by Ike Hamill
“Maybe,” Caleb said. “Maybe not. We already have a big clue. Your experiment nearly killed us, but it also showed us something. The stuff in that jar can set up a feedback loop in interface circuits. Maybe that’s what the Hunters are.”
“What?” Niren asked.
“Yeah, what?” Amelia asked.
“What if you took a stream of energy and then gave it a tweak so it had a little loop in it?” Caleb asked. He jumped up and started pacing again.
None of the others said a word. They all just looked at each other with confusion on their faces.
“The Hunter lives inside that loop. It’s just a point of energy, buffered on all sides by the current from the ether. And this stuff makes up the buffer,” Caleb said, pointing to the jar.
“A Hunter is a point of energy. Can you explain that?”
“I can try,” Caleb said.
Chapter 10
{Waiting}
“BURN IT,” JACOB SAID. He backed up until he was pressed against the wall. “I say burn it up right this instant.”
Harper was holding the doll.
“Come on, it’s not that bad. You’ve seen it before. Remember? Elijah was giving it a piggyback ride that day we went over to sign up for the housing lottery.”
“I was a little preoccupied that day, and I didn’t get a good look at it. Come on, Harp, that thing is pure evil. Look at it,” Jacob said.
She held the doll at arm’s length. It was about the size of a three year old. It was just big enough to cause some real mayhem if it did turn out to be evil. But she could see the doll’s sweeter side through the mildew and grime. Elijah had cleaned it up a bit, but it still showed its age. When she lifted it higher, the eyelids rolled open. For a second, she was inclined to agree with Jacob—the thing should be burned immediately.
She laughed at herself and flipped the doll around.
“Looks like he was trying to clean up these circuits. My grandfather showed me how to get those old flashlights working again. I bet I could get this thing going. Do they have any baking soda in the kitchen?” Harper asked.
She laid the doll facedown on the table in front of the couch. From a pouch on her belt, she pulled out her multitool.
“Yeah, they’ve got baking soda,” Jacob called.
“How about acid?” Harper asked. She rose to join him in the kitchen. She couldn’t help but look over her shoulder to make sure the doll stayed put while her back was turned.
“Like what?” Jacob asked. He handed her the baking soda.
“I don’t know. Vinegar maybe? Citrus?”
Jacob nodded and went back to the cabinet. He handed her an old jar of vinegar. The label was falling off.
“Vintage,” Harper said. She took the supplies and headed for the living room again.
Jacob sat on the floor so he could watch was she was doing.
“My grandfather used to say that the world eats everything eventually,” Harper said. “We’re going to eat what the world left behind.”
“What are all those wires?” Jacob asked. He was pointing to a panel on the back of the doll’s neck. The panel was open and the plastic ribbon connectors were hanging loose.
“I don’t know. Maybe Elijah already cleaned those. They don’t look broken or anything. I’ll put them back together when everything is done.”
She set her hands to work. Harper used an old bottle cap to mix her ingredients and one of the screwdrivers on her multitool to apply her foaming paste. She disassembled, scraped, cleaned and then put each piece back together. While she was working on that, Jacob took the doll’s clothes to the kitchen. He attempted to scrub out the stains. After drying the doll’s shirt, he put it up to his nose. It looked better, but it still smelled like death. Jacob sprayed it with some scented oil he found in the bathroom.
When he returned to the living room, Harper was stretching her arms.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Some of these parts were pretty rusted. I’m not sure it will work.”
“Elijah will be heartbroken when he gets back,” Jacob said.
They both laughed.
“Seriously though, I hope he doesn’t get upset that we worked on his toy,” Jacob said. “Some people are sentimental about the strangest things.”
Harper frowned. “We’re doing him a favor, remember? If he wants another broken, dirty doll, we can find him one somewhere.”
“What’s left? Can you turn it on?” Jacob asked.
“We should probably let it sit for a while, just to make sure everything is dry.”
“Come on—turn it on. I want to see what it does.”
“I thought you were scared of it,” Harper said.
“If it tries to kill us, I will smash it into little tiny pieces,” Jacob said.
“Okay. Let me make sure everything is hooked up,” Harper said. She went over the doll carefully, reattaching all the cables and shutting the panels. With the last one snapped into place, she pulled the shirt over the doll’s head and sat it up in the chair.
Its eyelids came up halfway when it was sitting upright.
Harper repositioned the doll and the eyelids went up the rest of the way.
“Now what?” Jacob asked.
“I have no idea,” Harper said.
They sat and looked at the doll. Harper picked up a rag she had been using. She leaned forward and scrubbed a bit of dirt from the doll’s cheek. The skin was pink for a second under her cloth. When she pulled it away, the skin faded back to its normal color.
“I think it’s doing something,” Harper said.
“Wait. I have an idea,” Jacob said. “Some of those old things have a voice prompt.”
He cleared his throat and squared his shoulders with the doll. “Greetings!” he said.
Harper laughed. “What are you doing?”
Jacob held up his hand to quiet her. He cleared his throat again. “Greetings!”
Harper shook her head. “I must have missed some corrosion. I’ll take it apart again. Maybe some vinegar was making a short between…”
She trailed off as the doll’s eyes turned to Jacob.
# # # # #
“Oh, no,” Jacob whispered.
He jumped when Harper’s hand shot out and grabbed his arm. “Talk to it some more. It’s working!”
“Doll, what’s your status?” Jacob asked the doll.
The thing blinked at him. The eyes turned to look at Harper. The head turned after. It looked back to Jacob in the same unsettling way—eyes moved first, then head followed.
“Status,” Jacob said again.
“Hello,” the doll said. “My name is Malty. What’s yours?”
Harper leaned closer to Jacob and whispered, “Did she say Malty?”
The doll looked to Harper—eyes first, then head. The expression on the doll’s face didn’t change, but somehow the eyes looked annoyed.
“My name is Malty. What’s yours?”
“Hi, uh, Malty. I’m Harper.”
It was Jacob’s turn to whisper to Harper. “Don’t tell it your damn name.”
“Why not?” Harper asked.
The eyes moved to Jacob. The head seemed to jitter as it turned to catch up. Jacob folded under the stare of Malty.
“My name is Jacob.”
Malty blinked. “Please don’t try to hurt me, Jacob.”
He looked to Harper and then back to the doll. “I wouldn’t do that. What are you talking about, Malty?”
The voice that came out of the doll wasn’t a recording. It wasn’t even a perfect imitation of Jacob, but it was close. In fact, it was so close to Jacob’s voice that Harper put a hand over her mouth and Jacob felt goosebumps rise on his arms.
Malty said, “Burn it. I say burn it up right this instant.” After a pause, Malty used Jacob’s voice again to say, “I will smash it into little tiny pieces.”
“No, Malty, those were jokes,” Jacob said. Harper began to stand up. “I didn’t mean any of that.”
“Good,” Malty
said.
“Can I talk to you in the kitchen real quick?” Harper asked Jacob.
“Sure. What about Malty?”
“Stay there, okay?” Harper asked.
“Okay,” Malty said.
# # # # #
“Come over here,” Harper said. “I don’t know if our friend can read lips.”
“I’m not taking my eyes off of her,” Jacob said. “Just put your hand up.” He shielded his lips with his raised hand to block Malty’s view.
Harper looked around and flipped on the sound system so the music would mask their voices.
She followed his example and whispered behind her hand. “If that thing was listening to everything we were saying, then it was listening to your aunt and Elijah too.”
“So?”
“So this is a lot like we’re looking through their old surveillance footage. You don’t do that without permission.”
Jacob shrugged. “Mac is my aunt. I’ve looked through her footage up at the cabin. I don’t think she would get riled up just because we fixed Elijah’s old doll for him.”
Harper looked into Jacob’s eyes.
“People in Fairbanks take their privacy seriously. Let’s shut her down and Elijah can do what he wants when he gets back.”
“Yeah. Sure. No problem,” Jacob said.
They turned back to Malty. The chair was empty.
“Oh, no,” Jacob whispered. He got his hands up and dropped into a defensive crouch.
“It’s no big deal,” Harper said. She shifted closer to Jacob until they were almost touching. “It’s just a doll. She’s probably just scared.”
“Hey, Malty?” Jacob called. “Where did you go, Malty?”
They heard a muffled giggle that sounded like it came from the bedroom.
“See? She’s just playing hide and seek. She’s probably built to play all kinds of games like that.”
Jacob looked down. Harper had taken a grip on his forearm. She was squeezing so tight that her knuckles were white. “Would you mind telling that to your hand?”
Harper let go. Together, they moved silently into the living room. Jacob ducked and looked under the table and couch.
Harper jabbed her finger at the open doorway to the bedroom. They started to move in that direction.
“Game’s over, Malty. You win. Olly olly oxen free,” Harper called.
“What the hell does that mean?” Jacob asked.
Harper shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just something we used to call when it was safe to come out.”
Malty didn’t respond.
When they got to the bedroom doorway, Harper moved into the lead. “Stay here. Watch my back.”
Jacob positioned himself to look across the living room towards the kitchen. He could see the base of the stairs that led up to the ground floor. Behind him, Harper began to search the bedroom that Elijah and Madelyn shared.
“Malty? You don’t have to hide,” Harper said. “Malty? Come on out.”
He struggled to keep watch. He desperately wanted to turn around and see what Harper was doing. A terrible thought kept racing through his mind—the next sound he heard would be her scream.
“Come on, Malty. Nobody here is going to hurt you. We’re the ones who fixed you up.”
Jacob thought he saw something shift over near the couch. As he focused on the spot, he began to wonder if Malty could have slipped between the cushions and hidden down in the upholstery. The doll wasn’t that big and was more stuffing than anything else. Underneath the padding, her little skeleton might be able to squeeze into a tiny space.
“Harper,” Jacob whispered.
“What?”
“I think she might be out here.”
He dared to shoot a glance back at her. She was crouched on the other side of the bed, looking underneath.
“Yeah?” Harper asked.
Jacob nodded. He stared at the couch as he heard her rise to her feet.
“Let me just check the…” she started. Harper’s sentence ended with a scream. Jacob whipped around to see Harper falling away from the closet. Meanwhile, the little doll was running straight at him. It had a significant limp, but it was as fast as a lizard. Before he thought to grab it, Malty dropped to the floor and flew between Jacob’s legs.
He spun and dove.
His shoulder hit the chair and he banged over onto his side as he landed on the floor. A grunt of air escaped his lungs with the impact. His outstretched hand had a grip on something. He looked up to see his fingers wrapped around the doll’s delicate ankle.
Malty rose up and hissed at him. He was so surprised that he nearly let go. The doll reached forward and banged its little hands against his fingers. He barely felt the impact.
Harper stepped over him.
“Malty!” she yelled. “Stop that.”
The doll’s arms froze. It looked up at Harper.
“That’s better. Now behave yourself.”
She picked up Malty under the armpits and put her back in the chair. Jacob got up from the floor and stood next to Harper. They looked down at the little doll. After meeting both of their eyes, the doll turned its gaze straight ahead. With her hands folded in her lap, Malty looked like she was waiting for punishment.
“Why did you hide from us?” Harper asked.
This time, the voice that came from the doll was an imitation of Harper. “Let’s shut her down and Elijah can do what he wants when he gets back.”
Jacob turned to Harper. “Can you believe they made a doll with such a strong self-preservation instinct? It seems weird, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe it grew careful over the years. How old are you, Malty?”
“I’m three years old,” the doll said.
“Canned answer,” Harper said to Jacob.
“How many years has it been since you were purchased, Malty?” Jacob asked.
The doll didn’t answer.
Harper moved closer to the doll and took a seat on the couch. Jacob moved to the chair near the bottom of the stairs.
“What kinds of things do you know how to do, Malty?”
The doll’s eyes shifted to Harper for a second, and then returned to staring at the wall.
“This is useless,” Jacob said.
“You have something better to do?” Harper asked. “We still have a bunch of time to kill.”
Jacob’s face lit up with an idea.
“Malty, you better start answering our questions. If you don’t answer, then we’re going to get bored and disconnect you.”
Malty blinked and then shifted her little eyes over to Jacob. He smiled. The head turned to follow the eyes.
“That’s right. Start answering or we’ll unplug all those little circuits that we plugged in. You’ll go right back to being trapped behind those eyes.”
Malty glanced down for a second and then back up.
Jacob nodded to Harper.
“How many years since you were purchased, Malty?” Harper asked.
The eyes and head shifted to Harper. The motion was better coordinated this time. It almost looked natural.
“Thirty-eight.”
“Whoa. She’s almost twice as old as us,” Jacob said.
“As you, youngster,” Harper said.
“What’s the most interesting thing you’ve seen?” Jacob asked.
The doll turned back to him. The eyes took on a faraway look, like it was really considering the answer.
When it finally spoke, a chill went down Jacob’s spine.
“I’ve seen both heaven and hell. I prefer hell.”
Chapter 11
{Escape}
“LOGAN,” MADELYN CROAKED. HER tongue had woken up, but she didn’t have full control of her vocal cords. “Logan!”
He didn’t move.
When Dave had activated his weapon, one of Madelyn’s hands had been shielded by the tree as she dove away. That hand was waking up faster than the other. She felt a prickly sense of touch returning and she could move some
of her fingers.
They cramped with the effort, but she moved them as much as she could. With each twitch, more muscles unlocked and she was soon moving her entire wrist. Madelyn used her fingers to drag her good hand towards the other. Once the live fingers found the dead ones, she began to pinch. Feeling came back with each flare of pain. Soon, she had both hands working and was using them to wake up other parts of her body.
“Logan,” she whispered.
Madelyn pushed herself up to a sitting position so she could begin working on her legs. As she massaged the muscles back to life, she stared at Logan to verify that he was breathing. At least Dave had the courtesy to use a non-lethal weapon.
Madelyn dragged herself towards Logan. Her legs were still coming back.
The clicking sound of the Roamers was distant, but they were in the area.
Madelyn slapped his face. She meant to only tap him, but she lost control of her hand as it descended.
On the third slap, his eyes opened.
He had caught the full burst from Dave’s weapon. His condition appeared worse than hers.
Once his eyes locked onto her, she pinched his face until Logan could move his jaw on his own.
“Whuh happun?” he asked. The words were slurred almost to the point of nonsense.
“Shhh,” she said.
Logan was working his tongue around and seemed to be getting more control. Madelyn moved her efforts to his fingers. As she woke up his hands, she gently worked her own legs until it felt like she could stand.
The clicking of the Roamers was beginning to swell again.
They were out of time.
Madelyn focused on his legs. She balled her hands into fists and began to beat Logan’s thighs and calves.
“Stop,” he said. He kicked at her.
“Good enough,” she said. She grabbed his limp arms and pulled them over her shoulders. Logan got the idea as she tried to stand. He used his uncoordinated legs to push them upright. As she stumbled forward, he pushed at the ground to get them going. Soon he was nearly walking, but he had no balance.
She turned downhill so they could build momentum.