Oh yeah, never get into a car with a stranger. That’s the rule you follow when your parents are alive, your sister is annoying as opposed to missing, and there isn’t a big dead man on your living-room floor with a crossbow bolt through his neck. Somehow I knew that going with Ralph, however strange a man he might be, wasn’t about to make my situation worse. In fact, I felt that, despite his bizarre appearance and manner, I could trust him more than anyone.
Once again, I was wrong.
Chapter 3: Escape from Escape
We drove all night. I asked questions, and Ralph answered them in his wheezing voice. He looked really old, at least sixty or so, with pale, leathery skin and beady, sunken eyes that were nearly hidden by his unkempt, curly white hair.
“Where are you taking me?” That was my first question.
“Away from here,” said Ralph as we sped out of town.
“I have to find my sister, Ralph. She ran off.”
“Out of the question, lad. Your sister will be okay. She’s better off without you anyway. It’s you that they’re after. Your sister wouldn’t be in any danger if you weren’t about.”
“But she’s lost!” I insisted. “It’s the middle of the night and she could be anywhere.”
“I’m not much of a finder, lad,” said Ralph. “I can find most power alright, but a child like that… no, I can’t sense her. But she’ll be okay. The police will pick her up and she can go live with your relatives.”
“But Ralph…”
Ralph glanced at me, keeping one eye on the road. “You can’t help her, lad! You just can’t. Heck, you can barely help yourself, can you? But don’t you worry. You’re in good hands with old Ralph. Saved you from that berserker, didn’t I?”
“What’s a berserker?” I asked.
Ralph smirked. “He’s the one that was messing with your father’s mind. He’s a controller. The worst kind.”
“A controller?”
“That’s right, lad. A controller is a dangerous enemy to make. Some of us can hide, and some can fight, but the real scary ones are them controllers. Especially berserkers. They can make you go psycho, lad. Did it to your father, didn’t he? And look what your father did.”
I had been looking out the window when he said that, beginning to wonder why I had been so willing to get in this man’s car. I turned to him and shouted furiously, “Shut up about my father!”
Ralph turned his head to look into my eyes again and said kindly, “Easy there, lad. I’m not disrespecting your father. But if I hadn’t rescued you, you’d be dead too now. That berserker was sent by the Angels.”
“Angels?” I was having a lot of trouble keeping up with the conversation, and Ralph’s raspy, accented voice wasn’t helping things.
“They don’t need you, lad,” said Ralph. “That’s why they sent a berserker to kill you. If they wanted you to join them, they would have sent someone nicer, like me, eh?”
Ralph chuckled at his own joke, but I was even more lost. Every question answered was making things harder to understand.
“The Angels, see,” Ralph continued in his near-breathless voice, “they’ve got enough destroyers, so they won’t bother with a kid like you. But we don’t want you dead. We want you on our side, to fight the Angels. You aren’t much of a destroyer, but you’re still a destroyer, so maybe you’ll make good cannon fodder.”
Ralph chuckled again. I wasn’t sure what Ralph meant when he called me a “destroyer,” but I did know what cannon fodder was. Like pawns in a chess game, they were the weakest soldiers that nobody cared about. I didn’t like his joke at all. I glared at him, but he just smiled back.
“Who knows, lad,” he said lightly, “you might even make a good destroyer someday.”
I felt a little calmer and said, “Okay. What’s a destroyer?”
“Why, you’re a destroyer!” laughed Ralph. “You’re a telekinetic. You can break things and you can fight. You can’t heal, you can’t hide, you can’t mess with minds. You’re a destroyer, pure and simple. Maybe you got some other tricks up your sleeves, but the Angels know you’re a destroyer.”
“That’s why they want me dead?”
Ralph nodded grimly. “The Angels don’t need you, lad. They’ve got enough better fighters. But they don’t want you joining us either because then someday they’re going to have to fight you. And if they’re going to have to fight you someday, they might as well fight you today, before you get stronger, see?”
Ralph coughed loudly once, cleared his throat and continued, “Right now they can kill you easy, and if they could kill me too while I was bringing you in, it’d be a bonus. But ha! I killed him, so that’s one less Angel, one less controller, eh?”
I asked, “So the Angels are the bad guys?”
Ralph shook his head. “There are no bad guys in this war, lad, because there aren’t any good guys either. It’s just survival, see? For you, it’s just who wants you dead – that’s the Angels – and who wants you alive – that’s us.”
“Who is ‘us’?”
“We’re the Guardians,” said Ralph.
“And you’re at war with the Angels?” I felt I was finally getting somewhere.
“Well, sure we are, lad. Angels, Wolves, Slayers – you name them, we kill them.”
“You mean there are people like us everywhere?”
“People like who, lad?”
“Like us!” I cried. “People with strange powers!”
“What? You mean psionics? But of course there are, lad!” said Ralph, chuckling. “What, you thought you were the only one, did you? You thought you were some freak of nature or something? There’ve been people like us since before history was written, lad. How do you think Jesus walked on water?”
“Jesus was like us?” I asked, incredulous.
“Well, there’s no proof that Jesus was a psionic,” said Ralph, grinning, “but light-foots can walk on water.” I stared at Ralph disbelievingly as he continued, “Come to think of it, I bet you could sort of walk on water too, you know, by hovering just over it. You’re a right powerful telekinetic, after all.”
Ralph had called me cannon fodder, and now he was saying that I was powerful. I was beginning to wonder if anything he said could be trusted, but then I caught Ralph’s eye and relaxed again, thinking that he probably just complimented me to make me feel better.
“Well, I guess I could hover over water,” I answered. “But do you mean that people with powers… um, psionics, have always been around?”
Ralph nodded. “Welcome to the world, lad.”
“But then how come people don’t know?”
“What do you mean, people don’t know? Of course they know! Governments know. Churches of course know. Everyone that matters knows. Ordinary humans just stopped believing in us these days because we know how to hide ourselves. We know how to blend in, see?”
“Yeah…” I said slowly. I didn’t see at all how this man managed to blend in, but I didn’t want to get on his wrong side either. He did, after all, kill the berserker with his crossbow. He saved my life.
Ralph glanced at me again. “Enough questions for one night, lad. You have to get yourself rested. Sleep now, lad. Sleep.”
As he said that, I felt the weight of the night bearing down upon me as if I had been touched by steel again, and a moment later, the darkness closed in.
When I woke, I was alone in the car, which was parked in a small lot. The outside world was covered in thick fog, but by the dim sunlight shining through it, I guessed it was late morning. Where had Ralph gone? I couldn’t see far through the mist, but I guessed I might be in some small town up in the mountains. I could hear the chirping of birds in the distance and the occasional sound of an engine as a car sped past somewhere nearby. I sat there confused, trying to make sense of what had happened.
Dad had killed Mom. He was hit by the berserker’s anger, and he killed Mom, and he almost killed Cat and me. Then he went after the berserker, who must have killed him.
My parents were dead.
It was like I was discovering this for the first time. I didn’t cry. It felt like a dull, heavy weight in my gut. They were gone, and there was nothing I could do. I wasn’t sure exactly how I felt, but it was more emptiness than grief, and try as I might, I couldn’t even picture their faces.
And Cat… Where was she? Why wasn’t she in the car?
Then I remembered. Cat was lost. I had left her and gotten into Ralph’s car. I hadn’t even tried to look for her! What had I done?!
I had to get back home and talk to the police. I had to find Cat. I pulled the handle on the car door and started to open it, but suddenly it got pushed back closed again. I saw Ralph’s beady eyes peering in through the window.
“Whoa, lad, where do you think you’re going?” he said. “You can’t go out like that – in nothing but them night things and all! I bet you’re hungry, too.”
Ralph walked around to the driver’s side and got in, plopping two paper bags onto my lap. “Those are your day clothes and your breakfast.”
“Hamburger and fries for breakfast?” I asked, peering into the smaller bag.
“Well, I’m no delver. I don’t know what you want.” Ralph turned the ignition, and raised his voice over the sound of the engine sputtering to life as he said, “We still have a long ways to go, but we’ll be there by night.”
It turned out that I was right about where we were. Ralph’s rusty blue convertible sped on up a winding mountain road cutting through a sweet-scented pine forest. We were already near the top of the mountain range, and we soon started our decent.
I felt a little better after eating, and somehow, without leaving my seat, I managed to change into the clothes Ralph had bought. There was a light brown T-shirt and a pair of gray sweatpants that were a bit too long for me. Ralph had also gotten me a jacket, but it turned out to be too small. It didn’t matter. I didn’t feel very cold in the car, even up in the mountains.
As I was rolling up my pajamas in order to stuff them into the paper bag, I felt something hard in the pants pocket. Pulling it out, I discovered it was the amethyst Cat had given to me moments before the attack.
“Ralph! I have to go back,” I said, suddenly panicked. “I have to find my sister!”
Ralph looked over at me. “No, no, no, and no! I already said, now, didn’t I? Your sister will be okay. She’ll be found by the police and she’ll be okay.”
“But…”
“No buts, lad, no buts. She’ll be okay, you’ll see.”
Again, a strangely dull but relaxing sensation washed over me. Why was I so worried about my sister? Ralph was right: Cat would be okay. I was the one in trouble, though I still hadn’t realized how much.
Just past noon, Ralph stopped to buy us lunch at another sleepy little mountain town, but he insisted that I stay in the car. He said it was for my own safety and that I shouldn’t be seen outside. I didn’t care. I had a feeling he was right, and I didn’t want to leave the car anyway. He brought back turkey sandwiches, and on we went. I continued my questioning.
“Ralph, how did you kill that berserker?”
Ralph grinned as he said, “I shot him with my crossbow. I thought you saw that.”
“No, I mean why couldn’t the berserker find you and hurt you?”
“What do you mean, lad?”
“When I move things, I have to see them,” I explained. “But the berserker could sense me from miles off, and he got to my father right through the walls. He never even saw either of us before he used his power on us.”
Ralph smiled. “Everyone’s power is a little different, lad.”
“But how come he couldn’t get to you, standing in the same room?” I asked.
“Because I know how to block his mind, lad. I can block his bad thoughts, so he can’t attack me.”
“I wish I could have blocked him,” I said unhappily.
“But you can! Someday I’ll teach you how. All in good time, lad.”
“I can learn?”
Ralph nodded. “Anyone can learn, alright. It takes practice, mind you. It takes lots of practice to block powerful thoughts. Controllers are dangerous. But it’s not impossible. I’ll teach you someday, lad.”
“Thanks,” I said. “What else can you do?”
“Oh, this and that, lad. This and that,” Ralph said airily. “Mostly I play with the wind. That’s good for hiding me because I’m no good at real hiding. I can block thoughts but I can’t hide. I made that powerful wind as a distraction so the berserker couldn’t find me in your house.”
Ralph chuckled and looked at me. “Can’t teach you that, though, you know? Every psionic’s power is different. You’re a telekinetic anyways, so you’ve got no need for wind. A proper destroyer beats a windmaster any day.”
“Where are you taking me, Ralph?”
“Patience. You’ll see. We’re going to the big city. We’re going to the ocean, and to our friends.”
I was really starting to like Ralph. Despite his constant fidgeting and his strange way of talking, despite everything about him, I knew I could trust him. When he talked to me, my worries seemed a little more distant, and I felt that I was going to be okay.
By late afternoon, through fleeting glimpses over the edges of some of the sharper curves in the road, I could already see the glittering of the ocean and the hazy shroud of city smog blanketing our destination. We were soon out of the mountains and the forest, speeding through one small town after another.
We stopped at a small hotel just inside the city’s edge. I was hoping to smell the salty ocean air, but we were still too far from the coast. I was getting a bit tired of Ralph’s over-protectiveness, but I didn’t argue when he told me to stay in the car while he checked us in.
Ralph led me in through the hotel’s back door, up two flights of stairs, and down a short concrete corridor. He unlocked our door and we entered. Inside was a gloomy room with an old TV, a small dining table and two hard wooden chairs. There were also two simple, single beds, each with a tiny bedside table atop which sat identical, cheap and dusty shaded lamps. It was a dismal place.
Ralph turned to me and said, “Our gathering isn’t for another two days, so we have to lay low for a while. Now I’m going to go do us some shopping, lad, and I don’t want you wandering off. You might get scared, but you need to stay put, you understand?”
“Yes, Ralph, I understand,” I said dully.
“That’s a good lad. You trust me, don’t you?” said Ralph, looking deep into my eyes for nearly half a minute.
“Yes, Ralph,” I repeated. “I trust you.”
“Good. I’ll be back soon. You stay put.”
Ralph stepped out of the room, and I heard his footsteps fade away.
I wandered around the dingy hotel room, carelessly sliding my fingertips over one of the bedposts. It turned out to be made of metal. Feeling drained, I quickly removed my hand.
As my head cleared, I noticed how bright and clean the light blue curtains looked. The TV also looked shiny, like it was brand new. The beds looked large and comfortable. In fact, the whole room was beautiful. Surprised at my discovery, I looked around again. This time, the room didn’t look all that nice, but it was still much better than my first impression.
Like the room, my whole existence was becoming clearer, glowing a bit before returning to normal. I was surprised at how sharp my senses were becoming, at how I could smell the air drifting in from the vents and feel the texture of the cold plaster walls. But what did it mean? I hadn’t even realized what I was missing until I got it back.
And what about Ralph? Did I really trust him? At first I was surprised at my own question. Of course I trusted Ralph.
But then a small voice in my head said, No.
No, I didn’t trust him. I had no good reason to. Ralph didn’t help me find Cat.
Ralph didn’t care about my sister. He didn’t care about my parents. My parents were dead… All the silenced emotions from last
night were rushing back to me. I couldn’t see well through my tears, but even so, it was like I was waking from a deep sleep. I could feel again. This pain inside me made my life real, and I was myself for the first time since leaving home.
I thought about Ralph once more. How far had he gone? When would he be back? I thought about running away. It scared me because I didn’t know where I would go. And I still wasn’t exactly sure what was going on between me and Ralph. I racked my brains trying to remember our conversation in the car. Last night and this morning, every time Ralph looked at me, I felt calm and relaxed, and then everything became dull. Everyone’s power is different. That was what Ralph had said about the berserker.
I was lying face up on the window-side bed when Ralph returned. I could tell by the noise he made entering that he was carrying large paper grocery bags.
I heard Ralph say, “Come here, lad. Help me with these.”
I didn’t get up. I didn’t even turn toward him. Through the corner of my left eye, I saw Ralph set the bags down on the floor and sit on the other bed. Still looking up at the ceiling, I asked, “Ralph, how did you know my name? How did you know my sister’s name?”
“I told you, lad, I’m a friend.”
“Whose friend?” I asked evenly. “I don’t know you.”
“Here, look at me, lad.”
I still didn’t turn to him. Instead, I turned my head the other way and looked out the window to the darkened sky and city lights. I could vaguely see Ralph’s reflection in the glass. He was fidgeting even more than usual.
“You’re not my friend, Ralph,” I said, keeping my head turned away from him. “You made me follow you here. You’re a controller. Not a very powerful one. Not like that berserker, but you’re a controller too.”
I heard Ralph snicker, and then he said, “I’m a man of many talents, lad. They wouldn’t have sent me alone if I couldn’t take care of myself.”
My head was still clear. Ralph needed to look into my eyes in order to work his power on me.
“Why did you try to control me?” I asked.
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