“Are you alright?” she asked him tenderly.
“Difficult to explain,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’m fine.”
“K. You say the word and we’ll bail. You’re more important than getting readings on this place. There are, according to fiction, hundreds of Fata Morganas, but there is only one Stephen Murphy.”
Murphy stepped back amused and endeared by her statement. “Thank you, Mia. Let’s see if we can free Paul’s wife from this place and get the hell out of here.”
“Your language is appalling,” Mia sniffed.
Murphy opened his mouth to say something but caught the twinkle in her eye and just nodded.
“Hey, you two, stop messing around,” Mike hissed from the window. “We’re to be at tea in five minutes.”
“I believe you and Audrey were invited and not us,” Mia reminded him. “We’ll explore while you keep Battle-axe Brewster occupied.”
Mike and Audrey left the blue room and headed for the front stairs.
“I see you’ve become acquainted with the Murphys,” Mrs. Brewster said from behind them.
Mike whirled around and smiled. “You gave me a start Mrs….”
“Amelia,” she supplied with a girlish giggle.
“Amelia it is then. Amelia, in my line of work I find it valuable to get to know my neighbors. You never know when you’ll make a good connection.”
“Didn’t you find them an odd couple? She’s so snooty and he, well, so common,” she said, linking her arm with Mike’s, causing Audrey to let go and fall into step behind them.
“Amelia,” Mike said, suppressing another bout of queasiness. “I think you’d be surprised just how uncommon Stephen Murphy is.”
Chapter Seven
Burt finished his report. Ted typed the account out while Cid plied the investigator with hot drinks and sugary snack cakes. Maggie was curled up under Mia’s lounge chair and was chewing on the rawhide bone Ted had produced from one of his many file drawers. This came from file drawer R, for reward.
“I’m out a backpack full of equipment, my computer bag with my laptop in it, and all the spare clothes I brought with me, including…”
“Your lucky shorts?” Ted asked.
“No I have them on. How’d you know I… never mind,” Burt said.
“We found your laptop, but it’s going to need some TLC before you’ll be able to use it,” Ted told him. “We found it abandoned in the snow,” he explained, “not far from your car. That’s where Murphy first saw the ley line segment. Mia and he would have taken a trip in it right away, but we all decided we needed more information before she chanced a trip in the disrupted line.”
“Mia shouldn’t be risking herself this way. Neither, come to think of it, should Mike and Audrey be in that place. I’m telling you, the Dew Drop Inn is a living thing.”
“If all goes according to plan,” Cid started, “Mike and Audrey will leave in the morning just like all the other lost travelers have, with the exception of you. Mia and Murphy will abandon the inn as soon as Paul Swanson can convince his wife to leave the inn with him.”
“Millie, Paul’s wife, does seem to be puzzled by the constant morning’s chores and flip flop weather,” Burt admitted.
“Let’s address that for a moment,” Ted requested. “You’re telling us that it is winter and summer at the same time?”
“No, but within minutes of each other.”
“It’s as if the place is trying to maintain the integrity of how it was when the meteorite struck,” Ted reasoned.
“What meteorite?” Burt asked.
“OMG, dude, you don’t know. We figured out what turned the Dew Drop Inn into a Fata Morgana,” Ted said and brought Burt up to speed on what they had discovered.
“So, if it’s bouncing between two ley lines happily, why did it turn on me when I challenged it?” Burt asked.
“Paul mentioned to Mia that the Brewster family made it their policy that no traveler would go without a bed for the night. Many times the family bunked out in the kitchen so any last minute guests could sleep comfortably in their rooms,” Ted said.
“So?”
“I know you’ve been in places, houses, stores, restaurants, where the personality of the owners seeped into the very walls of the place.”
“Are we talking atmosphere?” Burt scoffed.
“No, we are talking about a building evolving into a living entity, taking on the character of the people within,” Cid said. “Ted, Mia and I believe that the reason the inn stops to cater to lost travelers is because that’s what the owners of the inn would have wanted it to do. Somehow when lost and depleted travelers cross the ley line, their worry, and perhaps exhaustion, summons the inn. We took your calculations and used them to call the Dew Drop to us.”
Burt, who was just now getting a buzz from the coffee and sugar the boys had plied him with, lit up. “Eureka, Holmes, Watson, I think you’ve got it! All this time I was thinking that it was just my math that would predict when and where the inn would materialize.”
“You didn’t factor in that it doesn’t stop every time,” Ted said yawning.
“Are we keeping you up, Watson?” Cid asked.
“No, just experiencing suggestibility,” Ted answered. “You mentioned exhaustion, and I became tired. How about talking about something upbeat and dramatic?”
“Like your imminent death if we don’t get back on target?” Cid warned.
“That’ll do it,” Ted said, sitting up in his chair.
“How is it that I could survive or even enter a ley line?” Burt asked. “According to Mia, a flesh and blood human can’t see ley lines. How could a person walk through the line and not even get a tingle, let alone be pulled along in it.”
“We don’t know exactly how the inn is able to do all the things it does. We’re hoping Mike and Audrey will be able to bring back readings on the place. One thesis is that when the meteorite hit the ground, it sent an energy wave into the ley line along with the inn. This energy has maintained the inn’s integrity…”
“Just like it was on that fateful summer day,” Burt added. “But there’s more. The inn thinks. It expresses itself through Mrs. Brewster. She waffles between being a good hostess and a strict warden. She didn’t like me much.”
“Could be, the inn sensed that all wasn’t kosher with you. You used the inn’s hospitality and in return questioned its existence,” Ted deduced.
“So what’ll we do?” Burt asked. “Do we let it continue drawing in guests, performing its function?”
“You tell us. The test will be whether it lets Mike and Audrey leave in the morning. If not, it’s a sign that it has evolved into something besides the oasis it has been for the last few decades,” Cid said.
“Do you think I caused this change?” Burt asked.
“I don’t really know. Every guest that stayed probably left a part of themselves there. Not that they were aware they were doing so. We fear that the FM will build up too much energy and explode,” Cid said.
“It’s been stable for decades,” Burt argued.
So was Mount St. Helens…” Ted said, getting up to check on his wife’s resting body. “Energy can’t continue to build without a release mechanism.”
“What happens to something that explodes in a magnetic gridlock?” Burt asked.
“What do you think happens?” Ted inquired.
“You’re the science guys; you tell me,” Burt insisted.
“It implodes, sucks in everything around it first then explodes outward. It may shoot downward into the earth or upward into space. All I know is that it will impact this area,” Ted answered him.