Tara turned around and started to walk back toward Haslam House. She wanted to gather her thoughts, form a plan, unsure if she could face down her fears. She walked, still panting a little, amid birdsong under clear skies. Part of her wanted to walk forever and never have to decide anything ever again.
But suddenly, she was running.
***
This time, it took longer for Mortlake to put himself into a mild trance. The events of the day had left him confused, angry, full of self-doubt. But Carl had called his name, and Carl’s soul deserved whatever deliverance Mortlake could offer. He already had half of an idea and was now seeking more information. The only way to get it was to face terror in the dark.
The silence, and hint of colorless light leaking into the confined space, helped time become immaterial. Again, Mortlake struggled to clear his mind of irrelevant thoughts and fears. He began to worry that it would not work and that in itself was self-sabotage. Eventually, he forced himself to focus on the nothingness of the mirror, the total blackness in the near dark. The lightless rectangle became the universe.
Then he heard a voice, seemingly calling from an immense distance.
“Prof!”
Carl’s voice was anguished, but Mortlake got a sense of a man fighting heroically to control himself. In the mirror, a faint light appeared. It grew and became a rough oval. Features formed, and he saw Carl gazing anxiously down at him. Behind Carl, shadowy forms moved. Beyond them, a blazing image flickered in and out of view.
The wicker man.
“Prof, it’s hell. So much pain!”
“I’m sorry, Carl!”
Mortlake heard the anguish in his voice, despised himself for giving way to emotion when it was cheap and useless. He tried to focus, marshaling his rational impulses while not losing the connection to the other world. It was not easy, and the image in the mirror rippled, faded, then grew clearer again.
“Carl,” he said more evenly. “Can you talk to the others, or are they too far gone? Can you talk to the Romans or to Helen?”
As soon as he mentioned the medium, Carl’s face was replaced by another. It was a screaming head, engulfed in flames, a few hanks of hair burning on its head. It was barely recognizable as a woman, flesh falling from the face in glistening chunks. It screamed at him, cursing Mortlake with a volley of obscenities.
“Helen,” he said urgently. “You never burned. This is an illusion. It’s a form of torture. This is what the—the Evil One wants you to feel. You can resist! Turn all your emotions against it!”
“I can’t fight it! Set me freeeeee!”
The words seemed to echo, plaintive and full of pain. Helen York had not been an ambitious social climber, courageous up to a point. But she had been a loner, self-sufficient and mistrustful of others. Mortlake wanted to marshal the spirits held captive by the nameless demon.
“I can’t set you free, Helen,” he said.
The burning face screamed again. It grew until it filled the mirror then kept growing. Mortlake smelled burning flesh, gagged on the stink. He felt a wave of warmth and had to stifle panic. The cries of burning men filled the tiny space. The sensations were all in his mind, he was sure, but they could still do damage if he didn’t resist being overwhelmed.
“Only you can set yourself free—all of you!” he went on. “I can tell you how. Carl, come back if you can. Let me speak to you!”
Helen York’s face burned down, with unnatural swiftness, to a few fragments of blackened bone. Then Carl’s face reappeared. But this time, his features were contorted with agony. He, too, was caught in the unearthly conflagration.
“Prof! Prof! It burns you, and you die but you don’t die because it starts again. It never stops. I’ll go mad if I can’t get out!”
Mortlake felt a pang of doubt. Insane souls could not resist anything. Had the false god driven its earlier victims crazy? He hoped not. He was banking on some vestige of courage and resolve still existing in all of the human sacrifices. There was so much uncertainty, but he had to try.
“Carl,” he said. “If you can, will you communicate with the others? With the ones who’ve been there a long time ago?”
The contorted face in the mirror shook its head. Sparks flew and smoke rose from Carl’s hair.
“I can’t talk to them, Prof! They don’t think in English. I get a word here and there, can’t understand…”
Mortlake fought down despair again. He had to try something else. He almost lost the link to Carl as he tried to summon old little-used knowledge. He found the right words as best he could.
“Carl, listen, if you can memorize these words…”
He kept repeating the words, sitting in the dark, talking to the dead. He hoped he had got them right. A lot depended on his memory and judgment. Still, more would depend on the courage of a dead man.
***
Tara stopped running and started wheezing at the main doorway. She walked up the steps and into the hall, listening. She disliked the silence but was afraid of what might break it. Her sneakers squeaked on bare boards as she checked the empty living room. Mortlake’s case and an array of unpacked gadgets lay on the table. She picked up the taser, clipped it to her belt, then went out and paused at the foot of the stairs.
She could hear something. It was a voice, low and emphatic, and it was repeating something, but she couldn’t make out what. For a moment, she thought it was coming from the kitchen, but as she approached the closet door, she realized her mistake. She wrenched the door open, and Mortlake fell out, still speaking.
“Prof? Marcus?”
Tara knelt, supporting his head, looking down into his face. His eyes were unseeing, unblinking, wild. He was still mouthing what were almost nonsense syllables. Almost, but not quite. She slapped the side of his face gently, and he hesitated. His eyelids flickered.
“Cassandra?”
She laughed nervously.
“Never saw myself as a Cassandra,” she said. “You okay? Guess you fainted.”
He sat up, staring at her.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “The light was behind you and… I’ll be fine. And thanks!”
He got up, dusted himself off, and they stood awkwardly for a moment.
“Why?” he asked finally.
“I thought I should try and help,” she replied. “Was I wrong?”
Mortlake smiled.
“No,” he said. “I had you pegged for a fighter. And I do need your help. First, with some old-fashioned fetching and carrying.”
He set off the way she had come, talking rapidly. She interrupted to ask what he’d been doing in the psychomanteum. He explained in more rapid bursts, and Tara began to wonder if he had recovered from whatever had happened in the improvised spirit chamber.
“Prof,” she said, trying not to sound too concerned. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“No,” he said, looking down at her as they stepped out into the sunlight. “Is that a problem?”
She shrugged.
“I was just checking.”
They went to Carl’s van, which was mercifully unlocked. After opening the back doors, Mortlake stood gazing at the contents. The interior was filled with a jumble of tools.
“Not so tidy,” she remarked.
“No, but he had the tools for pretty much anything that might be required for a handyman,” the professor said. “A jack-of-all-trades. And that’s a good thing. Saves time.”
He started to rummage, throwing things out onto the driveway. Eventually, he found a small pickaxe that looked well used. He handed it to her and then found a long-handled spade.
“Okay,” he said. “This may all seem a bit bonkers, but we have to fight this entity for the sake of the dead and the living. And to do that, we need to beat it on several levels. It might seem odd to want to beat it on the material plane, but as you’ve seen, it is connected to the world of physics—your world.”
Tara nodded her agreement. Mortlake’s plan, fragmentary tho
ugh it was, held together. More or less. She accepted the point that if a paranormal being was able to influence living people and their technology, the effect could be reversed. In theory. But that didn’t mean they could do it in practice, as she pointed out.
“I’ve achieved remarkable results by manipulating historic relics,” he said firmly. “And I’m damn sure the one we want isn’t too deep. Describe what you saw, the sacrifice.”
As they walked back into the hallway, Tara mentioned the wicker man, the mound, the cheering tribes folk. She shied away from the victims. Mortlake questioned her about the mound and the stone circle.
“I’m taking a gamble,” he said. “But there are precedents. The mound was not so very high, but it was clearly worn down or destroyed, perhaps a bit of both. You’ll notice this house is constructed on a slight rise.”
Tara had noticed, but it hadn’t struck her as especially relevant. After all, heading up the driveway to a country house was pretty much standard. She pointed this out.
“Yes, they always built a fine house where it is literally high and dry, but not too high,” Mortlake said as they reached the cellar door. “So, they found a large, perhaps somewhat eroded mound, and ignored the locals’ warnings about it—if there were any. It may have been quiescent for centuries by then if people had avoided it. And the rich are usually indifferent to the concerns of the poor, supernatural or otherwise…”
The cellar door stood open. Tara put a hand on his arm, and he stopped talking. She unclipped the taser and held it up. He looked into her eyes, gave a slight nod, and then walked through the door. She clipped the weapon back on her waistband and followed.
The cellar was lit by a single bare bulb, which cast a feeble light over a space cluttered with junk. Tara tried to stay focused, but her attention kept hopping from one item to another. A heap of boxes piled against the side of the stairway was topped by a moth-eaten teddy bear. It lay upside down, gazing at her from one eye. Beyond it was a small island of furniture. One table had been pushed up against the far wall, leaving drag marks on the dusty floor.
She hesitated in shock when she saw a tall man and a short woman descending a dimly-lit staircase toward her. A heartbeat later, her mind had processed the reality—a fly-specked mirror leaning against the wall. Reflected Mortlake looked old, stooped, his hair disheveled. Mirror-Tara looked worse, a ginger-haired imbecile with her mouth hanging open. Tara shut it and followed Mortlake into the middle of the room.
“We need to move some of this furniture,” he said, putting down the pickaxe, “because of course we do. Banality is seldom absent from… Oh, let’s just shift it.”
The weariness in his voice was more worrying to Tara than the fact that he hadn’t finished a sentence correctly. They were both acting as if defeat were inevitable, she realized, because they had both screwed up so badly. For him, though, it was worse. He had years of experience in dealing with paranormal threats, she was still an impulsive novice by comparison.
No, she told herself as they worked to shift a chest of drawers, we won’t lose. We’ll do it for Carl, for Helen, for all the victims.
They cleared a space about six feet across. Mortlake hefted the pick then lifted it high. The pick wobbled clumsily in his unskilled hands, but he brought it down good and hard. The steel point pierced the concrete and sent small fragments flying. The impact in the confined space was as loud as a gunshot. Tara stood by, one hand resting on the taser. She wished she could join in, but Carl’s stock of tools was limited.
“You think it knows what we’re planning?” she asked as he lifted the pick again.
“Can it read minds?” Mortlake said, already sounding short of breath. “To some degree, it must. Stands to reason. But I think it skims the surface of thought. It’s more a thing of appetite and instinct. A rather low-grade demon, one might say. Which is why it’s been stuck here all this time.”
He brought the pick down again.
“But it can’t possess either of us, otherwise it would have done. That leaves…”
Another blow and this time, the pick went deep. He had to twist it free. The concrete floor, Tara saw, was only a few inches thick. Soon there would be a gap, and she could try the spade.
“It can try and burn you,” she said. “But not me, right?”
He nodded, brought the pick down, and smashed nearly a square foot of worn concrete. He was red-faced, sweat patches under his arms. It suddenly occurred to her that he was getting overheated and might even faint or suffer a perfectly natural heart attack. Cambridge professors did not dig holes, and occasional self-defense classes with Sammy were not really workouts.
“Let me take over,” she urged. “Then if it starts, if you feel it…”
He hesitated then let the pick rest on the floor.
“I get the message,” he gasped. “Never like this… in the movies…”
“Movie professors are buff, it’s the law,” she said, handing him the taser.
The light flickered.
“Better get a wiggle on,” Mortlake said, hefting the stunner. “I’m assuming it can’t interfere with gadgets that don’t depend on microchips.”
But you could be wrong, she thought, raising the pick.
It felt much heavier than it looked and it did not look light. She managed to break some more concrete, uncovering a layer of hard-packed black soil. The dirt was less resistant than the concrete but not by much. She was soon sweating and gasping. Mortlake had moved to stand just within reach, off to one side. After she had loosened the soil with three more blows, he called a halt.
“Carl wasn’t too precise,” he said. “For obvious reasons. But we shouldn’t have far to go. I trust him. Try digging a little now.”
I trust him, alive or dead, thought Tara, picking up the spade. I never really knew the guy. Now he’ll always be there, that lopsided grin, that voice. Not blaming me. I’ll be doing that.
The light flickered again, and this time, it did not fully recover. Shadows massed in the corners of the room. Their allies among the dead, Tara knew, were uncertain at best. They had dragged down Helen York. Mortlake had likened it to drowning men overturning a lifeboat in their panic. Seizing on the medium’s link to a higher plane as a way to escape their torment, the sacrifices had failed disastrously. They had also added another weapon to the armory of the demon. Anita and Tara had discovered that the hard way. Now they could only hope that an ally among the burning dead would at least confuse matters long enough for them to act.
“Ignore them,” Mortlake said. “Here, let me take over.”
They were both fatigued now. Neither Mortlake’s greater strength nor Tara’s greater fitness counted for much. This was not work for sedentary thinkers, and as she handed over the spade, she wished Tim could be here. Then she thought of the last time she had seen his face and changed her mind.
The light seemed to become even dimmer. She knew the entity was recovering its strength, harnessing the energy it had taken from Carl. Mortlake had theorized that, when it struck, it must take what passed for its mind off of its past victims. The plan was to distract it, give it too much to worry about. Mortlake had identified what he felt sure was the focus of its power, a material symbol it clung to. If he was wrong, they would be lucky to escape with their lives.
Mortlake staggered, almost fell. He was exhausted, though the hole he had dug was only about two feet deep and maybe three across. They swapped taser for spade, and Tara dug for a couple of minutes. She, too, began to feel slightly faint, breath rasping in her throat. The pit was nearly four feet deep now, and she nearly fell into it, catching herself on the spade. It sank almost to the shaft then struck something. There was a faint metallic clink.
“Shit!”
They looked at each other, then Mortlake scrambled clumsily down into the hole and started scrabbling with his hands. Tara laid down the spade and joined him. Soon, they were covered in dirt, and she’d broken a couple of nails. It could, she reasoned, just be an old
pot or maybe a buried bottle, the sort of stuff found on myriad digs by archaeologists. But then Mortlake stopped, leaned back on his haunches, and looked at her with wild staring eyes.
“Jesus Christ, it’s really there. Nobody’s ever seen one before!”
Tara had to smile at that. For a moment, his love of history, his deep reverence for the past, had driven fear from his mind. And she could not blame him.
“Yeah,” she said. “I get it.”
Even in the faint light, the gleam of gold was unmistakable. Tara reached down, feeling a weird reverence for the thing that had been a living deity to tens of thousands. She felt a chill as her fingers touched metal and rubbed away dirt as Mortlake, on the other side of the pit, dug under the Eagle of the Ninth.
“Aquila,” he was muttering. “It’s gilded bronze, not gold. What was I thinking? Gold fever, idiot. Doesn’t matter.”
Between them, they quickly uncovered the stylized sculpture of a bird of prey. Its wings had indeed been torn off, lost in the act of symbolic desecration. But the body was still intact. It was even upright, head proudly erect. Tara had expected something much larger. This thing was only about a foot long. But then, if one guy had to carry the eagle on route marches and into battle, it had to be fairly light.
It wasn’t size that mattered, she thought. It was the love they felt for it, the way it made them feel noble and good. Their esprit de corps. Their faith.
Something seemed to run across her hand, like a scuttling insect with ice-cold legs. She jerked her hand back then looked at Mortlake. He was gazing at her, his face oddly dark in the faint light. She detected a whiff of smoke before she grasped what was happening. The sudden chill was a sign that her power was being primed, activated, despite her wish to help Mortlake. He was trying to grasp the taser but it was just out of reach behind him, on the rim of the hole. She almost went for it, but now a faint flicker of flame was running along his rolled-up shirtsleeve.
She grabbed the spade and brought the wooden shaft up, hard, right into her nose. She fell back, the hot gush of blood followed by the taste of iron in her mouth. As the room spun and darkness started to close in, she heard Mortlake shouting words, Latin words, but also Carl’s name. She knew what they meant, those words. They were the ancient exhortation, a cry that Caesar himself had raised.
House of Whispers: Supernatural Suspense with Scary & Horrifying Monsters (Mortlake Series Book 2) Page 15