Jack James and the Tribe of the Teddy Bear (2 page)

“SIR, WE HAVE THE REPORT for you,” Jensen stood next to Savage holding a tablet computer.

“Just give me the gist,” he examined the tiny hole in the steel perimeter fence.

Jensen coughed. “Residential to the southeast. About 400 units. But that’s a busy road, I doubt if…”

“Let me do the doubting,” Savage stood straight. “And do NOT underestimate this thing. It put our K9 in the vet, and it escaped in less time than it takes you to gobble down a Krispy Kreme.”

Several agents within earshot chuckled. Savage put an end to that.

“Glad to see you people think this is funny! Jensen, go ahead.”

“Directly north, east, and west is the river of course. To the southwest is undeveloped forest. And to the immediate south, a light industrial center…umm, consisting of a lumber yard and a distributor.”

“What kind of distributor?” Savage asked.

“Umm,” Jensen scanned the page. “Toys…L and S Toy Distributors.”

“Toy distributor, huh?” Savage thought out loud. “All right. Assemble the search teams. You know the drill—no stone unturned.”

The agents hustled to the largest building in the compound.

Savage’s cell phone rang. His throat tightened. His client, Davos Mann, always had such eerie timing.

“Hello, sir. How are you?” he pretended to be calm.

“Do we have a problem, Savage?” Davos said in his gravelly, smoke burnished voice.

“No, sir. No problem at all.”

“Are you certain nothing’s amiss? I’d hate for you to lie to me.”

The hair stood on Savage’s neck.
How did he know?

“Well, sir. Actually we do have a little bit of a situation. We lost the creature. But you can rest assured, we’ll get it under control.”

“This is unacceptable. You know that, Savage?”

“Yes, sir. I am aware of the…”

“You are aware of NOTHING!” Davos stung his ears. “I cannot begin to place enough urgency on this situation, Savage. The creatures must be captured—all of them. And that one you so carelessly allowed to elude you was the key to finding the rest. Savage, you must fulfill your end of the bargain. You’ve gotten plenty of capital and plenty of time. Now time is running out. We have to capture those creatures before, before—let’s just say if you don’t have them soon, I’ll be greatly disappointed. And you won’t like me when I’m disappointed.”

Savage shook his head. He didn’t like the guy much already.

“So GET GOING!”

TWO

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I PRESENT to you, omnidimensional energy absorption,” Jack James tugged at the large, white bedspread, unveiling his simple display of three tall mirrors hinged together. “That’s the end result of my dad’s revolutionary technology. It all has to do with the quantum mechanics theory of entanglement…”

“Yawn!” Dillon Shane rolled his big baby blues and Mrs. Adams’ fifth grade class erupted in laughter.

“Now, people,” the teacher warned. She had a youthful look, yet the deep, dark circles under her eyes suggested years of sleep deprivation. “Remember, we all agreed to be courteous.”

Groans of reluctant acceptance.

“Thank you, Mrs. Adams,” Jack smiled, trying to preserve his self-confidence. His teacher was coming to his aid a lot lately, though in this case he couldn’t figure out why. He truly had some monumental information, if the other kids would just listen. They were all too busy joking around to take notice.

All of them, that was, except Amelia Klein. For the past two weeks, ever since she’d arrived at school, her smile seemed glued on Jack perpetually. Today marked day nine in a row. While the rest of the class registered their protests, she sat at her desk, twirling her long, raven-colored locks and gazing at him with her impossibly light brown eyes. For a moment, nothing else existed—no classroom full of critics, no teacher taking pity on him—nothing else but Amelia, radiant in her sunset-colored dress. Sweet Amelia.

Then Wendy kicked her shin and frowned in disapproval. Amelia looked at her desktop.

“Wendy Wurtzbacher!” the teacher barked. “You keep your hands and feet to yourself, young lady. Hear me?”

“Aw, Missus A,” Dillon debated. The towheaded kid spoke a mile a minute. “Do we have to listen to this? Jack talks about this stuff all the time.”

“And you talk about the Seahawks all the time,” Jack caused half of the kids to crack up, including a little chuckle from Mrs. Adams.

“Okay everyone,” she regained order. “Let’s calm down. Be polite and listen to Jack.”

Twenty-five crestfallen students reluctantly settled into their antique wooden seats and the sound of creaking filled the room. Willow Elementary, in a bygone era, had once been the town’s high school. Hand built in the 1890s out of lumber logged directly from local foothills, the building had a feel of a well-worn shoe.

Jack cleared his throat, considered the disappointed expressions, and decided to go off script.

“You guys are into monsters, right?” a few kids perked up, mostly the boys. “Vampires, werewolves, boogie men, things that go bump in the night?”

“Sure,” Dillon chattered at his normal, rapid pace. “But what does that have to do with those mirrors?”

“Everything,” Jack stood close and beheld his likenesses. Three freckle-nosed kids with chin length, sandy hair returned the stare. “Imagine these aren’t really reflections. Imagine they’re windows into other dimensions,” he angled the mirrors, causing his images to double, triple, quadruple and so on until countless Jacks trailed into infinity. “Now imagine these dimensions go on forever. If there were endless universes, then that would prove the existence of monsters.”

“Yeah, how?” Dillon leaned back in his chair, resting his head in his hands.

“That’s a great question. I’m glad you asked,” he was warming up. “Just think about it. Who are these so-called monsters, and why are they so, well, monstrous? Take vampires, for instance. Blood sucking beings with supernatural strength. Dracula, the most famous of all vampires…”

“Ahem!” Candice Rogers, the biggest Twilight fan in Willow Elementary, sneered and pointed at her Robert Pattinson T-shirt.

Jack conceded. “Okay, second-most famous vampire. At any rate, allegedly Dracula was able to transform into a bat, or even dematerialize into mist. Werewolves are shapeshifters, too. Ghosts, demons, even Bigfoot and Queenie the Columbia River Dragon all have the same thing in common, which is this unearthly ability to change physical shape or vanish entirely.”

“Queenie the River Dragon!” Dillon sat straight. “Oh, no you didn’t. You didn’t just mention Queenie, did you? Nobody believes in that stupid legend.”

“One guy does,” added Dillon’s buddy Mike Miller, a big kid with a bowl haircut and gaps between his teeth. When he smiled, he resembled a demented version of Moe from the Three Stooges. “That crazy old Captain Kimbo believes it.”

“Jack?” Dillon glared. “Are you really saying you believe in that stuff?”

Both friends slapped their desks in amusement. A quick squint of scorn from the teacher made them lower it to a light snickering.

“You may think they’re just stories,” Jack told them. “Legends passed down from generation to generation to explain the unexplainable. But I’m telling you it’s entirely possible these beings can and do exist. There
are
multiple dimensions, don’t you get it? Don’t you understand what this may mean?”

“I know,” Dillon spoke up. “It means you’re a nutbar!”

The students went wild again. Except Amelia, of course. She remained expressionless. Jack shook his head, imploring Mrs. Adams for support, but even she’d gotten caught in the whimsy of the moment. She made an attempt to conceal her grin. The temptation proved too great. Already in the grips of delirium, the sight of his sad face made her let loose an involuntary barrage of laughter.

Right then, he wished more than ever his father had finished his interdimensional machine, the O/A. How cool would it have been to show those loudmouths just how wrong they were? While the tormentors pointed and ridiculed, he daydreamed about pushing a button on the device and,
Blip!
he’d be gone, transported in an instant to some other place. Better yet, he’d make the class disappear. Or maybe he’d reach into another dimension and conjure one of those monsters the kids liked so much. He pictured it so vividly…

He presses the O/A and it shoots a pinpoint of energy, causing a rippling distortion in the air which cracks and grows, bursting with brilliance and forcing everyone to cower.

Something emerges from the brightness. It’s an absurdly large paw with absurdly large claws. Wendy lets loose a skin crawling shriek. Dillon babbles on and on, begging someone to save him, but it’s way too late for rescues.

“It’s a werewolf!” Dillon wails when it maneuvers out of the ripple completely.

“Let’s get outta here!” Mike attempts to make a run for it when another hand reaches from behind the curtain of warped space. The new figure breaks from the unknown dimension, a sizzling hunger in its bloodshot scowl, a frothy sheen dripping from its protruding fangs.

“A vampire! We’re all gonna die!”

The immense wolfman snatches Dillon and the vampire does the same with Mike, holding them in place, fussing and squirming. With no effort at all, they lift the two boys off the ground, legs dangling, feverish pleas for help going unheeded. Then something even more amazing happens—the werewolf turns and speaks to Jack in perfect English.

“Okay, Jack. Time’s up,” it seems confused, then irritated. “Oh, not again. Wake up!”

The school bell rings. Jack shakes from his fantasy. He blinks and realizes there is no O/A, no fissure in space-time, and worst of all, no monsters terrorizing Dillon and Mike.

“Okay, people,” Mrs. Adams managed to speak past the giggles. “Class is dismissed.”

Jack glanced at the clock. “Wait! Hold on! There’s more! Much, much more!”

“We know, we know,” Dillon gave him an indifferent wave. “We’ve heard it all before.”

But they hadn’t. Nobody had heard what he’d planned to tell them, nobody except Jack and his father, whom he hadn’t seen in quite some time.

“But…”

“Just face it, Jack,” Dillon cut him off. “Nobody cares.”

Mike lobbed the final insult. “Yeah. Nobody.”

AS THE CLASSROOM EMPTIED, Jack pouted at the old wooden floor and sank his fists into the pockets of his jeans. He’d been convinced this was going to be the turning point. Finally, he would be able to explain his father’s research and the incredible possibilities it held for the future of mankind. Instead, he ran into a force far greater—apathy.

“Nobody’s interested?” he repeated to himself. “How can nobody be interested?”

“I’m interested, Jack.”

His stomach churned with a flock of butterflies. Amelia. Talking to
him.

“I, uh,” he swallowed.

“Do you want to walk me to the bus stop?” she seemed unaware of his stammering.

“Uh…um.”

“He’d be delighted,” Mrs. Adams had to help him put on his goose down jacket. Then she handed him his backpack. “Bye, you two,” she waved. He couldn’t respond. He was on autopilot, watching Amelia wrap herself in a grey sweater. She hitched her oversized, white fabric handbag on one shoulder, and he followed her out the classroom door a drooling zombie.

Amelia just smiled, revealing a subtle overbite.

“I’m glad that’s over, aren’t you?” she rolled her eyes.

“You’re glad that’s over?” he repeated, following her to the exits.

“You know, those presentations, silly,” she giggled, her bright orange sandals flipping and flopping. “Don’t tell me you actually enjoyed it. It’s a form of torture, I swear. Child abuse, really.”

“Child abuse?” Jack parroted her words. It was his only coping mechanism.

“Yeah. Making us stand up there in front of the class. It’s traumatizing,” she touched his hand. “Did you know they did a study and found that people would rather confront death than make a speech in front of a crowd?”

“You…you know that?” Jack felt his shyness fading. “Yeah. I knew that.”

She went on. “I also know you have one heck of an imagination.”

He froze in his tracks. She walked two steps before realizing he’d stopped. Then she turned and flashed a grin. He got the feeling she knew what he was thinking, and it gave him the creeps.

“Did I hit a nerve?” she asked.

“No. I just,” he stammered. His daydreaming episodes were becoming more and more frequent, and he was having difficulty keeping them secret. “How’d you know?”

“It wasn’t hard to spot. You just stood there for a few seconds. And it looked like you were seeing something, something no one else could see. What’s with that?”

He started walking again, mindful the bus drivers around there didn’t wait for dawdlers. “Is it that obvious? I-I do have a pretty active imagination.”

“Hey, it’s all right. So you’re a little different. I like that about you,” she watched him out of the corner of her eye. “Besides, it’s good to be different. I pride myself in being different.”

“Different, huh? Is that why you’re here in Willow? Because you’re different?”

She shot a glare at him. “What do you know? What have people been saying?”

“Nothing,” he didn’t want to lie. He didn’t want to tell her the truth, either. People
were
talking.

“That’s okay. Small towns and gossip go hand in hand, I guess.”

“So, can you tell me why you had to leave your hometown and move here to Willow?”

She examined the floor. “I’d rather not. Can you tell me what you were daydreaming about?”

It was his turn to study his own feet. “I’d rather not.”