Was it because of Kid? He had offered to “crack the lock” just by listening as he rotated the dial, but eventually gave up and tried each combination in order, starting with 001; he made it to 012 before becoming frustrated and shooting the lock with his wind. They all gathered round as he opened the briefcase, and there they were: four silvery vials. She was so relieved the case hadn’t been empty that she nearly burst into tears. Noah and Jake also had a touching dampness about their eyes. Kid downright started sobbing. No, that wasn’t what was upsetting her.
She supposed it could have been the booze––she hadn’t puked like Kid and Noah, their celebrating especially boisterous, but maybe she should. Jake had been incredibly affectionate towards her all evening, too; was that it? Lately, a schism had been festering between them, but tonight had been different. After his third slurred speech of the evening, Jake had looked at Clem and the words caught in his throat; he thanked her for everything she had done, for being with them––with him. He had hugged her then, and whispered into her ear that he loved her, and she tearfully said it back. Her tears could have been from the briefcase suddenly jabbing her in the shoulder blades––Jake had held onto it since returning, refusing to let go––but she doubted that; it was love, definitely love.
He stayed by her side for the rest of the night, stroking her hair. Clementine had watched his eyes finally close, then set her head into the crook of his arm, and let her eyes close as well, listening to his breathing relax. It was warm, and when Jacob pulled her closer in his sleep, she clutched him back. Perhaps if they had been alone, she might have woken him up so they could make love, but for now, it was enough for her just to be in his embrace. So no, that wasn’t what was troubling her, either.
She fell asleep still pondering the cause of her worry. Perhaps this was what led her mind to drift into such troubled waters, as she had a dream that played into these fears; or maybe she feared the dream itself, even before it occurred. She was back in Mr. Sh?fer’s cabin, searching again for the briefcase, but this time it was pitch-black, the darkness broken in staccato bursts from the blood-red moonlight seeping in through the swaying curtain. At first, she figured the case was hiding underneath Mr. Sh?fer’s bed, just like in real life, but in that spot was a dark pool of something black and shiny. She reached for it and touched nothing, but when she drew her hands back, they dripped with thick, tacky blood, which gave off a sickly sweet odor. As the smell reached her nostrils, the train suddenly drove through an orchard, and branches began smacking the window; lemons fell through the curtain with dull, hollow thuds. Terrified, she looked up at Mr. Sh?fer, whose eyes were now open, lifelessly meeting her gaze; blood trailed from his gaping jaw, and Clementine knew he was dead.
She tried to scream, but nothing would come out; her mouth was sewn shut. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she looked back at Mr. Sh?fer; his bloody maw had twisted into a jagged grin, tongue flapping as a gurgling cackle wheezed from his throat, but there were no signs of life in his eyes. Clem pushed herself away, crying as she attempted to stand, but Mr. Sh?fer’s blood had soaked into her jeans and made her legs too heavy to lift, and they started to sink into the ground. The more she tried to pick herself up, the more they sank, and soon she disappeared into the carpet up to her waist. The blood underneath the bed started pouring out, filling the rest of the room.
Just before it reached her head, she looked again at Mr. Sh?fer, silently pleading with him to help her, but he was no longer there. Then she was completely submerged, and there was only blood and darkness, followed by deep silence. The silence would soon lead her into an easy, if not entirely blissful slumber, but a question lingered in the background, tacitly and relentlessly hounding her even after she awoke: what had she done? Which, of course, led to another, equally worrying question.
Did I make the right choice?
They started in Wichita Falls, Texas, and stayed in their van near Holliday, laying low while waiting for Madison’s reply to the letter regarding the vials of unknown worth. Mega-Ball up and disappeared once The Nomads secured the briefcase, so it was either sit around with a hot product to be caught, or move on. “You may trust him but that don’t mean we do,” Noah tried explaining to Jacob. Sometimes it was the three boys versus her, and others it was Noah representing Kid and Clem against Jake. These power dynamics were rigid, so it was out of the norm when everybody unanimously decided on leaving Texas, and they took that as a sign.
Celebrating was fine, but until the money was in her hand she refused to believe the vials were worth diddly-squat. Madison was an old friend of Noah and Kid, who Kid often stayed in touch with over the classic pen-and-ink after her peculiar departure from Sister Mary’s. They didn’t know much about what Madison was doing in Oregon, though she had told them long ago if they ever came across anything interesting while thieving, especially related to arcana, to contact her. Well, after sending a letter stating that it was something of seemingly ‘magical’ quality, Madison replied with a letter of her own after a week, and so they were headed to Oregon. Just like that. The intriguing part about Madison was the mysterious way she was, as Kid and Noah described, hot-footedly bought and shipped off to Oregon by a family of outstanding wealth. Who these Vernins really were, or what they wanted from Madison, nobody knew. From Kid’s descriptions, Madison’s cryptic letters did a good job at explaining nil; even casting at times a more peculiar lens on her situation. Like how sometimes she used words like “estranged” or “timely manner.” There seemed to be a sort of invisible clock hovering above Madison’s head, ticking down to a fateful hour that only she knew the length of; the fact that Madison refused to meet Noah and Kid herself once they had arrived in Oregon was also peculiar. Wouldn’t a friend, lost to time and distance, be ecstatic at the chance of reacquainting?
All that could be done was to meet her contact at a place called Whiteaker in Eugene, Oregon, and in the meantime try to relax, appreciate the road trip, and enjoy the sights.
They were something, Clementine supposed.
Deserts for a while, a long, long while (which she was accustomed to). Blankets of dry sand, bug clouds so thick they had to stop at several gas stations to use the squeegee. Called it bug duty. “Your bug duty next up,” somebody would say. The occasional ghost town, aftermath of the war. Then great Idaho mountains, and finally forests upon reaching Oregon. She had never seen so much green in her life. She supposed it appeased some fools driving from here to there, but not her. The rush of green symbolically depicted the nauseating waves her stomach took as they neared their destination with their fates resting in the hands of a stranger. The whole experience of leaving Texas so suddenly left an acrid welt on her psyche. It was as if the accumulation of her life, her memories, her family, her heart, withered away on her tongue, and she was forced to swallow the sorrow. It did not go down smoothly. Not kindly, she said to herself, like her daddy used to say.
She missed him, deeply. He had been dead for over four years now, but the pain of losing him never really got easier. The grief was always there, except where once she cried, now felt like overwhelming numbing. Then, the moments of pain would come in sickening bursts, in tsunami waves, so strong and out of the blue she wanted to fall to her knees, to allow the grief to rip her out to sea. That’s what unbearable grief turned into: bearable misery.
Her daddy taught her what it meant to be a human being. To be explorative and kind. To recognize birds by their songs; the sharp cry of the kestrel, the squall of the peregrine, the shrikes and the owls and the vireos. He taught her how to ride by moonlight and how to navigate by the constellations. He taught her how to birth a foal, how to trim hooves, how to break a wild horse, how to gain their trust. He taught her which plants on the plains could be consumed and which to avoid. Which healed wounds and which festered them: honey locust for a sore throat, strangler vine for a cough, palmetto for a migraine. Was there some plant out there that could heal the chasm he left behind?
Now she was heading to a new place, where she didn’t know the names of the birds and the plants. The birds would chirp and she wouldn’t recognize them; suddenly they weren’t friends but faceless, alien creatures. The plants were suddenly dangerous and offered no reprieve. The stars couldn’t be relied upon. And she would likely think about her father in these moments, and she would feel his gaping absence. She would think: My father isn’t here, just as everything I’ve ever loved.
Maybe leaving was so bitter because of what she had left back home. Technically she left home long ago, a year to be more accurate, but leaving Texas entirely felt like a shift in that technicality. Now, once again, the feeling shifted into a new form; something uglier, more real. She saw it depicted inside storm clouds rolling overhead, in the over-eagerness of her friends’ eyes, she saw it behind her own as the van rumbled and rocked her into milky sleep. But, unsurprisingly, when she awoke, sometimes in fright from that recurring dream she had of Mr. Sh?efer, the pain of leaving always remained, heightened by the nightmare.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Who decided to make goodbyes hurt so badly? Couldn’t they be good? Like at the start of a new chapter in life, or in a good book. Saying goodbye to old, unhealthy habits and to tiresome conversations. She never was much of a talker, didn’t have lots of experience with it stranded on a farm, besides her horses, and any conversation, especially ones revolving around small talk, was avoided like fluttering-cough.
There was the time when they were parked eating some burgers, almost nearing Idaho. It was a nice day, everyone had their doors open, watching the ochre grain sway, relishing in the taste of the burgers and enjoying light conversation, but not her. She was quiet, as she had been for the last hundred or so miles, when Jacob asked her what was wrong. In reply, between a peckish bite of food, she said: “Not too sure, but it doesn’t have a lick to do with you.” She dropped the budding argument in a hurry, not wanting to start another fight in front of Noah and Kid. She hated fighting in front of them, though sometimes it couldn’t be helped. Still, and Clementine was sure it was because Jake felt in some way she was trying to steal away their victory, he made it his goal to get the truth out of her by the end of the trip. He never did.
But that’s all her quiet was, the pain of goodbye, and he would never understand that. Not Jacob. Looking somewhat helplessly into the rearview, the land behind her kept giving way till there was nothing left of her old life but a memory, till even that seemed untouchable in its fragility.
Jake was adamant he drove the whole way because he didn’t ‘trust’ anybody behind the wheel of Agatha Christie. “Why’d you name the van Agatha Christie anyways, cap’n?” Kid asked Jake as they were approaching Idaho. Great powder-topped peaks could be seen looming in the distance, not a cloud hovering about. Giants of old times, so immense they made her feel a miniscule, insignificant thing.
“Ma used to read Agatha Christie’s crime novels to me before bed,” Jake answered with an air of wistfulness.
“How the hell old were you to be hearin crime novels?” Sister Mary’s was especially strict when it came to consuming media of any kind, though that didn’t stop the kids from getting their hands on it. The children just got sneakier in the ways they came about it. Kid Black got his cowboy fix no matter what (hence the name), despite the fact he had never done a cowboy thing in his life (Clementine often held her tongue). Even after being out for many years, Kid’s voice twanged with surprise whenever he heard how children were raised outside of Sister Mary’s.
Jake laughed when Kid had said it. “Slow yourself, cowboy, never said she was good. In fact, she was downright spiteful and full of venom most of the time. Not nearly like my pop, though.” He lowered his voice and muttered, “Monster.” Everybody knew of the horrors committed by Jacob’s parents, and anytime they were brought up, especially his father, you would know it was time to get quiet and leave Jake be. He wasn’t always so sour; considering Jake’s godawful upbringing, she would even go so far as to say he turned out just fine. She didn’t like to think about his childhood much. It just brought a sickening in her stomach. The memory of his first puppy comes to mind. Jake had found a new friend, abandoned on the side of the road. A bloodhound pup, floppy ears bigger than his body, and he took a quick liking to Jake, Jake to him. So he did what any boy would do; he took him home. He knew his father wouldn’t let him keep him and so for a week he snuck dinner scraps into his room. When his father found the pup, it was finally starting to fatten up, bones no longer showing. His pa took the pup (Blue, Jake named him) by the scruff, grabbed his shotgun, Jacob wailing all through the house to let him go, went out to the porch, looked Jake in the eye, and nuzzled the barrel right to Blue’s nape. Made Jake clean up the mess, tears and snot and blood all over him. Jake ran away two days later. That would traumatize just about anyone, she figured.
The conversation drifted out their open windows and into the Idaho air. “She read to you, didn’t she?” Noah said to Jacob, irked. “That’s something.”
The van became deathly silent, yet all Jacob did was give an aggrieved smile, not registering or just not caring that Noah was upset. Jake glanced at Noah in the rearview, and said, “Yeah, it’s something. I should be more appreciative, I know.”
This response pleasantly surprised everybody and because of that, the conversation flowed into them each sharing an intimate memory of Texas—minus her, of course; she would have started crying again. What surprised her most was how they still had good things to say despite the hardships the boys faced there. Especially as a young witch, forced to hide from the Coalition who prowled around empty streets at night in their pickups looking for anyone out of place. After the South receded—again—a faction called the American Coalition Against Arcanic Unlawfulness rose from the ashes of the scorched red states. They enacted all the same cruelties the KKK did, but with a more Salem witch-trial twist.
Kid claimed he once killed ten of the bigoted ‘cock-sucks.’ Noah popped Kid in the shoulder, said, “the only thing you’ve ever killed is my chances with women, shut up.” This began one of their famous slap/punch fights, and ended when Kid farted and used his wind arcana to blow it towards Noah’s nose. Then another fight broke out when it affronted Noah.
They would play with each other like that and then get into a real fight, then make up and do it all over again. Clementine pondered that’s likely what any close relationship was like. It seemed to her you pick a certain person at a certain time, and it’s as simple as that. For so long, for her, it was her brother. And now it was these morons.
Once, they passed a snake-oil salesman on the side of the highway selling ‘dreams.’ Whatever that meant. Seeing that man, his pale skin in a scorching desert, the lack of evidence that the desert had touched him at all—no sweat, no dust on the pristine suit—made her uneasy. This is all a giant mistake, she thought for the thousandth time, and her eyes briefly locked with the dream seller as they swept on by.
If anything, the close encounter along I-80 proved that.
They were not undercover cops, as Kid had suggested, nor the CIA looking to probe Kid’s brain for any sign of intelligent life, as Jake jokingly suggested; they weren’t even ‘happenstance,’ as the level-headed Noah suggested. She believed them to be, despite a shred of supporting evidence beyond her intuition, the briefcase’s original owner. It was a hot item after all, so why was it such a far-fetched idea? The black vehicle appeared to be following their van through several twists and turns, gas stations, and long stretches of highway. Strangely no one ever got out of the car and the windows were tinted beyond vision. But there they sat, watching from within the walls of their impenetrable, spectral titan. She had half a mind to confront them, to charge right up and ask what the deal was, but ultimately decided against it; nobody else was willing to take the initiative, nobody but her was even remotely worried about it. After a hundred miles or so it turned out to be nothing; the featureless vehicle took an exit and was never seen again. But the effect remained with her.
The vehicle reminded her of the time she first joined the trio. They were using Jacob’s arcana to pickpocket and rob gas stations, and her as a getaway if ever needed. In her defense, she was positive it never went beyond petty crimes until the briefcase. It did, however, go further back with Jacob and his old thieving buddies: the Diggery brothers and company (where he met Mega-Ball). Jacob never liked to go into specifics about what they had done in their time together, but he would always get this distant stare in his eyes as he thought back on the fate of those two boys.
It wasn’t long before the Ranger caught wind of these serial crimes, and it wasn’t long after that when he followed The Nomads’ touring patterns to make sure they weren’t up to activities of “devious nature,” as Texas Ranger Martinez liked to say while tugging on a plump cigar; the bristles of his mustache laid atop it like one of those droopy mop dogs on a kitchen floor. Now, typically a Ranger wouldn’t get themselves involved in trying to bring forth justice on accounts of such crimes, but The Nomads had the Diggery brothers and company to thank for that. When the Diggery brothers were finally caught for their past crimes—this was before she had come along—their fates were sealed and they were hanged, but their legacy continued to haunt the rest of the remaining members. Admirably, even when facing death they did not give up any of their compatriots (Jacob included). Still, for a time after, a little over a year in fact, Ranger Martinez made it his mission to get Jake, Mega-Ball and the others, hanged the same as the brothers. Through a clever plan of Jacob’s, he had his old thieving buddies begin robbing stores on the nights of The Nomads’ shows, and so Ranger Martinez eventually lost interest in Jake, but she would never forget the ghastly stares, and the fear the Ranger put into her heart; the sureness in his eye that they were nothing but scum.
Was she? The money they stole was insured, so who were they really hurting? The government? As if it ever cared for her. They just wanted to eat. A warm place to stay and practice their music. They wanted freedom. The freedom to be who they wanted to be. And besides, until the briefcase she had never personally stolen a single thing.
During the year leading up to the train job, they had lived entirely in their van, practicing on the side of the road most of the time. The funky smells, the constant arguing, the lack of privacy. If she didn’t spend another second as a sleeping-bag sardine she would die happy. She had even tried to get a few real jobs, but none were interested in hiring a scroungy looking thing of a girl.
Once they were nearing Oregon, and the weight of the black car was off her heart, there was another shift inside her. She started smiling, laughing at the gang’s occasionally-funny jokes, joined in the roadside jam sessions, and sang along to Jake’s music collection. It was one of those few experiences, besides playing music, where she felt they were simpatico.
Before they knew it, they were deep inside the new world of Oregon. But only after a few short hours crossing the border, the engine of the van began squealing, and before long they were stuck on the side of the road. Thankfully, somebody with a tow hitch came along and brought them to a shop in a nearby city, and there they compiled and spent the remaining money they had on repairs. On the bright side, the air was fresh, and the mechanics had semi-fresh coffee.
Still, she knew she wasn’t ready for this new chapter. She also knew that it didn’t matter if she was ready for it or not: it was here, and she would have to plant her feet down if she didn’t want to be blown over by the incoming fall that tinged at the tips of the Oregon night air like cold-gun steel.
Something is coming, her dreams warned. Something is coming.