The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) (24 page)

“I don’t understand,” Chantal said. “I thought about calling you and Emilio, thought very hard about it. God knows I could use some help. I just didn’t know if I had the right, if he — or you — owed me that kind of help.”

“But you did call,” the grandmother smiled.

“No.” Chantal looked confused.

“Gilbert was certain you needed us. He heard your voice, very clearly; he saw you in the fire.”

“Old Emilio said we should trust the vision and come here right away,” young Gilbert nodded. “He sends his regards, and a pouch of the medicine. He said he couldn’t make the trip again so soon, but that he does hope to see you on the road.”

A pouch of the medicine. Maybe there really was a God. Or several.

“Well,” Chantal replied. “Emilio was right, and your vision was right. I do need help, very badly. I wasn’t sure whether to call, but now that you’re here I’m very, very glad to see you.”

And then they all laughed.

* * *

“They’ve sent young men there, into the spirit land?” asked Gilbert’s grandmother, the
curandera
Maria Solana. The two new arrivals were seated at the kitchen table with Chantal and Marian, who had first insisted Gilbert call Marquita to let her know her mother and son were here. Les and Mr. Cuddles were out front, glaring at the final customers of the day.

“Yes.”

“For what purpose?”

“From what we’ve learned, they wanted to have the power of a sorcerer, to appear and then seem to disappear, by traveling back to the other dimension.”

“Like a magic trick?”

“Yes.”

“And they did this?”

“We think so. They used this power to kill an enemy, and then disappear.”

“They killed an enemy here, and then fled back into the spirit realm?”

“To the sixth dimension, or whatever dimension. Yes. We’re pretty sure.”

The old woman sighed. “This is ver’ dangerous. The creatures on the other side now know about all this, that their visitors follow the path of war. And now more people have been sent.”

“In order to locate and rescue the first two. They’re trying to learn control, how to travel back and forth.”

“And how do these travelers prepare? Do they fast? Do they meditate? Who instructs them about the dangers they can meet in the Other World, how to recognize dangerous spirits who can take deceptive forms, and how to come back to their bodies, here? What medicine do they carry?”

“They know nothing of these things. And now they cross over in their bodies, their bodies leave this place, through something called a vortex. They actually travel to the other side.”

The old woman shook her head at the magnitude of this.

“And then they think they can come back? Wearing their same skins?”

“Not good, hunh?”

“Emilio spoke of you,” she sighed. “You are the woman warrior.”

“I am.”

“Then I must speak to you as a warrior, and not just as a woman.”

“As much as you can.”

“Many times I have been called, when a young person has tried to use the spirit powers in a bad or foolish way. I have been called to set things back to rights.”

Chantal nodded.

“The young seldom understand how much work it can take to restore things to … balance. Balance between the worlds, as it should be. It can take a great effort. The right … helpers must be spoken to.”

Chantal nodded again.

“But to mess things up, this bad,” the old woman shook his head, “for that you need white people.”

Chantal smiled. So did Marian.

“Matthew went to try and help them, because they can’t find their way home,” Chantal said, realizing that Matthew could have immediately told her who sang that line. “I can’t abandon him; he’s the father of my child. So tomorrow I’ll prepare the best I can, and try to join him. I’m going to take some powerful medicine of my own. If I can guide them back, is there a way to seal this opening between the worlds, afterwards?”

“You will take weapons?”

“Yes. Matthew has none.”

“You will kill enemies, there?”

“No.” At first Chantal wasn’t sure what the old woman meant. “No, there’s no one there I want to kill. The weapons are only for animals. Even then, I would rather not kill. But there are large animals there, very large. If they attack us, then I would shoot to defend us.”

The old woman nodded, thought on it for a moment. “That is alright, then. If you were going there to kill enemies, that could be bad. More stuff to fix. But defend you and your man and the young person if the animals attack, that’s OK. Still, I must give this a lot of thought.” She looked at her grandson. “Both of us will smoke on this, and give it some thought, and then we will talk some more.”

“You’re welcome to stay here.”

“I have my tent,” the old woman said. “I think better where I can see the stars and feel the wind.” Les had helped them set up their large tent in the side yard. “We will discuss this more in the morning.”

“Les and Marian can bring food out to you. You’ll excuse me, but I don’t eat tonight.”

“That is better, if you take the narrow path.”

“I wish I knew it better, believe me. But tomorrow I will try.”

“And we will help you, if we can.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

In the end, she did not go the next day, which was Sunday. Darcie nodded knowingly when told Gilbert and his grandmother had shown up with a pouch of medicine, as though she’d known what they needed would arrive, somehow. Darcie then immediately entered into a detailed technical botanical discussion with Dona Solana about how much tea would be brewed, how much the participants would need to consume to see Chantal off, and how much that might leave for Chantal to carry along in a thermos. Chantal would have felt awkward negotiating with someone who was, after all, donating a precious sacrament very important to her own religion, so she was happy to see Darcie and the old woman laughing and getting along so fluently. Still, depending on how many survivors might end up sharing her thermos for the return trip, the bottom line was that supplies would still be tight.

The planning would require much of the day, so it was agreed they would go before dawn on Monday.

Even in the summer, they shouldn’t encounter many beachgoers on an early Monday morning, inland from the Spink’s Neck beach which they’d initially crossed to reach Worthy Annesley’s warehouse. So Chantal sent word through Cory that — while she’d need to attempt her crossing
near
where Matthew and Skeezix had been sucked through their large vortex — working inside Worthy’s warehouse, still presumably a hub of frenetic re-construction activity, would not work for her or her Apache guests. Instead, they’d find a relatively isolated spot, outdoors but nearby.

She had to hand it to Cory. He could have just dropped off his hardware — six headsets (he’d added a backup) and two shoulder
weapons — and left it at that. But he went further, handing her something she hadn’t even thought to ask for — a signed permit from the town of North Kingstown authorizing three days of outdoor camping and an outdoor fire for “Native American religious observances” on unoccupied town land at Quonset Point. (Ah, the wonders of government. And she wondered what kind of credentials Cory had flashed to get
that
cleared on short notice.) He then went even further, arranging for Chantal’s friend Herbert — “Uncle Remus” the chauffeur to everyone else — to pick them up at the store on Benefit well before dawn in an off-duty airport van.

So in the end there were eight in her party, including Herbert the driver, who’d stay a few hours, till Chantal either succeeded or failed, so most of the rest would have a ride home. With Chantal came Les and Marian, since the bookstore was closed on Monday, anyway — not because their abilities were specifically needed, but because they certainly weren’t going to let her do this alone, without some moral support. Red-haired Darcie came along, with a thermos bottle for Chantal’s backpack, in case it was needed for the return trip, by her and any survivors Chantal might find.

Gilbert and Marquita and Dona Solana filled out their number, hauling along a sizeable deerskin drum they’d brought all the way from Arizona, along with their tent and its good-sized poles. Either that Greyhound bus had had a sizeable cargo bay, or they were in touch with some secret Indian tent-making fraternity.

On the second try Herbert managed to find them a clearing not too far off the Davisville Road which Dona Solana, after stalking around and tossing some dried grass into the air to test the wind, decided would do. As the sky began to lighten, Worthy Annesley’s barbed-wire compound was visible, less than a half mile to the southeast. Through the morning gloom, the running lights of a few boats moved, out on the Bay.

Les and Marian and Herbert the driver helped young Gilbert — a far healthier and stronger-looking lad now than when Chantal had first met him, some months ago — pitch the tent in the gray pre-dawn
light, while Dona Solana set to work building the fire. Building the fire was a careful job; the hearth had to be banked and shaped in a certain way. Then she and Gilbert sanctified the area, offering tobacco smoke to all five points of the compass.

“Five?” asked Marian.

“The Indian people shake their heads at your ‘four points of the compass,’” young Gilbert smiled, though it was a kindly smile. “They say it means the white man can never be happy where he is, he always has to be going somewhere else. Just as nature gave us the five colors of the corn — red, yellow, blue, white, and mixed — so we are given the five points of the compass: north, south, east, west, and here.”

“Here?”

“Here.”

Chantal unpacked and re-stowed her backpack. Les and Marian, meaning well, had offered her a portable camp stove, an entrenching tool, bottles of vitamins, a fishing pole, heavy socks, everything but a color TV. In the end, she’d trusted Worthy’s reports on the availability of clean water on the other side, limiting herself to a single two-quart canteen for water, plus the thermos that Darcie and Dona Solana would fill at the last minute with some extra tea for her return trip. Other than that, her focus had been on two sturdy survival knives and a real military first-aid kit. (While G.I.s with eighth-grade educations had handled them just fine when everything was on the line in 1942 and ’43, modern civilian adults were no longer trusted with morphine syrettes, or local anesthetics more effective than 3 percent sunburn spray. Treated like idiot children, American adults were no longer even trusted with the topical vancomycin powder she carried, or any antibiotics strong enough to do any good in case of a real combat wound.)

To these she added a small quantity of compact food bars, a flattened roll of toilet paper — OK, she was a thoroughly sissified modern female — a change of socks and underwear, and all the ammo she could carry for her main burdens, the two big shoulder weapons, one
in a five-foot long canvas cover, the other packed away, disassembled, in its heavy aluminum case.

Dona Solana brewed up her peyote tea, using many of the dried buttons from her medicine pouch. Everyone on this side was expected to partake of the tea, to improve their own vision into the next world, in order to help Chantal as best they could. Les and Marian grimaced at the bitter taste, evoking a wave of quiet laughter.

“Isn’t it delicious?” asked Gilbert.

“Delicious,” said Les, wincing like he’d been asked to chew up and swallow a pine cone. Les was already the subject of a fair amount of good-natured ribbing for his transparent astonishment that anyone would actually get up and drive around before dawn, voluntarily.

Only Herbert declined the cactus tea, chuckling. It was also a sacrament of his church, after all. But he was driving.

Now, the fire lit and starting to take hold nicely, came Chantal’s final consultation with Dona Solana and Darcie the botanist. Well, scratch that. She certainly hoped it wasn’t her “final” consultation with either of them.

Matthew’s theory, which she embraced, was that Worthy was sending his men through in the belief they could handle this kind of travel with purely electro-mechanical means. Yes, the resonators might open the vortex, or make the vortexes visible, or whatever. But what if there were multiple destinations out there, multiple doorways to multiple dimensions? Chantal needed to be in a state where she could access the guidance of the entheogens, the psychoactive plant helpers, but she couldn’t afford to be flat on her back, gazing in helpless awe at visions of prancing fractal jaguars square-dancing with iridescent feathered serpents. She had to remain alert enough to stride through that vortex and deal with whatever might immediately present itself on the other side, which could include very real and colorful exotic animals bent on making her their morning Pop-Tart.

The dose settled among them, she drank the bitter brew. As she’d had no other breakfast, she might or might not empty her stomach
contents in a few minutes, but it wouldn’t matter. By then the plant alkaloids would be in her system.

Smiling, encouraging her, her Apache guests began to drum and chant. The chanting was not some hollow ritual; the rhythm and the tones set up a sympathetic vibration in her skull and thus in her pineal body that would help the drug do its work. She positioned herself cross-legged on the ground and watched the sun finish rising over the Bay to the east.

It came on almost imperceptibly, at first, a heightened awareness of the effectiveness of the chanting and the quality of the golden light of this morning, which might be her final morning, for all she knew. And that was fine. What good were your mornings, if you didn’t seize them, live them to the full? Old Dona Solana, now smiling and chanting and occasionally pausing to puff on her cheroot, had called her the woman warrior. And that’s what she was, wasn’t she? What good was a woman warrior who huddled at home, whimpering and shying away from the battle? Friends were waiting for her, friends in need of rescue. Chantal smiled. She felt no hesitancy now. She was the right person at the right place and time.

The familiar warm shiver came up her spine, then, not exactly sexual but sensual for sure, like the kind of comforting rush of warmth you got when you laid eyes on a loved one you hadn’t seen in months or years, opened your arms to hug them.