The spine creaked as he opened the book to a random page. Because of its size, this involved propping it against the edge of a shelf so as not to drop it. The pages he opened to were a random mishmash of shapes and squiggles. Over the years, a number of people had written notes in the margins, to the point where the handwritten text outweighed the printed stuff by a ratio of around three to one. He could read some of the scribbled notes, but the meaning of the print continued to confound his chip.
With some effort, he flicked through a few more pages until he found something that looked promising. A whole spread had been turned over to what Dan guessed were Summoning Symbols – arcane shapes used in ceremonies designed to connect this universe with one of the adjacent Malwhere dimensions.
Wedging the book between his body and the shelf, he wrestled the datapad out of his coat pocket and swiped above the screen until one of the corpse pictures appeared. Dan had traced the shapes the bodies made on the pad, and a selection of shaky white lines now covered the grislier elements of the image.
The lines had confirmed the theory that had been niggling at him since he’d realized the couch had been moved. The bodies had been positioned very deliberately in order to form a very specific shape. No, not a shape. A symbol.
Unfortunately, he had no idea what the symbol represented, and there was nothing similar on either of these two pages.
Balancing the book between one arm and his knee, and holding the datapad in his free hand, Dan attempted to turn the page with his elbow, with limited success. He muttered to himself as he tried again, wobbling unsteadily on one foot as he tried to elbow-wrangle the book into submission. He had just about managed to turn the page when the voice spoke in his ear.
“Whatcha doing?”
Dan was so focused on not crying out in fright, he lost control of pretty much everything else. The datapad flew into the air. The book flopped to the ground. He tried to catch both at the same time, failed miserably, and winced as the datapad cracked against the carpet.
He turned to find Ollie standing behind him. She pointed to the items on the floor. “You dropped that.”
“I told you to wait out there!” Dan barked.
“You were taking ages,” Ollie said.
“I was gone for less than five minutes,” Dan said, sighing as he knelt and retrieved the datapad. A spider’s web of cracks covered one corner of the screen, but it least it still seemed to be operational. “You could’ve got lost in here,” he said. “How did you even find me?”
“I can always find you,” Ollie said. She knelt beside him and started struggling with the heavy book. Dan stared at the top of her head as she wrestled with the thing.
“What? What do you mean?” he asked.
Ollie looked up and blinked, like the answer was so obvious she couldn’t figure out why the question was even being asked. “I mean I can find you. I always know where you are.”
“You always know where I am?” Dan echoed. “What do you mean, you always know where I am? How do you always know where I am?”
“Magic,” she said, then she grinned. “Actually, no. Just kidding,” she said. “I just followed the smell.”
She finally managed to turn the book over, and looked down at the gold leaf on the cover. “Malignancies of the Malwhere,” she read. “That sounds like fun.”
Dan gave himself an experimental sniff. “Oh. Right. Yeah, I guess that makes…” The significance of what Ollie had just said hit him. “Wait. You can read that?”
Ollie nodded. “Why? Can’t you?”
She noticed the screen of the datapad, and the image half-hidden by the cracks. “That’s the dead people!” she said, her voice rising in pitch. “You are investigating! I knew it.”
“I’m not investigating,” Dan said. “I’m just… I’m interested. There are aspects to the whole thing that…” He sighed. Her puppy-dog grin told him there was no point in protesting further. “OK, yes. I’m investigating. But I probably won’t find anything, so don’t get excited.”
“I’m already excited!” Ollie cheeped. She put her hand on her chest and her grin widened further as she felt her heart beat. “Yep. I’m definitely excited! That’s going really fast!”
She kept her hand in place, and a note of concern colored her expression. “Maybe too fast. Ooh, it’s thumping.” She bit her lip. “Am I dying? Is that what’s happening now? Am I going to die?”
“Only if I shoot you,” Dan told her. “Which I’m not ruling out at this stage.”
He replaced the datapad in his pocket, then heaved the book up onto his shoulder. “Let’s go find a table,” he told her. “Maybe you can make yourself useful, after all.”
CHAPTER NINE
After some exploring, they had found a small square table with a couple of chairs tucked underneath it and a selection of magazines spread artfully on top. Dan had swept them onto the floor and deposited Malignancies of the Malwhere on the table with a thud that threatened to buckle all four of its spindly legs.
He’d pulled a chair out, physically guided Ollie into a sitting position by pushing down firmly on her shoulder, then had handed her the datapad, opened the book at the first page, and stood back.
In a perfect world, he’d been hoping for a quick result. He’d have liked Ollie to flick through a few pages, let out an excited, “Aha!”, and point to a symbol that matched the shape the bodies had made. Ideally, there would have been some informative text alongside the symbol that explained its significance. Even more ideally, there would also have been a written confession in the margin from whoever had killed the man and his kid, along with details on the killer’s current whereabouts, but he appreciated that this was probably a bit of a stretch.
An hour passed. Maybe more. Ollie, to her credit, kept turning the pages, her eyes flicking from the paper to the screen and back again as she tried to find a match for the shape. She was nearing the end of the book now, and with each page turn, Dan felt his hopes drain out through the soles of his feet.
“Anything?” he asked, once she’d reached the end of the book. She closed the back cover, frowned, and gave the eyebrow an inquisitive stroke. Dan put his hands on the table and leaned over her. “Ollie? Find anything?”
“No. Nothing like that,” she said, indicating the white scribbles on the screen. “It’s not in there.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure,” she confirmed.
Dan straightened and sighed. “Check again.”
Ollie glanced down at the book. “I don’t think it’s in there.”
“You don’t think it’s in there. That doesn’t mean it isn’t,” Dan said. “Check again. I’ll…”
His voice ground to a halt. He tilted his head a fraction, listening.
“What—?” Ollie began, but Dan put a finger to his lips to silence her. His eyes darted left and right along the corridor of book cases, his hand slipping inside his coat to where Mindy was nestled in her holster.
“Get under the table,” he told her, drawing the gun.
“What, this table?” Ollie whispered.
Dan resisted the urge to point out that it was the only fonking table in the immediate vicinity, and so of course he meant that table. Instead, he just nodded and raised his gun, taking aim at a pool of shadow further along the stacks.
He listened again, then turned and took aim in the opposite direction. Ollie was on her knees under the table, looking more confused than afraid. Then again, what did she have to be afraid of? She could make gangsters explode just by touching them. She was under the table more for his safety than for her own.
The shadows were deeper down that direction. Two particularly tall sets of shelves blocked the light in both directions, forming a virtually impenetrable chasm of black. Were it not for his knack of seeing in the dark, Dan wouldn’t have noticed the shape squirming towards them, or the lecherous look on its slick, slimy face.
He lowered the gun as the Worm wriggled out of the darkness. �
�There you are! I was worried you’d gone and got yourselves lost,” he said, his shrill voice echoing around the cavernous chamber. “Thought I’d come and make sure nothing untoward had happened.”
He tried to cup a hand around his mouth to deliver a stage whisper, but couldn’t reach. He cupped a small patch of air about three feet from his head, instead, and winked down at Ollie. “Like their owner, some of my books can get a little frisky at times. If you know what I mean?”
“Not really,” Ollie admitted.
The Worm giggled. It was not a pleasant sound. “Well, who knows, perhaps you shall find out someday. That would be fun.” He regarded her down on her knees under the table. His swollen body farted and parped again as he shifted excitedly atop his fat, bloated tail. “Yes. Yes, that would be fun.”
Ollie smiled, but it was the smile of someone who hadn’t understood a joke, but didn’t want anyone else to know. “Um. Yeah. Who knows?” she said, and the Worm’s eyes blazed with anticipation. “Can I get out now?”
Dan helped her up, then stepped between Ollie and the Worm, Mindy still clutched in one hand. “We’re fine here,” he said. “We’ve got everything under control.”
“Malignancies of the Malwhere,” the Worm replied, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “An interesting volume. Seventeen different authors, all claiming to have channeled the same entity, often decades apart. They’d never met, but the language and structural flow of the narrative is remarkably consistent.”
He waved a stubby hand. “Rather dry for my tastes, and lacking any real overall coherence, but a worthy addition to the library, all the same.” He slithered closer. “Find what you were looking for?”
“No,” said Ollie before Dan could speak.
“But we will,” Dan added.
Ollie held up the datapad to show the murder scene with Dan’s white lines superimposed on top. “We’re looking for that.”
“Oh.” The Worm craned his neck left and right, studying the symbol from a range of angles. “Oh, I see.”
Dan didn’t want to ask, but asked anyway. “You recognize it?”
“Hmm? Oh, no. No, I’ve never seen that before in my life,” the Worm said. He squelched around the table until his tail had completely encircled it, his eyes never leaving the pad. “I’m afraid I have no idea what it means,” he added. His bloated lips parted into another gummy grin. “But I may know someone who does.”
* * *
Dan and Ollie stood across from each other at either side of the vinyl square, watching as the Worm smeared something green and gungy onto the smooth flooring with his tail. The Worm had taken the stuff from one of the crates positioned around the square, and had given the plastic container some sort of blessing before pouring a big glug of the stuff onto the floor.
It was probably some kind of mucus or bile, Dan thought, although it was impossible to say where it had come from. From the size of the bottle it had to be something big, he guessed, or a lot of something small. Whatever it was, it was pungent enough to make even Dan’s eyes water, and he stepped back onto the carpet as the Worm’s tail painted the stuff in an arc just a few inches from where he had been standing.
“You must stay in the square,” the Worm warned. “For the summoning to work, you must remain on the linoleum at all times.”
Dan hesitated, but then returned to his original spot. “You sure this is a good idea?” he asked.
“Yes. Of course. It’s nothing to worry about,” said the Worm. “Scryers are small-fry. Even running wild they pose very little threat, so bound they’re completely harmless.”
“What’s a Scryer?” Ollie asked.
“It’s like a… like an informant,” Dan explained. “From the Malwhere. One of the minor unnamed dimensions. They kind of tap into what’s going on in different, you know, places.”
“I see,” said Ollie, even though she didn’t. “Now could you explain that again, only better?”
The Worm slithered in before Dan could have another go. “Scryers are small, largely harmless Malwhere-based entities. Demons, if you like,” he explained. “Only itty-bitty little ones who are attuned to the frequencies and resonances of other dimensions. Their brains are tiny, but they hold vast amounts of knowledge, and they are usually more than happy to share it. If anyone knows the meaning behind your symbol, then it’s a Scryer. They know everything.”
“They’re more dangerous than he’s making out,” Dan said. He gestured to the slimy green shape on the floor. “Stay alert. Don’t step on any of that stuff, and if I tell you to run, you run. No questions.”
“What if—?”
“No. Questions,” Dan reiterated. “And I know it’s a difficult concept for you to grasp, but keep quiet. OK? Say nothing, keep still, and leave everything to us.”
Ollie nodded her understanding, although Dan knew better than to assume that meant she would do what she was told. Following basic instructions didn’t seem to be one of her strong points, and he wondered if it would be better to tie her up or something before they started.
Before he could really give the idea any serious thought, the Worm tossed a handful of something small and gritty into the center of the mucus-daubings, and began to mutter in some ancient tongue that Dan’s translation chip was completely clueless about. Dan could pick out the odd familiar word here and there, but they were all things he’d learned phonetically and didn’t know the actual meanings of.
The was the worst thing about all the Malwhere stuff. Even those who knew what they were doing had no idea what they were doing. When amateurs got involved – like those guys at the junkyard – then all Hell could break loose. Often literally.
“What’s he saying?” Ollie asked. Dan shushed her and watched the green smear on the floor. The spots where grit had met gloop had begun to bubble and fizz. Long strands of glowing green grew from each one, snaking and tangling together as they traced the route the Worm had marked for them on the vinyl.
“Is it supposed to be doing that?” Ollie asked.
“Yes. Stop talking,” Dan instructed.
There were machines for this sort of thing these days, of course. Devices that could weaken the walls between dimensions, open portals, punch holes – that sort of thing. Proper science stuff that you could probably convince yourself made total logical sense if you sat down with an instruction manual, an open mind, and a sufficiently large quantity of booze.
And yet, there was something oddly comforting about doing things the old-fashioned way. The fact it had become ‘the old-fashioned way’ suggested people had been doing it for years, and had survived at least long enough to pass the knowledge on. And if that were the case, then how dangerous could it be?
Then again, regardless of the methods, they were still creating a hole from one universe into another. That sort of thing, in Dan’s experience, usually had a tendency to backfire.
“Relax,” the Worm said, reading either his thoughts or his face. “I’ve done this a hundred times. More. The stones and the fluids have only a weak energy resonance. Just enough to open the doorway a crack, nothing more. Trust me, it’s perfectly safe.”
“Yeah, well,” Dan said, but if there were more word to come, he was hanging onto them for now. A swirl of green vapor was rising from the smeared outline, dozens of individual wisps all twisting together to form a growing cloud in the center of the square.
Dan caught Ollie’s eye through the thickening mist. She looked worried, but a whispered, “It’s fine,” from him brought a nod and a shaky smile.
The Worm resumed his chanting, his voice undulating between piercingly high and inhumanly low as he recited the words. It was tuneful in its own way. Not in any meaningfully pleasant way – it was one of the worst sounds Dan had ever heard, in fact – but there was definitely a melody of some sort woven through it. Possibly even two or more all competing with one another, and all losing badly.
A shape flickered in the fog, as if it was forming from a bolt of ligh
tning. It was there one second, then gone the next, only to return again a moment or two later. The details were still impossible to make out, but it was roughly the size of a human baby, only with arms that were both thinner and greater in number. Dan was pretty sure it had four of them, but the number of legs was harder to pin down. The shape hadn’t fully solidified below the waist, so it alternated between having no legs and having infinite legs, often at the same time.
It flickered again. Gone. Back. The Worm’s chanting became faster and more frantic, his stubby arms waving around like he was conducting an orchestra.
“What’s happening?” Ollie whispered, Dan’s instructions for her to keep quiet long since forgotten.
The Worm let out a shrill screech that reverberated around the room, then folded his lips into that rubbery smile. “It’s drawing tiny – minute – amounts of Malwhere energy residue from the stones and fluids,” he explained. “That’s how we can open the doorway, and how our little friend there can take physical form.”
Something tingled across the back of Dan’s neck like the beginnings of an electrical storm. At first, he assumed it was something to do with the pan-dimensional portal currently in the process of opening on the floor in front of him, but no, that wasn’t it.
Something the Worm had said had triggered the sensation. What was it?
“Who dares summon us?” chittered the shape in the fog, despite the fact there was very clearly just one of them. “Who dares disturb the Scryers?”
“So much for knowing everything,” Ollie said. She caught Dan’s glare through the fog and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Just saying.”
Dan watched the figure continuing to take form in the fog. It was drawing energy from the shape on the floor, becoming more solid with each moment that passed.
“You wish to know the meaning of the symbol,” the creature said, shooting Ollie a pointed look. “This is why you have reached out across the barrier. Yesssss?”
The last word was a long, drawn-out hiss, like air escaping from a bike tire.
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