The Homecoming Masquerade

by Baum, Spencer

  But for Nicky, everything before age five was a blank. The timeline of her life began with the man with the eye patch. They were in a cluttered room with two chairs and a desk. The man gave Nicky’s dad a shoebox full of papers.

  Those papers were their new identities. A birth certificate for Nicky, a driver’s license for her dad, Social Security cards for both. Nicky’s new name was Nicky Jennifer Crenshaw. Her dad’s new name was Bruce Crenshaw. They were from Windsor, Connecticut, wherever that was.

  “Why do we have to change our names?” Nicky asked her dad.

  “Because there are bad people in the world who don’t like us, but they’ll never be able to find us so long as we don’t use our real names.”

  This is what she remembered about her dad. He was a tall man with the same reddish-brown hair that she had. He had big, strong forearms. He kept glasses in his shirt pocket and pulled them out whenever he needed to read something. He didn’t talk a lot. He trusted Nicky to do whatever she wanted to do with her time, and he almost never scolded her about anything.

  She remembered when her dad told her that she did have a mother, once.

  “You’re going to look just like her some day,” her dad said.

  After they said goodbye to the man with the eye patch and left, they went to a big parking lot full of RV’s. Her dad bought one. He and Nicky drove it off the lot, onto the freeway, and across the country.

  They went from town to town, parking in open fields with other nomads, doing what was necessary to survive, and moving on. When Nicky started her thieving habit, it wasn’t from need, but desire. She was a kid. She saw stuff and she wanted it. She and her dad walked through grocery stores and she put candy in her pockets. She followed her dad into the thrift store with a bare neck and came out wearing a scarf. The first time she picked a pocket was at a bus stop in Atlanta, taking some guy’s wallet while he spoke on the phone. The first time she burgled a house, she was eight years old.

  As she grew older, she came to understand that her life wasn’t normal, that most people would find her way of living to be crude and frightening. She knew that when people spoke of “jackals,” they were talking about her. A jackal was the nickname for all the many homeless or near-homeless thieves who roamed the streets. It was spoken with disdain, with pity, even.

  But to Nicky, it was a marvelous life. Sneaking into people’s pockets, their cars, their homes, and taking what she wanted—it was a game to her, and the better she played it, the more they had to eat that night. Life was a joy, and after they picked up Frankie it got even better.

  Frankie Velasquez was an eight-year-old jackal they found walking along Highway 44 in Connecticut. It was raining, so Nicky’s dad pulled over to give him a ride. When Nicky’s dad asked Frankie where he was going, Frankie shrugged his shoulders.

  “Alright then,” said Nicky’s dad. “If you have no place to go, you’ll ride with us.”

  In Frankie, Nicky had a partner in crime, a playmate, and a brother. Together, they discovered that a two-person team could do more than just burgle homes. Two people working together could pull off a heist.

  Finding that convenience store clerks were mistrustful of Frankie with his dark hair and skin, Nicky concocted a technique where Frankie stood in the back of the store, drawing all the cashier’s attention, while Nicky roamed the aisles filling her pockets. Growing bolder, the two of them executed a heist in Missouri where Frankie shoplifted in plain sight, causing the shopkeeper to chase him out of the store, and leaving the cash register available for Nicky to empty. Growing bolder still, they broke into the cleaning closet of an old hotel, stole the master key, and went room to room, announcing themselves as housekeeping, and opening the door to any room where no one answered. They hit the jackpot in Room 1402, finding a big wad of cash and a pair of diamond earrings in an open suitcase.

  Their boldest heist ever came in Dallas. Nicky and Frankie were roaming through alleys and backyards in a wealthy neighborhood, watching families come and go, getting the lay of the land. They got a little careless in the yard of a particularly large house, and a little boy poked his head out the second story window to get a better look at them.

  “Run,” Frankie whispered.

  “No, wait,” Nicky said. She and the boy were looking right at each other now. She waved at him. He waved back. A minute later, the boy came down, and the three of them played tag in the boy’s backyard.

  The little boy’s name was Timothy. He was six. Completely fascinated with Nicky, Timothy didn’t find it at all strange that she and Frankie were roaming around behind his house. When he invited them inside, Nicky told Timothy they would only go in if he agreed to tell his parents that Frankie and Nicky went to his school.

  “But you don’t go to my school,” Timothy said.

  “Yes we do,” said Nicky. “We hang out with the big kids. You’ve seen us before. We’re on the playground all the time.”

  She spoke with such authority in her voice that Timothy immediately agreed, saying, “Oh yeah, now I remember you.”

  “So you’ll tell your parents we go to your school, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Nicky and Frankie shared a look as Timothy let them inside his house. Without a word between them, they both understood how this heist was going to work.

  Timothy introduced Nicky and Frankie to his mother, saying in a loud, clear voice, “They go to my school. I’ve seen them on the playground with the big kids.”

  Nicky convinced Timothy’s mother that she lived in one of the mansions down the street, that Frankie was her classmate from a few blocks away and was spending the day with her. She talked about how much fun it was to play with Timothy in the back yard, and said nice things about the décor in the house.

  “May I use your restroom?” Frankie asked, in an exceptionally polite voice.

  “Of course,” said Timothy’s mother. She pointed Frankie down the hall and to his right.

  While Frankie was gone, Nicky talked about anything and everything that might keep Timothy’s mother from stepping out of the room. She asked about her job. Timothy’s mother said her job was to raise Timothy.

  “What about Timothy’s father?” Nicky asked.

  “He’s a doctor.”

  “So he saves people’s lives?”

  “Sometimes. Mostly he helps people.”

  “I bet he’s a really nice person. You seem really nice too. I knew Timothy had nice parents. Everyone at school gets along real good with him. Do you like school, Timothy?”

  Nicky went on like this for ten minutes, keeping Timothy and his mother trapped in the sitting room until Frankie returned.

  “Nicky, I forgot. My mom’s coming to pick me up at two. We have to go,” Frankie said.

  “Oh, okay,” said Timothy’s mother. “Do you kids need a ride?”

  “No, thank you ma’am,” said Nicky. “Like I said, just down the street.”

  And with that, they were gone, stepping out the front door, Frankie’s pockets stuffed to the gills with stolen jewelry and cash.

  Among the loot was an oversized silver cuff bracelet with a rugged texture hammered into the metal. Nicky really liked that bracelet. When the end came, she was sad for the loss of her family, of course, but she was also sad for the loss of that bracelet.

  Nicky didn’t understand the way the world worked back then. She didn’t know anything about Washington, the Samarin clan, Thorndike Academy, the Farm, or the many institutions the immortals had set up to take honest people’s money and give it to the bloodsuckers. But she did know that people like her weren’t safe, that children who didn’t live in actual homes had a tendency to disappear in the night.

  Still, when the end came, it surprised her. They were in Danville, Vermont, continuing their northward trek after Nicky and Frankie’s fabulous heist in Dallas. Nicky and Frankie went into town that day to spend the money they had stolen. They returned to the RV at sundown and played cards. Nicky’s dad came back just before
midnight. They locked the door, got in their respective beds, and said good night.

  Nicky remembered having terrible, vivid dreams that night. She dreamt about monsters with poison fangs, prison cells with burning hot walls, thousands of spiders eating her skin…when she woke up, she wasn’t in the RV anymore. She was tied to a chair in a small room with cinderblock walls and a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. A beautiful girl with short blonde hair, her body only eighteen or nineteen years old, sat across from her.

  “Hello, Nicky,” she said. “My name is Melissa.”

  As Melissa spoke, she didn’t look at Nicky, she looked into her. She gazed in Nicky’s eyes, as if Nicky’s pupils were tiny windows to the brain.

  Nicky had never seen a vampire before, but she’d heard about them. She knew they could control your thoughts, and when they wanted to get inside your head, they looked in your eyes. The way this girl was looking at Nicky, the way she was speaking…

  Was Melissa a vampire? It seemed like Nicky should have felt something different if she was.

  Melissa started saying the strangest things. She told Nicky a list of rules or something, and after every statement, she asked Nicky if she understood.

  There are yellow lines painted on the floor that mark the borders of the farm. You will not cross the yellow lines unless a supervisor tells you to. Do you understand?

  “Yes,” Nicky said. What else was she going to say? If this girl was a vampire, Nicky certainly wasn’t going to argue with her.

  You are to control your emotions, never allowing yourself too much joy or sadness. Do you understand?

  Nicky never had a problem controlling her emotions. “Yes,” she said.

  You will tell me your full name now as it is written on your birth certificate.

  Which birth certificate? Nicky thought, and almost smiled. “Nicky Jennifer Crenshaw,” she said.

  You will not speak unless spoken to. Do you understand?

  “Yes.”

  And on and on Melissa went, staring at Nicky and giving these odd commands. Nicky said yes to all of them. Then, as suddenly as the session had begun, it was over. Melissa got up, untied Nicky, and walked out, leaving the door open behind her. Nicky waited until the sound of Melissa’s footsteps had faded into silence, then walked out of the room, down the hall, and out the front door, stepping over a yellow line without the slightest feeling of hesitation or remorse. She ran down the hill and into the wetlands below, expecting to find her dad and Frankie out there waiting for her.

  Search lights, barking dogs, wet, mucky marsh, alligators, snakes, and lots of mosquitoes. There were pursuers on the first day, but she lost them in the night and they never caught up with her again. At dusk on the second day, she stepped on a water moccasin and the snake responded with a sharp bite just above her ankle. That night, sick and delirious, she collapsed under a tree, where she almost certainly would have died were it not for a young Network Operative named Gia Rossi, who found her in time to provide life-saving first aid and get her out of the swamp.

  “You were on the Farm,” Gia told Nicky many days later. “You were meant to be enslaved. That blonde woman who spoke to you is an immortal named Melissa Mayhew. She was trying to reprogram your brain. Somehow, it didn’t take. That’s why you were able to leave. Had the reprogramming worked, you never would have been able to step across the yellow line.”

  “Why didn’t it work on me?” Nicky asked.

  “I don’t know but I’m quite curious,” Gia said. “As far as I know, you are the first person who ever escaped from the Farm.”

  * * * * *

  After nursing Nicky back to health, Gia tried to get a look inside her mind.

  “Melissa Mayhew is notorious for leaving little traps in people’s heads,” Gia said. “For all we know, Nicky, she might have arranged it so you could walk out, and at some point today, tomorrow, or in ten years, some hidden programming that you can’t remember will kick in and you’ll be her slave.”

  Gia had Nicky sit in a cushy blue chair and try to clear her mind. At Gia’s instruction, Nicky took slow, deep breaths, one after another. She stared at a single spot on the ceiling while Gia spoke soft, simple commands, telling Nicky to relax her body and mind.

  It didn’t work.

  “Funny,” Gia said. “I’ve never had that happen before.”

  “I was trying to relax,” Nicky said. “Trying to do what you said.”

  “Maybe you were trying too hard,” said Gia. “Let’s start over. Just sit back and relax. Listen to me, but don’t try to do what I’m telling you to do. Just relax and listen.”

  The second time didn’t work either. Neither did the third. Gia declared Nicky’s mind to be locked shut.

  “We use hypnosis to get at your subconscious, because that’s where the vampires put their commands,” Gia said. “But your subconscious is completely inaccessible. That must be why Melissa’s reprogramming didn’t work.”

  Gia had an old man with white stubble on his chin come to the house and look at Nicky. He too had her stare at a spot on the ceiling and relax. He tried waving a watch in front of her face. He turned out the lights and repeated short and simple phrases. He worked with Nicky all day, and declared her a lost cause.

  “The girl cannot by hypnotized,” he said. “Either she has an unusually great distance between her conscious and subconscious minds, making it impossible for anyone to get inside, or else Melissa has done something to her.”

  “Melissa didn’t do anything to me,” Nicky said. “I remember every word of our conversation. She was trying to get in my head but she couldn’t, just like you.”

  “Oh child,” the man said, “Melissa Mayhew is nothing like me. We humans have to take the long way to the subconscious. The vampires don’t. If indeed you are unaffected, then Melissa was being lazy and inattentive to her work. If she really wanted to get into your head, she would.”

  Nicky could tell that the man thought she was trouble. But Gia didn’t. Gia liked Nicky. And after the man left, Gia told Nicky not to worry about what he said.

  “I’m with you,” Gia said. “I think Melissa tried to reprogram you and it failed. I think there’s something special going on in your head. I think you have a gift and we need to work together to figure out the best way to use it.”

  Nicky’s entry to the Network was that simple, that accidental. Gia Rossi had been spying on the Farm. She saw Nicky escape. She rescued her. She nursed her back to health. She took a liking to her, and saw her as a future agent of the Network, a girl who was immune to the mind control that was such a powerful weapon for the enemy.

  Nicky, however, had other plans. She had no interest in going off to save the world while Frankie and her father might be enslaved. Gia proposed a compromise that met both their desires. Gia would take Nicky on a search for her missing loved ones, and along the way, Gia would teach Nicky what it meant to be a Network spy.

  They started at the lookout post in the Florida swamp where the Network watched the Farm from a safe distance, the post where Gia had been when Nicky walked out the front door. With binoculars in-hand, Nicky looked at the drab gray building where a vampire named Melissa Mayhew had tried to brainwash her, and hoped that by some miracle, Frankie and her father would show up.

  They never did, of course. But as Nicky sat on the platform in the tree and watched for them, Gia taught her about the Farm, about the slave system that provided a constant source of food for the vampires.

  Gia told Nicky that every vampire in the Samarin clan had a large “pantry” of slaves who did service work at the mansions until such time as their master decided to eat them. She explained how the Farm was where the slaves got their first dose of heavy brainwashing, and how, under normal circumstances, a reprogramming session like the one Nicky went through left the individual completely devoid of free will.

  “The majority of slaves are born and raised on the Farm,” Gia said. “Jackals like you and Frankie make up the overflow pop
ulation, stolen off the streets at night whenever there aren’t enough farm-grown slaves to meet the demand in the various mansions across the country.”

  “And my dad?” Nicky asked.

  “Your dad is someone they would call ‘collateral,’” Gia said. “They don’t want to leave adults hanging around after their children have been stolen. Parents whose children have been taken would draw too much negative attention to the clan and their activities.”

  “So what did they do with him?”

  “I don’t know, Nicky. But I’m not going to lie to you. Most of the adults who are taken off the streets are killed on the Farm.”

  “My dad wasn’t killed,” Nicky said. “He’s too smart for that.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said Gia.

  For three days they went back to that lookout post, and Nicky watched as lines of black vans came and went from the Farm, dropping off jackals from the street, filling up with newly reprogrammed slaves.

  Nicky remembered becoming enamored with Gia during those first days of spying. Here was a girl who was maybe twenty years old, and she spoke with such authority about the enemy – it was like she’d been doing this her entire life. Never once did Gia say or do anything to suggest to Nicky that she feared the vampires they were spying on. Never once did she seem put out in the slightest that she was now caring for an eleven-year-old girl.

  “The distribution system is elaborate and enormous,” Gia told her on the third day. “Some slaves from the Farm will go to Talahassee, some will go to Moscow. Sometimes vampires come to choose their own slaves; sometimes they don’t. They leave here in vans that take them to a trucking depot twenty miles north. That’s where we lose track of them. Thousands of trucks go through that depot every day, and only one of them carries the shipment of slaves. The slaves might go anywhere from that depot – we’ve never found out. At some point they get dropped off and distributed via smaller vehicles to the vampires all over the country and the world.”