INVISIBLE
PLANET
©2007 The Angst Guy
(theangstguy@yahoo.com)
Daria and associated
characters are ©2007 MTV Networks
Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me,
whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com
Synopsis: Quinn Morgendorffer sets out to visit her aunt, Amy
Barksdale, for a long January weekend. When her plans are literally shot to
pieces, Quinn discovers that nothing is as she once believed, and saving her
aunt from further harm might also mean saving the entire world as well.
Author’s Notes: To avoid giving away the plot, all notes
have been moved to the end.
Acknowledgements: My joyful thanks go out to Kara Wild, Thea Zara,
Deref, and Crusading Saint, who beta-read early versions of this story for me
in 2002 (jinkies!) and gave me the encouragement to continue. Additional
sincere thanks go out to the second batch of beta-readers from 2002, who looked
over the first six chapters. They were (in no particular order): Kara Wild,
Thea Zara, Robert Nowall, Crusading Saint, TerraEsperZ, Christian Wormwood, and
Galen “Lawndale Stalker” Hardesty (who has never stopped badgering me to finish
this—and hey, it worked!). The third batch of beta readers from March 2007 included
(again, unordered): Richard Lobinske, E. A. Smith, vlademir1, Steven Galloway, Katrina
Medina, Doggieboy, smk, Hershey-chan, Scissors MacGillicutty, Ranger Thorne, Kara Wild, and TygerStar29.
Thank you all!
*
CONTENTS
Chapter
Six
Big
Surprises in Little Packages
Chapter
Seven
No
One Expects the Spanish Inquisition
Chapter
Eight
Running
on Empty
Chapter
Nine
Apocalypse
Here and Now
Chapter
Ten
Quinners
and Losers
*
Today’s
children watch shows like “Sesame Street,” which teaches them that the world is
full of friendly interracial adults and cute puppets and letters that form
recognizable patterns. This is, of course, a pack of lies. When I was a kid, in
—Dave Barry
We like
to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark. . . .
—Ursula K. LeGuin
*
“This is not good,” Quinn
Morgendorffer muttered aloud as she drove. She stretched and wiggled her fingers
to keep them from cramping on the steering wheel. Outside, the bitter cold of a
January night roared over the Lexus. She squinted at a green sign that appeared
out of the darkness and flashed by among the bare trees of central Maryland.
The Farborough exit to her aunt’s home was two miles away on I-70. Once again
she glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard: 6:31 p.m. “This is not good,”
she repeated glumly. “Sorry, Aunt Amy.”
Quinn was running late. She was not
fashionably late; she was uh-oh damn-it late
late. She had told her mother’s youngest sister that she would arrive at
her home about five-ish, an hour before nightfall, and her aunt had made dinner
reservations for the two of them at six at an Italian restaurant. Being late to
her first sleepover with her delightfully weird aunt was not a good way to
start the three-day Martin Luther King holiday weekend, but Quinn hoped she would
make up for it somehow.
A good relationship with her extended
family had become a priority for Quinn since her older sister had left for
college in
In contrast, Amy Barksdale was a riot.
She was outspoken, opinionated, and sarcastic—far more like snide Daria than
Quinn herself—but Amy was also lively and funny and led a Bohemian singles
lifestyle that intrigued Quinn with its possibilities for her own path later in
life. The weekend ahead held great promise, assuming Amy wouldn’t be too ticked
off about Quinn’s bad timing.
“Okay, I know I spent too long in the Lawndale
Mall before I started on the way here,” Quinn said to herself, as if talking to
her aunt. “I’m sorry I’m late, but it couldn’t be helped. Sort of couldn’t. I
hope you’re the understanding type.” She shifted in her seat and wished that
her father’s blue Lexus had more padding for people’s butts. Hers was getting
sore. In her rear-view mirror, she spotted the headlights of several cars and a
truck coming up from behind to pass her, even though she herself was doing 76
mph on cruise control. She shook her head in annoyance and let them go by. One
was a little red sports car that reminded her of Amy’s Triumph; a truck following
it blocked any further view. It hardly mattered, as Amy wouldn’t be out at this
hour anyway. She’d be at her home, tapping her foot and eyeing the clock and
wondering where Quinn was.
Despite the cold outside, Quinn was
comfortable with the heater on while wearing a green long-sleeved top, tight
jeans, and cowboy boots. Her white fur coat lay on the seat beside her. She
brushed long, orange-red hair from her face as another green sign appeared in
the distance. The Farborough exit to her aunt’s remote subdivision was one mile
off. Quinn tapped the brake, taking the car off cruise control.
“It could have been worse, Aunt Amy,
it really could have,” she went on. “For one thing, I could have missed the Big
Hits for Young Misses Sale at Cashman’s. I got some nice blouses, a great pair
of embroidered jeans, some accessories, and a dynamite pair of snow boots. They’ll
be great if we actually get any snow this winter, stupid global warming. Oh,
and they’ll also have a sale a month before my eighteenth birthday in May, and
I can give you a list of things I’d love to get that I don’t think anyone else
will get for me. I would be thrilled if you could make it to my party. That
would be so cool. Maybe Daria will be back from college in
Quinn sighed, easing on the brake as
she left the Interstate and descended the off-ramp to State Route 513. No
houses or businesses were in view.
A sharp crack echoed through the
night. Quinn looked up, startled. It might have been a gunshot. Was it a
hunter? She frowned, hating the idea of shooting a living creature for sport or
any other reason. Those damn idiots had better be careful if they’re hunting
at night, she thought angrily. Who in his right mind would be out in
this frigid wind shooting at defenseless creatures, for God’s sake? Jerks!
She shrugged and picked up the paper.
New sounds came out of the darkness.
Tires squealing? And was that a crash? She shook her head in annoyance. A
careless speeder, probably, or someone trying to avoid a deer. Deer were out
this time of year, so it made sense that hunters would be around, too. Even if
hunting was legal, it didn’t make it right in Quinn’s mind. Deer belonged in
zoos and parks, not on trophy walls.
Quinn put the directions aside, turned
off the roof light, and turned right onto Route 513, accelerating to 45 mph.
The two-lane highway passed through farmland. Rows of bare trees and tall weeds
to either side screened the empty fields from view.
“Ten minutes left to
your house,” she continued absently. “I hope we have fun, no matter what. You
are the coolest person in the whole family, Aunt Amy. I know I’m not like
Daria, but I can be fun, too. We can certainly talk clothes; you dress a lot
better than Daria does, thank God. That Big Hits for Young Misses Sale comes
only four times a year, you know, one of those seasonal things. It was like fate
that I was able to catch it, that’s for sure. And I did bring you a present! You’ll like the perfume, I hope. It’s
called
Quinn exhaled, more than
a little nervous. There was nothing to look at in the darkness but the spooky
road. “It was so sweet of you to let me stay the weekend,” she continued, “especially
as the alternative would be me staying home by myself. Daria’s gone back to
Her
train of thought derailed as her car rounded a shallow curve. Something flashed
red in the headlights on the left side of the road ahead. Were those skid marks
leading from her lane across the oncoming lane, then off the left side of the
road to the weed-lined edge of a large ditch?
As her car flew by the spot where she
saw the red flash, Quinn glanced to the left—and was startled at what she saw.
She braked immediately and looked up in the rear-view mirror. Was that a car’s
tail light sticking up from the ditch? Was that the car wreck she’d heard a
minute ago? Should she go back and check, or keep going to Amy’s?
She spotted a mailbox and gravel
driveway ahead, on the left side in the line of trees. That tore it—she could
turn around there. She slowed and turned into the driveway, then backed the
Lexus onto the highway again after making sure there was no oncoming traffic.
Then she headed back to the accident scene.
“Don’t let it be anything, please,”
Quinn said, praying now and not just talking to herself. “Let it be a piece of
junk or a—”
She gasped and hit the brakes hard. A small
red convertible sports car with a black vinyl top had gone off the road into
the culvert. It rested crookedly on its wheels on the down slope. Was it the
red car that had passed her up a few minutes earlier on I-70? Someone appeared
to be in the driver’s seat. The car’s windshield was shattered into a milky
web, so it was hard to be sure.
Quinn hit her emergency blinkers and
stopped on the road just ahead of the wreck, pulling the right-side tires onto
the narrow gravel shoulder. The Lexus’s headlights bathed the unlucky vehicle
in stark illumination as she studied the vehicle. Someone was definitely in the driver’s seat.
After putting the idling Lexus into
park with the emergency brake on, Quinn quickly glanced behind her. No other
traffic was visible. The possibility that someone would accidentally hit her or
her car was frightening, but the chance that the car in the ditch was Aunt Amy’s
was much worse. But what the hell would she be doing out here like this? She’s
supposed to be home already!
Quinn put on and buttoned
up her coat, then put on her gloves and got out of the car, shivering as the
cold bit in. She flipped up her furry collar to protect her lips and nose. The
stink of gasoline was in the air. Tree branches rattled and dead leaves hissed
in the night wind, mixing with pops and hisses from the stilled engine of the
sports car.
She hurried around the
front of the Lexus toward the wreck. The ditched car stood out in the Lexus’s
high-beam headlights. Thousands of cracks in the windshield radiated outward
from a low point near the middle of the glass, making identification of the
driver impossible—but Quinn could tell that the car was a vintage
fire-engine-red Triumph Spitfire. Aunt Amy drove a vintage Triumph Spitfire
exactly like it.
If
that was Amy—and Quinn prayed that it wasn’t—why wasn’t she home
already? She’d told Quinn she would be home by four after taking off a little
early from her work as an art appraiser, at her office in Gaithersburg,
Maryland. What could have delayed her until now?
The car had gone into the deep ditch
diagonally. The front-left side of the car was smashed into the ground at the
ditch’s bottom. A large sapling with its bark half torn off supported the
Triumph on its left side near the rear, keeping it from sliding further into
the ditch or rolling over.
What should I do? What should I do?
For a few seconds, Quinn was paralyzed with indecision. Her cell phone’s
battery had gone dead earlier in the day, and there had been no time or place
to recharge it. She’d forgotten to bring the phone’s plug-in for the car’s
cigarette lighter, so she had no way to call for help. That left only one
option: get to the car and see if that was Aunt Amy inside. Things were going
to be difficult enough getting any survivor out of this wreck.
Her heart in her throat, Quinn looked
for a way to get down the slope safely to the car. Because the ditch sides were
steep, Quinn finally elected to sit on the road and scoot over the edge on her
butt. Her gloves and pants would be ruined, but maybe someone would buy her new
pairs later. She was doing this for a good cause, after all. Ditto for the boots
and anything else that was damaged beyond repair.
Once she reached the right side of the
car, she braced herself against the tilted Spitfire and stood up. Expecting to
see something horrible, she swallowed, gathered her courage, and peered in the side
window, hands cupped around her face.
A woman with long, wavy, dark-brown
hair and a heavy gray coat was the two-seater’s only occupant. She hung
unconscious in her safety harness, head leaning against the driver’s side
window, chin on her chest, mouth open, eyes closed. The right side of her coat was
torn open and glistened with a wide dark stain. Her arms were thrown forward
and to the left in her lap. Her bloodless face was clear in the light from the
Lexus.
It was Amy Barksdale. Amy had always
kept a youthful look, even at forty-plus, but now she looked much older than
her age . . . and possibly dead.
“Oh, God, no! God, no!” Quinn grabbed
for the passenger door and tried to open it, but it was locked. She swore, hit
the window with her gloved fist as she shouted her aunt’s name, then took a
moment to think. She then worked her way around to the other side of the car.
The stench of leaking gasoline was so thick she could taste it.
She had reached the rocky bottom of
the ditch and was hurrying around the Triumph’s crumpled hood when she noticed
a curious thing about the smashed windshield. The web of cracks spread out from
a low hole large enough to put several fingers through it. The hole was on a
straight line back to Amy’s right shoulder, where her coat was stained dark, then
on to the plastic rear window—where another hole, a small one, could be seen.
Had a pole or rock gone through the car?
Quinn reached Aunt Amy’s door just as
the answer came to her. The gunshot in the darkness, only minutes earlier at
the bottom of the off ramp from I-70—the squealing tires and crashing noise—
Not daring to breathe, Quinn peered at
her aunt’s slack, white face, barely visible through her hair. Amy had been shot.
“Amy!” Quinn screamed. She slammed a
hand flat against the window. “Amy, wake up! Look at me! Wake up, damn it!” Quinn began to cry as she
pounded the window with her fist. She then tried the door handle. The door
popped open at once and swung wide, hitting Quinn and knocking her off balance.
She fell back hard on her butt, then scrambled aching and breathless to her
feet and rushed back to the car.
Amy hung half out of her seat,
starting to slide out of her shoulder harness. Quinn grabbed her aunt and
pushed her partway back in the car. “Amy!” Quinn shouted. “Amy, can you hear
me? Wake up!” Getting no response, she reached down, found the buckle for the
seat belt and harness, and popped it open. Amy’s body sagged into Quinn, who
struggled to keep her aunt from hitting the ground. Though Quinn was not the
athletic type, she managed to ease her aunt onto the frozen soil and debris at
the bottom of the ditch. Quinn was vaguely aware that she was repeating Amy’s
name and begging her not to die, pleading with God to reverse time and change
this whole evening, start it over again from zero. Her stomach was in knots
with terror.
She needed something to use as a
pillow for Amy’s head, so she climbed back into the Triumph and found a pair of
brown leather gloves and a purple scarf on the floor on the passenger side. The
Triumph groaned but held steady as she snatched them up and got out of the car
again. Putting the wadded scarf under Amy’s head, Quinn then pulled the gloves
over her aunt’s pale hands for extra warmth. She was adjusting Amy’s heavy
overcoat when she looked down and noticed dark stains all over her own white-furred
coat. Quinn turned so that the headlights from the Lexus fell on her. The
smeared stains were bright red and wet. She looked down at Amy, then touched
the wet place on her coat. Her gloved hand came away gleaming crimson. Her aunt’s
blood was everywhere, too much of it to believe.
Not this, no, she thought, numb
with terror. I’m not ready for
this, God. Not this, please, don’t do this. Don’t do this. She
looked down at her aunt’s still form, then carefully unbuttoned Amy’s coat and
pulled it back from her aunt’s right side. Amy’s thin, light-colored blouse was
soaked with dark red. A ragged hole was visible in the blouse’s fabric below
the right end of her collarbone.
Amy shuddered and moved. Her blouse
rose and fell. She was alive.
Apply pressure, apply pressure,
stop the bleeding—it was amazing to Quinn that she remembered any advice
from the first-aid lessons two months ago in Phys Ed. There was nothing else
around to use, so Quinn took off one of her own gloves to put over the wound.
She then realized there would be a wound on the other side, in Amy’s back. She
had to stop that from bleeding, too. Off came the other glove.
Cold tears ran down Quinn face. She
managed to get one hand under her aunt, pressing up on Amy’s back with one
glove to cover the wound there. She pressed down on Amy’s chest with the other.
She had no idea how long she could keep it up. Her hands were soaked with blood
that became sticky and stiff in the arctic air.
Amy groaned and swallowed.
“Amy!” Quinn bent down to her face,
keeping the pressure on. Her frozen cheeks ached and her nose ran. “Aunt Amy!”
Amy’s eyes flickered open, glassy and
confused. Her gaze wandered to Quinn as she licked her lips. “Hurts,” she
whispered. “Hurts bad.”
Quinn started to cry again. “I’m here
with you, Amy! It’s me, Quinn!”
“Hurts,” Amy gasped. She grimaced in
pain and groaned. Her voice rose. “Hurts so bad!”
Amy
struggled to sit up, then lay back exhausted on the ground. “Hurts,” she repeated
through clenched teeth. Her eyes closed.
The sound of an approaching vehicle
reached Quinn’s ears. Moving light fell on her face. She looked up from the
bottom of the ditch, shivering violently in the cold.
Another vehicle pulled up, facing the
Lexus in the wrong lane at the top of the ditch, not thirty feet from where
Quinn knelt on the ground. It stopped, and the driver’s window rolled down.
Quinn couldn’t see who it was through the glare from the headlights. It was a
dark pickup truck with a dirty battered look.
“Help us!” Quinn screamed. “You’ve got
to get down here and help us!”
The driver’s door opened. A man
wearing a thick jacket started to get out. He held something in his right hand
that looked like a pole or rod. As soon as his left foot touched the ground,
however, he stopped and looked back the way he’d come. Headlights from behind
played over him. To Quinn’s surprise, the man swiftly hurled himself back into
the pickup and slammed the door. The truck roared to life. Its tires spun against
the pavement as it swung around the Lexus and raced off into the distance.
“Hey!” Quinn shouted after it in
disbelief. “Damn it, come back and help us!”
A new car pulled up moments later
where the previous one had been. Rotating blue and red lights flashed from its
roof and front grillwork. Doors opened. “Police!” a man shouted. “What’s going
on?”
“Help us!” Quinn sobbed. “Someone shot
my aunt!”
One of the officers immediately got
back in the police car and began calling in a report over the radio. The other
one climbed down the slope toward Quinn.
A gloved hand touched Quinn’s numb
fingers. She looked down. Amy’s eyelids flickered open. Her deep brown eyes
took in her surroundings, then dully came around to Quinn.
“I love you, Amy,” said Quinn through
her tears. She bent down and kissed her aunt’s cold forehead.
Amy’s white face did not change
expression, but her pale lips moved. Quinn bent down to hear her whisper, “How’s
. . . my favorite niece?”
A
hospital waiting room is a lonely place to spend a Friday night. Quinn sat alone,
as far as possible from the TV and its mindless programming, a paper cup of
steaming cocoa warming her fingers. A sheet of plastic covered the chair she
sat on; the staff wouldn’t let her sit on anything else. Once in a while, others
in the waiting room with her would steal long glances at her filthy,
bloodstained clothes and the white plastic sack at her feet. She could tell
when they were looking, but her mind was too far away for her to care.
The ambulance appeared less than ten
minutes after the police arrived. By then, the two officers had taken over from
Quinn and cared for the unconscious Amy as best they could, wrapping her in
blankets. Quinn collected Amy’s handbag, glasses, and car keys from the
Triumph, but the police wouldn’t let Quinn touch the car after that. It was now
part of a crime scene. The cops told her someone on a nearby farm had called
the police after hearing the gunshot and crash. A wrecker later towed Quinn’s
car to the hospital lot for free, thanks to her father’s Lawndale Automobile
Association card. All the loose ends were tied up, except for whether Amy lived
or died.
Quinn looked into her hot chocolate cup
and thought about the fun she and Amy were supposed to have had this evening.
They could have been laughing over dinner or watching TV. Instead, she rode
with her aunt in the back of the ambulance, holding one of her hands and
praying with heart and soul that Amy would live one more day. The prayer seemed
to have worked, for the moment at least. She lifted the hot cup and took a tiny
sip. The drink burned her lips and was too watery to taste very good, but she
took another sip anyway. She wanted chocolate, and it was all she had.
It figures that Amy would mistake
me for Daria, she mused. She must not have been able to think clearly
through her pain, and it was dark, too. I overheard her call Daria her favorite
niece once, the last time she visited us. I wonder if she’ll remember I was
even there at the wreck with her. Probably not. She took another sip of scalding
chocolate, barely noticing the pain.
At twenty minutes to midnight, a young
doctor with long, uncombed hair walked out of surgery. “Quinn Morgendorffer?”
he said, scanning the waiting room. “Is Quinn Morgendorffer here?”
Feeling her stomach drop out, Quinn
struggled to her feet. The doctor spotted her and came over. “Don’t get up,” he
said. “Just have a seat.” He took an empty seat across from her. “How are you
holding up?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “How’s my aunt?”
“She’s stable now. She lost a lot of
blood before she got here, but she made it through surgery pretty well. We kept
her out of shock, stopped the internal bleeding, cleaned out the wound,
stitched her up, and have her on an IV. She’s kept herself in good physical
shape, too, and that helps. Right now she’s sleeping, probably until tomorrow
morning. I’m betting eighty percent she’ll make it without complications.”
“That’s good.” Quinn fought down an
urge to burst into tears. She sat the half-empty cup of chocolate on the floor
and wiped her eyes. “I was really scared.”
“I heard you stopped the bleeding when
you found her. You got there right after it happened, right? Good, that was
good you did. She should heal normally with lots of rest. The bullet missed her
right lung and every major artery in that region when it went through, but it
broke her shoulder blade, the scapula. That’ll heal in time, but it’ll be
stiff. She won’t be able to move her right arm around for a while because we’ve
immobilized it, but she’s pretty damn lucky the bullet missed everything
important. What was really lucky, though, was you coming along when you did.
Had you missed her, then . . .” The doctor spread his hands. “That was quick
thinking, getting her out of the car and plugging up the bleeding. You saved
her life.”
Quinn was too numb to absorb the
praise. “I was late,” she murmured.
“Late? Late for what?”
“I was supposed to be at her place at
five,” she said slowly. “I stayed too long at a mall before I drove out here, and
I was an hour and a half late. I heard the shot and her car crash, and then I
found her. It was all just an accident.”
“Well, it was a good accident, then.
Maybe it was meant to happen this way. She owes you everything.”
Quinn nodded. She knew she should feel
good about that, but no feeling came.
The doctor looked down at her
clothing. Dark brown stains marred her white coat and jeans from her chest to
her knees. Noticing the doctor’s gaze, Quinn looked down and dully wondered how
she would ever get stains like that out.
“We have some extra clothes in
storage, for times like this,” said the doctor gently, getting to his feet. “You
should shower, too. Let me get someone to help you.”
“Okay.” She hesitated. “I have some
clothes in my car outside.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’d rather
you put on something here and washed up instead of walking around outside like
you are. It’s not . . . it’s just better.”
Quinn nodded and said, “Okay.” She
picked up the sack with Amy’s belongings, then stood and followed the doctor
with weary footsteps. She forgot about the half-empty cup of chocolate under
the chair.
“Do you need to call anyone?” he asked
as they went down the hallway.
She shook her head. “I can’t get
anyone on the pay phone. My parents left on a retreat. My sister’s in college
in
“Do you have a place to stay for the
night?”
She hadn’t thought about that. “I
guess not,” she said. “I’d rather stay here and see how Amy’s doing.”
“She’s going to be out for quite a
while, at least until late morning. A waiting room isn’t the most comfortable
place to sleep, either, as I’m sure you can imagine. It wouldn’t hurt to get
some rest, then come back about nine a.m. She might be able to talk to you
then.”
Quinn reflected. Farborough was a
small, run-down farming community several miles down the road from the spot
where she’d found Amy’s car. The town had two motels, but they did not look
inviting. She looked down at the bag with Amy’s belongings: her round-frame
glasses, her handbag, her keys. . . .
“I could stay at her house,” she said.
“I’d have to ask the police, I guess, but I could do that. I was supposed to
stay there anyway.”
“Let’s get some clean clothes on you
first, then,” said the doctor. “One of the nurses can get into the locker and
help with the shower.”
“Okay. Um, can I see my aunt before I
go?”
The doctor sighed. “Sure, after you
shower and change. Just don’t try to wake her.”
Forty minutes later, Quinn came back
to the waiting room in a gray woolen winter coat over a baggy, pea-green sweat
suit, the ugliest outfit she had ever worn in her life. It was warm, at least.
She kept her cowboy boots after cleaning them off. Her soiled clothes and coat
were wadded in a large black trash bag in her left hand, with Amy’s bag in her
right.
The doctor was in with another
patient, but a nurse on duty led her down the hall to a room with an open door.
Inside was a bed, shrouded by a curtain, on which her aunt lay under a sheet
with tubes running into her, monitors connected to her chest, and a transparent
oxygen mask over her bloodless face. The nurse let Quinn give her aunt a kiss on
the cheek before escorting her out of the room and pulling the curtains around
Amy’s bed.
Quinn walked back into the waiting
room and sat. The plastic sheeting that had covered her chair was gone, but
most of the faces of those waiting were the same. She stared at her hands and
saw Amy’s face in her mind. After a few minutes, she roused herself and went to
look for a police officer. Spotting a
“We’ll probably want to talk to you
tomorrow if we have any questions,” he said, finishing his notes. “You need us
to drive you out there?” he asked.
“I’d rather drive my own car, outside,
but maybe someone could follow me out if that’s possible.”
“Sure thing. Give me five minutes, and
I’ll go myself.”
She agreed, then sat again and waited.
The television set blared commercials for a used-car lot in Farborough, then
went back to a late-night variety show.
The deputy returned, and they left
together with the deputy in the lead. Quinn did not remember much about the
subsequent drive over the twisting nighttime roads to Amy’s house. She had
memorized the directions before leaving the emergency room, but everything
looked so different in the dark she was never sure if they were on the correct
route. The deputy knew the area quite well and took the turnoff to the
subdivision, next to a closed gas station.
Faraway Acres, the subdivision where
Amy Barksdale lived, was relatively new. Heavy woods were on every side, most
of the lots were undeveloped, and most of the homes present were still under
construction. All building work was suspended for the winter. Why does Amy
like living this far away from anywhere? Quinn wondered. At least she wasn’t
far from the Interstate, and she did like to travel. Given Amy’s recent trips
to
As best as Quinn could tell in the
darkness, Amy’s house was an attractive one-story ranch home, cozy in size. It
sat on a two-acre lot surrounded by barren flowerbeds and recently planted
saplings. A bright light over the garage door came on as the police car and
then Quinn pulled into the driveway and parked, with more lights on poles
coming on across Amy’s entire lot at the same moment. Some kind of burglar
alarm system, Quinn decided. She remembered that she had the keypad number
for the house and was relieved at that, at least.
The officer got out of his car as
Quinn got out of hers. “You sure you’ll be all right here by yourself?” he
asked, gritting his teeth at the frigid wind. He kept his hands jammed into his
jacket pockets.
Quinn nodded. “I’ll be fine. Would you
wait until I get into the house?”
“You want me to come in with you for a
second, look around?”
“Yes, please. I’m still sorta freaked
out.”
“No problem at all.” They walked to
the front door, where six tries were needed to find the right front-door key on
Amy’s key ring. The deputy pushed the door open. A shrill alarm went off, but Quinn
pulled out her sheet of paper, stepped inside, and tapped in the security code
on the keypad by the door. A triple beep sounded as the keypad lights turned
from red to green.
They walked through the house and
found it uninhabited, everything apparently in order. The deputy carried in Quinn’s
pink suitcase and Cashman’s shopping bags from the Lexus’s trunk, then gave her
a card to keep by the phone if she had to call for help in an emergency. She
was grateful for his help, though she had never once questioned whether he
would help her. Being naturally cute led one to expect all sorts of positive
male attention along with the unwelcome leers.
After she thanked the deputy and waved
him goodbye, she shut and locked the front door. The back and garage doors were
already locked, and all the shades and curtains in the house had been drawn
before Quinn had walked in. The silence settled into her skin as she stood in
the foyer of someone else’s unfamiliar home.
“I’m here,” she said aloud, just to
get it out of her system. “Sorry I’m late.”
For a long moment, Quinn wasn’t sure
what to do next. She felt a chill when she looked at the windows, wondering if
anyone knew she was in Amy’s house alone. That was ridiculous, of course. No
one could see through the shades and walls. It wasn’t like the world was
invisible, though the creepy idea was hard to shake. She thought of hunters in
the woods at night, shooting at anything that moved. It wouldn’t matter if they
could see her if they shot at the windows. Security
system—that’s what I need to do, boot up the house’s security system. A
security keypad was by the front door, and it took less than a minute to figure
out how to activate it with an occupant inside. Quinn felt only slight comfort
when the keypad beeped confirmation that the alarms were active.
What to do next? Phone calls, she
would have to make some upsetting phone calls soon. The first one would be to
the hospital to check on Aunt Amy again. She scratched at her arms where the
sweat suit itched. No rush to change, as there was no one to dress up for. The
trip was ruined, but she would do her best to see Amy through and take care of
her things. High school classes would start again on Tuesday, after Martin
Luther King Day on Monday. Maybe her mother could come over and watch things
when Quinn had to leave. If not, school would have to wait. She could get by;
she knew lots of guys who would do her homework for her if asked. Maybe she
could get the local police to call in for her and eliminate the worry about
making up anything at all. She would work out something. She was creative when
it came to excuses, though she hardly needed a creative excuse now.
Quinn shrugged off the hospital-given
overcoat and hung it in the front closet by the door. She paused to admire the
other coats, scarves, boots, and gloves stored there. Aunt Amy certainly had a
nice touch selecting comfortable, casual fashion—Bohemian was, again, the only
word for it. “Well, you are an art appraiser, after all,” Quinn said aloud. “It’s
a shame you aren’t my age. We could have used you in the Fashion Club, though I
suspect you were more like Daria than me as a kid. Pity.”
She closed the closet door, but it
wouldn’t shut all the way. Something was caught near the hinges, between the
door and the doorframe. Quinn opened the door again and reached in to push the
item back into the closet.
The item that got caught was a thin,
black, leather strap with holes punched in it like a belt. Puzzled, she pulled
the strap into better view. Her eyes widened in surprise. The strap was
attached to a black leather shoulder holster made for a handgun. The holster
hung from a coat hangar by its shoulder strap. Quinn gently took the holster in
one hand and turned it under the foyer ceiling light. Tooled into the black
leather in small letters were the words: A. BARKSDALE.
After a moment, Quinn let go of the
holster and slowly shut the closet door, stunned. Her aunt owned a gun? A real
gun? What was that all about? Was this something she should ask Amy
about, or just ignore? She wouldn’t ask tomorrow, of course, but eventually.
Not even Quinn’s neurotic, over-reactive father owned a gun, and he had even
been to military school.
“Self-defense, maybe,” Quinn said
aloud—but defense against what or whom? Was Farborough a hive of criminal
activity? Sure didn’t look like it.
She
let the issue drop and looked down at the black trash bag containing her
bloodstained coat and clothing. Blood was difficult at best to get out of any material,
as Quinn well knew—but with this much blood, and Amy’s
blood at that . . . eww. She shivered. Plus, just wearing those clothes again
would remind her of this horrible evening. And she did have extra clothing in her suitcase and bags. And Dad would
surely give her the money to replace everything she’d lost, if Mom wouldn’t. They
probably both would, after this.
Her mind made up, Quinn picked up the
trash bag and carried it through the living room, past the kitchen to the door
to the garage. She turned off the alarm system at a keypad before opening the
door, turned on the lights, and checked the garage as she’d done when the
deputy was present. No car was in it, as the police had Amy’s Triumph. Quinn
dropped the trash bag into a nearby garbage can, then shut off the lights,
locked the door, and reset the alarm.
She hesitated by the kitchen phone and
checked the time. It was just after one in the morning. She was tired but still
jittery and restless—and depressed. Chocolate would have been nice about now,
chocolate shared with a whole and well Aunt Amy. She remembered her cup of chocolate
from the hospital and wished she had brought it with her, even as dreadful as
it was.
The refrigerator beckoned. Quinn
opened it and was startled to discover that it was empty except for two bottles
of water, an orange, a bag of frozen peas in the freezer, and an open,
half-empty box of frozen potato skins. Quinn wrinkled her nose. Not even a
bottle of low-fat salad dressing and a bag of baby lettuce.
“Doesn’t look like you spend a lot of
time here, Aunt Amy,” she said. “You eat out a lot, or what?” She picked up the
orange, which appeared suitable for consumption, and looked around for a small
plate. Opening all the cabinets and drawers quickly cued her in on the location
of everything she would need to make her meals. Her discovery of a fully stocked
pantry of dry food was welcome. She sliced the orange, peeled the skin from the
slices, and left the results on the table in the dining room with a bottle of spring
water.
Coming back into the living room,
Quinn spotted a small-screen TV, which had caught her eye earlier while walking
through the house with the deputy. She found the remote on a coffee table next
to four other remotes, a notepad and pencil, and various recent news magazines—but
nothing about art, oddly. Quinn clicked on the TV, turned down the volume, and
flicked through the channels until she got to one called the Extreme Shopping
Network.
“This isn’t on cable,” she murmured,
barely able to tear her eyes from the screen. A little experimenting showed
that Amy had some kind of satellite TV service, with hundreds of channels in
every language possible. Quinn went back to the Extreme Shopping Network, which
was showcasing what it was like to shop in downtown
The furniture was stylish if also
offbeat and kitschy, exactly the kind of room a single woman would have without
the worry of a live-in man to screw things up: cream-color walls; a soft beige
carpet; green houseplants scattered everywhere (which turned out to be plastic—eww); a steel-blue sofa and matching
chair; an empty aquarium on top of a decorative chest of drawers; a floor lamp
by the sofa’s side table; various posters and paintings on the walls; and a
large picture window whose drawn purple curtains matched the purple pillows on
the sofa. No underwear on the floor, no beer cans, no sign that a guy lived
here at all. Quinn wondered if Amy had a cleaning service; she couldn’t picture
her aunt pushing a vacuum cleaner, ever.
The most unusual thing
was a large picture on the wall behind the sofa, showing the Moon rising above
the Earth as seen from space. Quinn frowned. Since when did Aunt Amy like space
junk like this, anyway? The picture looked more like a giant color photograph
than a real painting. She walked closer to the picture and noticed something
glittering in the lower right corner. Next to a date and a series of numbers were
the handwritten word “Discovery” and an inscription next to it, done with a
gold pen: To our eye on the ground, from your eyes in the sky—thanks for
your great work, Amy! This was followed by a number of indecipherable
signatures written with the same gold pen, each in a different hand. Some names
had military ranks attached to them.
“Okay,”
said Quinn, squinting at the writing, “now, is that my Amy, or someone
else’s Amy? Did she get this on e-Bay or something? Since when . . . oh!” Quinn
almost smacked herself on the forehead. Of course! To our eye on the ground—Amy
was into photography! That almost sort of maybe explained the notation. Some
guys had sent her an outer-space picture—Heaven only knew why that, of all
things—because she’d taken some photos of something artsy for them. This was a
good topic to take up with Amy, later on. Maybe Amy did fashion photography,
too. Daria had done it years ago in
Curious, she poked and prodded various
items in the room, finally shaking her head in disappointment over the plastic
plants. Now, that wasn’t like Amy at all. She would surely go for fresh, live
plants, wouldn’t she? Plastic stuff got dusty. On the other hand, you didn’t
have to deal with dirt. Maybe Amy had something there. If she were gone a lot
and couldn’t water the plants, that would help explain it, too. Quinn examined
a plant near the TV and saw that the stems were sunk in a block of green
plastic foam. She pulled the plant out and found a dead fly in the bottom of
the pot. With a cry of “Eww!” she carried the pot to the kitchen, emptied it
into a wastebasket under the sink, then put it and the plant back in place.
Quinn watched a few more minutes of
the Extreme Shopping Network, then decided she wasn’t in the mood for any more.
Turning off the TV, she idly picked up one of the news magazines on the coffee
table. As she did, a page marker fell from it to the carpeted floor. She leaned
down to pick it up.
It was a color photograph of her aunt,
standing in bright sunshine and smiling at the camera. Amy was dressed
conservatively, not quite the offbeat character she was around the family. In
fact, her outfit was closer to the magenta power skirt-suit that Quinn’s lawyer
mother liked to wear to her office, though in subdued earth tones. Behind Amy
was a large bed of roses, and behind that the façade of a futuristic building
that made Quinn think of a college campus. She saw no identification of the
building in the photo, but it was certainly distinctive, and she liked it. She
flipped the photo over. Penciled on the back was: Taking a break from work. It was written in Amy’s handwriting.
“I hope the college I go to is as nice
at that one,” she said. Her mood quickly sank. “And I hope Amy’s there to see
me graduate,” she finished, putting the photo down again.
One thing was for sure: if Amy needed
Quinn’s help getting through this mess, Quinn would be there for her, no matter
what.
She sighed. If only she knew what she
had to do. At least, she thought, things couldn’t possibly get any worse.
Motivated
by the photograph, Quinn decided that it would be a good idea to check on Amy
before she wore out and crashed. She looked for a telephone and spotted an
executive-type one with pushbuttons, sitting on the floor by the couch. Going
back to the coat closet, she found the folded paper in her coat pocket on which
she’d scribbled the hospital’s phone number, then sat on the couch by the
phone. She reached down for the handset—
“Whuh?” she said, staring at the row
of buttons along the bottom of the phone. Each had a printed label above it:
SCR1, SCR2, LN1, LN2, EME, FAX, MSG. What the heck was all that? At least it
had caller ID, too, which was nice. Quinn always liked to know who and where a
caller was.
“Sorry, Amy,” said Quinn, cracking a
tired smile, “but you are really weird.” She picked up the handset without
touching any of the buttons and punched in the hospital number. It picked up on
the second ring.
“
“Hi. My name is Quinn Morgendorffer.
My aunt, Amy Barksdale, is a patient there. She was brought in a few hours ago.
A deer hunter shot her by accident, can you believe that?”
“Oh, goodness,” said the woman, more
alert now. “Just a moment.”
“She was in Intensive Care, I think,”
said Quinn.
“Mmm. Okay, there she is. Now, I can’t
tell you anything about her over the phone, it’s hospital rules, but do you
want to speak to the nurses’ station in ICU?”
“Yeah, please.”
“Hold on, then.” The phone clicked and
went silent. Quinn sighed and waited. She looked down, feeling more tired than
before, and focused on the notepad on the table.
Quinn was nosy but not terribly so.
She had enough going on in her life without trying to figure out what everyone
else was up to. Tonight, however, she was overstressed and her inhibitions were
down. She reached for the pad and pencil without a second thought. With the
handset pressed between her right ear and shoulder, she held the pad of paper
up to the light, tilting it to see if impressions had been left there from
previous notes. To her surprise, there were quite a few grooves left by pencil
marks. Holding the pencil so the side of the lead, not the tip, was against the
paper, Quinn gently shaded over the page and made a rubbing.
The phone clicked on. “ICU nurses’
station.”
“Hi, my name is Quinn Morgendorffer. I’m
calling to check on Amy Barksdale. She’s my aunt. I wanted to see how she was
doing.”
“Were you in here earlier, down in the
ER?”
“Yeah, I was there. I’m the one with
long red hair.”
“I thought I remembered you. The
doctor was going on and on about you, how you saved that woman’s life. He said
he didn’t know of one person in ten who would’ve done what you did. You were a
quick thinker.”
“Uh . . . thank you. I’m just worried
about my aunt.”
“Oh, she’s sleeping
right now. She’ll be all right. Doctor thinks she might even go home Sunday or
Monday.”
Quinn
put down the pad of paper. “Come home? After she was shot?”
“Honey, she’s doing pretty good, all
told. We move ‘em out fast to keep the insurance down. I remember her coming in
here last summer, when she got back from
“
“No, I’m pretty sure she
works there. She said she usually comes here only on weekends.”
Quinn
was silent for a moment. The conversation was taking a very weird turn. “She
works in
“Oh, she might. She sure gets around a
lot. I think she actually has an apartment in Arlington, closer to work. She’s
a busy lady, your aunt.”
“Yeah,” said Quinn, confused. “Yeah,
she sure is. When can I see her?”
“Oh, listen, why don’t you call back tomorrow—wait, I meant, later this morning before noon? We should have h