Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
FADE
My heart stops at Aven’s proclamation. At first, I can’t concentrate on what they’re saying because of the cock on their forehead. I truly hope they don’t plan to actually… uh… walk around?... with that on their head. There should be some decorum at the office, even from a computer program.
My god, the weird things that I have to think about right now.
I’m distracted from all the distracting cock by the holographic appearance of Alice’s journal in front of us. I wince but try not to shy away. I didn’t know Alice. I can only imagine how horrible it must be to look at these pictures as one of her brothers.
The journal flips open, and an image appears. It’s one of the darkest pages in the whole journal. Unlike her paintings, the pages aren’t filled with black. They’re more detailed which means they tend to be more graphic and horrible.
This one isn’t of people though. The scratchy marks cover both pages with A U N framed inside a slanted box. There are swirly shapes on one side of the box but nothing on the other.
One of the things I’ve come to determine about Alice’s art is the point of view. Are we seeing the image through the victim’s eyes or through the eyes of someone forced to watch?
But this isn’t a heinous scene. I’m not entirely sure what we’re looking at.
The image magically removes itself from the pages, and when the journal flips further back, we see a different interpretation of a similar scene.
It’s darker. There are little bursts above the A U N, as if droplets of water are spreading along a wet surface.
Instead of swirls, there are dark holes now.
That image removes itself, and a third appears. It’s almost identical to the first, but the U is broken. Half of one arm is missing. When I lean closer, it appears as if that one letter has protruded a hand and is waving. The piece isn’t missing. It’s… come to life?
“What are we looking at?” I ask.
“A setting,” Zephyr says. “We’re looking inside a room.”
“A laundromat,” Aven expands, and they pull up a photograph from thin air and overlay one of Alice’s drawings over it.
I think the image is taken from the perspective of sitting in a chair and looking within the laundromat.
There are lines of machines, their round glass fronts gleaming in the sunlight.
The sunlight shines in through a window we can’t see, creating a slanted rectangle of light on the floor and the unmistakable A U N of the letters probably on the glass.
How ridiculously close the A U N in Alice’s drawing comes to the exact shape and position in the picture makes my chest tight. This isn’t just a suggestion of something similar. She didn’t just see this image somewhere and create a child’s memory of it.
She was four when she was here. Younger. She probably had no idea what she was looking at. The A U N were nothing to her at that point.
“Where is this?” Erez asks, voice quiet.
“Downtown. I’m processing a request for a visit; however, this is what the strip mall where the laundromat is located looks like now,” Aven answers, and another picture appears in the air. The entire site is in the middle of being demolished.
My gut sinks. There might have been answers there.
“These memories are from more than twenty years ago,” Zephyr says quietly. “Nothing is going to appear as it had once been. It’s going to take some time to find what we’re looking for.”
I want to ask what we’re looking for. No one is going to have carved their names into walls.
We’re not going to stumble upon a roster of those involved—the victims nor the predators.
But I don’t ask. I don’t think either of them knows exactly what we’re looking for at this point. We’re simply looking.
“The demolition has been halted by the city for expired permits,” Aven says. “It’s been shut down for a week now. No one is there. It’s a good time to investigate.”
“Let’s go,” Erez says, getting to his feet. “Send me the address, Aven.”
“It’s already in your GPS,” Aven says. “Thirty-eight minutes from here.”
I follow Erez to the door, but Zephyr stops us. “Hold on. Matty’s on his way. He was bringing us lunch. He’ll be here in three minutes.”
“I don’t want to wait until after lunch,” Erez says.
“We won’t. We’ll just wait for Matty. He’ll come with us.”
Erez does not want to wait. His impatience is loud.
I glance back at the table, but all the floating images, as well as Aven, are gone.
I totally feel like I’m living in the far-off future.
I can’t decide if this is what money gets you or what it’s like living with computer geniuses.
Is this a glimpse of homes in the future?
Will they all come with intelligences like Aven?
I’m terrified of that eventuality.
Matty arrives six minutes later. He sets the box of delicious-smelling food down, and we leave again. We climb into Zephyr’s SUV and head toward town.
As we get close, the traffic becomes thicker. Pedestrians seem to multiply.
“We’re right around the corner from our neighborhood,” Zephyr says as we pull up alongside the fenced in construction site.
“We’re a couple blocks away from where I found Alice,” Erez says. “I wonder if I passed her on the street and hadn’t been paying attention.”
“Based on what you told us, I don’t think that would have been possible,” Zephyr says, twisting in his seat to look at Erez in the back. “I don’t think anyone would have missed a screaming girl covered in blood and bruises being dragged down the street.”
“I’d like to believe that, but I still remember that day. No one heard her crying. I watched. I distinctly watched and waited for someone to hear her.”
Zephyr follows the fenced-in lot until he finds a parking spot, then we follow it on foot. It takes us several minutes before we find a place to sneak in.
“It’s a good thing none of us are big men,” I grunt as I try to shove my way through the same place the others had.
Erez snorts. “Guess muscles aren’t all that great now, are they?”
“But they’re pretty to look at,” I say as I straighten out. “Admit it. You enjoy looking at my muscles.”
He gives me an amused smile, which I take as a good thing.
Maybe I’m able to bring him some light, even at the precipice of what I imagine is going to be a very dark moment.
My gut says we’re going to find something.
Not answers, exactly, but probably more pieces to the puzzle… and I don’t think they’ll be good news.
The parking lot hasn’t been ripped up, but almost two-thirds of the strip mall has—including the laundromat. We carefully pick our way toward the spot where it’d been until we’re standing in front of a cement foundation that’s severely cracked.
“Can you see?” Zephyr asks, and I glance in his direction. He has his wrist up as if he’s taking a call through his watch.
“No,” Aven’s voice answers. “There aren’t any cameras facing inside the site.”
“That’s weird,” Erez says, frowning. “Aren’t big sites like this usually monitored?”
“Sometimes electronically. Sometimes by humans,” Aven agrees.
“Maybe they stopped monitoring when they were shut down,” I suggest. “It got too expensive?”
Zephyr shakes his head. “It’s a little suspicious. What can you tell us? Where do we go?”
“The laundromat closed six years ago. It was in operation up until that point. It appears that they weren’t in financial trouble.
They didn’t move the location nor try to sell the business.
That unit was never put up for lease, either.
That might have been because the mall was already failing to the point where few people weren’t visiting anymore.
They saw an even steeper decline in consumers when the laundromat shut down,” Aven says.
“People doing their laundry were also wandering the shops,” Matty says.
Erez and I nod in agreement.
“They sold all the equipment and vacated.” Aven pauses. “Ah. I see why the unit wasn’t put up for lease. The company who’d been using it continued to keep the lease and paid it right up until the mall was purchased with the intent to tear it down.”
“They spent six years paying on a space that wasn’t bringing in any money?” I ask.
“The only reason to do that is to ensure no one else has access to it,” Zephyr says.
“They were hiding something,” Erez says. “But it doesn’t look like there’s anything left to find.”
We’re silent for a minute. I look around the site, following the cracks in the foundation. That’s when I see a hole in the floor of what was probably a different shop. Before I can point it out, Aven speaks again.
“There was a basement,” Aven says. “According to blueprints, not all shops had access to the basement, including the laundromat.”
“Something tells me they created access,” Zephyr says. He takes a step toward the foundation. “What are the odds we can get down there safely?”
“I can’t see, remember?” Aven says.
“Can you look through my phone camera?” Zephyr asks. “Do I need to open an app for you?”
“Oh, baby. I love when you open my apps,” Aven answers. “The sweet caress of your thumb gives me tingles.”
Matty snorts.
“Try the Van Doren Family app. That’s the app I’m most familiar with, so I’ll be able to manipulate some settings long enough to give me eyes. You have that, yes?” Aven asks.
“I do. Hold on.” Zephyr pulls his phone from his pocket and taps around before holding it up. “Okay. Access my most private parts, Aven.”
“I love when you talk dirty to me.”
I look at Erez with an eyebrow raised. He shakes his head, slightly amused. I think he’d find more humor in the situation if we weren’t here. Where Alice had likely once been.
“Pan to the right,” Aven says. “Now to the left.”
Zephyr spends a few minutes giving Aven as much visual access as he can.
“I believe, if there’s access from the laundromat, it’s going to be toward the back,” Aven says. “Otherwise, you’ll have to locate access from one of the neighbors—yes, they owned the shop to your right as well. There was a door connecting the backrooms. That’s how they accessed the basement.”
“Is it safe enough to walk across?” I ask.
“I can’t answer that,” Aven says.
Erez steps up to the edge of the concrete and looks around. I follow, not wanting him to get too close. Or fall through the floor.
“There it is,” Matty says, pointing. I don’t see what he sees. “I’m not going in there.”
“Is it unstable?” Zephyr asks.
Matty looks sick to his stomach. I think his face is turning green. He shakes his head and shrugs at the same time. “There’s darkness in there. Darkness like Clark.”
I’m not sure who Clark is or what he’s referring to. There’s no power, so I imagine it will be dark.
“We’ll stay outside,” Zephyr says, bringing Matty into his arms, but his attention is on his brother. “You best be careful. I’ll haunt the fuck out of you if you die in there.”
Erez looks between Zephyr and Matty. “I think you need to learn whether the dead or the living do the haunting, but stop worrying. If it’s not stable, I won’t go in.”
By the time I turn back to Erez, he’s walking across the foundation. “Fuck,” I mutter, giving the concrete a dubious look. I send up a little prayer for our safety then cautiously but quickly follow. There’s no way in fucking hell I’ll be letting him go alone.
The hole in the floor definitely leads to a dark basement. Erez turns on his cell’s flashlight and points it inside. Unsurprisingly, the space is too dark and vast to see anything in the thin beam of light. Erez huffs in annoyance.
What we can see is that it’s not a wide open space. There are walls. Not just pillars holding up the concrete floor but full walls. There are doors that hang off hinges.
“They’re not the same material,” Erez says. “See? That’s drywall there. These aren’t support walls. They don’t carry the weight of the building above it.”
“It was probably used for storage,” I suggest.
Erez doesn’t contradict me. I’m probably wrong, but maybe I’m right. Maybe Alice’s drawings were from a time when she was with her parents and not… the man who beat her up? Maybe this was the place she was stolen from. If she was.
“Was there ever a missing person report for Alice?” I ask.
Erez shakes his head. “Not that I know of. I imagine Zeph would have found it by now. He’s looked at all the missing files dating back a year before we think Alice was born, just to be sure we didn’t miss one.”
“Just around here?”
“In the country. Remember, we have Aven’s help. What might take us decades to do takes them seconds. Minutes if they’re multitasking.”
“No offense, but I feel like Aven should have already solved this by now.”
Erez glances up at me with a smirk. “They do have their own autonomy, Fade. However, they don’t take that much initiative.
Zeph’s job isn’t Aven’s primary function.
They were built for a purpose, and despite them fooling around, flirting, and dropping in for conversations, they take that job seriously.
If we ask for help, they help, which is why Aven found something in the journal.
It’s why we have so many names to match the faces in Alice’s drawings.
Aven’s reach is infinite if we ask them to do something for us. ”
“You could easily make yourselves obsolete in Zeph’s line of work,” I note.
Erez leans back on his haunches. “No. There are places Aven can’t reach.
Like here. Besides, when we’re talking about events from twenty years ago, or more, you have to remember that feeds and information still weren’t absolute.
They were manipulated by man as they tried to erase or rewrite history, force beliefs and opinions as if they were fact.
There’s still a lot of corrupted information in the world that Aven sorts through all the time.
Then we have to take into account that not everyone has the sophisticated electronics that the Van Dorens do, so Aven is crippled there too. ”
“Huh.” I look back in the dark hole. “So, what’s the plan?”
“Come back with a ladder.”
Great.