A Quarrel Called: Stewards Of The Plane Book 1 (7 page)

16. G.

Sitting still was killing me, and working at The Blossom
wasn’t much better, since it was midweek and business was kind of slow. I was
agitated; I just wanted to get out and do something, anything. It was weird,
because usually I prefer to just sit back and people watch. But I reminded
myself of my vow when I moved in with Dad – no freshman punk was going to make
me look like an idiot on the first day of PT for ROTC… and all I wanted to do
was get out and run; not calisthenics, not lift weights, run.

Run?
Really?
Was I motivated to look good for Tara or
something? I considered that seriously for a moment and thought that might be
it, except she didn’t seem to have a problem with me the way I was.

Except
you haven’t kissed her yet.
How long do you think she’s going to sit around and wait for you to get the
cojones to kiss her?
My knee was jumping up and down as I sat in the break
room waiting for break to be over. I swear, if I saw me right now, I would
think I was on speed or something. I really did, I wanted to run.

Except it was so blasted hot.
Moving from Ohio to Texas in the summer had been a bad idea. My mom tried to
tell me so, but now I was here. Shit. Dad had that old treadmill in the back of
the spare room; it had boxes and clothes hung on it. Did it still work? Even if
it sucked, I could at least use it inside, in the air conditioning. Or I could
run late at night or early in the morning like all the other suburbanites.

I took a covert look through the window of the break room
door. No one could see me in here. I dropped to the floor and did twenty rather
miserable pushups. Arms shaking and jaw aching from gritting my teeth, they
made me feel better, less jumpy. Maybe that’s what I could do – whenever I had
a spare moment hanging around here, I could just do some pushups or jumping
jacks or something.

“Hey G.,” Manny said, pushing the break-room door open with
his backside so he could use his hands to carry a tray of food. “Your
girlfriend’s here.”

“Thanks,” I said. Is she though?
My
girlfriend?
I grinned. If she wasn’t already, then maybe I needed to
finally do something about that.

17. TARA

Sugary lemon with a hint of something else—I didn’t know
what kind of flowers smelled
like
that, but they sure
were pretty. I couldn’t contain my grin. “They’re beautiful!” No one had ever
given me flowers before.
OMG.

G. fidgeted with his keys a little bit. Then he shuffled
from one foot to the other. He met my eyes and then blushed just a little,
though it was hard to tell since his skin was dusky brown to begin with. But I
was pretty sure he was blushing. And then all of a sudden he was really close
and I gulped, having a hard time not looking up at him. Oh my God, it was
really happening. My first real kiss from my first real…

G. leaned down very close. “Be my girl, Tara.”

I nodded, unable to make a sound, mouth suddenly dry and
every inch of my body on fire with the most remarkable tingling.

His lips were soft, not mushy, and his breath smelled like
cinnamon. He pressed his lips to mine and for a long moment, we just held it
there, our hearts beating overtime. Then my lips parted and so did his and the
heat and the moistness mixed with the cinnamon flick of his tongue made me weak
in the knees. I clutched the flowers with one hand, and his arm with the other.
He’d obviously done this before and oh man, he knew how to do it
right
.

When he finally pulled back, I looked up at him and said
“I’ve been waiting for you to do that
forever
.”

He grinned.

18. MELODY

Late in the afternoon, I was taking a nap. It was another
dream, only this time it was more like a memory – of the first time I saw
Matthew’s ghost.

The garage was closed. The bay doors were shut, the front
windows had the blinds pulled and the ‘closed’ sign was in the window. But I
hadn’t seen my brother for a couple of days and I figured this was the best
place to start looking for him.

The sun was setting to my back, and I could see my shadow,
long and stretched out in front of me, racing me to the door, or in retrospect,
trying to warn me away, as I approached. I tried the handle. It was locked, so
I pulled out Matthew’s spare key ring and inserted the big silver key in the
lock. I opened the door only a crack, a strange smell assaulting my nose, but I
didn’t think anything of it at the time, since garages were always full of
strange odors.

“Matthew?” I called from the front. I still had not stepped
all the way into the room when I saw movement from the corner of my eye: the
flash of a pair of coveralls as someone walked past the door, a red shop rag
hanging out the back pocket. “Matthew!” I called. When I got no response, I
darted in after him, flicking on the light switch over the cash register as I
rounded the corner.

A ruddy sunset cascaded through the windows on the bay doors
and washed over everything in the main part of the garage. Where that light met
with the greenish fluorescence from the lights overhead was a visual schism, a
harsh rip in the fabric of reality.

There was something on the floor, some substance, and
because of the clash of light, I couldn’t tell what it was or even its color. I
bent down to touch it; it was slick, smelled metallic, and it was sticky and
brownish red. My mind couldn’t make sense of it at first.

I turned to the left to see where Matthew had gone, but
could see no one. The back of the garage was shrouded in darkness, and I could
only make out basic shapes.

“Matthew?” I called again. There was movement in the very
back, and a sharp metallic clang rang out, causing me to jump and shout. I felt
for the light switch near the door and flicked it on. Then I waited a moment,
blinking slowly, as fluorescence gained victory over ruddy sunset.

There was more of the reddish brown stuff in a thick, shiny
pool on the floor, and Matthew’s toolkit was overturned. Whoever had done that
must have been big, because those rolling cases were very large, and usually
filled with heavy, expensive tools. Air wrench attachments, screw drivers, and
hex wrenches lay everywhere.

Something moved in the back again, knocking some items off
of the workbench, and I jumped and screamed. It was only a rat, but that wasn’t
really what I was thinking at the time. Because my brain had finally figured
out what the sticky pool of liquid was – it was blood. And there was a lot of
it. And beyond the blood I saw that rat. And beyond the rat I saw another
shadow. It moved and I knew it was Matthew. He was faded, nearly gone; he
looked at me, breaking eye contact to look over his shoulder.

Then he pointed across the room to my left. I looked to see
what he was pointing at, but there was nothing. He disappeared.

I woke in a cold sweat. The couch was not a very comfortable
place to sleep on the best of days, and it was especially bad if one was having
nightmares. The late-afternoon sun was streaming in the windows and heating me
up. It wasn’t yet time for ruddy red light, but it would be in a couple of
hours. I suddenly wanted very badly to go to Matthew’s garage and take another
look around. But I really, really, didn’t want to do it at sunset.

It was light out
now
.
I decided to go. I wouldn’t tell Gram, because she would just talk me out of
it.

I grabbed my keys and made sure I had the malachite sphere
that Esme gave me in my pocket and the pog on a string around my neck. I wasn’t
ready to wear it on my finger—people would ask awkward questions—but after the
entity attack, I sure wasn’t going to leave it in the dirty laundry again.

I pulled up outside the garage.
So little
had changed since Matthew’s disappearance.
Someone else owned the
building now, but it seemed they had changed nothing but the name on the sign.
I walked inside, and a little bell over the lintel of the door rang briefly
with a brassy tinkle. That was one new thing.

“Hello? May I help you?”

“Hi,” I said, suddenly unsure what I was going to say. “I
ah, my car,” I paused to jerk a thumb in the direction of old reliable in the
parking lot. “It’s making this weird rattling noise when I turn it over. Could
someone take a look at it?”

“Sure. Why don’t you pull it in front of bay number one, and
I’ll have Mark look at it as soon as he’s able,” the man behind the counter
said. His blue shirt had a little red logo on it with a nametag pinned beneath
it. The tag read “Jimmy.”

I threw the car into park in front of the first bay and got
out, leaving the keys in the ignition. I stood there peering into the depths of
the garage, noticing small details that brought me both comfort and sadness.
The work bench was in the same place, and the paint on the walls was the same,
though the stain on the floor from Matthew’s blood had been removed. I stepped
a little closer so that I could see deeper into the garage, my eyes shaded from
the sun by the
soffet
of the roof. As my vision
adjusted, I cast my glance around the room, waiting for someone to notice me.
And then I noticed
it
. The whiteboard
on the left hand wall by the door—it was still there. The writing on it had
changed, but the board itself was still there.

I closed my eyes, trying to remember that night two years
ago. That was where Matthew’s ghost had been pointing. It had to be. I
concentrated, had there been anything there at the time?
Some
writing, a word, a mark?

“What seems to be the trouble, Miss?”

I jumped. I’d had my eyes closed, and the mechanic snuck up
on me like a grease monkey ninja. I looked from his shadowed face to his chest.
The name tag said “Mark.” I smiled wanly and repeated my lie from earlier.

“Well, I won’t be able to get to it today. But if you let me
keep it overnight, I should have something to tell you by lunchtime tomorrow.”

Argh.
Figures, I either had to give
him my keys or… my eyes narrowed. “Sure, let me get my house keys and stuff off
of my keychain, and I’ll just call a friend to come and get me.”

The man smiled, though he did not step forward into the
light where I could get a better look at him. I ducked into the car, pulled the
keys from the ignition, and removed the car key from the ring. I grabbed my bag
and rummaged quickly through the contents of the center console and glove box
to make sure nothing interesting was in there (there wasn’t) and handed the key
to him. I tried to step closer to get a better look at his face, but he sort of
half-turned when I did it, so I really only saw his profile and the glimpse of
a line of black extending above his collar on the side of his neck. Mark the
grease-monkey-ninja-mechanic had some sort of tattoo.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll leave my contact info with the guy
at the register.”

Mark nodded and retreated with the keys. I turned to enter
the lobby of the garage, and the hoot of an owl came from above. I looked up,
and one sat there in the shadows, perched on the lip of the sign hung overhead.
It gave me a long, unblinking stare before it launched itself from the sign to
skim the air just over my head. I don’t know why, but I felt fingers of dread
slide down my back.

19. TARA

Melody and I were parked under a tree only a little ways
down from Matthew’s old garage. The night was thick with heat, humidity and
mosquitos; I scratched my arm absently. “Tell me again why I am here with you,
scoping out your brother’s old garage and not out on a date with my significant
other?” I asked, just a tad annoyed that I was missing out on some quality G.
time.

“We are here because that night I saw my brother’s ghost –
he pointed at something, and I just want to look around one more time and see
if I can figure out what he was trying to tell me.”

“You do realize that it’s very dark outside. Which means
it’s even darker inside. And if you go in there and turn on the lights,
everyone in town is going to think the place is being burglarized.”

“Yeah, I know.” Her fingers drummed on the steering wheel.

I frowned. “And how were you planning on finding anything in
the dark?
If there’s even anything there?”

“With this,” she said, and held up a short light bar with an
extension cord attached.

“Mel, I just got done saying we couldn’t use lights.”

“It’s a black light,” she said and smiled at me smugly.

Okay, she had put a little thought into this. “And how are
we going to get in?”

“With this,” she said, and held up a large silver key. Her
smugness was sucking the oxygen from the car.

“What makes you think they haven’t changed the locks in two
years?”

“Because they haven’t changed anything in
two years.
Besides, what can it hurt? If the key doesn’t work, then
we’ll just leave and you can get back to heavy petting.”

“I prefer the term ‘quality time,’” I said with a little bit
of frost. And then my face warmed up in embarrassment since I had just admitted
to making out with G.

Melody laughed. Then I laughed too, and we got out of the
car and walked across the street and over to the door to the lobby of the
garage. I kept watch while Melody put the key in the lock, and miracle of
miracles, she was right, the key fit, it turned the lock, and suddenly breaking
and entering became just entering.

“Hello, Othello,” I said.

“I know.”

We darted inside and closed the door just as a car drove
past. My heart was thumping, but Mel? She was a woman on a mission. I darted up
behind her, not wanting to be left in the front all by myself.

We tiptoed into the main area of the garage, which was
nearly pitch black except for shafts of light from the bay door windows that
created square patches on the floor. It was enough for us to keep from tripping
over something but not enough to clearly make out each other’s faces.

Melody stopped on the left side of the garage and squatted
down on the floor, feeling along the wall with her left hand. I heard her
fiddle with the black light, and then suddenly the room was filled with a faint
purple glow.

“Oh, Melody,” I breathed in dismay. “Don’t turn around.”

On the floor behind her, the black light had illuminated
several ethereal drops and smears, clearly residue left over from the last
night Matthew was alive – his blood trail. My stomach twisted at the thought.
Of course she had told me all about it, but I hadn’t really been able to grasp
what it meant. This eerie glow must be nothing compared to the blood spatter in
living color as it was when Melody discovered it.

She ignored me, of course, and turned around to see what I
was looking at. She gasped. Neither of us spoke for a moment. Finally, “That’s
not the worst of it,” she said softly. “The puddle where he must have died is
over there,” she gestured with the light and a large area a little further
toward the back of the garage lit up with violet remorse.

I felt very queasy. My hand went to my mouth and I fought
back the urge to vomit. My mouth was watering, a sure sign that
a puke
was coming on, and then I saw it.
On
the whiteboard above her head.
More glow-in-the-dark blood
spatter
glowing. Oh my God. It was everywhere. Now I
understood why they buried an empty casket. I couldn’t conceive of anyone
living through something this horrendous. And Melody discovered it here, all
alone. And she had kept it to herself all this time. Sorrow welled up within
me, but not before my roiling stomach got the best of me. I ducked behind a
tool chest and heaved my guts up. I spit a few times to get the taste out of my
mouth and then I turned to apologize to my friend. But she wasn’t there.