Unfiction

by Gene Doucette

  But then the other ones started to move, and the enormity of the problem Oliver was facing came into focus: he was surrounded by an army. It was a fashionably dressed plastic army, moving slowly and missing a lot of joints, but he had nowhere to run and they had no reason to stop.

  He didn’t know what they were planning to do to him once they caught him—join us was hardly specific—but it didn’t seem like a good idea to wait and find out what they improvised.

  I need a weapon, he thought.

  But Mad Maggie’s didn’t carry weapons, because he hadn’t written them into the inventory. He would have loved to still have the pulse cannon, but that was long gone, and the only other one he knew about was sealed up in the now non-existent basement with Minnie. Unless Minnie was now the ghost near the door, because why not? Either way, her cannon was not going to be of any help. That was too bad; Oliver was pretty sure the mannequins wouldn’t fare well against one of those.

  He started running down the near side of the oval, far from the clothing half of the store and hopefully near some things that could be used to defend himself from whatever the plastic army had in mind. The mallet he used to crack open the recycling bin might have come in handy if he’d held onto it, but it wasn’t like it was the only one in the store. Hardware was just past home goods…

  Then he remembered the map in his pocket.

  He stepped off the main concourse into an aisle that featured shag rug tops for toilet seats and decorative plungers. The light wasn’t great there, but it was out of the way. Given a little time for his eyes to adjust, he was able to work out the details on Ben’s hand-drawn map and line them up with where he stood. The smaller X was just about where the cell phone display was. The bigger one was three rows further down from his current position.

  He caught the scent of… motor oil. It was a plot detail he’d forgotten about, a clue to an explanation he never entirely developed. Honestly, it was another element of the story he half-expected to edit out of any final version. It smelled like the smoke from a helicopter crash.

  The smell was uniquely helpful in the moment, because it made it a lot easier to find the right aisle. This was especially true when it turned out the spot didn’t have an X painted on the floor. There was actually nothing special whatsoever about it at all, aside from the odor. It was in a row of coffee makers, food processors and slow cookers, and these were also pretty unremarkable.

  He stood in the spot anyway; perhaps he would beam up somewhere or there was a hidden button or a save point or something, but no.

  Mad Maggie’s, meanwhile, was coming to life around him. He could hear the slow shuffle of feet—shod and unshod, depending on which section they were coming from—along the industrial carpeting. Did they know what they were doing? Or why? Was there any thought process going on at all?

  “If I promise to never leave another story unfinished, will you guys leave me alone?” he asked. That was dumb, because now they knew where he was, but it was hard to take that concern seriously when none of them had ears.

  The first mannequin appeared at the end of his row. A female one, in a very fetching mauve tennis skirt, a sporty blouse, and a sun visor to shade the eyes she didn’t have. Her hand was shaped in a grip to hold a tennis racket that wasn’t there. Either she dropped it getting down from her display dais, or someone forgot to give her one.

  She was moving so slowly, it was hard to feel terribly concerned about this development. He walked up to her, and stepped past, around the corner and into the face of a second mannequin. Then the ready-for-tennis one had an arm around his neck and he was taking her very seriously.

  She was strong. Really strong. And the one right in front of Oliver—businessman-on-the-go—was about to show how strong he was by swinging an open palm into Ollie’s stomach.

  Oliver threw himself forward and down, which flipped the tennis pro over his head and into the businessman. That took care of the immediate problem of him being choked, but there were seven more of them around already. If they were all as strong as that, he was in a huge amount of trouble.

  I should have gone to hardware, he thought, instead of stopping.

  Something hard hit him in the back of the head. He fell to his knees, and got kicked, and lost his breath for about five seconds. In that time, both arms got pinned down, and then both legs.

  He was spread-eagled in the middle of the concourse, in a store that didn’t exist.

  Join us, the girl said. She was there, at the edge of his vision, beside an endcap boasting discount pet food.

  “I don’t want to join you!” he said.

  One of the intimidatingly athletic mannequins from the sporting goods section turned the corner then, carrying a sledgehammer from the hardware section. It was on his shoulder, and the intent was clear.

  They were going to kill him.

  This was how he would join them—by becoming a ghost himself.

  It was one of the plot solutions he had been considering: a not-happy ending for Orrin. He didn’t like that ending. Horror stories were generally cautionary tales of some sort. Yes, there were other kinds of horror stories, with bleaker outlooks. He didn’t like those as much.

  The problem was, Orrin hadn’t sinned, so he shouldn’t have to die. He was a good guy who hadn’t done anything to deserve it. That was why Oliver preferred not to go in that direction.

  Perhaps Oliver had sinned, though, in which case this was appropriate. He just couldn’t imagine how. There had to be an opening for either redemption or acknowledgement.

  But, that kind of closure only happened in stories, didn’t it? This was the real world. Haunted mannequins notwithstanding.

  “Hey, can we talk about this?” he asked.

  Join us.

  “Aw, come on.”

  The one holding the sledgehammer got within striking distance, and was about to swing it into Oliver’s chest, when some sort of commotion caused the mannequin to turn around.

  “HAVE AT IT, YOU UNDEAD FIEND!” someone shouted. There was a whoosh, and the sledgehammer mannequin’s head bounced along the concourse.

  They jumped up and ran at the new attacker, and Oliver was freed.

  All he could see at first was a massive sword swinging around. The man wielding it roared, and plastic parts flew everywhere.

  It was Cant.

  “Sorcerer,” he roared. “What manner of beasts are these?”

  Of course, it couldn’t be. Cant wasn’t real.

  It was, undeniably, the large man Ollie had encountered previously, who either claimed to be Cant or starred in a hallucination in which he claimed to be Cant. But where before he’d been dressed somewhat appropriately for a citizen of the modern world, he now wore animal furs with patches of leather armor, a heavy cloak, and enormous metal-tipped boots. In his hands was the largest sword Oliver had ever seen. This wasn’t necessarily saying a lot, since he’d had few encounters with swords in his life, but it was still very large. It was the sort of thing that made more sense as a prop for an oversized statue.

  “They’re mannequins,” Oliver said. “I don’t know how they’re moving around like that, I think they may be haunted.”

  “Possessed by wraiths? Yes, I have heard of such an enchantment. It is very powerful.”

  He fought his way to Oliver, littering the floor with plastic body parts but somehow not reducing the overall number of attackers. It was a big store, but not that big.

  He took a defensive position between Oliver and the army.

  “I cannot kill what is not alive,” Cant said. “Do what you are here to do so we can be freed of this place, before they challenge my limits.”

  Oliver realized they were reassembling themselves, outside of the reach of Cant’s sword, and then coming back at him. No matter how much power he put in his swings, he could only break them at their connection points. If nothing else, it spoke to the durability of the modern mannequin when facing medieval weaponry.

  “I don’t know wha
t I’m here to do, though, and I don’t really know who you are. How did you even get inside? This place is locked down.”

  “I entered through the flexible barrier in the roof. That portal remains open, if we must retreat, but better to find your treasure first.”

  Cant pushed back the attacking force with a quick and furious charge, and then closed off the concourse by toppling a display. Dozens of fashion-forward serving bowls and stand mixers scattered on the floor.

  “And you know well who I am,” Cant said. “I am Cant of the Warven tribe, and you are a sorcerer under my employ, in a quest to locate the Kingdom. These are all things you know, Osraic Tal Nar Drang. Atha cautions patience, but we have no more time for you to recover from your addle-brained state. These creatures do not respond to force, only magic. I am here for violence; magic is your domain. Now why are we in this place?”

  “I don’t know! And my name is Oliver, not Osraic.”

  “Govern your own name as you’d like, but know that you led us here. You read the signs in the stone that none but a sorcerer could glean, and they brought you to this… merchant storage. Now enchanted guards block our way. We are well past your insistence that you understand nothing of what’s happened when your actions have made it so.”

  “They aren’t enchanted.”

  “Creatures who do not bleed, feel no pain, and can re-form themselves using the component parts of their fallen comrades are not natural beings.”

  “I know, but… I mean to say it isn’t magic. It’s the supernatural. There’s a difference.”

  Thinking Cant distracted, one of the mannequins pounced from atop a shelving unit two rows away. Cant saw the attack coming, though; he grabbed the dummy out of the air and knocked off its plastic head with a single blow.

  “All right, what is the difference?” he asked.

  “Ghosts aren’t magic, they’re something else. Supernatural and magical are different things.”

  “Just break the spell. I am quickly running out of patience with your delays.”

  “Look, I didn’t even want to do this.”

  Oliver was talking about not wanting to go to Pallas in the first place, but for a moment there he felt like what he was really talking about was being drugged and tied to a horse and taken through the mountain pass against his will. In that moment, it felt like a sense memory, rather than a plot point in a story that only existed in his head and on his laptop. He remembered how sore his behind was, and the smell of the horse, and the color of Atha’s eyes.

  It was just a moment.

  “Sorcerer: whether these beings are puppets haunted with the implacable spirits of the dead, or soulless guards propped up by a magical spell, there is no-one here but you. Cut their strings or counter the spell, I care not how. But we are going to lose if you fail to act.”

  “I’m just not sure what kind of story this is any more,” Oliver said.

  A proper regroup had taken place among the mannequins on both sides of the aisle. They’d put themselves back together somewhat haphazardly, with two and three different departments represented in the clothing choices of each one. There was a real possibility Oliver was about to be bludgeoned to death with a field hockey stick by a dummy in a suit jacket and bikini. At least they hadn’t figured out how to throw projectiles yet. That was probably coming.

  They were, anyway, about to charge. Cant may have failed to grasp the layers of absurdity that led to this moment, but he was right about the rest of it.

  “There’s something under the floor,” Oliver said.

  “The floor is made of rock,” Cant pointed out.

  “Cement, yes.”

  Oliver spied the sledgehammer, still at rest where the beheaded mannequin dropped it. He picked it up and took it to the spot on the map, where the smell of burning oil filled his nostrils.

  “Can you cut through the carpet with that sword?” Ollie asked.

  Cant pulled a dagger from a sheath on his hip and handed it over.

  “Make quick work of it, whatever you plan.”

  Ollie dropped to his knees and cut an X with the blade. It wasn’t quite as sharp as the average carpet knife, so it took multiple passes to get through. He tore open the material, which kicked up a cloud of dust and particulate matter from eons of foot traffic, and all of it smelled like oil.

  Why burning oil? he wondered. It wasn’t even an odor he was familiar with, although that didn’t stop him from the certainty that this was what he was smelling.

  Underneath the carpet, only a little off the center he’d defined when he cut the rug open, was a large X, glowing brightly on the concrete surface. Whatever marker that was used to scrawl the messages he’d seen on the walls earlier also made this mark.

  Oliver jumped to his feet, grabbed the hammer, and swung down on the X. The heavy end bounced against the surface, and that was all. He lifted it for another swing, and wondered if he was even strong enough to do this.

  There was a fire, he thought. That was going to be the big reveal in the story. But he never could decide on the particulars, or how Orrin was going to come across them.

  “Where was the fire?” he said aloud, still swinging the hammer. The cement continued to reflect the impact back into the hammer, but there were signs that it was starting to give in.

  “What did you say?” Cant shouted. He was trying to defend an attack on two fronts alone, which looked really exhausting.

  “There was a fire, but I can’t decide where it happened. This building was where fire trucks used to be stored, so the fire could have happened somewhere else but then why would the victims haunt this spot?”

  Cant didn’t answer right away, because one of the dummies was coming at him with a barbecue fork. Ollie took a couple more swings at the floor. The cement was starting to chip.

  “I do not know the ways of magic so I can be of little use to you here, sorcerer.”

  “I know. I wish I could talk to Wilson about this.”

  “I know not who this person is.”

  “Oh he’s my, my teacher I guess.”

  A real crack was showing now, and fragments were flying away with each strike.

  “You are the master now,” Cant said. “Teach yourself. And in the event I have not stressed this enough as yet, do so quickly.”

  “He’s right, you’re really on your own.”

  It was Wilson’s voice, coming from the far end of the row, on the other side of the hole Oliver was attempting to make in the floor.

  “Wilson?”

  And then he was standing there.

  “Yes. Hello. Sorry. It’s the camouflage; it really works. I’ve been here for a while.”

  “For how long? You couldn’t have helped?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m here now. So what’s the issue?”

  “Is Minerva here?”

  “No, I haven’t seen her. I thought she was with you. Things got weird. How can I help?”

  “I was trying to explain why ghosts aren’t magic. To Cant, who can’t possibly really be here. He’s fighting animated mannequins who can’t possibly exist either.”

  “Like I said,” Wilson said, “things got weird. Ghosts are magic.”

  “This is what I was saying!” Cant shouted. He was free-swinging his massive sword with one hand while beating back the army with their own body parts. This seemed smart, given they couldn’t use the parts if they were getting hit by them.

  “I mean technically,” Wilson added. “In the sense that magic doesn’t exist and neither do ghosts. I suppose you could say ghosts are supernatural while magic is unnatural.”

  Oliver took another swing at the floor. A real crevasse had begun to form, but there was nothing on the other side but more cement. He became concerned that the floor was too thick to get through. This was assuming he wanted to reach dirt in the first place. Maybe he did. If he was dealing with normal physics what he’d hit first was the basement, but that was probably gone.

  “You’re being too ge
neral,” Ollie said. “I’m thinking a ghost story can’t be a magic story. They serve different functions.”

  “But you could have a ghost in a fantasy story, and a magic-user in a ghost story.”

  “I appreciate that, but I need to know what kind of story this is.”

  “I never liked either kind of story. Hey, hang on a second. Looks like it’s getting tight out here.”

  Wilson stepped past Oliver and the hole he was making and onto the concourse.

  He had a pulse cannon on his back.

  “Where’d that come from?” Oliver asked.

  “Minnie handed it to me. I forget when. We should really find her when this is over. Hey, big guy, stand aside.”

  “Is this a magical device?” Cant asked, looking skeptical.

  “Sure.”

  Wilson fired a high-energy blast at the center of the army of mannequins. Then he turned around and fired another pulse in the opposite direction. The mannequins on both sides scattered—or rather were scattered—all over Mad Maggie’s.

  “That is great magic indeed!” Cant said. “I can see why Osraic called you master, even without a beard.”

  “Well, forget this,” Oliver said, “turn it up, point it at the wall, and let’s get out of here.”

  “I can’t, it’s damaged. Probably from when yours blew up. I was surprised it worked twice.”

  “Of course it is.”

  The component parts of the mannequins remained intact, and already Oliver could see them begin to pull themselves together. Wilson had bought only a few minutes.

  “So you were saying,” Wilson said.

  “Right, they’re fundamentally different kinds of stories. Magic reaffirms man’s need to feel in control of the natural world. It’s the idea that we can impose order through force of will. Ghosts are reminders that there’s disorder and chaos and we aren’t in control and we don’t know the rules.”

  “The world is your oyster versus don’t go out into the woods at night.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, children’s stories is what we’re talking about now.”