Why me? This is a little out of my jurisdiction. In more ways than one. Have you tried the local authorities—both official and not so . . . you know?
Legally? He owns the land. This mountain and the ones which surround it. That which is not done legally is covered by bribes, extortion, and even murder.
Oh sure, since it's too big for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, send in Cséjthe.
You underestimate yourself. And we are not in Canada, we are in the land your people call Colorado.
Everyone underestimates me. That or believes the phony rep. It's the only reason I've survived so long.
If this is true then perhaps the earth is doomed. Once he adds the secrets of your blood to his many baskets, he will drown the world in darkness!
Jeez, and here everyone's been worried about Hezbollah and Al Qaeda.
Come, Cséjthe, we must go now. Your best chance for entry is while night rules the skies.
And I felt her exit out through the head chakra.
I followed and we rose into the sky like two carnival balloons that had escaped the grasp of cotton-candied fingers.
"You mean our entry. Right?"
"What?"
"You said 'your best chance for entry' but you meant to say 'our best chance for entry.' Correct?"
"I have brought you here, Cséjthe, because you can do what no other man can do and you can go where I cannot go."
I looked back down. The wolf we had just exited was staggering around in circles, alternately whining and snapping at the other wolves who ventured too close. Another wolf had separated from the pack and was running away toward the mountain's upward slope on the leeward side of the plateau.
Looking up, I could see the outcroppings of the fortress a little better now. Dark and sinister against the backdrop of the barely waxing moon, its curving walls of stone were parted by a long arc of steel-framed panes of glass that made the great edifice look like a giant, blind predator, smiling over some sardonic secret. As we rose higher and drew nearer, I could see that each window was probably six by ten feet of tempered glass and stacked so that there were actually two rows instead of just one.
"Grandmother," I whispered, "what big teeth you have . . ." I turned to Wendigo. "Is this part of the Native American afterlife? Because I'd like to know if it isn't too late to convert to Islam and get the seventy-two virgins?"
"The Mangler is of your world, Cséjthe, not mine," she answered as we touched down on a broad ledge outfitted with a helipad. "But he corrupts what is mine as well as what is yours. Once he was a man—just as you were once a man." She began walking toward the main building a hundred yards away.
"So now we're both—what?" I asked, following reluctantly. "More . . . ?"
"Now he is much more."
"And me?"
She waggled her hand. "A little more."
"Great. So what's the plan? Any wolves or large dogs inside I can hop into and use to tear out this Nikidik's throat? And what are you going to do in the meantime?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"I cannot enter."
"Why the hell not?"
"Because The Mangler—the Nikidik—has warded his fortress with the Ttsilolni."
"The what?"
"The Sunwheel. The sign of the Whirling Logs: its power shuts me and all of my tribe out from all paths and all means of seeing. I can go no further."
"The Sunwheel?" That term was vaguely familiar.
"It is a timeless sigil of power, predating the Egyptian ankh. Not just my people but the ancient Hindus, Buddhists, Vikings, Romans, Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Mayans, Aztecs, Persians, Jews, Christians, and Neolithic tribes used it as a totem. In China it was called the Wan, in Japan it was the Manji, while in England the Fylfot. The Greeks called it Tetraskelion and Gammadion, the Germans, Hakenkreuz. The Mangler has taken the Ttsilolni and reversed the turn of the great wheel: it spins in reverse and its powers are turned back upon us!"
I looked up. There was a great stone eagle spreading its wings over the massive double doors leading to the inside of the fortress. Above the eagle's head, wreathed in a circle of leaves, was an irregular icosagon.
"Jesus Christ!"
Wendigo flinched and stopped moving.
I already had. "Well, maybe once upon a time the Germans called that thing a Hakenkreuz but ever since the Salzburg Congress of 1920, the so-called broken cross has been remembered as something entirely different!" I would have grabbed her and shaken her if I could. "It's a swastika, Lady! You don't want me! Maybe if there were vampires or werewolves or zombies on the other side of those double doors I'd be your man. But if you're wanting someone to take on the Third Reich, you should be calling Indiana Jones!"
She shook her head. "As I have said, the Ttsilolni wards my power to see within the walls of the fortress of The Mangler. I do not know what manner of creatures he employs, only what comes and goes without."
I stared at the thing the Wendigo called a Ttsilolni. There was no way around it: the emblem of the eagle and the wreath surrounding the "whirling logs" pretty much removed any doubts about the Adolf connection. "And then there's the inscription just below," I said, nodding at the chiseled lettering that spelled:
Brut Adler
"What does it say?" she asked.
"It's German. 'Adler' means eagle—I'm sure of that much. 'Brut' is tougher; too bad Deirdre isn't here." Too bad on more than one level. "I had a German zoology professor in college. I seem to recall that Brut could be used to denote either a nest or aerie—or progeny . . ."
"Progeny?"
"Yeah, like brood, clutch, covey, fry, spawn . . . offspring."
"I think 'nest' is probably the logical interpretation given the location and circumstances," she said.
"The Eagle's Nest," I mused. "The Eagle's Aerie . . ." Something rustled in the black trunk of forgotten memories in the basement of my brain.
"You hesitate, Cséjthe. You fear that the Nikidik is served by an army of Nazis within?"
Okay.
That was my reality check.
The only Nazis you could find in this brave new century were skinhead dorks who couldn't organize a bake sale. Hitler and his fellow architects of the super race must roll in their graves every time they see who inherited the mantles of the Aryan Brotherhood. Nope. Judging from the weathering on the stonework, this stronghold had been built a long time ago and whoever the present occupants were, I could do worse than pinheads with delusions of past glories or nonagenarian storm troopers in wheelchairs and walkers.
Besides, I was all ghostly and they couldn't see me, hear me, or touch me. What was I worried about?
And given all that I had been through in the past twenty-four, it was about time I started dishing out for a change.
"Keep your skirt on, Poca-haunt-us," I said, starting toward the doors again. "If there are any brown shirts inside, there'll be more than a few brown pants before I'm through. There's a new furor in town."
"Don't get cocky," she called as I reached the entrance. "Remember what I taught you about riding within the animus: your will must be stronger than the will of that which you occupy. Otherwise you will fail."
"Yes, Mother . . ." I stepped through the door and into Hitler's nightmare.
Chapter Twenty
The nightmare started off slow, with a pair of wrought-iron boot scrapers, just inside the door. It was an unassuming beginning—as was the carpet runner of industrial-grade material. The red weave bore the marks of dusty boot prints and stretched the length of a stone-flagged corridor leading to another pair of double doors some forty feet away.
I drifted toward the next set of doors, strangely self-conscious in the brightly lit but unfurnished hallway. I was, after all, invisible to the human eye.
Still, the layout was a bit intimidating. It made sense to have a temperature lock up here in the mountains where even the daytime wind chill could drop below freezing in the summer. But I was also mindful that the arrang
ement was identical to a suicide run in a medieval fortress. Although there were no obvious murder holes or arrow slits, modern technology made hidden panels and trap doors all the more likely. I shook my head: replacing arrows and molten lead with sensor-guided lasers and jets of poisonous gas shouldn't make any difference. I was as transparent to conventional traps and weapons as I was to walls and doors.
But I couldn't shake a prickling sense of unease. If something as big and as bad as the Wendigo couldn't get past the first door, then being all other-dimensiony might not be any protection from what might lurk around the next corner.
The next set of doors was more ornate. A second look, however, indicated that the ornamentation was appliqué. Heavy blast-doors lay beneath the façade, more functional than the outer doors and tricked out with electronic locks. Breaking in without the right key code would require a portable Cray with penultimate hacking software. Or enough high-yield explosives to bring down half the mountain.
I swam through the doors in a couple of breast strokes.
The other side opened out into a great atrium. Forget spooky old castle, this was Grand Hotel, done in '30s Art Deco with heavy Bauhaus influence. There were great staircases leading up and down, curving about a glass-cage elevator with gleaming brass fittings. Corridors curved off to my left and right, suggesting a greater labyrinth beyond. Assuming the old adage that you "can't go wrong if you go 'right'" I turned in that direction and began following the great hall as it arced further into the mountain's bowels.
The lighting in the corridor was dim, possibly set for the circadian rhythms of the occupants to match day and night outside. The rooms on the other side of the doors were darker still. I got the impression of maintenance facilities, meeting areas, offices, recreation facilities, weapons lockers, and numerous storerooms as I made my rounds and dropped down to the next level.
There were people down here. Men sleeping in barracks, women in dormitory chambers, couples in private apartments. And a nursery for children.
A lot of children.
It was hard to get a head count as the rooms were dark and I kept messing up my night vision by moving through the partially lit corridors and then sticking my head into another block of pitch-black darkness.
It suddenly occurred to me that my infravision wasn't kicking in. Had I left it behind with my flesh? It was one of the dark gifts bestowed with the vampiric infection. Was there a dividing line between the baggage of my past life and the carry-on luggage I was still toting around? I instinctively reached for the light switch, checking myself as my fingers passed through the wall plate.
There were too many targets to count by searching for hearts' fires. Maybe I'd have better luck upstairs.
I struggled up the mushy stairs, no longer possessing a silver cord to use as climbing leverage in my ascension. And I noticed something else: I was getting tired.
Maybe ghosts were supposed to take naps during the day. I couldn't remember the last time I'd slept—in the flesh or out of it. And maybe losing my astral connection had taken an additional toll. Whatever the reason, climbing the stairs up to the third level felt more like climbing a mountain. Maybe I should find a nice, dark storeroom and catch a little shuteye—a difficult proposition under any other conditions now that my eyelids were transparent.
No storerooms were immediately evident on the third floor. What was evident was a profusion of laboratories, medical facilities, and operating theaters. Each room, each chamber differed from the others in its equipment, layout, and appointments.
Take the operating rooms. One seemed geared for a broad range of procedures, another for microsurgery, a third specifically set for OB/GYN procedures, and a fourth that—well—looked like a vivisectionist's wet dream: everything up-to-date and state-of-the-art while offering a sense of retro familiarity for adherents of the Spanish Inquisition.
The labs had some commonality—I recognized gene sequencing and splicing equipment in more than one—but the remainder of the setups were alien beyond an electron microscope, some optical models, a number of centrifuges, and a dozen or so microworkstations networked to something likely mainframesized in the basement somewhere.
And then there was the Worm Farm.
One lab looked like a pet shop given over to aquarists with a couple hundred fish tanks lining the walls and situated on most of the tables, as well. The tanks, however, contained no fish, no snails, no crab, shrimp, or amphibian populations. There was variety but it all fell within a single phylum of the animal kingdom: Platyhelminthes.
Flatworms.
And on the walls above the softly burbling tanks: a generation of scrawled notes and formulae related to engrams and the theory of biochemical memory.
I stood there in the dim, green glow of the illuminated aquariums and felt the nonexistent hair on my nonexistent arms prickle and stand away from my nonexistent flesh.
"It's very pretty in here, don't you think?" said a strange voice from behind me. Which didn't help the prickling the least little bit. "I come here often, at night, because of the colors."
I turned around slowly.
There was no one there.
"The colors?" I asked, trying not to croak. My voice that is.
"The creatures. The water. The way the light moves through the tanks and out again. It changes, you know."
"What does?" I thought I saw a shadow fall across the jade luminescence of a long, low tank.
"The light. It's made up of many colors, you see. It only looks white most of the time." The shadow darkened. "Did you know that when you look at a red rose, it isn't really red?"
"It isn't?"
"No." The voice was young, almost girlish. Almost but not quite. "The petals absorb all of the colors of the spectrum except crimson, which is reflected back to your sight and registered on the retinas of your eyeballs." There was a hint of bored petulance in his tone and I wondered if puberty would tweak it to surliness or nurture something nastier within the next several years. "So you might say that the rose is every color but red."
"I—I hadn't quite thought of it that way," I said.
"As long as you're going to think about it, consider that all reflected colors are the ones that are essentially rejected by the objects that fall within our vision . . ."
"Interesting," I said, trying to figure out just who and—more importantly—what I was talking to. "Reflection is one thing," I added, nodding at a spill of turquoise light from the nearest aquarium, "but refraction is quite another. Does the water strip—absorb all the colors save one?"
"I had not considered . . ." the shadow said, taking on substance. "But it stands to reason that the visible color is, once again, the rejected hue from the spectrum. All other wavelengths are absorbed by the transmitting medium." A young boy stepped out of the darkened recesses between two tanks on opposing tables. "Which begs the question . . ."
"The question?" I didn't like the sound of this. I couldn't think of a single question within recent memory that I had ended up liking. And, lately, they had taken a definite turn for the worse. An orange flatworm with green striations oozed up the side of the tank behind the boy. Perhaps I should have thought of the creature as every color but orange with green markings. But I was a little distracted by the fact that I was able to debate the thing's color scheme since it remained visible through the kid's upper torso.
"You and I," the ghostly boy said. "What are we?"
Such stuff as dreams are made of, Prospero had said. A man grown weary of life and looking forward to escaping life's tempests in the restful oblivion of the Big Sleep—so maybe Shakespeare's magician was a tad biased.
"Are we the rejected light?" the kid continued. "A reflected color while the rest of what we were is absorbed into the landscape?"
Like I said: not particularly keen on the questions that were coming my way these days.
"You're new, aren't you?" he asked, switching to another question that I hesitated to answer directly. "I haven't seen you arou
nd here before. I'm Beppo." He didn't stick out his hand; what would be the point?
Beppo? Were the ghosts of the Marx Brothers waiting in the wings? What was next? Smurf Nazis Must Die? I was definitely past tired and edging over into hallucinatory. "Robert Walton," I said, trying to keep my guard up and simultaneously letting myself go with the flow.
"That name sounds very familiar. Should I know you?"
That depended upon the reading proclivities of twelve-year-old boys. "I shouldn't think so." And dead ones at that.
Of course, given that context perhaps I should have selected a nom de plume from Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
"Did you have an accident or are you a part of one of Grandpère's experiments?"
"Beg pardon?"
"Where's your body, Herr Walton? Is it in one of the labs? Down in the morgue? Or did you find your way here on your own from outside?"
"Uh, I don't know," I lied. "I'm kind of confused." That, at least, was pretty truthful. "Where am I?"
"Brut Adler. The Eagle's Aerie. Or, perhaps more accurately, the Eagle's Rookery. Grandpère hatches many fledglings here in this granite nest. Someday soon he will hatch himself and be reborn. Perhaps then he will rename it der Phönix Scheiterhaufen—the Pyre of the Phoenix." He said this with a curious mix of pride and wistfulness.
"Really?" I said. "And how is he going to do that? Some kind of breakthrough in blood chemistry?"
"If only it were that simple," answered a new voice. The other nurse from my hospital room back in New York had just entered the lab and she did not seem happy. "He prepares to be reborn by killing the unborn! He butchers babies so that he may live a second life! And a third! And Gott knows how many more!"
The boy howled back at her, rage suffusing his features, contorting his face into a nightmare mask of hate and fear and even sorrow. He ran at her, his arms straight out from his sides, his hands balled into impotent fists. "Shut up, Gretchen! Shut up! Shut up! Shut! Up!"
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