by Lisa Morton
Then Mina’s sounds were abruptly silenced.
With that Diana threw a look to Yi-kin, then pushed the door open. He leapt into the room—and was promptly flung back out, hitting against the far wall of the hallway.
Diana looked from Yi-kin, sliding down in a dazed heap, into the doorway of the room; it was dark within, and she caught only a glimpse of a man-sized figure ducking out of view. Mina shot out of the room as if spring-loaded, and Diana looked at her just long enough to ascertain that the cat wasn’t harmed. Mina ran a few feet down the hallway then stopped, snarling and spitting at whatever was in Diana’s room.
Diana smelled a strange odor, something acrid and unpleasant that she couldn’t quite place, slightly fishy but mixed with a scent that seemed inorganic, chemical. She could hear something breathing with sussurant exhalations, but could make out nothing beyond the doorway. She needed to get light into the room, but the fixtures in the hallway were gas, and it was obviously impossible to reach a lamp in the room.
Her mind raced through the possibilities, and she rummaged through her purse, then her fingers fell upon a large brochure of time tables and fare schedules they’d collected from the Southern Pacific railway offices. She pulled the brochure out, dropped her purse, rolled the booklet up tightly, and then held it up to one of the gas torchieres in the hallway. It caught flame instantly, and she thrust her little torch into the darkness of her room.
And was greeted by the sight of a man-sized reptile’s head hissing back at her.
She jerked back instantly. She wasn’t aware Yi-kin had regained his feet and was standing by her side, equally shocked. “What—?!”
Diana swallowed hard, then thrust the flaming booklet into the room again, and this time held it there. She could see it more plainly now: A greenish, scaly reptilian face with yellow eyes and slitted pupils, like an impossibly oversized lizard head, set atop a human-like body with two arms, two legs and a tail trailing behind it. The thing hissed again, flicking its long reddish, forked tongue, and reared back, and Diana suddenly understood:
It was afraid of the light.
Diana realized her little torch was about to reach her gloved fingers, and without thinking further she thrust it straight at the lizard thing. It recoiled backward, glared at her a last time, and then leapt out through the open window.
Diana and Yi-kin ran to the window and bent out over the sill. There was just enough of a glow from a nearby street lamp that they could make out the thing crawling effortlessly down the side of the building. It reached the street and slithered down into a manhole cover that had been left open, and Diana thought she made out the distant sound of a splash from somewhere down below.
Diana yelped as the flames did reached her fingers, and she flung her torch out into the street, where it fluttered down to the wet pavement and sputtered out. Behind her, Yi-kin had already lit a lamp, and was moving about the room lighting more.
“That thing didn’t injure you, did it?” she asked in concern.
“No, I am fine,” Yi-kin answered, then asked, “how about Mina?” He had become very attached to the cat.
Diana stepped out into the hallway, and gathered up Mina, who relaxed in her arms and allowed herself to be carried back into the room, although a tiny growling in the back of her throat told Diana she was still frightened.
Diana couldn’t blame her.
Yi-kin moved hastily, lighting every lamp in the room, before turning to Diana. “Miss Diana, do you know what that thing is?” he asked.
“I haven’t a clue, Yi-kin. It looked like some kind of reptile—a lizard, specifically.”
“Seh.”
“What?” asked Diana, still scanning the street below. She thought it unlikely their intruder would pay a return visit, but she was on edge now and in full defensive mode.
“Seh. How do you say in English….” Yi-kin put his arms together and wiggled them through the air, while darting his tongue in and out.
“Snake,” Diana supplied.
“Yes, snake. In China we have stories about snakes who want to become people. Two become beautiful women, get married and even have baby. Maybe that was like ching seh—green snake.”
Diana nodded, and finally turned away from the window, closing it behind her.
“Maybe.” Diana dropped into a chair and Mina huddled against her, still anxious. “It doesn’t make sense—we’re nowhere near a gateway. Where did that thing come from?”
Yi-kin paced before the fire he’d started in the room’s small stove. “If there is no gateway around here, then it come a long way.”
“Why?” Diana pondered.
“To kill us.”
Diana admired his bluntness.
He continued: “Things in netherworld don’t want you to close gateways any more, so now they send monsters to kill you. And they must have human help, since they know exactly where you are.”
A chill ran down her spine—everything he said made sense. On one level she was pleased—Yi-kin was proving to be not only hard-working and physically adept, but a fine strategist as well. But her pleasure with her assistant didn’t dispel her growing unease at the notion that they were now prey.
“One thing, though,” Diana said after a brief consideration, “that thing was afraid of light. How far could it travel, being unable to move in daylight, or in well-lit cities?”
“True. It maybe can travel hiding in ship, or in trunk.”
Diana nodded, then said, “We need to know what it was, and exactly where it came from.”
“How we find that out?”
They were in a foreign city, and although at least it was a sophisticated city where English was spoken, Diana knew she would have access to none of her usual information sources. “Perhaps we can try…a library, a museum….”
Yi-kin noted, “We tomorrow have a little time before boat leaves. We can try then.”
“Ho yeh,” Diana told him. (He no longer laughed at certain of her Cantonese pronunciations, so she assumed she was starting to grasp the difficult inflections.)
“In the meantime,” Diana continued, “we will apparently need to exercise caution at all times now, no longer simply when we’re near gateways.”
“I know,” Yi-kin said, then added, “tonight I will sleep with all lights on.”
Chapter XVIII
June 23, 1880
San Francisco, United States
Diana slept little that night, what with the unnerving attack and the way it sent her mind spinning.
She was no longer safe anywhere.
That thought disturbed her at first, then made her angry, and finally fueled her with a furiously renewed determination. Now she was no longer sealing the gateways only out of vengeance for what had been done to William, nor even to halt a potential incursion; now she was also doing it to save her own life.
It also gave her a small thrill of pleasure to know that she was apparently causing some disturbances of her own in the Netherworld.
She did manage to drift off just before dawn, but her brief sleep was troubled by nightmare visions of fanged snake heads darting down at her from dark corners. Even though she was greatly fatigued, she was nonetheless grateful to be awakened by a soft knock on her door around nine a.m. She heard Yi-kin calling, and she rose and moved to it. She asked him to wait while she prepared herself for the day.
After a quick wash in the room’s basin and a change of clothing, she hurried out to meet Yi-kin and found him awaiting her in the hotel’s main lobby. He looked very smart in his new suit; he also looked bright and well-rested, and Diana found herself envying his apparent abilities to sleep off their terror of the night before.
“Where do we go first?” Yi-kin asked her.
By way of answer, Diana went to the main desk clerk and asked if he could suggest libraries, museums, or universities in the nearby vicinity. He smiled and jotted down a brief list on a sheet of paper, which he passed to her. She thanked him, and then returned to Yi-kin. “
Let’s find a cab,” she told him.
They stepped outside the hotel’s doors and Yi-kin was just walking down towards a busy intersection in search of transportation when Diana stopped, frozen, staring at something across the street from the hotel:
A sign on a building there read, “Chappell and Sons Booksellers, 2nd Floor.”
Yi-kin rejoined her, and looked to see what she was staring at. “What is it, Miss Diana?”
It took her a few seconds to find her voice. “Don’t bother with the cab, Yi-kin.”
As she started across the street, he finally saw the sign. “Bookstore…strange. Yesterday I do not see this sign.”
Diana answered, “That’s because it wasn’t there yesterday.”
Yi-kin didn’t ask, he just followed her through the small door next to the sign, and up the stairs inside.
On the second floor landing, they found a door with a frosted glass window and a stencilled name, “Chappell and Sons Booksellers.” Beneath that was a smaller notice, “By appointment only.”
Yi-kin, whose reading of English was still coming along considerably better than Diana’s reading of Chinese, tried to sound out the bottom line. “By…what is middle word?”
“By appointment only.”
“Oh,” Yi-kin, muttered, dismayed, “we do not have appointment.”
“I believe I have a standing invitation,” Diana answered as she opened the door.
They stepped into a small room that was a virtual duplicate of the one Diana had visited in London. Diana even recognized particular books, in exactly the same places they were previously.
Then Stephen Chappell entered the room.
He, too, looked just the same as when Diana had last seen him, and she felt an almost inexplicable rush of warmth flood through her. He smiled at her for a few seconds before either of them said anything, then he said to her, “I’m happy to see you again, Diana.”
“And I’m happy to hear that, Stephen,” she told him. Then, seeing Yi-kin gaping in perplexity, she set about introductions: “Yi-kin, this is my friend Stephen Chappell. We know each other from London. And this is my assistant, Leung Yi-kin.”
Yi-kin bowed to Stephen, and was noticeably pleased when Stephen returned the gesture perfectly. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Leung. If Diana has seen fit to hire you, you’re undoubtedly a man of many rare talents.”
Yi-kin bowed a second time, and more deeply.
Diana said, “I had no idea that Chappell and Sons had American branches.”
“Ah…well,” Stephen said, “it’s a new venture for us. In the new world, as it were.”
“Quite,” said Diana. “Now, suppose you tell me why you’re really here.”
Stephen nodded to her, once, then turned away, searching his shelves. “I understand you’re in need of some information.”
“Of course you know about our scaly visitor last night.”
“A good bookseller always tries to ascertain the needs of his clients,” Stephen said, and then handed her a book.
Diana looked down at the title, and blinked in surprise.
American Indian Mythologies and Legends: Being an Investigation into the Curious Lore and Beliefs of the Savage Tribes. The author was listed as Dr. W. Augustus Raphael, and the publishing date was 1875. At least it was somewhat current.
“I think you’ll find the section on stories of the Hopi people particularly enlightening,” Stephen added.
Diana restrained the urge to open the book right then and there. “Thank you. How much do I owe you for this?”
“No charge,” Stephen told her, then added, “or rather, I should say…your expenses on this matter are being covered by a…patron.”
Diana nodded slowly. She knew better than to ask who that “patron” was, since Stephen would undoubtedly provide no firm answer, only more metaphysical meanderings about the “good forces” on her side, etc. etc.
“Is that all?” she asked, reluctant to leave.
“I’m afraid it is,” he told her.
Yi-kin started to turn away, but Diana didn’t follow. Instead she fixed Stephen with a hard look. “There is one other thing: A Taoist monk in China, Master Li, told me that my husband William was being held by a demon in the Netherworld, and yet you told me William was dead.”
“Yes,” Stephen responded, adding nothing more.
“Which one of you is lying?” she asked.
Stephen considered for a long time, then answered with another single word:
“Neither.”
Diana wasn’t going to let it go so easily this time. “What does that mean? Is William dead until he leaves the Netherworld?”
“Diana,” Stephen said, and he shocked her by suddenly taking one of her hands, and even through the fine leather of her glove she felt his touch like an electric vibration, “you mustn’t ever try to step through a gateway and cross over into the Netherworld yourself. In this sphere you are provided with certain protections, whether you are aware of them or not. In that place, you would be completely unprotected.”
Diana pulled her hand from his. “Were those protections helping last night when we were nearly attacked by some lizard creature?”
Stephen had no answer.
She surprised herself by leaning forward and offering a small, quick kiss to Stephen’s cheek. When she pulled back, he was looking at her wonderingly. “Will we meet again?” she whispered.
“I trust we will,” Stephen murmured back.
As they stepped out of the bookstore, Yi-kin leaned in close to Diana.
“Do English people always kiss book merchants?” he asked.
They left Chappell and Sons, had a quick meal at a bar that was willing to serve Chinese (and where Diana had to foist off not a few undesirable advances), and then returned to their rooms at the Powell Arms. Diana fed Mina the fish she’d kept over from lunch, then sat down to peruse the book.
The day was warm, and she was happy (with the bright sunlight streaming down) to throw her windows open and let the cool breeze blow into the room from off the nearby bay. The breeze smelled of salt and smoke, and it cleaned the last of the lizard thing’s foul scent from the room.
She found the section on the Hopi Indian tribe, and scanned a few pages until she came to what she sought. Yi-kin had gone out to do some shopping, and when he returned lugging a few wrapped packages, she exclaimed excitedly:
“Listen to this, Yi-kin: ‘The elders of the Hopi tribe tell weird tales of a race of lizard people, who were descended from the gods and lived on the earth before men. They built a great city and they amassed an astonishing fortune in gold, but their city was destroyed by a conflagration of some sort. Anxious to leave behind the cruel surface world, these enigmatic beings moved underground and built three cities along the Pacific Coast.
“’One city was said to have been constructed beneath the prominence now known as Mt. Shasta; the location of another has never been revealed, and is now presumed to be long dead; but the capital of their empire was built beneath a small community in the southern part of California called Los Angeles. The Lizard People, who were described as walking upright like men but having the head and skin of reptiles, carved out an intricate system of tunnels beneath Los Angeles; the underground city eventually held a thousand families, and vast amounts of gold, which was a symbol of long life to these creatures. The tunnels, which also held elaborate temples and golden tablets recording the history of this peculiar race, was built in the shape of a lizard, and covered more than thirty miles in length.’”
She finished reading and looked up excitedly at Yi-kin—only to see for the first time that he was wearing smoked spectacles that shaded his eyes.
“What on earth are you wearing?” she asked.
“I think maybe with these, people cannot see my eyes and so cannot know I am Chinese,” he answered.
Diana tried to tell him there was nothing wrong with his heritage or features, but he wouldn’t relent; he told Diana that he would not
inconvenience her any longer, and he thought this disguise would work. Diana finally gave in, but asked that he at least remove the glasses in her presence.
He did, and then sat down to discuss her new findings. “So these lizard people live in….”
Diana checked the book again. “A place called Los Angeles. It’s quite some ways south of here, I believe.”
“But have you not said gateway is north?” he asked.
“Yes, it is,” Diana acknowledged, as the full impact of that question hit. An entire city of demonic reptilian beings, hell-bent on her demise…and they were located a thousand miles from the nearest gateway? It ran completely counter to everything she thought she knew or understood about paranormal activity. Things simply didn’t work that way.
“We’re going to Los Angeles,” she declared.
“But we have tickets to north—”
“Cancel them. Make new ones.”
Yi-kin rose, already looking weary at the thought of wrangling with lines and ticket offices again. Diana saw his reluctance and smiled at him. “I know, Yi-kin, but this is a dilemma that demands answers. Ngoh dei yiu hui.”
We must go.
Yi-kin nodded and waited while Diana gathered her things to head out.
Fortunately arranging travel to Los Angeles turned out to be easier than setting up the northwest venture had been. The Southern Pacific rail lines had begun running from San Francisco to Los Angeles a few years before, and the trip would take only two days, on comfortable passenger trains. The trains also left frequently, and so two hours later they were in a first class section of a coach, leaving behind San Francisco and heading south.
Chapter XIX
June 26-28, 1880
Los Angeles, United States
Diana thought Los Angeles quite possibly the strangest place she’d ever been.
The trip down had been uneventful, even a bit dull. The train lacked any trace of the ornate luxuries of the European trains–there was no food car with finely-dressed servers, no crystalline fixtures or gold trim–and the stops during the first leg of the trip were frequent. Then the train entered a long, flat valley that apparently comprised much of the length of California, and speed picked up considerably; given the complete lack of scenery, she was glad. They dined at train stations, which offered plain meals, and at one point Diana nearly suffered a small disaster when Mina scampered off away from the train just as it was about to depart. Fortunately Yi-kin captured the mischievous feline and literally had to run with Mina in his arms to catch up.