"The Necklace" (in sections)

[crabapple]

I'm going to start posting sections of a short story I've written called "The Necklace" and I hope you have fun with it. Probably will post the first section tomorrow. Thanks!

[novakru]

oooooo,this is gonna be good!

[crabapple]

"The Necklace" by Rodd Matsui

Copyright 2006 Rodd Matsui

PART ONE

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Let me begin by saying that the mysterious telephone call, with its promise of a profitable short-term job, came after a barrage of bad calls early that morning, the nature of which I won’t go into except to say that after the barrage, I was becoming thoroughly convinced that someone was arranging some plan against me, a plan that seemed to involve sudden simultaneous betrayals on the part of my closest friends. After the last ill communication, I was pretty depressed and preparing not to leave the house that day; the world seemed unfaceable. When the phone rang again, I was hesitant to pick it up. But I did.

“This is Henrietta Phillips,” said the voice, though the hissing static obscured it. “Can you hear me?”

“I think so,” I said. “Can I help you?”

The static seemed to clear slightly, then, “There. That’s better. I have a job for you, if you’ll take it. Can you come up to Annan Woods on short notice?” It sounded like an old woman’s voice.

I told her that I could, and asked the nature of the job and what it was paying. She would only say the matter would be discussed on my arrival, and it would be worth my while.

My occupation is nothing very special; I do odd jobs, fix things, move things, paint. I’ve never had to advertise; work has been a steady trickle ever since I moved to this quiet community. Handiwork will probably never make me wealthy, but I do get by with it; and it is a solitary type of job which allows me to think and ponder things--my inexpensive lifetime hobby.

I grabbed my tool kit and some smokes and headed out to Annan Woods, which I knew was up towards the hilly parts of this area, although I had never had reason to go there. After negotiating a number of increasingly mazelike and narrow streets, I finally came upon the cul-de-sac described to me earlier; at the end of the cul-de-sac there was a large gate of chain-link, beyond it a slim drizzle of blacktop that I supposed passed for a road. The blacktop led to an old two-story house a couple of hundred yards away. This was the Phillips estate. The weeds and dirt that had come to overtake the place told me no one had come to maintain it in some time, though equally apparent was the fact that, some four or five decades past, this rather large area of leveled-out hillside had been home to a wealthy family; in front of the house was a decayed but beautifully constructed courtyard of ancient cement, with raised rectangular structures for flowers to be grown in, and a magnificent fountain now covered with a network of fissures. Even from this distance the place was quite a sight, and I looked forward to getting a better look at it; I got out of my car to open the gate, which had no lock, and drove in.

I parked just in front of the courtyard, and just as I got out of the car I heard the front door of the place squeak open. I turned to see a woman of seventy or more standing in the doorway. She was wearing a long, plain gray dress and slippers, and her hair looked wild, as if she’d just woken up; yet this was a woman of a notable beauty which the years had dampened but hardly extinguished; I observed, for a moment, her proud brow and fine slim nose and strangely piercing dark eyes.

[crabapple]

"The Necklace"

PART TWO

***********************


“You are Marcus Baily?” Her crisp voice carried well over the courtyard.

“Yes. You must be Miss Phillips.” I moved slightly towards the front steps.

“Come inside.” She vanished into the house. This woman did not seem grateful for my presence, but I learned some time back that jobs are worked for all sorts of people with all sorts of temperaments, and that one can’t be too picky. I went inside.

The interior was dingy, as I’d expected, and lit with dusty lightbulbs in archaic-looking hanging lamps barely holding themselves together, but the ceiling was impressively high, the hand-carved molding exquisite. There wasn’t much in the sizable livingroom--a couple of pieces of furniture here and there, a large ceramic cat and a few bookshelves. The wallpaper, not too old, was nonetheless starting to bubble and peel. Amazingly, the original hardwood floor was intact and fresh, though it may have been sixty or more years old. I guessed that it had been covered by carpeting for a long time, and that the carpet had been removed fairly recently, for the glossy varnish coat looked almost new.

My employer was sitting in an easy chair near the fireplace. “Sit down, please,” she said, with a slight smile crooking up one side of her mouth. “I’m glad you’ve come.”

I sat down, feeling more at ease. “Now, this job you have for me--”

“It’s a small job,” she said, “and I need someone to do it, though it may not be in your specific line of work. I hope it does not take more than an hour or two of your time.” A purse sat on the floor next to her chair; she bent laboriously and reached into it, producing a small stack of crisp bills and placing them on a table nearby. “I am prepared to pay you five hundred dollars if you succeed in completing it.” She paused oddly.

At that moment, a number of thoughts went through my mind concerning the nature of the job. She saw my eyes widen, I think, for hers did, and she smirked a bit. “You have a fertile imagination,” she said, “but I want you to find something, something very dear to me, and as soon as you possibly can. It’s something I’ve lost--a necklace of pearls, with a large emerald teardrop.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Is this necklace somewhere inside the house where you can’t get to it? It seems like a very simple thing to find.” I almost began to say something about the payment being ridiculously high for the task, but kept my lips shut. The money of insane people spends as well as any other.

“It’s true. You don’t understand.” She got up, and walked stiffly over to a large front window overlooking the courtyard. “A long time ago...” She paused, and took a breath. “A long time ago, I had a sister named Claire. She was very beautiful, far too beautiful for her own good, and mine. You see we were always in competition with each other, and we always quarrelled. This was more of a nuisance and a hindrance than anything else, and I would have forgotten our problems--if only she’d just let me have Anthony. Anthony was a stockbroker, a fine man, and quite handsome. I fell in love with him the night we met at a party.”

I interrupted to ask how these things related to the task at hand. “Let me finish, and you’ll see,” she said, somewhat sharply. “Anthony and I had been seeing each other for just a few days when Claire began her attempt to take him from me. And she succeeded, distracting him with her audacious charms, and tempting him with revealing gowns she would wear only on nights when he came to see me. I soon realized I had to take action if I was to keep Anthony for myself. I began behaving defensively, and eventually our arguing drove him away from both of us. The necklace I want you to find is my only memento of that time, and bitter though my memories are, I cherish it deeply.”

“I’ll find it,” I said reassuringly.

She looked at me for a moment, seeming doubtful about whether to go on, then bade me to the window. “Look out there. Do you see how the road goes around that bend?” The blacktop road that had brought me to the house veered off to one side of it, and continued around the hill the large house was built on. “No one goes out that way; the hillside’s eroded and the paved road, what there’s left of it, is dangerous and slopy. Around the bend and apiece down the road is what remains of another house, a guest house. Claire lived in that house for many years. She and it were destroyed in a fire in nineteen seventy. Please don’t listen for sympathy in my voice, because there isn’t any.” I was finding all this a bit much, and she noticed this, but she continued: “Now, I have had this necklace since nineteen fifty-five. I’ve always kept it in a lacquer jewelry box. About two years ago, I woke up and discovered it missing. I searched high and low in the house, to no avail. Do you know where I found it?”

I said I hadn’t a guess.

“Outside, on the road--off towards where the road goes around that curve.”

“That’s very strange,” I agreed.

“I brought it back inside the house. It stayed there for a couple of months, and then it disappeared again. I went looking for it in the same place, and found it further up the road--and closer to my sister’s house. A few months later it happened again, and I found the necklace yet closer to her house. It was all I could do to take the necklace back, for I shudder at the thought of even seeing the ruins, and try never to go near them, and I never set foot in them.

“The necklace disappeared again this morning. I searched all along the road, going as close as I could to the place--but I couldn’t find it.” She sat down again, and presented this in summary, her eyes gleaming: “I am sure my sister means to do me harm, and to take from me all that I enjoy in this life. But I will step no closer to the house than I have, because I am equally certain that she is there, you see!”

“You believe the necklace to be inside the ruins.”

“Yes, and you must get it back for me, before she takes it farther away...farther, where it cannot be retrieved!” She seemed very excited now, possibly because I was making an effort to take her story seriously. And I was certainly serious about considering the job. The way the stack of bills sat on the table, it was understood that I was not be be paid until the task was accomplished. Herein lay the conflict, because if the situation she described was imaginary, then there was no necklace to be found in the ruins, I would return empty-handed, and I would not be paid.

Hell to it, I thought. I’ve come all the way here, and I don’t see how climbing around that bend and taking a glance around will do me any harm.

“If it’s out there, I’ll come back with it. Don’t worry,” I told her, and started for the door.

Outside, the sun continued to blaze brilliantly; I saw some storm clouds off in the distance, and the breeze indicated they were probably coming in this direction; but they looked to be hours away, so I was not concerned with rain impeding my progress. I was actually looking forward to the hike, and, judging I wouldn’t need the tool kit, decided then to leave it behind.

I turned to find my employer standing at the front porch. A faint smile glimmered on her face, and in spite of how I felt about the job, it pleased me to think that my acceptance of it had somehow brightened her day.

“I’ll be on my way,” I said.

“Be careful. Please,” she well-wished.

I started for the ruins, trying to keep the image of the money in my head, and resolving to think no more about the questionable aspects of this task until I was well on my way down the road and unlikely to turn back.


*************************************

[novakru]

So far,so good:)

[stygianwitch]

keep it coming, started out as a good read, enjoying it so far, of course now i'm going to be nagging you for each installment :D

[crabapple]

I'm working on it, next section will be posted soon. Thanks!

[crabapple]

"The Necklace"

PART THREE


****************

I noticed something as I went around the curve in the road: The bird songs appeared to vanish abruptly, as if shut off, and were replaced by a peculiar silence broken only by minor gestures of the wind. As I walked, somehow, the silence settled in as a dominant element of its own, and I felt truly alone with my thoughts. I observed the road ahead, which was breaking up as the woman had told me. Much of it had fragmented and rolled down the incline; and the road at one point had indeed become slopy under untold seasons of rain, making it necessary to hug the hillside as I crossed this part. At the bottom of the hill two hundred feet down were thorny-looking shrubs I had no desire to be with.

Past this particularly dangerous area the road regained itself for a bit and then vanished under a layer of hard-packed earth. Now I was left with a dirt road which continued beyond the paved road, which I had no objection to; and, yes, looming in the distance was a dark gray squarish shape nestled amongst some bushes.

I felt some nervousness as I approached the place, but this soon vanished.

I had imagined the house being nothing more than some blackened dirt and splinters, and was surprised to find that much of it remained; it had been a one-story affair with several rooms, two of which had been burnt completely away off to the east side; some smoke had traveled out the windows of the intact rooms, staining them. At least there would be something of a house to search.

My anxiousness to take care of business is probably to account for what happened next. I slipped in some soft, muddy earth, I think. I do remember something about a large rock coming up at my face.


**********************

Some time later, something stirred.

I opened my eyes, immediately aware that my forehead throbbed, and that I was soaking wet and cold. I lay uncomfortably in an outcropping of tall grass. It was dark, and raining!

I contemplated the sharp rock that had almost killed me, touched my forehead, saw dark liquid on my fingers, mixing with the rain. I felt around on the ground, certain I would come upon the rock I had fallen on; but I couldn’t find it.

I had slipped just feet away from the house. Cursing my stupidity, I got up, stumbled over to the house and leaned against it until the pain in my forehead subsided slightly. Then I found a door and stepped inside, trying to make out, through the darkness, any details.

I had no flashlight, but I did have a lighter, and, trying to relax, I thought that now might be a good time for a smoke. Most of my cigarettes were damp but I managed to light one, then turned the gas dial up to full and flicked the flame on several times, pointing the lighter in different directions to get a better idea of the surroundings. The room I was in was empty, but there was a single open door connecting this room to more of the house. I moved through the darkness towards the door.

At a point that I thought was about the midpoint of the room I felt myself beginning to go unconscious again. There was the perilous sensation of my legs beginning to fall out from under me, and I held my arm out, to help control the fall, and presently I found myself on my back. It was then, as my head slowly cleared, that I heard the sound of hard shoes tracking across the floor, and rather fast. And then I heard a door shut.

I must admit that I had no idea exactly what was happening, but I was forced to consider three very disparate possibilities. It was possible, if I took the woman’s story at face value, that I had heard the spirit, or ghost, or whatever, of Claire Phillips. And it was possible that my employer had somehow, and I had no idea how, come across the distance to search for me. And this was logical, for it must have been hours since I’d left. The third possibilty was that the sounds of the footsteps and the closing door had been hallucinations brought about by the injury to my head.

And then a moment later I remembered how the woman had said that she avoided the ruins at all costs...and I remembered the money promised me, and began to think that perhaps there was a good reason why the sum was so high. A fear inside me began to grow incredibly real.

[novakru]

When's the next installment???

[crabapple]

In about five minutes!