by Alex Ziebart
But I don’t want no other, you’re my cameo lover, only here for a moment or two.
As she drove, her playlist cycled through Kimbra, Salt-N-Pepa, and the Spice Girls. She rolled down the window, turned up the volume, and let “Wannabe” drown out everything else. By the time she pulled into the cul-de-sac and found Todd’s address, she didn’t think she’d ever felt better. She stowed her blonde wig under the car seat and climbed out.
Would someone see her? Write down the license number? Call the cops?
Kristen paused at the curb. Todd’s house looked television perfect: bigger than it needed to be, but not so big as to be ostentatious, with well-trimmed bushes beneath a large living room window, its white curtains drawn. Everything appeared perfectly maintained, nothing out of place. Even the lawn had been recently mowed—and watered. While the summer heat had fried neighboring lawns to straw yellow, Todd’s lawn as was green as she’d ever seen.
Three kids. Laid off four times. He probably has nothing better to do than keep his house in good shape, but Jesus, how can he afford it in the first place?
She realized that might have been a damn good question. How did he afford it? Maybe he didn’t. Maybe that was the whole problem. Bernice was borderline neurotic about her finances. She’d bought a house young, thanks in part to Otherworlds’ success and her parents. Bernice had been working at her parents’ restaurant since she was fourteen years old. Every dime of her meager earnings over ten years went to opening her store, buying a house, and smoking cigarettes. Even so, Bernice said time and time again: if Otherworlds went tits up, she’d lose the house practically overnight.
For their generation, foreclosure was the name of the beast. You could do everything right, but the devil was always lurking around the next corner.
Kristen approached the house. The storm door was closed, but the inner door stood wide open. She peeked through the screen into the foyer where the typically feminine and the typically masculine lived side-by-side: arrangements of plastic, pastel flowers and ceramic kitties atop a lace doily on a well-beaten end table that would have looked more at home in a cabin up north, and a mounted buck’s head on the wall between two store-bought painting of potted roses. She could imagine the argument about that buck’s head.
Kristen gathered her nerves and knuckled the doorbell. No fingerprints.
She waited and listened. No one answered the door. She didn’t even hear voices or movement. With three toddlers, surely there should have been some noise. Again, she rang the doorbell. Nothing.
Not home?
She scanned the foyer again and saw shoes: a pair of lilac slip-ons and three pairs of children’s sneakers. If they were out, they would be wearing them.
Right? Maybe they just had a lot of shoes.
Kristen tested the storm door. It opened. She stepped into the foyer. “Hello?”
Nothing.
She ventured further into the house, stepping into a darkened living room, simultaneously rustic and floral. “Is anybody home? Todd? It’s uh…Maiden Milwaukee or whatever. I just want to know you’re okay.”
Nothing.
Kristen walked through on tiptoes. She tried to put herself in a detective’s mindset, wondering what they’d do on television—or in her comic books. Convincing herself the shoes were a sign of something, she looked for anything else out of place. The throw pillows matching the couch were on floor, which she supposed wasn’t too strange. Any house she’d ever seen with throw pillows, the damn things were constantly ending up on the floor. The living room’s tasseled rug was a mess, though, half-flipped, scrunched, and shoved out of place. Did someone slip, or trip?
She peered into the kitchen. Broken plates on the linoleum, a meat cleaver among the shards. No blood, though. That, at least, was a good sign.
Telltale buzzing alerted her to a cellphone nearby. She scanned the kitchen and spotted it facedown on the table, the imitation rhinestones stuck all over its case sparkling in the light as if screaming, “Look at me! I’m important!”
Kristen took it. The phone’s screen announced dozens of phone calls and text messages, the most recent of which had been sent hours earlier. Hours. No one in the modern age left their cell phone for hours. If you forgot it, it was the sort of thing you’d go back to get, even if you were only going to be gone for a little while.
She tapped the text message alert to open them. The phone switched to a password screen, a numpad with a connect-the-dots style password.
She’d had a phone with that style of password once. She’d always hated it; connect-the-dot passwords felt far less secure than punching in four numbers. Four numbers could be any combination. Connect-the-dots limited the possibilities: the numbers in the sequence always had to be adjacent to one another.
Kristen chewed her lip and tried her old password. Starting at 7, she slid her finger through 7-8-5-4.
Wrong.
9-8-5-6.
Wrong.
1-2-5-4.
The text messages opened. Kristen pumped her fist. “I’m a fucking genius.”
The messages brought her back down to earth. With the exception of one or two innocuous messages from friends or family, Todd had sent almost all of them. They were short, frantic, and concerned.
Please answer me and where are you and I’m serious, tell me if you’re okay.
Kristen formed the scene in her mind. The changelings get into his house, either invited or uninvited, and they try to grab him or his family. Either they want him or something he has, so maybe he tried to lure them away from his family by running. He runs, gets tired, steals a car, and tries to lose them at the highway. With Kristen’s help, he escapes and goes into hiding while trying to contact his wife.
“Except she isn’t here,” she spoke aloud. “So either they ran, too, or the changelings grabbed them. And their shoes are still in the foyer, which means they got grabbed.”
She stared again at the phone in her hand. Should she call him?
No. Not from his wife’s phone.
Seeing her number would get his hopes up—it seemed like a Jane thing to do. She felt bad for thinking it, especially because Jane usually seemed to mean well. Jane was just…rough.
Kristen knew how it felt when Jane played rough, though. She pulled her burner from her pocket, transferred Todd’s number, and dialed.
Voicemail.
Hi, this is Todd. I’m not available right now. If you’re calling to get some work done, include the nature of the work in your message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks.
Kristen affected the most chipper voice she could manage. “Hey, Todd! We met last night. I was wondering, do you have any PR experience? Helping you out didn’t do my public image any favors. Whatever’s going on, maybe I can help. Even if you did try running me over with a truck.”
She hung up and took stock of the phones in her possession: her phone, the phone from Jane, and Todd’s wife’s phone. She packed them into her pockets one at a time—not an easy task, given the size of women’s pockets—and saved hers for last. Sure, she was intruding on the home of a family potentially abducted by evil shapeshifters from the mythical lost continent of Mu, but checking her text messages was extremely important.
“Oh, shit.” Kristen cursed under her breath. She stared at the unanswered message from the night before. “You give the guy your number and never answer him? Poor form, Kris.”
Jack’s message simply read Hey.
Kristen tapped out her reply. Hey! Sorry I’m slow, been a crazy day.
Before she could get the phone into her pocket, it buzzed a reply. No problem! Sorry it’s been nuts. Slow for me. Doing anything tonight?
Not sure. Not screwing with you, honestly not sure.
We’re going out tonight. Come along?
Will let you know ASAP.
She pocketed the phone and returned to her search, walking down the hall with quiet steps. In sudden panic, she froze at movement ahead. Her eyes snapped for
ward and she met her own gaze, a copy of her at the end of the hallway.
A full-length mirror hung there with a crucifix displayed above.
Idiot.
Kristen put a hand to her chest to quiet her heart and peeked into the bathroom. She found it a mess, but a lived-in mess with no sign of struggle: brushes and makeup on the sink and counter, towels on the floor, and an overflowing trash can. Onward from there, she found the bedrooms: a master bedroom with its clash of lace and meat-and-potatoes bear-wrestling manly-man-stereotype, the kids’ room bedecked in pink and frills, and a play room that looked like someone put crayons and LEGO bricks in a blender and forgot to put the lid on. Again, while all were a terrible mess, nothing screamed conflict. Nothing obviously broken. No blood.
Just as Kristen turned to leave, she took a second look at a mound of stuffed animals in the playroom. They weren’t moving much, but they seemed to be breathing. One of the toys, a puffy white cat, rolled over and jump from the pile.
Oh, duh.
The cat arched its back in a stretch and padded over the minefield of toys to sit upright at Kristen’s feet. It looked up at her without discernable emotion; Kristen thought it seemed expectant only because cats always expected something of someone.
“What’s up, buddy? You don’t know where your people are, do you?” Kristen crouched and scratched the cat’s head. Her voice became saccharine. “Of course you don’t. Because you’re just a dumb kitty. Aren’t you? Aren’t you stupid? It’s okay that you’re stupid, because you’re so adorable!”
Offended, the cat swatted her hand and walked down the hall to reclaim its dignity.
“Yeah, well screw you, too. Dumb cat.”
Kristen stood upright again. She rubbed her face, trying to think of anything she might have missed. Living room? Check. Kitchen? Check. Bathroom? Check. Bedrooms? Check. Attic? She looked up and down the hallway for a hatch, but found none. Back yard? She went to a window and peered out. Just grass. Basement?
Kristen retraced her steps through the house looking for stairs and finding none. She did, however, find a door in the living room she’d previously written off as a closet. Pulling it open revealed the basement stairwell. Better than a baby gate, that’s for sure. She flipped on the light switch and descended.
A shiver crawled up her spine when her foot hit the bottom stop. Though she had no fear of monsters, basements had an aura of sorts. Whether they were livable or just for storage, dimly lit or bright as day, something about being underground was downright creepy, like crawling into a tomb.
Kristen steeled herself and ventured in. To her right, a doorway opened to what she guessed was the laundry room—a solid guess, given the washer and dryer. Their modern design surprised her; they were the button-operated sort with digital displays, not the old-fashioned manual turn-dials. For a man hard up for work, Todd didn’t seem to cut any corners. Kristen knew people with perfectly stable jobs who opted for older appliances.
Moving beyond the laundry room, her eyes went wide. Though the palpable sensation of being below the earth’s surface remained, what lay before appeared every bit like a cabin in the woods. There was a carpeted living room, an adjoining kitchen, and a pair of bedrooms beyond. Though the decor above had hinted at Todd’s affection for rustic living, it was overwhelming below. Wood paneling covered the walls, and from those walls hung gun racks, paintings of Wisconsin’s white pine forests, and another buck head. Various taxidermied critters posed on staggered shelves. An old, ratty brown couch faced one of the biggest televisions she’d ever seen, and on the back wall was a genuine fireplace, its stovepipe running up through the ceiling.
She passed through to the bedrooms, first checking the one on the right. Pushing the door open revealed what she supposed was a workshop. Tools lay scattered everywhere. Though a vacuum stood in one corner, sawdust coated the surface of a nicked and beaten workbench and part of the floor—concrete, but painted over with grey. In another corner lay a pile of ammunition, all sorts of ammo boxes neatly in a pile. Kristen couldn’t claim any knowledge of firearms, but assumed for every gun Todd had on display, he had the ammo to match.
She wondered if he’d have stood a better chance against the changelings if he’d seen them coming. He had a damned armory at his disposal.
Kristen closed that door and moved to the other room. Exercise equipment filled the space, including a treadmill, a recumbent bicycle, and a yoga mat. No weights, she noted. A computer desk sat in the far corner with a yoga ball as a seat rather than a chair. Given what she’d seen in the rest of the house, the pastel pink trim along white walls suggested the room belonged to Todd’s wife.
Moving to the center of the room, Kristen took a slow turn. In that room, she found common ground with the man’s wife. What did Jane say her name was?
Katy.
In her mind’s eye, she tried to paint a picture of Katy. Her gut rolled as she did. Trying to create a profile of the woman based on stereotypes made her sick, but it was all she had. Katy was most likely a housewife. Not only did she have three children, she’d undergone fertility treatment to have them. She had workout equipment, but none of it was for strength training. Katy wasn’t athletic. She just wanted to stay in shape rather than get fat after having children. Katy probably had some sort of workout regimen. Being a busy housewife in the modern era, but without the money for a personal trainer, Katy would have had a simple way to plan her day and track her progress. The simplest option would be a wearable device, like a pedometer to track steps and general movement.
Kristen’s gaze drifted to the computer. She turned on the monitor, flicked the mouse to banish the screensaver, and looked over the open web browser. The active window was just a bunch of cutesy crap, all of the stuff Jane had described: Katy gushing about her husband and children on social media. Clicking through Katy’s bookmarks, Kristen found what she wanted: a link to Katy’s online fitness log, complete with a step tracker. The log for the day indicated she hadn’t walked much. In fact, she hadn’t been active at all. Bold letters at the top of the page declared, Don’t drive! Take a walk!
Because though she hadn’t been active, she had moved.
Katy’s accelerometer had GPS connected to the cell network.
Kristen ran for her car.
Chapter 8
Kristen crouched among the trees of Zablocki Park as she peered out at the old Chocolate House building. The Chocolate House was a squat brown storefront attached to a long, white factory sat on a wedge of land squeezed between the park and Arlington Cemetery. Zablocki’s treeline extended right up to the road, providing excellent cover. Though the white outer walls of the factory somehow remained as bright as ever, the roadside sign screamed abandoned. Its chocolate-brown lettering and pink banners had faded, and the manual marquee perpetually read Closed. Kristen looked down at her phone and felt like grieving an old friend; the online map of the local area hadn’t updated its pictures since before the place closed. In the picture, the sign still vibrantly declared:
WHIPPED CREMES
99¢
A LB BAG
Easter morning wouldn’t be the same without The Chocolate House’s whipped creme eggs. Wisconsin really seemed to have a knack for destroying nostalgia.
Kristen shook her head clear. Not an appropriate time to think about candy.
She lowered her phone and looked past the sign to the lot beyond. The GPS on Katy’s accelerometer put her position directly on that lot. Using an abandoned building for a hideout made sense. Using an abandoned candy factory for a hideout was just rude. Kristen saw no cars in the lot, but the factory’s loading bay doors were at ground level. Though closed now, a car could’ve easily fit through them to park inside. Curtains blocked the storefront’s windows, and the factory windows were bubbled glass blocks, impossible to see through. Nobody seemed to be watching the building from the outside, either.
Of course, they were changelings. They could’ve been birds in the sky for all she knew. Sh
e couldn’t let that be a deterrent, though.
Kristen broke the tree line and crossed the street at a trot. As soon as she entered The Chocolate House’s lot, she ducked below the windows to crabwalk her way along the walls. She stopped beside the first set of loading bay doors—a set that faced the roadside. Anyone driving by could see her, which wasn’t ideal. She waited there for only a moment to listen for any noise coming from inside. Hearing nothing, she quickly moved on, swinging around the corner of the building. She shuffled down to the next set of doors and listened.
Still nothing. Kristen was suddenly at a loss as to what she was supposed to be doing—or what she had intended to do in the first place. She couldn’t hear through walls, and those loading bay doors weren’t exactly paper thin. She wasn’t sure she’d hear it even if someone were screaming bloody murder inside. She couldn’t see through the windows. She didn’t have X-ray vision. She didn’t have any gadgets. Why didn’t she have gadgets? All superheroes had gadgets.
No. No.
She did have gadgets. She had smartphones. Comic book detectives would kill for a smartphone.
Most importantly, she had Katy’s smartphone. She whipped it from her pocket and scrolled through Katy’s apps until she found the partner app to her pedometer. Kristen had bought one for Emma for Christmas the year before. Emma never used it, but that was neither here nor there. One of the app’s features was a proximity locator for the physical device. If you lost the pedometer, you just walked around until the app picked up the signal from the actual device. It had a range of ten, maybe fifteen feet.
Watching the phone’s screen, she circled the building and waited for it to sync. When she reached the rear of the building, where the white paint gave way to vibrant red brick, Katy’s phone picked up the device. Kristen crouch-walked back and forth, trying to find the very edge of the accelerometer’s range. She found it halfway down the wall and tried to picture what was about to happen.