Deadly Violet - 04

by Tony Richards

  And at first, it felt like it still wasn’t working.

  Then he sensed it as his pupils glittered behind their closed lids. Raine got a sense of motion.

  And the very next split-instant, he had left his body far behind.

  His eyes were still closed. Why was that? Normally, when he projected, he could see everything around him, because he had no eyelids anymore.

  But this was a different matter, temporal rather than astral. And so maybe there were different rules.

  He willed his lids open and they did that.

  He was sitting down. Another oddity. Slumped back in a deep armchair, in fact. And was no longer in his father’s study. But he thought he recognized this room. It was the drawing room in the west wing of Raine Manor, the same part of the building that had mostly been destroyed by the fire that had killed his parents. Except that, looking around now, he saw that it was perfectly intact.

  Bright daylight was flooding through the windows. A grandfather clock was ticking in the corner. There were shelves of books, and portraits on the walls. Ornaments and valuable rugs and walnut furnishings. A harpsichord stood near the door, topped with a vase full of freshly picked flowers.

  He looked down at himself, and saw that he was dressed in a very odd fashion. He was wearing britches, and a crimson velvet jacket with big ruffles on the front. A stiff collar was rubbing at his neck. That shouldn’t be the case since, when projecting, he never usually had any bodily form to speak of.

  There was a mirror above the room’s large marble fireplace. And so he stood up inquisitively and wandered over to it.

  Got a glimpse of his reflection, and reeled back with utter shock.

  Raine took almost a minute steadying himself before he tried again. This time he held his nerve, though what he saw astonished him.

  It was a face vaguely similar to his own. The same leaf-shaped ears that were the hallmark of his family. And his eyes were the exact dark blue they’d been before he’d turned them golden. But this was not really his face at all.

  It was wider, about ten years older. The hair was slightly curly at the front and had a few strands of silver in it. There were bushy sideburns. And he had a thick moustache.

  And he’d never worn one in his life!

  Raine took hold of it and tugged at it gently. Then he did the same with the skin of his right cheek

  Memories stirred. He thought he recognized this set of features from somewhere.

  From several of the family portraits scattered round the dark halls of his mansion, perhaps. Was this …?

  “Regis?” said a woman’s voice behind him. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

  He spun around, to find himself confronted by an attractive woman in her late thirties – dressed in the Victorian style – who was peering at him with a severe expression.

  “You were staring in the mirror like you didn’t recognize yourself,” she hissed.

  His mouth dropped open, but no words came out. Because his thoughts were reeling furiously. Had she said “Regis”?

  Regis Raine was his great-grandfather. And he’d never actually met the man. But was it possible that this was the way Temporal Projection worked? You didn’t simply hurl your spirit back through time – you threw your consciousness into the body of an ancestor?

  If so, it was utterly incredible.

  “Regis!” the woman – great-grandma Ivy? – was barking at him. “We Raines have always had a sensible and level-headed reputation. But if you persist in behaving in this way, then you’ll ruin it completely. People will start thinking we’re insane.”

  Wow, he’d never known great-grandma had been such a formidable battleaxe. He’d have liked to find out more about his origins. But Raine reminded himself what was going on in his own time. The situation was becoming urgent, and he really had to start thinking about getting back.

  And so he willed himself out of his great-grandfather’s body. Felt his eyes shimmer again.

  Then, he was racing back through time.

  When he looked out again, he’d returned to the present day. A breathless-looking Hampton was there, standing anxiously in front of him.

  Raine blinked, and his servant’s bulky frame slackened slightly.

  “You looked like a statue for a while there, sir. I was getting pretty worried.”

  Then his tone became inquisitive.

  “But did you manage to do it, sir? Project yourself into the past?”

  There’d be time for explanations later. He would fill the fellow in on every detail of the trip. But right now, there was something far more pressing that he felt impelled to do.

  Woodard filled his lungs, threw both his arms up at the shadowy ceiling.

  And then yelled, “Eureka!”

  He had always dreamed of doing that.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  What Willets had suggested – trying to help those people that we could – turned out to be much too tall an order. Far too many were affected, simply on my own block, let alone the neighborhood. Some of them were waving their arms around in a terrified fashion and yelling at apparitions no one else could see. But in a few cases, the products of their madness were a lot more tangible.

  Like Willets had said, every last rule was cancelled. And some of the things that people were seeing had managed to take on physical form.

  I walked hurriedly over to Roger Lym’s house, directly across the street from mine. The front door was ajar. Once inside, I went to go into his living room … and the heads of several dozen snakes rose smartly into the air, forked tongues flickering in my direction.

  Rattles whirred. The hoods of cobras flared like dark umbrellas. There was no sign of Roger, so I shut the door and got out.

  Back on the street and heading south, I pulled my cell phone out and tried to get hold of Cassie. But I only got her answering service, which left me wondering what was happening in East Meadow. Probably the same as this. In which case, she’d have her own hands full.

  The next home I tried was Dorothy Chase’s, three doors further down. And I couldn’t find her either. But it turned out that she’d always harbored a strong fear of cats. I could hear one moving around upstairs, purring.

  The sound was as loud as a tractor motor. And something got knocked over, up there, that sounded to me like a chest of drawers. So that was my cue to leave again.

  Yells were coming from every which direction, when I stepped back onto her front lawn. These were my neighbors, people that I’d known for years. And it was starting to look like I could do precisely zip to help them.

  But then it turned out I was the one who needed help.

  A bulge rose at the far end of the patch of grass that I was on. It was much too large to be the work of any mole or gopher. And it started to move across to me, gathering speed as it approached. Then the ground under my feet began to crumble.

  I tried to jump away, but that turned out to be more difficult than I’d thought. Every time I put some pressure through my legs, the dirt under my shoes split apart and I lost my footing. I was sinking lower. And there were big teeth gnawing up and trying to grab me.

  Willets suddenly blurred in and got me out of there. The world went sailing past us, so fast that it all got mushed together. And when we finally stopped, we were back on Sycamore Hill, up at a vantage spot called Coven Point.

  It’s called that because the original Salem witches used to perform ceremonies there. At night, of course. And for the first few years, in secret.

  It’s not the highest part of the hill – that honor goes, naturally, to Raine Manor and its grounds. But it is on a jutting promontory, overhanging a sheer drop of several hundred feet, with sharply jagged rocks collected at the bottom. Such a dangerous place to be, in fact, that the town’s authorities had set up a barrier, a stretch of thick rope, supported by wooden posts. It ran the whole outer edge of the point, and was draped with icicles by this time of the year.

  There were no dwellings near
us, only trees. We were facing north and east, with a perfect view of nearly half the town. A freezing wind was cutting into me like razor blades. I pulled my collar up and rubbed my hands together, and then stared at Willets, who looked unaffected.

  “Why bring us here?”

  I was hoping he had some specific purpose, but it turned out that he didn’t.

  “The best thing to do with generalized madness is to raise yourself above it, Ross. Besides,” he added in a quieter tone, “this is a nice, deserted spot. I don’t think we’ll get anyone’s crazed fantasies coming at us in a place like this. And we can keep an eye on everything that’s happening.”

  But that was all we could do, and we were both aware of that. The doctor had the unhappy look of a professional jock who’d just been told his knees were finished.

  “So we stand here and watch while the whole town goes to hell?” I asked.

  “You tried helping, and what did it get you? If I hadn’t come in when I did, you’d be literally worm-food.”

  He was right, but I still hated this. I stamped my feet against the cold, and then walked over to the edge. The footing was precarious – the wind had blown the snow away, leaving only sheets of layered ice behind.

  But I stared at the town below me.

  Somebody had driven a car into a tree down there. And a truck was slewed sideways, blocking an entire road. Tiny dots were visible, milling around wildly, and those dots were people. I started to recall the conversation that I’d had with Lauren, about the fact she had no need to stay here.

  “Thinking about it, why don’t you leave?” I asked the doc. I wasn’t looking at him, but could feel him peering at me. “I mean, you’re not bound by Regan’s Curse. So why don’t you get out?”

  Then I gave that a little more thought and added, “Why didn’t you do that a good long while ago?”

  I could hear him making a soft grumbling sound.

  “Sure, I could do that,” he responded. “I could go away from here, board an airplane and fly halfway around the world. And do you know what would be waiting for me at the other end?”

  I thought I knew the answer, but I let him say it.

  “A mirror. I would still be who I am, and have the same past as before. And till I’m satisfied I’ve put that right …”

  He let the final words trail off, because there was no need to say them.

  And I nodded and gave a small, wry smile, in spite of what was going down. But then my thoughts turned back to Cassie.

  She most likely had Lauren with her. And I thought it better that the three of us stuck together, from this point on. So I had another go at dialing her.

  Got no answer, yet again. And that started to bother me.

  “Trying to raise Ms. Mallory?” Willets asked.

  “Trying, not succeeding. Can you tell what she’s up to?”

  He went entirely still, casting his senses out.

  Then his expression altered. It became extremely sour.

  “I can’t tell what anybody’s doing,” he explained to me. “There’s so much craziness in the air that it’s like trying to find a single ant in a whole churning nest of them.”

  “Maybe you need to do that blurry thing again, and get us down to Rowan Street?”

  He tipped his chin back and was getting ready to do that. When something stopped us both dead in our tracks.

  I had pretty much lost track of time, but it had to be late morning, surely? I checked my watch and saw that that was right. And the sun was midway through an almost cloudless sky, as small as a polished coin and gleaming yellow-white.

  But as we watched, that began changing.

  Faint reddish tinges were appearing round its edges. And then spreading out across it, melding with blue ones and combining

  It was turning purple too. Lighting up the sky that shade, and casting its strange violet glow on everything in town.

  Reality was taking what looked like a final nosedive. Everything that we’d considered normal and inviolable was going to hell. The rest had been quite bad enough. But this came as a truly profound shock.

  And it was something else into the bargain. Confirmation we were done for. How could we fight anything like this?

  The town below me looked entirely different. A couple of basic colors were gone. Deep pools of inky shadow had gathered to the west of every building. And I looked at my own hands. And they were bathed in violet too.

  Then a fresh series of movements captured my attention. Another row of homes was beginning to disappear. They were going faster than the first ones had, with no chance for their occupants to get out.

  I stared further across. The very edge of the town looked like it was wavering, on the verge of falling apart altogether.

  And the only thing that I could do was stand there with my mind numb and my body stopped in neutral. We had found our way out of some pretty awful situations in the past. But we weren’t going to be able to find our way out of this one.

  I wasn’t even certain how much longer we had left. Maybe I would be re-joined with Alicia and my children, when the end came? I clung onto that desperate thought for all that I was worth, since my whole world was nearly gone.

  “Oh, do cheer up, sport,” came a voice behind me. “I never thought you were the type to give up quite so easily.”

  Woody? I was turning round to face him …

  When Coven Point, Lehman Willets, and the entire view beneath me vanished in a pitch-dark flash.

  And I was back inside Raine Manor.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  It had never struck her so forcefully before. She’d been twice in this town, and had seen some truly weird and frightening things. But the sun changing its hue was something she would never have imagined in her wildest nightmares. Staring at it, she felt like she had fallen off the world’s edge, and was dropping ever faster. And there was no bottom coming up.

  Lauren was gripped by a bad feeling of vertigo. Had to hang onto a nearby wall for a few seconds, and close her eyes to steady herself. Maybe she ought to have left when it had been suggested. But that most likely wasn’t even possible, by this stage.

  She opened her eyes again, taking in how insubstantial everything looked in this peculiar light. This couldn’t be real. But it was.

  Panic attempted to take hold of her, except she fought it. Her gaze went around and found Cassie, who looked equally alarmed.

  “What’s happened?” Lauren asked her.

  “How would I know?” Cass came back.

  But then shrieks started emerging from some of the dwellings near them. Other people were in trouble. Cassie’s frame went rigid.

  A young girl, somewhere off in the distance, was letting out a hollow wail. A noise like something you might hear from an insane asylum. Lauren thought she might have gotten a partial take on what was going down.

  If reality was breaking up, then maybe people’s minds were collapsing as well. That explained the incident with bat-winged Cassie, the barriers between ‘true’ and ‘false’ unraveling.

  She had already retrieved her gun and boots, and she marched over to her friend.

  “Looks like things are getting really bad.”

  “You think?”

  “You’ve lived here your whole life. What do you reckon we should do?”

  Cassie blinked at her, her face like granite.

  “You want the benefit of my expertise?” And her expression tightened even more. “Well, personally, I think we’re screwed.”

  But it was only her way of talking. Lauren understood that. Cassie might be at a loss, but she still looked determined.

  She was squinting off at the far eastern edge of town, the sky of which was no longer a steady purple. Jagged lightning bolts were streaking down through it. Violet ones, and dazzling to the eye.

  Parts of the skyline wavered through a series of mauve shades, becoming progressively deeper. It looked like the districts off in that direction were breaking apart. And when she turned h
er gaze toward the south and west, the same was happening.

  There was a quickly moving blur in the corner of Lauren’s vision. Martha Howard-Brett appeared in front of them, her features like a mask. Lauren knew her as a kind, sensitive woman. She was wounded by the suffering around her, but was doing her best not to let it affect her.

  “Know where Ross is?” Cassie asked.

  “I think he’s with Raine,” Martha replied.

  “So Mr. Fruitcake’s finally getting his hands dirty?”

  The adept just looked blank. “I couldn’t tell you.”

  Then her head went around, trying to find the sources of the wild screams that were still emerging, her eyes watering gently.

  “This is terrible. How can people help themselves when they are caught up in their own delusions?”

  “We aren’t,” Lauren pointed out. “At least, not anymore. So maybe there are people we can help?”

  “But help them how?”

  Cass stared at the horizon again, then looked the other way.

  “This is happening from the town line in. We need to get as many people as we can headed for the center. It seems to be the least affected part, so far.”

  “But what good will that do?”

  “Buy us some time,” Cass said.

  “For what?”

  There was no sensible answer to that question. But Lauren could see that extra time was the only thing they really had. Extended survival was the one thing that they could count on by this juncture. Maybe Raine could still come up with something.

  Martha was beginning to see the sense of that approach as well.

  “I’ll head south and start alerting people there,” she told them.

  “Try and get hold of Nick McLeish. He’ll help,” Cassie advised her. “And Emaline Pendramere in Tyburn.”

  Martha nodded, and then vanished.

  It was a harder task than they’d originally thought. Some people responded to them as they went from street to street. In fact, some had already figured out which way this thing was going, and were already on the move.