The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) (18 page)

Handling media relations for the church had been a full-court press since Windsor’s trial. Only now were things starting to slow down. But Tony had kept up his habit of working an extra hour or two after everyone else left the office. He usually grocery shopped around 7:30 or 8 p.m., by which time the meat and deli counters were closing and the customer volume at the Stop & Shop had dwindled. It was hard to believe the fanfare with which the Cranston store had opened as the state’s first 24-hour supermarket, back in the ’80s. In the permanent regulatory recession that marked the early 21st Century, they now closed at midnight, 10 o’clock on Sundays, like everybody else.

“Getting your holiday shopping done early?” asked the cashier as he rolled his half-empty cart up to her register; no waiting.

“Turkey isn’t just for Thanksgiving any more,” Tony smiled.

“I guess not,” she smiled back. Small talk for the bored and exhausted. “No coupons?”

As an afterthought, he’d thrown a couple cans of whole-berry cranberry sauce and a package of cornbread stuffing into the cart with the two frozen turkeys, so his purchase wouldn’t look too weird,
along with a few odds and ends he actually needed at home — milk, dishwashing detergent.

She rang him up and bagged his meager selections. The turkeys actually came with their own ready-made plastic carry handles. He paid cash and was on his way.

Turkeys. Nothing suspicious about a couple of frozen turkeys.

* * *

The Marina had been reasonably quiet this time of night, though a number of small craft displayed soft yellow lights, while an occasional burst of subdued laughter gave evidence of people planning to spend the night aboard. Walking south along the road, then angling southeast toward the sound of the lapping waves, the three of them had fairly easy going along Spink’s Neck beach. They avoided the sand, keeping to the large rocks above the high tide line. But the fog was continuing to thicken out over the Bay, meaning for the most part all they could hear were the low-frequency fog horns out over the water, as well as the occasional clanging of a bell buoy.

Now the fog began to swirl ashore, as well, causing the reassuring warmth of the scattered lights of the marina behind them to take on haloes, to grow dim, and finally to flicker out of view.

Distant noises occasionally came through in clear snatches, a trick of the fog. A laugh or snatch of a popular tune on a radio aboard one of the small craft back at the marina, the barking of a dog at one of the houses on the grounds of the former SeaBee base in Davisville to the northwest, now mostly preserved as a park and memorial.

It was hard not to consider just how alone and isolated they were, with no proverbial cavalry on call for a rescue, should they run into trouble. Yes, they’d left letters, and Captain Jack had been given a couple of names and numbers of people to notify should they fail to return by morning. But that felt like a cold and clammy comfort.

Now they started passing red-on-white “No Trespassing” signs. Skeezix guided them at an angle away from the beach, climbing over uneven dunes anchored with unkempt clumps of coarse sea grass. In
the darkness it was hard to judge your footing, Matthew slipped and had to scramble to keep from falling a couple of times, the problem exacerbated by the awkward long-handled pair of bolt cutters he carried, until he relented and let Chantal take them in charge.

They must have covered a couple hundred yards, gaining a good thirty feet in elevation from the beach, before the ground finally leveled off. And there was the chain-link fence, seven feet high and topped by a couple strands of barbed wire.

“No insulators,” Skeezix said after a quick scan. “Not electric, no alarm. Chain link is climbable, if someone holds me up so I can cut the barb-wire up top.”

“Climbable for you, Skeezer, but I’m an old-timer,” Matthew sighed. “And even if I got over the first time with some help, could I do it again on the way back if we’re on the run? Maybe with someone hurt? Without a tree or a ladder, that’s a bad bet.”

“No trees here,” Skeeezix said. “Take a lot of cuts to get through that chain link.”

“Then let’s work our way along the fence,” Matthew replied. “It’s unusual to fence more than an acre without putting in a couple of gates. You want emergency access in case of fire, and maintenance guys don’t want to walk their mowers a mile back to the front gate after trimming the weeds.”

“Gates could be chained,” Skeezix replied.

“And chains are easier to cut.”

Sure enough, only another 70 yards to the west, away from the water, a kind of dirt maintenance road ran up to the fence, where there was a gate big enough to admit a jeep or a tractor, securely chained and padlocked.

“Bingo,” Chantal nodded.

Matthew took back the big bolt cutters, tried to cut the chain, and failed.

“Strong chain,” Skeezix said.

“Yes it is. You want to try?”

“I’m not as strong as you,” Skeezix answered, sensibly. “Cut the fence.”

“What?”

Although the barbed wire along the top might be new, the fence itself was at least 40 years old. Skeezix pointed out that the vertical post of the gate had come loose from the horizontal bottom crossbar to which it was supposed to be welded.

“See if you can cut the fence link right under where the chain goes through.”

Matthew did.

“Now eight or ten more cuts in a line, straight down, then do the same inside the gate, right under where the chain goes through, there.”

It took a few more than twenty cuts, but five minutes later the chain and lock, still firmly locked up, lay on the ground. They were still firmly attached to the fence, but free of the broken gate, leaving the gate to swing open freely.

“You do this for a living, Skeezix?”

“We don’t like fences and gates. To us, it’s like a dare.”

“Can you hear the resonator, now?”

“No, it’s not on. But I heard it as we were tying up. It was coming from the direction of that building.”

They headed directly for the huge corrugated steel structure. As they drew nearer, they could see a thin vertical sliver of yellow light near the middle of the closest wall. It turned out to be a rear security door, its handle firmly locked. But someone had propped it open an inch or two with a wedge-shaped wooden doorstop, so there was no need to turn the handle.

“A little too easy,” Chantal suggested, her hand firmly back inside her purse.

“Smoker’s door,” Matthew replied. “Look.”

The ground was covered with cigarette butts.

“You really ready for this?” she asked.

“We came this far. Don’t know what we’re going to accomplish standing out here, shivering.”

Propping his bolt cutters against the outside wall in case they might be needed again later, Matthew slipped the door open.

The big old warehouse was cavernous, with pools of light where the main activities were going on. The dull background roar was probably an air conditioner system, cooling the place by a few more degrees than necessary, especially this late at night.

Other than that, their first impression was of thirty-odd engineers in shirtsleeves sitting at rows of tables or consoles, working busily at computer screens, forming a rough half circle around a piece of steel equipment about the size of one of those big rectangular garbage containers they drop in front of buildings that are being gutted for remodeling, except that this one had rows of four-foot tuning forks jutting from the top — Henry Annesley’s resonator, polished up and ready to go.

There was a kind of cloth-covered laundry hamper on wheels and a couple of ladders they could have lurked behind, but Matthew somehow couldn’t see them being caught spying like little kids. After a quick look around, he just walked right in.

A number of men — mostly men — at the consoles turned to look at the new arrivals. One of those men, set apart at a larger desk with several monitor screens, distinctive for his size and his trademark shock of red-blonde hair, was Worthy Annesley.

“Hi, Worthy.”

“Matthew?”

“We were in the neighborhood, thought we’d stop by.”

Worthington turned in his chair to look at a big brute in camouflage fatigues, a wide-handled pistol tied down low on his thigh, who was standing nearby, staring at Matthew and Chantal and little Skeezix, bent forward and dancing from one foot to another.

“I’ll take care of this, Mr. Annesley,” frowned the gorilla, sticking out his lower lip and reaching for his piece.

“Keep your hands away from that pistol, Buster.”

“This is a problem for security!” the gorilla insisted, petulantly.

“We surely will have a chat about security, Buster, a little later on. Right now you might want to observe the way the lady’s right hand is stuck inside her purse, and where that purse is pointed. It could be that all she has leveled at you is her lipstick, but the lady doesn’t appear to be wearing any lipstick. So let’s not roll the dice, hey? For now, maybe you and a couple of your boys can go outside and make sure the East Greenwich High School band isn’t forming up for a parade in the side yard, OK Buster? I know Matthew and … Chantal, isn’t it? I don’t think they or their companion mean us any harm. Though I do wonder to what we owe the honor.”

“Your friends have missed you, Worthy,” Matthew explained. “And the girlfriends are particularly worried about Bucky and little Alvin — no one’s heard from them since about the time Judge Crustio died. Marquita came to us to ask if we could help track them down.”

“And how
did
you find us, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“A secure facility with armed guards where there used to be an abandoned building? Rhode Island is one big small town, Worthy, you know that. People talk. But it was the sea monster sightings that clinched it.”

Worthington Annesley glared at one of the engineers at a nearby instrument console. It was clearly the “I told you so” look. “I was afraid someone would work that out. We’ve oriented the resonators so the excess radiation spills out into the bay, shielded it from the landward side. Who knew there was that much boat traffic out there?”

“We’re just a couple of landlubbers, you and me.”

“I guess so. Who knows you’re here?”

The question sounded casual. Matthew rolled his eyes.

“Worthy, let’s not turn this into a Grade B movie. Plenty of people know where we were heading tonight, starting with the friend who flew us down here in his Cessna. We didn’t walk from College Hill, and this isn’t my first trip to the circus. Chantal was with me at my lawyer’s office this afternoon when we left off the letters with
instructions to deliver them if he hasn’t seen me again by tomorrow noon. The cops and the press are generally pretty lazy, but I think a few details in those letters about Judge Crustio’s death will probably get their attention.”

“Nice office,” Chantal added, smiling. “Great view of the Capitol.”

Actually, the instructions were that either Matthew
or
Chantal could reclaim the letters, but Matthew saw no sense mentioning that here.

“OK, OK,” Worthy shrugged.

“Worthy, I do not work for the police. Just because I’m not going to actively join in your war doesn’t mean I’m working for the other side; I’m not. If we’d wanted to tell the cops or the FBI where you were, the phone call is free; you’d be chatting with them right now and we’d be safe at home with our kitty cats. Marquita is very worried, I feel somewhat responsible, I told her as a favor we’d find you and try to get her some word about Bucky. You should know enough to take care of the families. No one is returning her calls. A letter from their boy at the front can make all the difference.”

“I’ve been swamped, Matthew. This whole thing threatens to spiral out of control, you have no idea.”

“Then maybe it’s time for you to share, Worthy. I suspect you’ve opened up a huge can of worms here, if you not only have the old resonator working but you’re building man-portable versions. Then to actually open a vortex you must have had to develop some kind of feedback amplifier, which is going to create headaches you can’t possibly foresee. No one person can handle something this big, all alone. I assume your first challenge was figuring out how to open up a vortex from the other side to allow someone to get back. And given that Bucky and Alvin don’t appear to be back, I’d bet that’s still a problem.”

Worthington Annesley was shaking his head, giving Matthew the look. Chantal had seen it before; Matthew jumped ahead down a train of thought and was waiting for you at the next station; people wondered if he could read minds or something.

“Cory here helped a lot with the miniaturization. Cory used to be in naval electronics. Targets.”

“Hi, Chantal,” said the handsome guy with the short sandy hair, sitting in shirtsleeves and neatly creased khaki slacks in front of a computer screen at the near end of one of the tables.

“Cory,” she nodded. “Thought that was you.”

“Navy?” asked Matthew.

“It’s not just a job,” Cory smiled. “But I got tired of butting heads up through the bureaucracy every time we wanted to try something new. Electronic games in the private sector turned out to be a lot more lucrative. Worthy and I had mutual friends; you might say he offered me a challenge I couldn’t refuse.”

“I imagine the next thing you discovered is that the portals aren’t just a screen door to the back yard,” Matthew continued. “If there are multiple dimensions, multiple destinations, you’ve got to be able to do some fine tuning, or you don’t know where the hell you’ll end up. And you’re probably approaching it as a strictly electro-mechanical problem.”

“What else?” Worthy asked.

“You’re activating the pineal gland, which in humans raised in our culture is chronically short of dimethyl-tryptamine. You can
stimulate
these systems electro-mechanically, but you’re working inside the human brain. In the end, your problem is largely biochemical, your operator has to take charge and direct things internally.”

“What?”

“People in other cultures, shamanic cultures, have been training initiates to make these kinds of journeys for thousands of years, Worthy. You think you can duplicate and improve on that knowledge in six weeks with a couple of Intel chips and your Tom Swift Magic Erector Set?”