Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis

by P. T. Dilloway

  Becky stopped the car at the base of the hill. As Becky unbuckled her seatbelt, Emma said, “I’d like to go alone.”

  “Of course.” From the driver’s seat, Becky watched her friend trudge up the hill to Louise’s grave. The grass hadn’t grown over it yet, but there was a bouquet of flowers there that Becky had left two days ago, unless some caretaker had stolen them.

  Once Emma was at the grave, Becky waited for her to break down, to collapse in front of the grave and dissolve into sobs. That didn’t happen. Instead, Emma merely knelt down in front of the grave and stayed that way for three hours. During that time Becky considered going up there to make sure Emma hadn’t found a way to kill herself, but she resisted this urge. Whatever Emma said or did up there was private, between a grieving mother and the daughter she would never get to see.

  After the third hour, Emma stood up and walked down the path to the car. Her eyes weren’t tinged with red and there were no tears evident on her cheeks. The seeming calmness and composure of her best friend was enough to make Becky queasy. She wondered again if Emma would ever be the same.

  “Now we can go home,” Emma said.

  ***

  She didn’t stay home for long. She changed out of the clothes Becky had brought her at the hospital, into a denim work shirt and blue jeans, clothes appropriate for where she needed to go. It didn’t surprise her that Becky planted herself in front of the door to the garage. “Where are you going?”

  “The museum.”

  “The Plaine Museum?”

  “Yes.”

  “To the Sanctuary?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus, Emma, you just got out of the hospital. Don’t you think you should take one night off?”

  “I took the last three months off.”

  “And the city is still here.”

  “This isn’t what you think.”

  “Really? What do I think?”

  “You think I’m throwing myself into work to avoid the grief.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Then what do you call it?”

  “Keeping a promise.”

  In the end Becky relented. “Just try to be careful, will you?”

  “Thank you,” Emma said. She nodded slightly before she went into the garage, where her motorcycle sat in the same spot where she’d left it before she’d gotten on a magic carpet for her ill-fated trip to the archives.

  While it might have felt good to open up the throttle all the way and tear along the streets of Rampart City at a hundred miles an hour, she kept her speed under the limit. She didn’t have the Scarlet Knight’s armor to protect her and she had no intention of going back to the hospital any time soon if she could help it. So she coasted through the busy afternoon traffic and tried not to feel self-conscious after two months in a psych ward.

  For the first time since she was a teenager, she paid to park in the Plaine Museum garage. She stood in line for a ticket; the security guards didn’t recognize her after over two years and with her different hair color. After she bought her ticket, she stood in front of Alex the mastodon for a moment. She wanted to reach out and touch his tusk as she’d done when she was three, but she knew she couldn’t. She searched the crowds to make sure no one saw her—and made sure Dan wasn’t around—before she headed for the elevator.

  Guests weren’t supposed to use the staff elevator. She ignored this rule. If anyone asked, she would claim she was lost and had got into the wrong elevator. But no one asked as she entered the backdoor code she had programmed into the system years ago and the doors closed to whisk her down to the sub-subbasement.

  When the doors opened again, she felt a moment of disorientation to see the old crates looking not as disintegrated as in the future. There was also no radiation suit with boots hanging from a hook, something she would have to correct. She had put on her old work boots from her fieldwork days to walk along the muddy path to the false wall that led to the Sanctuary.

  She experienced another moment of disorientation at the false wall. She tried to pass her hand through it before she remembered it was just plaster, not a hologram like twenty years from now. She found the latch to open the wall and pushed it aside so she could crawl into the Sanctuary.

  There were no holograms in the Sanctuary either, just the more conventional TV monitor and maps. These didn’t concern her for the moment. Instead, she retrieved the cutting torch and a pair of goggles. With these, she began to open the silver metal box in the center of the room.

  She cut along the top of the case and then along the seams on one side. With this done, she could push aside the lid and then reach inside to pull out the red case. As when she’d put it in there, the red case seemed to weigh several tons until it was completely free of the homemade box with its magic dampening properties.

  Only then did Marlin finally appear like a genie popping out of a lamp. Unlike a genie, he looked none too happy. “It’s about time you got here. Do you have any idea—” the ghost stopped. He floated closer to her. “What happened to you? How many years did you keep me inside that infernal box of yours?”

  “It’s only been three months.”

  “Then I must be going colorblind.”

  “No.”

  “One of those conjurers use a potion on you?”

  “No.”

  “You just felt like dyeing your hair white, is that it? Maybe some kind of fashion statement?”

  “That’s not it either.” As Marlin tried to guess what had happened to her, Emma opened the red case. Inside she found the scarlet armor undamaged from three months inside its prison. She began to strap it on; her fingers worked clumsily as if she still had arthritis in her joints. When she got to the bottom, she felt another moment of disorientation not to see the Book of Isis there.

  There would be no Book of Isis now. It would remain in the sands of Egypt since Louise wouldn’t be around to find it. Another time she might have cried at this thought, but by now she’d run out of tears for Louise—and herself. She picked up the helmet and settled it over her head. Then she flipped up the visor, so Marlin could see her face.

  “I’m sorry for what I did to you.”

  “You should be. You don’t have any idea what it’s like to have to sit there facing the same wall day after day.”

  “I do have some experience with that.”

  Marlin raised an eyebrow at this but let the remark pass. “Well, after three months I suppose we have a lot of catching up to do. The don’s probably recovered from the mess that assassin made.”

  “Probably.”

  “We ought to get to it then. You’ve probably got to get home to change diapers and such nonsense as that.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Hired a nanny, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Just going to let your fat friend take care of the tike?”

  “She’s dead.” Emma flipped down the visor, to leave Marlin stammering as she crawled through the false wall, back to the hatch that opened to the sewers.

  The ghost caught up to her. “I’m sorry,” he said. He sounded more sincere than he ever had before. “How did it happen?”

  “She was born too early. She just couldn’t take it.”

  “Awful, that. Never good when a child dies, especially one so young.” Marlin shook his head. “If you don’t want to go out for a while, I’ll understand.”

  “No, you’re right: I need to get back out there. The don is probably running wild.” She flipped up the visor again so Marlin could see her eyes. “She’s not going to run this town anymore. I promise you that.”

  “I understand.”

  “Go and see what she’s up to. I have a stop to make first.”

  ***

  She knew Jim wouldn’t want to see her. What she didn’t know was if he knew Louise was dead or not. Rats couldn’t read obituaries or tombstones, so unless one of his scouts had been around the hospital or the funeral home,
she doubted he knew. For all she knew, he might not know she was back yet.

  With the golden cape wrapped around her body she slunk along the sewers in search of Jim. When she came to one of his garbage sculptures of her, she paused to admire it. She imagined the sculptures Jim would have made of Louise, of the little girl whose feelings he had tried to protect, the little girl who would never be now.

  Her first stop was Jim’s workshop, an out of service tube where he put together his masterpieces and slept on a bed made out of discarded cardboard. He wasn’t in there. The sewers of Rampart City were a nearly endless maze, so she supposed he could be anywhere. It would be better to find one of his friends and ask them where the king had gone.

  Maybe he’s dead, she thought with a shiver. There had been unrest among the rat population before she left, so it was entirely possible that some rogue group of rats had managed to kill him. There were other, more conventional ways he could have died as well, such as a heart attack or to break something and then drown in the sewage.

  Before she began to write his obituary, she decided there was one other place to try first. She tramped along the sewers until she came to the waterfront. About nine months ago Jim had taken her to his special place, a pipe that overlooked the harbor. He had dragged a couple of broken chairs and some boxes there to make a sort of observation lounge inside the pipe.

  As she neared the pipe opening, she minded her steps, so as not to make any large splashes that might alert Jim to her presence. She felt a mixture of relief and dread when she saw his silhouette in one of the chairs, his back turned as he stared out at the water. Was he thinking about her? About Louise? She supposed there was only one way to find out.

  The other chair was unoccupied at the moment. She kept the cape around her body until she sat down. Only then did she brush the cape away so he could see her. “Hello, Jim,” she said.

  He turned to her; he looked exactly the same as she remembered, no new scars from the unrest down here. “You back.”

  “Yes, I’m back.” She took off the helmet and shook out her white hair.

  “You different.”

  “Yes, I’m different.”

  “Still pretty.”

  For the first time in two months, she smiled. Everyone else had acted shocked when they saw her hair; even the doctors and nurses in the psych ward had given her strange looks when she emerged from her room the day after being admitted, her hair completely white. They had interrogated her for an hour to make sure she wasn’t an impostor. But Jim showed none of their surprise or fear of it. “Thank you,” she said.

  They sat side-by-side on their chairs for a while to stare out at the harbor as freighters, cruise ships, and yachts all glided along the water. As she watched them, Emma felt again the same numbness she’d felt after her first night in the psych ward. The numbness came from the simple thought that while Louise was gone, life went on. Her daughter was dead, but she still woke up in the morning, ate breakfast, and read a book.

  That was when she stopped crying for Louise and made herself a promise: once she was released from the hospital, she would do such a good job as the Scarlet Knight that there would never need to be a replacement. First she would finally bring Don Vendetta to justice. Then she would move on to whoever tried to take the don’s place. Eventually, when the time came, she would find a way to deal with Isis. It was probably foolhardy to think she could rid the world of evil, but it was all she could do. Louise would have been a great Scarlet Knight, even better than her, but she was dead and all Emma could do was try to accomplish what she would have.

  To break the silence, Jim said, “I miss you.”

  “I missed you too.” They leaned over at the same time; their lips met in the middle, just as had happened the first time Jim brought her here. While in the psych ward, she had thought a lot about her and Jim. She knew they didn’t have a future together even without Louise. They were from two different worlds, one above and the other belowground. These brief encounters and stolen kisses were the best they could manage.

  At the same time, she didn’t want to stop seeing him. While it was as foolhardy as her idea to rid the city of crime, she still loved him. If they could never be married or make another baby, she didn’t care. From her glimpse of the future, she knew a “normal” life would never be for her, but then none of her life had ever been “normal.”

  When their lips parted, she said, “We need to talk.”

  “About baby.”

  “Louise.”

  “Pretty name.”

  “It was my mother’s.”

  “Still pretty.”

  She put a hand to her mouth, to stifle a laugh at this, as she wasn’t sure if Jim had really joked or not. The twinkle in his eye told her that he had, so she allowed herself to laugh in a way she hadn’t for so long.

  After the last echoes of her laugh faded, she turned serious again. “Jim, this isn’t going to be easy to say.” She took a deep breath and then spit it out, “She’s dead.”

  “How?”

  “There was an accident and I gave birth to her too soon. She was too weak to survive.”

  She waited for his reaction. In the hospital she had considered various scenarios. He might go crazy as she had and try to kill her. He might break down and sob and wail. He might simply go catatonic.

  He didn’t do any of these things. He did stare blankly at her for a moment before he nodded. “You see her before she die?”

  “Yes.”

  “She pretty like you?”

  “Yes, she was very pretty. She had your nose and your teeth. Her eyes were blue like mine. Her hair was curly like yours but red, a little darker than mine used to be.” Emma sighed as she thought of the young woman she’d met in the future. “She was smart, even smarter than me.”

  “How you know this?”

  “I saw her, Jim. I saw her when she was nineteen years old. She was a scientist, like me. We both worked at the museum. She was just getting back from a dig in Egypt, a country that’s a long way from here.” She paused and saw he hung on every word, as hungry to hear about their daughter as she was.

  So as the sun began to go down over the harbor and the ships turned on their lights, she told him the rest.

  VOLUME VII

  Living Sacrifice

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  The therapist’s office always annoyed her. The koi pond with its miniature waterfall in the center of the room and the vanilla-scented incense in the corner were supposed to soothe her, but she found the phoniness of these touches bothersome. For that reason she had her white leather armchair turned to face the window; she lined it up so she could look down at the front of the Plaine Museum, the size of it from this height the same as the scale model in her office.

  The first thing she did after she shook Dr. Richman’s hand was to turn the chair. The second was to compose her ungainly frame; she slouched down into the chair like the man in those old Maxell commercials. She would then let out a sigh to signal she was ready for the session to begin.

  The first three months of her therapy consisted of her merely sitting in the chair with a pad of paper, to write out her “personal history” as Dr. Richman called it. She was supposed to write down everything she could remember in chronological order from as far back as she could recall. In her case this proved to be all the way back to when she was a year old, nearly thirty years ago. Dr. Richman had advised her not to color the personal history with any emotions, just to provide the facts; as a scientist she found this process easy enough.

  For the last twenty-one months they had rehashed the personal history, “coloring it in,” as the doctor described it. Much to her chagrin, they didn’t go in any sort of order; she suspected Dr. Richman had torn her history into pieces and then drew one randomly from a hat before each session. Last time he’d forced her to talk about her first date when she was fourteen.

  This time, after she’d gone through her usual process, Dr. Richma
n said, “Tell me about Jimmy Gates.”

  She tried not to sigh or show any kind of annoyance for the doctor to key in on. “He was a boy in my third grade class. He used to bully Becky and I.”

  “He was expelled from school, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. After he attacked me with a knife, cutting off some of my hair.”

  “How did that make you feel?”

  She considered this for a moment. She had spent days in bed, afraid to come out. Her childhood lisp had reasserted itself. “Distraught,” she finally said.

  “Why ‘distraught?’” the doctor asked.

  “Because he could have killed me. He might have if Becky hadn’t got the teacher.”

  “Was that the first time you faced death?”

  “Yes.” Certainly not the last. She faced death every night now, usually more than once, but back then she had been a little girl in the suburbs. Her grandparents had all died before she was born and her parents hadn’t allowed her to own so much as an ant farm, to protect her from death. But they couldn’t protect her from that forever.

  “What else did you feel, besides ‘distraught?’”

  “Shame. Embarrassment.”

  “Anger?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t want to hurt Jimmy? You didn’t want revenge?”

  “He was expelled and sent to juvenile hall. By the time he got out, I was in college and by the time I came back he was doing his first stint in prison.”

  “But if it would have been possible, would you have tried to take revenge?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Dr. Richman made an interested grunt and she knew he was writing something down. At least once a session he asked if she felt angry about something. A month ago he asked if her first period made her feel angry, an idea she found ludicrous. He kept trying to get her to admit she had a problem with anger, no doubt because her anger had landed her in his office to start with. After her baby died, she’d nearly killed a doctor and two orderlies. She’d spent two months in the hospital psychiatric ward before she was released on the condition she see Dr. Richman twice a week at his office in Executive Plaza. Because of this, the doctor searched for signs she might be a dangerous maniac.