“No, stop, you do that with everything you don’t understand: reframe it as childish.”
“It is childish.”
“Stories have value… you know what, I’m not going to get into this with you. The problem, right now, is that I don’t know how to make the ghosts animating those mannequins stop. If this is a ghost story, I have to find out why they’re so angry. If this is a happy ending kind of story, I’ll live, free them, and probably suffer a lot anyway. If it’s not a happy ending, I’m gonna die and haunt this place along with them. Either way, I first have to figure out what the big secret is. But, if this is a magic story, I just need to figure out how to break the spell.”
“I vote for the second one,” Wilson said.
“I do as well,” Cant said, “if we are voting.”
“The problem is, even with all the fantasy and sci-fi mashup going on here, I think we’re all stuck in a horror story.”
“So we do not get a vote,” Cant said. He looked disappointed.
“All right, what’s the big secret, then?” Wilson asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You mean you haven’t finished revealing it yet.” He gestured to the hole in the floor to make his point.
“Yes. No, that’s not really what I mean. I mean that when I wrote this story I didn’t know what the big secret was and I still don’t.”
“Not a problem. You’re here, just make up something.”
Wilson dropped the backpack with the pulse cannon on the floor and picked up the sledgehammer. He got going on the floor as if this was what he was supposed to be doing.
“Just make up something?”
“Well, I don’t know, Oliver, I’m not the expert on genre fiction in the room. I told you to work on literary fiction, and you didn’t, and now here we are.”
“Look, it has to be a big secret, okay? It has to be something jaw-dropping, something that makes the reader gasp and think, you know what? If this happened to me I’d be haunting that place too. Someone has to have been wronged.”
“And you don’t know what that is.”
“I never worked that part out! And now you want me to come up with it on the fly?”
“All right, all right, I understand. But look, you had some subtext, right? Something about a fire? Burning oil? Something connected to the military, maybe. I assume since they’re haunting this warehouse you’re leaning toward an Indian burial ground kind of twist. The secret-burial-site or whatever.”
“Yes, that was where I was heading. I just didn’t like it.”
“So we’re digging up bodies over here.”
His last hammer strike had dislodged the under layer of cement, with the first evidence of the ground underneath it starting to show. With dirt, there could be bodies. There could be a lot of things.
“It’s just cliché. I wanted something bigger. And that doesn’t even solve the problem. It doesn’t explain why the ghosts are turning up now, why they picked on m… on Orrin, and it doesn’t explain why or how they died.”
“So what?”
“So it should be monstrous, or it’ll just be like every other ghost story. I mean, who doesn’t expect the secret burial ground angle? It’s not even worth finishing.”
Wilson set aside the hammer.
“Look, if you tell anybody I said this I’ll deny it, but maybe it’s okay to write the by-the-numbers cliché everybody can see coming from a mile away if it gets us to the end of the story.”
“I agree with this one,” Cant said. “Whatever you can do that works in stopping these monsters, you should do. Here they come.”
Problematically, the ghost-animated mannequin army appeared to be learning. This begged the question; why would such beings behave like a mindless horde in the first place given they were thinking beings at one time—as always, assuming first that ghosts were even real. Perhaps there was something about dying and becoming a ghost that robbed a (former) person of their intellect. More likely it was just easier to have a mindless horde than it was to have a large mob of discerning undead individuals, from a writing standpoint.
Oliver decided it was probably his fault, indirectly, since this story was evidently his. He had no regrets as far as this point went, because the horde was easier to defend against when they were collectively stupid and predictable. At the same time it was probably his fault when they started throwing things, given that was something he predicted would be happening eventually.
The things they were throwing weren’t all that lethal—charcoal briquettes—and their aim was terrible, but the fact that they decided to try it at all meant he could count on their learning curve to continue to trend upward. Once that happened, and they located the cutlery a couple of aisles over, things were going to get pretty dicey.
“All right, well, let’s find your secret burial ground evidence,” Wilson said. He got down on his knees and started digging at the dirt with his hands.
Oliver crouched down next to him to help. The earth was cold, and a lot easier on the hands than it should have been. Loose topsoil is not what one should expect to discover underneath the floor of a warehouse.
But, they had no shovels. Those were four aisles down, on the wrong side of the mannequin horde. So it was a good thing, even if it didn’t make a lot of sense.
“Got something,” Wilson said.
He leaned in deeper, to his elbows, then started pulling. Oliver thought that if this was a very different kind of story, the thing he was grabbing would end up pulling Wilson down instead.
Nice twist, he thought. Then he held his breath until Wilson got his arms out of the dirt.
What he’d found was a human skull.
“Yuck,” he said. “You know, if you’d taken my advice, we’d be at a cocktail party on the seaside or yachting or going to a family reunion, instead of digging up bodies. You and your genre fiction, I swear. But this should do the trick, right?”
“It might.”
Wilson got to his feet and stepped out onto the concourse, the skull aloft.
“We’ve found the bodies!” he shouted. “Very tragic, I’m so sorry, we’ll go tell the world and… I don’t know. What else, fellas?”
“We will vindicate you!” Cant added.
“Yes, that’s very good. Vindication!”
The response of the dummy army was unspectacular in that they continued to exist, a fact that was particularly acute in Wilson’s case after he took a briquette in the forehead.
“Aowww!” he said. “Oliver, it isn’t working. Should we find more skulls?”
“Maybe the ghosts think that idea’s been played too,” Ollie said.
“This is stupid, just make this the ending and, I don’t know, fix it in a rewrite.”
“Pretty sure we’re not allowed a rewrite here. Hang on.”
Oliver reached into the dirt. He thought he saw something else in there while Wilson was intent on discovering a bone. Something that wasn’t in the shape of human remains.
What he came up with was a small box. It was rectangular, metallic, and looked the right size to hold a set of decorative fountain pens.
“What did you find?” Wilson asked. “It is better than my skull?”
“Could be.”
There was some kind of legend stamped in the metal on the lid. Oliver brushed off the dirt to get a better look, which was a challenge in the half-light of the room. He spat on it, and rubbed with his sleeve.
Lot 42.
Someone appeared out of the corner of his eye. He’d been dealing with highly visible animated plastic mannequins for so long he nearly forgot this all began with a decidedly scarier-looking ghost. And there she was again, at the other end of the row. She was speaking words he couldn’t hear, and pointing at the box in his hands.
“This is it,” Oliver said.
Wilson looked at what he had, not particularly impressed.
“That? What is it?”
“It’s a box.”
“I see that,
what’s inside?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t opened it yet.”
Oliver stood up and held it out for all the mannequins to see it with their non-existent eyes.
“LOT FORTY-TWO,” Oliver announced.
He was not hit in the head with a charcoal briquette, which was nice. Instead, a curious occurrence: the army stood still, as if at attention. Then there was a weird doubling effect that looked like a trick of the eyes, as the specters inhabiting each of the dummies took one step forward, and then melted into the ground.
That left nothing to hold up the mannequins, and while they were designed to stand upright for long periods, that required an exactness of positioning that was absent in this case. Thus, they all fell to the ground in a collection of heaps.
“Okay, why did that work?” Wilson asked.
“Magic,” Cant said. “He spoke the words which broke the spell.”
“Or found the clue which released them,” Oliver said.
“But what is it?”
“I don’t know what it is and I don’t know what it means. That was the key.”
“Not knowing was the key? Open the box, maybe it is a key.”
Oliver checked the front of the box. There was a latch, but no lock. Slowly, he unhooked it and lifted the lid.
“It’s not a key,” he said. “And I have no idea what I’m looking at.”
The box contained a glass vial of blue liquid in a cushioned interior that looked designed specifically to safely transport a glass vial.
Oliver showed it to Wilson, and then to Cant, who shrugged.
“We should find our way from this place,” he said, kicking one of the dummy legs on the floor. “I have no interest in your potions.”
“What did you mean, this was the key?” Wilson asked.
“The key to the plot. Since there was no back-loaded mystery to solve, it had to be front-loaded instead.” He looked at Cant. “Any idea how we get out of here?”
Cant pointed with the tip of his sword down the concourse.
“There is a barred exit ahead. Is it a door you can open?”
Oliver checked his hip.
“I think so. I have the night watchman keys.”
They picked their way around the mannequin carcasses, slowly, as if they were all sleeping instead of just being inanimate objects. Oliver kept waiting for one of them to grab his ankle or something.
“So you cheated,” Wilson said.
“What do you mean?”
“You couldn’t come up with a big reveal in the parameters of your ghost story, so you put the introduction of the mystery at the end of the story instead.”
“I guess you could call that cheating, sure.”
They got to the door. Oliver began fumbling for the keys, but didn’t have to bother. Cant took one look at the chain, gave it a yank, and let it fall away from the handles. On seeing the impressed faces of his companions, he shrugged.
“I am not that strong. It wasn’t locked.”
He pushed open the door, which led to a vestibule, and an opaque steel panel gate that rolled down from the top of an overhang. Cant leaned down to grab the bottom of it. Assuming it wasn’t locked, this would expose them to the night.
“Hang on a second,” Wilson said. “Oliver, it’s cheating because instead of ending the story, you’re starting a new one. So what kind of story is it now?”
“I have no idea,” Oliver said. “But I’m pretty sure when he opens that gate we’re going to find a city still under attack by aliens. That’s how we left it.”
Cant ignored the talk of aliens, and opened the gate. Oliver felt like he should be reaching for his cannon, but he didn’t have one any more. Old instincts.
There were no aliens waiting for them outside. It looked like the city was just as abandoned as before, but the rain had stopped. No giant bugs were in sight.
Minerva was there. She was standing in the middle of the street, looking like it was perfectly normal for them to have emerged from this exit at this time.
“Minnie!” Oliver said.
At the same time, Cant was taking vast strides in her direction.
“Gods, Atha, where have you been? Lazy elf.”
Oliver had no time to register this, because Minnie was backpedaling from both of them.
“Stay away, both of you,” she said. “It’s armed.”
She had on a jacket Oliver didn’t remember her wearing the last time they were together. It was an overcoat that was a little big for her, which made sense as soon as she removed it.
There was a bomb vest strapped to her chest.
“You have to do what he says or he’ll set it off.”
“Oh,” Oliver said. “So it’s that kind of story now.”
Chapter Twelve
The Wisdom of Owls
Whatever process transformed the interior of the real department store called Daniel’s into the thoroughly imaginary department store Mad Maggie’s had not impacted the rest of the city. In Oliver’s imagining, Mad Maggie’s existed as a large warehouse in a parking lot oasis, a standalone building in the exurbs. Conversely, Daniel’s was the place you took a subway train to reach, or to come across because it was next to a host of other shops.
The shopping village aspect was still all there. They were downtown, much closer to the hub—and Pallas—than before they took to the underground at Candle Square.
This area of the city was sort of like an outdoor mall. The streets had been surrendered to pedestrian traffic over a decade earlier, and there was a constant rotation of stores through the high-rent storefronts. It lacked the singularity of vision one might see in a real outdoor mall, with several landlords instead just the one, but that just made it less homogenous, and also less artificial.
Ollie liked the area, although he never shopped in it, even though it wasn’t at all far from his apartment. These stores catered to a clientele that had money, which he did not have. Wilson and Minerva, perhaps, would be more familiar with it.
Of course, all of that was before there were aliens, a warrior from an imaginary timeline, ghosts, and whatever was going on with Minerva at this moment.
“Who is he,” Oliver asked.
“There is no other man here,” Cant added. He was scanning the area like any good warrior would. “We are alone.”
“I don’t know who he is. He jumped me in the basement.”
“All right, what does he want?” Ollie asked.
“This garment you wear. Is it enchanted?”
She addressed Cant first. Minnie didn’t seem to be having any trouble with him being there, and also had no problem flipping from modern woman in a modern city, to Atha the elven archer.
“The vest is cursed,” she said.
He gasped.
“We require a blessed token! Sorcerer! With all of those trinkets of yours, do you have a charm?”
“If you recall, I didn’t exactly pack for this trip,” Oliver said, “so no.”
“Then use your magic!”
Oliver decided he’d be better off ignoring Cant for the time being.
“What does he want?” he repeated to Minerva.
“He said there was something he needed inside that store, and he didn’t know where it was, but you would find it. He seems to have a strong opinion about what you should do with it next.”
She held up a cell phone, high over her head, and walked it over to Oliver.
“Don’t do anything crazy,” she said under her breath, “I think he may be able to see us, somehow.”
Ollie accepted the phone, while Minerva took several steps back, as if the phone was the bomb and not the thing on her chest. The line was already open. He hit the speaker button.
“Hello? Who’s this?” Oliver asked.
“You shouldn’t have to ask, Orson.” The man on the other end of the phone had a Russian accent. He sounded familiar, but Oliver couldn’t place him.
“I’m not…”
He was about to sa
y I’m not Orson, before Minerva looked him in the eye and shook her head.
Her eyes were green, and they weren’t that kind of green before, and it distracted him temporarily, because she was clearly now playing the part of both Minerva and Atha, and Atha had unique and not-quite-human green eyes.
“Hello… old friend,” he said on the phone. “I thought you were dead.”
Minerva made a silent what? to which he shrugged. He was ad-libbing, but with the best generic dialogue that came to mind. It seemed to fit the situation.
His old friend laughed.
“And now you have followed the clues right to where I wanted. Do you have it?”
He realized he had spoken to this man.
“Not sure what you’re talking about, Koestler.”
“We’ve been playing this game for too long, comrade. Please don’t make me blow up your lovely little girlfriend. You know I will. Singapore wasn’t all that long ago.”
Singapore was where I killed him, Oliver thought. After he murdered my partner. He was holding her captive to force me to betray my country and I wouldn’t do it, and he killed her. I hunted him down and had a chance to bring him in alive, and instead I shot him in cold blood and watched his body fall off one of the tallest buildings in the world. He shouldn’t be alive.
“I remember,” Oliver said.
“I am sure you do. Now. Do you have it?”
“I have it.”
“Prove this to me.”
“Lot forty-two.”
There was a pause. Then: “Is it intact?”
“Of course it is. It’s a lethal poison, isn’t it? If it broke, we would be dead.”
“The whole city would be dead. Perhaps the country. And yet since the evacuation, we are very much alone. I could have been convinced the contagion escaped, but for the lack of bodies.”
“All right so you have your proof. This is your game, how do you want to play it?”
“Ordinarily, I would meet you in public, where your lady friend’s kaboom would destroy many more lives, and where you might be less inclined to employ that irrational heroism of yours. But since you’ve gone to such great pains to remove all the collateral damage from the city, I have had to make other plans.”
Unfiction Page 23