Close Encounter

 

 

“Keep in mind the themes. You will not have analytical tools and will have to rely on intuition based on what the object is or represents. That will likely be the key, attempting to use a mundane object in accordance with its themes should see you infusing your psionic energy into it.”

“Alright. And I can do this while already possessing an artifact?”

“That answer is slightly more complex. In short, possibly. Though without running tests during the process, we won’t know for certain.”

“Okay.”

“I theorize that any object can become an artifact when inundated with psionic energy, but you may find it easier to take an object that already has meaning. In other words, plucking one of a hundred mass produced objects off a store shelf will be harder for you than going to a charity shop and finding a relatively unique object with history behind it. That is likely a psychosomatic hang-up, but I posit—”

“I’ll keep that in mind, but I’ve got to go. Sorry,” Dyna said, hanging up the phone just as Ruby stepped out of the bathroom.

Her wild hair wasn’t quite so wild at the moment, dampened by water. She had apparently foregone the hairdryer. Dyna could empathize. She knew she forgot something when packing. The motel did have its own hairdryer, but it was more like a lukewarm fan. No hot air at all.

“Who was that?” Ruby asked, looking up at Dyna with heavy shadow around her eyes.

Dyna blinked twice at her somewhat strange appearance before answering. “Doctor Cross,” she said honestly. “He just wanted to tell me a few things and were you getting into my cosmetics?” Dyna asked, changing the subject.

“No.”

“Ruby…”

“Maybe.”

“I thought stupid makeup was for stupid people with big heads like Emerald? Then you come out here looking like Pris.”

“Is a pris good?”

Dyna pressed her lips together. “It’s a character from a movie. I don’t know if you’d like it.”

“An old movie?”

“Yeah.”

“You know,” Ruby said, moving about the room to pick up the ribbon that made her artifact look like a proper necklace. “I’ve been meaning to ask… Are all the movies you watch twice as old as you are?”

“No? I mean… Maybe. A few of them…”

“Huh.”

“Anyway, Walter hasn’t gotten back to me yet, so rather than sitting around and doing nothing, I want to go back to that house,” Dyna said. “Look around a bit and see if there are any clues there as to where he might have gone.”

“Better than nothing, I guess.”

“Yeah. You ready to go? We’ll pick up some quick breakfast on the way.”

“Sounds good.”

Ruby didn’t have much in the way of equipment, but Dyna slipped into her ballistic vest, threw her jacket on over the top, then grabbed a pair of goggles. Just in case. It was probably pure luck that house splinters hadn’t wound up in her eyes. Or worse. Her ear protection dangled on strings around her neck. With a gun at her hip, not that she intended to use it on Matt, she felt mostly ready to go.

As they stepped outside the motel, Dyna checked her mirror to find nothing alarming. With that, they got into the car.

Now knowing the way out to the house, at least a little, it didn’t take much time to get out to the rows of abandoned homes even with having stopped for some eggs Benedict at a local diner. Dyna somewhat expected police cars or at least crime scene tape all over the house, but found it left exactly as she had last seen it. The door was wide open and pieces of the house were splintered all over the front porch.

“Who would report it?” Ruby said after Dyna voiced her thoughts. “Not like he has any neighbors.”

“There were at least ten gunshots between all of us. Or, between you and him. I didn’t fire anything. But I figured someone would have heard.”

“Anyone out here is probably out here illegally. Doubt they want cops snooping about.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Dyna said, handing over a napkin. “You’ve got some hollandaise sauce on your chin.”

Ruby’s eyes, shadowed by the excessive makeup, widened. She snatched the napkin and started furiously rubbing her chin. “Let’s go,” she said without even asking if she got it all. “I’ll be on guard for bowling balls this time. And paint cans, hot doorknobs, blowtorches, nails in stairs, and—”

“You don’t have to list every trap. I get the idea.”

“Oh? I haven’t even gotten into the list of traps I thought of that he might also have come up with. Really, if that hadn’t been a movie, the kid would have been dead. The moment you make the enemy aware that there are traps, they’re going to be wary and not just keep blundering into them. You’ve got to be lethal from the start. So I would have—”

“And that’s what I was afraid of,” Dyna said with a sigh as she exited the vehicle. She didn’t have any odd feelings and the mirror showed off nothing interesting. Matt wouldn’t have returned and that all but proved it to her.

“Oh please,” Ruby said, stepping up next to Dyna. “The movie didn’t teach me a thing. If Emerald had told me a week ago to defend a building like that, nobody would have gotten inside alive.”

“I’m honestly not sure if you’re trying to be reassuring.”

Ruby flashed a grin and then stopped at the front door.

Dyna stopped as well. With a glance toward Ruby, she raised a hand and knocked on an intact bit of siding. “Matt?” she called out. Just in case. “It’s Dyna. Not here to hurt you! Just to talk.”

“I don’t think he’s home.”

“Me neither.”

“Me first?” Ruby asked, pulling out a small yet high-powered flashlight from her pocket. “I can take a hit.”

Dyna grimaced, feeling guilty again. “Sorry,” she said, fingers tracing over the mirror in her pocket.

She had no idea what she was going to do about that. Even after speaking with Doctor Cross, she was still uncertain. From before, from when she had bound with the Aztec disc, albeit temporarily, Dyna had received a brief lecture about how artificers with multiple artifacts was technically possible but not advised in the long term due to ‘hostile resonance frequencies’ of the artifacts interfering with each other. That meant that upon returning to the institute, she would almost certainly be going through the decoupling process once again.

Dyna’s immediate hope was that she would be able to trade in her mirror for something else. What that something was…

Dyna had no idea. She first needed to find an object that she wanted to try turning into an artifact. That sounded like an ordeal all on its own. Aside from the vague notion of better, Dyna didn’t have a clue what she wanted.

It had to be something portable. It wouldn’t be a good idea to turn a house into an artifact, if such a thing were even possible. Doctor Cross suggested that something like that wasn’t. Emerald’s pocket watch had a number of internal components, but it was conceptually just a timepiece. A car was theoretically one item, but had too many obviously individual components. The door, the windows, the radio, the wheels, the steering column, and so on. Existing artifacts in the Vault were invariably ‘single’ items, even if they were made up of a few different pieces.

A toy car, on the other hand, would probably work. It might embody the themes of speed or transportation… or childhood and fun.

Even before Doctor Cross’ call this morning, Dyna’s mind hadn’t let her sleep much. She had been too busy thinking about possibilities. It was honestly overwhelming.

She had to wonder if, perhaps by talking with Walter, she might just swap the mirror for an existing artifact from the Vault. One with its themes and ideas already known. But at the same time, if her natural psychic power was to somehow create artifacts…

Well, the institute existed to study the development of psychic powers. It would honestly be remiss of Dyna to not try to use her ability.

“Dyna!” Ruby called from somewhere in the house. “I think I found something.”

Dyna slowly closed the refrigerator door on a bunch of warm and frankly putrid food that Matt had hopefully not been eating. Lost in her thoughts, she had barely noticed herself walking around the house, investigating little things. Stepping over a loose floorboard, she moved back to the entryway where Ruby had gotten her head smashed in the day before. “Where are you?”

“Upstairs!” Ruby paused for a moment before calling out, “Watch out for every third step!”

Dyna froze with her foot hovering over the step. She slowly pulled back, noting a thick cut in the wood. A bit of weight would probably have sent her straight through it. Uncertain what might lie underneath and in no hurry to find out, Dyna carefully stepped over before climbing the rest of the steps.

“What is it?” she said, reaching the top.

“Come look.”

The top of the stairs was a small landing with four doors around it, all open. One led to a small bathroom. Two next to each other were mirrored bedrooms, though neither had any furniture. The last door was a much larger bedroom where Ruby’s voice had come from. Dyna walked into the latter room, stepping over a small wire poking out between exposed floorboards.

The master bedroom must have been where Matt spent most of his time. A mattress sat directly on the floor, covered with several dirty blankets. Cans of food were stacked up next to one of the walls. It looked like he had set up some small propane camping grill just outside the window, set up on a piece of plywood that clearly hadn’t been part of the original home construction.

Despite there being a bathroom just outside, there was another one attached to this master bedroom. Next to it was a walk in closet. Light from Ruby’s flashlight danced about in the closet. Shining her own flashlight on the floor, Dyna carefully moved over. It didn’t seem like there were any traps here, however. Matt probably hadn’t wanted to trip over them when getting up to go to the bathroom.

Did the water in this place even run? Dyna shuddered at the thought of what the bathrooms might look like.

Walking into the closet, however, Dyna had to let out a small breath. “Wow.”

“I know, right?” Ruby said, running a finger down a wall. “I didn’t even know they made newspapers anymore.”

Dyna took her eyes off the walls to shoot a strange look at Ruby. Deciding not to comment, she glanced back.

Every square inch of the walls was covered in scraps of newspaper or magazines. Little clippings. Some were full articles. Other pieces were just small segments. Sentences and words that must have had meaning to him. A few pictures stood out, usually surrounded by chopped up paragraphs and other articles.

“No red string tying it all together,” Dyna said, humming.

The ceiling and, actually, the upper parts of the walls were mostly blank. It looked like he had started to try to put up some clippings, but had either not finished or decided it was too much work to get up so high. The floor was uncovered as well, though it did have a littering of intact magazines, newspapers, a few pairs of scissors, and several sticks of glue.

“When you said he went crazy, I didn’t know you meant like actual trapped-in-the-basement-of-Psychodynamics-with-Doctor-Tarr levels of insane.”

Ignoring Ruby, Dyna took a closer look at one of the more prominent photographs of a young boy. The text, chopped up and assembled around him, included several instances of kidnapped, missing, and disappeared. Then there were the dozens of instances of Hatman surrounding the photograph. None were all one word. Some were two separate bits of text stuck together. Others were individual letters chopped out of various headlines and titles, making it look like one of those stereotypical ransom notes from really old movies.

The most complete clipping near the photograph seemed to be an excerpt from an article just stating the child’s name and date he went missing.

Pulling out her phone, Dyna snapped a photograph to send to Walter later on. Dyna didn’t know the kid pictured even a with a name and a face. She doubted he was an acquaintance of hers. Walter would be far more equipped to track down information about him.

Crouching down, Dyna found another photograph a little lower on the wall. Once again, it was surrounded with kidnapping, missing, and Hatman. She took a picture of it as well, only to take another glance around the room.

“Are all of these missing kids that were kidnapped by the Hatman?”

Ruby shrugged. “That’s what the implications are, if you believe it.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“I believe you,” Ruby said. “But these? This guy could be attributing every missing person with this Hatman, regardless of whether or not he was involved.”

“True, I suppose,” Dyna said, taking a picture of another section of the wall. “Still, just in case, we should get photos of all this to Walter.”

“Yeah. Especially this bit.”

Turning to the same wall with the door, Dyna found Ruby pointing at a section of the wall that wasn’t quite like the rest. Something was glued up to the wall, but it wasn’t newspaper or magazine clippings.

“A map?”

It looked like a sheet torn straight from a physical atlas. After taking a picture, Dyna stared at it for a long few moments. It was a map of the suburbs. Probably the same suburbs that this house was located in. There were symbols drawn on at various points. Some lots were crossed out with thick black marks. Others were circled. Some had both circles and crosses.

And a few of the crosses had smaller symbols near them. A long flat line that jutted upward around the center. “This is a hat, right? The little mark?”

“Maybe.”

Tension gripped Dyna’s stomach. “These marks are all over the place. Is the Hatman here?”

“Hope so. I’ll crack his skull in.”

“The symbol shows up around a lot of the crossed out properties… Has Matt been fighting the Hatman?” That could explain why he had opened fire despite Dyna and Ruby obviously lacking hats or any other physical characteristics of the man. If he had been expecting someone else. Someone a little more prone to kidnapping…

Uneasy, Dyna turned to look around the room. Did he have more of these? Did he make a new one every time he had to move?

Dyna blinked twice as her flashlight beam crossed the far end of the closet. There was a face she recognized there. The little girl from her memories. The one who disappeared. The Carroll Institute hadn’t managed to track her down. Not even a name. And yet, in a vague sense, Dyna still managed to recognize her. Of course she would be here. Matt had remembered something, so here she was. Dyna stepped forward, about to look for a name, only to freeze.

Around the photograph, more clippings had been glued to the wall. But just beyond those, Dyna saw it. More clippings covered the wall, but they weren’t random. There was an organization to them. Darker clippings spread outward, wide over the top of the picture of the girl. It wasn’t a single image, but a collage.

A collage of a hat.

Once she saw that much, the rest stood out against the background noise of the newspaper-covered wall. A face made up from text, pictures, scribbled over scraps, and more. But it wasn’t a complete face. There were gaps. Bare wall showing through. There were no eyes. No mouth. Just empty blanks.

“He used to come when I slept,” Ruby said, holding up a small tablet of paper that might have been better used for a grocery shopping list. Her flashlight illuminated numerous scribblings. “He just stood and stared. Watched. Now he comes when I’m awake.”

“We should leave,” Dyna said, feeling a tingling in her fingers. “We need to go.”

Ruby looked up from the tablet. “You didn’t even finish taking pictures.”

Dyna wasn’t listening. She had a bad feeling. Grabbing her mirror, she glanced down. “Black lenses.”

Ruby flipped the tablet shut and slipped it into the pocket of her hoodie. Her gun came out. She promptly drew back the slide, chambering a round. “Could be your friend.”

“Could be a man with a hat.”

“I’m honestly fine with either,” Ruby said, moving out of the closet. She approached the windows of the master bedroom that looked out over the backyard and peered out, using the wall as cover. “Nothing out back.”

Dyna walked out of the room, stepping over a trap on the way, and entered the right of the two other bedrooms. Its windows should look out toward the front. Dyna did the same that Ruby had done, just barely peeking out enough to see the sidewalk down below the house.

She immediately sucked in a breath.

A man walked down the sidewalk. He moved with purpose, but not at a hasty speed. Each step was languid, as if he had all the time in the world to get to his inevitable destination. Dyna couldn’t see his face. He wore a long black coat and a hat with a brim that stretched out clear to his already broad shoulders.

“You see him too, right?” Dyna asked as Ruby came up alongside her. She had to be certain.

“Yeah… You’re not the crazy one,” Ruby whispered. The corner of her eyebrow started twitching. “He’s doing something. Messing with my mind. Not strong, but the moment I looked at him, I had to start fighting it.”

“Really?” Dyna closed her eyes, focusing inward for a moment. “I don’t feel anything.”

“You saw him as a kid. Already got exposed to the trick. You’re probably fighting it off easier.”

“Maybe…”

“So what’s the plan? Ambush him when he comes in? Rush him now?”

“We need to report this to…” Dyna trailed off, watching as the man came to a stop outside the house.

He stood on the sidewalk, well within reach of the car they had come in, but seemed to pay it no mind as he turned to face the house directly. Dyna sucked in a breath and held it as he simply stared. She couldn’t see his face. The wide brim of his hat hid it just as much as it kept the visible sliver of her hidden from his eyes. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to look up. It would let her see, but at the same time, she was afraid of what she might find.

The man angled his head to the side, just slightly. After a moment of silent thought, he turned back to the direction he had been walking and started down the sidewalk once again.

“He’s leaving?” Ruby hissed. “Not today you aren’t—”

“Ruby!”

The younger girl was already out of the room. Dyna chased after her, hopping over a trip wire before skipping the sawed steps on her way down. She made it to the entryway and out the door just a few steps behind Ruby.

Ruby had her gun out and aimed down the street in the same direction that the man had been heading. Only a look of confusion crossed her face.

It didn’t take much to figure out why. The street and sidewalk were empty.

What…

What had they come out here for again? Why did Ruby have her gun out?

Unease gnawed at Dyna’s chest as she glanced up and down the street, seeing nothing. Pulling out her mirror, Dyna looked at her own face. No black lenses, no alternate perspectives. And yet…

Intuition or gut instinct, Dyna wasn’t sure, but she snapped at Ruby. “Get in the car!”

“Wha—”

“Car!” Dyna shouted, already rushing past the girl to the driver side of the vehicle. “Now!”

To her credit, Ruby didn’t argue further. The moment she had both feet in, Dyna stomped her foot down on the accelerator. She stared in the rear-view mirror, watching the empty street behind their car until it came time to turn.

“What was that about?” Ruby snapped.

“I don’t know. I… had a feeling. Like you might just disappear and I wouldn’t even know it.”

“Dumb.” Ruby clicked her tongue as she dropped the magazine from her gun, pulled the slide back until she ejected the chambered bullet, then started pressing the bullet back into the magazine. “Why was I… We were investigating the house. And then someone showed up on your mirror. But I can’t quite remember…”

“We were investigating the Hatman. I think… I got such a bad feeling about standing out there in the open. I think he found us.”

Ruby paused her movement, closing her eyes. “I didn’t feel any psychic in my head. Not after getting outside.”

“Neither did I,” Dyna said through grit teeth. “Neither did I.”