Marc Zicree - Magic Time

Two faces turned toward him. Identically featured and yet so different as to chill. Moonlit phantoms in blackness.

One substantial. . and one like a reflection in glass.

The knob leapt from Cal’s hand; the door slammed shut.

Cal dove for Goldie just as a huge serving dish sliced his way, grabbed him by the back of his vest and pulled him back. Cal stumbled, parrying objects with his sword. Staggering through the onslaught of the porch, they finally burst back into the damp night outside.

Doc was gasping, sprawled amid the devil grass, holding his thigh, blood spurting between his fingers, the gouge far worse than the earlier slash on his calf. Cal ripped off his bloody, grime-black shirt, removed the cleaner T-shirt beneath and folded it swiftly into a pressure bandage. A little distance from them lay the corpses of the two grunters. Cal suspected they’d rear to life again the moment anyone took a step toward the house, but they were quiet now.

Thunder growled overhead, and the air was thick with the smell of lightning and wind. Cal, Goldie and Colleen bent over Doc, getting in each other’s way trying to secure the bandage, to check him for other wounds. He waved them off impatiently.

“Don’t fuss over me; I’m all right. If I were to start dying, I would tell you.”

“We’re lucky any of us got out of there in one piece,” said Colleen, rising shakily and stepping toward the spare lantern they’d left on the curb.

“I don’t think it was luck.” Cal stared at the Wishart house, silent now, watchful. “It could have killed us any time it wanted.”

“Then what do you think it was?”

“Mercy. It did only what it needed to drive us away. Just like with Miss Hanson.”

“ Only ? Cal, that was the old college try.”

“No.” Doc said struggling to his feet, hissing through pain-clenched teeth. “I concur with Calvin. Our shields were down a dozen times. On any one of those occasions-” He tried to put weight on the bad leg, nearly fell. Goldie caught him under one arm.

“Guys, I know I’m the pessimist in the group, but what’s this ?” The sweep of Colleen’s hand took in the mutilated grunter forms. “Ethnic cleansing?”

The answer came from the shadows. “Nothing short of death could have stopped them, once the voice got into their minds.” Wilma Hanson came up beside them with her gliding, soundless step. Seeing them up close, she put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, my heavens.”

“You should see the house,” Goldie said.

“How’s my sister?” Cal asked.

“Quiet.” Concern etched Wilma’s brow. “For quite some time now.”

When Wilma Hanson unlocked the door and Cal stepped within, he found his sister in a state of semiconsciousness, distressingly sallow and drawn.

But also, in some inexplicable way, more human.

The attic was a ruin. Boxes of Christmas decorations were upended, board games scattered, their pieces intermingled-the Game of Life, Candyland, Mystery Date. A tangle of quilts and outgrown clothes had erupted from careful folds to take wing and land where they might.

It was an echo of the Wishart house, as if a hurricane had burst from the center of the room, then retreated. And indeed it had, Cal reflected, threading his fingers through the silk of Tina’s hair. Thunder had entered her. The storm child.

“Two faces.” Doc sat slumped on an apple crate, spectral in the amber light from the lantern on the floor, its radiance casting long shadows up the walls and slanting ceiling. “You’re sure?”

Cal nodded. “The one on the bed, the one that looked real, he. . I dunno. There was this quality of, ‘Oh, Jesus.’ Like he was shocked. Sorry for me.”

“And the other?” Doc asked.

“The other. . it’s weird, he was so much clearer, even though I could see right through him. He seemed. . outraged. Only it wasn’t, ‘How dare you!’ It was more like terror. At least, that’s the vibe I got.”

“You’re our Lionel Hampton, man.” Goldie glanced up from the battered 1964 Sears catalogue he’d been leafing through. “Our king of vibes.”

“Unidentical identical twins,” Colleen muttered.

Wilma crossed to one of the few cartons still intact and retrieved an old photo album. Flipping to the page, she held it open. Cal regarded the bleached color photograph. Wilma radiant with youth and youth’s near-infinite possibility, Wilma with the twins.

Cal’s eyes went to Fred. Even then, it could be detected: the tighter set of his mouth, the opaque quality of the eyes, the hunched, defended posture.

Cal murmured, “It’s him.”

“I guess it makes a kind of sense,” Wilma sighed. “They were so close-”

“Close?” Colleen looked up. “Didn’t you say Fred hadn’t visited in all the months since the accident?”

Wilma hesitated, uncertain. “Survivor guilt.” Everyone turned to Doc. His eyes evaded, and he fought to keep his voice even. “You cannot bring them back, cannot undo the tragedy of it, so you try to avoid it, not think of it-all the while thinking of nothing else.”

Wilma nodded. “When all the machines stopped, Bob should have. . Fred must have found a way to prevent it.”

Colleen said, “The Source Project.”

Cal answered Wilma’s questioning glance with, “What Dr. Wishart was working on.”

Again, Wilma hesitated. Then she asked, “Is he draining the town?”

“Would he?” Doc asked. “The Fred you know, would he be capable of such an act?”

Wilma thought, yes . But how could she possibly make such an accusation against a friend? It felt like a betrayal. Then, like nonsense. Carefully, she offered, “Arleta is- was -a fearful woman, and she instilled that in them. We all worried about how much the boys depended on each other once, well… once Arleta stopped allowing company.” Then she added, oddly protective, “She just didn’t want anything from the outside world coming in.”

Cal gazed down at his sister, her eyes closed, the points of her ears peeking out between fine strands. It’s what he’d wanted for her. A bubble of safety. A line of defense between her and what he’d increasingly come to see as an assaultive world.

“It could be about more than just keeping his brother alive.” Cal’s gaze lingered on Tina, on the long pale lashes of her closed eyes. “Fred could be hanging on to Bob to keep hold of himself somehow, remind himself of who he is.”

“Or maybe just hold on,” Goldie said, not looking up from the catalogue. “I believe Fred’s a wanted man. By the Big Kahuna. The one wanting to chow down on all us tweaked ones. Source-zilla.”

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Colleen snapped. “It’s all goddam guesses.”

Turning to Wilma, Doc asked, “The energy drain. The sickness. How bad?”

“The children are getting weaker. Some of the old people, too. A few, we can’t rouse anymore.” She drew in a sharp breath. “And it’s spreading.”

“Calvin,” Doc said quietly, “whatever is sapping these people, there is a battle: Fred, clinging to Bob, and something else absolutely determined to break his grip. And soon I think, very soon, more than just those creatures will start to die, unless the deadlock is broken somehow.”

Wilma drew her shoulders back. “Well, we survived company thugs. We survived cave-ins. We’ve even survived the damn economy.” Turning to her guests, she inquired, “So what do we need to do to get these battlers the hell out?”

For a moment, no one spoke. Then Colleen said softly, “We kill it. Even though it kicked our ass. We find some way to kill it.” It occurred to Cal that she was calling Fred Wishart it rather than he to distance herself.