by Anton Strout
“You’re a good actress, Elyse,” I said, “but you’re not that good.”
I walked away from her, went to the workbench, and grabbed George’s messenger bag off of it.
“I don’t think George is going to turn up anytime soon,” I said, walking back over to her. I flipped open the bag’s flap and pulled out the crushed remains of his laptop. “See this? See the bend in the middle, the shattered pieces flaking off of it? I have a feeling that your friend’s body probably ended up in worse shape than that. And I think you probably knew that George was dead, didn’t you?”
Elyse went green at the gills. Darryl did, too, a grayness overtaking his dark skin.
“Yes,” she said, letting out a long breath. “And it’s my fault.” She looked scared for a change, and for once, I was pretty sure she wasn’t acting. “I didn’t think the professor’s plan had worked until a few days ago. When we first took up with him, we knew he had spent years trying to get his magical process to work, but we thought it was only to further his cinematic frustrations with a lack of real fear that he felt was missing from the horror genre. I suspected there might be something more to it, but wasn’t sure what. When he ‘died’ suddenly, I started poring through his notes and at the same time I also discovered instructions he had left me on what he wanted done after his death. I was supposed to go to this lighthouse he mentioned out on Wards Island and play his final film there. He said it was already loaded into the projector and everything, but when I got to the lighthouse, it wasn’t there.”
“Guess who got there first?” I asked.
“So how does this end up with you trying to kill me?” Trent asked, incredulous. “Why?”
Elyse sighed, dropping her eyes to the floor. “I woke up the other night to discover the professor in my dorm room… young again and looking crazed. His notes had hinted at cheating death, but how could he be alive and so young? Darryl was with me. He saw the professor, too.”
Darryl nodded.
“Did he say what he wanted?” the Inspectre asked.
“The professor confirmed that the magic could work,” he said. “He was living proof, but he said that it came with a price none of us had counted on. He came looking for blood.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Yours?”
“That’s what we thought,” she said, “but no. He said I was his favorite. He said he’d spare me.”
“Us,” Darryl amended. “He said he’d spare us.”
“So you offered him someone,” I said. “Someone expendable. A freshman.”
“George,” Trent said, his face turning horrified as he spoke his dead friend’s name. “You gave him George.”
“I know underclassmen barely earn a blip on your radar,” I said, “but this is beyond the beyond.”
The shame on Elyse’s face was evident. Her brow grew thick with wrinkles as she broke into hysterical sobs. “I’m sorry,” she said between gasps of breath. “What do you want from me? He would have killed us instead!”
“I thought you said you were his favorite,” Jane reminded her.
“It wouldn’t matter,” she said. “He was out for blood and if I didn’t send unsuspecting George off to him, the professor would have killed us.”
I stood there, shaking my head at her. “Don’t schools these days offer at least one course on ethics?” I asked.
“I’m afraid an ethical debate would be wasted on this young lady,” the Inspectre said, stepping over to the table. Elyse looked up at him. “Why? Why would you do this?”
None of us understood it, but I think it perplexed the Inspectre even more. He sounded as angry as he was confused.
“Have you seen how many of me there are at New York University?” she shouted. “Never mind the cost. All my little Stepford sister actresses are graduated and up to their implants in debt, and the best that any one of them could land was a tampon commercial!”
“So that’s how you justify all this?” I asked. “So you could do more than commercial work?”
“Think about what we’re talking about here,” she said. “Professor Redfield’s initial vision was revolutionary! Sure, he was using magic to try and bring it about, but it was only over time that he even hinted that there might be some darker purpose at work. And as far as my career, well… to be the first actress ever to appear in this type of film? We were taking reality to a whole new level.”
“Congratulations,” Connor said. “You’ve landed yourself on a hit TV show: America’s Most Wanted.”
“Quiet,” the Inspectre said. He leaned over the table. “I couldn’t care less for your vanity, young lady. I want to know why Mason Redfield—a man I considered my brother in arms at one time—why would he do all this?”
Elyse fell silent, letting her head drop. After a while, she looked up. “That, I don’t know,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
“Me, either,” the Inspectre said. He stepped away from the table, disgusted.
Elyse looked up at me. “Sorry we tried to kill you,” she said, “with… well, you.”
“I bet,” I said. “I was the last me standing, but don’t worry—I’ll still have the nightmares for years to come to remember it by.”
Darryl had his arm around her. His toughness had left him and he looked to the Inspectre. “So, what happens now?” Darryl asked.
The Inspectre walked over to the couple, staring down at them. “Well, that depends on how cooperative you choose to be.”
Elyse started nodding, eagerness in her eyes. “We can be cooperative,” she said. “Like I mentioned, there are notes and film footage, computer files… You’ve seen what we can accomplish without a blood sacrifice …”
“And with a blood sacrifice, too,” Trent spat out at them, pointing to the spot on his side where Elyse had cut him and released Professor Redfield’s army of tiny office monsters.
“First things first,” the Inspectre said, stopping Trent with a reassuring hand on the boy’s shoulder. “This process that Mason put himself through… can it be reversed?”
Elyse’s face sank. “I don’t think so,” she said. She turned to her partner in crime. “Darryl?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “We hadn’t even got the process working in the first place. There wasn’t even a chance to figure out how to, umm, verse it let alone reverse it.”
“I’m confused,” Connor said.
“You’re not the only one,” I added.
Connor shot me a look that shut me up. “We’ve seen the professor in his current state. Young, agile, in shape… Why would he need you to kill anyone for him? Why not just do it himself? Why kill one of you, his loyal students?”
“I don’t know,” Elyse said, falling silent as she sat there, dejected.
“I think I do,” Trent said. “When you found me tied up on the floor, well… it wasn’t the first time we had tried to use blood that day.”
“Oh, really?” I asked.
“Ask Elyse,” Trent said.
I turned back to the young actress. The girl looked guilty. “After we were visited by the professor and… sent George off to him, I thought maybe we might be able to use blood for our own gain, too. I thought if we could harness the power of a blood sacrifice somehow, maybe we could use it to our advantage. So I told Trent we wanted a little. He even agreed to it.”
I looked over at Trent and he looked down at the floor. “What do I know?” he said with defense in his words. “I’m a freshman. I thought it was a hazing ritual!”
“Problem was, the ritual worked, but just barely,” she said. “We could animate certain objects or pieces from tiny bits of film, but they didn’t last very long before they quickly ran out of juice.”
“So you decided you needed more juice,” Jane said. “More blood.”
“That still doesn’t answer my original question, though,” Connor said. “Why use his own people? Why did he use George like that?”
“The professor always talked about the power of betr
ayal in film class,” Elyse said. “To him, it was such a classical theme—betrayal, revenge. I think he saw a real and twisted power in it.”
“Betraying his own followers would give their blood more power,” the Inspectre said. “Enough, perhaps, to complete his transformation for good.”
“Growing his strength, prolonging his stolen life with it,” I added. “One of you better be prepared to help us figure this out. It’s not just Professor Redfield I want to take down. For instance: you acted like you didn’t know about the water woman earlier, the same way you acted like you didn’t know the professor was alive. That’s my girlfriend who’s suffering from that woman’s mark. Now, give up some details on her.”
“Tell us what you know about that woman,” Jane said, her eyes showing her desperation for answers. “Please.”
“Like I said before, what woman?” Elyse repeated. “What mark?”
“The green woman,” I said. “Stop acting like you don’t know.”
“I don’t,” she said, panic on her face.
“Neither of us knows about her,” Darryl said.
“Bull,” Connor said.
Elyse looked defeated and shrugged. “Fine. Don’t believe me.”
The thing was, I did believe her. I mean, if you were going to cop to almost murdering one friend and handing the other to a recently rejuvenated madman, why lie about not knowing the watery she-bitch?
I stormed away in frustration, heading for the door.
“I think Mason Redfield may have found allies to help him in his rebirth, doing what he and his students couldn’t,” I said. “We don’t know what kind of dark bargain the professor made with that water woman, but I aim to find out.”
“Where are you going?” Jane asked.
“To find someone who might actually have some answers for me.”
28
I left the rest of the group to deal with locking up the students. I needed a break from the interrogation and I had a few things that still needed checking out with Godfrey Candella, and just as I put my handle on the door leading down to the archives, the man himself sent me a text saying he had some information to share.
Every visit down to the Gauntlet was a new adventure in creepiness, especially when it was dead silent and I found an exhausted Godfrey asleep with his eyes open at his desk, his head propped up on a now-drool-covered stack of books and his cell phone flipped open on the desk. I shook him awake and he sat bolt upright in his chair, startled. When he noticed it was only me, however, he relaxed.
“Wow,” Godfrey said. “That was quick.”
“I was on my way down, actually,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “So, any luck with Director Wesker or Ms. Daniels?”
“Not yet,” I said. “We’re questioning some of Professor Redfield’s students, and even though they were in on his magic, they’re maintaining that they know nothing about the woman in green we keep seeing.” I paused for a moment, my mind switching gears. “Let me ask you something that’s been troubling me the past few days. Do you think you’d be able to take down a loved one if they were transformed into something horrible?”
Godfrey tidied up several of the files and books on his desk as he thought about it. “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose I’m grateful that I don’t work in the field and will hopefully never have to answer that. On a good day, I only deal in theoretical dilemmas or recording those of other people.”
“I’m just asking your opinion.”
Godfrey sighed and put down his books. “Fine,” he said. “In that case, I’d probably die first. I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’d hesitate and that would be my undoing, but don’t worry, Simon. That won’t happen to you.”
“It won’t?” I asked. “Why not?”
“Because that’s not who you are,” he said. “You save people, and that includes yourself as well. It’s why you’re out there and I’m down here.”
Godfrey was probably right. The reason I obsessed over every little thing was my near-constant need these days to be helping others. My issues with Jane, the dresser, and the apartment were only a reflection against that, my last safe haven where I didn’t have to defend the world, my Fortress of Solitude. My emotional psychometric outbursts were only an extension of my raw feelings about not wanting to share that, but if I was honest with myself, it wasn’t that I didn’t want Jane to move in. Hell, she wasn’t even asking to. I was simply scared because it would ultimately be the final wall to giving myself over to someone completely. The realization alone was enough to ease some of my tension, and I switched my focus back to the case.
“Have you had any luck tracking down that symbol on Jane’s back yet?”
Godfrey nodded. “I came across that marking in some of the older books of New York history. It seems that the older generations of Greek fishermen and sailors carved it into their boats. They believed it would give them good water for safe sailing. It put them under protection from the sea.”
“Or something in it,” I said. “But what does it symbolize?”
“At first, I thought it might be the symbol for Castalia,” he said. “A fairly common figure in Greek mythology, the nymph of poetry.”
“What the hell is remotely poetic about this she-bitch who’s constantly trying to drown me or turn my girlfriend into something I’ll need a fish tank to hold?”
“That’s just it,” Godfrey said. “Castalia didn’t seem like the right fit to me, either. So I kept looking, checking variants of all water-based symbology. It turns out that the mark is used to summon forth a host, a vessel, for the water spirit to inhabit.”
“Then that she-bitch has been building up her power over Jane,” I said, “exerting it to take control of my girlfriend. So, what is it? Who is it a symbol of?”
“Are you familiar with the Police?” Godfrey asked.
“The band?” I asked. “Or the serve-and-protect kind?”
“The band,” he said.
“Yes, but do you really think this is the time for a music lesson?”
“In this case, yes,” he said. “I don’t care much for modern music personally, but I do try to associate myself with cultural works that touch on anything mythosrelated. When it comes to references, the works of Sting are unparalleled.”
“Okay,” I said. “So, what song are we talking about here?”
“‘Wrapped Around Your Finger,’” he said. “The lyric is, ‘You consider me the young apprentice, caught between the Scylla and Charybdis.’”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” I said. “What the hell are those?”
“I think your woman in green may be Charybdis,” Godfrey said. “A daughter of Poseidon. A naiad, technically.”
“Those are a type of water nymph, right?” I asked.
Godfrey nodded. “Very good,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said. “Good to see that my time studying Know Your Unknown wasn’t completely wasted on me. But I thought nymphs were supposed to be sexy. This Charybdis is more deadly than sexy.”
“I’m sure she started that way,” Godfrey said, “but if you—excuse the language—piss off the gods, they tend to exact a punishment.”
“Punishment?”
“According to Homer, she stole from Hermes. For her crime, she was turned into a monster of the sea. Another story says she was transformed because she did so much damage on land in the name of her father, Poseidon, that Zeus became irate with her and exacted it as punishment on her. There are several versions of the tale, but any way you look at it, she’s marked as a monster of the sea. Part of the description for Charybdis in one of her forms is a giant mouth that takes in vast quantities of water, creating whirlpools.”
“Like the ones that have claimed all those boats over the years at Hell Gate,” I said.
“Exactly,” he said.
“What about the other one you named?” I asked. “What was it called again?”
“Scylla,” Godfrey said. “That comes from another tale, but Scyl
la was also a nymph that the sea god fisherman named Glaucus fell in love with. Apparently, she wouldn’t give him the time of day, so he turned to the sorceress Circe, asking her for a love potion. She, however, fell for the fisherman herself, but he spurned her advances, causing her to take vengeance on the object of his desire—Scylla. Using poison, she transformed Scylla into a sea monster that is described differently than Charybdis—twelve legs like tentacles and a ring of snapping dog heads around her waist.”
“Tentacles,” I said. “That fits what I saw in my vision of when the General Slocum went down. That much makes sense, as do the crush marks on one of the student’s laptops we found at the bottom of a well leading out to the river.”
Godfrey nodded. “Supposedly, these two creatures were the guardians of the Strait of Messina, situated between Sicily and Italy. They still call one of the rocky outcroppings there Scylla. Scholars believe it may well be where the expression ‘between a rock and a hard place’ comes from.”
Despite the hard time my mind was having wrapping around the tale, the last details brought more pressing questions to mind. “Italy? Then what the hell are they doing here in New York?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, “but the Greek people are prevalent in America. Why not their gods, too?”
“No offense,” I said, “but I’m not sure I buy into this whole pantheistic worldview. I mean, if we’re going to go there, let’s just call in Thor to take care of it and call it a day, right?”
“He’s Norse, not Greek,” Godfrey corrected.
“Fine, whatever, but you see where I’m going.”
Godfrey sighed. “I hear you,” he said. “Look. I don’t know if I believe in gods and goddesses the way the Greeks did, either, but I do think that much of what they chose to believe in came from things that already existed in the world, something they then interpreted to fit their own worldview. For instance, it’s quite likely that supernatural creatures such as sea monsters may well predate the Greeks, but we see them as Greek mythological figures because that’s what the Greeks chose to name them. That’s what stuck in people’s minds.”