Down a Lost Road

Down a Lost Road - By J. Leigh Bralick

Chapter 1 – Change

All I wanted was my change, but Mr. Dansy acted like it was a bank heist.

I’d known him as long as I could remember, and I’d never seen him like this. He had been white as a sheet since I walked up to the counter, and his hands shook so hard as he plucked coins from the cash drawer that I was afraid they’d fall off. Sweat beaded all over his upper lip. I wondered if he was sick, but his little mole eyes kept darting over the convenience store like he was looking for someone. When a car backfired he jumped and spilled all the coins into the bottom of the drawer. That’s when I really started to worry.

“Mr. Dansy, are you all right?”

“Oh-h-h, fine, Merelin. Thanks for asking, darlin’.”

He glanced out the window and a visible shudder ran all the way down him. I followed his gaze, but the street outside was as deserted as ever, mid-morning at the beginning of summer. Most of the university students would already be gone, and they made up at least half the town’s population. I’d never thought of Mr. Dansy as the paranoid type, but he was really starting to freak me out.

He suddenly grabbed my hand and dumped the coins into my palm, pressing my fingers closed over them.

“Don’t lose it, darlin’.”

His head made a nervous kind of twitch toward the door, and his hand shot up to his mouth. Gnawing on a ragged fingernail, he just stared at me through those round brown eyes, big as they could possibly get.

“Have a good day, now,” he said, fingernail still between his teeth.

Okay. He could have just said, “Get out my shop,” but at least he was being polite.

“You too, Mr. Dansy.” I hesitated near the door. “You’re sure everything’s all right?”

“Go, go! Fine. I’m fine. Take care now, and don’t lose that.”

All right already. I won’t lose all forty-nine cents.

I nodded and ducked out of the shop. As I stepped onto the sidewalk, the heat of the early Texas summer blasted over me, thick with the honey-sweet smell of magnolia blossoms. The fragrance made everything shimmer, then my stomach flipped. I stumbled two steps into the shade of the offending tree, grabbing the dark trunk for support. It was so hot, and that smell, so sweet, almost sickening. And there, in my other hand, one rough coin turned so cold it burned.

A terrible sound rose around me, louder and louder, as if all the noise of the town were being sucked into a vacuum right over my head. I bent over, covering my ears awkwardly with my forearms. Louder. Deafening. Then suddenly it was gone. At almost the same instant it felt like someone grabbed hold of my stomach and wrenched it straight out. All the blood rushed to my feet, pulling a shiver of terror behind it. I almost dropped everything. I could have sworn the whole world shuddered.

I turned – it felt like slow motion – and glanced back at the shop. Mr. Dansy’s face hovered near the window, staring out at me. He had his sleeve to his forehead, still sweating. As I met his gaze he took a half step toward the door. He didn’t need to speak to warn me away. I lurched, hard, as if someone had punched me in the back. Clutching the coins, I spun and propelled myself into motion.

I ran all the way home.

Even my sixteen-year-old sensibilities couldn’t have cared less about the spectacle I made – grocery sack swinging wildly, feet hammering the pavement, messy ponytail half falling out. I’m not ashamed of my running. I’m good at it. But running track and running in terror are two totally different things. I wasn’t about to stop to analyze the idea, though.

Head and heart pounding, lungs aching, sweat everywhere, I finally made it home and jumped the front steps in two bounds. As soon as the door cracked open I was through it, throwing my weight back to slam it shut as though something had chased me home. I even snuck a glance through the peephole to make sure nothing had.

“Mer, don’t slam the door!”

I glared in the direction of the family room where my older sister Maggie was reading – where she was still reading. She hadn’t moved all morning. I couldn’t imagine trying to explain my terror to her, eighteen and imperious, too old for such silliness. My fingers tightened on the coins, and I took three deep breaths to steady myself.

The terror slowly began to fade. Then a little surge of resentment crept into its place. I couldn’t imagine Mr. Dansy had ever had a moment’s excitement in his life, so who gave him the right to freak me out like that? Besides, why was I always the one who got sent to pick up groceries when the car was conveniently missing? I was just starting to enjoy my summer break. Weirdness and overpowering irrational fears were not my idea of a fun vacation.

The tip of my finger brushed the rough cold coin again, and the strange feeling stirred in my stomach.

“Ugh,” I muttered, shuddering, as I took the groceries to the kitchen. “What’s with that?”

It came out louder than I meant, but Mom was right there at the counter and apparently heard my little rant.

“What’s wrong?”

Why did everyone always have to know my business? I scrambled to think of a reasonable answer.

“Maggie. She’s always yelling at me.” Mom’s brows arched, and I only glowered more. “Here’s your stuff.”

“Merelin…”

“What?” I snapped.

That made me irked at myself on top of it all. Why was I being so nasty? I didn’t usually cop that kind of attitude with my mom.

“I’m sorry. I’m fine. Just tired.”

Mom watched me quietly, the way she did when she knew something was wrong but didn’t want to pry. I tried a smile and beat a hasty retreat. Another minute and she’d be asking for her change, but I wasn’t about to hand over the coins. I ran upstairs to my bedroom and closed the door behind me – gently so Maggie wouldn’t yell at me again.

My hand still clenched in a fist, damp with sweat and scored with lines from the coins. I could smell them too, that cloying metallic scent that made my stomach quaver. My heart raced, nervous and excited at the same time. Part of my brain – the part that was growing up way too fast – insisted I was all worked up for nothing, and being childish besides, but I tuned out. I smoothed the rumpled green sheet on my old iron-framed bed, sat down ceremoniously, and tipped the coins out of my hand.

Just then, somewhere in the corner of my consciousness I thought I heard a door slam, footsteps in the hall. I jumped and clapped a hand over the coins. But the sound had gone…if it had ever been there at all.

Great. Now I was hearing things, too.

I turned back to the neat pile of coins in front of me, and sighed, feeling utterly ridiculous. That was it. A pile of plain old coins. The quarter, so tarnished you could hardly see George’s head, two dimes, and four beat up pennies. And I’d run all the way home in a panic over that? I frowned. No way. I couldn’t have mistaken the rough, gouged-out face of the one coin, so burning cold.

Maybe I had dropped it. But I could have sworn I’d been holding them too tightly. I’m sure I would have noticed if one had fallen out. At least, if I had dropped it, it would have to be somewhere in the house, because I’d felt it when I was standing by the door.

I slid off the bed, sweeping the coins into my hand and dumping them into an old tin on my dresser. A branch scraped my window with a fingernails-on-chalkboard kind of sound just as I turned to leave the room. It made me jump, again, and I’m not usually a jumpy kind of person. I stared a good two minutes at the window until I’d convinced myself it really was a tree branch, then I darted out of my room, clattered back down the stairs, and cleared the last three in one leap.

“Merry!”

Maggie and Tony, this time. They only called me Merry when they were really mad at me for something. I poked my head into the family room.

“What?”

“Do you really have to sound like a herd of elephants when you come downstairs?” Tony asked, not even glancing up from his physics textbook. He never stopped studying.

“At least I’m not a barnacle.”

Maggie peered at me over her magazine. “Your point?”

I shook my head and withdrew. Sometimes it felt like my twin brother Damian and I were the only sane ones in the family. I wandered into the kitchen and felt around in the empty grocery sack. Nothing. Quiet as I tried to be, Mom still heard me rummaging around and turned to see what I was up to.

“Looking for something?”

I shrugged. “Nothing important. I just picked something up when I was out. A little trinket coin…thing. I think I misplaced it.”

“A trinket coin thing? And you misplaced it?”

“Um, yeah. Why?”

She studied me closely another moment, then smiled brightly and turned back to the oven. “I haven’t seen anything like it, sorry.”

“You just seemed kind of, I don’t know, weirded out.”

“I’m fine.”

I crossed my arms and scowled. Now even my mom was acting strange.

“Mom, you don’t get to say you’re fine. That’s an obnoxious teenager thing,” I said, but she only laughed. “Just let me know if you see it, okay?”

“What does it look like?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it hard. Good question. “Like…a coin,” I said lamely. “Don’t worry about it.”

Without waiting for her reply I made my escape. I scoured the foyer once more, opening and closing the front door and triggering the security beep enough times that Maggie hollered at me again. Searched up and down the stairs twice, even the cracks in the carpet where the steps met the wall. No luck. When I thought I heard a door upstairs squeaking open I stopped picking at the carpet fuzz and bolted up the stairs.

I ran full into Damian. He only staggered a step, but I felt the world reel and knew with sickening certainty I was going to fly head over heels down the stairs. Just before I plummeted to my doom Damian’s hand locked on my arm, hauling me upright. He stooped to look at me – he was that tall, and being on a higher step didn’t help.

“Whoa, Mer, what’s the rush?” he asked languidly.

“Where’d you come from? Weren’t you supposed to be at the ice rink?”

Damian grinned. “Rink was closed. Zam broke down, someone left their gear in the locker room, a tornado tore down the bleachers, you know. It happens.”

I forced a smile and tried to edge out of his grasp, but he mirrored my movement, still staring me intently in the eyes.

“Mer?”

“Just going to my room.”

“Awful edgy.”

My heart raced. Much as I wanted to stay and talk to him, all I really felt was terror. I had to find that coin. Now.

“I just need to be alone a minute, okay?”

He released me abruptly. I could feel his gaze following me as I darted to my bedroom.

“What, you got a chat date with some guy I need to know about?”

I stuck out my tongue. “You’d know it already if I did. They’re lining up, but they’ll have to wait.”

Damian knew how shy I was. It was pretty pathetic, and I knew it. I’d never had a real boyfriend – not one that would get past Damian’s approval anyway – but he still liked to tease me about it.

I slipped into my room and shut the door on Damian’s concerned gaze, snapping the lock. I hated doing it, but I needed the solitude. From the door I scanned the floor of my room for the coin, inch by inch. I’d nearly reconciled myself to failure when I finally caught sight of it, glinting coldly between the folds of the granny quilt heaped by my bed. My immediate relief lapsed into a grumble of annoyance. All that time spent hunting for the thing and it was right there beside my bed.

Damian knocked softly on my door. I still felt guilty for locking him out, so I seized the thing without looking at it and stuffed it into my back pocket. Now that I had it safely in my possession, I could delay my investigation a couple more minutes.

“Sorry, D,” I said, opening the door.

He wasn’t there. The hallway stretched out dark and empty.

“Damian?”

Behind me the branch scraped and whined against my window again. My skin prickled, and I crept toward Damian’s room. His door was ajar, but as I edged closer I couldn’t see him inside. My heart galloped. I pushed the door the rest of the way open and peered in.

Damian was there, sprawled in his chair with his feet propped on his drafting table, fiddling with some kind of mechanical thing he’d been obsessing over for the last month at least.

“You’re here!” I cried, clutching the edge of his door.

He cocked his head at me, frowning behind the wisps of his golden hair. Another creak emanated from the hallway and I leapt into his room, slamming the door behind me and diving into the pillow on his bed.

“What the— Mer, you okay? What’s going on?”

Breathe, Merelin. You’re being ridiculous.

“The house is possessed,” I muttered into the pillow.

“Possessed.”

I slanted a glance at him. “It’s going to eat me.”

“The house?”

I nodded. But joking about my terror wasn’t making it go away. After a moment I sat up and found Damian still studying me curiously.

“Seriously, D, you weren’t just knocking on my door?”

“Um, no. You wanted to be left alone, remember? Since when do I bug you when you don’t want to be bugged?”

“All the time,” I said, cracking a smile.

“Well, okay. But this time, no.” He set the device on his desk. “So, you heard someone knocking on your door and no one was there?”

“I’m not crazy! Then there’s that branch, and the door creaks, and…I’m warning you, if I disappear, check the closets. They’re like big mouths.”

I pantomimed death-by-closet with my hands. Damian laughed and pitched a wad of paper at me.

“You’re crazy.”

“Be that way.”

Finally I rolled off the bed, but then I just stood there, rooted, both hands shoved in my back pockets. I could have pulled the coin out right then. I wanted to. Damian glanced at me once or twice, probably wondering why I was still standing there like an idiot, nervous and speechless. I would have to talk to him later. Somehow, at that moment, I just couldn’t seem to find my voice.

I wandered out of his room and slipped into my mom’s. With all the curtains drawn the room was dark and cool, just the way I liked it. But I couldn’t see the coin with all the lamps off, so I switched on the bedside light and sat down by the pillow. For a few moments I just stared at the face gazing back at me from the picture frame on Mom’s nightstand – the face I loved, and missed, more than any other. My dad.

Pictures of him filled every wall in the bedroom. Across from me hung a photo I’d taken myself at our last family reunion, four years ago, on one of those cheap disposable cameras the adults gave us to use. Dad leaned against our old magnolia tree sipping a mint julep. The way the light filtered through the leaves, I’d always thought it looked like some ethereal figure stood behind him, barely outlined by the shimmer of light. I used to make up stories about who or what the figure was. Angel, elf, ghost, the spiritual presence of someone from another world, any number of equally crazy ideas. I didn’t make up those stories any more.

Three months after the reunion Dad had disappeared.

He left the house late in the evening, when he usually sat quietly in his overstuffed recliner, drinking twice re-warmed coffee and reading last Sunday’s paper. I remember the rattle of rain against the windows. It was pouring, a cold and miserable late autumn storm. And there was my dad, throwing on his overcoat and peering again and again out the window. He said he had to go to his office at the university to get a student’s paper, but that didn’t explain his panic. I followed him to the door asking him why he was going, and before he disappeared from the porch light he turned to say something to me. I never got to ask him what. Only the rumble of his mellow voice cut through the shattering rain, his dark eyes sad and regretful, and then he was gone.

I’ve never stopped waiting for him to return. It didn’t matter what the cops said, or how they called a halt to everything, all at once, as if on cue. I remember the day Officer Jankins took my mom aside. The apologies, the tears. The reporters with bulky cameras trying to invade the sadness of our house, the neighbors sending cookies, the university’s condolences. No one whispered, no one spread rumors – none at least that I heard. They just gave up. Everyone did, except Damian and me. We’d made a pledge never to give up hope, and we never did, even though the years had blunted the pain. Sometimes I think my mom didn’t either, though she wore the mask of acceptance for the rest of the world to see.

My heart ached and the room blurred, but I blinked away the tears and pulled the coin out of my pocket. I kept staring at my father’s picture. Part of me didn’t really want to look at the coin. I just had this feeling that it wouldn’t be anything special. Maybe Mr. Dansy had given me an old arcade token or something equally chintzy as a joke, even though Mr. Dansy had never done anything like that before. And my whole morning of mindless terror would turn out to be just that – mindless. All worked up over nothing.

I desperately wanted it to be something more exciting. If I’d been a bit younger, it wouldn’t have mattered if the thing were just a bit of junk. I still would have pretended it had strange magical properties – something that hypnotized viewers, probably, and evoked strange whispers from dark corners in the room. I’d always had too active an imagination. But here I was, sixteen, too old for make-believe and too young to be bored with the tedious sameness of life, day after day.

I dreaded disappointment.

Finally I sighed and uncurled my fingers, holding the palm of my hand under the pool of warm golden light. For a solid minute I sat and stared. The object was a small circle, about the size of a silver dollar, cast from some heavy, dull-sheened metal that looked like bronze. In the center the metal twisted in a complicated knot, kind of like the Celtic necklace Maggie always wore. All along the knot were the tiniest, strangest letters I had ever seen, but the endless knot made it impossible to tell where the words began and where they ended. Or maybe they weren’t normal words meant to be read in the normal way at all. Maybe you could just grasp the meaning, the way you sometimes suddenly just know something.

I pressed my fingers over it and thought I felt the metal pulsing between my fingers, like the ground does under my bare feet before a thunderstorm. I half expected to see it glowing when I opened my hand. It only went on glinting coldly, the soft lamplight shining a bit on the bumps, but swallowed in flat shadow in the crevices. It seemed so unspectacular, but it was the most curious, wonderful, terrifying thing I had ever held.

And suddenly I remembered that I had seen it before.