Harken (Harken Series)

by Kaleb Nation

  “I don’t even know what to say,” Callista replied. She crossed her arms, still not seeming to believe what we’d heard. There was so much that had just been dumped on us at once.

  “Well if they—we—reincarnate,” Thad suggested, “do you think that Anon was Daniel Rothfeld?”

  I didn’t know whether to nod or shake my head. Why would Anon give us the tape if he already knew who he was? Was this his way of enlisting our support, to make us part of some army of his? The most perplexing part was why: we’d gotten so many questions answered, but now had an equal amount new ones.

  I was still holding the red gift-wrapped present from Anon, the final thing from his letter. Callista and Thad looked down at it the same time I did.

  “That’s too small for another tape,” Callista observed as she slid closer, Thad inching across the bed to be next to me. I turned it over to find the edge, ripping the paper across and tossing it onto the bed comforter.

  Underneath, I found a stack of three metal rectangles, with hinges on their sides that connected them together. I guess I’d been expecting a cassette or a tiny box with something important in it. I lifted it by the edge and found that the three pieces folded out into a line.

  Now there were three rectangles next to each other attached by the hinges. They were small picture frames, silver and new. At first glance I thought it was odd, until I saw that there were already photos in them, some that I recognized.

  The bottom picture was of me, smiling in a gray sweater and white t-shirt against a marbled blue background. It was my latest high school photo, the same that my mom kept sticking to the side of the refrigerator even though I’d tried to hide it dozens of times.

  Stranger were the other two pictures. The center photo was of a boy who was also my age, but who had black hair combed back and deeply emerald eyes. He was far tanner than me too, relaxed and smiling without showing his teeth, a leisurely grin telling the world that he didn’t have many monetary cares. The paper on which it was printed was old and bent at the corners, carefully placed behind the glass so it would stay together.

  Then there was the third picture, at the top. It was a photograph of Daniel Rothfeld, looking much like he had in the film but not nearly as tired or afraid. It intrigued me how I hadn’t picked up much strain from the man when he’d been on the tape, but now that I saw him in this picture and could compare the two, I realized just how different he was. It was almost like that picture had been taken before he’d gained his conscience.

  We continued to study the faces, trying to unravel this code. I couldn’t ignore a strange feeling emanating from the pictures. Something kept biting at me every time I looked from one to the other.

  I tried reading their Glimpses. That was easy. Daniel Rothfeld—finally, in a photo—was molded out of confidence, so filled with power and prestige that it practically shone from him. I knew it came from his power as a Guardian.

  Strangely enough, though, when I looked at the center picture I began to detect a similar feeling. It wasn’t as strong, just power and command deep in his eyes. Something…similar between the two.

  I finally looked at the bottom picture, and read my own Glimpse.

  And then it clicked.

  The three eyes—though all different colors, and all with different shades of feeling—were the exact same. Even when I hopped from the center, then to Daniel Rothfeld, and finally to my own, I knew that what I’d just discovered had been lying in front of me all along, and I—the Eye Guy—had just been too blind to see it.

  “I’m Daniel Rothfeld,” I realized.

  14

  Nightlights

  If there was a way to describe the feeling that overcame me, it was like my entire body was being pulled down the drain of a tub, water fighting to drown me as my bones were mashed together. No matter how much I struggled or how badly the force mangled me, I could not fight hard enough to escape.

  I looked up from the pictures, letting them fall into my lap, staring at Callista and Thad with fright and inwardly hoping that one of them would protest.

  They were looking at me with wide eyes, probably a mirror of my own face. But they didn’t say anything. Why weren’t they arguing, why weren’t they at least trying to prove me wrong? Didn’t Callista always try that—why wasn’t she now?

  Thad bent forward, resting his head on his knee and running his fingers into his hair, leaving them there, letting the realization flow through him.

  “The dreams were real,” I said, pieces still coming together like keys into locks. “We’ve lived before. Everything I saw…those were my lives. I’ve already failed twice.”

  I pointed to the pictures. “This is what Anon wanted me to know. That’s why I saw both of you in my nightmares. We were running from the Guardians in the first, and you tried to save me in the second life, but it was too late. And now we’re back.”

  “This is insane…” Callista breathed out, her voice dropping to a nearly indiscernible level. It was affecting her just as much as me. All along, we’d been far more important than we’d thought. Suddenly, we all knew why the Guardians wanted us dead so badly. How could this have happened?

  Nothing we could have spoken would have been of any comfort. What we’d thought was larger than us was now even a hundred times bigger. But who was I supposed to hate? Myself, for dying and pushing it onto me? That was the worst part, because if what I’d found was true, I was the only person to blame for it.

  “We need a plan,” Callista said.

  “I don’t have one,” I replied, unintentionally whimpering.

  “We need a damn plan!” she exploded at me, screaming so loudly that it bounced off the walls and the furniture, ringing on the glass of the TV.

  “I don’t have one!” I barked, my head snapping up as the roar left my throat, so harsh that it was painful. She didn’t back down.

  “Do you understand that they are going to kill us?” she shouted straight into my face. Her hands were in fists so tense that her knuckles were white.

  “Do you understand how big this is?!” she said. “We will die. They will make sure.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” I was just as loud as her, refusing to back down. “They’re after me. I’m the target. I’m the one who has to die.”

  “And if you die then we do too,” she said. “So if you let yourself die because you don’t even have any of this thought out, then you’re our murderer.”

  My hands slid down to my sides on the bed, ready to push myself up and face her, fury pumping through my veins. I moved but only made it to standing halfway before Thad lashed an arm out, slamming it across the front of my shoulders, forcing me to sit.

  “Sit the hell down!” he yelled at me. I fought, but the muscles on his arm were almost twice the size of mine.

  “You too!” he ordered Callista, just as harshly. “Sit down, now!”

  Callista didn’t take orders. But I’d never seen Thad so furious, arm still latched across me like an iron brace, fire in his eyes as he glared at Callista—lions in a war of territory. She bit her lower lip, but in the end, she sat halfway on the edge of the dresser, turning her head away with hot, angry tears in the corners of her eyes.

  “That’s enough from both of you,” Thad snapped. “We’re not going to get anywhere if we’re fighting with each other. That’s not what we need right now.”

  “What we need is a plan—” Callista started. He lifted his other hand.

  “Do you see I have another arm right here?” he growled threateningly. “I could pin you to a chair, and Michael here to another chair, until both of you shut up.”

  She shut up.

  “Don’t you dare yell at Callista again,” he told me. “We’ve given up a lot for you already, and we don’t owe you a single thing anymore.”

  I pressed my lips together tightly, teeth together too. I knew they’d given up a lot for me, and just having them there with me at that moment was something I should have been extremely g
rateful for. There was just no room for feelings of appreciation amidst everything else in my head at that moment.

  When I said nothing, Thad turned to Callista again.

  “And you,” he said. “We’re all upset right now. But you need to keep in control. None of us want to be here, but we’re here now. And we have to move ahead from that.”

  He took a large breath and let it out quickly in exasperation. “You two are gonna drive me crazy if you keep this up.”

  Finally, his arm slid away from me, and I sank back to let some of the tension ease.

  “Am I allowed to ask what the next step is?” Callista said. Thad cleared his throat.

  “Michael,” he said. They were looking at me again.

  “Um…” I started. “Well there’s the bank cash box at the bottom of the letter.”

  I produced the paper. The number was typed a space below an address in downtown LA.

  “We can go down there and take a look,” I said. “That’s the next obvious thing to do.”

  “Are we actually going to go after this Blade?” Callista said. Thad didn’t move but I could sense that the same question was on his mind too. Because that was really what all of this had pointed to, wasn’t it? I’d been led down a winding path to find the truth, and now that I knew, it was time for me to pick up where I’d left off, decades before.

  I knew I was a Guardian. And with all I’d found out, I couldn’t just stop here.

  But I couldn’t expect myself to go deeper, a part of me cried in counter. I was just a teenager. My goal was to go home somehow, right?

  “I don’t know,” I replied, just like I’d replied to so many other questions.

  “And that’s going to settle it for now,” Thad said, standing up quickly, clicking his pocket watch open. “It’s two-forty-three PM. We’re not going to argue. We’re going to stay here tonight, eat something, and tomorrow we will go to the bank, and take this one step at a time.”

  That sounded very anti-plan and I knew Callista wasn’t happy about that. She managed to keep her dissatisfaction to herself by promptly leaving the room, but the heat of her anger emanated down the hall.

  “You really get on her nerves,” Thad told me, shaking his head. I sighed.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “She’ll be alright.”

  “I didn’t mean to yell at her,” I said.

  “Look, this is a lot,” he told me. “We’re gonna deal with it in different ways.”

  I turned to him. “How come you seem so calm about this?”

  Out of all of us, he’d reacted the least, and actually seemed to have already adjusted to our new discoveries. I could sense his coolness under pressure, the calculated way in which he absorbed everything. I envied his ability to let go of inhibitions because I was so much the opposite.

  With questions still in the air, we left the room and headed in search of something to eat. Why did things have to be tenser now, even when we weren’t running from people trying to kill us? I felt stupid. I’d had to go and fight with Callista when that was the last thing I wanted us to be doing.

  I thought about apologizing, but I never ran into Callista as Thad and I got to the stairs. When we reached the bottom, we saw the paper grocery bags at our feet.

  “This was thoughtful,” I said, reaching in to the first and pulling out a sack of almonds. All of the bags were full of food: green apples, more almonds, a handful of fresh avocados, cans of white tuna, boxes of cheap crackers shaped like animals, and jars with some type of dough and fruit. The bags were full of them, assorted throughout like someone had picked them up from the store in a hurry and dropped them there.

  “Glad he gave us something to snack on,” Thad said, taking one of the apples and biting in to it. I was far hungrier than I had realized, so I grabbed one of the tuna cans and ventured off in search of a can opener.

  Around the corner, the area opened up into a gigantic kitchen with the same gray tiled floors as the entryway. The counter was made of smooth blue granite and seemed to go on forever around half the parameter of the room, not a spot or smudge on it. In the center of the floor was an island, covered by another slab of granite at least twice the size of my bed. The walls were full of cherry-colored cabinetry and drawers, except across the room where tall windows were covered by blinds. A small table sat beneath the windows.

  The kitchen was stocked with plates and cups and utensils hiding in the cabinets. But the pantry was entirely empty and the fridge’s shelves were so clean it appeared it’d never been used.

  It was difficult to let my surroundings sink in. Any other time, I’d have leapt at the opportunity to stay in a house like this. Spud would want to hear all about this giant home, only to be bored by the things I’d actually used it for: hiding upstairs at night and watching out the windows with my camera, attempting to see the neighbors as they got home. Most times, wealth didn’t impress me. Being star struck was a waste of time. I wasn’t the person who stood outside the gates of the Beverly Hills taking pictures; I was the person who grew scales and flew over.

  I grinned at the thought of Spud seeing me now. That was if I ever saw anyone I knew again. Slowly, the possibility of never being able to go back seeped into me. It was nearly unfathomable. Never? Of course I’d be going back. Maybe if I waited a week, or even two weeks, all of this would blow over? Maybe I could fix all this, then sneak home and take my family far away, where we could get new identities and hide so deep that the Guardians would never find me again.

  A week or two weeks? another part of me thought. Are you serious, Michael?

  The Guardians had tracked down a billionaire hiding in Japan. If they could find him in a crowd of millions and would set off an earthquake just to get him, surely they could find me anywhere I went.

  I sighed. I didn’t want to think about this, so I dug the last bite of tuna out of the can and chewed it down slowly.

  * * *

  As darkness settled over the mansion, we found ourselves growing restless. As large as the house was, it still felt like being trapped in a trench. I tried to step outside, just for a few minutes onto the back porch, but Thad wouldn’t let me. We had to stay indoors for now. If we were going to follow Anon’s instructions, we couldn’t take any chances of the neighbors alerting the police about trespassers.

  In the interest of not calling attention to ourselves, we knew that turning on lights would be a bad idea. Thad found flashlights in the kitchen though, unscrewing their caps so that the bulb was like a candle. We sat in a circle in the first bedroom we’d entered and had a light dinner of mashed avocados and more tuna fish together. I pulled out the bag of crackers.

  “Animal crackers and tuna fish,” Thad observed, grabbing some. “What a true meal of etiquette in this fine mansion.”

  “I don’t think I’m using the proper tuna fork right now,” I added.

  “I can just feel the walls trembling with disdain,” Callista said, taking a handful herself and dropping them into one of the crystal cups I’d found in the cabinet. The room was still very cold because even though we’d searched, none of us could find the thermostat controls.

  I was thankful that we were able to talk like that, because earlier I’d been wondering if Callista would ever speak to me again. Her anger quelled itself over time: I was slowly learning that about her. I chewed my food slowly as we passed the box of crackers around.

  No one spoke of what we’d discovered earlier. Callista picked the lions out of the animal crackers and kept stealing Thad’s lions too, so they had a mini skirmish on the floor. We even laughed together quietly.

  When we were full, we laid around continuing to snack, me leaning against the side of the bed with Callista lying on her stomach nearby. Thad kept trying to balance his plate on his knee by placing crackers on each side like weights. It kept falling over. So in the end, he dropped it to the floor, and reached into his pocket, clicking his watch open.

  “Oh, hello there,” he piped up. “It’s 11:11 r
ight now. Make a wish everyone.”

  I threw a cracker at him.

  “Why are you so obsessed with that stupid watch?” I said, laughing.

  The cracker hit him straight in the face: unflinching, his hand not moving to catch it as it fell to the floor. The room dropped into a hush.

  What did I say this time? I thought, food still in my mouth, hesitant to chew. I looked to Thad, but he’d already caught himself. His face had gone stony.

  “It’s just a watch,” he said in a hurry. Not true. He was covering something up.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Let’s watch TV,” Callista suggested, standing up abruptly and grabbing the remote from the stand. She switched it on before Thad or I could say anything else. The static burst swept throughout the room but I could feel that I’d touched a nerve.

  “It’s alright, man,” Thad told me, cutting his hand in the air dismissively. I chewed slowly, watching Thad stuff the watch back into his pocket. He didn’t appear angry… but there was hurt on his face. If he’d shown a Glimpse, I’d already missed it. His teeth were clenched slightly, though he pried them apart as he turned around to face the TV.

  I just can’t keep my mouth shut, I scolded myself. This was why I didn’t have many friends in real life. I just couldn’t deal with all of this, people and their problems. Their feelings.

  So we watched TV. Callista had turned it to an old black-and-white sitcom, so hyper with its canned laughter and sound effects that it became the room’s anesthesia.

  “We should talk about before,” Thad said suddenly.

  “No,” Callista replied without hesitation.

  In this, none of us had turned to each other, staring ahead as the screen fizzled lights onto our faces. It was something we’d been avoiding.

  But it had to be brought up. We were here together, in some strange house, not knowing what would happen the next day, the next week…the rest of our lives. It was the three of us against everyone else; a trio who, by fate or chance, had been shoved together against our will.