Sept
21: "I would like to make an exchange, please."
“Perfect?”
Izzy looked adorable staring at him as though he’d lost his mind.
“Yeah.
For the first time we know exactly where the professor is not going to be. We
can come back here tonight and continue the search for the collection.”
Excitement bubbled up inside him, and Owen had a hard time not bouncing up and
down like a kid on a trampoline.
“Uh…
isn’t that what we’re going to do now?” Izzy shrugged. His confused frown
melted into a heart-breaking smile as he seemed to catch Owen’s excitement.
“Yesh…
but… Come on. Don’t you want to?”
“Sneak
in after the professor thinks we’re gone? Sure… we can play Night at the Museum
if you want, but how are we going to get back in after he locks the doors?”
Izzy pointed out logically.
“I
got this covered.” Owen headed down the hall to B wing. “I just need to get
some tape when we go upstairs for lunch.” Izzy pattered after him, and Owen
remembered that they were supposed to stick together.
“Tape?”
Breathing heavily from his quick sprint to catch up, Izzy side bumped Owen as
he turned the corner into B corridor.
“Yeah.
I just need a little duct tape and we can get in here easy. I saw it on a
television show when I was a kid. Used to do it at home. I lost my key and my
mom swore she’d bust me if I lost it again, because the landlord made her pay a
three hundred dollar deposit to replace the locks. So, of course--”
“You
lost it again? After that? Man--”
“Yeah.
And I couldn’t tell my mom because I knew she didn’t have the money to pay for
another lock change. We ate nothing but eggs and ramen for a month to pay for
that first lock change, and so… I MacGyvered it.”
“MacGyvered
it? With tape?”
“Yeah.
It worked too, until my mom found my key in the laundry, and I got busted
anyway, but that’s not gonna happen here.”
“No?
Okay.” They stood in corridor B, counting the doors. At the far end of the hall
was a lumpy, shadowed collection of boxes and a tall metal filing cabinet.
“Start at the end and work our way forward?” Izzy suggested, leaning into Owen
a little.
Owen
accepted that weight, welcomed it. “You think there might be something of
interest in those big boxes? Surely if there were valuable Egyptian artifacts
they’d be locked in a storage room securely somewhere?” He glanced at the junk
at the end of the hall again. That box might be tall enough to hold something
interesting…
“Well,”
he acceded, “at least it will be a quick check.” Not like all those tiny shoe
boxes and file folders in the previous rooms.
“Right.”
They’d
just reached the end of the hall and those big boxes when Izzy grabbed his hand
again.
“Sh.”
Owen
paused, one hand on the flap of a box. “What is it?” He asked, looking at Izzy
curiously.
“Did
you hear that?” Izzy ducked close to him, glanced back over his shoulder. “I
thought… It was a scratchy sound.”
Listening
carefully, Owen shook his head. “No. I don’t hear anything. Maybe it was the
professor moving something upstairs?” He turned back to the box, unable to
suppress the excitement. This box… it might contain treasure… It was surely too
big to contain more letters or financial documents. “Do you think a mummy would
fit in this box?” He measured its height with a critical gaze. Mummies were
short… right?
“Doubtful,”
Izzy commented, pulling open one of the doors to the metal cupboard. “Wasn’t
even locked. Probably a sure sign that there’s nothing good in here.” His voice
grew muffled.
Curious,
Owen glanced over at his friend. Izzy had brushed his hair back behind one ear,
and bent forward into the depths of the cabinet. “Anything?”
“Uh…”
Straightening so swiftly that he banged his elbow on the b=metal door, Izzy
retreated from the cabinet into the shadows. “I’d like to make an exchange.”
“Huh?”
Owen glanced back and forth between Izzy and the cupboard. “What do you mean?”
“I
mean… Here. You take this. I’ll get the box.” Izzy’s pale face looked even
paler in the dim hall light, and Owen grew concerned.
“Izzy…”
“Here…”
Izzy pushed him toward the steel cabinet and reached for the flap of the box.
“Go on.”
Having
been pushed toward the cabinet, Owen stared at his friend, bewildered. “Izzy…”
A
shower of dust flew into the air as Izzy jerked the box flaps apart. The tape
ripped off with a dry, scratchy noise that sent a shiver down Owen’s spine.
“Just… Check out the cabinet, please Owen.”
Shrugging,
Owen turned back to the open cabinet. It was dark inside… and just as dusty as
the boxes around it. Being closed hadn’t protected the contents from time. He
wasn't sure what he expected to see after Izzy’s weird reaction, but it didn’t
look like anything was out of order to him. Sighing, he reached for the first
thing his fingers touched and pulled out a heavy block shaped object.
“Ugh.”
Izzy had made short work of the big box, and sat with its contents around him
on the floor.
“What
is it?” Owen asked without giving his friend more than a cursory glance before
turning his own mystery item over in his hands. It was… definitely strange. A
block of some sort of heavy plastic, maybe glass… and inside it a … “Izzy, what
does this look like to you?”
“It
looked like a big fuckin’ spider, why do you think I switched places with you?”
Startled,
Owen glanced back at the cabinet. Sure enough, on the bottom shelf amid a dusty
tangle of web, was a big spider, black and multi-legged, but nothing to get
hysterical over. “That? That’s just a garden variety daddy long legs. Eats
other insects and minds its own business.”
“This
isn’t a garden, and fuck that. It’s big and creepy and … What the hell is
that?”
“A
daddy long legs, doofus. I just told you.”
“No…
that.” Izzy pointed at the thing in Owen’s hands.
“Oh…
yeah I was wondering myself.” He held the thing out into the light, revealing a
bit more detail.
“Is
that… a man’s hand?” Izzy sounded appalled.
Owen
studied the thing. “Yeah. It looks like one, but it can’t be real. Maybe it's
from a movie set or something. Remember that book we read freshman year? The
Monkey’s Paw? Artifacts like this were pretty common a hundred years ago.”
Izzy
swallowed hard, his eyes widened. “Uh… Owen?” His voice had dropped to a
whisper.
Owen
tipped the object over. The skin was leathery, the bones cracked ivory. It
might be a real human hand, or the best replication that could be made. “Huh?”
“Owen!”
Izzy hissed.
“It
would be awesome if there were provenance papers in here that could tell us
more about this. Think about what a fabulous exhibit a human hand would make…
Visitors would love the creep factor.”
“Owen!”
“What?”
He focussed his attention on Izzy, and the things lying on the floor. “Did you
find something great in that box?” Owen knelt, holding the plastic encased hand
in one hand and bracing himself against the floor with the other. “It just
looks like clothes to me, Izzy.” A filmy white heap of something that could be
a wedding dress, some pointy toed shoes that looked fairly lethal, and a suit
of black woolly fabric that looked like it had seen better days.
“Behind
you.” Izzy shook, eyes wide pools of shock.
Heart
hammering in instant terrified response to that expression, Owen spun around so
fast he threw himself off balance and ended up falling awkwardly on his elbow.
The block in his hand hit the floor and shattered.
A
thin sliver of light, running floor to ceiling, brightened a crack in what had
seemed to be a solid wall. Then vanished, as though a door had been closed
securely.
