I’ll try to post my thoughts as I go through this first experience editing a lengthy work. Words of encouragement are great, too, however…

Jimmy and Alex argued about it for a bit.  Danny paid no attention, and instead focused on walking.  The staff continued to glow whenever it was within a foot of him.  That close, however, and his skin tingled, the hairs moving like they were caught in an electric field.  He rubbed his arms, but it didn’t do any good.

They’d walked for half an hour or more when he saw the first sign of light from somewhere other than the staff.

“Hey,” he said, interrupting Jimmy talking about how he never trusted Africans to begin with and sure as hell wouldn’t now.  “You guys see that?”

“What?” Jimmy said.

“See what?” Alex said.

Danny pointed.  Ahead of them, a good distance away, there’d been a flash of light—only once and then gone, but Danny was sure he hadn’t imagined it.

Jimmy put his hand on Danny’s shoulder.  “Sure you ain’t still messed up in the head from getting stuck to that stick earlier?”

“No,” Danny said, “I saw it.”

“Sure thing,” Jimmy said.  “Just want to be positive, you know?”

“It was there,” Danny said.  “A light.”

Alex pulled the staff away from Danny.  Its glow ceased.  “Be quiet,” he said.

They waited—seconds then minutes and then, as Jimmy began to fidget, the light came again.

“There,” Alex said.

Danny nodded.  It was a flash along the stone, like the reflection off a source moving outside their field of vision.

“That’s firelight,” Alex said.

“You’re right,” Danny said.

“You can tell that?” Jimmy said.  “You can tell that’s fire?”

“Come on,” Alex said.

They stayed close to the wall as they made their way along the tunnel in the direction the light had come from.  Alex held the staff far away from Danny, making sure it didn’t start glowing again and give them away.

“Maybe we’re in a mine,” Danny whispered.

Alex hushed him.

“Who the hell still uses torches?” Jimmy said.  “Miners sure don’t.”

“Be quiet,” Alex said.  He stopped.  “Wait here.  I’ll go on ahead and see if I can see anything.”

“Right, boss,” Jimmy said.  When Alex tried to hand him the staff, he said, “Keep it.  In case you need to hit something.”

“I have a gun,” Alex said.

“Oh, yeah,” Jimmy said, and took the staff.

“Keep that away from Danny,” Alex said, and left them.

Without the light from the staff, Danny couldn’t see Alex.  The detective moved silently.  Even with Jimmy there, Danny felt alone.

“What do you think it is?” Jimmy said into his ear.

“Don’t know,” Danny whispered back.  “Miners, maybe, like I said.”

“Can’t be.”

“What do you think it was?”

Jimmy was quiet a moment.  “You know, kid?  After the shit I’ve seen over the years, I don’t even want to guess.”

“Over the years?”

“Don’t worry about it, not—”

“What other stuff have you seen?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Jimmy said.

But Danny didn’t want him to wait until later.  He pressed the subject, asking Jimmy to elaborate, but it was like trying to get directions from a dead dog.  Jimmy just kept saying, “Nope, not now,” or “You’re gonna have to wait, kid, okay,” and Danny thought he could hear nervousness in the dismissals.  Jimmy hadn’t meant to bring the topic up and was now kicking himself for having done so.

Eventually, Danny let it drop.  He leaned against the tunnel wall and stared in the direction Alex had gone.  Quiet, and dark, and without the chatter of his two new companions, the insanity of the last day settled into Danny’s awareness.  He’d managed to forget about the culture box and the thing in his computer, but now they both returned, along with flashes of the awful man on the bus and the chrome tools he’d pulled from his bag.  Danny wanted to go home, to go to sleep and wake up and attend classes, like he was a regular college kid again.  He was even willing to deal with the headaches if it meant getting out of this tunnel.

The world isn’t supposed to work like this, he thought.  Danny was trying to figure out whether he could trust Jimmy Pete and Alex Dale when he heard the shot.

It was too far away, around a curve in the tunnel, for Danny to see the muzzle flash, but he knew immediately the loud pop was a gunshot.  He jumped and Jimmy did the same.  They collided, the staff in Jimmy’s hand swinging past Danny’s arm, erupting light.  In that brief illumination, Danny saw Jimmy’s wide eyes and, beyond him, Alex running toward them out of the dark.

“Keep it lit,” Alex shouted.

Jimmy didn’t hear or wasn’t paying attention, but Danny moved closer to the staff, coaxing it back to life.

No longer blind, Alex covered the distance between them quickly.  He had his pistol in his hand.  “There’s something up there,” he said, hands on his knees, panting.

“What’d you shoot at?” Jimmy said.

Alex shook his head.  “I don’t know.”

Jimmy said, “What do you—”

But Alex cut him off.  “I don’t have a goddamn clue.  I was walking and then there was this thing in front of me.”

“Did you find the light?” Danny asked.  “Is that how you saw it?”

Alex shook his head again.  “It was dark.  The thing was dark.”

“So how’d—” Danny began.

“It was darker than everything else,” Alex said.  “That’s how I saw it.  A black shape standing there in front of me.”

“Shape of what?” Jimmy said.

“A man, I think.  A large man.”

“You killed it?” Jimmy said.

“I shot it.  I think I hit it.”

“But you don’t know if it’s dead?” Danny said.

“No.”

“What about the torch?” Jimmy said.

Alex stared at him.  “The what?”

“Did the thing you shot have a torch?”

“Was it what made the light?” Danny said.

“I didn’t see one,” Alex said.  “If it had one, it wasn’t lit.”

“Let’s go have a look,” Jimmy said.

“Wait—” Danny said.  His stomach ached.  Far away, but close enough to tingle along his arms and spine, he could feel the pull of the staff.  And he knew—somehow he knew—that getting near that thing Alex had shot would only make it worse.

But Jimmy was already walking further along the tunnel and Danny had to run after him before the glow of the staff went out.  Alex followed.

The thing Alex had shot lay on the floor of the tunnel, its head propped up by the rock wall rising from the dirt.  Danny stared at it as Alex and Jimmy poked around the body.  Alex was right: the thing—or creature, or man, Danny wasn’t sure—was blacker than even the absence of light marking the continuing path of the cave tunnel.  It reminded him of a wooden artist’s doll, the kind with joints that could be posed in all sorts of ways: featureless, the basic shape of a man, but without any characteristics to make it human.

“That’s some crazy shit,” Jimmy said.

Alex crouched and poked at it.  “It’s dead.”

“You sure?” Danny said.  He stood next to Jimmy, who held the staff between them.

“Yes.”

Jimmy hunkered down next to Alex.  “Is it some kind of suit?” he said.

Alex shrugged.  “Maybe, but I don’t think so.”

“It’s a goddamn alien, then,” Jimmy said.

“Could be,” Alex said.

Danny said, “Let’s just leave it, okay?  Let’s keep going, see if we can find a way out of here.”  He’d been right about the tingling.  Up close, near the body, the tug of the staff was awful.  His arms felt like they’d gone to sleep and his stomach was writhing.

Alex was pulling at the thing’s face.  He’d grabbed it under the chin and now yanked up on its jaw.  The head rocked back and banged against stone and dirt.  “It’s not coming off,” he said.

“Maybe it’s a tattoo,” Danny said.

Jimmy stared at him.  “You ever seen a tattoo like that?”

“No.”

“You even think they make tattoos like that?”

Danny shook his head.

“An alien,” Jimmy said.

Alex stood up.  “It’s dead,” he said, “and we can’t learn anything more about it here.  We should keep moving.”

“That’s what I was saying,” Danny said.

“We’re not going to at least take a piece of it?” Jimmy said.

This time Danny stared at him.

Alex shrugged, took a pocket knife out of his jacket, and cut away a sugar cube sized chunk of the thing’s arm.  Danny felt sick.

“We keep going,” Alex said and put the piece of flesh in the pocket of his pants.

The hole they were in was dark.  Far above—it was impossible to judge the distance—faint starlight glowed, streaming through the opening of the pit into which they’d fallen.  If there’s light coming through, Jimmy thought, it must mean the cabin isn’t there anymore. That was a comforting idea: if those goddamn thugs hadn’t kidnapped him, he wouldn’t be here lying on the dirt floor wherever here was—but at least their stupid little house had been smashed in return.

Jimmy pushed up with his hands.  Behind and above him, someone moaned.  “Oh, God,” the voice said.  “Oh, God.”

“Get the hell off me,” Jimmy said, twisting hard, trying to shake the weight loose.

The voice moaned again, but the weight fell away and Jimmy was able to pull himself to his feet.  “Who is that?” he said.

“Danny.”

“You still got that staff?  You’re not glowing,” Jimmy said.

“I don’t know,” Danny said.

From a few feet away, Dale said, “Is everyone okay?”

Jimmy laughed.  What did the bastard think?  They fell down a goddamn hole and here he was asking if everyone was okay?

“Yeah,” Jimmy said.  “I ain’t too busted up.”

“I feel sick,” Danny said, “but I think I’m okay.”

“Nothing’s broken?” Dale asked.  “On either of you?”

“We’re damn peachy,” Jimmy said.  He stared up at the mouth of the pit.  “Which, if you think about it, we really shouldn’t be.”

Dale came up beside him.  Jimmy could see his shape, but couldn’t make out any of his features.  “That must be fifty feet or more,” Dale said.  “How’d we survive it?”

“Fuck if I know.”

Dale crouched next to Danny.  “Can you stand up?”

“I think so.”

Dale helped him to his feet.

Jimmy said, “Could be, whatever it was tore that place apart, it brought us down here nice and gentle.”

All three stood together, staring up.  “What do we do now?” Danny said.

“This tunnel continues on for a while,” Dale said.  “We can follow it, see if we can find a way out.”

“Anyone got a light?” Jimmy said.

“Matches,” Dale said.

“Nothing,” Danny said.  “Sorry.”

Jimmy looked at him.  “What about that staff?  It’s gotta be around here somewhere, right?  You were still attached to it when we fell.”

“No…” Danny said.

Jimmy continued, “I mean, if you pick it up again, might be the thing starts glowing again, too.  That’d give us plenty of light.”

“No,” Danny said.

“We’ll try it carefully,” Dale said.  “If it hurts, if you don’t like anything about it, we’ll stop.”

“No,” Danny said.  “What if it gets stuck to me again?”

“We won’t let it,” Dale said.

“Yeah,” Jimmy said.  “We’ll break you free this time.”

Danny unenthusiastically agreed.  The three of them wandered around near where they’d landed, feeling out with their hands, looking for the staff.  After some minutes, Dale called out, “I have it,” and held the staff out to Danny.  Danny looked at it.  Even with the time for his eyes to adjust, there still wasn’t enough light for Jimmy to make out Danny’s expression, but he figured the kid still wasn’t liking the idea.

“It’ll be okay, Danny,” Dale said.

“Yeah,” Jimmy said.  “Just give it a touch and see.”

Danny did.  He reached his hand tenderly toward the staff.  When his fingers were six inches away from the wood, it began to glow—faintly at first, then stronger.

“Stop,” Jimmy said.

“Why?” Danny said, but he stopped.

“I got an idea.  Alex, you hold the thing.  Danny, you stand close to Alex.  Maybe we can get it to glow enough to see by without you having to touch it.  And that should keep it from sticking to you like before.”

Jimmy’s plan worked.  They had to move slowly, Danny and Alex maintaining the cumbersome equilibrium of not so close together they were bumping, but not so far apart that the staff lost its light.  But they were able to walk along the tunnel with plenty of illumination to keep from slamming into anything.

Later, Danny said, “How’d you get in that house with me?  Was it the strange man?  The one with the tools?”

“No,” Jimmy said.  “Just a couple of black dudes with this goddamn staff.  They jumped me.  At a bus stop, can you believe it?  Drove right up in a van and tossed me in, drove me up into the mountains, and then you know the rest.”

“How about you?” Danny said to Alex.

“I was on a job.”

“What kind of job?” Jimmy said.

“I’m a detective.  Private.  I was hired to find something.  I had a lead, some people who seemed to know about what I was looking for.  I followed them from a bar.  The cabin’s where they came to.”

“Where they black?” Jimmy asked.

“Just one.  The other was white.”

“Was the black one African?  I mean with an accent?”

“No.”

“So the way I understand it,” Jimmy said, “is we got the three of us all ending up in this crappy cabin at the same time, except that I’m shanghaied by a couple of Africans who drive me up here, our detective follows some good old Americans, and the kid is grabbed by a dude with tools.  That all right?”

“Uh huh,” Danny said.

“Yes,” Alex said.

“And then we all fall through the floor.”  He was quite for a moment.  “So anyone here have any goddamn idea what’s going on?”

She turned her head to look at his reflection in the window.  “Yes?” she said.

“The beetle is gone.  We don’t know how he managed to get it but we have a lead on who he gave it to.”

“Who he gave it to?”

“Yes, ma’am.  Our sources indicate Ellison gave the beetle away shortly after gaining possession of it.”

“Why?”

“We don’t know.”

She looked back at the city.  “And the staff?”

“Missing, too.”

Earlene spun to face him.  “Missing?  The beetle and the staff are both missing?”

Tedrow nodded.

Earlene pulled out the chair behind her desk and sat down.  She stared at the glass trophy next to a picture of her husband and one of her dog.  Entrepreneur of the Year, she thought.  Jesus.

She stared up at Tedrow.  “Jamie,” she said, “You must—in fact, I know you recognize the importance of those two items.”

“Ma’am?”

“Their importance to me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I need them, Jamie.  They are crucial—the beetle, most of all.  Find them.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  Tedrow left her, closing the office door softly as he did.

Earlene DePaulo leaned back.  She didn’t have long now.

I TRUST YOU WILL NOT FAIL IN OUR AGREEMENT?

The voice came from in front of her, but the room was empty.  Earlene swiveled her chair until she was again facing the window.  Casting an indistinct reflection in the glass was a human shape, masculine, but without texture or definite form.  She could see that the figure was standing in the center of her office.

“We’ll recover them,” she said.

I DO HOPE SO.

“This is only temporary.  We have a lead.”

I HEARD.

“We’ll find them.”

The figure took a step toward her.  THE DESH GROW IMPATIENT, it said.  WE LONG TO FEEL AGAIN.

We all do, Earlene thought.  She said, “You have my word.”

THAT IS NOT WHY I CAME, HOWEVER, the creature said.

“Oh?”

WE HAVE IDENTIFIED A NEW THREAT.

Earlene rubbed her eyes.  Is there anyone who isn’t opposed to us? she thought.

TWO GIRLS.

“Girls?”

CHILDREN. THEY SEEK THE SAME AS WE DO.  AS YOU DO.

“Tell me more,” she said.

The Desh did.  Earlene listened, processing this new information, fitting it in to her existing understanding of the conspiracy she’d become involved in.

Earlene DePaulo hated all of it—but the allure of power was too great not to proceed.

When I finished The Hole and began work on Karaoke Quintessence, this preference was very much in mind.  KQ had the added benefit of being better formed in my mind.  A few years before the idea for The Hole had even occurred to me, I’d written forty-thousand words of something I was calling “Karaoke Quintessence.”  That’s roughly half way to a length that can be called a novel.  But it had sputtered out.  I didn’t like where the story was headed and that all important backstory wasn’t formed enough to give me an idea of where it would end.  So I set it aside, turned to The Hole, and ended up completing my first novel.

KQ was calling, however, and I liked the character, Jimmy Pete, I’d created as its protagonist.  The trouble was, I had another character, Alex Dale, I was itching to get to.  Alex has been around even longer than Jimmy, appearing in a short story I’d written many years ago, one that will appear in my upcoming short fiction anthology.  That story had a post-cyberpunk vibe, but Dale was easy enough to port to the newly developing Karaoke Quintessence.

That gave me two protagonists through whose eyes the novel would be told–and a third, Danny Weeks, was soon added.  I refer to these as “viewpoint characters” and I didn’t realize at the time how much trouble they can cause.

Telling a story from a single viewpoint is relatively easy.  You only have to worry about what happens to one person, and it’s difficult to lose track of him or her.  But multiple viewpoint characters means multiple story lines with multiple sets of events to keep track of.  A possible solution to the difficulty is to write one character’s story completely, then the next, then the next, and finally go back and intercut them into the novel as a whole.  Which is a fine plan, except that Karaoke Quintessence, like The Hole before it, was meant be serialized on my website as I wrote.

Had I outlined all of KQ before writing, this would’ve been easy.  I’d just follow the outline each day and post as I finished each chapter.  But this conflicts with my fluid plotting style.

The solution?  I cheated.  As everyone who’s read the last two chapters noticed, all three of my viewpoint characters were brought together.  Danny, Alex, and Jimmy found themselves in the same place at the same time and, for the foreseeable future, they will remain that way.  This makes alternating between them each chapter significantly easier, while allowing me to maintain the varying perspective on events that makes Karaoke Quintessence such a fun story to tell.

It’s a writing hack, so to speak, but it’s one that has granted KQ a newfound smoothness in crafting.

If my readers have further suggestions on how to handle such fluid plotting mingled with multiple viewpoint characters, write them up in the comments section below.  I’d love to hear how others have handled this issue.

They were just about to leave the cabin, Dale in front with is gun out, Danny limping along behind, and Jimmy bringing up the rear, when things got really weird.  Danny had reach down and taken the staff from the man who’d hit him.  “I’m going to keep it,” Danny said and Dale only nodded.  Jimmy shrugged.  What did it matter what the kid did with that thing?

But when Danny tried to carry the staff out of the cabin, he couldn’t.  It just wouldn’t go through the door.  Dale walked out just fine, but Danny slammed into something, an emptiness blocking the exit.  Jimmy slammed into him, swore, and, when she saw what was happening, said, “Just drop the damn thing, son.  If it ain’t coming out, just leave—”

He stopped, cut off before finishing, when the staff began to glow.  Danny screamed and tried to drop it, but couldn’t.  The thing was glued to his hands and the light, white and pulsing, spread from its top, down the length, and up Danny’s arms.  Jimmy grabbed him by the shoulders and jerked him backward, into the cabin.  

Dale shouted in surprise at the light and stepped back into the room with them.  He didn’t have any trouble going through the door.  Whatever it was that had blocked Danny, it seemed only to work in one direction.

Danny continued to scream.  Jimmy backed away from him, not wanting to get the stuff on his cloths should it decide to spread.  Dale was trying to grab the staff away from Danny, but it wouldn’t come loose.  Jimmy just stood still, not sure what he could do.  This looked like bad mojo, indeed.  And he’d seen enough bad mojo in his time to know that the best course of action was usually to avoid the shit.

Dale wasn’t going to let him do that, however.  “Help me,” Dale called to him.

Jimmy shrugged.  He took another step back.

“Get your fat fucking ass over here and help me,” Dale said.

Jimmy shrugged again, but this time stepped forward.  He put his hands on the staff, expecting it to be hot, but finding it instead freezing cold.  Danny was ridged, the staff held out in front of him, parallel to the floor.  The light had nearly covered his body, with hold his head and feet free.

Jimmy pulled.  Together, he and Dale managed only to drag Danny further into the room, until they were standing near the back windows.  But the staff wouldn’t come free.

Jimmy was working up the nerve to let go, to forget about Danny and this Alex Dale guy and just get the fuck out of here, when a bald man with a tattoo around his head stepped into the doorway.  The light from the staff meant Jimmy had no problem seeing the shock and then anger on his face.

Jimmy looked at Dale and Dale looked at the man.  Recognition flashed on Dale’s features.

“Oh, shit.” The man in the doorway said.  “Oh, goddamn shit.”

He took a single step into the cabin and took something from his pocket.  Jimmy and Dale just stood watching.  Danny didn’t move and didn’t give any indication of being aware of his situation.

And then the tattooed guy started chanting.

Dale was reaching for his gun, which he’d put away in the holster when he came back to help Danny, and Jimmy was deciding for the second time that evening that he was very surely going to die, when the tattooed guy hurled the thing in his hand onto the filthy wood floor of the cabin.  It bounced one and landed near the center of the room, six feet from where Jimmy stood.

Jimmy looked down at it.  Sticking up from the wood was a long, thin knife.  Its blade gleamed silver in the light from the torch, and the handle was five inch bar of dull grey.  A knife? Jimmy thought.  Did he try to throw a knife at us?  Did he really—

Danny stopped screaming.  Dale had the gun out and was aiming it at the tattooed guy.  And then Jimmy saw that the light from the staff had begun to leave Danny and was flowing through the air toward the knife.  As soon as they touched, the knife started to turn, slowly at first and then faster.  Dale lowered his gun, no longer paying any attention to his target.

The knife turned, and turned—and Jimmy realized that the floor was turning with it.  Like water in a whirlpool, the wood twisted and warped, the vortex growing, coming closer and closer to engulfing the entire cabin, the three of them included.

Jimmy glanced at the door.  It was closed and the tattooed guy was gone.  Behind him, he heard glass break and turned to see Dale knocking the panes out of one of the windows.  Even with all four gone, however, the opening wasn’t big enough for any of them.

And so Jimmy prepared himself for death.  He’d had a good life, been given the opportunity to do a lot of things most people wouldn’t even consider possible.  If he died now, he wouldn’t have much to complain about.

The vortex continued to grow.  The knife had long vanished and now there was just a huge hole in the middle of the floor, its edges less than three feet from the walls.  Jimmy pressed against the back of the cabin.  The light from the staff faded away completely and Danny dropped the staff.  It rolled down the incline and vanished into the opening.

Jimmy realized he was screaming and that Danny was doing the same.  Except now the screams from Danny weren’t because of the staff and the pain it caused—they were recognition of just how fucked the three of them were.

Dale stood quietly in the awful noise of the spinning floor.  He remained that way even when the vortex swallowed them.

After twenty minutes, the fat one again left the group, going to the bar and settling in.  Caesar and his black companion stood up, left money on the table, and left.

Dale counted to thirty before doing the same.

He had no trouble keeping their trail.  The men were loud, shouting and laughing and reminiscing about old times, and their progress along the sidewalk was slow enough that Dale could keep back a good distance.  He briefly considered staying in the bar to watch the fat one, taking him as the leader of the group, but decided he had to stick with these two.  They might not know as much, but they didn’t seem nearly as smart.  Caesar and the black man would be more likely to make a mistake.

Eventually the two found their car.  Dale memorized the make, model, and license number.  He had contacts working for the state who could help him find the vehicle again if need be.

He ran back to his car, got in, and drove in the direction the two men had been parked.  He only had to go a couple of blocks before he found them.  Again Dale followed.

What he hoped to get out of this wasn’t entirely clear.  These men didn’t already have the culture box.  That much he’d been able to pick up from their conversation.  But they knew something about it, and that was more than he did.  Perhaps they’d take him to their source for the box—or someone who knew that source.  Dale was still on Charlotte’s and Madison’s tab.  That meant at worst he was wasting their time and money, not his own.

Caesar’s car wound through residential streets until it connected with a main drag and then the highway.  They took the entrance ramp going west, toward the mountains.  After forty minutes, when they got off the highway and onto an unlit road that climbed steeply toward the peaks, Dale grew nervous.  It was one thing to follow a bunch of possible thugs through city streets, where his calls for help, should be be discovered, would attract  some notice.  But in the mountains, he’d be on his own.

He told himself he’d bail the moment things looked dicy.  He wouldn’t take any chances, not for two probably crazy preteen girls.

Some time later, their car turned onto a dirt road under a rusted metal arch that held up a sign that said only, “Ranch.”  Dale drove past a quarter mile, parked in the trees, and walked back.

With his flashlight, he could see that something had once been written over “Ranch” on the wood, but had long worn away.  The gate that used to guard entrance to the ranch was broken and bent on one side and entirely missing on the other.

This certainly counted as dicy, but Dale continued along the dirt road, glad he’d remembered to bring a pistol.

The dirt road turned out to be a dirt driveway.  A couple hundred yards from where it started, the path took a sharp turn to the right, through a small grove of trees, and ended in front of a dilapidated mountain shack.  From within the grove, Dale looked out at the cabin, trying to work up the courage to investigate further.

Caesar’s car was parked in front, next to black van with tinted windows.  The back doors of the van hung open.  The sun had long gone below the line of the mountains, but Dale couldn’t risk using his flashlight this close to the shack.

Cursing himself for falling prey to Charlotte and Madison’s charms—and their money—Dale crept forward.

None of the windows were lit.  When he was next to the van, Dale made out two men standing in the shadows of the porch, on either side of the door.  Neither looked like Caesar or his buddy, though both were of African descent.  The larger of the two men held a huge staff, which he leaned on, apparently dozing.  The other held a pistol, turning it over and over in his hands, the metal sparkling in the moonlight.

Dale pushed forward again, hoping to get around the side of the house to look in a window, but stopped when gravel crunched under his feet.  The guy with the staff looked up and walked over to the railing, peering out into the night.  He turned and said something to his friend, who shook his head.  The guy with the staff shrugged and went back to his place by the side of the door.

Dale waited.  He couldn’t risk getting any closer, now that the men were on the alert.  Ten minutes later, they chatted again and then both headed inside.  When they’d closed the door behind them, Dale crept to the side of the shack and then on to the side.

When he didn’t find any windows—just rotting wood speckled with dried mud—he continued to the back.

There were windows here: two small sets of four panes, each about five inches square and filthy.  He had to press his face up against one to see through.

Inside the shack was dark, but Dale thought he could make out several shapes.  Two tall blobs stood at one end—probably the black men—and near the center was a larger, lower something, a blog that might have been a piece of furniture covered with a cloth.  Dale squinted, trying to make out more.  His breath began to fog the glass and he had to move on to a different window.

In the time it took him to make this switch, the thing in the middle of the room had moved.  Now it was clearly two shapes, two men—though the smaller one might have been a woman.  The larger appeared to be huddled on the ground, while the other was sitting in a chair.  Dale saw no sign of Caesar or his companion.

As he watched, one of the black men walked over to the two people in the middle of the room.  He said something Dale couldn’t understand—it was either muffled or in a language different than english—and leaned close to the person in the chair.  Dale realized the recipient of these words was bound, for he tried to pull away from the black man but only twisted where he sat.

Dale reached into his jacket and pulled the pistol from its holster under his shoulder.  It’s not your job to rescue these people, he told himself, but he knew that’s exactly what he’d do.  The two black men he could take out before they had a chance to react.  But where are Caesar and his buddy?

Dale didn’t have to wait long to find out.  The black man bent even closer to his captive and the one huddled on the floor inched away.  When the black man raised his staff over his head and brought it down on the captive’s shoulder, eliciting a terrible scream from the now injured man, Dale began running around to the front of the house.  He had to help these people.  He didn’t have a choice.

The front door was an inch open when Dale jumped the steps of the porch.  He shoved it the rest of the way with his left hand, while holding the gun out with his right.

The man with the staff stopped half way through a second blow and spun around.  The one who had been by the door made a grab for Dale’s arm.  Dale shot him in the leg.

The man with the staff charged forward and Dale shot him, too, the round entering his chest at the midpoint between left nipple and throat.

The guy on the floor crawled toward Dale, pleading not to be hurt, to be let go, that he hadn’t done anything and wasn’t a part of this.  Dale ignored him, scanning the room for the two missing men from the bar.  But the room was empty aside from the wounded black guy by the door, the dead one in the middle of the floor, and the two captives.

Dale turned to the one he’d shot in the leg and said, “Stay there.  Are you armed?”

The wounded man shook his head.

“I’m going to pat you down to check, okay?” Dale said.

The man nodded.

Dale stepped over to him and bent down, patting his pockets with one hand while keeping the gun pointed at his stomach with the other.  Behind him, the guy in the chair moaned.

“Will you take care of him?  See if he’s okay?” Dale said over his shoulder to the other captive.

“Yeah, okay.”

Dale finished checking the black man for weapons and found none.  He helped untie the kid in the chair and then he and the fat captive tied the black man in his place.

When this was done, Dale took a moment to look at the two men he’d saved.  The one who’d been on the floor was six inches shorter than Dale and fifty pounds heavier.  He looked vaguely Italian and was dressed in a sweat stained collared shirt with flowers and horses decorating the fabric.  In his hand he held an old leather jacket.

The kid who’d been in the chair was much younger, no more than college age.  He was thin, and dressed only in a black t-shirt and jeans.  The color of the shirt made it difficult to see if his shoulder was bleeding, but Dale didn’t think it was.

“Is it broken?” Dale said to him.

The kid shook his head.  “I don’t think so.”  He looked around.  “Goddamn, what the hell is this?  I’m riding the bus and chatting with this guy and then—  Goddamn.”

“What’s your name?” Dale said.

“Danny Weeks.”

“And you?” Dale said to the fat man.

“Jimmy Pete.  And I gotta say thank you, man, for busting in here like the fucking cavalry.  Saved my life.  Those two fucks, I mean, who knows what they were going to do.  Rape me?  Eat me?  Shit.”  He pulled on his jacket.  “So thanks.”

“Did you see two other guys besides these two?” Dale asked him.

“Nope.  Just them two fucks.”  He stuck out his hand.  “Jimmy,” he said.  “Name’s Jimmy Pete.”

“Alex Dale.”  They shook.

“Can we get out of here?” Danny said.

“Where the hell did they go?” Dale whispered, looking around the single, small room.

“Who’s ‘they?’” Jimmy said.

“There were two guys I followed here.  Their car’s out front, next to a van, but they’re not here.  They can’t have gone far.  I came here just after they did.”

“Haven’t seen ‘em,” Jimmy said.

“Me neither,” Danny said.

Dale said, “Okay, I’ve got a car parked a little way up the road.  I’ll get you out of here, but I have questions to ask on the way.”

“For what you did?” Jimmy said.  “I’ll answer anything.”

Shit, he thought.  Jesus shit.  He remembered little after the lights of the van and the realization that it was coming for him.  There’d been a sound of tires sliding and stopping on pavement and a door (two doors?) slamming.  He vaguely recalled footsteps, too, and the shapes of men.  But all this was blurry and it wavered in his memory, indistinct and quickly vanishing.

He’d been grabbed and stuffed in a van.  That he could reason from his current predicament without any need to go back to memory at all.

Jimmy looked around but it was still dark out—he hadn’t been taken too long ago, at least—and the overhead lights in the back were turned off.  He could make out only the walls around him and squares of pale light where the windows let in the moon.  He pushed himself back with his feet until he felt the metal and plastic of the side of the van.  Then, carefully, Jimmy nudged his body in a sitting position.  His left arm was numb and throbbing, but an examination of it yielded no evidence of serious injury.

“Hey,” he shouted in the direction of the driver’s area.  There was a partition cutting off his view.  “Hey, fuck all of you!”

A small opening slid an inch wide in the middle of the partition, at eye level.  Light streamed through.  The light vanished as someone moved to look through, but then it was there again before the opening slid shut.

Jimmy had their attention.  He pushed across the floor, the pain in his head terrible, until his face was near the sliding peephole.  He shouted again.  “Yeah, you stupid fucks, you know who I am?  What I can do?”

Jimmy had no idea what he could do.  As far as he knew, he could sing a mean karaoke and throw a reasonable punch and not much else.  But that shit didn’t matter right now.  He was pissed.  He wanted to sleep, to be back in the hotel maybe watching a little TV before calling it a night.

The little sliding door didn’t budge.  Jimmy couldn’t hear anything from the front.

The van lunged and banged again and then began to vibrate.  They’d left pavement and were now on a dirt road.  They’re mutants, Jimmy thought.  Fucking backwoods mutant freaks, gonna cook me and carve me and eat me like goddamn Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

He crawled across the floor to the back doors of the van and was unsurprised to find them locked.  Mutants, but not stupid ones, he thought.  At least not real stupid.

Jimmy tried to think if there was anyone who’d want to hurt him.  He knew he was the kind of guy who pissed people off sometimes, but never bad—never bad enough to do something like this.  You don’t go around kidnapping a guy because he gathers up some tips at the bar, tips that might otherwise go to the staff.  And you don’t stuff a guy in the back of a van and drive him off along a dirt road just because you think his singing sucks.

No, Jimmy didn’t have enemies.

Then he remembered the crazy black guy in the alley.  Quickly, he checked his pockets and was relieved to find the tuna can still there.  That had to be why they’d come for him.  Ellison caused it by singling Jimmy out somehow.  Fuck him.  I was happy before.  Why’d he pick me?

The truck slowed.  Jimmy stuffed the can back in his pocket and slid until he was against the back wall, sitting up and facing the van’s back doors.  He felt the van turn right, then left, and then right again.  It bounced once and stopped.  Jimmy got into a crouch, ready to jump out of the van, either running past or tackling whoever came for him.

He didn’t get the chance.  The opening to the driver’s compartment opened, light came through, and then a heavily accented voice (was it African of some sort) said, “You, stay where you are.”  Then the light was gone again.

Jimmy heard the driver’s and passenger’s doors open and slam shut.  Footsteps, sounding like they were on gravel, came around both sides.  There was a key going into a lock and then the van doors swung wide and, before he could lunge, Jimmy found himself facing down one pistol held by the man on the left and a huge and twisted stick held by the other.  In the van’s overhead light, which had come on when the doors opened, Jimmy could see that both men were extraordinarily tall, but thin, and the deep blue/black of a central African.  Jesus Christ, Jimmy thought.  They are going to eat me.

The one with the gun motioned Jimmy out.  Jimmy did what he asked, crawling forward until he was close to the door, then swinging his legs out and standing up.  The one with the stick took a step backwards and raised his weapon.  The one with the gun said, “You, come with us.”

“Do I owe you money?” Jimmy said.  He wasn’t going to ask them about Ellison.

“This way,” the one with the gun said.

Jimmy looked around.  He was in the mountains, and the sun was just coming up.  The dirt road they’d driven along snaked down and disappeared into trees.  Further along, in the direction they’d been headed, was a house: a mountain cabin made of genuine logs, with a thatched roof.  It was small, quaint, and, from the perspective of someone driven there against his will, terrifying.

“You aren’t getting me to go in there.  No way in hell,” Jimmy said.

The African with the stick waved it at him.  “You go,” he said.

“No,” Jimmy said.

“You go,” the African said again.

The one with the gun grabbed Jimmy by the arm and pushed the pistol into his back.  “Yes, you go,” he said.  Jimmy stumbled and the man hit him.  He fell to the dirt, the heels of his palms tearing against the rocks and the twigs.  He tried to get up but the man used his foot to hold him down.

“God—” Jimmy started.

The African with the stick thumped it in the dirt in front of Jimmy’s face.  “Don’t talk,” he said.  “Go.”

The foot was lifted from Jimmy’s back.  He stood, brushing his hands against his pants.

“There,” the one with the stick said, pointing toward the house.

And so Jimmy went.  He let them lead him to the cabin and up its three wooden steps to the tiny porch.  He stood silently as the African with the pistol took a key out of his pocket turned it in the front lock.  Jimmy felt sick when the door opened onto blackness, but he allowed the African with the stick to tap him inside.

The cabin smelled of wood soap and ash.  Jimmy couldn’t see anything.  He stumbled forward a step, then another, and was half way through a third when his shin collided with something hard.  He called out in pain—and was answered.

“Hello?” a voice from directly in front of him said.  “Oh, Jesus, hello?”

Behind him, the door closed and Jimmy heard the key turn in the lock.

He bit the inside of his cheek.  He tasted blood.

It wasn’t just memories.  No, the sudden degradation of his sanity had not stopped when he’d left his room yesterday, when he’d run from the words on the screen and the white board.  The process had been a continual horror.  He’d dreamed when he slept and heard awful sounds while awake–whispers in the back of his mind and messages scrawled indistinctly at the corners of his vision.  Danny had begun the hate himself over the last twenty four hours, deriding himself for powerlessness, for weakness in the face of this experience.

He’d come to class to be surrounded by people.

But it didn’t work.  Even now, the professor turned with chalk in hand, and wrote on the board: large while letters forming CULTURE BOX and then, below it, FIND IT FOR ME.  Danny turned away, but he could still feel the words.

He stood up.  He had to leave.

The professor stopped, looked at him.  “Mr. Weeks?” he said.  “Is everything okay?”

The other students shifted to face Danny, seeing his pale skin and red eyes.  “I’m okay,” Danny managed.  “Just a little sick.”  He worked his way down the row of desks to the aisle, then up it to the lecture hall’s exit.  

Out in the hallway, he felt calmer, but only barely.  There was still blood in his mouth from the broken skin of his cheek.  He sucked on it, thankful for the overriding sensation of the pain.

He’d left his books, left his backpack, inside the classroom, but he couldn’t go back for them.  He had to get out.  He had to find the box.  To do so would be to give in to the insanity, he knew.  The culture box was nothing but a figment of his imagination, a product of his mind’s slippage.  But the search would calm him.  Even thinking this brought a degree of the desired effect: the buzzing in his head subsided slightly and the words just out of range of his vision, the messages hiding at the edges of his blind spots, grew pale.

Danny left the building, stopping only to get a drink of water from the fountain, and then walked in the direction of the bus stop.  He’d go home and see if he could conjure up the chat bot again.  Whether it existed or not didn’t matter.  He’d summon the mysterious messenger, either from the depths of the Internet or the corners of his mind.  He’d ask it how to start.

The bus arrived and he climbed on, keeping his eyes away from the rows of advertisements above the seats, trying not to look at anything displaying text that might shift into those hated words.  He squeezed into an empty bench spot facing across the isle, mumbling an apology to the fat woman next to him.  She grunted and turned away, pulling her purse closer to her chest.

Danny’s stomach shifted with each bump and his head swam.  Was the pain intentional?  Was it another indicator, like the constant text, that he needed to get moving, to find this culture box now and not wait another minute?  Jesus, he thought.

He looked up to stare out the window, hoping the view of the passing buildings would reduce his queasiness.  Across from him, in the opposite bench seat, was a man in a black wool coat.  The man saw Danny and smiled.  Danny tried to smile back and then broke eye contact.

The man leaned forward.  The bus was loud with conversation and the noise of the road, but Danny could hear him perfectly.  His mouth barely moved as he said, “I’m afraid you won’t be going home, Danny.”

“Excuse me?” Danny said.  He wasn’t sure he’d heard what he thought he’d heard and couldn’t rule out the possibility of auditory hallucinations.  “Did you say something?”

The man shifted the leather doctor’s bag he was carrying off his lap and leaned even closer.  “Of course I did, Danny.”

Danny shook his head.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “I’m awfully tired and I don’t feel well.  I don’t want to talk, if that’s okay.”

“Oh, quite okay, Danny,” the man said.  “In fact, I rather prefer it.”  He stood up.  The woman next to Danny simultaneously did the same.  She brushed off her pants and walked to the front of the bus.  The man in the black wool coat sat down in the spot she’d left.  “Now, Mr. Weeks,” he said, putting his hand on top of Danny’s, “I’m sure he haven’t the faintest idea who I am”–Danny shook his head–”but I need you to listen vary carefully to what I have to say.”  He moved his mouth next to Danny’s ear, whispering.  His voice was still loud and perfectly clear, even over the noise of the bus.  “When this bus stops next, you and I are going to get off.  We’re going to walk two blocks south and you will say nothing during that time.  When we get to our destination, we will rendezvous with a companion of mine who will take custody of you.”

“Am I under arrest?” Danny asked.  He was having difficulty concentrating on anything but the man’s voice.

“I am not an officer of the law, if that is what you mean,” the man said.

“Oh,” Danny said.

“But you are most assuredly not free to go about as you please.”

“Oh,” Danny said.

“This other man will take you somewhere and he will ask you questions.  I advise you to help him with whatever he needs and to do so without fuss.  Do you understand?”

“Who are you?” Danny said.

“I am someone who seeks the same item you do.”

“The culture box?”

The man in the black wool coat didn’t answer.  Instead, he opened his leather doctor’s bag and took out a metal instrument like a pair of narrow pliers with three heads and a rubber grip.  He lifted these to the side of Danny’s head, just outside Danny’s field of vision.  Danny found he couldn’t move and, more horribly, didn’t want to.  The cool metal touched his ear.

“This will be painful,” the man in the black wool coat said.  “But necessary.”

Danny only felt it for a moment.