Portals in Time 3

by Michael Beals

  “God Almighty, Ellie. Talk about drawing attention to yourself. I hope you bought new underwear.”

  “I did,” she said, smiling at him. “Want to see them?”

  “I think I can,” he retorted.

  “Well, now we’ve done the fashion thing,” Kat said. “Shall we go and eat? I thought we might go to The Loeb Boathouse again. The food’s excellent, and it’s not far from here.”

  “Wow! This place is amazing,” Giselle said, as they were ushered towards a corner table. “There are even children here.” She smiled at a little girl at a nearby table who dropped her fork and stared at her. “And it’s cool in here. How do they keep it so cool?”

  “Air conditioning,” Lily said. “It’s a big machine that pumps cool air through vents in the walls.”

  “They should introduce it in Hell,” she laughed.

  It took a while to order food. Nobody could make up their minds what they wanted. As a starter, the crab cakes were probably wonderful, but the seared chicken wings sounded nice as well. Then they had to choose the main course, which was even more difficult. There was a 10oz burger with the usual fries, the cast iron chicken, the red wine braised lamb shank, and to make it even more complicated, the petite filet. Dore knew immediately. He wanted the chicken wings and the burger, but the girls hummed and hawed for ages.

  When they’d finally chosen, and iced water was served, Giselle broached the subject of stealing a car. “Can we choose a small car? They’re much easier to park, and if I’m sharing the driving…”

  Dore shook his head. “I wouldn’t choose a small car. Grantham drives an Aston Martin. If he decides to put his foot down…”

  The conversation changed to who should work with whom. Would it be better if Kat teamed with Lily, so that Dore and Giselle could work together, or should Kat and Giselle form a team because they knew each other so well?

  Kat was about to comment on the subject when she saw a tall man enter the restaurant. That he was on his own was already unusual in this family restaurant, but it was when he turned and scanned the tables that her heart missed a beat. He was wearing an expensive gray suit with an open-necked shirt and was clean-shaven, but even if he hadn’t shaved off his beard, she’d have recognized Grantham. His piercing blue eyes and granite jaw were unmistakable. Too astonished to speak, she froze when he smiled and headed in their direction.

  Taking a chair from another table, he sat down between her and Dore, who did a comical double-take when he saw the man. Kat didn’t see Giselle or Lily’s expressions; she was too busy staring at Grantham.

  “I’m so sorry to disturb your lunch,” Grantham said in a deep voice. “I’m sure you deserve a break after all the traveling you’ve been doing.”

  “Grantham?” she gasped.

  “The same. We almost met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Lovely hotel. Shame I can’t use it anymore.”

  “But… how did you… find us?” Kat said in a breathy voice. “It’s 2024, and we’ve only been here for a few hours.”

  Grantham looked around, smiled at the little girl who Giselle had noticed, and then kept the smile on his face when he turned to look at Kat again. Grantham really was quite charming. “It wasn’t so hard. You weren’t in your hotel, so I checked the park. They were still building this park in 1866, so the lawn where you teleported was fairly obvious. All I had to do then was surf the years. I can do that on my device. It’s a bit like switching TV channels.” He shrugged. “It was also an educated guess. You probably needed clothes, and they changed American money in 2025. It now looks just like Australian money, but of course, you know that; you’ve probably have some.” He paused and then raised a bushy eyebrow. “I saw you sitting on the grass, but when you headed for The Loeb Boathouse, it seemed like a perfect opportunity. I was sure you wouldn’t shoot me in a restaurant full of children.”

  She shook her head to recover from the shock. “We, um… have no intention of… Holy crap, I can’t believe you’re sitting here.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it’s a shock. They’ve been looking for me for ages.” He turned to look at the others, Dore in particular. “I’m so sorry; I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Henry.” He peered at Giselle. “My God, you’re beautiful. I can see why Hades uses you as a guide.”

  Giselle blushed and looked away, but she soon recovered. “You really are Henry Grantham?”

  He nodded. “The same.”

  Kat tried not to stare at Grantham. “So, what are you doing here? Aren’t you putting yourself in danger?”

  “Not really, and I decided that it was better if we got to know each other. You’re obviously determined to bring me back, one way or the other, but I thought you’d like to hear my side of the story.”

  At that moment, the food began to arrive, so they stopped talking as the waiter set down crab cakes for the girls and seared chicken wings for Dore. But Kat couldn’t take her eyes off Grantham. For someone who was being hunted, he was incredibly relaxed. He even took the waiter’s arm as he was about to leave.

  “Would you mind if I join you?” he asked Kat. “I’m quite peckish.” Then, without waiting for an answer, he turned to the waiter. “Can I also have the seared chicken wings? They look rather good.”

  The waiter nodded. “Of course, Mr. Grantham.” Then he hurried off to expedite the order.

  “The thing is,” Grantham continued, “I’m sure Hades’ not happy about it, God probably yells at him, but if you realize how many people there are in Hell at any one time, it’s a drop in the ocean… literally. Many of the escapees become old-world sailors, who drown in the multitude of shipwrecks and go back to Hell again. But even those who settle down and get married don’t make any waves. They can’t have any children, they’re living in the past, and I can count on one hand how many of them are still alive.”

  Kat frowned at him. “But I thought they didn’t grow old.”

  “They don’t, but they’re still subject to death, such as starvation, accidents, suicide, drowning, murder and the like. Look at Clyde Barrow. He escaped from Hell in 1726, lived a perfectly acceptable life rustling cattle, and then he met Bonnie Parker… who wanted to rob banks. I mean, what a couple of idiots. They were bound to get shot in the end. They’re now back in Hell.” He laughed. “And Clyde’s working in a bank.”

  Kat found herself smiling. Grantham was a good storyteller. “But we can’t have dead people wandering around on earth. It’s creepy.”

  “Don’t be silly; of course it isn’t. You’re dead. Do you feel creepy? It’s a process, and it’s been going on for hundreds of thousands of years. So what if a handful of people escape from Hell?”

  “But it’s not a handful. You process about ten people a week. That’s 520 people a year. In ten years, that’s over 5000 people who escaped death. And that’s just in the US.”

  “In a world population of around seven and a half billion people,” he snorted, “that’s nothing, and they all go back to Hell in the end.”

  Finishing her crab cake, Kat sipped at her water. She wasn’t going to win this argument. Then again, it didn’t really matter. She was here to do a job.

  “Anyway,” Grantham said, leaning back as the waiter placed a plate of seared chicken wings in front of him, “I thought we should discuss it. I quite like the house I’m living in, and I’ll probably have to move if you keep poking around.” Picking up a piece of chicken, he gnawed at it for a minute. “The thing is, I’m very well protected. It could be quite dangerous for you to continue. Can’t you explain to Hades that I’m not doing any harm?”

  Kat laughed. “I could put it to him, but I doubt if he’ll agree.” She frowned. “What do you mean by dangerous?”

  “You could get killed. I have complex security in place, and you know what security people are like. They just want to please the boss. I believe you’ve already had one run-in. You were in the past when that happened, so nothing terrible would have happened if you’d died.”

  She thought about the
man in the brown overcoat who’d followed them from Macy’s. He hadn’t been interested in talking to them. They’d looked suspicious, so he was going to remove them from the equation. She studied Grantham as he ate his chicken. He was certainly charming, and his arguments all made sense, but for all his politeness, he was beginning to sound sinister.

  “And what about Rostock? Is he part of your security?”

  He stared at her. “Rostock? Who’s Rostock?”

  “He’s a demon who works for McInnes. He followed us to 1866. He’s probably still lurking somewhere.”

  Grantham shook his head. “I don’t know Rostock. You should be careful. He could be very dangerous.

  Grantham dipped his stick fingers in the water dish. He had beautifully shaped hands, the sort of hands that played the piano, or massaged the backs of beautiful women, strong hands, the nails perfectly manicured.

  “Are you married?” she asked, as casually as possible.

  Grantham almost did a double-take. He hadn’t been expecting the question. “Well, yes, although it would be foolish of me to explain that to you. I started all of this two hundred years ago. It’s not new.”

  “Two hundred years ago?” she gasped. “Harper inferred that it was quite recent.”

  “Dear old Stan. He’s never good at explaining things. He assumes that everyone understands how old Hell is. Hades is a magnitude of thousands of years old. Harper’s been in charge of the Gypsies for seven hundred years. Even I don’t know how long artifacts have been around. I believe they were invented by Pythagoras.”

  “But… Pythagoras was a philosopher.”

  “And mathematician.”

  Wiping his mouth on a napkin, Grantham stood. “I’m hoping you’ll leave and explain to Hades that I’m doing him a favor. I’ve learned far too much about the universe for him to allow me to return to Hell.” He gave Kat an unrestrained smile. “I have to go. Thank you for letting me share your table.” He stood there for a moment, looking at them. “Young lady, I believe your name is Kat, you’d be wise to stop looking for me… I do have to protect myself.”

  Kat looked up at Grantham from the table and said, “Hades told me to give you a message… The longer you wait, the more uncomfortable it will be when you return. As a human, no matter how long it takes, all roads lead to Hell…

  Grantham turned and walked out of the restaurant.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “So, where does that leave us?” Dore asked, as they filed out of The Loeb Boathouse and headed back across the park.

  “Well, it seems to me as if we’re in the same situation,” Kat replied. “Grantham will probably continue teleporting escapees. He must be making one and a half million a week just from West Fork alone. What would you do in his situation? He lives in the real world now.”

  Dore laughed. “Doesn’t he just? He’s in a better situation than most real-world people. He’s been here for two hundred years, and he’s not showing any signs of aging.”

  “What I don’t understand is the situation with Hades. He says he can’t go into the future, but he must be running Hell at this very minute. He’ll be the same person and so will Persephone. Why can’t they simply send the Elites to the real world and arrest him?”

  Dore was silent for a moment. “Perhaps because he’s not allowed to interfere with the real world. Perhaps that’s God’s territory, or maybe no one’s allowed to interfere. Think of all the terrible things that happen that don’t warrant divine intervention, all the wars, all the appalling murders. Maybe Grantham knows that, so he knows he’s safe. No one can touch him until he dies.”

  “Except us. We’re pursuing him.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “That might be the only loophole, which is why Hades was so eager to recruit you, although, at the moment, we’re neither one thing nor the other. We might be dead and residents of Hell, but we’re also alive. We’re not ghosts, and we’re not poltergeists; we’re real human beings… well, sort of. You hear about people being saved in extraordinary circumstances, people who think their deceased husband rescued them from death, or some small child who managed to avoid being eaten by wolves, or freezing to death on some mountain top. Maybe they were really rescued by people like us, people who teleported into the real world.” He reached out and squeezed her arm, perhaps as a reminder that, despite falling in love with Giselle, he was still her friend.

  “Giselle did mention that Hades has couriers to fetch him recent newspapers and magazines. And then there are his collections. Couriers have to go to Earth to get them. Possibly, one of them on their way to pick something up, came across someone in trouble and gave an assist… Either way, I would very much like to talk to one of his couriers.”

  Dore laughed. “Hades might have a bunch of blokes ferrying shit back to Hell, but we’re Hades first to open a detective agency. By the way, what should I call you now? Miss. Sherlock Holmes?”

  “Kat will do just fine, thank you very much. So you think we should carry on as before, find out where Grantham’s living and report back to Hades?”

  They had reached the center of the lawn area, and there were fewer people now. It was only five on a summer’s afternoon, but there was now a chill in the air. Perhaps it wasn’t warm enough for people to sunbathe.

  “I hate to say it,” Dore said, “because I think it could be dangerous, but yes, I think we should. I’ve been trying to figure out why Grantham came to see us. Was he warning us about the people who work for him, or was he challenging us? It felt like a challenge to me.”

  “It felt like that to me too… Did you notice what Grantham was wearing?”

  Dore squinted at her. “You mean the suit?”

  “It wasn’t just any suit. Grantham spilled his drink on it, but it didn’t make a single mark. It looked as if it had been made of silk, but it was completely waterproof. He was also wearing extraordinary shoes. They looked like English brogues, but they were made of some kind of woven material.”

  Dore laughed. “Trust a woman to notice things like that.”

  “My point is, I think he came from further into the future than 2025. If I’m right, it means he’s probably got a home in several different times. So how the hell are we going to find him?”

  He looked at his watch, thought for a moment, and then glanced up at the sun. “I don’t know, Kat; we’ll figure it out. Do you want to change your clothes now, while there’s no one around?”

  So Kat and the girls climbed into their long dresses, helping each other to button them up and smooth out the lacy collars. Dore watched them in fascination, in particular Giselle, who kept giving him intimate looks as she smoothed the wrinkles out of the skirt.

  “I can’t work out whether you’re more beautiful in a long dress, or an indecently short skirt. They both seem to suit you. You’d have been a sensation in army shorts.”

  “That’s why women wear skirts instead of pants,” Giselle remarked. “They’re provocative.” She smiled.

  “You think women’s clothes are provocative?”

  “Of course they are. They’re designed to make you want to look underneath them. Men love to look up women’s skirts, but when they’re wearing jeans, they don’t seem to notice, unless the woman has an amazing ass.”

  Splitting into pairs, they prepared to teleport, but at that moment, a group of children wandered by on bicycles. They were whispering to each other, clearly fascinated by the three women in Victorian dresses.

  “Excuse me,” one of the girls asked. “Are you actresses?”

  “Yes, we are,” Giselle said in a motherly tone. “We’re rehearsing for a play.”

  “Are you really?” the little girl said, excitedly. “What’s it called?”

  “It’s called Kat and the Magic Telephone. It’s a really exciting play about ghosts.”

  The little girl’s eyes widened. “Wow! Where’s it playing?”

  Giselle looked at Lily. She had no idea which theaters existed in 2024.

  “It’s playing
at The Lyceum,” Lily said. “It starts next Saturday. Now scoot. We’ve got to rehearse.”

  The little girl thanked her and raced off on her bicycle, her blonde ponytail swinging from side to side as she went to catch up with her playmates.

  It was dark when they arrived in 1866, and it took a little time for their eyes to adjust. As before, the Hansom cabs had all gone, there were few other carriages to be seen, and after the dull roar of modern New York, the silence was profound.

  “It’s so quiet,” Giselle said, as they made their way towards the road, “I can even hear my heartbeat.”

  Kat was about to say something when Dore came to an abrupt stop, holding out his arms to warn them. A hundred yards away, standing beneath a flickering streetlight was the hunched figure of a man. He was standing with his back to the light, so his face was in shadow, but he must have been close to seven-foot tall. She froze. It had to be Rostock.

  Unbuttoning the front of her dress, she reached in to draw the Browning, but Dore put a hand on her arm.

  “Holster the gun,” he whispered. “I think he’s waiting for us.”

  “And if he decides to shoot us?” she whispered back.

  “He wouldn’t be waiting under a streetlight if he wanted to shoot us; he’s a perfect target. There are also four of us. He wouldn’t have a hope in hell of killing us all. Anyway, I’m faster than he is. Let’s keep going and see what he wants.”

  So she re-holstered the Browning, but she didn’t fasten the buttons of her dress. Rostock might want to talk, but who knew where such a conversation would lead? She studied the demon as they got closer. He was wearing what looked like a military shirt, peaked cap, baggy riding pants and long boots that reminded her of a NAZI stormtrooper.

  They walked into the brightness of the streetlight. Rostock straightened and stepped casually in front of them, with the light falling across his face. Cabot had been right, Rostock did look vaguely human, but he was also incredibly ugly. He had thick, beetling eyebrows, one of his eyes was partially closed, and his mouth was a vivid gash that showed crooked teeth. All he needed was a bolt through his neck…