A Matter of Time

by Brian Harmon

  He pulled away from her, barely repressing the urge to shove her away. “I don’t like secrets.”

  “I don’t like boys who play hard-to-get,” she replied, her expression hardening. “Accept my job offer. Share your power with me. Then we can tell secrets.”

  “You said you’d show me what you do first. I haven’t seen anything yet.”

  She was still clutching his shirt, still standing toe-to-toe with him, but now she was meeting his gaze.

  He stared right back at her. This was no time to have a lousy poker face. If she saw through him now, he was certain she’d kill him.

  Finally, her red lips curled into another smile. “Fine.” She let go of his shirt and turned and walked back toward the stage.

  Eric let go of the breath he’d been holding. Wanting to look anywhere except at her bare ass, he turned and examined the speakers that were set up around the room. That static noise was starting to bug him. And that weird, warbling sound was even worse.

  “It has everything to do with exotic energies,” she told him. She took the white bucket off the stage and held it by its handle as she turned to face him again. It didn’t appear very heavy. She swung it gently and effortlessly at her side. “Magic is ideal, but it’s rare. And it’s complicated. Spiritual energy can be channeled into doorways, too, but it’s not very precise. And there can be…complications.” She walked up to the bucket of chum and peered into it, wrinkling her nose at the contents. “The best way,” she went on, “is to mix it up.”

  She pressed the toe of her shoe against the side of the bucket and pushed it over, spilling the foul contents across the open floor.

  Eric wasn’t close enough to be splashed by it, but he took a few steps backward anyway.

  There were more than just fish parts in that bucket, he saw. Matted chunks of something furry spilled out with the rest of it. Rat parts, he was pretty sure, but he didn’t care to look any closer to be sure.

  The smell was beyond foul.

  “I know a few things about exotic energy,” she explained as she began circling around the mess she’d just made. She didn’t seem concerned about the stench. “I’ve been all over the world, investigated a lot of strange things.” She winked at him as she added, “Seduced a lot of powerful people.”

  Was that supposed to turn him on?

  “I already knew how to open a door to another world before I came to this town. But what I was missing was a true understanding of the worlds behind those doors.” She stopped right in front of him, holding the white bucket behind her back with both hands and leaning forward a little in a disturbingly girlish pose. “I needed a good, long look at what was on the other side.”

  “And you found that in the basement of Rossetter,” guessed Eric.

  She smiled again. “That freaky zoo they’d collected was the key. By studying the creatures, as well as the nature of the portals they were using to bring them into this world, I finally understood how to open the door exactly where I wanted it.”

  “So how do you do it?” he pressed.

  She leaned in to whisper again, but he pulled away from her. He didn’t want his ear licked again. It tickled. And not in a good way.

  She pouted at him, but she didn’t pull away. She leaned in again, this time not so close, and whispered, “I don’t.”

  Eric was confused by this. He tried to grasp how that made any sense.

  She took advantage of his confusion and kissed him again.

  He stiffened, startled.

  What the hell?

  It wasn’t a long kiss. She didn’t force her tongue into his mouth again. Instead, she bit his lower lip and tugged on it as she pulled away.

  Ow…

  “The secret is to open it from the other side.”

  Eric resisted the urge to wipe his mouth and focused instead on what she’d just said. “Wait… How do you…?”

  Her smile widened a little. “You don’t,” she said again.

  “Huh?”

  She straightened up, thrusting her impressive chest forward, and gestured around the room with one hand. “White noise generators and electric fields help to channel spiritual energy,” she explained, referring to the speakers and the overhead wires. Then she gestured at the warbling speaker at the back of the stage. “And certain audio cues can increase psychic impulses in our brains, in turn increasing the ambient psychic energy in the room.” Finally, she turned and looked at the gory spill on the floor. “And certain types of magical energy can be gathered using…crude methods. You don’t really want to know too much about it.”

  Eric glanced over at the oozing walls. He had no doubt she was right about that.

  “And if you really know what you’re doing,” she said, her eyes shining with perverse excitement. “You can access even older forms of energy.” She watched his puzzled expression for a moment, then turned and lifted the bucket she’d been holding behind her back. In one, quick motion, she upended it and dumped its contents into the festering puddle of sludge.

  It was mostly black ash, but some of it was still recognizable for what it was.

  Eric felt his stomach roll over. It shouldn’t have surprised him. It made perfect sense, really. Why not? After all the other horrors this woman had committed, why shouldn’t he have expected this? And yet the idea had never once crossed his mind.

  Maybe that was a good sign. Maybe it was proof that he hadn’t been twisted beyond salvation by all the horrors he’d witnesses.

  He stared at the charred and crumbling skeleton lying before him in the festering puddle of gore, willing his expression to remain neutral.

  So this was what became of Pink Shirt.

  This was what his obsession with the secrets of the nameless organization had brought him.

  Mistress Janet put down the bucket and then turned to face him again. She was still smiling. “All of that,” she went on as if everything were perfectly normal, “in addition to the energy of this incredible building…” The energy of the unseen, that Isabelle had never fully been able to identify or explain. “Plus a few other things you can’t really see from here.” Something to be thankful for, he supposed.

  Then she stood there, smiling and looking incredibly proud of herself.

  “Then what?” asked Eric.

  “Then nothing. All the pieces are in place. That much exotic energy will naturally bleed through the borders between this world and others.”

  Eric nodded. “Okay…so what part of this process do you have to be naked for?”

  She looked at him as though that were the silliest thing she’d ever heard. “I don’t have to be naked.”

  He cocked his head, confused.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “You’re adorable, Funnyman. Really.” Again, she took hold of his shirt. “You and I are going to merge when this is done, remember? I’m not waiting any longer. I can’t wait any longer.”

  “So what do you do next?” he asked, quickly changing the subject.

  “Nothing. It’ll come to us.”

  “It?”

  “What’s on the other side of the door,” she explained.

  Now Eric began to understand. “It won’t work,” he told her.

  She was moving in to kiss him again, but now she leaned back, surprised. “What?”

  “The thing you’re summoning. It’ll kill us. We’ll be incinerated.”

  She let go of him and took a step back. “What’re you talking about?”

  “You can’t control the jinn. They’re too powerful.”

  She stared at him for a moment, puzzled. Then she laughed. It wasn’t anything as subtle as a chuckle. It was loud and hearty, as if he’d just told the funniest joke in the world.

  It caught him completely off guard. He actually felt himself blushing a little. “What’s so funny?”

  “You think this is about the jinni?”

  Eric stared at her for a moment. Then he gave a snort of a laugh. “No.” He glanced around, embarrassed. “Of cours
e it’s not about the jinn. Come on. That would…be… Uh… Stupid?”

  She smiled, amused. “I like you, Funnyman. You’re cute.” She crowded closer to him again. “And you’re a lot smarter than you pretend to be.”

  He wasn’t sure what to say to that. He didn’t feel very smart right now.

  “The jinn are gods in their own right. If they wanted to come to this world, they wouldn’t need me to arrange it for them. We’re fishing for something far more ancient. Something…primal. Something from the very beginning of time and the farthest reaches of existence.” She tapped her chin again and gazed upward, as if in wonder. “I like the word ‘titan’. Let’s call it that.”

  “How do you know it won’t kill us just like a jinn would?”

  “Because,” she replied, her eyes shining with that perverse delight again, “as soon as the titan enters this world, it’s going to head straight for Rossetter.”

  Eric cocked his head, confused again. “Why Rossetter?”

  “Because that’s where I set the first lure. You didn’t think I was just hanging out there all this time, did you?” That explained why she killed the scientists who were working there. She must’ve found a way to use the monsters in the basement to bait whatever emerged from the unseen schoolhouse. “Unlike the jinn, the titans are physically bonded to their home dimension. As it moves, it’ll create a tear in the universe that will plunge this town into its own, personal hell.”

  Eric was horrified. He didn’t even know how to respond. What the hell kind of sick plan was that? What did it even accomplish, besides pointless death and destruction?

  “Once I control the titan, I’ll be able to take control of the company. No one will be able to stop us.” She grabbed his shirt again and pulled him closer. “It’s like I told you. We’ll be gods.”

  Eric opened his mouth to say something, but suddenly the white noise from the speakers changed. An eerie moan began to creep through it, beginning on his left and moving around the room.

  Mistress Janet’s eyes brightened. “It’s coming,” she told him.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  This was bad.

  Creek Bend was about to sink into its own private hell, courtesy of a titanic monster from the farthest reaches of space and time. Mistress Janet was talking about ripping open a fissure between this world and whatever distant hell that thing called home.

  Was this sort of thing happening all the time? Were there people like him all over the world, stopping maniacs like her from destroying the world? It couldn’t just be him, right?

  He couldn’t think about that right now. Not just because there wasn’t time. He physically couldn’t. That awful, circling moan was making it hard to think about anything.

  And yet, Mistress Janet didn’t seem bothered by it. Precisely the opposite. She seemed excited by it. “It’s time!” she told him, her eyes filled with a deranged, childlike glee. “It’s coming!”

  “Shouldn’t we get out of here?” he asked. The eerie moaning noise swelled. It was growing into something closer to a howl. It was far worse than the warbling from the speaker over the stage. It felt like it was inside his skull, making him feel physically ill.

  “No!” she squealed. “It has to be now!”

  “What?”

  “We have to do it right now! Give me your power! I want to be doing it when it arrives!” She thrust herself at him, kissing him again.

  What the hell was wrong with this woman?

  He felt her hands groping at his khakis and tried to pull away from her. She responded by hooking one lean leg behind his foot and shoving him to the floor.

  “Give it to me!” she panted as she dropped to her knees and yanked on his pants. “We’ll blossom into gods together! And we’ll do it writhing in passion, while we watch the titan rising from the depths!”

  Wow. Apparently she had an obsession with godliness and god-awful paranormal romance fan fiction. It wasn’t enough that she’d summoned a monster from beyond hell to destroy the city? She wanted to be fornicating when it happened? At ground zero? At the very least, this crumbling, burned out shell of a schoolhouse was going to collapse on top of them. This was a whole new level of unsafe sex.

  She was stronger than she looked. And her hands seemed to be everywhere at once. He couldn’t seem to get free of her.

  Suddenly, she gave up on his pants and crawled on top of him. The next thing Eric knew, she was straddling him, her naked hips pressing down on him, grinding back and forth. She pinned his arms to the floor and stared down at him. She was breathing hard, panting, her ample breasts heaving as they hovered over him. Her eyes were wide. A string of spittle dangled from her lower lip. Her lipstick was smeared across one cheek. She looked wild. Crazed.

  “Give it to me!” she hissed. “I need it!”

  “I’m married,” he told her.

  “I don’t care!” she panted.

  “I do.”

  Her lips parted in a snarl. “Give it to me now!”

  “Not going to happen!” he shouted. “Get off me!”

  She changed then. The wild lust vanished from her eyes, leaving only an insane fury. She let out a piercing scream, then let go of his arms and promptly sank her manicured nails into his face, clawing at his eyes.

  Crying out in pain, he grabbed her hands and pried them off. “Crazy fucking bitch!” he grunted.

  “It’s mine!” she screamed. Her voice was shrill, insane. “Give it to me!”

  It took all his strength just to keep those deadly nails out of his face. It was like grappling with that wendigo again. He wasn’t sure which monster was more vile.

  “It belongs to me!” she shrieked. “I deserve it!”

  He watched those nails draw closer to his eyes. Should she be this strong? She was clearly in better shape than he was, but still…

  “Give it to me!”

  “Give it to yourself!” he grunted.

  She let out another furious shriek. “You can’t keep it from me!” she screamed. “I’ll take it off your bloody corpse if I have to!”

  A shot rang out.

  Mistress Janet arched her back and froze. The crazed fury was gone from her features in an instant. She stared down at him, puzzled.

  A thick trail of blood slowly painted its way down the curve of one breast.

  Her lips quivered for a moment. “But… We were going to be gods…”

  Slowly, she wilted. She kissed him one last time on the lip. Then she laid her head against his shoulder and died.

  Eric didn’t particularly find the moment romantic or tragic. He shoved her aside, rolling her lifeless body off of him. He then scrambled to his feet and backed away from her, wiping away the foul feel of her mouth from his lips and the blood from his scratched face.

  “I’m sure you had that completely under control,” said Steampunk Monk as he put his gun away. He was standing only a few steps away, wearing his looking glass shard spectacles.

  “Completely,” said Eric. It was suddenly silent in the room. During his struggle with Mistress Janet, he must’ve come in and disconnected the speakers. “How long have you been here?”

  “The whole time,” he replied. He pulled a cloth sack out of one of his many pockets and began tossing handfuls of what looked like road salt onto the spilled chum. “I’ve been keeping a close eye on that woman. And cleaning up after her, too.” He nodded down at the sack. “Salt, lime and quartz. Plus a few more complicated ingredients. Disrupts certain exotic energies, including the ones that let wendigoes pass through.”

  “So no more monsters wandering around in the high school?”

  “Or the old rec center. Or the asylum. I’ve taken care of it all. It’s over.”

  Eric wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but he still didn’t trust this man. He was an agent, after all.

  He turned away and continued scattering his salt mixture over the spilled chum. “She took quite an interest in you.”

  That seemed like an understatem
ent. “She was delusional. Kept saying I had some kind of power inside me. Thought she could take it from me by having sex with me. She was dangerously crazy.”

  He nodded. “Delusional, crazy and dangerous,” he agreed, “but not wrong.”

  Eric had been keeping one eye on Mistress Janet, half expecting her to get up again and continue her single-minded mission of getting into his pants. But at this he turned and gave him his full attention. “What do you mean?”

  “She was a lot of things, but she was never wrong when she sensed power.” He cocked his head to one side and added, “Curiously, though, she could sometimes be blind to certain kinds of power. Like with Mr. Tinnerly there.”

  Eric looked over to see Jay walking toward them. He appeared to be fine. Whatever he’d been through with Steampunk Monk clearly hadn’t included nearly having his eyes scratched out. Apparently, he’d been recruited to help with the cleaning process. He was carrying an almost empty sack of the salt mixture.

  “She didn’t sense any power in him at all,” explained Steampunk. “She took one look at him and immediately decided to kill him. But we both know he’s an extraordinary man.”

  Indeed he was.

  Jay didn’t seem to be listening to them. He walked up to Mistress Janet and stood over her, staring down at her. Eric couldn’t begin to imagine how many emotions must be flowing through him right now. Three years of chasing this woman across the country. And now it was over. Was he relieved? Did he feel justified?

  “But if she did sense something in you,” continued Steampunk Monk. “Then you can be sure it’s there. And given how desperate she was to have it for herself, I’d say it must be substantial.”

  Eric looked down at the woman. He never would’ve given into her. But he couldn’t help but wonder if she meant it when she said she’d share it all with him. If he’d been someone else, if he’d been like her, would she have kept her promise? Or would she have only taken the power for herself and murdered him? He thought it was probably the latter. But he liked to think that she meant it. Somehow, it made her seem a little more human to think that she really wanted someone to stay at her side, even when she became a god.