by J. R. Brule
“This . . . this room. This isn’t where we are.”
Chad’s grin wiped clean. “What did you say?”
“We’re not in here . . . it’s not even a real place. We’re in a parking lot.” The walls shimmered like dancing transparent curtains, and Chad watched them, afraid, until they were completely gone, and they were in a parking lot. “All that schooling wasn’t real. My childhood was different. That was Mr. Kloom’s lesson.”
(you’re doing it)
“Stop,” Chad said. “You’re being nonsensical.”
No . . . this isn’t nonsense. This is the world, the real world, and how I view it.
“You,” Rudy said. “You didn’t kill Mr. Kloom.”
“Of course I did. You watched him explode.”
It’s all about illusion, kid.
Rudy felt Chad’s Gift knocking at the door to his mind, trying to enter, trying to influence his way of thinking.
Salesman move like water, trying to find the cracks.
Don’t let the foot get in the door.
“Let me show you how real this is,” Chad said, and Rudy’s father, still buzzing with static, aimed the shotgun. “If you don’t stop, I’ll order him to shoot.”
“That’s not my father . . . my father died a long time ago. You made him up. You extracted him from the lesson. He’s not real.” Rudy saw his faux father smile. “In fact, that’s Mr. Kloom.”
Chad turned quickly and got up from his chair. The black-and-white man lowered the shotgun and then leaned on it. He spoke in the familiar Kloom voice. “You didn’t think I was done fuckin with you, did ya?”
Chad panicked, looked between the two men. “You’re wrong, the both of you, and you can’t win. Not against me.” He threw his fists out and the parking lot illuminated, and they were in a warehouse now, a giant warehouse with hundreds of hanging lights.
Rudy shook his head. “No. I’m not here. I’m in the safe place. With Mr. Kloom.”
---
Just for now, anyway, Mr. Kloom said. You’ll have to go back soon.
They were in that dark place again, that place of nothingness, and Rudy smiled. I know.
I’m proud of you.
Are you real? Rudy asked.
Of course I’m real.
I can’t tell the difference anymore. I saw you get shot.
That you did. What you’ve got to ask yourself is, did I really die?
I don’t know. I really don’t know.
Does Mr. Kloom have to be a person? Or could Mr. Kloom be something a little more . . . intangible?
Intangible, like an idea?
Sure.
Is that what you are?
No. I’m a person.
So where’s your body?
Where’s yours?
. . .
Are you real? Mr. Kloom lampooned.
Of course I am.
Then it’s settled.
Wait!
What is it?
Will I see you again?
No.
I don’t like thinking that.
So don’t.
I’m listening, and I don’t like it.
If you listen real hard, you’ll hear me on the winds. I’ll drift by every now and then.
What will you do now?
Help the others.
Was that your goal, to help me?
Yes. There are lots of others I worry for. Chad was nothing compared to the man I’m after.
What man?
The doctor. Mr. Berrington. I believe he paid you a visit in school.
The man with white coat, Rudy thought. And you? Rudy said. What did you get out of all this?
It’s simple, really. I don’t like this barbaric war between Gifted.
So you’re a saint.
Not quite. I stop the people like Julia Frond. They use kids like you as a stepping stone, to grow their powers.
And Chad?
He thought he was ready for me. He knew the school was a projection for your learning, and set a less sophisticated trap, one he believed I wouldn’t see coming. And Mr. Berrington, when he offered you a chance to play hooky, he meant to sever my influence. Not that it would have mattered, but you did well to decline.
I think that makes you a saint.
That’s because you haven’t seen what I do to the Gifted I catch hunting.
What do you do to them?
I trap them in the one place they can never leave.
A coffin?
No, kid, nothing like a coffin.
Where then?
A place I learned about by pushing myself past the limit.
Like my racing!
It’s good to see you’ve learned something. Now, I have to go. Mr. Berrington awaits. Bye-bye.
Wait! If you never killed anyone . . . Chad said he claimed hundreds of Gifted. How could you compete with that?
The power gained from sexual extraction is nothing compared to what you can draw from keeping someone alive. I don’t like doing it, but sometimes you have to do bad things to fight the bad people. Now, get out of here.
---
“Hey,” Chad said, “how are you doing that?”
“Doing what?” Rudy said.
“You’re fading, and you don’t even know it. That’s complicated shit. How are you doing it?”
They have to believe you know something they don’t.
“It’s simple if you think about it.”
“I have thought about it, and it’s not simple.”
(say your goodbyes)
“Bye-bye now.”
Rudy saw Chad’s eyes lose their focus, his body go rubbery, and watched him fall unconscious to the ground. Then, the world went watery, like a thousand raindrops making ripples in a lake, and Rudy saw Chad’s body get picked up by something with a see-through humanoid form . . .
---
Where am I? Chad thought. The place was so dark, and there wasn’t a floor, and he couldn’t see his feet.
Welcome! a familiar man’s voice shouted, to the mind trap!
Mind trap? What is this place? Chad shouted.
Chad felt afraid, and tried bringing forth his powers, tried to escape, but couldn’t find his Gift. It was gone, buried somewhere deep inside him—or maybe already extracted.
That’s exactly right, Mr. Kloom said with a bodiless voice. You belong to me now.
Tell me what this is! Chad yelled hopelessly. What is this power?
This, Mr. Kloom said, is your own head. Here, I’ll keep you alive, and sap every last ounce of your power for many, many years to come. Think of yourself as a bond; my long-term investment. By the way, I hope you don’t mind that I invited some guests.
A single light flipped on from above, illuminating a small and doorless room with no windows. The walls were green with what looked like corrosive acid eating at the stone. In one corner, Julia, Billy, and Norm were huddled close together.
Billy muttered, Holy shit, it’s him. It’s Chad Stevenson.
Chad saw Julia, and said, But I killed you. You can’t be alive.
Best save your energy, dear, Julia said, and smiled. Mr. Kloom promised I’d get revenge. After you left me for dead, he brought me back. I don’t know how he did it . . . but here we are.
Hey, Norman said, that’s what he told us, too. Except, it was about you.
Don’t you see what’s happening here? Chad said. Mr. Kloom tricked us! He wants us to fight each other!
Then, Mr. Kloom’s bodiless voice boomed through the small room as if God himself was shouting down at them. Yes! Now you can pick up right where you left off and kill each other!
Julia, Billy, and Norm looked at Chad truculently, and he backed away, coming up against a wall. He jerked when he felt his skin burn against the stone, and panicked when he saw their hands reaching for him. He felt his clothing grabbed and torn away.
Just as the single light flipped off, Chad screamed, and Mr. Kloom started to whistle a familiar sailing tune.
&n
bsp; 37:
WHEN RUDY WENT BACK to the market, to fact-check the loss of Mr. Kloom, he found no body. In fact, the market was different; it had a different name, different layout, and a different owner.
It was like the place he knew never existed at all.
Rudy went to the docks in search of Mr. Kloom’s sailboat. It was no longer in the marina. In the distance, he saw the faint outline of a sail. So he rushed to the end of the dock, afraid he’d never see his teacher again, and looked out over the lake. Far away, he saw a small sailboat bobbing in the water, and a rush of information scrambled to fit together in his mind.
Mr. Kloom had designed a world conducive for understanding the Gift—a place he could start Rudy fresh and uninterrupted. That world was at school, where Rudy could experiment through trial and error, to learn all the basics of his newly awakened powers.
Through sales in the real world, Rudy learned the skills he needed to protect himself from the illusions of other Gifted—how to see through the lies.
Mr. Kloom also taught Rudy the most effective route to self-improvement—finding new ways to fail. Because with every new challenge, as Mr. Kloom once said, a choice is presented: either the challenge serves as motivation to improve, or as an impassable wall. The trick is to always choose the former.
The only thing Rudy couldn’t figure out is where Mr. Kloom put Chad and Julia. He had said it was the one place they could never leave . . . but really, who could figure out that riddle? If Rudy had to guess, he’d say they got sent somewhere more unpleasant than a classroom—somewhere their toxicity was contained.
Rudy stood at the edge of the dock for half an hour thinking things through, watching Mr. Kloom’s bobbing sailboat coast toward the setting western sun. A cool wind played with his hair, and one yacht honked at an arriving friend. Rudy stayed put, watching Mr. Kloom’s boat become dark with shadows, and listened to the tranquil beat of water against the docks. It wasn’t long until the sail disappeared over the crest of the lake.
So why did Mr. Kloom help Rudy? What was his ultimate goal?
On the surface, it was as Mr. Kloom said, to stop the needless killing. Without Mr. Kloom’s help, Rudy was as good as dead. And while it was impossible to know how many other Gifted existed, Rudy imagined there were enough to keep a man occupied for some time.
But Rudy thought Mr. Kloom had another reason for doing what he did—something more profound.
That something was only one word.
As Rudy fingered the plain sterling chain around his neck, his skin tingled all over—Mr. Kloom had already revealed his ultimate goal when he gave Rudy that lone piece of jewelry.
We all need something to believe in, don’t you agree?
And that was Mr. Kloom’s lesson.
It was belief that taught Rudy how to resist the influence of the other Gifted; belief that allowed him to trust his own experience and understanding; belief that led him full circle to what Mr. Kloom had been trying to teach him all along.
The Gift was already inside him—all he needed was to believe.
Epilogue:
Two weeks later
AN OVERCAST NIGHTTIME SKY blanketed the hospital with shadows while a storm rumbled ominously in the distance, occasionally flashing with silent white lightning.
Nurse Omelli hadn’t gotten any call . . . hadn’t been notified by an EMT. An instinct originating somewhere deeper than her mind told her that something had been left out at the loading dock.
She turned her music off and walked timidly down the empty halls, to the garage in the back of the hospital. The door made a rusty sound when she opened it, and she searched for the light switch. She flipped it, but the garage stayed dark—probably due to a blown bulb. She found a flashlight, clicked it to life, and maneuvered through the idle ambulances, to the big back door that led to the loading bay.
She stood in its doorway, searching the area with the thin beam. She saw nothing, and thought her intuition had tricked her. Then the light fell on the lifeless faces of four bodies, and she slapped a hand to her mouth. Each was wrapped in a sheet from the neck down, all lined up next to one another on the concrete floor.
She thought to call Doctor Berrington—he’d know what to make of this—when she heard his voice from behind her, and she jumped, shrieking in surprise.
“Who are these people?” he asked, already kneeling beside them. His deep, confident voice never failed to stir her insides. She watched him search inside the dirty white sheets, looking for identification.
She thought he’d left hours ago. “I don’t know.”
“Who brought them here?”
“I-I don’t know.”
His hand paused inside the wrappings as he pivoted to look back at her. “I’ll handle this.”
It took her a moment to hear him, because this was all so strange. It was like the bodies were delivered.
Doctor Berrington allowed her to leave before withdrawing the buried note. He wiped her mind as soon as she got inside, so she’d forget she ever came back here. Doctor Berrington unfolded the note under the moonless sky.
You’re not so smart as you’d thought. Let these bodies serve as reminder.
I’m coming for you.
- Mr. K
Doctor Berrington crumpled the paper and stuffed it inside his pocket. His left eye twitched uncontrollably as he thought about the note—the mind’s of all four bodies were locked somewhere out of his reach—something only he should be capable of.
One of the bodies he recognized—the author of that silly Gifted book. And now that author was here, with these other three who weren’t dead, but unconscious; they were cold to the touch, but their blood still coursed. Another Gifted knowing how to perform a mind trap was . . . concerning.
He rolled out four gurneys, and loaded the bodies—first the woman, than the two men, and last, the author. He took them one-by-one from the loading bay, wheeling them casually through the empty hospital, past the patient waiting area and emergency rooms.
They’re not mine, no. But they can stay with the ones that are.
He located the door that no one else had ever seen, a door he kept well hidden. It opened to several steep steps that descended into a vast dark hallway. With just a flick of his power, each step congealed to the last, forming a ramp to suit his purpose. He guided each gurney down the ramp and into the tunnel. Every now and then, a faint humming light illuminated the passageway, with long stretches of total darkness between lights. Many stretches later, he reached the end of the tunnel, and it was cold.
He flipped a switch on the wall, and the place exploded with brightness.
Dozens of refrigerated compartments, stacked four high, lined both walls as far as the eye could see. And each one worked to feed his power—each one housed someone he’d trapped—someone his mind worked to digest.
Down here, his collection was kept secret.
He looked down at the author’s black-and-blue face, put his hand inside his pocket, turned over that crumpled note, and smiled.
Mr. Kloom would be a delightful catch.
END
Copyright © 2014 by J.R. Brule.
All Rights Reserved.
Cover design by Peter O’Connor
Edited by Elizabeth S.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
www.JRBrule.blogspot.com
JACK’S CLOSET TRADEMARK REGISTERED
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
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