by Graham Marks
“An owl, Gabey. Just sitting there on the mailbox, kinda looking at the house.”
Ten minutes later, showered and shaved, Gabe still felt jumpy and nervous, as if any minute something dreadful was going to happen. The owl was watching. Not an owl, but the owl. Had to be. He didn’t feel hungry any more.
As he went into the kitchen Remy was leaving, giving him a saccharine-sweet smile that ended with her sticking out her tongue; Gabe ignored her, which he knew drove her crazy, but that was only fair as it was all she ever did to him. He saw his mom over by the dishwasher, unloading it with the morning newscast on KZLA, a local TV channel, on in the background. No sign of his dad. They hadn’t said much to each other since yesterday, and he was kind of glad he wasn’t around now. The less stress the better, the way he was feeling.
“Hi, Gabe, sleep well, sweetheart?”
“Yeah, OK, Mom.” Gabe thought about what his dad had said, about how they didn’t – and by implication, shouldn’t – lie to each other in this family; well, if not telling his mom about the kind of dreams he’d had last night was lying, so be it. He glanced at the TV, showing a reporter, station-branded microphone in his hand, looking earnestly at the camera. “What’s the big story?”
“Someone’s gone missing, I think they said over by Daisy Canyon. They showed a picture. Older person, a guy wearing a red baseball cap. I wasn’t paying too much attention. Must be a slow news day.”
Gabe was glad his mom wasn’t looking at him as he felt the colour drain from his face. Way too many coincidences for comfort.
“Before you ask if there’s any chance of some French toast this morning, we’re out of eggs, sweetie, sorry –” his mom carried on talking with her back to him – “I could nuke a slice of pizza?”
“OK, thanks…” Pizza for breakfast. Oh joy. Never the ideal choice, but he had a hard day ahead of him and knew he should eat something.
“Want a glass of milk with that?”
“Yeah, that’d be great.” Gabe went over to the table, knowing that to refuse food would be like sending up a warning flare: Something Is Wrong With My Son! “Could you do me a favour, Mom? Could you tell Remy, again, that she’s not allowed to even step inside my room? I don’t go in hers, right?”
“Sure, but I don’t know what the problem is.” Gabe’s mom put a glass of milk on the table as the microwave pinged. “What’s she going to do, steal your dirty laundry? She’d be doing you a favour if she did.”
“She just gets in my face.” Gabe accepted the plate his mom gave him, the cheese on the pizza slice bubbling like yellow lava; breakfast appeared to be an ogre’s severed tongue.
“Give it a few years, when she and her little friends aren’t so little any more…”
Gabe turned to see his dad, whom he hadn’t heard coming into the kitchen; he hadn’t shaved.
Glancing at the kitchen clock, which was always a little slow, Gabe leapt up from the table. “Geez, look at the time – I gotta go!”
Snatching up the pizza slice, he hared back down the corridor, past his sister going the other way, and skidded into his room. He flung everything he needed for school in his backpack and was halfway back to the kitchen when he remembered the gold, wrapped up in the raggedy old duster and waiting on his bedside table. Swearing at himself under his breath for his abject stupidity, he ran back to his room and got it.
Disaster averted, goodbyes yelled and his head in a whirl, he exited the kitchen and grabbed his bike. Then he stopped and thought about what his mom had said. If he’d got to the kitchen a little earlier he would have seen the picture, known if the man she’d described was the same person he’d seen. Now all he could do was torment himself, something he seemed to have a talent for. He went to the side door, pulling it open very slowly.
No owl on the mailbox.
Could Remy have made it all up?
Chapter Ten
Gabe was finished, and now a hundred and fifty dollars better off for his troubles, which, to be honest, hadn’t been so bad. He had no idea what was in the envelopes Benny had given him, but the people he’d delivered them to had seemed happy enough to get them. And the places he’d been sent to turned out to be just normal offices, one place was quite a high-end shoe shop, not the scuzzy backstreet dives he’d imagined he’d be going to.
Tucked away in his wallet were two crisp fifties and two slightly less crisp twenties and a couple of crumpled fives. More where that came from, Benny had said, also saying he’d need Gabe again in a couple of days. Gabe checked his phone, surprised to see it was just after five in the afternoon and he still had plenty of time to get over to Studio City before Mr Cecil LeBarron closed up shop for the night. He had the original bracelet with him – the rest of the find was in his locker – and if he could sell it for a reasonable price today that would be a result.
As far as he could tell he hadn’t been followed – by cops, owls or coyotes – and if this had been some TV detective show he was in it would easily have won the gold statuette for Most Boring Script. But Gabe still couldn’t get rid of the oppressive feeling that he was being watched. It was with him the whole time, like a stink that wouldn’t wash off, and he didn’t know if it was doing the job for Benny or the gold bracelet in his backpack that was the cause. Maybe, he thought, it was both.
Getting back on his bike he set off for the antique store.
“I wasn’t at all sure I’d see you again.” Cecil LeBarron held back the door to let Gabe in. Today he was wearing a red and white pinstripe shirt, a dark blue jacket with gold buttons and some kind of coat of arms on the breast pocket and jeans with a razor-sharp crease. Another look Gabe could not decode.
“Me, either.”
“What made you change your mind, if I might ask?” Cecil LeBarron gestured for Gabe to follow him to the back of the store.
“You said you wanted to have another look, maybe make a different offer, right?” Cecil nodded, a slightly confused look working its way across his salon-tanned features. “So I came back.”
“Better the devil you know, in a manner of speaking.” Cecil went behind the glass-topped counter and held out a hand that was the total opposite of Benny’s, each nail beautifully manicured and polished, not a nicotine stain in sight. “May I?”
Gabe started to get the bracelet out of his backpack; all he wanted to do was be rid of the thing. Except now the moment had arrived, that was not how it was panning out. With the bracelet in his hand, warm to the touch, he felt an overpowering bond. He and it belonged together. He did not want to hand it over. He couldn’t hand it over.
“May I?” Cecil repeated, one eyebrow raised. “Please?”
Gabe looked at the man in front of him. Part of him hated Cecil LeBarron for wanting what he should not have, part of him hated himself for losing control of his life. He had no idea how long it took, but eventually he forced himself to let go.
“Ah, right…” Cecil finally plucked the bracelet from Gabe’s rigid, half-open hand. “Thank you,” he said, carefully placing it on a black velvet cushion. Reaching into his jacket he brought out an iPhone, swiped the screen and took two pictures, flash on and flash off. He pecked delicately at the screen and looked over at Gabe as the phone made its ‘email sent’ whoosh sound. “I have someone who is something of a collector of this type of thing. I told him about your visit, and he said he’d very much like to see the piece – if, or as soon as, you came back. And you can’t get more ‘as soon as’ than instantly, can you?”
Gabe was thinking that he supposed you couldn’t when Cecil’s phone trilled some fancy show-tune ringtone and Cecil took the call. It didn’t last long and mainly consisted of Cecil nodding and going ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh…’ a lot, then putting the phone down.
“He likes it very much –” Cecil nodded at the bracelet – “the piece. He wants it, and he says would you be prepared to accept seventeen fifty? One thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars, that is?”
Gabe looked at Cecil, who was observ
ing him with one eyebrow raised. Seventeen hundred and fifty dollars? With what he’d got from Benny that would make his total just a little shy of two grand! Something clicked in his head and he heard himself say, “This is like a bargaining situation, right?”
“Ah … y-e-e-s…” Cecil dragged the word out, like he was giving himself thinking time.
“You say a price, I say a price, isn’t that what you said?” Gabe had never bargained in his life, but he felt weirdly like he had nothing to lose. He overrode the crawling guilt, wouldn’t let himself look directly at the bracelet, just thought of all the money.
Cecil nodded. “I did, indeed.”
“OK, two thousand dollars.”
“Eighteen hundred.”
“Nineteen hundred.”
“Eighteen fifty.”
“Eighteen seventy-five.”
Gabe held his breath, watching Cecil watching him. Cecil broke first.
“I, ah… I can do that…” he nodded. “My client can go to eighteen seventy-five.”
Gabe’s mouth twitched. He’d won, though he’d had to betray himself to do it. But everything and everyone had their price…
Cecil paid him in cash, no receipt. A simpler, neater way to do business, he’d said. Yeah, right, Gabe thought; a simpler, neater way not to pay taxes, more like. Eighteen hundreds, a fifty, a twenty and a five. He now had just over two thousand dollars – two thousand dollars! – in an envelope, hidden at the bottom of his backpack. A couple of grand. He reckoned he now knew why a grand was called that, as you did feel good when you had that much money. And now he also knew Cecil had a client who wanted what he had, and was prepared to pay for it. Which was good to know as there was more where that came from. How much would the rest of the stash be worth? The knife alone… A bad taste leaked into his mouth at the thought of selling the knife, and he took a swig from his bottle of water and spat it out to try and get rid of it. Parting with the bracelet hadn’t been easy, but he’d managed it. And he would do it again, he would sell everything.
For now he had the two grand. It wasn’t going to solve all his family’s problems, but it would help and that was all he’d wanted to do. And then the thought struck him, straight out of left field and completely unexpected – how was he going to explain the money? What good would it be to have it if he couldn’t figure out a way for the family to use it? Turning up with that much money, in cash, was going to prompt the kind of questions he did not want to answer. Why he hadn’t thought about this before he didn’t know, but thinking about it now sure took the shine off of the situation.
With the light beginning to fade, Gabe swung right off the main drag, Ventura Boulevard, and into the low-rise urban grid where he lived, still thinking about what he was going to do and not really paying attention. Not picking up that the street he was on was unusually quiet and empty. It was only when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of red that his personal safety radar kicked in. Baseball cap red, at baseball-cap-on-head height. Over to his left, ten, fifteen metres away…
As the figure wearing the cap and an old brown leather jacket kind of slid out of the shadows, Gabe braked hard and slewed the rear wheel of the bike round 180 degrees. The street he’d come down was completely empty and silent, apart from the blood singing wildly in his ears.
His brain scrambled to make sense of what was happening. Of what should not, could not be happening.
Where was everyone?
He looked desperately for a way out, but couldn’t move.
What was this person going to do to him?
Fear gripped him, squeezed him like a snake. It was as if he’d switched places with the boys he’d seen being sacrificed; the inevitability of the situation, like the boys’, becoming clearer by the second. He was going to die. And like the boys, his heart was going to be torn from his chest and his blood would soak into the sidewalk. His fate was sealed.
Gabe wanted to shout out for help, but it felt like he had a hand round his throat and there was this crazy idea in his head that, even if he could yell, no one would be able to hear him. The fingers of an icy chill crept out from his spine and through his body. How this man from his nightmares came to be here, on his way home, didn’t make any sense. But then neither did the way he’d felt when he’d tried to hand the bracelet over to Mr LeBarron. Random thoughts cannoned into each other. No one should know how they were going to die… No kid should die before their parents did… Did you know it when you went certifiably insane?
Gabe felt himself begin to buckle under the strain of keeping himself together and waiting to see what this person did to him. He let his bike drop to the ground and turned to face the man in the faded red baseball cap, the man who was now only metres away, his face so deeply shadowed by the cap brim that Gabe couldn’t make out a single feature.
There was a movement behind the old man and a coyote came into view. As it stared at him, Gabe remembered that witches and wizards always had sidekick demons, familiars that took the shape of animals. A frazzled thought crossed his mind – this was what the owl and the coyotes had to be. Demons.
Gabe tried to turn and run but only managed to shuffle back a pace or two; it was as if he’d been separated from the real world, which he could see but not reach. The man stopped, an arm’s length away, and Gabe could smell him, a sharp, musty aroma crawling up his nostrils, strong enough to make him gag. He was desperate to escape at any cost, but he couldn’t move.
“Give … it all … back…”
Chapter Eleven
The man was close enough now that Gabe could see the pores on his face, the skin brown and heavily creased like old, old leather; the voice was a hushed, scratchy whisper, rough sandpaper on even rougher wood, as if he hadn’t spoken for a long time.
But his cracked, dry lips never moved.
“Give it … all … back…”
The words echoed in Gabe’s brain and the only thing he could do was watch, eyes wide, as the man slowly lifted his head to look directly at him. The face staring at him was picked out by the last of the light spilling like gold dust over the urban skyline. It should have warmed his features, but instead it made the man’s cheekbones and jawline sharper, his nose more beak-like. And his unblinking eyes… Gabe was mesmerized by them. Two polished black stones, each one set deep in its socket, they glowed, the fire inside pulling Gabe in.
Eyes were the windows of the soul. Gabe had heard that said, but couldn’t remember when or who by. If it was true he was facing down one truly mean character. Mean and evil, so the tiny, scared voice in his head kept on reminding him. Gabe didn’t care that the human sacrifices he’d witnessed him committing were in a dream, he knew, no shadow of a doubt, that they had happened…
“Give it to me – I require it!”
“I … I…” The effort of mumbling those two small words made Gabe break out into a sweat. And then the dam broke and everything poured out. “If I had it here, believe me, mister, I’d give it all to you in a second, I would! But I don’t have it, OK? I don’t. Not right now. But I can get it … yeah, I can… I can get it.” As he spoke, Gabe could hear the desperation in his voice. What am I saying? he thought. Exactly how am I gonna do that? Is nice Mr Cecil LeBarron just going to turn right around and sell the bracelet, on which he has no doubt made a tidy profit, back to me? “I didn’t know it belonged to anyone! I just found it, right? I didn’t know it was yours, how could I? If I had I wouldn’t have taken it, I wouldn’t… It was an accident.”
“Trouble … bad trouble…”
“Trouble? You gonna call the cops? Hey, you don’t have to do that!” Gabe saw an owl land behind the coyote; he pointed at it. “Look, the damn bird was there, the coyotes too. The owl saw…”
Gabe stopped, hearing how ridiculous and close to tears he sounded. He had gone crazy, he must have. What other explanation could there be? He was seeing things, he was babbling like a loonytune and any minute now some doctor was going to jab a loaded hypodermic in him and
he’d wake up somewhere strapped to a hospital bed.
“Why didn’t anyone stop me?” Gabe stared, transfixed by the red glow that flared in the man’s eyes.
“It has been so long, so very long…” Once again his lips, slightly parted to reveal a ragged collection of yellowed and uneven teeth, didn’t move. “I was not strong enough, but I am getting stronger…”
Before Gabe had a chance to wonder how it was he could hear what the man was saying when he didn’t appear to be talking, a bony, iron-hard fist slammed him in the gut. He folded over and fell to the ground, completely winded and unable to breathe, sharp stones in the asphalt biting at his face.
“Such bad trouble … if I do not get it back…”
Gabe, eyes squeezed shut, felt the man stoop over him and he flinched, waiting to be hit again. A dank smell wrapped round the whispered words fading away inside his head. In the long silence Gabe was sure he must have died, before figuring out that if you died maybe you wouldn’t hurt any more…
“Gabriel? Gabriel? Are you OK? What happened?”
Stella? Gabe slowly unfolded himself. Stella was kneeling down next to him, silhouetted against the sky. How long had he been lying here?
“Did you get hit by a car? Did you see it?”
“No –” Gabe pushed himself off the ground and stood up, a little unsteady – “and no.”
“You haven’t broken anything, have you?” Stella reached out and touched his face. “Are you sure you’re OK?”
“I’m OK… Just need a hand up…”
Chapter Twelve
Sometimes a bad thing happens, and then a good thing happens right afterwards, like a reward, or karma. Something like that. Gabe’s thinking circuits were kind of blown from being bounced around. But he did know that while it was Bad to be trashed by some old dude with a real shitty attitude, it was Good being found by Stella, who had a car and hadn’t minded driving him and his bike home.
