by David Nickle
Ears popped as the wind drew the air and the smoke out—and for a moment, the fires slowed. the doors to the cupboards swung open again as one, and dishes flew and smashed in the wind. The sofa overturned, pillows spewing behind it like entrails. But the men held tight. The only one drawn out the door was the one already airborne. Philip LeSage, held tight in the Insect’s embrace, flew head-first out the door, and was snatched in the bright twister that tore at the belly of the Octagon.
Ian Rickhardt didn’t look to see where he went. As the balcony outside the Lake House room disintegrated, he gasped wonderingly, and reached down, and took hold of himself.
“You ever play any D & D?”
“D & D?” Susan Rickhardt looked perplexed a moment, then made the connection and nodded. “Oh, Dungeons & Dragons. No.”
“I’m surprised,” said Ann. She swirled the bottom half of her glass of wine. “Seems like it’d be a natural for you.”
Susan shrugged. “I came to my habit late in life,” she said. “When I was a teenager, I was more of a Ms. Pac Man kind of kid.”
Ann nodded. “I played a lot of D & D,” she said. “A lot. From junior high school, all through university. It was a real lifeline for me. Also, wicked fun.”
“Wicked, now?”
Ann took a delicate sip of the wine and shut her eyes. She thought about the grand plaza in Tricasta, and how that world’s sun would paint the stones a rich gold as it set, the streams of water from the great fountain there sparkling like gemstones. There were pinkish marble benches surrounding the fountain, and on these adherents to the doctrine of the great water elemental Casta would sit, burn a cinnamon-tinged incense in special brass philtres, and contemplate Her greatness. When Ann described it the first time, Ryan had rolled his eyes and Leah had giggled, and for that moment, Ann had been embarrassed and thought she might be on the wrong track.
Ah, but when the sun went down—and the adherents began to chant a deeper rhythm—and Casta Herself emerged, a terrible cascade like a waterfall, falling up to the heavens . . . she could tell by the widening of Ryan’s eyes and Leah’s sharp intake of breath . . .
she’d done it right.
Beauty was a prerequisite to terror. And yes—when it finally came, the terror was exquisite.
At least it was from Ann’s perspective.
“I always wanted to learn how to play it,” said Susan. “I mean, it’s pretty much like Skyrim, but in your head, right?”
“Yeah,” agreed Ann, turning her attention even as she said the words, “in your head. But it’s not for the faint of heart.”
And her eyes flickered, and she thought about that.
The faint of heart.
Charlie Sunderland wasn’t an MD—by any reasonable academic standards, he wasn’t even a doctor—but he’d gleaned enough over the years to know how to administer a hypodermic and manage some basic first aid. He thought he might be able to set a bone, if it weren’t a complicated fracture. He was pretty good with CPR.
He was heading back from the conference centre, where he’d dropped off Ann—right on the covered bridge—when the tornado descended into the middle of the Octagon. He couldn’t see the twister itself—the roof of the glassed-in bridge blocked it perfectly as it descended. But he stared, frozen, at the greenish cloud that surrounded the vortex. The roaring wind left a ringing in his ears when it passed and drove him to the ground, in abject terror.
Sunderland was not an MD, but he was no fool either—he had after all compiled the file on the Lake House, and the Bounty II. He knew what the Insect was capable of.
He may not have understood why it had come to pass, but he understood what had happened. The Insect had broken free. The plan that they had all made—to do with Philip what they had not been able to do with Ann, and bind it tight—had broken down. Somehow.
And now—this.
The walls of the Octagon remained standing. Sunderland was amazed, although he knew he shouldn’t be: tornadoes in nature could be alarmingly selective. One house might be reduced to matchsticks; a neighbour’s might survive untouched.
And this . . . this was not nature.
Dr. Sunderland opened the door to the Octagon. It was dark inside, which he took to be a good thing; it might mean that the chambers surrounding the centre had survived. There might be survivors.
There was a first aid kit somewhere in this room, and a good one. Rickhardt had boasted about it when they’d arrived. It was above one of the sofas, attached to the wall. If there were light, Sunderland could have found it easily. In the dark, he had to feel around for it.
As he searched, he called out: “It’s Sunderland! I’m going to try to bring help! Shout if you can!”
No one shouted as he searched over the first sofa. He moved around to the other side, through the grey, changing light of the day. He was about to call out again as he reached out to the wall behind the second sofa.
He found he had no words. There was nothing to say, as the cool, dry hand wrapped around his own.
And her eyelids flickered.
“I used to dungeon master,” said Ann. From Susan’s blank expression, Ann could guess that the woman had no idea what she was talking about, so Ann explained: “I would be the one who made up the place where the adventures happened. In the game, I’d describe what was happening there, and the players would react.” Susan nodded, slowly, in that nervous-but-encouraging way that people who’d never rolled up a first-level halfling thief did, when Ann tried to explain how a game of Dungeons & Dragons went.
“Basically, it comes down to this,” said Ann. “I’m the one telling the story. If the characters run into . . . I don’t know, a band of trolls . . . I’m the trolls. If they meet a dragon—it’s me. If the bridge they’ve just crossed crumbles into dust . . .”
“You,” said Susan.
“Me.”
Susan got up from her stool, and went around to the other side of the bar. She opened up the refrigerator and got out another bottle of the Sémillon.
“Sounds wicked,” said Susan.
Ann chuckled. “Yeah. I used to play rough. Not everybody’s cup of tea.”
“Not for the faint of heart.”
“Right.”
Susan refilled Ann’s glass nearly to the brim. Ann widened her eyes and laughed. “Sure that’s enough?” she said, and Susan laughed too.
“We got big merlot glasses in here somewhere, if you’d like some more.”
Ann let her smile fade a bit.
“No,” she said. “Thank you.”
Susan came back around the bar and sat down by Ann again. “It’s okay,” she said.
Ann blinked. “What’s okay?”
“You’re all gone now,” she said. “It’s done. You can just relax.”
All gone now.
Ann thought about that. Earlier that morning, in the dark, Susan had predicted just exactly this: that she’d be eaten up soon. So had Lisa. The Insect would devour everything. And now, according to Susan anyway, that had happened. The Insect had devoured everything. Ann was here by herself now, or rather her flesh was . . . And Susan—or the flesh Susan left behind—was here helping her to adjust. To her new life—as a vessel that largely stood empty.
Of course, that wasn’t precisely what had happened—not to Ann at least.
Ann was, for the first time in decades, entirely whole.
Ann climbed off her stool. She swayed a little bit, what with the wine in her, but steadied herself with the stool. She walked down the bar to the urn that contained Michael’s ashes. She ran a finger up the cool metal.
“Tell me,” she said. “Does Ian have an up-to-date will?”
Susan shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Michael and I made out wills,” said Ann. “Part of the elaborate plans we laid for our wedding. It made sense; we both came into the marriage with considerable assets,
after all. Michael owned property, had investments. I . . . I had my part of my parents’ trust fund. You probably should have done the same thing.”
Susan shifted on her stool. “I’m sure I’m looked after.”
“Hope so,” said Ann. She left her wine glass on the bar and crossed the big room to the bank of windows. It had begun to rain, but the wind was blowing the right way, and not a drop of it touched the glass. The view was perfect.
Susan came over with both glasses—Ann’s dribbling a bit over the rim. “What you looking at, Annie?” she said, and then added, “Oh,” as she came closer, and saw.
Ann took the glasses from Susan, and set them down on a nearby table. “There was a storm,” said Ann. “It was terrible—a tornado. It touched down on the Octagon, and tore it out from the middle. You can see the pieces of it—there—and there—and that thing.” Ann pointed to a twisted helix of metal, sprouting from the edge of the ravine like a broken bedspring. “That’s the staircase, I think.” The trees that must have covered the grounds outside the tasting room were just as mangled. There was a wide swathe where the branches had simply been sucked away, leaving cracked stumps in their place.
“That’s one of your husband’s friends,” said Ann, pointing at a slender figure, clutching a blood-red bathrobe around himself as he staggered away from the ravine. The rain was coming hard and it lashed at him, but he didn’t stop. “We weren’t introduced when I came across him in the Octagon. Do you recognize him?” Susan must have taken the question to be rhetorical, because she didn’t answer. “All right. Well watch carefully. I am going to cause him to trip, and fall forward into mud.” The man did so, arms wheeling comically as he fell to his knees, and then his face. “He may wish to get up,” said Ann, and indeed, the man tried to do so, his narrow elbows emerging over his back, as though he were to begin a push-up. Ann smiled slightly and shook her head. “But I don’t wish it,” said Ann. It was difficult to see precisely, but it seemed as though something—a tree branch, perhaps?—reared up, and fell onto his back. His arms were splayed in the mud, and as he tried to manoeuvre them back under him, more branches seemed to come up from under him. “He won’t be getting up,” said Ann, and sure enough, he showed no more signs of it.
In the course of this work, Susan had dropped her wine glass. The floor here was carpeted, and it prevented the glass from breaking, and also absorbed the wine around Susan’s feet. From the way she wrung her hands together, eyes wide and mouth half-open in terrified dismay, it could have been the result of another kind of accident.
“So here’s the thing about dungeon mastering,” said Ann. “You can play rough—take-no-prisoners, re-roll no stats. But it doesn’t work at all if you’re not giving the players what they want. And it doesn’t work if you’re not giving them what you want them to have.”
“Why did you ask me about a will, now?”
Susan’s formidable brainpower made Ann smile. “Ian’s going to die in a minute,” she said. “I just hope he didn’t go leave all his money to some ’geister spa in Florida. You don’t want those ones looking after your future.”
Susan drew a breath, and held it a moment, behind pursed lips. Ann looked outside. The man in the mud was asphyxiating. Just to look at him, you’d think that he’d already died, but he hadn’t—he was trapped in himself, his mouth and nostrils filled with slick muck, memories flashing like lights behind his blocked-shut eyelids, terror fading to despair, and finally—dull, drowned acceptance.
“Don’t kill him,” said Susan, and Ann said, “I think it’s too late for him,” then thought about it again and said, “Oh. Ian. You mean Ian?”
“I mean Ian.” Susan’s voice took a low turn—like she was putting on the tough, letting Ann know that she also meant business.
Ann let her eyes flutter shut. “I’m not sure there’s much to do for him, either,” she said. “The good news is that the burns from the fire are superficial. He got out before that could take him. His legs are broken, though. And there’s a fracture in his spine, too. Might be paralyzed. Hard to tell at the moment. He’s conscious, but he’s at the bottom of a very deep hole right now. There is a dead man on the ground not far from him, and a little girl—Lisa. Yes, Lisa Dumont. She has quite lost her mind. Or she thinks she has. She hasn’t yet realized the truth. So now she’s singing. Can’t quite make out what the song is. Some lullaby. Sleepy-time, sleepy-time . . .
She’s giving him a look. She knows what he did. And he knows it.”
“How do you know all that?”
Ann turned around. “I’m there too.” She met Susan’s eyes, and the act of it seemed to drive Susan back. There was that terror, right there, in her eyes.
“Oh Annie,” she said, whimpering, “you . . . you’re not you. You . . .
you faded. And now—it’s the Insect in you, isn’t it? It got back in. And now that’s all there is.”
Ann considered that.
“I don’t think I’ve faded,” she said. “No. And as to the Insect being back in me?” She shook her head. “There’s no such thing as the Insect. There’s only me. There was only ever me.”
Susan kept backing away. Ann followed, keeping the same distance between the two of them.
“Do you want to save Ian’s life?”
“I don’t want you to kill him,” said Susan.
“I never intended to kill him. Or save him.” Ann stopped in the middle of the room, under the great bowl of its roof. “I thought I’d leave that to you.”
Susan’s eyebrows rose and she looked down, as though she’d worked something out.
“He’s in what’s left of the Octagon,” said Ann, helpfully. “You are too.”
To Ann’s disappointment, the last part was lost on Susan. “Thank you,” she said, and turned and half-ran across the room, and down the hall that led to the bridge. Ann sighed, and let her eyes flutter again—and watched as Susan ran a short distance farther, then come up short, on the empty space between the conference centre and the Octagon ballroom. The bridge had been torn down, and now there was nothing but twisted metal and fractured timber, tumbling down into the ravine. The Octagon loomed on the other side—literally, a smoking ruin. Susan fell to her knees and wept.
Ann shook her head. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Susan played Skyrim, and World of Warcraft. She was used to being led along a path. She was not a dungeon master.
There might have been a time that she had the capacity. But that time was past. Susan and her ’geist Little were two things now. Two things they would remain, until they found the courage to embrace one another.
And Ann had been wasting her time talking to Susan.
Ann left her wine glass on the table in the conference centre. She returned to the tasting bar, and hefted the urn containing Michael’s ashes. It was heavy but not burdensome, all things considered; after checking to see that the lid was screwed on tightly enough, she tucked it under her arm, and headed away from the Octagon, and poor despairing Susan Rickhardt, back to the meeting rooms at the far end of the conference centre.
With the electricity down, the hallway was a veil of shadows. Ann held the urn tighter, and stepped through. She could make out the shape of a bannister and the first few steps of a stairway to her left, but ahead, it was all darkness. It brought to mind the high school where Philip had dwelt. Except instead of classrooms and lockers lining the walls, there were big doors to meeting rooms and uncomfortable little benches along the way. Would the doors swing open suddenly, lighting some terrible spectre that ran towards Ann down the corridor, from the gymnasium?
No.
Ann took a step and two wall sconces to either side flickered to life—the hidden bulbs casting an irregular glow like gaslight. She smiled, and continued, and as the next set of sconces lit up, the last pair went dark, with the popping sound of cracking bulbs. If they’d been in a linen closet in the Lake House, they might’ve started a fir
e. They still might here, Ann thought as the second set of bulbs cracked. She stepped up her pace, and that seemed to do the trick; the light followed her down the hall, leaving the darkness behind her and cutting the darkness ahead.
She passed doors: the Pinot Grigio room, the Chardonnay Room, the Merlot. All of them were shut fast. She thought about opening them, and in response, the Amarone Room’s door handle cricked down. But Ann didn’t really want to look inside, see another poor wretch like Susan passing the time. So the handle returned to its place, and Ann left it in darkness with the rest
of them.
Finally, the hallway ended and she reached another set of double doors—these ones glass-panelled. Beyond, she could see a dimly lit reception area, with a long desk as you’d find in a hotel, more comfortable chairs. There were windows here, and another set of glass doors, leading outside. Ann pushed on the first set of doors twice. The first time they were locked. The second, they opened easily.
The last few drops of rain pattered softly as Ann stepped out of the conference centre, onto the gravel of the parking lot. The woods rose up around the lot untouched, limbs bare but undisturbed by anything other than a moderate breeze. There were a dozen cars in the parking lot; some of them looked expensive. The camper van sat between two more modest vehicles—a cherry red Toyota hybrid and a deep blue Town Car. The van needed a good wash, even after all that rain.
There wouldn’t be any more rain for a while. As she stepped into the middle of the lot, and set the urn containing Michael’s ashes down in front of her, the clouds began to thin. They drifted apart in gossamer strands, to reveal a wintery blue bowl of a sky.
She looked up, and waved.
Philip did not wave back. He was too far up for it to be visible in any event—drifting against the winds like a kite on a string.
But Ann knew he hadn’t waved; she hadn’t allowed it.
He could wait for her—on the knife edge of love and of terror. He could wonder, as she had wondered.
Which way would it go?