by B K Nault
Could an object have magical powers? Harold had to believe otherwise. Every bone and sinew fought against any other possibility. But already the mysterious device he turned over, that now warmed in his palm, had begun to change his life. Where did this mysterious object come from, and what made it tick? What did it want from him?
Chapter Six
Walter tied a shoestring, his swollen fingers uncooperative. The glass splinter was still a painful reminder of his handiwork, and Walter worried again how to communicate its import without endangering himself or the guardian.
The cot squeaked as he pushed up. The diminutive workshop and sleeping quarters he’d called home would soon be demolished. He was no longer needed to change the light bulbs, sweep the steps. Now it was time to go, and just as well, because the doors were about to close permanently behind him. And it was time to move on so he could focus on the final piece of his life’s mystery.
“Where will you go, my friend?” Father Tucker had come downstairs to help Walter pack up his few items.
“I’ve made some contacts.” Walter hedged the details, for privacy’s sake. The priest helped him strap on a heavy backpack bulging with his yellowed notebooks, packets of seeds, the Dremel and its worn parts, one extra shirt, and a box of hair dye #114, light ash brown.
“I’ve arranged for Luis to take you to the station.” The monsignor pressed a handful of cash into his palm, and then prayed a blessing over Walter. “I’m sorry you feel you must go. I’m still appealing to the city about the demolition. Won’t you wait and find out if our appeal is granted?”
“I must move along, Father.” Walter drew out the duplicate kaleidoscope, a perfect copy of the one already delivered. “For all you’ve done for me, I will be forever grateful. This is for your kindness to me, which I could never fully repay.”
The pastor accepted the finely crafted instrument and without pause lifted it to capture the light streaming in from high glass panes that allowed light to stream into the basement.
Walter had debated keeping the twin. A memento, a keepsake of his many hours obsessing over both the external and internal workings, the fruit of his labors. But he had to somehow thank the man who blessed him by taking him in when he was hungry, thirsty, needed shelter, and giving him work. He’d kept him from sleeping on the street, while allowing him to accomplish his life’s work. He owed the clergyman his life.
“It’s exquisite.” Slowly turning the dial, lips parted, Father shifted slightly to better catch the light. “I’ll cherish this as a memory of your devotion to our parish.” He was a slightly younger man than Walter. Together they’d seen the parish change, the demographics shrinking attendance in the pews, but increasing the long lines out the door on Food Bank Wednesdays.
“There’s not another exactly like it in the world.”
“But I saw you were making another. Aren’t they identical?”
“Only on the outside.” He didn’t explain the internal workings of the doppelganger.
“From the broken stained glass window,” Father Tucker recalled. He fingered the polished metal. “You know, in mythology, twins are considered opposites. One twin sired by a god, one by a devil.” He aimed the ’scope at Walter. “Have you spawned a diametric brotherhood?” His question was meant to be light-hearted, but Walter blanched at how close he might be to the reality.
“My desire is that each one only moves mankind forward in positive ways. But one never knows how even the simplest technology will be used.”
The priest studied Walter, brows furrowed in question. A vehicle rolled past in the parking lot and pulled up outside the window, its air brakes whooshing loudly and Walter stood up, glad for the interruption. He moved toward the door.
“There’s Luis now.” Father Tucker arose. “I’ll walk with you outside.”
Walter shifted a strap of the heavy backpack off a sore muscle and ascended the concrete steps into the Los Angeles sunshine. They embraced at the top of the stairs. “If anyone comes around asking for me…” Walter hesitated to say more.
“I’ll use the utmost discretion.” Father Tucker’s palm warmed Walter’s rounded shoulder. “When you get settled, let me know how to reach you if you’d like. As always, I will protect your privacy, brother.”
Walter knew he could trust the priest, who on many occasions had offered his counsel. He waved, and passed the vegetable patch one last time. Some of the plants were already withered and parched.
He didn’t want to tell him now, but he never intended to contact the priest again. The less his friend knew, the less likely he’d come to harm.
Please, Lord, keep us all safe from harm.
****
Harold slept fitfully that night. His customary cup of chamomile tea, a half hour of the History Channel, and a crossword puzzle didn’t do their usual magic. Magic? Unable to see it well in the darkened room, he still sensed the presence of the ’scope on his dresser.
While he was walking home, he had decided to place a Craigslist ad in case the true owner of the Kaleidoscope was looking for it. It occurred to him that the homeless guy had been wanting money for the find when the police came along. He probably expected Harold to give him cash, and Harold shuddered to think what they might have thought if they had seen him exchanging money for it.
Harold sat up in bed. Of course. That explained everything. Drug residue was over the device. Some kind of touch-absorbed element. His eyes had adjusted and now he could see. From the dresser, the glint of its metal winked at him. Why didn’t he see images, though? He had more contact with it than Rhashan and had seen nothing unusual. Still, he should wipe it down thoroughly before touching it again. Just in case.
As he drifted back to sleep, the image of Rhashan’s wife and child in the peaceful beach scene played out, reminding Harold of his own mom. If someone had only intervened when his dad had gone off the rails, maybe his life would have turned out differently.
Harold tossed and turned, his childhood stirred up for the first time in years.
“You’re just like your worthless father,” his grandmother had ranted. “No use fighting the genes he left behind when he killed your mom and disappeared into oblivion and left me to raise you. You even resemble him. Red hair and freckles, not dark and lovely like your mom.”
Grandma Destiny prophesied that not only would ugly Harold fail at everything he ever tried just as his father had, but as puberty set in, his inherited psychoses would mature, undermining every relationship, conversation and memory, thwarting every attempt at normalcy.
He recalled very little about his mom, taken from him so young. Late at night while he poured himself into studying to make straight A’s in high school, or at odd times during an argument with Georgia, he’d stop, trying to recall his mother’s reassurance that choices were his alone. He’d open and close doors in his mind to closeted snatches of songs, a poem, a picture his mom would describe of a happy family. “One day,” she’d repeat into his ear as he fell asleep in her arms, “he’ll make the breakthrough he yearns for, and we’ll be a normal family.”
When Harold eventually coaxed Georgia back, the fear his grandmother had planted, “You’re just like your father,” would be forever quashed.
He’d stopped visiting her soon after he graduated high school. The older Harold got, the more she complained how much he looked like his father.
The offspring of a sane, beautiful woman with dark eyes, and a haunting ghost with flaming red hair and eyes the color of the sea, his lunatic dad. He yearned to prove it was possible to drain the gene pool of the paternal psychosis that drove his dad to kill his mother and vanish from his life. He needed to get Georgia back, talk her into having his babies, and damning the sins of the fathers upon the generations.
****
The next morning, after the restless night, wheel squeaking accelerated Harold’s head throb into max intensity. He’d decided to question Rhashan about the vision so he could articulate to H.R. just what was going
on. He’d called down to inquire about the process, and had Form 321-D in his inbox, ready for the details.
“Rhashan, can I ask you a question?”
“Certainly.” Rhashan leaned in, lining up the envelopes on the edge of his desk as Harold had demonstrated. He turned expectant eyes to him. “Wot’s up, mon?”
“Yesterday you said you saw a…vision in the ’scope?”
Rhashan’s face morphed from serious to delighted. “I mean to tell you, Mr. Harold. I asked my wife last night. You see, she’s been working on her graduate degree, and becoming close to finishing. I not want to trouble her with my hope to finish my education too. But when I told her what I saw yesterday, she say she is glad I did, and she encourage me to get my degree as well. It may cause us a few more years of sacrifice, but dat okay with her. We have been working to make ends meet, and before now, I never want to stress her.”
The answer rambled away from Harold’s original question. “Your wife’s degree?”
Rhashan beamed. “Yeah mon, she writing her thesis now on crystal myths.”
“Thesis?” Harold blinked. “On crystal methamphetamine? That kind of crystal meth?”
“Oh, no.” Rhashan chortled. “She study cultural anthropology. Her research is in the area of crystals. You know, the belief dat crystals hold mysterious powers to heal. To prophesy.” One eyebrow curled up. “You get it now?”
“Oh, I don’t believe in that kind of hocus pocus.”
“Don’ be so quick to discount what you don’t know about.” Rhashan wagged a giant finger over Harold’s shoulder. “You are working with crystals even as we speak.”
He closed the waiting inquiry form on his monitor. “Of course, but silicon’s different.”
“Mr. Harold, I pick up da form applying for education assistance.” He pulled out Form 298-E from a brown envelope. “Would you help me?”
“What does this have to do with the ’scope?”
“Everything.” He pointed to the device Harold had wiped down and considered taking apart, but the morning had gotten away from him. “Because I saw myself gettin’ a diploma.”
Helping another employee improve themselves could be seen as a notch in Harold’s belt. “I suppose I could. Meet me in the courtyard at lunch.”
“Thank you, Mr. Harold. I appreciate your kindness. May I hold it again?” Rhashan’s gaze fell to the ’scope.
“Sure.”
Rhashan lifted it reverently. “May I ask if you would consider selling?”
Harold hadn’t considered selling it. Destroying it perhaps. “It’s not really mine to sell.”
“If I had something to give you, I would. Already it has changed my life.” Rhashan held it to his eye, squinting. He rolled it and turned, swinging toward light coming through the plate glass windows beyond the bullpen. “The colors they are pretty today, but no new visions.” He handed it back to Harold. “Still, that’s something very special you have there.”
An odd sensation grew in Harold, a feeling he’d only had for a few things before. He accepted the Kaleidoscope, cradling it possessively. Almost reverently.
****
The next morning, Harold was waiting in line at security when someone said, “Mr. Donaldson, may I speak to you a moment?” A guard motioned from behind the X-ray machine. About his own age and height, the guard wore a clipped military cut and starched uniform that impressed Harold.
“We’re redoing the older ID cards, and yours needs to be updated.” Harold followed him into a tiny room, more like a closet lined with monitors showing the hallways, offices and parking lot. “We’re adding a new watermark.” Keith—according to his nameplate—indicated Harold’s old card.
Harold unclipped the plastic ID from the lanyard. “I was under the impression we had at least a month left.”
“Yes, you do.” Keith examined the card. “But I had something else I wanted to ask you.”
Harold wondered if he’d somehow breached some security regulations when he was working nights recently, chasing the latest glitch in coding. Funds were still leaking in tiny dribs and drabs, and he had to find out what was causing the anomaly. “Am I in trouble?”
Keith laughed, but his smile faded to a strained look. “No, not at all.” He checked Harold’s face against the photo. “Might be a good time to have a new picture taken. This one is pretty old.” He motioned to a spot on the linoleum and aimed a small camera at him when he stepped on the X. “Smile!”
There was nothing wrong with the photo, but Harold complied. “You had something to ask me?” He stepped away from the mark, blinking from the flash burned onto his retinas.
Shifting his leather belt, heavy with a walkie-talkie, flashlight and a small firearm Harold had never seen out of its holster, Keith continued, “It’s not about work or anything.”
Harold shrugged. “Shoot.”
Keith didn’t flinch at the feeble joke. “I’ve noticed your Kaleidoscope in the X-ray bin.” Keith’s demeanor morphed from professional to almost childlike as he gestured at Harold’s breast pocket. “Mind if I take a look?”
Historically, Harold had nothing that set off the alarm, being careful not to carry too many coins in his pocket. But the metal in the ’scope had set off the buzzer once, and since then, he placed it in the plastic tray with his keys. The clip made a clicking noise when he slid it from his pocket. “Sure.”
“It’s beautiful. Where did you get it?” Keith lifted the cylinder. He rolled the dial and aimed at the backlit glass block walls across the lobby. “Oh…” Just as quickly, he lowered it, and then paused to examine it from end to end, his brows knit tightly. He gave it back to Harold, his friendly manner morphed from casual back to his usual serious tone. “I’ll get the card upstairs to you soon.” He slid the old ID across the linoleum counter and sat down, spinning the chair to face the monitors. His precision haircut formed a perfectly straight line above his crisp uniform collar; his skin tone had gone even paler than usual.
First Rhashan’s experience, and now Keith’s reaction, were beginning to perplex Harold. He returned the device to his pocket.
“I can’t believe it,” Keith muttered. “I just can’t.”
Harold knew he was going to hate himself, but he couldn’t help asking. “Believe what?” He braced himself for the answer.
“You can go now.”
The lobby was almost empty. He had to get upstairs or he’d be late. But he had to know. “You wanted to see, I didn’t force you.”
Silent for a moment, when he spoke again, Keith’s voice had dropped an octave. “I thought I was just going to see floating shapes and colors.” He lowered his forehead into his hands. “You should have warned me.”
“Why? What did you see? Warned you about what?”
The chair squeaked as Keith gazed out the window to the street. “My parents. I saw my parents.”
Harold breathed out, relieved. “That’s not so bad. Is it?”
Keith had gone to a faraway place. “I haven’t spoken to them in years. Not ever since…”
The longer Harold had the ’scope, the more he realized it was more than a toy given him by a random bum in the park. There was definitely something peculiar going on. His engineer’s mind began to categorize the clues he already had. Whatever Rhashan saw might have some commonality to Keith’s image. “Ever since what?”
“They seemed to have accepted my choices at first, and my mom came around, but my dad, he…”
“Choices?”
“When I tried to introduce them to my partner…they would have nothing to do with him, or me.” Keith’s anguish stunned Harold. They both regarded the object in Harold’s hand. “I had just about worked them out of my mind until…”
Harold swiveled to the clock. He didn’t want to seem insensitive, but if he didn’t move, he’d never have time for the restroom. “Well.” He slipped the ’scope, cool now, into his pocket.
Assuming Keith was finished with him and had become absorbed by hi
s own thoughts, Harold backed out and hurried upstairs. He’d planned to check his email for anyone claiming ownership of the pesky ’scope, but after Keith took so much of his time, he had to hurry and log in to begin working. Harold was finding it more and more difficult to concentrate on spreadsheets with the Kaleidoscope affecting everyone around him. He slid it into a drawer, hoping to get the thing off his mind.
In the cubicles around him keyboards clicked in their morning rhythms. Millie smacked her gum. He pulled out the Kaleidoscope and rolled it around on his palm, glad no one could see him. The walls, covered in gray, separated them from all visual contact with each other when there were seated.
He sighted down the shaft. Colors and shapes fell into geometric prisms of blues, greens, and gold. He shook it and tried again. Nothing unusual. He laid it down next to his stapler. Why did other people see pictures that meant something to them? Was it predicting the future?
Rhashan’s whistle floated in from the doorway two rows over at about eleven o’clock.
In a few minutes he heard, “Good morning, Harold!” Rhashan beamed down on him. “Guess what? I believe I will be accepted into the scholarship program, and if all goes as planned, I can begin classes next quarter!”
“That’s terrific, congratulations.” Harold wondered if the email he’d sent about Rhashan’s possible drug use had gone unread. Perhaps he could send a retraction.
“I have a gift for you.” Rhashan held out a tissue-wrapped bundle.
“That was unnecessary, really.”
“Go on, open it.”
Still feeling guilty about his suspicions, Harold tore off the paper to reveal a thin length of fabric, multi-hued, and gaudy. “A tie. Thanks.” Now he had to advocate for him. Even if he had made some mistakes, the guy seemed genuinely eager to make something of himself.