She nodded. "I was hoping you might feel that way."
Smith frowned. "I'm stuck in here, though."
The look she gave him was full of mischief. "That can change," she said. "I have an idea."
They ran. They dashed pell-mell out of the waiting room and down the corridor, leaving the orderly staring at them in blank astonishment. By the time he started to chase them he was hopelessly far behind.
The security door at the front was unlocked. After all, Colleen was still inside, and almost every inmate was locked in a cell. They were through the steel door and half way across the lobby before the night clerk had time to jump up in surprise. By the time he shouted, they were bursting from the front door.
Half a dozen lights on poles cast bright circles on the lawn. Smith wanted to savor the night air, see if he could make out a few stars, but he hurried after Colleen, panting. There was a tang of exhaust smoke on the air, but it was fresh air nevertheless, scented with grass and trees and the indefinable essence of wide open spaces. He found it wonderful beyond description.
The gate was closed, a guard staring at them from a glassed-in booth. Colleen galloped across the lawn, aiming for a section of stone wall to one side of the gate. She yelled as she ran, the same word over and over. "Now! Now, now, now!"
Something moved above the wall, and metal clanked on stone. It was a pair of ropes, the end of each rope knotted around the center of a two-foot metal bar. The ropes were draped over the wall, the bars against the stones, a foot or so above the ground.
Colleen ran to the wall, grabbed both ends of a bar, and turned to Smith. He staggered up, fighting for breath, and grabbed the other bar. He took a firm grip, one fist wrapped around each end of the bar, and she nodded.
The guard came out of his booth, looking uncertain, his gaze going from the fugitives to the orderly who was running out of the asylum, red-faced. Colleen bared her teeth in a quick grin and gave two quick tugs on her rope.
An engine rumbled on the far side of the wall, and the ropes pulled taut. Colleen braced a foot on the wall, and Smith copied her. The ropes began to rise. Colleen put her second foot on the wall and walked upward. Smith managed to copy her for several steps. Then his feet slid on the stone and he found himself dangling, the rope dragging him upward. His knuckles scraped stone and he squirmed, getting his shoulder against the wall instead.
Colleen walked upward and stepped nimbly onto the top of the wall. Smith felt his arms clear the top of the wall. He rose until his chin was level with the top of the wall and he could see an expanse of city lights beyond. After that, the rope was pulling him horizontally, pressing his chest harder against the stone surface. The bar popped out of his hands and he clutched the top of the wall, flailing with his feet.
The thud of footsteps behind him told of the orderly and the guard coming close. He scrambled desperately with his feet, and Colleen stood over him, reaching down to grab his upper arms. She heaved, just as hands closed over Smith's ankles.
Smith kicked his feet, one ankle came free, and he braced his foot on the wall. Colleen hauled him upward, he did his best to help with his free foot, and someone swore below him as Smith's other ankle popped out of the man's hands.
"Hey," Smith called, "there's a lady present, you know!"
Colleen chuckled as she heaved him up onto the wall. She was astonishingly strong. "Are you all right from here?" she asked, and he nodded. She dropped down on the outside of the wall, and he wriggled over and dropped beside her.
The gate swung open, the guard and the orderly ran through, and Colleen grabbed Smith's arm. A young black man with a tense, frightened face darted forward and grabbed his other arm. They led him at a stumbling run toward a Model T a dozen feet from the wall. A pair of ropes trailed from the back of the car.
Colleen opened the back door, shoved Smith in, and jumped on the running board. The black youth dove in the other side, and the car lurched into motion.
The orderly, his face a red mask of rage, jumped onto the running board on the opposite side. Smith and the youth were side by side in the back seat. The boy was staring at the orderly, not moving, so Smith reached past him and opened the car door. When the door was ajar he leaned back, slid his legs over the boy's lap, planted his feet on the inside of the door, and kicked hard.
The orderly went bouncing across the parking lot. The car turned onto the street in front, both back doors flapping. Colleen squirmed in beside Smith, sitting half in his lap, and got her door shut. The boy fumbled with his door, finally getting it closed, and a whoop came from the front seat.
Another youth was driving, a skinny white boy. Friends of Colleen's, Smith supposed. They had to be her age or older, but somehow they seemed like kids beside her.
"You must be Smith," the boy in the front seat said, almost vibrating with excitement. "Welcome aboard the Freedom Express!"
They pulled over a block from the asylum to recover the ropes and the metal bars, which were bouncing along behind the car. Then the black boy moved to the front seat and they resumed their escape. Colleen made introductions as they drove to the McDougall Estate.
Smith saw the McDougall building and felt a shock of recognition. He'd spent many hours inside, working with Carter to unravel the secrets of the cult. Tom, though, drove to the carriage house.
They stepped inside, she flipped on the lights, and he stopped short, staring at the metal contraption that filled one side of the room.
"Meet the Tin Woodsman," Colleen said. "I call him 'Woody.'"
At a loss for words, Smith finally managed to say, "Wow."
"He'll be accompanying us on our rescue mission," she said. "He has certain skills we'll need."
"What can he do?" Smith asked, and she grinned.
"Let me show you."
A button on the metal man's back sent water gurgling through his insides. Colleen fiddled with a contraption on his back, keeping up a running commentary about strips of punched metal and the need to enter the correct instructions. Then she sprang back.
The behemoth straightened up, then shuffled around until he was facing the center of the room. Then, moving like a gorilla on hands and feet, Woody lumbered forward for several steps. He stopped in the middle of the room.
"Watch this," Colleen said unnecessarily. "This is one of his combat routines."
Woody exploded into motion. His gleaming arms slashed the air as he whirled and spun. Sometimes his legs went scything out. He swung and chopped and jabbed, and finished by releasing a blast of steam from the center of his back. Then he went still.
Smith thought of the things that waited for them on the other side of the portal and smiled coldly. "I'm sold," he said. "It's coming with us."
"That's if we can open the portal," she said. "I'm stumped."
He looked around the perimeter of the room. Seven square stones stood in a circle, each one elaborately carved in shapes that twisted his eyes and made a wounded corner of his mind gibber in fear. He fought down the queasiness and considered the problem.
"When the cult opened the portal," he said. "Was it outside?"
She nodded. "They were in a pasture just outside the city."
"I wonder if that's important," he said. "Maybe the blood isn't enough." He looked at the dark lines on the floor, linking the stones. "Maybe you need grass. An unbroken circle of life." He shrugged. "Or maybe there's something in the walls that interferes with… whatever it is that happens. Let's go outside. It's worth a try."
Colleen shrugged on a knapsack, picked up a portal stone, and headed out the back of the carriage house. Archie armed himself with a BB gun and followed her. Tom set to work walking Woody out the front doors and around the building.
Smith grabbed another portal stone and lugged it out the back door. He found Archie shooting the pigeons roosting on the roof of the carriage house. They brought out the rest of the stones as Woody came wheezing and clanking around the corner.
Colleen took a careful look around, and
Smith followed her gaze. The military police on sentry duty were hidden by the bulk of the carriage house. The sun was down and no one else was in sight.
Smith and Colleen arranged the stones in a circle, each stone standing up like a tombstone. Then Smith stood well back as Colleen cut open the pigeons and walked in a circle, dribbling a line of blood from stone to stone until they were all connected.
The air in the middle of the circle seemed to darken. Smith shivered, suddenly cold, and wondered if it was fear. Then he saw the grass inside the circle turning white and glinting with frost.
For a long moment the four of them stood staring, mesmerized. Then Tom licked his lips. His voice came out hoarse and afraid. "I think we should go with you. Me and Archie. You might need us."
Archie was trembling beside him, but nodded.
"Nothing doing," said Colleen. "You're right that I need you both. Right here, just like we talked about. If anything starts coming through that isn't us or Carter, you close that gate fast. Believe me, it's important. It's absolutely crucial."
Tom nodded, looking simultaneously relieved and unhappy.
Smith stared into the circle, thinking about what they were about to do, and yearning for his room at the asylum and the warm oblivion of tranquilizers.
"Dirk?" Colleen stood at his elbow. "I need to ask you something, and I need a straight answer."
He nodded.
"Just how crazy are you?"
He thought about it. He wasn't a well man, certainly, but he felt reasonably normal, at least for the moment. He shrugged. "I'm okay for now. As for tomorrow, we'll see."
She gave him a long, searching glance. She must have liked what she saw, because she reached into her jacket pocket and handed him a snub-nosed revolver. He took the gun, tucked it in his waistband, and pocketed a couple of speed-reloaders and a box of cartridges.
The air within the circle of stones was roiling and churning now. A sphere of disturbed air formed, a dozen feet across, and in the billowing surface Smith could see… something.
"That's it," Colleen said. "It's open. Let's go."
For a long moment neither of them moved. Then Colleen stepped behind Woody and fiddled with his controls. The metal man marched placidly into the heart of the churning sphere and vanished. Colleen and Smith looked at each other, then strode together into the vortex.
Chapter 13 - Madness
Smith felt a cold breeze against his skin. Soft, icy fingers seemed to scour his face and press his shirt against his flesh. He could see nothing but dark mist. He kept walking, and the darkness ended, leaving him staring across the surface of a terrible new world.
The sky was black and featureless, unlit by moon or stars. There was a strange glow, though, emanating from the blank space above him. It was enough to show him Woody, patient and still a dozen feet away, and Colleen, tense beside him, a pistol in her hand.
"So far, so good," he said, and she nodded.
There was grass underfoot, long dead and perfectly preserved. It crumbled wherever he stepped, and he shuddered, imagining a living world brought under the malign influence of whatever dark power ruled here. He glanced back over his shoulder, taking comfort from the portal they had opened, swirling in the air behind him.
Nothing moved as far as the eye could see. The ground sloped away to his left, and he saw a dry riverbed winding its way through sterile fields. To his right the ground rose. He could see a hilltop in the distance, and the hint of a structure on the crest of the hill.
For an instant the sky was filled with an enormous image, a horrific travesty of a face with writhing tentacles and features so utterly, mind-wrenchingly wrong that his gorge rose. The gargantuan mouth opened, lowered, it was about to devour them, and he remembered the pistol in his belt. Would he have the courage to shoot Colleen first, or would he be selfish and take the first bullet for himself?
Then he blinked and the vast face was gone. He made himself breathe. If it had disappeared, then it was a hallucination. The horrors of this place would not be so fleeting.
"Dirk? Are you all right?"
He blinked and met her eyes. "Do you see all this? The black sky, the dead grass? It's real, isn't it?"
She nodded.
"All right then."
She gave him a worried glance, then looked around. "I think I recognize this. I saw the same hill in the distance when I came through before. If the distances and directions are the same, the other portal opened about three miles from here, in that direction." She pointed just to the right of the hill.
"Let's climb the hill," Smith said. "We'll be able to see a long way from there."
She nodded and they set out. Every fifty steps or so Woody would stop and she would touch a control on his back to start him walking again. Smith was quickly fighting for breath as the ground rose. He hadn't gotten much exercise in a long, long time.
Half way to the top they stopped to catch their breath. The light in this strange realm was unchanging, but Smith saw a strange darkness gathering off in the distance. He couldn't see anything distinct, just an area where the glow from the sky seemed muted. It made him think of a storm cloud, and he found himself hoping it wasn't coming their way.
They were a couple of hundred feet from the crest when a strange sound came to them. It was a voice, Smith was convinced of it, but from no throat the Earth had ever known. It gave a harsh cry, like the roar of a lion mixed with the caw of a crow, and Smith had the pistol in his hand before he realized he was reaching for it.
He looked at Colleen, and she gestured silently at the hilltop. He nodded. The sound was coming from up ahead.
The strange growling shriek came again, and this time another voice was mixed in. A human voice, a wordless bellow, and he saw Colleen's eyes go wide. She moved to Woody's back, fiddled with the controls, and sent him loping up the hill. Smith and Colleen hurried in the metal man's wake.
The crest of the hill was a scene of demented horror. In the middle was a circle of crumbling stone twenty feet across, a ruined tower made from hexagonal blocks of dark, eroded stone. All around the tower strange creatures swarmed, a wolf pack ripped from nightmares. The beasts numbered a dozen or more, each one a mad blend of malformed limbs. There were hind legs that looked almost normal, dog-like. Then another pair of limbs ahead of those, more flexible. Then another pair of limbs, and another, each more sinuous than the last, until they blended together and became a squirming mass of writhing black tentacles. The beasts had no heads, just a wide, gaping mouth with a frothing mass of tentacles all around.
They swarmed around a breach in the tower wall, and inside the tower, a human figure fought a desperate battle to hold them at bay. His face was wrapped in bandages, but Smith recognized his old friend instantly. He knew Carter's familiar tweed jacket, and the brave, undaunted way he kept on fighting despite impossible odds.
Colleen moved to Woody's back, her fingers flying. Then she hit a button and the metal man went surging up to the crest of the hill. The nearest beast turned to snarl at this new interloper, and Colleen inhaled sharply as the hideous throat gaped at them. And a strange peace came to Smith. The nightmare had finally been taken from his tortured mind and made real. He couldn't fight phantasms of his psyche, but he could fight these things.
Woody stopped, and the beasts swarmed him. He exploded into motion, swinging blindly but with terrible force, and his metal limbs slammed into the malformed creatures and sent their broken bodies spinning away. Creatures clutched at his legs, and he ignored them. They clutched at his arms, and he smashed them or batted them away. The whole pack was focused on him, and Smith caught Colleen's wrist and led her at a run toward the tower.
They circled the fight, and the embattled creatures ignored them. Smith felt immediately safer when they had their backs to the wall of the tower.
Muffled curses came from the other side of the wall, and the thud of something solid striking flesh. Smith raced to the breach and peered in.
One of the dr
ead beasts was inside the circle of stone. Carter was holding it off with a length of timber, but the creature had several tentacles wrapped around the club. The two of them were in a desperate tug of war.
Smith quickly scrambled inside. He stepped up beside Carter, murmured, "Steady, old friend," and leveled his pistol at the beast.
"Fire straight down its throat," Colleen said behind him. "It's the only thing that works."
He took aim. At the last second the creature let go of Carter's club and lunged at Smith, wrapping tentacles around his wrists, his legs, his waist. He screamed, a primal release of raw emotion, and fired three shots down the thing's awful gullet.
The tentacles flailed, his arms jerked, the pistol went flying, and he felt the fabric tear on his pants. There was a sharp pain as some of the skin on his wrists tore as well. Then the beast went limp at his feet.
And something slammed into Smith's head. At first all he felt was the shock of impact. It seemed to take a long time to figure out that he was sprawled on top of the dead creature. With a vast effort he managed to roll onto his side and look up.
Colleen was on the floor on her back with Carter kneeling on top of her. His hands were locked around her throat.
Smith opened his mouth to shout, to plead, but it was clear that he was far too late. His friend of so many years was lost to madness. His eyes flicked around the room, taking in details he'd missed before. Four wooden stakes stood in a row to one side. On each stake was a human head, crudely hacked off, the faces smeared with blood. Carter was utterly insane.
Well, there was one last favor he could do for Carter. The man he'd been was cowering in some dark corner of that crippled brain, horrified by what his hands were doing. Smith would spare him the experience of murdering Colleen. He scanned the room, spotted his pistol near the back wall, and crawled over to grab it.
Colleen, he saw, was reaching for her own gun, lying on the floor beside her. Carter was trying to drag her back without letting go of her throat, but she was as strong as he was, and she was fighting him. In a moment the pistol would be in reach.
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