The Demon Queen and The Locksmith

by Spencer Baum

  “And yesterday, there were so many butterflies at her place,” said Jackie.

  “It was cool, wasn’t it?” said Kevin.

  “Very cool,” said Jackie.

  Seeing his mom’s old books, Kevin found his mind drifting to her other possessions. Most of them were gone now, donated to various universities and museums, but there were a few things left in his house, in a room she had used as a laboratory. There was a safe in the closet. Kevin had mostly forgotten about that safe. When he got home, he’d have to give it another look.

  “You guys, there’s a door in the floor,” said Joseph.

  “What?” said Jackie.

  “A door. Come here!”

  In the far corner of the room, Joseph had lifted a panel of the wood flooring and exposed a hidden stairwell going underneath the house.

  “It’s huge down here,” said Joseph. “Told you it was an old bomb shelter.”

  Jackie and Kevin followed Joseph down the stairs, which were steep and without a railing. The stairwell landed in an abnormally large sitting room, lavishly decorated. The walls were lined with artwork, much of it Kevin’s dad’s, all of it strange. There were twisted, unusual sculptures made of metal and marble, giant, abstract paintings on the walls, and a bubbling fountain in the corner with small trees and ferns growing around and out of it.

  “You guys, what exactly are we doing here?” said Jackie. “I don’t feel comfortable sneaking around inside someone’s house.”

  “It’s the best way to get to know someone,” said Joseph. “See how they live when they aren’t present and don’t know you’re coming.”

  “You’re a freak,” said Jackie.

  “Sticks and stones, Sissy. You know I’m right. This is the real Cassandra we’re looking at here.”

  “Okay, so who is the real Cassandra then?” said Jackie. “I see the house of a wealthy person who likes art and for some reason wants to live underground.”

  “That’s just the surface,” said Joseph. “You know what I see? I see someone who is content to leave the top room of her house, the part that people can see, an absolute mess, but keeps this hidden portion in spectacular shape. Just the opposite of how most people would do it.”

  “So she’s weird,” said Jackie. “I’ll give you that. But how does that help us? You’re not so normal yourself. Why are you carrying around that old newspaper?”

  “This newspaper – oh, never mind. I don’t want to argue with you right now. This newspaper’s just a start. Who knows what other interesting things we’ll find here? Let’s see what else is behind the closed doors.”

  There were three doors on the back wall of the main room. One was open, leading to a small kitchen. The other two were closed. They approached slowly. “This one’s just a bathroom,” said Kevin, opening and closing the first door.

  “But this one’s a bedroom,” said Joseph. “Jackpot!”

  They followed Joseph into the bedroom and found him staring at a large painting, or maybe a drawing, on the wall opposite the bed. Kevin had a hard time deciding what it was they were looking at. Large and ornately framed, the picture was black and white with a murky but familiar image on it.

  “The first thing she sees when she wakes up, and the last thing she sees at night,” Joseph said. “A giant picture of Turquoise Mountain.”

  “Is it really Turquoise Mountain?” said Jackie. “It looks like something else.”

  “Of course it is,” said Joseph. “It’s a silhouette. The mountain is sketched in black against a white background. It’s the perfect way to burn it into your head. This mountain probably haunts her in her sleep. Years upon years of looking at this creepy picture drove her mad and yesterday she blew up the mountain.”

  “See, I think it looks like a termite mound,” said Jackie.

  “A termite mound? No, Sis, I’m sure this is Turquoise Mountain. Take a good look at the mountain tonight at sunset – you’ll see.”

  “I don’t need to see. I know it looks like the mountain. I’m just saying -- the shape of this is also like a giant termite mound from South America.”

  “I think you’ve just got bugs on the brain. What do you think, Kevin?”

  Kevin had drifted from their conversation. Something else had caught his eye. Next to Cassandra’s bed was a bookcase. Kevin was inspecting the spines of the books, his mind racing with emotion and memory.

  “Look at that, you’ve found more Peter Gerrard books,” said Jackie. “She must be a real fanatic. I’ve never seen these books before.”

  “I have,” said Kevin. He pulled one of the books from the top shelf. It was titled A Study of the Evolution of the Social Insects. He opened it. At the top of the inside front cover, written in pencil were two letters. CB.

  Kevin brushed his finger across the letters. “Courtney Browne,” he said quietly.

  He didn’t know why it bothered him so much. His mom’s old books had been at Cassandra’s house for a year now. Kevin stood up and tried to gather all the thoughts running through his mind. He couldn’t turn them into anything coherent, and before he could stop himself, he slapped the top of the bookcase.

  “W’oh, careful,” said Joseph. “Gig’s up if we break something.”

  “What’s wrong Kevin?” asked Jackie.

  “It’s a long story,” Kevin said. “Years of story. My life. I haven’t told you about Cassandra and my dad, and me. Cassandra and I haven’t ever really gotten along. I’ve always thought she was a little bit…odd.”

  “And you were right,” said Joseph. “This woman’s a nutjob.”

  “Hush, Joseph,” said Jackie. “Why did you think she was odd, Kevin?”

  “Lots of reasons. My dad…”

  Kevin took a deep breath. He had spoken the truth about his dad to himself a thousand times. He hadn’t breathed a word of it to another person since elementary school, when he learned the hard way that his peers at school were less than impressed with the Hearers.

  “My dad is a Hearer.”

  Joseph’s eyes lit up. “The Turquoise Hum?”

  “Yes, the hum.”

  “That’s awesome, Kevin,” said Joseph. “I knew there was something about the hum in your life. Yesterday, every time it came up--”

  “I know,” said Kevin. “There’s more. I think I may be hearing it too, starting yesterday, after we ate the sap.”

  “Seriously? Now that’s interesting. You were holding out on us,” said Joseph.

  “We can talk about this later. I’m ready to leave,” Kevin said

  “Okay, let’s just make sure we get all the evidence we need,” said Jackie. She pulled out her cell phone and used it to take a picture of the painting on the wall. “Would you like me to photo that newspaper, Joseph?”

  “That’s alright. I’m taking it with me,” Joseph said.

  “You’re kidding, right?” said Jackie.

  “She won’t even notice it’s gone, and if she does, she’ll think she’s lost it in the mess upstairs.”

  “Joseph, what’s so special about that newspaper?” asked Jackie.

  Joseph turned the paper so they could see its banner.

  The Shuberville Tribune.

  “Shuberville?” said Jackie.

  “That’s right,” said Joseph. “Shuberville -- the very last word Lou Sweeney ever said on the radio. The greatest of all mysteries.”

  “The Demon Queen of Shuberville,” Kevin said, echoing the words from his dream.

  Joseph nodded, pleased that Kevin remembered.

  “In his final broadcast, Lou called Shuberville a small town in Mississippi,” said Joseph. “But no one knows where it is. It isn’t on any maps. There is no historical record of it. People in Mississippi say Lou made it up.”

  “Can we talk about this later?” said Jackie. “If we’re stealing things, I want to get out of here now.”

  “Let’s go to your house,” Kevin said. “I want to take another look at that safe-cracking book.”

  “
Sticky Fingers?” said Joseph, intrigued. “What have you got in mind?”

  “I’ll explain on the way.”

  When It’s Time, Someone Will Find You

  Lou Sweeney was an abnormal child trapped in a normal life. His parents were kind. His house was nice. His neighborhood was safe. His mind was bored. When Lou was eight, he stumbled upon The Buzz Tingley Radio Hour and lost himself in the magic of it. A far-away voice, deep and full of authority, saying the most amazing things, “Telling the truth in a world full of lies…” Lou fell in love with fringe radio before he even knew what it was.

  On Lou’s sixteenth birthday, with the help of his high school guidance counselor, he was allowed one hour of airtime on the radio station at the community college. His program, a strange, high-pitched imitation of The Buzz Tingley Radio Hour, broadcast at five in the morning, had no audience, but Lou didn’t care. He went home with a tape recording of his broadcast. He mailed that recording to Buzz Tingley.

  Two months later, he received a letter:

  Dear Lou,

  Thank you for sending me your radio broadcast. I found it engaging and entertaining. You have real potential. Even at an early age, you can see through the falsehoods presented to a sleeping society as reality.

  Of late, I have spent much time in Southern Mississippi, where I am unearthing the greatest cover-up in modern history. I fear that my life will be in danger as soon as I go public with this story. I am telling you this because you can sense the truth, and some day the truth of what I am doing may be swept under the rug by powerful people who want to keep the masses silent. In a few weeks, I intend to tell the world via my radio broadcast about The Legend of The Demon Queen of Shuberville. If I am gone, and the world doesn’t know, or doesn’t believe, it will be up to you to finish telling the story.

  The truth, wherever it takes us,

  Buzz Tingley

  The next Wednesday night Buzz was off the air, his program unceremoniously replaced with country western music.

  Lou spent the remainder of his adolescence researching the whereabouts of Buzz Tingley and The Legend of the Demon Queen of Shuberville. He learned how to use a university library and he made important contacts in the radio industry, but he found no clues about what happened to his idol. By the time Lou broke into professional radio as a production assistant at KKBR in Houston, the same station that had once broadcast Buzz Tingley to the world, Buzz was not only gone, but forgotten. Lou asked people in the office if they knew what happened to Buzz. They didn’t know who Lou was talking about. He looked for archival recordings of the Buzz Tingley radio show. There were none to be found. He tried to find records of Buzz’s employment as an announcer for KKBR. There weren’t any. He looked for Buzz’s surviving family and found no one. By the time Lou began poking around Southern Mississippi on the weekends, he was looking for any evidence that Buzz Tingley had existed at all.

  Over the years, Lou learned that no one in Mississippi had heard of Buzz Tingley either. But everyone had heard the legend.

  In Jackson and Greenville, the kids treated it as a joke.

  “You’d better shut your mouth, or the Demon Queen’ll get you.”

  “I’m gonna hit the next pitch all the way to Shuberville.”

  “That girl is uglier than The Demon Queen of Shuberville.”

  “Be quiet!” their mothers would scold. “I don’t wanna hear you talking anymore about Shuberville.”

  It was the generational divide that caught Lou’s attention. It was like Santa Claus in reverse. The kids laughed it off, but the parents believed.

  In the small towns, the legend was more serious business.

  “Have you ever heard of a place called Shuberville?” Lou would ask.

  Usually the answer was no. Usually the room would clear as soon as Lou asked the question.

  In the township of Finlay, at Black Jack’s Package Liquors & Tavern, Lou befriended an old cotton farmer. After three hours of beer drinking and conversation had passed, Lou asked the question.

  The farmer’s face went dark.

  “I ain’t never heard of Shuberville. You got that? I ain’t never heard of it!”

  Slamming his mug into the table, the farmer got up and left. The bartender told Lou to pay up and get out.

  Over the years, Lou fell into a routine. He’d finish work at the radio station on Friday afternoon, drive through the night to Mississippi, spend the weekend trying to get people to talk, and drive back to Houston on Sunday. He developed a few important friendships in the Delta. George in Vicksburg. Abe in Greenville. Ned in Harristown.

  It was Ned who gave him the break.

  “Lou, some of us have been talking, in secret, and we’ve decided we’ll help you find out about your missing radio announcer,” Ned told him one afternoon on the front porch of the General Store.

  “That’s great,” said Lou. “I’d really appreciate even the smallest--”

  Ned held up his hand and looked around, as if spies were among them. “It’s very important that you say nothing from this point forward.”

  “Okay,” said Lou.

  “Tomorrow night, go to Sanders Mill off Route 20. Follow the creek going south. Keep going. When it’s time, someone will find you.”

  “Find me? Who’s--”

  “Shh….” Ned grabbed Lou on the shoulder. “You and I are gonna part ways now. As soon as you step off this porch, you and I never spoke, and I don’t know who you are. You got that?”

  Lou nodded.

  “Good luck,” said Ned. “And remember. You and I never spoke.”

  A Thousand Separate Bodies Working As One

  Gretchen Brinkley had no father. She had a grandfather, but he was in jail. Her grandmother was dead. She had no aunts or uncles, no cousins, no family friends.

  That left only her mother. And Ken Childress.

  Ken Childress was her mother’s boyfriend. He was slime.

  At seven, Gretchen understood that her mother had to lay down with slime to keep the bills paid. She knew her mother was broke, and that she allowed Ken Childress into their lives in exchange for money. She knew that Ken’s money, pulled from his pockets in large wads, was stolen. She knew that some day her mother and Ken both would be in jail. She knew she was supposed to be too young to understand any of this.

  At eight, Gretchen became aware that the hum in her ears wasn’t heard by everyone. At nine, she realized that the hum was more than a sound, it was a connection to the world. At ten, she decided that her mother lied to her about the scars. Gretchen’s arms and legs were covered with hundreds of tiny scars. Her mother said the scars were with Gretchen at birth, that the doctors called them birth marks.

  The scars were Gretchen’s connection points. They tingled. When she listened carefully, she could hear herself in the hum, and through the tingling of each scar, she could feel it. The hum resonated in her ears, and vibrated in her scars.

  By her eleventh birthday, Gretchen had developed two overwhelming passions in her life: an obsession with bugs, and a hatred for Ken Childress. Gretchen’s mother was housebound, afraid to go out of the apartment with her black eyes and bruised cheeks, and because she was housebound, she was dependent on Ken and his wads of cash. Gretchen hated her house, hated the prison of her life, so she stayed out all day and late into the night. She found bugs, she looked at them, she listened to them, she read about them at the Shuberville Public Library in their lone book on the subject: Treasury of Insects.

  On Gretchen’s twelfth birthday, Ms. Stephenson, the librarian, greeted her with a book wrapped in birthday paper. Gretchen tore it open to find a thick, hardbound textbook, hundreds of pages long: The Origin of Insect Societies: by Peter Gerrard.

  “I got it from the University of Mississippi,” Ms. Stephenson said. “This is a book for college students, but I don’t think it’s too hard for you.”

  “Thank you,” Gretchen said.

  “I have a son who’s about your age,” Ms. Stephenson said, “i
f you’d ever like to meet him.”

  “That’s alright,” said Gretchen.

  “I know what it’s like to live in a family without a father,” Ms. Stephenson said. “Maybe some day we could talk.”

  “Thank you,” said Gretchen. “But I’m fine. Thank you for the book. I really do appreciate it.”

  Gretchen read The Origin of Insect Societies cover to cover that afternoon. She fell in love with Peter Gerrard, a scientist long dead. The words and ideas and diagrams in The Origin of Insect Societies captured the magic of an anthill, the miracle of a termite mound – but beyond the words, Gretchen understood Gerrard’s implications. When he said, “The secrets of life itself lay within the bustling colony of ants, a thousand separate bodies working as one organism,” Gerrard wasn’t making a statement of fact, but a declaration of love.

  Ms. Stephenson helped Gretchen learn more about Peter Gerrard and his works. She used inter-library lending programs to obtain more books about and by Peter Gerrard for Gretchen to read. She arranged to have Gretchen excused from classes at school, giving her more time at the library. On days when Gretchen stayed in the library from open to close, Ms. Stephenson made lunch for her. Gretchen became an expert on Peter Gerrard, knowing as much about him and his work as highly paid professors at prestigious universities.

  As on her twelfth, Gretchen went to the library on her thirteenth birthday. As on her twelfth, Ms. Stephenson had a special present for Gretchen when she arrived.

  “I can’t send you home with this present,” Ms. Stephenson said. “The agreement is that I keep it here in the library. I think you’ll understand.”

  She handed Gretchen a framed document, an old piece of paper protected under glass, like a family portrait. Gretchen knew right away what it was.