Kill Switch

by Gordon Bonnet

“It’s just commercial stuff. Not nearly as good as what you make, I’m sure.” Elisa gave him a playful nudge at disparaging her caffeine choices.

  Rainey laughed. “No problem. I’m not a snob.”

  Elisa left to get cups of tea, and he motioned for Rainey to sit down on the couch. Baxter walked over, sniffed her curiously, and then sat down next to her and leaned heavily against her leg.

  “Aren’t you a good boy?” Rainey was rewarded with an enthusiastic wag. She looked up at Chris. “He probably smells our dog, Ahab.” She skritched Baxter’s ears, and he sighed heavily.

  “This is Baxter.”

  “Hi, Baxter.” Rainey smiled. “He’s about a quarter of Ahab’s size. He should have been named after the whale, not the ship’s captain.”

  Chris laughed.

  “So, what brought you to Crooked Creek?”

  He had rehearsed the story so many times that he knew it by heart. It still seemed like a lie. Which it was. All of it was a lie, and he was living in the center of it. He wondered if eventually he’d tell it so many times, to other people and to himself, that he’d start believing it.

  “I retired last June from teaching high school biology in Sacramento. Abby’s a painter, so she can work anywhere. We got tired of the city and the heat and the cost of living, so we decided to find a quiet place to live. When we found this cottage for sale, it seemed ideal. I’ve always loved Oregon.”

  Their friendly guest shivered. “I hope you don’t find it too cold in the winter. We’re kind of high up.”

  “Doesn’t bother me a bit. My parents moved around a lot when I was a kid. I lived in central New Hampshire for a while. This is bound to be milder than what I remember from there.”

  “Definitely. Crooked Creek is a sweet little town. I think you’ll like it. We have some characters around here, but they add to the interest.”

  Elisa came out of the kitchen then carrying a tray with three steaming mugs of tea.

  “Thanks, honey.” Chris stood, took one and passed it along to Rainey, and then took another for himself.

  “So, I overheard you make herbal teas?” Elisa set the tray on the coffee table, and sat down on the couch next to Rainey.

  “Yup. I do a lot of sales through mail order. We’ll never get rich from it, but it helps to pay the bills. Tyler’s off doing field work pretty often. I go with him when I can, but at least some of the time I have to stay home and mind the shop and take care of the pets.”

  Chris relaxed. His tension levels always rose when talking to strangers. After two months, he still felt it was at least even odds that he’d find himself suddenly facing the business end of a gun. However, this kind young woman, with the earnest face and the hand-sewn linen dress, she couldn’t be one of Them, could she?

  The conversation continued for a while, on topics from interesting local citizens of Crooked Creek to which parts of the nearby Three Sisters Wilderness Area they’d yet to explore. But finally Rainey said, with a smile, “I should be going. Once Tyler comes back, we’ll have you over for dinner.”

  “That’d be wonderful.”

  They said their farewells, and they watched through the window as Rainey walked down the driveway. He followed her with his eyes until she went around a bend in the road and was lost to view.

  “Should we throw away the tea?” Elisa stood next to the sofa, holding the box in her hand.

  “Absolutely.”

  “We can’t distrust everyone, forever.”

  “I thought that was the agreement.”

  She looked down at the box of delicately-bottled tea mixes. “Do you ever wish we had just taken our chances?”

  Chris sat down heavily in his rocking chair. “Of all the things we were told in that place, that’s the one I think was one hundred percent true. If we hadn’t taken them up on their offer, we’d be dead now.”

  “At some point, you have to assume that things are going to be okay. You can’t live balanced on that pinnacle of fear and suspicion indefinitely.”

  “No.” He sighed, taking a moment to reflect. “No, I suppose you’re right.”

  “I’m not saying that we should proclaim to the world our real names, and where we came from, or try to get in touch with people from our past lives. What we have here, Mrs. Hargroder was right about that, too. If it’s a cage, it’s a beautiful one. And we have each other.”

  “We do.”

  “So if this is all we have, we should let go of worrying about everything. Like everyone else in the world, we exist within our limits, love the people who are dear to us, and live as many years as we are given. Beyond that, what more can we do?”

  He looked down. “There’s just one thing that I can’t let go.”

  Elisa set the box of tea down on the coffee table, came over to him, and knelt down, just as she had two months earlier, when he’d awakened in that horrible room to see her next to him. “What’s that?”

  He looked deeply into her eyes—so warm, so loving. All those years apart, he’d missed her eyes. “It makes no sense. The whole thing about Iktomi7979. The old man who tortured me kept asking me that. I still have dreams about it, hearing that question over and over. Who is Iktomi7979? He insisted I must know. Deirdre didn’t know, and he accepted that, apparently. I thought, initially, they were hurting me to pay me back for eluding them for so long, for giving them so much trouble. But you did, too, and they didn’t torture you.”

  “No. No, they didn’t.”

  “And Mrs. Hargroder. It seems like her group would have been equally at risk from what Iktomi and Gavin were doing. Because that was it, wasn’t it? You hit it, when we were talking to her. Both groups were trying to accomplish the same thing. They were at each other’s throats not because they hated each other, but because they were in a race to accomplish the same thing—figuring out how to use alien devices, probably for things like mind control, and who knows what else.”

  “Yes.”

  “But Mrs. Hargroder didn’t even ask us about Iktomi. She gave us tuna fish sandwiches and new identities, and once we agreed not to talk, and to follow her rules, she sent us off with a pat on the back, holding our new birth certificates and driver’s licenses and so on. And there’s only one way that all makes sense.”

  Elisa looked away. Outside the window, the fog descending on the Douglas firs as evening fell. “And what is that, Chris?” Her voice sounded distant, without inflection, without emotion.

  “She knew who Iktomi is already. I hadn’t given it away to their enemies, she figured that much. And it wouldn’t have mattered if I had, because they killed them all. At that point, the last thing she wanted was my asking too many questions, or getting more ideas.” He paused, looked down again. “I guess she could have had me killed, too, but once I got away from New York, once I talked to people, interacted with people like Jim Hargis and Thomas T. Champion and the Harpers, it was too risky. Better to dupe me, get me to buy in, and then to offer me a carrot. Reward and punishment. Be a good boy and then go live your life in a cabin in the Cascades with the woman you’ve been in love with since college. But don’t ever talk to anyone again, about anything.” He shook his head. “They knew exactly what would tempt me.”

  “There’s no way to find out if you’re right.”

  He put his hand against her face, and gently but inexorably, turned her head until she was looking at him. “You know I’m right, though, don’t you? You know. It wasn’t just a lucky accident that you were safely hiding in your friend’s house in Hoquiam when the the others were being killed, was it?”

  She looked into his eyes for nearly a full minute before she spoke. “Chris, does it really matter if you’re right or wrong? It’s over. You wanted out. You’re out. And you can stay out. We can both stay out. Forever. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all of this, it’s that there’s too much pain and death and intrigue and secrecy in the world. Some secrets are not worth knowing. Some secrets, when you discover them, turn out to be banal and fo
olish and pointless, and not worth the cost. There are some secrets I regret ever trying to find out.” A single tear ran down her cheek, but her voice did not waver. “Let it be, Chris. Just let it be. You have a life, here, if you want it.”

  “Even if it means that I spend the rest of my life as Dave Hamilton, retired schoolteacher from Sacramento?”

  “Yes. Even that. There are worse things. Far, far worse things.”

  “I suppose there are.”

  “I think Dave and Abby Hamilton could be pretty happy together, honestly. As long as they are willing to let Chris Franzia and Elisa Reed remain in their graves.”

  “And Iktomi?”

  “Yes. Iktomi, too. They all belong to another world. Let it go, Chris.”

  He took her hand. “I used to have a sign up in my classroom, back in Guildford. It said, ‘Per Scientiam Felicitas.’ It’s Latin. It means, ‘Through knowledge, happiness.’ It’s simply not true, is it?” He shook his head. “It’s simply not true.”

  There was a pause. “I remember my yoga teacher, back in St. Cloud, telling us about a Taoist precept. ‘To become smart, learn one thing a day. To become wise, forget one thing a day.’” She smiled at him, and gave his hand a squeeze. “Perhaps that’s closer to the truth than your classroom sign was.”

  “What deal did you make with them, Elisa? What part in all of this did you play?”

  She looked at him searchingly, and it was a long time before she spoke. “I could tell you that. But would it really satisfy you? Everything that happened, everything we both did, led here. And to the end of our part in all of this. I would go back, do things differently, if I could, but that is an option we never have. All we can do is take the past, mistakes and all, and try to make the best of it. So if you ask me again, I will tell you. But are you sure that you want to know?”

  The room was sliding into shadow as the sun approached the western horizon. Leave it. Take the carrot. Gavin got this started by looking for answers, and where did it get him? And how many people died because of it? Sometimes answers are not worth the price. He felt tears start up behind his eyes, but fought them back.

  Getting answers would not give him what he wanted most, which was to have the world go back to the way it was. Simple, straightforward, honest.And if he couldn’t have that, what was the use of knowing what the truth was?

  “Okay.” He sighed. “You win.”

  She reached up and gave him a light kiss on the mouth. “I don’t know if my yoga teacher was right,” she said. “But maybe sometimes, happiness comes from knowing which questions not to ask.”

  About the Author

  Gordon Bonnet has been writing fiction for decades. Encouraged when his story Crazy Bird Bends His Beak won critical acclaim in Mrs. Moore’s 1st grade class at Central Elementary School in St. Albans, West Virginia, he embarked on a long love affair with the written word.

  His interest in the paranormal goes back almost that far, although it has always been tempered by Gordon’s scientific training. This has led to a strange duality; his work as a skeptic and debunker on the popular blog Skeptophilia, while simultaneously writing paranormal and speculative novels, novellas, and short stories. He blogs daily, but is never without a piece of fiction in progress—driven to continue, as he puts it, “because I want to find out how the story ends.”

  Stay up to date with Gordon and all his writing and appearances on Facebook, Twitter, or at www.gordonbonnet.com. You’ll also find more great fiction on his writing blog, Tales of Whoa.

  Some Things Have To Be Lived… Not Told

  Gordon Bonnet returns with his most compelling novel yet, Sephirot.

  “Bonnet is hands down one of the most talented emerging writers of any genre today.”

  Dusty Richards

  Author of The Mustanger and the Lady

  • • •

  Malkuth

  It had been a completely ordinary day for Duncan Kyle until the moment he fell through the floor of his living room at a little before two in the morning.

  A slow day at Carthen, Douglas, and Prescott Financial Consultants. Dinner with his girlfriend, Libby, followed by drinks at his apartment and the happy but never certain outcome that she intended to spend the night with him. They had not fallen into a contented doze until nearly midnight, and Duncan fully expected to sleep until his alarm went off at seven o’clock. So it was something of a surprise when he opened his eyes in the pitch darkness, and turned his head toward his clock to see that it was only 1:54.

  His mouth was sandpaper-dry. He swallowed, throat muscles contracting on nothing, and reached toward his nightstand for the bottle of water he kept there. His wrist contacted the bottle before his searching fingers did, sending it tumbling to the floor. It gave a light clatter as it landed on the hardwood.

  Empty.

  He swore under his breath, and swung his legs out of bed. Libby made a small, childlike noise in her sleep, mumbled something incomprehensible, and then was quiet. He stood, and walked out of his bedroom, naked, not even bothering to take his robe from its hook on the back of the door. He padded down the hall toward the kitchen. Moonlight shone through the living room window, turning the furniture and carpets a silvery gray. The window was open, and the curtains fluttered in the humid July breeze, looking organic, like some kind of sea creature swaying in the current. He went along his sofa, brushing his fingertips along its rough cloth surface, and passed in front of the television.

  Then the floor caved in.

  There was a grinding, rending crash, and the smooth surface tilted beneath his bare feet. He reached out for something to grab, and caught a projecting strip of the subfloor, but it snapped off in his hand. With a cry, he fell into darkness, with pieces of hardwood flooring, insulation, and dust raining down around him.

  He landed on his side, a rough edge of the tumbled mass of debris tearing a long scratch across the skin of his back and left shoulder as he came slithering to rest. The impact knocked the wind out of him, and for a time he lay, gasping and coughing while the dust drifted down, his thoughts as shattered as the world around him.

  It was only two minutes afterwards, but it felt like a great deal longer, that he braced himself on his elbows and sat up. Grit and wood slivers dug into his arms, legs, and butt as he forced himself upright.

  “Earthquake...?” he croaked, and coughed again. “Libby?”

  He had never been in an earthquake, and he had a vague memory from one of his high school science classes that upstate New York wasn’t on a fault zone, but he couldn’t think of any other ready explanation. He looked upwards, and struggled to his feet. There was a gaping hole in the ceiling, perhaps fifteen feet overhead, and he could see a bit of his living room through it. A corner of the sofa and one end of the coffee table, tipped perilously near the edge, along with trailing wisps of fiberglass and loops of electrical wire.

  Better move out of range. It’d suck to take a coffee table to the head if there was an aftershock.

  He moved to the side, out of the likely landing area should the coffee table fall, and called again, louder, “Libby?”

  There was no sound from his apartment. In fact, there was no sound at all. He looked around, and that was when he realized the oddest thing yet, something that had been knocked clean out of his mind by the shock of what had happened.

  If the floor of his apartment caved in, he should have fallen into the apartment below his. If things were normal, he would have landed in the living room of Missus Elena Gonzales, a sixty-something widow who was a mother hen type to the entire apartment building, constantly inquiring about the tenants’ health, eating habits, and love lives. And although going through the ceiling stark naked into Missus Gonzales’s living room would have occasioned an apology, he had no doubt that she would have been more concerned with whether or not he needed to go to the emergency room than the fact that he happened not to be wearing any clothes.

  But wherever he was, it was clearly not anyone’s living roo
m. The light was dim, coming through a row of slot-like windows high up in the wall. What he could see amongst the shadows was a dingy gray brown. The air was cool, and smelled of age and mildew. Near him, and covered with broken pieces of two-by-four and particleboard, was a jumble of wooden boxes. In one corner was a worn marble statue of an angel, its face toward a wall made of rough stone. The end of one wing was missing, and piles of broken ceramic jars partially covered its feet. The wall behind the statue had a shelf cut into it, and it held untidy stacks of leather-bound books. Tumbled blocks of fallen masonry lay strewn on the stone floor where in places the facing had peeled away, leaving bare rock and earth showing underneath. Farther away, almost invisible in the darkness, was an arched doorway through which he could see nothing but blackness.

  Had he fallen through Missus Gonzales’s apartment, too? Maybe he was in the basement of the building. Was there a basement? But immediately, he doubted this guess. This didn’t look like any basement he’d ever seen. It looked more like his imagined idea of catacombs, or a dungeon beneath a medieval castle.

  He rubbed his face, and then dragged his fingers backwards through his hair. “Fuck,” he said, his voice creaking in his dry throat. “What do I do? Sit around and wait to be rescued? Or try to get out on my own?”

  There was clearly no way to reach the hole in the ceiling and climb through back into his apartment. There was nothing big enough or sturdy enough to use as a makeshift ladder. If help didn’t come from overhead, there was no escape in that direction.

  He shouted again, up toward the hole, “Libby! Help me!”

  Silence.

  He waited, watching, for some minutes. If there’d been an earthquake, or at least a cave-in, shouldn’t the noise have alerted someone? Shouldn’t there be voices, sirens, noises of rescue equipment being moved? Libby wasn’t a heavy sleeper. No way could she have slept through all this.