Chapter #56Fane's Foundling by: Seuzz   You stare at Professor Jameson Hyde-White, and he stares back expectantly at you. There's a little white fleck on his lower lip, as though looking at you has set him to salivating.
Patterson is also staring at you, his eyes fixed and hard and piercing. You can feel his will pressing upon you: Say yes, you fucking moron!
Or maybe it's Say no, you pansy moron, I wanna shake you off hard.
You're struck by a resemblance between Patterson and the professor. Sure, one is elderly and cultured, the other young and brutal. But they are both lean, and both look very hungry.
Your spirit quails. Bad enough working under Patterson, but he looks like a baby kitten next to the professor's Bengal tiger. "I-- I really don't like this anymore," you stammer. Sweat breaks out all over your body.
The professor stares at you for a few more long seconds, and then a bright but slightly sad smile appears on his lips. "I understand," he says soothingly. "You have your own life spread before you, and are not tempted to spend it living the life of others. Is that it?"
"Something like that, I guess," you say. You don't want to tell him that he frightens the bejeebers out of you.
"An admirable sentiment, Mr. Prescott, and one I fully respect. When I think of what I might have missed if I had not lived my own life, on my own terms--" His gaze briefly grows distant, but it's sharpened by hunger, not blurred by wistfulness. With a short sigh he stands and beckons you up as well. "I have a little business to discuss with Mr. Patterson, and then we will speak again. Tomlinson will show you to another room in the meantime." He rings a bell.
"You got an offer for me," Patterson asks.
"Of course," says the professor. "We are highly impressed with you. You are Fane material if ever we saw it."
A door opens and a trim man with thinning hair enters. The professor directs him to take you upstairs.
* * * * *
You end up in a small but lushly furnished bedroom dominated by a queen-sized bed under a magnificent canopy. Through heavily curtained windows you look out on a green lawn.
But your gaze is turned inward. How stupid can you be?
Stupid enough to slam shut your only door on safety. The professor knows all about the book and the masks, and he knows there's a duplicate of you still in Saratoga Falls. There is no way that he and his colleagues at this "Fane" thing want you talking. It will be quite easy for them to take you down to that lawn, shoot you in the head, and bury you.
Your hands go to the window, pressing to open it, but the locks are painted shut. The door? You doubt you can sneak out.
And even if you could, you're in a foreign country, in clothes that are not your own, with no money.
Maybe if you pleaded with them, promised to keep your mouth shut, got Patterson to help make your case?
There's a second door into the room, and you jump as it opens. Speak of the devil--
"Oh, it's only you," Patterson grunts, and starts to close it again.
"Wait! What's going on?"
"You know as much as me. Looks like I got a job here. As for you--" His lips twist skeptically.
"They're going to kill me," you whisper.
"Probably." For a moment he looks troubled. "You had a good run, Prescott. Don't go to pieces at the end."
"But maybe if I told him I changed my mind--"
"Too late for that," he says. "I tried putting in a word for you, because, well--" He grimaces. "But whatsisnuts said it wouldn't do any good. Said you were acting on instinct, said he respected you for it, said he was actually glad you didn't peddle a line of shit. That's not the way he put it, but that's what he meant." Patterson's lip curls harder. "You told him you were a cock-up and a loser, and he's glad you told him yourself instead of making him find out on his own dime."
Abruptly he shuts the door, and with a click locks it.
You sink onto the edge of the bed and put your head in your hands.
But the professor is not going to give you time to feel sorry for yourself. There are two soft knocks at the door, and the butler opens it. He doesn't have to say or do anything further. With head hanging low, you follow him back down the stairs.
The professor is waiting in the atrium, an umbrella in his hand. He smiles widely at you. "I'm so sorry for wasting your time, Mr. Prescott, and would like to assure you there are no hard feelings on our end. It was an extraordinary offer for us to make, and I'll confess that I think you chose wisely. The best of luck to you, lad." He puts out that bony hand, and limply you return his elegant handshake.
But he doesn't follow you out. The two men who had bundled you into the house now bundle you back into that Bentley. You watch anxiously as you drive along, and perk up when you realize you're returning to the airport. But you don't relax, even when you're back on that Gulfstream and have hurtled off the runway. Your morbid imagination would have to suggest that bodies can always be turned up with a spade; maybe they think it's safer to throw you into the middle of the Atlantic. The stewardess brings you an e-reader stocked with hundreds of titles, but you can't concentrate on them, and you treat the dinner--a roasted bird with potatoes--as a last meal. You doze in your seat rather than crawl into the small bed.
* * * * *
You're woken with a bump, and the stewardess appears to tell you to fasten your belt. It's dark out, so you can't see where you're landing. But for the first time in hours you let yourself feel hope. If they're going to kill you, why go through the bother and expense of flying you someplace instead of just killing you in England? You peer anxiously at the lights gleaming in some small buildings as the plane stops, but can't make them out.
After a few minutes you hear the door open. You peer into the front cabin. Then all hope deserts you.
Eric Kim has clambered into the plane, and he has two of Straussler's goons with him.
He looks crestfallen. "Dude!" he exclaims. "I heard what you told them back at headquarters. Oh, man, how could you be so--?"
"Just do whatever you have to do," you whine back. "I don't care anymore."
Would that your heart didn't tell you it wanted to keep beating, for it is hammering at your chest like it wants to escape your fate.
Eric chuckles. "Oh, come on, Will. Put away the funeral weeds. It's not gonna be like that." He sets a large bag onto a leather seat and rummages inside it, drawing out something that looks like a motorcycle helmet with its visor down. "They coulda done this a lot smoother back at HQ," he continues as he follows the helmet with what looks like a giant novelty flashlight. "But they wanted you back here for obvious reasons. Watch the birdie!" He points the flashlight at you.
* * * * *
Your head is muffled, and you blink hard and rub your eyes. The world remains dark. You turn around, frowning. Where the hell are you? And why are you naked? Is that why you feel so cold? You clap your arms about your torso and shiver hard. It feels cold enough to snow, which is an odd feeling for an August night. Is this Caleb's idea of a joke? The last thing you remember is agreeing to meet him out behind his house for one last private "end of summer" party before school starts next week.
Lights blaze behind you, and you turn. You've barely time to make out the headlights before the car swerves past you. But not quite past. It clips you hard, and you tumble over his hood. You think you see the gray pavement rising to meet your face before the dark settles again even more firmly about you.
* * * * *
You sometimes get these cases of temporary amnesia when there's head trauma, the doctor tells your parents. Though in this case, he admits, he doesn't see evidence of that much trauma.
Your father glares at you as you lie bandaged in the hospital bed. Your mother clutches your hand; she's all cried out. "And you can't tell us why you were two miles from home, in the middle of the night, without your clothes on," he snorts.
"He can't remember the last three months, Harris!" your mom wails.
Is that where you were when something hit you? You're not sure if you want the memories to return or not. It sounds like you might have been having a lot of fun, but if so, you don't want to remember if it means explaining it to your dad.
You're out of school for a few weeks, then return. Despite it being close to the end of a semester you can't remember, no one cuts you any slack. You only narrowly pass your classes, and then only because you get a lot of surreptitious help from your friends. That's very decent of them, though there's something odd in their manner otherwise. You catch them sharing cryptic references to "all that weird shit in October," and once Caleb tries ripping your face off.
You do better in the spring semester, and graduate. You get into Keyserling College. You even get a girlfriend your freshman year, and then another when the first breaks up with you. But memories of those three months never return, and you'd even forget that you ever lost them, except that it makes for a fun bit of trivia to share with your new friends.
You graduate with a degree in computer science, but have to move back home because the job market sucks. And then one day something very peculiar happens.
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