Séance Infernale

by Jonathan Skariton

  Whitman saw a van in the Mercedes’s lane. Valdano was either drunk or nuts, because he was going at it, headlights blaring. The two vehicles were headed right for each other.

  A split second before impact, the Mercedes lost the game; it veered to the right just in time, nicking the left front of the van. The Mercedes went into a spin, and its speed and the slickness of the asphalt seemed to accelerate its whirl.

  McBride and Whitman didn’t turn around. They both looked into the rearview mirror. Charlie’s reflection was also looking into the mirror, but his gaze was focused elsewhere. They followed it in the mirror world.

  From behind, the lights of an oncoming cab were bearing down on them.

  McBride did her best to do something—she grabbed at the steering wheel with all her strength—but there was nowhere to go, and there was no time. Whitman froze, bracing for the impact. Charlie pulled back on the seats, screaming in Whitman’s ear.

  Tires skidded with a horrendous screech, squealing against the wet asphalt. A horn blared. Charlie was still screaming. All the sounds and the momentum blended into a mass of panic, disappearing into the oblivion of the downpour. The car jolted forward, then harder to the left, slamming the metal side rails. Whitman tried not to remind himself that the rails and the walkway were the only boundary between them and the immensity of the drop into the blackness of the Firth of Forth. He’d taken Ellie there for a walk once, and crossing the bridge while looking down had been terrifying.

  Something struck him in the nose; then again. The car was still traveling forward. There was a crashing sound—metal being lacerated, glass being shattered—but the sounds all somehow seemed far away.

  All was still and quiet. The ticking of hot metal from the wrecked car. Whitman groaned, stirred, and tried to release his seat belt. Something was obstructing his movements. He looked over to the driver’s seat and saw that McBride wasn’t there anymore.

  She was staring up at him from the carpet on his side, her head between his feet, her legs draped over his shoulders. She wasn’t moving. He nudged her and she doubled over him and sneaked back to the driver’s seat, muttering under her breath.

  “You all right?” she asked, placing her hand on her head, as if checking whether it was still there.

  He rubbed his neck and looked at Charlie. “I think we’re okay. You?”

  She nodded.

  Charlie slid the door open, leaned his head out, and threw up.

  Whitman pressed his forehead hard against the window, his eyes searching beyond the glass, into the darkness. He couldn’t see a thing; he could only hear it. A maelstrom of noise and chaos; a crash followed by thuds and the sound of long, sustained screeching, like metal on metal or fingernails on chalkboard.

  “Where’s Valdano?”

  He looked across to the other lane, and his gut plunged. He yanked open the door and stumbled out, staring at the devastation on the other side. The lights of the city blinked in the distance. He climbed up onto the metal spars separating the two lanes, a large knot tightening in his throat. There was no doubt about it.

  Valdano’s car had hurtled off the pavement with enough velocity to break through the guardrails and through the final protection barriers before the awful drop.

  A wind was whipping around Whitman, blowing the hail into his face. He narrowed his eyes and looked again. The Mercedes was hanging out there, back wheels on the walkway, front wheels jutting out through the rails and into space. He thought about what might happen at any second.

  He cursed beneath his breath and began to climb over the guardrails.

  McBride yelled his name from the open door of the Ford.

  But Whitman kept going, only dimly aware of the drop below, the desolate space between each pair of metal bars. The incessant, terrifying wind was howling, yet he could feel the sweat building up.

  On the carriageway, a few cars had come to a solid stop. The rails had buckled in where the Mercedes had careered into them. Whitman climbed up on them, then leapt onto the wooden walkway.

  Valdano evidently had bolted from the car before or during impact. The driver’s seat was empty.

  Whitman was against the rails now. And he could see all too clearly. He understood that if he tried anything, the car was poised to plummet to the water below. The vehicle’s frame had been twisted by the impact, the rear window shattered in the collision.

  “Elena! You okay in there?” he screamed through it.

  “I don’t know.” Tears streamed down her face. She looked around for an escape that wasn’t there. “Please help me.”

  “Listen to me. You’re going to climb over your seat and into the back. Can you do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They heard sirens coming from the north. Fife police were closer. They’d be there first.

  Things were happening in slow motion. Elena leaned toward the backseat. The car moved an inch and she froze.

  “It’s going to drop.”

  “No, it’s not, Elena. Go slowly.”

  He didn’t know that for sure. A fall meant certain death: a drop from that height would be like crashing into solid concrete. Falling through the dark, she wouldn’t cry, she wouldn’t even get to scream; she would just see the blackness opening its arms to claim her.

  “I can’t die. I don’t want to die.”

  The wind was so strong; if it were to gust even a little more—

  “No sudden movements. Don’t jump.”

  She managed to climb into the backseat. She made for the door.

  “Don’t open the door. The car will slide.” He pointed at the broken window. “Safety glass. You’ll be fine.”

  He extended his hand, weighing down the top of the trunk.

  “One more, Elena. Just watch the broken glass.”

  The car rocked on its fulcrum. Came to rest again.

  Elena distributed her weight, like a cat. The car still hung on the edge, a ton of metal teetering on a slender stalk.

  Whitman was faintly aware of McBride and Charlie behind him. If she started to fall, they wouldn’t be able to help.

  He extended his hand. Elena reached out.

  Their hands connected.

  He grabbed and pulled her, pieces of glass coming out with her as she squeezed through the window.

  Her feet were planted on solid ground again.

  The sirens were closer now. “Get back in the car. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “No,” McBride said, stopping him. “You have my testimony and at least one more independent witness to corroborate your story. You’ll be off the hook for the Archive fire. Valdano virtually confessed back there.”

  Whitman shook his head. “We have one more riddle. We’re close.”

  She seemed to weigh it. “My priority is finding the last girl who disappeared; I’m not here to solve puzzles.”

  The sirens inched closer.

  Whitman grasped McBride by her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “We have to find her,” he said.

  “How?”

  “You know how.”

  37

  Henri had allowed them to use a compartment in the bottom of the labyrinthine building. They had agreed to work individually in separate rooms, then get together and lay out what they had. Occasionally Whitman would pop into Charlie’s or McBride’s room, become disappointed in their dead end, then return to his own room and pace back and forth.

  Whitman was still bothered by those seemingly random and meaningless clusters of alternating numbers and letters that had sprung from Sekuler’s last communication. Image after image, and then, like a sleight of hand, a whole cinematic world—what we see and, in turn, what we can’t see—waiting to be explored. Repeatedly, in one form or another, Sekuler returned to the subject of time. In “Séance Infernale,” he was trying to capture—in some way—a horrible secret; it was something he had seen with his own eyes, something man yearned to conquer. But once he’d seen it, it was like nothing he had ever imagin
ed.

  Whitman combed through the notebook and wrote the strange numbers and letters down in the order in which they appeared.

  George Mackenzie 55 years Alexander Sterling, Esq 65 years Elizabeth Moncrieff 87 years William Boswell Esq 62 years X – Christine Gilbert 3 years. George Joseph Donaldson 18 years Margaret Reid 73 years Jane Bennet 13 years

  Who the hell are these people?

  He matched them up to the letters of the alphabet, first in English, then in French, then Latin. He tried running them forward or backwards against the key line, coming up with different variants and throwing up completely different readings.

  Nothing worked.

  Finally he fished for the codeine bottle. He pulled out two pills and put them in his mouth.

  On the paper, the letters and numbers seemed to move in front of his eyes, taunting him. He sat for a while, thinking over the possibilities. He cast his mind back and saw his daughter’s face.

  Those fucking numbers. They should have been able to form some kind of recognizable word. But everything was nonsensical.

  There was a knock on the door.

  He turned his head.

  “So,” Elena said, sitting on the free chair with a glass of brandy. “Alone at last.” Like a mirror, her liquid eyes reflected the glass, which itself showed a reflection of the two of them.

  “Maybe now you’ll spill the beans.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Why don’t you cut the crap, Elena? What’s the story?”

  She shrugged. They weren’t concerned about the same things, her gesture seemed to imply; they didn’t have the same priorities.

  “Why were you following us?”

  Her composure signaled both profound depths and immoral self-indulgence. It was as if she operated under a bizarre set of rules and principles, motivated by things that were more intricate than he could imagine.

  “When did you start following us?”

  “Early.”

  “So you saw Valdano’s guy almost poisoning me to death in that car?”

  She remained silent.

  “And you did nothing.”

  “I knew the cop was following you. You would be saved.”

  “And that time at the Canongate? When those thugs were chasing us through the tunnel? It was you in that car who saved us, wasn’t it?”

  “See? I am not so bad after all.”

  “And you saw the fire at the Archive.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “You saw what happened to Nestor?”

  “He shouldn’t have played with fire. And a cleaver.”

  He stopped, not knowing what to say.

  “You did the right thing when you left, though,” she continued. “You didn’t want your fingerprints all around. That’s why I moved the body to your house.”

  “You set us up? You killed him?”

  She shook her head. “Non. Not at all.”

  “Who the fuck, then?”

  “Our friend with the Mercedes, and his cronies.”

  He threw his hands in the air, as if giving up. “You were just playing us and Valdano off each other so you would only have one party left to get rid of.”

  She looked at him with wide eyes and intense curiosity.

  “Why?” he asked again.

  “I’m looking after things. Visiting. Tying up loose ends. Isn’t that what you’re doing here with your daughter?”

  “Motherfucker.” He’d heard enough. He grabbed her by the arm and started dragging her forward. She did not struggle.

  He turned his head toward the notes on his chair. His gaze ran across the numbers and the names. They all seemed wrong. The key line was evidently something completely different.

  “You’re going to tell me everything you know.”

  She smiled, staring straight ahead. “What would you like to know?”

  He exhaled. “Everything. Let’s start with how you fit into all this.”

  “I wanted to find out about my great-grandfather. Is that wrong?”

  It still didn’t add up. Too stressful a way to find out about one’s ancestors. “You were following us all this time.”

  She shrugged. “You didn’t accept my invitation to join you.” She turned her eyes up to stare at him. “And I asked nicely.”

  “Ah, sweet. Vous parlez bullshit.”

  He knelt down, holding her stare. She smelled like pipe tobacco. “What do you know about this film?” He held up the gibberish notes, crumpling them. “What is this? What do you know?” he asked her.

  When she looked at him, her eyes glowed an intense green in the dim light of the basement. “Why don’t you ask me what you really want to ask me, Alex?”

  “And what would that be?”

  “What you want to know has nothing to do with the film.”

  “You seem to have it all figured out.”

  “More than you could possibly know.”

  “And I suppose you’ll tell me.”

  “I know you’re not interested in the film anymore. You want to know something else, don’t you? You want to know if that’s her.”

  “Tell me what you know. The riddle.”

  “It reminds me of Jekyll and Hyde. The writer was born here in Edinburgh: Robert Louis Stevenson. And Treasure Island. X marks the spot.”

  She stared into his eyes, her liquid irises once more their familiar icy steel, more curious than fearful. “You are just a lost man looking for directions,” she whispered into his ear, her red fingernails wrapped around the back of his neck.

  “What the hell are you doing?” McBride’s voice. She was standing halfway down the stairs. “Are you okay?” McBride asked.

  “I think so.”

  She turned to Whitman. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Leave it alone, Serpico.”

  “You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”

  “She’s hiding something.”

  “Maybe she is. Still doesn’t give you the right to…”

  He ran his hands across his beard. “I’m fine. Let’s just keep working on this riddle and meet in a few minutes.”

  They turned their heads toward the door. Elena Genhagger was nowhere to be seen.

  —

  What kind of X marked the spot…

  It was spatial, Alex Whitman thought. Like a map.

  Whatever the X was, it was at the center of the layout, and it seemed to be a marker for something. Maybe something that could get you into a lot of trouble. Valdano had lusted after it.

  “X marks the spot…” Whitman said. “The X is positioned right between two of the names, which in turn refer to two tombstones. That means…he’s buried somewhere equidistant from the two graves…”

  George Mackenzie 55 years Alexander Sterling, Esq 65 years Elizabeth Moncrieff 87 years William Boswell Esq 62 years X – Christine Gilbert 3 years. George Joseph Donaldson 18 years Margaret Reid 73 years Jane Bennet 13 years

  55 years 65 years 87 years 62 years X – 3 years. 18 years 73 years 13 years

  The X, the convergence of points.

  But not of eight points, like he had thought; that would have made it redundant. Nor was it the convergence of two tombstones.

  55 65 87 62 X – 3 . 18 73 13

  The convergence of two lines on a map. Numbers. Coordinates.

  “How the hell do we find a place based on its coordinates?”

  “There’s a GPS in the squad car,” McBride said.

  —

  McBride entered the numbers into the computer and waited while it searched for a match.

  “Don’t forget the dot points and the minus sign in there; he’s included everything we need.”

  The screen blinked and flashed, finding a location.

  “You’ll never believe this,” McBride said.

  “What’s wrong?” They huddled around her.

  “Nothing’s wrong. It works.”

  They looked at the screen. It indicated that the coordi
nates corresponded to a location in the Old Town of Edinburgh.

  “Forty Blair Street.”

  “Too much of a coincidence for these numbers to just happen to point to an Edinburgh location, of all possible places.”

  “I know this address,” McBride said.

  “Where from?”

  “I know all the files by heart.” She stared into Whitman’s eyes. “The man who lives there, I know him.”

  —

  “There’s something else you need to see,” Whitman told McBride.

  “What’s happened?”

  “It’s downstairs.” Whitman’s tone was urgent. He had just gotten off the phone with someone. He knew something he wasn’t telling her. Something had happened.

  McBride followed him downstairs to the basement entrance.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “We’ll find out soon enough, I hope,” he said, opening the door, motioning her to pass through.

  “What’s happening?” She went in, and as soon as her foot touched the first step, there was movement behind her.

  She heard the door shut. The locks clicked into place. Whitman standing on the other side of the bars, fastening the latches.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  With a furious blow, McBride shook the door. “Open this door right now. Right now, bloody hell!”

  She stared at him behind the bars. She took out her gun and pointed it at him. “Right now, Alex!”

  “What are you going to do, McBride? Shoot me? Or shoot the lock?”

  The stupidity of her threat struck her. “God damn it, Alex…There was no one on the other end of that line, was there?” she said, her flailing arms dangling between the iron bars.

  Whitman exhaled a deep breath and shook his head. “My daughter’s in there.” He knew that police backup would never let him near that place.

  McBride closed her eyes, then lowered the weapon, sliding it to him. “You know how to use it?”

  Whitman turned to leave.

  “What am I supposed to do in here?”