The Gatekeeper's Son

by C. R. Fladmark

  Shoko pointed to a large portrait on the wall. “Who is the woman with Edward?”

  “That’s my grandmother. She died before I was born.”

  “She looks unhappy—they both do.”

  I didn’t see what she saw, but their pose was stiff and formal, no fun about them at all. I glanced at the other painting—the one covering the safe.

  “Shoko, … do you sense anything?”

  “You know I cannot.” Then her tone changed. “Why, do you?”

  “Well …”

  She followed my gaze. “Is it coming from that … safe thing?”

  “The gold’s in there.” I started toward the fireplace but stopped and backed toward his desk. When I grabbed a roll of tape from the top drawer, I saw the yellow sticky note beside his keyboard again, unmoved from last time, the same digits and numbers staring up at me.

  I rolled the ladder along the bookcase toward the fireplace and put a strip of tape over a small hole on the bookcase sidewall.

  “There’s a security camera in there. It watches the safe.”

  She moved back. “Something watches from the books?”

  “It’s a camera, for God’s sake.” I climbed down, my gaze back on the picture. “It’s not alive.”

  “Are there other … cameras watching us?” She sounded nervous.

  “No … Grandpa doesn’t like them.” I thought for a moment and then turned the brass candleholder on the right side of the mantle. The painting slid open just like in a scene from an old movie.

  The LCD display on the front of the safe came alive when I touched it, but I nearly fell off the chair when a female voice asked for a password. I stared at the screen and concentrated. I felt energy rise inside me.

  “You don’t need to force it, just listen!”

  “OK, OK, I’m sorry,” I whispered. A moment later, I punched a code into the keypad. Then the voice asked for a thumbprint. “This is insane,” I muttered. I took a deep breath and put my thumb against the screen.

  “Good afternoon, James. Access granted.”

  The safe door clicked opened. I glanced back at Shoko. She leaned forward, her eyes wide in astonishment, and climbed onto the chair beside me as I pulled the door open. We peered in together.

  “Oh …” she whispered.

  The gold bars lay there, rough and shaped like little surfboards with strange markings. They shone as if just polished—the same as when Grandpa showed them to me years ago. Beside the bars lay a rolled-up piece of leather—the map?

  “So this is the treasure,” Shoko said in a low voice.

  The sight had me transfixed. They should have been in a museum somewhere, not locked away. Grandpa didn’t need these anymore. And I was starting to think he should never have taken them in the first place.

  “I wonder how old these are.” I reached out to take one, but Shoko slapped my hand away.

  “Do not touch them! I told you it changed him—they are evil!”

  I turned to look at her. “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “And you know nothing!”

  I shook my head and reached in again.

  Shoko leaped off the chair, braids spinning out. Her hand flew back to her racket case. By the time she landed, a wakizashi, a short curved sword, was in her hand and pointed straight at me.

  “Touch it and I will cut you down!” she screamed.

  I jerked my hand away from the gold. She wasn’t hiding her feelings now—her fear and sorrow hit me like a slap in the face. She took a step forward and placed the tip of the wakizashi just a few inches away from my heart. She looked upset, but her sword never wavered.

  “Please, Junya, do not make me do this.”

  We stayed that way for a long moment, me on the chair, her below.

  “OK, Shoko, I won’t touch them.”

  She wiped a tear from her face with her left hand but held the sword steady.

  I tried to smile. “Wouldn’t killing me break our bond of trust?”

  “Death is the only way to break the bond,” she said. “And I will not hesitate if I must. I cannot let you become corrupted.”

  I wasn’t about to remind her she was hesitating right now, luckily for me.

  A car door slammed outside. I closed the safe, hopped off the chair, and ran to the window. Shoko crowded in close behind me.

  “There are many men,” she whispered.

  I heaved a sigh. “I guess my protection team is here.”

  “Look … it is Edward!” She sounded shaken.

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” I punched the lock button and turned the candlestick back. The picture took forever to slide closed.

  Shoko was staring at me, confused. “You will get in trouble?”

  Panic rose in me. “I opened his safe!” I hissed. “He’s gonna kill me!”

  I heard the front door open as we moved into the hallway. There was the usual murmur of voices and then someone swore.

  “Get the Chairman back in the car, now!”

  Mr. Barrymore’s voice came next, shouting from outside. “I need info, people! What’re we dealing with?”

  “Thermal detection upstairs.”

  “Get in there!” I heard Grandpa bellow.

  “Not yet!” It was Mr. Barrymore again. “Weapons and vests—let’s go, people! You three, cover the back and sides! Move, move, move!”

  I imagined men pulling assault rifles out of the SUVs and struggling into thick Kevlar jackets. I’d seen them practice.

  “Chief, control says no one came in the gate,” a voice called out, calmer than the rest. “Perimeter alarms are negative.”

  I still had a chance to stop this. I could call out, feign innocence, although there would be hell to pay. But why had the guard lied about us not being here?

  I suddenly thought of Grandpa’s driver, how he’d driven off without a word when I told him to. Now the guard who let us in. Had I made them obey me somehow?

  Shoko stared at me, waiting for some direction. The sound of ammo clips slamming into place made up my mind. I grabbed her hand and pulled her down the hall. I tried to be quiet, but with everything else dead silent, each step creaked.

  They weren’t rushing in. They were coming slowly, cautiously—and probably pointing their guns up the stairs. I pushed Shoko into Grandpa’s bedroom. My heart pounded. There was enough room to hide under Grandpa’s king-size bed, but…I stopped dead when I noticed that lingerie and a blue dress were draped over a lounge chair on the other side of the room. On the floor beside it was a pair of black high heels.

  Shoko touched me. “Well?” she whispered.

  I pushed her toward the bathroom, harder than I meant to, and she fell to the floor. The hilt of her wakizashi hit the floor, and the sound echoed off the marble walls. I swung the door closed and locked it. With my back against the door, I hit my fists against my forehead, as if I could somehow pound out a solution. But my brain had stopped working, frozen by the panic rising inside me. My whole body shook.

  Shoko crawled over to me on her knees, her wakizashi pointed at the door. “I thought you had an escape plan!”

  “I screwed up. We have to go out there—”

  She grabbed my arm. “Edward cannot see me!”

  “They’re going to find us. We have nowhere to go.” My neck was tingling. I felt their energy: fear, anger and something else.

  One of them wanted to kill me.

  The bedroom floor creaked. I tensed, waiting for bullets to rip through the door.

  “Is this natural?” She pointed at the floor. “I cannot tell.”

  I could feel three men looking at the bathroom door.

  “Yes, it’s Italian marble,” I whispered. It would be perfect for my tombstone.

  “It better be,” she said in a dead calm voice. Then she took my hand. “I am sorry, but I have no choice.”

  My mind collapsed as I watched her whispering to herself—probably a Buddhist death sutra. Then the door crashed inward and my head
exploded in pain.

  CHAPTER

  13

  I woke up on my stomach, my head pounding. When I tried to open my eyes, the world spun around me in a blur, as if I were in the center of a wheel. I reached out to steady myself, but only one hand moved. Something warm and soft held the other.

  “Lie still,” Shoko said. “You are not dead … yet.”

  I pried my eyes open. She was on her knees beside me. She let go of my hand and it dropped to the ground, which was soft and damp. I was lying in the dirt.

  “It is always like this the first time,” she said. “It will go away in a moment.”

  I let my head fall back and waited for my mind to clear. I had a worm’s-eye view of the bushes around us. I saw trimmed branches, a park bench, the street, and, beyond that, Grandpa’s house. I pushed myself up and was rewarded with sharp pain in my head.

  Grandpa stood outside the carriage-house gates, near the rear door of an SUV, surrounded by men. John, the bodyguard closest to Grandpa, held a small MP5 submachine gun in one hand. I lay in the dirt, confused, as two more black SUVs skidded to a stop beside the others. Four men jumped out of each. When had Grandpa gotten so many bodyguards? And was this all because I’d opened the safe?

  “They just kicked in the bathroom door,” John told Grandpa. “Nothing there. They’re still searching the top floor.” John put his hand to his earpiece. “The house is clear, sir.”

  “Did they check the safe?” Grandpa yelled.

  There was a pause. “It’s secure,” John said, “but someone put tape over the hidden security camera.”

  “What?!” Grandpa bellowed. “I’m going in there!”

  “Sir, you should wait—”

  Grandpa grabbed the MP5 from John’s hand, cocked the weapon like an expert, and strode toward the house. “When we find out who did this, he’s a dead man!” he said over his shoulder.

  I looked at Shoko. “How did we get here?”

  She didn’t answer at first, her attention still on the house. “My mother told me he was a kind man with a pure heart,” she said at last. “Do you see how he has changed?”

  “Shoko, how did we get here? They’re talking like it just happened.”

  “It did.” She sat back in the dirt. “I cannot do many things here, but I can do that.”

  I sat up. “There’s no way we got out of the bathroom and over here in less than a second.”

  She shrugged. “Use your eyes and decide for yourself.”

  I gave her a blank stare.

  “We call it traveling,” she said. “A way to move from one place to another.” Then she stabbed her finger into my chest. “But this is a secret. You must tell no one!”

  I gave my head a shake. “How … how’d you do that?”

  She shook her head. “It is not so simple … and if you do not already know, explaining will not help.”

  “You have to tell me something! This whole mess is your fault.”

  She crossed her arms. “I did not ask you to open that…that thing.”

  “We wouldn’t even have been in there if you hadn’t stolen—sorry, borrowed the journal!”

  She let out a low growl as she slid the wakizashi back into the racket case.

  “And why do you have a wakizashi?”

  “How else am I to protect you?”

  “Protect me?” I pointed a finger at her. “You were about to chop me in half!”

  “I saved you.” She frowned. “Did you not see your grandfather? I will not let that happen to you.”

  I sighed. “If it is evil … we need to get rid of it, take it back where it belongs.”

  Her eyes widened. “And you think you can do that?”

  “Someone has to.” I was staring at her, but my mind was a million miles away. “I think it has to be me.”

  She gave me an odd look. “Perhaps, but today is not the day we find out.”

  I leaned back against the thick trunk of the maple tree. I thought of all the things she’d told me that day. I should have had a million more questions, but my mind was blank. Information overload, I guessed. I laid my hand on a nearby tree trunk to steady myself.

  My finger brushed rough bark and my body twitched as the tree’s energy surged through the trunk and into me. It was vibrant, strong, pulsing like a heart. My mouth dropped open. “What the …” I started to stand, but Shoko pulled me back down.

  “Be quiet.” She nodded toward the house. “The men are starting to search away from the house.”

  “Oh, jeez.”

  “I will travel you home,” she said. “If you are there, no one can accuse you of being here.” She reached out for my hand, but I pulled it away.

  “Wait! I … I still don’t understand any of this!”

  She heaved a deep sigh. “Use your eyes. It is what it is. And I will travel more slowly this time so it won’t hurt as much.”

  I glanced back at the house. “OK, but make sure we end up behind my dad’s workshop. My mom will freak out if we show up in the living room.”

  “When I travel here, I must go somewhere I know because I cannot see my destination.” She glanced at me, thoughtful. “Try using your energy and see where you want us to go. And try not to take my head off.”

  I tried to build my energy, tried to imagine what it looked like behind the shop. All I got was a bigger headache than I had a moment ago.

  She looked disappointed. “Well, it is your house, so it should be safe. Hold my hand.”

  We sat cross-legged, facing each other, and I smiled as our palms touched. “They fit well together, don’t they?”

  She didn’t reply. I blushed and wondered why I’d said that.

  “Ready?”

  “What should I do?” I asked, anxious, like I used to feel in a jet as it began its takeoff.

  In answer, she slapped her right palm against the ground. A rush of air sucked the breath out of me and the world turned into a blur.

  She’d lied—it still hurt like hell.

  Before I opened my eyes, I did a mental survey. I was still sitting cross-legged and Shoko’s hand still held mine. My head and body ached, but the pain was fading fast. If I opened my eyes and we really were in my backyard, I’d have to believe everything she’d said that day.

  I opened one eye and swore. We were sitting in the narrow space between my dad’s shop wall and the back fence, a neglected patch of weeds and discarded building materials—shady, quiet and private.

  Shoko stood up and brushed the dirt from her legs. “That was not so bad, for you anyway.” She sounded tired.

  I didn’t move. I felt drained. My mind and body were overwhelmed.

  Shoko squatted in front of me. “Go and let your mother see you.”

  I looked up at her. “What will you do?”

  “I must seek the advice of my Elders. And … thank you for believing me.”

  I nodded. “Today was … a lot to take in all at once.”

  She smiled. “I had fun.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, not all of it was fun, but I enjoyed riding the cable cars and drinking hot chocolate with you.”

  “You’ll come back, right? I mean, because of our training and stuff.”

  “For now, practice using your energy—carefully. I do not know when I will come back over again.”

  “Over? Where are you going?”

  She smiled. “You have enough on your mind.” Then her eyes narrowed. “Remember, you must tell no one about this. They may put you in a place where I cannot reach you. Now go.”

  I was halfway to the back door when the wind came, as I knew it would. It billowed through my clothes and my hair and then it was gone.

  “Junya!” It was Okaasan at the kitchen door. “Is that you?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute.” I needed time to think before I saw her, both because of what had just happened and because I knew she was going to nail me about last night. I’d slipped out early this morning, before breakfast, just t
o avoid any questions.

  The clock on the stove said four-thirty. Just thirty minutes ago I’d been walking up to Grandpa’s gate with Shoko.

  Okaasan barely glanced at me. “I thought I felt something … odd. Did you notice anything?”

  “Nope.” I sat at the table and waited for what I knew was coming.

  “Why were you so late last night?”

  I swallowed. “I went to see Grandpa, and Ms. Lin took me out for dinner—she wants me to know what it’ll be like being Grandpa’s heir, apparently.”

  She turned to me and her mouth dropped open. “Oh my God, what happened to your face?”

  “Ah … basketball.”

  Her hands went to her hips. “And why was there was a pile of dirty clothes on your bedroom floor this morning? Surely you didn’t go to dinner like that?”

  I hesitated. “I … they got dirty after—”

  “What, playing basketball with Ms. Lin after dinner?” She glared at me and then turned to the counter and started hacking some celery.

  “I fell down on the way home and—”

  She spun around and pointed the knife at me. “Don’t lie to me, Junya!”

  “All right, I’m sorry.” I held up my hands. “Grandpa’s driver dropped me off on California Street last night.”

  She arched her eyebrows, waiting.

  “You said it was OK to protect myself—or someone else.”

  “So you get into a fight the very day after I say that?” She shook her head. “And who was this someone else?”

  I hesitated. “A girl. She got lost after a movie last night and … she got into trouble.” I tried my damnedest to block my thoughts, not like I had a clue how.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Do you know her?”

  “Well …” I considered how much to say. “I met her at the library on Saturday. She’s … she’s an exchange student. Her name is Shoko.”

  “Shoko.” She said the name as if sampling something new, unsure how it would taste. “That’s an old name.” Her eyes met mine. “This is the same girl who made you dizzy?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not in love!”

  “But you got beat up helping her?”

  “I didn’t get beat up,” I said a little too quickly. “Well, maybe a bit, but I did OK. She’s OK, too.”