Collaboration 1, part 7

[BL] 

“I need to get into a safe deposit box,” she said, unable to shake the nerves of anticipation. 

“Right over there,” the woman said, pointing to a desk at the end of the row of tellers. “Marcie can help you out.” 

“Thanks,” Vega said, giving the woman one last lingering look before crossing the room.
Marcie, a dinosaur at fortyish compared with all the other tellers, looked up from where she was tapping away at a computer behind the desk. Her gray eyes looked up over a pair of gaudy green-framed reading glasses with an inquisitional stare. Vega wondered what kind of punishment she could be in for if it turned out this was the wrong bank or if the box rental was no longer properly paid up. 

Vega held up the key Grandma had left like an admission ticket. “Need to get into a safe box.” 

“Certainly,” Marcie said, her voice and demeanor suddenly a great deal less intimidating as she hopped up from her seat. “Number?” 

“One ninety-eight,” Vega said, handing over the key to the woman’s outstretched hand. 

“Right this way.” Marcie led her back behind the desk and through a nondescript door beyond which was a second, heavily armored door swung wide open. Beyond, in a more dimly lit room, were several hundred safe boxes lining the walls of the walk-in safe. Unhesitatingly, the woman walked to about halfway through the room, withdrew a second key from under her shirtsleeve where it resided on a pink, coiled bungee, and slid both keys home into one of the medium-sized boxes. With practiced ease, she opened the door and withdrew a closed metal box about the size her new running shoes had come in and placed it on the island counter in the middle of the room. 

“Let me know when you’re done and I’ll close it back up for you,” Marcie said with a polite smile and took her leave.

Moment of truth, Vega thought to herself as she stared down at the cold, steel box. What secrets had Grandma hidden away inside this unassuming little container? It had no latch, only a simple hinged lid, and it opened smooth and quiet. 

Inside the box were two items – a rolled up old plastic grocery bag and a weathered manila envelope suitably sized for legal documents. Vega picked up the plastic bag and could tell there was something about the size of a Twinkie inside, firm but not heavy. She carefully unrolled the bag and withdrew what appeared to be little more than a wad of dried grass and leaves, tightly bound with longer strips of grass and reed. It had a slightly herbal scent to it, but she was at a loss to explain what it was. 

Hoping for more answers, she returned the grassy object back into the bag and withdrew the envelope. This felt like it contained at least a hundred sheets of paper judging by the thickness and way it flexed. She unwound the string binding it closed and let a well-worn book slide out into her hands. It looked for all the world like one of the old church fundraising cookbooks her mom collected, with its orange card-stock covers and amateur plastic spiral binding. The title was clearly done with an old typewriter, but the words were utter gibberish. 

Affixed to the cover was a stickie note: “Vega or Isabelle, burn the herbs and inhale before trying to read. Love, Grandma.” 

Who the fuck is Isabelle?

Collaboration 1, part 6

[MP]
The two-block walk to First Bank of Baltimore was an interminable blur. She was sure there was a good explanation for Gramps’s disappearance, but even the good explanations sent waves of dread cascading through her. At her worst moments, she was sure the bastards next door had taken him, were going to torture him, and his bloated, decaying corpse would soon wash up in the Chesapeake, courtesy of the Patapsco River. More probably, he had thumped his way down to the drug store for his weekly supply of Immodiam AD and Preparation H. But until she saw him, she’d never be able to relax. 

And then there was that strange letter from Grandma. What exactly was Gramps into? Why would Grandma think he would need help? What kind of help could she possibly be if Gramps was “in over his head”? And what would she be finding in the safe deposit box? A gun? Why keep it in the safe deposit box rather than at home, especially in their neighborhood? For a moment, she grinned, thinking of Grandma stashing Marvin the Martian’s Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator, but the levity quickly faded. 

Maybe it would be some sort of paperwork. Gramps had owned the rowhouse at one point, but their paltry savings wasn’t enough to cover even the cost of Grandma’s bargain basement funeral services, and he had had to refinance. Maybe she had been worried about that. But as quickly as the idea occurred to her, she rejected it – considering the way she died, Grandma couldn’t have been talking about the refi of the house. How would she have known he would need to do it? 

The more she thought about it, everything about Grandma’s final communiqué was odd. She must have prepared it ahead of time, but if so, why not talk to Vega about it instead of leaving some inscrutable message? Hadn’t Grandma trusted her? 

The way she had had it delivered was odd, too. Two months after Grandma passed a knock had come at her door. A courier was there with a letter, saying it had been held at his store with directions that it should be delivered if one month had gone by and they had received no communication from Mrs. Elenor Bond. Apparently she had been writing to them once a month for two years to keep that letter from being delivered. 

The final straw as far as Vega was concerned was the bank itself. While First Bank of Baltimore was close to the house, Gramps and Grandma had always had their accounts at Baltimore County Savings Bank, or as Gramps still called it, “The Building and Loan.” In fact, she even remembered their disapproval when she decided to keep the account her parents had opened for her at FBB instead of moving her assets over to Baltimore County. Why would Grandma have kept the safe deposit box at FBB? 

Was she hiding it from Gramps? And if so, how was it still being paid for after three years, especially since Grandpa balanced his checkbook to the penny every month; there would be no way for FBB to be automatically drawing money from Baltimore County without it sending Gramps into a tirade. 

As she opened the doors to First Bank of Baltimore, Vega sighed a breath of relief as the cool air flowed over her. While it wasn’t truly into the heat of the day yet, she could tell that it was going to be a scorcher. 

The bank was laid out in a giant circle, with an entire half-wall taken up with a counter manned by a platoon of tellers. In the middle hulked a large information kiosk surrounding a petite young woman of about 23. She wore a khaki-colored skirt that was cut tastefully above the knee and whose design hid, yet accentuated her shapely legs. Her full crimson blouse matched her well-kept nails, and she beamed a professional smile at Vega as she entered the bank. 

“Welcome to First Bank of Baltimore,” she said. “What can I do for you today?” 

She’s pretty, thought Vega, feeling herself respond to the sight of the receptionist’s lush bosom. Too bad I only date sistas.

Collaboration 1, part 5

[BL]
“What the hell?” she muttered as she pulled harder on the handle without success. 

Vega pressed her ear against the door, but the sound of music – both Reggaeton and blues - had faded altogether, leaving her with nothing more than the thumping of her own nervous heartbeat. She pounded on the door in frustration and called to her grandfather again. As expected, there was no response. 

What is he up to? She kept trying to tell herself that he was a smart and capable man and wouldn’t needlessly get himself into trouble. And, if he was next door, hopefully the neighbors would prove to be more bluster than action. Until she knew for certain, though, she wouldn’t be able to relax. 

Vega trotted downstairs and let herself out the front door, trying to figure out what she would say to the neighbors when they answered. At least it was sunny outside as the sun vaporized the last of the late morning clouds. Approaching the neighbors felt inherently safer in the light of day. 

She climbed the steps and heard the doorbell ring in response to her touch. The house was eerily silent – no music, no laughing or yelling or Jerry Springer turned up too loudly. After thirty seconds of no answer, she rang again and pounded on the maligned storm door. Still nothing.
Her mind went through a dozen possible scenarios, none of them good. Could she really call the police? That could get ugly if Gramps was breaking and entering. It seemed far more likely that the neighbors were the interlopers, but she suspected that was more a matter of her personal biases and fears playing tricks on her. 

A memory came to her unbidden - the words Grandma had shared from beyond the grave in a letter willed to Vega. It had been a peculiar thing at the time, a simple note asking the then twenty-three year old woman to watch out over Gramps because he had some secrets and might one day need help. Impossible as it seemed, the note now seemed to have a prescient feel under the current circumstances. What secrets and what kind of help? 

Vega had stashed the note inside the cover sleeve of her well-worn copy of Huck Finn and she found herself jogging back to her second floor room to retrieve it. She plucked the book from the shelf and extracted the nondescript mailing envelope on which her name was written in Grandma’s elegant hand. Fingers trembling, she withdrew the note and reread the last line: “If ever you think your grandfather might be in over his head, and only then, go to the First Bank of Baltimore on 2^nd and Washington, deposit box 198.” Affixed to the paper with Scotch tape just below “Love, Grandma” was a small metal key. 

Vega refolded the note and tucked it in her sweatshirt pocket. Had her grandmother somehow anticipated this circumstance? Before this moment, and aside from Gramps’ secretive attic room, there had never seemed to be anything unusual or exciting about her grandparents before. Just what hadn’t she been told? 

She stepped into the hall outside her room and called out again, but only silence responded. She then ran back up to the attic to try the door one last time. Nothing. No sound, no phantom smells. 

Vega touched the envelope through her sweatshirt. That bank was only two blocks away and it wasn’t even Sunday.

Collaboration 1, part 4

[MP] 

She considered leaving for the space of two breaths. If nothing were wrong, she knew Gramps would be ticked at her for invading his privacy. If. But she knew she would rather Gramps not speak to her for a month than try to live with herself if something were wrong and she did nothing to help him. 

She climbed fully into the attic and nearly leapt a foot as music came pouring from the open door. Reggaeton. God, she hated that crap. The Latino gang-banger-wanna-bes next door blasted it at all hours. Normally it was simply a minor irritation thumping through the common wall of the row house, but up here, with the thin attic floors and this open door, it was an unexpected aural assault that scared her half to death. 

Braving the lion’s den, Vega hurried across to the open door and peered inside. The attic was illuminated only with the meager light from her own attic and with the faintest ribbons of light from minute imperfections in the ceiling and floors. 

Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary that she could see. The attic had the look of living space. A bed lurked in a far corner, and closer to her was what appeared to be the outline of a couch and what was probably a coffee table. Odors of sex and marijuana flooded out of the doorway, gagging her. There was no sign of Gramps. 

She couldn’t be sure he wasn’t in there, thanks to some dim, unidentifiable shapes in between her and the attic entrance to the neighbor’s house, but she was even more hesitant to enter this attic than she had been her own. The worst Gramps would do would be to yell at her. The worst from The Latin Fools as she and Gramps referred to them…. 

She settled for calling his name. Shouting, really, given the volume of the “music” streaming up from the floor below. She strained to hear a response, but there was nothing. If he were in there and if he were hurt, she’d have to go in there to find him. Her only alternatives were to knock on their front door and risk being made a guest of their tender mercies or get the police involved and risk retaliation and Gramps’s arrest. 

She would need light. That meant a trip downstairs. 

She stood and turned toward the attic stairs, and as she did so, she saw another door across the room. She decided to check that door before she went for a flashlight. After all, if one of the doors was open, maybe the other one was, and if Gramps were anywhere other than in the attic now behind her, she’d be a happy camper. 

She jogged across the room past an enormous wooden box standing open and empty in the middle of the space, almost as if it were on display or in quarantine. The slight breeze of her passage rustled the forest of pinned up news clippings. She crouched and tried the small door inset into the wall, but the deadbolt was thrown. Even if it hadn’t been, both it and the hinges were rusted beyond repair. 

A news clipping had fallen from the wall just to her right. She picked up the push-pin that had held it up and then carefully plucked the small yellowed paper from where it lay on the floor. The headline caught her eye: Three Die in House Fire. The dateline read May 23, 1886, St. Louis, Missouri. 

She moved to pin the clipping back in place, and jumped for the second time in five minutes when the door behind her swung shut with a solid thump. She grimaced as she jabbed the push-pin into her finger. A drop of blood welled against her coffee-colored skin before oozing its way down her finger and onto the clipping. 

She jammed the clipping into the wall and ran back across the room, sucking her finger as she went. She tugged on the door, but the rusty hinges wouldn’t give. As she pulled, she could have sworn she smelled the faint odor of roasting meat, and, even fainter, the muted strains of “The Beale Street Blues” wafting out from behind the door.

Collaboration 1, part 3

 [BL]

Gerald took one last look around the room before relenting to the inevitable task at hand. Satisfied it was still as seemingly empty as before, he grasped the door's handle with his free hand and gave it a firm tug. What was left of the hinges groaned in protest and flakes of rust drifted to the floor to join their brethren. He held the pistol at the ready and flung the door open wide.

“Memphis,” he cursed under his breath. “God dammit.”

* * * * *

“Gramps?”

Vega tossed her keys on the kitchen counter as she wrestled to close the back door with arms full of reusable grocery bags. These she deposited on the table beside her grandfather's still steaming cup of coffee and crossword puzzle. From the look of it, he wasn't getting very far.

Assuming that he had just popped off to use the bathroom, she unloaded the bags and put everything away. Perhaps more than any part of the adjustment of having moved in with him, getting him to relent to both her cooking and her way of reorganizing the kitchen had been trying. Fortunately, he didn't like to cook, so she ended up getting her way by default. He would constantly complain about the food she prepared - “Damn healthy crap” - but she knew it was mostly in good humor and appreciated. She thought he was secretly starting to prefer it to the usual meat, potatoes, and gravy.

When the food was all in its proper place and she still hadn't heard a peep from the old man, Vega got a bit concerned. He was in decent health, but there was always just that little bit of concern whenever she came home to the residence of a man nearing eighty. She listened to the background noise of the house, but couldn't hear him.

“Gramps?” she called again, this time from the living room and a bit louder. Still nothing.

She bounded up the steps in her new Nikes, taking them two at a time like usual, and was about to call again when she noticed the door to the attic open at the end of the hall. For two decades as a kid, she had visited her grandparents in this house and never seen the door open before. And now, after nearly three years as his roommate while finishing up her doctorate, she still had no idea what was up there. Any time she dared to tease grandpa about what his big secret was, he would make up another entirely absurd story. It had almost become a game, until she was old enough to sense there was something in his evasiveness that was terribly personal, at which point she let it drop.

Vega walked to the end of the hall and peered up the narrow stairs. All she could see was a blandly painted wall and ceiling up above. Would he be pissed if she went up there? Surely, he must not have expected her home at this hour.

“Gramps? You up there?” She waited for a response, but there was none forthcoming. She began to get nervous again.

“Gramps?” She knocked on the attic door, but still there was no response.

Reluctantly, she placed one foot on the stairs and waited for him to poke his head over the railing and tell her to buzz off. She took a second and a third step. She forced herself to breathe, realizing that she'd been holding it.

Three more steps up and her head crested the attic's floor level. The room was drab, furnished with only a desk, chair, and filing cabinet. Most of the walls were covered with news and magazine clippings, many probably decades old judging by their wear. For all the years of mystery, it seemed to be a bit of a letdown.

Grandpa wasn't anywhere to be seen, though a door near the other end of the room was open. She realized that it had to lead into an adjacent house, which seemed peculiar since he didn't get along well with either of his current neighbors. He wouldn't be snooping around his neighbors, would he? She wondered if she shouldn't just turn around now and pretend not to have seen anything.

Collaboration 1, part 2

Two entries today to get this rolling...

[MP]

While his memory may not be what it had once been, Gerald knew that the box had been shut. Not just shut, but locked. Not just locked, but locked with the second key on the necklace he wore – one for the door to the attic and one for the box. 

Now the box was open. 

Gerald’s heart skipped a beat, and then made up for it, trip-hammering so hard and fast that it fluttered his shirt front. Gerald had not been in the attic since Elenor left him, and the last thing he had done on that day was to shut the box, lock it, and leave, both literally and figuratively putting the lid on that portion of his life for what he thought was forever. 

He knew nobody had come into the attic through his house. That left only two other avenues into the attic, and he moved to check them now. 

Gerald surveyed the room one last time, the harsh white light illuminating the far corners, bleaching the aged wood and seeming almost to render the tight attic living space in black and white. 

He was alone. 

Although he saw no one, his crocodile brain was not reassured. He fairly slunk into the attic, moving quickly to place and keep his back against one of the short walls, one that he shared with the row house next to him. Gerald sidled along the wall, feeling for all the world like a 14-year-old boy who is too old to be afraid of the dark, and yet can’t help but crab-walk up the steps, peering behind himself self-consciously all the time for that thing he knew lurked in the dark. 14-year-old like Hell, he thought to himself, what kind of 14-year-old has a .38 in one hand and drags his cane behind him with the other? 

As he traversed the wall, his back brushed the clippings he had mounted to the wall, clippings accumulated across nearly 45 years on the job. He relinquished the wall by an inch so as not to dislodge the fragile newsprint and magazine pages, but even that inch felt like a gaping chasm behind him. His eyes scanned the room, ticking off possible points of entry and possible points of concealment – a useless application of a habit built over a lifetime. The only points of entry were the stairway he had so recently ascended and the other small attic door across from his current destination; the only potential hiding place was under his desk – nobody there – and the box, into which he was most decidedly not ready to look. 

It was only when the small attic door in the far wall was almost directly across from him did he realize he had reached his destination. Now he was at a crossroads. He was loath to take his eyes off the room, but he couldn’t very well inspect the door and look at the room at the same time. Well, he supposed he could, but something in him recoiled at the idea of reaching down and touching the door without being able to keep an eye on it. 

He sighed, sighed again, and then, groaning nearly as loudly as his squalling joints, lowered himself to one knee. He put his cane on the ground.

He held onto the gun.

The door was metal, the paint faded to match the bland beige Elenor had colored the attic when he announced his intention to convert the space into an office. Before he focused on the door itself, he made a quick inspection of the wall: no cracks in the cinderblocks, no chunks missing or holes where rodents had broken through. A brief glance at the ceiling yielded the same conclusions: given the sun bathing the tops of the row-houses, he would know if the integrity of the roof had been compromised. 

When things had started to go bad at the end and he saw the way the neighborhood was deteriorating, he had used a low-tech solution to seal the attic once and for all – or so he thought. He had used a turkey baster to blast water into the locks and coat the hinges until they had rusted solid. Short of a blow-torch or sledge-hammer, the attic should have been impregnable. 

It should have been impregnable. 

Instead, lying beneath the door were two small talus slopes of rust, one under the lock, and one under the hinges.

Collaboration 1, part 1

As I mentioned in a previous post, +Mark Palise and I took a couple cracks at collaborative writing. The rules were simple - we discussed nothing about the project (not even what genre it would be) and we would take turns writing between one and two pages of material before handing it off to the other.

So, for fun, here's a glimpse into how that first effort turned out. I don't know if I'll post everything we wrote, but I'll post it incrementally for a while.

I opened the first effort with a scene I hoped would be sufficiently open-ended as to the genre of the story while quickly building a sense of mystery.

[BL]
Thump. 

Gerald looked up at the cracked plaster of his kitchen ceiling. His hearing wasn't as reliable as it used to be, but he was pretty certain that something upstairs had just made a noise. He tapped his hearing aid out of habit. 

After a full minute of silence, Gerald shrugged and returned to puzzling out fifteen down, “Part of a foot,” four letters. He hated crosswords, and yet he had not missed the Daily Herald's offering in over five decades. His granddaughter had tried to push something called a Sudoku on him, but her explanation of the process alone left his head throbbing. 

Thump. 

“Dammit,” he said, setting his pencil on the Formica table top with a snap. As he collected his cane and pulled himself to his feet, he wondered what on Earth could possibly be making that noise. He was too close to death to be worried about an intruder, but if a rodent or other critter had let itself in to the old house it could become a mess. 

Glancing up the stairs on his way to the first floor bedroom, he saw nothing but motes of dust playing in beams of the late morning sun before settling upon the collection of old family photos that lined the wall. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if it might not be the ghost of his dearly departed coming back to haunt him. Elenor probably would have a few choice words to share regarding the way he'd cared for himself these last three years. Gerald shook his head in a mix of amusement and regret. 

His knees creaked alarmingly as he knelt on the floor beside his bed and reached underneath for the old wooden box. He flipped up the two tarnished latches and opened the lid, revealing his grandfather's old Smith and Wesson 38 DA pocket revolver. He knew he would feel a damn fool when the noise upstairs turned out to be nothing more than one of the oak tree's limbs banging against the siding in the wind, but the heft of the old piece gave him just a bit of reassurance should it end up being something else. The neighborhood just wasn't what it used to be. 

With the gun held loosely at his side in one hand and cane in the other, Gerald resumed his journey upstairs. The stairs squealed under his weight, announcing his approach to anyone in the entire house. He rounded the corner at the top of the steps and looked down the hall. The two bedroom doors, like usual, were closed, and the bathroom door was cracked open. He was about to open the guest room when he heard the mystery sound again, from above.
“That better be a rodent,” Gerald muttered under his breath as he began to fish out the key he wore on a thin chain around his neck, safely tucked beneath his shirt. 

At the end of the hall was the door leading to the attic, his private domain even in the years Elenor had ruled the roost. It was scarcely larger than a closet door, but it was solidly built and had a quality lock personally installed. He slid the key inside and it turned with a reassuring click. At least someone hadn't broken in that way. 

Gerald looked up the narrow staircase and was further relieved to see it dark. He flicked the light switch and grumbled when the usual yellow glow didn't instantly appear. His granddaughter, bless her heart, had bought some new-fangled compact fluorescent bulbs that he'd been forced to use to replace the attic's lone bulb when it had finally conceded its miserable murky hue to eternal darkness. The new bulb took nearly as long to reach full brightness as it took him to climb the stairs and it had a harsh whiteness to it that seemed to change the character of the attic entirely. It wasn't for the better. 

He thumped his own way up the unfinished wood steps, letting his cane proclaim each step along the way. As the top of his head crested above the attic floor, he glanced around at the room for any sign of intruder – human, animal, or otherwise – but found none. The familiar newspaper clippings covered each wall, even if they felt out of place in the new lighting. His desk and chair, and the old AM/FM radio, all in their proper place. 

Then he noticed the box.