The Madness Below: An Alastair Stone Urban Fantasy Novel (Alastair Stone Chronicles Book 20)

by R. L. King

  “Did you find something?” Dez asked, coming in behind him.

  “Yes. They got in through here, and they used magic.”

  She gasped. “Magic? Are you sure?”

  “Quite sure. My guess is you won’t find any other evidence they were here—footprints, fingerprints, that sort of thing.” He indicated the kitchen cutaway, which looked out over the family room. “They’d barely have needed to come in more than a few steps. If the laptop was all they were after, they could use a telekinetic spell from here to pick it up and be in and out in less than thirty seconds.”

  “But—” Dez seemed to have lost her usual confidence as she looked back and forth between the kitchen door and the table where her computer had been. “Why…would a mage want to take my laptop?” She swallowed hard and got a drink of water from the sink. “You think this is about the video, don’t you?”

  Stone nodded. “I do. And I’ve got no idea why someone magical would want to steal it, but the fact that they do troubles me.”

  “Those tabloid guys from the Busy Bee last night—Oh, God, if they got hold of that video, it’ll be all over the news by tonight. And if my bosses find out where they got it, I’ll be out of a job before the day’s over.”

  Stone gripped her shoulder. “Calm down. While it’s certainly possible that those reporters had magic—it’s a useful thing to have for anyone who sneaks around for a living—it’s also possible that if they’re the ones who took your laptop, they aren’t actually tabloid reporters at all.”

  “What? What else would they be?”

  It was another good question, and another one that Stone didn’t have an answer for.

  “Do you think somebody else figured out that there’s something supernatural going on here? Maybe they’re doing the same thing we are—trying to find out what happened.”

  “Perhaps so—but if they are, the fact that they’ve broken into your home instead of trying to join forces with us troubles me too.”

  “Why would they know we have magic, though?”

  Stone nodded in approval. She was asking the right questions. “If they overheard us last night despite my spell, that means they’ve got to have magic of their own—which means they probably knew we were using it to keep them from listening.”

  “We should probably try to track them down. If they’re still in town, maybe we can—”

  “I agree with you—but not yet. I think the most urgent thing for us to do at the moment is go to the campground, so I can get a look around the area. It’s possible I’m being overly paranoid, but it doesn’t make me feel comfortable that one or more other mages are trying to find whatever it is before we do.”

  Especially if it’s one of the rifts. If it was, that meant someone else might know about them, and that wasn’t something he wanted to think about.

  8

  It took a little over an hour to drive to the Lake Nepauhauk campground, and Dez seemed restless the whole way.

  “Are you all right?” Stone asked. He’d been amusing himself watching the scenery roll by, occasionally switching to magical sight to watch the trees’ auras. A light, drizzly rain had begun to fall about halfway into their journey.

  “Yeah.” She stared straight ahead at the twisty two-lane road, gripping the wheel tightly.

  “Something’s on your mind.”

  She sighed and didn’t answer for a while. “I guess I’m feeling a little…I don’t know, violated? I’ve never had my home broken into before, by mages or anybody else. I can’t help thinking about them standing in my kitchen, touching my stuff…What if my boys had been home?”

  “I understand. I’m sure it must be disturbing.”

  “Disturbing.” She snorted. “‘Disturbing’ is a group of high-school kids murdering fourteen people with no apparent provocation, then standing around chanting some crazy-ass shit in an empty classroom. This is nothing compared to that. But I still feel like I want to go home and sanitize everything in my kitchen, you know?”

  “If it’s any consolation, I doubt they touched anything else. If they were after the laptop, they’d want to be quick about it.”

  “It doesn’t help.” With a sigh, she glanced quickly at him and then back at the road. “Let’s change the subject, okay? If I dwell on it, it’s just going to get me all worked up and there’s nothing I can do about it.” She gave a little laugh. “I barely know anything about you, and here I am letting you stay in my guest bedroom. What’s life like out in California?”

  Stone shrugged. “About the same as it is here—except we do lock our doors at night.”

  “You teach at Stanford? I’ve never even heard of ‘Occult Studies.’ Sounds like something out of a Lovecraft story.”

  Stone raised an eyebrow. “You’re familiar with Lovecraft?”

  “Oh, yeah, everybody around here’s heard of him. He came from this part of the country, you know. Rhode Island, I think. A lot of his stories were set in the New England area. Him and Stephen King, but he’s up in Maine. I tried to read one of his books—Lovecraft, I mean—but I couldn’t get through it.”

  “Yes, the prose can be a bit…impenetrable.”

  “That too, but—” She shuddered. “It was just…creepy, you know? There was something not right about that man’s mind, to come up with that kind of stuff.” She was quiet for a while, then ventured, “Have you ever dealt with anything like that? Do things like he wrote about exist in the world?”

  Stone debated how to answer that. I’ve seen things that would make you roll up into a fetal ball and never leave your house again hardly seemed productive. “Well,” he said with a chuckle, “I’ve never met a Great Old One, thank goodness.”

  “You’re deflecting.”

  “I suppose I am, a bit. I’ve dealt with some fairly horrific things in my career. But most of them aren’t a threat to the average person, mage or mundane.”

  “Most of them.” She paused again, her hands squeezing the wheel. “But you think this one might be, whatever it is.”

  “I don’t know. I hope not. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned.”

  “Do you have any idea what it might be? Have you ever seen a case like this before?”

  She was grasping at straws, trying to pull in anything she could find to help this make sense to her. Stone had seen that many times in mundanes who were thrust into the world of magic. He didn’t blame them—without the Talent or even the background to understand the supernatural world, it was all they could do. “I’ve seen… similar cases,” he said carefully.

  “You have?” She glanced his way again, surprised.

  “Not exactly the same, but similar.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  “Well…there was one a few years back where some spirits were possessing people and forcing them to commit horrific acts, because they fed on negative emotional energy.”

  “Seriously?” Both her posture and her aura tensed.

  “Yes. But we dealt with them. They’re no longer a threat.”

  “Do you think our kids are possessed?”

  “I’m not ruling out any possibilities at this point—not without more evidence. But it’s definitely something I’m considering. There’s a lot of supernatural activity in the New England area, so there’s a chance they might have encountered something out in the woods.”

  She mulled that over. “You said similar cases. Plural. What are the other ones?”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t give you any details about the other one I suspect.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve made certain promises not to reveal what I know about it, and I can’t break them. But the good news is that if it turns out I’m correct and it is the cause, it might be easier to deal with.” He hoped it was true. He still couldn’t close a rift if he found one, but if he could figure out how to get to the students, he might be able to block its influence on them.

  The one thing that concerned him, though, and lessened hi
s certainty that another rift might be responsible for the students’ actions, was that numerous other people—police investigators, reporters, and curious tourists—had been tramping around at the campground and along the hiking trail for the last several days, yet so far nobody else had shown any signs of ill effects. While it was certainly possible that all seven of the students—and nobody else—had latent magical ability, it wasn’t at all likely. Which meant either this case wasn’t caused by a rift, or it was a new kind of rift that behaved completely unlike any of the others Stone had discovered.

  “You sound so calm about all of this,” Dez said. “Like it’s something you deal with every day.”

  “It’s not. This kind of thing is fairly rare, even for me. Most of the time, I teach my classes, go for long runs late at night, and spend time with my friends and my cat. I’m not terribly exciting in the main.”

  She offered a genuine smile, and her chuckle was amused. “You have a cat?”

  “I do. His name is Raider, and he’s quite the miscreant.”

  “I was going to say I can’t picture you with a cat, but I think maybe I can.” She slowed the Jeep and pointed. “We’re almost there now. There’s the convenience store. I want to stop and get something to drink. Did you want to talk to the owner?”

  “I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”

  Stone followed her inside. Fortunately, it appeared that most of the attention of the last few days had finally settled down: there were no other customers in the small shop. He looked around, taking in the displays of snack foods, beer and liquor, cigarettes and tobacco, supplies for minor car maintenance, and a shelf full of the overpriced necessities people tended to forget to bring along, like toilet paper, shaving cream, and pain relievers.

  The proprietor, a craggy-faced man in his early sixties, watched them as they came in. As Stone approached him, he slid off his tall stool and put down the newspaper he’d been reading. “Help ya?”

  A quick look at his aura showed tense anticipation. Given the number of times he’d probably been questioned, it wasn’t surprising. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  The man sighed. “You a cop?”

  Stone glanced at Dez, who wasn’t wearing her police uniform today. “Er—no.”

  “You want to ask questions, then, you need to buy something.”

  “Fair enough.” He slid a twenty-dollar bill across the counter. “I’ll buy some answers. You tell me when I’ve hit my quota, and if your answers are helpful, there’s more where that came from.”

  The man’s eyebrows came up. Apparently, nobody else had tried that approach yet. He plucked up the twenty and poked it into his shirt pocket. “Go ahead.”

  “You saw all the campers in your shop last Friday evening as they were arriving, correct?”

  “Yeah. They all came in and bought a bunch of junk food, soda, energy drinks, that kind of thing.”

  “Did you notice anything odd about them? Were any of them acting strangely?”

  “Nope. They were actin’ like your typical kids. Some of ’em were quiet, some were hyper, and all of ’em seemed like they were happy to be off the bus.”

  “What about the two teachers? Anything unusual about them?”

  The man shook his head. “Didn’t really notice them. They bought a couple things, but mostly just hung back and waited for the kids to finish up.”

  Stone nodded. “All right. And then you didn’t see any of them again until Saturday night, yes?”

  “Yeah. Just the one—one of the girls. She came in around eleven, right about the time I was about to close.”

  “Did she buy anything?”

  “Energy drink. She tried to buy beer, but changed her mind when I asked for her ID.”

  “What did she do after that?”

  “Went outside and paced around.”

  “Did you see anybody else in the area? Perhaps out in the parking lot, or hiding in the trees nearby? Any vehicles?”

  “Nope on all counts. I got a few cameras around, since it’s pretty remote out here, especially this time o’ year. The cops already looked at my footage. Nobody else around, just her.”

  “Did she do anything else but pace?”

  “She looked pissed. Kept tryin’ her phone and then lookin’ down the road, like she expected somebody to show up.”

  “You said you were about to close. How long did you stay around?”

  “Until she left, about a half-hour later. I did a little cleanup in the store until then.”

  “Why did you wait?”

  By this point, Dez had returned to the counter and was listening to the shopkeeper’s story too. She put a big bottle of water and a package of beef jerky on the counter.

  “I didn’t want her to be out there alone,” the man said. “I got me a couple daughters. They’re grown now, but I still get nervous seein’ young girls out alone at night.”

  Stone nodded. “And she eventually left? No one came to pick her up?”

  “Nope. And when she left, she stormed off like she was chewin’ nails. She was still tryin’ to reach somebody on her phone, but I guess they weren’t answerin’, or else she couldn’t get service. We’re real spotty out here.”

  “Was she heading back toward the camp?”

  “Yep, up the road there.” He pointed.

  “Okay.” Stone sighed. “Two more questions. Am I still good?”

  “Yeah, you’re fine.” He rang up the water and the beef jerky. “That’ll be seven-twenty, by the way.”

  While Dez paid for her snacks, Stone considered his next questions. “Did you see the group again after that?”

  “Yeah, on Sunday afternoon when they were headin’ out. They all came in again to buy more snacks. It’s a wonder kids nowadays don’t weigh three hundred pounds, with all the crap they eat.”

  Stone didn’t comment on the fact that the storekeeper was apparently fine with selling all that so-called ‘crap.’ Instead, he asked, “Did you notice anything unusual about them then?”

  “Unusual like how? They looked tired, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Tired?”

  “Yeah. Not as squirrelly as they were on Friday. Quieter. A couple of ’em didn’t even come in.”

  “Did you overhear any of their conversations?”

  “They weren’t talkin’. They just came in, got their stuff, and went back out. The only ones talkin’ were the two teachers, just about normal stuff like watchin’ the Patriots game that night.”

  Stone sighed. The conversation had gotten him nowhere. He was sure this guy had told the police the exact same story; nothing in his aura suggested he was hiding or lying about anything. “All right,” he said. “One more, and this one’s more subjective. Was there anything they did that struck you as at all odd?” He continued watching the man’s aura carefully.

  The storekeeper considered, studying Stone. “Well…maybe. Maybe not.”

  “What was it?”

  He squinted. “Couple of ’em were lookin’ kinda like you.”

  “Like me? What do you mean by that?”

  “Like you were lookin’ just now. Like you were watchin’ somethin’ in the next county. I didn’t remember it till I saw you, but a couple of those kids were doin’ the same thing—except they were lookin’ at each other when they did it.” He shook his head. “Can’t believe I forgot about that. You think I should tell the cops? Is it important?”

  Stone shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He put another twenty on the counter. “Thank you very much for chatting with us. You’ve been very helpful.”

  They headed out, leaving him standing there, bewildered, behind his counter as the little bell on the door announced their exit.

  9

  “What did he mean, they ‘looked like you’?” Dez asked when they were back in the Jeep and rumbling up toward the campsite. “You lied to him, didn’t you? That was important.”

  “Yes. I was using magical sight to watch
his aura, to see if he was lying to us. I’m pretty good at hiding it, but there’s a certain blank stare that sometimes goes with it, especially if somebody is looking right at me when I do it.”

  Her brow furrowed. “You think those kids were using magical sight?”

  “No, I doubt it. But I wouldn’t be surprised if some kind of communication was passing between them.”

  “Like telepathy?”

  “Maybe—but probably something more primal than that. It seems from that video that they were linked somehow. My current working hypothesis is that whatever happened to them while they were away from the cabins must have done it.”

  Dez shuddered. “This is kind of freaking me out.”

  “I’m not surprised. Do you want to stop? You could drop me off at the campsite and wait for me at the convenience store if you like.”

  She waved him off. “No, no, I said I was in this and I am. Besides, I get the impression you don’t spend a lot of time out in the wilderness. Never mind whatever supernatural nasty is lurking around—if I send you up there by yourself, you’ll either get lost or get eaten by a bear or something.”

  Stone chuckled. “Guilty as charged. I’m not much of an outdoorsman.”

  “Do you think we’re going to find something dangerous up there?” She took a long swig of her water and swallowed hard.

  “You’re concerned that whatever influenced the students might influence us as well?”

  “Well…yeah, to be honest.”

  “I can’t say it’s not possible, but I can say it’s unlikely.”

  Dez turned right onto a badly paved side road, barely a lane and a half wide, past a scarred wooden sign labeled Nepauhauk Campground, 1. “Why do you think so?”

  “Because there were a lot of people up here wandering about, and none of them have killed anyone. I think whatever’s here chose those students specifically.”

  “Why would it do that? What’s special about them?”