They started with Maggie. Eric grabbed her by the shoulders while Fiona took her feet. Just before they lifted her, Eric noticed Maggie’s glasses sitting on her nightstand.
He nodded toward them. “She’s going to need those.”
Fiona set Maggie’s feet down, grabbed the glasses, and put them on Maggie’s face.
“They might fall off,” Eric said.
“Not if we don’t turn her over. Now, let’s move.”
They carried Maggie to the front door and carefully set her down. Keira was next. Surprisingly, she wasn’t as difficult to move as Eric had anticipated. Though she was tall, she wasn’t particularly heavy.
Once they set her next to Maggie, Eric said, “What about Maggie’s parents?”
“They’ll be fine. The Makers aren’t interested in them.”
“Well, then, what happens when they wake up in the morning and we’re not here?”
Fiona thought for a moment, then said, “Give me a piece of paper.”
He ripped one out of a notebook in his backpack and handed it to her.
“A pen, too,” she said.
“I only have pencils.” He handed one to her.
She sat down at the dining room table and held the pencil above the paper for several seconds.
“I wish Keira was awake,” she said. “She could probably fake Maggie’s handwriting. I’ll just have to make it from me.”
“Make what?” Eric asked.
Instead of answering, she started writing. When she finished, she turned the paper so he could read it:
Dear Mrs. Ortega,
Maggie wanted to wake you up and tell you we’ve gone to Keira’s and my house to study some more, but we’ve convinced her to let you sleep. We’ll probably be there all day. I hope that’s okay. Maggie said she’ll call you later.
Fiona Leatherwood
“They’re not going to believe that,” Eric said.
“Sure they are.”
“No way. They’re going to come in here first thing in the morning and wonder where we’ve all gone.”
“I don’t know about you, but it was really hard for me to wake up. And I had you forcing it on me. My guess is, her parents won’t even open their eyes until almost lunch time.”
“You think so?” he asked, unsure.
“It’s a guess, but based on everything we’ve learned over the years, a good one.”
“So you’ve seen something like this before.”
Fiona frowned. “Not quite at this scale, but similar.”
Her phone rang.
“Hello?” She nodded every couple of seconds, then said, “Okay,” and hung up. She turned to Eric. “They’ll be here in two minutes. Check the backyard.”
He crossed over to the sliding glass door in the living room, and parted the floor-to-ceiling curtains a few inches in the middle. The Maker surrogates were still there but something seemed different.
He counted them then looked back at Fiona. “Four are missing. Including Peter.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“Should we check out front?”
Just then her cell phone beeped. She looked down at the text message on the screen.
“We’ll know soon enough. Time to go.”
FROM THE BOOK OF TROUBLE MAKERS
Complied by Colin and Carl Owens from family records and current research.
MAKER POSSESSION
• As first suggested by Robert Leatherwood, then confirmed by Jeremy Trouble’s encounter with the Maker Larkin, Makers are able to expand their population only by capturing and possessing the bodies of children, ages 11 to 15. How these children were chosen was a mystery until ten years ago. The only things known up to that point were that they recently performed an act of selflessness that brought attention to themselves, and were typical decent kids who cared about others in general.
Then, ten years ago, Jeremy Trouble, working with his brothers-in-law Colin and Carl Owens, stumbled upon an extremely rare marker that was present in the skin cells of every targeted child they were able to test. This marker, however, was not present in anyone who was not a target. So, while any child could possess the traits listed above, if they did not have the marker, the TMs would not be interested in them.
• The Maker Larkin confirmed that Makers are able to determine if someone is a candidate by a particular smell they give off, undetectable to the rest of us. The theory is that this marker and the smell are linked.
• Once a child is identified by Makers as a candidate for possession, it is not a simple matter of just taking over the child’s body. The Makers must then prepare the candidates by breaking down their will to the point where they will accept the possession without a struggle. Some of the ways they achieve this are by:
Upsetting the candidate’s normal life
Causing the candidate to experience a “streak of bad luck,” as several clients have called it
Making the candidate think they are losing their minds
And, finally, making the client so scared and depressed that they reach their lowest possible point of self-esteem and can see no light at the end of the tunnel. This is the point when the Makers strike.
• Methods for achieving these goals include:
Causing personal items to disappear
Creating friction between the candidate and family members and friends
Causing a close friend or family member to disappear in a way that only the candidate thinks is suspicious
Using time distortion to throw the candidate off balance
Surrogate intimidation.
• A few notes on surrogates based on information from the Maker Larkin and only partially confirmed by field observations:
Individuals who are bad by nature are the most commonly targeted to become surrogates because they are the easiest to control
Whereas one Maker can create and control up to three essentially bad surrogates at one time, it takes multiple Makers to create a surrogate out of one essentially decent person
Because Makers operate either individually or in groups of no more than three, the maximum surrogates possible is nine, a number that has been witnessed on several cases
For more on surrogates, consult the TFS Encyclopedia.
21
Fiona put her hand on the doorknob but didn’t turn it.
“What are you waiting for?” Eric asked.
Before she could answer, the quiet outside was suddenly broken by the sound of a car racing down the street then screeching to a stop just out front.
“That,” she said, pulling the door open.
At the curb, Mr. Trouble and Uncle Carl were climbing out of the sedan. Unfortunately, the four missing surrogates were standing between them and the front door.
“You guys ready?” Mr. Trouble shouted.
“We couldn’t wake Keira or Maggie,” Fiona called out. “One of you is going to have to help us carry them.”
“Don’t worry about the girls,” he said. “We’ll get them. Just concentrate on yourselves.”
Peter Garr took a step toward the car. “You need to leave.”
One of his buddies moved up behind him, while the other two started walking toward the house.
“Fiona?” Eric said. “Maybe we should shut the door.”
“It’s going to be fine,” she told him.
From Eric’s point of view, the way the situation looked at the moment wasn’t even close to fine.
“Hey, relax, buddy,” Mr. Trouble said to Peter. “No one wants any problems.”
“That’s right. No one does,” Peter said in full monotone. “Now leave.”
“You know what? Transmit this to your little Maker masters. Mr. Trouble’s in town, and Eric is one kid you’re not getting.”