Chapter Three: Your Number’s Up
The grave beckoned, its open maw offering safe haven to a desperate man and Iben, for one, thought that was pretty darned ironic: “Fear not, the bogey bots can’t get you while you’re safe in my embrace.” He could almost hear the sinister cackle of the crypt keeper as it swallowed him whole.
Well, maybe it wasn’t a cackle, more like a crackle, an electrical hum or buzz…they’re near. Iben took a moment to reflect on the deadly peril of his situation and how ill-suited he was to making life-or-death decisions in the moment. He swiveled his head looking for inspiration (which years of writing had taught him often involved much eyestrain) when his attention fell upon a miniature headstone next to Mittelwerk’s.
Iben had to really squint to read it. It had to be carved in, like, 10 or 12 point type face to fit all those words onto that small tombstone. Nonetheless, he couldn’t rest in peace since the fierce horde-sound was nearly upon him. His brain screamed, “Do something!” So, he pushed the 42 on Mittelwerk’s headstone and the door whooshed shut with what sounded like a gasp of relief.
Iben then considered his chances of escape, pondering what ill-omen might have caused the beloved Frigga to be lately lamented and wondering if there was some deeper meaning to be found in the epitaph “Good Things Come in Small Packages.” Is it possible that Iben had nothing to fear from the tiny nano-beings? Of course, one had given him quite a scratch on the arm, but perhaps that nano had been malfunctioning. He guessed he’d soon find out as the blackish mass was just rounding the oak at the edge of the cemetery plot.
Then, above the droning din, another sound reached Iben’s ear, a desperate, yelping howl. That’s right! He’d brought along the blond lab planning to drop him off at the pound later. Apparently, he’d escaped the vehicle and just in the nick of time for Iben. The dog was throwing itself against the chain-link fence on the parking lot side of the ivy-covered building. Iben realized in an instant that the dog couldn’t get in only because it was not tall enough to reach the otherwise easy-to-open gate latch. Good dog! Iben sped toward the exit, but not before glimpsing the name on another of the nine headstones. This one was new and unsentimental. It stated simply:
Moments later, dog and man were into Iben’s Kia racing away from Paik Heavy Industries, out of Neptune City headed west toward the Garden State Parkway. Iben didn’t even take a breath for fear of sucking in errant nanobots until they passed the Naval Weapons Station in Earle.
“Wait a minute,” Iben said, “Hugh McIntyre. That can’t be a coincidence, can it?”
The dog made no reply, but panted anxiously, staring out the rear window as if not as ready as Iben to conclude, “Home free.”
“Hugh McIntyre. Hamish McIntrye. You don’t suppose they’re related in some way? If so, and I’m not saying they are, but if they were related they couldn’t have been very close or Hamish would have said something about losing a brother this year or having to go to a funeral. Then again, maybe Hamish didn’t know. After all, Hugh is buried behind a New Jersey factory next to a Mr. Mittelwerk, whose grave appears to come equipped with an escape hatch. Hey, maybe it’s a doggie door so that Frigga can let herself in and out.”
The lab, riding shotgun, perked up his ears at that, and Iben doubted it was because he appreciated the joke.
“Frigga?” Iben asked. “Do you know that name, boy?”
The dog spoke. Iben took that as a yes.
“Friend of yours? Girlfriend, maybe?”
The dog yelped more emphatically. Iben checked the rear view mirror and saw a Paik Industries cement-mixing truck bearing down. They couldn’t outrun it and on this late Saturday afternoon the sparsely trafficked highway offered no cover so Iben swerved off on the nearest exit and headed back toward the shore. The dog’s whine signaled the truck had done the same.
Iben drove on at a reckless speed, making aimless turns in what seemed to be a futile effort to elude the relentless pursuer. He was going to be Jimmy Hoffa’d, he supposed; buried under a ton of quick-setting concrete. He began to tremble and suddenly was drenched in sweat. Then he was choking, not breathing, dying.
“The nanobot musta got me, boy. I just didn’t know it til now,” he reported in ragged sobs to his canine companion.
“If it hadn’t been the bot it would’ve been the truck. I can’t fight something this big. God, I can’t believe that the thing I wanted most in the world, a stupid chance at a stupid network staff writing job, is going to be the death of me. I can’t believe my agent got me into this. And I mean got ME into this. Why me? Am I so insignificant, such a no-name nothing that when a killer assignment came in, the one that meant the writer would in fact die, he thought of me first? I suppose he knew no one would miss me.”
On wheels slick with Iben’s self-pity, the Kia careered wildly into Asbury Park city limits, speeding down the empty streets past the decaying carcasses of an abandoned, half-built high-rise, crumbling, deserted hotels and burned-out storefronts.
“This used to be the playground of the Jersey Shore,” Iben said, so shocked by the city’s haunted appearance he forgot his truck troubles and got his breath back. “I wonder what happened here?”
The dog barked sharply and stood up on the front seat. In the rubble-strewn parking lot where The Palace Arcade once reigned over the boardwalk now dangled strings of banana-colored lights and a banner announcing Benoffski’s Big, Big, Big Top Traveling Circus and Family Fun Carnival.
“Well, look at that, the circus comes to Creepytown,” Iben, never a fan of such dubious roadside attractions wondered if being shanghaied into white slavery--the fate of all lone visitors to carney world his mother always warned--would be his next adventure. “Did I mention that I hate clowns?”
Iben pulled into the parking lot, tucked the Kia between two Winnebagos and tagged along behind a posse of stragglers headed for the midway. They didn’t look like a fun group, much less family friendly. They exuded the jagged menace of meth addicts but viewed through an ectoplasmic blur. Iben saw the cement truck inching into the parking lot, and hoped the ghost gang was too oblivious to notice and man and his dog hitching a ride in their shadows to the midway
To buy them some time, Iben hit the first concession stand and assembled haphazard disguises: Bug’s Bunny ears and Slinky-eyeball glasses for himself and a couple of balloons to attach to the dog’s collar. He hoped that from a distance it would look like he was just another fun-loving dad taking his kid to the circus.
Do do do do doo do. Do do do do doo do. There it was again. The music. Iben Powned has been duped. No. It wasn’t really saying that. Hamish tried to kill you. Shut up. It’s just a bunch of notes, Iben commanded the wild-eyed side of his brain to agree with the smart part, but he didn’t know how long that order would stand when he found the source of the sound. It was coming from a carnival game booth and the tune was emanating from an almost unimaginable variety of mechanical wind up toys offered as prizes. One of the toys was the acrobatic polar bear that had been pitched through his window Thanksgiving Day.
How could it be, Ivan wondered, that I would find those particular tin toys playing that oddly mesmerizing melody at a traveling carnival that I only came to because I was being pursued by killers in a cement-mixing truck? To call such a thing a simple coincidence beggared reason. Was it fate? Did everything happen for a reason, as John Locke was so fond of pointing out on Lost? Indeed this was just the kind of thing that would happen on Lost. So, Iben wondered WWJD? What Would Jack Do?
Iben imagined the handsome spinal surgeon standing in his place listening to that tune. In his mind’s eye, he saw jack’s eyes glaze over as visions of the past overtook him. Jack would be remembering the time he stayed up all night fixing his mother’s beloved music box instead of dissecting kittens as he had promised his dad he would so he would make the old man proud on the pre-med biology final the next day. Luckily, his dad came home from the hospital too drunk to notice the kittens were intact and Jack aced the test anyway. Unfortunately, when he got home from school with his A+ grade, the music box was re-smashed and his mother gone for good. Turned out the music box had been precious because it had been given to his mother by another man, a nice one who treated her well, and his father knew it, couldn’t stand competing with even the memory of her former happiness, and kicked her out of the house. And it was all Jack’s fault for fixing the damn music box.
Jack’s eyes would then come back into focus, the tawdry carnival with its cheap amusements suddenly filling him with hopeless melancholy tinged with bitter loss and he would turn a deaf ear to that sordid melody and walk away.
God, no wonder they were still stuck on that island. Every experience was transformed into a metaphorical redo of some past misery that left them incapable of action. Well, Iben thanked heaven that he had no such emotional baggage keeping him from catching the clue bus.
He approached the “Your Number’s Up” game booth. The bored attendant was flipping through the pages of a fat paperback and singing softly to herself, “… 'She left me on the boardwalk / With my head held in my hands...'
“I beg your pardon,” Iben interrupted, “but I have a question. Interestingly, someone just gave me a wind-up toy exactly like this.” He pointed to the polar bear. “Can you tell me where they come from and what’s the name of the tune they play?”
At first he thought she didn’t understand him because she just giggled girlishly and pushed her chin-length brown locks behind her ears. Iben realized he still wore his pop-eyed glasses, but when he removed them, the smile came off the young woman’s face as well. Here we go again, Iben thought, another pretty woman, one minute all smiles and eyelashes, the next grim and frankly accusatory. He figured Jack might have better luck in these transactions, except, of course, Jack would already be gone.
“Sorry about the glasses,” Iben said. “Let me introduce myself. My name is Iben Powned and I’m a writer and therefore just really curious about those tin toys you’re giving away.”
“We give away nothing,” she said. Her tone of voice seemed kind of familiar but the accent was one he couldn’t identify. “You pay your money; you take your chance.”
“I see, of course.” Iben ponied up the five-buck fee. “So you’ll answer my questions if I pay?” he asked rhetorically. “Fair enough. How do I play?”
“You press this button, here,” she said pointing to a big red button. “And your ping-pong balls pop out here,” she pointed at a plastic chute. “You get five balls with numbers on them. Then you have to pitch the ball into the dish with the same number on it to win.”
Iben pushed the button and a ball with the number 16 popped out. “So, can you—by the way, I didn’t catch your name—
“Ventral Pallidum,” she said. “Go ahead, toss the ball.”
To Iben’s surprise, the ball safely hit its mark. “That’s unusual. Is that Eastern European?”
“Keep playing or I’ll get in trouble.” She placed one of the toys in front of him, a brood hen in a nest filled with Easter eggs that hatched into bunny rabbits.
Iben pushed the button again, a ball with the number 23 popped out. He tossed, and made the shot.
“Keep your eyes on the prize,” she said in true carnival barker style “My name is Netherlandish,” she said. “I’m not from there, but one of the tin toys is made there.”
She put his second trophy on the counter, a rose bud that bloomed to reveal a dancing green caterpillar inside. “The others are made in different places. Now hurry up, push the button.”
The next ball was number 8. Iben tossed it gently into the number 8 dish. The toy was a teddy bear riding a black rocking horse.
“Really, tin toys, all different, made everywhere in the world all playing the same melody?” Iben asked.
“You don’t believe me? You want me to draw you a map?”
“Could you do that? See, I think these music boxes might have to do with something much more important—“
“Keep your eyes on the prize,” she barked out to the crowd. “Finish the game,” she commanded Iben.
He pushed the button again. 16 popped then plopped into the right dish. The prize toy was a pair of cupids, one black, the other white, with arrows aimed at each other as they winged their way around a golden sundial. He had the same success with the next ball, 4. She gave him the polar bear music box.
“Can you tell me where this one came from?”
“Do you want to purchase a bonus ball?
“Will I find out where the polar bear comes from?”
She held out her hand, and snapped her fingers impatiently as he dug in his pocket for cash. “Don’t waste my time,” she snapped.
Iben pushed the button. 42 popped up. The woman slid a piece of paper across the counter.
“This is where the bear comes from?” Iben asked.
“Put it away! They’re watching.”
Iben casually tucked the map into his pocket not sharing Ventral’s fears in the least. In fact he was feeling quite smug as he filled his backpack with the toys.
“I feel like Santa Claus with my bag of goodies,” he joked. Unlike handsome Jack, he’d faced the music and come away with at least five new clues plus a map of an island. He was in such a good mood, he even shared a conspiratorial wink with the canine worrywart who’d been tugging on his leash to leave for the last five minutes.
“Just a sec, doggy-o-mine. WWID?” he crowed, pitching the final ball. “Iben would score!”
The 42 ball headed home as if pulled by a magnet. “I am the man!” Iben whooped as the ball fell into the dish. Instantly all the toys sprang to musical life, DO DO DO DO DOO DO, the yellow prize-booth lights shimmered then turned an eerie purple, he could see Ventral Pallidum’s teeth glowing in the weird light. Was she giving him the thumbs up, or signaling him to lift his eyes skyward? He looked up, nothing, then another sound brought him back to earth, an urgent beep, beep, beep. The sawdust beneath his feet began to shudder under the weight of a grinding, clunking mechanical beast crashing through the screaming, fleeing carnival crowd, and straight toward Iben.
Well, maybe it wasn’t a cackle, more like a crackle, an electrical hum or buzz…they’re near. Iben took a moment to reflect on the deadly peril of his situation and how ill-suited he was to making life-or-death decisions in the moment. He swiveled his head looking for inspiration (which years of writing had taught him often involved much eyestrain) when his attention fell upon a miniature headstone next to Mittelwerk’s.
Good Things Come in Small Packages
RIP Frigga
Faithful and obedient companion
in this world and all others
RIP Frigga
Faithful and obedient companion
in this world and all others
Iben had to really squint to read it. It had to be carved in, like, 10 or 12 point type face to fit all those words onto that small tombstone. Nonetheless, he couldn’t rest in peace since the fierce horde-sound was nearly upon him. His brain screamed, “Do something!” So, he pushed the 42 on Mittelwerk’s headstone and the door whooshed shut with what sounded like a gasp of relief.
Iben then considered his chances of escape, pondering what ill-omen might have caused the beloved Frigga to be lately lamented and wondering if there was some deeper meaning to be found in the epitaph “Good Things Come in Small Packages.” Is it possible that Iben had nothing to fear from the tiny nano-beings? Of course, one had given him quite a scratch on the arm, but perhaps that nano had been malfunctioning. He guessed he’d soon find out as the blackish mass was just rounding the oak at the edge of the cemetery plot.
Then, above the droning din, another sound reached Iben’s ear, a desperate, yelping howl. That’s right! He’d brought along the blond lab planning to drop him off at the pound later. Apparently, he’d escaped the vehicle and just in the nick of time for Iben. The dog was throwing itself against the chain-link fence on the parking lot side of the ivy-covered building. Iben realized in an instant that the dog couldn’t get in only because it was not tall enough to reach the otherwise easy-to-open gate latch. Good dog! Iben sped toward the exit, but not before glimpsing the name on another of the nine headstones. This one was new and unsentimental. It stated simply:
Hugh McIntyre
1968 - 2006
1968 - 2006
Moments later, dog and man were into Iben’s Kia racing away from Paik Heavy Industries, out of Neptune City headed west toward the Garden State Parkway. Iben didn’t even take a breath for fear of sucking in errant nanobots until they passed the Naval Weapons Station in Earle.
“Wait a minute,” Iben said, “Hugh McIntyre. That can’t be a coincidence, can it?”
The dog made no reply, but panted anxiously, staring out the rear window as if not as ready as Iben to conclude, “Home free.”
“Hugh McIntyre. Hamish McIntrye. You don’t suppose they’re related in some way? If so, and I’m not saying they are, but if they were related they couldn’t have been very close or Hamish would have said something about losing a brother this year or having to go to a funeral. Then again, maybe Hamish didn’t know. After all, Hugh is buried behind a New Jersey factory next to a Mr. Mittelwerk, whose grave appears to come equipped with an escape hatch. Hey, maybe it’s a doggie door so that Frigga can let herself in and out.”
The lab, riding shotgun, perked up his ears at that, and Iben doubted it was because he appreciated the joke.
“Frigga?” Iben asked. “Do you know that name, boy?”
The dog spoke. Iben took that as a yes.
“Friend of yours? Girlfriend, maybe?”
The dog yelped more emphatically. Iben checked the rear view mirror and saw a Paik Industries cement-mixing truck bearing down. They couldn’t outrun it and on this late Saturday afternoon the sparsely trafficked highway offered no cover so Iben swerved off on the nearest exit and headed back toward the shore. The dog’s whine signaled the truck had done the same.
Iben drove on at a reckless speed, making aimless turns in what seemed to be a futile effort to elude the relentless pursuer. He was going to be Jimmy Hoffa’d, he supposed; buried under a ton of quick-setting concrete. He began to tremble and suddenly was drenched in sweat. Then he was choking, not breathing, dying.
“The nanobot musta got me, boy. I just didn’t know it til now,” he reported in ragged sobs to his canine companion.
“If it hadn’t been the bot it would’ve been the truck. I can’t fight something this big. God, I can’t believe that the thing I wanted most in the world, a stupid chance at a stupid network staff writing job, is going to be the death of me. I can’t believe my agent got me into this. And I mean got ME into this. Why me? Am I so insignificant, such a no-name nothing that when a killer assignment came in, the one that meant the writer would in fact die, he thought of me first? I suppose he knew no one would miss me.”
On wheels slick with Iben’s self-pity, the Kia careered wildly into Asbury Park city limits, speeding down the empty streets past the decaying carcasses of an abandoned, half-built high-rise, crumbling, deserted hotels and burned-out storefronts.
“This used to be the playground of the Jersey Shore,” Iben said, so shocked by the city’s haunted appearance he forgot his truck troubles and got his breath back. “I wonder what happened here?”
The dog barked sharply and stood up on the front seat. In the rubble-strewn parking lot where The Palace Arcade once reigned over the boardwalk now dangled strings of banana-colored lights and a banner announcing Benoffski’s Big, Big, Big Top Traveling Circus and Family Fun Carnival.
“Well, look at that, the circus comes to Creepytown,” Iben, never a fan of such dubious roadside attractions wondered if being shanghaied into white slavery--the fate of all lone visitors to carney world his mother always warned--would be his next adventure. “Did I mention that I hate clowns?”
Iben pulled into the parking lot, tucked the Kia between two Winnebagos and tagged along behind a posse of stragglers headed for the midway. They didn’t look like a fun group, much less family friendly. They exuded the jagged menace of meth addicts but viewed through an ectoplasmic blur. Iben saw the cement truck inching into the parking lot, and hoped the ghost gang was too oblivious to notice and man and his dog hitching a ride in their shadows to the midway
To buy them some time, Iben hit the first concession stand and assembled haphazard disguises: Bug’s Bunny ears and Slinky-eyeball glasses for himself and a couple of balloons to attach to the dog’s collar. He hoped that from a distance it would look like he was just another fun-loving dad taking his kid to the circus.
Do do do do doo do. Do do do do doo do. There it was again. The music. Iben Powned has been duped. No. It wasn’t really saying that. Hamish tried to kill you. Shut up. It’s just a bunch of notes, Iben commanded the wild-eyed side of his brain to agree with the smart part, but he didn’t know how long that order would stand when he found the source of the sound. It was coming from a carnival game booth and the tune was emanating from an almost unimaginable variety of mechanical wind up toys offered as prizes. One of the toys was the acrobatic polar bear that had been pitched through his window Thanksgiving Day.
How could it be, Ivan wondered, that I would find those particular tin toys playing that oddly mesmerizing melody at a traveling carnival that I only came to because I was being pursued by killers in a cement-mixing truck? To call such a thing a simple coincidence beggared reason. Was it fate? Did everything happen for a reason, as John Locke was so fond of pointing out on Lost? Indeed this was just the kind of thing that would happen on Lost. So, Iben wondered WWJD? What Would Jack Do?
Iben imagined the handsome spinal surgeon standing in his place listening to that tune. In his mind’s eye, he saw jack’s eyes glaze over as visions of the past overtook him. Jack would be remembering the time he stayed up all night fixing his mother’s beloved music box instead of dissecting kittens as he had promised his dad he would so he would make the old man proud on the pre-med biology final the next day. Luckily, his dad came home from the hospital too drunk to notice the kittens were intact and Jack aced the test anyway. Unfortunately, when he got home from school with his A+ grade, the music box was re-smashed and his mother gone for good. Turned out the music box had been precious because it had been given to his mother by another man, a nice one who treated her well, and his father knew it, couldn’t stand competing with even the memory of her former happiness, and kicked her out of the house. And it was all Jack’s fault for fixing the damn music box.
Jack’s eyes would then come back into focus, the tawdry carnival with its cheap amusements suddenly filling him with hopeless melancholy tinged with bitter loss and he would turn a deaf ear to that sordid melody and walk away.
God, no wonder they were still stuck on that island. Every experience was transformed into a metaphorical redo of some past misery that left them incapable of action. Well, Iben thanked heaven that he had no such emotional baggage keeping him from catching the clue bus.
He approached the “Your Number’s Up” game booth. The bored attendant was flipping through the pages of a fat paperback and singing softly to herself, “… 'She left me on the boardwalk / With my head held in my hands...'
“I beg your pardon,” Iben interrupted, “but I have a question. Interestingly, someone just gave me a wind-up toy exactly like this.” He pointed to the polar bear. “Can you tell me where they come from and what’s the name of the tune they play?”
At first he thought she didn’t understand him because she just giggled girlishly and pushed her chin-length brown locks behind her ears. Iben realized he still wore his pop-eyed glasses, but when he removed them, the smile came off the young woman’s face as well. Here we go again, Iben thought, another pretty woman, one minute all smiles and eyelashes, the next grim and frankly accusatory. He figured Jack might have better luck in these transactions, except, of course, Jack would already be gone.
“Sorry about the glasses,” Iben said. “Let me introduce myself. My name is Iben Powned and I’m a writer and therefore just really curious about those tin toys you’re giving away.”
“We give away nothing,” she said. Her tone of voice seemed kind of familiar but the accent was one he couldn’t identify. “You pay your money; you take your chance.”
“I see, of course.” Iben ponied up the five-buck fee. “So you’ll answer my questions if I pay?” he asked rhetorically. “Fair enough. How do I play?”
“You press this button, here,” she said pointing to a big red button. “And your ping-pong balls pop out here,” she pointed at a plastic chute. “You get five balls with numbers on them. Then you have to pitch the ball into the dish with the same number on it to win.”
Iben pushed the button and a ball with the number 16 popped out. “So, can you—by the way, I didn’t catch your name—
“Ventral Pallidum,” she said. “Go ahead, toss the ball.”
To Iben’s surprise, the ball safely hit its mark. “That’s unusual. Is that Eastern European?”
“Keep playing or I’ll get in trouble.” She placed one of the toys in front of him, a brood hen in a nest filled with Easter eggs that hatched into bunny rabbits.
Iben pushed the button again, a ball with the number 23 popped out. He tossed, and made the shot.
“Keep your eyes on the prize,” she said in true carnival barker style “My name is Netherlandish,” she said. “I’m not from there, but one of the tin toys is made there.”
She put his second trophy on the counter, a rose bud that bloomed to reveal a dancing green caterpillar inside. “The others are made in different places. Now hurry up, push the button.”
The next ball was number 8. Iben tossed it gently into the number 8 dish. The toy was a teddy bear riding a black rocking horse.
“Really, tin toys, all different, made everywhere in the world all playing the same melody?” Iben asked.
“You don’t believe me? You want me to draw you a map?”
“Could you do that? See, I think these music boxes might have to do with something much more important—“
“Keep your eyes on the prize,” she barked out to the crowd. “Finish the game,” she commanded Iben.
He pushed the button again. 16 popped then plopped into the right dish. The prize toy was a pair of cupids, one black, the other white, with arrows aimed at each other as they winged their way around a golden sundial. He had the same success with the next ball, 4. She gave him the polar bear music box.
“Can you tell me where this one came from?”
“Do you want to purchase a bonus ball?
“Will I find out where the polar bear comes from?”
She held out her hand, and snapped her fingers impatiently as he dug in his pocket for cash. “Don’t waste my time,” she snapped.
Iben pushed the button. 42 popped up. The woman slid a piece of paper across the counter.
“This is where the bear comes from?” Iben asked.
“Put it away! They’re watching.”
Iben casually tucked the map into his pocket not sharing Ventral’s fears in the least. In fact he was feeling quite smug as he filled his backpack with the toys.
“I feel like Santa Claus with my bag of goodies,” he joked. Unlike handsome Jack, he’d faced the music and come away with at least five new clues plus a map of an island. He was in such a good mood, he even shared a conspiratorial wink with the canine worrywart who’d been tugging on his leash to leave for the last five minutes.
“Just a sec, doggy-o-mine. WWID?” he crowed, pitching the final ball. “Iben would score!”
The 42 ball headed home as if pulled by a magnet. “I am the man!” Iben whooped as the ball fell into the dish. Instantly all the toys sprang to musical life, DO DO DO DO DOO DO, the yellow prize-booth lights shimmered then turned an eerie purple, he could see Ventral Pallidum’s teeth glowing in the weird light. Was she giving him the thumbs up, or signaling him to lift his eyes skyward? He looked up, nothing, then another sound brought him back to earth, an urgent beep, beep, beep. The sawdust beneath his feet began to shudder under the weight of a grinding, clunking mechanical beast crashing through the screaming, fleeing carnival crowd, and straight toward Iben.
posted by The Alternative One at 9:28 PM
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