Honorbound (3 page)

I went over the story I had come up with. We would call the police and tell them that we were here when a man broke in.

“He attacked us,” I told her, “he beat the two of us and tried to drag you off. Your dad tried to stop him and the guy pulled out a knife and… did that. Then ran off.”

Her little brother would be home soon, so we went through the details of our story as much as we could before we called the police.

“Wait,” Sarah said as I was getting ready to call, “you don’t look like you got in a fight.”

She was right. I picked the fallen end table up off the floor. I had to do it before I lost the nerve. With a deep breath I slammed my face into the table top. I always thought cartoons were kidding when they show characters seeing stars. They aren’t.

When the room stopped moving, I called the police.

The killing had taken seconds, but it felt like hours. The rest of the night was a blur. The police and the paramedics came. They treated our injuries and questioned us. Mom was called, and she sped back from wherever she had been. Maybe it was just because I knew I had done it, but it didn’t seem like they questioned us very much. Maybe it was my shaking or Sarah’s bawling. Who knows.

When her brother got home from his friend’s house and found out what happened I thought he would never stop screaming. Mom held him for hours until he finally got too hoarse to continue.

Sarah and her brother didn’t have any living family members in the area, so child services were called and they were supposed to be taken to a temporary foster home. Somehow, and I’m still not certain how she pulled it off, Mom talked them into letting her take care of them until they could track down family out of state.

I have no idea what time it was when I finally collapsed into bed. I hadn’t even bothered to change out of my bloody clothes. As sleep swept me away my last thought was that it was over. How wrong I was again.

The next few days were pretty quiet. We were let off school for the rest of the week, but Mom had to take us to the police station a few more times to give statements. Sarah and I didn’t talk about what happened. I think we told the story so much that both of us were starting to really believe it. At least, by day.

By night I saw him in my dreams. His throat was open, but he was still laughing. I’d swing and swing and swing until there was nothing left. He still laughed. I didn’t get much sleep.

By Monday morning things were feeling like they were back to normal. Sarah and I walked to school together like always. We didn’t talk much on the way, but it wasn’t awkward. We understood. We didn’t need all the words anymore.

Our walk may not have been awkward, but school was. The stares. The whispers. Everyone being unnaturally, uncomfortably nice. I guess it didn’t really bother me though. Let them walk on eggshells, I thought, in a month we can all forget any of this ever happened. I wish it’d been that easy. Nothing’s ever that easy. I didn’t even get a full week of peace.

Sarah and I were laughing when we walked into the apartment. I can’t remember what about, something stupid from school I think. Who cares, we were laughing again. I saw Sarah’s little brother watching cartoons. Then I saw the sword.

It was sitting out on the mantle above our fake fireplace. An arched wooden stand held it on display in all its shining glory. One tier held the sheath, the next held the naked blade.

I froze when I saw it. Sarah kept going, then stopped when she saw the look on my face.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“The sword,” was all I managed to croak out.

She looked at it on the mantle. “You don’t think. They can’t know…”

Mom came around the corner from the kitchen before she could finish.

“Welcome home guys, how was school?”

Neither of us answered. I was fixed on the sword, Sarah glanced back and forth between me and Mom. Mom followed my gaze to the mantle.

“Do you like it?” she asked. “I was cleaning up your room and I found it in the back of your closet. You shouldn’t treat your present that way.” She walked over to it. “I know I told you not to take it out but, with everything that’s happened, I thought this might cheer you up a bit.”

“You took it out?”

“Yeah. I thought it looks better that way. Don’t you?”

“Why? Why did you do that?”

“You don’t have to shout.” She looked a little hurt. “Don’t you like it?”

I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to throw that thing through the window. What was I going to do? She took it out of the sheath. My Mom was going to die. I pressed my palms to my temples, trying to stop the room from spinning. Mom and Sarah both called after me as I slipped into my room and slammed the door. What could I tell Mom? She’d never believe me about the curse. I still had trouble believing it.

“Hon, are you ok?” Mom knocked on the door behind me. “Let us in.”

I got up and opened the door.

“Sorry, it’s… I like it. I’m just still kind of… stressed.”

Mom didn’t look completely convinced, but she let it go.

“Alright. Let me know if you want to talk, ok?”

She went back off to the kitchen. Sarah stayed behind. She watched Mom turn the corner then closed the door.

“What was that about?” she asked. “They’re going to get suspicious if you keep this up.”

I had forgotten, I never had the chance to tell her everything that had happened. She didn’t know about the curse.

“It’s not that,” I said. “It’s Mom. She’s… in trouble.”

“What do you mean?”

I started at the beginning, with the auction. I told her everything — the sword not staying in the sheath, the accidents, the meeting, the bus. She took a moment to process it all.

“You can’t be serious.”

I stared back at her.

“You can’t be serious. This is crazy. You don’t seriously believe the sword is cursed, do you?”

“I don—”

A crash from the kitchen cut me off. When we ran in Mom was sitting on the floor holding a hand to her head. One of the cabinets was smashed into the counter and cans of food were scattered all over. Sarah’s little brother clung to her side.

We pulled Mom up and sat her back down at the table. When she pulled her hand away from her head you could already see a large purple lump swelling up beneath her hair.

“I can’t believe that stupid thing, broke right off the wall,” she said. “Gave me a good hard whack coming down.” She poked at the swelling on her head and winced.

“Are you ok?” Sarah asked. “Should we call a doctor?”

“No, no. I’ll be fine. Just some headache medicine and an icepack.” She got up and pulled a bag of veggies from the freezer. “I would really appreciate it if you three could clean up all the cans for me, though.”

We went to work picking everything up while Mom went and laid down on the couch to ice her head. It didn’t take us long to finish. As soon as the last one was picked up I dragged Sarah back into my room while her brother went to watch TV with Mom.

“Do you see?” I said. “Mom took the sword out and now the accidents have started. We have to fix this or…” I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to think about losing Mom.

“So you want to murder someone? Who? How can you even say that?”

“Be quiet, Mom will hear. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I can’t just let Mom die. I don’t know that I can just murder someone though. I didn’t even mean to with your Dad I just…”

She squeezed my hand.

“No. No he deserved it. He deserved worse. Don’t you dare regret that. I just wish it had been me holding the sword.”

“So what do we do?”

We sat in silence, thinking. Sarah spoke up first.

“We can’t just murder some innocent person. We can’t. It’s gotta be someone who deserves it. A criminal.”

“How are we going to do that? We don’t know any criminals, and there’s no way we could get to someone after they’ve been arrested.”

She sighed. “You’re right. Let’s take some time and think about it, this is too much for me right now. We’ll work something out tomorrow.”

We didn’t talk about it the rest of the night, or at all in the morning. I couldn’t focus in school. There had to be someone who deserved to die, but who. I knew, deep down, I didn’t really care who. Mom’s life was more important to me than anyone else’s. I couldn’t tell that to Sarah though, she would’ve thought I was a monster.

The walk home was mostly silent. We had plenty to say, but were terrified of someone overhearing us. Mom was gone when we got back to the apartment, so we sat down to planning.

“Alright,” Sarah said, “we need to find someone who deserves this. I think we should do as much research as we can online, see if there’s anyone on the wanted list around here or someone who’s had a lot of repeat offenses. We’ll track them down and plan out how we’re going to do it.”

“What if we can’t find any?”

“If we can’t find anyone like that, then we can use the registered sex offender database and make it one of them.”

I nodded. It was as good a plan as any I could come up with. We were about to head to my room to start our hunt when the phone rang. I picked it up in the kitchen.

By the time I hung up all the blood had drained from my face.

“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked.

“That was Ms. Jenkins downstairs. The hospital called. Mom’s been in a car accident.” I sunk into the chair by the phone. “She’s ok, a few broken bones, but she’ll live. If they won’t release her tonight, Ms. Jenkins is going to come check in on us.”

“We should hurry then and find—”

I pounded my fist on the wall. “No. It can’t wait that long. Mom could have died. We have to do this now.”

“But who can we find that quickly?”

I stood up and went to the mantle. “We’ll find a homeless person. It won’t be hard, we’ll offer them money if we have to, get them into an alley where no one can see and then do it.” I pulled the sword down and slid it into the sheath, hoping it would stay there long enough for us to find someone.

“But how can you do that? What did some homeless person ever do to deserve that?”

I spun to face her. “What did Mom do to deserve this? Huh? It’s them or her and I choose them.”

Sarah flinched. “Fine. Let’s go.”

We got our shoes and jackets on and headed for the door. Before we got there, Sarah’s little brother ran out from the kitchen and blocked us.

“No!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. He had the cordless phone from the kitchen clenched in his hand.

“What are you doing?” Sarah asked. “We won’t be gone long, go play videogames.”

“No,” he said again. “I won’t let you hurt anyone else.”

Sarah and I both turned pale.

“What do you mean?”

“I heard you last night. I know it was you. I know what you did to Daddy. Now you’re going to hurt someone else. I’m not gonna let you.”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “I was protecting your sister, you know what he was doing to her. If we don’t do this now my Mom will die!”

“Daddy wasn’t bad!” he shouted back. “Sissy was bad. She deserved to be punished and you killed him. I won’t let you go. I’m telling.”

He was going to call the police. He was going to tell them everything. Mom would die. I’d rot in prison for the rest of my life and my mom would die.

“Please,” I pleaded, “she’ll die. If you do this you’re killing her.”

“You killed Daddy,” he said, “I hope your Mom dies.”

He started to dial 911. The sword flashed before I knew what was happening. The phone, and the hand holding it, thumped to the ground. Sarah’s little brother screamed, staring at the blood pulsing from his severed wrist. I brought the blade up again and buried it in his skull. The screaming stopped.

I yanked the sword free. Again, no blood stained the blade. I slid it back into the sheath. Mom was safe.

Sarah was on her knees.

“Why?” she whispered.

“He was going to call the police. We would have gone to prison, and then we never could have saved Mom. She’s safe now.”

“You
murdered
my brother.”

“I had to. I didn’t have a choice. You know I didn’t. Now help me, we have to clean this up.”

That was when the front door opened and Ms. Jenkins walked in.

“Kids, I’m here to take you up to the hospital to see Mrs…”

She froze when she saw the gory mess in the hallway.

“Oh my…” Her eyes flicked to Sarah, then to me and the sword in my hands.

“I don’t know what happened here but, it’s going to be ok. I’m going to take you to see your mom, o.k. sweetie? Just, put the sword down.” Her hand slid into her purse. She was pulling out her cell phone.

“I’m sure this was all just a terrible accident.”

My thumb pushed the sword free with a click. The blade made such a soft, sweet whisper as it slid from its case. Ms. Jenkins turned even more pale. The first time you kill someone is the hardest. After the first one, it gets a lot easier.

About the Author

Adam Wik lives in Cincinnati with his wife Caroline and dog Bailey. In addition to teaching English, practicing Parkour and martial arts and writing fiction he also writes about fitness, language learning and lifestyle design for
RoadToEpic.com
. You can get in touch with Adam by e-mail at
[email protected]