by Tim Powers
Vickery tugged the book and the wire-cutters out of his pocket and handed the book to Castine as he stepped past the sign. He clipped through a vertical row of wires in the grid of the fence, and when he had clipped them all the way down, he pulled one side toward himself, dragging the bottom edge over mud and leaves. The bent section of fence sprang back a few inches when he let go of it, but there was a clear yard-wide gap now.
He edged through, followed by Castine and Santiago.
All three of them paused on the reed-fringed bank. Patches of the lagoon’s surface were matte and didn’t reflect the glow of the distant lights, and on the glassy areas ripples spread and crossed one another in silence. Vickery could see bubbles out there, and he knew they were methane from millennia-dead primordial animals . . . or conceivably from the fifty-year-old corpse of one tormented human.
Castine looked back, as if hoping to see headlights through the trees and reassure herself that she was still in 21st century Los Angeles. “Old isn’t even the word,” she breathed, turning back to look out over the lagoon. “Eternal.”
“Let me have the book,” Vickery said. “I’ll open it to the front page and touch his signature when I call him.”
“I should do it,” said Castine. “I’m still initiated, connected to the birthing egregore. His ghost and I are loosened in a similar way.” Seeing his puzzled look, she explained, “Agnes said you lost your initiation, your membership, when you jumped into the ocean.”
Vickery was reminded that he hadn’t felt the elusive carrier wave in his mind for several hours now. “A dip in the ocean cancels it? I think our next stop after this is to get you a full-immersion baptism.” She just stared at him, so he went on, “Okay. Maybe he’ll respond better to a woman anyway.”
“Maybe it’ll respond better.” She pulled the old sock out of her pocket and twisted it around her right wrist: “Mobile hotspot,” she explained. Then she flipped the book open and touched the inked name on the front page. “Stanley Ancona,” she called softly out over the water, “we need your help.”
The wind sighed from distant Westwood and the eucalyptus leaves rattled overhead, and there was no disturbance in the black water aside from the constant ripples.
Castine repeated her summons three more times, to no perceptible result, and Vickery began, “Maybe I should—” but she waved him to silence.
“Let’s not hold hands,” she said, “but let’s each be touching one part of his signature, and—dip the book.”
Santiago was hugging himself in his sweatshirt, and shivering. “You’re not supposed to get close to that stuff,” he said. “It’ll drag you down, like it did those elephants.”
“Then you can pull us out, right?” said Vickery, and to Castine he said, “Let’s try it.”
They both started down the low bank, their shoes slipping in black mud or tar under the clustered reeds, and when they crouched by the edge of the water each of them had to brace one hand in the mud.
Castine held the book out in her free hand, and by the dim diffuse light Vickery was able to see that it was upside down, and that her thumb was on the scrawl which was Ancona. He reached out and took hold of the other side of the book, carefully laying his own thumb on the ink lines of Stanley, and then together they lowered the book until their fingers, and the inked name—and, Vickery noticed, one end of the sock—were in the water.
The whole lagoon seemed to shudder, and the ripples on the water stood still for a moment.
“Stanley,” said Castine on a long, shaky exhalation, “We need to—”
She and Vickery both jumped then, for a bubble had burst on the surface only a yard away, and Vickery’s nose was full of the smell of crude oil . . . and somehow of cigarette smoke too.
And the lights of the museum beyond the lagoon dimmed. Vickery looked up from the ring where the bubble had been and saw the translucent silhouette of a man hovering over the water.
Vickery heard a whisper, and even out here in the open night it seemed to echo: “And I should sleep, and I should sleep!”
A curl of distortion around the figure’s head might have been its tongue, testing the breeze for a target.
“We,” said Castine quickly.
“Need to,” said Vickery.
“Stop Chronic.”
“Again.”
“How?” finished Castine.
The ghost flickered, and then it looked bigger. The water rippled audibly, as if some submerged bulk had moved closer to the shore.
“Ghosts,” said Vickery hastily, hoping Castine had a way to continue the sentence.
“In the!” she gasped.
“Mix?”
“What.”
“Happens?”
There was no reply. Vickery was sure the thing was about to shoot out its ectoplasmic tongue, or even that Stanley Ancona’s tar-preserved body was about to stand up in the shallows, and he burst out, “What, dammit?”
Castine added, shrilly, “Answer!” and lost her hold on the book. It slid out from between Vickery’s thumb and forefinger too, and fell into the water.
The thing shrank, perhaps bending down over the floating book.
“What,” came the windy reply as it straightened again, “happens?” Its right arm merged into the blur of its body; perhaps it was extending its hand toward them. How close was the damned thing?
“Egregores,” it sighed, “commit suicide, always.”
“Huh?” was all Vickery could think to say.
“As soon as they’re,” came the ghost’s voice, “what . . . self-aware, yes.” Its arms spread out to the sides now. “Hey nonny nonny, its members go mad, then. In Europe, whole towns, 1518 . . . dancing for days, till they dropped. I was dreaming of giant ferns and warm seas. I should sleep.”
“The egregore,” said Vickery.
“Needs to be,” ventured Castine.
“Stopped. How?”
“For God’s sake!” added Castine desperately.
The thing was silent, and the lights of the museum were slightly brighter, as if the ghost were dissipating.
“You’re,” said Castine. She turned to Vickery and pointed two fingers at her eyes and then moved her hand away.
What, thought Vickery, looking at something? Castine impatiently held her hand out flat and stared at it. Vickery realized that she meant the thing had looked at something—he Ba image.
“Initiated!” he said.
And the thing darkened slightly, and spoke again. “This—speaking to you—is not. Stanley Ancona was.”
“The egregore,” Castine reminded it.
“Still?” The silhouette shivered. “The sigil was on the wall,” it said, “the fresh ghosts looked at it. Perversion.” For a moment its blurry head presented a profile. “I am desolate and sick of an old passion; I have been faithful to you, Gale Reed, in my fashion!”
Vickery’s right hand was numb in the cold mud, and the wind was chilly on his sweating face. “How,” he said hoarsely, and Castine finished, “Perversion?”
When the ghost spoke, its voice was slow and strained, as if it were struggling to marshall long-decayed thoughts and express them. “A man is initiated,” it said, “but he’s gone . . . when he dies, shuffled off this mortal toil! His ghost is not him—” It fell silent, then seemed to take a breath. “If it looks at the sigil, it becomes . . . part of, a necrotic member . . . ”
We need a ghost, thought Vickery, to bring to Topanga Canyon tonight, and we need it to look at the sigil—become a necrotic member of the egregore. He glanced down at the book floating in the scummy water, wondering if it was out of reach.
“Can,” he said, and Castine had evidently had the same idea, for she quickly said, “you come,” and Vickery finished, “with us?”
The ghost diminished in size, or retreated. “The spirit is willing,” it whispered, “but the spirit is weak. And I should sleep, and I should sleep.”
And then Vickery couldn’t see it anymore. He pushed his right han
d down in the tarry mud to get to his feet—
—But cold fingers closed slimily around his wrist. Castine yiped and tried to straighten her legs, but wound up sitting in the muddy reeds and sliding toward the black water as she reached around to try to free her left wrist from whatever had seized it. Her coat was rucked up around her shoulders.
Shapes were humping up out of the water, some much too big to be human forms. Triangular heads between bulky shoulders broke the surface, the distant museum’s light glistening on them as they stretched and twisted, and out across the lagoon Vickery saw a trunk uncoil near the statue of a mastodon standing in the lagoon. Over the scuffling sound of Santiago hurrying back to the cut fence, Vickery could hear Castine’s rapid gasps.
Closer at hand, several silhouettes rose erect from the water, and when they stretched out their upper limbs Vickery saw hands with long, moving fingers. These had evidently once been men, or nearly.
The breath was whistling in his own throat as he tried with his free hand to pry off the wet bony fingers tugging at his wrist, but Castine pushed herself down to the water, and her legs slid below the surface as she stretched her right hand out and caught hold of the floating book.
One of the manlike forms out in the water threw back its head and bayed at the night sky. Its voice seemed to shake the leaves of the surrounding trees, and carried a note of enduring rage and despair.
Castine recoiled from it, then braced her submerged legs and swung her arm back toward Vickery. She was holding the dripping book, and he could see her teeth clenched with effort.
“Tear up the page!” she gasped.
Vickery let go of the fingers clutching his wrist and let his feet slide down through the reeds into the water; and as cold water filled his shoes he extended his left arm and took hold of the book’s sodden cover; he flipped it aside, then closed his fist on the signed title page, crumpling it in his palm. It separated from the book and he rubbed it to wet fragments on the front of his tweed coat. Castine tossed the book out into the lagoon.
For a moment there was no change; shapes that might have been limbs and trunks and tusks waved in the wind, and the semi-human silhouettes reached out blindly. Vickery’s right hand was spasmodically pulled deeper into the water.
Then the lagoon shuddered again, and the moving forms sank, shoulders to heads and then out of sight, beneath its bubbling surface. The fingers on Vickery’s submerged wrist gripped more tightly for a moment and then flexed away, and the muddy water swirled as they withdrew.
Vickery and Castine dug their heels into the mud and tar under the water, but both of them had to roll prone in the muck and crawl to get back up to the bank. At last they were able to get to their feet, and they hurried through the gap in the fence to the pavement by the benches. There was no sign of Santiago.
After a nervous look back at the lagoon, Castine sank heavily onto one of the benches. Water dripped from her coat and puddled around her shoes. “We can’t linger,” she panted. “Harlowe might be on Wilshire already. He might be right outside the fence here.” Her hair was disordered from crawling out through the reeds a few moments ago, and she raised a hand—then saw the tarry mud on her fingers and let it drop. She wearily untwisted the sock from her wrist and shoved it in her coat pocket. “Sebastian—those were primitive men out there, among the mastodons!”
“Ghosts of them,” Sebastian said, breathing deeply. “We called up Stanley, and got a party line. I’m glad you figured out how to hang up, break the connection.” He gingerly flicked fragments of wet paper from the front of his coat.
Castine looked back, toward the water. “Jesus,” she said hoarsely, and it sounded like a prayer. “They all died in the tar, what, a million years ago?” She shivered visibly. “And one of them was able to give a cry that echoed on 21st century Wilshire Boulevard!”
Vickery nodded. “I bet it wouldn’t have happened on any other night. Harlowe and Chronic have got the whole supernatural world lit up.”
Castine sat back and looked down at herself in the dim light. She sighed,and brushed ineffectually at bits of reed stuck to her coat. “We always wind up a mess, don’t we?”
“Come on, I’ll give you a boost over the gate.”
“Right. Out of here.” She stood up and shook her head sharply. “That sure didn’t help the damned mental buzz.”
“Nor my leg.” Vickery tried to grin. “I’m probably going to get some prehistoric mastodon virus now.”
“Hush.”
At the gate, they peered through the bars, watching impatiently for a break in traffic, and finally Vickery judged it safe to climb over. He linked his hands to make a stirrup for Castine to step into, and when he heaved up on her muddy shoe she caught the gate’s top rail and lithely swung her legs over it and landed relaxed on the other side, her wet coat flapping. Vickery pulled himself up and rolled over the top and landed beside her.
When they stepped out onto the Wilshire Boulevard sidewalk, it was clear that Santiago and Fakhouri were gone.
“Watch for Harlowe’s gray Chevy Tahoe,” said Vickery as they began walking quickly back toward where he’d parked Galvan’s Cadillac.
“I am, I am.”
But in the glow of the streetlights and headlights, Castine took a moment to look sideways at him, and then down at herself. They were both smeared with gleaming black, and they were leaving splashy wet footprints on the sidewalk pavement.
Vickery caught her look, and glanced at her. “Your suede coat’s wrecked,” he observed.
“If anybody says anything—we can claim we’re in zombie costumes.”
“Trick or treating,” agreed Vickery.
“Galvan,” Castine panted as they hurried across the Curson intersection, “is going to be furious at the mess we’ll make of her car, and it’s a Cadillac? How much time do we have?”
The car was only a couple hundred feet ahead of them now. Pedestrians they passed looked after them in wonder. The projections of cartoon ghosts and vampires were still swooping across the tall expanse of the Screen Actors Guild building.
Vickery tugged back his sleeve as they walked rapidly past the dark façade of Callender’s. “It’s eleven,” he said grimly, “and I think we’ve got to find a ghost who’ll be willing to look at the sigil.”
“And get it past Harlowe’s uncanny valley images,” she said breathlessly. “We want something like Stanley’s book—or Laquedem’s medallion—so we can call up the ghost—after we’re past the images.”
“A cooperative ghost.” Vickery had the keyring out, and he pushed the button on the fob that unlocked the car’s doors.
Several people were standing on the sidewalk staring at Galvan’s garish car, but they stepped back hastily when Vickery and Castine came panting up to it. Three of them, two teenage girls and a middle-aged man with tattoos on his bare forearms, began speaking in unison: “The night is breathing, look at the stars!”
Vickery automatically glanced at the sky as he opened the driver’s side door, but of course no stars were visible.
He started the car as Castine got in and fastened her seatbelt, and he accelerated away west on Wilshire. His hands were at once slippery and sticky on the steering wheel.
“The heater!” said Castine, and Vickery nodded and switched the heater on.
After he had sped past a couple of blocks, Castine said, “Those people were in that black hole state.”
“Probably happening all over L.A. tonight.”
“And at midnight they all get swallowed up.” She shifted on the seat and tugged at her soggy coat. Giving up on finding a comfortable position, she slumped back; and then pointed at the dashboard.
“Uh,” she said, “your metronome’s clicking.”
Vickery glanced at the little metronome. “No, it’s just rocking with the motion of—” he began, then stopped speaking when he saw that the rocking of the four-inch pendulum was slow but regular, and the thing was ticking at each end of its swing.
Vickery had many times seen the metronome pendulums in Galvan’s cars click rapidly back and forth in response to expanded possibility fields or supernatural attention, but this slow ticking, like a long-stroke grandfather clock, seemed to indicate nothing but a minimal interference.
Vickery realized with a sinking feeling that the metronome had probably been doing this for some time, unnoticed amid all the distractions.
“What the hell?” he said, watching traffic again. “It doesn’t act focused, but—” He flicked a glance at her. “Have you got some kind of talisman on you? Maybe they slipped a, a voodoo charm or something into your pocket?”
Castine poked a finger in the pocket of her blouse, then worked her hands into her coat pockets. After a few seconds she pulled them out and patted her sodden khaki pants and bent forward to feel the hems of the cuffs. “I’ve got nothing but the damn sock,” she said, then sat up. “Wait. What did you do with the firing pin from Ragotskie’s gun?”
“I, uh—yeah, I dropped it in Fakhouri’s Trader Joe’s bag, along with all the stuff from the Saturn’s glove compartment.” He nodded toward the bag on the floor by her feet.
She reached into the bag, and after a lot of crumpling of paper he could hear her fingers scraping the bottom.
At last she straightened up, holding the tiny metal rod between he black thumb and forefinger.
“Got it,” she said.
“You think that’s making the metronome move?”
“What else? The metronome is registering supernatural intrusion, but weak, barely enough to make it move at all. And I think if Ragotskie’s ghost tried to cling to us, the firing pin from his gun is the only handhold it’d be able to reach.” She held it out, and when Vickery extended his palm she disattached the thing from her sticky fingers. He scraped it off of his hand in his shirt pocket.
He returned his hand to the steering wheel. “Why would he—it!—want to cling—” Vickery paused, then nodded. “Oh.”
“Right,” said Castine. “He still wants us to save Agnes.”
“In spite of the fact that she killed him.”
