Beyond the Pale (5 page)

“Wotan’s Beard! It’s about time you arrived, Travis.”

Travis lurched through the doorway into the cluttered foyer beyond and barely managed to keep from falling. Jack
shut the door. He carried a tin hurricane lamp, its speckled golden light the only illumination in the place.

Jack Graystone appeared to be about sixty years old, although Travis couldn’t remember him ever looking any different in the seven years they had been friends. He was a striking man, with a Roman nose and eyes of sky blue. His iron-gray beard was neatly trimmed, in contrast to his thinning hair of the same color, which had a tendency to fly rather madly about his head. He was dressed in an old-fashioned but elegant suit of English wool over a starched white shirt and a flannel waistcoat of hunter’s green. Travis had never seen him wear anything else.

“I’m sorry I took so long, Jack.” Travis tried to catch his breath. “My truck wouldn’t start, so I had to walk here.”

“You
walked
here?” Jack fixed him with a grave look. “That wasn’t a terribly good idea, you know, not on a night like this.”

Travis ran a hand through his sand-colored hair. “Jack, what is going on? I didn’t know what to think after the phone went dead.”

“Oh, that. Do forgive me, Travis, I’m afraid that was all my fault. You see, I thought I heard a noise in the parlor while we were talking. I turned around and accidentally cut the phone cord with a sword I was holding.”

Travis gaped at him. “A sword?”

“Yes, a sword. It’s like a large knife often used by knights in—”

“I
know
what a sword is.”

Jack gave him a sharp look. “Then why did you ask?”

Travis drew in an exasperated breath. As much as he liked Jack, talking with him could be a challenge. “Jack, would you please tell me why you asked me to come here?”

Jack regarded Travis with perfect seriousness. “A darkness is coming.”

With that he turned and disappeared into the dim labyrinth of the antique shop. There was nothing for Travis to do but follow. The gloom all around was filled with the flotsam and jetsam of history—chests of drawers with porcelain knobs, lead-backed mirrors, lion-clawed andirons, velvet chaises, and weather-faded circus posters. Jack never rested
in his hunt for curious and wonderful antiques. That was how he and Travis had become friends.

One day, not long after Travis started working at the Mine Shaft, Jack Graystone had stepped through the door of the saloon, incongruous in his old-fashioned attire, yet not uncomfortably so. He had asked if he might be allowed to cull the saloon’s storeroom for any “artifacts of historical interest.” Andy Connell had been out of town, but one of Travis’s assignments while Andy was away had been to clear a century’s worth of junk out of the back storeroom. Travis had been more than happy to let Jack do some of the work for him.

Yet before long—and afterward he was never quite certain just how it happened—Travis found himself on the storeroom floor, covered with grime and cobwebs, sorting through tangled piles of hundred-year-old clutter, while Jack, neatly ensconced on a barstool, politely offered direction. In the end, the saloon’s storeroom got cleaned, Travis hauled a pickup truck full of copper lanterns, bent-willow chairs, and thick-glassed purple bottles to the Magician’s Attic, and somewhere along the way Jack had apparently decided he and Travis were the best of friends. Travis had never bothered to disagree.

Still, nothing in their long friendship had prepared Travis for Jack’s behavior tonight. With Travis following on his heels, Jack wended his way to the back of the shop, his tin lantern casting off shards of gold light. He stepped over a heap of broken Grecian urns and edged past a wooden sarcophagus that leaned against the wall and stared with knowing eyes of lapis lazuli. They started up a narrow staircase that Travis, in all his visits to the Magician’s Attic, had somehow never noticed before.

Old photographs in antique gilt frames lined either wall of the stairwell. One caught Travis’s eye. He paused and peered more closely at the photo. It showed a group of grim-faced men and women clad in somber attire. Some gripped shovels or pickaxes, and a hole had been torn open in the earth before them. A caption was written at the bottom of the photo in spidery ink. Travis strained to make it out:
The Beckett-Strange Home for Children, 1933
. It was the groundbreaking ceremony for the old orphanage. However, it was
something else that had caught Travis’s attention. A rectangular shape floated in the picture’s background, blurry and half-obscured by a woman’s hat, but he recognized it all the same. The old billboard by the highway—only in this photo it was not covered by the cigarette advertisement. Although dim and murky, he could just discern the wild landscape. So the painting had been there back in 1933. Yet what was it advertising? There seemed to be flowing words written at the bottom of the billboard, but Travis could not read them.

A perturbed voice broke his concentration. “Travis, do stop dawdling. There simply isn’t time.”

Travis tore his eyes away from the old photo and hurried up the steps after Jack. The odd staircase ended in a blank wall. Jack pressed against a mahogany panel to his right, and an opening appeared. Travis ducked his head and followed his friend through the small door. Bronze light flared to life as Jack used the candle from his hurricane lantern to light an oil lamp atop a wrought-iron stand. Travis adjusted his gun-slinger’s spectacles in amazement.

“Jack, what is this place?”

“Minerva’s Thread! You can’t stifle your questions for five seconds, can you, Travis?”

Travis hardly heard him. The windowless room was circular, and by that he knew it to be somewhere within the house’s tower. He was familiar with the rooms above and below. Why had he never considered what might lie between? Now he stared in wonder.

The walls were covered with artifacts. Flat-bladed swords gleamed in the light of the oil lamp, their blades etched with flowing designs and incomprehensible symbols. Beside them hung half-moon axes hafted with bone and leather, and massive hammers that obviously had been designed for pounding in skulls, not nails. There were wooden shields inlaid with silver, and neck-rings of fiery copper, and helmets crowned with goat horns and yellow horsehair. It was like a collection from a museum, but not quite. For what startled Travis most of all was the way the objects shone in the warm light. Most of them were worn and well used, but none seemed to display the signs of decay and corrosion that came with centuries of burial. Well-oiled leather still looked supple, and steel glowed without a speck of rust.

This was too much for Travis. “Jack, I have a request, and I really don’t think it’s all that unreasonable.” He advanced on his friend. “
Tell me what is going on.
”

Jack gave him a sour look. “Do spare the dramatics, Travis. And sit down.”

As usual, Travis found himself obeying. He sank into a chair beside a table that occupied the room’s center. Jack filled a glass from a decanter of brandy and handed it to Travis.

“I don’t want it,” Travis said in a sulky tone.

“You will.”

Something in Jack’s voice made Travis hold on to the glass. “Jack, what are all these things?” He gestured to the artifacts that decorated the walls of the room. “Where did you get them? And how come you’ve never offered any of them for sale?”

Jack waved the questions aside with a dignified flick of his hand. Jack could do things like that. He paced around the table, lips pursed in thought. At last he spoke. “I’m dreadfully sorry to have to involve you in all this, Travis. However, I’m afraid I don’t have any choice. There simply isn’t anyone else I dare trust. And these matters are far too crucial for me to take unnecessary chances.” He sighed, a sound of profound weariness. “I am going to be leaving.”

Travis stared at his old friend in shock. “Leaving? You mean Castle City?”

The older man nodded in sad affirmation.

“But why?”

Jack sat down, folded his hands neatly before him, and met Travis’s eyes.

“I am being hunted,” he said.

Travis gripped the empty brandy glass and listened numbly while Jack explained in a tone of infuriating calmness that certain individuals had been searching for him for a long time. Now they were on the verge of discovering him at last, and Jack was obliged to leave Castle City, at least for the
time being. Travis started to wonder if Jack was dealing in black-market artifacts. Maybe the swords, axes, and helmets that adorned the walls of the hidden room had been smuggled into the country, and others who wanted them were after Jack. Hard as it was to believe, it seemed the only logical explanation.

Travis realized Jack had asked him a question. Dazed, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jack. What did you say?”

“Pay attention, Travis,” Jack said with a disapproving frown. “This is important. I said I was hoping you could keep something for me while I am gone. It is a small object—of no market worth whatsoever—but of great personal value to me. I would rest far better if I knew it was in good hands while I am away.” He unlocked an oak cabinet and pulled out a box, black and small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. He set it on the table before Travis. “Will you keep it for me?”

“Of course I will, Jack, if you want me to.” Travis picked up the box. It was heavy, and he realized it must be fashioned of iron. Its surface was decorated with angular symbols he did not recognize, and a simple hasp held the lid shut. Travis started to undo it.

“By the Lost Fraction of Osiris, don’t open it!” Jack clamped his hand down on the lid of the box and glared at Travis. Then, with a chagrined look, he leaned back in his chair and smoothed his waistcoat. “Forgive me, Travis. It really would be best if you left the box closed.”

“So I gathered,” Travis said.

“There’s no need to be flippant. Just promise me you’ll keep the box safe and secret.”

Travis sighed in defeat. “All right. I promise.”

“Thank you.”

However, Travis was not finished. “Jack, what’s really going on? Who are these people who are after you? Where are you going? And when will you be coming back?”

Jack’s tone was reproving, if not unkind. “You know better than to ask such questions, Travis. I have already told you more than I should.” With that Jack stood, giving clear indication that the conversation was over. Travis knew there was nothing else he could do, although that didn’t keep a heaviness from weighing on his heart.

Travis picked up the iron box and slipped it into the breast pocket of his sheepskin coat, then followed Jack downstairs. The two paused before the antique shop’s front door. Travis chewed his lip. Was this the last time he would ever see his old friend? “I’m going to miss you, Jack.”

Now a wistful expression touched Jack’s mien. “And I you, Travis. You are a true friend. Thank you for understanding.”

Travis didn’t bother to say he didn’t understand any of this. It would be no use. “Good-bye, Jack.” He couldn’t believe he was speaking these words. “Wherever you’re going, take care of yourself.”

A spark flashed in Jack’s blue eyes. “Oh, you can be assured of that.” Without further ado, he opened the shop’s door and ushered Travis outside.

Travis started through, then halted in mid-step. A chill coursed through him. “There it is again,” he said.

Jack’s bushy eyebrows knit themselves together. “What is it, Travis?”

Travis reached a hand toward the upper left corner of the door, and his fingers brushed over a design scratched into the paint. It was the same symbol he had seen on the front door of the saloon and the other doors around town. Except this one was different in that an X had been scrawled beneath:

Jack peered at the scratch marks, and at once his blue eyes went wide. “Oh, dear,” he whispered. “This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all.”

Travis looked at his friend in astonishment. “You know what this symbol means, don’t you?”

Jack brushed the scratch marks with trembling fingers. “It is the mark of their servants. I had not guessed they were this close, not yet. But if their minions have been here, they cannot be far behind.”

Travis shook his head in confusion, but before he could speak a beam of blue-white light tore apart the fabric of the night. Travis raised a hand to shield his eyes. It was like the searchlight of a police helicopter, except it was too low to
the ground, and there was no sound accompanying it, only the murmur of the wind. Whatever the source of the light, it was coming toward the antique shop. And coming fast.

“Go inside, Travis.” Jack’s voice resonated with low urgency.

“What is it, Jack?” Travis squinted against the light. He thought he saw something moving within—tall silhouettes backlit by the glare.

Jack’s voice became a stern command. “Now, Travis!”

This time Travis didn’t argue. He stumbled backward into the shop. Jack hurried after him, slammed the door shut, and slid the dead bolt into place. He shut the drapes that covered the shop’s iron-grilled front window, and the room was plunged into gloom. Only a razor-thin plane of hot white light found its way through a gap in the curtains: It sliced the dusky air like a glowing knife.