The Midnight Ground

by Eric Dontigney

  “Care to share what’s so amusing?”

  “Library,” she said. “Unspeakable evil, curses, conspiracies and you’re going,” more laughter, “to go,” harder laughter, “to the library!”

  I felt offended on behalf of libraries everywhere. “What’s so funny about that? Libraries have served us all pretty well over the centuries.”

  “I just suspect that,” she said, catching her breath, “people would be less intimidated by you if they knew you went to libraries.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “If they were smart, they’d be more intimidated.”

  Helena wiped at one eye. “True enough. You’ll let me know if you find something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Get some sleep, Hartworth,” she said, a little giggle in her voice. “You’ve got a hard day of research at the library tomorrow.”

  “Har, har.”

  Helena turned away and started walking toward her car. Every few steps, I heard a little snort, tee-hee, or snicker. You’d have thought I’d just announced my plan to become a fan-dancer. I drove back to the cabin and found Lil sitting right inside the door. She glared at me, stepped out the door, peered around suspiciously, and went back inside. She walked to the far side of the cabin, glared at me some more, and issued forth with a discontented noise.

  “Mrrrwwww.”

  “What’s wrong? Are you out of food?”

  I walked over and found her dish still half full with food. I poured more water into the other side of the little dish from a bottle I’d left sitting on the nightstand. She eyed me, unimpressed.

  “Not the problem, huh.”

  I checked the litter box and scooped out a few sandy clumps into a small plastic bag. I didn’t bother looking at her. Even knowing almost nothing about cats, I was sure the litter box was too clean to account for her annoyance. I sat down on the bed and regarded Lil for a moment. I held out my hand near the floor. She watched my outstretched fingers for a long time before she—ever ever so casually—sauntered over and let me scratch behind her ears.

  “You’re out of sorts because I was gone for so long, aren’t you?”

  Lil sat back on her haunches and looked up at me. Her kitty face was locked into an opaque, alien expression that probably would have told another cat, or Helena, several million things. It told me nothing. I reached down again and she deigned to let me pet her head.

  “I’m pretty new to this,” I offered. “I’ll do my best to figure it out, but you need to be patient and bear with me a little.”

  She tipped her head to one side, as if trying to pick up a transmission from a satellite, or possibly, the home world of the Cat Overlords. She held still like that for the better part of fifteen seconds before she seemed to decide that she was no longer aggravated. She leapt up onto the bed and started sniffing at things I couldn’t smell. I went through my nightly routine of bandage changing. It was getting slightly less agonizing. No one would ever mistake it for a massage, but it didn’t draw immediate tears.

  All the day’s activities caught up with me. I yawned several times and crawled into bed. I told myself to turn off the light by the bed. Myself agreed that that was an excellent idea, but made no move to perform the action. Myself isn’t really a team player, I guess. Somewhere between telling my hand to turn the little knob on the side of the lamp and the signal reaching my arm, I fell asleep.

  “You make an excellent point, young man,” said a small man in a tweed jacket, standing behind a podium. “Orthodox religion has always been intolerant of mystery schools, typically under the guise of maintaining the purity of accepted practice. Of course, the reality was always about maintaining a grip on temporal power.”

  I stood in the aisle of an auditorium that was filled to capacity. If anyone had noticed me, or cared where I stood, they kept quiet. Someone asked a question and I was shocked to discover the speaker was me.

  “Professor, in your opinion, was orthodox religion the primary threat to mystery schools?”

  The professor squinted at me. “Yes, you there. What is your name?”

  “Hartworth, Professor,” I answered against my will.

  “Hartworth, mmmm, yes. Who is your large friend, Mr. Hartworth?”

  I turned my head left. Rows and rows of students looked at me in utter silence. It was creepy. I turned my head right and found Dream Lil towering next to me like doom’s familiar. Even in the steady light of the auditorium, her features were difficult to make out, save for the savage scar on her damaged ear and her blood ruby eyes. I turned back to the professor and wondered what possible answer I could give that would sound sane.

  “Lil,” I answered automatically.

  “Ah yes, Hartworth and Lil, glad to see you could make it,” said the professor, scratching a note onto a piece of paper. “As to your question, no, in my opinion, orthodox religion was not the primary threat to mystery schools, nor was social pressure. Perhaps ironically, the primary threat to mystery schools was the most prosaic of all things: economics.”

  “Could you expand on that thought?” I asked.

  “Certainly,” said the Professor, warming to the topic. “By their very nature, mystery schools placed increasing demands on the time and energy of their members, especially at the upper levels. The longer the school existed, the more intense the demands. The elite of the mystery schools couldn’t devote themselves fully to careers or financial management while also pursuing the goals of the school. Some mystery schools collapsed under the financial demands. Others maintained themselves by bringing in a steady stream of novitiates and collecting dues.

  “That strategy, naturally, leads to a corrosion in purpose. Take the Masons, for example. When they began, I am confident they were a true mystery school, but time and an increasing membership led to a devolution into something more akin to a social club. Without a steady influx of wealth, mystery schools seemed doomed from the outset to collapse. With uncertain finances, the schools couldn’t pursue their goals as readily. That in turn diminished membership, which served to exacerbate the financial problems. To survive, they have to allow more open membership, but at the cost of drifting from their initial purpose. It is a dilemma to which I have seen no obvious solution.”

  “Perhaps a wealthy founder,” I offered.

  “A plausible notion, on the surface, but ultimately unsustainable. Consider the realities of inflation. In 1901, a fortune of five million dollars was a staggering sum, worth the equivalent of one hundred to one hundred and fifty million dollars in today’s market, give or take. Yet, the actual five million dollars loses value at a shocking rate as time passes, unless significant time and effort are put into managing it toward growth. Time and effort, Hartworth, the exact things the elite of mystery schools didn’t have to give.”

  I started to ask another question, but resounding booms shook the auditorium. It felt like a giant was slamming a fist against the roof. I put a hand against Dream Lil’s side to steady myself. There was a moment of disorientation, as though I moved some great distance, and my eyes snapped open.

  Someone was knocking on the cabin door with hard, steady bangs.

  Chapter 25

  In my experience, hard banging on the door never bodes well. It’s just an immutable truth. My first instinct, on coming-to, was to look for a back way out. I could have gone out a window. They were big enough, if I didn’t mind some scrapes and cuts. I doubted I could get out one without making some noise. Lil was standing up and looking at the door, but her ears were forward and she didn’t give off a fear vibe. I found that oddly reassuring and took a second to consider the implications. There were only a few people who knew where to find me. I was also on speaking terms with all of them at the moment. I hemmed, hawed, and listened to several more serious sounding thumps. Decision made, I heaved myself out of bed. I went to the door and opened it.

  “Hartworth,” said Patty, her eyes watching something off in the trees, “I wanted to talk…”

  She looked bac
k at me and her voice caught. Her eyes were fixed on my chest. I glanced down and winced. I wasn’t wearing a shirt. Patty’s eyes swiveled up to meet mine. There was anger in her eyes, but it wasn’t aimed at me. She’d been a cop somewhere else before she moved into small-town policing. Apparently, it was the kind of place where bad shit happened to people regularly enough that she knew the signs. Someone had done that to me. If I was one of those sad souls that cut themselves, there would have been newer scars, some of them red with the more recent trauma. My scars were evenly faded-out to pale white.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Let me grab a shirt. Come on in.”

  Patty followed me into the cabin and shut the door behind her. I dug around until I came up with a package of white t-shirts I’d bought. I ripped it open and, after fumbling with some stickers and a hunk of cardboard, I pulled it on. I turned to face the deputy. She looked thoughtful.

  “Piss off the wrong person?” she asked.

  “It’s possible,” I said. “I rub a lot of people the wrong way.”

  “Nice of them not to cut up the tattoos.”

  “Since they gave them to me, it would have been counterproductive.”

  Patty blinked at that. “Somebody tortured you and took the time to give you tattoos?”

  “Not sure it was torture. I don’t actually remember any of it.”

  “That’s probably a mercy,” said Patty. “They mean anything?”

  “Does what mean anything?”

  “The tattoos.”

  “Oh, yeah, they do.”

  Patty made an exasperated noise. “What do they mean?”

  “They’re alchemical symbols,” I said.

  “Alchemical?”

  “Um,” I verbally stumbled as I searched for a simple explanation. “Alchemy is the transmutation of elements or material into something more perfect, broadly speaking.”

  Patty sighed.

  I thought about it. “Alchemists tried to turn lead into precious metals and other things along those lines.”

  “Ah,” Patty said. “Do you know what the ones on your chest mean?”

  “Not specifically,” I admitted.

  “How can you not know? I mean, isn’t that your thing?”

  “A dermatologist might understand the anatomy and general processes involved with heart surgery. It doesn’t mean you want one giving you a bypass. I’m not an expert on alchemy.”

  She gave me a perplexed look. “Given that someone tattooed those symbols onto you, seems like you might have looked into it.”

  I sighed. “I did. It’s not as clear-cut as you might think. There’s a lot of bleed-through between old schools of magic and mysticism. The symbols are alchemical designs, but it doesn’t make them alchemical in intent.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Patty.

  I frowned and looked around. I found a scrap of paper.

  “Do you have a pen or pencil?” I asked.

  She handed me a pen. I used it to draw on the paper and handed both items to her. She pocketed the pen and glanced at the paper.

  “Okay?”

  I smiled. “What do you see there?”

  Patty didn’t pause. “Crosshairs.”

  “Maybe. All you actually see on that paper is a circle with a vertical and horizontal line inside it. You’re a cop, so you see crosshairs. Maybe I intended to convey a pie cut into quarters. Maybe I was trying to draw a Celtic cross, but I’m a shitty artist. Or, maybe I’m an X-Men fan who likes to doodle, and you’re holding the paper wrong. That drawing is a symbol, but it only becomes meaningful after you understand my intent. Until you do, it could be a lot of things, and easily misinterpreted.”

  Patty nodded. “So, you understand the form, but not the substance. You don’t want to guess because you don’t have enough information to make an educated guess.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Strange,” said Patty.

  “What’s strange?”

  “It just sounds a lot like police work, is all. You try not to jump to a conclusion until you’ve gathered all the evidence and information. It seems terribly rational.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “You blather on about black magic, which is obviously irrational and not real. Then you apply a rational methodology to trying to understand it. Talk about counterproductive.”

  I snorted. “It’s only counterproductive if magic actually is irrational and fake. I defy you to prove either assumption.”

  “Well, obviously it’s irrational and fake because,” she paused.

  “Because someone told you so, once upon a time,” I said.

  “It’s irrational and fake because it has never held up under any kind of scientific scrutiny.”

  I laughed. “You better believe it hasn’t. We all go out of our way to make sure of it.”

  Patty shot me an annoyed look. “That’s stupid. Why would anyone do that?”

  “It’s self-preservation. Can you imagine the mass panic if people realized that psychics really could pick thoughts out of their heads? Or that some wacko with a hotline into Hell could sic a demon on you, or your kid, at the drop of a hat?”

  Patty frowned and I saw her thinking it through. “Okay, yes, I can see how that might cause some panic, but people would get over it.”

  “Sure they would,” I said. “You know, because human beings have such a stellar track record dealing with things that are different. And you haven’t thought about the politics of it. What do you imagine the government would do in the face of all that human chaos and terror?”

  She chewed that one over for a lot longer. “Nothing good, I expect. They’d probably start rounding people up or quarantining them maybe.”

  “Shit, they’d shove them into internment camps faster than you could say civil rights violations. That’s assuming the government didn’t use them as lab rats or try to weaponize them. How about the law enforcement ramifications? How do you police a crime like thought theft? Or, I don’t know, arson with no apparent cause. How do you even start to investigate that?”

  Patty said nothing.

  “Bear in mind, we’re talking about a moderately civilized place here. This isn’t some war-torn nightmare or dictatorship. It’s America. Could you imagine what would happen in places where human rights, let alone civil rights, are considered an irrelevance? It’d be a fucking massacre.”

  Patty looked down and shoved her hands into her pockets. It finally hit me that she wasn’t wearing her deputy’s uniform. She wore jeans, a light sweatshirt, and beat-up cross-trainers. I was struck again by the simple solidity of the woman. The there-ness of her was profound. She was fully present in the moment. I was impressed by that. Most people, myself included, barely managed to stagger by being all of twenty-five percent present at any given moment. She shook her head firmly in the negative.

  “It’s all hypothetical anyway,” she insisted.

  “As you choose,” I said. “Just think of it this way. The best defense most people have against psychics and magic and all that other supernatural mumbo jumbo is that people like me don’t want to be noticed. Not getting noticed is our best defense against everyone else. As long as you think we’re fakes no federal task forces or shiny new law enforcement agencies are hunting us. We can move in the world freely.”

  “Like regular people,” said Patty.

  “We are regular people. Stupid, flawed, petty, and generally speaking, boring people. At any rate, I’m pretty sure you didn’t stop by to discuss alchemical tattoos and the political ramifications of magic being public knowledge.”

  Patty sniffed. “I should hope not. I’ll probably try to pretend that conversation never happened at all. I stopped by to talk to you about that fire.”

  I took in the fact that she was out of uniform. I made a guess. “You want to talk off the record, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “Fair enough. Lay it on me.”

  “There were no batteries in the smoke detectors. Not
one.”

  I nodded. “Sounds pretty suspect to me.”

  “It is, but I’m closing the investigation down.”

  “Why?”

  “A couple of reasons, the biggest one being that if I call it arson, it could screw with Paul getting any insurance money. I’m pretty sure he didn’t set that fire, so I won’t punish him.”

  I closed my eyes. God, I’d been so out of it. Those damn pain pills had done a number on me. If I’d had my head screwed on straighter, I’d have realized that obvious truth about the investigation. I opened my eyes and knew that Patty saw the comprehension in my eyes.

  “Right,” I said. “I get it. I’m not interested in making Paul or Abby’s lives any harder. Sounds like something you could have told me over the phone though.”

  “That part of it, sure, but there is still the matter of the missing batteries. Someone took them out. You don’t do that unless you plan on hurting someone. Somebody took a shot at Paul and Abby. If you figure out who, I expect you to tell me.”

  “What if it wasn’t a person? What if it was something you can’t lock up in a cell and put on trial?”

  “Don’t give me that crap, Hartworth. Boogeymen don’t set fires. People do. Just because some asshole figured out how to do it without leaving obvious evidence doesn’t make it magical.”

  I wanted to scream in frustration. I damn well knew it was magical. I also knew that the “criminal” behind it was a demon. She was also wrong about boogeymen. They did set fires sometimes. Patty didn’t want to hear it. Maybe she just couldn’t hear it. People committed crimes, end of story. Anything else was just too far-fetched for Patty to latch onto. I gave her a resigned nod.

  “If I find a person was responsible,” I said, “I’ll tell you.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “I’m not messing around with you. No vigilantes in my town. You find something out, you tell me. Then, I handle it the right way.”

  “If I wanted to go vigilante, I’d have done it by now. Tucker Smith tried to go all alpha male on me at Connor’s the other day. I didn’t even send him to the hospital.”