Lost Things: Three Adventure Novels

by K. T. Tomb

  “I’m sorry. I know I should have told you, but he was your best friend.”

  Something was tangling in her hair and yanked her back with such a force that she bounced off of the floor. Before she could understand what was going on, Valery was on top of her, pulling at her hair, clawing at her skin, screaming like a banshee. Gerald yanked her off and threw her on the bed.

  “Get out of here!” he yelled at both Julie and Piers, who made no hesitation before bursting through the door and down the dorm hallway.

  He wasn’t exactly comfortable being left alone with her, but he had hopes that one on one he may get more accomplished. She watched him like a lion watched a gazelle, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. Maybe she wasn’t next. Maybe he was. Maybe she was going to kill him right then and there, and not think twice about it. No, he looked into her eyes, she wasn’t that far gone, was she? He sure as hell hoped not as he placed a hand on her knee.

  “I don’t know how you feel right now. I can’t know. He was my friend too, but I understand that he meant more to you than that.”

  Was she even breathing? He watched her for a moment, unmoving and solid as stone, but every once in a while, she blinked, telling him that she was still there, even if she wasn’t listening.

  “What happened to Bobby was awful, we all agree to that. He didn’t deserve it, but what’s done is done. Okay?”

  She still said nothing, but at least she wasn’t going on another tirade, so he kept talking, hoping to lure the old Valery back, or at least a semblance of her. He pulled her hand into his lap and methodically rubbed the icy fingers. So cold. She didn’t fight, didn’t protest, but she still didn’t speak to him.

  “I miss Bobby too. He was a great guy and a great friend, and we are all saddened by the loss, but you can’t keep yourself locked up like this. You still have people that care about you, that love you. We all love you, Val. Please don’t lock us out.”

  “Love me?” She seemed to suddenly snap from her daze and scowled at Gerald. “I don’t care if you love me, I loved Bobby! And Bobby could have loved me!” She gave out a maniacal laugh. “No, he will love me! But Bobby isn’t here, now, is he? No, he’s gone. You let them take him away from me! You let him die and did nothing about it! It’s your fault! It’s all your fault!” She laughed awkwardly, to a silent joke that only she knew. “That’s okay because I’ll be with him, I’ll be with him again. It won’t be long now and we’ll be together.”

  Gerald moved towards the edge of the bed, hoping not to alarm her to his retreat, but that was exactly what he was doing. He was beginning to realize that she needed far more than he could give her, than any of them could give her. She’d become lost in her own delusions, delusions and visions created by the curse of the coin. He was sure of it now.

  “You want to know a little secret?” She giggled lightheartedly, but it wasn’t a Valery giggle. It was childlike and foolish, full of games. “Have you wondered what really happened to Sheila? Have you wondered if she really threw herself out that window? If she would really commit suicide? Come on now, Gerald.” She giggled again, more sinister than the first. “I’ve known you long enough to know that you’re pretty smart, when you want to be. When you open your eyes and look around you, look at what’s really going on. So what’d you think? You think she off-ed herself? Think she tossed herself overboard like a ragdoll surfing the wind?”

  He had no words, no response. He didn’t know what he thought. He’d doubted her suicide all along, but what was Valery hinting at? He couldn’t stand listening to her for one second longer. He had to get out of there.

  “I won’t give you the answer, sweetie,” she continued, “because I think you already know it!”

  She laughed again as he slammed the door behind him. He could still hear her fits of giggles as he made his way down the stairs.

  ***

  She ended the call for the sixth time in two days. They’d been trying to reach Gerald, but he had stopped answering their calls. Piers had started pacing the apartment the night before and had kept it up until this morning. Julie had tried to calm him, had tried to get him to go to bed, but he wouldn’t. He kept mumbling that Gerald was up to something. That he and Valery were plotting something, something against him and Julie, but Julie didn’t want to believe that. Didn’t want to, but now that he seemed to be blowing them off just as Valery had, it was hard for her to not believe that it was true. Maybe Piers was right.

  He’d finally given up on the pacing hours ago, but now he only rocked on the couch. Back and forth, back and forth. He was going to make her lose her own mind if he didn’t stop soon. He was just staring after her like a lost puppy dog. Why did she have to be the strong one now? They’d each had their breakdowns, and now he needed to get over his. Was it because of Robert? Piers hadn’t spoken to her about it since they’d left Valery’s, but then again, he hadn’t spoken to her about anything. He just paced, and then rocked. And stared; oh God, how he stared. Was it a bad thing that she just wanted to walk over and wrap her hands around his neck, just to see if he would fight her off? She didn’t do it.

  She slammed the phone back onto the counter and glowered at it, willing it to ring. Even as she willed it, she was stunned when it began vibrating across the surface. She snatched it up in a half-daze.

  “Hello?” She demanded, using the tone that expressed exactly how she was feeling towards Gerald at that moment.

  There was a giggle, a woman’s giggle, but not one that she recognized.

  “Somebody’s a little tense, aren’t you, my little whore? What’s wrong darling? My Bobby got your panties in a wad?” The voice had turned condescending and spiteful. Valery.

  “What do you want? Why are you calling me? I’m not going to try anymore. We said our peace and I told you that I would leave you alone, that we would leave you alone after that, so what do you want?”

  She didn’t know if she was angry or relieved to hear from her friend – or the girl that had once been her friend – but from the sound of the other girl’s voice, she thought that by the end of the conversation she was not going to be happy.

  “Well, I just thought you might want to know what this little birdie told me.” Valery snickered to herself, or maybe to someone else, who knew, and then grew serious. “Someone is being naughty. Very, very naughty, indeed. He thought I wouldn’t know, but I do know. I always know.”

  “What are you babbling about? Just tell me what you want or I’m hanging up!”

  “Then you won’t ever know what’s happened to the coins. What will happen to them if you don’t go, now. We have to stop him!”

  She was nearly hissing through the phone, but Julie had no idea who she was talking about.

  “You’re not making any sense. Who are you talking about? Who has the coins? What are they going to do?” She was frustrated enough as it was, but now Valery was making it worse. Why would she even believe her to begin with? The girl was gone, crazy, controlled by whatever the coin and the curse was doing to her. It made no sense to her, but she’d grown tired of trying to figure it out. She couldn’t even recall how long it had been since the professor’s death, how long all of this had been going on to begin with. Days? Weeks? Months? Everything dragged on, yet nothing seemed to move. They were in a funhouse, stuck in the maze of mirrors with no map to get out.

  “You know who I’m talking about! You have to know! Who else? It isn’t Bobby, so who else could it be?”

  She spit the words like venom into Julie’s ear, and they burned. No, Bobby wasn’t here any longer. Piers watched her from the couch, still rocking still staring. Like a cat stalking a mouse, waiting for its moment to pounce.

  “Gerald has them! He has them and they’re going to be lost forever. Oh,” Valery moaned sorrowfully, “forever lost. No, not lost. Can’t be. We have to stop him! Stop him, Julie! Stop him! Get the coins! Get me the coins!”

  There was a click, and then nothing, as Valery hung up the phone, leaving Juli
e with the cryptic message.

  “What did Valery say?”

  His voice was cracked and unsteady, but it still shocked Julie. After two days, she was beginning to wonder if he would ever speak to her again.

  “She said that Gerald is doing something with the coins.” She glanced at her cell phone, still puzzled by the call and Valery’s words. “I don’t know how she knows, or what he’s doing, exactly. But she was pretty freaked out.”

  Then she reminded herself that Valery had been pretty freaked out for a while now.

  “What did she say about the coins?”

  His eyes had cleared and he stood to move towards the kitchen, as if he hadn’t basically been catatonic for the last forty or so hours. As if everything had been completely normal, nothing out of place, and that this was a typical, everyday conversation they were having.

  “She just said that he was doing something with them. She said he is being naughty and that the coins are going to be lost.” She pondered what Valery had said, wishing that there had been more, something more concrete. Lost, how? “She kept saying that we need to stop him and then she said to get the coins, get the coins for her. I don’t know. I have no idea what she’s talking about or what Gerald is doing.”

  “Call her back,” he replied, matter-of-factly.

  As if it was the most obvious of choices. But it wasn’t the obvious choice, not with all that had happened, all that was going on. Valery hadn’t answered their calls even one time since Robert’s death and they were lucky she had even opened the dorm door for them the other day. She said as much.

  “But she just called you, didn’t she? Apparently what’s going on is very important to her and she wants us to take care of it for her, right? So why would she not answer your call now, if she really wanted help? Call. Her. Back.”

  He poured himself a cup of coffee and left the room, letting Julie think over what he’d said. He had a point. Valery needed their help with keeping Gerald from doing whatever it was he was about to do. So she did the only thing she could. She picked up the phone and called Valery.

  “Yes?”

  For a moment, Julie was fooled into believing that Valery, the old Valery, was on the other end, and then the calculation crept back into the voice.

  “They’re going to be lost if you don’t hurry. You should hurry, now, Julie. Before it’s too late and they are gone forever, just like my Robert. Oh, Bobby.”

  Julie thought she heard tears through the words, but couldn’t be sure. According to Valery, however, she didn’t have time to worry over the tears or the sorrow.

  “I know, you said that earlier, but where is he? We can’t stop him if we don’t know where to go.”

  “Oh, you know where he is. You know. The water will be so cold, you know, but the coins will capture the moon as they drift to the floor of the bay. It’ll be beautifully tragic. So tragic.” She trailed off for a moment before coming back full force. “Stop him, Julie! You have to stop him! Save the coins!”

  Another click and the girl was gone.

  “Hey, Piers?”

  Her fiancé walked back into the room, still sipping on steaming black coffee, his free hand shoved into the front pocket of his jeans, as she tried to mask her panic.

  “Where does Gerald’s dad dock his sailboat?”

  “Uh, the one by Savin Hill. Why?”

  “Because he’s about to toss the thirty into the ocean.”

  Piers’ eyes widened as his hand released the mug and the hot liquid splashed onto the carpet and his jeans. Instead of acknowledging the spill, he ran to the door and, snatching his coat, snapped the locks back and ran out the door, Julie barely on his heels.

  “Piers?” She jogged after him, nearly out of breath as they reached the bottom of the last set of stairs, but Piers showed no signs of slowing down. “Piers!”

  “We have to catch him, Julie. We have to stop him!”

  She cringed at the words, and though he couldn’t have known exactly what Valery had said to her on the phone, it chilled her none the less that he had just echoed her cries. She jammed the keys into the ignition and sped towards the Southeast Expressway. Gerald lived slightly further from the part of town where Savin Hill was located, but he’d also gotten a head start on them. For all she knew, he was already on the water and they had no chance of stopping him. Once those coins dropped into the ocean, they would be gone.

  She felt wild, like Cruella Deville, chasing after runaway puppies and she had a suspicion that Piers was feeling the same. He was muttering unintelligibly to himself and she didn’t bother with deciphering his words. All she worried about was getting to the dock and stopping Gerald. He must have lost it along with Valery. She’d contaminated him and now he was going over the deep end with her.

  “I’ve been thinking.” Julie barely heard his words, but that didn’t deter him. “What would we do if we had a few million dollars?” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, waiting for him to continue. He was distracted by something, his thoughts having veered off and left him in a daydream. For a moment, there was silence and then, “We have to stop him, Julie. Those coins are worth too much to just toss to the bottom of the ocean. We have to stop him!”

  “Since when have you been thinking about how much they’re worth?”

  She inquired, not so much nervous about his answer, but nervous about the cause of that answer, the reasoning behind his sudden change of heart. All their lives, they’d been satisfied with living on nothing. History would not have been their study if money had been a priority.

  “I thought we agreed that they need to be returned to the church? We can’t keep them; you do know that, right? The curse, remember?”

  “Yeah, the curse. Right. But if we don’t keep the coins, and we just sell them right away, we’ll be fine. No curse for us.” He shook his head in a silly, childish fashion. “Didn’t you say you had to have the coins in your possession in order to be affected? We sell them, quick and easy. Imagine what we could do!”

  His eyes roamed out the window in a daydream once again and for the first time, Julie noticed that his hand was in his pocket and had been in his pocket at least all of that morning, never moving. She tried to recall how long it had been there, but there had been so many other things distracting her thoughts that it was impossible to think that far back. Had it been a few hours? A day? Two, three, four days? The days were a blur behind them and she couldn’t recall.

  “Piers?” she asked hesitantly, “Do you have one of the coins?”

  She was terrified of his answer, though she already knew the truth. And what if he lied? Would she be forced to confront him? Her fiancé, the man she loved and planned to spend her life with? Would she have to fight a coin out of his hand just as she had wanted to do for Valery? She would fight, too. She would fight to save Piers, even if it meant to end her own life in order to save his. She would fight for him.

  He cocked his head to the side as he looked at her.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Do you?” Her breath was caught in her throat as she awaited his response.

  He smiled wide, almost angelically.

  “I do.”

  He pulled the coin from his front pocket and turned it this way and that, letting the moonlight gleam off the surface. He showed it to her as if it were a toy he’d just pulled from a Happy Meal. As if it was the most magnificent toy, the only toy he had ever wanted in the whole wide world. As if the toy were magic, and she supposed that it was, and would do tricks for them if they just stared at it long enough.

  She felt the lump in her throat tighten at the sight of it.

  “When, no, how did you get a coin? They’re in the vault! Or, they were, anyway.”

  “Didn’t it all make sense?” he asked, tentatively. “Everything Gerald said in the vault. He was right, you know. We could use the money, for our wedding, for our future. We would never have to worry about anything ever again. Just the two of us, ya know? We could get aw
ay from here! Where do you want to go? Paris? Hawaii? South Africa? Come on, baby, anywhere! You just have to dream it up and it can be ours!”

  She ignored his questions, still feeling the nausea well up inside her. He was corrupted, tainted by the promises made by the little slice of silver. Judas’ thirty.

  “When did you take the coin? How did you even get it?”

  “Oh,” he laughed lightly, “when Gerald and I fought and the coins spilled to the floor?” It was a question, more than a statement, as if she could have forgotten that moment. “I scooped one up as we straightened everything else. No one bothered to count them, so…” He shrugged nonchalantly. “No big deal. Only one coin, but now we can have them all!”

  She didn’t know what he meant by that, and she was sure she didn’t want to know. He turned in his seat, his face suddenly serious.

  “We have to stop him, Julie!”

  She turned her eyes back to the road, unwilling to meet his gaze.

  “We’ll stop him,” she mumbled, unsure.

  She was no longer concerned with stopping Gerald, though. Gerald seemed to be the sane one in the bunch, at least for now. If Valery was right, and he was going to toss the coins, then she wanted to be sure that that was exactly what happened. But now her concern was stopping Piers. Saving him from what he’d already succumbed to, and she was terrified that she was too late. Was there any going back once the curse had them in its control? She thought not, and that broke her heart.

  Chapter Four

  “This onetime ambassador of the kingdom of heaven on earth now walked through the streets of Jerusalem, forsaken and alone. His despair was desperate and well-nigh absolute. On he journeyed through the city and outside the walls, on down into the terrible solitude of the valley of Hinnom, where he climbed up the steep rocks and, taking the girdle of his cloak, fastened one end to a small tree, tied the other about his neck, and cast himself over the precipice. Ere he was dead, the knot which his nervous hands had tied gave way, and the betrayer's body was dashed to pieces as it fell on the jagged rocks below.” –The Urantia Book 186:1.7