The Ruined City

by John Wilson

  “Find something!” Howard urged. “How about that thing Jingshen recited when she and Kun were talking about Sanxingdui being destroyed?”

  Cate flipped to that page and recited, “When that which is far comes near…” But nothing happened, and the water kept swirling around them.

  Howard looked over the banister and screamed. Twisting along the corridor was a large gray tentacle. “It’s not working!” he shrieked.

  Cate said, “Something’s missing.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Ugh! What’s going on?” said someone from the landing above.

  Howard looked up to see Madison, water swirling around her ankles.

  “I couldn’t find Leon, so I was having a nap upstairs when I felt this bump. Was it, like, an earthquake or something? There’s water everywhere. Has anyone, like, called a plumber or something?”

  “That’s what we need!” Howard shouted hysterically. “A plumber!” The tentacle was now creeping up the stairs toward his feet.

  “Well, I’ll call one,” Madison said, lifting her pink cell phone and dialing.

  Howard was wondering vaguely why Madison had a plumber’s number on her cell phone when his own phone rang.

  “When that which is far comes near. Read the book,” a voice said when he answered.

  “What? Who is this?”

  “When that which is far comes near. Read the book,” the voice repeated. It sounded familiar. “Now!”

  Howard looked down at the page Cate was studying. The poem Jingshen had recited was in the middle of it. Desperately he began to read:

  When that which is far comes near,

  That which is closed may open.

  When worlds bleed one through the other,

  That which cannot is.

  Doors that the power of the moon may open,

  The power of the sun shall close.

  The words blurred on the page. The book vibrated, and a shimmering wave moved out from it in all directions. Howard’s body tingled as the wave passed through it, but the water retreated. The tentacle slithered back down the hall. Cate, Madison and Howard were standing in the center of an expanding, glimmering globe. As the surface of the globe sped outward, passing effortlessly through banisters, stairs, walls and Heimao, the water receded before it. Within moments everything was back as it had been—the floor and the walls were dry, the cracks in the dome were mended, and there were no sea creatures flopping on the stairs or moving along the halls.

  “Oh,” Madison said, “I guess we don’t need the plumber now. I’m going back to bed.” She climbed the stairs as if nothing had happened.

  Cate and Howard gasped with relief and slumped down onto the stairs.

  “I had to recite the incantation,” Howard said, feeling a touch of pride.

  “Yes. Surprising,” Heimao said.

  “What do you mean? Just because you’re a talking cat, that doesn’t mean you’re the only one with powers.”

  “Obviously not,” Heimao replied, licking her paws. “It may have escaped your attention, but you read the poem in ancient Chinese.”

  Howard looked down at the book. The page was covered in strange characters that meant nothing to him.

  “What did Madison say when she called you on the phone?” Cate asked.

  “It wasn’t Madison. It was Aileen from the library at the AIPC. She recited the first line and told me to read the book.”

  “Aileen!” Cate rubbed her chin. “Now it’s beginning to make sense,”

  “No, it’s not,” Howard insisted. “It’s getting more complicated. What does Aileen have to do with anything, and why did she call me? How does she even know my number? And how can I read Chinese?”

  “Madison told Aileen your number.”

  “What? But she doesn’t even know Aileen. And she’s too clueless to be behind all of this.”

  “Intelligence has nothing to do with whether a person’s an Adept. But you were right when you said that Madison is too much of an airhead to do the things she’s been doing. Somebody is guiding her.”

  “Aileen?”

  “Yes. Most Adepts are passive. Think of it this way. Some people have better hearing or sight than others, but that doesn’t mean they can affect what they hear or see. It’s very rare for Adepts to be able to influence the dreams they experience. They need help. Madison wasn’t calling a plumber—she was calling Aileen.”

  “And somehow Aileen helped me read the Chinese words?”

  “It looks like it.”

  “So what’s Aileen?”

  “That’s the key question. Do you remember the story Jingshen told at the beginning of The Golden Mask?”

  “The creation story about the struggle between good and bad?”

  “Yeah. Guang and Heian in the original story, then Jingshen herself and Shenxian in Sanxingdui.”

  “And Amshu and Claec in Atlantis in Mom’s story.”

  “Exactly. It’s an eternal struggle that is fought over and over again, whenever the dimensions swirl together. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she looks very much like the description of Jingshen in the book. Aileen is Guang, Jingshen and Amshu in our world.”

  “So who is Heian, Shenxian and Claec?”

  “The Chinese guy in the basement of the AIPC.”

  “Leon’s chauffeur!”

  Cate nodded. “And probably Wat Heely’s servant, Hei.”

  Howard realized that meant Wat Heely’s servant had been alive for well over a hundred years.

  “Guang and Heian may have been the very first Adepts, but their origins are so far in the past that it’s impossible to know for sure,” Cate continued. “Both are immensely powerful, but as long as their powers are in balance, like yin and yang, everything will be fine. There is danger only when that balance is disturbed.”

  “Like when Shenxian tried to take the mask and open the portal to the Realm of the Elder Gods.”

  “Or when Claec tried something similar in Atlantis. And I think Hei may have tried something at Wat Heely’s mansion. Remember when Aileen told us about the walls bleeding water? For some reason it didn’t work. Maybe the timing was wrong.”

  “Does Aileen control Madison?”

  “Control’s too strong a word. She tries to help when she can.”

  “So when Madison goes all weird and tells me to read the book or go through the arch, it’s actually Aileen? Why doesn’t she just do herself whatever it is she’s trying to get me to do?”

  “That’s complicated.”

  “And monsters from other dimensions aren’t! Maybe we should go back to the AIPC and talk to her.” Howard had felt uncomfortable in Leon’s house even before the walls started bleeding water from another dimension and a giant tentacle tried to grab him. He would be happy to leave now. “If Aileen’s the manifestation of good, she can help us.”

  “I don’t think that’s what we should do,” Cate said, crushing his hopes of escape. “The answer’s here. The power’s here. The portal’s here. And I suspect that Hei, if that’s what he still calls himself, is here as well.”

  “Hei is here?” Howard said. He had a horrible sinking feeling in his stomach.

  “Well, someone or something here opened the portal to let the water through. That allowed things from the other dimension to enter ours. Your reading from the book closed the portal, but Hei is getting stronger. Next time the portal opens, we have to be in the right place to go through it in the opposite direction.”

  Howard really didn’t want to go through the portal. His nightmares had taken him there already, and it hadn’t been fun. “But we don’t know how to do that,” he pointed out.

  “No,” Cate agreed as Heimao jumped off the post, stretched and headed up the stairs. “But someone here does.”

  AYLFORD

  THE BASEMENT

  “Madison, wake up,” Cate said, shaking the sleeping girl. Madison was lying fully clothed on top of a king-size bed in an extremely tidy room. Heimao was
curled up beside her.

  “Whaaa…?” Madison rolled over and blinked rapidly. She looked less attractive to Howard with drool running down her chin.

  “Where was the last place you saw Leon mumbling things before you passed out last night?” Cate asked.

  Madison rubbed her eyes, wiped her mouth and stared at them. “The basement,” she said.

  Cate’s tone became urgent. “You need to come down there with us.”

  “Okay, you probably have some geeky reason to go to the basement,” Madison said, as if she were talking to a five-year-old. “I get that. What you don’t get is that cool people like me, who were partying late last night, want to sleep. My mom woke me up this morning, then the earthquake woke me here, and now you two want me to go to the basement. Why don’t you just go away and, like, learn something?” She rolled back over.

  “It’s important,” Cate said, frustration creeping into her voice. “I can’t explain, but there’s something we have to do in the basement—and only you can help us do it.”

  Madison sighed loudly and said, “There is nothing I can—or want—to do with geeks in the basement or anywhere else. Now leave me alone. I have a history essay to do this weekend, and I have to sleep.”

  Howard didn’t know how sleeping would magically get Madison’s history essay done, but it might explain why she was only scraping by in the class. Then he had an idea. “I’ll write your history essay for you,” he said.

  It looked like a win-win situation. Either Madison helped them go through the portal and save the world, in which case writing an essay was a small price to pay, or whatever was in the Realm of the Elder Gods escaped and destroyed this world, in which case Madison’s essay would not be high on Howard’s priority list for the next day.

  His offer got her attention. Madison flipped over, almost squashing Heimao, and sat up. “Really?”

  “Sure,” Howard said. “I’ve written mine. I can do yours tomorrow.”

  “You’re, like, getting As in history, right?”

  Howard nodded.

  Madison frowned, perhaps calculating how little she would have to work for the rest of the semester if she got an A on this one essay. Eventually she asked, “All I have to do is come to the basement?”

  “That’s all,” Cate said.

  “All right.” Madison swung her legs off the bed and stood up. “But I need the essay by tomorrow night. Now give me a minute. And take that disgusting creature away.”

  Heimao gave Madison an evil look, jumped off the bed and disappeared out the door. Cate and Howard followed.

  As they stood in the hallway, waiting for Madison to get ready, Brad dragged his way past them, a steaming mug of coffee in his hand.

  “Good morning,” Howard said. “I see that you’ve dried out.”

  He got a foul look in return. It was hard to believe that the hallway had been waist deep in water just a few minutes earlier and that nobody could remember it.

  “This dimensional stuff can really mess with your mind,” Howard said to Cate.

  “No kidding. You can see why anything written down over the centuries has been so fragmentary.”

  “Okay. So if you’re right, and Madison is able to somehow open the portal and let us through—then what?”

  “We go to the white ship.”

  “Will it take us to the black arch?” Howard wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  “The only thing I’m certain of,” Cate said, “is that the answer must lie through the arch. Too many things point that way for it not to be important. After we go through, we’ll just have to wing it.”

  Winging it didn’t strike Howard as the best way to go about saving the world, but they had to do something, and he couldn’t think of a better option.

  A movement overhead made Howard look up. Madison was coming down the stairs—descending was a more accurate word. Even though her clothes were wrinkled and her hair was rumpled, she was stepping down in regal fashion, her hand delicately balanced on the banister.

  “She thinks she’s Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind,” Cate whispered.

  Howard almost choked trying to hide a laugh, but Madison didn’t notice. She swept into the hallway and stopped in front of them. A puzzled look crossed her face.

  “There’s something I have to get…” she said. Her face brightened. “Oh, right. Back in a minute.” She hurried down the hall to the kitchen.

  Cate and Howard exchanged looks, but Madison was back before they could think of a comment to make. Her clutch purse was bulging.

  “Okay,” she said briskly as she headed down the corridor beside the stairs. “Let’s get this done!”

  She opened a small door behind the main staircase. A momentary shudder passed through Howard—the narrow stairs looked a lot like the slimy tunnel. Madison flipped a light switch, and the three headed down.

  The basement was more modern and less luxurious than upstairs. “I thought basements were where parties happened,” Howard commented. He was surprised there was no one sleeping off the revels of the night before, although he would be the first to admit that his experience of parties was seriously limited.

  “Who would party down here when there’s everything you need upstairs?” Madison said. “So we’re here. Now what?”

  Most of the basement was taken up by a large recreation room, filled with a collection of expensive fitness machines and a huge flat-screen TV. There were three doors leading from the room, two of which were open. Through one Howard could see a large wine cellar that had probably been raided during the night. The other was a furnace room.

  “What’s behind there?” Howard asked, pointing at the closed door. As he spoke, a wave of panic surged over him. He felt cold, but he was breaking out in sweat. The door was the most terrifying thing he had ever seen.

  “It’s what Leon calls the media room.” Madison took a step toward it.

  “Wait,” Howard said, reaching for her arm. He felt a heavy sense of dread, and black shadows flickered around the edge of his vision. “Something’s wrong.”

  “What?” Cate turned to look at him. “Do you feel something?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m getting the black fringe around what I see.”

  “That idiot Leon’s locked the door,” Madison said, twisting the handle to no effect. “Okay, it’s not my fault. You’ll still write the essay for me, right?”

  Howard didn’t get a chance to answer. The blackness rushed in to form a tunnel with Madison at the end of it. She was still nagging him to write the essay for her when a piece of the blackness detached itself and leaped into her arms.

  “What a beautiful cat,” Madison said, cradling Heimao lovingly and stroking her fur.

  The blackness faded, and Howard watched as Madison strolled across the room, mumbling sweet nothings to Heimao. He and Cate stared after her for a moment. Then Cate stepped forward and grasped the door handle.

  “It’s locked.”

  She and Howard spun around. Leon was leaning casually against the wall at the bottom of the stairs.

  “What are you doing?” Cate asked.

  “Well, this is my house,” Leon said smoothly. “And come to think of it, I don’t recall inviting either of you to my party, so perhaps I should be the one asking that question. Never mind. You’re here now. Have you enjoyed your tour?”

  “It’s a beautiful house,” Cate said.

  “It is,” Leon agreed, “but you haven’t seen the best room.”

  “Which one’s that?” Howard asked, finally recovering his voice.

  “The media room, of course.” Leon stepped forward to stand beside them.

  “Maybe we’ll save that one for later,” Howard suggested, the frightening blackness still hovering at the edges of his vision. “We just dropped by to say hello. We have to go to the library and do some homework now. We are geeks, after all.”

  “We’d love to see it,” Cate said, turning the handle again. Nothing happened.

  “I told
you it’s locked.” Leon smiled coldly. “But there’s someone inside who can open it.”

  As he spoke, the door handle turned and the door swung inward. In one smooth movement, Leon slipped his arms around Cate’s and Howard’s shoulders and ushered the surprised pair through the door.

  Although the room was dark and Howard could make out only vague shadows, he had a sense of space. There was a damp chill in the air, and a cold draft was coming from somewhere.

  “Not the most comfortable place to watch a movie,” Cate commented as the door clicked shut behind them.

  Leon hit the light switch.

  Howard’s jaw dropped open in shock.

  The ceiling was not high, but the room was big in every other dimension. The floor was tiled, but the walls were rough and appeared to be carved from the rock of Hangman’s Hill. Niches had been roughly dug into the rock face. Each contained a statue. Some had the heads of dogs and birds—these Howard recognized from pictures of ancient Egyptian deities. Others, more crudely carved, had an African or South American look to them. A few were like nothing he had ever seen, or even imagined, before. There were squat, formless creatures with no recognizable limbs but slavering mouths and too many eyes. Some had fins and tails suggesting an aquatic life. The worst were large tentacled beasts that, if they existed at all, could have moved only by undulations of their elongated sluglike bodies. All were unpleasant to look at and gave the room an overwhelming sense of threat and foreboding. But they were not what had caused Howard’s jaw to drop. Standing in half shadow, at the farthest reaches of the light, was a tall, pale Chinese man.

  “Say hello to Hei,” Leon said with an unpleasant laugh.

  Hei smiled, clasped his hands and bowed. “It seems we cannot help running into each other,” he said. “Welcome.”

  Hei’s voice was deep and resonant, but it was also soft, as if his vocal cords had been worn smooth with great age.

  As he slowly walked toward them, Cate said, “I see you’re still serving Wat Heely.”