11

 

The Gravel Road

 

I stared down at my phone. This could not be happening. Stuff like this didn’t occur in real life. Only in bad movies, featuring mutated grizzly bears that had somehow managed to infest civilization and rampage through New York—or more likely, Tokyo—with wild abandon.

I tried calling Freja’s phone. It went straight to voice mail. Maybe the situation wasn’t as serious as it sounded? Perhaps some random rabid beast had slobbered all over Freja’s next-to-last dress and she screamed and the animal stomped on her phone. It had only sounded terribly sinister, but in reality, she was just fine. All Freja would need was a good bath and a short visit with her therapist to deal with her newfound phobia of rabid animals.

Oh, who was I kidding? Freja had screamed into a phone that then went dead. I glanced down at my soggy, sagging attire. This was not how I had wanted to meet my long lost family. It couldn’t be helped though. Family was family, and they didn’t necessarily schedule their crisis to moments when your hair was combed. But where to search first? I looked up and met the steady gaze of Emil, the gardener.

“You OK, miss?” He took a step closer, searching my eyes.

“My cousin’s taxi dropped her off somewhere strange and she can’t get to the park. She sounds as if she needs help, but I think her phone’s broken.”

“The taxi was taking her here, yah?”

“Yah. I mean, yes.”

“Then there’s a good chance she’s close. Sometimes they drop visitors in the back to avoid the traffic. Have you tried using the dog?”

“He’s not my dog.”

“The creature might be trained. If you have something of hers, you could give him a sniff and see what happens. Couldn’t hurt.”

Hmmm, it very well might hurt. Leroy could drag me through a marshland populated entirely by bristling hedgehogs and spiny porcupines crouched quivering under every other bush waiting to impale unwary travelers. But I hated to disappoint my gardener friend. Besides, there was probably a serious shortage of dangerous swampland in the city of Copenhagen. I stuffed my phone into Leroy’s collar pocket thingy and zipped it closed. Then I struggled to remove my waterlogged purse from my back. After rummaging inside, I tugged out the scarf that Freja had mailed me to wear for our rendezvous.

I held the scarf up to Leroy’s nose. He took a deep snuffle and turned to stare at the gardener.

Emil snapped his fingers and said, “Go on, boy.”

Leroy spun and zipped off down the path, dragging the leash behind him.

Wow, I had no idea Emil was so handy with dogs. I should have gotten his help with Leroy earlier. I waved a thank you to Emil and sprinted after my least favorite gamboling beast. I snatched up the leash just in time to get dragged around a corner toward the park exit.

Emil pulled a phone out of his toolbox, snapping a picture as I stumbled away. His grin made his face seem much younger than his gray hair would suggest.

I tightened my grip on the leash and sighed. It seemed I could not escape the shutter-happy Danish people, no matter which way I turned. But for Emil, I would forget my ire. I had wanted to experience a different culture, and he had been nothing but kind. He could not help that American tourists got a bit twitchy among all the incessant photography.

Leroy seemed to know what he was doing. We zipped out of the park, down two blocks, and into a dim little street. The rundown avenue contained several old warehouses, a gas station with boarded up windows, and a secondhand shop that displayed a collection of ancient coffee mugs featuring the crown jewels of Denmark. Leroy lurched to a stop in front of the narrow thrift shop. It was called “The Gravel Road.”

I slumped against the sagging storefront, breaths burning as I pressed my forehead to the crumbling brick. What on earth? I had expected an actual road with, you know, gravel on it.

Could this unsightly boutique be the gravel road to which Freja referred?

Two dusty windows sank into the brick storefront like deep set eyes. I rubbed a clean patch in the window with the heel of my hand. Dust coated the wares inside and I saw a number of creepy-looking dolls staring at me with those twitchy little eyes that blink every time you dip them upside down.

Another deep sniff and Leroy heaved on the leash, dragging me into an alley that ran to the left of the shop. The alley sported a great deal of carefully applied graffiti on both my left and right. A rusted, old dumpster leaned on three legs against the building, and a ginger cat hissed at Leroy before streaking through my legs and back toward Tivoli.

I came up against a faded brick wall at the back. The alley was a dead end. That is, unless I wanted to investigate the set of ancient concrete steps that sank down into the ground over to my right. The steps ended at a crooked wooden door with a tiny square window of yellowed glass. The door was ajar.

Leroy paused, snuffled the breeze, and thundered down the stairs.

I skidded to a stop. My phone beeped. I hooked the leash over my wrist and followed him down the steps while I dug through my purse. No phone. But I could hear it.

Leroy whined and scratched at his collar. Oh, yeah, the dog had my phone and he didn’t seem happy about it, either. The beeping probably hurt his ears.

I hauled him into a sitting position and zipped open the little pocket on his collar. The phone fell out. I knelt at the bottom of the concrete steps and scooped up my phone, glancing around. It was terribly quiet. Moss grew between the cracks in the stairs. The door had once been white. The paint had warped and peeled. The wood beneath was spotted with mold and splintered. A cut glass knob offered access. This was not a “happy ending” kind of door. I glanced down at my phone.

Freja had texted me.

 

So sorry Morgan. Dropped and broke phone. Found Tivoli Gardens. Nice gardener let me borrow his phone so I could tell you I’m OK. Just a skinned a knee, and an embarrassing story. See you at brunch.

A sigh slid from my lungs like the air from a week-old birthday balloon. She was OK then. I tugged Leroy closer and fiddled with the zipper on his collar until I had the phone stuffed back inside. It buzzed again.

Leroy flinched, scratched at the offending noise, and then leaped to his feet.

Hmmm…maybe I should have put it back in my purse after all? I leaned over his neck, trying to find the tricky little zipper.

Leroy shook, from his ears all the way down to the tip of his tail, and then he yanked the leash from my fist and scrambled into the shop beyond.

I looked up at the door. Creepy, but someone had to get Leroy. I forced my spine to straighten and my lungs to pull in a deep cleansing breath. Just because Bret had allowed too many films in which this kind of door was opened by a hapless blonde bound for slaughter did not mean that such things occurred in reality. Besides, I only had a few golden streaks and was mostly a brunette. Didn’t that fact alone make me immune to the Door of Doom?

I crept down the steps on cold, bare feet. OK, not so bad. I reached out for the cut glass knob. The door was slightly ajar after Leroy’s entrance. A nudge against the knob with my index finger and the hinges groaned as the door swung wide. The sound of a footstep crunched behind me. I spun, heart thumping at a ridiculous pace. Visions of famished zombies scrabbling down the alley danced in my head.

It was so much worse.

Standing at the top of the broken cement stair was a hulking figure of a man. The man with the brutal face. The same man who had watched me from across the fountain at Tivoli Gardens. The same man who had hidden in the shadows by the duck game as I bought my ticket for Dragon Boat Lake. Yep, that man.

Except this time, my stalker wasn’t at the edge of a crowd in a flower-strewn fun park. Oh, no. Now I stood with my back to the Door of Doom in a crooked little alley. This time I was alone with a man whose heavy fists looked large enough to palm my face. And that insufferable dog had abandoned me.