Glimpse

by Steve Whibley

  Glimpse

  by

  Steven Whibley

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Steven B. Whibley

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact Steven Whibley at stevewhibley@gmail.com

  Published by Steven Whibley Publishing

  Victoria, British Columbia

  www.stevenwhibley.com

  Publisher: Steven Whibley

  Editing: Mahak Jain; Devin Govaere

  Copyediting: Jon VanZile; Mary Thompson

  Cover Design: Pintado (rogerdespi.8229@gmail.com)

  Interior Layout and Design: Tammy Desnoyers (www.tammydesign.ca)

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Whibley, Steven, 1978—

  Glimpse / Steven Whibley.

  (The Dean Curse chronicles)

  ISBN 978-0-9919208-1-5 (eBook)

  ISBN 978-0-9919208-2-2 (bound).—ISBN 978-0-9919208-0-8 (pbk.)

  I. Title. II. Series: Whibley, Steven, 1978- . Dean Curse chronicles.

  PS8645.H46G55 2013 jC813’.6 C2013-901948-0

  Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Steven Whibley was aware of the trademark claim, the designations have been printed in initial capital letters.

  This book is dedicated to my sister, Lisa, and my niece, Morgan, for braving the very first draft; to my editor, Mahak Jain, for tirelessly pushing me to make this story the very best it could be; to my son, Isaiah, who is only two and won’t be reading this book for years, but who is a constant source of inspiration; and finally, and with great love, to my wife, Corene, who encouraged me to write when it was all just a dream.

  – Steven Whibley

  Chapter 1

  I’m cursed.

  I know, I know, you don’t believe me. Well, I didn’t believe it was possible either… until the guy who cursed me came along. So go ahead and think I’m nuts. But one of these days, we might just meet up and then… well, you’d better believe whatever I say to you. Your life will absolutely depend on it.

  My name’s Dean. Dean Curse. Yes, I see the irony in my name, no need to mention it. I was ordinary once. I tolerated school and did all right in math, but I was no Stephen Hawking. I liked soccer and read mostly comics. My favorite TV show was Survivor. I watched it all the time. I planned to be on it and win when I turned eighteen. Of course, none of that matters anymore because like I said, I’m cursed.

  It started a few days before my fourteenth birthday.

  ***

  I gulped down a spoonful of cereal and tapped one of the jars on the table. The moth inside twitched.

  “Don’t touch that!” Becky, my bigmouthed little sister, ordered. If being annoying was an Olympic event, she’d be wearing a gold medal.

  “Why do you have all these jars of bugs?”

  Becky closed her eyes and sighed. “I’m going to entomology camp this year, duh. I need specimens for my project.”

  “Entomology camp? Why can’t you just play with dolls like normal girls?”

  “I am a normal girl. Just because you don’t know how to be normal doesn’t mean no one else does.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” I lifted another spoonful of cereal and paused. Becky glared across the counter at me, no doubt wondering how she could fit me into one of her jars. “Don’t you have some rat traps to set or something?” I asked.

  Every few months, Becky adopted a new hobby, each one more disturbing than the one before. A few months before, she had started to collect animal bones as if she were a junior paleontologist. The time before, it was rusted pieces of metal. The more rust, the better. My parents only made her stop after I stepped on one of her rusty scraps and had to get a tetanus shot. Now, for the past six months, she’d been obsessed with all things that creep or crawl. Whatever she said, she was not a normal eleven-year-old.

  Becky glared at me. “Rat traps?”

  “For your project.”

  “You’re such an idiot.” She pulled the jars away from me. “En-to-mo-lo-gy. As in the study of insects. Not rodents.” She lifted her chin. “I’m supposed to bring fifty specimens. You’re looking at numbers thirty-seven, thirty-eight, and thirty-nine.”

  Number thirty-nine looked like a twig with legs, and I was kind of disturbed that insects like that actually existed. “Why aren’t they moving?”

  “Gee, I wonder,” Becky mocked. “Maybe because they’re dead?”

  “You killed them?”

  “Of course I killed them. How else am I supposed to pin them to the board?”

  “You kill them, then you pin them to a board? You’re a sick kid, you know that?”

  Just then, Mom walked into the kitchen, pulled up a stool, and started watching me eat my breakfast as if I were competing for a prize or something. I half expected her to cheer when I scooped up my next bite.

  “Fourteen already. Wow!” Her smile widened. “It feels like just yesterday that I was giving you a bath in the kitchen sink.”

  “Argh!” Becky pushed her bowl of cereal away. “Thanks, Mom. Now I can’t eat, and I probably won’t go near the sink for the rest of my life.”

  I rolled my eyes. “My birthday isn’t until Tuesday, Mom.”

  “I just can’t believe my little boy is so grown up.”

  “Please promise me you won’t make comments like that when my friends are here.”

  “What friends?” Becky said. “You don’t have any friends.” She grimaced as she placed her bowl in the sink, and then jumped back as if it were a bomb moments away from exploding. She turned and glared. “Why did you have to bathe that troll in here?”

  “I have friends,” I said, ignoring the whole troll jibe.

  “Who? Colin? Lisa?”

  “Yeah…”

  Becky laughed as she gathered up her jars of death. “Who else is coming? You can’t count imaginary friends.”

  I did know other people who wouldn’t mind coming, but unlike Becky, I didn’t like being the center of attention. It made me nervous, like I was being tested or something. That was why I had only invited Lisa and Colin, my best friends since second grade. That wasn’t something my sister would understand, though, and I could see by her pasty sneer that she was preparing to fling more insults, so I played the one card that would end the conversation.

  “Nice hair.”

  That was all it took. Becky’s dark hair stood up around her pale face as if she’d just been electrocuted. It was as if her frizzy hair was her kryptonite, the one thing she felt so self-conscious about she could hardly bear it. Her face flushed and her eyes started hurling battle-axes.

  “Well… well… you’re a dork, and you have too many freckles. And… and… your hair looks like you just rolled out of bed!”

  “I did just roll out of bed.”

  Mom pursed her lips and shook her head at me.

  “What? All I said was that she had nice hair.” I looked back at my sister. “I happen to like the I’ve-just-been-struck-by-lightning look. It suits you.”

  Becky let out a frustrated yell and stormed out of the kitchen. I counted to three before I heard the door to her room slam shut.

  “That wasn’t very nice, Dean,” Mo
m said.

  I shrugged. “It’s the only way to get her off my back.”

  Mom poured herself a cup of coffee. I could feel her scrutinizing me, but I didn’t turn around. “Maybe you should invite other people,” she said finally. “Colin and Lisa are great, but you should give other kids a chance to get to know you too.”

  I took a deep breath and forced it out before replying. “I have other friends.”

  “I’m sure you do, Dean, but when’s the last time you hung out with them?”

  “All the time, Mom. Colin and Lisa just happen to be my best friends.”

  She gave me a “Sure, I believe you” look. “Be nicer to your sister, okay? Don’t tease her about her hair.” She walked over and kissed me on the forehead. “Now go get ready for school. Your father had to go in early today, but I’ll drive you guys on my way to work.”

  Fifteen minutes later and only ten minutes before the first bell at school rang, Becky was still locked in the bathroom trying to tame her hair.

  “Snails move faster,” I grumbled.

  Mom shrugged helplessly. I knew my sister, and I knew she was going to stay locked in the bathroom until I’d be late even with a ride from my mom. The only way I wasn’t going to be late was if I walked—or ran, as the situation required. I threw my bag over my shoulder and headed out the door. Outside, the sky was clear and the air balmy with the first real heat of June. Summer vacation wasn’t far off, I remembered with a smile, and then I sped down the street.

  I stopped running a block away from the school, slowing to catch my breath. I checked my watch. Five minutes before the first buzzer! There was no way I could make it unless I took a detour. I ducked through an alley behind a strip mall.

  And froze.

  Two men, one roughly the size of a giant ape and the other tall and lanky, were stomping on a large mound of garbage heaped up against a rusted chain-link fence. It wasn’t until I heard the garbage moan that I realized they were kicking a man who was crumpled on the ground and grunting with each strike.

  My instincts told me to run, but my feet wouldn’t listen. Instead, I did something else—something really, really stupid. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my wallet. It was blue and had the Detroit Red Wings logo on the front. It looked nothing like a cell phone, but I held it to my ear and yelled, “I’m calling the cops!”

  The two men spun and glared down the alley at me. Probably only a second or two passed, but even that felt too long—I tensed and wondered if they’d come after me next. Instead, they tore off in the opposite direction.

  I slowly walked to the man on the ground. His filthy clothes were torn to ribbons and soaked in blood, and he was covered in garbage that had no doubt come from the overturned bin a couple feet away. A brown leather bag dangled from his shoulder. He rolled onto his back. Blood cascaded from a gash above his right eye and his nose was at an unnatural angle to the rest of his face.

  My stomach lurched at the stench of him. I swallowed back a mouthful of puke and helped him sit up against the fence.

  “What’s going on back here?” a nervous voice yelled from the end of the alley.

  A skinny kid wearing an orange convenience store uniform gaped at us. He had a baseball bat in his hand but looked far too scared to use it.

  “Call an ambulance!” I shouted. “And the police.”

  The beaten man coughed, spraying my Green Day T-shirt with specks of blood. He opened his mouth and tried to speak but only managed to mouth a word that I couldn’t make out.

  “Don’t try to talk,” I said. Sirens sounded in the distance. “You’re going to be—”

  His eyes suddenly widened to the size of doorknobs. He grabbed my shirt and pulled me close. I could feel his breath on my ear as he rasped a single word.

  “Glimpse.”

  And then his eyes closed and his head drooped. “Hey!” I yelled. But it was no use. He was unconscious. Only the sound of breath gurgling in his chest remained. And as for me… I didn’t know it yet, but after that I’d never be the same.

  Chapter 2

  The ambulance arrived first, followed by four police cruisers. The paramedics took the man away on a stretcher—he was still unconscious and barely alive by the looks of it—while the police blocked off the alley with yellow crime scene tape. The officers wanted to ask me some questions, so I gave up any hope of making it to my first class. I described the men as best I could: big, burly, and mean-looking. “You might want to check if any large animals recently escaped from the zoo,” I said, hoping a bit of humor would stop me from trembling.

  One of the officers nearby gave a chuckle, but the one taking my statement looked stoic. “Zoo? Why would you say that? Did you hear them say something about the zoo?”

  “What? No. I’m just saying they were big. Like animals. But they weren’t animals.” He just stared at me, so I added sheepishly, “They were people.”

  The officer sighed and pointed back down the alley. “Which way did they go?”

  “Left,” I said. “They went left.”

  An officer looking over the scene for clues pointed at a broken window facing the alley. “Wrong place at the wrong time,” he said. “Looks like those men were trying to break in. I bet the man you helped interrupted them. Thieves aren’t big on leaving witnesses.” He jotted down a couple more notes and added, “There’s been a string of break-ins around here this past week. I bet it’s the same men.”

  I shuddered. A couple minutes earlier and it would’ve been me who interrupted the break-in. I might have been the one getting carted off on a stretcher.

  Despite my protests, an officer—the one who had understood my warped sense of humor—insisted on calling my mom. I reddened as he talked to her, going on and on about my “act of bravery,” until he finally handed the phone to me.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Dean?” Her voice was sharp, and I imagined her clutching the cord of her phone as she paced in her office. “Are you okay, Dean?”

  “I’m fine. It wasn’t that big a deal.”

  “Are you hurt? The officer said you stopped some muggers from killing a man.” She sounded skeptical. “Is that true?”

  I snorted. Only Mom would entertain the idea that I had hired a police officer to give her a prank call. “It’s kinda true. I didn’t actually—”

  “What were you thinking, Dean!? Putting yourself in harm’s way like that. You could’ve been killed.”

  “Mom, just—”

  Now Mom sounded shrill. “I’m coming down there right now. Just stay where you are and I’ll be right there.”

  “Mom!” It wasn’t often that I raised my voice to my mother, but the situation seemed to call for it. Plus, given what had just happened, I figured she’d forgive me. “I’m fine. Really. It wasn’t that big of a deal. You don’t need to come down here. Please, don’t come down here.”

  There was a lengthy pause. Mom seemed to be considering her options. “You promise you’re okay?”

  “I promise.”

  “Do you feel well enough to go to school?”

  I might not have been the smartest kid on the block, but even I saw the opportunity. Since to-day was Friday, taking the day off would mean I’d get a three-day weekend. I turned my back on the officer and lowered my voice. “Maybe it would be nice not to see everyone today. I need to go home and get changed anyway.”

  “Why do you need to get changed?”

  “Well, my shirt’s ripped and—”

  There was a sharp gasp from the other side of the phone and Mom’s voice turned shrill again. “Ripped? Did the muggers attack you!?” Her voice reached a pitch that probably had every dog in the block barking.

  “Mom, I’m fine. I’m not hurt. It’s a small rip. I think I caught it on the fence or something. I’m not bleeding.” I probably shouldn’t have said anything, especially since my mom faints so easily. Dad and I always joked that her fainting was the reason the university covered the floor of her office with dou
ble-thick plush carpet even though all her colleagues got hardwood. “Okay, Mom,” I said, raising my voice slightly and hoping some of what I said would make it through her hysteria and calm her down. “I’ll just go home and get cleaned up. I’m fine. Don’t worry. Bye.”

  I handed the phone back to the officer. “She, um, she said I should just go home and get cleaned up.”

  “I’ll have someone drive you.” The officer looked over his shoulder and gestured to one of his colleagues near the perimeter line.

  “No, no, you don’t need to do that,” I said. We weren’t that far from the school and I’d probably be spotted by someone I knew. Then everyone would want to know how I’d managed to hitch a ride with the police. Sure, I wanted to see the inside of a cop car, but not badly enough to deal with that kind of scrutiny. “I’m fine to walk. I only live a few blocks away. Honest, I’ll be fine.”

  He shrugged, then handed me a card. “If you think of anything else, a better description of the men you saw, or if you remember anything later, give me a call.”

  “Sure.” I slipped the card into my jeans pocket and ducked under the police tape.

  I started feeling different right then. I don’t know if I’d call it a sense of dread necessarily, but it was a general uneasiness that felt all the more urgent because my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. At the time, I thought it was just strained nerves.

  It wasn’t.

  ***

  I took the long way home, hoping a walk would calm me. It did. In fact, the more I thought about what had happened, the calmer I became and the more I started believing that I had actually done something remarkable. I’d stood up to two muggers. Thugs who might’ve had machine guns and machetes for all I knew. I’d risked my life for a stranger! I was a hero.

  I grinned as I turned left on Fairfield Drive, stopping at Oakridge Mall. A mob milled around the doors to Gadget Emporium, one of the largest electronics chains in the country. Brightly colored banners announcing the grand opening flapped from flagpoles. An extra large banner was plastered across the red-brick structure, while on the rooftop a giant iPod-holding inflatable gorilla waved in time with the breeze and held a sign that promised “Free giveaways! Today only!”