Here Comes Mr. Trouble

“Eric,” she called up from the darkness. “You don’t want them to find you, do you?”

He hesitated halfway down, feeling very uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure if it was his ridiculous fear of basements or the fact that a gang of possessed people was chasing him in the middle of the night. It was probably more than a little of both.

“Eric,” she said again.

“I’m coming.”

He went the rest of the way down, then stepped carefully through the doorway and stopped.

This was the basement of his nightmare. Old wooden shelves scattered throughout the room like empty library bookcases, gnarled roots growing out of the dirt walls as if they were arms, piles of boxes and wood and trash, and more spider webs than he’d ever seen in one place. And then there was the smell: dirt and rot and something like spicy perfume. The mixture was enough to nearly make him gag.

“You’re right,” he said. “This is a great place to hide.”

He tried to give Maggie what he hoped was a brave smile, but he’d barely begun to raise his lips when he realized something wasn’t right. “You’re…you’re not wearing your goggles.” He thought back. “You haven’t worn them at all. How can you see?”

She tilted her head oddly to the side and smirked. “How can you not?”

It was a weird question. He had a feeling she wasn’t talking about his goggles, but before he could even say anything, there was a loud scraping noise behind them.

He twisted around. Peter Garr and Tommy Bird had come through the door, pulling an old china cabinet over the opening and sealing all four of them in.

Eric grabbed Maggie, pulled her further into the room, and moved in front of her. “Stay behind me.”

“Whatever you want,” she said.

Peter and Tommy crossed their arms and stood in front of the cabinet, staring at Eric. Staring, he realized, without the help of night vision goggles. Just like Maggie.

“Oh, my. Isn’t that cute.” The voice came from deeper in the basement, a woman’s voice.

“Yes. Very cute. So protective.” A different female voice.

Eric wanted to turn and look, but he knew he shouldn’t take his eyes off Peter and Tommy.

“Whoever you are,” he yelled, “you should let us go. My friends will be here any second.”

“Your friends?” a third voice said, this one male. “You mean the person who calls himself Mr. Trouble? Oh, what a delightful name, Mr. Trouble. I wish I had thought of it.”

“Me, too,” said one of the women.

“I don’t think your Mr. Trouble will give us any…trouble,” he laughed. “If he shows up.”

One of the gardener surrogates from the school stepped out from behind a bookcase to Eric’s left. He had one arm wrapped around Fiona and the other around Keira. The girls’ hands were tied in front of them and gags covered their mouths.

Eric couldn’t believe it. The Trouble sisters had been captured.

“I can see his mind turning,” the first female voice said.

“Yes, I see it, too,” the other woman responded. “So honorable, yet so useless.”

“Let them go!” Eric shouted.

“Oh, listen to him. Such empty words.”

“How, young Eric? How do you propose to make us let them go?”

Peter and Tommy took a single step in his direction, then stopped and grinned.

Yeah. How? Eric thought. There was no way he could take on either Peter or Tommy by himself, let alone both of them together. And then there was the gardener, too, and the ones out of sight who were speaking. There was no way he could stand up to all of them. His words were empty, something that only made him angrier.

“Let them go!” he repeated.

“Eric.” This voice was in his head, the same voice he’d heard after passing out from the scanner, the calm and friendly voice. “There’s only one way we will let them go. You know what that is.”

He knew? What could he possibly do that would—

Then he realized what she meant.

“You want me,” he said.

“Exactly,” the voice in his head said. “But just to make your decision a little bit easier…”

Something moved to his right. He looked over just in time to see Vice Principal Rose appear from around a stack of boxes. Like the gardener, he was holding someone in his arms, too.

“Mom?” Eric said.

His mother looked half asleep, unaware of what was going on around her. He took a step in her direction, but Vice Principal Rose pulled her to the side, threatening to retreat.

“Now, now,” the voice in his head said, “not until you give us what we want.”

Eric nodded. “Let them all go. You can have me.”

“Oh, so adorable,” the first woman said.

“The sacrifice absolutely makes you want to pinch his cheeks, doesn’t it?” the second woman asked.

Both Fiona and Keira started yelling, but the gags in their mouths prevented Eric from understanding them. Of course, he could pretty much guess what they were trying to say: Don’t do it!

But he had to. He had no choice.

Suddenly someone grabbed his arms and pulled them behind his back. He struggled, looking over his shoulder to see who it was.

“Maggie?” he said.

There was a sickly grin on her face as she held his hands together — tighter than she should have been able to.

“Not really Maggie,” she said.

“Oh, no,” he said.

He should have seen it, but he hadn’t. The calm voice she’d been using hadn’t really been calm at all. It had been monotone. He’d been so stressed out about finding his things in the Maker’s box then the sudden appearance of the Peter and his friends that he hadn’t noticed that Maggie wasn’t Maggie.

She was a surrogate.

“How? Maggie’s not a bad person. How did you—” Then he remembered what Mr. Trouble said about Makers and surrogates, that on occasion, when several Makers worked together, they could turn someone good into their slave.

The headaches. Maggie had felt it coming on but just hadn’t realized it.

I’m so sorry! This is all my fault.

He should have insisted she stay home that first night when he’d gone with Mr. Trouble and Fiona. This was his problem, not hers.

Maggie turned him all the way around, so that his back was now to the door and he was facing in the direction of the voices.

“Maggie, I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can, fight it.”

“Save your breath,” the surrogate Maggie said. “She can’t hear you.”

The gardener moved Fiona and Keira next to Eric, and Vice Principal Rose did the same with Eric’s mother on the other side.

“Take off their goggles,” the first woman said.

Maggie pushed the goggles down off Eric’s eyes and left them hanging around his neck. Everything he’d seen a moment before in green was now completely black. He then heard the gardener remove the Trouble sisters’ goggles, plunging them into the same darkness.

“I told you I’d do whatever you want,” Eric said. “Just let them go.”

The only sounds were the muffled protests of Fiona and Keira.

“Please. It’s me you want, not them.”

Still no response from the voices.

“Are you even listening to me?”