Soulstorm

by Chet Williamson

  Gabrielle leaned on her pry bar like a cane. "That's what the Nevilles built everything for. I wonder if it's brick all around."

  "Almost certain," McNeely said. "If there'd been later additions, maybe not, but this place was built all at once.”

  “What about the cellar?" Wickstrom asked.

  "That's brick-walled too."

  "But maybe there's no stone wall behind it. If we could get through the bricks …"

  "We'd find twelve feet of earth in our way and not a shovel to be had." McNeely sighed. "It doesn't look too good."

  "Let's try the plates," Gabrielle suggested. "Maybe we can force them."

  They discovered quickly that the plates were tight against the slots that housed them, so snug that none of their crude implements could even be inserted in the space, let alone any pressure be put on it to dislocate the steel.

  The third floor was next. They stayed together, going from room to room, looking for a trapdoor that would lead them to the attic. Finally, in one of the small bedrooms in the east wing near the gym, they found it, a wooden trap with a huge new lock and hasp. Wickstrom dragged a chair under it, worked Gabrielle's thinner pry bar inside the hasp, and wrenched down.

  The third time, he succeeded, yanking the hardware out of the wood so that screws fell like metallic rain. Wickstrom laughed in triumph as he pressed upward, but his face fell at the sound of wood against metal.

  "Fucker!" he yelled, pounding, on the trap with his fists. "That's metal! There's a goddamn metal door up there!"

  "Get down, Kelly." McNeely's voice was calm.

  "Why? What …"

  "Just give me the chair."

  Wickstrom clambered down dejectedly and watched as McNeely moved the chair two yards away from the trapdoor, stepped up onto it, and drove his heavy bar straight up into the ceiling. Painted plaster spattered down as he thrust again and again. In between the thrusts he spoke.

  "He can't … have covered … the whole roof … with steel … A ceiling's … just plaster and wood … We'll get through."

  He broke through then, and the sudden move threw him off balance so that he tumbled off the chair, the bar crashing down dangerously beside him, narrowly missing his neck. He leaped up, grabbed the bar, and climbed onto the chair once more. "That did it," he snarled. "Now, you bastard … " He thrust the bar up again and twisted it back and forth to widen the small hole he had made. Then he screamed.

  The scent of ozone bit through the air like summer lightning as McNeely let go of the bar and flung himself backward. He would have fallen again if Wickstrom hadn't caught him by the arm.

  "Jesus!" McNeely howled. "My hands!" He held them up so that Wickstrom and Gabrielle could see. The palms were fiercely reddened where he had grasped the bar, and small white blisters were starting to form.

  "A generator?" Wickstrom asked. "Could you have hit the generator?"

  McNeely shook his head, gritting his teeth at the searing pain. "I've been shocked before. This wasn't electric. With that power it would have traveled through my whole body. No, this was like … like the bar just turned to fire in my hands. One second it was cold, and the next—pow."

  Wickstrom knelt beside the bar and gingerly put out a hand. "Don't!" McNeely and Gabrielle cried at once, but by that time Wickstrom's fingers had contacted the metal.

  "Cool," he said softly. "It's perfectly cool." He held it out to the others, who touched it delicately. There was no indication that the metal had ever been warm. "Let me try," Wickstrom said, righting the overturned chair.

  "No!" McNeely said, starting to put a hand on Wickstrom's arm before he remembered his burned palms and stopped. "Look at me! You want this too?" he added, holding out the reddened hands for Wickstrom to see.

  "You said yourself it wasn't a shock," Wickstrom replied. "And the bar is cold, George. Maybe"—he gestured loosely at McNeely's upturned hands—''maybe you did that to yourself."

  "To myself!"

  "Yes! Psycho … "—he searched for the word— "… somatic."

  "Why? Why would I want to get burned?"

  "I don't know, George … I … " He was out of words. Instead, he got up onto the chair and pressed the bar through the hole, which McNeely had widened to six inches across. Wickstrom rotated the bar slowly, making ever wider circles, as if to feel the presence of any malignant stoppage above. "I don't feel anything," he said. "No heat, nothing up there just the edges of the hole. I'll try and make it wider."

  Wickstrom jerked the bar back and forth like a bell-ringer ringing the changes. Plaster began to flutter down again, and then Wickstrom's eyes went wide, and he stared at the bar in horror, his mouth dropping open.

  "Kelly?" said Gabrielle, her voice trembling. "What's wrong?"

  A small whimper escaped from Wickstrom's throat as he stared at his hands grasping the bar. They saw the muscles of his arm flex, as if trying to release it, but the fingers would not respond. McNeely reached up, grabbed the end of the bar, and found to his relief that it was still of normal temperature. He pulled down on it until the top of the bar was once again in view, and tried to yank it from Wickstrom's grip.

  Wickstrom yelped in agony, and McNeely saw that although the bar had come partially loose from the younger man's grasp, a raw flap of the skin of Wickstrom's hand coated that part of the metal where the contact had been broken.

  "Don't pull!" Wickstrom moaned. "Cold! It's cold!"

  "Water!" barked McNeely, realizing that Wickstrom's own frozen flesh bound him to the iron. "Cold water!"

  A bathroom was only two doors away, and Gabrielle dashed out of the room and down the hall.

  "I can't let go," Wickstrom grated. "I'm stuck fast to it."

  "It's okay, just relax," said McNeely. "The water'll free you. Like getting your tongue stuck to the pump in the winter, huh?"

  "We didn't have a fucking pump in Brooklyn," Wickstrom answered gruffly.

  "Well, we didn't have one in Larchmont either."

  "Then how the hell do you know so much about it?"

  "I used to watch Lassie on TV." They both laughed.

  "Holy shit," Wickstrom grunted. "What the fuck are we laughing for? I'm stuck to this bar, you've got your hands burned, and we can't get out of this shithole for love or money—so what the fuck are we laughing for?"

  "Maybe we're just sick of crying." The smile vanished from McNeely's face. "But you're right. There's nothing funny about it, Kelly. First hot, then cold . . . there's something in here that doesn't want us to leave. Not yet. I think that if instead of stone and brick those outside walls were paper, it'd still find a way to keep us from tearing them.

  Gabrielle returned with a basin of cold water. "Just pour it over his hands," said McNeely. "That's right, slowly. How's it feel, Kelly?"

  "I . . . I'm not sure, I . . ." The bar slipped from between his hands and thudded to the floor. McNeely knelt and touched it.

  "It's not even cold," he said. "Just about room temperature."

  "Room temperature didn't do this," Wickstrom said, showing the square inch of seeping redness at the heel of his left hand.

  "The same thing as when you had the bar, George," said Gabrielle. "You were the only one who could feel the change in it, the only one it harmed."

  "We're stuck, chillun," Wickstrom said with a laugh. "We ain't gettin' out of here nohow noway. The bastard's got us where it wants us now. Christ, if it's up there"—he pointed toward the attic above—"then it's all around."

  "Let's go down to the kitchen," said Gabrielle, despair in her voice. "There's ointment in the first aid kit for your burns, George, and we can bandage your hand, Kelly." She looked up at the gaping hole in the ceiling. "And afterward we can cover that up."

  If either of the men thought such a gesture would be foolish, they didn't say so.

  Chapter Eleven

  "We've got to make plans now," McNeely said after Gabrielle had treated and bandaged their wounds. They were sitting around the huge fireplace in the Great Hall. Every
light in the room was on, and Kelly was tossing one last log onto the fire they'd built. They'd talked briefly during the wound dressing about the chimney escape and had decided, after what had happened on the third floor, not to attempt it. Even if there were a way to get up and into the attic, what was to guarantee that the copper would not become instantaneously hot enough to fry the climber? So they had built a fire, Gabrielle had made cocoa, and the three of them sat closely together, watching the flames dance on the broad stone stage of the fireplace.

  "Well, we'd planned to escape," Wickstrom said dryly. "If our other plans work as well, we'll all be dead by sunrise. Whenever it is."

  Gabrielle ignored the jibe. "What kind of plans, George?"

  "We're here for a reason," McNeely said, concentrating on each word. "Here because it wants us here, because it can't let us go, because it needs us somehow."

  "You don't know that," Wickstrom grunted.

  "If you can come up with something better, let me know," said McNeely without anger. "Now, it got hold of Cummings when he was alone. And it'll probably try to do the same to us. So I think we ought to try to spend as much time together as we can . . . short of sleep time and personal needs of course."

  "Sure we shouldn't have a permanent buddy system, George?" asked Wickstrom. "It might try to get us in the john, y'know."

  "That might be truer than you think. It could approach us anywhere. And even being together is no guarantee as far as I'm concerned. I don't think we'll be approached when we're together, but I don't know either."

  Gabrielle opened her mouth to speak, then took a sip of cocoa instead.

  "What is it?" McNeely asked.

  "I was just wondering, how strong can this thing really be? I mean, could it destroy us all if it wanted to?"

  McNeely shook his head. "Not physically, I'm betting. But what it can do to our minds is another story. I don't know why, but I keep thinking that will has an awful lot to do with it. If we refuse to have anything to do with these things, then maybe there isn't that much that they can do to harm us."

  "That's a lot of guessing and not much knowing," Wickstrom said with a trace of petulance. "Let's face it, George, Gabrielle, we don't really know shit about what's here. Hell, maybe it could turn us all into jelly in the next second for all we know. Maybe . . ."

  "No," said Gabrielle. "It couldn't do that."

  "Why the hell not?"

  "If it could, it wouldn't be playing cat and mouse with us. It would simply make us do what it wanted."

  "Oh, come on! How do you know it's even sane enough to know the difference between cat and mouse and bash 'em on the head? I mean, I can't make any sense at all of what's been happening here, and you two are already writing a book!"

  "Look," said McNeely, holding up his hands, "we probably don't have enough input to make any real sense of what's been happening, so we can only theorize, Kelly. But we've got to start somewhere."

  "Why? What's so fucking important that we know? I don't think we can know. Why don't we just stick together as much as we can, and try to get through the next week or so without going crazy? I don't know about you, but I just want to forget all this stuff and concentrate on other things, like how I'm gonna spend my money when I get out—think pleasant thoughts, y'know? What my mother used to tell me when I'd have a nightmare, and Christ knows this's been a nightmare all right. So if you think we oughta stick together, George, well fuckin'-A with me. I hate being in this place alone." He stopped talking at last. His face had gotten red, and his frantic gestures had worked the adhesive tape loose from the gauze that covered his ripped hand. "Okay," he said, "okay, that's enough of a speech. I'll do whatever you two want to do as long as it keeps us safe and sane. All right?"

  McNeely nodded. "We'll set up a schedule. We'll eat together, be together as much as possible when we're awake." He looked at Gabrielle, a question in his eyes. She read it immediately and nodded. "Kelly, there's another thing. A complication you should know about."

  Wickstrom smiled tensely. "I think I know already. You two … you two are more than, uh, just friends, right?"

  McNeely was surprised, and tried in vain to hide it. "Yes. Yes, that's true. But how did you …"

  Wickstrom chuckled and relaxed a bit. "You hide most things real well, George, but that one was obvious." He glanced at Gabrielle and was amazed to find a splash, of pink on the sophisticated cheeks. "It doesn't matter, okay? I don't need to know any more than I already know."

  "It must look awful," Gabrielle said. "So soon after David."

  "You don't owe me any explanation. And you don't owe your husband an apology. It's just the way things are.”

  And the three of them sat there with their separate thoughts, Wickstrom's about another wife who'd been unfaithful, Gabrielle's about another lover with whom she'd cheated a living husband, and McNeely's about an unfamiliar weakness that at last let his features betray his thoughts.

  ~*~

  They spent as much time together as was realistically possible. McNeely and Gabrielle, except for bathroom privacies, were never apart, and Wickstrom was with them except when they all slept. Gabrielle had moved into the Whitetail Suite with McNeely, so the three of them all occupied the west wing only. They ate together, played games together, read books together—McNeely was reading aloud The Brothers Karamazov, which neither Wickstrom nor Gabrielle had read—and when one was tired, the others usually were as well. If Wickstrom awoke first, he would rap softly on the door of McNeely and Gabrielle's suite. If there was no answer, he would return to his own rooms and read, and within a short time they would knock on his door. Then they would have breakfast together.

  Wickstrom had been concerned that he would be approached the first time he was alone again in his rooms, but nothing happened. He had slept soundly and dreamlessly, or at least he had thought until he opened his eyes from sleep and saw another face gazing down into his.

  It was not the same face that he had seen before at that time in that position. This one was a pale face with straw-colored hair and sky-blue eyes, a young face with features so fair that it was all the more shocking to see the unmistakable stamp of madness on them.

  But it vanished as quickly and completely as the other had, leaving him with a pounding heart and the thought that it must be only the least unforgotten fragment of a dream. And since it was a dream, he saw no point in telling the others.

  Just as the others saw no point in telling him or each other about the faces they saw on awakening.

  Several sleeps later the three of them sat in the white playroom on the third floor. Breakfast was far enough removed so that they no longer felt full, but recent enough so that there was no hunger in any of them for the next meal. Like savages, they lived by their stomachs. McNeely was in the middle of one of a row of Edgar Wallace thrillers he'd discovered in the library, and Wickstrom was doing a crossword puzzle, working his way through a paperback book full of them, throwing away each page as he completed it. Though McNeely's attention was held fast by Wallace's prose, Wickstrom glanced up from his puzzle frequently to check Gabrielle's progress with her still life.

  She'd resumed her drawing six sleeps previously, had finished her preliminary sketches, and was now putting the finishing touches on the large blue bound volumes she'd positioned on the table. Wickstrom had marveled at her ability to turn pigment into the reproduction of realism that was forming on the canvas, and now, as she brought more and more tone and shading to what had been only bare outlines, he was finding it impossible to deal with his puzzle at all.

  Finally the last bit of color left her brush to settle on the canvas, and there were the books, burnished leather gleaming in the light, every pore of the binding pulsing with energy as though it were once more the living skin of the beast it had clothed.

  "My God," he said in awe. "Gabrielle, that is incredible."

  McNeely glanced up from his book. His eyes widened as he saw the painting, and then narrowed in intense scrutiny. "It's clear
er than a photograph," he said. "It makes the superrealists look like Monet. And yet," he went on, rising and crossing to the easel, "there's more to it than that. It looks more than real."

  Gabrielle smiled, embarrassed by the praise. "It is good. It's far better than anything I've ever done." She wondered if it might be because there was no more David to make her work seem so unimportant. "But it's not finished, you know. I've still got to paint the instruments."

  McNeely stepped next to the table. "May I take the books? Are you finished with them?" She nodded, reminding him not to disturb the sextant, and he picked the volumes up, bringing them back behind the easel and holding the reality up to the image. "I hate to gush," he said, "but this knocks me out."

  Wickstrom looked at the comparison and shook his head in wonder. "A good thing you paint still lifes, Gabrielle. If you painted anything alive, it'd probably step down off the canvas."

  "Don't say that, Kelly," McNeely joked. "In this place it probably would."

  Wickstrom and Gabrielle laughed. They were all finally able to joke again, even about the house and their being trapped within it. It was the timelessness that had made it so easy. When it seemed as though things had happened either a moment or a year before, it was easier and less painful to imagine the latter. " ‘We have always lived in the castle,' " McNeely had quoted once when they'd been discussing the phenomenon, and although neither Gabrielle nor Wickstrom seemed to recognize the allusion, they understood it well enough.

  "I'm thirsty," Wickstrom said, turning toward the door. "Anybody want anything?"

  "We'll go with you," said McNeely, setting the books on the small table by his chair. Gabrielle put down her palette.

  "Look, isn't this a little silly?" Wickstrom objected mildly. "I mean, it's been quite a while now since … the trouble, and nothing's happened. Hell, I sleep alone—if the creepy-crawlies wanted to get me, they'd get me then, right?"

  "I guess, Kelly. It's just that I don't think we ought to take any chances."

  "George, my chances of being grabbed while walking down the hall to the lounge for a glass of water are pretty small, wouldn't you agree?"