“How many copies did he have made?”
“Only six,” Andrea spoke up. She worked for The Book Worm bookstore in Cambridge, old and rare books their specialty. Leonard had met her in that store last year, and she had helped him finally track down this damaged copy of The Book of Awe. It had been in the possession of Marotta’s niece. She had obviously never cared to try prying the stuck pages apart, and it hadn’t been hard to convince her to sell the book. She hadn’t haggled for a higher price, either. But as cooperative as she’d been in letting Leonard have the volume, she hadn’t been able to tell him much about her strange uncle. “Drugs,” was about the extent of her description.
Meredith sat down with the deltoid book in her lap, became more engrossed. She found, in fact, that Marotta did suggest drugs as a way into other realms. Leonard lit a cigarette, turned his back to the women and stared into the corner of the room. His apartment was on the third floor. An attic loft. The ceiling slanted down to meet the floor along the sides of this, his bedroom. He had only a mattress for a bed, as he preferred, and he had always kept it in that corner before. But today he had slid the mattress against the opposite wall...
Andrea watched Meredith’s lips silently form words from the text. She asked, “Do you honestly believe in this stuff, too?”
Meredith only glanced up at her emotionlessly before plunging her eyes back into the book parted open across her thighs.
Andrea was close to her family. Leonard was not even close to his own, but for Meredith. He did not accompany Andrea to Sunday dinner.
Meredith had come, and Leonard made her coffee in the kitchen while she sat down in the small parlor with the book. She called in to him, “You haven’t cracked open the gummy part yet...”
“I know...I told you,” he replied. From his cupboard he selected the heavy black mug with white marbling he knew was her favorite. “There’s enough to read in there for now while I figure out what to do. Maybe a solvent that won’t damage the...”
He heard the crackling rasp.
“Hey!” he said, and set the mug down heavily.
Then he heard something thud heavily to the floor. And on the tail of that, Meredith was crying out his name. Even as a child, she had never cried out to him before...
“Merry.” He bolted for the central roan, and nearly collided with his sister in the threshold. Even in the seconds following her cry she had regained much of her composure, but she was still not his familiar Meredith. Her face was flushed, her neat bowl of hair had got ruffled, and her fingers were claws hooked into his forearms.
“What’s going on? What did you do to my book?”
“Go look at it.”
“What...”
“I think I found Louis Marotta.”
Leonard pushed past her into the living room, and on the central rug he saw the book lying with its covers closed in the fall. He lifted it. Opened it to the crusted portion. And for the first time, he was able to easily peel the central crevice apart.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
There was a withered, mummified human hand pressed in the book, in the center of a pool of that black material, which totally obscured the text on the two facing pages. The hardened ooze had not covered the hand, but was thicker and layered around the base of the wrist like melted and resolidified wax around the base of a candle. It seemed that the ooze had originated from inside the book. From this page. Either from the stump of the wrist...or...
“Blood?” Meredith asked.
“No. God...”
“What, for Chrissakes?”
Leonard didn’t know a huge, odd grin had stretched upon his face. “This goop came from around the wrist. It came out of a hole...”
“A hole? In the book?”
“Not in the book, Merry. In our dimension...”
“Len...”
“Look at it!” He whirled to hold the book open under her nose. She recoiled slightly from the sight and the smell. “The hand isn’t cut off, Merry. It just didn’t go all the way in with the rest of him.”
Excited by this discovery, less concerned about damage to pages already obviously ruined, Leonard peeled open more of the stuck pages. The ooze had only marred the edges of these. At last, a bit more carefully, he pulled free the page immediately following the one into which the hand was pressed. “Look at this!” He moved the page with the hand sprouting from its center open and shut away from the rest. “One page! One page in this book he turned into a door!”
“And that stuff came out.”
“Maybe the ocean of another world. Or the air...”
It was as though a great void on the other side, a fluid limbo, had begun to pour through and congealed upon contact with this plane. Wouldn’t it be funny, Meredith thought deliriously, if the hand had corked the hole accidentally, thus saving the earth – the universe? – from being totally consumed? Yeah, funny. Hilarious.
“Len. Len, you gotta get rid of it! That thing is too damn dangerous...”
He lifted his great grin to her. “What? What are you saying? You...afraid? Hey, do you know what we could learn from this?”
“Maybe what he learned. How to die.”
“Whatever dangerous shit was written on that page is gone now. There are as many other doors as there are dimensions, and that’s an infinite amount. We’ll avoid the one he chose. Anyway, we know Marotta’s motivations for making this book. Personal gain. Power. Immortality. All that good shit. But I’m not out for that, I’m not some power-hungry madman. Right? He got greedy...”
“So what the hell do you want?”
“What do I want? To learn, for God’s sake! I can learn more from this book than I would’ve learned in a lifetime at Clark, or any other school in the world! Do you know what could be done with this thing? The places we could see? The races we could meet and learn from? The resources we could tap? We could save our whole damn planet with this thing! It’s a link to all creation, all space and time and knowledge! This book is God!”
“Well who are you to think you can handle it? Turn it over to somebody else more capable, if you aren’t out for the glory.”
“Turn it over to who? Ahh, religious leaders? They’d destroy the thing! The government? They’d use it like Marotta, not to help the masses. No one’s qualified. At least I’ve got the open mind to believe in its potential and treat it with the proper caution. Marotta didn’t write the thing, he just pretty much was a researcher. A thief. He didn’t respect the powers enough. I do.”
“Len,” Meredith sighed, “who are you kidding? You sound just like any damn delusional Messiah I ever heard of.”
“You think I'm only out for myself? That must be you you’re thinking of! I care about things...”
“Oh...that’s cute. I’m only out for myself. Well, face it, bro...you've always been a poor little rich boy trying to show daddy you can be something important on your own. But you don’t really wanna work at being important. You’re really just an irresponsible lost soul looking for a few thrills to kill the time...just like me. If you stop trying to dramatize it all the time and just live it, it won’t be so bad. Life is empty and boring and pointless. More learning and knowledge never changes that.”
“So why did you help me look for the book? What made you so interested in finding it, too? Just for a cheap thrill?”
She pouted. “Sure. Why not? It was something to do.
“Something to do? You don’t care about anything, do you?”
Meredith thought of a line from Pandora's Box. When the character Alwa asked Lulu, “Do you love me, Lulu?” she replied, “I? Never a soul!” Meredith had quoted that line herself, more than once.
But in answer to her brother’s frustrated question now, Meredith only gave an enigmatic shrug, and lit up a fresh cigarette.
Meredith straddled Leonard, the curled ends of her bob swaying down to frame her white face and her breasts swaying down to fill his milking, stroking hands. He dreaded her seductions. He lived in secret,
aching hunger for her seductions. He never instigated them. Every time she had to seduce him like the first, and he thought that was most of the appeal for her. His guilt, the squirming nervous reluctance in him when he saw one of her seductions nearing, must have filled her with an odd satisfaction. When it was done he swore never again. And waited for the next time...
“Going to show the midget the hand?”
“No. Not yet...”
“It was his right hand.”
“Mm...”
“Most people just put leaves inside books.” Meredith smiled down at him and undulated.
“Did you see how long the nails were? Very long...”
“Don’t nails grow after death?"
“No...that’s just the skin receding around them. Either he had long nails to begin with, or...he didn’t die right away. He was trying to catch a hold and not be drawn in. And he got pinned that way. And maybe he stayed that way for a long time...”
“If he wanted to explore other dimensions so bad, why’d he fight going in?”
“Maybe that was one dimension he didn’t want to go.”
Meredith had gone. Andrea had returned. She found Leonard stripped to the waist and sweaty, crouched in the corner where his mattress had previously been. He was drawing designs in that corner, along the low ceiling where it slanted down toward the floor. She knelt by him and stroked his back while he referred to a diagram in the opened trigonal book and then took a measurement between two curves he had drawn.
“Did you make that ruler?” Andrea asked him.
“Had to; it’s in Smyth’s pyramid inch, a little off from the English inch. Smyth was Astronomer Royal for Scotland, found all kinds of interesting things in the measurements of the Great Pyramid. Marotta believed the pyramids were powerful centers for interdimensional travel.”
“You’re crazy, Lenny, you know that?”
“This is driving me crazy, trying to draw this. I've been at it for five and a half hours.”
“It’s hot in here...let’s go for a walk, get some oxygen, how ’bout?”
“In a minute...”
“Almost done?”
“This configuration has a few last vital curves. I won’t draw the last one in, though, until I’m ready to open the door...”
“Open the door, huh?”
Leonard twisted around to her with a tired smile. “Speaking of vital curves.” He slid his arm about her waist, drew her closer for a kiss. “Mm.” They embraced more tightly...
They ended up making love there in the corner, as if the mattress had never been moved, their clothing puddled around them. At one point Andrea glanced at a can of white paint by her head, asked about it. Leonard explained, “If I want to close the door fast, I have to obliterate the lines.”
“Oh, of course...right.”
He woke first, sat up to stare at her for a short while as she lay on her side bare on the bare floor, curled in a ball. She was sweet and dull – a refreshing contrast to his sister. Maybe it would be Andrea to help him break that hold. He only wished he loved her more. He wished he could lose himself so deeply in Andrea that Meredith would never find him...
He dragged his shirt off the back of a chair, dug cigarettes and lighter from its pocket. Then he contemplated the patterns he had woven web-like into the corner. Connect-the-dots to the secrets of the universe. Idly he took up his charcoal pencil, touched it to a nexus point in the strange anarchy of lines, curves, spirals. At this critical stage, could he switch channels, so to speak? Open different but related doors by varying the last lines? If he were to connect this point not to the curve running below it, but over here...to this nodal point to form a triangle. Yes – it was funny. Suddenly the whole drawing seemed to depend on this triangle one last stroke would create at its center. Even incomplete, the figure seemed to hum with its own vibrating energy...like the musical instrument...keys to keys...yes...a triangle...
He drew the pencil to that final point to complete the equation. He didn’t even use his ruler, but the line flowed straight and smooth, and even as he reached the nodal point he wondered if he had really meant to do this or if he’d been groggy from sleep, or if it had been the imp of the perverse. Or...if something close behind the barrier had influenced his foggy mind...
When the pencil point touched the nodal point a hand reached out of the plaster of the slanted ceiling.
Leonard was alerted to its presence by Andrea’s gurgle. He looked and saw her clawing at the hand where it had seized her throat. It was a man’s left hand. But the flesh was plaster white...and covered in the charcoal lines and curves Leonard had drawn. They smudged slightly from Andrea’s palms but the hand didn’t vanish.
“Oh God!” Leonard cried, leaping to his feet and backing away. He wanted to flee the apartment. Go find Meredith. Meredith was strong...Meredith could...
Andrea’s bare heels drummed and dug at the floor. Leonard forgot the paint. His reaction was more primitive. He tore into the kitchen, found a bread knife in a drawer. He could hear Andrea wheezing, rattling behind him. “Oh God,” he whispered. He still wanted to flee...but he whirled back toward the bedroom...
Andrea was gone. “No!” he shouted, and began to sob in fury and terror. “Let her go! Oh Jesus...let her go, God damn you!”
The hand returned. It passed easily out of the wall, again the patterns drawn there stretching out across its forearm like a fluid tattoo, coiled around the fingers like black rings. Leonard’s eyes followed the fingers in their stretching and clawing.
The long nails were raking the floor only inches from The Book of Awe.
Leonard fell to his knees before the hand, plunged the knife down. The blade slammed into the forearm. The hand fluttered like a dying bird and a black blood like ink spattered its white surface. The hand and arm withdrew.
A moment later Leonard was sitting alone on the floor of his loft apartment, naked, the book hugged against his chest in both arms, his clothing and Andrea’s strewn around him. And he stared at the slanted wall, that black blood like ink spattered on it and a trickle drying from a point where the bread knife stuck out of the plaster.
When he could rise he phoned Meredith.
She came, dressed primarily in black as always. “I was hoping you’d get rid of that bimbo, Len, but couldn’t you have used a more conventional method...instead of using her for a human guinea pig?”
“I didn't use her like that, God damn it! I didn’t mean to open the door then!”
“So much for caution.” They had gingerly stepped into the bedroom’s threshold. The room smelled of paint.
“It didn’t look like one coat was going to be enough, but it’s gone,” Leonard mumbled. “I should have used black paint, anyway...”
“But even painted over...isn’t the pattern still present? Under the paint? Couldn’t there still be a danger?”
“I don't know,” he whispered.
“How long did you turn your back on this thing?”
“Just to call you. And to let you in just now.”
“Okay...let’s break some plaster out of the wall. Some nice big chunks. That should disrupt it pretty well, huh?”
“Good idea! Watch it...I’ll get my tool box.”
When Leonard returned he seemed reluctant to go near the wall again, so Meredith took a claw hammer from him, crept up to the corner, swung the hammer in a vicious arc and then danced back. She had expected a hand to lunge out and catch her by the wrist to stop her. One didn’t. The first blow only made a dent, so she danced in again. Again. At last the wall was cracking. A few strands of the web had to have been severed, by now. Leonard sighed, and moved in with a linoleum knife he had taken up more as a weapon than to obliterate his drawing. Crouching together, they dug several large slabs of plaster free of the slats beneath. Meredith seemed to ignore the paint smudges and the chalky plaster dust on her clothing. She said, “This week on This Old House we’ll be closing interdimensional portals...”
Leonard was s
o grateful for her presence, her strength. Meredith always knew how to take charge. Neither of their mothers or the father they shared had given them the love the movies and TV shows told them was normal, nurturing love. Meredith had almost been a mother to Leonard. Yes, he thought, she had...though she was the younger. She’d helped him get into school. Helped him when he dropped out. She was suffocating, dominating, as mothers could be, of course. Had he in turn been a replacement for their father, fulfilling some need daddy hadn’t? Given certain aspects of their relationship, Leonard didn’t want to imagine just what Meredith’s paternal yearnings might be. At any rate, as often as he itched to be free of Meredith’s gravity, right now he was close to tears at her comforting nearness...
Even as the voice behind them spoke Leonard had caught a peripheral movement and begun to twist toward it.
“Now you’ve trapped me here...with you,” said Andrea.
Meredith spun on her heels. “Jesus!” She clutched at her brother’s arm with her left hand, raised the hammer in her right fist. “Go away!”
“I just told you...I can’t,” said Andrea. “You’ve ruined the corner.” She stood in the doorway, blocking their escape from the room. Andrea had always had a husky voice, but it was unnaturally deep and raspy now. Her eyes were closed and remained that way, as though she were hypnotized, sleepwalking. Her hair, blond and permed, was still gathered up in a plume above her head. But her flesh was so much paler than the brother and sister remembered it. And she was still naked. And her naked pale flesh was covered in grids and curves, angles and spirals. They were the same patterns from the corner – under the paint there was no longer any drawing – but this was a contoured map, with mountains and valleys of flesh and bone.
Leonard watched her lift her small right hand to her face, spread the fingers, flex them. Though her eyes remained closed she seemed to be studying the hand, testing it. Then he realized why, even before she said it.
“It’s been a while since I had use of my good hand.”
Unholy Dimensions Page 29
