The Stonefly Series, Book 1

by Scott J. Holliday

  Don't stop using your voice.

  His voice had become a point of pride for her. If his speech continued to sound regular, not like someone who'd been deaf from birth, she could at least hang on to that.

  "Will do," Jake said. He turned his eyes away, focused on the blue light of the coffee maker.

  She snapped her fingers in his line of vision.

  He looked at her.

  "I'm only trying to help."

  "That's not the kind of help I need."

  Elizabeth looked down at her coffee, taken black. This was a new thing for her—black coffee... and also listening instead of commanding. He could tell she was struggling not to scold him.

  After a moment she looked back up. "You can keep it here, you know."

  The it she referred to was Jake's water pitcher—a gift from dear old dad. He'd never met the man, and as his mother's story went she'd only met him once. Apparently once had been enough to make Jake. According to Elizabeth, nine months after that meeting she came home from the hospital to find the water pitcher on her doorstep. It came with instructions to hide it away until the newborn boy turned eighteen. She followed the instructions, bringing the pitcher with her when she picked Jake up from the institution on his eighteenth birthday, the day he was released.

  * * *

  Elizabeth arrived at 6:00 a.m. on the morning they let Jake out. It was the earliest Dover would process his paperwork and still dark outside when they passed through the gates out toward her car.

  "I haven't eaten yet," Jake said.

  She drove to The Iron Skillet for breakfast, bookending the years of his incarceration with marginal diner food.

  The parking lot was wet from a recent hose down. Jake took in the scents of bacon and potatoes and fryer grease as they neared the door. When they entered the restaurant, he looked up at the copper bell chimes banging around to announce their entrance. He recalled that the bells had been loud and mildly irritating when they were there six years before. Silent to his ears now.

  At the institution Jake had eaten more pancakes than any human being should consume in a lifetime, and yet as a free man for the first time since he was a boy, Jake ordered pancakes again. He couldn't defend the decision other than to say he wanted to taste the difference between sane diner pancakes and crazy institution pancakes.

  Turns out pancakes are pancakes. At least in Wixom, Michigan.

  After they finished eating, Elizabeth reached into her purse and produced a leather roll about the width and length of a sprinter's baton. It was dark brown, almost black, and it had a rawhide lace tying it closed. She lifted her son's chin with her free hand and looked him in the eyes.

  "From your father."

  Jake's heart jumped. He broke into cold sweat and held his breath. His mother handed him the leather roll, holding it out with the tips of her fingers like a soiled diaper.

  The roll felt warm in Jake's hand. He recalled a scene from some old-time movie—maybe dozens of them—where a doctor or butcher or killer unties a rawhide lace on a similar leather roll and lays it flat on a table. With a flip of his wrist the leather is unrolled to expose a variety of stainless steel instruments and knives. Jake set the roll down and looked up at his mother. She sipped her coffee. The mug was one of those brown, bell-shaped cups that everyone secretly wishes they had in their home. On the bottom of the mug was the manufacturer's name and slogan.

  Choice: Your choice for value!

  Jake untied the rawhide lace, laid the leather flat, and rolled it out. There were no knives or surgical tools, only a sheet of parchment bound to the leather. As the roll uncoiled, the parchment flattened with it. Written on the paper were three words.

  Expand your horizon.

  In the lower right corner of the parchment were two letters Jake could only assume were his father's initials.

  V.K.

  Expand your horizon? What kind of bullshit cliché was this? A note from his father, a man he'd never met, a man he innately knew was responsible for the pain he'd experienced and the curse that was his life, left Jake a special note that might as well have been 'Be sure to drink your Ovaltine?'

  Elizabeth nodded toward the diner door. "The rest is in the trunk." She dropped a twenty on the table and smiled at the waitress as she headed for the door. Jake was pretty sure The Iron Skillet was a bring-your-bill-to-the-register type of place, but for Elizabeth Duke there were no such places.

  Jake followed her out past the hostess stand, behind which there were artisan candles, a paperback book exchange, and jars of Beiler’s Goldenrod Honey for sale—Pure, Unfiltered, Raw!

  It'd become dawn while they had breakfast. The horizon was red and the sky had a blood orange hue. Elizabeth popped the trunk on her Mercedes with a remote key fob and pushed up the lid. Lying in the back was something approximately the size and shape of carry-on luggage. It was wrapped in butcher paper. Elizabeth motioned for Jake to help her stand the object on end.

  With effort Jake turned the item upright inside the trunk. Elizabeth ripped away the paper to reveal a water pitcher—an ancient clay pot with a red stripe dyed around the center like a belt around a pregnant belly. The pitcher was chipped here and there, the outside eroded. There was a handle with the spout situated opposite for pouring. It looked like it might hold a gallon or two.

  Jake handed his mother the leather roll and hefted the pitcher out of the trunk. The thing seemed inordinately heavy for its size and the fact that it was empty. Must have weighed fifty pounds. He set it down on the asphalt behind the car, careful not to crack it, though he wondered if the asphalt would crack first. In his grip the pitcher seemed to hum with an otherworldly force—a vibration most noted by its absence when removed his hand.

  He looked at his mother. "What do I do with it?"

  She raised an eyebrow and shook her head.

  Jake picked up the pitcher by the handle. Again it hummed in his grip. He closed his eyes and waited for something to happen, some essential knowledge to flood his system, some secret of his cursed life to now be understood.

  He felt nothing.

  He motioned for his mother to hand him the leather roll. She did. He held it tightly, closed his eyes, and tilted his head back. He willed a blast of pure energy to hit him, maybe lightning from the sky.

  Nothing.

  Jake opened his eyes. He checked with his mother. She was swinging her car keys on a finger.

  "Maybe fill it?" Jake said.

  "Later," Elizabeth said. She flipped the car keys into her palm.

  Jake started to put the pitcher back into the trunk, but something stopped him. A flash of light caught his eye, somewhere over the fields to the east. He looked over the farms toward the horizon. Everything seemed natural. He blinked and looked in all directions, but there was nothing that stood out as strange.

  He started the pitcher toward the trunk again, this time more slowly, and then he caught it. The horizon—the real horizon everyone sees—stayed put, but a new one appeared just above it, like a copy had been pasted slightly apart from the real thing. Jake crouched and this new horizon followed with him, dipping below the real horizon. He hopped and it hopped with him. He tried to blink it away, like sunspots on his eyes, but the thing remained.

  Jake put the pitcher back into the trunk and again looked out over the fields. The new horizon was still there. He unrolled the leather and read the parchment again.

  Expand your horizon.

  Elizabeth was already in the car.

  Jake got in the passenger side and looked out the window. "Can you see it?" He turned to her to read her answer.

  "See what?"

  "That line out there, just above the horizon."

  She tilted her head to look and then shook her head, no. She punched the gas and they pulled out of the parking lot. As she accelerated onto the highway Jake turned around in his seat, legs crossed and his back against the glove compartment so he could more easily read her lips while she drove.

  "Y
ou shouldn't sit like that," Elizabeth said. "It's against the law."

  "Were those his initials?" Jake said. "V.K.?"

  Elizabeth exaggerated her mouth movements for his son's burgeoning lip-reading skills. "Your father isn't a Mediterranean prince."

  Jake had always believed his father was Sergeant Dan. This was not the story his mother had told him, but even as a youth he could tell her story about his father being a Mediterranean prince was bunk. He'd inserted Sergeant Dan as his own theory right about the time the man walked him into Dover and said goodbye with tears in his eyes.

  "And I didn't meet him on a Mediterranean cruise."

  Of course she didn't. To Elizabeth Duke the idea of vacation was blasphemy. "Maybe you met him while having Mediterranean salad?"

  She laughed. A sound Jake ached to hear.

  "Not that, either." She took her eyes off the road and looked at him. "And it's not Sergeant Dan, by the way."

  Jake looked down. He hadn't known his hope was so transparent, hadn’t realized until now that his Sergeant Dan theory was precisely that—hope. When he looked back up his mother was taking a deep breath. She let it out slowly as she regripped the steering wheel, hands at ten and two.

  "I should have told you a long time ago," she said.

  Jake waited. For years he had known there was something strange about him. Something mystical and unexplained. A curse. He knew it had something to do with his mysterious father, and that his mother suffered regret when it came to him.

  "You know me," Elizabeth said. "I've never had much use for a man."

  Jake nodded. He wondered if her stance had crumbled while he was locked up. She'd raised him on her own and he felt she desperately wanted to be proud of this fact, but he turned out a bad apple, you see. A head case. A murderer.

  8

  Everyone called him Booger Brody, as Brody Williams was in the habit of picking his nose and smearing the winners into the long, shiny hair of pretty fifth-grade girls. A harmless, if not disgusting, business until booger-hair victim Sally Brewster went beet red, turned to Brody Williams, and screamed, "I wish you were dead!"

  Jake figured that up until age ten he'd been lucky. Childhood wishes were made, of course, and he'd granted them, but he didn't know he'd been bound, and didn't understand the rules and consequences. When his kindergarten girlfriend wished he would play house with her, he just did as he was asked and was released almost instantly. When his third-grade teacher wished he would just be quiet, he closed his mouth and her life was saved. There may have been a binding, and possibly a quickening, but it was over so fast he never knew.

  After Sally Brewster made her wish, Jake sat at his desk watching tears stream down the girl's cheeks. They dripped onto the graphite and charcoal rose drawing she had been working on. Her artistic skill was remarkable for her age. Everyone was certain she would one day be a graphic designer or a painter.

  Booger sat behind her sporting his bowl-cut hair, his arms crossed over a boyhood paunch, a satisfied smirk on his face.

  By the end of class Jake wondered why his chest felt so strange.

  By the end of the day his hands were trembling.

  That night he woke up with fever. His pulse raced and his body burned, but he didn't feel sick. It was a strengthening warmth, like his heart had taken to pumping hot honey. He felt he could leap into the clouds if he didn't flame out first.

  The next day it was more of the same. His fingertips and toes tingled. His body was filled with fire, but no one seemed to notice. He didn't sweat. He didn't hyperventilate. He constantly checked mirrors to see if his skin had gone red, but no.

  And he was suddenly obsessed with Brody Williams. He watched the kid, made crude drawings of him, and followed him wherever he went. He found his eyes drying out from staring at Brody without blinking. When he finally did blink, he had a moment to think what's wrong with me, what am I doing? But he never found an answer. Jake's ten-year-old brain didn't understand he was stalking the poor kid.

  Hunting him.

  On the third day, Brody Williams seemed to take note of Jake's stalking. Jake would come around a corner to catch Brody disappearing around another. He'd come around that corner to see Brody dashing out to the playground. He'd arrive at the jungle gym to find Brody headed to the swings.

  Had Brody stopped to ask Jake what he was doing, Jake would've told him the truth—he had no idea.

  Day four was a Saturday. Jake's mother was working from home, locked up in her office. He called out an unanswered goodbye and rode his bike to Brody Williams's house. He hadn't slept well in a few nights, but he wasn't tired. His blood heat was finally abating, replaced by a constant adrenaline flow. His legs pumped the bike pedals effortlessly. He felt strong enough to bend the handlebars in his grip.

  Jake dropped his bike in the Williams's front yard and marched up to the door, having no idea what he would do with Brody once he had him.

  Mrs. Williams answered the door in a yellow apron over a sleeveless blouse. A waft of something cooking came out of the house behind her—marinara sauce. Spaghetti or lasagna. She looked every bit a cook, and every bit somebody's mom. Someone with a bosom. Her arms were big and billowy, seemingly devoid of muscle or bone.

  "Is everything okay, son?"

  "Yeah," Jake said. "Is Brody home?"

  "I packed him a snack and sent him to the park. You look pale. Are you sure you're not sick?"

  Jake rode to the park.

  Brody Williams sat beneath a walnut tree, reading. A nearby stream trickled in the sun while birds and squirrels went about their daily routines. Bumblebees hovered lazily around open flowers. The air smelled of honeysuckles. Jake stalked along the stream bank toward his classmate. His body felt like a disconnected power line, zapping and writhing. He stopped momentarily to pick up a softball-sized stone at the water's edge.

  The closer Jake got to Brody Williams, the higher his arms hefted the stone. Soon it was above his head. He had no understanding of what he was doing or why.

  Next to Brody was a green Stanley thermos. Steam rose from the cap-turned-cup at Brody's side.

  As Jake came within striking distance, Brody reached down for a sip of his drink. Jake took aim at Brody's head and started the stone on its downward arc, but Brody slipped to the side and threw his drink in Jake's face.

  Hot chocolate.

  Jake dropped the stone and fell to his knees, hands clamped over his eyes. His skin burned, his neck, his scalp. He screamed through his palms.

  Brody Williams could have run. He could have kicked Jake senseless. He could have picked up that stone and ended Jake's life. Instead he put a hand on Jake's shoulder and said, "I'm sorry."

  Jake often wondered how different things would be if Brody's hot chocolate had been hotter. Had Jake been scalded and unable to see, Brody Williams would probably be alive today. Maybe he'd be a college graduate. Maybe he'd have a wife and a job, a son or a daughter. Sally Brewster would have died some time that following Monday. She'd be underground in a small casket. God knows where Jake would be.

  But the hot chocolate had been barely steaming. Jake pulled back his hands and opened his eyes. He could see. His skin was already cooling. He looked down to find Brody had been snacking on a block of cheddar cheese and Ritz crackers. He'd been using a Swiss Army knife to slice cheese away from the block while he read his book and sipped his drink.

  "Don't tell my mom, okay?" Brody said.

  Jacob Duke, possessed by a supernatural force he didn't understand, picked up the Swiss Army knife and put the blade in Brody Williams's neck.

  9

  Past Elizabeth's head, on the driver side window, raindrops began to splatter and spread out. She reached for the windshield wiper control.

  Jake focused on her lips.

  "I never needed a man," she said, "but I wanted a child. I wanted you." Her eyes flicked to Jake and then back to the road. She fiddled again with the wiper control until she got the timing right. "So, for a father I s
ought someone who would have no interest in rearing you. Someone who wouldn't be around to interfere. Do you understand?"

  Jake said nothing.

  "Your father was a traveling man."

  "A flight attendant?"

  Elizabeth's eyes thinned down. "Don't be smart."

  Jake turned to the window. That goddamn new horizon was still there. It seemed larger now, a thicker band. Closer?

  His mother wiggled her polished fingernails before his face.

  He looked at her.

  "He was a gypsy," she said. "A magician, in fact. He traveled with a carnival."

  Jake conjured an image of a filthy vagabond emerging from an aluminum Airstream trailer while scratching his nuts. Scruffy beard, black vest, no shirt. A gang of feral kids scurried about his feet, beating on each other and squealing. "Jesus. Why didn't you just go to a sperm bank?"

  "You wouldn't understand."

  "I wouldn't?"

  "You're not old enough to..." She sighed. "Just trust me, you wouldn't understand."

  Despite what she thought, Jake was plenty old enough to understand that she had wanted to experience sex. Maybe the ice queen's one and only time. Lucky her. The closest he'd come were fantasies about Nurse Kerry peeling back her bleach white uniform. "Why not Sergeant Dan?"

  She made a face.

  Jake gritted his teeth. Elizabeth Duke—Stonewall Duke, as she was known at the bank—was too good for a decent man like Sergeant Dan MacDonald, but some dirty gypsy was just her type?

  "Your father wasn't like what you're thinking," she said. Her eyes lost focus. "He was beautiful."