2. Calliope
Calliope
“Do you remember that time in high school—”
“When we had to go to the basement and collect boxes for the marching band.”
“Exactly.” Calypso’s voice wobbles just a fraction. “This is giving creepy high school basement vibes.”
We both stare at the door to the lowest level of the Penn Museum. My flashlight beam swings to the analog clock on the wall, the minute hand ticks slowly over to two in the morning.
It’s not that bad, sits on the tip of my tongue.
My bad and her bad are two different things.
My office would have been down there. Aside from all the weird shit that makes my stomach twist. Not the fact that it’s dark and creepy but that the man my boss hired over me has an office down there that should be mine.
I’m more qualified.
“We could order takeout,” Calypso suggests. “Instead.”
“It’s two in the morning.”
“Someone is open.” She swallows audibly. “Someone is always open.”
“Bagels,” I say as I punch in the code. The door lets out a long hiss as the locks disengage.
“Is it supposed to do that?”
“Sure.” I flip the switch. The lights shutter on in waves. One, two, three. Then one farther down pops with a wet-cough sound.
The scent of old chemicals and parchment tickles my nose. That tell tale mummy-and-formaldehyde stink that always makes me sneeze slaps me in the face next.
I couldn’t hold back my sneeze even if I wanted to.
Calypso jumps into my arms when the sneeze detonates through me. “Must I?”
“No.” I shoulder past her into the cold. Why the hell is it always colder down here.
Because it’s a creepy basement that’s why.
I move forward swinging my flashlight around. It’s mostly a stretch of hallway that branches into other rooms and storage and offices. But the hallway isn’t small, like the rest of the museum it’s open and not at all suffocating.
“Must you?” She is practically on top of me as I step into the hallway.
No. “Yes,” I lie.
“You’re fucking lying to me.” She elbows me. “The fuck Callie?”
I laugh letting my amusement chase away the weird of the basement.
“Seriously. Why?” She peers through a window with wiring.
“I wanted to see what you’d do,” I say, my thoughts elsewhere as I slowly walk deeper into the secret wing.
“You must get really bored at night,” Calypso says. Her shoulders relax as she catches up to me.
“I do.” Admittedly most of my night is spent playing a tough game of, stay awake in the most ridiculous ways possible.
“So. Can I ask a question?”
“Don’t do that.” I peer into a storage room and swear there’s a mummy laying on a table reminiscent of one you’d find at the morgue. “Don’t ask if you can ask the question. Just ask it.”
“But what if you aren’t in an answering mood,” she counters.
“See how much time we wasted by you not asking the question.”
“Fine.” She huffs. “Why ah.” She stammers. “Why are you working security here?” She rushes the words out. “Last we talked you had an interview for your dream job. Here.”
I nod slowly.
Last we talked I was living the worst year of my fucking life. “A lot happened that year,” I whisper, not to her, not to anyone really. More of an acknowledgment of my life. “I got the interview. Mr. Dagon was…”
Evil.
Heartless.
Power-hungry.
He took one look at my resume. The full one. Because I never give that one out. It’s nearly ten pages long. I made it for myself really. But he took a look at it and went still. I’ll never forget that look.
He told me he couldn’t hire me. Despite me being overqualified.
It wasn’t the first time a man looked at me and decided I was too much. Just the one I let myself break over. Add him to the list. Add him to the reason for the list. He’s my nemesis now. One of them.
“I hate him,” I say instead stepping around a turn and shining my flashlight down another hallway.
“It’s like a vast labyrinth down here,” Calypso says. She doesn’t mention that year this time. Which is smarter.
I’m still in therapy over it and there are just some things a girl may never get over. And I have to be okay with that.
“Doctor Soren Marquis,” Calypso reads it off the placard on a door, like she’s tasting it. The flashlight jerks. The beam skitters across his name. Clean black letters, like he earned the door. I shoulder past her into the office. “Oh,” Calypso drawls behind me.
Just that. Oh.
“There’s a story here,” Calypso continues, following me into the dark office. “If we get caught who do we call? Not security.”
“Girl.” I swing my flashlight in her face. “Shut up.”
She swats the flashlight away and flicks on the lights.
“No.” I press my palms to my eyes as they go blind from the overhead glare.
“Evil lights?” She chuckles. “You still hate bright lights.”
“Gah.” I turn them off and switch on a lamp on the desk. I almost knock it over several times in the process to find the switch.
“Doctor Soren.” Calypso walks around the office.
I just stare. My heart beats rapidly and my mouth goes dry and for some reason my stomach rumbles.
I hate that I love the office.
It’s large. Larger than one would think.
Maybe the size of a master bedroom in suburbia. Big enough for a desk, two chairs in front. One behind.
And to the left? Like a workspace of sorts. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Some knickknacks likely from his travels.
All I can stare at is his little sign on his perfect fucking desk.
So cute. So pretty. It would look prettier in flames.
I flip the plaque face-down on the desk. Calypso doesn’t say anything. Which, for her, is louder than if she had.
“Wanna talk about it?” she asks.
“Nope. Not today Satan.” I pop the p as I move around and sit at the desk. My desk. It should be my desk. I worked my ass off to sit behind a desk. I have plenty of student loan debt to show for it too.
Well I did. That was also a part of the deal that Mr. Dagon gave me. He’d pay fifty grand on my student loans every full year I work here, as a security guard. Not a curator.
I didn’t think he’d actually do it. Until he did.
It’s why I’m still here. Even though I’m not so sure that fifty grand is worth the mental illness it gave me.
“This should have been my desk,” I whisper.
Calypso hears me. It’s probably why she drops what she shouldn’t have been holding. I know what it is by the sound it makes when it strikes. A freaking tablet.
I’m so getting fired.
“Not broke,” she says way too loud after grabbing it and popping up.
“Touch nothing,” I warn her.
“Dagon,” she says, turning the tablet over in her hands. “Isn’t that your boss’s name?”
Something in my chest does a small wrong thing. Like someone shoved a knife in there then twisted. Like I said, a wrong thing.
“Common name.” I stand up even though I just realized this chair doesn’t just have heated seats but also massage. That bastard.
“Right here.” She meets me halfway showing me a little marking on the tablet.
I hum seeing the odd engraving before dismissing it and placing it back on the shelf.
“So, he took your job?” Calypso asks like she hasn’t already put two and two together.
“Yeah.” I look at the desk. At the chair. Knowing he’s down here researching what I spent my whole life dreaming about.
“How are you handling that?” she asks softly.
“I’m not.” My hand reaches for a book on the shelf.
Leather, fat, the exact kind I used to live inside.
And stops two inches out. Just hovers there like it isn’t mine.
I put the book back. Then I put it back again, harder, because the first time wasn’t enough.
“I haven’t looked at a research paper in three years.
No digs. No hikes. No nothing.” All at once the grief of not just all the loss strikes me but everything I loved too.
No one warned me that I’d lose that too.
My will to keep pushing forward.
My drive to dig deeper. To uncover any and everything I could.
The fire that burned deep inside me, snuffed out.
Now? I can’t be bothered.
“Callie—”
A crash echoes under the door from somewhere in the basement.
I freeze. My heart dropping through the floor straight into the Earth’s core. Calypso casually but with wide eyes flicks off the light by the door, drenching us in pitch black.
When we were little, Calypso would get scared of the dark. No matter where in that pitch black, she’d somehow always find me. I used to tell her, nothing exists in the dark that wasn’t there in the light. It’s just a matter of sight.
I used to believe it too.
So, when her finger slips into mine, holding tight, I nearly sob.
I don’t care that we might get busted. None of that matters because I’ll have to explain the footage to someone anyway.
But it’s the feel of her hand holding mine in the dark space that nearly undoes me.
I step close to her, holding her hand just as tight and drag her to the door to peer out the window. Only her unsteady breath, and my heartbeat thumping too loud, fill the small space.
I clench my flashlight to my chest, my muscles locked.
No one should be here. It’s just us.
George, the other security guard, is on vacation.
“Is anyone here?” Calypso whispers. Her voice shaking and breathless.
“No.” I grab the handle.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving,” I say.
“There could be a murderer out there,” she says.
“And they just heard you whine.”
I peek out the door despite her protests and see, nothing.
Another crash echoes back to us. I snap my head back in and slide to the floor.
There is someone here. Impossible. Also I’m so fucked.
“Dude.” Calypso hauls me off the floor. “You are the security guard.”
“Right.” I blow out a breath. “With an archaeology degree.” I sink back to the floor.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Another crash echoes and Calypso drags me to my feet. “Come on.”
“I’d rather not.” She won’t take no for an answer. She drags me up forcing my feet to work, so I stand there on shaky legs clenching a flashlight to my chest. “No one has ever broken in.”
“Aren’t you glad I’m here?” She blinks at me. “Give me a gun.”
“They don’t even give me a gun.” Her drama makes me feel a little better and I open the office door and step into the dark hallway, Calypso tight against my back.
I flick on my flashlight, the beam races down the black hall.
The beam catches something. Too tall. Too thin. Skin the wrong color. Not necessarily pale, but white. Something about the shoulders. Something about the way it’s standing that my brain refuses to file under person.
I scream. Calypso screams a half-beat later.
Then the thing, the person moves. Slinking down the hall in a way that I damn well know will give me nightmares for the rest of my life.
My knees lock up as I freeze and somewhere far away my hand still holds the flashlight. The beam wobbles because my hand shakes.
“Where’d it go?” I might be having a heart attack.
Full blown heart attack.
I’m dying.
This is the end of me.
“It? It? It?” Calypso says, uncaring about being quiet anymore.
“Yes it, that thing.” Neither of us moves.
“Man, Callie.” She snatches the flashlight moving the beam to the hall it raced down.
“Are you—”
“It was a naked man,” she says too fast. The way you say a thing you need to be true.
“Was it.” I keep my voice flat. Her jaw works.
“Man.” Her voice shakes.
Three years of no you didn’t, no you’re crazy sit in my mouth. I could hand it all back to her right now. Make her feel what she made me feel.
The cruelty of it tastes good for about half a second.
“I believe you.” It’s the first time I’ve ever said those words to her instead of begging for them.
“We should check and see if he’s still there.”
“Fuck.” I grab my taser. “I have to… you know actually work.”
“You have to get him,” she says, without fear. “I’ve got your back.”
“You don’t want to go first.”
“Hell no.” She pushes me forward.
Gathering my breath and my willpower, maybe a dash of stupid, I walk down the hall.
“This is the part of the movie where we die.” My flashlight beam shakes as we get closer and closer to the hall.
“Shhh.” She keeps pushing me forward.
I’m pretty sure if there’s another jump scare, she is going to push me in front of it and run.
I’d do the same, so I don’t really blame her.
Licking my lips I round the turn in the hall, my flashlight slowly rolling over the edge, then wall, then the hall.
“Nothing.” I exhale in relief.
“Bullshit.” She steals the flashlight again and shines it everywhere. More like a disco ball than a utility. “How? That’s not…”
“Possible.” I finish for her.
Everything in her slumps. “Get me out of here.”
She gets it now.
Welcome to my whole fucking life.
“Yeah.” I walk toward the entrance. There is just something not quite right down here. A weird vibe, maybe. I can’t explain it.
But it’s there. At the edge of my awareness, almost taunting me.
“Can we get takeout?” Calypso rushes to the door, her phone in her hand. Leaving me behind.
The skin between my shoulder blades gets hot. Itchy. Like something just looked at me and didn’t look away. I turn slowly around again. Flashlight first. The beam slides across nothing, nothing, nothing. Just dark. Just basement.
So, weird.
“Oh! Thai. They’re open!” Calypso says a little too loud. But it doesn’t really matter, we are alone.
Right?
I step into the hall with her, making sure the door is locked but for some reason it feels more like that lock is keeping something in.
“I’m ordering.” She yawns.
“You should go home. Go to bed.” I holster my taser and flip the flashlight off. “Rounds are done until four.”
“That sounds awful.”
“It is.”
Somewhere behind us a slap hits the window of the door I just locked.
“Nope.” Calypso runs to the security room door. It’s not far from the basement door. I can see both from where I’m standing.
But I can’t move. I’ve worked here years. Never have I ever dealt with this. Not. Once.
I’m terrified to turn around. Calypso just stares at the wall behind me. Her chest rising and falling quickly. That’s not good. I don’t want to turn around.
I have to.
With my hand on my flashlight again I move flicking it on as I go.
Nothing.
Now I feel insane again and I hate feeling like I’m fucking crazy. I’m so glad I have two days off after this.
“Can we hide in here the rest of the night?” Calypso asks.
I turn around again making my way toward her. “You’re staying?”
“I’m ordering enough pad Thai for two.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Shut up, Callie.” She frowns. “But what about work tomorrow?”
“I’m off.”
“The next night you work?”
“I’d rather not think about it.” I unlock the room and let her go in first.
“Same.” She pauses chewing on her bottom lip like she always has. “But seriously I don’t feel safe leaving you here.”
For a moment my face twists up into emotion I don’t have a name for. Where was she for all the years I really wasn’t safe?
I just shrug in answer because anything that comes out of my mouth might just be too crass for the moment. And I want the moment to last.
“It’s okay.” I don’t make it a promise.
I can’t keep those, anyway.