Vacancy

by Fredric Shernoff

“I don’t know. A bathroom maybe? Storage? I mean, most stores have more than one room. Even a tiny shop like this one. But somebody got rid of it.” She shook her head and spoke quietly. “What the hell is this place?”

  “We should get going,” Dylan said. “What time is it anyway?” He held up the phone and closed out of the camera app. “Yeah it’s definitely getting late and…”

  “What?” she asked. “Why did you stop?”

  “There’s no service in here. Absolutely none. This street gets four bars and being inside shouldn’t cut down too much of that.”

  “Okay, I’m starting to find all of this just a little too weird. Why don’t we go get something to eat and process everything we’ve seen for a while? We can always come back here a different time.”

  “Agreed. Let’s get out of here.” Dylan walked over to the door and turned the knob. He half-expected a magical lock to be in place resisting his hand’s efforts to open the door, but the knob turned as it had before and the door opened back up. He took hold of his bike and walked out of the shop.

  It only took two steps out onto the sidewalk before Dylan realized something was very wrong.

  Chapter Two

  Jim Hamilton woke with a start to the rhythmic pulse of his alarm. He fumbled with the iPhone on his nightstand and somehow managed to snooze the damned thing before he had even fully opened his eyes. He sat up, letting the top sheet pool around his waist. The heavy comforter was bunched at the bottom of the bed. Though Jim always buried himself underneath it before sleep each night, his body simply could not handle the warmth and he always kicked the blanket off by the time the clock struck midnight.

  “You okay?” Liz, his wife of five years and best friend for almost twice that number, looked at him with her sparkling green eyes. God, he loved those eyes! Always had, from the moment they’d first met his in an undergrad chemistry class.

  “Yeah, baby,” Jim replied. “Just some weird dreams.”

  “Ugh, I’m sorry, babe,” she said. “What were they about?”

  Jim thought about it. “I really can’t remember. You know how that is? It’s like there’s something there just out of reach.”

  She nodded. “Well, whatever it is, it was just a dream. Do we really have to get up yet?”

  Jim sighed. “Alas, m’lady, it would seem we do. Well, I do, at least. No reason for you to get up yet, baby."

  “Big meeting today, right?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Jackasses from that agency that’s always calling us but we never end up doing any deals with.”

  “The one whose name rhymes with shit?”

  He laughed. “That’s the one. Barkley and Barslitt.”

  Liz rolled over and wrapped her leg over his. “So what’s different about this time?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. I got a call from this one guy who works there. Somebody I’ve never met before, but that’s nothing big. They have a ton of these jokers always calling to find out what kind of properties we’re looking to buy.”

  “So? Still not getting what’s different.” She slipped her hand into his boxers.

  “Ooh… um… well, the guy said he had something great, so I figured I’d hear him out.”

  “And what’s Clyde think?”

  “He thinks what I think. These guys never have anything good, or if they do it’s at some unreasonable cap rate we can’t make work. But part of the job is keeping up appearances and…” he trailed off as Liz’s wandering hand found what it sought and took away his ability to string a thought together.

  Thirty minutes later, Jim walked into the kitchen. Liz placed a mug of coffee on the counter.

  “Thanks babe,” he said as he prodded a button on his dress shirt. “Come on, fucking thing. Wait…got it!”

  “I’m so happy for you,” Liz smirked. “Looks like it’s going to be a day of great achievements.”

  He kissed her. “Funny lady. What’s on your schedule?”

  “Same old. School year is finally wrapping up but the kids are as restless as I am.”

  “I’m sure it’s not just the end of the school year that’s got you restless,” he said. He ran his palm over her stomach, which had only started pushing outward in the past two weeks.

  “Yeah, true, this little one is keeping me up nights. I think he or she is going to be a pain in the ass just like its dad.”

  “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘charming.’” Jim smiled.

  “Do you want anything to eat?” Liz asked.

  “Nah. Gotta run, babe. You know how Clyde gets. Especially on meeting days.” He flicked his finger on the screen of his phone, soaking in the headlines from a news email.

  “Any update on the fire at the Tacony warehouse?” Liz asked.

  “Actually, yeah. Says here they think it may have been a meth lab that exploded. That’s replacing the arson theory that’s been circulating all week.”

  Liz sighed dramatically. “They just don’t make meth labs like they used to.”

  Jim laughed. “You’re lucky nobody was in that building or your humor would be seriously wrong.”

  She grinned. “I’ll give you that. Okay, mister. We both have to get moving.”

  Jim stood up and wrapped his arms around Liz as she moved to the door. “I love you,” he said, kissing her on the lips and on each side of her neck.

  “I love you too,” she said. “Now let me go before I drag both of us back to bed.”

  The ride to work was always somewhere between fifteen minutes and a half hour, depending on the traffic situation any particular morning. Jim had been on Clyde’s case to move the whole operation out of the industrial park and closer to where both of them lived.

  “We need highway accessibility,” his partner had repeatedly told him. “Plus, we have to be fair to the employees.”

  This thought brought a smile to Jim’s face. The staff at Deluxe Edition Realty consisted of one assistant. He knew that most people thought the company operated with a much larger team, but really it was just him and Clyde and Nia, who had been with them for the better part of two years.

  Jim and Clyde had been friends since high school, and going into the real estate business together had been Clyde’s idea. They were both licensed agents with the state of Pennsylvania, and it seemed like a natural fit to create a boutique sales firm. As it turned out, they had barely sold anything. Instead, opportunities to buy and develop properties had appeared almost instantly.

  Their most recent deal had been an unusual office condo type thing in New Jersey. The partners had never owned anything in New Jersey, had only dabbled in the office market at all, and had never even been approached with a condominium arrangement. Yet, the deal had appeared and it was good.

  Well, almost good. During their pre-purchase inspection period, they had asked to meet the head of the condo association. Whoever it was wasn’t even using his or her own name. A shell corporation acted as president in all the filings. The requested meeting was denied, with the attorney stating that the man in charge liked to maintain his privacy and anonymity. Clyde had almost walked away from the deal at that point but Jim had convinced him to stick it out.

  In the eight months since taking over their one fourth of the complex, they had only heard from the association once. The mysterious association president had sent a letter asking for all the owners to sign a document allowing mining of some kind of precious resource in their parking lot. After some consideration and consultation with legal experts, Deluxe Edition Realty had refused. There had been no further communication, but Jim imagined the refusal hadn’t served to ingratiate them to the management.

  He pulled into the parking lot and parked in his usual spot, across the lot from the side door that led to the office. Clyde usually parked right out front, which Jim had to admit made more sense, but he had his habits.

  He thought about Liz and that morning’s fun. Despite the hints of transformations happening to his wife’s body, Jim had a hard time fathomin
g that a new, little life was growing inside her. He knew his whole life was about to change forever, and that excited and terrified him. He was usually fairly hands-off when it came to Liz’s job but the pregnancy made him a little overprotective. He worried about her constantly and knew he would be happy when the school year wrapped up and they could spend some serious quality time together.

  Jim walked into the building and across the hall to his office’s main door. The light was on, which meant somebody had beaten him to work.

  “Morning, y’all,” he said as he opened the door. Nia was seated at the front desk. She leaned back in her chair, headphones in place with a cord snaking its way down her side to her phone on the desk. Jim knew Nia’s family was from somewhere in the Middle East, but he had never asked. She was his only experience with hiring and employing someone, and it seemed to Jim that a fresh-faced female minority just out of college was a landmine of potential lawsuits. He tried very hard to be friendly and respectful, but otherwise stayed out of her way as long as she was doing a good job, which she always did.

  “Hey there, boss,” Nia said, removing her headphones. “That guy from Barkley and Barslitt called. He’s on his way. I put out some coffee and donuts in the conference room.”

  He flipped her a thumb’s up. “Nice work, Nia, thanks. Clyde in yet?”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t seen him.”

  “Okay. Well, I’m going to check some things in my office. Do me a favor and send him in to me once he’s here?”

  “Sure, boss. I know you like your pre-meeting powwows.” She smiled at him.

  “You’ve got it all figured out. Thanks, Nia.” He turned and walked toward his office door.

  “Mr. Hamilton?” Nia called behind him.

  He spun around. “Yep, what’s up?”

  “How’s Mrs. Hamilton? Everything good with the baby?”

  “All good, yeah, thanks!”

  This time she gave him the thumb’s up. He turned and went into his office.

  Five minutes later, Clyde burst into Jim’s office.

  “Morning, pal!” he called.

  Jim looked up from his laptop screen. “You’re cheerful.”

  “You’re not? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Jim said. “You know, I just feel like these meetings are a waste of time.”

  “True,” Clyde admitted, “but I choose to look at it as morning entertainment. Don’t forget, you were the one the dude called.”

  Jim held up his hands. “Guilty as charged. Let’s go hang out in the conference room. We’ll say hello, have a quick breakfast or whatever, and smile and nod at whatever he presents.”

  They had only just made it into the conference room when Nia appeared at the door. “Mark Washington from Barkley and Barslitt is here.”

  “Send him in, thanks,” Clyde said.

  Mark Washington entered the room. He was young, Jim thought, at least ten years younger than him. He carried himself with the confidence that all such visitors seemed to possess. The young ones always seemed like that, thinking they could accomplish things their superiors never could. Sometimes they were wrong, but sometimes they surprised everyone. Jim figured in a few years he’d have an answer about young Mr. Washington.

  “Gentlemen!” Washington said with false enthusiasm. “How are we this morning?” He passed out business cards.

  “Doing fine, Mark,” Jim said. “Why don’t you sit down and show us what you’ve got?”

  “Like I told you on the phone,” Washington said as he maneuvered his briefcase open, “I’ve got something right up your alley.”

  He passed around copies of a prospectus and Jim made a show of flipping through the pages while the man spoke.

  “So this is a small strip center on the outskirts of the city,” Washington said. “Needs some TLC but the bones are there and there’s a market serving as the anchor.”

  “Hmm…” Clyde murmured. “I don’t know, Mark. We’ve seen a few things like this and right now we have most of our resources tied up.”

  Washington frowned. “I’m telling you, guys, it’s really the right thing for you.”

  Jim shook his head. “We’ll look it over, but I’m inclined to agree with Clyde. Just might not be the right timing for us.”

  “Well, I’ve got something else you might want to look at.” Washington passed out more papers.

  “Ambler,” Jim said. “That’s certainly convenient.”

  Washington looked pleased. “It’s very convenient. Maybe five minutes from here. The seller is moving the whole block as a portfolio deal. Three buildings.

  Clyde’s forehead creased in concentration. “Hey, sorry to be the idiot in the room, but I only see two buildings. There’s an alleyway right in the middle.”

  Washington nodded. “True, but there are some approvals in place to build something there. Rumor has it there was a building there a long time ago, but you’d have to do some serious digging in the records to find out what happened. Current documents we have only reference the three parcels but not the structures, and that’s how it was when the owner took possession about fifteen years ago. We’re pricing it based on the two stores that are actually there.”

  “Why didn’t the current owner build it out?” Clyde asked.

  “Well… like I said, there are some approvals in place. Some of the necessary permits were proving to be a little hard to acquire. Certainly nothing a good attorney couldn’t overcome, but the seller has other fish to fry.”

  Jim studied the papers. He knew a few of the stores on that street in the heart of town. He’d shopped at Galaxi Collectibles, one of the two in the portfolio, many years earlier. The owner, a large, jovial man named Hugo, had always been great to the teens and young adults who wandered into the shop looking for comic books or wrestling DVDs or whatever. In a normal circumstance, Jim wouldn’t care for that kind of tenant but he was always sentimental about stores he’d actually visited as a customer.

  “What do you think?” Clyde asked.

  “It’s worth a drive over,” Jim said. He turned to Washington. “It is going to be difficult for us to pull off financially right now.”

  “Owner is willing to talk about taking back some money in a second mortgage,” Washington said. “It’s a good deal. Lengthy leases to long-term tenants, plus the upside in the alley. Just think about it.”

  Jim spent the next few hours after the meeting working his way through paperwork and a pile of documents marked “to sign” that Nia always left on the corner of his desk.

  He thought about ordering lunch and pulled up two different menus on his phone, switching back and forth between them while he considered his options.

  He pulled up YouTube on his laptop browser and loaded a meditation video. He didn’t care about the swirling images on the screen, but the pulsing rhythms helped him focus. In five minutes, he was so captured by the sounds that he had forgotten what he was doing. A knock on the door made him jump.

  “You alive in there?” Clyde called through the door. “Was thinking of getting some air if you want to join me. Maybe check out the property down on Butler?”

  “Yeah, sure. Give me a second to grab my things.”

  “That’s funny,” Clyde said.

  “What’s that?” Jim asked. He stood in front of the buildings they had seen in the advertisement. A row of stores, strangely pockmarked by a confusingly positioned and wide alleyway.

  Clyde held up his phone. “Well, I was pulling up county records and there are mentions of the store that used to be between the buildings if I go back far enough, but then the records stop. There’s no explanation of what happened.”

  “That’s what Washington said,” Jim replied. “I wouldn’t think much of it. Shoddy recordkeeping. Somebody obviously made a decision to get rid of the building and paved the alley. Maybe it was a fire code thing. See how the two stores on either side have doors exiting into the space? Couldn’t have done that with another store in the middle.
”

  “Excellent deduction, Watson,” Clyde said. “Want to go in and chat with anyone?”

  “Yeah, sure. Let’s go hit up Galaxi’s.”

  The door to the collectibles shop jingled as they opened it. A college-aged boy looked half-conscious behind the counter. He gave them a casual wave and a nod of his head before looking back down at his phone.

  “Excuse me,” Jim said as he approached the counter, “is Hugo in?”

  “Nah,” the young man said. “He won’t be in until tomorrow. Can I help you with something?”

  “We’re doing some business on this street and just wanted to chat with the business owners. Hey, you don’t happen to know anything about what was in that alley next door, do you?”

  The clerk’s eyes widened. “Oh yeah, there are lots of stories.”

  “Oh, do tell,” Clyde said.

  “Well… people say that there was a store there way back in the day, but one day the building was just gone. And there’s a rumor that when there’s a full moon you can still get into the store somehow. Like a ghost store.”

  Clyde raised an eyebrow. “A ghost store. Well, that’s a new one. What’s your name, buddy?”

  “Lyle,” the teenager said.

  “Hey, Lyle,” said Clyde. “Have you seen this ‘ghost store?’”

  Lyle shook his head forcefully. “No, man. No. I don’t do real-life haunted houses. Plus there’ve been stories about other people who’ve seen the place.”

  “What kind of stories?” Jim asked.

  “The rumor is that some of the people who’ve seen the store or even ask too many questions about it…they disappear.”

  “Disappear?” Clyde dragged his thumb cross his neck. “Like that?”

  “Maybe,” Lyle said. “Some people say it’s more like they literally vanish. I guess the first idea makes more sense, doesn’t it?”

  Jim and Clyde sat on the step outside Galaxi’s Collectibles. Clyde grinned broadly. “So what we would be buying here is basically Brigadoon, Commercial Real Estate Edition.”