Unsung Requiem

by C. L. Stone

  Like the theft. And Erica. And where to live.

  I got into the back seat of Mr. Buble’s car with Nathan, but Mr. Buble didn’t drive anywhere. Instead, we waved goodbye to North and Silas. The parking spot was just outside of some shops downtown. I wasn’t sure of the location, as the area wasn’t totally familiar to me.

  “The task is simple,” Mr. Buble said. “There are two separate runaway teens that have been spotted in this area. They run from adults in general. They’ve left multiple safe homes and foster parents. It might be they won’t trust you either, but more likely younger people than any adults. We’d like to eventually get them into secure housing, even if they prefer to be on their own.”

  “What do we do if we find them?” Kota asked.

  “You’re only here to locate them, and if possible, tag them. They’ll be joined later by other Academy teens who live on this side of town, those who might be able to get information and convince them to move in to one of our secure locations.” He showed us pictures on his phone, one of a girl, another a boy. They were school pictures, each looking bored or irritated and half smiling at some cameraman. They were young, perhaps twelve or so. “They’ve been seen together, so it’s likely they’re looking out for each other.”

  “Then we locate and tag,” Kota said. “It seems simple.”

  “If you can get a tracker on one or both, we’ll have done enough to allow others to follow up later.” He leaned over Kota and opened the glove compartment, taking out two small, individually wrapped packets. Inside each packet was a very tiny black dot.

  “This is a very simple ping back tracker,” he said. “The teenagers seem to stay downtown, so it’ll be straightforward to keep an eye on them. Get it in a pocket, in a bag, anything, and we can find out where they might be staying for now.”

  Kota nodded. “Got it.”

  Mr. Buble checked in with me for confirmation. I only nodded.

  “Do your best,” he said.

  My heart was pounding at the thought of what we should do. One job after another. How did they keep up with everything that went on?

  “He’ll probably want to keep an eye on us when possible,” Kota said to me after we reached the sidewalk and started away from where Mr. Buble and Nathan remained, parked and waiting. “But I told him we’d probably pretend to be out on a date.”

  “Oh,” I said, realizing he was walking very close. “Should we... does he...” I wanted to ask if Mr. Buble knew yet. “What happened with Lily?”

  Kota hesitated, his green eyes blinking rapidly a few times before he responded. “Victor... kind of has a plan. I’m waiting to hear back. I’m not sure though.”

  Victor? Sometimes being in such a large group, it was so hard to keep up. I tried my best. I reached out, gave his hand a gentle squeeze and tried to show some confidence. “We trust Victor, don’t we?”

  He shared a light smile and his eyes lit up at my touch. “He gave up this job he was going to do with you to go sort it out and check with Mr. Blackbourne. You know, early on he sounded a little... jealous about everything. Or he sort of did when I talked to him about it.” He sighed. “Funny how we all did, in our own way. After I found out... it took a lot of talking to them to figure out how I even felt about it.”

  I wished I had some sort of response for him, but I wasn’t sure how to make it better. At times, I felt guilty for how this all came about.

  We continued to walk downtown. We didn’t really have a direction. We were just told to keep an eye out and try to find two people. I tried to keep their picture in my mind, looking at everyone we passed, hoping we’d get to them quickly.

  After a minute of waiting to hear him continue and he didn’t, I brushed my fingertips against his arm, trying to be encouraging. “I feel like I was constantly worried about... you. Them, too, but you mostly. I wasn’t sure you’d even try. And I’d understand if you didn’t want to...”

  He smiled a little. “I like that you’re more open now. Before, when... I guess it was new and everyone was unsure, it was like you held back. A lot. And now you’re different. You’re more you. And I like it.”

  My cheeks heated. I wanted to float as we walked, although I was more doing my best to avoid sidewalk cracks.

  For a couple of blocks, we continued, circling an area downtown where there was a mix of older homes, and then crossing the street near a church and finding ourselves on a street with more small businesses built into the old homes.

  After walking another block, he stopped shortly, taking his phone out. “Point,” he said.

  I tilted my head at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “Pick any direction.”

  “Any?”

  “Trust me. We have to walk the city anyway, let’s make it a little fun. We don’t get out much.”

  I guessed that was true, but I didn’t understand what he meant. “Where?”

  He smiled, and then jerked his head outward in a motion to direct me to look around. “Randomly. Just point.”

  I bit my lip, unsure.

  “Here,” he said. He held out his hand, I snagged it, and he drew me in close.

  His other hand closed over my forehead and swooped down in a motion. “Close your eyes if it’s easier. Now point. Oh wait.”

  He started spinning, in a slow motion, with me beside him on the sidewalk. It was a bit dizzying but he was careful.

  “Now point,” he said. “Anywhere. Tell me where to stop.”

  “Stop,” I said quickly, feeling like I was about to tumble. I pointed outward. He stilled me quickly, so my pointing finger was stretched out toward the city.

  “Stay still,” he said.

  I opened my eyes, and he held out his phone. He checked the screen. I peeked over his shoulder as he opened up a map. He zoomed in on where we were, displaying an overhead view of downtown Charleston.

  He double-checked our actual location, the street name on a sign next to us, and then again looked at the map, adjusting it to the direction I had pointed.

  “Oh, that’s a good one,” he said.

  “It is?” I asked.

  “Haven’t been there yet,” he said. He grasped my hand, and he lunged forward down the sidewalk, aiming us in the direction I’d pointed. “Come on. There might be one starting soon.”

  He seemed so happy we were doing this together. Was this an Academy job or were we out for the day? It didn’t seem to matter to him. The feeling was catching. I wanted to do a good job, but he seemed confident.

  We ended up on a street with an open-air market. It was later in the afternoon. The winter sun was already starting to lower itself a bit, but the stores around the market were open, welcoming what few visitors were walking the streets this late January day.

  The open-air market was sort of familiar to me, as we’d been on this street before. This time, instead of heading into the more familiar indoor mall that was nearby, he led me toward the market itself. We passed sweetgrass basket weavers sitting on the front entrance, displaying their wares. Occasionally people would stop to look at them. There was a candlemaker near them, creating a blend of sweet and smoky fragrances that hung in the air.

  Kota circled them. “Keep your eyes peeled,” he said. “We’ll do what you pointed out to do, but it’ll give us a chance to blend it a bit.”

  Kota followed a sidewalk between the open market and a stretch of shops running parallel to each other along the road. There wasn’t much traffic, and many people walked through the street as much as they did the sidewalk. It amazed me that while it was cool outside and the middle of the week, people seemed to be out and about.

  Kota stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and read from a sign just outside the door of what seemed a discreet spot between a sweet shop and a bar. If he hadn’t stopped, I might have missed that it was an additional location, and not just part of the sweet shop.

  “Next one starts in ten minutes,” he said. “Looks like we just made it.”

  “We’re in
time for what?” I tried to look around him to read the sign, but he opened the door too quickly and ushered me in.

  The building had an open lobby, with a bunch of shopping displays along the walls, Charleston tourist shirts, hats and other items in prominent view. However it didn’t have a feel of a shop, more like the items were secondary.

  A long, wooden booth was the center of attention. Attendants were behind it wearing matching T-shirts. Kota approached to talk to them. “We’d like the early jail tour,” he said.

  The girl behind the booth nodded. “Forty dollars,” she said.

  He pulled out his wallet and fished out two twenties and passed them over. The girl issued him a couple tickets.

  “Your tour guide is getting ready,” she said. She motioned with two fingers to another door, smaller, to the left. “There’s a group over there waiting. Stand with them. He’ll be there soon.”

  We went through the smaller door, and we ended up in the alley where others stood by waiting.

  I stepped up beside Kota. He reached for my hand, encircling my fingers with his as if to warm them. I held on, leaning closely into him. I inched up a little to whisper to him, “What’s this?”

  “There’s a ghost tour that wanders through the city a bit and then into an old jail... And then maybe a dungeon.”

  My eyes widened. “A dungeon?”

  He smiled. “It used to be.” He squeezed my hand once. “You’re not nervous, are you?”

  I wished I could have said no, but I felt a little awkward standing with the others in our group for this tour. However, I thought it would be even more awkward if it was just Kota and me and the tour guide. At least we blended in.

  He was right. It was a great way to move slow through the area, keeping an eye out for our targets and not look totally out of place.

  And I’d never been a part of a tour before.

  He leaned in, his lips finding my ear. “I’m a little nervous, too. I’ve never been to one of these. But last I heard, they only have one person out of every group get eaten up by one of the ghosts, so our chances are pretty good.”

  My mouth opened up in shock. Kota was always so serious and steadfast that it seemed impossible it could have been anything but the truth. I realized a moment later he was kidding. “Kota!”

  He grinned big. “Don’t be nervous. I won’t let them take you.”

  I scrunched my face, not believing I fell for it for even a second. This didn’t feel anything like an Academy job at all. However, he was right.

  “You haven’t done this before?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t get many days off. But when I do, before we got too busy, I’d come into the city and just finding something to do. Usually my mom dropped me off, you know, before I learned to drive.”

  I flinched when he mentioned Erica, but it seemed like he wasn’t worried about anything. I tried to just seem surprised by what he said. He was left alone in the city? “She left you here? And you went around? By picking at random?”

  His cheeks bunched up at his big smile. “Random is the best way. You get to experience something new.”

  “How do you know if you want to do it?”

  “I don’t. But I should at least give it a try.”

  “What else have you done?” I asked. As we talked, I took glimpses of the others in our tour group, a set of four older people, maybe early forties, a different older couple with white hair. All of them were dressed casually, for a day out and touring the downtown area. We were the youngest by far.

  He shrugged. “I took one of the cooking classes, learned how to do a backflip from some random guy at the park. I learned to play chess this way, too. They were playing outside a shopping center and I just asked the guys to show me how.”

  “You play chess?” I asked, but before he could answer, he got cut off by the tour guide clearing his throat behind us. I shook, surprised and scooted back to give him room to address the group.

  I only half listened to the tour guide and what he was telling us about where we were going, some history about Charleston, etc. I might have been more attentive if we weren’t out here for a purpose. From where we were, in an alley between shops just outside the tourist company office, we had a good view of the open market. I wanted to be sure to earn this favor this time.

  In fact, as the tour started, I lingered at the back, tugging at Kota’s arm. He got the gist, hanging back away from the others but still following along, whispering to me, “You okay?”

  “Just getting to the back of the group so we can keep an eye out,” I said.

  He nodded and held my hand, and we followed the tour. Kota occasionally asked a question to at least pretend we were really here for that.

  Part of me worried I wouldn’t remember what the two teenagers looked like. When I saw anyone around that was young, I scrutinized them. However most, if any, were with an adult and likely not who we were looking for.

  An hour later, with no luck on our hunt during our tour, we were standing in the middle of a dark room down in what I thought was a basement level in a Charleston building. It used to be a courthouse or something. I was mildly paying attention to the tour guide describing the history. It was an interesting space, bricked with low ceilings and the air was thick and smelled of wet dirt and moss.

  We didn’t need to be in this building to do the job we were set to do, but it was the last little leg of the tour before we were done.

  “We’ve been all over,” I said to Kota. “I haven’t seen them.”

  “Yeah, we should check inside some buildings,” he said. “I’ve been trying to think where I’d go if I’d left home... at least during the day.”

  “Where would you go?”

  He smiled. “Probably the library.”

  It made sense.

  The tour guide directed us from room to room, pointing out the jail cells. He told us a story about a prisoner’s death, and then how later people heard whispers and felt chills and ghostly images appeared in the mirrors. I eyeballed a few of the tourists. Some had their phones out, cameras ready and were taking random pictures of the jail cell, flash going off even after he warned a few not to use their flash.

  “Would anyone like to step inside?” the tour guide asked. “Just to see what it was like?”

  Kota inched down to whisper to my ear. “Want to?”

  I thought about saying no, to let someone else do it, but there was a giddiness in Kota’s eye that told me he would like to try it. “Okay,” I said, catching his excitement. We were already here, might as well do the ending. I was critical, assuming the lights would go out, maybe they’d say ‘boo.’ Even if I’d never been on a tour before, the setup was too obvious.

  Kota beamed and tugged at my hand. He leaned in again and whispered against my ear, “We’ll do it together.”

  We entered the dungeon, along with a couple of other people. When we were together inside, the guide closed the dungeon and then took out a large key, locking the door.

  “Imagine sitting in there for days on end, only to come out to face getting hung from the gallows.” The tour guide opened his eyes wide, enthusiastically wagging his head as if it was a scary idea to him.

  I stood closer to Kota, feeling a little squished inside the space and trying to not touch the walls or anyone else.

  Kota bent his head, his lips brushing my ear. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He released my hand to put a palm against the middle of my back. He started rubbing in a small circle, encouraging.

  The lights overhead went out. I pushed up against him, feeling my head against his shoulder. My side was pressed up into his, hip to hip. My arm wrapped around his waist. He wrapped his around mine.

  My heart was throbbing. I knew it was going to happen, and I was still wigged out, waiting for a brush of someone’s hand that wasn’t Kota’s... why did we have to take the haunted tour?

  Others around us were giggling. “Jus
t a minute, folks,” the tour guide said, although I thought he sounded like he was fibbing. “Must be a little short in the electric lines, I bet. These buildings are pretty old. Just stay still.”

  I sucked in a deep breath, exhaling out. In the dark, Kota’s lips found my ear again. “I bet someone’s going to jump out and yell boo.” That made me smile. I expected the same thing.

  Somehow holding on to him this close made the anticipation exciting instead of scary. And in my secret heart, I wanted to hang on to him like this, even without it being too scary.

  A scream erupted from inside the jail cell. Lights flashed and then a low red light remained, illuminating the area. At first, all I saw were the others inside the cell with us pressed up against the bars. Movement of shadows and flashing lights in front of us made me pull back.

  Kota never hesitated. He stepped forward just enough to provide a small barrier between me and the spook that had scared everyone.

  Peeking around his arm, I caught a glimpse of a gnarled skeleton. Flashes from Nathan’s horror movies came back to me. My fingers tightened against Kota’s arm until I felt my nails digging into his skin. A scream was choked up in my throat, but I couldn’t utter a sound. It was pretty scary.

  Kota’s fingers eased under mine as they clawed his arm “I’ve got you, sweetie.” The only way I felt better, though, was when I was pressed up as tight as I could be.

  His heart beat quickly.

  He kissed close to my ear at my cheek. “You’re okay.”

  Kota always managed to be soothing even when things were scary.

  And then suddenly, those lights went out again, and I heard Kota gasp, but my eyes hadn’t adjusted yet.

  And then I saw it, too.

  A glowing Volto mask, dead center, stuck to the bars of the jail.

  I swallowed hard to not cry out, grasping again at Kota.

  Was Volto here?

  A minute later, the light went on again, the normal overhead one, and the tour guide laughed. “Pardon our friend here. He’s not too happy with visitors. You can come out now. I hope you didn’t mind our little joke.”

  Most everyone else laughed. Kota tried to crack a smile.