Mists of Everness

by John C. Wright

  “Yes … ,” she said.

  “The men who came here. Describe them.”

  “An old man in a purple robe, with a squint. The second man was dressed in a nice business suit. Gray hair. He talked like he was educated. The third man was dressed in leather. He had a shaved head, tattoos, and an earring.”

  The black glove fanned out three photographs before her eyes.

  She said, “Yes, those are the men!”

  “These are the minions of Azrael. The man with gray hair, the one in the business suit, is the dangerous one.” The dark finger touched the second photograph. “He’s Guy Wentworth, regional director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He is one of the most powerful members of the Justice Department, and his family connections link him to underworld crime bosses and to influential political figures in Washington. Two years ago he began training a special squadron of assault agents, answerable only to him. Congress and the press have been blocked from making any investigations into his actions. Two of his political enemies have died recently; one by suicide; the other died in his sleep, apparently by a heart attack.”

  Emily said, “And the others?”

  “This man is Kyle Coldgrave, who calls himself Father Malignus; he is the leader of a Satanist group called the Church of the Dark Eschaton. The tattooed man is Angelo Cassello. He had been in a state institution. An insomniac and drug addict. It seems he took drugs to drive off nightmares. A small-time crook, he robbed to get drug money.”

  Emily said, “Why those three?”

  “They are each men who can reach or send another into the state of consciousness you are in now. Guy Wentworth controls a dream-research center, where secret and illegal experiments are carried out, whose true purpose is hidden from those who fund them—experiments on human subjects. Kyle Coldgrave practices Eastern meditation and ecstatic rituals. Angelo Cassello is insane. They each entered the Dream Realm. Something within that realm found them, called them, and is using them.”

  Now the man in black moved around the room, spraying some chemical from a black aerosol spray can at spots on the walls and floor. He took out a complex-looking pair of goggles, bent to examine the results. Next, he attached a special lens arrangement to his tiny camera and directed it at those places. He asked her who had arrived first and in what order, where they had stood, what they had touched, what they had said.

  She answered the questions as best she could, but said, “Galen—or whoever was impersonating him—wouldn’t tell them much. But he told them there was going to be a battle, at the mansion of Everness, and that they were not to loot, even the smallest thing. What is within may not be changed.”

  “Mansion?”

  “My husband’s family’s mansion. Ex-husband, I mean. My father-in-law lives there. Lemuel Waylock. A huge place, number fourteen out on route AA, on the shore near the Bay.”

  “What is this mansion? What is Azrael’s interest in it?”

  Emily answered, “You’re not a human being, are you? You are a dream-figment. Made out of hopes and fears and children’s stories. Old radio plays. Comic books. A dark avenger. You cannot be real.”

  “I am human. I adopt this guise while I continue to exist within this halfway state between waking and sleeping. There are archtypes, patterns, mythic images in the human racial subconsciousness, and anything that lives up to the standards of those myths, who acts out those archtypes, is not forgotten by the natural universe, and does not drown in the Mist. I am a man. I have a wife and a child. Sometimes my daughter can see me, and sometimes she forgets. No one can remember me when awake. Azrael did this to me. The man who killed your son did this to me. While I play the part of the avenger, all the hidden, buried psychological forces in man that dream of vengeance will assist me. I ask you to trust me. I will avenge your son, who is possessed by the ghost of Azrael. Tell me your secret.”

  “The mansion controls the gate between waking and dreaming. I thought my father-in-law was crazy. I mean, eccentric. I thought it was a cult. My son spends a lot of time with him. He practices dreaming. He knows old-fashioned fighting, like in Robin Hood movies, you know, swords and lances and bows and arrows and all that stuff. He has recurring nightmares, and he fights them. I mean, he thinks he fights them, but he’s just dreaming. It’s not really happening. I wanted to take him to a psychiatrist, but it did not seem to be hurting him … .”

  A hot tear slid down her cheek. She sniffed. “D-do you mind? I mean, I can’t move my hand … .”

  The black figure reached down with his gloved finger and wiped the tear. The cold voice issuing from beneath the shadowed hat brim spoke again, but this time it sounded almost human. “Raising children is hard. We must not blame ourselves for every evil that befalls them.”

  “I could have stopped it. If I had only …”

  “You can stop it now. Tell me of the mansion.”

  “The real world and the dream-world are the same there. Everything in the house is reflected in the dreams you dream when you are in the house. So, if there is, like, a candlestick on a table in real life, if you take a nap in the house, you dream about a candlestick, and it looks the same. I slept there once. I don’t remember what I dreamed, mostly, but I remember that much, and it scared me. I never quite believed it though.”

  “And your son?”

  “Practices memory techniques, so when he wakes up, he remembers.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s a guard. A watchman. When the attack comes from the nightmare-world, he’s supposed to stop it. Somehow. There are all these secrets.”

  “He told you?”

  “I’m his mother. You think I can’t figure out his secrets?”

  “Azrael wants to control the mansion, to control entrance and egress from the dream-world?” He did not wait for an answer but stood and moved to the phone. He drew an electronic instrument out from beneath his cloak and attached it to the wires. He spoke into a microphone jacked into the telephone. “Calling Burbank! I want the last ten numbers dialed into this phone. I am sending the signal through now.”

  He made an adjustment to his machine. Then he said, “Also, send all available information concerning this address, number fourteen, rural route AA, Sagadahoc County, Maine—also known as Everness Mansion—into the electronic file in the armored limousine. Out.” He took the jack out. Then he turned toward the door, as if ready to rush away.

  Emily stopped him by saying; “They’ll be gone.”

  The dark figure turned toward her. She could see no face, for he was silhouetted against the dim red light of dawn painted against the window behind him. But she could see two points of light reflected in his eyes, shining from beneath the brim of his hat.

  Maybe he thought he was human. Emily wondered how long this being had been in the dream-world and what that environment might do to a person, how it might mutate him.

  “Explain,” the cold voice commanded.

  “It’s dawn. The powers of the night retreat. Whatever the Warlock wanted from the house, he’s got it by now, or he’s gone back into the shadows. Night-magic doesn’t work in the daylight. My son told me that. I didn’t believe his stories, but I listened.”

  “What does he want in the house?”

  “A key. A silver key.”

  “What does it open?”

  “I don’t know. Something that needs to be kept shut. Peter’s family has been guarding it since forever. I wonder if Peter changed his mind and believes in this stuff now. Do you think he went to the mansion and got involved in the battle? They’d capture him, right? They wouldn’t kill him, would they? He’s a cripple, for God’s sake! They wouldn’t kill him!”

  The dark figure did not answer.

  Then she said, “Is my son really dead? Really?”

  The man in black said, “There are those who count me dead, yet I live. Do not despair. The world is more strange than first it seems, and there are many things hidden. Yet the rules of logic cannot change. If
Azrael is a ghost, and is yet a conscious being, able to act and move, this means death is not final.”

  Emily said, “If death is not final, then you can’t kill him. The Warlock; you cannot defeat him!”

  The voice spoke softly, perhaps with a hint of cool humor: “Ma’am, I was not planning to step out into the open and shoot him in the head.”

  “There is no way to fight him. No human power can touch him. You didn’t see his eyes. Staring out from my little boy’s face! I can’t move! He did this! All he has to do is look at you.”

  “He will not see me.”

  “How can you fight him, then? You can’t!”

  “Evil acts toward its own defeat. There is a force in the universe, a selective amnesia that hates magic and tries to hide it from men. A mist. It clouds men’s minds. Every man the Warlock confounds with magic is sent into the mist, and from the mist I recruit my allies: my organization grows larger the farther the Warlock’s power reaches. When the time is right, we forgotten men will come forth from the mists, and strike.”

  He held up his black glove once more before her eyes, and the mysterious stone in his ring seemed to pulse and writhe with crimson, rose, and scarlet gleams. “Stare into the burning eye of my fire opal. See into its utmost depth! It is the color of the rising Sun, of approaching day. The numbness that possesses you is an illusion; your limbs are whole and full of vigor! As you wake, you will realize that whatever hypnotic spell you are under has ended with the suddenness of a dream!”

  And she did wake up then, yawning and stretching in the middle of the floor.

  “Oh, thank you!” she started to say. But then she noticed that no one was in the room with her. She blinked, rubbing her head. “Strange. I could have sworn I was talking to some … but it must have been a dream. Must have been … ?” Because the strange conversation was already becoming vague and shadowy in her memory.

  But when she woke up Wil a few moments later, and he told her that he had almost jumped off the side of the reservoir last night, she started to pack.

  It was less than fifteen minutes later, they were in the car, speeding down the road. Wil was still arguing.

  “But where are we going?” asked Wil. “This is crazy!”

  “On vacation,” she snapped. “Anywhere. We’ll decide when we get to the airport.”

  “This is so crazy!”

  “This is perfectly sensible,” she said. “Something we can’t explain and we can’t fight has tried to kill you once. They—whoever they are—know where the house is. If you can’t explain it, and you can’t fight it, and it’s trying to kill you, you run. You run the hell away. It’s just common sense.”

  Wil stared off behind him into the rising Sun. Then he said the last thing she’d have ever expected. “But, if we do this, we’ll never find out what happens …”

  Something in the sadness of his tone touched her heart, too. Almost, she felt the impulse to turn around, to join whatever mysterious supernatural struggle was going on between her family and the forces of darkness. Almost.

  “Be practical!” she snapped angrily. And she pressed down on the accelerator.

  3

  Duress of the Warlock

  I

  Peter had been in hospitals before, after he stepped on a land mine in a swamp and lost the use of both his legs. And he had spent months and weeks on his back before, peeing in a tube and drinking from a straw, so this was not so bad.

  Of course, he had had the use of his arms back then, so this was worse.

  Peter had been in the stockade before, back before his marriage, when he was young and full of beans and stupid and picked a fight with the corporal on guard. God, that had messed up his record for so many years. One-week confinement in stockade; pack drill and two-week CB after that.

  But then it had been friendlies who had him, not the enemy, so maybe this was much worse. And this was an enemy from some nightmare-land, mumbo-jumbo hell beyond the edge of sanity, who—thanks to the fact that Peter had lost the fight at the old mansion—were about to fry up the Earth with an apple in its mouth, or something. Good going, Peter.

  World about to end. And he was here. There was nothing to do but lie on his back and think about his life.

  That land mine had been defective and poorly placed. It had not had enough punch even to blow his foot off, so he was lucky. Shrapnel broke vertebrae in his spine, so he’d never walk again, so maybe he was not so lucky. Got him shipped back home, so maybe that was lucky. His wife dumped him, so maybe unlucky. But she was a cruel bitch, so maybe lucky. Then his son, Galen, went crazy and went into a coma. Unlucky. Galen woke up again. Lucky. But he woke up even crazier. Unlucky.

  Then things in Peter’s life started taking a turn for the weird. His son turned out not to be crazy after all, but dead. Sort of. His flesh still walked the Earth, possessed by an evil ghost, a wizard from the Dark Ages named Azrael de Gray.

  Galen had never been crazy. His son had been a soldier in a war against the mumbo-jumbo freaks from magic-land, some sort of hell inhabited by shape-changers and rotting corpses and all sorts of shit that’d turn your hair on your balls white. Very unlucky.

  So, he was kinda glad his son had been in his right mind all these years, but it would have been easier on the rest of the world if Galen had been hallucinating, and the things he thought were coming had not been real after all.

  Galen had died in the line of service. He had died a soldier’s death, died still thinking his old man thought he was nuts. Peter had never gotten a chance to talk to him, never gotten a chance to set things straight.

  Because that big Russian fellow, Raven Varovitch, had made a deal with the Devil and killed Galen in order to save the life of his little wife. Wendy was her name. Unlucky for the both of them, because when Peter got out of here, the girl was going to be a widow and the guy was going to be a corpse.

  What hurt is that he’d liked the Russian guy from the moment he’d seen him. Nice guy. And what man wouldn’t kill someone for his wife? If you had a wife worth killing someone for. But when Peter got out of here …

  When who got out of where? Peter was going nowhere. Because his son had been right and magic had been real and monsters had come up out of the sea and stormed the old mansion. And Peter got caught in the cross fire. Of all places, in that spooky old mansion where he had been born and raised. Azrael de Gray had come up out of the night-world with a squad of men and an army of horrors.

  There had been magic weapons hidden in the house all this time, just like his dad had always told him. Wendy found a way to summon the weapons the mansion had been guarding since King Arthur’s time. One of those weapons, the Rod of Mollner, came into Peter’s hands so that he could slay the two giants, Surtvitnir and whatshisname, Argle-bargle. Something like that. But the Rod was cursed. He threw it, and it returned to the hand of the thrower, and the impact paralyzed his arm. The damn thing was meant to be thrown by some Viking god or something, not by a middle-aged, hard-ass jarhead in a wheelchair with two bad legs, whose bright idea was to use a weapon he didn’t know how the hell worked.

  And it was really dumb to throw it the second time.

  So the black hats won. Azrael de Gray was in control of the mansion, which meant—as far as Peter understood this mumbo jumbo—that he ruled the world.

  There was something worse than Azrael coming, something big and bad.

  And Peter was down for the count. And never getting up again. Arms and legs out of commission. World about to end. Very, very unlucky.

  If Peter had done his job right, if he had only done his job right, Azrael would have been the one flat on his back, paralyzed in all four limbs, and peeing in a tube.

  Peter replayed the battle in his head.

  There had to be some way for a little mortal man to use that damned god-hammer properly. If only he could have figured it right. If only these nightmares about the beast would stop. If only Raven had used the ring when he’d had the chance.

 
If only, if only. Crap. Peter wished he could just go crazy all at once and get it over with.

  Bergelmir. The other giant had been called Bergelmir.

  II

  Peter, from where he lay, could view the bleak, gray metal slab of the door, often left hanging open, and a bit of the drab olive corridor beyond. And why bother to close and lock it? Peter wasn’t going anywhere … and his captors knew it.

  He could usually see the guard stationed in the corridor.

  It was not the same man every day, but he always had the same expression on his face: dull-eyed, drowsy, harsh.

  The guards never spoke nor laughed; they never fidgeted nor smoked, but stood in postures stiff as a Queen’s Own Beefeater at Buckingham Palace. Peter would have admired the military discipline, if it had been military discipline.

  Peter might have felt sorry for them, if he had not seen, where their collars were not buttoned tight, a witch-mark of a shape he knew. Whatever enchantment these men were under now, the original vow that had put them in the Warlock’s power had been sworn voluntarily.

  Whenever he turned his head (and all he could turn was his head), Peter could see the security camera clinging to the ceiling above the head of his bed. The large-wheeled cart on which his medical equipment was kept was to the right of the bed. Farther right was the small, dusty square, crisscrossed by bars and thick wires, of the tiny window. That window was his only source of happiness. Some days he would lie for hours staring at the dusty square, hoping for a glimpse of clear blue sky. Once, to his great delight, he saw a bird fly by.

  The window was his entertainment. If he got bored with the view, he could always turn his head and stare back at the guard or at the medical equipment on the cart.

  They didn’t bother to feed him; an intravenous drip led from the cart to his arm, with nutrients to keep him hungry, always hungry, but alive. A catheter led from his diapers to a pump on the cart, to carry his wastes away. For his thirst, they had hung above the headboard one of those little sipping bottles bicyclists sometimes used, with a straw and nipple for him to suck on.