Chapter 8 : Dad

Ziv had to be doing all of 100 mph as he drove me to my dad’s house. I’d never been in a vehicle moving so fast, yet so smoothly. I wanted to ask him where he learned to drive, but I refrained. That was a conversation for another time. Right now, my focus was solely on my dad.

Was he drinking again? Or maybe he’d fallen and gotten hurt? He wasn’t that old, but he hadn’t exactly been taking good care of himself. I wouldn’t be surprised to find him with a broken hip at the bottom of the basement stairs.

I tried to stay calm and push the scenarios out of my mind. If it weren’t for Dex saying that he had a feeling, I wouldn’t even be concerned. It was probably nothing. Ever since our mom died, we had been terrified of losing our dad too.

This was just grief and anxiety, I was sure of it.

Zev pulled up as close to the door as he could and put the car in park.

“Thank you,” I said. I quickly got out and rushed to the door. I kept a key to my dad’s place on my keyring, so I let myself in without bothering to knock.

I could hear the car pull away. Distantly, I thought that I would have to thank Tahir again. He reacted so quickly to my distress.

My heart raced as I entered the house. I wasn’t sure what I’d find.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that this house was abandoned.

The front porch was grayed and weathered and the bottom step was broken so you had to step over it to get to the door. The siding was cracked in places and covered in a film of dirt that turned it from white to dingy cream.

My dad had stopped caring about the house or the overgrown property when my mom died. Dex and I agreed that he’d be better off selling the old 4 bedroom and moving into an apartment, but he wouldn’t do it.

The first step into the house creaked ominously as it always did.

“Dad?” I called out, as I closed the door behind me. “Where are you?”

There was no response. I checked the kitchen first and found it empty, aside from a stack of dishes in the sink.

“Dad?” I called again, louder this time. There was still no response. I walked into the living room.

He was stretched out on the couch. The tv was on and a baseball game was playing, but the volume was muted. I approached him with a knot in my throat.

“Dad?”

He lifted his head slowly and looked up at me. His eyes were unfocused and had dark bags beneath them. He was pale and his light hair was matted to his forehead with sweat.

“Hey, baby girl,” he said weakly.

“Dad, are you sick?” I asked. It was a stupid question. He was obviously ill.

“Oh, I’m just a little worn out,” he replied. He managed to pull himself into a sitting position, but it was clear that he was off balance.

“Dad, why haven’t you been answering the phone? You’ve got Dex worried sick.” I knelt in front of him and tried to get him to look at me, but his gaze remained unfocused.

“He’s always worrying about something,” he said under his breath. It was true, but it didn’t feel fair for him to say it in such a critical way. Dex was usually right.

I heard the door open and the floor creak and looked over my shoulder.

“We’re in the living room,” I called out. Dex entered a moment later and joined me in a crouch in front of our dad.

“Hey, old man,” he said tensely.

Dex and I might as well be identical, as similar as we looked. He was only about an inch taller than me and his eyes were pure blue, but we had the same straight, thin nose, full lips, and ringlet curls.

Dex looked at me in concern as my dad failed to respond to his greeting. I shrugged. “He was talking a second ago, but he looks like shit.”

“I can’t hear the game,” my dad hissed in irritation. Dex glanced at the tv and the crossed out speaker icon that showed it was muted. He looked at me and grimaced.

“If you can find his car keys, I’ll drive,” I said. He needed to go to the hospital and we both knew it.

“Try to get his shoes on him,” Dex kindly asked me.

He went into the kitchen to see if our dad had put his keys in the usual spot. Our dad’s shoes were beside the couch so I grabbed them and managed to force them onto his feet. He was limp and staring blankly at the tv. I didn’t think he was actually seeing it.

I grabbed the remote and turned the tv off. As I feared, he didn’t react.

“Dad, we’re going to the hospital,” I told him.

I knew that he wasn’t hearing me, because if he was he would have cursed a blue streak. He hated hospitals and refused to go under any circumstances. The man had once lodged a machete into his shin and tried to stitch himself up over the kitchen table.

Dex returned with the keys in hand and tossed them to me. I caught them and stepped away from my dad. We exchanged worried looks, but neither of us spoke. We didn’t need to. We were both thinking the same thing and neither of us wanted to voice it.

Dex grabbed our dad by the arm and pulled him up. Our dad went along with him willingly, but didn’t seem to notice that Dex was the one helping him.

“Thea, you don’t visit enough,” he said quietly. “You look like your mama in that dress. It suits you.”

I smiled sadly. “Thanks, Dad.”

I followed after them and locked the front door as Dex carefully led him down the steps. I managed to slip around them and stood on the ground, guiding our dad over the broken step. When we got to the car, he stopped and looked up at Dex.

“Well, hey, bud,” he said with a smile.

“Hey, pop,” Dex replied. “Can you get into the car for me? We’ve got to get a move on.”

He didn’t bother or ask for an explanation. He just nodded as if he understood and climbed into the backseat. Dex got in beside him and buckled him in. I sat in the driver’s seat and started the car. The engine stuttered a few times before it finally turned over.

It wasn’t a long drive to the hospital, but I couldn’t take this car too fast or the engine would give me trouble.

“What happened, pop?” Dex asked softly.

Our dad inhaled sharply and looked towards me. I could see his eyes through the rearview mirror. He looked intense.

“Thea, you’re a smart girl,” he said. “A real worldly type. I saw the strangest damn thing in the mines the other day. You think maybe you could find out what it was?”

“Sure, Dad,” I said as evenly as I could. I knew it. He was there when the artifact had been dug up. “Tell me what you saw.”

“The guys called me down to the tunnel, said they found something odd and wanted someone in charge to deal with it. It was this big, silver colored ring. It looked like an old bracelet or something. It had this real fancy engraving all over it. It looked like it might have been words or something, but I couldn’t tell you what language. I swear on my life, it was glowing like anything.”

“Glowing?” I frowned in confusion.

“You remember that canary glass vase your grandma had?” he asked.

“The one that glowed under the UV light?” Dex chimed in.

“That’s the one,” my dad said. “It glowed like that. Real dim, but glowing for sure.” He nodded as if to confirm to himself what he was saying.

“A glowing bracelet,” I repeated slowly. “With weird symbols on it.”

“That’s it,” he continued. “With real weight to it. It was heavy as a lead when I picked it up. What was it?” he asked hopefully.

“I don’t know, Dad, but I can find out for you,” I said, trying to ease his worries.

Dex looked at me strangely. My dad smiled a little and nodded. Then his expression shifted into confusion. “It spoke to me,” he said.

“Who spoke to you?” Dex asked in concern.

“The bracelet,” he replied.

I could feel Dex’s concern. “What did it say to you, Dad?” I instigated, trying to get him to continue talking.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t understand the language. It sounded like there were a lot of voices.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t understand it. I keep hearing it over and over when I sleep. It feels like it’s important, but I can’t make heads or tails of it…”

He trailed off and the unfocused, distant look came back into his eyes.

“He’s delirious,” Dex said in distress. I pushed the car as fast as I dared and wished that I’d asked Ziv to wait. Whatever was going on with our dad, he needed help.

The guilt was threatening to claw its way to the surface. I should have checked on him the first time Dex called me. Tahir would have understood. He’d asked me to come on such short notice, after all. If I’d called and told him that a family emergency had come up, he wouldn’t have held it against me.

I could feel the tears stinging my eyes. “What could cause this?” I asked angrily.

Dex shook his head a little and stared at our dad. “I’m not sure,” he said. “It came on so quickly. It’s not hot enough for it to be heatstroke. It may be his heart…”

I rolled through a stop sign and turned onto the road that would take us to the hospital. We were almost there.

“Could it be some kind of poisoning?” I asked.

“It’s possible,” Dex said uncertainly.

“They did dig up something in the mines,” I added, trying to remember the details I already knew. “Raine was working on the story. If Dad’s right about what he saw, could it be radiation poisoning?”

Dex grimaced at the idea. “I think it’s unlikely.”

“But not impossible,” I said. Dex shook his head, but didn’t speak. I could tell by the look on his face that he was running through every possible explanation in his mind.

This was too much. There had to be an explanation for this. Tahir hadn’t mentioned anything about the mines, but I knew from Raine that he had been called in by Mr. Ashworth. If I asked him, he probably wouldn’t be able to tell me much. I wasn’t even sure if he’d seen the artifact yet.

Mr. Ashworth had, though. He owned the mines and if something like this had really happened, as it seemed it had if my dad was even remotely correct, he would be the one to ask.

I pulled into the hospital parking lot and slowed the car. I wouldn’t be able to help from here. This was Dex’s wheelhouse and I knew that I could trust him to make sure our dad was taken care of. What I could do was go straight to the source and figure out what the hell had caused this. I pulled the car around to the emergency drop off and put it in park.

“I’m going to find out what the hell happened at the mine.” I turned in the seat and looked at Dex.

“Let me know what you find out,” he said. He opened the door and helped our dad out. He seemed disoriented, but allowed Dex to lead him to the door. I waited until they were safely inside, then put the car into drive and pulled away.

Mr. Ashworth was going to tell me the truth even if I had to force it out of him.