The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) (35 page)

“Chantal, babe, if it’s evening I’m sure Les and Marian are at their Lamaze class. There’s no one in the store.”

“Matthew, I’m ashamed of you. Don’t you always teach that we need to think outside the box? There’s
always
someone in the store. It just depends on how you define ‘someone.’ Tabbyhunter, can you hear me? I need you to do something for me. Can you play us a movie, Tabbyhunter? Can you show us the squirrel? Get on the desk here where you hear my voice and show me the squirrel, Tabbyhunter. Can you do that?”

Ten seconds. Fifteen seconds.

“Tabbyhunter? Play a movie?”

And then the redhead at the console — the red-haired Dimension 8 version of their Marian, albeit more provocative than usual in her black skin-tight suit — straightened up, hand to her earphone. And smiled. “It’s on. I don’t know who Tab Hunter is, but he’s brought the power levels back up; I’ve got the homing beacon loud and clear.”

“He’s watching a squirrel try to climb a greased pole, actually. Good Tabbyhunter. There’ll be a salmon treat for you, tonight.”

Disconnecting, she asked if she had time to call young Gilbert at Quonset Point, to tell him and his grandmother the current plan called for the travelers to beam back directly to the store on Benefit.

* * *

The vortex shimmered and closed behind them like the iris of a camera, and the four travelers were standing in the dimly lit bookstore on Benefit Street. Between the “Aviation” and “Show Biz” sections, actually. Outside, a car went by. A couple of cats scampered for the safety of the back rooms, but Tabbyhunter remained standing on the front desk. He stretched his neck, recognized everyone but Bucky Beausoleil, who he sniffed curiously, and then chattered a greeting.

“I hope no one will take offense if I use the bathroom,” Chantal said, setting down her reclaimed heavy aluminum rifle case and slipping out of her backpack, though she pulled a little holstered revolver from its hiding place beneath the front desk and carried it with her as she left the room, an after-hours habit she wasn’t going to abandon now.

“Are we really here?” Skeezix asked. And then, without a pause, “We missed supper, didn’t we?”

“Bucky, I’d take it as a favor if you were to call Marquita,” Matthew said. “She’s been pretty worried.”

Matthew turned on a few more lights. They heard keys in the front door, then, as Les and Marian arrived home. “Thank God!”
Marian shouted in an atypical burst of emotion as she rushed to embrace Skeezix. “And Chantal? Where’s Chantal, Matthew?”

“In the bathroom, of course. I wouldn’t take her by surprise, though; she’s armed.”

“Someone needs to call Gilbert and his grandmother.”

“I think Chantal already did. But go ahead, if you’ve got a way to reach them.”

“Matthew, for heaven’s sake. Even reservation Indians carry cell phones, now.”

Indeed, Gilbert and Dona Solana soon showed up, chauffeured by Uncle Remus, having received Chantal’s earlier call. And right behind them was Marquita, who was all smiles and hugs for son Gilbert and especially for Bucky.

“I know you all are tired, but we must do the ceremony now to seal the doorway,” Dona Solana insisted. “Waiting till tomorrow is not so good.”

“Grandmother Solana is right,” Matthew nodded. “Here in the side yard?”

“Yes, Gilbert will start the fire.”

“Though I’m afraid Worthy and his friends will open more doorways, eventually,” warned Chantal, who had rejoined them in the kitchen.

“They took your friend Worthy and his big machine away,” Gilbert replied.

“What?”

A large group of military men with trucks, Gilbert and his grandmother explained, emptying the building at Quonset Point, hauling away all the gear and Worthy and his workers, too, that very afternoon.

“I don’t think that will be an end to the trouble,” Matthew nodded.

“I am afraid you are right,” said the old Indian, lighting her little brown cheroot as they moved out to the side yard and Gilbert started laying the hearth for the fire. “I fear your adventures are not over,
Brother Matthew. These white people will never learn to leave things in peace. Yes, there will be lots more work for the Nde of Gilbert’s generation, I’m afraid. But for now, this woman warrior has done good work, finding you and bringing you all home.”

“Except for little Alvin,” Chantal sighed. They explained to Dona Solana, then, about the companion they’d left behind in the caves.

“And so that’s where his path ended,” she nodded.

“That’s what Emilio said.”

“Well, that’s OK. We will seal the doorway, now, and say a prayer that your missing companion’s soul will find peace in that strange world. Then tomorrow’s troubles will just have to wait for tomorrow.”

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

“You see them, don’t you?” asked Chantal when they were finally alone upstairs. She was wearing nothing but a long T-shirt, fiddling with her cell phone recharger, both of them having washed off several days’ worth of grit and gore.

“See what?”

“Jesus, Matthew. Are you telling me you don’t see the shapes, the shadows out of the corner of your eyes when you’re getting tired, those shifting layers, trailing curtains, glimmers and sparkles, but most of all the goddamned
eyes,
the eyes of those tyrannosaurs and those big spiders, watching us when we’re not looking, hoping for a chance to break through, looking for something to eat?”

“Of course I do,” Matthew replied, deciding not to point out she’d just quoted a line from “The Eggplant That Ate Chicago.”

“Well then, don’t do that. We’re supposed to be a team, don’t make me think I’m the only one who’s seeing these things, that I’m the only one who’s …”

“Going nuts?”

“Thank you.”

“Of course I see them. I hoped maybe
you
didn’t see them.”

“I was there, remember? Although you did a much higher dose than I did for the trip home, didn’t you?” She was now down on her knees, rummaging through the closet, evidently looking for some kind of ammo. Chantal had an aversion to leaving anything unloaded. She’d once admitted she kept supplies of ammo even for kinds of guns she didn’t have, because “You never can tell.”

“I had to. I could see the way it had to be done, but I couldn’t get all the overlays … lined up.”

“It felt like a close thing, honey,” she said, emerging from the closet with a satisfied look and a handful of cartridges at least the size of Dona Solana’s cigars. “It makes you want to know it all, to master it all, but I think down that road lies some kind of …”

“Fragmentation,” Matthew finished her sentence for her.

“A point where you’re closer to grasping it all, but a point from where you can’t come back.” Chantal opened her aluminum rifle case, pulled out an empty magazine — she would roll her eyes when people insisted on calling them “clips” — sat down and started skillfully slipping fresh rounds inside, where it appeared they were held in place by some kind of spring pressure.

“We made it, this time.”

“You did what you had to do to get us back, sweetheart. More than I could have done. Do you think this will fade, or is this always going to be with us, now?”

“Everything fades with time, babe. But nothing ever goes back to quite the way it was. You can’t have these kinds of experiences and then just wash them away. Or at least you shouldn’t. Wrong instinct completely, though I know why people try. They think they want to be ‘normal’ again, to fit in, to talk about child care and clam dip recipes and their favorite sitcom, so they seek some kind of oblivion, whether it’s alcohol or painkillers, it’s just a slower way to …”

“We both know where the death door is, now, Matthew, if we ever need it. I just hope neither of us ever feels we have to go there, alone. We’re supposed to be here for each other. What about …”

“Yes?”

“Now that we know everything that’s out there … I take that back, now that we know just a narrow
slice
of what’s out there, are they seeing shades and shadows of us, the way we can see them?”

“Through a mirror, darkly.”

“Philip K. Dick?”

“Scott Bakula,
Star Trek Enterprise.
Evil alternative universe.”

“They know we’re here, don’t they?”

“They already did, babe. They already did.”

“And can they come through without the resonator?”

“Eventually, maybe. Not yet. Not tonight.”

* * *

The next day, Cory stopped by to make sure Chantal and Matthew were OK, and to confirm the report from Gilbert and his grandmother that Naval Intelligence had seized the whole dimension-gate operation at Quonset Point just hours before the four travelers made it home, carted it all up and hauled it away.

“And what happens to Worthy?”

“Well, he’s going to be working as part of a larger team, needless to say, lots of details to be worked out.”

“What?” Matthew smiled in disbelief. “Worthy Annesley isn’t at the bottom of the Bay, or under arrest? He’s ‘working as part of a larger team’? How the hell did he pull that off?”

“Not much that I’m at liberty to say right now, Matthew. Chantal can probably explain to you how it works. Let’s just say that the Annesley family still has friends in very high places.”

“Wait a minute. Windsor and Worthy’s dad was an Annapolis classmate of someone who gets flown around Washington in a big Navy helicopter these days, right?”

“That’s something I could neither confirm nor deny,” Cory said, managing to not quite smile.

And before the day was over, Marquita brought Bucky Beausoleil back to see Matthew and Chantal again, as well.

There were hugs all around. Matthew offered what he could find in the refrigerator. They were friends, now, bonded by what they’d all been through. Marquita reported they’d broken the news to Alvin’s girlfriend. But Bucky seemed nervous about something else.

“You know how Alvin and I got stranded in that place?” he finally asked.

“The portable resonators they gave you weren’t tuned,” Matthew answered. “They were like the old-fashioned spark-gap radio transmitters, before they figured out you might want the sender and the
receiver tuned to the same frequency. They worked OK when there was no interference, but they were easy for the arachnids to jam. Frankly, you’re lucky you didn’t land somewhere way outside rescue range.”

“Mr. Hunter —” Marquita had trouble looking him in the eye.

“I thought I was ‘Matthew’ by now, Marquita.”

“What Bucky means is, we’re wondering if you’re going to tell anybody.”

“About who killed Judge Crustio?”

“I did what I did, and I’d do it again,” Bucky said, pursing his lips. “I’m ready to take whatever’s coming to me. It’s just … we were planning to get married, and we need to know …”

“Whether we’re going to be witnesses for the prosecution if anyone gets charged with killing the judge.”

“I’ve told Bucky it doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters. If I’m going to be spending the next 20 years in the joint, I don’t want her raising our child …”

The young woman blushed.

“Chantal?”

“You know where I stand.”

“Chantal and I have already talked this over, guys. In the first place, I think you’re going to find the authorities are extremely reluctant to prosecute
anyone
in the death of Old Crusty. You’ve probably noticed the blanket of secrecy the feds have thrown over the resonator and everything about it. To explain their theory of the crime any prosecutor would have to blow the lid off this thing so wide he’d probably be found floating face-down in the bay without a snorkel.

“But more to the point, I’m not retained by the authorities to help them keep the populace subjugated in ignorance and superstition. The spark you folks have struck isn’t going out. It’ll spread. The War on Drugs is doomed. If they don’t call it off soon, within a couple years their entire government will go down in flames, which would be no great loss. Governments do fall, you know. How long did they think they could keep locking up the sons and daughters of a nation,
by the millions, for no crime but growing and using plants? It’s a modern version of the witchcraft trials.”

“They say using the plant sacraments is an ‘artificial’ way to seek the kingdom,” Bucky nodded, soberly. “Well, maybe they need to look up ‘artificial.’ Celibate priests and calling everything a sin and chanting a bunch of memorized mumbo-jumbo that don’t really work for no one? That’s not artificial? Meantime, what could be more natural than fasting for a day and then eating a couple mushrooms or a handful of cactus, works every time? Especially when it turns out people have been doing it for thousands of years?”

“They’re also going to figure out real soon,” Chantal added, “that people need to know how to use these plants, to report back on what the heck is happening in those other dimensions.”

“Chantal and I don’t have any first-hand knowledge of how Old Crusty died,” Matthew shrugged. “Hell, if we went public with what we
do
know, we’d probably find ourselves in a rubber room at the state hospital. My recommendation to this young man is that he stop worrying and get ready to start supporting a bigger family.”

* * *

Tony Waranowicz had worked some years as a newspaper reporter before he signed up to handle media for the Annesleys. Not for the South Jersey View, it was true, but he knew the way these political meet-and-greets worked. The shirt pocket full of pens and the distinctive, three-by-seven-inch spiral-bound reporter’s notebook in his hip pocket — along with a focused attitude — were all he needed. Confidence was everything. Nobody but some first-year yahoo ever offered to show anyone their “press credentials,” which could be printed up in a few minutes and laminated over at Kinko’s, anyway. Nor did he wear a jacket and tie — editors wore neckties, not reporters, except for court reporters dealing with control-freak judges and of course the smug dorks on the Business Page, strutting around like bankers-in-training, might as well work for Advertising. Even his
heavy cotton long-sleeved shirt wouldn’t draw much notice; it was air-conditioned in the restaurant and breezy down by the beach.