by Lee Hayton
“Gary is not going to be happy with what you’ve done to his coffin,” Wilma observed. “It’s the only thing of value that he owns, and you’ve kind of wrecked it.”
“Boo hoo,” Julius returned, struggling against the cramped confines. “Can’t you figure out something other than this contraption anyhow? You are holding onto the most powerful object in the whole universe.”
“Maybe we will,” Tyler said. “If the instruction manual starts giving us useful information.” He poked Julius in the shoulder. “How about it, son?”
“I’ve told you useful information already,” Julius said, then frowned. “Haven’t I?”
“Take a peek at my friend and then say how useful you think you’ve been so far.” Tyler cocked his thumb in Wilma’s direction. “She look like you’ve been helpful?”
“It’s not on me if you’ve broken the damn thing,” Julius spat out. He wriggled his shoulders again, struggling like a worm caught on a concrete path in the sun. “I don’t have a cure for stupid.”
“Show a bit of respect,” Wilma told him, leaning over the casket. “Or we’ll shut the lid again, and this time, we won’t bother to open it back up.”
“You were telling us where the stone belonged,” Tyler prompted. “Do you want to continue on with that tale?”
“No. I want to get out of the box. How much did you shrink me by, anyway?”
“Just enough to fit you into the car.” Tyler looked over at Wilma who shrugged. “Maybe a foot or two. Nothing much.”
“A foot or two!” Julius cast a glance down at pelvic height and struggled again. “Let me out! You’re not fit to be running that thing.” He quietened for a moment, a look of cunning sliding onto his face. “Give it to me, let me take your burden.”
Tyler’s hand throbbed with a sudden warmth. When he looked down, the stone was unraveling its binds. Relaxation ran through all of his muscles, and he sat down on the bed. It felt good to sit down, comfortable to rest. There was a slam as Wilma flipped the coffin lid shut. “What the hell are you playing at?”
Tyler shook his head, startled out of the sudden trance-like state that had befallen him. “I don’t know. What happened?”
The stone fell onto the floor, free of Tyler for the first time in two days.
Wilma bent over and picked it up, then screamed as a shower of brilliant blue sparks erupted. The stone dropped back down to the floor.
Tyler looked at his hand. The bullet hole that Julius had shot in it had healed so thoroughly that no trace of a scar remained. He flexed his hand. Without the stone, it was lighter, freer. Moving with caution, Tyler poked his toe at the rock where it sat on the carpet. It moved along a few inches. He didn’t want to pick it up. If it latched on again, he might never be rid of it.
“Are there tongs or something around the room?” Tyler started looking through the bedside cabinets, hoping for a miracle.
“Try this,” Wilma handed across the used washcloth. “See if you can pick it up.”
Tyler grabbed the stone from the floor, every muscle in his body tensed in case the rock tried to reattach itself, but it didn’t. He put it down on the bed beside him.
“How the hell did he do that?”
Wilma flipped open the coffin lid. “Is there an actual instruction manual for this thing?”
Julius opened his eyes wide, and he clamped his lips together so hard that the scabs from earlier in the day popped open and started to bleed. “There’s mmm in the mmm of mmmm.”
“Order him to speak clearly, will you?” Wilma said, excited.
“Speak clearly,” Tyler commanded. He peered at Julius with a hopeful expression, but from the clenched lips, it was apparent it hadn’t worked.
“Pick up the stone and do it.”
Tyler felt a sudden rush of desire for a beer in one hand and a hamburger in the other. His favorite meal. The only reason he bothered to get up some mornings, even on those days he couldn’t afford the burger as well.
“I don’t want to.”
Wilma rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to be a girl. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to chase a greater good.”
It was a fair point. Tyler inched his hand closer, hovering over the stone, then his fingers danced away. He kicked the side of the coffin again. “Just tell us.”
This time, the string of unintelligible noises obscured every word.
“He’s not going to come around,” Wilma said, exasperated. “Just pick up the stone and command him. If we can get a book on that thing”—she nodded at the stone—“then we might actually get somewhere.”
“I thought all you wanted was to go to Vegas,” Tyler grumbled. “And we’re already doing that.”
“Man up and grab the damned stone, you baby.”
In a second, Tyler snatched up the rock and turned to Julius. “Talk clearly,” he commanded again. This time the stone sent out a glow and Julius opened his lips.
“There’s a book of all the old knowledge,” he said, writhing like a prawn on the barbecue. “It has everything that the stone ever has or ever could do written in it.”
“Where is it?”
Julius tried so hard to stop from speaking that his teeth bit half through his bottom lip. Blood flowed in a stream down his chin. His white teeth were stained with crimson.
“It’s in a special place in the desert. Off the beaten track.”
Wilma looked out at the parking lot of the motel, their vehicle the only one taking up space. “I think we’re there already.”
Julius began to convulse again, and Tyler leaned over to press down on his shoulders. “Don’t do that.”
The stone glowed again, and the arch of Julius’s back collapsed, so he lay flat in the coffin once more.
“There’s a place in the desert,” Tyler prompted. “You gotta be a bit more specific, man.”
“It’s protected by an old knight of magic. To access the book, you have to perform three trials. If you fail, then you’re not worthy—you’ll never gain mastery of the stone. No one has passed the test in our generation, probably a lot longer than that. Many have tried. All have failed.”
“What are the trials?”
Julius shook his head. “I told you, nobody’s passed them, so I don’t know what all of them are.”
He tried to press his chewed lips together, but the words bubbled forth. “I only experienced the first one. The whole thing was like waking up in a dream, except it doesn’t feel like it’s make believe or a hallucination—everything was real. It all made perfect sense until I failed. Then I came back to my senses in the desert and all I got was a kick on my ass as I walked away.”
“How about crib notes?” Wilma gave Julius a poke. “That’ll do us. We’re not really into hefty tomes.”
Julius cackled with mad laughter. “Good luck. It’s been so long since anyone read the book that no one remembers what the stone can do.” He glared at Tyler. “Or not do when the wrong fool gets ahold of it.”
The door to the room opened. Wilma slammed down the coffin lid while Tyler leaped to his feet, arms stretched out in front of him.
Gary stood in the doorway, his arms full of snacks. “Hey, what’s up?”
“How the fuck did you get all those?” Wilma stared at him with her mouth open. “You better not have been using up my credit.”
“Nah. The ATM at the gas station gave me out some more cash. I think it likes me.”
Tyler dropped his arms down to his side. He stared at the stone, realizing that at some point it had bound itself close to his hand again.
“What’d he say?” Gary asked, tipping his head at the coffin.
Tyler was just about to answer when a desperate scream came from outside.
Chapter Nine
They burst out of the room. Gary first since he was closest, Tyler and Wilma hot on his trail. A woman stood near their car, pointing her finger at the open trunk. The four men crammed inside looked uncomfortably like they were dead.
“Nice job closing the trunk, Gary.”
“I did.” Gary turned to them, pleading on his face. “You saw me.”
“It’s got a knack to it,” Wilma said. “You have to wait for a double clunk to know it’s all the way secured.”
“Ma’am?” Tyler walked closer to the woman. He recognized her from the front desk, though back then her eyes hadn’t been nearly as wide. “Excuse me, Ma’am?”
She turned to look at him, her mouth slack and her eyes wide. Her throat worked, swallowing rapidly, but she didn’t speak, just pointing at the trunk instead.
“It’s not what you think it is, Ma’am.” Tyler took another step toward her, and the scream erupted from her mouth again. “They’re just mannequins, that’s all.”
He stepped sideways so he could reach into the trunk without getting any closer to the receptionist. “Look here. I can lift them up with one hand.” He demonstrated, wishing that he’d thought to wear gloves as the muck from the tip truck coated his hands again.
“See,” Wilma said, jerking her head toward Tyler, “there’s nothing to be worried about. Just a couple of old polystyrene figures. The scariest thing about them is how much they smell.”
The woman continued to back away from them, her hands out in front of her waist to ward them off.
“Nothing at all going on here, lady,” Gary said. Given that his scarf had slipped, his entry into the conversation was a misjudged mistake.
“You have a snout,” the woman said, her words first hesitant, then stumbling out one on top of the other. “I can’t rent my rooms out to people who have snouts!”
“It’s a medical condition,” Gary said. Since the hurt expression on his face was genuine, it went some way toward convincing the motel owner that she was in the wrong.
“A medical condition?”
“Yeah,” Wilma said. “Like the Elephant Man but with Warthogs instead.” She frowned. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you it’s not nice to point out people’s deformities? It’s especially not nice to treat them different just because of it.”
Instead of fear, the owner’s face suddenly flooded with shame. Her cheeks glowed bright red, even in the pall of yellow light cast by the parking lot lanterns.
“If you kick us out of your motel just because my friend is a bit ugly, then don’t think that shit won’t be spread across social media by the time we hit the road.” Wilma had her phone out of her pocket in demonstration. “Would you like a crowd outside your door protesting while all your potential customers drive by?”
The woman’s face now turned white, the blood draining out of it like someone turned on a tap.
“I don’t—” She swallowed, her throat working overtime on the simple motion. “I’m not like that. Of course, you’re welcome to stay. I won’t… I don’t…”
“We’re glad to hear it, sweetheart.” Gary stepped forward, holding out his hand to shake. “No hard feelings. I know that sometimes it takes sensitive folk a little while to come to grips with my appearance.”
The motel owner stared at his hand as though it was a giant spider. She gradually forced her own out, gave a brief touch to his fingertips, then snatched her arm back to her side.
“You should use the shower,” she said. As Gary’s face crumpled into anger, the woman swallowed hard again, shaking her head. “No, I mean for those.”
She pointed at the man that Tyler was still holding in one hand. “To get them clean, put them in the shower. The polystyrene is fine with getting wet, and it takes only a minute to dry anything out here.”
Tyler nodded. “That’s a great suggestion, darling. I’ll get right on it.”
He turned and walked back into the cabin, hoping that the woman couldn’t see the coffin through the open doorway.
“Quick. Stack them up and let’s get out of here.”
It was nice that Wilma was good at giving orders since her small stature meant she wasn’t much help with manual work.
Tyler and Gary had maneuvered the coffin into the shower earlier and were now trying to wedge all of the other gunmen in.
“Get that foot,” Tyler said, jerking his head down as much as he was able given that he cradled a six-foot killer for hire in his arms.
“We don’t need to fit them in snugly,” Wilma complained. “By the time they work out what’s going on, we’ll be hightailing it out of the parking lot.”
“First off,” Tyler said, stopping between words to pant, “we need to ensure they won’t turn on and run straight out after us. If we can wedge this shower stall door closed, that would help out a lot.”
“There’s a wedge for the main door.” Wilma walked away and brought it back a minute later. “I don’t know how that’ll work in there.”
“Ready?” Tyler looked at Gary with his eyebrows raised. He got a nod in return. “Push it closed on three. One. Two. Three.”
Tyler shoved the last man into the stall and reached for the door, Gary and him leaning on it with their full weight. For a bunch of fellows who were light as feathers, the gunmen had proven surprisingly tricky to position. After a minute of exerting their full force, the shower door finally clicked into place.
“Phew,” Gary said, stepping away. “I thought they’d never fit.”
Tyler took a step back. The shower door snicked open again, and the men inside began to fall out.
“Dammit. This ain’t going to work.” Gary kicked at one of the collapsing men, who snapped back upright before gravity intervened, landing him full-length on the floor.
“Plan B, then.”
Wilma put her hands on her hips at Tyler’s words. “And what’s Plan B?”
“Lock the bathroom door, slip out the window, peek inside long enough to ensure everybody inside is operational again, then get the fuck out of here.”
Gary and Tyler looked expectantly at Wilma. “What? Why me?”
“You’re the smallest,” Gary said. “I wouldn’t be able to squeeze out that thing”—he pointed to the bathroom window—“if my life depended on it.” When Wilma opened her mouth to mount another protest, Gary added, “And Tyler’s going to be the one driving. That just leaves you.”
Wilma pouted, rolling her eyes. Gary gave her a pat on top of her head.
“Lucky thing you asked to be so young and slim, isn’t it?”
“Touch me again with those trotters, and I’ll cut them off and roast them up for dinner.”
Gary stuck his hands behind his back and stepped away.
“Do you think you’ll be okay to do it?” Tyler raised his eyebrows at Wilma. “Only, if we need to think of a Plan C, we could be here half the night.”
“I don’t understand why we can’t spend the night, anyway,” Wilma grumbled. “It’s going on my credit card, I may as well get the benefit.”
“We can’t stay because the old girl in the office won’t accept our feeble excuses forever. By the time she starts to think it through, I want us to be long gone.”
“She didn’t look like the type to think anything through,” Wilma argued. “Otherwise, would she be stuck in such a fine facility in the middle of nowhere?”
“Not really in a position to question other people’s life choices, are you?” Gary spoke the words then backed all the way out of the bathroom, heading for the front door.”
Wilma offered him a snarl to send him on his way.
“Go on, then.” She pushed roughly at Tyler to send him stumbling on Gary’s trail. “Get out and get the car engine running. I’ll deal with this lot and then jump out the window like bloody superwoman.”
“Thanks, Wilma. You’re really great for doing this.” Tyler settled for a wave just before she slammed the door in his face. “Once I see you’re out the window, I’ll give the command to turn them back to normal. Just check to see they’re moving, then run to the car.”
Wilma tore the door open again. “I may look young, but please remember that I’m a forty-year-old woman who's more than capable of understanding si
mple instructions. I do run a goddamn trailer park for a living, remember?”
Tyler put his hands up and backed away. “Of course, you do. I was just making sure we were on the same page. I’ll leave you to it.”
He got out of the cabin and into the car. Gary was already lying down on the backseat, the windows open to air out the noxious smells they’d accumulated in the past few days.
After starting the car up, Tyler eased it past the edge of the motel room, until he had a clear view of the window. It took a few minutes, long enough to wonder if something had gone wrong, then Wilma’s slender leg popped out of the gap.
“Looks like we’re right on cue.”
Gary sat up in the back seat for a moment to have a quick look, then settled down again. “Tell you what, I’ll be happy when you pay me back for that coffin. Sooner rather than later, would be good.”
“Few other things on my bucket list first, mate.”
Wilma tumbled down to the ground, falling to one knee. She stood up slowly, turning to give Tyler the thumbs up.
“Grow back to normal size, go back to your normal weight, and START!”
Wilma stared blankly in front of her for a few seconds, then gave a jump and began running for the car.
“Go! Go!” she yelled as she tumbled into the front seat. Tyler gunned the engine, and the wheels spun for a second, then caught on the gravel and took off across the parking lot.
“Hey!” The owner came zooming out of her office, flagging them down with one hand. “Hey. You can’t just leave in the middle of the night.”
She was close enough to slam her hand flat on the side of the car, then they were out of the driveway and back on the road. Tyler looked in his rearview mirror, long enough to see the gunmen turn the corner, sprinting in chase.
“What about the lady?” Gary said suddenly. “Aren’t we leaving her in a precarious position?”
Damn it! Tyler put his foot on the brakes, bringing the car to a step. “Yeah, you’re right.”
He hung out the window, pointing his hand back at the motel and trying to ignore the men pounding along the pavement toward him.
