God's Junk Drawer, page 54
“Okay,” said Parker, “counterpoint, though?”
“What?”
“They did send you back, didn’t they? When you were a kid? I mean, how else did you get out of the valley?”
Pyr’s biomechanical eyebrow went up.
Noah nodded. Pressed his mouth into a line. “I think they might’ve. Like I’ve said, the Castaway was very big-picture in the way they saw . . . well, everything. It kind of makes sense they’d send me home because they knew I needed to find my way back here and take over the lifeboat. Because . . . y’know, that’s what happens.”
“Paradox,” said Sam.
Olivia shook her head. “Time loop.”
“Same thing.”
“No.”
Pyr sat down on the edge of the dais with a doubtful look on her face. “They couldn’t send your family home, but they could send you home because they’d seen you come back here in the future?”
“Either they planned it that way, or they set me up to take over here and—by absolute, sheer coincidence—I’m also the only person who ever found the way out of the valley.”
“I’m not sure which one I like better.”
Parker shrugged. “Either way, it’s like you told us. The Castaway was always right.”
AP WIRE
September 24, 2023
Four people are missing and one hospitalized after a routine astronomy field trip went awry.
A group of 42 Monrovia University students had hiked to a Mount Wesley plateau to do a series of imaging exercises with their instructor, Dr. Noah Barnes. The routine trip went as planned until one of the graduate students, Olivia Martinez, began to have trouble speaking shortly after arriving at their campsite. Two other students, fearing a stroke, rushed her to Coleman Medical Center.
Not long afterward, it was discovered that Barnes, grad students Kyle Davis and Logan Smith, and trail guide Henry Gale had disappeared from the base camp. The remaining students searched for an hour before contacting the authorities. Search teams have turned up no sign of the missing persons . . .
Gabe McAllister @THEGabeGabriel7.bsky.social · 17h
WTF Thought my ex Sam and I were ending things on good terms. 3 days ago everything was fine, today he comes back from his work/field trip thing and tells me to get the hell out of HIS apartment. Told him I live here too and he says I don’t pay rent and I’m not on the lease so I can go live with—
1/
Gabe McAllister @THEGabeGabriel7.bsky.social · 17h
—my new boyfriend. Tried to tell him I couldn’t and he says it stopped being his problem when I broke up with him. Anyway I’ve got 22 hours to find a place before he dumps my stuff on the sidewalk so if anyone’s got a cheap sublet or a free couch I can crash on for a few weeks that’d be really—
2/
FOXNews.com
September 27, 2023
Plot Thickens in Mount Wesley Case
one of the missing revealed as a drug dealer with a stolen identity
A drug deal gone wrong may be the culprit in a mysterious set of disappearances during a routine Monrovia University excursion to Mount Wesley.
A professor, two graduate students, and a trail guide disappeared during a college field trip on Sept. 22. The trail guide, originally identified as Henry Gale, has since been discovered to be white-collar drug dealer Joshua Redd.
State police are now treating the missing persons case as gang related and a possible homicide, saying Monrovia professor Noah Barnes and his students may have been caught up in a drug deal gone wrong . . .
May 30
Fellow Colleagues
Please join me in welcoming Dr. Olivia Martinez, who will be a member of our full-time faculty in Monrovia University’s Astronomy Department this fall. Martinez earned her BA in Astronomy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and spent two years on staff at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California. She came to MU in 2019 to pursue her doctorate. In 2023 she suffered a stroke that left her with Broca’s aphasia, but which she also credits for inspiring her pioneering work in multidimensional astrophysics. In her first semester she will be teaching Astronomy and also joining MU professor Parker Sangthong on a joint project with JPL researcher Samael Jones studying extraterrestrial communication . . .
54
BEAU
On the morning of her twentieth birthday, according to Ross’s expert timekeeping, Beau wrote her suicide note.
It wasn’t serious. Probably. Just an outlet. More her being dramatic than any sort of message. Not like anyone would ever read it.
And it wasn’t like she was actually going to kill herself on her birthday. She’d go sit at the mouth of the cave and eat breakfast alone. Again. Go do all the random chores she needed to do for the day. Again. Come back here. Have dinner. Cry herself to sleep. Alone.
Again.
But she wasn’t going to kill herself.
Probably.
She didn’t eat breakfast. She stood at the mouth of the cave and stared through the pillars at the valley. She’d memorized every feature over the past two years and sixteen days since Billy had . . .
Billy was dead. He’d “disappeared” because that fucking bitch Scarnose had killed him. Probably twisted his arms and legs off and cooked him over a fire, then sliced him up and fed him to . . .
No. No, thinking about it always led to dark days, sinking deeper and deeper into a funk. Only happy memories about Billy and Dad and Mom. That was the rule. Especially today.
Didn’t want to ruin her birthday.
Beau threw a rock out between the pillars, listened to it thud and bounce down the big stone steps.
This wasn’t how her life was supposed to be. She knew people said stuff like that all the time. She’d heard the line on TV shows and in movies and some trashy books. She knew having to deal with tragedies, having your life go in an unexpected direction . . . they weren’t exactly unique problems.
But fucking hell, this felt pretty unique.
Her twentieth birthday should’ve been during her junior year of college. First semester. Turning twenty in the dorms. Partying with friends. Probably some underage drinking. Maybe a random hookup later—a friend with benefits or some cute guy from a class or a total stranger because it’s her birthday and she’s doing something wild. Or maybe she’d be in a serious relationship. Hell, maybe she’d be doing . . .
Beau almost laughed at the unexpected thought. The long-forgotten plan. The big dream.
Maybe she’d be doing that year abroad she always wanted.
She looked out at the valley. Thought about her chores for the day. Thought about how far it was to the Pakka camp.
Definitely didn’t think about killing herself.
She walked back into the cave and grabbed her pack. Her wooden club—she hadn’t thought of it as “Dad’s” for over a year now. Looked at her open notebook on the mostly-flat rock she called her desk. Left it sitting there. Again, not like anyone was going to wander by and read it.
Ever.
Ross watched her. She’d stopped talking to him four or five months ago. Maybe six. Every now and then he’d make a random statement. An attempt to start a conversation. Thankfully those came less and less. Maybe once a week. With only her to talk to, and with nothing new to ever talk about, Ross’s conversational skills had devolved to the level of a doll with a string on its back, parroting back the same phrases again and again. The same dead eyes, too.
She left the cave without saying goodbye to him. Because he was just a machine. An appliance. And it wasn’t really goodbye. She’d be back later.
Probably.
Quick check for Fang or a wandering raptor and then hop, skip, jump down the stone steps. She crossed the wide-open space to the edge of Dickwood Forest. Thought briefly about looking back at the cave one last time. Didn’t.
Crossing the valley, all six miles, would take around two hours. It used to take longer, back when she had Billy with her. Or Dad. But she’d improved. Gotten faster. No one holding her back.
No one she could depend on for anything.
Beau followed the edge of Dickwood to the Cut Rock, and then headed straight into the Dead Forest. The gray, barren trees broke up the sky without blocking it, and made zigzag shadows everywhere. She moved quick and quiet across the soft, mulchy ground, her club ready.
She felt the push in the air, the all-but-noiseless sound that shook her chest, and froze. Habit moved her feet, pressed her against a nearby tree. She took a deep breath. Held it.
Branches snapped and fell. Crumbled under massive feet. The air shifted as lungs bigger than her sleeping bag sucked in the smells of the forest.
Fang pushed between two trees, scraping off dry bark and cracking stiff branches.
Beau leaned to the side, not moving her feet, putting more of the tree between her and the tyrannosaurus. How fast had she been moving? Fast enough to sweat? She didn’t feel any sweat on her, but Fang could catch the faintest scent.
And then a thought bounced around in her head. She’d written the note. She could just walk out in front of him. Throw her club at that giant head and close her eyes. It’d hurt, but it’d be quick. She’d seen Fang kill raptors and duck-billed dinosaurs and Neanderthals.
And Dad. Dad had screamed, but not for long. Maybe . . . maybe ten seconds? Ten seconds of screaming, tops.
Could she deal with ten seconds of pain? Of that much pain? After all this, she wanted to say yes, but Fang’s massive jaws still terrified her.
She leaned harder into the tree.
Fang strode forward, snapped off some more branches with his head and neck, and a pair of the four-winged dinobirds threw themselves into the air. Their wings flapped in his face and the big tyrannosaurus took a few lazy chomps at them. It steered him a little away from Beau. Three steps away. Four. Five. Six. And then something skittered across the mulchy forest floor and Fang launched after whatever it was, picking up speed as he went.
She waited until she couldn’t hear his heavy footsteps. Couldn’t feel his growls under her skin. Then she counted to a hundred again and let go of the tree.
She made it through the Dead Forest to the edge of Saurus Swamp. Billy had given everything here such stupid names. She still used all of them.
Wide circuit around the swamp. Don’t want to get stuck in the soft mud on this side. One of the duck-billed hadrosaurs watched her go by. She didn’t care.
She reached the wrecked riverboat. And the Ice Castle. Halfway to the Pakka camp. She tightened her grip on the club. Thought of the impact when she’d hit things with it.
Her pace quickened as she traveled around the tower of crystal and glass, and found herself in front of the Castle’s drawbridge. Another Billy name. He’d only used it twice, but she remembered it. Still used it.
She looked up the shiny ramp to the entrance.
Through the trees toward the Pakka camp.
Back up the ramp.
Her grip loosened on the club.
She went in to see the Castaway.
Beau had visited the alien several times. She thought learning the secrets of the universe might distract her from her life in the valley. The Castaway had tried to oblige, but so many of the terms and things they told her were so, well, alien she’d barely understood any of it.
Also, they had a bad habit of drifting off into other languages she didn’t recognize.
She wandered the tunnels until she found the big room. The Castaway currently had dozens of long tentacles, or maybe roots, stretched across the dais. The central mass of its body looked like a giant purple pea pod with a star-shaped flower on top. As she approached, they stretched out a set of wings, each one the size of a bedsheet, and then pulled them back into themself.
“Forgive me, Beau Gather. My attention was on other matters and I did not note your arrival. Salutations.”
“Hi, Castaway.”
The tentacle-roots pulled back, wove together, lifted the Castaway’s body a little taller. The flower-shape curled in on itself and became more of a head. “Do you require my assistance?”
“I need . . . I need a straight answer from you.”
The rippling purple body moved to the edge of the dais. “Certainly.”
“You told me once, I’d get out of here someday.”
“I said, ‘Yes, you will get out of the valley, Beau Gather.’”
“Right. When?”
“Today. Just now.” A pair of long arms grew out of the Castaway’s body. Their head took on a more triangular shape.
“No, when will I get out? I can’t . . . I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do it alone.”
“Which action are you no longer able to complete?”
She thought of the note back at the cave. The note that wasn’t just her being dramatic. “Living? Existing? I’m . . . I’ve been alone for over two years now. I know you and Ross have tried to help, but I need . . . people. My own people.”
“The Neanderthals are your own people. We are merely life with different origin points.”
Beau squeezed the handle of the club again. “No, I mean . . . I need to know how much longer I’m going to be here? When do I leave? When does it happen?”
“Today. Just now.”
“I don’t . . . Just one straight answer. Please.”
“Forgive me. This is the correct response to your question. Today is the day you leave the valley.”
The words rattled in her head. “I . . . what? Today?”
“This is correct.”
She heard the club clatter on the floor. It echoed in the big room. “You’re sending me home?”
The Castaway’s bottom half rotated, twisting into a coil. Their triangular head softened, and a pair of eye shapes formed. “I am not. As I will tell you when you first ask, it is a task beyond my understanding.”
Had she misunderstood them after all? “Then what . . . how . . .”
The Castaway retreated to the center of the dais. It stretched out one of the long arms and the end split into thin fingers, gesturing to the other side of the room. “Another resident of the Castle shall make these events transpire.”
“What?” Again, it took her brain a minute to catch up, to make sense of the words. Was this what it was like to be drunk? Or stoned? She turned, followed the gesture.
A few yards away, an old man stood at the entrance to one of the side tunnels. She wasn’t great at ages, but she guessed he was . . . sixty-five? Seventy? He had gray hair gone white at the temples—like that Neanderthal bitch—and a fair number of wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. His threadbare clothes looked like he’d had them for years. The first thought in her head, which made no sense, was her grandfather. Mom’s dad. But a nervous smile spread across the man’s face and it clearly wasn’t Grandpa Bob.
Something stretched in the old man’s arms. A tan cat. Holy fuck he had Charlie, Billy’s cat that had gone missing years ago. He looked fine and healthy and sprawled in the old man’s arms while he scratched its head.
“Hello, Beau.” The man had an old voice. Not creaky-old, but definitely-seen-some-shit old. Probably a lot like how her own voice sounded.
“This entity is currently known as Noah,” explained the Castaway. “He resides here.”
Beau looked at the man. The human man. Not her imagination. Not a Neanderthal. Another human being. Who spoke English! “Have you been here all along?”
The man—Noah—smiled again. “Sort of, depending on how you look at it. The important thing . . .”
His breath caught for a moment. He stopped petting the cat, reached up, and wiped his wet eyes with his hand.
“What matters is, I’ve come to take you home.”
AFTERWORD
I was, as some folks say, a very impressionable child.
Lots of stuff scared me, mostly because my imagination took everything and ran with it. My uncle Tim, only a few years older than me, left some horror comics sitting out once that resulted in little me staying awake late into the night for several months. There was an episode of Fantasy Island that gave me nightmares for a year or three. I read Stephen King’s “The Boogeyman” when I was way too young and to this day I can’t sleep with the closet door cracked even the slightest bit. That door needs to be latched solid in order for me to close my eyes.
But the most terrifying thing, the thing that led to so many sudden-waking shrieks and screams and sleepless nights, was a show called Land of the Lost. In the little-kid way of things, I was convinced it was a new show even though a glance at Wikipedia tells me it had to be at least in its first cycle of syndication. The special effects are simple—almost crude—in retrospect, but at the time they managed to give me a recurring nightmare of a tyrannosaurus outside my bedroom window that copied one of the stock shots from the show.
I kept watching, though, because one of the other appealing ideas of the series was this underlying sense of mystery. That the whole strange setting of Land of the Lost was some gigantic puzzle. That there was more going on here, a strange logic that my little brain could almost recognize even if I couldn’t understand it.
As I got older I learned Land of the Lost was one in a long history of “lost world” stories about strange valleys, islands, and plateaus that were somehow disconnected from the rest of the world. Books, movies, TV shows, comics, and more. I read so many of them growing up and still love finding new ones.
And then, of course, I thought about writing one. I poked at the idea of this book for ages, adding little thoughts and notes. At one point it was going to be an elaborate D&D campaign (I hadn’t played in years, but for this . . .). Then it was a movie pitch. And eventually it’d built up enough momentum in my head that it became . . . well, the book you’re reading right now.
Which is normally my cue to start telling you some cute little factoids and easter eggs and trivia about this book and some of the things in it. And there’s a lot in this one. Like some of the other people Ross spent time with over the years. Where that Egyptian riverboat came from. Why Marissa was in Queens the day she was sucked into the valley. Thate’s connection to a sci-fi detective story I wrote, and the long process of deciding what color his skin should be (and then realizing months later I’d inadvertently turned him into a Rogue Trooper homage). Some of you may have already realized who the Castaway’s people are at war with. And Monrovia University . . . well, we may be hearing a lot more about that place in the future.
