10 – A Brief Moment of Normalcy

Erika sat in the back of her math class, phone in her lap, flicking her thumb up and up and up. Mister de Vries teemed with a lot of news about binomial theorems, but she found the subject even less interesting than she normally did. School as a whole wasn’t quite what it used to be in her mind.

Before, she had thought she would live a relatively normal life, albeit one in which she had a few party tricks to show off. It was a life where she still needed connections, networking, and social skills to advance. She hadn’t the slightest idea what she wanted to do as a profession or career, but Erika had confidence in her ability to figure things out when she needed to.

Now, however, Erika had a slightly different perspective.

There was a whole other world just sitting right there in the middle of Chicago. The Eclipse—some shadowy lizard-man conspiracy, but for real, clearly in control of the cops and the city as a whole if her experience after the subway incident had been any indication. The Puppet was more like a criminal gang as far as Erika could tell, elbowing in on The Eclipse’s territory. She still didn’t know much about The Castle apart from The Fixer mentioning that they were some other organization that had cropped up recently.

The Butler had yet to give her a call back. It had been a week since they met. Erika didn’t want to be pushy. Still, maybe it was time to take matters into her own hands.

Then there was The Church. A mere two people who didn’t claim territory in the city or openly fight against the others, yet who all the others turned to when they needed to know something. They seemed like they were best positioned to help Erika with her current goal of learn everything. If only she hadn’t pissed them off…

From their questions, it felt like they couldn’t really believe that an entire other faction existed and operated within Chicago without their knowledge. The Analyst seemed especially agitated.

As The Fixer had said, The Mummy had apparently been in hiding for centuries at least, not just in Chicago but throughout the entire world, and had gotten quite good at disseminating false information about themselves.

Erika tapped her pencil on the top of her desk, glowering at her phone. The fact that The Mummy was revealing themselves now wasn’t a good sign. Even she, inexperienced as she was, could tell that much.

And it was her fault. Well, it was The Fixer’s fault, but also her fault. Breaking those chains…

Teeth grinding together, Erika stood as the bell rang.

Kassandra didn’t even try to sell her any concert tickets. Given that Erika’s house burned down, she probably figured Erika had more to worry about than a few live shows. It was true, but not for that reason.

Making her way down to the Home Ec classroom, Erika pushed open the door, slumped into her seat, and immediately started scrolling again. She scrolled down mainstream news sites, none of which talked about anything important. She browsed through alternative news sites that were filled with simply insane conspiracy theories that nobody with a lick of common sense could possibly believe; even knowing about monsters and ghosts didn’t make them more believable. A few obscure sites, mostly of the blogging variety, zoomed past Erika’s fingers.

“You look like you’re trying to put a hole in your phone with your eyes.”

Erika finally looked up just as Daniel sat down beside her. He looked the same as usual, dressed in his long-sleeved polo with one too many buttons done up. She let out a small sigh, finally putting her phone down. “Isn’t it strange that the gas leaks just stopped?”

There hadn’t been a slight mention of the gas leaks since the subway incident. Not even the local conspiracy sites were talking about it. No mention of the city ‘fixing’ the issue, no mention of any extra occurrences, nothing.

“Isn’t that just how it always is?”

“What do you mean?” Erika asked.

Daniel shrugged. “A train derails. Gets in the news. As long as it isn’t a big, massive deal with a hundred people dead and chemical spills poisoning everyone, that’s it. The news will say an investigation is ongoing and that they’ll report back when they have more information, but they’ll never follow up on it. Those kinds of reports take months if not years, and nobody cares about some train that derailed six months ago. It doesn’t get clicks.”

Erika frowned, staring at her phone once again. “That seems cynical for you,” she said. “And I’m not sure that’s relevant to what’s going on now.”

“It isn’t the same situation,” he admitted, squinting at the board. “It’s the idea behind the behavior. Oh… pizza today?”

“Probably frozen pizza we’re going to shove into the ovens,” Erika said absently.

“No. Says dough has been rising and we’re to apply toppings ourselves.”

“Pretty sure dough is the hard part of pizza making, so we’re really not doing much,” Erika grumbled, utterly uninterested. “Not that making dough is that hard to begin with. I just don’t believe the ‘gas leaks’ stopped.”

Daniel looked over, half rolling his eyes. “Weren’t you the one who said some government organization was at the subway? Maybe they fixed it.”

Erika couldn’t say that they hadn’t. The Hanged Man certainly gave the impression that he had control over the situation in his demeanor. It just… didn’t quite feel right. “The Fixer says no way. It isn’t the kind of thing The Eclipse can handle. At least not on their own.”

“Wasn’t there some other group there as well? The Castle?”

“Yeah…”

“There you go,” Daniel said. “They weren’t on their own.”

The bell rang, and Missus Wheeler rose from her seat at a glacial pace. She started the roll call, reading through the list one by one. Three months into the school year, and she hadn’t bothered to remember anyone’s faces yet. Erika halfheartedly raised her hand when she heard her name, but otherwise continued scrolling down her phone.

“Know what I think?” Daniel whispered. “I think you need to get away for a bit.”

“Away,” Erika repeated, tone flat and a bit loud—she got a glare from the teacher.

“Ever since that museum thing, you’ve been a bit obsessed. Let’s go do something else. Get out of here and have some fun. Like normal kids our age. No ghosts. No seance. No monsters under the bed.”

“Get out of here? Skip class? You don’t ditch.”

“No. Like tonight or something. After school. Like we did the other week ago.”

“And… go to a church function—”

“Not that,” he said, shooting down the idea before Erika could get all the sarcasm she wanted in her tone. “Just…”

Erika couldn’t help but laugh. “Daniel King,” she said, lowering her phone fully for the first time since she woke up. She set her elbow on the desk and rested her chin on her knuckles. “Are you trying to get me on a date?”

Daniel’s ears burned a bright red. “What? That’s not… I—”

“Ah hem.”

Daniel snapped his gaze back to the front, where Missus Wheeler stood, arms crossed, foot thumping on the ground impatiently. She raised one single eyebrow above the rim of her glasses.

“S… Sorry,” Daniel said, shrinking in on himself.

Wheeler turned her steely gaze on Erika for just a moment before looking back to Daniel. “I expect this kind of behavior from Erika—”

“Kinda rude,” Erika muttered.

“—but you? Daniel, please. Do I need to separate the two of you?”

“No ma’am.”

Wheeler continued staring for a long moment, letting the rest of the class get their little giggles and chuckles out, before returning to the topic at hand: The dangers of the dreaded Cheese Grater. Which, fair enough, Carter had cut himself quite badly on a cheese grater… when he was seven.

Erika slowly looked over to Daniel—whose head was locked forward, watching Wheeler talk—and hummed a little to herself. Maybe he was right. A vacation from everything sounded like it could do her some good. She had been so focused lately with the gas leaks, the library, The Stalker jumping her, and everything. She had been the one to break those chains, and now, because of that, people were out there getting hurt. It felt like her responsibility to figure something out.

Besides that, it was just so fascinating. All these things that she never knew existed were out there, hiding in plain sight. Things that were, in some way, like her and Carter.

Maybe she was getting a little obsessed. The Fixer certainly didn’t seem like they were in a rush. Then again, when one lived for centuries, taking a month off probably felt like a weekend. At the same time, if Erika had worked on a problem for a few centuries and had nothing to show for it, she would probably be a lot more upset. No amount of claiming that The Mummy was really good at hide and seek would absolve that.

Erika drummed her fingers against the desk.

She hadn’t thought about going to a concert in weeks. She hadn’t gone to the gym. Her guitar was gone thanks to that fire. All of her old interests just stopped.

Erika tapped her nail against the glass of her phone, frowning a little. As the class broke apart to the various cooking booths to make their little pizzas, she leaned over to Daniel. “Sure,” she said. “Let’s go out tonight.”

---

“Shouldn’t you be the one picking me up on date night?” Erika asked as Daniel climbed into her pickup.

She didn’t get to watch his ears turn color; they were already bright red. To his credit, he barely fumbled with the seatbelt as he buckled himself in.

“Sounds like an outdated stereotype,” he said, sounding a little more confident than he had any right to be.

“Ohh. Almost a good response, except you’re the one who asked me out. Generally, the responsibility lies with the asker,” Erika said, giving a little wave through the window at Daniel’s mother and Bethany, both of whom decided to see him off from their front porch. “Now,” she said as she pulled away. “Where are we headed? Or did you forget to plan the date, too?”

Daniel let out a small, mildly annoyed breath. “We both know I didn’t mean this to be some date,” he said, shooting Erika a low-temperature glare. “And I know you’re just teasing.”

“So, you want me to stop?” Erika asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I… didn’t say that.”

Erika snorted as she pulled the car to a stop at the end of the street. “You’re into some pretty weird stuff. But seriously, where are we headed? Because last time, I just brought you along for some company while spying on that church. I’ve got nothing like that lined up tonight.”

“Believe it or not,” Daniel said, wiggling his phone from his jeans pocket in an awkward hip shuffle, “I did put some thought into this. In a rush after school. With help from my sister.”

“This oughtta be good.”

“I hope so. She said it was important to consider your interests, so I’ve got here a house my dad had marked down for his special group but never got around to investigating. Some old farmhouse just a bit outside Cedar Lake.”

“Cedar Lake? That’s like an hour away.” Erika drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, considering the distance. “An hour each way means we’re not getting back until late. Your parents cool with that?”

“Beth said she would cover for me. Not sure how, exactly, but she’s pretty good at that kind of thing for her age.” Daniel stared out the window, watching the scenery move by as Erika headed toward the highway. “Officially, we’re going to see a movie downtown.”

Erika snorted a little. Even before all this started, she wasn’t exactly an avid moviegoer. Maybe on occasion with Kassandra or some friends, but never on her own. She much preferred live entertainment. That said, looking over Daniel, she asked a question as she merged onto the expressway. “Would you rather go to a movie?”

“Maybe if something good was showing, but not really.” He sat back in the seat, tensing slightly as they passed a semi-truck. He gripped the handle above the door like that would help anything. “Believe it or not, I’ve gotten a bit more interested in the family business.”

“Oh? Starting to believe in ghosts and monsters?”

“I don’t know about ghosts, but I’m willing to admit that there are a few things that I’m not sure I can properly explain. Your mother, for one.”

“I know what’s going on there, and I’m still not sure I can explain it,” Erika grumbled. “Or that I’d want to. That is one aspect of this whole thing I would rather not think about, if at all possible.”

She was still weirded out by it all.

Daniel, thankfully, did not press any questions. Although he didn’t witness it, he heard about the transformation from Mister Dice to Leah at the arcade, and he saw Leah emerge when she hadn’t been the one to walk in there. It was perhaps the first thing that really got through to him that some supernatural things might be real after all.

The second thing had been those maggot monsters.

Several minutes of mostly companionable silence followed. It was broken up by much smaller talk; school topics, what plans both their families had for Thanksgiving the following week—not much in the case of the Walkers—and Erika’s birthday in December. She didn’t have many plans for that either. While she would celebrate Carter’s birthday all day long, her own was just another day.

Daniel’s phone led the way, announcing turns and exits to take.

As the pickup’s headlights cut through the November gloom and Illinois transitioned into Indiana, Erika asked, “So, what’s the deal with this farmhouse? Ghosts? Demonic livestock? Secret underground bunker where they trained psychic cows?”

“Dad’s file just said ‘recurring lights, no deaths, low priority.’” Daniel shrugged lightly. “Local legends in his notes say the original owners vanished during the 1918 influenza outbreak. The home and its land have been sold several dozen times since then, but nobody ever actually moves in. The oddest thing is some small real estate development company bought it to turn the farmland into McMansions, only for Covid to end up bankrupting the company before work could really begin.”

“Not that odd.” Covid screwed with a lot of things.

“Yeah. I wanted something strange enough to be interesting but nothing too stressful. This is supposed to be me getting you to relax, after all.”

That was… surprisingly thoughtful of him. “Your dad just has a bunch of notes like this lying about?” Erika asked, wondering what all he had that might not be related to ghosts. Then again, she could probably ask Rick.

“I wouldn’t say lying about, exactly, but Beth knows the combination to his safe, so…”

“Ah.”

“But I don’t think he cares? Beth figured out the combo to the gun safe one time, and that was changed by morning. I bet he keeps his notes locked up just to make Mom happy, but secretly hopes we’ll investigate.”

Erika pulled off the main road and onto an old dirt path that barely wasn’t overgrown by the surrounding trees and brush. Her own gun wasn’t on her at the moment, locked away in a small safe that Leah had bought her. She hadn’t thought she would need it given Daniel’s interests, but now she was regretting it a bit. Her bat wasn’t here either.

She could still picture the bat where she last saw it, rolled under the rear seat of The Hanged Man’s car. Every time she tried to retrieve it, however, it felt like she was grasping at nothing. She was still trying to grasp where it was, not where it was now.

How that all worked while the planet spun around, rotating around the Sun, all while zooming around the galaxy didn’t even warrant a thought. Her life was complicated enough without delving into astroparaphysics.

That wasn’t to say that she was undefended. She had gone out and bought a new bat. One made for adults, rather than the child-sized bat Carter had gotten for his birthday. She had thought the extra reach would be good, but now, she was regretting that decision. It was unwieldy, heavier, and harder to conceal even in her long coat.

At least she didn’t have to conceal it here.

“We in the right place?” Erika asked as they continued up the dirt road. It felt like a fog had settled in, but only in the distance, as if the area around her was cut off from the wider world.

That got her a little excited, even if it was just normal, if odd weather.

“GPS says so. Just a bit… Ah.”

“Ah,” Erika repeated.

There it was, sat atop a small hill. An old, late 19th-century farmhouse, folk Victorian style. Rectangular and large, capable of fitting at least two of Erika’s old homes within. A tall, rounded window peaked the roof directly over the entryway door, clearly having a second story up there. Despite allegedly being abandoned for over a hundred years, it was in surprisingly good condition. The paint was peeling off the exterior, but none of the windows reflected in Erika’s headlights looked broken.

“You sure this place is abandoned?” Erika couldn’t help but ask. “Last time I broke into a place, I got a bounty put on my head over it.”

“That’s what the notes said.”

“Good enough for me,” Erika said as she pulled right up to the front door. She looked over her shoulder, down at the pile of junk covering the floor behind her seat. All the ghost-hunting equipment she had gotten before their little seance adventure. She hadn’t touched it since. “Hope all this hasn’t run out of batteries already.”

Daniel looked back, pulled a flashlight from the floor, and flicked the switch. The bright light made Erika wince away.

“Still works,” he said.

“Great. Shine it somewhere else.”

“Right. I’ve never been on a successful ghost hunt before, but Dad has taken me and Beth out on a few outings in the past. The first step is to determine whether anyone is in immediate danger because that changes how we react to the rest of the situation.”

“I think we can skip that one,” Erika said, testing a few of the items as she packed them into a backpack. The little talky box turned on, as did the EMF reader. The ultraviolet flashlight took a few smacks against her palm, but it eventually turned on as well.

“Next is to ascertain the existence of a paranormal entity. We go in and basically look for anything abnormal. Tools can help, but be cautious of false readings.”

“Right.”

“Then identify the type of entity. Dad and his friends have figured out types they’ve identified and categorized based on behavior and other information,” Daniel said, flipping through a little black book.

“Steal that from your dad’s safe as well?”

“Nope. He had copies made for all us kids.”

“Fair enough.”

“Different types of entities can be sent home in different ways. Sometimes by breaking something they’re attached to, sometimes by conducting a little ritual. I’ve never gotten that far, though.”

“Apparently, you can also just say ‘goodbye’. That’s what they did at the pub, anyway.”

“I think that only works during a seance.”

“Doesn’t seem like there is harm in trying. Probably the easiest thing to try too.” Erika slung her pack over her back and kicked open her door. “Well? You ready?”

“Guess so,” Daniel said, keeping hold of the book and the flashlight.

“Excited?” Erika asked with a grin.

“Eh.” He shrugged. “You look happy, though.”

Erika considered for a moment, then nodded her head. Maybe getting away from all the Mummy and maggots and bounties was going to be fun after all. It would be a bit of a damper if nothing happened, but she was surprisingly excited right now. What happened later wouldn’t change that.

“Let’s go,” she said.