The Smiley-Face Witches

  “Don’t know,” Newton said, “don’t know and don’t care. Let’s get back to…”

  “Wait,” Clementine said, “let’s see where Mickey-D goes.”

  Newton resisted, but she got her way just like she used to.

  They followed Mickey-D at a distance, watching him mush along the slushy sidewalks while waiting for him to do something.

  “Let’s go back,” Newton pleaded, “its freezing out here.”

  “Just a little longer,” she begged.

  They trudged on, turning the corner on to Long Street when Clementine jerked him back out of sight.

  “What are ya doing?” Newton complained.

  “Look who it is,” she whispered.

  The creepy van they saw at the bus stop sat idling in front of the Holiday Lanes bowling alley, the Smiley-Face icon painted on the side panel grinning like it recognized them.

  “Acolytes,” Newton muttered.

  The passenger handed Mickey-D a yellow plastic bag through the rolled down window. He checked the bag’s contents, then handed the passenger a thick envelope in return.

  Clementine pulled out her cell, snapping pictures as fast as her thumb could flex.

  “What are ya doing?” he asked.

  “What do ya think is in the Church’s chicken bag?”

  Newton didn’t answer, so she nudged him. “I was reading on the ‘net about how some witches eat animal parts to gain their power and their knowledge.”

  “And ya think that’s what they’re doing?” she said.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “So they’re gonna gain the power and wisdom of a full grown chicken?” Clementine said.

  The way she said it made it sound ridiculous, but it didn’t have to be chicken inside the bag.

  “You’re right,” Clementine said, “maybe they got an order of sides in there, too. And having the power of an adult potato ain’t nothing to laugh at.”

  “Alright. What do you think is in the bag?”

  “Betcha that’s how EZ8 is getting into the school,” Clementine said.

  “What’s the connection?”

  “My boss has me digging up background information on the Smiley-Face Witches,” she said. “They were dealing EZ8 way back in the sixties and seventies.”

  She reached into her pocket and showed him the candy bar wrapper Drew got from Mr. Peck’s desk.

  He examined the wrapper himself. Enzyme Seven’s faint ammonia scent was hard to ignore but her evidence was still only circumstantial.

  “Saw one of them Blue Berets in the hospital when we went to drop Mr. Peck’s card off.”

  “Blueberries…Ya mean like in the YouTube videos?” he asked.

  “Yeah…”

  What was he doing there?”

  “He was trying to buy a Zero bar…”

  “Trying or did?”

  “That don’t matter!” she said. “Anyway, I followed him into a ward where there were a buncha other coma patients laid out. And Mr. Peck was in there with ‘em.”

  “That’s what coma patients do,” he said. “They lay there. Because they’re in comas.”

  “I checked their charts…”

  “You ain’t a doctor…”

  “Alkaloids,” Clementine said.

  Newton’s expression changed. “Chocolate has alkaloids in it.”

  “Denise had the exact same expression on her face when…”

  “Why would security care ‘bout a bunch of coma patients?” he asked.

  “Don’t know,” she said.

  “Why didn’t you say something before?”

  She averted her gaze, struggling to find the words to explain herself. “By the time we got back from the train station…I didn’t have a chance to…”

  “That was eight hours ago,” he said, “There wasn’t one second in between that you couldn’t tell someone that…”

  “Guess I didn’t want everything to get weird again like at Bixby.”

  “Then you should have stayed on the train!” he snapped.

  “You mean that?”

  Newton bowed his head apologetically. Conversations like this made him uncomfortable and he always said the wrong thing. “No. But maybe you don’t like normal as much as you think. Maybe you like it weird.”

  “That’s what Denise told me,” she said. “But I never…”

  “Holy smoke!”

  “What?”

  Newton’s eyes shrank to the size of periods. “I sold a bunch of those bars to my family. I gotta…”

  “Don’t think the ones we sold were bad,” she said.

  “How do ya know?”

  “Did ya hear ‘bout anybody in your family goin’ into a coma?”

  He hadn’t—yet. “But why sell the stuff if it’s poison?”

  “Ya think a dealer cares if a junkie overdoses?” she asked.

  “Guess as long as they’re getting paid…”

  “Maybe they don’t know,” she said, “Maybe they made a bad batch. But I betcha that’s why the Acolytes were really at the bus stop.”

  “What do ya mean?”

  “They weren’t there for Drew, they were looking to hook-up with one of their dealers,” she said.

  “But Mickey-D wasn’t there.”

  “But they didn’t know that,” Clementine said. “Denise told me Mr. Peck gave him detention before he freaked out.”

  Newton replayed the debacle at the bus stop in his head. “Guess they didn’t come after us too hard.”

  “They didn’t come after us at all,” Clementine said. “All I saw chasing after me was Botkins.”

  Could she be right? “We gotta ask Lazy-Eye Susan ‘bout this.”

  Clementine rolled her eyes.

  “What?”

  “Look at that big ol’ smiley-face on the van. You still think we can trust her?” she asked.

  “How else we gonna find Drew?” he asked.

  “What do ya mean?”

  “We got all these weirdoes all showing up at the same time,” he said, “we need someone that can think like ‘em, and I don’t know nobody weirder than Lazy-Eye Susan.”

  Clementine didn’t either, but that didn’t make her any less reluctant. “I still ain’t ready to go all in on her, not like the last time.”

  “We got enough pictures,” Newton said. “Let’s get outta here.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The chair splintered into its component parts when Drew hit the floor, but he didn’t get up right away. Crippling pain shot through his extremities on contact, but the pain faded and he forced himself into action.

  He ripped the electrodes off his head and unbuckled the leather straps. He didn’t know if it was an earthquake or some kind of explosion, but whatever happened buckled the walls, bowing them out and dropping the ceiling almost three feet.

  He pushed his way past the crumpled cell door. Because he couldn’t remember where he was, he wasn’t sure which way to go. “Right or left? Right or left?”

  The voice in his head said right, and because he listened, he was one step beyond the point where the ceiling imploded into a pile of concrete and steel.

  “That was close,” he said, but aside from the coating of dust on his face and pajamas, he’d escaped intact. “Now which way?”

  He waited for the voice to tell him, but heard something else instead. “Someone else is in here with me.”

  He wasn’t sure which direction the feint cry came from, so he waited to hear it again. When he did, he headed toward the source.

  The sign on the wall read ‘Cell Block One’, though the blast folded the door beneath in half. If somebody was inside, they were in even worse trouble than him.

  He dug through the rubble with his bare hands. “Hang on!”

  The foundation shifted and the supporting girders groaned. He thought about leaving, but then a bruised hand poked through the debris.

  “Hang on,” he repeated. He grabbed hold of her by her wrists and pulled
her free.

  “Are you a ghost?” the girl asked, before collapsing into his arms.

  ***

  She tucked her knees against her chest, unable or unwilling to look him in the eye. Her age approximated his, and her matching pajamas meant she was in the same kind of trouble.

  “Take it easy,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say.

  She ran her trembling fingers through her matted black hair trying to calm herself. Her eyes shifted from side to side, pearlescent black dots magnified by her oversized horn-rimmed glasses.

  He tore a strip of cloth from his pajamas but she pulled back.

  “I ain’t gonna hurt ya,” he said, and offered her the make-shift bandage again.

  She hesitated for a second before taking it with a trembling hand. “What’s my name?”

  “What?”

  “What’s my name?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Drew, my name is Drew.”

  “Drewww,” she repeated.

  “Do you know where we’re at?”

  She shook her head. “No. But I know we gotta get outta here.”

  He helped her to her feet and they inched down the corridor. Aftershocks slowed their progress, but they kept moving.

  “What do I call you?” he asked.

  “I told ya that…”

  “What do you want me to call you?” he asked.

  “Don’t know…”

  “Got a favorite singer?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “What about movies? Got a favorite actress?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Who’s your…”

  “Pick something,” she said, “just until I shake the cobwebs loose.”

  He thought about it for a second but couldn’t come up with anything. Then he caught himself checking her thumbs out and decided. “How about…Denise?”

  “Deneese,” she said, stretching the syllables out like she was taking it for a test drive. If English wasn’t her first language, it was a close second, though he couldn’t identify the faint accent flavoring her words.

  The corridor led them to the fractured remnants of a connected office suite. She glanced at the sign above the door. “Control Room Six.”

  “I can read,” he said. Getting through the unhinged door didn’t take much effort, though he should’ve checked before stepping inside.

  Deneese jumped backward, clinging to him like a frightened cat.

  The mangled torso buried beneath the debris caught them both off guard. Drew played it cool, but he’d never seen anyone dead up close before. Except for his grandfather, but that was different, that was…expected.

  She held on to him for a moment longer, long enough for him to smell the scented soap beneath the sweat and grime.

  “Sorry, she said, and pulled away.

  He gave her a second to collect herself before going in for a closer look at the victim.

  “What are ya doing?” Deneese asked.

  He pulled the debris off one chunk at a time, scraping his knuckles against the concrete until he uncovered the body beneath. “Runyon.”

  “He the guy that snatched us?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Drew said. “But he ain’t workin’ alone.”

  “What do ya mean?”

  “Runyon don’t give orders,” Drew said, “he takes ‘em.”

  “Then who gives the orders?”

  “Frost,” he said.

  “Who’s that?” she asked.

  “How can ya be here and not know who put ya here?” he asked. But then he remembered how groggy he was after waking in the chair. And he still couldn’t remember how he got there—wherever there was.

  He rummaged through Runyon’s pockets.

  “What are ya doing now?” she asked.

  Drew held the Swiss Army knife he found up in triumph. “I ain’t goin’ back in the chair without a fight.”

  She wasn’t impressed. “It ain’t very big.”

  He looked at her and then back at the knife. “Don’t have to be.”

  They split-up and checked the rest of the control room, sifting through the rubble for anything useful.

  “What about those?” Deneese asked.

  He turned toward the row of lockers tilting at a fifteen degree angle.

  “Might get lucky,” she said.

  “Don’t have the combinations,” he said.

  “One of ‘em might be open,” she said.

  He started at one end and worked his way toward the other, pulling the locker handles in sequence until one finally opened.

  “What did ya find?” she asked.

  “Clothes,” he said.

  ***

  Drew found someone’s lunch inside one of the other lockers. He gobbled his half of the PB&J sandwich down before slamming an Orange Crush without taking a breath. Whatever drug they’d slipped him was wearing off, and putting his street clothes on made him feel like himself again.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “You can turn around.”

  She posed for him, smiling for the first time. “What do ya think?”

  She’d wiped the grime and soot off her face, revealing elfin features beneath. Her jeans and sweater didn’t fit very well, but she could have been there for days, weeks, or months.

  “Nice,” he said. “Any luck?”

  She turned her pockets inside out. “No ID, no nothing.”

  The sagging ceiling creaked and groaned, releasing puffs of toxic powder into the air.

  “We gotta get outta here,” he said. He grabbed her by the hand and led her out of the control room.

  They negotiated the ruins as best they could, but the anonymous industrial corridors appeared identical in the near dark. Drew took the lead, afraid instead of leading them out he was leading them back in, but kept his anxieties to himself.

  “Why’d you ask me if I was a ghost?”

  “I was out of it,” she said, “But…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I been having these dreams…”

  “What kinda dreams?”

  He could tell his question made her uncomfortable, but she answered anyway. “Guess they ain’t dreams. Least not like the kind I used to have.”

  He sympathized, more than she knew. “If they ain’t dreams what are they?”

  “Memories.”

  They passed beneath a cracked security monitor bolted to the corner. She watched the screensaver’s geometric patterns fold into each other, neon colors fading to black before starting all over again.

  “Guess that’s what a ghost is,” he said.

  “What?”

  “A memory that hangs around without nobody to remember it?”

  “Never thought of it like that,” she admitted, “but I know the difference.”

  “And what’s the difference?”

  “The guilt,” she said.

  “Something happened?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He helped her climb over a vending machine clogging the corridor. “Something ya feel guilty about?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And ya can’t get past it?” he said.

  “Something like that.”

  “Don’t ya gotta try?” he said.

  “That’s what my friend told me,” she explained.

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Girlfriend,” Deneese said.

  “Oh…”

  “I mean a friend of mine who’s a girl,” she said.

  “Oh…What makes her so smart?”

  “She’s a DJ.”

  Drew tried biting his lip but couldn’t resist. “And what else did DJ Morpheus have to say about the Matrix?”

  “Not what she said that got me thinkin’, it’s what she did,” Deneese told him. “Ya ever see a DJ scratchin’ a record?”

  “Yeah…”

  ?
??A record’s just like somebody’s memory,” she said, “each groove proof of something that happened inside a recording studio.”

  “I guess…”

  “Sometimes the needle jumps and cuts across the vinyl and leaves a scratch,” she said. “Guess some memories are like that. They cut deeper than others.”

  “So I’m…you’re stuck with the memories…with the ghosts forever? Don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Forever is a long time,” she said. “Time enough for cuts to turn into scabs and scabs into scars.”

  “DJ Morpheus should be writing Hallmark cards,” he said.

  “You’re pretty cynical.”

  “Gotta be,” he said, “still waiting on my cut to turn into a scar.”

  “Look at it this way,” she said, “a scar is better than bleeding.”

  He stopped when he felt another aftershock ripple through the foundation, giving him an excuse to change the subject. “You never said how ya got here.”

  “That’s ‘cause I don’t know,” Deneese confessed.

  “Don’t know or don’t remember?”

  “I don’t…”

  “What do ya remember?” he asked.

  “I don’t remember anything after the accident.”

  ***

  Drew jammed a broken piece of rebar between the doors. He worked the shaft back and forth, prying them open wide enough to get a grip.

  Deneese slipped her slender fingers into the opening and grabbed hold. She pulled until the tracks clicked and the doors rolled back.

  “Careful,” Drew warned.

  They stepped into the laboratory, avoiding the shattered glass scattered across the tiled floor. Broken monitors and smoldering workstations littered the interior, forcing them to climb over and around the expensive scrap.

  “Nobody’s home,” she whispered.

  Wrong. The first shot pinged off the wall before either could react.

  Drew yanked her down to the floor.

  The second shot missed high.

  “Don’t shoot!” Drew yelled.

  There was a delay before the shooter answered. “Who’s there?”

  He recognized the gravely voice even if she didn’t recognize his. He rose with his hands up. “I ain’t carrying.”

  Doctor Jagger limped out from behind the overturned console gripping the gun in her trembling hands. Cuts and bruises weakened her resolve and she didn’t put up a fight when Drew took the gun from her.

  “We need bandages or something,” Deneese said.

  “There’s a first aid kit by that cabinet over there,” Jagger said. “No…the other one.”

  Drew helped her into a chair. “Why’d ya shoot at us?”

  Jagger managed a grin. “Thought you were Runyon.”

  “Ya don’t have to worry ‘bout him no more,” Drew said.

  Her eyes widened. “Oh God…is he?”

  “Dead,” Drew said.