IX: In Which More Is Revealed

“That just leaves you, Steve.”  Colin said, strangely eager to finally hear Steve’s tale.

“Well, my ‘gift’ is a bit like Sam’s.  I guess you could call us ‘circumstantially gifted’.  It’s not something that’s part of me, it’s just, well, there’s this bird.”  Steve paused to collect his thoughts.  “It just started showing up recently, but there’s this big, black bird that shows up at my window in the middle of the night, gets my attention and leaves things on my windowsill.  The first time it was my car keys.  They went missing the week before, then this bird shows up and puts them on my windowsill.  The next time was this thing.”  He pulled a pen out of his pocket and held it up.

It was a sturdy, expensive looking, black ballpoint.  Colin reached up for it and Steve handed it over, gesturing for him to pass it around.  It was heavy for a pen, probably solid metal casing.  Engraved on it were the words “Steven Caldwell and Assoc.” in silver letters.  Below that, where there might be a web address or phone number, were scratches down to the bare metal, obliterating whatever was there.  Instead there was a crude eye drawn in black in the middle of the scratched area.  Colin passed it to Xander who looked and passed it on.

“Have you ever seen that pen before?”  Colin asked.

“Nope, and before you ask, I don’t have a law firm or anything like that.  Google gives nothing relevant for the search, and I went all the way to page ten.”  Sam gave an impressed whistle.

Ron had pulled out his phone and was taking a picture of the pen.  “And the eye symbol?  Have you seen it before?”

“Just a couple of places.”  Steve said.  His usual cocky, carefree attitude had disappeared, replaced by a kind of scared tension.  “First time was here.”  He pulled out his car keys, showing them a small key with the same symbol on it.  “It was on there when Jake left them for me.”  Ron took the keys and took another picture.  “That’s the glove box key.”

“The other place was here.”  Steve said, reaching into the front pocket of his backpack and bringing out a small rectangular plastic box.  He turned to Sam.  “This is called an ‘Audio Cassette’, or ‘Tape’ as they said back in ancient times.  I looked it up and the internet says people used them to record music on.”

“Dick.”  Sam laughed.

Colin looked at it.  It was most definitely an old cassette tape in its case, the kind you would buy blank and record your own music onto.  This one had the eye symbol marked on the liner where the song list was supposed to be written, then again on the cassette itself where one would normally write the title.

“Let me guess. That was what was in your glove compartment.”  Jane said as Ron took more pictures.

“Bing, bing, bing!  Give the lady a Kewpie Doll.”  Steve smirked.

“Have you listened to it?”  Selena asked.

Steve waved his hand in a dismissive way.  “Ancient technology like that?  They don’t even sell players for them in the stores anymore.  I’ve ordered something off eBay, but I haven’t gotten it yet.  What kind of person still has stuff like this, anyway?”

Alex’s eyes widened and she turned to Xander.  “Isn’t Uncle Skip’s Walkman still in the back of the van?”

“Yeah!”  Xander said.  “Colin, you got a mike jack and speakers on your laptop?  I’ll  grab an audio cable so we can plug it in and we can all listen if everybody’s got time.”

Colin checked his phone.  It was only 4:13.  He nodded to Xander who looked around at everyone.  Nobody seemed to have any urge to leave yet and most seemed excited to hear the tape.

“Be back in a minute.”  Xander got up and walked out.

As he got up, he appeared to draw the attention of a guy leaving the coffee counter toward their table.  A look of recognition crossed the guy’s  features as he saw Steve.  He started toward them.

“Yo, Steve!”  He called as he approached.  He was a slim African American in his early twenties, dressed nicely in a leather jacket and jeans.  “I was gonna give you this at home tonight, but since you here, I got you that prepaid Visa you wanted to set up your Brazzers account.”  He pulled a card out of his back pocket and tossed it to Steve.  “Don’ be too noisy with that s**t tonight, and wear your headphones.  ‘Quan an me are gon’ be mixing some s**t and we don’ need any background effects.  Y’hear me?”  He laughed, giving Steve a complicated fist bump/handshake combo and half-hug.  “Who’s your friends?”

“Book Club.”  Steve said.  “Everybody, this is my roommate, Nate.”  Nate nodded to the group, turned to Steve, said he’d leave them to it,  and went over to a corner table where he set up his own laptop, put on a set of professional looking headphones and seemed to tune out the outside world.

“Brazzers account?”  Selena looked at Steve, one eyebrow raised.

“Nate likes to try to embarrass me in front of new people.”  Steve waved it off.  Colin made a mental note to find out what ‘Brazzers’ was and why it would be embarrassing.

Steve’s roommate was quickly forgotten when Xander came back, carrying the Walkman and a couple of cable bundles, neatly bound with twist-ties.

He set up a blocky AC adapter, plugged it into an outlet, connected it to the portable cassette player, then ran the double-ended audio cable from it to Colin’s laptop.

Colin opened an audio-capture program, plugged in his external speakers and adjusted  the volume to a level he felt would be appropriate to let everyone at the table hear without disturbing everyone else in the coffee house.  Everyone moved in closer and leaned forward to hear.  Colin made eye contact with Xander and nodded as he started the audio-capture.  Xander pressed ‘Play’.

Tension was high around the table as the characteristic hissing whir started up, then was drowned by music from the speakers.

Colin wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but was quite certain Lionel Richie hadn’t made the list.  “I’ve been alone with you inside my mind.”  Lionel sang.  “And in my dreams I’ve kissed your lips a thousand times.”

Alex giggled.  “Someone’s got it bad for you, Steve.”  She whispered.  Jane smiled and shooshed her.

“Hello.”  Lionel continued, oblivious to the interruption.  “Is it me you’re looking for?”  The song continued all the way through completely normally; the same studio-recorded version everyone had heard hundreds of times on soft rock stations or over the speakers at discount department stores.  Confusion reigned across everyone’s features all the way through, even as the outro faded.  The sudden transition as the next song started was jarring, as the unmistakable sound of the Red Hot Chili Peppers played.

“The f**k?”  Steve stared at the Walkman as if it would answer him.  Instead, Anthony Kedis continued to sing about how depressed his friends are.

“Holy s**t!  It’s a mixtape!”  Selena covered her mouth with her hand.

“Wait.  Someone stole my car keys and sent a trained bird to give me their mixtape?  This viral marketing s**t is getting out of hand.”  Steve laughed.

“Not that kind of mixtape.”  Selena said as Flea played his riffs.  “A real mix-tape.  We used to make them for each other all the time in the Nineties.”  She looked at Xander.  “Skip ahead to the next one, we can listen to the whole thing later for any weirdness.”

Colin looked at his computer as it recorded things and thought to protest, then looked at the time, realizing that everyone might not have the time to fully listen to an hour-long tape right now.

Xander fast-forwarded and found the end of the song.  The next one started up right away: ‘Do you believe in Magic?’ by The Lovin’ Spoonful.  An oldie. “This is a crappy mixtape, if that’s what it is.”  He said.  “These songs don’t go together at all.”

“It’s the song titles.  They’re spelling out a message.”  Ron said.  “Listen:  ‘Hello, My Friends, Do You Believe in Magic?’.  That’s a sentence!”  He seemed excited.  “What’s next?”

Xander fast-forwarded again.  The Lovin’ Spoonful gave way to The Beatles.

“Come Together!”  Jane slapped an imaginary button on the table as if she were on some kind of song naming game show.

Colin made a note as Xander moved on to the next song.  Hip-hop?

“That’s ‘November 18th’ by Drake.”  Steve said.

“I don’t know that one.”  Sam tilted his head.

“Trust me, I’ve heard it.”  Steve replied, giving a pointed look across the room at his roommate, Nate.

“I know it too.  It comes up on my dash every year on that date.”  Alex said wearily.  “Kind of like how every year on October first, everyone posts about waking up Green day?”

“Yeah. Next.”  Xander said, pressing Fast-Forward again.  He found the next song and let it play.

“The Beatles again?”  Sam asked.

“No, it’s a band called Nirvana.”  Jane said.

“Hold on.  I’ll admit i haven’t heard all of their early work, but that is totally not Kurt Cobain.”  Steve scoffed.

“Wrong Nirvana.  This was a band from the UK back in the Sixties.  That’s why Sam thought they were the Beatles.”  Jane said.  “This is ‘In The Courtyard of The Stars’.  It’s from a concept album.  Some people say it was the first Rock Opera.

“If she says ‘you’ve probably never heard of them’  I will totally lose my s**t.”  Xander whispered.  Alex shot him a reprimanding look.

Next up was The Jackson Five with ‘I’ll Be There’, followed by ‘In The Midnight Hour’ by Wilson Pickett.  Then, silence.

“You’re right, Xander.  Worst mixtape ever.  Somebody put iTunes on ‘Play All’ and ‘Shuffle’, then recorded it.  Mystery solved.  Nice meeting everyone.”  Steve moved to get up from the table.

“Hello, my friends, do you believe in magic?  Come together November Eighteenth in the courtyard of the stars.  I’ll be there in the midnight hour.”  Ron read from his notes.  Steve groaned and sat back down with his face in his hands.

“Ron was right!  It is a message.”  Sam was almost bouncing in his seat.  Most of the others were sitting in stunned silence, possibly trying to process the implications.

“Steve, are you okay?”  Colin asked as Steve mumbled into his hands.  Something about pasta?  “Are you diabetic?  Do you need food?”

Steve raised his head and slowly looked up at him.  His eyes made Colin think of a trapped animal, slightly wild.  “I don’t want to be in a creepypasta.” He said plaintively.

“What’s a ‘creepy pasta’?”  Colin asked, confusedly picturing a bowl of linguini and clams, with the clams extending from their shells like tentacles, and a cloudy cow’s-eye in the center, winking at him.

“Scary short-stories on the internet.”  Selena volunteered.  “There’s a whole sub-subculture built around them.”

“Right, “Steve said, “And almost none of them turn out all that good for the protagonist.”

“If this is a creepypasta, we’re in about six or seven at once.”  Selena said.  “I think if we’re in a story, it’s more of a Dean Koontz novel crossed with a bad RPG.”

“The message isn’t just for you, Steve.”  Ron said.  “It’s for all of us.”  His voice was so certain, so matter-of-fact, that everyone stopped and looked toward him.  “Whoever recorded it chose ‘My Friends’ on purpose.  ‘Friends’, plural.  And ‘Come Together’, indicating the group of us.  You’re not in this alone.”

Steve didn’t look very reassured.

“So they want us all to come to ‘The Courtyard of the Stars’ at midnight of November Eighteenth?  Where is that?”  Alex asked.

“It could be the courthouse lawn.  They have that big American flag sculpture on the ground.  It has stars on it.”  Xander suggested.

“It could be the sidewalk in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater for all we know.”  Steve said.

“It’s the campus Planetarium.”  Jane said.

They all looked at her.

“How can you be so sure?”  Alex asked her.

“They’re doing a show on the nineteenth.  Music from ‘Across the Universe’.  It’s a musical inspired by the Beatles, turning their songs into a rock opera.  British Invasion stuff.”

“That’s kind of a stretch…”  Colin began, unsure.

“Makes as much sense as any of this.”  Sam asserted.  “And it’s over a month away.  That gives us time to figure it out for sure and time to photoshop up a ticket with a good excuse for my mom to let me come out that late.”

Xander’s phone beeped an alarm.

“We’ve got to go soon.”  He announced, turning it off.

“We should all probably wrap things up.”  Colin agreed.  “Can we meet back here next week?”  He asked, hopefully.  The meeting hadn’t gone according to any of the scenarios he’d pictured, but he really thought it was important they meet again.

“I’m in.”  Sam said.

“Me too.”  Alex and Xander said together.

“I’m not going through this alone anymore.”  Steve shook his head.  Selena reached out and put her hand on his shoulder.  “Me either.”  Colin saw looks of agreement on everyone’s face.

“If Xander and Steve don’t mind, I’d like to borrow the tape and Walkman so I can record it and listen for anything else that might be hidden on it.  Is that okay with you?”

“Take the thing. Please.”  Steve said.  Xander agreed.

“I shall research as much as I can about everyone’s gifts and whatever else I may find to explain any of this.”  Ron offered, rising from the table.  “Blessed Be, my new friends.”

* * * * * *

Nate swore under his breath as his music started to distort and become choppy.  The game’s graphics were rendering weird and things were lagging badly, culminating in his character freezing in mid air wearing the head of one of the minibosses, twisted backward, staring at him from the screen.  The game crashed.

Another line of busted code somewhere.  ‘Quan was gonna be pissed.  He took off his headphones, set them down and rubbed his eyes.  When he looked up, he saw Steve’s ‘Book Club’ filing out, going their separate ways.  S**t!  He really had to piss.  There was no way he was leaving his laptop out here while he was in the men’s room, but if he packed it up, he might lose his seat.  He was gonna ask Steve to watch it for him, but now he was gone.

Maybe he’d get lucky and get a seat at the big table now that it was empty, he thought to himself as he packed stuff into his bag.  Or maybe not.  Some tall old white guy in a thousand-dollar suit was walking in the door, headed straight for the table with his briefcase.  Those type usually took up the whole table for their ‘Power Meetings’, even if there were only two of them.  Dude didn’t sit down, though, just walked up to the table and reached underneath.  He pulled out a smartphone from the underside the table, peeled packing tape from the back of it and touched something on the screen.  Nodding in a satisfied way, he put it in the pocket of his suit coat, turned and left.