Glimpse (11 page)

The man with the tattoo shoved Colin, sending him sprawling to the floor, and then moved toward his fallen comrade and nudged him with his foot. “Jim! Jim, get up.” Tattoo man's buddy didn't even move a finger.

Colin scrambled across the hardwood floor and took a post next to me behind the armchair. He kept one hand pressed to his neck.

“Get out of my house,” Mr. Utlet warned.

“Tell us where you keep your money, and we'll gladly leave.”

“What money?”

“Don't play games, old man. We've been doing this long enough to know that all you old suckers keep wads of cash in your house.”

Mr. Utlet's eyes became slits. “Get out of my house.”

“Or what?” Tattoo man flicked the knife in front of his face. “I have the—”

Mr. Utlet moved like a jackrabbit. One second he was standing two or three yards from the burglar, and the next, his fist was connecting with the other man's jaw. His punch only managed to knock the man back a step, but the knife clattered to the floor. Tattoo man growled and swung back at Mr. Utlet. I blinked, and the next thing I knew, the two of them were on the ground rolling on top of each other, fists connecting so fast the room filled with sounds like a gorilla beating its chest. Somehow the tattooed man managed to stand up and kick Mr. Utlet while he was down. Mr. Utlet groaned, then lashed out with his foot and connected with the inside of the robber's knee with a resounding
crack
. The man howled and staggered back, knocking into a floor lamp. Colin and I shielded our eyes as it smashed to the floor. Opaque shards of glass scattered around the room. Mr. Utlet was on his feet again. He slammed his fist into the man's ribs, and as the burglar staggered back, Mr. Utlet tackled him.

“Get the gun!” the tattooed man yelled.

The guy with the hole in his leg pulled himself to his feet and hobbled toward the couch. I could hear sirens in the distance. Help was on its way, but it wasn't coming fast enough.

I glanced at the ratty old armchair we were hiding behind, then at the man with the bloody leg, then back at the chair. “Push,” I said to Colin. Together, we pushed the armchair with our shoulders and launched it toward the man like some upholstered battering ram. His eyes widened, and he tried to move, but his injured leg didn't allow it. We struck him full-on and knocked him back. He staggered, arms circling the air like blades on a broken windmill, until finally he crashed through the large picture window and thudded to the ground below.

We risked a peek over the ledge. His eyes were closed, and he was wrapped in Mr. Utlet's paisley curtains like an Egyptian mummy that had insisted on being wrapped in trendy bandages.

“Move!” Mr. Utlet yelled from behind us. He had the tattooed man's arm twisted in an unnatural position, and he was running him toward the window.

Colin and I dove to the side just as Mr. Utlet tossed the burglar through. His feet clipped the ledge and he landed with a crunch atop his friend. Police cars and emergency vehicles careened to our block and drove over the sidewalk right onto Mr. Utlet's lawn, headlights suddenly brightening the living room.

Mr. Utlet limped to the couch, shoved it aside, and plucked up the revolver. He looked at us and a fleck of amusement played across his face. “I haven't had that much fun since Beirut.” He nodded toward our armchair battering ram. “Quick thinking, boys. Nicely done.”

He took a couple steps forward. I thought he was going to shake our hands or maybe pat us on the back. I didn't find out because as soon as he stepped in front of the window and into the white beams of the police car headlights, we heard, “Freeze! Drop the gun!”

That's when all the color from the room bled away. Just like before, everything grayed and that feeling of undeniable dread engulfed me.

Mr. Utlet smiled. “They think I'm the bad guy.” He turned to the window and raised his empty hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes from the lights. “Now see here!” he yelled. “These boys and I…” He gestured toward us and then froze.

In the seconds before it happened, I saw what the officers were seeing from their positions behind the cruisers. I felt like I should run to Mr. Utlet and throw my hands out like a human shield to protect him. Instead, I didn't move a muscle, frozen by fear and uncertainty, and watched my worst nightmare come true.

Since his free hand was shielding his eyes from the headlights, the hand he used to make his gesture was the one holding the gun. To the police, it looked as though he were taking aim at a couple of unfortunate kids. What happened next sounded as if someone had set a row of fire-crackers aflame. Mr. Utlet jerked and twitched in time to the bursts of noise. Then he dropped to the floor, and a shallow gray pool formed under his bullet-riddled body. As color filled the world again, the pool turned blood red.

I took in a raspy breath as I looked down at my wristwatch.

“One thirty-eight,” I choked. “It's 1:38.”

 

I didn't leave my house for days. Lisa and Colin called from time to time, but I couldn't bring myself to talk to them. I'd known
exactly
what time Mr. Utlet would die, right to the minute. All I had to do was stop it. I should've called the police a few minutes earlier, or made a ruckus on the front lawn to scare those men away, or at least made them think that Mr. Utlet wouldn't be an easy target. I went over and over all the ways the night could have played out differently. Each new possibility depressed me more than the last.

My dad used his connections in the psychology community to pull some strings with the school board. Lisa, Colin, and I were excused from our final exams and given a pass into grade ten—not that I really cared. But we also had to attend group and one-on-one counseling. I'd al-ready missed two sessions of both, but my parents were forcing me to go to the next group session.

According to Dad, Lisa and Colin hadn't missed a session and seemed to be doing well. Apparently, quite a few kids were having a tough time with the accident at school and were in counseling as well. Eric Feldman was among them. I was pretty sure Eric just wanted to be excused from his exams. Not that I could blame him, I guess. If I hadn't been so devastated by what had happened to Mr. Utlet and Mrs. Farnsworthy, I'd have been overjoyed.

The only good thing to happen over those few days was what
didn't
happen: no more visions. No more screaming faces, no more shrieks of terror. Whatever nightmare I had been plunged into seemed to have ended. For now.

I was brooding in bed, wondering if the past few days had been some test that I had failed, when there was a knock at my bedroom door.

“Honey?” my mom called. “Colin and Lisa are with me. Can they come in?”

I closed my eyes. Inhaled. Exhaled. I had avoided my friends long enough. Sooner or later, I knew they'd come find me. I cleared my throat, pushed myself out of bed, and opened the door.

“Hey, guys.” They were both dressed in nice clothing as if they were on their way to church. Colin was wearing a button-up shirt, which made him look ten times dressier than I'd ever seen him, and Lisa had on a dark knee-length dress. A newspaper was tucked under her arm.

“How're you doing, man?” Colin asked.

“Better,” I lied.

“You don't look better,” Colin said. He swept past me into the room, followed by Lisa, who shut the door behind her. “There was nothing we could've done.” He poked at some of the stuff on my desk.

“Whatever.”

“We did everything we could,” Lisa said.

I reddened.
Had they planned the speech before getting here?
“What do you mean we did everything we could? We killed him.
I
killed him.”

Lisa scrunched up her face. “Don't be stupid.”

“If he hadn't pointed that gun at us, he wouldn't have been shot.”

“Not by the cops, maybe,” Colin said, “but probably by the robbers.”

“No! That's just it, Colin. He'd already beaten two of the robbers. He had the gun. He only put it down because the third guy had a knife on you.”

Lisa and Colin looked at each other with raised brows.

“It's because we were there that he died.”

“I don't believe that,” Lisa said flatly. “No. It's not possible.”

“I'm the common denominator, guys. I'm the reason for all these deaths.”

“Oh yeah?” Colin asked. “And how exactly are you responsible for Mrs. Farnsworthy's death?”

“She wasn't standing behind her desk, right?” I widened my eyes at Lisa, waiting for a response.

She put her fists on her hips and leaned forward. “Yeah, so?”

“If she'd been standing behind her desk, she probably wouldn't have been killed. And the reason she wasn't standing behind her desk was because
I
said there was a rat hiding under her desk.”

“Oh God, Dean!” Lisa took a step back and looked up at the ceiling. “People believed you for about five minutes. After that, no one believed that stupid rat story. No one. Not the other students and certainly not Mrs. Farnsworthy.”

I waved my hand dismissively. “This curse doesn't make me see death so I can stop it. It makes me bring death. I attract it. I'm a… I'm a
harbinger of death
. Come near me and you're marked.” Colin shuffled back a step as I pointed a warning finger at him. “That's right. Stay away. I'm like one of those guys who walks through the forest spray painting big red Xs on all the trees that are going to be chopped down.” When I finished, I was breathing so heavily you'd have thought I'd just run a marathon.

After a lengthy pause, Lisa said, “Wow.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I didn't realize that the world revolved around you. That's all. Impressive.” She turned to Colin. “Don't you think that's impressive?” She didn't wait for his reply before turning back to me and adding, “
Harbinger
, eh? Yeah, that has a pretty good ring to it.”

“Shuddup,” I muttered.

“Oh, get over yourself, Dean. You're no more the harbinger of death than Colin is the harbinger of intelligence.”

“Hey!” Colin said. “I'm right here, you know? I can hear you.”

Lisa grabbed my hand with both of hers. “You're not doing this, Dean. It's not you. Something is happening
to you
, not
by you
.” She kept my hand in hers for a few moments before releasing it and adding, “Now get dressed. We have a funeral to attend.”

I swallowed hard and asked, though I really didn't want to know, “Whose funeral?”

“Mr. Vidmar's dead,” Lisa said softly. “He died the same day we stopped in to see him.”

I lowered myself to the edge of my bed and dropped my head in my hands.

Lisa rolled her eyes. “That doesn't mean it's your fault!” she continued. “But this is important. We need to go to the funeral.”

“Show him the article,” Colin prodded.

I glanced up. “What article?”

“It's his obituary.” Lisa opened the paper and smoothed it out beside me. She tapped the center of the page. “Here. Look who it says he's survived by.”

The obituary was barely a paragraph long, and Mr. Vidmar's brother's name jumped out at me. “Dmitri.” The name gave me a chill as it rolled off my tongue.

“Dmitri,” Colin echoed. “That's who Mr. Vidmar said we needed to talk to, remember?”

“You didn't get any answers from Mr. Vidmar,” Lisa said. “But it sounds like his brother knows something.”

I sat motionless for a moment. Part embarrassed, part terrified, part relieved. “I'm sorry about my little freak-out there.”

“Hey,” Colin said, “don't worry about it.” He walked over and put his arm around my shoulders and led me to my closet. “But you might actually want to keep that nickname. The Harbinger sounds freaking awesome!”

I smiled, and I didn't have to force myself to either. It was good to have my friends nearby, and it was good to know they didn't think I was a walking death trap. “I'm actually not having the visions anymore.”

Colin and Lisa looked at each other and then back at me.

“You're not having the visions
right now
,” Lisa corrected. “That doesn't mean they won't come back.”

I sighed. I had avoided considering that possibility, but I knew she was right. If these visions came back, it would be nice to know if there was a way to stop them. Or maybe understand what I'd done to deserve them. Something, anything. If it was a curse, perhaps there was a way to get rid of it.

“Okay,” I said. “Help me find some clothes.”

 

***

 

To my surprise, my dad thought that going to the funeral was a brilliant idea and immediately agreed to drive us. “First step to recovery is acceptance,” he said. Acceptance was the last thought on my mind. Answers, that's what I wanted. That was the only thing that would help. According to the obituary, the service was supposed to start at two. We told my dad we wanted to go a bit early so we could express our condolences before everyone else got there, so we arrived at the church just after one.

My dad offered to come in and sit with us, but given our true purpose, I thought that wouldn't be the best idea. He told us to call him when we were ready to be picked up.

The church looked as though someone had thrown a cross on a newly condemned building and decided to call it a place of worship. There was a sign outside, but either the letters had been written upside down or the writing wasn't in English. We walked up the narrow path and ducked through the doorway. A dozen or so pews lined either side of the chapel. Up front, a piano stood on one side of an elevated stage. On the other side, there was a human-sized box. Except for the man sitting in the front pew, staring at the casket, we were all alone.

I took a deep breath, prepared myself for the worst, and stepped into the aisle.