by Rick Wayne
The heavy bag had slipped a little on the walk and I pulled the strap back up my shoulder as I waited on the platform. A man in jeans and a sport coat stood behind me to one side, and I had visions of him leaping forward to push me in front of the train and snatch my cargo, so I wandered farther down, and I kept moving like that, turning every ten feet or so like I was just impatient to get where I was going. The train came and the people sitting on benches got up at nearly the same moment and waited for the doors to open. I let them pass so I was the last to step aboard, ready to jump back through the doors at the last second if need be. I stood in the same spot on the train, never budging, for the entire trip out to Brooklyn Heights. The sun was getting low in the sky. It shone yellow-orange between the buildings. It hit my face and I had to squint. No one looked at me as I zigzagged between blocks toward my destination. No one called me a silly girl. No one shrieked at the evil I carried. There was just the people and the city.
I stopped in front of the lot and looked at the formidable black-and-white signs that completely filled the temporary wall in a repeating pattern down to the corner and around the other side:
WATCHTOWER
Rex Magnus & Associates
Property Development
The wall had been erected to keep pedestrians like me from wandering into the construction site. The building inside, visible over the top, was barely more than a skeleton. Steel girders crisscrossed to a height of about five stories. They were bare at the top like the ridges of a spine, ready to accept the weight of more levels. It seemed the building was going to be a kind of twisting oval shape. A large crane rose from the center and dangled its hook. No one was working. The entire structure was completely silent. It was a crime scene after all, and two strips of yellow caution tape had been stretched across the plywood door built into the wall. It didn’t have a lock or anything—there wasn’t even a handle—but a large sticky legal seal was taped across the gap. It had bold red letters at the top and lots of tiny print underneath. A cluster of signs on both sides of the door warned me that the interior was under video surveillance, that trespassers would be prosecuted, and that a hard hat and safety goggles were required past that point. I tore the seal and ducked under the tape. The door swung shut behind me.
Standing on the other side, a mere three feet from the sidewalk, it seemed like I had passed into another world. The whole of the city faded to background noise. I saw a backhoe, several pallets of materials, two large trucks for hauling, a cement mixer, and—off to the side—one of those temporary offices for the foreman or whatever that looked like it had been made from a shipping container. Anything that might have been easily pilfered—nail guns, table saws, hand tools—seemed to have been removed.
I walked forward and saw the slab with spires of rebar where Lykke met his end. You couldn’t miss it. Orange cones surrounded it, along with three wraps of caution tape. The sides of the metal bars and most of the base were still covered in dried blood. I looked for a moment before walking into the husk of the oval structure, just as it got dark enough to trigger the automatic floodlights. They clicked on and I looked all around, to every nook and shadow. The hollow, concrete-walled basement dropped two floors into the earth. Lines of rebar poked from the floor and walls. The space was only navigable via a network of wood planks the workers had laid between square gaps in the concrete. To the right and toward the back corner, exactly where a structural pylon was supposed to be poured, there was an open dirt pit that descended even lower.
That was when I realized why Detective Rigdon had mentioned the name, Watchtower. I recalled seeing something about the project in passing on the news, one of those stories that pop up and fade away—like the one about a giant mural that appeared out of nowhere on the back of a retail center. Construction of the Watchtower building had been halted because of what had been unexpectedly unearthed under its foundation. The workers hit something old. University people were called and now there was a fight between the developer and the historical society and the city over what to do and who would pay for it.
There was a partially finished platform above me and to the left, and I climbed the bare concrete stairs as high as I could go. I stood on the edge and stared down three stories. In the center of the square dirt pit there was a dead tree. It sprouted from the floor in the middle of a kind of stone vault, bounded by a circle carved into the floor. Its bare branches were wide but blunted, and they ended in round and uneven nubs, as if the sprouts had been trimmed each year to keep them from filling the space. There were no leaves, either on the tree or the floor. Instead, there were candles, dozens of them, unlit and resting inside cups of old wax. In fact, so much wax had accumulated it seemed doubtful that the tree had ever been cleaned of it. Rather, when one candle was done it was simply replaced with another. The wax melted into cup-shaped nests, where it either overflowed and ran in dribbles and cooled into waxy stalactites that hung from the branches, like sinewy arms, or else it fell in drops and formed stalagmites on the floor. In a few places, the two had met to form narrow pillars.
When it was lit, I’m sure that tree was an amazing sight, an altar to light and life. But it was dark now and stained with dust and centuries. Several of the branches had snapped and lay on the ground like severed limbs.
I must’ve stared at it for a good fifteen or twenty minutes, wondering what it could possibly be, before the birds finally came to let everyone know my location. I heard the flock approach from down the street, like a speeding motorbike. The sound got louder and louder until I was awash with flaps and tweets and the staccato caws of the ravens, which turned twice around the structure before settling on the crisscrossing girders above me. They chirped and cawed and chatted with each other like an audience before a concert, and I felt a thousand eyes on me, shifting and stirring and watching my every move.
Then the rats came. Up from exposed pipes and gaps in the foundation. They crawled up and over the rebar, scouring every inch of the basement for the feast they were sure was coming. I shivered and turned from the pit to the open lot below. I wanted to get it over with, but no one had come. There was just the trucks and the dirt and the pallets of wood and drywall, tarped and chained. I reached into my bag and took out the tarot cards I’d collected: The Devil and The Fool. I added the third to the stack, the last card from my reading with the chef, the one I’d slipped into my back pocket when Darren got home. I slid them back and forth, one over the other. I sat on the edge of the platform and let my feet dangle over the side as the sea of rats churned below. There were roaches as well, but not many. The rats were eating them.
The stone vault buried in the earth had walls of cut stone slabs, which appeared to be adorned with a continuous mural, faint with age, that moved clockwise around the space. I could see a great darkness out of which a few faint stars appeared. I saw the dome of the earth under a tangled conflagration of dark figures bearing swords and pikes and standards. I couldn’t tell who was friend and who was foe, nor was there enough detail even to tell if the combatants were human. One group emerged victorious and they stood, weary, in a staggered formation with one figure at the center, raising a lighted staff.
My eyes stopped on the last segment as the birds chattered restlessly over my head and flitted back and forth between perches. I saw the northern hemisphere of a crude Earth, like something from an old map, with a tilted band separating night and day.
“Once the earth was covered in darkness.”
The voice, accented and resonant, penetrated the din of the animals. Its owner stood on the floor below me, still in his fantastic coat. He appeared to be alone. He pointed to the beginning of the mural.
“One speck of a vast empire which persists to this day. You can see it whenever the night sky is not obscured by clouds.” He looked up.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Mankind rebelled and threw off the shackles of the dark in a great cataclysm that lasted a thousand years.”
I look
ed again at the battle.
The chef motioned to the black stillness at the beginning of the mural. I hadn’t noticed before, but there were faint shapes hidden in the darkness, behind the marks and scuffing—snarling, grasping, tentacled things with wings as large as mountains.
“That is why they covet it so, the earth, despite its insignificance. It stands as a beacon to the other realms, a scion to the singular truth that evil can always be defeated.” He turned to the other side, to the tilted earth. “But although mankind rejected the dark, we were not strong enough to embrace the light, which is why our planet rocked and turned crooked on its axis and now spends half its days in light and half in darkness. And there she has spun, for millennia, waiting for us to pull ourselves up. Or to fall back down.” He put his tattooed hand back in his coat.
“Nice story,” I said.
“Alas”—he stepped closer to my perch—“much of it is false.”
I stood again and looked down at the tree. “What is that?”
“It was a beacon, once. And a sanctuary. Built when the Dutch still commanded this place, built to overlook the island across the river. There used to be a dozen such places, in all the great cities of the world. The tree was lit when darkness fell, so our allies beyond would see and know we required their aid, and they would send a champion.”
He was looking at it. “He will destroy it soon, now that he’s discovered its location. As soon as his agents have legally secured this property, he will hack it to pieces. To isolate us. There will be no champion this time.”
“You let her be taken,” I said.
It took him a moment to respond. “Yes.”
A lump sprung up in my throat. “Why?”
“Any answer I give will sound cruel.”
“But . . . how could you just stand there and let it happen?”
“I had hoped they would—”
“Don’t listen to him,” another voice interjected insistently.
Bastien. He walked up the metal stairs at the back of the open structure and stood opposite the chef on the platform below. My perch was above and between them.
“Don’t listen to him,” he repeated. “Whatever he’s told you, he’s lying.”
“And you.” I glowered.
He held up his hands. All his rings were identical now: thick metal bands. But not steel or silver. Platinum maybe, or some kind of hard metal like tungsten. In addition to the rings, the tips of his fingers were covered in matching pointed caps.
“I know how it looks,” he said defensively. “I do. But it’s not what you think.”
“It can’t be.” I laughed. “It can’t be what I think because I have no idea what to think. Not anymore.”
I looked between the two men. One of them was a talented deceiver. Well, that wasn’t true. They were both talented deceivers. But one of them was also an agent of menace, while the other was just a giant prick.
“Cerise,” Bastien urged. “I know all this is new to you. Just listen to me for a sec. Please.”
“No. I’m not listening to either of you.”
I lifted the seventh tarot card, the final draw from my reading. I showed them the 2D bar code on the front. I held it out like a talisman.
“I had a lot of time to think in jail. And I’m listening to this. I drew it. Me. Just me. From a deck I purchased myself.”
I clutched the other two cards in my left hand. I was certain they were us. The set of three. I was pretty sure I was The Fool. That was no big stretch to figure out. The Devil card was meant to represent one of them. The third card was hidden behind a bar code. I pulled out my phone and loaded the app.
“You think he can’t manipulate that?” Bastien accused. “How do you think magic works? You can’t—”
“STOP!” I yelled. “Stop talking.”
The birds seemed even more agitated now. They fidgeted like racehorses before the bell. But it was the rats that got to me. They weren’t moving. They’d stopped. Frozen. Staring. I expected some retort from the chef, but nothing came. He was as calm as the tree in the vault below, as if all of this were a scene in a rehearsal, that none of it really mattered, that we were just going through the motions and he was waiting for his turn to read from the script.
I scanned the tarot card. There was a beep and an image filled the screen. An androgynous figure in long robes stood behind a table that encompassed all four suits. On it were a wand, a sword, a pentacle, and a chalice, as if they were all his tools and he could draw any of them he chose. He looked directly at the viewer, resolute but calm, without fear or menace. His belt was the snake eating its own tail. His right hand raised a candle lit at both ends. His left hand was lowered toward the earth. Hanging over his head like a halo was the symbol of infinity. Bright blooming flowers burst from the base of the card, while above, the crackling glow of ethereal power turned the stars and planets to his will.
The label read: The Magician.
Fuck.
What the hell did that mean? They were both magicians!
I blinked once—just once, I swear—and there they were. They didn’t bother with the ski masks this time. Now they were in robes. The heavy off-white strapping was wrapped tight around every inch of exposed skin. There were five of them. Each held a two-edged sword with a dull, charcoal-colored hilt above a white blade. Or maybe the blades weren’t white. Maybe they were just brightly reflecting the floodlights above. Either way, when held before their robes, they almost seemed to glow. They had surrounded us, seemingly in an instant.
The chef yelled suddenly and angrily to the air. “Even still you sacrifice your pawns! Coward! Show yourself!”
I heard overlapping laughs, human laughs, amid the now-quiet shuffling of the birds. The rats seemed to quiver, as if bursting with energy—a dam about to break. Their whiskers twitched as their black eyes stared. Then a man’s voice rose over the din, but amid the low drone of caws and chirps, it was impossible to tell where it came from. It fluttered on the air like any other pair of wings. It seemed to be whispering, but I had no idea what it said. It faded in with the wind and then was swallowed by it.
Bastien grabbed me from behind. I hadn’t even heard him come up the stairs.
“We need to get out of here. This isn’t our fight.”
The monsters broke formation at once and I was sure we were dead. It would take them only moments to reach us. But no sooner did they lift their feet than the chef pulled both hands from his pockets and thrust his fists to the sky. The floodlights quit and the chorus of birds broke and feathers swirled around us as their owners leapt from their perches and dived and swooped and weaved in and out of the skeletal tower. It was chaos.
I ducked. It was dark now, and I could barely see five feet. But then neither could my attackers. I ran down the steps, and Bastien followed.
“Cerise!” he called.
We reached the bottom and a strap-covered face broke through the feathers, almost as if by accident. It seemed surprised, giving Bastien time to push me behind him. The bright sword with the charcoal hilt rose and fell against Bastien’s hands. I heard the clang of metal and was certain a battle of magic had taken place in that moment. Bastien’s rings had stopped the attack. But I saw a rivulet of blood run down one of his wrists. The robed monster swiped his sword free suddenly, taking one of Bastien’s fingers with it, ring and all, and he screamed. It seemed whatever magic he had stolen wasn’t enough to protect him. It was only a matter of time.
The rats came then. They broke upon the severed finger like vultures, and in a moment, it was covered in a squabbling ball of fur and whiplike tails. So help me, I could hear the crunch of their teeth on bone.
“Cerise!” Bastien thrust out a bloody hand. He was on one knee, grimacing. “Give me the dagger!”
I looked at it. I looked at him.
“I’m not strong enough! Please!”
The sword went up and to the side, as if to take Bastien’s head, just like William bouncer-man, and that’s
when it happened. I don’t even know how, really. I don’t remember thinking it. All I remember is that sword rising in the air and the thought that if Bastien died, I’d be alone. That thought birthed another, which pierced my mind like a dart.
These guys killed Kell.
These guys beat her, tortured her, and killed her, pregnant and all.
I was so mad. Angrier than I think I’ve ever been. I wanted violence. I wanted to hurt them. I looked down and there it was, in my hands. I had plunged the dagger two-handed into the monster’s back. It went in easy, far easier than Samir’s little blade. It went in easy like the key of the safety deposit box sliding into the lock. As if the blade fit. As if it was supposed to fall exactly there, into that thing’s chest, at exactly that time. Like it was its destiny. The dagger pierced the monster’s heart, which I felt quiver in vibrations through the copper hilt. And then it stopped. The sword fell. The body slumped free of the dagger and fell over the side into the pit, where it was greeted by the shrieking of the rats.
I think if my mind had been there, I would’ve thrown up then, given what they did to it. But it wasn’t there. It was far away, because that was the exact moment I knew. It was as if, in using the blade, I had been allowed to know. A parting of curtains to reveal I was not in the audience, as I expected, but on the stage. I knew then that everything that had happened—Lykke, Kell, Bastien, everything—had happened for one single reason. I’d been right, in a manner of speaking. It was a set up. All of it. Everything that had happened had been orchestrated. Deliberately. But not by a person. Not by the chef or Fish or anyone.