Throwing a piece of gum in his mouth, Kenji worked over the notion for a short while. Arms crossed, he eventually shrugged. “Seems far-fetched. I mean, to begin with, this isn't just some isolated photo or grainy recording. We have Agnes appearing in two very different pieces of media that come from two distinct content creators. I mean, unless the members of Jackal Priest secretly worked on a World War Two documentary.” Dylan was about to protest his skepticism, but Kenji continued before he could get a word in. “What seems more likely to me, is that this was an intentional implantation of information by a living person. Agnes inserted herself into two pieces of media that would be heard and seen by others because she wanted to spread a message. That message was a set of coordinates. Ten years ago, she disappeared, and the last traces we have of her are these weird recordings. She hasn't been seen since. I wonder what happened to her. When you look at this as a whole, there's something undeniably suspicious about it. Agnes disappears ten years ago, but has the foresight to leave behind a cryptic message. I not only wonder what happened to her, but whether she knew it was going to happen in advance. Know what I mean? If something happened to Agnes, did she know it was coming? That's the only thing that makes sense to me, otherwise why would she go through the trouble of inserting her message in those recordings? Something like that would take planning, foresight...”
Dylan massaged his jaw. “Not necessarily. What if I'm right and she's a spirit reaching out from the other side? Maybe it was a cry for help. Just think: something bad happens to her. She gets killed or whatever. Murdered, right? In death, her spirit reaches out and she sends out an SOS. Some clue about what happened to her in the hopes that her killer will be found. Maybe that shack belongs to the person who killed her!” He took off his glasses and polished the lenses with his shirt.
Kenji chortled. “Dude, shut the hell up. You're out of control. This is all so ludicrous I don't even know where to start. If your theories are dependent on the existence of the supernatural then they're crap theories. I expected better out of you, what with your being a chemistry major and all. This is hardly scientific.”
“Whatever,” said Dylan, turning back to his computer and scrolling around. “You're just being dense. This is clearly some paranormal shit, man. Either that, or...” His gaze narrowed as he clicked through a number of pages.
“What now?”
Dylan skimmed a new article. He was on a site dedicated to conspiracy theories, a large forum whose membership was constantly posting new threads and articles. Even at this hour things were bustling. Among the newest threads in the EVP section was a discussion on what were called “numbers stations”. This was the first Dylan had read of them, but as he skimmed he gave Kenji a rundown. “Ever hear of a numbers station? It's a radio station that just dishes out jumbles of letters and numbers. No one knows what they're for or who runs them. Says here, that... maybe they're a government project. Or that secret societies use them to transmit information to their followers. Think it might be something like that? Think that Agnes was a secret society member wrapped up in some classified project? Like, maybe the Illuminati were trying to spread some message through the media and we were just the ones who picked up on it? Maybe they held meetings out at that shack, and...” He shut the laptop and massaged his eyes. “Ah, fuck it. I'm going to bed,” he declared.
NINETEEN
The air that met his nostrils was heavy with more than dust. It was cold, filthy air, reaching out to him in waves as though generated by the movement of some unseen thing within the room. Stepping into the small space however, it became obvious that there was no one inside, and further, that no one had been in there for many, many years.
The dust on the floors was unbroken. The woman's claim that the house's occupants knew better than to enter this room rang true. There was a window to his right, next to a neatly-made bed weighed down by a blanket of dust. A dresser sat at the foot of this bed, and the opposite wall featured a medium-sized bookcase that still had a couple of volumes in it. Crouching beneath the edge of the bed like some beast lying in wait was a small wooden trunk. These objects, and a small, woven rug at the room's center besides, were all the room had to offer. There was no closet, no frivolous furnishings or anything else to be seen in the inkiness.
Reggie closed the door behind him and immediately regretted doing so, distinctly feeling as though he'd just locked himself in an enclosure with a lion. Holding a hand up to his nose to block out some of the dust that circulated through the air, he took a couple of nervous steps inside. The floors beneath his feet squealed, much unaccustomed to foot traffic. This space had all the allure of a dim funeral parlor and was every bit as unsettling to him, but still he felt pulled deeper in. Try as he might, Reggie couldn't simply turn around and leave. He was supposed to be here, had visited this house for a reason. As much as he would have liked to deny it, something had been set in motion the minute he'd decided to look into the footage of Agnes Pasztor. Walking through her deserted room was simply the most recent development in this investigation of his, and that he was slowly, blindly ambling to a yet unseen end-point was never in doubt.
Standing in the center of the room, the door and the hallway that would lead him to freedom seemed so very far. He canvassed his surroundings slowly, cautiously, reverently, half-afraid that the room's occupant, missing for ten years now, might barge in at any moment and accost him. No one came, however. From other rooms in the upstairs Reggie could make out hushed murmurings and doubtful shuffling, but nothing more.
Scanning the bed, Reggie realized that Agnes Pasztor had probably made it herself. A tremor seized his hand as he reached down and touched the dusty bedspread. One day, about ten years ago, Agnes had taken great care in making this bed. Then she'd been shunned from the house by the other tenants. Not long after that, she'd disappeared without a trace, but not before appearing in two recordings with a cryptic message to share.
Once, Reggie had watched a television show about serial killers and their upbringings. During this program, the host had toured the childhood homes of numerous killers. Their belongings, bedrooms and families were featured, and he remembered feeling terribly uneasy as he watched. It wasn't every day that one got such a glimpse into the private lives of others, and it was even rarer to learn about the day-to-day lives of infamous killers.
What had disturbed him most about the whole thing had been the utter normalcy of the killers' homes and upbringings. Their houses and lives and belongings hadn't been so much different from his own. He hadn't expected that. Savage men, he'd always assured himself, must live strange and savage lives. That hadn't been the case, however.
Looking at this room, which was more or less frozen in time, unchanged since the last moment Agnes herself had set foot in it, Reggie realized he didn't know a thing about the woman. Who was Agnes Pasztor, and what was she like? Watching that program years back had taught him that a mere perusal of the subject's bedroom or belongings was insufficient proof of their character. The woman who'd let him into the house had called Agnes a “witch”. What had she meant by that? The Hungarians he'd interacted with so far seemed to him a very eccentric bunch; even Mara had dabbled in palm-reading. Was the title of “witch” one that was commonly thrown about by this group, or was it something more nefarious that had to be earned through misdeeds? There was no way for him to know.
Reggie was shaken from his thoughts by a sudden desire to inspect the bookcase. He ambled over to it, allowing his eyes to scan the spines of the remaining dust-soaked volumes therein. Most were in a language he couldn't understand, and looked old enough to sit in museums. Leather-bound volumes packed with yellowed paper, mostly. He thought to pick one up and leaf through it when a singular book on the far right side of the top shelf called his attention.
This one didn't look like the others. For starters, its cover wasn't made of leather, but metal. Reggie brought a finger to its spine, allowing his skin to brush up against the cool exterior of
the book. He shivered as he did so. Sure enough, it was metal. His touch left a faint trail in the grime. Easing the book from its spot very carefully, Reggie was stunned by its weight. The book must have weighed at least ten or fifteen pounds.
Running his hand against the front cover and taking in the intricate designs pressed into the silvery metal in the faint light that came through the edges of the boarded window, he was transfixed. Very detailed etchings had been made across the cover and spine of this book. It was a job done with the utmost care, a task that would have taken no less than a lifetime. Squinting in the low light, appraising the front cover, Reggie could make out what seemed like thousands of little impressions in the metal which all came together to create a unified work. The design, a series of interconnected circles, was hypnotizing.
That it was a thing of great age was clear from the moment he picked it up, but just how old the strange book was he couldn't accurately guess. There was an aura of antiquity surrounding it that could just as easily have given the impression of a hundred years or a thousand. Opening the book, Reggie struggled to make out the words on its first page. There was no writing to be found on the cover, but he felt the need to try and learn the title of this strange and wondrous book that'd so captured his attention. What he found there was gibberish to him, but he shivered all the same as he tried to pronounce it quietly.
“Carte de Umbra Lungi.”
A draft passed through the room at that moment, as if the utterance of the ornately-rendered title had invited something into the space. The shadows seemed to quiver as the air shifted, and when the atmosphere was returned to its normal stuffiness, Reggie couldn't help but pick up on a change in the room. He'd fancied earlier that there'd been another presence there with him, that he could still feel the room's long-vanished tenant dwelling there in some vague way. The feeling was doubled, tripled now. So sure was he that Agnes would storm into the room at any moment that his heart began to race. Rocked by intense panic, Reggie lowered the book and scanned the room quickly, fist balled and legs growing weak. He wanted to run, to flee from this place. The entire house, the street it was situated on, no longer felt safe to him.
He left the room, feet pounding hard as he scaled the dark upstairs hallway and trotted down the stairs. He bypassed the kitchen, entered the foyer, and was out the door he'd entered from before his guide ever materialized. He felt the woman's eyes on him as he marched down the stoop and raced for his car. Fumbling with the driver's side door of the LeSabre, Reggie jumped in and engaged the lock at once. The fluttering of curtains at the blue, two-story house told him that its tenants were still watching him closely.
Shaking, Reggie wiped sweat from his brow and started up the car, peeling out of the spot and tearing down the street. He narrowly missed a number of parked cars as he sped onto the main road and took off. “Good Lord, give me strength,” he said in a near-whisper. The common refrain barely left his lips; he was out of breath, stricken by a fear he couldn't put a name to. Why was he so terrified? What'd come over him in that room and caused him to flee as if being pursued?
Glancing at the passenger seat, he found himself with yet another question on the growing pile.
Why had he seen it fit to bring with him the strange, old book with the metal cover?
He hadn't let go of it, had absentmindedly carried it out of the house with him in his flight. Or had he? The book, its cover glimmering in the dim sunlight, seemed to suggest otherwise. It had wanted to leave that house, had wanted to go with him. That was what it seemed like. That he'd made off with it was no mistake; his poking and prodding in that house, his insistence on further investigating the matter of Agnes' disappearance had won him this curio. The book entering into his possession was what was supposed to happen. Like a character written into a play, Reggie only wished he'd been made privy to the script.
No one in that house would care that the book was gone from Agnes' room. Guilt did not assail him, only fear. Something left to fester in that room over the course of the last decade was now out in the world again. He looked at the book in the corner of his eye as he rolled up to a stop light and felt an overwhelming sensation as of foreign eyes upon him. His car was the only one at the light however, and there were no pedestrians in sight. He was alone. Knowing it didn't make the feeling cease, though. It was just like it'd been up in Agnes' room. His car was host to another presence, another energy.
Reggie steadied his breathing and tightened his grip on the wheel. There was one place he could take this, one person he could count on to give him some insight into the nature of the book. Hitting the gas, he took off for Corso's Books.
TWENTY
Victor Corso was an old friend of Reggie's, a man he'd met not long after coming home from 'Nam. Victor had owned the little bookstore on the corner of Tenth and Washington Street for almost thirty years now, and dabbled in less conventional things, too. His was a shop dedicated not only to books, but to his other eccentric hobbies, namely astrology and tarot, as well.
Reggie stumbled into the book store with the strange, heavy book barely contained under one arm, sweating as if he'd just run a marathon. A few customers wandered around in the aisles, leafing through books, while Victor sat behind the counter and rearranged a few stacks of magazines. At sighting Reggie, Victor's face lit up.
“Reggie,” began the Italian bookseller with a clap of his hands. He was a short man, somewhat stocky, with dark, bushy eyebrows and a flamboyant swagger. Dressed always in his signature salmon dress shirts and pressed, tight-fitting slacks, it was Victor's custom to greet old friends with a handshake and kiss on the cheek. As he left his seat and started towards Reggie however, he must have seen that something was amiss. He paused just shy of Reggie and narrowed his gaze. “Are you all right, Reg?”
Reggie clutched at the book as though it were a dagger buried in his side and licked his lips. He attempted a smile, but didn't have it in him. Sweat continued pouring off of him. He'd thrown off his jacket before leaving the car, but his shirt was soaked through. His Adam's apple quivered as he tried to state the reason for his visit. “Victor, I gotta... I got a book here...”
Victor's gaze sank to the metal-bound volume under Reggie's arm. His eyes grew narrower still and he pressed a pudgy finger to one of his eyebrows, smoothing it out. Sniffing the air, he tapped Reggie's arm and motioned to a room in the back, just past the counter. “You need to speak alone, yes? Let's go in the back, hon.” Standing on tip-toe, Victor snapped at one of his staff on the other side of the store. “Luis, watch the counter for me. I'll be in the back room.”
Reggie followed Victor behind the counter and into the back room, where the staff usually appraised rare books, counted money at day's end and often lazed about when things were slow. Reggie had been back there once or twice to share a drink with Victor after business hours, but the errand he was on now lacked anything of pleasure or pleasantry. His request was very simple. Staggering to the nearest table, he cleared away the clutter of discount paperbacks and candy wrappers and set down the heavy book with a thud. “Please, tell me what this book is.”
Not that he didn't already have some idea. Before walking into the store, Reggie had leafed through it a bit on his own. Inside, he'd found about a hundred pages of flowing, foreign script. But what'd really captured his imagination were the illustrations.
There must have been at least a dozen. He couldn't be sure, because he simply hadn't had the stomach to seek them all out. Depictions, each of them, featuring grisly, medieval scenes. The first he'd glimpsed was of a woman's throat being slit and her blood collected in a chalice. The art was very old and its style was somewhat sketchy, however the roughness of the pictures only added to their morbid allure and grotesque realism. In studying that bit of art, Reggie had gotten the impression that the artist was someone intimately familiar with the act of murder; the strokes that'd laid this hideous work on paper were those of a hand that possessed also a considerable experience in
the slitting of throats, he felt quite certain.
The next illustration, featuring a horrible, hair-covered thing standing before a king on his throne had been, if it can be imagined, more awful than the last. Reggie had squinted through the dying light at the image, fearing that at any moment the monstrosity might leap from the page. He hadn't gone any farther in the book than that, hadn't had the strength to, but hoped that Victor might be able to shine some light on its provenance. Anything he could learn about the book and its potential involvement in the disappearance of Agnes Pasztor would be welcome.
Victor locked the door to the room and walked over to the table, hands in the pockets of his slacks. He plucked a pair of reading glasses from a table nearby and took a long look at the book, whistling sharply. “What have we here?” He furrowed his brow, touching the book's dusty cover and then suddenly recoiling. Stealing a glance Reggie's way, he sauntered off into the corner where he always kept a bottle of spiced rum inside of a cabinet. “Where'd you get this, Reg?”
Reggie considered his answer carefully. There was nothing much to tell, however. Where he'd gotten it wasn't the important thing. What he'd do with it now that it was in his possession was what most worried him. “Wouldn't believe me if I told you,” he replied, palming away a handful of sweat from his brow and massaging his scalp.
Transmission: A Supernatural Thriller Page 10
