N. Wilson - The Dragon's Tooth

Cyrus looked at the little man on the bed, and then back into the empty eyes of Billy Bones.

“Don’t worry about Horace here,” Skelton said. “His family’s kept more secrets than a dozen graveyards. And as for me, well, dead men tell no tales. At least, not usually.”

Horace scraped the stack of papers off his lap, hopped to his feet, and slid the card into Cyrus’s hand.

Skelton nodded. “Now read, boy. We’re doing what we can to make sure you’ll have the help you need.”

Cyrus swallowed and looked at the keys. His hand closed around them, and for the first time, they felt cold and heavy. The old man was crazy, no question. “I don’t want these.”

“Don’t you?” Skelton asked, creasing his forehead. “I’ve seen enough of you to know you’re no coward. You want to walk away? You want to live a life without knowing what those unlock?”

Cyrus looked around his ruined room. He wanted the men to leave. He wanted his wall back.

Exhaling slowly and ignoring the old man’s eyes, he dropped the keys into his pocket and moved quickly across the room toward the warped mirror door to his closet. He could always give the keys back in the morning. In the right kind of mood, he could even throw them into one of the pasture streams. He pulled out a pile of fresh clothes and turned around.

Antigone, wide-eyed, was standing in the doorway.

“What on Earth,” she said, looking at the wall. She turned to the sweating old man, her eyes taking in the tattoos. “I hope Dan has your credit card.”

“The girl, I assume?” The small man straightened his suit. “If both are present, only one needs to declare; the other can offer assent. Are you sure you want both included? You have the right to name two, but I can see definite benefits in selecting only one.”

“Both,” Skelton said. “They’ll need each other.”

“Who are you?” Antigone asked the little man. “What are we talking about?”

Cyrus slipped back to the door and held up the small card. “It’s in another language,” he said.

Antigone took the card from him and squinted at the printed letters. “No, it’s not. ‘Please declare aloud …’ What is this?”

The little man stepped forward. “Excuse me, miss,” he said. “If you don’t mind, the Latin is actually preferable in the current situation. We’re going above and beyond.”

He plucked the card from Antigone’s hands, flipped it over, and returned it.

“Pronunciation isn’t important. Do your best.”

Stepping back, he tucked his thumbs into his vest and waited.

Antigone stared at the words in front of her. “Are you serious? What is this supposed to be? I’m not saying it.” She handed the card back to Cyrus.

Cyrus looked into the tired eyes of William Skelton.

“You really want us to read this?” he asked. The keys were heavier in his mind than in his pocket. Antigone didn’t need to know that he was keeping them. Not yet.

The old man nodded.

“Okay,” Cyrus said. “I’ll read it if you answer our questions.”

After a moment, the old man nodded again.

Cyrus handed his stack of clothes to Antigone. “How do you know Mrs. Eldridge?”

“We were schoolgirls together.”

“Funny,” Antigone said. “Har, har.”

“It’s close enough to the truth,” said Skelton. “Met as kids. Hated each other since.”

Cyrus swallowed. For some reason, his throat was tightening. He didn’t really care about Mrs. Eldridge. “How did you know our parents?”

William Skelton sighed. “For a while, I was their teacher. For a while, I was their friend. I met them before they married. Helped them through some tough times. Made some tough times tougher.” His eyes dropped to the carpet.

“And?” Antigone asked. “What happened?”

The little man coughed loudly.

Skelton nodded. “It’s late,” he said. “You can hear the whole story tomorrow.” He pointed a tattooed finger at the card. “Do an old man a favor and read the paper. Soon enough, I won’t be keeping any secrets.”

Cyrus and Antigone looked at each other. Antigone nodded. Cyrus cleared his throat, raised his eyebrows, and began to read: “Obsecro ut sequentia recites …”

Pausing, he glanced up. William Skelton was staring at the ceiling.

Horace, the little man, was pursing his lips expectantly. “Go on.”

At first, Cyrus read slowly, stumbling and tripping as his tongue attempted to string the odd syllables together. But after two lines, his voice found a rhythm, and he could almost believe that he understood his own strange chanting. He smeared words, blended, missed, and guessed at words, but he got through it, and when he did, he held the card out to the little suited man.

“Keep it with you,” the man said. “Miss Smith, do you offer assent?”

“Um, sure,” said Antigone. “I guess.”

Hunching over the bed, the man checked his watch and made a note of the time on a large piece of paper. Then he signed the bottom with a flourish. “Billy Bones, that’s all I need. Know that I am risking a great deal for you.” He scraped all the papers into a pile, and then he shoveled the pile into an enormous leather folder. When he had finished, he shook hands with Billy, shook hands with Cyrus, bowed to Antigone, then picked a bowler hat up off the wreckage of Cyrus’s shelves and popped it on his head. “Good luck and good night to you all,” he said. And leaning to one side, he lugged the enormous folder out into the night.

Billy Bones slumped onto the end of the bed and put his head in his hands.

“Go now,” he said quietly.

Cyrus and Antigone backed slowly through the doorway.

The old man looked up suddenly, and his face was gray and bloodless. “Wait. Music. Your record player. I couldn’t get it to work.”

“It’s broken,” Cyrus said. “Always has been.”

“No, it’s not,” Skelton said. “Not for you. Not anymore. Turn it on for me.”

Antigone’s hand closed around her brother’s wrist. Cyrus stared. The old man was getting stranger. Sleeping next door could be too close.

“Please,” Skelton said. “Just flip the switch.”

Cyrus walked to his dresser, glancing back at the man on the bed. He’d already put a record on. John Coltrane. Cyrus had never listened to it. He’d never had a record player that worked. Flexing his fingers, he reached down and slid the power switch with his thumb. A spark tickled its way up into his hand, and the vinyl disk began to spin slowly. The mechanical arm lifted off its rest and swung into place.

The voice of a smooth sax filled the room.

When the door to 111 had closed safely behind them, Cyrus turned to his sister. Antigone widened her eyes. “Can this get weirder?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” Cyrus said. “I bet it can.”

CYRUS OPENED HIS eyes — there was no point in having them shut — and rolled up onto his side, clawing at his forearm. But that meant he couldn’t scratch his calf. Splaying his toes, he put them to work, too.

The lights were off, and his sister’s breathing was even. The curtains were glowing, backlit by the Golden Lady — he wondered if Dan even knew how to turn her off. The air-conditioning was humming, and the bed squealed every time he moved. He had kicked all his blankets onto the floor at least two hours ago.

They had only watched Antigone’s movie four times, but he hadn’t been able to stop replaying it in his head. His sister’s movies were always odd. The clicking, flashing images made new things seem old and forgotten. They made his dark, smooth-skinned mother seem painted and imagined. Her sleeping face had somehow steadied the camera in Antigone’s hands, and the picture had stopped bouncing and shifting and had become still. His mother’s hair, almost invisibly white, had grown since their last visit, and Antigone had made an exception to her rule, as she always did on Mom days. She’d let Dan take the camera and had entered the frame herself, holding her mother’s hand, brushing her mother’s hair.