by J. R. Rain
The area between Charlie’s home and the home next to his was covered in white gravel and seemed to serve as a small parking lot. There was also a path that led between the two homes. The path seemed to connect one side of the park to the other. The path led just outside the window in question.
Amazingly, there were no flood lights here, and the whole space was blanketed in darkness. It would have been easy enough for someone to pause outside the window and watch Charlie with his safe.
A narrow road curved through the mobile home park, which cars occasionally sped along, heedless of children, pets, Santa’s reindeer or vampires.
The question was: who had been watching Charlie?
Still standing next to Charlie’s mobile home, listening to a cacophony of “It’s a Holly, Jolly Christmas,” TV news anchormen, video game explosions and the clanking of dishes, I closed my eyes and expanded my consciousness out through the park. A trick I had learned a few months ago. In my mind’s eye, I saw glimpses of men in Christmas tree print boxers, women in tubs of vanilla bubbles, most of them shaving their legs, and even an older couple getting frisky under the covers. I saw teens playing Xbox and even grown men playing Xbox. I saw men and women talking excitedly, passionately, agitatedly. I saw children crying and playing, but mostly crying and being warned that Santa was still making his list of naughty and nice children. I saw sumptuous dinners being eaten in front of TVs tuned into Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart but rarely at dinner tables. Gather round the TV, all ye faithful.
I also saw four young men sitting together in the living room of one of the nearby double wide mobile homes. The young men were sitting around bags of weed and the occasional bag of crack cocaine. I saw guns in waistbands and a lot of bad attitudes. There was no sign of Christmas in their house, nor Hanukkah, nor Kwanzaa. A dead giveaway, for sure. No holiday cheer or spirit at all. Of any sort.
My consciousness snapped back, leaving me briefly discombobulated. What I hadn’t seen was the stolen safe, but I figured the drug dealers’ home was as good a place to start as any.
Chapter Twelve
I knocked on the drug dealers’ front door.
I listened with a small grin to the frantic sounds of weed and crack being hidden in everything from toilets to cookie jars, to no doubt deep inside boxers and briefs. I heard a chair fall over. I heard someone curse under his breath. I heard the sounds of shushing and the running of footsteps.
I was tempted to yell, “Police” and really listen to the fireworks within. I might even hear a window crash as one of them makes a run for it.
Instead, I waited, rocking gently back and forth, hands behind my back, just a five foot, three-inch mother of two confronting your neighborhood drug dealers.
My alarm system was jangling, but I mostly ignored it. I knew, after all, what I was walking into.
Finally, I heard footsteps cautiously approach the door.
An acne-covered Caucasian face peered at me through the door’s dirty curtain. The face frowned, and then looked almost comically left and right before he partially opened the door.
“Excuse me,” I said. “But my car broke down and I was wondering if I could borrow your phone?”
“My phone? Yo, fuck off, bitch. This ain’t no Triple Fucking A.” And he promptly slammed the door in my face.
Or tried to.
I stuck out my hand, and the door rebounded off it so hard that it slammed back into the drug dealer’s face. I followed the swinging door in, pushing harder. The young punk reached for his nose and for something under his shirt. And since I didn’t feel like getting shot tonight, I caught his hand in mid-reach, twisted until he dropped to both knees, and grabbed what he’d been reaching for under his shirt.
I came away with a Smith & Wesson revolver.
I swung the gun around and pointed it at the others, who were all reaching inside their own pants. Apparently, this was the official greeting of drug dealers everywhere.
“Hello, boys,” I said. “Hands where I can see them.”
“Fuck this shit,” said a tall black kid who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. He pulled up his shirt, revealing the gleaming walnut handle of an expensive revolver, and before his hand got very far beyond that, I fired the weapon. A bullet hole appeared in the kitchen linoleum next to his foot, perhaps just inches away.
He jumped maybe three feet, screaming like a girl. “Holy sweet Jesus! The bitch is crazy!”
I held the gun steady on the trio who were standing around the kitchen table. All three were in their late teens or early twenties. Hardly drug lords.
I said, “Next one who calls me a bitch gets a bullet in their big toe. Got it?”
No one moved or said anything. The guy next to me whimpered a little, and I realized I was still twisting his arm. I let him go and threw him a little at the same time. He skidded across the kitchen floor. Okay, I might have thrown him a lot.
I next had them drop their guns and kick them over to me. Once done, I gathered the weapons and emptied them of their bullets. I dropped the bullets in one of my jacket pockets. Next, I had the four hoodlums sit around the kitchen table like good little boys.
Or bad boys.
They didn’t like a woman telling them what to do. Myself, I was getting a kick out of it. When they were all seated and staring at me sullenly, I hopped up on a stool and held the gun casually in front of me. I couldn’t help but notice my feet not only didn’t reach the floor, they didn’t even reach the first rung of the stool. Still, I swung them happily and looked at my four new friends.
“Well,” I said, “here we all are.”
The oldest of the four, a Hispanic guy with a tattoo on his neck, leaned forward on his elbows. “Fuck you, bi—” But he stopped himself.
“Nice catch,” I said. “You just saved yourself a big toe. Merry Christmas from me.”
It was all the guy could do to stay seated. I sensed he wanted to rush me. In fact, I was sure of it. Every now and then, he caught the eye of the black guy across from him. Something passed between them. I didn’t care what passed between them.
For now, though, he needed more information, like who the hell I was, and so he stayed seated. For now.
“You ain’t no cop,” he said.
“Nope.”
“You with the feds?”
“Used to be.”
“Then what the hell are you?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.”
They all looked at each other. Two of them shrugged. From the living room, I heard the Jeopardy theme song. I was willing to bet that drug dealers the world over had Jeopardy playing in the background. Nothing so innocent as four hoodlums watching Jeopardy together.
The Caucasian kid who had greeted me at the door had yet to look me in the eye. He stared down at the table. His wrist was raw and red where I had subdued him. He knew the potential of my strength, and kept his eyes off me and his mouth shut. The fourth guy was another black youth, maybe twenty. He had yet to speak, although he found all of this highly amusing. I sensed he was high as a kite. If I was high as a kite, I would find all this amusing, too. I focused on the Hispanic leader and the talkative black guy.
I said, “Somebody stole something that belonged to me, and I want it back.” Technically, that was true, since half of whatever was in the safe was now mine.
“We lovers,” said the talkative black guy. “Not thieves.”
The high-as-a-kite black guy laughed. The Hispanic guy frowned. The sullen white guy kept being sullen.
“Cut the shit,” I said. “I know there’s drugs here.” I pointed to a Pillsbury Doughboy cookie jar with a crack running up along its doughy body. “I know there’re drugs in that cookie jar over there. I know there’re drugs in the toilet bowl, and I know there’re drugs down all your pants.”
The high-as-a-kite black guy giggled nearly uncontrollably. The Hispanic leader sat forward. The energy around him crackled and spat. He said, “What the fuck do you want, lady?�
�
“I want the safe,” I said.
“What safe?”
As I said those words, I watched the others in the room. The talkative black guy blinked. The high black guy continued grinning from ear to ear. The sullen white guy sank a little deeper in his chair. Just a little. Perhaps only a fraction. Not to mention his darkish aura grew darker still.
I had my man.
It was at that moment that I saw the old man in the far corner of the living room. Correction, two old men, as another just materialized. And they weren’t exactly men.
They were ghosts.
Chapter Thirteen
I jumped off the stool.
As I did so, the Hispanic guy made a move to stand. He didn’t move very far. A casual backhand across his face sent him spinning sideways to the floor. The others stayed seated, which wasn’t a bad idea. I told them not to move and they mostly didn’t, although the high-as-a-kite guy continued to fight through a case of the giggles.
I moved past them, slipping the gun inside my waistband. The backhand smack to their leader would keep the trio quiet for a few minutes.
People don’t realize that spirits tend to be just about everywhere. I see them appearing and disappearing almost continuously, sometimes randomly. I’ll see them briefly materialize by someone’s side, squeeze their hand or hug them, and then flit off again. Usually the object of such affection is left shivering pleasantly. No doubt, the unseen encounter suddenly brought an unexpected memory to the recipient.
And some spirits, like the old lady and her piano, attach themselves to objects, seemingly for decades, although I always suspected that only an aspect of their spirit attached. The majority of their spirit was elsewhere, wherever spirits might go.
Then again, I could be wrong.
As I approached the two old men, they turned toward me. Their attention, I saw, had been centered around something in the far corner of the room, something hidden under a blanket. The spirits themselves were formed of bright filaments of light that coalesced to form shapes. In this case, the shapes of two older men.
They didn’t speak and their shapes were only vaguely held together, which suggested to me that these were older spirits. Older, as in having died long ago.
Charlie had said that his father had died nearly two decades ago...and no doubt his grandfather had died many years before that. His grandfather and father were certainly two spirits who would have been powerfully connected to an object.
The safe.
The corner of this room smelled of smoke, or of something burned, and as I got closer, I saw tools scattered around the living room that didn’t belong there. Hammers. Mallets. Crowbars. Even a blowtorch. The corner of the couch was blackened, too, but that’s what happens when you use a blowtorch indoors.
I had the attention of both spirits, who watched me closely, silently, as I reached down and pulled back the corner of a stained quilt, revealing a very old-looking and heavy safe, the lock of which had been blackened by the blowtorch.
But the safe was still locked...and that’s all that mattered.
Chapter Fourteen
As tomorrow was Christmas Eve, I thought it a fitting gift when I delivered the safe to Charlie’s door.
Orange County doesn’t get snow. Hell, we rarely get rain, but as I approached the door, carrying the safe under one arm, a stiff, cool breeze appeared, and that was good enough. Any weather was good enough at this time of the year.
I knocked on his door to the rhythm of “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way” and fat little Rocko jumped from the couch, barking his brains out, until he got a look at me, then he hit the brakes, and scuttled off with his tail between his legs. Thank God Kingsley didn’t have the same reaction.
I set the safe down on the wooden deck, noting how the wood sagged mightily under the weight of the safe.
Charlie’s round face soon appeared and he gave me a big smile. Charlie, I saw, needed some serious dental work. Except he didn’t seem to care that he needed dental work, or that his teeth looked like crooked tombstones. Charlie was just happy to be Charlie.
He was about to slide open his door when he glanced down, and his crooked smile seemed to freeze in place. He blinked. Hard.
Then threw open the door.
I shouldn’t have been surprised when he gave me the mother of all hugs, but I was.
* * *
We were in his living room.
I had told him that a friend of mine had helped me lug the heavy safe onto his deck, and I made a show of pretending to struggle with the safe as we moved it from the deck to the center of his living room.
Amid leaning towers of laser jet printer cartridges, 40’s science fiction magazines, and enough clipboards to last two lifetimes, we set the heavy safe down.
Earlier in the night, after my discovery of the safe, I gave the boys ten minutes to clear out before I called the police. Most were gone in five. I kept their weapons and ammunition, which I would hand over to Detective Sherbet of the Fullerton Police Department.
For now, though, it was just me, Charlie and the safe. And inside, something, neither of us knew what.
The safe was clearly old. So old that it looked like it belonged on the back of a Wells Fargo stage coach. Part of the safe’s dial still gleamed brightly, although most of it was covered in blackened soot from the blowtorch. The handle was badly dented, no doubt thanks to the various hammers I had seen lying around.
Still, the safe had held fast, and that’s all that mattered.
Charlie stared down at it. So did I. My compensation was in that safe, whatever it might be. Could be gold. Could be old war bonds. Could be jewelry, gemstones or pirate booty, for all I knew.
I had been tempted to see if my own psychic gifts could penetrate the heavy steel safe, but I had resisted.
“I guess this is it, then,” said Charlie. He didn’t sound very enthusiastic.
“Do you know the combination?”
He pointed to the upper corner of the safe, where, upon closer inspection, I saw a number etched, 14. Two other numbers were etched into other corners, 29 and 63.
I said them out loud and he nodded. “Don’t think of them as three numbers, think of them as six numbers. One, four, two, nine, six and three. With that in mind, what are the two lowest numbers?”
I glanced at them again. “One and two.”
He nodded. “Good. And the next lowest?”
“Three and four.”
“Good, good. And the two highest?”
“Six and nine.”
“You got it,” he said, giving me a half smile.
“Twelve, thirty-four and sixty-nine?”
He nodded. “You’re the first person I’ve ever given the key to. Not even to my own son.”
“How old’s your son?”
“Twenty-one. But it’s too soon to give him the key. My father gave it to me on his deathbed.”
“I feel honored,” I said, and meant it.
We stared at it some more. He made no move to open it, and I certainly wasn’t about to. Somewhere down the hall, one of his piles of junk shifted, groaning, as boulders do in the deserts. The piano, I saw, was gone.
The light particles behind Charlie began coagulating and taking on shape, and shortly, two very faint old men appeared behind him. I noticed the hair on Charlie’s arm immediately stood on end, as his body registered the spiritual presence of his father and grandfather, even if his mind hadn’t. Charlie absently rubbed his arms.
“Well, let’s get on with it,” he said, and reached down for the safe.
As he did so, I said, “You really don’t want to open the safe, do you, Charlie?”
“I do. Really, I do. A deal’s a deal, and I want to pay you. Your half.”
“But wouldn’t you rather pass it along to your own boy?”
“Without you, Ms. Moon, I would have nothing to pass on to my kid. Besides, it’s really a silly tradition.”
“No, it’s not. It�
�s about family.”
“We’ve been keeping this thing going for years and it’s impractical at best, like a joke from beyond the grave.”
“I think it’s an amazing tradition,” I said.
He didn’t say it, but his body language suggested he thought so, too. He said, “Well, it is kind of fun not knowing what’s in this thing. I mean, it could be anything, right? But I suppose it’s time to find out once and for all?”
He made a move for the safe again, but he didn’t get very far, mostly because I grabbed his wrist. He shivered at my cold touch.
I said, “This isn’t right.”
“A deal’s a deal, Ms. Moon. Besides, I have no other way of repaying you.”
I thought about that, then looked around. “Not true. You have enough junk to stock a dozen houses. There’s got to be something in here that I want.”
“What are you saying, Ms. Moon?”
“I’m saying, let me pick something out of your junk, and the safe is yours. Keep it in your family. Pass it along to your son.”
He processed that information, and I saw the relief ripple through him and his shining aura. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as I’ve ever been.”
“But aren’t you a little bit curious what’s in the safe?”
“More than you know,” and as I said those words, I briefly closed my eyes, and expanded my consciousness throughout the room, and as I did so, two things made me gasp.
The first was the contents of the safe, which I saw clearly. The second was what I saw resting inside a wooden box deep under a pile of newspapers.
Charlie was watching me curiously. “Are you okay?”
“Er, yes,” I said, then patted him on the shoulder. “I would suggest you find a much better place for your safe.”
“I will.”
“A very safe place.”
“You think the contents are valuable?”
I thought of the two old spirits, Charlie’s father and grandfather. I thought of Charlie’s own son and the unique bond that kept the generations connected. The safe. I also saw in my mind’s eye the tightly rolled vellum document that might just be the rarest of all American documents, a document signed by our founding fathers, centuries ago. A document thought to be lost...until now.
