Kenji sought to force the fear from his mind and set his bag down on the desk. “Hope Reggie gets here soon,” he managed.
Dylan paced through the room, arms crossed. His face was looking pale, and the quick, twitchy glances he cast about the room, and especially towards the single window, revealed just how uneasy he was. “Feels like someone's watching us,” he said through grit teeth.
“Don't...” began Kenji, shaking his head. “Just don't. Reggie will be here soon, I bet.” He furrowed his brow, recalling that Reggie lived in St. Paul. He lived a lot closer to Akeley than the two of them did. Kenji thought it strange that they should have made it there before him, but knew better than to say anything out loud. No good would come from speculating over Reggie's tardiness.
The two sat in the shack silently, waiting for the third member of their party to arrive.
TWENTY-TWO
It was roughly an hour after Kenji and Dylan arrived that Reggie showed up. The sun had fully set by then and the fields were draped in shadow. The moon was a sliver of gold in the sky, barely visible behind a knot of angry clouds.
The sounds of Reggie's LeSabre coming up the gravel drive stirred them both from their frightened stupor. A few moments later, he came inside, a leather bag slung over his shoulder and a bit of sweat dotting his brow despite the intense winter cold. “Hey there, fellas,” he offered, closing the door. “Sorry I'm late. Didn't set out till later in the day.”
Dylan nodded a greeting, but remained in his chair, staring at the window.
“Thanks for coming,” said Kenji. “Did you bring it?”
Patting the leather bag he wore, Reggie nodded. He walked over to the desk, sporting a seasick grin. “You ready for this?”
Kenji nodded. “Brought a book that should help me translate it more quickly.”
Slowly, Reggie rifled through his bag. His eyes widened as his grip closed around the book, and he slowly drew it out, setting it before Kenji on the desk. It landed on the wooden surface with a deep thud, the metal cover shining in the light. “What do you think of that?” he asked, chuckling.
Dylan looked over Kenji's shoulder and tongued his molars for a time before asking, “Where'd you get this thing, man?”
Reggie started into his tale, describing the events that'd united him with the strange book, Carte de Umbra Lungi. First, he detailed his meeting with the mysterious Mara Antall. Then, he told the two of them about his visit to the old house where Agnes and Mara had once lived with a number of other Hungarian immigrants. He described the room that had once been Agnes' in no little detail, and then told them about his visit to Victor's, giving them the bookseller's pointed impressions of the thing. When he was through, he sighed, as though the information had been weighing him down all that time, and shook his head. “It's damned crazy, I tell ya.”
Kenji touched the cover. The metal was slightly warm to the touch, despite the coolness of the air. Studying the outside, he ran his fingers along the impressions in the metal. Though he was no expert, it was clear that this was an exceedingly old book, likely hundreds of years old, and that it'd been shaped by someone who held its contents very dearly. The delicate flourishes spoke of a craftsman who cared a great deal about the book's message, and who wished to dress it in an exterior that matched its importance.
“This book was in Agnes' possession before she went missing, then?” Kenji frowned, opening the front cover and looking over the title page. There, rendered in flowing script, were the words Reggie had given him. Carte de Umbra Lungi. The work was not attributed to any author, and there was no other information to be gleaned from this first page. “Why did she have this? And if she was kicked out of the house by the other immigrants, why didn't she take it with her?”
Reggie shrugged. “She didn't take anything with her by the looks of it. The room was dusty, but nothing was out of place. A bunch of clothes and such were still there. Looks like she just skipped town. Didn't take a thing.”
“All right.” Kenji fished the Romanian dictionary out of his bag and set it beside the Book of Long Shadows. “I'm going to start now. Please, keep it down while I try and make sense of this. If it's really Romanian then it won't take me too long to crack it. I've studied Italian for a long time, and the two languages are fairly close.” Turning the page, Kenji looked over the opening passages, but suddenly stopped short.
The flowing script was very neat, and the black ink was still readable despite the passage of years. It wasn't the writing on the page that drew his attention however. Pictured on the lower portion of the leaf beneath a chunk of text was a picture that made his stomach sink to the floor. “What the...”
Dylan, who'd still been peeking over Kenji's shoulder, recoiled at the sight of it. “OK, what the fuck is this about?”
The subject of the picture, a masterfully-drawn piece replete with great and realistic details, was a woman. Her throat had been slashed, and a bright trail of blood gushed from the wound. Her attackers surrounded her on both sides, held her arms so that she couldn't break free. The victim's blood was flowing down her bare chest and into a chalice. It was all Kenji could do not to shut the book at once.
The imagery was altogether too vivid. Though this book had been written long before the days of photography, he couldn't shake the feeling that this was some kind of primitive photograph, such was the intensity of the detail. Otherwise, it was very likely a scene drawn from life-- a drawing done by someone who was there, witnessing the grisly events thus depicted and rendering them with the skill of a master in realism. He closed his eyes and looked away for a moment. The image burned on in his mind, however.
“Yeah...” began Reggie, pacing nervously behind them. “There's some... weird shit in that book. Lots of... pictures and whatnot. I should've warned you. Sorry about that.”
Dylan sat back in his chair, his curiosity surrounding the book completely diminished. “Fuck this, man. I don't think we need to be looking at this kind of crap in the dead of night, out in the middle of nowhere. You know, this Agnes chick was probably into some freaky shit, and now she's missing. It's for the best; knowing what kinds of books she read, I'm not sure I wanna find her anymore.”
Kenji returned to the book, trying not to look at the picture and focusing only on the text. It was a battle he could barely win, though. If ever he let his gaze wander in the least, he found himself staring in horror at the grisly scene below. “W-well, it's an old book, guys. Stuff like this was featured all the time in b-books by writers in the ancient world...” Kenji stammered.
Dylan chuckled incredulously, standing up. “Bullshit, Kenji. You ever seen anything like that on the History Channel? I mean, what does this have to do with anything? We came out here because we followed this chick's message, but... now we're reading her old book and it's full of murder scenes? Nah, screw this. We should get the hell out of here, now.”
Kenji shook his head. “Just calm down, man. Let me try and read some of this. I'll get a handle on it and then we'll figure out what sort of book this really is. See if it has anything to do with Agnes' disappearance. OK?” He scooted closer to the desk and scanned the book afresh, tearing a sheet of paper out of one of his notebooks so that he could cover up the distracting image while he attempted his translation. “Just keep quiet. I'll tell you what I find in here in a little while. It's too early to freak out. For all we know she just... collected old books.”
Dylan grumbled, pacing around behind Reggie. “Yeah, that's why her Hungarian buddies shunned her, right? Not because she was a witch who slashed people's throats, but because she collected old books.” He pointed to Reggie. “That's what they said, right? That she was a witch? Something's not right here, and the more we stick around this place, the closer we're gonna get to finding her. Does that sound like a good idea to you, Reggie? You want to stand around waiting for ol' Agnes to come back, looking for her gruesome book?”
Reggie buried his hands in his pockets and ambled ar
ound the room, shoulders stooped. “Now.... let's just let Kenji here work his magic, huh? If we find... if something comes outta this we'll hightail it outta here, young fella. No doubt about that. No doubt. But we gotta... we gotta see what this thing's all about.”
“You guys are fucking hopeless,” spat Dylan, leaning against the wall, fuming.
Kenji had blocked out the chatter and was better able to focus on the text after covering up the grisly picture on the bottom of the page. Scanning the text, he could pick out several familiar words. It wasn't long before things began to fall into place for him. A couple of quick dictionary references hammered out the differences in tense and usage that he came across, so that, before long, he felt like he was reading straight Italian. It helped that the style was very formal and literary. Though archaic, he could make out a good deal without even having to glance at his dictionary. The only trouble was that the book was rather long; it would take him more than a single night to get through its hundred or so pages. Moreover, there was no telling what passage, if any, was relevant to Agnes' disappearance, or what other terrible images he might run across while attempting a translation. His skin crawled just thinking about the first image. Whenever he pictured it in mind, Kenji couldn't help but agree with Dylan: The owner of a book that featured such terrible illustrations as this must be rather depraved.
Kenji had started this investigation as an unbiased party. He and the others had been led to the shack without knowing a thing about the woman who'd fed them the coordinates. Now that he was learning a bit about Agnes' life and interests however, matters had taken on a very different cast.
As best he could tell from his readings on the first page, the contents of this book were extremely esoteric. It appeared to be something of a magical or alchemical text, referring to means through which supernatural abilities may be gained. In other words, it was something like a witch's spell book.
Outside of movies or books, Kenji had never seen such a thing. He knew books had been written on the subject of paranormal phenomena in centuries passed, but this wasn't like the historical texts he'd seen in documentaries. This, for all intents and purposes, was a grimoire chock full of actual spells and rituals. Whether these methods succeeded at conjuring what they proposed was open to debate, however it was clear in the volume's painstaking craftsmanship that the person who wrote the book thought it all to be true.
Kenji scoffed inwardly. No, this was a book of nonsense. It had to be. Magic, spells, rituals, the paranormal... these things didn't exist. He'd been listening to Dylan too much, entertaining too much ridiculous talk about EVPs and things of that sort lately. His unease about the gruesome art in the book had unseated his reason for a moment, made him consider the possibility that the book's contents were genuine, but he very quickly dismissed the notion and returned to his reading. Turning the page, he found a wall of neat text. Thankfully, there was no awful drawing on this or any of the next few pages. Sighing deeply, he pressed a few fingers to his forehead and treated the book like any other dry translation job. Kenji didn't bother taking notes; he simply wanted to get a good idea of the content so that he and the others could make sense of it. Possibly there would be some link in this book to real-life events, and it would lead them to the truth behind Agnes' disappearance.
The little voice in the back of his head seemed to mock him as he read on. You just couldn't let this go, could you? You've spent so much time investigating this random string of occurrences, digging deep where you had no business doing so. You'll regret it...
Dylan and Reggie fell into small-talk while Kenji worked through the first few pages of the book.
Outside, the night deepened, growing darker and quieter than before. A gust of wintery air struck the shack and the lights overhead dimmed briefly. As the breeze settled down, it almost sounded like a far-off sigh. The trio glanced out the window almost in tandem, half-expecting to find someone there.
There was nothing.
TWENTY-THREE
Dylan paced. Reggie was sitting with his arms slung over the back of one of the folding chairs, looking up at him. They chatted in hushed tones, not wanting to interrupt Kenji's reading.
“So,” continued Dylan, “it's just like I was saying. Sometimes, the dead can be captured on audio recordings or video. Experts don't know exactly how or why this happens, but they speculate that their energies interfere with the recording equipment, and that they reach out with a message for the living. Of course, they don't have the energy to say a whole lot, so the messages are often condensed, right? A little cryptic, maybe.”
Reggie's gaze hardened as he pondered this. “Like a set of coordinates, you mean.”
Dylan nodded gravely. “I told Kenji over there that this could be some kind of paranormal EVP thing, but he doesn't buy it. I think, though, that it's entirely possible. Just think about it. Maybe this Agnes lady died, right? And she wanted to let someone know about where she died, or the person who killed her, so she shares these coordinates. A string of Maidenhead coordinates like what she shared is brief enough for a spirit to convey, probably. Why not, right?”
Stroking his chin, Reggie glanced over at Kenji, who was hunched over the book, reading feverishly. “We'll see, I guess. I want to know what your friend over there makes of the book first.”
“Nah, think about it, man,” continued Dylan. He was trembling slightly, a mixture of excitement and unease coursing through him. He chewed on his lower lip, going through his theory again. “It's the only thing that makes sense. Her spirit got picked up on these two recordings because she wanted to leave a message for the living.”
“Sure, but then how's this book figure into all of this?” asked Reggie.
“Maybe it doesn't,” countered Dylan. “I hope it doesn't. That's some freaky shit in there. What I'm saying is that we're maybe dealing with a ghost trying to reach the living. I don't even want to consider that it could be an evil, witchy ghost we're chasing.”
Reggie yawned. He'd brought a thermos of coffee with him, and every now and then he'd take a long pull from it. “I've got a friend, Victor. The book store owner. He had a look at that book there, like I told you. He's kinda eccentric. Likes astrology and all kinds of New Age stuff. But he told me once, when discussing some murder in the local news, that the victim might never rest in such a case. A spirit, in death, is sometimes 'broken', he said. A violent end can scatter pieces of their spirit so that they can't know peace till the end of eternity. And those pieces, you know, they end up in all sorts of places. God knows where they might end up. Maybe in a video or song or somesuch. It's not impossible. Could explain why voices get picked up in these radio recordings, or why our buddy Agnes... you know.”
Dylan shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah... yeah, you might be onto something. I'm telling you,” he said to Kenji, patting his shoulder, “this is an EVP thing. She's a ghost of some kind, and she's reaching out to us from beyond, man. You know I'm right.” Kenji shook him off, focusing hard on the dense text before him.
“You think Agnes was murdered?” asked Reggie. “It's possible she was killed by someone and wanted the world to know what happened to her. When she died, her restless soul got busted like a mirror, into pieces, and those pieces ended up in a song, a documentary, that were released on the day of her death. Those things are examples of EVPs, a spirit caught on video, yeah? Her message was spread, transmitted...”
“Could be...” Dylan trailed off, balling and un-balling his fists. He was glancing repeatedly at the radio on the desk while he paced. He reached over Kenji and toyed with the knobs on it, his forehead dressed in a bit of sweat. “I, uh... once, in a movie, I saw someone try to...” He shook his head, decided not to finish the sentence.
“What's that?” asked Reggie, leaning forward.
Dylan hesitated. “Well, I'm not saying this is legit or anything, but... I saw in a movie once that you can use a radio as a kind of ouija board, to communicate with the dead. Know what I me
an? Ghost hunters online use 'spirit boxes'-- they scan the frequencies in search of anomalous noises. They claim it's the voices of the dead. I saw a few videos on that not too long ago when I was researching white noise and EVPs, too.” He gulped, issuing a nervous laugh. “It's dumb. But maybe Agnes lured us here because she wanted us to use the radio, right?”
Reggie sat bolt upright. “Now we're talkin'. You might be onto something there, kid.” He stood and walked over to the radio, brushing a thick layer of dust off the top of the black console. “Think we should give it a try? Maybe switch her on and see what we pick up?” He nudged Kenji's arm, drawing him out of his reading. “What do ya say, Kenji?”
Dylan shook his head. “Nah, we're... we're not in a great place to do this sort of thing. We're just going to hear what we want to hear in the static, guys. Not wise to mess with spirit boxes in our state of mind.” He'd gone pale again. “Let's just forget I said anything. It's a long shot. Movie rubbish.”
Reggie pressed, however. “No, I think you might have a point. It'll help us kill some time if nothin' else.” He tapped Kenji's shoulder again. “Let's have us a séance, boys. If we're right, and Agnes is really no longer of this world, then we stand a chance. Think about it; she's the one who led us here, and we've got a radio at our disposal. Let's fire her up.”
Transmission: A Supernatural Thriller Page 12