Shadow Walkers (4 page)

I didn’t talk to Matt.

I really wanted to, but I wimped out. I couldn’t even bring myself to cross the street. Instead, I walked to the Hole in the Wall Internet café and spent most of the afternoon online. By the time I was done, Matt was gone.

I went back to Hole in the Wall Internet café the following day. I was still determined to talk to him.

I chickened out again.

The next day, the third day of my banishment from my computer, I actually made it across the street before I lamed out.

On the fourth day, I thought I saw Matt glance over at me. I managed to nod, but I didn’t dare look at him when I did it. I was too afraid I’d be harpooned by those eyes of his.

On the fifth day, he wasn’t even there.

On the sixth day, he was back working in the garage again, but he went inside just as I set foot on his driveway.

The seventh day was the last day I’d be coming to Hole in the Wall Internet café—after that my punishment was over, and I’d be allowed to use my own computer again. True, I’d run into Matt other places on the island, but this seemed like the perfect opportunity to talk to him, one where I could plan it all out in advance.

As I road my bike into town that day, I thought about exactly what I wanted to say. I’d pretend to be walking into town again, but then I’d look over at him. I’d casually stroll over to the driveway and say, “I’ve been coming into town all week to work on the computer, and I couldn’t help but notice what you’re doing. You’re really carving a canoe?” Whatever it was he said, I’d smile and say, “Wow, that’s really interesting. By the way, I’m Zach. You’re Matt, right? We go to school together.”

I was pretty nervous as I placed my bike in the rack. But I was determined to see this through. It was just talking to him. What was the big deal?

I took another deep breath and turned around to face the garage.

He wasn’t there. The garage door was open and the half-carved canoe was still inside. But Matt wasn’t around.

Well, that’s that,
I thought. I wish I could say I was disappointed, but the truth is, I was totally relieved.

I stepped out on the sidewalk—and crashed right into Matt himself. He must’ve crossed the street behind me and was now walking into town. I hadn’t even noticed.

“Oh!” I said. “Sorry! Geez. Sorry.” I’d really collided with him. He smelled like cedar sawdust and sweat, both clean.

“S’okay, man,” he said, barely even glancing at me.

He wasn’t alone. He’d been walking with this girl—Leigh Walsh, someone from his class. She was pretty in a cheap, beer-on-the-beach kind of way. She smelled like something sweet, but not clean—something sticky, like taffy.

She and Matt were holding hands. That’s who Matt was looking at even now.

Matt had a new girlfriend. He was so caught up in her that I’d walked right into him, and he’d barely even noticed.

But Leigh had noticed. She laughed out loud. She didn’t actually say, “What a dork!” but she might as well have. It’d been a long time since I’d been this embarrassed—not since, well, the week before when Matt had caught me ogling him out at Trumble Point.

I immediately turned and headed into town. But Matt and Leigh were going into town too, so they ended up walking right behind, like the three of us were walking together.

“Ask for no foam,” Leigh said to Matt. “They always give me too much foam.”

They were going to Hole in the Wall too—it’s not like Hinder had more than one coffee bar. But the last thing in the world I wanted now was to spend time around Matt. So much for my making small talk, for my finding out if he was like me.

I stopped at the first store I came to and immediately ducked inside.

Outside, I heard Leigh laugh. At least I didn’t know for
sure
that she was laughing at me.

———

It was a New Age shop called The Crystal Unicorn. I knew this because it was one of the stores in town that had a sign. Still, I’d never been inside before. In the window to one side of me, there was a collection of stone goddesses, all different, but all very fat. The air smelled of patchouli and cat box.

I looked around. It seemed to be deserted—I didn’t even see the cat. A nearly dry fountain gasped from somewhere beyond the racks of angel greeting cards.

Even now, I wasn’t willing to give up on the Internet café completely, but I needed to give Matt and Leigh some time to get their coffee and go. So I worked my way deeper into the store, past a table stacked with different kinds of incense and glass cases full of colorful jewelry—the kind you’d see on an Egyptian queen or a Florida retiree. One hexagonal case held small crystal figurines—dragons, sea monsters, and, yes, a unicorn—but the light had burned out, so they all looked drab and dusty.

The back wall of the shop was covered with small mirrors with odd shapes and brightly colored wooden frames—African maybe.

A cloth curtain hung over a doorway into the back of the store, with a curtain of beads dangling down over that. Now I smelled something decidedly non-New Age—something frying in oil. I wondered if there was some kind of apartment in back.

Below the mirrors, there was a table with a basket full of handmade soaps, each in a yellow wrapper with a drawing of a crescent moon. I picked one up and smelled it.

“You’re Gilbert’s brother,” said a voice.

I jumped, startled. It was the shopkeeper behind the counter. If she’d come from the apartment in back, I wondered why I hadn’t heard the beads rattle. Maybe the cloth curtain had muffled them.

She was a large woman—a little like the stone goddesses in the front window. She had frizzy red hair in a bun, freckles, and a big blue sun dress. I’d seen her around before. I take back what I said about Matt being the only person on the island I’d never talked to. I’d never talked to this woman either.

“Yeah,” I said. “I am.” I wasn’t surprised that she knew who Gilbert and I were. It wasn’t just that everyone knew everyone else on Hinder Island. Here Gilbert and I were the Boys Who Lived With Their Grandparents Because Their Parents Were Dead.

“He’s such a cute little boy,” the woman said. She paused. “You like how that smells?”

“Huh?”

“The soap.” She meant the one in my hand, the one I’d been smelling.

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, sure. It’s nice.”

“It’s made with lemon, cedar, and rosemary, which all have purification powers. That means that soap doesn’t just clean the body, it also cleanses the soul.”

“Ah.”

She smiled at me. “Too much for you, eh?”

“No,” I said. “No, it’s interesting.” I put the soap back.

“It’s okay,” the woman said. “I didn’t always believe in all this either.”

“Well, I wanted to believe, but—”

“What?”

I glanced back at the sidewalk. It was still too soon to go back outside—I didn’t want to run into Matt again. Then I thought, well, why not tell her the truth?

“Last week, I found this book on astral projection,” I said. “And I tried it, but it didn’t work. For me, anyway.”

“How long have you been meditating?”

“What? Oh, I haven’t been. I mean, I just tried it for the first time last week.”

She laughed. “You’d been meditating for one day, and you’re disappointed that you can’t do astral projection?”

“What do you mean?”

“Astral projection is really hard. Didn’t the book tell you that?”

I kind of shrugged. “Yeah. I guess it did.”
To enter the astral state, most people require a daily meditation regimen of a half hour a day for at least three months
, the book had said. But I’d ignored that part.

“And even then—” she started to say.

“What?”

She fiddled with a rack of pendants. “Well, what most people think of as astral projection is just a form of dreaming. Oh, they
see
into the astral realm. Sort of. But they’re not actually
there
. I think we all enter the astral realm a little bit when we’re dreaming. Most folks who claim they do astral projection just do the same thing a little bit more consciously.”

This was basically what Celestia Moonglow had written in that book—that astral projection was a form of dreaming. Big deal.

“You said that’s how
most
people do it,” I said. “So some people do it differently?”

The woman in the sun dress looked up at me and smiled. “Maybe.”

“You?” I said.

“Truthfully, no. It’s not my thing.” She lowered her voice almost to a whisper. “But I know how it’s done.”

“How?”

She glanced around, as if to make sure the store was still empty. Then she bent down behind the counter. I stepped closer and saw that she was rummaging around in a big satchel on the floor, almost like a carpet bag. Finally she pulled out a bundle of incense sticks wrapped up in a plastic baggie. She pulled them out of the plastic, maybe twenty sticks in all. Unlike the incense on that table, these weren’t neatly wrapped in paper or packaged in boxes, just gathered in a rubberband.

I knew it was stupid—it was just a bundle of incense sticks—but the woman’s secretive nature, this whole interaction with her, was exciting somehow, something dangerous in a place where nothing dangerous ever happened.

“Try this,” she said, placing the incense sticks on the counter.

I picked them up and took a whiff. I didn’t recognize the smell, but it reminded me of a forest, rich and complicated.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a special recipe. Very difficult to get.” At that exact moment, I noticed a strange under-odor to the incense, like something rotten.

“Is it legal? And safe?”

She laughed. “Completely.”

“How much?” I said.

“A hundred dollars,” she said.

Now I laughed. “Uh, no thanks.” How had I not seen
that
coming?

“It’s worth it,” she said. “It really works!”

“I’m sure it does,” I said, starting for the door. Matt and Leigh had to have their coffees by now, and even if they didn’t, I could go in some other shop.

“Tell you what,” the woman said. “How about I give you a free sample?”

“No, thanks.” I really wasn’t interested.

“No strings! You take it home and try it. If it works and you like it, you come back and I’ll sell you more at the full price.”

I stopped.

“It’s free! What do you have to lose?”

She had a point.

“Here, take three sticks,” she said. “I can afford to be generous, because I know you’ll be back.”

I took them, and I really did intend to try them.

But the thing is, that was the day my punishment came to an end. And when I got home that night, my grandma said, “It still makes me sick to think about what kind of person you might run into on that computer of yours.”

And my grandpa said, “But you upheld your end of the bargain. So we’ll uphold ours. You’re free to use it and your phone again.”

So I put those three sticks of incense in the drawer of the nightstand in my bedroom, and I forgot all about them.

Soon the weeks of summer turned into months, and I was still stuck on my own personal Alcatraz. Now that I knew that Wounded Wolf—Matt—was straight, I didn’t even have him to fantasize about.

But at least I had my computer back.

One morning in mid-July, I tore myself away from the monitor to take the garbage out. I hate to say it, but my grandparents’ punishment had worked: I hadn’t forgotten to take the garbage out even a single time since then.

My grandparents were battling slugs in the garden out back, but Gilbert was on the front lawn playing with one of the neighborhood cats.

“What you doing?” I asked him.

“Playing fetch,” he said. He held up a stick.

“You play fetch with a dog, not with a cat,” I said.

“Oh, yeah? Watch!” He tossed the stick across the grass. The grey cat bolted after it.

Gilbert beamed.

“But he isn’t bringing the stick back,” I said. The cat was busy clawing at the wood. A second later, he forgot the stick completely and pounced on a nearby leaf. “See?”

“He still fetched it.”

I wasn’t going to argue. “Where’s Billy today?”

Gilbert looked glum. “He and his mom went off-island.”

“Sorry about that,” I said as I turned back for the house.

As I sat at my computer, I could hear the sounds of the island through my open window.

Crows cawed.

A neighbor’s wind chimes jingled in the breeze.

Gilbert squealed with laughter. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he really had taught that cat to return the stick.

By early afternoon, I was still sitting at the computer. Outside my window, a truck rattled by, and a bell rang in the distance.

I realized I’d been inside all morning. Plus, it had been weeks since I’d taken any photos or videos of the island—supposedly my “thing.” Some neighbor-friends of my grandparents had given me permission to borrow their rowboat whenever I wanted, so I decided to take it out into the bay.

My grandfather was washing dishes in the kitchen. I told him where I was going, then looked around for Gilbert. I didn’t see him, so I assumed that Billy must be back and they’d run off together.

I rowed around on the water for a couple of hours. When I finally got back to shore, I felt just as trapped by the island as ever, but now my arms hurt.

———

I was almost back to my grandparents’ house when I saw the silent pulse of flashing blue and red lights from the road up ahead.

The police car was parked on my grandparents’ side of the street. The siren was off, but I could hear the clicks of its flashing lights even from 100 yards away. There was a sheriff’s car parked just beyond it.

I felt a vague, but familiar, chill.

I started walking faster. There are no sidewalks on most of the island, and suddenly I was aware of all the gravel and tree debris that had collected on the shoulder of the road.

Up ahead, I could hear the low rumble of male voices and an old woman’s whimper.

Was something wrong with Grandpa? But there wasn’t an ambulance. Besides, they would’ve called me. Then I remembered I’d been out on the water where there wasn’t any cell phone service.

I started running. My feet kicked at the gravel and tree branches. One of the neighbors had just cut their lawn, and the smell of cut grass filled my nostrils.

As I got closer, I noticed something I’d missed in the flashing of the police car lights: a little cluster of people—neighbors—standing along the side of the road. We only had a handful of neighbors to begin with—what had happened to bring them all out onto the street? They spoke quietly among themselves, almost whispering, but suddenly one voice was clear: “It’s just not right,” it said. “What kind of world is it where things like
this
happen?”

Sensing my approach, the neighbors stepped apart, reminding me of scattering bowling pins. Part of me wanted to stop and ask, “What’s not right? Things like what?” But by now, I could see my grandparents.

They were standing on their front lawn with one of the island sheriffs and two police officers. The three public officials were all talking on cell phones, and the two police officers were rifling through notepads. At least my grandfather was all right—but then what was all the commotion about?

No one was talking, but the police officers and the sheriff seemed incredibly busy, talking and rifling. My grandparents, by contrast, looked completely motionless, helpless, frozen in a block of ice.

Even as close as I was, as fast as I was moving, no one had noticed me yet.

“Grandma?” I said.

She immediately came to life, looking over at me, her face brightening.

“Zach!” my grandma said. “Where have you
been
? And—”

“—
where’s your brother
?” my grandpa finished.

Everyone in the front yard immediately stopped talking and turned to look at me. All their eyes demanded a response.

Where’s your brother
?

For a moment, the question made no sense. It was a summer afternoon in July. Gilbert had to be around somewhere—with his friend Billy, maybe in their backyard, or down in my grandparents’ cellar.

Wherever he was, he was
somewhere
.

Wasn’t he?

“Grandma?” I said helplessly.

At this, my grandma’s face looked like the sun during an eclipse as the moon slipped over the last slice of light. A second later, she and my grandpa froze solid again.

The police officers and the sheriff all converged on me. There were only three of them, but they suddenly seemed like news reporters at a press conference with the president, asking me a thousand questions.

“When did you last see him?”

“Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”

“Did he tell you this morning where he was planning on going today?”

I ignored them. “Grandma?” I said. “Grandpa? Where’s Gilbert?”

But it was dumb question, because I knew my grandparents didn’t know. It was obvious that Gilbert had disappeared, and no one, not my grandparents and not the police officers or sheriff, had any idea where he had gone.

———

Hours later, Gilbert still hadn’t turned up.

All afternoon my grandparents had assumed that Gilbert was playing over at Billy’s, just like I’d thought. But when they finally checked, they realized that Billy had been off-island with his mom for most of the day. I was kicking myself for being so quick to jump to the conclusion that Billy and his mother were back already. This was the problem with everyone assuming the island was so incredibly safe. If no one ever imagined that anyone could do anything bad—if no one ever locked their doors or kept their kids trapped behind chain-link fences—that made it that much easier when someone finally did.

Before they called the police, my grandparents had phoned the parents of all of Gilbert’s other friends and checked every other house in the neighborhood. They checked the beach, the woods, the closest playground, and any other place they thought he might be.

The sheriff had arrived right away, but it had taken more than an hour for the police to arrive from the mainland on the ferry.

No one had seen Gilbert all day. I hadn’t been the last person to talk to him—that had been my grandfather, who had made him lunch. Gilbert could’ve been missing since right after then.

I’d done my part, telling the police any place I could think of where he might be—even those big rocks on the beach out at Trumble Point, though I was sure he wouldn’t go there by himself. But they wouldn’t let me go and look for him—cell phone coverage was notoriously bad all over the island, and they said it was really, really important that we all be available to immediately answer any questions.

So all we could do was wait.

I’d never felt so completely helpless in my whole life. Pacing back and forth in our kitchen, I felt like a wild animal caged without tranquilizers, fearful and angry at the same time.

So after a while, I did what I always do when I feel helpless: I went upstairs to get online.

My brother is missing!
I posted.
I think he’s been kidnapped!

When it became clear to my friends that I wasn’t kidding, people started making suggestions.

You live on an island,
MiniMimi wrote.
He has to be there somewhere!

That’s what the police believed too. They’d checked the security cameras at the ferry terminal and they hadn’t seen him get on the boat. But if Gilbert had been kidnapped, it’s not like they would’ve had him sitting with them in the front seat. They would have drugged him, or bound and gagged him, and put him in the back of a van.

And even now, the police
still
weren’t searching the cars leaving the island. They said there were legal issues, that there was still no evidence that he’d actually been abducted.

This was all too complicated to post online. That’s when I realized that while my friends could support me, they couldn’t help me.

So I started searching for answers. I checked out the traffic cameras at the ferry terminals, available online, but they just had a bird’s-eye view, not close enough to see inside any of the cars, and they were only showing the current shot anyway. There was no way for me to go back through the records and see what cars may have gotten on the ferry earlier in the day.

I searched in real time, looking for tweets or postings from anyone who might’ve seen my brother, or anyone looking like him, on the island or on the mainland. But I didn’t find anything there, either.

So I started looking for more general information about child abductions, but that also wasn’t any help. Most of what I found just repeated what the police had already told us.

Before long, I realized the Internet couldn’t help me find my brother.

Ninety percent of all missing kids turn up before their bedtime on the day they go missing
, it had said on one website.

I looked at the clock. It was eight-thirty. Gilbert’s bedtime was eight o’clock. It was already
past
his bedtime. If ninety percent of kids turned up before their bedtime, what happened to the other ten percent? Were they the ones who
never
turned up?

“No!” I said. I pushed myself away from my computer in frustration and spun around to face my room.

That’s when I remembered the “special” incense in the drawer on my nightstand, the stuff I’d been given by that strange woman in the New Age shop.