The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2)

by Vin Suprynowicz

  Disconnecting, she asked if she had time to call young Gilbert at Quonset Point, to tell him and his grandmother the current plan called for the travelers to beam back directly to the store on Benefit.

  * * *

  The vortex shimmered and closed behind them like the iris of a camera, and the four travelers were standing in the dimly lit bookstore on Benefit Street. Between the “Aviation” and “Show Biz” sections, actually. Outside, a car went by. A couple of cats scampered for the safety of the back rooms, but Tabbyhunter remained standing on the front desk. He stretched his neck, recognized everyone but Bucky Beausoleil, who he sniffed curiously, and then chattered a greeting.

  “I hope no one will take offense if I use the bathroom,” Chantal said, setting down her reclaimed heavy aluminum rifle case and slipping out of her backpack, though she pulled a little holstered revolver from its hiding place beneath the front desk and carried it with her as she left the room, an after-hours habit she wasn’t going to abandon now.

  “Are we really here?” Skeezix asked. And then, without a pause, “We missed supper, didn’t we?”

  “Bucky, I’d take it as a favor if you were to call Marquita,” Matthew said. “She’s been pretty worried.”

  Matthew turned on a few more lights. They heard keys in the front door, then, as Les and Marian arrived home. “Thank God!” Marian shouted in an atypical burst of emotion as she rushed to embrace Skeezix. “And Chantal? Where’s Chantal, Matthew?”

  “In the bathroom, of course. I wouldn’t take her by surprise, though; she’s armed.”

  “Someone needs to call Gilbert and his grandmother.”

  “I think Chantal already did. But go ahead, if you’ve got a way to reach them.”

  “Matthew, for heaven’s sake. Even reservation Indians carry cell phones, now.”

  Indeed, Gilbert and Dona Solana soon showed up, chauffeured by Uncle Remus, having received Chantal’s earlier call. And right behind them was Marquita, who was all smiles and hugs for son Gilbert and especially for Bucky.

  “I know you all are tired, but we must do the ceremony now to seal the doorway,” Dona Solana insisted. “Waiting till tomorrow is not so good.”

  “Grandmother Solana is right,” Matthew nodded. “Here in the side yard?”

  “Yes, Gilbert will start the fire.”

  “Though I’m afraid Worthy and his friends will open more doorways, eventually,” warned Chantal, who had rejoined them in the kitchen.

  “They took your friend Worthy and his big machine away,” Gilbert replied.

  “What?”

  A large group of military men with trucks, Gilbert and his grandmother explained, emptying the building at Quonset Point, hauling away all the gear and Worthy and his workers, too, that very afternoon.

  “I don’t think that will be an end to the trouble,” Matthew nodded.

  “I am afraid you are right,” said the old Indian, lighting her little brown cheroot as they moved out to the side yard and Gilbert started laying the hearth for the fire. “I fear your adventures are not over, Brother Matthew. These white people will never learn to leave things in peace. Yes, there will be lots more work for the Nde of Gilbert’s generation, I’m afraid. But for now, this woman warrior has done good work, finding you and bringing you all home.”

  “Except for little Alvin,” Chantal sighed. They explained to Dona Solana, then, about the companion they’d left behind in the caves.

  “And so that’s where his path ended,” she nodded.

  “That’s what Emilio said.”

  “Well, that’s OK. We will seal the doorway, now, and say a prayer that your missing companion’s soul will find peace in that strange world. Then tomorrow’s troubles will just have to wait for tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “You see them, don’t you?” asked Chantal when they were finally alone upstairs. She was wearing nothing but a long T-shirt, fiddling with her cell phone recharger, both of them having washed off several days’ worth of grit and gore.

  “See what?”

  “Jesus, Matthew. Are you telling me you don’t see the shapes, the shadows out of the corner of your eyes when you’re getting tired, those shifting layers, trailing curtains, glimmers and sparkles, but most of all the goddamned eyes, the eyes of those tyrannosaurs and those big spiders, watching us when we’re not looking, hoping for a chance to break through, looking for something to eat?”

  “Of course I do,” Matthew replied, deciding not to point out she’d just quoted a line from “The Eggplant That Ate Chicago.”

  “Well then, don’t do that. We’re supposed to be a team, don’t make me think I’m the only one who’s seeing these things, that I’m the only one who’s …”

  “Going nuts?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Of course I see them. I hoped maybe you didn’t see them.”

  “I was there, remember? Although you did a much higher dose than I did for the trip home, didn’t you?” She was now down on her knees, rummaging through the closet, evidently looking for some kind of ammo. Chantal had an aversion to leaving anything unloaded. She’d once admitted she kept supplies of ammo even for kinds of guns she didn’t have, because “You never can tell.”

  “I had to. I could see the way it had to be done, but I couldn’t get all the overlays … lined up.”

  “It felt like a close thing, honey,” she said, emerging from the closet with a satisfied look and a handful of cartridges at least the size of Dona Solana’s cigars. “It makes you want to know it all, to master it all, but I think down that road lies some kind of …”

  “Fragmentation,” Matthew finished her sentence for her.

  “A point where you’re closer to grasping it all, but a point from where you can’t come back.” Chantal opened her aluminum rifle case, pulled out an empty magazine — she would roll her eyes when people insisted on calling them “clips” — sat down and started skillfully slipping fresh rounds inside, where it appeared they were held in place by some kind of spring pressure.

  “We made it, this time.”

  “You did what you had to do to get us back, sweetheart. More than I could have done. Do you think this will fade, or is this always going to be with us, now?”

  “Everything fades with time, babe. But nothing ever goes back to quite the way it was. You can’t have these kinds of experiences and then just wash them away. Or at least you shouldn’t. Wrong instinct completely, though I know why people try. They think they want to be ‘normal’ again, to fit in, to talk about child care and clam dip recipes and their favorite sitcom, so they seek some kind of oblivion, whether it’s alcohol or painkillers, it’s just a slower way to …”

  “We both know where the death door is, now, Matthew, if we ever need it. I just hope neither of us ever feels we have to go there, alone. We’re supposed to be here for each other. What about …”

  “Yes?”

  “Now that we know everything that’s out there … I take that back, now that we know just a narrow slice of what’s out there, are they seeing shades and shadows of us, the way we can see them?”

  “Through a mirror, darkly.”

  “Philip K. Dick?”

  “Scott Bakula, Star Trek Enterprise. Evil alternative universe.”

  “They know we’re here, don’t they?”

  “They already did, babe. They already did.”

  “And can they come through without the resonator?”

  “Eventually, maybe. Not yet. Not tonight.”

  * * *

  The next day, Cory stopped by to make sure Chantal and Matthew were OK, and to confirm the report from Gilbert and his grandmother that Naval Intelligence had seized the whole dimension-gate operation at Quonset Point just hours before the four travelers made it home, carted it all up and hauled it away.

  “And what happens to Worthy?”

  “Well, he’s going to be working as part of a larger team, needless to say, lots of details to be worked out.�
�

  “What?” Matthew smiled in disbelief. “Worthy Annesley isn’t at the bottom of the Bay, or under arrest? He’s ‘working as part of a larger team’? How the hell did he pull that off?”

  “Not much that I’m at liberty to say right now, Matthew. Chantal can probably explain to you how it works. Let’s just say that the Annesley family still has friends in very high places.”

  “Wait a minute. Windsor and Worthy’s dad was an Annapolis classmate of someone who gets flown around Washington in a big Navy helicopter these days, right?”

  “That’s something I could neither confirm nor deny,” Cory said, managing to not quite smile.

  And before the day was over, Marquita brought Bucky Beausoleil back to see Matthew and Chantal again, as well.

  There were hugs all around. Matthew offered what he could find in the refrigerator. They were friends, now, bonded by what they’d all been through. Marquita reported they’d broken the news to Alvin’s girlfriend. But Bucky seemed nervous about something else.

  “You know how Alvin and I got stranded in that place?” he finally asked.

  “The portable resonators they gave you weren’t tuned,” Matthew answered. “They were like the old-fashioned spark-gap radio transmitters, before they figured out you might want the sender and the receiver tuned to the same frequency. They worked OK when there was no interference, but they were easy for the arachnids to jam. Frankly, you’re lucky you didn’t land somewhere way outside rescue range.”

  “Mr. Hunter —” Marquita had trouble looking him in the eye.

  “I thought I was ‘Matthew’ by now, Marquita.”

  “What Bucky means is, we’re wondering if you’re going to tell anybody.”

  “About who killed Judge Crustio?”

  “I did what I did, and I’d do it again,” Bucky said, pursing his lips. “I’m ready to take whatever’s coming to me. It’s just … we were planning to get married, and we need to know …”

  “Whether we’re going to be witnesses for the prosecution if anyone gets charged with killing the judge.”

  “I’ve told Bucky it doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters. If I’m going to be spending the next 20 years in the joint, I don’t want her raising our child …”

  The young woman blushed.

  “Chantal?”

  “You know where I stand.”

  “Chantal and I have already talked this over, guys. In the first place, I think you’re going to find the authorities are extremely reluctant to prosecute anyone in the death of Old Crusty. You’ve probably noticed the blanket of secrecy the feds have thrown over the resonator and everything about it. To explain their theory of the crime any prosecutor would have to blow the lid off this thing so wide he’d probably be found floating face-down in the bay without a snorkel.

  “But more to the point, I’m not retained by the authorities to help them keep the populace subjugated in ignorance and superstition. The spark you folks have struck isn’t going out. It’ll spread. The War on Drugs is doomed. If they don’t call it off soon, within a couple years their entire government will go down in flames, which would be no great loss. Governments do fall, you know. How long did they think they could keep locking up the sons and daughters of a nation, by the millions, for no crime but growing and using plants? It’s a modern version of the witchcraft trials.”

  “They say using the plant sacraments is an ‘artificial’ way to seek the kingdom,” Bucky nodded, soberly. “Well, maybe they need to look up ‘artificial.’ Celibate priests and calling everything a sin and chanting a bunch of memorized mumbo-jumbo that don’t really work for no one? That’s not artificial? Meantime, what could be more natural than fasting for a day and then eating a couple mushrooms or a handful of cactus, works every time? Especially when it turns out people have been doing it for thousands of years?”

  “They’re also going to figure out real soon,” Chantal added, “that people need to know how to use these plants, to report back on what the heck is happening in those other dimensions.”

  “Chantal and I don’t have any first-hand knowledge of how Old Crusty died,” Matthew shrugged. “Hell, if we went public with what we do know, we’d probably find ourselves in a rubber room at the state hospital. My recommendation to this young man is that he stop worrying and get ready to start supporting a bigger family.”

  * * *

  Tony Waranowicz had worked some years as a newspaper reporter before he signed up to handle media for the Annesleys. Not for the South Jersey View, it was true, but he knew the way these political meet-and-greets worked. The shirt pocket full of pens and the distinctive, three-by-seven-inch spiral-bound reporter’s notebook in his hip pocket — along with a focused attitude — were all he needed. Confidence was everything. Nobody but some first-year yahoo ever offered to show anyone their “press credentials,” which could be printed up in a few minutes and laminated over at Kinko’s, anyway. Nor did he wear a jacket and tie — editors wore neckties, not reporters, except for court reporters dealing with control-freak judges and of course the smug dorks on the Business Page, strutting around like bankers-in-training, might as well work for Advertising. Even his heavy cotton long-sleeved shirt wouldn’t draw much notice; it was air-conditioned in the restaurant and breezy down by the beach.

  Located near the southernmost tip of the state of New Jersey, at the base of the Cape May peninsula, Ocean City was a fading town of about 10,000 permanent residents, though as many as 100,000 vacationing beach-goers could swell the local population in the summer months. So a vehicle with out-of-state plates drew no special attention. Tony had been very careful to park legally — which took some doing — even though he’d ‘borrowed’ the Connecticut plates from a long-term parking lot earlier in the day.

  Ocean City had prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages since its founding in 1879, though, so the late afternoon soda-pop crowd in the restaurant’s meeting room wasn’t exactly whooping it up.

  The shindig had been arranged to introduce the Democratic Party’s candidate slate for the Fall elections, and said candidates seemed to be the major focus of attention, earnestly explaining their plans to better fund the local fire department and the vastly expensive coercion-based government schools to small clusters of attendees. But the informant had been correct, the white-haired former congressman, now about 80, was in attendance, seated at a table with a few cronies and a few empty chairs.

  Tony ran his fingers through his Beatle-length hair to make sure he looked presentable and walked up to the old gent, whose cane was leaning against the table.

  “Ambassador Howard?”

  “Yes?”

  “Mark Ritchie. I left a phone message,” Tony said, smiling and proudly stroking his new mustache. “We’re doing a Focus piece on the history of the War on Drugs?”

  “I was told there was a message, but I’m afraid I didn’t listen to it. You’re with the Sentinel?”

  “No, sir. The South Jersey View.”

  The local weekly would have a small staff; the former congressman would probably know them, at least by name, or would ask how his friend the editor was doing. The regional daily, formed a few years back by the merger of three or four struggling smaller papers and based in the next county over, would have a larger and more transitory staff. An unfamiliar name wouldn’t be a problem.

  “I’ve got most of the background I need, sir, I just had a few final questions.” Tony helped himself to a vacant folding chair. “I’ve got to say, when you look at the milestone legislation, the stuff that really gave police and prosecutors the tools they need to hamstring these drug operations, your name keeps turning up.”

  He hadn’t actually asked “Do you have a minute to answer a few questions?” That would have provided an opening for a “submit them in writing to my secretary” dodge. Never ask a question that can produce an answer you don’t want to hear. A good trial lawyer had once taught him that. Given the chance to take care of thing
s quickly here and not have to see ‘Mark Ritchie’ again — and given that this was an event where an old warhorse of the party would be expected to at least be civil to the gentlemen of the press — plain old plowing ahead was the key. Flattery would get you everywhere.

  “Well, son, I was head of the Subcommittee on Crime, so those things do come across your desk. We had a great staff that wrote most of the actual legislation. But yes, if you want to get it enacted, the chairman signs on as sponsor. That’s the way things get done.”

  “You represented South Jersey in Congress for twenty years,” Tony Waranowicz began, glancing briefly at his notebook but never breaking his stride. “I know you sponsored the asset seizure act, where the authorities can seize boats, planes, real estate, even cash from suspected drug dealers.”

  “That’s right. That’s been a major tool. Do you know they seized more than two billion dollars in assets from drug kingpins last year alone?”

  “I did know that, sir, and that’s quite a tribute to that law’s effectiveness. Some of those assets can be turned right around and used by police, too. Fancy sports cars for undercover stings like on Miami Vice, things like that.”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  “What a lot of readers may not understand, though, is that the government gets to keep those assets even if they never actually bring these criminals to trial — even if they never file any actual criminal charges, is that right?”

  “Well, son, that’s why it’s such an effective tool. Proving a criminal case can be difficult, especially the way they launder their cash, run it through offshore corporations or whatever. But the way we set up that law, it’s the boat or the car or the cash that’s accused of the crime, the crime of being involved with the drug business, and the previous owner has to prove you’re wrong before he can recover those ill-gotten gains. He has to prove the cash is innocent, you see, show where he got it. Needless to say, not many of them can meet that test.”

  “That’s amazing. It doesn’t concern you, though, this idea of people having their property seized before they’re actually convicted of any crime — these reports of policemen in towns along Interstate 95 pulling over black motorists and seizing large sums of cash, without any real evidence those men are drug couriers — just taking the cash and never bringing any charges?”