Accidental Evil (17 page)

Her mother came in from the kitchen. She had half of a sandwich in one hand and a napkin in the other. Lily turned back to the window.

“I guess I don’t understand where the concern is coming from,” Wendy said. She took a bite of her sandwich and swallowed before she continued. “Maybe they’re just part of the show. Either that or one of the neighbors is playing with one of their remote controlled robots. Such a thing is not outlandish to imagine.”

“It didn’t appear to be a toy,” Trina said. She had paced over near her cousin and was hovering by the front door.

Lily pulled the curtain shut and left her post at the window. She had seen several of the little things. They were all moving from south to north across the lawn. All seemed to be headed towards the park where the marching band finished up their concert.

“I’m always on the side of caution,” Bruce said, “but I can’t reach anyone on the phone. I suggest we wander down to the park and flag down a police officer. Then, if it is some kind of terrorist attack…”

“For goodness’ sake, Bruce, who said that it was?” her mother asked.

“I’m simply saying what everyone was thinking,” he said.
 

“I wasn’t thinking that,” Lily said.
 

“I’m going to the show,” Wendy said. She finished her sandwich and wiped her mouth with her napkin. “We’ve never missed it before, and I’ve been looking forward to a piece of strawberry rhubarb pie all week. Will anyone join me, or are you all too concerned about mysterious robots patrolling the woods?”

“It’s about a hundred yards to the park,” Trina said. “We can hear the festivities going on, so I guess we can assume that everyone is okay.”

“It’s twice that far if we take the road,” Lily said. “But it might be safer.”

Trina nodded.

“It’s a beautiful day,” Wendy said. “Let’s take the path. It’s so pretty.”

“I would like to find out if anyone else is having telecommunication problems,” Bruce said.

“It’s settled,” Wendy said. She moved to the door.

[ Walk ]

As they crossed the yard, they fell into a single-file line. Wendy was at the lead, followed by Gerard and Trina. Lily looked back and waved to her father—he was bringing up the rear. In the distance, the band finished playing. They heard a muffled voice coming through the public address system. Lily couldn’t tell what the man was saying.

When she took her bike to town, Lily didn’t take the narrow path through the woods. There were too many roots and rocks for her to ride it easily. The last time she’d walked the path had probably been the previous summer. Her family always ambled into town on Labor Day—the unofficial farewell to all the Summer People.
 

Lily watched Gerard, who watched the woods. His head turned this way and that. She caught a glimpse of what he was tracking. The shadow darted from one bush to the next. It didn’t seem to want to bother them. Lily wondered why she had been so afraid.
 

They all stopped when they heard the engine. Someone was barreling down the West Road. The tires chirped, perhaps on the turn, and the engine sounded like it was about to explode. Wendy started walking again and the rest followed.

The man’s voice stopped. There was no noise at all from the direction of the park. Lily wondered if maybe something horrible had happened. She didn’t even hear the normal bubbling sound of distant voices. Then, the sound of a single trumpet cut through the air. Lily recognized it as a sad sound before she even realized that the trumpeter was playing Taps.

Wendy turned. “For Big Jack,” she said.

“Oh,” Lily’s father said behind her. “That’s kind,” he murmured.

By the time the song ended, they were close enough to hear the announcer.

“And now we have a special treat—The Astounding Dunn will delight you with his otherworldly feats of magic.”

Lily heard a smattering of applause.

At the front of their line, Wendy sped up a little. Through the trees, Lily could see the park. They were nearly there.

[ Show ]

They emerged at side of the clearing just as Ricky walked out onto the stage in front of the gazebo. He looked very official in his dark suit and hat. Lily couldn’t imagine how hot he was in that suit with the noon heat. Music flared through the speakers and Ricky took off his coat as part of his first trick. He didn’t even appear to be sweating—Lily was already impressed.

She turned her attention to Gerard. He was crouching down next to Trina and seemed to be watching something in the underbrush. She followed his gaze, but couldn’t see what had captured his attention. Trina’s arm went up to point at something. Lily turned to see a woman running through the woods. She pulled up to a fast walk as she stepped through the leaves and came out to the clearing. Lily had seen her before. She lived up the hill somewhere near the golf course. She was a relative newcomer to the area.
 

Trina’s arm dropped and the woman kept moving. She threaded her way through the crowd.

Ricky finished his first trick to some more applause. People seemed too hot from the sun to be really engaged in a magic show, but at least they weren’t wandering away.

Lily saw a familiar face and waved. She caught Sarah’s eye and her friend started to navigate around the back of the crowd to come over to Lily’s side.

“I’m going to go find out if anyone knows about the phones,” Lily’s father said. She turned to see him walking towards the side of the stage.

“Your father will get everything settled,” Wendy said.

Lily moved to meet Sarah.

“I was going to save you a seat up front,” Sarah said, “but you can see just as well standing back here, I guess.”

Lily nodded. “Sarah, I think there might be something strange going on.”

“With the phones?”
 

Lily nodded. “And the…”

She didn’t get a chance to finish. They were interrupted by more applause and then some gasps. Ricky did something on stage and a cloud of smoke appeared. Even more people clapped at that.

“Mr. Gault said it was the tower on Cemetery Hill. He said an excavator knocked the lines and it killed the cell tower and the internet.”

“But our land line was broken as well,” Lily said.

“It’s all the same,” Sarah said.

Several people turned to look in the sky behind them. Lily looked up and saw a black object hovering just over the lake.

“Is someone shooting a video of this?” Sarah asked.

Lily shrugged. The black thing darted off to the north and attention returned to Ricky as he started another trick.

Sarah leaned close to Lily. “How’s the creep? Has he done anything weird?”

“He hasn’t had a chance. We’ve been preoccupied with these weird robot things this morning. That’s the other strange thing I was talking about. I’ve seen a couple of them.”

“Robots?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah, I guess,” Lily said. “Like little mechanical bugs or something.”

Sarah held out her fingers a couple of inches apart. Lily shook her head and held out her hands, about a foot apart.

Sarah laughed. A couple of people at the back of the crowd looked around as if the girls were being rude. Ricky finished another trick and the people clapped extra loud.
 

Sarah leaned in and whispered. “If they’re that big, they’re not bugs. It’s funny you should say, ‘robots’ though. Ms. Yettin was running around talking about robots before everyone showed up. Her uncle tried to take her away, but he wasn’t having any luck. She was pointing out all the fat people and yelling at them to hide.”

Lily’s eyes shifted left and right as she tried to take in this information.
 

The audience reacted well to Ricky’s trick. He raised his arms and gathered a few cheers.

“And now for my final trick,” he said. His voice boomed through the speakers. “If any of our guests here today have heart problems, I’d like to suggest that they make their way out of the park at this point.”

He paused, like he was waiting to see if anyone would take him up on the warning. The only response was a little laughter as someone cracked a joke off to the side.

Ricky stepped onto a box. A mirror was angled at him to reflect the sun.

“In ancient Babylon, the city of Mesopotamia was the home of the world’s greatest wizard, Abil-Ili.”

Lily focused on the stage. Her hand went out and grabbed Sarah’s arm for support. She didn’t like this trick. It was too creepy. As Lily squeezed her arm, Sara eye’s locked onto the stage as well.
 

The whole crowd was mesmerized. Ricky raised his arms and his voice.
 

“With a wave of his hand, he could strike a man dead.”

Ricky’s arms shot out and clouds of smoke puffed on either side of the stage. The sound of the little explosion rolled across the lake and then echoed back a second later. Ricky’s whispers were caught by the microphone, but Lily couldn’t tell what he was saying.

“When enemies would come for Abil-Ili, he would rise to his feet and declare himself protected by
God
. But it wasn’t God who protected Abil-Ili, it was the demons on the wind. Through my study, I too have mastered those demons. I say, ‘Carry me, demons of the Eastern Wind. Carry me away from my foes and deliver me from their attacks.’”

A light wind rolled through the crowd from the back to the front. Lily shook her head, rejecting the notion that Ricky could have orchestrated the wind. It must have been a coincidence. She lifted herself up to her tiptoes. The reflected sun wasn’t very bright. She wondered how he was going to pull off the optical illusion that he was levitating.
 

Ricky raised one hand and switched off the microphone clipped to his lapel. The speakers gave out a little squeal and then went silent. Meanwhile, Ricky had closed his eyes and was whispering his mantra. Even from her distance, Lily could see his lips moving.

She heard the gasp from the front row before she saw the trick.

At first, Ricky just looked like he was standing taller. Someone in the front row jumped up from their seat and ran off to the side. One kid started clapping, but stopped after only a few claps. Ricky kept getting taller and taller.

Lily knew what was supposed to happen, but the suspense still made her chest feel tight.

She saw his feet as he rose up over the stage. He must have been two or three feet above the level of the box on the stage when the murmurs broke out. Lily caught individual words like, “Strings,” or “Wires.” One confident man in front of her said, “Magnets,” over and over, like saying it would make it true. Still, Ricky rose. Sarah reached down and peeled Lily’s fingers from her arm. Lily hadn’t realized how tight she was squeezing.
 

Sarah took her hand and they watched.

Ricky was at least eight feet above this stage when his eyes flew open. His head was even with the top of the backdrop. When he looked down at the audience below, a look of horror made his eyes grow wide.
 

Somewhere in the crowd, a woman screamed.

Lily and Sarah both took a step back. People at the edges of the crowd were beginning to disperse. The idea of Ricky defying gravity was more than they cared to deal with on a lovely Saturday afternoon.

Sarah jerked her arm until Lily looked at her. Sarah pointed with her free hand and Lily looked over her shoulder. There were at least a dozen of the hovering things in the sky now.

When another person screamed, they both looked back to Ricky. He had been busy for the split second that they had looked away. Ricky was now high above the stage. He was higher than the roofline of the Village Peddler shop, and that roof was tall. She wondered if he would just float away, like a hot air balloon.

“We have to help him,” Sarah said.

[ Trick ]

W
HILE
R
ICKY
D
UNN
PERFORMED
his little magic show, Trina was only giving him maybe a third of her attention. She was keeping an eye on her cousin, and trying to spot the things that were giving him such fits. She had only really gotten a good look at the one near the rock. It had left a mark on Gerard’s hand before it ran off into the woods. Trina was surprised at how protective she felt about him. She had wanted to bandage up his cut and tell him it was going to be okay. But he was a grown man. Just because she was responsible for him didn’t make her his new mother.

Trina also spent some of her focus on the woman who had run through the woods. She vaguely recognized her. She was one of those fancy newcomers who had bought a place up on the hill. At one time, those houses on that side of the road would have been affordable for locals. They didn’t have shorefront or a good view, but they were easy walking distance to both. Once the golf course went in, even those places started to rise in price. Some of the people who bought them seemed like perfectly nice folks, but then they did something crazy, like running through the woods with a vacant look on their face. Trina watched the woman thread through the crowd and wondered what she was up to.

Then came Ricky’s big trick.
She had known Ricky forever. At one point, before Ricky was born, Trina was actually pretty good friends with Ricky’s mom, Mary. Then that whole mess with Vernon Dunn and Jim Stratton had upset the applecart.
 

Ricky spoke with a deep voice and talked about ancient times or some such.
 

“They’re closing in,” Gerard said.

Trina shushed him.

Some kid clapped and Trina looked back to Ricky. He looked like his feet were rising up over the stage. Trina looked for some kind of ropes lifting him, or maybe he was on a glass platform. She couldn’t see anything. Her eyesight wasn’t the greatest—the day had brought plenty of reminders of that.

“How’s he doing that?” Trina whispered to Gerard.

“He’s not,” Gerard said.

Ricky kept floating up. The people around her were starting to get disturbed by it as Ricky went higher than the curtain. He must have been twenty feet in the air when real panic set in with the crowd.