Apex Magazine - Issue 23 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Apex Publications
Published: 2011-04-02T22:05:09+00:00

We can talk down here, Lenahan says. Just let me get the lights.

I see you fine in the dark. Keep the lights off.

How about this one? Just a desk lamp. No one outside will see it.

Go ahead, then.

The lamp’s slender fluorescent tubes do little to penetrate the gloom in the basement warehouse, a space much bigger than you expected from outside.

Lenahan’s shop used to be a schoolhouse, still has the look of a relic from a lost time; the street it fronts has surrendered to modern clutter, telephone poles and squawky burger drive-thrus. Even the schoolhouse’s Rockwellesque bell tower still points benignly at the sky, though the bell’s long gone.

The former school houses a fabric and craft store, one with a subtle reputation for eclectic and exotic selections that stretches for hundreds of miles outside the tiny dollop of a town where it nestles. Every room brims with bolts of fabric, regimented in racks or piled in bins, from burlap plain to prismatic textures and labyrinthine patterns that dizzy the eye. In at least two former classrooms long glass cases stand sentry, crowded with glittering baubles, costume jewelry. In the cavernous basement, tall steel shelves hold rows of thick fabric meant for towels, sheets, blankets, even tents. So many rugs hang from overhead racks, den-spanning designs of tigers, elephants, dragons, griffins, Egyptian gods and even wilder beasts, that they would make for maze-like layers of concealment if your quarry tried to run and you pursued--but he doesn’t try to get away, even though he must know this place by heart even in the dark.

In fact, he acts as if he’s invited you in. He sits down at the desk where the lamp shines, it’s more of a drawing table, tilted up, scattered with catalogs and pattern books, the kind that show a smiling woman strutting in an outfit she’s supposedly sewn herself. He settles a hand down next to a small red cushion bristling with needles and pins. With his other hand, he gestures at a folding chair at the corner of the table, going through motions he’s long accustomed to, have a seat here, let’s look this over. Beside the desk and your chair is a long coffin-like box. You study it, wonder what’s in it, why he wants you to sit next to it.

A long wooden chest of some dark wood, with what appear to be elaborate Polynesian designs carved on its side--you see a horde of faces peering out through a thicket of strange trees, their gaze aimed to the right, where a large figure is stepping out from a yanni-esque opening in a wall of reeds. The lid of the chest is open, perhaps even removed. Inside, small objects glitter like treasure in a pirate movie.

You peer more closely. The chest is filled to the brim with buttons, of just about every kind you think could exist, every conceivable size and color: sky blue, gold, oak brown, blood red, sea green, India ink, rose pink, oil

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