by Landon Wark
Bill, I just don't see the need to.
And that was what had doomed their boy. He had just put it aside, like... like some chore that he didn't want to do. Because Jenny had said so. And now...
He happened to pass a picture hanging on the wall, a mass produced little printing from some distant relative that showed the Saviour walking with a boy of maybe the right age. Trees and rocks and bright brilliant sunlight filled the background. Bill reached out with a finger and flicked it from the hook where it hung. Shattered glass sprinkled the hallway before him and, while he made a slight effort to avoid it, a shard cut into the bottom of his left foot. He winced, but the pain barely registered.
The fucking protestant reverend had been no fucking good. He said he was going to help but he ended up being one of them. Who was going to help? Who could ignore the temptation if not a priest?
He knew what they were up to, trying to infiltrate the town, trying to spread some kind of drugs. He had seen them. And Jenny was doing it with them. What the hell was she thinking? He couldn't... He couldn't wrap his head around what the hell she could possibly be thinking, and the more he tried the more he found himself pacing around the house. The more his thoughts circled, dogging him through the halls and the rooms.
He sat down in one of the kitchen chairs for ten or twelve seconds and rose again.
On the table was a cluster of mail that had been accumulating for the last two weeks, growing whenever he absently wandered out and checked the mailbox. There were a couple of the usual bills, but the collection notifications had completely dried up after Jenny had thrown some of her witch money at them. More people willing to sell their souls. In beneath the top few layers a mid-sized glossy insert poked out. Bill shuffled the envelopes around and found a somewhat familiar smiling face. Looking back at him from under a Stetson hat and mirrored sunglasses he struck more than a passing resemblance to Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit. Behind the man a pair of men, caricatures really, in striped convict shirts cowered behind a set of iron bars.
"Liberals and socialists are scared of your vote," the top line announced. "They want the criminals on the street. They want you afraid."
Bill skimmed down the ad to the large bottom line at the end of the promises to end 'political correctness' in law enforcement which read: "Re-elect Geoff Timmons Sheriff."
Bill clucked his tongue.
The fear he had felt upon hearing that thunderclap came back to him and his legs shook for a moment. There was no way he could go back out to that place, but he knew enough about what was going on there to maybe give it a good kick, scatter the people there to the winds like so many leaves.
Jonah McAllister Takes a Break
Jonah McAllister stayed out in the cabin for as long as he was able.
He had no desire to repeat what had happened on that night several days earlier, nor any desire to discuss it. He had Sandy bring out what he needed for food in addition to her usual deliveries of any supplies that he ordered out for.
Research was going slow. He spent days out in his makeshift laboratory, maybe adding one or two new lines in his blue notebooks (and occasionally in the one black one he kept locked away in a safe he had bought with money he had created himself) per day. The one saving grace was that he had made some major headway with his electron recalibration and its connection to voxikinesis. He was able to float a coffee mug over to his hand without spilling much more than a drop or two. But that was it. He was no closer in figuring out where it fit into the larger picture, or why high electron motion should be a boundary. He felt constantly on the verge of cracking its secret, but it remained just beyond his grasp, compounding his frustration with the recruits in the house.
They were trying to take him in directions he did not want to go.
When she came to review some of the work he was getting ready to pass on to them Sandy would try to worm in the idea that they, that he, had taken on a responsibility to them when he had asked for them. He would try to ignore her as best he was able. Sometimes she would concede... at least for a little while, only to come back claiming that a review of the words was necessary. At that time she would try to make the point again.
At least the recruits were making some progress.
Sandy claimed that Jenny and Ezra were lagging not far behind her and that the others were not far behind that.
When he became jealous of their progress he had to remind himself that they were taking the easy route. They were getting the end product without the benefit of the knowledge of how it was put together. They were little better than soldiers who had been given guns but not told how they worked.
Of course that was his job; figuring out how the gun worked. But it would just not come to him.
It was nearly ten before he finished with his morning routine. There was not a drop of toothpaste left in his tiny bathroom. He settled for using a naked brush, licking the back of his teeth for the rest of the morning in a vain attempt to get rid of the taste it left behind.
He grumbled something, shoved the empty coffee canister into the cabinet and swung open the fridge door. There was a half bottle of flat soda inside. He read the label and, satisfied with the caffeine content, took a drink straight from the bottle.
Bouncing his foot on his chair he gave up waiting for Sandy to show up to deliver new supplies. He took a look around the cabin and at the papers and books that lay impotently around the room. He pursed his lips, took a look outside to the rain clouds that were threatening on the far horizon. A thought that some bland physical activity might loosen some of the gummed up gears that were holding him back seized him.
He grabbed the key to the small shack and locked the door, taking the dirt path towards the house before veering off into the sparse woods surrounding the house.
Carmen Carruthers pulled a sweatshirt over her head. It was far too hot for that choice of garment, but the black, collapsing veins over her forearms gave her little choice. As she adjusted her bra, having shifted as she put on the shirt she was momentarily distracted by a figure walking up the path below her second storey window.
As the figure turned off towards the woods she breathed a sigh of relief.
Jonah McAllister was still an enigma to most of the inhabitants of the house. The one encounter they had had with the (kid? man?) had not gone very well, especially for her. She had felt like there was a giant magnifying glass over her ever since. Every time she had to lock herself in the bathroom with a syringe there seemed to be a pair of eyes leering in at her.
She paused. Had he been able to see her getting dressed through the window?
Probably not.
Carmen frowned and shook her head. She was trying to pull her weight. She was trying to do something to mitigate the risks they were taking in having her on board, but writing something to try and get some kind of consensus out of a bunch of aspiring... wizards(?) was more difficult than she had imagined. When the doors of possibility had swung open for them people had a way of scattering off in all different directions. Paul was insistent on his Jesusing. Clay was the opposite, which was probably in line with what the founder thought, but Clay had no tact to speak of. Jenny seemed to be on board with Paul, but would likely change her mind depending on who was in the room. Ezra was reluctant to take a stand on anything. For the moment the solidarity of the group held, but Carmen was familiar enough with wedge issues to know that religion was king among them.
She opened the door to her room, wincing in the sunlight streaming in from the East. The sound downstairs of plates and glasses clattering around almost immediately caused her stomach to growl ferociously.
Her ligaments complained as she stepped down the curling stairway into the main hallway of the house and towards the kitchen. The rest of her body froze in mid stride as a trio of white shapes flickered on the edge of her peripheral vision. Three cars made the final turn from the lane onto the house lawn, twin swirls of dust blowing out from behind them. The word "Sheriff" was
emblazoned along the doors of the side visible to her.
"Fuck!"
An instinct, drilled into her since the first day she had gone out into the city to search for a way to end the terrifying malaise that had gripped her when her prescription had run out, took over and a spike of adrenaline hit her. She swayed, uncertain of which direction to go, deciding on rushing back up the stairs. Her complaining feet pounded up to the second floor, reaching her room as a pounding knock hit the door. Her shoulder bumped into the doorjamb of her room, the pain little more than a glimmer as she yanked open the drawer of her nightstand.
Her hand scooped out the large package of yellowish powder and trio of syringes inside. One of the long cylinders fell from her grasp and slid a short way under the bed. She lost a precious second retrieving it and then running out of the room, banging the opposite shoulder into the doorjamb.
The sound of Sandy walking to the front entrance spurred her on as she slid into the bathroom, slamming the door shut. The powder was easily flushed. The syringes were another matter. She thought for a moment of claiming she had diabetes, but that seemed problematic at best.
As the sound of booted footfalls on the stairs told her that time had run out. She placed the syringes in the sink and did what she could to call up how to do what it was she wanted to do. She wasn't as proficient at the work as Jenny or even Ezra, but she had been paying attention and her memory was reasonably sharp when her brain had its required amount of dopamine.
"Burn baby, burn," she muttered.
As she stumbled through the incantation a strange creeping urgency filled the air along with the cresting of the stairs by the boots of whoever was invading their house. Carmen was mentally preparing for disposing of the metal tips when an orb of white light encompassed the inner bowl of the sink. She shouted and covered her eyes as a blinding wave of light force brushed over her skin.
Blinking in confusion Carmen lowered her hand from her face and found herself staring at what looked like an almost spherical cutout of the ceramic of the sink bowl, almost three inches in diameter. She could see through the hole created in the enamel down to the floor below as a tiny piece of plastic, all that remained of the syringes fell into it. Even a small section of the spout had been sheared clean off, the clean metal underneath glinting at her mischievously.
She blinked, allowed only a moment for confusion before a pounding fist banged on the door. Carmen only had a moment to turn the tap on the sink, water sloshing up through and mime washing her hands before the door was nearly bashed in.
Carmen stood before the sink, staring at the face of a blocky woman in a deputy's uniform. Her writer's brain scrambled for something clever to say.
"You're gonna have to wait your turn."
"What the hell are you doing?" Sandy Jenkins demanded of the woman coming down the stairs from the second floor.
"We have a warrant that allows us to search the premises for illicit substances," the woman replied. "You can get it from Deputy Larson there if you want to have a look at it."
Sandy paused in her pursuit of the woman and looked over to where a lanky man waved a clipboard at her. She put her hand to her head and gave a prolonged blink, feeling anxiety shake the muscles in her neck. Almost immediately the heat of the morning seemed to breach into the heat of the mid afternoon.
Shit, Carmen.
"Why the shit would you think we have illicit substances here?"
"Anonymous tip."
"And th-that's all you need to come barging in here?"
"Yup."
"We got big drug issues in this county," the man holding the clipboard said loudly.
Sandy put her hand to the wall in an attempt to steady herself, looking up as Carmen Carruthers descended the stairs, her face a visage of near horror and regret.
Jonah's heart raced as he crouched behind the tree, hidden from the house by the thin line of forest surrounding the building. He dared not move in case he was seen by the loitering forces that surrounded the house.
The cruisers, all three of them, were lined up along the gravel just outside the front entrance. Two of the uniformed officers were doing what he could only describe as sweeping the grounds. From what he could tell, four more were inside the house and he felt an overwhelming melange of hope and despair about what they would find there.
His heart skipped a beat as one of the roving officers broke off and walked toward the cabin. He placed his back against the tree and flexed his arms and legs, trying to prepare to act in defence of what was his.
The others would be okay, as long as they didn’t do anything stupid, and from what he had seen of them doing stupid things wasn’t part of their character. What worried him the most, what made the sweat run down the side of his face, was what would happen if they took any of the notebooks.
He clenched his fists and readied himself.
The door to the cabin swung open and for a moment he was reminded of what it was like sitting in that hotel room, watching the man going through his drawers, placing his hands on his possessions, on his work.
The back door to the house opened and Sandy walked out, marching resolutely into the cabin. There were sounds of shouting and he grimaced, preparing for the worst. After a terrifying while the officers came out empty handed and he felt his pulse slacken slightly, the feeling of impending doom seemed to lift as the four in the house stepped out and walked resolutely back to the cruisers. They sat there on the radio for an agonizing ten minutes and then one car left. Another ten minutes passed and the second pulled off of the gravel. Only after the third vacated twenty minutes later did Jonah allow himself to rise. He inhaled the hot June air and walked back to the house, cautiously.
In the main room on the bottom floor he found a gathering of rattled people, sitting in shock around the sofa.
“What was that about?” he asked fervently to the first person in sight.
“Drugs,” Sandy muttered. "Fortunately they didn't find any."
Carmen looked downcast, her normally defiant eyes a mixture of confusion and near defeat. Clay stood beside her, kicking the wall lightly with the back of his foot. Jenny looked like she was about to faint. Paul clenched his teeth.
"Well what did you expect?" he asked the assembly.
The others nodded and as he looked around at them Jonah could see the mix of fear and confusion in their eyes.
“Maybe we should just tell them what we’re doing,” Jenny muttered.
Jonah shook his head. “We can’t do that.”
“Jonah—” Sandy tried.
"I can't yet!" he said tersely. "I-I'm not ready."
"Well, that's great," Clay muttered. "Any idea when you will be?"
Jonah clenched his fist. Why couldn't he make them understand?
"I need it to be safe," he said after a moment. "We can't have any lives on our consciences. I... look, we're going to need a lot of trust. What we're trying to do is going to shatter a whole lot of worlds."
From where he stood, a large bulk leaned against the wall, Ezra began to laugh.
“That’s why he wanted all of you,” the large man said between chuckles. “You all came pre-shattered.”
“Uncle,” Sandy warned.
The eyes in the room stared clean into Jonah’s soul and he took it all in. Was now the time to tell them? That was why he had allowed them in, that was why he wanted them, but they were far from being just puppets for him to play around with.
"I wanted all of you because..." he froze in their judgmental eyes, but his mouth kept pressing forward. "Okay, yes. I needed some people to take the first steps..."
"We wanted to help people," Sandy said. "And—"
"And we were the most pathetic sad-sacks you could find?" Clay pressed.
"Can you settle down?" Paul raised a hand to the height of Clay's shoulder.
"Yes, please settle down," Carmen said sheepishly.
“We’re plan B,” Ezra said. “In case you never find that trust that you need.
We’re supposed to go out into the world and spread the word, slowly, in case you can’t do it quickly. Be your... apostles?”
Paul's head pricked up.
“Is that true?” Jenny asked.
Jonah looked from her to Ezra to Sandy and then back again, his eyes heavy with judgment and lack of sleep. He felt the connection between his mouth and his brain begin to dwindle as his mind desperately sifted through things to say. “I don't want that.”
A great silence gripped the room and if he listened carefully he could hear the sound of something fracturing, straining to hold together.
Clay was the first to speak. "If that's what's going to happen, then fine. I'll shill for reality anyday, but I need to know what's going on around here."
"No," Paul interrupted. "No way. We shouldn't be giving people power they're not prepared to handle!"
Jenny's face saddened a little as he said it.
"I'm with preacher boy," Ezra said.
"That's what I'm trying to do!" Jonah shouted.
Sandy Jenkins shook her gummed up head and tried to inhale a breath that would provide some sort of clarity.
"All of you, shut up!"
Jonah's scowled, unused to the ultimatum.
The edges of Sandy's vision dimmed as she spoke. Her heart had not stopped racing since the Sheriff's deputies had pounded on the door. Blood squirted through the veins in her ears, dulling the sounds of the others talking.
She was angry, that much was certain, but she was unsure exactly at whom she was mad. She was mad at the Sheriff for pounding on their door, but she couldn't do too much about that. But she could control the ungratefulness of Clayton, and she could control (or try to) Jonah's attempts to put the responsibility solely on her shoulders while he hid away in his shack in the woods.
Jonah and the others furrowed their brows as her face reddened and she swayed a little on her feet.
"You assholes—" she motioned towards where Ezra and Clay sat without looking over, because she felt like if she did she might fall over. "Are going to shut up and show some gratitude."