by Rio Youers
They left the room together, Martin taking the lead, brushing against the bamboo chimes once again. The bone-music followed him to the bottom of the stairs.
“Thank you so much,” he said at the front door, offering his hand again.
“I’m not sure I helped very much, but…”
Martin pushed open the door. Wind and snow gusted in and he heard the chimes again. His thoughts made a similar sound. Hollow, tuneless thoughts—that there was still so much he didn’t know, and it seemed the only people who could answer his questions had been dead for thirty-two years. He might’ve fared better if he’d brought Dr. Hans Oculus with him.
This frivolous notion strummed an odd chord at back of his mind, and an idea quickly formed. He brought it to the fore, examined it, decided it was crazy, but also decided it just might work.
“If I were to come back with someone”—he used his body to shield most of the wind and snow—“who might be able to shine a light on what happened upstairs, would you be amenable to that?”
“Someone with a time machine?”
“I guess.” Martin shrugged. “Kind of.”
“Well, for the entertainment value, and provided they don’t wreck my restaurant … I’ll say definitely maybe.”
“Good enough,” Martin said, zipping his jacket. “I’ll see you soon.”
The snow was light enough that it blew across the sidewalk like dust. Martin lifted his collar and walked with his head low, breath pluming around him. He got into his rental car, cranked the heater to full, and drove the mostly empty streets until he found a hotel.
30
“I understand,” Shirley said. Her eyes were huge and moist and her upper body trembled. “Doesn’t mean I’m not scared.”
“A bright light can be overwhelming.” Valerie measured each word like a drop of medicine. “If sacrifice were easy, there’d be no achievement, no happiness, no love.”
Her words hung on the air for a moment, then gradually soaked in. Shirley nodded and wiped her eyes. Valerie didn’t cosset the girl, or soothe her; the strongest walls were built of stone.
“Did my mom die for this? So that I could be put onto this path?”
“She did.”
“And Dad, coming here…?”
“You see it now: your purpose.” Valerie spread her arms, encompassing something bigger than them both. “Shirley, the Glam has chosen you. This is where you rise above.”
Shirley wiped her eyes again and lifted her chin. Good.
“I was focusing on your sister for so long that I underestimated your energy—a brighter, more breathtaking energy.” Valerie stepped toward Shirley, still with her arms spread, deliberately treelike, a thing of great wisdom and strength. “She may be the doorway, but you’re the key.”
Valerie had spent most of the day alone, wandering around the island, thinking of ways to pay the price. It had been cold and demanding and a snow squall forced her to take shelter in a hollow tree. Looking out, she thought she saw the tiger standing in the swirling snow, watching her, but it was just her tired mind playing tricks. Even so, she cried out that she didn’t need him—didn’t need his animal friends, his Society, or his fucking drugs, then she wept for a long time, hoping this was true.
Finally, after the snow had stopped, and with the setting sun showing like a burn mark through rags of grayish cloud, Valerie knew what she had to do. She returned to her cabin and Shirley came a short time later. Valerie had already set the fire burning, and a warm, flickering light filled the room. Shirley started reading to her but Valerie soon held up her hand and said no, she couldn’t concentrate, and when Shirley asked why, Valerie told her. She said, “I didn’t think you’d be ready so quickly. You’ve amazed me.” And then she explained to Shirley what was required of her—such a momentous, unselfish undertaking. Shirley listened, her eyes growing wider and wetter. There had been denial to begin with, of course, and then acceptance.
“I understand,” Shirley said again.
“You are exceptional.” Valerie spoke slowly and with a great weight to her words, like a steady, heavy drumbeat. “I am awed by you. Overawed.”
“Thank you.”
“You won’t let us down. You’re too strong. Too special.”
She nodded at first, then uncertainty flickered across her face. This wasn’t surprising, given all the thoughts and emotions barreling through her mind. Valerie thought it would pass, then Shirley slumped and buried her face in her hands. She sobbed from a deep, frightened place.
Valerie let her cry. She let her squeeze out every scared and doubting tear, and during this time she didn’t move at all. She loomed, tree that she was—strong, wise force that she was. Shirley eventually looked up, the firelight reflected in her eyes. Valerie nodded once, then pushed herself deeper, laying herself across the girl’s delicate brain. She felt it quivering beneath her and exerted the merest pressure in only the most critical places.
“All that bad energy you’ve carried. Those moments of anger and resentment at a world that has treated you pitifully. One moment of light can end it all.”
“I know.”
“It’s godlike, in a way. Goddesslike.”
“Yes.”
“Show them, Shirley. Show them what you can do.”
“I will.”
“You will.” Valerie broke her treelike stance. She walked to the fire and placed another log on. It burned beautifully. The glow shimmered off the walls and ceiling and painted her skin a fetching shade of red.
* * *
In her dream she took an axe to Edith’s head, which was softer than she’d imagined, and there was smashed skull and brain all over, but worse, the energy was dead, the portal was dead. Valerie fell to her knees and tried to put the pieces back together but they slipped through her fingers and they were all black. She woke in an icy sweat and had to slap both hands over her mouth to keep the scream from breaking loose.
She clambered from her bed to her chest of drawers, opened the bottom one, took out the tiger mask. She lifted it to her face, smelled the latex, but smelled him, also—his expensive cologne, his skin. Valerie’s eyes fluttered. She pulled the mask onto her head, returned to her bed, and fantasized about the end of pleasure. Her orgasm forced her to suppress another scream, using the pillow this time.
Shirley was still in the living room. She hadn’t moved all night. Her expression was both familiar and strange, like a famous portrait with newly painted eyes.
“Did you sleep?” Valerie asked.
“No.”
“Are you tired?”
“Yes. A little.” She frowned, as if she didn’t quite recognize her own voice.
“You should sleep. You have a great task ahead of you.”
Shirley nodded and lay down on the sofa, one arm tucked beneath a pillow. She fell asleep within moments. A smoothness struck her face and her lips pulsed gently.
Valerie dressed and left the cabin. She greeted her followers with a beaming grin and a hearty “Good morning!” And it was a good morning. There was a skiff of snow on the ground and the sky was a cloudless, shiny blue. She walked swiftly, arms folded against the cold.
Nolan was in the storage barn, taking stock. Simon Song was with him, stacking hefty boxes, steam rising from his bald head. Valerie dismissed Simon and he left without saying a word.
“Everything okay?” Nolan asked.
“I know how to get to the White Skyway,” Valerie said, speaking as if she knew how to get to the nearest 7-Eleven. “It’s time.”
Nolan dropped the notebook he’d been scribbling in. The pen, too. It trembled in his hand for a moment then fell to the ground. He looked at Valerie and his face took on a dumb countenance and Valerie wondered if she’d have to slap him—slap the fucker hard—just to bring him to his senses.
“Ruh … ruh…” he stammered. “Ruh…”
Valerie’s hand twitched.
“Really?”
“Really. We have to create it, but I kn
ow how.”
“Huh … huh … how?”
“It’s complicated. You just have to trust me.”
His mouth twitched, then his whole face crumpled and tears the size of buttons rolled from his eyes. He stammered something else, then dragged a sleeve across his cheeks and flopped his arms around Valerie.
“It’s all just … I mean, it’s…”
“I told you that something was coming, that I could feel it in the air.” She pulled herself from his arms with a little mew of distaste. “I wasn’t wrong.”
“You’re never wrong.” He took a couple of robust breaths, wiped his face again, and managed to retrieve a shred of composure. “The Glam. I just…” He smiled pathetically. “I can come, right?”
“Of course. You’ve been loyal to me for many years.” Valerie made a sweeping gesture with her right arm. “We’re opening the Skyway right here on the island. It’s a route in and out. You can come and go as you please.”
“Skyway,” he repeated moronically. His eyes glazed. “Wow. I mean … wow. I don’t quite understand how it—”
“It’s the girls, Nolan,” Valerie said. “Edith and Shirley. Don’t overload your brain, just think of it this way: one of them is the door, the other one is going to blow the door open.”
“Ah, yes,” Nolan said, as if that made perfect sense.
“Which leads me to my reason for coming down here…” Valerie placed a hand on Nolan’s shoulder and urged him a little closer. “I’m going to need you to do something for me.”
“Anything. I’ll do anything,” he said. “What is it?”
She told him.
31
Martin pulled into the White Lantern’s parking lot and switched off the rental’s engine. The restaurant was closed but Sasha had agreed to meet them there. She had an hour, she said, before she and her wife were due to join the in-laws for Thanksgiving drinks. Martin thought an hour would be long enough.
“This is the place,” he said.
“I can tell,” Calm Dumas responded.
He’d called her Wednesday morning, pulling her number from old cell phone information stored in the cloud. He had little doubt Calm would want to help, once he’d explained the situation, but whether or not she could do it over Thanksgiving, and before Nolan was scheduled to pick him up Friday, was another matter entirely.
Calm had stepped up, though. She had no family—only three dogs, which she could leave with a neighbor—and therefore no plans. She told Martin that if he could get her to Jersey, on his buck, then she would come. Booking a last-minute flight the day before Thanksgiving proved problematic, however, and he didn’t want to put her on a bus. In the end, he decided the easiest way was to do the driving himself. So he made the seven-hour journey to Roanoke, Virginia, except it had been nine hours with the holiday traffic. He checked into a Holiday Inn for the night, then picked Calm up first thing Thanksgiving morning and headed back to Jersey.
They arrived in Sternbridge just after three p.m. and managed to find a restaurant that was open on the holiday. The food was good, but Martin had no appetite. He kept flashing back to last Thanksgiving: twelve of them, including Laura, sitting around Jimmy’s huge dining table, food everywhere, the football game buzzing in the background, barely audible above the sound of good cheer. If someone had told that version of Martin that in one year he’d be sharing Thanksgiving dinner with an elderly psychic lady at some mom-and-pop restaurant on the outskirts of Rutherford, he would’ve laughed them out of the room.
Calm didn’t have to read his mind to know what he was thinking. His expression, and the way he played around with his food, made it clear enough. She reached across the table, took his hand, and told him that she was thankful to be with a friend.
“I am, too,” he said, and that was the truth.
Now, standing outside the White Lantern, he wondered if some of her thankfulness had ebbed. Her usual poise had slipped, and there was a wariness about her, a watchfulness, that sent chills racing through Martin’s blood.
“Is it that bad?” he asked.
“It’s ungodly.”
“The restaurant?”
Calm drew her shoulders inward and scoped all around. The streetlights flashed off the lenses of her glasses. “It’s the whole damn place.”
Martin puffed out his cheeks and looked at Calm earnestly. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
She walked past him, heading for the front door. “Let’s just get it over with.”
* * *
“So close,” Valerie whispered.
She was a journeywoman, a visionary—an astronomer who’d been watching the skies for the last thirty-two years, waiting for a certain rare star to go supernova. And now it was happening.
Valerie took deep, measured breaths. Every time she blinked she saw the “garden” in Edith’s mind, every perfect detail, from the foliage and rock formations to the clear pools and waterfalls, all of which she knew so well, all—
“Mine,” she whispered.
So close.
She had built a fire on the beach and it burned hungrily, sparks spiraling upward from the flames and fading into the air. Sitting beside it, feeling the heat it pushed out, she wondered if she’d ever be cold again. This time tomorrow, she could simply step across the Skyway and feel the sun on her skin—a sun that didn’t sink beyond the horizon, but that gradually faded from the sky. Or she could swim in water that adapted to her mood: warm or cool, whatever she wanted.
“My water. My sun.”
Valerie had brought a small bag with her. She opened it and took out the two items inside. The first was the tiger mask, devoid of all its threat and power. It didn’t smell like him anymore, either. Her scent enveloped his; in the last twelve hours she’d masturbated six times while wearing the mask and urinated on it twice. The second item was the ring, as cold and heavy as it had always been, but duller … darker. She had removed it from the secret compartment in her lockbox earlier that day. The ghosts in her mind were clearer when she took the ring out, perhaps because it symbolized them as a group, or perhaps because her blood was still embedded in the inscription.
* * *
Sasha led them through the restaurant, weaving a path between the tables in the meek light. At the bottom of the stairs, Calm touched her elbow and said:
“It’s kind of you to do this, particularly on the holiday.”
“Not a problem,” Sasha said. “I had to drop in anyway.”
Calm smiled, although Martin noticed her eyes continuing to shift behind her glasses. Her hands were restless, too, making odd touching motions, occasionally reaching for things that weren’t there—or at least not that Martin could see.
“If you’re being honest, though,” she said to Sasha, “you’re only happy to do this because you don’t think it will work. You’d pegged me as just another charlatan—or weirdo, isn’t that your word?—before I’d even shown up.”
“I, uh…”
“It’s okay, sweetie. I get that all the time, but if you knew what I can already tell you about this place, you would never have allowed me through the front door.”
Sasha closed her mouth and looked at Martin over the old lady’s shoulder. He offered a shrug that conveyed very little of what he felt inside, but it was the best he could manage.
“We won’t be long,” Calm continued. “You can stay down here, if you don’t want to know. You can stay, too, Martin, if you’d prefer to keep some distance, and I’ll give you the details later. Your call.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said.
“Me, too.” Sasha said.
“Okay.” Calm shuffled toward the staircase, then stopped and closed her eyes. “Your uncle kept her here. Against her will. Partly because they paid him, but mostly because he was afraid.” Her eyes flashed open, fixed on Sasha. “A damn coward, your uncle.”
“A proper arsehole, I’d say.”
“That he was.”
They made their way upstairs, pausi
ng every second or third step while Calm made feeling gestures, sometimes touching the walls. This continued along the landing, until she reached the bamboo chimes, which she looked at for a second, then brushed with the back of one hand. They knocked and sang. Calm listened, eyes closed.
“This is how she knew they were coming.”
When Calm had shown up at Martin and Laura’s house in May, she told them that the psychic cosmos was vast and active, and that most people who connected to it were swept away. Watching her now, Martin got the sense that she was navigating a dark and relentless energy, something that could fracture space and melt logic. She inched along the landing, then opened the door at the far end and was drawn into the room beyond.
“It’s fast here,” she said. “And deep.”
She circled the table once, then unbuttoned her jacket and threw it on the floor. Martin picked it up cautiously, half expecting it to smell of sulfur, or to see smoke drifting from inside the sleeves. He looped it over the crook of his elbow and watched Calm as she worked, her hands sensing like antennae, her eyes constantly twitching.
“She was so young,” Calm whispered.
“She?” Martin gasped. “Are you talking about Valerie?”
“They did bad things. But she made them pay.”
Sasha had stepped into the room but remained close to the door, either trying to stay out of the way, or ready to bolt if the table and chairs started floating or ectoplasm oozed through the walls. Her face was a mosaic of amusement, bewilderment, and fear. Martin stood by her side. She looked at him with wide eyes and he shrugged vaguely again.
“This anything like Dr. Hans Oculus?” he whispered.
“Not … exactly.”
Calm ran her hands along one wall, then took them away quickly, as if she’d touched something unpleasant. She stepped backward, shook her head. Her eyes cleared. She looked from Sasha to Martin and said:
“The pig bled first.”