Here Comes Mr. Trouble tfc-1

by Brett Battles

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Uncle Carl warned. “It could just be a fake and not yours at all. Maybe even a trap.”

  Eric examined the key. There was the scratch it had gotten his first week back at school, and the double knot in the cord he’d tied himself a couple of days before the key had gone missing.

  “How did they get this?”

  “You’re sure it’s yours?” Mr. Trouble asked.

  “One hundred percent.”

  The four adults exchanged looks, then Mother Trouble said, “Perhaps we should look in the other drawers.”

  In drawer five was the old Swedish coin Eric’s uncle had given him two years ago. Drawer six contained the medal Eric had won a year earlier when he was still on swim team. Drawer seven: a five-dollar bill. It could have been Eric’s. He was missing some money. Drawer eight: a big white eraser identical to the one that, until a week or so ago, had been in Eric’s backpack.

  And in drawer nine was a piece of paper.

  As soon as Uncle Colin unfolded it, there could no longer be any doubts about Eric’s claims to the other items. Wrapped inside was a copy of Eric’s latest school photo. And the paper itself was the actual citation Eric had been given the previous summer when he’d helped the unconscious camper to shore.

  “This certainly puts a new spin on things, doesn’t it?” Mother Trouble said.

  Eric listened with only half an ear as Mr. Trouble, Mother Trouble and Uncle Colin tossed out and rejected several possibilities. His attention, instead, was on the pile of his personal items sitting on the bench.

  He hadn’t actually lost anything.

  He’d been robbed.

  Until that point, all the talk about the Maker had kind of spooked him, but his fear now disappeared and he was mad.

  “Excuse me,” Uncle Carl said.

  Eric looked up. “Huh?”

  “I need to get by.”

  Eric moved to the side so Uncle Carl could slide past.

  “Excuse me, again,” Uncle Carl said only seconds later as he came back.

  Moving out of the way once more, Eric noticed that Uncle Carl was carrying several tools. Curious, Eric climbed back onto the box so he could see.

  Uncle Carl set most of the tools on the workbench, but held onto a thick, foot-long screwdriver. He positioned the blade directly in front of the space between drawer number one and the frame.

  Uncle Colin, who had been speaking, stopped in mid-sentence. “What are you doing?” he asked his brother.

  “If we can’t pull it open, maybe we can pry it,” Uncle Carl explained. “After finding Eric’s stuff in the other drawers, I think it might be important.”

  Though Uncle Colin looked unconvinced, Mr. Trouble nodded immediately. “Excellent idea.”

  Not waiting for further approval, Uncle Carl carefully slipped the screwdriver into the tiny gap. The blade went in about a quarter of an inch then stopped. He started moving it up and down.

  “You’re going to damage it,” Uncle Colin warned.

  Uncle Carl stopped for a second and glared at his brother.

  “Right, right,” Uncle Colin said, backing down. “Opening is more important.”

  Still, Uncle Colin cringed each time Uncle Carl moved the screwdriver.

  Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. And then–

  Creak.

  The front of the drawer moved a fraction of an inch.

  Up and down. Up and down.

  Crack!

  While the drawer itself remained in the box, the front fell onto the workbench.

  “Watch out! Watch out!” Uncle Carl yelled.

  Both he and Uncle Colin dove and ducked like they were going to be hit by some invisible object. They looked up, then left, then right, then up again. Over. Down. Up. Around. It was like they were watching two separate, out-of-control roller coasters. Then all of a sudden both swiveled their heads in the same direction and stopped, staring at Eric.

  “Don’t move,” Uncle Colin ordered.

  Eric froze. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “They’re hovering right in front of you.”

  “What’s hovering right in front of me? I don’t see anything.”

  “Me, neither,” said Mr. Trouble.

  The uncles’ attention was firmly fixed on Eric, or, more specifically, the area directly in front of Eric.

  Uncle Colin reached over to the bench, picked up the tongs, then took a step forward. “Don’t…do…anything…to…scare…them.”

  “Scare what?” Eric asked, completely confused and not just a little scared. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “Colin,” Mother Trouble said. “You’re making him nervous. Now what in the world is going on?”

  Uncle Colin ignored her as he slowly extended the tongs, stopping them at a point a foot in front of Eric’s face. He relaxed his grip so that the two ends opened wide, then eased it another inch forward.

  “Am I over him enough?” he asked.

  “Over what?” Eric said.

  “Yes. You’re perfect,” Uncle Carl told him. “Grab it!”

  Uncle Colin slammed closed the ends of the tongs. They hit each other with a dull clang, catching nothing but air.

  “Wait a minute.” Uncle Colin looked at the tongs, surprised. “I had him.”

  Whatever it was Uncle Colin thought he’d had, Eric was too freaked out to stand still any longer. He threw his arms out and started waving them wildly.

  “Get away from me!” he yelled. “Get away! Get away!”

  “Careful!” Uncle Carl and Uncle Colin shouted in unison.

  Both of the uncles started looking all over the place again. Suddenly they stopped, their gazes falling to the floor in one quick movement.

  After only a couple of seconds, Uncle Colin said in a near whisper, “They’re gone.”

  Mr. Trouble grabbed his uncles by the back of their lab coats and turned them so they faced him. “What’s wrong with you two? There was nothing there.”

  Uncle Carl looked at his nephew as if he were insane. “Nothing there? There were hundreds of them.”

  “They were everywhere,” Uncle Colin agreed.

  “What ‘they’? We didn’t see anything.”

  Shaking his head, Uncle Colin said, “That doesn’t make any…” Then he paused and raised a hand to his face. “Carl, the goggles.”

  His brother reached up and touched his own goggles. Uncle Colin removed his first, and then Uncle Carl did the same.

  “They worked,” Uncle Carl said, astonished.

  “Yes. They did, they did!” Uncle Colin replied.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Mr. Trouble asked.

  Uncle Colin gave him an excited pat on the arm. “The goggles!” He held his out to his nephew. “These are the ones we designed so we’d be able to see the Makers. Remember, your father, he said they worked before he died. He was right. He was right.”

  “Are you saying there were Makers in that box?” Mr. Trouble asked.

  “Well, I can’t say for sure,” Uncle Colin said, “but we saw something. Like hundreds of bright little discs. They flew all around, and when they started to slow down, they headed toward Eric, hovering all around him. When he moved his arms around, they went all crazy for a moment, then fell to the ground together and disappeared.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s a hundred percent correct,” Uncle Carl said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yes, they dropped to the ground after the boy swung his arms through the air, but didn’t you see? They were already starting to wobble before that. And a few weren’t hovering as high.”

  Uncle Colin looked like he was thinking for a moment. “I believe you’re right. They did seem to have lost some energy by then. We should write this down.”

  “Yes. Yes, we should,” Uncle Carl agreed.

  The both started to turn away.

  Mr. Trouble grabbed them again. “Hold on. We’ve got more importan
t things to deal with than writing down your observations.”

  “But we don’t want to forget,” Uncle Colin said.

  “You won’t.” Mr. Trouble pointed at the video camera. “You’ve got everything recorded, including this conversation.”

  “Oh, right.” Uncle Colin smiled. “We do, don’t we?”

  “That was a good idea, the camera,” Uncle Carl said.

  “It was, indeed,” his brother agreed.

  “Focus!” Mr. Trouble yelled. He waited until everyone was looking at him before he went on. “I think we should probably assume there are more of those…things in the other two unopened drawers. I suggest we bag up the box and wait until we can open them in a more controlled environment back at home base.”

  “I agree,” his mother said.

  “Brilliant, Ronan,” Uncle Colin said. “That would definitely be for the best.” He turned to his brother. “Plastic wrap?”

  Uncle Carl nodded, then moved to a storage cabinet a few feet away while Uncle Colin started removing the clamp that was holding the Maker’s box in place.

  Just then, the door to the outside opened and Maggie and the Trouble sisters entered.

  “What are you guys doing?” Keira asked.

  “We got the box open,” Uncle Colin said, pausing momentarily in his work. “You should have seen it. Amazing!”

  “You…you opened it without us?” Fiona was not pleased. “Why didn’t you wait?”

  Maggie, who was looking much better than she had, asked, “What’s he talking about?”

  “The box we found this afternoon,” Eric said. “Remember? The Maker’s box?”

  Maggie stared at him, stepped around Fiona, and looked over at the workbench.

  When she saw the box, she said, “You opened it?” Though her voice was probably the calmest Eric had ever heard it, he got the sense that she was nearly as upset as Fiona.

  “I’m sorry,” Uncle Colin said, “but science waits for no one.”

  Maggie led the other girls over to the workbench. She reached out, her fingers hovering over the frame of the box, but she didn’t touch it.

  “You wouldn’t believe what was in there,” Eric said. “Remember the key I lost last week?” He held up the key. “It was in one of the drawers. One of my swim medals was there, too. And a coin my uncle gave me. And an eraser.”

  Maggie moved her hand over the opening for drawer number one. “You shouldn’t have opened it,” she said, still calm. “It wasn’t yours.”

  “It is now,” Uncle Carl told her as he set a large roll of plastic wrap next to the box. “Now step back.”

  Everyone but Uncle Carl and Uncle Colin moved away from the Maker’s box. The two uncles then started wrapping it in plastic.

  “They shouldn’t do that,” Maggie whispered.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Eric asked. “Your headache?”

  She looked at him. “I feel fine. They just shouldn’t have taken that. It’s not theirs.”

  Eric shrugged, and figured Maggie must still be upset about waking up in the car and not in her bed.

  Bwamp. Bwamp-bwamp. Bwamp. Bwamp-bwamp.

  Eric looked over his shoulder. “What’s that?”

  “An alarm,” Mr. Trouble said.

  He and Uncle Colin rushed to a monitor at the far end of the workbench where the noise seemed to be coming from. Eric and the others followed.

  “Well?” Mr. Trouble asked.

  Uncle Colin pushed a couple of buttons on an instrument mounted to the wall, then looked up at the big monitor. There was some distortion and Eric got the distinct impression the image was rewinding. When it started playing forward again, the picture looked the same as before: a quiet field turned green by the night-vision camera.

  Suddenly, the shape of a man entered the frame from the right and walked quickly across the monitor, disappearing four seconds later on the left.

  Bwamp. Bwamp-bwamp. The alarm sounded on another monitor.

  Then another. Bwamp. Bwamp-bwamp.

  Then another. And another.

  Soon alarms rang out from all the monitors.

  Uncle Colin turned to face the others. “They’re here.”

  26

  “Fiona, dart guns,” Mr. Trouble said. “Uncle Colin, goggles.”

  Fiona sprinted to a padlocked metal cabinet near the door and started inputting the combination.

  Uncle Colin, though, seemed unsure what to do. “Night vision or Maker vision?”

  “It would sure be nice if they were both,” Mr. Trouble said.

  “Right. Well, uh, we’ll get on that when we get back home to the lab.”

  “Night vision, then, and hurry.”

  Now with a sense of purpose, Uncle Colin moved quickly to one of the cabinets under the workbench and pulled it open.

  “Uncle Carl, Keira, communication gear for everyone,” Mr. Trouble ordered.

  They nodded and headed for a different cabinet.

  “Mom, you’re in the cockpit,” Mr. Trouble said. “Even if you don’t hear my signal, if you get the slightest sense that someone’s trying to get in, take off.”

  Mother Trouble looked at Eric and Maggie. “Isn’t he precious when he takes charge?”

  “Mom, now.”

  “On my way, dear.”

  She headed to the dry-erase wall and pushed in on one spot. A whole panel popped out, revealing a ladder that went up a few feet to a door that Eric guessed opened into the long hallway where the bedrooms were.

  “Catch,” Keira said.

  She tossed something to her brother and then to Eric and Maggie. They looked like wireless headsets for cell phones, complete with an elaborate loop that would hold them tight to the ear.

  Eric fumbled with his for a moment before getting it in place.

  “There’s a button on the back,” Mr. Trouble said. “Push that and you should be up and running.”

  Eric pushed the button. Suddenly every noise in the room screamed into his ear. He ripped the whole thing off and rubbed the side of his head.

  “There’s a volume control on top,” Mr. Trouble explained. “They’re supposed to be turned down after every use, but sometimes,” he shot Uncle Carl a look, “they aren’t.”

  Eric adjusted the volume and warily put the headset back on. As promised, it was much better this time.

  “You and Maggie will stick with me,” Mr. Trouble told him.

  “What are we going to do?” Eric asked.

  “The others are going to draw the attention of our new guests, while the three of us head for the car and get out of here. Maggie, are you having trouble with that?”

  Maggie was still holding her earpiece in her hand. “No.” She hooked the device over her ear. “There. Better?”

  Great, Eric thought. Now was not the time for Maggie to be pumping out the attitude.

  Fiona rushed over carrying several dart guns. She gave one to her brother then nodded toward Eric and Maggie. “What about them?”

  Mr. Trouble thought for a moment then shook his head. “Let’s not.”

  “Yeah,” Fiona said. “They might just shoot themselves.”

  “Or one of us,” Keira threw in.

  Uncle Colin began handing out goggles. “Don’t put them over your eyes until you’re outside,” he told Eric and Maggie.

  Mr. Trouble glanced at the monitors. “The way to the car’s still clear so we should get a move on it now. Fiona, Keira, you know your job?”

  “Yep,” Keira said, checking her dart gun.

  Fiona nodded, looking ready for action.

  “Uncle Colin, Uncle Carl, you’re on the monitors,” Mr. Trouble said. “Keep us informed of anything going on.”

  Both men nodded.

  “Okay, everyone. One last thing. I think we should assume that there aren’t just surrogates out there.” There was a sudden stillness in the room. “The Makers must be worried that Eric is slipping through their grasp, so I have a feeling they’re trying a big push. If you see a
Maker, run. Don’t try to fight them, or capture them, or even talk to them. Just deal with the surrogates. Am I clear?”

  Keira nodded. “They’re the last things I want to see.”

  “Fiona?” Mr. Trouble asked. “You heard me, right? No heroics.”

  “I heard you,” she said.

  “That’s not exactly a confirmation of my order.”

  “Was it an order?”

  “Yes. It was.”

  She gritted her teeth then gave him a single terse nod. “Fine.”

  That seemed to be good enough for Mr. Trouble. He turned to Eric and Maggie. “You guys ready?”

  “How will we even know if a real Maker’s around?” Eric asked. “We’re not going to be wearing the right goggles.”

  “True. We wouldn’t see them the way my uncles did a few minutes ago, but what we might see are the bodies they possess.” He took a breath and looked at Eric, his face more serious than ever. “See, that’s what they want you for. They need your body. The only way they can increase their numbers is to possess kids like you.”

  “You mean because of the marker in my skin,” Eric said.

  Mr. Trouble nodded. “To possess you, they need you at your lowest point. So they beat you down, make you think you’re going crazy, that everything’s hopeless, then they take you.”

  Eric stared at him. “What…what would happen to me if they did?”

  “I can’t tell you for sure, but my guess is that the you you know, the things that make you who you are…they’d all be gone. Only your body would be left.”

  Eric tried not to seem too freaked out. “So if we see them…they’ll appear as kids like me?”

  “No, they grow up with the Makers inside. But you can still tell. See, the Makers do something to the bodies. They make them perfect — too perfect. Their skin, their faces, their hair — everything. They also do something that makes the bodies last a lot longer than they should.”

  That was far from the skinny, troll-like creatures Eric had dreamt about. “How much longer?”

  Mr. Trouble paused. “We think centuries.”

  “Centuries? Are you kidding?”

  Mr. Trouble shook his head.

  “Well, do you think we’re going to actually see any?”

  “My plan is that we don’t.” He smiled and looked over at his sisters. “Fiona, Keira, you’re up.”