The Journeyman

CHAPTER 1

She stared, her chin resting on folded hands, at the small terrarium as if she wished she was on the inside looking out. A tarantula named Persephone watched her with Lucite eyes and equally shiny fangs from the safety and shadow of a cork bark cave. A shallow dish filled with pea gravel and water sat on the other side of the tank. Taped to the back glass was a symbol, the image from all of the Queensrÿche albums, one of her favorite bands—a band both she and her father appreciated. Chelsea Ritter, fourteen, tucked an errant clump of dyed turquoise hair back behind her ear and it immediately slid back into her face.

What do you think, Seph? she said.

The spider still watched, but remained still. She looked around her room for inspiration. Purple walls, posters of musicians and artwork of her own design—skulls, roses, hearts, demons and other symbols of either love or death adorned the room. One wall was a bookshelf loaded with tomes ranging from the hallowed halls of Hogwarts to the narrative wizardry of Hemingway and she had read them all. Many more than once.

Yes. I suppose you’re right.

She settled back into her rolling office chair and pushed off of the table with her feet, sending a slight shudder through the terrarium as she rolled across the floor and bumped into her bed. Persephone reared back on four legs and raised the other four as if attack was imminent. Once the threat had passed, she settled on all-eights before retreating a bit further into the tunnel.

The color of ink was always decided during her conversations with Persephone, who served as a sounding board, best friend, and live-in philosopher. A best guess put the creature—a female Chilean Rose-haired Tarantula—at four years old. Chelsea figured Persephone would live another ten given proper care and she looked after the creature with love. She had saved her own money to buy the spider back before her mother and father divorced. At the time her father, Luke, thought it was cool—even more so when the divorce happened and the pet made her mother queasy. Lately, it has been creeping him out as well, possibly due to the baby mice—pinkies they were called—she’d taken to feeding it.

Metalcore raged in the background. Screaming, gut-vibrating guitar and the thunder of double-bass pedal drums hammered away as Chelsea rifled through a pile of colored pens. She held up a red one and looked in Persephone’s direction once more, paused, and then nodded.

Red it is, she said.

A hardbound journal rested in her lap. On the cover—a rough-textured pea-green—the words WEIRD SHIT MY NEIGHBOR DOES were scrawled in black Sharpie. Its pages were almost full. She had journaled things ever since she could write. At first it was a cutesy diary about her dreams of being a doctor princess animal trainer. Then it was about the other kids at school. She found the psychology and habits of people interesting even before she understood what the words meant. Then she had discovered Arthur Clay.

Chelsea had watched her next door neighbor, Mr. Clay, since she was eleven years old. She had all of his quirky details scribbled in that journal and she found the practice of watching him very amusing. She had never officially met Mr. Clay although they knew each other by sight and on occasion she waved at him. He would wave back, but always looked uneasy about it, as if she had embarrassed him. Her father spoke to him on rare occasions, but they weren’t what the average person might call friends.

No visitors today, she said out loud as she wrote the same words in the book. There never are. She checked the clock and then rolled over to her window and peered through her window shade which worked like a two-way mirror. Chelsea watched the neighborhood through those shades, but from outside, they were reflective and she was invisible to the world…just the way she liked it. The music changed from metal to opera. The aria, Vissi d'arte from the final act of Tosca performed by Maria Callas, 1953 filled her room as a car slowed in front of Clay’s home.

Right on time, Art, she said as the late model Honda Accord pulled into the driveway, paused until the garage door was all the way up, and then proceeded into the garage.

She marked his arrival in the journal along with the date. Then she waited a few beats and wrote:

OPENS FRONT DOOR. CLOSES FRONT DOOR. CHECKS FRONT DOOR THREE TIMES. WALKS TO MAILBOX AND GETS MAIL. CLOSES MAILBOX. CHECKS MAILBOX DOOR THREE TIMES. GOES INSIDE.

All that checking and rechecking must be exhausting, she said to the tarantula.

Persephone was out and walking around, a rare sight. Chelsea glanced back out the window momentarily, then tossed the journal back onto her bed along with the red pen.

You hungry, girl? I guess it has been a bit since your last feeding. Might be a few bugs down there for you. Or maybe Luke will run me to the pet store...I’ll find you something.

A knocking at her door caught Chelsea’s attention. More of a pounding, really, as the music was quite loud.

Critter? her father shouted.

It was a nickname given her when she was little. C. Ritter had been written on her file at the doctor’s office when she had gone in for shots prior to starting kindergarten. Luke found it hysterical. Her mother had not. Their senses of humor never matched and Chelsea assumed it may have been a small piece of why they divorced. She got her father and they made a great team.

She turned the music down and walked to the door. With a quick twist of the knob, she opened the door just a sliver and said, Luke…you are my father. Through the crack she saw him grin. What’s up? she said and opened the door the rest of the way.

He leaned his forearm on the jamb and smiled at her. At forty, he still had the boyish face she remembered from when she was a little girl. He was graying around the edges and his belly poked out above his belt. Still, his eyes were deep blue and kind and Chelsea liked them.

Hey, I’m out of town for a couple days, remember? Just wanted to check on you. You need to stay with Uncle Collin and Aunt Jen?

No.

You sure? he said.

We’ve done this before, Luke.

She called him Luke and he never seemed to mind. When she was in trouble—a rare occurrence—she called him Sir. When she was sick or sad, it was Daddy, but on regular days, it was Luke.

I know and I trust you, but I worry, Critter. Last couple times were just over nights.

I’ll be fine, she said and patted him on the shoulder in that reassuring way. The first time he’d left her over night, she was three weeks away from being fourteen. He dropped her off with her aunt and uncle and she couldn’t sleep. She bothered Jen and Collin so much, they brought her home and Jen slept in Luke’s bed. Four months later, on Luke’s next trip, he agreed to try letting her stay alone, against her aunt and uncle’s advice, but she was fine. Things were fine.

You never would’ve done this if her mother was around, Collin had said.

Of course not, because her mother would’ve been home. Luke had answered. There were several beats of silence before Luke spoke again. Nothing was right when her mother was still here. Things are better now. We’re better now. She is going to be fine.

Chelsea swelled with pride when she heard that. She was hoping things weren’t going backwards. That Luke wasn’t second guessing her. She was more mature than most at her age, more responsible, and she wasn’t susceptible to all the crap her peers seemed to be unable to live without. She hated drugs, didn’t care about alcohol, didn’t care about sex, didn’t care about them. Chelsea wanted to be Chelsea. She wanted to live in a world of music and art and making strong decisions.

Luke patted her back. All right. But Collin and Jen are just a few blocks away.

Don’t I know it, she said with an eye roll.

And you’re sure you don’t want them to come stay here? I’m sure...

That would be silly, wouldn’t it? I’ll be fine, she interrupted without too much angst.

Okay, he said, although still looking unconvinced.

It was the fourth trip he would take leaving her at home alone. Two nights. She got it. She understood his concerns. She wanted to prove him wrong, to prove herself worthy. To be strong enough in his mind. Not like her mother.

"You’ll have to trust me. If I need something I’ll call them. And I’m sure they’ll drop in like always when you’re gone." She made air quotes around the words drop and in.

Luke nodded. Then his eyes lit up and he argued his case once more. What about homework?

I’m a few chapters ahead, Luke. As usual. Have I ever let you down before?

He smiled, a sympathetic and crooked thing, but soon enough it melted into the smile she was used to seeing. Genuine...warm...daddy.

Just don’t get bored, okay? Boredom leads to trouble.

She looked around her room at the dozens of art pieces, some finished and some works-in-progress. He nodded and his gaze fell on the bookshelf.

You really read all of those?

Yep.

I should quiz you.

You’ll have to open one of them first. It rhymes with cook.

Luke rocked his head up and down with a look that said simply, touché. Smart ass.

I could read one to you if you like, she said and then she noticed the concern in his smile. I’ll be fine. Really. I can dial a phone and lock a door.

I know. I know you will, he said. I worry is all. You’re my immortality, right? Someday you’re going to make something amazing and I can say, ‘My kid did that.’

Chelsea smiled and shrugged.

Hey, what’s that one? Is it new? he asked and pointed as he walked into her room.

He lifted a picture from its hook on the wall and studied it. In the image, a ballerina skeleton danced in mid grand jeté. It wore a tutu and had a bow tied against its skull.

I finished it this morning, she said. At least I think it’s finished…none of them ever feel finished.

He stared at it in awe. It’s just beautiful, Critter. You are amazing.

He hugged her to him and kissed her forehead. She hugged him back and took the picture and placed it back on its hook and watched as he stood back and looked around her room. His eyes stopped on the terrarium and Persephone. The spider had its front legs on the glass, hunting.

Gah, he said. It moves.

She’s hungry. I was about to feed her if you’d like to watch.

He glared at her and gulped audibly. Ya know, I think I’ll pass. But you have fun, and please, turn the music back up. I don’t want to hear it munching.

Chelsea grinned and shoved him out of her room, passed him and went down the steps to the garage to check on her stash of crickets. The plastic tub was woefully empty and smelled like rot and mildew.

Gag, she said. How can you eat something that smells like that? She looked up at the ceiling in the direction of her bedroom. Sorry, Seph. Might just have to hit the store after Luke gets back.

She thought about asking Uncle Collin to take her but he never appreciated her taste in arachnids, or her hair color, her all black wardrobe, her music…never mind. Persephone could wait a few days. Instead, Chelsea walked outside, sat in the corner of the front porch in her rocking chair and threw in her ear buds. She dialed up a playlist on her smart phone and sat in the warm, late-summer Midwestern sun, hidden behind the safety of the shrubs that wrapped around their porch.

Several minutes passed before the sweat started to bead on her brow. It was over eighty degrees and slightly humid. She stopped rocking and as she wiped her forehead on the back of her hand she noticed a grasshopper sitting on the rail of the porch. It was at least three inches long. The insect was busy cleaning itself, sawing its front legs back and forth between its mouth parts. Chelsea stared at it for a while before she decided it would make a suitable meal for her pet although it was three times the size of the baby mice she normally fed her.

You might be too big, she said. We shall see.

She eased out of the chair and took a step towards it. The grasshopper straightened and cocked its springy legs to jump.

No no. No no no, she said.

She leaned toward it, raising her hands to rail level as if in slow motion before she took another step. It turned. She leaned again and the damned thing jumped.

Shit, Chelsea whispered.

She watched over the rail as it fluttered its wings and landed in the grass on the edge of her front lawn. In her mind, she considered going inside for some lemonade or iced tea and then lying on her bed and listening to music or maybe sketching another masterpiece. Then again, she wouldn’t be outsmarted by an insect. She stuffed the phone into her pocket and walked off the porch, keeping her eyes on the place where the thing landed. A few feet away, it hopped again. Not as far that time. She jumped towards it, then fell to her knees and cupped her hands slapping them down on top of it, but the grasshopper leapt once more and landed on the metal rim of a window well on the side of her neighbor’s—Mr. Arthur Clay’s—house.

Chelsea wasted no time, but crawled quickly toward the well and again cupped her hands, bringing them down and this time catching the bug. She sat back with a satisfied smirk and gripped the insect’s wings between her thumb and forefinger. Brown liquid oozed from its mouth and its legs worked as if it was trying to crawl.

Ah ah, she said. Then in a bad Scottish brogue, Fret not. You have a higher purpose, little one.

Just then, something hit the window inside that well. The noise was the sharp TACK! sound of something hard striking glass, but the glass hadn’t broken. It caused her to jerk and drop the grasshopper which hopped away. Chelsea lay down and looked into the well which was made of galvanized metal. Gravel filled the bottom. Oddly, the window which should’ve looked into the basement was painted black on the inside, but whatever had struck the glass scraped some of the paint away and there was a rectangle some two inches long and three quarters of an inch wide that was clean. It was too low down for her to see through from any comfortable position. With her head dipped inside the well she heard muffled sounds… maybe talking.

What are you up to, Mr. Clay? she whispered.

Chelsea remembered the grasshopper, and realizing it had hopped on to live another day, sighed.

Sorry, Seph. This could be important.

There were more muffled sounds from that basement window. Definitely voices. One high pitched, one low. Someone was singing.

Is it music? Terrible music, if it is. Off key. Is he...singing?

She pulled her cell phone from her pocket, switched the camera to video and started to record. Reaching her arm into the well, she aimed the phone’s camera lens at the clean spot in the painted window and held it there as best she could trying to capture whatever was going on inside. She found if she placed a pair of carefully selected rocks from the bottom of that well on the window ledge, the phone propped nicely in place with its camera lens looking through the scrape in the paint. She waited. There were sounds—now a conversation—emanating from behind that window. Chelsea rolled over on her back and stared up through the tree limbs at the blue sky above.

CHAPTER 2

One hour earlier, Arthur Clay finished his work and clocked out. The appliance factory had lost a shift, down to two, but business was picking back up and talk of the third shift reopening had grown from rumor to the planning stages. Hiring notices were out in the local newspapers. Hopeful candidates wore ties into the foreman's office for interviews. Arthur didn't care about any of that. He had but one thing on his mind, and that was the plaything in his basement. It had been there for three days and was cleansed and exhausted. It was ready for the ritual.

He punched his time card and checked it three times before placing it in the slot which bore his name. He smiled and nodded at the well-wishers who each said Have a good weekend, Art, or something to that effect. He nodded at each of them with a half-hearted grin and walked in his oddly stilted way—as if he was afraid something might swoop out of the sky and carry him off—to the burgundy Honda Accord and opened its driver’s side door. He shut it and opened it two more times before he could sit down. He knew the others watched him, talked about him—laughed at him—but he couldn't help it. Everything had to come in threes. If it didn't, the stress became too much and the headaches came.

Let them watch. Let them laugh. She laughed and she watched.

When he shut the door for the third time, he was okay again. He turned the radio on, but it wasn’t tuned to a particular station. The static filled his brain with a wonderful empty quality and allowed him to concentrate as he drove home. It was waiting, and when he got there, it would be ready.

It would be done.

It would be time.

***

He pulled into his driveway and put the car in park before he pressed the button on the automatic garage door opener. It cranked up slowly, disappearing above the opening. There was nothing inside except for some shelves, a water heater and a push lawnmower. He always feared something else might be waiting for him there. Pulling the shifter into drive, the car rolled into the garage where he got out and shut the car door three times. He heard the flurry of notes as an opera of some sort floated from the next-door neighbor’s upstairs window. Art hated opera. He hated all the music those foul people listened to. He assumed it was the young one. The girl. He liked music from the 1950’s. Real rock and roll from the greats like Eddie Cochran, The Platters and The Falcons.

The large overhead door shut but Arthur had to close the inside door three times, the one that led into his kitchen. He breathed in the clean scent of bleach and pine-scented floor cleaner. Then he hung his light windbreaker on its hook next to the door and looked at his face in the mirror. He was clean shaven with well-groomed and thick brown hair. His teeth were straight. His eyes were blue…not icy like hers, but blue. He was regular, nothing offensive, but neither was there anything spectacular about his appearance. His thirties were being kind to him in his estimation. A muffled scream distracted him for a single clock’s tick and he smiled. Not a sinister expression, but one that displayed the comfort of being home after a long day spent inspecting appliances for the kitchens and laundry rooms of America.

A quick glass of orange juice crossed his lips before he walked out to check the mail.

Close the front door three times. Open the mail box and look inside in case something is in there that shouldn’t be. A human hand perhaps…or something crawling with maggots. Grab the mail, close the box once, twice, third time’s a charm. That infernal music from the neighbor’s. Back to the porch, back to the door, three times. Three. Three times.

Once inside, he found the muffled screams were still there. Arthur clapped his hands. That was music to him. He checked the calendar in the pantry, not once or twice, but yes, three times. It was today. It was ready. He hurried through the basement door, shutting it over and over and again and then descended to the bottom of the stairs. It was still secured to the chair, but its back was to him. This was by design, so it could not see him when he entered. It could not watch him and pass judgment with its cold blue eyes. The most beautiful eyes—but cold.

I take it the medicine has worked? he asked, not caring if it responded. It couldn’t speak anyway, not with the gag in place.

The woman grunted, screamed, then grunted again against the wad of terrycloth that was shoved into her mouth and secured with duct tape. This set off a fit of coughing and more gagging.

No need for that. It will only make things worse, he said.

The room was large, rectangular in its form, but instead of being concrete and cinder blocks or finished with carpet and sheetrock, it was covered in ceramic tile on the walls and on the floor. The ceiling was the drop in type, build of a metal grid and acoustic tiles. In front of the woman in the chair, there were three things: a plastic barrel, a Rubbermaid storage cabinet, and a garden hose attached to a spigot and coiled around its hanger. Three windows should have let in some natural light, but each had been painted black. The only light provided was harsh, clinical and artificial. It left nothing to the imagination which was how Arthur Clay liked it. There would be no surprises if he could help it. He was less and less surprised with each ritual.

He made a face as he came into its view. It, a woman in her twenties of average build, maybe five and a half feet tall with shoulder length black hair, leered at him over the duct tape. Her legs were bound at the knee and the ankle to the heavy chair with silver-gray tape and her hands were taped together behind her back. She watched him with eyes that were an impossibly pale blue and exhausted, but filled with hatred. Their color stood out against the red rims of her eyelids, made all the more stunning by the stinging tears.

First, we have to remedy this stench, he said as he snapped on a pair of latex gloves.

She was drenched in sweat and smelled of her own urine and feces. The Magnesium