In Stone (16 page)

“Please. I insist,” Iris says. I don’t argue.

Three cups of tea and four cookies later the doorbell chimes.

“Two lots of visitors in one day,” Iris exclaims. She’s positively ecstatic. Me, not so much. I fix a frightened stare on Jack. He knows what I’m thinking. I can see it on his face. Whoever is at the door is looking for us. It’s one of those things that you just know.

“I wonder who it could be. Malcolm?” Malcolm pushes himself up off the chair and thumps, thumps, thumps to the door. Iris rubs her hands and sits down in Malcolm’s chair. She starts chatting about her daughter and their plans to go and visit her in Australia or Argentina or Asia -- somewhere that’s not here. She pours more tea, which we won’t get to drink.

Jack is listening intently to the hushed voices at the door. I try to gauge what’s going on by studying his facial expressions, but he’s unreadable, stone you might say. My butt shifts to the edge of my seat.

Malcolm returns moments later, shaking a piece of paper and growling Bulgarian at both Jack and Iris. Something’s really wrong. The room is suddenly charged with anger. You could power an entire country with the electricity hanging overhead. He keeps waving the piece of paper around and pointing a sharp finger at Jack and I. Iris doesn’t appear to agree with what he’s saying. They spit their exchanges back and forth like a couple of warring cats. Jack stands up.

“I can explain everything.”

“What’s going on?” I ask. My bottom jaw takes a dive as Malcolm pushes the leaflet into my hands. My face is sketched on the front, and my name is scrawled across the top in big black letters. “Jack, what is this?”

“It would appear that the police want to speak to you about an incident that took place on the Slip train last night.” He turns to Iris. “The train was ambushed. Beau and I were there, but we escaped. I assume that we’re wanted for questioning, nothing more.” Jack speaks sincerely. His lie is so convincing that even I believe it.

“Then you should go -- clear up any misunderstandings,” Iris replies. There’s an inflection in her voice that smacks of concern. I can’t decide if that’s because she’s worried about us being in trouble or causing trouble. “There is a station here in North Slip.” Causing trouble. She’s definitely asking us to leave. Malcolm fixes a pair of squinted eyes on Jack. He starts chanting Bulgarian in Jack’s direction, but he keeps flicking his head toward me. It all sounds very threatening.

“Beau, we should go now and leave these people in peace.” Jack clamps his hand around mine while keeping his eyes fixed on the old man. “Thank you both for your hospitality.”

It doesn’t feel right keeping the sweater now, but as I start to peel it from my arms Iris shakes her head. “Whatever has happened, no one should have to freeze to death.”

“WHAT THE HELL WAS
that all about?” I ask as we tread through the snow. I used to love snow. Now I’m having fantasies about setting fire to it.

“The police officer was told by an eyewitness that the intruder on the train had dark, unnatural abilities.” Jack rolls his eyes.

“An eyewitness -- Callum?”

“I suspect so.”

“They don’t believe him though ... right?”

“The Police? No.”

“Wait.” I pull Jack to a standstill. “What are you not telling me?”

A brief shimmer of silver. He sighs and then fights the urge to look me in the eyes. “Whoever delivered that leaflet to the door told Malcolm that the dark and unnatural intruder was female. He thinks it’s you.”

I want to laugh that statement off, but an uneasy feeling makes my stomach squeeze. Something about Malcolm’s accusation scares me. I think about the airplane bathroom and my wrestling match with Lisa. I could have been mistaken for something dark and dangerous on two separate occasions yesterday.

“Beau, he’s just a crazy old man with crazy old ideas.” He slaps his hands on top of my shoulders and starts pushing me forward.

“Right.” I smile. But if that’s really how I feel, why can’t I bring myself to tell Jack about the dark and unnatural things that happened to me yesterday?

Ten thousand gallons of snow later and we come to a stop outside a bile-green, oblong trailer. Apparently the folks of North Slip don’t like their buildings to be built out of brick.

“This is it.”

“Of course it is,” I reply.

“Remember, you can’t help them because you don’t remember a thing about what happened yesterday.” Lying to the police is our only option. The plan is to pretend I blacked out and can’t recall the events of the train wreck.

“I can’t remember anything about what happened yesterday, got it. Who are you again?” I mock as I ferret around underneath my new sweater and slip my arms out of my shirt.

“What are you doing?” Jack asks, as like a magician, I pull my shirt from the sleeve of the sweater. His mouth gapes, and his head tips a little to the left.

“My shirt is making me smell like a swamp monster, and I really don’t want to stoke the “something dark and unnatural” fire.”

His eyebrows arc. “Impressive.”

“Not really. I was an awkward changing room teen.” Both Leah and I used to put our gym kits on over our clothes. In four years we’d perfected the art of getting changed without getting undressed.

“Why?”

I shrug. “Body issues. I’m one of one-point-two billion teens currently uncomfortable in their own skin.” I probably would have cringed if he’d asked me that pre our almost-naked night together.

“But your body is perfect,” he replies with a scoff. My neck burns. Suddenly, I don’t know where to look. I just want to chew on the sleeve of my new sweater. “Can’t lie to a friend,” he says. A smile spreads across his lips. It touches his eyes and sparks a mischievous twinkle. “You ready?” he asks, opening the door of the trailer. No. I might never be ready for anything ever again. I’ve never been called perfect before.

The reception area of the trailer isn’t big enough to swing a cat in. It smells like stale tobacco, and the walls are stained with brown damp patches. A man in uniform reclines in a chair. He has a rabbit-fur ushanka pulled down over his face.

Like he’s some sort of hardcore L.A cop, Jack slaps his palms down on the desktop. It jumps an inch, causing a pen pot to keel over and spew its contents. The officer leaps up like dynamite just exploded under his butt. I bite back a giggle. The poor guy needs several seconds to collect his nerves before he can make eye contact with Jack.

“Dobro
utro,” Jack greets. The officer says nothing. His eyes have found me, and he just gawks. Jack starts chatting away. I assume he’s explaining who we are, but the officer is deaf to it. He can’t take his eyes off me.

“Dude!” I finally snap when his gaze makes my toes curl. This gets him going. He scurries over to a door and hammers on it.

“How does it feel to be famous?” Jack shoves my shoulder gently.

“It blows.”

A robust guy in a suit opens the door. A handlebar moustache droops miserably over his top lip. The officer whispers something to him, and his head snaps over to me.

“Beau Bailey?” he asks.

“That’s me,” I reply.

“Inspector Pavla.” He takes a firm hold of my hand and shakes it. “And you are?” He offers Jack his hand.

“Parker. Jack Parker.” I think tea. Scones. Cucumber sandwiches, a martini shaken, not stirred. Never has a name suited someone so much.

“That’s quite a handshake,” Pavla says when Jack lets go of his hand. “I have some questions for you. If you’d like to come this way.” We follow him into his office.

“So,” he begins before he even sits down. It takes him a second to squeeze his swollen gut behind the desk. “I believe this belongs to you.” He ducks down to his right and produces my bag. He slams it down on the table in front of me. It’s open. Someone or something has managed to free the zipper. A bubble of excitement bursts in my stomach. I look over at Jack. He’s wearing a someone-just-threw-dynamite-in-my-face expression. I start searching through the bag, careful not to seem too desperate. Disappointment soon kills the excitement. The knife is gone.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened on the train?” Pavla leans on the table, twisting his mustache in his thick, tobacco stained fingers.

I clear my throat, take a deep breath. I am an actress getting into character. This will be an Oscar winning performance. “Honestly…” I purse my lips and blow an exhausted raspberry. “I don’t remember. I was sitting at the back of the train…” Pause for far off thought. “And there was a boy up front. Then this girl climbs into the carriage and after that…” I throw my hands up in the air and let them fall limp at my sides. “Nothing. My mind goes completely blank.”

“The girl, did you notice anything unusual about her?”

I shake my head. “I don’t even remember the color of her hair.”

“The boy, Callum, he seems to think she was strange.” I shrug again and huff a long breath “Like I said, not got a clue.”

“Hmm.” The Inspector disappears back behind his desk and reemerges with a plastic evidence bag. He slaps it on the table.

Choirs sing. Fireworks explode. Babies are born. The knife.

I almost fall off my seat. I sink my fingers into the cushion of my chair to stop them reaching out and snatching the little plastic bag. Jack shifts almost imperceptibly in the chair beside me. But I feel him buzzing.

“What’s this?”

I’m tongue tied. I have no idea how to explain it. We hadn’t planned for this eventuality. I try to say anything, anything at all, but I’m just decorating the table in spit.

“It’s a fishing knife. It belongs to me. Beau was just carrying it.” Jack jumps in.

“Were you on the train?” Jack nods. “And I suppose you didn’t see anything either?”

“I hit my head when the train stopped. Knocked me out cold.”

“He missed the whole thing,” I add.

“So this…” Pavla picks up the plastic bag and throws it back on the table in front of Jack. “This is your fishing knife?” Jack nods. It’s too close to him. It shouldn’t be that close. He could reach out, take it and --. I steal a glance at his lap, watch him twist his fingers until they’re bleached white. My heart starts pounding.

“What’s it made out of?”

“Animal bone. Metal taints the taste of the fish.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Family heirloom.”

“What do you fish?”

“Whatever’s biting.”

“Where’s the rest of your gear?”

“Airport lost our baggage.”

It’s like watching a tennis match. They both fall silent and just sit there, staring each other out. Testosterone floods the air.

“We actually have a flight to catch this afternoon. Are we done here?” I interject before they start arm wrestling. The Inspector taps his lips with his fingers then reluctantly pushes the knife along the table until it meets with the very edge.

“Be careful with that,” he warns in an ominous tone. Jack’s top lip twitches as he stares at the knife. I stand up and snatch it away.

“Of course,” I reply, nodding my head firmly.

The Inspector flicks his head at the door, and we both make a very controlled exit. I’m pretty sure Jack wants to book it -- I know I do. But we just walk even steps in unison out of the police station.

We keep walking, in silence, away from the miniature town of North Slip until the little oblong trailer is out of sight. My mind is racing when Parker, Jack Parker, snatches hold of my hand and pulls me to a stop.

“Just so we’re clear, you still want to do this, right?”

“Yes, I still want to do this
,” I breathe. My brain is a mangled mass of sentences that start spewing from my mouth. “How lucky are we? I mean, I’m never lucky. Sure, I was hoping that Lisa hadn’t found the knife, but deep down I was thinking she found it. There’s no way we’re getting it back…” I blabber on until he cups hold of my cheeks. A blinding grin, summer, bursts on his lips.

“You sound like you’re malfunctioning.” I watch his mouth move. It’s hard not to. It’s only a couple of inches away from mine. Full, soft lips, making shapes with each letter he sounds out. I wonder what it would be like to kiss him.

“I’m never this lucky,” I say again. I’m talking about getting the knife back obviously, but not wholly. A part of me feels lucky to be standing this close to someone so unique -- special, in otherworldly ways.

I want to kiss him.

He wets his lips with the tip of his tongue and his body shifts closer. His hands slip around my waist and clamp hold of my hips. I think he wants to kiss me too. I’m kind of glad he’s got hold of me. I’m so light right now; I could float away. Every muscle I have tenses as he bridges the gap between our faces but not with a kiss. Instead, he rests his forehead against mine. The tips of our noses touching. “I don’t want you to get cold. We should keep moving.”

I pull away. Quick. Wounded. My cheeks turning cherry. Something cold and hollow is expanding in my chest, but it has nothing to do with standing still.

“Then let’s go,” I say, marching forward.

* * * *

I trail behind Jack. We’ve been walking for two, maybe three hours. I stopped checking my watch the moment the second hand started ticking backward. A tightness grips my legs, the bottom of my stomach, my arms, my feet, my fingers, my toes, and quite possibly my hair. I remember the good old days when exercise meant lifting the remote.

“Are we nearly there yet?”

“It should be just after these trees.”

“You keeping saying that.” He stops, turns around and marches over to me. This is the closest we’ve been since I thought he was going to kiss me. Without warning, he grabs hold of my legs and throws me over his shoulder. I half scream, half laugh.

“Put me down, Parker. Jack Parker,” I order.

“Nope.”

“If you don’t put me down, I’ll scream.”

“Scream all you want. We’re in the middle of nowhere. No one will hear you.” He cackles menacingly.

“Fine. But I should warn you that my upchuck reflex is especially sensitive when I hang upside down.” Fifth grade. Two strawberry shakes. Monkey bars. It wasn’t pretty.

“I’ll put you down if you promise to stop whining about how far we’re walking.”

“In my defense we’ve been walking for a millennium.”

“There you go again. I’m not putting you down,” he says, all sing-songy.

“I hate you.”

He laughs and continues trudging through undergrowth until the ground changes from twigs and leaves to shining black tar. An unnerving shadow falls over us.

“Well would you look at that,” Jack says, sliding me down his stomach. “Just after the trees.” He smirks. For a second I daren’t put my feet on the ground. It looks like a lake of oil. I test its solidity with my toes. Solid.

We’re facing a curved wall of jagged, grey slate that stretches up into the clouds and drenches everything in its shadow. This is the wall stopping everything from falling over the edge of the world.

The land is dead; nothing lives here. Jack knows I’m frightened, frightened like I was at the train station when I assumed we were beginning our dissent down the rusty steps and into the Underworld. This time he doesn’t tell me ‘not yet’. He wraps his arms around me.

“This is the gate to the Underworld,” he says into my ear.

“It doesn’t look much like a gate.” I guess I was expecting something a little more Rodin-esque. Skeletons and hooded figures, holding scythes and such.

“That’s because it’s hidden. We need demon blood to draw it out.”

“Demon blood? And where exactly are you planning on getting that from?”

Jack narrows his eyes and points to a large swelling of rock at the foot of the wall. I squint my eyes for a sharper focus. There’s a slim gap, an opening that will take us straight into its belly. “In there.”