Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (167 page)

Jarvis might not be a genius, but the slums of Burnton were his element. He could beat any one of them in a fight, but they could have killed him all together. Only who would have gone first? More important, he was always out front in a fight with another gang, always ready to give and take the first blow.

In the hallway, Brett saw cracks in the paint. He grinned at the idea of telling the other Lords they needed to move out for a few days and hire a painter, or do the job themselves.

He smiled again at the noises coming from Jarvis’s room. He’d be in a better mood when he was done with the girl. He turned around and headed towards the front door.

Sharpie met him on the way. Sharpie was the shortest of them all, and seemed to have something to prove. His black eyes moved quickly, and his close cropped black hair looked almost military. He could be quicker to start a fight than anyone but Jarvis, but also had a brain he concealed better than Brett.

He told Brett, “Kelly’s. C’mon.”

The greasy spoon up the block was owned by a fence, who had muscle to back him up, so everyone knew not to bother him. This also meant they were welcome to come there to buy breakfast, so long as they didn’t start trouble.

Why was he drinking cola for breakfast? Brett shrugged, and took another forkful of lukewarm eggs.

Sharpie asked, “Whadja think of yesterday?”

Brett replied, “Jarvis’s top. We livin.”

The other boy shook his head. “He wasn’ happy. That’s trouble.”

The younger Brett didn’t see the problem, but in retrospect Sharpie was right. Jarvis had done the only possible thing, but somehow set himself off kilter.

Then he scrutinized Sharpie suspiciously. Sharpie had egged Jarvis on when he saw his new toy, and been the first to testify against him in court. If he had known his leader was headed for trouble he could have said something.

That ended the conversation. A certain camaraderie lay between the gang, but no real friendship. Even the name of the gang pretended to mean something it didn’t. If they didn’t want to see themselves, they could hardly let anyone else get close enough to see them.

Moodily Brett headed back to his room and memory lane. He could have looked up these old books again before now. Or did he only find his imperfect memory of them here? Since only the past replayed itself, he didn’t need to get emotionally involved.

Wandering out in search of dinner, Brett ran into the rest of the gang in the hall. Sharpie, Jeff, Red, and Clyde all clustered around Jarvis.

Even before getting close enough to see, Brett knew the plaything that Jarvis brandished. Jarvis had gone out and bought a gun.

“Nobody gonna slam Jarvis,” he said triumphantly.

In a voice oozing with admiration, Sharpie said, “You top, Jarvis. You a killer.”

How could Brett tell Jarvis the gun would only get him into trouble? They didn’t need a gun for the kind of crimes they committed, and the police wouldn’t just let a murder go. They weren’t Razors.

The Lords never talked like that though. Surely he’d known underneath even back then, but aloud they always pretended they feared nothing.

The best he could say was, “We don’ need. We slam great without one.”

Jarvis looked straight at him. “Sharpie likes it. You got somethin’ to say?”

There was only one answer to that. “No.”

Later he passed Sharpie in the hall. Sharpie knew exactly why he was pissed. “You can’t say nothin’ to him. Fool if you try.”

Almost true. Jarvis didn’t need his crew to like him, but he needed them to admire him, almost worship him. Brett could understand that better after all these years. So there should be some way to use that need to persuade him – only even now Brett couldn’t see it.

That didn’t make him a teenager again. As an adult he could plan, could take responsibility for his actions. With what he’d learned, he had nothing to fear from anyone here.

No more tap-dancing around. Brett would take the direct approach.

Jarvis’s room had garish posters on the wall: a mix of naked women and fight scenes. A few ants had discovered the crumbs on the carpet.

“Give me the gun.”

He deliberately spoke clearly and distinctly like an adult, and not with the mumbled slang of the Lords.

“Wanna fight outside?”

Jarvis spoke happily, like Brett had made his day. His black eyes and black hair didn’t make him look anything like a larger version of Sharpie. Jarvis was overweight, though not enough to slow him down. The fat was most visible in his face, swelling around the eyes to give him a piggish look.

“Here and now, or give me the gun.”

Brett could visualize the fast eager lunge which froze opponents in fear an instant before the knife cut them. He knew exactly how he would move out of the way, letting Jarvis lose his balance, and had contingency plans in case Jarvis didn’t fight as he always had.

“You still don’t know why you’re here, Bookie. To prove an adult mind in your teenage body could have avoided the killing? Is that why you’re here?”

Brett started, but Jarvis’s lips hadn’t moved. With a rush he remembered the future he had forgotten so quickly. Not the future but the present, though time must be distorted, surely he hadn’t been in that tank over twenty four hours.

Even with the momentary distraction Brett’s reflexes should have carried the day, but apparently the reflexes hadn’t come back with him. He doubled over as Jarvis planted a fist in his stomach, struck the floor after a savage blow hit his shoulder. When he lay on the floor Jarvis kicked him in the ribs, and he saw the world though a haze of pain. The adult Brett who could have distanced himself from that pain seemed very remote, and it was hard to believe that this was a hallucination, and he would wake in a tank of water after Jarvis killed him, only knowing he had failed to do – what? What should he have done?

Jarvis stood over him. “Always liked you, Bookie. Never thought you wanted to be Top. Taste my knife to help you remember better?”

Brett shook his head, praying it was more than a rhetorical question.

Jarvis grinned. “Okay. Always liked you Bookie.”

Then he walked around Brett without touching him. He closed his eyes briefly to try and block out the pain – but dammit, that was no way for a Space Force doctor to deal with injuries. Eventually he staggered to his feet and checked himself over. There would be some nasty bruises, but no bones had broken. He went to his room to lie down awhile.

Hunger woke him. He saw the setting sun through the window. Sometimes there would be hot food in the kitchen around this time. One of the other Lords might have ordered it. None of them worked for a living, so they weren’t cheap about money. Brett managed to lever himself off the bed without putting any weight on his newly hurt shoulder.

The rest of the Lords were there too. Brett dragged in a chair from the adjoining room, which had once been a dining room.

Clyde grinned at him, then turned to Jarvis. “Bookie givin’ you trouble? Wan’ me to have a little talk wit him out back?”

Brett didn’t let his face show fear. Clyde wasn’t quite as big as Jeff, but he knew how to fight, and was practically an adult. If Clyde and Jarvis declared open season on someone, they would make a good target for anyone hoping to show how tough they were with no risk.

Jarvis grinned back. “Give him a coupla days. I wouldn’ mind seein’ if anyone besides me can take Bookie. Watch yourself though.”

The warning could have been mockery, but Jarvis delivered it in a flat tone, and Clyde looked away, evidently taking it seriously. Apparently Jarvis really had liked Brett. Or wait, that was just how he remembered Jarvis. Only now this world seemed a lot more real than the other one. Would he really grow up to be a doctor-soldier? Did he want to?

Over the next few days, Brett was reminded that the candy store incident had affected Jarvis deeply. They committed crimes when they didn’t really need the money, and Jarvis wasn’t quite as careful. Then it stopped, but Bookie knew they would slam the convenience store in a week – unless all those strange memories of the future were a crazy dream.

If all that stuff were true, Brett couldn’t live this way much longer even if he wanted to. But everything seemed so real. Could he somehow stop the shooting, or get the Lords away safely afterwards? This wasn’t a bad life, the only one he knew really. And Jarvis was good to have on your side.

When it came up, Bookie couldn’t talk Jarvis out of slamming the convenience store, even though he pointed out they had slammed the place twice in the past four months. A ghost of the older Brett thought it was no wonder the owner had gone mad with rage, but Bookie had bigger worries. Somebody needed to talk to Jarvis all right, but Brett didn’t know what to say. Anyway, Jarvis didn’t really confide in anyone, or let anyone confide in him. Jarvis had shown Brett some scars from where his father used to beat him, but even then Brett knew that pity or even sympathy would have been dangerous. He had expressed awe at what Jarvis had survived, and at Jarvis for surviving it.

In the end Brett decided to forget all the crazy crap. Maybe he’d been hit on the head during his fight with Jarvis. Everyone else acted like they always had, nobody worried they were part of a hallucination. Anyway it had been a couple of weeks now, long enough for a guy in a tank of salty stuff he couldn’t drink to die of thirst. At the very least he would have shit himself by now. Bookie didn’t want to be him again. He had never liked the name Brett.

They pulled their masks over their heads, and walked into the store. Bookie never thought about it, but Brett realized the old man had to be the owner, since he was there all the time. This time something snapped, and he started screaming. By some fatal mischance, he was clever enough to tell Jarvis was the leader but not clever enough to keep his mouth shut, or at least avoid talking to his face.

“You stupid punks have garbage for brains! You could earn more money shoveling snow than you get from my goddam empty cash register. You’re a useless lazy idiot!”

Brett froze. It was real, all of it. This was exactly what he had remembered from the future.

Jarvis never let anyone talk trash to him. He pulled the pistol out of his waistband, the pistol they hadn’t even needed for the other robberies. For an instant Brett thought he could change the past, throw himself at the other boy when no words would be heeded. Instead he stood unmoving as he had long ago, and would never know if the moment available was enough to act in.

The echoing gunshot deafened Brett for a moment. The old man man’s skull split open, and his twitching body fell to the floor.

Jarvis froze in shock at what he had done, then forced his mouth into the approximate shape of a smile. “I showed him.”

From long ago memories Brett knew the patrolmen would be there in a few minutes. The shot had been heard. He had no desire to save anyone present from the consequences of their actions, least of all his younger self. He hated Bookie now, and refused to identify with him by an effort of will. Still he felt an almost forgotten rage building, one he had never been able to put into words.

Jeff, Red, and Clyde stood on tiptoe, straining to see Jarvis’ handiwork behind the counter, one shock of red hair squeezed between two brown buzz cuts. Sharpie and Brett walked around. The corpse had no head to stare accusingly, only a mess of red and grey, with bone fragments and a few larger chunks of skull. When they had frittered away their few remaining minutes of freedom in blank shock, the patrolmen burst through the door. When Brett didn’t put his hands against the wall fast enough to be searched for weapons, he got shoved hard. What was the point of this memory? He had come to terms with the stupidity of his former self already. Yet he had slid back into his mind so easily, but what did that prove? This whole experience was controlled by the Oceanians, wasn’t it? He already knew how idiotic it had been not to do his own thinking and make his own choices, to go along with those around him. Surely that wasn’t the lesson anyone wanted to teach him, especially if they wanted him to become part of the hive mind. Why was he here?

Three weeks later, the young public defender told him, “It’s me you need to speak with.”

The little room allotted for the interview was mostly concrete. The two of them were separated by a metal grill. Brett wore prison fatigues, but the lawyer was formally dressed.

Time had gone by quickly since the arrest – or had it? Brett couldn’t remember many specific events from those weeks. The ones he did remember were old and faint. Perhaps his original memories rather than from the flashback? Could the public defender’s words mean more than the obvious? Brett didn’t know what to say.

Evidently the other man did. “All the other ‘Lords’ have told the same story. They knew he had the gun, but not that he planned to use it.”

Brett remained silent. To point out that Jarvis had acted on impulse would be to testify against Jarvis. No security camera had observed the shooting.

His court appointed lawyer continued speaking. “Nothing you say will make any difference to Jarvis. The court already has all the evidence it needs. Your testimony will show your remorse, and your cooperation will enable the judge to reduce your sentence.”

He said nothing. Bookie was responsible for the decision to follow Jarvis, responsible for everything he had done while ignoring his own responsibility to choose. It seemed terribly wrong to try and escape that by tattling on Jarvis. It would be doubling down on his mistake, trying to make Jarvis responsible instead of himself.

Brett had never spent much time thinking about responsibility, until the past few weeks.

The public defender said impatiently, “I have a lot of people to see, and you still don’t know why you’re here.”

Brett expected the man to argue further, but instead he raised his hands. The room dissolved.

Now Brett sat in a courtroom. Odd how quickly the experience had become dreamlike. Yet everything felt real enough. The wooden chair was hard and uncomfortable, and he felt as if he had been sitting for awhile.

His lawyer was addressing the judge. “Clearly, Your Honor, my client is too foolish to be held responsible for his actions.”