by Brad Ashlock
The bedroom gave way into a cramped hallway with a flight of stairs, carpeted in the same baby blue. It led down to their left. There was a narrow wooden door overlooking the steps; Cal opened it. It led to another bedroom; red carpeting and light gray walls in attic contours. There was no furniture here, but another diamond-shaped window faced the opposite direction than the one they had first peered through. The four jostled for a view.
The roof of the house extended some fifteen feet out beneath the window; beyond sprawled a spacious snowy yard, down to the left a garage, and to the right, on the other side of a high wooden fence, several car lots. Fenders, grilles, and radiators leaned against the fence like hobos. Beyond the junky car lots to their right, they could see the four-lane avenue. Naumkin thought there was something familiar about the street, despite the lack of traffic. Cal experienced the same déjà vu; he couldn’t pinpoint the exact location and the ghost memory ate at him like the Arkansas fire ants.
Downstairs, another small hall led to a kitchen and a heavy door that led outside. Before leaving the house, they took a quick walkthrough. Judging by the décor, it looked to be a suburban dwelling circa 2000. They went outside. Naumkin suggested a check on the nearby street signs and the four-lane avenue. The house was on Colrain, which didn’t ring any bells, but the four-lane avenue was named Division. They were in Wyoming, a suburb of Grand Rapids. Rogue was a forty-minute drive away; Kentwood, the next suburb to the Souyh.
“We’re home!” Cal shouted.
Naumkin squinted an eye and tilted his head.
“Where are all the people? The cars?”
Cal suggested maybe somebody had dropped a neutron bomb.
“This is the future?” Jacob asked, wide-eyed.
“Cars you say?” Solomon said, rubbing his chin.
Cal chuckled. “He knows quantum physics but doesn’t know what a car is.”
Naumkin glared at his chess student and explained what a car was to their out-of-time companions.
“It’s bizarre-o, no traffic,” Cal shrugged. “Where should we go?”
“Maybe we should head downtown, down Division,” Naumkin suggested.
They headed two blocks along Division Avenue and came to 28th Street, a main thoroughfare that was usually teeming with traffic but was currently clear as a cul-de-sac. Naumkin and Cal were leading the way, but before they could cross 28th Street, they collided with something like a sheet of soft glass that caused them to stumble backward.
“What the hell?” Cal exclaimed.
Naumkin held a hand out in front of him, palm up, and pressed it toward where the street began. His hand encountered something smooth and invisible. The image of the street and what lay beyond—a gas station, row of stop lights, and a bus stop—distorted around his hand as if he were pressing upon an LCD screen. Cal knocked upon the invisible field with his fist, causing the same Technicolor rippling distortion. Jacob and Solomon joined them, pressing their hands against the illusion of continuing cityscape.
“I guess we head the other way,” Jacob said.
Exactly three blocks ahead of them, Joost Lusker, his falcon-headed can pegging into each of Meeko Russell’s footprints, came upon Wesley Street. He could almost sense her presence. He smiled—it looked more like a snarl—as he continued up the road, fresh ginger in his strides. He followed the girl’s sloshy footprints to the white house with black trim. He walked up the driveway and noticed the broken basement window. The footprints led out into the yard with its snow-draped Madonna, circled around to an outdoor grill, and returned to the basement window.
When he turned the back door knob, it was locked, so he tucked his cane under an arm and rammed the door with his shoulder. The frame snapped and he staggered into the house. He could not see into the next room, but he heard someone… breathing. In three long strides, he entered the room. Meeko Russell was at the window now, trying to slide it open. She stopped and looked to Lusker.
“Your time has come, Dudley-spawn,” he said.
“Who are you?”
“The candy man. When we’re done with you, I’ll pay your mommy a little visit—everything will be so sweet.”
“I want to go home!”
“I’ll take you home all right!” he said with a lurch. He yanked her to the floor. He wanted to stomp her where she lay, kick the life out of her. He raised a foot over her head, cursed, and brought his heel down on her hand instead, crushing finger bones. Meeko yelped and pulled the hand from under Lusker’s highly polished shoe; she tucked it under her belly like a broken wing and screamed. Lusker, no matter how much he yearned to, could not kill her. Yet. For The Presence to see how his toy ticked, Meeko had to be alive when Lusker took the razor to her.
“Filth!” he spluttered, then hauled her up by one arm and swung her across the room into the couch. She rolled off it to the floor, then scrambled to get under it. Lusker dragged her across the carpet by her ankles, again yanked her head back by the hair, and slammed her face into the floor. Blood flowed from her nose; semi-conscious moans were the only she made now. Lusker hoisted her over his bony shoulder, retrieved his cane that he had dropped when he lunged for her, and carried her out the door he had smashed through a minute earlier.
Naumkin and the others had only walked a block when they saw a man in black with what looked like a sack of potatoes swung over his shoulder. The stranger hadn’t seen them and was trudging ahead down Division. Jacob, without thinking, shouted for the person to stop. Naumkin held up a silencing hand, but it was too late, the man had stopped in his tracks. Like a wolf, Lusker slowly turned his head and looked over his shoulder. His hair tousled in the cold wind, dancing like a white-hot flame. He was half a block ahead of them, but Naumkin recognized the cane, the dark suit, and the white hair immediately. He could also guess who was over his shoulder.
“Lusker!” Naumkin shouted, his arms making an X across his body as his right hand reached for his left gun, and his left arm reached for the right. He drew and Jacob did the same. Cal pulled his nunchakus from the tatters of his leotard and Solomon prudently took a couple steps back.
“So,” Lusker called back to Naumkin.
“Put her down!” Naumkin shouted, charging toward the albino. The others trotted close behind.
Lusker shrugged Meeko off his shoulder. She fell to the sidewalk in a heap as Naumkin, still rushing forward, took aim and emptied his pistols. Lusker, grinning, spread his arms in welcome of the bullets. The slugs passed through him as if through a shadow.
Cal overtook his chess teacher, swinging the nunchakus over his head. He got in range of Lusker and whipped his weapon at the albino’s left temple; the club passed through, continued around and hit Cal’s shoulder. Cal recovered and launched three potentially lethal kicks in less than a second. He might as well have been kicking smoke. Lusker was laughing now, and began to glow like a jack-o-lantern. In a blur, he struck out with his can and nailed Cal in the forehead. Cal hurtled backward into the avenue as if struck by a cannonball. Jacob emptied on of his guns at the monster, but soon saw his bullets were as useless as Naumkin’s.
“You’ve come a long way for nothing. I’m going to kill the girl,” he said and held the cane over his head in both hands. The light building up within him flashed from his mouth and eye-sockets along with a scream that sounded like the glass storm and the glass ocean tangoing. Naumkin, Solomon, and Jacob were blown into the street with Cal. Lusker lowered the can, swung Meeko over his shoulder, and walked on toward Kentwood, toward the Russell house simulacrum without even looking back.
Cal helped Solomon get to his feet. Naumkin and Jacob’s elbows and knees were skinned from their tumble into the road. Solomon was bleeding from the back of his head. He said he felt dizzy, but soon shook it off. They all felt like they had just swallowed a thousand volts. They watched Lusker and his prize ahead of them, getting smaller and smaller.
“Are we gonna just stand here?” Cal shouted.
“She’s still alive,” Naumk
in said. “We have to follow him to wherever he’s taking her.
“And then what?” Jacob questioned.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“He kicked our asses,” Cal said.
“There must be a way,” Solomon said, rubbing the back of his head. “Everyone has a weakness.
They followed a couple blocks behind Lusker. The albino cast a few nonchalant glances over his shoulder at his steady pursuers. The walk reminded Naumkin of the death-march to the ocean of glass—futile; Lusker might as well have been a thousand miles away. The strip malls that lined the avenue had no merchandise and no suggestions.
As they crossed from Wyoming into Kentwood, the fast-food joints and gas stations gave way to ever-increasingly valuable homes. They had followed Lusker for four miles and were now surrounded by the paper cutout manufactured housing of Grand Rapids’ petit bourgeoisie. These houses, designed to be conservative and popular, had grown into monsters in the fertile silence of the trafficless streets. Their black windows seemed to ogle Naumkin and his comrades as they followed Lusker around the winding roads.
Meeko had come to. She was squirming in Lusker’s talons.
“Stop it!” Lusker barked. “Stop worming about or I’ll snap your neck like a bird.”
He was now at Yorktown Street; down the block was the mock-up of the Russell home, and in it the door that led out of the black cube to the grand hall of doors and The Presence. Naumkin and the others got to the corner as Lusker was letting himself into the large two-story gray mouse, Meeko still over his shoulder, flailing. The quartet broke into a run, Solomon lagging, and were soon at the house themselves. Before they reached the last porch step, the door swung open and Naumkin recognized Meeko Russell’s parents straightaway.
The Russells dropped their jaws in unison, so wide the flesh split at the corners of their lips. Their eyes rolled back red and metallic tusks sprouted between their other teeth. They jumped forward together, razor claws slicing through the air. The female doppelganger slashed through Naumkin’s leather vest to his skin. He fell back into Jacob and Solomon as Cal Dodged Mr. Russell’s claws and brought the nunchaku up under the creature’s chin. The thing’s head snapped back and it bit itself in the face with its unwieldy tusks.
Three shots rang out in quick succession. The female creature buckled over and fell into the snow-capped bushes. Jacob itched to take a shot at the other one, but Cal was much too close. The chess student could take care of himself; he swung his sticks low and smashed the horror in the knee. The creature roared and fell to the ground. In the clear now, Jacob emptied his gun at pointblank range into its hideous head. Something like blueberry yoghurt spattered across the porch steps.
Naumkin loaded his pistols and led the way into the house. From another room, they heard a swarm of cicadas chiming, followed by that now-familiar sound of reverse-suction, an Everywhere Door closing. They rushed into Meeko’s bedroom, ready for anything. Light flickered from the closed closet.
“He’s in there,” Jacob said, motioning with the barrel of his gun.
“This is it,” Cal said.
Naumkin crossed the room to the closet and opened it. Mercury vapor light enveloped them, insect sounds filled Meeko’s room, and the portal grew black like a defective mood-ring, a wispy pinwheel of smoke swirling at its heart. They entered this barrage of alien sound and light, this wormhole that seemed more like a mouth than a gateway. It slammed shut behind them. They were in the maze now, the realm of The Presence.
“So many doors,” Cal said.
“As stars in the sky,” Solomon whispered.
“He could have taken her anywhere,” Jacob said.
“Everywhere,” Naumkin corrected.
Cal suggested that they split up.
“Quiet!” Naumkin barked, holding up a hand. The others listened. Down the hall, they heard a little girl scream.
“We’re too late!” Cal cried.
They ran down the corridor and turned to the right. Now the cry issued back from where they had come.
“We’re being toyed with,” Solomon said.
They tried to follow the new screams. Now they heard a little girl moaning from a few doors behind them. They rushed to that door, but by the time they got there the moan, which gradually became a chuckle, now chimed farther down the corridor.
“We’re running out of time!” Cal said.
Solomon calmly intertwined his fingers and sat on the floor, his back against a mausoleum styled door. He shut his eyes and set his jaw.
Jacob said, “What are we gonna do?”
“I don’t know.” The repetitive non sequitur was ash in Naumkin’s mouth.
Solomon opened his eyes like an owl caught in the day.
“We’ll unhinge the doors!”
The others looked at him doubtfully.
“If we can’t get to Lusker, we’ll make Lusker come to us,” Solomon continued. “Quickly. Rip them off their hinges!”
“We don’t know what that will do,” Naumkin warned.
“But we know what Lusker will do to that little girl if we don’t try something. Come on!”
They proceeded to attack the doors. Naumkin gave one of his pistols to Solomon, who used the butt as a hammer. Cal smashed down a door with a spinning jump kick. By the time he landed, the threshold devoured the unhinged door; it sucked the whole thing into its void. Wind filled the room along with a pulsing light and the choir of cicadas. Jacob tore down another door, followed by Naumkin and Solomon. The hallway became a wind tunnel as the blackness behind the doors pulled at them, sucking at the air and the splinters of the broken doors; even the light seemed to be directed toward the gaping portals where pixie dust whirled like drunken novae.
Then Naumkin came to a door he recognized. It was made of brass and had engraved upon it the same series of pictograms that had been on the door he and Cal had first ventured through beneath the chocolate factory. There was the long-bearded messiah/fool, the animals inebriated/dead; it was as familiar yet unsettling now as the first time he had encountered it. He looked up to the hinges. The first bottom two were brass, but the top, instead of a bolt, was what appeared to be a human leg bone. Could it be from the Indian desecration? As if answering his question, it was suddenly aglow like a light bulb.
As Naumkin pulled if from the hinge, Joost Lusker sprang from the mausoleum styled door. He was upon Solomon like a hawk, and lifted the philosopher off the ground by his neck. Jacob screamed as Lusker broke Solomon’s back over his knee like a bundle of dry sticks. Solomon never knew what had hit him; he died instantly with his eyes wide, their flicker of brilliance suddenly dull.
“No!” Jacob bellowed, voice cracking, pistols popping.
The bullets sailed through Lusker who only laughed.
“I’ll kill you!” Jacob cried, the hammers of his pistols clicking while he pulled the triggers of the emptied guns.
“All you can do is annoy. But soon you won’t even be able to do that,” Lusker said over the din of the unhinged doors, stepping over Solomon’s body.
Shoving the others aside, Naumkin charged Lusker with the femur bone; he looked like a knight with a stubbed lance—pathetic. Lusker put his head back and let out a loud guffaw at the cliché man in the white hat rushing toward the villain, at the corniness of it, the tragicomedy of it. To Lusker, Naumkin was a dimwitted caveman rushing forward with a shard of bone; a chimpanzee. The laugh ballooned from his throat and overwhelmed the whirlwind of the unhinged doors. It seemed to be part of the storm now, laced with glass.
The chess master closed in, too enraged to care if he was charging toward death, only wanting now to silence that inhuman mocking cackle. Naumkin plunged the ceremonial artifact into Lusker’s chest. Lusker’s grand guffaw choked short, and he gazed curiously down to the bone wobbling in his breast. Naumkin withdrew it and backed away, the dirty-tipped relic in his grip. The albino slumped to his knees and the hole in his chest jetted chocolate syrup in a high arc toward Naumkin
’s cowboy boots. Lusker gazed up to the chess master, the pupils within his pink irises small as pin pricks.
“Thank you,” he said and swooned to the floor, dead.
Without waiting for the others, Naumkin jumped through the open mausoleum portal. It slammed shut behind him. The chamber, aromatic with lilacs, was in utter darkness except for a spotlight streaming down from the shadows illuminating Meeko Russell. She was spread eagle, naked, her wrists and ankles shackled to stakes driven into the matte black floor. There was an open straight razor in a dirty water glass beside her. She looked to Naumkin, her eyes wide as saucers and streaming with tears.