“Like what?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you, but just understand that some of this may be real and some of it might be pure baloney.” Andi took a deep breath. “There have been reports of people, groups, and even civilizations that have vanished. In 1872, the steamboat Iron Mountain disappeared while making its way down the Mississippi. She was never heard from again. Unfortunately, only one newspaper reported the vanishing. So did it really happen? Who knows?
“In 1947, a small plane crashed on Mount Rainier. When searchers found the crash site they discovered evidence of injury, but no people, no bodies, no footprints, and no indication that predators had hauled bodies away. The pilot and passengers were just gone.”
Andi fiddled with Brenda’s napkin. We gave her a moment to collect her thoughts. “In the late 1800s, on a farm outside Gallatin, Tennessee, a farmer named David Lang went into his field one day and—in full view of his family—disappeared. Some say the family could hear his voice in the field calling for help, but they could never find him. That mystery was never solved.
“It’s a long list,” Andi continued. “The Eskimo village of Anjikuni was found empty of all its residents, but everything they owned was left behind. A large group of Spanish soldiers vanished in 1711. And don’t even get me started on the Bermuda Triangle.”
“Are you saying that all these things really happened?” Brenda asked.
“No, I’m not. But we’ve seen enough in our adventures to make me wonder. The professor, of course, dismissed these stories, but I had a feeling he wondered if he might be wrong about that. But you know him—he was the poster child for logic and the scientific method.”
This kind of talk tends to fry my brain, but I had a sense that Andi had more connections to make.
“Man, I could use a cup of coffee,” Andi said. She looked worn out.
I started to rise, but Helsa beat me to it. She returned with more coffee for everyone, including Daniel. I still didn’t know if it was really coffee, but it looked and smelled close enough.
A couple of sips later, Andi continued. “I tried to nail down exact times when the kids were brought over or sent over or whatever the right verb is, but we’re dealing with children and they don’t fixate on time like adults do. If some of the adults were still alive, I might have made more progress. Anyway, I learned that there is no clear pattern. It’s not like they arrive on a timetable. Helsa confirmed that for me. They keep records of arrival times here. The time between arrivals varies and I can’t figure out a pattern on that. For all I know, new folk may show up before lunch or not for a week. I doubt time here is exactly the same as home.” She turned to Helsa. “How long does it take for your world to circle the sun?”
“Three hundred and seventy days, of course.”
Andi did blink at that. “How long is a day?”
“Twenty-six hours.”
Andi turned to the rest of us. “The year here is five days longer, and each day is roughly two hours longer.” She rubbed her face. “I imagine a minute here is different than a minute back home. It would take me some time to figure all that out, and there’s a good chance I’d fail even if I tried.”
“So we got nothin’,” Brenda said.
“Very little, I agree, but I did notice that the transition place, if that’s a good term for it, was not always the same. We were in Tiffany’s Café when we were snatched; others were in front of the café, at the end of town, in their homes, or some other place.” Andi slouched in her seat as if telling us all this had drained her. Maybe it did, but I’m pretty sure she was feeling like a failure.
Andi sighed in a way that broke my heart.
“You did good, Andi.”
“Thanks, Tank, but I’ve come up short—”
“Paper.” It was Daniel.
I looked at him. He held the watch he had taken from the professor’s room as a keepsake. Initially the watch proved too big for the arm of a ten-year-old. Since Daniel’s unwelcome growth spurt, the watch almost fit. Not quite, but almost.
“What?” I said.
“Paper. Please.” Daniel didn’t look at me. Instead, he gazed at Helsa.
She nodded, rose, and left the cafeteria only to return a few moments later with a couple pads of paper. She also carried a pen and a pencil, covering the bases, I supposed, and set them in front of Daniel.
“Whatcha going to do with that, baby?” Brenda said.
His answer was an action: he pushed the material in front of Brenda. “Draw. The town. Draw the town.”
“I’m sorry, Daniel, but I didn’t pay much attention to the place.”
“Tank did. He took a walk.”
Brenda looked at me, then at Andi. “I don’t get it.”
“Draw.” Daniel was insistent. Usually he kept to himself, living much of his life in his own mind, but he had no problem jumping into the middle of things if he had something to contribute.
Brenda took the pencil and started by drawing the main street we used to get into town. I outlined my walk, mentioning buildings I had seen and houses I had passed. Brenda added those to the map. Twenty minutes later we had a pretty decent map of Newland.
The moment Brenda set the pencil down, Daniel grabbed the paper and pushed it in front of Andi. She blinked a few times, looked at me, met Brenda’s eyes, then let her gaze settle on Daniel.
“I think I get it,” she whispered. With that, Andi picked up the pencil.
C
HAPTER
13
The Wisdom of Daniel
I was pacing, my patience gone. I had a feeling that we were about to cross a threshold of understanding and wanted to pray that we would recognize it.
Andi was putting little circles on the map Brenda had drawn. Each circle represented some child from our world who was dying in this world. Next to each circle Andi wrote two numbers in tiny script: the child’s age and the day when the transfer occurred.
I assumed that the circles would be all over the proverbial map, but even I could see a trend. The markers formed a line from Tiffany’s Café to the old church. Another line was formed going north from the church and into the residential area I had walked just this morning. Granted, these lines were a bit squiggly, but it was a pattern.
“There may be a time pattern after all.” Andi didn’t look up from the hand-drawn map. “I’ve included our event in Tiffany’s. It’s the most recent event we know of.” She let her gaze linger on the paper. I leaned over the table for a closer look. “Odd.”
“What’s odd?” I leaned even closer to the page.
“I was expecting a straight line, or a clump of events, but I don’t see that at all.” Andi pointed at the old church with the pretty steeple. “If I . . . can it be that simple?”
“I don’t see it, so it’s not all that simple to me,” I said.
“It looks like all the events fan out from the church building, like spokes from a hub. The earliest events happened in the residential area, the most recent in the heart of town.”
“And what does that mean?” Helsa asked.
“Notice how the clumps of circles—people—are associated on one line, then the next taken are a little distance from the first. The same can be said for the other small groups.” She scratched her head. “Think of the church as a lighthouse with a beam of light that swings in a big circle. Maybe I can extrapolate the next line—the line along which another abduction might occur.”
She didn’t have a ruler, so Andi tore a strip of paper from the edge of the page and used it to mark the distance between “spokes” at the same point from the hub, the church.
“The bar,” Andi said. “My best guess is that the next group will come from the bar.”
“At least there won’t be any children in a bar.” That was some comfort to me, but it wasn’t enough. “This is useful information, but I don’t know what to do with it.” I began pacing again. “If you’re right about the place, Andi, we still don’t have a clue about the time.”
Andi nodded slowly. “True. I don’t know how to figure that out. The times of the previous events seem random.”
“I suppose we could move into the place and—”
“Guys?”
It was Brenda. I had been so absorbed in what Andi was doing that I had forgotten about her. One look told me she hadn’t been sitting on her hands. She had made use of the pen Helsa had brought after Andi glommed onto the pencil. While we had been talking, Brenda was having a go at one of the other pads of paper, which she pushed to the middle of the table.
She had drawn the front of the bar we had driven past when we came to town and I had walked past on my little hike. “Him. He’s the key. Get him and we get our answers.”
In front of the bar stood Tockity Man, and in front of Tockity Man was another figure. A big figure holding the one-eyed man with the cardboard eye patch by the throat, and with his other hand he was holding Tockity’s fist. The big man was me.
There was something else in the drawing: a large vehicle.
“What is that?” I tapped the image. It looked like a vehicle of some sort, but Brenda hadn’t drawn the whole thing.
“Beats me,” Brenda said. “I just draw this stuff.”
Helsa took a gander, furrowed her brow a little, squinted, then suddenly straightened. “It’s a bus.” She blinked a few times. “It’s a school bus.” Her eyes widened. “That’s it.”
“What’s it?” I asked.
Andi was already dialed in. “That’s what’s going to tell us when the next event will occur. It’s our clock, Tank. School buses run on a schedule.”
“It’s headed away from the school,” Helsa said. “So that means school is out. I’ll be right back.”
Helsa moved to a phone mounted to the wall about ten feet from us. No one had to tell me what she was doing. She was calling the school.
The thing about Brenda and her drawings is this: she is never wrong.
CHAPTER
14
A Step of Faith
I had no idea if any of this would work. It was one of those things that looked good on paper but seemed beyond stupid when said out loud. But I was desperate to do something. Too many lives had already been lost, and children who barely knew how to live were facing the death that should be limited to the old. I was older. Okay, fine. Andi and Brenda had aged, but they had already lived a good bit of life. Yet the kids in the ward knew nothing of first loves, hopes, or dreams. Some were just old enough to learn to throw a ball. I had to do something, and I trusted Brenda’s and Andi’s insights.
The van we were riding in moved down the hill, driven by one of the police officers we had met when we first arrived in New Land. When we first met, he was all smiles. Now he was as sober as an undertaker. Once I told Helsa what I wanted to do, she sprang into action. Clearly, she carried some kind of weight in this strange building. When she spoke, people hopped to it.
Helsa sat next to me in one of the van’s rear seats. I leaned toward her. “I haven’t asked this before, Littlefoot, because it reminds me of when you left us. Watching you go was as much pain as I’ve ever felt.”
She took my hand. “I still love that name. Littlefoot. I cherish it.”
That gave me a grin. “How did you get back here?”
“They brought me back. The people who send you places sent me there; they brought me home.”
“How?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s beyond me. They know more than we do. They do good for the world—several worlds.”
“You really don’t know who they are?”
She looked sad. “No, Tank, I don’t. I really don’t. So much mystery. So many unknowns.”
“We feel the same. Still, we’ve done some good things. How did they send you to our world and bring you back?”
“They set up a machine. I don’t think it created an opening between our worlds, but he said it kept the doorway open.”
“He?”
She looked away, then said a name that sounded like Shaun or maybe Shane. I don’t think it was Shaun, but it was close.
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know. After I got back, he disappeared. It took me a little time to return to my proper age. When I did, he was missing.”
“He was part of your team?”
She nodded. “In a way, he was much like your professor. I’m a bit like Andi. When I was my natural age again—that took about three weeks—my team was off doing the work we do. They never came back.”
“No idea what happened to them?”
“None, but . . . I can’t be sure, but I have a bad feeling about Shaun. I think he might be your Tockity Man.”
That was a shocker. “What makes you think that?” I tried to keep all the surprise out of my voice. I doubt that I succeeded.
Tears filled her eyes. “He was the one who operated the device that kept the doorway to your world open long enough for me to pass through. After my team went missing, I went to the building where we kept the device. It’s at the end of town. The device was gone.”
“The church?” I asked.
“Yes. It is a center for worship. Well, it was a center for worship. The spiritual ways are not followed here as they once were.”
“Same can be said for our world,” I said. “It would explain a few things if this guy made off with the equipment and brought it to our world.”
“Again, I can’t say that’s what happened, but I fear it might be as you say.”
“Why would he do that?” Brenda asked.
Helsa gazed out the window for a moment. “If it is Shaun, then I think he lost his mind. It’s one of the dangers of jumping between universes. It short-circuits our brains.”
“Tockity Man is more than a little crazy.” That may have been harsh. I patted Helsa’s hand. “This isn’t easy work. We can only do what we can do.”
Helsa’s revelation was painful to hear, and I’m sure even more painful to share. I wondered what it was like wondering what happened to a team you had spent so much time with. The thought of losing Andi and Brenda would feel like someone doing surgery on me with a butter knife.
We arrived in front of the building that corresponded to the bar in our Newland, except here, best I could tell, it was more of a juice bar.
Helsa spoke to her driver, who repeated the words over the radio. The patrol cars that had followed us back into town blocked off the road. Other patrol cars, probably teams already on duty, were stationed along the street. Officers slipped from the vehicles and moved to the bar, walked through the door. Moments later patrons exited, looking confused. So did one man who I took to be the owner. He was less than happy.
“You ready to rock and roll, Cowboy?” Brenda sounded confident. I’m pretty sure she was faking it.
“No, but let’s do this anyway.”
The moment we were outside the van, I heard Helsa. “Tank.”
She rushed toward me, threw her arms around my neck, kissed me on both cheeks, then stepped back. “If it is Shaun, and if he has the transport mechanism, then he’ll have an activator. It looks like a small red fruit. Don’t let him use it, or everything will be for nothing.”
I nodded grimly and stepped toward the building. I had been right. It was a juice bar.
Dropping a coil of rope on the floor, I pulled one end up and tied it around my waist. A uniformed officer tied the other end to a stool bolted to the floor. We had a plan. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but it was the only plan we could come up with. We had a likely location for the next set of abductees. Andi figured that out. Brenda’s future-drawing power had given us a pretty good timeline and placed me at the scene with Tockity. Since Brenda’s drawing showed me mixing it up with the one-eyed crazy man in this universe, it meant I somehow needed to bring him here. All we had to do was get to the bar before the event.
“I hope this works,” I said. “If it doesn’t, then you guys will never let me forget it.”
“Y
ou got that right, Cowboy.” I turned to see Brenda grinning. That did me a lot of good. She could fill a room with laughter or suck all the air out of it with just a few words. Love that girl.
When we were dragged from our world, we were sitting in a café booth. I didn’t see anything like a portal or door, but then again I was looking at my breakfast. I hoped I would recognize it when it arrived. I scanned the interior of the juice bar with its blenders, brightly upholstered seats, and artwork of some strange-looking fruit on the walls. We moved the small tables and chairs from the middle of the floor. I figured if I stood in the center of the room I would have the shortest possible distance to anything that appeared in the room.
A light flashed in my eyes, the same kind of light that flashed in my head when we were transported here. Problem. The light didn’t form a structure like a door or anything. It was just a glow that filled almost half of the space in the juice bar. I hesitated, wondering where to enter.
Then I got a break: two or three confused and shaken people emerged from the center of the glow. I didn’t hesitate. I charged the point where I had seen them materialize. I might have only a moment. I hoped that I wouldn’t run through it and slam into the wall.
I didn’t.
The light that surrounded me now filled me. And it hurt. Big-time pain. I may have screamed. If I did, I didn’t hear it.
Then the light was gone, and I was doubled over but standing on a floor covered in peanut shells.
The bar.
“Tockity, tockity, tick—”
I straightened and saw the scruffy man with the Corn Flakes eye patch. A moment later, I had him by the throat. He had something in his right hand. It looked like the device Helsa described. With my free hand I clamped my big mitt around his hand and squeezed until I was sure I had control of all his fingers. His face twisted in pain and told me I had accomplished that part of my goal.
The Probing: Leviathan, The Mind Pirates, Hybrids, The Village Page 28