Magic Time: Ghostlands Page 18

  She found Theo standing one-footed stork-like on the pavement outside, flanked by two strangers who introduced themselves as Cal Griffin and Dr. Viktor Lysenko.

  Strangers, here in town. Incredible.

  Jeff would certainly have a word or two about that. And more than a word. As she was sure Theo knew every bit as well as she did.

  Melissa clucked her tongue in mock disapproval. “My goodness, Theo, what have you been up to?”

  Theo shrugged and smiled haplessly. Shaking her head, Melissa couldn’t help but smile back, feeling a warmth surge up in her that was far from being in love.

  Telling them nothing, she helped them get Theo to the Med Center.

  Watching the MRI tech and the night nurse load Theo Siegel into the big magnetic resonance chamber, Doc Lysenko seemed moved almost to tears.

  “I didn’t believe I would see equipment like this up and running for many years,” he told Cal, who stood alongside him in the waiting room just outside. “Truly, this town has accomplished the miraculous.”

  Yes, Cal acknowledged silently to himself, but at what price? His hand rested on the hilt of his sword and he noticed that, despite his words, Doc kept a close grip on the rifle.

  Miles to go before we sleep…

  Cal glanced over to where the young woman who had introduced herself as Melissa Wade sat waiting nearby, idly flipping through an old magazine—what other kind were there now? The photo he’d seen in Theo’s wallet hadn’t done her justice. She was breathtaking, and not flashy about it. In fact, dressed casually in jeans and an oversized man’s work shirt, it was obvious she was trying to downplay it.

  Still sitting, Melissa stretched, one hand sweeping the hair up off her graceful neck, craning her neck against the kinks.

  Cal felt a chill—on the back of her neck was a bump seemingly identical to the one he’d felt on Theo when helping him out of the El Dorado.

  When they were alone again, he would mention this to Doc. He felt certain Doc would be equally intrigued; perhaps the two of them might prevail on the medical staff to later run an additional MRI on Theo Siegel’s neck.

  Just keep an eye out for what you really need, the grunter boy Inigo had told Cal. But were these mysterious bumps part of what Cal needed or merely yet another of an endless series of distractions, delays from getting what he needed, to get where he had to go?

  Spying an intern passing by in the hallway, Doc exited quickly and collared the man. Through the door, Cal could hear Doc requesting access to a microscope.

  He watched as the intern led Doc away, and made no move to intercede.

  Half an hour later, Doc returned and took him aside, out of earshot of Melissa Wade. The young woman continued to read her magazine, seemingly unconcerned with them.

  “I needed to verify a suspicion, Calvin,” Doc said. He held up Colleen’s amulet, the one Papa Sky had given her in Chicago, the one that had saved them from Primal. Then he showed Cal the ragged piece of hide he had sawed off the dead dragon outside of town. “This and this, the same. At least, the same species, but not the same individual. They’re dragon scales.”

  Incredible. To date, Cal had seen only two dragons up close, Ely Stern and the one he had killed today. It was hard to imagine that Papa Sky, aging and blind, had had a run-in with a dragon and lived to tell about it. He’d said the scale had been given to him by some unseen “friend.” Supposing Papa Sky’s mystery man really existed, how had he come into possession of something like this? And how had he known what powers it possessed—how vital it would be to their survival?

  Perhaps an even bigger question was why.

  Every answer only raised more questions….

  Cal took the scale Doc had cut off the dragon carcass. “Do you think this might have the same properties as the other one?”

  “I don’t know,” Doc answered. “But I think it would certainly be advisable to find out.”

  The door to the MRI room opened and Theo Siegel emerged on crutches, his leg securely taped at the ankle with a surgical bandage, followed by the night nurse and the emergency room MD who had first examined him. Cal handed the scale back to Doc, who quickly stowed both in his pocket.

  Cal stepped forward concernedly, Doc beside him, while Melissa Wade rose and followed them. Cal saw that Doc still held the gem-worked rifle loosely at his side. Cal himself kept a close hand on the hilt of his sword.

  Cal positioned himself with his back to the wall, the entrance to the room in his line of vision. He saw Doc casually do the same.

  “Nothing broken,” the doctor, whose name was Asher Waxman, assured them. “Just a bad sprain.”

  “It’s a good thing you’re sturdier than you look,” Melissa admonished Theo, leavening it with a smile. Cal could readily see the fondness there—and read a good deal more in Theo’s shy glance back at her.

  There was a knock at the waiting-room door, which seemed a curious formality to Cal. Through its small window, he could see a young man with blazing blue eyes and a broad forehead crowned by wavy black hair. He wore the faintest hint of a smile—not mockery; Cal had the impression it reflected a permanent air of ironic bemusement.

  “That’s, um, Jeff. Jeff Arcott,” said Theo, ducking his head with reflexive subservience.

  Cal saw Melissa’s eyes light up at the sight of Arcott, saw her draw in a quick breath, could almost hear her heart pick up its pace.

  The doctor opened the door and Arcott sauntered in, hands hooked lightly in the pockets of his faded bomber jacket. Two uniformed sheriff’s deputies entered behind him and took flanking positions opposite Cal and Doc. Cal noted that each had a hand on a holstered nine-millimeter pistol—guns that, like the rifle, had gemstones worked into them.

  Arcott gave Melissa the barest nod then appraised Theo dourly, neither acknowledging nor overtly ignoring Cal and Doc. “My my, Theodore…”

  The way he said “Theodore” made Cal think of the condescending, smart-ass way that guy on Leave it to Beaver referred to the little kid who starred in the show. I’m smarter than you, it said. Way smarter.

  “I got a call you’d had a bit of a party tonight,” Arcott continued, “complete with piñata…only it seems you were the piñata.” Now at last his eyes came to rest on Cal and Doc. “Brought home a few new friends, too.”

  Melissa stepped between Arcott and Siegel. “They helped him back to town, Jeff. Drove the car back, too.” Her tone was ameliorating, her voice, as ever, musical. Cal sensed she was trying to protect Theo, to intercede for him.

  Siegel worked the crutches laboriously, drew up to Arcott. “They’re okay, Jeff, really. They saved my ass.”

  “Said ass shouldn’t have ventured outside the town limits, Theodore.” That strange formality again, that presentational style with its feigned lightness, its considered air of playfulness a thin coating over dead seriousness.

  And through it all, the easy air of authority—and implication of threat.

  “The coffee here is appalling.” Arcott addressed Cal now, and Doc. “There’s a boulangerie around the corner that should be open awhile and serves up something considerably more serviceable. Let’s talk…and see what we will be to each other.”

  Doc glanced at Cal, who nodded agreement. Letting Arcott lead the way—and never allowing his security goons to position themselves behind them—they emerged out into the night, Theo Siegel struggling alongside on his crutches and Melissa Wade bringing up the rear.

  The vapor lamps of the town hissed and blazed from on high, as they prepared to learn just precisely what Jeff Arcott had in mind for them.

  EIGHTEEN

  GOLDMAN IN THE KINGDOM

  Underground, in the dark, untenanted and unrecalled, the cavernous space held the smell of the earth, of only the soil now, no air handlers processing it, sanitizing it to nullity. To one of the intruders, the dead controls and silent alarms, the corridors snaking off to infinity, presented themselves as clearly lit as if by a camera flash. To the other, the darkness b
eyond the periphery of the musty blue light was total.

  But it still felt like home.

  After all, Herman Goldman reflected, there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot of difference between the tunnels under New York and a missile silo beneath the Iowa sod, other than that one tended to the horizontal, the other to the vertical—once the subway trains and nuclear missiles were rendered a historical footnote.

  Inigo stood staring quizzically at him in the pale light of the roiling sphere, and Goldie knew the inhuman little Caliban would just as soon sprint off into the blackness as give him the time of day—but that fear and curiosity held him rooted there.

  “Why’d you do that?” Inigo asked, with a quaver of uncertainty, like his voice was about to crack. “Up there. I thought she was your friend.” He meant Colleen, whom Goldie had left rolling on the ground as if trying to dig a hole to China, temporarily blinded and helpless when (to mangle unapologetically “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”) he had loosed the terrible swift sword of his lightning against her.

  “Hey, I’m from New York, we don’t have friends.”

  Which got exactly the look from the pint-size gnome it deserved. Goldie grew serious. “Colleen Brooks is altogether too formidable for me to give her half a chance to work up a good head of steam. She’d wipe the floor with me, not to mention the windows and baseboards.”

  He knew that didn’t answer the question, not at all, not really. It was merely the what, not the why of the act. But how could he answer that, even to himself, measure out the dimensions of ambush and betrayal, when he had no clear notion, no answer other than that he had acted wholly upon impulse?

  And that it was only the beginning….

  “So how ’bout you riddle me a thing or two, eh, little buddy?” Goldie went on. “Like why you were making such a beeline for this retro artifact of what was once laughingly referred to as the Balance of Terror? Not for its piquant charm, certainly. And don’t say you were intent on homesteading.”

  Inigo hesitated, debating his answer. Then he said quietly, “You want to let me go.”

  “Aw no, I don’t think that’s the sine qua non of the ideal answer, pardon my French. Two more to go.”

  Inigo looked at his feet.

  “And while you’re ruminating on a verb or two, let me just add an inquiry as to precisely how you knew to lead us to the delightful hamlet of Imaginary Corpse Town. Or for that matter, how you grokked what went down in Wind City, and the enigmatic little tchotchke Colleen laid with such refreshing venom on Primal. Why, you’re just a walking yellow pages of mysteries and miracles, you are, Boy Wonder.”

  The babbling, effervescent torrent of words warned Goldie that he was inching way over into the red zone, majorly in danger of full-tilt out-of-control-dom.

  And didn’t this infuriating, distorted, stunted, sad little boy only know he was throwing fuel on the fire by pulling this wordless Jesus-before-Herod crap?

  “Okay,” Goldie sighed. “I’m gonna turn over all the cards.”

  He reached out his hands, and crazy energy bubbled out of them, building in intensity.

  Soon, he knew, Inigo would begin to scream.

  I don’t want to do this, the tiny soft voice inside Goldie said.

  But then came the answering self, the grim, dark presence that was increasingly finding purchase in the desolate stone landscape within him.

  You ain’t got a choice, Jack. Not and get to the church on time.

  On other occasions, he had heard the murmuring voices in his head, the iron railroad spikes driven deep into his mind, had known them for the dissonant thrum of the Storm, the Source like the ultimate Benzedrine-mainlining Stravinsky chorus, the distant chaos land of power and enslavement and release. He had scuttled frantically away then, pushed his consciousness far from them to survive, to salvage some distinct notion of himself, of who he was and (here he had to force himself not to laugh) what he stood for.

  Get thee behind me, Satan…and don’t push.

  For Herman Goldman, this was anything but academic.

  For long ago, in a galaxy far, far away known as Manhattan, New York, he had met the gentleman with the inimitable headgear and sunburn to die for.

  And wasn’t that a topic for casual after-dinner conversation….

  He had been a grad student in his penultimate year, teaching—and please stifle your guffaws, ladies and germs—a course at NYU in Beginning Psych (having by then jettisoned his equally laughable pursuit of law) for the third dismal semester in a row, spewing it out by rote, no improvisation allowed, please, he had the patter down cold. Transference, anima and animus, borderline personality disorder, chronic narcissism, you name it, A to Z in the DSM-IV.

  Droning on to the bored undergrads with their butts planted in those uncomfortable wooden amphitheatre seats because they’d rather have a marginal shot at a future than just eat the damn twelve-gauge now. Herman (he was called Herman then, not yet Goldie) smiled again at the cute Anorexia Lite girl in the third row like Feiffer’s Dance to Spring, when he suddenly noticed—

  The Devil, sitting right there in the front row, grinning at him like…well, like the Devil.

  Herman blinked his eyes, hard, then blinked them again.

  But the sonofabitch was still there.

  Not such a bad-looking guy, actually. But then Satan began to needle him, really get his goat, heckle the hell out of him. It took all of Herman’s concentration to keep lecturing, to act like he was ignoring the bastard.

  Didn’t the freak with the wings have any better place to be?

  At which point, the Dark Angel pulled his trump card, levitated the whole damn class right up to the ceiling and held them there.

  So Herman kept lecturing up at them where they floated. In due time, they settled back down en masse into their seats, still as shit-ass bored-looking as ever, and the bell rang.

  One of them, a pimply sophomore named Lenny Hoff-mayer, sidled up to him at the lectern. “’Scuse me, Mr. Goldman, um, why were you talking up at the ceiling for a while there?”

  “Well, because that’s where you were,” Herman shot back, offended.

  Lenny didn’t stick around. The rest of the students had filed out, too. Only the Devil remained.

  In fact, he stuck around for days. Going everywhere Herman went, engaging him in long philosophical debates. Herman was surprised to find out the guy was actually more optimistic than he was himself.

  And because Herman Goldman had his line of patter, his syllabus, so stone-cold down, he found he could continue his lecture schedule without breaking a sweat, punch his clock same as regular, in essence pull the wool over everyone’s eyes.

  After that first class, no one tumbled to the fact that Herman Goldman had an extra passenger aboard.

  Then, after a few days, he clicked back to normal like the reset button had been pushed, and realized he’d been hallucinating. Which surprisingly, rather than filling him with dread, gave him an odd sense of security.

  He’d always feared that if he ever went crazy, he’d stay that way.

  But some inner equilibrium had kicked in, brought him back to the air-bubble-smack-dab-in-the-center-of-the-liquid level of sanity.

  And here was the key thing, the relevant part—he realized that Satan had not been anything other than…himself.

  Just as in this breathless moment, in the flat heart of the country a thousand feet down, in the vast, dead home that had ever-so-recently housed a chummy nuclear family of MIRVs, the implacable voice telling him to torture this helpless Changed boy was none other than—

  Himself.

  And he had no idea, no idea at all, if this time he could reel it back in.

  On the road to Atherton, the new recruit to the fold, the little gray brother named Brian Forbes, had told Inigo everything Herman Goldman had done to the fake policeman in the snowstorm night outside the Gateway Mall.

  Standing now in the missile silo, his stunted back to the gunmetal wall, with absolutely n
owhere to run and Goldie staring at him with an intense, anguished expression while his open hands erupted hot radiance like a pair of Fourth of July sparklers on steroids, young Master Inigo Devine had a nasty feeling he was about to be on the receiving end of a sensation a whole hell of a lot like it.

  He screwed his eyes tight, tried to brace himself for what was coming, something far worse than riding a hell-bound train, or climbing down a freakin’ missile silo….

  But then there was a cry that came, not from Inigo, but from nearby, and went echoing off into the void. Inigo opened his eyes in time to see Goldie collapse onto his knees, see the light from his hands flicker out.

  “I’m sorry, oh God, I’m sorry….” Goldman reached out to him in supplication and shame—although, Inigo realized, Goldie had stopped himself, had not done anything (short of scaring the shit out of him).

  Which was when the Big Zap happened.

  It was like Inigo’s mind was a battery suddenly discharging, shooting a flood of raw images into Goldie’s mind, one huge, mentally migraining mindburst, a zillion-mile-an-hour blur made up of bits and pieces that might (or might not) be Tina, Papa Sky, New York or something like it, and…and…

  “The Source.” Goldie was gasping, dry-mouthed. “You came from the Source.”

  Inigo didn’t need to say anything. Goldie knew. At least, that much of it.

  And Judas Priest, this was dangerous, because now that it was out of his mind and into Goldie’s, it was way possible—

  You Know Who might be able to hear it.

  “Quiet,” Inigo hissed, sitting up now, every nerve like burnt insulation and sizzling wire. “The Big Bad Thing—”

  But he shouldn’t even say that, shouldn’t name It. Goldman shot him a wide-eyed, questioning look, but didn’t press it.

  “You’re going back there,” Goldie said instead. “You know where it is.” He grabbed Inigo by the shoulders, crouching there at his level as the globe started to gutter and long fingers of darkness enfolded them. “Take me with you.”