PART 8
“See? Now you’re starting to get it. If I take away three apples, then add five…” Jack said, drawing the apples on a piece of ruled paper, then how many would I have?”
“Six?”
“Perfect. This stuff isn’t too hard, once you get the hang of it.”
“Agreed, subject,” Tyler said pompously, his persona unable to hide his pride in solving the problem correctly.
“So, let me ask you one now,” Tyler proposed.
Jack laughed. “Alright, go for it.”
“Say my kingdom has, how about, four stores of grain, and after a locust infestation, three must be discarded. There are many subjects in my kingdom, you see, and all of them require food. The trouble, then, is how to distribute it. It’s impossible to save them all, at least part of my kingdom will die of starvation. But who should it be? The upper class, who provides support, yet attempts to control the crown through their own means? Or the commoners, those who we need for farming, amongst other things, even if they’re ludicrously uncultured.”
“Um, Tyler? I loved to play pretend too, but this is more of a political question, and not one that you need to answer…”
“Why? Should they all starve?”
“No! Of course not, it’s just… this isn’t a situation you’ll ever need to deal with in your life, and I’m not sure I’m smart enough to answer a question like that.”
“I see, you simply do not understand. I’m disappointed in you, subject. Well then, I believe my lesson is concluded. I’ll have the servant show you out.”
Tyler plopped down from his chair and left the conference room, his cape dragging on the floor behind him. The door shut with a resonant boom, and Jack was left with his thoughts.
What a headcase, Jack thought, which means something coming from me.
Jack gathered his things, and headed for the door of the conference room. He didn’t need to be shown out, he knew the way. As he grasped the door handle, he felt a bolt of something jolt through his body. It sent him to the floor, breathing heavily.
What?
He stood up, and tried to open the door handle again. This time, it turned without incident. As he swung the door open, he was greeted by the sight of stone walls covered with expensive furs, torches hung equidistantly down what Jack knew to be the hallway, and a figure in full medieval armor down the hall.
Jack tried to make sense of this. He knew for a fact that this wasn’t the same spacious, modern architecture he’d seen when he entered the conference room. He looked at the knight. The metal was polished, but blemishes like scratches and small dents were to be found all over it. Jack had never seen battle worn armor, but if he had to guess, it would look exactly like this.
He walked up to the figure. “Hello, uh, excuse me?”
The knight turned to face him, saying nothing.
“Sorry, I think I’m just a bit lost, and was hoping to find the exit-”
“State your business! I do not recognize you. Are you a guest of the royal family?”
“The royal… I’m sorry, this is the Lacy household, right?”
The knight stood still for a moment, as though trying to make sense of things, then grabbed Jack by the arm, dragging him down the hallway.
“Hey, stop! You’re gonna leave a bruise!”
Jack was taken down the hallway, up a set of stone spiral stairs, and into a large antechamber. Now he was certain: this was not a redecoration of the Lacy home. This was something completely new. A castle. He slapped himself in the face a few times with his free hand, trying to wake himself up. Soon, he had to stop due to pain. Pain that felt all too real for his liking. He felt perfectly conscious, coherent. Jack couldn’t tell what to make of any of this. The knight pulled Jack to a set of large, wooden double doors. He knocked four times to a certain rhythm, and the doors were opened. Jack was yanked inside, then thrown to the floor, knocking the wind out of him. He opened his eyes, fighting for air. A crest of a large rodent in red and blue was in the center of an expansive tapestry that hung on the cobblestone wall. Another fine crimson carpeted extended from Jack all the way up several steps leading to a looming golden chair. He was, unmistakably, in the throne room.
A few moments later, a door on the other side of the enormous chamber opened, and in walked a royal procession. Three figures flanked by a knight on either side. The smallest took a seat on the frontmost, central throne, the other two sitting down on two seats behind.
Jack shook his head in disbelief, wiping his eyes. As he began to catch his breath, his certainty grew. The child he locked eyes with, the child in the largest throne, was Tyler.
*****
Toby had spent the last hour and a half organizing. He’d been pushing himself for days now, and the mess around him had progressed to the point of slowing him down. If the boys needed to find a study or research paper, it would require some amount of digging.
“How long have we been at this now?” Ponytail said after taking a sip from a juicebox.
“Something like… two days, maybe?” Toby said. “Oh, rats. I’ve got to spend the night at home tonight. Otherwise my parents will start to worry about me, and that’s the last thing we need right now.”
“Alright then,” Buzzcut said, “just be back in the morning.”
Toby nodded, then looked out the attic window. The sun was beginning to set. Toby decided he’d finish organizing at least one quadrant of the room before he left. As he reached for a page of notes, his phone rang. It was his mother. Buzzcut and Ponytail looked up from their work, the ringing distracting them.
“I’ve got to take this, sorry,” Toby said. He accepted the call. “Hello?”
“Hey Toby, are you spending the night at Ryan’s again today?”
“No, well, actually, would that be alright? I thought I’d need to come home tonight.”
“Well… if I’m being honest, I’m just happy you’re out with a friend. I told you it’s fun to spend time with people your age.”
“You know what Mom?” Toby started, looking to Ponytail, then Buzzcut, “I think you’re right.” The truth was, Toby thought the last few days might just be the most fun he’d ever had. “Alright, I’ll stay at Ryan’s then. See you tomorrow!”
As Toby was about to end the call, he heard his mother interject. “Oh, one more thing! A couple of your research buddies came by, they said they were working with you on a project, or something? A gentleman with a gray tie, and his wife, maybe? Honey, what do you think, are they married?” Toby’s mother asked his father. Toby discerned a muffled response from his father. “Yeah, I thought so too.” Toby’s mother turned back to the phone. “Anyway, they gave me their phone number, and asked you to call them when you had the chance.”
Who… no, of course. It could only be S., Toby didn’t have research partners as a matter of both security and practicality. He thanked his mother, and hung up.
“Boys, we’ve got a problem,” Toby said before filling the two in on the mysterious couple.
Ponytail exchanged a look with Buzzcut.
“Toby,” Ponytail said, “I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to be absolutely certain when you answer. You’re sure you’ve never worked with these people in your life?”
“Yes, I’m certain,” Toby said without hesitation.
“This could be bad. Turn off all GPS functionality on your phone. All of it. In fact, I’d leave it in airplane mode. Maybe tell your parents you dropped it or something.”
“What’s going on?”
Ponytail was pacing now. “It could be too late. We should leave, right now. This is exactly what I was afraid of…”
Toby stopped Ponytail, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Spit it out already.”
“It’s about the fabric… the fabric of reality.”
This caught Buzzcut’s attention. “You don’t mean…”
“Yes, I do. Toby, we’ve got to hurry up and figure this out.”
“That’s fine, but tell me why.”
“It’s a fringe theory. Or at least, I thought it was a fringe theory. The truth is, reality could be, ah, what’s the word, elastic. In that, if you leave your reality, if you stop observing the play-doh, so to speak, it’ll try and pull you back. I didn’t know how that would manifest, but…”
“How does that relate to-”
“Don’t worry about it, seriously. It’s a waste of time we can’t afford,” Buzzcut said, “the important thing is that the only way to fix it is to figure all this out, and fast.”
“Should we change locations?” Ponytail asked.
“No, it’s a waste of time. I’m going to repeat myself. Let’s get to it.”
The three fell silent. A few moments passed, then slowly, but surely, the room was once again filled with clicks and clacks.
*****
Ace’s e-cigarette had broken. She didn’t know when, but she knew it had happened sometime recently. This discovery, along with the ensuing lack of nicotine, had made her irritated. She did her best to calm herself before entering ‘Carter’s Sports and More’.
Every wall, glass case, and display was full of sporting equipment. Ace remembered her parents taking her to the store when she was a little girl preparing for softball season. Of course, she’d wanted the biggest, heaviest bat in the store. One day, you’ll get there, honey. I know it, her mother said. She pushed the memory out of her mind.
She walked around a rack of shoulder pads for peewee football players. She heard a faint ‘whack’ emanating from somewhere in the distance. She searched, trying to figure out which direction it was coming from, and eventually found herself at a wall full of jerseys. Everything from pro sports to jerseys of past Sleepy Grove Christian greats. She made an educated guess, and walked right through a couple of them.
Pushing the jerseys aside revealed a back section to the store, where netted sections of batting cages provided protection from big hits. Ace saw Carter fixing up a pitching machine. He’d load a pitch, examine exactly where it thumped against the rubber backstop, and recalibrate.
“Are you Jeff Carter?” Ace asked, raising her voice over the incessant whir of the conveyor belt on the pitching machine.
The man watched one more pitch hit the backstop, then turned to Ace.
“Depends who’s asking,” he said with a wry grin. “You need a glove? I’ve got a sale going right now, actually.”
Ace circled around the batting cage until she was just a few feet from Carter. She extended her hand through the netting. “Ace Rawlings, it’s nice to meet you.”
He shook Ace’s hand. “Nice to meet you too. If you want to buy something, our cashier should be in soon, but I can help you out right now if you’d like!”
“Actually, I wanted to ask you a few questions. I may not look it, but I’m working with the police as an investigator on a case.”
Ace waited for the man’s reaction. He seemed to accept her words, an amused smile remaining on his lips. “You may remember the Robertson family’s disappearance?”
Now a frown flashed across Carter’s face. “Sure do. They were a big basketball family, would come in and buy two pairs of shoes before every season. Didn’t, uh… didn’t know the police were putting a kid on the case though.”
“Don’t worry, they’ve got plenty of adults working on it too, it’s just that a certain kid just so happens to have a better chance of getting to the bottom of things than the rest of Sleepy Grove combined.”
Carter’s smile returned. He sighed. “Alright, I like your attitude. Tell you what. You go ahead and hit a few balls to help me fix this old piece of junk, and I’ll answer your questions. Sound good?”
“Any way I could get you to answer my questions now?”
“Come on now Ace, we live in a world built on trade. If I just answered your questions quickly to get you out of here so I could finish working on this thing, how could you ever be confident you got the full truth? See, it’s much better to have people in your debt when asking ‘em questions.”
“Alright, fine.”
Ace walked back around the batting cage, and entered through a door in the chain link. An old silver bat, its branding pounded off with use, laid on home plate, and Ace picked it up, weighing it in her hands.
“You a betting man, Jeff?”
“I’m a sports nut, what do you think?”
“Alright, then I’ve got a wager for you. A couple of the questions I might ask… well, they might be a little bit uncomfortable. If I hit three out of five, you’ve gotta swear to answer them.”
Carter thought it over for a moment. “Well, I’m not much of a ‘personal questions’ type of guy, but if the police need me to talk, then that’s that, I guess. What do I get if I win?”
“It won’t happen.”
“If you’re that confident, I better ask for quite the prize…”
“Sure, like I said, it won’t happen.”
“You said you’re some kind of detective?”
“Not just ‘some kind,’ I’m the best.”
The man smiled. “Alright, if I win, I’ve got a big pile of receipts laying around. We’re going digital, need someone to log them in our new system. Hell, I’d even pay ya’ to do it.”
Ace didn’t hesitate. “Sounds like a deal to me. Alright, whenever you’re ready.”
She readied the bat, waving it back and forth slowly to judge its weight. She took a practice swing, and decided to choke up a bit, raising her grip on the handle.
The first pitch left the machine and flew straight down the middle of the plate.
Suddenly, Ace was transported back to the tiny baseball diamond behind the drugstore on Adams Street. The miniature catapult that the little league called a pitching machine launched a ball with a high arc towards the plate. Ace brought her bat as far back as she could, then swung for the fences. Her bat was met by nothing but air, and the force of the swing turned her around, tossing her to the ground.
She leaped back up resiliently, turning back to the pitching machine so that only her coach at the mound could see her blush.
“That’s alright Stacy, you’ve got this! You can do it!” the collected parents said, offering their support.
Ace looked out of the corner of her eye and saw her parents holding hands. She could hear her father’s voice cheer her on loudest of all. She averted her eyes before she got a good look at her mother, who was attempting to blend in as though she was just like all the other parents.
Ace shook her head, refocusing. The second pitch was tossed in the same exact arc. Ace wasn’t going to allow herself to miss twice. She twisted her body backward, attempting to generate as much force as a little leaguer could. She swung… and missed again.
Now, she was beginning to get angry.
“Honey, choke up on the bat a little!” her father said.
Ace obliged, moving her hands up the bat’s grip tape. She looked back to the crowd, but failed to avert her gaze from her mother.
Ayumi Rawlings sat right next to the bleachers in her wheelchair. If one squinted their eyes just enough, they just might be able to tell themselves that her knit beanie (which was pulled down past her forehead) was just a peculiar choice of headwear on an eighty-five degree day. That there wasn’t a transparent rubber tube running from her nose to an oxygen tank attached to the back of the wheelchair. That she wasn’t a human skeleton, skin tensely stretched across bone.
But Ace wasn’t squinting. She saw everything her mother was, in stark contrast to the other children’s normal parents. Yet, what brought Ace to something near tears wasn’t her mother’s bleak aesthetic. It wasn’t the fact that she knew the other children would start treating her differently, now knowing that her mother was deathly ill. It was her mother’s pure, genuine, loving smile as she watched her daughter play the sport she loved.
Ace fought back waves of emotion, then turned back to the plate. Two strikes, she told herself. This time, I won’t miss.
The catapult pretending to be a pitching machine lurched forward, the ball flying in its usual arc. Because she’d changed her grip, the bat felt lighter in Ace’s hands. It was all perfect. She kept her eye on the ball, readying herself, then swung with everything she had.
The metallic ding of the bat connecting perfectly with the ball echoed throughout the empty lot. She sprinted to first base, quickly rounding it to second. As she continued her strides around second, she saw her third base coach smiling at her. He was motioning for her to ease up. Normally, she would have listened. But today, her mother was watching. She rounded third, and after a headlong sprint, dove headfirst back home. She looked up at her coaches. All of them were laughing. As she tried to figure out why, she noticed the coach on the mound pointing out toward the fence. In the distance, she saw the other team’s center fielder doing their best to climb over in an attempt to retrieve the ball which had sailed ten feet past it. Ace had hit a home run, her first ever, and hadn’t known until she’d finished her sprint around the bases. The humor of the situation began to dawn on her. She smiled, even while huffing and puffing, and turned to the bleachers. The parents were on their feet, hooting and hollering for the team’s first home run of the season. She scanned the crowd for her parents, who’d moved since the last time she’d seen them.
Then, she saw it. Just the smallest detail, almost out of sight, but enough. The back wheel of her mother’s chair peeked out behind a nearby shed. Ace ran out of the batter’s box, running past the parents assembled in the bleachers. She dashed behind the shed, and took in the sight of her mother.
Ace watched her cough violently into a small hand towel. Her father held her mother from behind, his brow furrowed in concern. Ace watched a few more violent shakes, and it stopped. Her mother removed the towel, and Ace could see the bright red stain she’d left behind. Ayumi turned her head slowly toward Ace, surprised, then immensely saddened to see her.
“Oh, Stacy…” her mother said, her voice trailing off weakly. “Did you get a hit?”
Ace swung, the motion and mechanics coming back to her, and sent the first pitch high and far, catching in the netting atop the cage.
“Wow, you’ve got quite the swing!”
“Yeah… I used to be pretty good, believe it or not. Had to give up the sport though.”
“Why?”
“It’s… complicated. Why don’t you throw the next pitch?”
Mr. Carter obliged, and the next pitch was like the last, dead center. And, just like the pitch before, Ace effortlessly sent it toward the theoretical outfield.
“I’m starting to think I was robbed at 3 out of 5 odds.”
“You were.”
The third pitch was a bit off center, but Ace didn’t care. She took a strong step in, loading her hips, and sent the third pitch straight back at the pitching machine. It hit one of the metal legs, causing the machine to fall over.
“Well, that’s…”
“Ironic,” Ace said, finishing Carter’s thought.
The two sat at one of the waiting tables near the vending machines.
“Alright, a deal’s a deal, what do you want to know, Ms. Rawlings?”
“It’s in regard to the mark on your arm,” Ace said. She’d never been one for social subterfuge.
Carter’s eyes widened for a moment, then he regained his composure. “That’s… how did you hear about that?” he asked embarrassedly.
“Word gets around, a few people at your gym have seen it.”
“Ah, I see. Well, I don’t know why you went around asking about people’s blemishes. Had it since birth.”
Ace sat unmovingly, staring at Carter all the while. She’d trained herself to discern lies from truths in even the best liars. Jeff Carter, of course, was not one of them. A few more moments passed, the feeling of discomfort becoming nearly palpable. Eventually, Carter gave in.
“Well, maybe not since birth… but since-”
“High school?”
Carter’s expression was beginning to reek of hostility. He did his best to maintain his normal smile, but it was far from enough to fool Ace.
“How did you-”
“Tell me about the woods that night, Mr. Carter. I know portions of it already, so please don’t bother lying to me. I need to hear the full story, straight from the source. I promise, this remains entirely anonymous. You seem like a good, honest man, and I want all the best for ya’.”
Carter shifted in his seat. Ace noticed it was becoming difficult for him to maintain eye contact with her. He weighed his options, then shook his head.
“Fine. A bet’s a bet, after all. I’ll tell you the story, you leave?”
“Works for me.”
He sighed, then began.
“It’s not very complicated. It was high school, we were ‘the’ nationally ranked baseball team, we felt entitled, you know how it goes. Thing is, there’s not that much trouble that a kid can cause in Sleepy Grove, at least not of good conscience. You spray paint a wall, you’re probably making trouble for a neighbor, a friend’s parent, or at the very least someone who’s treated you well in the past. So we wanted to find a new way to… well, to make trouble.”
“One of the kids on the team, he said his parents did these weird rituals. He’d always wanted in on them, but they’d never let him. He wanted to make his own, and being bored teenagers, we all agreed to do it with him. We didn’t really know what we were doing, or maybe we did, I don’t know. We were… we were kids. Not that that’s an excuse, but-”
“That’s alright, Mr. Carter. No judgment here. Please continue.”
Carter nodded. “We weren’t exactly creative about it. We bought some robes from the costume shop, we made a ritual with all sorts of chants and movements. We went pretty in depth with it, actually. The last addition was something one of the guys had read about in a newspaper article somewhere. A top basketball team had branded themselves to immortalize their season, and we all thought it was a good idea. So, one night, we all go out to the woods, do our little chants, brand ourselves, and leave.”
Carter studied the table, thinking of anything else he may have left out. “Well, I think that’s it, really. We never spoke of it again, and a few of the guys even had surgery to repair it. I wasn’t lying about it being embarrassing. But hey, we were kids, right?”
Ace tried to figure out what to make of this. She desperately tried to connect disparate ends to disparate ends, her deductive circuits running at full capacity to try to make something of this story. This isn’t it, right? This isn’t just another dead end?
“So… that’s everything, then?” Ace asked, trying to hide her disappointment.
“Yes, I’d say that’s everything. If I remember anything else, I’ll be sure to let you know, but like I said, it’s not a complicated story.”
A bunch of stupid kids fooling around? That’s really where this takes me? Come on, Ace think… there has to be something else you can ask, even a silver lining will do…
A thought shot across her distressed mind.
“Say, Mr. Carter, one more question.”
“Alright, at this point I’m an open book, but you did promise to leave.”
“And I will, promise. But that kid… the one whose parents were into the cult stuff? You remember his name?”
“Oh, sure. It was Alex Patterson, our catcher. Crazy guy, always was. Shame what happened…”
Ace’s hail mary had been answered. She quickly thanked Mr. Carter, then jogged out of the store.
It ain’t over till’ it’s over. And if my instincts are right, things might just be coming together…
Odds and Ends 
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