She reached down and, with her expensively manicured fingernails, opened the box. She smiled; this time, the gesture reached the cold eyes.
“These are hers, you’re sure?”
“The only thing that your husband had safely hidden. Now you have them. The only thing physical that remains of the person in question.” Webber stood and replaced the stolen files that he had to return and put them back into his briefcase.
“Tell your Mr. Avery that I will await my payment.”
She held the item a moment longer and she didn’t notice Webber leaving. Once the sliding doors were closed, she placed the dark-lensed glasses back into the box.
MORENO, CALIFORNIA
The town was incorporated and designed like most small towns in America—four main streets that formed a square with a small courthouse, police department, and general civic center at its middle. The park surrounding these grounds was now overgrown to the point that most of the playground equipment was hidden from view by the dense cover of weeds and grass. Of the few businesses still operating in the once-thriving town, only the used record store operating out of the old K-Rave radio station on Main and Cypress was making anything close to a living. This was only because of the current trend of collectors buying up old-fashioned vinyl records.
The houses, once perfect little homes produced after World War II, were now shells of their former selves. Of the nearly 612 homes built from old aircraft parts and into prefab housing, over half of them were now scorched reminders of the industrial accident that happened in Moreno in the fall of 1962.
Of the old factory overlooking the town, all but two six-story brick walls had been knocked down during the explosion of that eventful year. The old Spanish mission and winery on the opposite end of town high up on the hill was still there. The winery was built next to the crumbling Spanish Santa Maria Delarosa mission. The winery itself had succumbed to the elements about 150 years after the mission’s own destruction by an earthquake in 1821. Both ruins overlooked the town as if in guardianship of what had once been, but never would be again.
* * *
The news camera was set up in front of the old Newberry’s Department Store, one of the tallest buildings inside the deserted town. Standing tall at four stories, it seemed to tower over the next-largest building, the old Grenada Theater, two blocks down. The young reporter was a smallish woman who was currently trying her best to cover her growing frustration toward the old man she was interviewing. It was for a throwaway piece for the eleven o’clock broadcast for the local ABC affiliate in Los Angeles. The old man was a cook who still operated the lunch counter inside the old sectioned-off area of the department store, which had been officially closed since the death of the town. Newberry’s, despite the disaster, kept operating for two more agonizing years before finally succumbing after the disaster. The man was frustrating for the mere fact he didn’t, or claimed at least not to, fully understand what happened that night in October 1962. Out of the thirty-three current residents of Moreno, the stories were familiar in their telling—that either they weren’t alive at that time, or they lived in some other part of the country when the events in the small, hidden town in the hills happened. The young reporter knew this was a story that would never make the news cycle even as a throwaway piece leading up to Halloween.
“Since the evacuation of the town fifty-five years ago, many had decided to stay even though the contamination unleashed that night threatened their very health and life. You were one of these people who chose to stay. Why, Mr. Leach?”
The old man wiped his arthritic hands on his filthy apron and looked at his watch as if to say she was taking up his valuable time, even though it was clear the lunch-hour rush inside the dead town was fifty-five years into the past.
“My father, Roland Leach, was one of the original five investors in Moreno.” The old man turned and gestured toward the four-story department store behind him. “Newberry’s was his crowning achievement. To have a department store in a burg this small was a gamble at the time, but the town was bustling back then, and it gave him and my mom the means to raise three children. Let’s just say I’m attached to the property and have chosen to finish my life here.” A sad look flitted across his old features as he turned back to face the reporter and her intrusive camera.
“So, you aren’t afraid of the groundwater here due to the factory explosion in 1962?”
“I’m still breathing, ain’t I?”
“Mercury poisoning doesn’t scare you?”
The man didn’t respond, looking at the reporter as if he were about to say something but held back.
“Mr. Leach, thank you for your time.”
The old man nodded and then turned and opened the once-proud double doors of Newberry’s Department Store whose name was etched into the once-stainless steel handle.
The woman lowered her microphone and then hissed a curse at the old man’s retreating form.
“How in the hell am I supposed to make this into a story?” She handed her microphone off to her soundman and then faced the deserted street called, of course, Main. “Mayberry, the ghost town, is not a very good pitch.”
“Yeah, right, at least Mayberry had Don Knotts; we have only Goober inside an old department store cooking greasy burgers for all four operating businesses. Hell, it’s not even an empty ghost town. And did you see that couple running the record store? Can you say Haight-Ashbury and the Grateful Dead?”
“Yeah, hippies in this day and age, that’s what’s creepy, not the deserted town.”
It was the hundredth time news organizations tried to get a firm story on the old town and the hundredth time the footage wouldn’t air on television. Outside of the disaster in October 1962, there just wasn’t an angle for a good story anymore.
The news van left and drove back to the real world.
* * *
The young face vanished back into the boarded-up front of the old theater. He took a deep breath, and then the brightness of a flashlight lit his face. He leaned against the old and cracked plywood and breathed heavily. He reached out and pushed the brightness away along with the offending hand.
“Damn, I thought that camera guy saw me when he got into that van.”
“Take it easy. Even if he did, do you think he’s going to go snooping around here in the dark looking for us? The only people we have to worry about are those security guards up at the mission and the idiots who live here. If we can’t dodge a few morons, we deserve to get caught.”
The boy leaning against the plywood barrier looked over at the girl standing next to his brave friend who seemed to fear nothing. He and the girl were a different story. They feared everything, including the ridicule they received from the asshole holding the flashlight. Dylan was a bully of the first order, and he did things according to how he was taught by his brutish father—ruthlessly and absolutely.
“Trespassing is trespassing, no matter how you look at it,” the emaciated, frightened girl with the arm-length tattoo of a twisted vine said to assist her boyfriend and let him know she shared his fear of this place.
“You both agreed. Those posters are worth a small fortune. On eBay, you can get as much as seven hundred dollars per print. There has to be at least a hundred posters down there.”
“What if they’re not there?” the boy asked as he finally moved away from the front windows.
“Look, my grandfather once lived in this dive and was the theater’s projectionist, and he swears they took nothing out of this place but a few dead bodies, and then they sealed it up for good. The only people inside this place are county and state inspectors—those environment assholes, checking for chemicals in the water. The damn posters and even a few old film prints are down there. That’s where everything was stored.”
The young thief wannabe leading them was intent on following through with his little heist of movie memorabilia, but the vision of riches was not transferring well to his two companions.
The ligh
t caught the left side of the twin sets of winding stairs that led to the upper balcony, which was mostly gone now. The fire in 1962 had spread quickly to the upper reaches of the Grenada, and that was where most of the young bodies had been found after the total collapse of the balcony itself.
The flashlight moved, and they saw the two sets of double doors that led to the first-floor seating of the theater on either side of that snack bar. Two of these doors, old Naugahyde-covered wood that had lost most of the golden tacks that had once given them beauty and that tuck-and-roll look, were now hanging on by a screw or two, and the view beyond these doors was dark and foreboding. Then Dylan’s light moved to the office of the theater manager, where they had already looked, and next to that, the door that led downstairs to the basement, where the real treasure was awaiting them.
“Well, let’s do this and then go make some money.”
The boy and his girlfriend looked at each other and knew in their silence both would indeed follow. As the door to the basement was opened with a loud creak, the musty air from below wafted to their nostrils and forced the three treasure seekers back a step. Most unsettling was the plaster art deco gargoyles looking down upon them from the ornate wall sconces that once circled the lobby. The beastly eyes looked as if their sculpted and very scary faces were happy for their visit.
“Smells wet,” the girl said as she tugged on her boyfriend’s arm.
Dylan stepped through the door and started down the wooden stairs. “There’s probably been water down here since the fire. Let’s just hope those posters were stored off the floor.”
The large circular beam of the flashlight finally settled on the lowest part of the basement. There was water. So much so that they could see small ripples as a rat or two scurried away from their sudden intrusion.
“Water and rats?” the girl said squeamishly.
The boy took her hand, and they continued down to the bottom.
“Is that a vault?” the boy asked. “Maybe the posters are in there?”
“Nah, my grandpa said that when the new Moreno National Bank was built in 1960, they moved the old Savings and Loan vault to the basement here in the theater. He said it was the only place in town big enough to store it and had a lift with enough capacity that could lower it down here. So, no money or anything worth anything is in there. What we’re looking for is right here.” The light settled on six steel cabinets that looked as if they rose above the one foot of water in the basement. They were school locker–style, and they were covered in dust and rust. The light played over them, and the anticipation rose. “Let’s just hope the tops of these things didn’t rust out.”
The two boys examined the locker-style cabinets as the girl stayed in place far behind them. She was looking at the old, rusty, iron-and-steel-framed vault before her. She reached out and felt the coldness of the iron and steel and then remembered she had a lighter in her pocket, which she reached for. Both boys turned when the lighter flared to life.
“I told you, there’s nothing in there,” Dylan said, giving her boyfriend a dirty look as if blaming him for not keeping the girl on point. He turned his attention back to the unlocked cabinets before him.
The girl kept her free hand on the coldness of the vault’s door. The flame from the lighter showed condensation on the facing of the vault’s door and a funny, silverish smear across the door’s seal. She ran her hand through the moisture and then smelled the wetness that was gathered. She recoiled as if smelling something dead. She quickly wiped the water and funny-feeling paint away and then stepped back as she though she felt the door vibrate before her.
A yelp of happiness filled the darkened basement as the first locker was opened.
“I told you!” Dylan said, not so carefully sliding the large rubber band down on the rolled-up print.
He handed the flashlight to his friend and then unrolled the old movie poster. Even the girl wandered over through the foot of water. She saw the poster, and even she had to smile.
“Unbelievable!” said Dylan. The light caught the colored print and all their young mouths fell open. “The very first one we come across!”
The poster was a famous one from the golden age of Hollywood. The block lettering was wide and bright at the top as the light caught the lithographed rendition of Lon Chaney Jr. in his role of the original Wolf Man. The paper it was printed on was thick, just like Dylan’s grandfather had said to look for.
“It’s was what was known as a four-ply, thirty-two by forty-four print.”
“What does that mean?” the girl asked, moving closer to the beautiful poster as the light played over Lon Chaney’s fierce makeup.
“It means it’s real. Original and one of the most valuable posters in existence. Get it now?”
The girl shot Dylan a dirty look as he let the poster roll back into itself as he reached for another after handing off the Wolf Man once again to the boy staring wide-eyed at the locker, awaiting more great news.
“Whoa, look at this!” he exclaimed as a full-view photo of a helmeted John Wayne met their astonished gaze. “The Sands of Iwo Jima. Can you believe it? Mint condition and dry as a desert sand dune.” He turned and looked at the two. “We’re going to score big on these.” He shoved the poster into the boy’s arms and then jerked the flashlight from his fumbling hand and then shined it into the cabinet. “Look at these! Let’s just hope we can get them in one load.”
The girl gave Dylan’s back a scowl and her boyfriend a shake of her head as she turned back to the vault and struck her lighter once more.
She moved back and examined the door again. For reasons she couldn’t figure out, she was curious beyond belief about this old vault. She tilted her head and looked it over. Her hand holding the lighter moved to the stainless-steel handle on the door. She smiled and reached out for the handle and turned it. To her surprise, it moved as if greased just the day before. It made a loud clack as it was turned to its stops. A loud bang sounded from the inside.
“Would you leave that damn thing alone?” Dylan said. “What did you do?”
“N-n-nothing,” the girl stammered as she stepped back from the heavy iron-and-steel door. The lighter in her hand flickered as if a cold breath of air had struck it. “I … I … turned the locking handle, that’s all.”
The bright light moved to the vault as both boys stepped toward it. Her boyfriend had an armful of rolled-up movie posters. Dylan moved next to the girl as the flashlight examined the vault’s door. He touched the strange silver paint.
“What is it?” the boy asked as he fought to hold all the posters.
“Damn mercury!” Dylan said louder than he had wanted to.
“Mercury? I thought you said that those old stories were just made up,” the boy said as he stepped back from the vault.
The girl was furiously wiping at her pant leg.
Dylan smiled. “I told you not to touch anything.”
The loud bang sounded again, shaking the very foundation they stood upon, enough so that the stinky water that covered their feet and ankles moved in ripples. This time, the light as well as their eyes went to the thick door. The sound had come from inside the vault. They looked from one to the other as they realized for the first time just how dark the basement truly was.
* * *
From the high vantage point above the town, the old mission and winery sat in abject ruin. While an historical eyesore to some, the two buildings had their own aura about them. When viewed, they seemed just two crumbling buildings, but inside, there was a totally different vibe as the cameraman had earlier stated. This vibe was one that few visitors could describe. But one thing they did feel that they knew to be a fact was one of being watched.
One mile away and farther down the hill known as Drunk Monk’s Road, the trespassing trio had just started feeling the strangeness of the steel vault inside the basement of the Grenada. Inside the collapsed building, the winery came alive.
The thirteen tons of roof debris that had col
lapsed the remains of the old winery in 1962 after the explosion of the factory on the opposite hill moved, and dust swirled in the flow and ebb of the draft that reached the lowest section of the ancient ruin. In what was once the root cellar, where barrels were once made by carpenters, there was another vault. This one was six times the size of the smaller version inside the burned theater, only this vault looked more like an old steel box. The debris covering the steel suddenly burst up and out, uncovering the hiding place. The welded-shut double doors of the vault bent outward, creating a crack in the seal, and what was once designed to keep the beast imprisoned failed as it had many, many years before.
As the sun went lower in the west, the darkness once more shot toward the world of the living.
The beast discovered the town had company, and those visitors threatened the one thing it ever cared for.
* * *
The boy nervously moved posters to his other arm and then reached out and pulled his frightened girlfriend away.
“Something just shifted inside is all,” Dylan said as he moved closer to the door. He listened.
This time, the bang was so loud that Dylan fell backward and splashed into the foulness of the rotten wetness. As he spat out the terrible-tasting water from his mouth, the handle on the vault spun crazily. Their eyes widened, and the movie posters, the treasure they had sought, fell from the boy’s arm as the girl flung herself away from Dylan and the vault.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” the boy said as he turned away with the girl.
“Not without my—” Dylan began.
The crying sound was unmistakable. It started slowly at first, and then the sobs became deeper, more frantic. They all turned to the vault’s door once more, and then they knew that something was indeed inside.
The air turned foul as the light from the flashlight in Dylan’s hand slowly died. The heavy crying continued.
“Hey, turn that back on!” the girl cried out. “We have to get someone to help. That may be a child trapped in there.”
In the Still of the Night--The Supernaturals II Page 2