Modern Rituals (22 page)

They stopped. His vision cleared.

In front of Theo stood a door framed with white, pinhead-sized LEDs whose subtle glow illuminated, in the door’s center, a porthole window outlined by an inch-wide metallic bezel. A guard swept his hand over a black panel on the door’s right. Through the porthole, fluorescent lights flickered to life. Theo noted the distinct grey striations running through the glass from reinforced nano-tungsten—if a nuclear bomb destroyed Una Corda, future surveyors of the wreckage would find this round piece of glass perfectly intact.

A wisp of air evaporated some of the perspiration that had formed on Theo’s head as the door retracted into the ceiling. One guard released his grip on Theo’s arm and stationed himself outside while the other guard walked Theo into the cell. Theo looked around and a chill tingled the length of his spine. He had entered an asylum. The cell possessed an antiseptic quality: white walls, white lighting, a white seat and a white table—disinfected and missing any sign of mother nature—suited for surgery or silicon chip manufacturing.
 

Theo’s stomach churned.
 

He hated fluorescent lighting. He hated anything that reminded him of a hospital. The sterile candor made his head fuzzy—made him feel less human. Theo, a genius by any measure in electronics and biology, felt it paramount to remain in tune with the primal self—humans must never forget their place, lest they be forgotten. The universe was a big place—a place that required respect.

“Sir,” the guard said. “We will be outside. Our instructions are to use excessive force if necessary. Please don’t make it necessary. A lot of people have a great deal of respect for you here, myself included.”

“What’s your name?” Theo said.

“Lucas, sir. Lucas Beddington,” Lucas said.

“Listen, Lucas. Your dedication to this organization is wonderful—really. However, there are forces at work that need to be questioned. Just prepare yourself to question them when the time comes,” Theo said.

Lucas nodded and retreated through the entrance. The door dropped. Theo’s ears popped as the air pressure shifted.
 

Time to wait.

5

Trevor rubbed his thumb against the RFID tag beneath the dermal layer of his ring finger. It itched and subsided. Itched again. He rubbed. Then it hit him.

Schrödinger’s cat is dead.
 

Theo had issued the emergency protocol.
 

As long as the chip vibrated, Theo was in danger. The entire ritual was in danger.

What the hell happened?

They sprinted to the gym, James in the lead, Colette in the rear with Keto, Trevor and Olivia sandwiched between. James’ heart raced and sweat lathered his body. He wanted to leap out of his skin—his adrenaline gushed. Panic stirred in his gut.

They avoided the place where Horace had fallen. Colette’s confidence that she had in fact seen him die assuaged any concern he might need medical attention. And aside from her testimony, an uncontrollable urge pressed them to find the next clue. The ritual gnawed at James’ sanity as it nipped at their heels.

As the garden fled by, James observed the Buddha’s expression of consternation and wondered if the statue purposefully hid the secrets of a demise into which they ran headlong.
 

No matter
—
what other options do we have?

Lines blurred and his vision tunneled, as if the end of the corridor extended further than what was true.
 

Jesus, am I high?

The gym doors materialized and they entered the building, first into a closed foyer and then into the main hall. James hurried to the center—it remained exactly as he and Olivia had left it, though it looked creepier now, bathed as it was in a red glow.

“Any ideas, James?” Olivia said.

“There must be something here,” James said. “Let’s split up and search. Olivia and Trevor with me.”

James headed to the far end of the auditorium and stood in front of the stage. Olivia and Trevor joined him.

Colette remained with Keto near the entrance. She had been feeling uneasy from their last excursion into the forest. Not sick or ill—more like she’d drank too much. Inappropriate urges conflicted within her. She bit her lower lip and felt her nipples harden as goose pimples coursed across her body. Her face flushed and her panties grew moist.

“Oh, my…” she murmured.

Keto threw her a sideways glance, cocked his head and opened his mouth, but immediately closed it and walked to the retracted bleachers. He got down on his knees and crawled underneath. The emergency lights blacked out. Darkness engulfed them.

“Shit! Is everyone okay?” James said. “The generators must have run out or something.” Someone tugged on his arm.

“I’m here,” Olivia said.

“Me too,” Trevor said from just beyond Olivia.

“We are fine,” Keto said from across the gym floor.

“Good. Well, maybe you should join us over here,” James said, retrieving the flashlight from his back pocket and clicking it on. Its beam illuminated half of the gym.

“Wow, that is one bright light,” Olivia said.

“We’ll be okay over here,” Colette said.

“You sure?” James said.

“Yeah, totally,” Colette said. “That flashlight’s pretty bright, and there’s some moonlight coming in the doors over here. We’ll sync back up in a bit.”
 

“Okay,” James said, and turned back to the stage.

Colette turned to Keto, who crouched on all fours in the moonlight, his head bent under the bleachers. She approached him from behind, stooped down, grabbed his inner thigh and gently scratched upward until finding his crotch. Keto grunted and flipped onto his back.

“What are you doing?” he said under his breath.

“You,” she said.

Keto gripped her hand and pulled it from him—an act of cat and mouse, she thought. He stared into her eyes. She bit her lip and pleaded with a moan—Keto was the only man who could satisfy this ruthless urge. His grip relaxed.
 

“Not here,” he said.

He was hers. The image of their union overtook her and she had trouble thinking of anything else.

“I know just the place,” she said.

She lead him to a narrow closet she’d discovered just before the blackout. The door closed behind them and echoed throughout the hall.
 

James played the flashlight over the stage. “Let’s go check out what’s behind the curtain up there,” Olivia said.

“Good idea—be on your guard,” James said, and aimed the flashlight at the red drapes.

Trevor hoisted himself onto the stage’s platform and walked center of the closed apron. James held the flashlight’s beam firm on him while Olivia pulled herself onto the stage. Trevor flapped his hands against the curtain in search of the divide, then tore it apart, tugging one half a few feet stage-left. The curtain’s other half retracted in the opposing direction. Olivia entered the drawn proscenium and disappeared from James’ light.

“Oh, my God!” she said in a shrill voice.

“What is it?” James said, hoisting himself up onto the stage.

Trevor pursued Olivia and darkness swallowed him.

James heard nothing. He entered through the curtain, dousing the acting area in light. He froze. Olivia looked up and down while Trevor stared at her curiously.

“James—turn the light off,” Olivia said. “Hurry!”

James fumbled the switch into the Off position.

There exists a New Zealand cave renowned for a luminous surprise. James, on a month-long, study-abroad program, had visited this cave with his then-girlfriend. She’d convinced him to go by way of a kiss on the neck and a promise of sex—James preferred to stay indoors near his workbench and as far from nature as possible. The cave tour guides had strapped inner-tubes onto he and his girlfriend’s backs and trekked them through rainforest and rivers, and after plenty of grumbles and incredulous declarations of “really?” they’d reached a foreboding cave entrance, explored a tireless sum of caverns and finally come to a stone wall deep within the earth. At the base of this wall lay a watery passage. Their guide instructed James and his girlfriend to hop on their tubes and float through the claustrophobic chute—James obliged, if not to impress his girlfriend, then for an inkling inside him that this nature stuff wasn’t half bad. He floated on his back along a crevice that grew wider and taller until opening into an indoor gorge—and when his eyes adjusted, the cave revealed its secret. Like the most vivid, starry night, strewn across the cavern’s ceiling hung green, neon glowworms swaying in a gentle breeze. James lay flat on his inner-tube, mesmerized as the display passed overhead. On that day, he was forever changed into a man who appreciated nature—and he also got laid that night.

As the flashlight’s 300 micro-filament LEDs lost power, James rediscovered that same sense of wonder.
 

Iridescent, glowing ink shimmered on the stage floor and walls in an array of ultraviolet, purple and indigo. The group absorbed the spectacle, spellbound by scores of foreign words, drawings and indecipherable depictions. The images rose above the catwalk, reaching the high theater ceiling, as well as on the pin rail and hand lines used to raise and lower the curtain and props. They spread wide, tiny, large, clumped, thin, wiry, globby, thick—ubiquitous and enchanting.

“Who could have done this…?” Olivia said.

James stayed transfixed, savoring the bewitchment.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Trevor said.

James and Olivia turned to him and said at the same time, “You can see it too?”

“It looks like a crazed mathematician had a field day with a bucket of glowing ink,” Trevor said. “But these aren’t mathematical symbols, they feel…primitive. And the letters look Greek or Latin…sorta like petroglyphs, too? Damn, it’s just everywhere, isn’t it?”

James had also inferred as much: the letters conveyed an atavistic familiarity, their lines and angles tickled a primal nerve, though he struggled to place an origin.

“Trevor, if you can see this too, then maybe we aren’t crazy—or perhaps we’re all the same kind of crazy,” James said, chuckling. “Olivia, do you make anything of this?”

“No,” she said. “And yes. Hard to say—it’s quite beautiful, really. As for what it means, I haven’t the slightest idea.”
 

Puffs of breath filled the air as they contemplated.

Then a symbol on the ground caught James’ eye. “Hmm,” he said. “Does that look like a torii?” A circle surrounded it and a rectangle enclosed them both
.

“Come to think of it, yes, I suppose it does,” Olivia said.

Trevor, too, saw the ink. Logic battled his eyes and conflicted with his known universe—an act this grand would have been noticed by Purgatory 8. Then, an epiphany juddered his face silly.
 

This damned thing is a map
.
Whatever wily bastard drew this, they know every inch of Facility 7.
 

Trevor located the multipurpose hall’s roof where the torii (and kill zone) existed, then cross referenced it against other rectangles: the classroom building, garden, administrative center, courtyard, parking lot—circles and Xs and tiny stick figures marked the kill and safe zones, as well as statue locations. The map was confined to the floor, whereas the drawings grew abstract as they neared the walls and ceiling. Everything required to survive the ritual was there if you knew how to read it.
 

Discord reverberated throughout Trevor. Sweat collected in the pits of his arms and the nape of his neck. He struggled to breathe. He felt affected by the ink—by his surroundings. They had struck up an unfamiliar emotional rhythm in his chest.
 

“I need some air,” Trevor said.

“Here, take this,” James said, tossing him the flashlight.

“Thanks,” Trevor said. “Let me know if you figure anything out. I’ll be right outside.”
 

“Sure thing,” James said. Trevor exited the stage.

James turned back and pointed to the stage’s center. “The symbols are densest in the middle, here, and grow more abstract and indistinct as they move out toward the walls.”

“The lines are definitely crisper toward the middle. The shapes are more geometrical, also,” Olivia said.

“Yeah. Interesting…” James glanced up and pointed at a series of twisting curves on a far wall. “That looks like a Celtic knot. And look at the serpent-like thing next to it.”

“And that looks like an ankh,” Olivia said.

“But here, in the middle, there aren’t any curves. Lots of angles though,” James said and hummed to himself. The stage’s border framed the shapes like a map.

“Whoa…I think we’re looking at this all wrong,” James said.

“How so?”
 

James tapped his lips. He shuffled to the largest square and stomped on it.
 

“What if this is a map?” James said, almost to himself. “Let’s pretend this is the classroom building.” He pointed between his feet.

Olivia meandered to a torii
symbol painted on an adjacent rectangle near the classroom building.

“Hmm, do you suppose the torii is the same one we were attacked at earlier?” Olivia said.

“I was thinking the same thing. If I’m on the building with the altar room…Then that would be the gard—that looks like the garden!” James said.

“You’re right!” Olivia said. “This
is
a map! Wow—the school is a lot bigger than I thought. But wait, something doesn’t make sense.” She walked to a square a few feet away. “This would have to be the gym right? But it’s filled with rectangles and hallways. I think we would have remembered something like that. Maybe that’s the locker rooms?”

“Can’t be—they’re where the basketball court should be. Plus,” James said, pointing at a series of small rectangles nearby. “…those look like bathrooms right there, so that’s probably the locker rooms and storage closets. What gives?”

“Well, I think I see the stage,” Olivia said. “Yeah—must be—the proportion is right. Is that a line connecting the stage to the gym?”