The Somnibus: Book I - Finding the Mark (A Paranormal Thriller) (7 page)

O
n my way to the bank, I passed the library and
spotted the
guy
that had burst into my house sitting
on the bus bench on the opposite side of the road. I parked in the lot behind
the bench and walked up to confront the
guy
.

“Hey!
Hey you!”
I walked
through the bushes separating the parking lot from the sidewalk. “Don’t you
hear me?”

The man turned in my direction but looked around
as if he wasn’t the only one there. He sat up but didn’t attempt to run or
approach me.

“Me? What’s the matter? Do I know you?”

I walked up and snatched the glasses from his
face.

“Hey man, who do you think you are?”

“I’m the guy whose house you broke in to.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about”

His demeanor wasn’t that of a guilty man. He
didn’t have any idea what I was talking
about
. “Sorry,
I thought you were someone else.” I turned and walked away.

“That’s alright, buddy. You should be careful
though. You might do that to the wrong guy and get your ass kicked.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry man,” I said over my shoulder as
I headed back to where I’d parked.

I sat in the car and watched as the man headed
down the street. He didn’t seem to have any recollection of barging into my
house earlier in the day. How did he know the combination to the briefcase and
what had he meant by drawing the circle on his palm? He’d acted as if he had no
recollection of me and it dawned on me that someone might have bridged him.
Someone else wanted me to have that key.

I pulled into the bank and passed Honeycutt as he
left the parking lot. I snickered at the sight of such a big man in so small a
car.

Mr. Barnes stood talking with a teller when I
walked into the lobby.

“Michael, it’s good to see you.”

I reached to shake his extended hand.

“I’m here to access my safety deposit box.”

His brow furrowed, and his back straightened.

“Sure, have a seat.”

The lines in his forehead told me he was curious
as to how I had become the owner of Mort’s deposit box.

“So, Mr. Honeycutt just delivered the paperwork
establishing you as an account manager, along with Mr. Bell.”

My brow wrinkled, but I went along with it.
Honeycutt must have had a reason to set it up that way.

“We’ve become close the past few days, and he has
no other family. Since he isn’t getting any younger, he wanted to have someone
to take care of his affairs if anything happened to him.” I slid the key across
the desk to Barnes. “Let’s take a look.”

Barnes picked up the key.

“Sure. First though, we need to input your ID to
give you access.”

He reached into a cabinet behind his desk and
pulled out a hard plastic sleeve.

“This type of account requires a higher level of security.
Just slide your finger into the sleeve and hold still.”

I stuck my right index finger into the sleeve and
held it while a red light pulsed for about thirty seconds. The light went off,
and he removed the sleeve.

“This will just take a minute.”

He tapped away at his keyboard before he reached
up and shut off the screen. Barnes cleared his throat, handed me my key, stood
from behind his desk, and pointed me down a narrow hallway. 

“Shall we?”

We headed down the long corridor, passing a cage
full of small lock boxes, and continued to a large vault at the end of the
hallway. He stepped in front of the lock, and the keypad beeped with each digit
he pressed. Two flashing lights and a mechanical snap confirmed the proper
code.

“After you.”
He waved me through.

The narrow doorway gave way to a sprawling room
full of doors of various widths, though they all reached the full height of the
eight-foot ceiling. Some were the breadth of lockers, and others that of a
closet door. Tiny red lights flashed beside each handle and once we stepped
inside, the door sealed behind us.

He led me to an elevator at the far end of the
room. He placed his index finger on the keypad, and the doors slid open. We
stepped in, and the door closed. Barnes pushed the only option, my stomach rose
as the elevator dropped.

We stopped within seconds, and the door slid open.
Barnes stepped out without saying a word. The dimly lit room was much smaller
and had only four large doors. Each one had a blinking red light with its own
rhythm.

I followed Barnes to the door on our left. He went
over the instructions with me.

“Okay, insert your key here, place your index
finger on the keypad and the door will open. Remember to remove your key before
you go in, you’ll need it to leave.”

I stepped to the door, retrieved the key from my
pocket, and inserted it into the lock. As promised, the seal on the door broke
with a hiss. Barnes stood over my shoulder as I reached for the handle. I
turned and raised a brow to him. He took the hint and cleared his throat while
he backed away.

“Just come back the way you came when you’re done. I’ll wait
upstairs.”

Barnes left and I dropped the key back into my pocket. Nudging
the door open, I stepped inside and the door sealed behind me.

T
he room was nearly empty. A couple of small boxes
were stacked in the corner and a larger metal box with a keyed padlock sat in
the center.

I went to the smaller boxes and took the lid off
the top one. It was full of scattered photographs of Mort. I fished through the
pictures and noticed
some where
he appeared to be
younger including one picture of him at a party dated January 5, 1975.

It must have been his birthday. People surrounded
him and he stood in the middle of the group with a crooked “Happy Birthday” hat
strapped to his head. Something caught my eye in that particular picture. He
held a beer mug in his left hand and his right hand faced the camera, as if
telling the photographer to stop. I brought the picture close to my face and
confusion wrinkled my brow. He had no mark in the center of his palm. The hairs
tickled at the back of my neck, and I stuck the picture in my pocket.

I grabbed one of the other boxes with photographs
and made my way to the door, sticking the box under my arm. After fishing the
key from my pocket, I stuck it into the lock, the door released open, and I
headed down the hallway. I finally made it through the labyrinth beneath the
bank and into the main lobby. Barnes sat at his desk when I made my way through
the bank.

“You get everything you needed?” he asked as he
stood from his chair and followed behind me.

“I sure did. Thanks.”

“Have a good day.”

I pushed my back against the glass doors.
“Thanks.”

The crazy idea came to me on my way home. I
dropped the photographs from the bank on the table and went up to my room. I
opened my nightstand and pulled mom’s trace out from under the balled-up socks.

Mort had never told me exactly how to go about
bridging, I’d done it once by accident, and it nearly killed me. I remembered
when he bridged me and he put my hand over the stove. I tried to recall
everything he’d done.

Sitting back on the couch and closing my eyes, my
fingers closed around the trace and my body became light. I focused my thoughts
on Mr. Barnes, and the room went silent, except for the pulse in my ears.

A pounding force hammered my chest, causing air to
escape my lungs. The pain made my ears ring before my eyes were forced open by
an emerald flash. I inhaled deeply, trying to clear the pain from my chest. My
vision settled into a green-tinted version of an office. I looked over the
computer screen to a row of tellers standing behind a glass wall across from
me. I had bridged Mr. Barnes. I hadn’t given much thought to what I would do if
I bridged him, so I just sat there for a minute.

“Mr. Barnes? Are you okay?”

A beautiful young woman stood to my right.

“You don’t look so good.”

It took a second to realize she waited for Mr.
Barnes’ response: my response.

“Oh yes, I’m fine. Sorry, I must have dazed off
for a second.” I decided to have a little fun as Barnes. “I’m much better now
that you’re standing next to me.” I winked my left eye.

The young blonde girl narrowed her eyes and stood
taller before walking away. The corners of my mouth rose as I realized I’d
caused a little trouble for him. It felt weird being in someone else’s skin.
Standing from the chair, I immediately noticed the added weight took more
effort to move. Even swiveling my head from side to side took extra effort.
Barnes wasn’t obese like Honeycutt, but he could stand to lose a few pounds. I
sat back down to the groaning objections of the springs in the chair.

I shuffled through the papers on his desk, even
though I had no idea what they meant. A folder with my name on it sat on his
desk so I opened the file to find the closing documents from when Mort had
bought the house. As I sifted through the papers, a few pictures of me leaving
my house fell from between the pages.

A voice came from behind me. “Mr. Barnes?”

The contents of the folder threw off my concentration,
and my mind got away from me. My breathing accelerated, I had no idea how to
undo what I had done by bridging Barnes. My thoughts were scattered as I tried
to concentrate on things Mort had told me. Squeezing my eyes shut, I did the
only thing that came to mind: I thought of the living room where my body rested
while I took my little field trip into Barnes’s mind.

It didn’t take long before my chest burned, and
the green-tinted vision closed around me. The pulse slammed me in the chest,
and my eyes shut while I returned to my body, a sensation of my body soaring
backward through space. A cold wind washed over me and rushed against my skin.

My chest burned when I took a deep breath,
clearing the pain that lingered in my lungs. I sat for a moment, allowing my
mind to catch up with my body. My clenched fingers unfolded, revealing my
mother’s trace. However, that wasn’t the only thing as I rolled the stone from
my palm; the oblong mark in the center of my palm
glowed
a deep and vibrant green.

I brought my palm closer to my face and noticed
web-like lines radiating from the outer edges. Soon, the glow dissipated.
First, the lines became shorter, and then the oblong shape in the center
shrunk. Seconds later, only a dark emerald pinpoint remained in the center of
my palm. It glowed for an instant before disappearing into the pinkish skin of
my palm.

I’d had enough excitement for the day and decided
to go to bed and face the next day with fresh eyes and mind.

T
he next morning, I sat at the table going through
the pictures in the box from the bank. I lined them up in chronological order,
and by the date stamps on the
pictures
I determined
that some time around 1964 Mort had stopped aging. As I shuffled through the
pictures, the hand-written pages from the briefcase caught my eye. A tear slid
down my cheek when I saw the date at the top one of the crumpled pages.

November 21, 2011

Tonight is the worst night of my life. I have no one
to talk to, so I’m writing this down in order keep some sort of sanity about
me.

Alice and Jon are gone. They died tonight in a
horrible car crash on their way home, when Jon lost control over the car. Alice
told me Mallen had been visiting her in her sleep again. Alice forced him away,
and he began to harass Jon as a result. Mallen has bridged Jon several times
over the last few weeks and he is the reason Jon lost control. I told Mallen to
leave them alone, but he just doesn’t know when to quit.

Alice had been trying to contact me the entire
night, but I went searching for Mallen and missed her attempts. When I couldn’t
find Mallen, I feared the worst, and I bridged to Alice just in time to see it
happen. I entered Alice and Jon looked over to me with that wicked grin and
those colorless eyes. He jerked the car from left to right until it finally
spun out of control. Mallen laughed while the car twisted and turned its way
upside down. Jon flew from the car while Alice remained trapped. Jon’s body
was torn
in half and he had no chance at survival. I watched
through Alice’s eyes as Mallen released himself.

Alice remained trapped in the wreckage. We tried
everything to break free, but we couldn’t. I stayed with Alice until her soul
was gone, and her mind shut down, forcing me from her.

I will never forget the pain and anguish she
endured in those final moments. I felt every bit of it. Her thoughts were full
of her son who sat just out of reach, unable to help, watching the entire event
unfold.

I made a promise to Alice that I would take care
of Michael should anything happen to her and Jon. I will keep that promise
through my dying day.

I find myself guilt ridden with the situation. I
should have stopped it.

I sat back in the chair with tears streaming down
my face; taking some solace in the
fact
that mom
hadn’t died alone. Mort had been with her, and he did everything he could to
free her.

My poor father, I imagined his last thoughts. I’d
watched as he tried to put himself back together, literally.
Hopefully
his suffering had been short. 

I read over the note several more times, and part
of it stood out to me. He said he’d watched as Mallen left my father’s body. I
thought I had seen my father’s soul leaving his body, but it’d been Mallen.

My skin burned with rage over the death of my
parents. Losing them was bad enough, but learning that they were murdered tore
the wound open and rubbed salt into it. The anger dried my tears as I seethed
over the letter.

I went upstairs and again studied the blotch in my
carpet. Mort had told me there was only one way to kill Mallen, and the process
would reduce them both to a stain in the carpet. Mort was clearly there, but
why didn’t I see Mallen? I’d seen his outline when he escaped through the
ceiling, but this time there was no trace of him in the aftermath.

I had to know if Mallen was gone for good. I owed
it to my parents and to Mort to make sure. I went downstairs, gathered my keys,
and headed out the door. I had to do something, and I had a plan.