Chapter 5
After Blake had gone, Chuck and Gail were putting away the dishes and straightening the kitchen when she said, “You know, this whole thing about your grandfather is interesting. Your family is filled with mystery, murder, and intrigue. It would make a good book or movie script.”
Chuck laughed. “I never thought of that. That may be why Matt was writing it all down.”
“You think he did? Is it all on the computer in the bedroom?”
“Probably, or at least, most of it could be on that machine. He also wrote at the mill office sometimes. I guess he had to move the newer material to a disk or jump drive and copy it here.”
“Do you mind if I look tonight? Curiosity is getting the best of me and I don’t think I could sleep until I read some of his material.”
“Sure, but I think he runs the documents through an old copy of Word or some similar dinosaur program. It's similar to the Mac based stuff we use at the newspaper.”
Gail remarked. “I know how to operate Word. I used that starting with Office 97.”
Chuck was embarrassed. “Sorry. Matt and I learned computers on the old DOS 3.2 and even an old VIC 20 Commodore our dad bought us to type homework with.”
Gail snorted, “God. I remember those systems. My Uncle gave me a 64 Commodore and its inherent BASIC language. That machine was the eighth wonder of the world at the time.”
“Ha. Claudia, my Aunt on my mother’s side, thought the computer was a tool of the devil. She also didn’t watch television much. She couldn’t get beyond the RCA radio days of yore I guess.”
“What? You’re kidding!”
“Honest, she kept an old RCA floor model radio in her bedroom and listened to it at night. If you don’t believe me then go look in the middle bedroom. It’s standing in one corner. She gave it to me and Matt before she died.”
“You’ve still got an old floor model radio? Does it work?”
“It works, or it did last time I was here. It is in mint condition. Somebody offered Matt a thousand dollars for it a while back. He asked me if I needed the cash and I told him yes, but I’d rob a bank before selling that radio.”
Gail looked thoughtful. “I’ll bet it’s worth a fortune in antique value.”
Chuck placed the last dish in the dishwasher, closed the door, and twisted the cycle switch to on. “That old radio is worth a lot more than money. I can still remember walking into her room at night when Matt and I would stay over at her place. She’d be sitting in a rocking chair, sewing or knitting, rocking, and listening to whatever decent music she could find on the old AM bands.”
“I didn’t think she’d be listening to Rock stations or anything. I bet she was partial to WLS or maybe W1AW in Nashville.”
“I forget but I think it was the Nashville station. Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones kind of country music but once I caught her with the dial on the big bands and easy listening.” Chuck was enjoying the memories of his Aunt.
Gail hung the dishtowel she had been using on a counter rack and then turned to Chuck. “Can we go fire up Matt’s computer? I’m dying to get started.”
Without thinking, Chuck reached out and took her hands. They were soft and warm, slightly damp from the sink water. “You do realize that it’s almost one in the morning?”
Gail, not trying to pull her hands away, smiled, “So? In another sixty minutes or so, it will be 2:00 am.
Chuck released one of her hands and with the other; he tugged her down the hallway. “Okay...come on and I’ll pour some kerosene in Matt’s old machine to get it running for you.”
“Kerosene, uh, is the computer that old? I haven’t seen a kerosene fired CPU in a long, long time.”
“Humor,” Chuck realized. “She uses humor to release tension just like I do.”
Reaching the doorway he left open, he reached an arm inside and turned on the lights. “Okay. It’s in here.”
The room was large with a double bed against one wall and dresser with mirror beside it. A chest of drawers was against the opposite wall. There was abundant floor open floor space and gave the room an airy feel. Close to the bedside table was a computer desk with a white monitor sitting on top.
“Is this a picture tube monitor? No, LCD Flat screen?”
“It’s an old tube job but don’t worry. You will hardly notice the difference from the fancy one at work once you fall asleep.”
“Its fine and besides, I spent two years staring at a similar one. When I switched to LCD I thought my eyes were going to explode.”
Chuck flipped the power strip switch on and stood back to watch the computer boot. The monitor flickered and Gail said, “It’s been a while since I ran one this old. I hope it’s like riding a bicycle.”
“It’s a good machine but slow as pond water compared to modern ones.”
They stood watching as the monitor screen came alive with the Windows XP OS system logo. Chuck pulled the desk chair outward and then motioned for Gail to sit. “You can drive from here. Have fun.”
Gail sat down in the chair, stared at the monitor a second, then clicked on the Word desktop icon. “Let’s start at the beginning," she mumbled once the program was up and running. She used the file history function and brought up the most recent one Matt had been using. Chuck leaned over and the soft smell of her hair wafted through his nostrils. He glanced over the data for a moment and said, “This is it. Matt wrote it a long time ago from a few notes our dad kept. This will explain the general history but none of this is documented facts. A lot of it is just our dad's speculation spiced up by Matt’s own theories.”
Gail nodded and then looked at Chuck. “Okay why don’t you go ahead and grab some sleep? You’ve got to meet Blake in a few hours.”
Chuck felt a twinge of despair. He didn’t want to sleep. He wanted to spend all the time he could with her but common sense dictated he grab some shut eye. “Okay, you’re right, I am tired.”
Chuck turned to leave, hesitated in the doorway, “If you need anything I’ll be in the living room. Don’t go out the back door again unless you cut off the alarm system.”
Without turning away from the screen, Gail held up a hand, “Okay. I can disarm the alarm when I go get my stuff out of the car.”
“I forgot about that, okay, I’ll get our stuff right now. Be back in a minute.”
Gail already engulfed in the material before her, simply waved a hand in the air. He turned and left her staring intently at the computer screen.
A few moments later, he was outside opening the back door of the car and reaching for Gail’s suitcase. That’s when he thought he saw something move at the end of the yard near the old barn. Slowly, he lowered the bag back onto the seat and closed the door quietly. “The barn" he thought. "I haven’t been inside the place in a long time. Could there be any clues to Matt’s disappearance inside?”
He followed an old footpath through the trees toward the dark building. The night air was clear and less stifling than earlier. The old barn was a light red with white trim and the exterior boards were made of wide, rough-cut lumber from the mill. With the yard light at his back, his shadow against the barn wall grew taller as he got closer to the building. There were two double doors on the front, each about five feet wide with horizontal planks held together by cross braces. A long, wide board served as a latch and hook that kept the door closed. Chuck grabbed the latch and lifted, then pulled at the right side door. It opened with an ear-piercing squeak from the hinges, “Hope that doesn’t scare Gail.”
When the door was just wide enough to slip through, he looked back at the house, and then stepped inside the darkness. He reached and found the light switch where he remembered it and pushed it upward. From the overhead ceiling, a neon shop light sputtered alive and the ballast transformer started humming angrily.
The barn was twenty feet wide and thirty deep. There were no interior walls so the back of the exterior boards was visible in several places; one could see where red paint had dripped th
rough a few of the cracks between boards. The frame of the building, constructed from heavy oak cut into four by six inch studs, was firm and solid. Matt often said the barn would be a safer place to hide during a tornado than the house and he was probably right.
Taking up much of the open floor area was a car, a 1951 Chevy. Matt had been restoring it for several years and it was almost finished. It was beautiful with a deep, charcoal black coat of paint and full chrome bumpers. Over each side of the windshield were shade hoods that gave the illusion of the car having eyebrows. The car once belonged to his mother’s sister, Chuck’s Aunt Claudia, the one he’d been telling Gail about earlier.
On one wall, a selection of farm and garden tools hung each using nails or railroad pegs. Something there caught Chuck’s eye as he scanned across them slowly. There were two empty spaces among the tools. He could tell the tools had recently been there because their faded outlines had faded the wood behind them. Stepping closer he checked the dirt floor underneath the rack to see if they had fallen there. Nothing, so he moved closer to check the outlined shapes of the tools and recognized a shovel and pickaxe, or mad axe as he called them, was missing.
“Why would Matt not put the tools back up?”
His brother was a stickler for taking care of work tools and unlike many others, when he finished with a tool he returned it to the proper storage place. All the other tools were hanging there so only those two implements were missing.
The graveyard, Matt had told him that there might be a paper inside their Grandfather's casket to prove everything. Had he done something so gruesome? “Matt?” Chuck said aloud. “What on earth have you gotten into?”
The barn door hinges suddenly squeaked loudly and the door moved open a bit wider than before. Chuck spun around and looked, goose bumps exploding all over his body. A small, soft white hand and fingers appeared followed by a familiar face peeping around the edges of the frame. “Chuck?” “Hey” he answered quickly with relief in his tone. “I’m over here. Come on in.”
She stepped inside the barn and looked around. “Wow, I don’t keep my living room this neat and straight. Matt is a real neatnik, isn’t he?”
“Yea, he is and knowing that has given me a hint on something.”
He moved closer to Gail and pointed at the tools on the wall. “There are a couple of tools missing from that rack. A shovel and pick axe. I don’t see them propped up inside so I guess Matt left them out somewhere and that’s not like him at all.”
Gail folded her arms together and shivered. Chuck rubbed his hands up and down her arms and said, “You’re cold? It has to be 90 degrees in here. What’s wrong?”
“No, I’m not cold, I’m just, well; I’m just feeling something now but it’s nothing.”
He pulled her chin upward, looked into her eyes, and could see that she was upset and nervous. “Okay. What’s this feeling you had that’s upsetting you so much right now?”
She pulled away and turned her back. “I wouldn’t have said anything if I wasn’t so tired. It’s as I told you before. I have this knack for sensing things around me.”
Chuck placed a hand on her shoulder and gently turned her back to face him but Gail spoke first, “My mother was like this. She could pick up feelings out of a room or from an object in her hand. I’ve been doing it ever since I can remember. I told a couple of friends about it back in school and they laughed. I don’t read feelings and emotions from someone’s mind so much as I sense them from...from...”
“You sense them from objects or the emitting ions of the woodwork.” Chuck said finishing her statement. “My Aunt Claudia could place an object in the palm of her hand and read or see things from it. I’ve tried it a hundred times and got nothing. Doesn’t work for me but I do know it works so I believe you. Just tell me, what you’re picking up here in the barn?”
Gail shrugged and looked around. Her eyes locked on the old car. “Something is coming from that car. It’s strong too.”
He turned and looked at the Chevy. “Are we talking a Stephen King and his ‘57 Plymouth type feeling?”
“Don’t poke fun, Chuck. I thought you just said that you understand this kind of thing.”
“I’m sorry. I was trying to lighten up the mood here. I didn’t mean that. What I meant is, well, I do know that ESP and psychic reception is real.”
Gail stepped closer to the car, placed her hand on the dark hood, “Matt loves this car. He’s proud of it and so are you.”
“Yes. An old favorite Aunt gave it to us and we restored it back to factory condition. Matt would not sell it for love or money. Is something coming from it? What is it?”
“A while ago as I was reading Matt’s files on the computer, I felt someone’s hand on my shoulder. At first, I thought I sensed it being Matt but then I realized this was an older person, much older, but the sense was of Matt somehow. The touch wasn’t threatening, but the emotions behind it seemed that way.”
“Then why did it scare you out of the house? When I first saw you out here I thought you had heard the barn door creaking open and got spooked or something.”
“No. I didn’t hear that. What scared me is that nothing like this has happened to me before. The visions I see and sense are from the past, like a recording that my mind plays back. That hand I felt on my shoulder was real but they were not of our present day and time. I guess all that frightened me so I came looking for you and saw the light.”
She leaned her head onto his chest and whispered. “This sounds so silly. I know.”
Resting his chin on the top of her head, Chuck said, “No. It’s not silly. I could tell you all kinds of stuff that has happened around here similar to that. I wonder why the touch from the hand was assuring.”
They stood there for a few moments, and then he said, “Come on, let’s get our things out of the car and get some rest. You can finish reading the files tomorrow.”
As Gail turned to leave, something from the car called out to her mind.
“Pick up the nickel…pick up the nickel... it has much to show you.”
The Beginning (Whispering Pines Book 1) Page 11