It was then that Tom had spoken of his theories about the spread of the disease, about the Bargo Carnival and a fortune teller’s crystal ball. He regretted sharing the information almost the minute he had spoken it. It must have sounded like the ravings of a lunatic.
But Wilson wasn’t laughing. His response was, to say the least, surprising, as was the tale of one of his female patients who had experienced a temporary reprieve from the ravages of Hobart’s. Was it truly possible that his son’s soul was elsewhere, in a terrible subterranean realm? Suddenly the pieces of the puzzle he had been working on for so many months fell into place. It all made sense, and now Tom knew what he had to do.
He’d considered it for months, yet he had hesitated to pursue it; to seek out she who had so afflicted his son and compel her to remove her curse. It sounded like the act of a madman but desperation had driven him to it.
“It’s too risky,” Dr. Wilson had warned, yet he didn’t feel Tom’s pain. David was dying, Tom had to discover the terrible secret, reverse its power if he could. That secret was here, he could feel it, amidst the color and glitter of a traveling show, a show that had brought a sort of living death to his son.
He looked up at the sign above the tent, written in flowing and mysterious lettering:
Discover your future
Marella the Mystic
Fortune Teller
Tom took a deep breath. There was still time to back out. He paused before parting the tent flap and entering in.
The atmosphere inside the tent was thick with aromatic incense, and dozens of red and black candles provided flickering illumination. The tent was replete with small statues of beasts and exotic peoples of all description. In their midst, sat a round table covered with a long black cloth, and atop the table sat a large crystal ball, whose depths glowed an exotic blue green.
At the table, beyond the glowing orb, sat a tall dark haired woman, who could hardly have been older than her early twenties. She was pale, dressed in a long crimson gown, whose plunging circular neckline was, to say the least, revealing. Her haunting dark eyes followed the stranger as he walked toward her.
“Tis late,” she began, in an accent which showed the trace of Irish. “You seek the substance of the future?”
“Perhaps the past,” replied Tom.
“Sit down,” she bid, “my charge is twenty dollars, for I perceive that you seek much from me.”
“You’re right,” replied Tom, sitting across from her and placing the twenty on the table. “You’ve done this sort of thing long?”
“All of my life,” she proclaimed.
“The circus has no other fortune tellers?”
“None but me. You say that you do not seek your future?”
“Only that of my son, a young man by the name of David Tomlinson, do you remember him?”
“Should I?” remarked Marella, in a tone of voice that spoke of her indifference, her lack of compassion.
“I should hope so, he came to you a year ago when the Bargo Carnival was in Fresno.”
Marella’s eyes were without emotion, without luster, almost lifeless. The presence of this small and insignificance man seemed of no consequence to her. It was almost as if she knew even before he parted the tent flap, before she had set eyes upon his countenance, what he wanted of her.
“Many come to me, seeking that which only I can provide for them, thousands. Why do you suppose that I should recall this one?” She paused for a few seconds, then gazed into the depths of the shimmering orb before her. “Very well, Mr. Tomlinson, let us consult the spirit of the ball.”
Tom sat back nervously, his hand caressing the nine millimeter Ruger in his coat pocket. He could not understand what it was that he was afraid of, but he was terrified. Within the depths of the mystical sphere the glow brightened.
“I see your son from a great distance,” proclaimed Marella, whose full attention was focused into the strange globe. “Things are not well with him. He is ill, exhausted, dying. He labors in a world without sunlight, without hope.”
“No,” objected Tom, angrily, “he’s in a hospital bed in San Francisco, in a coma. A hospital bed that I suspect you helped put him in.”
“At the crack of a whip he labors, and behind bars as dark as ebony he sleeps,” she continued, seemingly unmindful of Tom’s words. “Yet now he lies dying in a small cave, alone. I know why you are here, Mr. Tomlinson. You desire the return of your son, you seek to acquire his release by force, if necessary. Yet I tell you that no force on Earth may accomplish your goal. Go, Mr. Tomlinson, leave this place while you still can.”
Tom rose to his feet, drawing back from the fortune teller and the malignant crystal ball. “You did this to my son, didn’t you?”
Marella’s intense gaze shifted from the ball, to fall upon the frightened father. “Don’t press me, Mr. Tomlinson. Take your leave at once while you still can. I shall not say it again.”
“Didn’t you!” he proclaimed, drawing forth his weapon.
“Yes, I did, as I have to countless other children throughout the years. I have been meticulously careful in my harvesting of souls, choosing only the most beautiful for the masters. They were selected, all of them, in this very tent. But they were always claimed elsewhere, so that no suspicion might fall upon me.” Marella rose to her feet, “You should have gone when I offered you the opportunity, you know too much now.”
“What the hell did you do to him? Tell me!”
“I ripped the soul from his body,” she replied, with sadistic glee. “I consigned it to my masters the drells, whom he shall serve with his labors, his blood, and eventually his flesh.”
“You’re mad!” exclaimed Tom, retreating one more step toward the entrance.
“Not I, mortal.”
Tom leveled his gun at the fortune teller, “I’m not a murderer. I am charged with upholding the law. I don’t want to hurt anyone, not even the likes of you. I just want my son back.”
“You can’t have him,” replied Marella, a spiteful smile on her face. “For centuries I have served the masters, one small mortal man is not going to stand in my way.” She walked around the table, toward David’s father.
Tom was sweating, afraid that he might actually have to use the pistol in his hand. What might happen to David if he killed this woman? “I warn you, miss, I’m in deadly earnest. I’ll shoot you if I have to.”
Marella stopped, not the trace of fear in her eyes. “You should feel honored that your son was deemed worthy, chosen to serve the masters. Now to deal with you.”
In an instant, Tom felt a terrible darkness closing in around his soul. His arms fell to his side and the pistol nearly dropped from his grip. “What’s happening to me?”
“I can’t have you returning to others and telling what you know,” said Marella, walking around the helpless father and back to her seat behind the crystal ball. “You’re going to meet with an accident. In but a few minutes you shall leave this tent, to begin the long drive home, but you shall never arrive. You shall appear to have fallen asleep at the wheel, and plunged from the bridge into the Humbolt River. A pity, but I’m sure that it won’t be long before your son joins you in death.”
“No,” whispered Tom, struggling against the spirit that was penetrating every fiber of his being.
Marella only laughed, observing his futile resistance, as she had observed so many others. “You mortals are so certain of your dominion over the things of this world. In your vanity you know nothing. You are sheep ripe for the slaughter, a vast flock from which one might pick and choose.”
“Mortal,” gasped Tom. “You are as mortal as I am.”
“You’re wrong,” said Marella. “My masters have granted me the gift of eternal youth for all of these past 197 years. To me you’re nothing but a child. Give in, mortal, spare yourself the horrible pain. Surrender to me.”
Pain, to Tom Barton, pain had become the only reality in the world. It swept into every corner of his body, displaced
everything else in his mind. No, that wasn’t right, not everything. Marella seemed to sense his exquisite pain, reveled in it. Yet her laughter faded as David’s father began to raise the pistol toward her and the mystical ball.
It was inconceivable. What power was this mortal drawing upon that he could accomplish such a feat? “You can’t!” she roared, “I won’t allow it.” Marella concentrated, adding her powers to those of the spirit within the ball. This mortal had to be controlled, possessed.
The gun became heavier, Tom’s arm was as a block of lead. The gun had to drop, as all massive things must. It was not the thought of his own death that frightened him. No, it was to have traveled so far, to have learned the truth, only to have failed his son. To succumb to this witch, the same one who had given his son a living death was inconceivable. He couldn’t let that happen. It was only the love for his son that enabled him to endure the terrible anguish, the pain that brought tears of blood to his eyes.
He moved forward, challenging the power of a demonic spirit and immortal practitioner of the black arts. He directed the weapon at the center of the brightly glowing sphere, wrapped in a swirling maelstrom of color. His finger seemed without joints, a lead rod, physically unable to yield, yet it did, he willed it to bend toward the trigger. Pressure increased, the steel arch moved, the pain! “For you, David,” he whispered.
“No!” shrieked Marella, as the bullet rushed from the barrel.
The power of the crystal increased during those microseconds of flight, like a terrible and swift hand it deflected the shard of lead toward the left, away from its natural course. It wasn’t enough.
The bullet plunged into the crystal, shattering it in a fiery explosion that incinerated the tent and lit up the night sky. The mighty blast swept outward, twisting, then toppling the great Ferris wheel, sending it crashing down into the empty concession stands, where great crowds had stood but an hour earlier. The cleansing flames raged through the unholy carnival, consuming everything in their path.
“One would have thought that this was a munitions dump, not a carnival,” remarked Sheriff Caldwell, as he watched the powerful streams of water from eight fire trucks combat the blaze. Over his shoulder, the light of dawn was beginning to shed its luminance upon the tragedy.
“Thank heavens that the fairgrounds are so far from town,” observed the young deputy. “That blast blew out windows at Henderson’s ranch more than half a mile away. Practically blew old man Henderson out of bed.”
“Any injuries there?” asked the sheriff.
“Thankfully, no.”
“We were just lucky. Had this thing happened an hour or so earlier, there might well have been several hundred people here.”
“What the hell could cause a blast like that?” asked the deputy, scratching his head in puzzlement.
“I don’t know. I was talking to the fire marshal an hour ago, and it has him stumped too. Witnesses claim that the fire was red at first, a crimson red!” The sheriff looked back toward the parking lot, where a single white Volvo sat. “Any idea whose car that is?”
“It has California plates,” replied the deputy. “I put in a call to the California Highway Patrol. The owner is one Thomas D. Tomlinson of Fresno. He wasn’t employed by the carnival. He is or was a police detective with the Fresno PD.”
“Maybe he was involved in an investigation,” suggested Caldwell.
“Not likely,” said the deputy. “He was on personal leave, something about his dying son. I don’t know why he was here.”
“Long way to come to the carnival,” remarked the sheriff, rubbing his tired eyes. “We’ll look into it once things are under control here. Damn, what a night.”
The clamoring of the phone on the control room table startled Ron, who had fallen asleep in his chair. He looked at his watch with tired eyes, a blurry digital 11:10 am greeted him. He had spent most of the night talking with Sybil and Connie, making plans. Now he wondered if that time might have been better spent with the sand man. Three nights of sparse sleep were taking their toll. He looked to his left to find Sybil reading an old cloth bound book. No, she wasn’t reading. Like Ron, she had dozed off. Connie was on hands and knees, her head into an open electronic access panel.
“Would someone get that!” she hollered.
Ron reached for the phone, fumbled for the speaker button so that the others might listen in. It was long distance. Dr. Wilson was calling from Fresno. His news was more alarming than the clatter that had announced it.
“Ron, David Tomlinson’s father was killed last night.”
The shock jolted Ron to alertness. “I remember you talking about him. How did it happen?”
“I don’t know exactly,” admitted Dr. Wilson. “I talked to him two days ago. He had become a man obsessed, obsessed with locating that damned Bargo Carnival and the fortune teller that he was convinced was behind his son’s coma. He traveled to Elko, Nevada to have some sort of showdown with her. He was convinced that if he could just find the fortune teller that had cast a spell on his son he might free him from the coma. I told him to hold tight until I got there but he wouldn’t listen.”
Dr. Wilson hesitated. “His wife called me early this morning, gave me the news. She was in a terrible state. There’s no explaining what happened, but the entire carnival was destroyed by an explosion late last night. Tom Tomlinson was killed in the blast.”
“What the hell did he do? Do you think he took some sort of high explosives with him?” asked Ron.
“I don’t see how,” replied Wilson. “He was a police detective but he was not an explosives expert. There were wild stories about the blast, about crimson red flames and pyrotechnics of a sort none there had ever seen.”
“Oh my god, he must have destroyed one of the crystal balls!” remarked Sybil, who seemed suddenly alert. “That has to be it.”
“Maybe,” said Wilson, but it gets stranger. “Last night David was dying. I know, I was there at his bedside. I wasn’t sure that he would make it through the night. But that was last night. This morning his condition had improved markedly. His mother and I will be transporting him back to York tomorrow. We’ll be there by late afternoon. FENS needs to be ready.”
“It will be,” vowed Connie.
“You’ll have at least a dozen Hobart’s children at the institute by tomorrow evening,” continued Wilson. “They’ve suffered enough. I want them rescued from that nightmare world they’re in as soon as they arrive and we can get them prepped.”
“What about the drells?” Ron asked.
“To hell with the drells,” said Wilson. “We’ll worry about them later.
“Yes, doctor,” confirmed Ron.
“I must admit, I’m becoming cautiously optimistic about our plan,” said Connie, as Ron hung up the phone. “I think we might be able to pull those young people out of that hell the drells created for them.”
“Don’t count your dragons before they’re hatched, my child,” replied Sybil. “An awful lot depends on how well Debbie’s negotiations with Lukor go. If we don’t find a weak point in the drells’ armor, or if the wulvers are unwilling to become involved, we’re going to be in a world of hurt, as are all of those kids.”
Chapter 17
The group was making their way along the shores of the subterranean sea when the rumbling began. It began as a distant sound of thunder, heard more than felt. It seemed to be emanating from somewhere out there beyond the subterranean sea. But it was building rapidly, drawing closer. The thunderous cacophony reverberating from the walls of the titanic cavern became nearly deafening. The ground beneath their feet began to shake. Indeed, the whole cavern seemed in motion.
“An earthquake?” Camron asked.
“Ner have I felt the likes of this,” said Lukor, looking about.
From the mists above huge stalactites plunged like daggers into the great sea. Even the mighty crystals that were the source of most of the light in this place dimmed and flickered ominously.
Gw
en held tight to Marci, who knelt by her side. The others looked about nervously, struggling to keep their balance.
The quake continued for nearly a minute. Then it ended as quickly as it had begun. The echoes of the geologic event reverberated from the distant walls for several minutes, eventually fading into the background.
Debbie almost expected some sort of towering tsunami wave to arise from the great sea, a wave that would threaten their very lives. Yet it never happened.
“What was that?” asked Leslie.
“I am not sure,” admitted Abaddon. “What I can say is that it was accompanied by strong disturbances within the ether.”
“Within the what?” Debbie asked.
“It is difficult to explain,” said Abaddon. “What is certain is that it was no ordinary earthquake. It was not caused by a stirring of the rocks deep beneath us. Its cause was within the fabric of the universe itself. “
That was a hard concept for Debbie to digest. “You’re not saying that the whole universe shook are you?”
“No,” said Abaddon. “I am saying that was the source of the disturbance. The origin of the disturbance was not within this cavern, nor was it within the rocks above or below. It was produced by a highly focused shock wave that traveled through the ether. Its origin is unknown.”
The explanation still didn’t make sense to Debbie, not exactly, but she let it pass.
They proceeded on all the more cautiously wondering what might happen next. There were no aftershocks and no tsunamis. They reached their hiding place along the shoreline sooner than they had expected. Here they encountered David alive and well. More than that, he was on his feet. Debbie embraced him.
“I was so afraid,” she exclaimed. “I was afraid you wouldn’t be here when we got back.”
“Where did you think I was going to go?” David asked, his voice loud and clear. “I wasn’t about to go for a swim.”
“Your voice,” said Lukor, “this is the second time that the elixir has worn off. First Debbie, and now you. What happened?”
The Realm of the Drells Page 24