The trees thinned out as we walked and the first sign of humanity appeared in the distance. The school, large and menacing, was the first thing I saw through the dark branches of the forest. It hummed with the thoughts of the September crowd inside it, school having let back in with the fall. It was weird to see it again. It was a marker of a different life. If things had worked out differently, I would be inside, the thoughts crushing me as I tried to go through my daily routine. I realized of all the things of my past life I didn’t miss school at all, not even a little…
“Let’s not cut through here,” I suggested. “There’s going to be people out back smoking and teachers trying to not notice them, so they can smoke, too. I’ll be recognized.”
“We can skirt the tree line,” Reaper suggested.
“Okay.”
We walked the edge of the forest, searching for a place to cut across without being noticed. As we passed the football field, I saw Coach, large and pig-eyed, trying to get the girls in his class to throw a football the proper way. He wasn’t having much luck.
I remembered taking archery classes on that same field not so long ago. With a shudder, I realized Gavin Nichols must have watched me from this very spot. He must have plotted my murder from behind these very trees…before he had attacked me and sent Daniel and me on a collision course with each other.
“I never got to go to a real school,” Reaper admitted as he also stared at the field.
“You’re not missing much,” I said.
“One still wonders about what one didn’t experience,” he said.
“If you say so…”
Beyond the school was a doctor’s office. We left the forest and crossed the parking lot. I pointed at the only car in the parking lot. It was a ridiculous-looking sport’s car. I knew the doctor who owned it to be a jerk, who only treated people willing to pay top dollar.
Reaper shook his head at my choice.
“It’ll bring too much attention. We need something cheaper.” Reaper said.
“The cheap cars belong to people who work for a living,” I said. “This guy deserves it.”
Reaper shook his head and sighed, but he didn’t back out. He had the alarm dismantled and the ignition hotwired in a matter of fifteen seconds. A couple seconds more and we were on the road. I clung to the door as he raced us down the street and out of town, following my directions to Daniel’s house. I didn’t look at our speed, but I knew we were well over eighty.
I opened the window, so the fresh fall air could circle through the car, and watched as the familiar wilderness flashed past. The closer we got to Daniel’s house, the more my stomach filled with butterflies. What would I find? Would Daniel be in Beatrice’s living room, pacing in agitated circles, because he couldn’t find me? Would he be in his tower, a scowl on his face? If he wasn’t there, would Beatrice and Han have heard from him?
I expected everything except for the one thing I saw.
My heart dropped as we crested the top of the mountain. The black gates that normally blocked the road were bent and twisted, a shell of their once tall reaches. Beyond them was one wall. That was it. A single wall. The rest of the castle was a blackened heap on the ground, burned beyond recognition. The wall framed the sun as it stretched over the horizon. I gasped in terror at the sight.
All of Beatrice’s furniture, her things she had taken so much pride in…gone. Had Beatrice and Han been here? Had Daniel? I jumped out of the car and ran to the structure, searching for piles of ash in nothing but ash. There had to be a clue. My heart pounded with my fear. Were they gone? Were they really gone?
“Clare!” Reaper called from the car.
I ignored him. There had to be a reason behind this fire. I had to find it. It was life or death. The scene was not forgiving and did not give up its secrets easily. Frustrated I couldn’t see anything beyond burnt wood and charred stone, I kicked at a piece of wood in my way. It flew through the air and crashed into the one standing wall. The whole thing tipped over at the hit the ground. When the dust had settled again, I felt tears well to the surface.
“Clare?” Reaper asked softly as he joined me.
“This was Beatrice and Han’s house. They were…are scientists. It was so beautiful here. Perfect. My castle in the woods.”
Reaper’s eyes raked the ground for ash piles. “I’m sorry. Is there anywhere else we can look for them?”
His words reminded me this wasn’t the only sanctuary I had. My heart started beating wildly again.
“Oh, God! My house!”
I ran back to the car and got in the driver’s seat, prepared to race home. Reaper reached me just in time. He pulled me out of the car by my shirt and forced me to walk around the car.
“I’m not letting you drive so work up,” he said. “Besides, we should be cautious.”
“Screw caution!” I yelled at him. I slammed the passenger door shut. “Drive!” I yelled impatiently.
Reaper crossed his hands over the steering wheel. “One of the first things I tell my people is that to live long, you must first gain control over your emotions.”
“Start the damn car, or I’ll ram emotion down your ever-loving throat!” I yelled.
He didn’t move, so I started screaming at him. I wasn’t sure what I yelled, but I knew there were a lot of curse words involved; words learned from Jackson and my time spent wandering the streets. His eyes grew wide, and, between one of my threats and the next, he started the car and maneuvered us back down the mountain, going as fast as he could.
When I stopped screaming he looked relieved. But the problem with not screaming was that it made me focus on the questions. What would I find when I got home? Would my house be burnt to crisp? Would all the memories Ellen and I had started to collect be wiped away as easily as flame to wood? If it wasn’t, what did that mean? I wasn’t sure if Beatrice and Han were dead, but could I face the reality of Ellen being gone?
My heart in my throat at the unanswered questions, we raced toward the house I had learned to call home.
It felt like a million miles away.
Chapter 6
Reaper ditched the car at an abandoned gas station, and forced me to walk the rest of the way to my house. He was cautious, making us come at the house through the backyard, instead of the front. I knew it was a good idea for multiple reasons. Reaper’s worry was focused on the possibility that whoever had set fire to Beatrice’s house was still around. I was more worried one of the neighbors would call the cops or, worse, each other. In a place like this, rumors destroyed faster than the time it had probably taken Beatrice’s house to be consumed by flames. Walking was agonizing, though. I counted every second.
I was glad, more than glad, when I saw the white gothic-style house still standing. It looked as serene as the day we had moved in. The lights were off and the place looked more than a little empty, but it was a relief against the fear.
The kitchen door wasn’t locked when I tried it, so getting inside was easier than I had thought it would be. The kitchen was a mess. It wasn’t the worrisome kind of mess, just the kind that happened when Ellen was left alone too long and was allowed to order nothing but take-out. I passed through the mess of my kitchen and quietly walked down the hall, not calling out in fear someone else besides Ellen was hanging around. Reaper followed after me, his stance cautious and his eyes alert.
The living room was another story in messiness. I sensed Ellen’s normal messiness overriding the room. Clothes were scattered about, blankets left unfolded on the chair and sofa, shoes poked out of the entertainment center, but I also sensed a colder messiness. It was as if all her things had been picked up and meticulously placed back in the same position, as someone searched for something. It was eerie to see. Who would go to such trouble? I peeked out the blinds and saw the wagon was parked along the curb, as was Sam’s silver Mercedes. Did that mean they had been taken against their will? I couldn’t see an alternative.
The bottom floor was empty, so I went up
stairs. It was as deserted as the bottom floor. Ellen’s bed was unmade, unchanged. The only thing different about her room was the addition of Sam’s clothes in the closet and his pants thrown over the back of the chair placed next to her bed. It was obvious he had been spending more than a little time here. His presence accounted for the increased amount of take-out I had seen in the kitchen.
My room was the last placed I checked. It was messy in the way I liked it. Books piled high, clothes sticking out of my dresser, but not taking up floor space, my bed made but not perfectly. Nothing was out of place, except… I turned in a complete circle to be sure. My guitar was missing.
I scoured the room for the guitar – I looked under my bed, under my blankets, even in the corners to be sure. Feeling as if it was the clue I needed, I went downstairs to check again. I searched the dining room and living room; I even went back to the kitchen. It wasn’t until I reached the hall that I realized the second door in the hall was open. The oddity of seeing it open stopped me in my tracks.
We never opened that door; I hadn’t gone in there since we had moved in. I hadn’t given it a thought, beyond it being a door we never opened. I realized Ellen had never gone in there, either. Not around me, at least. She hadn’t even mentioned it. It was a wonder my curiosity hadn’t gotten the better of me. Curiosity definitely held me now.
I peeked inside the door. The room was unlike any other room in the house. It was a place of study and research. There was a large map on one wall and papers were scattered around an old-looking cherry desk. And, sitting in the corner, as if it had always sat there, was my guitar. I stared at it, thinking hard. The only people who really understood its importance were Alex, Ellen, and, of course, Daniel. He had been the one to buy it for me. But why set it in a room I never went in to? Unless it was another message?
I pushed the door as open as far as it would go and looked around the room again. I searched for another oddity, anything that would explain why the room had been locked away. Not seeing anything else out of the ordinary, I went to the guitar and opened it.
As I opened the case, Reaper appeared behind me. “Nothing…” he said.
“Something…” I said.
There wasn’t a note, but there was definitely a clue. I pulled the perfect mahogany guitar out of the case, to be sure it was okay, and a DVD fell out. I stared at the DVD, trying to piece together an explanation. There were three people who knew about the guitar, of course, but only one who knew about the movie, which was a special edition of ‘The Goonies.’
“What?” Reaper asked.
“We need to go back to L.A., Santa Monica, to be specific,” I said.
Naomi, Ellen’s best friend in the whole world and an aunt to me, loved ‘The Goonies.’ It was a fact we teased her about; something that was an inside joke between the three of us alone. Naomi, for all her love of the macabre, was a fan of kid’s movies. The guitar was a message from Ellen.
“Okay…” Reaper agreed easily. “What’s all this?” he asked moving over to the cluttered desk.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, joining him at the desk. “I’ve never been in here.”
“Don’t you live here?” he asked.
“Have you been inside all the rooms at the school?” I asked back.
He shrugged and looked at the papers on the desk with curious eyes. I looked as well. The papers appeared to belong to a large book of some sort, but had been torn out by a hasty hand. From what I could tell, it was a daily account of a farmer in 17th century England. The name of the farmer stuck out at me: Evan Michaels.
“A farmer with a surname of Michaels?” I read the papers more closely, details sticking out at me; they were details I had never thought I would see. “Someone was researching my family history,” I told Reaper.
“Researching or tracking?” Reaper asked.
“How do you mean?” I asked.
He pointed at the map for an explanation. I realized it was a world map. There were places circled in red and other places circled in black. The black circles outnumbered the red.
“Something is weird about this room,” I said finally.
“Has something been moved?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I told you, I’ve never been in here. My house has been searched. The searcher was very careful about hiding their search…but this room. It’s different.”
“A different person searching through it?”
“Maybe,” I said. It wasn’t so much that the room had been searched, – which it had – it was more like there had been a confrontation. It was hard to place where the feeling was coming from.
“Do you think they found what they were after?” he asked.
“I don’t have a clue.”
“Maybe we can find something they missed…” he suggested.
“I…” I started to protest.
“We can be in Santa Monica in under a minute,” he reminded me.
“Alright,” I agreed.
I was curious, despite the longing to find out of Ellen really was in Santa Monica. The curiosity kept me in place.
I sat down at the desk and started going through all the drawers in the desk. Reaper started going through the bookcases along the wall. He pulled the books out and searched through their pages, before carefully placing them back on the shelves.
We looked for an hour, but didn’t find anything as exciting as the guitar. I learned through the course of my looking, however, that the room belonged to Ellen’s father, my grandfather. Discovering that wasn’t shocking – it was his house, after all – but seeing his name still surprised me. My stomach clenched every time I saw it. I found letters written to him from the Mayor of King’s Cross and letters he had written to various people around the world. The letters suggested he had been compiling a family history. He had been particularly interested in discovering the Michaels had ties to family in Jerusalem; he had written more letters to people there than anywhere else. They were letters requesting more information and access to government records. I didn’t find any record that his requests had been accepted.
“This is hopeless,” I said finally as I read the last letter from a man named Joseph, who worked in the Israeli government. “There’s nothing here.”
“Something about this room is off,” Reaper said.
He had given up looking through the books on the bookcase. He stood in the middle of the room, his arms crossed and his eyes almost closed shut, as he was trying to figure out the puzzle in front of him.
“I already said that,” I said, folding the letter up. While the penmanship was beautiful, the letter was useless.
“It’s not the fact that it was searched by someone else…it’s physically off. It’s too small.”
“Too small?” I eyed the large room.
“Compared to the length of the hall outside and the size of the kitchen, yes. There should be an extra five feet in here.”
“Huh...” I said.
“This wall,” Reaper said, pointing at the wall behind me.
With long strides he walked right at the wall. He turned into a misty vapor right before he smashed into the wall. I stared at the spot he had disappeared, impressed by his ability.
I jumped when Reaper’s foot appeared through the wall in a much different way than vapor. He kicked again, widening the hole. He bent down to look at me through the hole he had created in the wall.
“There’s a room back here,” he told me.
“Yeah, and there’s a hole in my wall. Couldn’t you have just taken me through?” I asked.
He rubbed at his neck in embarrassment. “Sorry. I got carried away.”
“Uh-huh.” I bent down and stepped through the hole in the wall. “Got a light?” I asked.
His lighter was silver, with two wings on either side. It illuminated a couple feet in front of us, not that there was a lot to see. The room was mostly empty, except for an empty sword stand, a few books along the edge of the wall and one book in the center of t
he room. The book was massive and was decorated in red and gold. I went to it, wondering why it was hidden and propped up on a pedestal. I picked it up, grunting from the effort, and took it back to the study.
I set it on the desk and started scanning through its pages. The words were elegant and carefully written; it was obvious someone had taken a great deal of time to make sure they were perfect. Designs decorated the pages and hand-colored art was on the top of every page.
As I flipped through the pages, I was able to understand its contents – it was a complete makeup of the Michaels’ family history. It was comprehensive – with stories, daily dealings of the family members, and handwritten letters from throughout the generations. A couple of torn pages in the middle of the book let me know that the pages I had found on my grandfather’s desk had been torn from this book.
“What is it?” Reaper asked.
“My history,” I said in a reverential whisper.
“It must be quite history to go to such an extent to hide it,” Reaper said.
“Yeah…” I agreed.
Reaper looked at his watch. “We should go,” he said.
I sighed. “Okay.”
He pulled his phone out to call Sara, and I picked the book up. I didn’t understand why it had been hidden, but I was going to figure it out. Maybe it would answer some of the questions I harbored of my grandfather. If not, then at least I could write him off as a crazy person who hid books in his study.
Before we left, I threw some of my clothes in one of Ellen’s bags and picked up the guitar, unwilling, and unable, to leave it to rot. There was a chance I would never come back; it wasn’t a chance I was willing to take.
Significantly more weighted down with belongings than when I had arrived, I walked with Reaper back to the woods. He offered to take the book or the guitar, one of the two heaviest things. I allowed him neither.
Sara was already waiting when we reached the treehouse. She eyed my new belongings curiously, but didn’t comment. As soon as we touched, I saw the world of moving darkness again. More distracted by the curiosity of the book and the guitar Ellen had left for me, I didn’t focus on the whispering voices, or the way the dark moved around us. I refocused when light came back to the world and we arrived back at the school.
03 Saints Page 9