by Jeff Vrolyks
Chapter Thirty
He drove a ways before stopping at a house with a couple trash bins out for the collector. He got out and opened the lid. It was three-quarters full. He stuffed the white plump bags down farther, making room for what he was going to add. He put Eddie’s duffle bag on the heap, closed the lid.
He got in the car and drove away. He wondered if he could sell the idol. Might be worth something to a museum. But maybe he’d keep it. It had some mystical aspects to it. He’d like to explore that a little more. He hadn’t considered it till now, but when he saw the girl in his peripherals, wasn’t he touching the idol then? Yes, he was putting it in his pocket. That was an interesting thing to consider. And why shouldn’t he see something as such? He had seen the hanged black man and hanged kid when he had touched the thing earlier that day. He took it out of his pocket and examined it in the dark Buick cabin.
“Too cool,” he said.
He didn’t look to the back seat at that moment, might have had a heart attack if he had. What he had earlier struggled to paint from memory staring at the opposing stall in the barn, would be suddenly brought to life.
He set the idol on the seat beside him, turned onto the next street. He cursed aloud when he looked down at the gas-gauge. It was dead on E. Below E, actually. It was damn near resting on the peg. He only lived a few miles from here, but with an empty tank he’d run out. He couldn’t let that happen. He needed a good place to ditch the car, and the shoulder of a busy road wasn’t that place.
A couple blocks ahead was a Veneco station. Luckily he had some cash. He might have saved ten bucks on a cab, but he’d lose half that amount putting a gallon or so of gas in the car. What choice did he have?
He pulled up to the pumps, killed the engine. He walked inside the shop pulling bills out of his pocket. The smallest bill he had was a ten. He gave it to the clerk and said five bucks on pump four. The clerk rolled his eyes a little. Can’t spring for a full ten bucks of gas, huh? Cheap ass.
Michael thought the dude might not have just rolled his eyes if he knew that he and the SacTown Slayer looked an awful lot alike. Identical twins, you could say.
He pumped his gas, didn’t take long. In the short time it took he considered the jade idol, wondered if it possessed other cool traits. Eddie had said it led him to some money. It was hard to believe, but what if it did? He’d be rich! What else might it do? He had said something about how he had a friend through it or from it or something; he couldn’t quite remember what Eddie had said. Maybe Eddie was a little nuts. He had all the time in the world to find out, though, he thought with a grin. He racked the nozzle and rounded the car, got inside, fired up the engine and pulled forward, up to the street. He glanced left and saw a little girl in a white dress, forty of fifty feet away and walking away from him. She made a sharp turn off the sidewalk into a barren field where she disappeared behind a stand of tall bushes. Michael thought nothing of it, turned right onto the street.
Seven or eight minutes later he was parking the Buick a few houses down from his house. He got out, patted his pocket to feel the bulge of the wonderful jade idol. It wasn’t there. His breath caught, heart began pounding. He exhaled with relief when he remembered putting it on the seat beside him. He looked over and saw it wasn’t there.
He’d spend twenty minutes tearing the inside of the Buick apart before giving up. The idol was gone. An image replayed in his mind over and over, and that was of the girl in a white dress walking away from Veneco. A girl with extremely light-colored hair.
His phone rang. Trent. News from Trent.
“God, let her be all right,” Michael said inwardly.