Eric hurried to the window and peered out through the moldy curtains. Sure enough, there was a big, red pickup truck parked out there. The door was open and the cowboy was climbing down from the cab. His bald head was exposed. His shirt was still bloody. Considerably more bandages had been applied to his face since last time he saw the man. And even from this distance he looked murderous.
Having lost the handgun along with his hat, he was now armed with a far less discreet shotgun.
Clearly, the stunt at the tavern hadn’t bought them nearly as much time as he thought it would.
“How did he find us so fast?”
“Maybe you should go somewhere a little less…special,” suggested Pink Shirt.
Eric turned and looked at him. “Who are you?” he demanded.
Pink Shirt gave him another of those curious smirks. “Just a concerned bystander.”
“Right. And I’m high priestess of the munchkins.”
The stranger looked amused. “Well, Your Highness, I’d take Toto and skedaddle down that yellow brick road if I were you. Now.”
From elsewhere in the building, Eric heard a loud crash as one of the doors was violently kicked in.
Aiden jumped at the sound. His eyes were wide with fear. His knuckles were white on the grip of the Taser.
“I wouldn’t go back the way you came,” suggested Pink Shirt.
Eric hesitated a moment longer. He still didn’t trust this guy. He had no idea what his role in all this was. But he was right. It wouldn’t take long for that angry cowboy to find the gaping hole in the bathroom wall and come bursting into one room after the other, ready to shoot anything that moved.
He glanced out the window again, and then eased the door open. It was clear. He gave Pink Shirt one more suspicious glance and received a peppy thumbs-up in return. He motioned for Aiden to follow and slipped outside.
Ducking low to avoid being glimpsed passing in front of the windows like easy targets in a shooting gallery, the two of them hurried back past the previous two rooms. The next door was the one they used when they first entered the motel. Aiden had locked it upon entering but now it hung open, the jamb splintered.
Eric peered inside, half expecting to have his head blown off, but it was empty. The cowboy was already making his way through the motel, meticulously hunting them.
It was clearly a good thing that they hadn’t remained in this room. Aiden’s motorcycle parked right outside the door must’ve seemed like a dead giveaway. But they weren’t safe yet. They still had to get out of range of that shotgun. At any second, the psycho could throw back a curtain and find that he had a clear shot at the back of their heads.
Aiden lifted the kickstand and hurriedly pushed the bike around the big truck and out of sight of the motel windows before straddling it and donning the helmet.
Eric mounted the bike behind him and braced himself for what was coming.
The bike roared to life and Aiden spun the tires as they raced across the parking lot toward the road. Eric was sure the sound of the motor would alert the cowboy and that any second now he was going to be shot in the back. But if any shots were fired, they didn’t find him.
Aiden didn’t bother with the driveway. He cut across the overgrown grass and darted out into traffic, narrowly missing a Volkswagen Beetle, and then sped off into the city.
Looking back over his shoulder, Eric didn’t see the red pickup racing after them, but he knew the cowboy wouldn’t give up that easily.
“Where do we go now?” shouted Aiden.
“Nowhere unseen,” Eric shouted back, recalling what Pink Shirt told them about going somewhere less “special.” Clearly, those hidden places were not safe. He thought about returning home. They could hide the bike in the garage and stay out of sight for a while. But he still didn’t know how it was that these two kept finding them. And the last thing he wanted to do was lead them back to Karen and Diane. “Somewhere public,” he decided. “The library.”
Surely the lunatic wouldn’t come after them in a place potentially crawling with witnesses.
Aiden nodded and turned down a side road that would take them back toward that side of town.
Eric glanced back again. Still no red pickup. “Have Paul meet us there,” he said, not bothering to raise his voice. He felt the slight vibration of the iPhone in his pocket and knew that Isabelle had received the message.
They reached the library in just a few short minutes. It wasn’t busy, but neither was it deserted. Eric instructed Aiden to park in back, where the bike wouldn’t be too obvious from the street, and then led him upstairs to the private reading rooms.
“So who’s the guy in the pink shirt?” Aiden asked as he placed his backpack on the table and began pacing around the room. He looked like a caged animal. His eyes kept drifting to the doorway.
“I don’t know,” Eric replied as he withdrew Karen’s phone from his pocket. “I ran into him at the asylum. Then I saw him entering the store a little while after you ran out.”
“He was at both of those places?”
“Both of those guys keep showing up today. I don’t understand how they keep finding us.”
Isabelle sent him a text message: THEY MIGHT BE MONITORING THE UNSEEN BUILDINGS SOMEHOW
Eric nodded. It certainly seemed likely.
Aiden stepped into the doorway and looked around. Not finding anyone out there to concern him, he sat down in the nearest chair and rubbed tiredly at his face.
“Do you have any idea who they could be?”
“I don’t. I just assumed that redneck guy was like the people who murdered Glen.”
Eric considered this. “Who were they? Do you know?”
He shook his head and glanced at the doorway again. It wasn’t just the cowboy he was worried about. Anybody who walked past that door and glanced in might catch a peek at his face and bring down a world of trouble for him. “All I know is they’d been trying to hunt down Glen for years before I even met him. He said they wanted to kill him because he was a seer.”
“A seer?”
“Yeah. That’s what he said they called people like us, people who can see the unseen. Seers.”
NOT OVERLY CREATIVE, ARE THEY? remarked Isabelle.
“You don’t know where they come from? Who gives them their orders?”
Aiden shook his head again and shifted uncomfortably in the seat. It was clear he wasn’t comfortable being out in the open like this. “This fat guy, though. He doesn’t seem very much like the guys who killed Glen. He’s…sloppy.”
Eric knew exactly what he was talking about. The cowboy was scary. He was purposeful. He was determined. He was undeniably dangerous. But in the end, he hadn’t seemed very smart.
“The guy in the pink shirt, though… He reminded me of them.”
Eric nodded. That man had done nothing to threaten him, and yet he somehow seemed more dangerous than the cowboy. In a very different and much darker kind of way. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he was sure of it nonetheless.
Aiden stood up and walked to the table. “But he helped us escape. Why?”
It was a damn good question. Eric didn’t have an answer.
Aiden opened the bag, stared into it for a moment, then closed it again.
“You okay?”
“Just… You know. Jumpy.”
“Understandable.” After all that had happened, anyone would be jumpy. And now he’d been dragged out of the shadows he’d been forced to become comfortable with over the years. Each time a voice drifted in from the hallway outside, he flinched, as if terrified that someone was going to glance in and recognize him.
Aiden stopped fidgeting and looked back at him for a moment. “What about you? You seem remarkably comfortable dealing with all this craziness.”
Eric shrugged. “It’s not my first taste of crazy.”
“Really?”
“I had a few experiences last year. I saw some things. Not quite like this, but it opened my eyes. I’m a lot more open-minded than I used to be.”
“I see.”
Eric wondered again if this was the same organization that he encountered on his last outing into the Twilight Zone.
Another text message arrived and he glanced down at the screen. FATHER BILLY?
“Yeah. Probably.” He met Father Billy while trying to escape a pack of corn creeps somewhere in Wisconsin’s rural farmlands. He lived in a decrepit church deep in a vast forest of massive trees somewhere between this world and another. He claimed to have once worked for a ruthless organization with a special interest in crazy things like fissures between realities and supernatural phenomenon. Unseen buildings and people with an unnatural talent to see them would be just the sort of business they’d be into. As would a man with the ability to create fearsome projections capable of frightening people into committing suicide.
SHAME WE CAN’T ASK HIM
“I know. But I don’t know how to contact him.” And for all he knew, Father Billy didn’t want to be contacted. He wasn’t the most social person he’d ever met.
Aiden stared at him, puzzled. “Who’s he talking to?”
Eric looked up at him, distracted. “What? Oh. It’s nothing.” He checked his watch. “I wonder where my brother is. He’s supposed to be meeting us here.”
“Your brother?” Aiden looked suddenly nervous.
“He can help.”
“I’m not good at trusting people.”
“I know. It shows.”
“Does it?”
“Just a little.”
Karen’s cell phone rang. Aiden cocked his head, curious. “Big Spice Girls fan?”
Eric grunted. “It’s my wife’s phone. She won’t let me change it.”
“Why don’t you just turn the ringer off?”
“I don’t know how.” He looked at the screen and saw that it was Paul. Cutting off the annoying music, he pressed the phone to his ear and said, “Where are you?”
“Just walked in the door,” said Paul. “Where are you?”
“Upstairs. The reading rooms.”
“I’m on my way.”
Eric hung up and then took a moment to stare at the silent phone. “What the hell’s a ‘zigazig ah’ anyway?”
Aiden shrugged.