Bad Bones (11 page)

Stella parked in the shadow of a tree overhanging the street that ran down one side of the school, sat back and looked at Gabe. “So?”

“What?”

“Exactly.” Stella glanced out of the car, towards the high fence marking the extent of Morrison’s grounds. “What next?”

“OK –” Gabe released his seat belt and reached for the door handle – “what’s next is you stay here in the car and wait for me. I won’t be long.”

“So now I’m what, just the cab driver here?”

“I’ve been thinking…” Gabe opened the door, the courtesy light coming on; Stella’s lips were a thin, straight line, her eyes slightly narrowed. “Look, OK … anything goes wrong, Stella, and I get caught? There’s no need for
two
of us to get carpeted for this. Right?”

“Wrong.” Stella grabbed the ignition key and her
bag and opened her door. “I told you I was coming, and like I said, you’re only doing this because I took you to see Father Simon.”

Gabe shrugged as he got out of the Toyota. There was obviously no point in arguing, so best get the show on the road as quickly as possible. He shut his door and stood looking up and down the street. He’d chosen this place as it was quiet and there weren’t so many street lamps, but since the break-ins the school was now also protected by some rent-a-cop company – at least, they had put up signs saying they were.

“We’d better keep an eye out, OK?” Gabe said. Thinking to himself,
Yeah, we really had, what with real cops, Benny and a guy in a red baseball cap to think about as well.

Stella nodded. “What happens now?”

“We get ourselves over the fence, get into the school, and we don’t get caught. By anyone.”

“Amen to that,” Stella said.

Gabe spotted what he was looking for. “This way…”

Gabe had been on night walks in the school grounds a couple of times before as a dare, and it had gone like a breeze. Now that Stella was with him, though, he was doubly on edge walking though the grounds in the pitch dark, every tiny noise a potential threat. But they made it and reached the annexe with the supposedly hinky window without any trouble. As far as he remembered, it was a part of the school admin block, or maybe it was a storage facility. It wasn’t somewhere students ever went, but it was connected directly to the main building.

“Keep your eyes and ears peeled, OK?” Gabe whispered, getting out the screwdriver he’d brought with him from his backpack and moving down to the first set of three windows, all of which were shut tight, as were the next ones.

“You sure this is the right place, Gabe?” Stella whispered from where she was keeping watch.

Gabe nodded. A lot of the buildings on the school grounds looked alike, but he thought he had the right one. This was not the time to look unsure of himself. Moving along until he was standing opposite the last window, he gave the wooden frame a sharp tug.
It gave, and a bit more than slightly. This was it. If he’d been sold a bill of goods then alarms would start going off and they would have to get out – and quick.

Nothing happened.

“Is this the one?”

Gabe jumped as Stella came up beside him. “Uh, yeah … yeah, looks like it…” He ran the shaft of the screwdriver up the narrow gap until he came to the loosened catch and then pushed. He’d expected it to flip up, but it didn’t. Every minute they were left standing out in the open was a minute too long, in his opinion, and he pushed up even harder, wishing he’d thought to bring a hammer with him. Hell, the whole toolbox…

“Anything I can do, Gabe?”

“Not unless you happen to have a hammer with you…” Gabe placed the business end of the screwdriver on the latch and jabbed the base of the handle hard with the flat of his palm.

Once, nothing.

Twice, a slight movement.

The third time, his palm really hurting now, the catch gave and the screwdriver flew out of his
hand, clattering on to the concrete pathway. Gabe froze.

“It’s OK,” Stella whispered, picking up the screwdriver. “No one’s here…”

Gabe gingerly pulled open the window; his armpits were prickling and he was hyped from the tension and they hadn’t even really started yet. Gripping the sill with both hands he took a deep breath. “Nothing ventured, right?” he said as he hauled himself up.

Gabe slipped through the door into the main building, followed by Stella, and started running down the unlit corridor that went front to rear straight through the centre of the structure. The slap of their footsteps echoed off the walls, so loud he felt sure the noise could be heard out on the street. Gabe zigged left at the first turn, sneakers squealing like piglets as he took the corner, thirty metres down zagging right, finally coming to a halt midway down a wall of lockers. He dug into his jeans pocket, bringing out a key ring on the chain he had attached to a belt loop. Finding the right key, he opened the oversized,
heavy-duty brass padlock on his locker, unhooked it and flipped open the clasp.

“What else are you stashing in there?” Stella pointed at the padlock.

“Nothing.” Gabe swung the door back, reached in and felt around at the back of the locker for the package. “My dad gave it me when I started here, kind of a joke.” He tried to ignore the tingling sensation he got when he touched the cloth. Tried to ignore the idea that the gold pieces were somehow aware of his presence.

“Is it there…? Have you got it?”

Something in Stella’s voice made Gabe stop, package in hand, and look up at her. “What’s the matter?”

“Thought I heard something…”

Gabe stuffed the gold in his backpack and refastened the padlock. “I’ve been thinking that ever since we came over the fence.”

“We should go.”

“I wasn’t thinking of stay—”

Before he could finish, Stella took off at a sprint and he had his work cut out to catch up with her.

“Wait a second!” Gabe grabbed her arm as they
were about to turn the first corner. “What are we running from?”

Behind them, headlights raked through the front double doors like the spotlight on a prison tower and they both ducked down.

“That.”

“Geez, are you psychic or something?”

Stella shook her head as they slipped down the corridor that led to the annexe. “Who knows, I just thought I heard something…”

In the distance car doors were being slammed, one after the other. As if life wasn’t complex enough, he did not need to add ‘fugitive from the law’ to his list of problems.

They reached the room with the open window and Gabe nodded for Stella to get out first. While she made her exit, he waited by the door, listening for any clues as to what might be happening out the front of the building. He saw torch beams randomly stabbing into the darkened corridor and heard the front doors being rattled.

“Come on!”

Gabe looked round and saw Stella beckoning him from outside. He shut the door and was about
to make for the window when he turned back and pressed in the lock mechanism on the handle.

“Gabe!”

“I’m there…”

“Hurry, before they come checking round the whole building.”

As soon as he was out, Gabe reached for the screwdriver that should have been in his back pocket, but wasn’t.

“Here.” Stella gave it to him. “I picked it up when you dropped it.”

“Right, thanks…” Gabe used the shaft to hold the catch up as he closed the window before letting it drop down. The second it had they both ran at full pelt, only stopping when they reached the tree by the fence that they’d used to get in.

Just as Gabe was about to give Stella a boost up, a sedan, tricked out to look like an actual cop car, came down the street. It was being driven slow, the occupants obviously ticking all the security company boxes by doing a final check round the school property. They both dropped to the ground until it had gone past.

“Close.” Gabe stuck his head up and peered
down the street. Seeing the rent-a-cops had gone, he stood up. “All I gotta do is unclench my butt-cheeks, but we did get away with it.”

Stella grinned at him. “Father Simon, here we come.”

Gabe took the folded duster out of his backpack and put it on the table in front of him. Father Simon, sitting in his armchair with a mug of coffee in one hand and an Oreo in the other, took a sip from the cup, then a bite of the cookie.

“I don’t condone for one moment what you did, the two of you –” the Father shot them a mildly disapproving glance – “and you are more than lucky not to have been caught. That said, I fully understand why you did it, so let’s see what you have, Gabe.”

Gabe leant forward and unknotted the cloth, opening one corner at a time. In the middle of the frayed, faded yellow square sat the rest of the gold pieces he’d taken from the skeleton. Father Simon finished off his cookie in one bite, put down his mug and reached straight for the twisted and deformed crucifix.

“A terrible thing…” Father Simon turned the cross over and then back again, and looked closely at the second hole in its base. There was such a sadness in his eyes Gabe half expected he might be about to cry. “Apostasy at its worst and most dangerous. Faith lost and its power turned to evil… I’ve read about this, but never thought to see it, hold it in my own hands.”

Gabe didn’t want anything the Father was saying to be true, but the very first time he’d set eyes on the man in the red cap he had sensed there was something not right about him. And that was before anything bad had happened. Now just the thought of him sent chills down his spine and made his skin crawl. He realized that until he’d met this man he’d never really thought much about good and evil. But evil had his scent. It was after him.

“Who was he?” Gabe asked.

Father Simon looked up. “The man who owned this?” He held up the crucifix.

“Yeah.” Gabe nodded.

Father Simon put down the cross on the table and reached to pick something up from the floor next to his chair. It was an old book, the leather binding on its spine and corners was cracked and worn, the
thick pages rough-edged and yellowing. Carefully opening the book to where a marker had been placed, about a third of the way in, Father Simon turned it round so Gabe could see.

“I found this,” he said, gently lifting the thin, translucent piece of paper that covered the colour picture on the left-hand page and holding it back.

Gabe could see the picture, which was about ten centimetres wide and eight centimetres high. It hadn’t been printed on the actual page, but was a separate piece of paper glued in place. He looked at the very old-fashioned portrait of a man with a beard and the top of his head shaved bald, wearing the flowing robes of a monk. In his left hand the man held a skull, in the other what could only be a heart, blood dripping from it. Round his neck was a cross, which was hanging upside down.

“I did some digging around. Something I do rather well, even though I say so myself.” Father Simon smiled slightly as he tapped the open book on his lap. “Having at one time been on the Index, though, this book took some finding.”

“The Index?” Gabe looked at Stella, who shook her head.

“It’s a book that listed
other
books which had been banned by the Church for being heretical, or anticlerical. This one was deemed both,” Father Simon said. “It’s an old translation of an even older volume called
Liber Absentis
– the Book of Missing People, loosely put. It’s a record of people, mostly priests, who strayed off the path of Truth and Light, and what their sins were.”

“And you think that’s the man who gave me the note?” Gabe leant forward to get a closer look at the portrait. “What’s his name?”

“I can’t be one
hundred
per cent sure, because there’s something very strange about his story –” Father Simon shrugged – “but I think his name is Father Rafael Delacruz…”

“So he was a priest?”

Father Simon nodded. “The first time I found a mention of him is in the mid 1500s, the early days of the Spanish arrival in South America. Nothing unusual in that – if you remember, I told you about The Twelve Apostles of Mexico? He came over not long after they arrived, to help convert everyone the soldiers conquered. But in the
Liber Absentis
it says he died here, in what was then called Alta California,
probably in 1769. Over two hundred years later.” Father Simon closed the book. “As I said, a very strange story, although I’m beginning to think that’s probably an understatement.”

“Couldn’t someone just have got the dates wrong?” Gabe frowned. “You know, like a typo?”

“Always possible. Just because it’s in print doesn’t mean it’s right… I thought that, when I first saw the inconsistency, but then I remembered the gold objects you’d found. Particularly the knife.”

Gabe looked at the ceremonial blade on the table. It was the same as the one he’d seen cut out the hearts of the two boys in his dreams.

“Look closer.” Father Simon pointed at the priest’s left hand in the picture. “Behind the skull, see anything?”

“Oh…” Stella put her hand up to her mouth.

“Geez … it’s the knife, right?”

“Maybe –” Father Simon picked up the sacrificial knife – “or maybe just one very like it.”

“This man, this Rafael … how come he lived so long?” Gabe stared out into the garden as he spoke. “I mean that’s like, I don’t know, a vampire or something. Was he a vampire? He couldn’t be, right?”

“No… No, he couldn’t.” Father Simon closed the book. “Vampires don’t exist, never have, but Father Rafael Delacruz did. According to what I’ve read, he started a cult, a kind of evil mix of powerful beliefs, cultures and sacred ceremonies, which involved blood sacrifice and soul slavery.

“Rafael was what we would describe today as a charismatic, a person who claims divine inspiration. These people wield immense influence on their followers, influence which grows with their ego. He was a dangerous man who, in 1574, escaped the clutches of the Church before they could deal with him. He went underground, disappeared with a small group of followers in the Sierra Madre mountains. He was never seen again.”

“Until over two hundred years later?”

“That’s right, Gabe, until over two hundred years later, and some nine hundred miles north.” Father Simon opened the book again, turned a few pages and then ran his finger down, stopping at a specific paragraph. “It says here that his reappearance in this area coincided with a number of killings. Children having their hearts torn out while they were still alive.

“At first local native tribes, who didn’t like the newcomers, were blamed. Then rumours spread of a man referred to by the Spanish as
Rey de los Infiernos,
King of the Underworld. The belief was that this man had the power to take over souls, and the more souls he gathered, the more powerful he became.”

Gabe felt like he was looking at some kind of horrific virtual jigsaw puzzle, where the pieces kept remorselessly dropping into place. Everything fitted, and the picture was not a pretty one. “What happened to this Rafael?”

“No one knows, although once again it was believed he evaded capture by the Church.” Father Simon steepled his fingers and was silent for a moment. “But I’d hazard a guess that they found him, eventually, and they killed him.”

“You mean like the Inquisition?” Gabe said.

“Exactly like the Inquisition.”

“And you think they buried him in that canyon?”

“Where they thought he’d never be found.”

“Hard to think that these beautiful things belonged to such a terrible person.” Stella picked up a ring and looked at it.

Gabe glanced down at the table and froze. He saw the crucifix, counted three rings, their red and blue stones glowing in the light, a bracelet, the knife and … where was the little, coin-sized thing? It wasn’t there, but it couldn’t
not
be there! Had he dropped it somewhere…? Was it still in his locker? He grabbed his backpack, frantically pulling everything out and searching its pockets. Nothing.

“What’s the matter, Gabe?”

Gabe looked up at Stella. “There’s a piece of the gold missing.”

“Are you—?”

“I am
totally
sure, there was a small kind of medallion thing –” he held his thumb and forefinger apart a centimetre or so – “and now it’s gone.”

“Think, Gabe…” Father Simon’s voice was calm, soothing. “Where did you last see it?”

“In my bedroom…” A picture flashed into Gabe’s head: Remy walking towards him as he went back to his room after breakfast yesterday. It hadn’t clicked then that there was only one place she could have come from because he’d been in a hurry, late for school, but it
had
to be her… She’d gone back to take a look at the secret things, all wrapped up on
his bedside table. Which he’d told her was none of her business. Red rag to a bull with his sister; Remy hated secrets.

“Gabe?” Stella touched his arm.

“My sister, Remy… My sister’s got it.”