by B. V. Larson
“I don’t need a partner, Draith.”
“These things are appearing all around me anyway. You’re going to end up coming back to wherever I am. Why not let me check them out with you?”
For some reason, that argument got through to McKesson. Maybe because it was true. He hit the unlock button and I ran around the car, half expecting him to pull away before I could get to the passenger door. He didn’t. I climbed in, and we drove off together down the dark streets.
McKesson and I drove through the city, following his watch. It pointed downtown, and after circling around the southern end of the Strip a few times, he and I looked up. Our eyes met. We’d both figured it out at the same time.
“Why the Lucky Seven, again?” McKesson groaned. “Rostok’s going to be pissed.”
“Will he come out and scold you?”
“No, he never comes out of his domain. Most of them don’t. He’s like a spider in there. But he has plenty of goons to do his complaining for him.”
Thinking of Bernie Kinley, I had to agree. That man definitely qualified for classification as a “goon.” I craned my neck out the passenger window and stared up at the towers. They formed two oblong shapes, thrusting upward side by side, looking like a giant tuning fork aimed at the sky. At night, the building was more attractive. I liked the way the walls ran with green lights.
McKesson parked his car, and we crossed the asphalt toward the eastern tower. I thought about the location of other recent rips. I could see a pattern.
“They’re chasing me, aren’t they?” I asked.
“The Gray Men? Maybe.”
“No, not maybe. I was at Holly’s place yesterday. About a dozen hours after I left, they kicked in her door. Now they are popping up at the towers, where I spent most of today. They are one step behind me.”
He turned his head to look at me. “You think a rip is going to open in Mrs. Townsend’s room again?”
I nodded. “A strong possibility. Only Jenna’s not there—I moved her, fortunately. She should be safe.”
McKesson began to trot. “If we get there first, they won’t be able to come through,” he said.
I ran after him, and we raced to the elevators. McKesson paused to call their security. Two unsmiling men showed up and handed the detective a keycard pass without comment. They followed us up to the eighteenth floor, but stayed in the elevator lobby. I could tell they were annoyed. I recalled Bernie telling me that they preferred to handle security issues on their own, but they clearly had their orders to cooperate with McKesson.
We entered Jenna’s old room just as the space inside began to warp. I saw right away there was going to be a problem: the warping had begun in the region of the sliding glass door. The slider and the curtains were rippling. I heard the glass rattle and shiver, as if there were a storm outside.
McKesson gave a nasty laugh when he saw it. “If they don’t pay attention and come through into that, this is going to be great.”
It wasn’t great. A figure stepped through, wearing normal clothing. A hood covered his face. His hands were covered by black leather gloves with the fingers cut away. Those fingers weren’t gray, I realized with a shock.
The moment the figure was firmly in the room, the sheet of glass that formed the sliding door exploded in a gush of blood. Stricken, the man staggered and pitched onto the table where Jenna and I had consumed a bottle of century-old wine the night before. He quivered and died, his body winged by blades of glass and shreds of fabric from the curtains.
“You missed, buddy,” McKesson said to the corpse. He nudged the body until it slipped off the table onto the carpet. “What the hell is this? A frat boy?”
I inspected the dead man, grimacing. We were clearly not dealing with a Gray Man. He was quite human. He had a growth of black beard, cut short and bristling. His hazel eyes stared up at the ceiling above us. There were strange tattoos on his neck that looked like tentacles trying to crawl up out of his shirt.
“Damned amateurs,” McKesson grumbled. “How the hell did he step out to wherever he was and then get back here again?”
I peered into the smoky space that filled the balcony. I couldn’t see much. It was dark on both sides of the opening. The darkness, plus a lack of caution, had killed our suspect.
“I’m going through,” I said.
“Are you crazy?”
“Yeah, but I have to take a look. Someone is sending rips through wherever I’ve just been. Holly might have been taken by this guy—or his friends.”
“You are stepping out again for a stripper?” he asked. “On a maybe?”
“No one else is coming through to our side. Maybe there is no one else over there. Or maybe there is and I’ll find out who’s trying to kill me. Clearly, it’s not just the Gray Men who are involved in all this.”
“Whatever happened to following my lead?”
“Look, they’re going to keep trying for me. Are you coming or not?”
McKesson shook his head. “Hell no,” he said. “But you go ahead. When they tear you up and toss you back, I’ll put a bullet in your brain out of compassion.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said, and I stepped out.
The far side was pitch black, but I could tell I wasn’t out in the open desert this time. I was in a room of some kind. The sounds were different, as were the smells and the temperature of the air. All the purring background city sounds had vanished. It was cooler now. The air seemed still and dank. Disoriented and fearful, I dug out my cell phone and used the pale blue radiance from its screen to illuminate the room around me. I knew I could be literally anywhere—but so far I didn’t sense anything dangerous.
I took a step or two forward, feeling my way. My eyes were still adjusting a moment later when I heard a heavy whump sound behind me as if something had been thrown. I whirled with my .32 automatic in my hand, held my fire as I looked down to see a man-shaped form had slumped behind me onto the floor, right where I’d appeared a moment earlier.
It wasn’t moving. I kicked it over onto its back. Then I knew.
It was the dead guy with the glass in his chest. McKesson must have tossed him through the opening after me, erasing evidence as usual.
“McKesson, you bastard,” I muttered.
“Who’s there?” called a quiet voice. A female voice.
I turned slowly. I could see more now, as my eyes had gotten used to the gloom. I walked toward the voice with my gun out. I held the cell phone up, but it went into sleep mode. I fumbled with it, and when it lit up again, I saw her.
Holly was sitting on the floor. She was shackled to a structure of some kind. I took two steps more toward her, and she squirmed in fear.
“It’s me, Holly,” I whispered. “Quentin Draith.”
“Get me out of here before they come back,” she hissed at me.
“Who are they? The Gray Men?”
“I don’t think so. They’re some kind of freaks. They like to cut up meat. I think they’ll cut us up too, if we stay here.”
The cultists, I thought to myself. I used the sunglasses to remove her bonds and helped her to her feet. I saw the place where she had been sitting. There was a row of shackles there, indicating the spot had been used to chain people up before this. I saw one other object, and squatted down to pick it up. It was a shoe. A black, brightly polished shoe. I looked it over carefully.
“What the hell are you doing?” Holly demanded.
“I think I know who this belongs to,” I said, holding up the shoe. “Robert Townsend.”
“Who the hell cares about a shoe?”
“Just carry it for me, OK?”
Holly did it, but she clearly thought I was crazy. I didn’t care. If that shoe matched the one Jenna had packed up, it was worth carrying out of this hole.
I led her back toward the spot where I’d come into this place. I took a moment to look around. Clearly, we were underground. There were drains in the concrete floor, and they looked as though they’d drained away ye
ars’ worth of blood.
I soon found the spot where I’d stepped into this place. The body of the man I’d seen come into the hotel room a moment ago was there, cooling on the floor. But I didn’t see the vortex.
“How do we get out of here?” Holly asked.
“It was right here,” I said, feeling around in front of me like a blind man. The cell phone kept going to sleep every few seconds, casting us into total darkness. I shook and cursed it every time.
“What was here?”
“Do you know this guy?” I asked.
“What?”
I toed the body at our feet and aimed the light down toward it. Holly gave a little whoop of fear.
“He might be one of the guys who grabbed me out of my apartment,” she said. “Did you kill him?”
“No, he killed himself. But when you saw him a minute ago, didn’t he step into a smoky region? An area that looked like a heat shimmer?”
I brought the cell light to her face. She looked terrified and baffled at the same time. “I haven’t seen him since I was dragged here,” she said.
Then I finally got it. Hadn’t McKesson said they’d “missed”? Well, maybe they’d screwed up in more ways than one. There was no rip down here for me to find. This spot was a one-way chute from the hotel room to this dungeon. I had stepped through, and McKesson had tossed the body through after me, but there was no way back. The pathway the cultist had used to enter the hotel room started someplace else.
“What’s wrong?” whispered Holly.
“The anomaly opened in two different spots. Each of the doorways was effectively one-way. That’s probably why when I looked through, I couldn’t see the other side.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I was in a hotel room. The hotel room can send things through to us here, but the starting point where the cultists are coming from is in some third location.”
Holly stared at me with big, scared eyes. “Just get me out of here,” she said.
I imagined McKesson at the far end, keeping his gun trained on the spot where I’d vanished. I wondered how long he would wait for me or something else to come through. I doubted he’d step out to look for me. That wasn’t his style. He’d watch the shimmer until it vanished, then shrug and go have a drink. I doubted he would even tell anyone how I’d disappeared.
“You came to find me, didn’t you?” Holly asked.
I nodded and put my arm around her. She hugged me in return. We were in an unknown dungeon—possibly in another version of our universe. A dead man lay at my feet, and he doubtlessly had friends somewhere nearby. We were in their stronghold, with no clear path of escape.
In short, we were screwed.
We searched the dungeon and eventually found two exits. One was a normal door, but the second was hidden and looked like part of the wall. I listened carefully at the normal door. I heard nothing on the far side other than the sighing of wind and possibly street sounds. The door was quiet and felt cool to the touch. The air that seeped beneath it smelled of the outdoors.
I moved to the hidden door. I could hear the sounds of voices from beyond it—possibly having an argument. I slipped on my sunglasses and put my fingers on the handle.
“Are you crazy?” hissed Holly, tugging at my arm.
“We have to find the other rip,” I said. “We have to jump back through it before it closes.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but there are crazies behind that door.”
“I’ve got a gun.”
“What if they don’t care?” she asked. “Look, let’s just try the other door first.”
I hesitated. She could be right, but I was afraid the pathway to the hotel room might close soon. Then we would be left with finding a new way home. Maybe we were on our Earth, maybe we weren’t.
I decided it was worth giving Holly’s choice a chance. I stepped up to the first door and the sunglasses worked like a charm. Metal squeaked as if the door hadn’t been used much, but it swung open. Leaves blew in over my feet, giving me the immediate impression of a normal Earth environment. Beyond the door, we found concrete steps that led upward and a night sky beyond. I closed the door behind me, knowing it would lock itself again in a few minutes when the metal hardened again. I’d been gentle with it.
I moved up the stairway with Holly close behind. I paused at the top, looking around. What I saw filled me with relief: trees and a cinder-block fence. There was the stucco wall of a large building behind me. The sky was lit with the pale radiance of earthly streetlights. I now felt certain we were on our home world—or were we? McKesson had indicated there were many worlds, and some looked a lot more like home than others.
We were inside some kind of compound or large yard, so we followed the walls to the left, looking for an exit. I passed windows that were closed, but showed very normal-looking blinds behind the glass. Everything was the right size and shape. We reached a walkway of concrete and came out to the front of what was now clearly a large house—and then I knew the truth.
I recognized that front yard. I knew the dry fountain, the large circular drive and the powered iron gates out front. I was in Henderson, Nevada, on the grounds of the mini-mansion McKesson and I had investigated few nights earlier. Things rapidly clicked into place. Holly had mentioned crazy people who liked to cut up meat. It appeared that they hadn’t all vanished into the unknown. I’d run into them again. The cellar Holly and I had escaped had to be close to the wine cellar where McKesson and I had fought the Gray Men. Perhaps the hidden door even led to the wine cellar.
Ironically, I was disoriented. I’d been so certain I was in some other place. The last time I’d gone through a rip there had been extra moons and a dozen other differences. I’d been left expecting strange vehicles and cities built of cubes…
I wasn’t out of danger, but I could walk home, or hail a cab, or call McKesson, or—suddenly, I realized I’d been an idiot. I took out the cell phone I’d been using for a flashlight. The batteries were low, but I had two bars of service. I shook my head. The next time I stepped out to an unknown place, I would check my cell first to know instantly if I was still home or in Neverland.
“Great,” said Holly in my ear. “Now, let’s get the hell out of here before someone comes looking for me. They are going to find the body of their friend down in that cellar and see that I’m missing.”
I took her to the street. We got there without incident. I walked her downhill to a corner that looked perfectly normal. Insects buzzed and a bat flew overhead, snatching them from the air.
“Let’s go get something to eat and a place to stay,” she said, holding onto my arm. “I want to get as far from here as I can.”
I had to admit she was making excellent suggestions. But I wasn’t done here yet. “Let’s walk to the nearest public place.”
I took her to a quickie-mart at the bottom of the hill. The guy behind the counter smiled with bad teeth.
“Disappear,” I told her. “I’ll call you later. I have to go back and get something.”
“You’re going back up there?” she asked, her tone indicating she thought I was crazy.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m finally close to these guys, and I want information.”
Holly searched my eyes. She must have seen I wasn’t going to change my mind. She gave me a sudden, hard kiss on the lips. I smiled.
“Thanks for coming to get me,” she said. “If you live, I’ll owe you a big one.”
I paused for a moment, wondering what “a big one” might be.
“Give me your cell,” she demanded, holding out her hand.
I shrugged and handed it over. She could call a cab if she had to.
We parted ways and I went back to the big house at the end of the darkest street in the neighborhood. I watched the yard with my gun in my hand until I was sure no one was around. Then I walked up to the front door and opened it. The lock gave way without a problem.
I smiled to myse
lf, thinking of Holly’s kiss and how I was beginning to like locks. They gave the opposition a false sense of security. As far as I was concerned, the entire world should lock up and go for a long trip. It would make my life easier.
The cut-up meats were mostly gone now from the kitchen. There were, however, some fresh bloodstains at the cellar door. I heard voices from below. They weren’t arguing or singing, now. They were chanting—speaking words in unison. I headed down the steps, trying to remember which ones creaked the loudest.
Quand il jette en dansant son bruit vif et moqueur,
Ce monde rayonnant de métal et de pierre
The words sounded like French to me. I didn’t understand all of it, but I must have taken a French class at some point, because I picked out something about dancing, stone, and metal. I crept down three steps more. I could feel the sweat sprout from my body.
There they were: I could see them kneeling in a circle around a shimmer in the air. The rip was almost gone. Could they have created it by themselves? Was that even possible? Were these cultists—of all the cultists in the vast world—the only ones truly capable of functioning witchcraft?
I reached the sixth step down, and I bent slowly to slip my hand under the wooden plank I stood upon. At first, I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I squatted and reached deeper. My fingers touched the bottle. McKesson had always been very thorough, but this was one detail he’d missed. I’d not bothered to explain it to Holly, but I’d come back for the Gray Man’s dead finger. I wanted hard evidence. If I took this finger to the right people, I knew they would have to take notice. Or, at the very least, it could give me a bargaining chip with McKesson.
Et pour la déranger du rocher de cristal
Où, calme et solitaire, elle s’était assise.
Something about loneliness and rock crystals. On my haunches with the bottle in my hand, I was better able to see the cultists. There were eight of them, both men and women. They weren’t wearing any special robes or anything like that. They had on normal clothing, but they were all sitting around the shimmering rip in the air with their heads bowed. One man had a leather-bound book in his lap and seemed to be leading the prayer, or chant, or spell—whatever it was. None of them had weapons in their hands.