Vortex

by Garton, Ray

  She coughed and sniffled as Crystal hurried away, then returned a moment later with a box of tissues. Penny wiped her eyes, blew her nose. Finally, she took a deep breath, then spoke.

  “The children are being fed to Pyk,” she said. “I’ve seen it happen. They’ve made me watch. He eats them.”

  Then she broke down again and slumped against Karen as she sobbed.

  Chapter Nine

  On Crystal’s computer screen via Skype, Burgess looked puffy-eyed and sleepy in his San Francisco hotel room, his hair spiked and tangled. He wore a black bathrobe and a pair of sweatpants and kept sipping from a cup of coffee. He claimed he hadn’t gotten three straight hours of sleep in 48 hours.

  “Look,” he said, “if I had any idea—any idea at all—that this was so... well, complicated, I wouldn’t have—”

  “This is more than complicated, Martin,” Gavin said. He was seated in front of the computer at the desk in Crystal’s office. Karen paced the floor behind him and Crystal was seated nearby in a chair. “If everything Penny says is true, these are incredibly dangerous people who have more power and resources in one pocket than all of us combined will ever have in our lives.”

  “I understand, I understand. And I don’t want you to take another step. Let’s just call the whole thing off. As long as you’re sure that what this girl has told you is true.”

  “You’re the one who told us these people are from Km Services,” Gavin said. “We don’t need Penny to tell us that’s a pretty shady organization with scary connections, right?”

  “Right, yes, that’s true. But this other stuff—the creature she said they were testing, she said children were, um—” He frowned and squinted. “She really said they were feeding the children to this thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you believe it?”

  “I believe she believes it.”

  “And this other woman, the Mahler woman, she actually saw children being taken in there?”

  “Yes.”

  Burgess sighed. “Karen? Any thoughts?”

  She said nothing for a moment and Gavin turned his chair around to see her standing in the middle of the room, hands on her hips, chewing her lower lip. Finally, she looked at Gavin and said, “How can we just walk away?”

  “What else do you suggest?”

  “I... I don’t know. I just can’t stand the thought of... well, if there are children being...” She pressed a hand to her forehead and groaned as she began pacing again.

  “I know, I know,” Gavin said. “That’s bugging the hell out of me, too.”

  “If it’s really happening,” Burgess said.

  Gavin turned to the computer with wide-eyed surprise. “Don’t tell me you’re actually being skeptical, Martin. You?”

  “As unlikely as that seems, yes. Sort of. I’m a little reluctant to believe that live children are being fed to... well, to anything. Did you ask Penny where the children are coming from? Where is Ryker getting them?”

  “Penny was too upset to ask her anymore questions. She’s sleeping now.”

  “What about Gertie? Where’s she?”

  “Gertie went home. She was afraid to stay away very long. She doesn’t want to make anyone suspicious.”

  “May I make a suggestion?” Burgess said.

  Karen came over to the desk and stood just behind Gavin. “We’re listening,” she said.

  “Crystal has introduced you to friends as a couple of mystery writers who are writing a novel set in Mt. Shasta. That’ll get the word around. In the morning, go out for breakfast, walk around town, talk to people. Ask who you might talk to about local history, the lore of the mountain. Make sure you ask a few people about this. Then in the afternoon, show up at the Mahler house.”

  “Just show up?” Karen said.

  “Yes. Show up and knock on the door. Introduce yourselves, say you’re writing a mystery novel set in town, and you’d been told that Mr. Mahler is a font of local history and lore and you’d like to chat with him.”

  “And then?” Gavin said.

  “Then you do that voodoo that you do so well. See what you can learn. See if you can get a look at the building out back. Better yet, see if you can meet this Ryker fellow. You guys are pros at this. You know how to suck up information. So, go there and... suck. For a while. See what you pick up. After that, if you want to walk away from this, then walk away. With my blessing. And full payment, by the way.” Karen hunkered down beside Gavin’s chair and looked at him. “Gertie gave us her cell phone number. We should warn her that we’re coming so she won’t be surprised and will play along.”

  Gavin looked at her without speaking for a moment. She squatted beside his chair, arms hanging between her legs, hands clutching each other tightly. She was tense, uncomfortable. She had been deeply disturbed by what Penny had told them—as had he—and was eager to see, at the very least, if there was something they could do about the possibility that children actually were being endangered. Maybe even killed.

  “Yeah, okay,” he said finally, after a long moment of silence. He turned to the screen. “We can do that, Martin.”

  “Good. Check your email. My contact should’ve gotten to you by now with information on Ryker.”

  “Thanks,” Gavin said.

  “Can I go to bed now? I’m so tired that for all I know, I’ve hallucinated this entire conversation.”

  “Get some sleep, Martin,” Karen said. She stood and put a hand on Gavin’s shoulder. “Ira going to go check on Penny.”

  Karen pushed the door open slowly. Penny had asked that the bedside lamp be left on at the low setting. It cast a small pool of soft yellow light. She leaned into the room slightly and listened to see if Penny was breathing with the rhythm of sleep.

  Penny sat up and looked at her sleepily.

  “Sorry,” Karen whispered. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “I was awake. Come in.”

  Karen closed the door behind her and sat down on the edge of the bed. They spoke in whispers. “Can’t sleep?”

  “I can’t stop worrying about Pyk. He’s so... vulnerable.”

  “If he’s eating children, I’m not so sure ‘vulnerable’ is a word I’d use to describe him.”

  Penny released a frustrated sigh. “He’s not cruel or evil. He’s just... what he is. They’re the bad ones—Ryker and the others. Pyk was supposed to escape with me. I’m not sure what happened, but he didn’t get out.”

  “Well, it sounds like Pyk is pretty valuable to them, so they probably won’t hurt him.”

  “They won’t kill him, but they’ll do whatever they have to if they think they can figure him out. They’re just using him. They don’t care about him. They don’t know how frightened he is. And he doesn’t like them, not at all. He knows now what he didn’t know before. He can ... feel how bad they are. I heard screams after I ran out of there. I think he hurt someone trying to escape. And if they push him too far, he’ll hurt them a lot worse. That wouldn’t be so bad, really. I wouldn’t mind at all. But I’m worried about him. If they drug him, he won’t be able to defend himself. And even if they don’t kill him, they’ll hurt him. They just don’t care. About anyone or anything. They’ll do whatever they think they have to do to get what they want. I was the only one who could communicate with him. I feel... responsible.”

  “You did what you could, Penny. You tried. Don’t beat yourself up. Tell you what. It looks like Gavin and I will be going out there tomorrow. We’re going to talk to the Mahlers, try to get a look at that lab and maybe even talk to Ryker. We’ll see what we can find out. But the important thing right now is that you got out of there.”

  “I’m scared of what’s going to happen next.”

  “What do you want to happen?”

  Thinking about that made her frown. “I don’t know. I never thought about that before.”

  “Surely there must be something you want to happen. Where would you like to be instead of back there?”

 
“Anywhere. Id rather be nowhere than go back to Mr. Ryker. Or back to Aquino Academy. Nowhere.”

  “Don’t you have friends there?”

  “No one trusts anyone there. Everyone’s afraid. Everyone is a possible danger. Even people you like.”

  Karen could not imagine what life would be like in a school you couldn’t leave, surrounded by people whose minds you couldn’t escape.

  “Tell me something, Penny. Why does Mr. Ryker feed children to Pyk? Isn’t there something else he could eat?”

  “Pyk likes eating living things. He told me I looked... delicious. He doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s not that he’s vicious, or anything. It’s just the way he is. It’s one of the things that make him an outcast among his people. When I told Mr. Ryker that, he wanted to make Pyk happy. He thought if Pyk were given everything he wanted, he would be more cooperative. So he had a little kid brought in, a little boy, and offered him to Pyk. And Pyk loved it. So that’s what he’s been feeding Pyk ever since.”

  “Where do the children come from?”

  “I’m not sure. All I know is that he gets them from what he thinks of as ‘the pool.’”

  “Pool? You mean, a... swimming pool, maybe?”

  “No. From... a group, I think. Like a pool of kids available to him. Does that makes sense?”

  “Yes, it makes sense.” Its maybe the most horrifying thing I’ve ever heard, she thought, but it makes sense. How does an ex-CIA worker for Km Services have access to a pool of children who are as disposable as live bait?

  “I could find out exactly where they come from if I wanted to,” Penny said. “All I have to do is open up a little more, go a little deeper into Mr. Ryker’s head. It would be easy. In fact, it’s harder not to do it than it is to do it. It comes naturally. But I have to protect myself.”

  “Protect yourself? From what?”

  “The people I deal with... well, they’re some pretty bad people. Sometimes seeing inside them is... painful. Damaging.”

  “So you have to try not to see inside them? Because seeing comes naturally?”

  “Like breathing.”

  Karen opened her mouth to speak, then stopped a moment, thinking, Do you really want to ask this question? After hesitating a moment, she said, “Can you see inside me?” Penny nodded. Then she smiled and said, “I don’t mean to embarrass you, but I don’t mind seeing into you so much because you’re such a nice person. I’m not used to that.” Karen felt her eyes sting with tears as a lump developed in her throat. It wasn’t from the sweet compliment, but from the relief in Penny’s voice, from the way she relaxed for a moment, revealing just how tense she’d always been up to that moment. Karen’s heart broke for the girl. She gulped the lump and willed the tears away.

  “Thank you, Penny,” she said. “That’s the best thing anyone’s said to me in a long time.”

  “I see that Crystal has already talked to you about your feelings for Mr. Keoph.”

  Karen blushed.

  “She’s very nice,” Penny said. “Crystal, I mean. But she’s not psychic. She thinks she is, but it’s really a talent she has for reading people. She’s not seeing inside them, she’s just seeing things outside them that most people don’t see. That confuses a lot of people.”

  “What is it like to see inside people?”

  “Scary. Sad. Especially when I see things about them that they don’t even know. Like you. You don’t know it yet, but you’ve already set aside a place in your mind for the regret you’re going to feel later when you come to see what an opportunity you missed by not telling Mr. Keoph how you feel about him.”

  Karen stopped breathing. She felt her heartbeat in her throat. Something about what Penny had said made those stinging tears return, and this time she couldn’t will them away. She stood quickly and told Penny to get some sleep, stepped outside the bedroom and pulled the door closed. She stood in the hall for a moment and took a few deep breaths.

  When the conversation with Burgess ended, Gavin stood and stretched, reaching up toward the ceiling, then bending down and trying to flatten his hands on the floor. He massaged the back of his neck as he walked around the room. “Are you going to do it?” Crystal said from her chair.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Are you going to go to the Mahler’s house tomorrow, like Marty suggested?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to talk to—”

  “Yes,” Karen said as she entered the room, “we are. We have to do something. I couldn’t live with myself if we just walked away from this.”

  “How’s Penny?” Crystal said, standing.

  “Trying to sleep. Do you mind keeping her here for the night?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Don’t be so glib about it, Crystal. Keeping her here is extraordinarily dangerous.”

  “Don’t think that just because I’m a New Agey girly-girl that I’m, like, helpless. When I lived in Los Angeles, I was burglarized and, um... attacked. I decided not to be traumatized by it and never to let it happen again. So I started buying guns and learned how to use them. I’ve got guns all through this house and I’m a damned good shot. Anybody comes in here, they won’t be leaving without an ambulance or a coroner. Besides, what choice do I have? We can’t send that girl back to those people.”

  Karen smiled at her. “Martin is exhibiting unusually good taste in women. He should hang on to you. And you can tell him I said that.” She turned to Gavin. “We should get some sleep, don’t you think?”

  Gavin chuckled as he shook his head slowly. “Yeah. Wish us luck with that.”

  Forty-five minutes later, Karen was lying beside Gavin in bed, unable to sleep. Penny’s words ran through her mind on a loop, again and again and again.

  You don’t know it yet, but you’ve already set aside a place in your mind for the regret you’re going to feel later when you come to see what an opportunity you missed by not telling Mr. Keoph how you feel about him.

  She could hear Gavin breathing beside her, his back to her. She could feel him as if her body were touching his, although it was not. She wondered if she was blowing it. Was her personal rule prohibiting relationships with coworkers really that important? Since when were any of her personal rules really that important?

  Karen turned her head on the pillow and looked at the back of Gavin’s head in the dark.

  Gavin?

  His body jerked with surprise. “Hm? What?”

  “How come we never see each other between jobs?”

  He didn’t respond for a long moment, then he slowly rolled over to face her. “Um... because you live in Los Angeles and I live in San Francisco?”

  “Well, yeah, I know, but...1 mean socially.”

  He propped himself up on an elbow. “What? Are you awake? Or are you talking in your sleep?”

  Karen began to feel embarrassed. “I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.” She rolled over on her side, turning her back to him.

  “No, no, what’s on your mind? Seriously. What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing. Really. Go to sleep. We have to get up in a few hours.”

  Gavin frowned into the dark. He decided this was a very weird job for all kinds of reasons as he rolled onto his side and tried to go back to sleep.

  Chapter Ten

  Gertie tried to be herself as she ate breakfast. She’d gotten little sleep and felt groggy, but she tried to hide it. Mama had cooked steel-cut oats and hard-boiled eggs and Gertie ate even though she didn’t feel hungry.

  “I wonder what all that fuss was last night,” Mama said as she sat down at the table with her bowl of oatmeal. Papa was outside tending the goats, chickens, sheep and pigs with the three young men from town who worked for him part time. The radio on the counter was quietly playing the news on NPR. “Why would they think someone had come to our door at such an hour?”

  “I think they were just looking for one of their people,” Gertie said. “Someone who was supposed to show up last night. They wondered if
he’d come to the door, is all. He was probably lost.” That barely made any sense at all, but Gertie felt the need to speak, afraid no response would somehow appear suspicious to Mama.

  Karen had called Gertie’s cell phone a little while ago and told her they would be coming later in the morning. She explained what they would be telling Mama and Papa—they were mystery writers working on a novel set in Mt. Shasta and had heard that Papa knew a lot about local history—and told Gertie not to let on that they’d met, or that she knew they were really there to look into the lab behind the house and possibly meet Mr. Ryker.

  “I don’t think Papa will take you out there,” Gertie had said. “And I don’t think he’ll let you go on your own.”

  “Even if we ask for a tour of the property?” Karen had asked.

  “Well, normally he might. But Mr. Ryker has told us to tell no one about that lab. Papa is pretty suspicious of most people. It took him a while to warm up to Mr. Ryker and his people, and if they hadn’t given Mama and Papa so many gifts, it would have taken a lot longer. He’s never met you, so there’s no way he’s going to get comfortable with you in a single visit. And even if he did, he’d still feel it was his duty to do as Mr. Ryker asked.”

  Karen had sighed. “Okay. Don’t worry about it. We’ll handle it.”

  Gertie was worried. She was a terrible liar under any circumstances, but she found it very difficult to lie to Mama and Papa. She wasn’t sure she would be able to pull it off. But for Crystal’s friends, she would try.

  She glanced nervously at the clock. Just a few minutes after seven.

  Karen found it difficult not to dwell on what Penny had told her the previous night, but she gave it her best effort. When they left the house, they found that snow had altered the color scheme of the world. Gavin drove them into town and parked at the curb. They walked into a small diner for breakfast at a few minutes after eight.

  As the chipper, plump, middle-aged waitress put their breakfasts on the table, Gavin said, “We’re new in town, and we’d like to—”