Discovery

by Lisa White

  The mountains.

  Tom looked closer at the picture and smiled. The answer had been here all along. There was his family and Dave posing so proudly with the trout, the river flowing at their feet, the mountains framing the clear sky behind their heads.

  Ben had taken Grace to the mountains. Tom was certain. Not many Powers knew about the Misfits, certainly not any of the Anti-Powers, so the Misfits’ Appalachian community would be the perfect place for Ben to hide Grace and keep her safe.

  Tom dropped the picture on the bed and ran to the hall closet. Using his powers, he pulled a large cardboard box down off the top shelf and levitated it to the living room coffee table. The box contained all the memories the brothers had left of their parents and Tom had not gone through it since they died. But he knew it was in there. It just had to be.

  One by one, he levitated each item out of the box. Family pictures, cards, letters, books, even a couple of old music albums from the seventies. The brothers did not have a record player on which to play the albums, but their father had kept them for posterity so the boys thought they should too. Tom rifled gingerly through the albums, papers, and books. Belonging to his parents and being irreplaceable, Tom gave the items a reverence unmatched by anything else in the brothers’ small apartment.

  Hidden at the bottom of the box was their father’s old Physical Powers Training Manual. Tom had seen Ben’s manual before and, with his brother and father having similar powers, Tom found nothing new in his perusal of the older manual.

  Beneath the manual was his father’s Bible. Worn at the edges with pages falling out, this Bible had seen more use than the old training manual. His father had memorized both, but the Bible had been the more influential reference tool. Tom carefully flipped through the pages and finally found what he was looking for.

  There, hidden in the New Testament Book of Revelation was an old hand-drawn map. The map to the Misfits’ secret community.

  Tom’s powers practically pushed the phone to his ear. He didn’t even need to press the buttons because, under his powers’ control, the phone dialed itself. In his first meeting with the Council, they had instructed him to memorize their emergency number, but memorization was not something Tom did. One look at the number and he could instantly recall it forever. He knew the Council had given him special access because of the Ben situation but he had not had to use it until now. Having met face-to-face with the Council and now knowing their secret identities, while nerve-wracking at best, the situation did have its advantages and easy access to the Council members was now one of them.

  The Council leader answered on the first ring. “Yes, Tom?” She sounded brusque.

  Tom took a deep breath. “I know where they are.”

  • • •

  “Here you are, darling,” Mr. Reich said handing his wife a vodka tonic. “With extra lime, just as you like it.”

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Reich purred. “Just put it right here on the side table.” She was lounging outside on a chaise, sunglasses on, watching a group of golfers from the country club play past their mansion’s expansive back deck. The sun was brilliant that afternoon so she looked somewhat normal in her sunglasses that day.

  She took a long sip of her drink. “Mmmm,” she sighed.

  “Feel better?” Mr. Reich asked, sitting down on the chaise adjacent to Mrs. Reich’s.

  “Yes. Much,” she said, lounging back and closing her eyes with her face full to the sun. Without opening her eyes, she calmly added, “But I still want that girl dead.”

  “In good time, my sweet Ava. All in good time,” Mr. Reich soothed, patting his wife’s hand. “The troops are ready. Our scientists have the lab prepared. We just need to pinpoint the girl’s exact location.”

  The Reich mansion sat on the sixth fairway of the Southern Pines Country Club golf course and its location provided a convenient venue for Mr. Reich’s twisted entertainment. With the bordering landscape providing cover, one of his favorite pastimes involved using his powers to bend and occasionally break the clubs of the golfers passing by his deck. And today was no exception.

  “Watch this, my dear,” he said.

  Mrs. Reich opened her eyes just as her husband initiated his mental attack on the four unsuspecting golfers. Simultaneously, a club flew out of each golfer’s bag and hung mid-air. Like synchronized swimmers, the clubs danced around the golfer’s heads, twisting and turning in the air until finally the metal rods shattered in two and fell to the ground. The golfers just stood there in disbelief, their shocked eyes looking back and forth from each other to the golf clubs scattered around them.

  “Oh, darling. Again? Really?” Mrs. Reich sighed. “That game is so tiresome.”

  “So what would you like to do this beautiful afternoon, my love?”

  Mrs. Reich looked at the golfers in their white and pastel polo shirts. Her eyes glowed and the edges of her mouth curled up as she suggested, “How about a little blood?”

  At his wife’s request, Mr. Reich smiled and looked over at the golfers who still stood in the middle of the fairway in disbelief. Immediately, the broken club shafts rose up off the ground and began beating the golfers’ heads and backs. Their harsh thumping sounds echoed in the fairway’s silence. Soon, blood poured from one golfer’s ear, even more from another’s nose, and deep crimson polka dots materialized on their light–colored polo shirts.

  “Is that enough, darling?” Mr. Reich asked.

  “More,” Mrs. Reich purred, her voice almost orgasmic at the sight of the golfers’ blood.

  Mr. Reich looked again at the foursome. The broken, jagged-edged clubs now alternated between beating and jabbing the golfers, tearing at their flesh, and cracking their bones. Two of the bloodied golfers ran for their golf cart, while another golfer lay sprawled out on the ground face down, with a club continuously smashing into his head. The remaining golfer grabbed at the golfer on the ground and tried to pull him toward the cart in between the clubs’ erratic swings. Large pools of blood stained the fairway by now and the golfers slipped on them as they tried to escape.

  Mrs. Reich held up her hand. “Enough now, dear. We don’t want to ruin the grass right in front of us. You know how hard the club works to maintain these fairways.”

  “You are so right,” Mr. Reich agreed. He waved his hand and the clubs instantly fell to the ground. The golfers disappeared in their carts, assumedly racing back to the clubhouse, leaving the broken golf clubs and large red pools of blood dotting the manicured fairway.

  Mr. and Mrs. Reich lay on their chaises laughing hysterically at a pitch only they could hear.

  “Excuse me, Mother and Father?” Gregory’s voice came up behind them.

  “Yes, Gregory?” Mr. Reich smiled over at his son who now stood at the edge of the deck.

  Gregory glanced over at the pools of blood and grinned. “I’m sorry to interrupt your afternoon but you asked me to let you know the minute she contacted us.”

  “And?” Mr. Reich raised his eyebrows.

  Gregory smiled. “And we now know where Grace is.”

  Chapter Sixteen: The Trio of Boulders

  Cooper’s Gas and Groceries was now just a memory and Grace was finally relaxing a little as they made their way deeper into the mountains and away from civilization. Neither she nor Ben had said much since leaving the gas station and Grace assumed Ben was as lost in his thoughts as she was in hers. She did not know why, but images from their high school days kept popping into her head. Football games, exam cram sessions, even the night of their group prom date swirled in Grace’s head like a photo album collage. And while those images swirled in her head, her heart was pulling up memories of its own. Like the feeling Grace had when Ben impulsively bought her the silly monkey key chain for no reason at all. Or when he boldly complimented her prom dress in front of everyone at the dinner table. Or when she realized that her lovesick feelings for Ben were not mutual and she had placed him back into her friends bucket.

  A bucket he seem
ed to be slowly but intentionally climbing out of now.

  Grace looked over at Ben and softly smiled. His messy black hair made his blue eyes seem bluer, if that was at all possible, and his face revealed the intensity of his concentration on the road. Grace was amazed at how deftly he maneuvered the narrow road’s hairpin turns as it wound through the steep Appalachian Mountains, and she assumed that his powers and superhuman reflexes made such quick maneuvers possible.

  When they finally reached a portion of the road that was somewhat straighter, Ben slowed the Jeep down slightly. “Here.” He looked over at Grace. “Lean over here and take the wheel for a minute.”

  Grace reached over and placed one hand on top of the steering wheel. “What are you doing?” she asked without taking her eyes off the road in front of her.

  Ben just grinned as he sat up toward the driver’s side window and pulled his wallet out of his back jeans pocket. He handed the wallet to Grace before taking hold of the steering wheel again. “Open this for me and pull out that white folded piece of paper. It should be right behind the cash.”

  Grace did as she was told and pulled out the paper. It was a map, or more specifically, a Xeroxed copy of a hand-drawn map. In the lower left corner were the words “Cooper’s Gas and Groceries” and a drawing of a building. Dotted lines crisscrossed the map representing the makeshift roads that weaved in and out of mountainous landmarks, with one dotted line abruptly ending at the upper right corner with the word ‘Misfits’ circled in bold pen strokes. Then it dawned on Grace. “You mean you know that old man back at the gas station?”

  “Not personally. I just know of him. Cooper’s been around the Misfits for a long time.” Ben smiled over at Grace. “I told you I wouldn’t leave you alone unless I know you’re safe.”

  Grace knowingly smiled back at Ben and then began scanning the map, searching for anything she recognized other than the gas station. “Where are we?”

  “Here, let me see,” said Ben.

  “You mean you don’t know where we’re going?” asked Grace incredulously, holding the map between them so Ben could see it and the road at the same time.

  “I know where we’re going. I just don’t know exactly how to get there,” Ben said sheepishly with a grin as he glanced down at the map. “I’ve been there a thousand times and know we have to turn off the road about fifty miles past Cooper’s. But I need the map for after we make that turn.”

  “Oh, give me this.” Grace pulled the map back into her lap. “You drive and I’ll navigate.” Grace studied the map to get her bearings.

  “Okay. Our turn is coming up so you better be ready, Miss Navigator.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” Grace saluted and rolled her eyes.

  A few minutes later, Ben pulled off the road into the woods and stopped. “Here we are. Where to now?”

  Grace concentrated on the map. “First, we need to find a large rock shaped like an Indian arrowhead.”

  Ben scanned the dense woods and pointed. “There.”

  Grace followed Ben’s point but she saw nothing but trees. “Where?”

  “You can’t see it, but I do,” he replied matter-of-factly as he put the Jeep in four-wheel drive and steered it toward the rock in the very far distance. There was no road now, not even a trail, and the Jeep jostled its passengers relentlessly as it made its way through the woods. The density of the tall trees blocked the sunlight so, in the deep undergrowth of the forest, it looked and felt more like the evening’s twilight hours than the mid-afternoon it actually was.

  “Okay, your smarty pants eyesight is going to get on my nerves, so why don’t I call out the landmarks on the map and you find them? Maybe then I won’t feel like just an ordinary human in your presence,” joked Grace.

  “Gracie, I promise you, there is absolutely nothing ordinary about you,” Ben said, shaking his head and smiling. “But that sounds good. What comes after the arrowhead rock?”

  Grace scanned the map again after they arrived at their first landmark. “At the arrowhead rock, turn left and go straight until you find a two hundred year old oak tree. I don’t think this map is drawn to scale, but this oak tree looks huge. And how are we supposed to know which one is two hundred years old?”

  “Got it,” Ben said, looking off into the distance. He aimed the Jeep toward the oak tree that stood even deeper in the wood’s darkness.

  After more than an hour of the pair working together like a well-oiled machine, with Grace calling out landmarks and Ben swiftly maneuvering the Jeep through the thick woods, they were finally reaching the edge of the map.

  “Looks like the last landmark is called the Trio of Boulders. They’re kind of shaped like Stonehenge but there are only three of them.” Grace squinted out the window. “These things look so large on the map even I might be able to find them.”

  “There they are.” Ben headed the Jeep toward a large outcropping of rocks at the base of a steep mountain. Just when the Jeep had almost reached its destination, it came to an abrupt stop in the middle of two small, but sharply sloped, hills.

  “What the — ” Puzzled, Ben looked out the Jeep’s front window. He gunned the engine. The tires spun on the leafy ground beneath them, but the Jeep did not otherwise move.

  “Are we stuck?” Grace peered out her window and scanned the mountainous landscape. Nothing but trees, rocks and forest undergrowth surrounded them. The Trio of Boulders was still about thirty yards away directly in front of the Jeep.

  “I don’t know. Maybe caught up on a root or rock or something. We may have to walk the rest of the way, but let me check it out first.” Ben looked intently into Grace’s blue eyes. “Lock the doors behind me and do not, no matter what, get out of this car under any circumstances. Do you hear me Grace?”

  “Okay.” Grace widened her eyes with Ben’s sudden seriousness. She glanced out her window again and, for Grace, the woods suddenly seemed darker than they were a few minutes ago.

  “Grace, I mean it. Do not get out of this car. Promise me.” Ben’s intensity increased.

  Grace turned back to Ben, her eyes widening even further. “Yes. Got it. I promise.”

  Ben took her hand and squeezed it with a wink before he exited the Jeep. The minute his door closed behind him, Grace pushed the door lock button and heard a simultaneous thump from each of the Jeep’s four doors. Without thinking, she tugged on her seatbelt, testing its usefulness.

  Ben walked around to the front of the Jeep. He looked closely at the front tires before peering down to inspect the Jeep’s undercarriage.

  “Ben?” Grace called. “What is it?”

  Ben stood up and looked at Grace crouched in the front seat. “I have no idea. We’re not stuck on anything that I can see.” He kicked the leaves around the tires, revealing nothing but dirt underneath. Ben then walked to the back of the Jeep and performed the same inspection. Still nothing. He returned to the front of the Jeep. “Hold on,” he yelled to Grace. “I’m going to lift it up and try to pull us out of whatever we’re stuck in.”

  “Lift what up? What did you say?” Grace called through the Jeep’s dirty windows.

  Before Grace knew what was happening, Ben lifted the Jeep over his head, with Grace bracing herself inside. She sat there suspended in the air for a few minutes, trying not to look down. “Ben?” she called out, her eyes focused on the Trio of Boulders up ahead.

  Just then, Grace heard an “Ugh” and the Jeep abruptly crashed back down to the forest floor. She looked around but could not see Ben. At first she thought the Jeep had fallen on top of him.

  But, unfortunately, she was wrong.

  Ben suddenly appeared in front of the Jeep, looking like he was being pulled and pushed in rag doll form. In mid-air, his body was tossed around like a juggler’s ball, but Grace could not see who or what was doing the tossing. She just heard soft, but deep, laughter echoing in the trees.

  “Stay in the car!” Ben yelled in between tosses. He swung his arms, attempting to strike whatever invisi
ble being was attacking him, but the attacks just kept coming. He was thrown back and forth in front of the Jeep, never hitting the ground, always remaining suspended. His strong powers appeared ineffective against his unseen attacker.

  Grace stared into the woods’ darkness, trying to see who or what had hold of Ben. She felt helpless watching her Guardian being tossed around right in front of her. She scanned the Jeep for anything that might be used as a weapon. Nothing. She then looked around the dense woods. A stick, a small rock, anything. As she inspected the woods, her eyes stopped on the Trio of Boulders. She thought she saw something move in front of the middle boulder. She stared harder but couldn’t see anything else.

  At that moment, Ben was tossed hard and pinned against a nearby tree with his entire back pressed to the tree’s trunk. His feet dangled up off the ground and his arms were forcefully extended around and behind the trunk, rendering him unable to reach his unseen attacker. His face turned beet red as he gasped for air and it was obvious to Grace that something had hold of Ben’s throat, but she still saw nothing but Ben and the trees. Before Grace could blink, Ben’s powerful arms pulled loose from their invisible hold and swung around to grab at his own throat. Ben pushed off whatever held him and began pounding the air in front of him. His fist obviously struck something hidden in the air and Ben fell off the tree, his feet firmly planted on the ground before he began striking again.

  As Ben struck the air at his feet and whatever hid in it, a body began to appear in the area that was now the target of Ben’s intensity. Invisible before, it was the body of a very, very large man crouched in the fetal position. His head was shaved and he was dressed in green camouflage shirt and pants with tall black combat boots, the kind found in army surplus stores. His arms defensively covered his face and head and his deep voice yelled, “Enough! Enough! Stop! Stop!”