The Camelot Kids

by Ben Zackheim

  The two boys sat together in silence for a couple of minutes, watching the city do its thing. “I don’t get it,” is all Simon could think to say.

  “Are you waiting for your foster parents?” Billy asked.

  “No, I’m waiting for Sister Alphonsus. She likes to come out for a smoke. We’re friends.”

  “Oh. But, uh… She won’t. You don’t know?”

  “About what?”

  “Sister Alphonsus is real sick. They have her hooked up to some breathing machine in her room.”

  Simon’s heart raced all of a sudden. His vision blurred.

  Not again.

  He couldn’t lose someone again.

  He ran up the steps and barged into St. Mary’s. So much for his vow to never go back inside. The place hadn’t changed at all since the Winter family took him home six months ago. The overhead light was still broken. The walls were still an unpleasant shade of Nauseating Gray. And it still smelled like ammonia.

  The security guard tried to stop him but Simon slipped under his arms, sprinted off and burst through the doors of Sister Alphonsus’ room. Billy was right. She was in bed. Several sisters knelt beside her. They all looked at him like he was the devil himself, come to take their patient away. The antiseptic smell of the machines that breathed for her filled the room.

  The guard finally caught up and grabbed Simon.

  “Let him go, Bob,” Sister Alphonsus said softly. Her small, pale shape barely raised the bed sheet. Bob did as he was told. He shoved Simon back into the room and closed the door.

  Sister Alphonsus glared. “I’ve never known a more stubborn 14-year-old, Simon Sharp. And don’t take that as a compliment either, you hear me? Pride is a sin. The worst kind.”

  “I’m not 14 yet,” Simon said with a smirk. But the sight of her in the bed, attached to all those tubes, made his lips pull down.

  He wouldn’t cry. He swore he’d never cry again.

  “Fool boy. Today is March 2nd. It’s your 14th birthday.” Simon felt like he’d been smacked on the back of the head. Again. She was right.

  “I know that. I meant I was born at night,” he lied.

  Two birthdays ago he’d had a family. His mom and dad got him cupcakes and gave him a mess of books from the wish list he pinned on his bedroom wall. Now, his world didn’t have room for birthdays.

  Sister Alphonsus’ frown eased into a warm smile. She shooed her bedside companions out of the room.

  “Get over here and let me see you,” she said.

  Simon shuffled over. Sister Alphonsus tried to put on her glasses but she couldn’t get them behind her ears. Simon helped her. She grabbed his wrist and tsk’ed. Then she lightly patted his chin and tsk’ed again. She cupped his cheeks in her cold hands.

  “Such beautiful eyes,” she said with a sweet smile. She took his hand in hers. Her grip was weak and cold. It was like holding hands with a skeleton.

  “Sister…”

  “How’s the foster family going?” she asked.

  The first thing he thought was, “I could lie.”

  Her stare was strong. He couldn’t lie.

  “Children’s Services is removing me. I never really quite actually, well, stayed there.”

  “Hm. Big surprise. Where did you stay then?”

  He shrugged. “Hostels. Bowery. Around.”

  “No doubt on your half-legal business ventures. You could come back to us, but you’d have to behave.”

  “No,” Simon said.

  “Yes, I know. It suffocates you to be here. You just can’t take being cared for.” She sighed. “Was it so awful here, Simon?” She coughed. He waited for her to stop. It was a long wait.

  “It’s not that. I mean, Brad beat me up every time you had your back turned,” he said. “But it’s… I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “Start by telling the truth for once.”

  “Fine,” he said, angry. “You always say that my best chance at having a family of my own is to do my homework. Go along. Whatever.”

  “Not ‘whatever’! Homework will make a home!” She pushed his hand away. Simon had forgotten how much she hated the word “whatever.”

  “Sorry, Sister. It’s just that it’s not right for me. You’re wrong,” he said. She frowned back. “I mean for me, it’s wrong. I don’t know how I know, but I do. I feel like I need to start now. If I want a family, I have to start right now.”

  “How is a 14-year-old supposed to make a family, Simon? You need to study. Become a man. You’ll be a good man, too. Don’t make that face at me! You will do great things. But you need to be patient. You’re just a boy. You need to pay your dues.”

  “I think I’ve paid a lot of dues,” he said. That red-hot anger he’d recently been grappling with started to bubble up again.

  Sister Alphonsus’ eyes softened. She took his hand again and gripped it tight. “Your parents are dead, Simon. You know that. You cannot put your family back together again. You cannot have what you had ever again. But you can enrich your life in so many ways and have a family when you’re older.”

  The conversation was killed by his stubborn silence.

  “You have nowhere to go,” she said. “You will stay here tonight. Tell Sister Mary Eunice that you’re my guest until the morning. Then do what you must. But know this! I will help the city locate you and place you somewhere. You cannot be alone, Simon Sharp. I won’t have it. Good night.”

  It was no use to protest. When Sister Alphonsus said good night, it was good night. “Good night, Sister. Sleep well.”

  “No chance of that. Please tell the death watchers to come back in.”

  “Yes, Sister.” He opened the door to leave. “Sister?”

  “Yes, Simon?”

  “Don’t die, okay?”

  He closed the door behind him before she could answer.

  SISTER MARY EUNICE led him to a small guest room that overlooked Seward Park.

  “I know how much you like to read,” she said and handed him a book. A romance novel. “It’s the only new book we’ve had in months! Our library hasn’t been the same since you left.” She winked at him.

  “Thanks, Sister.”

  “I’ll bring you some food. Or you could join us for dinner if you’d like.”

  “I’d like to eat in here, please.” Sister Mary Eunice knew all about Simon’s troubles with Brad. She smiled, nodded and left quietly.

  Simon lay down on the cot and stared at the ceiling. The Sisters were kind at St. Mary’s. It would be so easy to stay. He’d have to deal with Brad and the gang again, but he’d have a dependable bed and what passed for food.

  But Simon didn’t belong there. In his heart he believed that if he stayed at St. Mary’s, then he’d been orphaned by a myth. If he stayed, then King Arthur won . If he stayed then that meant he couldn’t have the family he wanted. He needed to find a family himself. On his terms. Not on St. Mary’s terms.

  First, he had to get through the rest of the day, though. He assumed (incorrectly) that he could avoid any more disasters if he just hid in bed.

  It was 6pm. At 11pm that night, Simon’s life would change forever.

  4

  Simon’s eyelids drooped. The book that he held over his face slipped onto his chin, so he knew it was time to mark the page and bid farewell to another choice day.

  He happened to glance out the window. Maybe it was a trick of the light or a spell of the dark, but what Simon saw next made him want to hide under the sheets.

  In Seward Park, a giant head poked through the high branches of an ancient oak tree. A set of eyes under a bushy mop of hair glanced through the leaves, spotted Simon ogling back, and ducked away quickly.

  Simon blinked hard, rubbed his face, and looked again. Whatever it was, it was gone. Maybe it was his imagination.

  Then he saw the trees’ branches swaying back and forth.

  “Just the wind,” he told himself. But if Simon had learned one thing from life it was to assume nothing. He forced
the window open and stuck his hand outside.

  Not even the slightest breeze.

  He slipped out of bed, careful not to make a sound, and got dressed.

  Getting outside was easy enough. He’d discovered the maintenance entrance when he’d first arrived at St. Mary’s two years earlier. In fact, he’d often meet Sister Alphonsus on the delivery ramp as she stole a smoke.

  Simon felt the chill air of New York on his face, slipped into the crowd and disappeared like a child of the city.

  AS HE ENTERED the park he noticed something in the air, and it wasn’t the smell of garbage.

  Everything felt off.

  New York is the town that never sleeps, but there were still way too many people for 11pm. The cars were driving too fast. The people were walking too slowly. The dogs were pulling too hard on their leashes. It was all just wrong enough to make Simon stop and study.

  A guy across the street was yelling at someone on his Bluetooth headset about being late for a business dinner, right next to a man in his underwear yelling at the brick wall for breaking his heart.

  Yeah. The Gates of Weird were open.

  The Gates of Weird were what Simon called those days when people acted odd. Odder than usual, that is. They seemed to strike once or twice a season and, when they arrived, you could depend on getting advice you never asked for from strangers, or unexpectedly sharing your private space with a guy grooming his beard with a toothbrush.

  When you live in New York, you get good at spotting trouble. This time it was someone dressed in a dark gray cloak. The creepy guy peered through a hood that hid his face in shadows. He stood near an empty row of benches in Seward Park as if he were guarding them.

  Simon had to pass him to enter the park, but he cut the widest possible path. The stranger shifted to watch him walk by, the pitch-black hole in the hood following his every step. Simon ran up a small hill, and glanced back to make sure he wasn’t being followed. The freak was gone.

  Cautiously, Simon went back to his search for whatever owned those humongous eyes. He walked onto a lawn and took his best guess at where it had stood. He ran his hands over the bark of a tree, not sure what he was supposed to find.

  But he knew it when he saw it.

  Simon realized that he was standing in one of two giant footprints – each about three feet wide. He stumbled back to get a better perspective and tripped over one of the print’s edges.

  He tried to comprehend what he was seeing.

  Someone moved behind him.

  The cloaked creep stood on the lawn nearby, barely lit by a nearby street lamp. Simon’s heart punched against his chest. He froze as the guy slinked toward him and stopped just out of arm’s reach.

  “What do you want?” Simon asked, sounding more confident than he really was. But the figure only stood there. He cocked his head to the right a little bit. “I said, what do you want, weirdo?”

  The figure dropped something on the grass, hesitated for a moment, and then backed away. The dropped object sparkled a warm white in the dim light.

  By the time Simon could pull his eyes away from it, the stranger was gone.

  Simon inched closer to the object on the lawn, expecting someone to jump on him any moment.

  It was a cylinder of steel. Hollow. He picked it up and admired the heft while running his fingers over its beautiful webbed etching. At first, he thought it was covered in a soft fabric but the steel was worn smooth as silk. Simon slipped his hand through the core and realized it was a piece of armor meant for the forearm.

  What was it called again? His dad once made him memorize every part of a suit of armor but he couldn’t remember the name.

  Vambrace. That was it. It was a simple piece but it fit him perfectly, from elbow to wrist. He made a fist. It was comfortable. And it was cool!

  When he could tear his eyes off of it, he turned to the gargantuan footprints again.

  What the hell was going on?

  EVER SINCE HIS parents death, Simon had suffered from a recurring nightmare. It went like this:

  Simon would walk through a field of tall green grass. Everything was beautiful and quiet and warm.

  But a deep dread followed him.

  He admired a mountain range when his dad, pale white, suddenly jumped in his path, grabbed Simon’s wrist and opened his mouth to scream…

  Simon jerked awake. Chilled sweat ran down his back. He rubbed his wrist. It was red and it ached, as if someone had squeezed it. In the dim light of a hazy morning, he dug through his sheets for the vambrace.

  Was the vambrace a dream too?

  No, it was under his pillow where he’d left it.

  HE SLIPPED OUT of St. Mary’s and made his way north, to 84th St. He’d stared at the vambrace for so long that now he was late. He had until noon to get Howie his books. At five bucks a pop he couldn’t afford to screw up.

  “HEY SIMON!” A man called from the bookstore’s delivery bay. It was Sam, the loader. He was the guy who let Simon into the bookstore’s storage room to take his pick of loot. He led Simon to the door while rummaging for his keys.

  “How much Howie cut you in again?” the old man asked.

  “I can’t tell you, Sam. You know that.”

  “HA! I had to try, Simon. All yours. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.”

  Simon quietly peeked around the corner to the rest of the stock room. Best he could tell, it was empty. He skimmed the stacks and found a new Picasso art book. Light but expensive. Perfect. He started stuffing them into his canvas bag until he heard voices on the other side of a door that led to the store.

  He should go. He was late.

  Just one peek. He just wanted to see if they’d changed anything. Maybe they’d finally moved the Young Adult section out of the Kids’ books section.

  He opened the door a crack and spied on the store he’d once called a favorite. Kids sat cross-legged on the carpet, reading. Parents lingered nearby, one eye on a book and the other eye on junior. He spotted a bunch of titles on display that would have excited him when his life wasn’t so messed up.

  An employee in the cooking section spotted him. Simon backed into the darkness. The door closed with a click.

  “Hey!” he heard the seller holler.

  The piles of books all around him seemed to be closing in.

  He dropped his loot and ran.

  A FEW MINUTES earlier, Simon was about to be one hundred dollars richer. Now he had nothing, with no prospects. Howie would definitely never use him again. And he’d forgotten to eat breakfast, thanks to that vambrace hypnotizing him.

  He was hungry. Again.

  An empty coffee cup on top of a trash-can caught his attention. It would take about forty minutes to make ten bucks if Old Melissa was right. She’d been doing it for twenty years, so he supposed she knew what she was talking about.

  “Maybe even faster since you’re a kid,” she’d said.

  $6.78 for Joe’s deli ham sandwich. $1.91 for a Snapple. After tax.

  He’d just do it until he had $8.69.

  Simon cleaned out the empty coffee cup with his shirt and sat on the pavement, head down.

  AFTER IT WAS over, Simon walked back downtown. He could usually find escape in the amazing faces of his fellow New Yorkers. But this time, he didn’t make eye contact with anyone.

  He sat on a curb across from St. Mary’s to eat his food. He stared at the entrance, and he thought.

  He could find another gig. He had some other irons in the fire. Maybe Mrs. Lee would let him deliver some laundry. But first, he wanted to see Sister Alphonsus. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was time to give in. He was scared, alone and would be hungry again in the next few hours. He could do a shelter, as usual. But...

  He walked up the steps.

  “I’d like to see Sister Alphonsus, please,” Simon told the guard he’d put the slip on the day before.

  “She’s dead, man,” Bob said.

  Simon pushed past him and ran down the hall as fa
st as he could. He couldn’t feel her.

  Her door was open. He walked in. The room was empty.

  “Well, look who came to visit, guys,” someone grunted from behind him.

  Simon turned.

  Brad was surrounded by his posse, orphan boys who he’d handpicked from the halfway house to follow his orders. As a lone bully Brad would have been formidable. But with a gang of lonely kids who just wanted to belong somewhere, he was downright dangerous.

  “Dad will be happy to see you, Slimeon. He told me the city’s looking for you. What, your fosters couldn’t stand you either?”

  They closed in.

  “The old hag is gone,” Brad said. “So Dad’s gonna be running this place now. Cool, right?”

  Simon was trapped in St. Mary’s. Again.

  5

  Sister Alphonsus’ memorial was so crowded that the church had to keep the doors open. The mourners on the cold sidewalk waited for the eulogies. But there weren’t any. Thanks to Digby.

  The round man, whose face had no idea how to smile, walked to the front of the packed room with his special, waddling gait and placed a single sheet of paper on the podium. He stepped onto a well concealed stool and glanced up at the audience in a way that made everyone feel like they were in trouble.

  “On this sad, sad day it’s important for me, as temporary Head, to review the updated rules of St. Mary’s Soul Gates,” he said.

  He covered everything from a new start time for classes (earlier) to a more rigorous bathroom cleaning rotation (to “build character”). He closed the service by telling the children to get to class.

  The adults, all of whom were twenty steps from going back to their normal lives, were mortified by the cold-hearted speech, but not so mortified that they did anything about it. Most of them couldn’t manage eye contact with the kids.

  Simon waited for his two escorts to lead him out of the room. Bob the guard seemed to enjoy the job a little bit too much, occasionally shoving Simon as if he were a prisoner. He certainly felt like one. Mr. Digby had locked down St. Mary’s tight in response to Simon’s five escape attempts over the previous two days.