Frustrated, I lower my arms. I would wonder how his dad sleeps through this racket if I didn’t already have an inkling. More likely than not, Mr. Talbot is locked away in their basement. His basement, which also happens to be the town mortuary.
I try to avoid the Ward gossip mill, I really do, but it’s impossible not to hear the rumors about the Talbot family. Four years ago, Elias Talbot swept into Ward with a single black suitcase and his surly teenage son to replace Mr. Whitely as the town mortician. The solemn Mr. Talbot was nothing like our previous mortician, who drove a bright green Jeep and hummed Top 50 pop songs in the grocery line. No one could believe it when Jesse’s dad refused Mr. Whitley’s facilities and built his own mortuary, right in the basement of his house. The motto on our street ismind your business,so nobody bugged Elias about pesky things like permits and zoning ordinances, although I had the pleasure of hearing Baba mutter about it under his breath for two weeks straight my freshman year.
As for Mrs. Talbot … not even our super sleuths can find any dirt on her. Some people think Elias murdered her—that he invented a fake story for the police after he embalmed her and stored her in his basement mortuary. Others think she’s in jail for committing an unspeakable crime and the Talbots had to flee town after her arrest.
In any case, not the sort of family you want to cross. Unfortunately, I’m sleep-deprived and operating at the mercy of a single brain cell. I finda pair of beaten dance shoes Baba was supposed to throw away behind the garbage bins and climb onto the chair again. Strategy is of the essence here. Throwing the shoe too hard might startle Jesse into sawing himself in half. Throwing it too gently won’t catch his eye, which means he’ll keep sawing, which means I’ll lose it and do something ill-advised like run into the Talbot house and cut the wires of all his power tools.
The first shoe sails wide, over the grill and straight through their open kitchen door.
Whoops.
I squint one eye shut, zeroing in like I’ve seen in the movies. Rearing my arm as far back as it’ll go, I keep a stabilizing hand on the gate. The chair squeaks.
A shadow passes over me, a wisp of darkness smaller than a bird in flight.
The shoe flies, and several things happen in rapid-fire sequence. The chair’s leg collapses, sending me flailing backward. Jesse’s head jerks up, and I fall into a shadow.
The world vanishes. Filth splashes around my ankles. I struggle to sit up, gagging against the odors battering my nose. Vomit, excrement. Blood and oozing decay.
I can’t see, but I could never forget this smell. The sewers carrying this putrid muck only break open in one street. A street thousands of miles away.
The nothingness at my feet wavers. From the void, a small body bubbles to the surface. Facedown and unnaturally still.
My heart freezes.
It’s not real. It’s not real.I screw my eyes shut and pinch my nose. Slow, shallow sips of air filter into my mouth.I left the Haikal villa three weeks ago.
The darkness presses close, and my hold on calm begins to rapidlyunravel. The darkness knows my name. It’s the darkness that pressed against me as I slept in El Agamy. That throbs in the split second before my hand finds a light switch. The most dangerous mistake is letting my gaze linger on these shadows. Once they start to change, there’s no going back. They’ll follow me into the light.
“Mansour!” My head snaps back as someone shakes me. The fog of terror temporarily lifts, and I take a tentative sniff of the air. Wood shavings and jasmine. The sweet, moldy tang of the Ahmads’ tangerines squashed on the street.
I force my eyelids to lift. My knees are damp from kneeling on the grass. My palms lie open, facing the sky.
A position of submission. Of surrender.
A chill that has nothing to do with the temperature spreads down my spine.
At the sight of Jesse’s ear protectors dangling around his neck, I latch onto the remnants of my irritation. Irritation is safer than the fear surging through me, souring in my stomach.
“Who usespower toolsat eight in the morning on a Saturday?” I demand. I hope he can’t hear the quiver in my voice.
“Power tools?” Jesse sits back on his haunches, work boots sinking into the grass. Dark eyes examine my features as though they might unveil the answers to the universe. “What thefuckjust happened to you?”
Two slats from the gate lie in pieces beside me. Sawed off, it seems. I’d worry about explaining to Baba why the neighbor’s son hacked his way onto our property, if Baba ventured out here more than once every fifty years.
“I have a headache,” I say. It emerges more pitifully than I intended. A headache making me hallucinate foul smells and faraway streets and floating children.
Down the road, a door slams shut, and the rest of my fog clears. I’malone with Jesse. Sure, his eyes are still brown, and I think Mr. Olson’s smoking on his porch next door, butstill.The thing could take him at any moment. Getting sawed into chunks isn’t on my list of top ten ways to get killed.
I skirt around Jesse and throw open the screen door. “Sleep in for once, would you?” I call over my shoulder. The screen slams shut behind me.
By late afternoon, I’ve successfully repressed my memories of the morning, prepared and packaged dinner, organized my closet, and cleaned every corner of the house.
I purse my lips at the pile of books on my desk. I’ve descended into levels of boredom where even stats homework would hit the spot.
A sharp tap rings from the roof. I flinch, whipping my head toward the ceiling.
Another tap, this one directly over my bed. Rain trickles from the clear panes of the window, pooling at the sill.
