by RJ Johnson
Scott winced and rose from his chair slowly.
“Take it easy,” Ted urged.
“I’m OK, Mr. McCray, I think Alex cured everything. I don’t think anything's broken anymore,” Scott replied, his eyes downcast.
“No, I meant with your mom.” Ted replied, grinning. Scott laughed and returned his friend’s father’s wink.
“See ya later, Alex.” Scott called over his shoulder as he left the house.
“Later, man.” Alex frowned. Scott’s mother could be terrifying when she was angry. Scott, shoulders slumped like a prisoner going for his last meal, walked downstairs and out the front door, closing it behind him.
It was only when the tires screeched away that Ted finally sighed with relief. He looked at his son and wondered: what else do you say to a kid after he’s seen his best friend nearly die?
“How about some food?” Ted managed after a moment.
It was these sorts of times that he missed his wife the most. He was supposed to have help with this kind of stuff. His heart swelled in his chest. He had no idea what else he could say. So he drew his son in and hugged him.
Alex stood there, the events of the afternoon replaying in his head. His father’s awkward embrace suddenly made everything clear for him. They had something incredible in common. Neither one had any idea how to react to what they just saw. They only had each other. It was that moment that Alex decided to be brave for his father. He would not ever let this man down in his life. He swallowed and looked at his dad with shiny new eyes.
“Are you sure you’re gonna get me Street Fighter?”
Ted choked up. He couldn’t help but laugh. Smiling broadly, he scooped his kid up, and took him to the kitchen, where he would do what fathers did and make his son some lunch.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Later that night, after again promising for the hundredth time that they were indeed going to the mall tomorrow to purchase the video game system, Ted finally got Alex to bed. Going downstairs to the front door, Ted opened it and looked outside, unsure as to what he was even looking for.
After ensuring that the night remained still, Ted closed the door. He checked twice to make sure it was locked, then went downstairs to the basement and opened the safe that contained Alex’s stone. Careful only to grasp the edges of the cloth that held his son’s prize, Ted put it into his coat pocket and went outside of the house he had designed for his wife. She had never lived to see it.
He opened the French doors that were on the far side of the house and walked out onto the deck, looking up at the black night sky. The stars flickered and danced above, slyly offering their secrets to Ted, as he closed the ornate doors behind him. Opening up his jacket, Ted removed a pack of stale cigarettes. After his wife died, he had quit smoking for his son, hoping to last a few extra years. He shook them loose, the stale tobacco scent catching on the damp evening air. It had been years since Ted had even touched a cigarette. Whatever the risks to his lungs, Ted considered, after what he saw today, he was sure one smoke was not going to be the end of the world. Fumbling with his lighter, he snapped the wheel several times until the flame caught, as he managed to coax the end of the old cigarette to light.
“Idiot-proof lighters,” Ted muttered to himself. He put the lighter back into his pocket and felt for the flannel shirt that contained Alex’s mysterious stone.
Squeezing the warm lump through the bloodied flannel, Ted looked up at the stars above. It was a particularly clear night for Onyx. The altitude had a great deal to do with that. The clear cold mountain air was far above the smoggy cities below, and there was little light polluting the night sky as Onyx was in the middle of a bowl-shaped valley. The stars, each a tiny point of light hundreds of light years away, shone brighter than ever tonight, and their crown, the Milky Way, made for an incredible vision, sweeping impossibly large across the sky.
The night sky never ceased to amaze Ted. Even on the brightest and clearest of nights, he knew that he was only seeing a small portion of what space had to offer, a mere 6,000 or so stars. Hidden behind them were millions upon billions of stars and galaxies, each stretching far and away into infinity. Even now, the light that had begun its journey several thousand years ago ended its travels as a tiny photon, hitting Ted’s eyes.
“Enough procrastinating,” Ted muttered to himself.
Steeling himself, he puffed on his cigarette a few times, getting the cherry nice and hot. Pinching the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, he squeezed his eyes and pushed the red-hot ember into the skin on his forearm.
Tears welled up in Ted’s eyes as the flesh on his arm seared with intense pain. Ted grunted as the cigarette ember faded out, the wisps of smoke rising from the burnt hair and skin. The cigarette had left a black circle of ash and a sizable burn mark.
Gritting his teeth, he opened up the flannel shirt he had kept the stone in and looked at it suspiciously. He stretched his trembling hand toward the rock in front of him, and for a moment, his fingers hovered about it. What the hell was he doing out here? It’s just a rock, for Christ’s sake! Don’t expect miracles! Finally, Ted composed himself and grabbed the stone.
Ted gasped as the stone again flashed a brilliant blue. The light traveled up to the wounded skin, and incredibly, the red, angry mark shrank rapidly, leaving no indication of any damage from the self-inflicted wound.
“How about that…?” Ted whispered quietly. But it seemed the stone wasn’t finished with him yet.
The light spread up and over his arm and across his chest, illuminating his body as the stone began to heal the years of damage created by the various toxins he had ingested into his body over the years. The glow surrounded his lungs, heart and other vital organs, healing each one to a pristine state. He coughed, expelling a particularly green and nasty lung bug, and drew in a deep breath.
His heart quickened as he realized what the glow was doing to his body: repairing all the damage that time, alcohol and various other follies of modern life had inflicted on him. He turned to look at his reflection in the window. His appearance remained the same, but he felt twenty years younger.
Processing this latest moment in an already-surreal sort of day, Ted sat down in his favorite deck chair, tilting his head back to look up at the stars above. Feeling for the stone in his pocket, he took it out and stared at the smooth and polished surface. It was light; no more than a few grams, he estimated. It had a long and thin claw-like shape, as if taken from the hand of some great beast. The stone was smooth otherwise, with no scoring or identifying features visible.
Ted set the stone down on the table in front of him, staring at it thoughtfully as he considered the proper course of action for this mysterious and powerful artifact.
Ted didn’t like the idea of just handing it over to the government. It wasn’t that Ted was some conspiracy nut about secret men running things behind the scenes or anything so ridiculous as that. In fact, as a veteran of one foreign war, he was as certain of the power of American Democracy and its innate goodness as the Founding Fathers had been.
But, given the power of making any man invulnerable to injury, there was no telling what could happen even in the hands of a well-meaning government. Ted shook his head no; the instant he thought about turning the stone over to the government, his mind flashed on Hell and the road to it being paved with good intentions. If this stone’s power were somehow extended, the balance of global power would shift so greatly in the direction of the United States that the world might have no choice but to surrender to some sort of “benevolent democracy.” Absolute power in the hands of men had never turned out especially well for humanity in the past.
The same was true for science. Anyone connected enough to properly exploit the power in the stone would certainly be a target for other governments, or organizations that lusted after such power. Given enough money and time, any plan, any project to steal the stone was possible.
It seemed that the safest course of action was to do nothing. Scott and Alex were good kids, and they wouldn’t talk about what happened if he asked them not to. The most obvious argument was, “Who would possibly believe them?” Scott was injury-free, Ted had the stone, and so far in his limited experience of parenting, the best way to keep kids quiet was to bribe ‘em.
More importantly, the risks to Alex, Scott, and even himself outweighed any possible reward that could come with announcing the discovery of the stone. They lived a comfortable life. The settlement from his wife’s death was more than enough to cover their lifestyle for many years to come. Money was not an issue.
He frowned. It was unfortunate, Ted thought as he carefully wrapped the stone back in the scrap of the bloody flannel shirt and placed it back in his pocket. The stone could do a lot of good in the right hands. He opened the French doors to his house and retreated back inside.
Ted crossed to the other side of the house, toward his office – and, more importantly, a larger and more secure safe. Entering his office quickly, he opened the safe, moving aside some paperwork and placing the stone far in the back, out of sight and casual reach. Out of sight, out of mind. He could forget the whole thing and just provide a normal life for him and his kid. Maybe in a year or two, he’d rent a safety deposit box and put it in there. Hopefully, there wouldn’t ever be a call for him to use the stone, but knowing it was close made him feel a little safer. Ted closed the door on the safe and exhaled a long breath, one he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding in.
Leaving his office, Ted closed the door behind him, making sure the door clicked completely shut. He walked down the carpeted hallway towards his son’s room. Stopping outside, he paused, listening to the familiar rhythmic breathing of his son in a deep sleep, hopefully guarded away from the demons Ted feared would come after them if the secret of this stone got out.
He closed the door to his son’s room and went to bed, knowing full well he wasn’t going to sleep tonight.
Chapter Two
Twenty-Two Years Later…
At 2:30 in the morning, cab drivers at the airport don’t have much to do. The few flights that did land in the middle of the night were usually filled with short-tempered, tired businessmen and their non-existent expense accounts. But the man in the front of the line didn’t mind. He’d been doing this long enough to know there were good nights and bad ones. It was all in how you looked at things.
Tony Welk had started getting people where they needed to go when he was 16 years old, pedaling tourists around Venice Beach in a bike with a cart attached. Skipping his last year of high school, Tony turned his bike business into a full-time job. A few years after that, Tony had his own cabbie medallion, and now, thirty five years later, Tony had seen it all and had enjoyed most every moment. Sure, there had been robberies, fares that skipped out, but Tony was interested in meeting people, and driving characters all over the Los Angeles metroplex made Tony feel like he was in his element.
A knock on his window roused him back to the land of the living and conscious. He shook himself awake and turned, seeing a scraggly-looking man holding only a dark green rucksack. Lean and muscular, the man stood at least six feet tall, and had dark brown eyes with a closely cropped haircut. He moved towards the back of the cab, trying the handle. Finding it locked, he waited as Tony inspected him.
The man's pants had seen better days, and while they had no holes in them that Tony could see (usually the first indication whether someone was a legitimate fare or just a homeless junkie looking for a warm place to sit for a few minutes), they had definitely seen some miles. The light leather jacket that hugged the man’s frame obviously wasn’t a cheap knockoff, which in Tony’s eyes put him within the margin of respectability. What struck Tony most of all was the way the man’s eyes never stopped moving. Always darting around in different directions, careful to observe and watch his surroundings for anything that could be a threat. Tony had seen that look before in a lot of people, most of whom had been in prison or war.
The man outside his cab wasn’t setting off any of his alarm bells, the cab driver mused, but it would probably be safer if he kept an eye on him.
Tony clicked the switch on his driver-side panel to unlock the doors of the cab and let the man in. His scraggly passenger entered quickly, throwing his backpack into the cab, slouching low into the seat as he got in.
“Drive.” the low voice commanded.
Tony wasn’t scared – not yet, anyway. If you spent your life assuming everyone was out to get you, eventually, someone would get you. He had developed that philosophy on his first day, and it had served him well.
“I’m gonna need somewhere to go.” Tony called back to his fare. “You’re already in for three and a quarter cause I picked you up at the airport, so you tell me where we’re going; otherwise, I’m letting you out at the gate.”
The man tossed a wad of bills into the front seat, barely held together by a cracked and dried-out rubber band. Tony glanced at the amount of money the man had casually tossed him and decided this was a good time to stop asking questions.
“Onyx Lake.” The man muttered.
Shrugging his shoulders, Tony picked up the roll of money that had fallen next to him. The roll was real; each bill contained within even had the crispness and smell of fresh currency. The trip to Onyx Lake from Los Angeles was maybe a three hundred dollar ride, but the man had just thrown him a few thousand dollars like it was nothing. Tony was wrong; he hadn’t seen it all. Nothing like this had ever happened to Tony before, but he quickly decided he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He nodded to his mysterious fare, put his cab in gear, and drove off.
During the four-hour journey, the man stayed silent, either asleep or lost in his own thoughts; Tony couldn’t tell which it was. It was all the same to him, really. Some fares were talkative, and some preferred silence. Tony didn’t know what to make of the man in his backseat, but the money spoke loud enough. He kept the radio low, listening to some DJ take callers from people who claimed to see aliens and jabbered on endlessly about conspiracies. He just drove the cab towards the San Bernardino Mountains, smoking his cigarettes, while his passenger occasionally raised his head to look out the back window.
Whatever the man’s problems were, Tony figured, he could be long gone and spending the fare at Commerce Casino by the time he got back to L.A. When someone tossed you this kind of cash that casually, there was little reason to think that the money was clean. The only way he might get some fun out of it before the Feds came down and ruined his party is if he splashed it around doing what he loved more than driving cabs: playing poker.
The sun was just barely turning the eastern horizon pink when Tony and his fare approached the small township of Onyx Lake, California.
“Pull over there,” the voice commanded from the back.
“But we’re nowhere near town,” the cabbie called back at his fare, “You sure you don’t…”
“Positive. Pull over.” The man said firmly.
“You gonna hurt me?” Tony asked nervously.
The man in the back began to chuckle and shook his head no.
“I’m not the violent type.” The man paused, “Not anymore, anyway.”
Suddenly, Tony was glad his mysterious fare was getting out. A chill had settled over the interior of the cab, and it was not a pleasant feeling. Tony flipped the blinker on his cab and eased into a turnout.
The cab rolled to a stop on the side of the highway, five miles away from the closest town. The man opened the door and exited quickly into the forest. Tony just stared for a moment, until he suddenly realized: the man was probably watching him, waiting for Tony to leave, and if he didn’t, the fare might consider other, less pleasant options.
Tony shook his head. Takes all kinds. He put the cab in gear and pushed the accelerator to the ground, lest the man think he was dawdling any longer.
And in fact the man had been waiting just out of sight t
o make sure of that. After the cab had retreated from view, for the first time in a long time, the man breathed a long sigh of relief.
The man turned and began to walk through the woods, careful to stay off the path, as he watched the surrounding area carefully for spotters or anyone else who might be casing the neighborhood below. After an hour of walking, checking and rechecking the perimeter around the neighborhood, he finally arrived at the backyard of an enormous house facing the mountains behind him. Pausing at the edge and checking the house for any indications of security or an ambush, the man breathed a sigh of relief, slipped into the backyard, and approached the back door.
Kneeling at the stoop, the man picked up a rock and felt along the edges for a crack. He twisted it, splitting the rock into two pieces, revealing a hide-a-key tucked neatly into a mold.
Using the key to open the door, the man stood, listening to the house for any signs of life. When satisfied there were none, he replaced the hide-a-key, closed and locked the door, drawing the shade shut slowly behind him.
When he turned to walk into the kitchen, he ran smack dab into the muzzle of a 12-gauge shotgun.
“You were much better sneaking into the house when you were 17, you know.” The muzzle of the gun lowered, revealing Ted McCray, whose eyes were welling up at the sight in front of him.
“Hey, Pop,” Alex replied as he stepped forward to hug his father for the first time in six years.
Chapter Three
The interrogation was delayed. No answers were expected and none were given. After he hugged Alex enough to guarantee that his once-dead son was in fact really standing inside his home, Ted rushed him into the kitchen, where a father began cooking breakfast for his son.
