Amber Eyes (13 page)

The shed’s paint was peeling off, its wood seemed rotten and its two small windows were broken.

“Nobody could live in such a rat hole!” Daniel said, raising his upper lip.

Brian questioned everybody with his puzzled little face. “So, how do we get inside?”

Jorge placed his hands around his mouth like a megaphone. “Ahoy! Anybody home?”

A strange man, a sort of hunchback troll who had to be at least 100 years old, came limping out of the shed. He was barefoot and wore pajamas. Two yellowish dogs followed him—I could count each of their ribs, and their legs were so thin, it seemed they could break at any moment. Both salivated like they had the rabies and started to eat voraciously from a dish the troll placed on the ground. Their vicious growls made me shiver.

“Sir!” Edward shook the gates with both hands. The gates clattered. Edward raised his head. The wrought-iron angel at its top was rocking. He opened his eyes wide and released the gates, backing off one step. The troll turned his head toward us and stared. One of his eyes was blue, the other deeply black and sunken into his face.

“Get the hell outta here!” He waved an arm. “T’is private property.”

“Sir,” Edward shouted back. “We’ve gotten permission from Mr. Dumont to camp here. I’ve got an email.”

Edward produced a folded sheet of paper and waved it. The troll shrugged his shoulders, went into the shed, and slammed the door. The two dogs raised their heads but resumed eating immediately.

Edward turned to Jorge. “What on earth?”

Jorge raised both hands with his palms upward. Daniel snorted. The rest of us looked at each other.

“How are we gonna get inside?” Brian said.

The shed’s door opened and the troll came out again aided by a wooden cane that looked more like a branch barely cut yesterday. He approached the gates, limping in actual slow motion while his crooked nose stood out like it moved way ahead of his body.

“What the hell do ya want?” he barked in coarse voice. He was bald and had blotches all over his scalp and face. Think about ‘thin as a rake,’ and that was him. His eyebrows were white, same as the many, long hairs that stuck out of his nose and ears.
Yuk!
Brian grimaced and backed off several steps, almost hiding behind Abe’s huge body.

“We’re Boy Scouts. We’ve got permission from Mr. Dumont to camp in the forest.”

“Nobody told me some goddamned kids were comin’. T’is irregula’.” The troll took a long, crooked finger to his nose and picked it.
Double yuk!

“I’ve got an email,” Edward said.

He handed the document to the troll through the bars, but the troll didn’t take it. Instead, he turned around and walked back to his shed. “Can’t read without my damned eyeglasses. Wait ‘ere.”

“It’ll be ages until he’s back,” Daniel snorted, throwing his arms up in the air. “Such a los—”

Edward glared at Daniel and he shut up. However, he’d been right. Not that the troll was a loser, but that it would take him one full ice age to come back. He spent half of another ice age reading the email, after which he argued with Edward. He wanted Edward’s picture ID to make sure he was the person indicated in the email, but Edward carried none.

“There’s no way I can’t let ya god dammed Boy Scouts in without an ID. Go away.” As he talked, the troll scanned our party. His sunken eye stopped on me and I suddenly felt like it was stripping me naked. I backed off one step.

“Are ya with them?” the troll asked. I glanced sideways. It seemed he was talking to me.

“Yes… sir.” I stammered.

“Oh. Then it’s different.” He pointed at Edward. “Do ya know t’is kid?”

All the Boy Scouts stared at me. “Yes I do. He’s Edward.”

“Well, then that’s that. Ya may come in, Mr. Boy Scouts. Lemme get the keys.” He left us, walking again back to his shed.

“Do you know him?” Jorge asked me.

I shrugged. “Never seen him before.”

“Then why did he ask you if you knew Edward?” Abe asked.

“The guys gaga,” Daniel blurted.

After he came back, the troll tried key after key in the padlock’s keyhole—he had more than 20 on his ring. He held the padlock with long, yellowy trembling fingers and, before he was able to try each key, he missed the padlock’s keyhole two or three times because of his palsy. There was something vaguely familiar in those bony hands, and in the way they held the padlock, and even in the troll himself, but I couldn’t fix in my mind exactly what.

“It’s unbelievable Mr. Dumont gave ya kids permission afte’ what ‘appened last week.”

“What happened last week?” Brian asked.

The troll stopped trying keys, raised his head, and fixed his sunken good eye on Brian. “Do ya really wanna know, kid?” he cackled. “Are ya brave enough?” Brian opened his eyes wide like soup dishes and hid again behind Abe.

The troll spat on the ground and continued trying the keys. “A fella drunken tramp trespassed on the property and ‘id in the mansion. Fell out of a second-floo’ window and killed ‘imself. Almost lost my job because of the fella. I’m supposed to watch the estate, but it’s too large fo’ one single man. The mansion should be off limits ta anybody. The buildin’s condemned. Poor fella broke ‘is skull in two, ‘is brains scattered all around the place.”

Brian stuck his tongue out. “Augh!”

“The mansion’s off limits for ya guys too.” The troll glared and pointed one of his emaciated fingers at us. “The floors are sinkin’, and the roofs and ceilin’s are fallin’ apart. Not safe. If any of ya goddamned kids gets killed inside and I lose my job, I’ll personally kill the rest of ya with my bare ‘ands!”

He extended his hands like he was choking somebody and his good eye popped a bit out of its socket. Brian, Abe and I gulped and jumped a short step backwards. The man did look fearsome and anything but fond of teenagers in general and Boy Scouts in particular. Daniel gasped, startled like the three of us, immediately checking if anybody else had noticed. I had, of course, and so did Edward, because I surprised him, glancing and smiling at an embarrassed Daniel.

Finally, the troll found the right key and unlocked the padlock, pulling the gates open—their rusty hinges squeaked like an old violin. Edward made a sign and all of us picked up our backpacks and boxes, and the rest of the equipment.

Edward crossed the gates leading us into the property. The troll stood by the gate, holding it open, like he guarded our entrance. He glared at us with his sunken eye and I felt I was a death-row inmate heading to the gas chamber. Daniel didn’t even bother acknowledging the troll’s existence as he passed in front of him. Abe accelerated, and Brian cringed, which made the troll smile, showing off his almost toothless mouth. When I passed in front of him, he stiffened, stood as tall as he could and as straight as his deformities allowed him, and murmured, “Welcome back, missus.”

Did he say “miss”?

I swiveled my head and stared at him, wondering if I’d heard right. Had he realized I was a girl among a group of guys? A chill traveled my body, but I couldn’t linger. The group marched into the woods at a fast pace, and I didn’t want to be left behind. Nobody acted like they heard his comment. After a while, I wondered if he’d said anything at all. Maybe I’d mistaken his heavy breathing for words.

# # #

Fifteen minutes after the encounter with the troll.

We hiked through the forest, loosely on the dirt trail we’d followed since we’d entered the estate. The sensation: like marching inside a tunnel—tall trees and bushes flanked us right and left like walls, and the tree canopies closed like a high ceiling creating a greenhouse effect. The conditions: unbearable —heat and humidity beyond what human beings can bear. Our leader: worried only about marching in a perfect line—dying from heat and exhaustion didn’t matter to him. Every now and then, Edward would gaze backwards and say, “Don’t break the line. Keep it ordered and you’ll succeed, as my old man says.”

My feet were killing me. I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to try the other pair of sneakers I’d brought from grandma’s, but I’d planned to do so as soon as we stopped for a rest. Or go barefoot. Or chop off my feet.

I sweated like I never did before. It trickled down my armpits, cheeks, and forehead, burning my eyes. I wished I’d applied some antiperspirant today. At this rate, I’d be stinking up my clothes in no time.

Abe broke the silence we had fallen into. “Edward, let’s take a five.”

His shirt was soaked in sweat way worse than mine, and he panted and dragged his feet. He wasn’t the only one exhausted, but he seemed the only one brave enough to admit it. I hadn’t complained. I figured they wouldn’t accept me if I complained—and I didn’t want them to call me a girl. Besides, I had this idea Daniel was waiting for my slightest comment to bully me—personal past experience dictated the thought.

Edward glanced back at us. “Not yet. Wait a bit. We haven’t got the whole day, and it’s still a 10-minute walk to the place where we’ll set up camp.” Thick droplets of sweat ran down Edward’s face, which was very red. He was tired too. No wonder, the weight he carried was larger than anybody else’s.

“But, Edward, these boxes weigh a ton! And we all need some rest, like, and we’re all thirsty. Aren’t you guys thirsty?”

“It’s only 10 more minutes. Don’t fuss. My load is way heavier than yours.”

Spots of cobblestone surfaced on the ground here and there under my feet. I had a vision of that trail paved with nice, white cobblestones a long time ago. I could only figure that years of rain and mud, and the lack of maintenance, had buried the cobblestones under layers of earth. As I kept walking, I daydreamed how this place might have looked years ago. In my mind, I saw crews of gardeners and landscapers trimming the bushes bordering the trail, and I wondered again in which movie I’d seen this property—they constantly used old, grand states like this one to shoot movies. It must have been an old movie because the bushes had grown into an impenetrable thicket, much like the one around Sleeping Beauty’s castle. I guessed it’d taken the bushes at least 10 years to grow that much and that thick.

During the hike, we passed by marble ponds and fountains. By that time, I’d gotten used to the flashbacks from this movie whose name I couldn’t recall. Long ago, the sculpted angels had held vases out of which water poured, and multicolor schools of fish swam in their clear waters. Today, either the angels’ heads, or the vases, or both, were broken, with graffiti all over their white marble surfaces. Moreover, stagnant water had turned those ponds and fountains into stinky swamps and swarms of mosquitoes hovered over them.

“Edward….” It was Brian.

“We’re not stopping yet, Brian,” Edward warned. This time, he didn’t glance back.

“No… I’m wondering… uh… if it’s true somebody died here last week.”

Daniel spat on the ground. “Of course not, dude. That gatekeeper’s gaga! You can’t trust what he says. Edward’s old man is the sheriff. Edward would have known if somebody had been killed, wouldn’t you, dude?”

“Nobody died here. Daniel’s right,” Edward said. “And the gatekeeper is not gaga, Daniel. He’s just a poor old man. Told you a gazillion times to be respectful, we’re Boy Scouts. My old man says the guy’s been working here since my old man was a kid. He’s way too old for the job now.”

Brian stopped. “Then… um… why did the gatekeeper said somebody… like… ah… got killed here last week?”

I walked past Brian, but Jorge did not. Instead, he pushed Brian’s backpack, forcing Brian to keep on. Brian raced a little bit until he took back his place between Abe and me.

“Because he’s old,” Edward said. “He’s confusing something that actually happened 10 years ago with what’s happening today.”

“So, is it true somebody died here 10 years ago?” Abe asked, wonderment lingering in his voice. He stopped, but restarted as soon as Brian reached him.

“Yeah. The whole police department responded to the 911 call. A drunken man jumped out a second-floor window and died on impact. It happened two weeks before the union’s riot, when the workers raided the mansion and almost set it afire.”

Daniel lifted his upper lip and rolled his eyes. “How pathetic.”

“People say his ghost still haunts the mansion,” Jorge volunteered from the rear. “That every night, he appears and jumps out of the window again. If you watch him, you can become hypnotized and jump after him.”

“Cool!” Daniel said. “Let’s go visit tonight.”

“No, please,” Brian pleaded in his little voice. I was sure I didn’t want to go either, but I didn’t say anything. Let somebody else be the one chickening out.

Edward turned is head. His hard eyes almost spanked us. “Nobody’s approaching that old mansion. You heard what the gatekeeper said: it’s off limits for all of us. And that’s an order. Understood,
Daniel
?”

Daniel raised his upper lip but couldn’t hold Edward’s eyes, so he dropped his head. “Sure, dude. I’m not crazy enough to kill myself in that place.”

But I was not sure if Edward trusted him.

Just then, my cell phone vibrated in my jeans pocket like an electric current was flowing through my leg. I dropped the boxes of supplies and desperately dug in my pocket, struggling to grab the stupid phone that slipped out of my fingers once and again. I finally got hold of it and pulled it out. On the screen, it said ‘Laura’.

A sea of confusion invaded my mind. Mom. Why the hell was she calling again? It made me feel hopeful and angry at the same time. Hopeful, because I could ask her to come and pick me up, or travel to wherever she was and forgot all about Yago. The police hardly knew my name. If I moved with her to a place as far away as Orlando, they would never implicate me in Yago’s murder—the police didn’t even have my full description. It made me feel angry because she should have been with me and should have never left me alone with Yago in the first place. Angry because she’d played with me earlier, calling me on the cell phone only to hang up. I finally pushed the green button. “Hello.”

I hated myself because I’d just sounded too eager, and I didn’t want to disclose I was in trouble. I listened, but Mom didn’t answer even though I could hear background noise.