The Little Black Book

Penelope Rose was just like any other twenty-something. She had an average job at MedTekk, answering phone calls about insurance coverage. She had a few close friends that she would hang out with on the weekends. The oddest thing about her was her long-lost father, who disappeared one night to never return. She sat with her headset on at MedTekk, typing up a work-up of coverage from a patient who had just called. It was reaching 2pm. She flipped her long chestnut braid over her thin shoulder as she placed her hand on a picture of her father that was pinned to her wall. He was of average height with shaggy brown hair, a very trimmed beard and was always smiling his crooked smile, as if he was always up to something exciting. Penelope's heart seized at the thought of him. He had vanished when she was eight years old, and she never learned if he had actually run off or something more sinister happened to him. She still had all these questions racing through her head. Had he left her on purpose? Where was he now? Did he have another family? She sighed. All that was behind her now, and she should move on, but it's hard when you don't get closure. She grew up in the foster care system until she was eighteen, then moved into her own apartment. She sat in her cubicle, staring at a bright blue screen in a daze thinking back on the last time she had seen her father, when the phone rang. Now, this was typical for her job, but this particular phone call was not.

"Ms. Rose?" a man said on the other end of the line. He sounded very tired, but eager to speak with her.

"This is she. May I ask whose speaking?" she asked in her monotone customer service voice.

"Ms. Rose, I'm your uncle's attorney. I'm sad to inform you that he has passed away." He replied. Penelope blinked, and was silent for a moment. She started to stutter.

"I-I'm sorry, sir. But I don't have an uncle." She stammered very confused into the phone. "How did you get this number?"

"This is Penelope Myra Rose, correct? Of 1365 Seaside Drive Apartment 206?" Penelope sat dumbfounded on the other end of the line.

"Um, yes, sir. But I don't have an uncle." She said, starting to get worried this was a prank call and she'd get in trouble for being on a personal call. She looked over her shoulder at her manager who gave her a sharp look, and tapped her watch.

"Look, I'm sorry, Ms. Rose, but I need you to come down to my office this afternoon. Your uncle has left you something in his will, and we need your signature. Can you be here around 6pm?" the man huffed.

"Uh, Sure. I guess. What's the address?" she sighed

Penelope wrote down an address on a sticky note in dark black ink. She watched as the time ticked forward on the clock. Every second passed as slowly as the first. When the second hand finally ticked to six, she was up and out of her seat, walking swiftly out the door, dodging her manager who was going to ask her to work overtime for the fourth time this week.

When she got to her car, she sat there staring at the address in her hand. She sighed and told herself she would go, just to sort out this mess.

She pulled up in her old gray Camry to the dilapidated office building. This had to be a trick. There was an old black Rolls-Royce in the parking lot, but no other vehicles. She stuck her keys between her fingers like metal talons ready to strike at the first sign of distress. She gripped the keyring until it dug painfully into her palm, then walked in the glass front door. An elderly man with bright white hair and a clean shaved face sat at a single desk in the middle of the room. He tapped his pen against the desk. The room was cold, compared to the sweat-inducing summer day outside. The green carpet was matted and dirty, and the fluorescent light was flickering and dimming. If it weren't for the streaks of light shining through the dusty smudged up windows, it would have been extremely hard to see.

"Ah, you must be Ms. Rose. Please sit." He gestured to the chair in front of him. Penelope took a gentle seat in front of him and sat on the edge of the chair which let out a loud creak as she put her weight onto it. She was ready to run. She tapped her toe quickly as the anxiety built up in her chest.

"Please, don't look so tense. This isn't my usual office building, just temporary due to a burst pipe." He said as he pulled out an manila folder, and slid it across the table towards her. The desk seemed like the only clean thing in the room. The sparse light shone on the desk, causing the polished oak to glow brightly, creating a glare. "Here you are, we just need a signature and then the twenty thousand dollars is yours." He smiled at her and handed her a black fountain pen.

"The-The what?" she said. The man looked irritated.

"The money your uncle left you is yours. Here, look." He opened the folder and pointed to a large check with her name printed on it.

"Now if you'd just sign here, and here. Then the money is yours to do what you'd like." Penelope took the pen but didn't sign. Instead, she looked at him in disbelief.

"I don't have an uncle." She repeated. The man stood up and went into a back room. She could hear him rummaging through boxes. He came back with a photograph. He pointed to two men who were hanging off each other in laughter.

"Here, you can have this. You were his last relative, so it should go to you." She gazed down at a picture of her father and another man who looked identical to him. They were twins. She sat there a moment in confusion. How could her father have had an identical twin, and yet she never even knew?

"May I ask you a question?" Penelope said putting down the pen in front of her. The man cleared his throat.

"Of course, anything." He said rifling through other papers on the desk, clearly only half listening.

"How did he die? My-my uncle?" she looked at him quizzically. The man stopped rummaging through the papers suddenly and placed them down.

"Well, that's a bit tricky. He disappeared, and after so long of being missing, he was pronounced dead. In his will, he left his savings to you."

"So, he might not be dead?" The man looked at her with saddened eyes.

"He has been missing for over ten years, the likelihood, well it isn't great. I'm sorry." He said. Penelope nodded, this was too much for her, and she just wanted to leave.

Penelope picked up the pen, signed the forms, and left with twenty thousand dollars. She sat in her car holding the check in her hands, and she knew that there was only one way to use this money.

The next day she made one call, and drove up to her father's old Victorian house that had been foreclosed on since he'd disappeared. She paid the fees to the state and the property was now hers. Penelope unlocked the door and nearly burst into tears. Much had changed since she was last here. The old cracked wood had vines running up the walls, and the stairs had fallen through. There were a few graffiti tags on the walls, and as the light shone through the stained-glass transom windows, she could see the years of dust and dirt floating through the rays of light. What she really had come for was to her left. Penelope held her breath as she took out a skeleton key from her denim pocket and unlocked the sliding door. She had a hard time sliding it completely open, so she wriggled her way through to the other side. She stood in the middle of her father's library. Penelope sat down and cried from the weight of her memories. The days where she would lounge in this room on the floor playing with her dolls, the days where her and her father sat curled up in blankets and read in silence. She felt more lost than ever. Wiping her eyes, Penelope stood back up and traced her fingers over the spines of the tomes, her fingers coming away with grime from lack of care. She chose a book and pulled it out. She pulled the book out, and with it a little black book fell from the bookcase too. It landed face-up, open to a blank page. She looked down at the book, noting that it seemed to have something dripping on it. She looked up at the ceiling, it was completely dry. Confused, she then looked back down at the book. A puddle was slowly forming, moving rhythmically across the pages as it grew. Penelope picked up the book lightly in her hands, and running water rushed out. The water began flowing out in waves, pulling her toward the book too fast for her to escape. The waves crashed over her, and the book sucked her in. She struggled to swim, and as soon as she was too tired to try anymore, she washed up on a shore. The sun beating down upon her face. She started coughing up salt water with her head turned to her side. She could see someone standing over her, holding out their hand.

"Hello there, Penny." Her head snapped up and she put her hand up against the glare of the sunlight and standing there was her father. She grabbed his hand and they embraced for a long moment.

"I knew, you'd find me. Someday." He smiled at her.

"I don't understand. What's going on? Why are you here?" Her father only shook his head.

"In time." Was all he said. "The sea awaits." He said pointing to a massive pirate ship drifting out in the horizon, another man waving in the distance. Her uncle.

"Maybe, all you need is a little adventure." He said, a delightful crooked grin on his face.

He kissed her forehead, and she watched as the ship neared, and suddenly she knew she was home again.