Madeline Ferrero found herself clinging to a piece of wreckage and suspended over a busy freeway. Ten feet above, a train carriage billowed fire and smoke. Much further below her was hard asphalt and roaring traffic.
Even through the haze of pain and fear that coursed through her, Madeline realized something important at that moment. Specifically, that her crazy ability to see patterns in chaos could be more of a curse than blessing. The metal sheet she clung to let out a creak. She moaned in terror and pressed her stomach to the cool steel surface. Steadied herself as best she could on a raised lip of plastic by her feet. The tarry smells of burning plastic made her lungs ache. Wind laced with stinging rain lashed her exposed hands. Her cell phone let out a ping. A new text message had arrived. And no matter what, she’d have to get it. With a speed only a glacier could have envied, she pried her right hand from its grip on the metal. Slid it into her jacket pocket. The cell phone fell into her shivering palm. She grasped it the way a drowning person would clutch a lifeline. Breathing hard. Stomach crawling, muscles aching. She brought the phone up to where she could see it. Sirens in the distance, coming closer. The sound of people gathering beneath where she dangled above the outbound side of the Cook County Skyway. Madeline felt her thoughts flow like syrup on a cold morning. Clumpy. Slow. Shocky, trauma specialists called it. She pushed the feeling aside and willing her fingers to open the phone’s clamshell case. The screen displayed a two-word message. LET GO. The sludgy, numb feeling fell away. Not replaced by fear. By a sudden, strange feeling of clarity. Not what she expected. Not what she’d have even dreamed of at the start of this day. * * * The morning, like many late September mornings in the Windy City, came in with fog. Not the ‘arriving on little cat’s feet’ kind of fog, either. A real Lake Michigan style pea-souper. Madeline Ferrero pushed through the brass-frame doors of Chicago’s fourth-or-fifth best known paper, The Daily Sentinel. A sensible, water-resistant jacket clung to her trim form. Dark brown hair freshly coiffed, coral-colored nails done just so. Her high heels beat out a precise march on the marble floor: tic-tac-tic. Places-to-go. Things-to-see. Job-to-do. A brief ride in the Art Deco-trimmed elevator. A brisk walk to the safe confines of her cubicle. A shrug to slide her plum-colored jacket onto a handy hook. The trio of flat-screen monitors that dominated her desk glowed warmly. Each screen displayed feeds from local user’s forums and a dozen of the top social networking sites. She sat in her chair, back ramrod straight, and adjusted her keyboard to the angle she favored. Her neighbor in the cubicle across the aisle leaned back to watch her morning ritual. Bill Turley hefted a cup of the local donut shop’s finest morning brew in salute. “Hey, good morning, Madeline,” he said, with a sepia-toned smile made possible by endless pots of coffee. “What’s so good about it?” she replied, annoyed. “The Red Line was running ten minutes slow today, I haven’t seen the sun in over a week, and I forgot my umbrella at home. Of course, it had to be on a day that looks like it’s going to rain cats and dogs.” Turley let out a tsk. “Waking up on the wrong side of the bed and all that. Should’ve brought in a box of my daughter’s Thin Mints, cheer you right up.” “Much as I love them, it’s not what I need right now,” Madeline replied, with a little more kindness in her voice. She opened her bottom desk drawer and pulled out a pair of identical looking electric blue-and-orange cans. “It’s time to do the journalist thing. My style of it, anyway.” Madeline popped the tab on one container and raised the bottom of the can towards the ceiling. The gurgle of a Lightspeed Energy Drink going down the hatch filled the cubicle. She forced herself to swallow. The taste of what was supposed to be sour lime and tart pomegranate swirled at the back of her tongue. At least, it tasted like what a college dropout of a food chemist could whip up in his lab. Turley watched her silently without comment. Madeline rinsed and repeated with the second can. Whap! The energy drinks hit her bloodstream with a mule’s kick. Hairs standing at static-electricity attention, skin tingling. A distant ringing in the ear. Heart pounding like a thoroughbred waiting for the track gates to spring open. She flexed her fingers. Showtime. “Okay,” Madeline said to herself, “Time to see who’s talking about what.” With a humming click of keystrokes, images flickered across Madeline’s triptych of screens. Pages of tweets from the past week. Forum posts from the newsgroups, the networking sites. Online news from the local web sources, both large and small. Each screen melted into a meaningless, glassy blur of images and text. Meaningless, except to her. Gradually, like a spinning tilt-a-whirl coming to a stop, the flow of pages slowed to a trickle, then a stop. Madeline copied and pasted three messages into her word processing program. Three lines that jumped out of the maelstrom at her. 9/6: 0215 – 0330 AVOID THE KENNEDY / DAN RYAN FWY SPLIT. 9/13: 0910 – 0925 SKIP THE ZOO OPENING ON PORTAGE PARK DR. 9/22: POLICE TIP RE: BOMB AT TERMINAL 3, O’HARE. “Don’t know which is freakier,” Turley said, as he ran a hand over his balding pate. “How you do your ‘thing’, or the information you manage to pull out of it.” Madeline shrugged. “It’s not freaky. I’ve always been able to see patterns in things. My Dad called it the Seeing-Eye talent.” “Seeing-Eye?” “It’s like those Seeing-Eye image books. Stare at a page long enough, and a three-dee image sort of ‘pops’ into view. And the kicker is, once you see the image, you can’t go back to seeing the page in the old way.” “So just what are you seeing?” “The same damned pattern I spotted months ago: anonymous postings that warn of some kind of danger.” “Ah. The ‘Helpful Gremlin’. You’re still on that kick.” “You can’t argue with results.” Madeline pointed at each item on the screen in turn. “Here, on the sixth. Around four a.m., highway patrol reported a multiple-car pileup at the highway split mentioned. Then the next date: an hour after the zoo opened, someone fell into the lion pen and got mauled.” Turley raised his eyebrows and took a slurp of coffee as she went on. Madeline continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “As for the airport though…the TSA’s finest didn’t find anything last week when they did a search.” “So that one turned out to be a dud?” “Maybe not. The terminal search delayed all the flights out by an hour. Maybe the poster just wanted that delay? So that a danger could be avoided?” “Still say it’s co-incidence. Lucky ones. Maybe not lucky for the poor saps that got it in the neck, but still.” “I know it sounds weird,” Madeline said, tapping her fingers on the desk impatiently, “I’ll be damned if I know how it works. But, somehow, it does.” A dark shadow fell across the office carpet between the cubicles. Turley downed the last of his coffee in a furtive gulp. He swiveled back to face his monitor as a man with a shopworn face and slept-in-it-overnight suit spoke to Madeline with all the warmth of a traffic cop writing out a ticket. “You know, the ‘how’ doesn’t interest me. Only the ‘who’,” intoned Editor in Chief Preston Lynch. He nodded in the direction of his office. “We need to talk, Ferrero.” Madeline grimaced, but said nothing as she followed in the man’s wake. Lynch graciously stood aside and let her enter his office first. Then he pulled the frosted glass door shut as if he were a medieval lord cranking up the moat’s drawbridge. He sat back in his editor’s chair with a plush-sounding squeak, and then tilted his gaze up at her. “I just got a call from two angry councilmen. And before that, an even angrier Congresswoman. Both want my scalp nailed to the wall next to yours.” Madeline raised an eyebrow. “Would these two councilmen be connected with the shoddy repair work I found being done on the Rosemont overpass?” Lynch set his jaw. “Never you mind–” “Afraid I have to. And the Congresswoman, doesn’t she have majority stock in that scam company I found? The one that pretends to seal gas leaks?” “Let’s say you’re right. They’re demanding to know who your source is.” Madeline stared, incredulous. “You think I actually know who this ‘Helpful Gremlin’ character is?” “And you think I buy your little act?” Lynch retorted. His face started to turn an unpleasant shade of pickled-beet red. “You think I believe in your ‘Magic Eye’ nonsense? These people want to know who–” “They can go hang, as far as I care.” Madeline’s cell phone let out a plaintive-sounding ping. Out of habit, she flipped the clamshell-shaped device open. She’d gotten a text from a number marked on the screen as ‘UNLISTED’. A three-word message filled the display. U should STOP. She frowned. Lynch had ignored her and ranted on. “…not a matter of what you care about! These people control the leases around here, and they can make my life, all of our lives very difficult.” “Then let them, Lynch,” Madeline shot back. “It’s what we’re supposed to do. Investigative journalism, remember?” Another ping from her phone. U GET HIM angry. NO WHAT U WANT. “Don’t you lecture me,” Lynch snarled. “I’ve been on the Daily Sentinel since you were covering band practice at Skokie High. You’re not going to embarrass this paper any more–” Madeline looked up at Lynch, angry, then back down at the phone. What was going on? Was someone listening in? “Damn it, Ferrero!” Lynch slammed a fist on his desk. “Put that phone away and quit ignoring me!” A ping. STOP STOP STOP Madeline’s head reeled as she tried to keep up with Lynch. “I’m not ignoring you, but…” TOO late. “–and I want you out!” Madeline blinked. “What did you say?” “I said, you’re out! Done! You’re finished at this paper!” A silence as deafening as the heated words enveloped the office. And then, a single ping from the phone. ASK lynch ABOUT gabriella. Madeline looked around at the walls. Could someone be listening? Well, if they were, she wouldn’t turn down help if it were offered. “Before I go,” Madeline said carefully, “Would you care to tell me about someone named Gabriella?” Lynch’s jaw shut with a snap. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A ping. THE woman U stay WITH WHEN wife OUT OF town. “I believe you know who I mean,” Madeline said. She weighed her voice precisely. As if the words uttered were made of candy glass. “The lady you stay with when your wife’s out of town.” Lynch’s face turned pale. “Perhaps I was hasty, there.” She nodded. “Perhaps you were.” “Let’s let this one lie for now,” Lynch said, and his face was set granite-hard. “We both have things to do, don’t we?” Madeline nodded agreement and rushed back to her cubicle. She thumbed the ‘OK’ button on her phone in order to reply to the last text. The screen read: SERVICE NOT AVAILABLE FOR THIS NUMBER. She had to try more than once to press the three keys for Star-69 to redial the last number received by her phone. “We’re sorry,” an automated voice recited, “you have tried a service that is only available on Midwest Telecom land lines. Please check the number you wish to redial and try aga–” Madeline got on the office phone and called the cell provider to confirm. A cheerful service rep regretfully informed her that the recall feature was not available for the paging number. Her cell made another ping. I would NO DO THAT. “Dammit, cut that out!” she said, as she held the phone, white-knuckled, in her grasp. “I don’t have a frickin’ way to reply to you!” Madeline put her face in her hands for a moment. It was possible, just possible, that the ‘Helpful Gremlin’ she envisioned didn’t exist at all. That someone had simply put together a real doozy of a prank. She cast a suspicious look in Turley’s direction. He’d left his desk. The coffee cup lay empty and crumpled in the wastebasket. A long shot, in any case. Five years of working together, and Bill Turley hadn’t ever told a joke on the job. The man’s mind just didn’t seem wired that way. Wired. Perhaps that was it! Madeline got up and ran her hands over the walls of her cube in a frenzy. Oblivious to the odd look cast her way by anyone walking past, she pulled up the carpet beneath her chair. Unhooked each of her monitors. Unscrewed her office phone’s receiver and probed the dusty electronic innards with an index finger. A ping rewarded her efforts. U just STOP. DO NO GOOD. “And can you just quit it with the stupid pidgin English?” Madeline said aloud to the air. Hands shaking, she fell back in her chair. She grasped one hand in the other and clasped her fingers together until they remained still. Finally, she let out a sigh. Her mind was still awhirl from the messages. The threat from Lynch. And maybe, just maybe, from the caffeine-laced energy drinks still circulating in her bloodstream. She forced herself to press through it all and think. Start with the premise of the story: That these messages are from the Helpful Gremlin. Okay. Sticking with it so far. Why would s/he start talking directly to her now? The answer hit her square-on. Because Lynch demanded that she expose her sources. And somehow, her source knew that was a threat. Madeline plugged her monitors back in as a thought occurred to her. How long has this Helpful Gremlin been around? Her fingers flew over the keys as she clicked on the archived directories of the forum sites. Then the online news sites in the city that used public postings for local interest. Seeking ever further, ever farther backwards. Two more pings from her phone, in quick succession. CAN NO help U IF U NO STOP. PLEASE. “I don’t know who or what you are, but I’ve had just about enough of you.” She shut her phone off and closed it with a clack. Her last distraction removed, Madeline let her talent loose. Allowed information to scroll past in a blur of light. Let her sniff the electronic breeze like a virtual bloodhound. Like shapes emerging from mist, the patterns emerged. From five years ago. Seven years. Ten, even. Similar warnings, done anonymously online. There were fewer people online back then. Fewer people saw them. She picked a handful of warnings that seemed to correspond to the biggest early events. Ten years ago: Prediction of a crane accident in Linden Hills. Nine years ago: A parking garage collapse in Sedgwick. Eight-and-a-half: Bank robbery and shoot-out on Ashland Avenue. Seven years ago: Tour boat fire on the Chicago River. Madeline chewed a nail in thought. Back then, fewer people heeded the warnings, even the big ones. Bigger likelihood that the disaster might claim lives. Another thought occurred to her. What might a modern-day Nostradamus do, if they had the hot-ticket prediction in hand, but knew that they wouldn’t be heard? Madeline stood as the tumblers in her brain clicked into place. Shrugging her coat back on, she worked her way back outside. Cool fog had given way to storm-tossed clouds and the occasional gust of rain. She pulled her hood up and headed towards the closest rail station. Leaving one hand deep in a warm coat pocket, she used the other to open her cell phone. A press of a button to turn it on. No waiting texts. Good. Her walk accelerated to her usual rhythmic tic-tac-tic as she speed-dialed the paper’s remote office. “Archives,” a bored-sounding voice said over the line. “Lorenzo, it’s Madeline. I need a favor.” “You still need a date to Abbot Park? Shoot, all you needed to do was ask.” “Easy there, Romeo. Only dates I’m looking for are seven to ten years back.” “What, you get tired of looking at glowing glass screens?” “The electronic archive only stores text. I need to see the headline archives, the physical stuff. I want to get my hands on the paper copies. It’s urgent.” “Shoot, I can have it for you in an hour, if you need it.” Madeline glanced at her watch. Still mid-morning, plenty of time. “Yeah, I’ll need it. I’ll hop the Gray Line, be at your office before eleven.” “See you then. Careful in the rain.” “I’m walking between the drops.” A stray gust drizzled her with icy droplets, giving lie to her claim. Madeline ducked into the station, pushed through the ticket gate, and had made it to the platform when the phone pinged again. Almost against her will, she flipped open the phone. STOP!!!!!! She frowned. One word, six exclamation points. “Well, someone’s worried that I’m getting closer to them.” She shook her head ruefully and deleted the text. With a roar of metal and compressed air, the light rail cars pulled into the station. A rattle as the car doors opened in unison. Beckoning her. A ping. DO NO DO IT! “Yeah, right. I’m going to find you, Gremlin. Bite me.” Madeline stepped across the small chasm between door and platform. She glanced about, saw no one on the car. Figured. Too late for rush-hour, too early for the lunch crowd. A final ping as the doors closed behind her with a deathly cold rattle. NO NO NO GET OFF THE train! A chill thrummed through her. The twang of a dark guitar string. She grabbed hold of an overhead strap as the train accelerated to speed. Thoughts caromed inside her head. Helpful Gremlin hadn’t been trying to get her to give up the search. The last set of texts had been trying to steer her clear. Her eyes went wide a she realized what she’d done. She’d gotten on a train. After getting three warnings. From someone who was damned good at predicting disaster. Madeline let out a squeak of fear as the car jolted. Heart thudding, she looked out the window. Her view of the city shifted as the car ascended onto the elevated tracks. She let go over the strap. Moved as fast as she could towards the rear of the car. Heels drumming a tic-tac-tic on the hard plastic floor. Spotted the emergency call phone. Grabbed the handle. Yanked open the phone’s cover. Madeline gasped. The cord dangled loose. Receiver slashed away and a bright red UNDER REPAIR sticker plastered across the keypad. She didn’t have time to swear. A gradual, almost stealthy shudder ran the length of the car. The shriek of metal on metal. The blooming roar of an explosion. She grabbed the nearest hand strap. The front section of her car buckled. Crumpled. As if a giant had smacked it with his fist. Madeline screamed as the rear section tore open around her. Flung her off to the right. The strap made a pop! as it tore loose from its base. The floor convulsed. It threw her into the air for one horrible second. Then slammed her on her stomach. She gasped as her breath was driven out of her lungs. She reflexively grabbed hold, wrapped arms around the metal surface beneath her. A white and red flash of light, followed by a BOOM! Slash of rain across one cheek. Smell of burnt plastic, rubber, fabric. Taste of hot copper in her mouth. Her own breath, ragged, pounding in her ears. The howl of wind, making her realize how exposed she was. From below, the sound of traffic. The ping came. She opened the phone. Breathing hard, stomach crawling, muscles aching, she brought the phone up to where she could see it. LET GO. A feeling of calmness, of acceptance, flooded through her. Madeline relaxed her grip. She fell into open air. * * * Another blustery, fog-wrapped morning in the Windy City. Droplets of sleet spattered the sidewalk like handfuls of sodden cake sprinkles. Madeline Ferrero made her way along one of the steep streets that led up from the shore of Lake Michigan. She turned into one of the elegant Victorian-style townhouses at the swanky heart of the city’s Gold Coast district. She moved at a slow pace. Hobbling, cane in hand. She took a deep breath, steadying herself, and then rang the doorbell. The woman who answered the door had sparkling, periwinkle eyes and a powder puff of gray hair that matched the silver frame of her powered wheelchair. One withered arm lay in her lap like a docile pet. The other grasped the control stick on the wheelchair’s arm with a surgeon’s precision. Madeline had to clear her throat to speak. “Are you…Maribelle Prudence?” The woman nodded slowly in the affirmative. Her expression was one of resignation. As if this day had been long expected. The silence between the two women threatened to get awkward. Madeline spoke again to fill it. “I’m Madeline Ferrero. And…if you are who I think you are, then you know why I’m here.” “I know, Miss Ferrero.” Prudence’s voice sounded cushion-soft to Madeline, with a hint of the old, gracious South. With a nudge of the control stick, the chair scooted back a few feet. “Come in, please. We have much that needs a talk-about.” The elderly woman led her into a living room lined with shelves of antique brass instruments and leather-bound books. A wall-to-wall bay window framed one side of the room like a gigantic rectangular eye. She waved Madeline over to a sprawling couch that looked as if it could have graced Scarlett O’Hara’s study from Gone with the Wind. A snow-white Angora cat with a pink jeweled collar picked her way delicately across the room. She rubbed up against Madeline’s leg with a soft purr. “She likes you,” Prudence said. “I knew she would. You’re a cat person.” Madeline sat down. Then she set aside her cane and carefully bent forward. She picked up the cat and settled the feline comfortably on her lap. As she stroked the cotton-soft fur, she said, “I guess I owe you my life.” Prudence looked at her intently. “Do you believe? In the power?” “I don’t know what I believe,” Madeline admitted. “I believed enough at one point in time to let go a piece of burning wreckage, just before a transformer on the track went up. I’d have been electrocuted or burned to death for sure.” “The alternative didn’t seem appealing at the time, I’m quite sure.” “No, it didn’t,” Madeline agreed. “Yet somehow, an open-topped garbage truck was driving along the freeway below me at just the right time. A truck full of nice, soft garbage, I should add. Or I’d have a lot more in a cast than my foot.” Prudence nodded sagely. “Indeed.” “I just want to…I just want to understand.” “I’d be delighted to explain more to you. But first, I’d like you to tell me how you found my house.” Madeline looked down to where the cat lay dozing, pooled in her lap like a roll of white satin. “After I got out of the hospital, I finished my trip. I’d been on my way to the archival office in Granville. I needed to see the photos around our headlines.” She took a breath before going on. “I felt that if you’d been trying to warn people all of these years, that maybe you’d have also tried to be there in person. At least for the biggest, worst disasters. Maybe you couldn’t save everyone, but you could call for help, maybe direct people to where there were survivors.” The cat let out another happy purr. Prudence said nothing. She rested her chin in the palm of her good hand, listening. “I have this talent at spotting patterns,” Madeline continued. “I picked out your face in several crowd photos. One time, you were sitting in your car.” Prudence nodded. “I was still able to drive, back then.” “Your car had a special license plate for disabled drivers. I ran the plate numbers by the Cook County Motor Vehicle Department. And here I am.” “Impressive, Miss Ferrero.” Prudence said. “As for my part of the bargain…you are familiar with the curse of Cassandra, are you not?” It took Madeline only a moment. “The woman cursed by the gods. Cursed to know the future – but that no one would ever listen to her.” “It’s no myth. And Miss Ferrero, what if the curse went beyond what we commonly know?” “What do you mean?” “I mean, what if the curse followed you? Not only all of your life, but into the next life? And the next? What if even reincarnation couldn’t break it? And what if the curse not only robbed you of the ability to convince others, it could also rob you of the ability to speak.” Madeline blinked. “You seem to be able to speak just fine.” “It wasn’t until modern-day inventions came along, you know. Until Cassandra found a way to express herself to people via the Internet. And, of course, she found an owner who could understand.” Madeline froze in disbelief. The little white cat sat up in her lap. Then rubbed noses with her as she let out a miaow. “She uses a special keyboard in my study,” Prudence explained. “I make use of it on the days that my disability gets the better of me. Extra-large keys for my hand.” “And some keys have single words. Like NO, YOU, and STOP,” Madeline said, understanding. “I guess I must have worried both of you. Worried that I’d have exposed you.” Cassandra leaped down off of Madeline’s lap and then traded it for her usual place on Prudence’s. The old woman let out a weary sigh. “We were. What if you wrote about us? Why, we’d just be another media sideshow. At least, when we’re anonymous, we could get some people to listen. We’re not just a crippled old woman and a very strange, very talented cat.” Madeline nodded as Prudence went on. “But you should know something, my dear. We rather liked having someone on the outside working with us, for a change. Someone in the media publicizing what we found, getting people to fix problems. Not just to clean up the wreckage after-the-fact.” “I like the idea of putting both of our talents to work,” Madeline said. She spread her hands and smiled. “You know, I may just have some ideas on how we could do that.” Prudence returned the smile with one of her own. “We had hoped that you might stay for lunch. To discuss that very thing. Besides, you saw what it was like on the way here. It seems like it’s going to rain cats and dogs.” “Really?” Madeline looked out the window to where Lake Michigan stretched to the horizon, green and glistening. “Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like the sun’s about to come out.” Here's three fantasy promos for the month of August! (And I have to admit, the one with the kitty in the spacesuit is pretty darned awesome banner art.)
1) Pawsome Sci-Fi and Fantasy https://storyoriginapp.com/bundles/d5d5c736-a8f3-11ea-86e0-8768fec7c564?bundleLinkId=yMNlJmN 2) Fantastic Fantasy Feast https://storyoriginapp.com/bundles/ec73082a-9f2d-11ea-8c1d-1f527b59eedd?bundleLinkId=xrTG1NA 3) Dog Days of Summer Promo (Kindle Unlimited) https://storyoriginapp.com/bundles/297c55fa-4f7e-11ea-8d54-8f241732ce9e Here's two thriller promos for the month of August!
1) Spectacular Summer Thrillers! https://storyoriginapp.com/bundles/d3393e6c-4f8f-11ea-98a0-5fbcf128523e 2) .99 cent Mega-Sale! https://storyoriginapp.com/bundles/f678da1c-9874-11ea-88ba-f73573df7716?bundleLinkId=TtnUlD5 |
AuthorPlease see my 'About and Contact' Page. Archives
December 2022
Categories |