The Ables (26 page)

“I thought I saw something.”

It was silent for a few beats while both Henry and I took in the view.

“All I see is some old man way down there.”

“Exactly.”

“What?!” Henry asked. “You recognize that guy? He’s, like, a mile away.”

I did recognize him. Well … I thought I did. There was something about the brisk-but-casual meter of his footsteps. I could even faintly hear them in the distance.

“Look at how he moves, Henry.” The man was pretty far away and only a silhouette could be made out, but you could see his movements as he slowly walked in the opposite direction. “See how his head bobs, ever so slightly.” Everything about the way he moved was familiar.

“I don’t know, Phillip,” Henry said reluctantly. “All I see is a dark stick figure on a darker background. He’s way too far away. I give up, man, who is it?”

Click-clop. It all started to come together for me.

“Is he smoking a pipe?” I burst out suddenly. “He is! Did you see that?”

“Holy crap,” Henry breathed. He finally saw it.

I was utterly convinced now. The pipe had sealed it for me, though the footsteps should have. Even though a few weeks had passed, the memories from that encounter were still fresh. The man on the sidewalk three blocks away, walking away from us, was the same man we confronted in the library during the SuperSim.

***

We decided—rather hastily, I might add, now that I have the gift of hindsight—to follow this Mr. Finch and see if we could find out where he was going.

This was the man who had singlehandedly ruined our reputation around town. The man who had made us look like idiots and fibbers. The man nobody else believed even existed. Of course we were going to go after him. There was zero debate.

But this wasn’t a SuperSim. This was real, and I felt the corresponding chill come over me as I contemplated the possible danger.

Now it’s important to note that Henry’s wheelchair was relatively new—it had been a birthday present several weeks prior. It was just about the fanciest wheelchair in existence. It was built with tungsten and titanium for a super lightweight and maximum strength construction. And it was quiet as a mouse.

Staying on our side of the road, we crept slowly after our target. He was now four blocks ahead of us, but he wasn’t in any hurry. Just taking a stroll through Freepoint, smoking his pipe, on Halloween.

Wabash Avenue, as it happens, is lined with tall oak trees. They’re stationed like sentries, one in front of each house, out between the sidewalk and the road. They must have been planted generations ago because they towered over the houses and the telephone poles. Between the massive tree trunks and the parked cars, we were blessed to have many objects to hide behind as we went along. The old man was moving at such a leisurely pace, we were able to make up ground just by walking quickly.

After a block and a half, we could see him more clearly now. He was wearing the same goofy hat and the same distinguished jacket—I had a sudden realization that for this one night, Bentley and Finch were both dressed like Sherlock Holmes.

Soon, we were close enough to hear him whistling.

The fact that we could hear him made me realize he could hear us too if we weren’t careful. I held my finger to my closed lips to let Henry know to stay quiet. Henry craned his neck, peeked over the station wagon we were using as a bunker, and we both saw something unexpected. It didn’t compute.

There was a second man walking with Finch. Where there had only been one mysterious old man just moments earlier, there were now two, walking side by side away from us. He was shorter, with medium dark hair and a long flowing black cape. There was a second set of audible footsteps and a hushed murmur of covert conversation.

“What the …” Henry whispered. “Where did he come from?”

The temperature seemed to have dropped a few degrees as the cold wind started to gust.

“Were there two of them before, and we just didn’t see the other guy?” I knew it was a long shot.

“No way, man,” Henry confirmed. “We would have seen another guy.”

“So he just appeared out of thin air?”

“Well, the old man did teleport the first time we met him, remember?”

“Geez,” I said, exhaling in frustration. “What do we do now?”

“We keep following them, duh.”

“I know that, I’m just saying … what if they split up? What if there are more of them?”
What if I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this?
I was, indeed, getting a bad feeling. What little we knew about this man made us curious to learn more, for certain, but it was also cause for hesitation. And fear. I was experiencing plenty of both.

“Don’t worry about your bad feelings,” he said, reading my mind as always. “We’re superheroes, dude. You’re going to have to get used to seeing crazy stuff. Now, we gotta go; they’re getting too far ahead of us. We’ll figure that stuff out as it comes, Phillip.” And with that, he was off toward the next car up the block, using his arms to churn the wheels forward silently.

After another block of following them, the two men reached a corner and abruptly turned left. They were still two blocks ahead of us, and we were unprepared for the sudden change in direction.

“Crap,” I exclaimed. I’m not sure why we just assumed they’d keep going in a straight line.

“Come on, let’s cross the street,” Henry urged.

We scampered across Wabash to the sidewalk our targets had just been on and then hurried toward the corner. The candy bags were starting to feel like dumbbells, and the muscles in my arms were beginning to burn. This time we ran, but we managed to do it without making much noise. There was a concrete retaining wall lining the yard of the corner house, and by ducking just the slightest bit, we were able to hide behind it as we moved. We reached the corner, stopping a few feet short of where the wall ended, and caught our breath.

After a few seconds, Henry slowly moved toward the edge of the wall and leaned his head around it to look down the street. The images I received from him were turned at an angle as he tilted his head. It was a strange feeling to have a first-person view of a peek around the corner without doing any of the actual peeking, like Henry was a personal periscope.

Unfortunately, a giant sagging tree branch hung low over the sidewalk about two houses down. We could see a foot or two through the leaves, but the total view was obstructed. The branch almost touched the sidewalk.

“Dang it,” Henry sputtered. “What next?”

As he continued straining his neck left and right, trying to find some magical angle through the leaves that revealed a better view, I was struck with an epiphany:
Henry’s right: you have super powers, idiot!

I concentrated on the drooping branch, focusing all my thoughts on it alone. Through the gift of Henry’s eyesight, I was able to see my powers in action even though I was still physically around the corner of the concrete wall. The branch slowly lifted, sighing back into a position it must have held years before, upright and tall.

“Not bad, Phillip,” Henry said, clearly impressed. “Not bad at all.”

But the congratulatory moment passed immediately for us both as we saw what the tree had been obstructing. I instantly regretted having moved the branch, because now there were four figures moving away from us. The new additions had similar capes, and I noticed all four sets of footsteps were in perfect rhythm.

“What in the heck is going on?” I said in frustration as Henry pulled back from the corner. I let the tree branch drop back into its former position.

“I don’t know, Phillip. Where are they all coming from?”

My bad feeling was coming back, this time much stronger. By this point, we were reaching the edge of town now, having stayed on the trail for several blocks. We’d started out following one man and now were outnumbered two to one.

“Hey,” he replied, playing devil’s advocate, “We’re not going to attack them. We’re just following them. We’re only trying to see where they’re going, okay?”

“Yeah,” I conceded, my lingering reluctance still showing.

“Look, don’t you want to know what this guy’s deal is? Who he is? What he’s up to?”

“Of course I do!”

“Well, then you can’t take your candy and go home just yet. We have to keep going. And they’re getting away if we don’t move soon.”

He was right. I did want to know what was going on. Who was this guy? And why did he have so many caped-crusader helpers? It didn’t make any sense to me at all. My curiosity got the best of my anxiety for the moment, and I nodded.

Henry stole another glance around the wall’s edge, and I lifted the branch again, but this time, the men were gone. Disappeared. Poof. He stuck more of his head around the corner to get a better view, but there was no sign of them. He wheeled his chair completely out from behind the wall and looked long and hard down the sidewalk. Nothing.

“Where did they go?” he asked, turning his head back to me. When his eyes finally trained on my position, we both saw Finch standing right behind me.

“Hello, again,” he said simply. His voice was as friendly as his presence was creepy.

Instinct kicked in, which means we screamed like girls and ran away from the old man, rounding the corner we’d been hiding behind and taking off like our lives depended on it.

“Come on, Donnie,” Henry yelled.

Donnie!
I’d almost forgotten all about him. He’d been quiet, as usual, just creeping along behind Henry and me, all throughout our attempts to play spy. I shuddered at the realization that I could so easily just forget about him.
But
, I reminded myself,
I am blind.

In addition to being strong and stealthy, Henry’s new wheelchair was also very fast, and it was a struggle to keep up with him. I tried my best to quickly memorize Henry’s images, which he was still sending me, whether he knew it or not. It’s not easy to look where you’re going when your vision is twenty paces ahead of your feet, I can tell you that much. I stumbled and tripped as I ran, my cape flapping and snapping in the wind behind me. Donnie’s hands were suddenly on me, steadying me as he ran alongside me.

I reached up and pulled off the cowl and cape, tossing them aside for greater wind resistance. Also, I kind of didn’t want to die in a full Batman costume. We ran and ran for two or three blocks without looking back. We were certain there were hundreds of caped weirdoes and a kindly old gentlemen right on our heels, carrying pitchforks and tobacco pipes.

But when Henry finally stopped and whipped his gaze around, there was no one behind me. Another disappearing act.

We all gasped for air while Henry darted his eyes in every direction. It didn’t appear as though we were being followed. As I watched the images from Henry, a wave of recognition came over me. “Hey,” I said slowly, “I know where we are.”

We were near Mr. Charles’ farm—our practice field. Through all the evening’s adventures, I hadn’t realized we’d gone all the way to the edge of town. Just a block or so east, and we’d be at the tree line that marked the farm’s north boundary.

“Yeah,” Henry agreed. “Me too. Come on!” He turned and took off again, headed for the nearby familiar ground.

“Donnie,” I yelled, waving my arm for him to follow.

By the time we reached the tree line, we were all gassed. But we kept running until we reached the cornfields, stopping fifty feet or so into the grass swath that ran between the two large plots.

Air seemed to be in short supply, and we all doubled over in fatigue as we gasped and panted, dropping our candy bags to the ground.

And through the sound of the deep breaths, the old man spoke. “It would seem to me,” he said, “that running would not be a very effective strategy for you gentlemen at this point. It only wears you out, you see?”

Fear raced through me like a wave, starting from the tips of my fingers and toes. He sounded about thirty yards away, give or take, and the very fact that he was standing there was proof of his statement—it was futile to try and run away from him. He was a teleporter.

“Isn’t it funny, don’t you think, that … after following me for several blocks—poorly, I might add—and then being frightened into a flight response … you still somehow ended up at the place I was headed to myself?”

“Well,” Henry huffed, “we’d be happy to go somewhere else, then. Honestly … we don’t really want to be around you anymore. I don’t, at least.” He inhaled another deep breath.

“That’s certainly out of the question.”

I felt like I should say something. I searched my brain for something confident and defiant. But I found nothing. I was terrified.

“Well,” Finch said with a deep sigh, “I suppose you’d better come take a look at what I’ve been up to this time.” With that, he turned and began walking slowly away from us. He got about ten paces before he stopped and turned back around. “Let’s
go
, children! I have many things to attend to, and I can’t spend all evening with you playing deer in the headlights.”

Henry turned toward me and I toward him.

“If he wanted to kill us, he would have,” I offered weakly.

“If he wanted to kill us
now
, he would have,” Henry countered.

“Well, if he’s going to kill us either way, I’m at least going to see what he’s talking about.” I turned and started walking. After a few steps I heard Henry sigh loudly and then begin following me.

“Come on, Donnie,” Henry said.

Finch turned and continued down the patch of grass between cornfields toward a ridge fifty yards away, where the farmland dove into a valley. As we got closer to the ridge, I began to hear all kinds of noises—machinery, voices, concussive sounds. Something was lighting the valley enough to create a soft white glow just above the ridge. Little plumes of dust and smoke were scattered here and there, floating up as they disappeared into the night sky.

Eventually we reached the very edge, where Finch was waiting for us. And what we saw in the valley defied logic. Somehow, in the course of one evening, Finch’s workers—all in black capes—had managed to carve out a huge chunk of earth, creating a cavity ten stories deep.