So I agreed to help a neighbor get his family back from an evil wizard who had kidnapped them. There’s a sentence I never expected to type, but life is unpredictable, and I like to think of myself as a guy who can go with the flow.
Last week, we got Carlos’ mother back. That was step one. Unfortunately, that meant Ivan knew what we were up to, which made getting Carlos’ siblings back more complicated. I talked to Ren on Sunday morning. He had managed to get the human porcupine quills out of his face but wasn’t up for going out all that much until his wounds healed. He told me that we would have to find a different focal point in order to get Carlos’ brothers and sister out. When I asked him where that focal point was, he just told me to keep an eye on the UPS guy who attacked him last week.
I noticed something was weird on the first day of the working week. The normal UPS guy didn’t show up, and in his place was a short Hispanic guy I’d never seen before. At first, that seemed like a good thing, but then the new guy started sneezing maggots. As with everything else that has been going on around here, I was the only person who could see it. To everyone else, it just looked like the guy had a bad cold. But then I noticed that he was avoiding eye contact with me. He told us that the old UPS guy was on a long vacation. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief at that.
As soon as I got the chance, I told Ren what happened. “He’s avoiding eye contact with you until the right moment,” wrote Ren. “When the time is right, he’ll look you in the eye. Don’t let him. It’s how the maggots get into you.”
I slept a little better that night than I was expecting to. Not much. I’ve taken to drinking a lot of coffee to get through the day. I know it’s bad to build up a dependency on that stuff, but no matter how much yoga and meditation I do, I can’t seem to get even six hours of sleep in a night. When I hung out with my fiancée on Monday night, she told me that she was worried about me. Not that I was going to get maggots in my sinuses or anything, just that I was going to burn out. She works pretty crazy hours, but always manages to get a good night’s sleep.
Carlos is a little alarmed as well. He says the teeth are spreading all over his grandmother’s house. He tried to pour himself a bowl of cereal one morning and teeth came out of the box. None of us has seen Ivan since the night he blinded Carlos. That makes me think he’s up to something.
On Tuesday morning, Ren figured out where the focal point was. That’s the gate that we will use to draw Carlos’ brothers and sisters out of the prison where Ivan is holding them. It’s in a fountain near my house. There’s a manmade waterfall and a small walkway behind it with a bathroom that’s almost always locked. The focal point is in the fountain itself. I went to see it and found that if I peer into the water, I can see what look like a bunch of metal arms reaching out of the tiles at the bottom of the fountain. It looks like some kind of art.
Ren invited Carlos and me over for dinner Tuesday night. He still doesn’t want to go out. When he opened the door, I could understand why. Those quills had left some nasty cuts on his face. They wounds had all closed up but they were white rather than red. Ren told us that now he just makes an excuse as to why he can’t let the other person see him when he’s on Zoom calls. As we sat down to dinner, I asked him how he found the focal point.
“How’s the steak?” he asked. Ren has a habit of not answering questions until you’ve answered his. Carlos and I agreed that the steak was very good. He had cooked it in a cast iron skillet and seasoned it with something that gave it a subtle aftertaste. The salad was really good, too. If Ren ever got tired of running his own business, he might have a promising career as a chef.
“So I didn’t find the focal point,” said Ren after he had eaten a little of his steak. “My friend did. Guy who got the quills out of me. He’s got some kind of power, he can track stuff. Especially through water.”
“Have you ever done this before?” I asked Ren. “Gotten somebody out of Ivan’s place?”
“Not from Ivan, no,” said Ren. Carlos and I had not talked much these past couple days. I wanted to ask him how he was holding up. “But I’ve done stuff like this before,” continued Ren. “He’s not the only person with those powers. You can try to contain people, but some part of them is going to find its way back out. Like how you put the lid on a pot and then boil the water, the lid starts to rattle. Because the steam has to escape. You can’t just keep it in there. If you try too hard, something will explode.”
“So because Ivan is trying to hold Carlos’ family and they want to get out, parts of them are getting out,” I said. “Like they’re just slipping through the cracks in the walls or something?”
“That’s about right,” said Ren.
“We went to that fountain when we first moved here,” said Carlos. “It was the first thing we did as a family after we had everything unpacked. Dad wanted to take us out to dinner, but it was only 3 in the afternoon, so he bought us ice cream and we just sat at the fountain talking and shit. It was really cool. I think it was the last time I ever saw him happy.”
“So that’s why the focal point is at the fountain,” I said. “And not in one of our homes.”
“Ivan sealed up those cracks,” said Ren. “It wouldn’t appear in your homes because he closed them up. But something has to get through. You try to hold down the lid from one end, the steam escapes from the other.”
“So what do we do?” I asked. “Pull on their arms like we did with his mother?”
“Not exactly,” said Ren. “Ivan’s tightened the screws here. If we’re going to get them out, we need to clear the way for them first.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means we have to break apart the fountain,” said Carlos. “Open up the floor so they can slip through.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Are we going to drop a wrecking ball in the pool so the tile breaks up?”
“No,” said Ren. “We just go for a swim.” He held out his gloved hand. I had more or less gotten used to wearing a purple glove that never came off and nobody else could see over the past week and a half. There was so much to process. The walls and floor of my warehouse slowly turning to teeth, the UPS drivers turning out to be supernatural creatures who work for Ivan, at least I could tell that the purple glove on my hand wasn’t malicious. I’m pretty sure it wanted to help, although I still couldn’t tell if it wanted anything in return.
“You just touch the bottom of the pool with the glove,” said Carlos, holding up his gloved hand as well. “You will have to dig a little, but after it’s over, nobody will notice that we did anything.”
“Okay,” I said. “We go tonight?”
“Tomorrow,” said Ren.
“See, I don’t get that,” I said. “Why does it have to be tomorrow?”
“To build up the energy,” said Ren. “See, the thing Ivan really hates is normal life. That’s why he lives ten floors up and he doesn’t follow the rules. He wants to feel like he’s above it. Wake up, make some coffee, take your kids to school, he hates that. But not us. We do magic just by doing our normal day stuff. That’s why I told you to just keep doing your job. That’s how magic is for you, it’s just normal life. But then you get to the end of it and you see how much you’ve really done. Get it?”
“I think so,” I said. “How’s your mother?” I asked Carlos.
“She came to stay with me and grandma,” said Carlos. “She knows it’s turning to teeth even if she can’t see it. I think she just likes being with us. She’s coming with us tomorrow.”
“No,” said Ren. “I can’t allow that. It’s too dangerous.”
“Bro, it’s her kids,” said Carlos. “She wants them back.”
Ren considered it a minute. “Okay, fine,” he said. “Just tell her to stay back when we’re, when we’re swimming.”
“I can tell her,” said Carlos. I thought he was going to add that she would not listen, but maybe he decided it was better to imply it.
After dinner, we hung out in Ren’s living room and watched Netflix. Some documentary about a crazy cult. It was the most normal I had felt in a long time. Has anyone else noticed how difficult it is to make friends as an adult? I’m still in touch with some of my old school friends, but I only get to see them about once every year or two. Carlos and Ren had a rapport. It’s that unspoken connection that you can sense between people when they’ve seen each other at their worst and best. I still didn’t quite feel like I was a part of it, but I was starting to think it didn’t matter. Whether or not they were my kind of people, at least I knew that they weren’t bad people.
Wednesday came. The day was normal, except that I noticed that nearly everything in the janitor’s closet had turned to teeth. One of my coworkers pulled a mop from it and cleaned the floors with a mop made entirely out of teeth, including the head. It made clacking sounds as she slid it back and forth across the floor. Of course, I was the only one who could see or hear it. This experience is starting to fuck with my understanding of what’s real and what’s just in our heads.
The new UPS guy never tried to make eye contact with me. He just sneezed a lot and I stomped on the maggots after he left. I knew he was up to something, but I couldn’t figure out what to do about it.
After work, I had a quick dinner and walked down to the fountain. Ren, Carlos, and Carlos’ mother would meet me there. We were going to get the rest of his family back.
Ren was already there when I arrived. I didn’t recognize him at first because he kept his hood pulled up. When he turned towards me, I could see why. He had circles under his eyes and the wounds still did not look to be healing. I asked him how he was and he said fine.
“Are you?” I asked. “Because you don’t look fine.”
He spun around towards me. “You got something you wanna ask me?”
“Actually, I do,” I said. I held up my gloved hand. “What is this thing? Why can’t I take it off? What’s it doing to me? Also, why can nobody else see that my warehouse is turning to teeth?”
Ren sat down on the edge of the fountain. He patted the stone next to him with his ungloved hand. I sat down. “The glove is harmless,” he said after clearing its throat. “Actually, it’s benevolent.” At this, I actually felt the glove flutter slightly. It had heard him.
“But what is it?” I asked.
“It’s from another plane,” he said. “Like, another dimension. If you went there, you’d have to keep your eyes closed. Because they don’t see things over there. Not like we see things. Understand?”
“No,” I said.
“Look, your eyes can only see certain things,” he said. “They can’t see in the dark, they can’t see radio waves. Did you know bats make echoes so they can find stuff in the dark? It’s called echolocation.”
“I think I remember that from school,” I said. “What’s this got to do with the gloves?”
“The gloves see in a way you can’t understand,” he said. “They come from someplace where everyone sees like that. Everything. You couldn’t go there, or if you could, you’d have to just feel your way around, because there isn’t light like there is over here. So they can see what Ivan is doing to your warehouse. They can see his power, they can see how he wants to eat everything. We need that to get through and get Carlos’ family out.”
“Okay,” I said. “But why could I see that Carlos’ closet was turning to teeth? I didn’t need the glove for that.”
“Because Ivan wanted to you to see it,” said Carlos. I hadn’t seen him approach. He was sneaky. His mother was with him. How did they creep up like that? There was one other person at the fountain–some businessman who sat on a bench about 40 feet away looking at his phone. He was leaving now.
“Did Ivan know I was listening to you guys?” I asked.
“I think he knew someone was there,” said Carlos. He and his mother sat down next to me. “He wanted whoever it was to know what he could do to them, too.”
“Well, now we’re all here,” I said. “Do we get started?” The sun was setting but it wasn’t dark yet. It felt a little weird that we were doing all of this out in the open. But I’ve learned by now that people don’t see what they don’t really want to see.
“They’re over here,” said Ren. Carlos started to follow. His mother stayed put. Ren said something to her in Spanish. My Spanish isn’t very good but I’m pretty sure he asked her what was wrong. She said something that I didn’t understand but contained the word for “brother”. Ren said something back that contained the word for “heal”. That seemed to satisfy her.
We walked to the spot where the hands reached out of the bottom of the fountain. They were not close to the edge. We would have to wade into the water to get there. There were four arms, one of which appeared to belong to a child. I couldn’t tell the ages of the other three just from their arms.
“What do we do?” I asked Ren. He didn’t say anything, he just took his shoes off and began to wade out into the water. I did the same, followed by Carlos. It seemed a little too straightforward. But then I heard a familiar voice.
“You can stop right there,” he said. We turned around and saw the new UPS guy about twenty feet away. He was still in his UPS uniform although I couldn’t see his truck parked anywhere. He sneezed, still avoiding eye contact. I noticed that Carlos’ mother was nowhere in sight. How had she disappeared so quickly?
“There’s three of us and one of you,” said Carlos. “What are you going to–”
The new UPS guy didn’t let him finish. He flung his arms wide as if he were going to give somebody a bear hug. As he did so, his arms transformed into tentacles that dripped with something that looked like mucus. He sneezed but didn’t bother to wipe his nose. Then he moved toward us with a speed I didn’t know he had.
Except he didn’t reach us. As he stepped into the water Carlos’ mother rose out of it. She had been lying down just inside the lip of the fountain as if she had known this would happen. Ren must have warned her or something. I realized I still didn’t know why the UPS was working for Ivan. She lunged at the new UPS guy with box cutters in her hand. He spun around as she rose up behind him and grabbed her with the tentacles. She drove the box cutters into his jugular vein. For a middle-aged woman, she had impressive speed.
The UPS guy gushed black blood from his wound. He didn’t die right away, wrapping Carlos’ mother in his tentacles and drawing her close. Carlos and I tried to pull him off but he was still very strong. Holding her close, the UPS guy seized her head and looked into her eyes. Her mouth opened as if by reflex, and a stream of maggots poured from his mouth and into hers like projectile vomit. She swallowed it all. Then the UPS guy collapsed and died, twitching.
Carlos’ mother coughed and coughed but the maggots didn’t come back up. Ren grabbed her and helped her to a bench. He told us to reach to the bottom of the fountain with our gloved hands and dig. We tried it and the tile parted under our hands like it was dirt. After we dug a small hole around each of the arms, they turned to flesh and started to move. So we grabbed and pulled. Carlos’ siblings came out, all soaking wet. They ranged in age from a few years older than Carlos to one preteen. I didn’t catch all of their names. With everything else that happened that night, I didn’t think to ask.
As Carlos’ siblings, Carlos, Ren, and I walked back to the edge of the fountain and put on our shoes, I saw a homeless guy sitting on a bench staring at us. No idea how much he saw, but at least he didn’t have a phone to record it. I waved. He waved back, then picked up his things and left. Can’t say I blame him.
The bathroom behind the waterfall was unlocked that night. We tossed the new UPS guy’s body in there. We’re hoping the body doesn’t give off too strong of a smell. There is something strange about that bathroom, something hungry that lives underneath it. I hoped that whatever it is accepted the body as food or tribute so that the police never find it.
Ren and Carlos took Carlos’ mother to see the same guy who got the quills out of Ren’s body. They haven’t responded to my texts asking how she’s doing. I know the siblings are back at the apartment now. The ones who had jobs are either trying to get their old jobs back or looking for new ones. But the glove still won’t come off. It was fluttering happily after we got the rest of Carlos’ family back. That was last night. The only thing I’ve heard from Ren or Carlos was a text from Ren saying that it’s still not over. “We have to go into Ivan’s place,” he said. “To make sure he doesn’t do it again. He’s fucking pissed and the gloves know it too. That’s why they don’t come off.”
I’m going to stop here for now. I was hoping it would all be over, but it looks like we have another week to go. More and more of the warehouse is turning to teeth, including some of the product. It’s so fucking eerie to see somebody handling it without realizing what they’re holding. And I’m still having trouble sleeping. But for tonight, it’s Thai food and Ted Lasso. If we stop Ivan for good, you’ll hear about it soon.