With a last bang and clatter, the busy senoculus apparently succeeded in tearing open the shaft doors on the second floor, because bits of debris ticked against the roof of the car.
Darkness enveloped me. The claustrophobia, having abated slightly, surged back full force.
In the elevator in my world, the rungs of the service ladder would be set in the concrete wall of the shaft. Here in Elsewhere, the idea of rungs existed in the idea of a concrete shaft. But the senoculus could climb down to the roof of the car as easily on the idea as on the reality.
Thirty-five
EARLIER I ADMITTED THAT, WHEN I WAS IN HIGH school, lingering spirits distracted me from science studies and math, for which I had no great talent, anyway. English and writing were my strengths, and baseball, and frying anything that might taste good, though that last came naturally and didn’t require me to take a class.
The rules of Elsewhere might not have been either a problem of science or math, but figuring them out seemed as daunting to me as mastering trigonometry. I guess that’s what froze my mind there in the idea of an elevator, that and anguish at the thought of the kids not making it out of that building alive. Although I’m pretty much a positive guy, especially considering that I’m always slogging through one crap storm or another, I must admit that my anguish almost segued into despair when darkness fell around me and I knew that the Other Odd, with its look-how-scary-I-am six eyes and its stupid forked tongue, was about to descend the service ladder to pop open this can and spoon me out of it.
Then enlightenment. Suddenly I understood that the idea of light in the car had been my idea, not a kindness extended to me by the senoculus. And the light had gone out because I had realized that the car should be dark.
The instant I reconsidered that hasty thought, the idea of light returned, all around me, issuing from no discernible source.
If the senoculus and I were equally matched in willpower, with the demon insisting that the elevator return to the second floor and me insisting that it continue down to the ground floor, the stalemate did not necessarily mean that the issue must be decided by a physical confrontation. I had no illusions that I would win in hand-to-hand combat against an undying adversary with supernatural strength. Not even Mr. Schwarzenegger could have hoped to win such a battle in the days before he became a governor and went to seed.
I had supposed that the rules of Elsewhere were impossible to imagine because the place was so formless, independent of the laws of physics and thermodynamics and other systems of my material world. Now, however, my anguish over the children brought me not to despair but to desperation, which is energized despair that compels vigorous action. In my desperation, I grasped a most important possibility: If the senoculus and I were equally matched in willpower, the contest might be decided by which of us was more clever.
Cleverness requires imagination. Evil is not imaginative. It inspires the same transgressions over and over again, with such infinitesimal variation that only the weak-minded are not quickly bored by that way of living. It seeks to destroy, and destruction takes no imagination. Creation takes true imagination, the making of something new and wondrous, whether it’s a song or an iPad, a novel or a new cooking surface more durable than Teflon, a new flavor of ice-cream or spacecraft that can travel to the moon. The vibrant imagination of a fry-cook with free will should easily trump the weak imagination of a demon anytime, anywhere.
Instead of willing the elevator car to descend the shaft and being resisted by the senoculus willing it to return to the second floor, I imagined the hydraulic ram that raised and lowered the car in the shaft, and once the idea of the ram was clearly in mind, I imagined it suddenly failing, dropping the car in an instant to the ground floor.
Wham! It is a good thing that the fall was only half a story, for otherwise I might have been knocked unconscious or badly injured. But I was only thrown off my feet, and I sprang up at once. The doors flew open before me, as I had imagined they would, and I stepped out of the car, into a hallway.
I remained in Elsewhere, in a smooth gray empty building, but the layout should be the same as in the real building in my world. I was well aware that the senoculus, that kissing fool, would already be sprinting madly for the entrance to the stairs on the second floor; therefore, I ran faster than I had ever run before. I sought the vacant dining room and found it, sought the vacant kitchen and found it, raced to one of the French doors that faced onto the rear terrace, and opened it. I saw that my reasoning had been correct: My world lay beyond the back door; the building still shared a boundary with the wasteland only on the lake side, where sorcery of some kind had invited the one whom they venerated.
Discovering the true and hidden nature of the world had nearly broken me. I hoped with all my heart that whatever more there might be for me to learn, further lessons could be postponed until I had gotten that dinner of cheese meatloaf, steak fries, and coleslaw, and until I felt confident that I had completed this first semester with my sanity intact.
I hurried across the terrace and about twenty feet into the yard before stopping and turning to look back at the house, lodge, witch’s cradle, whatever. Through the windows, I saw not the grayness of Elsewhere, but the warmly lighted house as it had been when I first approached it. Nobody was in the kitchen or visible in other rooms, so they must all be out on the second-floor deck, still waiting for the two Kens to appear with the seventeen sacrifices, although the gong had rung minutes earlier.
Boo and the kids were nowhere to be seen, which must mean they were in the process of making good their escape, if not already off the property.
I resorted to psychic magnetism, picturing Verena Stanhope in my mind’s eye, her ponytail and celadon eyes, and at first I felt nothing, nothing. Nothing. Before I could panic, I realized that perhaps my gift might be failing me because I was demanding to feel something. As crazy as most of us Californians are, it’s nevertheless sometimes true that you have to switch off the motor and go with the flow.
Although the shredding clouds were on the move, it seemed to be the moon that glided into sight, a great round silver ship on a dark but sparkling sea. The moon is very calming, except perhaps for werewolves, and I basked in its light as I took three deep breaths and slowly blew them out.
Suddenly I began to move in the direction that I felt the children might have gone—which turned out to be toward the satanic church where the fourteen ram skulls peered down from high pedestals. I halted after fifty feet, stunned by the prospect that Boo might have led them into that place.
A fourth deep breath, drawn rapidly and blown out hard, cleared my perception, and I realized that they must have followed a route past the church and into the woods beyond. I should stop worrying. In countless true stories, dogs that were lost while on vacation with their families, or that were stolen and taken great distances, found their way home across hundreds of miles of unfamiliar territory. A ghost dog probably had bags and bags of tricks that even the best of living dogs didn’t know. Boo must be aware of Mrs. Edie Fischer, because he had been there at the Salvation Army thrift shop when she had been parked at the curb, waiting for me to return. And if Boo had known where to find me precisely when I needed him to lead the children safely away, he would surely know where to find Mrs. Fischer in her superstretch limousine. If for any reason my ghost dog became lost, Mr. Alfred Hitchcock would probably drop in and show him the way.
If I’m insane, a Freudian psychiatrist will be of no help to me whatsoever. By the time we were halfway through analysis, he would be in an asylum.
Because I had not passed through this part of the yard on my approach to the house, I hadn’t until now seen the circular gazebo, which stood about ten yards to my left. I hurried to it, plucking the Talkabout from my utility belt.
All white, about twelve feet in diameter, graced by elaborate lattice-work, and with gingerbread around the eaves of the fanciful scalloped roof, it seemed almost to be a mirage, a glimpse of a magical place in F
airyland. Occasionally, with so much to corrupt and destroy, being a committed satanist must get overwhelming, must start to feel, you know, like a job, and not an easy one. Some days, they probably want to take a break from the killing and conjuring and endless scheming against the forces of good, take a break and chill out in a less dour atmosphere. Nothing will lighten the spirit more than to spend some time in a whimsical gazebo on a sunny day, with the scent of spring lilacs in the air, birds chirruping all around, while you compose an amusing hate poem and nibble on human sweetbreads.
In the shelter of the gazebo, crouched below the railing that capped its lattice wall, I switched on the Talkabout, made sure the volume was turned low, and said, “Are you there, Mrs. Fischer? Over.”
After a mild crackle of static, she said, “Where else would I want to be, dear? Over.”
“I was just afraid maybe you were out of range. Be ready, the kids are on their way to you. Over.”
“I moved the car out of that funky fire road and closer to your position. Over.”
“Good. That’s good. They’re being led to you by a dog, ma’am, though you won’t see it because it’s a ghost dog. You’ll see them sure enough. Over.”
“You’re such fun, child. It’s good to know you’re alive. Over.”
“Thank you, ma’am. You’re fun, too. Over and out.”
As I returned the Talkabout to my utility belt and stepped out of the gazebo, clouds claimed the moon once more.
Before I could continue on the kids’ trail, I heard voices. When I looked back, a few people were exiting the house, onto the patio. I could see them because they were backlighted, but I didn’t think they would see me in the dark of the moon. Three other people appeared around the north end of the house, and more voices arose to the south.
Somebody had been sent to the third floor to see why the Kens hadn’t answered the gong. The two were found dead with their sweaters pulled over their heads; and now there would be hell to pay, perhaps literally.
Thirty-six
NO ONE SHOUTED “GET HIM” OR ANYTHING SIMILAR, which seemed to indicate that they had not yet seen me.
The woods were a long way off, nothing but open yard between here and there. The moon would soon emerge once more. Although I wore dark clothes, they would see me when the lunar lamp returned, and I didn’t want to lead them in the direction that Boo and the kids had gone.
Between the gazebo and the stable, isolated trees stood here and there, as well as a few shrubs. I drew a Glock and headed that way, as more voices enlivened the night.
They would have guns. They would have knives. God alone knew what else they might have. My swift execution, however, was not what they intended. If they took me alive, I would end up on that steel stage, either here or at another of their secure locations. They would peel me alive, head to foot, until I spilled every secret that I possessed, which would probably occur even as they were laying out their skinning instruments and sharing with one another fond memories of previous flayings they had conducted together.
I felt like Frodo in Mordor, but without good Samwise to fight alongside me, alone and with no idea where I’d put the damn ring. When Gollum showed up, he would bite off my finger anyway, ring or not, just for the hell of it. If you’ve never read The Lord of the Rings, my apologies for alluding to it at such length.
Huddled under the first tree along my planned route, I scoped the way ahead and couldn’t detect any cultists in my path. When I looked back the way I’d come, past the gazebo, I saw three people with flashlights, the beams sweeping the ground ahead of them as they hurried toward their church. The search had begun in earnest.
Before the clouds stopped conspiring with me and the moon became a traitor, I ran in a crouch to a tall pine and sheltered against its trunk long enough to scan the night. I almost bolted for the next bit of cover, but three men appeared, hurrying up the gentle slope from the house, carving away the darkness with their flashlights. I pulled back, putting the pine between us a moment before one of the beams painted the curve of the trunk where I had just been standing.
Because I didn’t have a ghost dog to lead me, I didn’t want to make my way through the woods to the road where Mrs. Fischer waited. Psychic magnetism would reliably pull me to her, and there were most likely deer trails that I could follow rather than blunder noisily through the brush, but I would have to use my flashlight, which was out of the question.
I intended to leave via the long driveway by which I’d entered earlier. A crew of cultists would already have taken up position there, guarding the exit. To leave by that route, I would have to be reckless, and I would have to kill everyone I encountered before any of them might go out to the end of the private lane and discover the limo parked along the state route. No doubt Mrs. Fischer was expert with a handgun, smoothed out and fully blue, but she couldn’t hold off an army while she loaded the kids in the superstretch.
As the three men continued toward the stable, I saw more flashlights past that building, probing along the tree line. They would soon find the sleeping Dobermans.
The night was a box of dynamite. The fuse had been lit.
Ever since fleeing the house, I’d operated under the assumption that they knew who they were looking for; but that wasn’t necessarily true. Rob Burkett, Jinx, and the two Kens were too dead to describe me to anyone. The senoculus knew my face, which was exactly like its face with a more reasonable number of eyes, but just because that demon and all of these devil-worshippers were on the same team didn’t mean that they were constantly text messaging one another.
Anyway, in the dark, probing here and there with a light, I might be just another bad guy looking for the intruding bigot who had violated the sanctity of our religious service. Pistol in my right hand, flashlight in my left, I walked boldly away from the pine tree, toward the parking area, beyond which lay the driveway that led out to the state route.
So many flashlights were sweeping this way and that across the large property that I was reminded of the scene in E.T. when Peter Coyote and the other feds are searching the woods and fields for any indication of where the little visitor from another planet might have gone. I was E.T. and I really did just want to go home, but these searchers had crossed over from a different movie; Rosemary’s Baby.
As I walked past the back of the ProStar+, someone came around the side of it and shone a flashlight in my face just as I shone mine in his, and thus began an encounter as choreographed as any Rockettes number. The rhinestone cowboy. High priest of the cult. He wore the suit from the vision in which he had torched three children. He was probably more startled than I was, because he thought that I was dead but I knew that he wasn’t. He had a pistol with a silencer, and I had a pistol with a silencer. Simultaneously, we said, “You.” We pointed our weapons at each other, but neither of us fired immediately. I hesitated because I suddenly thought there was something I needed to know that only he could tell me. I think he hesitated because, even though I’d taken out the Kens and freed the children, he still felt invulnerable. He said, “Where are they?” I said, “Where are who?” He said, “Listen, pussy boy, I need those kids. I have a commitment, and I’m damn sure gonna keep it.” He looked a little fearful, like maybe, if he failed to sacrifice the seventeen, he would spend eternity in Hell, eating toe jam and boogers, and none of it fried. I realized what I needed to ask him, but first I said, “I think everything’s now coming full circle for me.” With some fury, he said, “Where are those snot-nosed little bastards?” I said, “I think soon I’ve got to go back home.” He said, “You [fornicating] little [fornicating] [fornicator], WHERE ARE THOSE KIDS!” I asked what I needed to ask: “You people, you or others like you, have something planned for Pico Mundo?” His eyes widened, and I had my answer. He shot me in the chest at the same moment that I shot him in the chest. Whifff, whifff. Because he wasn’t wearing a Kevlar vest, he collapsed. I was wearing one, but I also collapsed, because although the bullet flattened against the bulletpr
oof fabric and didn’t penetrate, I felt as though I’d been hit in the breastbone by a hard-pitched baseball. He dropped his pistol. I dropped my flashlight. I knocked his weapon beyond his reach. He tried to kick my gun hand, but with a bullet lodged in the torso, he lacked the strength to follow through. He coughed up some blood, and I spit out a little blood because I’d bitten my tongue. He was weak and going fast. He called me a disgusting name that suggested I had committed incest, and as I got my wind back, I called him a nutjob. I took the flashlight from his hand and switched it off.
My flashlight, lying on the ground and aimed at me, drew his attention to something, and in a thin, quavering voice, he said, “Why are you wearing that, where did you get that?” The object of his astonishment proved to be the diamond-and-ruby exclamation point, the brooch that Mrs. Fischer had pinned to the sleeve of my sweater for good luck. The cowboy’s gaze shifted from the pin to my eyes. He said, “Who are you? Who are you to be wearing that?” Instead of answering him, I said, “I’m done with you, Lyle Hetland,” and I put him out of his misery with another shot, this time to the throat.
Gagging but trying to be quiet about it, I got to my feet and leaned against the back of the eighteen-wheeler. A quick survey of the night confirmed that our encounter had attracted no attention. The various clusters of flashlights were fanning the night elsewhere, with increasing urgency.
Being a positive thinker, at least overall, I thought that putting an end to the cowboy must be a good omen, a sign that, with my primary enemy dead, I would walk off this property unscathed. That was when the night really got nuts.
Thirty-seven
AFTER SWITCHING OFF MY FLASHLIGHT, I DRAGGED THE cowboy from the back of his truck to the side of it and rolled him under the vehicle, sort of tucking him in for the night, though in this case an endless night. I didn’t want to waste time on the task, but leaving the body in the open, where someone might stumble across it, seemed likely to complicate my situation.