The Brooks Brother’s Hardware store stood alone on its main street block. Chipped layers of white-washed paint contrasted the darkness inside the tall narrow windows. Faded posters advertising Case knives and hand tools hung in the ground level windows, but the only thing in the second story windows, was a thick layer of cobwebs. Tonight, however the faint flicker of candle light betrayed the fact someone was upstairs.
The autumn breeze carried my breath away in white puffs as I lingered across the street, gripping my Maglite in shivering hands. I missed my coat, purposefully forgotten inside a few hours earlier. I took a deep breath of cold air and stepped into the street.
I started working for Mr. Brooks after getting passed over for an internship with the Henderson Falls Gazette. I was interested in investigative journalism and thought the internship would be a great segue into that career, and might lead to a job covering the police beat after I graduated. At any rate, it would look great on a resume. Unfortunately, the editor’s son got the position, and I found myself turning in an application to Henderson Falls’ oldest business.
I think part of the reason Mr. Brooks hired me was so he could have a captive audience. As a senior member of our county’s historical society and a frequent contributor to the local paper, his mind was a repository for obscure and trivial facts about local history, especially as it pertained to his family. He never missed an opportunity to bring up Captain Brooks, one of the earliest members of his family to settle in Henderson County, Civil War hero, and founder of the Brooks Brothers’ Hardware Store.
Mr. Brooks kept a family history scrapbook with a section detailing the life, military service, and entrepreneurial pursuits of this earliest known relative. Clippings from the historical society’s newsletter mingled with pages copied from Civil War history books and hand-written notes from Mr. Brooks himself. They painted a clear, albeit concise picture of the man’s life.
According to the Old Man, Captain Brooks settled near Henderson Falls with his family at the age of 12, just in time for the 1850 census. The 1860 census, listed him as head of a household with 2 children. In 1861, records of troops mustered from Henderson County show he enlisted in the 34^(th) Ohio Infantry in either in April or May. Somehow, though probably through breveting, he obtained the rank of Captain by the end of the war. Shortly after, he returned to his family and started the Brooks Brothers. Lumber company, later expanding into building materials and general hardware. By the time the 1880s arrived, Brooks Brothers’ Hardware Store was the largest building in town, boasting 2 storys, a scale for the grist mill, and even a spur off the B. & O. Railroad.
“And you know what else Tommy,” Mr. Brooks would say. “The Captain might’a gone to the house of representatives too if it weren’t for all that trouble with them damn Leylands.”
I nodded politely the first few times I heard about Captain Brooks. The stories were interesting, but you can only be so invested in the history of someone else’s relative. As Summer came to an end and I began my Junior year at Henderson Falls High, the Old Man moved on from talking about Captain Brooks, and started telling me about the history of Brooks Brothers’ Hardware itself. According to the Mr. Brooks, post-Civil War Ohio saw a veritable boom in industry, construction, and manufacturing; and his family’s hardware store was there just in time to take advantage of it. He claimed Brooks Brothers sold many of the furnishings to the courthouse when it was refurbished in 1867, served as the county’s largest retail store, even stocked some of the first cans of paint from some up-and coming paint store out of Cleveland. You could tell from the gleam in his eye and the excitement in his words, he still looked at Brooks Brothers as a major business concern in Henderson Falls. I humored him. In spite of the once great store’s run-down appearance, shrinking nightly bank deposits, and dwindling customer base, Mr. Brooks’ enthusiasm was infectious.
That long summer stocking shelves, cleaning and making minor repairs familiarized me with all the quirks of the place. I knew the third bank of lights took longer to turn on because the ballasts were going bad. I could walk over the sagging hardwood floors without looking down. I even knew about the long crack creeping up the masonry, hidden behind a banner advertising a defunct brand of lead paint. The only part of the store I hadn’t ventured into was the second floor.
One slow, rainy day in June while looking for something to do, I decided to sort through the pile of merchandise covering the stairs behind the counter. The clutter on the bottom steps was all overstock: 16 penny nails, drywall screws, spools of fence wire, things it made sense to keep in the store instead of the warehouse. But the higher up the stairs I looked the older and more out of place the items seemed. Old tangles of hemp rope, wooden pulley blocks, asbestos floor tiles, even a box of old cut nails, rendered the path upstairs all but impassable. I climbed the first few steps, curious to see what else was in the heap of inventory when Mr. Brooks shouted at me.
“You! Get down from there, boy!” His voice shook with anger. I had no idea what caused my mild-mannered boss to go ballistic like that. In the few seconds it took for me to clamber around the junk back downstairs, Mr. Brooks’ expression softened back into that of a friendly old man.
“I didn’t mean to snap at you like that Tommy, but it ain’t safe up there.”
“I’m sorry Mr. Brooks. I just noticed all this inventory laying around and thought it’d look better if these things were cleared away.”
He raised a wrinkled hand, dismissing my concern. “I know you were just trying to help, but you need to stay down here. I haven’t been up there since the 50s.”
“Why not? The upstairs seems like a great place for storing inventory.”
The old man scratched his stubble. “If it was safe up there, you bet I’d store some of our stock up there. I don’t trust that floor though. You’ve seen the ceiling over there next to the paint mixer?” He gestured to the front of the store, where a thin sheet of veneer plywood covered a swath of tiles on the high ceiling.
“I was up there one day, rough housing with my kid brother, Mike, you’ve never met him. Well anyway, we both ended up wraslin’ over a weak spot on the floor. The roof must’a had a leak and dry-rotted it. Long story short, my dad had to pull me and Mikey both out of the hole by our Buster Browns. Believe me, there’s no reason for you to go up there.”
My keys jangled as I turned the lock. I looked over my shoulder one last time, scanning the street for any witnesses before entering the inky darkness of the store. I tried to calm myself. I had done nothing wrong at this point. If anyone noticed me coming into the store at this hour, my cover story was plausible enough.
“I just stopped by to get my coat. I must have forgot it when I was locking up.”
It somehow seemed less believable as I advanced over the warped wooden floorboards. Each footfall creaked. My pulse quickened as I walked along once familiar aisles. Claw hammers, spirit levels, auger bits, were all reduced by darkness to indiscernible, globby shadows. I wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but the old building made me nervous at night. As the days grew shorter, my pace walking to the front door after switching off the breakers for the store lights became faster and faster. I imagined the long aisles harboring some invisible presence, just behind me until I made it to the safety of the streetlights outside.
Finally, I reached the clerk’s desk in the back corner. My coat hung from the back of the tall chair, right where I left it. I slipped it on, glad for the warmth. The streetlamps outside provided just enough light for me to make out the shape of the stairs leading to the second story. As I gazed up the stairwell, trying to see the yellow glow I’d noticed from the street, I felt thin cold fingers gripped the back of my neck. I spun around ready to yell out of fear when I saw a single finger pressed against her lips.
“Are you trying to get us busted?” Jess hissed through clenched teeth.
“Maybe you shouldn’t sneak up on me like that.”
“What took you so long?” Jess rolled her head to one side as she leaned against the clerk’s desk. Her gum popped, punctuating her sentence.
“There wasn’t any parking outside the movie theater. I had to park down past the coffee shop and walk the rest of the way.”
“Riiight, then you had stare at the building for five minutes.” Jess scrunched up the bridge of her nose, teasing me.
Jess was Mr. Brooks’ granddaughter. I was busy stocking shelves one day in late July when she came into the store and wandered down the center aisle. Jess played varsity tennis and was one of Henderson Falls High’s cheerleaders. I had a huge crush on her at the time, but she was always surrounded by her group of jocks and preps, and I never had the guts to approach her. I heard Mr. Brooks climb off his stool in the back of the store and walk to meet her. They exchanged some words, too quiet for me to hear.
“Hey, Tommy. Come over here. I got someone for you to meet.”
I made my way to where they stood standing. Mr. Brooks wasted no time. “Tom, this is my granddaughter, Jess.”
We exchanged awkward smiles. In a school as small as Henderson Falls High, you know everyone, even if you don’t have classes together.
Mr. Brooks went on. “She just got back from vacation down in Florida and we decided she ought’a take part in the family business. She’ll start next week. I need you to show her the ropes for me.”
After work, I was more than a bit excited to tell my friend Kyle about my new coworker.
“Duuude! You’re working with Jessica Brooks? The cheerleader?”
“Yeah man, I’m pretty stoked.”
“That’s legit, son! If her friends come into the store, you gotta tell me.”
“Why?”
“Well… she’s friends with Robin Gardner. Maybe she could probably put in a good word for me, and if I just happen to stop by at the same time…”
“Kyle, why the hell would a bunch of cheerleaders want to hang out in a run-down hardware store?”
“Hey man, a guy can dream.”
It didn’t take long to realize working with Jess was not as Kyle put it “legit”. A typical shift with her started with Mr. Brooks leaving the store around 3:30, giving us a sly look over his shoulder and saying something like, “Now don’t you kids have too much fun.” Once he was out of sight, Jess would plop down in the desk chair behind the Case knife display. The week she started I tried showing her how to stock shelves, to fill out hand receipts for customers, basic stuff you’d expect from a hardware clerk. The most engagement I got from her was a nod or a few unconvincing words like “Wow, thanks for showing me” or “I’ll make sure to remember that.” Despite the simplicity of the job, she rarely helped restock shelves or clean up around the place. Instead, she spent most of her shift behind the desk, scrolling on her phone, doing homework, or passing customers off to me under the guise of ignorance. The closest thing to work she did was re-pricing items. Most of the store’s stock actually came from large box stores and was repriced for the local market. I discovered this when I noticed the remnants of a Home Depot sticker Jess either gave up on or forgot to remove entirely from a box of machine screws.
For the first few days she worked with me, I tried making conversation, but we didn’t seem to have a lot in common. If it didn’t have to do with school gossip, sports, or the music she listened to, she didn’t seem interested in talking about it. Strangely, when she lost interest in social media and had nothing else to do, I caught her flipping through the Brooks Family History Scrapbook and an old leatherbound book I’d never seen before. It seemed to start out of boredom, just another way to pass the time, but she seemed to become progressively more interested in her grandfather’s scrapbook and the leather book. She never struck me as a history person, but I wrote it off as more of an interest in her own family than anything. Despite the various diversions she had, Jess still found time to bother me.
Sometimes she would interrupt me from whatever book I was reading. By now, any excitement about working with her was gone. I would have rather worked alone instead of doing everything while she sat around. I stopped trying to make small talk with her and focused on doing my job.
“I don’t see how you can sit there, reading like that, Tom Boy”, she said smirking. I hated when she called me that.
“Why not?” I asked, not lifting my eyes from the pages.
“It just seems like such a boring way to spend your time.” She reclined in her chair, popping bubblegum between her teeth.
Another time, maybe while we were eating lunch behind the counter, she sighed loudly.
“It’s so unfair I have to work tomorrow. Stacey and Molly are going shopping without me.”
I knew she wanted me to cover her shift. Old Man Brooks had me scheduled from open to noon. I planned on meeting my friends on a camping trip, maybe do some hiking, kayaking, or just hanging out by the lake. I said nothing.
She rolled her eyes. “What are you doing with your day off,” she asked.
“It’s not a day off,” I said. “I have to come in from open to noon. After that, I’ll probably meet up with Kyle and John at the lake.”
“That’s just the way you people are,” she smirked.
“What do you mean ‘you people’?”
“You know,” Jess blushed. “Country people living out of town. All you care about is being in the woods, hunting, and fishing, that stuff .”
I’d never been hunting in my life and thought fishing was boring. I decided to spare her the irony. She never showed up that afternoon and I had to close the store. I still went to the lake, but by then it was nearly dark and there wasn’t much to do but sit by the fire after a long day’s work.
The Saturday before fall break Mr. Brooks scheduled both of us to work on what turned out to be the busiest weekend we had in months. From the time we opened until late afternoon, a steady stream of customers came in for various items. When the chronically late Jess finally showed up, she wasn’t much help. Instead of helping customers herself, she referred them to me if there was something they couldn’t find or if they needed advice. I heard her say things like:
“I don’t know anything about plumbing Mr. Stevens, but Tom is basically a plumbing expert.”
“I totally forget how the paint mixer works Mrs. Anders, but Tom would be happy to mix those colors for you.”
“That truckload of mulch you ordered is right out back Mr. Lawson. Why don’t you pull around and Tom Boy can help you load everything before the rain picks up. I’m sure you can both get everything onto your trailer before the downpour really starts.”
I cringed. I hated it when she called me Tom Boy.
Sweat and rain soaked my clothes when I finally got back in the store. Jessica sat, scrolling through her phone with one hand, talking to yet another customer. Seeing me, her face lit up.
“Oh, here he comes! Tom, Mrs. Sandborn is looking for…”
“How about you do something for once and help her,” I snapped. “I’m going to lunch.”
The elderly woman’s mouth hung open, shocked by my rudeness. I grabbed my coat and walked out the front door. On the drive to the McDonalds, I cursed the bad weather and Jess’s laziness. In the short drive across town, my anger welled up inside me. I was pissed off I didn’t get the Gazette internship. I was pissed off Jess got paid to sit on her ass while I did all the work around the store. I was pissed off the line in the drive though was moving so slow.
When I finally got my food, I sped off from the drive through window, cursing under my breath, anticipating a screwed-up order and half-empty carton of fries. I parked a block away from the hardware store, not wanting Jess or Mrs. Sandborn to see me. I was still angry at Jess and realized what vocalizing my frustrations might lead to. I didn’t want to lose my job for yelling at the boss’s granddaughter. I also felt guilty about the way I treated poor Mrs. Sandborn. She was just a poor old woman looking for… something, just to get yelled at. She didn’t deserve that. She also looked familiar and I was sure my grandfather knew her just like he knew everyone else over 50 in Henderson Falls. It was only a matter of time until she ran into Grandpa, or worse, Mr. Brooks and complained about the rude young man working at the hardware store.
I finished my meal and sat in my car for the rest of my lunch break. My rage abated, leaving me anxious about returning to work. I decided to go into the store bearing an olive branch. I’d apologize to my Jess, maybe offer to cover her shift some weekend and hopefully get through the rest of the day without incident.
I noticed the lack of customers as soon as I stepped into the store. The murmur of questions from customers was replaced by the sound of the overhead heater. I found Jess, hunched over in her usual spot behind the Case knife display. It took a moment to realize Jess wasn’t scroll on her phone or doing homework. She was crying.
“Jess?”
She looked up at me through teary eyes. For the first time, I felt genuinely bad for how I snapped at her.
“I just wanted to say sorry for… earlier.” I stood awkwardly, waiting for her response.
“Why do you hate me Tom?”
“I don’t hate you. I… You’re just a lazy co-worker I have to deal with.”
I regretted the words as I said them. I felt my anger coming back and tried to keep a cool head.
She sniffled and wiped her eyes with an oversized sweater sleeve. “You never want to talk to me,” she sniffed. “You ignore me all day. You never even say ‘Hi’ to me when I clock in.”
I didn’t know what to say. “Look Jess I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s been a long day. I don’t want to-“
“Don’t want to what? Lose your Job?” She gazed up at me through puffy red eyes.
“Of course not!”
“We’re both going to lose our jobs, Tom.” Jess buried her head in her arms and burst into fresh sobs. I frowned, confused by the turn the conversation took.
“Why would your grandfather fire you?”
“Because the store is going out of business.” She raised her head up. “Every night, the deposits are getting smaller and smaller. I found these stuffed into grandpa’s ledger.”
She rummaged through the stack of mail beside her and pulled out a stack of envelopes.
“Last Notice, Late Fee, Past Due, Overdrawn.” She slid them from her hand to the desk like she was dealing cards. The sender’s names coupled with the red stamped messages worried me. Henderson County Tax Office, Nibco Plumbing Supply, Third Street Bank, Henderson County Rural Electric, a few miscellaneous suppliers for merchandise not purchased and resold from other stores.
For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why Jess cared so much about the rundown hardware store. She didn’t seem interested in the actual management of the place.I doubted she had hopes of one day running it herself. I remembered her perusing Old Man Brooks’ scrapbook. Maybe it was a matter of familial pride. I dragged my stool closer to Jess and tried to comfort her.
“I know this looks bad, but what’s the worst that can happen? I’ll find a new job somewhere else, and so will you. Mr. Brooks is old enough to retire anyway, don’t you think he’d like to get out of this place and-”
“That’s the thing, Tom. He can’t retire. He puts everything into keeping this place open. Any profit he turns goes right back into paying for more products and paying the bills.” Jess tapped the old-fashioned ledger on her desk. “You know how much money the store has in it’s checking account? It’s less than $100.”
“Just because the store is broke doesn’t mean the Old Man is.”
“Look at your paychecks, Tom Boy”, she said, without her usual mockery. “They don’t say ‘Brooks Bros. Hardware’. They say Simon J. Brooks, because he shares an account with the store.”
I furrowed my brow as I thought. Surely there was a way out of this mess.
“Maybe he can sell the place and walk away with a nice profit. An investor could renovate this building, just like the other ones downtown.”
“Do you really think anyone would want to buy this place?” Jess raised a challenging eyebrow.
I shrugged. I knew there were some people buying up the old historic properties and ‘gentrifying’ them. Somehow our dusty hardware store didn’t seem a likely place for coffee, vinyl LPs or whatever else the hipsters downtown liked.
“And even if he could find a buyer, it’d break his heart selling this place. It would absolutely devastate him.”
There was no denying that. Maybe the old man was a bit detached from reality and given to romanticizing the importance of the family business, but I think that made this sudden revelation of the place’s impending demise that much more tragic. I dropped my head as I racked my brain for some words to comfort Jess. Suddenly I felt a warm hand close over my wrist.
“I’ve been reading through some of grandpa’s notes. There might be a way out of this mess, but grandpa would never go through with it.”
I raised my head to see Jess looking at me with pleading eyes. “Will you help me Tom?”
My watch read 11:48.
“Do you have everything we need?”
Jess slapped her backpack. “It’s all in here. We just need to get set up before midnight.” She pulled a pink wad of gum from her mouth and smashed it under the desk before rising.
“Let’s go,” she said, wrapping her cold fingers around my hand and dragging me to the foot of the stairs. I felt like a kid reaching into a cookie jar, wondering if they were about to get caught. The wooden stair treads represented the point of no return. If Mr. Brooks or anyone else saw us reason, I’d be caught doing what he explicitly told me to never do.
I clicked my flashlight on, shielding most of the light with my hand. Faint marks left behind by Jess’s Chuck Taylors showed the path through decades of accumulated junk and old merchandise, all but blocking the stairway. I watched Jessica’s long legs retrace steps she had apparently taken earlier. I followed her with my logging boots, trying not to disturb anything. The higher we climbed and the less cluttered the stairs, the more noticeable our footprints became in contrast to the decades of dust. Without all the junk to distract the eye, Mr. Brooks would surely notice this evidence of disturbance.
The door at landing creaked on rusty hinges. Loose panes of glass rattled as it bumped the lath and plaster wall behind it. The room was exactly as Mr. Brooks described it: an overflow for outdated hardware. Scythes hung from rafters, motheaten burlap bags covered tables, and tendrils of leather straps from horse and carriage days spilled into the narrow walkway. There was even the odd sickle hanging from a nail on the pillars, swaying as our footsteps caused the old floor to creak and at times, noticeably bow under our weight.
Jess picked up her stubby plumber’s candle from floor, leaving behind a small ring of coagulating white wax. We ventured deeper into the musty room. Any doubt surrounding Mr. Brooks’ story of nearly falling through a weak spot in the floor vanished as my flashlight played over the section of splintered wood and exposed floor joists near the front of the store. I realized we might be in real danger of falling through a weak spot in the floor ourselves. Jess led me deeper into the maze of cast-off wares. At one point while, scanning the room I accidentally slammed my knee into the exposed springs of an old mattress sitting on a wrought iron bedframe. I cringed at the rusty squeaks. Jess giggled at my muffled curses. Our narrow walkway gave way to a large clearing. The expanse was mostly unused space. I might have paid more attention to the wall of wooden shelves or the partitioned off room near the front corner of the building but my attention was captured by a hulking rectangular form sitting behind a stained rug.
Gold pinstripes outlining the safe door glittered as we approached. A large, five spoke wheel was mounted beneath to the dial. Decades of use had worn through the nickel plating, exposing the brass beneath. The safe’s most striking feature was a portrait of a man’s face painted above a scroll of gilded letters reading: “C. W. Brooks & Bros. HDWE Co. Est. 1868.” Like tintype photographs of the era, his expression was stern, no trace of a grin, and if there was any mirth in his eyes, the artist failed to capture it. I felt a strange uncanniness as I looked at the bearded man’s face, ultimately chalking it up to a family resemblance to my employer. I wondered if the old man had ever seen the portrait of Captain Brooks.
“We don’t have much time,” Jess said. She kicked the red and gold rug away from the safe, revealing a circular, black stain on the floor.
I followed Jess’s lead and knelt on the opposite side of the stain, watching her produce a sheet of onionskin paper and a thin board from her backpack. She set her candle to the side illuminating the typewritten paper before unfolding the board in the center of the stain. It featured a row of numbers from zero to ten, the alphabet in capital letters, and the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in opposite corners. The caption at the top read ‘Ouija’.
“This is what you dragged me up here for? All this over a damn Ouija Board?”
“Look, If you go into this with the wrong mindset, you will have a bad time.”
I looked over the thing, half-expecting to find the Hasbro logo on one of the corners, but looking closer, it seemed genuinely old. It wasn’t modern cardboard; it looked more like the antique boxes I found in the warehouse. It had a dull appearance and some of the letters were partially worn away, either due to age or frequent use. I looked at the paper and read the lines closest to me.
DO NOT use in a graveyard.
Wait until the planchet stops on good-bye to put board away.
If the board starts counting down from-
“Or it might not work at all,” Jess interrupted, tilting her head to one side. “And we’ll have wasted all this time for nothing.”
“Alright, fine. Where’d you get this thing anyway?”
“Kathy Connors. She gave me these instructions, board and planchet for the ritual,” she continued, holding up a wooden pointer and setting it down on the board. I frowned. It hadn’t occurred to me before agreeing to do this, honestly, I wasn’t sure what I had agreed to at all. The only thing Jess told me was the key to saving our jobs and her grandfather’s business was upstairs and that she needed help. I can’t explain it, but I felt sudden apprehension looking at the board, sitting on the blackened circle in the candle light. It rekindled a distant memory, maybe one of those humid summer mornings in the itchy pews of Henderson Falls’ First Baptist Church and a vague recollection of my pastor going on about divination not only being a sin, but the very act putting your soul at risk of demonic possession. It was unsettling to say the least.
There was also the time Kyle told me spirit boards were ‘complete bullshit’ after we saw one being used in a horror movie.
“There’s a reason they always say to never play alone,” he said as the B-Movie we pirated flickered on the projector in his basement. “If you did, there’d be nobody to move that wooden thing.”
All that said, I felt reluctance at the thought of taking part in what basically amounted to a séance. I pushed these thoughts from my mind. If Jess really wanted to go to all this trouble just to sit cross-legged on the floor and wait for a message from beyond the ethers that wasn’t coming, that was on her.
With everything in order, Jess closed her eyes and took a deep breath before looking up at me.
“Are you ready?”
“I guess? What are we doing exactly?”
“Using a Ouija board.”
“I got that part, but why?”
She groaned as she looked at her Apple watch. “Look, we have five minutes, so I’ll make this quick. Has grandpa told you about the feud between Captain Brooks and the banker G. W. Leyland?”
“Maybe once or twice.”
Jess just stared at me, expecting more. By this time, I doubted there was anything about Captain Brooks the Old Man hadn’t told me about.
“He said something about Leyland and the Captain having a feud, or something?”
Jess nodded. “He probably didn’t mention Leyland’s attempt to take over Brooks Brothers?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“I read Captain Brooks’ Journal.” Jess gestured to the leather book poking out of her backpack, the same one I’d seen her reading many times before.
“During the Panic of 1873, the store fell on hard times and needed loans to stay open. Leyland was a money lender and the two agreed to a loan in exchange for a promissory note, payable once the Captain Brooks’ railroad investments recovered. It’s complicated, but after several months, Layland attempted to claim Brooks Brothers for the loan being in default. The Captain claimed Leyland forged a promissory note with different terms and even caught Leyland trying to force his way into the offices up here. There was also money missing after this visit from Leyland. The whole thing went to court and the Judge ruled in favor of a compromise between the two versions of the promissory note, since he himself couldn’t verify which one was real. Brooks Brothers was ordered to repay half the loan immediately and the remaining half upon the later note’s expiration. The store struggled after paying the first half of the loan. Rumors circulated about the Brooks family losing the store when Leyland called on the rest of the loan, and that’s when something strange happened: He never came. He went missing, days before the rest of the loan was due. People were initially suspicious of Captain Brooks, but he had an air-tight alibi. Other businesses in town came forward after his disappearance, claiming Leyland was guilty of unfair and misleading business practices, hidden balloon payments on loans, forced early repayment, interfering with businesses he’d loaned money to and trying to assume control of them. People started to think Leyland had made too many enemies in town and fled. After this, Captain Brooks’ journal entries seem to get… paranoid. He mentioned his fear of Leyland’s return. He changed the combination to the safe and wouldn’t tell anyone, not even his family what it was. He carried a revolver with him and insisted on locking the store himself each night. This went on a few months before he was found dead on this very spot.”
Jess pointed to the black stain. My skin crawled under my coat.
“What happened?”
“No one knew for sure. The coroner said it was heart failure. After witnessing his paranoia, the family probably believed it.”
“And you want to try asking his spirit for the combination to open this safe?”
“You’re really not as dumb as you look, Tommy Boy.”
“Why go to all this trouble? If there was anything in that safe, someone would have hired a locksmith a long time ago.”
“It’s a Chubbs Safe, whey were world famous their security. They used to say they were impossible to crack. I called around, but none of the locksmiths around here will touch it because it’s an antique. I found a man online who works on old safes, but he was expensive.”
“How expensive?”
“More than we make in a month.”
“Did you call and talk to the guy? Maybe he’s cheaper than you think. Or mayb-”
Jess looked at her watch. “Look, we don’t have much time, just give me your hand.”
I sighed and placed my hand on top of the planchet.
“One last thing.” Jess looked me in the eye. Her perpetual smirk vanished and her laughing eyes grew calm and focused.
“You have to promise, once we start, we keep going until the end? You got me?”
I nodded.
“And it doesn’t end until the planchet says ‘Goodbye’.”
“Alright.”
“Promise me.”
“Alright, I promise.”
“Good.” Jess rested her soft hand on top of mine. A cold handcuff bit my wrist as it ratcheted shut. I looked at the other end of the handcuff dangling from Jess’s wrist. Before I could speak she raised her free hand, dismissively.
“Just some cheap insurance,” she said.
“Insurance against what?”
Jess’s watch alarm chimed. Midnight. She straightened up and whispered, “Let me do the talking.” She slid the planchet to the center of the board.
“Is there a benevolent spirit who wishes to speak with the living?”
Jess scanned the darkness beyond our candle’s flickering light. A long silence passed before she spoke again.
“I am one of Captain Brooks’ granddaughters; is there a benevolent spirit who wishes to speak with the living?”
Wind whistled outside. The building’s roof creaked under the strain. The planchet remained a dead piece of wood in our hands. I looked around the room and saw nothing. Jess looked over my shoulder once more. Biting her lip, Jess spoke up.
“I am a descendant of Captain Brooks; is there a spirit who wishes to speak with the living?”
My heart thudded inside my chest. It wasn’t the wind picking up outside, or the sudden chill in the air, or Jess trembling across from me. It was the planchet moving. Not under the guidance of Jess’s hand, or mine, but some invisible force. It slid slowly to the word “Yes”, before returning to the center of the board.
Jess went pale, but smiled uneasily. “Who are we speaking with?”
The pointer skated across the board, spelling out a message.
“Captain Brooks.”
Jess’s face lit up with triumph. “We came to ask you-”
But the planchet kept moving “You shouldn’t be here Jess. He got me, now he’s coming for you. Leave now.”
The pointer moved towards ‘Goodbye’. It was nearly there when it shot back to the center of the board. Heavy footfalls echoed through the room.
Jess shook her head in stunned silence.
I scanned the room but saw nothing. “Who’s there?”
The board spelled out “Leyland.”
“We’re here on behalf of Mr. Brooks.” Jess shuddered as she spoke.
“Another Brooks in financial trouble. How predicable.”
Jess wiped tears from her eyes before speaking. “Mr. Leyland, I know you and the captain had- difficulties. But we need help opening the safe.”
A cold breeze burst through the room, carrying a madman’s laugh. Our weak light source trembled, sputtering and threatening to go out until the gust exhausted itself and the flame steadied.
“I help no one. Especially a Brooks.”
“Mr. Leyland, please it’s a matter of saving my grandfather’s business.”
The wind rose up again. A raspy voice vocalized the board’s words slowly as the planchet spelled them out.
“This is my business.”
Jess sat speechless. Before she could speak the cursor and the voice went on.
“When I came to call on Captain Brooks’s loan, murdered me on this very spot.”
A chill ran down my spine. I looked at the stain beneath us, suspecting for the first time it wasn’t from a water leak or spilled ink. Images of a banker dying, a safe slamming shut, and the smell of black powder smoke flashed through my mind.
“What does any of this have to do with me?” Jess cried.
“You’re family owed me a debt in life. I’m here to collect after death.”
“He can’t hurt us? Can he,” I asked. Trying not to panic.
Wicked laughter echoed through the room.
Jess looked faint when her eyes fell on Kathy Connors’ sheet of paper.
“What’s wrong,” the voice taunted. “Didn’t anyone tell you not to play in a graveyard?”
A faint metallic whir alerted us to the safe towering above us. The dial raced from one digit of it’s combination to another before stopping with a click. The five spoke wheel twisted, stopping with a metallic ‘thunk’ as the locking bars retracted. The massive door swung open on lazy hinges. Jess saw it before I did and screamed.
Inside was the dried-up husk of a man, still in a gilded age suit. Yellow wrinkled lips curled away from ivory white teeth as it stared at us with sunken, hollow eye sockets.
“Don’t you think there was a reason the captain never gave anyone the combination to this safe?”
Jess sobbed, her pale face reddened from crying. “You don’t have to do this. I never borrowed anything from you.”
“Captain Brooks’ debt will be repaid.”
Disembodied laughter echoed through the room. The open safe swayed with each reverberation. The planchet jerked to nine and started counting down. Eight. Seven.
“It can’t get to zero, Tom! Help me!” Each time the planchet moved, we forced it back to the previous number. The resistance was startlingly strong as we shoved it back to nine. I don’t know what scared me more, not knowing what would happen if it reached zero or the fact its movements were getting harder to fight. Even with both of our hands on the thing, shoving with all our might we were losing ground. Six, five, four. The safe rocked noticeably. The floor creaked under its weight.
Jess looked to the sheet of paper, searching frantically for some way out of this. The pointer stopped on four. I braced myself and pulled with all my might. It needled closer to three but I wasn’t about to let it get there. I wasn’t just fighting the planchet, I was fighting panic, a tired grip, sweaty hands. The safe shook violently next to us. I cried out in pain as the planchet ripped free from my fingers.
Three. Two. One.
Before it could get to zero, Jess flipped the board upside down.
“Tom, look out!”
The handcuff bit into my wrist as Jess lunged from our circle of light, dragging me with her. The candle got knocked over, plunging us into darkness. A deafening crash rattled the bones of the building as the safe fell face first to the floor where Jess and I were sitting just moments before. Before we could share this moment of relief, a blackened figure rose from behind ruins of the safe.