Hatman seized the staff and directed the man to stand back with a brusque wave. He raised the staff above his head and joined the mad chorus, driving the monotone voices to an even higher pitch. Hatman had regained his prize.
From his long coat he produced a timeworn satchel and coaxed from within a sad and scared bundle. Spirit energy. This energy, prodded by Hatman’s spiteful pokes, jumped from the satchel and unfurled like a flag, expanding into a human shape. A woman.
The woman screamed for help, for mercy, for divine intervention. She shouted in dreadful horror at the sight of her husband’s spirit snare. But she also shrieked at the thought of what Hatman would do to her as punishment for escaping hers. Soon, she would find out.
“Alexandra, what have you done!” another shape unfolded, developing into the likeness of a man. Middle thirties, clean shaven, and at the peak of his considerable handsomeness. And he was dead. Murdered at the prime of his life. Murdered by the very forces that held him prisoner seventy years. A slave to this primeval malignancy.
Hatman’s laughter set off a pestilential tempest of chanting from his followers. Emile shuddered with hopelessness.
“You won’t make a fool of me again, my dear Doctor,” Hatman said proudly. “Of that I am certain. There’s only one way to save your wife’s soul, and you know what it is.”
“Never!”
Alexandra felt pride for her husband, his will, his stamina, his ability to withstand the torture he’d been enduring for so, so long. They’d been through so much together. She never wanted to be away from him, and a part of her was happy she’d been caught again. Happy to be by his side. But not happy at what happened next.
Hatman activated the enchanted staffs and the beleaguered couple was instantly drawn into their respective prisons like lint sucked into a vacuum cleaner. With a slight nod, one of Hatman’s toadies tossed his torch on the pyre and the heavily oiled lumber went up in flames, creating an intense inferno, so hot the mortals were compelled to back away.
Hatman, though, didn’t feel the need for cover, and stood in place, holding both staffs arrogantly. With accursedness beyond description, the contemptible being strode toward the fire and extended his right hand to the flames, the hand which held the staff containing Alexandra’s soul.
Heat, if it’s intense enough, is devastating to a spirit’s energy field. And this was hot enough. Alexandra’s shrieks echoed louder than anything that evening. Then Emile’s vengeful cries to the heavens for retribution rivaled them.
“Damn you, Hatman! You sadistic bastard! You would do that to a woman? Do it to me, damn you!”
“We both know that would never work. You’d endure my torture. But I know it’s more painful to see this done to your beloved Alexandra. Tell me, Doctor…how much longer were you going to idly stand by and watch? Your wife is suffering, yet you refuse to help me.”
“I won’t! I won’t help you!”
Emile summoned all his strength, which had been depleted seriously by Hatman. Kept at the lowest possible level, just barely enough to subsist, yet not enough to escape his spirit snare. But he’d saved energy, a scrap here and there, sufficient for one strong push to freedom. He surged at the walls of his prison, shaking the staff. Hatman tilted his head, subtly impressed.
“How inspiring,” he chuckled again. “The love you two have for each other. The devotion. Well, Doctor, as it turns out I may not need you after all.”
“What do you mean?” Emile gushed with fear. Had Hatman unlocked the secrets to the Petrovic technology finally?
“I have another who can do the things you can do. A disciple of yours, someone who’s as brilliant as you, who’s been studying your work all his life and developing a technology that rivals yours. I can use him to make your machine work. And then I’ll have all the power I crave, and more. So much more!”
Another wave of devilish laughter trundled through the night. All the doctor could do was hope and pray this wasn’t true.
“You’re lying! Why should I believe you?”
Hatman spoke with a hollow tone of the gallows. “What you believe is of no concern to me. As a matter of fact, I think I might just dispose of you and your wife once and for all.”
He poked the fire with the staff. Alexandra shrieked in hellish hostility, the pain becoming unbearable. Torture beyond anything a living being could endure.
“NO! Stop! I’ll help you!” Emile cried, and at that Hatman only pushed the staff further into the fire. The searing heat became like a broiler to Alexandra’s eternal soul.
“Too late,” the laughter was unendurable to Emile. “I don’t need you anymore. So say goodbye to your wife…forever!”
“NO!” Emile and Alexandra screamed in unison, the primordial scream of two young lovers, cut down in the primes of their lives, signaling from the afterlife that their strife had never ceased even after death. No peace. No ever after. Just endless suffering at the hands of endless evil.
Hatman intended his two favorite prisoners a most unhappy and painful time in eternity watching each other burn. These two would pay for the decades upon decades he’d wasted. Valuable time. He had to wait far too long for his vision to be realized, and it made his inner turmoil even greater.
“I don’t like waiting,” he thrust the other staff into the inferno. With a desperate and grief-stricken wail, Alexandra welcomed her husband into the hell on earth that these terrible men had created especially for them. She welcomed him, but wanted nothing more than for him to be somewhere else, and together they cried out for a champion, for someone to save their souls.
Hatman heard their penetrating cries and listened to the ether, and thought twice about destroying the Petrovics.
“Why should I let you just extinguish into the ether without exacting a little revenge?” he said, withdrawing the snares from the fire. “Prepare, my dark followers” he spread his arms and raised his voice so the trees trembled. “My agents of injustice! Prepare, for we are about to have visitors.”
Chapter 10
Down a lonely road the SUV traveled, snaking with the curves and contours of the arid land. Ground squirrels and dirt devils inhabited the gently sloping terrain, with the occasional stands of pines and junipers specking the landscape, providing a break of green in the otherwise ceaselessly earthen tones of igneous rocks and natural arabesques on high Mesozoic sandstone cliffs.
The SUV accelerated evenly into a robust speed, passing a group of two eighteen wheelers, an RV, and a minivan before swerving once again into the right lane. Done deal. The SUV ended up in the lead past a dozen cars and trucks, making incredible time across the desert on Highway 26.
“What the hell was that!” Abby’s knuckles were still white around the Oh Shit! handle.
“What?” Rev was calm and comfortable behind the wheel. Not a care in the world.
“Don’t ‘what’ me. That kind of driving might not scare you. You’re already dead, but I’m not. And I don’t want to be.”
“Relax,” he knew he’d made a mistake the second he said it. “I mean, don’t worry. I used to race cars for a living—when I was living.”
“Rev, do I need to remind you how you were killed?”
“That wasn’t my fault. It was my car, and I was driving on one of the most dangerous courses in the world.”
“Well, this isn’t a race. And this isn’t a race car.”
“This isn’t the Phantom, either,” he frowned.
Abby rolled her eyes and stared out the window.
He drove in silence for a mile or so, then blurted: “Man, I love that car. He glanced sideways, shooting her a little bad attitude. “I have an image to uphold, and I can’t be driving this…this oversized tank.”
“It’s a fine vehicle. Besides, we needed something to carry the musical gear. That damn amplifier wouldn’t fit in the Phantom.”
“I still love it,” Rev pouted.
“I know you do.”
At just past mile marker twenty-two, nea
r a sign along the road indicating the city of Prineville was five miles ahead, the SUV slowed to a near stop before turning off. The fastidious side road was hard to miss with a magnificent log hewn arch straddling newly poured asphalt. A black, smooth ribbon in the heart of the dirty and dusty desert. As they passed under the arch, the words THE SINGULATE were clearly legible, branded into the face of the wood. Rev noticed a black Chevy Suburban suddenly following them. Security.
They traveled further, and the landscape began to change noticeably. Abby commented on the greenness. Grass and trees and flowers lining the road, remarkably clean and new. The lush gardens were clearly a part of someone’s homes. Yards and long driveways with tall evergreens and gigantic hedges concealing almost all construction within. Yet there were always small openings where Abby got a glimpse, and when she did she gasped for breath. Palatial mansions. Each of them more opulent, more ostentatious, more costly than the previous. For miles as they traveled into the heart of the lavish settlement, the minivan came upon an area where the houses, still grandiose, sat in the open, streets forming a circular pattern, everything surrounding one, singularly large and splendid property.
The black security vehicle kept pace as the SUV passed a row of especially tall, especially grand lodge pole pines, and, once they cleared the lowest, densest overhanging limbs, the main house came into full and dazzling view. Not a house, but a lodge. And not just any lodge, but a structure built of hand-hewn timber with such craftsmanship and care as to evoke a sense of mouth dropping awe.
Five towering stories. Deep eves and steep gables with decorative corbels outside and ornate cornices and handmade friezes of timeless workmanship. The reclaimed wood had an old-world charm, immense in width, with the main entrance framed by several twenty-foot feature logs, all of uneven texture, roots interwoven through the trunks, creating strange shapes and designs, faintly redolent of creatures not of this world. Creatures possibly Rev and Abby had seen before.
“This is it,” Rev gripped the steering wheel tightly with a solid hand.
“This is it,” Abby repeated managerially. “And I don’t have to tell you how important it is you keep in complete physical form from now on. Only when we’re in the room can you dematerialize.”
“Got it,” Rev took it slow and steady into the Lodge parking lot, a quaint little cobblestone square set to the west of the large, inviting abode.
“Yeah, but I just wanted to go over everything again before we get past the point of no return. There’s no room for error on this one, Rev.”
“Hey, I understand.” His patience was wearing thin.
“I’m not sure you do. This mission is different than any other we’ve been on. Stay focused, okay. No getting off track or off target, and no straying outside mission parameters. You can’t go off-script on this one and expect to get away with it. This time it’s real, and these guys mean business.”
“Abby!” he made her look him in the eyes. She had her defenses up, but when she saw those deep green pools of jeweled passion, she froze. “Abby, what’s wrong? I mean, this mission is dangerous, I’ll confess. But you seem more out of it than normal. What is it?”
“I’m sorry,” she admitted. “There is something bothering me about this mission. Problem is I can’t put my finger on it.”
“I can. It’s Hatman. He’s one creepy bastard,” he gave her a reassuring wink, though it really didn’t set her mind at ease. What he said next boosted her confidence. “You know what, Abby. Hatman’s about to have a really bad day.”
*****
Rev parked the SUV at the lodge’s south end lot, nearest the main walkway. It was the easiest and closest access to unload their luggage and gear, of which they had copious amounts. Before Rev could turn the engine off, there stood an attendant at the driver’s door. Dressed in heavy blue jeans, a forest green flannel button down, and tan hiking boots, the elderly gentleman looked like he’d stepped off the REI website.
“Howdy! Howdy!” he had the friendly smile of a man who’d seen and heard plenty of happiness in his long life. A thick silver head of hair and matching mustache added to his avuncular appearance. Both Rev and Abby reciprocated his friendliness with giant smiles of their own, though they weren’t buying the guy’s act for one second. The thing they didn’t know was the old man wasn’t buying their act either.
“Is this The Singulate?” Rev feigned ignorance. He scanned the road and noticed the security Suburban was gone.
“Why, you’ve found us,” the gregarious man put up his hands, chuckling. “And you must be the famous CassiX3.”
“You’ve heard of me?” Abby pretended to be slightly aloof while slightly friendly.
“Well, no. But anything will be an upgrade over the musical act they booked last year. They actually had the gall to bring one of them gay bands, the one that plays out at that Indian casino in Warm Springs. I mean, really. I don’t have anything against those Indians, but if the band is a regular at their casinos, I don’t want to hear it, you know what I’m saying?”
The smiles were getting harder for Abby and Rev. The subject matter couldn’t have gotten any more bigoted, so she changed it.
“Is this where we’re staying?”
“Yes, of course,” the old man spat a wad of Copenhagen into the bark dust. “Right here’s the place. The name’s Ed, and if there’s ever anything I can help you with, don’t hesitate.”
“How about a little help with our bags,” Rev said, and as he said it, Ed whistled loudly. In response, a gangly, pimply teenage boy rushed from the lodge pushing a luggage cart.
“This is Stewart,” Ed opened the SUV’s back door and started removing the contents. “He’ll be happy to help.”
Inside the lodge, they found exactly what they’d expected given the rustic and ornate features on the outside. Wrought iron fixtures and old gas lamps and stained lumber from floor to ceiling. The air smelled of alkyd. An entire study on the biological food chain was represented along the walls of the vaulted sitting area, ceilings thirty feet high. A giant open space with leather couches and bearskin rugs and taxidermy busts of just about every animal that roamed the prairie, woods, mountains, or grasslands.
Rev saw the lounge from the reception area. He didn’t want to mention it because of the woman eyeing him from the bar. He made no attempt at catching her attention or encouraging her flirtations. He only walked with Abby, side by side, even nuzzled close to her and made it clear they were together. It made no difference. The closer they got, the harder the woman stared. And when they walked past her, she was undressing Rev with her eyes, staring greedily at his face, his shoulders, his rear.
To the strange and beautiful woman’s disappointment, Abby herded Rev to the front desk where the pimply face teen was waiting with their bags.
Ed stopped at the base of a majestic knotty wood staircase and pointed upward.
“Your room’s up there. Number two-twenty.”
“Let’s go,” Abby motioned forcefully, and they started up the grand staircase, creaks and groans in the old wooden joists.
Rev kept his senses on two things, Abby and the strange woman. What he didn’t catch was Ed, who, standing at the bottom of the stairs, fetched a small talisman from his vest in the place where a pocket watch might have been. Instead of a watch, this thing was an ugly little stick with a circle of bone at the end tied together in a web of unidentified animal skin. On one side of the tip was a sharp end, and when Ed held the talisman loosely in his hand, the end shifted positions like magic, pointing at Rev.
Chapter 11
Abby got the chills on the way up the stairs. By the time she made it to the second floor, those chills had advanced to uncontrollable quaking, so bad she couldn’t speak. By the time she reached their room, she’d gotten the shaking under control, but her insides were churning like a tropical storm.
“This place is giving me a really bad feeling,” she admitted once the door was closed and the bellhop had gone.
“
Shh,” Rev waved his hand in front of the TV and it turned on. He waved again and increased the volume. Someone was listening. Of that he was certain. “You mean the usual bad feeling?”
“Worse,” she strained to keep from doubling over, constricting her facial muscles tightly.
“Abby, maybe you should sit this one out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Lay low,” he suggested. “Stay here and let me and the guys take care of things.”
“If you think I’m leaving you alone with that bimbo down there, you can—”
“Abby!” he was incredulous, but she wasn’t so sure. He could have been acting. He was a pretty good actor. “How could you accuse me of such a thing?”
“Gee. I wonder.”
“You know I made a commitment to you. No more womanizing. I gave you my word, and I’m sticking to it.”
“You’d better, Rev,” she pointed a finger at his nose. Her stomach was roasting with a flock of flaming butterflies, but her passion was more ablaze. “Because if you so much as touch one fake blonde hair on her head I’ll castrate you with my statmag emitter. And don’t think I won’t.”
“Abby,” he raised his right hand in the scout’s honor position. “I swear by my mother’s everlasting soul that my days as a philandering sex maniac are over. I love you, Abby. I want you. Nobody but you.”
She pursed her lips, squinted, and exhaled forcefully. She felt like she’d heard it all before, seen it all before. But how could she resist the way he was looking at her. He adored her, and she adored him.
“Abby,” he drifted toward her in a dreamy, glowing haze. She hated and loved when he did that. Gave him the afterglow of a Greek god. “You know you’re my dream girl.”
He clutched her waist so tightly it took her breath, but in a good way. She inhaled sharply just before he touched his lips to hers. Icy, yet at the same time passionately hot. Together they leaned against the bed where they’d placed their luggage. The second they brushed against the largest of the bags, a rumble from within caused Abby to leap up, severing their steamy connection.
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