Deadly Curiosities

by Gail Z. Martin

  “Most of those buildings were on land that sooner or later ended up belonging to Jeremiah Abernathy.

  “I hope you don’t mind the long message, but I thought you might want to know. Stop by any time. I always enjoyed helping Evan, and I’m glad to help you, too.”

  I put the cell phone back in my pocket, deep in thought. How much had Evan taken Mrs. Morrissey into his confidence? I wondered. Did she have an inkling about what we really did at Trifles and Folly?

  Teag had overheard the message. “More evidence that we’re looking in the right place,” he said. I slipped my phone into my pocket.

  “Did you get a chance to hack any more of the Stor-Your-Own files?” I asked. I was dying to know who Clockman was and how he fit into the picture.

  Teag nodded. “After we got back from seeing Flora and dropping you off, Anthony and I had a bit of a row.”

  I looked at him, worried. “Bad?

  He shrugged. “Not fun. He’s resigned himself to ghosts, but Flora’s talk about demons, and the possible connection between what we’re dealing with and the murders, has him really freaked out. He’s worried about both of us.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Teag looked uncomfortable. “I told him that the shop worked with a secret European organization that looks into supernatural threats, kind of like NSA for ghost hunters. CSI: Undead. Torchwood. He can figure it out.” He sighed. “And then I told him it was all part of a new Homeland Security partnership and I couldn’t say more.”

  I didn’t know whether to hug Teag or burst out laughing. “Wow,” I said. “Just…wow. You’re good.

  That’s the most inaccurate truth-telling I’ve ever heard.” Teag looked a little sheepish, and I grinned.

  “Hey, you were brilliant. And honestly, aren’t you glad he doesn’t want you to get eaten by a demon?”

  “It’s kind of sweet, yes,” Teag replied drolly.

  I happened to glance out the window, and I saw a figure in the shadows across the street. Teag seemed to sense the shift in my mood, because he sobered immediately. “There’s someone out there,” I said.

  “Moran?”

  I shook my head. “Not tall and skinny enough. I’ll go to the front door. You go around the back and see if you can catch whoever-it-is by surprise.”

  He nodded. “I’m on it.”

  I moved to the door, keeping out of sight of the big glass windows in the front of the store. Then I counted to one hundred to allow Teag to get into position before I threw open the door.

  Our stalker was gone.

  “No one there,” Teag said, shrugging. Neither of us wanted to go beyond Lucinda’s wardings.

  “Maybe we’re jumping at shadows. Ready to see what Sorren left us?” I asked. We had come into the office that morning and found a small package on my desk with a note from Sorren. The note said that it was something he had found scouting ‘the location’ and I should look at it when Teag could help. I took that to mean that Sorren thought it would pack a psychic wallop and so I should have Teag around to anchor me.

  “Absolutely,” Teag replied. “I thought we’d have a chance to look at the package much sooner. I never expected to be so busy today.” Teag walked with me to the office after making sure the door was locked and ‘Closed’ sign was turned.

  Sorren had left me a paper bag, folded and tied with a string.

  “Do you want me to open it, just in case?” Teag asked.

  “Sure, but I’m not getting any vibes.” I answered. Teag wasn’t as sensitive to objects as I was, but if it was really bad, he’d know.

  “Sorren’s sense of humor?” Teag asked as he removed a worn, muddy baseball cap from the bag.

  “He said he was going to see if he could verify the location of the activity for Mirov. It could be nothing and it could be bad, real bad,” I said.

  “But if you read it… I could practice my grounding on you. And if it’s real bad, I can pull you back quickly. Lucinda and Sorren thought that ability would come in handy.”

  I stared at the hat in his hand for a moment. There were about a million ways this could go wrong, or at least become highly unpleasant, but if we could figure out how to bring down Moran and his crew, a little discomfort was worth it. “Give it here,” I said with a sigh.

  “Better sit down, just in case,” he warned. “Let me prepare my cords and I’ll put my hand on your shoulder.”

  He didn’t have to convince me. We closed the office door. Teag made a hot cup of tea with plenty of sugar and had it ready to revive me if the vision was too intense. I sat down and took a few deep breaths. Then I held out my hand for the hat.

  Teag placed the hat in my hand and I felt the reassurance of his hand on my shoulder. The hat was unremarkable, a cheap gimme cap, with the logo of a hardware chain on the front. It was filthy, torn and probably one of thousands produced at some factory in China. But when the fabric of the hat touched my skin, I felt that tingle.

  The person who dropped this hat hadn’t been evil. But he had been terrified. I wrapped my hand around the cap and let my eyelids flutter closed, focusing on the vision. The store faded around me, and my inner sight took over.

  I WAS IN a dark corridor. Scared. Mildew and dust and a faint odor of moth balls hung heavy in the air. My flashlight cast a glowing circle that jittered from my shaking hand. I was inside one of the storage facility buildings, clutching a box in one hand, as I tried to hold both it and the flashlight. I fumbled to put a lock back on one of the storage unit doors.

  Something was coming. I felt it. I heard something shuffling along the tiled floor, maybe something being dragged. It was the kind of sound that gave any sane person the urge to run, and that’s what I was trying to do, just as soon as I got that damned lock back on the door. Damn! I should have brought my gear… didn’t think it was quite this bad.

  The sound was closer. I looked up, staring into blackness. I set the lock and pocketed the keys and eyed the distance between where I was and the doorway.

  I tucked the box under one arm like a football player and led with the flashlight, like a frightened quarterback. My running footsteps echoed, but the shuffling noise was still behind me, and getting closer. I pushed my way outside through a broken door and out into the night air, and I picked up speed. I wanted to look behind me, but I’d seen too many horror movies or maybe I’d looked back on a previous trip, because I kept my eyes focused on the hole in the fence, and the safety of the high grass on the other side. I’m getting sloppy. I should have been prepared.

  The air ahead was muggy and warm. But behind me, there was an arctic blast that raised my hackles.

  Whatever was chasing me hadn’t stopped at the door to the storage building like it always had before.

  I’d figured on the chase, called it a calculated risk. Out here, I thought I was safe, although I knew that nowhere inside the fence was really safe. Considering how dangerous the rest of the Navy yard was, I guess it was all relative.

  I was almost to the fence when I felt something tugging at my shirt. Terror gave me the adrenaline for a last burst of speed, and I tore free. I was scrambling under the fence, desperate to get through when the metal caught my hat and cut my scalp.

  The vision disappeared.

  I came back to myself a little quicker than the last time and calmer. I was leaning back, breathing hard as if I had been the one doing the running. My heart pounded in my ears, and I felt a sheen of sweat on my forehead and arms. Teag was standing next to me, his hand still resting on my shoulder as he daubed my face with a cool washcloth.

  “I’m back,” I said. I took the cloth and pressed it against my temples. After a moment, I took the hot cup of very sweet tea into my hand, and took a few sips, willing the sugar to revive me. “That helped,” I said. “I’ve never been this clear after a reading. We may have hit on something. It was very similar to when I used the ring.” “Glad to be of service,” he joked in his most serious ‘butler’ voice.

  �
�Were any of the people you called from the storage facility men?”

  Teag nodded. “Three of them, but only one phone number still worked. I got an older guy who told me to stop harassing him and hung up. Never even got a chance to say hello.”

  “That could be the man I saw in the vision.” I recounted what I had seen, while Teag listened with concern.

  “You don’t know how old that vision is,” Teag said. “But it could mean one tenant is brave – or desperate – enough to go in there after whatever he left behind.”

  “It wasn’t the first time he’d gone inside,” I said, sorting through the images. “He had a plan and a route, but something surprised him. I don’t think whatever’s in there ever went beyond the building after him before.”

  “That means it’s getting stronger,” Teag replied. He made a cup of tea for himself and came back with a package of cookies from the Honeysuckle Café. “It also makes the storage facility different from the other sites we’ve been to.”

  “We figured that,” I said, nibbling on a cookie. “The murders are feeding the demon, helping it gather strength. Let’s call the man from Stor-Your-Own again and see if we can go over to visit him. If he knows his way around, maybe he’d be willing to guide us in – especially if it means he might be able to get to his things more safely in the future.”

  “What could he want badly enough to take the risk he’s been taking?” Teag asked.“Something he thinks he can’t live without.”

  Teag dialed the man’s number again, and this time, someone answered.

  “I don’t want to answer a survey and I don’t want to donate money,” a gravelly voice said.

  “Mr. Pettis! Wait! I need to talk to you about Stor-Your-Own,” Teag said. The line was silent. After a moment, we heard rustling, so we knew he hadn’t hung up on us. “What about it?”

  “We’re trying to help tenants who couldn’t remove their items before the facility closed be able to get them out safely.”

  “Yeah? What’s it gonna cost me?” Obviously, Mr. Pettis was nobody’s fool. On the other hand, he was desperate enough to go into a dangerously haunted abandoned building to get something he needed.

  “We’re not asking you to pay anything,” Teag said in his most soothing, affable voice. “After all, those items belong to you. We’d like to see you get them back.”

  “You’re kinda late, aren’t you? Place closed down six months ago.”

  In the vision, I hadn’t seen Mr. Pettis’s face because I was experiencing the scene through his eyes. But his voice reminded me of the man in the neighborhood where I had grown up, the one who was always yelling at the kids to stay off his grass and who never gave out Halloween candy. The kids called him a grump and a troll. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I found out the guy worked nights and then spent all day taking care of a bedridden wife. Maybe Mr. Pettis had a similar story.

  “We’d like to get a statement from you about your claim to what’s in the storage unit, and our rules say we have to take the statement in person,” Teag said. “May we stop by your house?”

  “How do I know you’re not going to rob me?” Obviously Mr. Pettis seemed to believe that a strong offense was a good defense.

  “I can validate the information from your storage unit application,” Teag said, grabbing the folder. He read back details like payment dates, check numbers, and Mr. Pettis’s address. “Flora seemed to think you were pretty special,” he added, and I raised an eyebrow. Teag’s magic deals with data, but he’s got strong intuition and sometimes he’ll pull something out of thin air that amazes me.

  “Oh she did, did she?” Pettis said, but this time, he chuckled. “Well, I thought Flora was pretty special too. She had time to talk to me. Not many people do.” He was quiet again, and Teag let him think.

  “Come on by in the next hour and we can talk. Don’t be late – I don’t stay up past nine and it would be best if you’re gone by dark.”

  Teag grinned. “Thank you, Mr. Pettis. We’ll be brief – and we’ll see you in about thirty minutes.” He ended the call and looked at me with a triumphant grin. “We’re in! Let’s go talk to Pettis, and then get something to eat. When I go home, I’ll get on the computer and see what I can find about him. There are databases out there that bail bondsmen and collection agencies use to skip trace. I’ll do some more digging.”

  Teag wrote down the address from his notes. We locked up, and headed over to find Mr. Pettis.

  The Pettis house was in a modest section of Charleston, far from the mansions South of Broad or on the Battery. The neighborhood might have been new in the 1940s or 1950s, but it looked hard worn.

  “His name is Chuck,” Teag said as we pulled up. “Chuck Pettis. Age fifty-five. High school diploma, went into the military, saw action in the Middle East. Married once, widowed about five years ago. Two children, but they live out West.”

  The house had a bare-basics look to it. We headed for the front door. I pretended not to notice that Chuck was watching from behind the curtains.

  Teag knocked at the door. It opened just far enough for Chuck to look out through the gap of the safety chain. “We’re the ones who called about Stor-Your-Own,” Teag said. He’d combed back his skater boy hair for the appointment and donned a jacket. Chuck looked him over and gave me a critical glance before he grunted and closed the door.

  Teag and I exchanged a confused glance, then I heard the chain sliding in the lock and the door opened.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Chuck rasped. He stood to the side so we could enter.

  I have never seen so many clocks in my life.

  Chuck Pettis was obsessed by time. Clocks of every description covered the walls: old wooden school clocks, grandfather clocks, factory time clocks, antique pendulum clocks. Clocks filled the bookshelves, covered the mantle above the fireplace, and sat on the table. Antique Baby Ben alarm clocks in silver and brass, big, little and miniature were tucked in every corner, on windowsills and atop the TV. In the living room alone I counted at least half a dozen cuckoo clocks.

  All of them were running. None of them were set to the same time.

  The ticking was louder than my heartbeat. The house seemed to vibrate with the swing of each pendulum. And suddenly, I knew what Chuck had been carrying in my vision. Clocks.

  Chuck’s graying hair was cut short around a bald pate. He had a hawk-like nose, and his thin lips were set in either a grimace of pain or an expression of perpetual disdain. He was too thin, and his faded shirt seemed to hang on him. There was intelligence in his green eyes, but it was canny, shrewd, more the look of elusive prey than the glint of a predator.

  Chuck was afraid of something. Really afraid.

  “You’ve got a lovely collection of timepieces,” I said. It was true. The clocks spanned more than a century, from 1800s industrial models to the 1950s. Chuck had the best collection I had seen outside of a museum. None of the clocks were electric. And there were more in the other rooms.

  “I like clocks,” Chuck said, but his gaze slid to the side, and I knew he was either lying or not telling the whole truth.

  “Thank you for letting us come over,” Teag said.

  Chuck motioned stiffly for us to have a seat on the slip covered, swaybacked couch. “What do you want to know?” Chuck was back to being his gruff self. He plopped down in an old recliner like a king on a throne.

  “What can you tell us about Stor-Your-Own, Mr. Pettis?” Teag asked.

  Chuck eyed us suspiciously. “You two lawyers?”

  I shook my head. “No. But we are investigators, trying to get the items back to their rightful owners.” Another half-truth. We were investigating. And we wanted to get any dangerous supernatural items back where they belonged. But as I looked around, I wondered why on earth Chuck would risk the supernatural dangers of the abandoned storage facility – not to mention arrest for trespassing – over more clocks.

  “I never got a notice in the mail,” Chuck said suddenly. �
��About that Stor-Your-Own closing down.

  That’s not right. I paid them good money for my rent there. Never caused any problems. Paid on time, too.”

  “Did they call you?”

  Chuck motioned toward the kitchen, where I saw an old-style black phone on the wall. Anywhere else, I would have thought it was ironically retro. Here, I bet it came with the house. “I don’t just jump up and answer every time the danged thing rings, you know. Damn telemarketers. Call all the time during dinner or when I’m watching one of my shows. Then I get out there, and they hang up.”

  “Did they leave a message?” I asked.

  Chuck fixed me with a look as if I were daft. “Got no patience for one of them answering machines.

  Someone wants to talk with me badly enough, they’ll track me down, eventually.”

  I had the feeling that not many people tried.

  Using my left hand, the one with Bo’s collar wrapped around my wrist, I let myself touch the worn upholstery on the couch.

  The images that came to me were like old Polaroid photos, the colors faded by time. I glimpsed two children, both younger than ten years old, playfully chasing each other with cardboard-tube swords. A dark-haired woman looked on, with a smile of maternal patience. It was the same room and the same furnishings, but with one important difference: there were no clocks.

  Bo’s collar seemed to insulate me from the visions, making me more of an observer than someone present in the scene. I shifted my hand, and this glimpse had fast-forwarded in time.

  The house was quiet. The dark-haired woman I had seen before was several decades older, and she looked careworn and sad. Even so, there was a sense of frayed security about the scene, a feeling of comfortable habit, of constancy and familiarity. Still no clocks.

  I leaned back, but the cushions, flatted by long use, gave more under my weight. This was one of Chuck’s favorite places to sit. The vision I saw was more recent.