by Alan Marble
The old man sputtered with a little laugh. “So you say you’re here to see what’s new? Not just here for the company after all!”
Jonah leaned in and faked a conspiratory little smile. Escaping his apartment for a morning ride along the seaside had done much to invigorate him, lifting his spirits. The thought of indulging in another one of his precious few interests had left him feeling practically giddy by comparison. “I suppose you’ve got me there, Sam. Money’s practically burning in my pocket.”
Collecting coins was, in fact, one of the few real passions in Jonah’s life. Ever since the day his father had given him a US Mint silver poof set for his 8th birthday, he had become fascinated by coins. He had demanded that his allowance be paid in quarters so that he could sift through them, meticulously sorting them by date and mint mark, storing the new finds away and spending much of the rest at local coins shops when he could convince his parents to take him. When he’d gotten a little older and began to understand the value in certain rarer finds, he had started saving his money. Where other children saved theirs for trading cards or the latest video game, he’d save his for a buffalo nickel.
Over time he’d developed an especial affinity for silver. Since graduating college and getting a fairly good paycheck he’d been able to graduate from a coin here and there to somewhat regular purchases, filling in gaps in his collection, growing from hundreds of dollars to several thousands of dollars in value. Sam, who had gotten to know him quite well over many visits during the years, often joked that the value of his collection hidden away under his bed probably rivaled the stock in the shop.
“Don’t want to singe yourself too badly, best hand those burning bills on over,” the older man said with a jovial chuckle, before reaching his hands underneath the counter. “You’ve got some pretty good timing, too. Just finished going through some recent acquisitions, got a whole boxful of new stuff from an estate sale. Some real gems here, and it looks like you’ve got first dibs.”
Jonah watched as he pulled a tray out from beneath the counter and set it on top, waving a wrinkled hand over it with a flourish. There were rows of coins, some encapsulated in plastic containers and professionally graded, others loose but propped up in little slots in the felt tray. Several gold coins glimmered in neat rows on one side of the tray, just begging for attention, but gold was a little too rich for his blood. “New stuff, eh?”
“Oh yes. He was a collector, had a lot of good stuff. Look, here, a 1921 standing liberty quarter. You’ve been looking for one of these for a while, haven’t you?” The old man continued yammering on about the particular little gems and surprises in the lot, carefully pulling a few coins out of their spot and laying them out flat on the top of the counter. Jonah paid them a passing glance - he had, indeed, been looking out for that particular quarter - but found that he could not help but to keep looking back the tray, scanning the little rows of loose coins. One in particular, something dull and easy to overlook among the shinier selections, kept catching his attention.
Reaching in, he pointed at the little dull coin. “What about this one? What’s this?”
“Hmm? Oh, well, let’s see here,” Sam said, sounding briefly disoriented as he’d been interrupted in the middle of his spiel. Thick, shaky fingers pulled the coin out of its slot and laid it flat on an unoccupied piece of the felt. “Well now isn’t that odd, I don’t remember seeing this one in the collection, how did it get here?”
“Where did it come from?” Jonah asked the question without looking up, his eyes fixated on the coin. It was small, about the size of a penny, silver in color, well-worn and tarnished. There looked to have been some lettering but it had been worn smooth, and in the center some kind of intricate weave pattern. “What can you tell me about it?”
Sam picked the coin up again, turning it in his fingers. “I’m … I’m not quite sure to tell you the truth, I’ve never seen this coin before. I’m positive it wasn’t in this collection before, I would have remembered seeing something like this.”
Jonah grinned a little, briefly looking away from the coin. “Sure this one didn’t just slip through the cracks?”
“Psh.” The shopkeeper’s voice sounded ever so slightly irritated, but his gaze was fixed on the little coin as he turned it around in his fingers. “Not even sure what it is. Feels about right for a silver coin, and it’s about the right size for a Roman denarius. Definitely looks old,” he continued, muttering, fumbling with his free hand for a loupe sitting next to the register to give it a closer look. “Well-worn but not in terrible shape. But these markings … makes no sense.”
Watching with rapt attention, Jonah did not realize he was leaning so heavily over the counter until he nearly bumped into Sam’s head, pulling back at the last second with a little blink. “Wrong?”
“Roman coins always had some kind of bust on one side, usually the emperor at the time the coin was minted. Some god or goddess on the other side. This,” he said, setting down the loupe and resting the coin in the palm of his hand. “This is a Celtic knot. Inspired by Roman artwork but definitely not Roman. And the inscription … it’s pretty worn out but doesn’t look Latin to me.”
Jonah found himself strangely deflated at the news, but continued to pay attention while Sam turned the coin over. The other side, which he hadn’t seen before, looked to be some kind of stylized dragon, like something one might see on an old family crest. “Now, this … this doesn’t look right at all. Style isn’t Roman at all, and once again this lettering doesn’t appear to be Latin.”
“So. You know what it isn’t … but can’t say what it is?”
Sam huffed a little and then sighed. “Afraid not. It’s definitely old, and the right size, but the markings just aren’t right for a denarius. I suppose the designs are more classically British, so maybe it’s some kind of token, maybe an old denarius that someone repurposed, but it’s nothing like I’ve seen before.”
Without stopping to think about it, Jonah reached into his pocket and fished out his wallet. “How much do you want for it?”
“What? You want to buy this thing?”
“Fifty dollars.” As if to punctuate his offer, he pulled out a crisp $50 bill and laid it out on the counter.
The old man looked from the bill, to the coin, and then back up at Jonah. “Fifty bucks? Look, I’m all for making a buck but this thing is worth maybe three dollars in silver. Hell, even a denarius in this condition might not bring that much, just depending on whose mug is on the damned thing.”
“Or it could be the first ever coin discovered that was minted by one of the first kings of England, and might be worth millions.” Jonah smirked a little bit, pushing the bill in Sam’s direction. “Fifty bucks.”
“Well, that’s a bit of a stretch of the imagination. Likely as not I’m still getting the better end of this bargain,” the old man said, peering down at the fifty and then sighing. “All right, fifty bucks it is. But if you turn around and get rich of this thing …”
With a little more haste than he intended, Jonah snatched the coin off the counter, gave it a cursory look before stuffing it into his pocket. “Uh, yeah. Don’t worry, Sam, I’ll take you out to dinner if it comes to that,” he added, a little meekly.
“Steak dinner,” Sam said, waving the fifty in the air and making his way over to his cash register, ringing the sale up. “Make that steak and lobster. Surf and turf.” Jonah smiled, and opened his mouth, about to respond to the demand when a loud buzzing from behind him caught him off guard, and he found himself whirling about. “Looks like we got another customer,” the shopkeeper muttered, also turning to look in the direction of the door.
The heavy tinting of the glass windows made it so that Sam could see the customers ringing the doorbell even if they could not see him. Standing in front of the door was what Jonah could only describe as a small mountain of a man - barrel shaped chest, broad shoulders, thick upper arms and a head that seemed to sit right on top of them, his neck was so thick.
Close-set eyes and a thick brow seemed to give the man a permanent scowl, peering at the door from beneath short-cropped, raven black hair.
“Hmm. Don’t know this fellow. What do you think, Jonah?”
Jonah was surprised by the question, turning to Sam with a confused little stare. “What? What do you mean?”
“Not sure if I want to let this fellow in.” The sound of another buzz punctuated the big band music still warbling quietly in the background, the big man holding the doorbell longer than was necessary. “Don’t like the look of him.”
“He gives me the creeps.” It was more than that, actually. Something about the man set off alarm bells deep inside of Jonah’s mind, enough to make him feel a little knot forming up in the pit of his stomach. Something about the man standing on the other side of the door was inherently wrong. Instinctively he knew that the small mountain of a man standing on the other side of the doorway was trouble.
Sam nodded grimly, waving Jonah behind the counter with him, when the man again depressed the button longer than was necessary. The buzzing sound was suddenly grating on Jonah’s nerves, and make his skin prickle. “Yeah, me too. Don’t think I’m gonna let this one in.” Sam pressed another button on the side of the counter, leaning in to speak into what must have been a microphone, elevating his voice. “I’m sorry, we’re closing for the day.”
It was hard to read the man’s reaction through the tinted glass, but when he reached forward to ring the buzzer once again, it made it clear he had no intention of backing down. Sam turned to look at Jonah a little apologetically. “Look, if this creep doesn’t beat it I’m gonna have to call the cops. Don’t want you getting mixed up in all that, so, why don’t you go ahead and make your way out the back,” he said, thumbing in the direction of a door behind the counter. “Last door on the end, don’t go in the first one. It’s just the toilet.”
Jonah opened his mouth to protest, but yet another insistent buzz sounded while the man leaned against the doorbell. With an irritated harrumph, Sam mashed down the intercom button and leaned in to yell into the microphone. “I said we’re closed! Go away!”
For a brief moment it looked as if the man was going to take the advice. His arms dropped to his sides and he took a step back, gazing blankly at the darkened glass in front of him before balling his hands into fists. With a grimace and a sudden flash of movement, the man made his intentions crystal clear when he slung his fist at the door, knuckles smashing into the glass, which responded with a dull thud and a crunching sound.
“Holy shit!” Jonah took a step back in the direction of the back exit, turning to throw an incredulous look in Sam’s direction, the older man standing with a bewildered expression and a hand over his chest. “Did he really just punch the door?”
The answer came in the form of another fist slamming into the glass, in precisely the same spot. The glass bulged momentarily under the force of the blow, bending into the shop, snapping back into place with a series of spiderweb cracks and little concentric fissures forming around the shape of the man’s fist before he drew it back, presumably to strike again.
Again Jonah could only stare in shock. It shouldn’t be possible, he thought. “Isn’t that glass bulletproof?”
The old man did not answer, but the mention of bullets seemed to galvanize him. The look of shock on Sam’s face faded and was replaced with a grim sort of determination, and once again he reached under the counter. “So he wants to play rough, does he? Ain’t the first punk come try to make a quick dollar off an old man,” he said, grumbling, pulling out a slightly dusty pump-action shotgun. Peering at the weapon, presumably to make sure that it was loaded, he muttered “Time for you to get out of here, Jonah. Back door.”
“I can’t just leave you here,” Jonah protested, another loud crack sounding from the doorway as the man slammed his fist in to it again, the cracks widening and spreading.
“I’ve handled these bozos before,” Sam said with a sort of grim determination, looking over at him and nodding once. “I can’t have you just standing there, in the way. Please. I’ll have this clown on his way before you can count to ten …”
His mind raced, looking for some kind of protest that he could offer, something he could say to convince the old man to let him stay, let him help, but he realized that Sam had a good point. He certainly wasn’t proficient in weapons of any kind - not that he had any to offer - and, indeed, was likely to just get in the way. Casting one last glance at the doorway, looking at the sinister mountain of a man coiling his muscle for another blow, he made his way for the back doorway, pulling it open and slipping into the empty hallway beyond.
Still, he couldn’t just leave. In spite of the better half of his mind that agreed it was time to run, time to get out of the shop where he might at least call the cops, some strange sense of loyalty to his friend kept him from running. Pulling the door most of the way shut behind him, he let it remain open, just a bare crack, so that he could peek into the shop from behind. The view was unnerving - he was looking over Sam’s shoulder, along the length of the shotgun barrel, which was now pointed unsteadily at the shadow of the man assailing the door.
With the next blow, the man punched a surprisingly neat hole right in the door, chunks of it falling away and letting his fist pass right on through, coming to a stop just inside the door. The man held it there for a long moment, as if brandishing his fist, little bits of glass caught in the coarse hair covering his forearm, letting it turn slightly before pulling it back and grabbing on to the raw edge of what Jonah presumed to have been bulletproof glass. With a grunt loud enough for him to hear, the man pulled on the glass hard, peeling it back with almost no resistance. When there was enough of a hole opened up, he simply barged his way right on in, breaking the door around his frame.
Sam, unsteady but unwavering, finally pumped the action on the shotgun, loading a shell with a threatening ka-chunk sound that even made Jonah shiver, keeping it pointed right at the intruder. “All right, mister, it’s time for you to turn right back around and go back the way you came.”
The intruder did not seem in the least fazed by the sight of a shotgun barrel staring him down, standing rather impassively in front of the wreckage of the doorway, gazing right back at the man with coal-black eyes. “Where is it?”
“Cops are on their way. I don’t really care that you made a mess of my door, just turn around and leave and never come back, and that’s the last you have to worry about this little mistake …”
“Where is it?” The man repeated his query, speaking in a deep, sonorous voice, the words a little unsteady and forced, and marred by a thick accent that Jonah could not place. With a grimace, he took a step forward.
Sam responded by tightening his grip on the shotgun. “I don’t know what it is you’re after, son, but it ain’t worth a throat full of lead. I don’t want to use this but I will if I have to. Don’t make me do it.”
Undeterred, the man took another step forward, and then Jonah’s ears were suddenly assailed by a boom so loud that he could feel it in the chest like a fist. The shotgun jumped in Sam’s unwieldy grip, the recoil forcing the old man to stumble backward while belching out a little plume of smoke. The big man, mountain that he was, stumbled backward several steps from the force of the blast, his shirt tearing open and his chest blossoming in an ugly spray of red before he tumbled backward into the wreckage of the front door.
Jonah had seen guns fired on television, had seen his fair share of explosions in movies, but this was nothing like it. His ears still rang from the blast, and the acrid odor of gunpowder on the air was already plucking at his senses. Then there was the man, crumpled on the floor, felled by a shotgun blast to the chest. He had heard that seeing death faked in the movies was nothing like seeing it in person. He was almost inclined to agree when he saw the man twitch.
He was still alive.
“Holy shit,” he whispered under his breath, watching incredulously as the bulky man twitched again, rolle
d to his side, and began to slowly push himself back up to his feet. The wound on his chest looked far too shallow and inconsequential for the shotgun blast, the clothing sheared apart but the skin largely intact beneath, save for an oozing wound the size of a quarter.
Sam, too, must have been watching in disbelief, for the old man hardly budged as the wounded intruder pulled himself up straight, fixing that inky black gaze forward again and making his demand in that strange, foreign voice. “Where is it?”
“I don’t … know what you mean,” the old man responded, his voice now shaky and devoid of the conviction that it had only moments before.
The intruder took a few steps forward, now standing just in front of the counter, close enough that Jonah could now begin to smell the iron tang of his blood on the air. “The token. Where is it?”
The old shopkeep shuffled back a step, the shotgun forgotten in his hand as it drooped downward and then fell to the floor with a clatter. “Token? I’m sorry … look, the gold coins are right over there … this is just a coin shop …”
For a moment, the strange man seemed to consider the response, blinking dispassionately, hardly moving, and then worked his mouth slowly, as if trying to decide how to respond, himself. “Then you are of no use to me.”
Suddenly the man moved with more speed than someone of his bulk seemed like he had any right to move, leaning forward over the counter and shooting a hand out in Sam’s direction. The old man did not have a chance to respond before thick, meaty fingers closed around his throat, lifting him up off the ground, his thin, spindly limbs beginning to thrash in the air. Jonah could do nothing but watch while his old friend was lifted up into the air, wheezing and gasping for breath; he could do nothing but watch as those big, meaty fingers clamped down around his throat with a sickening crunch. The strange man relaxed his grip, and the shopkeeper collapsed into a pile on the floor, unmoving.