24 – Portents of Impending Doom

The atmosphere in Varn’s arcade felt unusually tense.

It didn’t help that, as soon as Erika walked in, Leslie stood, pulled a hefty shotgun out from under the table, and aimed it right at the door. He quickly pointed it up at the ceiling as soon as he saw that it was Erika coming in, but he kept it in his hands, frowning heavily as The Fixer walked in behind her.

Maybe she should have knocked.

Erika wondered if they thought The Fixer was some kind of ghost, but dismissed that idea. He looked as normal as any other person. So maybe they were worried about something else. Here she was, bringing yet another strange and unusual problem into their midst when all they wanted to do was wave around EMF readers and say goodbye to ghosts. As Sofia had said, she signed up to put ghosts to rest, not all this other nonsense.

Looking at the Hispanic woman, she was by far the most nervous of the entire group. She sat at the large table, hands rubbing together repeatedly, all while staring at both Erika and The Fixer. Mostly The Fixer.

But, as Erika looked around, she realized that Sofia was the only one who seemed truly concerned with him. The others weren’t ignoring him, of course, but Erika felt their attentions focused on her more than anything. Leslie especially looked disappointed. Rick kept frowning at her, then at his laptop.

Carter, Beth, and Daniel were still present. When Erika first walked in, it looked like Beth was showing Carter something on her phone. Games or videos, judging by the noises. All three stopped what they were doing before Erika even finished opening the door. Carter stared at The Fixer, and The Fixer seemed to have eyes only for him in turn, but both Beth and Daniel were, again, focused on Erika.

Only Anna looked mildly concerned with the others, rather than Erika. So that was reassuring.

“What?” Erika asked, not interested in waiting for one of them to figure out who was going to speak first.

Leslie and Rick looked at one another before the former began speaking. He spoke slowly, as if talking to a child. “You were at the Chicago Historical Gallery and Cultural Museum?”

“Sounds about right,” Erika said with a shrug. She hadn’t been paying all that much attention to its full name, but it had been a museum, sort of. “What of it?”

Rick pressed his lips into a firm line, looking down at his laptop. “They’re saying there was a gas leak in the area. Twenty dead, including a few first responders. It all started at the museum. They’re evacuating that whole section of the Lower West Side.”

“Gas leak?” Erika said. Confused, she looked at The Fixer and got a shrug in response. “There wasn’t a gas leak before I left. And I certainly didn’t do anything to cause one, if you’re thinking I had something to do with it. Anna was in the area—You see anything?” Erika asked the other woman.

“No. Nothing like what they’re describing. Heard a few gunshots.”

“Those also weren’t me… probably.”

“Probably?” Leslie said, alarmed.

“Well, I did shoot my gun, but only in some weirdo alternate dimension thing. I doubt someone heard that.”

“Alternate dimension thing?” Sofia asked. Her face paled as she asked. “W… What do you mean by that?”

“No idea. A lot of weird things happened, and I haven’t even started trying to think about them.” There were too many things to think about already, mostly involving The Fixer and Leah. Speaking of… “This is The Fixer, by the way. He’s… complicated.”

He dipped his head. “Good evening.”

Leslie opened his mouth. Whether he had a comment or a question, the world would never know. He paused as Carter got up from his chair.

Erika watched, wary, as Carter walked up to The Fixer with a look of concentration on his face. She shouldn’t have to intervene. Not if The Fixer had been telling the truth about everything. If so, he wouldn’t harm Carter. Erika hadn’t cared about being in the same car with him, but then, she was Erika. She could handle herself. Carter, on the other hand… If something happened to him…

If The Fixer hadn’t been telling the truth…

Nothing happened. Carter held up his arm, showing off the silver wristwatch that never left his person ever since he got it back when he was first starting school. Without a word, he held it up. Not giving it to The Fixer, just showing it to him.

The Fixer smiled a soft, kind smile. He crouched down to be on the same level as Carter. For a moment, it looked as if he might reach forward to rest a hand on the boy’s shoulder, but he stopped himself before really moving. “Has it helped?” he asked.

Carter nodded his head. Again, without a word spoken, he turned and walked away, heading back to Beth and Daniel at the side of the room. He plopped down in his seat and didn’t even look up at The Fixer again.

Which wasn’t all that odd. Not for Carter. The strangest thing about that whole encounter was that he went up to someone outside the Walker family in the first place.

Then again, with what she now knew about The Fixer, he wasn’t exactly not part of the Walker family, was he? Even discounting the whole possession-merging thing with Leah.

Erika blinked as she realized just what that little encounter signified. “You’re the one who gave him that thing? Mom was freaking out about it for weeks, thinking some creepy kidnapper pedophile was stalking around his school.”

“After the ordeal with you, I knew he would have problems,” The Fixer said, standing again without taking his eyes off Carter. “I thought I would head them off.”

“You could have told mom that, you freak. I remember her losing hair from the stress.”

The Fixer shifted in place, looking to Erika with a note of genuine discomfort. “I thought it would be best if we didn’t meet.”

“Oh yes, of course,” Erika said sarcastically. “Wouldn’t want to knock her up a third time—”

“Please. Not in front of Carter.” The Fixer looked over at the ‘kids’ table. “Or other children.”

Erika stewed, glaring at him with her lips pressed firmly together. “Don’t try to act like you care,” she muttered, crossing further into the room. She rounded the table, stopping at Rick, where she leaned over his shoulder to see these news reports he was talking about.

She expected a web page of a local news station. Instead, she found herself faced with a black screen filled with green text. It wasn’t falling from the top of the screen in strange, arcane symbols or anything; it was just simple lines of text. Every so often, a new line would appear, bumping the rest upward.

“Police scanner,” Rick said, seeing the confusion on Erika’s face. “I wrote a script that listens for a few keywords and transcribes any chatter here. Most of what I’m listening for is unexplained or odd happenings—things that might imply ghosts—but I adjusted the filters tonight to listen for activity in the Lower West Side.”

“I see… There were some cop cars and firetrucks around when I left. I figured they were there because of those gunshots—which still weren’t me—but a gas leak?”

“They’re covering something up,” Leslie said immediately, nodding to himself as if his worst suspicions were confirmed.

“Who’s they?” Erika asked.

“They. Them. The government, probably, or whoever is really in charge.”

From the corner of her eye, she noticed Daniel roll his eyes. ‘Conspiracies,’ he mouthed with a small huff. Which reminded Erika that Leslie had been the first to jump onto the idea that The Church’s invisible robot was an escaped government experiment. At the same time, Erika had to wonder whether he was actually on to something.

“Right,” Erika said. “Quick story time.”

She proceeded into an abbreviated recounting of the night’s events, starting with meeting up with The Stalker and heading to the museum, breaking in, briefly mentioning all the weird artwork and statues, before finally reaching the statue. She glossed over the attack from the masked men, only really mentioning that once one of the masks broke, the man went comatose. The other attacker then led them to a secret passage with the weirdo alternate dimension thing, which held a prison that, in turn, held The Fixer.

Erika neglected to mention the massive chasm, the red tongue, or the Mother of Maggots. She was still trying to process what exactly all that had been. She did leave some trailing ends, looking to The Fixer—she had a feeling he knew what all that had been about—but when he neglected to embellish her story, she shrugged and gave up.

“Then we left. The Stalker went off in one direction. I came here.”

“You weren’t followed, were you?” Leslie asked. Though he had sat down during Erika’s explanation, he still had that shotgun out and resting on the table. His eyes flicked to the door, though he didn’t grab the gun again.

“By The Stalker? I don’t think so.” She didn’t think that The Stalker needed to follow someone to find them.

“No. The ones who attacked you.”

“Oh… No, I don’t think so. After I smashed the statue, they all went comatose. Even if they recovered eventually, we left pretty quickly.”

Leslie nodded, pleased with that response. “They could have been possessed.”

“Or cursed,” Rick added. “Breaking the statue might have freed them.”

“Or killed them. Hence the gas leak story.”

“They were still alive,” Erika said. “At least when I left. I don’t know if anyone was home.” She tapped her finger to the side of her head. “But they were breathing at least.”

“The government must have known what was going on. That’s how they had the gas leak story all ready to go, such that even first responders at the scene would believe it. They came across the bodies, unconscious or dead, and easily believed they had passed out from toxic air.”

“But there were only four of them,” Erika said, then looked at Rick. “You said twenty people? Plus some first responders themselves.”

“The conspiracy runs deeper. Even some of the police or paramedics were those masked people. When you toppled the statue, they also passed out.”

That made… a fair amount of sense. All four people Erika had seen looked just like regular people. The postman looked like he had just gotten off his shift at the post office. The bowler guy was the same, except having recently come from a bowling alley. Was it strange to think that a cop was also a mask-holder?

“The possibility of conspiracy is likely far greater than you realize.”

Everyone turned toward The Fixer. He hadn’t chimed in once during Erika’s entire explanation, probably curious about the events before she reached his prison as well. He spent the time leaning against one of the old arcade machines, acting all aloof.

“I have been tracking this group for most of my life, and I have seen atrocities. They will not hesitate to kill you, your family, and your friends if they believe that any of you are getting in the way of their goals.” He paused, looking around the room with a grave expression. “It may be difficult, but I urge all of you to forget this night even happened and go back to your usual affairs.”

“Oh, and what?” Erika said, glowering. “Leave it all to you?”

“I have experience with this group.”

“Yeah, experience in their prison.”

“I appreciate the trouble you went through to assist me, but I had things under control.”

“First of all, fuck you. I did that for Mom. Not you,” Erika snapped. The Fixer tried to interject, but she talked right over him. “Second, it sure didn’t look like you had things under control. Or was being all chained up part of the plan?”

“Erika…”

“Quit ‘Erika…’-ing me. I’ve known you for like two hours and I’m sick of it already.”

Leslie leaned forward, hands clasped together. He had enough presence that, despite her argument with The Fixer, she noticed him moving and turned to see what he wanted. This time, however, he didn’t look in her direction. “Do you need help?” he asked The Fixer.

Maybe it was some gravity in his tone, or maybe The Fixer simply hadn’t expected him to ask that, but The Fixer hesitated long enough for Leslie to continue speaking.

“Erika might have mentioned that we hunt ghosts. While true, it isn’t entirely accurate. We gathered together after experiences with unnatural elements. We saw police, government, and all manner of people either ineffectual against these elements or unbelieving that they existed in the first place. Thus, we learned to deal with them ourselves.” Leslie paused, drawing in a heavy breath. “Not because we hate these unnatural elements or wish for targets to exact our vengeance upon, but because there are people out there affected by the elements who don’t otherwise know how to get help.

“It is clear to me that we don’t understand everything about this current situation. Rick and Anna,” Leslie said, pausing to gesture at the two others, “generally prefer to gather knowledge before taking action. But from my point of view, I see an organization that has attacked a private residence, burning it to the ground. If there are supernatural elements at play, if the feds are covering it up, then it sounds like something up our wheelhouse.

“I’m not sure how Erika leaving to find her mother resulted in you coming back in her place. You two clearly have some history that I don’t have the full picture of, but I can see that the two of you are not enemies.”

Erika huffed at that, folding her arms with a glare at The Fixer. But Leslie’s perception wasn’t exactly wrong, so she couldn’t really correct him.

“So I ask again,” Leslie said after watching Erika’s huff. “Do you need help?”

She fully expected The Fixer to shut Leslie down immediately. Someone who had been going at this alone for hundreds of years, if the archives were to be believed, wasn’t likely going to hop to inviting other people into his company. To her surprise, he nodded immediately.

“At the very least, I need medical attention,” The Fixer said. It wasn’t exactly bringing them on board, but it was something. “Erika said one of you could help… we can’t exactly go to a hospital.”

“Yeah, Erika mentioned you were injured in her text,” Anna said, looking The Fixer up and down. “I dropped out of med residency after a year. I’ve got some surgical knowledge. But you don’t look like you need it.”

“Hold it,” Erika said before anyone else could do anything. She pulled her keys from her pocket. “Danny, you can drive, right?” she asked, tossing the keys right to him, then pulled out a small wad of cash. “Could you take Carter and Beth and go get some McDonald’s or something?”

Beth bolted to her feet, fists balled. “You can’t just kick us out, you bit—”

“Bethany Ada King,” Leslie rumbled. His daughter shrank in on herself, wincing as she tried to make herself much smaller. “What were you about to say?”

“I… love McDonald’s?”

“That’s what I thought.”

“But—” Daniel started, only to get a shake of the head from Leslie.

“There will be time later,” he said, nodding his head toward the door.

Carter was the only one who stood without protest. Lightly brushing over the watch on his wrist, he simply walked over to the door. Erika gave him a light pat on the shoulder, stopping him as he passed by her.

“Listen to Danny and do as he says. And don’t order too much,” she said, passing the money to him. “Get me a Number 5 with a Diet Coke. And get a… Deluxe Chicken burger for…” Erika just jerked her head in The Fixer’s direction. “Not sure if they served anything in that prison. Anyone else want anything?” Erika asked, addressing the room at large.

Rick didn’t hesitate to put in an order. Neither did Anna. Leslie waved her off, pulling Daniel and Beth over to the side to speak to them quietly.

Sofia sat at her seat, head down, staring at the table. For how talkative she had been the other night, for how much she had to say about Erika’s proposed excursion to The Church, the woman had almost nothing to talk about now. Did The Fixer intimidate her or something?

As far as Erika could tell, The Fixer had barely paid her any attention at all.

With the children safely out the door with Daniel, all attention in the room turned back to The Fixer.

He sighed. “It isn’t pretty,” he said. “Brace yourselves.”

Just as in the car, the air shifted. A strange feeling of overlap came over Erika. She could almost see through The Fixer. Not like he was transparent, but like there were several variations of him all occupying the same spot. One of those variations bubbled and warped, surfacing above the rest. The bloodied form of Leah, complete with matted hair, gashes and wounds, and dangling chains folded into place over the top of The Fixer’s other guise.

“Madre mía…”

Rick started rubbing his eyes, wincing. He shook his head with a frown of confusion before looking around. “Where did… Holy hell!” he shouted. He grabbed hold of the cardboard shipping tube, clutching it as he pointed—as if all the others hadn’t already been staring. “Where did you—Are you alright?”

Leslie jumped to his feet. His hand darted toward the shotgun, though he didn’t quite pick it up again. He just hovered over it, ready to grasp it, while he stared at The Fixer.

Anna wasn’t much better. As the closest to The Fixer, she stumbled back. There was something odd about her expression. All of their expressions, in fact. It was true that Leah had a rather gruesome look at the moment, especially with the chain dangling from her eye socket, but Erika didn’t think they all would react like this. It was like…

“This is The Fixer,” Erika said, realizing just where the source of their confusion was coming from. It was like her, with her destroyed false IDs, except a hundred times more intense.

All of them grimaced, flinching ever so slightly. All at once, a certain level of calm came over them. They didn’t quite return to how they had been before, but Leslie pulled his hand away from his shotgun, and Anna started looking over The Fixer with a more clinical expression.

“That was…” Rick rubbed at his forehead. “I don’t even know how to explain it. One moment, that bearded man was there. I blinked, and you were there. I remember you saying to brace myself, but I immediately forgot why I was bracing myself.”

Fixer-Leah murmured something, but that iron mask had come back along with all the dangling chains.

Erika pondered Rick’s words for a moment. She hadn’t had any trouble, neither this time nor the last. Not even back during her stakeout, even if she had been confused at that time. She also saw the transformation, whereas, from Rick’s words, it sounded like he hadn’t seen it.

“What happened to you?” Anna said.

The Fixer couldn’t answer, so Erika hopped in.

“Guess The Mummy doesn’t like having guests,” she said. “The Fixer said something about being able to fix some of the injuries, but needs help getting the chains out. And probably that mask.”

“I’ve got a medkit with some cutting tools and sewing tools. Don’t exactly have an operating table, but if you lie down on the counter there… It isn’t sterile, but we can wipe it down with some wet wipes.”

“Let’s get to it then,” Erika said, looking over Leah once more.

This was going to take a while.

It was strange. A lot of the anger Erika felt diminished the moment The Fixer switched over to Leah. At first, she thought The Fixer was doing something, even if unintentionally, like what he had accidentally done with the rest of the group. Reflecting a little, however, Erika was fairly certain that seeing a familiar face all on its own, especially in such a pitiable state, was what ended up shoving that anger off into the back corner of her mind.

Moving up to Leah, Erika whispered, “Mom?”

The Fixer shook his head. Her head. Whoever’s head.

Whoever it was shaking whoever’s head just made Erika narrow her eyes. Taking The Fixer by the hand, Erika helped her over to the counter. “Let’s get you up here,” she said as Anna finished wiping it down with her rag. As she helped lift The Fixer, she stared over that iron mask attached to Leah’s face. Now that she had a closer look, it wasn’t exactly fused with her skin as she had thought earlier; it was more like little hooks and latches were dug into parts of Leah’s face.

Tension held it on. If she cracked it, splitting it in half, that tension would come undone.

“You want me to try breaking this mask off your face?” Erika asked. “I’m sure there are some tools around here more precise than a baseball bat.”

The Fixer reached up, trying to gently pull her skin to lessen the tension, but the hooks were too long and too deep. The mask would have to come off another way. After the brief attempt, he eventually nodded.

Erika stepped away for a moment. The first thing that popped into her mind was a chisel and a mallet, but there probably weren’t any chisels lying about. However, she had seen a flathead screwdriver when Leslie’s kids had been cleaning. Finding it wasn’t an issue. Neither was a hammer. She found a whole toolbox behind the counter.

“You really think that’s going to work?” Anna asked as she set out a few tools of her own, taken from a white metal medical kit she had dragged out from somewhere. She set aside a few knives, a pair of scissors, several tweezers of differing sizes, and thread for the suture device she had.

“I’m pretty good at things like this,” Erika said, looking around The Fixer’s mask. There was a temptation to go with her original plan and just crack it straight over Leah’s mouth, but she didn’t want to accidentally hurt her mother. Going with a gentler approach, she carefully placed the screwdriver’s tip on one of the hooks right around the cheekbones and lightly tapped.

The metal broke immediately. Erika flashed Anna a grin before moving around to the next latch. There were so many of them and they were so close together that Erika could easily see how she thought it had been fused to the skin. At the same time, she hadn’t the slightest clue how the mask could have been put on in the first place. It was like the metal shrank around her face, digging in as it went.

Magic, she supposed, if that really was real.

Anna moved down to Leah’s legs, starting with the hooks in her Achilles tendons. That gave Erika the space to continue working on the mask. Each clasp that broke away pulled that much less on Leah’s face. The little barbs were still dug into The Fixer’s face, but hopefully Anna would be able to remove them now that they didn’t have the rest of the mask attached.

“Erika,” Leah—The Fixer said in a hushed whisper as soon as the clasps around her jaw were gone.

“If you’re Erika dot dot dotting me again, I don’t want to hear it.”

“No. I was just going to say thank you. And I’m sorry. It might not be much of an excuse, but neither Leah nor I knew how to explain things. So we simply didn’t.”

“Yeah, well.” Erika tapped away at the next hook, snapping it off the larger mask. “This is one of those Oh no, the consequences of my actions moments. And I don’t mean not telling me, I mean knocking her up after making a deal like that in the first place. Guess I shouldn’t expect some devil to have good impulse control.”

The Fixer let out a small sigh, breathing through the nose. “Speaking of consequences, we need to discuss yours. While I appreciate the help and don’t blame you for anything… You may have done more harm than good.”

Erika tapped just a little too hard on the next hook, making The Fixer hiss. “Sorry,” she said, grinding her teeth. “But you sure know how to say the right things to piss me off. What did you expect me to do when I realized my Mom got snatched? Sit around and pretend everything was all peaches and roses?”

“That’s… a good point,” The Fixer said. “While I carry the blame undoubtedly, the end result hasn’t changed. The Mummy’s cult is unable to break their chains, but I ended up as the perfect bait for someone like you to come along.

“I fear we’ve done something… worrisome.”

Erika looked into The Fixer’s eyes and saw the severity therein.

“Great.”