Burton smiled. “Of course!”
“Life is a learning experience,” I laughed.
Favoring his sore ribs, Raul took a metal folding chair and it became a plush barko lounger as his fanny met the seat. “Where is Hell House anyway?” the mage asked, placing ankle atop knee.
“On the other side of Bangor,” Joyce replied. “This way, when we train a telepath, they have a hard time reading our thoughts.”
“Pretty smart,” I acknowledged, sitting next to Jess. My chair didn't do anything but start to get warm. “But then, the gang at Tech Serv were always a fiendishly clever bunch. Those vampire doorknobs will go into Bureau history.”
“And I thought the welcome-mat trapdoor was a particularly nice touch,” Jessica added, bowing in respect.
“As their designer, I thank you,” Prof. Burton added, doing a bow and sweep. Then she stood and clapped her hands. “Okay, people! Let's make like an audience.”
As we gathered close to her chair, the overhead lights dimmed and a huge liquid crystal theater screen descended into view. Some eight feet by four, its silvery white surface flickered into life.
“All that's missing is popcorn,” George whispered.
Mindy shushed him.
As the screen cleared of hash, it cleared to invisibility and focused on the foyer of the place we knew well, and did not care for a bit. The detail and clarity was amazing. Seemingly, we were looking past empty air at the inside of Hell House. There was not even the diffraction of glass. I found myself wanting to reach out and try to touch the artificially dusty furnishings, but resisted temptation. Optic fiber, liquid crystal, laser holograph, high tech science, or what not, I wasn't goofy enough to risk a finger on the assumption that the House couldn't still get me through the theater screen. That building was tricky.
Adorning the ceiling of the front hall was a huge crystal chandelier that gave off weak yellowish light. To the left was a great marble staircase that curled upwards to the next floor. My butt itched for a moment as I saw the banister again. A sliding door closet was to the right and a curtained alcove to the left. The stage was set, the house activated, enter the players.
Had I remembered to tell the Facility guards to put Lumpy in quarantine since he had eaten human flesh? Yes, I had. Okay.
With the fully expected creak of ancient hinges, the door swung open and in walked the senior class. Mentally, I wished them luck. They would need it.
The twins were the ones to first catch my attention. Wearing jeans and T-shirts, they were near identical in form and face, except that the man had coal black hair, while his sister was a fiery redhead. Rather pretty, actually. Nice legs.
Watch it, my wife warned.
Oops.
Next came a tall powerful man in military grab, a faint thin scar marring his right cheek. Mindy gave a short whistle of appreciation. I agreed, but maybe not for the same reasons. The guy was a Goliath, a Hercules! Roughly seven feet tall and some 300 pounds, not an ounce of it anything on his frame but rock-hard muscle. This man didn't need any magic. He could punch the house to death. Grenades were hung on a military web harness across his mighty chest, an ammo pouch was slung over a shoulder, a huge revolver was holstered at his hip and he held a squat Thompson .45 machine gun with an underslung cheese-wheel style superclip of ammo. George murmured approval.
Following Rambo Junior was a tall stately blonde woman with a stunningly beauti ... ah, plain face, and far too much bust. I prefer women who are small and slim and married to me.
Better, Jessica noted in my head.
Whew. Another daring escape from the jaws of death by Edwardo Alvarez, boy husband.
The stunningly plain woman was carrying a wooden dowel, only about a foot long. Hmm, just a beginner mage. Raul had a staff four feet in length and made of solid silver.
Tagging close behind came a wild haired beauty in a low cut gypsy gown of a thousand colors. Barefoot, she padded into the house.
“Barefoot?” I asked.
Twirling a dial, Prof. Burton shrugged. “Something to do with having to be in contact with the Mother Earth. How do I know? Mages are crazy.”
“Darn tootin',” Raul said, pinning a hypnotic vortex button to his T-shirt which now read VOTE FOR ANARCHY! Sigh.
Bring up the end of this conga line, was a thin, pale man dressed in the height of fashion, Gucci shoes, Sergio Valente three-piece suit, expertly tailored, and if that wasn't a Rolex Presidential watch on his wrist, I'd eat the banister. He even had a gold watch chain looped across his vest, with some sort of foreign coin dangling as a fob. Two watches? Dapper Dan struck me as the kind of person who would wash his hands before going to the lavatory. The only thing lacking was a silver spoon sticking out of his mouth.
As soon as the six entered the foyer of the house, Prof. Burton flipped a switch on the console and the door behind them slammed shut! They turned just in time to see the four great bolts ram into position, and an iron grate slide down from the ceiling. Then in orderly fashion, every window in the building nosily closed, the shutters crashed together and locked tight.
“Whew,” Steven remarked, the twin with black hair. “Lock and load, gang. It's showtime.”
The prof pressed a button. A hollow mocking laugh echoed throughout the old mansion and the chandelier tinkled in a ghostly manner.
Working the bolt on his Thompson, the tall slab of muscle with a scar glanced about. “Okay, standard defensive position. Katrina and I will take the front. Steven and Connie cover the rear. Patricia in the center. Sir Reginald on point. Remember, we're here to find an iron jewel, size unknown.”
Slowly, the dapper man turned and cocked an eyebrow. “And you were placed in charge by whom, Mr. Sanders?” Even his voice sounded like inherited money.
“Somebody has got to be,” Sanders rumbled.
“Should have decided outside,” Katrina Somers said in her heavily accented English. She sounded Russian. “Clock is ticking, comrades.”
Comrades?
She was recruited in Soviet Russia. Now hush.
Taking a clipboard, Burton put a plus mark next to Sander's name, and a minus next to Katrina. Rules said they were never to mention this was only a practice run with a time limit.
Ken Sanders frowned. “Conference!” he called and they gathered together. After a moment, the team broke apart and Katrina's face was as red as her heritage.
“Positions!” Ken snapped, and everybody moved.
In a shimmer, Sir Reginald Foxworthington-Smythe dissipated into smoke and wafted along the central hallway of Hell House. Neat! Now I sincerely hoped that he passed this final exam. Having an elf in the Bureau would be a definite plus factor. Why, at the yearly picnic, he could bring the cookies!
While the twins, Steven and Connie, handcuffed themselves together, Katrina polished her wooden staff on a sleeve and Ken clicked off the safety on his machine gun. Positioned in the middle of the assault force, the gypsy fingered the tiny gold cross about her neck and muttered something in Latin. She must be Patricia, the Healer. That's who I would want safe and ready to patch my guts back together if necessary.
Working a toggle, Prof. Burton had a door down the corridor creak open and the students dropped into attack formation. But nobody fired. Excellent.
“Who has got a pair of Bureau sunglasses?” Steven asked in his rumbling baritone.
Ken reached into his shirt pocket, paused and then started patting his pockets. “I could have sworn they were here.”
Next to me in the control room, Prof. Burton chuckled and twirled the sunglasses about on a finger. “I was tempted to substitute a pair of normal sunglasses that wouldn't show any auras just as a confusion factor,” she said. “But then decided that it was no fun kicking a cripple.”
Sheesh, and the prof was on our side.
On the huge screen, the students were busy checking the front hallway closet. It was completely filled with pre-aged clothes that disintegrated at a touch. No information there. Ken s
potted the rigged rat trap bolted on the inside of the door, and Patricia detected the razor blade welded onto the killing bar. That put them in a somber mood. As well it should. Anything but critical wounds could be healed within minutes. So nothing would kill them outright, but death was the only limitation. Agents learned their job here, or died in combat out in the real world taking countless civilians with them. It was a final exam in more ways than one.
After a quick peek in the lavatory, they moved on. Good thing too. If anybody had taken a seat, steel needles would have extended from the walls-ceiling-floor to stop but a scant foot away from the target. Prof. Burton started to de-activate the lavatory, then stopped. Fair enough. Maybe later they'll get stupid, or sloppy.
Parting the curtain, they found an unlocked door whose faded lettering read ‘BrOOM CLOSET'. They discussed it, chuckled and moved on. The professor didn't mark a plus, or minus. Interesting.
Coalescing into a vertical tornado, Sir Reginald became solid to report that the hallway seemed vacant of hostile forces. This gave the group courage, and they proceed to search for the iron gem with a vigor. They looked behind portraits, inside the pages of books, under seat cushions, unscrewed lightbulbs, emptied flower vases, lifted rugs, thumped the floors, and pounded the walls. Nothing was discovered, so they moved on.
During the lull, I made a note that once we had our new recruit, to check with the Facility and see if they had discovered what Lumpy was yet and where it came from. If there was a trans-temporal breach to a dimension full of his kind, we could be in for serious trouble.
Entering the Living Room, directly in front of them was a small glass aquarium on a wrought iron stand. Inside the aquarium was a school of winged, clockwork, wind-up goldfish wearing cowboy hats. The wire screen lid was ajar. Patricia reached to straighten it, but Sir Reginald stayed her hand. Another plus! Funny does not equal harmless, and nothing kills faster than stupidity.
Switching positions, Steven and Connie entered the Dining Room on point. The table was set for a sumptuous feast, with the most amazing china dishware and silver goblets. Steven smiled, and Connie frowned. Glancing above the table, she became furious, and Steven flicked his free hand at the wood rafters above them. Darkening into view, a now-dead spider hidden in the shadows lost its grip and slammed onto the suddenly vacant table with a meaty thump.
Not satisfied, Ken screwed a silencer onto his pistol and pumped two rounds into its head. That's my boy!
The Trophy Room proved to be empty of anything interesting, save an eight foot tall animated stuffed grizzly bear, which the students tripped to the floor, shoved into the fireplace and ignited. Child's play.
It was starting to seem as if the professor had set this whole level of Hell House on neutral. Burton must be trying to lull them into a false sense of security before getting tough.
In the Library, Steven and Connie found a loaded Ruger .44 revolver in a desk drawer. But it only took Sanders a second to discover that the barrel was blocked solid with lead. Pull the trigger and the backblast would blow a hand off. He got another plus mark.
The Kitchen yielded only a suspiciously half empty bag of PURINA DEMON CHOW. The oven was set to explode if turned on, but Sir Reginald found that trap. Plus. Patricia opened the refrigerator, but not the freezer. A minus.
Of course, the pantry was filled with pants which produced the expected mass groan of pain. I had no idea who the punster was at the Academy, but someday I would find the nitwit and personally shoot him/her in the spleen.
Apparently satisfied, Ken used handsignals to say the first floor was clean and they should move on. Tsk-tsk. Sloppy work that. There were twelve places they had failed to search for clues, two operational procedures forgotten entirely, and they hadn't found the special message for them on the telephone answering machine. It was obscene, but useful. Still, not bad on the whole.
“Cellar, or second floor?” Connie asked, in her sweet contralto. The operatic twins were still holding hands. Bio-harmonics? I wondered.
“Cellar,” Katrina suggested, nervously fingering her staff.
“Second floor,” Sir Reginald said, taking a pinch of snuff from an ornate Nathan Mills gold box. “Nobody hides things in the cellar anymore. It's gauche.”
In a juicy Bronx cheer worthy of any New Yorker, Patricia expressed her sentiments on the matter.
Drying sweaty hands on his pants, Ken agreed. “We'll hit the upper stories, but let's protect our rear.”
With her wooden wand, Katrina put a low-grade Sealed spell on the cellar door so that it could not be opened from the other side. Using a pocketknife on a chair leg, Ken whittled a doorstop which he then shoved tightly under the doorjamb. Meanwhile, Sir Reginald removed a lock pick kit from his tailored jacket and operated the ancient key latch, lubricating it first so there would be no noise. The twins kept guard.
Endlessly adjusting the controls, Prof. Burton nodded in approval.
“They're not bad,” Raul said around a mouthful of popcorn.
I stole a buttery handful from the huge carton that had materialized in his lap. “Shaddup and watch.”
“Will there be a cartoon later?” Mindy asked. George hushed her.
In standard formation, the students stepped upon the first stair and a ghostly figure appeared floating in the air before them. Moaning and groaning, the hideous vision warned them of unseen dangers and then faded away as only a ghost can. Because it wasn't a laser holograph, but an actual ghost, Abduhl Benny Hassan, an ex-member of our team. Not willing to lose trained personnel under any circumstances, Horace Gordon had conjured poor Hassan back from his icy grave. Not even death could stop an agent of Bureau 13! Only major holidays.
Averting her gaze from the screen, Mindy gave a heartfelt sigh. She and Abduhl had been close friends, getting a lot closer when he had died. But as a spirit, he no longer had any interest in the pleasures of the flesh and that sort of put a damper on their relationship.
Dutifully, Katrina recorded the speech on a tiny tape recorder, Patricia took several flashless pictures with a pocket digital camera and Reginald made a rough sketch of Abduhl's face.
Proceeding carefully up the stairs, I noted with pride that they walked along the extreme edge of each step, exactly where the board met the wall. That was where stairs were their strongest, the least likely spot to creak and announce your presence to an enemy.
Just for fun, I asked Prof. Burton to make the eyes of the portraits on the wall track their passage, even had one old lady get out of her rocking chair and leave while the students were alongside. That caught their attention, but Steven and Connie urged the team on by emphatically saying that it was nothing. Another plus mark by their names. I glanced at the clipboard. One telepathic and one a mage. The siblings were a powerful occult team, but only as long as they were in direct physical contact with each other. I wondered if the Dean of Doom had an answer to that?
“Yes,” Jessica said, adding salt to the popcorn. “Itching powder.”
Hmm, efficient, if somewhat slapstick.
As the students stepped on the landing, the staircase disappeared, leaving a solid seamless floor and no easy exit.
“Mark the spot,” Ken Sanders whispered on the monitor.
Using a diminutive spray can, Sir Reginald painted a brilliant orange line across the floorboards where the stairs had once been. Good idea that, and I made a note of the ploy.
Both sides of the hallway were lined with doors. Endless doors. There was no wall space, the portals stood jamb to jamb.
Placing her ear to a random door, Katrina listened and then very carefully eased the latch to peak inside. With a squeal, she threw herself across the hall and yanked open the opposite door. Everybody stepped out of the way as 160 tons of antique steam locomotive thundered out of one doorway and into the other.
In the control room, we were buffeted from side to side by the stereo speakers of the theatre screen hitting near overload.
As the caboose rattled out of sig
ht, Steven slammed the first door and Katrina did the second. For a minute, they stood coughing from the acrid smoke fumes that had poured from the flume. The floor between the two doors was deeply gouged from the rims of the steel wheels, piles of splinters sticking up in orderly lines, like toothpicks on parade. If you wanted weird, join the Bureau.
As breath returned, the seniors began heaping abuse upon the Bureau, their teachers in general, the professor specifically, and then cast dubious remarks on our general ancestry and sexual habits. Whew. Some of the curses were pretty good. George jotted a few on a notepad. Probably to give to his Army buddies as birthday gifts.
Then they abruptly stopped, because lying in plain sight on the floor was an iron gem.
Reaching for the jewel, Sanders paused and had the twins scan for traps. After a moment, they said it was clear. Wrapping a Bureau issue handkerchief about his hand, Ken pocketed the gem.
“Okay, we got it,” Sanders snapped, scanning the area to make sure it was clear. “Let's go.”
“But there is still a lot remaining to explore,” Patricia implored petulantly.
“Our mission was to get the gem,” he stated. “We got it. We go. End of story.”
I was becoming more and more fond of this guy. What a professional attitude. I bet he would happily shoot an enemy in the back. No dumb heroics, just get the job done and scram. Great!
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Prof. Burton insert a key into a special slot on the control board and unlock an armed switch. The button glowed with a red light and she grimly pressed it down until there was a loud click.
Oh-oh, now the students were in for it. Whatever door they opened, wherever they went, the very next thing they encountered would be the dreaded, the deadly—
Suddenly lights began blinking on the control board and a printer started whining out a fax. Faintly from outside the building, I heard a siren howling.
“What's happening?” George demanded, weapon in hands.
Prof. Burton ripped the fax free and whistled. “Holy crud! It's a Code Eleven!”
Doomsday Exam [Bureau 13 #2] Page 5