Bad Bones Read online

  Unbidden, his imagination began to put layers of flesh back on to the bones, building up an all-too-real picture of what this person might once have looked like. He pushed the image away, an irrational fear of unintended consequences gripping him. If he wasn’t careful, might these remains come back to life?

  Sometimes he hated his brain.

  “Who the hell were you, anyway?” he muttered, frowning as he stood up. “And what are you doing here?”

  They were both good questions, and he was surprised they hadn’t occurred to him before. If there were stories behind how all those things for sale in Cecil LeBarron’s place had ended up there, then there had to be a doozy of a one about how this particular body, and everything he’d so far found with it, had come to be here in the canyon. A place that was way off the beaten track now, so must’ve been even more remote back when the body was buried.

  This couldn’t be the grave of someone anybody had cared much for – it wasn’t six feet under in a cemetery and there was no sign of a coffin, for starters. And something was off about this whole thing; he couldn’t ignore the way he was feeling. He looked at the cross again and couldn’t shake the idea that the damage had been done on purpose. He wasn’t religious, but for some reason it made him feel kind of bad. What had happened to it?

  Gabe checked his phone again, surprised to see how long he’d been so focused on the job; the time had run away and he’d forgotten where he was, forgotten to worry about being found. He should go.

  But there was more to do.

  It was late, though, and he could easily spend at least another hour digging and still not even have got to half of the skeleton.

  But there was more to do!

  A feeling of intense rage flooded over him. Why was he so angry at himself? Something was wrong. He really should go. Go now. Wrapping the new finds in the duster, along with the original bracelet, Gabe wondered how much all seven pieces would be worth.

  Again a blast of anger hit him. These things were special! The knife wasn’t just antique, it was ancient! And, like the crucifix, it was sacred – he knew that, he had seen the knife being used. He’d held it in his own hands. How could he think of these things in terms of money? How could he?

  Now he wasn’t so totally focused on digging things up, Gabe was more aware of his surroundings. Once again on high alert, he stayed still and quiet, closing his eyes and listening for the whisper of wings or the near-silent pad of coyote paws. But there was nothing to hear.

  And then there was.

  Something … in his head.

  A murmur of voices, or maybe just one single voice – he couldn’t be sure. The sound echoed, bringing memories of his nightmare back into sharp focus. The sound of the voice rooted Gabe to the spot. It was bad enough recalling dark, blood-soaked dreams, but so much worse to be pulled back into them in broad daylight. Then a high-pitched whine set up, rising to a screech that felt as if it was trying to cut straight through his brain. Gabe clapped his hands to his ears in a vain attempt to shut out the noise.

  A feeling of cold dread took over and blanked out everything else. Fear made him want to run, just abandon ship and take the quickest route out of the arroyo, but he had enough self-control left to start scrambling back up to get his bike instead.

  Grabbing at anything to help him get up the slope, Gabe was shocked to see his fingers were bleeding when he got to the top. It took a moment before he realized there were no cuts anywhere on his hands, that the blood was just smeared. He slowly raised his hands to his ears and touched them, fingers coming away daubed with red. His ears were bleeding? Gabe stood on the pathway, shaking and staring at his hands, unable to take in what had happened, half believing he was seeing things, dimly aware that the screeching in his head had stopped.

  Chapter Eight

  Gabe pulled off his backpack, tore open one of the zipped compartments and pulled out the roughly knotted cloth. He stood, weighing the gold trove in his hand. Long seconds ticked by, time seeming to stretch.

  Choices.

  He hated choices, always sure he was bound to make the wrong one.

  But here and now it was so simple: keep the gold, or forget he’d ever found the damned stuff.

  Because he couldn’t ignore the obvious truth that there was more, so much more, to these things he’d dug up than what they appeared to be on the surface. It was so … the only word he could think of was possessive, but that was ridiculous. People possessed objects, not the other way round. Didn’t they? He hated himself for even thinking this could be otherwise, didn’t want to act like some kind of stupid, scared kid who believed in ghosts and ghouls and all that fairy-tale shit. But he couldn’t help it. His ears were bleeding ferchrissake!

  Gabe stared down at the bundle. He so wanted to throw it back down the arroyo, yet also desperately needed to keep the gold. The confusion was dizzying. Throw away or keep… Keep or sell and get the money? He could feel himself being ripped apart by the conflict battling it out inside him. The pressure inside his skull had reached migraine levels, the muscles in his arm were stretched to breaking point, vibrating with the strain of waiting to be told what to do, waiting to see which side in this messed-up duel finally won the day.

  And it was a close-run thing.

  The primal forces, fear of the unknown and superstition put up a fierce struggle against the voices of reason and logic. Not to mention what his old Grandad Mike had used to call dollars and sense. ‘When money talks, even if it’s in a whisper,’ he’d say, tapping the table top with a nicotine-stained finger, ‘you’ll find folks have a tendency to listen.’ He had been referring to politicians, whom he’d generally disliked and distrusted, whichever party they belonged to, but that thought had, in the end, swayed Gabe and made him return the gold to the sanctuary of his backpack. Dollars and sense…

  Gabe dusted himself down and hoped he’d managed to get rid of the worst of the blood – tough to do with spit, an already-grubby tissue and no mirror. If he was lucky and managed to sneak unseen into the house he could finish the job off when he got home. At least he hoped that was the way it was going to go, because he hadn’t been able to come up with a single decent idea to explain away bloody ears to his mom.

  Unsurprisingly, the headache had come back. He’d tried to be Zen and pedal in time to its dull, insistent throb, but that hadn’t made it any easier to figure out what to do. He knew it’d be better if the gold wasn’t in the house. The only other place he could keep it that was even remotely safe was his locker at school. Hardly high security, but he couldn’t think of anywhere else.

  The first thing he should do was at least try and find out the value of what he’d got his hands on. And then there was the question of whether he went back to Mr Cecil LeBarron’s Studio City store or looked for somewhere else.

  As he turned into his street he thought that Mr LeBarron might be the best bet to start with. The man was interested, and knew he’d screwed up today, which Gabe figured kind of gave him the upper hand. If he hadn’t driven himself crazy before he could get there.

  “Hey, Gabe…”

  Anton? Gabe wobbled and nearly fell off his bike, jolted out of his thoughts by his name being called.

  “You OK, man?”

  Gabe braked to a halt and looked behind him. Anton was walking to meet him. “Yeah, fine… I’m fine. You? What’re you doing here?”

  “Kinda waiting for you.” Anton shrugged, his smile lopsided. “Missed you at the end of school, wanted to check how your day was, you know? You being so kind of out there this morning.”

  This morning.

  So much had happened since then… Benny, Stella, Cecil LeBarron, the weirdness up in the canyon. “No, I’m good, Ant, really…”

  “We go back a long way, right?” Anton didn’t sound so sure of himself.

  “Yeah, we do. Long way.”

  “We always talk about stuff, right? Like we always have talked about stuff…” Anton didn’t seem to know whether to stay wh
ere he was or move closer to Gabe. “Anyway, look, I just wanted to say, you want to talk you can, you know, talk … to me. Right?”

  “I know.” A feeling of extreme tiredness washed over Gabe. He knew he should talk to Ant, about everything. About how hard it was to deal with his dad being out of work, about being held over a barrel by Benny Gueterro and having Stella on his case. And the skeleton and the gold. Maybe, after a decent night’s sleep, he’d feel up to it, but not now.

  “Gabe?”

  “Sorry, Ant.” Gabe found it hard to look his friend straight in the face. “Really … I gotta get home right now, but I’ll call you. I will.”

  “Make sure you do.” Anton waved, looking over his shoulder as he walked away. “Blood brothers, Gabe, don’t forget that.”

  Gabe watched his friend turn the corner at the end of the street; Anton didn’t look back and for a moment Gabe wondered why that made him feel a bit sad, then the reality of his situation pushed the thought away.

  He was about to ride off when his phone rang, not one of his designated ring tones. He looked at the number, which he didn’t recognize, except that it was local. Ant had recently been chewing his ear off about how he was getting an upgrade and changing services, and it would be just like him to call when he was only round the corner. On the off-chance it was Ant, Gabe picked up the call; the least he could do was apologize for the way he’d just been.

  “Hi, Ant, that you?”

  “Gabriel…”

  “Stella? How the—?”

  “Never mind how. You should forget Benny, you really should.”

  Gabe took the phone away from his ear and stared at it for a second, like that would help him make more sense of what was going on. “What?”

  “Like I told you, Gabriel, don’t have anything to do with that lowlife creep.”

  “So, OK … like what makes you think you … like, why d’you think you can tell anyone what to do?”

  Stella laughed, the reception so clear, her voice sounding as if she was standing right by him; Gabe couldn’t stop himself from looking. No sign.

  “Just don’t do it. He’s stupid and he’s trouble.”

  “Look—”

  The call was cut and Gabe found himself listening to the sound of silence. He stared at the screen again, angry and confused. What right did this girl have to tell him how to run his life? Even if he couldn’t fault her on her character analysis of Benny, which was entirely spot on. And somehow that made him even madder, being second-guessed and outmanoeuvred by someone he hardly knew, who hardly knew him. He almost punched ‘call back’ so he could demand to know why she cared what he did. Instead he jammed the phone in his back pocket and rode off. He did not have the energy.

  The car wasn’t parked outside when Gabe got home and he walked down the passage towards the kitchen, mentally crossing his fingers that he might get some time in the house on his own. It didn’t work. His dad was there at the table drinking a coffee, reading the paper. The funnies, not the Jobs Vacant pages, either. Typical.

  The timing was less than perfect. On top of really needing to get himself cleaned up properly, for the last few weeks it had taken a major effort on Gabe’s part to have anything even approaching a civil conversation with his dad. His mom had called him out on his behaviour, told him he was being unreasonable. She said he had no idea how hard it was for someone who wanted to work not to be able to get a job. Gabe had wanted to say did she have any idea how hard it was to have a dad who didn’t look like he was trying very hard to get a job, but managed not to. That would have done nothing except hurt his mom.

  “Anton came by earlier, looking for you.” Gabe’s dad put down the paper and sat back in his chair. “He find you?”

  “Yeah, he did.”

  “Good.”

  “Yeah…” Gabe made for the door.

  “Everything OK with you?”

  “Sure.” Only a couple of steps to go, nearly there.

  His dad sighed and shook his head, a pained expression on his face. “You know the one thing we’ve never done in this family?”

  There was no way Gabe could get away with not answering. “No, what?”

  Vern looked his son straight in the eye. “We never lied to each other, is what.”

  Gabe felt like he’d been caught between a rock and a hard place. His dad was right, he was lying, everything was not OK; but whose fault was that? He knew that if he let rip now it would be bad and he would regret it later, but why should he always be the one cutting slack and being understanding? Who was the grown-up here?

  “I can’t make you talk to me, Gabe.” His dad stood up, pushing the chair back, and walked past his son. “But I’ll be here, when you want to,” he said as he left the room. “If you want to.”

  Gabe stood in the empty, silent kitchen. With nothing to focus on, no target, his pent-up anger left a sour, metallic taste in his mouth. When life sucked it was a bitch, and it sure as hell sucked now.

  Chapter Nine

  This time the dreams were so much worse. Hyper-real, beyond hi-def, with every sense magnified to unimaginable extremes.

  The colours of the costumes were even more clashing and vivid, the woven patterns more jagged. The sounds were needle-sharp and they hurt, the atmosphere so heavy and cloying he felt as if he was running out of air to breathe.

  And this time he could smell the fear radiating off the victim, another young boy, as he was led right past him. Watching him being picked up and placed on the altar, Gabe retched at the thought of all the blood spilled on it by the thousands of souls who had died there. He looked down and saw the stones used to build the pyramid had been stained a dark, dark black by the gore that had soaked into them. So much blood no amount of rain could ever wash it away.

  Light from the setting sun flashed off the golden knife – the exact same knife he now had in his possession – and drew his attention to the man holding it. It occurred to Gabe that maybe he was some kind of priest, although the guttural noises he was making, along with the elaborate feathered headdress, made him look and sound more like a crazed bird. Then he noticed the crucifix. This man also had a crucifix, like the one he’d found, except not all bent and damaged.

  There was something odd about the cross, but before he had a chance to think about what it was the priest let out a roar and Gabe knew what was going to happen. Death was being called upon. This truly hateful scene was pulling Gabe in with its terrible, graceful savagery. And what made it so much worse was that he could see some kind of awesome, insane beauty about what was happening in front of him.

  That was when Gabe woke up, covered in sweat. The room was pitch black and for a second he panicked that he’d gone blind. Then the soft, fluorescent green glow from the display of his alarm clock pushed away the dark just a little and he saw it was 3.34am. Now 3.35am…

  Gabe lay flat on his back, exhausted. His skin crawled like he was covered in ants and he felt as if he’d been to … the word ‘hell’ squirmed and skittered around in the back of his mind waiting to be let out and he tried as hard as he could to ignore it. Hell was other people. Someone famous had said that, and he wanted to believe it was true and that was all it was. He did not want to believe it was crazed, knife-wielding people and lost souls, blood-soaked altars and sacrifices to unknown gods.

  The thought of going back to sleep was laughable.

  More of what he’d just been through? No way.

  Gabe dragged himself out of bed and padded down to the bathroom, the corridor lit by the plug-in night lamp his sister still said she needed. He closed the door and switched the light on. In the mirror over the sink an exhausted, freaked-out version of himself stared back. He looked like shit. Running the cold tap he sluiced his face and rinsed his mouth out; it was only when he saw the blood running away that he realized he must have bitten the inside of his lip. He checked his ears to see if they’d repeated their performance from earlier in the canyon. They hadn’t. He dried off and sat on the toilet lid
, elbows on his knees and hands cradling his head. He felt lousy. His life genuinely was crap, whichever way you looked at it, and now he couldn’t even escape from what was going on with a good night’s sleep.

  He sighed heavily. Tomorrow was another day. And tomorrow he and his family would still be facing the same problems. Tomorrow he had to work for Benny, and who knew what that might entail. Tomorrow he would also have to try and get rid of at least some of the damn gold. Although looking on the bright side, if that was at all possible, if Benny and Mr Cecil LeBarron both paid up, the day after tomorrow might feasibly be better.

  Yeah, right.

  “Gabey-Gabey-Gay-ay-ay-bee, hugging his pillow like a bay-ay-ay-bee!”

  Gabe jerked awake to see his sister, Remy, bending over and peering at him like he was some weird zoo exhibit.

  “Scram, Remy,” he muttered, turning over and squinting at the clock; he found it hard to believe he’d actually fallen back to sleep, not had any nightmares he could remember and that it was now 7.06am… make that 7.07.

  “What’ve you got there, Gabey?” Remy pointed at his bedside table, reaching forward like she was going to touch the untidily knotted cloth duster.

  “Nothing, now move it!”

  “Well, Mom says you’d better get your skates on, else you’ll be late for school…” Remy dodged the dirty sock Gabe launched at her as she made for the door. “And you got dribble on your chinny-chin-chin…”

  “Get…”

  Remy disappeared, then her head popped round the door, excited. “Guess what I saw in the front yard this morning, Gabey.”

  “A fight between two of your stupid dolls?” Remy crossed her eyes and did her ‘you’re so dumb’ face, which always cracked Gabe up. “OK, OK, I give up, what?”