by D. J. Bodden
♚
Still smiling, Jonas pulled out his MP3 player and selected his favorite electronica playlist. After adjusting the ear buds, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and headed for home. Robert Miles’ “Children” started with the roll of surf and a repeating stair-step of synthesizer notes, making the other pedestrians seem like they were marching to his tune at three or four steps per beat.
As he walked, he let his mind wander, pondering how best to start the conversation with his mom.
He’s dead, but I’m still here, was the first thing that came to mind, but that seemed a little harsh. I miss him too, and I need to know what happened, he continued, trying different conversation starters. Sometimes, I feel like I’m living alone. He swallowed hard on the last thought, took a deep breath, and kept walking.
At least he had Amelia. Other than her, he’d never had a permanent group of friends, just acquaintances — his father had taught him the difference. He’d thought his parents would be there forever, but things hadn’t worked out that way. Amelia had been with him for two years, and maybe that would fall apart too, but she was there now. Jonas just wished he shared her confidence that all of her perfect plans would work out.
His fingers twitched in his pockets as the song looped back with a heavier, faster bass. Music had always been his anchor in the storm. He’d been listening to the same stuff since he was ten or eleven, downloading it to an MP3 player the size of a smart phone. He listened to it while he walked, studied, and even fell asleep to it. And he had no problem listening to the same song five times in a row, even though it drove Amelia crazy.
He froze in mid-step, scanning both sides of the street. Someone was watching him.
He couldn’t explain how he knew, but ever since his father hadn’t come home — died, he mentally corrected himself — he could tell. Not only that, but he could also tell how many were watching, and approximately where they were. It was that déjà vu feeling. This time, it felt like a single person. He stooped, pretending to tie his shoelace, and looked behind him. But there was no one standing where he thought they should have been. Where are you?
An instant later, the music in his ears faded out, and something invisible slammed into him. He staggered back, looking around wildly, as a tingling sensation ran from the top of his head to the base of his neck. It felt like someone was reaching into his skull, searching for something by feel. He tried to run, but moving was suddenly very complicated, like he’d forgotten how.
Then it was gone — the tingling, the pressure, everything, as if it had never happened. He could hear music again, although the Gabriel and Dresden remix of “As the Rush Comes” was now playing, instead of the song he’d just been listening to. Taking out his MP3 player, he noticed he’d gone through more than half of his playlist.
“Are you all right, young man?”
Jonas looked up. It was Mrs. Eidelmeyer, a neighbor that lived on the same floor as he and his mother, though they rarely spoke.
“Excuse me?” he said, feeling confused.
“You’ve been standing there, stock still, since I rounded the corner, and it takes me a while these days.”
“I’m fine, Mrs. E,” he answered, not convinced he’d told the truth. “I just need to get home.”
♚
I’m going to talk to her tonight, he told himself, as he walked into the apartment. He dropped his bag and peered down the hall. Her bedroom door was closed. I’ll do it right after dinner.
He headed for the fridge, music still playing, although he’d turned it down so she wouldn’t hear. His parents could hear a pin drop from fifty yards, and had always insisted that he keep things to a whisper. Add that to the list of “Things that freak me out,” he thought.
Pulling out some leftover pasta he’d made the night before, he spooned it onto a plate and popped it into the microwave. His thoughts drifted to Amelia as he watched the timer count down.
Being around her made him feel good. He felt a little stupid for thinking of it that way, but it was true. She wasn’t the hottest or most popular girl at school, but she was more than attractive enough to take his breath away. And when she really kissed him, it almost made him forget that their goals – or his lack of them – didn’t quite match up.
He opened the microwave at the last second to keep it from beeping, another habit he’d picked up young along with cooking, cleaning, and taking out the trash. Not that he’d had to do everything for himself. There had always been nannies to look after him during day. But he’d still been required to reach a certain level of independence at a younger age than most. Now, it was just part of his routine.
He’d wanted it that way. Maybe it was because he was an only child, but he’d always felt like they were walking on eggshells around him – afraid they’d break him, or something. Their fussing had even seemed overbearing at times, because he’d wanted to do things himself. Eventually, they’d given in, however nervously, as Sharon, and Nancy after her, had taught him how to be more self-sufficient. It didn’t stop them from hovering nearby from sundown until he went to sleep. And if he woke during the night, one of them would be there to calm and comfort him.
He reached into the microwave, poked the pasta with a finger and immediately jerked it back. Too hot, he thought. He grabbed the plate with an oven mitt and set it on the table. He always tried to finish eating before his mother got up, because the smell of food — especially strong odors like cheese, garlic, and fish — nauseated her. She would try to sit at the table with him, if she was up, while subconsciously leaning away from the food he was eating. He felt bad about it, because it always made her turn several shades paler than she already was.
Sitting down at the table, he pulled his earphones out and said a silent prayer. His parents had been divided on the topic, but his father said he’d seen enough evil in the world that there had to be some good to measure it against. Whatever or whoever that was, Jonas figured it was in his best interest to be in His or Her good graces. Plus, it made him feel closer to his father.
He ate quickly, blowing on bites to cool them down. Then he rinsed his plate, put it in the dishwasher, and collapsed on the couch.
I should talk to her now, he thought, glancing over his shoulder at her bedroom door. It was still closed. For a moment, he thought about knocking, then sighed. I’ll just wait ‘till she comes out.
While he waited, he decided to study for his upcoming French test. Even though it was a week away, and he was passing the class, Amelia was right; passing wasn’t enough. He grabbed the book from his bag and started over at the beginning of the chapter.
♚
His cellphone vibrated and he jerked awake. Digging the phone from his pants pocket, he saw it was a text from Amelia.
“FRENCH TEST!!! xoxo”
He groaned. The test was on “friends and family.” When he got to papa, père, grand-père, he’d stared at his reflection in the dormant TV and dozed off, and his mother had probably already gone to work. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling he was being—
“Jeez!” he said, jumping in his seat.
His mother was sitting on the other end of the L-shaped couch, looking at him.
“You wanted to talk?” she said.
CHAPTER 2
His mother, Alice Black, eyed him with what looked like a mixture of amusement and concern. Jonas had spent the past few days getting ready to face her and instead, she’d made the first move and put him on the defensive.
“How long have you been sitting there?” he asked, self-consciously sitting up a little straighter and setting his book aside.
“Just a few minutes. You haven’t been sleeping well lately, and I didn’t want to wake you.”
“How do you know I—”
She gave him a soft smile. “I’m your mother.”
Jonas didn’t answer. It wasn’t fair. It didn’t matter if she’d just gotten out of bed, or just arrived home from work; she always looked impeccable. She wore a simpl
e black dress. Her only adornments a plain, gold band on her left hand, and a small, black and gold rose pin high on her left breast. Her pale, white skin was flawless, every single one of her jet-black hairs stood perfectly in place, and she moved with the eerie, almost mechanical precision of a ballerina.
She was beautiful… and he could tell people that without feeling weird about it. She wasn’t pretty, like Amelia, but beautiful, the way art was beautiful, like marble sculptures or crystal glass. She stopped conversations and turned heads whenever she glided into a room. Like Jonas and his father, she had eyes so black they seemed to drink in the light.
It made Jonas feel foolish and clumsy. He bit his lower lip and looked down at his hands.
She spoke first. “I’m sorry you and I haven’t been able to spend much time together lately. We’ve had a lot more demand, and I’ve been staying late.”
“At a night clinic?” he asked.
“Blood bank,” she corrected. “Lots of new faces in town.” She frowned, first looking pensive, then annoyed. “It’s not my concern anymore. But I’m able to stay a little longer than the others, so I do. Now… you have questions?”
Where do I even start? he thought. “I wanted to ask you—”
There was a thud, then another, followed by a loud cracking and splintering of wood as the door flew open, letting the late afternoon sun flood into the room.
♚
Without thinking, Jonas moved to close the door as a pale man wearing a black suit and sunglasses stepped inside.
Startled, Jonas said, “Hey, what are you—”
The man in black backhanded him. It felt like getting hit with a baseball bat. The blow spun him halfway around and knocked him to the floor, black spots dancing before his eyes as the man stepped toward his mother. Jonas grabbed for the man’s leg and got kicked for his trouble.
His mother blurred across the room, like his father had in the dream, and struck the stranger, full-force, across the face. How hard did that guy hit me? Jonas thought.
The intruder staggered back a step, straightened immediately, and punched. Alice ducked under it and swung her elbow into his ribs, twice, almost faster than Jonas could follow. Amazingly, the stranger shrugged it off and brought both hands down on her shoulders while driving his knee up. She fell back, and he lunged forward, grabbed her by the back of the neck, and threw her toward the open door. She shrieked as the sunlight touched her, blurred, and ended up on the other side of the room, facing the stranger.
I think I’m going to be sick, Jonas thought.
“Where is it, Mrs. Black?”
She seethed with indignation. “Where is what?”
“Your husband’s journal. Give it to me, and I walk away.”
“You dare threaten me in my home?” She looked like she wanted to rip him to shreds with her fingernails. She moved toward the man, but stopped short of the doorway, glancing at the light.
The stranger in black smirked and stepped through the light toward Jonas’ mother. Her eyes darted to the set of knives by the kitchen stove just as the man blurred, crossing the space between them in an instant. He kicked her into a wooden cabinet, rattling and breaking the dishes inside, and then punched her in the stomach so hard she doubled over. He shoved her back into the cabinet, snapped a fast kick at her midsection that she was able to block, and a wicked left hook that found her face, knocking her to the ground.
“Tell me where your husband put it, Mrs. Black, and I won’t have to hurt the boy.”
Suddenly, every trace of emotion drained from her face. The man, previously in a crouched position, began to rise, unnaturally, almost bending backward.
“You were… supposed to be…” the man said through clenched teeth.
There was no response; she just stood there, glaring, as the man’s body spasmed.
Jonas, head finally clear enough he could be something other than useless, rushed forward and smashed a heavy, black lamp over the guy’s head. Instead of knocking the man out, the blow only snapped him out of his daze and he kicked back, launching Jonas across the room and over the back of the couch.
Still gasping for breath – he’d never been hit that hard before – Jonas pulled himself up in time to see two almost comically large men step through the doorway.
How bad can this day get? he thought.
They were so big they almost had to duck and turn sideways to fit through the door. Both were wearing three-piece suits, and the first man had a full set of muttonchops. The second was older, smooth-shaven, and wore a bowler hat. Their eyes glowed yellow, like an animal’s eyes in a flash photo, and Jonas fought an instinctive urge to run away.
“Mom, look out!” he shouted.
His mother spun to face the new arrivals, but Muttonchops gently pushed her aside and launched himself at the man in black.
There was no contest. The new arrival was over six feet tall and three feet across. He grabbed the man in black by the face, one-handed, and slammed him against the cabinet, then through the table, and several times against the floor. There was no emotion to it — he might have been wiping the furniture clean. The man in black clawed and kicked; it just didn’t do him any good.
The man in the bowler hat closed the door, blocking out the sun. He handled the doorknob gently, with two fingers, as if he was afraid of breaking it, then turning to Jonas’ mother he said, “Are you okay, Mrs. Black?”
“I’m fine, Phillip,” she said, wiping blood from the corner of her mouth.
Muttonchops growled and dropped the man in black. There was blood on his hand where the man had bitten him. Phillip chuckled. “Careful, Bert. He nips!”
Bert’s eyes gleamed yellow, and he kicked the man, folding him in half and sending him skidding into the oven door with a loud clang.
The man rolled, flipped up, then headed straight for Jonas, who stumbled backward and tripped over the broken coffee table. At the last moment, the man jumped over him and dove through the black curtains and the window beyond. Jonas rushed over and looked out. The man in black, having survived the five-story fall, thrashed wildly, tangled in the heavy curtains, before managing to throw them off. There was a puff of smoke, and he disappeared. Jonas blinked, seeing the afterimage of the intruder, frozen in mid-step, but the man was gone. “Aren’t you going after him?” his mother said. There was a sharpness to her tone that Jonas wasn’t used to hearing.
“No, ma’am,” said Phillip, holding his bowler hat in his hands and protecting her from the sunlight with his body. “We’ve been ordered to stay here until nightfall.”
“Well, it took you long enough to get here,” she said, as she assessed the damage to her home and son.
“There were others, Mrs. Black,” said Bert, pulling Jonas away from the window.
Jonas caught an odd scent as Bert touched him. It’s like wet dog, he thought.
Looking out the window, Bert added, “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that one anymore.”
“We came as quickly as we could,” Phillip added, apologetically.
♚
With Jonas and his mother safely settled on the couch, Bert — Muttonchops — cleaned up while Phillip made tea. The two men were different. Phillip had an air of nobility to him. He was older, with thin lips and groomed eyebrows. Bert looked like a boxer, with a thick nose and jutting brow. But they were both big, like bodybuilders wrapped in custom-made Italian suits, and both had flat, brown eyes. Jonas thought they’d been yellow before, but it must have been a trick of the light.
It was almost comical watching the two of them tiptoe around his mother, although Jonas couldn’t blame them. She was still so angry that Jonas felt the urge to scoot away from her and go to his room.
Phillip carefully poured three cups and then sat on the far end of the couch, his bowler hat perched on his left knee. He sipped his tea, gripping the handle of the mug with two fingers as if it was a teacup. Jonas wasn’t crazy about hot tea, but drank a little to be polite. His mother’s
went cold as she got more heated.
Night fell, exchanging sunlight for street lights, nearby honking for distant sirens. Jonas was starting to feel a little tired. Bert was still cleaning, sweeping broken glass into a dustpan with a foxtail brush. The big man picked up one of the candlesticks that usually sat on the table and dropped it with a snarl.
“It’s silver,” Alice snapped. “Jonas, go pick that up.”
Jonas did as he was told without hesitating, giving the big man a sympathetic look, wondering if Bert had some kind of allergy. Then another thought occurred to him. How am I going to explain all this to Amelia?
“You won’t,” his mother said. “We may be leaving tonight.”
“Um… won’t what, Mom?”
Phillip raised an eyebrow.
Alice scowled. “Never mind.”
There were three sharp knocks on the door.
“He’s here, Mrs. Black,” Phillip said, rising from the couch.
Jonas saw his mother’s grip tighten around something she’d picked up from the floor — the man in black’s sunglasses.
Phillip opened the door and spoke quietly to someone Jonas couldn’t see, then said, “Come on, Bert. We’re leaving.”
Bert dumped the broken glass into the kitchen trashcan, put the foxtail and dustpan back into the pantry, and walked to the door.
“Goodbye, Mrs. Black,” he said.
“Sorry for the trouble,” Phillip added.
Then, as suddenly as they’d appeared, they were gone, and Marcus Fangston, his father’s old friend, walked through the door. Jonas hadn’t seen him since the funeral.
♚
“Alice! It’s been too long,” Fangston said.
“Sit down, Marcus. Explain these to me.” She held up the broken sunglasses for him to see.
“Those are sunglasses,” he said, picking up a wooden chair from the dining area and placing it across from her before sitting down.
Jonas frowned. The dining room chairs were solid oak and very heavy. He usually had to strain not to drag them across the floor. But Marcus had picked it up like it was made of plastic and carried it across the room one-handed.