by E. Z. Rinsky
I wonder where Oliver Vicks is at this moment. If we can’t find the books, the next best thing would be to find him and either lead the cops to him or just put a bullet in his brain.
Or maybe we’ll get lucky, and that heart attack he predicted will hit tomorrow.
Courtney is right. The guy isn’t crazy, in any conventional sense. He just happens to have a pretty wild belief set.
Which we still don’t understand . . .
I sit up. In the other bed, Mindy and Courtney are a tangle of limbs, with key junctures mercifully concealed by a stiff white sheet. I slide open the top drawer of the nightstand between our beds, and I feel around for the Gideon Bible I’d assumed would be there. Take it into the bathroom and flip the light on.
I sit down on the only chair in the room—mitigate the blasphemy by closing the lid first—and flip open the periwinkle cover. I immediately remember why I’ve never really tried to read this thing. Table of contents is words like Leviticus, Matthew, Corinthians, which I’m familiar with in name only. I leave the bathroom to get the iPhone and return to the holy throne. Google Joseph Egypt in bible. Genesis 37. It takes me about five minutes to locate these inscrutable coordinates. It starts:
Joseph, a young man of seventeen, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives, and he brought their father a bad report about them . . .
The story of Joseph is long, and hard to understand. I recognize a few things from what Heald told us: Joseph’s brothers selling him to slavers who take him to Egypt, the place where Pharaoh calls Joseph “Sophnot” (Zaphenath-Paneah in this edition. Based on my extensive trove of biblical knowledge, I assume it’s the same thing). But the language is dense and archaic and maybe it’s because it’s five-thirty in the goddamn morning, or maybe because the Bible is the kind of thing you need a teacher to help you decipher, but every couple sentences my eyes go unfocused, and the words become little black ants scurrying around the page.
This story though . . . these fifteen pages must be damn important to Oliver Vicks. Is it possible he checked himself into prison, just to be like Joseph?
I slam the Bible shut and go back into the bedroom, letting the bathroom door close loudly, half hoping it wakes the two lovebirds up, and gives me an excuse to scream at them for ruining my night. I flop back down into bed.
What was I hoping for? A little-known passage where Sophnot—né Joseph–decides to go on a killing spree, and use his victims’ skin to bind his papyrus manuscripts, then gives the exact street address he hides out in?
Oliver Vicks. So fearless that he checked himself into prison, knowing he’d walk out when he was good and ready. Doesn’t fear death because he knows how he’ll die.
So would he really leave his precious skin hanging in the red house, because he was scared of us?
Doesn’t make sense.
I sit up again, and use the flashlight on the phone to find Courtney’s red acrylic bag on the floor. Rummage through his tools until I find the GPS scanner, and return to bed with it. Flip it on. It scans for three minutes and finds nothing. The chip is gone.
“Didn’t sleep well, Frank?” Mindy asks, between big bites of pancake at the hotel café. 7:30 a.m. Spent the last couple hours staring at the ceiling thinking about two things: 1) what happened to the chip and 2) if it’s a big mistake to bring Mindy with us to the red house to find out. I think her intentions might be alright—she certainly shared a lot with us yesterday. But after hearing her loopy pillow talk . . . She’s clearly not in her right mind and we can’t risk her doing something crazy. What if Oliver Vicks is there in the red house? Would she try to stop us from killing him because he wrote the books she loves? If she’s desperate enough to bang Courtney, well.
“No. No I did not sleep well,” I say.
“Sure looked like you went down pretty quickly,” says Courtney, wrapping up an absolute decimation of his fruit salad. He’s eating fast and avoiding Mindy’s eyes.
“Yeah, it was quick,” I say, as dryly as I can. “Quick, but not super satisfying.”
Neither of them seem to catch it. They just keep eating. All I’ve got is coffee and a cake donut. I feel sick.
“You two seem to have pretty healthy appetites this morning,” I say.
“Yeah well.” Courtney slurps down some orange juice. “We’ll need our strength today. It’s time to get access to any private CCTVs from around the aquarium, try to find Rico, and trace his path. It’s a shot in the dark—even if we can get some businesses to show us their footage, there are hundreds of angles to review. And there are only three of us, and we only have one day. But I think it’s our best chance. You should try to eat more, Frank. I’ll get you a bowl of oatmeal.”
Before I can protest, Courtney shoots up from his chair—obviously relieved at the excuse to extricate himself from the awkwardness—and rushes to the breakfast buffet. I watch Mindy drench a piece of pancake in syrup then scarf it down. I can’t tell whether I’m over-or underestimating her. Is she really trying to be cooperative? Or was her desperate performance last night a carefully calculated ruse, to convince Courtney to let her take the books to London with her if we find them.
You’d love them Courtney . . .
Courtney returns with a big bowl of oatmeal, garnished with strawberries.
“Try to force something down,” he says, putting a hand on my shoulder.
“Thanks, champ,” I growl, and devour a tasteless spoonful. “So you two then, you two slept well?”
Courtney stares at the bottom of his orange juice glass. “Yeah, pretty well,” he says softly.
“Did you sleep on the floor or something, Courtney?” I ask lightly.
“No, I mean. Well not on the floor, exactly . . .” he says, sounding like he has something stuck in his throat, awkwardly prodding some pieces of fruit.
“I just thought maybe after you two banged,” I say offhandedly, “she kicked you out of bed.”
Courtney drops his fork and goes deep red. Mindy continues eating, unfazed.
“Frank . . .” Courtney starts.
I shrug.
“You two are adults. You can do whatever you want,” I say.
“We thought you were asleep,” he stammers.
“I mean, I was asleep,” I say. “Before you started.”
“I don’t see why this is even any of your business, Frank,” says Mindy.
I turn to her slowly, raise an eyebrow in disbelief.
“Because I was next to you,” I say. “But hey, it’s not a big deal, really. Don’t worry about it. Next time I’ll get up and help. I’ve got a nasty right hook.”
“Stop, Frank.” Courtney’s face is burning.
“It’s fine,” Mindy says, seemingly unfazed. “I’m a big girl. I can take it.”
I smile.
“I’ll say. Courtney, come help me build a fruit salad, would you?”
This disturbs Mindy. Courtney looks first to me, then to Mindy, tugging nervously on the early sprouts of a mustache.
I stand up, grab him by the elbow, and half drag him to the breakfast buffet, well out of her earshot. He pushes me off of him.
“What are you doing?” he asks, not angry—he doesn’t really get angry—but irritated.
“Oliver was at the red house,” I say. “I checked the GPS last night. The chip died.”
Courtney’s features sharpen.
“That doesn’t make sense. If he took the skin, we should be able to track him. There’s no way he found the chip.”
“Do you know how you make leather?” I ask.
Courtney frowns.
“Vaguely.”
“I didn’t either, until I looked it up last night,” I say. “But after you hang the skin, you have to soak it for a long time, in limewater, so that it gets loose, and you can scrape off hair and shit.”
He rubs his pads of his thumbs and forefinger together.
“So the chip is in one of those metal barr
els,” he says morosely. “Submerged, and surrounded by metal. I’ll bet that limewater is particularly corrosive too.”
“That’s my guess.”
“Alright,” he says. “So we’ll go there. Maybe he’s still there? That’s what you’re thinking?”
I shrug.
“Seems likely he’s been there in the past twelve hours or so. We have no idea where the books are. But if we can find him, arrest him, maybe get the money back for Sampson, that would sure be a close second best.”
Courtney mulls this, nods to himself, then looks over his shoulder at Mindy, sitting alone finishing up her pancakes. Turns back to me looking troubled.
“And you don’t want to bring her. You want to ditch her again.”
“Your intuition is phenomenal.”
“Frank . . .” he says. “What about all the help she gave us last night?”
I smirk.
“Yes, Courtney. All the help she gave us last night.”
He blinks emptily at me, and then his features sharpen.
“Frank, if you’re insinuating that . . . no. C’mon. That was personal. That has nothing to do with my professional inclinations.”
I cock my head at him like really?
“I . . . I,” he stammers, “we just like each other, okay? It’s not as if . . . it wasn’t some sort of elaborate ploy. I really think she’ll be helpful—she knows a million times more about Oliver Vicks than us.”
“Sampson, Becky, the dudes in khaki,” I hiss. “They’re not bad people. They all think they’re doing the right thing, because they’re up to their necks in this mythology. They’re not thinking clearly anymore. Mindy . . . I’m not saying she’s there yet, but after the things she said last night, I think she’s getting there.”
Courtney holds his gaze level. Doesn’t say anything.
“This is classic cult behavior,” I say. “Otherwise intelligent people going out of their gourds because of a charismatic dude with some crazy ideas about life. And honestly, you’re susceptible to this kind of stuff. You get excited and carried away by this sort of mumbo jumbo. I don’t want her around you. I want you cold and methodical. Because we have like thirty hours to either find those books or find their author, or things are going to get real fucking dark.”
His lower lip curls inward. Still he says nothing.
“Be objective, Court. I’m not saying she’s not brilliant. Hell, I think as far as she knows she does want to help. But what if we find Oliver and—”
“Mindy is coming with us,” he says calmly. “She cooperated with us last night. And she knows far more about Sophnot and his writing than either of us.”
I take a few deep breaths.
“You know I always trust you,” I say. “But I really think you’re not thinking clearly about this.”
He puts a boney hand on my shoulder.
“I promise you this. If we don’t find the books—or Oliver Vicks—it won’t be because we let Mindy tag along.”
I swallow a retort, and nod along. There won’t be any talking him out of this, I can see that. Not worth pushing it. I’ll just have to keep a very close eye on her.
“I suggest you worry about things pertinent to the task at hand,” he says. “For instance, something that’s been bothering me since what Mindy told us last night. We all agree that Oliver is incredibly smart, and personable. Surely he had good grades, and would have aced any interview. So why didn’t he just go to architecture school?”
The drive back to the red house is tense. Mindy knows she’s unwanted, and stays silent in the backseat. Courtney cleans our Magnums, while I drive. Three straight nights without real sleep. Little shapes, bats of light, seem to keep flying across the windshield. Courtney should probably be driving.
It’s a bit past nine when I park a quarter mile away, and approach the house on foot, Courtney and I first, pistols drawn. It seems unlikely that Oliver is just hanging around the dome, given that he knows we’ve been there before. But it’s a mistake to try to predict this guy’s behavior.
The other night the place glowed, and seemed to be alive. I was sure in the daytime the red shingles would sparkle, like solar panels, powering this dazzling structure. But in the morning light, the place just looks like an inflatable tennis tarpaulin tent.
I’m not sure whether I’m more relieved or disappointed that there are no cars parked outside.
“He’s not here,” I say.
“Don’t let your guard down,” Courtney replies.
The front door is unlocked. Pistols out, we enter. Red velvet hallways totally empty, and look recently steam-cleaned. We wander through the halls for a while, trying to find the chamber again, gradually becoming more relaxed as it seems clear this place has been fumigated.
Don’t feel any of the creepiness from the other night, when it was filled with coked up, gallivanting teens. In fact, I feel a little silly now for ever being freaked out by this space. In the sober light of day it’s totally harmless. The red walls look lame, the floor that just the other night appeared to me as infinite blackness looks cheap and poorly crafted. It’s like there was a spell when we were here last, and it’s worn off.
“Oliver designed this place?” Mindy asks, behind us. “For what? It’s not like you could live here.”
“Tuesday night we saw one practical application,” I say, without turning around.
I grip my gun a bit tighter as we find the descending staircase I’m pretty sure leads to the chamber. The flimsy pine door opens to the hallway where the foursome was embroiled on a mattress. The mattress is gone. At the end of the hallway, the blast door to the chamber is ajar.
I already know it must be empty, but my heart still speeds up as I burst in, pistol first, Courtney right behind me. The automatic lights flick on and indeed, the room is totally bare. No basin to wash your feet. No little stone on the floor for incense. Strong smell of disinfectant.
The tapestry that separated the room into two is gone—it’s just one long space now—and the place Rico had been hanging is empty.
The drafting table is gone, as are the tools or masks. Only thing left is the stone worktable—must have been too bulky to move. Courtney inspects the surface; he announces it’s been scrubbed completely clean. The only proof that the other night wasn’t just a bad dream are the designs painted on the walls and ceiling.
“He even took the barrels,” I say. My voice echoes sharply in the claustrophobic space.
“Didn’t leave a trace,” Courtney says.
“So let’s go. It’s still early. Have at least a few hours to try to get CCTV footage.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about these walls?”
I turn, and see that Mindy is still standing near the door, her back to us as she examines a maze of red, white and blue lines. I don’t know how she can just stare at it—every time my eyes catch the design I feel that familiar dizziness, the start of a migraine.
“What is it?” Courtney calls.
Mindy doesn’t respond. Jerks off her backpack, and pulls a folder out. Combs through it frantically, then returns her attention to the wall. Courtney looks at me like: See? I told you bringing her was a good idea.
I return a look like: We’ll see.
Mindy is on her knees, fanning out papers on the floor. We approach her.
“What’s going on?” I say, gesturing to the wall in front of her without staring. “Is this writing?”
“Of course,” she mutters, half to herself. “You thought he did all this just for aesthetic purposes?”
Courtney squints at the wall in front of her, rubs the place where his mustache would be, finding only the facial hair equivalent of a sloppily trimmed lawn. I force myself to stare at the wall as well, ignore the wave of nausea accompanying it. I don’t see how this could possibly be a language. It looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.
“What does it say?” I ask, finally looking down to the bronze floor.
Mindy snorts, and swivels around. Casts
her hands out in front of her at the expanse of walls.
“Do you have any idea how much information is written here?”
I shake my head.
She turns and presses the tip of her pinky at a spot on the wall.
“Look,” she says. “Watch my finger.”
I fight the dizziness and watch as her pinky traces a path, and when I really look closely I can see that it’s following a white square that’s suspended above the red-and-blue chaos around it.
“See the square?” she says.
“Yes,” Courtney says quickly.
“Now how about this.”
Her pinky makes vertical lines through the square, and it takes a moment to see that she’s tracing black lines, negative space, through it. I realize that when I can see patterns in the madness, I feel less sick, because my eyes can focus just on the foreground.
“A white square with black vertical lines,” she says. “That’s a symbol I’ve seen several times.”
“What does it mean?” I ask.
“What does it look like to you?” she asks.
“A cage,” Courtney says.
Mindy smiles.
“Right. Depending on the context, it means either a cage, servitude, or prison.”
I think about what Heald told us, about one interpretation of the books was that they were the entirety of Oliver Vicks’s life.
“Is it the same text as the books?” Courtney says.
Mindy shakes her head at him in disbelief.
“I’ve had about two minutes so far to examine it, Courtney. Give me time. Let me see if I can make something of it.”
“Sounds good,” I say, and squat down on the brass floor, like a baseball catcher.
She scowls.
“I need to concentrate,” she says, and juts her chin at the blast door. “I need a month. But give me a half hour. We’ll take it from there.”
Courtney and I dutifully retreat to the velvet hallway. I immediately sink to the floor, the same place I dozed off Tuesday night. Courtney paces the length of the hall, hands clasped behind his back.
