Messenger of Fear (Messenger of Fear 1)

“Mamumu?” the other inmate mocked, his voice thick to the point of incomprehensibility. He laughed and slapped his hand down hard on the steel table. “Mamumu ma ma, moo.”

“You a sword swallower, Mamomo?”

Manolo shook his head.

Andrews leaned in closer. “Nah, I think you are. That weak handshake there? You all scared. All shaking, hey, that’s okay, you’re a fish, you maybe ought to be scared—there’s some bad men in here. Like Carolla here. He’s a bad man, aren’t you, Carolla?”

“Bad man,” the other one confirmed.

“See,” Andrews said. “You need to make friends fast here, fish. Need someone to watch your back.”

Carolla stuck his hand into Manolo’s plate, scooped up a peach slice, and popped it into his mouth.

“See? There you go. You let Carolla eat your peaches, maybe he won’t hurt you. If you don’t be nice, he’s going to hurt you. He’ll knock the teeth out of your mouth and bust you open, that’s a fact.”

Manolo swallowed, stiffened, and tried to stand up, but both men grabbed his shoulders and slammed him down hard into his seat. Both men began eating his peaches, making a joke of it, slurping and slopping, while Manolo sat helpless, pinioned.

“Let me go!” Manolo yelled.

Andrews put a hand behind Manolo’s neck and slammed his face down into his tray. When his head came back up, there was blood pouring from his nose.

All the while I was growing increasingly uncomfortable. I told myself that this boy was a murderer, that he had taken a life and therefore deserved none of my pity. But even a less active imagination than my own would have seen where this was heading, what these two brutes intended for him. I did not wish to see it.

“Do we have to watch this?” I demanded.

“Don’t you want to alter the fabric of time to rescue him as you wished to do for Samantha Early?”

“It’s not the same,” I said through gritted teeth. “Samantha is just a victim. This boy killed someone. But that doesn’t mean I want to watch him . . . like this.” A thought occurred to me. “He did kill someone, right?”

“Yes,” Messenger confirmed.

“Then, do we have to summon the Game Master and all of that?”

“Manolo is not our charge. We are after another one.”

“Then, why are we here watching this?” I demanded, quite angry, feeling that I was being tricked.

The room froze. One second it was a brutal and threatening video; the next it was as still as a photograph. And then, it began to move in reverse. Regular speed at first, with mov

ements that seemed oddly normal, though reversed. Then the actions sped up, faster and faster so that we were standing in a swirl of orange jumpsuits and then an interrogation room with tired cops seeming to wave their hands at Manolo as he went from tears to sullen defiance, to his own hand-waving defiance.

On and on it went, out of the police station, into a squad car, back through a drive across a city I did not recognize, and slower then as red and blue strobes flashed and neon rippled across the wet skin of police cars in the rain, and then were gone.

The action backed past something that happened in a flash, then slowed, stopped, and began to move forward again in normal speed.

Manolo, no longer in jailhouse orange, was walking out of a fro-yo shop. He wore a name tag, so I assumed he was leaving a part-time job. The fro-yo was at an aged mall with a sparsely occupied parking lot. The lot was illuminated by the worst of tall fixtures that cast a silvery light, like moonlight drained of all mystery. Manolo walked toward his car, a beater sedan he must have inherited or perhaps saved his money to buy.

Two boys climbed from an SUV parked nearby. The boys were not particularly tough looking. They were almost identically dressed in jeans, T-shirts, and jackets. One wore tan work boots, the other sneakers. Two things marked them instantly as dangerous. First, the way they moved: quick, almost hurried, directly toward Manolo, but furtive as well, with many glances behind and to the sides.

Second, they were each armed. Boots carried a metal baseball bat. Sneakers had a crowbar, hooked at one end, tape-wrapped at the other, which formed the grip.

Manolo was no fool—he knew as soon as he heard their car door shut that he was in trouble. It was easy to see that he knew the boys.

He tried to get the car door open, but they afforded him very little time, and his first attempt to insert the key failed.

Had he managed to get the door open . . . Chance. The fourth of the forces that define our lives.

“Hey, guys, come on,” Manolo said.