Paradigms Lost (57 page)

Better get some pictures.
I got out the digital camera—twin to the one Bambi Inochi had been using, which had been my fee for services rendered. Standing near the bed, I sighted through the door. “Syl,” I said, “go stand against the wall there. No, a little over . . . over . . . stop.”

That put Syl just about in the path of Dave’s fire pattern. “Okay, you can move out,” I said, and then took several carefully focused digital shots of the wall and surrounding area. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I was seeing something. “You getting anything?”

Syl’s normally cheerful blue eyes were haunted; her black hair seemed duller. “Too much. There’s fear . . . loss . . . loneliness . . . fury, hatred . . .” she closed her eyes. “Feels like a revenant, a ghost.”

“What Verne calls a
ryunihav
.”

“Possibly. Verne says true ghosts, in the sense of a living being’s spirit refusing to either dissipate or “go on” to some other place, are vanishingly rare—though not impossible. What’s much more common are mystical echoes of the presence of a powerful person or soul, accumulations of their essence that take on a circumscribed life of their own. That’s a
ryunihav
. With the increase in magic, such “echoes” would start to replay again.”

“So it’s like a CD on repeat, and someone just turned the power back on?”

“Except that these things can take actions, sometimes dangerous ones. But they’re usually not capable of reason. You have to banish or neutralize them.”

“Well, that’s good. Can we try that and see if it works?”

Syl shook her head. “I have a bad feeling about that idea. I have to do the ritual while it’s present; if it’s stronger than I think, the ritual could backfire on me, and if it’s
not
a
ryunihav
, the focus I have on the ritual could leave me open to attack from whatever it really is.”

I don’t argue with Syl’s “bad feelings.” Even before I knew there were such things as real monsters and magic, she’d convinced me that she had
something
, and she’d only gotten better at it. “I don’t suppose you can ‘feeling’ your way to telling me which way to go on this?”

She shook her head again, looking apologetic. “According to Verne, a lot of what I’m doing is precognition. Sensing the future. With the werewolves, I wasn’t sensing
them
, because that’s almost impossible; I sense what’s going to
happen
in a few seconds, and I know it’s bad. But future sensing is
hard
. Even as old as he is, Verne’s known of very few people who could do it
reliably
—maybe ten or twenty in his whole life—and none of them really
saw
the future. Raiakafan’s the only other living person he knows with that power.

“So I might get a good feeling or bad feeling about some approach to something, but that’s about it. And from what’s happened before, I think it really doesn’t work all-out unless someone I care about is in danger.”

I nodded. That fit with the way things had worked before. “Okay. Then let’s finish checking out the cabin before the sun starts getting low. I want to get back to the hotel and figure out my approach
before
I get caught in this cabin after dark.”

She nodded and we got to work. Time passed, and the light was slanting a lot lower by the time we headed back to the hotel.

“Now
that
is interesting,” I said a while later.

Syl came and looked over my shoulder. “What?”

I pointed at the twenty-three-inch flat panel I was using for a display in our hotel room. “That’s the pattern of shot that hit the wall when Dave Plunkett tried to blow away the thing in his doorway.”

She nodded. “Shot hit the wall. So there wasn’t anything there?”

“No, that’s what’s interesting. Dave is a good shot. I was able to use the pattern of shot that grazed the doorframe to reconstruct his shots pretty clearly. He made a darn close grouping, centered here, here, and here.” I poked my finger at three points in the main image. “After picking up some of the shot, I know what kind of load he had in there, and the spread tells me the choke, or lack thereof. He had a cylinder barrel, which means that at fifteen feet the grouping was about seven and a half inches, and about twenty inches on the far side of the common room, where the wall is. Big house. And I personally wouldn’t be using number four shot for werewolves, but hey, that’s his choice. Does give me a nice number of pellets—around a hundred forty per ounce.”

“So you reconstructed the shooting.”

“Exactly. Now, look; I’m assuming ideal patterns, which don’t exist, but I can come fairly close. When I run it through someone firing three shots at these angles, I get a pattern very close to the one I found at the edge of the doorframe; standing at the bed, he was a little off to the side of the door, so he clipped it a bit. But take a look at the pattern on the far wall.” I ran it through several cycles. “Compare that to the real pattern—I’ve reduced it to the same wall with dots that I get from the sim.”

Syl studied it for a minute. “It looks . . . denser than the real thing. More dots.”

“Quite a few more. And I’ve run it many times. I never got
anything
that low, or even close. But the doorframe proves he really did fire three times, with the same kind of shot. My best guess is that about half of the first load never reached the wall.”

“So . . . some of it did?”

“Yeah. It’s not missing a whole load’s worth, which is really weird. It means that whatever was standing there wasn’t solid enough to stop
all
the shot cold, but
was
solid enough to stop
some
of it. And it
wasn’t
there for the second or third shots.” I looked at the screen, feeling grim. “That means that this thing can be solid enough to stop bullets. So much for it not being able to be dangerous.”

Suddenly, Syl’s cell phone began playing a song by U2, causing us both to jump. “Hello? Yes . . .
what?
Oh, my God! Yes, of course . . .” she looked at me in shock. “Hold on . . . Jason, it’s Samantha Prince. She says Aurora’s back.”

I understood the shell-shocked look. Samantha Prince (“Sam” to her friends) had been one of Syl’s closest friends in college. Her open personality made her a magnet for everyone with a problem . . . including a certain girl named Aurora Vanderdecken, who apparently had a
lot
of problems. Samantha had been a friend and confidant to the girl for months . . . and then Aurora had vanished, no warning, no letters, no trace.

This had happened at the same time Raiakafan had shown up, about a year or so ago. After that much time, even Aurora’s family had started to accept that she was gone forever. “Is Sam sure it’s her?”

“Very sure. But she’s not in great shape, and with her background . . . Jason, I don’t want to leave you alone with this, but . . .”

I hugged her and took the phone. “Samantha? Jason. I’m glad she’s back. Look, Syl thinks you could use some help.”

Samantha’s voice sounded relieved. “I know this must be an inconvenient time for you . . . my goodness, with what you’re involved in I suppose there
are
no convenient times . . . still, Syl has always been such a help whenever I’ve needed her. Aurora isn’t making a lot of sense, but she’s clear that she doesn’t want me to contact too many people. She’s insisting that we not even tell the police yet. It’s very confusing.”

“It’s no problem. I’ll send Syl down right away.” I handed the phone back to Syl.

A few minutes later, having hung up with Sam, she came over to me. “Are you sure you want to handle this without me?”

“Want to? Not exactly, sweetheart, but look, I know how close you and Sam were, and I like her myself.”

“Yes, I noticed,” she said, trying to sound like her usual lighthearted self.

“Can’t blame a guy for looking,” I said, grinning. “Anyway, you go help her out. Charter a flight if you need to on this short notice. And if you need anything, well, give Verne or me a call.”

“Thank you, Jason . . . I love you.” She hugged me fiercely and we kissed. “Oh no, I didn’t drive up here separately! I can’t take the Hummer; you need the equipment!”

“Then get a taxi. It’s only money. Or better yet . . .” I pulled out my cell, hit my speed dial.

“Domingo residence, Morgan speaking.”

“Morgan! Hey, look, a personal emergency has come up for Syl; she has to go visit some old friends, and we’re stuck up here on that investigation. Can you—”

“But of course, sir. I will send a car up immediately.”

“I could call a taxi—”

“That would never do, sir. Master Verne would insist.”

“Thanks so much, Morgan.” I hung up. Syl was packing away her things. “Gonna miss you.”

“You just be careful while I’m gone, Mr. Information Man,” she said, using one of her old nicknames for me. “I want a home and a husband to come back to.” She looked up at me. “It’s going to take at least an hour for the car to get here.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Something you’d like to do in that time?”

Normally, she’d have countered by playfully withdrawing her implied invitation. Instead, she just said, very softly, “Yes,” and came to me.

After she left, I stared out into the darkness that had swallowed up the limousine. That almost overenthusiastic “good-bye” session had told me how much she was worried. She knew that I never left an investigation unfinished. And she couldn’t see where this one would end.

“Great,” I sighed. “Now
I’m
worried.”

CHAPTER 79

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep . . .

I checked all the connections again. I’d spent the entire day wiring the cabin with a multiplicity of sensors, lights, and other gadgetry, all hooked to a dual redundant set of generators and controlled both from the laptop computer in the master bedroom and from my Lumiere smartphone. I was taking no chances that my preparations would fizzle at the wrong moment, especially now, as the afternoon sunshine was starting to fade. I made sure I had fresh batteries in everything I was carrying, and tucked the Mjölnir charm inside my shirt.

Syl had called around noon, to let me know what I’d already guessed: whatever was going on with Aurora was going to take some time to figure out and I had to deal with this one on my own. Apparently Aurora’s problem wasn’t exactly “normal” and she needed the aid of Syl’s particularly deft touch. Verne and Meta had given me some advice on useful approaches that didn’t require the talents of a wizard to pull off. I’d put as much of that advice to good use as I could in designing the pattern of lights and other devices around Dave Plunkett’s cabin.

I glanced at the west windows, where the remaining shafts of sunlight were definitely reddening, and went outside to grill a steak. No point in facing some Unknown Horror from Beyond on an empty stomach. I used a combination of spices, including cilantro, red pepper, and paprika, and sesame oil, cider vinegar, and honey, taking my time in the preparation and trying to keep my other senses alert. I wanted to evaluate the process of how this presence, whatever it was, acted. Any little quirk in its behavior might help determine what it was and how I might beat it. Oh, I thought I’d already come up with a weapon or three, but at least some of the possible explanations for the thing made it possible that killing it wouldn’t be necessary.

By the time the rub had worked its way in and I was ready to grill, the sun had gone down. I switched on one of the outdoor lights I’d rigged and started grilling. I could already feel a . . .
pressure
, was the best way to put it, an oppressive, nondirectional weight that dragged at my spirit. Concentrating on the pleasant, hot smell of the grilling steak made it feel more like a contest—the “weight” tried to force me to ignore pleasant and happy feelings, while my own focus on my pleasures gave a stronger and more palpable sense of direction (if direction was the right word for something that was purely emotional) to this external influence.

As I sat in the brightly lit kitchen, eating my dinner, I figured out what this leaden depressing sensation reminded me of: it was similar to being in a very bad mood and having to go somewhere that you would normally enjoy. If you didn’t know this was external, it would feel like depression, or perhaps the lurking tension of a phobia waiting to strike—as though you were afraid of spiders and didn’t
see
any, but were sure that there were a few hiding somewhere nearby, ready to stalk delicately out into screaming sight.

So I enjoyed the steak, but not nearly as much as I might have. Even in the lighted room—and the lighting helped, that much I could tell from having to cross back and forth between the kitchen and the darker deck area where the grill was—the damn thing’s influence was insidious. I noticed momentary flickers of fear and sadness in my thoughts: worry about Syl and her flight home, feeling I was simply unable to handle this problem, a creeping sensation between my shoulderblades . . . Then it faded back, as though either it had given up on trying to overcome my focus, or else it was planning a more opportune moment for its attack.

The “opportune moment” was pretty clearly whenever I went to sleep. The thing’s history made that clear. I could stay up all night if I wanted, but truthfully, that wouldn’t help me much at all. I needed to confront whatever it was directly and get some grasp of what I was facing.

So, after taking a walk far away from the cabin to let my dinner settle, I went to bed. That bed, however, had a whole range of controls near it. Even though the mysterious force had backed off, it took me a while to fall asleep. When you know there is a malevolent
something
waiting for you to nod off, it’s not exactly easy to close your eyes, let alone go to sleep. Given that this thing affects the mind, I was pretty sure it could tell whether I was asleep. It had probably known the very moment that the Plunketts had awakened, but it had always waited for its targets to fall asleep. Unfortunately, I also couldn’t use any artificial sleeping assistance; when I woke, I couldn’t afford to be sluggish.

I went to bed around nine o’clock. I think I finally managed to drift off to sleep around midnight.