by Harvey Click
Naomi noticed warm rain blurring her eyes, and it took her a moment to realize the rain was tears.
“Her name is Mary Ash,” she said.
“Now we’re getting somewhere. Who’s Mary Ash?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how do you know her name?”
“She . . . she . . .” Naomi didn’t want to mention Dexter and was too confused to think of any other explanation. “I’ve had quite enough of you!” she shouted. “Now take my purse and get out!”
His knife flashed, and something fell on the floor. It was one of Miss Barkley’s fingers.
“Try and remember who Mary Ash is,” he said. “I ain’t got all night.”
“I have her address on an envelope somewhere,” Naomi said. She moved her wheelchair back against the side-table where the family Bible sat. Perhaps the word of God would prove helpful. “Let me see,” she said, “I think I stuck it here in my Bible.”
She opened the cover and snatched the little derringer from the hole hollowed out in the pages, but the man’s bony hand grasped her wrist before she could get it cocked. She pummeled his face with a strength she hadn’t felt for years, and the gun fired. The tall man jumped back and clutched his side.
The derringer slipped from Naomi’s hand, and she fell out of her wheelchair trying to reach it. Nerves snapped like whips down her left leg as she rolled over. She lay there and took stock. Her left knee was probably broken and the gun was hopelessly buried beneath it. The monster was still standing. He was reaching inside his coat to feel his wound, so it probably wasn’t more than a scratch.
This is my last minute, she thought. Nothing left now but the past. Take my purse and all these grimy old paintings, who cares now? He won’t get my jewels unless he can open the safe, but he’ll probably find my pearl necklace. I told Miss Barkley to put it away.
She felt something stuck in the palm of her hand like a thorn, and she pulled it out. It was his filthy black fingernail; it must have come off in the struggle. She was staring at it when his knife opened her throat.
“You didn’t have to start shooting,” he said. “We could a done this nice and peaceful.”
The rain clouds in her eyes were so thick she couldn’t see. Then the clouds parted, and she saw her killer standing above her. His thin face looked grim and forlorn, and she was glad she didn’t have to trade places with him. She tried to speak, but the air gurgled out her throat.
“Be quiet now and go to sleep,” Daddy said. He was telling a story. “Late one night an old beggar dressed in foul-smelling rags showed up at the door. He looked hungry and heart-sick, but my little princess could see that he was an ogre in disguise. She didn’t fear the ogre nor the terror of night because she had something that could destroy him in the end. She had his filthy black fingernail.”
Naomi clutched the fingernail tightly in her fist as the numb chill of death swept over her.
***
Darrel Kane stumbled through tree-choked darkness for a long time before the yellow glow of a window led him to the house. He wasn’t a country person and couldn’t see why anyone except a plain damn fool would want to be, but even those who wanted to be ought to cut some weeds and mow their grass once in a while. The mess he’d been wading through apparently was the old woman’s yard. Thorny brush and shoulder-tall thistles came right up to her house like they were planning to move inside. The house took up half a city block but was so ugly even crack dealers would find a different block to live on. Looked like one good loud fart would bring it down, and only the rats would care.
The cold breeze wasn’t the only reason he was shivering. Maybe the Indian wasn’t nuts, and maybe Joe Ryver really was hiding behind a tree or was inside the house. This wasn’t what Kane was hired to do. He was supposed to be sitting in a safe-house with four armed agents backing him up. What was he supposed to do now, go in and wake the old lady up and ask her if she needed some aspirin or a bedpan?
Fuck this. He’d done enough work for one night. He started back through the tangled mess toward his car, thinking of his roll of summer sausage and his pumpernickel and his nice warm cot, and if the Indian bitch didn’t like it she could take a Midol or something. The window-glow soon vanished, and he wondered if he was going in the right direction. Thorns snagged his pants leg, and while he was trying to work them out of the cloth he heard a twig break too close for comfort.
He stood still and listened, and the silence came alive with strange scurries and whispers. Something tall and skinny darted through the darkness off to his right. He switched his flashlight on, but it was just a sapling the breeze had stirred.
His eyes kept pulsing in yellow splashes after he shut off the light, and the trees looked even darker now between the splashes. Another twig snapped.
“Over here,” someone said in a hoarse whisper.
Kane turned and saw a tall stick figure standing beside a tree twenty feet away, but when he switched on his flashlight the man was gone. He pulled his Glock but didn’t know where to aim it because tall shadows seemed to be dancing beside every tree.
“Over here,” the voice said, and Kane saw the skinny man off to his left. There must be two of them. As he aimed his gun at this new one, someone else said, “Here I am, asshole,” and he turned and saw another damn stick-figure.
Kane was wondering whether to shoot or run when a lasso fell around him and yanked him backwards off his feet. Then all the dancing shadows ran together into one skinny man staring down at him with one cold gray eye.
Chapter Nine
The gear that Dexter had packed for his research trip was still in his car, so Grimes told Johnny Burne to go out and get a bag of fresh clothes, and Burne did, and the voider didn’t kill him. Dexter showered and treated his cuts and put on clean clothes and wondered all the while if Burne followed Grimes’ orders because he was too stupid to know there was something out there or because he was smart enough to know there wasn’t. Or maybe, as Grimes had said, the thing out there didn’t want to kill anyone but Dexter.
When he came downstairs, Grimes invited him into his library and shut the door. It was a big room, shelves of books from floor to ceiling, and the must of old paper overwhelmed the smell of lavender. Grimes sat in a leather armchair and motioned to another one just like it, but Dexter didn’t want to sit. If he stayed on his feet he’d stay awake, and if he could stay awake until the old man went to bed, then he could try to find the shotgun and make another attempt to leave. It didn’t seem like much of a plan, but he didn’t want to spend the night here.
Grimes opened a cigar box. “Would you care for one?” he asked.
“No thanks,” Dexter said. He drew back a dusty blue drape and looked out the iron-barred window at the thick woods behind the house. If the thing was out there, he couldn’t see it.
Grimes cut a cigar and lit it. “How about some brandy?”
“No thanks.”
“Very wise. You need to keep a sharp mind.”
Grimes filled a snifter for himself while Dexter examined a screen of gauzy white cloth about six feet square. It stood several feet away from the wall in a beautifully carved wooden frame. It looked like a piece of Victorian chinoiserie, probably used with a magic lantern to give the illusion of invoked spirits during a séance. The gauzy cloth looked so delicate that he wanted to touch it, but when he did his hand went right through. There was nothing in the frame except a pale vapor, or maybe just a film on his eyes.
“What is it?” he asked.
“What do you see?” Grimes asked.
“I don’t know, something like smoke.”
“It’s called a smoke screen,” Grimes said. “Fragments of charged lodestone embedded in the frame concentrate the ether. I daresay you have a good eye—most people are unable to perceive what philosophers call the ‘subtle medium.’ ”
“A hypnotized eye is more like it,” Dexter said. “I don’t get it. You have enough toys here to fill a museum. Did you really need ano
ther one badly enough to rob an old woman?”
“I didn’t rob your aunt.”
“Okay, fine, you had nothing to do with it. You mind telling me why Mary stole it?”
“Perhaps she wants it because others do,” Grimes said.
“And why do they want it?”
“Because of what’s inside.”
“What’s that?”
“Something very rare,” Grimes said. “A spectrehole.”
“What’s a spectrehole?”
“A captured spectron.”
“That doesn’t say much.”
“Is it possible to say all we know?” Grimes asked.
“It’s possible to say more than this,” Dexter said. “Spectrehole, captured spectron, these are just words.”
“Don’t underestimate words,” Grimes said. “Tell me how you found your way out of the void. Words opened the door for you, did they not? A certain sentence, perhaps.”
“The word gives shape and form,” Dexter said.
“Ah yes. The word of the adept determines the form of things. The word gives shape and form. This sentence released you from the void because it’s the ultimate affirmation of the sorcerer’s power. His word is his will, and his will is the law called Logos.”
“Skip the sorcery,” Dexter said. “I just want a few facts.”
“What you call facts won’t help you, Dr. Radcliff. Sorcery is the only way you’ll leave this house alive. You’re thinking that when I go to bed maybe my power of suggestion will wane, and maybe you’ll be able to find my shotgun, and maybe you’ll be able to kill that thing out there, but you’re wrong on all three counts.”
“Why do you want to keep me here?”
“If you leave you’ll die, and at the moment your death doesn’t suit my purpose,” Grimes said. “Of course, that could easily change.”
He filled his brandy snifter with cigar smoke and watched it swirl.
“You’re a passable sorcerer when you have no choice,” he said. “The word gives shape and form is a perfect anagram of open grave with shaded forms. I daresay you’d need pencil and paper to work it out now, but when you saw the world dissolving into chaos you solved the problem with no pencil. First you had to drain the words of their meaning.”
“You’re pretty good at that,” Dexter said. “I’ve been listening to you all night and I haven’t learned anything.”
“Drain words of meaning to discover their true meaning,” Grimes said. “The word is your sword, but it’s been dulled by the tongues of fools licking its edge. Fools have embalmed our words with imbecility and buried them beneath the ballast of bombast. Open grave with shaded forms. Open the word-grave with shaded forms, riddles, anagrams, whatever will shake it awake.”
“You can keep your magic words,” Dexter said. “I’d rather have a sword.”
“Would you?” Grimes got up and took a dagger from a drawer. “Perhaps you’d like to have this.”
Dexter froze against the wall as the knife flashed through the air and bit into the plaster an inch above his shoulder.
“There, you have a piece of sharp steel, but it won’t do you any good against me or the voider. If you want to leave this house, you must learn your way out.” Grimes tapped his forehead and said, “This is your weapon.” He pulled some books from the shelves and threw them on a table. “These are your weapons.” He sat down and scowled at his brandy.
It was a nice dagger, jewel-studded leather hilt, blade eight inches long and sharp on both edges. Grimes tossed him a leather scabbard, and Dexter attached it to his belt. He went to the table and glanced at the books Grimes had pulled out. The titles promised hermetic revelations, but he knew the pages were filled with the same kind of nonsense he’d been listening to all night. The dagger seemed more useful.
“Any one of those books explains how to kill that thing out there,” Grimes said. “But you could read all of them and not understand a syllable because you’ve already buried their words in the grave of your educated mind. When you were a child, the word book meant colorful pages evoking worlds of fairies and magical creatures, but you’ve long since redefined it to mean a dry repository of dead words. Therefore I want you to forget the word book.”
“Mr. Grimes, I haff exciting news!” someone said.
Dexter turned and saw a figure moving on the gauzy smoke screen. It was a heavy-set man wearing a rumpled green suit and thick glasses halfway down his chubby nose.
“Dumbstruck I vas this evening vith a revelation! ‘Eureka,’ I cried, ‘Eureka!’ A new number I now haff. A paradoxical polyhedron it is possible to construct vith a mere sixty-four points!”
“Please, Professor Krickbaum,” Grimes said. “Can’t you see I have a guest?”
“Oh?” The man pushed up his glasses and peered around the room until he spotted Dexter. “Ach! In a state of projection it is difficult for me to see. Besides, I am vanting new glasses, and besides, your thimble stood open. I leaf now.”
“You may stay,” Grimes said. “This is Dr. Radcliff.”
“Ach, Dr. Ratliff! So agreeable it is to meet you here at last. Many good things the visdom-sayer has said about you.”
“Dr. Radcliff will be staying with me for a time,” Grimes said. “He has picked up a voider.”
Krickbaum shrank back into the screen. “Ach! Such nasty things. A nice pretty voman I vonce knew invoked a voider. Pregnant with child she vas and so very attractive too. She vatched it rip the fetus from her nice plump belly and peel off its skin like a big banana and eat it right there in front of her.” He started to laugh, and his glasses slid down his oily nose. “The big joke is, the voider of course vas pregnant too, so vhen its baby come out—”
“That will do,” Grimes said. “Dr. Radcliff is frightened enough already. Why don’t you show him how you can stand in front? This will be good training for him—no?”
“Ach! So difficult it is to project with no medium but the air. Let me see.” Krickbaum pushed up his glasses and balled up his face like a fist. “Now I vill try.”
Holding his arms straight out at his sides like a rope walker’s balancing bar, he stepped out of the smoke screen. He approached Dexter, bowed, turned a graceful pirouette on his tiny feet, giggled, and hurried back into the screen.
“Vas I quite opaque?” he asked.
“Quite,” Grimes said. “Come, Dr. Radcliff, let me show you.”
Dexter followed him behind the screen and saw rays of colored light playing out of a small red stone sitting on a shelf. Grimes lifted the stone, and two tiny images of Krickbaum danced on the lenses of his glasses.
“Interesting, don’t you think?” he said. “Professor Krickbaum is transmitting his simulacrum through this lovely ruby. Or is he? Is the sorcery in the stone or in his mind or in ours? Does the ruby project light or merely an influence that makes us believe we see light in the semblance of a man? I daresay if we took a photograph, it would show nothing but two men bedazzled by a gemstone.”
“I haff tried to explain to you, a special type of film vill vork only.” Speaking from Grimes’ glasses, Krickbaum’s voice sounded like a tinny old stereo. “One day soon I vill proof. Now please put me down! I dislike to project on irregular surfaces.”
“Goodnight, Professor Krickbaum,” Grimes said. He set the ruby on the shelf and capped it with a silver thimble. “The thimble blocks the light or whatever we see or imagine we see,” he said. “But what we see can also watch us. Thimbles have a way of falling over.”
Dexter felt dizzy and sick. He started to fall, and Grimes grasped his arm.
“It’s my fault,” Grimes said. “I shouldn’t have held the ruby so close to your eyes. The ethereal emissions always affect novices this way. I’ll show you to your room.”
He held Dexter’s arm, and they started walking toward the library door. Dexter’s legs felt long and strange and they moved heavily, as if wading through water. He struggled to remember something he wanted to ask.
“Explain
the words ember and bitter,” he said.
Grimes stopped and faced him, silvery eyes glinting behind wire glasses. “You disappoint me,” he said. “You have a Ph.D. and you don’t know the meaning of the name Mary?”
Mary means bitter, Dexter realized. Mary—bitter. Ash—ember. Bitter Ember.
“So Bitter Ember is some kind of nickname?” he asked.
Grimes shrugged. “If you had known her name, would you have known her heart?” he asked. “Would you have known that she was going to steal the Horn? What are names? Is my name really Michael Grimes? What’s the name of the things that fill these shelves?”
He took Dexter’s arm again, and they continued wading through the long room. As they were leaving the library, Dexter looked around at the old leather-bound things on the shelves.
Funny. He couldn’t remember what they were called.
***
Bitter Ember sat in the front room of the safe-house and stared at the tracking stone. Three slender brass rods met above a triangular iron base to form a pyramid a foot high. A stone pendulum dangled from the apex above a copper-mesh cage containing a tiny scrap of dried skin. The stone was supposed to detect sympathy between the skin and its one-time owner. If he came in range, the stone was supposed to pull in his direction like a compass.
But like most of Grimes’ toys, it took a lot of imagination to make it work. Or maybe the problem was that the piece of skin had been separated from the face of its owner for too many years. Bitter had always kept it in a plastic bag, but its essence was gone.
Josh looked up from his laptop screen and said, “Occultist nerd number two hundred just cracked the first riddle.”
“Maybe Grimes made it too easy,” she said.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I just think there’s a lot of creeps out there who know their abracadabras. Here’s another. Two hundred and one, and the night is young.”