This story is a sequel to Entropy. If you haven't read that, you should read it first.
I could not have been more surprised than I was at seeing Elizabeth wandering around the camp in confusion. This was the last possible place I would ever have expected to see her, and she was the last person I would ever have expected to see here. The first thought that ran through my head was that she was here to kill me in revenge for killing her husband. I squashed the thought instantly. Elizabeth was not a vengeful person, and even if she hated me now, we’d grown up together and been best friends for most of our lives.
To my surprise, it did not seem that she hated me. She spun around in fear when I tapped her on the shoulder, but at seeing it was me her expression of worry changed to one of delight. “Lazulia!” she cried, embracing me. “I can’t tell you how I’ve missed you!”
I wondered if she’d gotten my letter at all. Even if she hadn’t, someone would have told her. But if she knew… at best, she’d somehow manage to forgive me, eventually. More likely, she’d hate me forever.
“I’ve missed you too,” I told her. I wasn’t sure how to ask whether she knew. Luckily, I didn’t have to.
“I got your letter,” she told me. “I’m afraid you mixed up your congratulations and condolences.”
“What do you mean?”
“Is there somewhere more private where we can talk?” Because we were standing in the middle of the crowded camp with beings of every possible description going about their business around us. I’m sure it intimidated Elizabeth; even I’d been intimidated when I arrived.
I led her along a path down the cliffs to the beach. It wasn’t empty, of course; the docks were full of pirates and other mariners, and there were merpeople in the sea, and here, as everywhere around the camp, huge black butterflies flew overhead. There were a few beings on the rocky beach, but the rock Elizabeth and I sat on was far enough to allow private conversation.
We were both unsure of what to say. Finally, Elizabeth told me, “I tried to write to you, but I just ended up crumpling up all my attempts. I suppose some things are better told in person. So I kept wanting to come here to visit you, but I couldn’t work up the courage.”
“I guess you did, eventually.”
She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t courage but fear that brought me here. I’ll get to that later, though.”
“What did you mean, about me mixing up congratulations and condolences?”
“You sent me your condolences on the death of my husband. You would have been better served by sending congratulations on his death, and condolences on the marriage in the first place.”
“You weren’t happy with him?”
“No. Oh, I wish you had been able to tell me what happened with him, the day you left. I suppose I wouldn’t have listened anyway. I know I wouldn’t have. Caldow was quite good-looking, you remember. So I went home that day babbling about how I’d met… gods, I believe I actually used the phrase ‘the man of my dreams.’ Lazulia, I was shocked to hear you say you’d been a fool; no, the fool was always me.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “Or at most we were both fools.”
“I don’t know. Your dream ended up coming true, didn’t it?”
“In a rather twisted way, but yes,” I admitted. “Isn’t that funny? My dream was impossible, and it came true, and yours was almost guaranteed, and… well, you sound like it didn’t.”
“I don’t know if it didn’t come true, or if it was just the wrong dream. Anyway, upon hearing that Caldow was a man of suitable rank, wealth, and profession, my father called upon him the next day and arranged the match. I was overjoyed. We had a beautiful wedding, and then he had to leave on campaign right afterwards. I missed him, or the idea of him, but I liked living in his huge manor and being wealthy. It wasn’t until he came back that… well, that things went wrong.”
She paused, so I asked gently, “He was abusive?”
“Yeah. He was away a lot, but when he wasn’t… it was bad. And then after….” After what? I wondered when she broke off that chain of thought, but I didn’t interrupt. “I… I don’t want to admit it, but I… hoped he wouldn’t come back. Every time he left. And then finally he didn’t. And when they told me it was you who’d killed him... it was like you were protecting me from him, even from a distance, even without knowing any of it.”
I had to laugh. “When I found out he was your husband, I felt like I’d betrayed you.”
“That’s how everyone else back home feels, and assume I feel.” She looked around absently, then focused on a large black shape just over our heads. “You know these are omens of doom and destruction?”
“We’re the forces of chaos. We like doom and destruction.”
Elizabeth laughed, then asked, “Really?”
“No. But they seem to like it here, and they seem to fit, somehow. And they don’t hurt anything.”
“I suppose, but they seem so… ominous.”
“Like I said, they fit in here. They follow us in battle, even. Quite spooky for the enemy, I’m sure.”
“I can imagine. Weird, spooky things do fit in here, I guess.”
“Oh, thanks,” I pretended to be insulted.
“It’s just so… you described it in your letter, but actually seeing it… and then I was trying to find you, wandering around between all those strange, terrifying people.”
“They can be overwhelming, but most of them aren’t really like that when you get to know them.”
“I know. It’s just… I doubt I could ever fit in here.”
“Any more than I could back in civilization.”
“I know,” Elizabeth said sadly. “I was just hoping… I don’t know where to go. I know this must make me a horrible friend, ignoring you until I needed you, but Lazulia, I really need your help.”
“Anything,” I promised.
“I inherited Caldow’s money, quite a lot of it. His family dislikes and mistrusts me, and is quite unhappy with the arrangement. And now they have my daughter and will try to use her to manipulate me.”
My jaw dropped. “Your daughter?”
“Emily. She’s three.”
She had been going to say, “And then after Emily was born,” I realized. But the thought was overshadowed by the fact that Elizabeth was a mother. She’d had a baby. Elizabeth had had a baby. I could still remember when we were three years old, and now she had a daughter that age.
And she’d been taken from her mother and was being used as a pawn.
“What are we going to do?” I asked her.
“I don’t know! I hoped you could think of a plan, you’re the one whose good at tactics and strategy and all that. Caldow’s father is the highest placed, richest man in town; the law won’t help me against him.”
“I know you’re didn’t come to me for the law to help you, Elizabeth. Don’t worry, I’ll come up with a plan. Tell me more about where they have her.”
“Well, they live in the big mansion on the hill… you know which one I’m talking about?”
“The one that’s exactly the opposite of a haunted house?”
“Yes! I’d forgotten about that. From what I’ve been able to find out, she’s there being taken care of by the servants. Taken care of well, not mistreated or anything, but she’s my daughter!”
“The best thing,” I mused, “would be to sneak in and grab her. Is she under guard?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’d assume she would be. And the house would certainly be guarded. Damn not being good at invisibility. I’ll have to get help, I think, if that’s all right with you.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then the other question is what you’ll do once you have her. They don’t sound like the type of folks to give up so easily.”
“No. I was thinking maybe I could come here, but now that I’m here… this isn’t the place for me.”
“We’ll rescue Emily, and the two of you can come back here and stay while you figure out what to do next. Right now, let’s go find Tewlan. And maybe one of the Starthans, it would be useful to have someone less than six inches tall… but on second thought, probably more trouble than it’s worth. So Tewlan it is.”
“Who,” I heard the unspoken, And what?, “ is Tewlan?”
“He’s a friend of mine, and he can go so invisible you can’t even see him.”
“Um, isn’t that what invisible means?” Elizabeth asked as we walked back up the cliffs.
“Sure, but it’s really, really hard. Most people can’t get that invisible, at least not in bright light. See, this is the best I can do,” I went invisible, which, for me, only meant that my color faded to a sort of translucent version. “But I’m really bad at it.”
“About your friend… is he human?”
“As far as I know.”
We found Tewlan bent over an injured kitten, for he specializes in using his magic for healing, and heals humanoids and other animals without discriminating. Once he’d finished with the kitten, I made the introductions.
“Lazulia has said so much about you. It’s great to finally meet you,” Tewlan said to Elizabeth.
“You too. I mean, I haven’t talked to Lazulia for years so she hasn’t said much about you, but it’s great to meet you too.” Elizabeth blushed.
I raised a mental eyebrow. Elizabeth and Tewlan? That would be an interesting couple… though they’d be good for each other, I thought. And they were both my friends…. Wouldn’t that be interesting.
I explained the problem, and the plan, or as much of a plan as there was, and asked Tewlan if he was in. “I’d be happy to help you,” he told Elizabeth.
We rode to Elizabeth’s town, the town I’d grown up in. It was strange being back. Things were the same, except where they were different, small differences, but that only made it stranger. The house next door to the house I’d grown up in had been green, and now was blue. A tree Elizabeth and I had sat in had been chopped down. And of course, I was so very different from when I’d left.
We snuck up to the manor house Emily was being kept in. The plan was for Tewlan and Elizabeth to sneak in, invisible, and bring Emily out, while I made a diversion. I am good at creating diversions; you might say it’s one of my specialties.
We separated, and I went around to the front of the house, hid in a bush, and started making banshee-like screams. When someone popped out of the house to see what was going on, I started a fire. It was floating in the air, so it’s not like it would have caused any damage, but it seemed to upset people pretty well anyway. The person who’d first came out of the house—on closer inspection I could see it was a butler—went back in and came out with more people who ran around in a panic. They tried to swat at the fire with cloths to put it out, but it was higher than they could reach. At that point I summoned a whole swarm of the huge black butterflies. This freaked the people out even more, and soon there was a whole great crowd of frantic people, most of whom had come out of the mansion, though a few had been walking by. I directed the butterflies in great swirling dances. The people, except for me, were not entertained.
Finally, I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked around to see nothing behind me. “Is that you?” I whispered.
“Yes,” I heard Tewlan and Elizabeth’s voices.
“Do you have Emily?”
“Yes.”
“Can you make me invisible, so we can get out of here?”
A pause, during which Tewlan must have been nodding or shaking his head, then, “Nope. Even three people is taxing, I couldn’t do four. Just wait, they’ll go away eventually.”
“It might help if you put the fire out and got rid of the butterflies,” Elizabeth suggested.
I put out the fire and sent the butterflies back to where they’d come from, and soon enough, the people disappeared back into the house. We snuck away, then ran as quickly as we could to where we’d left the horses, and rode away.
Tewlan had dropped the invisibility while we were riding, and now I had the chance to look at Emily. She was adorable, and looked just as Elizabeth had at that age. She didn’t freak out at being taken away on horseback as Elizabeth would have though,
She liked the camp as well. Its bright colors and interesting people provided endless amusement for her, and there were a few other children around her age who she quickly became friends with. Elizabeth grew more comfortable with the camp than she had been, thanks partly to her daughter’s influence and partly to Tewlan.
Elizabeth and Emily stayed at the camp for a few weeks. Then they stayed for a few more weeks. And then a few more. Eventually, everyone realized they weren’t going anywhere. A little bit later, Elizabeth realized it and announced that they were staying. She told me it wasn’t because of Tewlan, but Elizabeth had always been a bad liar.
Showing posts with label kidnapping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kidnapping. Show all posts
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Ruinstones
This story was cowritten with my friend Jade Sands, and the characters are hers.
It was the goblins’ fault. Okay, maybe Alequan started it by stealing from the Goblin Mafia. But they stole it first! Not from us, true, and maybe you think it wasn’t any of our business, but that’s what we do. And it did prevent a war between the goblins and the dragons they originally stole the gold from. And sure, Alequan did make the runestones in the first place…. But he couldn’t have known what trouble they would bring.
So, I waited at the mouth of the goblin tunnel with a pair of horses, and Alequan came out with the gold, and we rode away, brought it back to the dragons, and assumed that was the end of it. Until we got home.
As always, Lindarr was waiting for us. Unlike always, Alequan’s brother seemed upset. “They took Elmvril,” he told us.
“Who did?” Alequan asked, at the same time as I asked, “The goblins?”
Lindarr nodded. “Last night. They attacked, and I went out to help fight them off. We killed most of them, but… It was a diversion, I suppose; when I got home, Elmvril was gone. They took my son!”
I’d never seen Lindarr so distraught, though of course it was reasonable. Elmvril was only six, and goblins are cruel.
“We’ll get him back,” I promised.
“I know, Sayla….” Lindarr looked up at me with a pained expression. “But will we get him back alive?” I could tell he could barely say it.
“Yes,” Alequan told his brother. And so we went back down into the dank, dreary tunnels of the goblins.
I will not describe the long days we spent wandering those empty labyrinthine passageways. Suffice it to say that by the end, we barely dared believe that we were alive, much less Elmvril.
Finally, we came to a large, round room. It would have been yet another dead end, except that it was occupied by three goblins.
Lindarr rushed forward and demanded, “Where is my son?”
“Someplace you’ll never find him,” one of the goblins said slimily. He seemed to be the leader. “If you want him, you’ll have to win him back.”
Lindarr seemed about to say more, but he caught himself; angering them would hardly help us.
“How?” I asked as Alequan and I caught up with Lindarr.
“A little game, perhaps? The boy against…” the goblin smirked. “His runestones?”
So that was what this was about. Alequan had a set of runestones he had made himself, of troll bones. Bones of a mountain troll, I hastily add, not the kindly monkey trolls that raised me. The runestones were nearly infallible in answering any question, and had other, more esoteric powers. Their fame had spread, so it was not surprising the goblins knew of them, and knowing of them, of course the avaricious little beasts wanted them.
We couldn’t bet on Elmvril’s life. But what choice did we have? If the goblins had the runestones… it would be bad. Imagine, if the greatest enemies of humankind had that much power. But against Elmvril’s life…. There was no choice.
“What game?” Alequan demanded.
“Divination,” smirked the goblin leader. “Ours against yours. You use your ruinstones, we use our entrails. We take turns thinking of something. We write it down and put the paper under a rock, and the other person uses their method of divination to tell what it is. The answers must be exact, of course. The first to be wrong, or not answer, loses.”
It seemed fair enough, which was in itself suspicious. But again, what choice did we have?
“Fine,” Alequan agreed. “Do you want to go first, or shall I?”
“Our side will be first to divine. Your woman will be the one to think and write, as will my henchman, and you and I will divine.”
I tried to think of something that would be difficult for goblins to comprehend. Finally, I wrote, “a rainbow.” Goblins preferred the darkness of their tunnels, and it was the least goblinny thing I could think of.
The goblin leader said something to one of the others, who left and came back with a large cage of rats. The leader scooped one out and slit its stomach. I winced at the unexpected violence, but of course I had seen far worse, and to far worse than rats. When the rat finally stopped twitching, the goblin leader studied the entrails and murmured, “an arch of colored light in the sky… that is called… A rainbow!” he exclaimed triumphantly.
The goblin henchman then wrote something. I watched anxiously as Alequan threw the runes. “A worm cut into eight pieces,” he said almost immediately.
He was right, of course. I tried to be trickier this time, and wrote, “a thornless, light pink rose.” The goblin killed another rat, and again was correct in his divination.
Each turn, we tried to outdo each other in complication, and each turn, Alequan and the goblin chief divined correctly. Finally, I wrote, “a tribe of six monkey trolls named Ibbi-oku, Gliziya, Urth, Gerthchi, Zurb, Dreyf, and Harold. The last three are children.” And yet, the goblin divined it correctly. “One more round,” he said after that. “Then we just kill you and take the damn stones.” I wondered why they hadn’t in the first place, but of course I didn’t ask.
And then it was the goblin’s turn, and I could tell by his smirk that he had a trick up his sleeve. Alequan threw the runes, stared at them in puzzlement, threw them again, stared more. He rubbed his temple and looked at Lindarr sorrowfully, and threw the runes one more time, then scooped them back into their bag. They hadn’t been able to tell him; he was about to give up; and then, suddenly, his face brightened and he blurted, “My runestones!”
The goblin swore. It had been a very good try, and very close, because Alequan’s runestones’ presence cannot be felt magically, so they cannot be divined. Alequan had only been able to guess, because they would have told him anything else.
And so I wrote, “Alequan’s runestones.” I knew I was taking a huge risk. They would be on the goblins’ mind, and when he couldn’t tell, surely he would know. But the rat entrails would reveal anything else, and while goblins are cunning, they aren’t known for their intelligence. And while the rat entrails were impressively accurate, they weren’t as infallible as the runestones.
He killed the rat, read its entrails, and said triumphantly, “a pile of stones.” He smirked, assuming I was giving up by providing something so easy. It didn’t even occur to him that his rat guts hadn’t provided the whole answer.
“No,” I said. “Alequan’s runestones.” I showed the paper.
We braced for a fight, because we didn’t expect them to keep to their bargain. But before we could move, the thee goblins did something, I think it must have been goblin magic, and there was only darkness. I assumed they’d killed us. I can’t begin to describe my shock at coming to aboveground, at the entrance to the tunnels, with Alequan, Lindarr, and Elmvril next to me. Even the runestones were still in Alequan’s pocket.
I’m not sure why they didn’t kill us; I know enough about goblins to know that they are not honorable beings; and observed enough of those particular goblins to know that they would have preferred us dead. But, we survived; I’m not going to question it!
It was the goblins’ fault. Okay, maybe Alequan started it by stealing from the Goblin Mafia. But they stole it first! Not from us, true, and maybe you think it wasn’t any of our business, but that’s what we do. And it did prevent a war between the goblins and the dragons they originally stole the gold from. And sure, Alequan did make the runestones in the first place…. But he couldn’t have known what trouble they would bring.
So, I waited at the mouth of the goblin tunnel with a pair of horses, and Alequan came out with the gold, and we rode away, brought it back to the dragons, and assumed that was the end of it. Until we got home.
As always, Lindarr was waiting for us. Unlike always, Alequan’s brother seemed upset. “They took Elmvril,” he told us.
“Who did?” Alequan asked, at the same time as I asked, “The goblins?”
Lindarr nodded. “Last night. They attacked, and I went out to help fight them off. We killed most of them, but… It was a diversion, I suppose; when I got home, Elmvril was gone. They took my son!”
I’d never seen Lindarr so distraught, though of course it was reasonable. Elmvril was only six, and goblins are cruel.
“We’ll get him back,” I promised.
“I know, Sayla….” Lindarr looked up at me with a pained expression. “But will we get him back alive?” I could tell he could barely say it.
“Yes,” Alequan told his brother. And so we went back down into the dank, dreary tunnels of the goblins.
I will not describe the long days we spent wandering those empty labyrinthine passageways. Suffice it to say that by the end, we barely dared believe that we were alive, much less Elmvril.
Finally, we came to a large, round room. It would have been yet another dead end, except that it was occupied by three goblins.
Lindarr rushed forward and demanded, “Where is my son?”
“Someplace you’ll never find him,” one of the goblins said slimily. He seemed to be the leader. “If you want him, you’ll have to win him back.”
Lindarr seemed about to say more, but he caught himself; angering them would hardly help us.
“How?” I asked as Alequan and I caught up with Lindarr.
“A little game, perhaps? The boy against…” the goblin smirked. “His runestones?”
So that was what this was about. Alequan had a set of runestones he had made himself, of troll bones. Bones of a mountain troll, I hastily add, not the kindly monkey trolls that raised me. The runestones were nearly infallible in answering any question, and had other, more esoteric powers. Their fame had spread, so it was not surprising the goblins knew of them, and knowing of them, of course the avaricious little beasts wanted them.
We couldn’t bet on Elmvril’s life. But what choice did we have? If the goblins had the runestones… it would be bad. Imagine, if the greatest enemies of humankind had that much power. But against Elmvril’s life…. There was no choice.
“What game?” Alequan demanded.
“Divination,” smirked the goblin leader. “Ours against yours. You use your ruinstones, we use our entrails. We take turns thinking of something. We write it down and put the paper under a rock, and the other person uses their method of divination to tell what it is. The answers must be exact, of course. The first to be wrong, or not answer, loses.”
It seemed fair enough, which was in itself suspicious. But again, what choice did we have?
“Fine,” Alequan agreed. “Do you want to go first, or shall I?”
“Our side will be first to divine. Your woman will be the one to think and write, as will my henchman, and you and I will divine.”
I tried to think of something that would be difficult for goblins to comprehend. Finally, I wrote, “a rainbow.” Goblins preferred the darkness of their tunnels, and it was the least goblinny thing I could think of.
The goblin leader said something to one of the others, who left and came back with a large cage of rats. The leader scooped one out and slit its stomach. I winced at the unexpected violence, but of course I had seen far worse, and to far worse than rats. When the rat finally stopped twitching, the goblin leader studied the entrails and murmured, “an arch of colored light in the sky… that is called… A rainbow!” he exclaimed triumphantly.
The goblin henchman then wrote something. I watched anxiously as Alequan threw the runes. “A worm cut into eight pieces,” he said almost immediately.
He was right, of course. I tried to be trickier this time, and wrote, “a thornless, light pink rose.” The goblin killed another rat, and again was correct in his divination.
Each turn, we tried to outdo each other in complication, and each turn, Alequan and the goblin chief divined correctly. Finally, I wrote, “a tribe of six monkey trolls named Ibbi-oku, Gliziya, Urth, Gerthchi, Zurb, Dreyf, and Harold. The last three are children.” And yet, the goblin divined it correctly. “One more round,” he said after that. “Then we just kill you and take the damn stones.” I wondered why they hadn’t in the first place, but of course I didn’t ask.
And then it was the goblin’s turn, and I could tell by his smirk that he had a trick up his sleeve. Alequan threw the runes, stared at them in puzzlement, threw them again, stared more. He rubbed his temple and looked at Lindarr sorrowfully, and threw the runes one more time, then scooped them back into their bag. They hadn’t been able to tell him; he was about to give up; and then, suddenly, his face brightened and he blurted, “My runestones!”
The goblin swore. It had been a very good try, and very close, because Alequan’s runestones’ presence cannot be felt magically, so they cannot be divined. Alequan had only been able to guess, because they would have told him anything else.
And so I wrote, “Alequan’s runestones.” I knew I was taking a huge risk. They would be on the goblins’ mind, and when he couldn’t tell, surely he would know. But the rat entrails would reveal anything else, and while goblins are cunning, they aren’t known for their intelligence. And while the rat entrails were impressively accurate, they weren’t as infallible as the runestones.
He killed the rat, read its entrails, and said triumphantly, “a pile of stones.” He smirked, assuming I was giving up by providing something so easy. It didn’t even occur to him that his rat guts hadn’t provided the whole answer.
“No,” I said. “Alequan’s runestones.” I showed the paper.
We braced for a fight, because we didn’t expect them to keep to their bargain. But before we could move, the thee goblins did something, I think it must have been goblin magic, and there was only darkness. I assumed they’d killed us. I can’t begin to describe my shock at coming to aboveground, at the entrance to the tunnels, with Alequan, Lindarr, and Elmvril next to me. Even the runestones were still in Alequan’s pocket.
I’m not sure why they didn’t kill us; I know enough about goblins to know that they are not honorable beings; and observed enough of those particular goblins to know that they would have preferred us dead. But, we survived; I’m not going to question it!
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Babysitting
Melody answered the phone. “Hello?” she said, her voice, as always, so soft it was just audible. In school she didn’t like being called on because, although she almost always knew the answers to questions, teachers always told her to speak louder. She had once auditioned for the part of a dryad in a school play, but although she could act fairly well and looked exactly like a picture of a dryad that was in her English book, tall, with long wavy red hair, she couldn’t speak loudly enough to be heard by the audience.
“Hello, may I speak to Melody Radin?” asked a pleasant male voice. Melody didn’t recognize the voice, so she prepared to hang up if it was a telemarketer.
“This is me.”
“I’m looking for a babysitter for my six year old daughter and a friend of mine recommended you. I know this is short notice, but are you free tonight?”
Melody considered. She didn’t normally babysit for people she didn’t know, but if someone she did babysit for had recommended her surely it was all right. And she was free, in fact she was bored to death at having nothing to do, and the money would be nice. “At what time?” she asked.
“Well, I need to be there by six, so from about five thirty to… I should be back by eleven. At your house, preferably, we’re remodeling….”
“Sure,” agreed Melody. “That sounds great. What’s your daughter’s name?”
“Kelsey,” said the man. “So, I’ll bring her by at five thirty. How much do you charge?”
“Um, five dollars an hour?”
“I’ll make it six. Kelsey can be rather… difficult. She likes to make up… stories, and will try to get you to believe them.”
“That’s no problem,” said Melody, smiling. “Difficult is when they run around the house climbing on the furniture and peaking things.”
The man laughed. “Well, I can’t promise how Kelsey will behave. I’ve never left her with a stranger before. I think she’ll like you though. I’ll see you at five thirty.”
“Okay, bye.” They hung up.
Melody’s doorbell rang at five thirty exactly. She opened it to a tall man with black hair and striking lapis-blue eyes tightly gripping the hand of a little girl. She was dressed in blue jeans and a long-sleeved pink sweater that was really too hot for August. Her brown hair was somewhat tangled and she had a band-aid on her cheek. The fear in her brown eyes made her face look older than that of a six year old, but unlike most scared children she did not cling closely to her father but stood as far away from him as his grip on her hand would allow.
Melody remembered how shy she had been at that age, always clinging to one of her parents or her big sister Alexia. She smiled at Kelsey. Kelsey attempted to smile back, but the quick upward curve of the little girl’s lips was not really a smile.
Kelsey’s father bent down and whispered something in her ear, but whatever he’d said most emphatically did not comfort her. She looked more scared than ever, her small body almost trembling.
“This is Kelsey,” the man told Melody. “Kelsey, this is Melody, your babysitter. You’ll be a good girl while I’m gone?” Kelsey nodded quickly, and he told her, “I’m running late. I’ll see you at eleven, Kelsey.” He released his daughter’s arm and left.
“What do you want to do?” Melody asked Kelsey. Kelsey looked around nervously. “Um, could we… would you mind going for a walk?” the little girl asked timidly.
“Sure!” agreed Melody. “It’s great weather, isn’t it?” Kelsey nodded. “That sweater seems hot though; do you want to borrow a cooler shirt? I don’t have anything your size, but if you could wear one of my shirts and even if it’s too big it would be cooler than that.”
The six-year-old hesitated, then nodded, so Melody led Kelsey to her room. Melody loved her room. The walls and ceiling were painted in swirls of the beautiful blues and greens of the ocean, Melody’s favorite colors, except for one wall which had an enormous window, framed by turquoise curtains pulled back to each side. Her desk was at the wall adjacent to the window so when she was doing her homework Melody could pause and gaze out at the ocean.
Melody led Kelsey into the room and went over to her closet. Kelsey was entranced by the window, and stood staring out of it, mouth agape. Melody looked through her closet and pulled out a sleeveless t-shirt. She showed it to Kelsey. “Do you want to wear this?”
“No!” It was almost a shout. “It has to have sleeves!”
Melody was puzzled, but she said, “Why don’t you come over here and pick something out?”
Kelsey approached the closet tentatively. Staying as far back as she could, she eventually selected a long sleeved silk shirt that hung down to her knees. Kelsey put the shirt on over her sweater, slipped the sweater out from under the shirt, and put her arms through the sleeves, which she rolled up to her wrists. “Are you ready to go?” she asked, her voice sounding half eager, half scared.
“Sure,” said Melody, so Kelsey eagerly ran out the door.
“Do you want to go to the tidepools?” Melody suggested once they were outside.
“Okay!” Kelsey agreed enthusiastically.
They stayed at the tidepools for several hours. Each time Melody suggested they leave Kelsey begged to stay just a little longer and Melody didn’t have the heart to refuse. Besides, she loved being at the tidepools and was having fun. Kelsey ran around as if she hadn’t been outside for months, hopping from rock to rock and splashing in the water.
It was almost dark, so Melody finally dragged Kelsey away from the tidepools, although actually when Melody insisted that they were going to leave, Kelsey was much more agreeable than Melody would have expected of a little girl whose father had called difficult.
They got home and Melody heated up some leftover pasta. When they finished eating, Kelsey asked if she could go on the computer.
“Sure, do you know how to use it or do you want me to help you?”
“I can do it myself,” said Kelsey. Her voice was tense.
Kelsey sat down in front of the computer, which was already on, and double-clicked on Internet Explorer. While she waited almost anxiously for it to load, she checked to make sure that Melody was not looking over her shoulder. The babysitter was sitting on her bed gazing out the window, so Kelsey turned back to the computer.
Although Kelsey was just learning to read, she could read and write her own name. Checking once again that Melody was not looking, she typed her full name in the search box and pressed enter.
A long list of websites loaded and Kelsey clicked on the first one. It was a newspaper article. Kelsey studied it carefully, but didn’t recognize enough of the words to be able to tell what it said. She went back and clicked on the next article, but she couldn’t read that one either. The third page she looked at was no more legible to her than the first two, but there was something different about it. At the top of the page was a picture of her parents.
Kelsey glanced back at her babysitter, then continued to stare at the article. She needed to know what it said. Hoping, praying, that it didn’t reveal too much, she turned to Melody and asked softly, a tremor in her voice, “What does this say?”
Melody came over and looked over Kelsey’s shoulder. “Oh,” she said. “It’s an article about a couple who killed themselves because their daughter was murdered. I don’t think your dad would want you to read that.”
Kelsey abruptly burst into hysterical, maniacal laughter. She laughed until tears flowed down her face, and at some point, it was impossible to tell exactly when, her laughter changed to sobbing.
Melody stared at the little girl, wondering frantically if she was having a mental breakdown and if she should call Alexia, or Kelsey’s dad, except that strangely enough he hadn’t given her a contact number, or 911.
“Are you okay?” Melody asked Kelsey tentatively, then felt like a complete idiot. Obviously Kelsey was not okay.
However, the question seemed to snap Kelsey out of her hysteria. She stopped crying, and simply stared blankly at the computer. After a moment, she said, “Read me the article.”
After Kelsey’s reaction to just hearing about it, Melody was not about to give her the gory details. “I’m sorry Kelsey, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Read it,” Kelsey insisted so imperatively that, against her better judgment, Melody did.
The short article, dated in May, was about a couple, Carolyn and Bill Anderson, whose five year old daughter had been kidnapped several months earlier. The police had found a decomposed body that they believed to be the Andersons’ daughter, and Carolyn and Bill had jumped off a cliff.
Without a word, Kelsey got up, walked over to the window, and gazed out into the night. “Why?” she asked softly, and Melody knew the question was not addressed to her.
“Kelsey, what is it?” she asked.
After a moment of silence Kelsey looked at her, her eyes filled with fear, sorrow, and the blankness of bereavement, but she merely shook her head. A six year old should never look like that, Melody thought, and repeated, “Kelsey, what is it?”
Kelsey shook her head again, whispered, “I can’t,” and turned again to gaze out the window.
Melody wanted to go over and hug her, but she didn’t think Kelsey would allow her to. After a moment she went over to the computer.
The article she had read to Kelsey had not contained the name of the Andersons’ murdered daughter, but Melody went back to the list of results of Kelsey’s search and clicked on another news article, written in February. It was written before the body was discovered and was about the kidnapping of Kelsey Anderson. It asked readers to call the police if they saw Kelsey, and had a photograph of a smiling five year old.
Besides for the smile, it was the same face as that of the Kelsey gazing out of the window.
“You’re Kelsey Anderson,” Melody said. “The man who left you here isn’t your father, he’s your kidnapper.”
Kelsey spun around to face Melody. “He said he’d kill me if I told you. He didn’t want to leave me alone because I’d been making noise, so he had you babysit me and he said if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me and he’d kill me!” she said in a small, panicky voice.
“It’s going to be okay,” said Melody, although racing through her mind was the thought that a kidnapper knew where she lived and was supposed to arrive to pick up his victim by eleven. She picked up the phone and dialed 911.
“911, please state the nature of you emergency.”
“I’m babysitting and the little girl I’m babysitting for was kidnapped. I mean, she wasn’t just kidnapped now, but the man who hired me to babysit her, I thought he was her dad, but he actually kidnapped her a few months ago and he’s going to be back at eleven and he’s a kidnapper!”
“Ma’am, calm down. Can you give me your name and address?”
“I’m Melody Radin and my address is 1432 Seashell Blvd.”
“Okay, the police are on their way. Will you be okay until then?”
“Uh… yeah.”
“Okay. They’ll be there soon. Goodbye.”
“Bye.”
Melody hung up the phone, then realized her sister would be worried if she came home and saw police cars in front of their house, and immediately picked up the phone again and called Alexia.
“Hello?”
“Alexia? It’s Melody. Um, well, the thing is, I’m babysitting, and um….”
“That’s fine,” said Alexia.
“No! I mean, that’s not why I’m calling. I already am babysitting and the girl I’m babysitting for, Kelsey, is at our house, and she’s actually Kelsey Anderson, remember she was kidnapped, it was in the newspaper, and the man who hired me to babysit her, I thought was her dad, is actually her kidnapper.”
There was a loud thud then some scuffling noises, then Alexia’s voice came back on the phone and said, “I’m sorry, I just dropped the phone. A kidnapper hired you to babysit his victim?”
“Uh-huh. Can you come home?”
“Of course, I’ll leave right now. Have you called the police?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Good. I’ll see you in- wait, does the kidnapper know where you live?”
“Uh-huh. But the police are on their way now.”
“Maybe you should go over to a neighbor’s?”
Melody was nervous about waiting at home, but she said, “Don’t worry, the police are on their way here now, and he’s not supposed to be back until eleven.”
There was a silence, and Melody knew Alexia was deciding whether to argue. Finally, she said, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Bye.”
“Bye,” said Melody, and hung up.
Kelsey was staring at her in horror. “The police are coming?” she whimpered. “He’ll kill me! He’ll kill you too, and the police, and the rest of your family, and… He told me he would!”
Although Kelsey’s words filled Melody with fear, she told the little girl, “It’ll be okay. The police are going to come and they’ll arrest the kidnapper and then he won’t be able to kill anyone.”
Kelsey looked at her dubiously. “What if they can’t find him? Or if they arrest him and he gets out of jail? Then he’ll kill us!”
“They will get him,” Melody assured Kelsey firmly, hoping that it was true.
It was not.
The police came. They questioned Melody and Kelsey, staked out the house, examined Kelsey for evidence… They did everything they could to find the kidnapper. It wasn’t enough.
A social worker came as well. Her intent was to take Kelsey to social services. Alexia, who by now knew the whole story from questioning Melody and Kelsey as intensely as the police, had other ideas. She sent Melody and Kelsey upstairs while she discussed things with the social worker. When Melody came down half an hour later, the social worker was gone. “Kelsey is staying with us,” Alexia proclaimed.
The next day Alexia signed Kelsey up for karate classes. Kelsey loved them, and was a natural at karate. Alexia also made an appointment for her to see a psychologist. Kelsey loved that a bit less, but she went. The therapy did help Kelsey’s feelings of self-blame over her parents’ death, a little, but it did nothing to stop her nightmares.
Two days after Kelsey’s rescue came a peak in the case. The small family had just gotten home from Kelsey’s therapy session when the phone rang. Melody answered it.
“You know, you might be a good babysitter, but you’re not very smart,” said the kidnapper. “To believe the fairytales of a little girl not known for her truthfulness. And to call in the police because of them. You have no proof I’m not the girl’s father. I could have you arrested for kidnapping.” He chuckled.
Melody had frozen, but she managed to find her voice. “I hope you do go to the police, because then they‘ll arrest you!”
“Exactly. And do you know what people do when the police can’t help them?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “The take the law into their own hands.”
“Wha- what?”
“I will get Kelsey back.”
“No!”
“The night I was supposed to pick her up the police were there, of course, and last night, I had some… business to attend to, relating to the reason I found it necessary to leave Kelsey with you in the first place. But tonight….” He hung up.
Melody was frozen in place, the phone still in her hand, when Kelsey came into the kitchen a few minutes later.
“What’s wrong Melody?” she asked.
Melody started to cry.
Kelsey went over and gave Melody a hug, but it did nothing to stop the older girl’s sobs, so Kelsey went to get Alexia.
Alexia promptly went to Melody, took the phone from her hand, and hung it up. Then she looked into her sister’s eyes and demanded, “What was it?”
Melody took a shuddering breath and managed, “It was him.”
Alexia took out a glass and filled it with cold water. She put in two ice cubes and a slice of lemon, then handed it to Melody, who took a sip.
After a few minutes, once Melody had regained control of herself, Alexia asked, “What did he say?”
“He said… he said that I don’t have any proof he’s not Kelsey’s father and he could- he could have us arrested for kidnapping. I told him that he couldn’t go to- that if he went to the police they’d arrest him. Then he said that he was going to take the law into his own hands, and that the night he left Kelsey with me the police were there and last night he had to do, um, whatever it was that was the reason he left Kelsey with me in the first place, and then he said, he said, like a warning, a threat, ominously, ‘But tonight…’ and then he hung up.”
Alexia picked up the phone, then thought better, put it back down, and took out her cell phone.
“Are you calling the police?” asked Kelsey.
“He won’t come if the police are here.” She dialed a number into her phone.
It rang three times before a young woman answered. “Yes?”
“Alala? This is Alexia. Are you busy tonight?”
“I have my Criminology final tomorrow. So do you, actually, remember? I have to study.”
Alexia ignored the fact that her reply was negative. “Do you want to help with a stakeout?”
There was a pause before Alala said, “What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.”
“Fine. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
The doorbell rang almost exactly ten minutes later. Kelsey, who was sitting on the couch looking at a picture book, froze. The doorbell rang again a few seconds later, and then there were three sharp taps on the door. Kelsey told herself that it was not her kidnapper, but she was still too terrified to answer the door. A few seconds later Alexia strode into the room, looked through the peephole, unlocked the lock, and swung the door open.
It was not the kidnapper, but Kelsey had known that as soon as Alexia had begun to unlock the door. The woman standing at the door appeared to be a few years older than Alexia. Her long ebony hair stood out against her pale skin and the large red bag hanging on her shoulder. Her eyes were nearly as haunted as Kelsey’s, and because of this, Kelsey immediately liked her.
Alexia made the introductions. “Kelsey, this is my friend Alala. We go to school together, and we used to be roommates. Alala, this is Kelsey, who I told you about.”
Alala flashed Kelsey a small smile as she entered the room, then turned back to Alexia. “So are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Yeah.” Alexia sat down on the couch next to Kelsey, and Alala sat down in an armchair and looked at Alexia pointedly.
“Well, like I told you yesterday, Kelsey’s kidnappers still on the loose,” Alexia began, then paused.
“Yes?” prodded Alala.
“Well, today we got- well, Melody actually got the call. It was him, the kidnapper.” She gave a detailed summary of the phone call, then concluded, “If the police are here he won’t come. So I thought that instead of calling them, you and me could keep watch.”
Alala nodded, started to say something, then glanced at Kelsey and remained quiet. After a moment she asked, “Have you locked the place up yet?”
“Of course. You can check if you want though.”
Alala got up and walked through the house. After a few minutes she was back. “It’s secure, but the only problem is Melody’s room. That window could be broken easily, and with the proper equipment it wouldn’t be impossible to climb in.”
Alexia nodded. “Melody and Kelsey can sleep in the guestroom tonight. The only door is to the living room, and you saw the windowpanes; nobody could get through them. And that way we can stay in here and study for our final while we keep watch.”
“Alexia, can I go in Melody’s room for now and go on the computer?” Kelsey asked.
“It should be fine for now,” Alala told her friend. “He wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to climb up in broad daylight.”
Alexia hesitated, but she knew her friend was paranoid enough that if she said it was safe, it was. “Okay, Kelsey, but only until it gets dark.”
Once Kelsey left, Alala said, “I didn’t want to tell you with Kelsey around, but I brought this.” She pulled a handgun out of her bag. “Just in case.”
Alexia nodded. “Is it loaded?”
“Yes, but the safety’s on.”
Alala put the gun on the couch cushion between them, then pulled out a textbook, and they began to study.
The sun was just beginning to set when Kelsey appeared on the stairs.
“Good, I was just about to get you,” Alexia said to her.
Kelsey appeared not to have heard her. She was pale, and there was fear in her eyes. She started to walk down the stairs, slowly, but she stopped about halfway. “We found out why,” she said quietly.
“Why what?”
“It was another news article, on the computer. I thought of it because of what he said to Melody on the phone.”
“What was it?” Alexia asked, her voice troubled.
“It has to be him. His eyes- and who else would…. And I knew there had to be some kind of reason, I mean, it really was a risk….”
“Why he left you with a babysitter,” suggested Alala. Alexia looked at her in surprise, but she agreed that it made sense.
Kelsey nodded mournfully. “He… it was in the news. It had a police sketch, it wasn’t very good, not like mine, that I told them, but the eyes…. It was him.”
“What did he do?” asked Alala.
“He- he killed someone!” cried Kelsey. “Her name was Crystal. It said she was walking home from school with her friend and he shot her from the roof of a grocery store, that’s how they got the police sketch, someone saw him coming down from the roof. I know it was him.”
“I’m sure it was,” said Alala solemnly, as Alexia, noticing that it was beginning to get dark out, blurted, “Where’s Melody?”
“In the bathroom, throwing up.” Kelsey added in a small voice, “I told her it wasn’t her fault….”
Alexia started to get up when the phone rang, jarring the solemn mood. Alexia answered it automatically. “Hello?”
“Hello,” said a pleasant yet ominous voice. “Do you know who this is?” he inquired.
“I can guess,” Alexia said. “What do you want?”
“I want to speak to Melody. Would you please put her on?”
“No.”
“It’s the only way you’ll find out what I have to say….”
Alexia considered, then said, “Hold on.” She covered the receiver with her hand and said, “It’s him. He wants to talk to Melody.”
“Don’t let him,” advised Alala.
“No. I’ll do it,” said Melody as she appeared on the stairs next to Kelsey. Slowly, she made her way to the phone and took the receiver from her sister. Against her better judgment, Alexia let her.
“I know what you did!” Melody accused before he could say anything. She stepped away from Alexia and stood staring at her, until Alexia reluctantly sat back down on the couch. Alexia glanced at the gun next to her, and was glad of it.
“Which thing that I did do you know about?” came the voice from the other end of the phone.
“That you-” Melody couldn’t bring herself to say the words. “Why you needed a babysitter!”
“Ah. How nice for you. Anyway, I’m just calling to let you know that I lied to you yesterday. I’m no longer in the country. If you have caller ID, you can see that the number I’m calling you from is in Australia.”
“We don’t have caller ID,” Melody said automatically, then felt stupid for telling him.
“Oh, well you’ll be able to see it on your next phone bill. But I’m calling to let you know that you may keep Kelsey, at least for now. I do owe you something, after all, I never did pay you for babysitting.” He laughed, an evil laugh, and hung up.
Melody turned to face Alexia, and was struck by the image of Alexia and Alala sitting on the couch, textbooks still on their laps, with the gun on the cushion between them, and Kelsey, standing on the stairs above them, tears running down her pale face. She managed to say, “He says he lied, that he left the country and isn’t coming to get Kelsey.”
None of them moved, at all. There was complete stillness in the room until Alala said, “You don’t know if it’s true.”
Alexia took out her cell phone and called the phone company. She explained what she wanted, and was told that the last number that had called her home phone was, indeed, from Australia. “It seems true then,” she said once she hung up.
“So he’s gone?” Kelsey asked. She did not sound happy; her question was almost a wail.
“Aren’t you glad?” Melody asked her. It was not a suggestion that she should be, just a question.
“No.”
Alexia said, “If he’s gone, there won’t be justice.”
“At least you’re safe from him now,” said Alala, her voice revealing that she, of all people, knew it wasn’t enough.
Kelsey, Melody, and Alexia are characters in Hey Cool, I've Never Seen a Teacher With His Head Cut Off Before!
“Hello, may I speak to Melody Radin?” asked a pleasant male voice. Melody didn’t recognize the voice, so she prepared to hang up if it was a telemarketer.
“This is me.”
“I’m looking for a babysitter for my six year old daughter and a friend of mine recommended you. I know this is short notice, but are you free tonight?”
Melody considered. She didn’t normally babysit for people she didn’t know, but if someone she did babysit for had recommended her surely it was all right. And she was free, in fact she was bored to death at having nothing to do, and the money would be nice. “At what time?” she asked.
“Well, I need to be there by six, so from about five thirty to… I should be back by eleven. At your house, preferably, we’re remodeling….”
“Sure,” agreed Melody. “That sounds great. What’s your daughter’s name?”
“Kelsey,” said the man. “So, I’ll bring her by at five thirty. How much do you charge?”
“Um, five dollars an hour?”
“I’ll make it six. Kelsey can be rather… difficult. She likes to make up… stories, and will try to get you to believe them.”
“That’s no problem,” said Melody, smiling. “Difficult is when they run around the house climbing on the furniture and peaking things.”
The man laughed. “Well, I can’t promise how Kelsey will behave. I’ve never left her with a stranger before. I think she’ll like you though. I’ll see you at five thirty.”
“Okay, bye.” They hung up.
Melody’s doorbell rang at five thirty exactly. She opened it to a tall man with black hair and striking lapis-blue eyes tightly gripping the hand of a little girl. She was dressed in blue jeans and a long-sleeved pink sweater that was really too hot for August. Her brown hair was somewhat tangled and she had a band-aid on her cheek. The fear in her brown eyes made her face look older than that of a six year old, but unlike most scared children she did not cling closely to her father but stood as far away from him as his grip on her hand would allow.
Melody remembered how shy she had been at that age, always clinging to one of her parents or her big sister Alexia. She smiled at Kelsey. Kelsey attempted to smile back, but the quick upward curve of the little girl’s lips was not really a smile.
Kelsey’s father bent down and whispered something in her ear, but whatever he’d said most emphatically did not comfort her. She looked more scared than ever, her small body almost trembling.
“This is Kelsey,” the man told Melody. “Kelsey, this is Melody, your babysitter. You’ll be a good girl while I’m gone?” Kelsey nodded quickly, and he told her, “I’m running late. I’ll see you at eleven, Kelsey.” He released his daughter’s arm and left.
“What do you want to do?” Melody asked Kelsey. Kelsey looked around nervously. “Um, could we… would you mind going for a walk?” the little girl asked timidly.
“Sure!” agreed Melody. “It’s great weather, isn’t it?” Kelsey nodded. “That sweater seems hot though; do you want to borrow a cooler shirt? I don’t have anything your size, but if you could wear one of my shirts and even if it’s too big it would be cooler than that.”
The six-year-old hesitated, then nodded, so Melody led Kelsey to her room. Melody loved her room. The walls and ceiling were painted in swirls of the beautiful blues and greens of the ocean, Melody’s favorite colors, except for one wall which had an enormous window, framed by turquoise curtains pulled back to each side. Her desk was at the wall adjacent to the window so when she was doing her homework Melody could pause and gaze out at the ocean.
Melody led Kelsey into the room and went over to her closet. Kelsey was entranced by the window, and stood staring out of it, mouth agape. Melody looked through her closet and pulled out a sleeveless t-shirt. She showed it to Kelsey. “Do you want to wear this?”
“No!” It was almost a shout. “It has to have sleeves!”
Melody was puzzled, but she said, “Why don’t you come over here and pick something out?”
Kelsey approached the closet tentatively. Staying as far back as she could, she eventually selected a long sleeved silk shirt that hung down to her knees. Kelsey put the shirt on over her sweater, slipped the sweater out from under the shirt, and put her arms through the sleeves, which she rolled up to her wrists. “Are you ready to go?” she asked, her voice sounding half eager, half scared.
“Sure,” said Melody, so Kelsey eagerly ran out the door.
“Do you want to go to the tidepools?” Melody suggested once they were outside.
“Okay!” Kelsey agreed enthusiastically.
They stayed at the tidepools for several hours. Each time Melody suggested they leave Kelsey begged to stay just a little longer and Melody didn’t have the heart to refuse. Besides, she loved being at the tidepools and was having fun. Kelsey ran around as if she hadn’t been outside for months, hopping from rock to rock and splashing in the water.
It was almost dark, so Melody finally dragged Kelsey away from the tidepools, although actually when Melody insisted that they were going to leave, Kelsey was much more agreeable than Melody would have expected of a little girl whose father had called difficult.
They got home and Melody heated up some leftover pasta. When they finished eating, Kelsey asked if she could go on the computer.
“Sure, do you know how to use it or do you want me to help you?”
“I can do it myself,” said Kelsey. Her voice was tense.
Kelsey sat down in front of the computer, which was already on, and double-clicked on Internet Explorer. While she waited almost anxiously for it to load, she checked to make sure that Melody was not looking over her shoulder. The babysitter was sitting on her bed gazing out the window, so Kelsey turned back to the computer.
Although Kelsey was just learning to read, she could read and write her own name. Checking once again that Melody was not looking, she typed her full name in the search box and pressed enter.
A long list of websites loaded and Kelsey clicked on the first one. It was a newspaper article. Kelsey studied it carefully, but didn’t recognize enough of the words to be able to tell what it said. She went back and clicked on the next article, but she couldn’t read that one either. The third page she looked at was no more legible to her than the first two, but there was something different about it. At the top of the page was a picture of her parents.
Kelsey glanced back at her babysitter, then continued to stare at the article. She needed to know what it said. Hoping, praying, that it didn’t reveal too much, she turned to Melody and asked softly, a tremor in her voice, “What does this say?”
Melody came over and looked over Kelsey’s shoulder. “Oh,” she said. “It’s an article about a couple who killed themselves because their daughter was murdered. I don’t think your dad would want you to read that.”
Kelsey abruptly burst into hysterical, maniacal laughter. She laughed until tears flowed down her face, and at some point, it was impossible to tell exactly when, her laughter changed to sobbing.
Melody stared at the little girl, wondering frantically if she was having a mental breakdown and if she should call Alexia, or Kelsey’s dad, except that strangely enough he hadn’t given her a contact number, or 911.
“Are you okay?” Melody asked Kelsey tentatively, then felt like a complete idiot. Obviously Kelsey was not okay.
However, the question seemed to snap Kelsey out of her hysteria. She stopped crying, and simply stared blankly at the computer. After a moment, she said, “Read me the article.”
After Kelsey’s reaction to just hearing about it, Melody was not about to give her the gory details. “I’m sorry Kelsey, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Read it,” Kelsey insisted so imperatively that, against her better judgment, Melody did.
The short article, dated in May, was about a couple, Carolyn and Bill Anderson, whose five year old daughter had been kidnapped several months earlier. The police had found a decomposed body that they believed to be the Andersons’ daughter, and Carolyn and Bill had jumped off a cliff.
Without a word, Kelsey got up, walked over to the window, and gazed out into the night. “Why?” she asked softly, and Melody knew the question was not addressed to her.
“Kelsey, what is it?” she asked.
After a moment of silence Kelsey looked at her, her eyes filled with fear, sorrow, and the blankness of bereavement, but she merely shook her head. A six year old should never look like that, Melody thought, and repeated, “Kelsey, what is it?”
Kelsey shook her head again, whispered, “I can’t,” and turned again to gaze out the window.
Melody wanted to go over and hug her, but she didn’t think Kelsey would allow her to. After a moment she went over to the computer.
The article she had read to Kelsey had not contained the name of the Andersons’ murdered daughter, but Melody went back to the list of results of Kelsey’s search and clicked on another news article, written in February. It was written before the body was discovered and was about the kidnapping of Kelsey Anderson. It asked readers to call the police if they saw Kelsey, and had a photograph of a smiling five year old.
Besides for the smile, it was the same face as that of the Kelsey gazing out of the window.
“You’re Kelsey Anderson,” Melody said. “The man who left you here isn’t your father, he’s your kidnapper.”
Kelsey spun around to face Melody. “He said he’d kill me if I told you. He didn’t want to leave me alone because I’d been making noise, so he had you babysit me and he said if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me and he’d kill me!” she said in a small, panicky voice.
“It’s going to be okay,” said Melody, although racing through her mind was the thought that a kidnapper knew where she lived and was supposed to arrive to pick up his victim by eleven. She picked up the phone and dialed 911.
“911, please state the nature of you emergency.”
“I’m babysitting and the little girl I’m babysitting for was kidnapped. I mean, she wasn’t just kidnapped now, but the man who hired me to babysit her, I thought he was her dad, but he actually kidnapped her a few months ago and he’s going to be back at eleven and he’s a kidnapper!”
“Ma’am, calm down. Can you give me your name and address?”
“I’m Melody Radin and my address is 1432 Seashell Blvd.”
“Okay, the police are on their way. Will you be okay until then?”
“Uh… yeah.”
“Okay. They’ll be there soon. Goodbye.”
“Bye.”
Melody hung up the phone, then realized her sister would be worried if she came home and saw police cars in front of their house, and immediately picked up the phone again and called Alexia.
“Hello?”
“Alexia? It’s Melody. Um, well, the thing is, I’m babysitting, and um….”
“That’s fine,” said Alexia.
“No! I mean, that’s not why I’m calling. I already am babysitting and the girl I’m babysitting for, Kelsey, is at our house, and she’s actually Kelsey Anderson, remember she was kidnapped, it was in the newspaper, and the man who hired me to babysit her, I thought was her dad, is actually her kidnapper.”
There was a loud thud then some scuffling noises, then Alexia’s voice came back on the phone and said, “I’m sorry, I just dropped the phone. A kidnapper hired you to babysit his victim?”
“Uh-huh. Can you come home?”
“Of course, I’ll leave right now. Have you called the police?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Good. I’ll see you in- wait, does the kidnapper know where you live?”
“Uh-huh. But the police are on their way now.”
“Maybe you should go over to a neighbor’s?”
Melody was nervous about waiting at home, but she said, “Don’t worry, the police are on their way here now, and he’s not supposed to be back until eleven.”
There was a silence, and Melody knew Alexia was deciding whether to argue. Finally, she said, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Bye.”
“Bye,” said Melody, and hung up.
Kelsey was staring at her in horror. “The police are coming?” she whimpered. “He’ll kill me! He’ll kill you too, and the police, and the rest of your family, and… He told me he would!”
Although Kelsey’s words filled Melody with fear, she told the little girl, “It’ll be okay. The police are going to come and they’ll arrest the kidnapper and then he won’t be able to kill anyone.”
Kelsey looked at her dubiously. “What if they can’t find him? Or if they arrest him and he gets out of jail? Then he’ll kill us!”
“They will get him,” Melody assured Kelsey firmly, hoping that it was true.
It was not.
The police came. They questioned Melody and Kelsey, staked out the house, examined Kelsey for evidence… They did everything they could to find the kidnapper. It wasn’t enough.
A social worker came as well. Her intent was to take Kelsey to social services. Alexia, who by now knew the whole story from questioning Melody and Kelsey as intensely as the police, had other ideas. She sent Melody and Kelsey upstairs while she discussed things with the social worker. When Melody came down half an hour later, the social worker was gone. “Kelsey is staying with us,” Alexia proclaimed.
The next day Alexia signed Kelsey up for karate classes. Kelsey loved them, and was a natural at karate. Alexia also made an appointment for her to see a psychologist. Kelsey loved that a bit less, but she went. The therapy did help Kelsey’s feelings of self-blame over her parents’ death, a little, but it did nothing to stop her nightmares.
Two days after Kelsey’s rescue came a peak in the case. The small family had just gotten home from Kelsey’s therapy session when the phone rang. Melody answered it.
“You know, you might be a good babysitter, but you’re not very smart,” said the kidnapper. “To believe the fairytales of a little girl not known for her truthfulness. And to call in the police because of them. You have no proof I’m not the girl’s father. I could have you arrested for kidnapping.” He chuckled.
Melody had frozen, but she managed to find her voice. “I hope you do go to the police, because then they‘ll arrest you!”
“Exactly. And do you know what people do when the police can’t help them?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “The take the law into their own hands.”
“Wha- what?”
“I will get Kelsey back.”
“No!”
“The night I was supposed to pick her up the police were there, of course, and last night, I had some… business to attend to, relating to the reason I found it necessary to leave Kelsey with you in the first place. But tonight….” He hung up.
Melody was frozen in place, the phone still in her hand, when Kelsey came into the kitchen a few minutes later.
“What’s wrong Melody?” she asked.
Melody started to cry.
Kelsey went over and gave Melody a hug, but it did nothing to stop the older girl’s sobs, so Kelsey went to get Alexia.
Alexia promptly went to Melody, took the phone from her hand, and hung it up. Then she looked into her sister’s eyes and demanded, “What was it?”
Melody took a shuddering breath and managed, “It was him.”
Alexia took out a glass and filled it with cold water. She put in two ice cubes and a slice of lemon, then handed it to Melody, who took a sip.
After a few minutes, once Melody had regained control of herself, Alexia asked, “What did he say?”
“He said… he said that I don’t have any proof he’s not Kelsey’s father and he could- he could have us arrested for kidnapping. I told him that he couldn’t go to- that if he went to the police they’d arrest him. Then he said that he was going to take the law into his own hands, and that the night he left Kelsey with me the police were there and last night he had to do, um, whatever it was that was the reason he left Kelsey with me in the first place, and then he said, he said, like a warning, a threat, ominously, ‘But tonight…’ and then he hung up.”
Alexia picked up the phone, then thought better, put it back down, and took out her cell phone.
“Are you calling the police?” asked Kelsey.
“He won’t come if the police are here.” She dialed a number into her phone.
It rang three times before a young woman answered. “Yes?”
“Alala? This is Alexia. Are you busy tonight?”
“I have my Criminology final tomorrow. So do you, actually, remember? I have to study.”
Alexia ignored the fact that her reply was negative. “Do you want to help with a stakeout?”
There was a pause before Alala said, “What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.”
“Fine. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
The doorbell rang almost exactly ten minutes later. Kelsey, who was sitting on the couch looking at a picture book, froze. The doorbell rang again a few seconds later, and then there were three sharp taps on the door. Kelsey told herself that it was not her kidnapper, but she was still too terrified to answer the door. A few seconds later Alexia strode into the room, looked through the peephole, unlocked the lock, and swung the door open.
It was not the kidnapper, but Kelsey had known that as soon as Alexia had begun to unlock the door. The woman standing at the door appeared to be a few years older than Alexia. Her long ebony hair stood out against her pale skin and the large red bag hanging on her shoulder. Her eyes were nearly as haunted as Kelsey’s, and because of this, Kelsey immediately liked her.
Alexia made the introductions. “Kelsey, this is my friend Alala. We go to school together, and we used to be roommates. Alala, this is Kelsey, who I told you about.”
Alala flashed Kelsey a small smile as she entered the room, then turned back to Alexia. “So are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Yeah.” Alexia sat down on the couch next to Kelsey, and Alala sat down in an armchair and looked at Alexia pointedly.
“Well, like I told you yesterday, Kelsey’s kidnappers still on the loose,” Alexia began, then paused.
“Yes?” prodded Alala.
“Well, today we got- well, Melody actually got the call. It was him, the kidnapper.” She gave a detailed summary of the phone call, then concluded, “If the police are here he won’t come. So I thought that instead of calling them, you and me could keep watch.”
Alala nodded, started to say something, then glanced at Kelsey and remained quiet. After a moment she asked, “Have you locked the place up yet?”
“Of course. You can check if you want though.”
Alala got up and walked through the house. After a few minutes she was back. “It’s secure, but the only problem is Melody’s room. That window could be broken easily, and with the proper equipment it wouldn’t be impossible to climb in.”
Alexia nodded. “Melody and Kelsey can sleep in the guestroom tonight. The only door is to the living room, and you saw the windowpanes; nobody could get through them. And that way we can stay in here and study for our final while we keep watch.”
“Alexia, can I go in Melody’s room for now and go on the computer?” Kelsey asked.
“It should be fine for now,” Alala told her friend. “He wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to climb up in broad daylight.”
Alexia hesitated, but she knew her friend was paranoid enough that if she said it was safe, it was. “Okay, Kelsey, but only until it gets dark.”
Once Kelsey left, Alala said, “I didn’t want to tell you with Kelsey around, but I brought this.” She pulled a handgun out of her bag. “Just in case.”
Alexia nodded. “Is it loaded?”
“Yes, but the safety’s on.”
Alala put the gun on the couch cushion between them, then pulled out a textbook, and they began to study.
The sun was just beginning to set when Kelsey appeared on the stairs.
“Good, I was just about to get you,” Alexia said to her.
Kelsey appeared not to have heard her. She was pale, and there was fear in her eyes. She started to walk down the stairs, slowly, but she stopped about halfway. “We found out why,” she said quietly.
“Why what?”
“It was another news article, on the computer. I thought of it because of what he said to Melody on the phone.”
“What was it?” Alexia asked, her voice troubled.
“It has to be him. His eyes- and who else would…. And I knew there had to be some kind of reason, I mean, it really was a risk….”
“Why he left you with a babysitter,” suggested Alala. Alexia looked at her in surprise, but she agreed that it made sense.
Kelsey nodded mournfully. “He… it was in the news. It had a police sketch, it wasn’t very good, not like mine, that I told them, but the eyes…. It was him.”
“What did he do?” asked Alala.
“He- he killed someone!” cried Kelsey. “Her name was Crystal. It said she was walking home from school with her friend and he shot her from the roof of a grocery store, that’s how they got the police sketch, someone saw him coming down from the roof. I know it was him.”
“I’m sure it was,” said Alala solemnly, as Alexia, noticing that it was beginning to get dark out, blurted, “Where’s Melody?”
“In the bathroom, throwing up.” Kelsey added in a small voice, “I told her it wasn’t her fault….”
Alexia started to get up when the phone rang, jarring the solemn mood. Alexia answered it automatically. “Hello?”
“Hello,” said a pleasant yet ominous voice. “Do you know who this is?” he inquired.
“I can guess,” Alexia said. “What do you want?”
“I want to speak to Melody. Would you please put her on?”
“No.”
“It’s the only way you’ll find out what I have to say….”
Alexia considered, then said, “Hold on.” She covered the receiver with her hand and said, “It’s him. He wants to talk to Melody.”
“Don’t let him,” advised Alala.
“No. I’ll do it,” said Melody as she appeared on the stairs next to Kelsey. Slowly, she made her way to the phone and took the receiver from her sister. Against her better judgment, Alexia let her.
“I know what you did!” Melody accused before he could say anything. She stepped away from Alexia and stood staring at her, until Alexia reluctantly sat back down on the couch. Alexia glanced at the gun next to her, and was glad of it.
“Which thing that I did do you know about?” came the voice from the other end of the phone.
“That you-” Melody couldn’t bring herself to say the words. “Why you needed a babysitter!”
“Ah. How nice for you. Anyway, I’m just calling to let you know that I lied to you yesterday. I’m no longer in the country. If you have caller ID, you can see that the number I’m calling you from is in Australia.”
“We don’t have caller ID,” Melody said automatically, then felt stupid for telling him.
“Oh, well you’ll be able to see it on your next phone bill. But I’m calling to let you know that you may keep Kelsey, at least for now. I do owe you something, after all, I never did pay you for babysitting.” He laughed, an evil laugh, and hung up.
Melody turned to face Alexia, and was struck by the image of Alexia and Alala sitting on the couch, textbooks still on their laps, with the gun on the cushion between them, and Kelsey, standing on the stairs above them, tears running down her pale face. She managed to say, “He says he lied, that he left the country and isn’t coming to get Kelsey.”
None of them moved, at all. There was complete stillness in the room until Alala said, “You don’t know if it’s true.”
Alexia took out her cell phone and called the phone company. She explained what she wanted, and was told that the last number that had called her home phone was, indeed, from Australia. “It seems true then,” she said once she hung up.
“So he’s gone?” Kelsey asked. She did not sound happy; her question was almost a wail.
“Aren’t you glad?” Melody asked her. It was not a suggestion that she should be, just a question.
“No.”
Alexia said, “If he’s gone, there won’t be justice.”
“At least you’re safe from him now,” said Alala, her voice revealing that she, of all people, knew it wasn’t enough.
Kelsey, Melody, and Alexia are characters in Hey Cool, I've Never Seen a Teacher With His Head Cut Off Before!
Friday, July 31, 2009
Not Bob
“You are not Bob!” the small, elderly woman accused, shaking her finger in my face.
I thought fast. “No, ma’am, I’m not. My name is George, I’m Bob’s identical twin and-”
She cut me off. “Sir, I have no idea who you are, but I am Bob’s mother and I assure you, they only pulled one baby out of me. Now who are you and where is my son?”
I was about to say that I was actually Bob’s illegitimate half-brother who happened to look exactly like him, but after a second look at the woman I knew that wouldn’t fly. The form I was currently in was the splitting image of his mother, if younger and more masculine. No, I’d have to tell her the truth. “Why don’t you come inside and sit down, and I’ll explain,” I offered.
“Nuh-uh. I’m not letting you get me alone. You’ll kill me, just like you must’ve killed my son. POLICE! MURDER! HELP!” she screamed.
I sighed. “I haven’t killed anyone,” I told her calmly. “Bob’s in Hawaii. If you don’t want to come inside, you can call him from out here if you have a cell phone.”
She eyed me suspiciously and took a large step back, but pulled a cell phone out of her tiny flowered purse and made a call. I assumed it was to Bob, it was too many numbers to be 911, and the side of the conversation I could hear confirmed it.
“Bob? This is your mother. Where are you? Don’t lie to me. Robert Caspian Jones, I am at your house, and that man is not you. How could I tell??? You’re asking me how I could tell? I am your mother! Now where are you? Hawaii? What are you doing in Hawaii? You’re snorkeling with your new girlfriend. You just take off in the middle of a work week to go snorkeling with some girl you just met, without telling anyone. You can explain? Fine, I’ve got to hear this.” Up until this point her voice and expression ranged from infuriated to exasperated and back again. But with whatever she was hearing now, her eyes widened, then darted around nervously.
“But you’re sure you’re safe there?” she asked him finally. “You promise? Do you want me to come out there? Are you sure? I’d feel so much better if I was there with you. Promise you’ll call me if anything happens? Okay. I love you, sweetie. Bye. Don’t forget to call me.”
Finally, she turned back to me. “So what’s your role in all this?”
“How much did Bob tell you?”
“Just that someone’s trying to kill him and you’re a friend who’s helping him out.”
I nodded. “That’s true, as far as it goes. Come inside and I’ll explain the rest.”
She didn’t argue this time, just followed me inside and sat down on Bob’s couch.
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name?” I asked her.
“Ethel.”
“I’m Nick.” As I introduced myself and while I was shaking her hand, I shifted into my true form.
She blinked, twice, but to my surprise that was her only reaction. I’d have expected her to shriek and run out of the house. Most people who actually see me shift without knowing what I can do beforehand get pretty upset. It’s not like there’s some disgusting morphing thing either, like I go all squishy and mush into another shape. I just suddenly look different. It’s just the shock of it that can upset people. But I guess Ethel’d had enough shock in one day to be immune for the moment.
“Ah. That explains it,” she commented. “Now, who is trying to kill my son, and what are you doing about it?”
“I wish I knew,” I confessed. “To both questions. Right now, I’m pretty much acting as a decoy and hoping someone’ll show up and try to kill me, thinking I’m Bob.”
“That’s obvious,” Ethel said. “But surely you know more than that. What makes you think he’s in danger in the first place.”
I shook my head. “I have a friend who’s a psychic, or a prophet, she’s not exactly sure yet. But she knew that someone is trying to kill Bob, and she told me that I could stop it... Basically, I guess she sees thousands of different possible futures, depending on the course of events, and the ones where I step in… turn out better than the ones where I don’t.”
She sat staring at me. “A psychic said that someone wants to kill my son, so a shapeshifter is sitting in his house pretending to be him.”
I grinned at her. “Yep. Sounds crazy when you put it like that.” I shifted back into Bob’s shape. “Anyway, you should probably go, in case anything does happen.”
She agreed, and I walked her out to her car. I’d just turned to go back inside when I heard her scream.
I spun around in time to see a masked man with a gun pulling Ethel into a van, which was beginning to drive away. I shifted my legs to those of an Olympic runner and began to run after her. The van was moving fairly slowly; I could have caught up with it. Even running like a normal person I probably could have caught up with it.
That’s why I stopped.
Cassie (yes, my prophet/psychic friend’s name is Cassandra, how ironic, prophetic, weird, whatever, ha ha ha, now get over it) had said that the futures where I was here were better than the ones where Bob was, and now I realized why. It wasn’t just because I had more experience with this sort of thing, or even because I can shift shapes. It was because I didn’t have the emotional attachment to Ethel that Bob did. Sure, I’d liked the woman, but she wasn’t my mother. If it had been the real Bob here, he would have run after the car, and he would have been killed.
So I glanced at the van’s plates, watched it drive out of sight, and shifted into Ethel’s shape. I took the cell phone out of my little flowered purse and called 911.
I didn’t have any particular reason to take Ethel’s shape, except for the vague hope it would confuse the kidnappers, but it felt like the right thing to do. I spent the time waiting for the police to get there trying to decide what to tell them.
When they finally arrived, I told them, “My sister was kidnapped!” I explained that I’d been house sitting for my son while he’s on vacation, and my sister Mildred had been over to hang out, and she’d been leaving when a van pulled up and a man dragged her inside and drove away, and the license plate was….
When the police left, I went back inside the house and waited. Sure enough, about fifteen minutes later the phone rang, and when I picked it up a technologically blurred voice told me, “That was stupid, calling the police. If you ever want to see your mother again, you won’t make a second stupid mistake.”
“I’m sorry?” I said, filling Ethel’s voice with confusion. “I think you must have the wrong number. This is Ethel Jones. My mother’s been dead for nearly forty years.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Then I heard in the background, “He must be faking it!”
I grinned. Despite using a machine to make his voice unidentifiable, my caller didn’t know how to use a mute button.
“Naw, it sounds like her. Hey Jimmy, go to the house and pick up whoever’s there. Once we got ‘em both here, we’ll sort it out.”
“Damn waste of an exploding van,” someone commented, and I shuddered. Then the muffled voice came back on the line. “Mrs. Jones? I don’t know if you’re you or this is you, but I can tell you this—do anything stupid and the other you will die.”
“I won’t do anything stupid,” I said, then made it a lie by waiting quietly for them to come kidnap me.
There were three of them, all wearing masks. I went with them willingly, struggled feebly a bit for show, but let them bind and gag me and shove me into the van.
They brought me to a warehouse. There were a couple more of them, also in ski masks, and Ethel. Her eyes widened when she saw me, but she said nothing—probably because of the duct tape over her mouth, but I thought she had enough sense not to give me away when they took it off.
Almost as soon as they’d shoved me on the ground next to her, they ungagged both of us. “Where’s your son?” one of them demanded. I didn’t know which of us he was talking to, and I don’t think he did either.
“Florida,” I said. “What’s this about? What did he do?” Sure, I didn’t really think they’d tell me that easily, but I really did want to know.
“What did he do??” one of my captors repeated angrily. “He hacked into our accounts and stole $50 billion from us.”
The explanation actually made sense—stealing money from mobsters from behind the safety of a computer screen was exactly the kind of thing Bob could, and would, do.
“Now where the hell is he? And don’t give me any of that ‘Florida’ crap!” He took out a gun and aimed it at me.
It wasn’t until that very moment that I had a plan. I shifted into Bob’s shape, which startled them for long enough for me to maneuver so the gun was pointing at my stomach. I know, some plan, right? I’m stupid and foolhardy and all that. As soon as the guy realized what had happened, or at least that the man they’d been looking for was standing in front of him, he pulled the trigger. Which is what I’d been counting on, of course, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. I writhed in agony. It was real, but I managed to make it seem just a little more fatal than it actually was.
“Distract them,” I somehow managed to whisper to Ethel. I think I managed to whisper it. Actually, I probably just thought it really hard. Anyway, whether it was through my intervention or not, when I let my head fall to the ground, eyes rolled wide open, a pool of blood all around me, Ethel began to wail. “My baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You killed him!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You killed him!”
It gave me the time I needed. It was harder than I expected. Normally, shifting shapes is nearly as easy for me as breathing. All I need to do is concentrate on the shape and just… shift into it. But since I was using most of my powers of concentration on just staying alive and conscious, it took every ounce of will I had to shift.
But I did it. I shifted into my own shape first, since I knew it best and couldn’t have managed another. I can’t describe how wonderful it was to shift into my own, unwounded form. I had been dying from a gunshot wound to the stomach, and suddenly there was no gunshot wound no pain, no bullet lodged inside me.
Before they could notice anything, I shifted back into Bob’s shape, but a healthy Bob. The puddle of blood was still there, and I lay in it with my eyes wide open, unmoving. I steeled myself to stay as still when they dragged me out of there, but they didn’t. They completely ignored me as they gagged Ethel again, and then ignored us both as they cleared out of the warehouse.
I waited and waited, just in case. Finally, I whispered, “Are they gone?”
“Mmmmrumph.”
I sat up and pulled the duct tape from her mouth.
“You’re…” she stared at me.
“I’m fine. I can shift my physical shape in any way I want, so I can shift injuries away. Of course, if I’d died I wouldn’t have been able to.”
“What’ll happen now?”
“Well, they think they killed Bob, so they’ll be leaving you alone now. It might be a good idea if he stays in Hawaii for a while. Hopefully the police’ll pick them up soon.”
“And if they don’t? Will Bob have to hide for the rest of his life?”
“No. If the police don’t get them, I’ll track them down and make sure they get put away. And I doubt Bob will mind staying in Hawaii for another month or two.”
The police did get them though, the next day. I testified as three different people in that trial, and I guess the jury believed all three of me.
I thought fast. “No, ma’am, I’m not. My name is George, I’m Bob’s identical twin and-”
She cut me off. “Sir, I have no idea who you are, but I am Bob’s mother and I assure you, they only pulled one baby out of me. Now who are you and where is my son?”
I was about to say that I was actually Bob’s illegitimate half-brother who happened to look exactly like him, but after a second look at the woman I knew that wouldn’t fly. The form I was currently in was the splitting image of his mother, if younger and more masculine. No, I’d have to tell her the truth. “Why don’t you come inside and sit down, and I’ll explain,” I offered.
“Nuh-uh. I’m not letting you get me alone. You’ll kill me, just like you must’ve killed my son. POLICE! MURDER! HELP!” she screamed.
I sighed. “I haven’t killed anyone,” I told her calmly. “Bob’s in Hawaii. If you don’t want to come inside, you can call him from out here if you have a cell phone.”
She eyed me suspiciously and took a large step back, but pulled a cell phone out of her tiny flowered purse and made a call. I assumed it was to Bob, it was too many numbers to be 911, and the side of the conversation I could hear confirmed it.
“Bob? This is your mother. Where are you? Don’t lie to me. Robert Caspian Jones, I am at your house, and that man is not you. How could I tell??? You’re asking me how I could tell? I am your mother! Now where are you? Hawaii? What are you doing in Hawaii? You’re snorkeling with your new girlfriend. You just take off in the middle of a work week to go snorkeling with some girl you just met, without telling anyone. You can explain? Fine, I’ve got to hear this.” Up until this point her voice and expression ranged from infuriated to exasperated and back again. But with whatever she was hearing now, her eyes widened, then darted around nervously.
“But you’re sure you’re safe there?” she asked him finally. “You promise? Do you want me to come out there? Are you sure? I’d feel so much better if I was there with you. Promise you’ll call me if anything happens? Okay. I love you, sweetie. Bye. Don’t forget to call me.”
Finally, she turned back to me. “So what’s your role in all this?”
“How much did Bob tell you?”
“Just that someone’s trying to kill him and you’re a friend who’s helping him out.”
I nodded. “That’s true, as far as it goes. Come inside and I’ll explain the rest.”
She didn’t argue this time, just followed me inside and sat down on Bob’s couch.
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name?” I asked her.
“Ethel.”
“I’m Nick.” As I introduced myself and while I was shaking her hand, I shifted into my true form.
She blinked, twice, but to my surprise that was her only reaction. I’d have expected her to shriek and run out of the house. Most people who actually see me shift without knowing what I can do beforehand get pretty upset. It’s not like there’s some disgusting morphing thing either, like I go all squishy and mush into another shape. I just suddenly look different. It’s just the shock of it that can upset people. But I guess Ethel’d had enough shock in one day to be immune for the moment.
“Ah. That explains it,” she commented. “Now, who is trying to kill my son, and what are you doing about it?”
“I wish I knew,” I confessed. “To both questions. Right now, I’m pretty much acting as a decoy and hoping someone’ll show up and try to kill me, thinking I’m Bob.”
“That’s obvious,” Ethel said. “But surely you know more than that. What makes you think he’s in danger in the first place.”
I shook my head. “I have a friend who’s a psychic, or a prophet, she’s not exactly sure yet. But she knew that someone is trying to kill Bob, and she told me that I could stop it... Basically, I guess she sees thousands of different possible futures, depending on the course of events, and the ones where I step in… turn out better than the ones where I don’t.”
She sat staring at me. “A psychic said that someone wants to kill my son, so a shapeshifter is sitting in his house pretending to be him.”
I grinned at her. “Yep. Sounds crazy when you put it like that.” I shifted back into Bob’s shape. “Anyway, you should probably go, in case anything does happen.”
She agreed, and I walked her out to her car. I’d just turned to go back inside when I heard her scream.
I spun around in time to see a masked man with a gun pulling Ethel into a van, which was beginning to drive away. I shifted my legs to those of an Olympic runner and began to run after her. The van was moving fairly slowly; I could have caught up with it. Even running like a normal person I probably could have caught up with it.
That’s why I stopped.
Cassie (yes, my prophet/psychic friend’s name is Cassandra, how ironic, prophetic, weird, whatever, ha ha ha, now get over it) had said that the futures where I was here were better than the ones where Bob was, and now I realized why. It wasn’t just because I had more experience with this sort of thing, or even because I can shift shapes. It was because I didn’t have the emotional attachment to Ethel that Bob did. Sure, I’d liked the woman, but she wasn’t my mother. If it had been the real Bob here, he would have run after the car, and he would have been killed.
So I glanced at the van’s plates, watched it drive out of sight, and shifted into Ethel’s shape. I took the cell phone out of my little flowered purse and called 911.
I didn’t have any particular reason to take Ethel’s shape, except for the vague hope it would confuse the kidnappers, but it felt like the right thing to do. I spent the time waiting for the police to get there trying to decide what to tell them.
When they finally arrived, I told them, “My sister was kidnapped!” I explained that I’d been house sitting for my son while he’s on vacation, and my sister Mildred had been over to hang out, and she’d been leaving when a van pulled up and a man dragged her inside and drove away, and the license plate was….
When the police left, I went back inside the house and waited. Sure enough, about fifteen minutes later the phone rang, and when I picked it up a technologically blurred voice told me, “That was stupid, calling the police. If you ever want to see your mother again, you won’t make a second stupid mistake.”
“I’m sorry?” I said, filling Ethel’s voice with confusion. “I think you must have the wrong number. This is Ethel Jones. My mother’s been dead for nearly forty years.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Then I heard in the background, “He must be faking it!”
I grinned. Despite using a machine to make his voice unidentifiable, my caller didn’t know how to use a mute button.
“Naw, it sounds like her. Hey Jimmy, go to the house and pick up whoever’s there. Once we got ‘em both here, we’ll sort it out.”
“Damn waste of an exploding van,” someone commented, and I shuddered. Then the muffled voice came back on the line. “Mrs. Jones? I don’t know if you’re you or this is you, but I can tell you this—do anything stupid and the other you will die.”
“I won’t do anything stupid,” I said, then made it a lie by waiting quietly for them to come kidnap me.
There were three of them, all wearing masks. I went with them willingly, struggled feebly a bit for show, but let them bind and gag me and shove me into the van.
They brought me to a warehouse. There were a couple more of them, also in ski masks, and Ethel. Her eyes widened when she saw me, but she said nothing—probably because of the duct tape over her mouth, but I thought she had enough sense not to give me away when they took it off.
Almost as soon as they’d shoved me on the ground next to her, they ungagged both of us. “Where’s your son?” one of them demanded. I didn’t know which of us he was talking to, and I don’t think he did either.
“Florida,” I said. “What’s this about? What did he do?” Sure, I didn’t really think they’d tell me that easily, but I really did want to know.
“What did he do??” one of my captors repeated angrily. “He hacked into our accounts and stole $50 billion from us.”
The explanation actually made sense—stealing money from mobsters from behind the safety of a computer screen was exactly the kind of thing Bob could, and would, do.
“Now where the hell is he? And don’t give me any of that ‘Florida’ crap!” He took out a gun and aimed it at me.
It wasn’t until that very moment that I had a plan. I shifted into Bob’s shape, which startled them for long enough for me to maneuver so the gun was pointing at my stomach. I know, some plan, right? I’m stupid and foolhardy and all that. As soon as the guy realized what had happened, or at least that the man they’d been looking for was standing in front of him, he pulled the trigger. Which is what I’d been counting on, of course, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. I writhed in agony. It was real, but I managed to make it seem just a little more fatal than it actually was.
“Distract them,” I somehow managed to whisper to Ethel. I think I managed to whisper it. Actually, I probably just thought it really hard. Anyway, whether it was through my intervention or not, when I let my head fall to the ground, eyes rolled wide open, a pool of blood all around me, Ethel began to wail. “My baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You killed him!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You killed him!”
It gave me the time I needed. It was harder than I expected. Normally, shifting shapes is nearly as easy for me as breathing. All I need to do is concentrate on the shape and just… shift into it. But since I was using most of my powers of concentration on just staying alive and conscious, it took every ounce of will I had to shift.
But I did it. I shifted into my own shape first, since I knew it best and couldn’t have managed another. I can’t describe how wonderful it was to shift into my own, unwounded form. I had been dying from a gunshot wound to the stomach, and suddenly there was no gunshot wound no pain, no bullet lodged inside me.
Before they could notice anything, I shifted back into Bob’s shape, but a healthy Bob. The puddle of blood was still there, and I lay in it with my eyes wide open, unmoving. I steeled myself to stay as still when they dragged me out of there, but they didn’t. They completely ignored me as they gagged Ethel again, and then ignored us both as they cleared out of the warehouse.
I waited and waited, just in case. Finally, I whispered, “Are they gone?”
“Mmmmrumph.”
I sat up and pulled the duct tape from her mouth.
“You’re…” she stared at me.
“I’m fine. I can shift my physical shape in any way I want, so I can shift injuries away. Of course, if I’d died I wouldn’t have been able to.”
“What’ll happen now?”
“Well, they think they killed Bob, so they’ll be leaving you alone now. It might be a good idea if he stays in Hawaii for a while. Hopefully the police’ll pick them up soon.”
“And if they don’t? Will Bob have to hide for the rest of his life?”
“No. If the police don’t get them, I’ll track them down and make sure they get put away. And I doubt Bob will mind staying in Hawaii for another month or two.”
The police did get them though, the next day. I testified as three different people in that trial, and I guess the jury believed all three of me.
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