She was prepared to resume her legal arguments, but when he finished reading, he considered her closely, and then smiled his humorless smile again. A slow burn ignited inside her. She recognized the smile for what it was—he was patronizing her. Few things made her more angry than being treated like a needy child.
“So, you want to see inside, do you? Let’s go inside then. You’ll not see anything different from what you’ve already seen. Boys, please excuse us.”
The old man produced a key, and the two guards stepped smartly out of the way. Once the door was opened, he entered a long combination into a key code box just inside the door to turn off the alarm system. Stepping aside, he held out his hand in an exaggerated gesture, indicating that Agent Allen should enter first.
Inclining her head, she stepped up to the door and turned to the two guards. She flashed them a flirtatious smile. “Boys,” she said in farewell, and then entered the mansion, followed closely by the white-haired man. With overt politeness, she held up her hand to stop him, “I won’t need an escort. I’m sure I’ll be fine on my own.”
“I’m sure you will,” he replied, “but there is nothing in the order that says I can’t come along. And, anyway, perhaps it is time we had a talk—we do work for the same government.”
She smiled again. “Perhaps it is.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask her why she wanted to search the mansion. She didn’t know why. Once again, her investigation around town had come up empty-handed. Last time, it had turned out the mansion had been the key to everything. She hoped it still might be.
As soon as they entered the mansion, it knew they were there. It always knew when humans trespassed its safe hold, tainting its refuge. It felt stronger. As its strength grew, so did its anger, so did its hunger for human flesh—a hunger that was now all consuming.
Even trapped, locked away down deep, it could smell two humans. It knew who they were. It knew both scents. It remembered and fought the chain that bound it. It wasn’t strong enough to break free yet, but still it fought the chain, still it hungered.
The mansion’s back door opened into the massive kitchen. As they passed through, everything was as Agent Allen remembered from her very first visit, the one she had made with Camm. The brightly polished pots and pans still hung above the spotless work area, reflecting the clear light streaming down from the high windows. Along one wall hung rows of burnished steel knives and cleavers, all glinting wickedly. The marble countertops shone, and the massive sinks were free of dead flies and any tarnish.
Entering the huge dining room with its intricately carved baroque furniture, she again found the room spotless. Pausing, she ran a hand over the smooth, dark wood of the immense dining room table. She nodded. As before, not a speck of dust was to be found anywhere. The white-haired man cleared his throat, gesturing toward the door leading farther into the mansion.
Their footsteps echoed hollowly as they trod on the dark slate floor of the mammoth grand hall. Big enough to contain several ordinary Trona homes, the hall was perfect in its grotesque splendor. The woodwork covering most surfaces writhed with carvings of gargoyles, devils, goblins, and predatory animals of all kinds, frozen in various attack modes.
A massive fireplace stood at the back end of the hall, tall enough for her to stand in and set with three immense logs on its grates. Around the fireplace, snarling rodents, carved into the musty moss-colored stones, appeared ready to spring out into the hall at any moment.
Agent Allen glanced up at the two upper stories. To reach their balconies, one would have to climb the grand sweeping staircases situated on each side of the hall toward the front of the mansion. She knew each level was lined with museum-quality paintings, mostly of demons or fanged animals, often half-human, half-animal, all wildly tearing apart their prey.
What still interested her most was the macabre grandfather clock that stood near the front of the hall. The clock was huge and the workmanship was perfect. The shiny wooden layers of the clock face seemed to reflect an old man’s face, while the clock’s hands were shaped like bony fingers. The brass weights were sculpted, coiled snakes. The pendulum was fashioned of various metals in the image of a hanged man, his face distorted with agony.
“Hmmm,” Agent Allen muttered to herself, suddenly aware of the older man’s gaze. She had not favored him with her thoughts, preferring to keep them to herself.
Everything looked exactly as it had on her first visit to the mansion, but completely opposite from her last. On her last visit, she had discovered Camm and Cal in the great hall, armed with high-power weaponry and suffering from serious physical and emotional trauma. They had been in a fight for their lives. Pools of green slime had spread across the slate floor. A trail of sulfurous-smelling fluid had led to the cellar door, which had been forced open.
Camm and Cal had led her down through the cellar to a secret door. They had followed the putrid trail of slime down a winding stone staircase deep into the earth. In a stone dungeon filled with bones—many of them children’s bones, they had watched the monstrous creature draw its last breath. Agent Allen shivered and shook her head to clear away the horrible image.
On that last visit, the mansion had been a wreck. Dirty, dusty, broken, stained, and tainted with a vile stench; it had aged fifty years in one night. Cobwebs hung from the damaged balconies. Splintered doors and gun blast holes told of violent struggles. Now, all was back spic and span, in perfect shape again without dirt or damage.
“Well,” Agent Allen said, “you guys sure cleaned up from the last time I was here.”
The old man smiled and asked, “What is it you want to see?”
Not wasting any time, she thought. “Is it?” She hesitated. “Is it still here?”
The man’s smile faded. He nodded.
“Is it way down all those stairs in that little stone room?” Agent Allen glanced towards the wine cellar door.
He nodded again.
“Can I see it? I mean, is it safe to see it?”
With a wave of his hand, he led the way down to the empty wine cellar. Pulling on the hand-shaped candle holder, he opened a secret door. Down, down the narrow stone steps they descended toward the deeply buried stone room.
Since her last visit, the mansion had been wired for electricity. Bare, dimly lit light bulbs (which she had to duck to avoid) hung from the low ceiling, lighting their way down. The white lines on her shirt glowed with a bright luminosity indicating that the passageway was lit with black lights, emitting a long-wave ultraviolet light.
As she neared the small stone room, the sickening odor of sulfur assaulted her senses. The narrowness of the spiral stairway, the cold dampness of the stone walls, and the frigid air, so different from the warm air outside, combined to send a shiver through her spine.
Thinking of what lay ahead, her chest tightened with foreboding. Then, she narrowed her eyes. No matter her fears, she was determined to see the creature again. She had to find out what was going on now. If there was any way for this thing to get out and prey on children, she had to know. If it was not responsible for the recent deaths, what new danger did they face?
At the bottom of the stairs, there was something else new. A large, thick Plexiglas window or door had been affixed with large, steel bolts into the stone wall, blocking the passage and separating the bottom stair from the little room and its occupant. Small holes had been drilled through the shield to allow an exchange of air, which explained the overwhelming stench.
On the other side of the Plexiglas lay the monstrous, rodent-like creature with a thick chain attached to one of its hind legs. Its dank, olive-green fur was matted and nasty, glistening wetly in shades of rotting green that Agent Allen remembered in her nightmares. It lay in viscous pools of stinking, steaming liquids that oozed from festering wounds and other orifices that may have been natural or not. To Agent Allen, nothing about the creature looked natural.
“Is it alive?” she asked.
As if to answer her question, the rat took
a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh of olive-colored vapors. Then, opening one puss-filled, blood-shot eye, it peered at her intently. The sense of evil was palpable.
Agent Allen backed up a step, hitting her head on a low-hanging light bulb. Instinctively, her hand went for her pistol. For a moment, neither agent nor rat moved.
VIII
The tall white-haired man looked amused at Agent Allen’s reaction.
Turning toward the Plexiglas, as if talking to the creature, he said, “We were afraid that our young friends had killed it, but fortunately we were able to resuscitate it. The builder of this mansion left a few instructions—very few—but there was some information on this creature.
“I don’t think the creature knows life and death the same way we do. While phosphorus is the basic building block at the cellular level of all life forms on Earth, this creature is built instead with the elements arsenic and sulfur. Its life functions are not like anything we’ve ever seen. By all normal criteria, it can be dead, but then still be reanimated.
“Although we were able to reanimate it after it was poisoned, it is not yet anywhere near its normal strength and vigor. Its healing processes are not fully understood, so we can only help it heal on a trial and error basis.
“For example, we were slow in realizing that it eats only fresh meat from its own kill, and then uses the bones from each kill in some kind of ritual that we don’t understand. Its olfactory senses are incredible. It seems to identify everyone and everything by scent. We’ve also noticed that it never sleeps, not ever. It will lie down and close its eyes, but its brainwave activity never slows down—it never stops thinking. Ever since it recovered from the toxin, its brainwave measurements have increased geometrically. I wish we knew what it was thinking.”
He shook his head, studying the creature closely. “Any normal injuries will heal within hours, but when Camm shot the alien toxin directly into its brain, the healing processes were directly impacted and have been slow to restart. We can’t help because we don’t know the difference between its dead flesh and its living flesh—it all looks dead to us. It may take considerable more time to bring it back to a hundred percent of its former strength.”
Agent Allen stared at the man with confusion. “It is a killer, a monster that eats people, and then saves their skulls. Why would you resuscitate it, let alone want it at a hundred percent?”
The man hesitated and scratched his head. Finally, he said, “I’m not sure how to explain this, but this thing is the guardian. It has a job to do, a very important job. Even though it did terrible things, we need it to do a job that only it can do.”
Agent Allen’s confusion did not clear up. “The guardian of what? This mansion?”
He hesitated again. “Well, yes, of the mansion, but more, much more than that. It is the guardian—” He appeared to search for the right word to use. “Of the passage.”
She glanced around. “Of this passage here?” she said, indicating the spiral stairway with a sweep of her hand.
“No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Much more than that.” He stared down at the creature as if the right words might be there. “It is the guardian of the passage between here and somewhere not here, uh, like a door, a quantum link outside of space and time. I’m not making sense. Am I? I don’t know how to explain what it does in layman terms.”
“You certainly don’t,” Agent Allen replied with impatience. “And, I have another question. When I was down here last time, there was a large, empty picture frame, like those on the big pictures upstairs, hanging on the back wall of this stone room. It is not there now. Why was that picture frame there, and what happened to it?”
The white-haired man smiled. “I’m not sure this will be any clearer. The frame was not a picture frame, but a dimensional frame that harnessed the cross over energies of overlapping dimensions. Normally, dimensions don’t touch, but apparently when they do, like here in Searles Valley, the dimensional overlap can cover many square miles. However, the dimensional energies can be exchanged only at a focal point that might develop anywhere within the range of overlapping or touching dimensional fields. One or more focal points can develop randomly at any time or place across the overlapping range of fields.
“However, the builder of this mansion, a Mr. Alberto Samuel, Sr., used a very ingenious dimensional frame to stabilize the focal point, allowing him to control the energy exchanges. With that frame, he could control both the place and time of the energy cross over. Now that the frame is gone, we’re finding that energy will cross over at random focal points, developing at any time or place across the Searles Valley basin.
“And, when I say energy, I mean anything and everything. Remember Einstein’s formula E=MC2? Everything is energy. Even matter is a form of energy. Things like that green monstrosity in front of us can come through a focal point. And that’s the problem. When you open up a focal point to bring through the untold mineral wealth from another dimension, how do you stop an unwanted life form from coming through at the same time?
“That was the other advantage of Alberto Samuel’s dimensional frame—it could hold a guardian in limbo between dimensions, releasing the guardian when the focal point opened and recapturing the guardian when the point closed.
“We don’t know where Alberto got a giant undead rodent with cells made of arsenic and sulfur, but it can exist between dimensions without apparent harmful effect. When the focal point was opened, this guardian was always right there in the passageway, challenging other life forms that might want to wander through.
“Unfortunately, we let the dimensional frame get away from us. Like I said, Alberto’s operating instructions were sparse and incomplete. We were operating mostly by trial and error, and we didn’t get a second chance on some errors.”
Totally overwhelmed with information, Agent Allen stared at the old NSA agent for a moment, but quickly recovered, not wanting him to stop talking. “Does this dimensional frame’s disappearing act have anything to do with the mansion changing from the wreck I last saw into the mansion’s current state of spotless perfection?”
The white-haired man smiled sourly. “Only incidentally. There are at least two mansions, one in this dimension and at least one other on the opposite side of a quantum passage that leads to who knows where. The mansions would switch places when the grandfather clock donged at midnight, releasing the guardian, and then switch back again sometime before dawn, recapturing the guardian. The grandfather clock controlled the dimensional frame, and the dimensional frame controlled the focal point and the guardian.
“When you were last here, the clock in the other world’s mansion had been damaged by our young friend’s gun fire, trapping the damaged house on this side of the passage. When we attempted to repair the controller, our man inadvertently opened a focal point, triggering an automatic switch-back, bringing the undamaged mansion back here. Apparently, this dimension is the normal or default state of rest for the spotless mansion.”
He sighed. “We regret that occurrence. We had brought the dimensional frame up to the main hall, where we could study the frame and the broken clock together. When the damaged mansion switched back to its state-of-rest location on the other side of the passage, it took both the frame and the broken clock with it. We were left with the spotless mansion and an unbroken clock, but no dimensional frame, on this side.
“Unfortunately, the clock that needs to be fixed is now on the other side where we can’t get to it. The clock on this side is still working. Until we turned it off, this clock tried to open the focal point each night at midnight, but couldn’t because the broken clock on the other side wasn’t able to open the opposite end of the focal point at the same time.
“Each time the end of the passageway opened on our side, the mansion partially phased out. When the focal point failed to develop, the mansion phased back in, always spotlessly clean and in perfect repair, no matter how big a mess we made during the day.
“We
have decided there must be a default version of this mansion somewhere because, while it never completed the switch to the other dimension, it always came out of the attempted phase-through process in exactly the same unblemished condition.”
For the first time, he smiled a real smile. “We no longer enjoy the luxury of having the nightly phase-through process to do our housekeeping for us. The risks of unwanted guests coming through even an incomplete focal point were just too great, so we turned the clock off.
“But, even when the clock was working, we had to clean up any mess made by that giant rodent. Without the dimensional frame on this side of the passageway, the clock didn’t seem to know what to do with the rat, and we don’t either. It doesn’t make sense to waste it, so we keep it chained down here, hoping to use it again as a guardian someday.”
Agent Allen stared at him, slowly shaking her head. “You know, in some crazy, demented way, that almost makes sense.” Drawing a deep breath, she glared at the monster rat. “In the end, I don’t think that anything you do with that monster will make sense.”
The white-haired man coughed and cleared his throat. “Let’s go back upstairs, where we can breathe fresh air and continue our discussion where that thing isn’t watching us so closely.”
Agent Allen nodded her head in assent. “Okay, just a second though. Let me get a good last look at that ugly thing.”
Stepping closer to the Plexiglas, she placed both hands on the clear barrier and studied the rat. Its oozing wounds had streaked its fur with green slime, adding to its hideous appearance. Its hairless tail dipped in and out of the noxious pools surrounding it. Dangerous and revolting, it smelled as bad as it looked. It was still peering at her through the narrow slit of one eye. An olive-colored mist expelled from its mouth with each breath.
Mojave Green Page 7
