Duck Boy (4 page)

“Merry, scary Christmas,” he muttered bitterly. He couldn’t even hear the
sound of the doorbell over the organ music. He rang again and sighed.

This wasn’t exactly the Christmas vacation he’d imagined—Aunt Shannon, the
loony, wailing on the organ; Uncle Edward buried in some book; Steve hidden in
his room. Like the last few times his father had shuffled him to her house,
usually Spring Break or summer holidays. Only it was winter this time, so he
wouldn’t be able to easily leave the house to escape all her crazy questions.

Here comes the wacky inquisition.

Maybe his mom’s notebook would keep Aunt Shannon from harassing him. He
hoped so. The organist veered recklessly into another unrecognizable melody.
Steve waited for the music to quiet down and rang the doorbell again. And
again. Three more times. The organ music continued.

“Shannon, Shannon….” Steve could hear Uncle Edward’s muffled voice shouting
between the organ notes. Uncle Edward’s voice faded into the blasting tones.
Moments later, the organ music stopped abruptly. Steve tapped the doorbell
several more times while he had the chance of being heard.

Why doesn’t Uncle Edward just answer the door? It would
be easier than stopping Aunt Shannon’s organ music.

Several minutes later, the front door swung open. Aunt Shannon stood there
with a dazed look, as if the loud notes had knocked her senseless. Green eyes,
rimmed with red. Long ribbons of tears filling some of her wrinkles. Her hair
bun was the tallest part of her, reaching to the middle of Steve’s chest. Over
her ears was a set of construction-grade ear protection—safety orange. Beside
her, Uncle Edward, his pants a little too high, belted tightly over a
substantial bulge. A bad comb-over: wisps of long gray hair threaded over a
shiny bald pate.

“You see,” Uncle Edward said triumphantly, pulling one of her earpieces away
from her ear. “I told you someone was at the front door.” Aunt Shannon’s eyes
narrowed and her mouth momentarily bent with grief. She slid the earmuffs down
around her neck.

“Hello, Aunt Shannon. It’s Steve.”

“What is it that you want?” Aunt Shannon asked briskly. She sounded like she
was addressing a door-to-door salesman, not someone she’d just invited to share
Christmas with her.

“I’m Steve,” Steve repeated. Aunt Shannon still didn’t seem to catch on.
“I’m your great nephew, remember?” Pause. Uncle Edward rolled his puppy-brown
eyes but didn’t utter a word to clarify the situation. “I’m supposed to stay
with you for the Christmas holiday.” He waited again as the information entered
her ears and she processed it. “My mom left, and she’s still missing.”

“Oh yes.” Her stern look continued. Steve didn’t dare enter the house. She
seemed far too fierce.

Suddenly her features exploded. “Well, what are you standing out there for?
It’s cold. My stars in the morning, child. Do you need an engraved invitation?”
She snatched him with her boney hand and pulled him indoors. Steve sighed. The
best decorations in the world couldn’t turn this house into Christmas, he
thought.

They won’t have Netflix. I hope they have cable.

Uncle Edward had already disappeared and was probably reading his book in
his chair. Aunt Shannon, with her bunned gray hair and her bone-bag body,
insisted on carrying Steve’s suitcase to his room. “I just look old,” she
snarled. “And you’re my guest,” she said through gritted teeth as she gripped
his suitcase with both hands and horsed it up a short set of stairs to the main
level of the house. At the top of the stairs, she
dragged it over the lime-green shag carpet. The walls were covered in gold
wallpaper veined with rivers and lakes of blood-red velvet. A violent
collision of color and style.

Now I know what wrecked her mind, Steve thought, as he waited. The suitcase fell onto its side, so she shoved it
with a foot into his room.

Steve’s space was livable, but crowded. Coffee mugs, statues, little
ornaments, and knickknacks cluttered every horizontal surface in the room.
Shanks Grill House,
read the first mug of what looked like
hundreds lined up on a shelf. In front of the mugs was a row of figurines: a
cowboy, a ballerina, a turtle, a puppy, and three unicorns. Steve slid his
suitcase under the bed.

“I’m putting you in a room with all of my collections, so you need to be
careful. My coffee mug collection is nearly priceless.”

“Ah…yeah. I’ll be careful,” Steve replied.

The nightstand beside the bed was covered in a sea of ornaments and trinkets
of any and every sort. The bed was clean and freshly made. On the pillow sat a
black plastic box. Steve raised it from the
pillow.

It’s heavier than it looks.

He turned it around, looking for some clue. A label on the outside read
“Richard A. Best—August 19/63—June 21/79.” Underneath the first line, there was
a company name: Coral Smith Funeral Homes. Steve shook it. It seemed filled
with sand. He dropped the box onto the bed when he realized what it was.

“Oh, geez,” Steve grumbled. “Richard’s ashes. Perfect.”

Aunt Shannon poked her head through the open door to see how Steve was
settling in. She noticed the black box lying on the bed.

“I see you met Richard,” she said pleasantly.

“These aren’t his ashes, are they?” he asked.

“Of course, dear,” Aunt Shannon replied. “Who else’s could they be?”

Steve picked up the box and offered it to his aunt. “Could you please put
this somewhere else, Aunt Shannon?”

“For your information, you are sleeping in Richard’s bedroom,” she retorted.

“This was his bedroom?”

“This IS his bedroom,” Aunt Shannon corrected. “He still sleeps here. He
just takes up a little less room than he used to.” She didn’t make any motion
to take the box out of Steve’s hand.

“No, really,” Steve replied firmly. “Could Richard sleep somewhere else
while I sleep in his room?” Aunt Shannon paused to think. She ran her fingers
gently down the outside of the box and studied them for a moment. She looked up
at Steve again.

“I suppose I could put him on the couch for the next few nights. Edward
won’t let me put him in my workshop.” She took the box from Steve’s hand. “Did
you bring your mother’s research notebook?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Yup,” Steve chirped, happy to have won the discussion of Richard’s remains.
“It’s in my suitcase.” He squatted down and pulled the suitcase from underneath
his bed, extracting the notebook. Mom’s notebook looked like a recycled goose.
Tattered pages surrounded the coiled wire binding like a bird on a bad-feather
day. Coffee-brown bubbles warped the paper, tinting the birdish book.

This is one sick chicken.

“Good work, Steve.” Aunt Shannon smiled for the first time. “It looks like
it’s been through a bit of a tornado.” She held the notebook and gently turned
and flattened the first few mangled pages. “This is an important first step.
We’ll bring your mother back with this.”

Steve smiled politely. “Sure…whatever,” he said weakly.

Mom is gone.

Aunt Shannon seemed oblivious to the facts. The facts told the story. A team
of this city’s best detectives, their staff, and a good bit of publicity
couldn’t scare up any clues at all. The case had even been aired on the TV
program
Unsolved Mysteries
a few months after she’d disappeared.

And now, a year and two months after the show had aired, everyone seemed to
have a theory. The case hadn’t moved anywhere—no witnesses, clues, anything.
The police concluded that Mrs. Best had run away. At first Steve had been angry.
They were wrong; Mom hadn’t run away, he had told himself. She wouldn’t run
away. Now he wasn’t so sure.

Run away? Merry Christmas.

“Steve?” Aunt Shannon called. “Steve?”

“Huh?”

“Are you all right?”

“Uh…yeah. I’m OK,” Steve responded.

“We’ll talk about it over cocoa in the kitchen.”

“Yeah, sure…whatever.”

He replaced his suitcase under the bed and flopped onto the ruffled
green comforter. He didn’t want to share a mug of anything
with anyone. He hoped Uncle Edward and Aunt Shannon would just get on with
their evening and leave him to himself. He relaxed, letting himself slip into
the only place he liked to go these days—sleep.

“Steve,” Aunt Shannon called. When he didn’t respond, she repeated herself a
little more loudly. “Steve!” Nothing. She trudged down the hall and yelled
sharply into the open bedroom door. “STEVE!”

Steve almost jumped out of his skin. It took him a couple of minutes to
figure out where he was and what he needed to do. Reluctantly he slid off the
bed and trudged to the kitchen. He slumped into a seat at the kitchen table.

Across from him sat Uncle Edward, who was reading a book titled
How to Build Your Own House
while he sipped his cup of tea.
His pudgy eyelids crinkled as he scrolled over the page of his book. Uncle
Edward was wearing a plaid shirt. He always wore plaid.

“Are you planning on building a house?” Steve asked as he read the title of
the book. Uncle Edward just snorted.

Aunt Shannon answered the question in her husband’s place. “Edward doesn’t
read so he can do anything. He reads because he likes to read.”

“Oh,” Steve replied. Aunt Shannon set the coffee-stained notebook on the
table.

“What’s that?” Uncle Edward asked, jerking his nose towards the notebook.
Steve wondered how he even noticed the notebook. He didn’t seem to look up from
his book as he read.

“It’s my mom’s notebook,” Steve responded glumly. “Aunt Shannon thinks it
might have some clues to Mom’s disappearance.”

“I see,” Uncle Edward commented in a disgusted tone. “More hocus-pocus, huh?
I wish you’d leave that stuff alone, Shannon.”

A whirring microwave oven on top of the fridge dinged loudly as it finished
warming Steve’s hot chocolate. Uncle Edward stood, his eyes never leaving his
book, and retrieved the cocoa. He slid it over the tabletop to where Steve was
sitting and returned to his seat. Aunt Shannon set a full teacup beside the
journal and lowered herself into a chair.

She smoothed the warped pages of the notebook gently, but the pages refused
to lay flat. “I’ve wanted to read this for a while now.” She slid a finger
through the handle of her cup of tea. “Can I read it?” she asked politely. Then
she schlorpped a mouthful of tea, returned the cup to its china plate, and
wiped her face with the back of her hand.

“Go ahead,” Steve returned. “You can keep it.”

“Oh no,” Aunt Shannon said with a frown. “It’s far too valuable to give away
so hastily. You really don’t know the potential here, do you?”

“Whatever,” he replied with distinct indifference.

“Regardless of how you feel, young man, I need to ask you a few questions.”
She paused for a moment as if to clear her mind of daily details to make room
for a big thought. “Now, tell me about the night she disappeared—what
happened?”

Steve shrugged. “I dunno. All I really know is that she screamed and then
she was gone.”

“That’s it?” Aunt Shannon asked. “That’s all you know?”

“Yup.”

“Come on, Steve. You know more than that.”

Steve sighed. This wasn’t a bus worth taking. “I don’t. I was almost asleep
when it happened.”

“I know you saw more than you think you know. You just need to jostle your
thoughts a little.”

“Joss—what?”

“Jostle. I suppose it’s a word that’s out of fashion. I just mean you need
to think more carefully about that night. I know you know some important
things.”

“I can’t help you, Aunt Shannon.”

Her green eyes dimmed.

“We can’t do it with an attitude like yours.”

“Can we talk about something else?”

Aunt Shannon shook her head.

“I need your help here.”

“Got any Christmas shopping left to do?” Steve asked as politely as he
could.

“Steve?” she asked in a hurt way. “You’re not much of an alchemist, are
you?”

She had switched topics, so Steve decided to run with it. “Alchemist? What
do you mean?”

“You don’t know what an alchemist is?” Aunt Shannon asked in disbelief. “You
really haven’t been brought up right, have you?”

Steve didn’t know how he should respond, so he didn’t say anything.

“An alchemist is a person who experiments with things and tries to change
things from one kind of thing to another.”

Steve nodded, but inside he winced, wishing he’d stuck with the Christmas
shopping topic. He’d heard many adults introduce their own speeches, and he
knew he was in for one of hers. She looked for his acknowledgment of the
information. He didn’t offer any encouragement, but she began anyhow.

“In olden days, alchemists tried to change lead into gold. That was the one
thing most of them focused on. But alchemy isn’t about gold. It’s about change.
And alchemy has limitless possibilities for change. Traditionally, alchemy’s
about taking something and transforming it into something else. I can prove
that this much is true—and so could many others. But I don’t think it stops
there. It may be about transforming time. It might be used to change one kind
of place into another. Best of all, it could even have something to do with
changing human beings—are you listening, Steve?”

Steve felt a little tired and he had lost interest in Aunt Shannon’s words.
“Sorry, Aunt Shannon. I’m sleepy.”

“Well, if you know nothing else about alchemy, you should know that it is
about experiments. Your mother must have told you what she was experimenting
with.”

“No, she never talked about it.” Steve shrugged.

“Steve, come on. You’re telling me you had no idea about her experiments?”

“Nope.” This time he shook his head for emphasis.

“Did she never show you her Benu stone?” Aunt Shannon asked in disbelief.
“She would have had her notebook with her and her Benu stone.”