by Bill Bunn
“I’m not coming.”
“Yes you are.”
“I’m not, and you really can’t make me do anything. I want to know what I should do next.”
“I don’t think it’s safe,” Larry insisted.
“I don’t think I have a life until this gets sorted out. So I’m not coming home until we get somewhere.”
Steve heard a heavy sigh on the other end of the phone. “You guys don’t listen to anything I say.” Steve smiled to himself, pleased to have held his ground. “If you’re going to stay, look for some kind of clue in the warehouse area—a piece of paper or something that has an address on it.”
Steve’s eyes surfed the inside of the warehouse, looking for likely spots for paper. He spotted an office-like square in the side of the warehouse and began to move cautiously towards it. He shuffled through the dusty wasteland of the warehouse and arrived outside the office. A sign on the door read “Shipping Office.”
“It’s a shipping office,” Steve muttered into the phone.
“Excellent, Steve. There’ll probably be something in there. That’s a good place.”
He tried the door but it was locked. “The door is locked. I’m going to open it Aunt Shannon’s way,” he reported. Steve gripped the door handle and instead of speaking the words he thought them.
Lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock.
Bright light stabbed the dim warehouse air; the door handle turned into an odd-shaped clock. Steve stepped into the dark office. His latest discovery warmed his cold body—he was learning a little more about his stone’s power every time he used it.
Inside the shipping office, old binders and reams of paper covered the floor. He walked behind a service counter into a small office area where an old desk sat, covered with magazines, with paper cuttings littering the floor. Steve pawed through the papers on the floor and the scraps, looking for something that might give him a hint as to his location.
“I’m looking for something with an address on it.” He scanned the room looking for something, anything. There were old computer printouts of some kind of inventory, there was information listed on paper, but there was nothing that seemed to speak clearly as to where he was. He spied a trashcan, tipped over in an opposite corner behind the counter. Steve crossed the sea of paper, righted the can, and picked through the contents. Most of the paper was balled, so he set about flattening each piece carefully and holding it to a small patch of light coming through one of the dusty overhead windows in the roof of the warehouse.
“This one has an address on it.” Steve adjusted his stance to give the crumpled paper more light. “It says J.C. Steel Ltd., 118 Millarville Road, Turner Valley.”
“What about the other papers?” Larry asked. “That could be a note from another company.”
Steve unfolded several more. Most of the sheets of paper had the J.C. Steel logo on them.
“Most of the paper says the same thing,” Steve said.
“Then that’s probably exactly where you are. Just a second, Steve.” He heard the phone clunk heavily. Suddenly Larry’s out of breath voice returned. “You’re at least a hundred miles away,” said the detective in an amazed tone of voice. “Let me Google you again to be sure. Just a second.” The phone popped again as Larry set it down. “Let me see.” Steve could hear the clack of the keys as Larry typed. “You’re over here. Hmm.”
Steve heard a bumping sound from somewhere in the warehouse. He dropped silently where he stood, scanning what he could see of the warehouse through the bottom of the dusty windows.
“OK, J.C. Steel is out in the country. It has open fields across from it. It looks abandoned. I think we’ve found you. The front of the building is brick, right? The back is a steel warehouse.” Steve didn’t reply. “Steve, are you still on the line?”
“I’m here,” Steve replied with a faint whisper. “That sounds like the building. I just heard a noise and I’m checking it out.” Steve sat and waited in silence for a few minutes.
“OK. I think the coast is clear,” Steve whispered.
“It’s time to come home. You can check out of there now. You’ve done a great job.”
“I’m not coming,” Steve replied firmly. “What do you want me to do next?”
“Steve, if you saw what you saw, and if the gang is really still in the building, you’re probably in grave danger.”
“You’re going to head out this way, aren’t you?”
“Well, yeah. I’ve got to get the people here going and chat with the police force where you are…but it’s going to take a few hours before we show up.”
“I’m going to stay here until you come and pick me up,” Steve insisted. “So give me something else to do. Do you hear me?”
“Gotcha,” Larry said in a low voice. “You stubborn guy. I’ll give you something else to do, but just realize that you’re doing it at your own risk. I suggested you return, and you refused. You’re both my witnesses.”
“Agreed,” Steve muttered, scanning the warehouse carefully again.
“Now that we think we’ve found them, it’d be nice to confirm they’re there. Plus, it’d be good to know whether Lindsay and your Uncle Edward are with them.” There was a pause and Steve heard Aunt Shannon mutter some unintelligible words. “Your Aunt Shannon just discovered that J.C. Steel has been defunct for the past few years—the number is out of service and has been for a long time. She also mentioned that it might not be the place where Lindsay and Uncle Edward are being kept. The ransom note would take you to the heart of the kidnappers’ world, she said. Edward and Lindsay might be confined somewhere else.”
Steve tried to swallow the lump in his throat. “I’m not liking the sound of what you’re saying. You want me to get into the other part of the building and try and find Uncle Edward and Lindsay?”
“You’re the one who wants to stay. What needs to be done should be done by professionals, so quit and come home.”
Steve sighed and thought for a moment. “I’m going to do it. I need to do this.”
“You’re insane. Don’t do this.”
“I’ve got to. I’m staying,” Steve declared quietly.
Silence as Larry fumbled around for a moment. “The other difficulty we have is this: we have to muster a group of police officers to swoop in and back you up. That means I need to make a few phone calls and drive up there myself. So I’ve got to hang up for a while. I can reach you on that cell phone you have, and I’ll contact you when we’re all ready to go. It’ll probably be a couple of hours to get everything together. I’ll give you a call and you can tell me what’s going on inside the building. We’ll work out a plan from there. Got it?”
“Got it,” Steve whispered.
“Please do me a favor, do yourself a favor. Just hide and take it easy until I get back to you, all right?”
“Sure.” Steve listened to the phone on the other end click and go dead. As the sound died away in the cell phone’s speaker, Steve’s heart floundered.
These next few hours are going to be agony.
His ears hummed with silence as he listened for sounds of a human presence.
That bumping sound must have been a mouse or a rat or something.
For a few minutes, Steve weighed the pros and cons of waiting against a little exploration. But his backpack brought him some confidence.
Even if they catch me, I could always disappear with my stone.
And with this thought, he felt the grip of fear loosen a little.
He scanned the warehouse through the dirt-caked windows again. He couldn’t see anyone or anything. He waited, just to be safe. Nothing.
After another fifteen-minute eternity, he decided to explore the warehouse.
I can’t handle waiting around like this.
He stood and tiptoed to the shipping office’s door, opened it, and scanned the space. His breath wafted like little ghosts around his head.
The door to the rest of the bu
ilding—I need to find it.
He worked his way up the side of the warehouse closest to the office wing he had seen outside. He loosened his coat, as nerves warmed his body to a near boil.
There has to be some kind of entrance or some kind of sign to help me find it.
As he walked towards a far door he heard a burst of sound, like footsteps running towards him just to his right side. Steve froze in his shoes and forced himself to turn and look. A frightened pigeon clacked away from a small cloud of frozen dust on the floor, to find the safer heights of the warehouse.
Steve let out a white, smoky breath and continued.
As for an entrance into the administrative wing of the building, there was one solid possibility. A set of heavy metal double doors with small glass windows, located in the middle of the warehouse’s inside wall, seemed to guard the entrance to some kind of a hallway.
He stalled for a minute as he remembered the two small clocks joined by a chain in his backpack. He slid the bag partway off his back, and put one hand in carefully and fished around carefully for the alarm clock. When he found it he pulled it out, and put it into his other hand. Then he put his hand back into his bag, pawing around for his plaque. When he found it, he thought the transformative words, and the clock burst into a ball of light, falling from his hand to the floor. A small tornado of dust pulled from the floor circled him. And in the settling dust, he reached down and pulled a shimmering set of handcuffs from the dirt. He placed them in the backpack carefully, so as not to damage his plaque. Then he gently swung the pack onto his shoulders.
The cuffs might come in handy.
Steve crept close to the doors. The windows were dark. For a minute or two he balled up his courage, then used it to take a look through the small pane of glass in the left door.
The hallway was dark, so Steve couldn’t tell if it led into the other part of the building. It didn’t look promising. He stepped back and looked around the warehouse carefully again. Towards the far end of the warehouse there was a sign that read “Manager,” with an arrow underneath pointing to a single metal door blocking the entrance to another hallway. The door had a long narrow window, but he couldn’t see through it.
He looked around the walls of the warehouse for any other doors that seemed as though they might do the job. The double doors seemed like a more likely entrance to the rest of the building. Steve retraced his path to the double doors. His eyes raked over the ground nearest the door looking for fresh footprints. The arc of a door inscribed in the dust indicated that one of the doors had been opened fairly recently. Clusters of footprints surrounded the entrance, but it was difficult to tell if they were recent. As he toured another possible entrance, a single door at the far end of the same wall, he noted fewer footprints around the door’s foot and a sheen of dust resting on the surface of the door, something he hadn’t seen on the other door. The set of double doors looked like the best option, so he took up his position next to them again.
Steve took a breath and forced himself to look again through the small glass window in the door. No one seemed to be in the hallway.
With the heel of his hand, Steve scrubbed the glass in one of the windows and stared through the door-glass one more time. No one. He slid his hand across the door lock and thought the transforming words while he touched the plaque with his other hand. Bright light focused in the door lock and radiated into a fierce blast of light that shot through the warehouse and up the hallway.
Once Steve recognized the face of a clock where the lock had been, he ducked around the corner and hid in a crevice in the warehouse wall, waiting for some kind of reaction. The light was so bright that anyone wandering close by would have noticed the flash.
Steve waited another while, listening carefully for any kind of sound. Cautiously, Steve returned to the double doors, opened one, and slipped inside. The hallway before him looked deserted. Fresh footprints dotted the thick layer of dust.
No heat.
Maybe the entire place is empty except for a security guard. Maybe I saw a security guard.
Steve glanced towards the door. He thought for a moment, and then touched the lock that had transformed into a clock. He touched the plaque in his pack and thought the transforming sequence again. The clock in the door looked rather odd and would arouse suspicion, so Steve changed it back in case someone came down this way looking for things out of order.
About thirty feet beyond Steve, the hallway veered to the left. Steve crept up the hallway to a darkened door, and sank into the door’s recess. He waited, listening. He heard nothing for several minutes. And then a gentle thumping sound.
It seemed remote, so Steve stepped back into the hallway and continued up to the corner of the building.
Then he heard voices, the voices of men talking as they walked. The voices were faint and their feet tick-tacked over the floor in some far-off place. The voices seemed to be getting closer. Steve retreated to the darkened doorway and listened. The voices and steps grew louder.
Steve tried the door latch. It opened easily. Darkness greeted him.
He stepped through and closed it behind him. A musty, odd scent irritated his nostrils. He pressed his ear to the door and listened as a muddy slur of voices and tick-tacking footsteps approached. Steve couldn’t make out the words; whatever they were saying sounded like another language. He heard the voices pass and walk around the corner. The two jabbered as they completed some task, then passed Steve’s hiding spot again. He waited until the silence returned.
Weird smell.
The smell, though, seemed somehow familiar. As the smell wafted into his thoughts, he remembered smelling the same thing at school in his biology class.
Formaldehyde.
His inquisitive nature got the best of him, and he switched on the light. Fluorescent lights flickered before they buzzed into a solid white.
The room was used for storage. Jars filled with liquid lined every shelf, covering every wall. Two huge rows of shelves divided the interior of the room into thirds. He stifled the simultaneous urge to scream and throw up.
The jars contained pieces of human bodies. A human heart, pickled in a jar above him. A brain floating in a large glass jar. He turned to scan the room. His eye caught a particularly gruesome jar displaying a head severed just below the neck, eyes removed. Another jar held a hand with no skin covering the bone and muscle. The jar beside that one housed a human fetus. Steve stopped looking so closely and scanned the rest of the room. Spare parts.
Got to get out of here.
He switched the light off. Cracked the door. Listening. Silence. He stepped through the door and closed it silently behind him. He edged along the wall of the hallway, until he met another set of double doors with big windows. This time the windows were clean, and so was the floor on the other side. The hallway empty.
He didn’t want to step through those doors, but he knew he had to. He thumbed the latch on the handle—it opened easily. He pulled the door open and stepped onto the clean, checkered linoleum.
The hallway on the other side of the doors was heated. Steve instantly felt as though he had caught fire.
He crept along the wall of the hallway looking for an open door. He tried the door and found his way into a huge meeting room. A giant table took up most of the room, leaving space for only a few chairs around its edge.
Not much of a place to hide.
He closed the door and slunk further up the hall. He found another unlocked door. The inside was dark, but with the hallway lights he could make out some shelving loaded with stores. A janitor closet, walls of shelves, filled with cleaning supplies and equipment. Approaching steps. He closed the door behind him and dug in behind a couple of large boxes on a bottom shelf.
A hand tried the doorknob, opened the door, and knuckled the light on. A large, stubby pair of hands reached for a mop and bucket.
A man.
The hands guided the bucket out in front of a sink and dropped a hose into it. The
man muttered under his breath bitterly, in another language. He poured some kind of liquid into the bucket and turned a tap, splashing water into the mop bucket. A few pine-scented minutes later, he turned the tap off and guided the mop and bucket out of the closet. Light off. Off, down the hall. Steve watched the man leave without closing the door.
He waited until the sound of the rolling mop bucket wheels had faded. He moved the boxes aside carefully and slipped into the hallway. Following the direction that the man and the mop had taken, he moved further up the hallway. He crinkled his nose as a waft of some strange chemical drifted past. He could hear sounds of activity behind some of the walls and doors he passed.
A door on his left looked unused. A big sign beside the door read “Sterile Laboratory.” The room was dark, but he could still make out beakers, test tubes, tubing, and funnels. Steve cupped his hand to his ear and pressed it against the door glass. Silence. He tried to open the door. Locked. He touched the lock and grabbed his stone.
The lock burst into a ball of light as it transformed into a clock. Steve pushed open the door. Once he was inside, he touched the clock, transforming it back into a lock. Inside the first door there was a second door. The door read “Warning: Sterile Area. Scrub down and change to proper attire before entering.” Steve pushed open the second door and entered the room. Beakers, test tubes, and machines lay around workbenches, as if someone had just gone for a lunch break, laying down his or her tools, leaving the work still spread out. Plastic covered everything. One bench had several ceramic dishes that looked as though they’d been heated to an unearthly temperature. The material inside the dishes was burnt beyond all recognition.
The contents of the ceramic dishes looked similar to the pictures he had seen in Aunt Shannon’s alchemy book. Someone was trying to make a Benu stone the old-fashioned way—by burning substances until they were completely pure. Steve walked around the lab, being careful not to disturb any of the work-in-progress.
Sounds of a key being pushed into the lock of the lab door made him duck behind a workbench. The door to the lab opened, and several people walked in wearing sterile clothing—hairnets, facemasks, uniforms, and special cloth footwear. They were discussing something in great detail. The lights in the lab flickered on.