The rain stopped just as Betsy arrived at the door of her uncle’s building on West 23rd Street. She collapsed her umbrella and rang the buzzer for 4B. For a few moments there was no reply, but then, without a word from the intercom, the buzzer sounded and Betsy went inside. Her backpack was heavy as she climbed the stairs.
When she got to the fourth floor she set the backpack down and caught her breath. The bag was soaked from the sudden downpour, which her umbrella had been largely unable to deflect.
The door to 4B opened, and in the gloomy foyer stood Uncle Clark, dressed in jeans and a red sweatshirt, hair fluffed up in the back—evidence of a recent nap.
“Come in,” he said, smiling faintly. “How did it go? I didn’t think you’d be here so soon.”
“Well….” Betsy laughed nervously as she walked past her uncle into the apartment. The two of them went to the kitchen, where Clark started making coffee. “I didn’t actually take my test,” said Betsy, taking a seat at the small table in the center of the room. “Something weird happened.”
Clark turned to look at her, curious. “At the DMV?” he said.
“On the way to the DMV.”
“Oh?” Clark turned back to the coffee machine, frowning.
“Um. So—” Betsy laughed again and ran a hand through her hair—”I don’t usually talk to, you know, people on the street or whatever—but, okay, I was standing on a corner waiting to cross 8th Avenue, to get to the DMV, you know, and all of a sudden this guy comes out of nowhere and says to me, ‘Hey, it’s your turn.’ And I’m like, huh? But I just ignored him, you know, figured he was crazy. But he’s still standing in front of me and, again, he’s like, ‘It’s your turn,’ and now I notice he’s got one hand behind his back, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh shit.’ But then he brings his hand around and he’s holding this, uh, thing—” Betsy stopped and picked up the backpack. She opened it and slowly withdrew a large steel helmet that resembled something from ancient Rome or Mesopotamia, though it looked more like a Halloween mask, menacing but almost cartoonish, with short spikes on the top.
When Clark looked up and saw the helmet, he froze.
“And, I don’t know, he hands it to me, and for some reason I took it! I don’t know why. But then he just runs off into the subway, disappears—and I’m like, ‘Wha….’” Betsy laughed again, giddy. Clark stared, his face drained of color. “So I didn’t know what the hell was going on, right, but I started to think, ‘Huh. This looks like it might be worth something.’” She paused. Clark didn’t move. “So, here’s my theory,” said Betsy. “I think I was meant to have this. I think it came into my life for a very important reason, and that reason is that I should try to find out how much this thing is worth and then sell it—so that I can finally move out of Bayside! To the city!”
Clark remained still, then slowly lowered his head and stared at the floor, his mouth open but empty.
He recognized the helmet. Three decades earlier, he’d stolen it from the museum where he worked. He never really knew why. He’d sold it on the black market for eight million, most of which he lost in a pyramid scheme involving bogus time-shares in a nonexistent resort on a nonexistent Caribbean island. He’d never thought he would see the helmet again. He had only been a janitor at the museum, so he had no idea of what the helmet’s historical significance was. He knew only that the label in the display case had read: “Forged steel painted with gold leaf. Found in the Warring Kingdom excavation layer.”
Now, seeing the helmet in the hands of his niece, he knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. She, like his younger self, had grand ambitions involving real estate. The helmet, he knew, could be nothing other than a curse sent down from the past, from the Warring Kingdom, a land torn apart, no doubt, by constant land disputes and excessive litigation.
And as he looked up at his smiling niece, Clark knew that there was nothing he could do to prevent her from falling victim to the same fate he had fallen to, so many years ago. Nothing, that is, except give her a thorough lecture on the importance of 1) not stealing things, and 2) developing a sound investment strategy.
Matt Cozart lives in New York.