Apparition, page 31
“Just call me Jankowitz,” said the tall man. He smiled, and the effect was extraordinary: transforming his face from a thin, austere one into something that was pleasantly open, if a bit intense. “I’ll be doing the science work tonight.”
“Science?” Shane felt the now-familiar twist of his world tilting ever-so-slightly off kilter. He looked at Martha. “What exactly –”
“We’ll explain inside,” she said, then gestured at the other man. “This is District Superintendent Patrick Lawler.”
“Just Patrick, please,” said the stout man. His voice was gravelly, the voice of a long-time smoker. He extended his hand as well. Shane took it automatically. The man’s hand was thick and callused – the kind of hand that could have ground Shane’s knuckles to powder if its owner were so inclined.
“District Superintendent?” said Shane, his confusion now doubled. “Like a school district?”
Patrick shook his head. “No. I’m from the church. Pastor Joshua’s ecclesiastical superior,” said the man. He smiled as well, but the smile was a thin façade that only barely masked the clergyman’s unease.
Shane let go of the man’s hand and looked at Martha. “I don’t understand.”
“You will,” she answered. Then she turned and opened his front door and walked in. “Bring the children,” she said as she disappeared into the darkness of the house.
Shane looked at the two other men. Jankowitz shrugged with embarrassment, as Martha were a prized but exasperatingly headstrong pet. Patrick just turned and walked into the house after her.
Matthew touched Shane’s his hand. His son was looking up at him with a mixture of curiosity and fear.
“Are we going in?” asked Matthew.
Shane had no answer. He knew that he had planned on facing the evil that had come for them. But now, standing at the threshold of the house, he was unsure. He looked at Ella, who was standing slightly behind Matthew. She stared evenly back at him. Shane felt let down somehow, as though he had expected her to give him some sign of agreement or an indication of what to do next. But that wasn’t her job. It was his.
He squared his shoulders. As he did so, a feeling came over him. It was light but unpleasant, like the shudder-inducing feel of walking into a spider’s web that had been stretched across a hallway in the night. A sense that something was wrong; that an invisible intruder had spun a silken thread in the corridors of his mind. Nothing major – yet – but definitely a harbinger of things to come.
The Lamia. He could feel it nearby.
“Come on,” he said, and almost yanked Matthew along after him as he walked into the house. He didn’t hear Ella follow them, and for a moment he thought she might refuse to set foot in the house. The idea made him glad – an excuse not to go forward with this strangeness, this insanity that had permeated his life. Then, at the instant he decided to turn around and just take the kids and run, he heard her walking up the steps behind him.
Perrrrrfect. The childrennnn….
The single invisible threat in his mind was now two. And then four. And then eight. He knew the thing that wanted his kids was near. Perhaps already here, already inside him so completely that it would soon wear him like a thin glove.
Shane focused on following Patrick once he was in the house. Something to keep his mind off the thoughts that were like a low undercurrent, a soft buzz that barely registered but was nonetheless always present. The clergyman walked through the dark hall and into the kitchen. Shane followed him just quickly enough to see Patrick opening the door that led to the basement before quickly descending into the darkness beyond.
Shane went to follow him, but something jerked him back. It was Matthew, looking up at him with a wild, almost panicked gaze. “Don’t,” he whispered.
Shane looked at Ella. She didn’t return his gaze. Her attention was fixed on the basement door.
We have to go, bud,” Shane told Matthew, “We have to get this thing off our backs.” He hugged the little boy, crushing him to his chest and then kissing the top of his tousled mop of hair. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”
“Promise?” Matthew’s voice was muffled, his face buried against Shane.
“Promise,” said Shane. He wondered momentarily if he was trying to convince Matthew to come because it was the best way to be free of this curse that had affixed itself to them… or if it was because it would be easier for the Lamia to find them down there.
He found he didn’t care which it was. Either way, this was going to end. Soon.
He freed Matthew from his embrace, then took his son’s hand again. He took Ella’s hand, too, and for once she didn’t fight him on it or draw away. Like Matthew, she let herself be led gently forward until they were in the basement.
As if coordinated ahead of time, the second Shane’s foot touched the first step in the stairwell, bright lights flowed up from the basement. It wasn’t the brightness of the single low-watt bulb that previously lit the space, either. He had to put his arm up in front of his eyes to keep from being blinded by the intense white light that leapt up the stairwell.
After a moment his eyes adjusted enough that he could put his arm down, though he still had to squint to see anything, and tears formed at the corners of his eyes. He continued down the stairs. Matthew followed closely behind him, and behind Matthew Shane could hear Ella following.
He stopped on the penultimate step. He looked around and saw the origin of the sudden brightness: several industrial-strength lighting stands with halogen floodlights hanging off them. The lights were plugged into the basement’s wall outlets, and all of them had cords that connected them to a sophisticated computer setup that stood on a medium-sized folding table off to one side of the underground room. Jankowitz was already sitting behind the computer, muttering to himself as he made adjustments to some of the arcane-looking equipment on the table.
Patrick had moved to the center of the basement, the focal point of the blazing glare of the industrial lights. He was bent over at the waist, a piece of chalk in his hand, and was putting the final touches on a pentagram that someone – probably the clergyman himself – had drawn on the floor. Every square centimeter of the star had been filled with rune-like symbols. It made Shane uneasy to look at.
Martha stood midway between the two men. From time to time, the old woman cast a quick glance at what Jankowitz was doing, but mostly she kept her eyes fixed on Patrick’s artwork. Her lips moved, and Shane wondered if Martha was able to read the strange markings on the pentagram.
He also wondered how long Martha, Patrick, and Jankowitz had been here. From the look of things, he guessed they’d been working on this set-up for several hours.
“Dad,” whispered Ella from behind him. Her voice was soft as a baby’s coo. Fear had wrung the strength from her. “This isn’t a good place.”
Shane could barely hear his daughter, but Martha must have been possessed of exceptional ears, because she immediately looked up from the pentagram and stared at Ella. “This is where it happened last in this house,” she said. “This is where the Lamia wants it to happen again. This is where we have to brace it.”
“Done,” grunted Patrick. He straightened up and put his hands on his back, grunting a bit as he stretched.
Martha stepped toward the pentagram. She gestured for Shane and the kids to come forward. Shane did so. Something inside him fluttered as he approached the pentagram. Fear wrung a sigh from his lips. He had to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other until he stood at one point of the star.
Martha gestured for Matthew to move to the point of the star at Shane’s left, then guided Ella until she was standing at the point to Shane’s right. “Sit down,” she said. Again, something in Shane wanted to refuse her order. He couldn’t tell if it was the Lamia making him feel this perverse desire for confrontation, or just his own sense of impending danger. Either way, it wasn’t until Matthew and Ella were both sitting cross-legged on the floor beside him that he managed to sink to his knees himself.
Martha watched as he lowered himself to the ground. Her eyes narrowed. Shane felt uncomfortable under her gaze, though he had no idea why. He looked away from her, glancing at Matthew and then at Ella. Both of the kids were looking at Martha expectantly. Shane looked back at her, as well, and saw she was still staring at him.
He was about to speak, to ask her what she was looking at, when Martha abruptly turned away. She walked to the point of the pentagram on the other side of Ella. Patrick came to her as she did so, and the heavyset man held her arm to steady Martha as she lowered herself to the concrete floor. Her knees popped audibly as she sat, and a flicker of pain crossed her face. Then it was gone, and she stared impassively at Shane as Patrick opened a large black case that sat on the floor near Jankowitz’s computer station.
The clergyman pulled something out of the case. At first Shane wasn’t sure what it was, but then Patrick put the object on the floor at the final empty point of the pentagram and he realized it was a candle. Only it was unlike any other candle he had ever seen – wider than it was tall, made of some strange kind of tallow or wax that seemed to sag under itself as though constantly on the verge of melting. Patrick struck a match, and Shane’s nostrils flared as the scent of phosphorous pricked them.
Patrick leaned over and lit the candle. It was so bright that Shane could barely make out the flame, though – it was just a slightly lighter speck in the brilliance of the basement.
“What’s with all the lights?” Matthew said.
Martha looked startled, as though she had almost forgotten anyone was in the room. She smiled at Matthew, but it was a strange kind of smile: sincere, but melancholy, as though she were looking upon a photograph of some personal treasure that had been lost long ago. As though looking at someone in terminal condition in a hospital. “This is an entity of darkness, child. We want it weak, we have to keep the place bright.”
Matthew nodded as though that made perfect sense. He even winked at Ella. She didn’t return the wink. She looked almost bleached in the intense brightness, her features so lacking in shadow or depth that she appeared a featureless outline of a girl – a bright but half-formed doppleganger.
Jankowitz pulled some more equipment out of the large black case from which Patrick had retrieved the candle. The thin man put up a tripod and mounted a small but expensive-looking camcorder atop it. He touched a button on the side, and a red light turned on.
“Recording,” said Jankowitz. He looked at his watch and then said the date and time out loud, clearly intending it as a start-point for the electronic record he was making.
Suddenly what was happening seemed all-too real to Shane. He felt like he had been playacting for the last few hours, an understudy rehearsing a performance no one really expected him to give. But now, with the camcorder on, he realized that this was real, it was all real and they could really die down here.
“I don’t want the kids here,” he said to Martha. He had to concentrate as he said the words, though, because at the same time as he said them he also wanted to keep the children near. Not to protect them, not to keep tabs on them, but so they would be within range of his hands and feet and teeth.
He suddenly wanted to kick Matthew in the face, to punch him so hard that his son’s neck would break instantly.
Shane swallowed. His mouth felt dry, raspy. “I don’t want them here,” he reiterated.
Martha frowned. “They have to be here.”
“Why?”
The old woman suddenly looked uncomfortable. “The children are what will call it,” she said. She didn’t look at Shane, staring at the candle, the walls, the mirror in the corner – anything, apparently, but him. “They have to be here, or it won’t come. It will just wait.”
“What do you mean, it will wait?”
“The Lamia can be patient, when it has to. It will not come when there is no… food… for it to consume. It can wait – perhaps forever – for what it wants.” Martha had her eyes fixed on the candle now, and her voice was so low Shane had to strain to hear what she had said.
Before Shane could reply, there was an echoing snap and the basement was cast into darkness. It was suddenly pitch black all around them and the candlelight – previously barely visible in the bright basement – was now the only source of illumination.
Shane glanced at the place in the darkness where he knew the stairs to be.
Shouldn’t there be light coming in from the kitchen? he thought. He didn’t remember Ella closing the door behind them when they came down. So it should be open, shouldn’t it? But no light, not even the faintest glimmer, could be seen at the top of the stairway.
At the same time, Ella yelped, a surprised yip that came out half-strangled, sudden terror clearly stealing the girl’s voice from her.
“Hey!” Shane said. Again he felt like he was acting: mimicking the words of a concerned parent without really feeling any of the emotion behind them. “You said we needed the light to protect ourselves.” The cobwebs in his mind had grown into fibrous egg-pods ready to release an infinitude of insectile monsters into his mind.
Martha reached out and touched Ella’s knee, a calming gesture that seemed to work on the teen. To Shane she said, “Don’t worry. The lights are there. We’ll turn them on as soon as anything happens, but it will never come to a place so bright.” She stared at Ella. “We’ll beat it,” she said. But Shane didn’t believe her. There was a quaver in her voice, a reedy quiver that clearly bespoke the old woman’s terror.
A low sound came out of the blackness behind Shane. His eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the darkness of the basement. Bright pink and white blobs kept floating in and out of his vision like blood cells under a microscope. He couldn’t see what was making the sound, but then recognized it as a voice. It was Patrick.
Shane blinked and after a moment the blobs occluding his vision receded and he managed to focus blurrily on the churchman. Patrick had removed his pea coat and Shane saw he was wearing a dark shirt with a white clerical collar beneath it. Patrick was holding a small book in his hands. It was open, and the clergyman was speaking in liturgical tones, though Shane couldn’t make out any words. He also couldn’t imagine how the man could possibly be reading a book in this near-darkness. Perhaps he wasn’t. Maybe he was just holding the book for comfort.
“Night vision is working well, I can see all of you on the monitor,” said Jankowitz. Shane looked in the direction of the voice and found he could see the tall man easily, his face and body illuminated by the low gleam of his instrumentation.
“Let’s begin,” said Martha. Patrick nodded and began walking slowly around the pentagram, circling Shane and Martha and the kids. He chanted in low tones as he walked, occasionally making the sign of the cross in the air.
Shane watched Patrick for what seemed like an exceptionally long time, then looked back at Martha. “What do we do now?” he said.
Martha folded her arms and shut her eyes in concentration. “We wait,” she said. Then her eyes snapped open again and she stared at Shane. Or at least, that was what he thought she was looking at for a moment. Then he realized that she wasn’t looking at him at all – she was staring over his shoulder.
At something behind him.
Shane’s skin started crawling as he slowly turned and saw… nothing. It was so dark in the basement he couldn’t even make out the far wall. He started to swivel back around, but a movement caught his eye. The crawling sensation was replaced by a numbing cold as terror ran up and down his spine. Then he realized he was only seeing the dim outline of his own reflection in the large mirror that sat in the corner behind him.
He remembered the first day in the house, being similarly scared of his reflection. He suddenly wondered if he had been right to be afraid; if there was something more to the mirror than simple wood and glass.
Shane stared at the mirror, at his own dark reflection, for a full minute before turning back to Martha. He didn’t like turning his back on the thing. It made him feel vulnerable.
“How long do we wait?” he asked Martha. The old woman’s gaze hadn’t shifted so much as a nanometer from where it had been: she was almost glaring at the mirror now.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “Focus on the candle.”
“What does that do?” asked Ella.
“We are sitting at the four points of the pentagram that represent earth, wind, water, and fire. The candle sits at the point that represents spirit. It will tell us if the demon is near.” Now Martha’s eyes flicked back to Shane. She looked at him intently. He thought he saw a flicker of sadness pass over her, then it disappeared, replaced by a gaze that was harsh as rough-hewn granite. “It’s most likely to come for you,” she said. “It wants to use you. To hurt the children. That’s how it feeds best: feasting on the dying pain of a child and then the desert of a parent’s guilt.”
