Magic Time: Ghostlands

by Marc Scott Zicree

  Rafe Dahlquist looked up from his position by a bank of computer screens, where he was monitoring the power. “We’re optimal. Just give me the high sign when you’re ready.”

  Cal nodded. A low hum of electricity, of turbines whirring along with increasing power, vibrated through the room and through all of them, like the steady pulse of a giant.

  Cal glanced at his watch, then at the big steel front door. Colleen could detect his impatience, the pregame tension in him, which they all felt one way or another. But she knew that he wouldn’t set things rolling until he had this one last piece in place.

  He didn’t have long to wait, as a moment later the door swung open and Doc entered, rolling in a dolly with a big cardboard box strapped to it. He set it upright and released the strap, easing the box to the floor. Crouching, he opened the flaps.

  Everyone gathered around, acutely curious, because even though Doc had prepped them on exactly what he was doing, hearing about it was one thing and seeing quite another.

  “You will have to excuse the workmanship,” Doc said by way of apology. “My needlework is usually confined to stitching up incisions.”

  He withdrew the bulky pieces, and a number of the onlookers gasped. Their surface was blackly iridescent, roughly pebbled and ridged, bespeaking power, even put to this new purpose.

  Colleen found the padded shapes oddly familiar, and in a rush it came to her. “Don’t tell me, you raided the athletic department.”

  Doc nodded. “I utilized shoulder pads and other protective pieces for the framework. As for the rest…”

  He didn’t need to finish; they all knew.

  The thick leather garments were from the skin of a dragon—the dragon that Cal had killed, Arcott had brought here at their request, and Doc had autopsied—fashioned now into body armor and visored helmets.

  “Sadly enough, there was only sufficient, um”—Doc searched for a delicately appropriate euphemism—“raw material to provide three full ensembles.” He glanced inquiringly at Cal, who drew near the box.

  Cal lifted out a helmet, tunic and pants. “Mr. Shango?”

  Shango approached and took them, eased his big frame into them.

  “Goldie?” Cal said, proffering the next set.

  “Thanks, but I’m uncomfortable enough in my own skin.”

  Cal nodded acceptance, then glanced inquiringly at Enid Blindman, who sat cross-legged on the floor nearby, tuning up his jumbo maple guitar, limbering up his harmonica.

  “’Preciate the offer,” Enid piped up, and Colleen was struck again by how even his speaking voice was musical. “But I need to keep loose, so’s I can spin my own kinda shell.”

  “Right,” Cal agreed. Colleen knew as well as Cal that Enid’s ability to weave a musical cloak about them, to shield them from being detected by whatever dwelt at the Source, might be their most vital armor of all.

  Cal turned to Colleen, raising the garments.

  “Uh-uh, no way,” she said, backing. “Only two more sets, I know which of my favorite bookends are gonna be in them.”

  Cal moved to speak, but Doc cut him off, took Colleen aside.

  “Don’t give me that kindly Russian doctor act, Viktor. I mean it.”

  Ignoring this, he said, “We both know that you are by far the better fighter, Colleen, and in any skirmish you will be on the front lines, no matter what any might command to the contrary.” He stepped close, peering at her with those gray eyes that had seen so much anguish and retained such compassion. “It would ease my mind greatly.”

  Dammit, trust him not to fight fair…. She felt her resolve melt like an Eskimo Pie shot into the sun.

  Scowling with extremely bad grace, she stalked back to Cal. “Gimme that,” she said, snatching up the grotesque rig.

  She slid her arms into the loose-fitting tunic—which smelled thickly of musk and other loathsome things that made her want to lose last year’s lunch—and pulled it on. Christ, she felt lost in this thing; it made her feel like a little girl wearing Daddy’s clothes. She pushed the thought away, subdued her rising gorge. Seeing that the sides had leather laces (she didn’t even want to think about what part they came from), she tightened the garment until it fit better and allowed a proper range of motion.

  She saw that Doc was holding the remaining suit of armor toward Cal. “No arguments, Calvin. We both know what is required here.”

  “Gandhi only wore a loincloth,” Cal said.

  “Yes, and look what happened to him.”

  Cal sighed and took the armor.

  “Spacibo,” Doc said.

  Cal gave Dahlquist the thumbs-up.

  As soon as Rafe Dahlquist keyed in the initiating sequence, the gemstones encrusting the Spirit Radio took on a numinous glow, a largeness and purity of light like the clarified essences of color produced by a prism. And like a wall dissolving to reveal an unknown territory beyond, the blue crystal faded from sight, replaced by a glowing fog…a fog that stayed bound within the parameters of Mama Diamond’s gems.

  It no longer looked anything like a blue crystal, Mama Diamond mused as she stared into the hypnotic, swirling mists writhing voluptuously within the flashing circle of gems. If she had to describe it (and she was grateful she would never be called upon to do so), she supposed the closest she could come would be to say it looked like every light on the Vegas Strip as seen through her milky bad eye (her formerly bad eye, she corrected herself; since the tête-à-tête with Stern at her shop, she was seeing just fine through it, thank you very much), if someone at the same time were slowly flipping her ass-over-teakettle so everything in her field of vision did a languorous three-sixty.

  “The field’s holding steady, we’ve got it contained,” Rafe Dahlquist reported to Cal. “But I wouldn’t trust it longer than twenty minutes, not at this point.”

  “Okay, so the meter’s running.” In his rough-hewn black armor and helmet, Cal Griffin looked incongruously like some slightly undersized biker from hell or mountain man who skinned and tanned his own duds—certainly not like the modest young man who’d been surreptitiously practicing his sword moves on top of the dorm building so no one might see him being so lethally beautiful in his movements.

  Cal nodded toward Colleen Brooks and Doc Lysenko, Herman Goldman, Shango, Howard Russo and Enid Blindman. Howie had a ruby-glittered, Tech Nine automatic stuck in his belt, while the others sported gem-encrusted rifles slung over their backs, plus their usual weapon of choice—machetes, sledgehammers, crossbows and the like. In addition, Enid was outfitted with his big guitar and the Hohner Meisterklasse harmonica he favored. Larry Shango carried the heavy-duty bag Mama Diamond had seen him load up with the homemade explosives he and Krystee Cott had been cooking up in the chemistry lab.

  But of course, there was no telling whether old-style explosives would work on the other side, Mama Diamond knew; that they did so here was certainly no guarantee.

  And if there was one thing Ely Stern’s unheralded arrival in Burnt Stick had taught her—and nothing along the way had dissuaded her since—it was that the best course of action was to expect the unexpected, and rely on nothing.

  The seven of them approached the roiling portal, its van Gogh palette of lights playing over them, making them look as though they were adorned in living war paint.

  “Now, you remember, Enid,” Howard Russo said, dogging the bluesman as he sauntered toward the rainbow font, “anything grabs you by the short and curlies, you cut and run. No heroics. You don’t want to live on in your music—you want to live on in your body.”

  “’Spect you to do the same it comes to that, Howie,” Enid responded.

  “You can take that to the bank,” Russo muttered.

  Colleen Brooks made a preemptive move to step through the portal, but Cal restrained her.

  “You threw me a party, this one’s mine. I test the water, then you can dive in.”

  “Cal—”

  “No, Colleen.”

  She ran an exasperated hand thro
ugh her short, spiky hair. “How do we know it’s a transporter device, and you’re not walking right into the disintegration chamber? I mean, I think I can confidently say we all saw that Star Trek episode.”

  “Uno momento,” Goldie said. He moved closer to the misty wall of light, turned an ear toward it. “I can hear voices on the other side. Plus I’m getting a murky picture…nothing clear, just a feeling of elbow room. There’s considerable real estate over there.”

  “Well, that certainly reassures me,” Colleen grumbled. But she relented, stepping aside to let Cal take point.

  Concentrating, Mama Diamond felt she too could hear the sounds on the other side, dimly. The noise was an impasto of voices too thick to be comprehensible, but each layered syllable was somehow distinct, embodied, solid. Mama Diamond imagined that if she closed her eyes she would see a legion of ghosts crowding around her. Which was why she kept her eyes firmly open.

  Cal turned to Dahlquist. “If something starts to go south, if it heads toward meltdown, kill it, shut it down. Don’t worry about us.” Mama Diamond read the uncertainty in Dahlquist’s eyes, but he nodded his agreement.

  Cal addressed Krystee Cott, whom he had delegated to command those left standing guard. “Keep everything cool, no one in or out.” He shot a glance at Jeff Arcott, glowering but silent against the wall. Arcott deliberately ignored him.

  As for Theo Siegel and Melissa Wade, Mama Diamond saw each was staring into the portal as though hearing a music being sung only to them—and perhaps, she realized, that was the case.

  Cal turned back toward the portal, was about to step through. It’s now or never, Mama Diamond thought urgently. Three quick strides brought her up to him.

  “Forget something, Mr. Griffin?” she asked pointedly. She might also have said someone, given the promise he’d made her on the roof of the dormitory building. Up close now, she could see that blue sprites of static electricity danced in his hair.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Cal said, not unkindly. “But we’re going to have to take a rain check on that.”

  “Well, that’s all right, dear,” she replied demurely. “I suppose you’d know best about that.”

  Mama Diamond caught Larry Shango’s eye. Did she detect amusement there, or just imagine it? More like he had been there before, and knew her better than that now.

  She stepped back. Cal Griffin gave her a shy smile—ah, there was that boy on the roof again—and walked into nothingness.

  In an instant, Colleen Brooks, Herman Goldman and Doc Lysenko followed him, then Larry Shango and Enid Blindman and Howard Russo were gone into the mist.

  The hum of the massive generators rose up, and Mama Diamond became aware of a sharp metallic smell in the air. It brought to mind the electric Fender guitar Arnie Sproule used to play from time to time; his old tube amp smelled like that when he turned it on after lengthy disuse. Only this was about a thousand times more intense.

  Mama Diamond’s heart was pounding like the hammer on her rusty old alarm clock, like John Henry’s sledge right toward the end before he dropped; she could hear it in her ears, feel it in the veins in her temples.

  It was talking to her, had been talking to her since she had first seen Mr. Shango standing over her on that train platform in Burnt Stick, since she’d encountered Griffin and his friends as she had crouched beside that fear projector in the night-kissed outskirts of Atherton.

  Staring into the shifting curtain of light, ringed by her own glowing treasure, Mama Diamond knew with surety those young ones would need her, desperately and soon.

  Better to ask pardon than permission, Mama Diamond thought, and leapt through the portal of the Spirit Radio.

  THIRTY-SIX

  CITY ON THE EDGE

  Sometimes, Larry Shango thought as he moved cautiously through the glowing fogbank, rifle at the ready, what’s new is old again.

  At least, that’s how it felt to him now, déjà vu all over, exactly the way it was when he’d been all by his lonesome, Sheep Mountain Table faded to invisibility behind him and Fred Wishart, that humorless spectre, about to appear and dispatch him to the land of Emiliano Zapata and cactus soda pop.

  Only this time, Shango had Cal Griffin and his retinue of Colleen Brooks, Doc Lysenko, Herman Goldman, Enid Blindman and Howard Russo along for the ride—which didn’t mean they had any more of a clue as to where they’d landed or were headed in this glowing, impenetrable soup.

  Shango glanced at his watch, which he could just barely make out in the shifting, multicolored light. Eighteen minutes to go…

  “Welcome to South Dakota,” Goldie murmured.

  “I’m open to suggestions,” Cal said.

  Colleen let out a cry. Shango wheeled to see that Mama Diamond had appeared out of nowhere and collided into her from behind. Shango smiled to himself; at least, this was one thing that was no surprise.

  “Come on in, the water’s fine,” said Goldie, utterly unperturbed.

  Cal sighed but said nothing, indicating his acceptance. He continued forward—then halted abruptly, raising a warning hand.

  Shango squinted into the mist ahead of him.

  A figure was appearing.

  It drew closer, gained clarity and solidity.

  But unlike Fred Wishart, this was no phantom assembled from the atoms, from the mist itself….

  Simply a boy, or something a good deal more than a boy, who strode up to them, intent on keeping an appointment.

  “Let me show you the Bridge,” Inigo said.

  Theo Siegel found himself sweating profusely, even though the room was outright frosty, the air circulators keeping the atmosphere at an even low temperature. He wanted everything to go smoothly, for Cal Griffin and his friends to emerge unscathed, for no mishaps to befall them on the other side.

  The dangerous side…

  Which might well have been this side, too, had not Griffin interceded and replaced Jeff Arcott’s hand on the wheel with his own.

  Theo cast an anxious glance Jeff’s way. Jeff glared back at him, finally willing to acknowledge his existence, at least. Theo realized this felt neither better nor worse than Jeff’s initial response of ignoring him entirely.

  Theo chose not to look at Melissa, however, not wanting to risk a second encounter with those accusing eyes, that wounded voice.

  How he wished he could somehow demonstrate to her what dreadful thing he feared would have happened had Jeff’s plan come to fruition.

  In later times, Theo would recall that errant thought and add ruefully, Be careful what you wish for—you might just get it.

  “Ten minutes and counting,” Krystee Cott said to Rafe Dahlquist.

  Suddenly, there was the sound of rending metal, and the bolted steel lab door tore clear of its hinges.

  Flame erupted into the room.

  Amid the screams and pandemonium, Theo heard Krystee Cott shouting orders, saw gunfire erupt toward the doorway. Mike Kimmel grabbed the extinguisher, unleashed it futilely at the growing blaze. The others in the room were dashing this way and that, trying to get clear. As far as Theo could see, no one was seriously hurt—perhaps a deliberate choice on the part of their attacker—

  But the damping equipment, my God…

  It was aflame, melting to slag.

  Through the smoke, Theo became aware of a vast, bony form striding into the room, sweeping people and machinery aside, tearing wiring loose in great, taloned handfuls.

  He had seen this one before, in the night, at the train siding.

  Jeff Arcott had called him by name.

  With claw and fang and fire, the man in black, the dragon thing, destroyed all that held the Infernal Device in check.

  Unhindered now, tendrils of insane purple light shot out of the Spirit Radio’s riotous maw, uncoiling into the room like living things, spreading outward to infect and corrupt all they touched.

  Arcott’s laboratory was alive with energy. Huge sparks, like phantasmal blue lightning, arced between the portal and the laborat
ory walls. The portal itself was as bright as a sheet of sun—a mirror of flame.

  The source of this energy was clearly no longer the massive diesel generators in the physics building’s basement. This energy came from elsewhere, and Theo realized there was nothing he could do about it.

  “Out! Everybody get out!” That was Krystee Cott, shouting to the others over the din, helping them find their way as they flailed and crashed about, blinded by the blaze, gagging on the smoke.

  Through the roar and fumes and glare, Theo could just make out a handful of others clearing the room; from their dim outlines, he thought he discerned Rafe Dahlquist and Al Watt and Mike Kimmel, moving under Krystee’s urgent direction. He saw others, too, furtive smoke shadows, frantic silhouettes of vapor, but could not identify them. The bulk of the destroyer, the dragon thing in the shifting, thick plumes of smoke, seemed unconcerned about them now.

  Theo cast wildly about for Melissa, heedless of his own welfare. His eyes located Jeff Arcott against the far wall, falling back and screaming horribly just as one of the tentacles of pure power seized him and whipped him about, hurling him into walls that threw off great plumes of sparks with each impact, as the tendril expanded to cover Jeff entirely, consuming him whole.

  Sickened, Theo turned away and dove deeper into the room, crying out Melissa’s name.

  He found her on the sidelines, wavering in the smoke like a heat phantom, a dreamy mirage. She was staring with a quizzical, unfocused gaze, mouth half open, at the wildly pinwheeling gateway.

  “Melissa! Melissa!” She made no sign of hearing him, registered nothing at all.

  Desperate, Theo grabbed her up and slung her over his shoulder, noting only momentarily the effortless strength that seemed to fill him—and the curious fact that there was no pain issuing from his injured leg, that he needed crutches not at all.

  He plunged with her toward the exit as the demon power surged up out of the portal, gaining ever more purchase here. A bolt of shimmering plasma passed perilously close to Theo’s head, singeing his hair and causing Melissa to twitch against him as if she were gripped in a nightmare.