"What… what's this… all about," he finally wheezed.
"Let's just say I'm pissed."
"About what?"
"Look, Tinker Bell, you slip into my room without knocking, you make veiled threats, you give me some kindergarten story about being the only survivor of the Battle Harbor carnage. Then you manage to get in the way while I'm following the old woman in the fog and I lose her. And if that isn't enough, you expect me to buy some half-baked story about you out tromping happily through the woods while the rest of the community is being carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey." I paused just long enough to reach down, jerk him to his feet and shove him across the room into the chair. Through it all, I made sure he never lost sight of the Mauser. "Talk to me, Kelto — and this time, talk to me straight."
It won't come as any surprise when I tell you the sullen look was gone. He blinked a couple of times and cautiously reached up to wipe off his mouth where a tiny trickle of crimson was oozing from his bruised lower lip. "I don't know what you're talking about," he stammered.
"See that little black thing over there?" I was pointing toward the telephone. "How would you like it if I walked over to it, picked it up, dialed the boys in the striped pants and told them you were withholding information about this whole ugly mess? Let me tell you something; if they happen to discover that you knew one thing that could have prevented just one of these atrocities, you won't take another hike to the woods for another thirty years. The way I see it, you're already an accessory to mass homicide." It sounded pretty bad, but the truth was, I had no idea what kind of charges the Mounties could drum up. I was bluffing. All I could hope was that he didn't know I was bluffing.
Kelto leaned forward, his eyes watering and puffy, still dabbing at his lower lip. "You can't do that. You can't interfere now."
"Watch me." I started to reach for the telephone.
Apparently he didn't know the phones were out because he appeared to be buying it.
Kelto held up his hand. "Wait a minute," he pleaded.
"Straight story, that's all I want, the straight story."
"We are approaching the Sabbat of Sate," he whispered, "the year of the fallow fields and the year of the feast, the year for an appeal of the fates."
"Look," I sputtered, "the jury is still out on you. Watch my lips; talk to me. Talk to me straight. Knock off the cult crap. What's going on here?"
Kelto tried to clear his throat and folded his long feminine fingers into a prayer pyramid; his eyes were closed. He began again, this time with his voice coming through as little more than a muted whisper. "We are about to witness the equinoctial awakening of Sate. It is the eleven year cycle of birth and death…"
"All right," I fumed, "hold it right there. You're talking about Sate, the Mongol, the one they call the Ancient of Ancients?"
Kelto nodded, eyes still closed.
"Come on," I sighed, "surely you don't have the audacity to sit there and tell me some second-rate Middle Ages witch doctor has survived all these years?"
"I speak the truth," Kelto replied grimly.
He opened his eyes, and they were slightly glazed. It was as if he had slipped into some kind of trance. "There is much you do not know."
"Enlighten me," I snapped, giving him another glimpse of the Mauser.
"Sate is not a product of the Middle Ages. The Ancient of Ancients reaches back into the dawn of all civilization, even before the time of the great celestial storms. He is a consort of the very Prince of Darkness himself."
I got up, poured myself another drink and tried to decide whether Kelto needed another bop on the beak or a straight jacket. All of this talk about the dawn of civilization and the Prince of Darkness was more than I could handle. He was rapidly being reclassified in the Wages reference file from weirdo to wacko.
"So you're telling me this guy Sate is several thousand years old?" It was becoming more and more difficult to keep a straight face.
"That's exactly what I'm saying," Kelto insisted, "but you still don't understand. Sate is not a mere mortal. He is a cursed force, an extension of the most evil one, and he has great powers."
I slumped back down on the bed, managed to locate a cigarette and took a swig of the tepid Scotch. I had just about decided Kelto's mumbo jumbo would make more sense if I was half in the bag. "Let's go back to the beginning," I sighed. "Tell me again. Why are you here?"
"The faithful have been summoned," he answered without hesitation.
"But I thought you said you weren't one of them."
"Quite the contrary. I am the vehicle of retribution."
"In other words, you figure this is your chance to get even with this Sate character."
"I see very little humor in all of this, Mr. Wages."
"Don't get pompous on me, buster. Like I said, the jury is still out on you."
Kelto blinked. "This may be the only chance we have to rid ourselves of this evil force."
It was play-along-with-Kelto time. "Okay, you tell me what makes you think you can get rid of this thing called Sate, when we couldn't bring him down with half the damn guns in the province pumping away at him."
Kelto's confidence suddenly began to return. His nearly flawless face inched its way into a sinister half-smile. "I know what to do," he assured me. "I alone know how it must be done."
"Let's go back to something you said earlier." I had calmed down to the point where it was at least possible to establish a rational sequence to my questions. "You said the faithful had been summoned. Are you telling me there are others here who believe in all of this nonsense?"
"There are many," he said evenly.
"Like who?"
"Can't you see? The true believers are all around us. It was my own research, my search for the truth, that led them to believe I was one of them."
I sighed, set my drink on the floor beside the bed and leaned back on my hands. "I hate to admit it, Kelto, but I think I'm starting to make some sense out of all this. What you're saying is you wanted to get even. You saw a correlation between what happened at Battle Harbor and the Coalition commune. You started digging into it and came to the same conclusion I did — that these incidents have been happening every eleven years and that Chambers Bay looked like the site for the next episode in this nightmare."
"I was uncertain until I was summoned."
"What do you mean, you were 'summoned'?"
"I was in the old library at Camberbie doing research. A strange-looking little man walked up to the reading table where I was seated. He laid a note on the table and walked away. The note was nearly illegible, but finally I was able to decipher it. It said, 'You are called, the chosen must serve, Chambers Bay at the time of the equinox.'
By the time I read the note and went to look for him, he was gone."
"Okay, but that doesn't prove anyone else is here. How do you know anyone else was informed?"
"I'm certain of it. This is a momentous occasion for the followers of Sate. A true believer in the religion of the Ancient of Ancients believes that he will be allowed an audience with the great Sate only once in his lifetime. It is the only time he will have the opportunity to appeal for Sate's blessing."
"Okay, if there are others, who are they?"
"So far, I am certain of only one."
"The Austin widow?"
"She is a true believer," he confirmed. "I am not surprised that you know it. She talks too much."
"But you don't know of any others?"
Kelto shrugged. "The Emissary has not yet revealed his identity."
"Emissary?"
"The Emissary is the appointed one, the one responsible to see that the way has been prepared."
I took another swig of my drink, jotted down a few more notes on my growing stack of three-by-fives and pushed on.
"So at this point you don't know who the Emissary is, and you don't know who the other true believers are, except for the Austin woman."