The Kaleidoscope (6 page)

Turning the device absently in his hand, Harold considered the challenge. Twelve minutes ago he’d believed the man was a slacker, who worked the bare minimum so he could spend the rest of his time doing God knows what. Had the colors really spun into a prophetic image?

Harold turned over the Kaleidoscope, inspecting the precision detailing and excellent workmanship. Whoever had crafted it had an eye for beauty, a talent for working with metal and glass. He sighted down the shaft, admiring the tessellations of hues that fell into place. Then when he turned a dial, new images appeared. Green, gold, blue, teal and purple. It was stunning.

A memory suppressed long ago squirmed its way to the surface. Once, Grandma Destiny had taken him to the Los Angeles County Fair, where he was fascinated by the fortune-teller. Grandma equated her trance to a drugged stupor, and convinced him anyone who claimed to speak with spirits in another world was delusional. Whenever he smelled cotton candy, images of the creepy woman’s angular arms, her freckled finger beckoning him recalled that day. A crystal ball sat dead center of the heavily draped round table in the tent that evoked the legends of Scheherazade. His grandma had yanked him from the tent’s dim interior before she could add to, “Your life will unfold before you as an undulating sea, generations before and still to come will herald you.” The crone kept his quarter even though he didn’t get the whole ten-minute reading. He wanted her to tell him if his mother could be reached from the beyond. Sandalwood incense still made him sneeze. Was Harold and herald a play on words, or was it some kind of power of suggestion and good guessing, as his grandma insisted about the fortune-teller’s game?

Could
an object have magical powers? Harold had to believe otherwise. Every bone and sinew fought against any other possibility. But already the mysterious device he turned over, that now warmed in his palm, had begun to change his life. Where did this mysterious object come from, and what made it tick? What did it want from him?

Chapter Six

Walter tied a shoestring, his swollen fingers uncooperative. The glass splinter was still a painful reminder of his handiwork, and Walter worried again how to communicate its import without endangering himself or the guardian.

The cot squeaked as he pushed up. The diminutive workshop and sleeping quarters he’d called home would soon be demolished. He was no longer needed to change the light bulbs, sweep the steps. Now it was time to go, and just as well, because the doors were about to close permanently behind him. And it was time to move on so he could focus on the final piece of his life’s mystery.

“Where will you go, my friend?” Father Tucker had come downstairs to help Walter pack up his few items.

“I’ve made some contacts.” Walter hedged the details, for privacy’s sake. The priest helped him strap on a heavy backpack bulging with his yellowed notebooks, packets of seeds, the Dremel and its worn parts, one extra shirt, and a box of hair dye #114, light ash brown.

“I’ve arranged for Luis to take you to the station.” The monsignor pressed a handful of cash into his palm, and then prayed a blessing over Walter. “I’m sorry you feel you must go. I’m still appealing to the city about the demolition. Won’t you wait and find out if our appeal is granted?”

“I must move along, Father.” Walter drew out the duplicate kaleidoscope, a perfect copy of the one already delivered. “For all you’ve done for me, I will be forever grateful. This is for your kindness to me, which I could never fully repay.”

The pastor accepted the finely crafted instrument and without pause lifted it to capture the light streaming in from high glass panes that allowed light to stream into the basement.

Walter had debated keeping the twin. A memento, a keepsake of his many hours obsessing over both the external and internal workings, the fruit of his labors. But he had to somehow thank the man who blessed him by taking him in when he was hungry, thirsty, needed shelter, and giving him work. He’d kept him from sleeping on the street, while allowing him to accomplish his life’s work. He owed the clergyman his life.

“It’s exquisite.” Slowly turning the dial, lips parted, Father shifted slightly to better catch the light. “I’ll cherish this as a memory of your devotion to our parish.” He was a slightly younger man than Walter. Together they’d seen the parish change, the demographics shrinking attendance in the pews, but increasing the long lines out the door on Food Bank Wednesdays.

“There’s not another exactly like it in the world.”

“But I saw you were making another. Aren’t they identical?”

“Only on the outside.” He didn’t explain the internal workings of the doppelganger.

“From the broken stained glass window,” Father Tucker recalled. He fingered the polished metal. “You know, in mythology, twins are considered opposites. One twin sired by a god, one by a devil.” He aimed the ’scope at Walter. “Have you spawned a diametric brotherhood?” His question was meant to be light-hearted, but Walter blanched at how close he might be to the reality.

“My desire is that each one only moves mankind forward in positive ways. But one never knows how even the simplest technology will be used.”

The priest studied Walter, brows furrowed in question. A vehicle rolled past in the parking lot and pulled up outside the window, its air brakes whooshing loudly and Walter stood up, glad for the interruption. He moved toward the door.

“There’s Luis now.” Father Tucker arose. “I’ll walk with you outside.”

Walter shifted a strap of the heavy backpack off a sore muscle and ascended the concrete steps into the Los Angeles sunshine. They embraced at the top of the stairs. “If anyone comes around asking for me…” Walter hesitated to say more.

“I’ll use the utmost discretion.” Father Tucker’s palm warmed Walter’s rounded shoulder. “When you get settled, let me know how to reach you if you’d like. As always, I will protect your privacy, brother.”

Walter knew he could trust the priest, who on many occasions had offered his counsel. He waved, and passed the vegetable patch one last time. Some of the plants were already withered and parched.

He didn’t want to tell him now, but he never intended to contact the priest again. The less his friend knew, the less likely he’d come to harm.

Please, Lord, keep us all safe from harm.

****

Harold slept fitfully that night. His customary cup of chamomile tea, a half hour of the History Channel, and a crossword puzzle didn’t do their usual magic. Magic? Unable to see it well in the darkened room, he still sensed the presence of the ’scope on his dresser.

While he was walking home, he had decided to place a Craigslist ad in case the true owner of the Kaleidoscope was looking for it. It occurred to him that the homeless guy had been wanting money for the find when the police came along. He probably expected Harold to give him cash, and Harold shuddered to think what they might have thought if they had seen him exchanging money for it.

Harold sat up in bed. Of course. That explained everything. Drug residue was over the device. Some kind of touch-absorbed element. His eyes had adjusted and now he could see. From the dresser, the glint of its metal winked at him. Why didn’t he see images, though? He had more contact with it than Rhashan and had seen nothing unusual. Still, he should wipe it down thoroughly before touching it again. Just in case.

As he drifted back to sleep, the image of Rhashan’s wife and child in the peaceful beach scene played out, reminding Harold of his own mom. If someone had only intervened when his dad had gone off the rails, maybe his life would have turned out differently.

Harold tossed and turned, his childhood stirred up for the first time in years.

“You’re just like your worthless father,” his grandmother had ranted. “No use fighting the genes he left behind when he killed your mom and disappeared into oblivion and left me to raise you. You even resemble him. Red hair and freckles, not dark and lovely like your mom.”

Grandma Destiny prophesied that not only would ugly Harold fail at everything he ever tried just as his father had, but as puberty set in, his inherited psychoses would mature, undermining every relationship, conversation and memory, thwarting every attempt at normalcy.

He recalled very little about his mom, taken from him so young. Late at night while he poured himself into studying to make straight A’s in high school, or at odd times during an argument with Georgia, he’d stop, trying to recall his mother’s reassurance that choices were his alone. He’d open and close doors in his mind to closeted snatches of songs, a poem, a picture his mom would describe of a happy family. “One day,” she’d repeat into his ear as he fell asleep in her arms, “he’ll make the breakthrough he yearns for, and we’ll be a normal family.”

When Harold eventually coaxed Georgia back, the fear his grandmother had planted, “You’re just like your father,” would be forever quashed.

He’d stopped visiting her soon after he graduated high school. The older Harold got, the more she complained how much he looked like his father.

The offspring of a sane, beautiful woman with dark eyes, and a haunting ghost with flaming red hair and eyes the color of the sea, his lunatic dad. He yearned to prove it was possible to drain the gene pool of the paternal psychosis that drove his dad to kill his mother and vanish from his life. He needed to get Georgia back, talk her into having his babies, and damning the sins of the fathers upon the generations.

****

The next morning, after the restless night, wheel squeaking accelerated Harold’s head throb into max intensity. He’d decided to question Rhashan about the vision so he could articulate to H.R. just what was going on. He’d called down to inquire about the process, and had Form 321-D in his inbox, ready for the details.

“Rhashan, can I ask you a question?”

“Certainly.” Rhashan leaned in, lining up the envelopes on the edge of his desk as Harold had demonstrated. He turned expectant eyes to him. “Wot’s up, mon?”

“Yesterday you said you saw a…vision in the ’scope?”

Rhashan’s face morphed from serious to delighted. “I mean to tell you, Mr. Harold. I asked my wife last night. You see, she’s been working on her graduate degree, and becoming close to finishing. I not want to trouble her with my hope to finish my education too. But when I told her what I saw yesterday, she say she is glad I did, and she encourage me to get my degree as well. It may cause us a few more years of sacrifice, but dat okay with her. We have been working to make ends meet, and before now, I never want to stress her.”

The answer rambled away from Harold’s original question. “Your wife’s degree?”

Rhashan beamed. “Yeah mon, she writing her thesis now on crystal myths.”

“Thesis?” Harold blinked. “On crystal methamphetamine? That kind of crystal meth?”

“Oh, no.” Rhashan chortled. “She study cultural anthropology. Her research is in the area of crystals. You know, the belief dat crystals hold mysterious powers to heal. To prophesy.” One eyebrow curled up. “You get it now?”

“Oh, I don’t believe in that kind of hocus pocus.”

“Don’ be so quick to discount what you don’t know about.” Rhashan wagged a giant finger over Harold’s shoulder. “You are working with crystals even as we speak.”

He closed the waiting inquiry form on his monitor. “Of course, but silicon’s different.”

“Mr. Harold, I pick up da form applying for education assistance.” He pulled out Form 298-E from a brown envelope. “Would you help me?”

“What does this have to do with the ’scope?”

“Everything.” He pointed to the device Harold had wiped down and considered taking apart, but the morning had gotten away from him. “Because I saw myself gettin’ a diploma.”

Helping another employee improve themselves could be seen as a notch in Harold’s belt. “I suppose I could. Meet me in the courtyard at lunch.”

“Thank you, Mr. Harold. I appreciate your kindness. May I hold it again?” Rhashan’s gaze fell to the ’scope.

“Sure.”

Rhashan lifted it reverently. “May I ask if you would consider selling?”

Harold hadn’t considered selling it. Destroying it perhaps. “It’s not really mine to sell.”

“If I had something to give you, I would. Already it has changed my life.” Rhashan held it to his eye, squinting. He rolled it and turned, swinging toward light coming through the plate glass windows beyond the bullpen. “The colors they are pretty today, but no new visions.” He handed it back to Harold. “Still, that’s something very special you have there.”

An odd sensation grew in Harold, a feeling he’d only had for a few things before. He accepted the Kaleidoscope, cradling it possessively. Almost reverently.

****

The next morning, Harold was waiting in line at security when someone said, “Mr. Donaldson, may I speak to you a moment?” A guard motioned from behind the X-ray machine. About his own age and height, the guard wore a clipped military cut and starched uniform that impressed Harold.

“We’re redoing the older ID cards, and yours needs to be updated.” Harold followed him into a tiny room, more like a closet lined with monitors showing the hallways, offices and parking lot. “We’re adding a new watermark.” Keith—according to his nameplate—indicated Harold’s old card.

Harold unclipped the plastic ID from the lanyard. “I was under the impression we had at least a month left.”

“Yes, you do.” Keith examined the card. “But I had something else I wanted to ask you.”

Harold wondered if he’d somehow breached some security regulations when he was working nights recently, chasing the latest glitch in coding. Funds were still leaking in tiny dribs and drabs, and he had to find out what was causing the anomaly. “Am I in trouble?”

Keith laughed, but his smile faded to a strained look. “No, not at all.” He checked Harold’s face against the photo. “Might be a good time to have a new picture taken. This one is pretty old.” He motioned to a spot on the linoleum and aimed a small camera at him when he stepped on the X. “Smile!”

There was nothing wrong with the photo, but Harold complied. “You had something to ask me?” He stepped away from the mark, blinking from the flash burned onto his retinas.