“What’s gotten into you?” Ogden asked incredulously. “I have done nothing but look out for you since we met!”
“And just what do you expect in return for this generosity?” Anna gave him a knowing look.
“That’s not fair!” he protested. “Sure, you’re pretty and all, but that was the last thing on my mind out here!”
“But it was on your mind. Don’t you wish to ‘share my bodily warmth’?” she cooed as she leaned up against him. She could see that he was getting frustrated. “Until it becomes absolutely necessary, hands off!” she said and walked off toward Joseph, who was warming himself by a campfire.
◆
Anna pulled her jacket tight and wrapped her arms across her chest to stave off the chill. She had survived the cold winters of her childhood in Russia, but she did not recall the damp chill present tonight.
Joseph looked up from rubbing his hands together at the sound of Anna’s footsteps in the snow.
“Has there been any news?” she asked.
“Not yet. But it's early.”
“Helen said that I resemble her daughter Angela. Is this true?”
“Dressed like that,” he replied, appraising her appearance, “there is a strong similarity.”
“I suspect that Mr. Dickson may be looking for me.”
“But why are you looking for him?”
“I believe he is holding my… step-sister captive.” Joseph regarded Anna intently.
“Why would a lowlife like Cain Dickson be interested in you, or even know who you are?”
“I do not believe that he is who he appears to be.” Before Joseph could inquire further, Anna asked, “What were the girls doing out alone at night?”
“From what I've heard, Angela was the only one out for a specific reason. She was looking for Frances McCree. Don't know why the others were out. But as you heard, most of those girls were libertines.”
“I am going to wander over past the pond as if looking for the dog.” She looked toward Charles Street and a densely forested area. Then she whistled, and Cletus appeared out of the mist. “He has made his presence here quite apparent. It would not be unreasonable for someone to look for him in the dark.” She patted the dog’s head.
“Go hide,” she said to the dog and pointed toward the indicated collection of shadows. Cletus ran off, leaping through the snow. Anna feigned surprise, shouted, “Cletus come back!” in her best American accent, and plodded through the deep snow after him into the secluded darkness.
Chapter 16
March 13, 1930
The snow drifts in the northeast corner of Boston Common climbed up to Anna’s thighs, and her movements were slow and deliberate. Cletus had leapt through the snow, creating a furrow of sorts, but it was only a small respite. She could feel the cold wetness seeping down from under the legs of her pants into her work boots. Once under the cover of the trees, the drifts sank down to below her knees, but the going was equally slow on account of the shadows and low-hanging branches.
“Come back here,” Anna scolded, concealing her accent as best she could. After fifteen years in New York, she could approximate Brooklyn English well enough, but she did not know if that would fool her prey.
As if on cue, Cletus bounded out of the foliage and ran around Anna several times, just out of reach, before disappearing back into the shadows. Anna feigned exasperation and followed the dog’s trail into the snow-covered branches.
Suddenly, both of her arms were grabbed by strong hands, and she was pulled bodily out of the foliage onto Beacon Street Mall, the wide path that was illuminated by a streetlight at the top of the embankment that surrounded the perimeter of the park. Anna was momentarily blinded by the light, but her vision quickly cleared to find that she was being held by one of the men she had seen watching the Langham Hotel earlier.
“Kind of late to be out yourself, miss,” the man said as he set her feet on the ground. He retained his tight grip on her arms and examined her face in the light. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for my dog,” Anna replied in her American accent. “He ran off this way.”
“What is your name?” When Anna hesitated in responding, the man gazed at her face again. Anna saw the recognition when he noticed her scars. He reached into his coat to pull something out.
Whatever he was reaching for snagged on the coat, and when his gaze turned from Anna to the pocket, she lashed out and struck his throat with her fingertips. The man fell to the ground, gasping for breath, and Anna ran down the path followed by Cletus.
As she approached the steps that led up the embankment to the street, Anna noticed a pair of the athletic young men in suits and overcoats at the gate to the sidewalk. She ducked into the foliage. There was no indication that the men had spotted her.
The copse turned out to be thin, and Anna found herself on another path heading back toward Hooverville.
Anna meandered through the maze of shelters, taking a circuitous route to Helen’s shack. The old woman was surprised when Anna entered unannounced, but Anna’s anxiety was evident.
“What’s happened?”
“One of the government men identified me. I disabled him, but they will be looking for me. I need a change of clothes.”
“Take what you need,” Helen said, pointing to a stack of folded clothing sitting on a long-vacant pallet. Anna pulled off the wool coat and slipped on a long, faded, blue cotton coat. Helen plucked off the cloche hat and put her own wide-brimmed black bucket hat on Anna’s head.
“That should do,” Anna said, adjusting the hat. In the distance, she heard a policeman’s whistle. “I had better get away from here now. But do not worry. I will find Angela.”
“I’m praying for you,” Helen replied, clasping her hands. “Good luck.”
◆
As she emerged from the shelter, Anna saw the lights of several people marching toward the shanty town from the direction she had come. She stepped calmly but quickly through the assorted hovels in the opposite direction. When she reached the other side of Hooverville, Anna noted a group of policemen armed with flashlights and pistols approaching from the entrance by the Metropolitan station on Lafayette Mall. She turned back and made her way through the growing crowd of residents awakened by the commotion, watching another group coming from the intersection of the Beacon Street and Charles Street Malls. She slipped into the trees.
Branches and brambles raked her face and twice plucked the hat from Anna’s head before she found the open area around a bandstand. Across it, Anna could see more men at the Boylston Street and Tremont Street exits. To the left, beyond the bandstand and through some trees, she could just make out the forms of men near a monument. To the right, across the Ball Field, she saw more of the agents and policemen near the exit at the intersection of Boylston and Charles Streets. If she left the cover of the trees, she would be seen by her pursuers.
Suddenly, a scruffy-looking man’s head popped up from beyond the snow drift around the bandstand and gestured urgently for her to join him. Anna could hear the noises of the agents and policemen approaching from several directions. She glanced to the man, who now pointed down below to his right and mouthed, “Good hiding spot.” He then indicated to approach from his left around the piled snow.
“There’s the dog!” a voice shouted to her right, and the sounds of movement approached her position.
Anna had forgotten about Cletus, who must have followed her scent. There was nothing she could do about him now. She scanned the immediate area. The group that had been near the monument ran past her position toward where the voice had come from. As soon as they were out of view, Anna ran to the bandstand, noting that a path had been dug in the snow to a door just below the level of the snow. The scruffy man waved her over, and then ducked through the low door. Anna followed into the close chamber, noting that the shadow cast on the floor was that of a bipedal humanoid with a long muzzle and thick tail, just before the door closed be
hind her with a thud.
In an instant, Anna whirled around, but the knives in her sleeves caught on the cuffs of the cotton coat, which were tighter than the wool one she had been wearing. She sensed an incoming attack and dodged to the side. She struck the rounded wall of the dark, low space and fell to a crouch, pulling one of the knives from a calf sheath.
Her eyes were slowly adjusting to the dim light in the room. She saw movement and rolled to the side. Something heavy swept over her and hit the wall where she had been a moment before. She grabbed the object and tried to stab it repeatedly. The surface was thick and scaly, and her blade did not pierce it.
Suddenly, Anna’s shoulder was pierced. There was a sharp, burning sensation, and then Anna was paralyzed. She dropped the knife as her fingers straightened. Her muscles would not respond to her commands.
“You might be the one,” the scruffy man’s rasping, sibilant voice said. The door opened, and now Anna saw one of the agents instead of the scruffy man who had called to her. “Come,” he commanded, and Anna found her legs moving on their own. She tried to speak, but her mouth would not move. She was a prisoner in her own body.
Chapter 17
March 13, 1930
When Anna and the man emerged from beneath the bandstand, a foggy mist obscured the landscape, making everything indistinct. Anna’s body followed the impostor agent past the Boston Massacre monument to Tremont Street. The agents Anna had seen there previously were gone, probably headed to the site of the commotion on the other side of the park. Anna followed the doppelganger across the street, where they turned right.
They continued for several blocks before passing through a short but dark tunnel under train tracks. When they emerged on the other side, Anna’s captor was no longer in the form of one of the muscular, gray-suited G-men. He had become a frail, stooped old lady. The neighborhood was now residential, and Anna found herself assisting the old woman through rows of nearly identical houses on the gloomy, deserted streets.
The crone led Anna casually to an unassuming townhouse. Rather than climbing up the five steps to the front door, the old lady led her companion down a short flight of steps to a door under the front porch. There, she produced a key from her handbag, unlocked it, and gestured for Anna to enter.
Anna’s feet took her into a low-ceilinged storage area. She heard footsteps coming from the floor above. Then the door closed behind her, casting the chamber into darkness. As her eyes adjusted, she noted two, thick-paned windows between the room she was in and the next room. At the far end of the storage area was a door adjacent to that neighboring room. She could feel warm air in coming from that direction. She had started to walk toward the door, when a scaly hand bearing five, long, clawed finger grabbed her shoulder.
Startled, Anna turned to see a stocky, reptilian being with scaly skin and a long, powerful tail. It was a crocodile man from her dream. It was the Xuxaax. Remembering that her knives had been useless against its tough hide, Anna turned and escaped through the doorway and then through another one beyond it. She ran blindly down a long hallway. The footsteps upstairs were closer now.
Suddenly, Anna saw a light at the far end of the passage coming from a spiral staircase leading upward. She headed to it and climbed the steps two at a time until she ran into something. She started to fall backward, but a strong, but gentle hand caught her.
“What have we here?” a tall, thin man said with an unnerving grin. He was young, perhaps in his thirties. His blond hair was messy, and he wore a stained artist’s smock. He took hold of Anna’s chin with his other hand and tilted her face up toward him and the light coming from behind him. He turned her face from side to side, appraising it. Then he noticed her scars, and grinned maniacally. “I think you might have found her this time. Put her in the garden with the others.”
Anna jumped when the scaly hand, now illuminated, grabbed her shoulder from behind again. Then she felt the sharp, burning sensation as its claw stabbed her in the back of her neck and she passed out.
◆
Anna regained her senses in a greenhouse. The ceiling of the chamber was opaque glass, and the room was pleasingly warm. Among the many wide-leafed tropical plants that lined the walls were four very lifelike statues of young women in modern clothing, two on either side of a path that led to a blank wall. All appeared to be running in panic toward her, and all bore more than a passing resemblance to Anna.
Anna stood third in the line to one side of the path, but she was facing the others, and her wrists were chained together and tethered to a ring set in a column above her head. She had been relieved of her knives, her coat, and her sweater, but otherwise appeared to be as she had remembered. She was not in any pain, save for the lingering burning sensation from the Xuxaax’s paralytic poison.
Turning her head was difficult, but Anna managed to glance across the path to her left, where she could barely see another young woman in the corner of her eye. The woman was real person, not a statue, and appeared to be paralyzed like Anna. She was tied to another column in the same pose facing the blank wall at the far end.
Looking with her extreme peripheral vision was uncomfortable, so Anna faced the far wall again. She could not blink, but her eyes were not dry or irritated. She considered her situation.
If I am shackled, she thought, there must be some risk of escaping. The paralysis must be temporary. She considered the strange man. He must be the one in charge, and not the Xuxaax. Perhaps Lyton had been wrong.
Anna tried to think of escape options, but bound and paralyzed all she could think of was to wait out the effects of the poison and hope she was not harmed or injected again. Dejected, Anna attempted to clear her mind to try and sleep.
As she stood frozen — her gaze focused on the opposite end of the room — Anna noticed the wall was not blank. There were very small characters or glyphs written across the central portion of it. The iconography filled in the shape of an arch that nearly touched the glass ceiling. Unable to look away, Anna saw the writing start to move, at first barely perceptibly, and then faster and faster until there was a regular rhythm to it.
◆
Captivated by the motion, Anna’s surroundings faded away, and she found herself in a chamber. Hourglass-shaped columns supported a strangely vaulted ceiling. The room was illuminated by globes set into the ceiling and filled with shelves containing what looked like rectangular blocks of metal. Spaced througohut the chamber were tables, some of which held the metallic blocks.
As she looked around, Anna noticed several other things there with her. They were all conical beings with multiple prehensile stalks near the apex at the top. Two of these stalks ended in three-fingered appendages that looked like crab legs. One stalk ended in a ball, from which cone-shaped organs periodically emerged from and retracted. Another supported a large, bulbous head sporting four enormous eyes facing in opposite directions. It was tipped with a handful of whisker-like tentacles that writhed independently. All of the creatures had metallic rings around the head stalk where it joined the main mass. Most of them also had rings around the claw stalks as well, and an arc of electricity connected them, though they did not seem to impair movement.
Anna turned to look at objects on the table. The metallic blocks had glyphs carved into them. There were also cups with what looked like carved bones in them, as well as stacks of thin metal sheets. Some of the sheets were scattered about the surface, and Anna could see glyphs that had been freshly etched into them. She reached to take one of the carved bones from the cup and realized that her hands were claws. She was in an alien body in some kind of alien library. The beings were taking the metallic “books” from the shelves with their claws and holding them up, arching their necks to look at them. They stood motionless for various lengths of time, and some of them took the bone styli, which — when touched to the metal sheets — initially glowed blue before fading into indentations in the surface.
Anna was struck by vertigo as she swiveled her head stalk around t
o look at her current form. The body and the stalks were corrugated and glossy, and changed colors between greens, blues, and purples in the light. Her claw stalks bore the metal cuffs. She tested them by stretching them in opposite directions and found that the range of motion was limited, with the electrical arc appearing and buzzing at a certain distance.
At the sound of the arc, another of the beings, who did not have claw-stalk cuffs, glided over to Anna.
The shackles are for your own protection, an alien voice said in her head. You are not accustomed to our form, and it would be quite easy for you to damage your host’s body. Then it glided back to where it had come from.
Anna looked at the book on the table nearby. To her surprise, she found that should could read the glyphs, and that the book was entitled Mental Communication Among Humanoid Species. It described an advanced mathematical formula beyond human understanding. Anna’s curiosity overcame her unexplainable situation, and she was compelled to experience the “book.”
As she scanned the metal surface, the glyphs started to move. The characters were completely different from the ones in the greenhouse, and images appeared in her mind. Anna felt a strange sensation. She became aware of a new sense of perception, more mental than physical, very far away. She mentally pursued the sensation and found herself staring at stationary characters on the wall in the greenhouse.
Chapter 18
March 14, 1930
Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god! a female voice said in Anna’s head. Anna knew it wasn’t her voice, but its source was nearby. She was still paralyzed, and nothing had changed in the greenhouse. Though she was starting to get uncomfortably warm, she could detect no signs of perspiration. Her entire physical being was frozen, but her mental abilities were still functional, perhaps even enhanced without the distraction of her physical needs.
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