He reached to the floor and slid a weathered brown briefcase toward me.
“Yes, of course. There’s this locked briefcase that requires a code to open. I don’t have the code, but Mort said you would know the correct combination.”
My head searched for numbers as I reached to grab the handle. I placed the case on the table in front of me and spun it so the handle faced me. The only thing I could think of was the combination of 5-6-1-2 that we used for my harness lock. I slid the numbers on top of the case and the tabs sprung up at me.
My heart raced in anticipation when I opened it.
“Here you are.”
I instinctively flinched and shut the case when Honeycutt’s voice rumbled behind me.
He reached around my back and slid the papers in front of me. I had no idea what I’d just signed, but they had the proper name and address and seemed official enough, so I’d signed without reading them. All I thought about was the case on the table in front of me.
He went back around the table to the pile of papers and gathered them into a disheveled stack. “Well, that wasn’t too painful, was it?”
Honeycutt struggled to button his jacket as he stood. He placed his glasses in his coat pocket and extended the bloated right hand in my direction.
“Not at all. So there’s nothing else I need to do?” I reached out to shake his hand.
“Nope. He took care of everything. I’ll submit the proper paperwork and have the deed reissued in your name. You should receive verification in four to six weeks. I’ll stop by Mort’s bank and make the proper changes.”
“Sounds good.”
I led him to the door and held it open as he wobbled his way down the porch steps, pausing at the bottom. “Take care,” he said. “And be safe tonight, Michael. Be safe.” The words hung in the air as he climbed into his car and drove away.
-Chapter 16-
His parting words bounced around in my brain. He’d uttered the exact words Mort had that first day. I remembered the briefcase on the table and went back inside, still wondering why he had used that particular phrase.
I made a cup of coffee and sat down in front of the briefcase. As I placed my hands on the latches, a knock sounded at the door, making me jump.
Making my way to the door and glancing through the peephole, the view revealed a man whose expression was shielded by sunglasses and stringy hair hanging in front of his face. The man’s head swiveled back and forth, and he knocked again, but much harder. Taking off his glasses, he leaned in toward the peephole. His huge pupil peered at me, causing my heart to gallop. He stepped back and raised his right hand with his fingers spread wide, revealing his palm. With his left hand, he traced a circle in the center of his palm and then pointed to it with his index finger.
“What do you want?”
He just stood there, swiveling his head back and forth.
“Go away before I call the cops!”
The empty threat had no effect on the stranger. I opened the door, just until the chain caught, to make myself clearer when his shoulder pressed the door open. I fell to the floor, dazed, but managed to scramble back to my feet. I ran after him as he went into the kitchen and grabbed the briefcase. He spun the locks to the proper combination and spilled the contents onto the table. He picked up a key of some kind and pulled it close to his chest. Standing in the doorway, blocking his exit, I wasn’t about to let him leave the kitchen with anything he hadn’t brought in with him. “Put that down and get the hell out of here before I call the cops!”
His dilated pupils focused on me for a second before he rushed at me. I braced for the impact, but instead he shoved the key into my chest, forcing me to grab it from him. I spun to the side as he rushed past and leapt from the front porch. I caught myself and ran after him, but I couldn’t catch him and he disappeared around the corner.
I stood in the middle of the street while my heartbeat steadied, and the adrenaline ran its course. I squeezed the key in my hand and walked back to the house.
In the kitchen, I shuffled through the items he’d spilled onto the table; the key, a small pile of papers, and a weathered photograph of Mort holding a baby.
The key looked like it opened a safety deposit box of some kind. It had FCB stamped on one side and 373 on the other. The paperwork Honeycutt left had an account at First Community Bank. It didn’t take too much to figure out there must have been a safety deposit box waiting for me. I set that aside and moved on to the papers.
They consisted of closing documents from when Mort had bought the house and a few random pages with writing scribbled on them.
The picture showed Mort holding a baby in a hospital. Someone lay in the bed behind him, but Mort obscured the person’s face. He had such a look of sincerity as he held the infant close to his face. My first thought was that it may have been his child, but he’d never made mention of having a child. Maybe something happened to the baby, but when I flipped the picture over, I saw the date stamp: December 10, 1987. My birthday.
I wondered if my mother was in the bed behind him. Why had she kept him a secret from me? Obviously, he was close with my parents, so why had I never met him?
The key caught the corner of my eye, and I snatched it off the table. Standing up, leaving the picture and papers in place, I grabbed my car keys from the counter before heading out the door.
-Chapter 17-
On my way to the bank, I passed the library and spotted the guy that had burst into my house sitting on the bus bench on the opposite side of the road. I parked in the lot behind the bench and walked up to confront the guy.
“Hey! Hey you!” I walked through the bushes separating the parking lot from the sidewalk. “Don’t you hear me?”
The man turned in my direction but looked around as if he wasn’t the only one there. He sat up but didn’t attempt to run or approach me.
“Me? What’s the matter? Do I know you?”
I walked up and snatched the glasses from his face.
“Hey man, who do you think you are?”
“I’m the guy whose house you broke in to.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about”
His demeanor wasn’t that of a guilty man. He didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. “Sorry, I thought you were someone else.” I turned and walked away.
“That’s alright, buddy. You should be careful though. You might do that to the wrong guy and get your ass kicked.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry man,” I said over my shoulder as I headed back to where I’d parked.
I sat in the car and watched as the man headed down the street. He didn’t seem to have any recollection of barging into my house earlier in the day. How did he know the combination to the briefcase and what had he meant by drawing the circle on his palm? He’d acted as if he had no recollection of me and it dawned on me that someone might have bridged him. Someone else wanted me to have that key.
I pulled into the bank and passed Honeycutt as he left the parking lot. I snickered at the sight of such a big man in so small a car.
Mr. Barnes stood talking with a teller when I walked into the lobby.
“Michael, it’s good to see you.”
I reached to shake his extended hand.
“I’m here to access my safety deposit box.”
His brow furrowed, and his back straightened.
“Sure, have a seat.”
The lines in his forehead told me he was curious as to how I had become the owner of Mort’s deposit box.
“So, Mr. Honeycutt just delivered the paperwork establishing you as an account manager, along with Mr. Bell.”
My brow wrinkled, but I went along with it. Honeycutt must have had a reason to set it up that way.
“We’ve become close the past few days, and he has no other family. Since he isn’t getting any younger, he wanted to have someone to take care of his affairs if anything happened to him.” I slid the key across the desk to Barnes. “Let’s take a look.”
“Sure. First though, we need to input your ID to give you access.”
He reached into a cabinet behind his desk and pulled out a hard plastic sleeve.
“This type of account requires a higher level of security. Just slide your finger into the sleeve and hold still.”
I stuck my right index finger into the sleeve and held it while a red light pulsed for about thirty seconds. The light went off, and he removed the sleeve.
“This will just take a minute.”
He tapped away at his keyboard before he reached up and shut off the screen. Barnes cleared his throat, handed me my key, stood from behind his desk, and pointed me down a narrow hallway.
“Shall we?”
We headed down the long corridor, passing a cage full of small lock boxes, and continued to a large vault at the end of the hallway. He stepped in front of the lock, and the keypad beeped with each digit he pressed. Two flashing lights and a mechanical snap confirmed the proper code.
“After you.” He waved me through.
The narrow doorway gave way to a sprawling room full of doors of various widths, though they all reached the full height of the eight-foot ceiling. Some were the breadth of lockers, and others that of a closet door. Tiny red lights flashed beside each handle and once we stepped inside, the door sealed behind us.
He led me to an elevator at the far end of the room. He placed his index finger on the keypad, and the doors slid open. We stepped in, and the door closed. Barnes pushed the only option, my stomach rose as the elevator dropped.
We stopped within seconds, and the door slid open. Barnes stepped out without saying a word. The dimly lit room was much smaller and had only four large doors. Each one had a blinking red light with its own rhythm.
I followed Barnes to the door on our left. He went over the instructions with me.
“Okay, insert your key here, place your index finger on the keypad and the door will open. Remember to remove your key before you go in, you’ll need it to leave.”
I stepped to the door, retrieved the key from my pocket, and inserted it into the lock. As promised, the seal on the door broke with a hiss. Barnes stood over my shoulder as I reached for the handle. I turned and raised a brow to him. He took the hint and cleared his throat while he backed away.
“Just come back the way you came when you’re done. I’ll wait upstairs.”
Barnes left and I dropped the key back into my pocket. Nudging the door open, I stepped inside and the door sealed behind me.
-Chapter 18-
The room was nearly empty. A couple of small boxes were stacked in the corner and a larger metal box with a keyed padlock sat in the center.
I went to the smaller boxes and took the lid off the top one. It was full of scattered photographs of Mort. I fished through the pictures and noticed some where he appeared to be younger including one picture of him at a party dated January 5, 1975.
It must have been his birthday. People surrounded him and he stood in the middle of the group with a crooked “Happy Birthday” hat strapped to his head. Something caught my eye in that particular picture. He held a beer mug in his left hand and his right hand faced the camera, as if telling the photographer to stop. I brought the picture close to my face and confusion wrinkled my brow. He had no mark in the center of his palm. The hairs tickled at the back of my neck, and I stuck the picture in my pocket.
I grabbed one of the other boxes with photographs and made my way to the door, sticking the box under my arm. After fishing the key from my pocket, I stuck it into the lock, the door released open, and I headed down the hallway. I finally made it through the labyrinth beneath the bank and into the main lobby. Barnes sat at his desk when I made my way through the bank.
“You get everything you needed?” he asked as he stood from his chair and followed behind me.
“I sure did. Thanks.”
“Have a good day.”
I pushed my back against the glass doors. “Thanks.”
The crazy idea came to me on my way home. I dropped the photographs from the bank on the table and went up to my room. I opened my nightstand and pulled mom’s trace out from under the balled-up socks.
Mort had never told me exactly how to go about bridging, I’d done it once by accident, and it nearly killed me. I remembered when he bridged me and he put my hand over the stove. I tried to recall everything he’d done.
Sitting back on the couch and closing my eyes, my fingers closed around the trace and my body became light. I focused my thoughts on Mr. Barnes, and the room went silent, except for the pulse in my ears.
A pounding force hammered my chest, causing air to escape my lungs. The pain made my ears ring before my eyes were forced open by an emerald flash. I inhaled deeply, trying to clear the pain from my chest. My vision settled into a green-tinted version of an office. I looked over the computer screen to a row of tellers standing behind a glass wall across from me. I had bridged Mr. Barnes. I hadn’t given much thought to what I would do if I bridged him, so I just sat there for a minute.
“Mr. Barnes? Are you okay?”
A beautiful young woman stood to my right.
“You don’t look so good.”
It took a second to realize she waited for Mr. Barnes’ response: my response.
“Oh yes, I’m fine. Sorry, I must have dazed off for a second.” I decided to have a little fun as Barnes. “I’m much better now that you’re standing next to me.” I winked my left eye.
The young blonde girl narrowed her eyes and stood taller before walking away. The corners of my mouth rose as I realized I’d caused a little trouble for him. It felt weird being in someone else’s skin. Standing from the chair, I immediately noticed the added weight took more effort to move. Even swiveling my head from side to side took extra effort. Barnes wasn’t obese like Honeycutt, but he could stand to lose a few pounds. I sat back down to the groaning objections of the springs in the chair.
I shuffled through the papers on his desk, even though I had no idea what they meant. A folder with my name on it sat on his desk so I opened the file to find the closing documents from when Mort had bought the house. As I sifted through the papers, a few pictures of me leaving my house fell from between the pages.
A voice came from behind me. “Mr. Barnes?”
The contents of the folder threw off my concentration, and my mind got away from me. My breathing accelerated, I had no idea how to undo what I had done by bridging Barnes. My thoughts were scattered as I tried to concentrate on things Mort had told me. Squeezing my eyes shut, I did the only thing that came to mind: I thought of the living room where my body rested while I took my little field trip into Barnes’s mind.
It didn’t take long before my chest burned, and the green-tinted vision closed around me. The pulse slammed me in the chest, and my eyes shut while I returned to my body, a sensation of my body soaring backward through space. A cold wind washed over me and rushed against my skin.
My chest burned when I took a deep breath, clearing the pain that lingered in my lungs. I sat for a moment, allowing my mind to catch up with my body. My clenched fingers unfolded, revealing my mother’s trace. However, that wasn’t the only thing as I rolled the stone from my palm; the oblong mark in the center of my palm glowed a deep and vibrant green.
I brought my palm closer to my face and noticed web-like lines radiating from the outer edges. Soon, the glow dissipated. First, the lines became shorter, and then the oblong shape in the center shrunk. Seconds later, only a dark emerald pinpoint remained in the center of my palm. It glowed for an instant before disappearing into the pinkish skin of my palm.
I’d had enough excitement for the day and decided to go to bed and face the next day with fresh eyes and mind.
-Chapter 19-
The next morning, I sat at the table going through the pictures in the box from the bank. I lined them up in chronological order, and by the date stamps on the pictures I determined that
some time around 1964 Mort had stopped aging. As I shuffled through the pictures, the hand-written pages from the briefcase caught my eye. A tear slid down my cheek when I saw the date at the top one of the crumpled pages.
November 21, 2011
Tonight is the worst night of my life. I have no one to talk to, so I’m writing this down in order keep some sort of sanity about me.
Alice and Jon are gone. They died tonight in a horrible car crash on their way home, when Jon lost control over the car. Alice told me Mallen had been visiting her in her sleep again. Alice forced him away, and he began to harass Jon as a result. Mallen has bridged Jon several times over the last few weeks and he is the reason Jon lost control. I told Mallen to leave them alone, but he just doesn’t know when to quit.
Alice had been trying to contact me the entire night, but I went searching for Mallen and missed her attempts. When I couldn’t find Mallen, I feared the worst, and I bridged to Alice just in time to see it happen. I entered Alice and Jon looked over to me with that wicked grin and those colorless eyes. He jerked the car from left to right until it finally spun out of control. Mallen laughed while the car twisted and turned its way upside down. Jon flew from the car while Alice remained trapped. Jon’s body was torn in half and he had no chance at survival. I watched through Alice’s eyes as Mallen released himself.
Alice remained trapped in the wreckage. We tried everything to break free, but we couldn’t. I stayed with Alice until her soul was gone, and her mind shut down, forcing me from her.
I will never forget the pain and anguish she endured in those final moments. I felt every bit of it. Her thoughts were full of her son who sat just out of reach, unable to help, watching the entire event unfold.
I made a promise to Alice that I would take care of Michael should anything happen to her and Jon. I will keep that promise through my dying day.
The Somnibus: Book I - Finding the Mark (A Paranormal Thriller) Page 6