Reuben Cabot: 12/2 - 9/96 (10/31/96 - 11/1/96)

(by Tom Brady)

It was a long night. I kept thinking that I should be helping with the retrieval of the Weather Machine, but at the same time I felt very pissed that the group would spurn Mr. Forteau (and, incidentally, myself) the way they did.

Hmm. Now that was a disturbing thought. Was I ticked off because I didn't get my way? I couldn't really ask Dog, because he didn't seem to understand my feelings toward Forteau or the rest of the group. Dammit, I owed Forteau, not only for his tutoring, but for putting me up for a month in Raleigh, among other things. I couldn't turn my back on that. Not that that would have any sway over Forteau's feelings on the matter. When he woke up, that is. If he woke up.

Several times during the night, I went out onto Forteau's porch and looked northeastward, towards Raleigh. I doubted I would be able to see or hear anything unusual, and if I did, there certainly wasn't much I would be able to do about it. The last time I went out was around midnight. I sat on the top step of the porch and listened to the noises of the rural evening. The weather was actually rather balmy, and it now that it had stopped raining, it was rather pleasant to be outside.

Midnight came and went with no booms, no explosions visible for miles, no cataclysmic eruptions. Rather anticlimactic, actually. I sat out on the porch for an hour or so. After a while, Dog came and lay down next to me, putting his head in my lap, but saying not a word. I thought about the little band that had been assembled, and hoped no ill befell them. Sure, Daedelus could be a pain, and Eric was pretty shifty, but I liked Renee and Cab, and Kasee was always entertaining if nothing else. John I wasn't sure about, but from what I knew of garou, he seemed to be an OK guy. I stroked Dog's fur for a while, then said, "Let's go in; it's starting to get a little chilly." After a final check on Forteau (no change - big surprise there), we headed off to bed.

1 November, 1996

The sky was still clear in the morning when I walked outside again. It was a little chilly - maybe in the mid-50's, and the air had a crisp autumn scent to it. Still no change in Forteau's condition. This is very bad. I went into the kitchen and made up an omelet, which I took to the library to eat while looking over some of the books on life patterns I had been studying halfheartedly the night before. Dog was, as usual, ensconced before the television, watching Good Morning America.

I took a shower after breakfast, and was reading in the library when there was a knock at the door. I expected Daedelus, but it was John, Renee, and Mary. I invited them in, and, over orange juice and bacon (per John's request), Renee gave me a quick description of the debacle of the previous night. I thought it was odd that she kept looking at her orange juice and making a face, but I just assumed citrus wasn't her favorite.

Anyway, it seemed that they had found the Weather Machine, but in a tumult that included wraiths, giant emeralds in the Umbra, men hanging themselves, and some sort of vicious tree-women (John smiled grimly at the mention of these). Ogre had run out with the Machine, and the rest of the Goth kids had scattered, leaving our merry band without a Weather Machine or any idea of its location.

When they finished their tale all I could was shake my head. I might have been of some help in keeping Ogre from running away with the Machine, since I was supposed to be the one to accompany him back to the mall with it, but I strongly suspected that, Umbral or no, I wouldn’t have had much that would have stopped Ogre from going wherever he wanted.

Then Renee said, "Wait, it gets better." Oh, great. It turns out that Ogre was having a Very Bad Day, since they had last seen him pinned to the Bell Tower at NC State with a lamp post through his gut, bleeding and on fire. Then, of course, he had disappeared. I kept expecting the Twilight Zone theme to kick in at any minute. So, now they - we - had no Weather Machine, no possible possessor of the Weather Machine, and no idea of where to go next. Lovely.

We went back to take another look at Forteau. I had noticed while we talked that Mary kept staring off into space, which was very uncharacteristic of her. As we walked back to Forteau's office, I realized that John was leading her - she was blind! Renee, who is better than I at examining life patterns, looked Forteau over and was unable to come up with more than we already knew - he was, to all appearances, in a coma. She then looked at Mary and was able to say that the blindness was not physical in nature, so it was probably paradox-induced. That was a relief, since that meant that it was only temporary.

While all of this was going on, I asked Mary what she was doing when she was hit with the paradox. I couldn't make much sense of what she was saying, but apparently she was communicating with "a friend." When she finally got tired of the questioning, she said, "Look, he was on fire, OK? I need to find him."

Hmm. On fire. By putting together her statements and the story Renee had just related, I was certain that her "friend" was none other than Ogre. And when last they had seen Ogre, he had had the Weather Machine. Well, I could stay out at Forteau's and study, or go with them and try and track down Ogre and the Machine. And quite frankly, I was bored. Besides, maybe I could convince them to give the Machine to Forteau after all. Ha. Not likely. But you never know…

I asked Dog if he felt like going for a ride. After a last wistful look at a rerun of The Partridge Family, he jumped off the sofa and walked over to the door. After one last check on Forteau, we all climbed into Eric's car which, I noticed, seemed to be lacking a windshield. I leaned forward and stuck my hand through the open space, wiggled my fingers and looked inquiringly at Renee. She just glared at me and said, "Never mind." John chuckled in the back seat. As we drove back to Raleigh, Renee had the presence of mind to stop and rent a minivan at RDU Airport. Man, we seemed to be having the worst luck with cars these days.

When we got back to the Chantry, not only did we find almost all of the other members of our merry band, but Betsy as well. This was bit of a shock, but Kasee said she found Betsy and "the tree girl" (?) at the glade in Pullen Park where the party has taken place the night before. Betsy swore she didn't know where Ogre was, and she certainly didn't know where the Weather Machine was. We agreed that we would all go to find Ogre. After a brief run to Crabtree Valley Mall to pick up Cab fromt he store where she worked, we started our search.

We spent the next half-hour quartering Raleigh in the minivan, with Mary directing us towards her "friend." After about a half hour, and a couple of wrong turns just north of downtown, we finally pulled into the parking lot of a flea market just off of Capital Boulevard northbound, just before the Yonkers Road intersection. We drove slowly up into the parking lot, and Mary stated that she was sure that her friend was in the building. We quietly snuck inside (no mean feat, there being nine of us). Fortunately, John scouted ahead umbrally.

We were peeking around some boxes when he appeared suddenly, stepping sideways into reality. He pointed to a box set off from the other tables and booths and said, "That's it."

Daedelus looked at the box, then at John. "Mary's friend is in that box?"

John shook his head slowly. "No. In the spirit world, that box looks like a big emerald. It is the Weather Machine."

(c)1997 by Thomas Brady