Annunziato knows of no bears or zoo escapees in the area. “Sometimes you get private individuals keeping dangerous exotics, but mostly in isolated places. Around here, it’d be hard to hide a big predator from the neighbors.”
Annunziato did not comment on tracks found at the site. However, the Journal showed photographs to Dr. Angela Mercado, a wildlife biologist at the University of Rhode Island. “The triangular webbed marks are superficially like the footprint of an aquatic bird,” Dr. Mercado said. “However, all birds have four toes, and these prints show five. Also, some of the prints are compound. They show the webbed toes, an arch, and a heel.”
Asked to speculate, Dr. Mercado said, “My best guess is you have a hoaxer. The impressions resemble the print of a human foot in a shoe designed to make the webbed tracks. The wearer seems to be trying to walk on the balls of his feet, so only the webbed tracks appear, but sometimes his heels come down.”
Footsteps on the porch jerked Sean out of the article. Dad and Gus came in, Gus looking sober enough, but Dad— Sean knew from experience how to read the muscle jumping in his jaw: He was down to the bone pissed and trying to swallow it.
“Glad you’re up, Sean,” Gus said. And, “Hello, Eddy. Bearer of pies again?”
“Like always, Professor.”
“Eddy,” Dad said. “No offense, but we need to talk to Sean.”
In other words, beat it. Eddy began to get up, but Gus told her, “Wait.” He looked over at Dad. “Jere, Eddy’s had the same contact with Redemption Orne as Sean. If he’s a target, she may be, too.”
It looked like Dad would argue. Then he shook his head and moved toward the counter. “Is there any coffee?”
“Over here, Dad.”
“Grab a cup for me, Jere,” Gus said.
Eddy gave Sean a furtive thumbs-up. “I brought Sean the paper, Professor Litinski. Did you see the article about Hrothgar?”
“We read it earlier. What do you think of it, Sean?”
He watched Dad carry two mugs to the table. “I didn’t finish it yet. Did you see the stuff at the house?”
Dad took the fourth chair. “We saw the torn screen, dead cat, slimed pillows, fake footprints outside the gate.”
Even though Eddy had already verified that the evidence was real, Sean was relieved Dad and Gus had seen it, too. “Anything new?”
“I don’t think so,” Gus said. He poured coffee. “Why don’t you finish the article? Then we can have a war council.”
Dad took a slug of coffee like he really needed it. Probably he’d been up all night; Sean doubted Celeste could have forced any Valium down his throat.
Sean opened the newspaper.
The Warwick Police Department has released no statement on the killing. An unofficial source remarked that human agency is being considered.
Authorities warn residents along the Pawtuxet to stay away from the river trails. Residents should keep pets indoors and not allow young children to play outside unattended. They should report any suspicious animal or human activity to the police.
Joseph Douglass spoke to this reporter last evening. “People better be careful,” he said, looking over the fence that separates his yard from the river. “Anything that could kill Hrothgar could kill a man; don’t even think about a kid. People better look out.”
Sean refolded the newspaper. Had the others been watching him, trying to gauge his reactions? Good luck. He felt numb, and the only comment that came to him was, “The reporter didn’t write about the smell.”
“There was a smell?” Eddy asked.
“The same smell as on the cat and pillows.”
“I bet the police told the paper not to mention it. So if someone calls claiming they know about the killing—”
“Exactly,” Gus said. “If he doesn’t mention the smell, no credibility.”
Dad shifted in his chair, as if Gus and Eddy’s CSI chatter chafed his already-raw nerves. Sean cut in quick. “What if Joe-Jack’s right? What if the Servitor goes after a kid next?”
“Sean,” Dad said. “There isn’t any Servitor. No familiar, no monster. Someone’s hoaxing us.”
Two days ago, Eddy had nearly convinced Sean of that, but after Hrothgar he didn’t dare bank on a hoax. “I don’t think so, Dad.”
“Sean, you’ve got to be reasonable.”
“That’s what I am being. We both saw Hrothgar—”
Dad shoved his mug away. It struck Sean’s cereal bowl, which sloshed milk and sodden flakes onto the table. “The police saw Hrothgar, too. They think a man did it.”
What was the line in the article? “Human agency is being considered.” “They’re not sure.”
“They will be when we tell them how someone broke into our house, our house, Sean. Some lunatic you met on the Internet, and you let him get your name, let him get drugs into you—”
This time Gus cut in. “We went through this last night, Jere. We said we’d start fresh in the morning.”
Dad scraped his chair away from the table. He went to the counter and leaned on it with his back to them. Sean sucked in his lower lip. It cracked, and he tasted blood.
“The war council needs to proceed in an orderly fashion,” Gus said. “Do we agree?”
“Agreed,” Eddy piped up.
“Agreed,” Dad said, turning around. “If we can keep it sensible.”
“Contrary to popular opinion, I’m always sensible.” Gus went into the dining room and came back hefting a folder. “The printouts Eddy lent us. Did she tell you, Sean?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve read through them. So have your father and Cel. So we’re all familiar with the material.”
Like she was in class, Eddy nodded. Dad nodded, too, but he didn’t wait for the teacher to continue. “Sean, I can’t believe you and Eddy talked to Orne. Talked to him twice. Couldn’t you tell there was something wrong with him?”
Eddy’s face went splotchy red—if there was one thing she couldn’t handle, it was an adult she respected chewing her out. Sean was used to it, so he tried to draw Dad’s fire: “Eddy didn’t like how he wouldn’t break character, but I thought he was just messing around.”
“And you lied about the ritual, Sean. You told me you got it from a book. You promised you were done with it after Mrs. Ferreira complained.”
“Jere—”
“Just a minute, Gus. Sean, what I want to know is why.”
It hurt Sean to swallow, as if a shard of piecrust had lodged in his throat. “I don’t know, Dad. I wanted to do the ritual; I really wanted to try and do it right.”
Dad lowered his head, so all Sean could see was his rumpled hair and crooked part.
Gus took advantage of the silence and produced a sheet of notebook paper covered with his spiky handwriting. “Last night I worked out some theories. Here’s Number One. Whatever’s killing animals along the river is unrelated to what happened at your house Saturday night.”
“Can’t be,” CSI Eddy said. “The MOs are the same. Shredded corpses, and the smell, and the prints.”
Dad looked up.
“I agree,” Gus said. “One’s out.” He slashed a pen across his notes. “So, Theory Two. It’s an animal doing the killing, either on its own or under human supervision.”
Eddy opened her mouth at the same time Dad cleared his throat. She deferred to him, and Dad said, “What would be strong enough to rip a Lab’s head clean off? A bear, maybe a tiger?”
“Those are big, conspicuous animals,” Gus said.
“Well, what about the human supervision? Orne. He’s got a wild animal hidden, and he lets it run on the river trail at night. It starts killing pets. Orne thinks that when Sean finds out, he’ll connect the killings with the spell he did. He’ll get more and more scared, and then Orne will pull the big scare of coming to the house in his costume.”
“The prints aren’t from a bear or big cat.”
“There’s what the biologist said. Orne’s wearing shoes that make a webbed print.
He follows his animal and steps on any tracks it leaves.”
“A lot of moving parts in that story. How would you control a bear or tiger? Even substitute a huge dog, like a mastiff. You could control the mastiff, but you’d still have to cover up hundreds of paw prints, in the dark. You’re bound to miss some.”
Dad scissor-rubbed his brow with a thumb and forefinger. “It’s damn clumsy. But what else could it be?”
Gus tapped his notes. “Theory Three. No killer animals. A person’s killing the pets and making it look like monster attacks. He’s tiptoeing around in his webbed shoes. He’s spreading his artificial slime. He’s dressing up in that monster suit.”
“Keep thinking for me, Gus,” Dad said.
“Three A: The hoaxer is the person calling himself Redemption Orne.”
“It has to be Orne,” Eddy said. “He’s the only one who knew Sean had the summoning ritual, so who else would put on a horror show about a Servitor?”
“And Three B: Geldman is Orne’s accomplice. He gave Sean drugs to make him hallucinate.”
Gus’s Number Three was pretty much what Eddy had come up with earlier. There was something wrong with both their versions, though Sean couldn’t put his finger on it. As for Dad, he was looking more convinced and more pissed by the minute. “I wish Sean had saved those damn powders. Now all we’ve got is the e-mail from Orne saying to buy them from Geldman.”
“Yes,” Gus said. “And Geldman could deny selling anything to Sean.”
“But the e-mail makes a connection between Orne and him. We should give it to the police. Geldman could be selling this garbage to other kids.”
What had been bothering Sean finally came clear. “No, see. Uncle Gus, Dad. Orne gave me the incantation to summon the aether-newt, not the blood-spawn. So why would he set up a blood-spawn hoax?”
The way Dad rolled his eyes, he didn’t get it. Gus, on the other hand, nodded. So did Eddy.
“Here’s another thing: The Reverend chats with me and Eddy once and decides to spend tons of time and money hoaxing us? Geldman takes a chance giving a kid drugs? I mean, couldn’t he lose his license or even go to jail?”
“Sean,” Dad moaned. “What’s your point?”
“His point is the big question,” Gus said. “What’s Orne’s motivation to terrorize a stranger?”
“Since when do lunatics need reasonable motivation?”
“Their motives have to make sense to them, at least.”
“Let the police figure that out.”
Dad said it like he was ready to grab the phone. But Sean couldn’t give in. “Dad, there’s a motive the police won’t think of. What if Orne’s really trying to see if I can do magic?”
“Theories Four and Five,” Gus said. “Number Four. Redemption Orne believes he’s a wizard. Geldman shares his belief, so they’re not hoaxers in the usual sense. They’re delusional, they’re creating their own reality, and they’re trying to drag Sean into it. Orne in particular, because part of his delusion is that he needs an apprentice.”
Four was better than Three, but Sean still couldn’t buy in. “Uncle Gus, you think Orne and Geldman could fake all this stuff and not know they were faking it?”
Dad scowled. “Why not, if they’re crazy enough? Besides, it doesn’t matter what kind of lunatics they are. I want them stopped.”
But it did matter was what made Orne tick. The difference between a hoax and genuine magic was huge. It was a difference as big as the whole universe and its laws. Dad didn’t understand that. Could Gus? “What about Number Five?” Sean asked.
“Five,” Gus said. “Redemption Orne is a wizard. Magic works. Somehow Sean made a mistake with his summoning, and now a monster’s loose.”
Gus’s bald statement launched a kick to Sean’s psychic gut. Eddy gawped as if she’d gotten the same kick. It was one thing for Sean to spout cracked ideas, but for Gus to do it? He wasn’t merely an adult; he was a philosophy professor and a former Navy pilot. Didn’t he have to disbelieve in cracked ideas, kind of on principle?
To hell with kicks: Dad looked like he’d taken a sledgehammer to the head. For a few seconds, he stared at Gus. Then he blew up: “Come on! This is serious.”
“I’m being serious.”
“But you’re talking fairy tales!”
Gus lifted his hand from his notes. “Not quite. The Cthulhu Mythos is as coherent a tradition as any religion. It’s had followers since humans grew brains big enough to follow anything. It’s got followers now. Orne could be one of them.”
“Not just a wannabe, an actual wizard. That’s what you’re saying?”
“That’s Theory Five.”
Sean got his psychic breath back. “Dad, I know it sucks to think about monsters, but what if it’s true? What if it’s my fault all these animals got killed? What about Joe-Jack and Beo? They helped make the river trail; now how can they ever walk it again? And I can’t even want them to, because they could get killed like Hrothgar, and it would be my fault.”
Dad gripped the edge of the counter. “Sean, the only monster is Orne, and it isn’t your fault he’s playing a rotten game with you.”
“If magic is real, it is my fault. It’s my Servitor. I summoned it.”
Either the counter was going to break or Dad’s knuckles were.
Quietly (cautiously?), Gus cleared his throat. “Here’s how I see it,” he said. “We’ve ruled out Theories One and Two. Three and Four, the deliberate or delusional hoaxes, the police can handle without our help. We watch the news. If they announce the slime’s synthetic, the prints are fakes, Hrothgar’s wounds were man-made, we turn our information over to them.”
“And if they don’t find a hoax?” Dad said. “Do we go to them with Theory Five?”
“I’m not sure that would help,” Gus said.
“It was a rhetorical question, Gus.”
The frustration Dad packed into that last sentence was another kick in the gut. Man, if Sean could only go back a few weeks, skip doing the ritual, no, skip going into Horrocke’s in the first place. But whatever his magical aptitude, he wasn’t powerful enough to time travel. “I don’t think regular weapons would stop it,” he told his mutilated slice of pie—he couldn’t look at Dad or Gus or even Eddy. “It’s probably like the thing Patience Orne summoned. The Puritans tried shooting it and chopping it with axes, and that didn’t even slow it down. It only went away when Patience died. They hanged her, and they heard it howling in the woods. Then they never saw it again.”
“How do you know that, Sean?” Gus asked.
“It’s in the Witch Panic book.”
“Speaking of which, I liberated it from your backpack last night.” Gus wrote some notes on the back of his theories sheet. “We wanted to see the ad you found. I have to admit, I’m stumped how Orne managed to make the clipping look so old. I’d love to have an expert check it over.”
“We already showed it to Mr. Horrocke,” Eddy said. “He wouldn’t say anything about it. Is that suspicious or what? I still bet he’s the Reverend.”
“That makes sense to me,” Dad said. “Sean found the ad at his store.”
It was no use arguing that Horrocke wasn’t Orne. All Sean had to go on was his memory of the old guy looking into the stacks, then up at the ceiling, as if he could spot the true culprit that way. Too bad Horrocke hadn’t wanted to talk about the clipping. He would have known if it was over a hundred years old. Who else would? Somebody at the MU Library?
The MU Library.
Ms. Arkwright.
Sean pushed back from the table. He risked a glance at Dad, whose face was unreadable except for the muscle spasm in his jaw.
Gus finished writing. He looked over at Dad and said, “I don’t think we have enough evidence to accuse Horrocke of playing wizard. But we could talk to him before we go to Geldman’s.”
Geldman’s? “You’re going to the pharmacy?” Sean said.
“This morning,” Dad said. “I want to know what was in the powders Gel
dman sold you. I want to know his friend Orne’s real name and what his game is.”
“We want you to come, too, Sean,” Gus put in. “You can tell whether Geldman’s being straight with us.”
Sean expected Eddy to ask if she could tag along, but Dad’s mood must have scared her off. All she said was, “Can I do anything here, Professor Litinski?”
“You can do a lot. Go online and research Redemption Orne, Solomon Geldman, Geldman’s Pharmacy, Servitors, familiars. A location for Orne would be great. Any forums or blogs he might be involved in. Just don’t contact Orne himself.”
“I’m all over it.”
Sean half-wished he could stay with Eddy, but at the same time he felt a queasy excitement over returning to Geldman’s Pharmacy. Once they’d seen the place, Gus and Dad would understand how Sean had gotten sucked into doing the ritual. And while they were in Arkham— “Could we go see Ms. Arkwright?”
Dad had come back to the table to fortify himself with coffee and the remains of Sean’s breakfast. “What are you talking about?”
“Ms. Arkwright. She’s an expert on old documents, right? We could show her the clipping.” But even as Dad gave him the evil eye, Sean realized how much more important Helen Arkwright could be. He turned to Gus. “Plus, she works at Miskatonic, with all the Mythos books, and Orne said we had to get the dismissing ritual out of the Necronomicon there.”
Around a mouthful of pie, Dad said, “Helen Arkwright doesn’t have anything to do with this.” He swallowed. “And she’s hired me for a very expensive restoration. The last thing I need is for her to think I’m a madman.”
“But she could get us in to look at the Necronomicon, and then we could look for the dismissing ritual.”
Eddy widened her eyes at Sean and mouthed, Chill. “Sean,” Gus said. “We don’t know we have anything to dismiss.”
“But the Necronomicon—”
“You don’t need any more crazy books,” Dad said.
“But if it turns out we need the Necronomicon—”
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