Day Five - Afternoon

     Casper marches straight to the pub. He doesn’t feel up to anything besides having a bite to eat and a nice nap afterwards. How he’ll fit doing errands into his busy schedule, he doesn’t know. He has time. He has until sundown, smack dab in the evening and still several hours away. He’ll make time. He’ll mix business with pleasure, asking Alicia about Messers. Smit and Smith while talking about lodgements. Lets see if he can’t confirm his suspicions that way.

     The bag’s drawstrings cut into his fingers; he’s holding them too tightly. He stops in front of pub and gives the door a thousand yard stare as he plans how to explain away the incriminating object in his possession. He raises his hand to door handle. He stops and thinks about how many questions Alicia’s going to ask. He touches the knocker instead. Maybe she won’t be there? (Bullshit. She’s always here.) He stops.

     His hand flops lamely to his side. He can’t go in there. Not after he almost got caught with the silver in his pockets. What would she say about his little bag of guilty secrets he doesn’t understand nearly as well as he’d like to (and like not to).

     He leans against the pub’s wall, staying well out of the tiny windows’ line of sight. He traces the clouds and considers his options. Where to go next? Who does he trust enough to get answers from?

     The druggie’s nowhere to be found. As enthusiastic as he is, he’s hardly reliable. That said, he might not be giving the man enough credit. Plastered or not, he was right about the witch man. Casper holds the bag up til it’s level with his eyes. His arm shakes with the effort and awkward position. No, he'd better to move on. The guy's nowhere to be found anyhow.

     Casper hauls himself off the wall and starts kicking stones down the main road. He runs through the list of people he’s met in Glenholm. It doesn’t take long. The list was never a long one.

     He stops dead at the town square. He doesn’t know where to go next. The most promising candidate is the nice lady who runs the grocery store, the one who knows the name of everyone in town. There’s just one itty-bitty problem. She’s a liar and a damn good one at that. He can’t tell if she’s fibbing to him, much less what she’s fibbing about. Like when she lied about Myr.

     He should’ve seen that whopper from a mile away. It was so obvious! How do you miss something that big? He’s gotten rusty over the years, he must have. How else can he explain it? But the fact of the matter is that he can’t call out anyone’s bluff, much less her’s, knowing as little as he does.

     He’s lost, stuck in a little town in the middle of nowhere, looking for a guy with nothing but a name, without a clue where he’s supposed to go or what in blazes is going on around him. He doesn’t know anything. He knows too much. He’s hungry and tired and he wants to go home and he’s trapped with nowhere to go.

     He takes out his frustration on the cobblestone path, kicking at it hard enough to send his shoe soaring. He huffs and hops after it.

     He has one job, just one job, and it shouldn’t be anywhere near as complicated as this. He knew there had to be a catch somewhere, but he didn’t expect it come from a simple lack of directions.

     He catches up to his flying footwear and slips it back on.

     You know what? This is ridiculous. What’s to stop him from going up to a complete stranger and asking them? There’s no lack of people idling about. Heck, there’s a few fellows just over there and- wow, they looked away real fast all of a sudden. What’s their problem?

     But it’s not just a few unnervingly attentive looks. Call him paranoid, but there’s more than ‘just a few’ people who are awfully interested in him and awfully concerned with (and not very good at) pretending otherwise. They stare at him like pickled monsters in a row of glass jars.

     What is wrong with this place?

     There’s no shortage of boys like him running amok, so why is he sticking out like a sore thumb? Oh wait. Small town, remember? Everybody’s known everyone here since dog’s years. It’s not just another boy they’re looking at. They’re looking at him. The anonymity he relies upon simply doesn’t exist here. Without it, he feels all too exposed. He’s naked and they’re still staring. Why are they staring? He left the weirdness behind in the backroom of the post office, so why are they still staring?

     Like pickled monsters in a row of glass jars.

     He needs to leave. Now.

     He takes off down the street. The monsters don’t chase after him. It’s the eyes that follow him. He dives through the first door he recognizes to get away and shuts it behind him.

     “Why hello there! Now tell me, what brings… you… here…” It’s the grocer lady. He’s at grocery store. Of all the places to go, he just had to come here.

     Casper freezes, back still pressed against the door. A rictus grin tics away at his face while he flounders. What’s he supposed to do now? Be the good boy? Be the quiet one? Be casual, collected, calm?

     “I had assumed you had left town with that gentleman fellow.” The lady speaks softly, slowly, like treading on eggshells. There’s not a smile in sight. This is serious business.

     Casper takes a shaky breath. “I wish I did, ma’am.”

     “So you found Myr then.”

     “...” He should be denying it to his last breath. Whatever it is that’s going on around here, Myr isn’t a wellcome face around these parts. Feigning ignorance, spewing excuses, flatout lying, these are what he should be doing. Rattled as he is though, nothing comes to mind. Ignorance escapes him. Excuses fall flat. The best of lies burn to the ground like the straw men they are. What’s left is a whole lot of nothing. And that’s exactly what he says.

     It’s as good as a confession, never you mind that he hasn’t actually done anything. But since when does that matter?

     “What do you want?” The lady asks. She looks so pale, so different from the first day Casper knew her. The friendly sparkle’s been snuffed out. She’s wary. On edge. It’s his fault. He shouldn’t be here.

     He should leave.

     But first. “Do you know where I can find a Mista Smit’- err, Smith. I mean Smith.” Casper rubs at his eyes with his free hand. “Whichever it is, where can I find him?”

     The lady raises an eyebrow. “I should think you’d know that much, at the very least.”

     “You’d think so, yeah, but, the thing is, nobody goes tellin’ me nuthin’, okay? And you know what else? I dun go askin’ ‘em either. So. Just. Tell me where to find the guy? Please...?”

     She cocks her head at him, completely and utterly baffled. “What…? He runs the bank of course. Whyever… What are you-?”

     Casper doesn’t hear the rest of it. A brisk thank you and he’s out the door, sprinting back down the main street. The lady calls after him, telling him to come back here this instant young man! He ignores her. Who does she think he is? His aunt? It was a nice thought, once upon a time, but that’s not how things went. It’s better to cut his losses, to move on. So he runs, like the coward he is, he runs.

     The banker welcomes him with as much warmth as the grocer lady. At least Casper saw it coming this time. How unceremoniously he was shown to the door last time he was here left no illusions about how he’d be received.

     “Is it Smit’ or Smith?” Casper asks. “I been gettin’ mixed messages as to which it is.”

     “Might be Smit’, might be Smith.” Mr. Smit’/Smith gives him a once over. “Might be a lot of things. Depends on who’s asking.” He nods at the bag Casper’s holding. “I don’t suppose this is a social visit.”

     “Wouldn’t be here if it were. Mister Smith.” There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that’s his real name. Casper’s known 'Smiths' enough to populate a small nation.

     Smith just grunts. “I don’t suppose the dandy stuck around too, did he?” He sounds indifferent, but the body language reads taut, anxious. For whatever reason, the question’s important.

     “Who? The toff? Nah. He skipped town soon as he could.”

     Smith visibly relaxes. “Ah. Issat right? Good. Good… Well. Don’t just stand there. There’s business to be doing, right? That means the office.” He just a thumb towards a door with a shiny plaque nailed onto it. “The walls have ears around here. Sensitive business means taking extra cautions.” He gives Casper a pointed look. “I don’t suppose you’d know what that means, now do you?”

     Casper snorts. “I know when to keep my yap shut. ‘M not an idjit.” He follows Smith through the door.

     “Ah, now there’s a relief. Good to know, good to know.” Smith shuts the door behind them and sits at his desk. “Now then. What is Myr wanting this time?”

     Casper drops the bag onto the desk and rolls his shoulder, working the kinks out of it. That thing was heavy and a pain to carry around all day.

     Smith glares at him and grumbles about putting marks into his poor desk. According to the local topography, it’s not the first time this has happened, nor will it likely be the last. “Just the usual I take it?”

     Casper shrugs. “I’m to trade the… uh… the goods for notes, then head back up.”

     “Nothing into savings then?” Smith squints at him.

     “I dun ask questions, sir. I just do as I’m told, is all.”

     Smith looks him over, unreadable. Then he grins at him and laughs. “You’re a smart one, no doubt about that. No, you’ll make it yet.” He chuckles some more, opens a cupboard on his side of the desk, and pulls out a scale. “Glenholm’s a strange, eerie place, no doubt about that. But, I’ll tell you what, it’s not such a bad place once you get used to it, though it does take getting used to. No, just keep your head down and keep on keeping and you’ll do fine, boy, you’ll do fine.”He takes out each gold egg and weighs them in turn as he makes small talk. It’s business as usual as far as he’s concerned.

     Casper wishes he could be so at ease; the eggs give him the creeps and everything about this business is rubbing him the wrong way. He doesn’t say anything. Smith, too, sinks into silence. He opens the safe in the back of the room and starts counting out pound notes. The paper starts to amount to a small mountain on Smith’s desk. Casper oogles it as it's altitude climbs.

     Smith pulls out a burlap sack and starts dumping the notes into it. Casper watches them disappear. Usually you’d use a treasure chest to pack away valuables. To use something so basic as a potato sack to carry a small fortune seems like a waste. When Casper says as much to Smith, he just laughs.

     “I won’t try to fool you, boy, what we’ve got here is no less than a king’s ransom, certainly worth a chest to put it in. Sadly, we’re short on treasure chests around here. What we do got in spades are spuds.” Smith hands over the full sack to Casper. It looks exactly like a sack of potatoes. “And if anyone goes asking what’s in the bag…?”

     “I’m to say I’ve got nuthin’ ‘cept potatoes.” Treasure chests are overrated. Burlap sacks are the new future of smuggling opperations. If he had this trick up his sleeve in the old days, moving merchandise would have been much easier.

     “Atta boy.” And with that, Smith sees him to the door and shows him on the way. You’d think they were friends or something. Casper just shakes his head.

<== Day Five - Midday     ==> Table of Contents <==     Day Five - Evening ==>