Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Call

by P. T. Dilloway

  It took Marie a moment to realize time had started to move backwards, like a movie played in reverse. Marie watched as Veronica came to life again. Then she was back in the parlor again with Mrs. Chiostro. They spoke backwards for a few moments before Marie returned to Robinson Park.

  Everything began to go backwards faster. She watched herself as she took Veronica into Robinson Tower and then the thrift store and then McDonald’s. Veronica fell back to sleep as the fever took her again.

  And then Marie stood in the Watchmaker’s vault. She sat on the chair in the center of the room with the pentagram drawn in Steve Scherr’s blood. Becky lay on the floor at her feet, bound and gagged. The Watchmaker stood beside the chair. He put a hand on Marie’s shoulder. “Concentrate, my dear. Focus very hard.”

  Marie looked up at the Watchmaker. He was human again, not that awful demon he had been at the end. Yet he wasn’t human, not really. He was always a demon. “Concentrate. It’s the only way to save Veronica.”

  “You don’t care about saving Veronica,” Marie said. “You just care about your stupid book.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The book that shows you how to open the gateway. You want the book so you’ll know where it is. Then you’ll want me to open it.”

  “That’s a very good story, my dear, but—”

  “It’s not a story. I’ve already seen it happen.” Marie took pleasure in how the Watchmaker’s mouth opened with shock. “I’ve been to the future. I know what you’re going to do. I know everything that will happen.”

  “Then you must know if you don’t take me back for the book, I’ll scatter Miss Beech’s brains all over this vault.”

  “I wouldn’t want that,” Marie said.

  Since she had already done it once, it was easy enough for Marie to open the window into the past. It was easy enough as well to make sure she didn’t take Becky with her this time. Becky wouldn’t want to go where Marie planned to go.

  She didn’t get off the chair this time when she found herself in the root cellar. Instead, she waited for the Watchmaker to step away from her. Then she seized his hand. “What are you doing?”

  “What I should have done from the start.”

  Marie focused her eye again. The root cellar soon disappeared. They were actually underground now. This was before the city of Rampart existed, before anyone lived in this place. Still Marie continued farther back into the past. She traveled farther and farther back until there was nothing around her but lava and rock.

  “What the hell have you done?” the Watchmaker shouted into her ear.

  “Wait here long enough and you’ll find your book,” Marie said. Then she let go of his hand. He tumbled away from her, towards the ground. He tried to change into his demon form, but he was too late. He disappeared into a pool of lava with a scream.

  ***

  Marie returned to 1876 and made her way to Veronica’s bedside. The little girl stirred beneath her covers. “Marie?”

  “That’s right, sweetie. I’m here now.”

  “Are you here to take me to Heaven?”

  “No, of course not.” Marie reached into her pocket. She felt the pills there. She could give the pills to Veronica again, but what good would they do? She had contracted the fever again. But maybe this time, with the Watchmaker gone, Marie could do things right. She could give the pills more time to work. If that didn’t work, she could use her eye—

  “Marie?”

  “What is it, sweetie?”

  “Can you get Mama and Papa?”

  Marie stared at Veronica for a moment. She remembered what Veronica had said at the very end last time. She had seen her mother and father. They were the ones she wanted to be with at the end. Marie brushed hair away from Veronica’s face and then nodded. “I will, sweetheart. You just stay right here. I’ll be back soon.”

  She kissed Veronica on the forehead before she left the room. She crept down the hallway to where Veronica’s parents slept. As they lay in bed, Marie used her eye for a few moments. They were good people. By 21st Century standards they were a bit strict, but they loved their daughter. They would love her so much they would leave this place after she died because they couldn’t bear the memories.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Windham? Wake up. Your daughter needs you.”

  They both sat upright, as if they’d woke from a nightmare. Veronica’s mother looked over at Marie, but she kept herself within the shadows of the doorway. “Who said that? Who’s there?”

  “It’s me, Marie. Veronica needs you.”

  Marie hurried back down the hallway. She concentrated with her eye to place herself outside of space and time again. It was like back at the halfway house, when she’d been a ghost. She watched as Veronica’s parents rushed into the room. They knelt beside their daughter.

  It hurt just as much this time to watch Veronica die. This time at the end, the little girl turned to her. She actually smiled a little. “Don’t worry, Mama. Marie’s here. She’s going to take me to the angels.”

  Those were her last words. Marie didn’t stay long; she let Veronica’s parents grieve in peace. She floated away, no destination in mind. It dawned on her she could go anywhere—any time—she wanted. There was nothing to hold her back anymore.

  But there was one last stop she needed to make in the present.

  Chapter 31

  Emma didn’t understand it. One moment she and Hisae had been in Robinson Park to try and finish off the demons. Emma had just punched a Class-4 in the face. A smaller one, probably a Class-3, made to claw out her throat.

  And then everything changed. The next thing Emma knew, she stood in the old Gluck & Lehman plant, Don Vendetta’s goons spread out around her. Though she probably shouldn’t, she took off her helmet. She ran a hand through hair that was perfectly straight now. She didn’t feel any pimples on her face either.

  She quickly put the helmet back on as she heard a door creak open. French peered out through the door. “What the hell?” he said.

  That was a good question. Emma didn’t understand it herself. There was only one possibility: Marie had changed the timeline back. That meant everything was as it had been. Emma’s parents and Aunt Gladys were dead. Dan was in Egypt with no memory of her. She was here to interrogate French and Estima, to find out if they had murdered her parents.

  This prompted her back into action. She stomped into the foreman’s office. She shoved French against a wall, next to Estima. “You two have some information I need. You’re going to tell me, or else. Understand?”

  “We told you, we didn’t kill no one!” Estima shouted. “Please, don’t kill us.”

  Emma watched them cower and shake with fear. She remembered what Mr. Graves had told her what seemed like months ago. When he had found the man who killed his friend, Mr. Graves had looked into the man’s eyes and realized he was just a man, not a monster. Emma looked at French and Estima now and saw the same thing. She had seen real monsters: demons, the Watchmaker, and that awful hookworm creature. These were just two petty criminals.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” she said. “I’m going to take you to the police. Make sure you ask for Lieutenant Charlotte Donovan. She’s been looking forward to seeing you. And she’s about the only one not on Don Vendetta’s payroll. Understand?”

  They nodded. Emma didn’t have any handcuffs on her. She looked around the old factory until she found a bundle of rope. She tied up Don Vendetta’s goons first so they couldn’t get away or get to French and Estima. The latter two she left in the foreman’s office. She tied them to the desk to make it harder for them to get away.

  As she finished, she noticed something different. On the wall, someone had written some graffiti in dark red lipstick. The fact it was lipstick meant it had been recent. What kind of vandal used lipstick for graffiti? Stranger yet was what they’d written: Schulman Jewelers.

  Emma closed her eyes. She thought back to the first time she’d been in this room. She definit
ely had not noticed that graffiti. Maybe she had missed it in her rage at French and Estima, but she doubted this. There was one conclusion she could draw: Marie had left her a message. Maybe Marie had come back a few days earlier or maybe she’d just stopped time for a few seconds to write it; Emma didn’t know the extent of the girl’s powers by now.

  She used an old rag to smear the graffiti so no one else could see it. Before she left the office, she bent down to glare at French and Estima. “If you lie to Lieutenant Donovan or try anything, I’ll find you again and the next time I’ll let Vendetta have you. Got it?”

  They nodded. She stood up and then went outside to where the goons were still tied up. She rifled through their pockets until she found a cell phone on one that could get on the Internet. She did a search to find where Schulman’s Jeweler’s was. Apparently the store had been closed for a long time, as there was no current listing. She did find the address of a Samuel Schulman. That might be the best place to start.

  Emma used the phone to call Lieutenant Donovan. The woman picked up on the sixth ring. “What is it?”

  “It’s me,” Emma hissed into the phone. “The don’s been busy. I have some of her friends at the old Gluck & Lehman plant. French and Estima send their regards too.”

  “You found them?”

  “Just before the don.”

  “She’s there? You have her?”

  “She got away.”

  “Why didn’t you stop her? What kind of superhero are you?”

  “I was a little busy with two-dozen of her goons. They’re waiting for you to pick up.”

  “Fine.” Lieutenant Donovan sighed into the receiver. “This still doesn’t mean I like you.”

  “I know.” Emma hung up and then went out to where her motorcycle—her red motorcycle—waited. Then she went to find Samuel Schulman.

  ***

  It turned out she didn’t need to find Schulman. Apparently he lived above the old jewelry store. The place looked abandoned with boards over the windows and doors. Yet the door was open. Emma put one hand to the Sword of Justice.

  If Marie had left that message, there was a very real chance this was a trap. Marie could want her to come in here so she could use that eye on Emma again. The last thing Emma wanted was to end up ninety years old again, or worse yet, nine months old.

  Her fears were realized when she heard Becky shout, “Help! Someone!”

  The sound came from downstairs, in the basement. The perfect place for a trap. So that was Marie’s game. She would lure Emma to this old jewelry store, into the basement, where she had Becky hostage. She would force Emma to surrender herself to save Becky’s life. And then Marie would take off with her little friend Veronica again. What would happen this time?

  Emma wrapped the cape around herself and then started down the stairs. She froze as one stair creaked beneath her weight. “Hello? Is someone there?” Becky called out. “Please, someone help me!”

  Emma took a deep breath and then made her way down to the bottom of the stairs. Instead of a basement, she found a vault. The door had been left open, so she could see Becky on a chair, in the middle of a pentagram drawn in blood. Her friend had her hands and feet bound.

  It pained Emma to be inches from Becky and yet to remain invisible. She couldn’t reveal herself yet, not until she made sure Marie wasn’t around. She tiptoed around the room, but there was no sign of Marie or the Watchmaker. They were alone in the vault.

  Emma finally let the cape drop. Becky gasped in surprise. “What the hell? How long have you been there?”

  “A couple of minutes. I had to make sure Marie wasn’t here. Where’d she go?”

  “I don’t know. Her and that old guy just vanished.”

  “Vanished?”

  “All I saw was a flash of green light and then they were gone. That was probably an hour ago. Now are you going to untie me or what? I really need to pee.”

  “Oh, sure.” Emma used the armor’s strength to free Becky, rather than risk a cut with the Sword of Justice. She helped her friend to her feet. “You’re sure Marie is gone?”

  “Yeah. Why? What is it?”

  “It’s a long story. We’ll talk about it later. Let’s get you home.”

  Though Becky insisted she could walk just fine, Emma carried her friend up the stairs. Emma offered to drive Becky home, but Becky refused. “It’d be pretty tight on that bike of yours. And I have to take Steve’s car back.”

  “Good point,” Emma said. She gave her friend a careful hug. “You just be careful. Marie could still be out there.”

  “She’s really got you freaked, hasn’t she?”

  “You’ve no idea.”

  Epilogue

  Emma left the motorcycle at the top of the hill and then walked down to the band shelter. As she walked, she looked around her, but no demons popped out of hiding. She saw a sparrow hop on a branch and glared at it for a few minutes until it flew away.

  While she knew that had all been in another reality, she couldn’t help but look at the park in a different way. When she had passed by the pond, she had paused for a moment to stare at the water. She thought of the slab that lay somewhere beneath the pond. Marlin hadn’t seen it, but then the slab might exist in another dimension. Then she remembered the time she had swam in the pond with Aunt Gladys, how she had imagined a monster in there with them. How right she’d nearly been.

  Lieutenant Donovan waited for her on the stage of the band shelter. She must have been there for a while because there were already three cigarettes strewn on the stage. A fourth would soon join them. “About time you got here,” she growled.

  As often happened these last few days, Emma had a moment of double-vision where she saw Lieutenant Donovan and the fatter Officer Donovan side-by-side. She had to make herself focus on the real one. “I’ve been busy.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. Your friends French and Estima sang like canaries. They couldn’t confess everything fast enough. Turns out they knocked over Third National and skimmed a bit more for themselves than they should have. That’s why the don had a hit put on them. They hadn’t even stolen as much as she put out in reward money.”

  “She wanted to make an example of them.”

  “Yeah, I suppose.” Her cigarette joined the other three on the stage. Lieutenant Donovan reached into her jacket for a fifth. “Made us all look like jackasses to make an example out of them.”

  “Did they say anything else? About that murder?”

  “Oh, that. I did some checking around. They were being booked in a jail upstate the night that happened for drunk and disorderly and public urination. They had fake IDs and no one bothered to run their prints. They spent the night in the drunk tank, got a slap on the wrist, and told not to show their faces again. I faxed the sheriff up there the mug shots. They were a match.”

  “Oh,” Emma said. She hoped her disappointment didn’t show. After all these years, she thought she would finally learn who had killed her parents. She thought she could finally make it right. But as Mr. Graves had said, it wouldn’t have really made it right anyway. Her parents would still be dead. Maybe Marie Marsh could bring them back, but she still hadn’t turned up.

  Lieutenant Donovan threw her cigarette away again. “That was another part of her brilliant scheme. She uses a prison snitch to plant that story to turn the heat up on them. Plus she gets us—and you—looking for the bastards. So we do her dirty work for her. I can’t wait to get my hands around her neck.”

  “She has a lot to answer for,” Emma said.

  “Yeah. I’m sorry about all this. Still, we got those shitbirds back behind bars, where they belong. That’s something, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so. Is there anything else?”

  “Got another kind of odd one. Friend in Missing Persons told me about it. An old guy disappeared. They searched his basement and found this crazy devil worshipping stuff on the floor.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Old guy’s name is Sam Schu
lman. Used to own a jewelry store. Not sure if they used him for some kooky ritual or what. If you hear anything, let me know.”

  “Sure.” Emma nodded to Lieutenant Donovan and then started back up the hill. She couldn’t tell the detective she knew who had made Samuel Schulman disappear. The only questions were what Marie had done with him and why she’d done it.

  As she reached the top of the hill, Emma saw she would have the chance to ask. Marie Marsh sat on the seat of the bike. Somehow she’d disabled the security system. Emma reached for the Sword of Justice. “You don’t need to do that,” Marie said. “I’m only here to talk.”

  There was something different about Marie. Her hair was cut in a short bob that allowed Emma to see both of her eyes. Both of her brown eyes. She wore a white dress Emma recognized as a flapper dress. Marie patted her hair and smiled. “I’ve been visiting the Roaring Twenties. It was quite a time. All those speak-easies and gangsters. Good thing the Scarlet Knight wasn’t here then.”

  “What happened to your eye, Marie?”

  “Oh, that. It’s a contact lens. I had someone make it for me about twenty years from now.”

  “Twenty years from now? You’ve been to the future?”

  “Sure. It’s not too different. I ran into your daughter. She’s got your eyes.”

  “My daughter?”

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I won’t tell you who her father is or any of that. We have to let some things be a surprise.”

  Besides the clothes, hair, and eye, there was something else different about Marie. Her entire attitude was different. She was far more confident than she’d used to be. No longer was she the shy, child-like girl Emma had known from the nursing home.

  Marie must have seen inside Emma with her eye, because she said, “I am different. For one thing, I’m older than you now.”

  “You are?”