by Graham Marks
No body, no blood spatter, no Father Simon. And no sign of the gold pieces from the canyon.
“You thought I might, like, faint or something, Gabe?”
Stella came from behind Gabe and went over to the desk, where she started looking at the books.
“No, but he’s your friend. I didn’t want you to have to see what I thought might be here.”
“Oh, OK…” Stella looked up and flashed him a smile. “Thank you.”
Gabe walked round the settee to the table and picked up the legal tablet. There was some writing at the top of the page, a message a few lines long in pencil, and a ragged edge where the bottom third had been roughly torn off.
“There’s a note, Stella.”
“What? What does it say?”
“Guy shoulda been a doctor, his handwriting’s so bad.” Gabe squinted at the paper.
“Here, let me see.” Stella took the pad, went over to the desk and turned on the lamp. “‘Stella and Gabriel’,” she read, holding the pad close to the light, “‘I couldn’t wait for you to come back here as there is something I’ve had to deal with as a matter of urgency. If you have brought the last piece with you, please leave it in the top right-hand drawer of my desk. Lock the drawer and take the key with you’.”
“He went without us?”
“Looks like it –” Stella bent down closer to the pad – “and it also looks like he might’ve written down the address of where he went – I need a pencil!”
“But the thing is, when did he go? For all we know it might’ve been last night.” Gabe wandered over to the table to see if he could work out what the Father had been looking for in the books and saw a green light pulsing on the laptop’s front edge. It hadn’t been turned off, and an idea parachuted lazily into his head. Gabe sat down, flipped open the laptop and brought up Father Simon’s browser. He was still using Safari, and the machine was old and slow, but finally Gabe accessed the browser’s Recent History drop-down and smiled when he saw the last site the Father had gone to – a page on Wikipedia.
“Pretty sure he’s gone to something called ‘Mission San Sebastian de los Ángeles’ –” Gabe double-clicked and brought the page up – “in Mission Hills.”
“How…?” Stella looked up from trying to figure out what the Father had written by rubbing a pencil over the imprint left on the second page of the legal pad.
“Magic fingers.” Gabe clicked and clicked again. A small all-in-one on top of a two-drawer filing cabinet next to the Father’s desk chugged into life and started to print.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“You, Gabriel my friend, are either deaf as I do not know what, or got way less smarts than I had you pegged for.”
As Stella turned to go to her car, Gabe spun round awkwardly, like he was doing a dance move he hadn’t practised nearly enough. Coming out of Father Simon’s house, neither of them had noticed the pale grey van parked the other side of the street from the rectory. Benny, a lit cigarette stuck in the side of his mean little mouth, was rolling the half-open window the rest of the way down as he spoke.
“You think he’s deaf or stupid, Nate?” Benny said, head on one side.
Looking over his shoulder, Gabe saw Nate Kansky, Benny’s other go-to guy, standing by Stella’s car. As Scotty was no doubt behind the wheel, the full bozo crew was out today.
“Musta got the brains of a hammer ain’t got no head, my opinion.”
“I think you have that right, Nate, nailed it in one.” Benny got out of the van, took a drag and pointed at Gabe, the cigarette between his fingers. “I thought I had made myself, you know, clear, Gabriel. Told you to stay away from little Miss Grainger here? Right? Didn’t I do that?”
Even if he’d been trying to imagine how a day could go downhill any quicker, Gabe was pretty sure it would have taken him some time to come up with this scenario.
“What are you—?”
“I’m not talking to you, missy,” Benny cut Stella off. “Not yet anyways.” He turned back to Gabe and held up the cigarette by its tip, like it was evidence in a trial. “See this? See what you have made me do? I was going so good, until you started acting stupid, Gabriel, not doing what you’d been told.”
Benny flicked the cigarette at Gabe. It missed, sailing over his left shoulder.
“But I am gonna deal with you later –” Benny signalled to Nate – “as I have other business to attend to now.”
Nate, left arm around Stella, had his right hand over her mouth. As he hustled her towards the van, Gabe grabbed at his shirt and tried to haul him back, stopping only when he saw the large gun that had appeared in Benny’s hand.
“Later, Gabriel.” Benny waved the barrel, a little up, a little down. “You hear me now? You feel me?”
Gabe nodded without even thinking, one eye on Stella, struggling hard as she was shoved into the rear of the van. Nate got in after her and slid the door shut. He kept his other eye on Benny and the gun. Benny who had no doubt been watching back-to-back gangsta movies, the way he was talking.
“Don’t deal with her, deal with me, Benny!” Gabe shouted. He couldn’t believe this was all going down on a nice suburban street, and outside a rectory. Where were all the curtain-twitching neighbours when you needed them? “This is all my fault, not hers.”
“No fret, guy, you-all will have your turn.” Benny smiled, spat and got back in the van. He leant out of the window. “As the cops like to say, ‘Don’t leave town’.”
Gabe watched the Chevy van drive off down the street in total disbelief. How was it possible that Benny had found them? Except somehow he had and now he’d got Stella. Gabe wanted to slap himself in the face – he’d let Benny take Stella, and done nothing to stop him! Apart from not get himself shot. He was worse than useless. And what was he going to do now, how was he going to get the medallion to Father Simon? Because they hadn’t left it locked in the drawer, like he’d asked, they were on their way to… Gabe’s jaw dropped.
The medallion was in Stella’s bag! It’d be safer in there, she’d said…
Gabe’s heart sank as the full, ghastly implication of what had just occurred slowly revealed itself.
Benny had Stella. Stella had the medallion, and the car keys. And he was left standing on the sidewalk, unable to do anything. On top of which, his bike was in the car. But even if it wasn’t, what could he do? Chase after Benny on two wheels?
He paced up and down, cursing himself for not having been exposed to mega doses of gamma radiation, or whatever else you had to do to become a superhero and leap tall buildings, trash your enemies with your retractable metal claws and save the day. Which was when he saw something on the asphalt, glinting in the early-morning sunlight. He went over, bent down and picked up Stella’s car keys. Had she dropped them by accident, or on purpose? He looked at the car. At least now he could get his bike. Or…
Gabe stood up. He didn’t have a full driver’s licence but he could drive, kind of. No, he could, he’d had a lot of time behind the wheel with his dad, practising in parking lots and side streets and suchlike. But his dad had lost his job and the project ground to a halt. He stared at the Toyota. If he was careful … if he was lucky … he could get away with it.
“But where?” Gabe whispered to himself, thunderclouds of frustration making it hard to think. If he did risk it, where was he going to drive to? It was like being a character in someone else’s game, and he was being given things, but not told what to do with them. Did he go back to Stella’s house, tell her parents what had happened to their daughter, and would they believe a word of what he said? Maybe the cops? Nope, that’d probably be the exact the same deal.
Gabe went over and unlocked the car.
Got in.
Closed the door.
Put the keys in the ignition.
Took a bunch of emergency M&M’s, as this sure as hell was an emergency.
Ate six or seven chocolate-covered peanuts in one go and thought about starting the car.
&n
bsp; He wanted more than anything to believe that Benny would not do anything bad. Very stupid? Yes. Possibly motivated by the last dumb movie or TV show he’d watched? Also yes. But not real, actual bad.
Just the thought that he might hurt Stella was driving him crazy, but as there was no way he could figure out where Benny had gone with her, there was no point in wasting time trying to follow a trail that didn’t exist on a map he didn’t have. None at all.
But he did have an idea where Father Simon might be: the Mission San Sebastian de los Ángeles in Mission Hills. The site of one of the early Spanish religious settlements in what was, as Father Simon had told them, then called Alta California and part of the Spanish Empire. According to the Wikipedia pages he’d printed out and skimmed.
And the only reason he could think of for Father Simon to go there was if he thought that was where he’d find Rafael Delacruz, the resurrected man. The evil person whom he believed Gabe had brought back to life. He had to have gone there, with the gold, for some kind of religious version of a Dodge City cowboy showdown. Crucifixes at dawn. It would be hilarious if he didn’t have a recent and very personal experience of what the man the Father was up against was capable of.
Gabe started the car.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The drive had been intense. Nothing remotely terrible happened, but he had spent the entire journey just waiting for the bad-luck axe to fall on him from a great height. Mainly because he couldn’t stop repeating his dad’s watchwords when he was giving him lessons. Just be careful and don’t worry about your driving; instead, worry about what all the other idiots on the road are doing.
And boy, had he worried.
So much that his main concern became getting pulled over for being terminally cautious and driving too slow. By the time he arrived at the Mission, Gabe sincerely doubted he had any nerves left unshredded. He got out of the car and took a look round at where he was.
From the quick scan he’d given the Wikipedia article he knew that the original adobe structure had been badly damaged in a big quake in 1857, rebuilt and then added to over the years. The long, low-rise building, set some way back from the street with a broad, tree-dotted lawn sloping down towards him, was described by the article as ‘something of an architectural mongrel’. This Sunday morning the Mission San Sebastian looked fine to him, odd only in that it was genuinely old, unlike just about everything else in LA. And it also looked like no one was there. No visitors he could see, no staff or whatever, the place all quiet and empty.
Crossing the road he couldn’t stop himself from anxiously scanning here, there and everywhere to see if he was being watched. Like by a coyote, or an owl. He walked up to a small side gate, thinking he had to keep his wits about him and try to spot any trouble before it found him. The gate was unlocked and Gabe let himself through, mentally tossing a coin as to which way he should go. Right, along the terracotta-roofed walkway with its long line of flattened arches, or left, towards the taller, two-storey structure with a cross on the roof, aka the actual church part of the Mission. Instead of guessing, he got the folded sheets of paper out of his back pocket and referred to the small schematic of the grounds for any clues that might help make up his mind.
It looked like there was a smaller chapel behind the church, in an area marked ‘Cemetery’. The caption said it was the oldest original building of the Mission. He couldn’t call it logic – nothing that had happened to him over the last few days had been remotely logical – but it felt like if Rafael, the devil-worshipping returnee, had a connection to anywhere in this place it would be the most ancient part. The part that had been around when Rafael had last been here.
When he reached the far corner of the main church building, Gabe stopped, flattened himself against the wall and poked his head round for a quick recce, then felt kind of ridiculous. Why was he acting like he was Agent Gabriel Mason here? Because you never knew. Definitely a good enough reason, he told himself.
He looked again. There was nobody around in this part of the grounds, either, and not so far away Gabe could see the line of trees behind which was the graveyard. In there, if he was right and if he wasn’t too late, he’d find Father Simon. Dead or alive, said the voice in his head.
Out in the surrounding area some animal or other uttered a strange, almost-human sound, halfway between a scream and a moan, and it made Gabe tense up. He’d been trying not to think about what might be happening to Stella, in the back of the van with Benny, Scotty and Nate. While it wasn’t his fault she’d gotten under Benny’s skin, he couldn’t help feeling it was his fault Stella hadn’t been safely at home today, where Benny couldn’t get his hands on her.
But if he opened up the floodgates to the unending list of ‘what if?’ possibilities, he knew he’d be drowned by them and unable to think of anything else. Or actually do anything. He didn’t want to stop himself worrying about Stella, but in this particular here and now he had to. He had to believe Benny wouldn’t do anything terrible, while he knew for a fact that Rafael absolutely would. With a quick glance behind him, Gabe peeled himself off the church wall and ran for the trees.
He had spent so much time playing first-person shooter games he found it impossible not to imagine there really was a sniper up on the church roof, with him in the cross hairs of his telescopic, laser-guided sights. Every metre he covered, the trees that would give him sanctuary seemed to remain just as far away, only adding to his chances of being hit by the sniper’s high-powered, hollow-point bullet. The bullet that would punch through his skin, its copper alloy jacket peeling apart, the lead core fragmenting on impact, then tearing up and making hamburger of his insides. He’d read all about it. He knew every single stage of what was going to happen, that he wouldn’t even hear the kill shot.
And then there he was, running through the narrow stand of trees, moments later coming out the other side. Safe. Unscathed. In the graveyard.
Gabe stopped to get his breath back, as well as some of the sanity he’d lost in the previous twenty seconds. He scanned the area around him. There was no way a cemetery – even during the day, with a total lack of cold, silver moonlight – was not going to be spooky. The place was full of dead people, what else was it going to feel like? But in the silence, the only sound his own ragged breathing, there was the same zing of electricity in the air that there’d been earlier, at Janna’s house. But this time it was more intense.
The man was here, somewhere. And he was getting stronger.
Out of the corner of his eye Gabe caught a brief flare of light over to his right, like someone had just taken a picture and the flash had gone off. In that direction he saw a small building, which, if he was reading the map right, had to be the old chapel. Although what he was going to do if he found Father Simon locked in mortal combat with Rafael, he hadn’t got a clue. In his pocket he still had the crucifix, which Stella had picked up off the floor at Janna’s and returned to him, but when it came to a weapon, that was about it.
A saying of his mom’s, or maybe it was his grandma’s, came back to him, about how the brave went where angels feared to tread. He was with the angels on this one – he did not feel brave and, if there’d been any other alternative, he would not be about to tread anywhere but back to the car.
Dodging between the ranks of graves of the long-dead, some abandoned to nature and with stones leaning at crazy, drunken angles, others neat and well tended, he saw the flashing light go off again, twice, three times. Coming from inside the chapel. Whatever was happening it looked as if it was hotting up, just in time for his arrival. As he got closer, Gabe slowed down. He could see the place better now; the roof of the small building sagging like the back of an old horse, it looked every day of its two hundred and some years of age.
He arced round to the left, where the door had to be, keeping his distance until he was facing the front of the chapel. The double doors were open. As Gabe strained to see inside he heard the wing-whisper, then he saw the owl, a grey phantom, gli
de between him and the building. Reining back his fear, he searched the cemetery for the coyotes, finally spotting them, their fur the perfect camouflage against the gravestones. Sentry-like, they were sitting either side of the low building. They were warning him off.
Looking back at the chapel he caught a movement. He was going to have to ignore the coyotes. Inside, he could see the figure of a man… No, make that two men.
Chapter Thirty
When he got into big trouble as a child, Gabe remembered his mom asking him what had possessed him to do whatever it was he shouldn’t have done. As if she wanted to believe it wasn’t really his fault and he had no control over himself. Standing outside the chapel, the sensation of being taken over, possessed, spread out through his whole body from deep inside and invaded every part of him. More mist than smoke, as he breathed he could feel the coldness swallowing him up. And there was nothing he could do to stop its progress.
He began to move forward, not really knowing if he was being pulled unwillingly towards the chapel or walking steadfastly into whatever was going down in there of his own accord.
By the time he had stepped through the open doors it didn’t much matter either way. He was inside, where the normal rules – the ones which made the world as he recognized it turn – did not apply any more. He knew this to be true because he’d been in the exact situation before. And only just survived.
In the small, confined space where he now found himself, the air was alive with a loud buzzing, like hornets on steroids, and thick with the acrid scent of burnt herbs and a hot, metallic smell he couldn’t identify. The vile mixture clung to Gabe’s nostrils, the taste coating his mouth, and it made his eyes water. He waited for the screaming and the jagged, agonizing knives to begin stabbing at him. Waited for his head to start expanding until his skull disintegrated from the pressure. But nothing happened.
