The Argus Deceit

by Chuck Grossart

  He’d unloaded a new set of problems on her, and what he initially expected to be a moment for both of them to move forward, comparing their similar experiences and maybe finding some common theme they could use to their advantage, had instead turned into something different.

  “When you’re in the darkness, do you see yourself in any other places?” he asked.

  She nodded. “In my dreams, I do, but you’re never in my dreams, and it’s only one place. I’m a little girl, like I’ve told you, and it’s all terrifying.” She shifted her gaze from the floor to him. “I’ve never seen you anywhere but here, Brody. Nowhere else.”

  Brody shook his head. Everything he’d felt so confident of began to shift. He no longer felt so sure of himself.

  He glanced at the rifle. For a moment, the shifting stopped.

  “The first time you saw me with this,” he said, pointing at the M16, “was back there, where the three morons were, or are, right?”

  She nodded.

  “That rifle shouldn’t be here, Connie. I was back in Vietnam, smack in the middle of a firefight with the NVA in some valley I don’t remember ever being in, and I had that rifle in my hands. Both of them, Connie. I had both of my hands. Then, all of a sudden, I was back here, in Garland Trail, with the rifle.” He flicked his pinned-up sleeve with a finger. “And I was like this again.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I brought it with me, somehow. From one place to another. I don’t know how or why, but it’s here just the same.” He reached into his pants pocket. “And then there’s this,” he said, holding up the yellow toy dinosaur. “I found this in my apartment just a little while ago, before I went looking for you. It’s from my house in Colorado. It sits on my shelf right next to a model airplane in my room. I’m ten years old there, Connie. It shouldn’t be here, either, but here it is.” He handed it to her, and she reluctantly took it from him. “It feels real, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Squeeze it, Connie. Feel it. It’s real, right?”

  She nodded slightly. “Yes, it’s real.”

  “I don’t think I’m imagining all this, Connie. I really don’t. I can’t explain any of it, but I know what I’ve seen.”

  “Why am I here? And if I am in those other places, why don’t I remember any of it?”

  “I don’t know,” Brody replied. He gently put his hand on her arm, relieved to see that she didn’t pull away. “We’ll figure this out. You and me. Okay?”

  Connie looked at the floor again. “My dream, Brody. It isn’t like what you’re saying. At all.”

  Brody remembered Connie saying she’d seen where it all started. “What do you see when you’re dreaming?”

  Her voice took on a detached quality, as if she was recalling something she’d rather not. “I’m in a house, like I told you before. I’m little, and my parents are there, but they’re not my real parents. I feel close to them, like I love them both so much, but they’re not my real mom and dad. It’s hard to describe.”

  Brody gave her arm a squeeze, telling her it was okay to continue. He was here, and he would listen.

  “I think there’s someone breaking into the house, and I peek outside my door. My dad is there, and he tells me to go back to my room. My mom is in the hall, and I wait with her while my dad goes to see what’s making the noises.”

  Brody felt her body tense. “It’s okay, it’s just a dream. It’s not real.” As soon as he said it, he realized how ironic he sounded.

  “But it feels real, Brody!” she said, her voice shot through with emotion. “More real than any of this! Oh God, what’s going on?”

  “You told me you saw how this all started. Is it your dream? Is that where you see it?”

  Connie nodded, and Brody thought he saw her quickly wipe a tear away, though it was difficult to see her face in the dim light. “After my dad goes into the living room,” Connie said, continuing her description of the dream, “I hear a noise. It’s his voice, like he’s surprised, but then he doesn’t say anything else. My mom calls for him—his name is Jack, she calls him Jackie—but he doesn’t answer. Then she leaves me, goes into the living room, too.”

  Brody put his arm around Connie’s shoulder. She leaned into him.

  “I stayed in the room, like my mom . . . like she told me to, but they didn’t come back. I waited, but they didn’t come back.”

  Brody felt as if he were hearing the story from a child’s point of view, as if she had really been there and felt the same terror that he could hear in her voice.

  “I heard them, moaning or something. I went to see for myself and saw them in the living room. It was dark, but I could still see them. They were just standing there, not moving. Then I turned on the light.”

  Brody felt her body shudder. At first he thought it was the start of the pain that would take her away to the darkness, but it wasn’t.

  “There was something else, there, Brody. And one of them came after me.”

  “Who were they?” he asked softly.

  She turned her face to his. “Not a who.”

  “What was it?”

  “I can never see them clearly, just shapes, like people. I don’t know, but I think my mind is blocking them out for some reason. I know I’m scared of them, not only because they were in my house when they weren’t supposed to be, and they had done something to my parents—the man and woman—but there was something else about them that scared me so badly. I turned and ran, but they grabbed me. They took me away, Brody. They took me away.” She moaned a little. “Oh God.”

  “And that’s where this whole thing started?” he asked quickly.

  Connie nodded, and her body began to shake. He held her more tightly, knowing his gesture wasn’t going to make any difference. She would vanish from his arms no matter how firmly he held on.

  “I think so,” Connie said, her voice betraying the pain she was feeling.

  Brody stroked her hair, knowing he only had seconds. “It’s okay, we’ll meet back here, right here, okay?”

  Connie nodded, and then she wasn’t there anymore.

  Brody sat there for the next few minutes, digesting Connie’s words. Her dream sounded real. He could tell by the fear in her voice, the terror, and in the way she spoke about her parents. She wasn’t convinced they were her real parents, but Brody questioned her assumption. If the moment she described was when this farcical mind game had started for Connie, then deep down she must know that the scared little girl taken away by someone who had broken into her house was her.

  Brody felt the first twinges of pain as he watched the world around him begin to fade away, and he wondered if the same thing had happened to him. He’d had no dreams like that, no dreams at all, for that matter. His time here, in Joshua, and in both Culver and West Glenn, was part of a sick game. What troubled him was that Connie had no idea she was with him in those other places. He had met Connie elsewhere, but she hadn’t made the connection. Yet.

  He checked that the rifle was sitting where he could easily find it again. He took the yellow dinosaur from the floor and tucked it back in his pocket.

  The pain in the back of his head exploded, and he let the darkness take him. Wherever he would find himself next, he would find Connie again.

  They would fight the shadow man as best they could. And escape this crazy trap.

  Chapter 30

  BRODY16

  West Glenn, Colorado

  Monday, March 30, 1981

  Brody was in the cafeteria again, sitting with his friends and listening to them discuss the assassination attempt against President Reagan. His time in the darkness had lasted only a few seconds, it seemed. And he remembered being there, right from the start. Moments earlier, he’d been in the warehouse, with Connie. Brody patted his pants pocket and couldn’t feel the toy dinosaur. It didn’t come with him for some reason. As he felt for it, he looked at his left arm, firmly attached in this world. He flexed his fingers.r />
  “Dude, what are you doing?” Kyle asked.

  Brody started to answer, then decided it wasn’t worth the effort. None of this was real and talking to any of these people didn’t matter. He stood up, leaving his books on the table, and headed for the cafeteria exit. The lingering smell of food from the previous hour’s lunch made his stomach growl. He was starving.

  “Hey, Brody, where are you going?” Kyle again.

  Brody turned slightly and waved at him, remembering how the kids in Culver had reacted badly as soon as he stepped outside his scripted role. If that happened here, he wanted to be as far away from his “friends” as possible. The cafeteria was full of kids, and if they all reacted like those other kids had, he’d be in a world of hurt. Better to leave now, fast.

  Brody spied Joan sitting at her table and noticed she was looking right at him, a questioning look in her eyes (not glassy, not yet). She was supposed to go to the table where he’d been sitting, open her notebook, and let him see his name (written in large, teenage-girl balloon letters) across the top of one of the pages. She’d find him in the parking lot and ask him to drive her home. And then, there would be an accident.

  Sometimes she lives, sometimes she dies. He remembered it all.

  Brody was surprised to see Joan get up from her table and move to follow him. He quickened his pace, but she actually ran after him.

  He walked briskly out of the cafeteria and could feel everyone’s eyes burning into his back. All the normal lunchtime noises suddenly ceased. He had gone off script, and his schoolmates had all noticed.

  Brody ran through the halls, heading for an exit door. He would get to his car and drive to the last place he’d seen Connie.

  It was a building, right? He tried to remember, as the memories slowly seeped into his mind. They’d been hiding in a gas station, then they ran to a theater, and Connie had opened the side door and slipped inside.

  The shadow man had been there, too, following them.

  Brody remembered going inside, and then—

  A dark room, with a point of light at one end. He’d gone to the light, opened a door, and found himself in the bedroom. Reba’s bedroom.

  He’d opened a door in that place and found himself back home in Joshua, in his house, but he was still sixteen then, not fifty-two. Brody remembered feeling a gun in his hand and seeing Felix. He couldn’t remember anything else from that point on. The theater was the key, though. It was the last place where he’d seen Connie, a teenager like him in this place, and it had a door through which he could make it back to his house in Joshua.

  Brody pushed through the exit and ran toward his car.

  “Brody!”

  Joan was behind him. He glanced back and saw her standing in the exit, holding the door open.

  “Brody? Where are you going?” she asked. Her voice was still the same, not flat and emotionless. Not yet, anyway. It would be soon. Brody still couldn’t help but think about how pretty Joan was, and deep inside a little voice spoke to him, urging him to go to her, talk to her, drive her home (like he was supposed to). He blinked hard, trying to clear his head.

  “Go back inside, Joan,” Brody said. “You’re going to get in trouble.”

  Get in trouble? Why are you talking to her? She’s not even real!

  Joan looked back inside the school for a moment, then walked outside, letting the door close behind her. “Where are you going?” she asked as she ran after him.

  “I’m going home,” he lied, but it wasn’t really a lie when the person you lied to wasn’t real, right? Joan slowed to a walk as she approached, and for some reason, Brody couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  “Can you drop me off at home?” she asked. “It’s on the way. I think I’m done with this place today, too.” Her smile was amazing, and Brody could smell her perfume on the breeze.

  “What about your boyfriend?” Brody asked, wondering why his feet weren’t moving and why he couldn’t stop talking.

  “Who, Todd?” Joan said.

  The wrestler. Todd. “Yeah, him.”

  Joan looked down at her feet for a moment, then back to him. “He’s a jerk. Don’t worry about him.” She stepped closer, and Brody felt the familiar electric shock coursing through his body. “I know you saw what was in my notebook,” Joan continued. “I kinda like you, Brody Quail.”

  For a second, Brody’s heart jumped. Joan had just said the words he’d longed to hear, at least as a sixteen-year-old kid, but then he remembered, this time he hadn’t seen the page with his name written across the top. He had to get away from her.

  “I’m sorry, Joan, but I can’t take you home. You need to go back inside.”

  Before he could turn and run to his car, Joan grabbed his arms, pulled him closer, and kissed him, right on the lips.

  The feeling was so strong, so overwhelming, that for a few seconds Brody completely forgot who he was. He was sixteen, getting kissed by a beautiful girl, and that’s all that mattered. He didn’t think about the accident. He didn’t think about having to find Connie. He leaned into the kiss and put his arms around her.

  The moment didn’t last long.

  He pushed her away, a little more strongly than he meant to. “Go!” Brody yelled, feeling a little guilty, but the regret he felt was fleeting as his senses returned. “Get away from me. Now.”

  And he saw exactly what he expected to see: the shock and hurt that erupted on Joan’s face from being shoved away quickly vanished, and the life in her eyes faded. When she spoke, the girl he’d kissed just seconds before, so warm, so full of life, was gone.

  “You have to take me home.”

  Brody turned and ran to his car. With each step, the urge to return to Joan, to kiss her again, grew weaker and weaker. The ache in his head was back, though, and it began to throb, a sign he’d come to realize as the moment when the game master knew his player was no longer playing. Brody pushed it away, locked it in a drawer in his mind, managed it.

  He opened his car door and turned the key. The old Impala coughed, then started. The tires squealed as he gunned the engine and backed out of the parking space, then hit the brakes and slammed the shifter into first gear. In his rearview mirror, he saw Joan, still standing where he’d left her; she was moving her mouth and he could read her lips.

  You’re supposed to drive me home.

  There were others there, too, walking up behind her. Kids and teachers, as if the entire school had suddenly emptied out.

  They were coming for him, the hive-mind aware that a player had gone off script. Brody shuddered as he remembered the time at the elementary school when much the same thing had happened. When a mob of lifeless grade-school automatons had attacked.

  Brody tore out of the parking lot and headed for the theater. And hopefully for Connie.

  As he drove, Brody kept an eye on the people on the streets, both pedestrians and drivers. Everything seemed normal (as normal as it could be in this crazy place); none of the people seemed to go out of their way to watch him or run out into the street to block his way, and none of the drivers grabbed their steering wheels and careened into his car to stop him. Maybe time was needed for the collective mind of these things to react, or maybe their communication was limited by distance, like a transmitter or something. Brody didn’t know and didn’t care. He had to get to the theater.

  He would enter the building as he had before, from the side door. There he had entered a darkened room and found the door to his house in Joshua.

  Reba’s room.

  Brody clicked his blinker on and turned the corner, the theater only a couple of blocks away. He’d avoided the intersection where the accident was supposed to occur, wondering whether it mattered if Joan was with him.

  His head hurt, and his stomach was growling, but he’d turned on his radio to help keep his mind off the pain. The sound quality on the Impala’s original AM radio wasn’t very good, but when every station was talking about John Hinckley’s attempt on Reagan’s life instead o
f playing music, sound quality didn’t matter.

  Brody parked his car on the street beside the alley and walked toward the door. Before, it was unlocked, and he hoped it would be this time, too. Right before he reached for the door handle, Brody felt eyes on him. He turned and saw that others were now aware that he had gone off script. At the mouth of the alley, a crowd had gathered, staring. He grabbed the handle, pulled, and stepped inside.

  A technician studying the readout said, “Sir, he’s transiting. One of the junction points.”

  “How long until we’re ready to intercept?”

  The tech checked another part of his screen. “Injection point in ten minutes, sir. I have to recalibrate for the new environment before we send him in.”

  Lead checked his timer and sighed. Time was running out. “Do it as quickly as you can. The diver has to get in there fast.”

  “Copy, sir.”

  Every second that passed meant less time for an escape. He had hundreds of lives resting on his shoulders, and as Lead he wasn’t going to let them all die. Years of hard work were coming down to this moment. He could stop the operation right now, and no sane person could blame him, considering what was going to happen soon, but he wasn’t ready to give up.

  Not yet.

  “Sir, he’s transitioned into the new environment,” the tech said. “Recalibration in seven minutes.” He paused, then said, “And there’s another junction point now, close. If he finds it, we’ll have to recalibrate again. Stability is fluctuating. It’s getting turbulent in there.”

  “Where’s the girl?” Lead asked.

  “She’s still off the grid, sir. We’ll see her when she transits.”

  Lead glanced over to the corner. The girl. A real wild card, that one. He shook his head and checked his timer again. More drastic measures might be necessary when it came to the girl. And soon. “Send the diver at the first opportunity, copy?”

  The tech nodded but seemed unsure. “If we insert the diver, and the target crosses the junction point, we’ll lose—”