Law of Kanya
Episode 1: The Family Secret
By Josh Buckby

Chapter 2

The drastically confusing sight brought Kelly to a sudden, gasping lurch back from her desk. Clumsily, she sent all sorts of detritus crashing to the floor and nearly fell clean off the chair she suddenly realised she was sitting on. Covered in cold sweat, putting her hand to her heart, she uneasily confirmed her surroundings.
The room that had once been her bedroom had transformed into a disorganized study in the blink of an eye. Her childhood toys and dollhouse, colourful cartoonish decorations of ponies and fairies, and even her tiny bed gave way to cupboards and lazily packed cardboard boxes, illuminated in warm gold by a bright lava lamp on the corner cabinet. Gone was the ominous thunderstorm; the brisk, lamppost lit street beyond her open window bathed her in a cold glow, and loose sheets of paper flickered across her floor in the breeze.
A sudden weight grew on Kelly’s head. Her hair was far longer and parted rather then permed at the front. She looked down to see her body no longer that of a terrified seven year old but a slender, late teenager. Clothed not in a pink nightgown she hadn’t owned since childhood, but a far more familiar tank top and jeans.
‘Wait, what’s wrong with you Kelly?’ she thought, shaking her head. ‘Of course my rooms the study now, I sleep in the master bedroom. Of course I look this way – I’ve been like this for years! It’s just…’
She paused for a moment as the words drifted slowly into her head. ‘That felt so real…’
“You have one new message! Time – Today, Four-Fifteen pm.”
Kelly nearly jumped again as the wall phone just outside her door sounded off. Her dad’s familiar voice filled the hallway. It had actually been a while since it had been heard echoing in the house. “Kelly, darling you there?”
There was a disquieting pause while Kelly wondered whether to get up and answer, but was far too unnerved.
“Well it was worth a shot, wasn’t it? Anyway, just calling to let you know I’ll be staying at a hotel for the night. The boys are having a big send-off to a good friend o’ mine retiring…”
Dreary, Kelly thudded against her forehead with the heel of her hand. Certainly not the best course of action, but it always seemed to jumpstart her brain.
“…Plus your mum’s out with her girlfriends - what I’m saying is neither of us will be home for at least another day and a half. It’s a while, so if you need us you’ll have to call our mobiles…”
She could hear awkwardness in her father’s voice as he finished. He preferred meetings in person and never really knew if he was behaving right on the phone. “Well, that’s about it. Hope everything’s going well for you and your big man, eh? And say hi to your bro. I hardly see him anymore and…”
He hung up abruptly, well before he’d finished his sentence, and the machine confirmed in a droning voice that he was the only caller. Kelly glanced to her own clock near the window, which read nearly ten at night. Sighing in relief, she realised she must have dropped off to sleep earlier that afternoon. So that whole scene, that whole messy, befuddled scene… had thankfully just been a dream.
“Ugh…” Kelly mumbled. “Really hoped never to see the alien vacuum cleaner again…”
That had been quite a trip, but Kelly fell into a very familiar mindset upon realising she was back in reality. For a brief moment she considered wracking her brain for some cryptic answer to the dream. After such a long amount of time spent having them, the desire had faded into obscurity.
‘I’d be over thinking this like usual,’ she thought to herself, rather happily. ‘It’s just a stupid dream.’
She told herself it would be much better simply to doze back off and hope it didn’t repeat. With a yawn, she squirmed into an especially comfortable position on her chair and went to lay her head back down on the desk.
‘Ricky will love to hear about this one in the morn…’
“WHOA!”
“YIKES!”
Kelly leapt back from the table in a flurry, having settled down on top of another human being already claiming it as a bed. A scruffy young man with shaggy black hair, a slick goatee and a big baggy leather jacket jumped away, overreacting to her sudden bump against him and sending even more trash flying around the room.
“Wha… What’s going on?” he grumbled loudly, flailing in his seat.
“Why ask me?” Kelly screeched. “You’re the one who went off like a volcano!”
Regaining his senses and realising he wasn’t under some kind of attack, he calmed. “Uh… Sorry Kelly.” Ricky mumbled. “Jeez, try not to do that again!”
“Chill out!” she retorted, slouching back against the table. “You usually sleep like a rock. I was trying to doze back off, that’s all.”
In her daze, Kelly hadn’t even noticed her boyfriend Ricky slumped next to her, sprawled out amongst the mess of papers on the desk. His wandering eyes soon reached the same detritus and he let out a long overblown groan, followed immediately by the crack of his skull against the wood.
“I don’t wanna!” he whined.
Oh yeah, Kelly remembered now. Those papers littering the desk were supposed to be Ricky’s job reports. Lots and lots of complex, brain numbing garbage about machine codes and assessments and other stuff not worth caring about at this time of the night. Needless to say, neither one of them had been up to the task. Exhausted and senseless, they’d dozed off together.
Kelly slumped down on Ricky’s back, her arms around him passionately. She always felt safe the closer she was to him. It had been a long and hard road since her youth that dream portrayed, and he being there beside her had been a huge chunk of contribution. At least the last year had gone by relatively unburdened.
Kelly was nineteen now, and in an ironic turn it had been her parents that had flown the coop rather then her. They'd bought and moved into a new apartment in Chicago’s downtown city, and she’d inherited this old suburban place in their stead.
Ricky had been Kelly’s close friend and boyfriend for most of her high school life, and he’d moved in shortly after graduation. She loved the whole setup. Between their dull jobs, the two were always close enough to one another to unwind.
He smiled as she tightly wrapped around him. “Sorry I woke you.” she mumbled in his ear, still half asleep. “I had another dream. Yes: it was another one of those.”
“Oh, it’s been a while!” Ricky said, instinctively and without opening his eyes. “What was it – three weeks ago the last one happened?”
“Now stop that. You know I can’t control them.”
“Yeah I know. So any results? What happened this time?”
“It was the alien vacuum cleaner again.”
Ricky grumbled loudly.
“I think he’s shown up more then anything else I’ve dreamed about.” Kelly whispered. “He deserves an award for persistence!”
“Yeah, if you can ever stop laughing out loud at him!” Ricky added, rolling his eyes.
That dream of hers was no secret to anyone who knew her, Ricky least of all. It was reoccurring constantly, as it had been for most of her life. Her brother’s bedtime story was practically on audio book she’d heard it so many times.
He’d tell the story, kiss her goodnight, and then she’d sneak out and follow him down into the garage. Of course it felt so real, right up until she’d hear the unusual noise, reach for the door and then…
She couldn’t remember anything else from that night for the life of her, and because of that big empty spot in her mind, that part of the dream would change all the time. If it didn’t just stop and wake her up, something stupid or implausible would happen.
The ‘alien vacuum cleaner’, as he’d come to be known, seemed to be a favourite. As for where in the world her mind had conjured that hideous thing up from – that she couldn’t begin to imagine.
Ricky shuffled around and finally reopened his eyes. “You know, somehow I don’t think an alien vacuum cleaner tried to abduct you two that night. Do you think you’ll ever remember it? We’ll ever find out what really happened?”
Kelly frowned, because this had come up before. “We know what happened.” she said, her voice stern as if to remind him. “I already know exactly why I have these dreams. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay, bad choice of words.” Ricky gulped, sitting up and embracing her. “You know I never mean it that way, it’s just… I want to help you move passed it, you know I do.”
“I’m fine, really.” she insisted, though clearly anxious. “Just try to go back to sleep and forget it ever happened.”
Kelly really didn’t want to dwell another second on the subject. Forgetting about it as quickly as she could, she lay her head back down on the desk.
“Really?” Ricky mumbled. “Bedroom’s just next door - you can’t be that beat, surely?”
“It works for you, doesn’t it? You’d be surprised how much paperwork can take out of you.”
Kelly smiled half heartedly back and tried to read one stray piece of paper under her nose. “Dad sends his compliments, but I didn’t even think to ask earlier. How are things at the factory?”
“Oh, it’s casual, enjoyable.” Ricky stammered, until she shot a disbelieving look and he turned pale. “Okay, it’s plain, repetitive and boring, what did you expect?”
Ricky ground his day away at a metal-works in a project just outside the city, and by no surprise things could get dull quickly. “Most interesting thing they did was drop this on me.” he grumbled, pointing at the strewn papers. “What about you? Anything happen at the office?”
Kelly’s choice of job was as an intern at a shipping company. She’d been fairly optimistic when she first joined several years ago with a friend’s assistance. In the end, she was glad to have any kind of income in her position, but it was still a brain dead office job nonetheless.
“Actually, today they hardly needed me at all.” she grumbled. “Lisa took charge and the place gets so packed with people they hardly even notice me sometimes!”
“Okay, so our jobs suck.” he replied. “Sometimes I feel like if we packed up and disappeared off the face of the earth no-one would notice at all.”
Kelly smiled. “You actually made that sound bad. That would be your dream come true!”
“That it would.” he smiled, already imagining it. “How can I persuade you to come along?”
“You can’t.”
“Aw, but think about it!” he snickered. “All we’d have to do is just… drop most of our income in an offshore bank and then discretely buy a few plane tickets…”
“Ricky!” she grumbled, but couldn’t help smile at his optimism.
“I’m just saying!” he snickered. “We leave your deadbeat little brother here to clean up his messes for once, cut the ties that bind, and before long we’re sipping martini’s on a Bahamas beach and not having every little problem at our skulls going bang bang bang…”
THUD, THUD, KATHUD!
What in the world? A loud banging reached their ears from below, shaking the floor under their feet. In a flash, the two lost their dreary nature and were out of their seats. What on earth was making that noise at this time of night?
“I’ll check the door!” Ricky whispered.
Kelly ran to the wardrobe and grabbed the first things she could find, which turned out to be a bright red button-up shirt and sneakers of almost matching colours. Ricky was doing quite the opposite, kicking of his shoes and trying to lose his heavy coat as quickly as possible.
She grappled with her clothes, watching him as he kicked some of the packed boxes aside and threw himself flat against the doorway. In his mind he was imagining himself a VIP bodyguard, or something down that avenue, clearly. When he finally did manage to strip down to just the white tee, slacks and socks he was wearing, he started tearing through the jacket’s pockets. She wondered what was he suddenly searching for, but as it came into view she jumped away in resentment. Ricky was carrying a gun.
“RICKY! I MADE YOU PROMISE!”
“No, wait, it’s just another toy!”
He pulled the trigger. Kelly jumped again with a squeal of terror, but thankfully a little white flag was all that sprang out from the barrel of the weapon. She hastily recovered. She was expecting a squirt of water.
“You should’ve told me you got another one! This is ridiculous!”
“I’d never carry a real one around you, I promised!” he sighed. “But we need something to scare thieves! And - do you know how hard it is to find one that looks this real?”
Kelly shook her head as he concealed the flag. “You won’t need it. Those bangs came from inside, if you noticed.”
Ricky begrudgingly lowered the gun and rolled his eyes. “Oh, don’t get ahead of yourself then.”
He marched into the adjacent room with her in tow. Sure enough, the room across from hers delivered only an empty bed and a dead TV; two signs that her brother was up to no good. At this time of night, there was only one other place he could be found.
“Come on, let’s go see what he’s ‘accomplished’ this time.”
Cautious, the two descended the stairs. Kelly’s younger sibling Evan had been a total freeloader to her parents and now he was trying to pull the same trick with her. Ricky probably would’ve thrown him out in an instant if he was in charge, but Kelly didn’t have the heart to kick her younger brother to the curve, and rightfully so.
Evan spent more time in the city then her and when hanging out in the streets he could pass for slick and cool. Most of it was an act. Behind their doors he was something of a closet nerd, and they didn’t get on much. Neither Kelly nor Ricky owned a car just yet, so the second they took over the house, Evan had claimed the garage and turned it into a laboratory, setting up whole chemistry sets and Bunsen burners in there.
This was where the magic happened – hence the banging. She dreaded to think what he had done this time.
Rounding the turn at the bottom of the stairs, Kelly gave a quick glance inside. Their garage had always been grey and dingy, but Evan liked it that way. He’d managed to fit a mismatched sideshow of science equipment, microscopes and equation charts in there, with which to play mad genius with in his spare time.
One thing they always chuckled at was a photo portrait of himself Evan had hung close to the entrance, the words ‘Professor E. Houston’ scribbled boldly underneath. The nerve of him; he wasn’t even sixteen yet.
Even so, Kelly never took much notice of those things. In fact, Kelly hardly ever stepped inside at all. Whether inside or at the doorway, the room always gave her a sudden feeling of vertigo, and this time was no different.
“Same old story?”
Ricky crept to her side and placed a hand on her shoulder. She quickly shook off the disorienting feeling as he did. “He’s not in there!” she snapped. “If it wasn’t coming from in there, then where…”
“Oh geez… You guys are up?!”
Kelly glanced to her left, where a little archway under the stairs gave way to their laundry. She came face to face with her quirky, bright eyed brother as he stumbled out. That is, as much of him as she could see beneath the frayed, messy brown hair draped over his eyes.
Evan was dressed in a driving cap, a singlet and pair of jeans, all grimy and dirt-ridden. His most recognizable attire, and judging from the careless expression on his face, he probably hoped Kelly would believe he looked like that because the time had simply slipped his mind, but she knew him too well.
“Hey sis…”
“We heard banging.” Ricky said. There was just enough time for Evan to see him stuff the toy gun in the back pocket of his tracks.
“Whoa big dude!” he stammered. “I thought Kelly had you on a leash! What were you expecting down here, terrorists?”
“You tell me. Still playing alchemist? Still trying to create the perfect explosive to compress rock into diamonds?”
Evan scratched the back of his neck. “Uh-uh. This time I had the right explosive for the task.”
“I… was joking…” Ricky gulped, eyes wide.
Kelly looked down and saw a layer of black soot on Evan’s shoes. She grumbled loudly. “I don’t want to hear an excuse, Evan. What have you done?”
“Well uh…”
He glanced into the laundry. She couldn’t see any purpose to him toying around in there at this time. Unless he wasn’t actually in the laundry and instead the…
“Oh great, you’re trying to take over the basement now?!”
“Now wait, let me explain…”
Kelly was too flustered to listen. She pushed aside her pleading brother and vanished. Ricky thundered along in pursuit. “Just tell me you didn’t kill anything!” he glanced back.
Evan shrugged sheepishly. “Might-a killed a few cockroaches. Hope that isn’t too much of a loss to the great circle of life!”
The two rounded into the laundry and quickly found and descended the staircase into their basement. Ricky heard Kelly’s voice whimper from inside, calling his name and urging him in. It wasn’t a pleasant sight.
His eyes moved passed the maze of cardboard boxes and plastic bags stuffed away down there. They were glued at an unusual mass of broken wires, scattered bricks and tools on the far side of the room, and a giant gaping hole where the far wall had once been.
“You… demolished the wall?!” Ricky shouted.
“Now hold on a second…” Evan stammered.
Kelly clenched her fists, ready to take after her feisty mother and batter Evan into submission, but she was beaten to the punch. Like a raging bull, Ricky took hold of Evan’s collar and pulled him so close, he could see up his flaring nostrils. Ricky had been soft in the past, but nothing was going to deter him this time.
“You maniac! When did you do this?”
“About ten minutes ago!” Evan huffed, trying to weasel out of Ricky’s hold. “You were sleeping like logs – least I thought you were! I was just hammering out what the pipe-bomb didn’t shake loose.”
“The pipe-bomb?” Ricky wailed. “Are you serious, Evan?”
Kelly pressed against the doorframe, watching them wrestle and shaking her head. She wasn’t about to defend Evan. One or two little smoking vials of sulphur were the most he had ever cooked up. This time, he’d pushed his privileges in the house to breaking point. He could get them all arrested for this.
There was a huge piece of cracked woodwork missing in the far wall, its edges covered in soot. It didn’t seem to have affected any supports, thankfully. It was a miracle the whole garage above hadn’t caved in thanks to him.
No question danced in their heads more so then why. When Evan finally talked his way out of Ricky’s grip, half disoriented, the recluse smile planted across his face made Kelly cringe even more. Why didn’t he care at all?
“If you’re quite done… it was all intentional!”
Oh, and that made it all better, Kelly wondered? Ricky froze, like the gears turning in his mind had grinded to a halt. “Two hundred dollars!” he finally wheezed out. “Last time, your little saltpetre bomb exploding prematurely cost us two hundred dollars to clean up!”
“That was different! The guidebook didn’t say the fuse needed to go in before step five!”
“This… This is at least ten thousand! Your parents are gonna commit you! You’re bananas, Evan!”
“Method to the madness! Don’t treat me like a pyromaniac!”
“Says the guy who just firebombed us!”
Kelly glanced round the room and a sudden chill went up her spine. The broken bricks and debris Evan had left scattered across the floor gave her a twisted sense of déjà vu. She shivered, not so unlike the feeling she got in their garage.
“Why?” Ricky bellowed. “Just why, Evan?”
“I was getting to that… Kelly?!”
“Baby, what’s wrong?”
It didn’t help that she was in a room surrounded by boxes and boxes of memorabilia; reminders of her youth. Ricky took notice of her subtle behaviour and wandered in arms reach, caressing her.
“It’s too familiar.” she whimpered, placing her head against his chest. Holding her close, Ricky leapt at the opportunity to guilt trip Evan.
“Nice going, Professor!”
“…Oh.”
After what seemed like an eternity he finally caught on, and he supposed Kelly had every right to be mad with him. “Sorry,” he gulped loudly. “I didn’t really think about that.”
Of course not, she thought angrily. Kelly’s stomach was in a sickening knot now. The garage had looked not so unlike this a long time ago. When she woke to howling, wailing sirens. To the worst day of her entire life…
“So… you’re still beat up on Sam, after all this time?” Evan asked, shuffling about.
“What kind of a question is that?” she huffed angrily. “He was your brother too! Don’t you ever miss him?”
“Sure, but I don’t let it get to me anymore.” Evan answered. It was no surprise. He had never been as close to Sam as she had. “You know, you’re luckier then me!” he added with a glare. “You don’t remember most of it! It was easy for you to move on!”
“Are you jealous of that?” she asked, baffled.
Evan’s reply was a confident “You bet! I’d give anything to forget that night!”
“And I’d give anything to remember it.” Kelly brooded, tugging on one of her sleeves.
She’d often wanted to venture into the garage more frequently, or down here in the hopes of finding some old piece of her childhood. Something, anything to jog that long lost memory back. The courage had never been there.
“No more stalling.” she snapped. “Why did you do this, Evan?”
“Well, see for yourself.”
He pointed at the big gaping hole. “I mean, really look at the wall! Where’s it lead to?”
Kelly paused at the unusual question, but it didn’t take long for it to dawn on her. Both she and Ricky had been expecting a crater, and a cave-in of dirt.
That wasn’t quite what was waiting on the other side.