Warlock, page 9
Jim saw that door of the department opened, and he touches the button on his camera.
This was Alex, who put his possessions to his pockets.
“Thank you!” he said to the doorway. “Thanks for the hostility! You have a good interior designer! He had done a good job in the cell! That’s…”
Doors closed after him. Alex turned to his friend, who stays leaning to hot van across the street. “My dear friend! My Sancho Pansa!”
He put his cap on, and dancing a little went to meet him. They shake hands, and Alex said:
“Nice to see you. You get a good skill in taking me out. This time it must be a fastest one”.
Jim turn off his camera. “I’m cheated,” he said. “I take a little help from our friend Ms. Prey.”
Alex turned serious, and once again regretted that he quitted smoking – one of the sweetest things after the bars in police department – first inhale of the smoke. “So,” he said. “What’s with her?”
Jim nodded to the van:
“Come one, I’ll tell you. As always, your behavior gives us surprises.”
Alex opened a door and leaned out above the windshield:
“Why is this?”
“Because,” said Jim. “If you did not get there…” He nodded to the station, “Perhaps we would not have a chance to talk with Antony’s father.”
Alex smiled widely, remembering his questions to himself, when he thought about this case in the cell. “Bingo!” Saying this, he rose steadily theatrically send an air kiss to the doors of a local police department over the roof of the van, and sat inside.
Van with the “ABnormal” sign on the board, as if a big hornet turns around, and drove out of town.
---
A few red strokes had left by the sun on the horizon when Alex and Jim parked their auto at the parking lot near the dinner that called “Crossroad.” A cameraman checked his equipment, batteries, and closed van. When they opened the door of the dinner streetlights was lit up. Alex looked through the room and sad to himself that the farther such places from little towns, the less coziness they have. A hand raised at the far end of the dinner, and Jim pushed his friend “There we go.”
They walk through the aisle and sit with the smiles to the table, where young woman sit.
“Good evening, Miss Prey”
She looked at them, and if there is something that can surprise Alex – there was her glance. That was a strange mix of fear, astonishment and … Readiness for a fight?
But she answered in light tone:
“Outside for a jail is always good, Mr. Barns.”
“Alex”, smiled narrator of the “ABnormal”.
She smiled a little, “And you must be Mr. Helper,” she told Jim, who tried not to shiver – despite smiling eyes of a woman was very cold. Jim shake her hand, and sit totally disoriented – This all was totally wrong, but he cannot say why it is. In a moment, he looks at hand that he just shakes – a half of it was gone, and now he had doubled his efforts to contain anxiety. Helper decided that work will calm him and put his camera on, but she stopped him with a left hand. He looked at it, and it was normal.
“No”, she said icy “Just a mic.” She hides her hand and adds “Please.”
Jim looked on Alex and saw his nod.
“Anyway, the camera can work like a mic. It has a good sound”, said Helper closing lenses with a cover.
Alex smiled with his prepossesses smile and said:
“Do they have a good cook here? Your jail has not the best one.”
Another weird smile from Miss Prey and answer comes after it:
“Pretty good. You should try their pancakes.”
Alex nodded, and call waitress. After a couple of minutes, they begin their dinner and interview. Jim turned on his recorder, and Alex smiled with his operative smile:
“So. We sit in a small cozy dinner with a teacher of our hero. Please, tell us and our viewers what subject are you teaching in your school?”
Alice bent down a little, and answered:
“It’s worldwide literature.”
Jim waved with his hand a little:
“You… Don’t need to talk directly to mic, as I had said it’s pretty good.”
“Ok”, she nodded.
“And when do your last met Antony?”
Alice signed a little, and rib her hands with an attempt to bending down once again, but then she took her in her hands:
“It was that… That… That dance night… I was a lead teacher of that evening.”
Alex listened to her carefully without interruptions, waiting when she stops. Jim liked work of his friend – he knows perfectly, that Alex wanted to eat pancake that lay ahead of him, but now he became an attention itself. Barns smiled a little, and nodded again:
“Let’s call it incident. We use this word is such cases. It helps a little”
Alice shows them her bitter smiled:
“Help, yeah” she sipped her tea, and now Alex allow himself to bite a little from his food.
“Let us begin from the beginning. How do you meet Antony?”
She looked to the table, and her sight became a little dreamy. Jim knew this attribute – this means that Alex doing all right, and their interlocutor looks inside of herself.
“First time I met all their family. Tychov’s. They came to our school a week after school year start. Their father told us briefly who are they, why do they went out of their country and why they choose our city. Main thing was their son – Antony. They were afraid that if they bring him to school without preparation it would be too hard for him.”
Alex drunk his coffee:
“Why do you think so?”
She looked up to the friends:
“Say, had you moved to another school? One of you?”
They waved negatively with their heads.
“I thought so. You know, school is always an aquarium with the piranhas. It’s always hard enough, even if this school is across the road. You can only imagine, how do you feel when other inhabitants of this tank thought in different language.”
“It’s hard to imagine, I must to say.”
“Yes, it is” she nodded. «That’s why Antony took private lessons three times a week for a two month, before he came to the class for a full time,”
“Tell us a little about him. Help us understand him.”
She looked in her cup a little then said:
“I wish I can help you. You see those kids a lot of time, and may think that you knew them, but it is an illusion. First of all – They live in another time, on another planet, their own planet, where no place for grownups. Young people are living proof of Einstein’s theory – they have their own time. Antony’s time was from another part of a world. And that makes him interesting.”
Alice looked straight to the Alex’s eyes:
“Do you think about such things as language? How it is connected with our way of thought?”
“No”
“I’m too. Before I met Tychov’s. The main difference of Antony was his way of thinking. It was too hard for him to think in English. Every time he had translated his thoughts,”
Helper frowned:
“I’m sorry, but… Is that, the way of thought, too different?”
She smiled:
“Huge difference. They have another sentence construction, and this has its influence on everything. Yes, you have the same result, but with different languages you can walk from A to B in different ways.”
Jim nodded looking on Alex knowing that his friend does not like when Helper interrupts into interview. Barns do not show any dislike of Jim’s question. The narrator squinted a little and asked:
“You just said that you can’t help us to understand Antony. Why do you say so? I mean, look, you were his private teacher a lot of time, then – his regular teacher in school. What’s wrong with him?”
This time Alice had thought a whole minute before she answered:
“He was dodging.”
Barns frowned:
“Hm?”
“Despite all that we know now, despite that what he did… From a very first day, he was hard to look at. Like something far away from you in a hot day. You are looking on something in perspective, and this image dancing and changing, so you can’t concentrate on it.”
Alex listened carefully, no matter how long pauses there was.
“Antony can talk of horrible things with a calm face. He needed to talk with a simple sentence, but I saw and knew how difficult his mind was. He had a good imagination.”
Barns smiled a little:
“Please, Ms. Prey, give us some example.”
“Oh” it was evident that she was confused. “Ok. Once I asked him to tell a story. A fairy tale, to be exact. And he told me a short story about Lovers Bridge.”
Seeing misunderstanding of men, she explained:
“We have one that have such nickname. It’s because of a lot of locks that young people hang there”
Guys nodded, and a teacher continued:
“So, he told me a story about a worker that cut out locks from there. A worker noticed that with every visit of that bridge he feels worse. And one time he feels that his crown on his teeth fell out and his wedding ring was rusted or looked like it. Then this worker come to the dentist, and that man told our worker that crown was melted. Other diagnosis told him, that his bones in a bad state. Shortly, it happens that there was a troll under the bridge, and he takes an arrow from any trespassing person automatically. Without questions, or so – because people do not believe in them anymore. Troll was killed, and bridge felled down the next day, because without troll it can’t stand.”
Alex nodded, as if he weighted a story in his mind:
“Pretty interesting.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Much more interesting how he told it. It seems that he looked inside of himself, and catch ideas, pictures and forms. He doesn’t invent it, and he looked it on some inner screen.”
By this time, Alex finished his dinner and mopped his mouth silently thinking about record. He sipped coffee and asked seriously:
“Excuse me, Ms. Prey but all that you told about Antony by now, we can say about every third or second teenager. If there was something… Something that if you looked careful, can prevent an incident?”
She looked at her hands a second, and then into Alex’s eyes:
“Something creepy? Something wrong with his sexuality? Blood at the corner of his mouth?”
Barns straightened up a little and interrupted in a calm voice:
“Ms. Prey I don’t mean any…”
But she was calmed down:
“I know… Excuse me, please. You know, it’s hard to talk about this. Especially now when you knew haw it ended. All small things, all signs.” She took a pause, and Alex used it to finish his coffee. “I think that when I can tell that there is something wrong with him was too late for us… For him.”
“Can you…” Alex said almost in whisper. “Can you tell us about that point?”
She smiled with one of her bitter smiles and shrugged her shoulders:
“Sure, what the hell. You will discover it anyway. It is about my arm. To you viewers – I had had lost two fingers on my right arm, with a part of arm itself”
Her smile became a little bit evil, and Helper wished to be invisible now:
“Once I shouted at Antony. It was a week before expulsion from school. After classes I had found a little bird at last row of desks. Antony sat there. But it wasn’t a real bird, it was a doll… Something like tribal or ritual woo-doo. I took it from the floor and felt a hard pain in my forefinger. The doll dropped to the floor and saw a needle in my hand. It was brown and stuck there…”
Alice’s hands were shaking, and Jim wanted to say something. He looked at Alex and saw serious expression on a friend’s face that said: “don’t dare.”
Ms. Prey continued:
“I tried to pull out that needle, but it broke in my fingers, like it was made from thin glass, and part of it left into my hand…”
There was hard sign.
“When I was at the hospital, they… They told me that infection was really quick and rabid. And… Sorry…”
Alex gives her a napkin, and she mopped her eyes:
“Thanks,” She said and signed one more time, a little bit lighter. “They tried to rescue whole arm, but…”
Barns said seriously:
“Thank you, Ms. Prey, but… How do you know that it was his doll?”
She nodded and whipped her nose:
“It was a little mockingbird,” she answered. “When we had our lessons, he read almost all American classics, and told that only ”To kill the mockingbird” was pretty good. He dislikes most of great books, saying that their literature much greater”.
She looked at their faces:
“I know how it looks, but I knew that it was him. There was something wrong with him that days and expulsion was a first step to an incident. Something was rotted inside of him,”
Alex writes something in his notepad then asked:
“Can you indicate when does that start? I know, you said that you can’t say for sure, but maybe there was some point, some line where you can say it starts?”
Alice thought a little with a serious face, and then said:
“Maybe it was a car crash?” She looked in Alex’s eyes “Yes, I can say that it’s a start after his returning from hospital,”
“Can you tell us something about that crash?”
“No. Some episodic things like that fact that it was happened after a party. And one boy from school, from the high classes – he was also was in that crash, but he is died”
Something flashed Alex’s eyes from inside for a second, and only Helper noticed this. He knew what this light means – his friend find some important thing. Or something that looks like that.
“Ms. Prey, I know that it hard for you, but main cause why we are here is an incident. Please, tell us what happened there. What do you saw?”
And once again, smile bend her lips, and Jim noticed that she had large amount of smiles. Moreover, most of them haven’t anything that connect with positive emotions. She said, looking at her hands:
“As I had said it was a dance night, and I was the overseer. Everything goes well – some alcohol, some overlap with kisses and touches. You know how it happens with the teenagers. In addition, there was a girl, I knew that Antony likes her, and… And then he arrived at the hall.”
Alex interrupted as tender as he can:
“Wait a minute, and he wasn’t allowed?”
“Yes. No.” She looked at the side, and then her eyes returned to table where her hands lie. “For that time he was suspended, but I think everybody was surprised, because of rumors about a dead guy. I don’t know the details, I heard about some fight at that party where crash were, or something like this. And besides all this – his expulsion wasn’t calm at all – he fights with one of the friends of that guy. Anyway, he wasn’t a star at that time, and I don’t see start. I came in hall when first thunderbolt strikes at hall and all gadgets dies.”
Alex looked at Alice attentively:
“What do you see inside?”
She shrugged:
“A large number of teenagers in the darkness. Despite all electronics were dead, it wasn’t silent there – there was some humming. Similar to one when you turn large speakers on. I thought about how can I organize all of them, obviously dance was over, and then I heard a scream. I knew that something was wrong. You can differ about scream of joy from one that brings bad news. And then were a lot of them, and crowd. I saw someone in the center of the hall. I heard someone’s yelling about blood, and when lightning strikes in the second time…”
She looked into Alex’s eyes, but he thought at that moment that she sees his guts and most hided thoughts:
“It was a second, like a photocopy, but it burned on the back side of my eyes, and I can see it even now, liking at you. Antony was here, in the center of the hall, moving his hands on the floor. They were all red with blood. He dipped his palm into a puddle of blood near him and draws a line. It was something like honeycomb… I thought I heard that he says something, but… You never can hear in that crowd. It was only a second, when I can see him well, and then all windows blown. I was stunned for five…ten minutes? Wen Roy, our janitor helps me to get up Antony lied in his own blood. I don’t know what happens with him, but I heard that he stubbed himself.”
Alex waited a second then said:
“Thank you, Ms. Prey”
“That’s all I can say about this… incident. And about this boy, except of one thing – he took something. You know there is test when they show you a room, and then hide or moves something, and you need to tell what had changed? That was what he done. He had shifted something inside of all here. And you can’t say what he did for sure, but you feel it. And you feel dizzy, because your mind knows that something happened, and eyes don’t see what…”
All that Alex can say is repeating his previous phrase:
“Thank you, Ms. Prey”
“Hope that my story will help you, Mr. Barns. Help you not to investigate it, sit in your van, and go home.”
Alex smiled a little:
“Unfortunately, we can’t Ms. Prey.”
“I was afraid that I would hear this answer. Well, I hope that I will never hear anything about this place, this case or about results of your work. No offences.”
“Yes, you’re said that you’re leaving today,” said Alex. “Is this case had such influence on you?”
“It’s about influence on everything. Once I had a boyfriend, he was computer geek. And he had that thing – thermal grease. One wrong move, and you’re get it on everything – your hands, dress even face. Antony does something that have it is an imprint on everything. Everything is spotted with… that.”
