Chapter 3: The Pawnbroker's Scorn

Chapter 3: The Pawnbroker's Scorn

The bell above the door to “Maggie’s Curios & Knick-Knacks” gave a tired, tinny jingle as they entered. The air inside was thick and still, heavy with the scent of dust, old paper, and the faint, metallic tang of tarnished silver. It was a mausoleum of forgotten dreams, shelves overflowing with dusty clocks that had stopped ticking decades ago, chipped porcelain dolls with vacant eyes, and tarnished military medals whose stories were lost to time.

Behind a counter cluttered with cigar boxes full of cufflinks and tangled jewelry, Maggie looked up. Her face, a roadmap of sixty-eight hard years, was set in its usual expression of deep-seated suspicion. Gaudy gold earrings, shaped like coiled serpents, dangled from her lobes, glinting in the dim light. Her gaze swept over them, a swift and practiced dismissal of their frayed clothes and grimy skin.

“Don’t track dirt on my floor,” she said, her voice like grinding stones. It wasn’t a request.

Reg’s jaw tightened. He walked to the counter, remembering his own advice. Don’t look desperate. He forced his shoulders back, trying to project a confidence he was a universe away from feeling. The cold weight of the effigy in his jacket felt less like a winning lottery ticket and more like a tumor against his ribs. Toeless hovered a few feet behind him, a nervous shadow clinging to his heels.

With a steady hand, Reg pulled out the statuette and placed it on the scarred wooden countertop. He gave it a gentle push, sending it sliding across the wood until it came to a stop in a small pool of light from a desk lamp.

For a moment, the object seemed to command the room. The milky crystal drank the light, the red veins pulsing with a sinister, living quality. It looked alien and ancient amidst the mundane clutter of Maggie’s shop.

Maggie’s bored expression flickered. She leaned forward, her sharp eyes narrowing. She picked it up, her movements surprisingly deft. The statuette’s weight in her hand was clearly more than she expected, and a flicker of professional interest crossed her features.

“Alabaster?” she murmured, turning it over. “No. Something else. Cold.”

Reg felt a spark of hope ignite in the pit of his stomach. This was it. She saw it. She saw the value. “Found it. St. Augustine’s trash,” he said, keeping his tone even. “Figured it’s old. Worth something.”

Maggie grunted, her thumb tracing the face of sorrow, then the blank, featureless void. Then her fingers rotated it to the enraged face—his face. She held it there for a long moment, her brow furrowing. She glanced up at Reg, her eyes sharp and analytical. She didn’t say anything, but a new, unpleasant tension filled the air.

Her gaze then fell upon the final carved face. The one that had been a mask of pure terror.

Her entire demeanor shifted. The professional curiosity vanished, replaced by a look of utter disgust. Her lips peeled back from her teeth in a sneer.

“A joke,” she spat, her voice dripping with contempt. “You think this is funny? You crawl out of whatever gutter you sleep in to come here and play me for a fool?”

Reg stared at her, completely bewildered. “What are you talking about? It’s an antique.”

“An antique?” she laughed, a harsh, grating sound. She slammed the statuette down on the counter. The sound cracked through the quiet shop like a gunshot. “This is a sick, cruel piece of garbage.”

She thrust the object towards them, her finger jabbing at the face she had been studying. “Look at it! You think I don’t have eyes in my head?”

Reg’s gaze followed her finger, and the breath caught in his throat. The face of terror was gone. In its place, carved with the same impossible, horrifying detail as his own, was the face of Toeless.

It was the kid’s likeness exactly—the thin cheeks, the defiant set of his jaw, even the small scar above his lip. But the expression was one of absolute, soul-shattering fright, his mouth open in a silent scream, his eyes wide with a horror Reg had only seen in men on a battlefield. It was the same terror Toeless had shown in the doorway that morning, when Reg had grabbed him, immortalized in stone.

“It… it wasn’t like that,” Toeless stammered, his face draining of all color.

“Get out,” Maggie snarled, her face flushed with anger. “To come in here, mocking your own pathetic situation. Carving your miserable faces onto a piece of rock and trying to pass it off as treasure. It’s pathetic. Get out of my shop!”

“But we didn’t—” Reg started, but Maggie wasn’t listening.

She swept the statuette off the counter with the back of her hand. It hit the floorboards with a dull, heavy thud. “Out! Before I call the cops and tell them you’re trying to pass off counterfeit trash. Now!”

She pointed a trembling finger at the door. The threat was real. Humiliation and confusion warred inside Reg. He grabbed Toeless by the arm, dragging him towards the entrance as the old woman continued to spit insults at their backs. He bent down, snatched the effigy from the floor, and stumbled out into the blinding light of the street, the jingle of the bell mocking their retreat.

The door slammed shut behind them. They stood on the pavement, blinking in the sudden brightness, the sounds of the city rushing back in. The hope that had carried them all morning had been utterly and violently extinguished. They had nothing. Less than nothing.

“Reg, I swear…” Toeless began, his voice shaking.

That’s when it broke.

The shame, the frustration, the gnawing hunger, and the cold, terrifying dread coalesced inside Reg into something black and volatile. It wasn’t just anger. It was a pressure building behind his eyes, a roaring in his ears that drowned out the city traffic. It felt unnatural, an invasive force hijacking his own despair and amplifying it into a monstrous fury. The world narrowed to a pinprick, and at the center of it was Toeless’s terrified face—the same face now carved on the stone in his hand.

“You!” Reg roared, his voice a guttural sound he barely recognized as his own. He shoved Toeless hard, sending him staggering back against the brick wall of the shop. “This is your fault! You and your sniveling fear! It put your face on the stone! It ruined everything!”

“No! I didn’t do anything!” Toeless cried, holding his hands up.

But Reg was beyond reason. The black tide of rage was all-consuming. He was a passenger in his own body. He saw his own fist clench around the statuette, saw himself raise it as if to strike. The face of fury—his own face—seemed to gleam up at him.

“It was our one chance!” he screamed, his voice cracking. “Our one goddamn chance and you ruined it!”

He didn’t hit him with the statue. Instead, with a final, explosive surge of rage, he shoved Toeless again, with all his strength. The kid’s head cracked against the brick with a sickening thud. Toeless crumpled to the ground, landing in a heap on the dirty sidewalk, a thin trickle of blood starting to run from his hairline.

And just like that, the rage was gone.

It vanished as quickly as it had arrived, leaving a cold, horrifying vacuum in its wake. The roaring in his ears subsided, and the sounds of the city came crashing back. Reg stood over Toeless, his chest heaving, his arm trembling from the violence of the shove. The metallic taste of adrenaline coated his tongue.

He looked down at the boy, curled up and whimpering on the ground. He looked at the blood. Then he looked at the statuette clutched in his white-knuckled fist.

The enraged face of Reg Carter stared back at him. Beside it, the terrified face of ‘Toeless’ Tom. Two down. Two to go.

The object in his hand hadn’t just been a catalyst for his anger. It had fed on it. It had fueled it. He hadn’t just lost his temper. He had lost control. And the cold, sickening realization washed over him that the monster wasn’t just carved in the stone anymore. It was inside him.