Peter Andrews

FUSED QUARTZ

Snapping a few pictures of a sealed tool shed disturbs the dead… and the peace of the person who got paid to let someone in.

I pulled the plastic off the windows. With Jimmy’s help, I yanked the tarp clear of the roof. “Cut the chain.”

Jimmy took aim with the bolt cutters.

“Hold it,” I said. I held out my palm.

He shifted his weight to balance the cutters, reached into his back pocket, tossed me his wallet. “Take seven.”

“Eight,” I said. I’d pissed away my inheritance. If I had to violate my dad’s wishes, it was going to pay.

He hesitated. We stood sweating in August’s heat and humidity.

“Come on. Let’s go,” I said.

“It’s like entering a tomb. Think we’ll find a mummy?”

“Let’s hope we don’t find a daddy.”

Jimmy groaned.

The cutters took one bite, and I was entering my dad’s studio for the first time in twenty-five years.

Studio? Actually a tool shed, about the size of an efficiency apartment. Sure enough, there were antique mallets, saws, rakes, and hoes pinned to the walls. But the center of the room was dominated by two cabinets of drawers, each inset with zinc sinks.

Jimmy snapped some pictures. “This is old stuff. Original?”

I laughed. “You mean like it’s all been sitting here since the eighteen eighties?”

“At least. Why is that funny?”

“My dad stick-built this place in 1991.”

That was the year Dad turned fifty. The same age when my grandfather had succumbed to a ravenous form of dementia. I saw it all. Pop-Pop writhed, cursed, and melted away in less than a year.

Pop-Pop’s death haunted Dad. His own fiftieth birthday party was a wake. He couldn’t abide music from that day. Sunshine brutalized him. Hugs were forbidden. It was as if all his senses had been red-lined. I found a shotgun later, but he never used it.

He died quietly, sitting on the ground, nearby, as if he’d simply fallen asleep. I glanced outside through the doorway. The stump I’d found him leaning against was still there.

“Stick-built?” Jimmy asked. He combed through the place. It was a real New England salt box, with layers of thick white paint over the irregular boards and dark green trim that showed brushstrokes. He tapped a window. The glass was wavy and bubbled.

“This, at least, might be nineteenth century. I can’t tell the difference between scavenged glass and what Andre makes. Both are pricey, but a hit TV series pays.”

“Particle Man.”

Particle Man was an engineered ghost my father created for the bespoke comic book. A genius, who’d been poisoned, had transferred his mind into his experimental project, animating self-assembling nanoparticles. Each week, he sought revenge. Kids liked him because he could turn himself into a mist, fit through tight spaces like pipes, and reassemble himself at the other end.

Jimmy started humming the theme song, a real earworm. I’d be stuck with it all day.

Jimmy unloaded a crystal ball from a velvet bag for his signature picture. Placed the sphere on one of the cabinets. Lined up the shot, featuring three of the old tools in the circle, cap-tured in the square frame of the rest of the room.

Click.

“Um.”

Jimmy frowned. My arm was in his photograph.

I edged toward a window on the far side of the room.

Click.

One pane of glass had a sticker on it. The Grateful Dead logo. I stooped down for a closer look. I touched it.

Click.

“Did you just take my picture?” I asked.

“Sure. Who knew Billy Bronson was a Dead Head?”

“He wasn’t. His jam was jazz. Don’t print that photo.” Had some asshole fan gotten in?

He aimed a C-note at me. I snagged it. “Fine.”

The room shuddered, and both of us had to scramble to stay upright.

“Earthquake?” Jimmy asked.

In the Catskills? “This mountain hasn’t moved in a million years. Maybe someone’s blasting.”

The crystal ball rolled off the cabinet and shattered on the floor. The shards were milky white. I picked up a piece. “Fused quartz?”

Jimmy nodded. “Yeah. And expensive. I’m suing whoever’s blasting.”

I noticed his gear bag was half off the cabinet. “Another shake, and you’ll lose that.”

Instead of putting his stuff on the floor, he put it into one of the sinks.

I went back to the sticker. It didn’t belong in here. The glass I held had a sharp edge. I scratched at the sticker with the shard, barely getting a few flakes off. I braced against the win-dow frame with my other hand and pushed harder. The shard slipped and cut the hand I used to steady myself. When a drop of my blood hit the floor, the temperature plunged, like stepping into a morgue’s cooler.

Trauma? The wound wasn’t big, but the chill worried me. Afraid I’d lose consciousness, I squatted down and put my head between my knees. My breath misted when I exhaled.

Click.

Water started filling a sink. The one with the bag.

“Crap!” Jimmy fished the bag out, sloshing water on his expensive camera. He did an agitated jig.

A laugh came, but it caught in my throat. A whirlpool rose from the sink full of water and congealed into a shape. Damned if it didn’t look like Particle Man. Or Dad.

The image was gone in a moment. I don’t think Jimmy saw it.

He was staring out the window. Snow was falling on a summer day. “Check under that sticker,” he said.

I took the shard, my blood still on it, and went back to work. This time, the sticker peeled right off, in one piece.

I expected to find something underneath. Nothing. I crouched down for a closer view. My breath fogged the window, showing a message that had been scratched in.

“Everything feels too much. Leave me in peace.”

I wiped the moisture off the window before Jimmy could snap a picture.

I hope my father found serenity. I haven’t. Next year, I turn fifty.