Don't Open That Door - GoM 1

Echoes - 9

Pete McKayne waited outside his workshop in the closing night. He didn't waste time in greetings, and led the Corbans in right away.

"What is it, Pete?" asked Alex, curious about the carpenter's late call. "D'you need more materials?"

"I need to show you something," he replied curtly.

He took them to the other end of the workshop, where Alex's table was, covered by a thick tarp.

"I got it ready for a first sanding," he said, turning all the lights on. "But I got busy, so I covered it and left it for later. I came back to it a while ago."

He pulled the tarp of with a theatrical move and pointed at the table with a grave frown. The Corbans looked down at it and back up at him, their faces reflecting their lack of understanding. Pete snorted.

"There are new marks on it, Al! Not casual scratches, but deep marks. Out of the blue! Look!"

He handed Alex his son's phone while Claire stepped up to take a better look at the marks Pete had pointed out. All she got to see was that they looked like letters before a choking cold got a grip of her, like frozen hands pushing her away. Alex noticed her quick step backwards. Claire met her eyes and shook her head, glancing at Pete. Alex pointed at two marks on the table to catch his attention.

"You mean these, Pete?"

"Yeah. You can see they're not in the pictures. So they weren't there when you brought Clarisse's junk in the morning."

"Don't they look like letters?" Claire said from some feet away.

Pete leaned in and nodded. "Now that you mention it. Yeah, R and S, if you ask me."

Alex slid her fingers over the table, studying the old marks. "These two here," she said. "Look, M and B. And these two others, N and— What's this one?"

"Looks like an L to me," Pete replied. "I'm telling you, Al. Someone had fun carving the whole ABC on this poor fine wood, but the R and the S weren't here this morning. And we sure didn't do it."

Alex felt that things were suddenly making sense, but just out of her grasp. She needed to think it all over to figure it out. Meaning she needed to calm Pete down and get out of there.

"Don't worry, Pete," she said with a casual shrug. "You just do your best on it for Saturday." She produced her phone and took a picture of the table. "There. Just in case the table tries to tell you to go to hell."

"Ha-ha, so funny."

"Alright, then." Alex patted Claire and nodded to the door. "Night, Pete."

"Right there, Bootter's child. Tell me what's going on."

Alex swallowed a sigh and faced the carpenter. Those were the times when she wished Old Bootter had been more discreet about his extracurricular activities.

"Hand to heart, I don't know, Pete," she replied. "I need to look it up, that's why I took the picture."

"You better explain this to me as soon as you figure it out, 'cause I'd never seen a table that writes on itself."

"Maybe it's eager to be in the bookstore."

"C'mon, get outta here!"

"Night, Pete."

As soon as they left the workshop, Alex asked, "What happened back there?"

"The table," Claire replied. "I don't know if it's another cobolt, but it was exactly the same I felt at Kat's. And it pushed me away."