When I pulled up to his house, Bob’s door was open and he was waiting for me on the sofa in his living room.
“What did you find?” I asked.
“What, no hello, how are you?”
He could tell I was not in a joking mood. “It is probably nothing, but I found a picture of a woman on the company website who fits your description of Chloe.”
“That seems like a bit of a long shot. My description wasn’t very detailed.”
He handed me a black and white picture and a short article about the history of the company. The picture was unmistakably Chloe, down to the pendent with the heart shaped diamond around her neck.
“This is Chloe,” I stated definitively.
“Well, it can’t be,” Bob said.
“Why not?”
“This picture was taken in 1946. Assuming she was about twenty-five when it was taken, she would now be over eighty years old. It could be her great grandmother.”
The article informed the reader that she and her husband had purchased the company after the war. During the war, she had been a nurse and he a surgeon. They were known for their charity work with the poor. In an effort to make up for their involvement with the Nazis, they had poured money into impoverished countries. Schlangenol Pharmaceuticals provided more free drugs to stop the spread of HIV in Africa than any other company.
The woman was quoted as saying, “Since my husband and I have no children, we feel the need to adopt the suffering from all over the globe.”
“Did you find anything else?” I asked.
“I did a little hacking and found out a couple of other things.”
“What?”
“First of all, C.L.O.E is an acronym. It stands for Computer Logistic Organizational Electronic database. I was able to tap into her and run some searches relating to their holdings in C-U. Among their ten million dollars in assets in this community, they own both buildings we have asked about and are about to see. I also found a memorandum suggesting the reason the company invested in this community: Champaign is inhabited by an educated scientific community that does not draw as much attention to itself as other similar communities on the east and west coasts.”
“You are a genius.”
“Who am I to argue?” said Bob.
“Let’s take off. I don’t want to miss our appointment with the realtor.
During the drive over I decided I could no longer ignore the supernatural elements to my problems. That was Chloe in the picture. The dreams I was having were too real and if they didn’t stop I was going to hang myself from a rafter with a piece of fishing line.
It was time to hire a witch doctor.
When we pulled up in Bob’s van my realtor was waiting for us in his white Lexus.
I introduced Bob to Steve. Steve was wearing sunglasses and a blue polo shirt with khaki pants. Although the trip was clearly a waste of his time, Steve seemed pleased to be there.
“Good to see you, Sam. Are you enjoying the house I sold you?”
“It’s great. What can you tell me about this apartment building?”
He took out a large key ring and headed up the walkway. “It’s a hell of a good deal, and the buyer—a European investment firm—seems anxious to sell. They purchased it in the 1960’s. It was built in 1938 and has an Art Deco design. The architect, Abe Spear, was famous for his time. They’re asking three hundred thousand dollars, which is frankly a steal. I assume it must need work, but I haven’t been inside. It has been empty for two months. I guess they figured it would sell better without renters.”
As we entered the building I observed the mailboxes. All the names had been expunged with white-out. Judging from the length of the name—assuming the use of a standard font—Mark Zan had lived in 3A.
“Let’s look at the offices on the ground floor,” I suggested. “I heard this was a doctor’s office.”
“Not in the last twenty years,” Steve said.
As we walked into the first office the smell of disinfectant was strong, despite the fact that it had stood empty for some time. The floor was solid white tile. The walls were also white. Even the baseboard and crown molding were white. The place reminded me of my terrible dream. The only window, located in the front of the room, was filled in with glass blocks and covered by a set of white plastic drapes.
“You can remove the glass blocks; it’s not an expensive job, although it doesn’t look bad,” Steve volunteered. The room was spotlessly clean.
“Do you know what they used to use this room for?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
We headed across the hallway to the next office. This one had dark green carpeting and oak paneled walls. There was a waiting room with a built-in desk in front for a receptionist. Although the waiting room contained no furniture, you could almost picture the chairs. As I entered, I noticed a small office to the right and a large office in the back.
The large office was elegant, with solid rosewood paneling and oak floors. The antique tin tiles in the ceiling were clearly from a period prior to the date the building had been constructed. The rest of the office had fluorescent lighting but this room had a chandelier with four candle-shaped light bulbs attached to brass tubes in the shape of fishing hooks.
Steve looked at me. “This would be your office,” he said.
I started to wonder if selling one of my kidneys would allow me to afford this place. I had two, after all. I went to the back wall to decide where to put my desk.
Even the air vent cover on the floor looked expensive, with a cast-iron Art Deco design. As I looked closer I noticed a piece of paper that had slipped through the grating but not yet drifted down to the furnace. I lifted the vent cover, grabbed the paper, and put it in my pocket—still pretending to study the design. If he had noticed, Steve didn’t comment.
Next we went to the upstairs apartments. Each one contained a living room attached to a kitchen, a full bath and a bedroom. All of the rooms were badly in need of upkeep. Two of the apartments on the top floor had graffiti on the walls; one had a Star of David in red spray paint and “G.D.” written across it. The other said, “Fuck you bitch” in black paint. All but one apartment had holes in the plaster. The carpeting in all of the apartments would need to be replaced; it was covered in cigarette burns and stains.
In the last apartment, Bob started staring at the ceiling. “What’s going on?” I asked. Bob pointed to a tiny camera attached to the ceiling. It was a twin to the one in my own house.
The last stop was the basement. The foundation consisted entirely of large blocks of limestone. The stairs were a dark brown wood that creaked as we descended.
“Steve, is this possible? The basement looks older than the building.”
“Excellent observation,” Steve sounded a bit sycophantic, but this would be a big sale.
“They built the apartment building over the existing foundation. In the 1880’s there was a church here that burnt down.”
“Is it safe?”
“Actually it looks pretty good for its age. No signs of major flooding, although some water has gotten in.” He pointed to three dark patches on the wall. The basement smelled earthy but not like mildew.
The furnace was like a giant cast-iron heart. Although, given that it was the size of a Volkswagen, it would have to be the heart of a blue whale. It had clearly been built to burn coal but had been converted to natural gas.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Steve asked, proudly pointing to the floor. “You would expect cement or maybe dirt, but this floor is solid limestone, and the grooves cut all over it all converge at the hole in the floor.”
“What are the grooves for?”
“Water, I guess. They allow the water to drain more easily.”
In the center of the room was a huge stone block that was perhaps six feet by three feet. “What is this?” I asked, pointing to the slab.
Steve looked at the giant stone. “You got me, although it must weigh two tons. It had to have been put in when they were building the church; they couldn’t have moved it through the doors later.”
“Maybe it’s an altar,” Bob offered, “or a tomb. This was a church.”
“In the basement?” I said. “It has no engravings, markings or crosses. Wouldn’t an altar or tomb have something carved on it?”
“It can’t be a tomb,” Steve said. “It weighs two tons and is made of solid rock, but ... who knows ... it would make a great bar for basement parties. If anyone spilled, the liquid would go down the groves in the stone and into the drain.”
“All you’d need is a hose,” I said.
In answer Steve pointed to a copper pipe coming down from the ceiling and ending in a water spigot.
“Where is the air compressor for the air conditioner?” I asked Steve.
“That is on the roof. It looks like it was put in last year. It’s an energy efficient model and still under warranty.”
“Well, it works great. I am freezing.”
“Actually it’s not turned on, but this room is cold. It would be a great wine cellar,” Steve added.
“Or a morgue,” I said.
We decided to continue our conversation on the front walk. As I looked down on the floor from the top of the steps the basement seemed different. The hole in the floor reminded me of the sun, with the grooves forming rays as in a child’s drawing. The slab had been surrounded by a small moat leading to the hole. I thought of the narrow furrows in swords and daggers referred to as “blood grooves” and felt sick.
Once we were out of the house, Steve seemed relieved. “So, what do you think?” he asked.
“The rooms would cost a fortune to clean up,” I replied.
“It has a lot of potential; if you rent out the other office and one floor, you could pay the mortgage.”
“Let me think about it. Any other information you could find out about the property would be a great help. I may want to come back with a carpenter.”
“Sure, no problem. Any time.”
“What about the other property?”
“Since it’s not for sale, information isn’t readily available. I normally can look up prior owners on the computer, but no luck. You could try the recorder of deeds.”
“Thanks, I will. And thanks for your time.”