The Mall of Cthulhu (6 page)

After that, Ted didn't see or hear anybody for hours.

Laura marked a section of ATM surveillance tape as potentially significant, saved, then put her computer to sleep and began the tedious process of swiping her ID card to get out of the building, then swiping her T pass to get home. She remembered that she had left Ted with nothing to eat but a variety of high-fiber cereals, so she figured she should stop off at the Indian restaurant with the shockingly surly staff and the shockingly good food. She grabbed a chilled bottle of Riesling at the liquor store next door. She normally couldn't stand those Kool-Aid wines, but back when Ted had been in his wine phase, he'd convinced her that it was the perfect pairing with rich, spicy food.

She trudged up the three flights to her apartment loaded down with wine, samosas, and saag paneer, turned the key in her front door and said, "Ted! Dinner!"

Nobody answered. She heard a click in the rear of the apartment, dropped her burdens, and drew her sidearm. "Ted?" she said again. "Ted, are you asleep? TED!"

No answer, but the click now became a rattle which seemed to be coming from her bedroom. Laura mastered her fear and began systematically clearing the apartment. She did a quick sweep of the kitchen and living room, pointing her gun behind the couch and the chairs. Nothing. She kicked open the bathroom door and swept the shower curtain open with her left hand while holding her gun steady with her right. Empty.

The rattling sound had stopped, but now that she was confident that no one was lurking behind her, she could turn her attention to her bedroom. Heart pounding, she stalked down the hall. She swung around, crouched in her doorway, and found herself pointing her gun at Ted, who was climbing in the window.

"Whoa!" he said. "It was just one site, I swear! Okay, two! Jesus, you really take this porn thing seriously!"

Laura laid her gun down on the floor and found that the hand that had been able to hold the gun so steady suddenly couldn't stop shaking. "You fucking asshole!" she yelled at Ted. "What the—Jesus Christ, what were you doing out of the apartment? You could have been killed! And you could have been killed by me! You are such a fucking idiot!"

Ted finished clambering in and looked sheepish. "I'm really sorry. But I've been hiding in the park all day, and I think I found out something really important."

"I dropped the saag paneer! I dropped a fifteen dollar bottle of wine! And you smell like a fucking dumpster! Ugh! Oh, please tell me that's not my computer under your arm. And please tell me that dried milky substance on it is, in fact milk, because otherwise I'm going to have to puke and kill you, not necessarily in that order."

Ted explained how he had sneaked out to the local Queequeg's dumpster to use their wireless internet so he could check out the game files.

"Yeah, my data guy just told me what I already knew, which was that the spreadsheets are indecipherable. He said the fact that all the numbers were so low was kind of strange—nothing appeared to be above the low thousands—but maybe the units were hundreds or something . . . "

"I don't know about the spreadsheets, but I . . . the Virtuality file . . . I got . . . "

Ted's eyes were shining, and he looked actually happy as he flipped the computer open. Laura wondered where the puking wretch from this morning had gone. "Okay, so the guy's avatar—the character he plays with is Randolph Carter. Who attends Miskatonic U. Who lives in the Innsmouth House dorm! Which is right next to Howard Phillips Hall!" He looked at Laura like she was supposed to get the significance of all this.

"Uhhh . . . "

"Lovecraft?"

"What the hell is that—is that one of your porn sites?"

"No, no no! H. P. Lovecraft? Writer?"

Laura looked blank. "Hey, can we talk and eat? I'm starving, and that saag paneer isn't getting any hotter."

Ted's face, already lit up, got one shade brighter. "Oh, thank you! Indian food! I have to tell you, the whole bachelor fridge and bran cereal thing you have going on here is just really not working."

"Yeah, well, they feed you really well in jail."

"Point taken. But why all the bran? I mean, is there some kind of a problem with your plumbing that needs to . . . "

"My plumbing is not up for discussion. Come out to the kitchen and help me dish this stuff up."

They went to the kitchen, where all the food had survived its drop very nicely. Ted picked up the bottle of Riesling that had rolled under the table and gave Laura a big hug, which was such a rare experience that she didn't really know how to react. Tentatively, she hugged him back and then felt instantly awkward, not to mention disgusted, since he still smelled of the dumpster.

"Okay, I want to hear everything, but you have to change your clothes. You're not very appetizing smelling like that."

"Okay, okay! Kendra leave anything else here?"

"Well, let's just say it's nothing I want to see you wearing right now," Laura said, smiling. Ted retreated to her bedroom and emerged a minute later wearing her ratty old New York Liberty t-shirt and a pair of workout shorts that were enormous on her but made Ted look like he was playing basketball in the 1970's. She couldn't help smiling.

They ate and drank in silence for a moment, and Laura felt slightly guilty as she saw how ravenous Ted was. Eventually, Ted was able to get out, through the adrenaline fogging his brain and the saag paneer clogging his mouth, that he'd taken the CD to Queequeg's and logged on to some video game from a file on the CD, and that he—or rather the computer person he'd been pretending to be—had been attacked by a busty blonde who'd called him by name, thus confirming that Hal-caf hadn't been working alone and that his associates had probably taken the Queequeg's hard drive. The fact that Laura hadn't been called by the police today had led her to believe that someone other than the police had the hard drive, and this pretty well sealed it. She didn't think assault by virtual centerfold was in the Boston Police playbook.

Everything in the area of the game where Ted had been "attacked" related to Lovecraft, who was apparently some kind of horror writer from the twenties who wrote a lot about gigantic octopus-headed creatures from other dimensions that he called "The Old Ones" and their nameless horrible horror, and bad geometry. Or something like that.

"So, your shooter couldn't get a date in high school. What's your point?"

"Hey, I represent that remark! There are a lot of hours to fill up pondering why the popular girls don't like you, and for some of us, a rich fantasy life augmented by fantastic fiction and yes—role playing games—there, I said it, helped us through this difficult period. You know, it's really just like why you played field hockey."

"First of all, I played soccer, and second of all, popular girls liked me."

"Yeah, but did they
like you
like you? How many did you nail?"

"Lesbians don't
nail
, okay? That verb implies the use of an implement that . . . "

"Ducking the question. So you were 0-for-high-school, is what you're saying."

"Yes, fine. Anyway, why is the fact that these people are your fellow dorks important?"

"Because it's
real
. That's the only reason they'd shoot up the Queequeg's. They can play this game and pretend they're dorks, and coordinate this thing nationwide or maybe even worldwide on the internet. Anybody who stumbled onto anything would just think these guys were Lovecraft fans, but they are really Cthulhu cultists! For real!"

"What the hell's a Cthulhu cultist?"

"Well, in one of these stories, it's a bunch of degenerate sailors and the like—you can tell they're evil because they're not white—I know, I know, somehow the racist part sailed right over my head when I was fourteen—anyway, they are trying to open portholes to other dimensions to bring about the return of these creatures so horrible to contemplate . . . "

"That contemplation of their horror would drive you instantly mad, I get it."

"Right!"

"And this is real."

"Yes!"

"That's nuts."

"True! Also, there's no such thing as vampires. You could look it up."

"Ted, there are so many holes in your theory. First of all, what is anybody's motivation for bringing nameless horror to the Earth? Second, if they do all their planning in what is essentially a public space, why would they need to shoot up a Queequeg's to get it back?"

"I don't know. Maybe you can't get in to Randolph Carter's room without a key. Or maybe they found information from the
Necronomicon
and encoded it in the spreadsheets."

"What the hell's the
Necronomicon?"

"Ugh, it's the book that unlocks the secrets of the dead. It was written by the mad Arab, somebody."

"The mad Arab?"

"I can't remember. Al somebody. Listen, these stories are from the twenties. They're not exactly PC. But Randolph Carter had a book written in Arabic tucked into a desk drawer!"

"I'm not buying."

"Well, I am. Which is why I'm going to Providence tomorrow."

This stopped Laura short. Ted was leaving town? Ted was doing something active? He'd followed her to Washington, to New York, and then to Boston, clinging to her like a remora. And now he was the shark all the sudden? It didn't feel right.

"I'm all for you getting out of town, but what's in Providence?"

"Well, Randolph Carter had a map of Providence in his dorm room. I actually downloaded it to your computer, so we can look at it if you want . . . " Ted opened the laptop and Laura reached out and snapped it shut.

"You downloaded a file from a hostile web site?"

"Well, it's not a hostile site, I mean, it's just that some hostile people use it, and—"

"And you downloaded a file from this site where hostile people hang out and you were about to open it on my computer."

"Well, yeah. I thought we could look at it and compare it to a real map of Providence, you know, see if there are any clues . . . "

"Did it ever occur to you that there might be a virus or something on this file?"

"Uh. No. I mean . . . "

"Do not open it. In fact, give me this." Laura reached out and grabbed her computer away from Ted. "Okay, so besides the killer Trojan horse virus map, what else makes you think you should go to Providence?"

Well, some people believe that the
Necronomicon
was real and that Lovecraft had it and hid it somewhere in Providence before his death. Other people think he donated it to Brown, but of course their libraries insist there is no such thing as the
Necronomicon."

"Which only proves to these nutballs that Brown University is part of the conspiracy, right?"

"Exactly! Because if they did really have it, they'd deny it! So, I figure they're in Providence looking for the
Necronomicon
somewhere. I'll get a bus down there or something and see what's up."

Laura felt something strange when Ted said this. It took her a minute to realize she was kind of hurt. All this time dreaming of Ted being out of her hair, and now he was just taking off. He'd only be fifty miles away, but still. Who was going to look out for him? And didn't he feel like he needed her anymore? And if he wasn't weighing her down, what would she use for an excuse for not having a real social life?

After dinner, Ted settled in to watch some reality show that Laura found too stupid to even use to kill time. So she sat down to plan the Providence Operation. Because Ted was nuts, of course, and this was way more likely to be an organized crime thing than some kind of cult killing, but what if he wasn't? Certainly if somebody had told her at the beginning of freshman year of college—or when she was a first-year student, she reminded herself, remembering how she had ripped into anyone who dared to call her anything containing the word "man" when she was eighteen—that there was a colony of vampires, and that the incredibly hot sorority girl she had a crush on was several hundred years old, she would have said they were nuts.

And besides, even a fruitless chase after the cult of C-somethingorother was more exciting than looking for Whitey at the ATM, which looked like a project that was going to drag on pretty much indefinitely, as they had a fresh tip to check out a strip mall ATM in Naples now, and the videos were being uploaded and would probably be ready for analysis tomorrow. Ugh.

So she decided to play a little thought game. Let's assume these people are really in Providence, and that they are incredibly powerful badasses. It wouldn't hurt anything to assume this as she did her planning. (And, some part of her brain whispered, It would keep Ted safe, because she had to keep her Ted safe.) First of all, Ted getting on a bus and going to Providence alone wasn't going to work. He hadn't been seen in his completely clean-shaven persona yet, except by some rats in the Queequeg's dumpster, but she didn't like the idea of him in an enclosed space like that for an hour. And maybe the authorities and whoever else was after Ted would be watching South Station and its adjacent bus depot.

"Hey!" Ted called from the couch. "Wanna watch
Massachusetts Marriage?
Twenty people in a gigantic house on Martha's Vineyard, and nobody knows who's straight or gay, but there will be at least five weddings at the end!"

"Can't talk. Working." Laura turned back to the computer, then turned back to Ted. "You made that up, right? That's not a real show, is it?"

"I swear to God!"

"I had a summer like that, except it was Nantucket, and nobody got married."

"No shit?"

"Well, there were only five of us, but one girl told me we could fool around, but we couldn't go out, because that would make her a lesbian."

"Whoa. Okay, drunk girls are making out on TV—I need to pay attention to this."

Laura turned back to the screen and her operational planning. She felt an excellent brain buzz coming on—the kind she thought she'd get running investigations at the FBI. Her mind felt electric instead of foggy as she thought out all the angles. If she were an evil conspirator searching for Ted, what would she do?