I turned to Andi, but she didn’t have a clue.
“He’s overloading it!” the professor yelled.
“He’s what?”
“Whatever he’s thinking, he’s overloading the system.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Tell him that.”
I turned back to Cowboy. He kept walking. The crackling got louder. The sparks brighter. Finally he reached Slick.
By now the man was screaming uncontrollably, convulsing and rolling on the ground. Cowboy knelt down to him. He took him by the shoulders and said something so soft no one but Slick heard. The man showed his appreciation by spitting in the big boy’s face. Cowboy barely noticed. He just kept on holding Slick and talking.
And Slick kept on struggling. But it did no good. He gradually got weaker and weaker until he finally wore himself out. When he quit struggling, Cowboy let him go. But the man wasn’t done. He threw up his fists and began beating on Cowboy’s chest and shoulders, tried punching his face, all the time screaming and swearing. Cowboy was unfazed. He just grabbed Slick again, held him, and kept talking.
Slick’s eyes bulged in frustration, but he couldn’t move. His face grew red. The veins in his neck bulged. It looked like he was going to explode. Then he threw back his head and let go a chilling scream. A howl like an animal’s. It went on until he ran out of air.
He finally collapsed into Cowboy’s arms. This time it was real.
The air over the yard stopped crackling and sparking.
“Tank?” Andi shouted. “Tank, are you all right?”
The big guy turned to us.
We all waited.
He broke into that good-ol’-boy grin of his. Then he scooped Slick up into his arms and rose to his feet.
Epilogue
The 130-mile drive to Bakersfield was as long as it was boring. I didn’t mind. Not this time. It was the first peace I’d had since our visit to the Twilight Zone. A couple weeks had passed since our fun and games at the Institute.
Of course, Cowboy had carried Slick to their infirmary. And of course they threw us out, with promises we’d be hearing from their attorneys. Not that I blamed them. Between the professor’s electrical work and Cowboy’s voodoo, we’d pretty much destroyed the place. At least their credibility.
I wish I could give you a “happily ever after,” but it didn’t roll that way. The evening we finished, Andi and Professor Sunshine took a taxi to the airport. He had lectures at UCLA the following day—which left no time for long good-byes, which I’d try to get over.
Cowboy wasn’t so easy to get rid of. But I’ll get to him in a minute.
It was the kid, Sridhar, that haunted me. I let him stay on my sofa the first couple of nights—back when he was calling his folks in Sri Lanka for money to fly home. But they never connected. They’d either moved or changed their number. The kid didn’t buy it for a minute. Something else was up. To keep him safe, we made plans to ship him to my mom’s over in Arizona. It never happened.
He disappeared. Just like that. One morning his blankets were folded, the pillows stacked, and he was gone. My first thought was the Institute. I called the police. They said I had to file a missing persons report.
“Can you at least drive out there and check?” I said.
“You think he’s at the Institute?” a bored voice asked.
“That’s what I said.”
“So if you know where he is, how can he be missing?”
I hung up and drove out there myself.
I wasn’t sure what I’d do. It didn’t matter. When I got there, the place was deserted. Completely. In seventy-two hours everyone had packed up and disappeared. The gate was open, the auditorium gutted, the classrooms and dormitories empty. A ghost town. Talk about eerie. That night, for the first time in a long time, I locked my doors.
A few mornings later Cowboy swung by the shop. He wanted me to touch up his tat where it had scabbed.
As he sat in the chair he said, “He didn’t leave a note or nothin’?”
I shook my head and began inking.
He kept sitting there thinking, or whatever he does when he isn’t talking. Finally he said, “You ever wonder what that headmaster guy meant when he said we weren’t brought together by accident?”
I did, but kept my mouth shut.
Cowboy didn’t. Or couldn’t. He looked down at my work. “I miss ’em already, don’t you?”
“Not exactly.”
He motioned to the boy that I’d tatted with the four of us. “You ever wonder about this little guy?”
“I just ink what I see.” I finished up and began smearing on the Aquaphor. “I got a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“How come that security field never bothered you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it put me and the professor through hell. It barely touched you.”
“Oh, yeah it did. Something fierce.”
“’Til you replaced what you were afraid of with something better.”
“That’s right.”
“Which was?”
He didn’t answer.
I taped on the cellophane. “What’d you replace your fear with, Cowboy?”
He broke into that goofy grin. “If I told you, you’d just say I’m preaching.”
“What’d you replace it with?”
“God. I kept thinking how much He loves—Ow! That’s tender.”
I didn’t bother to apologize. “Somebody still owes me one fifty for this.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Plus another twenty for interest.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Alright, we’re done here.” I peeled off my gloves.
He climbed out of the chair. That’s when he spotted the envelope with the numbers or the symbol or whatever it was that I’d sketched and left on the counter.
“Wow,” he said, moving closer.
“Wow, what?”
“Did you ever notice that if you turn this around it’s not a six, a nine, and a six? If you keep turning, it’s a six, a six, and another six.”
“And thanks for stopping by.” I ushered him toward the door.
“I’ll drop off the check tomorrow.”
“Mail’s fine.”
That had been two weeks ago.
I parked the car six blocks from the Bakersfield airport. It was gonna make me a little late, but it was worth it, not paying for parking. I cleared security and headed for my gate. Some tattoo business I’d never heard of up in Washington State had e-mailed me. They said they’d seen my work and wanted to discuss building a franchise. It was obviously a mistake, but not mine. So when they wired me a couple hundred and e-mailed me the ticket, I figured let them worry about it. A little vacation wouldn’t hurt.
At least that’s what I thought, ’til I heard the voices at the gate.
“This treatment is unacceptable. You should have been aware of the weather long before we departed, long before you dumped us in this godforsaken . . . where are we again?”
“Bakersfield, Professor.”
“Bakersfield.”
The professor was fighting with the attendant behind the counter, Andi beside him.
“Sir, please try to understand. First class is entirely booked. There is no possible way to—”
“Look at this ticket!” the professor said. “Do you see it? What does it say?”
“First class, but—”
“We had first class out of Los Angeles and we expect first class out of, out of . . .”
“Bakersfield, Professor.”
I got in the boarding line and turned my head so they wouldn’t see me. Too late.
“Oh, look, there’s Brenda!”
I pretended not to hear. But Andi was as persistent as she was cheery. “Brenda. Brenda!”
When it was clear everybody heard her but me, I turned and acted surprised. “Hey.”
“Are you on this flight, too?”
I nodded. “What are the odds?”
“A good question. I’ll let you know.”
“I bet you will.”
“Pardon me?”
I shook my head.
“We’ll see you on board, okay?”
“Right.”
Once I got on the plane I moved down the aisle, checking my seat number. The good news was I was way in the back. With luck, the professor would get his way and wind up in first class. The bad news was—
“Miss Brenda! Miss Brenda!”
I looked up. There was Cowboy in the last row, all grins.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“It’s incredible. The University of Washington, they want me to fly up there and talk to them.”
“Talk to them?” I continued down the aisle toward him.
“For a scholarship! They want to talk to me about a scholarship.”
I glanced at my ticket, fear growing.
“Think of it. I might become an honest to goodness Husky! Go dawgs! Isn’t that fantastic? Isn’t God good?”
“Well, He’s something.”
“What seat do you have?”
“Thirty-eight D.”
“Are you kidding me? I have 38 E!”
I searched for another empty seat. Any would do. But I was late and the plane was packed.
“Did you see the professor and Andi? They’re on the same flight, too. Isn’t that amazing?”
I stuffed my backpack into the overhead. With no place to go, I dropped into the seat beside him.
“This is so cool. I mean, really, really cool.”
I sighed and buckled in. Like so many times before, Slick’s voice echoed in my head. Are you so naïve as to think there are not greater forces at work?
Cowboy continued his chatter. “I mean really, when you stop to think about it, how lucky can we get?”
I leaned back and closed my eyes, knowing whatever was happening, whatever was going on . . . it had nothing to do with luck.
Contents
1. Clyde Morris
2. The Phenomenon
3. Encounters
4. Earthsong
5. Gustav Svensson
6. The House
7. Explorations
8. During the Night
9. Four Messages
10. A Heated Debriefing
11. Daniel
12. One Final Message
13. The Prison
14. The Third Death
15. A House Afire
16. The Monster
17. A Hero
18. Reflection
CHAPTER
1
Clyde Morris
Clyde Morris looked entirely the part of a wraith: neck tendons tuned like a harp, white hair wild, fogging corneas following unseen demons about the old dining room. “My life, my years, all over. Done! Can’t reach them from here, can’t change them, no more chances!”
His frumpish wife, Nadine, could make no sense of his ravings, his clenching and unclenching hands, his rising, pacing, sitting again, his seeing horrible things. She reached across the table to touch him but drew her hand back—it felt chilled as with frost.
He leaned, nearly lunged over the table, his face close to hers. “It knows me! It knows all about me!”
From down the hall came the shriek of door hinges. Clyde’s eyes rolled toward the sound, his veiny face contorted. A wind rustled the curtains, fluttered a newspaper, swung the chandelier so it jangled.
Clyde stood and the wind hit him broadside, pushing him toward the hall.
“Clyde!”
He reached across the space between them but the wind, roaring, carried him down the hall along with cushions, newspapers, the tablecloth.
A doorway in the hall, glowing furnace red, pulled him. He craned forward to fight it, stumbled, grappled, and slid backward toward it.
The doorway sucked him in like a dust particle. A high-pitched scream faded into infinite distance until cut off when the door slammed shut.
The wind stopped. The newspaper pages settled to the floor. A doily fluttered down like a snowflake. The chandelier jangled through two diminishing swings, then stopped and hung still.
Now the only sound was the wailing of the widow, flung to the floor in the old Victorian house.
CHAPTER
2
The Phenomenon
When A.J. Van Epps first called to relate what had happened—or allegedly happened—to crusty old Clyde Morris, I fidgeted, perused lecture notes, indulged him. Why would a learned academic and researcher like Van Epps trouble himself—and now me—with a campfire tale too easily debunked to warrant the effort? The largely one-sided conversation took a feeble turn toward interesting only when I discerned in Van Epps’ voice a tone of dread so unlike him, and it was after that hook was set that he sprang his proposal: Would I come and assist in the investigation? Would I help him regain his objectivity? Would I lend my knowledge and experience?
Oh yes, exactly what my frayed nerves needed. Being in a near plane crash and hauled into a misadventure in a so-called “Institute for Advanced Psychic Studies,” not to mention having my personal and deepest fears vivisected by one and the same, was a sleepy, monotonous ordeal. I needed the change.
Besides . . .
We were old friends and associates. I would be lecturing at Evergreen State College in the Puget Sound area in the next few days. Of course I could afford a side trip to help him look into the matter. I agreed to come—and kicked myself the moment I ended the call.
McKinney here. Dr. James McKinney, sixty, professor of philosophy and comparative religions, emeritus, at large, published, and so on and so forth. Generally, a scholar of religious claims and systems, but specifically, a skeptic, and it is to that last title I devote the most attention. This, I trust, lends explanation for why I and Andrea Goldstein, my young assistant, drove our rental car through the meandering and sloping village of Port Avalon and located the quaint Victorian residence of Dr. A.J. Van Epps.
Van Epps, thinner and grayer than I remembered, took our coats, then expended no more than a minute or two on greetings and how-are-yous before he led us to his kitchen table and brought up a photograph on his computer: A two-story Victorian home, dull purple, richly detailed, turreted, with a covered porch and sleepy front windows.
“My interest, of course, is to ascertain how it works, what empowers it, what measure or means of controlled stimuli will produce predictable results.”
Andi and I studied the photo. I saw a house; it was Andi’s way to see more, always more, which was one reason I took her along.
“Seven panels in the door,” she said. “Each window has seven panes. There are seven front steps.”
Not that I appreciated her timing. “Save it for later,” I advised, then asked Van Epps, “So this is a house here in town?”
Van Epps inserted an artful pause before answering, “Sometimes.”
This whole affair was ludicrous enough. “A.J., I’m not known for my patience.”
“Check out the landmarks: This tree with the large knot; this fire hydrant; this seam in the street.” He arrow-keyed to a second photograph, what one would call a vacant lot: some brush, some trees, nothing else . . . save for the same knotted tree, fire hydrant, and seam in the street in front. “I took this soon after the first. The house was there, and then it wasn’t.”
I didn’t stifle an irritated sigh. “If I may—just to cover the obvious—these photos are digital.”
He sighed back. “I didn’t alter them. No Photoshop.”
“And you’ve presented them in the order you took them?”
“Yes.”
“So I’m to take you seriously?”
He leaned back and held my gaze with his own. “I’ve found something, James, something atypical. As you’ll observe, Port Avalon is one of those . . . alternative kinds of town that attracts all brands of superstition, so the locals have their legends about the House, h
ow it’s a harbinger of death, how it knows you, follows you . . .” With an unbecoming cryptic note, he added, “Takes you.”
I rubbed my eyes, mostly to buy time. I was at a loss.
“I came to Port Avalon with the specific objective of encountering this House in order to study it, know it. I saw it for myself a month ago, even before the incident with Clyde Morris, and yes, there is something about it that would trigger such legends, so I have to ask, what is it really? And can we control it—maybe harness whatever powers it?”
“Harness? What are you talking about?”
He fidgeted, composing an answer. “Some friends and I are interested in occult power—not as occult power, you understand, but as . . . power. Power that could be useful.”
“Friends?”
“Investors, shall we say.”
I knew he wouldn’t go any further into it. Maybe another time. “A.J., if you want me to bring balance to this—”
“Absolutely! I can see the handwriting on the wall, this is no plaything.”
“Then I’ll be skeptical. Digital photographs? Legends? To waste my time is to insult me. Show me evidence beyond this.”
“There’s Nadine, Clyde Morris’s widow. You should hear her account. She was there, in the House, when it took him.”
I rose deliberately. “Then we’ll go there now.” I turned to get my coat.
The closet door was locked.
“Other door,” Van Epps said.
I found the closet, grabbed and put on my coat. Andi threw hers on.
“There’s more,” said Van Epps, clicking on another file.
It was my role to get him on track and I persisted. I recognized his favorite jacket in the front closet: fine leather, and a distinctive smell. I grabbed it and held it out to him.
With his eyes turned away from his computer, he swiveled it to show us another photo, that of a ghostly old man with glassy eyes and hunched shoulders glaring at the camera. The lighting was rather dim, the photo taken outdoors at dusk or later. “Clyde Morris.”
I would have none of the chill I felt and shook it off. Andi showed the same chill plainly. “He could have been dead already.” I was being sarcastic.
“He was,” said Van Epps. “He died a week before I took this.”
Invitation: The Call, The Haunted, The Sentinels, The Girl Page 6
