Breaking the Curse

Chapter 16

In downtown Lakewood, the engine sound of an old Chevy car gets louder and louder as it approaches one of the oldest restaurants in town, The Outpost.

The restaurant is busy with a lot of government officials coming in for their lunch. But for Margarate, she comes in for a whole different reason.

"Margarate, I wasn't expecting you to come in for work today so I brought Keang in to cover your shift instead," said Mrs. Jocelyn, Margarate's boss.

"I-I'm not here to work. The-the storm last night..." Margaret stammered. Fear, paranoia, and dread were already covering her entire body that now she was so preoccupied, she didn't know where to look or how to calm herself.

"I need to buy a new phone. Can I borrow some money, please? Because, you know, uh —I gave my oldest son, Simon all my last month's paycheck for — uh, fuel for his car and, for the copies for the posters," she told her boss. Mrs. Jocelyne was a softie, and Margaret knew it.

"Yes, you can Mar. How much do you need?" Mrs. Jocelyn asked under her breath.

"One hundred Riels. You can cut it from my paycheck this month, don't worry."

"Yes, I will. And about that, you won't have much in your paycheck if you keep cashing out this much money at this rate," her boss said.

"Can you cut it from next month's paycheck, please?"

No response from Mrs. Jocelyne but the two locked eyes for a moment. An awkward moment.

"Mrs. Jocelyne. I've been here for a very long time, right? Have I ever called in sick or missed a shift once?" Margaret added.

The guilt trip was working on Mrs. Jocelyne. She hung her head, not wanting to make any more eye contact with Margarate.

Margaret couldn't hold her tears anymore and they started to roll down her cheek like rivulets. 

"I don't know where my boy is. I don't know if I'm ever going to see him again. If he's hurt—"

 Margaret composed herself before continuing. "I-I need this money to buy a new phone. The last phone-the storm fried it and the money is two weeks in advance."

Mrs. Jocelyne acquiesced and wrote a new paycheck for her. After getting the loan from her boss, Margaret rushed into the convenience store next door and bought a new wall phone, the only phone that she could afford at the moment. After getting her new wall phone, she ran back to her house, plugged in her new phone, and sat in her armchair, waiting for her son to call her again.

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Lakewood, the search for Sabastian was still going on for the second day. For nearly two whole days, both the search parties and the police hadn't found anything concrete to justify the speculation that nearly everyone in the town started to share from one mouth to another that the kid was already dead.

No cold body meant no death. Even though that was what Captain Jack kept telling the people in town and especially the volunteers for the search parties, they still wanted to give up and let it slide just like the other fifteen kids that had been missing and presumed dead for the past five years.

"Whoa, whoa. Careful, careful. I need you alive for the next few days, at least," Captain Jack joked after he quickly grabbed Deputy Thomas's shirt and prevented him from falling off a cliff.

"Oh, don't worry Capt, I can survive that," Deputy Thomas joked back and the three local police officers shared a laugh before they continued to dive into the rabbit hole of their town's long dark history so they could find a way to look for the missing child, Sabastian.

"I'm serious, Capt! You know Bell the Crazy man who lives up north made the jump and he was drunk as a skunk. He did it on a 500 riel bet too," Deputy Thomas says to his boss and his co-worker who still can't stop laughing.

"Bell is a drunk piece of shit and a liar. You make that jump from this height, the water down there is gonna turn into cement, hit you like a ton of bricks, break every damn bone in your body," Captain Jack says.

"Nah," Deputy Thomas replies before walking away from his Captain in embarrassment.

The Captain's radio crackles to life. "Captain Jack, do you copy?"

"Yeah, I copy. What's going on?" the Captain responds back at the radio.

"I found the address that you asked me to look for. The address for Roy Simon, Margarat's ex-husband. He lives at December 16th Street, Phnom Penh," says his secretary through the radio.

After receiving the information needed, Captain Jack sprinted back to his Jeep that was parked nearby.

Pulling onto the main road, the Captain pressed hard on the pedal and a few minutes later he drove past the sign that said "Leaving Lakewood".