by Peter Clines
The doors closed. Everyone had boarded and the bus was pulling out. The floor trembled and Eli’s seat gave a small lurch. The station outside seemed to slide away.
The man in the suit slid away with it. He took a few more steps toward Eli’s bus, trying to keep up. Eli glimpsed a glossy plastic chin and painted lips and then the faceless man vanished as another bus came between them.
The bus swung back in a smooth arc. After a moment Eli was looking at the back of the row of buses, with narrow glimpses of the terminal between them.
Then the seat lurched again and they moved forward.
Eli was California-bound.
7
Four buses, a train, another two buses, and five days later, Eli stepped onto the sidewalk in Pasadena in desperate need of a shower, some clean clothes, and at least one solid meal.
The city reminded him a bit of Dover. A good-sized town with parts of a city squeezed in here and there. There were three- and four-story buildings of brick and concrete across the street from steel-and-glass storefronts.
The weight of his pea coat pressed sweat out of his chest and back. After half an hour he shrugged out of it and slung it over his arm. The sun felt oppressively bright and hot, and once again he found himself wishing he’d bought sunglasses in Boston.
Half the people on the street either had a phone pressed to their head or held in front of them like a microphone. Most of the others wore tiny headphones. Two wore massive, retro-looking sets that covered their ears. Eli tried to catch the two or three people with open ears, but they slipped away in the crowd or into buildings.
After twenty minutes of trying to catch a pedestrian, Eli switched tactics.
He looked around, spotted a chain drugstore, and walked in. Less than a dozen customers, if he counted right, despite the noon hour, and one cashier on duty. A paunchy security guard glanced at the heavy pea coat over his arm, then went back to staring into space. Eli found a granola bar and a Mountain Dew (four of his remaining thirty-two dollars gone at convenience-store prices) and waited until the two customers in line had concluded their transactions.
The cashier looked tired or bored. Possibly a mix of the two. Eli put her at fifteen or twenty years older than himself, not quite his mother’s age. A few strands of silver highlighted the woman’s hair. Her name tag had a dark, sticky spot in the shape of a T, followed by ORI. She took Eli’s meager lunch, waved it over a price scanner, and asked if that would be all.
“Ummmm, actually,” said Eli, “I don’t suppose you know where the fork in the road is?”
The woman blinked and looked at him for the first time. “Sorry?” Her voice had an accent he couldn’t place, almost turning her s’s into z’s
“The…the fork in the road. I’m supposed to meet someone there in…” He glanced at his watch. “In about an hour. But I’m not sure where it is.”
She stared at him for a moment. Then she blinked twice. “Oh,” she said. “The fork?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“It’s easy.” She waved her hand at the door. “Go down Colorado,” she said, pointing with one finger. “About six blocks and turn left on Pasadena Avenue. Then just go straight until you see it. Maybe two miles altogether.”
Eli smiled. “Thank you.”
“Where’re you from?”
“What?”
“Your accent. Where’re you from?”
“Maine,” he said. “A little town called Sanders. You haven’t heard of it.”
“Near Stephen King?”
“Not really, no.”
The cashier shrugged. She gave him his change and pushed his food across the counter without offering him a bag. Her eyes slid to the person behind him.
Eli munched the granola bar as he walked down Colorado. It was a big, wide street, several lanes across, and his gaze kept sliding up the taller buildings to the sky. At Pasadena he tossed the wrapper in a trash can and cracked open the Mountain Dew.
Traffic on Pasadena Avenue all came at him, one way. The road started out with businesses but quickly became more residential. The houses had a very cinematic feel, as if he’d seen the street a dozen times in movies or television shows. Eli kept expecting celebrities to step through apartment doors or out of parked cars.
The woman across the street could’ve been a celebrity. Her outfit showed either determined eccentricity or a poor sense of disguise. She wore a long trench coat and a swollen hat of brown leather, something between a large bonnet and a plush muffin, with a large brass button just over her forehead. What he’d first mistaken for an odd, heavy collar on her sweater had glinted in the sun and revealed itself to be a huge pair of sunglasses, or maybe goggles. She looked around with quick, nervous glances, waiting to get recognized, and locked eyes with Eli for a moment as they approached each other. She managed a weak smile when he didn’t react, as if they’d shared a secret.
He passed more apartments, a big complex that identified itself as the Ronald McDonald House (something he’d definitely seen on television), and a house that declared itself to be an English tea garden, before he reached a wide-open space. The narrow block between two roads formed a small park, with some grass, spiky bushes, and a few trees that included a huge, thick palm. A gravelly path led to an oval of sand and some kind of marker at the park’s center—a narrow pillar of aluminum, or maybe steel, that stood twenty feet tall.
Another minute of walking carried him past the park to an intersection. On the other side of the block, the road mirrored his, a one-way street running the other way. The little park was a triangle, not much more than an oversized traffic island formed by the two streets coming together to form a single road.
No. Not where they came together. Where they split.
The fork seemed…normal. Houses on either side. A small apartment building at one end. A man worked a lawnmower across a distant lawn. Eli wasn’t sure what Harry would be looking for here in just…twenty minutes.
Assuming he was even at the right intersection. Theo had made a blanket assumption everyone would know which fork he was referring to. The cashier seemed pretty sure, granted. Could it be possible the roads didn’t split like this anywhere else in the city?
What if it wasn’t related to street layout? What if “the fork in the road” was the name of some trendy bar or club hidden in one of the nearby buildings? Those supposedly covered Southern California, and it’d make much more sense as a meeting place. Hell, it could be a cutlery store or travel agency or just a little bookshop with a catchy name.
He waited for a cluster of cars to pass by and crossed the street to the corner of the park. What he’d mistaken for grass was a dense, low plant with swollen leaves. It reminded him of the brown-green seaweed that washed up on the beach sometimes.
He wondered what the park looked like from above. What did the points of the triangle aim at? Maybe the short paths or plants formed some kind of symbol or—
The steel monument at the center of the park. From this angle it was less of a pillar and more of a futuristic, one-piece signpost. The shaft flowed up and widened into a rectangular top that reminded him of a huge highway mile marker.
Eli stepped around a few bushes and got a clear view of the monument’s base. His mind froze up. Once again he was struck with the surreal sensation of being in a movie.
A Muppet movie.
8
Metal tubing held the giant dinner fork a foot or so above a rough slab of concrete. Two basketball-sized stones and a third, larger one, sat in the sand in front of it, as if some giant had stabbed at them and just missed. A sculpture or an art installation of some kind.
Eli walked up to it. Silver paint gave the fork the color and texture of brushed aluminum. He rapped his knuckles against it and heard a wooden clunk. Thick, but hollow.
He walked around the fork, looking for a plaque or an inscription or maybe a small note held in place on the frame with a magnet.
Nothing.
He turned and looked
at the trio of stones. Were they markers? He leaned over the closest one and looked for letters or numbers or symbols of some kind.
He heard a click behind him. Metal on metal. Just loud enough to stand out from the ambient sound of passing cars and the distant lawnmower. The sound probably hadn’t made it out of the small park.
Eli turned.
Harry’s long flintlock rifle was a dark circle to his eyes, only recognizable from the way her hands held it. Recognition sparked in her eyes, and her glare softened, but not much. “Mr. Teague?”
“Harry,” he said. He let his hands drift out, not up over his head, but plainly open and empty. “You’re early.”
“Not as early as I’d hoped,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to find you.”
“And you have,” she said. She took a few steps toward him, but the rifle didn’t shift from his head. “You’ll please pardon my saying, but I find running into you again on the other side of the country a bit disturbing.”
“Imagine what it feels like at gunpoint.”
Her mouth twitched, but the rifle still didn’t move. “How did you find me?”
“Theo,” he said. The salesman’s surname popped to mind. “Theo Knickerbocker.”
“How do you know Theo?”
“I…I went to Quincy Market looking for you and found him. Well, he found me. He tried to sell me a necklace. We talked for a couple minutes and he figured out I was looking for you.”
“Did he, now?”
“Yeah. He told me you were coming here.”
The rifle shifted in her hands. “Theo doesn’t just tell people things,” she said. The words were ice.
Eli realized she’d wrapped her finger around the trigger.
“I…I paid him,” he said. “Twenty-five dollars. Cash. He told me you’d be here now, and gave me a bracelet.” He reached for his pocket to pull out the trinket, but stopped as her grip tightened on the rifle.
Harry stared at him. “What were you looking for?”
“What?”
“Just now. When I found you. What were you looking for?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I was just…looking. Trying to figure out what you were coming here for.”
She said nothing.
The rifle barrel wavered between a black dot and a blurred, foreshortened rod. It’s pointed at one of my eyes, Eli realized. “I thought you’d need—”
“Why are you following me, Mr. Teague?”
“To warn you about the faceless man.”
She took in a fast, short breath. “When?”
“Just a few days ago. The day after I helped you change the flat tire. He showed up at the bank where I work. He was looking for you. And then he followed me to Boston and killed Theo.”
The rifle wobbled. The barrel tilted down. “Theo’s dead?”
“He…he shot him. In the head.”
“And you got away.”
“He was focused on Theo. I got to the edge of the market and ran.”
Her mouth trembled for a moment. “Do you have a firearm?”
“A what?”
“A firearm. A gun. A pistol hidden somewhere on your person.”
He shook his head. “No, nothing.”
“Excellent.” The rifle came up and became solid again. “Toward me, please.”
“What?”
She tipped her head toward the scrub behind the fork and made a small shooing gesture with the rifle’s tip. “This way. Quickly, please.”
He walked toward and past the large utensil. Her boots shifted in the dirt, swinging her around the fork so it never came between Eli and the rifle.
He headed to the edge of the dirt oval and paused at the scrub plants. He glanced right, then left. Past the intersection to his left, the Model A business coupe sat against the curb, the andalusite blue all but black on the tree-shaded street.
He leaned his head back. “You’re not really going to shoot me, are you?”
“Don’t be daft, Mr. Teague. Do you have the time?”
He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost one thirty.”
“How close?”
He looked again. “One twenty-seven.” He looked over his shoulder. “What happens at one thirty?”
She stood a few feet away. Her aim had relaxed and she stared up at the fork. She looked at him, then past him to the scrub. “Close enough,” she muttered. “See the fork’s shadow? The top of it?”
He looked down at the scrub. His own shadow was a dark blob across the tan-and-green plants, but the fork’s long shadow reached past him. Its edge sat almost a yard into the growth. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do.”
“Dig there.”
“What?”
“Dig,” she repeated.
He stepped toward the shadow’s edge and the plants crunched under his feet. A few stronger branches scraped at his ankles. He moved to the side, double-checked the fork’s shadow, and kneeled. One of his hands pushed into the low bushes. The brown leaves scraped at his fingers and palm. He glanced back at Harry.
“Dig.” The words had more emphasis this time.
“What for?”
“Because I have a rifle and you don’t.”
“No, I mean, what am I digging for? Am I just making a hole or…?”
“Just dig, Mr. Teague. You’ll know when you find it.”
He looked at the rifle, then her, then back to the muzzle. “I don’t suppose you could—”
“If what you say is true, we don’t have a lot of time,” she told him. “It’s best if you just keep your mind to the task at hand so we can both be gone before anyone finds us here. Dig.”
He sighed and set both hands to work. He pushed the low branches and leaves out of the way. They moved without effort, lifting up and folding back.
Two or three of the plants had been snapped off and left in the tangle of branches. A rough circle of dirt beneath them was dark and loose. He could see parallel trails where someone had run their fingers back and forth to smooth the ground.
He held back the scrub with one hand while the other pawed at the ground. The soil came up easily. It felt like digging at the beach, although the grains felt larger and coarser. He went down a few inches, then clawed at the sides of his hole to widen it. The ground there resisted, reinforced by a web of threadlike roots.
Another group of cars drove by, and Eli wondered if anyone saw the woman holding him at rifle-point. No one called out or honked horns. Wasn’t Los Angeles supposed to be all about guns and drive-by shootings? Did they not notice, or just not care?
He hadn’t even dug for two minutes when his fingers brushed something smooth and angled eight inches down. They found the shape again and pulled it from its tiny grave. He flipped it over in his hand, and a few quick swipes knocked most of the dirt from it. “This it?” he asked Harry.
The soil hadn’t even stained the little packet of wax paper. It had been cleverly folded into a square envelope, maybe three inches on each side. Through the tacky paper Eli could feel something round, maybe the size of a half-dollar, although the packet seemed too light for a—
Harry snatched it from his fingers. She tugged on one of the folds, and the packet bloomed like a paper flower in her hand. She plucked something from the center and closed her fist around it. She murmured something Eli couldn’t hear and let out a deep sigh. The rifle lowered and drifted to the side.
Eli stood up and coughed. “So what is it?”
She glanced at him. “Thank you for the warning, Mr. Teague,” she said. “You have my appreciation, although I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you should run back home. As fast as you can. Forget you were here. Forget you saw me. Go back to your life and be thankful for it.”
“Forget…” He shook his head. “What the hell is going on?”
“You have, if I understand the phrase correctly, jumped into the deep
end of the pool. You should go home now while you can. They haven’t directly connected you to me. You’re just a witness.”
“Like Theo was?”
“Theo’d been playing the odds for a while. It won’t be the same for you.” She waved the rifle, and the movement made her ponytail swing out from behind her head. “Go.”
They both heard the growl at the same time. A rumbling engine that stood out even over the SUVs and sports cars rolling past the traffic island. The sound came from the bend to the south, echoing off the houses.
“Run,” Harry whispered. She shoved the mystery item inside her jacket. The rifle came back up. “Run now.”
“What about you?”
The growl rose and became a roar. Eli glanced to the side and saw people in the passing cars glancing at their dashboards, then out to the streets.
“Mr. Teague, this is no time for chivalry or nobility. Please, you need to get away from here as fast as you can. Run until you drop and then keep crawling.”
“I’m not going to just leave you to deal with—”
The Hudson Hornet ignored the stoplight and shot through the intersection. The black, glossy finish reflected the sky and the sun and the other cars. The roadster aimed itself at Eli and Harry.
“Dammit,” said Harry. She backed into him, forced him around the fork.
The moment slowed in time.
The Hornet’s tires were already up on the island. The driver’s side of the car plowed through one of the pointy bushes. Grit sprayed up from the other tire. Eli saw the faceless man behind the wheel. The plastic mask gazed back at him.
Harry’s rifle went off. The Hornet’s passenger-side tire exploded.
The car lurched to the side, crushing two more pointy bushes under its bulk before the driver could compensate. The Hornet slid into the dirt oval and came to rest. The passenger door sat just a few feet from the concrete base of the fork.
“I’m sorry,” said Eli. “I don’t know how he followed me here.”