Cries from the Lost Island

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

  “Yeah, sure,” Roberto said. “We just found our best friend murdered. We’re fine, thanks. You?”

  “All right, I know you’re both in shock. Try to relax.” Every time the man looked at me, I felt like a stiletto had been plunged into my chest. “I’m Officer Sackett. Can you tell me what happened?”

  My brain had stopped working. I swear. I was having trouble remembering anything. In a small stunned voice, I stammered, “I-I didn’t walk her home. I should have walked her home.”

  Officer Sackett leaned forward. “What time was that? Where were you when she asked you to walk her home?”

  I forced myself to try and recall. “She . . . she didn’t. Ask. But I should have. We were at the Starbucks. Around three.”

  Since the officer was not taking notes, I assumed the entire session was being recorded, and instinctively looked around the little room for cameras. If we were being recorded, we were probably also being filmed.

  “I called your parents. They’re on the way. Your father said you were surly this afternoon, Mr. Stevens. Said you had a violent argument with him, stamped out of the house, and ran off. That true?”

  I opened my mouth, but for a few awful instants no words came out. “I went to meet Cleo.”

  “But you told your father you were going over to Mr. Dally’s to play video games.”

  “I met Cleo at Starbucks first.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Uh-huh. What games did you play when you got to Mr. Dally’s?”

  “What?”

  “Games. What did you play?”

  I shrugged and shook my head at the same time. “I . . . I don’t think we played any. Did we?” My memory had huge gaps. I turned to Roberto. “Did we play any games?”

  The officer turned to Roberto and squinted one eye at him.

  Roberto said, “We didn’t have time to play. While we were sitting around talking, Cleo called and said she needed help, so we took my bike to her house.”

  “Your next-door neighbor, Mr. Jackson, said you both jumped on the Honda and left in a hurry at approximately 3:45 pm. Your parents also said they found empty beer cans on the living room table. Had you been drinking?” His gray brows lowered as though he thought we were the worst sort of juvenile delinquents.

  Roberto seemed to be coming back to himself. He crossed his arms over his chest and announced, “Nobody’s read us our rights, you know that? I want an attorney.”

  In a threatening manner, Officer Sackett leaned across the table toward us. “Listen, boys, you’re in trouble. Real trouble. You realize you’re both suspects in a murder case? You could help yourselves by being cooperative.”

  Roberto shook his head. “Not a chance. And I want to see my parents. Right now. Are they out there in the waiting room?”

  Officer Sackett’s voice dropped to a low threatening growl. “All right, Mr. Dally. My assistant will escort you to your parents.”

  Instantly, another officer came in and took Roberto away. Before Roberto left, he gave me one of those “don’t say a word” looks.

  But I wanted to tell someone. I had to. Maybe if I told the police everything, they could find the killer.

  For several moments, Officer Sackett ground his teeth with an ugly look on his face.

  “Are m-my parents out there, too?” I stammered.

  “No. I told you the truth. They’re on their way.”

  Finally, he lifted his eyes. His stern gaze went through me like a lance. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened.”

  Tears filled my eyes. “I don’t remember much.”

  “Just start at the beginning. Tell me what you do remember.”

  “Well, I mean . . . I don’t . . .” Taking a deep breath, I spoke in a rush of words that came out so fast I almost choked on them: “Cleo was Queen Cleopatra in a former life, but the demon Ammut won’t let her go to the Island of the Two Flames, so she keeps being reborn in new bodies. I think it has something to do with the fact that she betrayed Marcus Antonius in 30 BC. Or maybe 31 BC at the Battle of Actium. I—I’m not sure.”

  Officer Sackett blinked a couple of times. “I’m asking about the murder. Do you have any idea who did this? Did you see anyone else out there at the scene?”

  The conversation went straight downhill after that.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Six days later when I followed my parents out to the cemetery for the funeral, it was raining.

  A green canopy roofed the chairs in front of the freshly dug grave. Only a few people had come. Roberto and his family sat in the second row, behind Cleo’s aunt and uncle. Three of our teachers were there. One man I didn’t know sat in the very back. Short and stocky, he had black hair and a carefully clipped mustache. Late fifties, probably, he was around five feet five inches tall. He looked Egyptian, and I wondered if he was a close relative of Cleo’s. When he fixed his blue eyes on me, I had the urge to flinch.

  As I looked around, it was stunning to me that Roberto and I were the only friends her age that she had in the entire world.

  As we walked forward, Cleo’s uncle, Dr. Moriarity, stood up. A tall muscular man with graying brown hair and black eyes, he was fifty-eight and looked like he’d spent all those years in bright sunlight. Deep wrinkles cut across his weathered face. Black-rimmed glasses and a thick beard gave him a sinister appearance. He gestured to the front row. “Please, sit with us. You’re family.”

  Lowering myself onto the chair beside him, I nodded politely to Cleo’s Aunt Sophia. The black-haired woman gave me a weak smile. She looked so sad. Her eyes were badly swollen and bloodshot. She reached across Dr. Moriarity’s chest to clasp my hand, and say, “Thank you, Hal, for being her friend. She loved you so much.”

  Tears tightened my throat when I replied, “I loved her, too.”

  “I know you did.”

  My mother and father sat down to my left. The closed coffin rested on the stand next to the grave. It was polished steel. A bouquet of her favorite flowers, lilacs, spread across on top. I stared at it and listened to the blood pulsing in my ears, a slow dull rhythm. This was a nightmare. . . .

  It couldn’t be real.

  Cleo couldn’t be dead. I could still feel her presence and hear her voice talking inside me. I’m right here, Halloran.

  Father Josephs stepped up to the podium and opened a Bible. A short white-haired old man, he had gentle eyes and a deep voice. I barely heard anything he said. Something about how much we’d all loved Cleo, what an excellent student she’d been, how much she had suffered in her life, and how it was over now because she was with God in heaven.

  After a while, I couldn’t stand it. I closed my eyes and pretended I was walking the magnificent streets of ancient Alexandria with Cleo. Hand in hand, we strolled past Doric tombs decorated with crocodile gods in Roman garb, Ionic marble columns, and gigantic sphinxes and falcons, which lined the pathways to Greek temples. Down the street ahead of us, the awe-inspiring lighthouse stood on the western side of the harbor entrance to Pharos Island and was connected to the city by a long man-made causeway. Soaring into the sky, the lighthouse was not merely an engineering marvel; like all Ptolemaic monuments, it was a work of artistic brilliance that glittered in the sunlight reflecting from the vast blue Mediterranean Sea. Life-size paintings of Egyptian gods and goddesses covered the structure. The magnificent turquoise image of Set stared down upon me, which made me feel very small. Though, oddly, I was different in the daydream, taller, more muscular, and dark-haired. Obviously, I was playing Antonius in my daydreams. Cleo was older. In her thirties, maybe, and stunningly beautiful. Cleopatra had been thirty-nine when she’d committed suicide.

  As we stared at the lighthouse, she took my arm and leaned her head against my shoulder. I bent down to kiss her and breathed deeply of her lemon-scented hair. “All will be well, my love. Stop worrying.”

  “
He’s coming. You know he is. By withholding the wheat, we’ve given him no choice. Rome is starving. There will be war.”

  “And we will defeat him. We just have to force him to fight on land. Sea battles are not my strength—”

  Dr. Moriarity leaned sideways to whisper, “Did she give you the medallion before this happened? We can’t find it anywhere.”

  Like a slap in the face, the words brought me back to the funeral, and I found myself staring at a steel coffin adorned with lilacs. The scent of wet earth rode the wind that swept the graveyard. Losing Cleo and Egypt was almost unbearable. It took me a few moments to gather my wits, before I could say, “What medallion?”

  Dr. Moriarity glared at me through his thick glasses. Barely audible, he said, “You’re the only person she would have given it to. I want it. It doesn’t belong to you.”

  “What can you tell me about the Island of the Two Flames? How do you find it?”

  His black eyes flared. “Did she tell you to ask me that? Is she trying to get there?”

  “I’ve been researching it. It’s in the middle of the Nile, right? Where exactly?”

  Moriarity lifted a finger and pointed it at me, as though about to make a threat, when my father bent forward to hiss, “What’s the problem, Moriarity?”

  The professor shook his head and sat back in his seat, but for the rest of the funeral, he kept turning to glower at me.

  When the ghastly ordeal was finally over, and the workmen were lowering the coffin into the grave, I walked a short distance away to stare up at the mountains. I couldn’t watch them shovel dirt over the top of my Cleo. My whole body hurt. I didn’t want to feel anything. Not ever again. Since the mountains had always filled me with a sense of peace, I tried to will myself into their cold stone hearts.

  Roberto walked up beside me. He’d washed his brown hair, but still wore his black leather jacket and jeans with the knees out. Casting a glance back over his shoulder, he said, “What did Dr. Who want? I saw him whispering to you in the middle of the ceremony.”

  Roberto had never much liked Cleo’s uncle. He said the archaeologist was a spooky know-it-all.

  “He asked if I had the medallion.”

  Roberto’s eyes went wide. “Holy shit. If he wants it, we’d better go get it pronto.”

  I looked around to make sure no one could overhear us. The unknown Egyptian man who’d sat in the rear was standing alone, off to the side, pretending he wasn’t monitoring me, but I knew he was. He had cold, ice-blue eyes, so he was either a cop or a mass murderer. “They’re watching me like hawks. There’s always a sheriff’s car or police car outside our house. I think they’re taking turns. They follow me everywhere I go. Can you get it?”

  “No problemo. The cops have pretty much decided I was an innocent bystander. Nobody’s watching our house, but I’ll use an invisibility spell anyway. I’ll go tonight. Hide it in my gym bag.”

  “With your dirty underwear?”

  “Sure. Who’d brave the smell to search for it?”

  I considered the possibility. “Be careful, Roberto. The thing that killed her might still be out there.”

  “Hal, listen . . .” he said in a soft voice.

  I stared at him with despair in my eyes. The tone in his voice brought home the fact that we had just lived through true horror together. We were both different people now.

  Roberto licked his lips. “We need to talk. Alone, and I mean alone. You didn’t tell the police about the—”

  “No, of course not. I haven’t told anyone about the medallion except you.”

  He expelled a relieved breath. “Okay, that’s good. Did you meet the Egyptian cop?”

  “He’s a cop?” My eyes moved to the man still sitting in his chair in the rear. Bronze-skinned and dressed in a crisply ironed green shirt and pants, no one would ever mistake him for a man to be taken lightly. He was in charge. No doubt about it. “Who is he?”

  “Name’s Colonel Sattin. He came over to talk to me when we first got here. Says he’s trying to recover a stolen Egyptian antiquity that he suspects Cleo had.”

  A hard swallow bobbed in my throat. “You don’t think—”

  “No doubt, bro. But I don’t—”

  “Robert?” his mother called.

  Roberto swung around, scowled at her, and said, “Give me a second, for God’s sake.” Then he turned back to me. “Gotta go, Hal. See you at school tomorrow?”

  “I . . . yeah, I don’t know. Maybe. Don’t know if I can stomach the questions from the morons.”

  “There’s only three days of school left. Why don’t you blow ’em off? You’ve already earned an A in every class. Besides, the sympathy factor will kick in with the teachers. They’ll probably give you A-pluses if you’re home grieving.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, but if school’s open, my parents will force me to go. Mom always says you have to ‘stand up to your worst fears’ or you end up being a bed wetter when you’re forty.”

  Roberto’s brows lifted. “Want me to curse the school so it’s closed tomorrow?” He drew a lopsided pentagram in the air, as though it was a secret signal. Like I was the only person present who knew he was a witch, even though he made a point of telling every person he passed.

  “That’d be great. Thanks.” I didn’t actually believe his spells worked, but what harm could it do?

  Roberto saluted and trotted off to get in his parents’ car. I watched them drive off and felt lonely beyond words.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The night of the funeral, the dreams started.

  A rush of air filled my bedroom. Hot, sweltering air. That’s why it roused me. I curled onto my side and gazed at the back of my closed eyelids where little white sparks shot around. I felt hollow. I kept reliving the nightmare, but not her death. Instead, I clung to that last conversation on the bench outside of Starbucks, repeating it over and over in my dreams.

  Slowly, as I climbed out of sleep, I heard things.

  Jewelry clinked.

  The air smelled of lime-laden dust and sunbaked stones running with water.

  Then, footsteps. Almost not there.

  They came across the room, and I felt the side of my bed sink as someone sat down beside me.

  “Halloran? Don’t be afraid. It’s just me.”

  I longed to weep. “Oh, my God, I’m so glad you’re here. I dreamed that you were dead.”

  “I’m here. I’m not leaving you. I came to help you.”

  A warm hand touched my face.

  “Hal? Hal, wake up!”

  My father’s panicked voice made me sit bolt upright in bed, gasping for air. Through my window, I could see the blizzard and hear the wind shrieking as it hurled snow at the house. “What? What’s wrong?” I asked. Adrenaline was shooting through my veins like fire.

  While Mom stood like a black silhouette in the doorway, Dad ran to me, sat down on the bedside, and wrapped his arms tightly around me. His blond hair was a mass of tangles. Clearly, they’d leaped from their bed to charge to my room.

  “You were sobbing in your sleep, Hal. Are you all right?” Dad asked in a worried voice.

  I was still sort of locked in the dream. Cleo’s voice echoed in the back of my mind. “Yeah. I’m okay, Dad. Just a dream. Sorry I woke you.”

  “Was it about Cleo?”

  Before I could answer, Mom said, “Of course, it was about Cleo, John. How could you even ask?” As a psychiatrist, Mom had perfected the art of making people feel stupid. Oh, I loved her. But I’d never liked her much.

  Dad shouted, “Let him answer, will you?”

  “It was Cleo,” I said. “She was . . . was here . . . in the room.”

  Mom leaned against the doorframe. “Hal, you have to stop blaming yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”

  I rubbed a hand over my numb face, and my eyes drift
ed to the window to watch the whirling snow that glittered in the gleam of the streetlights outside.

  It was strange, wasn’t it? For the moment, I’d blocked Cleo’s death. Instead, every night I returned to Starbucks. Maybe because she was still alive there, not dying in my arms, not dead in a coffin beneath six feet of dirt. At Starbucks, I could still hold her. I could still love her. And she loved me. Loved me with all her heart. But this latest addition to the Starbucks dream was new and strange. It didn’t feel like a dream at all. It felt like some ancient doorway had creaked open, and Cleo had walked out of Duat into my bedroom, carrying the scents of ancient civilizations with her.

  Dad turned to the window. “This is a bad blizzard. They’re sure to cancel school today. That will give us more time together. We need to talk with you, Hal. Will that be okay?”

  “I just want to sleep, Dad. I’m so tired.”

  I stretched out on my back and closed my eyes. Mom and Dad whispered, then one of them quietly closed my door. Their bare feet tapped the stairs. A little while later, the kitchen lights came on, which created a yellow square around my door.

  Had Roberto found the medallion? The murder scene was roped off with yellow tape and being searched for more clues every day. The cops hadn’t staked it out, had they? Would they catch him? Surely, the cops weren’t out there in this kind of blizzard. But I knew Roberto would be. He’d be digging through the snow, trying to find it. I prayed he’d be okay. Every year people died in Colorado blizzards.

  Wind whistled outside. I opened my eyes and stared at the snow flying beyond my window. Dad was right. Terrible storm. Georgetown would be buried beneath three feet of wet snow tomorrow morning. School would definitely be closed.

  Roberto would be so proud of himself.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The next morning my parents poured themselves cups of coffee, put on their reading glasses, and boxed me in at the breakfast table. I felt like a rat in a cage being studied by scientists with magnifying glasses. Between them lay copies of the police reports. The police had interviewed me twice and the sheriff’s office four times. They’d also interviewed lots of students at high school, as well as my teachers. My normal life was gone forever. I’d tried to give the cops every detail I could remember to help them find the thing that had killed Cleo.