Shadows from the Past -- Chapter 61 of 73

Shadows from the Past
Copyright A Strange Geek, 2012

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The first few lazy flakes of snow wafted down as the last recognizable signs of civilization fell away on the road north out of town. The view was not enough to distract Diane after the lapse in the conversation.

The physical sensation of arousal was getting worse. It had started shortly after Richie and Cassie had visited the guest room. She had hoped she was only picking up vibes from that, yet it had persisted after they were done.

She squirmed and let out her breath as a soft, husky sigh. She wondered if Jason were doing this to her deliberately, or if she were sharing in a sexual experience he was having. Didn't Melinda mention that he had two other slaves?

Her mind was still intact, as far as she could tell. All she was feeling was the physical manifestations generated by her enslaved self. Nevertheless, induced arousal did not feel much different than voluntary, and that unnerved her.

"Is that your roundabout way of asking 'are we there yet?'" Debby asked in a mildly amused voice. Diane chuckled, grateful to feel some other emotion, albeit briefly.

"Ha, ha, very funny." Richie glanced outside. "There's nothing out here. Why the fuck would they build a motel in the sticks of the sticks?"

"Lots of towns have motels right outside the city limits," Diane said. "They tend to be cheaper than the ones in town."

"This one was definitely cheap, I seem to recall," Debby said. "And you got what you paid for, unfortunately."

"This is weird," Diane said. "I haven't seen a single car going into town the whole drive. And was that an abandoned air field we passed on the left, Mrs. Radson?"

"I'm not sure if it's abandoned, Diane," said Debby. "It was used by a military base up in the foothills northwest of town. It's since become some sort of Department of Defense research lab."

"Heather mentioned that Brad's father was stationed there. Never let on as to what they're doing up there."

"You think a piece of paper is gonna stop the feds when they want to do something? Tell that to Jason's father."

"Okay, that's enough," Debby said in gentle admonishment. "We're about there, I see the pullout, but ... strange, the sign is ... oh dear."

Diane looked through the windshield as Debby pulled the van across the oncoming lane and over a speed bump. "Oh no, not again!"

The motel was a dilapidated, weathered, two story ruin sitting on the other side of a small parking lot littered with debris. Tall, browned weeds thrust up between cracks in the asphalt. A lamppost had fallen over, blocking the one-way entry, forcing Debby to swing around in what would have been the wrong direction.

"I have to stop here," Debby said, pulling up just short of the covered entryway. "There's too much broken glass, and I don't want to blow a tire way out here."

Diane stared at the snowflakes as they hit the windshield, heaving a heavy sigh. "Shit," she said in a tiny voice.

"Unless you can get some visions outside, this trip may have been for nothing," said Debby. "I apologize for getting your hopes up."

"Yes, but not very close. In fact, I wouldn't come any closer than this, those gutters along the sides could come down at any--"

The back door suddenly slid open and frigid air poured in. Richie jumped outside and came around the front of the van, sneakers crunching on glass, and bee-lined for the entrance.

Debby opened her door far enough to yell, "Just where do you think you're going, young man?!"

Richie whipped around but did not stop, backing up towards the entrance. "Where the fuck do you think I'm going?! We didn't come out here to sit on our asses and admire the fucking architecture."

Richie stopped and gave Debby a contrite look. "No offense, Mrs. Radson, but you're not my mother."

Diane glared at Richie for forcing her into this position. She gave Debby a sheepish look.

Debby sighed and spoke in a low, shaky voice. "He's right. I'm not his mother. I'm not your mother either. I guess ... I guess I need to stop acting like one."

Diane placed a hand over Debby's and squeezed it. "Mrs. Radson, please, don't stop being a mother to us. Just ... just realize that ... we have things we have to do and ..."

The words just got harder to force out, and she was relieved when Debby squeezed her hand in return and offered a tiny smile. She nodded towards Diane's passenger door, then climbed out at the same time as Diane and slammed the door behind her. "I may not be your mother in the sense of authority over you, Richie," Debby said. She went around the rear of the car, opened the back door for a moment, and slammed it shut. She returned carrying a flashlight. "But I damn well will be a mother in that I won't let harm come to either of you if I can help it. I'm coming inside with you."

"Suits me fine, Mrs. Radson," Richie said, and Diane wondered if Debby realized he had meant it.

Ned stared at the four-part number he had just jotted down, a cold, half-eaten slice of pizza sitting on a paper plate next to the mousepad. He still could not believe he had done it, or how easy it would have been from the start had he known exactly where to go in the maze of menu options.

He looked up at the screen. The application he had broken into did not have access to customer accounts, but it did have a customer status page. He watched as numbers changed, showing the second-to-second variations in signal strength to the modem, signal-to-noise ratio, accumulated bandwidth usage, and packets transmitted and received.

What he had really needed was right below where it said "Customer Name: Laura Bendon." That was where the IP address appeared.

Ned pulled Jason's folder into his lap. "Okay, let's see what the next step is, though I can kinda guess."

This was the part he had read over the night before and actually understood. Jason had talked about such things enough that he had already picked up some basic knowledge. What would determine the ease with which he got into the laptop was how security-conscious Laura had been when she had first set up her home network.

Ned found the answer to his chagrin only a few minutes later. The IP address did not respond to a "ping" request, which was effectively a simple packet sent to see if the machine was alive. A computer or router could be instructed not to respond to such requests. Nor did the address respond to well-known Windows open-port vulnerabilities, any of which may have allowed him to take remote control of the laptop.

He looked at the customer status page. It still hummed with surges of incoming packets interspersed with pauses. Laura was surfing the web at that very moment.

"Some," Ned said with a sigh as he grabbed the remains of his lunch and chewed a bite before continuing. "Got her IP moniker, but so far her laptop's locked up tighter than an A-cup bra on a D-cup bosom."

"I can only hope your hacking abilities are better than your ability to create metaphor," Seeger said with a tired sigh. "Is there anything you need from me at the moment?"

"Nah, not unless ya got a way ta have Ms. Bendon open up all the ports on her laptop."

"Sadly, I do not. I wish to step out for a moment to head to the drugstore." He placed a hand over his chest. "The combination of stress and cheap pizza has given me heartburn."

As Seeger's footfalls faded into the distance, Ned glanced at Jason's notes. "Hmm. A port scan, huh? Says I need some app named nmap for that."

Ned poked around on the web and soon had nmap downloaded and installed. He ran it against the IP address and waited. The long pause was telling him what he already knew, that she had nothing worth exploiting ...

He entered the IP into a new browser window. It spun for a few seconds until it returned a simple page with a large icon of a hardhat and the words "UNDER CONSTRUCTION!" in bold underneath it.

Except there was nowhere else to go. No links led anywhere. His only clue was when he did a "view source" on the page that he saw the version of Windows IIS which had delivered the page.

It took some searching through the notes, but he found that Jason had listed techniques for poking around a website to find things which were accessible but not linked directly. Unless the user was savvy enough to protect those pages by requiring the referred URL to be from within the site (which itself could be bypassed with ridiculous ease anyway), then a brute-force approach might work.

Jason had listed the more popular forms of free software that anyone could download and run with minimal effort -- Wordpress, phpBB, SimpleMachines, just to name a few -- and what their likely default URLs would be relative to the main page.

He started trying them in order, but each one returned the same result: 504 Not Found. As he reached the tenth entry in the list, he decided that he would hate that number to his dying days.

On the eleventh, he hit pay dirt. He was now looking at the front page of a piece of software called SuperWords!Lite, a type of blogging software. It was a bare-bones setup as well, with no more than a single post which read "testing testing testing." The post was dated well over six months ago, before she became enslaved to Nyssa.

"Huh. She prolly doesn't even remember she has this. Question is, can I exploit it? Well, if ya knew that, Nose, ya wouldn't be sittin' here talkin' ta yerself."

Jason had not listed any specific exploits for this software. Ned did some Googling and discovered that versions prior to 1.2 had a serious attack vector concerning faking the administrator login. Once past that, another exploit would allow him access to a command prompt.

He looked at the bottom of Laura's webpage and gave a small whoop of delight when he saw the words "Powered by SuperWords!Lite v1.1."

He was about to start surfing to find the secret sauce for this exploit when he heard Seeger's footsteps approaching, accompanied by a second set out of sync with his. From the report they made against the floor of the hallway, he guessed it was a woman's shoe heels.

"Uh-oh," Ned said, his mind conjuring up the worse case scenario, that Laura had caught on to his scheme had had driven to the school to put a stop to it. He closed out of everything and stuffed the paper with the IP address into his pocket and bolted from the chair. "Hey, uh, Mr. S., ya back already?" he started before he had even appeared in the doorway. "Or didja forget ... hey!"

The next moment, Cassie threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly. Ned uttered a relieved sigh into her ear, glancing over her shoulder at a rather bemused Seeger. "Don't get me wrong, babe, I'm glad ta see ya," Ned said as they broke off the hug. "But what brings ya down here?"

Ned detected the bit of huskiness to her voice and wished Seeger would go about his business. "Gettin' there. Think I jus' made a breakthrough soon after Mr. S. had left."

Seeger cleared his throat. "Miss Kendall was fortunate I had arrived when I did. I suspect her driver was giving her a hard time."

"I told him I left a textbook at school that I needed to finish my homework," Cassie said. She rolled her eyes. "When Mr. Seeger showed up, I told Harry that my mother had already called on ahead to insist he show up to let me in. Harry would believe that of my mother."

"So I can't stay long in either case," Cassie said with a distinct note of disappointment in her voice.

"Only if it's not too late in the day. There's some snow headed in this afternoon."

Cassie smiled. She hugged him again and gave him a kiss. She held it a bit longer than perhaps she had meant, her breath leaving her as a desirous gasp. She was slow to separate from him when he drew back, following his lips for a second.

Ned glanced past Cassie. Seeger had turned away and folded his twitching hands behind his back.

Cassie noticed his gaze and Seeger's posture. She blushed, but gave Ned a small smile before she headed for the door. "Thank you, Mr. Seeger," said Cassie. "I'll go by my locker and grab a book before heading out."

Seeger nodded and waited until she was away before turning back to Ned. "Am I to understand you and Miss Kendall are ... involved?"

Seeger stood with a befuddled look on his face before clearing his throat again. "Ah ... I shall see Miss Kendall out and head to the drugstore."

The front door of the motel had been locked with a chain and padlock, but the hinges gave way to Richie's kick. The door swung back on its chain, then fell with a crash when the rusting chain snapped.

Diane gingerly picked her way around the detritus of splintered wood and broken glass left in the wake of the door's destruction and coughed at dust suspended in the air. Behind her, a welcome beam of light swung around the remnants of the lobby.

"This is really odd," Debby said as her beam played first on the counter, then a moldy sofa, and then a moth-eaten rug. "It's like they simply closed up one day and never returned. Not even the lobby furniture was removed."

Diane flinched when a crash resounded from a far corner of the room. Debby's light swung towards it, catching Richie standing before the remains of the cabinet behind the counter where the keys to the rooms had been kept. Several lay scattered across the floor.

"I believe you, and I feel that's the problem with this entire place. It may be just waiting to come down on top of us."

Richie joined them. "Then let's not waste any more time. Let's find the room and see what I can get."

"Look, you want to turn back now? Fine. Hand me the pendant and I'll go upstairs myself."

"No," Debby said. "If you both go, I go with you. But only if both of you go. Diane has to decide for herself."

Diane sighed. She most certainly did not want this expedition riding on her, yet now Richie looked at her expectantly. "Well ... I-I promised Heather," Diane finally sputtered. "And I don't want to go back on that."

She looked at Debby's face, but in the dimness it was unreadable. Was Debby disappointed in that answer? Would she have preferred Diane find some sort of personal fortitude with which to answer the question? Diane had no choice but to disappoint on that score. Ever since her encounter with Jason the day before, she felt like she was being guided, that nothing was really in her control anymore.

"All right," Debby said in a neutral voice. She stepped past Diane and Richie. "But I'll lead the way. If the stairs can take my weight, they probably can take yours as well."

Diane shuddered at the thought of what they would do were Debby to take a fall and leave them stranded. She would indeed be helpless, for they were as far away from the lines as they could possibly be. They already diverged quite a bit in the north part of town, and now they might as well not even exist. She could not use her power even if needed.

She glanced at Richie. Even now, when he was getting his way, he seemed on edge. It was not just the induced lust from the potion. Every now and then he would wince and press a hand to his head, as if he had a headache.

Diane followed along, bringing up the rear. Debby led them out of the lobby and suddenly stopped. Still lost in her thoughts, Diane nearly ran into Richie. She heard a thump and a rattle of chains. "No good," Debby said. "I remember the stairs being here, but there's a locked door in front of it."

"Lemme see it," Richie said and edged past her. Debby shone her beam on a chain and padlock twined around the door handle. While this chain also had some rust, it was far less weathered than the one on the outside door had been.

Richie pulled it, then kicked the door several times. "Richie, that won't do any good!" Debby shouted above the din. "It opens out."

"There's always at least two sets of stairs in any hotel I've ever been in," Diane said.

"Yes, that's what I was thinking as well, Diane," said Debby. "I just don't know where it is." She swung her light to the corridor stretching to the left into darkness. "Let's try down this way."

Diane never thought a motel could feel this creepy. As the light faded save for Debby's flashlight, she thought she saw shapes moving in the darkness. "Here it is," Debby said. "And it's open. Now, everyone, please, let's take this slowly. If I tell you to turn back, you will turn back. No arguments."

They crept up two flights of stairs. The steps were metal and less prone to weathering than wood, but a few steps creaked, sounding loud and ominous in the silence. Diane heard a sigh of relief from Debby, and they soon stepped off the stairs and stood on the second floor.

Debby flicked her beam to the nearest door, which was unmarked, only some rust stains where the nails which once held the number to the door remained. She swept her flashlight to a door on the other side, which read "217". They advanced and found another door on that side with no nameplate.

"We're going to have to count," Debby said. She jiggled her light over the unmarked door. "This is likely two-fifteen." They advanced. "Two-thirteen ... two-eleven ... two-oh-nine ... two-oh-seven!"

As it turned out, the "7" still remained, though cocked at an angle. Debby tried the door and found it locked. A few kicks from Richie solved the problem.

"What a chintzy piece of shit this place is," Richie said as he stepped over the threshold. "Most hotels I know would've broken my foot just now."

"No, it wasn't much, but it was reasonably priced," Debby said as she followed him in. She swept her beam over the moldering bed, the dust-shrouded drapes, and the water-stained desk. She flipped her light up and saw a similar stain on the drop-ceiling tiles.

Diane swallowed and forced herself over the threshold. She coughed at the smell of mold and rot. "A-all right, let's get this done, please," she said as she pulled out the pendant.

"What?" Richie demanded. In a less hostile voice he added, "I mean, what is it, Mrs. Radson?"

"I just realized something," Debby said. "If Penny was here for the reason I think she was, then ... you may see her in a compromising position."

"In that case, I'll all for Diane's suggestion," Richie said as he pushed past Debby's arm. Diane saw the smirk on his face even in the dark. "Let's do this."

Diane nodded. She took a deep breath and steeled herself, then slapped her hand and the pendant against Richie's outstretched hand.

The darkness was suddenly replaced by stark incandescence. She and Richie stood on a plush, clean carpet, and the smell of must had disappeared. It had been replaced by another heady aroma, and Diane uttered a gasp as her gaze came to rest on the bed.

Penny was indeed here, wig and dark glasses abandoned on the night table, the pendant having fallen to the floor. Her long rust-red hair spilled over the mattress. Her naked body rocked, her breasts bouncing in time to the thrusts of a broad-shouldered man with tousled dark hair who let into her with a vengeance, forcing each thrust home as if working off more than just sexual need.

Diane blushed, and her hips squirmed in a vain attempt to release the growing heat in her pussy. All her attention was on Penny and her gorgeous curves, the same she had grown so used to seeing on Heather. Penny's eyes were dark with lust but shimmering with uncertainty.

"Holy shit," Richie muttered. "Fuck. I'm sorry, but I call 'em like I see 'em, and Heather's Mom is one hot babe."

"Why is she doing this?!" Diane cried. "She's married! Why would she want to do it with another guy?"

The man made a noise like a grunted exclamation, the words too garbled to be understood. Diane glanced at Richie, who stared at the man, his eyes narrowed. "Wait just a fucking second, that sounds like ..."

"R-Richie, please, calm down!" Diane said in a shaky voice. "Y-you said he divorced your mother when you were five. That was, what, um, 1995. This has to be at least two years after that."

"It's not that, okay?!" Richie bellowed, stomping his foot. "Look, I don't know how to explain it, but this is just wrong!"

"Richie, l-let me see if I can pick up what Penny's thinking. Just hold on a moment."

She turned away just to get Richie's anger out of view. She hated being around him when he got that way. One of the reasons she had agreed to do that foolish diversion for him so he could save some of the potion for Melinda was his increasing agitation when she tried to beg off.

Diane's heart pounded as she stepped to the side of the bed. She took a deep breath and plunged her hand into Penny's shoulder.

Diane gasped as her senses reeled. Her pussy throbbed weakly with her heartbeat, and her body was suffused with heat as feelings of arousal and sexual pleasure that were not hers poured in torrents into her head. She barely heard the stream of thought amongst the sensuous cavalcade.

... God, I shouldn't be enjoying any of this ... should be just a duty ... just to make people aware ... just to open their eyes ... oh God ... oh he's going to make me cum so hard ... it just gets more intense each time ... maybe I'm addicted to it ... I'm sorry, David, I'm so sorry ... please I'm doing this for your good, for everyone's good. please don't judge me too ... hard ... ohhh! ...

Penny threw her head back and cried out. Diane was slow to withdraw her hand, and for a few seconds her pussy reverberated to the same rhythm as Penny's orgasm. Her knees gave out and she sank to the floor, panting hard.

She was suddenly plunged back into darkness, save for a zig-zagging light beam. "Oh Goddess, are you all right, Diane?"

Diane swallowed and let out a ragged sigh as her climax abruptly faded, though it left a lingering ache in her pussy. She nodded and let herself be helped up.

"I'm sorry if I broke you both out of the vision early," Debby said in a contrite voice. "But first Richie stomped his foot and then when you collapsed--"

"It's fine," Richie snapped, and stomped past Diane and Debby. "Let's get out of this fucking place."

"Richie, wait, don't go on ahead!" Debby cried as she scrambled towards the door with Diane in tow. "Richie, slow down! Whatever it was you saw, we'll talk about it in the car on the way back."

It took Ned long enough to apply the exploit that he felt the adjective "simple" used to the describe it on the hacking website was unwarranted. Simple, perhaps for people who do this all the time, not for clueless "noobs" like him. Nevertheless, he felt a sense of accomplishment, despite having only elevated himself to the level of "script kiddie," a generally derogatory word used by more experienced hackers like Jason.

As snow began to fall in earnest outside, he was finally greeted with a familiar "C:" prompt. "Avast ye scurvy dogs, prepare ta be boarded!" Ned cried out.

The interface was slow. The characters he typed took up to two seconds to appear on the screen, and the output of the programs he ran came in fits and starts. He was tunneling the connection to the command prompt through the blogger software, which itself he had learned was not very swift.

He read Jason's notes to determine which commands to enter to learn what hardware was installed, as well as what service pack level the Windows OS was at. Fortunately it appeared she was a bit lax in her updates; she was at a level which had some nice exploits he could use once he figured out how to open the right ports.

He confirmed that the laptop had a working webcam and was an early enough model to have some nice security holes which would allow him to operate it remotely. The only sticking point was how to activate it without its pilot light alerting her to the fact.

Ned was so engrossed he had not heard Seeger approach, and he flinched back from the keyboard.

"Yep. Connection is like tryin' ta suck up the ocean with a straw, but I figger I can coax her machine inta openin' up fer me." Ned smirked. "Sounds vaguely perverted, don't it?"

"At this point, Mr. Lussander, anything you could possibly do would not hold a candle to what Laura has done," Seeger said in a flat voice. "I need to keep reminding myself of that every time my moral compunctions attempt to get the better of me in this endeavor. Are you going to keep at this today?"

Ned glanced towards the window. "Unfortunately, I don't got a choice. I hafta get this figgered out today, since Miss Sunshine will be sendin' Heather home tomorrow night. I gotta be ready ta make with the pics by then."

"Yeah. But I'll be able ta get inta her machine without havin' ta sacrifice a goat again."

Seeger's eyes briefly glanced around the room as if he fully expected to see a gutted carcass somewhere among the rows of silent PCs. "Very well, Mr. Lussander. My wife will not take kindly to this, but then again, she has not taken kindly to a lot of things associated with this job. She keeps pressing me to retire."

"Ya were already lookin' forward ta retirement at the start of the semester, I seem ta recall."

Seeger sighed. "Yes, and I am still very much open to it. But not on these terms. Not with the school in danger."

"Too bad ya still will retire at some point, Mr. S. The school won't be the same without ya."

When Ned heard no reply after a few seconds, he looked up. He paused when he saw Seeger's eyes looking subdued and somewhat nonplussed.

"You have me at a loss, Mr. Lussander," Seeger said in a heavy voice. "I do not believe I have ever felt such genuine sentiment towards me from a student before. No, I have. From Miss Kendall. And Mr. Conner."

"Mr. S., the whole gang of us feels that way. Even Richie. He just wouldn't be caught dead admittin' it."

"I simply do not like feeling I cannot do anything to help. So many of you seem in dire straits. Sometimes I feel if I had been more diligent, none of this would have happened."

Ned was at a bit of a loss himself. He had never expected someone like Seeger to do this sort of emotional dump. Perhaps it was the fact that they were the only two in the school which prompted it. Ned felt sympathy for him. He had to maintain appearances at all time. Even when he was letting things slide with the Harbingers, he had to make it look like he wasn't playing any favorites.

Ned found he could reply only if he dropped all pretense of maintaining a strict faculty-student relationship. "Dude, look, I'll tell ya the same thing I've said ta both Jason and Cassie. Ya can't think of everything, and ya can't be everywhere at once. It didn't help that ya had no idea that Ms. Bendon was workin' at cross purposes ta ya."

Seeger let out a heavy sigh. "I suppose I will have to take comfort in that, at least until this is over."

"Ya can do me a favor, though. I'm not gonna be done til after Cassie's gonna hafta head back up the mesa. Can ya gimme a lift home? I'm only two miles away, but with the snow I don't wanna hafta hoof it. And mebbe give Cassie a jingle so she knows I got a ride."

Ned scribbled Cassie's cell phone number on a post-it and handed it to Seeger. Seeger nodded and headed out.

Ned carefully ran each of the commands that Jason had listed in his document. If he had done everything right, the firewall would have a few choice holes punched in it without alerting Laura unless she happened to look at her firewall configuration. Now he could get back in at will.

He let out his breath in a windy sigh as he flipped the folder closed and leaned back in his seat. Only now did his heart pound as the realization of what he had done hit him.

The Harbingers had never really violated the law (age of consent laws not withstanding). Or rather, no one outside of Jason. For him it was "okay," as if he got a tacit "get out of jail free card" every time he went online specifically to hack information out of some reluctant server for the purpose of fighting the Darkness. He got into the school systems so often that it wasn't even funny anymore.

Breaking yer own morals, Ned thought as he rubbed the back of his neck. What a time fer me ta wish something I said didn't have any meaning.

"This is extraordinary," Debby said in an awed voice. "I was told it was possible, and Elizabeth's journal suggested it, but this is the first time I've ever come across a bona fide case."

"So Heather's mother could pass on her ability to see the Auras through sex?" Diane asked.

"It's the only explanation that fits, Diane. And it explains everything you sensed from her."

"And her husband gained the ability and almost went nuts. She had to use her other power to keep him in the dark."

"My Goddess, that poor woman! Forced to cheat on her husband to help protect her family. She must have hoped that the more people she could get to see the Auras, the less power the Darkness could wield."

"And that explains Richie's father, why he could see it on his ex-wife, like Richie said in that vision he had last month. Did I get that right, Richie?"

Richie was jolted out of his reverie, having spent much of the trip back staring out the window. The road was covered in a dusting of snow, and it was coming down steadily from a white-gray sky. He was waiting to return to the solace of the Haven lines, so they would drown out the screaming in his head.

His father had not stopped his tirade despite Richie having discovered his father's dirty little secret. He still felt what had happened had been plain wrong, regardless of his father's marital status. The only thing his father's voice had to say about that was to ask what Richie's excuse was.

"You said your father could see your mother's Aura," Diane said. "When you saw him sitting on the boulder."

"Richie, I know seeing your father in your vision today was a shock for you," Debby said in a soft voice.

"Look, I don't give a shit that I saw him having a good fuck, okay?" Richie snapped. "Like Diane said before, he wasn't married. Who the fuck is gonna tell him to keep it in his pants? Shit, I wouldn't, if I was him."

Richie tensed, expecting someone to give the obvious retort, the one he would have given had the situation been reversed: so what the hell is your problem, then?

Richie had no answer. He knew it had something to do with the fact that it had been Heather's mother. If he had seen him with some random woman he picked up, or even a damn prostitute, he wouldn't have freaked out.

"Richie, Heather's mother was not being affected by the Darkness yet," Debby said. "At least if I have the timeline in my head correct."

"That had to be no later than 1998," Diane said. "That was the year Richie said he saw on his father's watch."

"She likely had no idea of that," Debby said. "To her he was another citizen of Haven she wanted to protect."

"Actually, I was going to ask the same thing," Diane said. "I mean, it's great that we got all this information. A lot more is making sense now. But we still don't know how it happened, how she got to where she is now."

"Yeah, I want to know when she got a fucking clue and figured out that Jo was a backstabbing bitch," Richie grumbled.

Silence settled on the van, save for the tires against the road and the swipe of the windshield wipers. Debby slowed to a stop at a red light at the intersection with Ridge Road. "My experience has been that when things come to a head, they tend to come full circle."

Richie frowned but refrained from demanding just what the fuck she was talking about. He heard a despondent sigh from Diane and guessed that she had figured it out. He was sure if he could calm himself down long enough he would deduce it as well. Or if he could get his father's voice to quiet.

He didn't understand why his father still raged at him. He was going to make everything right. Once his mother was freed, they would figure out what to do with Cathy, and they could get back to normal. Maybe then his father would come back, and it would be like the last ten years had never happened.

"Where did it start?" Debby asked. "Where was Penny set on the path that brought her to this point?"

"The abandoned church," Diane said in a hollow voice. "That's where I think she decided she wanted to keep investigating what happened. Either there or the old cemetery, but it's probably the church."

"Yes, I thought as much," Debby said in a solemn voice as she eased through the intersection. She slowed again as she was forced to follow a trunk spreading sand on the street.

"I can't go there today," Diane said in a quavering voice. "I'm not in the right mindset."

"And I wouldn't want you to with this snow falling. You should both head home at once as soon as we get back."

"Just don't get your hopes up," Richie said. "I don't know if I can get a different vision at the same place. Whenever I've done that before, I just get the same one."

"But did you ever pursue other visions before coming back to the first one?" Debby asked.

"It makes sense, Richie," Diane said. "I mean, look at how they've all been in order. I was kind of hoping for one earlier than the ones we got today. We skipped over a few years."

"Hey, I don't fucking control them. Not like I have a little dial that lets me set what year I get."

"If you'll both come back over to my house tomorrow morning, I will gladly drive you over there," said Debby.

Richie could not offer the same gratitude, as he saw it as a criticism of his ability to protect Diane. He knew Debby likely did not mean it that way, but he was always one to react first and think later, just one of the many things about which his father's voice badgered him.

He shifted in his seat. His cock was getting hard again. It reminded him of his tryst with Cassie earlier, and then there was no stopping his erection.

Unfortunately, thinking of Cassie reminded him that he still needed to come clean about sharing his potion with Melinda. It had not seemed urgent before, not until Cassie had professed her friendship to him. Now he felt it a moral obligation, as if he had to retroactively earn Cassie's friendship.

He let out a slow sigh as his father's voice began to subside. He peered through the whirling flakes and tried to think about something else.

Ned grinned and leaned back in his chair. "Okay, I think I finally got something, Mr. S."

Seeger was not sure what had compelled him to stay with Ned after making the phone call to Cassie. His head had started pounding from both lack of sleep and his wife's earlier tirade over the phone when he told her he was not heading home yet despite the snow. Staring at a computer screen, even just over someone's shoulder, was making the headache creep forward over his skull.

Seeger closed his eyes for a moment and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I will not profess to understand anything you have done for the past half hour, so you will need to enlighten me, Mr. Lussander," Seeger said in a tired voice.

"I was havin' trouble figgering out what ta do 'bout her webcam," Ned drawled, pointing at something on the screen that Seeger was sure was important, but he could not get his eyes to focus on the text. He wished the younger generation did not assume that the older one could read font only slightly larger than most amoebas. "Couldn't find diddly 'bout that model. Turns out it was discontinued not long after it hit the market."

"Dead ...?" Seeger paused. "Forgive me for my ignorance. How can a pixel be ... well, dead or alive? It's just there."

"I mean it don't light up. Or it's stuck on one color. Ya can get 'em on LCD type monitors or hi-def TVs. Same fer digital cameras like webcams."

Ned rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, that depends. If it inherited some of the design from the previous one, then we can get somewhere."

Seeger nodded. He had finally become used to Ned's speech patterns. It helped that the boy was far more intelligent than Seeger had given him credit for.

He wished he could get his wife to understand. Granted, he had gone from talking of nothing but looking forward to retirement to wanting to cling to the job indefinitely. He had tried to explain the urgency of the situation, but it was hard when he could give only the vaguest of explanations.

If he were any younger, he was sure she would be accusing him of having an affair.

Even if he got the school through the current crisis, he could not leave. If they somehow managed a miracle and gave Laura her walking papers come Monday, the school would be without a principal for who knew how long. Seeger would have to fill in as acting principal until the board got around to assigning a new one. Then he would have to wait for the new principal to settle in and for a good replacement vice principal to be found.

"So then the question is, Mr. Lussander," said Seeger. "Can it get us anywhere?"

"Hopin' so. The next model I was tellin' ya about had a security flaw. Ya could finagle it inta turnin' on without notifyin' the user."

"I saw someone use one of those webcams before. It had a little light on it that went on when it was recording."

"Ayep, but it's all controlled with software. Mess with the software the right way and ya can screw with the light."

Ned grinned. "Already got it. Little whiz-bang program I jus' installed on her computer. Thought ya figgered that out already when ya saw me download it."

"Yes, I saw you download that program but ..." Seeger's eyes widened. "A program to illicitly turn on someone's webcam, and it was on the internet just for you to take?"

"Well, that's kinda a gray area, 'ccording ta what Jason had ta say on the subject. Anyway, I ain't gonna be bitin' the hand that's feedin' me, and this here puppy promises ta do the job."

"Try it, cross my fingers, and hope it works. Basic'ly, turn it on when her peepers are on the laptop screen and see if she flips out. If she don't, we're home free."

"Even if you accomplish such a thing, how can you be sure you'll get anything useful? I highly doubt that Laura will just happen to position her laptop in just the right spot for you to get pictures of ... well, whatever."

Seeger clenched his teeth. "More breaking of one's morals, no doubt," he rumbled in an irritated voice.

"Well, not quite, but it's kinda a long story, and ..." Ned paused as he glanced back at the screen. He suddenly straightened up and turned towards the computer. "... and it's showtime."

Seeger stiffened. He had hoped to get something for his headache. Instead, he rubbed his temples and leaned in with morbid curiosity. Ned had brought up an application that he had explained was monitoring Laura's connection. Numbers which had flat-lined earlier were now suddenly spiking.

"She's online right now," Ned said. Some furious typing, and a new window appeared on the desktop with a large black rectangle and a single button beneath it labeled "Connect." He hovered the mouse over the latter. "Cross yer fingers, Mr. S."

Ned clicked the button. For a few seconds of leaden silence, nothing appeared to happen. Then, the rectangle flashed several times, and Seeger flinched when he suddenly saw Laura's grainy image staring at him.

"Woo, yeah, heh, I didn't stop ta think she might not be in, ah, a complete state of dress," Ned said with a tiny smirk. "Sorry 'bout that."

At first, Seeger had no idea what he was talking about. He had reacted to the success of Ned's endeavors without taking in the scene. Now that he had a chance to focus on the image, he saw she was wearing only a loose-fitting robe, and from the amount of exposed cleavage, clearly nothing underneath. She shifted in her seat, the three-frames-per-second catching up in jerky cadence, but enough to afford Seeger a brief but very definite view of one of Laura's nipples.

"Oh good heavens," Seeger said in a shaky voice as he bolted from his seat and turned his back.

He heard nothing but the creak of Ned's chair and the click of the mouse for a few moments, then, "She ain't getting upset, or lookin' at the top of the screen strangely. Nope, no reaction at all. This dog's gonna hunt after all. Wait, I saw something move in the ... holy crap, that's Heather!"

Seeger almost turned around. He wanted to believe it was to reassure himself that she was safe. He clenched his jaw and his fists and remained turned away.

"Woo, yeah, that's some smokin' outfit. Shoulda figgered Bendon would ... oh ..." Ned cleared his throat, followed by more mouse clicks. "The desktop is back ta G-rated again, Mr. S."

Seeger slowly turned around and let out a gusty sigh. "I must admit, it disturbs me how you can look at that sort of thing and react so casually to it."

"The implications of that statement are even more disturbing. You are dealing with things that would tax most upright adults."

"Very well," Seeger said as he headed to the door. "I need a few moments to myself."

Seeger trudged back to his office. He paused just inside the door and listened to the silence, his gaze flitting over what had been his home away from home for the past fifteen years.

He no longer knew what to think. Never had he bargained for something like this. He remembered dreading having to deal with what he had considered the worst problems which could befoul a high school -- drug use, teen pregnancy, guns -- but he would have gladly traded what he had now for all of them.

Seeger sat down behind his desk. He had already cleaned out much of his belongings in case the Harbingers did not pull through for him.

If they managed this, if they somehow drove Laura out of the school, he would be left wondering how they did it. Just as he wondered how they stopped Victor. And Melissa. And whatever that damnable school nurse had been doing.

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