A Matter of Time

by Brian Harmon

  Her gaze slid down his body as she considered it and came to rest in the vicinity of his crotch. (As if this encounter wasn’t awkward enough.)

  “Fine,” she said. To his relief, she looked up and met his gaze again. “We’ll do it tonight, then. While I’m…working.” Her lip curled into that naughty smile again. “I’ll let you watch. It’ll be exciting. For both of us.”

  “I’m sure it will.”

  “You’ll understand then. Once you see what I can do, you’ll know why we belong together.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” He had to force himself to keep a straight face. This was going well. She was going to let him be there when she summoned the jinn. That was his chance to stop all this craziness.

  Her smile widened. She fiddled with that button, teasing him. “And as soon as we’re done, you’ll give it to me. Your power.”

  “As soon as we’re done?”

  She smiled. The top button popped open. Her cleavage swelled. “Right then,” she purred. “Right there.” She stepped up to him and grabbed his shirt again. She pulled him close and whispered in his ear, “You can give it to me any way you want.”

  Dear Jesus…

  She turned away from him then and began walking away, her tall heels clacking on the concrete, her sexy hips swaying with each confident step. “I’ll see you then.”

  “Wait,” said Eric. “When? Where? Here?”

  “No. Not here. I’m done here.”

  “Then where?”

  “It’s a secret.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, confused. “But how am I supposed to meet you if you don’t tell me where or when?”

  “You found me here. You’ll find me when and where I want you again.”

  He stood there, baffled.

  “I like how you do that,” she called back to him as she approached the illuminated doorway from which she’d first appeared. “It’s mysterious. Tantalizing. Exciting.” She paused before disappearing through the doorway and looked back at him. “It makes me horny,” she told him.

  Then she was gone.

  Eric finally relaxed a little. That was a horrible experience. But at least she didn’t forcibly stuff her tongue in his mouth again. And she didn’t expose herself to him again, either. That was an improvement over their last conversation, at least.

  His cell phone buzzed in his hand, reminding him that he was still holding it and alerting him to a new text message.

  THAT WOMAN IS SERIOUSLY BUGSHIT!

  Eric didn’t need her to tell him that. He figured it out for himself way before that part about becoming gods and living forever.

  YOU NEED TO GET OUT OF THERE

  He looked once more at the monstrosity on the other side of the bars, at the creepy, almost skeletal shape stuffing its alien face inside its illuminated belly, and nodded. It was definitely time to go.

  THIS ISN’T GOOD, texted Isabelle as he started back the way he came. THAT KIND OF CRAZY IS DANGEROUS

  “No kidding,” he whispered. “If Karen finds out about this chick, I’m a dead man for sure.”

  I’M SERIOUS. SHE REALLY BELIEVES SHE CAN BECOME A GOD

  “Can she?”

  NO. I STILL BELIEVE THERE’S ONLY ONE TRUE GOD, BUT FROM WHAT I’VE LEARNED, THERE’S A VERY GOOD CHANCE THERE ARE OTHER GOD-LIKE ENTITIES OUT THERE. THEY MAY BE ANGELS OR DEMONS OR ACTUAL DEMI-GODS, BUT THEY’RE OUT THERE. AND I DON’T THINK ANY HUMAN BEING CAN ATTAIN THAT KIND OF POWER WITHOUT GOING UTTERLY MAD. BUT YOU AND I BOTH KNOW IT ONLY TAKES A LITTLE POWER TO MAKE A PERSON EXTREMELY DANGEROUS

  That was absolutely true. The agents were a great example of that.

  THAT WOMAN’S PSYCHOSIS ALONE MAKES HER DANGEROUS, BUT YOU CAN’T DISMISS THE POSSIBILITY THAT SHE MIGHT BE RIGHT ABOUT THINGS

  “You don’t really believe she can share powers with people by having sex with them, do you?”

  I WANT TO SAY OF COURSE NOT, BUT YOU’VE SEEN A LOT OF STRANGER THINGS

  True again…

  IF THAT SEXUAL ENERGY NONSENSE TURNS OUT TO BE REAL, YOU CAN’T LET HER HAVE HER WAY WITH YOU

  “I’d never do that!”

  I KNOW YOU WOULDN’T. BUT WHAT IF SHE KNOWS A WAY TO FORCE YOU?

  “Not going to happen.”

  DON’T GET COCKY. IF SHE FINDS A WAY, AND IF SHE REALLY CAN TAKE YOUR “POWER,” THERE’S A GOOD CHANCE SHE COULD LEARN THE PROFOUND TRUTH YOU LEARNED AT THE CATHEDRAL THE DAY YOU MET ME

  He paused at the door. “You think so?”

  SHE COULD ALSO LEARN ABOUT ME, AIDEN, HOLLY’S COVEN AND ANY OTHER SECRET YOU’VE BEEN KEEPING

  He looked across the room at the doorway where he last saw Mistress Janet. “You think she could do that sort of thing?”

  I THINK SHE BELIEVES SHE CAN DO THAT SORT OF THING. AND I THINK YOU’D BE WISE TO BE AWARE OF ANY POSSIBILITY OF IT

  He nodded and reached for the door handle.

  CAREFUL ON YOUR WAY OUT, TOO. I FELT THAT STRANGE VASTNESS AGAIN WHILE YOU WERE TALKING TO THAT CRAZY WOMAN. EVERY TIME THAT HAPPENS, A WENDIGO APPEARS. I THINK IT MIGHT BE WHAT I FEEL WHEN THEY CROSS OVER

  Again, he nodded. That did seem to be the pattern, now that he was thinking about it.

  He pushed open the door. The dark hallway stood before him, where the mysterious creatures murmured and sighed and scuttled within their locked cells.

  No lights had been turned on in here. Like on the way in, he had only his cell phone to light the way out.

  Having seen the hideous beast twice enjoying its wendigo tartar on the other side of those bars should’ve made these noises at least a little less creepy. After all, they were only animals, right? Creatures from another world, but still only animals. Probably no more dangerous than some of the ones on display in any zoo. And yet as he started down this hallway, keeping to the very middle to better avoid any reaching claws or tentacles that might decide to take a swipe at him through those little slots, he found that the noises had grown much more unsettling.

  Was it his imagination, or were they louder now? In addition to the murmuring and sighing and scuttling, he thought he could hear an odd sort of clicking noise and a soft hissing.

  Were they waking up? Was it dinner time?

  He felt a cold tingling creep up his spine.

  Just keep walking, he told himself.

  When he was just about halfway down the hallway, there was a loud, echoing series of clanking noises and all of the doors suddenly cracked open.

  Chapter Forty

  For a few terrifying seconds, Eric simply froze. He stood there, his heart racing, his eyes wide with panic, unsure whether he should run forward or backward or just continue standing there like an idiot while he waited for the monsters to crawl, slither or shuffle out of their cells after him.

  Nothing moved for a moment. Most of the noises fell silent at the sound of the disengaging locks. Darkness loomed behind each cracked door in terrifying anticipation.

  Then there was a crackle of static somewhere overhead and Mistress Janet’s voice filtered through the darkness: “Playtime, Funnyman. Let’s have some fun before you leave.”

  Somehow, through the gripping terror that was rapidly freezing his blood and draining all the color from his face, he managed to understand what was going on. The hallway must be under video surveillance. Why else would the doors all unlock precisely when he reached the midpoint of the corridor? Mistress Janet was clearly watching him on a computer screen somewhere right now, toying with him, eager to see him demonstrate some of the “power” she hoped to leech from him before the night was over.

  Unfortunately for him, whatever “power” he might have within him didn’t include anything very useful against an army of otherworldly predators.

  He did the only thing he could do: He ran.

  Almost immediately, he heard doors creaking open behind him. Ahead of him, something that roughly resembled an elephant’s trunk, except that it was low to the ground, blood red and covered in some kind of slime, crept out through one of th
e openings, sniffing at the floor. On the other side of the hallway, long, bony fingers reached out and grasped the door, pushing it open. He ran past both of these things without pausing to investigate them any further.

  It was too far. There were too many doors. Even if not all of these cells contained something terrifying and man-eating, he had little chance of making it all the way to the end without something attacking him. And if any one of these things held him back for even a moment, the rest would converge on him.

  He suddenly recalled Holly’s vision of him dying and his body being dragged away.

  It was a mental image he seriously could’ve done without at this point in time.

  “Don’t be shy,” mocked Mistress Janet. “Put on a show for me.” Her voice, broadcast over multiple speakers along the ceiling of the hallway, lacked any definite origin, giving it a creepy, otherworldly quality, as if she were not a mere woman, but an all-seeing deity looking down from above.

  She was no-doubt enjoying herself immensely.

  “I like to watch,” she purred.

  Something that looked like a large crab scuttled into his path. Instead of pincers, it had huge, bug-like mandibles. He gave it a hard kick and sent it careening down the dark hallway. It made a noise that sounded eerily like a human scream.

  A horrid face emerged from another doorway as he was passing it. Its eyes were huge, empty sockets, its mouth a gaping hole frozen in an eternal scream. He saw it for only an instant as he bolted past, but it was long enough to see something horrible squirming inside that mouth, something with eyes of its own…

  He didn’t have time to dwell on the horror of the sight. In the next instant, his light fell on a pair of shining eyes staring back at him from the darkness ahead. Big, menacing and low to the ground, it was enough to make him stumble to a stop in panic.

  As it crept toward him, its silhouette began to emerge from the shadows. It was big and hairy, like a wolf, but too big, too compact. It gave a long, threatening growl.

  “Kill it, Funnyman,” crackled Mistress Janet’s voice from overhead. “Use your power. I want to see you use it.”

  That was going to be a problem.

  He glanced over his shoulder, but didn’t dare take his light off the beast before him. There were noises from back there. Lots of noises. Awful noises. And the darkness at his back was writhing. Things were there, creeping toward him.

  Something shrieked in the darkness. It was impossible to tell if it came from behind or in front.

  When he looked forward again, it was just in time to see a long, bony limb reach out of the darkness and snare the wolf-like beast. The thing snarled savagely as it was dragged across the hallway and through an open doorway.

  Eric didn’t wait for the skirmish to end. He bolted past the brawling beasts and on down the hallway, past creeping feelers and shadowy shapes peering out at him from doorways, past the crab-thing as it lay on its back, its legs twisting angrily as it struggled to right itself, and over a long, twisting thing that looked like a giant python, but didn’t seem to have a head.

  He didn’t scream. Not aloud, anyway. He was too focused on getting the hell out of here. Inside his head, on the other hand, he was shrieking like a little girl.

  He’d been in some terrifying situations before, but this was pretty high on the list of things that tested his bladder control.

  Something that resembled a short, naked man with dead, gray skin, shriveled, black eyes and a permanent expression of agonizing horror frozen on its corpse face stumbled toward him. A real zombie? Or simply a creature from some other world that just happened to look like a dead and rotting human?

  Eric’s reflexes took over. Not daring to dodge to either side for fear that something far worse was going to reach out and drag him into the darkness, he went straight down the middle and threw his shoulder into it. Its body was surprisingly light. It made a soft, horrid crack and broke apart as it was thrown backward against the wall.

  No, not a zombie. At least not a human one. Like the wendigoes, its proportions were all wrong. Its head was too small. Its hands weren’t shaped right. It had a strange growth in the middle of its chest.

  How many worlds did the agents collect these things from? If it was only one, he dearly hoped to never visit it.

  “You’re really determined to do this the hard way, aren’t you?”

  He realized that it didn’t matter to her if he lived or died. After all, if he let something as minor as a hallway full of monsters overwhelm him, then maybe it meant she was wrong about his power after all.

  The woman was beyond help.

  “Come on, Funnyman. Just a little peek? Pretty please?”

  The end of the hallway was coming up. He was lucky so far. It sounded like many of the things behind him were fighting among themselves rather than stalking him. He might just make it out of this alive.

  Or not…

  The third door from the end came into view. The one he dared to peek into on his way in. This time, the door was wide open. Dozens of those long, spidery, finger-like things were reaching out into the hallway. Several of them had speared a pale, furless creature with boar-like tusks and bony spikes on its back and was dragging its still-twitching carcass across the floor. The rest were creeping across the tile, over the walls and into the ceiling space, searching for more prey.

  He didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. There was an ear-splitting screech from behind him and when he looked back over his shoulder, something dreadful was moving toward him across the ceiling, snapping tiles and supports as it went and letting them rain down onto the floor.

  He veered right, aimed for the least concentrated cluster of spidery limbs and charged through, leaping over the dead beast in the process.

  He stepped on one of the thing’s countless, probing limbs. It snapped like a twig underfoot. The creature made no sound, but the other legs shot out in an instant, attempting to spear whatever had disturbed it. If he’d been moving any slower, they’d have snared him. As it was, he felt several of them graze his pants leg.

  When he was clear, he risked a look back. The monster wasn’t done yet. All those limbs were reaching toward him, eager to snatch him before he could get away. Some of them were only inches from his face.

  Then the thing on the ceiling arrived and those spidery arms turned on it instead.

  Eric threw open the door and rushed into the guardroom beyond, shoving it closed behind him.

  “Well that’s one way to do it,” said Mistress Janet. “I think that might’ve been even sexier than watching you use your powers.”

  When he shined his light through the window, he found that he could just make out the two shadows writhing in the darkness.

  “You’re making me feel all tingly,” she purred.

  Eric became aware of a noise. It wasn’t coming from behind this door. He turned and shined his light into the room. For a moment, he seemed to be alone. Then he saw it. A horrid face pressed against the glass of the door on the right, staring back at him.

  Before he could fully recover from the startling sight, something slammed against the door on the left, rattling it.

  He’d forgotten about the other two hallways.

  How many monsters had these psychopaths collected?

  “Use it, Funnyman. Don’t leave me unsatisfied. Let me see it.”

  The door on the right creaked open. A strange, skeletal claw reached into the room.

  “I promise I’ll show you mine.”

  He bolted for the stairs.

  The door on the left slammed open. Something that resembled an armored turtle, but with a huge, horned head and fast, powerful legs stumbled into the room and shook itself.

  Eric said a bad word and vaulted over the desk, keeping to the middle of the room as much as possible.

  From the right, not one but three creatures crowded through the doorway. They looked like hairless apes, with hideous, swine-like faces and long claws that drug the ground. They were runnin
g straight at him.

  He ran for the stairwell door.

  The turtle thing charged him. Its appearance was grossly deceptive. It wasn’t even remotely slow. And neither were the bald apes.

  But he had time. He was going to make it. The stairs were right in front of him. All he had to do was get on the other side of that door.

  But as soon as he opened it, he found his way blocked by another wendigo.

  It let out a fierce howl and threw itself at him.

  Surrounded by monsters, he shouldn’t have had a chance. He wasn’t trained for combat. He was barely trained to perform CPR. There was no reason for him to have the skills necessary to get out of this situation alive. And yet somehow, whether by the grace of his survival instincts or by sheer, dumb luck, he evaded the wendigo by ducking low and to the right, dodging its big hands and circling behind it.

  In the process, he backed himself into the corner beneath the stairs, trapping himself there. Again, this should’ve been the end of him, but as the wendigo turned to follow him, the charging turtle monster forced its way through the door before it could swing closed.

  The wendigo was caught completely by surprise. Gored through the thigh by the strange monster’s horns, it collapsed onto the floor with a deafening shriek and was promptly torn to pieces.

  The slower moving ape-things arrived a moment later, screeching at the other two, and slashing with their huge claws.

  Eric didn’t stick around to find out who the winner of this monster brawl was going to be. He climbed over the railing and ran as hard as he could go up the stairs to the first floor.

  He didn’t stop to look back this time. There were only four doors downstairs. There were eight up here. He didn’t wait around to see if he was going to be surrounded again. He ran back through the hallway and all the way into the waiting room before pausing to look back.

  “You’re such a tease,” pouted Mistress Janet. “You know that right?”

  “You’re kind of…a maniac…” panted Eric as he struggled to catch his breath. But of course she couldn’t hear him.