Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3

by Karen McQuestion

  Like faithful dogs, Mallory and I quietly trailed him past the living room and through the kitchen. When he opened a door leading to the basement stairs, I said, “The stone is down there?”

  He said, “Of course,” and proceeded confidently down the stairs, clearly not doubting we’d follow him. I had an uneasy feeling about this.

  I stepped back to see if Mallory was feeling it too, but her face didn’t show any concern. She took my movement for good manners, as if I were saying—Ladies first!

  “Thank you, Russ.”

  I paused at the top, uncertain, but when she was halfway down I came to my senses and followed. This was Mr. Specter, after all. The science teacher at my high school. It’s not like he’d have a dungeon in his basement, knock us unconscious, and lock us up. I’d told my parents I was going to be here and Mallory’s car was parked in front. If I didn’t come home, this is where my parents would come looking. Still. Why not have the stone upstairs? He had known I was coming to get it since this afternoon.

  My nose wrinkled as I got a whiff of something, and at the same time Mallory said, puzzled, “I smell popcorn!” At the landing at the bottom, I smelled it too. Fresh buttered popcorn. Making the turn, I saw that Mr. Specter’s basement had been converted to actual living space—no cement block walls and iron support beams here. Instead, the walls had been covered with drywall, the ceiling tiled, the floor carpeted. Bookshelves on either side of a closed door lined the wall opposite the stairwell. A horseshoe-shaped sectional sofa with a coffee table in the middle took up a good portion of the room.

  And sitting on that sofa were my psychiatrist, Dr. Anton; Mrs. Whitehouse, the lunch lady; Kevin Adams, the owner of Power House Comics; and Rosie, the waitress from the diner—all of them munching on popcorn and drinking tall glasses of what looked like lemonade. When Mallory and I walked into the room, they stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to us.

  “Speak of the devil,” said Mrs. Whitehouse. “Or should I say devils?” She popped a kernel of popcorn in her mouth and laughed an insidious cackle.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Mallory backed up a step and said, “Sorry for interrupting.”

  “You aren’t interrupting, Miss Nassif,” Mr. Specter said. “Please take a seat. We’d like to talk to you.”

  “Just a minute,” I said, taking hold of Mallory’s arm. “What’s this all about?”

  “A book club?” Mallory asked, her voice tentative.

  “It’s not a book club,” I said. “They’re here because of us.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Dr. Anton said, his head tipped to one side in a show of empathy. “This isn’t anything you need to worry about. We just want to talk to you. Just a friendly chat.” Somehow it didn’t feel like a friendly chat. All of them stood up now, and I did a mental tally—there were five of them and two of us, but we were closer to the exit and we were younger. Maybe if we ran…

  Mallory leaned against me. For the first time, I saw a look of alarm cross her face. All along she’d been saying someone was looking for us. She’d used the word “hunted,” but even after I’d been shot and despite spotting the men in business suits at the hospital, I sensed it hadn’t felt truly menacing to her until now. Is it paranoia if people really are out to get you?

  “I think we need to go,” Mallory said. “My mom is expecting me back soon.”

  “This was never about getting the stone back, was it?” I asked Mr. Specter accusingly. “You had this planned all along.”

  “Really, Mr. Becker,” he said. “What an imagination. We only first talked about it after school. I couldn’t have planned this too far in advance, could I now?”

  Rosie got up off the couch, her face crinkled in motherly concern. “You’re scaring these young people, Sam. Stop it.” She came up to Mallory. “We just want to talk to you, honey. That’s it. We want to help you, if we can. You’ll be free to go anytime.” She turned and waved an arm at the group. “Look at us. Do any of these people look like they mean you harm?” I surveyed the group and saw her logic. None of them looked capable of doing anything nefarious. Still, you never know. I’d watched enough movies to know the ones you least expected always turned out to be the villains.

  “We’re just going to be talking?” Mallory said.

  “I promise you, honey, it’s just talk. We want to give you some information. Nothing painful.” Her manner was reassuring; her tone was soothing. “All we ask is that you keep everything we say here confidential.”

  “It can’t leave this basement,” Mr. Specter said.

  “We’re listening,” I said, crossing my arms.

  “Oh, don’t be like that,” Mrs. Whitehouse said. “Really.”

  “Please, sit down,” Rosie said, gently pulling on Mallory’s elbow and leading her over to one end of the sectional. I shrugged and sat down too, resting one arm protectively behind Mallory on the back of the sofa. “You’ll see,” Rosie said. “This is gonna be painless.” She smiled in a friendly way.

  “So what’s the deal?” I asked. “You all know each other?”

  Mr. Specter cleared his throat. “Yes, we’ve all known each other since high school.”

  Mallory leaned forward, her interest piqued. “You went to high school together?”

  “Yes, indeed. Well, except for Arthur.” Mr. Specter waved at Dr. Anton. “He went to the boy’s prep, St. Mark’s Academy. It’s not there anymore.”

  “Which is a pity,” Dr. Anton said. “It was a good school. But poorly run. If it weren’t for some very avoidable financial troubles it would still be around.”

  “We all met when we were walking around at night,” Mrs. Whitehouse said. “Just like you and your friends.” As much as I didn’t like Mrs. Whitehouse, I was glad someone was getting to the point.

  Mallory turned to me, her eyes wide. Rosie pushed the bowl of popcorn in front of us, and Mallory took a few kernels before asking, “Did you see the lights too?”

  “We all saw them,” Mr. Specter said, and the group nodded in confirmation. “We met right there on the field. Before then, none of us knew the others had been out night walking too.”

  “It was incredible,” Kevin Adams said. “I can still see those particles glowing in an enormous spiral on the field. Right away I knew we were experiencing something most people only dream of.” His eyes shone and I could imagine a teenage version of him. His younger self would be slimmer, and his Elvis hair and sideburns would look less out of place, I thought, on a younger, hipster-type. I tried to imagine the five people in the room—the lunch lady, comic book store owner, teacher, psychiatrist, and waitress—as teenagers so long ago, standing in the field marveling over a cosmic occurrence.

  “And then, the changes began,” Rosie said. “We began to experience unusual things. You know what I’m talking about?” Mallory nodded and Rosie continued. “I myself noticed I could read minds. I won’t lie; it freaked me out a little bit. I got used to it, though.” She chuckled. “And I found out that what people say is very different from what they’re thinking.” Rosie reached for the pitcher on the coffee table, filled two plastic cups with lemonade, and handed them to Mallory and me. Even when she wasn’t working at the diner she still couldn’t resist giving people food and drink.

  Mrs. Whitehouse raised her hand and said, “My turn.” Her voice got louder. “I discovered almost right away that I could heat things up just by touching them. My hand never changed temperature, but if I focused, whatever I touched got hotter and hotter. It was a big help when I got the job in the lunchroom right after high school.” She tucked her hair behind her ear, which made me realize exactly what looked off about her. Without her hair net, her head looked oddly bare.

  There was a pause, and Mallory said, “What about the rest of you?”

  Kevin Adams said, “Mine didn’t come for weeks, and at first I thought I’d been left out. And then, one day, I could see through things like I had X-ray vision. I went to Vegas i
n my early twenties and cleaned up at the card table. Eventually the casino owners figured something was up. They thought I was cheating and kicked me out, but by then I had made a small fortune. I used my winnings to buy the comic book store.”

  “What about you, Dr. Anton?” I asked. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if he could read minds too, and if so, if he’d done it while I was his patient. That would have been a terrible intrusion.

  “Mine was a little boring, I’m afraid,” he said, stroking his goatee. “I realized at some point that I could charge things. Electrical things. Old batteries and the like. It came in handy on occasion, but it wasn’t terribly useful.”

  “Dr. Anton is being modest,” Mr. Specter said. “He was a human conductor of electricity, a marvel of science. It was truly amazing to see.”

  “He was,” I said, suddenly realizing they’d all spoken in past tense. “So, not anymore?”

  “No,” Mr. Specter said, shaking his head. “The abilities don’t last indefinitely.” He leaned forward, his hands on his knees, and scanned the room, looking at the others. “When was the last time any of you were able to use your gifts? Or even were able to feel them?”

  There was a collective murmur among the group. No one seemed able to pinpoint exactly when it had happened. “It just faded away,” Dr. Anton said.

  “By the time I turned forty it was all over,” Rosie said. “It just got to be less and less and then it was gone.”

  Kevin Adams said, “I lost my X-ray vision about the same time I lost the ability to run a mile without stopping. Now I’m huffing and puffing after a block or so. Don’t get any older if you don’t have to, kids.”

  The other adults laughed. “Too many donuts, Kev,” said Mrs. Whitehouse, patting her own considerable stomach. “I told you they’d slow ya down.”

  Mr. Specter said, “Let’s not get off track here. There are things Mallory and Russ need to know before they leave this room.” He fixed his eyes on me. “This is what we’ve learned over the past few decades, Russ. It seems that every sixteen years or so the light particles come, sometimes two years in a row and always near the field at the train station. At least that’s the case locally. The particles fall in other places in the world on a different time schedule, but just for our purposes we’ll talk about Edgewood.”

  Dr. Anton said, “Certain types of people seem compelled to come into contact with the particles. They have trouble sleeping for months leading up to the event. Their homes start to feel claustrophobic. For inexplicable reasons they feel the urge to walk at night.”

  “Certain types of people?” I said.

  “Sophomores in high school,” Mrs. Whitehouse said, firmly.

  “Just sophomores?” I asked, exchanging a look with Mallory.

  “So far.” Mr. Specter got up and started pacing as he spoke. I recognized it as something he did in class. “We think it has something to do with cell growth of the individual at a specific age—sixteen years old, plus or minus six months or so.”

  “And all of these individuals are exceptionally smart,” Dr. Anton said.

  “Exceptionally smart?” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  “I know I don’t seem smart,” Mrs. Whitehouse said, her face turning red, “but actually—”

  “I don’t think he was referring to you,” Mr. Specter said, overriding her. “Were you, Mr. Becker?”

  “No, sorry if you thought that.” I hadn’t been talking about her, but I could see where the mix-up occurred. “I meant me. I’m not exceptionally smart.”

  “Every one of the teenagers affected has had exceptional intellectual abilities, including you, Russ,” Dr. Anton said. “Remember the tests I had you do when your parents first brought you in?”

  I remembered. I’d filled out pages and pages of Scantron forms, all the while wondering what they had to do with having trouble falling asleep. “Yeah?”

  “You scored quite high,” Dr. Anton said. “Nearly genius level. I suspect that if you’d been less sleep-deprived you’d have done even better.”

  “So why do I have to work so hard to get good grades?”

  “Because high school is boring,” Rosie said. “Good lord, it’s amazing you children learn anything the way schools are set up. No offense,” she said, smiling up at Mr. Specter.

  “None taken,” he said.

  “We know it’s happened before to other kids,” Mallory said. “And that some of them disappeared or died. Why?”

  Mr. Specter took off his glasses and wiped them on the front of his shirt. The room got noticeably quieter and everyone’s gaze was aimed at the floor. I wondered if maybe this was news to them, if maybe Mallory had stumbled upon a pattern they hadn’t noticed.

  “You weren’t aware of this?” I said.

  “No, we all know about it,” Rosie said, her voice quavering. “We lost some good people that way.” Her voice broke the spell of silence. The rest of them lifted their heads and nodded thoughtfully.

  “So why did it happen?” Mallory set down her glass of lemonade and searched their faces. “Where did all those kids go? Why did some of them die?”

  “I’ll take this one, Sam, if you don’t mind,” Dr. Anton said. “It’s because of the Associates. There’s an organization, they call themselves the Associates. They run pretty much everything.”

  “Everything where?” I asked.

  “Everything everywhere,” Dr. Anton said. “Everything in the world of any consequence is controlled by the Associates.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “Everything in the world?” Mallory said. “What do you mean? I’ve never heard of them.”

  “Everything might be a bit of an exaggeration,” Mrs. Whitehouse said. “They don’t do business in every single country.”

  “Just the ones they care about,” Mr. Specter said. He perched on the end of the couch opposite us. “They don’t, for instance, seem to care much about Canada, which is a big mistake on their part.”

  “Don’t underestimate the Canadians, I always say. They seem all nice and polite and apologetic, but when it comes right down to it, they’re survivors.” Rosie stood up with the pitcher. “Does anyone need a top-up on their lemonade?”

  Mallory held out her cup. “So what does this have to do with us?”

  “The Associates have always been around,” Mr. Specter said. “They were the ones who orchestrated the presidential assassination of 1865. They wreaked havoc with the financial world in the twenties and started the Great Depression. They’ve been behind every military action—”

  “Sam, that’s enough,” Rosie said firmly. “You’re scaring them.” She sat down and put the pitcher on the table. She spoke directly to us. “In a nutshell—the Associates like to cause problems, because people are easier to manipulate when they’re hungry and desperate and panic-stricken. And the Associates are all about power and money. Greed. It’s an old story.”

  “How can this be?” Mallory said. “Wouldn’t people know?”

  “Most people don’t know,” said Kevin Adams. “And the ones who try to tell are discredited or killed. Those of us who do know—and there are hundreds of us—have to proceed very cautiously. We have a whole network of people working behind the scenes doing whatever we can to offset their evil. One of the ways we try to get the word out is through disguised mass media.”

  “Disguised mass media?” I’d never heard that term before and couldn’t even imagine what it meant. If something was disguised, wouldn’t that mean hidden? How could it be mass media then?

  “Through comic books!” Mallory said, her eyes lighting up.

  Kevin pointed a finger at her. “Bingo, little lady. She’s a smart one,” he added, looking at Mr. Specter. “Comic books have more truth than people know. Movies too. We’re trying to get people used to certain concepts, so that if news of the Associates and what they’re doing becomes public, it won’t be a complete shock. We’re seeing progress too, now that comic books and graphic novels are becoming
more mainstream.”

  “I think we need to get back to the main reason for this meeting,” Mrs. Whitehouse said, brushing her hands together to wipe off popcorn salt. “We need to warn these kids about the recruiters.”

  “Ah yes, the recruiters,” Mr. Specter said. “If it becomes known to the Associates that you have supernatural powers, you will be recruited to work for them. We need to avoid that at all costs.”

  “That won’t happen,” Mallory said firmly. “My parents would never allow it. They want my high school experience to be a priority.”

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but the Associates don’t take no for an answer,” Mr. Specter said. “It wouldn’t be optional.”

  “Oh.”

  I’d gotten good at reading Mallory’s face. All those hours of staring at her had paid off. I saw that she understood what he was saying, and that she also got that he’d indirectly answered the question about the kids who’d died or disappeared. Those were the kids who’d said no to the recruiters.

  “How would they find out about us?” I asked. “And what can we do to avoid them?”

  “Keep a low profile,” Rosie said. “Walking around at night out in the open is probably not a good idea, no matter how good the eggs are at the diner.” She smiled kindly, and I found myself smiling back, despite the seriousness of the discussion.

  “Don’t show anyone your powers,” Kevin Adams said. “I know it’s tempting, but keep it to yourself. They have eyes everywhere.”

  Mrs. Whitehouse jumped in. “Act normal at school and with your other friends. Don’t give anyone any reason to be suspicious.”

  “Remember,” Dr. Anton said, “we’re here for you. You aren’t alone in this.”

  “We’d like to talk to the other two young people as well, if you can arrange that,” Mr. Specter said. “Nadia and Jameson?”

  “How do you know—?” I started to ask, but was interrupted by Mallory.

  “That’s out of the question,” she said. “Both of them are homeschooled, and Nadia isn’t allowed anywhere without a family member. And Jameson, well, he can be difficult at times. I’m not sure I can get him to come.”