by Lon Frank
Now, he possessed a medallion identical to the one on Ellie Eden’s necklace and accurately guessed at its function. He had believed for several years that the mysterious pictures in the Eden Studio were actually plans for the operation of some alien machine, but he knew neither its location nor purpose.
Turning the small disc over in his fingers, he felt a certainty of premonition that he held the key—to both the machine and to his future.
Landing in the tall grass of the meadow, the two men ducked under the still-spinning rotors and trotted to the forsaken little trailer, not realizing that they were being watched by six pairs of eyes, hidden just beyond the low stone fence. As Mason held the door open, Arthur took in the empty interior and bits of rope, and ascertained the situation immediately.
“He’s loose.”
Neither man was given to unprofessional expletives and their faces only registered the consternation of unforeseen complications. Turning rapidly in a circle, Mason silently pointed out the trail of beaten grass leading into the thicket of berry vines and wild Chinese tallow trees. The director followed his gaze before he spoke again, his voice a strained whisper.
“And it looks like he’s headed to the old mansion. I wanted to talk to him a little first, but now he’s becoming a nuisance.”
He reached into his coat and pulled out the metal disc and a 9mm Israeli-made automatic pistol.
“A nuisance we can do without.”
* * *
As Lemaire broke free of the dewberry brambles, he stood alone in the clearing surrounding the old plantation house. A hundred yards back along their trail, Mason quietly tapped him on the shoulder and disappeared into the drapery of an ancient weeping willow. Cautious by nature and trained by Special Forces, the agent felt the tingle on the back of his neck which meant they were not alone.
When the two old West Texas ranchers and the silk-stockinged girl giant passed, he stepped back into the path behind them. He had gotten his favorite weapon from the helicopter, and as he leveled the short-barreled, 12-gauge, pump shotgun at the three backs, he spoke in a terrifyingly calm voice just loud enough for them to hear.
“And they said the circus didn’t live here anymore.”
* * *
The director of FACT always appreciated the effectiveness of a quiet touch. As he reached out and rested his hand on the shoulder of his wayward female agent, he looked truly grief-stricken.
“Agnes, Agnes, I had such hopes for you. Have you forgotten just who you work for and what I can make happen? And where’s that corpulent corporal of yours? Don’t tell me he’s lost in the woods; I should fear for his safety among the wild animals.”
With this, he glanced at Mason, who took his cue, and began easing back into the underbrush.
“But now that you’re all here, you’re just in time for a little demonstration. In fact, you just might prove useful. In a guinea pig sort of way, that is.”
It was then that he caught the movement in the corner of his eye. Swinging his weapon around, he brought it to bear instantly on a running blur of brown fur. As he squeezed off a single shot, he realized not only that the animal was running into the bushes, but it was running FROM a squat and time-stained masonry building. As the raccoon collapsed in a motionless tumbled heap, he brought the gun once again to point at the hapless trio.
“Okay, kiddies, it’s show time and I think Elvis is already in the building. Move.”
* * *
Before leaving the meadow in search of the fugitive Lucky, Arthur Lemaire raided the first-aid kit in the helicopter, taking a small pen-type flashlight and a wide roll of cloth tape. He now held the light between his teeth while he taped together the wrists of his three captives. It was almost completely dark and he didn’t want to take any chances, so he also taped their ankles, one to one another, like some macabre three-legged race.
The compulsive orderliness which ruled his every waking moment caused him to align his prisoners according to height, so that Elmo found his left ankle bound to the right one of his wife, and his right taped to the left one belonging to the tall former agent. The stride difference of the two women made it quite awkward for them all to walk, but after a few false starts, they settled into a drunkenly syncopated rhythm like some huge comedic insect.
Arthur herded them slowly towards the low building where the raccoon had appeared. The faded and crumbling building was situated in the center of an overgrown graveyard behind the ruins of the plantation house. It had a low, curved roof and neither window nor door, and looked to be constructed solely of very old concrete, or tabby in the local vernacular, such as was commonly made in this area, using sand and sea shells. A century of neglect showed in the water stains along its walls and the straggling vines which clung within the cracks of its once-whitewashed surface. It was, in appearance, a typical, family burial crypt in this low country where corpses were routinely interred above ground. Typical, that is, except for its large size and its lack of any visible means of entry.
As Arthur surveyed each wall, moving front to back, he fingered the metal disc in his pocket and searched for any marking or sign which might be a clue to its use. Moving his hobbled little group to the rear of the crypt, he noticed at once the beaten-down grass at the center of the back wall. Playing the small light up the wall from the area where Lucky and Ellie were standing just minutes before, he spotted the same depression that they had found.
He grabbed Agnes and roughly shoved her and her attached accomplices forward so their noses almost touched the cold damp of the masonry wall. In fact, Elmo was struggling to suppress a mold-induced sneeze when Arthur pressed the medallion into its place.
* * *
A half-hour earlier, Lucky and Ellie slipped quietly through the undergrowth and arrived at the old crypt-like building. Lucky knew the way, obviously, and chuckled occasionally to himself as he led the young woman through the tangle of ancient dewberry vines and wild roses. As they reached the back wall, they could hear the voices of Arthur Lemaire and Mason in the distance.
Lucky held a forefinger to his lips and motioned for Ellie to hand him her necklace with the little bird emblem. He ran his hands over the wall, and quickly finding the place, pressed the medallion into a small depression. The wall immediately began to waver, then suddenly disappeared altogether. Lucky stepped into the little room, then reached back to pull in the stunned girl, as the wall began to reappear.
They were in a room as clean and shining and brightly lit as a modern surgery suite. However, there didn’t appear to be any lighting, and the only object was an ungainly looking machine. It stood on four short legs, like a large splayed table, and had a glass bubble-type enclosure, open at the sides. Inside were two seats and a small console with a joystick and various gauges. Lying on the floor around it were three short, metallic poles, each pointing in a different direction.
Ellie opened her mouth but closed it again without speaking. Lucky just grinned and began to walk slowly around the machine.
“This contraption is what I thought I remembered when I saw the papers from the old photo studio. Somehow, I knew the old plantation and this place and this machine. But, these pole things were fixed into place like this.”
He picked up one of the three rods and slid it into a round opening on the side of the machine’s base.
“Help me, Ellie; they’re not heavy, and I got a feelin’ those other guys are fixin’ to join this picnic.”
They quickly slid the other two rods into place then clambered into the seats inside the bubble. Lucky jiggled the joystick and tapped the gauges but absolutely nothing happened. Ellie pointed to a small window where four numbers were set on little wheels like an auto odometer. She reached over and gently spun them, randomly stopping on 1-8-6-5 and pushed a small green button on the dash.
The light in the little room suddenly faded, a low humming began to come from the deck under their feet, and the machine itself began to blur in their vision.
* * *
>
In his dream, the little elephant statue stepped from its fountain and began to dance in a grassy meadow filled with yellow and lilac and pink wildflowers. The sky overhead was a gaily striped canvas, fluttering in a summer breeze, and held aloft by huge tent poles of gray-leaved cypress.
As he followed the pirouetting pachyderm, he saw circus posters hovering above his head, imploring him to ‘Ride in the Flying Machine’, and ‘Visit the Terrifying Mystery Crypt’, and ‘See the Amazing Man with No Face’.
Ahead, the elephant stopped dancing and stood motionless under a great and spreading live oak. It suddenly transformed into a petite, rounded trailer of shining metal. He looked at the small curved door and saw the reflection of a garish grease-paint smile, orange wisps of hair and a large, red rubber nose. He searched the reflected face for eyes, but two large raindrops landed and turned them into ripples of rainbow oil sheen on dark bayou waters.
As the grease paint began to melt and run from the dream reflection, he turned his face up into the warm rain.
“Lucky! Lucky, wake up!”
His eyes opened more in protest than in recognition, but he smiled at the worried look on Ellie’s beautiful young face. She was gently patting his cheeks with soft hands, wet from the bottled water in her purse.
“Well, hiya, missy. What’s fer breakfast?”
The two new friends sat on the doorstep of the machine and tried to gather their senses. Ellie told Lucky about the bench at the library and how she had been gently coerced into going along with Olive and Elmo.
Lucky told her about wandering out of the desert, and finding Elmo and Olive, and their photograph from Eden studio, and how they found the plans to the machine. How they didn’t know what they were, but followed them to the Maison du Jet D’eau. He told her how the old photos lined up one way to show the machine and another way to show the old plantation house. He unsnapped a breast pocket on his sky-blue, western-styled shirt, and dug out the small folded paper that Elmo found in the back of the old photo of his grandfather. As he smoothed the yellowed paper to show her that it too had an ink drawing of the old mansion, he noticed the reddish stain.
“Oh, fer cryin’ out loud! I plum fergot about the key! Help me get this, will ya’ darlin’?”
He held up his left foot, motioning Ellie to help him get the boot off. She first grabbed it by the toe, but realizing that would never work, she looked quizzically at the old man, who just grinned and turned her around. He then re-lifted his foot between her shapely legs, where she caught hold of the heel with both hands. He gingerly placed the other foot on her posterior and pushed. As the boot popped off with some effort and Ellie lurched forward, the small key clattered onto the stone floor of the darkened room. Lucky waddle-limped over and picked it up.
“This here key was wrapped up in the back of the old picture, too. Maybe it can get us outta here, ya’ think?”
Ellie set his empty boot inside the machine and retrieved the small flashlight from her bag. As she shined the beam on the back wall where they entered, they were surprised to see a small wooden chest bound with iron bands and fastened with an old hand-forged lock.
“Look, Lucky. What is that? And how did we miss it; I mean we came right through that wall, didn’t we?”
“We didn’t miss it, darlin’, it weren’t there when we came in. But it looks like we found the home fer this here key.”
The lock clicked easily with the key, but Lucky had to kick it twice with his still-booted foot to get the hasp to open. Ellie kneeled, raised the curved lid and gasped. There, in the glow of her flashlight, was a jumble of gold coins and green gemstones. Lucky bent down and scooped up a handful to examine closer.
“Well, put me in bloomers and call me Darlene, they’s Spanish doubloons and emeralds!”
Ellie hesitantly picked up a jewel and thought to herself that it was almost the size and color of a large seedless grape. Her empty stomach, upon receiving the mental image, gave a sharp pang to remind her of the fact that she had not eaten in almost a full day. She glanced around the blank walls of their prison and turned a worried face up at her older companion.
“Yeah, Lucky. But I almost wish it was full of Spanish omelets and orange juice.”
Lucky stuck a handful of treasure in his pocket and closed the lid on the chest, before helping Ellie to her feet.
“I know, sweetheart, I know. But I was just thinkin’—give me that little dog tag of yours. It got us in here, maybe it’ll get us out.”
He took the medallion from Ellie’s hand and stepped up to the rear wall where they had entered. Turning his head and shielding his eyes with one hand, he forcefully held it against the smooth plaster of the barrier and almost fell through when the wall again disappeared.
“Well now, darlin’, they don’t call me ‘Lucky’ fer nuthin’, ya’ know. Grab one end of this box and let’s go get us some eats!”
They stepped out into the early morning sun of summer upon the bayou country. The air was scented with roses and lilac and the acrid smell of smoke from the smoldering timbers of a recently burned barn. As they reached the corner of the rear wall of the crypt, they saw the great plantation house. Only it was not a ruin, but stood inside a white picket fence, with only slightly ragged formal gardens spreading along its sides.
At first glance it looked as if a southern belle would glide out onto its wide portico at any moment to welcome her hungry visitors. But then they saw the curtains fluttering out through broken windows, the smashed pickets of the fence, the overturned wagon and the three bodies lying on the front lawn.
Ellie put a trembling hand to her mouth and sagged as her knees weakened. Lucky helped her put down the trunk as he quickly surveyed the abandoned fields around the graveyard.
“Okay, little one, just sit here a minute. It looks like whoever done all this ain’t still hangin’ around, so you’ll be safe. I’m just gonna go get my other boot, before we go steppin’ in anything, if you know what I mean.”
He made sure he had the medallion before entering, just in case the wall should close again, and headed for the machine where Ellie dropped his boot. He clambered in and sat on the little seat while he slipped the still-new and stiff footwear over his stockinged foot and tugged on the straps fastened to its top. He mumbled to himself with the strain.
“Dad-gummed tight thing ...how does anybody wear ...every day?”
Suddenly the right strap broke cleanly where it was stitched to the boot top, and Lucky’s arm jerked back violently, his elbow hitting a red button between the seats. As the doors whisked shut and the humming noise began to screech, he looked at Ellie sitting on the little chest and their eyes locked in bewilderment.
He watched as her mouth opened, but he was gone before the scream could reach his ears.
* * *
By 1865, the South was running out—out of corn, out of potatoes, out of flour and chickens. But mostly, the South was running out of sons. The hungry cannons of the North had consumed its men and boys as simply as the crows picked the stray corn from its untended gardens. Desperate to replace the living fodder required to stain the soil of ghastly battlegrounds, the South first called the young to duty, and then even sent the black wealth it so jealously protected, marching into the vain and vapid history of defeat.
In the early spring of that year, no men plowed the low fields beside the bayou; no women set the cotton to grow. By summer, the noise of war grew quiet, but no one came home to the House of the Fountain. Only the grizzled and nearly blind patriarch and his equally aged wife remained to eke out an existence on the once-manicured grounds and festive ballrooms of the great white house at the end of the lane marked by the moss-shrouded oak.
Mostly, the world forgot the old plantation, passed it by without a backward glance. But there were rumors. Rumors of Yankees, come to change things, come to take the land, to take the heritage. And warnings of men, cut loose by the war; loose of their families, of their homes, loose of the law. They were the
marauders who would come in the dark of night or in the brightness of noon to take without regard, to burn and to kill. They were men possessed by their particular demons, which were risen by the call of blood, nurtured by the beauty of heedless death.
But on this summer day, one traveler did turn at the ancient oak. He pulled his little, one-horse, covered wagon up to the front of the big house and stepped down in front of the gate, holding his hands high and turning round to show his unseen hosts that he was unarmed. His tinker’s wagon was painted with his advertisement in stately and formal print; “E. E. Hawkins, Master of Modern Photographic Method”.
Edmond Emory Hawkins was an itinerant photographer, making his way to the West after terminating his employment as a battlefield correspondent for a Boston newspaper. He intended to improve his vocational standing by documenting the reported atrocities of the red savages along the Texas frontier. As the elderly couple emerged from the house—the man holding an ancient, long-barreled musket, the woman cradling an earthenware jar of water—he launched good-humoredly into his practiced introduction.
“Good day sir, and good day, madam. I mean you no burden. Just a place to stable a faithful beast and perhaps a shared repast at your table. I will gladly make a present of your photographic image in payment.”
It was at that precise, unfortunate moment they noticed the riders under the willows. Realizing immediately that flight was not possible, the three stood their ground and hoped the outlaws would recognize their poverty and pass them by. When the first shot rang out and the old woman lurched to the earth, shattering the little jug of water on a flagstone step, the men knew their fate was sealed.
The raiders left their bodies in the yard where they fell and searched the house for food or portable wealth before setting fire to the empty barn and galloping off towards the Texas border. They were barely out of sight when Lucky and Ellie stepped through the wall of the mysterious crypt.