THE CAM1
Chapter One 2
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He sat staring intently. He was drawn to it like a insect to a light. The computer hummed with the sounds of the jungle. The Safari Cam live streaming video of an African water hole. At any time you could see lions leopards and elephants along with wildebeest and animals of all kinds.
Victor Sokol lived alone. It wasn’t always like that. The young man of 28 was in love but she had left him. No explanation. Just left. One day he came home and her things were gone.Nothing of hers was left behind. It was as if she had never been there. 4
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Victor was always exercising. Lifting weights.He was proficient in the martial arts which in turn gave him a hard athletic body. He stood 6ft 3, his dark brown hair was pulled back and hung to his shoulders in a tail held by a diamond studded hair tie she had given him. His clean handsome natural features attracted many women. But he was interested in only one and she was gone.
So he sat for days stunned just staring at the computer searching ever searching for what? He didn’t know.
Then he stumbled across the Safari Cam. And it caught his attention. Fascinated him. Here was life! And death played out on a daily basis. And so he sat watching caught up in the daily struggle of life on the African plain. But he had to live. So he had to eat and to eat he had to work . So he slept. He worked. And he ate very little. He sat and watched the cam. It was his escape. It helped him think of anything but her. It was Friday morning when it happened.Something that would shape his life for years to come.6
It was a rainy morning when he awoke the alarm clock blaring its Bon Jovi tune “Have a nice day.”He went to the bathroom relieved himself and made his way downstairs. After making coffee and grabbing a cup he made his way into the living room to check out the Cam before he had to leave for work. When he sat down he noticed the screen was black. “Hmmm must have shut down” he mumbled to no one and pushed the button to start up and nothing happened. He sat still for a moment then as he felt his heart beat accelerate he checked the plug. It was connected. He swallowed bitterly at his next thought. The computer crashed!Damn!What was he going to do now if it had?“Shit!"Did everything in his life have to fall apart at once?Well this won’t do. He felt helpless.Alone. Abandoned. And now his computer is gone. He unplugged it and tried several different outlets but the same blank screen stared back at him every where at every receptacle. He was no computer genius in fact he was more computer illiterate. But he was sure it was the hard drive that went.It was old and moving slow the humming and whirling sound of the drive was louder and louder every day.He could sense the inevitable and now no safari cam. He will have to rectify the situation but right now he has to get to work. The mail doesn’t deliver itself.7
Victor Sokol was a mailman for the great state of New York. Upstate New York in fact. He used to love his job delivering the mail always feeling the link of the pony express the first mail carrier all through the ages to himself. A history to be proud of. Sometimes bringing happiness to doorsteps and other times grief. That part wasn’t so gratifying. Now it seemed even the people who had a occasional kind word or hello only grimaced when seeing him coming. The world had changed since she left him. The veil of a carefree world had dropped and he could see the shades of grey now. Was it the world that had changed or just him.He didn’t know anymore. What he did know was he couldn’t go back home without a computer without his Safari Cam. 8
So that afternoon instead of eating lunch in his mail truck as he would normally do he went to the local Supermarket in the area to check the want ads for a computer. He didn’t need a new one, maybe someone was moving or their kid was leaving for collage and they wanted to get rid of one. He only needed one to get back on the internet.The Safari Cam(his obsession now). The entrance to the supermarket had a cork board hung on one wall. The board measured 4x5 foot and was covered with items for sale from toaster ovens to cars.They were postings for garage sales bake sales.Everybody was selling something. Then it caught his eye down in the corner of the board. A little yellow posted note that simply said. “Laptop for sale, Corner of Banbury Rd and Rt 140(Pinewoods Ave.). "Hmmmm Pinewoods" he wondered if it was anywhere near the cemetery. He wasn’t really interested in a laptop but what the hell if it would get him on line he would take a look. He pulled the piece of paper from the board and stuffed it in his shirt pocket and feeling like he had just won the lotto he went out to his truck and ate lunch.
He finished early on this day. He was anxious. As the day progressed he began to worry someone else may steal his find. 9
His computer! 10
It was his! 11
He found it! 12
Now he just had to get to it before anyone else does. He raced through his route and done he got back to the post office and changed. Taking the note from his shirt pocket he literally flew out of the building jumped in his Ford Explorer and pulled out of the parking lot. He almost hit a dog crossing the street in his rush. Slamming the brakes. Then sheepishly turning on his windshield wipers he headed south down into the city then turned onto congress and up the hill. Past the park after rounding the bend onto Pawling he veered left a ¼ of a mile onto Pinewoods Ave. He sped along the road now in anticipation.Banbury! Banbury! Couldn’t be to much further and then he was there at the road. And there on the corner of Banbury and Pinewoods loomed the house. It sat directly across from the old Forest Park Cemetery aka Pinewoods Cemetery one of the top ten most haunted places in the United States. It was now run down and overgrown. The gates are gone only the two pillars still stood with chains strung across them and signs screaming KEEP OUT hanging from them. The mausoleum that stands in the middle of the cemetery and at the crossroads of the winding twisting trails that snake through the grounds has been vandalized and splayed with Satanic symbols. Some people believe it is one of the 7 gates of Hell. Victor stood looking at it for a minute musing. "It figures one of the gates of hell would be in Troy. That would explain it” He chuckled then turned his attention to the house. The old Victorian house loomed over the road the two windows at the very top seeming to stare down malevolently at him. The house took to the stormy backdrop as a fish to water. It’s off color white was blunted by the flame red trim that encompassed the whole house. Victor stood staring and then with a great exhale of breath started up the steps that looked as if they had been carved out of ivory. The door was oak, and solid with a some sort of pagen ritual being played out on it in the carvings a half inch thick into the door. Victor knocked twice and waited a full two minutes before knocking again. "Shit!” he thought no ones home. He decided to try around back. Circling the house to his utter astonishment there was no other entrance. There was just blank walls as if the house had only one face out front. “Strange, very weird!” But upon rounding the corner to the front of the house to his amazement the door was open standing silently beckoning him to enter.
Alright he will play(he thought)and he made his way up the steps. Standing in the doorway he gazed into the foyer.The foyer like the back half of the house had no face. It was blank. Just a round off white room with no other exit or entrance save the doorway he was standing in. Victor never even noticed this detail he was transfixed by the sole object sitting in the middle of the room. There stood a Cole black table with 4 legs jutting out from it as if it were a giant tarantula ready to spin its deadly web to catch any unsuspecting victim. But that wasn’t what was so captivating. 13
No. It was the object on the table that had victor so enchanted. 14
There it was! 15
The Laptop! 16
What he had come seeking. 17
It was closed and the brand name which was stamped in the center of the cover read Salem.Next to the Laptop was a price tag hand written in very elaborate strokes $66 and 6 cents. Odd price but never the less he had to have it.Victor wanting to waste no more time here counted out the sum and placed it on the table even rounding it out to $70 but when he reached for the Laptop he found he couldn’t move it. It was if it had been cemented to the table. 18
“What the hell?”He dropped to his knee reaching under the table to feel for a latch or hidden mechanism but found nothing. Again he tried to pick it up and found he couldn’t move it. 19
Hell. For that matter he couldn’t move the table. Was it bolted to the floor? He looked around him and it was then the oddity of the room struck him. He felt the hair on the back of his neck raise and some deep primordial fear was beginning to rise up in him. And then why he could never say? He slowly picked up the four extra dollars and put them back in his pocket and placed 6 cents in their place and without hesitation for he new. He picked up the Laptop turned and walked out of the house.20
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To be continued …….
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