Seeing Red, page 15
Now Bray was frankly interested. "What was it like?"
"I got an impression of tremendous motive force," said Angus. "Blinding black light; a contradictory thing, I know, but there. The air felt pushed out of my lungs by a giant hand. Everything loose in the living room was blown like summer chaff in a hurricane. Overpowering nausea. Vertigo. Disorientation. I was afraid, but it was a vague, unfocused kind of terror. It was much worse for Nicholas.
"You see, he—like most people—held latent beliefs in supernatural things. I did not. Too many years debunking special effects led to an utter skepticism for things that go bump in the night—for me. I saw raw, turbulent energy. Nicholas saw whatever he did not totally disbelieve. You might see demons, ghouls, vampire lycanthropes, the Old Ones all hungering for your flesh and soul, dragons gobbling you up and farting brimstone, Satan browsing through your body with a hot fondue fork. Or the Christian God, for that matter."
Bray was taken aback, obviously considering what such an experience would mean for him, given his life's collection of myth and superstition, of fairytale monsters and real-life guilts. All of it would manifest to his eyes. All of it, at once. He said, "You mean that every superstitious fear I've ever had is waiting to eat me, on the other side of a paranormal power overload?"
"Not as such," said Angus. "Your belief is what makes it real. True disbelief renders it unreal, back into energy—which is what I saw. But that energy, filtered through Nick's mind, made a monster. He said he was trying to hold the doorway to Hell shut, and something horrifying was pulling from the other side. It gave a good yank and the doorway cracked open for a split instant before the briefness of the squirt closed it for good—but Nick, in that instant, saw what was trying to get him. It scared him white."
Bray was quiet for a long moment. Then: "He moved in with you shortly afterward?"
"Yes."
"You could not debunk the supernatural after that?"
"Not and do it with anything like conviction. Investigating the nature of the phenomenon became paramount."
"Nicholas helped you?"
"He was just the ally I needed. He had a propensity for pure research and a keen mind for deduction. We collected data and he indexed it. Using a computer, we were able to produce flowcharts. One of the first things we discovered was the presence of 'pressure points' in the time flow—specific dates that were receptive to the power burst, as the Spilsbury house had been. Lammas, Beltane, Candlemas, Hallowe'en. Almost all holidays. There are short bursts, long bursts, multidirectional bursts, weak and strong ones. Sometimes the proximity of a weak date will magnetize the power, attracting it to a particular time. But most of it concentrates at one physical place. Of course, there might be a dozen such outbursts in a day. Consider Jack the Ripper's reign over Spitalfields, or World War Two—the phenomenon would damn near become cyclical, feeding on itself."
"I see" said Bray. "But what about—"
"Nicholas?" Angus interrupted his meandering walk, hands in pockets. "I think the road is just above us, there. Shall we climb up out of this muck and make our way back? I have a flask of arrack in my room, to help cut the chill."
"Thank you," Bray said as Angus helped him through a web of creepers.
"Nicholas was very good at charts," said Angus. "He cross-matched all the power bursts—he was the one who called them 'squirts,' by the way—to ebb and flow grids, and to longitudes and latitudes. He calculated in 'weak spots' and compensated for them. He synthesized a means whereby he could predict, with reasonable accuracy, the location and date of a future 'squirt.' Sometimes he was wrong."
"But he was right for at least one," said Bray.
"In Manhattan," said Angus, "in a dilapidated, condemned office complex called the Dixon Building, he and I faced a full-power blast, alone."
"Oh my god—"
"God is right. Nicholas was eaten alive by the demon on the other side of the door. He still believed."
The two old men scrambled up onto the road facing the Hermitage, in the distance. It loomed darkly against the overcast sky, in silhouette, like a dinosaur waiting for dinner.
"In that hotel, tonight, at precisely one-thirty A.M., there will be an interface such as I've described. On paper, at least, it's one of the biggest I've ever seen. There are a lot of superstitious people out there in the world. I can show you the graphs, in my room."
Together, Angus and Bray entered the maw of the Hermitage.
"Have you taken stock of the clientele here yet?" said Bray as Angus shucked his heavy coat. Since Angus had not been able to coax the room's antediluvian steam coil into boosted output and since the fireplace still held cold tinder, both men kept their sweaters on. The arrack was forestalled when Bray produced a travel decanter of cognac from the depths of his overcoat.
"There is a word for this supernatural power," Angus said. "Some call it mana. It's like electricity—neither good nor evil in itself, but available to those who know how to harness it. Devoid of context, there is no 'good' or 'evil.' I am not the only one who has discovered that the interfaces can he charted. Others will be swift to use such power potentials for selfish or harmful ends. They would embrace the iconography of what the unenlightened blanket with the term evil. That desk clerk, for example. I never saw anyone who wanted to be a vampire more, yet to exist as a true vampire would be a pitiable state indeed. I slipped him a silver dollar earlier, one I had charged in accordance with legend as a protective talisman." He dragged a ponderous Victorian chair over to the table where Bray sat nursing his cognac and staring abstractedly through the parted drapes, into the courtyard below them.
Bray saw three men in black awkwardly bearing an enormous footlocker into the lobby. "You mean like a witchcraft amulet?"
Sipping, Angus said, "Amulets are no good if they're not in your possession. This was a talisman—charged by the hook, in this case, the original text of a grimoire called the Liber Daemonorum, published in 1328 by a fellow named Protassus. I have a first edition."
"And the clerk?"
"Since he was behaving by such rigid rules, it was almost boringly simple to anticipate him. He reacted as though he was about to burst at the seams. If not for the gloves he wore, I think that talisman might've burned right through his hand to drop on the floor. But the predictability of a phenomenon or movement does not necessarily decrease its potential threat or danger. Don't kid yourself about the uses some intend for such power. It's backed up like sewage on the other side of the veil, waiting to be tapped, ever-increasing. A lot of bad could be created. Power corrupts." He killed his glass and Bray moved to refill it.
"Why expose yourself to something like that?" said Bray, now concerned. "Surely you've had a bellyful of baring your psyche to the tempest—or can you build some kind of tolerance?"
"To a degree, yes. It's still an ordeal, a mental and physical drain. But I can stand, where others would bend." Angus leaned closer; spoke confidentially: "You've missed a more obvious reason for doing so."
"Nicholas?" Bray said finally. "Vengeance?"
Angus swallowed another firebolt of liquor. "Not as an eye-for-an-eye thing. Nicholas' death convinced me that the phenomenon itself must be interrupted. Each outburst is more powerful. Each comes closer on the heels of the last. It is as though it is creating a bigger and bigger space in our reality in which to exist. The 'valve' must be closed before the continuous escalation makes preventive action impossible."
"By god!" said Bray, his eyes lighting up. "The talisman!"
"I hope that wasn't too ostentatious—announcing my presence in the Hermitage with that stunt. As far as the rest of the congregation here is concerned, I'm just another acolyte."
"I haven't seen too many people since I arrived."
"Well, they'd shun the daylight by nature, anyway," said Angus. "Or what passes for daylight around here." He let his eyes drift into infinity focus, regarding the courtyard below. "You know, the Hermitage is quite an achievement, for what it is. But it isn't 'evil.' The power I spoke of, the mana, is what keeps the sunlight from this place and makes dead trees root in dead ground. Channeled and controlled, the mana could be used to build a perfect womb for something that would be evil by anybody's definition. Something designed by people of ill intent to fit every preconception. Tonight's surge is a big one. Maybe it's going to fuel a birth."
"I don't even want to think about that possibility," said Bray.
"I must." Angus dumped one of his satchels onto the bed. "During that one-thirty juncture tonight, I must try to put a bogey in the paranormal plumbing."
"How?" said Bray, now visibly unnerved and looking about fruitlessly for a clock. "How does one stop that much power, barreling right at you?"
"One doesn't. You turn it against itself, like holding a mirror up to a gorgon's face. It takes, in this special case, not only protective talismans against the sheer forces themselves, but also my anti-belief in the various physical manifestations—the monsters. The power will exhaust itself through an infinite echo effect, crashing back and forth like a violently bouncing ball inside a tiny box." He drained his glass again. "In theory, that is."
"Plausible," Bray said. "But then, you're the expert on this sort of thing. I suppose we'll see the truth early this morning . . ."
"No!" Angus, face flushed with sudden panic. "You must leave this place, before—"
"Leave you here alone, to fight such a fight alone? I admit that two old men may not present much of a threat to the powers you describe, but where in hell am I going to go, knowing that such things transpire?" Bray's hand grew white-knuckled around his glass.
"Your own dormant fears might destroy you," Angus said. "Another death on my conscience."
"What am I to do, then?" Bray stiffened. "You may not believe in revenge, but I do. I insist! I side with you or I am less than a man . . . and that is my final word on the matter, sir." As punctuation, he finished his cognac.
The expression on Angus' face was neutrally sober, but within, he was smiling.
Midnight should have been anticlimactic. It was not.
In the funereal quiet of the lobby, an ebony clock boomed out twelve brass tones that resounded through like strikes on a huge dinner gong. A straggler, dressed in tatters, fell to the wine red carpeting in convulsions, thrashing madly about. The stalwart desk clerk had watched the man inscribe three sixes on his forehead earlier, using hot ashes from the lobby fireplace. The ornamental andirons hissed their pleasure, hotly.
An almost sub-aural dirge, like a deep, constant synthesizer note, emanated from the ground floor and gradually possessed the entire structure. A chilling undercurrent of voices seemed to seep through the building's pipework and the hidden, dead spaces between walls.
In the Grand Ballroom the chandeliers began to move by themselves. Below their ghostly tinkling, a quartet of figures in hooded tabards raised their arms in supplication. Candles of sheep tallow were ignited. Mass was enjoined.
Somewhere near the top of the hotel, someone screamed for nearly a whole minute. Unearthly, lowering noises issued from the grounds, now heavily misted in nightfog. There were the sounds of strange beasts in pain, and vague echoes of something large and massy, moving sluggishly as though trapped in a tar pit. It was starlessly dark outside.
"Are you positive you wish to stay?" said Angus, opening the flask of arrack. Bray's private stock was long gone.
"Yes. Just pour me another glass, please." Each new, alien sound made Bray wince a little, inside the folds of his coat, but he maintained bravely.
From within his shirt, Angus fished out a key on a thin chain of silver links. He twiddled it in each of his satchel's two locks. The first thing he produced from the case was a book lashed together with stained violet ribbons.
"Good God," Bray choked. "Is that the . . ."
"The Liber Daemonorum. Pity this must be destroyed tonight. By burning. Damn shame. This is a collector's item." He heaved the volume onto the bed and the rank smell of foxed and mildewed age-old paper washed toward Bray. Brittle pieces of the ragged hide binding flaked to the floor.
Nearby, probably in the hall outside 713, someone howled like a dog until his voice gave out with an adenoidal squeak.
Bray's attention was drawn from the ancient witchcraft tome to the disk of burnished gold Angus removed from the satchel. It was an unbroken ring, big as a salad plate, with free-cast template characters clinging to its inner borders. It caught the feeble light in the room and threw it around in sharp flashes.
"Gold?" said Bray, awestruck.
"Solid, refined twenty-four karat, pure to the fifth decimal point," said Angus, tossing it to the bed. The heavy chain necklace attached to it jingled; the disk bounced a hard crescent of light off the ceiling directly above. "The purity of the metal used in the talisman has protective value. I won't put it on until a few seconds before deadline—keep it as potent as possible, you understand."
From the satchel came more protective fetishes, mojo bags of donkey teeth, copper thread and travertine, hex stones with glyptic symbols, inked spells on parchment bound with hide thongs, tiny corked vials of opaque liquids. Angus tucked these into his clothing.
Something thumped heavily and repeatedly on the floor above them. Drum chants could be faintly heard.
"Any doubts now about there not being a full house here tonight?" Angus said. Bray's hand quivered in betrayal as he drank. Angus regretted that the academic portion of his mind regarded Bray simply as a handicap; his sense of honor could not refuse the older man. He hoped he would survive what was to follow, but would allow no compromising of his own task. Silence hung between them awhile longer.
"Does it matter where we are when it hits?"
"No. This hotel is the place. The psychos surrounding us are like the creepy trappings—more supernatural furniture. Pay them no heed. What we're dealing with has no form. You can be tricked by illusions; if you even consider for a second that something monstrous before your eyes might possibly be real, you're lost—you must remember that. The demon Nicholas saw was not real, until he thought it might be, making him afraid. Then it ate him up."
"Angus!" Bray stood from his chair. "I can—I can feel something strange . . . palpable, a swelling . . . like a balloon about to burst . . . " He looked around, agitated now.
Angus hauled out his railroad watch. "One-twenty-seven A.M. I set this by the time service in Willoughby late yesterday. Hmm—I suppose no time service is strictly accurate." He slipped quickly into the talisman.
"Exactly like the atmospheric buildup Nicholas sensed, before the squirt at his house," Angus said. "I have no extra power objects, friend Bray. You'll have to stick close behind me. That's about the only aid I can offer you. And something else—" He hurriedly dug a dented tin of Ronson lighter fluid out of the satchel and doused the Liber Daemonorum. The pungent liquid soaked slowly into the comforter on the bed and saturated the book of sorcery. Angus then came up with several disposable plastic cigarette lighters, each gimmicked with electrical tape. "Take one of these, and listen to me. During the confrontation, I may become momentarily transfixed. If that happens, I want you to light the book. It must be burned during the interface if my other, lesser shielding spells are to function. The lighter is modified to produce a long jet of flame when you thumb the wheel. Understand that the book is rare, and dangerous, and the supplicants booked into this place would gladly murder us to get it. If I hesitate, destroy it!"
Bray clutched the lighter tightly, like a crucifix against a vampire.
As though in the grip of an earthquake tremor, the Hermitage shuddered. A chunk of the whorled plaster ceiling disengaged and smashed into chalky crumbles at Angus' feet.
"Remember, Bray!" he shouted. "It's not real—"
The rest of his words were obliterated by a thunderclap concussion of moving air as the oak door to 713 blew off its hinges and slapped the floor like a huge, wooden playing card. The French windows past Bray splintered outward in a shrieking hail of needlelike glass bits. The bottles and rickrack on the table scattered toward the window. The cognac flask pegged Bray's temple and brought blood. The vacuum force of the moving air seemed to suck the breath from him. He screamed Angus' name, soundlessly.
Angus labored toward the door, walking ponderously, like a trapper in a snowbank, one hand holding the outthrust talisman, the other readying the lighter for the Liber Daemonorum crooked against his chest. Outside, the corridor was awash in stunning yellow light. A high-frequency keen knifed into his ears and numbed his brain. He heard his name being called over and over, coupled with a maniacal laugh that kept shifting speeds, accelerating and slowing, a warped record in the hands of a lunatic disc jockey. Through the shimmer and glare Angus thought he could see stunted, writhing shapes—various monsters struggling to be born of his mind. He stared them down and one by one they were absorbed back into the light that produced them, dissolving as though beaten progressively thinner with a mallet until the light shone through and disintegrated them. The talisman began to radiate heat against his chest. The first echo had been achieved.
The maniac sounds were definitely caused by something in terrific pain, fighting him. In the hallway mirror, Angus saw himself vaporize—hair popping aflame, shearing away, skin peeling back as though sandblasted off, skull rushing backward as sugary powder, blood and brains vanishing in a quick cloud of color and stink.
It was an illusion, and he ignored it.
He tried to ignore the dim, background sound of Bray's screaming.
A gray lizard demon, scales caked in glistening slime, breached the outside window to 713 and pounced on Bray's back, ripping and tearing. More rushed in like a floodtide, their alligator snouts rending his clothing, their flying spittle frying through his skin like brown acid. Curved black talons laid open his chest and they began to devour him organ by organ. His lighter went spinning uselessly across the floor.
Angus caught a glimpse of the carnage taking place behind him. Bray was lost.
