Duck Boy

by Bill Bunn

  Duck Boy. Duck Boy.

  Steve didn’t move for quite a while. He groped until he found the bag of carrots, picked one out and brushed off some dirt. He took up his position behind the potato sack and began to gnaw on the carrot.

  “I am such a loser,” he lectured himself. Any grown-up would have been scolding him now too, he was sure. “Aunt Shannon needed my help, and I froze. Uncle Edward needed my help, and I hid.”

  He sat in the back of the root cellar, cold and silent. Finally, after hearing nothing for several minutes, he groped his way through the tangle of strewn belongings across the basement to the bottom of the stairs.

  He stopped to tune his ear to the silence, listening for the slightest pin-drop. Fairly certain that he was the only one in the house, he tiptoed up the basement steps to the kitchen. A frozen draft of air surged into the basement under the door. He pushed it open slowly and entered the dim light of the kitchen.

  The house sat in frigid darkness except for a weak wedge of light coming from inside the refrigerator. The glow of winter wafted through the upstairs windows, the only light in the whole house. He resisted the temptation to turn on a light, thinking that the house might still be watched and the light would signal his presence.

  As he glanced around, he realized they had gone. The back door of the house lay in a bed of splinters on the floor. The cupboards and fridge door hung open, the contents of both hurled across the counters and floor—Country records, eggs, burst sacks of flour, sugar, dishes, cutlery. Elves, snowmen, Santas, skaters, and sleighs seasoned the destruction. The fridge hummed, sighed, and hummed again as it worked with the winter air to cool the house. Out of habit, Steve guided the fridge door closed.

  “A flashlight.” Steve stooped over one of the drawers on the floor and retrieved it. The evening light wasn’t bright enough for a close inspection. He clicked it on, being careful to keep the beam away from the windows.

  Two or three cupboard doors were pulled completely off their hinges. He stepped carefully around the objects on the floor and made his way around the house, looking for Uncle Edward. He stopped by his room.

  His room was a wreck, too. The shelves of knick-knacks lay in a smashed sea on the floor. The bed listed on its side with fatal knife slashes exposing its stuffing; the bookcase lay face down. His suitcase knifed, things strewn around the room in clumps and heaps. Socks and gonch like confetti around the room.

  He stepped through the wreckage of the upstairs rooms again. “Uncle Edward,” Steve called quietly. “Uncle Edward?” No reply.

  A new thrill of panic made him shiver.

  I’m alone now.

  An icy draft cut through the thin warmth remaining in the house. Back in his room, he pushed the bed from its side; it fell on its legs back down to the floor with a heavy thud. He sat down on the bed’s edge to examine the carnage of his room.

  “Aw, man!” Steve exclaimed after discovering the shards of his iPod.

  The pictures that Aunt Shannon had removed from the police file were missing and so were all the alchemy books from Steve’s bookcase and nightstand. By some miracle, both notebooks were buried under the carnage.

  “My backpack’s still OK,” he noticed aloud, holding it up, inspecting it with the light from the flashlight. He returned the notebooks carefully to the inner pocket.

  Maybe my underwear scared them away. The gonch who stole Christmas.

  “Oh geez,” Steve muttered, “Larry.” He jogged to the living room to check the clock.

  7:15 ish.

  Christmas had been thoroughly smashed in the living room. Toilet-brush limbs strewn across the room, sprinkled generously with shoddy crafts. “Awwww,” he groaned. In the middle of the shag carpet was Aunt Shannon’s blown glass tree star. Smashed to smithereens. The meager Christmas he had hoped for bashed into oblivion.

  He grabbed his coat, gloves, and hat, knowing that he couldn’t stay in the house.

  Back door.

  He shambled back to the kitchen. In the weak winter light, he noticed something he’d missed earlier—a piece of paper. On the kitchen table sat a note made from letters cut out of a magazine. Steve picked it up.

  “Woah. Seriously.”

  The stove clock read 7:21.

  Lindsay.

  He dropped the ransom note on the counter, zipped his coat, donned his gloves and hat, swung his backpack onto his shoulder and sneaked out the back door.

  To make sure he wasn’t followed, he headed up the alleyway for two blocks before crossing the street and heading back down the opposite alleyway to Lindsay’s back door.

  Good thing Aunt Shannon showed me her house.

  Lindsay’s house was another below-average split-level in this average neighborhood. Steve knocked on the back door and waited. A daddish-looking adult answered the door—probably Lindsay’s father.

  “Hello, sir. My name is Steve. I’d like to speak with Lindsay, please.”

  The man smiled warmly. “Come on in,” he said, scanning Steve from his face to his feet. “My name is Walter.” He extended his hand and Steve shook it. He headed up a short set of stairs and spoke firmly into a hallway. “Lindsay, there’s a Steve here to see you.”

  He could hear her protests to his arrival as he removed his hat and gloves, stuffing them into a coat pocket. With his hands he quickly smoothed out his hair.

  “What’s he doing here? I’m supposed to meet him at Shannon’s,” she complained, turning from the hall toward the front door.

  “No. He’s at the back door,” Walter repeated.

  She appeared shortly and took one long suspicious look at Steve. “What happened?” she exclaimed. “You look awful.”

  Steve hadn’t noticed his appearance. He scanned himself quickly. “Oh jeez, sorry about that.” He bent over to clean dust, flour and some crusted eggshell off one of his knees. “I guess I should do this outside,” he apologized as he watched the eggshells flake from his pants to the floor.

  “Don’t bother trying to clean up,” Lindsay suggested. “You’re too far gone for that. Where’s Shannon?”

  Steve looked startled. “Um…I’m not sure. She’s not back yet.”

  Lindsay’s brow wrinkled into a questioning look. “Then why are you here?”

  “Um, it’s kind of a long story. I’d really like to talk to you about it.”

  “Sure. I’m supposed to see you at Shannon’s around now, OK?”

  “Um, no,” Steve stated flatly. “I need your help. Now.”

  Lindsay’s brow furrowed. “You look kind of freaked out.”

  Lindsay’s reply was cut short as her father passed her with his coat on.

  “Goodnight, dear,” he said as he passed by. He pointed to Steve. “Ian, here, won’t be staying for very long, will he?”

  “No he won’t, Dad. Goodnight,” Lindsay replied with an emotionless voice.

  Walter looked towards Steve. “Nice to meet you, Ian.”

  “Nice to meet you, too.” Steve replied. Walter flashed a smile at him and stepped through the front door and whisked it closed behind him.

  “Go ahead… speak,” Lindsay commanded.

  “Actually, is there some place we could talk privately?”

  “It’s private here.”

  “What if your mom overhears?”

  “My mom doesn’t live here.”

  “Oh. Um, do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “Nope.”

  “OK, then.” Steve paused for a moment fumbling for a way to start the whole conversation. “It’s kind of a long story,” he repeated. “But I’m in trouble. And you said you knew how to make a Benu stone.”

  Lindsay’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t answer.

  “Have you made one?”

  Lindsay still didn’t answer.

  “I need to make one soon,” Steve insisted. “Aunt Shannon told me you know how to do the Great Work, you know, make the Benu stone and everything.” Steve looked up at Lindsay.

  “You’
re not making any sense,” Lindsay stated in a very unimpressed tone.

  “Can I come in and sit down? This really is a very long story.”

  Lindsay sighed. “All right.” She motioned for him to come up the stairs. Steve dusted the debris and dust from his body, and followed her into the living room. She sat in a single chair, so he took the couch.

  Forget the how-are-yous.

  “Have you seen her change a clock into a lock and back into a clock again?”

  Lindsay stayed quiet.

  “I know it’s a secret,” Steve answered. He knew by the way that she didn’t answer she had seen Aunt Shannon’s demonstration. “I’ve seen it, too.” Lindsay raised her eyebrows without saying anything. “If she let you see her experiment, then I know she trusts you. And if she trusts you, then I can trust you.”

  “You can trust me.”

  “Good,” Steve replied. “I should apologize first. I lied to you on the phone this afternoon. Aunt Shannon is gone, like I said, but she’s not coming back.”

  “What?” Lindsay shrieked. “What do you mean? Where did she go?”

  Steve explained Aunt Shannon’s disappearance and how it had happened. As he explained, he recalled that the police were going to call for a visit.

  He interrupted his story to Lindsay to check the time: 7:35.

  “Can we shut the light off in the living room? I want to see what’s going on back at the house.”

  Lindsay gazed at him with another weird look.

  “Please,” Steve pleaded.

  Lindsay got out of her chair and turned out the lights. The two of them headed to the main window and opened the curtain to gaze at Aunt Shannon’s house. They waited a couple of minutes in silence. A police cruiser rolled up the street and stopped in front of the house. As the police car stopped, one of the policemen opened his door, turning on the interior light of the car. Steve recognized Larry right away. There was another police officer with him.

  As they watched, Steve continued to explain the afternoon’s events, culminating in the abduction of his Great Uncle Edward.

  Larry banged on the front door of the house repeatedly, with no response from inside. Garner motioned towards the police cruiser for the other police officer to join him at the house. He left the front step to walk around the side of the house. It wouldn’t take him long to discover the devastation.

  A couple of minutes passed. Steve and Lindsay saw a light go on somewhere inside the house, probably the kitchen. Suddenly one of the policemen ran frantically around the corner of the house to the patrol car, yanked the car door open, and ripped the radio microphone from the dashboard. He spoke for a few minutes into the microphone and then threw it on the seat, slammed the car door, and ran back around the side of the house.

  Steve slumped down onto a couch. “I’m in deep trouble now,” he moaned.

  A faint sound of sirens seeded the air and began to grow. In a dramatic sweep, several police cars appeared in front of Steve’s aunt and uncle’s house, screeching to a halt. The frozen air crackled with the sound of radio messages bristling through bad speakers. As he and Lindsay surveyed the spread of the investigation, Steve began to tell the full story of the last couple of days.

  “I’m really not a bad person. I screw up, but I’m not a bad person,” Steve finished. The guilt he had carried since his mother disappeared hatched into a sense of criminality.

  Lindsay’s look softened. “I believe you,” she said. Steve was silent. Police buzzed around the yard and through the house in a frenzy of investigation. “Aunt Shannon has been harassed and watched for months by some people who wanted the details of her latest experiments.”

  “You mentioned that,” Steve interrupted impatiently. “And I met them today, too.”

  Lindsay ignored his tone and turned towards him. “Didn’t your mom disappear last year?”

  “Yeah,” he admitted quietly. “She disappeared the same way.”

  “Aunt Shannon told me that your mom was gone. For a while, your mom and Shannon were working together on a new kind of alchemy. When your mom vanished, somebody heard about it, and they assumed it was something to do with her experiments. They were right, of course. I read the newspaper clippings about her disappearance, but what really happened?”

  After closing the curtains, Lindsay took a seat again. Steve found the darkness of the room somehow comforting, so he began to relate the story of his mother’s disappearance.

  Then he returned to the kidnapping of Uncle Edward. “I don’t understand how the kidnappers knew so much. They weren’t looking for Aunt Shannon, so they must have known she was gone. And they knew I was at home. They even knew about the pictures in the police file that Aunt Shannon took from the file. How did they know? I told these things to Uncle Edward, and that’s all. Oh, and Larry knew, too.” His forehead furrowed as he scrutinized the day’s events in his mind. “I’m sure Uncle Edward never said anything. So either Detective Garner said something or someone overheard my conversations.”

  “Maybe someone heard your conversations,” Lindsay suggested.

  “How?”

  She shrugged. “I dunno. Bugs, phones, or something.”

  Steve stopped to consider for a minute. “That’s possible. Aunt Shannon noticed some guy working on the phone lines my first morning at her place.” He slumped his head into his hands. “The worst part is this. Now I’m stuck—can’t go back to that house, or my own house. I’ve got nowhere to go. And I have no money.”

  “You should stay downstairs tonight, Steve,” Lindsay suggested.

  “But what about your dad? He didn’t want me to stay very long. He wouldn’t let me stay.”

  “Nah. My dad wouldn’t want you to stay, but where would you go if you leave here?”

  Steve shrugged. “I dunno.”

  “My dad only pretends to care, anyway.”

  “What do you mean?” Steve quizzed.

  “My dad doesn’t really care,” she repeated. “He only cares about himself, which means nothing else matters.” She stopped for a moment. “My parents split a year ago. My dad left my mom to ‘find himself,’ whatever that means.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Steve interjected.

  “Ah, it doesn’t matter. He’s never around. You saw him leave, and he probably won’t be back until tomorrow morning. He doesn’t really want me around, but the lawyers said he had to take me for the Christmas holidays. My mom wanted to go out and find herself this Christmas.”

  “That’s a drag,” Steve replied. “Christmas sure can suck.”

  “Yeah, it can. I’m sure glad I could hang out with Shannon. She’s pretty wacky, but she sure is great. I don’t have any friends here yet.”

  Lindsay began to pepper Steve with questions, probing each disappearance with careful scrutiny. She ended another long discussion by asking a big question. “What can we do?”

  “I have no idea,” Steve replied.

  “So we need to figure this out.”

  “Right, exactly. Except I have no idea how to experiment, or how to find my Benu stone.”

  Lindsay gave him a warm smile. “You did come to the right person. I think we should make our Benu stones first. Have you done any experimenting before?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’ll get my notebook. Then we can start. When we experiment, we need to write down what we do and how we do it so we don’t forget.” She left the couch and jogged upstairs for a moment, returning with two notebooks. She handed him one with a chewed pen clipped to the cover.

  “All right. Let’s go,” Steve exclaimed as he grabbed the book.

  She flipped through her worn notebook looking for a specific page. “Here’s how Shannon says to make a Benu stone.” Lindsay looked up from the notebook pages at Steve. “Have you ever seen a picture of the Ouroboros?”

  Steve flashed a smile. “Yeah. Isn’t that the picture where the dragon is eating its own tail? I saw a picture of it in one of Aunt Shannon’s books. But I do
n’t understand it.”

  “It eats its own tail to satisfy its hunger. As it eats it grows, as it grows it eats. It never gets bigger, never smaller. Old alchemists believed that the Ouroboros was a picture of matter—of molecules and atoms. Aunt Shannon believes that the Ouroboros is a picture of language—words and letters. So as we experiment, we use words to transform things.”

  “The way the clock changes to a lock?” Steve asked, checking to make sure he understood. “She just says words as she touches her Benu stone.”

  “Right.”

  Lindsay looked down at her notebook again, squinting to read her own writing. “The Great Work… You know, making a Benu stone… isn’t so much a matter of making the stone, it is a matter of finding that stone.”

  “Right,” Steve agreed.

  “And the stone is not a stone.”

  “Exactly. The stone that isn’t a stone.”

  “It’s called a Benu stone, but it might be a picture, a coin—something else. Or,” Lindsay smiled, “a box of ashes from a cremation. Of course, it might be a stone, too. But we’re probably looking for something other than a stone.

  “And the thing you need to find is the thing that is your stumbling stone—your deepest fear—and the Pearl of Great Price—your greatest hope.” Lindsay studied Steve.

  “OK, I’m afraid of dying,” Steve declared.

  “Umm. Not sure about that one. I thought that would be my biggest fear, too. But Aunt Shannon told me it probably isn’t. So I don’t think that’s your greatest fear, but let’s pretend it is. You look for something in your life that reminds you most of your own death. Then, you must look at your fear through that object and change your own self until it becomes your greatest source of joy—in other words, life.”

  “OK. If you say so.” Steve knitted his eyebrows.

  “I don’t know if she showed you her wordless book. There are only colored pages. The book tells the same secret. You start with black—the blackest black there is. And you move through white, yellow, and finally to red. Fear is black; joy is red.” Lindsay stopped and flipped ahead a couple of pages in her notebook, and then back one. “You know, Shannon never did tell me what the rest of the colors were all about. But they work in there somehow.” Lindsay peered up from her notebook.