Zayn and Imane stood outside the white building their aunt rented for the funeral service. In Algeria, they wouldn't use candles or pictures of the deceased. There would be a burial at a graveyard, a religious talk of the afterlife then silence to show respect. Crying and shouting was deemed as disrespectful to the deceased, though it never stopped the emotional ones from screeching their pains.
Before Zayn rang on the black doorbell to the right of the white king-like door of the two-story mediterranean style villa, he hovered his finger over it and thought, to himself, that nobody else needed to be present at his father's funeral. Not his closest friends, not his aunt, not his father's friends who had never helped when Captain Salem needed money to pay for meat and chicken and tomatoes and water, for an overdue bill, for clothes he'd say he'd buy for himself but would really go and buy his unknowing daughter the clothes instead.
He could hear the conversations, the voices, the noise from inside the villa.
Now you want to see him? Zayn thought. Now you care?
"What's wrong, Zayn?" Imane asked, noticing a glare in her brother's eyes as she looked up at him from the right side. "Ring the bell." She stood on her toes and stretched her arm out but was stopped by her older brother.
"I have a different idea, Imane. Follow me." Zayn turned and walked down the street back to the bus stop he and Imane were dropped of at. Ahead was an intersection which connected the street of homes with the street of cars, shops and the loud noise of traffic. The streets were littered with food wrappers, cigarettes and empty bottles of water and soda. Even the weekly cleaning trucks couldn't keep that neighborhood clean because of the type of people living there.
Zayn reached into his pocket. Before he dialed who he had in mind, a text message arrived from an unknown number. Zayn would've swiped the notification away and ignored it if not for the one word he saw in the message, "father." He opened the notification and read what the new message said.
"Give us the necklace your family has been hiding and no one else will die. We promise to grant you and your sister wealth and safety. A generous offer you are advised to take. You have until midnight to reply. This is not a negotiation, Zayn Raiz. We are always watching."
Zayn closed the text message as his sister pulled on his arm to read the message. "Spam. Wrong number," he insisted. He attempted to put some pieces of his father's murder together. Captain Salem had warned Zayn was being watched before his fall. His father's killers had the audacity to contact Zayn and order him around. And the death of his family was for, what, a necklace? Take away parents for jewelry? Was that it? Was that where the world came to?
It is already in your possession.
Zayn froze. He felt the cool air blow against his ears before he reached into the pocket of his pants. The silver necklace given to him by his late mother's friend. "This is it? This is what they want and why the killed him?"
"What're you talking about, Zayn?" Imane asked, as she kicked a few rocks across the street, watching them hit tires of parked cars under the sunset.
You inadvertently found it by attending your mother's funeral all these years. What will you do? Will you surrender your only chance at power? Omayra's voice deepened into a grow-like echo. Or will you taste blood and fight for your remontada.
Zayn spoke in his head as to keep his sister unaware. "They wanted to give me safety?" He laughed. "I'll create my own. My own wealth. My own peace."
As you wish, young Zayn, Omayra's voice trailed off in his mind. Her presence gone.
So Zayn remembered his plan and called the last number in his recents tab. "Hello, I'm changing the delivery of my father in his coffin. I'd like the delivery to be in thirty minutes at the Dely Ibrahim cemetery as planned. Skip the house visit. Thanks."
"Where are we going?" Imane asked, pointing back where they walked from, up the dim street as the sun set.
"It's just going to be us, Imane. We don't need anyone else at Dad's funeral." He nodded at his younger sister hoping she understood.
"But Roqaya messaged me saying she was waiting for us." Imane tapped her brother's arms twice. "Zayn! Zayn!"
"No, Imane." He flagged down a taxi driver in a white sedan then gave his sister his full attention. It didn't matter if he, too, wanted to see Roqaya, wanted to see the woman he would've been engaged to. "Nobody else deserves to be at dad's funeral."
"How do you know? Why do you get to decided?" She crossed her arms and waited for an answer. "Huh?"
Zayn knew his sister wouldn't budge until she heard something. "Because you and I are the only ones left who actually cared about him. And I'm the oldest, so you do what I say, okay?" Zayn hailed a taxi driver who drove their way. "Remember what you said at the ramen store. You'd trust me. Always."
The taxi driver came to a stop beside them and unlocked the doors. Zayn opened the white Toyota Corolla's door and watched Imane enter after she took a deep breath.
"I wanted to see Roqaya," Imane said, fixing herself in the black clothed rear seat.
Her brother nodded and continued staring out of the window as the taxi drove through the dim neighborhood, cracked streets and flashing lights which made some alleyways look like horror scenes and gave the apartment buildings a menacing look under the moonlight. The taxi driver turned his music on and played the song titled Wahran by the artist Randall. Zayn fell to the rhythm of the music as one of the few things that put him at ease. "You'll see Roqaya soon, Imane. Real soon."
At the cemetery, Zayn had paid the taxi driver with savings meant to be for Imane's college. He didn't like using what he had worked so hard to earn, but his pride wouldn't let him ask his friends or his aunt for money. Money, which was used for survival. Money, which was used for protection. Money, the drug of the world, was not going to become a weakness for Zayn. He made that promise to himself ten years ago when his father had struggled to pay the bills and buy food for his children. It didn't mater that the military had cut Captain Salem's salary in half or that he he had been forced to work overtime without overtime pay. For Zayn, whatever outside circumstance was happening, whatever difficult problem life would threw at him, he wanted to always have money ready in saving. Always.
So as the taxi drove out of the cemetery, Zayn stood under the crescent moon and told himself that he understood how his father must've felt when he had needed money all those years ago.
"Don't need a bucket of change, need a place to live in." Zayan slid his right hand into his suit pocket then grabbed Imane's hand and strolled through the pebble pathway built in the center of dirt. They followed the pathway through luscious grass, an aisle of rocks, and past many gravestones. Zayn was sent a picture of where his father's burial was, and off memory, at night, he managed to locate his father's area.
But as he walked with his sister close on his left side, Zayn noticed areas that should've been lit by the street lights remained dark. He saw shadows, which looked like figures, walked the same direction Zayn. The line of lights poles were two rows of graves over to his right, parallel, and so as Zayn walked, the shadow figures floated ahead, too.
By the time Zayn arrived at his father's grave, he was surrounded by shadow figures, invisible to Imane, but haunting to her brother. Some of the shadow figures had arms, and they reached out and grabbed Zayn's shoulders, touched his chest, ran their arm across his back.
"A soothsayer . . ."
"She will use everything . . ."
" . . . And leave you with nothing."
"Thieves in your future, human."
"Murders."
"Death."
"Join us."
"Yes, abandon her . . ."
"We will continue the agreement."
The voices grew and grew from their faint sounds, and they repeated over and over, the same orders, the same warnings, the same . . . suggestion . . . Zayn thought. Once the voices sounded as if someone was whispering into his ear, Zayn couldn't help but clench his jaw, dig his nails into his closed hands and shut his eyes for a moment. He was never the kid afraid of the dark but the voices, the whispers, the ominous temptations from the shadow figures warned Zayn of danger.
Their touch was as if ice cold water and dumped on top of Zayn. His temperature sunk, his hands trembled and his teeth began to clatter, enough to catch Imane's attention. But she just stared at her brother's bizarre behavior. As the seconds passed, it seemed the shadow figures closed in on Zayn without him noticing. Within seconds all he could see was a circle of darkness.
"Your wicked hands will not touch what is mine," Omayra spoke, loud and clear in Zayn's head, angered instead of her calm, sinister tone. The shadow figures instantly dispersed and appeared again, to the right of Zayn approximately ten feet away. "Leave. And if I call upon you, you will arise and serve, as that is your place. At my every order."
Wh-What were those? Zayn thought, his voice trembled and words stuttered.
"The living of another unseen world. They are aware you are possessed. Your energy attracted them." Omayra chuckled. "But what they don't know is who possessed you. The who is very important."
They'll leave me alone now? Zayn glanced around him. Right?
"You're safe, young Zayn. But to change your life, you must question everything."
Question everything? Why?
But that was it. An answer from Omayra wouldn't come. A fading whistle played in his head.
Imane grabbed her brother's arm and shook it. "Zayn, do you hear me?"
"Yeah," he answered, glancing down. "Sorry, Imane." He tightened his grip on his sister's hand as they both stood on the right side of their father's burial, where the rectangular hole in the ground had a brown coffin inside which looked black in the night.
"They're fast," Zayn said, pacing around the rectangular shaped dugout while still holding his sister's hand. He looked around the cemetery once more and saw no shadow figures. His heart forgot how to work at the possibility of seeing them again.
"Who? The delivery people?" Imane asked.
"Yeah."
"Is Papa in there?"
Zayn stared at his father's coffin. "Yeah."
"Are we going to fill it with dirt?"
"Yeah." Zayn stood on the right side of his father's coffin. He glanced at the gravestone and read:
Captain Salem Rais.
1985-2040.
Don't need a bucket of change, need a place to live in.
"Did you write that?" Imane pointed at the gravestone of her father.
"Yeah."
"Rest in peace, Papa. I'll miss you." Her runny nose increased, and she wiped it, fought
back tears, lost the battle, then leaned against her brother's left arm and continued to cry in silence.
"I won't let them get away with this, Dad. I'll make whoever did this to you pay. And Im-man-ne," Zayn stuttered on his sister's name. "Imane will be more than fine. I'll protect her." Zayn motion for Imane to step back then he grabbed the wooden shovel that was laid on the ground behind his father's gravestone. "And I'll find Mom's grave. You never wanted to show me . . . but I'll find it."
Zayn started shoveling dirt into the hole, starting from the leg area of the coffin. As more and more dirt fell, beginning to completely cover the end of the coffin, Zayn threw the shovel on the ground beside him.
"What's wrong?" Imane asked, wiping her tears.
He looked down at the burial and found a wide enough gap between the sides of the coffin and the dirt to fit his feet and legs in. He jumped onto the coffin. A loud bang followed. Then he switched positions and stood with his back fully against the dirt. The feeling of standing in what looked like a five foot dug hole in the ground didn't scare him as much as he thought. If it was eight feet deep, he might've had a claustrophobic panic attack, or at the least, Zayn would've screamed out for Imane to throw down the shovel.
"What're you doing down there?" Imane asked glancing at her lunatic brother. Her hair dangled as she stood leaned over the burial site. "You're lucky you can jump out! You didn't even measure how deep it is!"
"If you don't want to see, look away, Imane. I'm opening the coffin to make sure Dad's inside."
She nodded and kept staring with attentive eyes.
A coffin's top was heavier than expected. Zayn tried but couldn't lift it an inch, even with Imane's telekinetic strength as she stared fixated at it. Zayn switched and pushed the cover up. It worked. He managed to fully open the coffin's cover and place the light door against the dirt.
Captain Salem laid in his coffin with his eyes closed, skin pale and wore a black robe. He looked different. Older. Weaker. When blood stopped flowing through the body, it changed his father. The scar on the left side of Captain Salem's face, beneath his jawbone, always caught Zayn's attention.
Then on Captain Salem's chest, a black suitcase with a silver handle stole Zayn's focus. It had blended into the darkness along with his father's black robe. What gave the suitcase away was the silver handle that even Imane had noticed.
"What's that?" his sister asked, pointing at it.
Zayn grabbed it and made sure not to move his father's arms too much. Who had left a suitcase in his father's coffin? Zayn hadn't ordered for anything. He didn't give authority to the company to allow anyone to know about the coffin or to place something inside it.
So without any answers and still standing in the middle of a dark night, Zayn opened the suitcase in a seven foot deep hole, unlatching the tops of the silver locks. He popped it open and, for the first time, felt like he was doing a drug deal outside of work. Inside the suitcase, green. Green and white bills. Stacked and organized.
Money. U.S. dollar type of money.
"Was Papa rich?!" Imane yelled.
"Ssh," Zayn replied, with a finger pressed against his lips. "Where did this money come from?"
"Take it, Zayn."
Zayn glanced at his sister in surprise at how eager she was.
"I told you before, young Zayn. That I would help you achieve your desires."
Zayn's hand was on the handle of the suit case before it slid off. "Omayra? You put the money here? How?"
"I am Omayra. How I do what I do is only for me to know. But the money is from the weak human I possessed. He seemed to be stealing money from his leader. A thief deserves nothing but their hands cut off. You are now one step closer to achieving your desires, young Zayn." She laughed. It sounded as if she enjoyed the events unfolding. "What will you do with this wealth?"
I . . . I don't know yet.
Zayn shut the briefcase. He tossed it to Imane, winked, then jumped and pulled himself up. He quickly began digging to get himself and his sister out of the cemetary with all of that money in hand. How dangerous the situation could become if someone saw that amount of money. They wouldn't let it go, surely.
Who would?
Zayn finished shoveling all of the dirt over his father's coffin. He flattened the area. Imane kissed the gravestone and waved at her father. Zayn stood in front of the gravestone a little longer and just stared at his father's name, at his year of birth, year of death and clenched the handle of the briefcase tight.
I won't let you down. I'll protect Imane and make them pay.
Back at the apartment, Zayn had watched Imane go into her room to sleep, then double checked the apartment's front door was locked. He strolled down the light brown hallway, past a closet on the left with a sliding mirror, took a right past his sister's room, then entered his room on the left. He set the black brief case with a brown handle on his desk then flicked the locks open.
For half a minute Zayn just stared at the money in the brief case. He stood in front of his desk's gray chair, both hands on the top of his chair, gripping the covered headrest. Surreal to see that much money in person, to own that much money.
Zayn grabbed a bundle of cash and began counting how much it had. When the final bill was counted, Zayn dropped the bundle of cash onto the carpet of his room. He stared at it as his mind ran through calculations about how much the entire suitcase might've had. Each bundle of cash had $8,300, with three bundles in one stack. He concluded with a motionless body that the large suitcase had perhaps, $2,00,000, or a little less. The amount, the number, it baffled Zayn, as he continued to stand with an expressionless face, open mouth, and one raised eyebrow, with a stack of cash by his feet.
He thought about how he had just went from two years of working blood, sweat and tears drug dealing to save fifteen thousand dollars for his sister's future education to becoming a millionaire instantly.
"What will you do?" Omayra asked.
This is real, right? Zayn exhaled and cracked his neck. I'm not going to get arrested using this?
"As real as the death of your father," she responded, though, with not the best comparison. It did, however, break Zayn out of his admiration and astonishment. "You don't have time to act innocent. The bloodhounds will soon begin their hunt."
Who're the bloodhounds?
"You'll learn soon, young Zayn." Omayra laughed, ominous and clear, her voice echoing in his head. "You'll soon learn."