“If I knew that, then I would be able to tell you where it is,” Will said patiently.
Penelope sighed. “I suppose.” She tapped her fingers idly on the steering wheel. “What do I know about geology? Nothing. Astronomy? Ditto. Meteor streaks by, gets pulled in by gravity, crashes to Earth, and if it doesn’t burn up, causes a big hole.”
“It couldn’t have been a little hole,” Will said. “Or Anthony wouldn’t have been able to find it. And it wasn’t a meteorite, Penelope. It was a sky god, cast out from the heavens.”
She couldn’t tell if Will was being sarcastic or serious. Glancing at him, she said, “Sky god, meteorite. Whatever. Anthony isn’t above using technology.” Her hand went to the medicine bag. “He had the diamond for a long time, long enough to have it analyzed.”
“If it were analyzed, it would have the properties of the meteorite,” Will surmised. “It wouldn’t say anything about where it crashed.”
“So based on Magic Elk’s story, he came to Texas and started checking sites out,” Penelope said slowly. “It sounds like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.”
Will didn’t say anything. Just then a light came on in the house. She felt him twitch.
“Don’t worry,” Penelope said. “Automatic light.”
“What, an automatic light to scare off burglars?” Will almost choked with amusement.
Penelope shrugged disdainfully. “They’re supposed to vary the times and lengths of the automatic timers. Anthony counted on the house’s reputation too much.” Nevertheless, she wasn’t going to tell Will that just looking at the house from a safe distance away during the waning hours gave her a case of the screaming collywobbles.
“So how do you find a needle in a haystack?” she said.
Will shrugged. “A metal detector?”
Penelope sat up straight in the driver’s seat. “Actually, that’s not such a bad idea.”
“Not over what is probably thousands of square miles,” Will added thoughtfully. “Why aren’t we going in?”
Not bothering to look at Will, Penelope made a disgusted noise. “You know why.”
“I didn’t much like going in before, either,” Will said.
“You went into that house?” she said. It wasn’t exactly a question.
“Right after you left it.”
Penelope took a moment to figure that out. “I conveniently distracted the occupants.”
“Every last one of them,” he said. “They went after you. Anthony didn’t dare lose the diamond, but he did all the same. Who knew you would last as long as you did? I bet you shocked the hell out of Anthony.”
“Well, a pity he didn’t keel over with a heart attack caused by the shock,” Penelope commented caustically. “Why don’t they do the ceremony themselves?”
“The witch, the seatco, and the shadow people, you mean?”
She nodded. “They know, right? So why don’t they dump Anthony and go to town?”
Will nodded back. “Good question. Magicks are good and bad, both sides of the spectrum. They need him for the time being. There are always checks and balances. Only man can open the doors between the worlds. And like it or not, they’re not men.”
“So Anthony opens up the door, the world ends, and the fourth world takes over.”
“I told you, it’s not that simple,” Will said, and his face became grave again. “If any one human being survives, they’ll be in a world of evil spirits, witches, and ghosts, most of which don’t care for the living. It will be like a version of Christianity’s hell.”
“Of course.”
“You know, my brother will suspect that you may not want to fulfill your part of the bargain,” Will said after a lengthy pause. “He might even consider the fact that you would come early and with reinforcements.”
“Anthony thinks I’m driving to Texas because I’ve duped you,” Penelope said. “He thinks I have few morals. However, he is counting on my relationship with my mother to make a deal. He also believes that under no circumstances would I ever believe anything you or Joseph John told me. He believes all of those things. If I want my mother back, then I have to do business with him.” She looked at him frankly. “It just won’t be the way he expects.”
“And why would he leave some kind of clue within the house as to his whereabouts?”
“Because of the same beliefs,” she said. “If I’m not here, then how could I go into his house? If I’m cowed by his threats, then how could I dare? I’m right, you know. It doesn’t take a genius to see his arrogance. I’m just a white coward.”
Will said something under his breath and glanced out across the street.
“What was that?” she said, suspecting he didn’t want to answer her.
“I said, you’re anything but a coward,” he muttered. Will didn’t look at her but merely added in a subdued tone, “I misjudged you before.”
Penelope didn’t know how to respond to that. Instead a wave of guilt threatened to tip her ass over teakettle. “Let’s go,” she suggested, picking up two heavy duty Maglite flashlights from the backseat and handing one to him. “While I still have a little nerve left in me.”
Both of them got out of the Jeep and approached the house warily, as if the worst were about to happen. Instead, nothing happened. Will said, “Are we climbing in a window?”
Penelope walked up to the front door and tried the handle. “Nope,” she said. “Door’s unlocked.” Then she pushed it open and shook off the surge of goose bumps that ran unbridled down the bony part of her spine. Unlocked doors were suspect. Sometimes they could be a boon, but in this particular case, it was eerily untrustworthy. But since it was open, and they hadn’t seen movement from inside the large house, she entered and Will followed.
There was a light on in the room immediately to the left of the large foyer. From her previous surveys of the house, she knew it was one of the living rooms. The floor was dust-covered hardwood that showed a rash of footprints going and coming.
“Should we close the door?” Will said.
“Yes,” she answered. “In case a patrol comes by. We don’t want any suspicious cops wandering in.” Then she added nervously, “Let’s start with my favorite place.”
“The basement,” Will said with a sigh. “I suddenly decided that I hate basements.”
“Yep, the basement,” Penelope said. “Where else would you hide something when you have a decomposing seven-foot monster to guard it?”
“Why bother with a safe then?” Will asked dryly.
“Because—,” Penelope said slowly, turning down the long hallway that had the pantry at the end. She was thinking of reasons for why Anthony would have needed a safe and couldn’t immediately come up with anything. “Because his things wouldn’t be here all the time. That would be one reason. You tell me. You’re related.”
“Anthony stopped being my brother, and understandable so, years ago,” Will said softly. “The art work is all gone.”
The kachina statue, with its snarling grimace and bloody fangs that so terrified Penelope before, was gone. So was the sand painting. The house had an empty feeling now, as if the occupants had pulled up stakes and fled. It made her wonder, Why would Anthony want me to meet him here on Thursday at Midnight? Why not somewhere a little more secluded?
Because Anthony knows this place will scare the ever-living crap out of you, answered her abruptly astute inner voice. It will be his advantage. “Not if we find them first,” she said.
Will said, “What?”
Penelope turned to him just as they reached the pantry door. She didn’t know what kind of tricks that Will had up his sleeves, but she hoped they were better than hers. Although she had the hard core certainty of technology at her side, she wasn’t sure what the seatco could and couldn’t take. The problem was that she didn’t have a vintage Ford Thunderbird.
Pity.
“You aren’t angry with me anymore,” she said instead.
Will studied her face in
the limited light of the hallway. “No. I should have suspected that all things have a reason for happening. The Great Spirit wouldn’t have chosen you if you weren’t the one we needed.”
Penelope had difficulty relating with that kind of reasoning, but since the two courses were unswervingly interrelated, there didn’t seem to be any point in arguing. She had personally witnessed the impossible, and the impossible had chased her like a maddened dog. Besides which she had a vested interest, and there was the little matter of making sure that Anthony didn’t haunt her dreams for the rest of her life. And I don’t need to mention Jeremy. And Jobe. And Sammy. And Freddy. And my mother. And four little kids who haven’t a clue.
Turning back to the pantry door, Penelope opened it cautiously. The room appeared the same as it did before. She didn’t bother with keeping the lights off. In fact, she would feel better with every corner lit. The other constricted, smaller door was slightly ajar, and she took a breath before opening it. The aperture to the basement was a gaping black hole.
Penelope turned on the flashlight and pointed it downward. There were only narrow wooden steps and nothing there at all. She glanced back at Will, and he started to move in front of her. She shook her head and began to descend, expecting the worst. The creaking groans of the old wood made her wince, but she did not hesitate in her downward movement.
Instead the basement smelled like musty dirt, not the decomposing crypt of three dead people murdered by supernatural forces. Penelope paused at the bottom and surveyed the basement with her flashlight. The floor of the room was red-colored earth and black where the dirt had been recently turned. The walls were the same brick as the exterior, and the fresh grout showed where the safes had entered the dank place. The Fort Knox safe that was the decoy sat in plain sight on the far side of the room. The other safe was also patently visible. Its door gaped, and nothing remained inside.
Finally there were the ruined remains of the dumbwaiter. The exterior frame appeared to be taken apart by a sledge hammer. Will was shining his flashlight about the room as well. He stepped around her and took something from his pocket. It was a small leather pouch. He opened it by holding the flashlight under his arm and poured an incremental amount of what looked like sparkling dust into the palm of his hand.
Penelope didn’t say anything. She merely watched as he blew the dust onto the dirt section of the floor and began to chant softly in his tribal language. After a minute, he stopped and said, “The seatco is not here, and I’ve prevented it from entering through this dirt.”
“I didn’t think it was,” she said. “It doesn’t smell as funky as it did before.”
Ignoring the safe she had opened before, Penelope went to the decoy safe, and proceeded to open it. The combination was the same as the other. Anthony hadn’t bothered with it. When it was open, she shone the flashlight inside and saw a stack of papers. Flipping through them, she found the deed to the house and some related insurance paperwork.
Will watched her. “Anthony likes to dot his I’s and cross his T’s, doesn’t he?” she said.
“Anthony tries not to leave things to chance,” Will answered. “Does any of that help?”
“Not really. He doesn’t need this place anymore so he left it lock, stock, and barrel,” she said with a note of frustration.
“There’s something else there,” Will said and pointed with the flashlight.
Penelope’s prying fingers pulled it out. It was a segment of a photograph. She could tell what it was immediately. “It’s an aerial survey photograph of something. It got caught on the metal shelf and snagged the corner.” She studied the corner that was left and added, “Not that there are any identifying marks on it.”
“It looks old,” Will commented.
She thought about it. “The population of Texas has increased dramatically over the last twenty or thirty years. Maybe this crater got built over without anyone knowing what it was. It could have filled up with dirt and brush and sediment, and it wouldn’t have looked like a crater. So Anthony looked at old maps and photographs to see if he could identify it.”
“But he had to know where to look first.”
“He knew where to look,” she said. Penelope’s mind raced. “How. How. How?”
Suddenly she knelt down and started pawing through the dirt. Will watched interestedly. After a few moments she lifted something up and said, “I saw something glittering.” Shifting the awkward flashlight around so that it was braced under her arm, she brushed aside the reddish dirt that marred the object. Then she twisted toward Will, carefully holding the object out in the palm of her hand like it was a precious commodity. “Do you recognize this?”
The little item was a small carved bead. It was distinct in its brown color, shot through with milky white streams of an unknown substance. A pretty little piece of jewelry, it seemed as though it was missing the remaining lot of its brethren. Will cocked his head. “It’s…” he said and trailed off. Then he laughed shortly. “It’s part of the necklace that Magic Elk gave to Nahkeeta. He brought it from his journey. The diamond was attached to the end of it. At one point in time, another one of my ancestors had it cut and faceted.”
“It’s the necklace that I saw Anthony take from your grandfather’s study.” Penelope stared down at the dime-sized bead. “He had one of the beads analyzed. So can we,” she said. “If it doesn’t take us long. But we need to search the rest of the house.”
Methodically and always staying together, they went through the remainder of the house. Most of it was empty.
One room had a little pile of personal artifacts lying on the floor next to a mattress that was also on the floor. Kneeling, she flipped open a brown leather wallet. Inside was a Dallas Police Department badge. The name on the identification said Alan Harcourt. Penelope wasn’t surprised. Something about Anthony had aroused his suspicions, and he had come back to investigate the house. The detective hadn’t made it out of this house, at least not alive.
There was also a gold ring that Penelope recognized. It was a promise ring that had been given to Jeremy by his island girlfriend. He had never willingly taken it off, although he should have for creeps.
Swallowing hard, Penelope stuck the ring in her pocket next to the little bead from Nahkeeta’s necklace. Rising to her feet, she felt the weight of Will’s eyes on her and said, “My friend was first in this house. Now he’s part of that thing that lived in the basement.”
“The seatco still exists,” Will said softly. “You cannot kill it with modern technology.”
“I hurt it badly,” she stated. “There’s nothing here that— ,” Penelope stopped and tilted her head. In the little pile of items were wallets, belts, and items of clothing. She remembered that the seatco still had a watch on one wrist and a wedding ring on the other hand’s finger. But some of it had been captured. Anthony had been gloating over the fact that he could have people killed without needing to dispose of their bodies. But there was something else there.
Penelope leaned down and swooped the two items up. One was an old patch. It was weathered and stained. Barely discernible she could see the words, “Strategic Air Command” on it along with an armored hand holding lightning bolts in it. The other item was more interesting. “Do you know what this is?” she said as she presented it to Will.
Will shook his head. “Some piece of equipment from something.”
“It’s a regulator,” she said. “It’s part of the gear you use for scuba diving.”
“Then the crater must be down toward the gulf,” Will said, looking closely.
“No,” she said. “No. Anthony wouldn’t have made his headquarters here if that had been the case. And he wouldn’t have stayed here for as long as he did. There’s nothing in Magic Elk’s legend about the ocean. Only desert and bare earth. Like far west Texas or most of Texas west of Fort Worth. He got old aerial surveys because it would show up on them. A geological analysis of the bead told him exactly where to look. And I can only think of o
ne place that would need scuba diving equipment.”
“A reservoir?” Will ventured.
“Good guess. Too many people around to see it. I might be wrong, but I think I can find this place,” Penelope said quietly. “Let’s go.” She waited until Will’s back was turned and pulled out the weapon she had secreted behind her back.
But she stopped abruptly when she saw that Merri was standing in the doorway watching them with a glacial expression on her beautiful face.
Chapter Thirty-One
Tuesday, July 15th - Wednesday, July 16th
Fry (slang, origin unknown, probably 1920s American) - to die in the electric chair
Will didn’t hesitate. His right arm hooked backwards in a powerful blur, and he slammed the end of the Maglite flashlight into Merri’s face. Metal clunked loudly against bone. The witch fell backwards against the far side of the hallway with a hail of dust and grit pouring down on her from the ceiling. The thud shook the entire floor.
“Run,” he said to Penelope. He turned his head for the second that it took him to say the single word, and when he looked back, Merri was standing before him, smiling an ancient smile that chilled the very soul. She had come to her feet like a supernatural jack-in-the-box, seemingly without physical exertion. The only evidence of being struck was that her head was slightly canted, and a minute stream of blood trickled down from the corner of her mouth.
“You want to play with me, big man?” she said, and her hands moved with deceptive speed. One grasped his face, and the other one shoved forcefully in the area of his chest. Will was thrown across the room as if he were a weightless rag doll. His body hit the wall next to Penelope like a bag of cement hitting the pavement from a multi-storied drop. Plaster walls disintegrated into flying debris and grimy powder. He immediately slid to the hardwood floor in a heap of tangled limbs and emitted a terrible groan.
Shadow People Page 29
