Gabriel’s Watch - Book One: The Scrapman Trilogy (10 page)

Even if I didn’t believe everything that Claire was saying, there was just something spiritually soothing about her presence. Just as she’d rushed me for a hug earlier, I still felt as though I’d never separated from the warmth of that embrace.

As for ghouls and ghosts and goblins—I’d never seen anything firsthand, but had heard a great many intriguing tales. I suppose there’d always been a part of me that had wondered, a part of me that was open to the possibility of certain things not being exactly how they appeared.

But I also found something incredibly burdensome upon such an understanding, as if the very thing you’d expected to set you free only added an extra shackle and its length of chain. For these reasons I chose to stay blissfully indecisive, perched up on the fence between the believers and nonbelievers, until the devil himself came to push me off.

The table looked exactly as I’d remembered it, draped in a thin brown cloth, the edges of which were long enough to brush the tops of my knees, and a thick yellow candle standing off to my left. Claire lit the candle, which sent a number of shadows into an immediate stupor. They flicked and twisted together, as if dancing to some inaudible melody, their stringy bases remaining pinned to the legs of chairs and beneath the various barstools about the diner.

“Let’s begin, shall we?” Claire proceeded to spread an assortment of brown-backed cards across the table, then flipped over the first of many. It displayed a man leaning against a tree. There was a woman to both his left and right. “The Lover’s card,” Claire announced. “Why, Miles, you haven’t perhaps found a woman in the midst of all of this, have you?”

It was obvious that I’d been caught off guard by her question. My lips parted in place of an answer, but one didn’t come—not right then, anyway. Claire smiled, her eyebrows lifting as she did so.

“Define ‘woman’,” I managed to say, trying to bring a bit of my sarcasm-based confidence back to the table.

Claire only shrugged, “Well, if you’re going to be so selfish as to keep me from a little friendly gossip, then I’m obligated to tell you this card doesn’t always refer to
lovers.
It represents a coming choice involving a relationship. But since you remain coy, and are forcing me to guess, then I would say that one of these women represents the everlasting bond you have with your wife and the other—dare I say—is your new lover.”

I did not correct her; instead, I may have blushed slightly.

Little did I know that when I’d turned that gigantic ditch into a home all those years ago, I was also building a bulky and unorthodox extension of myself, like a fresh cerebral compartment in which I would later collect my worst fears, deepest desires, and darkest secrets.

And, in contradiction to the thick and resilient skin that I’d presented to the rest of the world, there was my only weakness, my only soft and ever-so-fragile underbelly, and she who thrived within its walls. With all the wires that had been coursing through it, all the pipes and tubes weaving in and out of each complicated system we’d assembled, the cavern had become a being all its own—living and breathing with Alice at its nice, warm center. And for someone even as sweet as Claire to hint or inquire at the faintest realization of such an existence had stung like the thrust of a hypodermic needle.

“Your silence speaks volumes,” she giggled and flipped over the second card. On it I saw a skeleton holding up a sword in one hand. Its other hand was placed atop the head of a kneeling man. The man appeared to be pleading. The card was marked: Death. “Now, before you get too worried,” she started, “this card hardly ever refers to death in a literal sense. It usually just signifies a coming to an end or a transformation.” She pointed back to The Lovers card. “It’s directly related to the choice you’ll have to make between the two women we discussed.”

As Claire brought up Alice again, this time in a roundabout but matter-of-fact manner, I found myself still bothered by the lackadaisical way in which she chose to do so. I crossed my arms to display my discomfort. If she’d noticed, she didn’t let on.

Claire instead revealed the third card, and as her hand withdrew, I saw a young man merrily on his way to walking right off a cliff, his attention momentarily stolen by a bird in the sky. “It’s The Fool,” she said.

“And, let me guess, that’s me,” I retorted, trying to smile but failing miserably.

“Yes,” Claire agreed. “The Fool himself is clumsy in all his show-full confidence. And, despite his vast potential, he suffers from impossible dreams of grandeur, and his naive misunderstanding of the real world.” She stopped to look up at me.

Our eyes met for just an instant before I lowered mine back to the table and back to my presumed fate, the very fate unfolding in those flimsy pieces of colored cardstock.

“But, do you remember what I said about these cards and how you can’t always take them at face value?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“Well, in this case ... ”

I caught a sudden shuffle of movement off to my right and turned to see three men emerging from behind a curtain on the far wall. The first man was holding a gun as the second was steadily unwrapping a length of rope from his wrist. The last man was harder to see, but judging by the amount of space that he took up, he seemed to be a formidable weapon all by himself.

“In this case,” Claire continued, “there might be an exception.”

I
shot to my feet, but the first man already had his gun on me. “Now don’t go and do anything stupid there, Loverboy,” he snarled.

“Loverboy?”

“That’s right, now keep your hands where I can see ’em.”

The man with the gun stayed about five feet from me as the man with the rope came to pluck the 45 from my waistband. I kept my hands in the air and my eyes on the first man.

“I’m disappointed in you, Claire,” I said without looking at her. “I thought you were someone I could trust.”

“A lot has changed, Miles.” There was no joy in her voice, only a saddened twinge of regret. I’m sure she’d rather I had stayed away after all.

“You’re right, Claire.” I turned to her, but could see only the top of her head. She couldn’t even look at me. “A lot has changed. You don’t know just how right you really are,” I went on, “but when you find out, I hope I’m there to see it.”

The man with the gun was suddenly in my face, jabbing me hard in the chest with his index finger. He was bulky, but still smaller than the last man. His shoulders were set low, like that of a linebacker, and he looked like the kind of guy who used to wander through bars, lifting skirts and pinching bottoms, just to get himself into a bit of trouble.

The squareness of his forehead, and the way his beady eyeballs had sunk into his skull, made me believe in the bleak nature that must have been his intelligence. He was simply big enough to be intimidating.

“Who the hell are you to talk to her like that?” he huffed. “You’re lucky you’re still breathing, Pal. If it weren’t for her we’d a shot you dead before you even walked through the door.”

He then spat something out in Spanish—something I couldn’t understand. And as strange as it was to hear a grown male Caucasian speaking that language, it made me wish I’d paid more attention in school. But, after all, it was my lackluster performance in academics which led to my four year spurt in the military and ultimately to a career in maintenance.

Immediately after those harsh syllables had slipped from the man’s tongue, the guy behind me grunted an acknowledgment, grabbed my wrists, and shoved them into the small of my back. He proceeded to tie them together, working swiftly and with such speed and precision that I was thoroughly bound in just a matter of seconds.

“Whatever it is that you guys are doing here, this is a mistake.” I tried to reason with them. “You should just let me go before this gets a whole lot worse.”

The man’s eyes seemed to sink even deeper. He lifted his lip to bare his teeth in a yellow snarl. I could tell before he even spoke that my words hadn’t had the effect I was hoping for—quite the opposite, actually. I had to think of something slightly more drastic to get through to them.

“Now you’re threatening me?” His breath was just as fierce as the manner in which he chose his dialect. “You’re in no position to make—”

“What happened to your nose?” I interrupted.

“What?” The man’s box-like brow crumpled inward like a car wreck, compressed partly by confusion, but mostly by agitation.

“Your nose, what happened to your nose?” I smirked, only slightly.

“What the hell are you talking—”

I smashed my forehead hard into his face, feeling the nasty crunch-like pop of busting cartilage, as I heard the man yelp in pain and surprise. There was then a sudden flash of bright red light—which signified the end of this particular confrontation. After that, everything went terribly dark.

What happened next isn’t going to make much sense, but bear with me. I found myself drifting out in the middle of some impossible ocean. The waves were lifting and descending steadily around me as I looked up at the glorious night sky above. I could see the mighty brushstroke marking the brilliant edge of our Milky Way Galaxy, as millions of pin-pricked stars helped to illuminate the scene.

I was flat on my back, my body resting on something sturdy and buoyant—a raft made up of logs, strung together with some crude form of twine—and, even though I’d never turned to inspect it, I somehow just knew it was there.

My wife was there also, lying beside me; I could feel her face pressed gently against my neck, and her arm draped over my chest. By the rhythm of her warm breath on my skin, I could tell she was asleep. Curled up to my left, sleeping just the same, was our little girl. I squeezed them both—very solid and very real—beneath the glimmering moon, which hung in its perfect assortment of pastels.

It was a picture I’d seen a thousand times, a page torn from one of my daughter’s favorite storybooks. It was the tale of a boy whom, after running amuck and threatening to devour his own mother, finds a magical passage to a hidden world within his room. There he sails off to live on an island full of wild creatures.

The boy comes to rule the brutes as they grow to love him for the mischievous child that he is. But, despite the fact that he is surrounded by a beastly breed of equal nature, he returns home shortly after discovering that which he’d found to be most important.

It had been one of my daughter’s favorite bedtime stories, and out of some miracle I’d found the three of us on our way to that distant island of wild creatures. It was there that we would be living—happily ever after.

T
his, of course, was not the case. As the reverie began to slip away, and that vivid night sky washed out like a cold drizzle down a storm drain, I found the only waves left were the ones caused by the immensity of my throbbing pulse. It splashed against my temples in a painfully consecutive manner, as though my own head had been busily cleaving itself in two.

I tried to sit up, but this only intensified the pain. Dropping back down, I again found my arms fastened together. This time they’d been wrapped around something metallic—like a thick pipe, perhaps part of a waterline. I knew I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

I lifted myself again—much slower this time— slumping up against whatever I’d been tethered to, and let my head droop forward like that of a poorly stuffed scarecrow.

Wherever I was—it was dark, and yet I still held the lids of my eyes closed quite forcefully, shielding them from another intense burst of pain, as if that might help. Needless to say—I was in some serious trouble.

I could hear the voices of men as they spoke, greatly muffled beyond the thick walls of my enclosure. The tender epicenter resonating at the back of my skull, a screaming patch of flesh that marked the spot where I’d been knocked unconscious, seemed to be reaching out with talon-tipped fingers, etching sharp circles into the surrounding tissue. It did so with nauseating persistence. Saliva poured readily into my mouth as I was struck with an overwhelming urge to regurgitate—and then did so, quite violently.

I wanted to wrap my whole head up, stick it under my arm, and carry it home like an injured puppy. I instead twisted my wrists, not so much in an attempt of freeing myself, but to understand the level of difficulty I’d be up against soon enough. I found the knots to be tight and expertly woven, like the work of a bosun’s mate, or farmhand. I twisted again. Maybe I could wrench a hand free if I struggled hard enough. I didn’t have much else to do at the time.

A few moments later, a stream of light flooded the area about me. It came with the creak of an opening door as I stopped my maneuverings and forced myself to look up and into the brightness.

My vision was hazy, almost like staring through a pane of glass that had been coated with penetrating fluid, but the blur that I saw eventually formed itself into a somewhat familiar silhouette as the figure entered the room.

A new sound of footsteps sent a peculiar kind of echo ricocheting off the vertical surroundings. Being quick and shallow, the noises told me two things. One: my visitor was a woman, and two: my confinement was made out of some kind of metal.

As she approached, slicing the darkness with the door she’d left open, I noticed a few grated racks on the far wall. It looked as though I’d been tossed into an old walk-in freezer—which made sense because I’d been at the diner. It was starting to come back to me. I was still at the diner. They must have put me in the kitchen, inside a very large freezer, and tied me to one of the racks. At least I had an idea of where I was. Perhaps, with this realization, my situation was improving.

The woman came and sat next to me, dodging the puddle I’d recently created. “Are you okay?” she asked.

I felt something cold on the back of my neck— wanted to believe it was only sweat, but knew it was the clammy sensation of drying blood. “What do you want, Claire?” The words fell from me and dropped lifeless to the floor, as hollow as snakeskin. “Haven’t you done enough?”