by Alex Gordon
In a few cases, yes, the right plants and herbs mattered. Elder, for example. To a human, it smelled like cat piss. To a demon, it smelled much worse. But even so, it was a speed bump only, a warning to the entity that something even worse awaited if it kept pushing. And that “worse” was the will of the practitioner. The power she possessed to bend the space between this world and the next to her will, and the demon along with it.
Dark space. Lauren’s name for it. Like dark energy, you couldn’t see it, but its properties affected everything else. I have an affinity for dark space. That was her explanation for her ability to see and talk with Connie when no one else in Gideon could, for how she could pass back and forth with relative ease between this world and the next when for so many others, it had proved a one-way trip.
She tucked her itinerary back into its burgundy leather portfolio and set it to one side. Then she sat still, hands spread before her on the table, and closed her eyes. The ever-present voices, now so much a part of her that they didn’t register unless she stopped and listened, chattered merrily in her ear. Sometimes she wondered if maybe they weren’t inside her head after all, but outside, that the reason she could hear them was that they were part of the space between, too. A case of hypersensitive hearing instead of a glitch in her head. Maybe I’m just an eavesdropper. The thought made the prattle easier to deal with.
Lauren imagined the individual voices as threads, brass and silver and copper tarnished black and green, the gaps between the words like the space between her world and theirs. In between the words, there was silence, and she reached for that, shrank herself to a pinpoint so she could burrow into it. As she did, the voices receded, dopplering to a distant whine and then, finally, to nothing.
She opened her eyes and looked around her dining room, the living room beyond. The air shimmered in places, opalescent waves separated by clear air. She grabbed her handbag and the car keys, and entered the nearest swirl. When it ended, she stepped into open air, and then into the next stream—as she did, the voices rose, then died again.
Outside, the situation wasn’t as clear-cut. Other people, birds and dogs and vehicles speeding through the parking lot, all combined to disturb the streams so that they thinned, dissipated, vanished. She managed to insert herself into the scraps, zigzagging down the sidewalk like a child playing hopscotch until she stood next to her rental car. The air still eddied around her, and she wondered what a passerby would see if they looked at her at that moment.
“Lauren, is that you?”
Lauren looked around and spotted one of her neighbors hurrying toward her. Elena, a nurse at one of the local clinics.
“My God—it’s been ages. Are you—” Elena looked directly at her for a few moments. Then she closed her eyes, shook her head, mumbled something under her breath. “There’s nobody—I could’ve sworn I saw—” She turned and headed back to an Explorer parked nearby. Stopped, and looked back once more toward the place where Lauren stood, puzzlement flashing across her face. Then she got into her vehicle and drove off.
Lauren remained beside her car, and watched Elena leave. Eventually, she smiled.
LAUREN’S FORAY IN invisibility proved brief. She needed to reset herself firmly in this reality in order to drive—the few times a shred of darkness passed through the cabin, the car slowed, as though it no longer felt her foot on the gas. The kiosk in the parking garage balked a few times and spit out the cash she tried to insert, unable to sense her touch on the keypad.
Once she walked out onto the street, city noise washed everything magical away and the voices streamed back. Cities, it seemed, weren’t the best places to attempt to vanish into the spaces between. Too many people and buildings, too much machinery and activity, disrupted the dark space. Lauren imagined it blending with her reality, the diluted remnants altering it just enough so that something as common as a brick could look strange and out of place, or making it so that a face you had never seen before looked familiar. A touch of weirdness, just enough to remind someone sensitive that the world wasn’t always as it seemed.
That was why so many thin places turned up in woods, or sparsely populated areas like Gideon. Lauren imagined the Carmody compound, a mountain hideaway surrounded by miles of wilderness. It’s going to be odd. Just how odd, she wouldn’t know until she got there.
Her wardrobe needed updating, so she spent some time shopping for clothing suitable for a warm weather business retreat. Then she found a quiet table at one of her favorite sandwich places, dug out her phone, and placed a long-delayed call.
“Hello?” Virginia sounded harried, as though she’d been interrupted.
Lauren figured in the two-hour time difference. Ah. She had phoned just as the woman prepared for her late morning horseback ride. “You were headed out to the barn—I can call back.”
“Bert can wait.” The sound of squeaking springs as Virginia settled into her old office chair. “I wondered when you’d call.”
Lauren gave her a rundown of the encounter with Kaster and the upcoming trip to the Carmody compound. Listened to the sound of papers rustling as Virginia straightened her desk.
“Are you sure you should go?”
“No, but I’m going anyway. Have you heard Kaster’s name before?”
“No. Should I have?”
“I’m wondering if he’s involved with the Council.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because he knew I didn’t have a job anymore, and I figured that someone on the Council might have told him.”
Silence for a few long moments. When Virginia finally spoke, it was in the slow, deliberate tone she used when she struggled to keep the sharpness in check. “They didn’t hear it from me, if that’s what you’re not asking.” Then came a snort. “That’s the sort of thing they’re good at. Finding out those bits of personal business that don’t matter. The Catemans kept them off-balance for almost two hundred years, telling them everything they wanted to hear. They don’t like being upset. They like order. And they like money—is this Carmody fellow rich?”
“Oh, yes.”
“It figures.”
“You don’t trust them.”
“It’s not that. It’s because the things we have to do, the guarding, the vigilance—they’ve gotten away from that. I used to speak to one of them on the phone, and hang up wondering whether they had ever set a ward or read the sky.”
“I’ll remember that, in case any of them are there. But I have to go. Connie told me that I’ve been called and I need to see it through to the end.”
“Fat lot of good that ever did her.” Virginia sighed. “You will be careful?”
“As careful as I have to be.” Lauren looked out at the street scene, the so-familiar Seattle traffic. “Can you . . . protect someone you don’t know? From a distance?”
“It’s not easy, but I can try.”
“I have a friend. Her name’s Katie Westbrook. She’s pregnant. I’ve warded her house and car and some of her possessions, but I just want to make sure. I have photos in my room, on the dresser, if those would help. She’s the one with long red hair. Her husband is the one with black hair and wire-rimmed glasses. His name is Paul.”
“Yes—the photos would give me something to focus on. I can ask Zeke to help boost the signal if I have to. But they’ll be fine, and so will you. Rocky says you have to give him a chance to win back all the money you took off him last week.”
Lauren managed a smile. “Tell him to save his nickels, because I’m coming back for them.”
“I will.” Virginia cleared her throat. “Lady keep you.”
The blessing caught Lauren off guard, hit her harder than she would have expected. She blinked as tears welled and her eyes stung. “Thanks.” She disconnected, then sat back and stared at nothing for so long that her server came to her table and asked if she was all right.
“I’m fine.” Everything was fine. “It’s going to be okay,” she continued under her breath, the sandwich
shop’s background music just loud enough to cancel out the babel in her head.
FOR THE FIRST time since Lauren’s arrival in Seattle, the restlessness that had dogged her in Gideon returned. She drove through Downtown for a while, then headed east through Capitol Hill and Broadmoor before finally winding up in Madison Park, where she cruised along the tree-lined streets until she came to a formidable wrought-iron gate.
Abernathy College had been founded in the early 1900s by the same family that owned Lauren’s former employer. It was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it liberal arts institution, a few spacious converted homes surrounding a main building tastefully rendered in old red brick and stone, all hidden behind towering stands of oak and maple. Lauren had never met anyone who graduated from there; they were the sort who journeyed to Europe or Asia for their advanced degrees before vanishing into university libraries, museums, or positions curating private collections. She only knew of the place because of her father. He had made his living repairing old furniture, and had taken night classes there in design and restoration. Every so often she had met him after class and driven him home, on the days her mother used their car.
She drove through the gate and parked in a small lot near the library. No one questioned her when she entered the building and wended her way past the front desk and through the stacks to the computer lab. There she checked the kiosks for the next available terminal and added her name to the waiting list.
So quiet, this place. Like a forest, which in a way, it still was. She killed time paging through books and edging in and out of the dark space that revealed itself in the afternoon light that streamed through the windows. Her voices griped in complaint when she did so, and she wondered why. Did they lose track of her? Did it hurt them?
Finally, her turn came. Because there was a waiting list, she had only an hour to accomplish her task. She settled into a kiosk, signed in with the guest password that someone had helpfully taped to the desktop monitor, and set to work.
Andrew Carmody. She plugged his name into the search engine, then scrolled through the results. The official website of the Carmody Foundation, the philanthropic organization started by his father, Steven. Gossip sites, years-old stories about the disappearance of Andrew’s wife and the part, if any, that he played in it, interspersed with more recent tales of his daughter’s brushes with rehab, the law, and Portland-area hospitals. The man himself was forty or so, a graduate of Stanford Business School, the shaggy-haired idol of men like her former bosses. One photograph in particular seemed to define Carmody, a shot taken at an awards banquet. There he stood, amid older men in staid business suits, dressed in jeans and an oxford shirt with half-rolled sleeves, sporting a three-day growth of stubble and a surfer dude grin. The PacNorWest casual look of a man who had no one left to impress and nothing to prove.
Except . . . Lauren clicked another link.
Nyssa Carmody. Photographs of Andrew’s daughter revealed a colt of a young woman, crop-haired and taller than most men, her mother’s model angularity combined with her father’s sandy-haired fairness. Her beauty shone regardless of the circumstances, whether she had just been pulled from a wrecked car or caught exiting an after-hours club on the arm of a man three times her age. If the columnist felt charitable, they blamed her problems on the loss of her mother, the continued rumors of her father’s involvement in the disappearance. If they didn’t, they called her every printable variation on a spoiled little bitch theme, yet another clickbait cautionary tale.
She’s only fifteen. Lauren thought back to her own teen years, the comparative calm of cigarettes, the odd toke or raid on the liquor cabinet, and backseat tussles with boys as inept and clueless as she was. A different world. A different universe.
The next link. Fernanda Carmody. Lauren studied her face, its flawless lines and curves frozen in time. It had stared out from the covers of numerous magazines until she married and vanished into motherhood. Stuck in Portland before it was Portland. A woman born in Rio de Janeiro, who had called New York, Paris, and Milan home.
Lauren found herself feeling sorry for Fernanda. Mired in a world she didn’t expect. Surrounded by strangers. I know how that goes. She contemplated one photo in particular, a rare unretouched image of Fernanda without makeup, the goddess come down to earth. Frizzy hair, a crooked smile, and a tiny scar on the tip of her chin. The photo of a human being, a missing wife and mother.
Lauren closed the image with a sense of relief, and moved on. Eugene Kaster. A family business, apparently, the care and counsel of Carmody men. Kaster’s father, Frederick, had served both grandfather Elias and father Steven, but had passed away before Andrew took over the company reins. Stockier, balding, a gnome of a man, the sharp bones that made the son appear so distinctive giving the father the look of a grinning skull.
Lauren continued to click links and skim articles, unsure of what exactly she searched for. Something that explains all this. Some indication of why Carmody wanted to adjourn to the wilderness and surround himself with witches. Maybe he’s searching for his wife. Assuming he hadn’t killed her in the first place.
Lauren stared at the screen, mind churning. She had never formed an interest in gossip, the reams of idle speculation about famous people she would never meet. But now I’m going to meet one of those people. She squelched further thought by opening another link, and squinted as red calligraphy filled the display.
The Curse of Carmody Peak!!
Lauren groaned. It was the sort of website she usually blew past on reflex, white text against a black background, throbbing headlines and illegible captions. The first stories were a mishmash of legends from northwest Oregon, everything from haunted movie houses to the “Bandage Man” of Cannon Beach and sightings of Sasquatch-like creatures. Only one story mentioned Carmody Peak specifically, a series of recollections from campers and loggers who spent the night on the mountain. Talk of weird sounds and sightings. Noises in the undergrowth, as though they were being followed. A sensation of being watched.
Because weird sounds in the woods at night are so unusual. Lauren moved on to the meat of the article. Several Fernanda Carmody photos, along with a rehash of the details of her disappearance liberally peppered with exclamation marks.
She paged down. When attempts to alter the display failed, she tweaked the brightness and squinted when necessary in order to read the vibrating verbiage.
Carmody employee missing!
An article cut and pasted from a small-town Oregon newspaper, date June 1978. Dr. Elliott Rickard, forty-six, a scientist in the basic research division, vanished during an employee picnic at the Carmody compound outside Portland.
Lauren studied the photograph that accompanied the story. A half-dozen men crowded together, including Steven Carmody and Frederick Kaster, who between them held a pair of the overlarge scissors used in ceremonial ribbon-cuttings. Next to them stood Rickard grinning broadly, hands shoved in the pockets of his lab coat.
Finally, at the bottom of the page, a flashing banner.
Another victim?!?
A short article from the Portland paper followed. David Garvin, age thirty-four, a Portland photographer, had told friends he would be spending a few days hiking the Northern Coast Range. His truck was found in a clearing near the base of the peak, but Garvin had yet to turn up.
That was two weeks ago. A photo showed Garvin standing beside his truck, a camera hung around his neck. He was broad-shouldered, stocky, and dark-haired, his face obscured by a beard.
Lauren flinched as a soft ping sounded from the desktop, an indication that her time was almost up. She printed out the section of the website concerning Rickard and Garvin. Just as the last page emerged, someone knocked on the kiosk door. She had just enough time to shove the pages in her bag and clear her search history.
She hurried out of the library through a side exit and down a corridor lined with offices. She walked in one direction, rounded one corner, then another and another, and found herself in the same place
at which she started. A few of the doors had windows—she spotted movement in one, the dark shape of someone looking out at her, and waved. “Excuse me. I just left the library, and I’m all turned around.” She stepped closer and found herself staring at her own reflection.
Great. Lauren hurried down the corridor in the reverse direction, and again wound up in the same place. Tried the library door and found it locked. Knocked, softly at first, then harder, in an effort to draw someone’s attention. But no one answered.
Overhead, the fluorescent lights stuttered and hummed, then dimmed, casting the corridor in shadow. She heard one of the doors open, and turned just as a woman emerged from an office at the far end. “Excuse me? Could you tell me if there’s another way out of here?” She pointed to the library door. “It locked behind me and I can’t find another exit.”
The woman said nothing. She watched Lauren for a few moments, then started toward her.
“I don’t want to be any trouble. I just need an exit.” Lauren backed away as the woman drew closer. She came to end of the corridor, looked both ways, and found the other hallways had vanished, replaced by walls. She was trapped.
As the woman continued to approach, the overhead lights winked out one by one.
Lauren stilled. Even her voices had gone quiet.
She traced the Eye of the Lady in the air.
The woman quickened her step. Just as she came within arm’s reach, another office door opened and a man stuck out his head. “Is something wrong?” As soon as he spoke, the lights blazed. The voices blared in Lauren’s head.
The woman vanished.
“I’m sorry.” Lauren looked in both directions, found that the hallways had returned to normal. “I left the library by a side door and wound up here.”
The man stared at her. “The library’s on the other side of campus.” He pointed to the door through which Lauren had entered. “Go out that way, follow the path, it’s the first building on your right.”
Lauren walked to the door that a short time before had been locked. She could open it now. Of course she could. “Thanks. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”
