Page 15 of Brody
“Oh.” Ellis’s knees echoed against the wooden floor when he dropped down next to me and picked up the nearest item. It was an electric lantern, often used by campers, but the glass sides had been smashed to pieces and only the metal frame remained. “So, all this is mine?”
“Yeah.” I took the lantern from his hands and placed it in the ‘salvage’ pile. The wiring still looked good, so it could probably be fixed. “The police were looking for anything that could identify you, but so far, no luck.”
Ellis’s gaze darted around at the various items, his eyes showing no obvious signs of recognition. “I see. Sorry to have all this useless stuff dumped on you.”
He balled his hands into fists on his knees, gripping his pants hard enough that he was in danger of tearing the fabric.
Reaching out, I placed my hand over his. “It may not be useless. Do you notice anything strange about all this stuff?”
At my implied request, he looked over the items again but shook his head. “No. Everything looks like standard camping stuff, I think. It’s all broken, but that’s not surprising.”
“It’s all new.” I picked up the canvas from the tent and held it up for him to see. “It’s hard to tell because of the damage, but most of this stuff has barely been used. There’s no wear-and-tear like you would find on these items from general use. Like here. On this tent. Look past the bigger damage and you can see creases in the fabric like it was just pulled out of its package for the first time. Hell, some of this stuff still has price tags on it.”
I handed him one of the items in question, a water bottle that was mostly undamaged with a price tag clearly stuck to its side. The sticker hadn’t even started peeling yet.
Ellis turned it over in his hands, exploring it with his fingers as much as his eyes as if his identity might be written on it in brail. When he found nothing, he put it down and his gaze immediately gravitated back to me.
“So, does this mean something?”
The weight of his stare pressed down on me. Without meaning to, I’d become his compass. His north star guiding him through things when he knew nothing else and where he naturally looked for answers. The responsibility hit me all at once. I could tell him anything right now and he would believe me. Any order I gave, he would follow.
It was a heady sense of power, but also terrifying.
I couldn’t meet his eye for long.
“It’s a clue we can use to start looking for your identity. Assuming this is everything, and the police didn’t loose part of it, then the supplies you had here would have only lasted for a few days. Based on where we found you, only Emberwood and Rynkirk are close enough for you to have hiked from in a few days. You didn’t come through Emberwood. The town is so small that the appearance of any stranger would have been noticed. So, you must have passed through Rynkirk at some point. We’ll visit the camping supply stores there and see if that’s where you bought this stuff. Maybe someone will recognize you.”
He nodded. It was a short, straightforward gesture like he wasn’t even aware that he had done it. “All right. Do we go now, or…”
The sound of his stomach growling cut him off. He blushed and pressed both hands over his stomach to silence it.
I laughed and stood up, offering him a hand to help him off the floor. “How about we get breakfast first. Then we’ll worry about what to do next.”
Giving me another of those automatic nods, he grabbed my hand and didn’t let go until we were in the kitchen where I deposited him at the table.
“All right. I just went grocery shopping, so we’ve got plenty of options. What do you want?”
I searched through the refrigerator for a moment, reviewing our options, until I realized he never answered me. A heavy silence hung behind me, and I cautiously peered over the refrigerator door.
Ellis sat at the table, staring down at his clasped hands with a pensive look on his face.
“You all right?” I asked.
He jumped and his knee hit the table, knocking over the salt and pepper shakers sitting there.
“Oh, sorry.” He rushed to clean up the mess he’d made. “It’s nothing. Anything is fine. Don’t worry about me.”
When he picked up the fallen shakers, he sprinkled some salt over his shoulder before putting them back in their stand. The gesture was so smooth, it was clear he hadn’t even thought about it. Only once both shakers were back in their place did he realize what he’d done and stared down at the salt dusting his shoulder in shock.
“I don’t know why I did that.”
“Knocking over the salt is bad luck,” I explained. “Tossing salt over your shoulder keeps the devil away.”
He nodded again with his gaze still locked on his own shoulder. “That seems right. When I knocked over the salt, I had this overwhelming feeling that something bad was coming for me.”
After brushing the salt from his shoulder, he finally looked back at me with a wide searching gaze.
“I just acted without thinking. So, it must be something I do a lot. That means I must be superstitious, right? But I don’t know why. Did something happen to make me superstitious or is it just an irrational belief.” He nodded toward the refrigerator. “It’s the same with food. I don’t think I like eggs, but I don’t know why. I don’t even remember what they taste like, but at the hospital I always avoided them whenever they were served. It doesn’t make sense.”
