This is Episode 5-6 of a serial urban fantasy & paranormal story.

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Part 5-6: Turns

“Ahh, good! Please!” replied the man, staring up at the ceiling in plain relief.

“You’re um, not fazed by hearing some random chick’s voice then?” I said.

“The turns, do you have the turns?”

Persi arched her eyebrow at me, and lowered her hands a notch. I let my rapier slip back into nothingness and folded my arms.

“I might,” I said. “But first I want to know who you are. You’re not Ted Nnn— En, right?”

“Nijinsky,” said Persi.

The dude turned to look over his shoulder. She winced and bit her lip.

“Do you have the turns?” he demanded, eying a space a few feet to the left of where my short friend stood.

“Never mind her. Who are you? Not Ted?”

He swung back around, and wobbled back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Not Ted,” he muttered, after some time.

“Then who?”

“Mmmm, mmm. Mmm? Hm hm hm heh hm ha, hah, haha!”

I sighed, and let him giggle himself out.

“Okay, next question,” I said. “What—”

“Mike!” he shouted, dropping the book and the tool. I surprised myself by not really flinching, but rather leaning back, as I might do if he were a spit-talker. The things he dropped clattered into the cardboard coating below, which seemed to frighten Mike. He cringed away from the noise and then looked after them, doe-eyed.

“Hi, Mike,” I ventured. He got down on his hands and knees and pawed through the mess.

I keyed in to my real body, which had developed a lovely low grade itch all over.

“The interrogation is slow goings,” I said, speaking to everyone.

“Six or five minutes until I’m done with the call. Any signs of danger?” said Deluxe.

“He—Mike by the way, apparently, if that helps anyone—seems kinda harmless.”

Turning my attention ghostward, I discovered that he’d recovered both the wrench and book, and was nestled up beside the bomb, peering at the circuit board. His muttering returned:

“Maybe four, no. But if, no. Two, maybe. There are two turns, no.”

“Hey Mike, tell me what you’re making, and maybe I can find the turns,” I tried.

“It’s a present,” he said. “It’s every present.”

“Who is it for?”

“My prince, it’s for my prince, my prince, my prince. Two. Maybe three, no. But. If, no.”

I swallowed through a rapidly drying throat. “What’s the present do, Mike?”

“You need the turns, the turns and maybe, the turns and then it all comes together. Fast! Maybe three. No.”

He moved the tool into the circuit board and made a small adjustment, then resumed the babble. I pushed off the bed frame and joined him in peering, trying to see what he was tinkering with. The circuit board was big, maybe the size of a place mat, most of its surface strewn with a miniature city of blocky chips and tubular thingamabobs. Probably resistors or diodes or what have you—an electrician I was not. Wide ribbons of wires came in and out of it, and little lights blinked. If you opened up any modern computer and told me that this was its guts, I’d believe it.

There was one oddity though. In a relatively flat space on the board, three fat vacuum tubes emerged, their insides obscured with fog. Collaring each, flush to the surface of the board, were what looked like gears, complete with teeth that interlocked. The strange marriage of steampunkiness to this otherwise modern looking landscape was doubtlessly the component that bothered Mike, and he did me a favour by confirming it a moment later.

He tapped one of the tubes with his wrench, which I could now tell was more of a multi-tool contraption with a weird hook on the end (it reminded me of the steel things dentists use to scrape your teeth). It tinked lightly, then he plunged the hook into a little slot near its base. As his wrist twisted, so did all the gears. Sprinkles of light lived short lives in the murky depths of the tubes. The colour was hard to catch, given the intense bloody hues all around, but I thought they might be blue. Wouldn’t surprise me.

“How’d you learn to make this, Mike? This present?” I said, after standing back up.

He shook the book in his hand, hard enough to audibly rattle the pages.

“And when, when does the prince need it?”

“Time is in and time is out,” he said, even-toned. “Time swirls around like a party boat. She turns one way, smiles to port, turns that way, a blind retort. Turns starboard for the still peace, she turns again for the fell beast. Watch her come and watch her go, but don’t mistake turns for the ebb or the flow.”

“A-plus, very creative,” I said, answering Persi’s inquisitive gestures with a shrug. “But, Mike, do you know when the prince is coming? Or where you need to take this present?”

“Turns, my voice, we need the turns, tell me the turns and we might bring the present.” I swear I heard a bit of exasperation creep into his otherwise flat delivery, and to be fair, he’d been pretty insistent about these turns right from the get go and I was running out of ways to dodge around it.

“Look,” I said. “I’m not super with puzzles or word games, but I’ve some pals back in, uh, voice-land that might be of help. Can you hit me with the ditty about time and the boat and the turns one more time?”

He recited it again, and this time the condo-bound Alena tried her best to say it along with him. We had to do it a third time, because I failed to warn Fergus and Deluxe so all it did was make them uncomfortable when I started rhyming weirdly out of nowhere. Thankfully, Mike appeared happy to oblige. Anything for his precious turns.

“I’ve written it down, best I can,” said Fergus. “The stuff I felt though, it’s faded again, I think maybe the beer killed it. Not ringing any bells.”

“Some developments on my end,” said Deluxe. “Anonymous call has been placed, confirmed via police monitor we’ve a unit inbound within fifteen or twenty. Second, also confirmed a likely cousin to Professor Nijinsky, one Michael Nijinsky—electrical engineer. Resides a few towns over.”

“Maybe a house sitter while Ted’s off in Europe?” I said.

“Not improbable. I do not have a photo yet, still looking.”

“It’s probably him. Can I describe a bunch of weird-ass circuits to you instead?”

“Ooh, please please do.”

So began the tedious job of detailing the circuit board. Mike conveniently left me alone and went back to making things irritating with his spastic chatter. I did my best to fill Deluxe in about tubes and was getting into the finer details and positioning of the rest of all the crap when the doorbell rang.

“Calvary’s here,” I said.

“Already?” said Deluxe.

Mike had noticed, standing up with a hop at the sound. He flung his stuff aside and went marching out of the room, arms swinging, door thwapping into the stopper behind him so hard that it bounced back and slammed shut.

I shrugged again at Persi, who had taken to leaning in the corner, and went to watch the shitshow.

 

 

Continued in Part 5-7

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