Halifax Read online

  CHAPTER ONE

  Farrell. It was a good name. A name someone would remember, but not necessarily remember for any particular reason. Farrell, the sixteen-year-old boy bearing that name, was much the same. Although a good-looking young man, you wouldn’t remember him for it. His light and floppy hair was too long to be preppy, but too short to be cool. His voice was pleasant enough. Steady. Neither slight nor deep with no specific accent. He was neither short nor tall. Not fat. Not slim. Farrell was very…medium. He could be the captain of the soccer team or the president of the chess club. It all depended on just how memorable he wanted to be.

  It’s difficult, though, to be too unmemorable when you’re standing alone in the middle of the street with blood dripping down your arm and onto your Chuck Taylor sneakers. Which is exactly what Farrell was doing. His jeans were covered in mud or something equally dark and disgusting. His face was crossed with scratches and his lower lip was purple and swollen. The blood dripping on his sneakers was from an ugly gash cut deep into his shoulder. The blood ran in channels down his arm and covered his hand, finally falling off in droplets from the tips of his fingers.

  If he was in pain Farrell didn’t seem to care. His gaze was fixed down the long, deserted street. Every streetlight for endless blocks was red, but there were no cars on the road. Not at this time of night. Not in this part of town. It was an industrial area in an older section of Los Angeles. Most of the buildings were run-down or abandoned. Broken-down cars and trucks filled lots behind barbed wire fences. Broken-down and forgotten people --- the homeless --- slept in doorways. This wasn’t the place for a sixteen year old to be alone in the middle of the night, but it was just the kind of place sixteen-year-old Farrell would be.

  There was something up the block that caught Farrell’s attention and his eyes darted to the left. It was a movement. Was it a person or a reflection from the changing stoplights? It was barely anything at all, but Farrell saw it. He took off running down the block. He ran towards the dark corners in the dark night. Towards the dark --- not away from it.

  At the corner of Third Street and Sack Alley stood the old and abandoned Wells Sewing Works. Its rows of tall windows, each with twenty-four small panes, were mostly broken. Those that weren’t broken were too dirty to see through. Graffiti marred the building’s brick walls and trash, blown down the street through who knows how many years, was piled around the old double front doors.

  Farrell came up to the entrance. He kicked aside paper cups and crumpled newspapers and tried to open the doors, only to find them locked. He slowly moved to the side of the building, scanning the street as he went, looking back over his shoulder, looking for something, looking out for something. He reached a side door. It was open and wood from around the lock was splintered and lying on the ground. It had been broken open. Broken open with apparent great force.

  He moved carefully, looking left to right, squinting into the darkness of the old building. Farrell tried to be quiet, but even his soft steps echoed through the building. Inside, the main room was expansive. Once upon a time it would have been filled with workers, each at a sewing machine, toiling away in the heat making something for someone else for very little money. A few sewing machines remained. They were in pieces on the floor, pieces Farrell stepped over as he moved further and further into the room. Only the light from the street lamps outside, coming in through the broken windowpanes, lit his way. Farrell tried to navigate through the shadows and remain out of sight.

  “You don’t need to hide,” a man said from the darkness. “I’m not hiding.” The man lit a cigarette and the glow from the match illuminated his face for a moment. It was a handsome face. A very handsome face. It matched perfectly the very posh English accent the man had. He stepped into the light. He was wearing a perfectly tailored grey suit and shiny black loafers. He was a very expensive looking man.

  “Great,” Farrell said. “We get to stop running. I hate running.”

  “If you hate running, why are you chasing me?” the man asked, flicking ashes off the end of his cigarette.

  “You’ve called too much attention to yourself,” Farrell replied.

  The man smiled. “Are you the police?”

  “I like to think of myself as an enforcer,” Farrell told him.

  “You mean a vigilante.”

  “In any case,” Farrell said. “I enforce the Code of Conduct and you’ve broken about fourteen codes.”

  There was a huge bang at the front of the warehouse and suddenly the double doors broke open, each crashing against the walls and almost coming off their hinges. Dust and dirt rose up in a cloud around the entrance. From the middle of the cloud stepped fifteen-year-old Izzy. She wore motorcycle boots and sported enough cuts and bruises to make a prize-fighter jealous. Izzy pushed her long brown hair out of her eyes and glared at the man.

  The man exhaled a lung full of cigarette smoke into the air and let out a sigh. “There’s just no getting rid of you.”

  “You’re all the same,” Izzy said as she stepped up next to Farrell. “You guys always look like male models. It’s totally pathetic. Same designer clothes. Same perfect hair. Same stupid accent. What’s wrong with a little bit of originality?”

  The man dropped his cigarette and snuffed it out beneath his fancy loafers. He looked at Farrell and Izzy and the left side of his perfect face began to twitch. His left eye began to blink. The corner of his mouth rose into a half grin then fell into a frown. Then his arms began to shake as if an electrical current had begun to flow through his body. He began to convulse, jerking uncontrollably.

  Farrell and Izzy looked at each other with worry in their eyes. It probably occurred to them that this would have been a good time to run away, but neither moved. They stood their ground and watched as the man’s skin began to peel away and mounds of greenish, bumpy fat started to pop through his suit, like he was a giant kernel of corn popping in a microwave. Arms, six of them, sprouted out from various parts of his body. His beautiful, perfectly shaven, and carefully exfoliated face split apart and an oversized, droopy, puke green head emerged with a mouth stretching from ear to ear --- or things that vaguely resembled ears.

  The man had transformed into a massive, horrible, green Thing. He was reminiscent of Jabba the Hut --- only not as attractive.

  “If you looked like me, you’d rather be a male model, too,” the man, this Thing, said. He no longer had a proper English accent. He had a guttural, deep, and deeply unattractive voice.

  Izzy was about to make a comment, something probably insulting, when two of the Thing’s many arms sprang out in a flash and grabbed Farrell and Izzy. It had one of them in each hand. The Thing dragged them towards him, towards It, even as they struggled hopelessly to break free.

  “How about a kiss?” It asked Izzy as it smiled to reveal several layers of shark-like teeth. Izzy turned her head away in disgust.

  “Now you’re breaking all sorts of Codes,” Farrell said as he pulled against the arm that was wrapped around him. “No screen. Unprovoked violence. Sexual harassment.”

  “I won’t have to listen to you any more after I eat you,” the Thing said.

  “Eating me is a major violation,” Farrell told the Thing, as if he had any authority left at all. “Grounds for instant removal from this planet.”

  “Then I’ll eat her,” the Thing said, turning its attention to Izzy.

  “I swear I’ll give you indigestion for the rest of your life!” Izzy spat out.

  The Thing, the former man, bared his pointy teeth. It began pulling Izzy closer. Her boots slid across the floor, her feet shuffling, as she desperately struggled against the Thing’s gooey grip. Farrell grabbed onto Izzy’s shirt, trying to hold her back, but she was pulled from his grasp.

  The Thing’s mouth
was growing larger as Izzy was growing nearer to it. It was opening, stretching into an exaggerated, massive, toothy hole quite big enough to swallow Izzy in one or, perhaps, two bites.

  “Drop my sister!” someone said. It wasn’t Farrell. They all turned to see a younger boy standing at the entrance to the building. The bloody and battle-scarred Rom, thirteen years old but short for his age and more Poindexter than Indiana Jones, stood his ground, wielding a large super-soaker water gun like an Uzi.

  “You’ll be dessert,” the Thing said as it dragged Izzy the last few inches towards its mouth.

  “Look away, Izzy,” Rom said to her. “This thing’s about to get uglier.” Rom pulled the trigger on his super-soaker, but instead of water coming out, a beam of light shot from the gun. It zigzagged across the room like a lightening bolt and hit the Thing in its big gut.

  The Thing exploded. Green goo splattered all across the room, sticking to the walls and covering Farrell and Izzy in a slimy layer of Thing flavored jello-ness. Farrell slipped as he got up off the floor and wiped what was left of the Thing off his arms.

  “You’re late,” Farrell told Rom disapprovingly.

  “My legs are shorter than yours,” Rom replied as he helped Izzy up. She tried to wring the Thing out of her hair, but it was no use. “I believe a ‘thank you’ is in order,” Rom continued.

  “You’re right,” Farrell said. “Thanks, Rom. Thanks for almost letting us die.”

  Rom hauled his modified super-soaker up on his shoulder. “Next time I’m going to let one eat you.”

  Farrell surveyed the scene as if he’d seen it all before. Just another day at the office. Been there. Done that. “Let’s take a sample back with us,” he told the others as he walked out. “Maybe we can find out who he was. Or who she was. Or…whatever.”

  Izzy looked around at what was left of the Thing. She stepped through puddles of the Thing looking for a sizable chunk of the Thing. She finally found the lower part of one of the Thing’s many arms. “This is so gross,” she said as she picked up the sticky, dripping specimen. “I hate this job!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  A very average house stood on the middle lot at the end of a cul-de-sac on a suburban street. It looked just like every other house for blocks, a hundred two-story stucco-covered houses all in different shades of beige and all having small, parched lawns. It was the kind of neighborhood where you might pull up to the wrong house by mistake and not even realize it until your key failed to open the front door.

  It was morning when Farrell, Izzy and Rom came home to the suburban house. They were exhausted, bloodied, and gooed. Izzy followed Farrell up the front steps. She carried the arm of the Thing. It dripped some kind of slimy, Thingy blood on the front porch. Rom brought up the rear. He was always lagging behind.

  Inside the house, their mother waited for them. She was dressed in a perfectly pretty flowery dress. Her auburn, shoulder-length hair was curled under at the ends and bounced as she walked. She wore a pink, frilly apron that was the exact same color as her pink lipstick. She waited with a smile frozen on her face.

  Farrell and Izzy came into the spotless living room. Not a thing was out of place, except, perhaps, for Farrell and Izzy. Their mother’s smile disappeared at the sight of them.

  “Do you know what time it is, young man?” she asked Farrell as she crossed her arms.

  “I’m really not in the mood to talk to you about it,” he said. He pushed past her, not even looking at her.

  Izzy clomped across the living room. Her heavy boots left big, dirty footprints on the newly vacuumed carpet. She tossed the Thing’s arm on the coffee table right between a picture book on the architecture of Nantucket and a bowl full of potpourri. The mother looked horrified.

  “You don’t plan on leaving that there, do you, missy?” she asked. She was evidently not as concerned about it being an arm as she was about it making a mess.

  “You are so not the boss of me,” Izzy said as she collapsed into an upholstered chair. Dirt literally puffed up off of her as she sank into the cushion. This upset the woman even more.

  “We’re going to have a family meeting about this,” the mother said. Izzy rolled her eyes. “We are. Just you wait.”

  Rom finally made his way through the front door and dropped his super-soaker in the foyer. The woman lit up at the sight of the youngest of the three kids. It was as if a puppy had just wandered into the room. Like a puppy carrying freshly baked muffins in a flower covered basket had arrived.

  “Rommie!” the mother exclaimed as she ran and enveloped the boy in her arms. “My little Rommie. Are you all right, son?”

  Rom melted into her apron and smiled. He looked at Izzy and Farrell, both of whom were doing nothing to hide their disgust. “I’m fine, Mother. Though peanut butter cookies could be in order.”

  “Right away, my little general,” she said. She kissed Rom on the forehead and was headed towards the kitchen when the doorbell rang.

  Farrell grabbed the woman’s arm to stop her as Izzy jumped up and crept towards the window. She carefully peered out from behind the curtains to see a lady standing at the front door. She was dressed in a suit and holding a file.

  “It’s a lady with a file,” Izzy said. “That’s never good.”

  “Rom, Izzy, other room,” Farrell commanded. “Mother, deal with this.”

  The kids scrambled into the dining room, hiding near the doorway, as their mother made her way to the front door. She straightened out her apron as she went, not noticing the blood Rom had wiped on it. She fluffed up the ends of her hair and her smile returned as she opened the door.

  “Good morning,” she said to the lady with the file. “Can I help you?”

  The lady looked at Mother, then past her into the room. She was checking things out. Making a judgment. That was her job. “I’m Mrs. Kahn from Children’s Services,” the woman said. “I’m here to speak with you about your children.”

  “Please come in,” Mother said. “Have a seat. I’ll make you some tea.”

  “Thank you, but I don’t need any tea,” Mrs. Kahn said as she entered the house and took a seat on the sofa. “I just need to talk with you about your kids.”

  Mother dusted off the seat Izzy had been sitting in and took her place across from the social worker. She folded her hands in her lap and beamed her perfect smile across the coffee table. “What seems to be the problem?” she asked.

  The woman looked down at her file. “The problem is that your children have missed over thirty-six days of school in the last three months alone.”

  “What seems to be the problem?” the mother asked again, her smile never fading.

  “Well, that is the problem,” Mrs. Kahn said, already a little exasperated. “Regular attendance at school is a requirement. It’s the law.”

  Mother just smiled. “What seems to be the problem?” she said yet again in the exact same way.

  In the dining room, Farrell, Izzy and Rom all looked dismayed. “Mother’s wigging out,” Izzy whispered.

  “What’s wrong with her, Rom?” Farrell asked.

  Rom seemed reluctant to answer. He didn’t want to say it, but he finally blurted it out. “It’s a fatal error,” he said.

  “Fatal?” Farrell asked.

  “Fatal,” Rom replied with a sigh.

  Back in the living room, the social worker was shifting in her seat. Her frustration and annoyance were growing. She wasn’t a woman to be toyed with. She’d seen a thousand dysfunctional families in her time with the school district and this Stepford housewife wasn’t going to ruin yet another one of her long days.

  “This is a very serious matter, Mrs. Jones,” the woman said as she closed her file. “I don’t have time to…”

  And then she saw it --- whatever it was next to the potpourri on the coffee table. The Thing’s arm. She looked up at the mother and she saw something else for the first time. Rom’s blood on her apron. Mrs. Kahn slowly got up out of her seat.

  “Yo
u know, I believe I have all the information I need,” she said as she made her way to the front door, never taking her eyes off of the mother. “I’ll just…I’ll report a file. I mean, I’ll file a report. I’ll be in touch.”

  The social worker ran out the front door as fast as her sensible heels would take her. She was already in her car and driving away when the kids ran back into the living room.

  “Excellent job, Rom,” Farrell said as he watched the woman’s car through the window. Its tires squealed as it rounded the cul-de-sac and disappeared from view.

  “I wasn’t the one who left a bloody arm next to the candy dish on the coffee table,” Rom protested.

  “How long do we have?” Izzy asked.

  “She’s probably already called the police,” Farrell said. “Pack up. Say goodbye to Mother, Rom. And don’t forget the ball.”

  Farrell and Izzy scurried around the house. They began stuffing things into bags, tucking whatever useful items they needed, whether they looked useful or not, into whatever they could carry. Rom, meanwhile, turned his attention to the mother. She still had a smile on her face. She beamed at Rom and he looked away. He couldn’t take it.

  “What seems to be the problem?” she asked him. He just shook his head sadly.

  “Goodbye, Mother,” he said as he hugged her, wrapping himself around her waist. “I’ll miss you.”

  “What seems to be the problem?” she said yet again.

  “Let’s go!” Farrell yelled at Rom as he ran back into the room, bags on each shoulder.

  Rom reluctantly pulled himself away from the mother. He opened a drawer on the bureau in the hallway and pulled out a Magic Eight Ball. It was a children’s toy. It was like a large plastic eight ball from a pool table with a small window at its base. You asked it a question and it displayed an answer in the window, as if it had some kind of magical, eight-ballish psychic powers.

  “Will I ever see Mother again?” Rom asked the Magic Eight Ball as he shook it. He turned it over to reveal the answer printed on a triangle floating behind the small window on the ball. The message read Don’t Count On It.