by J. S. Volpe
19
They started with the basement. There were four rooms down there. One of them, the wine cellar, contained nothing but decades-old, cobweb-festooned wine racks. Another contained only the furnace, the water heater, the fuse box, and a small stack of firewood. The last two were packed with a bewildering variety of junk, most of it stuff that Robert May had no longer had any use for (if he ever did) but for some reason was loath to throw away.
They found many interesting items in these latter two rooms—boxes full of old issues of Mystery Magazine; a paper grocery bag full of doll heads; a framed painting of a group of scantily clad shepherdesses lounging about a field at night while a gigantic full moon with a face on it leered down at them; an old battered sea chest with the words “Property of the Pirate’s Club” stenciled on the side—but no weapons aside from an ancient sledgehammer whose splintered handle made it unusable.
They trooped back upstairs and hunted through the first floor. In a closet in the game room, tucked amid folding chairs and jumbo sketch pads and vintage jigsaw puzzles, they found a Louisville Slugger, its thick end scuffed and nicked but still quite solid and serviceable.
“I think I’ll keep this for myself,” Calvin said, hefting it with a smile. He liked the feel of it in his hands. It felt good and sturdy, able to bust skulls like cheap crockery.
In the kitchen they turned up cutting utensils galore. Calvin labeled some of them off-limits, since he used them and didn’t want to have to restock his cutlery drawer with knives uncontaminated by leucrota blood; but everything else, he said, was fair game.
Grinning, Violet immediately snatched up the longest knife in the kitchen: a carving knife with a ten-inch blade and an antler handle.
“Hoo-rah!” she said, holding it up so the blade glinted in the light. “I’m ready for some big fuckin’ game now.”
Donovan pulled a butcher’s knife from a drawer, and after some consideration, Cynthia took one, too.
“What about you?” Calvin asked Tiffany. “You’re the only one without something at this point.”
Tiffany shook her head. “None of this really feels right. I don’t want a knife. I’d rather have something with a longer reach.”
“Yeah,” Cynthia said. “I’d prefer something longer range myself, actually.”
“All right,” Calvin said. “Let’s keep looking.”
The rest of the first floor yielded nothing better than what they already had, so they moved on to the second floor, which was also the last floor to search; the third floor’s rooms contained only portions of the Collection, which was off-limits, and the room atop the tower contained no weapons or weaponizable materials.
Most of the second floor failed to yield anything either. In the bathroom Cynthia grabbed a spray can of vanilla-hazelnut air freshener off the toilet tank and asked Calvin, “Mind if I take this?”
“For what?” He figured she couldn’t possibly mean for the leucrota hunt.
“Well, I was thinking it could work kind of like Mace. If the leucrota’s like a dog, it probably relies very heavily on its sense of smell. And if we can screw that up enough, we might be able to disorient it and make it more vulnerable.” She shrugged, looking a little self-conscious. “It’s just an idea.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Tiffany said. “In theory, it’s sound.”
“I’ll still have the knife, too.”
“Well, all right,” Calvin said, dubious. “You can take it if you want.”
Calvin felt a bit uncomfortable letting everyone see his bedroom, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. There wasn’t anything embarrassing or revealing in it, especially since the bulk of its contents were still Mr. May’s, and he didn’t anticipate they’d be in there very long anyway. Just a quick once-over to check for weapons, then out.
As they entered, he kept his eye on Tiffany and was pleased and a little aroused to see that her gaze immediately sought out the four-poster bed. She regarded it with a small, thoughtful smile, no doubt remembering her and Calvin’s all-too-brief interlude on the couch earlier. Then she glanced at Calvin. He smiled. Her own smile widened, and her cheeks suffused with blood.
“Whoa, check out the babe!” Brandon exclaimed, grinning at the painting on the wall opposite the door. The painting depicted a beautiful young auburn-haired woman reclining on a riverbank, her diaphanous white gown sheer enough to show her nipples (and probably her pubic hair, too, had one knee not been discreetly raised). It was so realistic it almost could have passed for a photograph.
“That’s Anna May, Mr. May’s aunt,” Calvin said. “It was painted by Randolph Crow, Cynthia’s great-uncle. Anna died in the big influenza epidemic of 1918, and Randolph, who was in love with her, shot himself right afterward.”
Brandon stared at him blankly, then looked at the painting again.
“Dude,” he said unhappily, “you sure know how to kill a good woody.”
They searched the room. The closet contained nothing but clothes, shoes, spare bedding. There was nothing under the bed except dust bunnies. A cabinet with lead-glass doors was full of books and assorted knickknacks.
“What about in here?” Cynthia asked, tapping her finger on a large trunk that was padlocked shut. “Did you ever find the key for this thing?”
“Yeah,” Calvin said. “I did. The trunk’s full of historical stuff. Old documents and ledgers and things, most of it relating to the May family.”
“Ooh!” Lauren said, eyeing the trunk like a fat lady spotting an unclaimed box of bonbons. “Would it be too much to ask if I could perhaps take a peek inside someday?”
“Someday, sure. When we have more time.”
“Who’s this?” Brandon asked. He was peering into a cardboard box that sat on the seat of a rocking chair in the corner. The box contained some of Mr. May’s items that Calvin had cleared off the bedside table and the dresser but had not yet decided what to do with. Brandon pulled out a small framed black-and-white photograph of a young woman with her hair in a bun and 1930s-style clothing. “She’s kinda babelicious.”
“Oh, that’s Ethel,” Calvin said. “Ethel Lewis.”
“Mr. May’s first love,” Cynthia said.
“And File #1.”
“What?” Lauren said. “She’s a file?”
“Yeah. She was the anomaly.” He glanced at the clock. “I don’t have time to give you the full story, but I could give you the Reader’s Digest version. Back in the summer of 1935, when Mr. May was a strapping young fellow of nineteen and was spending the summer home from college, a pretty young lady named Ethel Lewis showed up in town, claiming to be an anthropologist from Bard College who was here to research the Mima, the Indian tribe who used to occupy the area. She was particularly interested in the woods out back, since the area around Spirit Cave and Indian Hill was one of the Mima’s holiest sites. Well, she wound up spending so much time around the woods that Mr. May’s parents invited her to stay at the house rather than the crappy boarding house she was staying in downtown. Mr. May quickly grew enamored of Ms. Lewis, and she seemed quite fond of him, and soon he was accompanying her on most of her outings.”
“Reading between the lines,” Cynthia said, “I get the impression they were screwing each other all over the woods.”
“Yeah,” Calvin agreed. “Anyway, they were young and in love and everything was all wine and roses, at least for a while. As the summer wore on, she grew moodier and moodier, and sometimes Mr. May would find her crying alone in secluded corners of the house. She refused to explain why. Then one day they were up in the tower, just talking and looking out at the woods, and, um…” Calvin paused, swallowed.
“What, did she jump or something?” Lauren asked.
“If only,” Cynthia said.
“No,” Calvin said. “Totally out of the blue she gave him this sad smile and said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and then pulled out a straight razor and slashed her throat.”
“Holy fuck!” Donovan said.
“Yeah,” Cynthia said. “It s
ounded pretty awful. The file mentions that they were still finding old, dried bloodstains in odd corners up there a couple of decades later.”
“What exactly was anomalous about it?” Tiffany asked. She looked troubled by the tale, more so than anyone else, more than was warranted by a story about a long-dead stranger, however frightful her end. Calvin couldn’t help wondering if Tiffany’s psychological troubles had ever led her to contemplate suicide. “Just because no one knew the whys and wherefores?”
“That’s not why,” Calvin said. “The real mystery came afterward, when Mr. May tried to get in touch with her friends and her family and her college.”
“Oh, I bet I know what’s coming next,” Brandon said.
Calvin nodded. “None of the names she gave checked out. None of the people she had named as relatives and friends even existed. Her college had never heard of her. Mr. May even sent photographs to the college, thinking maybe she had given him a fake name for some reason, but no one recognized her. He traveled to the towns she mentioned having lived in. No one there had ever heard of her or recognized her photo. Every single thing she had told him turned out to be a lie.”
“Or a delusion,” Cynthia said. “I can’t help wondering if she wasn’t seriously mentally ill. I mean, to kill yourself like that. Brr.” She shuddered. “That takes a whole special level of…of something. It’s horrible. I’m surprised Mr. May still went up into the tower after that. When we were up there with him that one time, he seemed totally okay with being there.”
“Traumatic as it was, it had been nearly seventy-five years since it happened,” Calvin said. “That kind of time span can soften even the worst pain.”
“So you think. You’re not even a third of the way through that span yourself yet.”
“Didn’t this Ethel girl have any ID on her?” Brandon asked.
“No,” Calvin said. “That was another thing. On her body and in her luggage, there were no ID cards, no personal items, nothing. Just some clothes and toiletries, all of which looked pretty new. In the wake of the incident, Mr. May started researching other cases of mysterious people of unknown origin, like Kasper Hauser and Princess Caraboo. From there he branched out into other anomalous phenomena. And that’s how the whole thing started. She became File #1, the first of thousands. He kept investigating the case on and off over the years, but when he died he knew no more about her than when he started.”
The room was dead silent. Tiffany was clutching her elbows, her eyes downcast, her face the color of chalk. Seeing her like that, Calvin wished he hadn’t brought the subject up.
Brandon set the portrait back in the box.
“Dude, you’re such a downer today,” he said.
“So old Mr. May had not one but two pictures of dead chicks in his bedroom,” Violet said, gesturing at the painting of Anna May. While Calvin had been telling his story, she had sat down on the edge of the bed nearest the painting, seemingly oblivious to the annoyed glances he cast her. “That old geezer was kinda messed up when you think about it. Pining over lost girls and…” Her eyes narrowed. She leaned forward, the bedsprings creaking faintly, and peered at the painting. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Calvin asked.
Violet rose and took two steps forward, which brought her directly in front of the painting. She crouched a little, and it became clear she was looking not at the painting but at the bottom of its frame.
“What are you looking at?” Cynthia said.
“No, wait,” Lauren said. “There’s something there.”
“What?” Calvin hurried over next to Violet and looked where she was looking.
On the underside of the painting’s frame was a small protuberance about the size and shape of the eraser on a Number 2 pencil, painted the same gold color as the frame. At first Calvin thought it was a flaw in the frame or a weird bubble in the paint, but when Violet reached out and pressed it with her finger, the protuberance sank in with a faint click, and the whole painting, frame and all, swung away from the wall on unseen hinges like a door opening. Violet had to jerk her head back to avoid getting bopped on the nose by the frame’s outer edge. The painting drifted to a stop when it was perpendicular to the wall. Behind it, in a recess in the wall, was a steel wall-safe one foot square. It had a gleaming silver handle on one side, and in the center was a large combination dial numbered from one to one hundred.
“Did you have any idea this was here?” Cynthia asked Calvin.
Calvin shook his head. He pulled the safe’s handle, hoping that Mr. May had left it unlocked. He hadn’t. The door didn’t budge a millimeter.
“Have you seen anything that might be a combination?” said Tiffany. “It would probably be three numbers.”
“No,” Calvin said. “Not that I remember.”
“But you can set your own code. He might have done that. What was his birth date? Do you know?”
“Uh…” Calvin thought hard for a moment, then tried 4-8-16 on the dial. The door still didn’t budge.
“What about his name?” Tiffany said. “That’s a three.”
“It’s three letters, not numbers,” Donovan said.
“Just convert them into their number in the alphabet. A is one. B is two. And so on.”
“So…” Calvin frowned, concentrating. “M would be…thirteen. Then one. Then twenty-five.”
That didn’t work either.
“You might have to pick it,” Brandon said.
“Do you know how?” Calvin asked.
“No, not really. I mean, I’ve seen it done in movies, but…” He shrugged.
“I think you need a stethoscope or something,” Donovan said.
“You could just blow it open,” Violet said.
Calvin turned and stared at her, one eyebrow raised.
“What!” she said. “You can use that plastic explosive shit that looks like Sticky-Tac. They do it on TV all the time.”
“Violet,” said Lauren, her voice low and weary, as if she were sick of explaining very simple things to a child, “if you blow it up, you could end up blowing up whatever’s inside.”
“So just use a tiny bit of the stuff, a little blob like a wad of gum.”
“No blowing it open,” Calvin said. “The combination has to be around here somewhere. Mr. May was too careful and, well, I guess ‘anal-retentive’ wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate, for him not to have kept the combination somewhere.”
“What happened to Mr. May’s wallet after he died?” asked Lauren.
Calvin stared at her, dumbfounded, thinking she was implying someone had robbed Mr. May’s corpse, which was not only creepy but irrelevant to what they were talking about. Then he realized what she was getting at: Mr. May might have carried the combination in his wallet.
“It’s over here.” He strode over to the cardboard box in which Brandon had found Ethel Lewis’s portrait earlier.
Calvin rummaged through the box’s contents, then pulled out a scuffed brown leather wallet. He sat down on the foot of the bed and started removing everything from the wallet. Everyone gathered around him and watched.
Out came credit cards, business cards, a driver’s license that had been two years out of date when Mr. May passed away, a library card, a membership card for Bat Conservation International, a spare house key, a card on which Mr. May had written all of his personal information, a few pieces of paper with addresses and/or phone numbers written on them, a movie ticket stub, a list of books about ancient history with a few of the entries crossed off, a small reproduction of the photo of Ethel Lewis that now sat in the cardboard box, and a laminated card declaring that the bearer, Robert May, had been ordained a minister by the Universal Life Church.
Calvin opened the wallet’s pockets as far as they’d go to make sure nothing was wedged in a corner. All he found were specks of lint and flakes of leather.
“That’s it,” Calvin said. He tossed the empty wallet onto the bed.
“The girl,” Tiffany said, looking at
the small photograph. “Her picture was important to him. Maybe the girl is the key. What was her middle name? Maybe her initials are the combination. Or what about her birth date?”
“Mr. May never learned her middle name or her birth date. Or if he did, he didn’t write them down in the file.”
He picked up the small photo and flipped it over to see if anything was written on the back. It was blank. He hurried over to the cardboard box, pulled out the framed photo, and slid off the backing. There was nothing written on the back of this one either, and nothing was inserted between the photo and the backing.
“Damn.”
“He was a reverend?” Lauren asked, looking at the card of ministry.
“Apparently.”
“I’ve heard of the Universal Life Church,” Brandon said. “They’ll ordain anyone. It’s perfectly legal, too.”
“He was a reverend like Squash,” Tiffany said.
“Yeah, but Mr. May doesn’t have skulls and secret tunnels in the basement,” Cynthia said.
“No, the skulls are in the Collection. And the basement is a cluttered maze. Like the junkyard. Like the warehouse. A perfect hiding place for monsters.”
“The Collection itself is a cluttered maze if you want to look at it that way,” Calvin said. “And there are secret tunnels nearby; they’re just sealed off behind the wall of rock at the back of Spirit Cave.” He started to put the cards and papers back into Mr. May’s wallet.
“Chasing Amy?” said Brandon, looking at the movie ticket stub. “I never met the old guy, but he doesn’t strike me as the Kevin Smith type.”
Calvin paused, staring at the stub and recalling his similar feelings about the movie poster in the office.
“No,” he said. “He’s not really the movie type at all.”
He picked up the stub and looked at it more closely. The ticket had been purchased on December 15, 1996 at the May Cinema on Potts Road. Maybe the date was the combination. Maybe that was why Mr. May had kept the ticket stub. Calvin went to the safe and tried 12-15-96. It didn’t work.
He shook his head and stuffed the stub back into the wallet. Maybe one of the other items in the wallet held some subtle clue to the safe’s combination. Or maybe none did. Either way, they didn’t have time to keep working at the problem right now.
Calvin got up, tossed the wallet back into the box, then turned and took a last look at the wall safe. Another new mystery to solve. They just kept piling up around here, didn’t they? He swung the painting-door closed. It latched with a faint clack.
“All right, guys,” he said. “It’s getting late, and we still haven’t found adequate weapons for everyone.”
“There isn’t anywhere left to search, is there?” Brandon said. “I thought this was the last searchable room in the house.”
“The house itself, yeah. But there’s still the garage and the shed out back. I think there are some gardening tools in there that might be useful if they’re not too old and rusty. Let’s go take a look.”