by Matt Carter
He watched, a little skeptically, but he watched, and I watched the reflection in the Jackalope case over his shoulder. The light would fall at fifteen seconds in, and as the time approached, I found myself much more anxious than any person who’s actually fought Splinters should ever be about anything else.
At four seconds to go, the phone vibrated. A text message. Before I could even think of snatching it back, I caught the reversed words scrolling along the upper menu, over the video, next to Aldo’s name.
Pics from morning shift. He’s been visiting your Splinter-dad’s shop again.
Ben’s eyes narrowed, and—with an information-need that I had to respect, as inconvenient as it was—he swiped the message open, filling the screen with the latest candid shots of himself.
After a few seconds of very uncomfortable silence, he started with the easy part of the message. “You think your own dad is a pod person?”
“A Splinter,” I said. It was time to start getting terms straight. “And I’m effectively certain he is. I saw him.”
“Jeez, do you think the worst of everyone?”
“No,” I said. “There’s Billy, Aldo, uh, a few you haven’t met, and . . . you.”
He was still scanning through the photos.
“Tell me,” he said, “exactly how sick a stalker are you?”
He was angry. I’d been the object of a lot of anger, but for some reason this time it made my stomach twist in on itself so hard it hurt.
“I’m not sick.”
“How long have you been following me?” he asked.
The hurt in my stomach was filling up my brain, not in the helpful, packing peanut way. “I needed to know you were—”
“Never mind.” He put the phone down, opened his wallet, and slammed what little was in it (twice as much as the drinks and tip demanded) on the table without looking at it. “Don’t come to me again, Mina,” he said slowly and clearly, stepping out of the booth. “And I don’t care what you think she is. Stay the hell away from Haley.”
5.
The Used Car Prince
Ben
“Are you all right?” Haley asked as we walked down Main Street, shopping bags hanging lazily at our sides. She’d caught me looking over my shoulder again. I told myself not to be so jumpy, so paranoid, but it was hard not to be.
“Yes,” I lied. When that didn’t feel right, I quickly amended, “No . . . I don’t know.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
“No,” I said firmly. Anyone else would have pushed the point, tried for more detail, but after all she had been through, Haley had gained a great appreciation for people not constantly asking her how she was doing. At the moment, I liked it.
I looked again, then forced my eyes forward, cursing myself. She was out there, somewhere, and I just had a sick feeling in my gut that she was watching me. She’d already forced her way into my life, she already knew more about me than I felt comfortable with her knowing, and I wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t insane. But there were enough points hiding in what she’d said to make me paranoid.
I was sure she would have loved that.
After I ran away from her in the Soda Fountain, I spent the next few days inside, staying away from my phone, the internet, the windows, any possible way that she could have been looking in on me. That first day I even began tearing the room up, trying to look for hidden cameras or bugs, stopping only when I realized I didn’t know what hidden cameras or bugs actually looked like.
The Perkinses were another issue entirely. I got by those first few days playing sick. Mom bought that readily enough. Haley, for her part, kept a respectful distance, but I could tell she didn’t entirely believe the excuse. Aunt Christine was the real problem. Haley was right about her mom trying to play matchmaker for us. Every opportunity she got, she would try to arrange family nights out at the movies, or make suggestions for new places for Haley and me to check out, saying she wanted a review. She bought me so much cold medication, vitamins, and cough syrup, I thought I’d spontaneously catch something just from being around all of the bottles.
It was Haley who finally got me out of there. She’d said her mother had been driving her crazy, and that she needed an escape.
It was not a good time for my knight-in-shining-armor problem to kick in, but it did, so I spent the better portion of the afternoon wandering around downtown Prospero helping Haley carry supplies for the upcoming block party. Being a gentleman, I offered to carry the two canvas bags that held watermelons.
I regretted this offer after the second block.
“So is this going to be a big party?” I asked.
Haley shrugged. “It’s big for Prospero, if that’s what you’re asking. Almost everybody brings food. They set up a few games. You might even get to see Mr. Smith dressed as a clown.”
She shuddered dramatically. I laughed for the first time in a couple days. It felt nice.
“Sounds like something to see,” I said.
Haley chuckled. “I know he’s weird, but he’s mostly a nice guy when you get to know him. Have you noticed how he sometimes doesn’t seem to know how things are supposed to work?”
I hadn’t spent much time around him, though it seemed as decent an assessment as any. “Yeah.”
“Well, the same goes for his perception of appropriate clown makeup. I think he gets most of his makeup tips from scary movies,” she said. Again, I laughed and it felt great. At least it made the bags feel slightly lighter, the day slightly cooler, though a Cherry Timewarp was beginning to sound pretty good. . . .
No. I couldn’t think about it. I liked the Soda Fountain of Youth, I even loved bantering with Billy, but it was one of her places. I couldn’t chance running into her again.
“I could see how that would be a problem,” I said. Then, on inspiration, I said, “You know, you’re pretty easy to
talk to.”
Sympathetically, Haley reached down for my hand, stopping when she remembered the bags I was carrying. She smiled. I smiled back.
It was a good moment, at least until she looked up the street. Her eyes went wide, and the smile completely disappeared. She darted away from me, then half-turned on her foot to look back.
“I don’t think he saw me. You haven’t seen me either today, okay?” she said urgently.
“What?” I asked.
“You haven’t seen me. Please?” she said quickly, opening the door to the nearest business and jumping inside.
“All right.” That was weird. I looked up the sidewalk, trying to follow her gaze. Aside from the usual street traffic, I could only see a boy on a bicycle. He was blonde, tall, and lanky in a muscular sort of way, wearing a faded t-shirt and soccer shorts. His shaggy, tied-back hair and poor attempt at starting a beard made me first take him to be lazy, but as he came closer I could see his eyes held steely focus. He almost paid me no mind, almost passed me by. I thought Haley had overreacted.
Then he saw me.
He looked away, then did a double-take, skidding sideways slightly as he turned the bike to me. Jumping it up onto the sidewalk, he smoothly lowered the kickstand and dismounted, walking my way.
“Are you Ben Pastor?” he asked, never letting up his deliberate pace. Like his eyes, his voice was focused and clear.
“Who wants to know?” I asked, suspicious.
This was all the confirmation he needed as he quickened his pace. He raised his arms. I dropped the bags to the ground, preparing to fight, hearing the sickening sound of one of the watermelons breaking open on the sidewalk.
Then he smiled a disarmingly crooked smile and wrapped his arms around me in a powerful bear hug.
“Thank you, brother. Thank you so much for saving Haley,” he said, letting me go. He grabbed me by the shoulders hard, laughing. “You need anything, and I mean anything, you just call me up, okay? Anytime.”
“Thanks?” I said, more than a little confused. I’d gotten used to strange people in this town congrat
ulating me; they just rarely did so with this level of exuberance. He looked down at the bags I had been carrying, at the one that now steadily leaked watermelon juice.
“Oh, man. So sorry, so sorry,” he said. “I’ll totally get you a new one.”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a wallet, and rifled through a surprisingly large stack of cash before pulling out a business card.
“It’s not necessary,” I said. “I got it on sale—”
He put a hand up dramatically as he pulled a pen from his pocket and started writing on the back of the card, “Stop. I insist. You wouldn’t have dropped it if it hadn’t been for me. And after all you have done, it is the least I can do.”
He handed me the card. The front had a jaunty cartoon of a man driving off into the sunset in a new sports car with text reading, “BRUNDLE’S AUTOS—IRWIN BRUNDLE, THE USED CAR KING—YOU’LL SAVE BUNDLES AT BRUNDLE’S!” On the back he had written what was presumably his phone number. Something about that name . . .
“That’s my dad’s card, but my number on the back. I know Haley’s dodging me right now. With what happened, I’m totally cool with that, but just gimme a time and a place when you’re free and I’ll bring you a couple watermelons to make up for that one. Organic ones, the good stuff, I swear,” he said with a smile.
I could tell he wouldn’t back down easily, and though I wanted to politely get rid of him so I could get back to Haley (even though part of me was curious about why the son of the “Used Car King” rode a bicycle), I said, “Thanks. I didn’t catch your name?”
The boy smacked himself on the forehead theatrically before offering his hand, “Sorry, brother. Kevin Brundle at your service.”
A slight, cold chill went up my spine as that name fell into place.
Haley had mentioned Kevin only a few times when we had been hanging out. They had dated for almost a year, breaking up only a couple weeks before she disappeared. She said he had taken it badly. After she had been declared missing, he was one of the primary suspects. Considering the fact that his younger brother had disappeared two years ago under similar circumstances, he made a pretty good one. His dad, in addition to being the Used Car King, was also an influential member of the Town Council and got Kevin out of the Sheriff’s custody after just under a week. There was no evidence against him, and nothing more than coincidence to tie him to either of the disappearances.
The boy standing before me was not entirely what I expected.
“Thanks, Kevin,” I said. Looking for an easy exit, I motioned down to the bags, “Listen, I really gotta get these—”
He nodded sympathetically as he walked back to his bike. “I hear ya. Get the good one on ice, the bad one on the compost heap. Just remember, hit me up when you’re free and I’ll get you a new one!”
As he rode off, he waved to me. I didn’t wave back. So far, Kevin wasn’t the complete jerk that Haley had made him out to be, but she had known him longer and had to know more than the façade he put on to the public. I was willing to trust her judgment on Kevin.
What if he’s one of them?
The thought came and went quickly, and I was angry at myself for letting it in at all. I thought of Mina—her damned Splinters—and I laughed.
I took the dripping bag of crushed watermelon and dropped it into the nearest trash can I could find. After inspecting the other melon I had dropped, I began looking for Haley.
I didn’t have to look far.
She’d retreated into Foxfire Collectibles. It was a small shop with aisles upon aisles of model kits, comic books, magic tricks, remote control vehicles, and hundreds of ornately painted, custom-sculpted, role-playing miniatures locked in glass cases. It was hard to see Haley through the aisles, but I could hear her talking to the owner by his well-hidden desk.
“ . . . I think I’m adjusting well. I mean, I’m still a little shaky, but I’m getting used to it,” she said.
“Good. It was a traumatic experience. It will take some time yet to recover, but you are doing remarkably,” the owner said. “Now, I believe your escort has arrived.”
“Thanks,” Haley said. She walked around the aisles to greet me, followed by the middle-aged man who ran the shop. With a smartly-shaved beard, precisely-parted reddish brown hair and thin, wire-rimmed glasses, he looked more like a college professor than the man who ran the town’s hobby shop. The patched jeans and black t-shirt that read, “It Goes to 11” were the only things that gave him away as probably the town’s biggest kid-at-heart. I’d met him a few times during my walks through town.
“Hey, Ben!” he said when he saw me. “Good to see you again! Getting the newest issue of The Gamemaster in tomorrow. They promise someone’s gonna die, but I doubt it’s gonna stick.”
“I’ll have to pick that up,” I said.
“Is he gone?” Haley asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “We talked for a bit, but he left.”
“I’m sorry,” Haley said simply.
“Don’t worry about it,” I replied.
Haley looked up at the owner, smiling politely. “Thanks for letting me hide out in here, Mr. Todd.”
“Anytime, Haley,” he said, patting her on the shoulder.
Mr. Todd. Mina’s dad. The man who raised her, the man she thought was a monster. He smiled pleasantly, humanly, and only then could I understand how truly crazy she was.
Haley took my arm with a smile as we exited the store. “Seems I owe you again.”
Looking down into her eyes (her human eyes, I reminded myself again), I knew what I had to do. I had to stop thinking about Mina Todd, stop thinking about her “Splinters” and just try and enjoy the rest of this trip, however long it turned out to be. It was not a bad realization to come to.
Accepting Haley’s arm, I asked, “So, where to next?”
6.
Salvage
Mina
I wasn’t sure why Aldo had insisted on working on the new containment chamber in my room instead of his. Neither of us was in any heightened danger of abduction, I was no great assistance when it came to engineering matters, and he was even less fond of the smell of all my mismatched herb sachets than I was. I asked him four times if he and his parents were having one of the “rough patches” that usually caused him to shelter at my place, but he insisted that they weren’t, and I couldn’t catch even a hint of the nervous little tic in his left anterior auricular muscle that those “patches” always gave him.
I’d tried to talk him out of it. I wasn’t eager for company while I was dealing with the stomach pain Ben’s outburst had given me. It had since spread to my throat, and when I’d gotten home from the soda fountain, it had forced me to spend nearly three full minutes in the bathroom with the mat shoved under the door, waiting for my eyes to stop watering so I could get back to work.
I couldn’t account for it. Ben wasn’t the first person to decline Network membership, and he was far from the first to call me sick. He wasn’t even the first to do it while in serious, imminent danger of replacement. I wasn’t due for a major hormonal fluctuation for almost two weeks, and raising my blood sugar didn’t seem to have any effect.
This had me even more worried than Ben’s answer itself. I’d had a similar physical reaction to just one ally before. It hadn’t ended well. I would have to proceed with even more caution than I’d thought.
I’d spent the three days since my failed approach with a different recording in each ear and Ben’s cell phone tracker open on the screen (it had only taken Aldo six calls to cell phone stores to find a sales rep dumb enough to activate it for us), trying to catch up on general info and keep on top of all possible threats to him at once.
“I’ll need you on him on Thursday,” I told Aldo when I reached it on my schedule.
“Huh?”
“Thursday,” I repeated. “Haley has another follow-up appointment, so he might not be in range of her wallet. He could get separated from his phone and we wouldn’t be able to hear a struggle.”
>
“Sure. Okay. Have a look at this!”
Aldo scooted back on the carpet, away from the containment chamber, to show me his progress. I wasn’t even sure why he’d chosen this week to build it. It wasn’t going to be much help with the immediate Ben Pastor mission, and he’d been promising me he’d make one for months ever since my last specimen had oozed its way out through the corner of a sandwich bag before I’d gotten it home.
This chamber was about two feet cubed, made of aquarium glass, laminated and layered four panes thick, with a rubber seal from a pressure canner around the lid, rattrap springs in the hinges, steamer trunk locks soldered to the front, and a tangle of wiring threaded through it that I was sure Aldo would explain.
He was holding a universal remote and grinning.
Before explaining anything, he pulled out an LED, touched the contact points to two of the wires inside the container, and pressed a button. The “volume up” button, to be precise. The diode glowed so brightly green I thought it might burn out on the spot. Even though I hadn’t been reaching for the chamber, I jerked my hand away from it.
“It’s electrified?”
I have a “thing,” as Aldo would put it, about electric shocks. Even when I was little before I had better things to do, I refused to use the park playground equipment because of how the static builds up on those plastic surfaces and then discharges the moment you brush against one of the metal bolts. Unfortunately, electricity also happens to be one of the only things that consistently bothers Splinters. Tasers and stun guns, both real and improvised, make up a large, vital portion of my arsenal. I keep them aimed away from me even more carefully than I do with real guns, on the rare occasions when I’ve been able to gain access to those.
Aldo snorted. “‘Is it electrified?’” he mimicked. “In case you have to subdue one quickly without opening the lid! And you haven’t seen anything yet.”