“I do love him,” Madeline admitted.
“I know you do. I can see it in your eyes and his.”
“They why do I feel like I’m still chasing him? He’s getting better, but it’s like he’s fighting something. And he won’t let me in on it.”
“It’s not like you’re letting him in either, Maddie.” Her mother reached out and grabbed Madeline’s hand. “Keep praying for him.”
“I did that before. It didn’t do anything.”
“Then don’t let up. You might get an answer when you least expect it.”
Madeline continued to work on her food and with time her appetite returned. She knew she was being difficult at times with John, but a part of her wanted more out of him. What that meant she did not know, nor did she know what form it would take. Not a day went by when she did not spend a great deal of time thinking about him, their potential future together, and the idea of traveling cross-country with him.
* * *
After dinner, Madeline did not drive back to her apartment. Instead she drove on to Sioux Falls and on the way into the city she stopped by the abandoned church that housed Dr. Amalynth’s lab. No lights were on, the parking lot was empty, and the doors were padlocked again. She decided against spending the night staking out the place due to her tiredness and the potential futility of it.
Next, she drove through Dr. Amalynth’s neighborhood. It was a risky move but as she passed his house there was no sign of activity. No vehicles were in the driveway, no lights were on, and there was now a for sale sign near the mailbox. She turned around, drove home, and wondered what John was doing tonight.
Chapter Nineteen
It was a Thursday night in late September when John and Madeline visited the St. Patrick’s Carnival on the southern edge of city. As they wandered through the crowd, they gravitated first toward the games area and then toward the food vendors. The vendors served food from trucks, trailers, and stands and the meandering wind carried the scent of caramel corn, cotton candy, corn dogs, and mini-donuts at them from all directions. The lines at each vendor were predictably long since it was the first night of the carnival, but John was willing to wait.
John held Madeline’s hand and waited in line in front of the kettle corn truck. John watched the spinning neon yellow and red spokes of the Ferris wheel under the light of a full moon. Nearby, kids screamed as they rode down a giant wavy slide on burlap sacks. He half-wondered if Madeline had the stomach to ride on the chair swing which, to him, was one of tamest rides at the carnival.
He studied the faces of the crowd and wondered how many of them struggled with forgiveness like he did days before. He brought to mind thoughts of Jared Wyckham’s animated preaching in front of Madeline’s church. He summoned recollections of Rebekkah’s harsh words in the last days as their relationship hurtled toward a final breakup. Even when he invoked the eerie solitude of the dark days that followed, it failed to resurrect the bitter emotions attached to the words, sounds, and images. He desperately wanted to tell Madeline of his victory but one look in her eyes told him it was not the right time. Instead, he just smiled.
“One large bag of kettle corn, please,” John said to the vendor inside the food truck. “And a bag of mini-donuts.” He pulled out a few dollar bills and set them on the counter. He studied the mini-donut-making machine. The donut batter was dropped in rings into a pool of heated oil only to travel like empty inner tubes down a river of bubbling oil. The donuts were then flipped by a metal wheel to fry their other sides and at the end were drained and doused with cinnamon and sugar before being bagged up. The teenage boy behind the counter handed them the donuts and the kettle corn and took the bills off the counter.
John then thanked the vendor and walked with Madeline toward a lighted stage where a band played minutes earlier. He gazed at the stage and then at the deck of stratus clouds that encroached on the moon. He wondered how long the next band would be able to play.
The stage was an imposing structure with four large metal supports, a canopy, and banks of lights that shone down onto the platform below. Curved arrays of black speakers hung high above from the edge of the stage supports as a road crew set up equipment below for the next act.
A man wearing a bright green tee shirt and blue jeans then made his way toward the stage. The tee shirt barely covered his sizeable belly. The man climbed onto the stage and picked up a wireless microphone. He looked to be in his late sixties and had a bald head, glasses, and a long white beard and mustache.
“Good evening, everyone. Is everyone having a good time tonight?” The man’s voice was raspy but full of depth as if he had a powerful singing voice. The man waited for a smattering of cheers and applause to finish. “Great. Just wanted to make a couple of announcements before I introduce our next act. I know you’ve been waiting patiently for them to take the stage for a while now. I promise you, it’ll be worth the wait. Right now we’re keeping an eye on the weather and our resident weatherman says the storms should hold off just long enough. If something changes this will be the first place you’ll hear about it.” He then went on about the food vendors, their hours, and some final comments about the carnival.
High above and to the south billowing thunderheads lit up with brilliant explosions of amber and violet anvil crawlers. The lightning put on a visual show but it could not yet compete with the sounds of the crowd, the hum of the electric generators, or the roar of the rides on the midway. John knew the storms were building along a wandering warm front and the forecast put the storms over their location in two to three hours. Although there was nothing to chase, the artistic side of him longed to stand out in a field with a camera and a tripod and take some pictures.
When the lightning illuminated the nearby thunderheads he caught glimpses of new storm cores that sprouted up just to the west of their location. A flash of lightning in the new clouds confirmed his suspicions that several new storms were firing up in advance of the main line.
He whipped out his cell phone. A quick glance at the local radar only reinforced his concern.
“What is it?” Madeline asked as she plunged her hand into the bag full of warm kettle corn.
“Enjoy this while you can,” he said to Madeline.
“Good thing we brought our rain ponchos,” she said. “Does this mean no fireworks?”
“Maybe not manmade ones.”
Just then a stiff gust of wind kicked up a cloud of dust from a nearby baseball field and sent it into the crowd. Some shielded their eyes and Madeline secured her kettle corn bag. The man in the bright green shirt descended from the stage. John tracked him as he made his way through the crowd.
What caught John’s eye, though, were two sets of brightly colored balloons that were tethered to either side of the music stage. As the wind pushed the dust and stray paper through the carnival grounds, both sets of balloons broke free. He watched the balloons glide up and along the air currents toward one of the developing thunderheads.
The balloons soared out over the crowd. One set passed by a bank of lights that illuminated the nearby baseball field. John squinted and saw something peculiar trailing behind the balloons as if there was a long shimmering string attached to them. He waved at the man in the bright green shirt with both arms in a desperate bid for attention. He then wove his way through the crowd and caught up to the man. “Do you know who’s in charge of the carnival?”
“Why I am. I’m Father Hauser.” He extended a hand to shake. “And you are?”
“John. John Sayers. Nice to meet you.” John returned the handshake, but wondered if the priest had ever dislocated someone’s shoulder with that grip.
“How did you hear about us?”
“There was an ad in my girlfriend’s church bulletin.”
“Great, great. What church?”
“Spirit of Grace.”
“Odd. We didn’t submit it to your bulletin.”
John became agitated. “Okay, but you might want to clear the crowd outta he
re.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Everyone needs to leave. Now.”
“On what grounds?” Father Hauser said with a chuckle as if he did not take John seriously.
“There’s something funny going on with those balloons that just took off from the stage.”
Father Hauser put a hand up to shield his eyes and looked toward the sky. He then gave John a confused look.
“There are wires attached to them. If you look really close you can see them.”
“I guess I don’t understand your point,” Father Hauser said.
“Somebody just turned your stage into a lightning rod.”
“It’s not supposed to storm for a while. I’ve run this festival for years and we’ve never had a problem.” The priest waved him off.
John looked back over the crowd and saw Madeline as she wove her way toward them. Then he saw a strange string-like material hanging from a streetlight she passed. “Here, come with me for a minute,” he said to Father Hauser.
John led the way toward Madeline and the streetlight. By the time the three of them converged, John reached up and tore a piece of material off the lamp. It had the consistency of cotton candy but he was convinced this cotton candy was made of black carbon nanotubes. He ran to the next lamp and found more. Then he discovered the spider web-like material on the roof of a vendor truck.
He pointed to the truck roof and yelled back to Father Hauser. “Do you know if any of your workers put that up there?”
“What is that? I can’t think why they’d do anything like that.”
John sprinted back and faced the priest. “Do you happen to know a Dr. Amalynth?”
Father Hauser rubbed his beard and thought a moment. “What’s his first name?”
“Frank.”
“I haven’t heard that name in years. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Curious kid. I didn’t know he went on to be a doctor. Does he work at the hospital?”
“He’s not a medical doctor,” Madeline said. “He’s an electrical engineer.”
“Did you guys have a falling out?” John said.
“Not that I can remember. I haven’t seen him in years and years. He was only here for a year. In our private school. Didn’t play well with the other kids on the playground. Bullied a lot. You say he became a doctor? I didn’t think he was very smart. Kids used to call him dum-dum Frankie ‘cause he stared out window all the time. Especially when it rained. Heh, I remember one storm he just stared and stared. Couldn’t get the kid to do a cotton pickin’ thing some days. And then…”
“Wait. What did they call him?” John said.
“Huh? Dum-dum Frankie.”
John thought back to the confrontation in the abandoned church and how Dr. Amalynth’s demeanor changed when he used the word ‘dumb’ to describe something he had personally done. “Did you ever call him that?”
Father Hauser looked off to the side and then back at John. “Look…I…uh…we’ve all made mistakes in our time. Things we aren’t proud of. It’s like…”
Before Father Hauser finished, John pulled down more of the webbing material. “I think this whole place is wired. Wired for death. Madeline, do you have a piece of paper? I just thought of something.”
Madeline pulled out a scrap of legal pad paper from her purse. She handed it over to John along with a black pen.
“I think I just figured something out,” John said. “Madeline, remember when we found those papers in the lab?”
“You’re still thinking about those?” She said as she rolled her eyes.
John pulled out his cell phone and brought up the pictures he took that day. As he flipped through the images, he stumbled upon a news clipping that featured St. Patrick’s church and a few words about the carnival. “I’m such an idiot. It was right in front of us the whole time.” He held out the photo for the others to see. He then put his phone away and walked over to a nearby park bench and scribbled out a frantic set of notes. When he was finished he held the paper up for all of them to see. On it was a list of targets starting with Pastor Cordell and ending with Father Hauser. Next to that was a graph with several nodes on it. The graph looked like a simple spider web with Dr. Amalynth’s name in the middle.
“He’s working his way back through time,” John continued. He glanced up from the paper. “And now he’s back to the beginning.”
“The beginning of what?” Madeline said as she drew near.
“The pain.”
The clouds continued to fill in overhead and a branch of lightning fanned out high above. It was the closest the lightning had gotten to the carnival grounds all night.
John stared Father Hauser in the eye. “If you don’t get everybody out of here, he’s going to take out the entire crowd.”
Father Hauser shrugged it off. “How would he do that?”
“By plugging the carnival into the sky. If those balloon lines stay intact all it’ll take is one bolt to travel along them and take this whole place out. Those lines are made of carbon nanotubes. They can be electrified in an instant.”
A look of startled concern appeared in Father Hauser’s eyes. “But our weatherman says the storms are going to hold off until after eleven.”
John pointed back toward the looming storms just a few miles away. He then made a motion toward the northeast to indicate where the storms were headed. “Weathermen can be wrong from time to time.”
Father Hauser left their side and made his way back toward the entertainment stage. He took one look back at them with a growing look of terror in his eyes.
In that moment, John recalled the discovery of Dr. Amalynth’s electrified cage that surrounded the plastic model carnival. To Dr. Amalynth, it was a justice chamber. To John it meant the worst was yet to come. He glanced at Madeline and he knew that she understood what they had to do.
Chapter Twenty
Father Hauser ambled up onto the stage and took a deep breath. He watched the workers as they bustled about and moved pieces of a drum kit into place. He clicked on his microphone and looked solemnly out onto the crowd. “Everyone, I need you to listen. I need your attention please. I’ve just been informed some pretty rough weather is headed our way. You’re going to want to seek shelter immediately until it passes. No need to leave the grounds, folks, but get indoors. As always, the church is open and we’ll open up the school if we have to.” He spoke with the road crew on stage with animated gestures and fielded questions from the audience with the microphone turned off.
Meanwhile John and Madeline tore at every black fiber web they saw in panic. John pulled out a pocketknife to cut through the material and the more he removed the angrier he became. He threw the webs onto the ground in disgust and glared up toward the heavens.
“How on earth did these get everywhere without anybody noticing? Do you think he used a drone?” Madeline said as she ripped a bundle of the webbing off a nearby tree limb.
John spotted something scurrying along the ground out of the corner of his eye. He walked up to it and scooped it up in his hands only to find it was not a bug but rather something metallic and mechanical. Its legs kicked about in a frenzy. “Looks like he’s got workers in the shadows.” John held out the palm-sized mechanical spider to Madeline.
She leapt backward. “It is alive?”
“No. It’s a machine.” He dropped it onto the ground and stomped on it with the heel of his sneaker. The legs rocketed off in random directions as the shell of the body snapped into three pieces. He picked up one of the pieces and found a tiny spool of carbon nanotube thread inside. “This looks like the thing I saw on your Dad’s kitchen table. Guess I know why he gave me those wireflies.”
He felt a few large raindrops hit his head and shoulders. He peered up to see an amber bolt of lightning fan out overhead. “We’ve gotta get out of here. Let’s go back to the truck.”
No sooner did they start running than a bolt crunched into the entertainment stage. It popped some of the lights, blew out the speakers, an
d sent a shower of angry orange sparks out over the crowd. A panicked wave of people hollered and flocked toward the school while others scampered toward the parking lot.
All of the amusement rides ground to a stop. While a handful of people disembarked from the Tilt-A-Whirl, a lightning bolt punched into one of the empty cars and knocked it off of the platform with a loud crash. Amidst the screams and confusion, John and Madeline made it back to the truck. John looked back for a moment and stopped to watch as faint, thin, glowing blue lines appeared in a web shape just above the midway where all the amusement games were. He remembered that look from the grass around St. Andrew’s Church and drew his hands into fists.
In seconds another bolt hammered the midway area and its energy sizzled and spread out along the web that drifted down from above. Bright blue and white flashes then rocked multiple sections of the midway. Light bulbs exploded high above and rained glass down onto the ground. Smoke churned into the sky as the rain picked up. Awnings ignited and the wind whipped them into towers of flame. At once the entire carnival grounds and the nearby school were plunged into darkness.
Inside the truck, John pounded the dashboard with his fist. Madeline called the police on her cell phone.
He fired up his truck only to notice something strange in his rearview mirror. There, on a road adjacent to the carnival grounds, he saw a white pickup truck in the dark with its headlights turned off. Without hesitation, he knew who it was and what he needed to do.
He pulled his laptop out of the backseat and propped it open. He plugged in the antenna device Dr. Ferganut gave him and started up the software that controlled the wireflies. He then pulled out a pair of wireflies and held one in the palm of his left hand and set the second one to the side. With his right hand he powered down his driver side window.
“Hit a key will you?” He said to Madeline.
She reached over and smashed a key on the laptop. The first wirefly whirred to life and set off after the white pickup truck. He then grabbed the second device and held it out the window until it, too, lifted off toward the heavens.
The Hammer of Amalynth Page 10