Oath Keeper

I do now, DelRoy thought as he thundered down the stairs, but he didn’t want to give Goreski the satisfaction of that kind of revelation. Besides, he wasn’t even sure where that had come from. Family? All he knew was that when Ned had called and said that something had happened—that Sue had been attacked by some homeless man and was now in hysterics—something inside him had clicked. Something ancient, and kind of scary even. Someone he cared about had been threatened. And now here he was, racing to protect her.

It was a funny way to learn how he actually felt.

“She won’t thank you for that in the morning,” DelRoy said, pointing at the bottle of sedatives on the side-table. Ned was coming out of Sue’s bedroom and he paused to pull the door shut quietly behind him.

“I know my sister, Detective. If I hadn’t done something, she’d have gone back down to that place and torn it apart. And how do you think that would have ended up? Yesterday she comes home and tells me that every powerful bureaucrat in the city is dancing in secret with those nuns, and then tomorrow she gets arrested for breaking in? Maybe hurting someone? You think they’d just slap her on the wrist? They’re making people disappear!”

“So she’s kept you informed.”

“Of course she has! I’m her brother!”

“That’s not what she tells people.”

Ned looked away. “I know. Not our brightest idea, maybe.” Then he looked back. “But it worked. You gotta give her that much.”

DelRoy shrugged. He was still wound up tight. He’d arrived less than an hour ago to find Sue frantic, alternating between tears of frustration and screams of rage. It had been all Ned could do to keep her in the house until DelRoy had arrived, and the first thing he’d done was hand over the note.

the fire is here but it sleeps soon it will not they will all be taken many will die if you would see the girl again follow nafosh

It looked bad. That much he could admit, but Sue was more than just scared. She was like a caged panther. A raging kettle of boiling oil, looking for someone to spill on. After reading the note twice, he’d suggested a drink, to calm her nerves—not to mention his own—but he hadn’t twigged to what Ned had done until Sue’s eyes had begun to droop. And now that she was down for the count, he could only stand there, looking at the brother with frank curiosity.

“I don’t know what to make of you, Ned. No apparent job, but no criminal record either. No history of paying taxes, or having a phone, or a car, or a bank account. But you do have childhood records. Classic paper trail of a guy who grew up here, but then moved away.”

“Except…?” Ned said, smiling in a curious way.

“Except that Sue says you’ve visited a few times, only I can’t find any passport or visa information. No consistent pattern of long distance calls on Sue’s phones, and judging by that odd accent of yours, wherever it is you live, it is a long, long way away.”

Ned laughed. “Very far indeed,” he said. “But just a few miles up the road.”

DelRoy glared at the guy and counted slowly to himself, before he felt calm enough to continue. “Look Ned,” he began. “I’m trying to help, but maybe you don’t understand how this is shaping up. You’ve falsified documents in an attempt to gain fraudulent custody of a minor. A little girl. Who has now gone missing. On top of that, we now have threats of additional serious crimes on the horizon—arson, murder, who knows what all? These are not petty. They’re as major as they come. Which means that when I leave here, I have to notify the feds, who are going to show up here with their paper-sniffing proctology equipment. And when they do, you are going to stick out like a corpse in a chorus line. So maybe this would be a good time to drop the cute and mysterious. Don’t you think?”

Ned dropped his gaze to look at the floor. He looked like a five year old boy with his hand caught in the candy drawer. Then he seemed to melt. “Oh crap,” he said, running his hands through his thinning hair. “I need a drink.” DelRoy watched him wander out to the living room again, snatch the gin bottle from the table, and take a long pull from it as he flopped himself into the overstuffed chair.

The detective followed and sat on the sofa beside him. Ned held the bottle out and DelRoy accepted it, taking a small gulp himself. Then the two men sat there in strained silence for a while, passing the bottle back and forth between them.

“She trusts you, you know,” Ned said, breaking the silence.

“Who, your sister?”

“Yeah.” Then Ned shifted in his chair and turned, peering at him from behind those old fashioned glasses. Ned was sweating—probably from the gin—and his wispy white hair was clumped and damp around his temples and across his forehead, hanks of darker silver-gray plastered against his flushed, pink skin.

“That’s important,” Ned said. “Me, I just don’t get people. Not here, anyway. Never have, so I’ve always relied on Sue’s instincts. Even when we were little. And she trusts you.”

DelRoy recognized the signs of a witness talking himself into a confession, so he just nodded and let Ned continue.

“The thing is,” Ned said, nervously, “I’m pretty sure you won’t believe me. And then where will we be?”

Ned was the bookish sort, and he’d already said more words today than DelRoy had heard from him over the entire week since they’d met. Which was good, because guys who didn’t talk much didn’t get much practice at lying either. The detective took another slug of gin and shrugged. “In the last couple of days,” he said, ticking his observations off on his fingers with the bottle as he spoke, “I’ve learned that somebody may have brain-wiped me, the city is effectively run by nuns, and hobos deliver hand-printed death threats while wearing clown costumes. In light of all that, I’d say I am unusually receptive to weird right now. Try me.”

Ned chuckled nervously. “Well, you see, the thing is, I don’t actually live in this world.”

DelRoy looked at him with one barely raised eyebrow. “That’s it? I just told you pretty much the same thing, myself. Of course you don’t live around here, Ned. Everything about you says that you’re a long, long way from home. India or Asia somewhere, I’d guess so it—”

Ned shook his head. “No, when I say ‘this world,’ I don’t mean this society, as in this city or this country. I mean this planet.”

DelRoy snorted a laugh, and then choked as the mouthful of gin tried to jet from his nose.

“I know,” Ned said, waving a hand at the detective’s obvious amusement. “I know exactly how it sounds, Detective. Like I’m a complete nutter, right? So I guess I’m just going to have to show you.”

DelRoy reached up with the bottle to scratch at his head, watching with wry curiosity as Ned held his hands together in front of his face, and spoke quietly into his palms. Like he was praying or something.

“Creepy, isn’t it?”

The detective reeled back in his chair and looked around in a panic. “What the—?” The voice had come from right next to his ear, but there was nobody there.

“Down here, dumbass.”

He looked down at the bottle in his hand. “That’s right, genius. Not ventriloquism. It’s really me.”

DelRoy flung the bottle across the room, and backpedaled himself right up out of the chair, and fell hard over the back, crashing to a heap on the floor. Because while he had been watching, the open rim of the gin bottle had spoken to him.

And just to prove he was crazy, he’d even watched its lips move.

“I’m what the Wasketchin call a ‘kincraft,’” Ned said.

DelRoy was standing with his back to the wall. At first, he’d drawn his gun, but that had just been a panic reaction, and he’d quickly shoved it back into his shoulder holster. But that didn’t mean he was prepared to believe what he’d seen.

“You put something in the gin.”

Ned shook his head. “I’ve been drinking the same stuff you have, Detective.”

“In my glass then,” he tried.

Ned smiled. “You weren’t drinking from a glass.” He waved a hand at the mostly-empty gin bottle lying on its side in the corner. “And you can take that away and have it analyzed if you want. I promise you, there’s nothing in it that shouldn’t be.”

DelRoy quickly flashed on a dozen other explanations, hallucinogens in the air supply being the most plausible of them. So in the absence of a rational explanation, he fell back on his training. Collect more evidence.

“Show me again,” he said, but Ned just shook his head.

“That was all I had in me, I’m afraid. I can’t create magic over here. I’m limited to what I bring with me when I come back, and that was it.”

But that gave him something to pounce on. “You can do magic, for real, and you put all your cards into the talking gin bottle trick?”

But again Ned shook his head. “No. That would be too specific. Not much chance a mugger or a gang banger would happen to be carrying gin, is there? Before I cross back, I prepare a fairly general purpose charm. It lets me animate any small object in the vicinity. Make it talk. It only lasts for a few seconds, but it’s enough. Most people react the way you just did, and by the time they calm down, I’ve had plenty of time to run away.”

“So you’ve done this before?”

“Two other times,” Ned replied. “This city isn’t as safe at night as it used to be.”

“And this is, what did you call it, your kink?”

Ned laughed nervously. “No, not ‘kink,’ Detective. ‘Kincraft.’ It’s what they call my kind of magic over… there. I never even knew it existed until I discovered my way into Methilien, but it turns out I’m really good at it. Back here, I was just a creepy guy who liked dolls, but over there? I quickly became Kincraft to the King of the Wasketchin. Can you blame me for wanting to make a life in that world instead of this one?”

DelRoy glanced at the bottle again, but his eyes snapped back to Ned just as fast. He was in full-bore detective mode, and for now, the bottle wasn’t the issue. Ned was. He had to listen to Ned. Find the flaws in his story. Poke holes in them.

Sure, there were gaps you could fly a cargo plane through, but the problem wasn’t really Ned. With a story like his, what you think is or isn’t possible is irrelevant. What matters is what he thinks is possible. So you pay attention to that. But listening to Ned was like listening to a foreign tourist talk about life in his village back home. You can tell by the expression on his face and the light in his eyes that it’s all very real and natural to him, despite the fact that what he’s saying is completely insane.

“So if I understand, you make dolls for a living. Over there. Dolls that talk.”

“Look, Detective, do you think I don’t know how this sounds? Do I strike you as retarded, or delusional?” DelRoy started to answer, but Ned waved him off. “I mean aside from the story you’re hearing now. You’ve known me for a week. I know how odd I may have seemed at times. I don’t fit in here. I never have, and I know that. But truthfully, at any point this week have you thought to yourself, ‘This guy is dangerously unstable?’ Or have you been thinking more, ‘This guy doesn’t fit in?’ Like maybe I was raised in a commune or something and don’t know the social etiquette here?”

To tell the truth, that was pretty much exactly what he’d been thinking.

“Good,” Ned said. “I can see I wasn’t far wrong.”

DelRoy grimaced. He was far from ready to accept the story. In fact, it was much more likely that Ned really was a master-class liar—one so talented that even a hardened city detective’s refined truth senses could not pick it up. But even so, debating something this whacked out would only spin his wheels, so he opted to play along. Act convinced.

“Well,” he began, letting a half-convinced smile pave the way. “This story of yours does fit the facts better than anything I’ve been able to come up with. Even I know it isn’t some trick bottle you bought in Japan. I’m not sure what I believe yet, but I suppose it’s possible that it isn’t your story that’s crazy, Ned. Maybe it’s the facts that are crazy, and your story has just enough crazy to fit them. But does it have to be another planet?”

Ned shrugged and sat back in his chair. “I don’t actually know what to call it. ‘Planet’ seems right, but I’ve never seen it from space or anything. I have no idea if it’s a round ball that floats in blackness the way the Earth does, or what. Would it help to think of it more like the world on the other side of the wardrobe?”

DelRoy laughed nervously. “I guess that’s better than the one down the rabbit hole.” Ned smiled. “But you do realize nobody else is going to believe you, right?”

Ned rolled his eyes. “Of course I do. Why do you think I don’t tell people?”

“But now you’re telling. Just because I mentioned the feds?”

Ned nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “But not because I’m going to stick out like a dancing corpse, as you so delicately put it. There’s something else now. Maybe worse, and I don’t know what it means. Although I have no idea how he found out about me.”

“The hobo,” Ned said. “The one who wrote Sue’s note. He said, ‘Follow Nafosh.’”

DelRoy cocked his head. “So?”

Ned leaned over to grab the gin and took a long pull. “My name is Ned Nackenfausch,” he said. “But that name sticks out over there. It’s too alien sounding, so nobody calls me that.” Then he shrugged helplessly and pointed at the note.

And then it clicked. “‘Follow Nafosh,’ He meant you. You’re Nafosh.”

All Ned could do was nod.

That night, Detective DelRoy started making calls. Even after promising Sue he would do so, it had still not been an easy decision to keep that promise. The whole thing with Ned had come out of left field and now it just laid there, a time bomb, waiting to go off. If it did, DelRoy was going to lose some serious cred. Maybe even his job. But what choice did he have? Look the other way, like everyone else seemed to be doing? Let the nuns win, leave the vanished cases vanished, and let the kids just continue to rot in that hole?

And how would he ever face Sue again?

In the end, that was what made his mind up for him. The thought of Sue having to move on with her life, without ever knowing what had happened to her daughter. He pulled out his phone list and started dialing.

Not official calls, though. Only people higher up the command chain could make an official request to one of the national agencies, but with the number of familiar faces he’d seen at the nun’s party, he couldn’t be sure who to trust locally. So instead, he made some unofficial calls. To people he’d worked with over the years. People who were not based here in town. People who knew people.

With their help, and a little luck, he was finally able to reach somebody who seemed to give a damn. The Deputy Director of the newly formed National Children’s Protection Agency. Unfortunately, being a new agency and eager to make its mark, the Deputy Director made an unexpected—and terrifying—decision.

He was going to raid the orphanage.

“There are children at risk,” the D.D. said, when he called DelRoy at home the next morning. “You’ve intercepted a serious threat made against them, and even if you don’t think your vagrant was serious, I can’t afford to take that chance. I had some of my boys take a look, and a lot of your facts check out. It’s clear that these orphans are living in abusive conditions, abandoned by the system, left in the care of negligent guardians, and the surrounding infrastructure is not up to the task of correcting things. This is a textbook case of the state falling victim to its own internal issues and completely failing to fulfill its obligations to the people. Leaves me no choice but to intervene in the matter.”

“Don’t worry, Detective Donnelly. You’ll receive full credit for bringing this to our attention.”

“No, son. Don’t thank me. I’m just doing my job. It’s for the kids, after all. We’ll be going in at fourteen hundred, and I’d really like for you to be there, if you can, son. It’ll look so much better in the photos if we can spin the local-boy-does-good angle.”

“I’ll see you on site at thirteen-thirty. We can coordinate the talking points then.”

“So long, Donnelly. You’ve done well here. Real well. We’ll see you soon.”

DelRoy could only stare at the silent phone still gripped in his hand. The time was now eleven o’clock.

When he got to Sue’s place, there was no answer at the door, although the newspaper lay at his feet, so she was probably still home. He pounded again on the heavy wooden door, and was just about to go around to the back, when a bleary-eyed Sue peered out at him through the window.

She looked groggy. He must have waken her up. “Open the door, Sue. Things are happening quickly, and I need to talk to you.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were ready to leave. As soon as he’d mentioned the impending raid, Sue had bolted to full alertness. “Somebody is actually doing something,” she said, her voice edged with dreamy wonder.

“Yeah,” he said. “But to these yahoos, ‘doing something’ probably means something that’ll involve terrifying little kids with a bunch of storm troopers in riot gear.”

Sue’s shoulders sagged.

“If we leave now,” he said, “we can get there before anything happens. Maybe we can get a chance to talk to the girls. Warn them or something.” Then he looked around. “Where’s Ned?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Here’s Ned,” Ned said, as he came into the kitchen. He was carrying a brown bag full of fresh bagels and two coffees. “Um, sorry, Detective. I didn’t know you’d be here. I only—”

“Not now, Neddy. We’re on our way out. The Old Shoe is about to be raided!”

“We’ll tell you in the car. Come on!”

When they got to the Old Shoe, everything was quiet. Rather than wait for the feds, as he had promised, DelRoy jumped out of the car and bolted up the front steps, with Sue and Ned right behind him. The front door was unlocked, and they went inside, pulling the heavy door shut behind them. Ned locked it.

“Better not,” DelRoy said. “Could be considered obstruction.” Ned’s eyes widened, but he unlocked the door without complaint.

“Hello?” The detective’s voice echoed throughout the old building, but there was no answer and the building reverberated in eerie, mid-day silence.

“That’s odd,” Sue said, stepping forward to peer into Sister Regalia’s office, which was open, but empty. “There’s always been somebody in the office before.”

Chapter 26