They made their way into town, which proved to be as deserted as the developed lands, as Arthur had called them, that they had left behind before. The houses here were more worn and not nearly so identical as the Levittown had been, but they still possessed that air of abandonment that had haunted Nick on his arrival. "This looks as good as any," he said, and led a soaking wet Lene up to the door of number 848. Nick tried the doorknob, which was locked then knocked and rang the doorbell just in case there might be anyone inside. There was no answer so Nick left Lene on the doorstep and went to the window.
Setting his backpack on the floor, Nick removed the drenched sweater he was wearing and wrapped it around his hand. He made a fist and punched at the corner of the window to shatter the glass. Then with his free hand, Nick reached through the broken pane and undid the lock.
He shook bits of glass off the sweater and stuffed it into his backpack, looking over at Lene. "Wait here while I..." Nick trailed off. The five-year-old had vanished from the porch, and the front door was ajar. "...unlock the door?" he finished, confused. "Lene? Lene, where'd you go?"
"Boo!" Her face appeared in the open window, and she laughed.
"Watch out for the broken glass," Nick warned her.
"It's okay. I'm being careful, promise," Lene said, looking down at the floor.
"Hey, how'd you get in there, kid?" he asked. "That door was locked just a minute ago." Nick walked across the porch and through the front door, clutching the backpack in his hand. He looked at the door suspiciously before he closed it and turned the lock. "How did you get in?"
"Easy. I opened it, silly!" the five-year-old laughed like it was the simplest thing in the world but stopped when her teeth chattered. "Nick, I'm cold," she told him again, "and hungry. But mostly cold."
"Allright, let's take care of that first."
The pair deposited their wet shoes by the front door and searched the house for some dry clothing. The house was only one story high, and they found a single bedroom tucked into the back of the bungalow, leaving a trail of wet footprints down the hall. The room had a queen-sized bed, a television, a recliner set into the wall, and a long mirrored bureau. Lene went through the bureau dressers, opening them one by one until she found a drawer with men's shirts and another with slacks.
Nick asked her to check the closet next, and she uncovered a pair of towels. He dried the five-year-old's hair then wrapped a towel around her head. "Can you undress yourself?" he asked.
Lene shook her head. "Can't reach the buttons."
"Turn around, kid," he told her and undid the row of buttons down the back of her dress, letting it fall to the floor. Nick realized that he should feel a bit uncomfortable stripping down a five-year-old, and he quickly threw another towel over her shoulders. "Hold onto that," he said and rummaged through the dresser for a shirt. With his head turned to the side, Nick handed Lene the shirt. "Put this on. It buttons up the front." He became incredibly interested in the scar on the palm of his right hand and stared at it intently until she gave him the word that it was okay to look.
"Okay, done," the five-year-old announced. Nick turned and laughed, looking down at her. The shirt sleeves hung far past Lene's hands, and some of her buttons were done crookedly. He kneeled down and undid a couple of the off buttons, refastening them in their correct positions.
"There you go," Nick removed the towel from her head. "Feeling warmer now?"
"Uh huh. You're still wet, though."
"Yeah, I am," he agreed. "Let me take care of that and then we'll look for something to eat, okay?"
She went over to the recliner with the tails of the men's shirt dragging behind her and sat down, curling into a warm ball like a contented feline.
Nick looked down at his t-shirt, which was torn from where the skeleton "girls" had grabbed at him what-seemed-like so many days ago, and pulled it over his head. He deposited the soggy tee on the floor then used a towel to dry off his hair. It was still damp from when he'd used it to towel off Lene's curls, but there'd only been two towels in the closet for them to use. Nick ran one hand through his blond locks until they stood on end.
"You look crazy," Lene giggled from her seat.
Nick made a funny face at her and grabbed a button-up shirt from the bureau. It was just a little bit tight on him, and he had to undo the cuffs so that the wrists of the shirtsleeves didn't pinch his arms. Nick turned away from Lene and struggled with his pants. The wet jeans were stiff and difficult to remove; they kept getting caught on his legs as he tried to push them down. Finally getting the jeans off, Nick kicked them aside. He noticed that he had two tattoos on his legs, one on each calf – a stingray on his right leg and a sea horse on the left. Wow, I must have a thing for tattoos, he thought, and the ocean. Nick glanced up and happened to realize that Lene was watching at him in the mirror. "What are you staring at?" he asked.
"Your tattoos... and also your shorts have guitars on them," the five-year-old observed. And so they did.
"I like guitars, I think," Nick said, using the towel to dry off his damp boxers. "I keep having this dream about me playing the guitar in front of a crowd of people," he told her, reaching for a pair of slacks from the bureau. Nick slipped them on and zipped the fly, but the waist was too tight to fasten the top button. "And then when I'm done singing, I always drink a cup of coffee – two sugars, no milk."
"My far drinks coffee in the morning when he goes to work. He says it makes him awake." Lene slid off the recliner and stumbled slightly on the hem of the long men's shirt before straightening. "Food time now?"
"Yeah, let's go get something to eat."
After two days of consuming nothing but roasted mushrooms, Nick was starving and knew that Lene felt the same. He lifted the five-year-old by the waist and made her open all the cupboards in the bungalow's little kitchen. In a cabinet above the refrigerator, she uncovered several boxes of cereal, all different brands.
"Cinnamon Toast Crunch!" Nick exclaimed, setting her down. "And Cheerios and Honey Nut Chex! This is awesome!" He pulled out all three boxes and set them on the counter, automatically reaching for the fridge door to get the milk. It was empty. "Oh, right. Go ahead and do your thing, kid."
They were soon sitting at the kitchen table, munching on cereal. "It's best when you mix them," Nick told Lene as he spoke through a mouthful of Cheerios. "You've got to put the Cinnamon Toast Crunch in first on the bottom so it makes the milk all sugary," he instructed. "And then you add the Chex to blend in that sweet honey nut taste. Finally, you top it off with Cheerios, gotta have the Cheerios."
Lene nodded back at him. "It's good!" she agreed.
The pair happily munched on their cereal until they had their fill then Nick set their bowls in the sink and decided to explore the house. Besides the little kitchen, there was the living room – with its smashed windowpane – plus a bathroom, laundry room that led into the garage, the one bedroom, and a negligible backyard. The garage was small and devoid of both cars and the usual junk you'd find in a garage alike.
"How about we try to dry off our clothes?" Nick proposed. "These ones don't really fit me, and that shirt doesn't look like it fits you, either." They gathered their wet clothes from the bedroom, though Nick chose to throw out his torn shirt. He also decided to dry out his wet backpack, so he opened the bag and removed its contents – a couple of water bottles, the kitchen knife, a container of wipes (which were now useless because the container had filled with water), and the bottle of baby powder, which had remarkably remained dry. Setting these aside, Nick brought his jeans, sweater, backpack, and Lene's dress to the dryer, setting them on top of the unit.
"So, can you make it work?" he asked the five-year-old. "You fixed the toilet, and you must have unlocked the front door earlier, so I'm guessing there's more to your powers than just filling fridges and drawers with stuff. Can you get this dryer going?"
Lene looked at it for a moment then nodded. "But I hafta reach the knobs to turn it on." Nick tossed their clothing into the dryer's front-loading door and picked her up, setting her on its top. She put her hands to the unit and then turned to Nick. "Okay, it works now. I don't know how to turn it on, though."
He reached out and twisted a few of the switches then hit the start button. The dryer came to life with a rumble, and Lene jumped in surprise. "Whoa! It's bumpy," she giggled, her voice vibrating from the rumbling of the dryer.
Nick set her back down on the floor. "Now we wait for that to dry." He looked out the window at the darkening sky and thought of the faceless outline people. Nick didn't think they would pursue him and Lene down from the plains, but just in case he'd have to take precautions. He'd already shattered the front window, so the little bungalow was no longer secure. The bedroom did have a lock on the door, though, so Nick hoped they would be safe enough in there.
When the clothes and backpack were dry, he removed them from the machine and led Lene back into the bedroom. Once again, he turned away while the five-year-old removed her clothing and then handed her the white dress, which by now had turned into a dingy brown from where dirt marks had dried on the fabric. As soon as Lene had slipped her dress on, Nick helped her button up the back. As for himself, he decided not to change back into his jeans because they weren't exactly the most comfortable clothes to sleep in. Nick rummaged in the bureau until he found a pair of sweats and put them on. He removed the tight button-up shirt he'd been wearing and decided to sleep shirtless.
Lene stared at his arms and observed, "You have a lot of tattoos."
"Yeah, looks like I'm an ink maniac," he agreed.
"There's some more on your back, too," the five-year-old told him.
Nick twisted around and tried to see over his shoulder but couldn't. "What do they look like?"
"Um... there's a moon with a sun in the background on the left side... and then you have a music note on your right shoulder... and in the center, there's a word."
"Really, what does it say?" he asked.
"I can't read it," Lene said. "K-A-O-S... What does that mean, Nick?"
"I don't know... Hm, Kaos? I wonder what that is." He turned his back to the mirror and glanced at the reflection, seeing the letters K, A, O, and S written vertically down his spine. Nick puzzled over it for a minute, and then turned away from the mirror. "You should use the bathroom now if you have to," he instructed Lene. "I'm going to lock us into the bedroom after this, and neither of us can leave until morning."
"Why, Nick?" she asked.
"Because I'm worried about those things I saw when we were on the canyon road," he told her. "I don't think that they'll follow us all the way down here, but just in case, I want to lock the door so we're safe. So let's go use the bathroom now, okay?"
The five-year-old got the toilet working, and when she was done with it, Nick relieved himself, too. They returned to the bedroom, where he locked the door and then pushed the recliner in front of it. He drew the curtains and then looked around the room, satisfied. "Hm, so what's there to do for the next couple of hours?" he wondered. Nick's gaze landed on the television set, and he remembered his past experience trying to turn on a TV.
"Can you fix this?" he asked. "Last time I tried turning one on, it didn't really do anything..." Nick went over and pressed the power button, and the same thing happened as before – the unit made a turning-on sound, but nothing happened and the screen remained blank.
"Hm..." Lene went over and touched the black screen, which sparked with static electricity when her hand came into contact with it. After a moment, the screen flickered and came to life. Nick's eyes widened in excitement, but then the television only displayed a still image of colored bars and started to make a high-pitched atonal sound.
Disappointed, Nick wrinkled his nose at the loud tone and turned the unit off. "Oh well, it was worth a shot," he said to Lene, setting his hand on her shoulder. She jumped back in surprise and Nick removed his hand as an electric shock sparked between them, most likely from the static of the TV.
"It's okay, Nick, I'm tired anyway." The five-year-old yawned.
He nodded. "Well then, you take the bed, and I'll sleep on the recliner by the door. You can wake me up if you need anything." Nick tucked Lene into bed and told her goodnight. Then he took a seat in the recliner, pulling a handle on its side to trigger the leg rest. He reached over to flip the light switch, but thinking better of it, he left it on, remembering that light was his friend. Eventually, Nick was able to fall asleep – but not before wondering if those invisible cut-out people were going to attack them in the night.
...
He woke the next morning to hands on his shoulders and a hysterical Lene shaking him. "Nick! Nick!" she cried. "Nick, help me!"
"What's wrong?!" he started, awake. Nick couldn't move because she had climbed on top of him and was clinging to him frantically. "Is it the faceless people, are they here?" But it couldn't be them. It was daylight, he realized.
"They got my parents! The bad men, they hurt Mamma and Pappa. They were after me, too!"
"Wait... what?" Nick was confused. She didn't seem to be in any apparent danger, so he had no idea what she was talking about. Nick looked at the five-year-old on top of him and saw that she wasn't a five-year-old any longer. Lene's curly, dark hair had grown longer and fell across her arms and back, and her white dress was different now and clean again though in a similar style as before, but her amber eyes hadn't changed at all. They glinted with the same topaz and gold flecks, and right now those eyes were filled with tears.
"You gotta help them, Nick!" she begged him urgently. "Günter got the bad guys, but he won't go back to help my parents. He says it's too late." The girl broke into a terrified wail and wept against his bare shoulder.
Nick sat up and put his arms around her. "Lene. Lene..." he said her name calmingly. "Whatever you're thinking of, that's not happening right now. There's no one here who's going to hurt you," he told her, rubbing her back. She cried harder. "It's okay, kid, it's okay. I'm here, I'll protect you... You don't have to worry. You're safe now."
"But my parents..." her voice was muffled against his skin. "Those bad men killed them."
Nick's hand stopped in shock. When had her parents died? "Did you see it happen?"
The girl pulled back from his arms and nodded, her face stained from crying. "They came to our house and were fighting with Mamma and Pappa. There was... all this bright light and then... and then it happened and they tried to come after me," she sobbed. "Bruno tried to protect me... they got him, too. Those bad guys came after me next, and I thought they – thought they were going to kill me," Lene's voice caught and her eyes filled with fresh tears.
"Shh... no one's going to hurt you now," Nick soothed, stroking her long hair gently. "What happened next, baby? How did you get away?"
She choked back another sob. "I couldn't," she told him. "There was nowhere for me to run. The bad men put their hands up towards me... But, but then Günter showed up."
His eyes widened in shock. "Günter? Are you sure?" She nodded. "What happened? What did he do when he got there?"
"He saved me," the girl said numbly. "He fought those guys and there was more of that bright light and then he took me away. He said we couldn't save my mor or far, so he took me with him. After that, Günter took care of me."
Nick shook his head. That jerk saved her? None of this sounds right, he thought. "That doesn't make any sense, kid," he told her. "Günter's a bad guy, why would he save you? He's just as bad as those men who murdered your parents."
"No!" the girl exclaimed loudly. "He did save me. Günter's been looking after me ever since."
"Listen to me, Lene," Nick said seriously. "I've heard so many things about that guy that you wouldn't even believe. He's a bad man, and if you ever see him again, don't trust him. Stay away from him, kiddo. Come on, think back to a few days ago... Remember the woods? When we were in that cottage? Günter attacked us then. Don't you remember that?"
She still didn't look like she believed him. "I don't know, Nick. ...It seems like a long time ago, even though I know it's only been a few days. All these things are mixed up in my brain."
It happened just a few days ago, so why wasn't the incident as fresh in her memories as it was in his? "Lene, when did this happen to you?" Nick asked. "When did the bad men get your parents?"
She shook her head. "I dunno, like last night? Time is all messed up in my head, it's hard." She grabbed fistfuls of her dark hair and tugged in anguish. "I can't tell apart what happened yesterday at the river and what happened last night when they came. And before the river, everything's all jumbled together."
Nick looked down at her tear-soaked face. It didn't make any sense. Lene had been with him the entire time, but now that she'd aged, she was inundated with all these strange memories that couldn't have happened and yet had. He put his hand up to one of her cheeks and wiped it off, then did the other. "How old are you, kiddo?"
"I'm nine and three-quarters," Lene sniffled. "I'm gonna be ten in November. But I was just five yesterday, wasn't I?"
"Yeah, you were," Nick agreed. So she knew that she was aging rapidly. "Do you know why you get older so fast?" he asked.
"No, but it's not normal, is it? The weird thing is, I remember being five yesterday, but I also remember being nine... There's something's wrong with me, isn't there, Nick?" Her amber eyes looked devastated.
"There's nothing wrong with you," he assured her quickly. They sat there in awkward silence not looking at each other until Nick spoke again. "Listen... I'm really sorry about your parents, Lene. I never met them, but I know you loved them a lot. And even though I can't do anything to help them now, I want you to know that I'll protect you, okay? You're safe with me."
Lene nodded. "Thanks, Nick." She wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him.
