Threshold

by King, R. L.

  “It’s possible,” Prudence said. “We had no idea what might be causing it. The first few times it happened we thought the Dark-tainted were coming for us, but they never did, so we just wrote it off to Joshua being so much more sensitive to it than the rest of us.”

  “And how often does this happen?” Jason asked. “Is it a regular thing?”

  Joshua shook his head. “Unfortunately not. The last time it happened was a couple of months ago. The time before, only a month before that. But the time before that, it was nearly six months back.”

  “That one was worse than usual,” Prudence said.

  “So possibly more of them might have come through,” Stone said, thinking. “That lends credence to my idea that it builds up power and then has to recharge periodically. If it let more of them through—or possibly one or more of the powerful ones—it might need more time to sort itself out after.”

  “But none of this helps us,” Verity reminded them. “It sounds like we were right about it winking in and out, but if it’s only here every once in a while and it’s not on a schedule, how will we be able to get to it when it comes back? Especially if it doesn’t stay long.”

  Stone’s thousand-yard stare was fixed on the dog at Gary’s feet, which now lay on its back with its paws in the air. “Hmm...” he said at last. “Perhaps if we knew where it was when it showed up, we might be able to—induce it to make an appearance.”

  “Induce it?” Jason asked. “How?”

  “No idea. I’ll have to work on that, I think.” He switched back on and focused on Joshua. “You said that you might be able to tell us where the rift is, though.”

  It was Sykes who nodded. “We might. See, there’s this place—it’s a little town up in the hills about ten miles from here. It’s pretty much a ghost town, and it’s got a reputation for bein’ haunted, and dangerous. It’s dangerous, all right, but it’s not haunted.”

  “No?” Verity asked with interest.

  Sykes shook his head. “Nope. Whole place is full of the Dark-tainted. People go up there to investigate, and when they come back down they claim there’s nothing going on up there. Everything’s fine, they say.”

  “But it’s not fine,” Prudence said. “We can’t prove it, of course, but we’re pretty sure everybody up there in Decker’s Gap is possessed by the Darkness, and if anybody else goes up there they grab them, too. They come back down, and seem fine on the surface, but we know better. Mostly people just don’t go up there anymore. It’s too far off the beaten track for tourists, and there isn’t really anything for them to do anyway.”

  “What’s up there?” Jason shifted around in his chair; his knee was starting to act up again and he was thinking longingly of the bottle of aspirin in his overnight bag.

  Sykes shrugged. “Not much. A few houses, some closed businesses, an old cave that’s been closed to the public for years—something about bats and rabies—the remains of an old summer camp, not much else. Every once in a while somebody from up there will come down to pick up supplies. We don’t know where they get their money, and we stay away from them whenever we hear tell they’re around. Mostly they go to a couple of little towns closer to where they are, though.”

  “Hmm...” Stone said, pondering. “Interesting, indeed. May I use your phone?”

  “Sure,” said Prudence. She pointed. “Through that door over there.”

  When Stone had left, Gary gave the door through which he’d left a sour look. “I’m not sure I trust him,” he said, apparently not caring that Jason and Verity were still sitting at the table.

  “Why not?” Jason asked, annoyed. “Do you trust us?”

  Gary shrugged. “I haven’t heard enough out of either of you to know one way or the other. But anyway, you two are just kids. I’ve seen his type before. Full of himself. Thinks he knows everything. Hell, I used to be his type. I’m old enough and cynical enough now to know that most people who think they have all the answers are the ones you want to stay away from if you know what’s good for you.”

  “He knows what he’s doing,” Verity said, defensive. “He’s proven that to us more times than we can count. And he really does want to get rid of the Evil. We all do. We’ve all lost friends to them, and we’re tired of looking over our shoulders all the time to see if they’re after us.”

  “We’ll see,” Gary said. “I hope you’re right.”

  Stone returned about ten minutes later, a preoccupied expression on his face. “What was that about?” Jason asked him.

  “Called the rental agency to tell them about the car,” he said. “Told them I’d have it towed into town and they could pick it up at their leisure.”

  “You had to do that right now?” Verity asked.

  “I also called Nancy Weldon,” he said.

  That got her attention, and Jason’s too. “What’d she say?”

  Stone took a deep breath. “I asked her if she had any idea where Daphne’s friend Neil was from, and if she might know where he played when he was a child. She said Daphne mentioned it in a couple of her letters—she remembered it because she recalled being worried about a little boy being allowed to play in such a place.”

  He met Jason’s eyes, then Verity’s. “She said it was a small town called Decker’s Gap, and he used to play in a place called Gorley Cave.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The Harmony Farms residents’ stares joined Jason’s and Verity’s. “You think this—conduit is in Gorley Cave?” Prudence asked. “How can that be? How would you know that?”

  Stone shook his head. “We don’t know it for sure, but it makes sense. Do you know how large this cave is?”

  “Not too big,” Sykes said. “It was too small to really be a tourist attraction, I know that. I haven’t been up there in years, but if I remember right it was just a couple of chambers: a small one in the front and a bigger one in the back.”

  “How large is the bigger one?”

  Sykes shrugged. “Room sized, maybe. Big room. Ceiling’s about maybe eighteen-twenty feet at its highest. Some kid got bitten by a bat a few years back, and they boarded up the entrance so the bats could get in and out but the people couldn’t, and shut it down. And then after—things started happening, that’s when Decker’s Gap started getting the reputation as someplace you didn’t want to go, and that was it. I don’t even think the teenagers go up there to make out and explore anymore. For one thing, it’s too hard to get there. The road’s in bad shape even in good weather, and barely passable this time of year. You’d need a four-wheel drive vehicle and chains.”

  “How long would it take us to get up there?” Jason asked.

  “If you had the right vehicle and gear, maybe an hour,” Gary said. “And that’s if the road’s clear all the way up. If it isn’t—and if that’s the Darkness up there, it’s not likely to be—you’d have to hike. Which means you won’t be going for a while.”

  “Why not?”

  Gary gave him a can you really be that stupid? kind of look, then pointed at his leg. “You’ve been shifting that knee around all morning, and the walking stick’s a dead giveaway. You wouldn’t get a mile on that thing the way it is now. You’ll have to wait until it heals up.”

  Jason started to protest, but Stone shook his head. “No, no, that’s fine, Jason. It works out well, actually. As I said, I still need to do a fair bit of research if I’m going to have a prayer of coaxing that conduit to come out and play with us safely—let alone figuring out a way to shut it down once it does. I’ll have to call Madame Huan and ask her to send me some things. There’s no way we can go for several days anyway. You just stay off that knee as much as possible. We’ll need you in good shape.”

  He turned to the Harmony people. “Is there anywhere in town we might be able to stay? I know you said we were guests here and we’re honored that you’ve taken us in, but it would be quite rude of us
to expect you to put us up for as long as we’ll likely be needing to stay here and prepare.”

  Prudence shook her head. “You’ll stay here, Dr. Stone. No argument. If you really can stop the Darkness, you’ll be doing us an immeasurable favor. The least we can do is give you a place to stay while you get ready.”

  “That’s not all we’re gonna do,” Sykes said. “I’m coming with you.”

  “Mr. Sykes—”

  “Like the lady said, no argument. I’ll bet some of the other folks around here would want to help out, too. You just tell us when you’re ready to go, give us a day or so to get set up, and I’m guessing you’ll have quite a few of us joining up.” His expression grew serious. “I don’t think you realize what you’re getting yourself into. There’s a whole town full of those people up there. It’s a small town, sure, but are the three of you gonna take on even twenty or thirty people? You’ll need some backup. And quite a few of us are handy with guns.”

  “I thought you said you wouldn’t kill anyone,” Stone said.

  “We don’t have to kill ’em. But if it comes down to that—if that’s what it takes to get rid of the Darkness for good, it’ll be worth it. It’s so remote up there that nobody will even know what happened until the spring.” It seemed odd to hear such coldblooded words coming from the amiable Sykes, but he looked utterly serious.

  “I sure hope it doesn’t come to that,” Verity said, looking scared. “Hopefully once we evict some of the people up there, they’ll fight on our side.”

  “Okay, so it’s settled, then,” Prudence said. “Do you need anything to help you with whatever you’re doing?”

  “I need to go into town to pick up a few things,” Stone said, “and arrange to get the car towed somewhere the rental company can pick it up. I don’t think they’ll be coming right away. I suppose we ought to file some sort of police report about it, too.”

  Jason grinned. “Did you get the license number of that deer?”

  The next couple of days left Jason and Verity mostly on their own with the Harmony Farm people. Stone accompanied them into Highland, where he picked up several blank notebooks and pens and pencils from the drugstore, went the post office and rented a large post box, and then placed a lengthy call to Madame Huan. He described the items he needed, and asked her to ship them via the fastest possible method. She agreed to do so, and didn’t even ask too many questions.

  He also called Stanford and arranged to have a teaching assistant take over his classes until he returned, citing unavoidable circumstances that would almost certainly keep him away from Palo Alto until after the quarter started.

  Jason called Marta at the restaurant and told her he and Verity would be away indefinitely as well; she was understanding and wished them luck in whatever they were trying to do. All three of them picked up some warm jackets, gloves, hats, and sturdy boots from the local merchants. Their own clothes were sufficient for hanging around the Harmony compound, but inadequate for outdoor hiking in the winter chill.

  Jimmy, an affable and perpetually baked man in his late twenties, was happy to help them dig the Lincoln out of the ditch and tow it up to Harmony Farm, where they covered it with a tarp and left it parked in front of the guest cabin. Surprisingly, no one had bothered it; Jason half expected to go back and find the wheels gone and the windows covered with graffiti, but he supposed people did things differently around here. Either that, or they just hadn’t found it yet.

  Prudence and Joshua decided to let Stone work from the home of Zachary, their healer, who was currently out with several friends in a van following a band called the Electric Platypi. “He won’t mind,” they assured the mage. “He’s real mellow about everything. And he won’t be back for a while anyway.” Jason and Verity would then have the guest cottage to themselves during the day.

  Stone immediately set to work on the research he could do without the books he was waiting for from Madame Huan. “Take care with that knee,” he told Jason. “It sounds like we’re going to have quite a hike, and we’ll need you at 100%.”

  Jason listened a little: he discovered that Prudence was the resident mundane mender of cuts and scrapes, so he asked her to wrap up the knee, and borrowed an old pair of crutches from her so he didn’t have to put weight on it. “I know I gotta let it heal,” he told Verity, “but I’ll be damned if I’m just gonna sit around on my ass until whenever Al figures out what he’s trying to do.”

  On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, Jason knocked on the door to Zachary’s house. “Al? You in there?” He hadn’t seen much of Stone over the past two or three days; the mage had spent all his time sequestered away, and only turned up for occasional meals and late at night to fall into bed. He was usually up and out of the sleeping cabin before Jason or Verity were awake.

  “Come in,” came Stone’s distracted voice.

  Jason pushed open the door and peered inside. Stone sat at a large table under a window providing the cabin’s only light. The entire area around him, including parts of the floor, were covered with open books, notebooks, sheets of paper with strange notations and diagrams scribbled on them, and maps with multi-colored lines radiating out in various directions. Some of these were tacked up on the wooden walls near the table. A cardboard box half full of wadded-up papers lay on the floor near Stone’s chair. A small radio off to the far side of the table softly played something that sounded like AC/DC.

  “I—uh—guess you got your stuff from Madame Huan, huh?” he asked, pointing at the box.

  “Yesterday,” Stone said without looking up. With his disheveled hair and two days’ worth of stubble, he was starting to look like he’d fit right in among the Harmony Farm crew.

  “Are you getting anywhere with that?” Jason asked.

  “Who knows?” He sighed, looking up at last and running a hand through his spiking hair. He pointed at a notebook in front of him, one of the five from Daphne’s storage locker, and waved his pen around vaguely. “I can’t even tell how much of this I’m making proper sense of. I think I’m learning more about the nature of how these portals work—or were supposed to, anyway—but who knows if I’m right? And there isn’t even anyone I know of I can call and consult with. Even if we revealed the Evil’s existence, nearly no one knows anything about portals these days, beyond how to use them. So I’m on my own.”

  Jason pulled up a chair, carefully nudged a couple stacks of papers away to clear a space on the floor, and sat down across from Stone. “What have you figured out so far?”

  Stone’s bright blue gaze came up; he looked simultaneously manic and very tired. “You want the short, glib answer, or the long, informative, stupefyingly boring answer?”

  “Um...how about the short one? I don’t think I’ll be able to follow the boring one anyway.”

  “All right, then: short answer.” He leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. “Near as I can determine from my highly imperfect understanding of Daphne’s notes, the reason they tried to set up two portals instead of one was because they thought that if they constructed them properly, they’d support each other. Rather like how when you’re building a house of cards, you lean one against the other and they hold each other up.”

  “So that’s how they thought they could make them stick around longer?”

  “Right. Well—that, and their whole purpose with the project was to come up with a way to create gateways to places where there wasn’t already a portal. Think about it—how useful would it be to be able to use the Overworld to travel to anywhere, not just the locations of the previously existing portals?”

  “So you’re saying these two portals are connected?” Jason glanced around at the various papers and diagrams, but he couldn’t make a bit of sense out of any of them. “This one, and the one that’s near Vegas? So if we could go through the one here, we’d come out there?”

  Stone shook his head. “I don’t think they
are, and I think that’s the problem. Again, this is based on a very sketchy understanding of some pretty complicated formulae, but probably the easiest way I can see for this whole experiment to go pear-shaped was if they failed to properly connect their conduits. If I might be allowed to exceed my quota of tortured metaphors for the day, it’s rather like trying to hook up the dishwasher so it vents the dirty water into the sink, but instead you end up connecting things wrong so it ends up spewing it out through your showerhead.”

  “But—” Jason said slowly, struggling to wrap his mind around the concept, “—wouldn’t they have noticed that? I mean, if your portal ended up pointing at Outer Mongolia instead of Los Angeles, wouldn’t you see that and be able to fix it?”

  “Not necessarily. Remember, in order to construct the gateway, they’d have needed to have people at both ends, because they’d need to bring both ends into existence at roughly the same time in order to connect them. Otherwise, they’d risk having one of the portals fizzle out before the other one was ready. I’ve seen nothing to indicate that more than the four of them were involved, so that limited them. I’m guessing they probably had two of their team in Vegas and the other two here. And if the portal here is in a cave out in the middle of the great bugger-all, chances are the other end is equally remote and well hidden, since they didn’t want anyone stumbling onto what they were doing until they had it right. Unless there’ve been advances in technology I’m not aware of, that means their communications were primitive at best, or more likely nonexistent. Even if they had access to those new cellular phones I’ve been hearing about, those things aren’t completely reliable, especially inside a cave. So to an extent, I think they were working somewhat blind.”

  “Why do you figure they set them up so far apart? Wouldn’t it be safer to—I dunno—try porting from the kitchen to the bedroom, instead of halfway across the country?”

  “Who’s to say they didn’t do that first?” Stone asked. “Although one would think that if they’d shown any success—” he added, indicating the notebooks, “—they’d have documented it somewhere. Either there’s another notebook I don’t know about, or they did actually try their maiden voyage as a cross-country jaunt. Unless we find any other documentation, though, I doubt that’s something we’ll ever know, since all the principals are almost certainly dead.”