Gatekeepers Read online

  Gatekeepers

  By

  Sam Ferguson

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Dragon Scale Publishing, 212 E Crossroads Blvd. #119, Saratoga Springs UT 84045

  GATEKEEPERS

  Text copyright © 2017 by Sam Ferguson

  Illustration copyright © 2017 Dragon Scale Publishing

  All Rights Reserved

  Front cover art by Luciano Fleitas

  Contents

  Other Books by

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  About the Author

  Other Books by Sam Ferguson

  The Sorceress of Aspenwood Series

  The Dragon’s Champion Series

  The Wealth of Kings

  The Netherworld Gate Series

  The Dragons of Kendualdern series

  The Fur Trader

  The Haymaker Adventures

  Dark Sahale

  Other Books by Dragon Scale Publishing

  Codex of Light by E.P. Stein

  The Protector of Esparia by Lisa M. Wilson

  Kingdom of Denall Series by Eric Buffington:

  The Troven

  Secrets at the Keep

  The Changing

  Tales of the NoWhere and NeverWhen by Jason Hauser

  Wisp the Wayfinder

  Puck the Pathwinder

  Nobb the Nightbinder

  Also available exclusively on the

  Dragon Scale website:

  Tharzule’s Tome of Wishes by Malinda Smiley

  Orcs and Elves by Bethan Owen

  CHAPTER 1

  Nobody ever expects their life to change so drastically, especially not on a plainly boring Tuesday in the beginning of April. The bad stuff is supposed to come on Mondays. Everyone knows that. The good things happen Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But Tuesdays? Most people forget about Tuesday altogether. That’s why so many people get days in the middle of the week mixed up. Not me. I always remember Tuesdays.

  Tuesday is the day my life changed forever.

  Right now I am sitting at a desk. There is a pen and a pad of paper in front of me. The detectives in their cheap off-the-rack suits have been gone for an hour or so. They want my story. They want to know how it all began and why I was picked up where I was today. I could tell them, but they wouldn’t believe me. Who would ever believe that someone like me would ever do what I have done? Then again, I suppose it is usually the quiet people you have to watch out for.

  I decide to take the pen in hand. I’m not sure what I am going to write. Should I put everything down on paper? All of it? Or should I trim it down so I don’t make their bureaucratic supervisors’ heads explode? If I tell them everything today, then their world will never be the same. I will transform their lives exactly like mine was altered.

  Nothing will ever be the same again. In some ways it may be better, but it will be far worse in many more ways. This is not an easy decision to make. In my hand is a pen, and the words that come from that pen will decide a turning point in human history, for better, or worse.

  Funny thing, today is Tuesday as well.

  *****

  It was a bright, warm Friday in June when I was released from county jail. I had spent the last eight months of my life in that cold, cement building. Eight months of sitting alone in a six by four cell. Could have been worse though. Had the prosecutor been able to prove anything, I would be moving to a higher security facility just outside of Dallas for the rest of my life. Seeing as how I am thirty-two years old, I would likely have been sitting there for several decades. Then again, it was Texas. They probably would have fast-tracked my butt toward the death penalty.

  Good thing they couldn’t prove my guilt.

  The thing was, I did kill a man, or at least it was something like a man, but it wasn’t the man they said it was, and it sure as heck wasn’t murder. I’ve never been a violent person. Sure, I’ll play first-person shooter games or squeal like a kid when I get a great cut-scene as my character on the latest fantasy RPG gets a sweet assassination, but in real life, not at all. I get nervous just making phone calls. I’ve been in a few scrapes, but only when I had to. Never started fights, and I tried to avoid them if at all possible. Getting jumped a few times in elementary school by a couple dozen kids will either turn you into a great brawler, or it will knock the violence out of you. I was more the latter. A well-timed joke, especially a self-deprecating one, can often end a fight before it’s begun. Quick feet help too.

  I know what you’re thinking, what kind of elementary school did I go to to have such encounters? Well, I was poor growing up. Sometimes even a white kid can be a minority in some places. Other than that, I had a fairly nerdy appearance when I was younger. My first experience of being jumped by a group came in third grade. My first knife fight came in fourth grade. We moved around a lot though, so even when I won my fights, I still had to start all over as the new kid at some other forsaken dump where the teachers were frankly too tired to babysit us all the time. Shoot, I even had one teacher pay a kid to attack me once. I guess the going rate for beating up nerds was $15.

  I guess that was why it was so ridiculous that I was here now. Collecting my personal items back from the county jail after being accused of murder. The trial had been televised, given the nature of the circumstances. That had been enough to end my marriage. It’s hard enough to go through an eight month ordeal like that yourself, but then to see your wife and kid mobbed by reporters... I couldn’t blame her for leaving. It was the right thing to do. She moved back in with her parents and her two younger siblings. The apartment we had been renting was now being rented to someone else.

  I was two states away, in Texas, signing for my cheap $20 watch I had bought from Target the day before coming down to this miserable state, and wondering what had happened to the $150 running shoes I had come in with.

  “Sorry, sometimes things go missing,” the fat cop said from behind the thick glass. He gave me one of those looks, you know the kind, a twisted smile that told me the “lost” shoes were likely on his feet right now and both of us knew there wasn’t a dang thing I could do about it. “Sign here for your watch.”

  “My wallet?” I asked, trying to forget about the shoes.

  The cop nodded and pulled a zip lock bag from a plastic basket nearby. “One wallet, black. Contents inside consist of a Utah driver’s license, three dollars, a picture of a toddler…”

  “My son,” I said. It was enough that I had been here for months and lost my family over everything. I wasn’t going to accept the term “toddler” from this judgmental prick.

  “A picture of your son…” the cop said with a shrug.

  That’s better. I continued to sign the four different signature spots on the form and took my wallet and watch back.

  “I’d give you your clothes, but they were in evidence for mon
ths with that blood all over them,” the cop said. “I suppose you can have them if you want.”

  I had already had a pair of jeans and a t-shirt sent to me, so I shook my head.

  “I still don’t know why they didn’t fry your sorry behind,” the cop said with a sigh as he took the forms back. “I know you’re guilty.”

  I glowered at the man. He had no idea what he was talking about.

  I was escorted through a short series of halls and brought outside by a tall officer with a build much bigger than mine, and that was saying something, because I weighed in at a healthy two-hundred and seventy pounds. Sure, I always had a bit of fat around the edges, but I am built solid and thick. Wide shoulders, a 52 inch chest, and 19 inch biceps, and that was measuring before a good workout.

  I had found out around thirteen that stopping fights was much easier if you looked like you could beat a bull with your bare fists. So, I have spent six days a week in the gym since my thirteenth birthday. I’ll say this, it works better than jokes or trying to run away.

  I remember one time I went to the gas station as a sixteen year old. I was in a pink rental car, my mustang had been in the shop. A group of Hispanics started approaching me with their baggy t-shirts and their blue bandanas tied around their heads and elbows and their boxers hanging out the back over their sagging jeans. Now don’t get me wrong, I try not to judge people by appearance, but sometimes you just know. You get that thick feeling in your stomach, and they look at you with pure anger in their eyes. Of course, it didn’t help that the knife fight in fourth grade was started by a couple of Hispanics that didn’t like me. Anyway, I stepped out of the tiny little ford escort GT and all four of them stopped. I’m not sure what they had said before, but when I got out all I heard was “Ah, sheet, he’s big man. Let’s go.” They turned and left just like that.

  Like I said, the gym worked for me.

  I suppose it might also have contributed to my current predicament though, looking back on it all. It’s hard to present yourself as an innocent man caught up in the wrong circumstance at the wrong time when they have to give you a triple-x jumpsuit and use the big hand cuffs. I couldn’t blame the jury for doubting as long as they did. I was just happy that enough of them came around to my side of it all.

  Anyway, all this was to say that if the cop squeezing my arm made me feel small, then you have to understand he was humongous. He took me down to the bottom of the steps in front of the county jail house and let me go.

  “Now stay outta trouble and don’t come back, ya hear?” the giant cop said.

  I nodded absently and rubbed the spot on my arm where he had been holding me. I looked out and saw only one car, a black town car with a tall man in a slick suit standing against it with his arms folded. Even on my best days, I wouldn’t have any such car waiting for me. My bet is he was here for Slim, the “innocent” drug dealer I had met on the inside. Nice fellow, actually, if you can get over the squirmy feeling he puts in your stomach by talking to you. He was acquitted and scheduled to be released the same day. Funny that a drug dealer peddling meth to kids was being treated as if he did nothing, and was going to be driven away by a professional chauffer. On the other hand, I was going to be walking to the nearest bus station.

  Susan had promised me that she would leave one of our joint cards open. I had exactly one thousand dollars to use however I saw fit.

  I glanced back to the chauffer. His shoes were probably worth about that much. I shook my head and started walking down the sidewalk.

  It wasn’t long before a car pulled up alongside me. I glanced down, expecting it to be a reporter. The window hummed as it slid downward.

  “The name is Hank,” a man said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a bent business card. “Wondering if you might be up for a chat?”

  I didn’t bother to take the card. I didn’t even slow down. I just kept walking as the car rolled alongside. “You a reporter?” I asked. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Not a reporter, and I know you didn’t.”

  “Lawyer then?” I had had three down-and-out lawyers try to convince me to hire them and sue the state for defamation of character. I’m no law expert, but even I saw the ridiculousness of such an idea.

  “I’m a friend, just want to have a friendly chat. I’ve been looking for someone like you. I thought you might be able to use a job.”

  So it was another one of those, then. I had had several of those types of offers as well. Slim had offered me a “position” as a bouncer at some club. Another couple of guys, whose names I hadn’t bothered to remember, offered me something similar. Unlike Slim, however, the other two had been moved to the state prison. “Not interested,” I replied evenly.

  “Well, take the card at least. Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

  “Pretty sure I won’t,” I said.

  “I know more about what happened than you might realize,” Hank said.

  “I doubt it.” I kept walking, a little faster now. Hank tried to say something else, but I soon saw a sidewalk that turned away from the road. I turned. If Hank wanted to chat, he was going to have to get out of his car now. As I had expected, the car drove off and I was once again left on my own.

  I walked until I came to a park bench. It was about as empty and brown as the area around it, but it seemed as good a place as any to sit down and think about my next steps. As I did so, I found the current Dallas Morning News sitting there. In big, bold letters the words Joshua Mills Acquitted of Patricide! paraded across the top. I flipped the paper over. What did they know about it anyway? They hadn’t been there.

  That had been my first Terrible Tuesday, a term I would later come to use much more often.

  When I was six, my parents had divorced. My father was one of those bad ones. He drank, he hit, he cheated on my mother. You name it, he did it. To the rest of the world he was a devout Mormon. I suppose he was nice enough at times. He left us on the side of the road shortly before my seventh birthday after a, shall we say, eventful, vacation. My mother and I had to make the trip back across seven states to reach our home in a small town in northwestern Montana. When we arrived, there was an eviction notice on the door. Apparently my father had gambled away the mortgage money as well. Growing up we moved around a lot. Good days would come when the alimony check came in. There weren’t many of those. Still, we made it through. As any young boy in my shoes might, I had often fantasized about growing up, finding the deadbeat, and beating him to a bloody pulp.

  I had never thought the first time we met would lead to his death.

  We got in touch when I was in my late twenties. I hadn’t thought about him for about ten years by that point, but he had apparently been trying to find me since my nineteenth birthday. Ironically, when he finally fished my phone number out of some PI willing to take his money, he said he was trying to make sure I had made the decision to serve as a missionary and became a good Mormon instead of following in his shoes. I’m still not sure if that was supposed to be a joke. In any case, I told him there were no hard feelings. Life is crazy for everyone. Lots of little boys lose parents, and many had it worse than I did. We chatted for maybe an hour and then I politely told him that it was a bit too late to try and start any sort of relationship. We didn’t speak to each other much after that. A happy birthday here and there, but mostly just silence. Then there was the recent phone call. He said he urgently needed to see me. He said it was a matter of life or death.

  The tremble in his voice was sincere. Something was very wrong. I knew he played a lot of games and tricks, but this sounded real. More than that, it felt real. Sometimes, even for people who don’t deserve it, I try to go the extra mile to help out. That whole, treat people the way you would like them to treat you line is pretty hard-wired into my system. Now, I’d be lying if I said it was an entirely altruistic trip. Part of me moronically hoped that perhaps he had become a millionaire and was lying on his death bed ready to give me and my mom a nice fat check for all the
crap he put us through. I know it isn’t an honorable thought, but I had come a long way from the angry little boy who had fantasized about beating the man within an inch of his life.

  So, I made the trip down by plane. I rented a car, and we met at a restaurant. I had learned from our first phone call that he was remarried and had seven children. Apparently he claimed he was even going back to church. I was not about to put myself in the middle of that, so I had suggested a great steak house I had heard about. Dinner was okay. The food was great, but the company was not. He was not the young, powerful man that used to shadow over me. He was a wrinkled little man who looked weaker than either of my grandfathers ever had. Then again, both of my grandfathers had been country boys, and always had a great deal of strength. My father, on the other hand, was a lifelong pencil-pushing schemer. His first weapon was charm. He saved his strength for the home.

  We chatted in circles as I tried my best to enjoy my sixty-dollar buffalo rib-eye. God Bless Texas. The poor guy nearly died when I told the server that he would cover the bill, but he nodded slowly as his brown eyes glanced to my arms. I made sure to flex them just a bit for good measure.

  We then left the restaurant and he stammered through a few sentences as we turned the corner and walked down a long alleyway. I thought perhaps he was trying to muster up the courage to apologize for the past. Maybe he felt he needed to do that before he died? I didn’t know.

  “Spit it out,” I said finally.

  “Do you remember our house in California?” he asked.

  That was an abrupt change of subject. “Yeah, sure.” I nodded.

  We stopped in the middle of the alley and he glanced to both ends. “I should never have worked there.”

  That’s it? You flew me down here to talk about work regrets? What are you playing at?

  “Do you remember that job?” he asked. “I worked selling jet turbines. Do you remember?”