by B. V. Larson
I reached the cellar door and stretched out a hand to gently touch the handle. The house had interesting doors. They were made of real wood—not pressed hollow fiberboard fabricated to look like wood. These doors were heavy and made of planks of cedar. Darkly stained and varnished, each door had an arching top, like a dungeon door in an old castle. Even the handles were interesting. They were a dark, oil-rubbed bronze.
I learned in an instant that these metal door handles conducted heat very well. I recoiled, jerking back my burned hand with a hiss and a curse. It was not a loud utterance, but apparently it was enough to alert my visitor.
“Quentin?” asked a sibilant voice from behind the door.
I forgot about my throbbing hand and lifted the .32. I stepped back two paces and aimed the muzzle at the door. Rethinking my stance, I shuffled to the right. If my visitor was aiming a weapon of its own at the far side, there was no sense in making the task any easier for it.
“Who’s there?” I asked in a harsh whisper.
The light under the door brightened, then dimmed again. I thought I saw the movement of a rippling shadow. Whatever it was, I had the feeling that it had shifted and turned away.
“I think I’ve damaged your stairs. I’m sorry.”
I frowned in recognition. Could that be…?
“Ezzie?” I asked. “Are you down there wrecking the place?”
“I’m sorry.”
I rubbed my burned hand on my chin and kept the pistol aimed at the door with my other hand. If it really was Ezzie, and not some other trick from another place, shooting her would have no effect. She was essentially a silicon creature—a living mass of heated stone.
“What the hell are you doing here? Are you alone?”
“I’m not cold now. I feel good.”
Whoever it was, it certainly sounded like Ezzie. She was a creature that seemed to function like a pet for Rostok, my benefactor. Since he was the very man who’d set me here to guard this juncture between worlds, my mind was racing to conclusions. Had he changed his mind about my ownership and sent Ezzie to eliminate a possible impediment to his plans?
“Did Rostok send you, Ezzie?” I asked.
“Let me in, Quentin.”
I took a deep breath. I’d spoken with Ezzie only a few times before, and she’d always been somewhat childlike in her responses. My immediate concern was for the wooden portions of my house. If I could get her out onto the tile floor in the main room, at least she couldn’t burn away flammable portions of the house that came too near her radiant body. Now that I knew where she was, I was fairly confident I could outrun her if it came to that.
“All right,” I said. “Let me get something. Just a second.”
I walked to the kitchen, flipped on the lights, found a hand towel, then flipped the lights off again. Ezzie and her kind didn’t like bright light.
Using the hand towel, I opened the door and quickly stepped backward. A glaring, hot mass undulated forward. Ezzie moved at about the speed of an elderly man who had to lean heavily on a cane. Sliding through the doorway, her rounded, crusty sides brushed the doorjamb. Fine wood blackened and sent up twin curls of smoke. I winced at that. This visit was going to end in a repair bill I couldn’t afford.
Ezzie herself resembled a giant slug made of cooling lava. She had no eyes but seemed to sense her environment somehow. I figured the source of her odd voice was the opening in her head, which swiveled fluidly on a thick stalk.
“This room is cold,” she said.
“I’m sorry about that, Ezzie,” I replied, keeping my distance. I wiped sweat from my forehead. It seemed a hopeless task, as droplets continually beaded up and ran down from my hair to sting my eyes. Her presence was like that of a mobile, open furnace. “Can you tell me why you are here? What do you want, Ezzie?”
Her head section rotated, as if taking in her environment. It was a slow process requiring several seconds. At last she fixated upon me again. I felt a chill then, despite the sweltering heat. Had she come to kill me? Was she able to squirt lava at an intended target? I’d met up with several of her kind before—although she was the only one I’d had words with. A small one had burned down my previous home, and another had burned to death a person I’d known. Yet another had tried to get me when I’d visited their hot, hellish homeworld.
At long last, Ezzie stared at me and spoke again. “Do you know what Rostok can do?”
I thought about it. “He has many powers,” I said.
“Only one matters.”
My face burned due to the lava-creature’s proximity. Eager to learn the secrets of a strong member of the Community, I didn’t back away. The Community was an eccentric group of shadowy people here in Vegas. They were the most powerful of the powerful in my city, the people who really mattered.
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“He sees stories before they happen.”
I squinted at her and put my hands on my knees. I lowered my voice to a whisper although I had no reason to believe anyone else could hear us.
“What kind of stories?”
“He sees tomorrows. Lots of them. Then he sorts through them, selects the most likely, and does things as if that story will be the real one.”
While I absorbed this information, I wondered if anyone else had somehow gotten into my cellar. Logically, if Ezzie had done so, others could as well. Perhaps they were down there even now, preparing my demise.
“So, he knows ahead of time who lives and who dies?”
“Some of the stories, yes. Part of them.”
I blinked at her, mulling this over. It would explain a lot. A power like that would be worth keeping, and would allow someone to gather great wealth. It sounded like it wasn’t a perfect, clear view of the future, however. She kept mentioning multiple futures. I imagined that would make things harder. In some cases, it would make the power useless. What good was it to be able to see the future if you could clairvoyantly see both sides winning every election? But in situations in which there were many possible outcomes, and you saw two or three of them, you would be greatly helped in your decision making.
“Did Rostok send you here, Ezzie?”
“No. He does not send me places. Not anymore.”
“You’ve left him? You’ve left his service?”
Ezzie squirmed. She slipped forward, causing my tiles to sizzle under her body. My floor was marble—real marble. Seeing it abused this way made me wince. Those tiles weren’t impervious to heat, and they weren’t cheap.
In response to her approach, I took an involuntary half step backward. I kept a distance of about ten feet between us. Even at that range, the heat of her body was intense. More intense than when I’d encountered her in the past.
“He no longer cares for me,” she said.
I frowned. There were several ways to take that statement. Rostok and Ezzie had always had an odd relationship. Usually, he behaved as if permanently annoyed with her foolishness. In my experience, he treated her like an exotic pet—or a half-witted gangster’s moll. I couldn’t help but wonder about the nature of their history together. I didn’t ask Ezzie about all that, however. Complex questions were beyond her capacity to answer.
“Where have you been?” I asked her. “How did you get so comfortably warm?”
“I passed through my home to come here. It is a nice place. Have you been there?”
I thought of the bubbling lava pools and the deadly superheated creatures that swam within them. If ever there was a true hell, her homeworld was it.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been there.”
Ezzie shivered and slithered a few inches closer. I felt the urge to back away, but I resisted. She seemed excited—in a good way.
“So warm,” she said. “I miss it. I’m sad to be away even for a few minutes.”
“Then why did you come here, Ezzie?” I asked. She’d ignored the question the first time, but I decided to give it one more try.
“I like you.”
“I like you because you do what you want. I watched you when you were talking to Rostok. I decided to be like you and do what I want.”
I grimaced. I didn’t like this development. I didn’t want Rostok blaming me for Ezzie’s decisions. But as long as she was in the mood to give information, I decided I might as well get whatever I could. “What does Rostok’s artifact look like? What gives him the power to see the future?”
“I saw you,” she said. “I saw you in the glass. Well, at least I saw half of you.”
I opened my mouth, and closed it again. I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The other half was missing. The part with the meat on it. I understand that your kind needs all your parts to operate. You were finished when I saw you in the glass.”
I didn’t like where this was going. “Let me see if I understand what you are saying, Ezzie. You like me, and you saw me dead in one of Rostok’s visions. So you came to warn me? Is that it?”
“No,” she said. “Not really. I can’t fix you. If you’re going to die, you see, it is as good as done. I just wanted to talk to you one more time. To tell you I like you.”
I shook my head, frowning. This creature didn’t think like a human. She seemed to have emotions and some level of empathy, but she really was quite alien.
I was about to ask more questions, probing for the details of my future demise. It didn’t sound good, this talk of my meaty parts having gone missing.
Before the conversation could continue, I noticed Ezzie was moving again. She didn’t turn around and slither back into my smoky cellar. Instead, she slithered forward toward the hallway that led to the back bedrooms. I walked after her, careful not to place my bare feet where she had passed over the tiles. A trail of smoldering gray ash was left in her wake.
“Where are you going, Ezzie?”
“This way.”
“Um, there’s carpet ahead. I’d really prefer if you stayed on the tile.”
“But this is the way I must go. I can see it clearly now. Look ahead.”
I followed the path she was taking, and I did see something. It was an orange glimmer, a faint circle like a flame at the end of the hallway. I followed Ezzie until I could go no farther without stepping onto her burning path.
“Come on, Ezzie. The carpet!”
It was too late. Fibers curled, blackened, and sent up plumes of foul smoke. It smelled as if I’d burned a tire in the hallway.
“Ah, dammit!” I said.
“I’m sorry, but this is the way I must go.”
I trotted back to the couch, forced my feet into my shoes, then ran back after her. I walked into the hallway, choking on the smoke. I stamped on the carpet where it glimmered orange in spots like the tips of lit cigarettes.
“Ezzie?” I called, but it was too late. She had entered the rip at the end of the hallway and vanished.
I opened every door and window I could, trying to air the place out. I ground out smoldering spots in the rug as I found them.
By the time I was sure my house wasn’t going to burn down, the pale orange sphere of wavering light at the end of my hallway was dying. I knew I was looking at a portal that led to another place. I’d been through several of them in the past. At times, they’d taken me to other spots in Las Vegas. But usually, they were doorways to entirely different worlds. The trouble was, there was no way of knowing what world I would end up in if I stepped into this particular rip in space. Ezzie hadn’t told me about her destination, and I wasn’t sure I could trust her alien word on the subject if she had.
So I stood there, coughing occasionally and cursing often. I didn’t quite have the guts to step into a rip that was fading before my eyes. Not when I didn’t know what was on the other side. Knowing Ezzie, it might well be the flaming core of a volcanic mountain. There might not even be breathable air where she was going. I couldn’t take the risk.
Eventually, the rip faded to a glimmer and vanished. I retraced Ezzie’s path to the cellar. At the bottom of the scorched stairway, the floor was burned and cooling. She’d come in right where the cultists had held their odd gatherings and where they’d often formed portals to distant places.
When I was sure the house wasn’t going to burn and that Ezzie was gone for good, I cracked open a beer and rolled the cool can over my forehead. After swilling down two of them, I flopped onto my couch again. At least the house had cooled down into the bearable zone. I stretched out on the couch and managed to get back to sleep.
My dreams were haunted with images of my own body, twisted and burning. Chunks of meat were missing from me, here and there.
The next day, I was mildly depressed. The damage Ezzie’s visit had caused was more extensive than I’d thought. This came at a bad time as I was in financial trouble anyway. I no longer answered the door these days. The phone had been disconnected, and my cell was a throwaway from a convenience store. It was only a matter of time until the bill collectors figured out my latest cell number and began harassing me with calls again, but I needed the phone. It was my only connection to the outside world. How else would I get work?
The problem was there wasn’t any work. I’d done too good of a job when I’d trashed the Gray Men and left them trapped on their side of the interdimensional fence. I was like a firefighter who’d invented a way to stop all fires before they started: unemployed.
Besides my cell phone, the only other way to find me was to visit my blog. Draith’s Weird Stuff was still up and still busy with visitors. Unfortunately, they came to read the freaky stories before wandering off to new online horizons, rarely clicking on any of my banner ads.
People could find my e-mail address on my website if they looked hard enough. If they typed a nice message to me, I might grudgingly share my cell number. That was the best way to connect with me. Some did it, but when I scanned them looking for promises of quick cash, I was always disappointed.
All my efforts at dodging the collections people didn’t stop the mailman himself from stuffing my mail slot with a daily stack of notices. They came in colored paper envelopes now, and when the mood struck me to open one, I often found the print inside had as much red ink on the page as black. I wondered vaguely, as I stirred around a pile of leaflike paper threats with one index finger, why people used red print when they wanted to get your attention? Even more intriguing, why did this tactic work so well on the human psyche? There was no way of denying it; when I saw paper with red print all over it, I felt a little bit sick inside. Perhaps it was because the shade matched that of blood.
All the notices had numeric amounts printed on them stipulating how much I owed. The words were often capitalized, bolded, or italicized—occasionally all three. Words such as disconnection, late fee, and overdue were common. My personal favorite was final warning. Final warning always made me smile, because I knew it was a blatant lie. There was no such thing as a final warning from any of these people. They would continue to hound me until I was dead, and then probably keep going long afterward. I was surprised there weren’t stacks of pink envelopes stamped final warning strewn over half the graves in the Vegas cemeteries.
Most people in my situation would make a few phone calls. Maybe I could hit up my mom, or some uncle who owned a business and could find a spot for me to work in the back. I didn’t have any options like that, as I still hadn’t recovered most of my memories—my past and my family were all a big blank. It haunted me still, not really knowing who I’d been before that fateful car crash last year. But I’d learned to live with the loss of my past, even if it still bothered me.
One of my unpaid bills caught my eye at about six o’clock the following evening. It was a Wednesday, an unremarkable Wednesday by any measure. Outside it was warm and dry with a desert breeze coming down from the moonscape mountains that surrounded Las Vegas. The breeze was welcome but did little to cool off the city.
The envelope was light blue—nothing overly int
eresting there. What had caught my eye was the return address: it was from the County Assessor’s Office. There was no getting around this bill. They would take my house away from me if I didn’t pay.
I gritted my teeth and tore open the crackling paper. My eyes popped when I saw the amount.
I stood up, sighed, and walked outside. The tax bill drifted down onto the marble tiles behind me. Technically, I owned the house free and clear. But realtors never clarified a critical point to potential home buyers. Lands and houses were never really entirely yours. You still owed taxes on them every year. Worse, the taxes were based on the value of the property as some computer interpreted it. In my case, they had coldly calculated that my house was worth millions.
I closed the mansion door behind me with a resounding boom. It was like the slamming of an ancient tomb. I rattled my key in the lock and stepped toward the street.
I didn’t have a car anymore; they’d long since repo’d it. I walked down the hill toward the town center. Henderson had taxi cabs, but I couldn’t afford them. The bus stops were at the bottom of the hill. Fortunately, I didn’t mind the walk.
There was only one man in the Community I knew I could turn to: Mr. Rostok, the owner of the Lucky Seven. Sitting like a spider inside his horseshoe-shaped casino, I wondered if he already knew I was coming. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.
My plan was uncomplicated. I would head to Rostok’s casino and try to impose upon him. His pet had wrecked my house. With luck, he’d pay something to fix it. With less luck, he’d give me some kind of job to do. At the very least, I might learn if there was any truth to what Ezzie had said about seeing my death in Rostok’s visions.
The weather was fine, and the sun blazed over the Spring Mountains to the west. As it was June, I knew the sun would take a long time to vanish behind those dark peaks. At least it was beginning to cool down. I wasn’t big on bright sunlight, so I pulled my hoodie over my head and watched the concrete as I walked. I pulled out my sunglasses and put them on, further shielding my eyes from the glare.