David: Savakerrva, Book 1

by L. Brown

  “But what if it didn’t, I mean, ‘Redhawk’? How cool is that! You could be Apache or Crow or hey, maybe they had to change your name, maybe you were in witness protection!”

  “At birth?”

  “Sure, why not, maybe your mom was a mole in a mob! But you know,” Ryan continued, now looking farther down, “if you were this guy, you wouldn’t just be another Garth from Detroit, you’d be David Redhawk from Marquette, that town in the Upper Peninsula, the U.P. You could be an outlander, bro’, maybe you’re a Yooper!”

  Thoughts all scattered, nothing making sense, Garth never heard the fade, the song ending above.

  “And look,” resumed Ryan, “your mother’s name is ‘Anastasia’ and your father—?”

  Garth leaned closer in. “Father — unknown?’”

  Ryan wrestled with that, tried to understand. “But how could your Mom not know your Dad’s name, do women just forget?”

  Garth exhaled, blew a frustrated breath. “Whatever, we’re wasting our time, let’s—”

  “Wait, what’s this? What kind of middle name is that?”

  Following Ryan’s point, Garth eyed a word never before spoken or heard. “Sava-kerrva?”

  Brows furrowed at the sound, the odd moniker confused.

  “Huh,” grunted Ryan. “Is that some Indian name?”

  “Doesn’t matter, it’s not mine,” said Garth. “Come on, we’re done.”

  “No-no, wait, what’s this?” And lifting the certificate to expose the next page, Ryan revealed a faded pink form. “That’s weird, it’s a bill, some kind of receipt from — ‘Willie’s Willys’?”

  Veering between indifferent and intrigued, Garth skimmed a receipt embossed with a 1955 Willy’s delivery truck and inked with a note: ‘22 lbs received/delivered to Sheriff. No charge.’

  But before he could digest it, mull what it meant, the ceiling creaked from movement, someone in the kitchen above. Someone, by the sound, adding ice to a glass.

  “Miss Kang,” whispered Ryan. “She’s going to watch House!”

  Already moving, Garth closed up the file. But when he lifted it back to the drawer, the old cardboard split, and as time stopped a moment, every paper dumped to the floor.

  Neither spoke, their eyes said it all, and with a blur of hands, they scooped and stacked.

  “Hurry!” croaked Ryan. “We can’t be caught!”

  Garth agreed, but instead of scooping, he found himself staring, peering at an old newspaper. An odd thing to stow in an adoption file, but odder still, thought Garth, was the headline: ‘Young Mother Murdered, Hunter Tells Odd Tale.’

  “Garth!” scolded Ryan, but though his bro’ was beside him, he was also somewhere else.

  “Night of December twenty-third—” Reading fast, Garth mumbled the facts. “Was hunting alone when he noticed a dark haze or very low cloud… followed it to his field… then saw a woman in the snow and a man who seemed… to glow?”

  Now Ryan paused, waited for more.

  “Woman identified as local veterinarian Ana Redhawk, mother of a nine-month-old—?” Trying to calculate if his March birthday made him a match for this December crime, Garth wondered if three from twelve made nine. But numbers blurred, he couldn’t think, so he skimmed the next few lines. “And saw her stabbed… stabbed twice… with a long, crooked stick.”

  A strange detail, that. Stranger still, the mention of the stick shouldn’t have mattered, had no reason to disturb, yet somehow, it did. Anxiety rising, Garth read to the end.

  “No description available, not yet released… but the hunter made the following—?” But as he turned the page, as old newsprint crackled and Ryan’s light flashed the newspaper sketch, Garth’s eyes lit with bewildering glow.

  “That—?” Addled and rattled, the mirror image of Garth, Ryan tried to speak. “That’s—?”

  Seemingly ripped from Garth’s book of Dreams, the hunter’s sketch depicted a faceless being draped in chains.

  “Time!” shouted Miss Kang from the first floor above. “Everyone in bed, I’ll be on the couch!” Creaks and thumps marking her overhead track, the Enforcer of Rules opened the basement door.

  “Hurry!” rasped Ryan, but though he grabbed the newspaper, Garth held fast.

  “Somebody down here?” asked Miss Kang, her feet now thumping the steps. “Well, somebody was, who left on the light!”

  Succumbing to panic, Ryan switched off his flashlight.

  “Hey!” shouted Miss Kang, her descent abruptly stopped. “Who’s down here, what’s going on!”

  Ryan always answered, but he now clenched tight. West Point or Harvard Law would likely ask about a felony trespass; why he, a fourth grader, was once tried as an adult, so slopping the file back into its drawer, he then slammed it shut it with the bare metal screech.

  Which startled Miss Kang, sparked a continued descent. “What — who’s playing with the saw!”

  Ryan grabbed Garth’s arm and pulled. But Garth just sat there, gaped at the sketch.

  “Answer me!” demanded Miss Kang. Descending fast and seconds away, she impelled Ryan to leverage every one of his sixty-three pounds and drag Garth from the vault.

  “Well, there’s no hiding now,” said Miss Kang. “I tell Mr. Jack!” Reaching the basement, she clicked on the lights, but as she turned with her tall drink glass, she stared perplexed at what she beheld, at Garth reading a newspaper while Ryan wrestled the forbidden, still-open door.

  “He’s real?” Garth asked, showing the sketch.

  Apparently shocked, Miss Kang went mute, just glanced between the sketch and Garth.

  “Aardgarth!” yelled Zack. An unexpected blast from above, it made Miss Kang lose her grip and drop her glass, and when twenty ounces of Long Island iced tea shattered and splashed, the breakage triggered, in Garth, an explosive compulsion to go, to escape the Wraith of his dreams now clenched in his hand.

  “You down here?” barked Zack. “You hiding with the mice?” But as Zack clattered down, Garth charged up.

  “Hey!” Zack roared, blocking the way. But not stopping or slowing, Garth blew right past.

  “What — my book, Aardgarth, where’s my Zinn!”

  Aware of nothing, Garth shot past Niqua and Kricket, then Lana and Marco and Miss Kang’s cat, and after whipping open the door, he fled into night, into a swirling, leaf-sweeping wind.

  Elsewhere in Detroit, Father Nkomo stirred a steaming pot. His day nearly done, he covered his yawn, then ladled stew into a bowl and set it on a tray. And then, he added a roll.

  “Make it two?” Fiftyish with stubble, a man with a ‘Live Better, Work Union’ button pinned to his Pontiac cap held an empty tray. “Now, I know man don’t live by bread alone,” said Pontiac. “But it helps, Father. It does surely help.”

  Nkomo eyed the Pontiac man, then glanced at the bread basket sign: “One Roll Each!” Then looking up, the priest surveyed the church basement line. Most middle-aged, some aging fast, a hundred cheerless faces stretched from the cafeteria counter to the door.

  A ring tone interrupted, an annoyance quite close.

  “Nope,” said Pontiac, now checking his phone. “Not mine, must be yours.”

  Nkomo pulled out his phone. “Hello?” he answered, but as he spoke, he tossed a second roll onto Pontiac’s tray. “I’m sorry,” the priest said to his caller, now nodding Pontiac on. “But I didn’t quite hear, it’s who?”

  “Me!” shouted Garth, gripping a payphone as if it were life. “Only maybe I’m not, because I found my file and I saw it, Father, I saw the sketch! So, is that what you meant when you asked about my file, have you seen it, too? Is my name David?”

  “David?” repeated Nkomo, still trying to hear. “David who, Debrowski?”

  “It’s Garth, it’s me! But I just saw my file—”

  “Garth?”

  “And I want the truth, we have to talk!”

  “Talk? Of course, but we’re still serving food. Can I call you back?”

  “No!” Gart
h hollered. “The sketch, that thing I dream is real!”

  “Real? What’s real?”

  A meaty fist interrupted, banged the basket of rolls.

  “Two!” shouted a man in a Saturn-logo shirt. “The rule is one—” He pointed to the Pontiac man. “And he got two, he got another bun!”

  “Father, please!” Garth begged. “Are you at school?”

  “No, I—” Still holding his phone, Nkomo leaped the counter and wedged between two dinner trays, the angry chasm between Pontiac and Saturn. Hungry for bread, but craving a brawl, they squeezed Nkomo front to back.

  “Listen, Garth,” Nkomo began, “I’m near downtown, Saint Leo’s church. Can you get here, get a ride, meet me outside?”

  But the phone stayed quiet, Garth didn’t respond. Couldn’t respond, because the boy from the Group Home now raced toward downtown, toward the Renaissance Center towers and skyscraper heights and — circling high up, helicopter position lights.

  Sergeant Hruska rubbed his eyes. Lieutenant Kyce stretched his legs. Not sleepy, just fatigued, the tactical flight officer and pilot of the Michigan State Police patrolled Detroit a thousand feet up, walked the beat through their helicopter FLIR. An infra-red display resolving objects by heat, it reminded, both agreed, of seeing the world through the eyes of a ghost.

  Lifting his gaze to look outside, Hruska marveled again at the moonlit downtown, how even the Detroit River seemed a rapture of glint. A rapture, he noted, now smeared by a smoky haze, some curious cirrus shaped — like a Y?

  “Quiet, huh,” Lt Kyce remarked. Sitting to Hruska’s left, the pilot eyed the buildings and streets and, just east of downtown, the dark swath of vacant lots, old Poletown’s shallow grave. “Must be the calm before Devil’s Night, let’s enjoy it while it lasts.”

  Hruska nodded, then looked back at the river. But saw only waves, the haze was gone.

  Hate to run hate to run, what’s happening!

  Careening through leafy whirlwinds, Garth cut across Poletown’s untraveled streets. Next came the freeways, running the underpass of the Chrysler, then the M-10, then finally up ahead, he saw them, the twin spires of St Leo’s church. He needed to speak, excise the amazements sprung from his file, and most of all, understand how, exactly, the haunt of his dreams matched an old hunter’s sketch. Coincidence? And if not, then what, did this Wraith in chains actually exist?

  Wheezing on iffy legs, Garth staggered up St Leo’s steps.

  “It’s over, kid,” came a voice from the dark. “Closed up ten minutes ago, they’re done.”

  Peering into the shadows, Garth discerned a man with a beer. “I—” Garth coughed, tried to catch a breath. “Is Nkomo here?”

  “Who?”

  “A priest, he—”

  “The tall guy, black? Talks kinda’ weird?”

  “Uh—?”

  “He’s here,” the beer drinker huffed. “The good shepherd just threw me out. But I just wanted my share, man, just wanted another bun!” Tossing his bottle, now storming off, the man in the Saturn shirt faded from sight.

  But as Garth stood there, as he caught his breath on the St Leo steps, something new distracted. And why it did, he wasn’t yet sure, but as he looked toward an urban campus, the university called Wayne State, he discerned a strange veil of cirrus, a dark, coiling haze. Nothing startling, not a phenomenon to empty a dorm — was it just weather, an early ice fog? — but as neighborhood dogs began to bark, the hunter’s story came back, what he saw in the woods. But instead of Upper Michigan, this haze was here; and drifted, into the teeth of the wind, toward Garth.

  “Matilda!” shocked a voice behind.

  All twisted up, now twisting around, Garth faced an old man in a hat.

  “Hah, I don’t believe it! You eat here, too?” he asked.

  The sight of the old man hit a chord, resonated with a ride on the bus, yet Garth turned back toward the school, to the slowly approaching haze. Which now, somehow, seemed to affect the campus below, the security lights that flickered, then increased their light.

  “Good stew,” the old man remarked, picking his teeth. “Yes, I’d even call it great. But me? Honestly, I just come for the buns.”

  Confused by the campus lights, Garth watched them surge in brilliance, then spark and go dark.

  “Say, listen, I’m glad you’re here,” the old man continued. “Remember this morning, our talk?”

  Garth remembered nothing, because as the haze approached, so did the barks, the braying of dogs fleeing his way. Scared by it, by what was coming and some impossible past, he slowly stepped back.

  “Those buttons I used to install, the gears? Well—” The old man followed. “I remembered it wrong, you believe it? I know, I’m getting old. And maybe it doesn’t matter to you, but to me? Oh, it tortured all day, so just so you know, we didn’t put ‘Reverse’ on the bottom, we—?”

  Barking and yelping, wild dogs charged past, and that was enough, that drove Garth to enter a place never before considered or seen, and reaching back, he pushed on the door of the church.

  Locked.

  “That would have been upside down,” shouted the old man. “So just to be clear—?”

  Lit with fright, exhausted but needing to move, Garth leapt off the steps and fled with the dogs.

  “It was on top, Matilda! Reverse on top!” the old man yelled, though if the boy from the bus heard or cared, he just couldn’t tell. But what he did know, what the man in the hat somehow understood, was that whoever the boy was, he’d never see him again.

  “Garth?” Untying his apron and rounding the church, Father Nkomo checked the grounds.

  “Looking for the boy, Father?”

  Nkomo eyed the old man. “Yes, actually, I’m looking for a student of mine. He was here?”

  “Somebody was,” the old man shrugged. “But though I didn’t catch his name — tell me, does he like to run?”

  Ditched by the dogs and lost on a road, ready to vomit but lacking the breath, Garth ran. Or imagined he did, but as he weaved through unoccupied lots skirting downtown, he devolved into stagger, an upright crawl. He needed a lift, some errant bus or lost Uber car, but he was alone, this end of Detroit rarely saw life. At least human life, was it still there?

  Garth looked back. But if the haze still followed, he saw only night, an asphalt sky devoid of threat. Panic receding, he finally stopped, gulped some wind and savored a breath. Maybe one breath, perhaps even two, but when he looked again, the roil reappeared. Still coming, it angled toward Garth without fury or rush, a predacious haze content to stalk.

  Off again at a dead-legged run, Garth yearned for help, for someone in a car and hopefully armed. Police, in a word, but though he saw none, he recalled a place he knew was patrolled. Somewhere to the right, he sensed, so rounding a corner, that’s where he looked.

  Nothing, of course, all he saw was more of the same. But when he turned left, when he beheld the shell of a building still gracing Detroit, he sprinted toward its perimeter fence.

  “Trooper Two, Dispatch,” crackled the dispatcher’s voice.

  “Dispatch, Trooper Two, go ahead.” Twelve-hundred feet high, Sergeant Hruska watched a few ghostly forms in his FLIR, beer-drinking revelers leaving a club.

  “Trooper Two, confirm you’re near the U?”

  “That’s confirmed,” answered Hruska. “We’re just over the Majestic.”

  “Roger, ah, campus police reporting multiple security lights out, suspect possible shooter, some guy with a gun. Can you assist?”

  “And there goes our quiet,” sighed Lt Kyce. Then finessing cyclic and collective, he banked toward the Wayne State campus, its patchwork of lights.

  Two miles south, Garth climbed a chain-link fence. Thrashing and kicking, rattling the barrier as much as he could, he shouted with all he had left.

  But nobody answered, no one came, and though he’d climbed this fence before, he’d been caught every time. So where was security, were they inside?

  Clinging
to the fence and lifting his head, Garth surveyed his only hope, eighteen stories of Beaux Arts decay. A long-ago terminus for travelers and trains, Michigan Central Station now stood empty, a black hole of brick from the time of Titanic and the era of steam. Still magnificent, at least from without, yet its lofty columns held only dark.

  “You!” crackled an amplified voice. “Off the fence, or you’re under arrest!”

  Garth exulted, threw up an arm. “Hurry!” he shouted, squinting into the spotlight of an approaching car. “Help me, please, it’s close!”

  Too close, by what Garth saw next, for as the car’s spotlight and headlights flickered and surged and shattered with sparks, the vehicle died, just rolled to a stop under a streetlight’s glare. The security guard scrambled out, but as he assumed an ambush and flailed for his gun, the streetlight exploded as well. Pelted by glass and showered with sparks, the guard now fled, just bolted from the station and the boy on the fence.

  ‘Trooper Two, Dispatch.”

  “Go Dispatch, this is Two,” replied Hruska. Circling over the college, he scanned the campus through his infra-red screen.

  “Okay, ah—” The Dispatcher hesitated. “Might have more of the same, a security guard reports someone’s shooting out lights near Michigan Central Station; should I roll a black and white?”

  “Negative, we got it,” Lt. Kyce grumbled. “Probably just kids.”

  But it wasn’t just kids, and with no one to help and nowhere to go, Garth swung off the fence and raced into Michigan Central Station, his last stop in a night gone berserk. Not sure what to expect, he saw nothing at first, the building’s darkness seemed impervious to light. But as his eyes adjusted, colors emerged, spray-painted letters defaced every wall.

  Yet if he noticed the walls, it was only because he hunted for cover, some crevice to hide. But would that be enough, could he really evade a haze from beyond?

  Rushing headlong and turning his head, Garth banged his knee into a mass of steel. It hurt, of course, but he ignored the pain to consider the source, the dumpster blocking his path. Not ideal, not even close, but could a solid steel tub help him vanish, hide him away? The question nudged, but his exhaustion pushed, so without delay, he grabbed the sides and leapt in.