Without another word, the girls headed out the back door.
As soon as they were gone, Mr. Trouble led Eric and Maggie to the exit.
“What do you see?” he asked into his radio.
“The area right outside and all the way to the car appears clear,” Fiona answered.
“Excellent.” He looked at Eric and Maggie. “I’ll go first.”
He opened the door and climbed down the steps. When he reached the bottom he did a quick look around, then motioned for Eric and Maggie to come down.
“After you,” Eric said.
“Why? Are you scared?” Maggie asked.
“No, of course not.”
The left side of her mouth moved up in the hint of a weird smile before she started down the steps.
In the field beyond the plane, Eric could see one of the Trouble sisters nearing some trees, and the other one moving off to the left. It was too dark, though, to tell which was which.
“Eric, you want to join us?” Mr. Trouble called out.
Eric glanced down. Maggie and Mr. Trouble were both at the bottom looking up at him. He hurried down the steps.
“Uncle Carl? Uncle Colin? How are we looking?” Mr. Trouble asked.
“We can’t find any of them,” Uncle Colin responded. “It’s like they all disappeared.”
“They couldn’t have all disappeared,” Fiona whispered over the radio.
“Fiona, do you see any of them where you are?” Mr. Trouble asked.
“No,” she said. “But they’ve got to be out here somewhere, don’t—”
Keira cut her sister off. “I see one.”
“Where are you?” Mr. Trouble asked.
“In the woods to the right of the plane,” she replied. “He just came around the abandoned house and slipped into the trees.”
“Maker or surrogate?” Mr. Trouble asked.
“Surrogate, definitely. Too ugly to be a Maker.”
“I see one, too,” Fiona said. “Wait. No, two more.”
“Three just came around the house,” Keira reported. “They’re heading toward the barn.”
Mr. Trouble turned to Eric and Maggie. “We need to get to the car now.”
As they started to move, Fiona let out a short, surprised scream. It was quickly followed by the pffffft of a dart gun.
“Fiona, are you all right?” Mr. Trouble asked.
There was a moan over the radio.
“Fiona?”
“I’m…I’m okay,” she said. “Sorry. He knocked me over.”
“Did you get him?”
“I hit him, but he didn’t go down.”
Eric could see Mr. Trouble frown. “You must have missed him, then.”
“No. I could see it hanging from him, but he kept going.”
Pffffft.
“Who shot that?” Mr. Trouble asked.
Pffffft.
“One just jumped out at me,” Keira said. “The first dart hit him in the chest but didn’t do anything. Got him with another in the leg. That knocked him out. Hold on.”
“What are you doing?” Mr. Trouble asked.
“I said hold on!”
“Fiona, what about the one you saw? Where is he now?”
“He was headed down the line of trees on the left side of the plane. I…I don’t see him now.”
Mr. Trouble pushed Eric on the back and grabbed Maggie’s arm. “Come on.”
He started running toward the sedan.
“I have them on the monitors now!” Uncle Colin announced. “I count…” He went silent for a second then muttered, “Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Eighteen.”
Mr. Trouble nearly stumbled. “Eighteen?”
“No. No, not eighteen. Nineteen.”
“Four just sprinted out of the woods in front of me,” Fiona said. “They’re headed toward the barn!”
That was where the sedan was. By Eric’s count, there were at least seven surrogates headed their way.
“Well, how about that?” Keira said.
“A little busy for riddles right now,” Mr. Trouble told her.
“What? Oh, sorry,” she said. “The surrogates are wearing padding under their clothes.”
“What kind of padding?”
“This guy’s got chest protectors on both the front and back. You know? The kind catchers in baseball wear? My first dart hit it but didn’t go all the way through.”
Eric, Maggie, and Mr. Trouble stopped as they reached the car.
“Fiona, did you get that?” Mr. Trouble asked.
“Yeah,” Fiona answered. “Concentrate on arms and legs, right?”
“Right.” Mr. Trouble pulled open the rear door of the sedan and motioned for Eric and Maggie to get in.
As they climbed inside, he opened the driver’s door. But before he could enter, two surrogates came around the end of the barn.
“You’re not going anywhere,” one of them said.
Mr. Trouble raised his dart gun and fired off a shot. The surrogate in the lead paused mid-step then fell to the ground. Mr. Trouble fired again, but the other surrogate moved quickly to his left and the dart sailed harmlessly through the air.
Mr. Trouble stepped around the open door to get a better angle, but the surrogate retreated to the end of the building and disappeared around the side.
“Give us the boy,” the surrogate called out from his hiding place.
Mr. Trouble lowered his gun and took several steps toward the end of the barn. “I’m afraid we can’t do that.”
“That’s too bad,” the surrogate said. “It would be so much easier for you if you did.”
Mr. Trouble crept over to the barn and snuck along the wall until he reached the corner. He brought up his gun, flashed a quick smile back at Eric and Maggie, then stepped out so he could see around the corner.
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
Pffffft.
Pffffft. Pffffft. Pffffft.
Pffffft.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Mr. Trouble yelled as he ran behind the barn out of sight.
Quiet descended over the car.
After nearly a minute, Eric held his hand to his radio and said, “Mr. Trouble, are you there?”
There was no response.
He glanced at Maggie then said, “Fiona? Keira?” Nothing. “Uncle Colin? Uncle Carl? Anyone?”
But the only thing that answered him was dead air.
He turned to Maggie again. “Do you believe me now that something strange is going on? That it’s not just bad luck I’ve been having?”
“Yes,” she said. “I believe you.”
“Well…well, good,” he said, surprised by her response.
“In fact, I think maybe we should find someplace to hide,” she suggested.
“But Mr. Trouble wanted us to wait here.”
“This is the first place they’ll look for us.”
She had a point.
“We could go back to the plane,” he said.
“No. They’d expect that, too.”
“Then where?”
“In the barn. I’m sure there are plenty of places to hide there.”
He looked out the window at the barn. While it didn’t look as rundown as the house, it didn’t appear to be particularly sturdy, either.
“But the surrogates,” he said.
“See there?” She pointed out the window. “That board is loose. We can sneak through there and they’ll never see us.”
“I…I don’t know. Maybe they’re inside, too.”
“They’ll be coming for us here any second. Now come on.” She opened the door and got out. “Eric, trust me.”
It was the same thing he’d been asking her to do since the Trouble family had arrived. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
27
The inside of the barn was almost pitch-black.
Eric took two awkward steps forward and then remembered the goggles on his head. He pulled them down over his eyes. Su
ddenly the interior appeared out of the darkness, all tinted night-vision green.
Along each side of the building were broken-down stalls where animals had once lived. The area in the center was empty and had probably been where the old owners had stored equipment. In the rafters, sticking out about a third of the way across the length of the barn, was a loft. There were still some boxes or something up there. They were rectangular in shape but the shadows were too deep to make out exactly what they were, even with the goggles.
“This way,” Maggie whispered.
Eric followed her down the middle of the building.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“I told you,” she said. “Finding a good place to hide. There’s something that looks like it should work over there.” She pointed toward the end of the stalls on the right.
Eric couldn’t make out what she had seen, but if it were someplace the Makers and their surrogates wouldn’t find them, then great.
As they neared it, he could see it was a hole in the floor surrounded on three sides by a waist-high metal railing to keep people from falling in. On the open fourth side was a set of steps leading down.
A barn with a basement.
Great.
“Come on,” she said as she started down.
“Maybe we could just hide in one of these stalls up here,” he suggested.
She looked back at him. “I thought you said you weren’t scared.”
“What? I’m not. I was just thinking that…maybe…”
“Then come on.” She turned, walked down the stairs, then passed through an open doorway bottom.
“Eric,” she called up from the darkness. “You don’t want them to find you, do you?”
He hesitated halfway down, feeling very uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure if it was his ridiculous fear of basements or the fact that a gang of possessed people was chasing him in the middle of the night. It was probably more than a little of both.
“Eric,” she said again.
“I’m coming.”
He went the rest of the way down, then stepped carefully through the doorway and stopped.
This was the basement of his nightmare. Old wooden shelves scattered throughout the room like empty library bookcases, gnarled roots growing out of the dirt walls as if they were arms, piles of boxes and wood and trash, and more spider webs than he’d ever seen in one place. And then there was the smell: dirt and rot and something like spicy perfume. The mixture was enough to nearly make him gag.
“You’re right,” he said. “This is a great place to hide.”
He tried to give Maggie what he hoped was a brave smile, but he’d barely begun to raise his lips when he realized something wasn’t right. “You’re…you’re not wearing your goggles.” He thought back. “You haven’t worn them at all. How can you see?”
She tilted her head oddly to the side and smirked. “How can you not?”
It was a weird question. He had a feeling she wasn’t talking about his goggles, but before he could even say anything, there was a loud scraping noise behind them.
He twisted around. Peter Garr and Tommy Bird had come through the door, pulling an old china cabinet over the opening and sealing all four of them in.
Eric grabbed Maggie, pulled her further into the room, and moved in front of her. “Stay behind me.”
“Whatever you want,” she said.
Peter and Tommy crossed their arms and stood in front of the cabinet, staring at Eric. Staring, he realized, without the help of night vision goggles. Just like Maggie.
“Oh, my. Isn’t that cute.” The voice came from deeper in the basement, a woman’s voice.
“Yes. Very cute. So protective.” A different female voice.
Eric wanted to turn and look, but he knew he shouldn’t take his eyes off Peter and Tommy.
“Whoever you are,” he yelled, “you should let us go. My friends will be here any second.”
“Your friends?” a third voice said, this one male. “You mean the person who calls himself Mr. Trouble? Oh, what a delightful name, Mr. Trouble. I wish I had thought of it.”
“Me, too,” said one of the women.
“I don’t think your Mr. Trouble will give us any…trouble,” he laughed. “If he shows up.”
One of the gardener surrogates from the school stepped out from behind a bookcase to Eric’s left. He had one arm wrapped around Fiona and the other around Keira. The girls’ hands were tied in front of them and gags covered their mouths.
Eric couldn’t believe it. The Trouble sisters had been captured.
“I can see his mind turning,” the first female voice said.
“Yes, I see it, too,” the other woman responded. “So honorable, yet so useless.”
“Let them go!” Eric shouted.
“Oh, listen to him. Such empty words.”
“How, young Eric? How do you propose to make us let them go?”
Peter and Tommy took a single step in his direction, then stopped and grinned.
Yeah. How? Eric thought. There was no way he could take on either Peter or Tommy by himself, let alone both of them together. And then there was the gardener, too, and the ones out of sight who were speaking. There was no way he could stand up to all of them. His words were empty, something that only made him angrier.
“Let them go!” he repeated.
“Eric.” This voice was in his head, the same voice he’d heard after passing out from the scanner, the calm and friendly voice. “There’s only one way we will let them go. You know what that is.”
He knew? What could he possibly do that would—
Then he realized what she meant.
“You want me,” he said.
“Exactly,” the voice in his head said. “But just to make your decision a little bit easier…”
Something moved to his right. He looked over just in time to see Vice Principal Rose appear from around a stack of boxes. Like the gardener, he was holding someone in his arms, too.
“Mom?” Eric said.
His mother looked half asleep, unaware of what was going on around her. He took a step in her direction, but Vice Principal Rose pulled her to the side, threatening to retreat.
“Now, now,” the voice in his head said, “not until you give us what we want.”
Eric nodded. “Let them all go. You can have me.”
“Oh, so adorable,” the first woman said.
“The sacrifice absolutely makes you want to pinch his cheeks, doesn’t it?” the second woman asked.
Both Fiona and Keira started yelling, but the gags in their mouths prevented Eric from understanding them. Of course, he could pretty much guess what they were trying to say: Don’t do it!
But he had to. He had no choice.
Suddenly someone grabbed his arms and pulled them behind his back. He struggled, looking over his shoulder to see who it was.
“Maggie?” he said.
There was a sickly grin on her face as she held his hands together — tighter than she should have been able to.
“Not really Maggie,” she said.
“Oh, no,” he said.
He should have seen it, but he hadn’t. The calm voice she’d been using hadn’t really been calm at all. It had been monotone. He’d been so stressed out about finding his things in the Maker’s box then the sudden appearance of the Peter and his friends that he hadn’t noticed that Maggie wasn’t Maggie.
She was a surrogate.
“How? Maggie’s not a bad person. How did you—” Then he remembered what Mr. Trouble said about Makers and surrogates, that on occasion, when several Makers worked together, they could turn someone good into their slave.
The headaches. Maggie had felt it coming on but just hadn’t realized it.
I’m so sorry! This is all my fault.
He should have insisted she stay home that first night when he’d gone with Mr. Trouble and Fiona. This was his problem, not hers.
Maggie turned him all the way around,
so that his back was now to the door and he was facing in the direction of the voices.
“Maggie, I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can, fight it.”
“Save your breath,” the surrogate Maggie said. “She can’t hear you.”
The gardener moved Fiona and Keira next to Eric, and Vice Principal Rose did the same with Eric’s mother on the other side.
“Take off their goggles,” the first woman said.
Maggie pushed the goggles down off Eric’s eyes and left them hanging around his neck. Everything he’d seen a moment before in green was now completely black. He then heard the gardener remove the Trouble sisters’ goggles, plunging them into the same darkness.
“I told you I’d do whatever you want,” Eric said. “Just let them go.”
The only sounds were the muffled protests of Fiona and Keira.
“Please. It’s me you want, not them.”
Still no response from the voices.
“Are you even listening to me?”
“We’re listening to you,” the first woman’s voice whispered into his ear.
Eric jumped, and the three voices laughed.
“Is this better?” the woman asked, a few feet away this time.
There was a scratching sound, then a sizzle as a match flared to life.
The hand that held it had long, elegant fingers and perfectly groomed nails. It moved the match closer to Eric’s face, until the only things he could see were the yellow flame and the darkness beyond it. He closed his eyes and turned his head, feeling the heat against his skin. More laughter, then the match moved away. After a second, he opened his eyes again.
The darkness that had filled the basement was gone, replaced by light from three camping lanterns spread across the room.
And standing a dozen feet away from him — the Makers.
28
There were nine of them. Five were in a semicircle in front of Eric, while the other four were huddled together behind them, their arms around each other, eyes closed.
They were beautiful. All of them. Painfully beautiful.
Their hair was perfectly cut, not a strand out of place. Their skin was as smooth as water on a still pond. Their eyes were big and dark, their lips full, and their teeth impossibly white. They could have been characters from Noriko’s Revenge or one of Eric’s other manga books.
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