by Rune Skelley
His next task was to soothe Gale. The unpleasant memory of their pitched battle on the front porch would be fresh in her mind. Furthermore, the upheaval in their domestic arrangements was bound to stir up jealousy. That should be the simplest hurt to remedy. His sister’s frustrations would be overcome by her maternal instincts soon enough with her girls under one roof. And Severin saw no reason he couldn’t continue to indulge Gale’s sexual appetites.
I’ll need to get a bigger hammock.
He projected his customary calm as he descended to the first floor.
Adding Melissa meant a fresh energy supply. Her misapprehensions about her power made her utterly dependent on Severin for tutelage, which would make her easy to control. He permitted himself a few seconds of grinning, and even a chuckle. All it took to claim Melissa was chasing away her husband, which Severin didn’t even remember doing, as such.
In the kitchen he frowned when he saw the ragged hole where the basement door’s knob belonged. Gale had a key, so it must have been an intruder.
Melissa’s husband.
Severin rushed to the basement.
The light was on, the outside door ajar. The thousands of domino batteries were gone. Willow was gone.
Even the slab was gone.
The bastard can’t have dragged that off!
Severin paced the paths of his dominoes like a wilderness tracker, examining their faint marks in the dirt floor. The interloper must have set off the cascade, releasing the dominoes to return to the Elsewhere as each fed its store of energy into the next, all the way to the slab itself.
What happened when the slab became energized?
In a shadowy corner of the vast room, a single artifact remained. A jade carving of a bare-breasted barbarian queen that Severin recalled extracting from his table years ago. He retrieved her from the unclean floor, marveling at her continued existence. None of the other thousands of items survived.
He pocketed the tiny statue.
The dominoes, his carefully constructed arrays of arcane batteries, were toppled prematurely. Wasted. Was Willow consumed in the process, her would-be rescuer fleeing in horror?
No. That didn’t feel right. Severin knew he would have felt the slab’s spark being released, felt the Elsewhere reeling from the blow.
No, the energy had not been set free.
Without Willow to conduct the power to the Elsewhere, the slab wasn’t grounded. The power had been trapped. He pictured the white hot stone, glowing with frustrated potential.
Severin stalked to the open exterior door. If the wet snow ever held any tracks, it had long since obscured them.
Gale must have discovered this disaster hours ago and lit out into the storm to find her living baby doll. If she’d not been successful by now, she would not return triumphant.
Grudging admiration for Willow’s rescuer, the care and planning he must have put into this exploit, brought a grim smile. Melissa had been ideal bait. The moment Severin saw her he thought only of adding her to his collection, of giving himself a complete set. Severin had taken his eye off the husband, dismissed him.
Now Willow was lost, Gale gone.
Gale would come back, would choose one daughter plus him over being alone, vainly chasing the other. Doubts stained Severin’s thoughts. How soon could he anticipate Gale’s return, really? She turned on him rather completely during their confrontation. Her ire might need time to cool, but Severin felt confident she couldn’t function indefinitely without him.
Meanwhile, Melissa was his creature in ways more total than she could grasp. She was every bit as suitable a conduit for the slab’s energies as Willow, and held her own impressive reservoir of mystical power. Using her to release the charge might even produce greater effect. Severin liked the idea of delivering a more powerful jolt to the Elsewhere. The longer the Collective Id was stunned, the better his opportunity to enshrine himself in the role of Superego before it recovered.
But the slab was missing. What happened when all that power flowed into it and couldn’t escape? It must have lost its moorings to the physical world and been set adrift in the Elsewhere.
Easily fixed. I’ve done it before.
He closed and locked the outside door and turned off the lone light bulb before trekking back to the attic.
Melissa slumbered in the hammock where he left her. At least one thing knows its place.
Severin strode to his table, merely an old door spanning two sawhorses. He pulled the jade figurine from his pocket and turned her in his fingers as he stared at the white sheet draping the makeshift table, studying the contrast between the elegant detail of the carving and the deceptive homeliness of the portal that brought it to him. He placed the figurine on a nearby crossbeam.
The slab came to him by way of his table, too. He had reached into the Elsewhere and guided it into position in the basement. Now he would have to guide it back.
With his right hand, Severin lifted a corner of the sheet and reached under with his left. He reached deep, past the table’s surface, and felt warmth. He sought farther, knowing the heat came from the energy trapped in the stone slab.
He would soon have his target.
Searing agony attacked his palm, but he gritted his teeth and pressed his hand against the slab. Sweat flowed over his body as he struggled to direct the momentum of his enormous catch. His original discovery of the slab had also been excruciating, as was the later focusing. He’d been sure his hand would be pulverized, yet found it unharmed.
The massive stone was slipping away, not cleaving to his hand as it had before.
He strained to maintain contact, frustrated that the pain interfered with his feel for the work. Severin let a whimper escape, tears joining the sweat dripping from his graying beard. He flexed his fingers, and cried out from the pain.
The slab eluded him. His pain receded, now a throbbing, stabbing echo of its pinnacle. After stirring the Elsewhere in futility for another minute, he drew his hand out from under the sheet.
Severin’s forearm terminated in a charred stump, the jagged, blackened ends of two bones protruding where the softer tissues shrank away.
“Uncle,” Melissa asked groggily, “what is that horrid smell?”
*** *** ***
Brad Tanner tried to sleep, but it was too tempting to stare at Willow, to watch Zen breathing. His delicate, beautiful girls, fairy creatures he couldn’t believe existed in his squandered life.
He kept replaying the acrimonious scene when he’d arrived with the diapers, each trip through the events highlighting new ways to be disappointed, frustrated, and wounded by Fin’s behavior. Plus his jaw hurt.
Willow had talked him out of giving chase, convincing him it would only lead to more conflict. She said Fin reacted badly to his sister, which made sense. Fin never knew Willow was pregnant, but even if he had he would have expected the child to be somewhat taller.
Fin didn’t know about the suspended animation that prolonged Willow’s pregnancy for twelve years. He naturally assumed a recent conception. Brad ground his teeth. Fin was so angry because he thought Brad was spending time with Willow. On an intellectual level, Brad knew it was a simple misunderstanding. On a gut level he knew the resentment would be there no matter what clarification Fin received.
Brad wiped his eyes. What did I expect, thanks for bringing her back? I should have kept her safe in the first place. Brad reached across Zen to stroke Willow’s cheek, and silently promised to never let anyone hurt her again, himself and Fin included.
Fin. Would the gap between him and his son be bridged with Willow’s return, or grow wider?
Willow had been disconcerted and disappointed that Brad knew nothing about Fin’s marriage or wife. That was even more awkward than discovering the inflatable doll upon their arrival down here. Willow was having a hard time adjusting to the idea that Fin was an adult, but kept getting slapped in the face by the evidence.
Maybe Willow misunderstood. Fin married? It sounded far-fe
tched, and yet...
My son didn’t tell me he was getting married, Brad thought with a familiar stab of regret.
Brook was pretty and seemed loyal to Fin. Her fashion sense placed her squarely in Fin’s tribe, and she apparently didn’t question his obsessive devotion to his lava lamp. Brad wished them well, but even more he hoped to get to know them. His second chance was open to everyone.
After four hours of not sleeping, Brad crept from the bunk. He climbed the ladder in his socks and raised the hatch, then sat on the rim to put on his shoes.
The trees wore sheaths of ice, and each limb he brushed made tiny music. The sun had only recently risen, and the cold in the air was sharp. He circled to the front door, and stepped over a heap of newspapers to unlock it. It looked like the house had been deserted for weeks. He and Melissa had been preoccupied: her plotting his murder, him planning Willow’s rescue.
The few items that mattered to Brad were in a box in the downstairs closet. He would claim them now before abandoning the house to Melissa.
The phone’s message light blinked. With a shrug, Brad hit the button.
“This is the trauma center in Donner, regarding Kyle Tanner. Please return this call, at ...”
Brad scrambled for the pad and pen, and replayed the message to get the number. He dialed with unsteady fingers.
His call was answered, and transferred. He spent a minute on hold. The people he spoke to seemed passive, unconcerned. This was just another day at work for them.
The doctor’s tone was less distant. Not warm, but comfortingly professional. Brad heard years of practice with delivering unpleasant news. The doctor began with a too-detailed summary of the reconstruction he wanted to do on Kyle’s knee, without which Kyle was never going to walk again without a cane.
“The cerebral issues are of greater concern,” the doctor said candidly.
“What do you mean?”
The doctor’s explanation was too much for Brad to process, despite obvious pains to express it in layman’s terms. He mentioned delta waves and something about inconsistent symptomatology.
“But he’ll wake up?”
“I can’t put odds on it. None of the available data preclude it, nor adequately explain why he remains unconscious. Prudence favors optimism.”
Brad okayed the knee surgery. It was something he could do.
Melissa should know about this.
Brad ended his call to the hospital and punched in the digits for Melissa’s voicemail at the bank. He paused before pressing the final button. Did he owe anything to the woman who’d plotted to kill him?
He swallowed. What kind of fate had he left her to?
He pressed the button.
“Kyle is in the hospital in Donner. Thought you should know.” He left the number.
A weight lifted once he decided to tell her.
Brad wanted to get back to Willow. Hearing Melissa’s voice, thinking about her, set his hands trembling. The break was far less clean than he’d imagined it.
*** *** ***
What if a lie believed itself?
Scurrying through the tunnels and chambers deep in the heart of Gaspra, an asteroid 150 million miles from Earth, a few dozen beings applied their full concentration to this riddle. Until 22 days ago, that lie had been the foundation of their universe. It called itself the Floating Wisdom, and it thought it was a collective intellect spanning thousands of planets. The scuttling beings in the asteroid had been a part of it.
The only real part.
Fin Tanner shattered the lie, casting the alien spiders into despair and chaos.
Then he helped them find a small, true unity to replace the grand, false one he took away.
The spiders revered Fin Tanner, although they seldom understood him. When he battled his brother they gave him power. When Fin evaded Kyle’s killing stroke, the brunt of it surged into the spiders.
It might have killed them, but instead they absorbed it. That flood of power was infused with Kyle’s beliefs, and now so were the spiders.
They now carried the Prophecy of the Divided Man.
Kyle knew it as the New Revelations, a tale of sin and redemption he gleaned from the mind of Reverend Brian Shaw. The Tanner brothers were its central figures, the Divided Man, and their conflict a sort of holy war. They fought over the Completer, a woman named Rook, who went with Fin when Kyle fell.
Yet, the prophecy remained unsatisfied. There were more battles to be fought.
The more they studied the prophecy, the more the spiders came to understand that it was their mission to bring it about, to restore light upon the Earth.
They discovered a new truth even greater than the old lie.
CHAPTER TWO
MYSTICAL GLASS KINGDOM
I’m freaking out a little about my mental health. When people talk about their inner child, I don’t think they mean it quite this literally. And, lucky me, I’ve got two. Brook, perfection personified, and whipping girl Bramble. Both look just like me, so I never know who I’ll see in the mirror. They’re so real it’s scary. I know I’m not making them up, but that actually makes it worse. They’re there. In my head.
My research suggests that I do not have dissociative personality disorder. B and B are something else. Depersonalization disorder and clonal pluralization and selective doubles delusion and all that jargon Wymbol used to spout to Mom. I wonder if he’s still practicing? He helped me get them under control back then. Maybe he could do it again? But how would I ever tell Fin? “Say, honey, did I ever mention that I’m full-on crazy? Funny story!”
Kyle fucking Tanner ruined everyfuckingthing. He woke them up. He made me believe Fin was dead. That’s such an evil thing to do! Is it any wonder I left the Stockholm Syndrome Sisters in charge? I was out of my mind with grief.
I can’t tell Fin about this. I can’t tell him my multiple personalities prefer his evil twin. No fucking way. No fucking way.
from Rook Tanner’s journal
Freshly showered but rewearing yesterday’s clothes, Fin Tanner waited for his wife in the dingy hallway outside the Buck U gymnasium women’s locker room. He tried not to look like a creep.
Considering the life-and-death battle he’d fought yesterday, he had remarkably few injuries. There was the small gash under his eye, bruising on his torso, miscellaneous cuts from all the broken glass, and his scuffed knuckles. Hardly worth mentioning, but Rook kissed them all. She had escaped unscathed and felt guilty.
Fin would never forgive himself if he’d gotten her hurt.
On the heels of four college girls in skimpy workout clothes, Rook came through the door looking clean and beautiful, but tired. It was still strange to see her with chestnut hair. Her blue eyes lacked their customary glint, and the hum of her mental signal was ragged. Fin felt a stab of guilt at her bare legs and impractical shoes. Her skirt was barely long enough to protrude beneath the gray hoodie she liberated from the library’s lost and found. The small flock of rook tattoos encircling her ankle silently scolded him for dragging her around in such lousy weather.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said as soon as she spotted him. “My ID is in my leather jacket. If I can find that, I can go to the bank. And then we can eat.”
Fin hugged her. She relaxed into his chest, and he breathed the familiar, gingered peach smell of her, disguised under a layer of cheap hand soap. He loved her so much. He didn’t want to think what he would have done last night without her, what sort of bender the image of his mother and Brad — and a goddamn baby! — would have sent him on.
“I wore the jacket to our reception.” By which she meant the kegger they threw three weeks ago. The kegger that culminated in explosions and abductions, alien and otherwise.
“We’ll think of something else.” Fin wished he had some idea what. Neither of them had their keys or wallets. “Let’s go back to the library.” They’d spent the night there, drying off with the bathroom’s wall-mounted hand dryers, and having sex in that same bathroom
while waiting for Rook’s sweater to dry.
Rook shook her head, pressed against his heart. “The police probably picked it up, right?”
“We can’t just go into the police station,” Fin said.
Pulling away, Rook said, “Why not? It’s my jacket. I want it back.”
Fin set the plastic bag containing Vesuvius between his feet and opened his arms to Rook, wanting harmony with her. She ignored his gesture.
“I’m hungry,” she said. “I don’t want to live in the library. I don’t want to shower at the gym and wear gloves from the lost and found. I want to fuck in the bathroom because it’s fun, not because it’s our only option. I want a real life.” Rook’s vibration was as worked up as she was. “One of us needs to solve this, and…”
She stopped talking and turned away.
What the hell was her problem? He was the one with the issues right now. Didn’t she know he was hungry too? He wasn’t proposing they live in the library, it just seemed like a safe base of operations.
In a mocking voice she said, “We can’t go home, Rook. We can’t go back to the bomb shelter, Rook.” She grew shriller and shriller. “We can’t go to the police station.”
“Rook,” Fin said, but he didn’t have anything else to say.
“We’re in a bad place, Fin. We need to solve this. I’m going to find my jacket. You don’t have to come.”
She walked away without looking back, pulling up her hood against the frigid temperature outdoors. Fin struggled into his pilfered windbreaker, grabbed Vesuvius’s bag, and hurried to catch up. With everything turning to shit he couldn’t stand to lose her too.
The previous night’s devastating mix left the world glazed in a half-inch of ice. Sunlight sparkled off every tree branch, street sign, and bike rack. The campus looked like a mystical glass kingdom. Fin had no time to take it in, hustling to keep up with Rook as she marched downtown. The temperature hovered in the teens.
