Splinters

4. New Approach

4. New Approach

Mina

Of all the things I have to do to protect the humans of Prospero, explaining myself to potential new assets is easily the one for which I have the least talent, the one task that makes me more nervous and prone to stalling than any other.

Usually, I prefer to wait until I can get my hands on a fresh Creature Splinter from the woods before making my pitch. People find it harder to brush me off while they’re watching a furry, oversized dragonfly trying to grow itself human arms and legs, but such things are hard to find, harder to catch, and hardest to keep alive long enough for any particular use. The threats against Ben, and the return of the thing I will henceforth refer to as “Haley,” purely for convenience’s sake, had forced me to move up my schedule considerably.

The bug in the program I’d given Ben hadn’t died yet, and he hadn’t thrown it away, or at least, if he had, he hadn’t emptied the guestroom wastebasket since, so I had a muffled ear in his room at the Perkins house. Haley had finally left her purse unattended in a locker behind the park amphitheater long enough for me to fit another temp bug in her wallet, download a good teen tracker app to her phone, and get Ben’s number out of it, but it still wasn’t nearly enough.

My Network is small at the best of times, and some of the members leave town for summer vacation. Fewer ECNSs in Prospero means fewer people to worry about, but it also leaves any work that comes up to Aldo, Billy, and me. Mostly me.

Keeping Ben accounted for every minute of every day without his help was costing me an unsustainable amount of sleep.

For his own safety, he needed to know.

I stood for a while outside one of the windows of the Soda Fountain of Youth, preparing myself.

It was nice, knowing it was a human sitting inside, laughing at Billy’s jokes. It was nice not worrying about whether the way Ben folded his long limbs might include slightly unnatural angles, whether he had the ability to twist them into new shapes at a moment’s notice. He had what Aldo had always referred to, not so affectionately, as “heartthrob hair,” exactly the color of wood varnish, cut short up to the middle of his ears and left just long enough on top to fall into his eyes.

I’d never had an opinion on the style one way or another before, but on him, it gave me the bizarre, persistent urge to brush it behind his ears with my fingers and then staple it there. Or something.

Human.

I wanted him to stay that way, an ECNS, forever. He was my asset. I wanted him for my side. I didn’t want to have to cross him off the list and wonder if it had been my attention that had brought theirs down on him, too; and most of all, I very earnestly didn’t want to end up having to kill him.

That made it a little easier to open the Soda Fountain’s front door, walk up to the booth Ben currently had to himself, and say the most straightforward thing I could think of.

“May I join you?”

Ben froze when he looked up at me, and for a moment I thought he might bolt for the door.

“Um… okay.”

I slid onto the bench opposite him and grabbed one of the menus from the clip on the wall, partly to look normal, partly so I could rearrange the letters of the menu items in my head while I gathered together what I’d been planning to say. Somehow it had already gotten muddled on the way from the door to the booth.

Ben still had a menu open in front of him as well, and he showed signs of discomfort with the silence after just a few seconds.

“So… uh… what do you recommend here?” he asked.

“You come here a lot,” I noted, trying to arrange my argument. “I thought you’d know what you preferred by now.”

In a town as small as Prospero, a person’s movements, particularly those of a recent local hero, aren’t exactly secret, even to those who pay less attention than I do, but judging by the look on Ben’s face, this wasn’t a good start. I picked a recommendation at random to try to fix it.

“Do you like cherries?” I asked.

“I don’t dislike cherries,” Ben responded.

Right on cue, Billy’s hazy voice called out to us.

“Hey, what’s happening?” He wiped his hands on his stained apron as he walked up. Seeing us both at the table, he smiled broadly. “Jailbait and Superman? How’d you two get together?” His eyes were more red-rimmed than usual. It was hard to tell if he was feigning ignorance of my plans better than usual or if he’d really forgotten.

“He calls you Jailbait?” Ben smirked.

“Billy enjoys nicknames,” I explained. “He finds them amusing.”

“And she can sometimes use reminding that she’s not a withered old cat lady just yet,” Billy added.

“We’re here on business,” I cut off this counter-productive thread of conversation. “Get me a Triple Chocolate Malt, Loch-Ness sized, double shot of espresso, dark and white chocolate chips, no milk chocolate, extra whipped cream, and a Cherry Timewarp for Ben here.”

“You know him?” Ben asked as soon as Billy retreated to the kitchen.

I nodded and seized the topic. This was something we had in common. “Billy Crane. He’s part of my Network. My driver, mainly, but he does a bit of everything. He owns a van, and he drives it less negligently that you’d think. He’s also good at breaking things, fixing things, he’s a competent drummer, and he’s studying to become a licensed hypnotist.”

“Hypnotist?” Ben asked, poorly suppressing a smile.

“He insists it’s a good way of meeting girls at parties,” I explained.

“Does it work?” he asked.

“If I ever go to one, I’ll tell you. He can also buy alcohol, if that matters to you.”

“No, not really,” Ben laughed.

“Good. This isn’t a place where you’ll want to dull your reaction time.”

Billy returned from the kitchen and, with one of his standard flourishes of ill-conceived humor, arranged two straws in the malt he set in front of me.

Once he’d gone again, Ben eyed the bright red, fizzy, pink whipped cream-adorned Cherry Timewarp skeptically for a moment before taking a sip. The set of his jaw muscles when he swallowed it didn’t suggest that he found it anything less than pleasant.

In any case, he continued to drink from it, watching me warily but expectantly. I had to get to the point.

“Do you believe in UFOs?” I asked.

This caused Ben to inhale some of the Cherry Timewarp and slip into a discouraging coughing fit.

The fact that he’d developed such a fondness for the Soda Fountain of Youth had been one of the few good signs since he’d arrived in Prospero. It’s one of the only places that actually cashes in on the town’s paranormal reputation, with its jukebox full of 50s sci-fi TV soundtracks and collection of framed UFO photographs and stuffed cryptids. Little of it has anything to do with the truth, but I’d thought that maybe if it held any appeal for Ben, it might be a good place to start.

“What?” he finally choked.

“In aliens? Bigfoot? Angels? Ghosts?” I tried.

When Ben could breathe again, he answered, quite firmly, “No.”

“No to one, or no to all?”

“No to all,” he said. “If any of those things existed, I think you’d probably find one stuffed and mounted in the Smithsonian somewhere.”

So much for that angle. I took a spoonful of my malt and concentrated on crunching the frozen chocolate chips for a moment to keep my head clear.

“Okay,” I said. “I was hoping for a frame of reference you might understand. Instead, I’ll cut to the chase.”

“I like the chase, I can totally cut to that,” he said, with the nervous kind of smile people wear when they’re trying to calm someone down. It didn’t do much for me.

I took one long draw from the malt, and then I told him.

“For more than a hundred years, Prospero has been ground zero for an invasion from another world of shape-shifting beings who seek to take over our minds, bodies, and lives, and there is every possibility they have designs on the world as well.”

For some reason, the Theremin riff that emanated from the jukebox at that moment seemed to amuse Ben.

“The so-called miracles and monsters of this town are mere side effects of this invasion. When things go according to their plan, it’s almost impossible to notice they exist, but sometimes there are accidents, sometimes they experiment, and sometimes things leak through from the other world that aren’t supposed to. The abnormal activity in Prospero has gotten some attention from the UFO chasers and crypto enthusiasts of the world, as you can see.”

I gestured around the Soda Fountain’s convenient décor.

“But instead of welcoming the publicity and the tourist dollars that come with it, like Roswell, Point Pleasant, and Port Henry, the Prospero Town Council does its best to suppress any information about anything out of the ordinary. It does this because it has been collaborating with the invaders, possibly from the very beginning. In exchange for their silence and their help procuring humans to be copied and replaced, its members are protected and kept in their positions of wealth and power. I have made it my life’s work to combat these creatures and all that they do. Many have come before me. I’m here to invite you to join the fight.”

I sat back and waited for the answer. I could tell a moment before it came that I wasn’t going to like it.

Ben laughed.

“You think this is funny,” I said as agreeably as I could.

“Well, this is some kind of a big joke, right?” he asked, barely suppressing his laughter. “I mean, there are hidden cameras filming this somewhere, right? And at any minute they’re gonna jump out and say, ‘Hey, you’re on Monsterville: The Reality Series, please sign this release form so we can make you look like a jackass on network TV.’ Right?”

“I don’t have any hidden cameras here,” I told him, calmly, seriously, the only way I’d ever convinced anyone of anything. “And I assure you, this is no joke.”

He stopped smiling. “You… you really believe this stuff, don’t you?”

“The way UFO chasers ‘believe’ things on faith alone? No,” I told him. “I’ve seen it.”

“And of all the people in the world you could share it with, you decided to tell me?” he asked.

“You were a logical choice. Almost everyone in town is potentially a Splinter—”

“Splinter?”

“Not my term,” I explained, “but it fits. From what I’ve studied of the resistors who came before me, that’s been the word for these things for at least fifty years. But as I was saying, anyone, and I mean anyone in town, or who has even visited, is potentially a Splinter and cannot be trusted completely.”

“Well then,” he said, “I hate to break it to you, but I have been to this town, many times before. How do you know I’m not one of them?”

This part would require some finesse. I hoped I had enough to spare.

“Because the last time you were here, you were eleven years old, and unless you were an early bloomer, they couldn’t have replaced you then,” I said.

Ben’s fingers went whiter than they already were against the cold glass of the Cherry Timewarp. Again, it looked very much like he might run, and again he didn’t.

“How do you know when I was last here?”

I was honest. To a point. “Status Update: July 9th, 3:46 p.m. Ben Pastor is going to be attending a funeral up in Monsterville, USA. First time we’ve been up there in five years. Hopefully the last. If you don’t want the world knowing your life story, you really shouldn’t be posting it on—”

“Thanks for the tip,” he stopped me, looking as annoyed as he did relieved, but he still made no move to get up. “So you looked me up because you didn’t know me, and because of that you thought you could trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Has anyone ever told you you should get your head examined?”

“Many times,” I said.

They had, and the conversations had never been productive.

“Are you prepared to discuss anything with me other than my mental health?”

Ben needed a few seconds to consider this. “Yes. Fine. I’m listening. You want me to help you fight shape-shifting aliens, and—”

“I never said—”

“Okay, okay, you never called them aliens,” he backtracked. “Suppose I believe you. What exactly do you want me to do?”

A helpful question. “First of all, I want you to be on your guard,” I said. “The Splinters have taken a particular interest in you, and with you living in the same house as one of them—”

“You mean Haley.” Ben set his now empty glass down with a clink, all helpful inquisitiveness instantly closed off. “You’re saying that while Haley was gone, she was actually being transformed into some kind of… pod person out in those woods?”

“She’s a Probable Splinter, yes,” I said. “A very, very Probable Splinter, actually, and the process does seem to be executed in the woods, although I haven’t been able to pinpoint the location.”

Ben glanced around for eavesdroppers. A good instinct, one that could be channeled into usefulness, if he’d allow it.

“I can’t believe that,” he said.

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“Does it matter? I’ve known Haley for my entire life. I can’t say we’re close, but she is my friend. I can believe that something terrible, something nobody wants to talk about, happened to her. Maybe it’s even something involving someone in this town, someone connected, someone who could afford to keep this covered up, I don’t know. I believe that whatever it was caused enough stress to make Haley want to forget it as some kind of defense mechanism. But the idea that she’s been replaced by some kind of body-snatching monster is… impossible.”

“Impossible?” I repeated. “Maybe on a global scale it’s improbable, but you’ve been willing enough to believe more improbable things than that recently. How many people can you name, real people, not characters on TV or in movies, who’ve disappeared, only to reappear two months later with only some scratches and a convenient dose of amnesia?”

I could hardly believe it. I thought I’d lost him after the reaction Haley’s name had gotten, but something in what he’d seen of Prospero so far must have already brought him closer to my line of thinking than he was letting on, because this actually made him look thoughtful. I drank from the malt to keep my focus while he processed it. Finally, he asked the question I’d been hoping to hear most of all.

“Maybe… maybe if you just had some proof of something paranormal, something more than this,” he waved his arms at the pictures and the stuffed Jackalope in the case behind him. “Maybe—”

“I do! Not about Haley personally, but I do!”

It wasn’t the proof I liked to have, the living, breathing kind that I could put in front of someone at almost any level of denial and have them consider it, but when people ask, it’s different. When people ask, sometimes videos will do the trick. I’d loaded my best one, the one I’d captured of Alexei’s disguise glitching up when a stage light fell on him a couple years earlier, onto my best phone for just this purpose. I hurried to queue it up and passed it across to Ben.

He watched, a little skeptically, but he watched, and I watched the reflection in the Jackalope case over his shoulder. The light would fall at fifteen seconds in, and as the time approached, I found myself much more anxious than any person who’s actually fought Splinters should ever be about anything else.

At four seconds to go, the phone vibrated. A text message. Before I could even think of snatching it back, I caught the reversed words scrolling along the upper menu, over the video, next to Aldo’s name.

Pics from morning shift. He’s been visiting your Splinter-dad’s shop again.

Ben’s eyes narrowed, and—with an information-need that I had to respect, as inconvenient as it was—he swiped the message open, filling the screen with the latest candid shots of himself.

After a few seconds of very uncomfortable silence, he started with the easy part of the message. “You think your own dad is a pod person?”

“A Splinter,” I said. It was time to start getting terms straight. “And I’m effectively certain he is. I saw him.”

“Jeez, do you think the worst of everyone?”

“No,” I said. “There’s Billy, Aldo, uh, a few you haven’t met, and… you.”

He was still scanning through the photos.

“Tell me,” he said, “exactly how sick a stalker are you?”

He was angry. I’d been the object of a lot of anger, but for some reason this time it made my stomach twist in on itself so hard it hurt.

“I’m not sick.”

“How long have you been following me?” he asked.

The hurt in my stomach was filling up my brain, and not in the helpful, packing peanut way. “I needed to know you were—”

“Never mind.” He put the phone down, opened his wallet, and slammed what little was in it (twice as much as the drinks and tip demanded) on the table without looking at it. “Don’t come to me again, Mina,” he said slowly and clearly, stepping out of the booth. “And I don’t care what you think she is. Stay the hell away from Haley.”