“What? I’m not. I was just thinking that…maybe…”
“Then come on.” She turned, walked down the stairs, then passed through an open doorway bottom.
“Eric,” she called up from the darkness. “You don’t want them to find you, do you?”
He hesitated halfway down, feeling very uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure if it was his ridiculous fear of basements or the fact that a gang of possessed people was chasing him in the middle of the night. It was probably more than a little of both.
“Eric,” she said again.
“I’m coming.”
He went the rest of the way down, then stepped carefully through the doorway and stopped.
This was the basement of his nightmare. Old wooden shelves scattered throughout the room like empty library bookcases, gnarled roots growing out of the dirt walls as if they were arms, piles of boxes and wood and trash, and more spider webs than he’d ever seen in one place. And then there was the smell: dirt and rot and something like spicy perfume. The mixture was enough to nearly make him gag.
“You’re right,” he said. “This is a great place to hide.”
He tried to give Maggie what he hoped was a brave smile, but he’d barely begun to raise his lips when he realized something wasn’t right. “You’re…you’re not wearing your goggles.” He thought back. “You haven’t worn them at all. How can you see?”
She tilted her head oddly to the side and smirked. “How can you not?”
It was a weird question. He had a feeling she wasn’t talking about his goggles, but before he could even say anything, there was a loud scraping noise behind them.
He twisted around. Peter Garr and Tommy Bird had come through the door, pulling an old china cabinet over the opening and sealing all four of them in.
Eric grabbed Maggie, pulled her further into the room, and moved in front of her. “Stay behind me.”
“Whatever you want,” she said.
Peter and Tommy crossed their arms and stood in front of the cabinet, staring at Eric. Staring, he realized, without the help of night vision goggles. Just like Maggie.
“Oh, my. Isn’t that cute.” The voice came from deeper in the basement, a woman’s voice.
“Yes. Very cute. So protective.” A different female voice.
Eric wanted to turn and look, but he knew he shouldn’t take his eyes off Peter and Tommy.
“Whoever you are,” he yelled, “you should let us go. My friends will be here any second.”
“Your friends?” a third voice said, this one male. “You mean the person who calls himself Mr. Trouble? Oh, what a delightful name, Mr. Trouble. I wish I had thought of it.”
“Me, too,” said one of the women.
“I don’t think your Mr. Trouble will give us any…trouble,” he laughed. “If he shows up.”
One of the gardener surrogates from the school stepped out from behind a bookcase to Eric’s left. He had one arm wrapped around Fiona and the other around Keira. The girls’ hands were tied in front of them and gags covered their mouths.
Eric couldn’t believe it. The Trouble sisters had been captured.
“I can see his mind turning,” the first female voice said.
“Yes, I see it, too,” the other woman responded. “So honorable, yet so useless.”
“Let them go!” Eric shouted.
“Oh, listen to him. Such empty words.”
“How, young Eric? How do you propose to make us let them go?”
Peter and Tommy took a single step in his direction, then stopped and grinned.
Yeah. How? Eric thought. There was no way he could take on either Peter or Tommy by himself, let alone both of them together. And then there was the gardener, too, and the ones out of sight who were speaking. There was no way he could stand up to all of them. His words were empty, something that only made him angrier.
“Let them go!” he repeated.
“Eric.” This voice was in his head, the same voice he’d heard after passing out from the scanner, the calm and friendly voice. “There’s only one way we will let them go. You know what that is.”
He knew? What could he possibly do that would—
Then he realized what she meant.
“You want me,” he said.
“Exactly,” the voice in his head said. “But just to make your decision a little bit easier…”
Something moved to his right. He looked over just in time to see Vice Principal Rose appear from around a stack of boxes. Like the gardener, he was holding someone in his arms, too.
“Mom?” Eric said.
His mother looked half asleep, unaware of what was going on around her. He took a step in her direction, but Vice Principal Rose pulled her to the side, threatening to retreat.
“Now, now,” the voice in his head said, “not until you give us what we want.”
Eric nodded. “Let them all go. You can have me.”
“Oh, so adorable,” the first woman said.
“The sacrifice absolutely makes you want to pinch his cheeks, doesn’t it?” the second woman asked.
Both Fiona and Keira started yelling, but the gags in their mouths prevented Eric from understanding them. Of course, he could pretty much guess what they were trying to say: Don’t do it!
But he had to. He had no choice.
Suddenly someone grabbed his arms and pulled them behind his back. He struggled, looking over his shoulder to see who it was.
“Maggie?” he said.
There was a sickly grin on her face as she held his hands together—tighter than she should have been able to.
“Not really Maggie,” she said.
“Oh, no,” he said.
He should have seen it, but he hadn’t. The calm voice she’d been using hadn’t really been calm at all. It had been monotone. He’d been so stressed out about finding his things in the Maker’s box then the sudden appearance of the Peter and his friends that he hadn’t noticed that Maggie wasn’t Maggie.
She was a surrogate.
“How? Maggie’s not a bad person. How did you—” Then he remembered what Mr. Trouble said about Makers and surrogates, that on occasion, when several Makers worked together, they could turn someone good into their slave.
The headaches. Maggie had felt it coming on but just hadn’t realized it.
I’m so sorry! This is all my fault.
He should have insisted she stay home that first night when he’d gone with Mr. Trouble and Fiona. This was his problem, not hers.
Maggie turned him all the way around, so that his back was now to the door and he was facing in the direction of the voices.
“Maggie, I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can, fight it.”
“Save your breath,” the surrogate Maggie said. “She can’t hear you.”
The gardener moved Fiona and Keira next to Eric, and Vice Principal Rose did the same with Eric’s mother on the other side.
“Take off their goggles,” the first woman said.
Maggie pushed the goggles down off Eric’s eyes and left them hanging around his neck. Everything he’d seen a moment before in green was now completely black. He then heard the gardener remove the Trouble sisters’ goggles, plunging them into the same darkness.
“I told you I’d do whatever you want,” Eric said. “Just let them go.”
The only sounds were the muffled protests of Fiona and Keira.
“Please. It’s me you want, not them.”
Still no response from the voices.
“Are you even listening to me?”
“We’re listening to you,” the first woman’s voice whispered into his ear.
Eric jumped, and the three voices laughed.
“Is this better?” the woman asked, a few feet away this time.
There was a scratching sound, then a sizzle as a match flared to life.
The hand that held it had long, elegant fingers and perfectly groomed nails. It moved the match closer to Eric’s face, until the only th
ings he could see were the yellow flame and the darkness beyond it. He closed his eyes and turned his head, feeling the heat against his skin. More laughter, then the match moved away. After a second, he opened his eyes again.
The darkness that had filled the basement was gone, replaced by light from three camping lanterns spread across the room.
And standing a dozen feet away from him—the Makers.
28
There were nine of them. Five were in a semicircle in front of Eric, while the other four were huddled together behind them, their arms around each other, eyes closed.
They were beautiful. All of them. Painfully beautiful.
Their hair was perfectly cut, not a strand out of place. Their skin was as smooth as water on a still pond. Their eyes were big and dark, their lips full, and their teeth impossibly white. They could have been characters from Noriko’s Revenge or one of Eric’s other manga books.
Of the five directly in front of him, three were women and two were men. None looked like they were any older than Mr. Trouble, but Eric knew this was an illusion and their true age was nowhere near that.
There were others in the room, too—not Makers, surrogates, a half dozen of them standing against the far wall.
“Don’t say anything more,” Fiona whispered through her gag. At least that’s what he thought she said.
“I’m not going to let them hurt any of you,” he whispered back.
Her eyes widened in frustration and she said something else, but this time he didn’t catch it.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” the blonde female Maker at one end of the arc said.
The man next to her sniffed the air, much like Peter had done before. “He’s perfect. Can you smell it?”
“I can,” a brunette woman in the center said.
“But is he ready?” the other blonde woman asked. “He doesn’t seem ready.”
“Harlan?” the brunette woman said.
One of the men in the group of four in the back sucked in a deep breath then broke from the circle. As he did, Eric felt Maggie’s grip on his arms loosen a bit. It wasn’t enough so that he could break free, but at least he could feel his blood flowing again.
“He doesn’t need to be ready yet,” the man said. Eric assumed he was Harlan. “They have the box and have already released one drawer.”
Gasps and looks of horror from the five in the arc.
“Released?”
“Outrageous!”
“How do you know?”
Harlan looked at Maggie. “We’ve seen it through the girl.”
“We’ll have to start again.”
“Yes, again.”
“It will take time.”
“Yes, it will,” Harlan said. “But it will also give us time to prepare him properly, without the influence of these…others.” He moved back into his group, putting his arms around those next to him. He then bowed his head and closed his eyes.
Maggie’s grip tightened again.
“We need to do something about them.”
“Yes, we do.”
“They need to pay.”
“They have thrown off our timeline.”
“Yes, they definitely need to—”
Something crashed down on the boards above their heads. As one, the Makers in the arc looked up, then smiled.
“He should pay.”
“Yes, he should be the one.”
“Mr. Trouble.”
“Yes, Mr. Trouble.”
Another crash.
“Oh, this is delightful,” the first woman said. “He thinks he can break through like a superhero.”
The others smiled.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Three heavy crashes with only seconds between each. This time, there weren’t just thuds, but the loud sound of wood cracking.
“Marvelous,” one of the men said.
“Move back,” the brunette woman told Eric and the others. “Unless, of course, you want him landing on you.”
Maggie, the gardener, and Vice Principal Rose pulled their hostages back until they were up against the china cabinet in front of the door. Peter and Tommy were now sitting off to the side, their heads bowed like they were asleep.
Everyone else, with the exception of the four Makers huddled together, looked at the ceiling in anticipation. Eric was pretty sure it would take only one more good hit for a hole to be punched through. But as he watched, the seconds of waiting grew to over a minute.
“Maybe he hurt himself,” a Maker said.
“Oh, yes. Maybe.”
“If we could sense him, we’d know.”
“Yes, if one of us could. But I see nothing.”
“I see nothing, too.”
“I see nothing.”
“Not a thing.”
“He’s like those before him.”
“Yes. Like those before. Unreadable.”
“Perhaps he’s left.”
“Perhaps,” the brunette woman said, “but I think we should check.” She turned her head to look at Peter and Tommy.
Instantly, Tommy’s eyes opened and he stood up.
“Check,” the brunette said.
Tommy nodded, then pushed the cabinet back just enough so that he could squeeze out the doorway.
The brunette closed her eyes. A moment later, her head began moving like she was looking around.
Above, they could hear Tommy move off the staircase and onto the main floor, walking toward where the sound had come from.
The brunette continued to move her head back and forth. “He’s not there,” she said. “I can’t see him.”
“He must be there,” another said.
“Who else could it have been?”
The woman’s head turned quickly to the right, then she stiffened and her eyes shot open.
There was a thud on the floor above.
“What?” one Maker asked.
Then another, “What?”
And another, “What?”
And the last, “What?”
“I’ve lost contact,” the brunette said.
“Send the other one,” the blond man told her.
Almost instantly, Peter rose from the floor. But before he could reach the gap Tommy had created, something crashed into the barn floor above them again. Only this time the wood didn’t hold, and a thick rectangular object dropped through the boards into the basement, bringing down a hail of splinters and chunks of wood with it.
The object turned out to be an old bale of hay. It must have been one of the things Eric had seen up in the loft when they’d come into the barn. No wonder the crashes had been so fierce. The hay had to fall at least twenty feet before it hit the barn floor.
The Makers were all smiling, each looking up at the hole that now loomed above them. Peter had retreated from the door and was now standing near the bale. He, too, was looking up.
“Come down and join us,” the brunette woman shouted at the new opening.
“Your friends are already here,” the blonde woman next to her said.
They waited expectantly, smiles on their overly beautiful faces.
Something clicked in Eric’s ear. It was coming from the receiver he was still wearing. A glitch or something, he decided. Static.
“Be ready,” Fiona mumbled.
“We have no problem waiting you out,” the blond man said.
“I have no intention of making you wait,” Mr. Trouble announced, his voice not coming from above, but from the gap next to the china cabinet.
Pfffft. Pfffft. Pfffft.
Darts flew through the room. Three of the surrogates standing against the wall fell to the floor, while the three others ducked behind one of the shelving units. The Makers themselves didn’t move.
Maggie immediately pulled Eric deeper into the basement, away from the gap, while Vice Principal Rose all but carried Eric’s mom toward some shelves on the other side. But the gardener was the closest to the opening and never had a chance. Eric couldn’t see where
the dart hit him but he went down, hard and fast.
Here Comes Mr. Trouble Page 22