by Matthew Cody
“Uh-huh,” Jez said. “Bernie, ghosts are one thing, but now you’re getting all science fiction-y on me.”
He held up his hand. “Just bear with me. These Explorers used these wormholes, these little doorways in reality, to travel the cosmos. They are rare, but they are definitely real. Hidden from the perceptions of most people.”
Bernie looked over his shoulder at the mechanical bird, and though she couldn’t be sure, Jez thought the bird nodded at him, ever so slightly. As if it was encouraging him to continue.
“But the book also talks about something else—a great evil that the Explorers discovered. A thing totally malevolent and filled with hatred of all living things.”
Jez went cold as she remembered what the ghost boy had said.
“The Dead Gentleman,” she said. “Tommy warned me about him.”
Bernie nodded as he patted the book. “I couldn’t be sure until just now, but hearing that nearly confirms it. The Dead Gentleman is coming. He may already be here.”
“Bernie,” said Jez. “How do you know about all this? I mean, where did you get that book, and that … Merlin thingy? Who are you? Really?”
Bernie took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt as he squinted at the little mechanical bird.
“I’m someone who’s trying to make up for lost time. I’m trying to set things right, in my own small way.”
“Well, that’s great, but you still haven’t answered my question. I need to know what is going on—last night I was attacked in my own room! Monsters came out of my closet, Bernie!”
“Your closet?” Bernie put his glasses back on and peered at her. “I’ve long worried about the basement of this old building, but this is a troubling development. Your apartment could be a direct portal to the Dead Gentleman’s world. You cannot go back there. It isn’t safe.”
Jezebel suddenly pictured her father sleeping, oblivious. She imagined her closet door slowly creaking open and a dead, rotted hand reaching out of the darkness.
“Dad! He’s still up there!”
Jez turned and started for the doorway. How could she have been so selfish? She had been so caught up in whether or not he would believe her that she hadn’t even bothered to consider that he might be in danger, too.
She ran to the stairwell.
“No, Jezebel! Wait!” Bernie started after her, but his leg stiffened up on him. He fumbled around, looking for his walking stick. Jezebel didn’t wait for him to find it.
Into the lobby and past the elevator she ran. As she bolted by the elevator doors, Jez noticed that the number was lit on twelve—her floor. It didn’t move. It stayed there.
She heard Bernie’s voice calling after her, but it soon disappeared as she began sprinting, two steps at a time, up the long stairs.
She was halfway there, and totally out of breath, when things began to slither in the shadows. The stairwell was not very well lit, and the weak fluorescents barely kept the darkness at bay. Jez was careful to avoid the small pools of shadow that had settled into corners and around doorways, for whenever she turned her back on one she’d catch a glimpse of something moving. It wasn’t a shape exactly, it was more like a disturbance in the dark, like the ripples on a pond when something big comes too close to the surface.
Whether the pounding of her heart in her ears was from exhaustion or fear, she wasn’t sure, but she tried to calm her panic and keep going. One foot at a time. Around floor seven she began to hear voices. She was taking the stairs slowly now, her calf muscles trembling in protest, and she’d just slipped past a shadowy spot on the floor when the lightbulb overhead began to flicker. Its strobe light effect made her dizzy. She saw then that on the floors above her, it was all darkness. Beneath the buzz of the faltering lightbulb she heard a low, unintelligible murmuring followed by a single whispered answer:
“Jezzzzzebeeeel …”
Once again her arms and legs threatened to turn to stone and she could barely move. Just like her experience at the closet, she was being held in place by more than simply her own terror. Shaking off this strange paralysis was like forcing oneself to wake from a bad dream, but since she’d broken free once before, it was easier the second time.
Willing her legs to move, she hurried for the stairwell exit, but the door wouldn’t budge. The fire doors in the stairwells had no locks, and yet this one was shut tight. It wouldn’t give an inch. She turned and went back down the steps to the sixth floor, but it was the same thing there—a lockless door locked tight against her.
She turned to continue down when a buzzing lightbulb exploded with a pop and the stairway above her went black. Then the light above her head began to sputter and fail. Something was choking the lights out, floor by floor. Something was chasing her, and all the doors were locked.
She had a quick, involuntary memory of the chattering voices in the dark of her closet. Light had been the thing that saved her then, but the light all around her was dying.
The bulb went pop. Tiny pieces of glass rained down upon her as the light died in a puff of burnt electricity. There was a moment of near-darkness, lit only by the blue-green afterimages that floated in her eyes.
Just then Jez heard a sound moving along the steps on the landing above her. It was the thumping of something large—heavy footsteps followed by the clitter-clack of claws on marble steps.
She ran. She jump-skidded down the steps. Five floors below her she could make out the dim, day-lit glow of her only hope—the lobby. The stairwell ended in an archway that emptied into the lobby, and there was no door down there. No door to lock against her.
Fast as she ran, she could still hear something thump and clack its way along the steps not more than a hair’s breadth behind her. It was so close now.…
A bright light suddenly exploded in front of her, blinding her and sending her tumbling. Any farther and she would have careened down a flight of steps. As her vision cleared, she saw Tommy Learner, standing over her and looking the same as he had the day before. The light originated from the small lantern that Tommy held in his hand, and its glow barely extended to the spot where she now lay in a crumpled heap.
There was no sign of the thing following her. Everything was quiet.
“Sorry about that,” said Tommy, frowning. “But you should really watch where you’re going.”
“You …,” she said. “You!” She was out of breath, frightened and angry. She was proud of herself for saying that much. Despite what Bernie had said, Tommy didn’t look at all dead.
“Sorry,” he said. “But we don’t have much time. Have you found Merlin? Have you seen the bird?”
Jez shook her head. “What bird? I was being chased and you … YOU!”
“Chased? By what?”
“I don’t know! Something big! It was right behind me.” Jez pointed to the wall of darkness just beyond Tommy’s circle of light. As she did so, there was the slightest sound of something shifting, slowly moving around in the dark. She noticed that the floors below her had gone black, too. The lobby archway was now little more than a pinprick of light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Tommy’s lantern was the only thing in the whole stairwell keeping the blackness at bay.
“Where?” Tommy asked, squinting. Jez frantically pointed again behind her as she pulled herself to her feet. The boy flipped those ridiculous goggles of his down over his eyes. At once they started to glow blue.
“Uh-oh,” he said. “Croucher. Big one, too. I see it. Just outside the light.”
“What’s a croucher?” she asked, inching toward the stairs. Using Tommy’s lantern, they could still make it to the lobby.
“It’s a kind of evil spirit. They usually crouch over dark doorways or jump out of closets, surprising their victims. Hence the name. Nasty.”
“What’s it look like?” she asked. “I can’t see it.”
“You’re better off that way, trust me. Crouchers are uglier than anything you can imagine.”
“So what do we do?”
> Tommy stood on his tiptoes to get a look over the stairwell at the landing below. The blue light goggles grew brighter as he fiddled with a switch on his belt. “Yep, I was afraid of that. There’s another one waiting for you on the next floor. They always hunt in pairs.”
Tommy scratched his cheek. “Do you have a light source?” he asked.
“No, but you’ve got your lantern! C’mon!”
Tommy shook his head. “I can’t. Can’t move from this spot. See, I’m not here. Not really.” The strange device on his wrist began to chime. He made a face. As Jezebel watched he began to change—just like in the basement, he was becoming indistinct, fuzzy somehow. A ghost of a boy.
“Okay, you need to listen,” he said. “I’m going to disappear in a few moments and I’ll be taking the light with me.”
“YOU WHAT?”
“Don’t worry, those are two really big crouchers, so that’s in your favor.”
“What’s in my favor?”
“The bigger the croucher, the smaller the brain. It’s the little, devious ones that are really vicious.”
Tommy suddenly flickered. For a fraction of a second he disappeared, leaving Jez in a terrifying eye-blink of absolute darkness. When he reappeared, he seemed even weaker, less distinct.
“Sorry,” he said. “I have so much I need to tell you, but you’ll get through this—just be cleverer than they are. And don’t forget the bird. You need to find him.…”
Then he was gone, and Jez was alone in the dark. With them.
For a few never-ending seconds she stood there blinking, trying to discern shapes out of the inky blackness. Jez could hear something shuffling around her, and she imagined two great beasts—all claws and dripping fangs—circling their prey.
A light sputtered and flashed in the air next to her. Tommy was there again, as insubstantial as sun through a stained-glass window. His wristwatch contraption was dinging with alarming urgency.
“I’m out of time, but I’ve got to tell you the most important thing! Everything depends on …”
He flickered again. Instinctively, reflexively, Jez reached out to grab his wrist. She saw, rather than heard, him mouthing “No!”
It felt as if she’d grabbed the end of a live wire. Electricity coursed up her arm, stopping her heart as the world exploded around her in an agonizing flash of light. Then darkness.
PART TWO
The winds of time spiral about us like
the spheres themselves. It will take
a grounded mind and keen senses to
follow the path laid out before you.
—from the introduction to the
Encyclopedia Imagika,
“On the Profession and Its Associated Perils,”
Sir Bartholomew Wainright, editor
CHAPTER NINE
TOMMY
MILES MACINTOSH’S BEDROOM, ENGLAND, 1900
“Now, from here on out, do as I do and only speak when spoken to,” the Captain whispered, careless of the seawater dripping from his mustache. “This place isn’t going to be a stroll in the park like the Lemuria Outcropping. Just follow my lead and try to stay quiet.”
Then he opened Miles Macintosh’s bedroom door.
By this point I was having a much harder time ignoring my own soggy state. My soaked underclothes were bunching up in a most uncomfortable way, and we both stunk of dead fish. Merlin seemed waterlogged, too. The poor bird tried to shake himself dry, but I could still hear water inside whenever he moved—like it was sloshing about in a tin can. Still, I did as I was told, tiptoeing along the hardwood floor as Merlin sat quietly on my shoulder. At least it felt good to be on dry land again.
Miles Macintosh’s bedroom was mostly dark, and what light there was came from a dim fireplace in the far wall. It was early morning outside the window, not yet dawn, and the fire had burned low until it was little more than a pile of glowing ashes. But that dull light was enough to see that one entire wall was nothing but shelves of books, ornate model ships and tin soldiers. A nice soft rug padded the floor. Heavy drapes framed the double-paned window, and beneath that was a large four-poster bed.
I’d heard that people lived like this, but I’d never seen it with my own eyes. In a way, it was nearly as unbelievable as the sunken temple. All that luxury for one boy.
Young Miles snored softly away, oblivious to the pair of waterlogged scoundrels standing in his doorway.
“So what’d he do?” I whispered.
The Captain gave me an annoyed glance. “He didn’t do anything,” he whispered back. “Now, be quiet.”
“Then why are we nabbing him? This is a kidnapping, right?”
“We are not here for him!”
We both froze as Miles snorted loudly and rolled over. For such a little kid, Miles had a snore like a wood saw. Scott put his finger to his lips and took a cautious step into the room. The floorboards creaked under the big man’s weight, but thankfully Miles didn’t stir.
Scott’s instructions had been clear—I was to guard the door and not let anyone in or out. Who I’d be guarding it from was still a mystery. Miles’s parents were sleeping soundly in the master bedroom a floor down, and if Miles himself wasn’t our quarry, then I couldn’t imagine who was.
The Captain had been in a foul and secretive mood ever since we’d escaped the kraken. For my part, I was quite happy to be alive after being nearly swallowed by a giant sea monster, and I’d actually been impressed with the Captain’s fancy piloting that’d gotten us away from the beast just in the nick of time. But I guess all Scott could see were the Kraken-teeth-sized puncture marks along the outer hull of his precious ship and the gallons of seawater that had drenched the lot of us. We’d spent hours pumping out the bilgewater, and it would take days yet to repair the outside damage. We’d docked in Southampton just after midnight and sloshed our way through the empty streets to the Macintosh house—mansion was more like it; they were certainly well-to-do. The locked front door had been a cakewalk (thanks to yours truly), but I shuddered to think what Mr. and Mrs. Macintosh would think when they awoke in the morning to find two sets of seawater footprints staining their fine rugs.
With the door shut behind us, the bedroom was even darker. The weak glow of the fireplace coals did little to penetrate the deep shadows. Anything could be hiding in there. The Captain pulled something out of his bag, and after a few seconds of shuffling I heard a slight click followed by a very soft hum. Scott’s eyes suddenly glowed blue beneath the lenses of a pair of oversized goggles.
He looked ridiculous and I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing, but as I watched the Captain scan the room with those stupid-looking eyepieces, it suddenly dawned on me what he was doing. He was seeing in the dark! This was my first glimpse at a pair of paragoggles in action, and my mind raced with the possibilities. A pair of see-in-the-dark specs could open up a whole world of lucrative opportunities.
I’d just begun to work on a plan to get myself a pair, or at the very least lift the Captain’s, when Scott made a sudden move toward the bed. Merlin squawked and the big man grabbed at a handful of air as Miles Macintosh, who’d apparently been faking sleep all along, leapt past him and headed for the door. As Miles ran past the fireplace, I caught a good look at the boy—skinny, with the pasty white skin of a rich kid who didn’t spend much time out in the sun, and spindly little arms and legs poking out of an overly large nightshirt. A stupid tasseled nightcap dangled down in front of his eyes.
I cracked my knuckles and grinned. The boy was headed straight for me.
“Make it easy on yourself, Miles,” I said. “You’ve got nowhere to—Uff!”
Scrawny Miles Macintosh hoisted me by the collar and was lifting me up over his head. One-handed.
The boy growled at me as I dangled helplessly. Then he said something in a throaty foreign language as he tossed me the way you might toss an apple core over your shoulder.
Merlin took to flight and I, thankfully, landed on the bed’s soft feather
mattress, bouncing once before rolling off and onto my butt.
Scott appeared at the edge of the bed, wielding some kind of bizarre-looking gun. There was a pop, and then Miles went down, entangled in a large net.
“Quickly,” said the Captain. “That won’t hold him.”
“What do you expect me to do?” I shouted, my head still spinning and my butt bruised.
“Here,” said Scott. A sturdy pole suddenly appeared in his hand. He tossed it to me. Attached to the handle, near the center of the pole, was some kind of hand crank. “Tesla Stick. Give it a crank, and when he makes a break for it, smack him. But don’t touch the end yourself.”
Cautiously, I took the rod with one hand and turned the little handle with the other. There was a mechanical whir and the pole started to vibrate beneath my fingers. The little hairs on the back of my arm stood up as the tip of the pole began to spit out little blue sparks. It felt better to have a weapon, but I still wasn’t terribly confident—not after having been tossed about like that.
Miles was tearing at the netting, biting and clawing at the cords like a trapped animal.
“What’s the matter with that kid?” I asked. “He rabid?”
“That’s not a kid. I fear we’re too late,” answered the Captain without looking up. He was busy fidgeting with something else in his shoulder bag.
Merlin gave a warning whistle and I heard the snapping of ropes. Miles had broken free, and as he stood up he raised his arms in the air and growled again. At any other time I might have laughed at the image of a little kid in a nightshirt and drooping nightcap beating his chest like some zoo gorilla. But I’d felt just how strong the little munchkin was, and there was no time for laughter—Miles was making a run for it.
Jumping forward, I swung the staff at Miles’s behind. As soon as the pole connected, I felt an electrical jolt of feedback run up my arm as Miles reeled back, his body stiff. The boy staggered and blinked, dazed, but he didn’t fall. And my shiny new staff had stopped sparking.