by Deen Ferrell
It was H.S.’s turn to lean back in his chair. Willoughby carefully explained about the time freeze, about seeing the face staring at him out of the light and not knowing where it came from, and about the conversation he overheard between the man who owned that face and the tattooed man who had been photographing Antonio’s shop. H.S. listened carefully, not interrupting. When Willoughby was done, he tapped a finger on the tabletop, seeming to be lost in thought.
“You say the tattooed man referred to this man as Mr. B?”
“Yeah,” Willoughby said. “The ones that took over the ship referred to someone they called ‘BL’ or the ‘Big Man.’ They called me a special prize for him. Do you think it could be the same guy?”
“Hmm…Mr. B, Big Man, BL…Could this be the same entity associated earlier with the cult? Could this be Beelzebub?” H.S. shook his head. “I don’t know, Willoughby.”
Willoughby gulped, looking down at his plate. “Uh, do you think…Do you think I messed up by not telling you earlier? Could I have helped prevent all this?”
“I think we’re all asking ourselves could we have helped prevent this. Perhaps if we had each done things differently, the outcome could have been affected. Perhaps it would have made no difference at all. I do know one thing,” H.S. forced a smile. “I know that you, Willoughby, are a prize.” He pointed down at Willoughby’s plate. “For now, eat. We need to get you better.”
Willoughby reluctantly picked up his fork and began eating the eggs. H.S. watched him for a moment, his mind far away in thought. At last, he spoke.
“Those who attacked us a few days ago, Willoughby, spent months in planning this attack. They had already infiltrated our defenses long before you were recruited. If there is any blame here, it is on me for being too convinced of our technological superiority. I should have been more careful. Had you told me this earlier, I don’t think it would have changed anything. The plans of our attackers were too far along.”
Willoughby breathed in, a sense of relief flooding over him. A seagull swooped low, making a loud cry. H.S. stood, giving Willoughby another tight smile.
“Now, I suggest you eat quickly. If you choose to take lunch on the veranda as well, you may want to do the same. These gulls mean business.” He pushed his wrought iron chair back and stood. “Get some rest today. We leave on my yacht tomorrow evening. You have a whole day to regain your strength. Dr. Kensington will be around in the early afternoon. I have things to attend to, but I’ll be back in the morning. I’ve given Sydney and Dr. O’Grady an assignment on the other side of the island. I thought you might like a day to yourself. Sydney may sneak in for a moment when she’s back, but it should be late. You can always pretend to be asleep if you’re not in the mood for a chat.”
Willoughby puffed out his cheeks. “Thanks.”
With that, H.S. was gone. Willoughby breathed in deeply. This was no longer only about Observations, Inc., or mathematics, or adventure, or even saving or impressing his friends. He had been meant to find H.S. For whatever reason, he was already a part of this, even before he knew. Now that he did know, there was nothing for it but to accept his quest, whatever that quest might be. There was no running away. There was no turning back.
For the rest of the day and until the sun sank to touch the water in a blaze of color before him, Willoughby alternated between resting, reading the few books H.S. had left him on Nostradamus, and standing for long moments at the rail of the veranda, staring out over the pink sand, the turquoise ocean, and the blue, blue sky. Sydney did sneak in just after it got dark. Willoughby followed H.S.’s suggestion and pretended to be asleep.
“Hey,” Sydney whispered. He didn’t respond, his eyes shut tight. She stood there a long moment. “Well, I just wanted you to know that, uh, that I did want to tell you about your father. I had a big fight with H.S. about it, but…H.S. has been like a second father. I’m sorry.”
Willoughby still didn’t respond, though a tear may have escaped his eye. He tried to push his face toward the pillow so she wouldn’t see. Finally, she left. When he was sure that she was gone for good, he opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.
The last thing he thought of before drifting off to sleep for real was his earlier talk with Sydney. Things felt different when he thought of Sydney now. The trials they had been through together made them more, well, more sensitive around each other. Everything she said seemed to hurt, or to send his heart into dancing cartwheels. How weird was that?
He thought about sitting on the veranda with her, not saying a word, just watching the sun set over the ocean. Well, okay, Willoughby had to admit to himself; this is Sydney—maybe the part about not saying a word is too much of a stretch.
29
The Blind Eye
Antonio drifted back from the verge of unconsciousness. He was being dragged. The terrain under him was hard and uneven. His leg burned with every movement as if it were on fire. Who was dragging him? He tried to focus his eyes. Pain shot through his whole body and he gasped. He tried to raise his head but could not seem to make the muscles work. There was too much pain. The black head of the fanged beast had snapped down on him. Was it dragging him? A shiver of terror racked him. How many times had the beast bitten him? Was his leg even there anymore?
“Keep still,” a panting voice commanded. “You need to listen—listen carefully Antonio!”
Antonio felt a flood of relief. Whoever was dragging him, it was not the monster.
“We’re not out of this yet. You’re heavy. I’ll have trouble moving you myself. Can you hear me? We need to get away from the water—somewhere under the rock.”
Antonio recognized the voice. It was T.K., the cabin girl, or…His mind was drifting. What had that brutal man called her? He tried to think. Princess…He had called her child princess. In fact, his exact words had been “the child princess who didn’t die.” The man’s name had been Belzar. They were on a ship—the Absconditus. Belzar had aimed a gun at her. He had saved her. He remembered the closet, the glowing knob. Then they had been falling into the dark waters of a cave, and a black beast had risen up from the water. It had attacked. He saw in his mind the cabin girl, T.K., slicing at the beast with a fury and intensity he could never have imagined of one so attractive and petite. She had struck the beast at least three or four times, forcing the massive head to finally let go.
Antonio tried to pull up, but a wave of pain washed over him and the world went suddenly black. He drifted in and out after that, through what seemed to be hours of pain and nausea. He vaguely remembered T.K. bending over him, staring in his eyes, and then cutting his pant leg open. Finally, he managed to move his head.
“What happened?” he croaked in a harsh whisper. He noted that T.K. had a blood-soaked rag tied around her forehead and a line of drying blood on her cheek. She turned toward him.
“Good, you’ve regained consciousness. We need to get you up under that ledge. If you’re asking why we’re both still alive—why the beast didn’t kill us—I got a lucky slice across its nose. It sank away, but you’ve been out for hours. It will be back soon…can you move?”
Antonio was distracted from the pain for a moment. How was he able to see? They were in a cave with no visible opening, yet there was light. He studied the cave ceiling. It was alive and glowing.
“The light…the ceiling…”
T.K. followed his gaze. She wiped sweat from her brow. It was hot and humid in the cave. “It’s glowing algae. It reacts to vapors from the water. Smell that metallic scent? Kind of like a cross between rust and sulfur? That triggers it. Sometimes it’s brighter, sometimes it’s almost dark. When the waters are being agitated, more vapors are released and the algae glows bright.” T.K. stepped toward a jagged wall of rock only partially covered by the glow. She pointed at a dark crevice.
“In there is where I need to move you. I need you to go in first, so I couldn’t really drag you.”
Antonio took a pained breath and forced a look at his leg. The pain was barely tolerable when he tried to move it. He dropped his head back, relaxing the leg. “How bad is it?”
“I’m no doctor, but I don’t think it’s broken. The fangs didn’t hit an artery. Once the poison works its way out of your system, I think you’ll live.”
“Poison?” Antonio moaned.
“It’s mild,” T.K. answered. “I’m not sure if it actually injects venom or if it just infects you with nasty bacteria from its teeth. Either way, I’ve lived through it before. Your chances are at least passable.”
“Thank you for that,” Antonio mumbled. T.K. turned from him and started to carefully scale the wall. Antonio watched, his eyes narrowing.
“Where are you going?”
T.K. climbed higher—as if she hadn’t heard the question. Finally, as she began to carefully pull herself onto a thin ledge, possibly twenty feet up the rock face, she spoke. “I told you before—the beast will be back. He’s been gone too long already. If we don’t stop him somehow, we both die.”
Antonio watched, spellbound, as the girl pirouetted ever so slowly until her back was to the rock and her face peered out over the dark waters. She eased her hand down and pulled her knife.
“You have a plan then?” Antonio asked.
“No. I just like the view,” T.K. snapped. “Of course I have a plan!”
Antonio waited a long moment. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Are you…going to tell me?”
“No.”
“Am I part of this plan?”
“Absolutely,” T.K. flashed him a tight smile. “You’re the bait… I suggest it’s in your best interest to push yourself into that crevice beneath the overhang.” She pointed again to the dark space near the base of the rock wall.
“The bait?” Antonio tried to move, pushing himself up from the cold cave floor, but he fell back, wincing from intense pain. “I…do not think…this is such a good plan.”
“That’s why I didn’t want to tell you about it.” T.K. watched the dark waters, adding in a barely audible mumble, “I should have known. It’s what comes of getting mixed up with H.S.”
It took Antonio a moment to get the pain completely under control. When he finally spoke it was through gritted teeth. “You speak…as if you know something about him.”
“I told the Captain not to work for him. He shouldn’t have ignored me.” There was bitterness in the girl’s voice. Antonio thought he saw her wipe at a tear. He decided to change the subject.
“How do you know this place? How did you know that—Belzar?”
“That Belzar is a thief and a murderer. A long time ago, he worked for H.S.”
“H.S. never mentioned—”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure there are a lot of things H.S. never mentioned to you. Unfortunately, now isn’t the time to discuss them.”
Antonio was feeling dizzy from trying to talk, but it kept his mind off the idea of being bait. “If I am to attract… the beast, I deserve to know my chances.”
T.K. bent her knees slightly, her knife at the ready. She sighed. “Better if you can make it to that crevice…When the beast surfaces, you don’t need to do anything. It will smell you. It knows that you’re hurt, that you’re weakened. You are frightened, aren’t you? It needs to sense your fear.”
“Oh, I think I can play that part well.” Antonio tried to force a smile.
“It will strike at you without hesitation, then, I’ll drop on its head and slash out its eyes.”
Antonio thought for a moment. “What if you miss or are thrown off?”
T.K. shrugged. “Well… then we both die horribly.”
Antonio couldn’t help it. The plan was so hopeless that all he could do was offer a weak laugh. He breathed out a sigh. “Die horribly you say, as if it is a stroll down the boulevard…”
“Life is a stroll down the boulevard. What do you want me to say? Every street eventually ends.”
“What are we facing? Is it a giant sea snake?”
T.K. wiped at her forehead again. “No. You didn’t see its whole body—only its neck. It has the body of a giant seal.”
Antonio thought for a moment. He almost stopped breathing. “A plesiosaurus? All the way back to the Jurassic…? No. We couldn’t have traveled so far back. Not without a connecting bridge.”
“Tell that to the plesiosaurus…”
T.K. looked up, suddenly tensing. “Push to the crevice, Antonio—NOW! It’s here!”
Antonio heard the water ripple. He tried to rise onto his elbows, fighting to push toward the crevice, glancing around for anything he could use as a weapon. He grabbed at a medium-sized rock and slid it over. The beast burst out of the water, splashing a wave of warm stink over him. Its eyes glowed deep amber in the dim light. It pushed its head higher until it was a good twenty feet out of the water. The head was hideous, flat and pointed, and at least five to six feet wide. Antonio was afraid it would see T.K. on her ledge of rock, but she had frozen, becoming absolutely still. The beast spun its head, as if looking for her, and then turned back to Antonio. It trumpeted in a deafening roar, spraying spittle and seaweed all around. Antonio pulled his hands to his ears and roared back. The beast coiled its head to attack. It shot forward, sharp rows of fangs bared in an angry hiss. Antonio rolled sideways, pulling his rock to block the fangs. At the edge of his vision, a blur of motion collided with the darting head. T.K. was only able to hold on for a matter of seconds and was then thrown sideways, back into the pool of odorous water. She had made her few seconds count, though. The beast coiled and screamed, protecting a badly bleeding left eye.
It plunged back into the pool, coiling and uncoiling its neck. Its cries literally shook the cave. As it writhed in the water, it pushed back, slamming against the far wall. Then it was gone, plummeting back to the depths from which it came. The cave grew silent. Antonio heard the sound of his heart beating and his gasps of ragged breath. He heard T.K. struggling back toward the rock ledge where she began to pull herself up. Moments later, the beast shot out of the water again. T.K. rolled up onto the ledge. The writhing beast turned its good eye on her. It trumpeted again, slamming once again against the far wall before shooting out in a beeline for the girl. Its head reared into a striking pose. Fangs bared, the beast coiled, trumpeting wildly, then its open jaws shot down in a lightning strike. T.K. screamed.
30
Time Fusion
Samuel Allan Wasser carefully polished a stretch of mahogany rail that curved along the upper sideboard of H.S.’s forty-foot yacht. The morning was still soft gray as a slight mist was rising up from the gently lapping waters of the expansive marina. He liked the tart tang of the salt-water air in the early morning and the bite of the cool sea breeze. For too long, he had allowed himself to be pinned to his duties on land, stuck in empty board rooms and dark limousines. He should be celebrating his escape from duty and deliberation. Why couldn’t he enjoy his return to the sea? He looked over a spit of pink sands toward a ridge of low hills, dark-green pools of shadow looming out of the morning fog. The boy was somewhere there, in their private facility along the ridge. He had almost died H.S. said. Yet he did not. He lived while others were now lost. Sam considered this, pushing hard at the railing.
Willoughby knew him as simply Sam, the chauffeur. And so he had been to the boy. He had observed the boy twice a day, Monday to Friday and occasionally on weekends. He had ferried him to and from that appalling snobbish school he was forced to attend, and occasionally, to and from other events. He had been observing the boy for almost two years now. Antonio’s opinions were valued, but were not enough. He had wanted to get to know the boy for himself. He applauded Willoughby’s disgust for pompous academia, his mathematic brilliance, his brooding sarcasm, his penchant for bravado and longing for adventure. Most of all, he admi
red the boy’s unspoiled good nature. It had been a hard decision to make, to bring the boy into the fold. Had it been the right decision?
Sam smiled to himself. Willoughby never suspected he was more than a chauffeur. Of all the hidden things within his secretive organization, perhaps he was the best-kept secret of all. Born to money, he had soon tired of it. As a young college prep student, he had been determined to seek out something extraordinary to do with his sizeable fortune. Then, he landed at Princeton and crossed paths with a visiting Cambridge professor named Hathaway Simon. The man gave a lecture series that peddled wild theories about the origins and nature of time. Most of his contemporaries thought the man mad, but he didn’t speak like a madman. He spoke with an authority that hinted at something stranger than wild theories. He spoke as if he had real experience channeling time.
Thirty-seven years later, here they were—he looking every bit of fifty and H.S. having seemed to barely age a decade. The man did have experience in time, extensive experience as it turned out. The evolution of Observations, Inc. had been bizarre, but exhilarating.
Looking over the gleaming wood rail, his mind brushed on H.S. He had confronted him about his ability to defy aging. The stout man had claimed it was the result of his frequent travels outside of time. Sam had begun to suspect there was more to it than that. He had traveled outside of time too—a considerable amount of time—yet he looked merely young for his actual age of fifty-nine. Now, with the events of the past week, coupled with the disaster the previous year in St. Petersburg, Hathaway had begun to hint at a far more complicated tale. He was, he confessed, a survivor of an ancient organization, one that had been wiped out by a calamity of epic scale. He claimed to be one of a kind.
Sam wasn’t sure he believed the man. Still, H.S. had delivered on the time travel technology. He was brilliant, and there were few like him around. Yet, what, exactly, was his “kind?”