The Strike Trilogy (4 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

S
till trying to make sense of his strange encounter, Tobin parked his car, walked into his house, and hung his keys on a hook on the wall. Hearing the TV on in the living room, he looked in and found Bill on the couch, watching the Red Sox game.

“Oh, hey, Bill. How was dinner, did you guys have fun?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, we did. It was good.”

“Cool. Where’s my mom?”

“She’s, uh, upstairs. She went to bed when we got back, called it an early night. I told her I’d stay here until you got home.”

“Oh.”

Slightly confused, Tobin headed upstairs. He walked down the hallway toward his room, but then stopped at his mother’s room. Inside, he saw that she was asleep, and next to her on the nightstand, there were several bunches of balled-up tissues.

Tobin stepped back into the hallway. Reaching into his pocket, he took out the photograph that the old man had given him and studied it.

After a quick change of clothes, Tobin climbed up the ladder to his attic and turned on the light. As he maneuvered past the exercise equipment and Christmas decorations, he made his way to a series of boxes against the wall. Sorting through them, he found the one he was looking for; it was labeled: MOM’S STUFF.

Tobin opened the box. It was filled with photographs, picture albums, and other mementos. One of the photos caught Tobin’s eye: it was of him and his mother, taken at a recent family barbeque. He was laughing and pulling away from her as she wrapped her arms around him and tried to give him a goofy kiss on the cheek.

Tobin chuckled, putting the photo down. Then, at the bottom of the box, he found a picture album. As he opened its cover, he felt a slight wave of nerves in his stomach. He rarely looked at these pictures, and his mother looked at them even less.

They were pictures of his mother and father’s life together: their wedding day, their honeymoon, bringing home a new baby.

Tobin turned through the pages. He stopped on a picture of himself at a baseball game with his father. They were eating popcorn and wearing matching caps, bought only moments earlier. Tobin guessed at his age in the picture. It must have been right before that night.

Tobin turned the page. He stopped on another photo.

This photo showed his father, in his mid-twenties, standing next to another man, also in his mid-twenties. The other man was tall, thin, and wearing glasses. Tobin compared the photo with the one from his pocket, and the two men did look similar.

A buzzing came from Tobin’s phone—it was a text message, from Jennifer:

EVERYONE’S HERE. ARE YOU COMING OR WHAT?

Tobin closed the box, watched his head on the low ceiling, and walked toward a window.

“I really shouldn’t, and it is absolutely the wrong decision, but yes, I am.”

He opened the window and crawled onto a short roof above the porch of his house.

“Because I am an idiot.”

After closing the window, Tobin hopped off the roof, walked down the street, and turned the corner toward Stacey Redmond’s house.

CHAPTER SIX

T
he party had been a great one. It was at a house only a mile-and-a-half from Tobin’s—right along the beach—and the early autumn air had been just warm enough for the teens to grill some burgers, chat outside, and pretend it was still summer for one more night.

Now, though, the party was almost over, and Tobin was walking along the shore with one of his best friends. She was someone he had known ever since the seventh grade, when they had both helped each other sneak out of an insufferably boring health class.

“You are so lame,” Jennifer told him.

“What?” Tobin asked. “Why?”

“Disappearing old men at the supermarket? Red flashes of lightning or whatever the heck you said? Tobin, you’ve been trying to scare me with stories like this since we were in middle school. This is—my god, it’s like we are still twelve.”

“I know,” he laughed, “but this time it actually happened, Jen, I swear! I don’t know what else to tell you, but this is absolutely, completely true.”

“Yeah, okay, just like the time in ninth grade when you were sick in bed and you saw your neighbor murdering his wife? Just like that?”

Tobin smiled. “That…was also true. Both of these stories are true.”

“Yeah, either that or plots from Hitchcock movies. Either one.”

Tobin laughed again. “Okay, look, the other one was a lie, but this one is true, I’m telling you. I can even show you the picture and everything.”

Jennifer laughed it off. “Whatever.”

A silence passed.

“This was fun, though, wasn’t it?” she asked. “Tonight?”

“Yeah, it was. I just wish I could’ve gotten here earlier.”

“I know, me too. I’m thinking about having everyone over my house in a couple of weeks, though. My parents might be going away.”

Tobin looked to her with a grin. “Everyone that was here? Don’t you think your dad might be a little mad if you have a party with, like, fifty people?”

She shrugged. “I guess. I just want everyone to hang out again soon.”

“What is it with you and all this hanging out with everybody stuff lately, anyway? You’re going crazy with this.”

“I know. But that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about tonight. Why I wanted you and Chad to come.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. You and Chad…you guys are my best friends. I’ve been hanging out with you two longer than anyone else in my life. And when we go away to college next year, I don’t want that to change.”

“It won’t.”

“It might. My sister is friends with nobody that she went to high school with. Nobody. And she goes to college like twenty minutes away.”

“Well, that won’t happen with us.”

“It might. It probably will.”

“No, it won’t. Because I won’t let it.”

“Well, then, we have to make sure. Let’s promise, tonight, seriously, the three of us, that no matter what happens next year, we will always stay friends. Just like this.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious, Tobin.”

He laughed. “I am, too! It had never even crossed my mind that we
wouldn’t
be friends.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

A silence.

“Because, hanging out with you guys…that’s like my favorite thing in the world.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And don’t make fun of me for saying that.”

Tobin laughed. As they walked along the beach, he put his arm around Jennifer and kissed her on the side of her head.

“Okay.”

As Tobin and Jennifer returned to the party, Tobin’s phone rang.

“Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“It’s my mom.”

He let it ring.

“So? Aren’t you gonna answer it? She probably just wants to know where you are.”

“Yeah, I know, but she probably also found out that I left, and will now somehow find a way to actually kill me through the phone. I’ll just wait till I get home.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I said something pretty crappy to her today, anyway, so I should really go back and apologize.” He headed for the street. “Tell Chad we should get lunch tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay. And remember what I told you, Tobin: if you see any more disappearing old men in red coats, I want you to call me. I can get you some help.”

He laughed. “Ha, ha. Very funny, Jen. Talk to you later.”

“Bye, Tobin.”

Walking along a quiet road, Tobin was about halfway home when his phone rang again.

“Geez, Mom, I’m on my way. Take it easy.”

But, when he looked at the phone, Tobin saw that it read: UNKNOWN CALLER. He answered it.

“Hello?”

A woman replied. “Please, whoever this is, don’t call the police.” She sounded as if she had been crying.

Tobin was startled. “What? Who is this?”

“Please!” the woman cried. “He said if you don’t come right now, or—or if you call the police, he’ll—he’ll—”

She sobbed. Tobin could no longer understand her. He grew frightened.

“Who is this? Why are you—Hello…? Hello?”

But the woman didn’t answer. Instead, a man’s voice came from the phone. It was hushed, calm, and quiet.

“You better get over here, Tobin. As fast as you can. Don’t stop and don’t ask for help. You are the only one who can help her.”

The boy was nauseous. His hands shook.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Jackson’s Bookstore,” the man said. “At the end of the Chapman Bridge. Now. Before it’s too late.”

And then the man hung up.

“Hello?” Tobin asked. “Hello...?!”

The boy looked at the screen of this phone, then put it back in his pocket. With his stomach roiling, he looked down the street toward his house, then back in the direction of where he came. Suddenly, he felt a warmth behind his eyes, and saw a quick flash of blue light.

Tobin turned around and walked in the opposite direction of his house. All of his thoughts faded away and he had a fierce, unwavering focus. He walked toward the Chapman Bridge.

It began to rain.

Usually by this time, Susan Wilheim was home for the night. Her bookstore was closed, she had enjoyed a nice glass of wine with her husband, and they were ready to watch their favorite late night TV program. But on this night, on this suddenly stormy, October night, she had been faced with a nightmare.

Susan was tied by glowing purple ropes to a chair in the middle of her bookstore. She was gagged, sobbing, and terrified. With tears streaming down her face, she looked to the man on the other side of the room.

Jonathan Ashmore, the pale man in the purple suit, was standing at a large picture window and watching the pounding rain that had just started to fall outside of the bookstore. He was waiting for someone to appear at the other end of the Chapman Bridge, directly outside the window, but that person was not here yet. With an impatient grunt, he wiped away the condensation on the window and looked toward Susan.

“Can you please stop all that crying and struggling?” he asked. “I know you’re playing the ‘damsel-in-distress’ role and everything, but really, that’s just annoying.”

Jonathan walked to her and turned on a lamp. She looked up at him.

“Take it easy,” he said, frustrated, chomping away on his gum. “No one’s gonna hurt you, okay? I told you: I’m just gonna wait here, do my thing, and then…I’ll be on my way.”

Thunder rumbled. The wind picked up. Jonathan walked to the window and looked to the other end of the bridge. A boy was there, about seventeen years old. Tobin.

“Ah,” Jonathan said, walking back to Susan. “Places everyone.

“It’s show time.”

At the other end of the Chapman Bridge, Tobin was standing in the rain and listening to it patter the dirt and pebbles around him.

“What am I doing?” he asked himself. Looking down, he saw that his clothes were drenched to his skin, and his hair was in wet pieces across his forehead. He was not sure how he had gotten there, or even how long it took. “This is insane, I have to call the police.”

The boy took his phone from his pocket, but then looked up at the bookstore on the other side of the bridge. A woman appeared there in a large picture window, pushed there by somebody. She was tied to a chair. She was crying.

Tobin’s thoughts faded away. He walked nearer to the store.

Another person appeared in the window. It was a pale man in a purple suit. He reached over and put his hand on the woman’s shoulder. He was chewing gum.

A flash of white. A burst of heat. With quick, heavy footsteps, Tobin walked across the bridge. He felt his fists clench, his abdomen tighten, and his back straighten. He was ready. He did not know what was about to happen, yet he knew he had been waiting for this moment his entire life.

Lightning streaked across the sky. Thunder boomed.

In the quiet bookstore, Jonathan pushed Susan away from the window and against a far wall.

“There you go,” he said. “Now just sit here and watch. Should be interesting.”

Jonathan looked down and saw that she was crying.

“Look,” he said, “you’re gonna be fine.” He turned off the lights around the room. “If everything goes the way it should, I’ll leave here, and it’ll be like none of this ever happened. You won’t even remember seeing my handsome face.”

The pale man smiled at Susan, then popped a piece of gum into his mouth and crouched in front of the window, his back to her. As he stared at the floor, he thought.

“You know,” he said, “this isn’t really my style, to be honest. I usually don’t like to get involved in things that are this big—and believe me, this is big—but this one was just too good to pass up. So, I just gotta be the bad guy for a bit, you gotta be the victim, and then that’s that. Okay?”

Behind her back, Susan rubbed her wrists together. She found that she could move her arms, just a bit. When she looked down, she saw that the purple glow around her ankles had begun to fade.

Jonathan snapped his gum, picking at a spot on the floor.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” he said. “It’s not like you have much of a choice, do you?”

Jonathan realized the room was silent. He turned around.

Susan was free from the chair and standing over him.