Spencer opened the door to find no one, not on the landing or anywhere in the entrance hall that he could see. Then made his way carefully down the stairs, holding onto the rail for balance. He thought about searching the house now, finding Suzie and making a run for it. Only if he ran into Smiling Jack before he was ready, it would all be for nothing. He had to take the chance of waiting.
Without glancing back he went out the door, squinting in the bright sunlight that proved once again that Nowhere Blvd. was not on the same day night cycle. He headed east, towards Mr. Buttons’ tree house. It was a long walk in the growing heat of the suit and he began to feel himself getting dizzy, mentally weighing the odds of getting caught if he took it off now. The tree house itself didn’t have any means for human entrance, having neither a rope ladder or stairs. Mr. Buttons had simply climbed the tree with his claws. So instead he walked past it to his true destination, the Rejected Woods.
Not for the first time, he kept feeling someone might grab him from behind as he walked. He couldn’t turn his head far enough to see behind him, and had no peripheral vision through the eye holes. But the walk to the woods went without incident, and soon he was inside their protective cover. It didn’t take long at all to get far enough in to be completely cut off from the mansions view. He began stripping off the bear suit as fast as he could, breathing a great gasp of air as he pulled his face free of it.
It didn’t come off easy, kept sticking and sucking at him. Like trying to peel off wet jeans, but worse. In fact, to his horror he couldn’t get his right hand out at all. He pulled hard, yanking with increasing panic. He even went so far as to pull the suit inside out for better leverage on it. But it wouldn’t budge, and yanking it hurt. It was like the paw had grown into his own flesh, and one wouldn’t come off without the other. He worked at it for several minutes, even trying to work the knife blade in there. But the process proved to painful to continue. Finally he had no choice but to compromise, cutting the suit around the area where it was stuck to his arm. It left him looking like a boy with a bears arm. He looked down at his new hand/paw, wiggling his new claws. It cost him about as much dexterity as a pair of heavy gloves, but at least it was a weapon he couldn’t drop. His left hand could still hold the hunting knife after all.
Spencer headed north. Given the weight of the gas can on his pack, he regretted that his plan involved more than a little backtracking. What was worse was that he couldn’t be sure how much time he had to get all the preparations done. The first time he’d come to Nowhere Blvd. it was about the same real world time as it was now. At the time there’d been at least eight hours of daylight left in Nowhere Blvd. Going along that theory, he’d have about eight hours of daylight again. Except he wasn’t at all sure that Nowhere Blvd. moved on a 24 hour clock. He hadn’t had a watch when he’d come over and never stumbled upon one in the old scavenging missions. His internal clock could read the day/night cycles of the place almost perfectly, but that depended on having seen the beginning or end of that day/night. Because the sun in Nowhere Blvd. stayed in the same place all day, you couldn’t figure it out if you showed up somewhere in the middle.
The thought of it made him nervous. If he couldn’t be in position by sunset he had a much smaller chance of getting to Suzie in time. Jack tended to do his lab work early in the night, doing God knows what else the rest of the time. Running would sap Spencer’s energy, but should he try anyway? He was working blind here.
Well not entirely, he thought.
As he marched he began to realize that he had in a short time forgot a lot about Nowhere Blvd. It was a surprise, he hadn’t thought he could have forgot any details even he tried. Yet now he remembered how you could tell the time here by subtle temperature variations. Unlike in the real world, it didn’t get cooler towards sunset. Without the sun hitting at an angle, it got hotter and hotter the whole day, and colder and colder the whole night. He tried to remember what other details he had forgot. He reminded himself of the ways to tell if you were in danger. The tap tap of the Hollow Men patrolling in the streets, the clop clop of Smiling Jack’s black shoes, the shifting of dead leaves and the smell as a Rejected Thing was stalking you. And the sound Mr. Buttons made…well the thought of that brought a smile to his face.
He settled on a fast march, estimating by the heat he had at least a few hours before dusk. The bright light after the dark night of the real world gave him the curious feeling that he’d just woken up, that the real world had all been a dream. The smells of the forest, the crunch of sticks beneath his feet, it was all so much more familiar than his room back in his parents house.
The whole thing really would have been a very pleasant homecoming, if not for the overwhelming fear of being murdered.
He tried to plan what he would do if a Rejected Thing came after him. He realized he’d also forgotten his fear of them, his longtime neighbors. But he was no longer sick from the soars and weakness that came from malnutrition, and a steel hunting knife was a lot more deadly than a sharp piece of bone. To his surprise he realized there wasn’t a single one he could think of who could survive a fight with him now, and he was pretty sure he knew them all. Of course if things went poorly a few hours from now, a single one of them wouldn’t be his problem.
Spencer walked a horseshoe path around the north end of the forest. Snacking on an energy bar from his backpack, the hill and mansion always at his left just a little ways out of view. Finally arriving near Nanny’s bone pile just as the sun began to darken. He sensed the presence of Rejected Things nearby, caught a few shadowy glimpses in the distance. A few wasn’t enough for what he had in mind though. He needed to see all of them, and the only time that happened was during a feeding.
The feedings didn’t happen every night. But over time he’d noticed that the bodies of the failed experiments tended to remain in Nanny Gurdy’s basement for a couple days or so before being dragged in their half devoured state to the bone pile behind the tall hedges. Which meant he was going to have to go to one of the few places in Nowhere Blvd. he never had. As dusk fell there was no need to wait for dark. Nanny would be at the long cabin saying goodnight to the latest group of “recruits.” The comfy house at the edge of the woods would be abandoned for a little while.
At least theoretically, he thought with some trepidation. He could never be entirely sure what it was in Nanny’s basement that gnawed at the bodies before delivering them to the starving masses. The answer seemed fairly obvious after a while, horrible as it was to contemplate. But on the other hand, maybe there was a completely separate monster living in her basement.
Moving around the hedge to within view of the house he felt very exposed. Walking crouched down in stealth seemed silly given the sun still shining down on him. But it would be all too easy for someone to be standing inside that kitchen looking out at him, the glare preventing him from seeing he was walking into a trap. Having no option for stealth, he decided on speed instead and made a dead run to the trapdoors outside the kitchen that lead into the cellar.
Not surprisingly they were locked. But the wood of the doors was anything but new, making it easy to pry the lock out with the hunting knife. The doors came open revealing a short flight of stairs leading down into the darkness. He wished that his night vision goggles hadn’t broke, and wished even more fervently that he’d been able to get his hands on a gun.