668, page 14
There were no cobwebs, no neon spiders, no rats, no centipedes, no stench of decay and unearthly body odor.
There was, however, a wishing well in the middle of the floor, with a four-foot brick wall around it.
He stepped into the room cautiously.
Suddenly the peaceful, ordinary, middle-class nature of the entire scene caused alarm bells to go off, and he whirled with an oath, slapped the wall with the flat of the cleaver to silence them, and, simultaneously, turn on a bank of overhead fluorescent lights. They weren’t green.
As he passed the staircase, he noticed that the door at the top was barred with thick iron bands upon which had been scratched icons and runes in a foreign, perhaps even alien, language. A mauve waxy substance sealed the rim, and someone had stolen the doorknob.
A trap, something told him.
Well, of course it is, he snapped silently; you don’t put something like the Bingomomicron in a perfectly ordinary basement without some sort of protective device to either zap the intruder or warn the rightful owner or both, depending upon the nature of the rightful owner, who was, in this instance, dead and therefore undoubtedly capable of practically anything.
A sudden pulse of green from the well startled him.
A glance back at the mouth of the tunnel told him Chita still hadn’t bothered to see if he was alive or not.
All right, the way is clear, he told himself; the book must be in the well.
Marvelous, something told him; a way with the incredibly obvious is what you have, don’t you?
A talent, he answered; a gift from the gods.
Carefully, he placed the cleaver on one of the steps for easy chopping and swinging access, dropped the gun into his pocket, and approached the well.
A bead of perspiration broke from his temple.
His stomach protested the absence of liquid, and damn strong, fortification.
Every instinct, every sense, every connection with his well- developed, tenacious grip on life told him he was making a huge mistake, that performing this heroic deed would only get him into deeper trouble than he already was in because, in case he hadn’t thought about it, which he hadn’t, if he did find the Bingomomicron in that well, and if he did destroy it and thus stymie the pending return of the Older Deities, there were going to be some very irate acolytes back at the other house who, upon learning that they’d been acolytes for nothing, would probably kill him.
It was something to consider.
The green glow pulsed again.
Wait, he told himself No sense getting up a lather when you don’t even know if that book is in there. One step at a time, old man; one step at a time.
He took the step.
With hands braced against the cool brick and a Gaelic prayer at his lips, he leaned over the rim and looked in.
He leaned back.
He dusted his hands.
He rubbed his neck, his chest, the back of his neck.
Shit, he thought.
The book was there.
John Laste, still holding the holy vial of blood, rose from his folding chair. He looked at each of his colleagues in turn, smiling confidently when none looked away but met his gaze calmly and with pride.
“Since I am in possession of the Holy Vial of Blood,” he said quietly but with the confident authority of having more money than anyone else in the room, “I shall intone the Final Words of the Final Coming of the Older Deities, so that They shall be pleased with our work, and we shall be rewarded accordingly because They are pleased.”
“John,” Caroline said in dismay, reminding him of a promise he had made in the heat of such passion as he was able to generate considering his social position, age, and the thought of his wife walking in on his indiscretion.
Marsha’s eyes widened. “I knew it,” she said. “I knew the cat was dead.”
Wally Putney turned to his wife. “Caroline, you don’t mean … you can’t say … you haven’t…” He sputtered. “With him?”
Caroline blushed but held her ground.
“Now wait a minute, hold on there,” said Dr. Smith. “You told me you’d get him to let me intone the Final Words of the Final Coming.”
“Jesus, Caroline,” Wally groaned. “Him, too?”
Smith rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t talking to her, you idiot. I was talking to her.”
They looked at Pilandra.
She blushed.
Smith leapt to his feet. “Her!” he shouted.
And pointed at Marsha.
John gasped. “Marsha!”
“Marsha?” Caroline queried.
“I promised you nothing,” Marsha told the doctor primly. “No more than I promised him.”
“Wally?” Caroline queried.
“Wally?” John said.
Wally leapt to his feet. “Now see here,” he objected.
They looked.
He blushed.
John demanded an explanation.
Wally whined that it was because of the enormous amount of money he had lent Marsha several years ago, for the shoring up of the Laste Roundup chain of sauteed barbecue restaurants famed throughout New England and parts of Minnesota for their hot sauce and cross buns.
“Marsha, is this true?”
“Without it,” she confessed proudly, “we would have gone broke.”
“But we were doing so well, all those grand openings, all those checks. How could we possibly go broke?”
“Because of the embezzlement.”
Caroline crossed her legs in utter confusion.
“I have never touched a penny except for personal and business reasons,” he defended himself stoutly.
“Not yours,” she said. “Mine.”
“Yours?”
Dr. Smith wanted to know why he wasn’t going to get to say the Final Words of the Final Coming.
Pilandra put a hand on his knee to calm him, and Rex shook his head in subtle warning, lest someone notice the act of familiarity.
Meanwhile, John began to nod. “I see. So you borrowed an obscene amount of money from Wally Putney to cover the fact that you had embezzled all that money from the Roundup.”
“No,” she said. “To pay the blackmail.”
“Oh my god,” Wally whispered.
John continued to nod. “I see. You were being blackmailed because someone had discovered your acts of embezzlement, which, by the way, dear, means you’re fired, you realize that, don’t you?”
“No,” she said. “Because of…” Suddenly Marsha burst into tears. Instantly, Rex knelt before her, a handkerchief in his hand. She smiled bravely and dried her tears. “Thank you,” she said gratefully.
‘Think nothing of it,” he said, stood, faced the room, and whipped off his patch.
“My god!” John gasped. “It’s you!”
“You!” Wally stammered.
“You!” Caroline blushed.
“You?” Kenilworth queried. He frowned at John. “I think, under the circumstances, John, I should be the one to say the Final Words of the Final Coming.”
Defeated and crushed, John folded back into his chair, thrashed around until Rex extricated him, and sat on the hearth, head down. “Under the circumstances, Kenilworth, I believe you’re right.”
Caroline pouted.
Marsha said, “In a pig’s eye. It’s my turn, you old fart.”
“Now wait a minute,” Wally protested. “Despite this unsettling turn of events, I do think I’m next in line, don’t you think?”
“No,” said Rex Regal, so firmly, so forcefully, so loudly, that everyone stopped gaping and staring and gasping, and looked at him in fear and awe. Even John, crushed by the traffic on the road of life as he was, lifted his head.
“We do not have time for this petty nonsense,” Rex declared with a winsome smile.
“I hardly think embezzlement and impending poverty is petty,” Marsha complained, although she put a pleasant spin on it so not to offend him.
“What blackmail?” John asked.
“In the scheme of things, my dear,” Rex said so gently that she blushed half her wrinkles into oblivion, “I think everything is petty just about now, don’t you agree?” He pointed to the dark green night. “The Older Deities are nearly upon us. Our differences, as petty as they may be, must be postponed for the greater good. I don’t think They would be pleased if They arrived in the middle of a family squabble.”
Marsha and Caroline instantly nodded at the wisdom of the pronouncement; Wally, his limpid hair all limp and his watery eyes sparkling with renewed purpose, shrugged, although he did pat his wife’s shoulder in a gesture of solidarity and temporary forgiveness; and Pilandra beamed proudly.
Only Dr. Smith refused to join the circle of dedicated acolyte-bonding; instead, he dragged his black bag onto his lap and opened it.
Rex moved to the center of the room. He held out his hand. “John?”
A brief moment of hesitation marked the passing of the mantle before John handed over the Holy Vial of Blood.
And immediately it fell within Rex’s grasp, the blood began to glow.
“All we need now,” he said with a charmingly evil smile, “is the Bingomomicron, and all our troubles will be over.”
Inside the well was a dark-stone pillar that rose to within three feet of the rim. On the dark-stone pillar, which turned slowly counterclockwise by a devious mechanism that appeared to be anchored at the very center of the Earth, was a somewhat smaller, crude light-stone altar; on the light-stone altar, which had an inordinate amount of bloodstains soaked into it, was a sturdy gold and copper bookstand inscribed with runes and alien characters of an indescribable nature.
On the bookstand was the Bingomomicron.
It was exactly as Chita had described it back when she was Hester; it was also a lot uglier. Nothing exquisite here, nor even so awful that it took on a perverse beauty. It was just plain ugly, no getting around it, and he hoped that it had not been made in the Older Deities’ image; if it had been, they wouldn’t have to lift a claw against the opposition since the opposition would simply wither away from the massive shock to its collective aesthetic sensibilities.
Then, as he struggled to keep his gorge from rising, he noticed that far below the stone altar was a grid of thick bars blocking the throat of the well. He also noticed, since his curiosity hadn’t been warned to knock it off, that the grid was several levels deep. How deep he could not tell. How far each level was from the other he could not tell. How thick the grid bars were he could not tell, but they were pretty thick.
He wondered about it.
He stopped wondering about it when it occurred to him that the grid definitely hadn’t been placed there to keep the book from tumbling to the center of the Earth should it fall from its stone altar.
“Damn,” he said.
But there was no time for further introspection, speculation, or rationalization. He could see another pulse of green working its way toward him from the depths of the well. He had to work, and work fast. Time was of the essence.
So, with a deep breath, he leaned over the rim and reached in.
In the middle of the street, the cowled figure stopped dancing and stared expectantly at Number 668.
In the kitchen at Number 668, Chita and Sheila stood at the sink, wondering what in hell they were going to feed all those people since no one had told them that the stove was gas, and the gas had been turned off. Yet, from the raised and angry voices in the back parlor, they also realized that the guests probably weren’t too hungry anyway and that the dinner had probably only been a ruse to get them into the house so that they could perform their obscene rituals without anyone except those already in the house becoming suspicious.
Chita drummed her fingers thoughtfully on the sink’s chipped rim.
Sheila tapped her foot impatiently on the chipped linoleum floor.
Finally Chita said, “I’ve got to get Kent.”
Sheila was aghast. “But you can’t.”
“I have to,” she answered. “He comes back here with that book, those people are going to murder him.”
“But he’s supposed to burn it.”
Chita smiled at the foolishness of the young. “Matches,” she said wisely. “He don’t got no stinking matches.”
“He don’t? But that’s terrible.”
“Lords are like that,” Chita educated her as she turned the young woman toward the dining room and gave her a gentle shove. “They got all these people to do their thinking for them, so when they have to think for themselves they go a little crazy sometimes. Trust me. He forgot the matches.”
Sheila turned with a frown. “Quentin isn’t supposed to let anybody down there.”
“Neither are you.”
“I forgot.” She took a step back into the room.
Chita smiled, much as Rex had smiled at the gathering in the back parlor, the evilly charming one. The smile, not the parlor.
Sheila, being young but not stupid, stopped.
The voices also stopped, then started again, this time replacing their arguments, accusations, and heated denials with a monotonic monotonous chant accompanied by someone beating time on the seat of a chair. Sheila’s eyes widened in horror and she looked to Chita for guidance.
Chita, who had recovered her butcher knife, told her to see what they were doing.
“They’re chanting.”
Chita then suggested that the young woman insinuate herself into the dining room, position herself beside the doorway to the back parlor, and make sure that the acolytes didn’t leave the room. If they needed help chanting, Sheila was to help them; if they needed help remembering the words, Sheila was to make them up; if they tried to leave, Sheila was to use whatever force and power within her disposal to keep them here.
“That’s what the baron told me, too. But he didn’t tell me what to do if they hit me or anything.”
“Fake it,” Chita said.
Sheila’s eyes widened again, this time in admiration. “You know, that’s what Quentin always tells me. It has something to do with the male ego. Do you think—”
But Chita was already gone, the basement door practically ripped off in her hands as she flung it open, flung herself down the steps, dodged Quentin’s belated hatchet, and plunged without thought to personal safety into the refrigerator.
It wasn’t until she was halfway there that she realized she’d forgotten the matches.
Sheila, true to her word and used to obeying unreasonable demands, sensuously insinuated herself into the dining room, unobtrusively positioned herself by the entrance to the back parlor, and was about to set in motion a nebulous plan to prevent the acolytes from leaving the room when, without warning and suddenly, Rex stood before her.
“My god,” she said, “it’s you!”
Someone tapped her on the shoulder. She spun around away from Rex into the surprised but not unwilling arms of Quentin Eddye, who looked over her shoulder and said, “Hi, Pop.”
Trying to ignore the green glow racing toward the outside world as opposed to the murky and mysterious depths of the Earth, Kent picked the book off the bookstand.
Chita considered half a dozen choices.
Sheila, and everyone else in the back parlor except Pilandra who already knew, said, “Pop?”
Kent frowned as he backed away from the well and dropped to the floor just as the green glow exploded into the air, splashed against the ceiling, and faded.
Rex? he thought.
Chita burst into the exceptionally neat and clean basement, saw Kent rising shakily from the floor with a really humongous book in his hands, and shouted, “I forgot the frigging matches!”
Kent looked at the book.
Chita looked at the book. “God,” she said in a non-blasphemous expression of utter distaste.
He placed the book on the floor, wiped his hands on his jeans, and pulled out his gun. “Maybe,” he said, “I could shoot it.”
“Maybe,” she answered, “you could shoot that,” and she pointed at the well, from the depths of which came a grumbling and muffled roaring that had, they knew instinctively, nothing to do with another arrival of the green glow.
And it was then that Kent realized that Howmaster Maclemmon, con man, thief, and fairly decent amateur astronomer, had tricked them all.
The trouble was, he didn’t know whether there was any time left to do anything about it.
4
In the best of all possible worlds, none of which Kent seemed to live in or was destined for, there would be a crate of fresh dynamite tucked under the workbench, complete with caps, plunger, and wire, the assembly of which would permit him to destroy the house, seal the well and tunnel with flaming debris, and forever, or at least for the next hundred years or so, protect the world from the proverbial fate worse than death; in the best of all possible worlds, he would be able to flip open the vile book, run his finger swiftly down the table of contents, find the spell or the directions or the instructions to send the Older Deities back where they came from, and give the world a chance to figure out how to deal with them the next time they decided to come home; in the absolute best of all possible worlds, however, he wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.
Another, more intense pulse of green briefly illuminated the lighted basement.
“So,” said Chita as she backed nervously toward the tunnel entrance, “what are you going to do?”
Kent gathered up the book, and the cleaver, and shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t have a plan?”
“No.”
“You came all the way over here without a plan?”
He gave her a look she didn’t want, so gave it back with one of her own. “When I came over here,” he reminded her sourly, “the plan was to burn this damn thing. I don’t have any matches. I waited for you to bring the matches. You came, but you don’t have any matches. There’s no dynamite, no acetylene torch, no flares, no firecrackers, no belching dragon. The best thing I reckon we can do is return to the house and see if any of them know what to do with it.”
