Penult (Book Four of The Liminality)

  I examined the pebbled surface carefully, running my finger along the grooves.

  “I … I honestly can’t tell.”

  “Well, we had better figure it out, no? I mean, if we don’t have a working column, that kind of changes things.”

  “The only way to tell would be to try and activate it. This is … a pretty good copy … if I say so myself.”

  “Told ya. Well shit. We got a fifty-fifty chance, right? Not bad odds. Good enough to proceed.”

  “Are we … are you ready to move on?”

  “Yeah, sure. Once we get Rhino and Georg dried out. Might as well.”

  Ubaldo dropped anchor and got ourselves and our bugs all watered and fed. Even way out here, this ocean could not have any deeper than the deep end of a public pool. The water was crystalline. We could see right down to the gravel beds and make out every bristle on every crab that traversed them.

  The insects indeed seemed grateful for the rest. They snacked noisily on some kind of slurry they had discovered in the cisterns that lined the outer rail.

  Olivier hobbled down the deck, ignoring Urszula’s request to stay off his feet. He dunked a finger into one of the open cisterns and stuck it in his mouth.

  “How is it?”

  “Like something between horse crap and mushroom juice.” He spat out the traces over the side and wiped his hand on his trousers.

  “Yum.”

  “Whatever. The bugs seem to like it. But if this is what they eat in Heaven, I’m going back to Hell.”

  Ubaldo had climbed down into the hold with Georg and the only true Frelsian remaining on our expedition, a mild-mannered African named Solomon.

  “What’s down there?” said Olivier, calling down a hatch. “Anything useful? Cracker columns perhaps?” He looked at me and twitched his eyebrows lecherously.

  “Cherubim,” said Ubaldo. “I estimate … two hundred.”

  “Damn!” I said.

  “They any threat to us?”

  Ubaldo shook his head. “Their sides are bound … with some kind of webbing. They are in a deep sleep. Still … if they awaken while we are still on the boat….”

  “Fuck that. I say we toss ‘em right now.”

  “Toss them?”

  “Chuck ‘em all overboard. That way we don’t need to worry.”

  “But … there are hundreds.”

  “Hundreds fewer we’ll meeting up again with down the road.”

  I heard a splash. Georg had already stuffed the first Cherub through one of the ventilation ports.

  “Need help down there?” I asked.

  “No. We have it under control,” said Ubaldo. “It’s pretty crowded down here.”

  I went over and dangled my legs off the bow with Urszula and Karla, who had somehow taken to hanging together. We made an awkward trio. I did my best to alleviate the tension with diversionary small talk.

  The trussed up Hashmal lay beside us, limbs appressed to his sides with strands of gooey plasma. He looked like some poor moth wrapped up to be some spider’s dinner.

  “This must be your doing Karla,” I said. “You have a knack for conjuring goo.”

  “At least I am good at something.”

  “Remember that time you wrapped up Urszula?”

  “Yes,” said Urszula, giving me a look so serious it scared me.

  I gazed down into the water.

  “Wonder how hard it would be to catch one of those crabs?”

  “Too big,” said Urszula. “They would drag the boat under.”

  “Really? As big as our bugs?”

  “The water here is deeper than it looks. Trust, they are big.”

  I sighed. “Sure would be nice to have some seafood for a change. Some of these damned manna chips.”

  “You want food? I can make some,” said Karla. “I love cooking. Just tell me what you like and I can make it. It may not look very nice but I guarantee it will taste just like the thing you are expecting. Maybe better.”

  “Okay. Hot fudge sundae. Fried shrimp battered with coconut.”

  Karla laughed. “Better make it one thing at a time or else get both all mixed up.”

  “Okay. Shrimp first.”

  Karla reached into a pouch and pulled out a handful of lively shreds of root. She stared them down and they transformed as we watched, shrinking, rounding out, turning golden brown. They didn’t look so much like shrimp as some kind of low-end, microwavable chicken nuggets.

  “Go on. Try one.”

  I reached over and popped one in my mouth. It was hot and crispy and exploded with flavor, all spicy and coconut-y with bursts of cilantro, way better than the popcorn shrimp we used to get at Red Lobster.

  “Holy crap! That’s … amazing.”

  I looked at Urszula.

  “Don’t look at me,” she said. “I am not making you a sundae.”

  “Try one! They’re good.”

  Karla was hunched over and squinting at me.

  “James? What is wrong your chin?”

  “My chin? Nothing. Why?”

  “And your fingers. You have no fingers.”

  “What?”

  Urszula sighed and rolled her eyes. “Oh wonderful. The times he chooses to fade! Now we will be stuck on this boat … for how long?”

  Chapter 60: Stalked

  Spikes of pain jabbed my shoulder where the Hashmal’s arrow had struck me back in the Deeps, like some hard-shelled creature using its claws to dig itself from my flesh.

  The smell of old feathers, lavender and unwashed dog told me I was back in that that musty, old cottage in Stromness. The fire had gone out, but I was plenty warm with a quilt tucked under my chin.

  Light streamed in through holes in the curtains. Jess stood by the window, peering through a gap along the edge of a blind. When I grunted and sat up in bed, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “There are some people out there … staring at the cottage. Two men and a woman.”

  I clutched my side. “Crap. It’s them. They found me.”

  “Them? But … how do you know? Maybe they’re just tourists. Maybe they’re lost.”

  “No. The way my shoulder’s aching. It’s the Friends. Has to be. I took an arrow from a Hashmal in the Deeps. You can’t see it, but the shaft, it’s still with me.”

  “We can pretend we’re not home. They have no indication this cottage is even occupied. I haven’t been outside all day.

  “You don’t get it. They know I’m here. It’s no use. And here we are, stuck on an island with nowhere to run.”

  “Well, sorry. I thought we’d be safer out here. Hardly anyone comes here this early in the season.”

  “It’s not your fault, Jess,” I said. “I never thought they’d find me this fast.”

  “Well, the door’s firmly locked. There’s no way they’re getting in. And if they continue to loiter, I can call the police. Report them for trespassing.”

  “Jess. You don’t understand. They don’t need to get through the door. Physically.”

  Her cell phone pinged and she slipped it out of her pocket.

  “Who texted?”

  “It’s … Helen.”

  “Don’t answer.”

  “No worries. I won’t.”

  “Are they … back in Brynmawr?”

  “Well, no. They’re in Inverness and … oh … my goodness.”

  “What’s up? They’re not still looking for Karla are they, because … there’s no need. I told you ….”

  “No. Not Karla. It’s Isobel. They’ve found Isobel!”

  “Really?”

  Her phone pinged again.

  “Turn off the ringer!”

  Jess ignored me and it probably didn’t matter.

  “Helen says they found someone who knows someone who knows Izzie. And now they’re trying to get in touch with that second someone to find out her location.”

  Jess peeked around the curtain again. She gasped.

  “One of the men is coming up the walk!
”

  I threw myself out of bed and wobbled over to the window. I gave my head a shake, trying to rid my mind of cobwebs. A man in a grey suit and a chartreuse tie stood at the door, rummaging through a suede courier bag. Two other people—a curly-haired fellow who looked a bit sleepy and a sharp-featured woman with a blonde ponytail—leaned against the coarse stone wall of a building across the lane.

  I backed away from the window and sighed.

  “Yup, Belinda’s with them. These are the Friends of Penult.”

  “Remind me again,” said Jess. “Are they the ones who killed that poor man in Aberdeen?”

  “Yup. It was them.”

  “But … these are not those assassins?”

  “Nope.”

  “So does this mean that the old assassins are now the good guys?”

  “Maybe. For the moment, anyhow. But things change fast around here.”

  Something rustled at the front door. A sheet of paper was being shoved beneath it. Fancy stationery. It almost looked like parchment. I had expected to see a message. ‘We know you’re in there. Come out!’ Or something on that order. But the sheet was blank.

  As I stood over it, though, it began to fold and curl spontaneously. Paper horns and pincers protruded from an angular little body. It rose up on spindly legs and took a step into the fool, feeling around with its feelers.

  Jessica ran to the desk in the corner and pulled a pair of scissors from a drawer. Something glinted from a pit in the center of the creature’s head. It had acquired an eye. I grabbed a stone paperweight and chucked it while Jessica stalked the thing with her scissors.

  The paperweight thudded against the floorboards, narrowly missing the creature. It had dodged aside nimbly, doing so, scurried within Jessica’s reach. She lunged and snipped off a leg. Frantically, it attempted to refold itself, but I took advantage of its distraction and stomped on it, pinning it to the floor. Jessica administered the coup de grace, dismembering the creature with her Fiskars.

  “I need to get out of here!”

  “Don’t you mean we?”

  “Jess. They won’t hurt you unless you get in their way. I’m the one they want.”

  “I can help you. Together we’re stronger.”

  “Jess. No. You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Just … away. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “But….”

  “Jess, please.”

  “There’s a root cellar down below, where Auntie kept her preserves. At the far end there’s a passage leading out to the back yard. When we were kids we used to play hide and seek. It was my favorite spot to go, because everyone was too scared of the spiders to come look for me.”

  The door knocker slammed three times, making us both jump.

  “Don’t you dare open that door,” I said.

  “Don’t you worry. And anything that tries to come underneath will have these shears to contend with.”

  “Once I go, they should leave you be. They’ll know I’m not here.”

  “Grab some food from the kitchen.”

  “No time! Now where’s that root cellar?”

  “Down here.” She peeled back a threadbare Persian rug in the main sitting room to reveal a hinged trap door with a recessed metal pull.

  I pulled on my sneakers, not bothering to tie the laces. Jess lifted the hatch. A steep, narrow ladder descended into the black.

  “I’ll come back when … er … if … things cool off … and if you’re still here.”

  “Be careful!”

  “You too, Jess. Thanks for everything.”

  ***

  The root cellar was tiny, little more than an underground closet. But a narrow stone-lined passageway extended for several dozen meters off the back. As advertised, it was loaded with spider webs, some of them occupied. Slivers of light seeped through the slats of a wooden casement door at the end. I undid a simple and pushed it open, finding myself in a tangle of thistles and aster under a sprawling butterfly bush.

  I crawled out and hunkered down under cover of the weeds. A missing stave in the picket fence separating the back yard from the neighbor’s garden caught my eye.

  The man in the grey suit came around the side of the house, checking every window and door. His colleagues came around the other side of the cottage. They met by the back porch and huddled.

  The second man slipped a forked stick from his daypack, holding the two arms like a divining rod. The end the stick began to tremble. The man rotated in place, studying its vibrations. The front door slammed.

  The Friends responded immediately, hustling to the front of the house. I prayed that Jessica had gotten away clean. Though, I wouldn’t have put it past her to have slammed the door only to create a diversion. That woman was a smart cookie.

  As soon as they were out of sight, I scrambled out of the weeds on my hands and knees and made for the gap in the fence. My moves were far from slick. I tripped on a brick and scuffed my knee, but I made it through the fence, crawling and squirming into a strawberry patch. I squished a few berries before regaining my feet and darting out onto the street.

  I ran headlong down a steep, cobbled alley towards the waterfront, dodging down random intersections just to make sure I couldn’t be easily followed. In the flats, I veered away from the busy piers, following a road that paralleled the shore and led to a series of warehouses that fronted on the pebbly beach.

  I blew past three buildings before I found one with its main door ajar and slipped inside. It was dim inside, but there was a small sailboat boat up on stanchions, its hull was badly gouged on one side. I thought about climbing into it to hide, but remembered that was how that Tsarnaev kid—the Boston Marathon bomber—got caught, so instead I made for a pile of smelly fish nets in the corner and burrowed several layers deep.

  One advantage of hiding under a bunch of fishing nets was that I wasn’t easily seen, but I could keep an eye on the warehouse doors through the mesh. The down side was that it stank like rotten fish guts.

  I’m not even sure why I was bothering to hide. Between credit cards, phantom arrow shafts and that weird divining rod thingie, they certainly had many ways of tracking me, however imprecise. The burning in my shoulder was already starting to intensify.

  We never should have come here. I should have followed my instincts. I had to get off the island. But how? The passenger ferry was out of the question. Too many people and any one of them could be Friends looking to snuff me.

  I had to go someplace wild and far away from everything. Some place they wouldn’t expect me to go and where my signal would be faint. That way, when the roots came to take me, I wouldn’t be so vulnerable. It would take them time to find me.

  Maybe I could steal a boat. It would have to be something powered because I didn’t have the faintest idea how to handle a sailboat. I think I knew what direction to go back to Scotland, though it didn’t matter to me where I ended up as long as I had room to run. Norway. Iceland. Any large land mass would do.

  It would have been so much easier if we had stayed on the mainland. Ironic, that the island that harbored Stromness was actually called Mainland by the locals.

  The electrified icicle that pierced my shoulder twisted as the door creaked open, bathing the net pile in a swath of sunlight. I kept still, hoping it was fisherman come to work on his boat—someone who could be a witness and a deterrent to any monkey business.

  But no. It was Belinda, followed closely by the guy in the grey suit. So much for getting way. The other guy was not with them this time. I imagine he was outside somewhere covering the back exit. These Friends might not be the most stealthy hunters but they weren’t stupid. They learned from their mistakes.

  Something slithered out of my back pocket and crawled up my shirt. I slapped at it and snatched it up. It was a folded up piece of card stock—an origami crab—the calling card of Belinda Davolo of the Friends of Penult. I had gotten rid of their I
vory credit card but her calling card—her avatar—had remained in my wallet. They had more than that phantom shaft to keep tabs on me. They had backups.

  They came straight for the net pile, fanning out, looking a little wary. I felt like a cornered rat. My face flushed. My heart drummed like a thrash punker. I threw off the nets covering me and backed away from my pursuers.

  “It’s no use, James. We have you,” said Belinda.

  “Have this, you fucks!”

  I didn’t even have to think. None of this waiting for something to loosen in my belly like some sad geriatric sitting on the john, praying for his laxative to take effect.

  The nets blew off the warehouse floor and arranged themselves into a towering monster of mesh. Billy was back. Reincarnated from wherever wishes and daydreams go to die.

  Belinda and her cronies stopped in their tracks. Billy was still coming together, drawing in sheet after sheet of fishing net, twisting them into anatomically correct layers of sinew and muscle.

  Billy even had a face. Those folds and pockets arranged themselves to look sort of like me—a buff and big-chinned version of the real James Moody, like those idealized monuments commissioned by dictators.

  “Kill! Billy. Kill!”

  The man in the grey suit pulled a gun and fired. The bullets passed right through the netting, knocking off a bit of nylon but otherwise having no effect.

  With his gorilla arms dangling with menace, Billy lurched after the man with the gun and smacked into his side with a knotted fist the size of a small suitcase. The man went flying, skidding across the dingy floor in his nice suit, coming to rest at the base of a waste bin.

  The other guy grabbed a grapple and jabbed it into Billy’s leg. Billy kicked free and backed away. He grabbed a fistful of oars from a rack on the wall and tossed them at his tormentor.

  I just stood, there, trembling, my own fists clenched so tight that my fingernails dug deep into the flesh of my palms. I didn’t have to move. I just stood there, arms loose at my sides, while Billy did his thing, which was our thing, really.

  Belinda had retreated back to the door of the warehouse and was frantically fishing through the contents of her purse. Her colleagues tangled with Billy, dodging his wild, ham-fisted blows. One jabbed tried to hook his mesh with a grapple, while the other dove at his floppy feet with a length of rope, aiming I suppose to tether him in place. I just kept all my attention on Billy and let him fight however he saw fit.

  With a little too much confidence, Belinda strode to the middle of the open bay where the battle raged, carrying a dagger much too large to have fit in her purse. As I watched, her dagger grew ever longer and thicker until it became a veritable two-fisted Claymore.