ONE
“This is it,” said Mr. Monkey as
he stopped in front of a 7-foot high rectangle of lighter colored wall in the
hallway. “Happy birthday, Izzy.”
“This is it,” thought the 5-year
old girl standing at his side, who said aloud, “You promised.”
“I promised,” the old man agreed,
“I remember. I’m 82, I’m not totally
insane yet.”
He reached toward the “door” and a
lighter colored rectangle about 7 inches square appeared at its side. The man
placed his palm on the area and it appeared to sink about one fourth of an inch
into the wall. The edges shimmered, grew brighter momentarily, and then the
wall was simply gone.
“Go ahead, don’t be afraid.”
Isabel was momentarily crestfallen
when she stepped through the opening. “It’s just an empty room.”
“An ‘empty room’ wouldn’t have a
chair in it,” said the Monkey Man, “If you want to get technical.”
“But I imagined more,” the girl
complained.
“You haven’t begun to imagine,
dear. Have a seat.”
When she sat down, her feet were a
good 12 inches off the floor. It meant nothing to her. She couldn’t touch the
ground in any of the
grown-up chairs.
The man smiled. “Here, take this,”
and he handed her an oval object about 5 inches long that looked like it was
crafted out of some kind of exotic multicolored stone. As she held it, the rock
began to get warmer and glow. Her fingers sank into its surface just like the
man’s hand on the door patch. The wall facing her chair begin to get brighter
and brighter and then it exploded in a brilliant flash of light before dimming
back to its normal wall-state.
“That’s it ?” girl queried.
“That’s it.”
TWO
“That’s it,” Isabel said when she
finally found the letter buried under a pile of advertisements for hemorrhoid
cream and dollar-off prune danish coupons on her dining room table. She hadn’t
had time to read it yet, as she was just running out the door to go jogging
with a friend when the mail came. The girl was curious as a cat. You don’t get
registered letters from faraway law firms every day. But her friend Kim was
waiting for her in the driveway, so she’d just signed for it, tossed everything
and ran, ran, ran.
Now, freshly showered and plopped
down on her couch, she contemplated the envelope with an embossed return
address proclaiming, “David Espacio & Associates, Attorneys at Law,
Miami-Dade Counties, Florida. “Who do I know in Florida?” she wondered.
Slipping her index finger beneath the flap, she zipped it open and removed the
singe sheet of 100% Cotton Laid Business Paper within.
_________________________________________
Dear
Ms. Giardio,
As
you may (or may not) know, After an individual dies, all assets of the decedent
must be transferred out of his or her name. Assets that are jointly owned, have
a beneficiary designation or that are payable on death, do not have to go
through probate. Such is the case of one Vincent P. Monakhe, and as his
attorney of record, I have the duty to inform you of his passing, as well as
the fact that you have been designated as his sole beneficiary. We would like
to meet with you at your earliest convenience to discuss the ramifications
involved and have enclosed an open-ended voucher for a round-trip airline
ticket, redeemable at your convenience. Contact information follows, we look
forward to seeing you soon. Blah, blah, blah, and seven
paragraphs of legalese followed.
_________________________________________
Vincent P. Monakhe?
Mr. Monkey!
THREE
Mr. Monkey, it turns out, had left
Isabel his house and enough money that she wouldn’t have to work for the rest
of her life if she didn’t feel like it. Unbelievable! He was just this nice old
man who she liked to visit when she was a little girl. He moved away before she
turned seven, and aside from Christmas and birthday cards, Izzy hadn’t had any
contact with him since. Her family had moved out of the ‘hood when she was
twelve, and truth be told, she could barely remember him at all. He was too old
for Facebook (Ewww! My parents are on
Facebook!), Snapchat, Vine, Tumblr or any of the other social media apps that
are the indispensable tools of life for young girls, and anyway, Isabel had
been too busy growing up and going to school and dancing and kissing boys and
doing all those so very important things that young women have to do between
the ages of five and twenty five. And now, here she was, owner of the little
red bungalow on the corner of Vincent and Chestnut.
FOUR
The little red bungalow on the
corner of Vincent and Chestnut stood before her, just as she had remembered it,
though it seemed a lot smaller somehow. Funny how everything shrinks as you get
older (including yourself). That enormous sledding hill you went careening down
in first grade? Eight feet high. That impossibly steep cliff honeycombed with
“Indian Trails” you used to play capture the flag on during family picnics?
Actually just a ditch. That towering
statue of Paul Bunyan? About ten feet tall.
Izzy stood contemplating the front
door, hoping some answers might lie behind. The worse-than-useless lawyer in
Florida didn’t know squat. “So sorry, Ms. Giardio. All he left were
instructions to allow you to access his remaining accounts, pay all the
inheritance taxes and give you this house key. I don’t even know what
arrangements he made for his remains, if any.” What arrangements, indeed?
Isabel had asked around at all the local funeral homes and had even called the
county coroner. No one knew what had become of the Monkey Man’s remains or if
there even were any. He
just up and vanished like a fart in a stiff wind.
The girl took a deep breath,
exhaled, slipped the key into the lock and walked through the door. The house
was still fully furnished, and Mr. Monkey must have made some kind of
arrangement with a housekeeper because there wasn’t a speck of dust or cobweb
to be found. There was even food (all good) in the refrigerator and pantry.
More arrangements had been made it would seem. Izzy made a mental note to check
with the attorney to see what else she might expect. It seems he hadn’t been
completely forthcoming with her.
She walked through the house,
peeking in closets, checking under the beds, opening doors. She paused in the
hallway before the door-sized area of lighter paint, puzzled. She’d seen stuff
like that before where a painting had been removed after hanging for years and
the sunlight had faded the wall around it leaving a dark square of original
paint behind to testify to its absence. But this area was lighter. And
huge. What could have caused that?
A bookcase, maybe...but in the middle of a hall?
“Huh,” she said to the wall, and
continued her inspection tour. She slept well that night and dreamed of a
bright light flooding her room.
FIVE
The bright light flooded her room
as Isabel awoke and looked at her phone. Eleven o’clock! She just had time to
throw some clothes on and make a quick swipe across her face with a washcloth
before the doorbell rang. “Ophelia Johnson,” said the smartly dressed lady on
the doorstep, “ReMax Realty. You must be Ms. Giardio.”
“I must
be,” Izzy agreed, “Please call me Isabel.”
Twenty minutes later, walkthrough
completed, the Realtor said, “Well, we won’t have any problem selling this
house, it’s extremely clean, although the architecture is a bit unusual for the
Twin Cities. This house looks like it belongs in the desert southwest, not the
frozen tundra. Luckily, Bryn Mawr has always been an ‘easy-sell’ with its
neighborly atmosphere and close proximity to downtown. Normally, I’d advise you
to declutter, remove personal photos and eclectic items, etcetera, but it looks
like you’ve already done that.”
Izzy had already noted that there
wasn’t a single photo of the Monkey Man or any of his family anywhere in the house,
but she wasn’t surprised. After all, he hadn’t lived here for the better part
of two decades. She wondered why he hadn’t sold it long ago, but assumed it
must have held some sort of sentimental value for him. Why he had passed it on
to her was as big
of a mystery as ever.
“The only thing we’ll need to do
is repaint that faded hallway,” “Ah’ll
feel yer” Johnson said, and Izzy fought back a snicker. “I can
have a crew out here tomorrow.”
“...a
crew out here tomorrow,” seemed a little excessive to paint one
hallway, but Izzy agreed. The sooner it was done, the sooner she could go home.
“I imagine you might be anxious to
return home,” the Realtor said, “But I might advise staying through the first
showing this weekend if you can. Houses in this neighborhood sell extremely
quickly. After they list, I’ve often had multiple offers on the next day.”
SIX
The next day, Izzy decided to go
for a walk through the nearby woods while the painters did their thing. She
remembered playing there when she was little, running the paths, skipping rocks
on the pond, playing in the “little house in the big woods” her father had
constructed for her out of tree branches and scrap wood. Its collapsed remains
were still there, broken teacups and small wooden chairs missing a leg scattered
about. Standing quietly in front of her childhood haunt she would have sworn
she could hear girlish squeals and giggles echoing in the wind.
When she returned, her “other”
house smelled pleasantly of fresh paint. Isabel busied herself making lunch,
and then left to do some shopping at the nearest mall. Later that night, as she
walked to the bedroom, the young woman stopped dead in the middle of the
hallway. Fresh paint or not, there on the wall and just as noticeable as before
stood the door-sized rectangle. If anything, it was even brighter than before.
“Aaaargh!” she grumbled. “I’ll have to get those fool painters back tomorrow!
Just look at that!”
And look at it she did. Its edges
seemed to be faintly glowing. As she stood facing it, knees wobbly, she felt a
strange “pull” and a distinct sense of deja vu. She extended her arm, almost as
if in a dream, and another smaller, glowing rectangle appeared. “I’ve done this
before,” she whispered and reaching out, tentatively placed her palm on the
square.
SEVEN
Izzy reached out and placed her
palm on the square, impossibly feeling her hand sink into the wall. The “door”
(which actually was a door)
instantly melted away and she stepped into the room. White walls. White floors.
White ceiling. There were no lights visible, the entire room seemed to emit a
soft glow. And, in the center, a massive white chair that looked like it had
been sculpted out of fine marble. “Now, that’s
gotta be comfortable,” she thought sarcastically. But she sat down on it
anyway. What else would you do in an empty (not really
empty) room with only one chair? It was every bit as uncomfortable as she had
imagined a marble chair would be. She noticed the colorful oval-shaped stone
resting on the chair’s arm and, after a second’s introspection, inserted it
into the oval-shaped hole where it was obviously meant to go.
Oval stone and chair instantly
softened and warmed and Izzy sank a couple inches into the most comfortable
chiseled rock La-Z-Boy ever. Whoooaaa! It conformed perfectly to her body yet
instantly returned to its hard, squared-off appearance when she lifted her arm.
The wall she was facing began to glow, becoming ever brighter, until suddenly
it expanded and the whole room was awash in a brilliant light.
It soon dimmed and as color
returned, Izzy found herself floating in mid-air, nearly one thousand feet
above a small village. “OH, MY GOD!” she screamed. But she wasn’t falling, she
was flying and it
was exhilarating! Then, her body (was it really her body? No. Her viewpoint -
there was no body in
evidence) decided to swoop down to the town below, skimming the trees, and HOLY
SHIT! she was rushing directly into the side of a house. She opened her mouth
to scream again, but before she could, she passed painlessly through the wall
and found herself floating near the ceiling inside the bedroom of a four
year-old boy. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he was playing with something,
but Izzy couldn’t see what. Just then, his mother(?) called to him and the boy
ran out of the room, leaving behind a small plastic dinosaur. Ankylosaurus,
Izzy thought, armored back and knobby tail. Her brother had had one just like
it and was always sticking it in her face. Boys! Annoying! (That’s redundant.)
Then, the room began to retreat, and Izzy found herself floating in mid-sky
again.
As the strangeness and possible
danger of her situation began to gain space in her brain and push the amazement
to one side, Izzy began to wonder, “How the hell do I get out of here?”
Instantly, a pink translucent square appeared to hover in the air in front of
her. When she placed her palm on it (OK, thought
about placing her palm on it) the world faded and she again found herself
sitting in the white room.
She exhaled for about ten minutes.
Wow! That was the best Disney ride ever!
Izzy removed the stone oval from
its resting place and thought about her next step. What should I do now? What
should I don’t?
EIGHT
DON’T SELL THE HOUSE! she told Ah’ll feel yer
Johnson. It’s just all too much, too soon. The Realtor grumbled to herself, but
it wasn’t the first time a client had gotten cold feet and backed out. She’d
have another fish on the hook tomorrow.
NINE
Tomorrow was slow in coming for
Izzy, who had spent the night staring at the ceiling, heart racing. 156 speckled
white ceiling tiles. Four orange ladybugs and one UFI (unidentified flying
insect.) When daylight finally arrived, she showered and set about making
breakfast; scrambled eggs with chives and goat cheese. She sat at the little
kitchen table covered by a standard-issue red checkerboard tablecloth and
poured herself a glass of two-percent milk. Screw you, osteoporosis! As she ate
her food, she gazed around the house which was feeling ever more familiar to
her and basked in the morning sunshine streaming through the eastern-facing
window. Not a single dust mote floated in the shaft of light, but that’s not
the kind of thing most people notice unless they’re specifically looking for
it, and she didn’t. What she did
notice, however, was the gallon of milk occupying the space behind her glass.
Her eyes drifted to the blue text
imprinted on its label. Its expiration date was 1999.
“That’s impossible,” she thought,
and proceed to pull out the carton of eggs, container of butter and package of
bacon as well as a dozen boxes and cans from the cupboards. They all had
freshness dates or manufactured dates from the same pre-millennium year. But
nothing was stale. The bread was as soft and moist as if it had just come out
of the oven the day before. She sniffed the bacon. It smelled like bacon. She
cautiously tasted the olives which tasted like olives. The butter was as soft
and yellow as the day it was churned.
“Huh,” she said for the second
time.
TEN
The second time she sat in the
chair (technically the third time) the
wall took her to some foreign land. Izzy didn’t recognize the language at
all...not Germanic, not Scandinavian, not Russian, but the people were
Caucasian...possibly Slavic or Eastern European of some sort. She “flew” down
to a mountainside meadow where a shepherd sat in the shade of an olive tree
cuddling a sheep and talking into its ear. “WHAT THE...” was all she had time
to sputter and then in a fast-forward blur of color the scene shifted. Now she
was in London (she recognized Big Ben in the distance) and a hackney carriage
was discharging its occupants. As the couple stepped out, the man’s wallet fell
out on the street. The cabby scooped it up, stuck it under his overcoat and
hastily drove off.
“Hey! You assho...!” Izzy yelled,
but it was too little, too late. She was already floating above a sprawling
city slum. Tin shacks and makeshift hovels lined the narrow streets that were
baking in a tropical sun. The scene blurred. Fishing wharf. Blurred again.
She was in a room that seemed
familiar, and after a second, Izzy recognized it as the dinosaur boy’s bedroom.
This time, he was happily building a rocket ship (or dump truck, or elephant -
it was kind of hard to tell) out of Legos. In the background, the TV was on and
Big Bird was musically teaching the young world how to blow their nose or
something. Izzy was curious to know what the rest of the boy’s house looked
like, and found that if she imagined herself leaning forward and drifting
through the doorway it actually happened. She flew into the hall and down the
stairs and, oops! right through the wall at the bottom. This was going to take
some practice! She had landed in the kitchen, where a thirty year-old woman in
a yellow sun dress was bending down and removing a Sarah Lee raspberry pie from
the oven. Izzy could feel the heat wash over her and when the woman crossed the
room and set the pan on the windowsill to cool, she could smell the raspberries
and sugar. Back in the white room her mouth began to water.
Suddenly, the viewpoint whirled
about and Izzy was whisked back up the stairs into the boy’s bedroom.
Apparently, there was something the wall wanted her to see. She looked around
the bedroom. Nothing but model cars and coloring books. A toy train in the
corner, a kiddy-karaoke box on the bookshelf. Baseball glove on the unmade bed
with rumpled Buzz Lightyear sheets. And then Izzy’s viewpoint rotated and she
drifted over to the window. Sidewalk. Trees. A brownstone across the street,
where, standing in a second floor window was a man peering through a pair of
binoculars. Looking directly through her and into the boy’s room.
ELEVEN
The boy’s room and the street
scene and the whole world faded as the brownstone was washed away in a bloom of
white brightness and then Izzy was home. “NO! I’ve got to go back!” But the
chair had returned to marble. Apparently the wall was done with her for the
day. She determined that she’d try again later.
TWELVE
Later that afternoon, Izzy went
for another walk in the woods. The little finger of forested land that extended
to her house was connected to a much larger section of Wirth Park, a mostly
“wild” area (in the sense that it was just woods, no mowed lawns or landscaped
flora) smack-dab in the heart of Minneapolis. Established in 1889, the park
currently occupies 759 acres, which is 90% of the size of New York City’s
Central Park. It isn’t rare to walk its trails for the whole afternoon and
never see another person as long as you stay away from the more popular areas
like the wildflower garden. But it was the weekend, and there were a few people
and pets sharing the land with her.
“Izzy? Isabel Giardio?!” That
voice was familiar. “Oh. My. Gawd. I haven’t seen you in like, forever!”
“Ashley Wilson, as I live and
breathe!” Isabel exclaimed, using a phrase she’d picked up from her grandmother
(she was tempted to add, “Land’s sake!” but judiciously refrained.)
“What are you
doing here?” they
both shouted together, and promptly hooked their little fingers together
(because that’s what you do when you
both say something in unison.)
I still live here.
I just inherited a house!
I’m working for General Mills.
No, no boyfriend - boy’s just
stick dinosaurs in your face!
What?
Laugh.
I got married to Greg Holmberg
right after high school (had to - I’ve gotta be the most fertile woman on the
planet. We only did it once, and he even pulled out!)
O. M. G. Have I got something to
show you, swear to God!
THIRTEEN
“Swear to God on your mother’s
grave you’ll never tell anyone about this!” Izzy said in a conspiratorial
voice. “I barely believe it myself.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Properly sworn to secrecy, the
girls walked into the house on Vincent Avenue, but when they arrived at the
center of the hall, there was nothing to see but blank wall. “I don’t get it,”
Izzy complained, “There should be a door to a room here. An amazing room!” And
then in a hushed voice she added, “I think it’s some kind of alien technology.
You know, like Star Wars
shit.”
“You are too funny, Izzy!
You always were the craziest of any of us. A secret room! In the six inch wall
space between the dining room and the bedroom, I suppose, although I did see
something like that in Men In Black
once! Better be careful who you tell or they’ll wipe your memory!”
“I
know where your room is! Like
we always said, ‘Only to be found in Isabel’s imagination!’ “
FOURTEEN
“ ‘Isabel’s imagination’ my ass!”
Izzy fumed, but she had learned a valuable lesson. This knowledge probably
wasn’t for public consumption. At least not if she wanted to stay out of the
booby hatch! (Another one of grandma’s favorite expressions.)
She hustled down to the white
room, sat down, plugged in and announced, “Take me to the dinosaur boy’s room!”
The room went white, the sky
filled its place and Isabel was flying.
But the dinosaur boy’s room was in
a city, and Izzy was soaring over cornfields, rapidly approaching a small town.
Apparently, the wall was a bit resistant to being ordered around. As she
skimmed toward the town, Izzy was sure to check the name on the water tower as
she passed by. BOSWELL. Wherever the heck that was. Corn country.
That narrowed it down a little. Motion stopped above the fields at the
confluence of a drainage ditch and a creek south (judging by the setting sun,
west was on her right hand side) of town where two men stood arguing.
“...matter what you say, you
ignorant pissant!” the man with the scruffy beard yelled.
“Screw you, a deal is a deal!”
countered the man in the torn overalls.
“I’ll have my money back or
there’ll be hell to pay!” Scruffy shot back.
“Eat me!”
“Not hungry, just had yo’ momma!”
That was too much for Overalls,
who really was a bit
too fond of his momma. He screamed some indecipherable farmer curse and charged
Scruffy. Well, “charged” may be too strong of a word... “lumbered toward” would
be more descriptive. Scruffy easily sidestepped the oncoming mass and plunged a
large buck knife into the man’s kidneys as he chugged by.
“Oof!” went Overalls, who skidded
to a face-down stop in the mud. Blood was rapidly soaking through the back of
his shirt and pants.
“Out! Let me OUT!” Izzy screamed
as she watched Scruffy walk over and withdraw the knife, wiping it off on
Overall’s shirt. “Serves ya right, ya cheating bastard!” Scruffy hissed as he
walked off, leaving his associate choking and twitching.
Izzy jammed her hand into the pink
square as hard as she could imagine when it finally appeared.
FIFTEEN
It appeared this would be easier
than she thought. Izzy had dashed to her laptop as soon as the wall went white.
“Boswell” + “Town” had yielded only a handful of hits, primarily in Indiana,
Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. The corn said “Indiana,” and a quick glance at
Google Maps confirmed it. There, in full color, on her computer screen was a
bird’s eye view of the ditch and creek for all to see. A second Google search
got her the number for the Benton County Sheriff in nearby Fowler.
“There is a man dying near the
intersection of Gilles Ditch and Goose Creek south of Boswell,” Izzy told the
woman who answered the phone. “Hurry! He’s hurt badly! There’s a lot of blood!”
And then she hung up.
“Really,” she thought, “What more
could I do?”
SIXTEEN
“What more could I do?” Izzy
wondered. She’d have to think ahead, because it looked like this kind of thing
would more than likely happen again. I can’t just dial the cops and say, “Hey!
Calling from Minneapolis 514 miles away and my magic wall just showed me a
possible murder!” The more she thought about it, the more Izzy was convinced
that the fewer people that were in on what was going on in the magical room
(that couldn’t possibly be where it was) the better. Like many people, Isabel
was justifiably paranoid about sharing anything
with any government
agency, let alone the agencies that would logically be the ones that would be
interested in such technology. CIA, FBI, NSA, and all the other “alphabet”
agencies that no one knows exist. No rational person would voluntarily get into
bed with any of them. That’s the kind of thing that gets you “disappeared.”
She also felt that there must have
been a reason that the Monkey Man had chosen her. (She never would have guessed
that it was actually the wall that had
done the choosing.) She could do good
with what had been given her. But how?
“I’m going to have to formulate a
plan to stay anonymous,” Izzy thought, and just then her cell phone rang.
“Isabel Giardio?”
“Yes.”
“Ms. Giardio, this is Deputy Topp
with the Benton County Sheriff’s Office. Would you care to explain how a person
in Minneapolis comes to report a homicide only minutes after it happened in
Fumbuck, Indiana?”
SEVENTEEN
Indiana Jones would have been
proud of her ability to get out of that one. There wasn’t exactly a myriad of
possible explanations that would stand up to more than a minute’s worth of
scrutiny. “Drone footage I randomly
saw on the Internet?” Really? Quite a coincidence. What was the
web address? Show us your browser history. “An
anonymous phone call from a co-conspirator to a wrong number?”
Easily checked. “Witnessed by an old friend
who called me wondering what to do?” Hand over the name or you’re
guilty of obstructing justice; he or she is an eyewitness to a felony.
In the end, Izzy simply told them,
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you officer.”
“Try me.”
“OK. You asked for it. The answer
is simple. My mother was a psychic, as well as my grandmother before her. I’ve
always had the ability to randomly “see” things that I couldn’t always explain,
and this is one of those “things.” I saw that man attacked in a vision, I swear
to God!”
“A vision.”
“That’s right. I told you you
wouldn’t believe me. But how else could I know these things? I’m sure you’ll
check my phone records and Internet history, if you haven’t already. You’ll
find I have absolutely no connection to anyone or anything in Indiana. It
sounds fantastic, but it’s true!”
“You can be sure we will
check on those things Ms. Giardio. Very, very thoroughly. For your sake, I hope
you are telling what you believe to be the truth, although I myself am
skeptical, because if we do find a link, I
wouldn’t want to be in your shoes! Lucky for you we have other evidence in this
case. I guess I wouldn’t hold my breath on being called as a ‘witness’ if there
ever is a trial. Somehow I doubt the D.A. will want ‘I saw it in a dream, your
honor!’ coming out on the stand.”
The second that she hung up, Izzy
jumped in her car and drove to Best Buy where she purchased a half-dozen
prepaid cell phones. With cash. She’d watched Homeland
enough to know that’s how the spies did it. She’d remove the battery and throw
them in a public trash bin after one use.
When she got home she collapsed on
the couch. “Whew! That was close!”
EIGHTEEN
“That was close, but no cigar,”
the man growled and slapped the blonde woman’s face hard. She was nude, gagged
and bound with several feet of nylon rope and sported an assortment of bruises
on her arms and thighs. “Lady, when I’m finished with you, you’ll be crying for
mercy.” He spat, crossed the room, picked up a four-foot long bamboo stick and
began to strike the writhing woman’s bottom, raising angry red welts. She
whimpered and cried out in pain with each strike.
Izzy desperately looked around for
a clue as to the whereabouts of the room they were in. It was obviously a
basement, concrete block walls and stairs that led up to a door with a padlock
dangling loosely from its hasp. An assortment of whips, handcuffs and clamps
hung from the cobwebby ceiling. A real torture chamber. It looked as if the
wall was showing her the next Ted Bundy, who proceeded to drag the woman across
the room and drape her over what looked like a gymnastics pommel horse. A
battery charger sat on a table nearby and the clamps on the ends of its jumper
cables shot sparks and crackled as the man advanced menacingly toward his
hapless victim. He laughed maniacally.
Needing information to help guide
the authorities in apprehending this monster, Izzy flew to the small window and
was frantically looking about for a landmark when she heard the woman say,
“Shit, Roger. Loosen these ropes a little! I’ll never be able to get you off if
I don’t have any sensation in my hands! And make sure that charger is turned
down low! After the last time, I didn’t have any feeling in my ass for three
days! I couldn’t tell if I was coming or going!”
NINETEEN
Going on three days later, Izzy
saw the dinosaur boy again. His name was Timmy, and he lived in Portland,
Oregon. Izzy even knew his address, which was printed on an electricity bill
his mom (Catherine Oswald) had left out on the desk. His father was in the
merchant marine and was out to sea for the next two months. The wall had
allowed her to spend an entire afternoon hovering about his apartment, and she
was even able to follow him down the block to the neighborhood playground,
where he spent an hour moving a pile of pebbles from one side of a sandbox to
the other.
She never saw so much as a glimpse
of the binoculars man from across the street, and then it was time to go home.
TWENTY
It was time to go home. Isabel had
been living in Madison, Wisconsin ever since she graduated from the UW, working
in the travel office of the university. Not exactly what a young lady with a BS
in physics had hoped for, but a job was a job. And the BS turned out to be just
that. Supply far exceeded demand if you didn’t have a PhD behind your name.
Luckily, the Monkey Man and his money had rendered it all a moot point.
She hopped on Interstate 94 and
headed east through the rolling hills and lush green farmland of the Badger
State.
Once home, she stopped at the
office to pick up her last check and say goodbye to everyone. She’d already
called and broken the news that she was quitting a week earlier and everyone
wished her well. University employers were used to their younger workers moving
on. It was practically a job requirement.
She paid her landlord the three
month penalty for breaking her lease and spent the next two weeks cleaning the
house, boxing up her belongings and having a garage sale to get rid of the
rest. One man’s junk is another man’s treasure – it was all gone within two
days. College towns devour cheap furniture. She got a trailer hitch installed
on her car and rented a U-Haul trailer with a painting of an armadillo on the
side, originally from Alamagordo, New
Mexico!
It only took two hours to carry
her boxes out and stack them in the trailer, then she locked the house, dropped
the keys in the mail, and was back on the road, this time headed west.
By the time she got to Eau Claire,
Izzy wearied of the limited musical selection the radio had to offer and
switched to a news station. All they were talking about was the brazen
abduction of a young boy in Portland, Oregon.
A young boy named Timothy.
TWENTY ONE
“Timothy Oswald! You WILL show me
Timmy!” Isabel screamed at the wall before she sat down and plugged in to the
marble chair.
Izzy crossed her fingers and hoped
the wall might be cooperating as the room dissolved into blue sky and she found
herself sinking toward a medium-sized city. Paying close attention to
landmarks, there was an Interstate crossing between two metro areas, one larger
than the other. It looked like she was heading toward the smaller town which
sat on the shore of a fairly large lake. The entire city was surrounded by
foothills with mountains in the distance behind the larger burg.
The area she was dropping into was
a fairly new development, with winding roads and cul-de-sacs, not the standard
rectangular blocks that were a staple of years gone by city planning. When Izzy
finally wound up closing in on a house, it was an older two story, built long
before its more modern neighbors. There were several tin-roofed sheds, and an
assortment of pickup trucks, rusted out refrigerators and stacks of lumber,
pipes and other detritus surrounding the house and a vacant lot next door. The
lake was about one hundred yards away, hidden by a swath of trees.
The house wasn’t her destination,
though, as Izzy breezed on by and found herself inside a travel trailer parked
in a shed. Faux wood paneling lined its walls, a counter ran along one side
stacked with cans of food; chili, mac & cheese and spaghetti-O’s.
On the linoleum floor at one end
sat a young boy, chained to a steel ring in the floor and gagged, but still
breathing.
His head jerked
up and his eyes went wide when a half dozen metal pipes crashed to the ground
outside the door. A key was inserted into the lock, the door opened, and
binoculars man stepped into the trailer.
TWENTY TWO
“Trailer for
sale or rent, rooms to let, fifty cents. No phone, no pool, no pets, I AIN’T
GOT NO CIGARETTES!” the man sang in the very worst Roger Miller impression
ever. “What?” he said, looking at the boy. “You never heard good music before?”
He pronounced heard, “heered.” “We’ll have plenty of music later. This might be
your special day, but I am King of the Road and the king is
ready to par-tee! We’ll get us some whiskey and take a few photos and then
we’ll have us some real fun.”
“But then, I’m
afraid, you’ll have to go away. You’re just to dangerous to have around. A
loose end. Can’t have any loose ends.”
“Aww, don’t
cry, I’ll make it fast.”
TWENTY THREE
“Make it fast!
Let me out!!” Izzy commanded the wall. “LET. ME. OUT! I’ve got to call the
police.” She didn’t care whether they could trace it back to her or not, though
she was pretty sure it would be “not” given her anonymous cell phones. Somehow she
would convince them. She had to.
But no pink
square appeared.
“Of course! I
have to know where this is!” she thought and “leaned” toward the door. The wall
cooperated and Izzy drifted out of the trailer and down the driveway. At the
end she found a mailbox with the number 2657 on it. Across the road was a
street sign. W ORCHARD AVE.
But where? I
don’t know the city!
And then she
was being pulled across the street toward a house down the block. Maybe some
mail she could read? That had worked before. But instead she flew over and
stopped before an old woman working in her garden.
“What’s this?”
she nearly shouted, “She can’t hear or see me! This is futile! I’ve got to find
out where we are and get back home! Don’t you understand? His life depends on
it! His life depends on me!”
But nothing
happened...until...
A green square
appeared in the air before her, and when Izzy “placed” her hand on it it began
to glow. Then she began to glow.
The old woman
looked up and gasped, “An angel!”
“What?” Izzy
said, “Can you see me?”
“See me...” the
woman said.
“You can hear
me?!”
“Hear me...an
angel!” she whispered.
“An angel?”
Izzy wondered, and then, “YES! An angel! I am an angel sent from God to give
you this message! You must trust and obey.”
“Obey...an
angel.”
“Yes! Listen to
me carefully! Have you seen the boy on the news? On the TV? The boy who was
kidnapped in Oregon. He’s here. He’s in a trailer that’s in that shed across
the street! You have to call the police! You have to get help!”
“Help,” the old
woman said, “An angel...HELP!”
Instantly, Izzy
felt the glow dissipate and cool return. Invisible again.
“Mom, are you
OK?” a younger woman asked as she poked her head out the door. “What’s
wrong?” She ran to the garden and helped
the old lady to her feet.
“Help,” the
woman said, “My angel...”
“It’s OK mom.
Come on, let’s get you inside. You need to lie down and I’ll make you some
tea.”
“My angel...”
“Yes, Mom. I’m
your angel. Let’s go inside.”
“No!” Izzy
cried, “We’ve got to get help!”
TWENTY FOUR
“We’ve got to get
help for you, Mom.” the daughter said, “come in and lie down.”
She guided her
mother to the door as Izzy watched helplessly.
“I give up.
Show me the square. Let me go.”
TWENTY FIVE
“Let me go!”
the old woman said and jerked free of the hand on her arm. “The boy! The boy on
TV!”
“What boy Mom?”
“The boy on TV.
We saw him. I saw him.”
“The boy that
was kidnapped? What? You saw him?”
“In the shed.
In a trailer. THERE!” and she pointed across the street.
“Mom, are you
sure?”
“I SAW HIM!”
“OK, Mom, I
believe you.” She pulled a cell phone out of her pocket and dialed 911. “Hello,
police? I need to talk to someone right away. It’s about that little boy that’s
been on the news. The one who was kidnapped.”
“I saw him,”
the old woman said, “My angel.”
TWENTY SIX
“Angel food
cake, for my little angel,” Izzy said, “Four years old! It seems like only
yesterday you moved in across the street. You know, that used to be my house when I was a little girl.”
“A little
girl?”
“Of course,
Amelia. I wasn’t always eighty-one! In one more year I’m going to show you
something wonderful. Something that will change your life! It’s sure changed
mine. It showed me who you are. It’s showed me a lot of things.”
She didn’t say
a lot of bad things. But then, she didn’t say a
lot of good things either.
She didn’t say
how she had seen the old man hiding money beneath his floorboards every week
when he cashed his social security check. She didn’t say he’d been doing it all
his life and that he died alone, without any heirs.
She didn’t say
there were women, men and children all over the world who suddenly had the
police or rescue teams or a neighbor mysteriously show up on their doorstep
exactly when they were most needed.
She didn’t say
the wall had shown her a wonderful man who lived in her city. A man who took
her breath away, and would never stick a dinosaur in her face.
She didn’t say
the first time she met him she knew “this is it.”
TWENTY SEVEN
“This is it,” said Itsy Bitsy as
she stopped in front of a 7-foot high rectangle of lighter colored wall in the
hallway. “Happy birthday, Amelia.”
“This is it,” thought the 5-year
old girl standing at her side, who said aloud, “You promised.”
“I promised,” the old woman
agreed, “I remember. I’m 82, I’m not totally
insane yet.”
She reached toward the “door” and
a lighter colored rectangle about 7 inches square appeared at its side. The
woman placed her palm on the area and it appeared to sink about one fourth of
an inch into the wall. The edges shimmered, grew brighter momentarily, and then
the wall was simply gone.
“Go ahead, don’t be afraid.”
Amelia was momentarily crestfallen
when she stepped through the opening. “It’s just an empty room.”
“An ‘empty room’ wouldn’t have a
chair in it,” Isabel said. “If you want to get technical.”
“But I imagined more,” the girl
complained.
“You haven’t begun to imagine,
dear.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I thought of the basic premise of this story a couple
months before I was able to start writing it. Luckily, a vacation in Florida
afforded me hours of doing nothing but sitting in the sun and contemplating the
various plot points I needed to flesh it out. Most of the story was written on
my iPad, which, lacking a keyboard, was a bit of an adventure. As always, I had
no idea where the story was headed when I started writing. I just knew there
was a “room” that was going to show stuff to someone. “Mr. Monkey” appeared
before I knew that his real name was Monakhe. The best part of writing for me,
is discovering what the story wants me to know as I begin to get into it. I
didn’t know the ending until I was halfway through and then it came to me. Of course, the tale would come full circle
and end exactly as it had begun with Isabel passing her knowledge on to Amelia
in the same exact way she had gained it. Starting each chapter with the last
chapter’s ending was just a fun exercise in writing (I think it worked OK , and
by happy accident it reinforces the whole story’s end=beginning thing.) Along the
way, I dropped the idea that the Monkey Man and his whole house had been
transported (somehow) from Roswell, New Mexico (home of a suspected alien
spaceship crash and subsequent government cover-up.) I thought it worked better
leaving that part a mystery, although it is alluded to a couple of times. I
also dropped two or three of Izzy’s excursions from the white room – this is
supposed to be a short story after all.
