My First Day At Third Eye Over Iowa

JOHNSON:So there I am: 10:30 AM on a drizzling Tuesday and Duncan is yelling at me from downstairs that there's a delivery for me. So I stumble down---Duncan yelling at me 'bout rent or something but I'm still wrecked from the night before. Honestly, I should have punched him, but I couldn't tell which of the two Duncans... Anyway, the package is this envelope with a key, a 3x5 card with an address and an unsigned check from a guy named Hans Abbadon for $1500...

     ...all packed in rock salt.

     I'm not kidding.

     Fuckin' rock salt, for crissake. At first, I thought it was something like economy size anthrax or---fleetingly---industrial grade Russian diamonds---but no soap. Just rock salt; about 8 ounces or so, I guess. Not that I measured it... And a $1500 check.

     Fuckin' weird.

     I thought about just forging a name on the check---I mean, what the hell---but just as I'm about to do that, I get the idea that if I do that, I'm begging for trouble. It'd be easier to go to the address and use the key and see what this is all about. So's I get to the place; it's just a block or so south of downtown aways. Turns out the city bus goes right past it. There's a parking deck being built right across the street---or apartments...or something. There were a few cars parked on the street; some of them looked they had been there for a long time. One was a grungy Vega that was once upon a time snow white. It was all rusted out; had Nebraska plates and an Omaha dealer's name on the back.

     It was an old brick building, not in as bad a condition as the others on that side of the block...but not any better. They all look abandoned. A few doors down, one had a ten-foot tree growing right in front of the door---I swears to God, I'm not kidding. You gotta wonder what the City's thinking about this place. Anyway, the date over the doorway said "1900 AD". I'm no expert in architecture but it sorta reminded me of pool hall from one of those Black and White movies from the 1930's. Well, at least it would have pool hall if it had been the 1930's. There was just a big window next to the door. I couldn't see anything because of all the dirt on the window. So, I went in. There was one of those black letter boards with little white plastic letters on it. It said:"Th rd Eye Over Iowa: Paranormal News & Invest gat ons". Below it was a list of office numbers but all without names. Only one had a name: "#19 M ke Stone, Ed tor".

     All the missing "i" s threw me for second. The letter board was pretty beat up but since it was clean as was the tops of the woodwork and the floor looked recently swept, I figured somebody was home.

     So, I'm thinks to myself there's a scam going on here: right out of "The Sting"-that '70's flick with Newford and Redman where they stage some kinda dog track betting gig to put a bad guy out of business. Anyway, I'm thinking that something ain't 100% Kosher and I'm just about to leave when I saw the damnedest thing.

     Ok, you're not gonna believe me. Sure the floor was dirty and the light was dim but like I said the floor had been swept. The plaster walls looked like they had been crumbling onto the floor for ten or twenty years and there should have been piles of powdery crap all over. But it wasn't. The worn wood floor was stained with some dark splotches that happen from people spilling stuff on it; like not wiping your feet well enough in the winter (my old gran's favorite complaint).

     But this splotch was no ordinary splotch. It moved. In the wood of the floor! The damned thing fucking moved! I swear to God! It was about the size of a man and looked like muddy water soaking through a paper towel. Just working its way in the wood flooring for about a minute or two until it just faded away.

     Well, Hell, I just stood there. Amazed. That's it: amazed. Then I started thinking there was stuff in the wood from the plumbing or something and it happened every time the toilet got flushed and that this one guy----who's here now---just flushed the toilet.

     Or shit like that.

     Okay, that's what I told myself at the time. But there wasn't any sound of a toilet flushing or any sort plumbing noise. And this place didn't look the kind of place that easily kept its plumbing sounds secret. It was quiet. Dead quiet. So again, I'm thinking this is too weird to stay here...but then I remember the letter board sign: "Paranormal news and Investigations". Well, I then I'm thinking, okay then this might be normal for this sort of place of business. Maybe there's some sort of hi-tech gadget that they use to freak out the customers and get them to believe the hocus pocus. So I look a little closer for dry ice or cameras or telltale drips of glow in dark paint and whatever else I could remember from Saturday Morning Scooby Doo shows. But there was nothing.

     So I'm think about leaving but that check for fifteen hundred in my pocket argued against that course of action. So I pushed on.

     A little ways ahead was a hallway that led to doorway marked "stairs". So, I walked down there and true enough, the sign didn't lie; there was a stairwell with stairs going up to the next floor. On the next floor, I found the door to office 19 open and inside the man I concluded to be Mike Stone was seated at his Sherman-tank green metal desk tapping away at his laptop.

     "Can I help you?" He asked me this without so much as raising his head.

     "Uh-yeah." I started but I kinda lost my train of thought. The place was awash in empty plastic two-liter soda bottles, half-eaten crusts of pizza, and four waist high stacks of comic books.

     "What is it?" he asked.

     "Okay, I got this check fifteen hundred from Hans Abbadon in the mail. The note said for me to come here if I wanted the check signed."

     "Was there a key?" he asked.

     I handed it to him. "What's it to?"

     He looked at it. And then looked up at me and looked at the key some more and frowns and says back, "I don't know. Sorry."

     "Don't it go to any of the offices up here?" I ask.

     "You can try, but it doesn't look like it would fit any of them. It's got the wrong shape. All the keys for the office doors up here don't have that big triangular hump like yours."

     I hemmed and sniffed. He handed the key back.

     "If you want your money, you have to agree to work here."

     "Doing what?" I asked. "Paranormal investigations?"

     He smiled a big toothy feral smile. "Yes."

     I laughed. I guess I was nervous and amazed. Seemed a real easy job that probably valued factual verification as much as some recent Pulitzer winning newspapers. "Sure. Why not?"

     I handed him the check. He signed it then dug into his desk drawer and handed me a key to the office across the hall: #20. I asked him what my first assignment was and he shook his head.

     "I haven't a clue. I just got here two days ago myself. Seems there's business and stories already lined up. My guess is if you go in your office, something will find you."

     I shrugged and schlepped across the hall to my office door and unlocked it with the key he gave me.

     "Hey," he called out, "was there anything else in your envelope?"

     'Rock salt," I told him. When he frowned back at me, I asked, "Anything wrong with that?"

     "Don't know. I just got a feeling..." he answered and then he went back to tapping on his laptop.

     The air in my new office smelled musty and a thin fine layer of dust covered everything. The room seemed large, about 12 ft square. The floor was carpeted in non descript gray carpet which sported four large donut-like dents evenly spaced from each other. In the space between the, the carpet seemed much cleaner and newer. There was a large bookshelf along one wall...and while this was mostly empty, one side was choked to the gills with what seemed every yellowing schlocko 1970's paperback paranormal book written in that time as well as some newer, slender pamphlets from Wonderella Press. I figured I had been given the old conference room.

     For a desk, I had found a small table just big enough to sit down at and eat a ham and cheese sandwich. I guess I was getting hungry 'cause that's the first thing that came to my mind. Anyway, in the middle of this was a plain manila folder with my name written on a fluorescent pink post-it note. Who ever wrote it used those same curly-cues usually written by waitresses who write the syrupy cheery "Thank you!" with the big smiley face. Thankfully, there was no smiley attached to my name.

     There was nothing cute about the inside of the folder. It looked like serious journalistic business: scraps of paper with names and phone numbers and hastily jotted info---only about half of which I could read with damn all making very little sense to me. Some of it wasn't even in English; some of it wasn't even in a Latin alphabet.

     Among this jumble, were several neatly clipped newspaper articles from what seemed to be from several small Iowa newspapers and weeklies. All were short articles about weird local occurrences---most of which were about strange grave desecrations. But the big tip-off was written in red ink on the sheet of paper wrapped around the bundle of clippings: "See Mike Donahugh: B.Lavastksy".

     Well, I figures, if ever there was a story to grab me, there it is.

     The first thing I did as I left was pop my head in on Big Bwana boss man Stone to find out where the B. Lavatsky Museum was. Without looking, he deftly pulled open his desk drawer, flicked out a pamphlet on the very place with directions to it on the back cover. Without another word, he went back to typing.

     The first thing to do, I figured, as I walked back onto the dilapidated street, was to cash my check then get a real good lunch downtown, then pay my rent and head off to B.Lavastsky. And I would have done that very thing but for as I stepped off the curb, I heard a very low honking horn and saw the intricate grill work detail of a City Bus a mere foot from my face...

     The next thing I knew, I was being yanked backwards by the collar and thrown down onto the sidewalk. The bus snorted and honked past. A very strange man's face looked down at me.

     "You're okay," he said. "You only have the wind knocked out of you."

     "Nearly knocked the life out of me," I gasped.

     "No," he answered---almost smiling. "I would have noticed that." It was an odd smile: almost cheerful, almost grim resignation. It bothered me.

     He offered me his hand, "It's my first day off in long, long while. So no one dies today."

     I stretched out my hand to his. None of his facial features were unusual or striking. In fact he was very average looking almost to a point of being one that melted in to the background of crowd and easily forgotten. But---there was something in his smile still bothering me. Mona Lisa? A sneering corpse? He took my hand and pulled me to my feet.

     On standing up, I shook myself back to my senses. The guy had started to walk away. It took me a second but then I figured what the hell: I had money in my pocket, a job, and I was alive.

     "Hey buddy! Come here!"

     He turned and stopped.

     "What's your name?" I asked.

     "Partneck," he answered.

     "Ever hear of the B. Lavatsky Museum?"

     "Yep. Know some individuals there. Why?"

     "Well what's yer hurry?" I smiled. "I 'm gonna buy you lunch!"