Rotted Roots — Part 2: A Meeting is Set
“You can’t go up there.”
“I have to. No one else is gonna.”
“You’ll die! Don’t you get it? You’ll die and no one will care!”
“Then I’ll die! At least I’ll have died for something…”
“We’ll be right back to High Noon Over the Atlantic, the latest Late-Night Radio Drama from Ninety Five point Nine — The Snap, right after a quick word from our sponsor.”
Ryder turned the volume down on the radio by his desk as the first commercial came on — “WorldTree Technologies — designing a better tomorrow for everyone’s world” — and went back to his notes. Putting some final thoughts down on a case always helped give it closure for him, even if it didn’t end well. It was his way of releasing it from his brain. So it was behind his desk, with a glass of red wine in his hand and ink smudges on his wrist, where he found himself after the eventful day he had helped along.
Saturday’s meeting with the Ryder Industries executive had been set for one that afternoon. At precisely one-ten, in accordance with Saturday’s detailed plan, Ryder walked into the lobby and demanded to see his brother. He had ranted and raved, making sure to attract the attention of everyone who was passing by as spit flew from his mouth as often as his curses did. After four grueling minutes of wrestling security, Ryder had been tossed from the building. After that he had calmly hailed a cab back to his office. There, he continued on other work to pass the time.
His notes in front of him were a hodgepodge of thoughts and ideas — ranging from how he had predicted the reticence of the boyfriend to give up the information he had needed, to how his mind was now turning towards being fully engaged with Saturday’s plan. All Ryder had to do was wait for contact from him.
He turned the ink-encrusted page of his notebook. His lungs grew heavy. On the page in front of him, the page that was supposed to be blank, was a riddle from Molly. When she had worked as his assistant she often hid riddles and jokes in his notebooks for him to find at a later date. She thought it would work to cheer him up from the rough cases. It didn’t. But he appreciated the effort, even if it didn’t show.
His hand trembled faintly as he ran his fingertips over the looping writing in the center of the page. It read, “I have millions of eyes, yet I live in darkness. I have millions of ears, yet only four lobes. I have no muscles, yet I rule two hemispheres. What am I?”
“The human brain.”
His elevated pulse activated the latent Chronos in his bloodstream. Using it for so long had internalized it into his muscles and bones. Stress brought it out in flashes. He bit down on his cheek as the world began to slow around him. The voices on the radio were pulled like taffy. The traffic outside his window slowed to an amble. Ryder gripped the edge of his desk and tried to breathe slowly. Molly’s face smiled from behind his eyelids. The smile turned to sadness. She turned away and faded into the clouds of stars in his vision.
When Ryder stopped screaming time had reset around him. His wine had spilled to the ground and was joined by shards of inebriated glass. The notebook landed on the other side of the room in a billowing crash of pages and unwritten words. He was standing over his flipped chair.
He was looking at where his notebook had landed when he saw the envelope. He walked over and picked it up from its place underneath the door. It was just another envelope, with a red stamp on the corner and his name printed in the center. He had gotten all the mail when he had returned earlier that afternoon. He opened it. Inside was an old key and note, saying:
“UPTOWN POST OFFICE. P.O. BOX 28. ELEVEN P.M. TWO WEEKS.”
So Ryder let the weeks pass by. He took another case in the interim — involving a man trying to tunnel under Enfield Park to gain access to a woman’s apartment to imitate a dead relative haunting her — and which he subconsciously let drag on to keep him from drinking away the days. Nothing of importance beyond the case happened. He listened to the news every night to be sure.
Then the night came. Pulling on a tired-looking jacket, Ryder caught a cab and urged it onward into the icy, rain-soaked night. The drive lasted forever despite the lack of traffic along the back streets they took. After twenty minutes of driving, they arrived at the post office. Ryder paid the man one hundred dollars to forget the fare.
Wading through the rain, Ryder went to the back of the building. Streams of water poured off of the gargoyles ornately carved into the façade of the building. The lights in the large windows were dark. Only a hobo whispering to a duct-taped cane lurked in the alley as Ryder moved to the employee’s entrance. It was already unlocked for him.
His footsteps clattered as Ryder walked through the facility and up the marble stairs to the main lobby. Ryder noticed a faint trail of moisture — the remnants of rainwater — going up the stairs. Ryder slowly followed it. Rain clattered against the windows. Another set of clacking footsteps echoed down the stairs.
“Saturday?” asked Ryder. No response. Ryder moved into the lobby, keeping a hand on the pistol he had tucked into the pocket of his jacket for protection. The footsteps subsided. Ryder looked over the brass counter through the grate and saw a door swinging on the other end of the sorting facility. The sounds of the city entered the empty building. “Saturday?” Nothing.
Box twenty-eight was around the corner from the counter. That entire wall, stretching at least forty feet, was taken up with small boxes, running from number one through over seven hundred. Number twenty-eight was at the right corner of the wall. The key Ryder had been carrying with him slid into the lock easily.
Something wasn’t right about this. Who had been there in the building with Ryder? If it was Saturday, why didn’t he respond? Why hadn’t he heard anything directly from Saturday since their meeting over two weeks ago? When it came to dealings with his family, everything was in danger.
Inside the box was a single notecard. Ryder pulled it out and read it. Printed in the same typeface as the original message read:
“46.877186, -96.789803. 4442382866. MAY.DAY.”
Something had indeed gone wrong.
TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK…
