Piercing the Veil

by Guy Riessen

  “Sheesh, now you’re just boaring me.”

  Derrick frowned at Howard for just a moment “Holy crap, you dug deep that time, H, nice one, man!” he said as he recalled the myth of the boar sent by Artemis to kill Adonis.

  Howard bowed low, doffing an invisible cap.

  Howard walked next to Derrick as he put the metal-studded wheels through their icy-ground paces in the frozen mud and grass next to the brick path that led between the campus hospital and the University Professorial Offices. Derrick’s breath was huffing out in big white plumes once they got to the door.

  “Man, if I had to use this thing for long, I’d totally put an engine in it.”

  “Fuel-injected, turbo?”

  Derrick sighed, “Uh no,” he said, waving his index finger, “I’d put in an electric motor—the flat torque and zero-to-sixty impresses the chicks way more than the rumble and stink of a gas-powered engine.” Derrick patted the arm of the chair.

  “No one knows the chicks like you do, D.”

  Derrick caught Howard’s eyeroll. “Just, sayin’.”

  Howard pulled Derrick backward up the steps then into the lobby where he called the elevator. By standing next to Derrick’s outstretched leg, Howard could reach the panel and pressed the four-button to go to the floor where most of the Linguistics department had their offices.

  “I see how it is, Language Boy.”

  “Hey, you want a different button, feel free to get up and press it,” Howard said.

  Derrick grumbled.

  HOWARD’S OFFICE WAS tiny. Well, it was tiny in relation to the number of books Howard crammed in it, anyway. Shelves lined every wall, with an additional couple standing in the middle just past his desk.

  The afternoon’s flat gray light shined through the tall window on the east wall. There was an eight-foot-long table pushed up under the window to make use of the natural light. Each office had tall ceilings and a single light fixture mounted high in the center. Basically worthless, so most professors had desk lamps and floor lamps plugged into the several floor outlets.

  Howard switched on his desk lamp and the two swing-arm lamps that were clamped to the side of the long table. The table top was covered with a long white sheet of butcher paper and on top of the paper was an array of various artifacts.

  There were several dark-bound tomes opened to thick stained vellum pages scrawled with text that seemed to writhe disgustingly, even as Derrick looked at them. Various small statues were scattered about between the tomes, some were depictions of horrific creatures, others seem to show humans engaged in abhorrent acts.

  Derrick rolled down the length of the table. “Dagger new?”

  “Yep, Mary and I brought it back from the dig in Egypt.” Howard stepped over to the table and picked up the dagger. The blade was black and about ten inches long with a groove that ran the entire length, and two that ran about half the length.

  “Oh really? From the drone-scan expedition you and Mary coordinated?”

  “Well, yeah, we actually did a small single-chamber excavation while we were there.”

  “Sarah hasn’t released those mission files yet.” Derrick knew Howard and Mary left for Egypt, but he and Sarah had been sent off on a priority investigation in the North Dakota oil fields at the same time.

  Holding out his hand, Howard passed it to him. “Gah, gross—that blood on it?” Derrick asked. He looked closer. “Weird man, this dagger doesn’t look Egyptian. Those are blood-channels, right? Sacrificial?”

  The hilt of the dagger was carved with a creature with folded wings and a circular mouth filled with teeth with a tongue that hung out and down to its bloated belly. On closer inspection, the dagger wasn’t black, but instead, appeared to be made of a very dark green stone. It felt slippery, almost slimy, and much colder than the temperature in Howard’s office.

  “Definitely sacrificial, yeah,” Howard said. “I’m working on the inscription around the hilt base.”

  Derrick peered closely at the carvings in the stone. Deep angular slashes, red like fresh arterial blood, ringed the base between the grip and the hilt.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but that’s not paint or stain.”

  Derrick’s lip twisted up in distaste. “What d’you mean?”

  Howard pointed at the paper where the dagger had been resting. A thick pool of red traced the T-shaped outline of the dagger, hilt, and cross guard. The edges of the pools had dried to a brown-red that flaked and crusted. Derrick looked back at the blade again. A trace of thick red had dripped from the angular text, the drip rolling slowly down the hilt toward his hand. Derrick shifted his hand further down and held the dagger back towards Howard.

  Howard nodded, saying, “Yeah, that’s blood. Human. Mixed types and genetics according to the labs. Sarah’s got Mary working on the genome trace, so we can see if the blood is from a specific population.” Howard took the dagger and set it back down on the paper.

  Derrick wiped his hands on his pants. “Wow, that’s a gross one, H.”

  “You know it,” Howard said, turning back toward his friend. “And it keeps bleeding like that. Twenty-four seven,”

  Howard pulled a piece of blotter paper from a box on his desk. “Have to swap out the blotter about every twenty-four hours or so. I dry it under the heat lamp.” He swapped the fresh blotter sheet with the one under the dagger, then switched on a red heat lamp clamped to the center of the table. He pulled a piece of brown-stained paper from a wire in-basket sitting under the lamp and replaced it with the freshly bloodied blotter sheet.

  Howard pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and clicked it open. Writing the date and time on the paper he said, “I’m keeping each one as dated samples. Might mean something to Mary.” He lifted the top of a plastic filer he had on his desk and slipped the paper inside.

  “You’re not planning on bringing that bleeding thing home with us over the weekend? Maybe I should stay with someone less, I dunno, gory?”

  “Nah, don’t need the actual dagger, I’ve already transcribed the text. Just need these books.” He closed and stacked three of the open tomes on the table.

  “That’s bad enough. That’s some creepy writing in those.”

  “Right there with ya, buddy. Let’s blow, dude.”

  Derrick rocked his wheelchair back and forth. He pushed his hair back and grinned up at his friend. “So, about that Steam Wars expansion, man—it’ll be handy having me at your place for a while!”

  “Yeah, no kidding. With you in the hospital, it’s taken every ounce of my willpower to not fire it up without you.” Howard grinned back.

  “C’mon, H, you can’t play a medic-dwarf solo. You’d just die without my techno-mage.”

  “I’m still counting that as willpower.”

  Derrick cast a skeptical eye at Howard. “Anyway,” he said, exaggerating the word and rolling himself toward the door. “We gotta stop by my office still. If you get books, I do too.”

  “What book? Love in the Capacitor Age?”

  “Shut it, man. And take me to the elevator.”

  Howard tucked his books under his arm, followed Derrick out of his office, and locked the door behind him.

  The wait for the elevator was blessedly short—a benefit of being there after professor office hours were over, so there was no student competition for the single elevator car.

  This was the first time Derrick had been up to his office since his kidnapping, but when they got off at Derrick’s floor, he knew something was wrong as soon as he rolled backwards out of the elevator cage and into the hallway.

  Light rimmed the edges of the doorway to his office at the far end of the hall. The door, which should have remained locked ever since they drove off in the VW bus headed for California over a week ago, was now open and hung slightly ajar.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  DERRICK RAISED HIS open hand, turned his head back toward Howard and whispered, “Dang, H. My door’s open.”

  Howard nodded and moved
down the hall, Derrick rolling right behind him.

  The paper label that identified Derrick’s office to students and faculty alike for the last four years, despite Sarah’s promise every year that next year’s budget would allow them to get him a brass-colored plastic nameplate like everyone else on this floor, was ripped from behind its clear plastic slot. The door hung loose in the frame, the wood near the latch itself was splintered.

  Howard stopped before they reached the door, and whispered to Derrick, “Damn, D!”

  “Yeah, I know. It was locked when we left for California.” Derrick rolled up next to Howard. The wheels of the chair made a slight squeak on the hallway tile. “Worst part is, there’s no way Sarah will budget a nameplate for me this year if she’s gotta pay for a new door.”

  Howard shushed him.

  They listened, but there was no sound of movement in the office. Then they heard the window in the office shatter. Howard tossed a quick glance at Derrick and shared a nod.

  Howard faced the door and used his boot to shove it open. The squeal from the weight hanging unevenly on the hinges was loud in the empty hallway. He was balanced on the balls of his feet, arms up, ready to strike, or throw.

  Late-afternoon light streamed in through the broken window, golden shafts breaking through the clouds. Motes of dust swirled in the beams of light that cut across the darkened office. The fluorescent tubes that Derrick had installed overhead last year were shattered. Howard stepped in, head swiveling left and right. Derrick leaned over the arm of his chair trying to see around his big friend.

  A silhouette exploded from the corner and dove toward the broken window.

  “Holy shit! Stop!” Howard yelled, followed immediately by “What the ...?”

  “Grab him!” Derrick shouted, shoving at his wheels and rolling into the office.

  The dark shape jumped through the jagged hole, knocking shards of glass teeth out from the open maw of the window.

  Howard raced to the windowsill. Taking care not to touch anything that might harbor fingerprints, he leaned his head out the window.

  “Is he on the ledge, H? Grab him!” Derrick’s voice was loud against the hiss of the wind through the shattered window.

  Howard turned toward Derrick, his eyes were wide and white in the low light. “Shit, D, we’re six stories up.”

  “Yeah, so grab him off the ledge man, before he falls or something.”

  “Whatever that thing was, it’s not on the ledge. It jumped clear of the building.”

  “Oh my god, can you see him? You think he’s still alive.”

  “That thing was still falling when I looked down, but it was just a shadow.”

  “A shadow?”

  “Yeah, a shadow cast on nothing—just falling through the air. When it hit the ground, it looked like a bag of black flour ... dropped from six stories up.”

  “What?”

  “Foompf.” Howard spread his hands outward. “Did you fail a student or something? You know, a dead shadow demon student or something like that ... might be looking for revenge?”

  “You might think so, but Sarah’s got me on the sick-list, remember ... none of my students have died yet this semester, man.” Derrick’s voice trailed off as he rolled himself into the room. Papers littered the floor. Every drawer in his desk had been pulled out, dumped onto the top of the desk. Electronic components spilled everywhere. The empty drawers had been thrown into the corner where they lay bent and broken in a heap. Both of his four-drawer file cabinets had been yanked open and all the hanging folders were scattered everywhere. His magnifying lamp, hung with its arm bent from the corner of the desk. The magnifying glass was shattered.

  Derrick pulled his phone from his pocket and paused for a moment, looking at Howard. He grimaced and said, “This is messed up. Puts a real crimp on our plans for playing SEW.”

  “Yeah all these tiny electrical bits are gonna take forever to clean up. I don’t know how working with all this small stuff doesn’t drive you crazy.”

  “Maybe it does, and I’ve just got that special brain compartment walled off, as Doc would say.”

  “Hmm, comforting. You need more books and less, uhm,” Howard said, stooping to pick up a tiny brown tube with a wire running through it, “electric hotdogs for your GI Joes?”

  “That’s a resistor, H.”

  “Oh yeah.” Howard pulled a penlight from his pocket and shined it in the darkest corners and under the desk.

  “Looking for dust bunnies?” Derrick asked.

  “Just looking around to see if there’s any more of those shadow things.” Howard bent down and picked up a baggie full of electronics. He walked over to Derrick and stood in front of him. “Hands out.”

  Derrick cupped his hands, holding them over his lap. Howard poured the contents of the bag into his lap.

  “What the heck, Howard? We need to clean this mess, not make more. Besides, you shouldn’t handle stuff until the police get here. Speaking of which ...” Derrick began to dial, and Howard put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

  Howard said, “Sarah needs a call, but the Campus police, not so much.”

  “What about ... fingerprints ...” Derrick said, realizing how stupid that sounded even as he was saying it.

  Howard shook his head. “Yeah, no. Supernatural shadows that leap through jagged glass shards without leaving so much as a drop of blood, fall six stories, then burst like a water balloon filled with laser-printer toner aren’t gonna leave fingerprints for the campus cops. This is our purview.”

  “Hmm. Point taken.”

  Howard slapped Derrick on the shoulder and waved the baggie with his other hand. “Hang tight, bro. Sorry about the additional mess,” he said, waving at the pile of electronics in Derrick’s lap. “I’m going to go see if there’s anything left of the shadow-thing-dust-pile that I can bag and tag for Mary. I sure as hell haven’t seen anything like it before. You?”

  “Nope. Think it could be related to the Haunt that busted my leg?”

  “Seems likely—we know you gave that François dude your name, and someone sure had it out for your paper name tag in the hallway. Plus, you nixed my demon-student theory.” Howard laughed.

  “You know those demon-student theories always collapse under scrutiny anyway.”

  Howard found an unopened box of latex gloves under a heap of papers that had been dumped from a desk drawer. The box was split, as if someone had stepped on it. He picked it up and shook splinters of fluorescent tube glass into the wastebasket before tearing open the top and pulling out gloves and stuffing them into his pocket.

  “I’ll call Sarah. She and Mary just left for Thailand a couple days ago, remember? Dunno if I can reach her at the moment—it’s five a.m. tomorrow there already ...” Derrick paused for a moment, then waved Howard off with one hand, “You go on and have fun on your dust-collecting field trip.”

  “Good plan. Be right back, buddy,” Howard said, before jogging off down the hall to the door to the stairwell.

  “Jogging, of course. Frakkin showoff,” Derrick muttered as he dialed.

  SARAH REITERATED, IN her typically clipped fashion, everything they were already doing. Get samples. Look for what’s missing. She said she and Mary would be back late on Monday, eastern-time. Derrick called Howard’s cell right after he disconnected Sarah’s call. He rolled over to the window. Locking the wheels, he levered himself up against the windowsill and leaned out to wave at Howard as he picked up.

  “They’re in Ayutthaya, right?” Howard asked, phone tucked against his chin as he swept up the black dust that hadn’t blown away in the cold wind.

  “Yep. Had to patch through on the satellite network,” Derrick said.

  “She have any thoughts?”

  “Pretty much just said to do all the things we’re already doing.”

  “Gotcha. Hey, D, are you OK up there if I run to the hardware store and grab some sheet plastic and duct tape for your office window, maybe some wood and screws for the
door?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine, maybe a bit hurt...”

  “Ah shit, what happened? Or is it the leg acting up?”

  “No man, it pains me you think I don’t already have duct tape.”

  Derrick hung up. He looked at the massive amount of stuff strewn about his office, leaned over and grabbed a handful of papers and started sorting.

  WHEN HOWARD GOT BACK, it was full dark, and Derrick was shuffling through papers with his penlight hanging from his mouth, so he could see what he was doing.

  “I grabbed lights too,” Howard said as he set up three portable fluorescent lights—the kind you might use to light your garage, so you could work on an engine at night. Once plugged in, the room was well-lit.

  Derrick pulled the little flashlight from his mouth and rubbed his jaw. “Good thinking.”

  “It’s what I do best. What’d they take?”

  “Hmm, Well, so far I haven’t found anything that’s missing.” Derrick waved his hands toward the plastic bins and baggies on his desk. “Obviously there’s lots of little parts, bits and pieces, to account for. Weird part is it’s mostly my prototyping stuff from RadioShack.” Derrick pointed to a plastic bin on the floor. “All my custom-fabricated parts are right there, and all accounted for.”

  “What about research notes? Papers and what not? Could that be what they were after?”

  “Won’t know until I get everything back in their proper stacks and files. No way to tell if all the paper is here in this mess. I’ll know if so much as a Post-it is missing. But I have to go through it all first. Of course, if they were just taking photos...” Derrick shrugged.

  Howard pulled the baggie from his coat pocket. It was filled with a very dark gray, coarse dust. “If they were taking photos, I don’t think they came out so good,” he said, smiling.

  “Could have been uploading straight to the cloud from a student or faculty Wi-Fi account, Sherlock.”

  “Damn, you’re right.”