by Amy Cross
“Maybe she's hurt,” Marty suggested.
“Oh, she's fine,” Carol replied with a heavy sigh. “That's just what children look like here.”
“I'm not gonna hurt you,” Robert said, crouching down so that he was at the girl's eye level. “I'm a friend, okay? Your dress looks a little torn, and I just wanna know that you're okay. Can you tell me that? Then we'll leave you alone. It's just...”
Looking down at the bottom of the girl's dress, he saw that the fabric was ripped in several places, and there were dark stains in several patches. After a moment he looked back at the girl's face, and he felt a shiver in his chest as he stared at her large, brown eyes.
“What's your name, honey?” he asked. “I'm Robert. This is my wife Carol and our daughter Martina. We're friends, we're just here visiting from out of town. Do you live round here? Do you have someone looking after you?”
“We can't adopt some homeless kid,” Carol sighed. “Just give her a couple of nickels if you're so worried, and let's go!”
“Mom, don't be so mean,” Marty said, stepping closer to the girl. “What's wrong with you? She might need help.”
“Hey, little thing,” Robert continued, reaching out toward the girl but not quite touching her shoulder as he stared into her eyes. “We're not mean. We just want to help. Can you tell me your name?”
He waited.
Marty waited.
Even Carol, frustrated and bored, waited.
The girl stared back at Robert.
“Come on,” he added finally. “Help us to help you. What's your name, little girl?”
She paused, and then slowly the girl began to move her lips. As she did so, a thick plume of gray, noxious-smelling gas emerged from her mouth.
Chapter One
One month later
115 Mierstock Drive.
Elly Blackstock stared down at the piece of paper for a moment, before glancing out the car window and seeing the squat, nondescript bungalow on the other side of the road. She watched the house for a moment, struck by how ordinary everything seemed in this neighborhood, and then she looked down at the paper once again.
***
“Wait, wait, wait!” a voice called out from the other side of the door, followed moments later by the sound of a bolt being slid across.
Then another bolt.
Then a key being turned in a lock.
Then another bolt, and another and maybe another at the same time.
Then a second key.
Then a heavy clunking thud, followed by what sounded like chains rattling.
Then a fourth – fifth? - bolt, and then silence
Finally, the door began to shudder slightly in the frame as the handle was turned several times.
“Can you give it a kick?” the voice continued, before the door fell still. “Give it a good kick!”
“Um...”
“With your foot! Kick it with your foot!”
Elly hesitated, before gently pushing against the door. When this didn't work, she tried again, then again.
“Harder!” the voice yelled. “And use your foot! It's the bottom where it's stuck!”
Elly waited for a moment, not really sure what she should do, then finally she used her foot to push the door. At first this didn't achieve much, but she tried a couple more times and finally the door shuddered open. Caught a little off-guard, Elly stumbled into the bungalow's gloomy interior, almost falling but managing to steady herself against the wall.
Looking along the corridor, she saw that there was no-one around.
A moment later she heard a shuffling sound in a nearby room. Heading over, she looked through and saw a shortish, hunched figure silhouetted against the window, and she watched as the figure rifled through some of the many, many papers that were strewn over every available surface in the room. There was something unusual about the way the figure moved, something awkward yet frantic, something that seemed almost wrong to watch.
“Annie?” Elly said cautiously. “Annie Radford?”
The figure turned, and in the low light Elly was just about able to make out a pair of familiar eyes staring back at her. Familiar, that is, except for the startling intensity of the gaze.
“I got your note,” Elly continued, holding the piece of paper up. “I'm sorry it took me almost a week to get here, but -”
“Finally,” Annie said. “You're late. We've got work to do.”
“Yeah, I know, but I couldn't just... I mean, I had to make arrangements to leave. I couldn't just walk out the door and come straight here.”
“Why not?”
“I had things to take care of first.”
“Did you bring a bag?”
“A bag?”
“I told you to bring a small bag.”
Elly furrowed her brow, before looking back down at the note.
“Um,” she said cautiously, “I don't see any -”
“Three years ago,” Annie continued, sounding a little annoyed, “outside the hearing when I met you, I told you to pack a small bag and keep it by the door so you'd be ready. Pack a small bag and keep it by the door, in case you ever need to disappear in a hurry. I'm pretty sure those were the exact words I used.”
“Oh,” Elly replied, vaguely remembering something like that, “yeah, sorry, you did. I didn't think of that, but I have a suitcase with some overnight things in it. For the trip. It took me a day to get here.”
“Huh.”
With that, Annie turned and looked back down at the papers in her hands. After a moment she began searching through them again, almost as if she no longer cared that she had a visitor.
Next to Elly, a dream-catcher hung from the ceiling, and a set of wind chimes moved in a faint breeze. There were several more dream-catchers and sets of chimes all around the room, and a moment later Elly noticed a bunch of metal boxes on one of the nearby tables. Stepping over to take a closer look, she realized that the boxes were in fact old-fashioned radio sets, although each had been opened at the back and there were wires poking out and running to various home-brewed pieces of equipment. Deep down, Elly was already thinking that the look – and indeed the fusty smell – of the house seemed like something from one of those news reports about hoarders. She half-expected a startled cat to suddenly leap out from behind one of the shelves.
Glancing over at Annie again, she couldn't help feeling sorry for the woman she was now seeing. Frail-looking and dressed in a tattered pale-yellow dress, with scruffy hair and a hunched back, Annie seemed utterly preoccupied by the papers in her hands. She looked so unkempt, in fact, that Elly was quite impressed that she'd managed to write a letter and successfully get it into the mail system.
“So you wanted me to come and see you,” Elly said cautiously. “I've got to be honest, I wasn't quite sure why you'd be -”
“You've seen it too,” Annie replied, and now her voice sounded harsher than before. “You know it's real.”
“Well, I -”
“You haven't lied to yourself, have you?”
“What do you mean?”
Annie turned to her again.
“Please, Elly, tell me you haven't fooled yourself into thinking it was all a dream, or an illusion.”
“You mean that stuff that happened at the hospital?” Elly replied. “And the stuff that happened out at Lakehurst?” She paused, aware that this was likely the last moment she could deny it all and turn around. “No. No, I know that was real. There were times when I desperately wanted to think it was all one big joke, or that I was mad, but deep down I know it all really happened. I mean, unless I'm completely insane, in which case I guess I could have imagined the whole thing. I could be imagining things now. Maybe I'm in a padded cell somewhere and this is all in my head.”
She waited for Annie to laugh, but Annie didn't laugh.
Instead, Annie headed over to a desk and picked up something that looked like a homemade metal helmet. Making her way to Elly, she held the item out for her to take.
<
br /> “What's this?” Elly asked cautiously. “It looks like some kind of helmet.”
“It's a shielding helmet for your brain,” Annie explained. “I need you to put it on, so I can be sure you're really you.”
“I'm sorry?”
“I need you to put it on, so I can be sure you're really you.”
“What does that even mean?”
“What part don't you understand?”
Elly opened her mouth to reply, but then Annie turned the helmet around and stared at her. Clearly, she wasn't joking.
“Did you make this?” Elly asked, taking the device and taking a look at the various wires snaking all across the surface of what seemed to have started out as an old football helmet. There were patches of foil taped to the insides, along with some old Christmas lights.
“Of course I made it,” Annie said.
“Is it safe?”
“It keeps the voice out,” Annie explained. “I need to make sure that you're really you, and that it's not something else speaking through your mouth.”
“How would that even -”
“You said it spoke through Thomas Clay Lacy once,” Annie added. “At the hearing, I mean. So you've seen it happen, you know it's real. And you know what it can do. So put the goddamn helmet on already.”
“Sure, but...”
Elly hesitated, before realizing that she'd driven a long way and that she might as well humor Annie. She still paused for a moment longer, worried she might be about to get zapped, and then very cautiously she put the helmet on.
“It's heavy,” she said with a nervous smile.
“Do you feel any different?” Annie asked.
Elly shook her head, which caused some of the wires to rustle slightly on the helmet's sides.
“And do you remember your journey here?”
“Sure. Why wouldn't I?”
“That's good, that means it hasn't been in your head.” Annie stared at her for a moment, before reaching up and taking the helmet off. “I suspected as much. As far as the entity is concerned, you're really of no importance.”
“Thanks, but -”
Suddenly Elly gasped as she realized her hair was caught in some of the wires on the inside of the helmet. Feeling a series of painful tugs, she was about to ask Annie to stop, but then Annie turned away with the helmet and ripped several strands out of Elly's scalp.
“Ow,” Elly muttered, rubbing the top of her head.
“We have to take this with us,” Annie said as she set the helmet on the desk, and then she turned and looked at the old radio sets. “We have to take these too, plus everything in there.” She turned and pointed past Elly, who turned and saw various items of electrical equipment sitting in a shopping trolley near the door. “Everything with a yellow sticker has to come with us.”
“Take them where exactly?” Elly asked cautiously, glancing back at Annie.
“That's why I called you here,” Annie replied. “I've been waiting for a sign that it's back, and now that sign has arrived. I need an assistant, and you're ideal because I know that you understand this stuff is real. We're going to take that shopping trolley's contents, and several of my other pieces of equipment, and we're going to travel to a town called Farstone in Arizona.”
“That's a long way,” Elly cautioned.
“I don't care. We have to go. And you promised you'd help.”
“I'm not sure that I -”
“You promised you'd help.”
“Well, sure, but I don't know if I have time to go to Arizona.”
“You promised.”
“Yes, but...”
Elly's voice trailed off as she realized that technically she had promised, albeit several years earlier. And Annie seemed so intense, and so certain.
“We have to go there!” Annie said firmly, sounding a little agitated now as she struggled to gather several of the radio sets into her arms. “We have to check it out. I need to know if I'm right!”
Elly opened her mouth to argue, before realizing that maybe she'd come too far now to back out. Or at least, she'd come too far to back out yet. She figured she could humor Annie for one journey, and that then she'd find a way to excuse herself from whatever else was planned. Besides, having lost her latest short-term job, she had nothing better to be doing with her time, and there was always the possibility that Annie might help her clear her name.
“Fine,” she said. “Let me just go and clear some space in my car.”
“You have a car?” Annie asked, turning to her while cradling half a dozen of the radio sets, each of which had wires trailing down to the floor. “Even better. I wasn't looking forward to getting all this stuff onto the bus.”
Chapter Two
“So anyway,” Elly continued as she kept her eyes on the road ahead, “I drifted from job to job, mostly in the healthcare sector, but it wasn't easy with my background. Sooner or later people would find out about what happened at Middleford Cross, and then I'd be let go.”
She glanced at Annie, who seemed completely engrossed in the radio set on her lap. She was fiddling with the back section, poking around with a screwdriver and showing no sign that she was actually listening to anything Elly said.
“It was always the same,” Elly explained, hoping to get a response. “People had heard little rumors and whispers about Middleford Cross. Not enough to really know what had happened, but enough to make them wary. It was like I'd been blackballed, although I know that's not what had actually happened. I guess the Middleford Cross story just made people feel uncomfortable. Fortunately I'd inherited a little money a while back, so I've been just about keeping myself afloat financially.”
Again she waited.
Again Annie seemed oblivious.
“And then I got abducted by aliens,” Elly added as a test, “and -”
“I am listening, you know,” Annie said immediately, while still working on the radio. “I didn't reply because I didn't feel the need, but I am capable of doing two things at once. I just don't really need to know anything about your boring everyday life, that's all.”
“Okay,” Elly muttered, watching the road for a moment and swallowing hard. “Sorry, I didn't mean to bore you. I just thought maybe you'd like to know how -”
Suddenly a bright spark burst from the radio set in Annie's lap.
Startled, Elly almost lost control of the car, but she quickly managed to straighten the steering with only a brief wobble in the lane.
“That wasn't supposed to happen,” Annie said, peering down at the radio. “Maybe I crossed some wires somewhere.”
“Are you sure you need to be doing that right now?” Elly asked.
She waited for a reply, but Annie was too busy reaching the tip of a screwdriver deeper into the radio's lower casing.
“So are you going to tell me what, exactly, has prompted this need to get to Farstone?” Elly continued, finally asking the question that she'd been trying to bring up since they'd set off. “I've never even heard of the place, it seems like a dust town in the middle of nowhere.”
“It's in Arizona.”
“Sure, but why do we need to go there? I looked it up on Wikipedia and the place isn't really known for anything.”
“I picked up some chatter,” Annie replied. “Some of the cults think something's going down near Farstone, and I have to get there before the rest of them. It all seems to be related to the entity, and it's gotten them all really excited, but I haven't managed to work out what's actually happening. Whatever it is, I'm worried that one of them might get their hands on something important. There's something in Farstone that they want.”
Elly paused, trying to work out where to begin. She had so many questions, her head was spinning.
“Pull over,” Annie said suddenly.
“I'm sorry?”
“Pull over. Pull the car over at the side of the road.”
***
The radio smashed as soon as it hit the ground, with the casing coming away and
the wires and internals spilling out as the whole mess began to roll down the verge. Finally, everything landed in a small stream that ran far down beyond the side of the road, where a solitary spark fizzled for a moment before dying out.
“Shame,” Annie said, a little breathless after the exertion of throwing the set so far, “I'd have liked to have at least saved the capacitor, but it was finger-printed. I'd never have been able to rely on it, not really. That's the problem with these sets. The charge eventually changes the system, like fine little grooves. Those patterns are easily identifiable, if you know where to look.”
Elly stared at the wrecked radio for a moment, before turning to her.
“I need to ask you about the cults again,” she said after a few seconds. “I might be over-reacting a little, but you mentioned cults and cults sound... not good.”
“It's okay,” Annie replied, “there are only six of them, and we're way ahead of at least four.”
“Six cults?”
Turning to her, Annie nodded.
“Six?” Elly asked again.
“That I know of. I suppose there might be more, but I doubt it.”
Elly hesitated, as traffic sped past on the highway just on the other side of the parked car. After a moment, figuring that cold hard facts might be useful, she took her cellphone from her pocket and tapped to unlock the screen.
“NO!” Annie gasped, grabbing the cellphone and throwing it down the verge.
“Hey!” Elly said, but she was too late. The cellphone landed perfectly in the stream, splashing the broken radio in the process.
“No phones,” Annie said, sounding a little breathless now. “I meant to tell you that earlier, but I didn't really think it was necessary. I thought you'd figure that out for yourself. We can't have phones with us. They can track us through our phones, they might even be able to hear us through them, even when they're switched off.”
“Who can track us?”
“You don't understand. I don't even know how to explain it to you.”
Elly stared down at her ruined cellphone. Deep down, she was already annoyed with herself, figuring she should have guessed how Annie would react. She should have hidden the phone, instead of brandishing it so freely. For a few seconds she felt completely lost, as if she was way out on a limb in the company of a madwoman.