Invitation: The Call, The Haunted, The Sentinels, The Girl Read online

  The kid looked at him a moment, then lowered his gaze.

  “What if he doesn’t want to go?” Andi asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The boy has had second thoughts,” the professor added.

  “I’m sorry, that’s not possible.”

  “Possible or not, it seems to be—”

  Slick made a sharp motion with his hand. The kid grabbed the back of his neck and cried out. “Ahh!”

  “Is that correct, Sridhar?” Slick asked.

  The boy was in too much pain to answer.

  “What are you doing?” Andi demanded.

  He calmly repeated, “Sridhar? Is that correct?”

  “I—” the kid gasped.

  “What’s going on?” Andi cried. “What are you doing?

  “An electronic leash,” the professor said.

  Slick smiled. “Very good.”

  The professor continued. “Not only does it serve as a tracking device, but apparently as a method of control as well.”

  “Only for the less compliant,” Slick said. “Time to call it a night, son.” He waved his hand and the kid cried out again, this time doubling over in pain.

  “Stop it!” Andi shouted. “You’re hurting him!”

  “Let him go!” Cowboy’s voice joined with Andi’s. “Stop it!”

  Sridhar kept gasping. “Please . . . please—”

  “Stop it!”

  All right. Enough was enough. They could yell all they wanted, but there’s only one way to stop a bully. I took off up the steps and went across the stage, heading straight for him. He had me by twenty, thirty pounds. I had him by surviving the streets.

  I heard Cowboy shouting behind me, but I didn’t need his help. I lunged at Slick and shot straight through him like he was thin air. The reason was simple. He was thin air. Another projection. I spun around and tried again. Same thing. Only now he was laughing.

  “Please, Dr. Trenton,” the kid begged. “I shall go. Please!”

  Slick’s projection turned to him.

  The kid stood panting. Sweating.

  “Go” was all Slick said.

  The kid nodded and staggered toward the opposite exit.

  “Sridhar!” Andi shouted.

  “Big day tomorrow, son,” Slick called after him. “Need to get that beauty sleep.”

  “Wait!” Cowboy shouted. “Hold on, now.” He raced toward the boy, but was too late. The kid never looked back as he stepped through the door and let it slam behind him.

  “Sridhar!” Cowboy got to the door. Pushed it. Slammed into it. Pushed again. It didn’t budge.

  Andi spun back to Slick’s image. “You can’t hold him against his will.”

  “Actually, he looked more than willing, wouldn’t you say? And as for you—” He glanced at his watch. “I have deactivated the security field for the next two minutes. That should give you all ample time to leave the auditorium, cross the yard, and exit through the gate.”

  “And if we don’t?” the professor said.

  “Then I shall have you arrested for trespassing and breaking and entering.”

  “We were invited,” Andi argued.

  Slick looked to where Sridhar had exited. “That may be difficult to prove.” He glanced back at his watch. “One minute forty-four seconds.”

  We stood a moment. No one knew what to do.

  “Better hurry,” Slick said. “As the professor can attest, the effects of the field can be quite unpleasant. One minute thirty-two. I believe you have played out all of your cards for this evening, wouldn’t you agree?”

  The professor was the first to turn. He hesitated, then started for the exit.

  “Professor?”

  “I’m not going through that field again,” he said. “Trust me, none of you want to.”

  “An excellent choice, sir.”

  Without warning, Cowboy bolted for the stage.

  “No!” I shouted. “He’s just a projection.” I waved my hand through Slick as a reminder and Cowboy slowed to a stop.

  “Seventy-six seconds,” Slick said. “Dear me, it will be close.”

  I looked after the professor, then glanced at the others. Finally I turned to leave.

  “Miss Brenda, what are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “There’s nothing any of us can do. At least not tonight.”

  “Very good,” Slick called after me. “Run, run, run away; come back to fight some other day.”

  What I wouldn’t give for him to be real. Just long enough to land one punch. But he wasn’t real and there was nothing we could do.

  Those were the facts. The same facts that led Andi to eventually turn and follow me. And finally, Cowboy.

  We stepped outside and barely made it across the field in time. A groggy guard had opened the gate and we walked through. It closed with a mournful creak, followed by a dull thud.

  We headed back to my car. Nobody said a word. Nobody wanted to. We were all alone with just our thoughts and the dark, violet band stretching across the horizon.

  CHAPTER

  8

  I wanna make it clear, I’m no pushover. Just because some kid I don’t know gets into something over his head doesn’t make it my business. It happens all the time. Hookers, gang members, drug runners . . . if they can get out, fine. If not, it’s called survival of the fittest.

  Despite Cowboy’s whining and Miss Do-Gooder’s pleadings, I’d had enough. And for the first time I could remember, me and the professor agreed. Of course we’d called the cops, and of course they said they’d look into it, which of course they wouldn’t. Not with all the money the Institute had to throw around.

  I dropped Cowboy off at his place around six. Took the professor and Andi to our best (and only) motel around six forty-five. I was dead-dog tired but hung in the parking lot just long enough to hear the professor rant and rave about the accommodations. After all the drama, I figured I was entitled to a little entertainment. Of course, we’d all exchanged phone numbers (my mistake) and agreed to contact each other if someone had an idea, but I wasn’t holding my breath.

  I got to bed but didn’t sleep good. Way too many dreams. First it was the usual suspects—making rent, shop troubles, Mom, a guest appearance by Jimmy Jack, who knocked me up at fifteen, and little Monique. Sweet, baby Monique (who I secretly named and held for five minutes before the Brady Bunch couple showed up and swept her away). A day doesn’t go by that I don’t hate myself for that decision, worry about where she is and how she’s being treated. She’ll be eleven next month. Same age as the boy I tatted on Cowboy’s arm.

  The boy who never showed.

  But the dream that wrecked me was about Sridhar. He was in one of those cattle chutes they drive sheep through on their way to slaughter. In my version it led to the Institute’s auditorium where we all sat watching. Slick was up on stage in his three-piece suit holding shears. When Sridhar got to him, he shaved off the kid’s clothes like wool. And the kid? He just stood there looking at me like I’m supposed to do something.

  Once Slick finished and the kid was butt naked, two security guards showed up. They tied his feet and hands and hung him up on a conveyer belt with hooks. It carried him off stage through curtains spattered with blood. I knew what was coming next and forced myself awake . . . both times.

  There might have been a third if Cowboy hadn’t called.

  “Did you get it?” he asked.

  “Get what? What time is—”

  “The dream. The one me, Andi, and the professor got.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Where Sridhar is getting butchered?”

  Ten minutes later I was in the car driving to pick them up. Besides the dream, a picture kept forming in my head. More like a pattern. I kept pushing it away but it kept coming back. A sign it might be legit. I rummaged through the glove compartment of McD wrappers and parking tickets ’til I found a pen and an envelope from a delinquent water bill.

  I sketc
hed as I drove. Pretty simple, really. Just a circle with three spiral arms shooting from it.

  I picked Cowboy up first. He gave me that good-ol’-boy smile. “Mornin’, Miss Brenda. How you been?”

  Andi greeted me with her usual enthusiasm. “What a fantastic morning. It’s great to see you again!”

  The professor didn’t bother.

  We wound up at the local St. Arbucks getting a much needed caffeine fix. Andi chattered the whole time, making me think she’d had a few shots beforehand.

  “Since the beginning of time, dreams have been taken seriously by every known people group. The ancient Babylonians put great stock in them. Besides the Persians and the Greeks, there were the Romans. Of course, we can’t forget the Jews, who even included them in their holy scriptures. Not to mention the Muslims, Christians, and every Eastern belief and culture. In fact, did you know—and you’ll find this incredibly interesting—an indigenous tribe of New Guinea once based their entire government upon the dreams of—”

  “Your point?” I said as we grabbed our drinks and settled in at a back corner.

  “My point is, this is definitely not a coincidence. The odds of three people having an identical dream with identical details is nearly impossible.”

  “Nearly?”

  “Approximately one to ten to the one hundred fifty-seventh power.”

  I gave her a look.

  “Approximately,” she said.

  The professor, who’d been quiet as a tomb, dug a pack of powdered creamer from his pocket. He answered my look. “Lactose intolerant.”

  “So it was Sridhar, right?” Cowboy said. “The little guy put the dream into my brain.”

  “A wonder he found room,” the professor said.

  Andi ignored him. “Before his training, Sridhar started off as a lucid dreamer—”

  “Which is an entirely different crock of—”

  “Which is something the United States government invested millions of dollars developing during the Cold War. They called it Remote Viewing, and it was somewhat successful.”

  “The government paid millions of dollars for people to dream?” Cowboy asked.

  “I rest my case.”

  The professor tore open the creamer and dumped it into his coffee. He’d just picked up a stirrer when Andi cried, “Wait! Look!”

  We followed her gaze to the professor’s cup.

  “Did you see that?” she said. “Did you see the way it swirled?”

  The professor sighed wearily. “Really?”

  “No, I’m serious. No substance swirls into a liquid like that. It was a perfect circle, a perfect ring with three symmetrically placed arms spinning out of it. It lasted only a second, but surely you saw it?”

  She turned to Cowboy, who shrugged.

  Then to the professor.

  He gave the cup an extra stir.

  She looked at me. My face must have given something away. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

  I pulled out the water bill envelope and shoved it across the table at her.

  “There!” She pointed at my sketch. “See! See!”

  “See what?” Cowboy asked.

  “A nine. Don’t you see it? That’s the number nine. It doesn’t get any clearer than that.”

  Once she mentioned it, it was kinda clear. A nine, spinning out of the circle.

  “And this spiral up here at the top right. See the way it makes a perfect six? And this one at the top left?”

  “Another six,” Cowboy said.

  She tapped the paper. “Nine, six. It was September sixth when we got there last night.”

  “It still is,” Cowboy said. He was catching her enthusiasm. “What about that other six, the one on the left?”

  “It could be anything. The minute our plane took off, the number of words in the Institute’s name, or—”

  “The sixth chair of the sixth graduate in today’s ceremony,” I said.

  Andi and Cowboy looked at me.

  “It’s a joke,” I said. “I wasn’t—”

  But Andi’s eyes were wide. “The sixth day of the ninth month with the sixth participant. It’s Sridhar! It’s got to be!”

  Cowboy frowned. “So, besides the dreams—”

  “Someone or something is telling us to help!”

  The professor closed his eyes in exaggerated patience.

  “That’s why we’re here!” she practically shouted. “The plane crash, the nine pinnacles, the same numbers over and over again. They’re telling us to rescue Sridhar and to rescue him today!”

  I shook my head. “You may not have noticed, but we already tried that.”

  Andi reached into her handbag and dug around. “So we have to try again.”

  “That’s right,” Cowboy said eagerly. “Practice makes perfect.”

  She pulled out a pencil and notepad. “We have to devise a plan. Between the four of us there must be some way to save him. Professor? Come on now, we need your help.” She drew a rough sketch of the Institute.

  The professor looked at me and sighed. Between Cowboy’s bighearted naïveté and Andi’s over-the-top enthusiasm, we were outnumbered.

  I’ll save you the boring details. It was late, but after too many cups of coffee and way too many pastries for breakfast, and then lunch, we had no fewer than six plans for breaking into the Institute during the ceremony. Because of Cowboy’s involvement, most looked like football plays with x’s and o’s, but at least we had them. One might have actually worked if it weren’t for Andi’s text message.

  “No way,” she said, looking at her phone.

  “What?” Cowboy asked.

  “It’s from the Institute.” She looked up. “We’re on the list.”

  “List? What list?”

  She read it out loud. “‘Please stop by Security and pick up your on-campus pass. A fun day to be had by all. Dr. B. J. Trenton.’”

  The professor swore under his breath.

  I joined him.

  CHAPTER

  9

  We’re standing at the back wall of the auditorium watching the show. Slick, the real one, had been onstage forty-five minutes, rambling on about how privileged the kids were and how they’d be making the world a better place. The good news was they’d shut down the security field, so once we got our passes we just strolled on with the rest of the doting parents and whoevers. The bad news was we had to listen to his drivel.

  “ . . . leaving selfish ambition behind to enter a new fraternity, an order that will guide us from old paradigms of self-destruction into a new age of knowledge, peace, and prosperity. Graduates, are you ready?”

  The six students behind him nodded. Like the others we’d seen the night before, they were strapped into their chairs looking excited and nervous. Except Sridhar. Even where I stood you could tell he was pretty drugged up.

  “Then let us begin the induction!”

  The choir on the back risers began to sing the same creepy music. Like before, two hooded guys came forward with a long pole. They slipped it into the ring on the pipe’s lid and lifted it off. And, like before, glowing green smoke seemed to billow out.

  “Arise!” Slick called. “Travelers of the future, come fill these newest members who have prepared so long for this moment with your great and wondrous knowledge.”

  I glance over to the control board a dozen feet away. Some guy in a shaved head was sipping a Jamba Juice and running the show. By the looks of things, everything was going according to plan. Everything but us. We still didn’t have one. Even if we did, the two burly guards on either end of the stage could be a problem.

  Sridhar and the others watched as the music grew louder and the smoke turned into a cloud that divided into two, then four, with the last two dividing to make six.

  “We gotta do something,” Cowboy whispered. “Maybe we could ask them to make an announce—”

  “Shh,” Andi said. “Listen.”

  He paused a second. “All I hear is singing.”

  �
��Exactly.”

  “What’s that got to do with—”

  “Shh. Don’t you hear that? The rhythm? The pattern?”

  “It’s just music.”

  “And a rather loose description of the term,” the professor added.

  “No, listen.” She took a breath and blew it out. “Hear it?”

  We didn’t.

  She did it again—breathed in and out. She motioned to the stage and did it a third time. “See? See how Sridhar and the other five are aligning their breathing with the music?”

  “To help them relax,” I said. “Like the guy told us last night.”

  “But those bass notes, hear their rhythm? The way they throb? Underneath?” She tapped her fingers into her palm. “Bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum . . .”

  “It’s like a heartbeat,” Cowboy said.

  “Precisely. And it’s lined up to match the light pulsing inside those clouds.”

  I looked on as Sridhar and the other kids closed their eyes and tipped their heads back. “So it is to help them relax,” I said.

  The professor shook his head. “No. It’s to manipulate their limbic systems.”

  “English?” I said.

  “It’s creating a trance-like state. Lowering their resistance, making them susceptible to hypnotic suggestion.”

  “Or to whatever wants to enter them,” Andi added.

  I turned back to the stage. The clouds were moving into position over each of the students. “So what do we do?”

  “If we’re to help Sridhar, we better act now,” Andi said, “or it’ll be too late.”

  I gestured to Shaved Head at the control panel. “We could take over the board.” I turned to Cowboy. “You could take him out, right?”

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to hurt him.”

  “You take out guys every week on the football field.”

  “Not on purpose. If I do, I always try to patch ’em up when I’m done.”

  I just looked at him.

  “There’s another way,” Andi said. “If I go backstage and confuse the singers’ rhythm, if I can shift it so it’s actually conflicting with the flashing clouds—”