by Kaleb Nation
The teller coughed loudly at me and I realized it was my turn. I stepped up.
“I—I have a deposit box here,” I said.
“We use electronic access codes here,” she told me through the speaker. “Do you have yours?”
I nodded and punched the long password string into the box. She checked it with her computer, then told me to go wait at a side door. I stood there for a few minutes until I heard it click, and she ushered me in.
“You’ll need your PIN to open it,” she informed me, all business. The hallway was tiled, fancy marble on the walls covered by more richly framed portraits. As we walked, we started to pass wooden booths with thick red cloths hanging from poles covering their entrances. There were numbers over the booths, and when we came to the one marked “43”, the woman stopped.
“When you’re done, press the call button and the guard will retrieve your box,” she said. She held the red cloth open for me insistently, so I slipped under.
I heard her high heels clicking against the floor as she left. I was now in a boxy room, identical to the others I’d seen on my way up. Harsh lights glared from the ceiling and scrubbed the place clean of any sense of uniqueness. A simple leather stool sat in front of a counter. I heard the teller open a door far away, a few seconds of outside babble, then silence when it clicked shut.
In the center of the counter was a small safe deposit box, lonely and out of place in the grandeur of the room. It was black and metal, the lid sealed by a digital keypad on its top. I stepped closer, glancing over my shoulder to make sure the cloth had fallen into place. It didn’t seem secure enough, not as my expectancy rose, hands gripping the box. It took great effort for me to lift it even an inch.
There was no reason for me to waste time, so I set the paper next to me on the counter and carefully typed the PIN. The box took a few seconds to register and I thought for a moment I’d punched it in wrong, until there came a single beep marking my success. Something inside clicked. I lifted the lid.
Yet another white envelope with my name was resting on top, so I took it out first. I didn’t have a chance to open it though, because there were more things beneath it that distracted me. I fished around in the box, pulling out two blocks of paper, stiff like tall notepads. It wasn’t until I had them all in the light that I realized they were bound stacks of cash.
I nearly gasped. They were all hundred dollar notes bound together in their center by a strip of yellow paper, each stack marked as “$10000”. There were two of them. I’d never seen so much money all at once, even at my hourly rate. This type of money would have changed our lives back home…free air-conditioning in abundance…a new car.
I cautiously reached into the box again with my right hand, unable to let my other release its clutches on the money. I didn’t find anything else but a bumpy base, until I realized that it didn’t feel right and I had peer inside again. At the bottom of the safe deposit was another box.
I unwillingly let go of the money to grab this new contraption, grunting at its weight and struggling to set it on the counter without making too much noise. Even the tiny click of its edge touching the countertop echoed in the booth, though luckily the heavy cloth wouldn’t let the noise escape.
It was one of the most unusual devices I’d ever seen. It was no thicker than two inches but long and rectangular, like the case that my mom kept her old china silverware in. There was no place for a lock though the lid was stuck tight, every part appearing to be made of something like brass.
The most unusual part, though, was the top of the lid. It was embellished in a strange metalworking, the design swirling up and down intricately with lines and curves that whirled into shapes at the corners. In the center of the box’s lid was an upraised piece, with two circles side-by-side, embedded in the metal and bulging out unusually.
I licked my lips. This was something different. I’d learned, however, that Anon tended to do things in an order, so I reached for the abandoned envelope and tore it, pulling the paper out.
To Mr. Asher,
This will be my final correspondence for some time. I must be brief.
This money is to aid you in survival. The bills are untraceable and will provide for your food and basic needs. Do not feel inclined to repay this to me: this is a portion of funds that you left in my care before your passing.
You also asked me to keep one other thing for you. It is the box. Only you can open it.
Do well. Don’t trust anyone.
ANON
It was so very brief in comparison to all his previous letters—almost a letdown when I got to the end. I’d wished for a few more answers…but then again this was Anon.
So I set the paper and the money aside and moved for the box. Shouldn’t Anon have at least given me some instructions on how to get it open? I searched all around it but couldn’t find a hole for a key. In fact there didn’t even seem to be any edge where the lid would part: the entire thing all one piece of uninterrupted metal.
I ran my fingers around its sides, trying to find a button. Instead, as my fingertips crawled the top’s design, I accidentally hit an edge of one of the corners. At first I was frightened that it’d broken off, then I saw that I’d actual hit a hidden lever, which had turned down like a switch.
Nothing happened. So with haste, I searched the other corners, finding that the matching pieces there also moved, shifting all three remaining levers until they faced the center.
I heard a mechanical clicking like tiny gears being forced into motion, feeling a gentle vibrating movement inside the box’s metal shell. Then, like twin doors, the protruding circular pieces started to split apart at their centers, opening like eyelids until they exposed what was beneath.
It was a pair of glass orbs filled with clear liquid, still unsteady from when I’d moved the box. Floating inside them was what appeared to be two human eyeballs.
There was one in each orb, both staring straight ahead with no socket or muscle around them: blank, expressionless gazes missing their frame of a face. It was almost grotesque, until I convinced myself they weren’t actually human eyes…or were they? I couldn’t tell for sure. If they weren’t authentic, they were at least realistic.
I stretched over the countertop so I could see the eyes clearer. Their irises were both green with wide-open pupils, almost like a cat’s in the dark, staying straight even when I tilted the box forward at me so their gaze met mine. Was that all I was supposed to see? Maybe the box didn’t open after all.
I found myself falling into my usual habit, and without even thinking I’d gone beyond the gaze of the eyes and spotted a Glimpse. Immediately, I withdrew with fright.
That was odd, these eyes shouldn’t have shown anything at all. But it’d certainly been there, inviting me in.
So I did it again. I leaned the box forward, studying the gaze, trying to read what was behind it just because that was the only success I’d found so far. I saw a Glimpse, that was certain. But there was nothing there. It was like the eyes were open and surprised and caught in their exposing second, yet didn’t have any emotion or secret to tell.
Suddenly, the pupils narrowed.
I jumped, dropping the box at their unexpected movement. The pupils had squeezed inwards into thin slits like a lizard’s gaze. The box slammed back onto the counter with a crash. In my surprise, it’d felt like the fake eyes had leapt straight from their metal sockets, entering my mind and then slithering back all in the same second.
It was violating, like hands crawling up and down my skin, squeezing and touching me and giving me shivers with their coldness. It was like I’d had something pulled straight through my gaze, and I realized that the eyes I’d been trying to read had sucked in my Glimpse instead.
As if in confirmation of this, the box gave another click, an invisible seal glowing light orange around the parameter before cooling back into its regular gray. Some type of Guardian lock that worked through reading eyes? An alignment in the box that only allowed
it to open at my Glimpse?
I shook the feeling away from me in shivers, hesitant hands reaching forward to remove the lid. It slipped off like the top of a gift box, revealing a tiny space lined with rich, black velvet inside. In the center was a single piece of thin paper.
I lifted the forlorn page out gingerly; it looked so fragile that I was afraid even a gentle blow from the ceiling A/C would make it tear. It wasn’t folded, the writing revealed on the opposite side as I flipped it over and set it flat on the counter.
It was mostly blank. The only part with marking was in the center, black hand-written ink that’d long soaked into the page. At the top was a set of numbers and decimals with two letters: coordinates. Below these was a simple note, written in scratchy cursive so harsh that it’d torn the page in parts:
IT IS HIDDEN IN THE CHURCH.
Their simplicity only made the words all the more severe. What I held in my hands was a treasure map already solved, directions that I had left for myself in some other life. It sank in that the last person to touch this page had been me, decades before, when I’d first been certain that I was going to die.
Was it going to be that simple? I couldn’t shake the feelings of uneasiness, some foreboding now that I had these instructions. Did I even understand what it would mean for me to find the Blade, how much of a chain reaction that would set off?
I placed the lid back and it sealed itself immediately. I turned to the cash. All this time I’d been trying to avoid looking at it. I peeled a stack of the bills from the block, stuffing them into my pockets: I could always come back if I needed more. Then I locked everything up and pushed the buzzer for the guard.
Even the heat of the day felt colder and more tinged with anticipation as I walked through the bank’s doors again. I rolled the paper up nervously as I turned the corner, seeing Callista and Thad still sitting on the cars. They both slid down to their feet.
“Anything?” Callista asked. I didn’t reply, nodding toward the Shelby. They understood, climbing in with Thad in the back seat and Callista beside me, no one speaking until the doors were sealed.
I handed Thad the paper and let him unroll it.
“The Blade is there?” he said after reading it.
“I’d think so,” I replied. “I can’t think of anything else that I’d have kept exact coordinates of.”
While I was saying this, Callista had reached forward and taken the GPS off its mount on the front window, switching it on and clicking its screen with her fingers. Thad and I must have figured out what she was doing at the same time because both of us fell into a hush as she typed. The GPS mulled for a few seconds, then the screen changed to show a path.
“Ten minutes away,” Callista said. “Twenty in traffic.”
“That close?” Thad said with uncertainty. “Why would you hide it out in the open somewhere?”
“Maybe because nobody’d think to look in the open?” I replied, pulling the car keys out of my pocket and slipping them in to the ignition. Thad slid out and walked over to his car, leaving Callista and I again as the engine growled to a start.
It just didn’t feel right to make light conversation anymore, as I made a U-turn and got back onto the main street. Our tension had risen to an almost unbearable level, leaving both our eyes locked ahead but mine still distracted enough to nearly miss turns and red lights.
I wondered why I’d fallen into such a state. It took half the trip for me to realize why: We were actually about to find what all of this had been leading to, what had started this entire fiasco decades before we were even born.
The GPS announced that we’d reached our destination far before I’d expected it to, and its voice caused me to whirl around in my seat.
“Do you see a church?” I asked, but Callista was already searching for it herself. There wasn’t a church in sight: we were in the thickest part of downtown, surrounded by cars parked against the street and pedestrians wandering through the restaurants and shops.
I hit the brakes at an abrupt red light, still searching for anything that might resemble an old church. Nothing. No steeple, no bell tower, and no giant doors—everything here was modern.
I turned the corner with Thad’s car still tagging close behind, going around the block again and stopping carefully where the GPS directed. I pulled onto the side of the road and parked.
“I still don’t see a church,” I said nervously. Callista grabbed the GPS again, confirming that it had been programmed correctly. She looked out her window.
“It should be there,” she pointed.
I strained my eyes looking, but it was no use. No church was on that street.
16
Restlessness
Callista and I waited stoically in a corner booth of the restaurant that sat where the church should have been. Businesspeople held loud conversations in the tables near us—I hardly noticed they were there. Scents of oregano and basil wafted through the air from the bustling and noisy kitchen, my spaghetti and Callista’s small pizza still steaming but untouched, ordered mostly so we could get a table. My fingers drummed as I stared at Thad’s empty seat.
Finally, Thad came walking through the restaurant doors, sliding to sit beside Callista.
“Good and bad news,” he said, picking up his fork and stirring his food around.
“Bad news first,” Callista said. He cleared his throat.
“We’re in the right place,” he explained with an unfortunate tone, twirling his fettuccini noodles onto his fork and taking a bite. “I looked up what I could online at the place next door. Saint Winslow’s Church used to sit on this exact spot, before it was burned to the ground thirty-four or something years ago. They built Fabolli’s on its foundation. You know what that means?”
Both Callista and I stared at him blankly. He swallowed a bite down first.
“Thirty-four is seventeen times two,” he said. “Two lifetimes ago, the church that was here just happened to be burned down.”
“The Guardians knew I’d hidden it here,” I said, nodding my head forward into my hands. Thad lifted a finger.
“But there’s the good news,” he said. “They must not have found the Blade, or else they’d have used it on you by now, right? I mean, isn’t that the whole point?”
He pointed his fork at me. “Think like them. They have to keep killing you every seventeen years. If they had the Blade, and that’d make you die once and for all, they’d have gotten rid of you with it last time.”
“Good point,” I admitted. Maybe the Guardians had given up on their search, thinking that I’d hidden it somewhere else. Hope was having a hard time seeping through the shutters, but I accepted whatever little bit I could get.
“So where is it now?” Callista pressed. Thad swallowed his mouthful down.
“I read a little more,” he continued. “After the church was burned down, all of the relics and anything important were retrieved and moved.”
Callista’s fork scraped against her plate.
“So the Blade is just hidden with all the old stuff,” she said when it hit her.
Thad nodded deeply, too glowing for what he was about to say to be bad news
“They took it all north,” he said with excitement. “Everything is being stored at the Cathedral Of Saint Helen in a little town called Lodi.”
“And nobody ever thought otherwise,” I said, a thrill of relief driving through my heart. For once, fate appeared to be working in our favor. I shoveled a bite of my food into my mouth as some type of victory stab.
“Let’s get there fast,” I told them through my full mouth. “We can make it tonight.”
“Flying might not be the best idea,” Callista broke in. “It’s too much of a risk. All it takes is one Guardian or Chosen still hanging around this area to spot us, and it’s all over.”
It could have been the usual, paranoid Callista-speak that Thad and I were learning to ignore. However, we contemplated her words for a bit, and she was probably right. It w
ouldn’t be smart to take any unneeded risks now, not when we were so close and were still undiscovered.
“Dangit.” I grumbled loudly. “This is one of those rare occasions when Callista is right.”
The way she glared at me, I knew if I’d been sitting in range I’d have gotten punched.
“So let’s stay as much under the radar as we can,” I went on. “We’ll sleep tonight and drive it early tomorrow.”
None of us were interested in finishing our meals, not now that we’d found a lead and were too eager to concentrate on something so mundane. But we gobbled down our food because we were all getting tired of little but albacore tuna and crackers back at the house. I paid with one of the $100 bills, Callista and Thad sending me curious glances when I produced the money. We climbed into our cars and drove back to the house with few words passing between us. Anytime one of us tried to start a conversation, it would end abruptly. Pretty soon we gave up on trying, and separated throughout the house.
* * *
We went to our rooms early, knowing that we’d need rest to face whatever was coming the next day. When I heard the last of their doors closing but found myself turning over in the bed repeatedly for hours, I turning onto my back and stared at the ceiling, trying to sort through my thoughts.
Restlessness held me like the grip of noose, choking any sense of peace out of me that might have led me to sleep. The house had become unsettlingly quiet, the missing hum of my bedroom ceiling fan causing the room to feel even more vacant. It was just too big of a bed, the walls were too far away. There were none of my familiar photos on the walls either, those faces that most people might be frightened by in the middle of the night but I found strangely comforting. Maybe reading their eyes had made me feel like I wasn’t so alone in my room. Or maybe they’d just reassured me that I was home.
