March Forth (The Woodford Chronicles Book 1) (15 page)

              “I’ve only been working on this assignment for like a year, bro,” John acerbically observed. Steven shushed him.

              Larsen continued as if he hadn’t noticed the interruption.  “There must be something about her, something we’ve missed.  There’s no other explanation.  I’ve been looking for Dave – for Carver, I mean – for so long!  How could this …this …stranger be allowed to find him?  What possible quality does she have that I lack?  I’ve been LOOKING FOR HIM FOR EIGHTEEN YEARS!” His voice rose, and cracked, and Steven was horrified to realize he had begun to sob.  “It’s just not fair,” Larsen sounded like a four year old having a tantrum.  “It’s just not fair.”

              Awkward silence prevailed for a long moment before Eric ventured, “I don’t really think that’s a good reason for wiping away people’s brains.”

              The General gave no response except continued sobbing, so Steven responded for him.  “Everything else aside, there must be some connection.  Not only did she meet him, several times, but she could see me when I was fully cloaked.  How do you explain that, unless we consider the possibility that Carver did something to her?  Do you have some other explanation?”

              John and Eric glanced at each other, and Eric shrugged almost imperceptibly before looking back to his shoes.  John spread his hands and suggested brightly, “The Lord works in mysterious ways?”

              “There’s got to be more to it than that.”

              Eric and John glanced at each other, and Steven thought he detected a sense of alarm in that glance.  He wondered what the techs were hiding.

              “Even if that’s true, there must be a better way to get to the bottom of things,” John finally answered.  “We haven’t even got anyone from the Boogie Man Patrol working on this assignment to prevent the energy’s negative backlash.  Do you really want to use the energy with negative intentions?  Can’t you imagine what that could bring back on us?”

              “Well… but…,” the General was still weeping, and uncharacteristically flustered.  “If all the extra nonsense is wiped from her brain, maybe it will show us the truth that she’s hiding.  Maybe it will show us how she fits in to all of this.  That’s not negative intention, it’s furthering our mission.  We are meant to bring Carver in by any means necessary, and the end justifies the means in this case.”

              “I doubt she would think so,” Eric murmured.

              “It would help her, too, Eric,” Steven stepped in again.  “The General has discovered that she has some pretty serious issues, mentally.  This would give her a fresh start.”

              The techs glanced at one another once more, then John said drily, “I really don’t think it’s up to us to decide who’s got issues we should wipe away.  Larsen’s over there crying his eyes out because he’s jealous this lady got to see his friend and he couldn’t.  You,” he addressed Steven, “can’t seem to have an original thought unless someone tells you to.  Eric has the social skills of an agoraphobic mole.  And I…. well, I just don’t think we are in any position to be judging whether or not to wipe away part of someone’s brain.”

              A snarky response was forming on Steven’s lips, but it was chased away by surprise when Larsen whispered, “You’re absolutely right.”

              “He…what?” Steven asked.

              “He’s completely right.”  The General’s voice was hushed and thick with tears. “I’ve been going about this all wrong.  I’ve let my emotions get the better of me.  I should have been trying to get her to work with us voluntarily, rather than forcing my will on her.  Carver himself would be ashamed of me.”  He wiped away his tears and clapped John on the shoulder.  “Thank you, boys.  Both of you.  It took an incredible courage to make me see I’ve been wrong, and I am incredibly grateful to you both.”

              Both John and Eric shrugged, and John said, “It’s all good, man.”

              Steven felt overwhelmingly confused, and more than a little angry.  All he had been doing was following Larsen’s orders, and now the General had not only reversed his position completely, but expressed gratitude to the techs for rebelling against his original stance.  It was maddening, baffling, and unbelievably frustrating.

              He had no idea how to react, so he stayed silent for as long as he could.

David

              He had been walking along the sandbar for as long as he could remember, now, which truthfully wasn’t very long at all.  However, he remembered why he was walking, and that was an improvement on things.  For so long, he had wandered with no idea of why, how, or where he was going.  At least now he knew: he was looking for someplace real.  He was looking for where he belonged.  He was looking for the man in his vision, who he was pretty sure could help him, though he didn’t know why he thought that.

              As he walked, he murmured, “Use my gifts.  Find a world where I can be safe.  Find you again.”  At least, he murmured the closest approximation of those words that he could muster.

              Although the sun shone brightly, it was not terribly hot.  He waded through the shallow water that occasionally flowed over the sandbar, or he walked on the sand when it did not, without feeling hot, or tired, or really much of anything at all.  He simply walked, almost oblivious to his surroundings.  None of it seemed real.  He just wanted something real.

              This went on and on, an unchanging blur of sun and water and sand, until suddenly he saw a flash of light in his periphery.  He paused and looked around; for a moment, but saw no change in the scenery.  Then, as he began to walk forward again, he saw a woman standing about twenty yards ahead of him.  She was looking around with an air of apparent interest.  When she noticed him, she smiled and waved.  He smiled and waved back, almost against his will.

              There was something familiar about her.  He walked closer, unafraid and unperturbed by her sudden, inexplicable presence.

              “Hi there,” she called as he walked closer.

              He nodded wordlessly in response, unable to remember what one says in such situations.

              “Are you… are you David Carver?” she stammered.

              He thought very hard about that.  He knew those words, they definitely sounded very familiar.  Although he wasn’t one hundred percent sure, he nodded.  He was pretty sure he might be that thing she had said.

              “I’m Deanna.  Do you remember me at all?”

              He stared at her for a few seconds, then shrugged.

              “I used to… you used to… sometimes I gave you cigarettes.  Before.  When I worked at the BitterSweet Bistro in Woodford.  Do you remember?”

              He considered her words.  Many of them did not make sense to him, but he felt like they should, somehow.  They conjured images in his mind of a crowded street and of an empty, dimly lit room filled with tables and stools, with this lady in both places.  He remembered trying to tell her how he had found himself there, even though he did not really recall himself, and he remembered that she was nice to him.  He remembered she told him he could be safe in her strange world.  All of these things appeared as vague images in his mind; for no logical reason, he simply felt safe with this woman.

              He thought all this, and he nodded slowly.  “Nice lady,” he offered.

              She grinned and nodded.  “Yes, you called me that once or twice.  I’m glad you remember.  I think maybe we can help each other.”

              He cocked his head to the side and looked at her quizzically.  He couldn’t figure out what it was about her that he found so reassuring.  He felt like he understood her, and vice versa, even if he didn’t fully understand what she was saying.  A voice in his memory whispered: “You know very little, right now.  But you did know many things.  You knew the cause and solution to the problem you’re having now.  You knew what was important in life.  You knew me.  You knew you weren’t alone.”

              He wasn’t sure where those words came from or who had said them, but he was pretty sure they were important.  “Not alone,” he murmured in his hoarse voice.

              “That’s right, you’re not alone,” she answered.  “I’m here now, and You is always with you, even when you don’t know it.”  She giggled.  “That sounds funny, when I say it like that.  He told me to call him ‘You,’ but maybe you don’t know him by that?  He’s a very tall man who wears robes.  I think maybe you knew him, once.”

              David’s brow furrowed slightly as he tried to figure out what she was saying, and he said nothing.  It felt like something in his brain was jiggling as he listened to her speak.  It was not necessarily an unpleasant sensation, but an odd one.  He didn’t know what to make of it.  He jiggled his head a bit to see if it would stop the feeling; it didn’t.  He waved his hand to encourage her to talk more, so that he could explore the feeling further.  She looked at him quizzically, as if she didn’t understand the request.  He waved again and, after searching his mind thoroughly for the right words, said, “More.”

              “You mean… do you mean more of a description?”

              He shrugged and nodded.

              “Well, he’s very, very tall.  Maybe six and a half feet tall.  And he has dreadlocks that go to his shoulders, and a cocoa complexion.  He carries a staff, and he wears sandals.  He, um.  He’s not actually a person.  He’s a connection to the Divine, or something.  It’s all a bit confusing.  But I think maybe I need to help you find him.”

              Maybe it wasn’t actually his brain jiggling.  Maybe it was something IN his brain.  A thought?  A memory?  Maybe it was waking up.  Maybe it was dancing.  He was pretty sure thoughts didn’t dance like that, though.  Whatever the case, it felt weird, so he took up the metaphorical security blanket of repeating his mantra.  “Use my gifts.  Find a world where I can be safe.  Find you again.”

              After he had repeated it several times, he realized she was listening intently and even watching his lips move, as if she were trying very hard to understand him.  People didn’t usually do that.  Lots of new things happening.

              “Yes!” she suddenly exclaimed, delightedly.  “You need to find You again!  That’s exactly right!”

              He stopped talking and smiled with her.  He liked smiling, he hadn’t done much of it in a long time.  It felt nice.

              “Do you actually have any idea what I’m talking about?” she asked.

              He shrugged, still smiling.

              She sighed.  “Okay, we need to figure this out.”  She looked around, then said, “Do you know where we are?”

              He looked around, too.  Then he said, “Not mine.”

              She nodded.  “I think we’re in my mind, actually.  Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it seems to be true.  And I think… I think we can help each other, but I’m not sure how, really.  I need to become queen of my world, apparently, and I think I have to help you regain your connection to… to… to You.  And to your world.”  She paused and contemplated their surroundings for a moment.  “When I met him, he told me that sometimes worlds collide, and fit into each other in any way they can.  I think your world is stuck in my world, right now.”

              He nodded, staring at the sky.  “Motorcycle,” he offered.  That was all he really remembered of his world.

              “Yes,” she sighed again.  “I wonder if the organization knows where your brand new motorcycle is.  Those men…Steven Drisbane and Benjamin Larsen.  Do you know them?”

              He blinked.  There was something familiar in those words.  “Bed?”  He shook his head; that wasn’t right.  “Ben,” he corrected himself.

              “You do know them,” she murmured.  “Maybe that could help.”

              They sat in companionable silence for a few moments.  He closed his eyes for a moment, and the vision he had had before he started walking the sandbar flashed in his mind.

              “Always safe, my lady, as long as you choose to be,” he intoned, repeating the words of the man in his vision.  He opened his eyes again and saw that the nice lady was looking at him with big eyes and an open mouth; she was surprised.  He didn’t know why.

              “Can you do me a favor, David?” she asked once she had gotten over her surprise.  She took his hand in hers, and said, “Let’s both just close our eyes and clear our minds, and be open to connection.”

              He shrugged.  She put her free hand over his eyes and said, “Close your eyes.”  He obeyed.

              They sat like that for a long while, holding each other’s hands with their eyes closed and their minds open.  After a bit, he felt a hand on his head and opened his eyes, expecting to see the nice lady.

              “Hello, old friend,” the robed man said, smiling fondly at him.

              “Find you again!” he exclaimed, happily.

              “All you ever had to do was look,” You said, and offered David a hand to help him up.

Benjamin

              He was incredibly embarrassed about the fact that he couldn’t seem to stop crying, but there was no help for it.  It was as if all of the emotions he had pushed aside for eighteen years had finally broken through some dam and were now leaking out of his eyes.

              He tried to wipe away his tears as he said, “Thank you, boys.  Both of you.  It took an incredible courage to make me see I’ve been wrong, and I am incredibly grateful to you both.”

              The techs seemed as embarrassed by his gratitude as he felt about his own tears, so he switched tactics.  “So now what?” he asked.  “I am open to your advice, gentlemen.”

              Eric and John glanced at each other, then Eric quickly mumbled, “I think we should still find her, just not wipe her brain.”

              “She… she might be helpful to our investigation, you’re not wrong about that,” John admitted. 

              Drisbane sounded rather irate as he asked, “What makes you say that?”  Benjamin couldn’t imagine why the boy seemed bent out of shape.

              John only shrugged, and glanced at Eric again.  Eric mumbled something Benjamin couldn’t hear.  Apparently, neither could Drisbane, who snapped with great vitriol, “What the hell did you say?”

              “Drisbane!” Benjamin exclaimed.  “What in God’s name has come over you, boy?”

              The boy turned his icy stare toward him.  “What’s come over ME? You’ve suddenly decided that everything we’ve been doing is wrong.  You’re thanking these guys and asking their advice because they basically staged a rebellion.  And you want to know what’s come over ME?”

              “Ensign …”

              “That’s right, sir, I AM an Ensign.  I’m an officer in this organization and I have followed every order you’ve given me, and I have ALWAYS performed to the best of my abilities, no matter what thankless task you’ve given me.  And have you ever thanked me?  No.  But you thank these two for flat out disobedience.”

              “You just have your panties in a bunch because I said you don’t have any original thoughts,” John observed. 

              If looks really could kill, John would have died in that moment.

              “Gentlemen, please,” Benjamin began.  His tears were subsiding, and the calm of catharsis was all he felt in that moment.  “This is completely unnecessary.  Drisbane, I’m sorry if you feel invalidated.  You are a good operative.  I rely on you heavily.  But what these boys did for me…” he trailed off for a moment and rubbed his eyes.  “For so long, I’ve just been reacting to circumstances.  Burying my feelings and reacting.  It’s a sad state of affairs.  You know why I admired Carver so much?  Well, many reasons, but one was that he always took charge of his own destiny.  He was a natural born leader.  No one even believed in magic, but he isolated the energy and developed tools to make it accessible to us.  He… nothing could stop him.  He was amazing.” He paused and rubbed his eyes again, then looked intently at Drisbane.  “You and I, boy… we haven’t been so amazing.  We’ve been reactive, passive.  Rather than taking charge of our lives, our mission, we’ve been reacting to whatever gets thrown our way.  It’s sad.  I’m ashamed of myself, and I want better for you.  I realize that now.  I realize it because John and Eric took charge of the situation and showed me how terribly I was behaving.  They had the courage to stand up to me and remind me of what’s important.

              “I… I’ve been so blind.  I’ve been burying my feelings and rationalizing my behaviors, just so I could spare myself the pain of admitting the truth: I miss David so much, it is almost physically painful.  He was my hero.  I wanted so much to be like him.  I don’t… I don’t want to be what I’ve been.  The years of frustration over my inability to find him have made me feel like a… a… well, a loser.  I’ve felt weak and inferior, and I’ve tried to hide it.  It all boiled over.  I tried to rationalize it, but I was taking out all of my frustration on Miss Flanagan because I resented her for being able to meet him, for having some unique gifts by accident.”  He sighed, a long, deep, cleansing breath.  “Don’t be like me, Drisbane.  Don’t be petty and resentful.  Choose your own path and do what you know to be right.  Like these boys.  Like Carver once did.  Let us both strive to be better than we’ve been.”

              Steven looked back at him with hurt in his eyes.  “All I’ve ever done is follow your orders.”

              Benjamin heaved another sigh.  “I know, boy.  I know.  And now I’m ordering you – all three of you – to help me figure out what to do next.  I don’t know if I trust myself to make the right choices at this point.  I need help.”

              There was a long, awkward pause as all of the men thought about what to say next.  Then, without preamble, Eric blurted, “I saw Carver’s energy signature in Miss Flanagan’s molecular scan yesterday.”

              John glanced at him, then looked back to Steven and the General, apparently unsurprised.  Steven’s eyebrows knitted together.  Benjamin himself could only ask, “What?  How?”

              Eric tapped away at his keyboard, and pulled up the image in question.  It looked like a bunch of glowing, purple dots in the shape of a person, but Benjamin recognized it as Miss Flanagan’s molecular scan.  As he watched, a lavender flicker of light crossed over the darker purple dots, and Eric said, “There, see?”

              “Show me again, please.”

              The tech complied.  They watched it three more times. 

              “I’m not sure I understand what this actually means,” Benjamin finally said.  “It’s not something I’ve ever seen.  I didn’t think it was possible.  Is he actually…. Is he somehow inside of Miss Flanagan?”

              “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought since I observed the phenomenon,” Eric said, his mind engaged with the problem at hand enough to make him forget his social anxiety.  “We’ve been taught that Carver could walk through space and time, and visit different worlds and dimensions, even before he invented the Broom.  Is that true?”

              “Well, yes.  Before he incorporated technology, he had to do it the old fashioned way, with spells and rituals and such.  The Broom made it so much easier.”  Benjamin’s eyes twinkled as he remembered the joy they had felt after inventing the device.

              “If he became lost, and cut off from reality, as we’ve learned,” Eric continued, “he may have begun to drift between worlds without control.  Evidence would point to this.  We’ve learned that he would disappear frequently, before his desertion, leaving the room and showing up on the other end of the planet with no knowledge of how he got there.”

              “True,” Benjamin mused sadly.  “Very true.”

              “Well, if he had no control over it, who’s to say he didn’t start going to places that were not necessarily actual places, but worlds of perception?”  Eric concluded, then realized everyone was looking at him, and developed a sudden fascination with his keyboard.

              “I’m not sure… I’m not sure I’m following.”

              “Yeah, it’s some trippy shit,” John interjected.  “He tried to explain it to me and I thought he was having an LSD flashback, but it turns out the kid’s never tried any drugs.  I think he basically means that every living thing has the capacity to be their own world, as each of us filter everything through our own memories and senses and stuff.  So like, the waitress could be a world that Carver might have gotten lost in, or at least visited.”

              “That’s just not possible,” Drisbane interjected.  “You’re combining psychological theories with proven organization methods, and we never covered anything like that in training.”

              John shrugged in response.  “It’s weird, I’ll give you that.  But nothing we’ve done has worked, so maybe we have to consider new ideas.”

              Benjamin seemed to be staring at nothing, wide eyed and silent, as he considered the possibilities.  “If people… if Miss Flanagan, specifically… was seen in that light, as a world….” He trailed off as he tried to frame his thoughts into words.  “How… how do we find Dave….Carver…. in her?”

              John chortled in response, murmuring, “In her.”  Once he had pulled himself together, he said, “When I used to play shows with my band, we had good shows and bad shows, like anyone does.  When it was bad, it was horrible.  It was like the audience was against us.  It was the worst feeling in the world, like we were just totally at odds with everything, and nothing was working for us.”

              “Is there actually going to be a point here?” Drisbane interjected.

              “Yes, actually, there is, oh ye of little patience,” John answered in a tone that reminded Benjamin of his third grade teacher when her class had been interrupted.  “When a show went well, everything just felt so perfect.  The audience vibed with us, we vibed with each other, everyone was into it.”  He paused for a moment.  “When we had the waitress here, it wasn’t by her choice.  We kind of inflicted it on her.  She was kind of, if I can refer to my own experience, playing a bad show.”

              Eric nodded as if this made perfect sense, but both Steven and Benjamin only looked confused.  Benjamin finally ventured, “If I’m following you, she needs to play a ‘good show’?  Is that what you’re saying?”

              “Well, yeah.  Like, instead of trying to force her to let us in to her ‘world,’ I guess, we need to see if she could just, like, share it.  Because if we try to force it, we just get more separate, but if we’re all in it together, then we’re in it together.”  John paused for a few beats before saying, “I’ve studied a lot of science, but the music analogy made more sense to me in this instance.”

              “I think…. I mean, I think I understand what you’re saying,” Benjamin stammered.  “But I don’t really know how to proceed.  If I may extend your analogy, what factors were present in a good show versus a bad show?”

              “Well,” John screwed his face in thought.  “I guess part of it was us.  The band.  Our attitudes going into it, if we were fighting among ourselves – which happened kind of a lot.  But it also had to do with external forces like the venue and the audience.  There were some people who came to a lot of our shows, and whenever I saw them in the audience, I felt like it would be a good show.  This one girl would come a lot, and I’d always play better when she was there, ‘cause I kind of had a thing for her, I guess.  And there was this dude, this tall dude with dreads, who would always somehow show up for the good shows.  Whenever I saw him out there, I knew it would be a great night.”

              “All of which provides exactly zero help to us at the moment,” Drisbane muttered under his breath.

              “I guess what I’m saying is, our attitudes toward her might have an effect.  We should treat her less like a test subject and more like a person,” John explained.  “And maybe, I dunno, do we have anything she might want?  Maybe she’d be more willing to help us, to let us explore her world, so to speak, if she got something out of it.”

              Benjamin pondered this for several long seconds before saying, “I think we may have something to offer her, actually.  And she may have something to offer us.   She does have some unique abilities, after all, that may actually serve us well.”

              Steven let out a gasp of air and said, “Seriously?  Sure, why not.”  His tone implied that he was not altogether pleased, but Benjamin had made up his mind.

              “We have a plan, then.  Eric, John…. Do you think you’d feel better about returning our devices, now?”

              Eric tapped the button on the device, and the devices returned to the room.

              “Where were they, anyway?” Drisbane asked.

              John snickered in response.  “They never left.  They were just shielded.”

              Drisbane rolled his eyes.

              “Well, then, gentlemen,” Benjamin said jovially.  “It looks like I’m heading to Woodford to present a lady with a job offer.”