by Brian Harmon
A moment later, a familiar, digital ringing drifted toward them from farther down the hall.
Chapter Forty
Eric, Aiden and the man in the pink shirt all stood staring down the hallway as the sound of Eric’s ringing phone drifted toward them, faint but perfectly audible.
It wasn’t far away.
Eric had time to be thankful that he’d never felt the urge to change his ringtone to something creepy, like the theme song for Halloween or The Twilight Zone. Or that circus tune that always reminded him of clowns… He was fairly sure his heart might not have taken that.
“Come on,” said Pink Shirt as he began moving toward the sound.
Aiden started after him, but Eric placed his hand on the back of his neck, halting him. “Still have that Taser?” he whispered.
Aiden looked up at him, his expression anxious, and shook his head. “It was gone when the cowboy locked me in the asylum.”
That figured. Eric nodded and the two of them followed their mysterious companion down a short set of stairs to an intersection in the hallway, where the sound grew louder.
The shadows continued to lurk in their peripheral vision. Each time they looked in one direction, something darted past in another. But nothing more revealed itself.
When the phone stopped ringing and his voicemail picked up, Eric disconnected the call and redialed.
Around the corner, a doorway stood open. The ringtone was coming from inside.
The three of them exchanged uncertain glances and cautiously approached the door.
The room beyond was dark. There was no window. The only source of light was the faint glow from Eric’s phone, which revealed the creepy outline of a man with wispy, white hair, sitting with his back to them in a blackened, metal chair.
“Hello?” said Eric.
But the man didn’t acknowledge them.
“Where are we?” Aiden asked.
“Janitor’s office, most likely,” Pink Shirt replied as he stepped into the room and approached the old man sitting at the desk.
Eric followed him. “Excuse me,” he said. “You have my phone. I’d like it back.”
The phone stopped ringing and fell dark.
The man at the desk remained silent.
Eric had a bad feeling about this.
Death is here with us… Inside the school… The old man had spoken these words to Eric only a moment ago. Had death come for him as soon as he hung up? We won’t talk like this again… Had those words been his last?
As he and Pink Shirt stepped up to either side of the chair, Eric braced himself. He’d seen enough horror movies to know this scene well enough. This was the part where something chilling waited to reveal itself.
Pink Shirt withdrew a flashlight from one of his pockets and switched it on.
Eric had half-expected to find a gruesome scene illuminated by the light, perhaps a horribly mutilated corpse with wide, staring eyes and blood splashed onto every surface of the room. Therefore, he was only half as startled when the light revealed the shriveled face of a dry corpse clutching his cell phone in one, bony hand.
Pink Shirt didn’t flinch at all, as if he’d expected nothing different.
Aiden, on the other hand, left the room in a hurry and with a mouthful of stifled expletives.
Eric didn’t blame him. He uttered one of his own, just for good measure.
Pink Shirt examined the corpse in front of him and then lifted his eyes to Eric. “This is not the gentleman who spoke to you a moment ago.”
Eric had to agree. This man had obviously been dead much longer than a few minutes. He was all but mummified.
Why the unfortunate fellow was holding his cell phone, however, was a mystery to Eric. He certainly hadn’t retrieved it from Hosler Avenue himself. And somebody had used it to call him only moments ago.
Pink Shirt stared at the corpse. “Someone else is here somewhere.”
Not yet ready to face the task of taking back his property, Eric procrastinated by examining the scene. The fire had destroyed everything in here except the metal furniture. The desk, chair and filing cabinets remained intact, although warped and charred. But there was an old newspaper laid out on the desk in front of the corpse.
Pink Shirt shined his light onto it and skimmed the article it was turned to. “It’s about the fire of 1881.”
Eric looked up at him, surprised. “Another fire?”
“Not another fire. The same fire. Look.”
The article showed a map of the city, revealing the fifteen blocks that were ravaged by the famous inferno. This school was located right in the heart of it.
Eric tried to remember what he knew about the 1881 fire. “No one knows what started it or even where it started,” he recalled.
“No one knows? Or no one remembers?”
Eric looked around at the charred walls and ceiling. Was he really looking at a casualty of the historic fire that wrecked Creek Bend more than a century ago? Was the mystery of how the fire started simply a detail lost when this school slipped into the unseen?
Suddenly, the mystery had taken on a new dimension that encompassed the entire town and its history. How far back did this go?
“I don’t believe any of this is a coincidence,” said Pink Shirt. “It all fits together somehow. We just have to put the pieces where they go and hope we have enough to grasp the bigger picture.”
Eric nodded and looked down at his phone still clutched in a cold, skeletal hand. He’d put it off long enough. Half expecting the corpse to turn and ask him what he thought he was doing—it wasn’t as if the dead had never talked to him before—he reached carefully down and grasped the dead man’s sleeve with one hand. The last thing he thought his poor heart could take today was to have a skeleton’s arm come off in his hand as he attempted to pick up the phone. But it slid from the bony fingers without trouble.
There, he thought. I had to take it off a corpse, but I got my damn phone back. Now everyone can just get off my case about it.
“Doesn’t look like there’s anything else for us in here,” declared Pink Shirt. “Let’s go find your friend.”
Eric nodded and stepped out into the hallway.
Aiden was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’d he go?”
Pink Shirt looked up and down the hallway. “I thought he was right outside the door.”
Shadows darted this way and that in the corners of their eyes, but none of them belonged to Aiden.
Eric called out to him, but there was no answer. He was gone. Every instinct told him this was very bad.
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions,” warned Pink Shirt. “Maybe he had some kind of revelation and went to check something out.”
It wasn’t all that unlikely. After all, Aiden had little reason to trust Eric any more than Eric trusted Pink Shirt. Maybe the sight of the corpse had somehow triggered a realization and he hurried off to find the secret on his own while they discussed the dead janitor.
But on the other hand, it also wasn’t all that unlikely that there was something terrible lurking in these blackened hallways that was picking them off one-by-one.
“We should find him.”
But Pink Shirt was already moving away down the hall, his flashlight trained on the warped lockers. “We will,” he assured him. But he sounded distracted.
“You don’t think we should make it a top priority?”
“Do you see this?”
Eric turned to face him. He saw nothing but the same destruction he’d witnessed throughout the ruined schoolhouse. That and those distracting, darting shadows. “What?”
Pink Shirt swept his light up and down the wall of lockers. “There’s a difference.”
Eric looked at the ones nearest to him. They were not merely scorched. They were warped from the intensity of the heat. Clearly, the fire had burned hotter in this part of the building than elsewhere. But what did that tell them?
He walked toward the man in the cheerfully col
ored shirt, studying the anything-but-cheerfully charred locker doors as he went. Soon, he realized that the damage was growing more pronounced. By the time he reached the spot where Pink Shirt was standing, he found that the locker doors had actually melted a little in the blaze.
Beyond this point, the damage receded again. And now Eric saw something else. Where the metal had softened, it had warped in the direction the flames were rushing. On either side of him, the lockers were deformed in opposite directions.
He turned his back to the lockers and saw that he was standing in front of a doorway. The frame was burned almost completely away, the jagged edges of the scorched cinderblocks exposed.
“This is where the fire began,” Pink Shirt declared. “And it was hot.”
Eric approached the doorway. The room inside was pitch black. Now that he was thinking about it, the stench of smoke was stronger here. And there was another stench, as well. Something earthier… He couldn’t quite place it, but the word that came to mind was “moldy.”
Pink Shirt stepped boldly past him and entered the room, sweeping his flashlight around.
Eric followed him and withdrew his phone. (His own, this time, not Karen’s.) It didn’t put out nearly the same amount of light as his companion’s flashlight, but it helped. And he felt better knowing that he had it.
The room looked less like it belonged in a school than in a factory. Dozens of metal pipes of different sizes snaked through the room, running from wall to wall and floor to ceiling, twisting and coiling around several large tanks and boxy, burned-out machines.
Everything looked half melted.
“Boiler room,” said Pink Shirt.
Of course. That made sense.
Eric didn’t see any shadows in here. Was it only because it was too dark?
“The fire started here.”
That made sense, too. The most likely ignition point of any fire was the structure’s main source of heat. “Accidents do happen.”
“They do. But this was no accident.”
“It wasn’t?”
Pink Shirt stood in the middle of the room, turning in a slow circle, shining his light into every crevice of the room. “You smell it? A dank, swampy stink.”
He did smell it. It was stronger now than it was before, a heavy, nauseating odor just beneath the lingering stench of smoke.
“It all fits.”
Eric stood motionless, watching him. “Does it?”
“The patterns…”
Eric wanted to ask what these patterns were, but he was sure this man wasn’t going to enlighten him until he was good and ready.
What was it he said when they first reached the first floor hallway? Something about the birds and the worms and even the weeds that had taken root in the soiled floors?
“I saw it when I first arrived in this town. It was everywhere. An ancient, forgotten language, painted in the mold and the decay and the rust. Everywhere there was deterioration or rot, I saw it. Patterns. Messages. It spoke to me.”
Eric turned and looked at his phone. Immediately, Isabelle texted him, echoing his exact thoughts: OH SHIT THIS GUY’S CRAZY
Pink Shirt turned suddenly and faced him.
Eric lowered the phone and stared back at him. “So the fire wasn’t an accident.”
“Hardly. Normer was right. There is something hidden here, something truly profound.”
“You know the secret?”
Pink Shirt gave him a disturbingly wicked smile. “We’re dealing with a jinn.”
Eric blinked. “Wait…what?”
“Probably not what came immediately to mind when I said that.”
Eric nodded. “I figured.” Robin Williams’ lovable, wish-granting Disney character didn’t exactly fit in with what was going on here. But he didn’t need this man to tell him how much legends could change over time and across different cultures. There was no such thing as a genie and probably no such thing as the jinn (from which the idea of the lamp-dwelling genie evolved), but there could be things out there that originally inspired the story of the jinn. Every legend had to start somewhere, after all.
It was the same as the golems he faced last year. There was likely no such thing as a real golem by any strict definition, but the things he faced were similar enough to the myths to have been given the name at some point.
Pink Shirt turned and continued looking around the room. “Existing in a nightmarish, neighboring dimension and comprised of living fire and smoke, this thing is essentially a living force of destruction. Pure, chaotic power in an indestructible, physical form. A dark god, practically.”
“What the hell’s it doing in Creek Bend?”
“Not just Creek Bend. I’ve heard of them turning up all over the world. I’ve never seen one, though, or met anyone who has. It has to be summoned, and I doubt anyone ever survives its arrival.”
Eric was horrified. “Why would someone summon a living force of destruction?”
“Why do people do anything destructive?”
Eric had no response to that. He had a point. Why build bombs? Why commit acts of terror? Why make war? Why watch Fox News?
“I’ve never known one to be successfully summoned. No one knows how. The best most fools can do is open a tiny crack just long enough to let it reach in and slaughter them. But this time…” He shook his head. “Every now and then they manage to actually throw open a door.”
“You mean they actually summoned it all the way into the world?”
“No. Nothing it could actually pass through. But enough to wreak havoc on more than just the immediate vicinity. What’s remarkable is that it’s still here.”
“Still here? Right now?”
“Its flames may have died, but its voice carries on. The patterns in the decay… It speaks through the rot. Through death.”
Eric shivered.
“It’s somewhere in this building. Somewhere right around here. This is where its breath entered Creek Bend in 1881, burning everything in its path.”
“In this room?”
“Through this room.”
“From where?”
“That’s what you’re here to show me.”
“Me?”
Once more, Pink Shirt turned and faced him. “You. And your little window of truth.”
Eric stared back at him. The glass shard.
“Clearly, there’re places inside this building that are hidden even deeper. Just like we needed the glass to see the school, we need the glass again to see what’s hidden inside the school.”
As Eric stared at him, something dropped from the ceiling between them, a tiny, gold streak, glinting in the faint lights they carried.
Blinking, he lifted his eyes to the blackened ceiling. There, directly above him, was a large, rippling pool of shimmering, gold liquid.
Eric stared at it, a cold lump forming in his belly. “It was you…”
“It was me.”
Eric lowered his face again. For the first time, the man in the pink shirt took off his glasses. Behind them, his eyes shined the same color of molten gold as the aura plasma on the ceiling.
Chapter Forty-One
This was why the cowboy didn’t use the aura plasma to fight off the old woman. It wasn’t he who controlled the stuff. Pink Shirt lied to him.
“You’re not even surprised.”
Eric had been fooled by this man’s lies. He believed that the aura plasma was controlled by the cowboy. It made sense to him at the time and he never thought to doubt it. But…
“You never trusted me. Not for a second.”
“Was I wrong?”
Pink Shirt smiled. His golden eyes gleamed. Eric could barely stand to look at them, but he refused to avert his gaze. “No. I suppose you weren’t.”
“You were using us.”
“Sorry about that. But clearly I needed the both of you.”
“Where’s Aiden?” It was clear now that he hadn’t just wandered off.
“Somewhere quiet.”
/>
“That’s not very helpful.”
“Isn’t it?”
Talking in circles again. Eric really hated that.
“So this is what you were after? This…thing…that’s hidden here?”
“I didn’t know what was here, to be honest. But I had a feeling it was going to be something incredible. And I was right.”
“What happened to not letting your bosses get their hands on the secret?”
Pink Shirt’s grin never faltered. “Don’t be ridiculous. You think anything I find here could make a difference? These people… They have so many of these ‘profound secrets’ that you can’t possibly imagine. It’s like donating a single bullet to the army. I doubt they’ll even care.”
“So what is it you want?”
“Seriously? Think about it.” He leaned closer and spoke slowly, as if Eric wasn’t bright enough to fully understand the words he was saying. “I want those secrets. I want to be let into their little club.” He turned away and swept those queer eyes around the room. “I’ve been a good little soldier. I’ve done everything I’ve been told. I even disposed of the useless Texan for them.”
Eric felt shocked. “They wanted him dead?”
“He’d outlived his usefulness. I let him keep you distracted for a while and then I sent him to intercept you at Hosler, where I assumed you’d save me the trouble of disposing of him.”
“So you planned that?”
“Of course I planned it. I planned everything. I’ve been in complete control all day.”
Eric realized that he was right. If it was Pink Shirt who controlled the aura plasma, then he was the one who attacked them on the highway. He was the one who abducted Aiden and locked him in the basement of the asylum, only to let him out again to win his trust and gain entry into this little raiding party.
No wonder the cowboy confronted him on Hosler. He wasn’t the one spying on them, so he knew nothing of the old woman’s vengeful spirit. He was as much a victim of this man’s lies as Eric and Aiden.
“You were the only wrench in the machinery,” declared Pink Shirt. “You showed up out of the blue with your strange ability to sense my deception.” He turned and faced him again. “How do you do that? That’s all I want to know.”
