Crisscross

by F. Paul Wilson

  It wasn’t his driving. It was him…the way he’d changed when she’d told him what Hokano meant. He’d become another person. The regular fellow in the booth at the bar had become this grim, relentless automaton encased in a steel shell.

  “What if it’s not Blascoe?” she said.

  He didn’t turn his head. His eyes remained fixed on the road. “Then we’ve made a mistake and we’ve wasted some time.”

  “What if he is Blascoe and doesn’t want to talk?”

  “He won’t have a choice.”

  His matter-of-fact tone chilled her.

  “You’re very scary right now. You know that, don’t you?”

  She saw his stiff shoulders relax a little. Very little. But it was a start, a hint that a thaw might be possible.

  “Sorry. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  “Yeah, I do. I started out the night with Dr. Jekyll, and now I feel like I’m driving with Mr. Hyde.”

  “Did I suddenly sprout bushy eyebrows and bad teeth?”

  “No. But you changed—your eyes, your expression, your demeanor. You’re a different person.”

  She saw the tiniest hint of a smile in the backwash of light from a passing car.

  “So I guess we’re in the Spencer Tracy version.”

  Jamie had no idea what he was talking about.

  “What did I say—what was it about the translation of Hokano that set you off? You were fine until then.”

  He sighed. “You’ve already heard some strange stuff tonight. Ready for something even stranger?”

  What could be stranger than that piece of human skin he was carrying around? Even if it was fake, even if it was some other kind of hide, the story he’d attached to it was bizarre as all hell. How could he top that?

  “Seeing as we still have some time to kill,” she told him, “fire away.”

  If what she’d heard already was any indication, it would not be boring.

  “All right. It’s more than a matter of killing time. You might be getting involved—hell, you’re probably already involved—and you should know what you’re getting into.”

  “How many more preambles are you going to lay on me? Can we get to the story, I mean before morning?”

  He laughed—a short, harsh sound. “Okay.”

  Then whatever lightness had crept into his voice in the past minute or so deserted it.

  “What if I told you that there’s been an unseen war going on between two vast, unimaginable, unknowable forces for eons, for almost as long as time itself?”

  “You mean between Good and Evil?”

  “More like Not So Bad and Truly Awful. And what if I told you that part of the spoils of this war is all this”—he waved his hand at the countryside sliding past—“our world, our reality?”

  “I’d say you’ve been reading too much Lovecraft. What’s the name of that big god of his?”

  “Cthulhu. But forget about any fiction you’ve read. This—”

  “How can I? That’s what it sounds like. Earth is a jewel that all these cosmic gods with funny names slaver for.”

  “No, we’re just one insignificant card in a huge cosmic deck. We’re no more important than any other card, but you need all the cards before you can declare yourself the winner.”

  Was he kidding her? She couldn’t tell. He sounded pretty serious. But really…

  “No offense, but I’ve heard it all before and it’s ridiculous. And if you believe it, that’s scary.”

  “Trust me, I don’t want to believe it. I’d rather not believe it. I was much happier knowing nothing about it. But I’ve seen too many things that can’t be explained any other way. These two forces, states of being, whatever, are real. They don’t have names, they don’t have shapes, they don’t have faces, and they don’t dwell in forgotten jungle temples or sunken cities. They’re just…there. Somewhere out there. Maybe everywhere. I don’t know.”

  “And you came by this arcane knowledge…how?”

  “I’ve been told. And somewhere along the way I became involved.”

  “Involved how?”

  “Too complicated, and it doesn’t bear directly on what we’re talking about.”

  “All this informationus interruptus is starting to fray my nerves.”

  “Let me just say that I’m a reluctant participant and leave it at that. I’m sure I’ve already stretched my credibility to its tensile limit.”

  No argument there, Jamie thought.

  She was going to ask him what side he was “reluctantly” involved with, but dropped it. She couldn’t see him siding with “Truly Awful.”

  “All right. We’ll leave it there. But what’s the connection to Blascoe and Dementedism and Hokano? That one little word was the jumping-off point for this story, remember?”

  “I remember, and I’m getting to it. Just listen. These two forces I mentioned…whatever names we might call them are human invention, because we humans like to name and classify things. It’s the way our brains work. So through the millennia, the people who’ve had a peek at the doings of these forces, their intrusions into human affairs, have given them names. They call the Not-So-Bad force ‘the Ally,’ and the—”

  “See?” Jamie said, exasperated. “That’s where all these situations fall apart. Why should this ‘vast, unimaginable, unknowable force’ want to take our side? It’s just plain—”

  “It’s not on our side. I didn’t say it was. It’s indifferent to our well-being. We’re just a card in the game, remember? It keeps us safe simply because it doesn’t want to lose us to the other side.”

  “To the ‘Truly Awful’ force.”

  “Right. And through the ages the Truly Awful force has been designated ‘the Otherness.’”

  “Ah. Lightning strikes. That’s why you were so upset when I told you that Hokano means ‘other.’ But Jack, lots of words mean ‘other.’ It’s in every language on Earth.”

  “I know that.” He sounded a bit testy. “But here’s what I’ve been told about the Otherness: When a world or a reality—a playing card, if you will—falls into its hands, the Otherness changes it to something more like itself. And that change will not be human friendly. If it happens here, it will be the end of everything.”

  Jamie’s mouth felt dry. She’d just flashed on something…pieces had clicked together into an unsettling shape.

  “The Dementedist Holy Grail—the Great Fusion—it’s…it’s all about this world commingling with the Hokano world…”

  “Yeah. The ‘other’ world.” He jerked a thumb toward the back seat. “The lady who used to wear that piece of skin knew all about the Ally and the Otherness. She told me she was involved in the war too, but was connected to a third player, one that wanted no part of either of them. The pattern on her back matches the pattern on Brady’s globe, and since the goal of Brady’s cult is the fusion of this world with the ‘other’…can you see why I got a little shaky back there in the bar?”

  Jamie’s first mental impulse was to deny it all as a fever dream, a worldview even loonier than Dementedism; but a primitive part of her, a voice from the prehistoric regions of her hindbrain, seemed to know something her forebrain didn’t. It whispered that it was all true.

  Feeling as if she were drowning, Jamie grasped at straws.

  “But…but you can’t be buying into all their nonsense about split xeltons and such. Please tell me you’re not.”

  “No, of course not. But maybe there’s a grain of truth at the heart of their mythos. What if—now, I’m just making this up as I go—but what if Dormentalism was somehow inspired by the Otherness? For what specific reason, I don’t know, but I know it can’t be good. What if there’s a little bit of Otherness in all of us? Maybe that’s what the xelton concept represents, and the purpose of the Fusion Ladder is to identify those who carry more Otherness than most and band them into a group.”

  “To do what?”

  Jack shrugged. “Light all the bulbs on Brady’s globe? I don’t
know. I’m counting on Cooper Blascoe to clear that up.”

  “If he’s really Blascoe.”

  “Yeah. If.”

  Jamie had been praying that the man in the cabin was Blascoe, revving her interview motor for when she finally faced him. Now she wasn’t so sure she wanted to hear what he had to say.

  15

  Jack slowed the car to a crawl along the rutted country road.

  “Where did you park when you went up to the house that first time?”

  “Somewhere along here, I think. I’d know better if you had the headlights on.”

  “Just playing it safe.”

  Out of necessity he’d kept the parking lights on. If there’d been a moon out, or even stars, he could have turned off everything. But the sky had put up a low roof of clouds, leaving the woods around them as dark as Kurtz’s heart.

  “Why don’t we just turn and roll up the driveway?” She sounded impatient.

  “Like you said before, we don’t know what kind of security they’ve got here.”

  “Right, and I’d rather be inside a car when we find out. And I do not feel like pushing my way through two or three hundred yards of woods again.”

  “We’ll compromise. We’ll hide the car down here and walk up the driveway.”

  “How about you walk up the driveway and signal me when it’s all clear.”

  “I don’t mind going up there alone,” he told her. “But you can forget about the all-clear signal. I’ll talk to him myself and tell you what he said.”

  “Like hell you will!”

  Jack smiled in the dark. He’d been pretty sure that would get to her.

  He stashed the Crown Vic behind a stand of bushes. If it were earlier in the year, they’d be in full leaf. Now their bare branches didn’t give much cover. A casual passerby probably wouldn’t notice, but anyone on the lookout for a car couldn’t miss it.

  As they stepped out it began to rain. Nothing serious, little more than a light drizzle, but it made the chill night chillier.

  They walked up a long driveway that was little more than two dusty ruts—steadily turning to muddy ruts—divided by a grassy hump. Jack took the lead, with Jamie staying close behind.

  He was beginning to think that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. He could scope out the security setup—if there was one—better in daylight. Right now he felt as if he were flying blind. But he couldn’t turn back. He was here and if the guy in the house was Cooper Blascoe, Jack was going to learn the connection between the designs on Anya’s skin and Brady’s globe. Tonight.

  “So far, so good, right?” Jamie said.

  “We could be walking past infrared sensors, motion detectors, you name it, and we wouldn’t know.”

  “Let’s go back.”

  Jack kept moving. “On the plus side, we’re in the middle of nowhere. If we set off anything, it’ll take time to get here. We do a quick in and out.”

  “But if it’s Blascoe, it’s going to take some time to get what we want out of him.”

  “We’ll talk fast. Or take him with us.”

  Lighted windows from a typical woodland A-frame shone between the trees, and still no sound of an alarm, no blaze of light from security spots.

  Jack and Jamie reached the front porch without incident. He made a quick perimeter check, looking in all the windows he passed, hunting for alarm tell-tales. He wasn’t concerned with motion and infrared detectors; he was looking for surveillance cameras. He didn’t see any, but noticed odd-looking metal brackets on a couple of the walls.

  The TV was on and someone was splayed supine on the couch, watching. All Jack could see of him were his legs and shoeless feet resting on a coffee table.

  “What’s the situation?” Jamie whispered when he returned to the front porch.

  “We go in.”

  “Shouldn’t we knock?”

  “Don’t know about you, but my plan is to go inside whether he answers the door or not, so why waste time knocking.”

  He pulled his Glock from the small of his back. He’d only seen one occupant, but you never knew…

  He pressed the pistol against his outer thigh as he grabbed the knob. If it was locked, he’d kick the door open or break through a window.

  Not necessary. The knob turned and the door swung inward.

  He peeked into the room, giving the walls a good once-over. Not a surveillance camera in sight. That didn’t mean there weren’t any, but it was the best he could do at the moment.

  He stepped inside, entering a high-ceilinged great room done up in standard Hollywood hunting lodge. Moose and deer heads stared down at him; antlers were framed here and there on the tongue-and-groove knotty pine walls; faux Indian throw rugs on the floor under rustic, rough-hewn furniture. Looked like a B-movie set. All it needed to complete the picture was John Agar entering stage right.

  Keeping the Glock down, he stepped up to the couch and peered at the man sprawled on it. He looked maybe seventy, long gray hair lying on his shoulders, sunken, unshaven cheeks, oversized plaid shirt and jeans, both stained. He gripped a bottle of Cuervo Gold in one hand and a knockwurst-sized joint in the other. His eyes were fixed on the TV screen.

  Jack said, “Cooper Blascoe, we’ve come for a visit.”

  The man’s voice was thick, phlegmy, his words slurred. He spoke without turning his head.

  “Fuck you, Jensen. Hope you brought me some good shit this time. This batch is bogus.”

  Jack walked past him toward the rear rooms.

  “Hey!” the guy yelled. “Who the—?”

  Jack waved the Glock at him. “About time you noticed. Keep it down.”

  “Why? Nobody here but me.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Turned out he was telling the truth. The two bedrooms and littered bathroom were empty.

  “All right, Mr. Blascoe,” Jack said as he returned to the great room. He kept the pistol in hand for effect. “We’ve got a few questions for you.”

  The man give him a bleary look. “Who says I’m Blascoe?”

  “You did when you answered to that name. And calling me ‘Jensen’ iced the cake.”

  Blascoe rubbed a hand across his mouth to hide a grin.

  “Did I do that?”

  “Yeah.” Jack waggled the pistol in Blascoe’s direction. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  The bleariness gave way to a hard stare. Jack couldn’t be sure at this distance, but the whites of Blascoe’s eyes looked faintly yellow.

  “You gonna shoot me, do it here. I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

  “No shooting, just talk.”

  “If we’re going to talk, we’ll talk right here.”

  Jack leveled the pistol at Blascoe’s face, thinking, This is going to sound like bad-movie night, but here goes.

  “Don’t make me use this.”

  “Jack!” Jamie cried.

  Blascoe pivoted and looked at her. “Hey! A babe! You brought me a babe!”

  Damned if Jamie didn’t smile. And was that a blush?

  “Been a long, long time since anyone called me that. I—”

  Jack cut her off. “This place could be lousy with AV pickups. Someone could be watching us right now. We need to quiz him somewhere else.”

  “You worried about cameras?” Blascoe laughed and pointed to the wall brackets Jack had noticed before. “That’s where they used to be.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Out in the yard. I rip them out and toss them off the porch. Jensen puts them back up, and I toss them out again. Don’t want nobody peepin’ on me.”

  “See?” Jamie said. “It’s okay.”

  Jack shook his head. “I’d still rather—”

  Blascoe fixed him with a rheumy stare. “Don’t matter what you’d rather, no way I’m leaving here. I can’t.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “Because I can’t, that’s all. I just can’t.”

  We’re wasting time, Jack thought as he holstered the Glock. Wrestling
him outside would waste even more. He unwrapped the flap of skin and held it up.

  “What do you know about this?”

  The old man squinted at it. “Not a damn thing. What is it?”

  As Jack was trying to decide where to begin, Jamie stepped up to him and gripped his arm.

  “Let me.” She held up a small digital recorder. “I’m good at this.”

  “But—”

  “My show now.”

  Jack reluctantly backed off. She made her living ferreting out information. He’d learned—sometimes the hard way—to respect experience.

  Jamie sat next to Blascoe on the couch and turned on her recorder.

  “I’d like to start from the beginning, Mr. Blascoe—”

  “Call me Coop.”

  “Okay, Coop. I’m a reporter for The Light and—”

  “The Light? I love The Light!”

  Why am I not surprised, Jack thought.

  But Jamie was all business. “Glad to hear it. Now, what I want from you is the truth, the unvarnished, warts-and-all truth about the Dormentalism situation: How you started it and how you came to your present…circumstances.”

  “You mean why I’m not in suspended animation, and how I came to be a shell of my former self?” He leaned closer and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “Know what? If you hold me up to your ear you can hear the ocean roar.”

  “I’m sure that would be very interesting, but—”

  “This’ll take all night,” Jack said.

  She looked at him. “Just let me handle this, okay. If Coop knows what you want to know, it’ll come out. But this is a once-in-a-lifetime coup for me, and I’m going to squeeze all I can from it.”

  “See that?” Blascoe said. “She don’t care about time. I like that.” He leered at her. “But what if I don’t feel like talking, beautiful?”

  Jack cleared his throat. “Then I toss you in the trunk of my car—it’s very roomy, you’ll like it there—and haul your ass out of here.”

  Blascoe waved his hands like someone trying to flag down an onrushing car.

  “No, no! Don’t! I’ll tell you.”

  Wondering why the guy was so afraid of leaving, Jack gave him one of his best glares. “Better not be bullshitting us, Coop.”