by Sergio Gomez
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said. “I was wondering where the heck he’d come from.”
Jack accepted Lucas back from his dad, the weight of it more comfortable than it had been last night. “Well, how did you think he got back in here, Dad?”
“I didn’t know,” Scott joked. “I thought maybe he walked in.”
They both laughed at this. In his mind, Jack could hear Lucas laughing along with them.
After breakfast, Jack told his dad he was going to meet the other kids at the lake and he was taking Lucas with him.
A lie, because he was going there by himself.
The force that had guided him down the staircase guided him back to Lake Myers. Without it behind him, he probably would have gotten lost considering he didn’t know his way about the trails.
There was no stopping the guiding force, though. It was like the bike was in control, not him. The pedals making his legs work, the handlebar steering his arm in the direction to point the tires the right way.
The force took him on a familiar path—the same one they’d ridden through at the end of their trip down the lake. Up ahead was the fork where Gina and Tommy Marino had split from the group to do whatever they’d done.
The handlebar moved underneath Jack’s hand, pointing him toward the right path.
Okay, guess that’s the way we’re going.
The bike went down the path, and up ahead he saw a short underpass. Privacy.
That’s what Tommy and Gina had come down here for.
A jealous bone jerked in his body.
The bike continued, but as he drew in closer to the tunnel his pace began to slow.
He knew he wasn’t going to find out what Tommy and Gina had actually been doing down here by themselves, but he was going to find out what the guiding force wanted.
It was like there were two wants in him now; what Jack Roberts wanted and what the guiding force wanted, and right now one was more important.
Jack stopped in the shadowed part of the tunnel and got off his bike. Lucas had been situated on the front of his handlebars, and he’d been riding one-handed with his other hand in the hole in Lucas’s back. The dummy had slipped and moved around on the ride over, but holding him hadn’t been too bad.
Jack hauled him off the handle bars now, and let the guiding force take control of him again as he walked to the graffiti on the left wall of the tunnel.
The graffiti was of a skull wearing a pirate hat with a gold tooth in its mouth. There were golden cutlasses crisscrossing underneath the big skull, spray painted with the same gold as the tooth.
Jack read the message written underneath the skull: THE ONLY TREASURE IN LIFE IS DEATH.
“Funny seeing you here.”
The voice echoed off the tunnel walls. He hadn’t heard her approaching because he’d been so intent on the graffiti.
Jack whirled around to see Gina only a few feet away from him on her bike.
“What?” he said. Though he’d heard her, he wasn’t sure he knew what she meant.
“This place—that graffiti. It called you, too?”
Jack nodded. “Called… I guess that’s a way of putting it.”
“I woke up thinking about it this morning. Hadn’t stopped thinking about it since Marino showed it to me yesterday.”
Gina got off her bike and kicked out the kickstand, then stood next to Jack.
“Did you have to bring Lucas?” she asked, regarding the dummy in his arms.
Jack thought about it. “Yes. I did.”
Looking up at the graffiti, she asked, “What do you think?”
“About what?”
“What it says. What it means.”
Jack gulped. Tommy probably said something to her—something cool—and she was going to compare whose was better. “I’m not really sure.”
“Oh, come on,” she said, bumping her shoulder into his, “you have to think it means something.”
“Do you know who wrote it?” Jack asked.
Gina shook her head.
“My guess would be…” He turned the thought and words around in his mind, trying to find the right way to say what he was thinking aloud without sounding stupid. “Whoever wrote it was sad and didn’t want to live anymore.”
He braced himself to hear her laugh at him. But she didn’t. Instead, there was a pause of silence between them, and in the cover of the tunnel it was deafening.
“I was thinking the same thing. I think maybe…” She stopped, and shook her head.
“Go ahead, say it.”
“Don’t laugh at me.”
“I won’t,” Jack promised. “I don’t want you to twist my arm off.”
“Alright,” she giggled. “I think maybe the person who wrote this message is calling us.”
“Calling us?”
“From beyond the grave.” She swallowed. “There’s something here. I felt it when I was here with Tommy, too.”
“Um.” Jack had no idea what to say to that.
“Like another presence. Waiting for us.”
“What? Did you see something?”
Gina looked at him. “No, Jack. I feel something in this tunnel. But I also feel like this is the wrong time. And there’s something missing.”
“Like what?”
Gina walked to the wall and put her hand on the graffiti. The stone was cold and hard and grimy. “I don’t know, but I feel this presence stronger now than when it was just me and Marino.”
Her eyes darted to the dummy Jack was carrying.
“What?” he said.
“This is going to sound stupid, but I think there’s something here trying to send us a message, and it’s using that dummy to send us a signal.” Gina locked eyes with Jack. “Want to try something?”
He didn’t want to do anything now. In fact, he’d regretted coming here at all. This was spooking him, but he also didn’t want to come off like a chicken in front of her, so he nodded.
“Let’s go get Twist. Then maybe Tommy and Vic, too,” she said.
The excitement in her voice caught his attention, and suddenly he wanted to do whatever she wanted to.
Gina started for her bike, and Jack did the same.
Each time the machine coughed up a ball, Tommy felt a sense of relief. The kicks were in the seconds between the ball coming at him and him swinging the bat with all of his might. Accuracy and form be damned.
This one is for these stupid feelings, he thought, cracking the ball coming at him as hard as he could.
That one was a good one, hit the bat right in its sweet spot and drove the ball straight back against the chain link fence. The entire thing rattled as the ball struck it.
“Tommy!” A shriek pierced his ears over the sound of the machine’s thwack as it launched another baseball at him.
“Huh?” He whirled around to see who it was. The ball sailed past him, strike one.
It was Homeschool and City Boy.
What the crap?
“Yo, Homeschool,” Tommy said back to her.
She pointed behind him, and City Boy’s mouth turned into a big O. “Tommy, look out!”
Tommy spun back around and saw a baseball hurtling toward him. The ball was arcing through the air, its trajectory aiming for his gonads. Tommy jumped back, just in time to get out of the way.
Strike two.
He sighed in relief. That time they really would’ve seen him get hit in the gonads if he hadn’t been quick enough.
The ball struck the ground and bounced before coming to a rolling stop against the cage.
“Whew,” Tommy said, hitting the red button on the device hanging off the cage to stop the machine.
“Talk about bad timing, Homeschool,” Tommy said, taking his helmet off.
Gina and Jack were laughing. The Marino family jewels seemed to have been the butt of many jokes the last two days.
Gina composed herself, then said, “Tommy, we gotta talk.”
Tommy glanced over at Jack. If it was about
the stuff that happened at the tunnel yesterday, he didn’t understand why the City Boy was with her. “’Bout what?”
“The tunnel—” Gina saw him glance at Jack again and his face twist into a weird expression. “The graffiti on the wall, I mean.”
“Oh,” Tommy said, as if that explained everything. He swung his bat over his shoulder, and turned over to the machine that launched the balls. “I had ten more balls to go, but I’ll call it a day. You two owe me five bucks.”
“Shut up, bonehead. This is serious,” Gina said.
“Fine. Meet you out back?”
“Yeah,” Gina replied.
They both headed to the back of the arcade building while Tommy gathered his belongings.
“This better be good,” Tommy said. He was only joking, but a part of him meant it. He wanted to get paid back for those ten extra baseballs somehow. If not from them, then maybe Lou would help out.
Gina was leaning against the wall, her left foot tapping up and down as if they’d been waiting long—and in some way, they had been. Jack was standing next to her, off the wall, but a little too close for Tommy’s comfort.
Considering what happened between him and Gina yesterday and all.
The kids had settled on the back of the arcade building because it was a solitary spot. The only company they had back here were the birds that pecked at the top of the trash bags piled up in the dumpster and the ones perched up along the ledge of the building, crapping all over the asphalt.
“I think you know what it’s about,” Gina said.
Her tone was accusatory, and Tommy wasn’t expecting it, so it stopped him in his tracks. “Whoa, I have no idea what you’re getting at.”
“There was something else in the tunnel with us, Tommy. When we were looking at the graffiti. You had to have felt it, too.”
He shook his head. “Have no idea what you’re talking about, Homeschool.”
Gina turned to Jack, to see if he would back her up. Jack nodded.
“We just came back from there,” he told him.
The jealousy bloomed to its full extent in Tommy’s heart. He wished he was back in the cage, hitting those balls as hard as he could. “What?”
“Nothing like that happened, Tommy,” Gina said, putting her hands out as if she’d have to push him back at any moment.
Tommy took a breath, and stuffed all that sour emotion back down inside of him. “Oh. Well, what the heck were you guys doing there then?”
Gina looked at Jack to take over again. Maybe it’d be better coming from someone Tommy didn’t know very well.
Jack had left Lucas back at the tunnel—again, the presence seemed to tell him it was right—even though that would have helped to convince him at this point, but what mattered more was the guidance of the force, and it’d told him to leave the doll where it was.
“You know Mr. Gibson, the old man that makes toys?”
“Yeah? What about him?” Tommy said.
“He brought us this dummy he made last night. Told us to keep it for a while.”
“Okay…And?” Tommy was even more confused now.
“Anyway, this morning I woke up…and the dummy, or something coming from the dummy…a force, I guess you can call it, told me to go to the tunnel. The one you and Gina went into yesterday.”
“Where the graffiti is,” Gina added.
Tommy felt a pang of jealousy again. “Yeah, I know the spot—I’m the one that showed it to you, Homeschool.”
“Just sayin’.”
“Go on, I’m still not getting it.”
“Well,” Jack said, “I took the dummy with me. Once we got there…” Jack looked at Gina. She gave him a slight nod. “We both felt like there was another presence in the tunnel with us.”
Tommy looked at them, waiting for the punchline. “Are you guys trying to get me back for that story? I told you I just made that up.”
Gina shook her head. She got off the wall and put her hands on Tommy’s cheeks. They were cold. Tommy wasn’t sure if it was from having them against the concrete wall or from fear.
“Tommy,” she said, staring right into his eyes, “we aren’t joking. We both showed up at the tunnel because of this presence. This force. I didn’t know Jack was going. He didn’t know I was. We just both knew we had to go to that spot. Shit, Tommy, Jack’s never even been there before.”
“Okay, okay, let’s say I believe you two.” He pushed her hands away. “What do you guys want from me?”
“What do you know about that graffiti? Who did it?”
He shrugged. “There are a lot of rumors about the graffiti—the tunnel specifically—but there’s only one I buy.”
Gina looked over her shoulder at Jack, then turned back to Tommy. “Tell us.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “But let’s go and get the others first.”
“Why?”
Tommy shook his head. “You’ll understand after you hear the story, but the others are going to have to be there, too. I don’t want to repeat it.”
Tommy moved the sleeve of his leather jacket to get a look at his watch. “Get your bikes, and we’ll go get Twist from his house. He knows Vic’s phone number, right?”
“Yeah,”
Gina said. “He can call Victor and have him come over.”
Tommy nodded. “Alright, sounds like a plan.”
Gina and Jack started walking back for their bicycles. Tommy had his motorbike out front, but he hung back to watch Homeschool and City Boy.
The afternoon was sunny, but the angle of the building made a shadow that put Tommy in shade.
It was like talking to them had opened something up inside of Tommy. He realized they were right. There was indeed something funny in the air that hadn’t been there yesterday. Something was going on in Dutch County, alright.
Something was going on between those too, also. Something that swelled the balloon of jealousy in his chest again. He watched them round the arcade building.
“Don’t try anything funny, Slick.” He said as they disappeared from his sight.
PART THREE
THE TOME OF EVIL
Chapter 1
Five pounds of pork chops.
Four pounds of potatoes.
Three whole chickens.
That was the easiest way for Twist to remember the shopping list Big Bob had for him.
It was better to count backward, because that meant he got what they needed the most at the top of the list.
He kept repeating the list to himself over and over in his head. Big Bob had been pissed about the leaves yesterday, and he knew a second mishap in a row would get him worse than a couple of slaps.
Twist got everything, proud of himself at doing a good job, and started back. The walk from the butcher shop back home was only fifteen minutes if you moved like you had somewhere to be, but with the plastic bags weighing him down the walk seemed double that. The way back always did.
There was the weight of the meat and potatoes, but also the dread that maybe he forgot something on the list.
Sure, he had an actual checklist in his pocket, and he’d ticked off the three items. But what if Mom forgot to write something down?
Big Bob would blame him, no questions asked.
It’d happened in the past, it would happen again. Maybe once Twist was old enough to defend himself the cycle would end, but he wasn’t yet, so the thought wasn’t important.
He put these thoughts to the side and went back to checking off the list in his head.
Five pounds of pork chops.
Four pounds of potatoes.
Three whole chickens…
As usual, Jamie’s pencil-necked little brother was walking by himself. Only this time it was in the middle of broad daylight on Vinewood that Jarod spotted him. Just the same, he was going to take out his frustration on Twist, until that asshole Jamie came back.
He carried bags that seemed to be pulling him off balance with each step. They were brown paper bags inside o
f plastic ones with the meat cleaver logo of the butcher shop.
“Yo, check it out guys.” Jarod turned the music down in the car.
He glanced into the rearview mirror and saw Blake and Shelly were still making out. Poochie was the only one who’d noticed the decrease in volume of Limp Bizkit over the car speakers.
Poochie leaned forward in the passenger seat with a big smile on his face that showed off his green braces. “Looky, looky. Jamie’s brother.”
At the mention of Jamie’s name, Blake pulled away from Shelly and leaned forward, almost shoulder-to-shoulder with Poochie. “What? Jamie’s back—?”
He saw the kid, and was disappointed. It wasn’t Jamie, just his little brother. Blake had been waiting almost as much as Jarod to see him give Jamie what was coming to him.
“It’s all right, this twerp will do for now,” Jarod said, glancing at the glove compartment.
No one knew this, but he’d kept a small calendar in there ever since word got back to him that Jamie Harper would be back from the Army. The calendar was marked off with the days until he came back, and today he’d X’d out the last day because it was the day of his retribution.
There was still one more thing he needed to get before confronting Jamie, though, but soon his day dreams of punching him until his knuckles bled would become reality.
And even if Jamie came back tougher than before and managed to beat him (again)… Well, that’s where that one last piece of the puzzle would come in.
Jarod snapped back to reality and eased the Ford over to the curb, rolling up to Jamie’s little brother.
Twist had heard the car coming from way back, because Jarod’s Ford was a rickety piece of crap. It would’ve been impossible for Jarod and his goons to sneak up on anyone unless they were totally deaf.
“Hey retard,” Jarod hollered out at him. “What’s in the bag?”
“Your mom’s tits,” Twist yelled back.
Jarod’s goons started to laugh.
Shit. That was a good one. He admitted to himself, and he didn’t have a comeback for it.
“Hey, you guys want to have a cookout tonight?” Jarod asked them once they’d piped down.