by Mark Leslie
“What are you doing with all these hidden photos of Grandfather, Dad?” Scott wasn’t sure why his father would have gone to such trouble to keep these pictures hidden and in such a secure spot.
Putting the photos aside, he looked down into what else was inside the tackle box, and started pulling them out one by one.
The first object looked like a hearing aid. It had the little ear, shaped crescent that would fit over the top of a person’s ear, then a little rounded nub that you might stick inside your ear. Strange, his father had never had or at least spoken about any hearing problems – why, then, would he have this hearing aid? And why would he keep it in his tackle box.
The second object Scott pulled out of the tackle box was a silver metal box no more than an inch high by two inches wide and long. It had a little extendable aerial that you could pull out of the top, a small screen that seemed to be some sort of digital display as well as a couple of analog meters; one rounded one with a pair of small hands and the other that looked like the partial crescent shape of a voltmeter. Below that were a cluster of nine small buttons that looked like a digital telephone keypad, the top six buttons black and the bottom row of three red. Below that was another small screen. Scott lifted the box up, figuring it was about two pounds – pretty dense – and saw that on the left side of the box there were a couple of audio jack ports – two different sizes – one that appeared to be for 3.5 MM mono plugs and the other for the much larger and thicker 35 MM stereo plug. As he twisted it around, he noticed the on/off switch at the back near the top.
“What the hell is this?” Scott mumbled, putting it back down on the workbench.
He wanted to turn it on and play with it, but there were several other strange devices in the tackle box that he was curious to look at.
The third object looked to be some sort of handgun shaped object, except the pistol part ended in a tiny umbrella-shaped object and the butt had a thin antenna. There was an on/off switch.
There was a gold-banded watch inside as well – there appeared to be nothing unique about that.
The last large object was a pill bottle, a somewhat translucent brown plastic and a white lid – but no label and nothing written on the top. He shook it and could hear the pills rattling around inside. Then he pushed down and twisted the lid, but it didn’t come off the way a standard child-proof lid was supposed to be removed. The pill bottle seemed to have, much like the false bottom of the tackle box, some special secret way of opening it. Scott fiddled with it for a minute but was unable to decipher the manner by which he could open it.
Finally, in the bottom was a syringe, a couple of bolts, a pen, a pair of cufflinks, a tie clip, and small pile of lose change, both American and Canadian money; mostly nickels and quarters. Scott picked up one of the dimes and noticed there were a series of silver rings near them. He fiddled with one of the silver rings, eventually figuring out there was a thin ring he could pop off to reveal the coin was hollow inside.
“Holy shit, Dad,” Scott said. “What the hell would you need hollow coins for? Passing on information about secret fishing spots?”
That’s when he heard the front door upstairs open and close, and his father’s voice.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Scott said, scrambling to place all of the objects back into the bottom of the tackle box. The coins, the pill box, the pistol-shaped object, the watch, the metal box and the hearing aid. Once they were inside, he carefully put his grandfather’s pictures back on top, then set the false bottom object back in.
He could hear his father and mother speaking upstairs.
“Don’t come downstairs,” Scott said. “Don’t come downstairs.” He repeated that as he struggled with the false bottom, trying to get it to properly latch back into place. It wasn’t working. Nothing he tried seemed to be getting it back into place.
The sound of a drawer squeaking open and the clinking of cutlery filled the kitchen, familiar sounds of Scott’s mother preparing a meal.
“I’ll heading downstairs for a minute before dinner,” Scott heard his father, the voice coming from the top of the stairs, announce.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Scott said, trying to guide the tiny ridges along the side that he had to line up with tiny little tongues that further popped in and locked the false bottom section securely into place. Nothing seemed to be working.
As he struggled with the false bottom, he could hear his father’s footsteps coming down the stairs. The one saving grace was that his father walked terribly slowly due to his one bad leg, but the rhythmic two-toned thumb of his one normal shoe, the other built-up heavy Frankenstein monster shoe pattern sounded, to Scott, like the rising anxiety-inspiring beat of tension music in a movie like Jaws or a horror flick where the creature was getting ever closer.
His father had descended at least a half dozen stairs, before the false bottom settled into the right position and finally clicked into place.
Scott breathed a sigh of relief as he placed the top section of the tackle box back inside and closed the lid.
He managed to get himself across the room and over to his father’s toolbox area, pulling out one of the small cabinets holding a miscellaneous selection of tiny nails, screws, and bolts, when his father walked in.
“What are you up to, chief?” his father asked. Chief was one of the nicknames he’d regularly called his son when he was a kid. It had started off as Chip, but then it migrated to either Chief or Sport or Boss or Partner. For a while, during Scott’s teen years, he hated whenever his father used those terms. Now, though, that he was a little bit older, hearing his father calling him Chief was somehow comforting – something that seemed of definite importance, particularly now that he’d learned his father was keeping something rather odd from his family.
“Oh,” Scott said, trying to sound casual. “I just need a sharp object to pop open the hard drive on my laptop.”
He proceeded to start explaining some of the technology about the problem he’d been having earlier, knowing full well that his father would begin to fade out, stop paying attention to his computer-babble. Sure, the man had been proud that his son was so knowledgeable about computers, but he’d never been interested in hearing him talk about it.
As Scott watched his father’s face fade into the standard bored look he got when Scott spoke about computers, Scott wondered if that, too, had been a mask, something kept from the rest of the world, like those strange and intriguing technological devices squirreled away in his father’s tackle box.
Chapter Eleven
Today
“Aw, shit, Gary,” Scott said. “Not you too!”
Before Scott could do anything, Gary lunged forward, his hands closing around Scott’s throat.
Scott reached up and tried to pry Gary’s fingers away from their crushing grip on his throat. They both stumbled backwards as Scott simultaneously tried to back away and out of the tight clasp his friend had on his throat.
The back of Scott’s legs hit the black leather couch, preventing him from moving back any more.
Scott dug his fingernails into the backs of Gary’s hands, but his friend didn’t respond to the pain, acted as if nothing were wrong. Gary choked and gasped as the hands closed tighter on his throat.
Managing to slip a couple of fingers from his right hand between Gary’s hand and his throat, Scott pulled hard. It brought a bit of relief, but he still couldn’t breathe. He again pushed back, and this time they both fell, Gary falling on top of Scott onto the couch.
As they fell, Gary’s grip lessened enough for Scott to get his fingers wedged in deeper between his friend’s hand and his throat. He pried the hand further away, Scott could again breathe.
“Gary, please don’t do this!” Scott gasped.
“You cannot evade us! We will stop you!” Gary said in that same monotone voice, his glassy eyes fixated completely on Scott, barely blinking or showing any emotion.
Scott squirmed and struggled, his right hand further prying Gary�
�s one hand off his throat, his left hand trapped between their bodies against Gary’s chest.
As Gary pressed down and struggled against Scott, his breath blew into Scott’s face. There was something on Gary’s breath, a strange and powerful mothball-like scent. It made Scott’s eyes water and he turned his head away from the blast of fetid air.
The distraction from the terrible smell loosened Scott’s grip on his friend’s hand, and Gary managed to get a tighter hold back onto his throat. Scott was feeling himself begin to fade.
They rocked back and forth on the couch for a few more seconds, with each rock, Scott managed to twist his arm and hand, so he could finally press the palm of his hand against Gary’s chest. With an additional back and forth rocking, he also managed to get his elbow against the hard back of the couch.
Figuring he was less than ten or so seconds from “lights out” Scott made one final struggle. With a desperate push of his elbow and against Scott’s chest, they both tumbled off the side of the couch and onto the tiled floor, this time with Scott coming down on top of Gary.
Gary didn’t let go of Scott’s throat as he fell, seeming to completely lack the self-preservation instinct most people might have of putting out an arm to break their fall. Instead, he kept his hands firmly in the choke-hold on Scott’s throat – which was very likely the only thing that saved Scott.
As he went down, Gary’s head went first, and the weight of the two men falling was absorbed mostly by the back of his cranium.
Unconscious from the concussion, Gary’s hands went slack from Scott’s throat and his arms dropped to the ground.
Gasping, Scott knelt over his friend and sucked in the glorious air he had been prevented from pulling in just seconds earlier. He couldn’t get away. Gary was laying there, unmoving, his eyes closed, and Scott was terrified that his friend’s eyes would snap open and he would reach up and begin choking him again, like in a scene from a horror movie. But despite his fear, he couldn’t do anything other than kneel over his friend and keep pulling in lungful after lungful of sweet air.
“Jesus, Gary.” Scott finally gasped. “What happened?”
He begin to get up, wondering if Herb and the security guard had been close enough to hear the scuffle. Gary and Scott hadn’t been loud at all, except maybe for the fall to the floor and the loud smack of the back of Gary’s head. But considering the size of the building and how far they were likely away, he doubted they’d heard a thing.
But he still needed to get away before they came back.
He stood and stepped over to the door.
As he was reaching for it, the knob turned, and from the other side of the door, Herb’s voice in unison with the security guard, blended together that now familiar monotonic drone of words: “You won’t get away. You cannot evade us!”
Chapter Twelve
Four-and-a Half Years Ago
Scott was sitting at the diner table across from the client that had attracted him to the meeting. Despite the delays from his father’s surgery, the meeting was still happening, and for that reason, Scott was at a state of unease that he usually didn’t face when meeting with a client.
Normally he was confident and somewhat cocky in his approach. The clients needed him more than he needed them, and he could easily command a premium dollar for his services. He could be picky about whom he chose to work with, he could dictate the terms of the relationship.
But, because of the lack of control on his side, the continued delays inflected on the meeting prior to it happening, thanks to the delays at the hospital for his father’s surgery, Scott’s position of power and authority had been undermined.
The client, upset and angry over the delays, was in the position of power.
Scott was in an undermined position.
And he wasn’t used to that at all.
So he was already off guard, a little set back, when his cell phone rang.
“Sorry about that,” Scott said, lifting the phone up to flick off the ringer while simultaneously glancing down at the screen to see who was calling. It was a Sudbury area number, one he didn’t know, but it was an exchange Scott recognized as being from the hospital.
“You’re not answering that,” the client barked at him, his cheeks fleshed red, his jowls quivering like a bowl of translucent pink gelatin. “After dicking me around all morning, you’re not going to answer that.”
Scott looked back at him, wondering at the chances he would be able to make the initial revenue this job had initially promised.
The client, his voice louder, reached out and placed his hairy, thick-knuckled hand over top of Scott’s, the one holding his cell phone. “You answer that fucking phone and we’re done.”
This was a lot of money. Scott looked at him, at his beady little blue-grey eyes, bunched closely together under the thick mono-brow that crossed his forehead. That single caveman-esque eyebrow would have been the man’s most striking feature if it weren’t for the large bulbous nose. It had obviously been broken multiple times, and it carried a deep red-blue hue, the color associated with years of heavy and abusive drinking.
It was early afternoon and Scott could already smell rye on the man’s breath.
He couldn’t be more than in his mid-forties, but the man looked to be pushing sixty.
Sitting there, realizing he’d likely already lost the job, Scott hated the man with virtually every single fiber of his being. And, for the first time since he’d started his career as a hacker, he hated this pandering he’d had to do to people like this client; to the dregs and lowest common denominators of society.
He hated himself, the path his life was on, the dealings that were a regular part of his life.
It was a strange awakening to suddenly have dawn on him, all while the phone vibrated in his hand beneath the large clenched first of this client he had so eagerly sought to travel such a great distance in order to be with and woe.
Enough, Scott thought.
“I have to get this,” Scott said, angrily pulling his hand from under the client’s meaty fist and sliding his thumb across the screen to unlock it for the phone call, lifting the phone to his ear.
“You’re done. I’m done,” the client said, standing from the table, his chair scraping loudly against the floor as he rose.
“This is Scott,” he said into the phone, staring down the client.
“Scott. It’s Mom.” Her words were anxious, loaded with emotion and panic. Suddenly, the angry client receding back through the diner, and virtually everything else surrounding Scott vanished.
“What is it?”
“It’s Dad,” She said, and then tried to say something more, but she couldn’t force the words through. She started crying.
Scott dropped his phone hand down to the table and stared at the numbers, the numbers of the hospital, the ones he hadn’t recognized but figured he’d know based on the exchange.
He stared at the phone, the sounds of his mother sobbing flowing up to his ears.
His father hadn’t made it.
He glanced back at the client, watched him stomp out the front door, then looked back down at the phone.
His mother’s voice punched through the silence and the sudden ringing in his ears. “Scotty? Are you there?”
“Shit! Shit! Shit!”
Chapter Thirteen
Today
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Scott said, pulling his hand away from the door handle he had just been reaching for, as if the handle had suddenly started glowing with a white-hot intensity. “What the hell can I do now?”
He looked away from the twisting knob and glanced back at the unconscious and prone body of his friend Gary. Gary was still out.
But for how long?
“Think, think, think,” Scott said, pacing back and forth in front of the door. “I haven’t had a second to think here. Can’t a guy catch a break?”
As if in response, the vent kicked in again, throwing a blast of stifling heat into his face.
The vent!
It was wide enough for him to crawl into it.
A way to escape.
He could climb up and into the vent and get away.
On the other side of the door he heard a set of keys jangling.
Shit, he thought. Of course the security guard had a set of keys to every room in this place. It was just a matter of seconds before he got the door open and it was game over for Scott.
Scott looked around the room, his eyes falling onto the couch. A plan started to develop in his mind.
He stepped over top of Gary, grabbed his one arm and one leg and slid the prone body to the back of the room. Then he lifted the one end of the couch and dragged it in front of the door, wedging the high hard back of the couch under the door knob. About seven feet long, it covered not only the door but about a foot and a half on both sides.
Scott then grabbed at the metal cabinet on the side of the room, and, pulling forward, managed to rock it back and forth until it tipped over and slammed down hard on the floor. It was heavy and laid on the floor less than half an inch in front of the couch.
Stepping onto the couch, Scott was pleased with the two purposes it would serve – it, and the heavy cabinet lodged in front of it, would make it harder for Herb and the security guard to get door to open once they unlocked it; and it would also allow him the height needed to get into the vent itself.
Outside, a key slipped into the lock. There was the sound of jostling, but the door didn’t unlock. More jangling of keys.
