Signalz

by F. Paul Wilson

  Hill followed but at a slower pace.

  “I’ve been down these a number of times,” he said. “The trick is to keep your head down and your eyes fixed on the next step.”

  Hari stopped on the lip of the first step and looked down and around.

  “Who dug this?”

  “Don’t know,” Hill said, “but Burbank’s papers say it was already here when they dug the Allard’s foundation. The owner, the original Mister Allard, would only allow natives of an obscure South American tribe to work on the section of the foundation directly above this.”

  “How old is it?”

  “Burbank didn’t know.”

  “Okay, one more question then I’ll shut up: all these flames burning in the wall…who refills the sconces?”

  “No one,” Hill said. “They never seem to run out.”

  Twenty-four hours ago Hari would have called bullshit. But after spending the night on another planet, she accepted that he was telling the truth.

  She started down, using his method of watching the next step, and it worked to block out all the empty air around her. She’d almost caught up to Hill by the time he reached the bottom where an obviously impatient Ellie waited before a big, pointed-arch door of riveted steel set in the wall.

  Hill flipped through his crowded keyring and selected the largest one.

  “You have a key for every room in the place?”

  He shook his head. “No idea what all these are for. Luckily they’re labeled.” He stuck the big key in the lock but didn’t turn it. “Don’t get your hopes up, anybody. Every time I’ve opened this door I’ve run into a wall.”

  When he turned the key, a latch went thunk deep within. He grasped the iron ring that served as a handle and swung it out to reveal…a stone wall.

  “You weren’t kidding, were you,” Hari said.

  “Close it again,” Ellie said, “then let me open it.”

  Hill gave her a look. “You really think…?”

  Hari looked at the solid wall of stone, the very bedrock of Manhattan, impenetrable. And yet…this weird kid had this air about her and, what the hell, anything and everything seemed possible today.

  How had that mantra ended? It will begin in the heavens and end in the Earth, but before that, the rules will be broken.”

  Well, the sun had been late climbing into the heavens, and here they were, deep in the Earth…and all sorts of rules had been broken back on Norum Hill…

  “Give her a shot,” Hari said. “What’ve we got to lose?”

  Hill pushed the door shut and stood back. As Ellie reached for the ring, Barbara cried out behind them.

  “Wait for me!”

  The three of them turned to find her crawling backward down the steps on her hands and toes.

  BARBARA

  I don’t know how I did it, but I couldn’t let my baby go off with strangers to see the infernal machine that destroyed her life. I found a way to bottle my terror and crawl down those awful stairs.

  As I reached the bottom I stood and brushed myself off. I found Ellie and the other two staring at me.

  “What?” I said, unable to think of anything else.

  The Indian woman smiled and applauded softly while Ellie and Tier Hill showed little reaction.

  “Ready?” Ellie said.

  Without waiting for a response, she grabbed the ring in the door and pulled.

  And with that the spider legs sprang from her back, poking through Blanky without disturbing it or the myriad black crawly things that hid beneath it. Hill recoiled and Hari sprang back, nearly tripping as she cried out.

  “Holy fucking hell!” She backed almost to the steps. “What? What?”

  I had seen those legs before but still wasn’t used to them. I’d never get used to them.

  The door swung outward, but this time no wall of stone blocked the way. Instead it opened onto a wide, dark hallway lit by flaming sconces similar to the stairwell.

  Hill leaped forward and peered through, saying, “How’s this possible?”

  “Told you I could open it,” Ellie said with a smirk. “You need to believe me next time.” As she spoke her spider legs retracted. “Well, what are we waiting for?”

  She stepped through the doorway. Hill took a step after her, then stopped. I couldn’t blame him. Who’d want to be alone with her? That left it to me. I was about to fall in line when Hari grabbed my arm.

  “I’m not crazy, am I? You saw that right?” I couldn’t help the tears that sprang into my eyes. She spotted them and nodded. “Oh, yeah. You have. What…how…?”

  I swallowed and pointed through the door. “If there is an explanation, I don’t think it will be rational, but I’ve a feeling we’re headed toward a big part of it right now.”

  “But where did those…legs come from? And where did they go?”

  “She says they’re tucked away elsewhere. Don’t ask me what that means.”

  I stepped through the door and Hari followed close behind. Hill brought up the rear.

  We entered a high-ceilinged hallway dimly lit by flames flickering in small, widely spaced sconces. It spanned maybe fifty feet wide. Darkness swallowed whatever lay above us, but I could see doors set in the walls. So many doors, all made of riveted steel like the one at the entrance.

  Hari gestured to Hill’s heavy key ring. “I guess we know what all those are for now. Where do the doors go?”

  He shook his head. “No idea. I’ve never been in here. Burbank didn’t mention them in his notes. I don’t know if he ever got this far.” He held out the keyring. “Want to open one and see?”

  I almost laughed at Hari’s shocked expression as she said, “Do I look stupid to you? Or crazy? If you notice, they all have locks. I will trust that they’re locked for a good reason and leave them that way.”

  “They all seem to be labeled,” I said, squinting at the weird symbols top center on each door. “But in what language?”

  “Don’t know,” Hill said, flipping through his keys. “But I’ve got matching symbols here.”

  The walls and floor of the stairway chamber behind us had been smooth, almost polished. Less effort had been expended on this passage. Everything looked roughhewn, and I imagined the unseen ceiling to be no different. Perhaps even rougher since the floor was littered with chunks of fallen rock. I stepped carefully.

  After walking perhaps a thousand feet we found our way blocked by a massive stone wall that had a Gibraltar feel to it. Part of the Manhattan bedrock, the schist. A steel door identical to the one that had admitted us was set in its base. Ellie, who’d reached it first, tugged on its ring but it wouldn’t budge.

  “I’m not sure which key,” Hill said as we reached her.

  “Try the same one as before,” I said.

  He did and the latch thunked. He pulled on the ring and the door swung open to reveal a large round chamber lit by the same flickering sconces that had illuminated our way since we’d stepped out of the elevator. A round, tapering structure squatted at the center, dominating the space.

  Years ago I’d taken the girls on a tour of Hoover Dam that included the generator room where we’d stared in wonder at the huge turbines. This resembled one of those, only smaller. Its design had an Art Deco feel and looked…ceramic.

  “This is it,” Ellie said in a flat tone. “The Prime Frequency generator.”

  I stared at the thing and hated it.

  I said, “This is what made you sick and burned you and put you in a coma? This is what changed you?”

  She nodded. “As I said, wrong place, wrong time.”

  I looked up toward an arched ceiling. “Then that means we’re directly under the center of the Sheep Meadow.”

  “Not necessarily,” Ellie said. “Like my hidey hole, this chamber bends the rules of physics and geometry. It occupies its own space, one that’s not always where it seems to be. When it emits its signal, it’s under the Sheep Meadow. At other times, like now, it’s…elsewhere.”

 
; Hill said, “I’m having a problem getting my head around that.” He looked at Hari. “You?”

  “Yesterday morning I’d have been right beside you on the confusion boat. But after where I spent last night, no, it’s fine. Nooooo problem.”

  Which seemed an odd thing to say. But I couldn’t let it distract me. I needed to know more about this thing.

  “Who built it?” I said.

  Hill shrugged. “Burbank told me the signals started in 1941, but according to his notes, the stairway and probably the tunnel were here when the Allard’s foundation was dug.”

  I couldn’t stay in the same space as this thing. I walked back out into the passage and burst into tears. I wanted—needed—someone to blame. This big, gleaming, soulless inanimate object wasn’t filling the bill. I kicked one of the fist-sized stones littering the floor and sent it flying, wincing at the pain in my foot. I kicked another. More pain. I deserved it for letting Ellie lead us to the Sheep Meadow instead of insisting we go to the zoo as planned.

  I’d let her go to where this contraption was lurking in the depths of the schist waiting for someone like her to come along.

  Burning with sudden fury I picked up one of the rocks and charged back into the chamber. With a wordless cry of insensate rage I began hammering the side of the generator, screaming at it.

  Hands pulled me away and pried the rock from my fingers as sympathetic voices tried to soothe me—the voices of Hari and Hill. Ellie stood silently by, watching with the eyes of a stranger, as impassive as the generator itself, which I hadn’t even scratched.

  I got a grip on myself and tried to explain.

  “This…this thing,” I said, pointing, “stole my daughter.”

  “I’m still here, Mother.”

  I stared at her. “Are you?”

  Ellie didn’t answer. Instead she turned and stared at the infernal machine, saying, “The generator will transmit its last signal tonight and then destroy itself.”

  “I wish it had done that a year ago.”

  “The time wasn’t right then. Now it is. It has begun in the Heavens and it will end in the Earth.”

  “When tonight?” Hill said.

  “After dark, for certain, but the exact time will be for someone else to decide.” Ellie moved toward the door. “I’ve seen what I came to see. We can go now.”

  “Well, thanks for the permission,” Hari muttered.

  But she followed Ellie.

  Hill moved to my side. “Not much point in staying. I made a circuit of the thing while you stepped out and found no writing or sign of controls or power source. Right now it’s just a big dull inert device.”

  I nodded and led him out. We found Hari waiting for us in the passageway.

  “I’ve still got a lot of questions about these signals,” she said. “Like where do they come from?”

  Hill waved an arm. “Out there.”

  “Oh, well, that clears up everything,” she said with a sour expression. “Can we be just a smidgen more specific?”

  I could have relayed what Ellie had told me about vast cosmic entities toying with us but I didn’t understand it and wasn’t sure I believed it myself, so how could I explain?

  But even if I’d wanted to give it a try, I would have been interrupted by the banging sound that echoed through the passage.

  “It’s coming from over there,” Hill said, pointing to one of the mysterious doors embedded in the right sidewall. He started moving that way.

  Hari said, “Oh, you can’t seriously be thinking of opening one of those.”

  I agreed with her, but Hill paid us no mind.

  Placing an ear against one of the doors, he said, “There’s someone in there. He’s pleading to get out.” He starting flipping through his key ring.

  “Think about this!” Hari cried. “It might not even be human—just pretending!”

  Which struck me as another odd thing to say. But only for a heartbeat. After what I’d seen in the past few days, it made perfect sense.

  But what had she seen?

  “I’m not leaving someone locked up down here,” Hill said. He nodded toward the symbol on the door. “One of these keys has to match that.”

  He apparently found the key he sought, for he stuck it in the lock and turned. The door slammed open and a bedraggled man staggered out, holding a sheaf of papers clutched against his chest.

  “People!” he cried. “Oh, thank god, people! I thought I’d never see another human being again!”

  HARI

  1

  He said his name was Winslow—P. Frank Winslow—and he was a novelist. Hari had never heard of him, but she imagined a million writers were out there she’d never heard of.

  She and the others led him to the stairwell and back up the insane stairway—Barbara crawled while they walked—then into the elevator and up to the lobby. All along the way he rattled on about a hole in the floor of his apartment and how it opened into a totally deserted city in another reality on another world and how he’d followed a seemingly endless serpentine path that eventually led him to the door Hill had opened.

  Hari figured she could beat that story—she wished her alternate world had been deserted—and was only half listening until she heard him mention a familiar name.

  “Wait-wait,” she said, grabbing his sleeve. “What did you say?”

  “I said I have to be careful not to run into Belgiovene once I’m back.”

  “Belgiovene?” Hadn’t Donny mentioned that name? “You’re sure that’s his name?”

  “Well, I overheard him call himself that when he was on a phone call. You know him?”

  “Only heard the name. Could be someone totally other. Why would you want to avoid him?”

  “He was sent to kill me.”

  Hari felt a chill. Donny said he was sure a guy named Belgiovene had killed his brother.

  “How do you know he was sent and why would someone want to kill you?”

  “The Septimus Order sent him—because I know too much.”

  Déjà vu body-slammed her: exactly the case with Donny’s brother.

  “Gotta go,” she said and hurried toward the entrance without good-byes or an explanation. She had to check this out.

  When she reached the door, Simón said, “Can I get you a cab?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  She stood under the canopy and dialed Donny’s number while Simón waved and whistled from the curb. The call went straight to voicemail so she left a message to call her ASAP. Then she took the cab down to the Flatiron District. She called Donny three more times along the way with the same result. Seemed like he’d turned off his phone.

  Back in her office, she settled before her computer and found a strange icon blinking on her monitor: Donny’s grinning face in a glowing circle. She laughed and clicked it. The screen flickered and a video of Donny began to play. He was standing by the damaged hood of their rented Tahoe. Initially she warmed at the sight of him, but then she noticed how stressed he looked.

  “Hey, Hari, I’m pretty sure this transmission will work. I’m beaming it straight to your hard drive. I hope you enjoyed our time together this morning as much as I did, and I hope you’re looking forward to a replay as much as I am.”

  She was. As much as she knew it was foolish and couldn’t go anywhere, she most definitely was.

  “Okay, that said, I wanted to prove to you that I can do more than sit and tap at a keyboard.”

  He waved to the woodsy scenery behind him.

  “I think you can recognize that area just a little ways back up the hill there.”

  She did: the cutoff from Norum Hill Road to the passage to that other place. What was he doing back there?

  “Remember I told you I had some unfinished business up here? Well, this is it. It’s been a busy morning, lemme tell you. I contacted a few folks I’ve come to know on the dark web and arranged the purchase of a satchel bomb.”

  “Oh, crap!” Hari said aloud. “Don’t!”

/>   “It’s twenty pounds of C4 explosive. My little gift to those Septimus sonsabitches. Their trucks made another delivery. Another ten trailers and tankers, no doubt filled with more freeze-dried food and water. I watched them leave the mountain, so I’m here all alone.

  He slammed a fist on the Tahoe’s hood.

  “Damn them! They knew this was coming and didn’t tell anyone. Grabbed everything they could and socked it away for themselves. Big plans to profit from the shit storm. Remember how I told you someone needs to take them down? Well, that someone is me. I’m gonna see to it they went to all that trouble for nothing.”

  “Please be careful,” she whispered.

  She noticed the running time stamp in the upper right corner of the video. He’d recorded this almost an hour ago. That meant whatever he planned to do was already done.

  Then why was his phone going straight to voicemail? And why hadn’t he called her back?

  Anxiety began a slow, tingling crawl through her gut. She didn’t like this one bit.

  “Like I said, the truckers have come and gone, the passage was open but now it’s closed again. But I’ve got twenty pounds of C4 wedged into the mountain wall back there right where the passage opens. When I send the signal, a shitload of rock is gonna come down. Ain’t nothin’ or nobody gonna be traveling between worlds through there.”

  He leaned closer to the camera.

  “It looks like I’m going to be able to get away with this, Hari. There were a couple of spots where things could’ve gone south—like taking delivery of the satchel bomb, for instance. You never know when a fed is going to be playing games with you. As insurance, I slipped a thumb drive into your bag this morning. It contains everything I’ve learned about Septimus and its operations. It’s all moot now, but I’m just letting you know so you won’t be puzzled when you find it.”

  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

  “Showtime, babe.”

  Something awful was going to happen, she just knew it. She held her breath as he raised a cell phone and pressed a button.

  Up the road behind him the side of the mountain exploded, causing the camera to shake and blur the image. Smoke billowed as shattered trees and rocks blasted into the air. It took a while for the debris to stop falling, but the smoke remained.