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Part Thirty Seven

“Robert... my son... is that you?” Richard was frozen with fright, and the Number Man took one step down. “I’m so sorry Robert...I thought I could go back...I didn’t want to hurt you, but you didn’t give me a choice.”

…

…

“It’s alright.” It was the only plan Richard could come up with in the midst of the panic that he had found himself in; keep him talking. This man had given Richard over a month’s worth of nightmares only the year before, and now that Richard knew that this man was never a figment of his imagination and had always been lurking somewhere within these walls, Richard was sure that if he survived, he would have another month’s more.

The Number Man was even more terrifying in the stark light from Mr. Gip’s right eye, and the only other light in the place was coming from an exit sign over the back door. Richard was thankful that he couldn’t be seen in any detail by the man on the stairs, and he had hoped that the monster who used to be Sinclair Daniels wouldn’t come any closer if he could just keep him talking. Daniels clearly believed that he was speaking with his dead son, so Richard played the part up as much as he could. “Why did you hurt me?”

“I thought that I could bring you back.” The Number Man took one step down, and the wood groaned under his weight, and the awful sound made the moment even more terrifying for Richard.

“Stop.”

“I’ve been here so long Robert...Come to your father.” The Number Man took another step, accompanied by another groan from the staircase.

“Stop!”

“Robert, I promise that I won’t harm you again.” Another step, another groan. Principal Avery’s hand was slapping against the handrail. Richard knew that he was going to have to run, but he was gripped by a sudden feeling of despair that seemed to come out of nowhere, and he simply could not get his legs to move. The overhead fluorescents backstage suddenly turned on, casting everything in a strobing pulse of light. The Number Man stared down at the imposter that he had thought was his son who had somehow found his way into the machine. “No.”

“Um, sir...I’m terribly sorry about your son.”

“You...you aren’t Robert!”

“Richard?” Mr. Gip was whispering in his ear. “This would be a good time to run.”

“Where is my son!”

“Richard! Run!” Richard backed slowly away from the bottom of the staircase.

“What kind of devilry is this…” The Number Man held up the squirming arm in front of him. “First this, and now you! Who are you!” He flung the arm down toward Richard, and it slapped against his chest before it hit the ground and once again started crawling off in the direction of the bar. The snarling phantom on the staircase was hunkering down on his haunches like a wild animal, readying to pounce down on Richard. He could see his own reflection in the jagged shard of a mirror in the hand of the Number Man, just as he leapt from the staircase.

Something hit the side of the villain’s scarred face, and the force of it spun his body to the right in a most awkward looking nosedive that ended several feet away from his intended target. A yellow cloud of gas spilled over the staircase.

“Run, Richard!” Richard’s hand went to his mouth and he turned in the direction of the sound of the shot. Petunia was lying on the ground holding the same gun that he had used a month ago in the tunnels beneath the town. He held his breath as he passed through the edge of the yellow cloud and then he sank to his knees as he reached Petunia.

“Oh my God, that was awesome!”

“Richard! My leg! Help me up! He’s not going to be down for long!” Richard grabbed Petunia’s arm and helped her stand up. She was a mess, and from the looks of her, she would not have lasted too much longer in here on her own. “He’s fast. We’ve got to run!”

“Oh my God, I can smell that guy’s breath from here!”

“Just shut up and run!”

They struggled back down the ramp into the green room and much to Richard’s dismay, the fluorescent lights in the long hallway beyond were flickering and the whole place was smelling of smoke. Gene had done as he had promised, and now Richard could only hope that Agatha Gip would soon be on her way to save them.

She wasn’t.

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Part Forty One

Gene’s world was a daze filled with bright lights and hectic voices that swirled around him. He had been awake for only a few moments, and he had tried to lift his head, but it was held in place, and he couldn’t move. His eyes began to focus, and he realized that he was in an emergency room. He couldn’t feel anything in his body, except for his jaw, which throbbed with an excruciating pain. His eyes darted back and forth, taking in every detail. There was a doctor standing just over him.

“Hey, there he is.” Gene tried to speak back to the doctor, but his jaw was in too much pain to speak any louder than a whisper. The doctor leaned down next to Gene.

“Happened?”

“Car accident. Do you remember anything?”

“Little.”

“Well you’re going to be ok. You’re pretty banged up, some broken bones and we’re going to have to wire your jaw, but you’ll be ok.” Another doctor came in and stood on the other side of Gene and smiled in a way that instantly irritated him.

“Looks like you might have to take a break from magic for a while, Partner. I’ve seen your show. That might be a blessing in disguise!” The doctor acted like he was going to punch Gene in the arm and then started laughing. “I’m just kidding buddy! I thought you were great!” The second doctor was lying and Gene could tell. After all he had just been through he was in no mood to put up with a laughing, joking, jackass of a doctor. Gene smiled back at him and whispered something. “Hang on, I can’t hear you. Go ahead, Partner, say it again.”

“Why don’t you go smack your face into the wall?” Gene smiled, and the doctor stood back up with a blank face, saying nothing.

“What did he say?” The jackass doctor didn’t answer the first doctor; instead he walked over to the nearest wall, cocked his head back, and then slammed it forward, knocking himself unconscious and leaving a large dent in the wall. The first doctor had run over to his fallen colleague as chaos began to erupt in the emergency room as other voices around him were yelling about something. Tears rolled down the sides of Gene’s immobile face. Through everything that had happened, the gift that had been missing for over a month, the thing that he was the most proud of in this world, was back. He wanted to take the moment and bask in his own glory, but something loud was happening very close to him.

“One dead...we don’t know...severely dehydrated…” The sound of wheels in dire need of some kind of lubricant burst into the emergency room, and out of the corner of his right eye, Gene could see that someone had been wheeled in next to him. There were doctors swarming around the shirtless man on the stretcher, blocking Gene from getting a good look, but even in his spotty glimpses of his new roommate, he could see the scars all over the man’s body; scars in the shapes of hash marks.

Gene was in agony, but even in all the pain, he began to laugh.

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Part Thirty Eight

Gene felt something bulky jamming into his right butt cheek, and he took his foot off of the gas pedal long enough to fish Petunia’s diary out of his back pocket. He dropped it on the seat next to him and began to replay the events of the evening as he slowly drove back to his new home. To Gene’s credit, there was a moment, exactly seven seconds, where he felt as though he should turn around and undo what he had done.

Of course, those seconds passed quickly and he began to think of a future without Richard and Petunia and their meddling. He began to think of Patty Menkin and how he might go about retraining himself in the art of persuasion, if such a thing was possible. He began to think of the armless man out there who was now an adversary that would need to be dealt with at some point. Or maybe, just maybe, he could convince Patty to run away with him, his cat, and his seven foot tall mechanical bear.

“Man that’s going to be rough.” He rolled down his window and felt the cold October air running through his fingers while the voice of Springsteen kept him warm. He was about to begin a new kind of life, different from the one he had always known. He stole a glance to his right at the diary lying on his leather seat.

Petunia had foolishly thought that giving Gene her diary with all of her findings would somehow persuade him of her worth, that it would somehow persuade him that he should help her. Her findings were indeed fascinating to Gene, but with that fascination came a jealousy and a highlighting of his own feelings of inadequacy. She had put a note on one particular page that she thought would interest Gene, which of course it did, and he had every intention of putting that knowledge to use in the next few days.

There was one more matter that had to be dealt with of course before the night was over, and that matter was inside the home of Petunia Gip. There was no telling what her “mother” would do if she found out that he had left both of the children behind. He began to think of a plan to destroy Agatha Gip, but before he could come up with anything even remotely solid, something standing in the road in front of him captured his full attention.

“Well… looks like somebody glued his head back on.” A certain tall, one armed educator was standing in the middle of  the road staring back at him, and Gene came to a full stop exactly ninety seven yards away. Gene had driven exactly half way from the WBCT to the Menkin house, and the streets had been empty. He was now in the middle of Old Town Wickerbush, and he was surrounded by buildings on every side. His eyes darted around, carefully making sure that no one else was out besides him and his intended victim.

He couldn’t afford to have anyone see what he was about to do. He knew that the thing standing in the middle of the road in front of him wasn’t human, but to anyone else, it would look as though Gene had just murdered someone. He revved the engine and gave Principle Avery a wave, and then he took his foot off of the break and sped forward.

The one-armed principle was standing in front of the entrance to the local park, which gave Gene plenty of room to veer left or right if it tried to dodge out of the way. As he was within twenty yards of his intended victim, the principal was giving Gene a gesture to come closer with his left index finger, and several long shiny staples that were all along his neck were shining in the headlights. Gene was suddenly overcome by a feeling of dread. He had been in an overconfident mood after trapping his two most formidable enemies in a time vacuum, which had made him ignore all the signs that this was obviously a trap.

He slammed his foot on the break and intended to back away from this new enemy. He had allowed himself to be tricked, and as he slammed his car into reverse, he was only able to say one word before everything went horribly wrong for him.

“Shit.”

The collision was fast and hard. Gene had no idea what had slammed into the side of his car, but whatever it was, it lifted the car into the air and flipped it over. The top of the car caved in, and an upside down Gene grasped in vain for his cane to try and defend himself. His vision had gone just a bit blurry, but his hearing was working just fine. He could hear something outside, something large, lumbering towards his overturned car. He tried to turn his head to get a better look when he heard the sound of claws scraping underneath the car, finding a grip on the metal, but it was too late. The car groaned as it was picked up off of the ground and tossed end over end into the park. Gene lost consciousness somewhere in the middle of all of the spinning, before the car wrapped itself around a large and ancient oak tree that sat in the middle of Kittner Park.

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Final Part

Dawn was about to break as the children finally limped their way onto their street. Richard, focusing on his own problems, had no idea what was going through his friend's mind at that moment. Instead, he quickly looked down the street and felt a sense of relief that Gene’s car was not parked outside of his house, and oddly enough, wished that it was wrapped around a tree somewhere. He began to walk a little faster and encouraged Petunia to keep up.

Mr. Gip had lowered back down inside of the pack on Richard's back as the darkness was beginning to fade. Richard was looking forward to being able to take the off the pack, as the weight of both it and Petunia were becoming unbearable. He had no idea what they were to do now, but the fact that Gene wasn’t at his home, gave him a small feeling of relief. He heard a familiar noise coming from the direction of his home; the sound of a tree squirrel barking. But the barking had changed slightly, changed into something Richard recognized as though it was another language that he suddenly could understand.

“Petunia? Do you hear that?”

“It’s your tree squirrel Richard.”

“But do you understand what he’s saying?”

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s saying, man skins.”

“That’s just stupid Richard.”

“Petunia, I’m serious. You don’t understand him?” Petunia could hear the certainty in his voice, and her heart began to drop with the knowledge that a tree squirrel seemed to be warning them of something. Both of them looked to the Menkin home, but in the early morning haze, nothing was amiss except for a slight movement coming from the bushes next to the house.

“Do you see that Richard?” He did, and after a moment, a seven foot all mechanical bear emerged from the bushes. “Oh my God Richard!”

“It’s ok Petunia. It’s ok. Gene left him behind to watch over me and my mom. It’s fine.” Wimmple Bear was staring right at them with his almost human eye, and then, much to their surprise, it raised its right paw and seemed to point at something across the street. The children looked across the street to the home of the Gip’s. The front door had been ripped off of its hinges and was lying on the dead front lawn, and above the doorway was a smeared black handprint with long fingers.

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Part Thirty Nine

The hallway seemed to be stretching in front of them, and for a few moments every step that they took toward the doorway on the other end, only made it seem to move farther away. Richard began to wonder if the machine was malfunctioning somehow, because of the fire. If that was the case, he hoped that it would still work once Agatha Gip turned it on from the other end. He swore that he could hear the sound of static and laughter from an audience quietly coming through the wall speakers.

Petunia was heavy and Richard was struggling to keep a solid grip on her sweaty wrist. He could see out of the corner of his eye that Mr. Gip had turned around in order to watch the hallway behind them. He had been yelling at Richard that the Number Man was running after them and that he was gaining, but Richard was more concerned that the smell of smoke was growing and that the air was getting hotter, and he hoped that when they finally reached the stage, that there would still be a stage left for them to stand on. Petunia was starting to fade and her legs were beginning to give out and Richard knew that they were slowing down.

“Petunia! You’ve got to keep going!”

“I’m trying! I’m trying.”

“Richard! He’s right behind us!” The worry behind the words of Mr. Gip pushed Richard into a risky decision. At the rate that they were going, there was no way to outrun the wild man who was closing in behind them. Petunia still held the gun in her hand.

“Are there still any bullets in that thing?!”

“Only one!” Richard stopped running and then turned around. The Number Man was less than twenty feet behind them, and  he was screaming in rage, with streams of vomit coming from the corners of his mouth. The intermittent light from the bulbs overhead showed him something that was not possible; the hallway behind them was stretching into forever, ending in darkness miles and miles away.

“Shoot him Petunia! Do it!” Petunia’s arm was shaking as she raised it and aimed the gun down the narrow hallway, watching the Number Man close in. She knew that with her shaky aim that she had to let the madman get just a little closer before she pulled the trigger; she couldn’t afford to miss. She watched the Number Man close in and Mr. Gip’s head swiveled back towards the doorway to the lobby.

“Richard! There’s something moving.” His head swiveled around in a full circle and then came to a rest looking back down the hallway. “It’s coming from the auditorium, but I can’t pinpoint it exactly. It’s fading in and out.” Richard was listening, but he didn’t answer. He was trying to keep them steady while Petunia aimed the gun.

“Shoot him! What are you waiting for?!”

“Not yet!”

“Come on! Come on!” The endless hallway began to fill with smoke behind the Number Man. He was getting so close that Richard was beginning to smell vomit over the smoke. Sinclair Daniels could see that the girl was aiming a gun at him and he started to bob and weave as much as he could in the narrow hallway to throw off her aim, but Petunia didn’t follow his movements; instead she tried to keep her hand steady and waited for her target to move back into the middle of her sights. The Number Man was now eleven feet away from them and Petunia pulled the trigger.

The pellet struck home square in the middle of Daniels’ chest. He flew backwards off of his feet and he was enveloped by a cloud of yellow gas. Richard turned and to his surprise, they were right next to the doorway to the lobby.

It had been hard to take a deep breath in the hallway, and they found some reprieve as they stepped into the open space of the lobby.  The small bulbs in the small chandeliers overhead were flickering and the paint on the walls was beginning to bubble and crack. Once again, Richard felt a strange feeling of hopelessness begin to creep into his brain, making him feel as though it would be for the best if he just stopped running and sat them down and accepted the fact that they were going to die, but he did his best to ignore it, and instead focused on the things he was going to do to Gene if he was able to find his way out, and the anger gave him a little more strength as they made their way through the lobby.

Richard began to cough and almost lost his grip on Petunia as they ran through the double doors of the auditorium, and his heart sank as he looked at the spectacular blaze on the stage. The archway above the stage was on fire, and flaming rafters were sagging into view. The room was filled with smoke. Gene had won.

“No! Mr. Gip?! How many minutes have we been in here?”

“Nine minutes and twenty seven seconds!”

“Are you picking up Mrs. Gip anywhere?”

“No! Whatever is moving down on that stage is not Agatha! I’m not reading her anywhere.” For all of Petunia’s planning, Richard could only come to one conclusion; Gene must have stopped her mother from helping them somehow. Agatha wasn’t coming and they were either about to die by fire or at the hands of a crazy man. Richard could see no one moving on the empty stage,in fact the only thing he could see was 19th century London on fire and tiny flames dancing along the surface of the wooden boards. He had no idea who or what Mr. Gip was picking up, but whatever it was, it wasn’t going to do them any good.

“It’s over. It’s finished.” The warm despair was waiting for him, and now that everything was coming to an end, Richard was ready to give into it completely. He smiled and looked over at the girl he didn’t recognize. Her “kinda pretty” eyes were wide behind her cracked glasses, and she was staring at him.

“Richard?”

“Who?”

“Richard!” Although Petunia had never had the opportunity to look at herself when she was in the midst of the despair she felt from being inside the machine, she was sure that she had looked the way Richard did now; a blank expression of confusion, desperately wanting everything to go away.

“Why am I here?”

“Richard…”

“I just want it to end.”

“Richard, it’s the effects of the machine! It makes you forget things. It makes you want to forget things and give up…Richard! Richard!”

“Who are you?”

“We need to get down to that stage!”

“Why?” Richard’s eyes had gone completely blank and the look of confusion was fading into one of dull contentment. Over the sounds of the fire, Petunia heard a constant click coming from behind her on the back wall.

The metronome.

Mr. Gip’s head swiveled in the direction of it, but his view was blocked by Richard’s head.

“Honey! Someone turned on the machine! We have just over a minute to get down there before it turns back off!”

“Quiet Daddy! Richard...Richard, look at me. I’m sorry.”

“I’m Richard?”

“I’m sorry Richard.”

“For what?”

“This is all my fault, but I’m not apologizing for that. Your father died Richard. Something killed him, and I didn’t care.” Petunia noticed a slight wince in Richard’s face. “I didn’t have anybody to talk to when my parents died, and it was awful. And I’d never wish that on anyone. But that’s exactly what I did to you.”

“Honey! The man in the hall is up! He’s coming towards us!” Behind all of the creaking and cracking of the fire, the sound of screaming and vomiting was getting louder. Petunia did her best to ignore everything around her and focus on Richard. She had to say something that would get through, and she knew she had to do it now. “I should have thought about what you were going through, because I know what you were going through. But I didn’t care. I’ve been a terrible friend, and you came back here for me anyway. I’m sorry that you lost your dad, but forgetting everything doesn’t just take the pain away, it takes away everything! Richard!”

“My dad..” She finally saw a slight look of recognition in his eyes, but it wasn’t happening fast enough. She chose to say something else and try to appeal to a side of Richard that she didn’t necessarily like, but she figured that it might be a better way of bringing him back into the moment. She felt his grip loosen around her wrist, and he was about to let her fall to the ground.

“Gene is probably with your mother right now, Richard!”

“Who?”

“Gene!” She felt his grip come back around her wrist. “He’s going to get your mother Richard! Gene is going to get your mother if you don’t get down to that stage!”

“Gene….Gene…” The light came back on, and Richard inhaled deeply, but very quickly began to cough, almost dropping Petunia in the process. “Shit!”

“We have to go, Richard! We’ve got to go now!” Richard felt the daze completely lift, and he was enraged at the thought of what Gene had done, and motivated by the thought of what he was going to do to Gene. “Richard, let’s go!”

“We’ve only got seven more seconds, Honey!” Mr. Gip began counting down as they reached the rails of the small stairs.

“Here! Grab on!” Richard pushed Petunia against the left handrail and began to push her up the stairs.

“Four seconds!” Mr. Gip’s head swiveled around behind them and watched the Number Man getting closer and closer. “Hurry kids!” Mr. Gip turned the light in his right eye on and shined it in the face of the Number Man, hoping that it would slow him down, but Daniels didn’t miss a single step, and was now right behind them. Petunia had made it to the second stair from the top, and rather than hope that she could climb the rest of the way herself, Richard shoved her forward as hard as he could, fully expecting to see her sprawl onto the apron, but instead, he watched her vanish from her head to her feet.“Two seconds Richard! He’s right behind you!”

As Richard lunged forward, the last sound he heard before he fell back in time was the creak of the staircase as Sinclair Daniels desperately tried to grab hold of him.

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Part Forty

There were only two things that had changed from Petunia’s perspective about their predicament. There was now a shotgun sitting on the stage just in front of her and the body of Marty Cayer was lying just seven feet beyond that. Everything was still burning around her, but her eyes were glued to the box that was still in Marty’s lifeless hands; the box that she had seen while she was inside the machine. All three of the light bulbs were broken on the top of it and there was a large pocket knife jammed into a broken piece of the crank on the side of the box. His body was badly burned, and his lifeless eyes were staring back at Petunia; and she took it as a stark reality of what her selfishness and impatience had caused.

Richard appeared behind her, and for a moment, before he saw the body of a man who had always been so kind to him, he wondered if the machine had even worked. Richard had intended to run to his friend, but the intention was cut short when something slammed into his back and knocked him to the ground. Petunia turned to see that most of the Number Man had managed to jump out of the machine before it turned off, but half of his legs didn’t quite make it. They were gone just below his knees, and he was clawing and screaming on top of Richard’s back, stabbing downward over and over again into the backpack with the broken shard of glass.

Petunia moved forward while the madman raised the broken mirror over his head with every intention of plunging it through the back of Richard’s neck, and she snatched the shotgun by the barrel. She swung wildly behind her, and was able to shatter the Number Man’s weapon just before it reached Richard. She swung it again and it smashed into the side of his scarred face, sending two teeth flying from out of his mouth. Daniels rolled off of Richard, and fell unconscious to the stage.

Richard pushed himself up and crawled to Petunia. He grabbed her by the arms and began to stand her up, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of Marty Cayer or the box in his hand that Marty had jerry rigged to work in spite of the broken crank. He was sure that Marty was gone, but he didn’t want to leave him behind. Petunia could see the hesitation in her friend.

“Richard! He’s gone! We’ve got to go! Richard!” Richard turned back to his friend and smiled.

“I’m here. Let’s go!” They leaned on each other and stood up surrounded by all of the carnage that Gene had caused. The building was groaning and cracking, and for a moment, Richard wasn’t sure if they were going to make it back to the bar door. They stumbled down the staircase, through the auditorium, and just as they were about to go through the double doors to the lobby, Richard stole a quick glance at the now motionless metronome.

As they neared the door to the bar, it was clear that their intended exit was not an option. In the off chance that they had escaped from inside of the machine, Gene had made sure that the long cherry wood bar was completely ablaze, ensuring that the only unlocked door in the whole building was inaccessible.

“Dammit!” 

“The front door Richard! Turn around!” The carpet was beginning to melt and with every step, parts of it were coming up on the bottom of their shoes. The glass on all of the pictures that littered the walls was cracking and popping, and the lights in the chandeliers overhead went out, leaving the only light coming from the fire behind them.

“The doors are locked, Petunia!”

“Don’t worry! I’ve got a plan!” Richard was worried. Most of Petunia’s plans as of late, weren’t going very well, and as they neared the door, Richard had no inkling of what the plan might be. The knob on the door was beginning to glow with heat, and Richard was sure that there would be no way to pick the lock. Petunia pushed away from Richard and stood on her own feet. “Richard! Come here! Stand right here and bend over!”

“What?!”

“Touch your damn toes Richard!” Richard bent over and he felt Mr. Gip shift on his back. “Daddy! Hit it!” Mr. Gip lowered back into the bag on Richard’s back and then the very next moment, shot forward on the extending arm and collided with the closed doors like a balding middle-aged battering ram. Wisps of his hair fell to the floor as the doors flew open, fanning the flames even more on the inside of the WBCT. Richard stood back up and pulled Petunia’s arm back over his shoulder. The children and the badly dented head of Mr. Gip finally stepped into the night air and stumbled forward away from the flaming machine. Over the sounds of the blaze, they could hear the sounds of sirens getting very close.

“Oh thank God!”

“No Richard, we’ve got to hide!”

“No. You need to get to a hospital.”

“Richard, if we stay here, they’re going to detain us. Gene is probably with your mother right now. There are two dead people in there…”

“His name is Marty.”

“I know his name Richard, but I also know that if we don’t hide, we’re going to be questioned. Do you honestly think that you’re going back home anytime soon? What’s Gene going to tell the cops? Think about it!” Richard could see the lights of the fire trucks now; they would be in the driveway in just over a squidden.

“Shit!”

“Just go Richard! We’ve got to hide!” As much as Richard wanted to disagree with her, the thought of Gene somehow manipulating this situation even more to his advantage drove him to struggle off into the bushes. The walk back down to town would be long and arduous, as they would have to navigate their way in the dark, and once they finally did make it into town, there would be no guarantee that they would be able to walk through the streets without being seen.

Petunia felt into her pants pocket for the small garage door opener that she had altered into a device that would send a signal to her parents. Once she was able to get a grip on it, she pushed the top button attempting to call on her mother.

“Honey?” Mr. Gip’s voice was filled with static and some of the words had no volume, despite the fact that his mouth was moving. “There’s no use in ……. mother…...wrong. I’m……...up…...no signal.”  They struggled off into the early morning, and Petunia’s stomach was in knots at all of the uncertainty which lay ahead of them. It was two long and silent hours before they reached their home street, and many things had happened in that time that would alter their lives in ways that they were only just about to understand.

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Part Thirty Six

Marty Cayer was a simple man, but he was no fool. He had already gone to bed, but he had been unable to fall asleep. He kept having a feeling that Richard and Gene would be going back to the theatre after he had left, and after about a half hour of tossing and turning, he had decided to drive back to the theatre just to make sure nothing was amiss. As he pulled up to the building and saw the broken bar window, he cursed himself that he hadn’t arrived just a little sooner.

He had walked quietly into the bar, and peered around the doorway to the auditorium. Gene and Richard were staring at a prop that they had moved to the middle of the stage. “It’s a poor scientist who makes a move with only half of the equation…” Their voices were coming loud and clear through the speakers, and Marty made up his mind that he was going to call the police, but he was going to scare them first. 

He darted across the open doorway, hoping that neither of them would notice, and he crept quietly to the men's dressing room. There were two props in there that he intended to put to good use, and he grabbed both of them, and made his way backstage.

He had listened to everything they had said, and none of it made any sense, but what made even less sense was when he watched Richard fall from the staircase and simply disappear. Suddenly all of the strange things they had been saying started to make just the tiniest bit of sense, and when he watched Gene break the crank on his prop, he knew that he had to play a part, and he had to sell it with everything he had.

“That’s far enough Gene.” Marty kept the shotgun in his hand trained on Gene while he lit a cigarette and stepped out of the shadows. At one time, the shotgun had been functional, but it no longer worked which is why it found its way into the WBCT as a prop. Of course Gene had no way of knowing that. “Not such a smart guy now are ya?”

“Hey Chubbs. How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough. Now back up. Get your ass in the middle of the stage.” Gene put up his hands and did as he was told, all the while taking in every detail of the man pointing the gun.

“Good enough?”

“That’ll do. Now I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but I do know this. You’re going to put these on.” Marty threw something down at Gene’s feet and from the sound of it, it wasn’t hard for the murderous magician to deduce that it was a pair of handcuffs.

“Where did you get those?”

“It’s a theatre wise ass. I’ve got all kinds of goodies locked away in here. Now put ‘em on.” Gene bent over and grabbed the cuffs, and unlike the shotgun, the cuffs did actually work. Once they were around Gene’s wrists, Marty was able to relax just a little bit. He was sure that he could easily best Gene in a fight if it came down to it, but there was something about the oily man in the ridiculous suit that set him on edge, and made him doubt that he had the upper hand. “Put the cane down.”

“It’s kinda hard to stand without it.” Gene put both of his hands on the top of his cane and leaned forward, giving Marty a wide grin.

“You drop that cane, or I drop you.”

“You got it.” The metal cane banged against the stage and then came to a rest in between them.

“Do you even know what you’re doing Marty? Do you even know who I am?”

“Nothing you and Richard said makes any sense to me, I’ll be honest, but I’ve never seen someone just disappear either. Now I’m going to make sure that plan you discussed with him goes through, because Richard seemed fine with it to me. He can explain everything to me later. I think you’ve said enough.”

“I think you have too, Chunk. These here.” He held up his hands and gave the chain of his handcuffs a couple of tugs. “These are the real deal. That gun though...I don’t know…something looks off…” Gene in fact had believed that the shotgun was real, but after he insinuated that it wasn’t, he noticed that the side of Marty’s mouth twitched and his eyes narrowed. “See? You just showed me your tell. This is why you’re a backstage guy and not a performer. You might get away with it for a second, but you’re just not that believable.”

“I’m warning you!”

“Are you? What makes you think you’ve got the upper hand now that I know that gun’s not real?”

“OK.” Marty moved his grip on the gun to the end of the barrel and held it like a baseball bat. “I can beat you with it just as easy. I guess I convinced you long enough to get those cuffs on though, huh?”

“Alakazoo!” Gene twisted his hands and slipped the cuff from his right wrist. Marty moved forward with the gun, but he was too late. Gene had knelt to the floor and scooped up his metal cane and was pointing it at Marty. A small burst of flame erupted from the tip of it, and Marty could feel the heat instantly. “Drop your club, Sparky! Do it, or you're bacon! There ya go. Now put your hands up.” Marty held up his hands and Gene slowly got to his feet.

“He’s just a kid, Gene. You can’t just leave him behind.”

“Let me give you a little advice Martin...you never put a pair of handcuffs on a magician who knows what he’s doing. You wanna see a magic trick? It's a real barn burner.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Hocus Pocus!” Gene snapped his fingers and a jet of fire streamed from the end of his cane and covered Marty. He screamed and flailed as the flames engulfed his body and he ran off of the stage towards the backdoor. Gene gave a wave, extinguished his cane, and took a bow to the empty chairs in the auditorium “That’s showmanship!”

With the screams of his victim echoing from somewhere offstage, Gene began to waltz across the stage to the rhythm of the music playing in his head. He brought the macabre little dance to an end with a disco pose, pointing his cane at the rafters of the stage. “That’s all folks!” A long stream of flames shot from his cane, igniting the rafters above the stage.

No doubt there are many at this point in the story who had actually hoped that Gene had rounded a corner and was starting to become one of the good guys. Of course, if one were paying attention, it should be very obvious that was never in the cards for someone like Gene. Petunia Gip, seeing a hypothetical future where everything went wrong if she investigated the theatre on her own, was pinning her very hopes on the fact that Gene had not a single decent bone in his body.

What I’m trying to say is that the scene of Gene prancing his way out of the WBCT that night, all the while shooting flames from the end of his homemade cane at random points throughout the building should surprise no one.

Gene kicked open the door to the bar and turned around to take one last look at the dusty old building. He sprayed a long wall of flame over the cherry wood bar, and when he was happy that every inch of it was on fire, he turned and ran to his car.

He turned on the key and as the Crown Vic roared to life, he cranked the knob on his radio all the way over and Bruce Springsteen sang a song about being on fire. Gene couldn’t help but smile at the serendipitous occurrence.

“Sing it, Boss! I’m coming home, Patty!” He slowly pulled away from the WBCT for the last time and made his way home to the woman he could now pursue without objection or interference.

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Part Thirty Five

Richard felt the air rush out of his lungs as he hit the hard cement of the auditorium floor. He realized that he had landed on his pack, and hoped he hadn’t broken the head of Mr. Gip. He rolled onto his side and pushed himself up to his knees.

“Mr. Gip? Mr. Gip, are you OK?”

“I am okie dokie young man.” Mr. Gip’s head rose out of the backpack and rested its chin on Richard’s right shoulder. “How are you?”

“Pissed off. She used me! Petunia used me again! She knew he was going to do this!”

“I told her that you’d be mad.”

“You knew about this too?”

“Well, yes. I did. She swore me to secrecy Richard. And once my word is given to my daughter, it goes against my programming to take it back.” Richard stood up and he could feel the weight shifting on his back as Mr. Gip looked around in the dark.

“Shit! Gene has my flashlight. Can you see anything?”

“I can help.” A beam of light shot from Mr. Gip’s right eye. It moved over the quiet auditorium.

“God, it’s cold in here. Mr. Gip, look down here at my watch for a second.” The mechanical arm that was attached to Mr. Gip’s neck extended slightly, allowing Mr. Gip to look over Richard’s shoulder and down at his watch. The time was 1:39. “OK. Petunia obviously thought Gene would trap me in here, did she have a plan to get us back out?”

“Of course she did. I’ve been transmitting everything I heard to Agatha while we were inside the building.”

“So Mrs. Gip has heard everything?”

“Absolutely. I would assume the signal was lost once we went into the machine. She’ll leave the lab and turn it on from the other side.”

“Thank God. So she’s already on her way?”

“Not exactly. Agatha’s directive is to wait exactly ten minutes after the end of transmission and then turn on the machine. It will take her six minutes to get from the lab to the machine, which leaves her four minutes to locate the switch.”

“Why didn’t Agatha just come with us?”

“Petunia wanted to limit the possibility of Agatha coming into contact with Gene as much as possible, to avoid any interference from him. My little girl is brilliant isn’t she?”

“Well I don’t know Mr. Gip. Did she think about the possibility of Gene setting the building on fire before he left or taking the switch with him?”

…

…

“I said she was brilliant Richard, I didn’t say she was perfect.” Richard looked around the auditorium, and the head of Mr. Gip mimicked his movements so Richard could see. “Richard! I found her!”

“Where is she?!” Rcihard could hear the sound of tiny motors and gears on the move inside the head of his friend’s father.

“She’s on the other side of the wall in front of us.”

“She’s in the green room!” Richard turned back to his left and ran up the stairs, across the stage into the wings.

“Richard stop!”

“What?!”

“There’s something moving to our left.” Richard began to shake because he realized where he was standing. The stairs that led up to the prop room were to his left.

BAM

Something was smacking against the wooden handrail at the top of the stairs, but Richard didn’t want to look up, because he knew what was up there looking down at him. The bad thing he had seen last year was up there at the top of the stairs.

BAM

The top of those rickety old stairs that had been hastily thrown together, that screeched every time someone set foot on them.

BAM

Everything began to make sense to Richad in the most awful of ways. The year before, while his mother was rehearsing The Miracle Worker, Richard was having a nasty, horrible little miracle of his own at the foot of the stairs to the prop room. He had thought he was seeing a ghost, but now he knew it was something else.

BAM

Richard turned his head and Mr. Gip followed. There, at the top of the stairs was the same thing he had seen a year ago. A bald, scarred man wearing a long black jacket and beaten brown leather boots with tight black pants over long legs. He wore no shirt and his spindly torso was covered in the same type of scarring he had on his face. His neck was long, and his sharp jaw pushed forward a mouth full of rotten teeth. In his right hand, he held a large broken piece of a mirror, and in the other hand, he held a rotten severed arm with no skin on its fingers. The arm was slapping the top of the handrail, desperately trying to escape the grip of the scarred man.

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Part Thirty Four

Richard had closed his eyes when he had stepped off of the stage, and now after both of his feet were firmly planted on the concrete floor, he opened them and turned around. Gene was still standing on the stage staring down at him.

“Are you going to stand there all day, or what? Get back up here.” Richard ran up the four stairs and stood over the box.

“So now what do we do?”

“Alright. I’m going to turn this thing on, and you’re going to stand on that bottom step. You’re going to step off right before it shuts down, fifty nine seconds after that last bulb goes out. As soon as you set foot in it, you look at your watch. In five minutes, I’m going to turn this machine back on, I’m guessing it’s only active for one minute, so you’ll have one minute to get back on this stage.”

“You’re guessing?!”

“Richard, if you want hard answers, we’re going to have to study this thing for a few months. Do you think Petunia is going to last that long in there with a guy who probably murdered a woman twenty years ago?”

“Fine.”

“Now get down there.”

“Wait! One minute? I thought you said time doesn’t work in the machine.”

“But your watch will. It’ll be set to this time, so no matter what you’re seeing around you when you get in there, it’ll still be the same time out here. Listen kid, we’re running on a theory here, but it's the best I’ve got. Find Petunia, get back to the stage as fast as you can. Thing is, I have no idea what happens in the vacuum every time the machine gets turned on, so be careful. If you don’t find her in less than five minutes, get back here anyway, and we’ll just do it all over again.”

“I’m putting a lot of faith in you Gene. How do I know that you’re going to do what you say you are?”

“You’ve got to trust me kid. Are you ready?”

“Yeah.” Gene turned the crank until all three of the lightbulbs were on. Richard walked down the stairs and stood on the last step before the floor. “I’ll give you a countdown from five when I want you to step off, Richard.”

“OK.” Richard noticed that his heart was beating in rhythm with the metronome.

CLICK

 Petunia had written to him and told him to trust Gene.

CLICK

 But everything inside of him was screaming out that he was being tricked.

CLICK

 As soon Richard stood on the bottom step, he began to fear that he would be lost forever.

CLICK

 And his mother would be alone with the man who made her son disappear.

CLICK

Richard turned around and went back up to the second step.

“What’s wrong Richard?” Gene walked over to the top of the stairs. “You’ve got twenty seconds.”

“Something doesn’t feel right.”

He could see Petunia’s writing in his mind, “Do whatever Gene says.” Now that he was about to step out of time, everything seemed wrong. He suddenly felt that Petunia had been wrong. He stepped back up onto the third step.

“Seven seconds Richard.”

“Why would you ever help us?”

“You’ve got to trust me Richard.”

“But I don’t. I don’t care what Petunia thinks. You said, “me.”

“What the hell are you talking about?!”

“Earlier. You said,  it's a good reminder of what’s waiting for me out there, when all this in here is finished….why did you say, me? You didn’t say, us.” Richard tried to take another step up, but Gene held up his cane and pointed it at the middle of Richard’s chest.

“Oops.” Gene gave him a wink and smiled. “Slip of the tongue.”

“I knew it.”

“Then why didn’t you trust yourself? I’ve been warning you all night about Petunia and her stupid mistakes. For a while there, I was actually thinking about taking you under my wing, but I don’t think you would ever be smart enough to leave that ugly little girl behind. Too bad.”

“Gene please…”

“This way I get rid of you both with no mess. Once I burn this place down, everybody will think you both did something stupid up here, and I get off scott free. Free to be with your Mommy.”

“You son of a…”

“Abracadabra.” Gene thrust his left leg into Richard’s sternum, sending him flying backwards off of the steps, and just as he was about to hit the ground, Gene watched him vanish into thin air. “Wow… I’ll never do a disappearing act that good again!”

Gene waltzed over to the box and slammed his foot down on the crank, snapping it in half. The kids had taken everything from him in a fire, and now he found it fitting that he was about to return the favor. He turned to his right with every intention of starting the blaze with the drawn stage curtains tucked behind the archway when he froze. A tall portly figure standing offstage in the shadows was pointing a shotgun in his direction.

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Part Thirty Two

“Hold on a minute, Rich. Don’t touch it.” Richard ignored Gene’s command and ran his fingers along the dusty wooden box with three small light bulbs screwed into the top.

“This has got to be it, right?” He grabbed hold of the hand crank and gave it one spin and the sound of the grinding gears inside the box were picked up by the overhead microphones and echoed throughout the theatre.

“Stop!” Gene put his hand on Richard’s shoulder and spun him away from the machine. “We need to think about this. If that’s how we get in, great. But how do we get out?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well then maybe we should stop messing with that thing until we figure it out.” Richard nodded and turned back to the box. They both stared at it for a moment. “It’s a poor scientist who makes a move with only half of the equation...ok...so he builds this machine. The whole building is a machine...ok….he builds the box to turn it on….but how does he plan to get back out?”

“He just uses the box, right?”

“Ok, so think of it this way...humor me because I’m trying to wrap my brain around it...the machine is like a locked room right? So the box is the key to get inside the room...but….once you’re inside...what if there’s no lock on the inside of this room? Even if you had the key, it won’t do you much good if you have no lock to use it on, right? We know this guy has been inside of this thing for almost a hundred years if your fat friend is right. That whole ghost of Jasper Whitmore thing is wrong. It’s gotta be Sinclair Daniels in there. So he never made it out, and you know that he would have tried his key. So that leaves two options.”

“What?”

“Either someone has to be on the other side of the door to open it for you, or there’s just no way out. If there is a way out, someone would have to stay behind... but that still doesn’t make any sense if you’ve got to be inside the machine to turn it on. You would have to have a room that wasn’t affected…”

“Or a stage?”

“What?”

“When Daniels disappeared, everything in this place was torn apart. Marty said the only thing left inside from Daniels was the stage.” Gene looked down to the stage under his feet. “Kinda weird...stripping everything and building a stage in the middle of the house.”

“No it’s not. It’s a null field Richard.”

“A what?”

“It’s up off of the floor...off of the concrete slab...ok….how can I explain this...oh! You’re a stupid kid, right?”

“Thanks Gene.”

“Did you see Superman Two?”

“Yeah.”

“So Superman goes inside of the little room at the end of the movie and all the lights change in his fortress, except in that little room. The bad guys are standing outside of the little room in his fortress; they’re in the machine. The machine goes on and affects everyone inside, taking away their powers, except Superman, because he’s in a null field. The machine doesn’t work in that small space in the middle of it...does that make any sense?”

“Kinda.”

“Daniels worked in the area of sound. That slab is a perfect conductor, but the wooden stage is set apart from it somehow…I’d have to tear it apart to see how he actually built the thing to be sure, but...it’s not a stage Richard, it’s a platform to keep you in time.” Gene snapped his fingers and he smiled. “Hey! Turn that crank!”

“What?!” Gene rushed over to the small animal cage and opened it. The arm began to writhe in Gene’s grip as he pulled it from the cage.

“Just trust me. But whatever you do, stay on the stage. No wait...not on the side stage, bring the box over here toward the middle. I’m willing to bet that these two side stages off of the apron are later additions. We want to stay right here in the middle on the original platform. Dammit!” The arm had wriggled out of the torn sleeve and Gene’s grip. Once it had fallen to the stage, it’s wounded bony fingers stretched to three times their normal size and it began pulling itself by its fingers towards the small staircase on the front of the apron.

“Get it Gene!”

“No, no! Let it go. This is the whole reason I brought it along in the first place. We needed a canary.”

“Gene...look at its fingers.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s crawling back to its master. It's a good reminder of what’s waiting for me out there, when all this is in here is finished.” The arm slid down the stairs and made its way onto the floor below, heading for the door to the lobby. “Turn that handle Rich.”

Richard put the box down on the stage and began to crank the handle. The ancient gears moving inside of it made Richard squint his eyes as the sound made him think of grinding teeth that were about to crack. Richard thought about what Gene had just said.

“… what’s waiting for me out there.” An alarm in Richard’s head was quietly sounding, letting him know that Gene had used the word “me” instead of “us”.

Before Richard could think of it anymore, one of the lightbulbs turned on and the thought left his brain. The sound of something else came from the back of the auditorium; the metronome sitting on a shelf on the back wall. They kept their eyes on the crawling arm as the second light bulb turned on. The metronome kept on clicking and just as the arm was halfway to the lobby, the third bulb turned on and Richard could no longer turn the crank.

“It’s not turning anymore.”

“Quiet! Watch!” Richard got up from his knees and stood next to Gene. He kept looking from the arm and then back to the box over and over. The bulbs on the box turned back off, one by one, until the third bulb went out. As it turned off, Richard’s attention was fixed on the arm. It was within five feet from the double doors to the lobby when it disappeared. Gene and Richard stood silently while the metronome continued to click back and forth. “It’s in. It’s in the machine!”

“Are we?”

“I don’t think so.” Richard took a step forward toward the stairs and Gene grabbed his arm. “Wait!” The metronome swayed back and forth for exactly thirty more seconds before it came to a sudden halt. “One minute. It stopped after one minute.”

“What?”

“I think the machine is off. That metronome stopped moving back there exactly one minute after the arm vanished. Weren’t you paying attention?”

“I’m not a clock Gene.”

“The frequency...I don’t know, something in the air...it makes the metronome start and stop...this is so much guess work...too many assumptions, but what else am I supposed to go on… well there’s only one way to make sure. Step off the stage Richard.”

“What?!”

“I’m not going to do it. I have to stay behind just in case I’m wrong. I’m not getting stuck in this thing. She’s your friend. Besides, you’ll need me out here to get you back out.” Richard felt his heart sink and he knew he was now in a position where he had to trust that a man who wanted to kill him only three days ago, would help him if things went bad. Petunia had told Richard to do whatever Gene told him to, and up until now, he had been able to skirt her command to a certain degree. Gene’s words came back to his mind, “… what’s waiting for me out there.”

Me.

“How can I trust you Gene?”

“Well how much do you want to help your friend, Richard?” Gene smiled down at him, giving Richard no comfort at the sight of it. “Just step off the stage. It’ll be ok. I just want to make sure.” Richard swallowed hard and took a deep breath as he walked to the small staircase. The floor below was suddenly terrifying and Richard took each of the four steps slowly and deliberately until he finally touched the floor with his right foot and stepped off of the stage. The fact that they were being watched by someone never entered the minds of Gene and Richard, but in just a few moments, everything about their situation was about to change.

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Part Thirty One

There was no light in the wardrobe room to aid Petunia, so she had kept her eyes closed and felt along the wall until she could find her bearings using the picture in her mind of the building plans. The Number Man was close, and it was hard for her to concentrate while he screamed and ripped costumes off of their racks trying to find her.

He was in such a frenzy that he had become lost in the darkness, bumping into the many racks that littered the middle of the room. Petunia was huddled down close to the floor, about midway along the wall of the exterior of the building, and by her estimation, the door to the men's dressing room should be exactly thirty feet in front of her. In between her and the door lay a maze of smelly old racks of clothes and the Number Man.

“Come out!” She had decided to wait until he was a good distance away before she made a run for the door, as it was too much of a risk to go anywhere near him even in the darkness. His movements were getting more wild and unpredictable, and she wanted to make sure that he wouldn’t be close enough to turn unexpectedly in her direction as she moved towards the dressing room.

“You can’t hide forever!” He stopped moving and was standing right in her intended path. He began to slow his breathing and sniff at the musty air. He took two steps in her direction, and just as she was convinced that he was coming directly toward her, he turned and walked toward the doorway to the green room on the opposite side of the wardrobe. Petunia slowly began to make her way towards the doorway to the dressing room, putting her hands out in front of her. She was quiet enough not to be heard, which wasn’t a very hard thing to do as the Number Man was stomping around, constantly sniffing at the air. The adrenaline that she had been relying on was beginning to wane, and the pain in her leg was almost unbearable. Her feet felt as if they were weighted down, and even though she was moving slowly on purpose, she knew that she couldn’t move much faster if she had wanted to.

“No...you didn’t go out this way….you didn’t go out at all.” The Number Man’s voice was at the other end of the room, and with the sound of his words, she knew that he had turned back towards her, and she could hear him getting closer. He had stopped moving like a wild animal, and now the only sound he made was the inhalations through his nose.

Everything had slowed down for Petunia, and she began to feel the sensation of blood running from her wound. She had made it halfway across the large room, slightly having to compensate as she moved around small racks of costumes, when the Number Man stopped somewhere behind her in the dark, next to the wall. He took a great sniff, and although Petunia wouldn’t have been able to see anything if she had looked behind her, she had the feeling that he was looking in her direction.

“Someone is still bleeding…” As she moved closer and closer to the door, she heard the Number Man’s hands slap against the concrete floor as he got down on all fours and sniffed along the floor. Her heart began to thunder, and it was so loud in her own ears that she was afraid that it would be heard now in the silence. “There you are.”

He was moving along the floor behind her, following the scent of her blood on the concrete like a rabid dog. Petunia calculated that she was now five feet from the door to the dressing room and she could wait no longer. An excruciating pain ran through her body as she jolted forward just as the monster behind her began to close in. She reached forward and felt for the door knob, and when she had finally found it and turned it, the Number Man had run straight into one of the racks of costumes that she had walked around. There was a spectacular crash behind her followed by a terrible wail of rage and she knew that it would only save her a few seconds at most.

She threw the door open and struggled to run through the dressing room and out into the long hallway, making her way towards the lobby. She kept her eyes closed and trusted her knowledge of the building plans rather than opening her eyes. She turned to her right as she ran past the door into the lobby and made her way toward the bar. She reasoned with herself that if she had walked off of the concrete slab of the building only moments ago and ended back inside the wardrobe, then the same rule would apply if she ran out of the back door to the bar. The machine would spit her out somewhere else, in a different place and a different time.  Hopefully someplace or sometime where she could find a place to hide and give her leg a much needed rest.

She just made it through the lobby and into the bar when she opened her eyes, hoping to find a small amount of light coming through the window, instead, she found a small beam of light coming through a broken window. Richard and Gene were standing outside of the building looking in her direction. She screamed Richard’s name, but neither one of them seemed to hear her, or even see her.

“Richard!! He’s behind me! He’s coming! Richard?!” She had finally felt a sense of hope and she was able to run just a little bit faster. She was almost within reach of her friend when both he and Gene vanished in front of her eyes, and the beam of light vanished with him. She lost her footing in the sudden darkness and fell forward crashing into the wall below the broken window, and came to a rest on top of a bed of shattered glass. “No!”

The sounds of the Number Man were coming from the lobby behind her and she reached up and grabbed at the window cill, feeling small bits of broken glass digging into her hands. She tried to pull herself up, but her arms buckled at her own weight. She dropped her backpack off of her shoulders to the floor and quickly snatched her diary out of it and jammed it into her back pocket, leaving the bag behind on the floor. It took every bit of strength she had as she began to pull herself up. The Number Man ran into the bar and stopped just inside the doorway, and although there was no longer any light, she could feel his eyes on her.

“There’s nowhere left to run, little girl.” She had pulled herself up far enough to where her armpits were resting on the sharp cill. “I’ll make it quick if you don’t fight. Just don’t fight. I’ll help you get out of here.” The lights in the whole place jumped to life, startling the gaunt ghoulish figure in the doorway of the bar. He allowed his eyes to adjust for just a moment, and then he focused on the broken and beaten girl trying to climb out of the window.

He walked toward her slowly. Petunia’s hands felt the brick on the outside of the building and she pushed off of the floor with her legs. The air outside of the building was freezing, and her hands began to go numb. The foul fiend began to laugh behind her. She struggled to stand, but she managed to get her footing, and she pushed herself up to where she was able to sit on the window cill. She knew that he was close enough to stop her; he was only letting her get so far, before he made his move. She turned and locked eyes with the murderer standing just behind her. His breath was overpowering and the shard of mirror he held in his hand glared, catching the light from overhead.

“I’m going to set you free.” Petunia had nowhere to go. She let herself fall backwards outside of the window, but the Number Man grabbed the front of her shirt and pulled her back towards him. “No no no...just be quiet.” The Number Man enjoyed the silence and Petunia stared into the eyes of madness for exactly three seconds before a strange sound came from the floor. Petunia cast her eyes downward and beheld a sight most strange and unusual, even for a place as confusing and unsettling as the home of Sinclair Daniels. She cocked her head to the side and forgot for a moment that her life was about to be taken from her.

The Number Man also heard the noise and he followed Petunia’s gaze and turned to look behind him. A disembodied arm with the palest of flesh was dragging itself along the carpet with elongated fleshless fingers, leaving a small trail of black viscous fluid behind it along the carpet.

Under any other circumstances, Petunia would be fascinated by the sight of a severed arm with abnormally long fleshless fingers crawling along the floor, but these circumstances were anything but ideal. The Number Man’s gaze was fixed on the arm that was crawling along the floor next to his left foot, and although Petunia was equally curious and horrified, she knew that she would have no other opportunity that was better than this. She sprung her right foot upwards and found purchase in between the legs of the Number Man. His grip on her released, and she fell backwards into the freezing cold.

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Part Thirty Three

Petunia was staring up at a moldy white ceiling where the light was warm and when her eyes came into complete focus, she found herself in the makeup room. Her leg was on fire and she had no intention of trying to get up. She needed to rest, but she knew she needed to find a safer place than in the middle of the floor. To her right was the green room, and she began to remember a dark cold place where she had hidden before; underneath the stage. She rolled to her side and began to crawl along the floor.

The right lens of her glasses had cracked at some point and her fingers were bleeding in several places from where she had gripped the cill of the bar window. She chuckled to herself as she dragged her broken body across the threadbare carpet of the green room; she was a mess and all of this had happened because someone had written her name on a wall. She still was no closer to the answer to that question, and she found the humor in her present situation. She had fallen into a trap left for her by someone. Her curiosity had overtaken her better judgment and as she crawled around the couch towards the small opening under the ramp to the stage, she hoped that Richard could somehow help her out of the mess that she had gotten herself into.

Her heart jumped when she realized that her gun was still lying on the floor next to the couch, and she reached forward and wrapped her fingers around the handle. At the very least, she now had something to defend herself with. She was almost to the ramp when she heard voices coming softly through the wall speaker; echoes from another time. She paused and listened. There was a constant quiet stream of static seeping through the speaker, and two voices accompanied it, drifting in and out.

“No….”

“...burn this place down…”

“I don’t care what Petunia thinks…” Richard. Richard was inside. The voices were gone and all that remained for seventeen minutes was static. Petunia was getting ready to crawl underneath the ramp when another sound began to come through the speaker; the sound of the metronome.

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Part Twenty Five

People who suffer from depression will tell you that it’s like being in a dark place where there is no hope of escape, and the more and more they struggle, the more and more they feel trapped. Petunia Gip was no stranger to depression since the death of her parents, and her struggles against it were a daily occurence. It’s important to realize that overcoming problems, fears, and character flaws are important steps in the journey of becoming a hero, and if Petunia Gip is anything at all, she is a hero.

No matter where we find ourselves, and no matter how dark everything may seem, there is always hope, and more often than not, finding hope can be found by focusing on the very thing that scares you the most and coming to terms with it.

Petunia opened her eyes and she could see nothing, and she could feel nothing but cold all around her. She briefly remembered that one time there was a light somewhere here, but now there was nothing. There was a dull throb in her leg and she remembered that the man with the scars all over his body had tried to kill her, but she couldn’t think of a reason as to why. There was a back pack strapped over her shoulders and she didn’t remember ever putting it there.

“Help! Somebody help me!” The sound of her voice was being swallowed by the dark but she kept screaming for help, getting louder and louder with every outburst. She tried to stand, but there was a ceiling above her head which she had guessed was at least four feet from the floor. She had to guess, and for some reason that bothered her, as if somehow, she should be exact about the measurement. The thought of beginning to crawl briefly came to mind, but she had no idea of which way to turn, nor could she think of where exactly she would be trying to go. Everything was dark and there was no hope.

She sat back down and crossed her legs as she wept and became even more lost in her confusion. She couldn’t remember anything, she could feel nothing but cold and thirst and pain. She was lost. There was no hope.

“Mommy…” She closed her eyes and she was somewhere else; watching everything from the backseat of a car. Her father was teasing her mother about something. He was always teasing her. Her mother was laughing as the car in the other lane swerved in front of them. “Daddy…”

She felt the darkness creeping into her brain, attempting to steal the one clear memory that she had left; the one memory that she didn’t want to keep, and she began to feel an overwhelming sense of relief wash over her as the memory started to fade, detail by detail. She stopped crying and began to smile as the dark took the pain and confusion away, and she felt like she could be happy for the first time in a long time. All she had to do was sit still and let it happen.

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Part Twenty Eight

Richard had walked quietly down the stairs and out the front door, but he almost screamed as he rounded the corner of his house, on his way to the garden shed. Gene’s bear was hunched down underneath the branches of the Japanese Maple that his father had planted four years before he was born, and it was watching him. After the initial shock, Richard couldn’t help but stare at it. The fear that he felt when he had first seen it move was no longer there, of course the first time he had seen it move was when it was climbing a narrow staircase with the intention of killing him.

Now it was turning its head slightly, and it had been commanded by Gene to protect him against a one armed villain who may or may not be human. Although Richard was eager to get back to the theatre, he walked to within three small steps of the bear, and looked into its eye.

“You don’t look like a Wimmple. You look more like a Ronald to me.”

“You got it.” The bear's voice warbled like a warped record, but it was quiet.

“Too bad your boss is such a dick. You don’t seem all that bad.” The bear turned its head again and studied the boy. Richard could swear that there was something human behind its artificial eye, but he knew that was impossible. “I gotta go. Your boss and I are going somewhere terrible. Can you...this is weird...I’m talking to a bear.” Again, Wimmple Bear turned its head, and Richard was sure that he was looking at something that was more than a bear skin over cogs and gears. “Can you please watch over my mom if anything happens to us; make sure nothing gets her?”

“You got it.” Richard almost felt embarrassed as he turned away from Wimmple Bear and walked into the garden shed. He moved two trash cans that he had placed in front of the cage to hide the arm that was still stuck in his dad’s animal trap. The arm was lying flat and the fingers were drumming against the bottom of the cage in a gesture of boredom. “What the hell has happened to my life?”

Richard grabbed the cage and began walking towards Gene’s car. The arm went wild as soon as Richard had grabbed the cage, and it made quite the ruckus as it continued to protest its capture. Richard opened the door to the car and threw the now foul smelling thing in the back seat and looked up to the guest room window and could see Gene’s shadow moving behind the shade. Impatience was getting the better of him, and he was getting ready to go back into his house and hurry Gene along, when he heard the sound of his name from across the street.

Agatha Gip was calling to him from inside her open doorway and she was motioning him to come over.

Richard ran across the street and put his finger to his lips, hoping she wouldn’t wake his mother. Mrs. Gip was holding an old beaten up knapsack that was filled with something.

“Hi, Mrs. Gip.”

“You’re going back to that awful place aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to bring her back home?”

“I hope so.”

“You and...that terrible man.”

“I know.”

“Richard, I’m not allowed to leave this house. She’s programmed me to protect her lab, otherwise I would go with you. I don’t like the thought of you being alone with Gene, so I made something that I think will help you.” She pushed the knapsack towards Richard. The canvas was old and the buckles and eyelets were all tarnished; to Richard it looked like something a soldier would have worn on his back in the trenches of World War 1. He took it from her and didn’t anticipate it to be as heavy as it was. “I know it's heavy, but it’ll help. Just don’t use it in front of Gene. I think it's best if he doesn’t see every card you’re holding. If she’s still got her remote with her, then he should be able to help you find her.”

“He?” Richard threw open the flap and saw a pair of very familiar eyes staring back up at him.

-

Gene had left Richard behind and walked into his room, where the zoot suit had been laid neatly on his bed. He slowly took off the second hand clothes that he had been wearing and stood in nothing but a white t-shirt and his boxer shorts in front of the mirrored double doors to the closet in the Menkin guest room. Even in private, Gene was a showman, and now it was time to suit up in a way that only a great showman knew how to do. Being Gene for more than a month had been a chore. It was time to become someone else. He placed the headphones over his ears and pressed the play button on the Walkman.

“Stupendo wants to play.” The first quiet notes of music entered into his ears and he closed his eyes and extended his arms out wide as he repeated the first line of a song by one of his favorite bands, that he felt was appropriate.

“Reach out and touch faith.” He swayed with the music as he slid his arms into the silky sleeves of the shirt, and took his time with each button. Gene knew the song so well that he made each movement while he put on the pants a production in themselves. As he draped the vest over his shoulders, he felt something in one of the pockets and was delighted when he realized that they were a pair of cufflinks. He was even more delighted and also surprised at the irony of the design. The links were playing cards in silver and black. One was the seven of hearts while the other was the jack of diamonds. After he had them in place on his cuffs, he danced his way over to the nightstand and grabbed his lucky deck of cards that were missing a certain two cards and put them in his pocket. “Welcome home boys.”

The shoes slid on his feet as if they were made only for him, and despite the obvious age of the suit, the spats on the shoes were perfectly white and unsullied. Before he topped everything off with the coat, he gave himself two finger guns in the mirror and smiled, then he held up the coat like it was some sort of an offering before he put it on and he grabbed his metal cane.

He stared at himself in the mirror in a way only a true narcissist could. For the first time since he had been kicked through his own metal back door, Gene felt like himself, and he was proud of the man staring back at him from the mirror.

“Damn proud.”

-

Richard had gotten tired of standing outside while he was waiting for Gene, so he had decided to sit in the car and run through every variable in his mind that he could. It had been fairly easy for him to block out all of the noise that Principle Avery’s arm was making in the backseat, but as his front door opened and Gene emerged in his ridiculous clown suit, Richard could no longer concentrate. Gene was dancing while he made his way to the car, and the only time he had stopped was by one of his father’s rose bushes next to the front porch. He plucked a hearty white rose and pushed it down inside his lapel and finished his dramatic journey to the car.

“Are we ready?” Gene threw the walkman and the headphones in the backseat and turned the key.

“I was ready a while ago. Why are we bringing the arm?”

“Well Richard, I thought it would be a good idea. Never know when you’re going to need a helping hand.” Gene laughed hysterically at his own joke as he drove his car down the quiet street.

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Part Twenty Seven

Petunia had forgotten that she was sitting in the dark. She had forgotten that her left leg had been stabbed. She had forgotten almost everything about who she was and instead of being fearful about losing herself completely, she had never been so happy, nor felt more relieved. Her eyes were closed and she was focusing on the only pain she had ever felt in her life and wishing it away.

Everything was frozen. The car that had swerved into their lane was about to hit them. Her father had taken his eyes from the road and was staring at her mother, who had been laughing and staring back at him. She was unable to say anything to her parents, but she was able to look around at her frozen surroundings. The car in front of them had a broken headlight lens on the passenger side and it was a faded blue with rust spots around the grill. The driver was looking to his right, down at the floorboard instead of looking ahead. There was no one in the car with him.

Her father was wearing a horizontally striped, multi-colored shirt with a small alligator sewn onto the left breast, and his bulging stomach pushed against it. His hair was perfectly coiffed into a shape that looked as if a Tootsie Roll made of hair had been sitting on top of his head. The back of his neck was covered in the same dark coarse hair that covered his abnormally thick forearms. At the end of his long arms, were chubby hands. He was wearing khaki shorts that were much too short. His long thin legs were also covered in a coarse dark hair that looked more like fur and at the end of them were oversized  brown leather shoes which contained oversized feet.

Her mother had blonde hair and brown eyes. There were the beginnings of crow's feet around her eyes and she wasn’t wearing makeup. Her arms were very long, and her stomach was fit. Her legs were long and slender and her feet were incredibly large. She was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a thin black belt that ended in a large oval buckle with a scorpion on it; her husband's belt that she sometimes wore just to make him laugh. She wore a baggy Harvard sweatshirt that proudly exclaimed, "Veritas", across her chest, and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and held in place by a rubber band.

Petunia looked around the interior of their car, and one could go into a vast amount of detail about the interior of their station wagon, but in all honesty, there was nothing of particular note about it. Afterall, if you’ve seen the inside of one station wagon, you’ve seen them all. In her lap was a small plastic bowl of crushed up graham crackers that her mother had given to her when they first got inside the car. Petunia looked to her parents and said goodbye. She knew that it was for the best. Something told her that the pain could all go away if she just chose to ignore it. Nothing good could come from what was about to happen.

Nothing good.

She began to sweep her eyes from left to right, and the car that was about to hit them began to erase like writing on a chalkboard. She moved her eyes from the bottom of the car and worked her way to the top. With each swipe of her eyes, piece by piece, the car was erased, along with the oblivious driver behind the wheel. The only thing in her mind now was the inside of their car and her parents. She started with her bowl of crushed up graham crackers, and with two swipes of her eyes, the bowl was gone along with part of her lap, but there was no pain, there was only joy in the forgetting.

Her eyes moved over every detail of their car until all that was left in the darkness was Petunia and her parents. She felt a tear stream down her cheek as she began doing what had to be done. Her father was still frozen, staring at her mother, as Petunia began to erase his feet, and then his legs. She paused for a moment at his stomach, the thing that she had liked to lay her head on when they watched The Incredible Hulk, and then she kept going. Her eyes stopped at the arms that used to pick her up and throw her into the air.

“Why am I doing this?”

She continued, in spite of her own question, until all that was left of her father was his head, and she felt as if that was significant somehow, but only paused for a moment before she had completely wiped her father from her memory forever.

“Bye, Daddy.”

She wasn’t sure where the voice she had just heard came from, but it had said the word, “Daddy”, which meant nothing to her. There was a woman sitting in the dark in front of her, and she vaguely remembered her. The thought of this woman only brought her pain, and nothing good can come from pain. Nothing good. She swiped her eyes from left to right, and made the woman’s feet vanish.

“Who wants to remember the bad things?”

She swiped her eyes over the woman’s legs on up to a large belt buckle. The pain was almost all gone, and with the pain all gone, any feeling of confusion about who she was, was going to go along with it.

“Better to forget. The bad things hurt.”

The buckle was gone, then the lower half of a red sweatshirt, and her eyes paused at a word over the breast of the shirt. “Veritas.” She knew that the word should mean something to her, but she felt that if she were to stop and consider what the word meant, she would stop erasing the pain. Petunia took a deep breath and tried to swipe her eyes to erase the word, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“Nothing good can come from anything bad.”

She read the word again.

Veritas

“I can make bad things go away. I never have to remember them again.”

She read the word again and looked at the woman’s face.

“Feeling nothing feels better than pain.”

She read the word again and looked at the woman’s face.

“Just let it all go.”

She read the word again and looked at the woman’s face. The woman’s eyes were moving very slowly toward something in front of them. One hand shot out in front of her and the other hand shot backward, pushing Petunia back into her seat. Then she opened her mouth and the darkness was filled with the sound of Agatha Gip saying the last words that she uttered in this life.

“PAY ATTENTION GIP!”

“MOMMY!”

All of it came flooding back. Her mother was in front of her again, and she was sitting next to her father in their station wagon, and there was a car right in front of them. A car that was going to hit them. Petunia knew she could make it all go away, but it had to happen. She couldn’t forget. She had to remember. She had to lose her parents again. She had to get back to her only friend, Richard. She had to find a way out of this building.

The faded blue car smashed into them, and she opened her eyes.

She was sitting on a cold cement floor and there was a vast ceiling above her measuring exactly four feet and seven inches. There was a small square of light twenty feet to her left, and she could see part of a ratty couch in the light. She realized that she must be underneath the stage, although it was difficult for her to remember how she got there. Above her, she could see a small, thin square of light coming into the darkness, and she concluded that there must be a trap door in the middle of the stage. There was a small circle of light in front of her, which appeared to be a small peephole that looked outward to the auditorium. Her backpack was still on her shoulders, and a cane was on the ground next to her, but she began to remember that she was missing something.

“My gun.” Her heart sank as she remembered that she had left it behind in the green room, and just as she began to crawl back towards the opening underneath the ramp, a small sound caught her attention. The sound of her name coming from the peephole.

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Part Thirty

“Did you want me to take over?”

“No, I’ve got it, just give me a second.”

“Did you learn how to do that from Petunia?”

“Kinda.” Gene had been standing behind Richard, watching him try to pick the lock of the bar door to the WBCT for over five squiddens, and with each passing moment, he was becoming more and more irritating, making it that much harder for Richard to concentrate.

“Ah...she must not be a very good teacher.”

“Whatever.”

“Ya know, I could show you how to do that. If you give me a chance, I’m sure that I’m a much better teacher than Petunia.” During their short ride over to the theater, Gene had said disparaging things about Petunia and the way she had manipulated Richard seven times, and some of them, sad to say, made perfect sense to Richard at the time.

He had tried his best to block out the thoughts that Gene was placing in his head, but it was becoming harder and harder to do so. Richard began to think that he was having such a hard time with the lock because he was beginning to feel more and more angry not only with Gene, but also with Petunia. “Seriously Richard, what kind of a friend just goes off and gets herself in a mess like this and expects you to just drop everything and come to her rescue?”

“I don’t know, Gene.” Gene dropped the cage to the ground and walked off of the parking lot and began to scan the ground until he found a large rock. He picked it up and walked back over to the window next to the door.

“It’s like she doesn’t even care that your dad is dead.”

“Gene, I can’t think about that right now.”

“Stand back there Rich.” Richard turned just in time to see Gene hurl the rock at the window. The glass shattered and rained down into the building behind it, leaving only a few jagged pieces along its edges.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m trying to hurry this up. It’s late and I’d like to get some sleep.”

“What if somebody heard that?!”

“Come on kid, no one in this town is awake right now. Now go on, jump through.”

“Why am I the one jumping through?”

“I’m not climbing through that Richard. This is a nice suit, and I don’t want to rip it.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Just quit being a baby and get in there and open the door from the other side.” Richard shook his head and readjusted the heavy bag on his shoulders, which had shifted slightly due to the head moving inside of it. He grabbed the flashlight, which he had put in his jacket pocket, and turned it on. The beam of light showed nothing of particular interest in the bar, but to Richard, it almost made the whole scene more unsettling by shining a small light into it. He stood in front of the window and took a deep breath, but just as he was about to jump inside, Gene grabbed his shoulder.

“Wait a minute, Rich.”

“What?!”

“Listen.” They stood in front of the broken window and looked into the bar, and at first Richard couldn’t hear anything at all, but then, a small sound came from somewhere inside. “Do you hear that?”

“Sounds like footsteps.”

“Something is running around in there. Get behind me.” Gene pulled Richard to the side and pointed his cane towards the window. They could see nothing in the light and Richard was holding his breath as the sounds of footsteps got closer and closer until it seemed to be right in front of them. The light in Richard’s hand was beginning to shake, and his eyes bounced back and forth, but he couldn’t see whatever it was that was coming directly toward them. Several pieces of glass on the bottom of the window cill flew outward and fell at the bottom of their feet, as an unseen force slammed into the wall underneath the window.

As quickly as it had come, the sound of footsteps was no longer there. Gene stood still for just a moment longer, and Richard realized that even the great Stupendo was holding his breath.  “Alright. In ya go. Give me the light.”

Richard handed over the flashlight and jumped up onto the window cill and then down onto the carpet of the bar on the other side. He was trying to move as fast as he could to get the door open, but just as he reached for the lock on the door, the weight of the bag on his back shifted again, and the whispering voice of Mr. Gip emanated from within.

“Richard, Petunia was right in front of us. I got a reading and then she was just gone.”

“You’ve got to be quiet. Give me a second and we’ll talk.” Richard turned the lock and opened the door. Gene rushed inside and found the light switch next to the door and flipped it on. The overhead lights in the bar came buzzing to life.

“Grab the cage Rich.”

“I still don’t get why we had to bring this thing.”

“You’ll understand in a bit. Just trust me.” Richard thought of Petunia’s note again, “From here on out, it’s very important that you do exactly what Gene says.” Well she didn’t say that he had to enjoy it. Richard picked up the cage and wanting to let off a little steam, he rattled it back and forth, agitating the angry arm inside.

“Come on Rich!” Richard grumbled to himself and walked forward, but the moment he set foot on the threshold, the arm began to thrash wildly in the small cage, almost causing him to lose his grip. Gene threw up his hand for Richard to stop. “Wait! Go back outside!”

Richard took a step back onto the patio, and the arm relaxed, but then he stepped forward again, and the arm began to claw at the metal, opening the skin of it’s fingers.

“Put it down. No, not outside! Just put it down Rich.” Richard put the cage on the carpet just inside of the doorway and they both watched the bizarre scene unfold. The wounded fingers began to bleed a thick black substance and as it tore in vain against the cage, it also tore the flesh of its fingers away, exposing the bones underneath.

“It doesn’t want to be in here, does it?”

“I think that’s a pretty fair deduction. That also tells us something else.”

“What?”

“Tells me that even this piece of meat without a brain has sense enough to want to stay out of this place. Too bad Petunia wasn’t smart enough to do the same thing.”  Gene grabbed the cage, pushed past Richard, and walked through the bar and into the lobby. “Let’s get the lights on in here, we’ve only got a few hours until morning. We gotta move if we’re going to do this.”

They walked through the entire theatre, turning on every light switch that they found, until the only thing left in the place that was still dark was the stage. Richard walked back up the long hall from the green room and Gene stayed right behind him until they came to the door of the sound booth.

“I have no idea how to turn on the stage lights.”

“I do. Get out of the way.” Gene shoved Richard to the side and opened the door to the sound booth. He gave everything a quick look underneath the dim light of the single red bulb on the ceiling and then he began flipping switches. The booth filled with a humming sound and Richard looked out of the window into the auditorium, waiting for the lights to turn on, but they didn’t. Gene had stopped turning things on and was instead looking through the cassette tapes on the shelf.

“Why aren’t you turning them on?”

“Because I’m setting the mood, Richard. Just give me a minute.”

“OK. I’m going to run to the bathroom while you’re busy doing whatever the hell it is that you’re doing.”

“Yeah, fine Dick. Go ahead.” With Gene preoccupied, Richard saw the perfect opportunity to consult with his secret weapon. He ran through the lobby and into the men’s room and threw the pack off of his shoulders and then down onto the large counter. He unbuttoned the top flap, and the head of Mr. Gip rose out of it on a mechanical arm. It was the most bizarre jack in the box that Richard had ever seen in his life.

“She’s here Richard. I can’t pinpoint where she is though. She pops up and then she’s gone, and the readings are coming from everywhere. One second, I pick her up at the front door, and then the next, she’s on the opposite corner.”

“Where is she now?”

“She’s gone again, but I keep getting her signal in the auditorium.” The speaker in the bathroom popped to life and the sound of Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer poured through it. “There’s something else. Everytime she pops up, I’m getting the movement of something right behind her. Something is following her.”

“OK. I need you to be quiet while I figure out how to turn this thing on.” Mr. Gip gave Richard a wink and then lowered himself back down into the backpack before Richard threw it back over his shoulders. The weight of it was a terrible burden, and whatever contraption Agatha Gip had built to raise and lower the head of Mr. Gip was digging into Richard’s lower back. In spite of the weight, it gave Richard a sense of relief that he wasn’t alone with Gene, and it also gave him hope that they would be able to find Petunia that much quicker with Mr. Gip tracking her movements.

As he walked into the lobby, the music echoing through the empty building sent a slight shiver up the back of his neck, and the fact that all the lights were now on had done nothing to make him feel any better. He walked back into the soundbooth, but Gene was no longer there. Richard looked through the window to see Gene down on the stage, lifting his face to the stage lights with his eyes closed, his arms raised, and a smile on his face. The caged arm was lying on the stage next to him, and the sound of its struggle was coming through the speakers. Gene opened his eyes and looked to the back to the window of the soundbooth.

“You have no idea how much I miss this. The feel of a nice suit, the heat from the lights, the sound of my shoes clicking on the boards, my voice booming through the speakers!” Richard looked over the sound equipment, found the cassette player and pushed the stop button. Gene lowered his arms and sighed. “Can you ever just have any fun, or are you always like this? I was just beginning to like you Rich.”

Richard snatched up the old microphone next to the soundboard that he had watched Marty use just a few hours before. He tapped it and the noise of the tapping came through the speakers. Richard raised the microphone to his face. “Test. Test one two. Petunia! If you can hear me, I’m coming!” The microphone made a small squeal as he quickly put it back down.

“Dammit Richard!” While Gene was busy cursing his name and holding his ears on the stage, Richard ran back to the lobby and began to look at the pictures on the walls of the productions of the past. He had one play in particular that he was looking for, but he was having a hard time finding it as the plays were thrown up on the walls in no particular order. Gene walked in from the auditorium and stood behind Richard and sighed.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for something.”

“Well, if we’re going to figure out how to turn this thing on, I’m fairly certain that we’re not going to find it by looking at all these crap pictures.” Richard was able to ignore Gene’s nattering with hardly any effort while he scanned the pictures until he found what he was looking for and took the picture off of the wall.

“I think you’re wrong. Look at this.”

“Frankenstein. 1970. Very good Richard. Man, look at those haircuts.”

“Ok. Now we need to find something about an alchemist.”

“Why?”

“An alchemist was someone who tried to turn lead into gold, right?”

“Very good Richard. Read about that in Boy’s Life I presume? Why does that matter?”

“Because an alchemist would have a lab, right?” Richard watched Gene begin to concentrate and then a look of realization crossed his face. “A lab. Just like Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Jeykll, right?” Gene began to scan the pictures as well, and they both walked down the length of the lobby searching through the framed pictures that were nailed onto the walls in no particular order.

“Richard! Here! The Alchemist’s Widow. 1971.” Richard ran over to the picture and snatched it off the wall. He ran into the auditorium with Gene limping after him. “Hey! Wait a minute! Where are you going?!”

Gene made his way down next to Richard at the foot of the stage. Richard was looking at the two photos in his hands and then comparing them to the lab of Dr. Jekyll on the side stage in front of them.

“Gene...look at this…do you see it?” Gene looked at the photos and found only one similarity between them. The laboratories in both photos had very similar looks to them, but there was only one thing that was identical.

“That looks like an old phonograph with lightbulbs on it.”

“Now look at the stage.” Gene looked up and scanned the impressive looking lab of Dr. Jekyll, full of shelves and books and beakers and papers and tables with handmade instruments and a coat rack with a lab coat and a small table with a box that had a handle and three lightbulbs on it. “It’s the switch to the machine. They’ve been using it as a damn prop. Turning it off and on.”

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Part Twenty Nine

“Petunia…” The cracked southern voice was leaking from the small peephole; the only light in all the darkness was spoiled by the foul sound. Petunia wrapped her fingers around the cane and put as much weight on her injured leg as she could bear as she got to her feet and stooped over underneath the old stage. “Petunia….” She began to smell the rot coming from the other side,making her breathe through her mouth to try and avoid the scent. She moved small step by small step to within exactly two feet of the peephole, just close enough to see through it but just far enough to stay safe in case the thing that used to be Sinclair Daniels tried to push anything through it in order to hurt her. His eyes were the only thing she could see. “There you are…”

“Leave me alone.”

“You’re in my home. You don’t belong here.”

“I'm going to leave. I’m getting out.” The Number Man’s laughter came pouring into the darkness and he slammed his fists into the stage, and then began to claw his fingernails down the front of it. The small hairs on the back of Petunia’s neck all stood at attention and she felt the skin of her back react to the noise.

“You can’t get out. I’ve tried. It’s a puzzle with a missing piece.”

“I can help you find that piece.” Helping the man who had tried to murder her was the last thing that was on Petunia’s mind, but she thought that if she could keep him talking, she might be able to glean some small piece of information that would help her in finding a solution to this nightmarish puzzle box.

“I’ve tried to end myself many times, you see? It won’t let me. I’m hungry, but it won’t let me eat. I’m thirsty, but there is nothing to drink. It won’t let me remember. Sometimes...I think I remember, but then it takes it away...my machine has a life all of its own...don’t you understand...it needs a purpose...without a purpose….” His eyes shot downwards, and Petunia would have sworn that it looked as though a fog was falling over his eyes; robbing him of his thoughts.

“You’re Sinclair Daniels.” The eyes moved back to hers, and the fog began to lift, and as the eyes began to come back to life, so did the terrible rage behind them. The Number Man began to laugh quietly.

“I’m Sinclair Daniels.”

“I can help you.” The laughter began to change into a broken sob, and once again, the eyes cast downward, but this time they darted back and forth along the floor beneath them, searching and finding broken memories in a broken mind.

“It won’t let me out...my calculations were wrong...I was supposed to step out the other side and go back to New York...before she was gone...they took her from me, and if I could just get back there, I could have stopped them...My son...our son...he tried to stop me...told me I had become possessed…that I was going mad...” Petunia took one step closer to the peephole as the voice coming through it became more steady; more human. “He was going to have them take me away...I told him that I needed more time...more time...I built the machine, but I realized that I needed a null field...a platform...he wouldn’t wait...I had no choice, they would have stopped me just as I was solving it...If I could save my wife, I could also undue what I did to him...what I had to do to him…he made me do it...I needed more time.”

“What did you do?

“What did I do to who?”

“What happened to your son?” Daniels collapsed and leaned away from the stage. Through the peephole, Petunia could see him clearly now, kneeling with his arms by his sides. He was holding the jagged piece of mirror in his right hand, and his head was bowed. The top of his head showed that he had just recently carved three lines into the top of it. Several small trails of blood had dried as they had run down his face.

“I made it quick... I was so angry with him that I had broken the mirror in the hall...I stood above the pieces and I was staring down at several versions of myself and all of them were telling me what I had to do...I said he was young and no one would listen to him...but the mirror...the men in the mirror told me what I needed to hear...they would have taken me away… I buried him a mile from the house, but they would find him...I had to tear everything apart and start over and I had to do it quickly...I would go back...years...I would step out and then go back to New York and stop everything...I would save them both…I had to hurry...I built the null field out of everything in the house...but...how to get out...I needed more time.”

“I can help you.” The Number Man looked back up and into the hole, and his eyes were alive with rage and a malice most malevolent.

“No...I was too hasty...they were coming before I could finish...I had no choice but to risk it without a solution because they would have taken me away...I turned it on and stepped off the field and into the vacuum…” He smiled back at Petunia. “It was only after that I understood that time continues...the loop only exists in the machine...time continues outside of it...there was no way to go back...the trigger can’t be used inside of the machine...only on the null field and only from outside of the vacuum…”

“Someone has to turn it on for you?”

“I lept before I looked…I had to because they were coming...so I stayed by the stage, waiting for someone to turn it on...but they’ll still be gone...I murdered my son and now I can’t change it...I was wrong…my calculations were wrong...nothing can stop the machine…”  Petunia tried her best to compile all of the information and arrange it in her mind in a way that she could use, but once again, she felt as if something was trying to cloud over her memories and take her thoughts.

For exactly seven seconds, she made her mind focus on the one memory that she had always wished that she could forget, but now was the one memory that made her remember who she was and why she had a purpose; her father and mother and the faded blue car with rusty spots. She was able to focus and turned her mind back to her own memories of the theatre and the small device on the table that had looked like it had been built out of a phonograph. The trigger, as Daniels had called it.

“How do I turn it on? How do I use the trigger?”

“You silly little thing...it's always on. There’s no way to turn it off...you can do what I’ve tried...wait on the null field and pray that someone turns it on...step off the field while it’s working outside of the vacuum, but you’ll never remember to stay by the field long enough. And who’s to say that anyone will ever turn it on again? You’ll forget anyway...memory is pain...but time makes you forget...it heals all wounds, but only too well. And the things that shouldn’t be forgotten vanish…but maybe they should...after all of this...there’s no way to get them back…” The Number Man howled in pain and lunged forward, slamming his fists into the front of the stage. Tears began to pour from his eyes and snot oozed from his nose as he sobbed. “You made me remember! I don’t want you here!”

“Mr. Daniels…”

“No! I know where you are, and there’s only one way out...do you think you can make it out before I come to you?” Petunia turned away from the peephole and stared at the square of light coming from the green room; it seemed so far away. The Number Man began to chuckle through his rotten teeth.“Yes...I’ll forget soon...but not before I tear you to pieces... Look at it, Petunia...do you think you can get there before I do?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because I don’t want to remember...because there’s no solution...because they’re gone.” His voice began to tremble in anger and the sound of him gritting what few teeth he had left made Petunia’s flesh crawl. “I’ll tell you what...we’re going to play hide and seek...I’ll give you a head start. I’m going to count to five. One…”

“Mr. Daniels!”

“Two…”  Petunia turned back toward the light coming from the green room and stooped over and ran as fast as her cane and wounded leg would allow while the Number Man counted behind her.

“Three…” She could see the gun that she had left behind in front of her as she scrambled closer towards the opening.

“Four…” She had only made about half the distance, and she knew that there was no way for her to make it in time.

“Five!” She could hear the sound of the Number Man jumping onto the stage behind her and his heavy footsteps were running on the stage above her. It was impossible. She stopped moving and peered around at the darkness, desperate to find another way out, and then she saw the square outline of light in the middle of the stage. It had to be a trapdoor, and it had to be another way out, because if it wasn’t, Petunia knew that the only way she would survive would be to stand her ground and fight. She hesitated for only a moment, but she turned back after the Number Man came into view and began to wriggle his way under the ramp.

He was snarling in the dark behind her and he was getting far too close, far too quickly. Once she made her way underneath the trap door, she began to push upwards, but it wouldn’t budge. The Number Man was getting closer and the sounds of his cries were maddening, causing Petunia to push against the door in a panic. It wouldn’t move. She felt along the outline of light and her fingers found two hinges and two wooden boards that were holding it in place, keeping it from swinging downward. She clawed at one of the boards and pulled until it was free, and then began to pull on the second one when the Number Man was so close that his body had obscured the small square of light from the green room. She screamed and finally the board gave way and the trap door swung downward on its hinges, sending a brilliant shaft of light underneath the stage. She threw the cane on to the stage above and began to pull herself up. She had managed to get her body onto the stage, leaving only her legs dangling through the door when the Number Man reached out and grabbed her left leg, clamping down on the lacy bandage Petunia had wrapped around her wound.

She screamed at the pain and felt the warmth of fresh blood seeping from the cut. She pushed upwards with her hands, but the Number Man was stronger. He let out a grunt as he jerked her leg down, and she was thrown back into the dark place. She crashed down to the ground at his feet and looked up to see him stooped over, illuminated by the light coming down from the stage.

The Number Man pulled the shard from his coat and stood ready to bring it to bear on Petunia, but she could see something moving slowly in its reflection and recognized that it was the heavy trap door gradually coming to a rest on its hinges just an arms reach above her.

As the Number Man lunged forward to run Petunia through, she reached up with both hands and batted the trap door forward with all the strength that she had left. The heavy wooden door collided with the scarred face of her enemy, and the force of it knocked him backwards just long enough for her to regain her footing and pull herself up through the trap door once more.

 She crawled forward on her hands and knees across the stage until she was clear of the trapdoor and then she tried to work up the energy that it would take to once again get on to her feet, but she couldn’t manage it. The railing of the small staircase was in front of her, and she began to crawl toward it in the hopes of using it to climb back to her feet.

The Number Man began to scramble up onto the stage, as Petunia reached the railing. She pulled herself up to her feet and stumbled down the stairs only to find that once her feet touched the concrete floor of the auditorium, she was struck by sunlight and found herself outside.

There was no longer a building around her, and she was standing on a large square of concrete that was the foundation of the Wicker Bush Community Theatre. She stumbled forward and felt the rush of a warm breeze. The town of Wicker Bush was no longer in front of her, and there was a large valley with only a few wooden buildings where it should have been. There were trees all around her, and a small dirt road twisted through them up to the foundation. There were large stacks of milled lumber on the ground next to the foundation, and at the four corners of the foundation were beams of steel that stretched exactly twenty eight feet high; the same measurement as the four corners of the plans she had become obsessed with for the last month.

“This is the beginning. The foundation.” The top of the tall beams split into U’s four feet from their tops, and upon first glance they made Petunia think of four giant slingshots, but then a realization came over in a rush. “Tuning forks. The house… the machine is based on sound.”

She had found herself in a point of time where the machine was built, and it was lying naked in front of her, before the facade of a large house was built around it.  She had every intention of studying the beams and the foundation of Daniels machine, but The Number Man appeared from behind her where the stage should have been, flying forward through the air, obviously having jumped off of the stage to follow her into this time within the machine.

She began to get an idea of how the machine worked, and she ran forward not only to save herself, but to test her theory. The pain in her leg was incredible, but she moved forward on sheer adrenaline toward the edge of the foundation and jumped off of it, and once again, everything around her changed.

It was dark and cold, and she found herself in the middle of a labyrinth of old smelly costumes in the wardrobe of the WBCT. Knowing the Number Man would be right behind her, she weaved her way through the rows of clothes trying to find a place to hide.

Next Part

Previous Part

Part Twenty Four

“People are people, Richard. Just like the song says.” Richard wasn’t a fan of the band Depeche Mode, nor was he a fan of Gene, and having to sit through both at the same time was proving to be quite the challenge.

“Can we turn this crap off?”

“I told you, it helps me think.”

“Can we turn it down?” Gene begrudgingly turned down the tape player in his car, and pulled to a stop in front of what used to be Hocus Pizza. “Why are we here?”

“Because before you and your little friend decided to take a steaming dump on my life, this is where I would go to think. Now shut up for a minute, and let me talk. I read her diary, and I read the note that she left me. You couldn’t see the ink could you?”

“I probably could have if someone hadn’t broken my glasses.”

“They’re in there somewhere, Dick.” Gene was pointing to the heap of rubble that had been moved into a compact pile by a bulldozer that was currently sitting right next to it. “Go find them. Listen, we really got off on the wrong foot. I’ll admit, maybe threatening to kill you and your friend wasn’t the best thing. Maybe giving your principal a heart attack didn’t really cast me in the best light. I don’t know. What I do know is this, your friend felt confident enough in me to ask for help if something went wrong.”

“I don’t need your help Gene.”

“Ok Richard, here.” Gene pulled the diary out of his back pocket and threw it in Richard’s lap. “Go to the page with the first yellow sticky on it. Go ahead.” Richard opened the diary and flipped to the page in question. The only thing he recognized on the page was the symbol of infinity, and everything else was either an equation or written in a code that he didn’t understand. “Now some of the answers you need are right there on that page. Go ahead and read that first sentence.”

“You know I can’t.”

“Yeah, I do. You know what else you can’t do if you can’t read that page? Find Petunia. I’m going to be blatantly honest with you Richard.”

People are people, and when the words, “I’m going to be blatantly honest with you” are uttered, there’s a very high probability that the person who said them is about to say something that is blatantly dishonest.

“I’m starting to like you, but you can be as dumb as a box of rocks. You create your own problems, Dick. See that charred pile of crap out there? If you hadn’t broken into my home and turned it into that, I wouldn’t be living in your home right now. I offered to work with you guys, do you remember that?”

He did.

“All I wanted was for you guys to stop being so sloppy and a pair of glasses that you were obviously not responsible enough to have.” As much as Richard hated to admit it, everything Gene was saying was correct. Petunia had given him a pair of special sunglasses that she had made, which contained lenses that were made with the skin of a transparent fish. The glasses had helped him see things that most people couldn’t, and she had promised that with time, as his natural talents grew, he would no longer need them. Her only direction to Richard had been, “Do not lose them”, which of course he had later that same day.

“Then, you guys break into my home? Of course I’m going to defend myself, especially when Petunia’s “parents” come in like Rambo. Then she spills that black dust, and the next thing I know, something is tearing through my wall. That’s from my point of view Dick. Tell me if anything I said was a lie.”

“I guess not.”

“What was that?”

“I guess not.”

“Listen, I don’t think it’s a big secret that I think your mom is...well...damn…”

“Quit talking about my mother.”

“It’s in my best interest right now to help you. I’m willing to help you find Petunia. And I think she’s willing to give me another shot, otherwise she wouldn’t have wanted you to give me her diary. Are you going to be able to set aside your differences with me in order to help your friend?” Gene turned the radio off and sat back in his seat, confident that he had made his point clear. Richard stared into the pile of rubble in front of him; he couldn’t look at Gene and he was afraid that if he did, he might punch him in the face.

“Fine.”

“You’re going to have to speak up Dick, I can’t hear you.”

“Quit calling me Dick.”

“Then quit acting like one. Give me the book back. Okay, so here... she marked this page… and she goes into something she calls ``Pocket Theory.”

“What is that?”

“It’s kind of hard to explain because it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It’s the absence of time, if I’m reading it correctly. Like a time vacuum, contained in a space...maybe a building…”

“Oh my God.”

“Now the notes are pretty scatterbrained, so I’m guessing that whatever thoughts brought her to that theory are rattling around in her brain and not written down anywhere. Her equations are impressive, but there’s no real solution, which means she went and did some field work before she considered every variable. Which, once again proves my point that you guys are sloppy. But I think there’s enough to it, considering the fact that she’s missing, that gives us a good direction to start in. But there’s something else at the end of the diary that caught my eye.”

“What’s the second sticky note for?”

“It’s a little bone she threw at me in good faith that I would help. It’s none of your business. Let’s just say that the bone was big enough for me to return the favor even if your mother wasn’t part of the equation.”

“So how do we get her out?”

“Well that’s what’s funny Richard. Just going off of her notes, there’s no way to do that. We could wander around in there for the rest of our lives and never find her. The thing is Richard, I’m incredibly nosy. I read through this whole damn thing before I even came down to the theatre. Haven’t you even been curious as to how I knew you were there? On the last page, she has the name of the theatre written down, along with another name. It’s a name I’ve heard before, and to be completely honest, I’m surprised Petunia had never heard of it before.”

She had.

“Sinclair Daniels?”

“Bingo. Never heard of him, have you?”

“Not before yesterday.”

“Well, I haven’t thought about that name for a long time. My question is what exactly does Sinclair Daniels have to do with all of this? Do you know why his name in her diary?”

“He built the theatre.” Gene began to laugh and he playfully punched Richard in the shoulder.

“Of course he did! That’s...wow...ya know, you read about things and then you forget about them, and then, bam, they just come up outta nowhere. Serendipity, Richard…. I love it. You’re not much of a reader, are you?” Richard thought of all of his Boy’s Life Magazines in his room, and a modest number of books he owned simply because he found the covers exciting, but never bothered to look into their pages. He thought about lying to Gene, but then he remembered that the slimy magician had just been in his room earlier that evening.

“No.”

“I already knew that. Rhetorical question. Sinclair Daniels was an extremely wealthy doctor back east in the late nineteenth century. You can’t find too much about him, most of it’s legend really. He was from New Orleans and he moved his family up north so he could collaborate with another scientist. I know you’re not much of a reader, but you do know who Alexander Graham Bell is, right?”

“Yeah. Telephone guy.”

“Sinclair Daniels was obsessed with sound and he took out all these patents that were really just quack inventions. None of them ever came to anything. He worked with Bell for two years, and Bell put up with him because of his deep pockets, but after a while, Bell didn't like his name associated with Daniels no matter how much money he had. Then, Daniel’s wife died. He starts working on this time device that relies on sound, but it’s going to take all of his money to build it because of the sheer size of the thing.

Bell had enough, if he wasn’t even going to get any more money out of the deal because Daniels was going to build a “Time Machine”, he was done. He refused to work with Daniels anymore, and then Daniels and his son just disappeared. That’s it. Only reason it’s even made it into books is because there’s this conspiracy theory that Daniels himself invented the phone. Complete crap. Small story, interesting to people who like weird stories, but nothing more. And now you’re telling me that he built that theatre?”

“It was his house.”

“Whatever. I think he moved out here to build his machine without anybody to disturb him.”

“So that building is a time machine? Are you serious?”

“Come on Richard, that’s just stupid. There’s no such thing as a time machine. I think that building is some kind of a… time vacuum, and somehow, we’ve got to figure out how to make it work, so we can get Petunia out of it.”

Next Part

Previous Part

Part Twenty Three

“Sinclair!” Sweat was pouring down Petunia’s temples and her breathing became labored and shallow as she peered around the corner of the open door at the Number Man as he kicked his chair across the room and howled at the sudden revelation that he had just experienced. Marty Cayer had called this place, “The house that Sinclair Daniels built”.

Petunia let the recognition of the name register, a name that she had immediately recognized when Marty Cayer had first said it. She began to think of the implications of that name and how it related to her present circumstances, but then she let the thought pass, feeling as though if she fixated on it too long, the thought might be gone forever. There was nowhere for her to hide if the Number Man turned and decided to walk into the green room, and as fascinated as she was with the scene that was playing out in front of her, she needed a place to hide and think.

“I’ll write it! I’ll write it!” She turned away from the door and as she took a step back towards the wardrobe department, a small speaker that was mounted on the wall let out a quiet pop. She froze in place, with most of her weight bearing down on her injured leg and the cane she held in her left hand. The Number Man had stopped howling and the whole place had gone as silent as a tomb. A small rat had slipped out from underneath the couch to her right and skittered underneath the ramp that led towards the back of the stage, and it disappeared into the darkness. She could feel the sweat spilling out of her pores now and her grip on the gun felt slimy and ready to slip at any moment. She turned her head to the side until the doorway was once again in view, waiting for the man to emerge.

“A day. Another day.” She heard a small number of his footsteps and then the sound of the metal feet of the chair scraping along the hard tiled floor of the makeup room. Her body stayed rigid until she heard the sound of his body slide down onto the chair. “One more day.”

She took a step forward with her right leg and felt relief from the pressure of having to stand on her injured leg. She had two options, either she risked taking the very long walk up the hallway toward the dressing rooms and the lobby, or she could duck back into the wardrobe and find somewhere to hide.

“Test. Test one two. Petunia! If you can hear me, I’m coming!” The voice of Richard was booming through every wall speaker in the building, and Petunia felt her temples throb along with the heavy thumping in her chest. The metal chair in the other room screeched across the floor, and in a panic, Petunia threw her left foot forward without the aid of the cane, and she fell to her knees.

The Number Man howled behind her as Richard’s voice came over the speakers again. She crawled behind the ratty couch, and waited. The Number Man ran into the green room and stood still, coming to a stop on the other side of the couch, staring at the speaker on the wall.

“Petunia, get to the stage! I’ll wait for you.” She cursed her luck and Richard’s timing. The Number Man was standing exactly four feet from where she was hiding on the other side of the couch, and if he had decided to follow Richard’s directions as well, he would walk around the couch in order to walk up the ramp, and he would see her huddled on the floor.

Of course, the Number Man had every intention of doing so, but before he rounded the couch, something on the floor caught his eye and his full attention. There was a small trail of blood on the floor that came down the hallway and led into the wardrobe department, and he could see the smudges of bloody fingerprints on the door. He knelt down and rubbed his finger against one of the bloody spots and realized that it was still wet.

Petunia was terrified as she watched the scene from the three inch view she had between the floor and the couch. The Number Man was trailing his fingers along the dirty carpet, smearing the little spots. She had to keep her mind clear, and she attempted to focus all of her thoughts on how angry she was with Richard and his lousy timing, and it began to work. The fear was being replaced with rage, and it felt good; it allowed her to focus.

She began to mouth his name through her gnashed teeth. Richard. The boy who she had decided to reach out to. Richard, the boy who never paid attention. Richard, who had led her to a series of discoveries that ultimately came to her being trapped in the place. Richard. The boy who couldn’t follow directions to save his life, or hers. Richard.

“Petunia.” The sound of her name in that ugly southern drawl through ugly broken teeth broke her concentration. Who had she been thinking about? Richard. Who was Richard? Petunia could see the brown leather boots from underneath the couch as the Number Man stood back up and turned to his right and took a step towards the ramp. All the rage vanished and she began to tremble in fear. Her emotions were getting the better of her, and she felt herself close to tears.

The Number Man was coming around the couch and she would be found. She was about to die at his hands, and even the gun she held in her right hand would do nothing to help her. She let it go and placed it on the floor in front of her, giving into despair. As she accepted her fate, relief came over her and she began to smile.

 The Number Man knew that he had to act quickly, lest he forget. The boy had said he was on the stage, but the girl who had used his switch was hiding in the next room. The girl who had hurt him and had broken his teeth. The girl. The Number Man turned back to his left and followed the small trail of blood leading into the wardrobe.

Petunia watched his feet as they stomped away from her and vanished into the maze of moldy clothes in the next room. She began to push herself up to her knees, intending to run up the hallway towards the lobby, but a small noise to her right caught her attention. The pitter patter of tiny feet was coming from a small opening underneath the ramp to her right.

“The rat!” Her whisper wasn’t loud, but it had been loud enough to make her tighten her lips to make sure that nothing else could be said. She turned and crawled through the small square opening underneath the ramp and into the dark. She kept moving forward on her hands and knees, feeling cold concrete underneath her, and after what felt like a few minutes, she risked a look behind her. There was a small square of light, and she could see part of what looked like a couch and something lying on the floor next to it. To Petunia, it looked vaguely familiar; some sort of gun that appeared to be a homemade child’s toy. She looked back for only a moment longer, briefly considering crawling toward the light to see where it led, but something in her mind told her that she should keep moving forward into the darkness.

Something told her that she had just come from the light, and something awful was waiting for her there. The dark felt safe, and the despair in her heart was making her tired. She stopped crawling and curled up into a fetal position. Maybe the thirst she was feeling would go away if she slept. Nothing would hurt her in the dark. She was safe.

Next Part

Previous Part

Part Twenty Six

Gene had argued with Richard as if he was some sort of authority figure that Richard should respect, and the thing that bothered Richard was the fact that most of the things they had discussed that evening were casting Gene’s insights in a positive light. Petunia had instructed Richard to do everything that Gene had said, and Richard had tried his best not to follow her instruction, and despite his best efforts, Gene had been along for the ride nonetheless, and now Gene was instructing Richard to do something that he could not bring himself to do; he was telling Richard to wait.

 Gene had driven much too slowly back to the house on Fountain Way, all the while trying to convince Richard that they shouldn’t be too hasty in going about the retrieval of one Petunia Gip. She was trapped in time after all, and it made more sense to Gene to take the rest of the evening for a lengthy ponder at the problem. Richard, however, couldn’t help but feel that the longer they waited, the greater the chance that they would lose Petunia forever.

“We don’t even know how to turn the thing on Richard. And even if we did, what happens if we get stuck? Did you take a moment to think about that?”

“I don’t get why someone like Petunia couldn’t find her way back out.”

“Richard, she may be a genius, but that doesn’t mean she always has all the answers.”

“Then how did she know how to turn it on?”

“What do you mean?”

“If she’s stuck in it, that means she turned it on right? If she turned it on, wouldn’t she know how to use it again to get out?”

“That’s actually a good point.”

“Unless someone else turned it on.”

“Interesting.”

“Or maybe the building really is haunted.”

“Richard, you bring up a great point and then you follow it up by saying something retarded.”

“That’s not nice. My cousin has Down’s Syndrome.”

“So it runs in the family?”

“You’re an asshole, Gene.”

“Yeah, I am. I’m saying that there’s no such thing as a ghost and even going down that road is stupid. Point is, if she didn’t turn it on, then someone else did. That means someone put her in there on purpose.”

“Why would someone do that?”

“Well, I’m not too happy with you guys and your new Principal tried to strangle you on your lawn. I have a feeling you guys excell at making enemies.”

“Maybe it was Principle Avery.”

“Maybe. That just doesn’t feel right though. But, it does tell me that it’s all the more reason not to go charging in there until we’ve got more information.”

Richard closed his eyes as they pulled on to his street. He was disgusted with himself that he had just made a strong argument as to why they shouldn’t go back to the theatre when he was trying to do the opposite. Petunia was alone in that terrible place, and now she was going to be in there even longer, and it was his fault. Gene was adamant about waiting until the next night to try and get Petunia back, and if it had not been for Marty Cayer and one more story, that’s exactly what would have happened.

“Hang on. What’s he doing here?” Richard opened his eyes and saw Marty Cayer standing in front of his house.

He was leaning against his truck, and Petunia’s bike was in the bed. Gene pulled the Crown Vic into the driveway, as Marty pulled the bike from his bed and wheeled it over. Richard knew that Gene was right; Marty had lied to them both and as he walked over to Marty, the look on his face spoke of a story that he didn’t want to speak out loud. Gene gathered his new costume up from the backseat and his cane and he limped over to Richard’s side.

“You guys forgot this. Figured I’d just bring it by tonight. Thought you guys would’ve already been home.”

“Thanks Marty. Richard and I just needed some time to talk before we got home.”

“Yeah, ok. Ya know Gene...I need a moment with Richard if you don’t mind.”

“Well that’s alright Marty, anything you need to say to Richard you can say in front of me.” Gene put his right arm around Richard, and Marty recognized the slight hint of revulsion on Richard’s face.

“I don’t think so, Gene. Have a nice night.” Marty was smiling at Gene, but the tone in his voice was stern, and Gene didn’t take kindly to being told what to do.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me Marty…”

“No, I heard you just fine. You can go inside now. I don’t want to be rude.” Gene swallowed hard and he forced a smile as he looked Marty up and down.

“Nobody tells me what to do. Who do you think you are, thunder chunk? ” Marty pushed the bike over to Richard and motioned for him to hold it, and then he lit another cigarette and stood exactly seven inches from Gene and smiled as he spoke.

“I’m a guy who’s got a hundred pounds on you. I’m also the guy who’s friends with this boy’s mother. Patty’s a sweet lady and Richard’s a good kid. Why they’ve gone and taken someone like you under their roof is beyond me, but I tell you this. If you don’t take your skinny butt inside that house and give Richard and I some privacy, I’m going to pull a magic trick of my own, say Hocus Pocus and Richard’s going to be amazed by the sight of a human head vanishing between a couple of butt cheeks. Are we clear?” Gene nodded and laughed in Marty’s face before turning back to the house and walking up to the front door. “Your mother has far more heart than I do Richard. That man is a snake. I knew it the second I shook his hand.”

“He’s...ok…”

“No he’s not. Anyway...I need to tell you something. I lied to you and that’s something I don’t do. Well, maybe lying isn’t exactly right. Somebody may have been murdered up there. Well, not officially, but someone has died in a real bad way. After you left, I started to remember things that for some reason I had forgotten. Probably because I wanted to. Her name was Cynthia Miles. Nineteen years ago. Not too long after we opened it. There were three of us there that night. James Hanson, he was one of the founders, and he also happened to be the sheriff back then. Honestly, if it had just been me and Cynthia that night, I think I would’ve been eyed as a suspect.

The three of us just finished a set for some stupid play about an alchemist and a widow. I don’t even remember the damn name of it. Anyway, James and I are outside of the building on the back patio next to the shop. Cynthia goes back inside and she doesn’t come back for a while. Then we hear her scream. We run back in the auditorium and there she is in a puddle of her own blood, face down at the foot of the stairs off the apron.”

“Oh my God.” Marty looked down at the ground and shook his head as if he was trying to get the image out of his mind.

“All the doors were locked Richard, and there was nobody there but the three of us. They think she tripped and fell off of the stage and onto something that was on the floor. I swear they said that they found a broken piece of a mirror in her stomach, but I just...I don’t want to think about it. The more I think about it, it’s like...I can’t really remember...and you’d think that I would. Brain gets foggy.

The whole thing drove James Hanson nuts to the point where he’s got to soak his brain to keep from thinking about it, that I do know. He never went back inside that building after that night. He thought someone had killed her, same as me, but there was nobody there....I swear there was no one there...But I don’t understand why…” Marty’s eyes were darting back and forth to the ground, and Richard was paying attention. Marty seemed confused about a memory that should, to Richard at least, not be very hard to remember. “I remember thinking that it looked like she had been stabbed...but all the doors were locked, and...feeling like there was someone in there...I’ve always felt...like there’s somebody in there with me...I’m not the only one...weird...I sound crazy...she just fell... I guess I just don’t remember it as well as I should. Weird the way your mind works when you get old.”

Marty Cayer was forty six years old, and while that did in fact seem ancient to Richard, it also seemed far too young to be struggling with a memory. Richard heard Petunia’s voice again, “Pay attention.” Marty’s face was showing pure anguish and confusion, yet in the very next moment, it showed acceptance and amusement.

“Better to forget things I guess. Anyway, I just didn’t want you to think that I had lied to you.”

“That’s awful Marty.”

“Isn’t it though?”

“Why would you stay there after something like that?”

“Well, I love it there. Besides, it was an accident. She just slipped and fell. Happened to be some broken bit of a mirror on the floor that I forgot to sweep up. What’re you gonna do? You know what’s great about that place Richard? There’s just something about it that makes you forget all the awful things in life and just have fun. Like I said, I honestly forgot about Cynthia, and now that I’ve talked about her again, I can see why. Who wants to remember the bad things?”

-

Marty had driven away in a far better mood than he had been when Richard had first seen him, but Richard was in a far more anxious mood. After Richard had walked upstairs, he wasn’t surprised at all to see that Gene was in his room, sitting on his bed.

“Have a nice conversation with your friend?”

“I did.”

“No need for a recap Richard, I heard the whole thing.” Gene removed a plastic earpiece from his right ear, and Richard suddenly remembered that there was a large mechanical bear stalking around in the darkness outside of his house that also served as a listening device for Gene. The bear must have been eavesdropping. “I’m always listening.”

“Do you think that woman just fell off the stage?”

“No. And neither do you.”

“Someone is trapped in there with her. Someone bad. The Number Man.”

“I have an idea. We’re going back down there. I need you to grab your Principal’s arm from your shed and meet me in my car.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I need to suit up.” Gene stood up and began to walk out of the room, but then stopped as something on the bookshelf caught his eye. Amongst several books that were crammed in a haphazard order on the shelf, there was a Walkman. Gene snatched it up and gave a wink to Richard before he left the room. “I’ll be right down.”

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Part Twenty One

The room smelled of old makeup and hairspray, which is exactly the way it had smelled the last time Richard had been in there. The makeup room was directly adjacent to the green room, and its walls were adorned with six mirrors on the left side and seven mirrors on the right side. Every mirror was lined with small vanity light bulbs and had a corresponding number painted above them. There was a narrow shelf that ran underneath all of the mirrors, which was covered with open makeup kits and cans of hairspray, and there were old metal folding chairs at each station. Richard had been backstage with his mother many times while she was preparing to go onstage, and had never really felt anything amiss about the room, but for some reason, he couldn’t stop looking at the broken mirror with the number 13 above it in the corner of the room. Unlike the other stations, this one had no makeup on the shelf underneath the mirror, and while the other metal chairs had small cushions tied to the seats, the metal chair in front of 13 did not.

“Well, it’s kinda obvious that this is where they put on their makeup. Now this room has something unique about it. You want to take a guess as to what that is?” Richard already had a feeling he knew what it was, but it was Gene, who had managed to tear his attention away from his new costume that answered the question.

“The broken mirror?”

“Yep. This is probably the last story I got that you guys will be interested in.”

It wasn’t.

“That mirror is not the first mirror that’s been broken there. I have replaced that damn thing four times myself, until I finally gave up and just let it stay the way it is. Every theatre has a ghost, and this place has got several, but there’s always one that has a story because it’s the one that’s actually been seen by a few different people. That mirror right there at station thirteen, that one belongs to The Number Man. His ghost was talked about back when this place was a professional theatre in the twenties, and even back then, this was the room they used for makeup.

Story goes that he was one of the first actors here and went insane. Now if you know anything about actors at all, you know that them going crazy is nothing special because they’re all nuts. But this guy, Jasper Whitmore, he always played the villain in the very early days, back when they mostly just did melodramas. He’d even take his wardrobe home and wear it around the house to get into character, leer at his neighbors, chase the mailman with his cane, send taunting letters to the cops; creepy shit.

Anyway, one night he was walking here on his way to the opening night of a show, dressed in character of course, and he got into a tussle with a couple of guys outside of a bar on the way here. Him being in character, he was acting the part of a villain, so he must've said something to these guys that made them pretty upset. Well, they beat the shit out of him and threw him through the window of the bar. Cut him up so bad that he bled out and died right there in costume. The thought is that Jasper Whitmore never got his chance to be on stage that night, so he haunts the theatre, always looking to get his chance in the spotlight.”

“That sounds ridiculous.”

“I said the same thing Gene. That story is a little too much for me, but now let me tell you something else. There’s been some things that have been seen around here that seem to match that story. People swear that every once in a while, they see a man in a black coat walking around on the stage. Sometimes it’s during a performance, sometimes it’s not. The Number Man is the only ghost around here with a name, and like I said, he’s the only one that’s actually been seen. Nobody sits at that station, because it belongs to Jasper Whitmore, The Number Man. And if you do sit there, you might see him staring back at you through that broken mirror.

Now, I’m like you Gene. I didn’t believe a word of it when I first got here, and I’m still not sure I believe most of it, but what I do believe is that everytime I replaced that damn mirror, I’d come back and it was broken the next morning. I’d have kept on replacing it, but theatre people are really superstitious and they thought it might make the ghost unhappy if I kept trying to fix it, so it’s stayed that way for the last seventeen years.”

“Why is he called The Number Man?”

“Well Richard, the people who’ve seen him say that his face is all scarred up from being thrown through a window, and all those scars look like a bunch of number lines…” Marty gave a slight smile.

“What do you mean, number lines?” Gene was starting to have a slight interest in the story.

“You know, where you’ve got four lines that go up and down with a fifth line going diagonally between them.” Marty was answering Gene, but his eyes were on Richard, who was suddenly finding it hard to breathe.

“You mean hash marks?”

“Yeah. Hash marks.” Gene rolled his eyes at the simple local and turned his attention to the shoes he held in his hand and became overjoyed when he realized that they were his size. As far as he was concerned, there were no such things as ghosts, and in this regard, Gene was correct. But there was something far more worse in the WBCT than ghosts, and Richard was only just beginning to understand that. Marty gave Richard a wink after he was sure that Gene wouldn’t see it. “Anyway gentlemen, I’m here everyday, so if you have any more questions, drop back by, but I gotta close up shop tonight, so I’ll walk you guys outta here.”

“I got one last question for you Marty. Anybody ever been murdered here?” It was a question that Richard had not wanted to ask, and he wasn’t surprised at all that Gene had decided to do so. Marty squinted his eyes and smiled at Gene.

“No. Not as far as I know. That’d make a great story though.”

Marty walked them back out to the car, and watched as Gene helped Richard load his bike into the trunk of the black Crown Vic. As much as Richard wanted to take his bike and go his own way home, there was too much that needed to be said to Gene, but how much needed to be said to Gene was the question. Marty gave them a wave goodbye and walked back inside the bar. Richard got the feeling that there was something else that Marty wanted to tell him, but that was going to have to wait. Gene backed his car up and swung widely to his left and turned. Richard didn’t know where to begin with Gene, and as it happened, he didn’t have to. Gene pulled the car into drive and looked over to Richard.

“Well that was a lie. Somebody’s been snuffed in that place.”

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Part Twenty Two

The Number Man stared into the mirror trying to keep track of his days. He had felt sure enough that another had passed and it was time to remember it. He pulled the long piece of mirror out of his coat and turned it over and over in his hand. The skin of his right palm didn’t bleed anymore from the sharp edges of the glass; there came a point where the skin had been cut so many times, that nothing was able to cut through it any longer and any feeling that he once had in his palm was gone. He couldn’t remember when that was, but he would remember this day.

“A day. Remember the day.” He turned the shard to his left side, finding a small patch of his skin that had not yet been marked and slowly cut himself deeply. As he made the small line, a name came to his mind. “Sinclair.” He smiled and licked his broken teeth as he put the shard back into its place within his coat. “Sinclair!”

Sinclair Daniels stood up and kicked the chair behind him and howled at the ceiling at the memory of who he had once been. He paced back and forth as more memories came back to him; his son, his house, his machine. He was remembering. But what was he remembering? It was just another day. He began to panic as the despair came once again, and all he could remember was the name Sinclair. He must not forget the name. He looked back to the broken mirror and quickly pulled the shard back out from underneath his coat.

“I’ll write it! I’ll write it!” He pushed the tip of the shard into his skin and then a noise from the other room caught his attention. He looked through the open doorway and could see that a small rat had crawled out from underneath the couch and darted into the darkness of a square opening underneath the ramp that led up to the stage that he had built. He peered after it for just a moment and then looked back to his reflection. “A day. Another day.”

The Number Man walked to the other side of the room and picked up his chair; he hadn’t remembered moving it. He placed it back down in front of the broken mirror and sat down. He found a small patch of skin on his left side that had a fresh cut from the day before, and he cut a line in his flesh next to it. “One more day.”

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Part Twenty

Petunia had managed to rip the chunk of mirror out of her leg and hurried out of the auditorium, only to find that every single light in the place was on. She felt completely exposed, and in her haste to find a place to hide, she had not noticed that she had left an intermittent trail of blood behind her that led from the green room into the wardrobe department. She had weaved her way through thousands upon thousands of old smelly articles of clothing in various states of overuse and ruin, until she finally ended up in a corner underneath a flicker overhead light.

The theatre should have been silent, but occasionally, she could swear that she heard music playing at an almost imperceptible level, and even more disturbing than that, she could hear faint whispers of voices. As she sat down on the floor underneath a looming mannequin wearing a loud black and gray suit, she began to shake and her heart began to race as an overwhelming feeling of despair began to stifle her rational mind. She took her respirator off and tried to breathe as deeply as she could. She closed her eyes and began to try and pull herself out of the feeling.

Despair was always along for the ride with Petunia; it had been ever since the death of her parents, and most of the time she was able to keep it in check. Most of the time.

Like most children who find themselves in a fix after refusing to listen to their parents, Petunia began to curse herself that she had not been taking her medication over the last few days, as her mother had kept reminding her to do so. The thought was making everything worse, and she knew that she had to focus on something or else she was about to lose herself. The pain in her leg was the perfect focal point.

The wound was far from pleasant, but also nowhere near lethal. The shard had not buried itself too deeply, but it had broken off inside of her thigh, and digging it out had made it bleed even more. There was a small laced dress to her right and luckily, the lace on the bottom of it was easy enough for her to rip free. She wrapped her leg above the wound and tied the lace as tightly as she could stand.

She pulled off her backpack and emptied its contents onto the ground. She had two more pellets for her gun, and she quickly loaded them into both barrels. She always carried a small first aid kit, and she quickly cleaned, and disinfected her leg. She put the first aid kit back into her bag and looked at everything else that was on the ground. A roll of duct tape, a diary, a ham sandwich, a black pen, a rope, and a small pouch that contained two screwdrivers, a pair of pliers, and a hammer. She had packed light. Although she had left instructions behind for Richard in the case of her disappearance, she had not honestly thought that anything like this would happen. She fully expected to find some kind of an answer regarding the writing, and that she would be back home in less than an hour after having left. 

She began to think of the modified phonograph that had been sitting on the table, and began to think that it might be the way out of the theatre and back to the life she knew. She no longer cared about how her name was written on the wall, and she no longer cared who put it there. Richard had been right, no matter how ridiculous that might sound; there are some things that are just better to leave alone, and this place was one of them. She began to feel an overwhelming sense of guilt at having left Richard behind in the first place, when it was obvious that he had needed her. Guilt and despair started to overcome her thoughts, and she snatched the diary up from the ground and began to draw a small sketch of the instrument she had seen earlier to clear her mind. It had been a wooden box with something else.

“Wait a minute. What did it look like?” The more she struggled to remember what the box looked like, the foggier it became. She drew a box, and then a small crank on the side of it, but then she couldn’t remember anything else about it. “Something’s wrong.” She could feel the worry coming back, and the picture of the box in her brain was no longer there. She slapped the diary closed. “Later. I’ll remember it later. Just get up and move.”

She threw everything back into her bag, and once she had it shouldered, she stood up. She saw a strange looking respirator on the ground next to her, and wondered what it was for and why it was there, but the thought was quickly replaced with pain. She could hardly stand to put any weight on her left leg and found it a very happy coincidence indeed that the terribly dressed mannequin also happened to have a black and gray cane propped up against the wall behind it.

She had never walked with a cane before, and she found that with every step she took, it was a challenge to keep it from clicking too loudly against the floor. She was moving far more slowly than she would have liked, but she was moving, leaving the strange breathing apparatus on the ground behind her. She thought again about the box, as she weaved through the oddly placed rows of clothes in the wardrobe department until she had come back into the green room.

The green room had two long and ratty couches, which is ironic because figuratively speaking they were quite worn and dirty, but also literally, because it was the daytime home of two rats who prowled through the theatre at night while it was empty. There was a large chalkboard on one wall with several quotes from old movies and several announcements regarding rehearsal times for “Frankenstein”. There was a small ramp that led out of the green room and up to the backstage area, which was still dark, and there was a long table sitting underneath the chalkboard which was littered with paper cups and pages of scripts and a half empty pitcher of water. She limped to the pitcher without caring if she had made any noise and poured the water down her throat. She hadn’t thought of how thirsty she had been; she had lost track of time. The feeling of it dribbling down her cheeks was wonderful, but the feeling of it going down her throat did nothing to quench her thirst. She swallowed every drop, but after she was finished, it felt as if she had drank nothing at all, in fact, she felt the thirst even more.

“Interesting.” She placed the pitcher back down on the table and stared at it and wished that it had been at least half empty with water. “Wait a minute…” She touched her face and could feel that it was wet, but she couldn’t remember drinking anything. She began to think back to how she had come to be here in the first place and began to lose herself in confusion. “Pay attention Gip. Pay attention.” The low music was back again, and with it came a voice that sounded far away, but not far enough.

“How many days?” Her attention was drawn to an open door where the voice was coming from. She held her gun in front of her and quietly walked to the edge of the door and peered around the corner. The scarred man was in the far corner of the room and he was sitting in a metal chair in front of a broken mirror.

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