Mystery!

by Chantelle Aimée Osman

  Penny was silent. She wanted to weep, but her eyes felt dry as sand.

  “I wish I could help you, I really do,” Bessie continued. “You seem like a real nice girl. I wish we could have played cards sometime. I’m sorry this is happenin’, I really am. But I caint stop it.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Drink the tea. It’ll help you sleep. Mama made it real strong.”

  “Will I die?” Penny whispered.

  “We all gonna die. Just a matter of when.”

  As Bessie promised, the tea was strong, and quickly took Penny back into her cosmic nightmares. They were so compelling and so vivid that, when Penny awoke to find that she had been bound to a wooden cross and men in white robes with pointed white hoods were carrying her amid torchlight toward an old stone church, she at first thought she was surely still dreaming.

  But the smoke from the torches made her eyes water, and the leather manacles and straps bit into her wrists, armpits, and ankles. The Klansmen’s procession solemnly bore her up the front steps and into the church, which was full of more white-hooded figures standing on bleachers from the floor to rafters along the walls. Flickering torches and wrought iron candelabras cast strange shadows throughout the whole room. The Reverend Haughton stood beside a stone altar in front of a large, round stained glass window depicting the same weird symbols she’d seen on the book, which lay upon the altar in front of him. He wore deep purple satin robes with a dragon embroidered on the chest. The legs of his operator moved beneath the fabric at his belly.

  “Brothers, place her beneath the stars!” the reverend ordered.

  They tilted the cross and slid the post into a slanted hole in the stone floor. She found herself staring up through an open skylight into the cloudless night, the stars a profusion of cold sparks. One of the masked men secured her head to the cross so that she could look nowhere else.

  “Brothers and sisters of the Invisible Empire!” The reverend’s voice was like that of a god. “We gather here tonight to witness a new chapter for our world. Tonight ends this age of debasement and decadence, this age in which we have seen the sickly fruits of miscegenation and a society threatened by the mud peoples. Communist Orientals, cunning Jews, savage Redskins and brutish Negroes—after tonight, the world will be purified, purged of their stink and disease!”

  The crowd of Klansmen and women roared their approval.

  “I offer my own dearest flesh and blood, my own granddaughter, as an offering to the Great One. If she is deemed to be the example of exemplary young womanhood we know she is, she shall be the instrument of our salvation from a world of depravity!”

  “Hallelujah!” she heard Morinda shout from a nearby row.

  Granddaughter?

  She didn’t have time to dwell on it, for she heard the ancient book creak open, and the reverend began to read aloud some abominable incantation that was never meant to be heard by human ears.

  Penny felt her consciousness travel up, up into darkness as it did in her nightmares, only it was all real now, and she felt the vast consciousness of the eternal entity known to humans as Yog-Sothoth turn to notice her.

  How many miserable souls live upon your petty world? Its voice was a blowtorch upon the wax of her sanity, but the hardened bits of her mind summoned up the figure from her nearly-forgotten geography class.

  “Three billion, two hundred sixty-three million,” she whispered.

  A pittance. Not worth leaving my lair. Yog-Sothoth turned away from her and went back to observing the collapse of a nearby nebula.

  Behind the ancient Old One, Penny sensed a throng of its dark minions clamoring to taste what their master scorned as unripe fruit. She turned and beheld her own planet as they did: an obscure backwater world populated by craven, base gangs of over-proud apes…and none, perhaps, quite so abominable as the hooded figures who surrounded her body in the church.

  In the back of her mind, she could hear the reverend’s incantation intensify, and she felt the power of the stars themselves flood into her soul, her mind. Penny realized that she was the goddess of all who existed or who would ever exist on planet Earth, the ultimate Angel of Death for a species that seemed as eternally doomed and insignificant as a nest of ants in some forgotten desert. She could end all the pointless struggle and war and striving with a single thought, and the human race would become fuel for the beings who were by far their cosmic superiors.

  The cosmic energy flowing into her was enough to open a portal in the stained glass window and allow the hungry minions to swarm across the countryside, first toward Bucktown, and then the rest of the world.

  Dost thou wish it? asked the minions.

  The human animal in her—the part of her that wanted to jump when she found herself at great heights, the part that delighted when misfortune befell the bullies at her school—that part wanted to tell them “yes” and open the portal.

  Why should they survive when Mother is dust?

  But another part, the part that was capable of performing demanding music and the coldest of equations, the part that would not gibber in terror no matter what horrors the old gods showed her, had a better idea.

  “I do not wish it.”

  The minions turned away, indifferent, Penny instantly forgotten.

  Penny closed her eyes against the stars and let the power of the reverend’s spell explode out of her every pore. Her body became a temporary sun. She heard the reverend’s keeper shriek a moment before it was incinerated along with its puppet. The Klan members had no time to scream before they burst into ash along with the wood and rock of the church.

  When Penny opened her eyes, she found herself lying on her back at the bottom of a blasted, scorched crater, her cosmic energies spent. Nothing but she had survived. She shook off the charred leather bindings, dug through the gray powder and debris until she found a pair of boots, tied them on her feet, and began the long trek back to town to call her stepfather.

  Back to TOC

  “(Ms.) Taken Identity”

  Timothy Zahn

  The nightly news was over, and I was heading to bed when Jacoby called with news of her own.

  It was pretty much the usual, except this time with a bit of a twist. Two, actually. The first was that the murder had happened at Thomas Porter’s fancy Porter House estate, during one of his upper-crust parties.

  The second twist was that the victim was a doppel.

  The tree-lined street outside the gate was also police car-lined when I arrived. Jacoby was already there, talking with a plain-clothes security type and two of the cops who were manning the barricades against the crowd. She spotted my car and was inside almost before I stopped. The cops passed us through the cordon and we headed up the long winding drive toward the mansion.

  “Good news first,” she said, tapping at her tablet where she’d made her notes. “The body was found on the floor in one of the guest powder rooms off the main ballroom. Given the way the drinks were probably flowing, it’s unlikely it was lying there very long before someone walked in on her. The gate guards swear no one left between now and a half hour before the alarm was raised, so our killer is presumably still inside.”

  “That helps,” I agreed.

  “Right,” Jacoby said dryly. “The bad news is that our suspect pool is somewhere north of two hundred of the country’s best and brightest.”

  I scowled at the mansion. It was certainly big, but it didn’t look that big. “They must be stacked like cordwood in there.”

  “I’m told a lot of them were socializing outside around the famous Porter fire pit,” Jacoby said. “Though I’m guessing they’re all back inside now, so the cordwood thing might still be valid.”

  She was right. Even with the help of the cops inside, we had to work our way through a whole crowd of fidgety but tensely quiet onlookers, all of them dressed in outfits that probably cost as much as my car.

  A lone cop was waiting at the powder room door when we made it past the gauntlet. “Qui
nce,” I identified myself.

  “Walden,” he said, glancing at the badge clipped to my belt. “I hear you’re the resident expert on doppels.”

  “I’m an expert on murders,” I corrected, already not liking him. He had the casual air of someone who’d worked his fair share of homicides and was used to the whole idea. For some of us, the basic inhumanity of murder never fully went away. “Doppels are just a hobby.”

  “I guess this is your lucky day, then.” He stepped aside and pushed open the door. “Be my guest.”

  In life, doppels could look like anyone they wanted. In death, they were a stomach-turning blend of movie mummy and human-shaped naked mole rat. The pale, hairless body lying on the tiled floor of the anteroom looked even more grotesque wrapped in a gold lamé sheath that had probably cost twice as much as my car.

  “Ugly SOBs, aren’t they?” Walden muttered from behind me as Jacoby dropped to a crouch beside the body. “No wonder they’d rather look like someone else. So how do you get to be an expert?”

  “Daughter,” Jacoby said.

  “What?”

  “She means this one’s a daughter of a bitch,” I said. “They’re not all males, you know. Jacoby?”

  “No ID,” Jacoby said, sliding her gloved hands inside around the edges of the dress. “Not that there’s really any place to put one in this getup. Do we know if she was a guest?”

  “Security’s running a check now,” Walden said. “But they think she was probably a crasher with a fake invitation.”

  Jacoby and I exchanged looks. Getting past Porter House security was an achievement in itself. “Any security footage?”

  “They’re reviewing the gate and perimeter cameras,” Walden said. “But they say there’s nothing inside the house itself.”

  Not surprising. The rich and powerful like being looked at, but only on their own terms.

  “Looks like blunt-force trauma,” Jacoby continued, drawing an air circle around a spot on the doppel’s forehead. The impact mark was small, smaller than it would have been on a normal person, but it was definitely there. “From the size and shape, I’m guessing she was slammed into the edge of that sink.”

  “So it could have been an accident?” Walden asked.

  “It could have been,” Jacoby said, “if it wasn’t for the other mark here.” She drew another circle around the right temple. “Someone slammed her head into the sink; and when she didn’t die right away they turned her head a little and slammed again.”

  “Doppel bodies aren’t as sturdy as your average human,” I told Walden. “It would be like killing a five-year-old child.”

  “Oh,” Walden said, his cynicism gone.

  A small thing, really. But anything that got a person to see doppels as people instead of alien freaks, even if that new-found empathy only lasted a few minutes, counted as a win in my book. “Anything else?” I asked.

  Jacoby shook her head and stood up, her eyes darting around the powder room as she noted objects, positions, distances, and angles. The crime scene cops would have taken pictures of everything, of course, but Jacoby liked to see things for herself. “The autopsy may show something, but I’m guessing it was the two head blows that killed her. Hopefully, she’s on file somewhere so we can at least get a name.”

  “Hopefully,” I agreed. “Go ahead and take her ring pattern. I’ll go see if our hosts can shed any light on what she might have been doing here.”

  Thomas Porter was one of the most recognizable faces on the planet, some said second only to Mickey Mouse. But right now, standing beside the massive desk in his upstairs office, he showed none of the easy charm and quick wit he liked to display for cameras and investors. His face was tight, his jaw and throat muscles clenching and unclenching, his fingers fiddling restlessly with an expensive-looking twitch stick. He looked up as I came in, his eyes automatically running a quick evaluation. “Detective Quince?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “My apologies for intruding on your grief, Mr. Porter, but I have some questions for you and your wife. Is she here?”

  “Bathroom,” he said, nodding toward a closed door at the side of the room. “And it’s not really grief, Detective. We didn’t even know the victim.”

  “How do you know?” I countered.

  “Because Beth and I don’t know any doppels.”

  “Again, how do you know?”

  He seemed to draw back, his eyes narrowing. Apparently, the thought that a doppel might be playing a long-term masquerade—especially among his circle of friends and associates—had never occurred to him. “I—” He broke off.

  It might have been interesting to let him go and see what sort of excuse or justification he came up with. But I didn’t really have time for that. “Never mind,” I said. “Let’s assume you’re right. Any idea as to why she might have wanted to crash your party?”

  “Of course,” he said, his eyes flicking to the side as the bathroom door swung open. “Beth? You all right?”

  “I’m fine,” a woman’s voice came. “Just a little queasy.” A woman stepped into view, also one of the most photographed people on the planet.

  Wearing the same gold lamé dress as the doppel lying dead in the downstairs powder room.

  At least I assumed it was the same dress. The top part was hidden beneath an open formal-length vest, blue with Chinese tooling, one of the current fashion rages among the rich and easily manipulated. But the lower part of the dress, as well as the neckline, looked exactly the same as the one downstairs.

  Beth’s step faltered a little as she spotted me beside her husband. “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry—I didn’t know you had a guest.”

  “That’s all right,” Porter said. “This is Detective Quince. He was just asking why a doppel might have wanted to intrude on our hospitality.”

  “The new phone, of course,” Beth said, her face darkening. “Just more industrial espionage, only this time raised to a new level.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Excuse me, Ms. Porter, but would you mind taking off your vest?”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “I’ll second that what and add a why,” Porter said. “What does her vest have to do with anything?”

  “The vest? Nothing,” I said. “I’m interested in the dress underneath it.”

  Beth looked at her husband, gave a little shrug and slid off the vest. “It’s a Joivivre,” she said. “The vest is a Tomás Varisi. The shoes are Prada Lux.” She half barked, half sobbed a little laugh. “Suddenly I’m back in my old modeling days.”

  “You haven’t lost your touch,” I assured her. The shoes, too, were identical to the doppel’s. “Thank you—you can put the vest back on. Excuse me a moment.”

  Jacoby answered on the second ring. “Yes?”

  “You get her pattern?”

  “It’s wending its way through Central.”

  “Good,” I said. “Get on the security records. I want to know if any of the other guests is wearing that same dress.”

  “What, you think there could be two dresses like that here?”

  “I know there are two,” I said, watching the Porters’ expressions closely. Mostly, they just seemed bewildered. “I want to know if there were three.”

  There was a moment of silence. “Okay,” Jacoby said. “I’m on it.”

  I put the phone away. “What do you mean, there are two?” Porter asked.

  “I saw at least three down there earlier,” Beth put in before I could answer. “Joivivre is very popular right now, and this dress is one of her bestsellers.”

  “What does this have to do with anything?” Porter asked.

  “One of those three women you saw was our victim,” I said.

  Beth’s smile vanished as she spun to face me. “What?”

  “Your wife said you have a new phone, Mr. Porter?” I prompted.

  His face went through the subtle contortions of a man forcing a switch of gears. “Yes. The phone.” He glanced at his wife, then reached i
nto his inner jacket pocket and pulled out a phone. “The Portal Seven,” he said, lifting it up.

  “Let him hold it,” Beth prompted.

  “Well…yes, sure.” With only the briefest hesitation he held it out to me.

  I took it. It was about the same size as my phone, but noticeably lighter. The case was different, too, softer and more comfortable than anything I’d ever used. “Nice,” I said, peering at the screen and the apps already loaded.

  “You have no idea,” Porter assured me. “I know it looks pretty standard, but behind the screen is a quantum leap in phone technology. It’s five times faster than the current generation, can connect to cell signals too faint for any other phone to pick up, has four times the battery life, and ten times the storage capability. You might as well call it a computer that also makes phone calls.”

  “Impressive,” I said. “Is that what the party was for? A private unveiling?”

  “Hardly,” Porter said. “This was the first of a series of get-in-on-the-ground-floor parties for some of our major investors and international distributors. I’ve been working the room, talking quietly one-on-one with them, offering a preview of what we’ve got coming up. When we debut, which I’m hoping will be within six months, we want as many ducks lined up as possible.”

  “Rich ducks, I assume?”

  He gave a microscopic shrug. “New tech is always risky, and investors have gotten skittish of late,” he conceded. “But I’ll convince them. Portal Seven: You’re going to love it.” He reached over and squeezed his wife’s hand. “Beth came up with that one.”

  “Well, good luck with it,” I said. “So you’re thinking the doppel was a thief?”

  “What else?” Beth asked bitterly. “Impersonate me, pick the phone out of Thomas’s pocket, and walk straight out the gate. There are companies out there that would pay millions to get a look inside that case.”

  “The case is pretty interesting in itself,” I said. “So there’s no security out at the gate?”