by Gwen Hunter
“Useless gift!” I socked a crate. Pain spiraled up from my injured hand. “Spit and decay!” I cradled the hand and raged at my deformed talent. “Why can’t you just once give me something I can use.” When the pain eased, I checked the butterfly bandages. They were still firmly stuck. I wondered if the EMT had applied them with superglue.
A moment of rational thought surfaced and I studied the crates scattered in front of me. Securing the hammer and crowbar under my arm, I hoisted up one crate. Slightly unsteady, I walked from the storage room into the workroom, kicking the door shut as I moved.
Isaac looked up as I entered, as if he immediately sensed my uneasiness. Or maybe my fear. My St. Claire gift was not projection, but sometimes in extremes, one of us would display some new trait. Isaac put down a set of metal-snips and nudged his partner. Jubal looked up and saw me. Perhaps it was the surge of emotions in the room, but Noelle stepped into the work area, paused and walked in.
“What?” she demanded.
“Deliveries came while I was at the show?” My voice sounded alien, a hollow tone.
Noelle nodded, sticking a threaded needle through her lapel to secure it. “Saturday. Why?”
“The delivery man stack the crates in the back?”
“Yes.” Her tone was uncertain.
I turned to Isaac, one heel grating on the floor. “Davie sent you something. Several somethings. It’s in four packing crates, each identical to this one.”
He glanced at Jubal, who shrugged. Neither one of them knew the crates were back there. Neither one had expected a delivery from Davie. Noelle shook her head.
“I’m wagering it’s stone,” I said, striding to Jubal. “It’s heavy.” I lifted the crate higher and dropped it onto Jubal’s workbench. It landed with a weighty thump that made the sturdy counter wobble.
He set down his handmade, duct-taped tool and turned off his torch and brazier. With everything that created fumes now shut down, Isaac turned off the ventilation fan and the CD player. Instant silence crushed in, marred only by the tap and ping of cooling metal.
“Can I open this for you?” With a shaking hand and crow-bar, I gestured at the crate. This would free Davie. I had the ransom. At his nod, I thrust the sharp end of the crowbar into the seam between side and lid and whapped the blunt end with the hammer three times, three ringing chimes of steel against steel. Working the crowbar out, I inserted it a few inches to the side and struck again, three solid blows. Isaac spun the crate and I repeated the two steps on the other side, hearing the quiet groan of nails as they released from the tight-grained wood. Isaac ripped off the lid and Jubal took it, setting it aside before stepping back to allow Isaac access to the box my brother had sent.
My sense of knowing had abated only a bit with my attack on the crate, and I put down the tools, watching as the men pulled out white packing peanuts and sawdust. The throbbing in my pulse demanded him to hurry, to get beneath the packing, get inside fast. Isaac reached in.
From the crate came a paper-wrapped bundle that Isaac placed on the workbench. The wrapping crunched and crinkled softly as he pulled it away revealing a dirty, fist-sized, white-and-gray quartz rock. The silence in the room was fraught with tension, punctuated by a ping of hot metal and the rough cadence of breathing. I reached out to touch the stone. Lifted it to the light.
Gold glimmered through the quartz and the layer of ingrained earth that still coated it. Raw gold wire, two to four millimeters thick and as much as six centimeters long, twined on and through the duller quartz.
“Is that…” Noelle’s sentence faltered into silence.
“Yeah. It’s gold,” I said. Freshly mined gold in one of its natural states. Carefully I put the specimen back on the bench. I looked at the box, then back at the storeroom where three other boxes waited. Heavy boxes.
“I’m closing the store,” Noelle said, and withdrew to the front.
“What else is in there?” I jutted my chin at the box on the worktable.
Isaac and Jubal reached in and each lifted out two more paper-wrapped bundles. Sawdust cascaded to the floor. When they unwrapped them, each bundle contained dirty grayish quartz wound throughout with gold wire. I picked up another block of quartz and gold, this one small enough to fit into my palm.
Raw gold has many forms. The most commonly recognized form of gold found in North America had been the nuggets and gold dust made famous in the Gold Rush of 1849. But there was also gold leaf, crystal gold in dozens of classifications and categories, alluvial gold, dendritic gold and sponge gold among other common varieties. Varieties like wire gold. Like the specimen in my hand. I lifted another, heavier piece.
I held the jagged stones to the lights overhead, letting the crystalline center of the rock capture the illumination and throw it back. This one was dirty on one side, smoother where it had lain buried, in contact with the ground for long ages. One small area was cracked and stained where it had been exposed to the elements. Several marks showed where a pickax had been used to mine the quartz. Other sides were crystal spires or cragged, irregular depressions, where the quartz had broken from a much larger stone.
A larger stone with this much gold was out there. Close to the surface. Somewhere. Where? And someone wanted it. Wanted it badly enough to hurt Davie. A shiver of heat threaded along my nerves below my flesh, into my marrow. Where had Davie gotten this stone? It was freshly dug from the earth, I knew that much. The stone hadn’t been cleaned or washed. It was a new find.
“Tyler?”
I snapped back and blinked, surprised. I had been oblivious, turned inward, silent and preoccupied ever since I first saw the crates addressed from Davie. I was holding two fists of quartz rough, staring into their pale crystalline depths.
I set the hunks of stone on the table, comparing them to the others there. Each appeared to have been cleaved from the same mother rock, though the other two showed larger, darker shadings on one side, where the elements had reached them.
“That’s what they wanted when they took Davie,” Noelle said, her voice reverent in the presence of this much gold. “Isn’t it?”
“Best guess,” Isaac said, his voice rumbling. “Lotta people would kill for that much gold.”
“Where did he get it?” Jubal asked.
“There are more boxes in the storeroom,” I said softly.
Moments later, three more shipping crates were deposited on the workbench and I could hear the blow of hammer on crowbar as they were opened.
Feeling as if I were wrapped in heavy gauze, insulated from the world, I watched my friends as they opened the boxes. None of them spoke or looked up at me until all the crates had been emptied. Two of them held quartz and gold in massive chunks, fist sized and bigger, four and six per box, much like the one I had opened. The fourth crate held a single huge chunk of quartz rough and a padded manila envelope addressed to Isaac in my brother’s neat boxy print.
Isaac looked at me, eyes intent. Whatever he saw in my face made him pause. He gestured me over to him, ripped open the envelope and fanned the contents. There were several dozen documents, some photocopies, and a letter-sized envelope, unsealed. He opened it, removed the contents and scanned the pages inside before placing the first page in my hands. It was a letter from Davie.
Isaac.
Hey, man, I got some troubles, from recently and from my past. If you’re reading this, then I didn’t make it back to retrieve the boxes. Which means I’m either dead or missing.
You have the quartz, hopefully all five boxes. Don’t go to the local cops, man. One of them, maybe more than one, is part of the problems. Maybe tied in with some people who are after me or the quartz.
You know I’ve been buying up land around here for years, and purchasing the mineral rights to others. I found this on a mountain I bought. Just dumb luck. Literally stumbled on it. Anyway, some local people with more money than sense found out about it and they’ve been pressuring me for use of mineral rights. Which means strip mining, glory-hole
mining, or open-pit mining, all which would ruin the ecosystem for decades. I won’t sell. But if you’re reading this, then they didn’t take no for an answer or one of the earlier problems got out of hand. If that’s the case, there isn’t anything you can do to help me with that. If it’s only the stuff in these boxes, I might have a chance.
Tell the Brat to try a scan for me. I’ll try to reach her. And try to convince her to call in Aunt Matilda. She says she hates the old woman, but she’s just scared of the family gifts and what Aunt Matilda represents. She’ll be ticked off that I told you the truth about the St. Claires, but she’ll get over it.
Help her keep Jane safe. Take them to the family if they’ll go. Jane may need help soon. All indications are, her time is on her.
Attached is a check to cover your expenses. Consider yourself hired. Take care of them for me, man. That’s the first thing. Second, ask around. See if you can find me. And here’s a letter for the Brat. Hug her and Jane for me.
—David
It was typical Davie. Organic. Nonlinear, like a free-form tapestry of thoughts, feelings, concepts and information. Nothing clearly defined or spelled out, not a thing. That was the problem with Davie’s gift. He was a strong receptor, and growing up receiving random thoughts from others tended to force the brain to grow in random patterns, to cause the recipient to think similarly. It made Davie’s mental processes hard to follow. Half of what I read in the letter was senseless to me. But I got the fact that Davie had trouble with some local moneymen and with the local cops, and had told my friends the embarrassing history and truths about the St. Claires. Spit and decay. I didn’t look up at them as I accepted the second letter, the one with the salutation to me.
Hi Brat.
I know you’re already mad that I told your pals about the St. Claires. But I figured you might need them someday. Today’s the day. There’s stuff I haven’t told you about my past. You know. The missing years. And I didn’t tell you about the gold. So sue me. Main thing is, I’m in trouble and chances are it will head your way.
Projection isn’t my strong talent, but I’ll try to send you info. Do a scan. It won’t kill you. Listen to Isaac. He was in the military and he’s lethal. I’ve hired him to watch over you two. I’ve been getting impressions that Jane is about to enter her time. Call Aunt Matilda. She’ll help.
I love you, Brat.
—Davie
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jubal and Noe reading Isaac’s letter. Isaac stood relaxed against the worktable, upper-body weight on one elbow, feet crossed. Without even looking, I knew he was watching me, waiting for a reaction. “How much did he pay you?” I asked. Stupid first question. Stupid, stupid, stupid. There were so many more important things to ask.
“Twenty thousand.”
I winced. It was a lot of money. It meant Davie expected big trouble. I refolded the letter, feeling the texture of the paper. The good stuff, heavy twenty-four-pound bond. Davie liked rich textures, good art, delicate china and massive, imposing silver, the finer things. “When did he tell you guys about the St. Claires?” That was the next thing I wanted to know. Which was stupid question number two. I felt my face flame.
“A few years back. When we first were incorporated,” Noelle said. “He wanted us to know what you could do. We don’t know why. It never made much difference to us.”
“That’s Davie.” Three years ago. They had known about the St. Claires for three years. My fingers made little circles on the paper, feeling the texture of the letter. But only the texture. I got nothing else from a surface scan. No trace of emotional emanations. No hint of Davie at all. “He has reasons for the things he does, but you may never learn them.”
“So,” Jubal said, a hint of amusement and a deeper curiosity in his voice. “Why didn’t you want us to know your family’s a bunch of crystal-ball-reading psychics.”
I flinched.
“She hates that, Jubal.” Noe slipped an arm around me.
“What did he tell you?” I asked, my voice lower.
“That the St. Claires run a successful hotline, Internet Tarot card site, Internet astrology site, some palm-reading businesses, and stuff like that,” Noe said, trying to gauge my body language. “And that some of you have real gifts. Him and you included.”
“That if there were tough business or customer negotiations we should leave them to you. You can read people better than most,” Jubal said. “Course, we pretty much got that already from the first time you convinced that old couple, the Smythes, to buy the moonstone stock, back before we moved here. You’ve always been pretty mystical about making sales.”
I remembered the moonstone situation. Our financial plight had been grim. We needed to make a sale—a big sale—or quit. We were tapped out, sleeping, all of us, in a decrepit, 1950s-style one-bedroom apartment with mattresses on the floors, little heat and no curtains on the windows. The rent on the shop was overdue. Business was slow. We were hungry. Desperate.
And then the vacationing couple from Ontario had parked in front of the shop and come inside. I had turned on the family gifts and for once they hadn’t deserted me. I had learned that their daughter loved moonstones, and that they were loaded. Despite the headache it caused, I read them like open books. Before the hour was out, I had sold them every moon-stone piece we had in stock at top-dollar prices. The couple, the Smythes, had been back two times since and cleaned us out of moonstone jewelry each trip, concentrating on the more fabulous pieces, spending a fortune. Now we created certain items with them in mind. Catered to them for saving us, even though they had never learned we needed saving.
“He told us that you and he were receptors, not that he explained that very well,” Noe said.
“That’s all?”
“Pretty much.”
I looked up at them, reading their faces. Concern. Puzzlement. There was no ridicule there. A bit of the pressure that had landed on my shoulders began to lift. But I had one more question to ask. “How often have you been to the family sites?”
Jubal grinned. “I got my natal chart done and my financial horoscope plotted out through the year 2017. I sold my computer stock when the chart said to and made a triple return. Haven’t lost anything much on the market since.”
“I had a Tarot reading by a woman named Olympia, but wasn’t too impressed,” Noe said. Isaac said nothing, his dark face impassive. I got the impression that he didn’t believe in psychics. For some reason that relaxed me even more.
The words dragged out of me. “Olympia isn’t the most talented of the family. Next time, ask for Aunt Matilda.”
Isaac’s brow went up a fraction. Noe still seemed concerned about something. Jubal looked like a kid in a candy store. I resisted the urge to open and give them a read. I had a firm policy against scanning the people close to me. It wasn’t fair if it worked. And when it didn’t work, which was most of the time, I got really frustrated.
“So?” Jubal took a draw on his cola and jumped up to sit on the worktable, swinging his legs, long hair sweeping forward across his fair skin. “Tell us about the family gifts. David was vague.”
I looked at Isaac again. A corner of his mouth quirked up in amusement at his partner. He picked up the stack of papers that had been in the manila folder with the letters and started paging through them.
“Psychic gifts are pretty common,” I said, feeling my way through the explanation. “Cults and entire religions have grown up around them, including some modern-day ones. Some people think that those with the stronger gifts are actually people with angelic or alien DNA, or alien spirits stranded here, energy beings stuck here on earth. Which is dumb, but no dumber than any other explanation for psychic ability that I’ve heard.
“The St. Claires have a gift stronger than most and it’s passed through the matrilineal line. The family started making money doing readings back before the Depression, just after we made a killing in the stock market based on a Tarot reading made by Aunt Matilda’s grandmother.”
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I shrugged out from under Noe’s arm and moved across the room, picking up my cola. It was warm, but I drank it anyway. The family history included stories of financial success and failures, the rare lynching and burning at the stake, and a lot of plain dumb luck. I picked my way through what I wanted them to know, told about Uncle Mabry, who got himself strung up under a railroad trestle for cheating at cards. He won too many games at one table using his gift for reading his opponents’ minds to read their cards. The men knew they were being cheated but never figured out how, so they strung him up as a sign to others. Play fair or die.
Grandpa Horace had died rich and happy by depending on his wife’s gift for reading the stock market and for certain other unspecified gifts she used in the bedroom. A few others, cousin Otto and Aunt Isabel, were minor talents but big-wigs in the family industry, and I mentioned them and gave thumbnail sketches.
“Davie and I are receptors, meaning that we can receive impressions from others, but I can’t project at all. Davie can project, but he’s inconsistent, undependable.” At Jubal’s reaction, I clarified, “He can send impressions to other people sometimes. So can our aunt Matilda. She’s the family matriarch. The strongest among us. And no, I won’t be calling the old bat. She’s a busybody and a meddler and an evil old woman who only sees bad stuff in her visions. She’s got a tongue like a sword and doesn’t mind slicing me up with it. I won’t call her.”
Then I remembered the vision of Davie being beaten. “Well, at least not until I don’t have another choice.”
“And why didn’t you want to tell us about your gift all these years?” Isaac asked, stretching out his Texan drawl, which I had always loved. The undercurrent said, even if you do believe in all this nonsense.
“Honey child, we are your friends,” Jubal added.
