Firewalk

by Chris Roberson

  “Oh, nothing,” Izzie answered, a little sheepishly. “Just talking to myself, I guess.”

  Daphne bobbed her head back, pointing with her chin at the journals spread over Izzie’s borrowed desk. “That’s related to your Ink investigation, I take it?”

  Izzie chewed her lower lip, considering her answer. “Tangentially, I guess you could say?”

  Daphne nodded, seeming satisfied with the answer. “Well, let me know if you need anything,” she said, and turned back to her computer.

  “Thanks.” Izzie returned her attention to the journals.

  She figured that at some point Aguilar must have described in greater detail the nature of these “daimons” that he mentioned. And what of the “Unreal” from which they supposedly came?

  Izzie kept on reading, intent on finding the answers.

  The first time she came across the phrase “true place” in reference to Recondito in the journals, Izzie thought nothing of it. It was a somewhat unusual formulation, an adjective and a noun that, while not often appearing together in casual conversation, did not elicit much in the way of curiosity when encountered once in passing. She assumed that Aguilar had meant that the city was somehow authentic, though expressed somewhat awkwardly.

  The next two times that she came across the phrase, she wondered if it was some sort of tic or habit that Aguilar had picked up somewhere along the way, but didn’t dwell on it. Her Spanish was rusty, and her Quiche nonexistent. Perhaps “true place” was a direct translation into English of a concept from another language?

  The fourth time that she read the phrase, though, she began to suspect that there was a deeper significance that she had missed at first glance. Especially, considering that it revealed that Recondito was not the only “true place,” but simply one of many.

  Don Mateo, Aguilar wrote, had originally come to Recondito in the 1930s precisely because it was a “true place,” a region where the walls between the worlds were at their thinnest.

  Samantha’s academic paper was not of much guidance here. Izzie could only find two times that the old man’s grand-daughter-in-law had mentioned “true places.” The first was an analysis of the phrase itself …

  The recurrence of the term “true place” might be a reference to the phrase “saqil kolem, saqil tzij” which appears in the Popol Vuh. While typically translated into English as “enlightened existence, enlightened words,” the Quiche word “k’olem” also carries the meaning “place,” while “tzij” can be translated as “certain or true,” so that the phrase could be rendered along the lines of “the clarity of the true place.”

  The second note, interestingly, was not in reference to the Mayans or the Quiche language or anything to do with Mesoamerica at all, and was instead a mention of a similar concept halfway around the world.

  In Tibet, “beyul” are conventionally understood to be hidden valleys in the Himalayas, sacred to the Tibetan Buddhists. But there is a mystical tradition which contends that beyul are in fact places where the worlds of the physical and the spiritual overlap, and it is for this reason that they are not to be found on any map.

  Izzie was about to put the academic paper aside when she spotted a handwritten note on the back of one of the pages. It appeared to be a quotation, but it wasn’t clear whether this was a revision that Samantha Aguilar intended to make to the paper, or a comment added by her husband or someone else, or something else entirely.

  “Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.” – Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

  That rang a bell with Izzie, and it took a moment before she remembered Patrick telling her about the name for Kensington Island in the native Te’Maroan language. Kovoko something, right? And Kensington Island was certainly far away to the west and south. Was there some other connection there? She would have to bring it up with Patrick when she spoke to him next.

  She wondered how the door duty was going in the office building, and felt the slightest pang of sympathy for him being stuck with such an onerous task, which was considerably outweighed by her relief that she wasn’t forced to help with it herself.

  So, a “true place” was one where the material world intersected with the spiritual one, or something of that sort? And these were hidden away, not included on any map. Izzie could not help but recall the nickname for Recondito, the “Hidden City.”

  Elsewhere in his journals, the elder Aguilar mentioned that a similar true place had once existed in Central America, and that the order of Mayan daykeepers had arisen in ancient times to help safeguard their fellow men against the dangers inherent in trafficking with the otherworldly. But the dangers arose not only from the “shades” and “daimons” that inhabited that other world themselves, but from those men and women who sought to profit by communing with them, striking dark bargains.

  Eventually the Mayan empire fell, and the daykeepers retreated to their secret temples deep in the jungle, still protecting the people as best they could. But centuries later a dark cabal took root amongst the Aztecs, a cabal that used human sacrifice to solicit the aid of the darker denizens of the other spheres, forging alliances with the very same otherworldly powers that the daykeepers had stood guard against.

  But, as Aguilar put it in his journal, “the spheres turn in their gyres, and the influences wax and wane.” Eventually, the true place situated in Central America was not as potent or reliable as it once had been, and it was as though the walls between the worlds had grown thicker, less permeable. But as that true place waned, another was on the ascendancy, a true place that by the latter days of the nineteenth century threatened to be the most potent, and most dangerous, of them all.

  Recondito. The Hidden City.

  It wasn’t simply that strange things happened in the city and a select group of people knew about it. People who knew about such things came to the city because strange things happened there. This Don Mateo, certainly, had journeyed from the Yucatan Peninsula to the city in the 1930s because of the weirdness, if Roberto Aguilar’s account was to be believed. And what about Patrick’s great-uncle, Alfred Tevake? Had he traveled here from Kensington Island for the same reason? Kensington Island might itself be another “true place,” if there was some secret meaning hidden in that quote from Moby-Dick.

  It all seemed possible. Crazy sounding, and definitely improbable, but not impossible.

  But she still had not found any description or explanation in Aguilar’s journals that helped bring the “daimons of the Unreal” themselves into clearer focus. And more and more she had begun to suspect that that was precisely the kind of information that would prove useful, if everything else that she had learned was correct.

  “I’m going to grab some dinner at the food trucks outside,” Daphne said, suddenly appearing beside Izzie’s desk. “Want to come with?”

  Izzie looked up, a little dazed. She was deep into the second journal now, filling the legal pad with notes, and was so caught up in her reading that she hadn’t noticed Daphne’s approach.

  “Oh,” she said, blinking a few times while getting her bearings. “No, that’s okay. I had a late lunch.” She paused, and then added, “Thanks, though. I just really want to get through this stuff today.”

  Daphne glanced at the legal pad, half of the pages already filled with notes. “What is all this, exactly?”

  Izzie chewed her lower lip. “It’s a little hard to explain.”

  She resisted the urge to cover up the legal pad before Daphne was able to read anything that was written on it, afraid of how that might look. In the end, though, Daphne just shrugged. “I get it,” she said airily. “Complicated, right? Well, good luck with it. I’ll be back in a while.”

  As Daphne turned and headed towards the door, Izzie glanced at her phone and saw that it was almost six o’clock. She wondered for a brief moment how Patrick’s search was going, but then felt her attention being drawn back to Aguilar’s journals like iron filings to a magnet
. There were answers hidden there, she was sure of it.

  She had been reading a discussion of the “Rattling House,” which according to Don Mateo had been the part of Xibalba where a different type of training had been carried out. But Izzie couldn’t quite puzzle out the references to “Shifting” and “Shadowing,” and she wondered if this was another instance of a Quiche term being awkwardly translated into English. One could master the art of Shifting to other branches on the World Tree, or Shadowing through solid objects and to other places on Earth, by learning to travel freely along each of the four paths that lead from the Crossroads: north and south, east and west, up and down, inward and outward. What could any of that possibly mean?

  Samantha Aguilar’s academic paper proved to be of little help on this point, only comparing what the old man described in the journal as being somewhat similar to the Sufi concept of tay al-makan, or “folding of space,” a kind of miracle that the enlightened could accomplish which involved moving instantly to distant locations. There was a handwritten note in the margins, clearly penned by her husband Ricardo.

  Samantha, I’m reminded here of the work of the nineteenth century British mathematician Charles H. Hinton, who proposed a fourth spatial dimension in addition to the three dimensions that humans are able to perceive. Might these instances of “inward” and “outward” be equivalent to the terms for movement through the fourth dimension that Hinton coined, moving either ana (from the Greek for “up toward”) or kata (from the Greek for “down from”)? - RA

  Izzie sat back. Fuller had mentioned Hinton in his note in the margins of the self-help book by the founder of the Eschaton Center, who had described wisdom as “emanating to ana from kata out of the higher realms beyond.” And in the email thread about the Ink injectors, Ibrahim Fayed had mentioned “ana/kata leakage.”

  And what was it that Fuller had said that night in the lighthouse? “Gravity leaks into other spaces, but doors swing both ways.” Professor Kono had explained to them all about the experiment that Fuller had originally planned to conduct with the Undersight equipment, an attempt to prove his theory that the reason that gravity was the weakest of the fundamental forces was because it “leaked” into the higher dimensions. And that Fuller also hoped to prove that our universe is only one of many that orbit through that higher dimensional space, and that sometimes two or more universes can come into contact with each other, with often-dramatic results.

  This brought her back to old man Aguilar and his teacher Don Mateo, and their talk of spheres turning in their gyres, influences waxing and waning, and true places where the walls between the worlds were at their thinnest.

  Izzie was beginning to feel like one of Patrick’s cargo cultists, praying for the metal birds to return, and finding themselves suddenly stumbling across an airport runway.

  The only possible conclusion that made sense to her was that all of these people were talking about the same thing, though approaching it from different directions and with wildly different vocabularies. The scientists saw it as a scientific matter, the academics considered it a question of mythology, and the mystics believed it to be a kind of magic, but in the end it was the same reality that they were describing. There were worlds beyond our own, things could move from one world to another, and there were places where that kind of contact or communication … or contamination? … was more likely to occur.

  But if doors swung both ways, just what was coming through to this side?

  More than halfway through the third journal, Izzie finally found an answer, in a section in which the elder Aguilar described the ways in which he safeguarded the people of Recondito from otherworldly threats.

  When he first mentioned putting salt on the ground, Izzie had initially thought that Aguilar was talking about dealing with icy roads in winter. Then she remembered where she was, and how unlikely it was that the roads in Recondito would get icy in the first place. So what was he talking about? She backtracked and reread more carefully.

  Salt spread on the ground will serve as a barrier against them, and other crystals can serve a similar purpose. In addition, they are reluctant to pass over running water, fire can keep them at bay, and loud discordant noises can serve to disorient them. But these are only deterrents, and cannot destroy one who is Ridden. Silver can disrupt the connection with the host, whether introduced by bullet or by blade, but unless it remains in the body the disruption will be temporary, and the connection may be restored if the silver is removed while the body is still viable. But the only way to permanently severe the link is to render the body into pieces small enough that they cannot be controlled.

  Izzie remembered her grandmother’s barrier of red brick dust, protection against spiritual threats. Would the silica contained in the dust be sufficiently crystalline to serve the purpose that Aguilar was describing here? Or was that another instance of cargo cult thinking, aping the form of something without the function?

  Which brought to mind the symbols etched by Patrick’s great-uncle into the walls of Little Kovoko and filled with white paint mixed with sea salt. Had it been the symbols themselves that safeguarded the southwestern corner of the Oceanview, or the salt in the paint, or both?

  Izzie was copying out the passage about deterring and destroying the Ridden in the pages of the legal pad when her phone began to buzz. She glanced over, and saw that it was Patrick calling.

  She put the pen down on the legal pad and picked up the phone from where it lay on the corner of the desk, sliding the answer bar and putting it to her ear. “What’s up?”

  “It’s, uh …” Patrick began, and faltered. “You should get down here. There’s something you need to see.”

  Izzie sat up a little straighter. Patrick’s voice sounded strained, breathless, and perhaps a little scared.

  “What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “I …” She could hear him swallowing hard, or possibly gasping for air. “You just need to see for yourself.”

  As Izzie stood up from the desk, Daphne came in carrying a bottle of Italian soda and a paper bag.

  “Okay, I’ll be there as quick as I can,” Izzie answered. “Where am I going, exactly?”

  “What?” Patrick sounded a little dazed, or at least preoccupied.

  “Can you send me the address?” Izzie said, speaking slowly and deliberately.

  “Oh. Right. Hang on.”

  A second later, Izzie’s phone chimed with an incoming text. She glanced at the screen, seeing a new message from Patrick that was simply a street address in the Oceanview.

  “Get down here,” Patrick said. “I already talked to Joyce and she’s heading here as soon as she cleans up. This is … you’ll see.”

  “Okay, I’m on my way,” Izzie said, before realizing that Patrick had already hung up.

  “Trouble?” Daphne asked, putting the soda and bag down on her desk.

  Izzie was already shouldering into her suede jacket. “That police lieutenant I’m working with wants me to see something in the Oceanview. He’s been down there knocking on doors, and I guess he turned something up.”

  “Come on,” Daphne said, reaching for her keys. “I can give you a ride down.”

  “No, that’s twice in one day, and I …” Izzie began, then trailed off when she saw the look on Daphne’s face.

  “Seriously, it’s no trouble.” Daphne gestured to the paperwork on her desk. “It’s not like this mess isn’t going to be here waiting for me when I get back.”

  Izzie considered objecting, but then she thought about the urgency that she’d heard in Patrick’s voice, the tone that almost sounded like desperation. She needed to get there as quickly as possible.

  “Okay, okay,” Izzie answered, clipping her holstered pistol back on her belt. She pulled open a drawer on the front of the desk, and slid the journals, academic paper, and legal pad inside. Then she turned and headed towards the door, where Daphne was already waiting, sipping her Italian soda with one hand and with her keys r
eady in the other.

  “I’ll let you drive,” Izzie said with a sly grin to Daphne, “but only because you asked so nicely.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” Daphne said as she put her car into park by the side of the road.

  Izzie double-checked the address that Patrick had texted her, then glanced up at the street sign at the end of the block, and then looked over to the number painted above the entrance of the nearest building.

  “Yeah,” she said, glancing quickly back at the phone. “This would seem to be the place.” She looked up and out the car window. “Not sure what we’re supposed to be seeing here, though.”

  As best as she could recall from the GPS maps captured from Ibrahim Fayed’s “find friends” app, this was indeed the block that the six suspects had passed through on their way to the Pinnacle Tower that morning. There were self-storage facilities on the east side of the street, and a warehouse converted into office space on the west side, just as Chavez had described. But there was no sign of Patrick, or of any other police presence for that matter.

  “Come on,” Daphne said, opening the driver side door and swinging her feet out onto the pavement. “Let’s look around, maybe they’re just inside or something.”

  Izzie shrugged, unbuckled her seatbelt, and opened the passenger side door.

  Even if she hadn’t known that they were only a couple of blocks away from the bayside docks, she would have been able to tell in an instant just from smelling the air. Even mixed with the freshwater that flowed into the bay from the Varada River in the east, the briny scent of the seawater that swept past Ivory Point into the estuary from the ocean was almost overpowering.

  The sun had set a couple of hours before, but the glare from the streetlamps on either end of the block was nearly as bright as daylight. There were a few cars parked further up the street, but nothing in the immediate vicinity of the address that Patrick had provided.