The Village (Harbingers Book 12)

by Alton Gansky

  The Village

  Alton Gansky

  Contents

  Copyright

  Harbingers

  Dedication

  1. Arrival

  2. Getting a Cold Shoulder

  3. Breakfast for Dinner

  4. Tockity

  5. A Walk Through Nowhere Land

  6. Breakfast at Tiffany’s

  7. I Don’t Think We’re in Kansas Anymore

  8. Littlefoot, New and Improved

  9. Few Answers, Too Many Questions

  10. The Fountain of Elderliness

  11. Useless Hands

  12. Doing Something Even if it’s Wrong

  13. The Wisdom of Daniel

  14. A Step of Faith

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Afterword

  Published by Amaris Media International.

  Copyright © 2016 Alton Gansky

  Cover Design: Angela Hunt

  Photo © lctrail @ fotolia.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any other means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without prior permission from the publisher.

  Harbingers

  A novella series by

  Bill Myers, Angela Hunt, and Alton Gansky

  In this fast-paced world with all its demands, the four of us wanted to try something new. Instead of the longer novel format, we wanted to write something equally as engaging but that could be read in one or two sittings—on the plane, waiting to pick up the kids from soccer, or as an evening’s read.

  We also wanted to play. As friends and seasoned novelists, we thought it would be fun to create a game we could participate in together. The rules were simple:

  Rule 1

  Each of us would write as if we were one of the characters in the series:

  Bill Myers would write as Brenda, the street-hustling tattoo artist who sees images of the future.

  Angela Hunt would write as Andi, the professor’s brilliant-but-geeky assistant who sees inexplicable patterns.

  Alton Gansky would write as Tank, the naïve, big-hearted jock with a surprising connection to a healing power.

  Rule 2

  Instead of the four of us writing one novella together (we’re friends but not crazy), we would write it like a TV series. There would be an overarching story line into which we’d plug our individual novellas, with each story written from our character’s point of view.

  We started with The Call, The Haunted, The Sentinels, and The Girl. Round two brought us The Revealing, Infestation, Infiltration, and The Fog. Round three? Leviathan, The Mind Pirates, Hybrids, and now, The Village. And if we keep having fun, we’ll begin a fourth round and so on until other demands pull us away or, as in TV, we get cancelled.

  There you have it. We hope you’ll find these as entertaining in the reading as we did in the writing.

  Bill, Angie, and Al

  THE VILLAGE

  By Alton Gansky

  Chapter One

  Arrival

  The sun was blinking. Well, not really blinking. That would be a sign that the end of the world was about to arrive. What it was doing was flashing in my eyes as I did my best to drive the Ford SUV up the narrow mountain road. The real culprits were the trees. It was about an hour from sunset and dogwood trees kept blocking the sun, making it look like it was flickering. Truth be told, it was kinda annoying. Still the forest, the mountains, the clear sky was all very beautiful and very different from the place we left that morning.

  I wished it were that lovely inside the car.

  I shot a glance at Andi sitting in the passenger seat next to me, then stole a quick look at the backseat. Brenda sat behind Andi gazing out the window on her right just as she had been doing since we left the airport in Asheville. She hadn't said more than twenty words since we arrived in North Carolina from our stay at Andi's grandparents’ home near Tampa. If you knew Brenda, then you know how this was not normal for her. Not a single snide remark. Odd, I found myself missing her occasional barbs. Just as well. She hasn't been all that warm and cuddly since—

  Well, no need to get into that now.

  Seated behind me was Daniel, my ten-year-old buddy. He wasn’t himself. I expected to see his young face hovering over the screen of his handheld video game like usual. I hadn’t heard a single digital beep out of that game—or a word out of him.

  Of course, I had no right to expect anything to be normal.

  My friends and I have been living in a “new normal.” That's what Andi called it. She's good with words, and the Internet, and research, and patterns, and just about everything else. She is really good at keeping me on pins and needles. Anyway, she’s especially good at seeing patterns no one else can see. She can look at ten unrelated things and see what connects them all. That’s our Andi. Now that the professor is gone, Andi Goldstein is the smart one of our group. If I said that out loud I'm sure she'd show me the back of her hand. Brenda might show me the front of her fist.

  That's not to say that Brenda Barnick is any kind of dummy. She's smart in a different kinda way. Street smart is the best way to describe her. She’s a gifted artist, although most of her art decorates people's skin. No one can ink a tat like Brenda. She’s dynamite with pen and paper too. The strange thing—not so strange to us these days—is that her drawings somehow show a bit of the future.

  Me? Well, if we haven’t already met, then all you need to know is that my name is Bjorn Christensen but I go by Tank. It’s easier to say. At six-foot-three and 260 pounds, I’ve been gaining weight, so no one asks, “So why do they call you Tank?” My size is why Daniel sat behind me while I drove. He didn’t need as much leg room as Andi and Brenda.

  “Much farther?”

  Whoo-hoo. Two words from Brenda.

  Andi kept her eyes on her smartphone. “GPS says about five minutes, but it’s been on-again-off-again. Cell coverage up here is abysmal.”

  Double whoo-hoo. This was almost a conversation. I decided to risk it and say something myself. “The road is slowing us down. Too narrow. Too many hairpin curves.”

  “Ya think?” Brenda sounded sour. “I’m getting carsick.” There was a pause and I redirected the rearview mirror to get a better look at her face. She was staring at me. “And when I get carsick, Cowboy, I tend to vomit forward and to the left. Just about where you’re sitting.”

  Brenda liked to call me “Cowboy.” No one else does. “Should I stop and give you a chance to . . . you know . . . let you get some air.”

  The three in the car all said, “No!” Even little Daniel.

  “Okay, okay. Cool your jets. I’m just trying to keep everyone safe.”

  “I’m sick of the car,” Brenda said. “I’m sick of flying to out of the way places.”

  “Technically,” I said, “Tampa is not out of the way. It’s a pretty big city. And when we were in San Diego—”

  “Shut up, Bjorn.”

  Yikes. Brenda never uses my first name.

  “Yes, ma’am. Shutting up.”

  Andi’s guess of five minutes was a tad off. Not by much, just a quarter hour. Brenda would have chewed through the car door if she could have managed it, and a big part of me believed she could.

  By the time we rolled into town, the sun had dipped below the mountains and what had once been shadows was now full blown twilight. The streetlights, which looked a hundred years old if they were a day, flickered on and made a brave effort at pushing back the dark of evening. I was glad to pull onto Main Street and leave the twisty two-lane road behind. Newland, North Ca
rolina wasn’t all that far from Asheville, but it was all up hill.

  “No cell service, guys,” Andi said. “We’ll have to find the hotel the old fashioned way. Look for it.”

  “You made reservations, right?” Brenda made the question sound like a statement.

  Andi shook her head. Her flighty red hair flopped around a little. Some might think it looked funny, but I think she’s adorable. As far as I’m concerned, she is gorgeous from the tiptop of her hair down to those tiny things she calls feet.

  “I couldn’t make reservations. They don’t have a website and when I called all I got was an answering service. And by answering service I mean answering machine. Didn’t know those things were still around.”

  Brenda leaned forward and for a moment I thought there would be three people in the front seat. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “C’mon, Brenda. I’m not known for my sense of humor.”

  That wasn’t completely true. I’d seen Andi laugh many times. She could be witty when she wanted. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t feeling it at the moment.

  “I’m not spending the night in the car.” Brenda said that with some heat.

  “We shouldn’t have to.” Andi didn’t bother to turn to face Brenda. “You know how this works. We get a message with a destination and information on where to stay. Maybe our keepers made reservations for us.”

  “They had better.”

  “Okay, ladies,” I said, “let’s see what we’re dealing with before we start shooting at each other.” Of course, for self-protection, I glanced over my shoulder to see if Brenda was coming for me. She wasn’t. Instead, I saw little Daniel patting her leg. Daniel might be the only person in the world who can settle Hurricane Brenda. It was working.

  I motored slowly down the street, taking in the town. There wasn’t much to take in. I’ve been in a few small towns in my time and this one was pretty much the same thing. The buildings were old, maybe built in the 30s and 40s. Some were made of red brick, some had wood exteriors. I didn’t see any stucco like what I see in California. There were a few shops and one department store, though most would be hard pressed to call the small two-story building much of a department store. There were two eating establishments that I hoped offered biscuits and gravy, and a bar for those that liked to drink their meals from a beer mug. I slowed when I came to a building with a gold star on the door and a sign that read Sheriff’s Office.

  I pulled to the curb. A sign hung on the door: GONE FISHING. We saw a hardware store, a feed store, a shoe store, and a few other stores.

  “Anyone else notice the weirdness?” Andi was leaning forward as if by doing so, the town would release its secrets.

  “Like what?” Brenda asked.

  “Like there’s no one on the street. No pedestrians. No cars on the road. I don’t even see parked cars. Shouldn’t there be a beat up pickup truck or something?”

  “Maybe . . .” I began.

  “Maybe what?” Andi said.

  I put my brain in high gear, then said, “I got nuthin’.”

  “Tank’s got nothing.” Daniel snickered. At least the kid hadn’t forgotten how to talk. He was a quiet kid most of the time. Emotionally challenged his doctors say, but he’s not. He’s just different, and since Brenda took over his care, he is more open than ever. Not a chatterbox, but he no longer hesitates to speak. He has a special gift all his own.

  “Hey! I thought you were my pal.” I said the words with a big grin.

  “I am. Pals. You still got nuthin’.”

  I caught Brenda and Andi smiling. Sometimes I think the kid could walk into a dark room with no lights and somehow lights would come on anyway. Don’t analyze the statement. Just take it at face value.

  We reached the end of Main Street and I saw something that gave me hope—a church. A church with a real steeple. It was small, but beautiful. I’m the spiritual one of the group and I love church. My friends, well they haven’t come around. Yet.

  Just as we reached the end of Main Street Andi piped up. “There. I see the hotel. On the left.”

  There was movement in the backseat as Daniel and Brenda scooted forward for a look-see.

  “I see it.” I did and it looked good to me. I was sick of the car. At first it was hard to make out detail in the dim light, but I could see clearly enough to know I was looking at a three-story, wood-framed building with an attractive front porch and shutters on the windows. The place looked very much like a country home on steroids. It wasn’t actually in town, but about a hundred yards past the last building on the street. As we drew near, I could see someone had kept the place up. The paint looked new, the shutters hung straight, the furniture—about six or so rocking chairs—was very inviting, although, after a flight and a slow drive, I was looking forward to standing for a bit.

  “Looks nice,” Andi said. “I like the exterior.”

  Brenda huffed. “I’m more interested in the interior. I really gotta pee.”

  With that pressing news, I pulled into the parking lot on the east side of the building, took the first space I could find—which was easy since ours was the only car in the lot—and switched off the SUV.

  Brenda’s door was open before I could set the parking brake.

  Chapter Two

  Getting a Cold Shoulder

  “I’m gonna wait to get the luggage,” I said. “I want to make sure we’re staying here tonight.”

  “It has to be here,” Andi said. “This is where we were sent and it’s the only place in town, at least as far as I saw.”

  I agreed with that. I hadn’t seen anything that said “motel” or “hotel” or boarding house and I mentioned that fact. “Come on, buddy.” I put a hand on Daniel’s small shoulder. “Let’s go see if Brenda made it to the necessary room.”

  Daniel giggled. “Necessary room.” He repeated the phrase then snickered again.

  We walked to the front of the old style hotel, up four steps to the front porch and to a wide green door with stain glass panels. Light oozed through the colored glass making me think of the church again.

  Andi pushed the door open. It wasn’t fully closed. Apparently Brenda’s need was real. The lobby looked like something out of the 1950s. The carpet was ornate and decorated with images of flowers. The flowers had faces. I think they were meant to be cute, but they kinda creeped me out. I shut the door behind us, then turned my attention to the front of the lobby. The front desk was made of wood that bore a shiny bar-top finish. It was as pretty as the carpet was disturbing.

  A small woman stood behind the front desk. She was short and—I hate to say this—looked like a mouse. I don’t mean she had mouse ears, I mean her features were small, her nose slightly pointed, and her hair a light brown that looked like it wanted to be blond. For a moment, I started to look for mouse whiskers. Her eyes were wide, but that was easy to understand. A black woman with dreadlocks had just plunged through the lobby door and made a beeline for . . . I looked around the lobby . . . the bathroom next to the stairs. Brenda always made a strong first impression.

  I felt a smile might do the lady some good, so I gave her my best we’re-not-criminals grin and walked to the desk. “My name is Tank. This is Andi Goldstein, and this little guy is Daniel.”

  “Um, hello.”

  She even sounded a little like a mouse. I continued. “I’m guessing you already saw Brenda. She’s about the same height as Andi and—”

  “The black girl with the funny hair?” the woman said.

  “That’s her. We’ve been on the road for a long time and she needed . . . to use the facilities.”

  “I figured that part out.”

  Andi moved to my side. “I called and left a message yesterday on your machine but never got a call back.”

  I heard a flushing sound followed by a door opening. Brenda exited, looking refreshed. “Sorry about that, but when a girl has got to go, a girl has got to go.”

  Andi returned to the desk clerk. “Anyway, we would like t
hree rooms, please.”

  “I-I’m sorry. We’re full up.”

  We stood dumbfounded. I started to say something, but Andi had taken control. “If you were booked-up, then why didn’t you return my call and tell us that before we drove up here.”

  “I didn’t get the message. Maybe someone else did.” The woman inched back a foot as if she expected Andi to spring over the counter.

  I watched as Andi’s eyes shifted to a name plate on the counter. “Jewel Tarkington. That’s a lovely name. Listen, Ms. Tarkington. I think you’re having some fun with us. Maybe Brenda’s mad dash in here put you off a little, but we’re really nice people and need a place to stay tonight.”

  “I wish I could help.”

  “Our money is good,” I added.

  “I have no doubt that you are wonderful people, but like I say, the hotel is—”

  “There are no cars in the parking lot,” Brenda said. The temperature in the room dropped at least five degrees.

  “We don’t use cars much around here—”

  “I see you keep your keys on that board behind you,” Andi said. “It looks to me like every hook has a key hanging from it. Did everyone leave at the same time?”

  “No, of course not, it’s just that . . . that . . .”

  Daniel spoke to Brenda softly but I heard him just fine. “Like Tank. She’s got nuthin’.”

  I half expected Brenda to hush my little buddy but she didn’t. I don’t think I would have either.

  “Let me see if I have this right, lady. No cars in the lot, no one in their rooms, no noise from people staying here, and you want us to believe that every room in the place is booked. You expecting a bus or somethin’?”

  “Please, there’s nothing I can do.” Jewel began to look a little pale. “I can call another hotel for you. You know. Get you booked there.”