I navigated back through the strange oversized house, down the hall and toward the front door. I ignored the kitchen, with the strange and alluring scent of gingerbread wafting from it. As I reached for the high handle on the door a voice spoke, halting me.
“You must be new,” said a girl’s voice. “You can’t run, there are cameras everywhere. You’ll only make it worse for yourself if you try.”
I looked over. A girl was standing by one of the oversized chairs, a book in her hand. She was older than the girls in gray had been. I guessed her age at sixteen or seventeen. She had brown hair, done in a neat braid, and light brown eyes set high on a long face. Her features were different from what I was used to seeing at school, making me think she was from another country, far away. She had on a simple blue dress, cut well, not threadbare like the gray girls.
“I tried to run,” she said, “my first week.”
She held up one of her hands, showing she was missing part of her fingers on that hand. The first two knuckles on her ring and pinky fingers.
“It would have been better if I hadn’t,” she said, sounding matter of fact. “I was lucky. The two others who ran with me, were less fortunate.”
“Are all the children here girls?” I asked.
She laughed, “You’re here, aren’t you?”
“I’m not a child,” I said, realizing it was true. I’d digested too many of Not-me’s memories to be a child anymore. “And I’ve only seen girls.”
“You look like a child to me,” the girl in blue said. “And she prefers the taste of boys. They don’t tend to live through their first mistake.”
The cold anger roiled inside me. “She prefers the taste…” I trailed off, the pieces beginning to come together in my head.
“She cooks and eats the young ones,” she said. The casualness of her statement and her placid tone were horrifying.
“She’s a witch, isn’t she?” I said. “Caroline. That’s who you mean when you say, she.”
The girl in blue nodded, “That’s only been her name for a couple of years. It’s not her real name. She uses them up and takes a new one from someone she’s eaten.”
I felt sick all over again. The fairy-tales of old world witches flashed into my head. Hansel and Gretel, the legend of the Wendigo, The Juniper Tree, and Russian folklore of Baba-Yaga. These tales are backed by disturbing accounts throughout history, such as the Malleus Maleficarum, the Samlesbury witches, and horrific accounts from the Northern European Great Famine of 1315. Did these accounts hold a thread of truth, pointing to an ancient evil? Was that who was here?
“I’m not like the others,” I said. “I don’t know how yet, but I’m going to find a way to kill her and set you free.”
The girl in blue looked sad. “No,” she said. “She can’t be killed. I’ve seen it. She’s not a human, she’s…” she looked fearfully up at the ceiling. I saw a camera where the girl was looking. “She’s something else.”
I opened the door and dashed out into the gloom of the larger facility the house was squatting in. “I’ll find a way,” I said, as I got busy exploring my new hunting grounds.
***
Interlude
The fire alarm wouldn’t turn off. Caroline had sent two men to manually disconnect the power. The system was supposed to be state of the art, but after two angry phone calls to the company that had installed it, they could find nothing wrong with the system.
Caroline stood inside her control room, staring at the array of monitors, growing more irritated by the second. The two technicians running the boards were rewinding and playing back footage at a furious pace, trying to find where the boy had gone.
“Run it all the way back to when he entered my study!” she snapped.
“We don’t have any cameras in there, at your request,” one of the techs said, his tone bordering on belligerence.
They had been trying to find where the boy had gone with the house cameras, after the fire alarm had gone off. The flashing lights were making the camera view distorted and difficult to discern. Caroline had fifteen men making a manual search of the house. Again. The boy had vanished.
“Show me the door you loh!” Caroline said. “There is a camera on the door.”
The tech complied, muttering about being called a fool, running the door footage back until Ivan was on screen. He looked disheveled and upset, walking down the hall, pointing his gun at empty air.
“Where is the boy? Is he behind Ivan?”
The tech switched view, so the hall behind him was visible. Nothing.
“Play it forward, show me Ivan entering my study.”
Ivan opened the door and gestured with the gun, then stepped inside. When he let go of the doorknob, it fell to the floor. Ivan let out a curse the mic picked up. The he picked up the knob and entered.
“Gav-no!” Caroline cursed. “Go farther back. Show me Mr Black and Gregor delivering the boy.”
This took a minute. The tech scrubbed back through two days of footage until he found the spot. A view of the foyer appeared on screen, Mr Black waiting and looking bored. There was no boy.
“Where is the boy? Show me when they entered.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The tech ran it further back, then hit play. The door opened, Mr Black stepping in after Gregor opened the door. Gregor appeared to be struggling with empty air, then hurried away down the hall. There was no boy.
“Skip ahead, to when I got there.”
The video sped up, until Caroline herself showed up on screen wearing her apron. She argued with Mr Black for a beat, the appeared to take hold of empty air.
“Freeze!”
The image froze. Caroline was leaning forward, her hand outstretched, apparently holding on to nothing.
“Gay-no…” Caroline said again. “The boy doesn’t show up…”
“I’m sorry,” said the tech, “I don’t see him… let me try a different angle.”
He fiddled with the controls, and Caroline let him. She remembered looking into the boy’s face. There was no doubt. He was there. He just didn’t show up.
The tech continued to try and get an angle in which the boy appeared. Caroline pulled out her phone and punched a number.
“Are you sure the boy was here?” the tech asked.
Caroline walked away as the phone was answered, ignoring the tech.
“Yes?” said the voice on the other side. “I presume you have news for me. It must be interesting if you’re taking time from your busy schedule to call instead of delegating it.”
“We have a problem,” Caroline stated.
“Oh?” the voice sounded amused. “Has your production schedule been thrown off?”
“Bigger problem. You said Gregor worked on the boy, yes?”
“Yes… did he die? That’s no problem—“
Caroline cut him off, “Quit trying to guess what I have to say. It’s irritating. Have you looked at the footage?”
“What footage?”
“Of Gregor working on the boy, you pompous pimple! What do you think?”
“You’re in rare form. No, of course not, why would I bother? I sent him to you, didn’t I?”
“Look at it now.”
“Now? I’m kind of busy at the moment.”
“Now!”
“Okay, give me a moment. You cranky old bat.”
There was shuffling from the other end and a long pause. Then a curse and a tapping of keyboard keys. After a longer pause the voice came back.
“What…” the voice trailed off, at a loss for words. He cleared his throat, “What am I looking at here? What is this boy? I assumed he was not human, but…”
“I don’t know,” said Caroline, “but he doesn’t show up on cameras. Also, he brings misfortune wherever he goes.”
“Misfortune?”
“He collapsed his holding cell, nearly killed three of my men and destroyed my study!”
“He did what?”
“Now, he’s loose in the facility. He boasted he let himself be captured so he could be invited in. What did you bring to my doorstep?”
“Don’t tell me you can’t handle a boy—“
“He is not a boy! He used some kind of magic I couldn’t see or feel. On me! Me! We have a big problem.”
“You have twenty-five men, handle it.”
“You get your ass back here with everyone you can find and help! This is your mess!”
Another alarm started blaring. The techs began typing frantically. A view of one of the old machines inside the facility came up. It was on fire. Caroline stared at it for a long moment.
“Hurry, before he blows us all up.” Caroline ended the call.
“Get men over there! Put that out! Turn on the ventilation! Cancel the search of the house! He’s in the main facility!”
The techs began carrying out her orders. Caroline ground her dentures together and tried again to brush the chemical foam off her suit. She needed to consult her books. That fool of an American “associate” had brought an unknown evil into what had been a smooth operation. She needed to find a way to fight something she couldn’t see. And to see if she could find some old text on what this thing was, that took on the appearance of a child.
***
Stage one of “Operation Infiltration” was not going well. I had decided my mission needed a name. Operation Infiltration had a nice ring to it, so it had stuck. Stage one was to figure out where the fuck I was. My first guess, an Abandoned Missile Silo, was still on the table, but I was beginning to suspect the possibility of an Abandoned Cold War Nuclear Shelter, or an Abandoned Large Scale Mining Operation. It was probably mining something valuable enough that all operational efforts were being kept under wraps from satellite surveillance.
I had paused to investigate what looked like either a jet airplane turbine engine or, upon closer inspection once I discovered the cable, a giant motor made for winching a steel cable up what appeared to be an elevator shaft. The problem was, that when I paused to investigate the giant machine, the mouse gremlins following me also paused to investigate the giant machine. I didn't think anything of it until the machine caught fire.
I cried out and leapt back as orange and blue flames jetted from various ventilation holes in the motor, curling up around the metal housing. I watched it burn for a second. The flames were really pretty, but the smoke was awful. Choking, I backed up further, wondering if I had just doomed whoever was at the bottom of the elevator shaft.
Aside from the girl in blue, I had not found any of the children the old witch claimed to have. Of course, I had left the house right away, assuming it was probably not reserved for the children, although I was now second-guessing my actions, thinking I should try and circle back and find the house again. All I had to do was backtrack the seemingly endless maze of hallways I had just come from.
I heaved a deep sigh and sat down, watching the giant turbine burn. I didn't think a motor would explode. It was an electric motor, wasn't it? I couldn't tell. I don't recall ever having been around a gasoline motor, but if it wasn't a gasoline motor, why was it burning? I didn't know.
I was sitting down to try and think. The place I was in didn’t make sense, and I was completely, totally, hopelessly, grotesquely lost. Imagine shrinking yourself down and deciding that, for whatever reason, you really want to explore an underground ant nest. But not any ant nest. No. You want to explore the underground ant nest that holds the world record for being the biggest ant's nest in the world. And without a thought to the darkness, to the labyrinthine maze of twisty, bendy, windy hallways, you jump in. No map, no plan, no light, no idea where you're going, except an adrenaline-fueled sense of over-inflated self-importance. Yeah. That's about what I had going on.
I had gone down a level, which I decided quickly was a mistake because I found corridors that seemed disused. Undisturbed dust lay on the floor. I had gone back up a level, figuring I wouldn’t need to backtrack to go up; I could just use the staircase that was right in front of me. However, the staircase that was in front of me seemed to go up a level and a half. Curious, I exited, only to discover I was in a completely different structure. No, not something bright and happy—more like something that was intended for a different set of functions.
I found abandoned living quarters, bunks bolted to the wall, built-in sink-above-toilet combinations looking like space and functionality were considered a premium when they were designed. But then, for whatever bizarre reason, put in such a cavernous, unexplainably capacious facility as this. They certainly had the room to have full-sized everything. Realizing that being half a level up from the facility I'd just been in was probably a good sign I was headed in the wrong direction, I tried to backtrack. I say tried because, though I was sure I walked back down the hallway I had come from, I ended up in a room I had not been in before.
From here, I went down a full level, only to end up in what looked like a creepy, abandoned hospital. It was at this point it began to dawn on me that there was just the possibility some sort of magic was being used to keep me lost. Now, considering that Caroline was a witch, and the Tall-man was… well, the Tall-man, it was a possibility.
“Maybe I’m dreaming,” I said aloud.
“Definitely not dreaming,” said a voice, startling me.
“Not-me?” I said, unsure where the voice was coming from.
“I told you that’s a dumbass name for me, didn’t I? I remember telling you it’s a dumbass name. Yet you keep using it, like a dumbass.”
Yep, that was Not-me’s voice alright. I cast around for the reflection.
“Up here,” he said.
I followed the sound and saw a camera mounted high up. The lens was winking with the firelight. I squinted. I couldn’t see it well enough to catch sight of him.
“How are you talking to me when I can’t see you?”
“I can see you—you have no idea how hard the in-between place I’m in is to navigate—and that appears to be enough if I project the right way. I just now figured it out. I was stuck in that creepy house. I got to listen to a hilarious argument between the witch and the tall guy. They can’t see you on the cameras, and it’s giving them fits. But they’re sending people to put the fire out and you gotta move. Oh, nice work weaponizing the gremlins by the way, I really got a kick out of you giving those thugs bad luck. See if you can do that some more.”
“Yeah, I realized that after I became a luck-vampire, they never messed with me when I was low on luck. I think they’re treating me like I’m one of them.”
Not-me’s cackling laughter echoed around the room. “That figures. You’re so good at breaking stuff that they must think you’re mother gremlin.“
“Hey, I’m lost. This place doesn’t make any sense. Which way should I go if I need to move?“
“Did you hit your head? What’s wrong with you? Just go back the way you came.“
“You sure? Every time I’ve gone back the way I came I’ve ended up in a place that I haven’t been to yet”
“What? That doesn’t make any sense. Come on, get up! Men with rifles are almost here!“
I stood up, and as I did several flashlight beams entered the room form one of the side passages. Men began shouting, and I took off running towards the passage I had entered from. Gunfire erupted from behind me, bullets kicking cement chips into my face as I dove through the doorway. The burning motor exploded.
I was already diving when it blew up, so I landed flat as debris pelted the hall I was in. Something struck the heel of my shoe, hard enough to sting, but the rest missed me. There was no more gunfire, so I got up and ran. I should end up back in the abandoned hospital. When I got to the end of the hall, I burst through a set of double doors and skidded to a stop. This was not where I had come from.
The floor was linoleum, all little squares with vomit imitation speckles adorning the off-white surface. The walls were drywall, instead of cement like everything else had been. There was a drop ceiling with missing panels, and flickering fluorescent lights. The walls had creepy pediatric psych ward vibes. They were painted with colorful stick figures and animals, rainbows and other kid friendly art. But the pictures they depicted were wrong. Disturbing images, instead of happy picturesque Americana. No simple houses and happy families. Bears were chasing down and mauling one group of what appeared to be stick children. On another wall, there was a rainbow, but at the end of it, was a leprechaun with sharp teeth. He had a stick figure cooking in his pot instead of gold. In another place, stick children were being thrown into a black pit, tentacles reaching up for them as they fell.
“What the fuck?” I breathed.
***