The Eye of the Bedlam Bride — Chapter no 44

[ 44 ]

SOMETIMES, THINGS ARE EXACTLY WHAT THEY SEEM TO BE.

Sometimes, there are no surprises, and despite that, despite your intention to gird yourself against what’s about to come, it still hits you with the force of a kick to the stomach.

I had to take out a zombie turkey, multiple zombie chickens, and an undead pig as we walked up the street. The entire north side of the floating chunk of Iowa was covered with the monsters. Donut said they were sliding off the edge and falling to the ocean far below. I knew some were probably landing on the thin strip of Florida also, meaning we’d likely be dealing with more zombies later, no matter what happened today. Donut wouldn’t stop bitching about them.

“They really need to stop recycling plot lines,” Donut was saying as we walked up to the trailer. “What is with the undead hordes? We had the ghouls during the Iron Tangle, those undead body part monsters at the end of the last floor, not to mention all the vampire forest creatures, oh, oh, and the ghommid village. That was just a few days ago! And now we have zombie farm animals? I mean, really. Whomever is coming up with this crap needs a new trick. It’s like a guy at a bar using the same annoying pickup line over and over. It didn’t work the first time, so why keep trying it? It’s pitiful, really.”

“You shouldn’t complain about things we can easily beat, Donut.

Especially not out loud.”

“I know, I know, Carl, but it’s not like they don’t know this already. The posse loves speculating on cool monsters we should fight, and they’re starting to get tired of the undead things. I want to kill more dogs. Do you know how long it’s been since I killed a dog? It’s been ages. My numbers are always great after I kill a dog.”

She was trying to distract me. I was formulating a response when I saw it, and the reality of what was about to happen finally hit me.

“Fuck me,” I said, seeing the motorcycle.

It was sitting right there in the yard of the dilapidated, single-wide trailer.

It wasn’t the only thing out here. The whole place was a junkyard. There was a broken-down Ford truck with only three tires, a rotted couch, an old dishwasher, plus what looked like a regular, old-school soda vending machine. The soda machine was covered with weeds and dirt like everything else in the yard.

Instead of a logo for Coke or Pepsi, the machine featured the profile silhouette of a man I immediately recognized.

Under the image were the words One Fight for Nine Tokens.

Under it was an asterisk mark with tiny letters that read: Warning. Once activated, you may leave the zone, but if you do, you will need to deposit nine more tokens to reactivate. And under that, in even smaller letters was: By the way, there are only nine tokens available in this whole area. So if you leave, you’re pretty much fucked.

“I thought it was a fatter version of you with a mustache until I saw the motorcycle,” Donut said. “It’s only a shadow, but he looks just like you, Carl.

The nose is quite identical. It’s eerie, really.”

I felt as if I couldn’t breathe, and I was doing my best to hide it. “Don’t ever say that again.”

“Does he really have a mustache? Did he work in porn? It’s no wonder you didn’t have any pictures of him.”

“Sometimes,” I said. “To the mustache part, not the porn. Whenever he was getting ready to go out on one of his motorcycle weekend trips, he’d grow it out.” I instinctively reached up and grabbed my own face, which I still shaved every day. “He could grow one out really fast.”

“Well, it doesn’t appear he’s ridden that thing in a long time,” Donut said, looking over the dirty motorcycle.

“You know what,” I said, looking over the yard. My eyes focused on the green weeds growing up around the tires of the motorcycle. At the flowers.

“You’re right. This is wrong. All of this is wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

I gestured behind me. “Everything here was covered in snow just a few hours ago. It melted because it was transferred here to Florida. This trailer and the entire yard is different. Look at the grass. Look at all the dust on the

truck and motorcycle.”

“Hey,” Donut said. “You’re right! They’re cheating! And this is different than the zombie turkey barn. That had snow on it! And look over there, where the yard ends!”

I looked at where she was pointing, and there was a pile of kids’ bicycles in the overgrown yard adjoining the neighboring trailer. One of the bikes was cut in half. The half that had been in the neighbor’s yard was gone, and the front half remained in the yard here, sliced off like it had been cut with a precision laser. I looked over the bikes, remembering. When I was a kid, everyone would roam the neighborhood in packs, but I never had a bike, and I’d chase after them on foot, always getting left behind. I never had friends, not lasting ones. I always blamed it on not having a bike.

I looked over at the neighboring trailer, and one of the same bikes from the pile was leaned up against the side of the wall. It was literally the exact same bike, complete with the same pink and white Spider Gwen stickers.

“This yard and trailer is not from Christmas. They are cheating. This little spot is from a different time. Earlier, but not by much. Maybe sometime in the summer. It’s spliced in.”

An ominous feeling washed over me. Why would they do that?

It’s because they want you to see something. Something specific they caught on their magic cameras.

I walked over and rubbed my hand across the dirty and cracked leather seat of the motorcycle. The bike had Georgia plates that’d expired years before. I knew nothing about these things, but I did know there was something special about this one. It was a collector’s item and if it had been in good condition, it’d be worth a lot of money. It was a Harley-Davidson 1965 FLH Electra Glide Panhead. I didn’t know what any of that meant, but I knew this was the last year of some type of configuration and the first year of something else. He’d never shut up about it. This damn thing was his prized possession.

I reached down and picked up the motorcycle. I lifted it easily. I remembered that day I’d accidentally knocked it over. How heavy it had been. I pulled it into my inventory.

To my surprise, it didn’t stick itself in the temporary category like everything else from this floor. It went into the same spot as the two pieces of the royal chariot, the bicycles, the kayak, and a few others odds and ends.

Shitty Transportation Items.

“If we loot stuff from here, I think we get to keep it,” I said.

I looked around the yard again, this time more carefully. There was a clear line where the ground changed, where this little section had been added in. It was a rectangle about twenty feet all around the trailer, stopping a few feet into the yard of each of the neighbors. There were other things cut in half. A rake. What looked like part of a fallen-over fence, though both halves remained. The winter half had shifted an inch over to the side.

My eyes caught a line of flower pots dotting one clean side of the yard, up against the south, flat end of the trailer. The first, biggest pot contained purple, round clusters of flowers, and they were carefully potted and taken care of. There were little signs in each pot, but I couldn’t read them from here. My dad would never have done that. I swallowed at the implication. I took a step forward to exam them further, but I hit an invisible wall, smushing my face against nothing. Behind me, the vending machine made a chime.

“Put the tokens in, Donut. And let Mongo out.”

Warning: The fight will not commence for forty-two minutes and thirty seconds.

A countdown timer appeared in my interface.

Warning: This area exists in a different time instance than the remainder of this floor.

Warning: Physical interactions in this area act differently than other

locations on this floor.

What the hell does that mean?

The warnings came the moment I touched the flimsy door on the side of the trailer. I’d cleaned out the yard, taking everything I could pick up, including the old washing machine, several kids’ bikes of various sizes, and all the pieces of rusty crap. I couldn’t quite lift the Ford truck all the way, though I felt as if I should be able to. I wished we had more time. I did manage to lift one end, and I thought if I could possibly jack it up, I might be able to get under it and lift it long enough to take it. This one had Iowa plates, and the registration was surprisingly up-to-date, despite the missing tire. If we had more time, I would’ve stripped the whole vehicle clean, including the engine to give to Katia.

The flower pots were all labeled with the type of flowers they were. The handwriting was elegant and feminine. The purple flowers in the big pot that’d caught my eye were called alliums. There were daffodils, asters, hyacinths, and several others. Next to it was a well-organized shed filled with gardening supplies and bags of soil. I took them all.

Also on the back side of the trailer was another surprise. Half of an old minivan sitting in a parking spot. It was cut down the middle, front to back, and it was leaned over, fluid spilled all around it. The winter half wasn’t there at all. The engine was cut right in half. I tried picking the whole thing up, and crap started falling off of it. I took it all, but it was mostly junk.

Donut remained silent on my shoulder while I did all this, though she did jump down and land upon Mongo as I took all the minivan pieces. The dinosaur had eyes on what looked like a zombie cow wandering down the street. The zombie was leaving us alone, and we warned Mongo against chasing after it. If he left the yard, he wouldn’t be allowed back in.

There was other stuff here, in the far side of the yard. Stuff I didn’t want to think about. Donut saw it, too, and said nothing.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I reached up and touched the door sitting there next to the carport, and that was when I received the warnings.

“What?” Donut asked. “Why is there a timer? Carl, what does that mean?”

A strange numbness had fallen over me. It was like I was watching this all play out on a screen, and it wasn’t really happening. “There’s a reason they made it from a different time, Donut. They want us to watch something.

We can’t leave, so we might as well get it over with.”

“But what does that last warning mean?”

“I’m about to find out. You stay back until I call you in.”

“Carl?”

“Yeah.”

“You can just wait out here with me. You don’t have to go in there.”

“I know. Thank you. But I need to do this. You wait, okay?”

Donut hesitated. “Okay, Carl.”

The ground rumbled as a distant cliff crumbled into the ocean far below.

I entered the house, and I closed the door behind me.