He sent that message and opened up a web browser window. In the search box, he typed “110 Butler Avenue.” He scanned the search results and saw nothing that referred to the building that had existed in the alleyway. He typed “Maverick Supplies and Drugs” and hit “Go.”
Very few local results were in the list that appeared, but there was a link from a website called “HauntedSpots.com”
He opened the page, which appeared to be an encyclopedia of supposedly haunted locations. The entry for Maverick Supplies and Drugs was brief. There was a black and white photo of the store. Based on the cars and the presence of the “C” that had been missing in 1989, this was an earlier era in the store’s existence. Dylan guessed probably the 1960’s.
He started to read the paragraph under the photograph, but a text notification popped up on the screen. “Hey bro,” Matt’s message read. “You just woke my ass up but you can come by whenever.”
He pushed away the notification, and immediately it was replaced by a message from Emma. “Want to hang out this afternoon?”
Dylan laughed. At least his scheduling was working itself out. He replied to Emma, telling her he could come to her house at 1. Then he shifted his focus back to the entry on HauntedSpots.com.
Maverick Supplies and Drugs
Store disappeared on August 10, 1989 under mysterious circumstances. No evidence of owner exists. It is thought that the store reappears from time to time to certain individuals.
Mysterious circumstances? Dylan thought that was unusually vague. And what about the owner? Why wouldn’t Dr. Mike be mentioned by name? He was well-known in the town in 1989. Dylan felt frustrated by the lack of information in the entry. He and Emma could add quite a bit to the lore around the pharmacy. He backed up to the Google search results, then stopped himself. Researching the store was a dangerous hole to fall into. Dylan could see how easily a simple search for answers could become an obsession.
He put the phone in his pocket, got back on the bike, and pedaled toward Matt’s house.
“So? What’s up?” Matt asked. They sat on a glider on Matt’s front porch, hidden from the street by thick bushes.
“Not much, man,” Dylan said. “I’ve been spending some time with Emma.”
“The new girl? Yeah, I know you were going to meet up with her yesterday. Not positive that qualifies as spending some time, but I’m glad you’re making an effort.”
“Right. Well, yeah, I’m pretty sure she’s my girlfriend now.”
Matt looked pleasantly surprised. “Well now, that’s something. You moved faster than I would have expected, Dyl. Good for you!”
“Thanks.”
“By the way, who was it who told you she would go for you? Oh, that’s right, it was me.”
Dylan smiled, but his thoughts were wandering. Being with Matt was a nice break from everything that had happened recently, but bantering with his friend seemed so unimportant in light of the mysteries of the universe that had been revealed to him.
He wondered if Matt would understand or believe anything he said. Probably not, but then again…
Dylan took out his phone. “Can I show you something?”
“Yeah, sure,” Matt said. “Watcha got?”
Dylan pulled up a video of the 1989 version of Butler Avenue. He started to hand the phone over to Matt, then at the last second flipped through the images until he found one of Emma.
“Here you go.”
“That’s Emma?” Matt asked.
“That’s her.”
“She’s really hot, man. I get why you were nervous.”
Dylan laughed. “Well, yeah. She’s so much more than that though. She’s incredible to talk to and funny and smart—”
“God, I’m going to be sick,” Matt said. “You’re in love! Moving a little fast, my friend. Take some free advice from someone who’s been there: don’t rush things. All in good time!”
This made Dylan feel even more out of sync. What had happened to him and Emma was seeming more and more like a wild dream, and hearing his dad and now Matt analyze his blossoming relationship made him wary. He needed to see Emma. He needed to see if the spark was still there a day removed from their experience in the store.
“You okay, Dyl?” Matt asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a lot on my mind.”
“Want to talk about it? That’s what friends are for.”
“Thanks, but I don’t know. Not right now. Maybe another time. Possibly.”
Matt looked a little hurt at that. “Okay…well, if you change your mind, you know where I live.”
They changed the subject after that, and Dylan managed to loosen up a little and have a few laughs. Still, his mind kept returning to Emma, and the pharmacy, and the deep mystery surrounding it.
Dylan arrived at Emma’s house at five minutes to one. His back was sweaty from exertion, but his palms were sweaty from the thought of seeing her again. He sent her a text announcing his arrival, and she came outside a few minutes later. Her hair was pulled into a loose bun, and she wore yoga pants and a massively oversized grey t-shirt.
Dylan knew instantly that he needn’t have worried about his feelings for her. They were still quite intact. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey yourself!” She skipped down the stone path leading from her front door to the sidewalk. They kissed and for the first time since he’d woken up that morning, things felt right. He placed one hand on either side of her hips and pulled her toward him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed gently.
“Wow,” he said when they each let go. “I hadn’t realized how much I missed you.”
“I feel the same way,” she said. “Nothing has been right today until right now.”
He nodded. “I get it. So what do you want to do?”
“My parents are away all day. So whatever you want.” She paused. “Have you, you know, been thinking about what happened at all?”
“Yeah. I have.”
She smiled. “Oh good. I thought it might have just been me.”
“I did a little research,” he explained. “And there’s almost no mention of what happened to the pharmacy.”
“I did the same,” she replied. “Did you look into Clyde at all?”
“No. Shit. I guess I should have. You did?”
“Yeah. I checked everything I could. There’s nothing about him anywhere. But there was something else.”
“What?”
“Why don’t you come inside and take a look.”
She walked back up the hill. He stood mesmerized for a few seconds as he watched her move, her body accentuated by her tight pants, and then ran up behind her and put his arm around her waist.
Inside the house, she led him to the kitchen table, where a laptop sat open. She logged in and a web page popped up on the screen.
“Take a look at this,” Emma said.
On the screen was some sort of government file. Nearly half the document was hidden beneath black lines.
“What is it?” Dylan asked.
“The government occasionally declassifies old stuff. Sometimes they only partially declassify things, and that’s what this is. It’s describing an incident with a store.”
“Our store?”
“Well, the address is redacted. But read what it says.”
Dylan read the page out loud. “Okay. ‘August 10th 1989. Neighbors in the block nearest the site contacted local authorities reporting the sound of an explosion.’ And then there’s a bunch missing… and then it says, ‘Every attempt should be made to create the appearance of a blank, after which all documents pertaining to the incident with blank should be eliminated.’”
He looked at Emma. “The date matches. So what are they saying here? That they created the appearance of cleaning up a disaster?”
“Yes, that’s what it sounds like.”
“Why do that? Why would they have to make it look like a disaster if the store really blew up?”
Emma smirked. “Well,
because the store didn’t blow up, Dylan. We’ve been in the store.”
He smacked himself in the head. “Ugh. Obviously. Sorry. So they didn’t want people to know that this was happening. They made it look like the store had never been there, and let the records exist up to that point just enough to make people think there was some normal situation. A fire, or whatever.”
“Right. It works, if you think about what people knew of Dr. Mike back then. It all kinda fits with what we assumed when we were in 1989.”
“Do you think they know that the store still exists?”
“Who? The government people? Probably. I bet that has to do with that mess of hidden sentences at the bottom of the document.”
“I wonder how they got wind of this,” he said. “Somehow the feds or whatever took this away from the local authorities. And they did it fast, I think.”
“Maybe they knew about Dr. Mike’s experiments. Maybe they were watching him and he wasn’t even aware.”
“Can you pull up anything older?” he asked.
“No. Without the date and the circumstances to use as a guideline I have no idea what I’m looking for.”
Dylan thought it over. “So what’s the point?” he asked.
“The point?”
“I mean what do we do with this information? Dr. Mike did some crazy shit and the store became what it became. And the government didn’t want people to find out. I get all that. What does it matter for us? Or for Clyde?”
“Well I think it matters because tonight is the last night of the full moon.” She put her hand on Dylan’s and looked into his eyes. “If the government gets any idea that we’ve found the store and accessed it the way we did, they could cut off access to it. We need to get back there now if we’re going to get back at all.”
Dylan sighed. “Emma, maybe we just don’t go back at all. If the intelligence agencies know about it, maybe they will go fix what happened. This is too crazy.”
“We know we can get back, Dylan! We know what to do.”
“We talked about this!” he said. His voice sounded frantic and he hoped he wouldn’t come across like he was yelling at her. He took a deep breath and spoke quietly. “We don’t know if we will get so lucky next time. We need to let the portal close.”
“I don’t know, Dylan. I hear what you’re saying but we are the only people who know that Clyde exists! He had family and friends. People who loved him. They don’t even know he was ever alive so they can’t mourn that he’s gone.” Tears formed in her eyes. “This isn’t right. We can’t do nothing.”
“We won’t have enough time to act,” Dylan said. “Can’t we let the full moon end this time and consider our options for next month?”
She thought for a second, then nodded. “We can try that. But what if it doesn’t work anymore?”
“I don’t think that’s going to be the case. But that’s the deal I’ll make with you. We try again in a month and we prepare the best we can. And if it doesn’t work, if we can’t get the store back, we just walk away. If it’s there, we go and try to save Clyde. And his friend. Can you work with that?”
“Yes. Thank you!” She kissed him and he returned the kiss, wondering as he did so whether he had just made a promise he would come to regret.
Interlude
Liz Carlyle awoke in the middle of the night with a scream. She’d had a terrible dream, and the vividness of it remained with her as she shuddered in bed with her covers pulled tight to her throat.
In the dream she’d been married to a man named Jim. She was pregnant with his child, and they were so unbelievably happy. He had rescued her from a succession of unpleasant relationships and shown her a life so much better than she’d ever imagined.
In that dream, she was floating outside her own body, watching Jim and another man stand in front of a store on an old town main street. She couldn’t identify any of the surroundings in the fog of the dream. The sky turned purple, and terrible thunder sounded. It was so loud, she thought her eardrums might bust.
Jim turned to her, somehow seeing her floating there. “I love you!” he called. She tried to reach for him but she had no body to reach with.
“Don’t forget me,” he said, and his body began to dissolve into a purple dust. The man next to him dissolved too, his terrified eyes crumbling away to nothing.
“Don’t leave me!” she called, and she was surprised to find that she could speak.
“Don’t forget me,” Jim said again. “I won’t forget you.”
At that, he had fallen to the ground, no more than a pile of purple ash that blew away in the strong wind. She had screamed then, and it was that scream that carried her back to her body in the land of the living.
She sat there reliving the awful dream, and tears poured down her cheeks. She knew that she would get no more sleep that night.
Chapter Seventeen
Dylan had thought the month would go by slowly, but time has a funny way of bending depending on the circumstances. Between his fear of the coming full moon and his enjoyable times with Emma, the days moved in a blur. His 16th birthday arrived and he passed his learner’s permit test. It would still be some time before he’d have the opportunity to try for a license, and he would have to borrow a car anyway for a while, but the thought of getting closer to being an independent driver excited him.
Emma got him an outfit from Old Navy, and for once he was happy to receive clothing as a gift. He felt there was almost nothing she could do that he wouldn’t find the most interesting, most wonderful thing ever.
They agreed not to discuss another trip to the vacant alley until a week before the full moon, and they stuck to that agreement, though Dylan constantly felt the topic nagging at his mind, and guessed Emma was experiencing a similar internal struggle.
Just the same, they filled their days with a relationship that was as normal as any two teenagers would have. They went to the movies, the mall, and even the Philadelphia Zoo. Their make-out sessions grew longer and longer, and Dylan knew it was only a matter of time until one of them would attempt to take things to another level.
That moment came two days before they were to lift the ban on speaking about the store. Emma’s parents were out of town again and they sat in her room on the bed, flipping through options on Netflix as rain poured outside. Thunder rumbled gently, nothing like the supernatural storm they had experienced before and likely would again.
“Dyl,” Emma said, “I want to ask you something.”
“Okay, what’s up?”
“I’m ready.”
He laughed. “That wasn’t a question. Ready for what?”
She reached out and stroked his chest with one finger.
“Ready, like… for sex. With you.”
“Oh. Oh man, are you sure?”
“Are you not?” she asked.
“No, I am. I definitely am. I just…are you sure?”
“Dylan, relax. I picked up what we need.”
“Oh man.” He felt his heart racing.
“There’s nothing to worry about.”
“I know,” he said.
“So what is it?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
She nodded. “We don’t have to rush anything. I want it to be perfect.”
He sighed. “Me too. I want you and I want this but it’s just…overwhelming.”
“Do you want to wait?”
He took a deep breath. He felt his emotions twisting and hoped to keep from getting choked up. “We don’t have to wait long. I promise. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, of course. I want you to be into it. I’m not going to force you.” She kissed him and lay back on the bed. “I love you, Dylan.”
“I love you too,” he said. He kissed her again, feeling his anxiety dissipate. On an impulse, he slid down the bed and crouched near her feet.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He kissed the inside of one of her thighs, then reached up and started pulling off her sh
orts.
“There are some things I’m ready to try,” he said.
Dylan knew he would remember that night for the rest of his life, and the experience itself and the moments that followed as they held each other and listened to the rain pushed away all worries over the mysterious store. He had never done more than kissed a girl before, and Emma’s excited acceptance of every move he made gave him a confidence he’d never thought he could possess. He didn’t know if he was mad at himself or not about pushing off actually having sex, but he knew it wouldn’t take much more time for him to be ready. He felt certain he would know when the moment was right.
The next morning, they got up early, making sure he was out the door before her parents were due back. He kissed Emma goodbye and got on his bike with such enthusiasm he felt he might fly away. He pedaled home as fast as he could, simply wanting to jump into his own bed and revel in the memories of the previous night.
When his house came into view, he saw an old Lincoln Town Car in a hideous gold color parked in his driveway. Dylan walked his bike past the large vehicle, opened his garage door using the keypad, and stored the bike inside.
He entered his house and walked into the living room. His parents were sitting with a man who was wearing a brown trench coat. They all turned to look at Dylan as he walked in.
“Dylan,” Mrs. Merchant said, “did you have fun at Matt’s?”
“Sure…yeah, Mom.”
“Dyl,” Mr. Merchant began, “this gentleman is Agent Stevens. He just got here a minute before you did. He’d like to talk to you.”
Dylan didn’t think his parents looked particularly concerned, but there was something off-putting about the visitor’s lack of expression. “Hello, Dylan,” Stevens said. “I have to ask you some questions. Your parents have expressed a desire to stay here for our talk, but I understand that you may want some privacy.”
“I don’t understand,” Dylan said. “What is this about?”
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