by Anton Strout
I twirled my bat around in my hands while I raised it up into a classic batter’s stance. I rested it on my shoulder for a second, focusing in on the mob, and then started swinging for the outfield as hard as I could.
It was hard work, more so thanks to the sway of the now-wildly rocking boat, but both of us kept our feet. In a matter of moments, I had worked my way closer to Connor.
“Jesus,” I said, feeling the strain in my arms. “They keep coming up over the railings.”
“Don’t worry, kid,” Connor said. “With the boat moving, I think the undead crowd is thinning.”
“Good,” I said. “I can barely swing anymore.”
“What’s the matter, kid?” he asked. “You don’t want to swim for the island?”
“Not if I don’t have to,” I said. “I’d rather not find out whether the water of the East River would eat through me or the metal of my bat first. Or if it would make me like one of those creatures.”
“I wouldn’t worry about what would happen in the water,” Connor said.
“ No?”
“Nah,” he said. “Given the workout your arms are getting, I doubt you’d have the strength to swim to shore before drowning.”
“Thanks, Captain Optimism,” I said.
“It would be a better way to go than having your girlfriend channel some water-based she-devil and kill you.”
The numbers of our gruesome enemies were thin enough now that I could chance a look back into the wheelhouse. Jane looked worn and half-asleep at the controls, but she still managed to shoot me a weak smile.
“She’s got the mark under control,” I said.
“For now,” Connor added
“Yep,” I said. “For now. When we find that water woman, we’ll beat her into removing it. If we find her.”
I turned back and Connor was watching me. “Don’t worry,” he said, as sober and sincere as I’d ever seen him. “If it comes to it, I’ll take care of things if Jane turns.”
I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure there was a proper way to “thank” someone for promising to beat down the woman you loved. All our training in dealing with zombies and the like was meant to prepare us to strike down our colleagues without hesitation if they turned, but I didn’t think I had the courage to do it to Jane myself. Was hoping I didn’t have to come to that level of difficult decision making.
At least I now understood why the appeal of the open water had put Jane in such an improved mood; the girl was just releasing her inner monstrosity.
20
We hit the shore on Wards Island, tying off the boat on the shattered wooden remains of a dock that had definitely seen better days. Thankfully we had been able to outpace the aqua-zombies in their efforts to climb back on board the boat. I was paranoid enough once we landed that I stood at the water’s edge waiting for several minutes to make sure we had no hangers-on. When nothing came shambling out of the river for us, I finally retracted my bat and holstered it.
I turned around to face the darkness of the island’s woods behind us. Jane was sitting on a boulder off to my right, rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped around her body. Her wind-whipped hair hung mostly over her face, giving her a crazy sea-haggish kind of look.
I walked over to her, but she didn’t register my presence as I approached. I put my hand on her shoulder. “How are you feeling?”
Jane brushed her hair out of her face and looked up at me. Her cheeks were wet with tears. “Horrible,” she said, “but a bit more like myself now that I’m on dry land.” She continued to comb her hair down to something less Don King–like. I took her wanting to straighten herself out as a good sign that she was acting a bit less possessed now. “What came over me? What the heck happened out on the water?”
“You don’t remember?”
Jane shook her head. “Snippets of it,” she said. “It’s all a bit cloudy for me.”
“I think you had a little visit from someone,” I said.
“Did I? From that woman?” she asked. I nodded and her eyes widened. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
I knelt down in front of her and took her hands in mine. “I’m fine,” I said. “You fought that woman’s power and you won.”
Jane shook her head and looked down on the ground. “I don’t know how it happened. Being out on the open water just brought out the connection to it in me. It was overwhelming. I felt so . . . right. The mark started burning while you and Connor were fighting those . . . things. I don’t remember too much else until you got me inside the cabin.” Her face darkened. “I never should have come.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over that,” I said. “You can’t change the past. What’s done is done. We just have to keep fighting this as it comes. We’ve got Allorah analyzing things from a scientific angle, and Director Wesker is looking into the arcana behind it . . .”
“But how long do I have?” Jane asked, hysteria rising to the surface in her voice. “I could feel myself losing control and no one seems to be making any progress on it.”
“We’ll find a way,” I insisted.
“No!” Jane shouted. “We won’t. I shower more and more. At this rate, soon you’re going to need to buy an aquarium to hold me, Simon!”
She was over-the-top with emotion, much like I had been during my psychometric bout at the Gibson-Case Center. I know how stubborn those feelings had made me in the moment, and Jane was being just as stubborn. No matter what I was saying, she wouldn’t listen to me. I stood up. “Connor,” I said. “Talk to her.”
I was met with silence and I looked around. At first, I couldn’t see him anywhere in the darkness, but then I caught sight of his shadowy figure standing at the edge of the woods by the white of a nearby building I hadn’t even noticed. He stood there stock-still, and I walked over to him with caution, my hand resting on my bat in its holster. I had already had to deal with one person under possession tonight. I was hoping I didn’t have to take on another.
“Connor . . . ?” I asked, hoping I was hiding the trepidation in my voice.
I walked around in front of him. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets, and he was looking up in the air toward the building. I stepped right in front of him and caught my partner’s eye.
“What’s up, buddy?” I asked, unholstering my bat.
He looked over at me and his face looked normal enough. “Does anything strike you strange about where we landed?” he asked.
“Other than the undead Aqua Men off its coast? Not that I’m aware of. Why?”
Connor grabbed me by my shoulders and spun me around. “Open your eyes, kid.”
I had been so concerned about Jane that I hadn’t really taken in much of our environment. The three of us were standing in a cluster of trees, some kind of forest or park on Wards Island. It didn’t have much in the way of lampposts or lighting of any kind, giving the area a wild and unused look, but there was one thing that stood out about the place—the building Connor had been looking at.
In front of us stood an abandoned lighthouse that rose almost as high as the bridge itself. A small rectangular room at the base of it stuck out, but other than that it looked fairly typical—a raised cylindrical structure that narrowed as it rose, ending high above in a railed balcony that surrounded the glassed-in top and its long-extinguished signal light.
Once I had taken it in, I turned back to Connor, only to find that Jane had joined us. She seemed more composed now as she stared up at the lighthouse. She looked over her shoulder at Connor.
“Doesn’t look to be an active lighthouse,” Connor said, “but with aqua-zombies just offshore from it and nothing else around—”
“We should probably check that out, huh?” Jane asked.
Connor looked at her. “At least one of you is paying attention,” he said. “Good to have you back.” He smiled, and then headed off toward the steps leading up to the entrance of the lighthouse.
I didn’t move. “Excuse me for showing concern over my po
ssessed girlfriend first,” I said.
“Can we not call me ‘possessed’?” Jane asked. “I haven’t started hurling up pea soup or anything.”
“Yet,” I added. Jane shot me a hurt look. “Sorry.”
Jane didn’t say another word and headed off after Connor, leaving me there to feel like an insensitive cad all by my lonesome. I shook it off and followed after her, undoing the strap on my holster once again and pulling my bat free. I hit the combination of marked buttons on the shaft of my bat that spelled out Jane’s initials, which extended the custom weapon to its full size with a gentle shikt.
When I caught up with the two of them at the top of the steps leading up to the entrance, Jane was whispering to Connor. “Who’s going first?” she asked.
Before he could respond, I pushed past the two of them. “I’ll go,” I said. I still felt caddish. The least I could do was take the lead going in. I tried the handle of the heavy door. It was solidly built, its ancient wood barded together with thick iron bars that ran across it at three separate parts. It wouldn’t budge.
“Locked,” I said, handing Jane my bat. She took it and I reached up the sleeve of my coat for the set of lock picks I kept there.
“Looks like you would have been going first anyway, kid,” Connor said, slapping me on the back. “You sure you can pick this? Looks kind of old . . .”
I dropped to my knees and started working on the tumblers with my assortment of picks and torsion wrenches. “I should be able to,” I said. “Pin locks go back almost four thousand years. The hardware has changed over the years, but not the theory or mechanics behind them. And you’d be surprised how many of the old art houses and antiques stores in Manhattan are still using those old locks. Made a lot of my old heists fairly easy.”
“I keep forgetting,” Jane said, mustering a false pride in her voice. “My boyfriend, the ex-thief.”
“Emphasis on the ex,” Connor added.
I went silent as I concentrated on the lock. With both my partner and my girlfriend watching, a little performance anxiety crept up on me, especially since I was using my old nefarious skills. Not being able to beat the lock would be more than embarrassing. Worse, it would give them something to bond over while picking on me.
I needn’t have worried. I expected the lock to give me some difficulty given the abandoned state of the lighthouse, and I was surprised when I heard it click open under my working it seconds later.
“You make it look so easy,” Jane said, giving me a silent golf clap.
“It was easy,” I said, still examining the mechanism itself. “I expected the hardest part of opening it would be due to corrosion given its age and with it being so close to the water, but someone’s been taking very good care of it.”
I slid my set of picks and torsion wrenches back up my sleeve before standing and took my bat back from Jane. I put my hand against the door. “Stay sharp, people,” I said and pushed it open. The door didn’t make a sound.
“Well, that’s disappointing,” I said.
“What is?” Jane asked.
“Where’s the creakiness from unoiled hinges? Maybe I watched too much Scooby-Doo as a kid, but I’m a bit disappointed that it didn’t squeak open like they always did on the show.”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky and the Gator Ghoul will be waiting on the other side,” Connor added.
I gave him a thumbs-up for the reference, and then turned my attention back to the lighthouse as we entered.
The interior of the circular part of the lighthouse was open and led off to another part made up of the long rectangular section we had seen from outside. The cylindrical part of the room was ringed along the far wall with a spiral staircase built into the curvature of the building. I wasn’t sure what I had expected to find in here. Maybe some nautical equipment—a rain slicker that belonged to the Gorton’s fisherman, perhaps. Instead, the interior of the lighthouse was littered with film equipment. Old-school cameras set up on tripods, recording equipment. . . even a table scattered with an odd assortment of different microphones and tape reels. One wall had a makeshift film screen tacked up and an old film projection machine faced it. A thick black reel of film still sat in it, threaded through the machine like a snake caught in a trap.
“What is this place?” Jane whispered.
“From the look of it, I’d say it was the good professor’s home away from home,” Connor said. “Unless you know of any other bridge-obsessive film teachers around town.”
Jane laughed and I shushed her.
I headed for the stairs. “Let’s see if we have any Goldilocks lurking around here before we get too carried away,” I said.
As I started up into the lighthouse, I was thankful for the solid structural integrity of the building. Sturdy old-world stonework made up the walls, and the staircase itself was cast from black iron. I did my best to move silently, going up it without making a sound. Jane followed right behind me and Connor took the rear.
The farther I went up into it, the more my nerves were on end, but other than a shoddy old mattress on the second level up, there were no signs of habitation. It still gave me the creeps, despite the spectacular view at the top of it. I couldn’t get back downstairs fast enough, Jane clutching my hand as we rushed back down.
When we reached the room full of film equipment once more, Connor spoke up, using his full voice now that we knew we were alone here. “Why the hurry, kid?”
“You don’t find this place creepy?” I asked.
Connor shrugged. “Not really,” he said. “I mean, nothing has tried to kill us in here yet.”
“Call me crazy,” I said, “but I actually take comfort when I have something tangible to deal with, something I can take a bat to. Getting a spooky feeling just gets under my skin, especially when nothing stands out.”
Connor laughed. “That is crazy,” he said.
Jane interrupted the sound of his laughter. “None of this explains why Professor Redfield was killed,” she said. “Or any of those ghosts you mentioned.”
“She’s right,” I said, “but here’s a theory: maybe he set up his crazy film studio too close to her ship-sinking business. Maybe the professor awoke her ancient spirit while making his documentary or something.”
“Maybe,” Connor said, “but if she killed him for his knowledge of her, wouldn’t she have destroyed all this, too?”
“Probably,” I said, “but let’s look around. There may be something here that’s of use to us.”
We spread out around the room, picking through the film equipment for anything that didn’t look like the professor had accumulated it from the film department of NYU. I went over to a long table along the right side of the room that was cluttered with bits and pieces of broken wood. I put on my gloves as I shifted them around. Peeking out from beneath two of the boards was a white, halfrusted plate with the letters SLO carved into it. The rest of the piece was torn away beyond the O. I pulled it out from underneath everything else and held it up for Connor to see. “This looks promising, yes?” I asked.
“We’re definitely taking that with us,” Connor said, over by the film projector set up in the center of the room. “Make sure you bring it to the boat.” He pulled out his flashlight and started examining the machine.
“What are you doing?” I said. “You want to watch movies, we’ve got stadium seating back in Manhattan.”
“I’m trying to figure out how to unthread this film reel to pack it up and take it with us,” he said. “It’s the last thing the professor was working on. Maybe it will give us some insight.”
“Thank God you don’t want to watch it here,” Jane said, nervous. She wrapped her arms around herself.
“Not here, no,” Connor confirmed. “I don’t want to hang out here any longer than we have to, especially if more of those river-bottom zombies come knocking. The professor was passionate about film. Let’s take it out of here and see where his passions really lay.”
21
The boat made it back to the docks over by Chelsea Piers even though I thought the engine and motor might have been clogged with aqua-zombie bits from earlier. Cleaning the guts and ichor off it would have to wait. After tying off, the three of us headed back and reported to the Inspectre about Mason’s secret film-production lighthouse. When we showed him the film canister, he insisted on kicking all the norms out of the Lovecraft’s theater as the credits on The Picture of Dorian Gray rolled.
A fair number of agents from a variety of divisions gathered in the theater, along with most of Other Division and some faces I recognized from some of my Fraternal Order of Goodness training sessions. The Inspectre watched the theater fill up before looking down at the film reel in his hands. Jane, looking a little more tired now that we were off the water, collapsed into one of the theater seats in the middle of a row halfway back.
“I’ll take care of loading the film,” the Inspectre said, lifting up the canister. “See to the girl.”
I nodded. “You know how to run the projector?” I asked him as I sat down next to her.
“Can’t be that hard, can it?” he scoffed. “I’ve solved the riddle of the cube at Astor Place, fought the Geissman Guard. . .”
“You also got lost in the Black Stacks at Tome, Sweet Tome for half an hour,” Connor reminded him.
The Inspectre’s face fell and he blushed. “Well, yes, you have me there, my dear boy.” He tried to shake off the sudden deflation from Connor’s words. “I still maintain that those occult books kept changing the layout back in the Black Stacks . . .”
“It’s possible,” I offered. “I mean, if a homicidal bookcase can come charging after me, surely the rest of them can move around.”
“Yes,” the Inspectre said, getting lost in thought. “Perhaps.” He wrapped his arms around the bulk of the film canister and walked it up the aisle toward the door leading up to the projection booth.
