Infernal

by F. Paul Wilson

  The Otherness maybe. He and Dad had had a brush with some of its inhabitants in Florida. The thought of Vicky in a place like that… unbearable.

  Eighty-three hours… why that number? Sounded like a prime, but so what?

  He did a quick calculation: Vicky had activated the Lilitongue around nine P.M. last night. It was now going on three. That left roughly sixty-five hours before she was “transported to a faraway place.”

  He wanted to be sick.

  Tom said, “Maybe the book’s wrong.”

  Jack shook his head. “Cool it with the wishful thinking. You saw the mark on Vicky’s back. This morning it was bigger. It’s stretching out to encircle her, just like the Compendium said.”

  “Shit. I feel so awful about this.”

  “You should.” Jack wanted more than ever to strangle him. “You damn well should.”

  “Hey—”

  “Shut up, Tom. Just shut the fuck up. I need to think.”

  Did he ever. How was he going to break this to Gia?

  * * *

  -62:04

  “What’s wrong, Mom?”

  Gia tried to hold back the tears as she looked at Vicky. She’d let a single sob escape. She had to stifle the second. She sensed that if she let it push through, it would burst the dam and she wouldn’t be able to stop.

  Jack sat to her right on the couch, his arm around her back. Vicky stood to her left. Tom had secluded himself in the kitchen. A single reading lamp on the side table lit the old dark book-lined shelves of the Sutton Square house.

  “It’s okay, honey.” She prayed her voice wouldn’t shatter. “I’m just very sad.”

  “Why? Is it the book?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  She slipped her arms around her child and squeezed her.

  “Is it a sad book?”

  “Very sad.”

  The Compendium lay on her lap. Gia stared at the illustration of the Lilitongue, hating it. Then, through tear-blurred eyes, she read the text for the fourth time, searching for a shred of hope.

  Part of her balked at the possibility that anything so outrageously fanciful could be true. It was the stuff of Harry Potter novels.

  But another part of her called up a vision of that black mark—the Stain—stretching across her daughter’s back and she knew it was true.

  Gia felt her world crumbling around her. She couldn’t lose her little girl! It wasn’t going to happen—it couldn’t happen! Not Vicky! Please not Vicky! Take me instead!

  “There’s got to be a way out, Jack.”

  His arm tightened around her. “I agree. Has to be. We’ve just got to find it in time.” He reached for the book. “Tomorrow I’m going to take this—”

  She clutched his arm. “Take it where?”

  “To Abe’s professor friend. I already called him but he’s gone for the day. But I’ll show this to him. Maybe he’ll be able to tease something out of the text that we don’t see.”

  “And what if he can’t?”

  “Then we go public with the Compendium and the Lilitongue. Haul the world’s best minds here and see what they come up with.”

  “But you won’t be able to find this professor till tomorrow, right?”

  Jack frowned. “I’m still working on tracking him down tonight. Abe had only his office number. The museum won’t give me his home number.”

  “Okay, you go looking, but leave the book with me.”

  “Why?”

  “To save time.” Dear God, so little left. “Have you been through the whole book?”

  “No. Look at the size of it. Must be a thousand pages.”

  “That’s my point. While you’re out looking for this professor, I’ll comb through every single page. There may be more about the Lilitongue hidden inside. And that way, when we bring this professor in, we’ll know where to direct his attention.”

  Jack chewed his upper lip for a second or two, then shook his head.

  “We’ll both do it—tag-team style. You do an hour, then I’ll do one. That way we won’t go blind.”

  “But what about Abe’s professor?”

  “Who better to track down his home address than Abe? I’ll put him on it.”

  Relief flooded through Gia. She didn’t want to be alone here with Vicky, this ancient book, and the Stain.

  * * *

  -61:49

  Tom sat alone at Gia’s kitchen table, sipping a Killian’s Irish Red he’d found in the refrigerator and feeling down.

  Had somebody put a curse on him? Sure as hell seemed that way. Everything he touched turned to shit.

  The feds were looking for him and he faced ruination and jail time if they found him.

  If they found him? How about when they found him?

  His stash had been discovered and frozen.

  His last chance—the weird artifact he’d tracked down and hauled from the bottom of the ocean—had turned out a bust. Worse than a bust: It had put a little girl—Gia’s little girl, of all people—in jeopardy.

  Could things get any worse?

  He couldn’t see how. But things could be worse.

  He tried to avoid the thought, felt ashamed that it even occurred to him, but his only luck lately had been Vicky touching the dimple on the Lilitongue instead of him.

  Christ, he hated himself for the relief he felt.

  Yes, he’d been the one looking to “elude all enemies,” but not the way the Lilitongue was going about it. Whisked away to some undefined place from whence he could never return? No, thank you.

  He shivered. He’d rather take his chances with the feds.

  But of all people to be stuck with that creepy-looking mark, why Vicky? Why couldn’t it have been Jack?

  How low was that?

  Sometimes I disgust even myself.

  He heard a noise in the hallway and looked up to see Jack walking his way, a key ring in his hand.

  Tom said, “Everything okay?” and immediately regretted it. What a stupid thing to ask.

  Jack glared at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “It just popped out. How’s she doing?”

  “Terrible.” He snapped a key off the ring and handed it to him. “I’m staying. You’re not. This’U let you in.”

  “I want to help, Jack. I can—”

  “You can do us all a favor by leaving.” He stood aside to clear the door. “Walk up to the corner and catch a cab.”

  The scorn in Jack’s clipped tone burned like acid. His impulse was to protest but he thought better of it. If Gia felt the same, he was better off gone.

  Tom grabbed his jacket from a chair and shrugged into it as he slipped past Jack and headed down the hall. Passing the sitting room he saw Gia sitting in a pool of light, rocking Vicky on her lap.

  He stopped. “I’m sorry, Gia. I had no idea… I never dreamed…”

  His voice died as she looked up at him with haunted, red-rimmed eyes. He waited for her to say something, to scream curses at him, but she said nothing. He wished she would. The hurt and fear and the how-could-you? look in her eyes cut deeper than any words.

  She’d lose her daughter in sixty-some hours and she blamed him.

  Not fair.

  “Let’s go,” Jack said from close behind.

  Tom expected a shove toward the door. Thankful it didn’t come, he began moving on his own.

  And then he was on the sidewalk. He arrived there standing, under his own power, but he felt as if he’d been given the old heave-ho and landed with his face in the dirt.

  The door clicked behind him and Tom was alone.

  His breath steamed in the air as he looked around at all the lighted windows in the high-rises. Surrounded by millions of people and yet alone.

  More alone than he’d ever been, and feeling it.

  He couldn’t remember ever being all that connected to anyone, at any time, but at least he’d had people he could act connected to. Now…

  The Skanks? He’d burned those bridges long ago. His kid
s? Barely knew them. Terry? She didn’t want him around—he was an embarrassment, a pariah to old acquaintances and colleagues. Even the solace of immersing himself in work was now denied him.

  Perhaps subconsciously he’d considered his family something to fall back on—theoretically, at least—if worse came to worst. Now…?

  At this time last year he would have had Kate and Dad to lean on. Both gone now. He’d never considered Jack a possibility, because no one knew anything about him. But even Jack, his only surviving sib, wanted nothing to do with him.

  Was this what the philosophers called angst?

  He started walking up toward Sutton Place.

  Not fair. None of it.

  Sure, he’d recovered the Lilitongue and brought it to Jack’s place, but he hadn’t meant to hurt anyone. Maybe he shouldn’t have shown it to Gia and Vicky. That probably had piqued the kid’s curiosity, but Jack was at fault here too. Sure, he’d stowed the sea chest out of sight, but he should have found a better hiding place.

  And Vicky—what about her? If she’d minded her own business instead of poking around other people’s things…

  Ah, what’s the use?

  He reached Sutton Place and found a cab, gave the driver Jack’s address, then slumped in the seat.

  When had he last felt this low? He needed a little pick-me-up. No, he needed a big pick-me-up.

  He checked the driver’s ID card: a scowling black face over a name that began with Kamal.

  Tom leaned forward. “My nose has this bad itch. You know where I can get something for it?”

  The cabby glanced over his shoulder, then looked ahead.

  “You are a cop?” he said in heavily accented English. From Guyana, maybe?

  “No, I’m anything but. Just a guy from out of town with a problem nose. Can you help me out?”

  “I take you to someone. But you better be no cop.”

  Instead of turning west, Kamal headed uptown. The numbers on the cross streets progressed from double to triple digits, and the neighborhoods became rundown.

  Kamal made a quick left and pulled to the curb near a bodega. A tall black man in an oversized, thickly padded Giants Starter jacket stepped out of the doorway and sauntered over.

  ‘“Sup?”

  This looked pretty straightforward, but Tom had seen enough hapless would-be customers hauled in via police sting operations. He decided to play it cute.

  “I’m looking for my girlfriend,” Tom said.

  The guy looked surprised. “Are you now?” He leaned over and glanced toward the front seat. “You know this one, Kamal?” His accent matched the driver’s.

  “Just met him.”

  The guy looked at Tom. “Girlfriend, yes? What her name? Angel, maybe? Or Roxanne, huh?”

  The guy was playing along and seemed to be enjoying it.

  “No, Snow White. She’s a bit of a flake.”

  He nodded and smiled. A missing front tooth made him look like Leon Spinks. “I see her around. How much you pay to find her?”

  Tom had the money ready. He’d considered using some of his bogus twenties but decided this might not be a guy you wanted mad at you.

  He handed fifty bucks out the window.

  “That should do for now.”

  With a single quick move the guy removed the money from Tom’s hand and shoved it into a pocket.

  “What else you want? We got alphabet soup—A, X, MJ from TJ—and we got baseball, purple rain, roofies, and Georgia Home Boy.”

  Tom smiled and said, “Thanks, but I’m very faithful to my girlfriend.”

  The guy straightened. “Okay. Leave your window open and wait here.”

  He said something into a walkie-talkie as he sauntered back to the bodega. A few minutes later a kid who couldn’t have been more than ten ran up to the cab, tossed a little envelope through the window, and kept on moving.

  Without being asked, Kamal put the cab in gear and took off.

  Tom found the packet on the floor, picked it up, and stared at it. He’d had a coke problem for a while. When he’d realized where it was taking him he’d weaned himself off. He hadn’t partaken for almost five years now.

  But he needed a boost tonight. Needed one in a big, big way.

  * * *

  -56:33

  Gia glanced at the clock: almost eleven thirty.

  Jack had dozed off while awaiting his turn at the Compendium. She’d gone upstairs to check on Vicky, asleep in Gia’s bed, and then forced herself to peek into Vicky’s bedroom in the hope the Lilitongue had decided to move on. It hadn’t. It hung there in the air like… like nothing she’d ever seen or imagined.

  After that she moved herself and the Compendium to the kitchen so as not to disturb Jack. Her mind screamed for sleep and her eyes burned like coals, but she couldn’t stop. And she didn’t want anyone else to take over, couldn’t let go of this book until she’d read every word.

  So far the words offered no hope. They did, however, depict a world rife with wonders and horrors. People and objects and devices with strange powers and obscure purposes. If even a small fraction of what the Compendium described was true, then life on Earth, existence itself, was far stranger than she ever could have imagined.

  But nowhere, at least so far, had she found another mention of the Lilitongue of Gefreda. She was losing—

  No. She wouldn’t give up hope.

  She turned the page and found a heading: Remedies.

  Probably just a lot of folk medicine—herbal potions and poultices and the like. A long section. Her impulse was to skip over it, but she’d promised herself to read every word, so that was what she’d do.

  As she skimmed through the pages she found lotions to cure everything from scales to boils, elixirs to heal everything from diarrhea to blindness, solutions to—

  The words Stealing the Stain leaped out at her.

  Gia closed her eyes before reading further. Please, God, let it be about the Lilitongue stain—not wine stains or bloodstains, but the Stain.

  Then she did a quick scan of the text and gasped when she spotted “Lilitongue of Gefreda.” This was it!

  But hadn’t the Lilitongue text—she knew it by heart now—said that once acquired, the Stain may not be shed—not by cleansing, not even by flaying the Stained skin. Nor may it be given to another.

  Then how…?

  Never mind the contradiction. Learn what it says.

  She found a list of ingredients—things like sodium bicarbonate and tartaric acid and juice of the seeds of the vanilla planifolia orchid, among others. Where on earth was she going to find—?

  Wait. She had some of them right here in the kitchen.

  She hopped up and darted to the cabinet with her baking ingredients. She spun the lazy Susan until she spotted her box of baking soda. The label said “sodium bicarbonate.”

  Yes! Such a common item… but maybe not so common back when the Compendium was written.

  Another spin and she found her bottle of vanilla extract.

  She hurried to the computer and Googled vanilla extract:

  Vanilla Beans are the long, greenish-yellow seedpods of the tropical orchid plant, Vanilla planifolia. Before the plant flowers, the pods are picked, unripe, and cured until they’re dark brown. The process takes up to six months. To obtain Pure Vanilla Extract, cured Vanilla Beans are steeped in alcohol. According to law, Pure Vanilla Extract must be 35 percent alcohol by volume.

  Alcohol… the recipe or whatever it was didn’t mention alcohol. But if she boiled that off she’d be left with juice of the seeds of the vanilla planifolia orchid—probably pretty hard to come by in the old days.

  Going back and forth between the Compendium and the lazy Susan Gia discovered she had five of the eleven ingredients. But she didn’t have a clue as to where to find crushed monkshood petals and dried red fly agaric. From what she learned through the Internet, she figured she could probably find the missing ingredients in some of the more esoteric ethnic herb shops downtown. S
he knew of one in Chinatown that sold the weirdest things.

  She read further. The instructions were easy: Mix up the solution, wet your hand with it, then lay your hand palm down on the Stain and wish—yes, wish for it to leave the Stained.