08 – Some Conspiracy Theories Hold Grains of Truth

Erika followed the navigation on her phone, turning down one of the seedier streets in Chicago. It was up north, pretty much the opposite side of the city from where Erika and Daniel lived. It was, nonetheless, the street he had given her over the phone.

She drove down, frowning at every building she passed. A video rental place that looked sketchy as shit right next to a store advertising clothes, shoes, erotic toys, and lingerie. And a hookah lounge. Two separate tattoo parlors whose signs had faded to the point of being nearly illegible, one of which seemed to be open at nearly four in the morning—the parlor she had gotten her tattoo at hadn’t even opened until noon. The Jamba Juice didn’t fit in with the rest of the street but she supposed nothing but creepy places would have been a little too much.

Normally, Erika would have been all for browsing through old streets like this that had some culture going back before she had even been born.

Today? After being chased out of a church by a robot and a goddamned magician? Erika wasn’t feeling in the exploratory mood.

At the far end of the street, nestled half-under elevated commuter tracks, was a small building with plywood blocking out its windows. Mosaic tiles above the door, patterned after Space Invader aliens, were chipped and broken. There had once been lettering on the building for a name, now evidenced only by a section of the mosaic tiles less sun damaged than the rest. Varn’s.

“You have reached your destination,” Erika’s phone said as she pulled to a stop in front of the former arcade.

Erika scrolled down her contacts list, eying the open liquor store across the street, and called Daniel.

“Hello?” he said, sounding like she had just woken him once again. “Erika?”

“This place looks creepy as fuck. Is your dad luring me out to kill me because I woke him up?”

“What? No… What are—” He stopped, yawning into the phone. There was a bit of deep grumbling in the background. Nothing understandable. “Dad says there is a short alley underneath the train tracks. You can use it to get to a parking lot in the back. The front door is barred.”

“Ah yes. The only place I’d rather be than on a sketchy street is down a sketchy back alley,” Erika grumbled, throwing her pickup into reverse. The alley ran alongside the old arcade, though parking lot was an excessive term for the five parking spaces directly behind the building. One of the parking spots was already occupied by a silver minivan that looked about as old as Erika was.

Though, with her pickup’s age, she didn’t have room to judge.

“Are you already here?”

“No. We’re a bit out. Dad says that Rick might be there. He’s one of Dad’s friends and lives a lot closer than we do. He’ll let you in if he’s there. Just knock a shave and a haircut.”

“If I get killed by an axe murderer… or just a random gang punk, I’m coming back to haunt you.”

“Careful.” Daniel paused then dropped his voice to a whisper. “My father won’t take that as a joke.”

“It wasn’t one,” Erika grumbled, hopping out of her pickup. She threw on her Victorian coat again, frowning at the wrinkled scuff near the collar where that mirror thing hand grabbed her. Smoothing it out as best she could, she walked up to the back door of the arcade and thumped the end of her bat against the door.

Knock, knock-knock knock, knock.

Erika stood around, looking into the dark of the alley, half expecting to see some mirrored monster lurking under the eaves of the elevated railroad tracks. Her fingers tightened around the bat’s grip as she scanned the rooftops, worried she might see some shadow teleport overhead.

The grinding click of the deadbolt had her turning back to the door just in time to see a somewhat gaunt man open the door. Just a crack. He had sandy hair, tanned skin, and a shaggy soul patch hanging a thumb’s length off his chin. In contrast to his fairly plain look, his Hawaiian shirt was blinding. Peering out, he narrowed his brown eyes. “You the girl?”

“I’m certainly a girl. You Rick?”

Opening the door just a crack further, he scanned the small parking lot, eyes moving from her pickup to the whole small parking lot. Erika followed his gaze, glancing around one final time to make sure, as best she could, that she hadn’t been followed.

“Come in. Quickly,” he said, throwing open the door just enough to admit one. As soon as Erika squeezed past, he slammed the door shut and flicked the deadbolt closed.

The supposed Rick turned around and stared. He wore a brown trench coat wide open that looked like it had been washed a few too many times, leaving it worn and fraying. Bits of the Hawaiian shirt he had on underneath poked through a few holes in the sleeves. Slung over his shoulder, he had a cardboard shipping tube. The kind used to mail posters or rolled-up paintings.

As his eyes roamed from Erika’s boots to her eyes, she gestured with the bat. “You better not try anything, old man.”

“Old?” He frowned. “I’m twenty-seven.”

“Yep. ’bout ten years too old for me.”

He just shook his head, sweeping into the place. “Sorry about the mess. We just got the place. Cheap because it’s gang territory.”

“Ah. Lovely.” Erika looked around the place. “My pickup going to be stripped to the frame by morning?”

It wasn’t a particularly large area and the excess of old arcade machines didn’t help with the space issue. The floor was a spackled and multi-color carpet that probably glowed under ultraviolet light. A healthy coating of dust covered everything, including the floor, making the spackle a grody brown. Only about a quarter of the lights in the low ceiling looked like they worked.

Rick brought her off to one side of the arcade where a glass counter that might have been a display cabinet for prizes stood mostly cleaned off. A series of bar stools sat around it, leaving the area looking like a poor man’s meeting table.

“Not really ready for guests. Just next week, I was planning on getting an inventory of all the arcade cabinets, seeing which might have value to collectors. If any even work. After that, a good cleaning of the carpet is in order,” he said, moving behind the counter to a much cleaner-looking mini fridge. Opening it, he pulled out a small brown glass bottle. “Coffee?” he asked, holding it out to her.

The bottle looked alcoholic but the label said coffee. “Cold? Pass.”

“Not tired at all and up this late. Early?” He shook his head, keeping the bottle for himself and kicking the fridge door shut. “Whatever. Must be nice being so young.”

“Definitely an old man,” Erika said, rounding the counter and taking a seat on the bar stool next to Rick.

“Huh.” He popped the metal bottlecap with his teeth. “Figured you would sit as far from me as possible.”

“Normally, you would be right,” Erika said, narrowing her eyes as she looked around the dim arcade.

“Back to the wall, eyes facing the door?”

Erika dipped her head in a slight nod.

Rick took a swig of his bottled coffee and let out a slight sigh when he finished. “So. Paranormal experience, huh?”

“I’m normally a pretty open gal so know that it isn’t that I don’t trust the weird old guy who lives out of an abandoned arcade—”

“I don’t live here.”

“But I would rather not explain more times than necessary. Might as well wait for Danny and his dad to get here.”

“Just trying to make small talk,” he said, slinging the cardboard tube off his back and letting it rest against the counter.

“Alright. What kind of strange experiences have happened to you?”

Rick winced. It was a little thing. Barely a flicker of his eyes. Erika didn’t miss it. Nor did she miss the way his fingers tightened around the shipping tube before he let it go completely. He drew in a deep breath, took in a long drink of his coffee, and let out a satisfied sigh.

“Found something lurking in the basement of one of the UIC buildings.”

“UIC. University of Illinois at Chicago?”

“That’s the one. Disembodied whispers, flickering lights, people going missing. All the fun stuff. We’re… not exactly sure what it was. Never saw it. But certainly saw things flying across the room. Like some invisible person tossing crap at us.”

Erika tensed. Her fingers tightened around the bat even as she forced herself to remain otherwise still. “Invisible?”

“Yep,” he said, popping the p. “Found some old experiment logs from a Doctor Ellison trying to map and imprint human consciousness into printed circuits. They supposedly failed, but we found a machine with wires fused into the building’s walls and floors.”

“That’s… unusual.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t believe it either.”

Erika shot him a frown. “I didn’t say that.”

“Don’t need to. I’ve heard that tone.”

“So,” Erika said with a slight huff. “What’d you end up doing about it?”

Rick took another drink from his coffee, frowned at it like it wasn’t working the way it was supposed to, and sighed. “While shit was flying about, something cut the main power line into the building. Anna grabbed the loose cables with her bare hands and jammed them into the machine. Caused a blackout to the entire neighborhood, but it seems like it stopped the thing.”

“You don’t know for sure?”

“Look, kid. We don’t know anything for sure. You think there are actual books on this kind—”

The door rattled.

Rick cut himself off, standing. He grabbed hold of the cardboard tube, setting the bottled coffee on the counter. Erika followed his example, readying herself and the bat. She moved around the counter, taking cover behind one of the arcade cabinets, peering around the side at the closed door.

“Danny and his dad?” Erika whispered, keeping Rick in view as he moved up against the wall next to the door.

He didn’t respond, grabbing the cardboard tube with both hands like he was ready to swing it at whoever stepped inside.

The bolt slid aside and the door opened fully. Rick started to swing, only to freeze at the last moment.

Daniel, bleary-eyed and mid-yawn, didn’t even notice as he stepped into the arcade. His shaggy brown hair looked matted and tangled, sticking up in odd spots. He clearly hadn’t changed out of his red and black flannel pajama bottoms.

Behind him, wearing a thick camouflage hunter’s jacket, an older version of Daniel stood. He had a gray beard hanging halfway down his chest and fuzzy gray hair.

Rick let out a long sigh, slinging the cardboard tube back over his shoulder. “You should have texted.”

“That’s how the government keeps track of where you are,” the elder King said, throwing the door shut behind him. He took one look around the arcade, frowning openly behind his beard. “Thought you were going to clean this place up.”

“Bring your kids tomorrow… er… today and put them to work. Either that or you’ll just have to wait until I get around to it on my own time.”

The elder King grunted noncommittally. As Daniel stepped closer to Erika, his eyes came to a rest on her. “This the girl?”

“Again?” Erika glared. Not at the elder King but at Daniel. “Who did you tell them I was?”

“Just a girl I know,” he said with a shrug.

“Oh. I see.”

Elder King chuckled, clamping a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “Son. We’re going to have a little talk about womenfolk later on,” he said, making his son’s ears turn a flaming red. “Speaking of… the women coming?” he asked Rick.

“Neither answered their phones.”

“Smart.”

“Smarter than me,” Rick grumbled, shaking his head. He looked over to Erika with a small frown. “So…”

With his gaze, both Daniel and his dad stared as well.

Erika met each of their eyes and sighed. “Might as well take a seat.”

---

Erika didn’t tell them everything. She left her brother well out of her explanation along with the odd things her family could do. Years of being told not to mention those kinds of things didn’t exactly go away easily and, aside from Daniel, she didn’t know either of the others. Instead, she focused on her mother, noticing odd changes in her behavior, the stakeout at the church, and spotting a man getting out of her mother’s car.

Then she talked of the archives, running through everything that happened after she dropped Daniel off at his home.

“—I attacked him with the bat. He teleported again and I managed to make it to my truck. Got here without incident,” she finished with a shrug. “I didn’t want them tracking me home somehow and I figured some badass ghost hunters would have a secret hideout where I could stay a bit.”

Erika leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms to show that she had finished for the moment. She looked around the room, gauging the others’ body language. Daniel was the easiest. She wouldn’t really say that she knew him but she did know him better than the other two. While he had managed to stay awake, he had the look of a skeptic. He had one arm crossed over his chest and the other hand scratching at the scruff on his chin.

His dad, who had introduced himself as Leslie King, had been leaning forward with mild interest when she had been talking about the mirror monster. The moment she started mentioning the office worker’s spells, he adopted a pose almost identical to Daniel’s.

Rick, on the other hand, was almost exactly the opposite. Erika caught more than one roll of his eyes when talking about the archives themselves. Once she moved on to the office worker, his back straightened and his hands gripped his shipping tube. He might have developed a slight tremble in his grip.

Erika looked between the three, frowning as the silence stretched on. “Thoughts?”

“Sounds insane,” Daniel said instantly. His eyes widened and he quickly shuffled his hands in front of him. “Not that I’m calling you insane. Just the situation… is not believable or… Not that I’m calling you a liar—”

“Danny. The hole you’re digging is only going to get deeper.”

“T-This… magic—Magician,” Rick started. He sounded nervous. A bit upset. “What spells did you hear him cast again?”

“Teleport. Spatial… warping? Enchantment nullification and… curse… ending? Look, I was panicking a little and wasn’t too focused on his words. Especially not his first few words.”

Rick, hunched over with the shipping tube resting across his lap, fell silent. His eyes stared down at the spackled carpet.

“Richard,” Leslie said, tone firm yet carrying a note of sympathy. Rick jolted up, sucking in a sudden breath like he had forgotten to breathe for the last few seconds. When he looked to Leslie, the latter continued, “We don’t know a thing about the situation. Don’t do anything foolish.”

Rick bobbed his head, blinking several times. “You’re right.”

“’Course I am,” Leslie said, clapping the man on his back.

Erika shot a questioning glance at Daniel and got a shrug in return. Something must have happened to him. Either he was interested in magic or he was interested in what that magic could do. Erika guessed the latter, just based on when he had reacted. Had he gotten cursed during one of their ghost hunts? Were curses real?

Before she could ask, Rick had a question of his own. “Those latter two spells. Why did he try to cast them?”

Erika shifted on her stool. That was one of the parts of her story that she had left out. Ever since she was a child, ever since her mother first learned of what she could do, Leah had drilled into her head that she was never, under any circumstances, to let other people know about the odd abilities in the Walker family.

“I smashed open a gate,” she said, motioning with the bat. “Big iron gate. I think he must have thought that I had used something special to break it open. In reality, I’m pretty sure the old iron of the gate was just brittle.”

“May I see?” Rick asked, holding out a hand for the bat.

Erika shrugged, flipped the bat with one hand so the handle faced Rick, and dropped it in his hand.

He took it and looked it over from end to end. His fingers ran over the blue swirl sticker toward the end of the bat. After a second, he tapped it against the floor, listening to the ring it made. “Hollow, shorter, and thicker than standard sizes. Aluminum, right? Made for a child?”

“It’s my brother’s,” Erika said with a nod. “He was never interested in baseball though, so I stole it just in case. Never know when you’ll need a bat, right?”

Rick frowned, tapping it on the ground again. “Unless that gate was pure rust, I don’t think an aluminum bat would be able to break it. At least not without deforming. This looks practically new.”

“A lot of strange things happened tonight. Something breaking when hit with something metal seems like the least weird,” Erika said, trying to get them off the subject. She looked around the group again. “What about the mirror creature? The archives? Does Outsider-class being sound at all familiar?”

“Can’t say it does,” Leslie said, frowning. “I don’t think we’re dealing with a ghost here.”

“I’ve seen Boston Dynamics,” Rick said, shaking his head. “They could make a robot like that. If they can do it, so can other people.”

“Maybe,” Erika admitted. “But a robot that turns invisible?”

“Secret government projects are into all kinds of things,” Leslie said. “Invisibility has been in the works since ’43 with the Philadelphia Experiment. Plenty of time to perfect it. Bet this robot is an escaped prototype.”

Daniel audibly smacked his face with his palm. His ears were, once again, bright red. Except it wasn’t Erika’s fault this time. “Dad, please.”

“Listen to your boy,” Rick said with a sage nod. “You think the army would lose an experimental robot? You’re afraid the government tracks your phone everywhere you go.”

“’Course they do but this is a stealth robot. They made it too good.”

Rick stared for a long moment. Slowly, he nodded. “That tracks.”

Daniel slapped his hand into his face once again. He glared through his fingers, giving Erika a ‘You asked for this’ kind of look.

It was true, she supposed. She could have just gone to a hotel if she wanted to avoid leading anyone back home. They were a little strange, it was true. She had more or less expected that from a bunch of self-professed ghost hunters. Normal people didn’t investigate the paranormal. Still, strange or not, sitting in a small group with other people was far more comforting than sitting alone in a hotel, paranoid about every little noise and every stray movement in the corner of her eyes.

At least here, she could say with relative confidence that the distant popping noises were gunshots from gang activity rather than a steam robot blowing a gasket.

“Robot or not,” Leslie said. “At least this story will be easy to verify.”

“Oh?” Erika said, raising an eyebrow.

“Sure. Big infinite archives below a church? Just have to peek in the door.”

“If those archives really archive everything,” Rick started, leaning forward with an eagerness in his eyes. “We could find out… anything. What ghosts we got, what ones we’ve missed, what that thing under the neuropsychiatric building was.”

“You want to go there?” Erika said, raising an eyebrow. “To somewhere guarded by an invisible robot and some kind of Harry Potter wizard?”

Rick nodded his head. “Of course. Think of everything we could learn.”

“We aren’t in this to sit around,” Leslie said, thumping his hand on the glass counter. “The feds don’t believe us, the people don’t believe us, but there are things out there that prey on people. We can’t police the whole world but we can make the city we live in a little safer for everyone.”

“Besides,” Rick said after nodding along with Leslie’s statement. “You’re already planning on going back, aren’t you?”

Erika frowned. She was. That binder for The Fixer had been a thick one. If it explained what The Fixer was and what it wanted, she might have a better idea of how to handle the fake Leah. And, if she was lucky, an idea of where the real Leah was.

“Trust me. One thing you learn when dealing with all this odd stuff is that it is better to have someone watching your back.”

That was a good point as well. That wizard had a few powerful spells. Probably more than what he had shown. But if he really could only do one thing at a time, a group of people would be far more difficult to deal with. Erika found herself nodding.

“Alright. Let’s go—”

“Woah, woah,” Rick said, waving his hands back and forth. “Not today.”

“Rick’s right,” Leslie said. “Those people at the church are going to be on guard. Not to mention daybreak will be soon. The city is waking up. People are going to be up and down the streets, making it much harder for us to slip in unnoticed.”

“Besides,” Rick added, “we should still tell Anna and Sofia. Schedule a meeting or just wait until our regular monthly meeting?”

“Schedule, obviously. We can’t wait on something like this.”

“Right. Tuesday?”

“I can take the day off. Not sure about Anna.”

Erika cut into the conversation, leaning against the countertop. “I don’t mean to interrupt but are you sure waiting is a good idea? They might be on guard right now but they might also pack up. We wait too long and when we get there, all we’ll find is a normal, empty basement.”

Leslie and Rick glanced at each other, each frowning. “Risky,” the former said.

“We should still get Anna and the others in the loop.”

Leslie drummed his fingers on his knees, frowning heavily behind his beard. “Tonight,” he said, looking back to Erika. “Late. More like tomorrow morning. We have preparations to make. If the place is as big as you said, they won’t be able to move it in such a short amount of time.”

“True,” Erika said, sinking back onto her stool. She wasn’t so sure despite her agreement. That salaryman could simply wave his hands and cast a few spells, packing the entire place into a pocket-sized box for all she knew.

But… the idea of going back right away wasn’t that great either. She didn’t exactly want to encounter those things again. And if she did, she wanted to be more ready.

“When was the last time you slept?” Erika winced at Rick’s question. “That’s what I thought. You might be a punk teen with all the energy in the world but you don’t want to go into something like this sleep-deprived. Tonight. Midnight. Meet back here.”

“Fine. I suppose I can wait. You got a couch that isn’t covered in dust?”

“Don’t even have a proper chair,” Rick said, a sad look on his face. “Maybe someday.”

“Guess I’m finding a hotel,” she said.

“Uh…” Daniel glanced from Erika to his father, looking like he wanted to ask for permission. “We have a couch…”

“What’s the number one rule with possessions?”

“She isn’t possessed,” Daniel said in an utterly flat tone of voice.

“You might be right,” Leslie said, looking over Erika. “You might be wrong. We don’t take chances with these kinds of things. No leading ghosts back home. Or escaped government stealth robots.”

“But it’s apparently fine for her to come here,” Rick grumbled to himself.

“It’s fine,” Erika said, looking to Daniel. “A hotel isn’t a problem.” She had half a mind to ask him along, just to have someone watch her back while she slept a little. Given how little sleep he had gotten because of her, she doubted he could manage to stay awake for more than a few minutes.

If the wizard and the mirror monster hadn’t ambushed her outside the arcade, she was probably not being actively followed. Still, she wouldn’t go home yet. Daniel’s dad had a point. Better safe than drag Carter into this mess.

“I wouldn’t get anything in this area,” Rick said, pulling her attention back to the rest of the room.

“No kidding. I can find something.” She took her bat back, resting it on her shoulder. “Danny has my number. Don’t you dare go into this without me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. You mind if I share your story with the other members of our group? Or would you like to tell them?”

“Knock yourself out.”