The Repossession (3 page)

Rian frowned. Reverend Schneider was always first one there leading a prayer group and speaking on local radio about the tragedy of Spurlake that the kids seemed so desperate to leave. Well, just ask Genie if the Reverend was the saint everyone thought he was. Get
her
on local radio and she’d open a few eyes.

His mother was still talking.

‘I can’t believe how many are missing now. There’s a pile of flowers left beside the community noticeboard on Geary Street and countless candles burning. I just don’t know what’s going on in this town. If parents ate with their kids like we do, maybe they’d know what they’re thinking. It’s just so scary. If I hear of one more 1-800

number to call if you know anything, I’ll get hysterical. I keep hearing about Mr Harrison out with his flashlight.

He’s been roaming the hills for a year. That boy of his is gone and he isn’t going to call. None of them are coming back, get used to it already.’

Mr Yates helped himself to more cheese.

‘You’re right, m’dear. Those kids have gone. The town just can’t hold them. Happening right the way up to the Okanagan. They just up and go with no thought to the pain their families must feel. I blame crystal meth. It’s destroying our society. Once those kids get their hands on it – their lives are already over. There’s talk of a government task force coming in to control it, but you think it will stop the kids disappearing? I don’t.’

‘I don’t know any kids doing meth,’ Rian said.

His mother looked at him with relief in her eyes.

‘Well, I for one am glad about that, Rian. I don’t know what I’d do if you started taking drugs.’

‘You’d throw me out, just like all the other kids who’ve been thrown out of their homes in this town for doing something their folks didn’t like.’

‘And you’d deserve it,’ Mr Yates said, pointing his knife at Rian.

Rian glared at him, but let it pass; no point in arguing, he’d be gone soon enough. He’d never heard of Anwar, but then again there were hundreds of kids at his school he didn’t know. Tonight he and Genie

would be joining those names on the community board if everything went to plan. He briefly wondered if his mother would set up a 1-800 number herself and make Mr Yates comb the hills at nights. Almost made him laugh to imagine it.

He’d started making plans the moment he realized that Genie was being held prisoner. He’d arranged to see her the day after school ended but she didn’t show. Then he’d heard about the girl possessed by the devil on Maple Street and knew the moment he walked over and saw the Reverend Schneider’s car that they had Genie. Genie’s mother had turned her water hose on him. No boy was coming near her house and that was that. The language she used certainly wasn’t Christian.

It had taken weeks of organization, but this was the night Genie would be free and they would leave, start a new life somewhere. Everything was prepared.

‘Your mother was talking to you,’ Mr Yates informed him.

Rian focused on his mother. She was looking at him oddly. ‘Sorry.’

‘I was asking if you knew any of these missing children?’

Rian shook his head. ‘No. But I guess some are pretty desperate. They don’t have a choice I guess, some

families are pretty messed up.’

His mother looked at him sharply. She knew about Genie and how he liked her. Never met her of course, but a mother can tell when a son is distracted. ‘That poor girl.

I know you miss her.’

‘The Magee girl?’ Mr Yates asked, like he knew something about her.

Rian was surprised they knew he liked her, let alone seemed to have discussed it.

‘Mother got her locked up in the house, believes she’s possessed,’ Rian explained.

Mr Yates looked exasperated. ‘There is no such thing as possession. God, we might as well live in the middle ages.

The County should take her into care.’

‘Reverend Schneider sits on the Board of Governors,’

his mother informed him. ‘He sees Satan’s hand in everything. That unfortunate girl.’ She looked at Rian with pity. ‘Poor you, finally got a girlfriend and she’s possessed by the devil.’

Rian heard the sarcasm in her voice.

‘Poor family stock. The father was a lawyer but her mother is a Munby and y’know . . .’ Mr Yates declared.

Rian didn’t know. ‘Munby?’

‘Not here. Not at the table,’ his mother insisted. But then she said, ‘Shame, a Munby. That’s a special curse

all of its own. Poor thing.’

‘Genie
isn’t
crazy. She
isn’t
possessed. She’s the only sane person in that house,’ Rian declared, trying to control his anger.

‘And you’re going to save her?’ his mother cooed, definitely mocking him now. ‘You can’t save a Munby girl.’

The wind slammed a window shut upstairs. Rian stood up sharply. He wanted to be far away from this table before he exploded. ‘I’ll get it.’

‘Don’t forget the shutters,’ Mr Yates called after him.

‘I’d better get going. If a storm’s coming, I don’t want to be on the road.’

Rian stomped up the stairs. This would be the last time he would go upstairs, he was thinking. In just one hour he and Genie would be free of this town forever. This particular Munby girl was going to be saved.

The lights played on the wall beside her. Genie was sitting at her dressing table in her boyshorts, rubbing antiseptic cream on to the burn on her arm. The blisters were taking a while to heal, leaving a distinct outline of a Celtic cross. Her feet rested on broken pieces of wood hidden by her old clothes. She’d begun this breakout plan, already broken off enough of the panelling on the wall to wiggle her feet through to the next room, but discovered the hole she’d made came up behind one of Grandma Munby’s heavy oak chests. It was never going to shift and now she had a problem of how to hide the hole.

She’d be beaten for sure if her mother found out.

The evening was warm; the breeze outside was growing louder. Bad weather was coming. She didn’t mind, it would be something to listen to at least. The house was already creaking. She looked again at the bobbing shadows on her wall. She could make out the reflection of a tree and something else, like a face but in the negative.

She tried to make it into Rian’s face, his fine nose, the

wild eyebrows, tried to give it the last smile he gave her as she promised to meet him the day after school ended.

Rian, her only hope, and she didn’t know for sure that he even missed her.

The shape on the wall changed again. She blinked. A chill swept across her, giving her goosebumps. The image looked back! It was no longer indistinct. It was a human face, a real human face and she thought she knew who it was, a kid from school.

‘That’s so weird,’ she was thinking. Then the eyes opened. She was transfixed, her palms began to sweat and she was a little scared. The shimmering image on the wall was staring at her, the lips began to move, soundlessly, but she knew exactly what he was saying. It was impossible.

She had finally gone mad like Granny Munby. The face faded a moment as the sun went in, then came back fiercely. It was Anwar somebody, Anwar from Palestine or some place. He’d been in her Forces and Energy class . . .

He was staring at her and his lips moved again. ‘
You’re next
,’ he was saying. ‘
You’re next
.’

There was a whoosh as the wind swept up through the side of the house. The sun went in and the image on the wall abruptly vanished.

She tried to remember Anwar. A bright kid, lonely, third from the left in class. Arrived suddenly in the middle

of term the year before. No one ever talked to him. His English was perfect, he had polite manners and, fatally for him, a glass eye from some explosion in his hometown of Gaza. You could hardly tell, but that’s all the excuse anyone needed to shun him. A freak in a school of anti-social freaks. Anwar had been on her wall and he’d definitely said, ‘You’re next.’

Genie continued lying there, chilled to the bone.

‘
Next what?
’

She looked out of the window and saw that the trees were now swaying in the stiff breeze. The sky was darkening. She had that prickly feeling she always got when the weather changed.

She urgently needed to talk to Rian. Something was happening out there. Something bad. High school would begin in September. She would leave this room, leave this house. Leave this town. She would leave a note for her crazy mother. Scrawl it right across the living room wall if necessary. ‘I am not possessed. You are.

I am not evil. It’s
you
who’s full of hate. You’re the devil.

It’s you he came for and already took you away.’

Yes, Anwar was right. She
was
next. Damn right. ‘I’m next!’ she shouted to the room. She threw her book against the wall. She really had to get out of here.

Tunis drove by and flashed his lights. Rian grabbed his backpack, jumped out of his window and dropped with practised ease to the ground below. He ran silently towards Tunis’ pick-up truck, flung his backpack in the back before climbing in.

Tunis was driving away already. Slightly nervous about what they were about to do this night. He brushed his dark floppy hair out of his eyes and looked at Rian and nodded. ‘You heard?’

‘What?’

‘Anwar, the Palestinian kid. He’s disappeared. It’s on the radio, got a CTV crew here and everyone praying again over on Geary Street. So many flowers left there now it’s getting to be a hazard. He was in your year?’

Rian shrugged. Couldn’t put a face to the name. ‘I don’t know him.’

‘Police definitely going to start tagging the kids now. Sixteen kids in like six weeks. I mean, that’s over thirty kids disappeared from this area alone this

year. Four brothers vanished from Hope, one after the other, and I heard they got a child watch thing going up in Lytton and Lillooet to make sure no kid leaves –they all have to go around in pairs, they’re so spooked.

I’m
so
glad I ain’t a kid any more. Where the hell do they all go? How come none of them ever come back, or even call?’

Rian shrugged. ‘Mr Yates blames it all on crystal meth.’

‘No way. Those losers just turn up dead in doorways.

They don’t have the energy to move, let along run away.

Something else is going on here. Maybe this.’

Tunis handed him a printout.

‘You think this is for real? Denny sent it to me. He says this is what the missing kids are going for. You think they’re that crazy?’

Rian read it. Tunis was always getting crazy stuff from Denny who was always looking to make a quick buck, preferably without any effort.

Want to make $2,000 cash? Participate in a simple experimental trial that could help us cure one of the world’s most pressing problems. We need healthy young people, 14 to 17, willing to put their survival skills to the test. We are a non-profit organization with brilliant green credentials.

All applicants apply in total confidence. No adult/parent need be notified. Sign up now and we will give you directions.

(We regret that due to the nature of this trial only able-bodied volunteers fit enough to get to us under their own steam can participate.) (Yes, this is part of the test.) We reject many applicants. Call us toll-free and see if you qualify. (North-West Pacific Residents only.) Call us and change your life forever!

Rian frowned looking at the toll-free number printed at the bottom.

‘You’re kidding, right? Denny sent you this? Tell me you’re not going to do it. Where did he find it?’

‘He was on some chat forum. You know, he’s always online talking to crazy people and there was this suicide link he found.’

‘Suicide link?’ Rian queried.

‘Y’know. Are you lonely? Getting bullied at school, contemplating suicide – there’s tons of stuff like that out there.’

‘And he found this there?’

‘I called the number.’

‘What?’ Rian couldn’t believe him.

‘It’s toll-free. Denny tried to backtrack the IP

address of the web-link and it sort of vanishes some

place in Eastern Europe.’

‘But it’s talking about the North-West Pacific. That’s us, not Europe,’ Rian said frowning.

Tunis grinned. ‘I know. Cool huh? Two thousand dollars cash, Ri. Probably a cure for the common cold. I heard there was a place out in the Cascades where they pay you to get flu and they pump you full of drugs to see if they can cure you.’

Rian despaired. ‘Promise me you won’t do anything stupid. You didn’t give them your number, right?’

Tunis grinned. ‘Gave ’em yours. You think I’m crazy.’

He laughed.

Rian shook his head. ‘You should send this to the cops.

Maybe they should investigate it. Denny could be right, that’s exactly where all the missing kids are going.’

‘Oh sure. All of them,’ he said. ‘As if. They’re long gone, well out of this town. Living the good life in Vancouver or whatever. It’s like you turn thirteen, someone rips a mask off your head and says, “Behold you have been living in a town of monsters! Flee, flee, before it’s too late”.’ He laughed and turned to Rian. ‘You’re fleeing. You’ve seen the light. Reverend Schneider will be praying at your door by the morning; your ma will be all teary-eyed and suddenly miss you. It’s like a ritual. Cops go search, but they’re always one day or one week too late. It’s the

curse of Spurlake, the dying town in the mountains.

I heard the Ski Lodge might not open this winter and so they won’t be hiring snow-board instructors. Only places left to hang out are the DQ and McBean’s Pancake House.’

Tunis graduated the year before. Worked for a lawn company in summer and taught snow-boarding in winter. He’d never been much of a scholar or anything but he’d been Rian’s neighbour for the last four years and they’d struck up a friendship. Mostly playing basketball in the yard or talking about cars. Tunis was a Ferrari fanatic and the only kid in town who followed Formula One racing. He was always making Rian wake up at four o’clock on a Sunday to watch a race from Europe or some place thousands of miles away. Formula One was his religion.