by Kim Foster
"Is she okay?" he asked, glancing at the love seat.
"She was trying to help me."
"She's fine," Rasha said curtly, and glanced at her grandmother.
"I love her but she's crazy now, talking to the kitchen pots like they were people..."
She looked back at Josie.
“...Helping strangers who kill children."
Bacon growled a very low rumble from his throat.
Rasha handed Josie some water. But she kept the shovel close, ready. Josie wasn't going anywhere.
"Start talking."
Rasha had always seemed so scary to him, but now he saw something completely different. She was acting tough, but she was worried, frantic for Musa, willing to do anything to get him back. Even as she looked at him, fiercely, the shovel ready to bash him in the head again, he saw that Rasha fought back her tears.
He wanted to make her feel better. But he wasn't sure how.
"I think he's alive."
Her reaction was visible. Tears filled her eyes, and she wiped them away.
"You think he's alive? Like you don't know?"
"I didn't take him...or, I don't think I took him..."
"What? What?" she burst out at him, "How could you not know? Did you take him or not?"
And then she took one great swing and rammed the shovel into the dry wall above his head.
"God, you are such a freak!"
She paced the floor, a caged panther, clanking the shovel down on the wood floors. In his whole world, he had never seen such anger. In his world, everyone was disinterested, disconnected, there was nothing worth raising a voice for, everyone walked their own way and occasionally rubbed shoulders in passing, but there was never this kind of friction.
When Rasha turned to look into Josie's eyes, all he saw was that she loathed him.
"You've lived here this whole time, on this street, sitting on your steps, watching us, just waiting for the chance to take him..." she said, bewildered.
“It wasn’t Musa I was watching,” he thought, but he kept quiet.
"Why?...Why did you take him?”
And then, she got on her knees in front of him. And she begged. She begged him to tell her where Musa was.
It was the most awful thing he had ever seen in his life. All of her pain right there in front of him. And he had nothing to offer her. Nothing.
So he said nothing.
He looked at the floor. Tried to think of what to do next, and didn't even flinch or close his eyes, when Rasha got up, raised the shovel over her head and prepared to kill him right there on the spot.
☐☐☐☐
What Emerald thought she saw was someone swinging a cricket bat.
Or that's what it looked like through the window.
The windows were open at the little clapboard house at the end of the street, and Emerald plainly heard the swoop of a heavy object like a bat or a rake or a shovel winging through the air and crashing into something.
Then she heard a voice scream back. A boys voice. Josie.
It made her stop and turn her face to the house.
She was almost crossing out onto Birrell Street when she saw the house. She hadn't entirely noticed the house before, but she chalked that up to being new and not having lot of time to investigate the street or the kids on it.
But the giant sweeping motion made her stop.
She looked around to make sure she wasn't being followed. No, Grotty Greg was being fawned over by Botany Cook at the other end of the street, and The Barrel had sped off in a huff. The police seemed content to mill about and look at their clip boards and order around groups of people searching the beaches for the missing children.
Emerald walked quickly up onto the sloping grass, and made her way to a side window that was cracked open. She heard the scene inside before she got there.
"Tell me where he is!"
Wham!
"Tell me where he is, freak!"
Wham!
Each time she heard Josie make small “oof” sounds as the metal thrashed the softer parts of him.
Emerald ran faster, and hit the window hard with her palms. She banged on it.
"Stop! Stop! Don't hurt him. Don't!"
She saw the shovel stop mid-air and watched the girl with long wild hair, turn to her, startled. Bacon leapt off his spot hovering over Josie, and came running for Emerald.
"He didn't do it." Emerald said, hopping up on a big trash can and sticking one leg, then the other through the small slit in the window and pushing the frame up with her hands.
"Down, boy," she said to Bacon, but he was undeterred.
"What do you know?" Rasha blurted out.
"I caught him trying to bite my grandmother.
"Yeah, yeah..." Emerald said with a sigh, putting her feet down on the wood floor, and straightening her t-shirt. Bacon attacked her pant leg.
"Josie does that. It’s super-annoying..." she waved a hand at Emerald as if this were no big deal.
"But I'm not sure its his fault....Also, could you call off the attack dog?" she said sarcastically since Bacon was clawing and chewing at her pant leg, but making very little dent in the effort to bring her down.
"Bacon, heel."
Bacon squealed, let go of the pant leg and simpered back to the couch next to Teta.
"Really? Well, God knows what he did with my brother...he knows something and he won't talk."
She pulled the shovel up over her head and brought it down onto Josie's ribs.
"Stop! No, stop!" Emerald yelled, "God, you're so violent."
"Not violent..." Rasha said, leaning on the shovel, "just willing to get my family back at any price."
She lifted the shovel high in the air.
"Whoa! Whoa there, killer!" Emerald leaped in between her and Josie.
Josie moaned on the floor, curled into a tiny ball. He was pretty sure Rasha had shattered his ribs. They felt like broken pieces of china.
Rasha looked something beyond mad, almost crazed. Her hair, flew in all kinds of directions and her eyes darted around the room, from Teta on the couch, to Emerald, to Josie.
Emerald thought she looked like a crazed animal, acting only on instinct, biting, clawing, fighting back at anything in her path. She had a furious temper, Emerald could see that, and it stopped her from making sound decisions.
Emerald secretly loathed this kind of unhinged emotion. Emerald was even keel, reasonable, academic, predictable, cool, inventive, stubborn to a fault and useful in all circumstances, but Rasha was a bottle rocket, sparkly and fiery and hot and exciting, but also dangerous, unpredictable, a little crazy.
She knew immediately that Rasha was going to drive her batty. Once she got the shovel out of her hand.
"I have to find my brother. And I will one way or another," Rasha said, swirling around toward Emerald and positioning the shovel in front of her.
"Will you try to stop me?"
And Emerald, unafraid of anything, even an angry bottle rocket with a shovel poised to knock her out, walked right up to Rasha, her eyes never leaving hers, seeing the pain, the panic of losing someone you love, and knowing how that felt, and said in the softest, most sincere, whisper, "No. I won't stop you. I will help you. Josie will help you. We'll do it together. "
Emerald held out her hands and gestured for Rasha to give her the shovel.
Rasha was not sure what to say to this.
What she wanted to do was go wolf, and kick and claw and fight until she got her brother back, and her grandmother was well again, but she was starting to see she couldn't do it alone, that her garden shovel wasn't going to be enough. And even though she didn't quite trust them yet, and wouldn't trust them for a long time, even though she was hardly going to become their best friends, and have pajama parties, and share all their inner most secrets, she was inclined to not be alone right now.
Her better sense decided they might be able to help find Musa. Together.
And so she let herself give up the sh
ovel. And Emerald smiled, a message that she had made the right choice. And a sign that at least for now, they were on the same team.
☐☐☐☐
The next sound Josie heard was a voice speaking in Arabic.
Josie lifted his head a bit off the floor. He could see Rasha in one of the over-stuffed chairs. She was listening closely, sucking nervously on a piece of her hair. She was, Josie thought, trying to decide whether Teta was talking to the plants again or whether what she was saying was true.
Josie heard the word "Bangkok" and saw Rasha take a deep mournful breath.
Josie also saw Emerald, sitting cross legged on the floor off to the side.
Josie pulled himself up a little and winced. His ribs were hot pokers. But when he touched his side, he saw that he was bandaged and that a thick cream, which smelled like head cheese and feet, must have been made by Teta, and applied while he was knocked out.
It was obvious that whatever danger he had been in before had stopped.
The truth was coming out.
He raised his head a bit and saw that Bacon had waddled down the hall and was now sitting outside one of the bedrooms. Musa's bedroom he guessed. His big square head was resting on a stuffed light green plane, probably Musa's.
Bacon's eyes looked heavy and sad.
Josie watched Rasha listening to the words, letting them sink in. There were tears in her eyes as she listened. Teta got up, let the afghan fall on the floor, and wrapped herself around her granddaughter, cupped her young hands in her old hands, and told her the whole story, or as much as she knew about Bangkok, and Trinket and Musa.
All of it was in Arabic, except the last part which Josie suspected was for his benefit.
"...and so you see, dear Rasha, this boy is the Shintawk," Teta said, glancing at Josie, aware that he was listening. Rasha looked at him, too.
"... and if we help him, he might be able to bring our Musa home."
And then Josie heard the old woman say something he thought no one in the world would ever say, "Josie Brown is our only hope."
✽✽✽
They talked all afternoon, Josie, Teta, and Rasha, with Bacon snoring, unmoving, in the hallway in front of Musa's room.
Rasha occasionally got up to fill her grandmother's tea cup, or rub her old hands. Teta checked Josie's bandages, feeling her away around his wounds with the tips of her fingers, and where she thought it was needed, she applied more healing salve.
Rasha rummaged through the refrigerator and made them lamb kebabs, sprinkled in cumin, salt and mint, which she served with a little pot of thick yogurt, a bowl of steaming cous cous, and a hot flat bread that Teta called saj.
It was the kindest meal Josie had ever eaten. They sat around the coffee table, eating with their fingers, drinking tea, and listening to Teta.
She told them all the stories she knew - about Bangkok, and shape shifting Taipan that lived in nests in the swamps of Northern Australia, and a zombie crocodile-raptor named Verdoon that snatched people from their beds, and a gigantic blood-thirsty Red Back that wraps babies in her web and eats them live and whole when she's hungry.
She talked about the Organic Food Shop and how it was a den for Bangkok, and how there were other dens, posing as shops and markets, and other monsters living among the people in various towns and inlets in Australia.
To listen to her tell it, all of Australia was besotted by secret enclaves of malevolent, robotic Funnel Webs, and Box Jellyfish that lived in drains and reached up grabbed people when they showered.
Emerald listened, but Josie watched her shift in her seat. She wasn't sure about all this magic. After some time, Emerald could no longer contain herself.
"Mrs. Kadoura..." she asked, lobbing a piece of lamb into her mouth.
"Teta, please call me Teta."
"Of course, Teta...I don't believe in shape-shifting creatures, and invisible dogs and river creatures that steal children. It seems like hogwash to me."
Josie winced at her bluntness. Emerald had this way of coming out with things that were more blunt and harsh than they needed to be. She never soft-pedaled anything. But the upside of that was he always knew where he stood with her. There was no bull with Emerald, and that was weirdly comforting.
"I mean, pretty soon you're going to tell me drop bears exist!" Emerald screeched dramatically.
Rasha tensed in her chair.
"Ha ha, those are just for American tourists," Josie jumped in, trying to lighten things up.
"I do love watching the Americans when we tell them a bloody ferocious bear is going to drop from the tree and eat their face!"
Rasha looked like she was going to hit someone with a shovel again.
Josie had learned a lot about Rasha, in between her pummeling him with a shovel and eating with her over the course of the afternoon. She was a bit unpredictable and he had no idea what she would do or say next. It unsettled him and made him want to run away from her, and also made want to stay close and try to predict what she might do next.
She was perplexing in all the right ways.
"This is just like the drop bears. There's no science here," Emerald was reasoning.
"It's just somebody's grandmother - somebody's lovely grandmother..." she gestured toward Teta, "...telling stories about legends and myths. I mean, where's the science, the facts, the data? I have documentation that Kraken exist. There is a scientific reason behind this."
"Oh right, Fukushima, nuclear reactors, seismic shifts in the plates of the earth?" Rasha asked, now raised up in a kind of mother bear defense.
"That's right. Not ghost stories. Real events backed up by real science."
Josie rolled his eyes. All the Kumbaya was going downhill. Fast.
"Are you calling my grandmother a liar?" Rasha was out of her chair now.
Josie looked over to Teta. Who seemed to exist outside of what was happening. Her face was blank, like nothing was registering. Something about her was shifting, changing. She was there, but not there.
"I believe her." Josie said, standing up.
And everything stopped. The girls looked to him. He had never really been in a room where all eyes were on him, paying attention, looking to him for guidance.
Josie wasn't sure about the magic or the science, but he remembered that Howard had said science couldn’t explain everything, just like Teta. Wasn't it possible that science and magic co-existed?
"I believe Teta, Emerald. I believe because she took me there, mind melted with me, helped me try to defeat Bangkok."
"You beat Bangok?" Emerald asked, impressed.
"Well, no. I'm not strong enough, but Teta has been helping me."
"But I also believe Emerald," he looked right at Rasha.
"There is a lot of scientific data to back up the existence of a nuked-out Kraken. The way we pollute the ocean... the environment changes sea creatures, and the nuclear disaster at Fukushima probably made Bangkok even more warped and powerful..."
The girls looked at him and then, each other.
"Cool," they said, simultaneously and sat back down.
Josie was bringing up some kind of inner authority he didn't know he had.
"We really don't know what we are dealing with, but Bangkok is real and he's powerful," Josie said.
"And he's coming..." Teta said, her white eyes huge and staring, searching the air.
"Tonight....He is coming for the children."
Josie was on his feet, his ribs burning hard against him. He grabbed Teta by the shoulders and sank into the couch next to her.
"No Teta! I haven't practiced enough, I don't know how to beat him.”
Teta, now clearly moving in and out of some state, held his face in her hands and whispered into his forehead. She spoke Arabic and English and some other magical gibberish that was of no language he had ever heard.
"Nagona si, widwalla....see han...se han... Shintawk. You are ready. Kin kaodoo...zu pinchu...ve doon."
But when he pulled back to look i
n her milky eyes, he saw that she was retreating somewhere, going away from them. Her eyes were wet and nervous and her eyeballs darted from one side to another. She turned her face away and pressed her dress down with her hands.
"You can see the future, can't you Teta?"
She didn't answer him, but he knew the answer.
"Tell me now, before you go!" he shook her shoulders, trying to bring her back. The woman had gone ice cold. Her skin felt like a sheet of ice, her hair turned silver before his eyes, and strands of it were pitted with icicles, and frozen slivers. Her skin turned blue then purple.
Josie could hear Rasha screaming behind him, and Bacon barking furiously.
"Tell me, Teta!...What is going to happen tonight!"
Then, the old woman raised her cold, purple face to Josie and looked straight at him. Her breath puffed out into the room as frost, as if she were talking to them on a wintery day, and even though her eyes were still white balls stuck in her head, she looked at Josie as if she could see him perfectly.
And in the voice of Ludivine Salt, that haltingly cold, twiney voice, she said:
"Bangkok is going to eat every last bit of the children...right.
down.
to.
their.
little.
white.
bones."
And then the old woman slung back her head and cackled like she had never heard anything so wonderfully entertaining.
"little.
white.
bones.
so.
ta-a-a-a-asty."
And then the old woman’s mouth jacked open as if it had come off its hinges, and produced copious amounts of saliva and froth which came running out of her mouth and down the front of her. And then she laughed even harder, her body rocking forward and back, forward and back, her head lolling about, the sounds like echoes in a cave, surrounding them, ringing in their ears.
And then the old woman started hacking uncontrollably, choking. She grasped for her throat, clasped her fingers around her neck and sputtered and tried to expel something stuck there.
The old woman looked like she might die right there in front of them, until she took one old withered hand and stuffed it inside her wide, gaping mouth. She reached around inside, fishing for something that had gotten stuck, lodging her hand deeper and deeper inside her huge trench of a mouth, and finally finding it, and pulling it out, dragging it out of the sea of her mouth and dangling it in front of Josie.
