Vortex Read online

  “Gertie is very upset,” Crystal said quietly as she closed the front door behind them. “I’m still trying to calm her down. But Penny is so calm it’s almost, like, creepy.”

  Crystal led them to the small dining room where two women sat at the rectangular table. One was heavyset with short, mussed, graying brown hair and puffy bags under protuberant eyes and the other was a slender, pretty girl with long red hair and a faint sprinkling of freckles on her cheeks. Each had a coffee mug and a third mug stood at the place where Crystal had been sitting across from them.

  Crystal made the introductions, told Gavin and Karen to sit down and brought them coffee.

  “You can talk to them,” Crystal said to Gertie and Penny. “They work for a good friend of mine. They’re here to help.”

  “Sorry for waking you,” Gertie said tremulously.

  “Stop apologizing, Gertie,” Crystal said. “I’m glad you came. Really.”

  “I-I just didn’t know what else to do, where else to go. Those people were after her,” she said, nodding toward Penny. “They spread out through the woods to find her, but I’d taken her into the house. She told me to hide her because they were going to come to the door.” She looked at Penny with admiration, even awe. “She knew. She knew they were coming and even what they would say.” She turned to Gavin and Karen again and continued. “I put her in an old hope chest we keep in the cellar. They came to the door and woke my parents. They asked if anyone had come to the door or if we’d heard anything. Mama and Papa didn’t know what was going on, and I lied. They left and Mama and Papa went back to bed. I waited a little while for them to go back to sleep and then I went down and got Penny out of the chest. I knew we needed help from someone who would understand, so I brought Penny here. I was so scared at first. When I got in the car and drove away, I expected them to follow us—Mr. Ryker and his people. But Penny said they were pretty preoccupied.”

  “Mr. Ryker?” Karen said. “Who’s Mr. Ryker?”

  “He’s in charge out there,” Gertie said. “They came to investigate the... um... what I found.”

  “What did you find?” Karen asked.

  Gertie frowned and lowered her gaze. She stared at her right arm, then touched it with her left hand. “It bit me,” she whispered.

  “She’s talking about Pyk,” Penny said. She spoke softly and calmly. “He came out of the mountain. Well, no... that’s not quite right. He came from underground. Under the mountain. I have a lot of time to kill in our hotel room and I’ve been reading up on Mt. Shasta. A lot of the things people believe about this area—I mean, the crazy stuff—a lot of it’s true. There is a city deep underground. A whole civilization of people who came here long, long ago from a continent that sank into the ocean. That’s where Pyk is from. But he’s not... he’s...” She frowned as she considered her words for a moment. “He’s a misfit. Maybe mutant is the right word. He’s angry, even mean. But mostly because he’s scared and confused. There are others like him down there, and they’re dealt with, these... misfits. Mutants. They’re isolated from the others. Like criminals here. They’re cared for, but they’re considered dangerous, so they’re kept separate from everyone else. For safety. But Pyk escaped, and he ended up here.”

  “Hold it,” Gavin said. “Let’s go back a little. Who are you, Penny? What are you doing here? How are you involved in all this.”

  “This is my latest assignment. I was brought here to help them communicate with Pyk.”

  “Help who communicate with him?” Karen said.

  “Mr. Ryker and his people from Km Services. When I first met him, he worked for the CIA.”

  Crystal turned to Karen and Gavin and said, “I’ve already put in a call to Marty and given him the name. He’s got somebody working on it. He’ll let us know what they turn up.”

  “Ryker worked for the CIA?” Gavin said, gently prodding Penny to continue.

  She nodded. “I went on a couple of assignments for him back then. This is my second since he left the CIA and started working for Km.”

  Gavin was impressed. She was about thirteen years old but sounded older. Her eyes were older, too. He got the feeling they’d seen far more than the average 13-year-old girl. “Who do you work for, Penny?” Karen asked.

  “Work for? I go to school. At Aquino Academy. You’ve never heard of it. I don’t think anybody has. It’s a boarding school for kids like me. Kids who have... unusual abilities.” Karen tossed Gavin a glance that said, What did we step into? When she turned to Penny again, her expression softened and he saw compassion in her eyes.

  Gavin was tempted to ask more questions but decided it might be a good idea to let Karen take over the dialogue with Penny.

  “What kind of unusual abilities, Penny?” Karen asked. The girl looked Karen square in the eye and said, “You realize that I’m not supposed to be talking about any of this. To anyone. By telling you this, I’m putting you in danger.” She shrugged one shoulder and sighed. “You’re in danger just for being here with me. They’ll want me back and they’ll do anything to find me. And they don’t want anyone knowing about me, about Aquino Academy, or about what they’re doing out at Gertie’s place.”

  Karen nodded. “I understand that. We’ve been in similar situations before. Go ahead, Penny.” She smiled. “What unusual abilities do you have?”

  “I’m telepathic.”

  “And the others at your school?”

  Penny blinked. “You believe me?”

  Karen hesitated before saying, “I don’t disbelieve you. What about the others?”

  “They can do all kinds of things. Move objects, start fires, heal wounds. All with their minds.”

  “Where is this school?”

  “It’s in the mountains. But... well, this sounds weird, but I don’t know where. Only that it’s in the mountains.”

  “We’re in the mountains now. Is it nearby?”

  “No. I was flown here.”

  “Then you don’t know what part of the country it’s in?”

  “There’s a military installation not far away. Sometimes we go there for outings. To a movie, or to shop at the store, or have a picnic in the park. Just small groups of us, never very many at a time. When I have an assignment, I’m taken to the installation and put in a plane, then flown to wherever the assignment is.”

  “Do you know the name of the military base?”

  “It doesn’t have a name. There are no signs. Everyone just thinks of it as The Base. There are no roads that lead to it. You have to fly in and out. I don’t know how big it is, but... it’s big. I only know what I’ve... learned. From others.”

  “Learned? Have they told you these things or have you taken this information from their minds?”

  “I took it. In bits and pieces. I have to be careful there because they know what I am, what I can do. They’re ready for me to try to read them. They expect it and they’re looking for it. They don’t like it and they get angry if they catch you doing it. It’s, um... not a good idea to make them angry.”

  Karen turned to Gavin with a look that silently asked if he had any questions.

  “What about this assignment, Penny?” he said. “What were you doing?”

  “I was communicating with Pyk. That’s why they brought me in. He doesn’t speak English. Well, he doesn’t speak much at all, really. His people communicate telepathically. Mr. Ryker wanted me to—” She searched for the right word. “—I guess I was kind of an interpreter.”

  “How did Km Services learn about this, uh... this creature?” Gavin said.

  She looked at Gertie and said, “She can tell you.”

  Gertie squirmed when she became the focus of attention again. Her hands trembled as they fidgeted with each other.

  “I found him,” she said. She told them about her first encounter with the creature, then rolled up the sleeve of her flannel shirt and showed them the rose-colored scar left by the bite. “Papa came running out when he heard me screaming and he beat it ov
er the head with a flashlight. If Papa hadn’t come along, I think that thing would have eaten me. I thought Papa had killed it at first, but it was only unconscious. We thought it was a little boy because he was so small, but he was naked and his... well, he had a... his, um, genitals... he wasn’t a little boy He wasn’t even human. Fangs, strange eyes, pointed ears. Papa was very excited because he’s always believed he was drawn to the mountain for a reason. He thought maybe this was it. He called a friend of his, Nathan Westphal. He has a website that covers all kinds of paranormal stuff, but especially activity related to Mt. Shasta. He’s written a couple of books about the mountain. Papa asked for his advice and Nathan said he was going to make a call first. He came over that morning to look at it and he said he’d contacted a couple of people who might know what to do next. And the next thing we knew, there was Mr. Ryker and his researchers. I’m not sure how it went from Westphal to Ryker, but that’s what happened. They wanted to set up a lab on the property. They gave Papa money, gave us all kinds of things—a new dishwasher, a new refrigerator, stuff like that. All they asked was that we not talk about it to anyone because they wanted to be left alone to work. They said they were going to find out what that thing was and where it had come from. But I didn’t like Mr. Ryker. I didn’t like any of them.”

  “What do they want with him, Penny?” Karen asked. “With Pyk, I mean.”

  “He’s very strong,” Penny said. “He’s telepathic. And he can push.”

  “Push?”

  “He has...” She groped for the word, then frowned as she considered it, as if she wasn’t sure it was the right one. “... influence.”

  “What does that mean?” Karen asked.

  “He can make people think things. And do things. Even things they don’t want to do, things they’d never do otherwise. He’s very powerful. At Aquino, we call that pushing. None of us can push. No one can that I know of. We’ve tried. They’d like it if we could. But we can’t. That’s why Pyk is so important to them.”

  Karen frowned. “If he can do this, and if he’s so powerful, then... why hasn’t he done it to them?”

  “He has. When they first arrived, he... did some things. He was afraid and hungry and... well, other things, I guess.”

  “Other things?”

  “He pushed Carla—she’s a woman who works for Mr. Ryker—to have sex with him. She was in the lab with Pyk and Mr. Ryker and others and suddenly, she just took off her clothes, went to Pyk and bent over in front of him so he could... you know. And he did. Then he made one of the assistants, a man, roll up his sleeve and offer his arm to Pyk to eat. And he did. At least, that’s what Mr. Ryker told me. All of this happened before I got here. That’s why they brought me. Once they realized what Pyk was doing, they sedated him and kept him that way until I arrived and was able to communicate with him. The first thing they wanted me to tell him was that they—that we—were his friends and wouldn’t hurt him, that we wanted to help him. I knew that wasn’t true, but... it was my job. So I did it. After I’d, um... well...” She frowned and her gaze wandered around the room, as if she were searching for something.

  “What’s wrong, Penny?” Karen said.

  “Well... it’s just hard to describe to people who don’t know anything about it.”

  “Go ahead and do your best, and if I have any questions, I’ll ask them.”

  “After I read Pyk for a while, I was able to tell Mr. Ryker what he could do, what he was capable of.”

  “You read his mind?”

  “His... everything. It’s like—” She released a single breathy laugh. “Well, this might sound silly, but it’s kind of like that old TV show with Mr. Spock. You know, Star Trek? He does this thing called a Vulcan mind meld where his mind kind of, um... what’s the word? It merges with someone else’s mind. It’s like that. Once I do that, I can read everything about that person. All their feelings and memories and thoughts. Nothing is hidden. I did that with Pyk and I told them what he could do. Once they were aware of it, they weren’t so, um... sus... suscept—”

  “Susceptible to it?”

  “Yeah,” Penny said, nodding. “They also give him mild sedatives to keep him... well, sedate.”

  Once again, Gavin was impressed by how articulate and confident Penny was. He had to keep reminding himself that she was thirteen.

  “Also,” Penny went on, “they’ve been keeping him happy, treating him like... well, like a king. They give him anything he wants.”

  Karen said, “I still don’t understand what it is they want from him.”

  “They want to understand him. They’ve been running all kinds of tests on him, trying to figure out how he works, how he does what he does. They’re hoping if they can, they’ll be able to make other people like him.”

  “Like him? You mean, with his abilities?”

  Penny nodded. “They’d like to make others like Pyk. Like the students at Aquino. We’re already... gifted. They think if they can figure out what makes Pyk the way he is, maybe they can make one of us the way he is. Or more of us.”

  “Are you talking about Km Services?” Karen said.

  “Yes. And the people they work for.”

  “Who would that be?”

  Penny shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. He thinks of them as ‘the people in charge.’”

  “The government?” Gavin asked.

  “I’m not sure. Some of them, I think. Maybe.”

  Karen turned to him and said, “We can’t expect her to have all the answers.”

  “I know they’re all very rich and very powerful,” Penny said. “And they own... well... just about everything.”

  “And they want an army of telepathic soldiers who can make people do things with their minds?” Karen said.

  Penny nodded. “Mr. Ryker thinks... well, he’s thought to himself a few times that they can do pretty much whatever they want. Now they need to be able to make other people do whatever they want. He and the other people he works with think Pyk can help them do that.” She looked down at the tabletop. “He doesn’t really know what he’s doing here. Pyk, I mean. He’s afraid, and angry. We were going to escape together. But he didn’t make it. They still have him. I could feel his fear when Gertie took me into her house.” She put her elbows on the table and her face in her hands.

  Gertie stared open-mouthed at Penny.

  “How much do you know about this, Gertie?” Karen said.

  The question seemed to startle Gertie. “I-I-I didn’t know about any of this. All I knew was that they were there, behind our house, doing... something. I knew it involved that... that thing that bit me, but... I didn’t know how. Then I saw them bringing Penny here to the shed.”

  “Shed?” Karen said.

  “I call it a shed, but—” She shrugged. “—it’s their lab. They built it behind our house. People come and go, especially at night. I saw them bringing Penny there. And then children. Little children. Penny came and went, but the children... I only saw them coming in, never going out. That bothered me a lot. The whole thing bothered me, but the kids...” A deep frown wrinkled her brow as she stared down at the table and seemed to see through it. She placed her hands flat on the tabletop and slowly closed them into loose fists again and again, dragging the tips of her nail-bitten fingers over the wood. “I couldn’t get that out of my head. The image of those little kids being led from the SUV that had brought them and into that ugly white building. I didn’t know what was going on in there but I knew... well, I felt that... it couldn’t be anything good. Kids that little... they shouldn’t be out that late by themselves.”

  “Sometimes people from town are drawn to the lab,” Penny said. “That was part of the work Mr. Ryker’s been doing with Pyk.”

  “Work?” Karen said. “How does their work involve people from town?”

  “Well, they’re trying to understand how Pyk influences people, so they need him to do that while they’ve got him hooked up to their machines so they can... measure it, or rec
ord it, or whatever. Once the people get there, Pyk tries to get them to give him something. Something they value. Like... another person. Like a... a wife or husband. Or a son or daughter.”

  Karen and Gavin gave each other a long look, then turned to Crystal. “Like your friends Rhonda and Wendy maybe?” To Penny, Karen said, “You mean, Pyk persuades these people to give him... other people?”

  “Yes. But Mr. Ryker wasn’t very confident, so he also offered the people what he called incentives. Like a new car, or money.”

  Gavin looked at Crystal again. This time, her eyes had widened. He turned back to Penny and said, “What did they do with the people who were given to them?”

  A pained look crossed Penny’s face as she looked down at the tabletop and she began to squirm in the chair. “They... they...” Her voice was quieter, higher in pitch, and she sounded about to cry. She didn’t finish.

  “What about the children, Penny?” Karen said. “What did Ryker want with children?”

  Until that moment, Penny had been calm and relaxed. But Gavin’s question made her tense. She frowned and began to fidget. Her lips quivered and she looked, for a moment, as if she were about to cry.

  “You okay, Penny?” Karen said.

  Penny lowered her head and did not respond.

  “If it’s upsetting, Penny,” Karen said, “you can—”

  A cough-like sob escaped Penny and her shoulders shook once. Slowly, she lifted her head as tears rolled down her cheeks. She said something, but it was garbled.

  “What was that?” Karen said.

  Penny began to shake as she slumped in her chair and covered her face with her hands.

  Karen and Crystal both left their seats and hurried to Penny’s side. They comforted her, reassured her, told her she didn’t have to talk if she didn’t want to. Penny shook her head back and forth for a moment, then lowered her hands, sobbing.

  “No, I should talk, I should,” she said. “I have to.”