by Rick Wayne
“And this one?” Dench nodded toward the back. “Would be a lot easier if we didn’t have to drag him around with us.”
Milan glanced back and saw me looking. She turned straight and slowed a little.
“I don’t suppose I could have—” I cleared my throat. I coughed. “I don’t suppose I could have that water.”
Dench handed it back to me and I unscrewed the cap and drank just about all of it.
“Slowly,” Milan urged.
She was accelerating cleanly now. Must be on the freeway.
“Where’d you get the truck?”
“We had some luck. Someone put an old stallion out to field.”
“Ah,” I said sarcastically.
“You’re angry,” she said a moment later.
Dench turned slowly with a look of mild confusion, as if he was surprised that I might have anything to be angry about.
I didn’t answer right away. “You warned me. You said it would be dangerous.” I tried to sit up but failed.
“Easy,” she chided.
I caught her looking at me in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes suggested I looked at least as bad as I felt. I lay back and covered my eyes to block the passing lights of the freeway, which were giving me a headache.
“So, what’s this about a chair?” I asked.
“The chair isn’t important,” Milan said.
“You know, that’s what you all say about everything. Jesus, no wonder nobody believes in this shit.”
It was silent in the truck for a cool minute.
“Fine,” Milan said stiffly. “What do you want to know?”
“Well . . .” My head was still a little fuzzy. I rubbed my eyes, as if whatever was occluding my mind was trapped between them. “Just, start with the mushrooms.”
“He already told you,” Dench said.
“He said it’s like a giant toadstool ring,” I snapped. “You act like that’s supposed to mean something.”
“Mushrooms recycle dead matter into living,” Milan answered.
“I know that.”
“The ring is a doorway. Or passageway, I suppose would be better. They used to be quite common.”
“A doorway? To where?”
“Other realms. Higher dimensions. And lower.”
“So, who opened it? What for?”
“It’s not open,” Milan answered. “Not yet.”
I looked out the window. New moon. No light.
I finished the water and added the bottle to the trash on the floor.
“You need to rest,” Milan accused sternly. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
That, at least, was true. Now that I had a short nap and some water in me, my blood was flowing again, and a fresh headache hammered the back of my eyes. I shut them. I lay back. It was such an odd topic for a freeway.
“Granny said something about a book.” When no one responded, I opened my eyes. “Like a book of spells or something like that?”
“Sort of,” Dench said, stoic as always. Then he turned to Milan, as if handing the conversation over to her and absolving himself of any further reply.
“It was stolen,” Milan said. “A long time ago.”
I waited. “Stolen by who?”
“Warlocks,” Dench said.
More silence.
“Warlocks . . .” I took a deep breath and let it out slow.
I think Milan could tell I had just about had enough of all of it.
“Doctor,” she began patiently, “if you could go back in time, how would you explain quantum mechanics to someone from the seventeenth century?”
I thought for a moment.
“Without sounding crazy,” she added. “Particle-wave duality. Entanglement. Overly complex theories full of symbol-filled formulas that ultimately describe some very magical-sounding things. Action at a distance. Unknowable uncertainties. Spontaneous generation of matter.”
“Schrödinger's cat,” I added.
“Exactly. A creature both alive and dead.”
“Well . . . Technically, that’s not true.”
“But you see my point.”
“You’re saying I should keep an open mind? Is that it?”
“It’s always a good idea, but no. I’m saying it’s difficult to have a meaningful conversation without a common frame of reference. Think about what you’re asking us to do. It’s what everyone asks us to do: stop what we’re doing and give you a four- or five-sentence answer that explains the universe to your satisfaction. And if we can’t, well, then we’re just full of shit, right?
“You’re trying to understand things by jumping right to the end. You reject the conclusion because it seems too fantastical to you. But you already believe some very fantastical things. The difference is that, in the latter case, you have knowledge of the deep and complex road that takes us from here to there.”
I lay back. While weighing the merits of it all, I draped my elbow over my eyes and passed out again. The truck stopped hard, and I looked up at the restaurant. It didn’t seem like I’d had my eyes closed for more than a second. Maybe a minute or two. And yet, here we were. The place was closed. The Jag was nowhere in sight. Milan didn’t wait for us. She hopped out and ran around to the back of the building while Dench helped me to my feet. My head still hurt, but not as much as before, and it seemed like my legs might actually be able to support my weight this time.
“I’m fine,” I said, even though I wasn’t. I asked where she was going.
“To let us in,” he explained.
Only he didn’t mean to the apartment, which we entered with ease. I don’t think it was even locked. He meant the sanctum, whose stacked-stone doors were shut and sealed. We waited in the hall for several minutes before they finally swung open, slow and silent. Must be a back door somewhere. Right away I smelled smoke, but not from a fire. More like someone had burnt the pot roast. I leaned against the wall and didn’t move right away. Not until I saw the body.
The big room was no less impressive a second time. But now it was also uncomfortably warm, and dry, and the tips of a couple branches of the tree were on fire. The tree was alive and full of water and not in any danger of bursting into flames, but the dry tips of a few small branches smoldered like just-snuffed wicks. And the Japanese screen, the one that had covered the central alcove, rested at an odd angle as if leaning against something big on the other side. I still couldn’t see what it was hiding, but I caught the end of a taut chain, bolted through a steel loop to a square slab. The rock around the bolt was charred, as if the metal—both chain and loop—had been red hot and casting off sparks. The chef was on the floor, face down, wearing his bright feathered garb. He wasn’t moving. His mask lay several feet away, upturned. Milan was leaning over him, feeling for a pulse.
I looked up to the books on the wall of shelves. It looked like there’d been a massive earthquake. Almost every single volume had fallen from the shelves. Those that hadn’t lay sideways on each other.
“Jesus . . .” I said, turning my eyes over the mess. “What the hell happened in here?” It looked like a set from a disaster film.
“Doctor!” Milan called.
Étranger’s bald head was covered in running sweat, like he’d just spent eight hours in a sauna.
“Get some water. Please.”
She and Dench turned the chef over and worked the brightly feathered parka over his head. One plume came loose. His arms were completely limp. His armpits were drenched in sweat. I could see his breath was very shallow, and his eyelids fluttered like he was in REM sleep. Or delirious. Milan pressed her ear to his chest and listened.
I stood facing the semi-circular kitchen, trying to remember where the chef had gotten the glass he had given me earlier. I opened one cupboard and a tarantula hawk—a wasp as large as three of my fingers—buzzed at me from inside a jar. I heard a clink as it tried to sting my hand through the glass, and I moved back.
“Hurry!” Milan called.
I found the glasses
on the other side of the sink. Fine mist rose from the tap as I filled one. It wasn’t until a moment later, when the heat penetrated the wall of the cup, that I realized it wasn’t mist. It was steam.
“Ow!” I dropped the glass and it broke in the sink.
“Doctor!” Milan yelled angrily.
“Fuck.” I had my fingertips in my mouth. “It’s hot!”
“Please!”
I scowled. Clearly, she didn’t understand what I meant. It wasn’t hot like when you let it run too long. It was hot like it was just poured from a boiling pot.
I grabbed another glass. I had lifted the handle of the faucet straight up, rather than to either side, yet what came out was instantly hot, which meant the water had boiled in the pipes. I let it run for a moment before I risked dabbing a hand in the stream. It was still warm, but approachable. I filled the glass and carried it over, fighting the urge to gulp it myself.
“What the hell happened in here?”
“A battle,” Dench said.
Milan took the glass from me. “This is hot water.”
“You said to hurry.”
She lifted the man’s head to help him drink. I don’t think he was conscious. His lips pursed from the movement and smoke came out. I caught a whiff of sulfur. I turned to the Japanese screen, but I couldn’t see anything. Just a crooked scene of a songbird on a branch.
I grabbed his limp wrist and felt for a pulse. His fingertips were dark, as if covered in charcoal ash. “He needs to go to the hospital,” I said. I switched from his wrist to his neck, hoping for a different result.
Dench shook his head. “No hospitals.”
“You don’t understand. He has a serious arrhythmia. Right now his heart is deciding whether it wants to keep beating or not.” I turned to Milan. “He could die at any moment. Literally.”
“No hospitals,” she repeated softly.
Étranger’s left arm started twitching and Milan pushed me back. “Benjamin.”
Dench helped him to his feet.
“Let’s get him to the bed,” she ordered.
I stood helpless, watching. I barely had the strength to support myself, let alone another. As they lifted his limp body, I saw something unexpected on the floor, which distracted me from the labor. There was a mark: a W, it seemed, with a curved line underneath. It was dark and powdery, like it had been drawn in charcoal ash. I went back to the sink and filled another glass—the water was much cooler now—and drank it. I was starting to feel better, or at least not so terribly bad. Less porous. Solid, even. I filled the glass again and used it to snuff as many of the smoldering branches as I could reach. I rinsed the glass, filled it again, and drank. I leaned against the counter, cup in hand, and realized my hands were shaking. My legs, too. They hadn’t been before. I took it as a sign I was getting my strength back.
I looked at the mark on the floor, near the loose feather and upside-down mask. I knelt and touched it. I put the mask on the counter and twirled the orange-and-green plume in my hand. I walked to the screen. I reached up to slide it out of the way, but stopped. My trembling hand lingered inexplicably in midair as if, being closest to the thing, it were aware of some danger the rest of me was not.
Dench appeared in the door and asked if I’d like to wait up front. I took that to mean I wasn’t to hang around in Étranger’s private sanctum while the man himself lay near death in the other room, so I followed. Milan was nowhere to be seen. I set my water on the carved stone coffee table and collapsed on one of the couches. It felt great. I could’ve slept ten hours right then. Dench just stood by the windows and looked at the floor. Motionless. Like a zombie.
“Is he gonna be okay?” I asked.
“Hard to say,” he mumbled.
That’s when I saw my bag. It was resting in the corner near the window. I sat up with a grunt and walked to it. My phone was dead, but I found a nearby outlet and plugged it in. It buzzed angrily, like a scolding pet.
Thirty-six hours. That’s how long I’d been out of it. I expected to find a string of texts from my wife, first terse and angry, then skeptical, and finally worried. But there was nothing. It had been over two days since we had talked, and there wasn’t a word. No messages. No missed calls. Nothing.
I plopped down and leaned against the wall. I checked the phone one more time, hoping I’d missed something. Ollie, at least, had called. Couple times. Sent text messages also. And I had a voicemail from Mom’s hospital. They had gotten some tests back. It didn’t sound good. I sat with my bag on my lap for a long time. No clock ticked. No refrigerator hummed. There was only the faint rush of the occasional passing car on the street below.
“You okay?” Dench asked.
I nodded. There wasn’t another response. How do you tell someone that you just realized your marriage was over?
“So,” I said after a moment. “You can smell things.”
“Emotions.”
I raised my eyebrows. “No shit. What’s fear smell like?”
“Burnt hair.”
“What am I feeling now?”
“Shock.”
“And what’s that smell like?”
“Ozone. Like from an arc welder.”
I thought about my daughter. I would’ve given anything for a hug right then. A hug from which I’d never let go. “What about love?” I asked.
His face twisted. Like it was something truly nasty.
Milan came into the room from the hall. She stopped and put her hand to her forehead. “He’s resting,” she said with a hand to her forehead. “His heartbeat has stabilized. For now.”
She sat down and everyone was silent. It was the first moment we’d had to catch our breath. No one spoke.
“Make no bargain,” I said to myself.
Neither of them asked my meaning.
Make no bargain, the chef had said. And yet he had. Granny said you could buy lots of things with a Moirai Penny, including time. She ended up with a pocket watch that ran backwards. And she was cackling to the chef that he was out of time. That seemed oddly significant.
A clock chimed. I’m not even sure from where. One of the rooms in the hall, maybe. It was midnight. Somewhere in the city, I figured, something was happening right then, something that was worth my life—and his—in order to stop. But none of us had a clue where. Save for a W with a curved line underneath. A message from who-knew-where.
“He’s in shock,” Dench said to Milan without turning.
“I’m fine,” I told her.
She studied me from the couch. She didn’t believe me, but neither did she want to argue. She didn’t look all that great herself. After a few quiet minutes, she rose to join Dench at the window. I could see the faint reflection of their faces in the glass. They were worried. But not about me.
“Something bad is happening, isn’t it?”
It took her an unusually long time to answer. “A long time ago,” she began, “doors were shut and sealed. The world was shuttered up and left to itself.”
“Shut by who?”
“It would take too long to explain. What matters is that tonight, someone is breaking that seal, forging a new opening to . . . “ She stopped.
“All kinds of shit can come across,” Dench finished.
“Like demons or something?”
He shook his head. “Demons don’t serve men. Not even warlocks.” He turned to face Milan again, as if once more handing her the burden of speaking to me.
“Demons believe they are the rightful kings of all men,” she said. “Which is why there’s general agreement on the part of everyone concerned, even warlocks, that they’re best left locked away where the saints imprisoned them.”
I could tell there was more to that statement that I didn’t understand.
“Kings of all, huh?”
She nodded and sat again on the couch. Dench didn’t move from the window. It seemed then like he was a sentry on duty, keeping watch. I looked at his boots. Military issue.
“So that
’s it?” I asked. “I nearly died, and we’re done?”
“Warlocks are masters of deception,” Dench explained. “It happens.”
“There are families—” Milan began.
“Clans,” Dench corrected.
“—families with names you don’t know, with lineages that go back hundreds—in some cases, thousands—of years. The heads of each compete for a seat at the stone table.”
“What do they want?”
“Everything,” Dench said.
“They believe,” Milan said with a sigh, “that their ancestors were promised the earth.” She spoke slowly and softly, like she was forcing herself to do me the favor of answering.
All three of us were quiet.
“Kings of all,” I whispered. I scowled.
Milan watched me, curious, as I dug in my bag and pulled out my tablet.
“Kings,” I repeated.
“What are you doing?”
“What if it isn’t a W? What if it’s a crown?”
“What do you mean?”
“Rex Magnus,” I said.
The others waited for an explanation.
“Rex Magnus & Associates was supposedly developing the abandoned school. And the derelict apartment where I found the bone labyrinth. It sounds like a man’s name, right?”
Milan shut her eyes in exasperation. “It’s Latin,” she said, as if she should’ve known. She looked to Dench. “For ‘great king.’”
“And their logo”—I turned my screen around to show them—”is a crown.”
It was simple, like an icon—little more than a W-shaped scrawl with a swoosh underneath.
Milan stepped closer. “Where are they located?”
I tapped furiously on the screen.
She saw the look on my face. “What?”
“Delaware.”
She sat down again on the edge of the couch.
“Hold on.” I started typing again.
“Doctor?” she asked after a minute.
“Just a second.” I was scrolling furiously. “At the Chinese grocer, where we found the immigrants, there was some question about who owned the place. The cops acted like that was because someone was trying to avoid getting into trouble, but what if that wasn’t it? What if we subscribe to the theory that Chinese folks are just as honest as anyone else and the reason they didn’t know was because the building had changed hands recently and no one was sure who the new owner really was?”
