Night Latch

by Anela Deen

  “No one knew where he was buried before?”

  “When he died, he instructed his followers to bury him in a grave without markers. It’s claimed the funeral escort killed anyone who crossed their path to make sure no one knew where he ended up.”

  “Jeez. Harsh.”

  “A lot of people believe it was because they’d buried him with treasure.”

  “And did they?”

  “There were a few identifying items among the bones, and this box. Paul had friends who’d been part of the expedition. At first it looked like nothing until they studied it a bit more.”

  “Paul wasn’t there?”

  “He’d come down with chicken pox and had to stay home. You should’ve heard him scolding my mom for not vaccinating him as a kid. Statistics and everything. He was such a nerd.” A small, sad smile turned at his lip, quickly gone. “Anyway, his colleagues Skype’d with him during the trip. This box had everyone in an uproar.” He tapped the paper in front of me. “The language inscribed here is an archaic form of Mongolian that’s almost extinct. Nikudari. There are only about three hundred speakers left and they all live on the outskirts of Herat, Afghanistan.”

  “I assume they got the translation.”

  “They did. That’s the spooky part.”

  “Because a mysterious object in an ancient conqueror’s burial site is so every day.”

  Nick’s expression remained deadly serious. “It says, Voice that cannot be unheard. Speech that cannot go unheeded. Power supreme. Cost sublime.”

  Goosebumps rose on my arms. “Okay. That is spooky.”

  “Paul called this thing a myth wrapped in a horror story. The material it’s made out of isn’t even from the region. This is a rare blue stone called Larimar which is found only in the Dominican Republic. There’s no way Genghis Khan was anywhere near there. X-rays can’t get a clear picture of what’s inside, like it’s deflecting them, and no one can get it open, not by hand or by machine. That’s the insane mystery of it.”

  “But there’s a key.”

  He nodded. “Paul’s doctorate specialized in Eurasia and this time period specifically. He had a theory about the key but wouldn’t share it with anyone. Next thing we knew, he flew out to the Smithsonian in D.C. I was in Japan by this time. About a month later I got a package from him with the stone. He said the box had been stolen, that it was dangerous and no one should ever get their hands on the key. He told me to find a place where it’d never be found. A week later he was…” Nick bowed his head.

  “Did you really get rid of it?”

  “I skipped it off the tallest waterfall in Japan.”

  “So, when you said Paul told you to lose it—”

  “That’s what I did.” He gripped my arm. “I know you’re a locksmith, but if it could be opened by typical means, they wouldn’t be doing any of this.”

  “I’m not a typical locksmith.” I clasped his arm in return. “There are things I can’t tell you, but I promise, I can open this box.”

  He held my gaze, his brow creasing, but he didn’t voice the questions I saw forming in his eyes. Instead, he said, “Even if you can, I don’t know that you should. Paul gave his life to keep it locked.”

  That was true, and we had no guarantee they’d leave us alone even if we did what they wanted. We needed a better plan and more information. In particular, it would be nice to know what that fancy riddle engraved on it meant. Why were there always mysterious insinuations with these things? Was there a rule somewhere that said you couldn’t be plainspoken when crafting creepy objects of legend?

  The thought snapped forward a memory of the graveyard and Moreau’s incantations written across the stone. I chewed the inside of my cheek, considering. Crafted words held power, I’d seen that firsthand. Maybe the engravings on the box did something similar.

  I folded up the paper and stuck it in my pocket. “I think I know someone who might be able to explain what this box does.”

  “You do?”

  “It’s worth a shot.” Though the guy never did anything for free. Who could say what he’d want in exchange this time?

  Nick seemed to read my reluctance. “What kind of someone is this? Not a friend, I’m guessing.”

  “Not really, but if anyone knows, it’s him. I’ll ask him tomorrow.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “No,” I said sharply. There was no way I’d have Nick owe him too, and that wily witchdoctor could barter a person out of their socks before they knew what’d happened.

  “You’re not going alone.”

  “He won’t show himself with a stranger around,” I told him, thinking fast. “Don’t worry, I’ve dealt with him before and he’s not a Foster-type.” I hoped. I didn’t know him all that well but he seemed too practical for wanton violence. Nothing to gain in that.

  Nick’s jaw tightened. “I don’t like this. You’re my oldest friend. If something happened to you because I dragged you into this, I wouldn’t—I don’t know how I’d—” His voice cracked. I leaned across the table to clasp his shoulder.

  “Trust me, okay? There is a solution to this and we’re going to find it.”

  “Sam…”

  “Hey, remember senior year when you snuck into school at night on prank week, took the molding off the entrance to the teacher’s lounge, and then dry walled over the actual door?”

  He gave a wan smile. “The teachers kept pacing along the wall the next day looking for the door. I hear the freshmen still talk about that prank.”

  “They do, but none of them know that while drywalling you stood inside the room like a dummy and accidentally sealed yourself in. Who got you out of that jam?”

  “You did. But Sam, these people, they won’t just give us detention if we screw with them.”

  “This trouble is just another sealed up room, my friend, and I’m going to break you out of it.”

  Somehow.

  Chapter 26

  The weather turned to absolute misery on the drive back. It might’ve been a welcome distraction from overthinking the predicament I found myself in but the drive became a white-knuckled experience. Halfway home, mid-November provided a zesty freezing rain for tonight’s special. Sticky slush built up along the edges of the windshield no matter how hard I ran the defrost.

  The two-way stretch between Bellemer and Ames lacked streetlights and didn’t hold much by way of civilization. Just farmland and forest, and I’d crossed into the latter. I wasn’t sure if the absence of anyone else on the road was a good thing or not. On the one hand, there was less chance of crashing into someone. On the other, there wouldn’t be anyone to help if I spun out and collided with the towering trees I drove past. Although, crawling along at barely thirty miles per hour, it wouldn’t be much of a crash.

  At least Nick didn’t have to brave this. He and his parents were staying in Ames so he could be close to Camp Dodge where he had to check in with his commanders in the morning. I estimated I’d make it home at about the same time if I had to drive the whole way at this crawling pace. No sleep again.

  “Not like I need to be sharp for tomorrow or anything,” I grumbled. Maybe I should check if the supermarket sold an intravenous coffee next to the filters.

  A few minutes later, the freezing rain turned to sleet and the wind picked up. Tiny frozen pellets clattered against my truck, evading my wipers frantically thunking left to right. The road beyond my headlights glistened, a shining stretch of icy wet. Concern poked at me. I debated pulling over to wait out the worst of this but there was no shoulder. With the weather and the inky dark of this country highway, to stop would be more dangerous than to keep going.

  Or so I thought.

  Intermittent bursts of light from ahead caught my eye as I rounded a curve in the road. I had only a second to wonder at it before a car careened around the bend, caught in a violent spin. High beams flashed with each rotation. It skidded into my lane, lined up for a direct hit. My body went cold. My lungs froze in my
chest. Only long experience driving winter streets kept me from slamming on my breaks or wrenching the wheel. Instinct took over. I let go of the gas and nudged the steering to the right.

  Time seemed to slow as the car whipped toward me. The glare of lights. The shine of its bumper. The glitter of sleet filling the vanishing space between us.

  At the last moment, it lurched hard to the left, missing me by a hairsbreadth, and veered over the side of the road. Still coasting forward, I stared in dumbfounded shock at the place it’d been. Metal crunched behind me, snapping me out of my daze. The implication slammed home. No shoulder along here. No ditch. Only the unforgiving trees awaited.

  I eased to a stop and pulled over to the side as much as possible. Grabbing my emergency flashlight from under the seat, I scrambled out of the truck. Cold, wind-driven sleet pelted me in the face as I rushed back down the road. Visibility was so bad I would’ve missed where the other car had gone off the highway if not for the torn-up earth alongside the asphalt.

  Wet dirt gave beneath my boots as I half-slid down the steep incline, the slender beam of my flashlight bouncing ahead of me. I nearly lost my footing in my rush. I raced along a trail of ravaged underbrush and spotted the other car. It had missed the initial row of trees, pitched down the slope, and wrapped its front end around an enormous evergreen. It was a small sedan, all four doors still closed. Nothing moved but for the curl of smoke rising from the crushed engine. A sinking feeling entered my stomach.

  “Is anyone hurt?” I shouted as I came up behind it, stepping over fallen branches and a quilt of pine needles. No one answered.

  I moved around to the left side, flashing the light into an empty back seat before going to the driver’s side window. Someone sat hunched forward, unmoving, head turned away where the air bag pillowed it. The door resisted when I pulled on it, warped metal groaning as I got it open.

  “Can you hear me? Are you all right?” I touched the driver’s shoulder—a woman’s shoulder. She wore a short-sleeve blouse of all things in this weather, in white or maybe cream, with cut-off jeans. It wasn’t something I’d usually notice but every detail seemed to brand itself into my awareness. She made a sound. A small moan but didn’t move.

  “My name is Sam,” I told her, setting the flashlight at my feet. “You’ve been in an accident.”

  The first thing to do was get her out of the car. The smoke that had been drifting up from the engine had thickened, a stench of hot metal and singed evergreen. I wasn’t too worried about an explosion—that only happened in the movies, really—but fire posed a definite risk. The rectangular airbag seemed to have her wedged in there good.

  I grabbed my pocket knife. “I’m going to help you out of the car, okay?”

  She didn’t answer. The canopy of branches over us trapped the smoke pouring from the engine around the car. No time. I put a bracing hand over her collarbone, and sliced a hole in the air bag. It deflated in a whoosh of dust and stale air. I mashed it down and eased her back so her head tipped against the head rest. Then I went to unbuckle her seatbelt—and froze in horror.

  With the airbag gone, I had a clear view of her seat. When the front end had crumpled against the tree trunk, the collision thrust her seat forward. The steering wheel had rammed into her middle, pinning her to the seat and mangling her ribcage as badly as the front bumper. Bones had shattered inward, shredding her. A pool of blood filled her lap. I looked away; the sight too ghastly to take in without going lightheaded.

  Her head shifted towards me and I grimaced. She looked really young. Sixteen? Seventeen? Barely old enough to drive. She had pale, blond hair cut short and streaked with pink. Her eyes opened, glassy brown, full of pain and fear as they met mine.

  She tried to say something. Blood dribbled from the side of her mouth.

  I swallowed hard, trying to erase the stricken expression I felt on my face as I dug out my phone. An ambulance could help her but we were in the middle of nowhere during an ice storm and the engine had the look of an impending bonfire.

  No. No panic allowed. Dial 9-1-1 and then find something to douse the engine.

  She made another inarticulate whimper. Tears filmed her eyes. I took her hand where it hung limply at her side. “Hold on. Help is coming.”

  I flipped open my phone.

  “Sam.”

  I looked up in surprise. Alice stood beside me. Untouched by the wind and sleet, the smoke swirled around her while she gazed at me with eyes like a pair of blue stars. She looked more like an ethereal spirit than the person I knew.

  “Why are you here?” I said.

  “Go back to the road. To your truck.”

  “No, there’s been an accident. This girl needs my help.”

  “She doesn’t.”

  “Yes, she does, she—” I turned back to find the light in her brown eyes faltering, the hand in mine going slack. I took in the solemn distance in Alice’s expression. “You’re here for her, aren’t you?”

  “Return to your truck and call your emergency number.”

  “Is there a chance they can save her?”

  She didn’t reply, the answer obvious.

  Stubborn refusal surged through me. “I can’t just leave her. Couldn’t you hold off a little while—”

  “Sam,” Alice made a reprimand of my name. “She is on my docket. Her life ends here.”

  The desire to argue didn’t leave me, though I knew I’d be wasting my breath. Even if I could get the girl out of the car, I had no way to save her from her terrible injuries. It seemed unlikely the EMTs could’ve done anything either. Alice—Death—had come for her. I couldn’t stop this girl from dying any more than I could change the weather that had caused the accident. It gutted me, the knowing I could do nothing more than hold her hand while her life faded away beside an empty highway.

  A thought nudged its way to the front of my mind. Maybe there was one thing I could do, but the idea struck me as so outrageous I felt like an imposter even considering it. Only a priest or a bishop could deliver last rites. There did, however, exist a loophole in which a lay person could perform them. As a kid I’d seen my Nana do it for a friend when Father Chuck was out of town and Deacon Schmidt wouldn’t make it in time.

  Still, I hesitated. She might not even be Catholic or believe in God at all. And this went against my instincts too. I didn’t subscribe to the idea that someone had to towel off your earthly sins before death or you’d be condemned to purgatory. It was another one of those staggeringly hypocritical, box-checking rituals. Yet…maybe I could do this my own way. Maybe the words could be a simple wish for peace. Judgement-free. That was the essence of prayer, wasn’t it? Asking something greater than ourselves to lend respite to our mortal suffering? I could offer her that.

  I held her hand with both of mine, wishing I knew her name. Her eyes looked into mine blankly, as if she didn’t truly see me anymore.

  I stumbled a bit through the words. O Fount of Life. O Blood and Water. It had been a while since I learned the sacraments during confirmation classes, and to be frank, I never did completely memorize the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. I also didn’t have any Eucharist on me or oil to anoint her, but I spoke with a sincere heart, and with true sorrow to witness a young life end so abruptly. With my thumb, I traced the cross on her brow, her lips, and over her heart. Her gaze stared back at me, empty.

  “Be at peace,” I whispered, wishing I could’ve done more. “I’m sorry.”

  I had to step away from the car then, the smoke so heavy my eyes watered and my chest seized with cough. From a safe distance, I watched while flames licked out from the mangled hood.

  “You should not have done that.” Alice stood beside me again.

  I swiped the moisture out of my eyes, annoyed. “Cultivate a little sympathy for us mortals, will you? This is a tragedy.”

  “You behave recklessly, ignorant of the impact of your own actions.”

  “And why, oh great mentor who never explains anything, is what I did wrong? Wh
y is it wrong to hold someone’s hand so they don’t have to die alone on the side of the road?” My voice turned raw. Too close. All of this was too close to my own sad history.

  I felt Alice’s gaze on me though I didn’t meet it. She gave a resigned sigh. “I’d hoped to spare you. But now, being what you are, having done what you did, I cannot shield you from it.” She lifted a hand. “Now you will see.”

  Chapter 27

  Someone stepped out of the cloud of smog surrounding the car. The girl, I realized with a start, and for an idiotic moment, I thought I must’ve had it wrong, that I’d mistaken her injuries. Then my slow brain caught up and noticed there was no blood on her clothes and the wind didn’t ruffle her short hair.

  “That…Is that her…?” My voice gave out on a breath.

  “Her soul,” Alice confirmed. “Yes.”

  I took an involuntary step back, the hairs along my arms rising. A ghost. I’d seen way too many horror movies for my nerves to handle this well.

  The girl moved uncertainly away from the car. She didn’t look incorporeal or ghoulish. If not for the silence of her steps, I might have mistaken her for the living. Even the look of confusion remained utterly human. Her gaze found us and relief swept over her features.

  “Can you help me?” she said, hastening our way. “That’s my car and I—I don’t know if I’m okay. I feel strange.”

  Alice spoke, but her voice changed. It echoed in an overlapping cascade, a terrible chorus of shadow and devastating command.

  “Margaret Ophelia Simon.”

  The girl gasped. She crashed to her knees as if someone had pulled her legs out from under her.

  Alice strode forward to loom over her like an implacable monolith. “The thread that held you to the living world has been severed. Your life has ended.”

  Alice’s tone held an odd monotone, as if these were lines from a script she’d repeated so many times they ceased to have any meaning for her. Despite my rapt astonishment at this whole thing, that struck me as rather insensitive, like a doctor blithely rattling off a terminal diagnosis with no thought to the patient’s reaction.