by Amy Simone
The cat still purred.
“We need help,” he said to the open room. He didn’t know what else to say.
“She’s stuck, eh?”
“Yes, sir, she’s stuck,” Bob told the unknown source.
“That happens sometimes. Stupid Coach should have known better. He’s got no business fooling with those witches.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” Bob noted. “I think the woman got him mixed up in all this.”
“He knows better.” The voice was so deep that its vibrations reverberated in Bob’s bones. He felt as though he was inside some great being’s body.
“You probably want to get back up to the party upstairs, don’t you?” the voice asked him.
“No sir. We’re prepared to do whatever will make things right again.”
“Take the cat out.”
Bob reached inside and tenderly put Tiger down. Tiger stood still for a moment, lifted his nose and scented the air.
“Good kitty,” the voice observed. “It’s sensitive, I see.”
“Yes.”
“Now run along,” the voice told Bob.
“Run along?” Bob asked in disbelief.
“You heard me.” The voice sounded like it was getting angry. “Be sure to talk to Leroy before you leave that party. He’ll give you your next directive.”
Bob didn’t move.
“You know the way out. Now leave.” Bob felt a force pushing his entire body out of the cavern and back into the hall. He tried to hang back, to even grab Tiger, but the cat jumped sideways, evading him.
“No, I can’t leave her here,” Bob stammered.
The opening closed up behind him. All he saw now was a smooth wall. Bob banged on the wall. It was no use. Tiger and Cassie were no longer with him.
43
Leroy
Bob rode the elevator up in shock. He had let her down. Cassie was really stuck now, in some strange electro-force or who knows what it was. He couldn’t believe he’d fallen into that trap. It was following the Coach that led them down there. Where was the Coach anyway? He knew he’d seen him earlier.
There was a slight chime. The doors of the elevator slid open. Bob was back on the surface, in the back office of the library. He strode out and looked angrily about. Nobody was in that part just then.
He entered the main body of the library and saw the characters were cavorting about, having a grand time. So many books, resting next to each other for so long, had bred a familiarity with each other that most mortals would never comprehend. Bob wasn’t bothered by it. It reminded him of wartime. He’d been through so much already that this was nothing. The din bothered him but he knew how to handle that. His gift was the ability to focus during chaos, to shut out what was unnecessary, to focus so precisely that he could make things move in slow motion. Now, as he made his way through the thick assembly, he efficiently recorded and took in details—colors of shoes, who had on cuff links, the smell of perfume on one woman, the lilt of an Irish voice. Any detail in his immediate vicinity he absorbed and later, he’d be able to recall those exact observations as he replayed his movements. That is how he survived battle. This is how he survived life now.
“Where’s Leroy?” he asked a pirate who drank a Mai Tai next to a fair-haired lady dressed like French royalty. She held a champagne stem. Her overly made-up eyes checked him over, up and down. Whatever she saw she approved of so she moved towards him.
Bob pushed her away. “Leroy. Where’s Leroy?”
The pirate pivoted on a heel and pointed towards the DVD section. “They’re having a viewing party over there.”
Bob walked to the other side of the floor. He headed towards an audience watching a large wall monitor. Each character took turns and would step into the screen, playing out parts of the movie Gone With The Wind. It was like karoke on steroids. Leroy, the globby triangulated energy force stood off to one side, jiggling with laughter. His small sprinkle lights hummed and blinked sporadically. A puddle of his usual slime surrounded his base.
Among those in the audience were not only book souls but movie souls from the DVD collection, too.
On screen detective Humphrey Bogart had taken over the role of Rhett Butler and had gripped Scarlett O’Hara to pull her over and ravish her. A small snicker went through the audience.
“Get her, Boggie! You know what to do!”
“My turn!”
Bob looked at who had called out and saw a nerdy looking thirty-something-year old who now stepped into the movie and yanked Bogart out, setting the famous character out on the carpet to join the rest.
The crowd booed. “Knock him out, Leroy! Get somebody else. That guy’s a loser!”
Bob watched in fascination as the nerd tried to kiss Vivian Leigh but even she, in the movie, was having none of it.
“Eeew,” she said, turning away.
They quieted down once Johnny Depp joined Scarlett.
“Now that‘s sexy,” somebody murmured.
Bob approached Leroy. “Excuse me. Your boss downstairs told me to talk to you. I suppose we have a work in progress going on…”
The triangle who towered a bit over Bob, turned and seemed to look at him. His lights blinked all at once. Bob took that as a sign he’d heard him.
“Your boss said you would have directions for me,” Bob prompted.
Leroy left the movie crowd and slid over to the open circular desk area where the librarians’ aides normally sat. They kept small boxes containing slips of paper and extra pencils on top of the counters. He bowed over and etched a series of numbers and letters onto one piece using a beam of light that came from what most would consider his head.
Bob thanked him and started to leave. He planned to slip out the back door.
“Can I just let myself out?”
Leroy moved his entire body from side to side, showing “no,” and accompanied him to the rear of the building. Without touching the rear emergency door, commanded the door to open itself.
“It’s been real,” Bob said. “Thanks for your help.”
As he stepped out of the building, he heard a cheer from inside as a large betting sports pool finished.
“Worse than Vegas,” he thought. Carefully, keeping to the shadows and edges, returned to his truck. Once in, he looked more closely at the message Leroy had given him. It was cryptic for sure. Not knowing what else to do, he pulled out his phone and dialed the series.
He figured Cassie’s life was at stake.
That’s when things really got weird. The call hooked him into the dreaded “dead end” that the Coach had warned Cassie about. Bob had dialed the number figuring it might give him a clue to help her. He was wrong, though.
He found himself inside a dark steel ball. It was as if his truck had morphed into a spherical coffin.
“Ugh,” he thought to himself. “They’re playing me for a fool.” He vainly banged away on the inside of the metal. The darkness was more than he had ever experienced. Only by feeling his own face or arms or legs was he aware he still had any form left of his own. Finally, he sat down, rocking, holding his head in his hands. What were they going to do with her? Was this how things would end?
44
Aftermath
It felt like an eternity, but when Bob checked his phone, only a little over an hour passed. He heard a ping and checked his email.
“Where are you?” was in the subject line. Eagerly, Bob opened it up.
“They let me go. I went out to the parking lot. Your truck is there but you’re not. I have Tiger. My phone is locked in your truck. I had to go back inside and use the computers here at the library. Where did you go?”
He breathed a sigh of relief. Cassie was safe.
“I’m here,” he responded. “Sort of. I’m trapped in something. The last thing I know is I was sitting in my truck and then it turned into a prison cell or something. I think I’m actually in the truck still but I guess you can’t see me.”
“Oh God,” she wrote bac
k.
“Did they hurt you?” he asked.
“They put me through some cleansing ritual. That thing with the voice said they will reprimand the Coach. I tried to explain I am the one who got him involved with the witch. They will take that into consideration. Now how do we get you out?” she asked.
“Come back to the truck,” he suggested. “I hide a key in the gas flap. Use it. Get us out of here.”
In short order, he heard the truck door open, then her wonderful voice. Next he heard the cat yowling from its carrier in the back. Everything should have been good except it wasn’t.
“Bob, I don’t see you,” Cassie explained. “I gotta call my mom. I’ll make up something.”
Bob could hear Cassie saying repeatedly to her mother that all was okay. She fibbed and claimed she’d drunk too much and had too much fun on her extended date. “I’ll be home as soon as I can, mom. Thanks for watching the kids. I’m sorry I did this. Yes, let Catherine know I’m okay.”
Then Bob felt the diesel rumble into life. Cassie put it into gear.
“I don’t know what to do Bob. I wish I knew where you were. Hey, let me call you!”
She did that. They discovered he was situated exactly in the middle of the truck, probably in the console area, maybe inside a cup holder. Cassie dug around but couldn’t feel anything odd.
“I have got to get home, Bob,” she said. “Tiger’s driving me nuts.”
“He’ll calm down at my place,” Bob suggested. “I don’t think it’d do us any good to go to your mom’s.”
“What about air?” she asked him?
“I’m good for now,” he told her.
“I like none of this,” Cassie said. “I will hang up so I can concentrate on driving, okay?”
Cassie pulled into Bob’s stable yard and deliberately drove the truck into the middle of the covered arena. She let Tiger out in Bob’s cabin after letting Whomper out. Then she turned on all the lights for the entire barn complex. The horses woke up. Some watched her as she opened the doors to the truck and searched.
Whomper joined her and whimpered. He could sense that his master was still in there somewhere.
“Here, old boy.” She lifted the large dog so he could rest in the front seat. “Sniff. See if you can find him.”
From inside his trap, Bob could feel his dog’s nose as it scouted close to his position. He called Cassie. “He’s nailing it,” he told her. “My dog’s got a line on me.”
She peered into a deep recess of the console. What looked to be a small ceramic black bead was in the bottom of one of the deep cup holders. “Got it,” she told him over the phone. “Except, you’re tiny.”
“Must be this black hole stuff,” Bob told her.
She put the bead inside her jeans pocket. “Hold on,” I will move the truck back out.
Cassie felt exhausted. It was late. She was worried. Bob was with her, but he wasn’t. Everything she’d been through when they’d converted her back to human form had taken a lot out of her. She turned off most of the barn lights, then went into Bob’s cabin. They had both kept their phones on. He could hear her muttering as she moved about.
“Come on in, Whomper Let me close the door,” Cassie urged the dog.
At last she was inside. Her cat walked about now with his tail up as he re-explored the rooms. Whomper got some water. Cassie carefully placed the mysterious black bead in a cup and rested it in the middle of Bob’s dining table.
“I’m at a loss,” she said.
“Get on my computer,” he told her. “It’s in my barn office.”
“Okay but I’m taking you with me.” She carried the cup with her now.
“I’m in here. I’ve powered it up. What do you want me to do? Try to summon the Coach?”
“No. Bruce. The Coach got us in this mess to begin with.”
“How do I get Bruce?” she asked.
“He’s on Facebook.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“He is. Trust me. He’s on Facebook. Go to my profile. Type in his first name under my friends. He should come up. Send him a message. Hurry. My phone is about to run out of juice.”
She located the right profile. Army buddies for sure. Both of them had many pictures of their time together except Bruce’s postings had ended several years ago. She sent a PM to Bruce, then sat back and closed her eyes and prayed.
“Who’s this?” Bruce messaged back. “You’re not Bob. Bob never starts his messages like that.”
Furiously Cassie typed to Bruce to explain what had happened. It didn’t take long. The blue haze formed in a corner of the room, then lumberjack-looking Bruce stood before her. She’d never been so glad to see such a sight.
“Here he is,” she said, offering a white tea cup towards Bruce. The black bead rolled around in the cup's bottom.
“Oh my God,” Bruce said. “I hate when this happens.”
45
Redux
“You mean you’ve seen this before?” Cassie’s eyes got wide.
“Seen? No, it happened to me. Once.” He took the cup from her. “I can’t believe they did this to him.”
“How do we get it un-done?” she asked. Her breath shortened as her chest tightened.
“Tell me again… you two were where?”
“Someplace deep under the city library. The South branch.”
Bruce looked down at the cup in his massive hands. “Bastards,” he said. “To do this to a war veteran. A fine man. Bob is one of the absolute best people on this planet.”
Bob could hear Bruce. He had turned his phone off though because he didn’t want the battery to die. What he didn’t like, though, was the frustration he also detected in his friend’s voice. That was most alarming.
Cassie fell back into Bob’s desk chair. The computer hummed and cast a grey-blue pall on her face. Bruce sat on the edge of the desk, thinking, cupping the small container in his hands.
“How did you get released?” she finally asked.
“It wasn’t easy.”
“I got that. What did you do or who did what to who?” Her teeth felt almost clenched in anger. Bruce seemed reluctant to reveal much to her. “Is it some state secret? Why won’t you tell me?”
Bruce set the cup down and went over to the kitchenette portion of the office. He washed and dried his hands, almost ceremoniously.
“It’s not pretty. The Coach knew what to do. We had to apply a great deal of force. In my case the container I was in was strapped down to a rail and then a train ran over it.”
“You mean they mushed you? As in squashed like a bug? Oh, hell no.” Cassie’s face showed her confusion.
“I know it sounds like death but that’s the closest we could come to making it happen. In my case what difference did it make? I am already dead, you know.”
“What you’re saying is we need to kill him?” She reached for the cup and clutched it to her breast. “I can’t believe you’d even suggest…”
“It’s not from me. That was from the Coach.”
“Our great protector? Ha!” She had heard everything now, she thought. This was taking things to the next level.
“I’m not letting you do that to him,” she said to Bruce. “Why? So I could reach out to him as a ghost on Facebook?”
“Ow. That hurts.”
“There’s got to be a better answer. We have little time. I can feel it,” she said.
“You women and your intuition.” Bruce shook his head.
They faced each other. Neither one had any answers.
A loud bang echoed through the arena. One horse had kicked the sides of its stall.
“I will check on the horses. Give them some hay,” Cassie told Bruce. “Don’t you dare touch that cup or do anything to him. We need to think.”
She looked over at the microwave. The digital readout said 1:00. “Damn, it’s late. I’m so tired.”
She got up anyway and walked out.
Bruce walked over to the desk, looked dow
n at the bead in the cup and said, “Don’t worry, good buddy. We’ll figure this out.”
Bob had squatted down on his heels. Being in the pitch dark like this was depressing. He was having his doubts.
Still with no idea as what to do, Cassie announced to Bruce she would go to sleep. They decided Bruce would take the couch, and she’d use the bed.
Two hours later she woke up. Tiger swatted at the black bead and chasing it on the wood floor of Bob’s cabin as if was a marble.
Bruce already was awake and had turned on a light.
“Tiger! No. Stop!” Cassie chased her cat until she saw the small object rolled under the bed. “This is terrible. Poor Bob!” She retrieved it and held it in her hand.
“Call him. See if he’s all right,” Bruce told her.
She did. Bob answered her although he sounded shaken up.
“What is going on out there?”
“My cat,” she explained. “Look, we need to do something. Bruce and I can’t figure out how to help you. Either we need to go back to the library…”
“… negative,” Bob said.
“Call for the Coach somehow,” she continued.
“Maybe,” Bob told her.
Then Bruce chimed in, “or go find some scientists.”
“Like who?” Bob asked.
Bruce took the phone from her. “Those black hole guys.”