by Laura Bickle
“Bert?” I whisper. I walk behind the display cases, searching for him. Dad and Carl hang back, like there’s some invisible line here we shouldn’t be crossing.
I jump when I see a figure sitting on the floor. Surrounded by the chalk lines, it’s draped in black velvet from one of the cases, and all I see is the silhouette of its back. It moves a bit with each inhale, and the humming emanates from it.
My hands ball into fists. It looks like Bert. Has to be Bert, sitting in the middle of the floor of the locked shop. Still, I’ve seen too much weird shit to take anything for granted.
My breath unconsciously settles into the rhythm of the breath of the velvet-wrapped lump on the floor. A familiar tail slithers out from the ragged hem of the velvet, and I know it’s him. That provides little comfort. Tiny T-rex arms reach out and press against the chalk on the floor.
The velvet slips from Bert’s head. His eyes are closed, but he’s in an attitude that I’d never seen before: one of prayer. The humming vibrates the wattle underneath his chin, fluttering like a moth wing.
The humming drains away. Bert opens his eyes. They glow an unfamiliar red.
I try to tell myself it’s only the reflected neon. Bert closes his eyes, opens them again, and they resume their usual gold color. He looks back at me, then at my father, still transfixed in the hallway. “It’s done.”
My father nods. His Adam’s apple works up and down. “When are they coming?”
I squeak, “‘They’? Who are ‘they’?”
“Soon,” Bert answers. He lets the velvet fall from his shoulders into a puddle on the floor. He’s entirely in the lizard nude beneath. Not that it matters, but seeing him without any trace of human clothing makes me realize how much he actually tries to blend in with us. He’s unnaturally still, like a desert lizard from a nature documentary. His golden eye fixes on my father. “And you’d better be ready to deal.”
The statement hangs in the dark air like a threat. Wax hisses from a candle, oozing down over the sides of a glass cabinet. The flame sizzles. We all stare at it, hearing the sigh of the wax as it drips down to the floor.
A buzzer sounds, and I jump. It’s the buzzer to the night window. I hope it’s just some guy wanting to trade his wedding ring for one more round at the blackjack tables.
Bert glides toward the window. He moves forward, bowed, his head lower than his tail. He’s nearly on all fours, tail undulating and wiping out part of the chalk line. I haven’t seen him ever do that before. He slides up to the stool, and I can see his lizard reflection in the glass. He’s not making the slightest effort to camouflage himself with glamour.
That, he’s done before, but usually just on Halloween, and then, only to get rid of asshats who are pissed that he won’t make a deal.
But this isn’t Halloween.
Shit.
Suddenly, there’s a guy on the other side of the window. I didn’t see him walk up. He just appeared. Like Bert, he radiates stillness. A figure wearing a gray hoodie stands at the window, hands in his pockets, the hood shadowing his face. I glance at the security screen. It doesn’t show a face, just shadow.
Bert doesn’t say anything to him. He just turns to my father. “It’s for you.”
My dad licks his lips and approaches the window.
I sidle closer to Carl. “I don’t like this shit,” he whispers. “Not one fucking bit.”
Dad places his hands on the counter, palms down, and puts on his stony pawnbroker face. “What can I do for you?”
Hoodie answers, “I have something you want.”
“Yeah?” The usual bravado in my dad’s voice sounds tinny. “There are a lot of things I want.”
Hoodie snickers. It’s not a human laugh. It sounds like rain in a gutter. “I have what you want most of all.” Hoodie pulls out of his pocket a small object. From my vantage point, I can’t see what it is.
“Put it in the tray.”
Hoodie places it in the bank tray, and Bert reels it back. My dad and Bert stare at the tray for a moment, like something radioactive or disgusting is in there. My dad finally picks it up.
It’s an hourglass. It’s small enough to fit in my dad’s palm, the caps laced with gold. The sand inside is black and white, and the glass seems blurry in the dim light. Old.
“What is it?” my dad wants to know.
Hoodie’s hand snakes through the tray slot. He shouldn’t be able to do that. Nothing human has that kind of flexibility. Dark, impossibly long fingers snatch the hourglass from my dad’s grip. They turn the hourglass over so that black sand rains down on the white.
“Death.”
My dad takes a step back and reaches for the shotgun under the counter.
CHAPTER 6
This is going to go down badly. I know it.
It’s like the time a guy tried to rob us last year. He wasn’t drunk or on meth or opioids. He was just desperate. He tried to hold my uncle up with a little .22 caliber target pistol Sid wouldn’t buy. My uncle took a bullet in the thigh before he and Bert beat the guy to a pulp.
The guy suffered brain damage. It wasn’t anything they intended on happening—they just wanted to discourage him from coming back—but it went all pear-shaped. I know it still bothers Sid.
For a few months afterward, we saw the guy walking down the street sometimes, his head cocked to the left like a pigeon. He talked to himself in a garbled voice. Sid would give him a sandwich, but my dad said that was like feeding stray cats, and we’d never be rid of him. Sid quit doing it. A while after that, we stopped seeing him at all.
My dad’s fingers rest on the shotgun under the counter. He twitches, and I’m afraid he’s going to make a really wrong move. Bert sits motionless, like an iguana on a tree. Carl and I stare at the hourglass, the black sand churning down into the white. Hoodie giggles beyond the bulletproof glass, and his fingers snake back through the slot.
The phone rings. Carl snatches the receiver from the counter and presses it to his ear. As he turns to us, his face pales.
“It’s my dad at the hospital. He says Pops is in full cardiac arrest.”
My dad turns to Hoodie. “What did you do?” he yells. The veins stand out on his neck in cords.
“Death.” Hoodie smiles with long white teeth in the shadows. Far too many teeth for a human mouth.
“Stop whatever the fuck you’re doing,” my dad hollers. He snatches the shotgun out from under the counter, ratchets a shell into the chamber, and presses the muzzle to the glass. “That’s not part of the deal. The glass may be bulletproof, but that’s good for only one shot. I’ll keep shooting until you’re dead.”
Hoodie chortles. “I brought you what you asked for.”
“This is not what I fucking asked for!” my dad screams at Bert, and I think he might aim the gun at him. Bert doesn’t move, staying placidly motionless.
“He’s coding.” Carl clutches the phone to his ear, his knuckles white. “Dad says he’s coding.”
I stare at the black sands creeping into the white ones, like roots. Fast-growing, insidious. It occurs to me that they should’ve just blended into gray, not stayed separated like that. Like oil and water. My heart pounds under my tongue. Maybe if I break it... I take two steps toward the hourglass, and my shadow falls over it.
“I brought you exactly what you asked for. The power of death,” Hoodie says. He reaches up into the slot again. He turns the hourglass over. White sand bleeds into the black, pale tendrils like the roots of an onion. “And the power of life,” Hoodie says.
I look back at Carl. His free hand is pressed over his ear, and his eyes are closed. I can see him straining to listen to Sid’s voice on the other end of the connection. I hold my breath, staring at him until his eyes open.
“He came out of it,” Carl says. “He’s breathing on his own.”
My breath shakes. I step back, behind Bert. My hands are quaking, too. I move them behind my back so no one can see.
My father gently places the shotgu
n down on the counter.
“Do you want to sell or pawn it?” Dad croaks.
Hoodie laughs. That rattling, hissing laugh again. “I’ll sell it. And all sales are final.”
Dad reaches for the cash drawer. “How much do you want?”
I can see it then, the desperate glint in my father’s eyes.
I’ve seen that look before, in the eyes of the kind of people who have nowhere else to go but the pawn shop window in the wee hours of the morning. No ATM, no credit card, no relatives to help them out of whatever trouble they’re in. Sometimes, my dad turns people like that away. Now, that look is in my dad’s eyes, and it doesn’t matter what side of the glass he’s on.
Hoodie has seen that look, too, and Hoodie has him. “I don’t want money,” Hoodie says. “I want blood. Like before.”
“What does he mean...like before?” my voice leaks from my lips.
“Shut up, Erasmus,” my father breathes. He doesn’t even look at me, keeps staring at Hoodie. “I’ll give you any amount of money you want. Name your price.”
Hoodie shakes his head. “No money. Money is worthless to me. Just blood.”
“Dad,” I growl. “What is he talking about? Does he want you to kill someone?”
“Erasmus, shut the hell up.” My dad’s hands are shaking. “Please.”
Carl’s hand claps down on my shoulder, drawing me back into the shadows.
“I will not give you a life for a life,” Dad says tightly.
Hoodie chortles. “You did before. You bought one life with another. Fair and square.”
“No. I won’t do it.” There’s the tightness of steel in my father’s voice. The kind of tone when no deal can be negotiated.
Hoodie reaches into the slot for the hourglass.
Bert turns his head in the diffuse neon light and his tongue snakes from his mouth. “Will you deal in something other than blood, Most Luminous Shadow?” His speech is formal, deferential. I’ve never heard him talk like that before.
Hoodie’s ephemeral fingers pause on the glass case of the hourglass. “I always deal in blood.”
Sweat glimmers on my father’s lip. “Will you let me choose the blood?”
“No. However, I will permit...exclusions.”
Bert glances sidelong at my father with his slitted reptilian eyes. “Be careful of your wording.”
My father presses his fingertips to the counter to keep them from shaking. “No blood from my son. Not from Sid. Not from Carl. Not from my father. And not from me.”
Hoodie snorts. “That’s not a fair bargain, and you know it. Precious blood for precious blood.”
“Blood for blood. Just not from us. Take someone else’s.”
Hoodie closes his hand around the hourglass, and he pulls it back through the chute. “No trade.”
“What if...what if I sweeten the deal?”
Hoodie cocks his head. He waits for my dad to continue.
My dad is nodding to himself. “Ten years. Ten years of my father’s extended life, taken from me. Blood for blood.”
I don’t understand what the hell is happening here, but I don’t like it. “Dad!” I lurch forward, but Bert’s tail lashes out, pins me back against Carl.
Hoodie pauses. “Interesting. But insufficient.” He tucks the hourglass into his pocket and turns to go.
“Wait.” My father’s voice cracks, and his breath steams against the glass. “What if...what if there’s no blood from Erasmus, Carl, Sid, my father, or me, but I also owe you another favor? No questions asked.”
Bert glares at my father. “That’s not a good idea.”
Hoodie turns. “Redeemable at any time? As long as it’s not the blood of your son, your brother, your nephew, your father, or yourself? In addition to the other blood I would claim?”
“Yes.”
Bert closes his eyes.
“Swear it to me in blood.”
My dad reaches into his back pocket. He always carries a pocket knife. He fumbles the knife open, slips the silver blade across his palm. Dark blood wells up in his hand. He holds it cupped in his palm through the slot.
Hoodie bends down. A long black tongue snakes out of his mouth, lapping at the blood. My stomach turns at the wet sound of the tongue against Hoodie’s teeth and my father’s flesh. My father doesn’t look away, just stares down at the feeding creature, a look of terror and revulsion on his face.
Hoodie licks the wound clean. He wipes his shadowy face with the back of a hand. “It is agreed. Blood for blood. Not of the five kinsmen living here. And one favor of my choosing, to be granted any time in the future...and that debt will pass to your heirs, should I not claim it in this lifetime.”
“No, that’s not—”
Bert presses his clawed hands to his face, covering his eyes.
“It’s too late for amendment,” Hoodie says, his jagged white teeth gleaming. “The sins of the father are visited upon his sons. Always. In exchange...I give you the power of life and death for one life.” He places the golden hourglass in the tray.
My father cranks the drawer back in and snatches the hourglass out, turning it so that the white sands drain into the black. “You can’t do that—”
“It’s done.” Hoodie dissolves into the shadows, as if he were never there. Only his voice lingers: “And what is done can never be undone.”
DEEP IN MY BONES, I know what Hoodie says is true. There’s no going back once things are done. But with so many regrets tangled in the past, it’s hard to move forward.
My father slumps against the counter. He presses his hands to his eyes, and I think I hear him weeping, muttering, “What have I done?” over and over.
Bert sits beside him with his head lowered. He doesn’t really try to comfort him. I don’t know if he’s just as stunned as we are, or whether he’s also lamenting the stupidity of my father’s deal with a devil. It sure as hell seems stupid to me, but I don’t have all the information.
“What the hell was all that?” I demand the full scope of the stupidity. “What did you do?”
My father won’t answer me. Carl has to drag me by the arm upstairs to our rooms. I struggle part of the way, but eventually give in. My dad can rot in the darkness downstairs all he wants, but what business did he have visiting that shit upon the rest of us?
“What the fuck was he thinking?” I slam my fist against the wall of the stairwell. It makes a satisfyingly loud bang, and I kick it again for good measure. I want my father to hear that I’m pissed. “He’s perfectly fine to fuck up his own life...but why is he determined to drag everyone down with him? Now we’re all in debt to a demon!”
Carl stands with his hands in his pockets, a hulking shadow in the stairwell. “I don’t know, man. I just don’t know.”
I press the heels of my hands to my eyes. “Don’t you want more than this? Don’t you want to go out and have...have a normal life without all this shit? I mean...we could’ve had one...but if he’s making deals with the Devil that can be collected on us...how in the fuck are we ever going to get out of here?”
“I don’t think...I don’t think there is any getting out of here, man. I think that this crazy...is all there is for us.” Pain glitters in his voice.
Carl wants things, too. He’s talked about going to college and playing football, and his coach said there was a good chance of him getting a scholarship. We’ve also thought about someday getting a car and taking a road-trip cross country. Yesterday, those had seemed like achievable dreams.
“I think...” Carl begins. “I think we gotta sleep on this. In daylight, this is gonna seem better. We’ll figure out what to do. Maybe Bert can figure a way out of this. Maybe there’s another deal that can be made.”
I grimace. “That’s Dad’s motto: always another deal.”
“Yeah. Just... We should try to get some sleep.”
Shoulders slumping, I follow Carl up the rest of the stairs to our living quarters on the second floor.
In a reasonable imit
ation of an apartment house, this floor had been split up with drywall many years ago. The drywall extends up eight feet and then stops, exposing the rafters above—and the illusion of privacy. There’s still rust-colored shag carpet from the seventies, worn smooth in places. There are bedrooms off a hallway, a kitchen, and a living area with a flat-screen TV.
In the living room sprawls a giant leather couch that came off pawn last week. The old plaid one is currently propped up by a Dumpster in the alley. An enviable amount of off-pawn stereo and gaming equipment reach corded fingers behind the television. When Carl and I ride our bikes, we park them behind the couch. They’d get ripped off in a hot second if we left them in the alley.
Carl switches the lights on. Fluorescents suspended by chains from the rafters buzz overhead, chasing away the shadows.
I stomp down the hallway to my room, not even bothering to take a detour to the kitchen. Carl digs around in the fridge. I plod to my room and close the door. My dad can’t hear me slam it up here.
The darkness above is oppressive, and I flop down on my bed, staring up at it. I can’t help but imagine that Hoodie is able to be anywhere he wants to be, even glowering in the shadows behind the beams. The streetlight filtering in from my window through the fire escape isn’t enough to pierce it. I reach to my bedside to turn on a lamp.
My room isn’t really much of anything, but it’s mine. I’ve got an old twin bed that had been bunk beds with Carl’s until he outgrew it. Dad took it apart, and you can see the marks on the bottom of the wood where he sawed it off. The furniture is mostly just salvaged stuff—a dresser and a metal desk I found in a Dumpster. With Lily’s help, I painted the desk black, and it doesn’t look bad. I keep my computer on it—a sweet Alienware rig that has last year’s games loaded on it, all of which someone failed to pick up off pawn.
But the stuff that’s really mine is displayed on the wall above my bed. Well...sort of mine. It’s a collection of license plates from all over. Sometimes, they arrive on cars, trucks, or bikes that are sold to us. Sometimes, old or unusual ones come in boxes from estate sales. I have some like that from England and from the 1980s in Japan that were cut right off the cars. I have plates from twenty of the fifty states, plus Canada, Mexico, and one from DC. I have one that says ELVIS4VR and another that says FLYING.
