The Forgotten

by R. L. King

  Jason nodded several times, feeling each nod as a jerk of his head. “Run when you say. Got it.” Think of Verity. I’m doing this for Verity. It’s safe unless we attract attention… Gotta get through so I can help Verity…

  He dared not look behind to see if the things were getting closer, but he was convinced he could hear them breathing on his neck, feel them nipping at his heels. Any minute now they’d catch up—

  Think of Verity. You’re doing this for Verity.

  “See the portal up ahead?” Stone’s soft, even voice said on his right.

  Jason looked. Far ahead, so far that it looked like the tiny beam of a flashlight shining toward them, he could see faintly shifting lights. He nodded. “Y-yeah, I see it.” An unbidden thought popped into his head, reminding him of a poster he’d seen once in a head shop: What if the light at the end of the tunnel is coming from the oncoming train?

  “All right. When I say the word, we’re going to run for it.” The mage’s tone was tight and flat—he sounded like a frightened air-traffic controller trying to talk down an 8-year-old piloting a jumbo jet. “Ready now?”

  “Ready.” Ohgodohgodohgod they’re right here—

  “Go!” Stone’s voice boomed out, echoing from one side of the tunnel to the other. Jason felt the mage’s shoulder tense as he flung himself forward. Jason barely gave him a one-step head start before he was at his heels. He dared a glance behind him and wished he hadn’t—there were more of the things now, milling around in great agitation. As the two of them began to run, the things seemed to catch their scent.

  “Run! Run! Run!” Jason yelled. Younger and faster than Stone, fueled by a panic that he couldn’t begin to articulate, he soon overtook the mage. He grabbed Stone’s arm in a death grip as he went by and pulled him forward, his eyes fixed on the ever-growing, ever-shifting portal up ahead.

  The things were all around them now. Stone waved a hand and a shimmering shield formed to enclose them. A couple of the dark shapes dived for them, but bounced off it. The places where they hit flared bright, while the overall brightness of the shield dimmed correspondingly. Jason was pretty sure it wouldn’t take more than a couple of hits. The portal was just ahead. Desperate now and running on animal flight-instinct, he grabbed Stone bodily and just about threw him through the glowing space, then flung himself through behind him. Just before he went through, one of the things cruised up next to him and he got a good, close look at it, but then he was through the electric waterfall and sailing forward, his momentum crashing him hard into a gray stone wall. That was all he remembered.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  When Jason opened his eyes, he was lying on a dusty stone floor. Gingerly he sat up—his muscles ached, and for a moment he couldn’t remember why. Then he saw the wall only a couple of feet in front of him and realized what had happened.

  Stone lay a few feet away from him, stirring but clearly not fully awake yet.

  Jason took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and let his mind drift back over to what had just happened. His whole body still shook. As his mind lit on the image of the thing he’d seen right before they’d exited the portal, a sudden overwhelming wave of nausea swept over him. He looked wildly around and spotted a trash can next to a table; he barely made it there before his entire Passage to India lunch special made a violent and spectacular return appearance.

  For a while he just knelt there clutching the trash can, his hair hanging limply down over his eyes, and tried to get his breathing under control. What the hell had that been? He’d never been more terrified in his life. Those things—it was as if they had contained the essence of everything that was wrong with the world. And they had wanted him. He had no doubt about that. If this was how mages traveled, then he’d take a bus, thank you very much. He was going to have nightmares about that trip for the rest of his life. Again, an absurd thought popped into his mind (that was happening a lot lately, he noticed): he’d never done drugs with his friends back in high school, but he was pretty sure he had just won the distinction of having the worst “bad trip” ever. Too bad he couldn’t tell anybody about it.

  The nausea abating now (which was good, because he didn’t think he had anything else to offer if it hit him again), he dragged himself up and took in the area around him. Small stone room, table, wooden door, old bookshelf. Light from couple of electric sconces on the walls.

  Oh, and of course there was the shimmering portal in the middle of the room. Mustn’t forget about that. Jason eyed it warily, not wanting to get too close for fear one of those things would reach a hand or a claw or a tentacle or whatever else it had through and yank him, screaming for dear life, back through to the other side. Yeah, it was irrational. He didn’t care. He thought he was entitled to a little irrationality right about now.

  He squatted down next to Stone. “Doc? Wake up. I think we’re—wherever we were trying to get to.” His mouth tasted horrible, and he wished that guys still carried handkerchiefs—or better yet, that he could get his hands on a large quantity of water.

  Stone put a hand to his head and winced. “You chucked me into a wall.”

  “Yeah, well—sorry about that. I hit the same one myself. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight at the time, y’know?”

  “Yes—that didn’t go so well, did it?” He pushed himself up on an elbow and looked around at his surroundings. “At least we made it to the right place.” Wrinkling his nose, he added, “—and what’s that smell?”

  “Don’t ask. Trust me.” Jason took hold of his arm and helped him to his feet. “So, what now? I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that whatever book you came here to get, it’s not on that shelf over there.”

  Stone glanced over. “What? Oh. No, of course it isn’t. Come on. We’ve got a bit of a hike up to the house. I don’t want to stay here long, but I could definitely use a drink and I think you could too.”

  “Yeah, definitely. But first a nice bottle of mouthwash and a big glass of water.” He paused. “What the hell happened in there? You said it was safe if I kept it under control.”

  Stone moved over and opened the heavy wooden door, waving Jason out. “You didn’t.”

  “I did!” he protested. “I was fine until they started—talking to me.”

  That stopped him. “Talking to you?” he asked, fixing that intense ‘I may or may not be reading your mind’ gaze on him. “What do you mean? They actually spoke to you? Intelligibly?”

  Jason shook his head. “No. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, if that’s what you mean. There weren’t really words. But I could tell they—wanted me. Made me feel strange. It’s hard to explain. Like at one point—” he shuddered with the memory “—I was convinced that you weren’t really you. Like they’d taken your place, and were leading me off the path.”

  “Fascinating,” Stone said, almost to himself. Then, louder: “I’ve never experienced anything like that before—but then again, I’ve never made the trip with a non-magical companion.”

  “Might have told me that before we left, Doc,” Jason protested.

  “Slipped my mind,” Stone said. “And would you mind terribly if I asked you to stop calling me ‘Doc’? Just Alastair is fine.”

  “Sorry, man. Too many syllables. You know how lazy we Americans are. How about I just call you Al?”

  Stone looked stricken. “No. Just—no.”

  Jason grinned. “Al it is, then.”

  Stone sighed loudly, but didn’t push it. He once again motioned Jason out, then closed the door behind them. Then he waved his hand at it and muttered something under his breath, and it became just another part of the solid stone wall.

  There was a stairway outside the door, leading up. “Oh, look. More basements! I’m proving my theory, you know,” Jason said with a grin.

  “I think not,” Stone said, heading up. “You’ll see.”

  At the top
of the stairway was a long, narrow trap door, about the size of a standard interior door, but set into the ceiling. It had a rope attached to one end. Stone pulled it and the door swung smoothly down to reveal a short stairway of its own, like the kind people sometimes used to get into their attics.

  “Hold on,” he said. He went up first, and Jason heard him fumbling with something that sounded heavy. Then whatever it was slid aside, and a patch of dim light appeared above them.

  “Where the hell are we?” he demanded.

  “Come on up.” Stone was already scrambling higher, and seemed to be climbing over something. Jason followed him to the top of the dropped staircase, and discovered he was standing on a narrow ledge inside an enclosure around seven feet long and three feet wide. There was a stone cover that had been shoved aside—that must have been what Stone was fumbling with. The rest of the room was empty. The whole thing looked vaguely familiar to Jason—and then he realized what it was.

  Leaping out quickly, he stared at Stone with wide eyes. “This is a crypt!”

  “I told you it wasn’t a basement,” Stone reminded him with a quirked eyebrow and a grin, pulling a false bottom over the trap door and settling it into place. “Now budge over so I can put the cover back on.”

  Jason helped him move the lid back onto the sarcophagus—it wasn’t nearly as heavy as it looked, he discovered—and then looked back at Stone. “Why do you have the entrance to your portal inside a crypt?”

  Stone shrugged. “You have to admit, it’s not a place that your random passerby is likely to investigate.” He crossed to the exit and muttered something at the door, which made a small click and swung minimally open. “Come on.”

  Outside, it was dark. Jason was confused until he remembered that if Stone was telling the truth, they were in England now. If they’d left at lunchtime then it was already evening here. As he expected, they were standing in the middle of a graveyard.

  “What is this place?” he asked, looking around. It didn’t look large—perhaps a grand total of forty to fifty graves, with headstones scattered haphazardly around, along with the crypt that dominated the space. The whole area was surrounded by trees, making it intimate and more than a little creepy.

  “It’s my family’s plot,” Stone told him, heading toward an opening in the trees.

  “Your family has a private cemetery?” Jason hastened to keep up, beginning to wonder just how much more there was to his strange new friend. It was okay, though—getting the subject of conversation back to mundane things—even mundane creepy things—was helping him get his bearings again.

  “Not exactly grand enough to call it a cemetery,” Stone said. “It’s been here for centuries. Nobody left but me now, so—” He didn’t finish that, but kept going. Jason saw he was heading up a small path through the trees.

  After a hundred feet or so, the path broke free of the trees onto a large, empty field. Far off in the distance, the dark bulk of what looked like a massive house rose into view. It was toward this that Stone seemed to be headed.

  “Is that your house?” Jason asked, hurrying to catch up again. “What—you live in a castle?”

  “Yes, that is my house, and no, it’s not a castle. It’s a dump, mostly, to be honest. You’ll see. Come on—it’s cold out here, and I’d really like to get inside and have that drink.”

  They’d made it about halfway across the field when Jason spotted a small light bobbing toward them. He stiffened. “What’s that?”

  “Ah, good.” Stone didn’t seem the least bit disturbed—in fact, he sounded pleased. “It’s about bloody time.” Picking up his pace, he hurried off in the direction of the bobbing light. Again Jason had to speed up to catch him.

  “Aubrey!” Stone called. “Where have you been?”

  The light drew up to him, revealing itself to be a stocky old man in a flat cap, heavy coat, and plaid scarf, carrying an old-fashioned lantern. “I’m sorry, sir,” he puffed. “Unavoidably detained. Come on—let’s get you inside. I’ve laid the fire and I’ve got tea on.”

  “Excellent.” Stone motioned behind him. “Aubrey, this is Jason Thayer. Jason, Aubrey Townes—he looks after the place when I’m not around, and generally looks after me when I am.”

  The old man held up the lantern and squinted at Jason, looking him over. He had the severe, craggy face of a man who’d spent a lot of his life doing physical work out in the sun, but it lit up in a pleasant smile. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Thayer.”

  Jason and Stone followed Aubrey back toward the house. As they drew close, Jason could see that Stone was right—it was not a castle at all. Instead it was one of those huge, dark, gothic mansions that you saw on TV adaptations of novels about rich girls who died of consumption, or creepy old men who kept orphans prisoner in the basement. It had a central hall flanked by two smaller wings, and the whole place presided over a circular, graveled driveway like some sort of malevolent spirit. Jason half-expected to see gargoyles on the edges of the roof, but all he saw as they passed by were a couple of wayward crows and a whole lot of missing shingles.

  “This place must be great at Halloween,” he muttered loud enough for Stone, but not Aubrey, to hear.

  “It’s a little grim,” Stone agreed. “Needs far more work than I can afford—the trust fund barely covers basic maintenance and repairs and Aubrey’s salary, and even so, we have to close off one of the wings because we can’t afford to heat it. It does look a bit better in the daytime. You’ll have to take my word for that, though—we’ll be long gone by then.”

  Aubrey opened one of the heavy, double front doors and waved them inside. They walked through an entryway into a large, open greatroom with a soaring, shadowy ceiling and an enormous fireplace dominating the left wall. Arranged around it were some comfortable-looking old couches and chairs and a low table, and it was this area that Aubrey motioned them to head for. “Please,” he said, “Sit down. I’ll bring you refreshments. You both look tired.”

  “What I really need,” Jason said, “is a bathroom.”

  “And a stiff drink or two,” Stone added. He pointed off at a hallway leading from the other side of the room. “Loo’s over there, Jason. And Aubrey—don’t spare the alcohol.”

  When Jason returned, feeling much more human after rinsing his mouth out several times and drinking a large quantity of water, Stone was seated on the couch in front of the fire. Aubrey must have returned, because on the table was a plate of small cakes, a teapot and cups, two glasses, and a large bottle of something amber and alcoholic. Jason threw himself down at the other end of the couch with a loud sigh.

  “Feeling better?” Stone inquired.

  “Yeah. As good as I can feel after having the crap scared out of me.”

  “Good. Why don’t you sit here and have a drink—please don’t get yourself drunk, though. We’re heading back soon, and I think you see now what I meant.”

  Jason froze. “Doc—Al—I can’t do that,” he said. “There’s no way you’re gonna get me through that thing again.”

  Stone gave him a rueful smile. “Jason, I’m afraid there really isn’t any other option. If you want to help Verity, we need to get back home.”

  “I’ll take a plane.” Jason leaned over and poured a healthy dose of liquor—he didn’t even care what kind it was—into his glass.

  “That could take days—especially if we have to explain to the authorities how you got here in the first place without a passport. And I can’t get on with what I need to do without you.”

  “You take the plane, too.” Jason was aware that he was being completely irrational, but he still felt like he’d earned the right after what he’d experienced.

  “Jason, you know I can’t do that even if I wanted to. There’s no way I’m taking what I came here for on a commercial flight.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t do it.”

  “You
can, and you will. Verity’s depending on you. And besides, now that I know what happened to you, I can do something about it.”

  Jason looked up, not daring to let any flicker of hope reach his face. “What do you mean? You’re just saying that to get me in there again.”

  “No. Believe me, Jason, I’ve no more desire than you do to have a repeat performance of what happened today. That frightened me almost as much as it did you. We had a very narrow escape back there.”

  “No shit?” He paused and took another drink. “So—assuming that you really can do something—what can you do?”

  “I can put a block on your mind so they can’t reach it.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It’s hard to explain—think of it as being a bit like hypnosis. I’d forgotten that most mages’ mental protections are more highly developed than the average person’s. You’re one of the most stubborn non-mages I’ve ever met, though, which will help. You’ve got the raw materials—I just need to tweak them a bit so those things won’t be able to get in.”

  Jason thought about that. “What—will it feel like?”

  Stone shrugged. “Nothing, really. You won’t even notice it.”

  “Then how will I know you succeeded?”

  “You’ll just have to trust me on that. And once we’ve successfully made the trip back, you’ll know for sure.”

  Jason took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said at last. “For Verity, I’ll do it. But no more after this. You want me to do any more traveling, I’m taking a plane.”

  “Fair enough,” Stone said, nodding. He got up. “All right, then. You sit here and enjoy your post-portal snack, and I’ll be off to retrieve what I came here for. We should be back on our way in less than half an hour.”

  Stone returned about fifteen minutes later carrying a leather briefcase. Jason was still on the couch, staring moodily into the fire. He’d finished the whole plate of cakes and most of the tea, but hadn’t touched the rest of the liquor. He rolled his head over the back of the couch as he heard Stone approach. “Find what you were after?”