The Keeper
Jonathan Bigly was awakened by the ringing of the doorbell. He lived in a small, mostly vacant, three-story apartment building at the edge of a town in Maine called Keeper’s Point.
“Just a Second.” John shouted towards the door. John wondered who it could be. He picked up his bathrobe and put it on as he walked to the door. Before opening the door, he looked through the peephole. Two police officers were standing outside of his apartment. There was another knock. John took a deep breath before opening the door.
“Can I help you?” John asked with a nervous look on his face.
“Yes actually, do you mind if we come in?” Before receiving an answer both Officers stepped into the apartment. “I am Sergeant Prince and this is Officer Martin. We’re from the Keeper’s Point Police Department. Do you work at Pfeiffer Photography?”
“Yes. Is there a problem?” John said before sitting down in the next room and motioning for the police officer to sit down as well.
“We’ll get to that in a minute Mr. Bigly. Is it true that you were there last night at 11:45?”
John paused for a minute and unsuccessfully searched through his mind for what this could be about before saying, “Umm, I usually finish up my work around 11:30. I can’t remember if I finished any later last night.”
“There was a robbery last night at 11:45, but there was no sign of breaking and entering. Were you aware of any of this?”
“No. I must have left before it happened. What was stolen?” John said as calmly as possible, knowing that he was the only suspect.
“Well, we are not exactly sure because we have not been able to get in contact with Mr. Pfeiffer, but we found an open safe that was empty, but we were alerted by motion detectors located in the main office.”
“I could tell you what else was stolen if you took me down there.”
“Actually, Mr. Bigly, we’re going to have to take you down to the station for some further questioning.”
“But I have things I need to do. I need to be at work in two hours!”
“Well, maybe if you cooperate with us you can be back by then. Please come with us.”
John followed them knowing that he wouldn’t be out of the police station for at least five or six hours. At the police station, John was tossed into an empty office and told to wait. The office had nothing but two chairs and a desk in it. There was not even a clock on the wall. John cursed himself for having lost his watch. He had lost it about a month ago and refused to buy a new one since, thinking that it had only been a burden. After a few minutes, John, who was quite bored, started to think about his father. His father had been a cop, and he had never really been proud of this. He had always thought that it was normal to look down at police officers and had never spent more time than was necessary with his father because of this. John’s father had noticed that John had avoided him, and so neither ever tried to develop a relationship with one another. Whenever John thought of his father, all of his thoughts were negative, and over time, John had convinced himself that his father had never done anything good, even though he could not think of an example of his father doing anything bad. John was tired. He had been unable to sleep much at night recently and before too long, he fell asleep in the Police Station.
John woke up, and after what seemed like a couple of hours an officer came in to take his fingerprints. After his fingerprints had been taken and the police officer had left, John realized that they had never taken his cell phone. He pulled it out and called a friend to ask for some help, but not before noticing that it had been almost three hours.
“Hello?”
“What’s up Tom, it’s Johnny.” John said after letting out a sigh of relief that someone had answered the phone.
“What’s up?”
“I’m actually at the police department. They pulled me in here for some bullshit reason. You think you could come up here and make some noise so they’ll let me go?”
“Yeah sure man, sounds like fun.”
Ten minutes later, he heard through the door that there was some kind of commotion outside. After a while a cop came in and told John that he was free to go due to a lack of evidence.
When he got outside, John saw his friend Tom.
“How did you get me out of there?”
Tom laughed. “You remember that video tape I got of the mayor?” A couple of years earlier Tom had been trying to sneak a video camera into a strip club, when he saw the mayor coming out of the club. He had managed to catch this on tape, and had been waiting for the right time to release it.
“Oh man, that must have been great, but how’d that get me out?”
“I showed the tape and said that the mayor had organized the break-in at the photo-lab because he thought that there were more incriminating pictures there and that he was trying to frame you. A whole bunch of people believed this and started chanting ‘Let Him Go!’ I don’t even think they knew you.”
“Wow, thanks a lot man.”
“No problem. It was lots of fun. Sorry, I’d love to stick around but I have to um… meet someone. See ya.”
Tom had been a good friend of John’s in High School, but recently, John had begun to develop a habit of keeping to himself. In fact John was not even sure what Tom did for a living. Every once and a while John would meet some of his old friends for a few drinks, but it felt awkward to him. John took out his cell phone again and looked at the time. It had been almost four hours since he had been picked up that morning and he was two hours late for work. He walked the two blocks down Main Street from the Police Station to Pfeiffer Photography. As he walked in the door, his boss looked up and immediately started yelling at him.
“You’re fired. First, you rob the place then you show up two hours late for work? I don’t think so. Good luck finding another job. The only reason I hired you in the first place was that I felt sorry for you. Maybe you can get a job scrubbing floors at that orphanage across the street from your apartment.” As John walked out of the store, his boss kept laughing at him. John could not help but think about how messed up the world was. He had been arrested for nothing, and then been fired because of it. He thought about yelling at his boss and telling him that there was no reason he should get fired, but that wouldn’t do anything. He would still be out of a job, and he would just feel bad about losing his temper. John walked the long block back down Mill Road to his apartment building. He felt glad just to have a place to live. He stepped over the pile of broken glass by the door to his building. John lived on the run-down south side of Keeper’s Point right in between a liquor store and an old orphanage. The south side of town was where the people who worked at the log mill lived before it was shut down a few years ago. Now, the North Side of Keeper’s Point was a trendy place to live and a ‘small town escape,’ so people just pretended that the south side did not exist.
That afternoon, John went back downtown to see what was going on with all that Tom had exposed. John made it downtown just in time. The mayor had decided to make a speech. John was surprised when the mayor said that he had actually looked into it and found out that the brake-in was actually a scandal and that he had fired several police officers that had been in on it. The mayor did seem to forget to address the strip-club video, but after the announcement that he had put an end to police corruption in Keeper’s Point, nobody seemed to even remember the video. By the time, everything had settled down on Main Street, it was getting late and John decided to go home.
Once back at home he realized that he would not be able to get to sleep, so he called up his friend Tom again. They decided to meet at a bar up the street from John’s apartment.
As John and his friend Tom walked into the bar, Tom stopped by one of the booths near the back to say hi to the owner of the bar who was a friend of his. John went directly to the bar and sat down. He was about to order a drink, but then he realized that since he was no longer employed he should be spending less. When Tom came back, he offered to buy John a drink, but John declined. He wanted to be able to wake up early the next morning and look for another job. Maybe he would find one farther away and it would give him an excuse to move out of his apartment. After a couple of hours they decided to go home. On the way out of the bar, Tom went back over to the booth with the owner. This time John resolved to follow him over. When they reached the other side of the room, the two men sitting at the booth quickly shoved whatever they were looking at on the table under a coat. Tom said goodbye to his friend and they left the bar. As they walked off of the parking lot, John glanced back at the bar to see a police officer in uniform stumble out of the bar and drive away quickly in his squad car. John laughed to himself and wondered how far the policeman would make it. John walked across the street back to his apartment, and went straight to bed.
After having been asleep for a few hours, John began to dream. In his dream, his saw a clock on his wall directly across from his bed. Inside of the clock he saw faces. He saw the face of Sergeant Prince who had arrested him that morning, and then it started to change, and he saw the face of the Mayor, and then finally it changed into the face of his friend Tom. John was puzzled by this, and wondered what his friend Tom had to do with the Mayor, or the Cop. John dismissed this as just an overview of the day. All of a sudden the clock stuck out its hands and began to point at him, and then it began to speak:
“John, you are the victim of the wickedness of others. You must follow me John. We must fight them together. Stand up John, follow me.” John stood up, and began to walk. He followed the clock, as it lead him out of his building, up Mill Road, and then down Main Street. He followed the clock all the way to the Keeper’s Point Lighthouse. The lighthouse that the town was named after. He followed the clock through the door and up to the top of the lighthouse.
The next morning, John woke up freezing cold. It took him a few minutes to realize where he was and why he was there. As John walked back to his apartment, he kept thinking to himself. How could I let myself be taken there? It’s that I’ve got a weak mind. I surrendered to the mischievous clock. I can’t even remember what he told me. All that I can think of is that he said something about wanting to fight, and how he was wicked. It’s so silly because it was just a dream, but it actually made me walk six blocks in my sleep. I could have been killed! When he finally made it back to his apartment building, he saw that there had been a fire, and although the fire was out it was still surrounded by fire trucks and police cars. John wondered what could have happened. He decided not to stick around to avoid being questioned about why he didn’t sleep at home last night, and to probably avoid being arrested. John walked the two blocks up South Street to the South Point Motel. This was the only place to stay in the entire town that was in his price range at the moment, and it also happened to be the only place in town without running water.
John spent the day putting in Job applications at local fast food restaurants and for other entry-level jobs that required nothing more than a high school diploma. John had always been smart; what held him back was the fact that he could not afford college, and therefore, he had been forced to live his whole life without much of an education and without a real future. After a day without any progress or even hope, John returned to his motel room. Although John had always been broke, he had never been homeless. He had always hated his apartment with its dirty walls, and the fact that there was never hot water. Now he was in the cheapest motel in town with even dirtier walls, and he could only afford to stay there for a couple of days. Furthermore, he had lost his Job. John went to sleep wondering what was going to happen to himself. On the wall across from his bed the clock appeared again, and once again he saw a face inside of it. This time it was his father. John was immediately furious at the clock.
“Why did you stay at this motel John? I saved your life and rescued you from your pitiful home.” Said the Clock.
“You destroyed my life, you burned down my building, and made me the only suspect. I refuse to listen to you anymore. I’m not going to let you control my mind and turn me into something that I’m not.” John was awakened by the sounds of banging on his door and shouting from outside.
“Police! Open up or we’ll break the door down!”
“Okay! I’m opening the door!” John went over and opened the door. This time he did not hesitate at all. Outside were six police officers all with their guns drawn and pointed at John. John put his hands up and allowed himself to be arrested.
At the Police Station, John was thrown directly into a holding cell. After a while, he fell asleep in his cell.
John was awakened by the loud sound of his cell being unlocked.
“A friend of yours came to bail you out.” Said the police officer. John tried to think of anyone who would even know where he was. When he walked outside, a tall skinny man dressed in a suit came up to him and stuck out his hand.
“Daniel Tynan. I am an alderman from ward three, which is most of the North Side.”
“Hi. I’m John Bigly. Why’d you bail me out?”
“For the past few years I have been doing a study on corruption in our town. I think that you may be the key to uncovering all of this. Are you aware that a Tom Meyer was fatally shot this morning?”
“No. Is it true? Is he really dead? Who shot him?”
“Did you know what he did for a living? He was a hit man for Gino Marcuccilli. We still can’t prove that he is associated with organized crime, but everything points at it. I have contacted the FBI about possible evidence linking Gino Marcuccilli to almost every crime operation in New York in the past twenty years.” John could tell that Alderman Tynan was very proud of what he was doing, but at the same time scared to death.
“How am I connected to all of this?” John asked with genuine uncertainty.
“Well, Your friend Tom, in getting you out of jail with his tape, was unknowingly going against orders from his boss. Gino Marcuccilli was part of a plan that involved both the police and Mr. Pfeiffer to cheat an insurance company. Most of this town is corrupt, and almost everybody is in cahoots with each other. That makes crime in this town very easy to commit and very difficult to stop.”
“Wow, I can’t believe that I’ve been living here for so long and I never knew of or even suspected that anything like this was going on.” John said in surprise.
“I’ve been looking in to this for a couple of years now, and it’s nice to have someone else on my side. When I heard about what your friend Tom did I was very impressed. It lost his life, but it may have saved our town. Without someone to pin the break-in on, they might get nervous enough so that the insurance company catches on. Then our work will be done.” Alderman Tynan said with a distant look of satisfaction on his face.
“Well, I hope things keep working out like this and you can catch those guys, but right now I’ve got my own problems, and at least need to get some sleep.” John went back to his motel from the police station, almost laughing to himself about how seriously the alderman had taken all of the recent events. John was sure that the whole thing was a mistake, and even if there was all of this corruption in his town, it was nowhere near as serious as Alderman Tynan had made it seem.
When John got home, he was still tired, and decided to take a nap. As soon as he fell asleep, the clock appeared again, but this time he saw his own face in it. John was hardly asleep, and woke himself up. He was surprised to see that the clock was still there. Although John thought that he was still sleeping, he reached into the bag next to his bed, and quickly pulled out his camera and took a picture of the clock. Moments after he snapped the picture the clock disappeared. John could not fall asleep again, and could think of nothing besides his proof of the clock. Sometime in the middle of the night, John left his motel room and went over to the photo lab where he used to work. He tried his old key in the door, and was shocked that it still worked. He went into the lab, and everything was exactly how it had been before. He wondered how there could have ever been a robbery. John walked back into the dark room and started to develop his film. About an hour later, he was ready to print the picture of the clock. He took a deep breath as he slid the paper into the developer. As the image started to appear, he was shocked. In the middle of the photo there was the clock, crystal clear, but the rest of the picture was terribly distorted. As he looked at the picture, he was instantly able to remember countless times that he saw examples of corruption and failed to realize what they were. He thought of how the cop, the mayor and his friend Tom had all been criminals, and how his father was really not a bad guy. What he didn’t understand was why he saw himself. John was about to leave and call Alderman Tynan, to expose the police and Mr. Marcuccilli’s whole operation, when he heard voices from outside the darkroom. Ten Police Officers busted into the room, and turned the lights on. John was so scared that he forgot about the picture. As he was being led out, he remembered the picture and turned around to see if it was still there, but for some reason the only part of the picture that got exposed and disappeared was the part with the clock in it.
Paul Sableman