“Does more than that,” Susan said. “Lets ya blur the line between the possible and the impossible.”
“What does that mean?” Clementine asked.
“In an infinite universe, anything that can occur will occur,” Susan said. “No matter how crazy or unlikely.”
“Or impossible?” Newton said.
“Or impossible,” Susan agreed. “And that means all the information for any event that’s ever happened or ever will happen is already encoded in the fabric of space-time…”
“Because information can never be destroyed,” Newton said.
“Which also means information can never be created,” Susan said. “Just reorganized. After ya accept that notion, ya just pick the possibility ya want and improve the probability of it happening when ya want it to happen.”
As intriguing as Susan made it sound, the idea of messing with the brain’s natural chemistry troubled Clementine. “Weren’t ya scared?”
“I was young and dumb,” Susan said. “Gulliver told us it would open our minds to the coming changes, and he had a way of making…”
“Changes?” Clementine said. “Ya mean ‘bout the stuff on the Zero Album?”
Her casual reference to the record caught Susan by surprise. “Where’d ya hear ‘bout that?”
Clementine winked. “I got my ways.”
“What’s the Zero Album?” Newton asked.
Susan balked at going into more detail, something she wasn’t usually shy about. “It’s gonna sound crazy…”
“We’re cruisin’ around at five thousand feet in a giant Man-in–the Moon blimp and you’re totally dressed like a pirate,” Clementine said.
Susan’s snort turned into a wheezing laugh. “Gulliver were brilliant, but he got…a little crazy toward the end. Reckon the guilt of what he did during the war started eating away at ‘im.”
“You mean the experiments and stuff with Enzyme Seven?” Clementine said.
Susan agreed. “Think he was trying to find some kinda justification for what he done. Think that’s why he was always reading and...”
“What kinda books?” Newton asked.
“All kinda books,” Susan said. “He pieced together his own kinda mythology, figuring out what’d he’d done, were done before. That anytime there were stories of superhuman heroes and inhuman monsters and such through history, Enzyme Seven were responsible.”
“The twilight of the old world and the dawn of the new,” Clementine said. “We’re the old…”
“…And Cryptos are the new?” Newton said.
Susan’s sheepish smile belied her cynicism. “The world’s more likely to end with pens and paperwork than fire and brimstone.”
“Ya think your pals really believe in all that stuff?” Newton asked.
“Reckon some believe more than others,” Susan said. “And some believe in the believing so much that the rituals and ceremony surrounding the thing become more important than the thing itself.”
“Like Christmas?” Clementine said.
“You’re too young to be so cynical,” Susan said.
“When you’re a kid, half the fun is the anticipation,” Clementine said. “Trying to guess if you’re gonna get what you asked for. And then you open you’re presents and you’re all like, this ain’t as fun as the commercials made it look.”
Newton paused before posing his next question. “Gulliver Grimsby’s dead, ain’t he?”
“He is,” Susan agreed. “Twice now, if’n ya count Jamphibian’s unfortunate demise.”
“And they need Enzyme Seven to make EZ8,” Newton said.
Susan nodded. “Right again.”
“Then who’s in charge?” Newton asked. “Somebody’s gotta be putting EZ8 in the chocolate, right?”
***
Tasha shifted the unwieldy box from one hand to the other and pushed the barn door open. She paused to inhale the fragrant perfume of cocoa and vanilla wafting through the air, and closed the door behind her.
The Acolytes were hard at work, but she didn’t acknowledge them. Tasha didn’t even know what acolyte meant until she who must not be named told her. But now she used it in conversations whenever she could, which wasn’t often. Besides, it sounded so much better than interns.
She whipped her long pink braids over her shoulder before stepping on the hem of her robe. Working in the ceremonial garb frustrated her, but the robes evoked a certain kind of romanticism that helped recruiting while the masks kept the girls from sneezing into the product.
Tasha took a quick lap around the factory floor to make sure the assembly line was functioning at full capacity. Their recipe was specific, and the girls followed it exactly, measuring and combining the ingredients inside giant brass cauldrons before adding the special sauce to the rich, velvety mixture.
Jen came toward her, clipboard in hand. She’d changed her name from Caitlin a few weeks before in a show of solidarity with the other Acolytes, almost all of whom were also named Jen.
Tasha handed her the box.
“These the labels?” Jen asked.
“Yeah,” Tasha said.
Jen lifted her mask and stared back at Tasha with the same vacant expression as a dog waiting for a Frisbee to be thrown. “We need more special sauce.”
“Out already?” Tasha said.
“What can I say, the stuff’s like, totally addictive,” Jen explained.
She followed Tasha to the antique iron safe at the back of the barn.
“So, like where’s she get it?” Jen asked.
Tasha handed her one of the stainless steel canisters from within before slamming the safe shut again. “She was married to Willy Wonka. Got the recipe as part of the divorce settlement.”
Jen wasn’t sure if she was joking or not, but she was just as afraid of Tasha as the rest of the girls, so she beat it back to the assembly line.
Tasha climbed the stairs to the second story. Unfinished plywood walls divided the loft into four offices, though only one was occupied.
She heard music coming from the other side of the door, the same music playing whenever she went to the office. She preferred electrohouse herself, but she’d learned to tolerate the prog-rock pumping out of the speakers.
Tasha raised her hand to knock, but the door creaked open all by itself.
She who must not be named sat with her back to the door in a winged leather chair, but didn’t turn around. A window cut into the rough-hewn lumber let her keep an eye on the assembly line below, though she was otherwise occupied.
“Eight across…twelve letters… killing a witch?”
“Maleficacide,” Tasha said. “Was that really the crossword puzzle clue?”
“No, I was just being dramatic…”
Tasha reached into her robe and put the glass eye on the desk.
“Tell me what happened…and spare no detail.”
“Gas explosion,” Tasha said, and waited. She would have filled the interminable silence with idle chit-chat a few weeks before, but she’d grown accustomed to long, dramatic pauses in their conversations.
“You’ve done well.”
She who must not be named—“Sorry, is it alright if I go back to calling ya Nancy?”
“I suppose…but only ‘cause your teacher’s pet,” Nancy said. She lifted her mask and shook her hair loose. Suspiciously dark bangs framed bone white skin stretched taut over high cheek bones, rendering her age indeterminate. She could have been forty, she could have been eighty, or she could have been any age in between.
Tasha took her cue from Nancy and pushed back her own mask. Heavy lids hanging over wide-set hazel eyes softened angular features begging to be photographed. “So who was she?”
Nancy rolled the glass eye back and forth across the table. “An old friend.”
“Friend?”
Nancy stared back at Tasha from behind ambivalent blue eyes. “Actually, friend isn’t quite the right word for it.”
If friend wasn’t
the word for it, enemy was. Nancy didn’t ask for any souvenirs from the others. Faking her funeral brought out the collection of arthritic blue-hairs like she’d planned, though they didn’t seem like much of a threat to their operation.
But Nancy decided otherwise. “Use your imagination,” she said, so that’s what Tasha did, taking out the most senior Smiley-Face Witches in the most unusual ways. But she’d left no such instructions for Lazy-Eye Susan.
“Any complications?”
“No,” Tasha said.
“Any complications?” Nancy repeated.
Tasha’s full lips stretched to cover a smile one tooth too wide for her mouth. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
Nancy slipped her necklace off and pried the gem from its mount. She snapped the glass eye into the setting and put the necklace back on.
“A perfect fit,” Tasha said, “looks like ya had it made special for the occasion.”
“I did,” Nancy admitted.
The record wound down and Tasha noticed something she’d overlooked when she’d first come in. She knelt beside the plushie toy sitting in the corner. “Where’d ya find this? I used to have one when I was growing up.”
She remembered the baby gargoyle being much bigger than her other teddy bears, but she didn’t remember the toy coming shackled and chained.
“My Lil’ Thingamajig,” Tasha cooed. “But why’s it wearing glasses chained ‘round its neck like an old lady at a…”
She yanked her hand back. “That thing bit me!”
“Shoulda warned ya,” Nancy said, “Don’t put your hands anywhere near its mouth.”
Tasha nursed her bleeding finger, angry with herself for letting the Thingamajig’s puppy dog eyes lull her in to complacency. She knew better than to trust anything was as it seemed inside Nancy’s office. “Where’d ya get that thing, anyway?”
“I made it.”
Tasha’s nose crinkled. “Out of what? Smells like rotting meat.”
“Snails, and tails, and puppy dog entrails, that’s what that little boy is made of…”
Blood pooling around the Thingamajig’s feet confirmed the toy was stuffed with something other than foam.
“Is that thing chewing on a human ear?” Tasha asked, “never mind I don’t even wanna know.”
Nancy grabbed an empty tissue box from her desk and tiptoed toward the surly Thingamajig. She waited until the toy was distracted and snatched the severed ear back. “I’ve been looking for that all morning.”
“Whose is it?”
“Never mind,” Nancy said, and put the ear in the box. “Put a record on. The music seems to put him a good mood.”
Tasha browsed the stack of albums next to the turntable, keeping her eye on the Thingamajig growling at her in the corner. She read the title scribbled across the plain white dust jacket. “31063423 Peck, Peter?”
“That’s new,” Nancy said.
Tasha guessed he was a DJ like her. “What’s his sound like?”
“Like an operating system.”
“An operating system?” Tasha said, “What kinda machine uses 78 RPM records for its operating system?”
“One stuffed with snails and tails and puppy dog entrails.”
Tasha didn’t know what she was talking about, but that wasn’t unusual.
“Put that aside and throw something on with a beat,” Nancy said, “I feel like celebrating.”
So did Tasha. Since they’d added EZ8 to the candy bars, nobody could get enough, and the money was coming in faster than they could count. She put another record on and turned the music up, loud enough for the girls on the floor to hear it.
She watched the Thingamajig boogie to the music, mesmerized by the creature’s obscene gyrations. “What about the other two?”
“Now that their sister is gone, I don’t need them anymore,” Nancy said. “Best be rid of them before we head west.”
“What do you want me to do?” Tasha asked.
Nancy returned to her crossword puzzle. “Use your imagination.”
***
She screamed. Jack the Zipper hadn’t even touched her yet, but the mere thought he might triggered a primal response. Instead, he tightened the shackles binding Lucy to the crude table and answered his phone.
They called him Jack the Zipper because of the zipper in his leather mask where his mouth should be—and because his fly was unzipped when they first met. He was there when they woke, a blood-stained butcher’s apron wrapped around his elongated torso, reading glasses absurdly fitted over his mask.
Penelope watched her sister getting worked over from between the bars of her cell wondering how they’d gotten themselves into such a mess. “Remember drinking from the cup at the funeral…but nothing after that.”
She woke the next morning in the dank cellar wearing the same gown she’d worn to the funeral, surrounded by dusty jars of fruit preserves and stacks of old newspapers, nursing the worst hangover she’d ever had.
Penelope pushed tangled strands of coarse gray hair out of her eyes. “How many days ago was that? Musta drugged us…Musta been something in the wine.”
“This might tickle a bit,” Jack said, his voice rising at the end of each sentence like he was asking for permission. He put one clammy hand under Lucy’s chin and the other behind her head and turned until he heard a sharp crack.
Penelope turned away. She’d suffered the same ordeal but watching someone else endure it was so much worse. They’d fought back as long as they could but Jack’s methods were practiced and cruel, and they would have worked—if either sister knew where Lazy-Eye Susan was.
“Still, hain’t felt better in years,” Penelope admitted. Her arthritis was all but gone. Stiff joints flexed like they did when she was a young girl. Her posture stiffened and she was sure she stood at least two inches taller.
She grabbed another newspaper from the bundle and got back to work.
“If’n we ever get outta here, you’re gonna have to show me how ya make these,” Lucy said, but that was before Jack showed up.
The trick was in the folding of the newspaper and how the letters in the boxes overlapped with the adjoining puzzle to complete the spell. That and the blood sacrifice the ritual demanded. Lucy was always squeamish about such things.
Penelope pricked her finger and let the blood drip on to the paper doll.
The doll twitched and jerked, breeching the transitory zone between nothingness and existence before coming to attention to salute its master.
“At ease,” Penelope whispered.
There was no need for instructions since the doll’s orders were encoded within the puzzle boxes. The doll mounted the plane she’d folded and waited for her to launch. She checked to make sure Jack wasn’t looking and cracked the window.
She held the plane between her thumb and forefinger and sent the pilot off with a kiss. “Bon voyage…”
The plane sailed through the open window before catching an updraft. She watched her erstwhile messenger climb high over the surrounding pines before losing sight of him for good.
She’d lost track of how many she’d sent out, but reminded herself that only one of them had to find its way to a friendly port.
The cellar’s creaky wooden door opened, letting the piercing wind stab through their bones.
Penelope remembered the girl’s colorful braids from the funeral, but didn’t think Tasha was their warden. She was dangerous, but young and inexperienced. No, she was just the muscle, an Amazonian enforcer in the service of her mistress.
But seeing the Acolyte without her mask worried Penelope. “She must not care if’n we see her face, but why don’t she care?”
***
The cellar door swung open and Penelope followed Lucy out into the heavy, wet snow. Deep purple clouds masked the moon, rendering the night almost black. And while the derelict farmhouse was abandoned long ago, surveillance lights lit up the adjacent barn like a stadium.
“What’s g
oin’ on over yonder?” Penelope wondered.
The school buses parked around the barn reminded her of the band’s tour caravan years before, their psychedelic color schemes evoking a kind of dreamy pageantry long since out of style. But Acolytes loading equipment on board the buses meant whoever snatched them wouldn’t be there much longer.
“Get movin’,” Tasha ordered, and raised the Needle-Gun belt-high.
Penelope appreciated her weapon of choice, though not many others would. The burnished copper tip spit silver needles out with enough kinetic energy to maim or kill depending on how many times the bellows was pumped. It was another relic from Gulliver’s notebooks, an impractical idea made practical by his determined tinkering.
“Ya know they’re gonna get rid of us,” Lucy whispered.
“I know,” Penelope said.
They trudged along a serpentine path carved through the wooded ravine behind the farmhouse. The smell of pine resin seeping from the trees reminded Penelope Christmas was coming and she hadn’t even started her shopping.
“Funny what ya think of when you’re up against it,” she muttered.
Lucy scanned the surrounding scenery for anything they could use to their advantage. “You know this is gonna sound crazy, but I feel really good.”
“Me, too,” Penelope said, “hain’t felt this good in ages.”
“Shut-it,” Tasha barked.
“At least they hain’t shot us yet,” Penelope whispered.
Lucy wondered about that herself. “How come they hain’t shot us yet?”
“Must be marching us to where they dug the graves so they don’t have to carry us,” Penelope said.
They came to the edge of a rocky creek, a wobbly foot bridge connecting one side with the other. The gap wasn’t very far, and the bridge wasn’t very high, but the fall could break a leg or turn an ankle.
“Don’t seem safe,” Lucy said.
Tasha pressed the Needle-Gun’s cold tip against Lucy’s back. “It ain’t. But the good news is that your only gonna have to cross it once.”
Lucy tested the bridge’s stability with her boot. The bridge quivered like Jell-O in response.
Tasha pumped the gun’s bellows. “Don’t make me count to three. Because ya know what’s gonna happen at three. One…”
Lucy started across the uneven planks, Penelope following right behind her.
“What do we do?” Penelope whispered.
Lucy had a plan--Alright, not a plan. A plan implied careful thought. This was more of a reckless whim. “Remember Not Last Night But The Night Before?”