In Stone (8 page)

“This is it,” Jack whispers as we arrive at the second-to-last door on the corridor. There’s a gold sign that reads ‘storage’ pinned to the front of it, and this old-school keypad, with chunky buttons, knobs, and no digital display. Jack starts stroking his chin.

“Hmmm…this wasn’t in any of my books,” Jack murmurs, shaking a pointed finger at the keypad. He tries the handle. The door doesn’t budge.

“Okay,” I breathe. “What exactly does that mean?”

“I don’t know how to get inside,” he replies nonchalantly, as if we are talking about something mundane like the weather.

“What now?” I question. Jack presses his ear up against the door.

“I think there’s someone in there,” he informs, clearly excited at the possibility. “How heavy do you think security will be up here?”

“I have no idea.”

“Best guess?”

“Best guess?” He nods his head.

“I guess if they have guards on the front desk they won’t need to load every floor with guys, but--” Before I can finish, and for some reason that escapes me completely, he knocks on the door. Calm evaporates.

“What are you doing? Are you insane?” My heart is hammering through a billion beats a second. “Why did we go to all that effort of sneaking in if you were just going to knock?” I shout-whisper at him. Although there is zero point in trying to be quiet now.

“I wasn’t going to knock, but I can’t short the keypad. This was our only option. It’s like you said; it doesn’t make sense to have heavy security up here when they have it in the foyer.”

“That was a theory.”

“It’s a good theory.”

He’s a whack-job. A fricking fruit-loop. I start pacing. I’m debating making a run for it, when the door clicks open. I shake out my arms, roll my shoulders, and take a breath in prep for big, burly, gun-brandishing guards. But expectation is quashed. I was right, and instead of more guards like the ones downstairs, we’re greeted by a guy who looks like a pipe cleaner with eyes. He loafs out into the corridor, scratching his head. He can’t be much older than me. His eyes are pink and splotchy. Five bucks says he’s been sleeping on the job. He pushes a pair of heavy-duty, horn-rimmed glasses up his nose and hitches up a utility belt full of big-boy toys. A radio hanging from it crackles with static.

“Hey,” he greets suspiciously. “I don’t think you guys should be up here.” Jack starts strolling toward him, a move that makes the Pipe Cleaner’s eyes anxious. He reaches down to his belt and snatches the radio. A single press of a button, and we’re toast -- those guys from reception will be up here in a flash. But snap, the crack of a whip, and Jack’s tail flicks forward. The radio falls to the floor and smashes to pieces. The Pipe Cleaner is me, yesterday, all slack-jawed and trying to wrap his head around what he’s just seen. Not even the bleeding gash on his hand from where Jack’s tail has caught can pull him from the trance.

Jack lunges at him. I’m not really sure what happens next. I see Jack’s fingers pinch around the Pipe Cleaner’s shoulders, the back of his neck. Then the Pipe Cleaner is unconscious, falling into Jack’s chest.

“You killed him,” I choke as Jack tosses him over his shoulder like a sack of spuds.

He turns sharply to me with a look of absolute disgust “Beau, I don’t kill people,” he reminds me. “He’s just…resting.” Jack shakes his head, at me presumably, while he walks off through the door.

I follow them into the room and close the door behind us. The guard is slumped in a folding metal chair. I can’t see Jack. Twenty hours too late, I’m having trust issues. Eyeballing the lifeless guard, I make way over to him. I stretch out my hand and let it hover over his mouth. A jet of warm air breaks against my palm and a sigh of relief escapes my lips, a fraction too loudly.

“Satisfied?” Jack asks. I pull my hand away and am reduced to kid-being-caught-with-their-hand-in-a-cookie-jar status. I decide to pretend that I didn’t just doubt him. All girlish, I twirl, smile and flap-flap my eyelashes. He’s looking  at rows and rows of metal shelving and several thousand boxes filling them.

“Holy mountain of mess,” I say. This is our Everest. Jack turns his head to look at me. An eyebrow is poised, and a ghost of a smile sits on his lips.

“What?”

“Told you he wasn’t dead,” he almost sings. Apparently, he doesn’t want to play pretend. “We’re going to have to work on your trust issues.”

“What issues?” I shrug. “I don’t trust you; it’s as simple as that.” I match his smile. There’s that hot hormonal shift again, deep inside my stomach, and of all the things I should be thinking right now I’m stuck with, I haven’t kissed a boy in almost two weeks. I used to kiss Mark every day. We kissed for three hundred
and sixty-five days straight. 

“What is all this, anyway?” I ask, wiping my mind and eyeing the cardboard jungle. I stroll over and brush my fingers along some of the boxes, disturbing a buildup of dust. Jack is behind me in a matter of seconds. “This is our hunting ground,” he says over my shoulder, right into my ear. I shiver. Another mental mind wipe. “They’re dated. We just need to find the boxes from Saturday the tenth.”

“Well what are we waiting for? Let’s get this party started,” I reply, rolling up my sleeves and rubbing my hands together. I’m not really eager to get started, more eager to get away from him. I’m not warming to the way my body reacts when he’s close.

We manage to narrow down our search to a moderately sized section of shelving. All the boxes are labeled with dates and a list of contents. There are some grim things stored within these walls of cardboard. I come across the phrase blood-soaked several times -- it gives me goose bumps. Jack is searching low on one side of a shelf, and I am searching high.

“Beau,” he says, disturbing the blanket of silence. “You have something protruding from your navel.” I look down to see him staring up at my belly button through a gap in the boxes on his side of the shelf. My top has ridden up, and I’m showing off my stomach. My insides curl. I snatch hold of my top ready to tug it back down, but he reaches through the shelf, grabs hold of my hand, and stops me.

“Dude,” I exclaim with frustration. He retracts his hand swiftly.

“Sorry,” he clears his throat; his eyes flash fluorescent. “What is that?”

“It’s a piercing, a twenty-first-century fashion statement. Really, it’s no big deal.” I rarely see my own body, having someone examine it so thoroughly conjures up feelings of being called out for talking in a jam
-packed school assembly.

“Not the metal, the mark.”

“Oh god,” I wince as embarrassment reaches its climax. Of course he’s referring to the hideous mole that can be seen, sunning itself on my torso from the deepest, darkest regions of outer space. That’s probably a slight over exaggeration. It’s roughly the size of an Oreo and spends most of its time hidden underneath a waistband. But still, it’s dark, and hairy, and makes after gym shower sessions at school really uncomfortable. With one hand clasping the shelf I’m on, I use the other to tuck my shirt into my jeans because, you know, ensuring it’s invisible now means he hasn’t already seen it. Obviously. 

“We still have like a billion boxes to sift through, and you want to chat about body blemishes?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be climbing so high,” he says, changing the subject. I knew this boy was smart. “These shelves don’t look very safe.” Jack’s words taper off at the end as he switches shelves and moves further away from me.

“Thanks Mom, I’ll jot that down,” I call after him. He snickers.

My eyes are scanning labels dated December when I hear a creak. The muscles in my shoulders turn to rock. I lift myself up and peep over the top of the shelf. The door sways a little, as if it’s been caught by a light breeze…or like someone’s just come through it.

I closed it. I’m sure I did.

I shut my eyes, try to cast my mind back, but the only thing I can remember is the unconscious Pipe Cleaner. The soft shuffle that was the sound of Jack searching has disappeared. My throat closes, every sinew solidifies.

“Jack.” I wait a second, but he doesn’t respond. “Jack!” My eye catches the chair where the Piper Cleaner was slumped. It’s empty.

“Jack…”

A groan infiltrates the air and cuts my call short. It could be wood, you know, how it settles when it gets too hot or too cold. Or pipes, it could be the sound of pipes protesting at a sudden rush of water.

“Jack?” I call again; only this time nerves have killed all the volume.

Another groan. It’s not settling wood or pipes. Something is behind me, the hairs on the back of my neck spike, and ice slips down my spine. I turn sharply in a moment of panic, and my foot slips.

“Whoa!” Jack says as I tumble from the shelf and into his arms. “I told you climbing was dangerous.”

“Where were you?” I growl, pushing him from me. I’m not in the mood for his charming, boyish bullshit. “Why didn’t you answer me when I called, huh?” I push against his chest again.

“I didn’t hear you.”

“You didn’t hear me?”.

“Why are you so upset?”

“I’m not upset.”

“Obviously you are.” His fingers trail across my cheek and tuck a stray brown curl behind my ear.

“No, not upset.” I jerk my head away from him. “Concerned, perhaps, that our comatose security guard has vanished from his chair.”

“What?”

A long raspy breath bursts our argument bubble. We both turn to  the source of the noise. At first I’m ready to throw a thousand apologies at the Pipe Cleaner, who’s standing, fully conscious, and staring at us, but then I realize his face is disturbingly different. The glasses are gone. His eyes are two pools of tar. His complexion is death, his cheeks hollow.

“Shit.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s possessed,” Jack replies matter-of-factly.

“That’s not good,” I say, tucking myself safely behind Jack.

“You find the knife. I’ll fix this,” Jack informs me in a whisper. His head tips a little to the right, and I can see his cheek in profile. There’s a stony-grey tint to his skin, just like someone has run a grey blush up his cheekbone. 

The Pipe Cleaner starts frog marching toward us as I back away. He spots me and his head turns in my direction. He gawks with wide, soulless eyes. Eyes that you could trip in and keep falling
for forever. His bottom lip drops, and he expels a chilling moan. I’m not sure I can move. It feels like if I take another step he’s going to fly at me.

“Jack?”

“I’ve got this,” he assures me.

I ditch cautious and hurry over to an unsearched area. Like a librarian on speed, I start scanning labels and pulling boxes off shelves. There’s a loud crash. I look back over my shoulder to see Jack being bowled into various shelves. The skinny Pipe Cleaner is an unflinching machine, charging at him. He catapults Jack into another set of shelves that collapse and crumple under his weight. For a second he doesn’t move; he just lies there amidst a graveyard of flattened cardboard and crushed metal. The side of his face is split open and spilling blood. But then he gets up, fire burning in his eyes, and barrels straight back into the fight.

A symphony of bones breaking, cardboard crunching, and metal clanging, rings out as I plough through boxes and then, like someone hit mute, the noise evaporates. It’s the most wonderful sight I’ve ever seen. In its very own plastic wallet is the white knife. A choir sings. Fireworks explode. Babies are born.

“I got it. Jack, I got it.” I scramble to my feet. The pair have pretty much leveled the room. Someone has heard the commotion and is trying to get in through the door, but the shelves have fallen like dominoes, and are wedging it shut. Jack has the Pipe Cleaner in an arm lock. I think of bears; feral, bedraggled, and bleeding.

“What should I do?”

“Use it. Kill him.”

“No!” I spit. This poor guy was a normal Joe-nobody until we came along. I know he’s currently a dribbling psycho, but I can’t get past the image of that lanky, lost-looking guy, loafing out into the corridor. I can’t kill him, can I? I’m tossing the knife back and forth between my hands, weighing it -- weighing the weight of what I have to do.

“Beau, if you don’t kill this thing, he’s going to take the knife and use it on us.”

I can’t let him kill us. The Pipe Cleaner struggles against Jack’s grip, wailing and grousing as he does. There’s a loud pop, pop, pop and an air whipped hail of bullets hit the door. As if there wasn’t enough noise and confusion already cramping up this room.

“They’re shooting at us.”

“Beau,” Jack urges.

The struggle between Jack and the Pipe Cleaner becomes much more fraught. Something bulky and black drops on the floor. A Taser. Maybe I’m drunk on the chaos, maybe I’ve watched one too many cop dramas, but before I can stop myself, I swoop down, pick it up, and jab it into the Pipe Cleaner’s ribs. The Taser hums like a hornet, and the Pipe Cleaner’s body begins to jerk. He transforms into a flicker, moving so fast there appears to be five or six of him. A cloud of white foam expands in his mouth and drips like snowfall down his chin, onto his regulation navy-blue sweater.

Jack lets him go. He’s by my side in a blink and ushering me behind his back, but I want to see. The Pipe Cleaner freezes. A hissing sound, as if air is being teased out of a tire, leaks out of his lips, and he starts vomiting a stream of thick green liquid onto the floor. I’m too intrigued to be repulsed as the green liquid coagulates. It’s moving, living, curling into the shape of a butterbean.