Compendium Effect : : Tolen's Trial

Extraction

Extraction

Professor Osbourne Tuttle waited in the second-to-last seat for every one else to leave, especially and namely the hassled mother and her two lively children that had been seated behind him since Chicago. When he left his seat, his toe bumped the lost, and loudly lamented, Pokemon ball and he watched the inspiration for his raging headache disappear under another seat. Until this moment, there had always been a rationale for turning back and pretending he hadn't seriously considered ditching the Son Doong trek because of some text message delivered to him on a burner phone which had been mailed to him, along with a credit card.

Last one off the bus, he paused to absorb his surroundings and the strange odors of engine exhaust and river-borne fog. A tug leaned on its horn somewhere west of where he stood, or it was locomotive, at distance. Detroit was a city that slept, but never well. Not so many strangers, oblivious to him milled about, absorbed in envy, anxiety, greed and despair, the metaphysical, perhaps incidental detritus of every large city he'd ever visited. And yet this place was different, so different from any city he'd visited with its thick air and the sky of charcoal and wooled steel. Instead of his thrill at seeing a new city, dread pooled around his feet, soul-sucking goo that would, as a consequence of his movement, eventually not only attach itself, but entangle him as well.

The bus station phone well stank of cheap tobacco smoke. The floor might have been bare earth for all the cleaner it was. The scratch and flicker of tubed light against scoured block walls, graffiti murals covered the wall. Someone slept on cardboard, near the fire exit, at the foot of a painted saint in green and gold, wearing the face of Dick Cheney. With one hand raised for benediction, the other held a censer by its ornate, gold chain of smoking shotgun shells.

The ring on his right hand pulsed twice against his middle finger and he listened to the world slow down until its speed had clocked down to about half the norm. If he thought of normal time speed as a perfect circle, this was a long oval, creating the curious effect of crystalline awareness in front and behind him, while muting anything at a distance on the left and right. Osbourne's eyes widened a little, his chest thudded and heat rose to his face. The ring only pulsed when he was in danger. His footsteps, the sound of them echoing around him, slowed as he scanned the room. The ring pulsed again, urging faster movement, but he had grown weary of running from phantoms only it knew, fleeing before he was sure its warning was grounded in reality. He spotted an empty row of black vinyl-upholstered seats with kick-up foot rests and went for them. He felt a little silly thinking himself lucky when he was close enough to see which credit cards were accepted. His forefinger ran the edge the American Express card that had come with the phone.

Until now, he had not considered using it, but if he were to continue he had a decision to make; doing as instructed, or keeping his Son Doong plans. The ring pulsed again, and Osbourne Tuttle happened to be looking in the right direction. Something, something that seemed to be following Osbourne, distorted the light around it so that it was impossible to name its shape. He watched a woman, who had the same shade of bottled bronze hair as the mother from the bus. She wore buckskin fringe jacket, now and asked for a light from a hunched over man of middle age wearing a bright yellow derby, a collared shirt overtaken in printed strawberries and lime green skinny jeans. One of the kids, whose shrill voice Osbourne would not easily forget, shouted something unintelligible and kicked a drink machine full of brands Osbourne had never seen. He looked around for the other kid but it was nowhere in sight. A young woman, with the unmistakable bearing and beauty of the Armenian, perhaps Persian wore a blue streak in her hair and pulled two joints from her cleavage, selling to a pair of little men in motorcycle leather. She wore chunky boots that laced up almost to her knees and her hair lay in black tresses to the middle of her back. The ring pulsed.