A Quarrel Called: Stewards Of The Plane Book 1

by Shannon Wendtland

  I hovered in the oldies section, and by oldies, I mean eighties. I wanted something cool yet simple with a hard downbeat that I could layer with some of the newer tracks that had been coming out lately. Something that most kids hadn’t heard before. Like maybe the Motels? Or … I reached for a battered disc by Dexy’s Midnight Runners just as another, definitely more feminine, manicured hand, beat me to it.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Were you reaching for this?” She smiled and held the disc out to me. She had dark brown—almost black—hair with a pixy cut, and the deepest green eyes I had ever seen. Lots of eye makeup and a tiny gold nose ring. Holy shit, hot.

  Suddenly self-conscious in my grocery store uniform shirt and my sadly preppy khaki pants, I managed to smile and say something not completely asinine. “Nah, you take it. I have a copy at home.”

  “Really,” she said, slumping to her left, and throwing her hip out. “You have this album at home? Name one song, just one, off of the back, and maybe I’ll believe you.”

  “Released in 1982, Too-Rye-Ay is the second album by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. The most popular song was ‘Come on Eileen,’ but that would be too easy, so let me name them for you in reverse order: 'Come On Eileen,’ 'Until I Believe in My Soul,’ 'Liars A to E,’” I said, warming to my subject, “let's see then. there's 'Plan B,' 'I'll Show You'—”

  “Okay, okay, I give. You obviously know your stuff. Though if I may say so, you certainly don’t dress the part.” She arched an eyebrow as her glance skimmed me from head to toe. She handed the album to me. “What’s with the outfit? And if you don’t mind me asking, since you have a copy of this album at home, what do you need this one for?”

  My pulse picked up. This chick was really cute, and she didn’t hate me. Maybe I should– “I have a job to help pay for my rig, and I wanted this album because I’ve got a gig coming up and I can’t find my copy anywhere,” –talk myself up a little. That was only a partial lie.

  “Really? You spin?” Her mouth quirked and then bloomed into a smile.

  “Yeah. I said I have a gig, didn’t I?”

  “Let me know where, and I’ll come by for a listen. If I like what I hear, I can hook you up with a major event. Pays a thousand bucks. And it sure beats working at the deli.”

  Shit. Now I would have to come up with something or risk losing my chance with this girl. “Give me your number. I’ll text you as soon as the date is set. My manager’s working out the details for me.”

  “Right, cuz I want you stalking me with your Dexy’s Midnight Runners? No way. You give me your digits, and I’ll text you this weekend. If you don’t have details by then, well…” her green eyes twinkled, “then I’ll have to find somebody else.”

  She gave me her phone, and I put my name and number in. What the hell else was I supposed to do? Find a gig, that’s what.

  So it turned out that Colton’s brother’s friend was having a party on the other end of town and he would let me spin for a few hours as long as I did it for free plus drinks. Sadly, I don’t drink when I spin, so it seemed like I was doing the gig for the price of a couple of cokes. Oh yeah, and hauling all my gear out there, too. Setup takes an hour, take-down takes another hour, spin for at least two hours and all I get are a couple of cokes? And the chick’s phone number when she texts me to get the details on my gig… Oh yeah. There was that. I grinned. Wish I had gotten her name. I blamed it on her little gold nose ring. It was distracting.

  #

  It was nighttime and the cat (I had decided to call him Mr. Smith, after The Smiths, one of my favorite bands), was out prowling the neighborhood again. I was watching Mr. Smith out the window, yet another ploy to keep myself from doing what had to be done.

  I had the software fired up, my headphones around my neck, and the file copied from my phone and onto my hard drive. All I had to do now was click the damned button. My finger hesitated. What was wrong with me?

  From the street, I could hear the yowl of a very angry cat, and I jumped a little and looked to see Mr. Smith, back arched, facing some threat from the direction of Mr. Thompson’s house. He was making a heck of a racket, his hackles starting to rise and his tail puffed up. I started to get worried for him, the scrappy bugger, until I saw a winged shadow swoop into the dim light from the top of Thompson’s garage, claws extended. It was the owl from the other night. And before I could even get out of my chair, it snatched Mr. Smith with its claws and flapped its wings in mighty strokes, trying to carry the cat away for, what I could only assume, would be its dinner.

  But Mr. Smith put up a fight, and before long, the owl was forced to let the cat drop at least twelve feet to the ground below, where it twisted in midair to land squarely on its paws. Then it dove into the nearby sewer opening.

  The owl hooted and continued on its flight, coming in my direction, barely skimming past my window to land on the edge of the roof over my room. I could hear its claws scraping on the shingles; I noticed that I was gripping the edge of my desk with white knuckles and my heart was pounding in my ears. Screw this, there was no way I was going to listen to this EVP crap in the dark. I shut down the computer and turned on my TV. Best thing for a case of the heebie-jeebies: a couple hours of mindless cartoons.

  16. G.

  Sitting still was killing me, and working at The Blossom wasn’t much better, since it was midweek and business was kind of slow. I was agitated; I just wanted to get out and do something, anything. It was weird, because usually I prefer to just sit back and people watch. But I reminded myself of my vow when I moved in with Dad – no freshman punk was going to make me look like an idiot on the first day of PT for ROTC… and all I wanted to do was get out and run; not calisthenics, not lift weights, run.

  Run? Really? Was I motivated to look good for Tara or something? I considered that seriously for a moment and thought that might be it, except she didn’t seem to have a problem with me the way I was.

  Except you haven’t kissed her yet. How long do you think she’s going to sit around and wait for you to get the cojones to kiss her? My knee was jumping up and down as I sat in the break room waiting for break to be over. I swear, if I saw me right now, I would think I was on speed or something. I really did, I wanted to run.

  Except it was so blasted hot. Moving from Ohio to Texas in the summer had been a bad idea. My mom tried to tell me so, but now I was here. Shit. Dad had that old treadmill in the back of the spare room; it had boxes and clothes hung on it. Did it still work? Even if it sucked, I could at least use it inside, in the air conditioning. Or I could run late at night or early in the morning like all the other suburbanites.

  I took a covert look through the window of the break room door. No one could see me in here. I dropped to the floor and did twenty rather miserable pushups. Arms shaking and jaw aching from gritting my teeth, they made me feel better, less jumpy. Maybe that’s what I could do – whenever I had a spare moment hanging around here, I could just do some pushups or jumping jacks or something.

  “Hey G.,” Manny said, pushing the break-room door open with his backside so he could use his hands to carry a tray of food. “Your girlfriend’s here.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Is she though? My girlfriend? I grinned. If she wasn’t already, then maybe I needed to finally do something about that.

  17. TARA

  Sugary lemon with a hint of something else—I didn’t know what kind of flowers smelled like that, but they sure were pretty. I couldn’t contain my grin. “They’re beautiful!” No one had ever given me flowers before. OMG.

  G. fidgeted with his keys a little bit. Then he shuffled from one foot to the other. He met my eyes and then blushed just a little, though it was hard to tell since his skin was dusky brown to begin with. But I was pretty sure he was blushing. And then all of a sudden he was really close and I gulped, having a hard time not looking up at him. Oh my God, it was really happening. My first real kiss from my first real…

  G. leaned down very close. “Be my girl, Tara.”


  I nodded, unable to make a sound, mouth suddenly dry and every inch of my body on fire with the most remarkable tingling.

  His lips were soft, not mushy, and his breath smelled like cinnamon. He pressed his lips to mine and for a long moment, we just held it there, our hearts beating overtime. Then my lips parted and so did his and the heat and the moistness mixed with the cinnamon flick of his tongue made me weak in the knees. I clutched the flowers with one hand, and his arm with the other. He’d obviously done this before and oh man, he knew how to do it right.

  When he finally pulled back, I looked up at him and said “I’ve been waiting for you to do that forever.”

  He grinned.

  18. MELODY

  Late in the afternoon, I was taking a nap. It was another dream, only this time it was more like a memory – of the first time I saw Matthew’s ghost.

  The garage was closed. The bay doors were shut, the front windows had the blinds pulled and the ‘closed’ sign was in the window. But I hadn’t seen my brother for a couple of days and I figured this was the best place to start looking for him.

  The sun was setting to my back, and I could see my shadow, long and stretched out in front of me, racing me to the door, or in retrospect, trying to warn me away, as I approached. I tried the handle. It was locked, so I pulled out Matthew’s spare key ring and inserted the big silver key in the lock. I opened the door only a crack, a strange smell assaulting my nose, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time, since garages were always full of strange odors.

  “Matthew?” I called from the front. I still had not stepped all the way into the room when I saw movement from the corner of my eye: the flash of a pair of coveralls as someone walked past the door, a red shop rag hanging out the back pocket. “Matthew!” I called. When I got no response, I darted in after him, flicking on the light switch over the cash register as I rounded the corner.

  A ruddy sunset cascaded through the windows on the bay doors and washed over everything in the main part of the garage. Where that light met with the greenish fluorescence from the lights overhead was a visual schism, a harsh rip in the fabric of reality.

  There was something on the floor, some substance, and because of the clash of light, I couldn’t tell what it was or even its color. I bent down to touch it; it was slick, smelled metallic, and it was sticky and brownish red. My mind couldn’t make sense of it at first.

  I turned to the left to see where Matthew had gone, but could see no one. The back of the garage was shrouded in darkness, and I could only make out basic shapes.

  “Matthew?” I called again. There was movement in the very back, and a sharp metallic clang rang out, causing me to jump and shout. I felt for the light switch near the door and flicked it on. Then I waited a moment, blinking slowly, as fluorescence gained victory over ruddy sunset.

  There was more of the reddish brown stuff in a thick, shiny pool on the floor, and Matthew’s toolkit was overturned. Whoever had done that must have been big, because those rolling cases were very large, and usually filled with heavy, expensive tools. Air wrench attachments, screw drivers, and hex wrenches lay everywhere.

  Something moved in the back again, knocking some items off of the workbench, and I jumped and screamed. It was only a rat, but that wasn’t really what I was thinking at the time. Because my brain had finally figured out what the sticky pool of liquid was – it was blood. And there was a lot of it. And beyond the blood I saw that rat. And beyond the rat I saw another shadow. It moved and I knew it was Matthew. He was faded, nearly gone; he looked at me, breaking eye contact to look over his shoulder.

  Then he pointed across the room to my left. I looked to see what he was pointing at, but there was nothing. He disappeared.

  I woke in a cold sweat. The couch was not a very comfortable place to sleep on the best of days, and it was especially bad if one was having nightmares. The late-afternoon sun was streaming in the windows and heating me up. It wasn’t yet time for ruddy red light, but it would be in a couple of hours. I suddenly wanted very badly to go to Matthew’s garage and take another look around. But I really, really, didn’t want to do it at sunset.

  It was light out now. I decided to go. I wouldn’t tell Gram, because she would just talk me out of it.

  I grabbed my keys and made sure I had the malachite sphere that Esme gave me in my pocket and the pog on a string around my neck. I wasn’t ready to wear it on my finger—people would ask awkward questions—but after the entity attack, I sure wasn’t going to leave it in the dirty laundry again.

  I pulled up outside the garage. So little had changed since Matthew’s disappearance. Someone else owned the building now, but it seemed they had changed nothing but the name on the sign. I walked inside, and a little bell over the lintel of the door rang briefly with a brassy tinkle. That was one new thing.

  “Hello? May I help you?”

  “Hi,” I said, suddenly unsure what I was going to say. “I ah, my car,” I paused to jerk a thumb in the direction of old reliable in the parking lot. “It’s making this weird rattling noise when I turn it over. Could someone take a look at it?”

  “Sure. Why don’t you pull it in front of bay number one, and I’ll have Mark look at it as soon as he’s able,” the man behind the counter said. His blue shirt had a little red logo on it with a nametag pinned beneath it. The tag read “Jimmy.”

  I threw the car into park in front of the first bay and got out, leaving the keys in the ignition. I stood there peering into the depths of the garage, noticing small details that brought me both comfort and sadness. The work bench was in the same place, and the paint on the walls was the same, though the stain on the floor from Matthew’s blood had been removed. I stepped a little closer so that I could see deeper into the garage, my eyes shaded from the sun by the soffet of the roof. As my vision adjusted, I cast my glance around the room, waiting for someone to notice me. And then I noticed it. The whiteboard on the left hand wall by the door—it was still there. The writing on it had changed, but the board itself was still there.

  I closed my eyes, trying to remember that night two years ago. That was where Matthew’s ghost had been pointing. It had to be. I concentrated, had there been anything there at the time? Some writing, a word, a mark?

  “What seems to be the trouble, Miss?”

  I jumped. I’d had my eyes closed, and the mechanic snuck up on me like a grease monkey ninja. I looked from his shadowed face to his chest. The name tag said “Mark.” I smiled wanly and repeated my lie from earlier.

  “Well, I won’t be able to get to it today. But if you let me keep it overnight, I should have something to tell you by lunchtime tomorrow.”

  Argh. Figures, I either had to give him my keys or… my eyes narrowed. “Sure, let me get my house keys and stuff off of my keychain, and I’ll just call a friend to come and get me.”

  The man smiled, though he did not step forward into the light where I could get a better look at him. I ducked into the car, pulled the keys from the ignition, and removed the car key from the ring. I grabbed my bag and rummaged quickly through the contents of the center console and glove box to make sure nothing interesting was in there (there wasn’t) and handed the key to him. I tried to step closer to get a better look at his face, but he sort of half-turned when I did it, so I really only saw his profile and the glimpse of a line of black extending above his collar on the side of his neck. Mark the grease-monkey-ninja-mechanic had some sort of tattoo.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll leave my contact info with the guy at the register.”

  Mark nodded and retreated with the keys. I turned to enter the lobby of the garage, and the hoot of an owl came from above. I looked up, and one sat there in the shadows, perched on the lip of the sign hung overhead. It gave me a long, unblinking stare before it launched itself from the sign to skim the air just over my head. I don’t know why, but I felt fingers of dread slide down my back.

  19. TARA

  Melody and I were parked under
a tree only a little ways down from Matthew’s old garage. The night was thick with heat, humidity and mosquitos; I scratched my arm absently. “Tell me again why I am here with you, scoping out your brother’s old garage and not out on a date with my significant other?” I asked, just a tad annoyed that I was missing out on some quality G. time.

  “We are here because that night I saw my brother’s ghost – he pointed at something, and I just want to look around one more time and see if I can figure out what he was trying to tell me.”

  “You do realize that it’s very dark outside. Which means it’s even darker inside. And if you go in there and turn on the lights, everyone in town is going to think the place is being burglarized.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Her fingers drummed on the steering wheel.

  I frowned. “And how were you planning on finding anything in the dark? If there’s even anything there?”

  “With this,” she said, and held up a short light bar with an extension cord attached.

  “Mel, I just got done saying we couldn’t use lights.”

  “It’s a black light,” she said and smiled at me smugly.

  Okay, she had put a little thought into this. “And how are we going to get in?”

  “With this,” she said, and held up a large silver key. Her smugness was sucking the oxygen from the car.

  “What makes you think they haven’t changed the locks in two years?”

  “Because they haven’t changed anything in two years. Besides, what can it hurt? If the key doesn’t work, then we’ll just leave and you can get back to heavy petting.”

  “I prefer the term ‘quality time,’” I said with a little bit of frost. And then my face warmed up in embarrassment since I had just admitted to making out with G.

  Melody laughed. Then I laughed too, and we got out of the car and walked across the street and over to the door to the lobby of the garage. I kept watch while Melody put the key in the lock, and miracle of miracles, she was right, the key fit, it turned the lock, and suddenly breaking and entering became just entering.