by Derek Murphy
Turning her head to him, Chloe said, "Forty million dollars’ worth of bearer bonds! We can take them anywhere in the world and cash them in! No questions asked!"
Feeling ill at ease, he said, "As I understand it, things like this have to be declared and accounted for when you transport them. How will you get them past airport security?"
"We won’t be taking them with us. We’ll let your good, old Uncle Sam take care of that for us!"
At his puzzled look, she said, "We’ll mail them to ourselves! I’ve mailed all manner of things around the world without any trouble!"
His mind leapt to the fact that there was a post office just off the airport access road and that today was a weekday, promising that it would be open unless the snowstorm had proven too much even for the postal service. Lifting an eyebrow, he gestured her toward the door and followed as she set out with a whoop.
Back aboard the snowmobile, he drove sedately back to Chloe’s house and drove directly into the little garage without backing in. She hurried ahead of him while he closed the door and followed as quickly as he could. He wasn’t worried about her leaving him; he had the only key to the SUV and there wasn’t an operable vehicle to be had outside of it.
* * *
Turning away from the Qantas desk, Chloe handed him his ticket and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the lips, unmindful of the few people still standing in line to purchase their own tickets. The monitor over the desk showed that their flight was on time and that the condition of the runway was nearly optimal, promising a quick getaway for them. All they had to do was wait the thirty minutes until it was due to take off. Hurrying along the concourse, they went through the screening turnstile and there was a short delay when the metal detector buzzed at Chloe’s piercing. She was escorted to an inner room for a strip search and grinned at him as she disappeared through the door.
Finding a seat near the doorway, he continually glanced at his watch as the search went on; if they didn’t hurry up, they would miss their flight. He wished that he had insisted she remove the ring when they were at her house. She had left the key in Boris’ open safe as a calling card, not that anyone would know it had come from her, but she seemed to believe the occasion called for some sort of flamboyant gesture. Without the key, there was no reason to keep the ring.
At long last, she exited the room with less than ten minutes to spare and they set off for the gate at a jogging rate. Drawing near the gate, Dag slowed and placed a hand on her arm, causing her to frown as she looked at him.
"What’s this? What are you doing, Dag? We’ll miss the flight!"
Removing the claim stub for the package from his pocket, he stuffed it into her purse and held up his ticket.
"The important thing is to get you out of the country. They don’t know me; I’ll be safe. I’ll exchange this ticket for another one at a later time. I want to tell my kids goodbye before I leave. I promise I’ll follow you. It may be a day, it may be a week. I don’t know, but I’ll be there."
Tears came to her eyes as she realized that he had no intention of following her. She clutched at him as he pushed her to the walkway that led to the plane. The steward standing at the entrance gestured for them to hurry, and Dag barely heard his words.
"The flight is leaving in just a few minutes."
"Dag! Don’t do this! Come with me! We could have such fun!"
Shaking his head, he said, "You don’t love me, Chloe. We owe each other our lives, but you’d get tired of me in a short while. I’d rather not take the chance of falling in love with you only to have you kick me out."
Beginning to sob, she said, "I’d never…! Oh, Dag! Please! Come with me! I don’t know how to be alone!"
He kissed her once, tenderly and said, "You won’t be alone long, Chloe. Knowing you, you’ll have someone with you the first night. Don’t you see? You’re not a one-man woman. It’s better this way."
Still sobbing, she let herself be hurried along and the steward began to close the door behind her, shutting off her sight of him. Sighing, Dag turned away and began walking back along the concourse. He stopped once at a trash can and ripped the ticket into small pieces, stuffing them far down among the used, paper coffee cups, candy wrappers and snotty tissue. He had seen a pair of men on the concourse who looked suspiciously like a couple of Boris’ men and while he didn’t know how they had tracked them to the airport, he was determined that they not know which flight Chloe had boarded. If he had boarded the flight with her, the man tailing them would have entered the gate area and ascertained which flight they took. In a few days, they would have received an unwelcome visitor in Sidney. With his anonymity gone, he couldn’t think of anything better to do than what he was doing. He continued on through the concourse until he was past the screening gate and exited the building. As he stepped off the curb near his SUV, he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder as something hard was pressed into his ribs.
A guttural, accented voice said, "We’d like to talk to you about a briefcase."
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The Keystone
Scrambling over the broken stones of what should have been his home, Ron cursed, gasping at the pain of his broken leg. Various cuts and scrapes either oozed or dripped blood here and there and he wondered if they were the full extent of his injuries. Bruised muscles cried out at every movement and it felt as though he had a broken rib or two when he took a deep breath. All things considered, if that was all he came out of this with, he would be lucky; it wasn’t every day you had a castle fall down around your ears.
His new home wasn’t supposed to be a castle. At least he never planned on it. He believed it was all the fault of that stone that had been kicked around in his grandparents’ attic all his life. Granddad had said it was a stone from the castle his forbears had lived in during the middle ages. At least Granddad had called it a castle. Ron had seen an old sketch of it in his gr-gr-gr-whatever’s journal, and it had been simply a single, Norman tower, much like the peel towers built along the Scottish border; only in Ireland. He wished he had listened to his Granddad’s warning about the stone.
Lifting his head from the stone he rested on, he heard the sound of sirens in the distance and grunted. At least someone from town was coming to investigate the disturbance and hopefully, pull him, and his guests from the rubble. At that thought, he looked around, wild-eyed, and hoped he could find her. "My God!", he thought. "Where is Darla?"
She had been right beside him when the house fell down around them, but where was she now? He turned painfully, leaning a hand on a large stone to steady himself as he looked back the way he had come. It hadn’t been far. No more than ten or fifteen feet. Pushing himself off the stone, he crawled back toward the stones he had pushed off of his legs.
The sirens were still faint and distant when he arrived back at the little cavity in the tumbled stones that had saved his life. Looking across the field in front of the house, he saw no sign of headlights. He tried to lift one of the stones and only managed to roll it partway onto another, where it rocked momentarily until it slid, grating and grinding onto another. Surely, there was another cavity to be found! There had to be one, or Darla would most likely be dead!
He cried, "Darla!"
When there was no answer, he rested his hand on a smaller stone, no larger than his head and felt engraving on the side he touched. In the darkness, he removed a lighter from his pocket and struck it, once, twice, before it caught fire and he held it where he could see the engraved stone. Yes. It was the stone from Granddad’s attic. Striking at it with his hand, he only succeeded in adding another bruise to his already bruised hand. He thought back to earlier in the evening when the stone was set into the middle of the mantel in his office.
* * *
"Now that the house is finished, I guess you and Darla are going to finally get married and have some kids."
Turning from where he had just finished tamping mortar into the cracks around the keystone he had taken from his Grandd
ad’s attic after the old man died, Ron wiped a film of sweat from his forehead and removed his work-gloves. He reached out for the beer resting on top of the mantel and took a deep drink as Darla moved to slide an arm around his waist.
She said, "Harry! You know better than to ask a question like that!"
Pausing for dramatic effect, she said, "Of course, we’re going to get married! Now that he has a house worthy of himself, he can’t wriggle away! As for kids; we’ll have to see. I want to enjoy living with him for a while first!"
As their friends laughed and chided him for being too proud to continue to live in any house built by someone else, Ron felt his ears turning red in embarrassment. It was common knowledge among their friends that he was inordinately proud of being the most prominent housing contractor in the area. He had worked hard to get where he was and when he had finally settled on a house plan, had spared no expense in building the house of his dreams.
He had hired an architect with a reputation for designing homes that would withstand hurricanes, earthquakes, and, it was hoped, even a tornado. The walls were of poly-form concrete construction that was specially braced for durability. The roof was reinforced and covered with specially designed, recycled rubber, roofing tiles that was guaranteed to last a hundred years. The doors and windows were triple-pane, bulletproof glass and he was absolutely sure that nothing in the house would burn except the furnishings, even if someone turned a flamethrower on it. The house had been finished just this week and the only thing that remained to be done was to set this keystone in the mantel as a symbol of his family’s success in America.
It was a strange-looking stone; kind of purplish-grey with streaks of some silver material in it. Ron had considered sending it to a geologist to find out what kind of stone it was, but had decided that it wasn’t really all that important. Stranger still had been the engraving on it. A series of horizontal lines had been carved into the stone with shorter lines rising and depending from them. He had seen pictures of carvings like it in books, and knew the lines were called Ogham Script, but knew nothing else about them.
Harry, the man who had mentioned marriage and kids, said, "I don’t know about you, but since you’re finished with that job; how about getting to those steaks? I’m getting hungry and I know you must be; you’re always hungry!"
Deanna, Harry’s wife, said, "Darla and I slaved over everything else; they better be good!"
Ron’s office manager, Jaime, grabbed her boyfriend’s hand where he sat in one of the leather wingchairs and pulled him up from his seat. Matt’s eyes had been glued to the stone since Ron began setting it in place and now he moved closer to it. He was an art-history major in college with an interest in all things Gaelic. Matt’s mother had been born in Ireland and he felt an affinity for their art. The troubled, questioning look on his face had grown stronger the longer he had studied the stone as Ron worked with it.
Jaime said, "Come on! Let’s go get some food! I’m starved. Just watching Ron work on that thing made me hungry!"
A young woman, Jaime had barely been out of high school when Ron started his company and hired her to run his office for him. She had been his favorite waitress at the diner where he ate lunch and had talked to him about his business every time he came in to eat. For the past three years, she had run his office efficiently and kept his books as well as any accountant could have done. She had balked at doing the taxes for the business, prevailing on him to hire it done by someone who knew the ins and outs of the tax codes.
Matt walked closer to the mantel, his eyes never leaving the stone and stopped just a foot away from it, lifting a hand to lay his fingers in several of the grooved lines.
He said, "Go on without me. I’m going to get a book from the car and look at this a little longer."
Rolling her eyes, Jaime slapped Ron on the arm and said, "You had to go and put that thing up tonight! Now I’ll never be able to drag him away from it until he’s got it deciphered!"
Laughing, they all turned away and made their way to the kitchen and the patio door that let out onto the patio. The flagstones had been shipped from New England and had cost Ron a pretty penny. Smaller stones had been built into a receptacle for the gas grill that had been set into it and Ron stepped out onto the patio, inhaling the scent of the early summer evening. It smelled a little like rain. Looking across the yard, he thought of the expense of having the landscaper he used in his business to turn the ten acres around the house into a park. He sniffed again. There was a tinge of ozone in the atmosphere and an electric feel to everything. Ron couldn’t put his finger on it, but it gave a sense of an impending…something. Shrugging, he thought, "At least the patio is covered."
Darla and the others laughed at something Harry said and he turned from lighting the grill, ready for the platter of steaks that Darla had brought from the kitchen. A flicker of lightning occurred in the sky and he could have sworn that its final resting point had been the top of the house, but there was no thunderclap. If it had been right on top of them, there would have been an instantaneous, deafening crash. Instead, there was simply an increased sense of something about to happen.
As the laughter continued, he forced his forebodings from his mind and began placing the steaks on the grill. Busying himself with nursing the meat to a perfect turn, he forgot about the lightning that didn’t exist and the electric feel of the air. He was about to remove them from the grill when Matt exited the kitchen with a book hanging beside his leg and a dumbfounded expression on his face.
"You better look at this."
Slightly annoyed, Ron finished getting the steaks onto a platter and sipped at his beer before turning to see what Matt found so important. The others were grouped around the young man and he heard Darla say, "Ohh, that’s just somebody’s superstition!"
With the platter in hand, he carried it to the patio table and set it down, leaning toward the others to get a look at what Matt found so interesting. The book he held contained a picture of a stone with the same lines cut into it that his stone had and the picture, even in the book, looked very old.
Matt said, "According to this translation, it’s a curse on the house that contains the stone, as well as on the owner."
Taking the book in one hand, Ron frowned as he looked at the picture more closely and asked, "What is the curse supposed to do?"
Matt’s finger found a line in the text below the picture and he said, "The house is cursed to grow beyond all proportion inside, while staying the same size outside, and all manner of terrible things are supposed to happen inside it."
"What about the curse on the owner? What’s supposed to happen to him?"
"It says here that he is supposed to be so proud of having built his house that he will resist all attempts to tear it down."
Shrugging, Ron asked, "Well? Who wouldn’t? Who wants to have their house torn down around them? This sounds like nonsense."
"It says that the owner will resist everything, even though the house costs him his family and friends. Don’t you see? Even knowing what the house is doing to him, his pride won’t let him stop it."
"Pfft! Like I said, nonsense!"
Matt closed the book, looking at the others as though he regretted something, then darted back inside the house, returning in moments with the backpack that held his other books. Grabbing Jaime by the arm, he pulled her to the edge of the patio and onto the grass. She resisted him, pulling her arm loose and stepping back onto the patio.
"Matt! Are you crazy?"
His voice shaking, he said, "I’m not going back inside that house, Jaime! Let’s go! We’ll walk around the house and leave! It’s dangerous to stay here!"
He reached for her arm, gritting his teeth as she pulled back. For a moment, he stood staring at her; the expression on his face making it plain that he was torn as to what to do. Finally, he turned and walked away from the group, quickly reaching the corner of the house and passing out of sight. Jaime looked around at the others, embarrassed and ups
et, but walked to the patio door and stopped before stepping back inside.
Her voice was tentative. "Ron? I’m sorry, Ron!"
With that, she ran into the house to retrieve her purse from the living room, soon turning a corner.
Embarrassed, Deanna said, "Matt sure knows how to break up a party!"
Harry leaned over the platter of steaks, quickly cooling in the early evening air and sniffed.
"I’ll eat his steak if no one else wants it. These smell good!"
Darla and Deanna went back inside and began moving the last of the side dishes out to the table while Ron and Harry opened fresh beers and sat down.
Harry, to change the subject, said, "I’ve decided to buy that parcel of land east of WillowPark. Are you up for building some up-scale townhouses for me?"
Their informal partnership had been lucrative for both of them and Ron, letting himself be pulled from what just happened with Jaime’s boyfriend, shook himself and turned to face his friend fully.
"Of course. What price range did you have in mind?"
"A quarter-mil apiece. At least for the ones nearest the road. The properties at the back of the development will be a half-mil."
Just then, Darla ran back out, stopping with her hands waving aimlessly in the air as though she didn’t know what to do with them.
"I can’t find Deanna!"
Rising, Harry walked back into the house as Ron stood and asked, "What do you mean? She can’t have gotten lost in the house; it’s big, but not that big."
Her voice rising and breaking, she almost wailed, "Well, it’s not now! Ron! Something’s wrong with this house!"
He hurried inside and Darla followed just to the edge of the door, stopping with a hand on it as though reluctant to enter. Ron began trotting as he reached the corner of the kitchen and stopped when he saw what lay before him. A long corridor stretched out ahead with doors letting off of it on either side. It seemed that he could hear stone grinding against stone, followed by the sound of someone breathing as though periodically resting from heavy effort. Faintly, he heard Harry calling for Deanna as though from a great distance.