The Vanishing

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “Why not?”

  She followed the powerful river around a few more twists and turns and stopped. “That’s why not.”

  The storm of paranormal energy that had been the stuff of her nightmares still barred the entrance to the Devil’s Ballroom. The currents were so fierce and so powerful that in places they crossed over into the normal spectrum. Here and there currents of cobalt blue and fiery red could be seen with just her normal vision.

  The atmosphere in the tunnel sparked and flashed, lifting her hair, exciting all her senses. When she looked at Slater she saw that he was studying the storm with intense fascination. His eyes were hot.

  “This is . . . amazing,” he said. “It looks like a miniature category five hurricane. How the hell did you and Olivia get through it?”

  “The raw power of flat-out panic, I think. We just held hands and aimed for the eye of the storm. Woke up on the other side.”

  “You woke up?”

  “The storm knocked us out for a while. Not long.”

  “Did you get out the same way?”

  “I remember now that we had no problem getting back out. It was going in that was tough. Like running through a storm of nightmares and hallucinations.”

  “Think you’re up for another try?”

  “If you’re sure it’s important. I’m older now and I’ve got much better control over my senses. It may not be as bad.”

  “We’ll do it the way you and I got into the outer cavern. Together.”

  He threaded his fingers through hers.

  “On the count of three,” he said.

  She braced herself and heightened her talent. “Right.”

  “One—”

  He plunged forward, hauling her with him. They slammed into the eye of the storm. For an instant she was back in the kaleidoscope. Chaos reigned. The world shattered into a million glittering pieces . . .

  And then they were on the other side. Her senses were skittering wildly, but at least she was awake. She hadn’t passed out this time. She realized that Slater’s hand was still locked around hers.

  “What happened to two and three?” she asked.

  “I was in a hurry,” Slater said.

  He studied the reverse side of the paranormal storm for a moment and then he turned on his heel, taking in the broken stalactites; the jagged shards of grimy mirrors that lined the walls, floor and ceiling; and the jumble of fractured crystals that littered the floor.

  “Incredible,” he said softly.

  “Welcome to the Devil’s Ballroom,” Catalina said.

  “Good name for it,” he said.

  He began to prowl the chamber but he kept his grip on her hand. The physical contact made it easier to combine forces to suppress the hallucinations.

  “Do you have any idea what this place was?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Slater stopped to examine a large chunk of yellow-green crystal. “I think we are standing inside what’s left of a machine that was designed to generate paranormal energy—a lot of it.”

  “I didn’t know there were machines that could do that.”

  “Designing and constructing such a device was one of the goals of the Bluestone Project. Looks like the Fogg Lake lab got as far as building this chamber.”

  “Why the mirrors on the walls and floor and ceiling?”

  “Mirrors and glass in general have some unusual and rather complicated physics that make them essential to paranormal research. The same is true of crystals.”

  “It looks like the researchers got this generator up and running,” Catalina said. “But something went wrong.”

  “There was an explosion,” Slater said quietly. “I think we know what the fallout was.”

  He drew her toward what appeared to be a panel of very thick green glass.

  “A window?” Catalina asked.

  “Looks like it.”

  There was so much grime on the thick glass that it was impossible to see what was on the other side.

  Cautiously, Slater set down his flashlight and used his palm to wipe off a layer of dust and debris.

  Fascinated, Catalina aimed her flashlight through the window. Inside was an array of old-fashioned control panels covered with dials, gauges and switches. There was a metal desk in one corner. Logbooks and drawings were scattered everywhere.

  A vintage pinup calendar hung on the wall. Miss July was a long-legged, well-endowed redhead. Her makeup, hairstyle, skimpy negligee and sexy pose were clearly from the middle of the previous century. Someone had drawn a circle on a very familiar date.

  “July twenty-fourth,” Slater said.

  “That’s it,” Catalina whispered. “The date of the Incident. The annual Fogg Lake Days celebration is held every year on July twenty-fourth.”

  “The explosion that took place here triggered the release of the paranormal gases that blanketed the town and the surrounding area,” Slater said. “Congratulations, Catalina. Fifteen years ago you and Olivia LeClair found one of the lost labs. Whatever is inside that control room and the rooms beyond it is all still a highly classified secret and worth a fortune on the black market.”

  “Whoever grabbed Olivia must think she can lead them to this place.”

  “Looks like she hasn’t done so yet,” Slater said.

  “We have to find her.”

  “We’ve got a lot more information to work with now—”

  He broke off and tilted his head a little, as if trying to hear something that was being said in the distance. He flattened his palm against the thick green glass and went very still.

  Catalina watched him, not speaking. She felt the energy heighten in the atmosphere and knew he was going into his zone: hearing voices.

  “Fear,” he said. “Panic. Something has gone wrong. Disaster. ‘Can’t shut it down. Out of control. Get out. Get out.’”

  Now Catalina could hear a sound, too. She flinched in reaction to the strident, insistent noise.

  Not voices.

  The retro telephone in Slater’s pack was ringing.

  CHAPTER 25

  What the hell?” Slater said.

  He yanked his hand off the glass and slipped the pack off his shoulders. He set the bag on the floor and quickly unfastened the straps.

  The phone rang again, a demanding, discordant summons that was impossible to ignore.

  Catalina watched him take the phone out of the bag.

  “Please don’t tell me we’re dealing with a ghost calling from the Other Side,” she said.

  He studied the phone. “No such thing as ghosts, remember? I think the energy in this chamber activated this device.”

  “Right. Well? Are you going to answer the phone?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Excitement crackled across his senses. Even if he had become one of the monsters, he still lived for moments like this, moments when the past sent shock waves into the present and made it dazzlingly clear that it could not be ignored.

  He closed his hand around the receiver, lifted it out of the cradle and cautiously held it to his ear.

  He heard a series of high-pitched pings.

  “Voices?” Catalina asked.

  “No,” he said. “Sounds like it’s sending out a signal of some kind.”

  A muffled grinding noise rumbled in the section of mirrored wall adjacent to the control room.

  Catalina swung around to stare at the source of the rumbling.

  “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “Gears,” Slater said. “Old and rusty but still functional.”

  Ponderously, the section of paneling slid aside, revealing a portion of the control room.

  The pings stopped. Slater crouched to set the receiver back into the cradle. He put the device into his pack and slung the strap over one shoulder. He walked clos
er to the doorway and aimed the flashlight into the room.

  “The phone sends the signal that opens the door of the control room,” he said. “It probably closes it, too.”

  “Why did whoever created it make it look like a standard telephone?”

  “I think it’s safe to say the engineers who designed it wanted to camouflage the fact that it’s a functioning paranormal machine meant to provide access to this chamber.”

  “In case the thing fell into the wrong hands?”

  “Exactly,” Slater said.

  Catalina moved to stand beside him. She played her light over the space.

  “Whoever was in here on the night of the explosion sure left in a hurry,” she said.

  The evidence of a frantic, chaotic departure was everywhere. In addition to the litter of papers and schematics, chairs were overturned. Coffee mugs lay in pieces on the floor. One of the drawers in the desk stood open. Slater crossed the space to take a look inside.

  “Empty,” he said. “When they evacuated this place someone grabbed whatever was in this drawer.”

  At the rear of the control room a door stood ajar. Catalina moved toward it and aimed her flashlight into the inky darkness beyond.

  “A hallway,” she said. “Offices on either side. Maybe some labs. The doors are all wide open. There are drawings and papers everywhere. They were running for their lives. I wonder if they all made it out safely or if there will be skeletons at the end of that corridor.”

  Slater moved to stand behind her. He added the beam of his flashlight to hers.

  “If there are bodies, there’s no rush to find them,” he said. “This is the most significant discovery the Foundation has ever made. We need to get a team in here to secure the artifacts and any data that was left behind.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  He glanced at her and saw that her eyes were narrowed and her jaw was rigid.

  “You think the good citizens of Fogg Lake will have a problem with the idea of the Foundation sending a team to this site?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Look on the bright side. It will give Uncle Victor a chance to sharpen his people skills.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We’ll let him figure it out later. Right now we have to secure this place.”

  “And find Olivia. Time is running out for her, Slater.”

  “Now that we know why they grabbed her, we’ve got what we need to set a trap.”

  Catalina turned to look at him. “How do we do that?”

  “We go back to the beginning of this thing and figure out who in Fogg Lake helped Morrissey’s killer get in and out of town unseen.”

  “What makes you think the person is still in town?”

  “I don’t know if he or she is still around but I am sure that the individual was here fifteen years ago. This is a small community. It won’t be hard to narrow down the list of suspects, and then we can start eliminating them.”

  “You said earlier that the accomplice might be someone who knew the area but wasn’t living here at the time,” Catalina reminded him.

  “That’s still a possibility, but after seeing this place I think it’s far more likely that the accomplice was a resident when Morrissey and the killer arrived. What’s more, I think that individual was still around the next morning when you and Olivia came out of the caves.”

  “Why?”

  “From an operational point of view, there was a lot of planning involved by someone who was intimately familiar with the area around Fogg Lake. That person had to meet Morrissey and the killer somewhere on the old highway and guide them to the cavern. That individual also had to secure a boat and return it without anyone knowing it had gone missing. The accomplice was still in town the next morning and in a position to learn that you and Olivia had survived but that everyone thought you had hallucinated the murder. That person also may have cleaned up the crime scene, just to make sure there was no evidence left behind.”

  “I agree that the accomplice was well acquainted with the terrain and the dangers in this area. I just don’t understand why you’re so sure that the accomplice was someone who was living in town when the murder went down.”

  “I told you, I can’t be absolutely positive,” Slater said. “I’m going with what feels like a probable scenario. But there is one more piece of evidence I can offer.”

  “What is that?”

  “You said that when the search party showed up, you and Olivia told everyone about the murder. You also described the ruins of the generator chamber.”

  “The Devil’s Ballroom.” Catalina watched him closely. “Right.”

  “You said you stopped talking about it because people told you it was just a hallucination. But at first you must have provided a lot of details.”

  “So?”

  “As you keep pointing out, it’s been fifteen years since you witnessed Morrissey’s murder. Now, after all this time, someone has come looking for you and Olivia. I think something happened recently that made the accomplice realize you and your friend didn’t hallucinate the Devil’s Ballroom. I think that person has figured out that you and Olivia LeClair actually did find a critical part of the Fogg Lake lab.”

  Catalina took a breath. “You believe that only someone who was in town immediately after Olivia and I got out of the caves would have heard our detailed description.”

  “Yes. You said the two of you stopped talking about what you had seen when your parents and the other adults in the community told you it was all a vivid hallucination.”

  “Olivia and I were all about passing for normal in those days—about showing that we had control. But that doesn’t mean that someone who heard us describe the chamber at the time didn’t tell someone else later, someone who recognized the description when they came across some evidence fifteen years later.”

  “That’s a stretch,” Slater said. “Not an impossibility, but a stretch. The logical assumption is that the accomplice was here the morning you and Olivia got out of the caves. Whoever it was heard every detail and remembered it.”

  She nodded. “Where do we go with that information?”

  “Nowhere,” Slater said. “We stay in Fogg Lake.”

  Catalina eyed him with grim determination. “How are we going to find Olivia if we hide out here?”

  “Think about it, Catalina. If the kidnappers expect Olivia to lead them to the Devil’s Ballroom, they will have to bring her here. Best guess? They’ve got her stashed somewhere nearby in the caves.”

  Catalina stared at him, stunned. “The cave system has never been mapped. They could hide a hundred captives indefinitely in these tunnels.”

  “Not if they want to find the Devil’s Ballroom. Sooner or later the kidnappers will have to make their move.”

  “We can’t just sit and wait.”

  “No,” Slater said. “We’re going to make our move first.”

  “Are we going to tell everyone in town that we found this place?”

  “No, for now this is our secret. But we are going to rattle someone’s cage.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Slater believes Olivia’s kidnapping is connected to the murder that occurred in the caves fifteen years ago,” Catalina said. “After concluding our investigation today I have to tell you that I agree with him.”

  She and Slater were sitting in a red vinyl booth in the Lake View Café, the only restaurant in town that was open in the evenings. They were talking to Euclid Oaks, the heavily built, bearded owner of the Fogg Lake general store. Euclid was also the mayor. He had stopped by the table to find out what was going on.

  Catalina was well aware that they had an audience. Most of the town’s population had managed to crowd into the establishment that evening. The restaurant and bar had gone silent when Euclid arrived. Everyone knew why he was there. Every
one was listening to the conversation.

  “What murder?” Euclid Oaks said.

  Outsiders might be excused for thinking the mayor was not very bright. They would have been very wrong. Euclid had been born and raised in Fogg Lake. He had left in his teens to go off to college to study mathematics. He had ended up teaching the subject at the graduate level. Later he had used his talent for probability theory to make a fortune in casinos around the world before returning to Fogg Lake to work on a theory involving something he called the duality of paranormal energy waves.

  Catalina put down her fork. “The murder Olivia and I witnessed, Euclid. I’m sure you remember. You were one of the people who came looking for Olivia and me the morning after we spent the night in the caves.”

  Euclid’s thick brows bunched. “But there was no murder. Your folks and everyone else agreed that you and Olivia had hallucinated the whole thing.”

  Slater looked at him. “Turns out I was able to collect some evidence at the scene.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Euclid said. He eyed Slater with undisguised skepticism. “What kind of evidence?”

  “At the moment I’m not at liberty to discuss it.”

  “Is that a fact?” Euclid’s scowl got tighter. He folded his arms across his broad chest. “Who got murdered?”

  “A Foundation researcher named John Morrissey,” Slater said.

  “What was he doing in our caves?” Euclid asked.

  “Good question,” Catalina said. “The Foundation thinks he was probably looking for hot artifacts.”

  Euclid eyed her and then shifted his attention to Slater. “You’re sure he got killed?”

  “As sure as I can be without a body,” Slater said. “Now that I’ve had a chance to examine the scene, I’m convinced the killer dumped Morrissey into the river.”

  “Huh.” Euclid pondered briefly. “Any idea who killed your guy?”

  “No, but we do have a lead on the people who grabbed Olivia,” Slater said.

  A breathless silence gripped the restaurant and the bar. No one moved.

  “What have you got?” Euclid asked.