Nighthawks at the Mission (The Long Preview)

  Coming over the small wooden bridge shaded by the oak trees that lead into your apartment’s courtyard area is a thin, older man, maybe in his early sixties, in a three-piece old style suit as gray as his face and his hair. He is whistling into the wind. You can’t help but notice that there is a burnt-out electrical smell—like a socket has burnt out or when your TV pops a fuse—when he appears.

  He stops midway on the bridge over the small creek. “Feeling alone, Miss Sarah Orange?” he says.

  You swallow, feeling very alone now; there is no one there at this particular moment except for the people in their apartments around the courtyard. “No,” you call out.

  “May I step over and speak with you?” He waits before making his move.

  “Of course.”

  “Good,” he says, smiling, walking over to where you sit on the deckchair. Before you can say anything, he speaks again; a voice of cultured ooze pours out of his thin lips. “Oh the things I know about you, Miss Orange.”

  You stand up, ready to do a little bit of fight or flight. “P-pleased to meet you, Mr.?”

  “My name, well, for now, let’s say it’s Scratch. I often go by that name in New England.” He titters like a girl. “Old joke.”

  “Oh,” you say, looking for an easy escape route. That sixth sense that something is very wrong is needling the back of your head. Thunder cracks, very close by.

  “Oh I wouldn’t leave, Miss Orange.”

  “Wh-what do you want?” you say, barely hearing yourself as the thunder starts up again. The wind and the city noise that are picking up make it hard to be heard. You wonder where the storm has come from, it was seemingly peaceful just moments ago.

  The old man’s eyes light up and he smiles, revealing a set of yellowing, uneven teeth. He puts a finger up to his lips, shushing you.

  From his pocket he takes out a small, gray, dented, and very old-looking box with a small, white button that has a large crack running through its middle. Scratch presses it, and you suddenly find that all sounds from the outside world have stopped—no city sounds, no sound of the wind, not even the chatter of your neighbors or the sounds of their televisions. He puts the device back into his pocket. The whole world has been muted except for you and him.

  “That’s better. Why, Miss, I’m here to congratulate you! Your sister has left to you this particular item in her will.”

  “My sister is not dead,” you say.

  “She’s not only dead, she’s really most sincerely dead.” Scratch laughs and then catches the look on your face, a look of pure horror. “Apologies.”

  Scratch motions for you to sit down on one of the poolside deckchairs. He sits down opposite you on another deckchair.

  “Oh, Miss, I do apologize, but this item was left in her will for your family in particular. Unfortunately, it did take a long time—she had to be considered legally dead and the item had to clear Network customs and well, you know how bureaucracy is. Someone took its listing, put it to the bottom of the pile and then forgot that the pile existed in the first place.” He laughs with that titter again, frightening you. “She went missing leading an illegal expedition to somewhere on the other side of The Oberon, maybe even past the Burzee, no? Quite the explorer she was.”

  He gives you a small leather book of parchment that has a cloth strip binding it together. It is about the size of a thick wallet.

  “It’s the Voice of the Four Winds, or the Book of the Witch-Lords of Mir. It’s an original made out of Afer skin. It has inside of it pages of prayers, spells, a complete map of The Oberon itself, the Rosetta Stone page—where it translates fourteen Earth languages into the Antediluvian standard hieroglyphics… It’s a rare book to have outside The Oberon.”

  You open it carefully. On the first page is a collection of circles and lines drawn in black ink. Little thunder bolts sign the corners of each page.

  Scratch, looking at what you are seeing, reads what it means. “And over the world, nor stop, nor stay, the winds of the Storm King go out on their way…”

  The simple nature of these words and the unknown that lies behind them is suddenly terrifying. You suddenly don’t want to take it. You bite your lip. “If I r-refuse to take it?”

  Scratch tilts his head in amusement. “Refuse?” After a moment you can see that his eyes have turned a deep green after being a light hazel. “Of course you can.”

  “H-how much?” you ask quietly.

  “How much is it worth? How much is it worth? Oh, it’s worth a good amount of pennies… But never sell it. You must never sell it. Keep it on you at all times.”

  You feel as if something has slapped you hard across the face. “I will never sell it. I will always keep it.”

  Scratch begins to walk away, humming to himself, and then turns back to you. “Be seeing you.” You notice for the first time that Scratch has companions with him—three tall men in black coats and black fedora hats with almost bone-white skin.

  As you watch them leave, you start to shake a little, not sure if what just happened actually happened or was only in your mind.

  ~~~~

  THE private gym that a long time ago Tyler gave you access to is empty at this hour, as it mostly always is, and time stretches out; you can’t sleep and don’t want to think anymore. So you work out by yourself.

  You throw your sweatshirt off, stretch and, just because you can, you do a random handstand, letting the blood flood your head and push out all those thoughts that come up like little poisonous buoys floating in the surf on your mind. You roll onto the floor, catching a glimpse of your slightly sweating self in the mirrored wall, and spot the hanging boxing bag.

  You go over, fall into the fighting stance you were taught a long time ago, and start to lightly kick at the bag, kicking it once, twice, three times with your right foot. You throw in some medium punches. You wish to keep it to an easy exercise but as those thoughts start to finally intrude, you start to go at it, biting the inside of your lip hard. You start punching the bag, kicking it, as hard and as fast as you can for a minute straight. Both your hands and both feet sting like hell. You finish with a little combo, hurting your right hand a little. You taste blood in your mouth.

  You stare at the bag, sweating profusely now, thinking of Tyler and wishing that the bag were your ex-boyfriend’s face. You start to cry a little again, but you shrug it off with another combo thrown at the bag.

  You walk away and run for five miles on the treadmill; the only sounds you hear are the running of the tread’s motors and your feet slapping against the belt.

  ~~~~

  YOU steal your mother’s Volvo that morning. You’ve packed two suitcases: one with your personal stuff, like pictures of your sister and father as well as yearbooks and other things; the other suitcase is full of clothes. You managed to pack up everything in the middle of the night, silent as a ninja.

  You drive through the deserted streets of Long Beach and Seal Beach, seeing your old hometowns for the last time; you’re killing time until the sun comes up and Tyler will be awake. You throw your phone into the bushes near the PCH once you get hold of him and set up a time and a place to meet, which is at his house of course. You’ve been calling him over and over since three in the morning.

  It’s 7:00am when you arrive at Tyler’s beach house, which is empty and cold compared to how it was at Thanksgiving. You stand in the living room staring at the waves as you wait for him to come down from his bedroom. When he comes down the stairs you look at him oddly, like he is a completely new person. His hair is disheveled and his eyes are red with heavy bags under them.

  “Sarah,” Tyler starts, swallowing compulsively. “Sarah, I’m- I am sorry about that, about what happened.”

  You sit on the leather couch in the living room, listening to him spout on about his need to apologize and that it was “just sex, just sex.” You stare at him for a good moment, saying nothing; Tyler finally chokes up a little.

  You tilt your head. “Yes?” you
ask.

  Tyler shrugs his shoulders. “Look, we don’t- We haven’t had sex, you know, and that’s, that’s something- You need to have that in a relationship.”

  “I was waiting until, until marriage, Ty,” you say coldly. “We were going to be married, weren’t we? We never said it totally, but there was that—I don’t know what you want to call it—implication, there.”

  Tyler starts to cry a little. “But I’m a guy, Sarah. I need it. I want it. Sorry if that sounds selfish, but shit, I do. Your friend Christine, and Courtney, they understood… They weren’t, uh, weird about sex, you know.”

  You stand up suddenly. “I need to use the bathroom, Tyler.” Tyler nods and sits down on the couch you’ve just left.

  You go upstairs and pass by the bathroom, ignoring it. You make it into Tyler’s bedroom. On the dresser next to his king size bed is a nightstand, and on it is a wallet with Bad M*F*cker embroidered on it. You open the wallet and take out all the money in there—a good collection of hundreds and twenties, equaling $1,240. You put it into your jacket. You also see his Rolex watch, gold, and snatch that—he once told you it was a gift for turning eighteen and was worth $8,000 new, so you could probably get a third of that at a pawn shop. You think of something and immediately walk down the hall to the guest bedroom.

  Lying in bed, stomach down with bare back showing, is Courtney.

  You reach into your jacket and slowly take out the heavy gun you’ve brought with you. You cock it and even point it at the sleeping Courtney. You stare down the gun sight and aim it right at the back of her pretty little head, savoring the moment just a little.

  You pull the trigger and the gun makes a dry click sound. Courtney snuffles something in her sleep. You smile thinly.

  You walk downstairs again, seeing Tyler on the couch. “Goodbye Tyler,” you say evenly. You take one last look around his house. “Oh, here’s your little present back.”

  You hand Tyler the gun. Tyler sniffles a little. “You can keep it. You were the only crazy Wild West girl around here. Every week you’d be out there.” Tyler has a weak, sad smile on his face.

  “I wanted to give it to you and Courtney so bad… ” you reply coldly. “But I can’t keep it. Goodbye.”

  Tyler feels the gun, pops the cylinder, and drops the bullets into his hand. “You brought it over, uh, loaded?”

  “Oh I guess I did,” you say and walk away without turning.

  ~~~~

  YOUR cab pulls up to the Queen Mary. You had dumped your mother’s car off in a parking lot next to the Courthouse. The Queen Mary strikes you as a stately throwback of a cruise liner. The Network brochure you got at their local office in Long Beach mentions that the old ship, which looks to you to be kissing cousins to the Titanic you’ve seen in movies and books, was originally launched back in the 1930s, retired in the 1960s, and then re-furbished and re-launched a few years back since all the other, newer, ocean liners with all their electronics would have full mechanical meltdowns every time they went into The Oberon. The ship is a majestic piece of black, white and red machinery, and its four smokestacks are already pumping out a sizeable amount of pollution into the gray and very overcast afternoon air. A thousand seagulls and their cries fly around the parking lot next to the launch.

  You hold the brochure tightly in one fist, your tickets tucked inside, and you hold your small crucifix in the other.

  The yellow cab pulls up behind idling buses and cabs and other random cars that swing in and out to drop off a passenger or three. Jaime says awkwardly that he has forgotten his cash, and you dig some out from your purse.

  “No problem, honey,” you say sarcastically. You pay off the cab driver who pulls out with a screech.

  “Did the courthouse thing feel, you know, strange? We are actually married, Sarah, that’s, that’s something. That’s really something.” Jaime looks at you sheepishly, one of his eyes slightly blackened. He holds up his left hand; new golden wedding ring in place.

  You hold up yours and you clink your ring against his. “We are married,” you marvel. “Your uncle the judge was very nice to come in on his day off. How’s your eye, Jaime? Tyler didn’t hurt you too bad, right?”

  “Meh. What did you think of the- of the wedding? Weird, right?”

  You nod. “It was kind of the opposite of every girl’s dream. Look, Jaime, no offense, but this is, uh, an open marriage, you understand that right? No offense? We’ll work together as partners, like we said. We’ll figure that out when we get out there.”

  Jaime has to think over what you’ve just said. “Oh, no, no, none taken. You’re not really my type anyway,” Jaime says. “We have to do that again, though, you know that? 365 days later we have to do it in a Witch-Lord Temple in order to stay.”

  You feel sort of slapped in the face by his earlier comment and are about to say something when you see something amazing. You and Jaime watch as a couple of Long Beach longshoremen, in their black and yellow safety vests with red hard hats, are lifting a couple of large metal crates the size of cars into the front hold of the Queen. The thing is, though, they are not lifting these crates with cranes, but telekinetically. A telltale green glow is coming from these telescoping batons that have orichalcum stones embedded into their grips. The two longshoremen are pointing at the crates with their batons but they are not touching them; the crates are just floating upwards towards two more longshoremen who are standing on the Queen. These two are “grabbing” the crates in mid-air, again with that telekinetic power coming from their telescoped batons. The large crates, that must weigh thousands of pounds, bob for a moment in the air as the second team of longshoremen grabs hold of them.

  “That’s orichalcum power. The longshoremen now use telekinesis ori, which is cheaper and more cost effective than cranes…” Jaime says. You are both pretty young but the orichalcum thing is still a little off-putting to the both of you—you and Jaime didn’t originally grow up with it like kids are nowadays, so there’s always that little moment of reality disconnect when you see something on the news or someone using it in real life. A couple of other people are quietly watching the scene go by, as red-capped valets and bellboys scurry about with pieces of luggage and other random items.

  “Stuff like that is going to be all over the place in The Oberon,” Jaime says and then starts walking to one of the metal platforms that leads into the Queen. Jaime almost disappears into the darkened interior of the ship, but stops by the line going inside. A couple of baseball-capped security guards wait nearby, as does an aged stewardess charged with checking passports.

  You wait on the edge of the giant gangplank that leads into the Queen, having a bad feeling. A cool breeze blows by your face, caressing your skin for a moment. You think to yourself how irresponsible this is, how impulsive this is—but then you realize, what’s to stop you? There’s nothing really there for you in the O.C., no real future expectations that are great. The sad fact of the matter is that you were just planning to go to college and help Tyler grow up a little (despite him being older than you), and that fell apart. Jaime, in his own almost criminally-nerdy way, is leading you towards something better than what is waiting for you in Long Beach. You know it inside; you feel it inside.

  But, at the same time, there is a slow and awful dream-like sensation; this feeling of upcoming danger you can’t exactly shake. Your palms sweat a little and your heart starts to pound. This is an adventure, you admit to yourself. This is something more extraordinary than anything you’ve ever done—and all because you got burned by a relationship with a man who looks exactly the same as the one you are now in a sham marriage with.

  Suddenly the salty smell of the sea and the whiff of diesel that permeate everything in the air become stronger, the scents carving themselves into your memory.

  And, with that last thought, just as Jaime is waving for you to come on in, you step onto the metal platform. It clangs heavily under your sneakered feet. There is no one to see you off.

  ~~~~

/>   YOU stand on the starboard side of the ship with Jaime after having settled into your cheap little cabin that has cigarette burns on the carpet and smells like vomit in one particular corner. When you saw the room, you and Jaime gave each other a look about the one bed. Jaime laughed nervously. He then shut his mouth after the look on your face.

  Jaime has left to grab you two some coffee, and you stand next to the railing, feeling a chill as a fresh breeze blows in. You put on your headphones, so you’re listening to your iPod when a red-capped valet, an older black man with a kind face, comes by and taps you on the shoulder gently. You turn down the volume on the iPod and stop the Manowar that’s ringing through it.

  “Miss, make sure you stuff that away with the purser by the time we get to the Nemo Gate. Otherwise it’s gonna cook, okay?”

  You look uncertainly at your iPod with its Hello Kitty cover. “It’s gonna cook?”

  The valet nods. “Honey, with all that EMP out there it’ll pop the moment we go through.”

  You look confused.

  “You know, EMP? It’s like a signal that comes off the A-bombs when they blow ‘em up? Well, The Oberon is just full of that signal bouncing around and it blows out all the electronics. I mean, why d’ya think we are on the Titanic’s younger sister? This thing should be a museum, not an ocean liner, but all the new liners are almost like NASA built ‘em, too much electronics—they would break down two seconds after they crossed.”

  “Is this thing safe, then?” you ask, suddenly uncertain.

  The valet looks around at the ship as if seeing it for the first time. “Well if it’s not, I’ll save you a seat on one of the lifeboats.” He winks and starts to leave, but then turns around to say another word to you. “Oh, and make sure you don’t get caught with a camera—it’s a UN rule. No pictures allowed!”

  Jaime skips around the corner, his steps almost bouncing down the old deck, carrying two cups of coffee.

  Jaime gives you a cup and you thank him passively. “No electronics? No iPods, no laptops?”

  Jaime sips his coffee a little bit too quickly and dribbles some down his sweatshirt. “Uh, yes, yeah. I forgot about that whole thing…”