But this was beyond weird. He had never slammed a ride this nightmarishly surreal in his entire life. That journey through the house-if such a vast space could be called a house-had been bizarre in the extreme. And was that a murder he had lived through? A death? The scene had a curiously stylized feel about it-a woman with, of all things, a crow on her shoulder and the moon hanging in the sky like something from a Chinese woodblock print. But the physical agony he had endured had certainly felt real enough.
And why had the ride happened at all?
He most definitely had not planned on slamming this one. His subconscious mind must be more engaged with Robert Whitting-ton's disappearance than he had thought.
Shit, he had a screaming headache and his brain felt very, very stupid. Did he always feel this disoriented afterward? Surely he used to snap back a lot faster? He couldn't recall this tremendous bone-draining exhaustion, which now gripped every limb. And lurking at the edges of his consciousness was still the horror he had experienced during the ride, the fear.
He got to his feet, only to find that he was actually incapable of walking in a straight line. With difficulty he steered his way into the kitchen. Opening the fridge, he removed a jug of ice water and, without reaching for a glass, started drinking from the jug's mouth. At least this was something he remembered: this raging thirst, which always followed a ride. The water splashed down his chin as he drank greedily and clumsily.
By the time she arrived he was feeling better. Not good, but better. Her first words, however, were not encouraging.
"My God, you look terrible. Are you all right?"
"Actually, no. I feel like crap. Sit down."
Frankie balanced herself on the very edge of the couch, her eyes never leaving his face. "So, what happened?"
"I…" He stopped.
She leaned forward in anticipation, but for a moment he felt at a loss. Where to begin?
"Well?" She was impatient now.
At the door, he supposed. That's where he should start. He would begin at the door with the strange-looking coat of arms…
She hardly blinked throughout the entire time he talked, and she did not interrupt. But now she spoke, her voice tired.
"So he was killed. Someone drowned him. This woman."
"Probably. The feeling of drowning was very real."
"What I don't understand is how she managed to overpower him. Robbie was slender but he was no weakling. Physically, he should have been more than a match for her. And he was strong swimmer. It was his exercise of choice-he used to swim laps at the Queen Mother Sport Centre at least twice a week. He always said water was where he felt most at home. Why didn't he put up more of a fight?"
"His brain was damaged, remember. When I was in the pool one side of my body was heavy-like a stroke victim's. I think Robbie's brain suffered a trauma of some kind and that it affected his motor coordination as well."
"Well, at least you saw a house. That's always promising. That's a firm reference point."
"A house, may I remind you, which has, among other things, rooms housing fields of butterflies and blind monks. And something called a portal."
She frowned. "Could be symbolism."
"Could be insanity." He paused. How to explain to her the incredible sensory overload he had experienced? "That one moment when I opened the door inside the portal, was like nothing I had ever experienced in my entire life. I felt insane. It felt like my brain was on TCP; as though it was frying inside my skull."
"Well, maybe that's what it was. Maybe Robbie tried some kind of hallucinatory drug and he overdosed."
He shook his head. "I thought of that but I don't think so. The weird thing is that during this ride, I was conscious of great discipline. I was walking from room to room in strict order. There was a set sequence, which required enormous mental focus. I didn't just open doors at will. There was a definite pattern. Some doors I left closed… on purpose. And I must have opened hundreds of doors. Thousands."
"Thousands?"
"Hundreds of thousands, maybe. I know: it's madness. And there was this one phrase, which kept going through my mind like a mantra: the order of places, the order of things. As though this was some kind of guiding principle or prime directive, or something. Despite the chaos, there was an incredibly tight discipline to the journey-not like being spaced out at all. At the beginning of the ride I was in control and it felt good, I tell you. It was as though I was being tested, and the fact that I was able to choose the correct door every time was immensely empowering. Except that toward the end of the ride-when I followed this woman-I lost it. And shortly afterward I found my brain going into meltdown and then I woke up inside a swimming pool. Oh, hell." He sighed. "This is crazy stuff. Maybe you're right. Maybe this was some kind of acid trip. It was certainly a rush."
"It sounds like a fantastic ride." There was a hint of wistfulness in Frankie's voice. It reminded him of the surprise confession she had made the last time he saw her. There were times my envy was eating me up. All those years ago when they were together-happily he had thought-she had been resentful of his RV skills. He still couldn't equate such an emotion with the young, unassuming Cecily Franck he had loved. He rather wished she hadn't told him.
She spoke again. "What about the woman?"
He thought for a moment. "She was real," he said slowly. "She was real. I could sense her as a person. Yes, definitely. Which makes it even less likely that we're talking drugs here."
"I don't suppose you made any ideograms?"
He shook his head. She was referring to a method followed by many remote viewers, who, while viewing would allow their hand to engage in a kind of automatic doodling, which captured the images accessed during the ride. He rarely worked this way. Still, drawings were sometimes useful.
He got to his feet and walked over to his work desk. Opening a drawer, he removed a pad of paper and a pencil and started to sketch. A circle on top of a cross, the circle intersected by a smaller half circle. The whole thing set against the background of a rose in bloom. He was not great at drawing, and his rose looked more like a battered daisy, but it would do. After a few seconds he returned to where Frankie was waiting.
"Remember I told you about the coat of arms I saw? On the door and on the wall leading to the portal? Well, this is it. At least that's what I remember from the ride. Maybe it will remind you of something about Robert." Without much hope, he held the pad of paper out at her. "Does it ring a bell?"
"My God." She stared at the drawing.
"What?" His voice sharpened. "You know what it is?"
"Robbie had this tattooed on the inside of his right arm-above the wrist."
"Why? Was he straight? It looks to me like the symbol for female sexuality."
Frankie smiled. "This symbol has nothing to do with sex. It's a combination of several astrological symbols into one. He called it the Monad or the Monas, something like that. Monas, if I remember correctly. But exactly which symbols and what they mean, I don't know. But, Gabriel, that's not important. What is important is that this symbol is based on the coat of arms at Monk House."
"Monk House?"
"The Monk sisters." She looked up at him, excitement in her eyes. "Morrighan and Minnaloushe Monk. Robbie was friends with them. They live in this big old rambling redbrick house in Chelsea. I've only been inside a couple of times but I remember the coat of arms. It's everywhere. I asked Robbie about it, and he told me that it dates back to the sixteenth century, and was something to do with the Monk family."
Gabriel looked at the drawing again. Sixteenth century. The design looked remarkably modern for the 1500s. "It still doesn't make sense."
"Believe me, very little of what Robbie did made sense. But the letter on the chain around the woman's neck in your ride was an M, which means it could belong to Minnaloushe or Morrighan. And the Monas coat of arms points to Monk House."