It’s the first time I’ve ever seen magic at work.
I’m jolted out of my fascination by the sudden appearance of brake lights in front of us, alarmingly close. I hit the brakes and the horn simultaneously.
We’ve entered the business area of the town. The streets are full of last-minute curfew-beaters, and nobody’s happy about the crush. Everywhere are snarling faces, underlaid with panic. The sky’s taken the hue of a rich wine, the bellies of the dotted winter clouds frosted with the sun’s last rays. Sunset can’t be more than half an hour away and everyone knows it. They want to be inside when the night comes, in case it brings back last night’s trouble. I get it, but they’re holding us back in a big way.
“Send it up higher,” I tell Kenta.
“I just told you…”
“We need to see more,” I cut him off. “Even a little bit could make the difference. We’re not getting through this quickly.”
He shrugs and toggles the controls. Snarled in traffic I have plenty of time to watch the phone display. The view opens up, the town on the screen washed under a tidal surge of life energy. The view levels off. Kenta’s added another fifty feet to the drone’s altitude and starts sending it out in a wide circle around us. It helps, but does it help enough? I glance at the sky, trying to will the sun back up.
The traffic gods send us a clear stretch of road and I get to use the gas pedal. We move slowly, but we’re moving. I’m forced to watch the car in front of us and leave the monitoring to Hollett. It’s only a minute or two after we gain some forward momentum that he barks out, “Stop!”
I jam on the brakes, eliciting a loud and piercing honk from the Mazda behind us. “What have you got?”
“Kenta, hold the drone where it is.” He holds the phone so we can see it. A couple of blocks away from us there’s a flat black hole in the sea of green waves.
“Is that it?” I take a quick look at the location and ease off the brakes, rejoining the flow of traffic.
“Looks like it,” Kenta says tremulously. “That’s what the signal looked like last time.”
“Could it be one of the offspring and not the original?” Hollett asks.
Kenta looks closer at the screen. “I don’t think so. See how large it is? The others are newer, they should leave a smaller footprint.”
Hollett looks at me for input. I shrug. “He’s done this before. We have to go with what he says.”
Hollett doesn’t like that anymore than I do, but like me he accepts it with the knowledge that time is of the essence. He moves the screen around a bit.
“Is that the high school?” He runs his fingertips across the screen, zooming in.
“I thought you didn’t know this town very well,” I say accusingly.
“Don’t take a security job without knowing what’s secure in your area,” he cautions.
I grunt in understanding and take a closer look at the screen. It’s tough to read through the green waves, but the currents of magic only pass about half through solid buildings and leave the solid borders easily spotted so I can make out enough of the surrounding geography to agree with him. I can make out the broad square of the parking lot, the irregular angles of the exterior walls, the football field and the baseball diamond. Zoomed in, the impenetrable darkness is centered in the clamshell of an auditorium that sprouts from the back of the school. The black hole in the oozing green tide looks as deep as a well and about as warm.
“I think you’re right,” I tell him. “That’s the school.”
“How far away is it?”
“Maybe a quarter of a mile.”
The sun’s a dying smear of red in my rearview as I turn at the nearest street and start threading my way towards the municipal center. Once we’re clear of the boulevard traffic becomes almost nonexistent, so it’s the work of only a few minutes’ drive before I can see tall sodium lights in the distance. I check the time on the dash. We’re beating sunset by fifteen minutes.
When we reach the parking lot it’s empty. It doesn’t take much to figure out why. The place is buttoned up tight. Thanks to the curfew all non-essential government workers get the night off, up to and including whatever staff work after hours in a closed high school. At most there might be a single security guard inside, but even if there is he’s doubtlessly holed himself up somewhere safe.
I drive slowly through the parking lot as Kenta swings the drone down to ground level. From here the school is a broad, two-story rectangle of weather stained red brick and sand-colored concrete with a broad brick and concrete awning over four sets of double doors. Most of the lights are on in a flagrant offense to power conservation rules, but I approve. The light will help limit the kiovore’s range of motion. I park fifty yards or so away from the main entrance and get out of the Jeep, leaving it running. I draw my Springfield in a two-handed grip and check out the main entrance.
From left to right the first three sets of doors are intact and secure. The fourth is fine under first glance, but a second shows the metal has been bent away at the junction of the double doors and then bent mostly back into place. If I’d needed any further evidence that it was inside, this was it. I head back to the Jeep to see Hollett and Kenta standing beside it.
“This is it,” I say. I sit down in the passenger seat, turn the engine off and open the glove compartment. As Kenta stows the drone in the back of the Jeep I rummage through the detritus for a moment before my fingers close on the small flashlight I keep there. I stick it in my left pocket, then dive back in until I locate the pebbled rubber grip of the feather-edged Gerber folding knife. I clip it inside my right front jean pocket and head back to the door.
Hollett’s got his thorn wand in a death grip and is patting his pockets, reassuring himself of the whereabouts of their myriad of contents. Kenta, the drone safely stowed, is holding his wooden pendant thoughtfully in his right hand, the hand wearing the heavy canvas glove, and is nervously flicking his sister’s enchanted tanto in his left. All I’ve got is a handgun that won’t kill my enemy and a pocket knife that might, if things go right.
I lead the way.
The closing door echoes out in front of me, the sound carrying all the cold finality of slamming prison doors. It’s not a cozy feeling.
The lobby of Superstition Bay High School is loaded with the detritus of the winter season. Their winter break started this week, but nobody bothered to tell anyone to update their public face. There are still posters advertising their winter formal, which if the dates listed are accurate was a full two weeks ago. A statue of a grinning anthropomorphic alligator (the school mascot, Bite), looms a full fourteen feet tall in one corner, wearing a wrestler’s singlet and football shoulder pads and a diver’s mask with snorkel while carrying a tennis racquet, baseball bat and lacrosse stick in his claws. His toothy head has been topped with an absurdly tiny Santa hat.
“Which way?” Hollett asks. Kenta, who has fallen in behind and between us, is nervously flexing his hand in the thick leather glove.
“The school’s been added onto a lot over the years, but it’s still basically a big figure 8,” I tell him, “and the auditorium’s at the back end of the school on the left. We go straight down the middle.”
“Glad they left the lights on,” Kenta says.
“The gym coach is a faun,” I tell him. “He must have gotten word that the kiovores try to avoid the light and did his best to keep them out of his place.”
“Find out what he drinks,” Hollett says with a grin. “I’m buying him a case of it.”
“You actually don’t want to know that,” I grin back, heading down the center aisle. Hollett and Kenta complete the triangle behind me. Our shoes squeak on the tiles, echoing up and down the hall. It only takes a minute to reach the wood-paneled doors of the auditorium.
The placard outside the doors announces the SBHS production of Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap”. The doors are set in a shallow foyer, set at a right angle to the hallway. They look fine, but the l
ight fixture in the ceiling above them has been crushed and mangled, broken glass and crumbs from the torn drop ceiling crunching softly under our feet. The entrance to the auditorium is in its own pool of darkness.
I take a deep, settling breath, then another, letting them out through my teeth in a gentle hiss. I take a single-hand grip on the Springfield, just in case it jumps out at me, and ease the door open with a soft metallic squeak.
I’ve been in here before, so I know what view is waiting for me. The auditorium is appropriately huge, an educational cavern built on what seems to me to be a severe downward slope. A percentage of the space must be built into the ground. Hollett and Kenta stick tight behind me as we pass through the doors into a small, four-foot vestibule. I stop at the edge and peek around the brief wall to get a quick look into the room. Rows and rows of seats lead down to a wide stage floor, dim lights filling the room with vast gulfs of shadow. The room is set for minimum lighting; the stage is set for the mystery.
But my life isn’t a mystery. It’s a monster movie.
They’re everywhere. Spectral faces stare out at me from the gloom, vague bodies silhouettes on the edge of my vision. Crouching in the aisle, staring at me. On the sparely decorated stage, perched on the set pieces like monstrous vultures in a still-life painting. Coiled atop the rows of seats, gaping at me with thirsty black eyes that are darker than the air around them. Tatters of clothing, suits and dresses and sweatshirts and jeans, hang from alien bodies along with matted and tangled hair, the only remnants of individuality that they have left. Without them they’re all the same blood-hued insectile carapace, faceted ebony eyes, hideous grasping claws and dagger-filled leech mouths.
I whip around and bodily shove Kenta and Hollett back out into the hallway, blocking them from view as I ease the door shut. Hollett, who didn’t get to look inside, doesn’t appreciate the effort.
“What the…” he starts to snap before I clap my hand over his mouth and muscle him across the hallway and up against a trophy case.
“Shut up,” I hiss. “I don’t think they saw me.”
“They?” Kenta asks in alarm.
“They’re all in there,” I whisper harshly.
“All?” Kenta looks like he’s swallowed a tennis ball.
Hollett peels my hand away from his mouth. “All of them?”
“Well, I didn’t exactly take a head count, but it’s damn sure most of them.”
The thought is paralyzing. It wouldn’t be all of them, of course. Like the one in the theater, there would be others scattered in dark places around town. I lean back against the wall opposite the auditorium doors, gun at the ready. Will they be curious enough to come check out what opened the door?
“Think the big one’s in there?” Hollett keeps his voice to a dry whisper.
“My guess is yes. Either the same instinct would draw them all to the darkest hole they could find, or else they all followed him.”
When Hollett speaks again his voice is troubled.
“Ian, we had a plan to deal with one of them, and that plan was dicey at best. We’re not equipped to deal with fifty.”
I keep the gun trained on the door. One twitch, one creak and I’m emptying the red magazine into the door.
“You know I’m right,” he says.
“Yeah, I know that,” I admit through my teeth.
“I’m all for fighting the fight,” he says quietly. “You know that. But I won’t throw my life away in a hopeless battle, and that’s what we’re facing now.”
“Hopeless?” Kenta’s voice is ghostly.
I focus on the door. My brain is spinning, firing off ideas like sparks from a Fourth of July sparkler. Then, as suddenly as a light being turned on, one of them locks in place.
“The plan is still the same,” I tell Hollett.
“No, Ian,” he says as if he’s leading a child through his lessons. “Our plan was specific. Find the one and kill it.”
“And that’s still the plan. Only now we have to go in there to do it.”
“You want us to go in there?” Kenta looks like he’s about to swallow his own teeth.
“I’ll go in and find the first one. They haven’t come out by now, that means they didn’t see me as a threat or else they just didn’t see me. They won’t attack me. We have,” I check my watch, “five minutes left. It won’t take me that long. I find it, signal you, then you come in and we kill it.”
“And if something goes wrong, if you fail, Kenta and I will be the appetizers tonight.”
“And I’ll still kill the prime one, after which you’ll be fine. Hell, you probably won’t even change all the way. I bet you’ll still have most of your own teeth.”
“Christ, DeLong.” Hollett is visibly weighing the odds, and by his expression the conclusion he reaches is marginal at best. “One sign that the situation has gone south and we’re out of here,” he promises.
“If that happens,” I concede, “go back to Doctor Laveau’s and watch over Lisa until the Calvary arrives. When that happens find an Envoy named Samantha Chappell. Tell her what’s happened. She’ll take care of you.”
He turns away from me and for a moment I think he’s changed his mind, saw the light and is walking out. He stops a short distance down the hall, at the maintenance door we’d passed, opens it and steps in. A moment later I hear water running, then he steps back into the hall with a short black hose. He sets it on the floor, letting the stream run across the hallway to the far wall. Then he stands firmly on the other side of the running water and beckons Kenta to stand next to him.
I step carefully back over to the theater doors.
They watch me go. Hollett’s voice stops me at the door.
“Move fast,” he whispers.
“Watch me,” I say, slipping through the auditorium door.
Twenty-Nine
The auditorium door slides shut behind me with a soft whisper, leaving me in darkness until my eyes can adjust to the new light level.
I can smell them, now that I know they’re here. It’s a dry, toxic smell, autumn graveyard leaves rotting in the shadows. I wonder if it’s the same scent Gault picked up back at Parkman Auto. A faint rustle sounds off in the theater somewhere, an unseen body shifting position. It comes again, from a different direction. And again. And again. They’re getting restless. I wonder if they can sense the setting sun, and the oncoming creep of night.
I start walking before my eyes can fully adjust, conscious of the dwindling hourglass sands. I step slowly and carefully, stepping gingerly to avoid scuffing my sneakers on the thin carpet. I round the corner of the short guiding wall with a brass dedication plaque (“Welcome to the Reese Auditorium”), take the bracing breath of a man cannonballing into an icy pond and step into the cavernous room.
It might be my imagination, but it seems that they’ve edged closer to the door. The faces look closer, the seats closest to the entrance holding more backward-facing bodies. The seats creak as they lean forward, staring at me with their unreadable, alien expressions, their bodies undulating gently, like snakes entranced by a flute.
I wonder what they see, when they see me. Am I a shadow in their vision, the way they were to Kenta’s scanner? Do I shine a different color, like an infrared camera panning across a heat-filled landscape? Or am I just what I appear to be: a fool walking into a den of lions who, unlike Daniel, has no God to close their mouths?
I scan the kiovores, forcing myself to breathe smoothly while my pounding heart kicks my eardrums’ asses. The light is minimal, but I can see enough of them to spot their individual differences, and my eyes are peeled for that long black ponytail I remember. The floor of the auditorium slants downward slightly, giving me the smallest bit of high ground to stretch out my vision, but it’s not enough in the dimness. I stop halfway to the stage, peering desperately out into the gloom.
I’m down to the end of my window. No time to patrol the aisles, even if I was brave enough to do that. I could fire off a shot into the ceilin
g, trying to provoke some kind of action, but the action would probably be for them to swarm me and pound me into a liquid. I’m out of ideas. I’m also out of time.
As one their heads all snap up to the ceiling, staring at it as though it isn’t there. They freeze that way for a full second before exploding into action. They leap for the door, flowing smoothly through it in a silent wave, fast buy not rushing, moving with sure, silent energy. Some take the emergency exit to the right of the stage, some rush the stage and disappear into the wings and the delivery door I know is back there. They make no noise. If there were less of them I probably wouldn’t even have heard their footfalls. In less than half a minute they’re gone, free to hunt and feed and spread. I hope Hollett and Kenta had a good head start.
“Shit,” I whisper. I couldn’t tell in the rush if the original was in there. I couldn’t even hazard a guess. It’s irrelevant now, though. They all sensed the darkness at the same time. I’m sure that, wherever it is, the first kiovore also knew when it was safe to go outside. It’s out there right now, like a shark in the ocean deep, getting ready to feed again. I turn back up the aisle, reaching for my phone with my free hand. I need to get a ride. I’m going to be needed soon.
The kiovore is waiting for me at the top of the aisle, less than twenty feet away, its armor-like skin cold in the dimness, the braid of black hair draped over its shoulder and across its chest. It stares straight at me, its face as vacant as a stone idol, its long arms hanging straight down so that its hands hang by its thighs. It seems even larger than before from my vantage despite its almost skeletal leanness, almost overpoweringly tall and imposing. I freeze, barely daring to breathe, my hand clamping down on the phone so hard the case cracks.
Its head slowly cocks to one side, those unblinking black eyes with all the emotion of a spider’s picking me out and dissecting me. It’s not moving. I can’t even tell if it breathes. As softly as I can I slide my right foot back, trying to create some space between us even though I know how fast it is. Half a mile wouldn’t be enough space to make me comfortable, but I’ll settle for half a yard.
No More Devils: A Visit to Superstition Bay Page 26