Interesting Times (Interesting Times #1)

by Matthew Storm

  Smith thought about it. “Like when your kids grow up?”

  “No. Like one minute everything is normal, and the next you’ve got a cat talking to you. And for some reason, that’s not even weird. You don’t freak out. It makes sense that the cat can talk. It’s like the cat could always talk, and you just now noticed.”

  Smith regarded Oliver nervously. “All right, then,” he said.

  They drove on in silence. Oliver saw a road sign announcing that they were about to enter Portsmouth. They’d crossed into New Hampshire, then. He hadn’t noticed where the state line had been, but today New Hampshire was just as good as Maine. Smith took an off-ramp just outside of the city and pulled into a gas station. “You want to get this one, buddy?” Smith asked, stopping adjacent to a pump.

  “Sure,” Oliver said. It was the least he could do, he thought. He’d be happy to buy the gas all the way to Boston as long as Smith didn’t turn out to be a vampire, or a werewolf, or some kind of alien.

  Oliver used a credit card at the pump and then went inside the station to buy snacks and sodas for he and Smith to share. When he came back outside, he was not entirely surprised to find that Smith was gone. He couldn’t blame the man. He must have sounded like a complete lunatic before, with the talking cat business and all that.

  There was a working pay phone just outside the gas station’s front doors. Oliver used it to call 411 and had them connect him to a taxi company. Half an hour later he was in the back of a cab heading into Portsmouth. This time he resolved to keep his mouth shut about anything remotely metaphysical. It wasn’t worth the trouble.

  Oliver couldn’t recall if Portsmouth had been on the itinerary when he’d been on vacation with his parents, but he knew he didn’t plan on staying here long. “Is there an airport here?” he asked the cab driver.

  “Pease,” the man said.

  Oliver was taken aback. “Okay, is there an airport here, please?”

  “No, no,” the driver said. “It’s called Pease. Portsmouth International.”

  “Great.” An international airport sounded promising. “Who goes there? American? United?”

  “Nothing commercial,” the driver said. “It’s just general aviation and freight, I think.”

  Oliver sighed. “Just take me to a hotel, then. I don’t care which one. Just something decent.”

  “The Sheraton is nice,” the driver offered.

  “The Sheraton, then.”

  The driver hadn’t lied. The Sheraton was perfectly acceptable, if a little smaller in size than Oliver was accustomed to. But he remembered that he was in New England, and the skyscrapers that dotted San Francisco’s skyline simply didn’t exist here. He inquired about a room at the front desk, only to be told the Honeymoon Suite was the only room available.

  “I’ll take it,” Oliver said, slapping a credit card down on the counter.

  “But…” the clerk began. “It’s the Honeymoon Suite.”

  “Do I have to be married to get the room?” he asked.

  “No, but it’s for newlyweds.”

  Oliver sighed deeply. “Let me ask you something. Do you think there is a newlywed couple out there, anywhere in the world, that is worried right now because they didn’t reserve this particular room? ‘Oh, honey, this is the happiest day of my life, but I forgot to reserve the hotel room in Portsmouth!’ Seriously?”

  The clerk looked less than amused. “No.”

  “Well, you never know,” Oliver said. “Maybe there is. Give me the room, and if those entirely unlikely people do show up here, I’ll let them have it. It’ll be my gift to them.”

  Oliver showed the clerk his driver’s license and was quickly off to his room, feeling more than a little ashamed of himself. He wasn’t usually that sarcastic with strangers. Or at all, he thought. But he’d been through a lot, and he thought maybe he was entitled to a bit of abruptness. Just a bit, mind you. He wouldn’t want to make it a habit.

  The suite was on the hotel’s highest floor, which was to say it was on the third floor. Oliver wasn’t sure what all the fuss had been about. The room’s door had a plaque bolted to it that read “Honeymoon Suite,” but that was the most romantic thing about it. The furnishings inside were entirely what he would have expected. There was one ordinary queen bed, which was definitely not formed in the shape of a heart or covered in red satin sheets. There was a perfectly acceptable television and an armoire against one wall. Maybe they dressed the place up when they had a reservation, Oliver thought. Flower petals and chocolates on the bed, or something like that. He wasn’t sure what hotels usually did.

  Oliver checked inside the minibar and helped himself to a four-dollar can of diet soda. He flipped on the television and looked through the channels, none of which interested him. He spent a moment watching CNN to see if there was anything odd in the news, be it lizards or vampires or magical doors appearing out of nowhere. It was entirely ordinary. Democrats and Republicans didn’t like each other, and there was trouble in the Middle East. Same as every other day. Oliver was almost disappointed.

  He dialed room service and ordered a turkey sandwich with a side of steak fries, which arrived promptly fifteen minutes later. Oliver tore into it with the vigor of a starving man. He hadn’t realized until the smell of food hit him how hungry he really was.

  Oliver turned the television to one of the local cable channels, which was running a marathon of a detective series. He’d seen the current episode already. Deciding he’d earned it, he went back to the minibar and spent five dollars on a package of M&M’s for dessert. He thought about it for a moment, then took two miniature bottles of Scotch as well. He knew the alcohol was absurdly overpriced, but he no longer cared. He downed them one after the other and watched the television detective get one step closer to finding the murderer.

  Half an hour later he switched off the television and lay back on the bed. He was tired. When was the last time he’d gone to sleep without the unwanted assistance of drugs? He couldn’t remember now, and he didn’t care. Oliver sighed deeply and drifted off to sleep.

  And for the first time in his life, Oliver dreamed.

  Chapter 15

  Oliver found himself in a lecture hall, seated in a padded chair equipped with a tablet arm. He looked around, surprised. He’d been here before. He was at his university, Fordham Heights College. This room was in the humanities wing, if he remembered correctly. It had been packed the last time he’d been in here, but now he was the only student in the class.

  The room had a pitched floor so as to increase the available seating. At the lowest level stood a podium, with a blackboard just behind it. Behind the podium stood Dr. Thomas, his old astronomy professor.

  “Good morning, Mr. Jones,” said the professor.

  “Good morning, Dr. Thomas,” said Oliver politely. This was a dream, wasn’t it? His first dream? Weren’t you supposed to be able to pinch yourself to see if you were dreaming? Oliver hesitated, then reached down and pinched his own leg. “Ow,” he said. That had hurt. Wait, did feeling pain mean that it was a dream or not a dream? He couldn’t remember.

  “What did you think of the reading?” his professor asked, holding up a thin volume. Oliver leaned forward so he could read the title. The book was A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking. Oliver remembered it. It had been assigned as part of his “Great Works” class, which had been mandatory for all freshmen in his school. The assigned readings had included authors such as Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and for some reason, Stephen Hawking.

  “I thought it was difficult,” Oliver said honestly. He had.

  “What struck you the most?”

  “Well,” Oliver began. It was difficult to say, given how little of it he had understood. “We had been talking about mass-energy equivalence before.”

  “And what conclusion can we draw?”

  “Physics is hard,” replied Oliver.

  “Dumbass” jeered a new voice. Oliver looked at the desk nearest to him. Jeffrey was sitting
on top of it, looking back at him. Now Oliver was positive he was dreaming. He’d have remembered if a talking cat had been in his class. People remembered that kind of thing.

  “What conclusion can we draw?” Jeffrey asked.

  Oliver looked at his desk. An empty sheet of paper and a pen lay before him. Was he supposed to write something down?

  “Matter cannot be created or destroyed,” Oliver said.

  “And that would be impressive if I were teaching third-grade science,” said Dr. Thomas sternly. “However, I am not.”

  “I’m not sure why you’re teaching Stephen Hawking in a literature class,” Oliver pointed out.

  “What conclusion can we draw?” Dr. Thomas repeated.

  “I remember this question,” Oliver said. “I answered it before. I gave you a conclusion.”

  “What conclusion can we draw?”

  “I said that thought was a form of energy, and therefore mass.”

  “And?”

  “That if thought and mass were equivalent, I asked you if thought could somehow be transformed into mass?”

  “Very good,” said Dr. Thomas.

  “No,” said Oliver. “It’s wrong. You laughed. You made me feel like an idiot.”

  “Imagine that,” said Jeffrey.

  “You said it was ‘absurd.’ That’s a quote, by the way. You said if it were true, you would think about Pamela Anderson and Pamela Anderson would appear.”

  “Who is Pamela Anderson?” asked Jeffrey.

  Oliver sighed. “I can’t remember the rest of what you said. You drew a bunch of equations on the board and I got a B in your stupid class. A literature class, by the way.”

  “Who is Pamela Anderson?” Jeffrey demanded.

  “She was a model a long time ago,” Oliver told the cat. “She used to be on a television show about lifeguards. I never actually saw it.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “I don’t really remember,” Oliver admitted. “Um…tall. Blonde. Kinda pretty, I guess. She was mostly famous for her big brea…she was curvy.”

  “Oh,” Jeffrey said. He looked at the front of the classroom. “Like her?”

  Oliver blinked. Dr. Thomas was gone. In his place stood a tall, curvy blonde woman. It definitely was not Pamela Anderson, but he didn’t care. She was gorgeous, and she was smiling invitingly at Oliver.

  “Wow,” Oliver said. “Some dream.”

  “No fair!” cried Jeffrey. “Make someone for me, too! Maybe a sleek little Siamese. No, two sleek little Siamese!”

  “You can’t make things appear by thinking about them,” Oliver scolded the cat.

  Jeffrey looked at the smiling blonde woman, then back at Oliver. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  Oliver wondered. This was only a dream, after all. In that case, who knew what else he could do?

  The blonde woman reached down and rapped her knuckles sharply on the podium. Oliver felt the world starting to slip. What was happening now?

  The rapping came a second time, and Oliver opened his eyes. He was back in his room at the Sheraton. Jeffrey and Dr. Thomas were nowhere to be seen, nor was the blonde woman. It had been a dream, of course. Was that what dreaming was like? It seemed overrated.

  The rapping came a third time. “Who is it?” Oliver asked.

  “Room service,” called a man’s voice from behind the door.

  “They already came,” Oliver said, getting off the bed. Then he frowned. That voice had sounded awfully familiar.

  Oliver crossed the room to the door and opened it cautiously. Sally and Tyler were standing on the other side. “Don’t just open the door like that,” Sally scolded him. “You didn’t know who we were.” But Tyler came forward and swept Oliver up in a bear hug.

  “Good to see you,” Tyler said. He was wearing a new Hawaiian shirt, Oliver noted. The last one must have been destroyed when…what was the proper word for turning into a bipedal wolf monster?

  “Thanks,” Oliver said awkwardly. “It’s good to see you, too.” Oddly enough, Oliver found that he meant it.

  “We could have been anyone,” Sally continued, pushing her way past them into the room. “Never just open the door.”

  “But you knocked.”

  “Oh, god,” she sighed. She looked around the room. “Anyone else here?”

  Oliver shut the door behind them once Tyler had come inside. “No. How did you guys find me?”

  Tyler gave him a guilty look. “I put a tracker on your clothes earlier,” he admitted.

  “You…you bugged me?” Oliver asked.

  “For lack of a better word, yeah.”

  “Oh.” Oliver wondered how Tyler had done that without him noticing. Maybe it had happened when he was unconscious.

  “That’s the last thing we need to worry about,” Sally said. She turned to Oliver. “What happened at John Blackwell’s house?” she asked.

  “A vampire bit me,” Oliver said. Then he started to laugh.

  Tyler and Sally exchanged a worried glance. “And…how is that funny?” Tyler asked.

  Oliver continued laughing. “I just can’t believe I said that,” he replied. “A vampire bit me. Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?” He sighed deeply. “Fuck my life. Who would believe any of this?”

  “Try doing my job someday,” Tyler muttered. Sally nodded. Neither of them seemed to find the situation all that humorous, Oliver noted. Or all that unusual.

  “What happened after that?” Sally asked.

  “It gets weird,” Oliver said. “Weirder, I should say.”

  “Yeah?” Tyler asked.

  “I wanted to leave but the door was blocked by…vampires.”

  “And?” Sally asked expectantly.

  “Um…” Oliver wasn’t sure how to phrase the next part. “A door magically appeared and I walked through it.” He frowned. That had sounded even crazier said out loud than it had in his head.

  “Well then,” said Sally.

  “Yeah,” Tyler said. “That’s about what Blackwell told us.”

  “You went back for me?”

  “We never had to,” Tyler said. “Seven started flipping his shit because your signal hopped from California to the East Coast in the space of about three seconds, and Artemis got the call a minute and a half later. Blackwell told her what happened.”

  “What did she say?” Oliver asked.

  Sally snorted and looked away. “She politely asked whether he knew what the word ‘protection’ meant,” Tyler said.

  “Really?”

  “She may not have been polite,” Tyler said.

  “Well, that’s what happened,” Oliver said.

  “So how did you do it?” Sally asked.

  “I have no idea. My head was a mess. They drugged me and the blood was…like another drug. I guess I…teleported, somehow?”

  “Teleportation doesn’t exist, as far as I know,” Tyler said. “The cyborgs came close to developing it once, but they never got it to work.”

  “And there aren’t any more cyborgs,” Oliver said, remembering.

  “No, there aren’t,” Sally smiled.

  “It doesn’t sound like teleportation, anyway,” Tyler said. “It sounds like a portal was opened. That is a thing, but damned if I know anyone that can pull it off without some pretty serious tools.”

  “Is the door still there, in the house?” Oliver asked. “It didn’t appear in Maine.”

  “No, it vanished as soon as you left,” Tyler said. “Blackwell said he’d never seen anything like it. He asked if you were a sorcerer.”

  “People keep saying that,” Oliver said. “Well, vampires and my cat say it. Are there really sorcerers out there?”

  “I guess so,” Tyler shrugged. “I never met one.”

  “So are you a vampire now?” Sally asked him.

  “No,” Oliver said. “Well, I don’t think so. I’ve been out in the sun. Doesn’t that kill vampires?”

  “Not immediately, but you’d have a nasty sunburn,” Tyle
r said. “You look all right. So she just drained you?”

  “No,” said Oliver. “She made me drink her blood. She wanted to turn me into one of them, but it didn’t work.”

  “I’ll be damned,” said Tyler. “I’ve never heard of it just ‘not working’ before. Not and the victim still being alive, anyway.” He looked at Oliver suspiciously. “You have any new cravings? Rare meat? Virgins?”

  “No, I…” Oliver blinked in surprise. “Virgins?”

  “He doesn’t know all that much about vampires,” Sally said. “Neither do I, really.”

  “But you know one,” Oliver pointed out. “You drove right to his house!”

  “You think we hang out there?” Tyler asked. “Hell, no. And when you go to somebody’s house, do you start asking about their medical history? Or whether they can turn into a bat? Of course you don’t. Half the mythology about them is crap, I know that much. At least half.”

  “Did you have a twin?” Sally asked suddenly.

  “No,” Oliver said. “Why?”

  “Forget it,” she said. She looked at Tyler. “So he’s immune to vampirism and he makes magic doors.”

  “And cats that talk,” Oliver pointed out.

  “And cats that talk,” she said. “You got any ideas on this?” she asked Tyler.

  “Zilch,” said Tyler. “Look, I’ll be honest,” he said to Oliver. “We’re flying by the seat of our pants here. But Artemis is committed to keeping you safe. We should take you out of here.”

  “Where?” Oliver asked. “Back to the vampires? That didn’t work out so well.”

  “Chantal won’t bother you again,” Sally said. “Maria took her head off.”

  “Well, I think she deserved a little…” Oliver paused. “Wait, you don’t mean she got yelled at, do you?”

  “No,” Sally said grimly. “I don’t.”

  “Oh,” Oliver said.

  “Anyway, Artemis wants you kept mobile,” Tyler continued. “At least until she figures out what the lizards are up to.”

  “Great,” Oliver said. “If your little girl can’t solve it, you could always call Encyclopedia Brown.”