Cul-De-Sac, page 9
Which was fine, really.
After all, being strong was probably more important to her life than being cute was, day to day. Plus, she was managing that second one. Just in a slightly different fashion than was normal. Regardless, the woman looked at him, smiled and gave him a nod.
“Hey, Jake. Getting an early start?”
The words had him nodding.
“Lavander needs to be gone over, first thing. Two has visitors coming in. In-laws, so she wants to make a good impression. Plus, that’s where things were happening yesterday, so I want to go and look around, as if I’m going to see something that everyone else has missed, while doing basic lawn care. You know how it is.”
The woman made a choking noise, deep in her throat.
“That... Is a weird way of saying that. I mean, I do get it. I went and took a look around last night, myself. Still, it isn’t really your job, is it?”
There was scrutiny then. An intense observation that left him feeling awkward and uncomfortable, for a moment. As if he might have been being sort of ridiculous about the whole thing. Then, that was kind of what he’d just been saying.
“Not at all. Worse, I literally don’t even know what to look for. Still, the grass will keep growing anyway, and I heard that I’m being paid for this? I haven’t been clocking in or anything, so that might not really be happening, but... Staying busy is better than not.”
There was, as far as he knew, nothing for him to do other than what he was. Not even a radio in the house, as far as he could find. He was willing enough to lightly cover that situation, when the woman moved a bit, to the computer and started typing. After a moment, she nodded.
“That is... You’re in here as a GS-1. So, you’re on salary. Meaning you don’t have to clock in. We don’t do that here, so that was probably just the easiest thing to do. Plus, this way, we can ask you to do whatever we need, and its actually kind of your job. You also have a bunch of lessons done already?”
Holding up the latest booklet, he nodded.
“Ready for the next test, too, if I’m allowed. I don’t really have anything else to do here. My grandparents are nice, but it’s kind of clear that they weren’t really ready for me to suddenly show up. Um, my parents died. There was a fire.” He rubbed at his left forearm, where the handprint showed openly, since he was in short sleeves.
That got attention. A grimace, and then no words.
“I can do the testing? Let me set that up. Then you’re doing lavender today?”
Shrugging, he nodded at the same time.
“I’m doing that first. Then I need to get to a few other places. Not everyone wants my invaluable lawn care help for some reason. I think I can finish that up today. The area out front, too. Then tomorrow I’m planning to clear the area around the outside of the wall. That will take a few days, probably.”
Those words had the woman bobbing her head.
“No shit, right? We’re running a secret facility and have a solid wood line twenty feet off of the outer perimeter wall. Specs say we should have a minimum of a hundred feet, for a place like this. Are you taking the trees out, too?”
On that one he just shrugged.
“I don’t know how to do that, but I might need to figure it out. A hundred feet?”
“Minimum.”
She moved as they talked, her voice smooth as she flowed out from behind the counter like a dancer. Holding a blue stopwatch and a single page test. As soon as he was settled at the testing table, in what he was starting to think of as his spot, the woman grabbed his booklet and notepad. He kept his pen. There was no lunch that day, which he was probably going to regret. They had a lot of roasted chicken left, and potatoes, but he hadn’t remembered to grab anything before he left.
Not that he was hungry, just then.
The test was too easy, and took about three minutes, since he was getting the pattern of the things. There were no trick questions, either. When that was done, the woman moved behind the desk, and a minute later, spoke up.
“Perfect score. The next lesson in your line up is... Basic security. Which makes sense, being here. Let me grab that.”
The woman hurried, and for some reason seemed to think he was supposed to do the whole thing as he sat there, instead of doing his job. Which, given he had an hour and a half left, made some sense. Interestingly, Calley came in about fifteen minutes later.
“Anything new, Martha?” She sounded bored, but smiled at Jacob and waved, not interrupting him, seeing he had a book out.
The first woman lifted her head, seeming slightly annoyed, suddenly.
“Baron Locust was out last night. In town. Cats are going missing again, and of course the locals all think that some kind of El Chupacabra is in the area. The local police were past here and shared that. They know that it has something to do with us, but not what, exactly. I talked to the Baron, but that will work for about six hours. You know how he is. Thank God, it was only cats this time.”
Calley, goofy and generally nice seeming, made a slightly annoyed sound.
“I hope he’s not gearing up again. We can only hide that so many people are going missing.” She glanced over at Jacob and noticed him looking up. Instead of not telling him anything, as the booklet in his hands suggested was the correct thing to do, the woman tossed her hands up.
Then spoke.
“He’s not exactly... Human. He absorbs life energy, in a spectral form. It keeps him alive. That, the problem is that we have him here, in one location. He used to move from place to place. White four?”
Pulling the map, he had tucked into his notebook, just under the blue cardboard cover, he found the location.
“I’m over there today, if I get a chance. For his place, in fact. I only have four left, for the whole complex. Well, more work than that, but for houses. That one is pretty bad, if I recall. Um... Does he have to hunt? Or, I mean, if we take some goats past, could he eat those?” It would be more work, getting them and taking the bodies away, but he could arrange it all, he thought. At least the removal.
Instead of telling him to shut up, being a stupid and rather inconvenient child like he was, Martha looked at him coolly, then sighed. Instead of telling him to get back to work, reading, she got on the phone, for some reason.
Jacob just went back to work. The booklet wasn’t a long one, since, like the others, it was basically a list of things that amounted to, if he saw something, he needed to call it in. The number for that was there, at the Guard Shack, but wasn’t one he knew yet. That meant turning the booklet back in, and Calley testing him, between phone calls. It wasn’t the intense focus on him, to prevent cheating that the others had used, but she had him testing at nine, when the day shift started to come in. The night shift as well, since there was a change over, he guessed.
That wasn’t a thing he’d thought of before, but the men and women there probably treated the whole thing like a strange, but otherwise regular job. With days off and that kind of thing. When Calley waved at him, the room holding eight people, everyone heard what she said.
“Perfect score again. We probably need to push you on this, for a bit, to get passed the boring things faster. Five a day? You can handle that, if you don’t sleep, right?” It was, he thought, a joke. Except that Ken was there and nodded.
“Good plan. Anything on the board?”
The dark-skinned man who lived down the street from him yawned, which got several of the others to follow along. Jake didn’t, but he’d been up for hours already.
Martha snorted.
“There is. Baron Locust was out again last night. We’re getting some animals in, to try and break the cycle that’s forming, to see if we can distract him with something non-human if we make enough of that available. It probably won’t work, but we have a man on body disposal already, so we might as well use him. You’re on pick up for that, Jake? We have goats coming on Monday. The Baron said that sounds wonderful and that he shouldn’t need to eat before then. You can tie them up in the back yard. He eats at night, so you can pick them up for disposal, first thing in the morning?” She smirked, as if that were going to be some kind of a huge issue for him.
It probably would be, when he was carting around the bodies, after the fact. Until then, he just planned to think of them as goat burgers. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too bloody. He had a feeling that sacrifices would be.
“Oh! Can we increase the order for that? Mr. Prentis needs some sacrifices occasionally. Let me make sure on that one, first. We should check and see if we can eat any of the meat, too.” By that he meant to see if anyone wanted that kind of thing, not that they, there in the room would eat it, but one of the guys, Mick, gave a nod.
“I could eat goat. Check on that, first? Then we’ll want to make sure they’re handled correctly. I don’t want food poisoning.”
That was the consensus there, it seemed. No one even mentioned being vegan, if they were. Then, even if you didn’t eat meat, if the animals had to die for other reasons, it made sense to use them fully.
Instead of just ordering the animals, Martha waved at him to come behind the front desk.
“I’ll show you how to order those? We’ll do the pickups here, behind the garage. We should probably put out a list, to see who needs what?”
Everyone laughed, but Calley, who printed out fliers, to go to all the houses. That was going to be a bit of a pain, but it was only seventy of them, and would only take a few hours to get out to people. Less than that, since brown was empty, except for seven.
Armed with a new lesson, in booklet form, and the printed papers, which had both offers for live animals to be delivered, or for safe to eat meat, if it was desired. He got the tractor and trailer out, with the needed mower and brooms. Also, some gear to scrub the driveway with. A pressure washer, which was a lot larger than seemed normal, so he could make certain some certain in-laws wouldn’t have a reason to think that they were messy there at Terrace Springs.
Which meant that he was just finishing up lavender two at eleven in the morning. It really did look better, he realized. Enough so that he decided to do the whole place, with the pressure washer, if he could find the time. Taking the years of grime and weathering off the cement drive and walk actually altered the color of it.
That was more work, but not a big deal. Still, by interspersing the passing out of fliers, with the rest of the mowing and pressure washing, then sitting in the office working on tests, which were mainly remembering numbers and not even that for some of them, he was able to get back home by six. No one was there, and he was locked out, but instead of reading in the back yard, he went to gold one, and tapped on the front door. Politely.
That had the door being opened, no more than a minute later, the well-dressed man with the goatee smiling on seeing him. He looked plump, but not actually fat, however that worked.
“Jake! I got the missive, earlier. That’s most convenient, having sacrifices brought in. We can easily preserve the meat, for consumption, as well. In fact, that’s traditional, in my discipline. I fear my magical needs outweigh my need for food, greatly.”
That made sense, really. Not that he knew how many sacrifices the man was going to need. It sounded like a lot, since there were three planned just for the altar, they were planning to build.
“We have the cement coming next week, on Wednesday. The lumber for the forms, too. I have the small backhoe checked out. I can roughly operate that. We look clear for power lines and water, since those run to the side, but we should double check that. We can use the equipment for the big earth moving part, and then clean up the edges and level it by hand?” He was basically telling the man what he’d suggested in the first place, clearly knowing how to do the work. “We can start on Thursday, if we have the materials and sacrifices? You needed three for that?”
The man chuckled. It seemed oddly pleasant.
“I see that we’re moving quickly then! Given that I’ve put this off for three years now, it’s probably needed. Yes, though. Three sacrifices. Chickens will do for two of them. The final consecration should be something larger. A human would be best, but I’ve rather promised to not do that, any longer. So, a goat or cow? A bovine by preference. Age isn’t important, this time.”
Jacob sighed, and pulled his notebook around, and made a note of both the time, but also what was needed.
“Cows are going to be harder to move. Can we... Um, butcher it here, do you think? I don’t know how to do that, but I’m not going to carry a thousand-pound animal on my shoulder too easily.”
The dapper man tapped his mouth, then smoothed the well-trimmed hair on his upper lip.
“We should be able to do that. Though a cow will be larger than even that. If you can cool the meat quickly, that should suffice, once we bleed and butcher it. The life energy will carry in the blood, so we’ll want a catchment system for that. Waste not, want not.”
For that, they just needed tools, for cutting, paper to wrap meat in and plastic tarps and buckets. Gloves too, of course. He wrote that all down, nodding as he did it.
“We’ll need the cow for the upper portion, not just the foundation?”
That it turned out, was different, since they needed to get a large, mainly flat, stone in as well. That was going to be hard to source, but Mr. Prentis figured that part as being his job, at least. Then, apparently, they were going to have to carve things into it, with chisels. The man was clear on that part, too. That they were doing that part.
Jacob could have begged off, but didn’t bother, just nodding. It wasn’t yard work, but then again, it kind of was. Finished with the notes, he put the cap back on the black ballpoint and smiled.
“Oh, not to be stupid, but do you know what day this is? I was in jail, in solitary and no one told me that kind of thing.” It was probably a strange thing to say, but the magic man, or satanist, whatever he was, simply looked polite.
Then tilted his head, just a bit, as if listening to someone for a moment.
“Ah? It’s currently Tuesday. The seventeenth of June. So, we have a week before we truly start work on this project.” The man looked around, down the cul-de-sac, and nodded. “Did you, perchance, hear anything about what went on yesterday in lavender? I heard that we rather had a visitor. A Russian gentleman, who seemed rather interested in Miss Lewis?”
Jacob lifted his shoulders and shook his head.
“Lavender three? Tidy yard. I haven’t met the people there at all. You know more about that than I do, it seems. The man was wearing high tech camouflage. He also seemed out of it, when I choked him out. I mean, he didn’t seem to notice that it was happening at all. He just ran, carrying me on his back, like I wasn’t there.” It was a risk, admitting that, but he was almost certain that the man knew he’d been there and was testing him.
How he knew that, Jake didn’t know at all. It was almost as if there was a scent of it in the air. Which was bizarre to think at all.
The fellow starred at him for a few moments.
“You might, perhaps, arrange a meeting with Miss Lewis? She could have use of an animal or two on occasion, I believe? Be careful there, but if you’re being useful to her, and honest, you should be fine. If not... Well, be prudent, of course. I don’t wish to steer you into danger, after all. We haven’t even finished the altar yet.”
With that, the man smiled, waved and stepped back into his home. Rapidly. Turning, Jacob noticed two things, the first was that there was a small blue electric car driving into the driveway at his house, the garage door opening, meaning it was Jim. At the same time, an older woman had stepped out of gold five and was watching the car, closely. Her face was tight, and hair gray. She was heavy in build, but that was off somehow. It wasn’t fat, but she wasn’t arrayed correctly, under the purple robe she had on. There were four rows of lumps, which moved gently.
At a guess, he figured those were probably going to be arms. Meaning she had two visible, with two legs, so was probably some kind of spider woman. So, he waved at her, since being rude was a bad plan. Seeing him, she did it back and then moved toward her house, coming back a moment later, to wave a white piece of paper at him.
Which he recognized, having put it there himself. Jogging, his right foot feeling better than it had for a while, he got to her a few moments later.
“Hello! Do you have an animal order?” He pointed at the paper. The woman, her face not moving, at all, not even her lips, or eyes, spoke. From her chest. That voice was deep and gravely.
Understandable, despite that.
“Yessss. Sheep, by preference. Alive, so the blood flows? They won’t be edible to others, after, but the fleece and skin will be intact?”
Nodding, he simply wrote, taking down the order.
“How many would you like? Also, is this a recuring order?”
That question got a pause.
“Three sheep? One time only, for the summer solstice celebration, next week. Is that possible?”
“I know we can get goats in that time frame, but I’ll have to check on sheep. Let me call that in? I think it was on the order list, so it looks good. I can leave a note, if it’s going ahead or not? I’m up early, most days.”
There was a half bow then.
“Very well. This is an interesting service. One not offered before.”
Then the person, or whatever they were, turned and walked inside. When he spun, he noticed Jim was standing outside, watching him while pretending to look at the paper in his hand. When he looked up, seeming suspicious, of the neighbor, Jake waved.
“Hey! Did work go well?”
That generic comment had the young-looking man nodding.
“It did, in fact.” Then he waved the paper. “We can get animals now? Or meat?”
They moved inside, using the front door. That required a key, which was just a bit of metal, like regular doors had. A thing he still didn’t have at all. Which, of course, meant that the people there weren’t certain he was staying, yet. Otherwise, he would have just been issued one.
