by Jon Steele
Krinkle turned away, stepped to the girl, checked her eyes again.
“She’s also half human. That means we’re forbidden to interfere with the time of her death if that’s what’s coming down. With her or without her, we’ve got no choice but to survive.”
Harper looked at the girl.
Just a kid.
“We are not them, they are not us.”
“Amen,” Krinkle said.
Harper felt a jab of pain in the palms of his hands. He saw fresh blood seeping through the bandages.
“Hey,” Krinkle called.
Harper looked at him.
“If I could choose to interfere with the time of her death, I would. If I could’ve done the same damn thing for the Cathars at Montségur eight hundred years ago, I would’ve. It’s nothing personal, it’s the gig. Been that way for two and a half million years. But if it makes you feel any better, imagine my crew outside the cathedral right now. They’re armed to the teeth and they’ll protect le guet to the death, with or without us.”
Harper saw them on his timeline. Five rock-and-rollers dressed in black leather; one young woman working as guitar tuner and sometimes chauffeur of Krinkle’s magic bus.
“Your crew is a post-rock band from bloody Finland.”
“And they do killer encores as required.”
Harper rested his bandaged hands in the pockets of his mackintosh, listened to Clémence rumble through the nave once more. Flashes of the last seventy-two hours ripped through his eyes. Strange lights in the sky, stranger things on the ground. A sextant from a time before the locals knew the world was round. And there was a five-thousand-year-old mathematical proof of infinity engraved in the sextant’s arc. That was just Paris. In Montségur, in the shadow of the Pyrenees, where the Cathars made their last stand—where it all went bad for Harper, Krinkle, and Astruc eight hundred years ago—there was a shed full of somber angels cast in scrap iron and a biscuit tin containing one-third of a clay drinking cup and one bloodied carpenter nail. Two thousand years old, from Jerusalem; so said the sculptor of the somber angels. Mad lines of causality, their courses plotted thousands of years ago, now intersecting and delivering the message that some of the legends and myths of men were being ground down to a point of singularity, ready to blow the lid of the truth about angels hiding in the forms of men in a place called paradise.
“Christ, I need a smoke,” Harper said.
“Yeah, a hit of radiance would do a body good right now. But later. Let’s finish this.”
Harper looked at the girl.
“Remind me how ‘this’ works.”
“Easy,” Krinkle said. “I’ll back le guet’s memory up to just before you spilled on the reincarnation of human souls. When she comes around, pronounce her given name, let her see the light in your eyes. The synaptic contacts of her entorhinal cortex will fire simultaneously and delete her declarative memory from that point on. She’ll have no choice but to follow you back to nowtimes.”
“Easy, you say.”
“Yup.”
The roadie walked to the girl, passed the palm of his right hand before her eyes. She blinked.
TWO
i
Consciousness returned.
She tried to comprehend the world in front of her. She was facing a steel door, buckled and ajar, seven inches thick. Like she was inside a bank vault. Her arm was raised, her hand held a gun; it was pointing at the steel door. Beyond the gun barrel was a wisp of smoke, and the room smelled of cordite.
She looked down, saw she was sitting on a narrow camp bed. Her left arm curved as if holding something no longer there. Before she could think what it might have been, a voice ripped through her brain: Weapons check. In quick moves she retracted the gun’s breech, saw a hollow-point in the firing chamber: Loaded. She ejected the magazine, checked it: Empty. She shoved the magazine to the grip, aimed at the door again: Fire ready, one round good to go. Question: Where the hell did I learn to do that? No idea was the answer. She eased her finger from the trigger and rested the weapon on the bed. She saw a green plastic bracelet attached to her right wrist. She raised it to her eyes: no name, no markings, no clasp.
“Huh.”
She looked up, saw a bank of fluorescent lights in the ceiling. She looked around, saw the pale green concrete walls of a large square room. She looked right, saw the kitchenette built into a recessed section of the wall: sink, stove, microwave, huge fridge-freezer. Close by was a small wooden table and chairs next to the sink. Nearby shelves held glasses and plates, aluminum pots and pans stacked atop a big iron skillet. There were tall clear jars filled with tea bags and curious-looking smaller jars. She got up and walked to the shelves. She read the handwritten labels on the jars of tea: Morning Light to welcome the day. Midday Buzz for harmony and balance. There was a tea for afternoons, labeled Violette’s Garden, that did something, and one called Night Clouds that did something else. And there were dozens of smaller jars stacked atop one another with labels written in the same script as the teas: Molly’s Tofu Stew, Molly’s Veggie Mix, Molly’s Yummy Homemade Alphabet Spaghetti.
She pulled open the one drawer under the countertop: kitchen utensils, forks and knives, different-sized spoons. She closed the drawer, opened the fridge. It was loaded with bottles of UHT milk and Molly’s Finest Apple Juice. The freezer was loaded, too: bags of frozen vegetables and complete meals in plastic tubs. Each tub was labeled with the contents and instructions on how to prepare them in the same handwritten script as the other stuff: Ten minutes in the microwave and chow down!
“Huh.”
She looked at the table and chairs again. No; one adult chair, one child’s high chair. She looked at the buckled steel door again. It wasn’t a bank vault; it was a bomb shelter with enough food to keep one adult and one child alive for months.
“Where the hell am I?”
She closed the freezer, closed the fridge, saw a baby cot in the corner. She walked to it. The cot was made up with a clean sheet and blanket. There were folded pajamas lying on the blanket next to a stuffed bear. A repeating pattern of a sheep with a wide grin on his face was printed onto the pajamas; the stuffed bear was smiling, too.
She walked to the nearby wardrobe; floor-to-ceiling, three doors. She opened the first door: sweaters and blouses, shoes, socks, T-shirts, lingerie. She pulled one of the brassieres to her chest; it fit. So did all the clothes behind door number two, from the look of them.
“This is weird.”
Behind the third door: children’s toys on the lower shelf; three upper shelves with kids’ clothes. Overalls, sweaters, shirts and trousers, socks and shoes. All the clothes were the same size as the pajamas; lots of blue, no pink.
“Blue means boy. So where’s he?”
She looked under the dining table and chairs, the baby cot, the camp bed she’d been sitting on. No little boy anywhere, but half hidden under the bed was a black canvas bag. She walked over, reached under the bed, and pulled out the bag. It was open. It contained silver tubes, divided into six sections according to the colors of their plastic caps. Red, blue, yellow, green, white, purple. She removed a white-capped tube. Four inches long, half an inch in diameter. No label, but there was a button on the side. She pressed it . . . Click. A short needle poked through the cap and a jet of valerian-smelling liquid drained onto the concrete floor. She looked at the bag again. Inside was an information chart with a diagram of circles; some interconnecting, some connected by lines. Within each circle were lists of physical or emotional symptoms corresponding to a particular colored cap, or combinations of colors. Below the diagram were required dosages. She saw another silver tube on the bed with a small blue cap next to it; the needle had been released. She picked it up. It smelled of lavender. She checked the diagram, followed the colors and interconnecting circles and lines to the words:
For severe shock or emotional trauma. Do not exceed one dose per 72-hour period. MAY BE FATAL.
“What the fuck?”
&nb
sp; She checked under the bed again, saw an open book on the floor. She pulled it out, thumbed through it. It was a child’s storybook about a giant caterpillar named Pompidou flying through a star-studded sky, circling the moon, and then over the Boiling Seas of Doom. On the caterpillar’s back rode a band of silly-looking men. They wore paper pirate hats and waved wooden swords and shouted into voice balloons:
“Up, up, and away!”
“Me toos!”
“To the ice castle!”
“And don’t forget to save the princess!”
“Oh yeah, oh yeah. Must save the princess!”
She closed the book and read the cover:
piratz
Une histoire drôle de—
“Wait a sec.”
She reopened the book to the silly-looking pirates, read their dialogue again.
“It’s French. I think in English but I can read French. I must be dreaming.”
She tossed the book and silver tubes onto the bed—clink, clink. The sound bounced around the room, and she followed it till it stopped at a set of bifold doors on the wall opposite the kitchenette. She walked the twelve steps it took to get there, pulled open the doors. A small bathroom: toilet, shower, sink with mirrored cabinet above, a double-door closet to the right. Shelves next to the shower held soaps and creams, adult and baby shampoos, boxes of tampons, towels and washcloths. She stepped into the bathroom, opened the right side of the closet. There was a combo washer-dryer and cleaning products, a broom and a mop. The left side held stacks of clean cloth diapers wrapped in plastic. Neat, she thought. And she remembered the neatly written labels on the jars in the kitchenette; jars of Molly’s this and that. She wondered if her own name was Molly because, thinking about it, she couldn’t remember what her own name was.
She reached over, opened the mirrored cabinet above the sink. One electric toothbrush for an adult, one kid’s toothbrush with blue bunnies on the handle. Toothpastes, disposable razors, dental floss, a child’s thermometer, Band-Aids, and aspirin. She stepped closer, rose to her tiptoes, and checked the top shelf for a prescription bottle or anything with a name on it. Nothing. She closed the cabinet, saw a woman in the mirror staring back at her.
“Is your name Molly? Is that my name, too?”
No answer. But the more she stared at the woman in the mirror, the more no way seemed the answer. Molly was a neat freak; the woman in the mirror was a tramp. Messy blond hair, ashen face covered in dirt and sweat, looking out at the world with a vacant gaze. She touched the glass to make sure the image was a reflection and the woman in the mirror did the same thing. She saw the woman was wrapped in a black blanket. She stepped back from the mirror, held out her arms, and the woman in the mirror matched her moves again. It wasn’t a blanket, it was a black wool cloak over a green sweater and blue jeans. All the clothes were filthy with dirt and twigs and pine needles. She focused on the sweater, saw a dark blotch of something damp. And there was similar spotting down the legs of the jeans. Blood?
“What happened to you? By the way, who the fuck are you?”
Not receiving answers from the reflection, she opened the sink’s spigot. It gurgled and spat a few drops. There was an electric switch on the wall with a label: WATER PUMP. She flipped it and water began to stream from the spout. She leaned down, splashed a few handfuls on her face. She felt something trickle from the back of her neck and down her cheek, then drip into the sink. She watched a trickle of blood circle the basin before going down the drain. She wet a washcloth, pressed it to the back of her neck. A sharp pain raced up her neck and into her skull.
“Shit!”
She held the washcloth to the mirror, the woman on the other side of the looking glass doing the same damn thing. There was a nickel-sized spot of fresh blood on the cloth, like she’d been jabbed with . . .
“. . . a needle.”
She dropped the washcloth in the sink, hurried to the camp bed, and checked the black canvas bag. Twenty compartments up, twenty across made two hundred tubes; one ninety-eight still in the bag, plus two on the bed made them all accounted for. Had to be the stuff for severe shock she’d found when she came around. She reached behind her head, found the sore spot again. Wondered if she’d jabbed herself, or if someone else had. She looked back to the bathroom. The woman in the mirror was still watching her from the other side of the bifold doors.
“Anytime you want to pitch in with a hint, feel free.”
The woman in the mirror didn’t offer one.
“Big fucking help you are.”
She quickly read through the symptoms on the lid of the canvas bag, searching for something reading, Can’t remember a thing? Try this. Nothing. She sat on the bed, looked at the steel door. She stared at the gap in the buckled metal, saw a light beyond the door; then came a metallic, iron-like smell. She rose from the bed and walked to the door, more curious than afraid. Crimps in the metal were razor-sharp and the gap was narrow. Air flowed into the room and the metallic smell was stronger here. She turned sideways, leaned through, and saw a blood-spattered stairwell with a woman’s body over the bottom steps. Face hammered to pulp, throat slashed, hair soaked in blood. The dead woman’s right thigh was wrapped in a bloodied pressure bandage. It had come undone, and a thick shard of glass was buried deep in the woman’s leg. Blood had ceased to flow, but it was fresh. Looking over the body again, she realized the clothes in the closet would fit the woman’s body, too. She wondered if the dead woman was Molly, and if this was her place and the missing little boy was her child.
“So what am I doing in here and why are you out there? Where’s your kid?”
Her eyes followed a trail of blood up the steps. At the top of the stairwell, two men lay slumped together, half invisible. It was the clothes they wore; uniforms of some kind, imprinted with a strange camouflage pattern that made them almost disappear. If not for the red blood seeping through the fabric, she would not have seen their bodies.
“Hello?”
Her voice echoed up the stairwell and the sound startled her. She eased back into the vault, wrapped her arms across her chest. An odd feeling washed over her; more the lack of any feeling at all. No fear, no panic inside a blood-splattered dream. Had to be a fucked-up dream. And the voice in her head reminded her how, in really fucked-up dreams, there’s no choice but to ride it out till you reach the really scary stuff; then you wake up screaming. She turned to the bathroom, saw the woman in the mirror.
“That’s your voice in my head, isn’t it? I am dreaming all this, aren’t I? Is that why I’m not afraid? Or is it because I haven’t come to the really scary stuff yet? Or it was that stress-be-gone shit in the silver tube I got jabbed with? Because anything can happen in a fucked-up dream, can’t it? Just have to ride it out.”
Water overflowed the sink and poured onto the concrete floor. She rushed into the bathroom, pulled the washcloth from the sink, watched the water drain. She squeezed the cloth, watched blood drip from it. She slammed closed the spigot and faced the woman in the mirror, knowing she was looking at her own reflection, except for the eyes. The woman’s gaze was more than vacant; it was soulless.
“It wasn’t any stress-be-gone shit, was it? You got jabbed with some steal-your-soul shit, didn’t you? That’s why you’re looking at me like that. You have no fear because you have no soul.”
Silence.
“Who are you? What are you doing down here? What happened to those people out there?”
Nothing.
She turned and walked to the baby cot.
She picked up the perfectly folded pajamas. She lifted them to her face, smelled them. There was the mingled scent of soap and powdered skin, and smelling it, she remembered coming to minutes before. Right arm with a gun pointing toward the steel door, left arm curved as if holding something to her breast. She looked at the woman in the mirror.
“The little boy was in my arms, wasn’t he? I was holding him, wasn’t I? Did somebody take him? Did he wander off, or is everything about h
im part of this fucked-up dream, like you and the needles and all of it?”
Nothing.
“Say something, damn it!”
Silence.
“Fine. I’ll figure it out myself.”
She walked to the camp bed, laid the pajamas next to the children’s book. Next to the book were the silver tubes with popped needles; next to the tubes was the gun. Her eyes moved slowly over the objects, trying to figure which of them made the most sense. Francophone pirates waving wooden swords while riding a giant flying caterpillar; the little boy’s pajamas with the grinning sheep on them; the Glock 19 with one 9x19 parabellum round left in the firing chamber.
“The gun wins.”
She picked it up, stuffed it in the belt of her blue jeans, and looked at the woman in the mirror.
“If I’m not back in an hour, send in the marines, bitch.”
ii
“He told me you would come. He said I could trust you.”
Harper scanned the girl’s eyes. She was back with him, ready to spill whatever message she had from Monsieur Gabriel.
“That’s good, mademoiselle. Did he tell you what else I would do?”
The girl lifted the lantern, turned a latch, and opened the small glass door.
“Inspirare.”
She pronounced the word in slow cadence, evenly spaced, pitch accents all in a row. That meant it sounded like a command. Funny that, Harper thought.
“All right.”
He stepped close to the lantern, leaned forward, and exhaled slowly. The fire in the lantern flickered, almost dying. Then the wick ignited and a brilliant light sparked and glowed. Le guet closed the glass door, latched the lantern shut. Krinkle stepped next to Harper, both their eyes locked on the flame.
“Whoa. Management said it might be here, but holy mother backbeat,” Krinkle said.
“What would be here?”
“The first fire of creation.”
“They seem to tell you a lot more than they tell me.”
“They do.”