Uncanny

by David Macinnis Gill

  “Can we hurry this up?” I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “What are you doing?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” He blew metal shavings off and tested it again. “Making a key.”

  “Not a very good one.”

  “Patience.” After a couple more notches he slid the key into the lock. “Voilà.”

  “Finally!” I pushed the door open. “Let’s see you crack the safe.”

  The back hallway led to Louie’s office. I shone my phone around till I found the light switch. The fluorescents flickered on, but there was no safe in sight. I pushed aside a painting of dogs playing poker and knocked on the paneling behind them.

  “What’re you doing?” Harken asked, picking up random objects from Louie’s desk, then putting them back down. Probably “finding” other things to pocket.

  “In the movies the safe is always behind artwork.”

  “The safe’s almost never behind a painting, and I’d never refer to that as art. Try the floor. Or the closet.”

  I opened the only closet in the room. It was full of cheap suits and a few yellowed wedding dresses covered with that thin plastic.

  “Nothing here but junk,” I said. “It’s getting really late. Maybe Louie lied about a safe.”

  “Found it.” Harken’s voice came from Louie’s desk, followed by a loud slam. “Ouch! Damn it!”

  “So much for stealth.” I shone my light on the safe. It was a classic cube model, squat, hard, and heavy. “Just like Louie.”

  Harken pressed the buttons and tried the handle. “Locked.”

  “Imagine that.” I didn’t bother to hide my smirk. “A lock that’s locked. What miracles will they think of next?”

  “I was expecting a dial and tumbler,” he said. “This lock is much more . . . modern.”

  “I can do it.”

  He raised an eyebrow and stepped aside. “You’re up, Houdini.”

  I dialed 911 on Louie’s desk phone. “I’d like to report a robbery in progress. Louie’s Pawnshop on Broadway.”

  “A unit has been notified,” the operator said. “Please identify yourself.”

  “I’m the owner!” I whispered. “Hurry up! Before they rob me blind!”

  I hung up, then hit the speed dial button labeled “Home.”

  Louie’s sleepy voice came over the line. “Who the hell is this?”

  I gave it my best Southie accent. “Is this the owner of Louie’s Pawn? This is Officer Rooney of the Boston Police Department. You better get down here. There’s been a break-in, and your safe’s been cracked. Right. Right. Does this sound like a joke to you? Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

  I hung up, then grinned at Harken. “There you go. That’s how you crack a safe.”

  “Someone forgot to tell the safe. It’s still locked.”

  I patted his cheek, then checked the clock. “Watch and grow wise, grasshopper,” I said. “Let’s find a good seat for the show.”

  “Wait,” he said and held my arm. “Do you know where Louie lives? What if it takes too long for—”

  “He lives two blocks down Broadway. Everybody knows that. Now quit doubting my plan and come on. The clock is ticking.”

  Five minutes later, a squad car parked behind the pawnshop. Its lights were on, but not the siren. From our hiding place behind a Dumpster, we watched two cops walk to the porch. The female cop stepped on the broken pieces of the lightbulb and signaled her partner to draw his weapon.

  Seconds later, a beat-up Mercedes pulled up behind the cop car. Louie kicked his car door open and swung his legs out.

  “Stand where you are!” the female yelled.

  “I’m the owner, officers!” he called out, and waddled over. “I got a call that my place was robbed.”

  The cops traded a quizzical look, and the male cop pushed past him. Louie started to follow, but the female cop put a hand up to stop him.

  “Wait here, sir,” she said and joined her partner inside.

  Louie hung back for half a minute, stalking around and cursing at the shattered bulb. I could almost see the gears turning in his head and the curiosity building inside.

  Seconds later Louie, obviously tired of waiting, went inside.

  “This plan has no chance of working,” Harken whispered.

  I stuck my hand out. “Bet you twenty.”

  “Twenty what?”

  “Twenty dollars.”

  Harken spat into his palm. “Agreed.”

  “I wouldn’t shake spit hands for a hundred bucks.” I wrinkled up my nose. “Wait. Here they come.”

  We ducked back behind the Dumpster, and I watched Louie lead the cops out. He patted both their backs, and the officers returned to their squad car.

  “How much gossamer would I need for two minutes?” I whispered.

  “Too much,” he said. “You’re not capable of a long glimpse.”

  “Theoretically speaking,” I said. “A half inch? An inch?”

  “Willow Jane, do not.”

  I caught a sliver of gossamer in my teeth and drew out an inch of silver filament, twisting it as I pulled. A wave of nausea hit my gut, and a cramp bent me in half. I cried out, the pain was so intense. Harken was right. I wasn’t ready for such a long glimpse, and my body was delivering the message with pain. I fell to my knees, and the familiar red and blue triangles formed the rip across my vision.

  The gap opened like a porthole into another world. It grew rapidly, and soon I was no longer seeing in full color. Even in the dim light the world had been rendered in sepia tone. I stared at Harken, frozen in place, his face like an old daguerreotype portrait.

  With the back of my fingers, I touched his face.

  It was warm.

  Then his head turned toward me, and I scrambled backward, ready to scream but realizing that there was no need. His body moved awkwardly, with herky-jerky motions, like a DVR recording going backward.

  Time was on rewind.

  “Wicked,” I said, because it was. The first time I’d glimpsed, I had somehow saved Devon from getting killed by a car, then blacked out. Now I could not only stop time, I could make it go in reverse.

  I turned to the porch, where Louie and the cops were walking backward into the shop.

  “Wait!” I yelled and chased after them. I had to reach Louie before he could get to the safe, or my whole plan would be ruined.

  I caught them in Louie’s office as they walked in reverse toward the desk. The cops moved to either side, and a red-faced Louie struggled to lower himself to his knees. He crawled backward, butt in the air. He reached for the safe.

  “Hold on!”

  I grabbed a notepad and pen, then squeezed my head under the desk. Louie’s breath huffed out like a mix between rancid cheese and rotten sausage. I held my nose while Louie turned the handle, then pushed the buttons in opposite order. I scribbled down the combination.

  Louie crawled out from under the desk. I scooted around the female cop and ducked into the closet between the wedding dresses. Then I pulled the closet shut, licked my thumb, and was sucked down the rabbit hole. It felt as if a meat hook had been driven through my side and then yanked hard, pulling my guts along with it. I struggled against the sensation, fighting to stay in the glimpse even though doing so was pulling me apart at the seams.

  In the distance, like his voice was coming from a string phone, Louie said, “Sorry to waste your time, officers.”

  Nausea made me double over, and I had one final look at the cops and Louie leaving the room before I sank to my knees.

  Then like that, it was over.

  The nausea.

  The vertigo.

  All of it.

  Outside, the car engines started. I crawled on hands and knees across the dirty shag carpet to the safe. My fingers danced over the dial to the tune of the numbers I had memorized. I said a little prayer, then pulled the handle.

  The door swung open.

  My egg lay inside atop a nest of twenties and fifties. There was enough cash
to pay rent three times over. Yesterday I would’ve been like Tantalus beneath an apple tree, trying to grab it all. With no more landlord, there was no point in it. Like my dad always said, Connings weren’t the most conventional people, but thieves we were not.

  “Hallelujah,” I said, picking up the egg.

  The egg felt warmer than I remembered, and the surface seemed smoother and more delicate, almost translucent. I shone my cell phone LED on it and gasped when the light went straight through.

  “So that’s what evil looks like,” I said, and with an eye roll to the heavens, I toppled over and hit the floor like a bird with broken wings.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  I awoke in the back seat of a yellow taxi, feeling like I’d been punched. Harken was sitting beside me, and he patted my shoulder when the taxi stopped. I sat up, groggy, and stared out the rain-streaked window at the lights of the Harvard Bridge over the Charles River.

  “Where are we?” I asked, exhausted. That glimpse had really done a number on me.

  “Three seventy Helles Alley,” the driver said. “That’ll be forty bucks.”

  “Forty bucks?” I said, checking my nose to make sure it hadn’t been bleeding. “Seriously?”

  “Hey, sweetie,” the driver said. “It ain’t easy getting from Southie to Back Bay in fifteen minutes. Your boyfriend said he’d make it worth my while.”

  Harken leaned forward and looked closely at the cabbie’s license. “Sorry, but I lied.” He caught the guy’s eye in the mirror. “Thank you for the ride, Robert Bickle. It’s on the house. We should enjoy our night.”

  “Enjoy your night, kids,” Bickle said. “This one’s on the house.”

  “You’ll be sharing your umbrella, too,” Harken said.

  “Sure thing.” Bickle slid open the glass between the front and back seats. He passed his compact umbrella through. “Stay dry out there.”

  Harken swung the door open and held a hand out for me. I accepted not because he was gallant or anything but because the grogginess caused my head to spin as soon as I moved.

  “Where’s the egg?” I said, watching the taxi drive away.

  Harken took it out of his back pocket for an instant, giving me a brief glance at it. Even in the streetlights, it looked as dull as before. “I picked it up in the pawnshop. After you blacked out.”

  “Can I keep it?” I said.

  “Better it stays with me,” he said. “Safer for you that way.”

  We walked up Commonwealth toward the Hellesgate. Harken held an umbrella over us. I got as close as possible without touching him, exhausted from the long glimpse, feeling frayed at the edges. To our left the rain peppered a large drainage pond beneath the Mass Ave viaduct. Harken steered us across the street and turned right on Beacon, where the upscale street was lined with nice cars on both sides. During summer they were lined with shade trees, too, but the foul weather had chased the leaves away. The people, too. We were the only people on the block, if you didn’t count drivers, and I didn’t. They were nestled in toasty warm cars while we were dodging puddles and getting lashed by the wind. Harken and I were the only ones crazy enough to be out in the cold rain right before midnight.

  Sickly streetlamps lit the sidewalk as we moved through the oases of light, the beams shining on our heads like halos, and our breath froze in the foggy night air. The wind was stinging my face, and I could feel my cheeks blooming from windburn.

  “Thanks for rescuing me,” I said. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “An aftershock from the glimpse,” he said, sounding cranky and a little worried, too. “Didn’t I warn you not to go back too far? You’re fortunate to be here.”

  “I feel more woozy—” My balance was shot, and my tongue felt too big for my mouth. “—than lucky. So what’s our plan?”

  “Plan?”

  “To make the switch for Devon,” I said and grabbed his sleeve. “We have to have a plan.”

  “Well, we go to the thirteenth floor. Find room thirteen thirteen. Give Malleus the egg and take your sister back.”

  “That easy?” I said. “A murderous magical death skeleton is just going to cooperate?”

  “Malleus,” he said. “always keeps her word, which is not necessarily a good thing. Here we are.”

  We stopped in front of the hotel entrance, a high marble arch with the name of the building carved in ornate Old English. All those horror stories Siobhan and I had heard and other ones I didn’t like to think about, like a little girl falling to her death in an elevator shaft, but I never thought they were possible.

  Until now.

  I looked up through falling rain at the intimidating edifice. The hotel had been renovated, turned into condos, gentrified like the rest of this too quiet neighborhood. But under each window, lit by the glow of streetlights, almost as a reminder of the hotel’s true purpose, were reliefs of gargoyles with open mouths and sharp fangs. A wild-haired gorgon held up a severed head over the arch of the main entrance, blood dripping into its hungry mouth.

  “What kind of man built those?” I asked.

  “You don’t want to know,” he said. “Trust me.”

  “I don’t.” Even though I was starting to really trust him. “Can’t be people actually live here. Rich people?”

  “There’s no accounting for taste,” he said, jimmying the front door with a penknife. “Especially among the wealthy.”

  “Where did you get the penknife?”

  “Found it.”

  A rush of hot, stuffy air greeted us. The lobby entryway was straight out of the Gilded Age with ornate paintings, marble staircases, and fresco ceilings. An elevator sign pointed to an alcove on the right. We shook off the rain, and Harken tossed the umbrella into a corner.

  “Stand by the elevator.” He pointed to a desk in the middle of the lobby where a man in a green uniform was snoozing. “I’ll take care of the security guard.”

  “Don’t—” I whispered.

  “What?”

  “—hurt him.”

  He winked.

  I didn’t wink back.

  I slipped into the alcove, which housed the four elevators that serviced the old hotel. They were straight out of a black-and-white movie, with hand-controlled doors and an accordion gate cage. Above each elevator, old-fashioned arrows indicated the floors. I counted them, one through twelve, then fourteen. I couldn’t believe these things still worked.

  Wait. Where was the thirteenth floor?

  Harken approached the guard. He chatted away, trying to meet the guy’s eye but couldn’t seem to manage it. His mouth tightened, then he passed a hundred-dollar bill across the desk. The guard stood and shook hands, but Harken gave the beefy mitt a sudden yank and jabbed his penknife into the man’s fleshy hand.

  “What the hell?” The guard pulled his revolver and aimed it at Harken’s chest. “You’re under arrest!”

  Harken stepped back. “Willow Jane, can I get a hand?”

  “Not again,” I said, my stomach rolling at the thought of glimpsing again so soon.

  I pricked my thumb with my teeth. A single drop of blood bubbled up, then, a few seconds later, it glimmered and turned silver, the bubble thinning until it formed a single strand. I bit down and drew out the thread. Just a few millimeters, I reminded myself, my knees shaking.

  “I’ll shoot you both!” the guard yelled, waving the weapon back and forth, then he stopped mid-threat.

  The guard and Harken were suspended in time, then began to move backward, like they were rewinding. An electric chill went up my spine, and my tongue tasted like I had swallowed battery acid. The world began to swirl, turning all colors, then milky white as Harken and the guard morphed into statues carved from marble.

  I walked slowly over to them, holding my chest because it was like breathing through a straw. I removed the gun from the guard’s holster and hid it in the trash can beneath a pile of TastyKake wrappers.

  “That should do it,” I said, then returned to the elevators.r />
  With a roar of sound and light, the glimpse ended, and I leaned against the Italian marble wall. The stone felt so cool on my cheek I wanted to fall asleep right there.

  Across the lobby Harken passed the hundred-dollar bill across the desk. The guard stood and shook hands. Harken gave the beefy mitt a sudden yank and jabbed the man’s hand.

  “What the hell?” the guard yelled and reached for his empty holster.

  Harken grinned. “Looking for something?”

  “My weapon!” the guard barked, then promptly passed out across the desk.

  “Sorry about that.” Harken grabbed the keys but left the hundred-dollar bill. “Aqua Tofana doesn’t know her own strength.”

  When he joined me, he was noticeably agitated and carrying a fireplace poker on his shoulder. He put a round key in a lock by the elevator and pressed the call button.

  “You couldn’t vex him, could you?” I said.

  He pressed the call button again. “Did you hurt him?” I said. “And where did the poker come from?”

  “There’s a lovely fireplace on the far side of the lobby,” he said. “I didn’t lay a finger on him.”

  “But you did stab him,” I said. “Is he okay?”

  “He’ll wake up with a headache, but he’ll live.”

  “What’s Aqua Tofana?”

  “You heard that?”

  “I hear lots of things now,” I said, rubbing a smear of blood from my thumb.

  “It’s a—” He paused, and I could hear a lie in the silence. “—sedative.”

  “For what? Elephants?”

  He looked at me funny and started to say something as the elevator arrived. A bell pinged as the doors opened, eagerly inviting us to enter a cage made of dark mahogany panels and crisscrossed, gilded metal straps.

  “Dammit, we have to take the stairs,” I said wearily when I looked inside.

  “To the thirteenth floor?” Harken pushed aside the old-fashioned accordion door, and we stepped aboard.

  I pointed to the buttons on the panel. “In case you hadn’t noticed, they skipped that floor. It goes from twelve to fourteen.”

  He pressed both ten and three at the same time. “You just have to know which buttons to push.”