Gary thumbed the tape machine and asked, “What do you remember of last night?”
Mark thought. “We went looking for Gabbie’s assailant. We … got separated.” His brow furrowed. “I thought … I thought I saw someone, maybe more than one person. I tried to follow. I … think I.… There was someone else there. He … said something. There was noise. Maybe the wind. Then I was alone and the cops and you showed up.”
Gary rewound the tape and played it again. Mark listened and again his face drained of color. “We need to make copies of that. I don’t want to risk losing the only thing that can make me recall what I saw. Then you’re going to hypnotize me and condition me not to forget. And I’m going to do the same for you. It may not do any good, but it can’t hurt.” He looked at Gary. “You and I are going to spend all our time seeing what we can find out about Kessler and the time between his getting to America and showing up at White Horse. And we’re going to do some digging on Wayland Smith. And digging around in the Hastingses’ attic and basement for … I don’t know.” He rubbed his face as if he hadn’t slept. “There’s got to be some sense to all this.”
“Mark, just what the hell is going on?”
“If you apply that ample imagination of yours to this, you’ll have no problem in seeing the obvious. Whatever it was that happened in Germany at the turn of the century is happening again right here in William Pitt County, New York.”
Gary grinned. “If you’re right, it could be the coup of the century for you.”
“I don’t even want to think of all the possibilities right now. I just want to get a handle on what we’ve experienced so far, and I think Fredrick Kessler’s the answer. Whether we’re dealing with ghosts, aliens from Planet Ten, or fairies, Kessler’s the key—”
Gary’s eyes widened. “The key! I’d forgotten about it.”
“We’ve got to dig around some more and find the lock that matches that key.”
Gary stood up. “You know, I’m sort of excited by all this. It’s amazing stuff.”
Mark finished tying his shoelaces. “Just remember what happened in Germany.”
“You mean all the old folk rites and stuff?”
“I mean a lot of people died.”
Gary’s expression turned somber. “Yes, I see what you mean.” With no further comment, he went down the stairs.
PART 4
SEPTEMBER
1
“Mark!”
Mark pushed himself away from Phil’s desk, not even bothering to save off his program, so urgent was the note in Gabbie’s voice.
He entered the kitchen to find Gabbie helping Jack to a seat at the table. Perspiration ran in streams down Jack’s face, and his shirt clung to him, almost completely soaked through. Given the day’s heat and humidity, it was likely he’d sweat, but this was far beyond normal. Despite working alongside him on the fence, Gabbie’s face showed only a light sheen of moisture.
Mark said, “What is it?”
“Jack’s sick, but he won’t go home.” Her tone was both scolding and concerned as she looked down at the young man.
Jack tried to downplay his condition. “I’m okay. It’s just a bug. Give me a few minutes to catch my wind, and we can get back to work on that fence.”
Mark reached down, saying, “Jack, if you’re sick, take it easy—”
His words were cut off as his hand touched Jack’s shoulder. The younger man cried out in pain. Gabbie’s hands flew up to her mouth and she jumped slightly at the unexpected cry. “Jack, what is it?” she asked, her eyes wide with concern.
Mark knelt. “Let me look at that shoulder.”
Jack nodded weakly, allowing Mark to unbutton his shirt. Mark fumbled awkwardly a moment, his bandaged right hand encumbering him. He got the buttons unfastened and gently pulled the shirt back.
“Oh Christ!” said Gabbie, looking down at Jack’s shoulder. It was aflame with infection, a dome of red flesh rising up above the joint. The center of the swelling was almost purple, while the flesh at the edges of the swelling was hot red.
Mark said, “This is no bug, Jack. You’ve got a killer infection. We’ve got to get you to the hospital, now. I’ll drive. This looks like an invitation to blood poisoning if I’ve ever seen one.”
Jack looked down at his shoulder, attempting to focus his eyes. “It was all right this morning,” he said, his voice sounding weak.
“Well, it isn’t all right now,” answered Mark, digging his car keys out of his pocket. Handing them to Gabbie, he said, “Let me turn off your dad’s computer and you go get the car started. Drive it around to the back and I’ll help Jack outside.”
Gabbie hurried out toward the front door, and Mark gently replaced Jack’s shirt over the inflamed shoulder. Within a minute the computer was off, the doors locked, and Mark’s car turning down the road toward Pittsville Memorial Hospital.
2
The young doctor in the emergency room examined the shoulder, touching it lightly, but even that gentle touch caused Jack to wince and grunt. Gabbie stood by his side, while Mark stood a short distance off, watching through the E.R. door.
The doctor said to Gabbie, “I think you should wait over there. This isn’t going to look very pretty.” Gabbie said nothing, only shaking her head once.
The doctor ordered novocaine and injected Jack just above the swelling, in still-healthy tissue. The pain from the needle caused Jack to grip the edge of the examination table where he sat, but he said nothing. “That shoulder’s really hot. This will take the sting out in a moment.” He waited, then touched near where he’d injected.
When Jack didn’t complain, the doctor injected closer to the center of the inflammation. As he waited for the entire shoulder to go numb, he said, “You really shouldn’t have let it go this far, Mr. Cole. It may have been only a boil a week ago, but now it’s a world-class infection and you’re a hairbreadth away from septicemia.”
“I didn’t have a boil a week ago,” said Jack, his color returning a little now that the pain was dulled. “Doctor, I didn’t have a boil this morning.”
The doctor looked skeptical. “I’m not going to argue, Mr. Cole, but that couldn’t have popped up in a few hours. Didn’t you have any discomfort in this shoulder recently?”
Jack shook his head, but Gabbie said, “You were rubbing it the night before last, after running into the woods, remember? And you were sort of moving it around all day yesterday, like it was stiff. I saw you.”
Jack said, “I thought I’d just wrenched it going over the fence.” Then he thought and said, “Yeah, it was sore yesterday.”
The doctor only nodded, as if this was an admission of neglect on Jack’s part. He took a scalpel and said, “If blood makes you queasy, I suggest you look at that pretty girlfriend of yours.” He cut into the center of the swelling, and the nurse at his side began to sponge off the blood. “Whew, what a mess.” The doctor probed deeply. “If I’d known it was this deep a pussy mass, I’d have sent you into O.R. and called in a surgeon.” He ordered another tray to catch the discharge and nodded to the nurse. Another nurse came and moved Gabbie away, and without saying anything, they turned Jack and made him lie down. The doctor ordered a shot of antibiotics and continued to drain the infection from Jack’s shoulder.
He probed into Jack’s shoulder, seeking to lance the core of the infection, and said, “What’s this?” He kept the lancet in place and asked for a long retractor, pulling open the incision. Then he went after something deep inside and came away with a tiny white object. “I think we’ve found the problem.” He deposited the object on a clean green cloth and said, “I think you had a bone chip work loose and get infected, Mr. Cole.”
Jack’s voice sounded weak. “I’ve never had any trouble with my shoulder, Doctor. I shattered my leg a few years back.” He closed his eyes a moment, then said, “If I had a bone chip there, I wouldn’t be surprised.” He described his sailing accident while the doctor cleaned up the shoulder.
When
he was done, he ordered Jack to stop at the pharmacy and pick up a week’s supply of penicillin and told him to take it easy for a couple of days. He said Jack should have the shoulder looked at the next day and again in a week, and Jack said he’d check in with Dr. Latham.
Gabbie and Mark took Jack outside and the doctor looked at the cleanup in progress in the E.R. He went to the instrument tray to inspect the bone fragment and saw that the cloth it lay on was missing. Looking around, he was about to comment on its absence when a warning siren intruded. An ambulance was approaching the E.R. door, and the doctor quickly forgot Jack’s quirky bone fragment as he pulled off dirty gloves, moving toward the sink to scrub once again.
3
Mark sat quietly behind his own desk. Gary was out having dinner with Ellen and Mark expected he wouldn’t see his assistant until the morning; it was likely Gary would sleep over at Ellen’s tonight, as they preferred the relative privacy of her apartment. Mark had been silently staring at the hospital-green cloth he had deftly pocketed in the E.R. It was stained by a now brown spot of Jack’s blood, and upon the bloody spot a tiny white object lay.
Mark had been staring at the object for nearly an hour. He sighed and opened a desk drawer. Mark was an infrequent pipe smoker, and the ignition of tobacco in his study was a sign of deep concern or worry. Had Gary entered, he would have known in an instant that something was wrong. The tobacco was dry and half-stale, but Mark packed the pipe anyway. It would burn hot and cook his mouth a little, but the ritual and smell of the pipe had a calming effect upon Mark, and at this moment he felt the need of a calming influence.
When the pipe was burning, Mark rose and poured himself a brandy from the nearly empty decanter on the bar. He’d have to remember to purchase some more in town, or remind Gary to, he thought. They’d had a bit more than usual, a sure sign of stress, as they both tended to drink only after a long day’s work.
Mark returned to his desk and put the drink down and the pipe in his seldom used ashtray. He picked up the small Bausch & Lomb reading glass that had come with his compact edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and looked closely at the white fragment on the towel.
What the doctor had taken for a bone chip was a triangular piece of white flint, little more than an eighth of an inch long. It tipped a tiny piece of wood, the presence of which had been hidden from the doctor by the mass of puss built up around the flint. Mark opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a box of X-acto tools. To the usual collection of blades and handles he had added a long pair of tweezerlike tongs, used by stamp collectors, and two pairs of small needle-nose pliers.
Mark used the tongs to pick the tiny arrow up off the cloth, carefully, as his bandaged palm made handling things awkward, and hold it underneath the glass, turning it to inspect it from every angle. His mind struggled to accept what he held, and he silently sought to determine how this tiny missile could have come to be.
He sat back, placing the glass down. Without thought, he transferred the little arrow to his uninjured hand, noticing it felt almost without weight. His mind cast back two days as he attempted to organize the fragmented and shadowy images of that strange encounter in the woods. A dozen times he had listened to the tapes, and Gary and he had hypnotized each other against forgetting, but even just after hearing the tapes he found that the memories were distant, colorless things, lacking substance, as if a dimly seen movie were being recalled, not one of the most terrifying moments of his life. What power could cloud a man’s mind? he mused. The Shadow? he answered, knowing the glib quip was born of frustration at not understanding what force moved out in the woods.
Suddenly his reverie was broken by a small prick in the palm of his left hand, as if an insect stung him. He jerked it involuntarily and then looked down. The tiny arrowhead was now stuck in the fleshy part of his palm, under his thumb. He wondered how he had managed to stick himself. He didn’t feel alarm; the pain had been barely noticeable. He reached for the tongs to pull it out, then felt his heart skip a beat as he saw the tiny missile vanish into his hand, as if sucked in by his own flesh.
Mark sat stunned and flexed his fingers. He experienced an odd discomfort in the palm of his hand, as if he had strained a muscle, but otherwise no pain. Then he knew. He grabbed up one of the X-acto knives in the box on the desk and, gritting his teeth, dug an incision where he had seen the arrow vanish. The pain struck him like a hot wave and his eyes watered, but he pressed the knife deep. Blood flowed copiously, and he held his hand above the hospital cloth. Mark quickly dropped the knife and picked up the tongs. He pressed the bleeding wound against the cloth, and for a moment the pressure and absorbed blood cleared the wound. In the incision he could see the tiny arrow, and he plunged the tongs in, gripping it. Ignoring the jolt of electric pain, he blinked furiously to clear his eyes of tears. They flowed down his cheeks as he pulled the arrow from his hand, depositing it on the now blood-soaked cloth.
Mark rose and found his knees weak. He made his way to the bathroom, managing not to drip blood on the floor along the way, and tended the wound. Luckily, he had acted quickly and the missile hadn’t moved deeply. He used a gauze pad to stanch the flow of blood, elevating the hand above his heart to hasten clotting. Then he inspected the damage. What had felt like an amputation and had bled like a mortal wound was only a cut a little longer than an inch and perhaps a quarter of an inch deep. He applied copious amounts of Neosporin ointment to the cut and bandaged it. The cut would heal without needing stitches. Now both of Mark’s hands hurt, but the discomfort was among the least of his concerns.
He returned to the desk and picked up the little arrow, being careful to employ the tongs. With real regret he reached over to his butane lighter and flicked it on. Without hesitation he placed the little arrow in the flame, watching as the slender wooden shaft burned in an instant and the flint turned black. When he had finished, he rubbed the blackened arrowhead between his thumb and forefinger. As he expected, it crumbled like so much soot.
Mark sat back, then took a long pull from the neglected brandy. He had seen and been injured by a genuine elf-shot. He had destroyed the evidence, but he felt no further need for evidence. He was convinced, and he knew that convincing others was not a prime concern at this point. Now he knew what lurked among the trees of the woods behind the Hastings house.
Jack had been wounded by one of the tiny creatures Mark had seen bounding by in advance of the Wild Hunt. Now Mark understood why medieval legends told of such wounds causing death. The tiny weapon was beyond the ability of the healers of the day to detect and the infection came fast. Without antibiotics, Jack would already be close to death.
Mark considered and then rose. He began to pace the living room. For hours his mind wrestled with the problem of what to do next.
As dawn approached, he began pulling books off the shelves around his desk.
Three hours later, Gary entered through the front door and saw his employer hard at work behind the desk. One quick glance told Gary that Mark had been up all night, and the pungent odor of stale pipe smoke still hung in the air. Gary skipped his usual wry quips and said, “What is it?”
Mark absently waved to the books. “We’ve got to dig out some things from a lot of garbage.” He looked up at Gary. “The other night, when we were all out running around, Jack was elf-shot.”
Gary sat down, his eyes wide. “Right.”
“I’m serious.” Mark held up his left hand. “I made the mistake of putting the damn elf-shot on my own flesh and it dug itself in.”
Gary began to say something, but halted himself. He looked at Mark, started to speak again, then stopped. Finally he could only shake his head and say, “Coffee?”
“Good idea.”
As Gary rose and turned toward the kitchen, he said, “What are we doing?”
“Digging out every description we can find of how fairies behave and what to do about them.” He looked up at Gary. “Not all the cute, fanciful stuff, but any reference to how
to deal with them—rituals, prayers, customs, protocols, anything. When we’re done, I want a handbook on what you do to deal with fairies.”
Gary stood dumbfounded. He was silent a long time, then again started to speak. One more time he halted, unable to articulate his astonishment. At last he said, “Coffee,” and turned toward the kitchen.
4
Gabbie heaved and the trunk rocked slightly. Jack said, “Here, wait a minute. That’s pretty heavy.”
He came around a stack of magazines and stood next to the girl. Together they pushed, and the large trunk slid slowly along the floor, revealing the bottom half of the bookcase it had blocked.
Mark and Gary hadn’t been around for almost two weeks, since Mark had taken Jack to the hospital. Mark had called to say they’d stumbled onto something, but they’d be back at work on the cataloging soon. Then last night Gary had called to say he’d be taking Ellen for a long weekend to New York City, while Mark was up at Buffalo, lecturing at SUNY that afternoon for one of their Friday colloquium series, a favor he had promised months before. Neither would return until late Sunday night.
Gloria had decided that someone should at least continue digging stuff out of the basement for Mark to catalog, so she had volunteered Jack and Gabbie. A dozen old trunks had been plundered and their contents sorted somewhat, waiting for Mark to make final disposition. Jack knelt and began scanning titles. “Some of these I can read, others not. My German’s pretty fractured.” He pulled one out. “Some sort of physics text, I think.”
The door at the top of the stairs opened. Gloria shouted down, “Gabbie, Tommy’s here.”
“Great!” said Gabbie, jumping up. “Come on. You’ll like Tommy. He’s a real character.”
Jack wiped dusty hands on his jeans and followed Gabbie up the stairs. In the hall, Phil stood shaking hands with a large man, at least three hundred pounds on a six-foot-two-inch frame. His red-brown hair was combed straight back in a rakish style and his beard was so red it was almost orange.