“Lonneskey is hardly a good man.”
“People change.”
“No. They don’t.”
“How did you get back to us if you were already here? Some of these paths are one-way. It’s impossible to go backward.”
“The fissures create disturbances in the spectrums. I can feel them. I can see the paths. All of them. Including the ones that lead backward.”
“Convenient.”
“It is.”
“So then what was up with the factory?”
“After I left that golem at the church, I realized something.”
“What’s that?”
“I realized that it probably wasn’t a coincidence that you were here. I realized you were probably looking for whatever’s hidden here. That’s also when I realized that I might need you. Lucky for me, you managed to survive a third golem. But then I had to keep you alive long enough to meet you here. The problem with that was that I left a particularly nasty golem in the factory.”
So there was another golem at the factory.
“My second rule is always remain flexible. I had to distract you so you wouldn’t stumble across the golem and finally get yourself killed just when I needed you.”
“The residuals.”
“Residuals? Yeah. I suppose so. I can’t really take credit for that trick. I learned that one from an old friend. Just before I killed him.”
“Your mother must be so proud. So you put the residuals there to hide the golem from me?”
“That, and to spy on you. I wanted to know what was so special about you, how it was that you defeated three of my golems. I saw you talking to someone… But after knocking you out, I couldn’t make that device work. It looked like an ordinary, cheap phone.”
It figured that someone would knock him over the head just to get a closer look at his stupid phone. “It is an ordinary, cheap phone.”
“You weren’t using it like a phone. You were talking to someone. They were feeding you information.”
That’s right… He was talking to Isabelle. And he wasn’t simply talking on his phone. He’d been talking to it. Isabelle was sending him text messages, warning him that something seemed off in there. And he hadn’t sent any texts back to her because she didn’t need him to. She could get into his thoughts. To someone who didn’t know about Isabelle, it would seem that his device was communicating with him independently and despite the lack of a signal.
But this man had already threatened Father Billy’s life. He had no intention of letting him know about Isabelle.
“Someone was talking to you,” the foggy man insisted.
“Yes,” admitted Eric. “The crew of the Enterprise. They’ll be beaming me up shortly.”
“I don’t care for sarcasm.”
“I don’t care for pompous, murderous little pricks.”
The young man shrugged. “Fine. I dragged you safely around the office where I hid the golem and I sent you on your way. Even gave you your phone back. Didn’t want to risk you not making it here for our little talk.”
“You’re a real saint.”
“I also took care of that cat for you. I’ll bet that could’ve ruined your day.”
“You have no idea.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Eric met the young man’s stony gaze. For a moment, they both remained silent.
This man didn’t seem to know anything about his dream, or about the old folks who had helped him along the way. He was under the impression that he must be some kind of government agent, specifically sent to either confront him or beat him to the prize in the cathedral. And his peculiar use of the cell phone only reinforced that fantasy. It was clear that he didn’t trust him, but the irony was that he would never in a million years believe the truth.
And if he was really lucky, that would give him just a sliver of an advantage.
Finally, Eric asked, “So what now?”
“Now, we’re going to go down there. And you’re going to lead the way.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. I’ve heard enough. There’s nothing scary about you. You’re just a rotten kid who needs his ass kicked real good. I’m not playing your game. You can go to hell.”
The foggy man, no longer foggy at all, barely even a man, pulled a handgun from under the back of his tee shirt and pointed it at Eric, instantly regaining his full attention. “One more rule: I never rely solely on my talents.”
Eric stared into the barrel of the gun. “How prudent of you.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The foggy man’s pistol pointed at his back and an ominous darkness waiting below, Eric descended the wooden stairs into the black depths of the cathedral.
Nothing about this situation gave him a good feeling. All things considered, the gun was probably the least of his worries at this point. (But it still pissed him off to think that the little bastard had so completely taken control of the situation.)
He promised Isabelle he would be careful, yet here he was, in a very vulnerable position, shepherded into this nightmare hole in the ground at gunpoint, his very fate in the hands of the enemy and his odds of making it out alive dwindling with each passing second.
He was ashamed to admit that he had let his guard down a little. Discovering that the foggy man was no longer foggy, that he no longer had his ghostly tricks at his disposal, made him careless.
Karen would be so disappointed in him.
The sun still shined overhead. Eric could still feel it on the sunburned skin of his arms, neck and face. Yet there was also that peculiar chill in the air, the cold from that other world as it crushed down on him. The duality of the fissure was distinctly noticeable here. He felt as if he could feel both worlds at once, their opposing forces at work on him, the hot and the cold, the light and the dark.
He felt as if he were growing heavier with each step. His ears popped. His eyes felt dry and heavy, like they did when he rose with too little sleep. His head ached. His feet hurt.
Miserable, Eric descended deeper and deeper into the darkness.
He looked up at the sky, expecting to find that it had grown black, but in spite of the gloom that was quickly enveloping him, it remained clear and blue.
Lowering his eyes to the steps before him, Eric found that the cathedral’s rock wall had inexplicably turned into huge stone columns that appeared to run all the way up to the rim of the hole, yet there had been no such columns there when he stood at the top looking down. The walls had been nothing but rough stone.
And he found himself not entirely surprised by this transformation. The columns were familiar. They had been in his dream. As he carefully descended the steps, his thoughts muddled in a fog of pain and morphine, he had marveled at these same massive columns, his weary mind struggling to recall whether they had been here all along.
Soon the gloom thickened, his sight reduced to a few yards and then only a few feet, a few inches…
Eric stepped carefully, willing himself not to stumble beneath his inexplicably increasing weight.
He could no longer see anything in front of or below him. All he could see was the sky above, still blue and bright, but utterly unaffecting the shadows of the cathedral. He gazed up into that blueness, but had to lower his eyes. It was unnervingly alien to see something like this. His mind couldn’t quite wrap itself around the concept. He felt like he would go mad if he kept trying.
But navigating these steps in the dark was almost as unnerving. He kept expecting the steps to end without warning and spill him screaming into the black emptiness beneath him.
He considered turning around and making a move for the gun now that the light had gone, but he didn’t quite dare risk it. He couldn’t be sure the young man didn’t possess unnatural night vision in addition to spectrum-shifting and golem-conjuring.