Duck Boy (14 page)

“Hello, sir. My name is Steve. I’d like to speak with Lindsay, please.”

The man smiled warmly. “Come on in,” he said, scanning Steve from his face
to his feet. “My name is Walter.” He extended his hand and Steve shook it. He
headed up a short set of stairs and spoke firmly into a hallway. “Lindsay,
there’s a Steve here to see you.”

He could hear her protests to his arrival as he removed his hat and gloves,
stuffing them into a coat pocket. With his hands he quickly smoothed out his
hair.

“What’s he doing here? I’m supposed to meet him at Shannon’s,” she
complained, turning from the hall toward the front door.

“No. He’s at the back door,” Walter repeated.

She appeared shortly and took one long suspicious look at Steve. “What
happened?” she exclaimed. “You look awful.”

Steve hadn’t noticed his appearance. He scanned himself quickly. “Oh jeez,
sorry about that.” He bent over to clean dust, flour and some crusted eggshell
off one of his knees. “I guess I should do this outside,” he apologized as he
watched the eggshells flake from his pants to the floor.

“Don’t bother trying to clean up,” Lindsay suggested. “You’re too far gone
for that. Where’s Shannon?”

Steve looked startled. “Um…I’m not sure. She’s not back yet.”

Lindsay’s brow wrinkled into a questioning look. “Then why are you here?”

“Um, it’s kind of a long story. I’d really like to talk to you about it.”

“Sure. I’m supposed to see you at Shannon’s around now, OK?”

“Um, no,” Steve stated flatly. “I need your help. Now.”

Lindsay’s brow furrowed. “You look kind of freaked out.”

Lindsay’s reply was cut short as her father passed her with his coat on.

“Goodnight, dear,” he said as he passed by. He pointed to Steve. “Ian, here,
won’t be staying for very long, will he?”

“No he won’t, Dad. Goodnight,” Lindsay replied with an emotionless voice.

Walter looked towards Steve. “Nice to meet you, Ian.”

“Nice to meet you, too.” Steve replied. Walter flashed a smile at him and
stepped through the front door and whisked it closed behind him.

“Go ahead… speak,” Lindsay commanded.

“Actually, is there some place we could talk privately?”

“It’s private here.”

“What if your mom overhears?”

“My mom doesn’t live here.”

“Oh. Um, do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“Nope.”

“OK, then.” Steve paused for a moment fumbling for a way to start the whole
conversation. “It’s kind of a long story,” he repeated. “But I’m in trouble.
And you said you knew how to make a Benu stone.”

Lindsay’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t answer.

“Have you made one?”

Lindsay still didn’t answer.

“I need to make one soon,” Steve insisted. “Aunt Shannon told me you know
how to do the Great Work, you know, make the Benu stone and everything.” Steve
looked up at Lindsay.

“You’re not making any sense,” Lindsay stated in a very unimpressed tone.

“Can I come in and sit down? This really is a very long story.”

Lindsay sighed. “All right.” She motioned for him to come up the stairs.
Steve dusted the debris and dust from his body, and followed her into the
living room. She sat in a single chair, so he took the couch.

Forget the how-are-yous.

“Have you seen her change a clock into a lock and back into a clock again?”

Lindsay stayed quiet.

“I know it’s a secret,” Steve answered. He knew by the way that she didn’t
answer she had seen Aunt Shannon’s demonstration. “I’ve seen it, too.” Lindsay raised
her eyebrows without saying anything. “If she let you see her experiment, then
I know she trusts you. And if she trusts you, then I can trust you.”

“You can trust me.”

“Good,” Steve replied. “I should apologize first. I lied to you on the phone
this afternoon. Aunt Shannon is gone, like I said, but she’s not coming back.”

“What?” Lindsay shrieked. “What do you mean? Where did she go?”

Steve explained Aunt Shannon’s disappearance and how it had happened. As he
explained, he recalled that the police were going to call for a visit.

He interrupted his story to Lindsay to check the time: 7:35.

“Can we shut the light off in the living room? I want to see what’s going on
back at the house.”

Lindsay gazed at him with another weird look.

“Please,” Steve pleaded.

Lindsay got out of her chair and turned out the lights. The two of them
headed to the main window and opened the curtain to gaze at Aunt Shannon’s
house. They waited a couple of minutes in silence. A police cruiser rolled up
the street and stopped in front of the house. As the police car stopped, one of
the policemen opened his door, turning on the interior light of the car. Steve
recognized Larry right away. There was another police officer with him.

As they watched, Steve continued to explain the afternoon’s events, culminating
in the abduction of his Great Uncle Edward.

Larry banged on the front door of the house repeatedly, with no response
from inside. Garner motioned towards the police cruiser for the other police
officer to join him at the house. He left the front step to walk around the
side of the house. It wouldn’t take him long to discover the devastation.

A couple of minutes passed. Steve and Lindsay saw a light go on somewhere inside
the house, probably the kitchen. Suddenly one of the policemen ran frantically
around the corner of the house to the patrol car, yanked the car door open, and
ripped the radio microphone from the dashboard. He spoke for a few minutes into
the microphone and then threw it on the seat, slammed the car door, and ran
back around the side of the house.

Steve slumped down onto a couch. “I’m in deep trouble now,” he moaned.

Chapter 11

A faint sound of sirens seeded the air and began to grow. In a dramatic
sweep, several police cars appeared in front of Steve’s aunt and uncle’s house,
screeching to a halt. The frozen air crackled with the sound of radio messages
bristling through bad speakers. As he and Lindsay surveyed the spread of the
investigation, Steve began to tell the full story of the last couple of days.

“I’m really not a bad person. I screw up, but I’m not a bad person,” Steve
finished. The guilt he had carried since his mother disappeared hatched into a sense of criminality.

Lindsay’s look softened. “I believe you,” she said. Steve was silent. Police
buzzed around the yard and through the house in a frenzy of investigation.
“Aunt Shannon has been harassed and watched for months by some people who
wanted the details of her latest experiments.”

“You mentioned that,” Steve interrupted impatiently. “And I met them today,
too.”

Lindsay ignored his tone and turned towards him. “Didn’t your mom disappear
last year?”

“Yeah,” he admitted quietly. “She disappeared the same way.”

“Aunt Shannon told me that your mom was gone. For a while, your mom and
Shannon were working together on a new kind of alchemy. When your mom vanished,
somebody heard about it, and they assumed it was something to do with her
experiments. They were right, of course. I read the newspaper clippings about
her disappearance, but what really happened?”

After closing the curtains, Lindsay took a seat again. Steve found the
darkness of the room somehow comforting, so he began to relate the story of his
mother’s disappearance.

Then he returned to the kidnapping of Uncle Edward. “I don’t understand how
the kidnappers knew so much. They weren’t looking for Aunt Shannon, so they
must have known she was gone. And they knew I was at home. They even knew about
the pictures in the police file that Aunt Shannon took from the file. How did
they know? I told these things to Uncle Edward, and that’s all. Oh, and Larry
knew, too.” His forehead furrowed as he scrutinized the day’s events in his
mind. “I’m sure Uncle Edward never said anything. So either Detective Garner
said something or someone overheard my conversations.”

“Maybe someone heard your conversations,” Lindsay suggested.

“How?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. Bugs, phones, or something.”

Steve stopped to consider for a minute. “That’s possible. Aunt Shannon noticed
some guy working on the phone lines my first morning at her place.” He slumped
his head into his hands. “The worst part is this. Now I’m stuck—can’t go back
to that house, or my own house. I’ve got nowhere to go. And I have no money.”

“You should stay downstairs tonight, Steve,” Lindsay suggested.

“But what about your dad? He didn’t want me to stay very long. He wouldn’t
let me stay.”

“Nah. My dad wouldn’t want you to stay, but where would you go if you leave
here?”

Steve shrugged. “I dunno.”

“My dad only pretends to care, anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Steve quizzed.

“My dad doesn’t really care,” she repeated. “He only cares about himself,
which means nothing else matters.” She stopped for a moment. “My parents split
a year ago. My dad left my mom to ‘find himself,’ whatever that means.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Steve interjected.

“Ah, it doesn’t matter. He’s never around. You saw him leave, and he
probably won’t be back until tomorrow morning. He doesn’t really want me
around, but the lawyers said he had to take me for the Christmas holidays. My
mom wanted to go out and find herself this Christmas.”

“That’s a drag,” Steve replied. “Christmas sure can suck.”

“Yeah, it can. I’m sure glad I could hang out with Shannon. She’s pretty
wacky, but she sure is great. I don’t have any friends here yet.”

Lindsay began to pepper Steve with questions, probing each disappearance
with careful scrutiny. She ended another long discussion by asking a big
question. “What can we do?”

“I have no idea,” Steve replied.

“So we need to figure this out.”

“Right, exactly. Except I have no idea how to experiment, or how to find my
Benu stone.”

Lindsay gave him a warm smile. “You did come to the right person. I think we
should make our Benu stones first. Have you done any experimenting before?”

“Nope.”

“I’ll get my notebook. Then we can start. When we experiment, we need to
write down what we do and how we do it so we don’t forget.” She left the couch
and jogged upstairs for a moment, returning with two notebooks. She handed him
one with a chewed pen clipped to the cover.

“All right. Let’s go,” Steve exclaimed as he grabbed the book.

She flipped through her worn notebook looking for a specific page. “Here’s
how Shannon says to make a Benu stone.” Lindsay looked up from the notebook
pages at Steve. “Have you ever seen a picture of the Ouroboros?”

Steve flashed a smile. “Yeah. Isn’t that the picture where the dragon is eating its own tail? I saw a picture of it in one
of Aunt Shannon’s books. But I don’t understand it.”

“It eats its own tail to satisfy its hunger. As it eats it grows, as it
grows it eats. It never gets bigger, never smaller. Old alchemists believed
that the Ouroboros was a picture of matter—of molecules and atoms. Aunt Shannon
believes that the Ouroboros is a picture of language—words and letters. So as
we experiment, we use words to transform things.”

“The way the clock changes to a lock?” Steve asked, checking to make sure he
understood. “She just says words as she touches her Benu stone.”

“Right.”

Lindsay looked down at her notebook again, squinting to read her own
writing. “The Great Work… You know, making a Benu stone… isn’t so much a matter
of making the stone, it is a matter of finding that stone.”

“Right,” Steve agreed.

“And the stone is not a stone.”

“Exactly. The stone that isn’t a stone.”

“It’s called a Benu stone, but it might be a picture, a coin—something else.
Or,” Lindsay smiled, “a box of ashes from a cremation. Of course, it might be a
stone, too. But we’re probably looking for something other than a stone.

“And the thing you need to find is the thing that is your stumbling
stone—your deepest fear—and the Pearl of Great Price—your greatest hope.”
Lindsay studied Steve.

“OK, I’m afraid of dying,” Steve declared.

“Umm. Not sure about that one. I thought that would be my biggest fear, too.
But Aunt Shannon told me it probably isn’t. So I don’t think that’s your
greatest fear, but let’s pretend it is. You look for something in your life that
reminds you most of your own death. Then, you must look at your fear through
that object and change your own self until it becomes your greatest source of
joy—in other words, life.”

“OK. If you say so.” Steve knitted his eyebrows.

“I don’t know if she showed you her wordless book. There are only colored
pages. The book tells the same secret. You start with black—the blackest black
there is. And you move through white, yellow, and finally to red. Fear is
black; joy is red.” Lindsay stopped and flipped ahead a couple of pages in her
notebook, and then back one. “You know, Shannon never did tell me what the rest
of the colors were all about. But they work in there somehow.” Lindsay peered
up from her notebook.