Gatekeeper's Secret
Copyright© 2026 by Fick Suck
Chapter 7
“Holy crap!” Grady exclaimed as he held the lantern above his head. The staircase heading down was old; the wood was grey with age and cracked from dryness. Scooping up the Wunderbar, he began probing the planks, testing if each step would hold any weight. No one was going to find him if he crashed through rotten boards and broke his leg, or his neck for that matter.
He struck the board hard with an overhand bash. The wood held. Tentatively, he placed one foot on the step and pushed. The board gave a little, but it held. He slid his other foot onto the board. He tested the next board. Fifteen steps later, he reached the bottom platform. He took a breath to calm himself.
Holding his lantern high again, he saw the room spread out northward, not under the barn but beyond it. The timbers holding up the roof were thick like railroad ties. The same ties crisscrossed the ceiling. Unlike the other storeroom, this one was piles upon piles of stuff, with knife handles sticking out of boots and closed sacks dropped everywhere in no discernible order. He looked around for a book or papers; there were none he could see.
Grady shook his head. He wanted to grab everything the light touched and explore every nook and cranny. Yet, he knew better than to rush towards anything. “I’m going to need at least two sets of work lights on stands with extension cords to run them,” he said out loud in hopes of remembering. “I’ll need garage shelves, garbage bags and screw it, I’ll have to buy a separate laptop with an inventory program; I’m not sure a simple spreadsheet will do the trick with this mess. I need months and I don’t have months. Tags, stickers, what?”
He hung the lantern from a large nail that had been placed head high. He shook the timber before leaning against it as he surveyed the room more closely. The more he gazed, the more he confirmed that everything in the room had been tossed in willy-nilly.
He shifted his feet, only to have his left foot tap something next to it. He bent down to examine his find, a small wooden box made from red and blond woods about six inches long and half as wide. The latch was tight but gave easily to a little pressure from his thumbnail. The inside of the box was filled with a cushiony material that felt like a mix between silk and Styrofoam. He lifted a white piece of fabric to reveal a small pair of spectacles, full moon lenses mounted on a thin metal frame. When he moved them under the light of the lantern, they acted like a prisms, throwing rainbows in various directions. Closing the box, he placed it on the stairs to go up with him when he was done.
After useless attempts to poke and prod the closest sacks, he gave up for the moment. Taking the lantern and the glasses, he climbed the steps, determining if he needed to replace any of the wood. By the time he reached the top, he was considering a set of telescoping attic stairs that folded down as an interim solution. Carefully, he closed the shelf-heavy doors and pushed the crown and footer boards back into place. Scooping up his jacket, he transferred his find into the big inside pocket.
Grady glanced around the main stable one last time, making sure he had closed everything and left no evidence to be found. Out of curiosity, he pulled out the spectacles from the case and tried on the glasses. They were made for a smaller face, but he managed to tuck the arms behind both ears. When he looked at the back of the stable, the entire area looked unusually well lit. He strode over to the circuit box and cut the power to the lights. He could still see everything in the barn.
Racing outside, Grady looked up towards the Twin Sisters. Night had not become day, but he could see out into the distance quite well. Only because his hand hit the barn door as he swung around to look elsewhere, did he remember to close the stupid thing. Without bothering to turn on the lantern again, Grady marched to the back door of the house. Inside, he slid the glasses back into the box and scampered to the kitchen. He downed a thick bologna sandwich with mayo without thinking before washing it down with half a liter of soda. After stuffing his face with a family-sized bag of tortilla chips, he was feeling the exhaustion and aftermath of an adrenaline dump. He was ready for bed.
Thankfully, his alarm went off at six o’clock. Rolling out of bed, jumping through the shower and stuffing his face with frozen waffles took twenty minutes. He had his truck with a hitched trailer down at the road by 7:00. The Rivera brothers pulled up five minutes later in their work van. They had marked out the squares for excavation and unloaded the bobcat by the time the solar installation crew showed up with their truck and trailer.
Grady took the new crew up to the house and showed them the stakes with the orange ribbons that demarcated the solar array placement. After they remeasured his stakes to match their requirements, they gave him the thumbs up and began unloading their equipment. Grady drove back down the drive to the front. One of the brothers was still excavating while the other had already begun assembling the rebar. By 2pm, the cement mixer was pulling up along with the county inspector behind him.
The paperwork for the building was in order, which seemed to piss off the inspector. There was not anything the man could do to stop the pour. Grady’s suspicions were rising though, as he could not think of one reason for a building inspector to come out to a pour. Someone was paying inordinate attention of his ranch and his business, unless this man was simply shopping for some money to grease his palm.
When the inspector drove off, Grady stalked over to Enrique who was concentrating on the pour like it was the most demanding task ever, “Do you know him?”
“Oh yeah, Grady, I know him,” Enrique said. “He works for the Paramount Group. I think he reports directly to Mr. Jeffries. He’s as mean and dumb as they come.”
“You’ve worked for him before?”
“We’ve picked up a couple of subcontracting gigs for Paramount south of town, promising more work if we did a good job. They’re not only cheap, they’re bastards about it. They paid what they owed us in the end, but we had to fight for months to get it. We don’t do work for them anymore; they’re not worth the aggravation. That one is a snake.”
“Hmm,” Grady said musing. “Paramount puts one of their own in the building inspector’s office and gets the lowdown on everything that’s going on in the county. They might even get special assists when they’re cutting corners.”
Enrique nodded. “I would not recommend you purchase anything they build, not even a drainage ditch. They worship the almighty dollar more than my grandmother prays to Jesus and she goes to church twice a week.”
“What’s left to do today?” Grady asked.
“We finish leveling out the building foundation and cover it. The gate post on the either side needs to be dug and prepped for another pour. We’ll rent a cement mixer when we finish raising the walls and do that post at the same time. Then we unload the fencing supplies, the gate, and some of the fiber optic cable. You sure you don’t want an electric motor for the gate?”
Grady spit to the side. “Another piece of equipment that will break too soon and require continuous maintenance in this climate. We’re going to have our hands full installing the cameras and their system. We’re going to keep the gate mechanism as simple as we can.”
Leaving the Rivera brothers to their work, Grady returned to the house. He checked in with the solar installers, and they had already leveled the field and started pouring the small footprints for the frames. They were saving their bigger pour for the battery storage unit for tomorrow.