“Yeah, it’s a shay-eee-ay-eee-ay-eee…” Yes, I chose that moment to start stuttering. I had reason to. At that moment, an idea – the idea –was taking shape inside my head. I took a breath. “Hold on, Brent,” I said into the phone. “Let me think for a sec!” My mind raced. When I spoke again, I was very, very excited. “I’ve got it!” I cried. “The idea we’ve been looking for!”
“What?” he asked.
“Cyril’s uncle!” I said. “How about if he offers Cyril some help?”
****
We constructed the advertisement on the computer that afternoon. When it was finished, we printed it out and looked at it. “This should work,” Brent said. Here’s how it read:
CONTACT THE DEAD!
Do you need the advice of a dear, departed friend or relative?
Do you have a problem that only a dear, departed loved one can solve?
THEN GO SEE EMILY ANN!!
Miss Emily Ann Sorenson, Channeler: Your Gateway to the Spirits of the Afterworld
-- ‘A youngster with the gift of otherworldly gab!’ – Spirit Quarterly
-- ‘Emily Ann is just a child, but she’s the best. She’ll put you in touch with anyone!’ – Seer’s Catalogue
-- ‘She knows how to raise your spirits!’ – Medium Magazine
Appointments Only, Please. Call 805-555-3145
“Yup,” I agreed. “This is good.”
Getting the advertisement into Cyril’s hands turned out to be pretty easy. All we had to do was drive over to Arthur Halverson’s house and leave it in the bathroom near the room with the safe, making it look like a piece of junk mail that someone hadn’t thrown away yet. We did have one problem – while we were planting the note, Cyril showed up at the house unexpectedly, ready to tackle the safe again. We managed to run out the back door of the house just as he came in the front door. He never saw us.
And it worked! We got the call the next day. Actually, Loni got it, since she was the one carrying around our mom’s cell phone – that was the number listed in the ad. The call came at dinner, and she answered it with her mouth full of food. Though I only heard her end of the conversation, I could pretty much guess what Cyril was saying.
“Hethlo?” Loni said into the phone, her mouth struggling with some half-chewed chicken. She quickly chewed and swallowed as she listened intently. “Yes,” she said. “It’s simple, really. I go into a trance, and the spirits speak through me.” She listened and then spoke some more. “Yes, yes! Any secrets you might have would be absolutely safe. The trance is so deep, I never remember anything the spirits say.” More listening. “Yes, sir. I’m sure I can help you. Let’s see… I have an opening for tomorrow at 4:00PM.” She gave him an address and a few more instructions, thanked him for calling, and hung up the phone.
“We’re all set!” she beamed at me, stuffing another forkful of chicken into her mouth.
I knew better. “No, not yet!” I said. “A lot can still go wrong!” I reminded her that we would need a lot of luck for our plan to work. Still, I was very excited. My own next bite of chicken tasted especially delicious.
****
Cyril arrived at Brent’s house the next day. That was the address Loni had given him. Loni had told him to climb the stairs to the loft above the garage and to knock on the door three times. That’s what he did.
The door opened, and my dad appeared, wearing a long orange silk robe, a white turban tied tightly around his head, and a single, large golden earring in his left ear. It was a clip-on earring. Though he was a good sport about wearing the costume, he refused to get his ear pierced for it. Anyway, he looked perfect. He bowed slightly as he looked at Cyril. “Welcome to Miss Sorenson’s loft,” he said, forcing a slight, mysterious accent. “You are Mr. Cyril Morton?”
Cyril nodded. “I want to talk to my dead uncle!” he said. “My great-uncle, really.” He stood on tiptoe, trying to peer over my dad’s shoulder. “Where’s the girl?” he asked impatiently.
“She’s here, sir. But first – we have a question for you. How did you hear about Miss Sorenson? We sent the ad with her new phone number to only a few people, people deemed worthy of her services. Your name is not on our list.”
“A worthy friend showed it to me,” Cyril lied. Without warning, he suddenly turned himself sideways and stepped past my father, into the loft.
He must have been impressed by what he saw. Loni and my mom had spent all morning and most of the afternoon decorating the small room. Elegantly draped sheets covered every wall. A single dim light from the ceiling cast an eerie glow on the old wooden coffee table in the middle of the room and on the throw pillows that were scattered around it. On top of the table was something truly impressive – a glowing yellow-green sphere, about seven inches in diameter. Cyril couldn’t know it, but the sphere was really just an old bowling ball that we had covered with fluorescent paint. We had placed it, holes side down, on top of an old ashtray. Burning incense in the corner was filling the room with a vaguely sweet aroma. Mysterious music, the kind you sometimes hear in Indian restaurants, drifted in from hidden speakers.
Loni was sitting on one of the throw pillows, in front of the table. The costume she wore did two useful things: it made her look mystical, and it totally disguised her. She had on a blue silk robe, wire-rimmed glasses, a flowing reddish wig, and some freckles that my mom had painted on her with make-up. Like my dad, she wore a turban. Loni’s turban, though, was huge – it was as big as her head. It had to be big, because that’s where we hid another speaker. I’ll get to that in a minute.
“Is this our next client, Punjar?” Loni asked, looking at my dad.
“It is, Miss Sorenson,” he replied, bowing slightly. He turned to Cyril. “Please sit down, sir. And pardon our temporary workspace, out here in the suburbs. We hope to be working downtown again by the end of the month.”
Cyril sat down. He pointed a thumb at my father. “Will he be listening in on our session?” he whined.
“He will be sitting in the corner, listening to music on headphones,” Loni said. “You will be able to hear the music coming out of them. He won’t be able to hear anything else.”
Cyril grunted, apparently satisfied. “Okay,” he said. “What do we do? I want to speak to my dead uncle.”
Loni nodded. She gazed for some time into the glowing bowling ball, waving her hands over it. Then she recited her practiced speech, full of words she had picked up off of some psychic’s website. “Our universe, as you know, consists of multiple concentric spheres of reality, each touched by infinite tangential planes of consciousness. Our connection to the spiritual plane is fairly clear today. We should have no trouble.” Cyril grunted again.
Loni looked up at him. “Did you bring the item I requested?”
Cyril nodded. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a sock. “This belonged to my uncle,” he said, handing it over.
Loni accepted it and draped it over the bowling ball. “Now, before we can start,” she said, “You’ll need to hold onto this.”
She handed him something. Fear suddenly clutched at my stomach and held it tight. For some reason, Loni wasn’t following our script – she was starting to make things up on the spot! I wished I could see better from where I was hiding. Brent and I were in an adjacent room, also above the garage, and we were peering into Loni’s room through a dark crack in the adjoining door. We saw Cyril staring, confused, at the item in his hand.
“What is this?” he asked. “Some kind of wooden doll?”
Oh, no! Not one of her dolls! I wanted to throttle her. Brent did too. He started to groan. I nudged him sharply, and he stopped. With heavy hearts, we watched what happened next.
“This is Princey,” Loni said gravely. “He will act as a focal point, a way for the spirits you seek to find you. He will concentrate your aural energy into an aural beacon, transmitting the energy lines
across the metaphysical barriers that separate us from the spiritual world. The aural conduits, as always, follow coherent planes of transcendence, which is why we require such images of our alternate selves, images like the one you are holding. Do you understand?”
“Yes, yes!” Cyril said, obviously lying again and sticking the doll into his shirt pocket. “Can we get on with it? I’m in a hurry.”
I sighed with relief. Our luck was holding out – Cyril actually bought all that rubbish. My sister must have spent a lot of time on that website. She continued. “Punjar,” she said. “It is time for you to leave us.” My dad nodded. He put on his headphones and sat in the corner. He closed his eyes and began listening to his private music. He bopped his head back and forth to a quiet beat.
“I will now,” Loni said, “release my mind to the universal aural consciousness. Please do not be alarmed by what you see or hear.”
Loni put both hands on the glowing bowling ball, just to either side of the sock. She started to chant. “Sim Balla Balla Bow! Sim Balla Balla Bow!” She repeated the chant again and again. Over the course of a minute, her eyes grew hazy, and her head began to swoon back and forth. Still, she chanted. “Sim Balla Balla Bow! Sim Balla Balla Bow!”
Then, in an instant, her head froze, tilted to one side. Her mouth was partly open. Cyril looked at her, amazed.
Her face stayed frozen like that, silent, for a full minute. Cyril looked around the room nervously. He looked at my dad, who was still sitting in the corner with his eyes closed, still smiling and bouncing his head. Then Cyril looked back at Loni. He seemed unsure about what to do. He almost looked ready to jump up and leave.
“Cyril?” said a thundering voice. “Is that you?” The voice was me. I was speaking softly into a microphone that was attached to an electronic sound system, one that caused my voice to sound very deep. The voice was sent to the speaker hidden in Loni’s turban via a wireless transmitter. To Cyril, the voice appeared to come straight out of Loni’s frozen mouth.
Cyril, amazed, stared at Loni. His eyes bugged out, and his hands clutched at his knees. Finally he got the nerve to speak. “It’s me, Uncle Jeffrey! It’s me!”
“This is not Jeffrey!” I said coldly. “This is Rudy!”
Cyril look confused. “Rudy? Uncle Rudy? Uh… I don’t understand…”
“I owned that sock for a while, before I gave it to Jeffrey. Now what do you want?”
I guess I’d better stop and explain how I knew about this Uncle Rudy. While Loni and my mom were decorating the room, and while Brent was fixing up the microphone and the sound system, my dad and I talked to a man who once worked as a butler for Cyril’s Uncle Jeffrey. We got his name and address from Arthur Halverson. The butler told me a whole bunch of stuff about Cyril – stuff we could use to convince him that he was really talking to spirits. I knew exactly what his Uncle Rudy would say.
“I want … uh… to speak to Uncle Jeffrey.” Cyril looked nervously around the room and then at the ceiling before returning his gaze to Loni’s frozen face. “Why do you sound so strange? Your voice was never that deep!”
“It’s because I’m speaking from the Great Beyond, you idiot!” I said through Loni’s mouth. “Now before you say another blasted thing, tell me – was it you who dumped all that fruit punch powder into my swimming pool back in 1981? Don’t lie to me!”
As I said this, Brent went to work. He pulled a black thread at his side, a thread that was connected under the door to a vase on a bookshelf. The bookshelf stood along the far wall, to the right of Cyril. The vase fell to the floor with a crash. Cyril jumped.
“Well?” I thundered.
“Um, yes… that was me,” Cyril admitted, starting to sweat. “You see, I was… I was filming a movie. I was going to call it ‘Blood Bath’. I know you would have loved it! I guess I never finished it.”
“You stupid, moronic, ignorant, incompetent, conceited jerk!” I barked. Brent pulled another thread, and a book tumbled off the bookshelf. Cyril jumped again. Panic filled his face. “I can’t stand the idea of talking to you more, even now that I’m dead,” I continued. “I’ll go see if Jeffrey is around. You wait there.”
The room fell quiet. Once again, Cyril looked anxiously around him. He turned and stared behind him at the door, perhaps thinking about fleeing, and this gave Loni a chance to straighten out her neck and stretch a crick out of it. She was back in position – frozen with her head tilted and her mouth partially open – when he turned around again.
“Cyril! What are you doing here?” came a slightly deeper voice from her mouth. I had made the voice sound deeper by turning a knob on the sound machine.
“Uncle Jeffrey? Is it you this time?” Cyril’s voice was filled with both hope and fear.
“Yes, it’s me. Why on earth – har har! – are you pestering me?”
Cyril spoke in earnest now. “Uncle,” he said. “I’m having trouble with the combination to the safe, the one that holds the Kumquat Legacy. I know the combination is 56-11-11, but I don’t know what it means!”
“Hmmm…” I rumbled. “56-11-11. I remember. I also remember that I gave you a clue.”
“Yes,” Cyril protested. “But it doesn’t tell me a thing! It makes no sense!”
“Ah, but it does make sense,” I returned.
“No, it doesn’t!”
“Does too!”
“Does not!”
“Does too!”
“Uncle!” Cyril exclaimed, his voice raised to a shout. “Tell me what the clue means!”
“Hmmm….” came my deep voice. I paused and forced Cyril to wait anxiously for a while. Then I said, “You know, to be honest, I don’t even remember exactly what I wrote.”
“I’ve got it right here!” Cyril said excitedly, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a yellow sheet of paper and held it under the dim light of the bowling ball. He read the following aloud:
The combination’s not absurd.
Just change the numbers to a word.
Solving this puzzle should not take a century.
The answer is clear – it’s elementary!
“And that’s it!” Cyril added. “It doesn’t say anything else!”
We had it! Brent, using a tiny flashlight, scribbled down the verse. He gave me a thumbs-up sign and switched off the light. Feeling incredibly satisfied – more satisfied than I’d felt in a long, long time – I spoke again into the microphone.
“That poem is clear enough,” I said. “What’s the problem?”
“I keep telling you – it makes no sense!” persisted Cyril.
“Tell me this, Cyril,” I continued. “Did you steal young Dave’s copy of the clue when you were in the mayor’s office?”
“Certainly not!” Cyril exclaimed.
Brent pulled on a black thread, and a dish fell from the bookcase, smashing into pieces on the floor. “Tell me the truth!” my voice thundered.
Cyril’s eyes darted around wildly. He was speechless for a second. Finally, he blurted, “Yes… I… I guess so… Listen, Uncle! I knew that deep down, you really wanted me to win, so I thought it would be okay!”
“Cyril! You demented dollop of donkey dung! You moronic mound of monkey muck!” I had turned up the volume on the machine, so my whispered voice came out of Loni’s mouth with a deafening roar. “That was low, even for you! You must never, ever mess with Dave, his family, and his friends again!”
“But, Uncle…”, Cyril stammered.
“And if they solve the puzzle first and earn the Kumquat Legacy, you must leave them alone, or else!”
“But it’s supposed to be mine! You know that!”
The voice persisted. “YOU MUST LEAVE THEM ALONE!” While I spoke, Brent silently opened the door to the adjoining room and picked up a rope that we had earlier placed on the floor. Cyril, of course, did not see him; the doorway was dark, and besides, he was focusing far to
o much on Loni’s face and my words to notice anything else in the room. Brent pulled gently on the rope. The bookshelf started to move forward, away from the wall.
On cue, my dad sprang into action. “Sir! Watch out!” he cried, in his silly accent. His headphones flew off as he grabbed Cyril’s arm and pulled him away. As soon as Cyril was clear, Brent gave a sharp pull, and the bookcase fell over, smashing the now empty chair.
Cyril, shaking, stared at the fallen bookshelf. Meanwhile, my sister’s head righted itself, and she looked around in wonder. “What happened?” she asked innocently, rubbing her neck. “I feel so tired!” Her young girl voice seemed very different from the deep, bellowing voice of a few moments before.
She suddenly seemed to notice the bookshelf lying before her on the floor. She glanced up at Cyril in amazement. “Wow!” she said. “Did you do that?”
Cyril said nothing. His eyes were wild with fright. His whole body seemed to vibrate, as if the fear inside him were about to explode, about to send little pieces of him all over the room. He frantically grabbed at the Princey doll in his pocket and threw it on the floor, as if that would send his dead uncle away.