“Like this one now you mean?”
“Yes. I believe we’ve always been headed to this room, at this time.”
The blonde smiled.
“Oh good. How does it end?”
The brunette smiled back, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“Now that I can tell you. It ends with you dead and me pissing in your face.”
“If that’s the case, I’m not sure I’m keen on this fate shit.”
“That’s the point about fate, isn’t it? The shit just keeps on coming around and there’s nothing any of us can do about it.”
It was the blonde’s turn for questions.
“And there’s no room in karma, fate, whatever you want to call it, there’s no room there for free will?”
“Not where fate is concerned. Free will is an illusion, just a way to make you feel better about the fact that you’re fucked six ways till Sunday whatever you do.”
The blonde took a deep draw from the cigarette and blew three perfect smoke rings, each through the other before rubbing the butt between her fingers and letting the ash fall to the carpet.
“I don’t see how you can live that way,” she said after a pause. “From my experience, our free will is what drives the universe. See, before we got here, I made a choice. I decided that I’d let you have the first shot, I owe you that much if nothing else. That’s not fate, not karma, that’s me, taking control of the situation.”
“And what if I made the same choice?” the brunette replied.
“Then I guess we’ll be sitting here for a while yet. Did you bring a pack of cards?”
The pair of them sat there for a while longer. John had another try at pushing his way through, straining every bone and muscle, but he got nowhere, and had to give up after less than a minute, already sweating with the exertion. The wound in his belly throbbed, and as if on cue the brunette stubbed out her cigarette then spoke again.
“Actually, I don’t believe this is fate. I believe this is karma, your karma, coming around to bite you on the ass.”
The blonde laughed, and this time there was no music there, just cold hard steel.
“I’m a bad person therefore some imaginary thing somewhere I can’t see is going to punish me? That’s just another fairy story to keep us in line. If you’re going to use that as an excuse, you’re going to have to define what is good, what is evil, and the nature of punishment in the cosmic scheme of things.” She paused to light another cigarette. “I guess we really are going to be here for a while.”
“Not too long now,” the brunette said. “I just want you to apologize.”
The blonde scratched at her belly again, and red roses of color blossomed there.
“Apologize for what, for being me? For doing what I want, when I want? Why should I apologize for that?”
“You ruin lives. You ruined my life that day when you walked into our shop with that fucking gun. You were always going to shoot, weren’t you?”
“Yeah. What’s your point?”
“And you don’t care? You don’t care about the boy? Or the father?”
“What is there to care about? I’m here. You’re here. As I see it, the only directive we have is to stay alive for as long as possible, and enjoy ourselves while we’re at it.”
“Enjoy? You enjoy being a sadistic bitter bitch?”
“Yes, actually, I do. Why don’t you pick up that gun and give it a go? Maybe you will too.”
“Maybe I will. You need to be punished.”
“If you believe in Karma, as you’ve said, then my punishment is coming to me anyway. If that’s the case, why are you sitting there with the gun? Don’t you have the courage of your own convictions?”
“I can wait,” the brunette said, and smiled. “What goes around comes around.”
The scene faded and wavered, went almost black dark, a single black egg hung in the space behind the door. It popped and revealed a scene beyond. Two women sat in the dingy room. The blonde scratched at her belly, raising red spots of color on her white shirt.
The brunette spoke first.
“Do you believe in fate?”
John stepped back and closed the door softly. There was no way out for him in that direction.
It seems someone is trying to tell me something. Maybe its time I started listening.
Down in the deep, the bass voice sang.
Where he lies, where he lies, where he lies, where he lies,
The Sleeping God is dreaming where he lies.
18
Sam, at some point that evening he’d started using her name, finally agreed to go back to the cell after an hour when there was no recurrence of the singing. Thankfully, Todd hadn’t heard it again either. If he had he might start questioning his own sanity, even more than he was already doing.
The station fell relatively quiet around him as full night came on and shifts changed, or at least as quiet as it could be during the biggest murder case to hit the town in living memory. The news crews were still camped out in the main parking area, several from Halifax and Toronto having joined the local lads when the late afternoon flights came in. It was just as well it wasn’t full winter or they’d all be freezing. But even now, in what passed for a Newfie spring, it would be bloody cold out there. Todd hoped they had plenty of clothes and coffee.
There was still no sign of the sarge or the inspector, and the chief had long since stopped believing any story about them following up a lead. Todd had left half a dozen voicemail messages, and a couple of texts, for both of them, but hadn’t had any replies. He’d also phoned around the bars that the inspector usually favored, but nobody had seen either him or the sarge all day.
What with that, and the fact that he was slowly coming around to believing Sam’s statement, outlandish as it was, he was now worried, he was very worried.
He’d listened to the tape again too, playing it over and over, part of him hoping that maybe he’d play it one more time and the singing wouldn’t be there.
And then he woke up and it had all been a dream.
He never believed that plot if he saw it in a movie though, and wasn’t holding out much hope for it now. He was still wondering how to write the music part of it up in the witness statement when he got a call from Doug Wozniak from Forensics.
“I tried to get Sergeant Lodge but she’s not around so you’ll have to do. We’ve got a preliminary report, and you’re not going to like it. Come down for a coffee and I’ll go over it. I’ve put a fresh pot on.”
Normally he’d have waited for Forensics to deliver the full typed up version so that he could pass it on to the sarge or the inspector, but not tonight. Besides, Doug, a regular golf partner, knew his coffee and made the best brew in the station.
Two minutes later he was in the bowels of the station in the Forensics lab. This wasn’t the open glass and chrome magnificence he’d seen in the television depictions of a Forensics’ team, but a low-ceilinged converted basement, crammed with equipment and smelling, more than slightly, of the tang of acid.
Overhead fans whirred noisily, one with a slight stutter that Todd would have found more than annoying if he’d had to live with it for any length of time. But Doug had a broad smile, one that rarely left his face, as he handed Todd a large mug of black coffee.
“Drink up, you’re going to need it.”
Doug’s white coat was stained with a variety of substances, some of which looked like food; coffee, ketchup and the like, and others that were probably a variety of staining reagents or acids. He wiped his hands on the front, leaving a new reddish-brown smear, then led Todd over to a long table where the crime scene evidence was laid out in a series of sealed clear plastic bags.
“The bodies are off to the morgue,” Doug said. “But you saw them already at the scene. They were mostly clean, all of them infused with enough weed to knock out a horse, but clean otherwise, nothing harder than some grass is what I’m saying. There’s certainly no angel dust or acid, nothing to ind
icate a frenzied psychosis in any event. We drew some blood from your witness too, she’s the same as the others, long term cannabis user at a guess, but if she’s done anything harder it’s been long enough ago to be cleared out of her system.
He waved a hand over the evidence table.
“And then there’s this lot, no stray fibers on any of the clothing, no bits of metal filings from any weapon, no prints anywhere in the apartment apart from those of the dead and your witness.”
“None at all?”
“Well, there’s one,” Doug said. “We found it when we went back for a second look this afternoon.”
He lifted up an envelope. Inside was a single tall sheet of paper, and Todd knew what it must be even before he turned it round. It was Hines’ artwork, his summoning spell. There was print powder on the central yellow part of the painting.
“So, have you run it through the system?” Todd asked.
Doug grimaced.
“This is the bit you’re not going to like, it’s Green’s print, definitely. Our inspector has managed to corrupt the scene on his first day back on the job.”
Todd now knew why Doug wanted to tell him this in private. If it got to the chief straight away, Green would be tossed off the case faster than spit. But Todd didn’t see what other option there was. The inspector had turned up for ten minutes, gone AWOL and screwed up the scene before he left, dragging the sarge along with him. If the chief was going to carpet the boss, Todd would be at his side, cheering him on.
“This is fucked up,” Todd said, and Doug just nodded in agreement.
He lifted his coffee mug to drain the last of it, and heard a distinct voice in his ear, the old man, singing the blues.
Where he lies, where he lies.
He almost spit coffee all over the evidence bags and Doug looked at him with a quizzical expression.
“You okay, Todd?”
“Did you hear that?”
That got him another raised eyebrow.
“Hear what, the fan? The request for a new one is in but…”
Todd wasn’t listening, he heard it again, a complex middle eight played on a slide guitar by somebody that knew what they were doing.
He put the mug down and backed away from the evidence on the table as the painting inside the clear envelope bulged and stretched. Something ripped, a tear that seemed to unzip the fabric of reality itself to leave a single shimmering black egg hanging a foot above the plastic bags. Todd heard the song come through, loud and clear.
Where he lies, where he lies, where he lies, where he lies.
The Sleeping God is dreaming where he lies.
“Tell me you see that,” Todd said, almost a whisper, but Doug was already backing away from the table.
“I see it. But what the hell is it?”
Todd remembered the statement he’d typed up earlier.
“They were eggs, but they weren’t really, they were something else, shiny. Look, have you dropped acid? No? I thought not. But if you had, you’d know exactly what I’m on about. Black eggs, first there, then, pop, somewhere else. Somewhere hazy and wavy and dreamy and all fucked up.
“Then the screaming started.”
Doug moved forward again and reached out a hand, as if to investigate the strange occurrence. Todd pulled him away, rather too urgently for Doug’s liking.
“What did you do that for?”
“Just don’t touch it,” Todd replied. “For God’s sake don’t do anything that might cause it to change.”
“Change into what?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be so damned terrified.”
The black egg, Todd saw that it shone with an oily sheen that danced in an aura around it, red and yellow and gold and blue, like oil on a hot skillet, thrummed and vibrated with a hum that set his teeth on edge.
The blues song got louder.
He sleeps in the deep, in the dark.
The egg stopped vibrating and seemed to calm, even maybe grow smaller.
He sleeps, and he dreams, in the deep far below.
Almost gone again, there was now nothing more than a thin, pencil thin, tear in reality.
And the Sleeping God is dreaming where he lies.
With a sound like a zip being closed the tear disappeared, the song stopped and the room fell quiet save for the stuttering thump of the busted fan overhead.
“You said you tested everything for hallucinogens?” Todd said.
Doug hadn’t taken his eyes off the spot above the table where the tear had been seconds before.
“Yes,” he finally replied. “But I think I’d better test everything again.”
“Probably a good idea,” Todd said, and headed back toward the cells. He had more questions for Sam, and for himself too.
19
Janis stood in the hallway at the foot of the main stairs, unsure of her next move. She was now also unsure of her original diagnosis of having been drugged. She should definitely be coming down by now, definitely seeing reality start to bleed in. But what she was seeing, and hearing, from the rooms, and through every doorway, was just more weirdness, more confusing images that seemed to have a purpose. It almost seemed as if someone, or something, was trying to teach her something.
She was almost sure now, this was no drug addled dream, you didn’t feel hungry in drug addled dreams, and Janis’ stomach rumbled loudly while she stood there trying to come to a decision. She also hadn’t had a coffee in several hours, and that was going to turn into a serious problem for somebody if it wasn’t rectified soon.
And if it wasn’t a drug dream, what could it be? Surely, she’d remember someone trying to hypnotize her? At some point, she was going to have to consider the possibility that everything that had happened, was still happening, was objectively real. She wasn’t there yet.
But I’m getting there, and I’m in no mood for being jerked around. You wouldn’t like me when I’m cranky.
She decided it was time for more positive action. Opening more doors inside the house wasn’t going to get her anywhere.
But what about under it? Can I get out that way?
And not just get out, John might be down there, and she still hadn’t found the Forensics team. Just having that thought was enough to fix her course of action. She had to look now.
The fat man might also be down there somewhere, she’d heard him down there the last time she opened the door. Of course, in this place, that was no guarantee he’d be there next time, but even if he was, she’d dealt with fat smelly men often enough—the bars in town were full of them on any given Saturday night. She put a hand on her pistol again, taking some small comfort just in the fact it was there, and headed for the cellar door.
Yet again she half expected to see a new scene when she opened the small pine door under the stairs, but like the last time, there was just the dark passage with stone steps leading down. She tried the light switch again but as before it just clicked and clicked with no answering flicker of the single bulb overhead. At least this time the noise was only met by silence. There were no loud Scottish admonishments from below.
She stepped onto the cramped landing at the top of the steps and looked down. It was different in another way too this time, it wasn’t quite so dark down there, diffuse light showed her what looked to be the three bottom steps of a line of twelve, a clear view if she wanted to descend.
There was still no sound coming up from below, and she tried not to think about the fat Scotsman hiding in wait in some dark corner as she put her foot on the first step. Besides, she’d probably smell him before she saw him.
“Ready or not, here I come,” she shouted, and started down the stairs.
Her eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom, and she went down in silence. There was no sound from below and no smell. She reached the bottom without mishap and looked across a high brick cellar that seemed to stretch the whole width and breadth of the house, and maybe a bit further.
It might be shared with the next building
up the hill, there might be another way out.
The light, what little there was, came in from a row of three windows about twelve feet off the ground, at or just above street level would be her guess, although all she could see out of them was more of the dense swirling fog.
The cellar itself seemed even older than the rest of the house, the brickwork was crumbling in places, and damp in others. It probably dated to the first dwelling on the site, which would put it three hundred years back at least, and maybe more. There looked to be about that number of years worth of junk down here, filling much of the space with old furniture, piles of decaying books, magazines, newspapers, and bags, leather, cloth and plastic depending on the era, full of clothing. The room smelled musty, appropriate to the age of the stacked junk, but there was no hint of the fat man. She relaxed slightly and took her hand off the pistol.
“John? Are you down here?”
She got no reply, but having felt the quietness and stillness she didn’t expect any. There was a thin layer of dust over everything, including what little floor she could see. No one had been down here for quite some time.
So, how is it that you heard the fat man shouting less than ten minutes ago?
She pushed that thought away, just another impossible thing she’d think about later when she had the time. Just like she had no time to waste investigating the nooks and crannies, valleys and byways that snaked between and around the junk piles.
Then she heard it, a distant chanting, getting louder.
At first, she thought it was the bloody song again, but the chanting got closer, a strange, guttural cacophony that contained no words of any language she could recognize. At that point, she wasn’t even sure that human vocal chords were capable of making the sounds she heard, yips and cries, chirps and whistles intermingled with bass drones and harsh glottal stops. The whole effect chilled her to the bone and it wasn’t helped by a sudden blast of cold air that swept through the room like a gale.
It felt like someone had just opened a window.
Maybe I can get out.
Something moved in the left-hand corner of the cellar.
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