Case File 13

by J. Scott Savage

  “What?” Angie said, taking a step back. “Are you mocking me?”

  Nick’s eyes went wide and he slapped his hand to his mouth.

  What was that? Angelo mouthed silently.

  Nick had no idea. It was like his brain had come disconnected from his tongue. Terrified he’d somehow lost his ability to speak, he opened his mouth and tried again.

  “I. Have. To. Go,” he said, speaking each word carefully. “I. Have. Home. Work. To. Do.”

  Angie narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “Don’t think I won’t figure out whatever you’re up to.”

  “Gotta. Go.” Nick turned away and hurried up the street before he could do anything else that might give away his zombieness.

  Just as Nick and his friends reached the corner, Angie yelled, “I’m going to be watching you.” And then, “See you tomorrow night.”

  “Dude, what was that all about?” Carter burst out as soon as they were around the corner.

  “Shhh.” Angelo looked over his shoulder to make sure they were no longer in hearing distance of the girls.

  “Fluorescent bra strap?” Carter said, just as loudly. “Seriously? Were you trying to make them more suspicious than they already were?”

  Nick shook his head. “I don’t know what happened. I was just mopping when suddenly the wrong words started coming out.”

  “You were just what?” Carter asked with an odd little smile on his face.

  “Talking,” Nick said. “Why are you grinning like that?”

  “You said mopping.” Carter giggled.

  “I did not.” Nick looked to Angelo, who shrugged and nodded.

  “Sorry.” Angelo rubbed his chin. “You definitely said mopping, not talking.”

  Nick touched his throat as though it were some strange instrument he was learning how to play for the first time. “What’s wrong with me?”

  Angelo flipped open his notebook and began writing. “I can’t say for sure until I’ve done some more research. But my guess is that you are experiencing early signs of synaptic breakdown around your sylvian fissure.”

  “Sylvia who?” Carter screwed up his face.

  “Not a who. A what,” Angelo said. “The sylvian fissure is the part of the brain dividing the frontal and parietal lobe. The part of the cortex around the sylvian fissure is thought to be involved in spoken language. In the event of a synaptic breakdown the neurons would be unable to—”

  “Stop,” Nick said. “You’re making my head hurt worse than it already does. Explain in words two syllables or less.”

  Angelo thought for a moment. “You’re having brain farts.”

  “Oh, that’s much more helpful,” Nick said sarcastically.

  Angelo closed his notebook. “It was only a matter of time really. As your body shuts down, your mind goes with it. Eventually zombies’ minds and bodies deteriorate to the point that they no longer think at all but merely shamble around following the scent of human flesh.”

  “Sounds kind of fun,” Carter said. Nick raised an eyebrow and Carter added, “Well, maybe not the human flesh part. But the mindless thing would be cool. No more homework. No more studying. No more math lessons. No more having to think at all.”

  “You’re well on the way to that and you’re not even a zombie.” Angelo grinned, then looked closely at Nick. “Have you noticed any other changes?”

  Nick shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “What about that thing on your elbow?” Carter tugged at the sleeve of Nick’s shirt, revealing a gaping wound.

  Nick tried to twist his arm around so he could see the back of it. His shoulder felt oddly loose in its socket and made a kind of groaning sound as he turned it. “I fell a couple of days ago shooting hoops.”

  “A couple of days ago?” Carter plugged his nose. “Dude, it hasn’t even scabbed over and it smells worse than the sweat socks my little brother only changes when my mom peels them off his feet.”

  Angelo leaned closer to get a better look. “Does this hurt?” he asked, poking the unhealed cut with the back of a pen.

  Nick cringed, anticipating a jolt of pain, but the truth was he could hardly feel it. “Not really. In fact, now that you mention it, my arm didn’t hurt all that much even when I scraped it.”

  Angelo nodded as if that was exactly what he’d expected to hear. “Your body’s healing systems are slowing down along with your heartbeat and breathing. Nerve endings are dying. Cells are no longer reproducing. Basically, your body is discovering it’s no longer alive and it’s beginning to decompose.”

  “Whoa!” Carter gulped down the last of his sandwich and beamed with delight. “That is so cool. What if your skin starts peeling off? Maybe you could get a bone to poke out too. Imagine how scared of you Frankenstein would be then.”

  “Along with every other kid in the school, and the teachers,” Angelo said.

  “Not to mention my parents.” Nick groaned. His mom had already started looking at him funny. It was only a matter of time before she decided he must be sick and took him to a doctor. He fingered the amulet under his shirt. “It’s been pretty cool being a zombie. But maybe it’s time I started to think about taking this off.”

  “I call second!” Carter shouted. “Promise me you’ll let me try it next. I totally want to pull off my arm and sew it onto the middle of my back.”

  As the three boys reached the top of the hill that overlooked Nick’s house, a large yellow truck came into view.

  “What’s with the moving truck?” Carter asked. “You’re not going anywhere again, are you?”

  “Not that I know of.” Nick was positive his parents wouldn’t decide to move without telling him, but cold sweat dripped down his back until he realized the men were carrying pieces of furniture out of the truck and into his house. “It’s just the furniture my parents had shipped back from my aunt’s house,” he said with a sigh of relief.

  “Looks sort of old and beat up,” Carter said.

  “I know.” Nick nodded. “I don’t know what my parents see in any of it.”

  Angelo peered into the dim back of the truck. “Did you bring back any of your Aunt Lenore’s voodoo items?”

  “No. My parents made sure all the good stuff got thrown away.”

  “What a waste.”

  “Lend a hand or get out of the way,” Nick’s dad called, coming around from the side of the truck. “This is a working zone. Men are breaking a sweat here.”

  Nick noticed his dad was carrying a lamp that might have weighed five pounds at the most.

  Catching Nick’s look, his dad gripped the base of the lamp, which was shaped like a large black-and-red bird, in both hands. “I’m carrying the valuable items while they carry the bulk. Tomorrow, I want you to help me get all this stuff put away. My boss is coming for dinner.”

  “Sure thing,” Nick promised.

  “By the way,” Dad called over his shoulder, “there’s a letter for you inside the front door.”

  Nick glanced at his friends. Who would send him a letter? As soon as he saw the envelope on the entryway table though, he knew who had sent it. The canary-yellow paper was a dead giveaway.

  “Nice desk,” Carter said as the three boys passed though Nick’s living room, which was packed wall to wall with furniture.

  Nick, who was already starting up the stairs, barely heard him. As soon as the three boys got into his bedroom, Nick closed the door and turned the letter over in his hands. There was no return address and the only writing on the front was Nick’s name and address, written in an oddly formal handwriting that looked like the kind of thing you might see on the front of a wedding invitation. But he had no doubt who it was from.

  “What’s the big deal?” Carter asked. “Love letters from some long-lost girlfriend you never told us about?” He pretended to sniff the air. “Is that the aroma of perfume I smell? Or did you just swipe your mom’s deodorant today?”

  “It’s not a love letter,” Nick said. “It’s from this g
uy….” He tried to think of a good way to describe Mazoo. “He was this big dude in a bright yellow suit.”

  “Sounds like Tiffany’s kind of guy,” Carter said.

  Nick ignored him. “He was my aunt’s pastor and he performed her funeral service. But he was also in her house. He asked me if I had explored it. I think he might have been one of those voodoo sorcerer guys. A…”

  “A bokor?” Angelo had been flipping through an encyclopedia of fantastical creatures on Nick’s desk. He dropped the book and hurried over to where Nick had started to tear the letter open and held out a hand. “You might want to be careful where you do that.”

  Nick paused and looked at the envelope. “You think it’s cursed or something?”

  Angelo bit his lip. “Does he have any reason to curse you?”

  “I don’t think so.” Nick tried to remember anything Mazoo had said to him. “He told me I was a lot like my aunt. Then he asked if I had looked around her house and wanted to know if I had any questions.” There was something else too, but he couldn’t remember what.

  “Maybe he thought you were a bokor too,” Angelo said, his eyes serious. “He could have been testing you. If he thought you were a competitor, this could be his chance to get you out of the way.”

  Nick swallowed. He shook the envelope. “It doesn’t feel like there’s anything inside.”

  “It could be a powder so fine you can’t feel it,” Angelo said. “Or it might be something in the ink. Or a curse that only affects you when you read it.”

  The letter seemed to be getting heavier and heavier in Nick’s hand. “What should I do?” he asked. “Should I throw it away or burn it?”

  The three boys looked at one another. Angelo almost always had an answer for everything. But now he appeared as unsure as his friends.

  “I can’t stand it,” Carter blurted. Before anyone could stop him, he grabbed the bright yellow letter and ripped it open. Wide-eyed, he reached inside and pulled out a piece of stationery the same color as the envelope. But his hands were shaking so badly he dropped the paper and it seesawed slowly to the floor. For a moment, it seemed that it would land facedown. But just as it was about to hit the ground, a breeze flipped it over.

  All three boys held their breath. The handwriting on the page was the same as that on the envelope. There was only a single line.

  The owl has the answers you seek.

  Carter reached up to touch his face. “Am I cursed?” he asked softly. “Is my face…hideous?”

  Nick looked at Angelo and they both burst into nervous laughter.

  “I wouldn’t want to look like that,” Angelo said. “But I think you’re stuck with it.”

  Carter’s ears went bright red. “Very funny.”

  Nick picked up the letter.

  “What does it mean?” Angelo asked.

  “No idea.” Nick turned the paper over. Maybe there was invisible ink on the back? “I think he said something like that at the funeral, too. Something about the owls having wisdom. But what owls?”

  “Owls represent birth and death in many cultures,” Angelo said. “They are also viewed as familiars in witchcraft.”

  Nick couldn’t imagine any way that might apply to him.

  “The innuits viewed owls as sources of guidance,” Angelo added.

  Nick scratched his head. “I’m not an innuit.”

  “Or maybe he’s talking about the owls on the desk,” Carter said.

  Nick and Angelo stared at him.

  “The one downstairs.”

  Carter led Nick and Angelo down to the Braithwaites’ living room. It looked like an antique shop, filled from one end to the other with old furniture. The movers, who had carried in the last few pieces while the boys were in Nick’s room, were standing in the front yard discussing something with Nick’s parents.

  “See, right here,” Carter said, weaving through the odds and ends until he reached a roll top desk with an owl on each corner. It was the desk from Aunt Lenore’s basement. But what was it doing here? Mom had been determined that everything from the basement should be destroyed.

  Nick hurried to the desk and began pulling open drawers. There was nothing in any of them. “Someone must have emptied it,” he said, disappointment burning in his stomach.

  “But the owls are cool,” Carter said. “They look like they’re watching you.” He reached to one of the glaring heads. At his touch, the head turned. There was an audible click as a section of the desk slid open, and a small gold bottle dropped onto the floor.

  Carter picked up the thumb-sized bottle and bounced it in his palm as though he’d known it was there all along. “So is this what you were looking for?”

  For the rest of the night, the boys worked at discovering what the tiny gold bottle was and how to use it. The top was sealed over and they couldn’t figure out any way to open it. They twisted and turned it. They shook it, squeezed it, and tapped the sides. They examined it under a magnifying glass, a microscope, and even a black light. The last was Carter’s idea, and none of them had any clue what it was supposed to reveal. But they tried it anyway.

  It seemed to be hollow, and if you were very quiet and shook it, you could hear a faint rattling coming from inside. But other than that, they were stumped.

  Sometime after two in the morning, Carter and Angelo finally fell asleep. When they woke up a little after ten Saturday morning, Nick was spinning the bottle like a top on the surface of his desk.

  Angelo rubbed his eyes. “Any luck?”

  “Nada,” Nick muttered, letting the object clink to a stop against the base of his lamp.

  Carter yawned and ran his fingers through his spiky hair. “Didn’t you sleep at all?” he croaked.

  “Don’t need to,” Nick said. “Even when I try, all I do is lie awake on my pillow.”

  “Maybe we could use acid on it,” Angelo said. “I’ve got some at home in my chemistry set.”

  “Or we could hit it with a sledgehammer and bash it open.” Carter pretended to swing a heavy hammer over his shoulder.

  Nick cupped the bottle protectively in his hand. “I don’t think Mazoo hid it there for me to smash or dissolve. There has to be something we’re missing.”

  Angelo picked up the object and turned it between his fingers. “What makes you think Mazoo hid it?”

  “Who else could have done it? He’s the one who sent me the letter.”

  “He told you where to find it,” Angelo said in a low, mysterious voice, like a detective in an old movie. “But you don’t know he hid it in the desk.”

  Nick pressed his hands to his eyes. Although he wasn’t tired, his head throbbed from thinking too hard and a dull ache in his stomach reminded him he hadn’t eaten anything in more than a day. “If Mazoo didn’t put it there, who did?”

  Angelo set the bottle back on the desk and twisted the ends of an imaginary mustache. “To solve the mystery of the bottle, you must think like the bottle.”

  Carter shook his head sadly. “All that reading has finally affected his brain. I say we go to the gas station and buy a bunch of those ninety-nine-cent burritos.”

  “Inspector Ruiz needs no food. He lives for the chase. Think about it. You found the bottle in the desk. Whoever put it there must have known about the hiding place. Clearly Mazoo knew about it, but he could have given it to you at the funeral instead of going to all the trouble of hiding it. Therefore it stands to reason that the bottle belongs to someone who knew about the hiding place but couldn’t give you the bottle in person, because…she was dead.”

  Nick hated it when Angelo went all brainiac on them, but this time he had a point. “You think it belongs to Aunt Lenore?”

  Angelo beamed and touched his finger to the tip of his nose.

  “Maybe it’s a secret message,” Carter said, now wide-awake. “Maybe she’s trying to tell you who her murderer is.”

  Nick snorted. “She wasn’t murdered. She died of a heart attack.”

  “Do you know that fo
r sure?” Carter asked.

  Nick opened his mouth before realizing he didn’t. His parents told him his aunt had died of a heart attack. But how did they know? Did Mazoo tell them? Maybe she’d been killed by her own snake venom. Maybe that’s why it was in the basement. And even if she didn’t, even if she was checked out by a real doctor, would he be able to tell the difference between a normal heart attack and one brought on by some kind of voodoo curse? “But why would someone want to kill her?”

  “You tell us,” Angelo said. “You’re the one who knew her.”

  “Not really. I didn’t even know I had a great-aunt until my parents told me.” Nick bit at the edge of his thumbnail as a thought occurred to him. “There was a book though—almost completely burned up in her fireplace. I thought it was weird she would have left it there.”

  Angelo and Carter leaned close. “What kind of book?”

  “A journal, I think.” Nick wished he’d had more time to look at it before his parents walked in on him. “There was something about a bokor who was trying to come back from the grave. I think she called him the King. And someone named E who had given in to something.”

  “Dude, you’re giving me goose bumps.” Carter ran his hand over the back of his arm where all the tiny hairs stood on end.

  “Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Angelo asked, opening his notebook.

  “I meant to, but then I found the amulet and the whole zombie thing happened and I forgot all about it. There was something else, too. Something about a key and a treasure.”

  Carter’s mouth dropped open. “Like a buried treasure?”

  “I don’t know,” Nick admitted. “My parents walked in before I could finish reading and now I’ll probably never find out.”

  Angelo tapped the tip of his pen slowly against his monster notebook. “Maybe your aunt killed some kind of voodoo king for his treasure. And maybe he could come back from the grave because he’s a zombie like you. That amulet you’re wearing could be part of his treasure. It could be he killed your aunt to get it back.”

  “If he did,” Carter said, “he’s probably after you now that you have the amulet.”