Oath Keeper

by Jefferson Smith

  Still, the trip had been worth it. Today was a good day. In fact, it was the best day she could remember in quite a long time. Despite all her struggles, and despite having had to pawn her mother’s necklace to pay for all the toys until Regalia could pay her back… Despite all of this, today she returned home bearing gifts for the children. Toys and dolls and games and crafts. It was almost like a dream, really. A dream of Christmas. Let the day be cold and miserable. Nothing could dampen the tingle of delight she had been feeling ever since Sister Regalia had first told her the good news.

  “We need toys, Sister. Lots of toys. It’s time we had more fun for the children around here, don’t you think?”

  Diaphana had been so startled by the suggestion that she had only been able to nod a timid response. Was the Sister Superior really agreeing with her? Finally? After all these years?

  “Well, let’s not delay then, Sister. Here is the credit card. Go now. Get as much as you like. The more the merrier. When you think you have enough and you think it’s time to stop, just imagine the smiles of joy you’ll see when you come back through that door. Then buy a few more.”

  “But Sister! That is— I mean, really? How wonder—”

  “Not now, Sister. You can thank me when you return. Now go. Time is wasting and you have a lot of shopping to do.”

  The giddiness Diaphana had felt then, as she’d run out the front door of the orphanage, was still with her now. She could still feel the tingling in her legs, and the fluttering in her stomach. But that was nothing compared to what was about to come. She lifted her weary eyes to look up at that heavy front door. When she imagined all the excited little faces that were about to explode into delight, like on a birthday morning—a birthday for every girl in the entire place… Well, it made her heart want to burst from her chest and dance on the steps for joy.

  Picking her parcels up one last time, the bulky Sister made her way up the steps and shouldered her way through the front door. “Hello! Come see, my darlings! Come see!” Diaphana’s voice rang out as she stepped into the warmth of the front hallway. But no sparkling eyes were there to greet her. Oh darn. How silly of me. It’s late. They’ll all be in classes still. Sister Diaphana hefted her bags once again and shuffled down the hallway toward the classrooms at the back.

  “Surprise!” she called, as she burst through the junior classroom door, managing an awkward flourish of her arms for show, despite the bags and parcels that hung from them.

  But the room was empty.

  Now where on Earth can they be? Oh. Of course! Sister Regalia had taken them all down to the dining hall in the basement. That’s what she’d done. They would all be down there having a late lunch. What a perfect place to surprise them all with gifts! With her heart beginning to race in anticipation, the large nun gathered up her bags—and her stamina—one more time, and went back down the hallway toward the basement stairs.

  It took her several minutes to struggle her way down that narrow, rickety flight of steps, but in the end she managed it, without having to leave even a single package behind. Marshaling her reserves for one last big push, Diaphana launched herself into the dining hall. “Hello my lovelies! Hell—”

  But this room too was empty.

  Now this really is odd. Where could they all have gotten to? With no young faces around to see her exhaustion, Sister Diaphana dropped her bags where she stood and slumped her sweating frame into the nearest chair, letting out a satisfied whoosh of breath, and tugging at the collar of her habit for ventilation. Then she just sat there for a while, breathing heavily and enjoying the tingly feeling as the circulation returned to her fingers and arms. And she listened. The Old Shoe was normally a buzz of activity during the afternoons. Classes in session, babies and toddlers being put down or taken up from their naps, the sounds of pots and pans banging down here in the kitchen, as the Unlov— as the rambunctious girls helped prepare dinner. The Old Shoe might be many things, but it was never quiet. Not like this.

  After a few moments mulling that over, Sister Diaphana dragged herself back up to her feet and went up the stairs to see where everyone had gone. She’d already checked the ground floor, so she went up further. No sounds of laughter or cat-calling from the Sisters’ floor. Up further, and nothing on the junior floor, nor the senior floor above that, nor even anybody on the fifth floor, which had once been the home of the rambunctious girls, but was now being used for storage.

  Wherever could they all have gotten to?

  Sister Diaphana paused in the stairwell. Could it be? Possibly. Maybe. Sister Regalia had been going to the zoo a lot lately. Maybe she had been arranging a big tour of the place for all the children. The portly nun smiled at that. Yes, that seemed likely. The zoo. Something had changed Sister Regalia for the better, it would seem. First all the new toys, and now a trip to the zoo. Life in Our Lady of Divine Suffering’s Home for Orphans and Evictees was finally starting to look up. Everybody was at the zoo, of course!

  And when they got home, they’d be hungry, yet there they were with nobody on hand to get the dinner ready. Well, nobody except one exhausted Sister. How hard could one dinner be? So with her smile back on her face where it belonged, the Sister with the heart as big as all the world toddled back down the stairs to get dinner going. For sixty people.

  When she got to the kitchen, she found that there wasn’t really much to work with though. Sister Disgustia obviously hadn’t done the shopping in far too long. Still, Diaphana put herself to work and managed to find a cupboard full of bread. And they still had an enormous tub of peanut butter. So she rolled up her sleeves and set to it.

  There was a scary moment when the table had lurched under her hands and she wondered if the whole building was going to fall on her, but it passed quick enough. Probably just a truck going by, she decided, and she had a good laugh at herself for taking such a silly fright. Then she picked up her knife and went right back to sandwich-making.

  A few minutes later, she had a hundred and twenty sandwiches ready, and milk poured for everybody. Well, ninety of the sandwiches were peanut butter, but she’d run out, so she’d made thirty more with plain margarine, just to be safe.

  Diaphana was just tidying things away when she heard a bang from upstairs. That’s them. Her eyes flicked immediately to the pile of bags and boxes that she’d arranged along the back table. They’re going to be so happy! She could already hear them shouting, and their heavy stomping as they ran down the hall above.

  “Unit two, basement level! Three and four, upstairs! Move it!”

  That was odd. Had they brought people home with them from the zoo? Perhaps a zoo keeper to teach a class on animals? That would be nice.

  A moment later, the swinging kitchen doors flew open, and dark men stormed into the room.

  “In the kitchen! We’ve got one!” Army men of some kind. Or policemen? They rushed forward, rifles raised to their shoulders, pointed at her, as they fanned out around her.

  “Down on the floor, lady! Now!”

  “Do it! Do it now!”

  Diaphana looked around, bewildered.

  “Knife! Knife! She’s armed!” The big man on her right darted forward suddenly and punched viciously at her hand. The butter knife jangled away into a corner. Diaphana’s eyes went wide and she turned to see where the knife had gone. What was—? Then the pain shot up her arm and she cried out. But what did I do?

  “The man said ‘down,’ lady! And that means DOWN!”

  The shorter man on her left waved his hand, and Diaphana turned to look at him through teary eyes. What did he want? But then she sensed a motion from the first man and she turned slowly back to see what he—

  The heel of his rifle came rushing toward her face.

  “Hostile neutralized. The kitchen is secure.”

  Chapter 26

  “Out of my way, Goreski!” DelRoy pushed past the nosy jerk and hurried toward the stairs.

  “You don’t clock out for another hour,” Goreski sputtered, behind
him.

  “Family emergency. Bill me.”

  “But you don’t have a family!”

  I do now, DelRoy thought as he thundered down the stairs, but he didn’t want to give Goreski the satisfaction of that kind of revelation. Besides, he wasn’t even sure where that had come from. Family? All he knew was that when Ned had called and said that something had happened—that Sue had been attacked by some homeless man and was now in hysterics—something inside him had clicked. Something ancient, and kind of scary even. Someone he cared about had been threatened. And now here he was, racing to protect her.

  It was a funny way to learn how he actually felt.

  * * *

  “She won’t thank you for that in the morning,” DelRoy said, pointing at the bottle of sedatives on the side-table. Ned was coming out of Sue’s bedroom and he paused to pull the door shut quietly behind him.

  “I know my sister, Detective. If I hadn’t done something, she’d have gone back down to that place and torn it apart. And how do you think that would have ended up? Yesterday she comes home and tells me that every powerful bureaucrat in the city is dancing in secret with those nuns, and then tomorrow she gets arrested for breaking in? Maybe hurting someone? You think they’d just slap her on the wrist? They’re making people disappear!”

  “So she’s kept you informed.”

  “Of course she has! I’m her brother!”

  “That’s not what she tells people.”

  Ned looked away. “I know. Not our brightest idea, maybe.” Then he looked back. “But it worked. You gotta give her that much.”

  DelRoy shrugged. He was still wound up tight. He’d arrived less than an hour ago to find Sue frantic, alternating between tears of frustration and screams of rage. It had been all Ned could do to keep her in the house until DelRoy had arrived, and the first thing he’d done was hand over the note.

  the fire is here but it sleeps soon it will not they will all be taken many will die if you would see the girl again follow nafosh

  It looked bad. That much he could admit, but Sue was more than just scared. She was like a caged panther. A raging kettle of boiling oil, looking for someone to spill on. After reading the note twice, he’d suggested a drink, to calm her nerves—not to mention his own—but he hadn’t twigged to what Ned had done until Sue’s eyes had begun to droop. And now that she was down for the count, he could only stand there, looking at the brother with frank curiosity.

  “I don’t know what to make of you, Ned. No apparent job, but no criminal record either. No history of paying taxes, or having a phone, or a car, or a bank account. But you do have childhood records. Classic paper trail of a guy who grew up here, but then moved away.”

  “Except…?” Ned said, smiling in a curious way.

  “Except that Sue says you’ve visited a few times, only I can’t find any passport or visa information. No consistent pattern of long distance calls on Sue’s phones, and judging by that odd accent of yours, wherever it is you live, it is a long, long way away.”

  Ned laughed. “Very far indeed,” he said. “But just a few miles up the road.”

  DelRoy glared at the guy and counted slowly to himself, before he felt calm enough to continue. “Look Ned,” he began. “I’m trying to help, but maybe you don’t understand how this is shaping up. You’ve falsified documents in an attempt to gain fraudulent custody of a minor. A little girl. Who has now gone missing. On top of that, we now have threats of additional serious crimes on the horizon—arson, murder, who knows what all? These are not petty. They’re as major as they come. Which means that when I leave here, I have to notify the feds, who are going to show up here with their paper-sniffing proctology equipment. And when they do, you are going to stick out like a corpse in a chorus line. So maybe this would be a good time to drop the cute and mysterious. Don’t you think?”

  Ned dropped his gaze to look at the floor. He looked like a five year old boy with his hand caught in the candy drawer. Then he seemed to melt. “Oh crap,” he said, running his hands through his thinning hair. “I need a drink.” DelRoy watched him wander out to the living room again, snatch the gin bottle from the table, and take a long pull from it as he flopped himself into the overstuffed chair.

  The detective followed and sat on the sofa beside him. Ned held the bottle out and DelRoy accepted it, taking a small gulp himself. Then the two men sat there in strained silence for a while, passing the bottle back and forth between them.

  “She trusts you, you know,” Ned said, breaking the silence.

  “Who, your sister?”

  “Yeah.” Then Ned shifted in his chair and turned, peering at him from behind those old fashioned glasses. Ned was sweating—probably from the gin—and his wispy white hair was clumped and damp around his temples and across his forehead, hanks of darker silver-gray plastered against his flushed, pink skin.

  “That’s important,” Ned said. “Me, I just don’t get people. Not here, anyway. Never have, so I’ve always relied on Sue’s instincts. Even when we were little. And she trusts you.”

  DelRoy recognized the signs of a witness talking himself into a confession, so he just nodded and let Ned continue.

  “The thing is,” Ned said, nervously, “I’m pretty sure you won’t believe me. And then where will we be?”

  Ned was the bookish sort, and he’d already said more words today than DelRoy had heard from him over the entire week since they’d met. Which was good, because guys who didn’t talk much didn’t get much practice at lying either. The detective took another slug of gin and shrugged. “In the last couple of days,” he said, ticking his observations off on his fingers with the bottle as he spoke, “I’ve learned that somebody may have brain-wiped me, the city is effectively run by nuns, and hobos deliver hand-printed death threats while wearing clown costumes. In light of all that, I’d say I am unusually receptive to weird right now. Try me.”

  Ned chuckled nervously. “Well, you see, the thing is, I don’t actually live in this world.”

  DelRoy looked at him with one barely raised eyebrow. “That’s it? I just told you pretty much the same thing, myself. Of course you don’t live around here, Ned. Everything about you says that you’re a long, long way from home. India or Asia somewhere, I’d guess so it—”

  Ned shook his head. “No, when I say ‘this world,’ I don’t mean this society, as in this city or this country. I mean this planet.”

  DelRoy snorted a laugh, and then choked as the mouthful of gin tried to jet from his nose.

  “I know,” Ned said, waving a hand at the detective’s obvious amusement. “I know exactly how it sounds, Detective. Like I’m a complete nutter, right? So I guess I’m just going to have to show you.”

  DelRoy reached up with the bottle to scratch at his head, watching with wry curiosity as Ned held his hands together in front of his face, and spoke quietly into his palms. Like he was praying or something.

  “Creepy, isn’t it?”

  The detective reeled back in his chair and looked around in a panic. “What the—?” The voice had come from right next to his ear, but there was nobody there.

  “Down here, dumbass.”

  He looked down at the bottle in his hand. “That’s right, genius. Not ventriloquism. It’s really me.”

  DelRoy flung the bottle across the room, and backpedaled himself right up out of the chair, and fell hard over the back, crashing to a heap on the floor. Because while he had been watching, the open rim of the gin bottle had spoken to him.

  And just to prove he was crazy, he’d even watched its lips move.

  * * *

  “I’m what the Wasketchin call a ‘kincraft,’” Ned said.

  DelRoy was standing with his back to the wall. At first, he’d drawn his gun, but that had just been a panic reaction, and he’d quickly shoved it back into his shoulder holster. But that didn’t mean he was prepared to believe what he’d seen.

  “You put something in the gin.”

  Ned shook his head. �
��I’ve been drinking the same stuff you have, Detective.”

  “In my glass then,” he tried.

  Ned smiled. “You weren’t drinking from a glass.” He waved a hand at the mostly-empty gin bottle lying on its side in the corner. “And you can take that away and have it analyzed if you want. I promise you, there’s nothing in it that shouldn’t be.”

  DelRoy quickly flashed on a dozen other explanations, hallucinogens in the air supply being the most plausible of them. So in the absence of a rational explanation, he fell back on his training. Collect more evidence.

  “Show me again,” he said, but Ned just shook his head.

  “That was all I had in me, I’m afraid. I can’t create magic over here. I’m limited to what I bring with me when I come back, and that was it.”

  But that gave him something to pounce on. “You can do magic, for real, and you put all your cards into the talking gin bottle trick?”

  But again Ned shook his head. “No. That would be too specific. Not much chance a mugger or a gang banger would happen to be carrying gin, is there? Before I cross back, I prepare a fairly general purpose charm. It lets me animate any small object in the vicinity. Make it talk. It only lasts for a few seconds, but it’s enough. Most people react the way you just did, and by the time they calm down, I’ve had plenty of time to run away.”

  “So you’ve done this before?”

  “Two other times,” Ned replied. “This city isn’t as safe at night as it used to be.”

  “And this is, what did you call it, your kink?”

  Ned laughed nervously. “No, not ‘kink,’ Detective. ‘Kincraft.’ It’s what they call my kind of magic over… there. I never even knew it existed until I discovered my way into Methilien, but it turns out I’m really good at it. Back here, I was just a creepy guy who liked dolls, but over there? I quickly became Kincraft to the King of the Wasketchin. Can you blame me for wanting to make a life in that world instead of this one?”