03 – The Castle at Large

The Butler towered over Erika as she guided the way through the long, empty corridors of The Castle’s asylum. Erika couldn’t be certain, but it felt like The Butler was even taller than the last time she ran into the woman.

“I am sorry for not contacting you,” The Butler said, breaking a silence that had lasted since leaving the operating theater. “It wasn’t that I deliberately ignored you, just that The Director doesn’t typically bring in outsiders.”

“That’s… fine? I guess?” It sounded like The Director had been the one deliberately ignoring her. “What changed? Aside from us being all broken and bloodied.”

“The Director has many thoughts, but I am privy to few.”

“You could just say that you don’t know.”

The Butler flashed a sheepish smile as she turned down a corridor—Erika couldn’t actually tell if it was the same one she had been walking down before. “Sorry. Being around The Director always makes me feel like I need to be more eloquent in my word choice.”

Erika snorted. “He seems like the kind of guy who reads a thesaurus for fun.”

“I think he talks like that because his appearance makes it hard to take him seriously.”

“Honestly, it doesn’t help. Makes him seem like a kid pretending to be an adult,” Erika blurted, then quickly changed the subject. “Do you all live here?”

“Oh, yes. Mostly. It’s safe, and a lot of us would attract attention if we wandered around.”

“Really? You all seem pretty human as far as I could tell. Not like The Art or The Adjustment—and those two were wandering around, knocking on our door the other week ago.”

“That’s very kind of you to say, but most other people wouldn’t agree. There is just something…” The Butler’s steps slowed as she turned a thoughtful gaze toward the ceiling rafters. “People notice that we aren’t like them. It’s the uncanny valley effect. The Adjustment is so drastically inhuman that it loops back around into not bothering people—they’ll think she is a person in a costume or that their eyes are playing tricks—but we’ve just got those subtle things different about us that unnerves others. You’ll catch a glimpse of The Orderly in a dark alley and, while you won’t be able to pinpoint exactly what about her disturbs you, you’ll still feel that fight or flight instinct kick in.”

Erika hummed as she considered earlier when The Orderly had popped out of the shadows, and her feelings at the time. She had been spooked, yes, but that was before she even saw The Orderly; wandering around dark hallways in an unknown location made everyone frightening. When she opened her mouth to dismiss The Butler’s concerns, a sudden flash of The Orderly’s face surfaced in the back of her mind… those odd, pupil-less, star-like eyes and the way her mouth didn’t move under her mask when she spoke.

Okay, maybe they have a small point, Erika admitted to herself. The Butler was obviously extremely large, but that wasn’t too strange on its own. People like Andre the Giant existed and, in fact, were celebrated. Then again, if Erika passed The Butler randomly while out shopping in a mall, without knowing who she was, she would probably have gone out of her way to avoid the tall woman.

“‘Within the vast tapestry of human existence, there exists a spectrum of variation that the average individual is willing to tolerate. However, when those differences surpass the spectrum, they invoke a wide array of adverse emotional responses,’” The Butler quoted, judging from her tone—probably The Director. “It’s just how humans are.”

“That… sucks,” Erika said, not sure what else to say. “You don’t have to worry about that with me. I’m sure the same is true for the other Hunters.”

“Truly?”

“Well, as long as you ignore one quick startle if you sneak up on me.”

The Butler chuckled as she slowed to a stop at one of many otherwise identical doors, which she promptly knocked her knuckles against in three heavy thumps.

Rick’s distinctive voice answered from within with a simple, “Yes?”

“You have a visitor,” The Butler said, loudly, before turning to Erika. “I will wait outside. Please do not wander on your own.”

“Yeah, I learned my lesson,” Erika grumbled as she heard a lock on the door click from within. Glancing at the doorknob, she found just a simple privacy lock, but it was nice that they offered that much, she supposed.

Rick stood in the opening, looking haggard with his scraggly facial scruff having sprouted into a thin beard and mustache since she last saw him. A plain white cloth looped around his neck, holding his arm in a sling. Other than that, he looked mostly fine, if weary. His sword was still with him, strapped to his back without the usual shipping tube hiding it.

It seemed that The Castle had not provided a supply of Hawaiian shirts for him to wear, leaving him with a simple charcoal button-up and matching slacks.

He only took one look at Erika before stepping aside. “Come on then.”

Erika took a breath and stepped inside, letting Rick close the door behind her without a word to The Butler.

The room was similar to the one she had woken up in, a sparsely decorated medical room with a bed, a cabinet, and a squat desk with some kind of terminal on top—a computer that looked like something out of the fifties, but also something out of fantasy. It was made from wood, brass, and glass tubes filled with green. Erika opened her mouth to comment, then stopped herself, focusing on Rick.

“You look well enough,” he said first.

“I… I am so sorry.”

“Yeah,” Rick said, moving back to the desk with a mild limp. “I bet.”

Erika let out a long sigh, following a little behind him.

“You know,” he said, easing himself into the chair, “before you showed up, we dealt with ghosts maybe once a month, if that. Most of the time, it was nothing special, and we spent our nights dealing with things like those pub ghosts we got rid of. Sometimes it got dangerous, I’ll admit. Leslie’s brother even had an incident, killing his own wife post-mortem. That was before I knew him, but still…”

Erika dragged her fingers through her hair in agitation, closing her eyes. “I get it. You don’t want me hanging around anymore. I don’t blame you—I thought the people after me were basically just regular people with weird masks, not… that.”

Rick folded his arms as much as he was able with the sling in place. “Now, don’t go putting words in my mouth. I got to speak with Sofia and Leslie, neither wants to kick you out to the curb.”

“Really? Not even Sofia?”

“Might have helped that she walked away from the crash with barely a scratch,” Rick grumbled, shaking his head before refocusing on Erika. “You’ve been part of the crew for three months now, we’re not just going to ditch you, but there are going to be changes; something like this cannot happen again. Leslie was the one who brought up kicking you out first, and that guy is all about helping out when other people need it. I think he realized just how close his kids came to being in our place.”

“Yeah, I… I need to apologize to him as well. And Danny. And Beth, too.”

“Maybe consider something more than just saying sorry.”

“Jeeze… I only woke up like an hour ago,” Erika said, feeling a little relieved. “Haven’t exactly had time to go out and buy you a ‘Get Well Soon’ card.”

Rick snorted, though Erika couldn’t tell if he grinned or grimaced right after. “Actions speak louder than words, but if you’re in the market for cards, better get one for Anna. We haven’t talked to her about all this, she’s—”

“I saw,” Erika admitted, feeling a slight well of nausea. “She was being worked on by The Doctor. She’s going to end up looking like Frankenstein.”

“Frankenstein’s monster.”

Erika blinked. “What?”

“She’s going to look like the monster,” Rick said, swiveling back to the computer, he pulled up an image search of the old 1930s Universal movie. “Frankenstein was the doctor.”

“I… You know what I meant.”

“That’s no excuse for being wrong,” he said before unlooping part of his sling, lifting his arm out of it. Several thick black stitches ran from his bicep halfway down his forearm. “I think we’re all going to be a bit stitched up, but The Orderly said we should heal well enough. You look like you’re a bit stitched up too.”

“Knee brace, splint on my forearm, and…” Erika hiked up her crop top, showing off the hard cast-like framework around her chest. “I think I’ve got pins going into my skin from this thing? I’m trying not to think about it too much.”

“Probably fused to the rib bones to keep them in place while they heal, assuming there is no magic nonsense involved.”

“There has got to be some magic. I’m pretty sure I broke half the bones in my body fighting that thing, not to mention the crash.”

“It’s their Doctor,” Rick said with a small shrug. “I woke up the same day with a concussion and a few broken bones—got off pretty easily, though Sofia has me beat. You, on the other hand, were in and out of surgery for the first two days. And Anna…” He shuddered. “I’ve basically watched them reconstruct her from scratch. I think, when the van flipped, it landed straight on the passenger side, crunched her up. Any normal doctor would have called her on the spot.”

Erika tried to think back to the crash, but her memories were hazy. There was the crash, breaking her way out of the ruined van, fighting the monk, Leslie with his gun, and a helicopter? She was less certain about that last one.

“Do you know what happened to the guy who attacked us?” Erika asked. “I’m pretty sure I shattered every bone in his body, but I was kinda out of it, so I don’t really know.”

“They asked me a whole lot of questions about him that I didn’t have many answers to, but from the context, I think they’ve got him here.” Rick shrugged and winced. “Told them to go find The Fixer if they wanted to know more. They didn’t say if they actually did, though.”

“That was going to be my next question: has anyone talked to my mother or The Fixer?”

“Leslie said he would, last I spoke with him. Phones don’t really work here, apparently, but they bring around some steampunk contraption that works like a phone so I can call out,” he said with a vague gesture toward the bubbling computer tower. “The Orderly said I was well enough to leave, as long as I kept from straining my arm for about a week, but I wasn’t about to leave you and Anna no matter how benevolent they seemed.”

Erika appreciated the thought, but wondered what Rick thought he would do to a bunch of supernatural people… then her eyes flicked up to his sword.

Rick noticed her gaze. “Sorry about all the work you put into breaking the curse, but I think I’ll keep it around for a bit longer. Just in case.”

“Yeah, makes sense. You want it gone, just let me know. Based on my experiments with the cubes back at the house before everything went to shit, I think I can break only parts of the curse.” Erika’s memories of the expedition to the house were a lot clearer than of the crash and beyond. With one of those advanced cubes, she had been able to stop the music part of the curse without affecting the teleportation-to-hand part. “However, there is no guarantee that I’ll break the right part of your sword, so if you want it fully functional… yeah, best to wait.”

“I’ll think more about it once we’re all out of here.”

Erika sank onto Rick’s bed, sighing. “I don’t think you need to worry about them being assholes, at least not as long as they’ve been honest about everything they told me, but I get it.”

“They tell you about their seer and some dark apocalyptic future or some nonsense like that?”

“Yep,” Erika said. “They want us to convince The Eclipse to work with them to stop it.”

“The kid who runs this place gave me the same spiel.”

“Probably don’t call him that to his face.”

Rick huffed. “I’m not stupid.”

“Just making sure,” Erika said with a grin. “But I do need to contact my parents, probably weather a good amount of shouting, then get them on board with convincing The Eclipse. They know more about all this than I do, so… Is this the thing that lets you call out?” she asked, looking over what she thought had been a computer, but now wasn’t so sure.

“No.” Rick swiveled in his seat to face the screen, “It’s a computer, but not really? Reminds me more of TempleOS than any real operating system. It does have a GUI, web browser, and connection to the internet, but like, whoever designed it did not implement their HTML and CSS renderer properly, so everything is funky. They don’t have DNS set up, so URLs don’t resolve, and the only reason I was able to access my wiki is because I know the IP address. Surprised that TCP/IP even works here.”

“Sure,” Erika said with a vapid nod, “some of those acronyms almost sound familiar.”

Ignoring Erika’s comment, Rick turned to the actual machine to the side of the screen. “I’ve been trying to figure out how it works, but haven’t been having much luck,” he said, tapping the liquid-filled glass tube. “Is this for thermal control? Does it serve some other purpose?”

“I could break it and then we get to see if it melts down,” Erika offered, earning a look from Rick. “Just a joke. I plan to be very polite to our hosts, at least until Anna is all back in one piece.”

A rapid series of intense knocks tapped across the door, making both Erika and Rick look over. “It’s The Gadget,” Rick groaned, talking over the continued knocking.

“How do you know?”

“Come in!” he called out, sounding resigned.

The door flung open, slamming into the wall before bouncing back. Only The Butler’s hand, reaching out from where she leaned in at the corner of the doorway, stopped it from swinging back into a short little blur of orange hair and darker skin.

“Hello! Hi. Oh! You took it apart again,” The Gadget said, zipping between Erika and Rick to the computer tower where they promptly started twisting some valve inside the casing. “This needs to be three and a quarter to achieve the best flow, and the sparky bits were out of alignment, but that’s okay! You put it back together better than you did yesterday. And you!”

The Gadget bounced away from Rick, landing on the bed beside Erika. With no sense of personal space, the teenage boy leaned in. “Your eyes are much prettier when you’re conscious. Sorry. That’s creepy. I saw you watching the surgery, did I do good? I think I did good. I heard you complimented my tattoo work. Thanks! I like tattoos. I practice on myself all the time,” he said, lifting up his shirt. He turned around, showing off his heavily inked back, but somehow, his arms bent and his head swiveled so that he was still facing forward. Erika barely got a glimpse before he put his shirt back down, pointed at Erika’s chest—head and arms still reversed—and kept talking. “You have a tattoo too! It’s nice. I hope you don’t mind, but I had to touch it up—The Doctor wasn’t too careful about making all the lines line up after your surgery. Did you know your back is blank? The Orderly says that constraints breed creativity, but I like the back, it’s just such a wide and open canvas, ready for anything!”

He took a breath for the first time since bounding into the room, and probably would have continued yapping if not for The Butler grabbing him by his shoulders, lifting him up like a cat caught by the scruff, and setting him down several steps away.

With an apologetic smile, she said, “Sorry,” then looked down at The Gadget. “What has The Mind told you about meeting new people?”

“To give them a chance to—” The Gadget gasped, looking horrified. “Oh no, I’ve said one hundred sixty-seven words and they haven’t said one? Now I’m at seventy-seven?”

“Breathe,” The Butler said, taking in a deep breath before letting it out slowly. Repeating her breathing exercises a few times, The Gadget started following along.

Erika’s mind was still catching up to the rapid fire speech The Gadget just put out. The main thing that stuck out to her was that her tattoo had gotten screwed up because of a surgery, and The Gadget had tried to fix it. With the cast around her chest, she couldn’t see most of it, thus she couldn’t tell how good of a job The Gadget had done, but judging by Anna’s leg, it was probably passible.

I hope.

“It was very kind of you to try to put Anna’s tattoos back,” Erika said with only a slightly strained smile. “I’m sure that will help her feel more… at home?”

“If she wants them different, I can make them different. I’ve had a lot of practice. Every time I fill up my back, The Doctor takes it off so that I can start over again!”

“The Doctor takes off… your back?”

“And puts on a new one. I forgot to say that part. I have all my old ones hung up in my room. My favorites are framed.”

Erika blinked, then blinked again, mentally picturing a series of skinned human hides tossed up on the wall for display. “That… sounds incredibly…” Not sure that she had anything polite to say, she let her comment die off just like that.

The Gadget didn’t seem to mind. He just grinned, then reached into the pockets of his teal-green cargo pants. “The Director wanted me to get your stuff, so I got your stuff. It’s right here. The phone was busted up so much, but I fixed it. I’m good at fixing things like that. The Doctor is better with people, but if you need something fixed that isn’t a people, I’m your Gadget!”

Erika turned the phone over in her hands before tapping the power button. There wasn’t a single crack in the screen, and her concert photo wallpaper was fully intact. Her watch was similarly pristine, and still four hours behind if her phone’s time was accurate.

The Gadget’s bright, beaming smile dimmed as Erika slipped the watch back onto her wrist. “I couldn’t get the right time. I’m sorry. It has a glitch in it that I couldn’t fix. The Director said the glitch is supposed to be there, but what kind of watch doesn’t tell the right time? I failed.”

“No, The Director was right. Don’t worry about it.” As a test, Erika broke off a small sliver of the cast around her chest—not enough to break it, just chip a bit of it away. The hands on her watch immediately responded, starting to tick just a little faster. Since she had already broken something in this place and The Director hadn’t worried about it, she stole a bit of time to dump the ripples immediately.

It still worked.

That was good. She was fairly certain her parents were going to give her an earful about being more careful as it was, breaking her birthday present less than a month after getting it wouldn’t have helped… even if it had technically caused the problem to begin with.

“Oh, you shouldn’t do that,” The Gadget said.

For a moment, Erika worried that dropping the ripples had created another bomb, but The Gadget’s eyes were glued to her cast—the spot she had chipped, specifically.

“If your ribs don’t heal right, The Orderly will be livid, and then we’ll have to break all your bones again to set them properly.”

“I won’t do anything more. Thank you for fixing my things.”

The Gadget grinned. “I made my own tattoo gun. Do you want to see it?”

“Maybe later,” Erika said, hoping her smile wasn’t too strained. “Right now, I think I need to make some phone calls. Can you set that up for me?”

“Yessiree!”

In another blur, The Gadget vanished from the room, slipping right past The Butler and out the door. Erika, left seated on the bed still, was not sure if she was supposed to follow. A glance up at The Butler just got her another apologetic smile.

“So,” Rick said with a small smile touching his lips, “that was The Gadget.”

“Yeah…”