I could think of only one other person who might know what kind of nostrum Verna Blackwood was feeding her son. My mother knew much more than she admitted about the Blackwood household. However, I came home to an empty apartment. My mother had gone out, leaving me with no other avenue of inquiry to pursue. That night, I dropped into bed and dreamed about Alistair and Mora bending cheek to cheek over a stack of books and arguing about whether I was mad or not until Alistair grew long white ears and pink eyes and pointed out that we’re all mad here
CHAPTER TEN
The ringing telephone jarred me from sleep. Indistinctly, I heard my mother issue a cheerful greeting to someone she called, "dear." A moment later, she said, "Oh, he told you all about it. Yes, if you like. Yes dear, I'll tell him when he's awake."
I thrashed my way out of sleep and managed to roll myself upright on the daybed, resting my head in my hands while I waited for my brain to catch up with the rest of me. I felt a mug pressed to my fingers, and my mother said, "I'm fixing a picnic lunch for you and Mora. She wants you to take her to the place where Alistair does his little disappearing trick."
“Did she say what bus she was taking?”
“No bus,” my mother said. “Her mother is dropping her here.”
Mora’s mother? Her actual mother? Wide awake, I scrabbled under the daybed for a pair of jeans and a clean shirt.
My mother returned from the kitchen. “I’ve got your breakfast ready. Don’t panic, Henry. It’s Mora’s mother, not the Mongol horde.”
“That’s worse.”
“And she’s not here to see you. We’re working on the Methodist Women’s Soup Kitchen committee together.”
I wolfed ham and eggs, washed my own dishes and made up the daybed with military precision. Then I tried to read until a neat little grey Prius pulled to the curb. I stepped out on the front porch as the passenger door opened and Mora squirmed out, depositing her laptop and kit bag on the sidewalk. Then she opened the rear door and began dragging out more bags and cases.
The sight of Mora wiggling around in the back of the car in denim shorts distracted me from my nerves, and I started to her assistance, but the driver’s door closed, and a tall woman with dark red hair came around the front of the car. “Hello, Henry. Mora says you’re helping her with her dissertation today.”
I halted. “Yes, ma’am.” Mora had her mother’s features and height but not her curves. Junoesqe was the word that came to mind. Maybe Mora would fill out as she got older. I pictured that and liked the image until I realized I was contemplating Mora’s mother’s figure.
I didn’t realize what she was doing until her arms went around me. “We’re so glad you came home.”
I tried to return the embrace but knocked Mrs. Fee in the side with my cane.
She stepped back and studied the cane. “That must be a nuisance. You need something more suitable.”
I nodded and said, “Yes ma’am,” which was generally an acceptable answer to anything.
“I think there’s something in the attic that would fit you better. Mora’s been helping me catalog some of my grandfather’s old things.”
Mora had her technical array out of the car by then. “Hal and I have to go, Mum.”
Mrs. Fee gave her daughter a wave. “Take care, Henry. You’re under-weight. It’s time you put some muscle back.”
She strode down the walk toward my mother’s door.
“How long as your mother known my mother,” I asked.
Mora was piling herself with straps and cases. I took her computer, her canvas bag and an odd-shaped leather case that looked roughly a hundred years old, and risked strangulation by arranging the strap around my neck. Mora said, "I believe they were already well acquainted before you left.”
“How did I not notice that?”
“You may have been preoccupied with your own concerns.”
That was a generous way of saying that I had been too self-absorbed to pay any attention to my mother’s personal life.
Mora had more urgent concerns. “I spent most of the night refining my model, and our time-frame may be restricted."
“Time frame for what?”
"In order for access to Alistair’s target universe to recur at roughly ten-thousand year intervals, it has to be within higher-dimensional proximity to our own universe, but for exact details, I require data from the spacial coordinates of Alistair's exit point.”
“Time frame for what?” I repeated.
She chattered away, lost in her mathematical universe. “I have yet to identify the mechanism Alistair employs for the translocation, but the information I derived from his texts indicates the involvement of light and gravity in the formation of the interstices.”
She redistributed some of her bags and cases, and I took a leatherbound box about the size of a toaster from under her arm and put it under mine.
She said, “In addition, I consulted Mum regarding Alistair’s para-dimensional alien god thingummies. She was not aware of the particular mythology; that seems to have been a well-kept secret within a small sub-cult.”
“Thingummies?” I asked suspiciously. “Is that a math word?”
“I gave her the authors and titles of some of Alistair’s books, and she is going to the anthropology department to look for more, but she may not have much success. Alistair’s information appears to have been assembled from obscure fragments of many re-translations and re-interpretations.”
“You told your mother about this?”
Mora blinked at me. “I told you; she specializes in pre-Sumerian civilizations.”
“I thought his old gods and elder race and whatever it is were supposed to have died out before dinosaurs, much less Sumeria.”
“Dad is searching for anomalies in the fossil record, but he does not expect to find them.”
“Your father?” It was one thing for me to tell my mother about Alistair’s antics or my “visual distortions.” She had known Alistair since we were children. “Your parents are taking this seriously?”
“I explained that the math was consistent,” she said.
“And they went from math to alien god thingummies without a hitch?”
She stared at me as if I had grown a second head. “The math is consistent,” she repeated as if any argument would be madness.
Apparently, that was all the Fee family required to throw aside all science and good sense.
I took Mora to the spot near the sidewalk on the tree-shaded street from which Alistair disappeared each evening into thin air. Trusting me to direct traffic around her, she unpacked her laptop and an arsenal of technology all linked to the computer by USB cables, or blue teeth, or fire wires. She produced a fat stick of red chalk and drew lines all over the pavement. She took readings and walked around, waving a light meter like a commuter looking for a cell signal. She took compass readings and unpacked an antique sextant and took measurements of…I couldn’t imagine what, since the angle didn’t seem to suggest she was looking for latitude.
Finally, she arranged herself on the pavement right where Alistair’s interstice opened every night. My hackles rippled to see her there, but she sat, placid as a cat, with her computer on her lap and, consulting a number of timetables, entered a lot of numbers into the laptop, which turned it all into a kaleidoscope of shifting colors and shapes on the screen.
The drivers who passed on the street gave us plenty of room and waved to me as they went by. Mrs. Wenzel, walking her dachshund, Skeeter, stopped on the sidewalk by my side. Skeeter, ambled over to examine Mora. He licked her computer, and she scratched behind his floppy ears without taking her eyes off her screen.
Mrs. Wenzel said, “What’s going on here now, Hal? Hello, Mora dear. The two of you are blocking half the street.”
Mora glanced up, still scratching Skeeter’s ears. “I am with the university, checking for dimensional distortions produced by gravitational flux in the presence of photon barrage caused by sunspots and lunar distortions.” It so
unded like a glib lie but might well have been the truth.
Mrs. Wenzel wasn’t so easy to satisfy. “What do you mean? Gas leaks? Water mains?” Skeeter was trying to usurp Mora’s lap from her computer.
“Quite possibly,” Mora replied, and that, again, might be nothing less than the truth.
Mrs. Wenzel harrumphed. “Well, I suppose it’s all right—seeing it’s you and Hal. Just don’t block the street all afternoon.” And she ambled away with Skeeter in the lead.
After two hours or so, Mora pronounced herself finished and departed bag and baggage for the university, declining my company and promising to contact me in the morning with her results. I returned to my mother's apartment. She and Mrs. Fee had gone, but my mother had left a note in the middle of the kitchen table. A wants you this afternoon.
Sure enough, Alistair awaited me at the door of his room in a state of feverish glee. "What has delayed you? I sent for you hours ago."
"I've been occupied."
He waved this away like an unpleasant odor. "I knew you would be eager to hear everything I have to tell you." A wild light burned in his sunken eyes. "I have decided to lay everything before you. When you have seen the full breadth of my ambition, you will ally yourself with me as my right hand, the general of my armies, a prince in your own right as I will be the consort of a goddess."
I clenched my jaw against a protest that I would do no such thing. “Go on.”
He said, "I have already told you how I made a study of these creatures which have been called by some the elder gods."
I acknowledged this to be so.
"During my study of these creatures, I sought through what records I could discover to find among them one that would suit my purpose."
"What purpose is that?"
"Have I not explained to you that these are creatures of immense power? To serve them is to possess the very powers of the gods," Alistair said. "After many long and tedious months of labor, I came on a reference to one such creature, which seemed to me to be of a nature that would be amenable to my desires. Many have been the names given to her by her worshipers down the aeons: Queen of Worms, Lady of Ruin, Mother of Desolation, She whose spawn devour all flesh, but her true name, as nearly as mere human organs can pronounce it, is Slethyrl." His lips twisted and writhed, and the sound was neither a hiss nor a snarl but a mix of the two that made the small hairs rise and prickle on the back of my neck. Maybe it was something in the way he pronounced the name with such gloating sensuousity.
"And you’re going to introduce yourself to this queen of worms with the devouring spawn, and propose...what...an alliance?"
"Henry, one does not propose alliance to a god. I shall offer up to her my most abject devotion, and in return, she will make me her high priest, her chancellor, her consort. I will free her from her long imprisonment, and she will cover the Earth with her young. Those who fall down before us shall bring her sacrifices, and she will gloat and grow fat on the screams of the defiant, but some, some I will not allow to worship at her feet. Those who have scorned and spurned me, I myself will sacrifice to her glory.”
“Sacrifice, Alistair? Are you genuinely planning to…Mother of Desolation, Alistair? Do you actually want to wreck our world for the sake of a little petty vengeance?”
“Petty.” His eyes bulged. “Can you call it petty? I have been ignored, laughed at by those who think they understand the universe. Is it petty to demand the honor to which I am entitled by right of superiority?”
He had always played at this game, this pretense of greatness, but I had dismissed it as yet another of his caricatures. When had the game become real to him? Or had he always been deadly earnest and I had overlooked his ranting.
“Who has laughed at you, Alistair? To whom, apart from me, have you even spoken?”
His gaze slipped away from mine. “They are envious. They resent my triumphs.” He expanded again. “Consider the scope of my proposal. I am about to master universes and seize the power of the gods.”
I could not get sense out of him. “And you think you can find your gods?” I asked.
"I can," he said triumphantly. "I have. Last night, I passed through a portal which I have found and made my way through many worlds and twisted paths until, at last, I stood on the plains of Gan-Yogsonath with the mountains of Auglahar rising high and sharp and white-toothed behind me and to my right the black river Yespin which empties into the dead sea called Kek where that black water sinks into the dry and salted dust and is never seen again. I knew then to walk straight ahead with the mountains behind me and the river to my right, and I came, in time, to the lip of a chasm, the Valley of Shadows.
It stretched, it seemed, from horizon to horizon and I looked into its depths and saw below me the great road which winds down the length of that fissure riven ageless aeons ago by some unknown and unremembered cataclysm. Wide as a highway, it runs between a thousand thousand palaces rearing from the stony floor and springing from the walls of the valley. The tower of Uneth-Sul thrusting like a black fang from the earth; the house of Gol, squat and sullen; no doubt even the very pit of Samoth lay somewhere along that road.”
Caught up in the rhythm of his narrative, he sprang from his seat and began to pace the floor beside me. “Giddy with desire for my lady, I scanned the valley for the sigil of she whom I longed to find. To my dismay, I knew not which of a thousand thousand temples was her own. At last, as I gazed in awe and despair, I spied one of those edifices which I had seen described by a certain professor Carlsbad, which he had seen in a drug-enhanced vision. This was the temple of Thoth, and from its placement in the valley, I believed I would be able to locate the resting place of Slethyrl, so I returned home with all haste, and I have neither slept nor eaten nor drunk anything but have spent every moment in study to discover how the temple of Slethyrl is placed, and I believe I have succeeded at last."
I said, "And you mean to go back to the valley and into the temple of this creature?"
He dropped back into his chair. "Of course."
I could hardly believe he meant to do what he proposed. He couldn’t possibly contemplate laying waste to a world, to lovely Woodhill and her cool trees and overgrown roses, and her graceful old houses.
I debated the merits of tying him to a chair until he came to his senses. Could I get him out of Blackwood House? Catch him outside and haul him back to my mother’s apartment over my shoulder? Would my mother accomplice herself to a kidnapping? And how long would I have to keep him before it was safe to let him go? The less time I had to keep him tied up, the better, but when did he mean to depart for the final time? A time frame would be helpful.
"But you can’t go alone," I said.
"Of course not.” He stared at me. “Haven’t you been listening? You are coming too. Haven’t I said that you are to be a prince and a general? Can you think I would ascend to godhood and leave you behind?”
Of all the moments for him to remember childhood loyalties—just when he proposed an adventure I had no earthly desire to join. “Well then,” I said. “When do we leave?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Alistair flourished a negligent hand. “The time is near, but it is not yet. There will be time for preparations and to reveal all to my dear Miss Fee before we go.” He frowned. “Do you think she will want to come with us? She will be anxious to meet my goddess as soon as possible.”
I shuddered. “No, I don’t think she wants to come along.” I tried to think of a way to wither Alistair’s romantic interest. “She may not be as sympathetic as you hope. She cares about math, not gods or ruling the universe.”
He snorted. “When I reveal to her my great purpose, her former delights will be as ashes.”
“It’s usually better not to suggest to a woman that her interests aren’t important.”
He raised rapt eyes to heaven. “Henry, Miss Fee is not a woman. She is a rare intellect, a spirit imprisoned in crude flesh. You do her injustice to suggest she is a common earthly th
ing.”
As far as I was concerned, Mora exhibited all the usual features of being a woman, the main one being that I wanted to do naked things to her that would shock Alistair into a coma.
“Never mind, Alistair. She definitely doesn’t want to go. It will have to be we two alone.”
He looked crestfallen. “Well, as a mere frail woman, the journey would be too much for her in any case.”
I said, “But can’t you give me some indication of the day of our departure? I want to be ready when you call on me.”
He made a production of smirking like a cartoon villain and cut his eyes sideways at me. “Soon, Henry. Very soon. Prepare yourself.”
I pressed him a while, which delighted him and got me nothing. I warned him again about his mother and poison, but he refused to listen. Finally, I excused myself and left him to his scheming.
My mother returned home as evening began to close over the street outside my window. She hung her purse beside the door. “Hello Henry. Did you have fun with Mora today?” She brushed past me, moving toward her bedroom.
“It wasn’t a Sunday School picnic, Mother,” I said. “Mora thinks Verna may really be poisoning Alistair.”
My mother paused. She turned toward me. “Henry, if she’s been poisoning him, she managed to do it while you and I were living under her roof and I did all his cooking and took him all his medicines. I spoke to his doctor and to Walter’s when Walter was ill. The doctors found nothing.”
“Can you be sure of that?” I asked her. “Did they test for everything?”
She laid a hand on my forearm. “Henry, don’t take poor little Alistair too seriously. He’s always been sickly, but he could leave Verna and that house any time he wanted.”
She patted my cheek in her half-fond, half scolding way. “Let me go to bed. Today has been long and busy, and it will be long and busy tomorrow, and I’m half dropping.”
She had her bedroom door closed between us before I could make a protest.
The Blackwood Curse: Queen of Corruption Page 9