The rest of the week crawled by like a dying man in the desert. Nate came home Friday and dropped his bag in the kitchen. He flopped on the couch and wrestled the knot of his tie open a few more inches.
A moment later there was a knock at the door. It was Tim. “I saw you come in,” said the older man. He held up a fresh six-pack. It was just starting to bead with sweat. “You look like you need a beer.”
“God, yes.”
“Sundeck?”
“Yeah, just let me burn this tie.”
Five minutes later they were leaning back on the deck chairs watching the sky turn orange. Nate held out his beer and they clinked bottles. “Thanks,” he said. “You have no idea how bad I needed this.”
Tim nodded. “It’s a lot better to deal with stress a little at a time than let it build up and go on a bender that’d need serious clean up and recovery time. Took me ten years to figure that out.”
“Is that what these evenings are about? You trying to save me from years of stress?”
Tim chuckled. “Mind if I sound pathetic for a moment?”
“I do it all the time. Go ahead.”
He stared at the sky for a moment and swallowed a mouthful of beer. “I don’t think I’ve had a real friend in years,” he said. “I’ve had lots of co-workers and colleagues and folks working on the same project. People I liked and trusted. But I don’t think I’d call any of them friends. Didn’t really have time for friends.”
“So now you just want to sit on the roof and drink beer?”
“Isn’t that how everybody imagines the good life? Kicking back, shooting the shit, drinking a beer or three while you watch the sunset.”
Nate shrugged. “I guess so. Never thought about it.”
“You never thought about the good life?”
He leaned his head back and guzzled the last of his beer. “Not for a while. I mean, in college it seemed pretty simple. Meet the right girl, find a job you love, a place to live, done.” He shrugged again. “Turns out there’s a lot more to it than that.”
Tim shook his head. “There’s nothing more to it than that. Trust me.”
Nate put his dead soldier in its grave and pulled out a fresh one. “In the spirit of fairness, mind if I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“It’s an odd one.”
“I’ll tell you now,” said Tim, “you’re a nice guy, but I’m not interested.”
Nate laughed into his beer and banged the rim of his bottle on his front tooth. “Bastard.”
“Just wanted to nip it in the bud now so your feelings didn’t get hurt later.”
“You’ve been here, what, two weeks now?”
“Exactly, yeah.”
Nate passed his bottle from hand to hand. “Have you noticed anything odd in your apartment?”
“Odd how?”
“Just, I don’t know, weird. Something that doesn’t make sense or you can’t quite figure out.”
“Besides the crap layout?”
Nate dipped his head. “The layout’s kind of weird, yeah. Have you noticed anything else?”
“Why?”
“I’m just trying to figure out a couple things in this place. The rental company doesn’t seem to know anything about it and I’m curious.”
“You know what they say about curiosity and cats.”
“Yep. Good thing I’m an ape with delusions of grandeur.”
Tim mulled it over. “Actually,” he said, “I don’t think it’s the sort of thing you’re looking for, but you know what the weirdest thing about this place is?”
“What?”
“I sleep great here.”
“Huh?”
The older man nodded. “Like a baby. Eight hours, solid, every night.”
“That’s weird?”
“It is for me. I don’t think I’ve had a good night’s sleep in years. Granted, for years I was doing six-hour nights, but even if I got my six hours, it was usually all bad dreams or waking up rattled.”
“And now you sleep okay?”
Tim nodded. “Since the day I moved in. My eyes close and they open eight hours later. No tossing and turning, no dreams, nothing.”
“No dreams?”
“Yeah. It’s great. I used to have major anxiety dreams all the time, the ones where you wake up feeling tense. Teeth falling out, losing your hair, all those.”
“Hate to tell you but the hair one wasn’t a dream.”
“Watch your mouth or there’ll be no more beer.”
Nate took a long sip. “It’s just funny you mention it,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve had a dream since I moved in here, either.”
“Did you have a lot before?” asked Tim.
“Some. I mean, I don’t think any more or less than anyone else. Sometimes work dreams, scrambled memories. Every now and then the embarrassing naked-in-class type dream, y’know? But nothing since I got a place here.”
“Sleeping better, though?”
“Yeah. Sleeping great.”
Tim shrugged. “Might be some weird
feng shui
, psychological thing. Something about this place is calming somehow, on a subliminal level.”
“I tell people the place was an opium den right after they built it,” said a voice. “Residual drugs just knock everyone out.”
They peered over their shoulders and saw Xela striding across the roof. She wore bright red chucks and another tuxedo shirt, one at least three sizes too big for her, with the cuffs rolled up to her elbows. Nate wasn’t sure she had anything else on.
She walked between them and grabbed a beer from the six pack. “You remembered to bring more,” she said. “Good man.”
Xela dropped down on Nate’s deck chair by his feet. She set the neck of the bottle against the edge of the chair and popped the cap off with a quick strike from her hand. She toasted Tim and said, “You’re the other new guy, right?”
“Tim Farr,” he said. He held out his hand.
“Xela.”
“So I’ve heard.”
She sighed dramatically and turned to Nate. “You can’t keep anything just between us, can you?”
“Not so far.”
She took a sip of her beer and looked at the sun. “So what are you guys up to?”
“Just taking in the sunset,” said Nate.
“And discussing weird apartments,” added Tim.
“Ahhhh,” she said. “More people in the cult of Kavach.”
Nate looked at her. She was almost silhouetted by the sunset. It turned her hair into threads of black. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Xela shrugged and took another hit off her beer. “Every time people move in they get caught up in all these ‘mysteries’ of the building. Most everybody forgets about it after a month or two.”
“Or they move out,” said Nate.
She smiled at him. “You’ve been talking to Veek, haven’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“She’s cool, don’t get me wrong, but she really needs to get out more. It’s just an old place. It’s got a few quirks, that’s all.”
Nate tipped his bottle back and swallowed the last of his beer. “I could show you something in my apartment that might change your mind.”
Xela batted her eyes at him. “Oh, if only you knew how many times I’ve heard that one.”
Tim laughed.
“So there’s nothing strange in your apartment?” asked Nate.
“Aside from my bathroom being a cave? Nothing.”
“A cave?”
She nodded. “You ever see those high-end Vegas hotels where the shower isn’t a little stall, it’s just one whole corner of the room? The water gets isolated by all the space.”
Tim nodded. “I guess,” said Nate.
“That’s what I’ve got. I don’t even have a bathroom door. It’s just this big open space with a showerhead and a drain and a toilet about that far away.” She pointed over at the firepit.
“Let me ask you something, then,” said Tim. He set his empty bottle down in the six pack. “You joked about drugs knocking people out. Should I take that to mean you sleep great, too.”
“When I sleep,” she grinned.
“No, seriously,” he said. “You sleep great?”
She raised a blue eyebrow at him. “Fine. You provided the beer.” She leaned her head forward in thought. “Yes, I sleep great. Never a bad night.”
“Do you ever dream?”
“Ahhhh,” she said. “One beer, one straight answer.”
“Xela,” said Nate. “Do you ever dream?”
Her smile flattened out, and she took a long hit off the bottle. She swallowed it and looked between them. “No,” she said. “I haven’t had a dream in a year now. I’m the most uninspired artist in the world. Happy?”
Veek tilted her head at Nate as they headed down the back stairwell. “So none of you have had any dreams since you moved in here?”
He shook his head. “Not me, not Tim, and not Xela. She thinks she’s having an artistic slump or something.”
Veek made a noise in her throat that might’ve been agreement.
“So?”
She glanced at him. “So what?”
“Have you stopped having dreams since you moved in?”
“I don’t know if I count. I sleep great here, but I’ve never had dreams.”
“Never?”
She shook her head as they turned onto the last landing. “Nope.”
“Not once in your life? You never had nightmares as a kid or sex fantasies when you hit puberty or anything?”
“Getting a little personal,” she said.
They reached the basement. “Sorry.”
“But, no,” Veek said, “nothing.”
They stood in the short hall between the door to the laundry room and the first padlocked door. Nate glanced into the laundry room at the silent machines. There was no sign of any other tenants.
“So,” she said, “how do you want to do this?”
“Have you looked down here at all before?”
She nodded. “A couple of times. I was just never sure what I was looking for.”
He nodded at the double doors. “I bet whatever we’re looking for is in there.”
They walked down the hall. “I’ve never seen it open,” Veek said. “I even tried to make a point of being down here whenever they’d replace a water heater or one of the washers or dryers.”
“Just hanging out in the cellar?”
“I’d pull all the sheets off my bed and do laundry.”
“Clever.” Nate poked at the padlock securing the bar across the door. It squeaked when it rocked on the end of the chains. He set his hand on the door. “How old do you think these are?”
“The chains?”
“The doors.”
“On a guess, I’d say they went in with the building.”
“Me, too.” He squinted at the crack between the doors. It was a seam of black. Nate wasn’t sure if he was seeing a darkness beyond the doors or just half an inch into the gap between them. “I should’ve brought a flashlight.”
“We’ll have to work on our mystery gang kit.”
He pulled out his battered grocery card and pushed it into the crack. It caught for a moment but slid deeper when he wiggled it. He held the card by the last quarter inch. “I’m either through or these are really thick doors.”
“Do they have any give at all?”
Nate grabbed the two handles. It was tough with the chains wrapped around them, but he wiggled his fingers until he had a good grip. He leaned back and put his weight on the handles.
The doors didn’t budge.
He glanced over his shoulder and Veek took a step back to be closer to the stairs. She gave him a nod. He took a breath and threw himself back, heaving against the handles.
The doors shifted. It wasn’t even a quarter of an inch, but they moved and he felt them catch on the beam. A few links of the chain rattled. It was loud in the hall.
Nate shook his hands out. “Well,” he said, “they’re definitely locked.”
“Wow,” said Veek, “we’ve learned so much.”
“We learned they’re not solid like the door to twenty-three,” he said. He traced the outline. “These’ve been painted too, but whoever did it was a lot more careful.”
Veek examined the walls. So many years of paint covered the bricks they were just soft shapes. Nate studied the chains wrapped around the wooden beam.
A shuffling came from behind them, someone’s feet slapping on the stairs. They spun and took a few quick steps to the laundry room. Just as they did, Xela appeared on the landing and bounced down the last flight of steps. She had a pillowcase slung over each shoulder and wore a t-shirt with a glittering Batman logo. “Wow,” she said. “Could you two look any more guilty?”
“We thought you were Oskar,” said Nate.
She smirked. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing,” Veek replied. She crossed her arms.
“Sex in the laundry room? You must not’ve gotten far.”
“We were checking out the doors,” Nate said. “Trying to figure out if there was any way to get them open or see what’s past them.”
“Y’know,” said Xela, “there may be a reason they’re locked. Maybe it’s not safe in there.” She walked into the laundry room and tossed her pillowcases on top of the washers.