He smiled. Manga. That had been the answer.
He located Keira’s address book and scrolled until he found an entry labeled “Ronan.”
He selected Ronan’s number then held the phone to his ear. After three rings he began to wonder if perhaps Mr. Trouble had fallen into a deep sleep, too.
But then the call connected and Mr. Trouble said in a tired voice, “Keira? Is something wrong?”
“It’s me. Eric.”
There was a pause. “Eric?”
“We’ve got a big problem.”
“Where’s Keira? Why are you using her phone?”
“She’s asleep. Fiona, too. I can’t wake them up. I’ve tried, but I can’t. And Peter Garr and one of those other Maker surrogates are outside.”
“They’re outside right now?”
“They were when I looked a minute ago.”
“Hold on.” Mr. Trouble put something over the phone, muffling his voice. “Uncle Carl? Uncle Carl, wake up, we’ve got a situation at the house.” There was a pause. “Uncle Carl? Uncle Carl! Great.” He groaned. “I should have expected this.” His voice came back clear again. “Eric, you still there?”
“Yes.”
“Listen to me very carefully. You need to get my sisters up, and then have one of them call me. I’ve got, uh, a similar situation here.”
“I’ve tried. They’re not waking up.”
“You have to figure some way. Your best bet is probably Fiona. That talisman you held yesterday might be what made you less affected by the…well, it doesn’t matter what. Since Fiona came in contact with it, too, it’s possible she might be able to snap out of it more easily than Keira.”
“Okay,” Eric said, unconvinced. “But she hasn’t shown any signs of snapping out of it yet.”
“Just try,” Mr. Trouble said. “As soon as I get Uncle Carl going, we’ll be on our way. Can you handle it on your own for now?”
“Uh…um…sure. I guess. Just hurry, okay?”
“Keep this phone on you. If I don’t hear from you guys first, I’ll call as soon as I get there.”
After he hung up, Eric started to stuff the phone into his pants pocket but realized he was still in the pajamas his father had brought over. He tried tucking the cell in his waistband but that didn’t work either. He’d have to carry it.
He crawled back over to Fiona. He’d already tried talking to her and shaking her so this time he slapped her on the cheek, not hard, just enough that she should have felt it. Should have, but didn’t.
He pulled her eyelids back, thinking that might do something. No luck.
What then?
Water? He’d seen people use it in movies to wake someone up. It was worth a try.
Jumping up to get some from the kitchen, he took a quick step toward the door and tripped over Keira’s foot.
“Whoa!” he yelled, reaching out to grab the bed to keep from falling to the floor.
As he did, the cell phone slipped from his hand and thudded onto the carpet. When it hit, its display screen flashed on, lighting the foot he’d just stumbled over.
He reached down and picked up the phone, hoping he hadn’t damaged it. It still seemed to be operating okay so he started for the door again. But then he paused. He hit a button on the phone, bringing the screen back to life. Maybe he didn’t need water at all.
He knelt next to Fiona and pulled her eyelid back once more. This time, he shined the light from the phone directly into her eye.
For the first three seconds there was no reaction. Then she blinked, or tried to, since he was holding her eyelid open. She attempted to do it again, the muscles around her eye fighting with Eric’s finger.
Another few seconds and she started to twist her head from side to side, weakly at first, then stronger with each swing. Her closed eyelid started to flutter, and she let out a low, irritated groan.
“Wha…what…”
She continued to try to close her eye, but Eric wasn’t letting go. He knew if he did, Fiona would slip back into her deep sleep the moment that eye shut.
“What…what’s that…light?”
“Fiona, wake up,” he said.
“Turnoutthelight. Letmesleep.”
“You need to wake up,” Eric said. “You can’t sleep now. Come on, Fiona. Please!”
Her fluttering eye opened for a second, closed, then opened again.
“Eric?”
“Yes!” he shouted, smiling. “Good. You are awake, right?”
“Yeah,” she said with some effort. “What’s going on? What are you doing in here?”
He let go of her eyelid and moved the phone away. “I’m waking you up.”
“Why?”
“Because we’ve got problems.”
That got her attention. She put her hand out to push herself up, but slipped and banged her elbow against the floor.
“Ow!” she yelled.
“You need to call your brother.”
She looked at him, still wincing in pain. “My brother? Why?”
“Peter Garr’s outside with another surrogate. I think they’ve done something that makes it hard for anyone to wake up. It took me forever to get you to open your eyes.”
Fiona blinked, then looked at the other two girls, their sleep suspiciously undisturbed by the conversation she and Eric were having.
“Here,” he said, holding the phone out to her. “I called him when none of you would wake up. He’s on his way, but said if I was able to get you awake, he wanted you to call.”
She punched a code into the phone, then frowned, and punched it in again. When it didn’t work a second time, she flipped it over. “This isn’t mine.”
“Oh, yours is over here.” Eric crawled over to where he’d left her cell then tossed it to her.
A few seconds later, she was holding it to her ear. “Ronan?…Yeah…what?…Are you sure?” She listened for a while, a couple of times shooting a look at Eric. “Okay, we’ll be ready.”
After she hung up, she slapped her cheeks and opened her mouth wide, stretching her face. Finally, she let out a big exhale and pushed herself to her feet.
“Okay,” she said. “Show me where they are.”
20
When Eric and Fiona peeked around the shade covering the bedroom window, they saw nothing but an empty front yard.
“Maybe they left,” Eric said.
Fiona was silent for a moment. “Show me where you first saw them.”
Eric led her through the dark, silent house to the kitchen window. He pulled the curtain back an inch so they could both look out.
He’d been hoping the backyard would be as empty as the front, but it wasn’t even close.
Not only were Peter Garr and the gardener there, but so were Tommy Bird and Kyle Sanders. And Sam Lincoln, the kid who had picked on Eric the first day things had started turning bizarre. And Ronnie Welles, and Andy Venton, and Rick Marks and a couple of adults Eric didn’t recognize. They were all standing in Maggie’s backyard, staring at the house.
“How many do you count?” Fiona whispered.
“Ten,” Eric said.
“That’s not possible,” she muttered to herself.
Peter Garr’s head tilted back, ready to sniff the air again.
“Shut it,” Fiona ordered.
Eric let the curtain drop then followed Fiona into the hallway outside Mr. Ortega’s den. It was one of the few places in the house with no windows.
“You’re sure? Ten?” she asked.
“Yeah. Why? How many did you count?”
She hesitated, then said, “Ten.”
“Why are there so many?” he asked.
“Not why. How?” She pulled out her cell. “They’re in the backyard,” she said into it a moment later. “Ronan, there are ten of them…Yes, ten…I don’t know…” Her face suddenly looked shocked. “What?…But that makes at least sixteen…How could they possibly…Okay, we’ll be ready. Just hurry.”
As she hung up, she said, “Get dres
sed, then meet me back in the bedroom and help me wake up the girls.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Get out of here while we still can.”
Eric dressed in the living room and gathered his things, including the pamphlet and the Thomas Leatherwood letter, putting them all in his backpack. As soon as his bag was slung over his shoulders, he headed back to Maggie’s room. When he reached the door, he knocked in case Fiona was still changing.
“Hurry. Come in,” she called out.
She was dressed and kneeling next to Keira, trying to shine the light from her phone into her sister’s eyes.
“It’s not working,” she said, frustrated. “Did you do anything special?
He shook his head. “Your brother said since you and I came into contact with the talisman, we might be less…open, I guess, to whatever it is that’s happening to them.”
“Less vulnerable,” she said.
“Yeah.”
Fiona held the light in front of her sister’s eye for a moment longer and then gave up. “We’re going to have to carry them.”
“Carry them? But…but…”
How were they going to carry two girls? Maggie, maybe. She was as small as Fiona and they could probably move her. But Keira was taller than any of them, including her older sister.
Fiona must have figured out what he was thinking. “We’ll take them one at a time.”
They started with Maggie. Eric grabbed her by the shoulders while Fiona took her feet. Just before they lifted her, Eric noticed Maggie’s glasses sitting on her nightstand.
He nodded toward them. “She’s going to need those.”
Fiona set Maggie’s feet down, grabbed the glasses, and put them on Maggie’s face.
“They might fall off,” Eric said.
“Not if we don’t turn her over. Now, let’s move.”
They carried Maggie to the front door and carefully set her down. Keira was next. Surprisingly, she wasn’t as difficult to move as Eric had anticipated. Though she was tall, she wasn’t particularly heavy.
Once they set her next to Maggie, Eric said, “What about Maggie’s parents?”
“They’ll be fine. The Makers aren’t interested in them.”
“Well, then, what happens when they wake up in the morning and we’re not here?”
Fiona thought for a moment, then said, “Give me a piece of paper.”
He ripped one out of a notebook in his backpack and handed it to her.
“A pen, too,” she said.
“I only have pencils.” He handed one to her.
She sat down at the dining room table and held the pencil above the paper for several seconds.
“I wish Keira was awake,” she said. “She could probably fake Maggie’s handwriting. I’ll just have to make it from me.”
“Make what?” Eric asked.
Instead of answering, she started writing. When she finished, she turned the paper so he could read it:
Dear Mrs. Ortega,
Maggie wanted to wake you up and tell you we’ve gone to Keira’s and my house to study some more, but we’ve convinced her to let you sleep. We’ll probably be there all day. I hope that’s okay. Maggie said she’ll call you later.
Fiona Leatherwood
“They’re not going to believe that,” Eric said.
“Sure they are.”
“No way. They’re going to come in here first thing in the morning and wonder where we’ve all gone.”
“I don’t know about you, but it was really hard for me to wake up. And I had you forcing it on me. My guess is, her parents won’t even open their eyes until almost lunch time.”
“You think so?” he asked, unsure.
“It’s a guess, but based on everything we’ve learned over the years, a good one.”
“So you’ve seen something like this before.”
Fiona frowned. “Not quite at this scale, but similar.”
Her phone rang.
“Hello?” She nodded every couple of seconds, then said, “Okay,” and hung up. She turned to Eric. “They’ll be here in two minutes. Check the backyard.”
He crossed over to the sliding glass door in the living room, and parted the floor-to-ceiling curtains a few inches in the middle. The Maker surrogates were still there but something seemed different.
He counted them then looked back at Fiona. “Four are missing. Including Peter.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“Should we check out front?”
Just then her cell phone beeped. She looked down at the text message on the screen.
“We’ll know soon enough. Time to go.”
FROM THE BOOK OF TROUBLE MAKERS
Complied by Colin and Carl Owens from family records and current research.
MAKER POSSESSION
• As first suggested by Robert Leatherwood, then confirmed by Jeremy Trouble’s encounter with the Maker Larkin, Makers are able to expand their population only by capturing and possessing the bodies of children, ages 11 to 15. How these children were chosen was a mystery until ten years ago. The only things known up to that point were that they recently performed an act of selflessness that brought attention to themselves, and were typical decent kids who cared about others in general.
Then, ten years ago, Jeremy Trouble, working with his brothers-in-law Colin and Carl Owens, stumbled upon an extremely rare marker that was present in the skin cells of every targeted child they were able to test. This marker, however, was not present in anyone who was not a target. So, while any child could possess the traits listed above, if they did not have the marker, the TMs would not be interested in them.
• The Maker Larkin confirmed that Makers are able to determine if someone is a candidate by a particular smell they give off, undetectable to the rest of us. The theory is that this marker and the smell are linked.
• Once a child is identified by Makers as a candidate for possession, it is not a simple matter of just taking over the child’s body. The Makers must then prepare the candidates by breaking down their will to the point where they will accept the possession without a struggle. Some of the ways they achieve this are by:
Upsetting the candidate’s normal life
Causing the candidate to experience a “streak of bad luck,” as several clients have called it
Making the candidate think they are losing their minds
And, finally, making the client so scared and depressed that they reach their lowest possible point of self-esteem and can see no light at the end of the tunnel. This is the point when the Makers strike.
• Methods for achieving these goals include:
Causing personal items to disappear
Creating friction between the candidate and family members and friends
Causing a close friend or family member to disappear in a way that only the candidate thinks is suspicious
Using time distortion to throw the candidate off balance
Surrogate intimidation.
• A few notes on surrogates based on information from the Maker Larkin and only partially confirmed by field observations:
Individuals who are bad by nature are the most commonly targeted to become surrogates because they are the easiest to control
Whereas one Maker can create and control up to three essentially bad surrogates at one time, it takes multiple Makers to create a surrogate out of one essentially decent person
Because Makers operate either individually or in groups of no more than three, the maximum surrogates possible is nine, a number that has been witnessed on several cases
For more on surrogates, consult the TFS Encyclopedia.
21
Fiona put her hand on the doorknob but didn’t turn it.
“What are you waiting for?” Eric asked.
Before she could answer, the quiet outside was suddenly broken by the sound of a car racing down the street then screeching to a stop just out front.
“That,” she said, pulling
the door open.
At the curb, Mr. Trouble and Uncle Carl were climbing out of the sedan. Unfortunately, the four missing surrogates were standing between them and the front door.
“You guys ready?” Mr. Trouble shouted.
“We couldn’t wake Keira or Maggie,” Fiona called out. “One of you is going to have to help us carry them.”
“Don’t worry about the girls,” he said. “We’ll get them. Just concentrate on yourselves.”
Peter Garr took a step toward the car. “You need to leave.”
One of his buddies moved up behind him, while the other two started walking toward the house.
“Fiona?” Eric said. “Maybe we should shut the door.”
“It’s going to be fine,” she told him.
From Eric’s point of view, the way the situation looked at the moment wasn’t even close to fine.
“Hey, relax, buddy,” Mr. Trouble said to Peter. “No one wants any problems.”
“That’s right. No one does,” Peter said in full monotone. “Now leave.”
“You know what? Transmit this to your little Maker masters. Mr. Trouble’s in town, and Eric is one kid you’re not getting.”
Peter had been in the process of taking another step toward the car, but he froze for a moment, his foot in the air. When he started moving again, he took several rapid steps forward, moving to within fifteen feet of the car before stopping.
“You are Mr. Trouble?” he asked.
“You’ll excuse me if I don’t pull out my driver’s license to prove it, but yeah, I am.”
“You…are…too young.”
“And you have bad hair,” Mr. Trouble countered.
Eric jabbed Fiona with his elbow and nodded toward the two surrogates heading their way. Though they were not walking fast, they didn’t have far to go and would soon be there.
“I really think we should shut the door,” he said.
“Ronan,” Fiona yelled. “I know you like talking, but maybe not now.”
Mr. Troubled glanced over. “Ah, right.” He looked back at Peter. “Sorry, can’t engage in an insult war right now. I hope you understand.”
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