Piercing the Veil

by Guy Riessen

  The Sweep Cops were a subunit specializing in appropriating and subverting police investigations to the Sweep team, then cleansing the police records on a timely basis to make cross-linking data difficult and investigating outside the DCV resources fruitless.

  Sarah looked up and smiled at Derrick. Her voice took on a sing-song tone, and she said, “Claire, eh? Let’s see ... oh she’s a widower. Huh, I think you have a fan, Derrick.” Sarah raised an eyebrow.

  Derrick blushed, and he cleared his throat.

  Howard chuckled, and said, “You keeping secrets from me, D? Next time I’ll invite her down to play SEW with us.”

  Sarah said, “Moving right along. Your uhm, car, is in the Large-Scale Research Hangar, north of Arkham.”

  Derrick said, “What? No way! Cool!” He looked at Howard and said, “That’s the old hangar from before Boston even had an airport. MU had their original expedition research plane hangared there, back in the late nineteen-twenties.”

  “Mountains of Madness reference, D?” Sarah said.

  “MoM’s one of Lovecraft’s Sweep stories so it’s disinformation cloaking the real story,” Derrick said.

  Howard leaned forward a little, causing Mary to scramble to keep the black dust she was scraping going into the test tube she was holding. “No way. You’re talking about the real plane Professor Fields took to the Antarctic excavation of the Mi-Go crash site?”

  “The very same, man! Flew the Boeing 80 from here to Antarctica. Cool, right? Let’s go check it out after Mary finishes your beauty treatment. Never seen the Large-Scale Research Hangar.”

  “Damn straight!” Howard switched to a flawless Professor Higgins from a Pygmalion production and said, “Oh yes, indeed. A Boeing 80, eh? The finest aeroplane that ever commanded the skies of the Empire.”

  Derrick lifted an imaginary top hat by the brim, “Righto!” His accent, on the other hand, sounded like any other American nerd quoting Monty Python.

  “What’s the big deal about a plane hangar?” Mary asked as she pulled another pen from her pocket.

  “Well,” Derrick said, “It was DCV’s first plane ... excuse me, ‘aeroplane.’ And for the first time, MU research expeditions were launched in weeks, rather than months it might take to travel by steamship somewhere. It took, like, just over a week to fly all the way down to the Antarctic, man. The technology was fascinating—they had to be able to land on dirt roads, rutted fields, snow, and gas up with kerosene, tractor fuel, whatever.”

  “Yeah,” Howard said. “And a visiting female professor of exobiology convinced MU’s hotshot linguistics professor, one Doctor Horatio Fields, to come with her on a last-of-the-season expedition to a Mi-Go crash site.”

  “Huh. Hotshot linguistics professor gets the babe, eh? Suddenly it makes sense why y’all are interested.” Mary peered at Howard over the top of her glasses and set her pen on the counter. “When was that?” Mary said, pushing her glasses back up and leaning in again. She scraped the last sample into a test tube and placed it in the rack with the others. She moved over and leaned her back against the workbench.

  “Nineteen twenty,” Derrick answered.

  “Wow, not many female professors back then,” Sarah said.

  “From nineteen eighteen to nineteen twenty-four, MU just had one tenured professor, Alexandra Sutton, Egyptology. But the visiting professor was Professor Doreen Landis, Exobiology.” Derrick said.

  Howard nodded, adding, “And from the after-action report, the other professors on the expedition said there was definitely a romantic interest going on between Fields and Landis.”

  Howard’s eyes flicked over from Derrick to Sarah and back. Derrick scowled pointedly back at Howard.

  Mary leaned forward. Somehow her glasses were back low on her nose again and she was scowling over them at Howard. “Well ...? Y’all can’t stop there, History Boy. Give us the skinny.”

  Howard knows how to play a room, Derrick thought, realizing this was why Howard’s classes always had waiting lists and never had drops.

  Howard dropped his voice and said, “The team arrived after the Mi-Go vehicle had been excavated within an ice cavern, but an early onset of winter meant they couldn’t get a cargo ship there before the following summer. After just a short time there, the exobiologist and the linguistics professor disappeared ... forever!”

  “Meh,” Mary shrugged, “I’ve heard better.” Holding the test tube, she patted at her lab coat pocket and frowned.

  Howard looked at her and winked, “Along with the Mi-Go extra-atmospheric vehicle!”

  “What? They had the gumption to steal a Mi-Go spaceship?” Mary’s eyes were wide.

  “No one knows. There was no contact with either professor after that. Zip.” Howard snapped his fingers for emphasis.

  “Okay,” Mary said, nodding, “that is a jim dandy good story.”

  Derrick nodded enthusiastically, “Yeah, right? And the Boeing 80 had these crazy cool skis that fit on the landing gear, but they sat just over the hub-level of the tires. So, they could land in a field, refuel, attach the skis, then takeoff again. That way they could land on the snow once they arrived over Antarctica.” Derrick nodded, “Only downside was, the skis cut way back on the fuel-efficiency, so they’d just put them on for the final leg of the trip.”

  Mary laughed. “Sure, Derrick, that’s really great too.”

  “So anyway, what about my car?” Derrick asked, frowning at the knowing smiles Howard and Mary seemed to be sharing, then looking back at Sarah.

  “Rental should be dropped off any time now. I’ll get a text once it gets here and you just need to sign for it. It’s yours until we get your car back.” Sarah paused for a moment, looking everywhere that didn’t mean meeting Derrick’s gaze. She smoothed her hair, twisting at her ponytail, then mumbled, “or claim it totaled.”

  “What!?” Derrick shouted. “Totaled?” he added quietly. He was stunned.

  “Jeez, Derrick, it’s a Civic.”

  “And a stock one, at that,” Howard added. “Not to mention the brakes and suspension were well past due for a total overhaul. But she’s special, right, D?”

  Derrick nodded.

  Sarah said, “You can put all your fancy electronics into whatever the insurance buys you. Maybe even get something better. You must have quite a nest-egg; living in faculty housing and making your salary.”

  “Well, sure, but, my car’s like an old friend, man. I’ll miss Galileo.”

  Howard stood and put his hand on Derrick’s shoulder, “I feel ya, man. I’d feel the same about Smokey.”

  Derrick saw Mary mouth, “Galileo and Smokey?” toward Sarah, who shrugged and then made a display of flicking the cover over the tablet screen and tucking it back under her arm.

  “So, any ideas on how the Shadow Man tracked you? It was your car, of course, so there’s a link, but you were parked at Howard’s complex. If it was hit while parked here on campus, it would make more sense. How did they discover Howard’s complex? Something’s going on there.”

  Derrick nodded. “Yeah there’s some active tracking, obviously. The first Shadow Man office break-in could’ve been from the info I leaked under drug-influence while I was kidnapped. But this next puzzle piece is stumping me ... so far.”

  Mary held a tube in one hand and patted her lab coat with the other. She scowled over the top of her glasses and said, “Coulda sworn I had some pens in here. Anyone have a Sharpie I could borrow for a sec?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  DERRICK LEANED ON ONE crutch and opened the door to Howard’s office. Howard stood over by the window, hunching over the long table against that wall. He stooped over an open book that had thick pages and large sharply angled script. Derrick crutched across the small room and peered over Howard’s shoulder. “Chicken scratches?”

  Howard sighed and glanced over his shoulder. “Yes, Derrick, they’re chicken scratches.”

  “I always suspected those birds.” Derrick set his crutch against a book
shelf and sat in Howard’s desk chair. He tossed his phone on the stack of papers on the desk. “Nothing weird going on with the new phone. Took the whole thing apart, checked it out—everything matches exactly against the schematics.”

  “You checked your new phone? The one you got after the Haunt? Really?”

  “Yeah, man. I’m bumping into dead ends ... I know it’s strange to check a brand-new phone, but as Sherlock Holmes said, ‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’ We’re being tracked somehow.”

  “Yeah but busting open a new phone? Seems more likely that the Frenchman or whoever he works for just hacked the Department of Motor Vehicles and pulled your vehicle registration.”

  “Sure, that makes sense. Except I live on campus in the faculty housing, and my car is registered here at the campus address. How would they get the address of your apartment, let alone know that we were over there at the time?”

  “Oh yeah, that’s true. So, how’d you get the schematics for the phone? That stuff’s top secret corporate data, isn’t it? The black helicopters are probably already en route for you.” Howard leaned over the table and looked upward out the window.

  “H, we are the black helicopters.”

  “Well, we’re the OTHER black helicopters.”

  Derrick shrugged. “Anyway, ain’t no thang. There’s not many corporate sites I haven’t prowled around. But the upshot of my search is, there is nothing extra in this phone ... and nothing anachronistic ... you know like a chip version produced later than the manufacture date.” Derrick leaned back in the office chair and put his legs up on the desk. “Ahhh,” he said, moving his brace around until it wasn’t digging into his leg.

  “Chip versions? I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

  “Yep. The serial numbers printed on the chips indicate manufacture date and the factory where they’re produced,” Derrick paused then pointed toward the table. “What’re you working on, man?”

  Howard waved absently at the bloody dagger. “I got a bunch of blood samples off to Mary for testing, but haven’t heard anything back yet, so I’ve tabled that for the moment.”

  “Heh, I see what you did there.”

  “Yeah.” Howard smiled and then looked down at the book again. “And so, Sarah has me working on research related to the Haunt. Your GoPro video and sensor data has all been analyzed and archived. Good stuff by the way. Just don’t expect me to stop making fun of how you look with that thing strapped to your head.”

  “Laugh it up, Chuckles. We’ve got HD video of the whole thing, right up until the Frenchman gassed me with his stupid Asthma Inhaler of Doom. Plus, Sarah thinks it was an awesome idea.”

  Howard winked at him. “Nice.” He stepped to one side of the desk and sat in the chair his students use when they come for his office hours. “Anyway, the creature that attacked us at the Haunt, let’s just call it a bone golem for lack of a better descriptive ...”

  “Fits the concept.”

  “Yeah, but as you found when you dug into the Forest Service database, there were only the complaints which looked indicative of a poltergeist. No reports of, you know, giant leprous rotting zombies crashing through floors and walls and whatnot.”

  Derrick chuckled and said, “Nope, nothing like that. The reports I’ve pulled up are all oddly dead-ended. Enough for MARC to pick up and assign to us ... but every one of the reports was flagged to not get passed up the chain of internal command. If they’re legitimately from differing sources, why would that particular flag be set? So, it’s pretty clear the Frenchman found a way to hack into the system and planted the trail of information for MARC to find.”

  “It seems the Frenchman knew there were people he needed to find ... but didn’t exactly know that we were they. He was laying traps without knowing who the target ultimately was before we showed up to investigate.”

  Derrick folded his hands in his lap. “So, this François lays a honey trap and we step right into it. And by ‘step in it,’ I mean, you drop the one thing I tell you not to drop and you spring the trap?”

  “I’ve been giving that some thought as well. I think maybe your gizmo ...”

  “QQTV”

  “Right. Anyway, I think dropping it may have sprung the Frenchman’s trap inadvertently, and too soon. Probably before the ritual was complete. I think the golem was supposed to be a more standard form—a giant creature created from dead people, sure, but not disintegrating like it was. A rite that summons something that is already rotting and falling apart, doesn’t really make sense, right?”

  Derrick nodded and motioned his hands for Howard to continue.

  “Mary got the DNA back on the bones and the bodies in the basement. The bones I recovered were DNA matches to the five boneless bodies. There also appeared to be some contamination from the DNA from the dead guy in the center, and, we can presume, the Frenchman—that’s the only DNA that’s not a match to the bodies. The dirt we bagged once you shattered the golem with EMB ...”

  “EMP,” Derrick said.

  “Nah, dude. EMB. ElectroMagneticBadassery!”

  “Dang, H. Wish I’d thought of that one. EMB Pulsar. Yeah, man. That’s now officially its name.”

  Howard smiled, nodding. “Yeah! Anyway, the dirt was matched to a pioneer burial ground the Sweeps found a half kilometer to the north of the Haunt. It was a powerful multipart ritual, I’m sure it was supposed to create an equally powerful creature. I think the energy released when I dropped the Pulsar threw a wrench into the works by dumping a massive surge into the summoning.”

  Derrick nodded. “A premature unburial. A golem built of various body parts from several dead people ... Frankenstein’s Monster, yeah? I haven’t had a cause to look it up before, but is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein a Sweeps fabrication, or is it legit fiction?”

  “Dunno offhand without looking it up. But let’s say Frankenstein’s monster was a real occurrence. It could have been an actual intersection of science and Mythos influence. That would make it very similar. I mean, we had the basement with five boneless bodies at the pentagrammic cardinal points ...”

  “And one ‘bone-full’ body in the center.”

  “Exactly. And the Sweeps found more of the Shadow Man-style dust upstairs, mixed with all the shattered floorboard. So, if one were to use a combination of Mythos and Death magic ...”

  “Death magic?”

  Howard leaned back in the wood chair. “It’s definitely not standard necromancy and I haven’t found an exact match yet, but I see elements of Slavic magic, perhaps Black Shamanism. Maybe some kind of haruspex-based magic revolving around human sacrifice rather than animal? There’s definitely some similar concepts that show up in a number of places in ancient Eastern Europe, particularly in areas bordering the Middle East.”

  “Gotcha. So, if we’ve got the five bodies providing the bones and guts for the golem ... and grave dirt providing bulk and strength through sympathetic magic ... hmmm. And what, the guy in the center was the actual ritual to bind the Mythos magic with the Death magic?”

  “Nailed it, D. Let’s say the Frenchman placed the human ash in the middle of that upstairs bedroom as the summoning focal point. Then he returns to the basement to complete the ritual once he knows we’re upstairs ... he’d be getting ready to spring the golem on us when ...”

  Derrick held up one hand, like an eager student. “Oh! Oh! Is this the part when you drop the sensor I specifically told you not to drop?”

  Howard sighed. “Well, yeah. But by dropping the sensor, your Veil-sensitive technology rips a small tear right in the middle of the room, and fwoom! The bone golem materializes in a partially formed state, sloughing off all kinds of gross chunks and icky bits when it moves. Like dumping gasoline on a campfire, breaking the QQTV acted as an accelerant. Perhaps manifesting the golem even larger than it should have been but with less cohesiveness? Like a bonfire burning really big, but not for very long.”

  Derrick
was rubbing his heel on the desk edge again. “You know, H, you’re making way more sense than you usually do, man.”

  Howard’s mouth twisted to one side. “Hmm. Well. On that backhanded note ...” He waved toward the book he was looking at when Derrick came into the office. “That book is a collection of ancient rituals and has a Shadow Man creation rite. My initial translation seems to indicate it can bind the spirit of a djinn to do a magicians bidding.” Howard leaned forward and said, “And, this ‘Black Djinn’ ritual uses human ‘dust’ which, I’d be willing to bet, refers to the burned human remains that Mary’s identified.”

  “Exactly what Mary was postulating ... sounds like our link. Where was the tome found? Eastern Europe? Middle East?”

  Howard leaned back, his shoulders slumped. “That would make sense, but no. The tome was found at the site of the Temple of Kom Ombo.”

  “Temple of the what-now? New to me, so I’m clueless here, sorry.” Derrick shrugged, absently scratching his foot on the edge of Howard’s desk. Howard grimaced at the flakes of dead heel skin sloughing onto his papers. Derrick noticed Howard glaring at his foot and stopped.

  “Kom Ombo: an ancient Temple of Sobek site in Upper Egypt dated to the Greco-Roman period, with a portion of the construction dating to the eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty.”

  “Ah, Sobek I know. Crocodile god.”

  “Yeah, dude, half man, half crocodile.”

  “So, the tome is from the Greco-Roman period?”

  “Still no. It was found at that site, yeah, but it’s older than that. In dating the papyrus, there are pages from the twelfth Dynasty, and some from even earlier. About two years ago, a new opening below the eighteenth Dynasty portion of the temple was discovered using ground radar. It led to a chamber and inside, a dais where this tome was resting.” Howard got up and retrieved the tome from the table, “Check this out.” He held it open showing Derrick how the cover and the interior pages fit together.