Scavenger

  “Operated?”

  “Not only did he operate,” Professor Graham said, “but the boy survived. Pentecost then asked permission from Reich to conduct a church service and give public thanks to the Lord for saving the boy. During his sermon, he opened the sack and dumped its contents on the floor. You asked what was in it. Snakes. People screamed and charged toward the door, but Pentecost stomped the head of each snake without being bitten and told the congregation that they must be vigilant and stomp out evil just as he had stomped the snakes.”

  “The guy definitely had a sense of drama,” Balenger said. “Those herbs he found. It’s awfully convenient that the exact ingredients he needed were in that grove but nobody else knew about them. Any bets that he already had a sedative hidden in his clothes and he added it to the tea when no one was looking?”

  “As a former police officer, you see the manipulation from the distance of more than a century, but at the time, in that isolated mountain valley, it would have been hard to resist the spell Pentecost was weaving. I can’t explain the surgery. Maybe he took a risk and happened to succeed, or maybe he had medical training.”

  Balenger felt the seconds speeding by. Amanda, he kept thinking. “Tell me about the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires.”

  “We’re not certain what it was, but it sounds like a time capsule. Of course, the term wasn’t invented until the New York World’s Fair in 1939, but the concept’s the same. With each day, Pentecost emphasized that a new century was coming. He warned that their souls would soon be tested, that the Apocalypse was on its way. As autumn approached, he urged everyone to select the physical things they most cared about. In December, he ordered them to put these cherished objects into the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires. ‘Vanity. All is vanity,’ he told them. ‘As the new century begins, material things will no longer matter.’”

  “What did the Sepulcher look like?”

  “No one knows.”

  Balenger couldn’t subdue his frustration. “What?”

  “Reich’s manuscript was hurried. He leapt from topic to topic, trying to compress as much information as he could in the limited time he had before midnight arrived—midnight of what was possibly the last day of the world. The passage you read indicates that he planned to put the pages into the Sepulcher. But then his courage snapped, and he fled, cramming the unfinished pages into his clothes.”

  “Okay, the Sepulcher wasn’t described in the manuscript,” Balenger said. “But Reich could have told the doctor what it was.”

  “Reich never became fully conscious. The infection from his injuries spread through him like a storm. He lapsed into a coma and died the next day.”

  “The Sepulcher was supposed to contain all the treasured objects of the town, so it must have been large,” Balenger said. “Didn’t anybody find it later? The people in Cottonwood must have been curious. Surely, when spring came and the snow melted, they’d have gone to Avalon to learn what was happening there.”

  “Indeed, they did.”

  “Then…?”

  “They never found anything that they thought might be the Sepulcher.”

  “But the people in Avalon could have shown them where the Sepulcher was. A name like that, it was probably buried in the cemetery.”

  “The search party from Cottonwood found a deserted town. The buildings were abandoned. There wasn’t any sign of violence, of the population having been caught by surprise. No half-eaten meals on tables. No objects on the floor that might have been dropped in a sudden panic. On the contrary, everything was neat and tidy. Beds were made. Clothes were hung up. There were gaps in the rooms, where furniture might have been removed or vases or pictures carried away. Even pets were gone. As for the larger animals—pigs, sheep, cows, and horses—those were found dead on the grassland, killed either by the freezing weather or starvation.”

  “This doesn’t make any…How many people lived in Avalon?”

  “Over two hundred.”

  “But that many people can’t just disappear and not leave a trace. They must have gone to another town.”

  “There’s no record of that,” Professor Graham said. “As word of the mystery spread, someone from Avalon who’d packed up in the middle of winter and moved to another town would have explained what happened. Out of two hundred people, someone would have spoken up.”

  “Then where did they go? All those people, for God’s sake.”

  “Some religious zealots in other towns in the area began to believe that the Second Coming had indeed occurred in Avalon and that everyone there had been transported to heaven.”

  “But that’s preposterous! Jesus.”

  She smiled. “You see how easy it is to revert to religious terms when a seemingly impossible event occurs?”

  Balenger stared dismally at the floor. “This hasn’t helped. I don’t know anything more than when I started.” His voice tightened. “I have no idea how to find Amanda.”

  10

  Behind him, Balenger heard the elevator open. He turned toward the open door, beyond which footsteps grew louder, heavy, a man’s.

  Ortega stepped into the doorway. “I was beginning to think I was in the wrong building.” He didn’t look happy.

  Balenger introduced him to Professor Graham. “We’ve been talking about the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires, but there’s not much solid information about it. Did you find Karen Bailey?”

  “No.”

  Another disappointment. Balenger’s shoulders felt heavier. “What about the game case? Did you send a patrol car to the row house?”

  “We can talk about it later.”

  “Look, I understand your reluctance to discuss this in front of a third person, but Professor Graham has a special interest in the topic. She might be able to help us.”

  “Still acting like you’re in charge?” Ortega asked.

  The air in the room felt compressed.

  “Acting like someone who’s scared,” Balenger said. “Was the game case still in the attic?”

  Ortega hesitated, then reached into his suit coat. He removed a transparent plastic bag that contained the case. “Scavenger. The name still doesn’t sound familiar.”

  Balenger took the case from him. Beneath the game’s title, he saw an image of an hour glass in which sand drained. The sand at the top was white. As it fell through, it changed to the scarlet of blood.

  “May I see?” Professor Graham asked. Fatigue lines etched her face.

  Balenger handed it over. She examined the cover and turned the case. “A copyright for this year. But I read all the game blogs on the Internet. I never heard of this one.”

  “You read all the game blogs?” Ortega asked in surprise.

  “People think video games are for teenagers. But the average age for a player is thirty, and plenty of people my age are fans.” She held up her knobby fingers. “You’d be amazed how it keeps the mind sharp and arthritis at bay.”

  “Even so,” Ortega said.

  “A professor of history playing video games, many of which are violent?” The white-haired woman forced a smile. “I suppose I could play a universe-exploring game like Myst, which is fairly outmoded now, or a role-playing game like Anarchy Online, in which I control a character in another reality. But to tell you the truth, they’re too slow for me. The ones with weapons and cars—they’re the ones that get my juices flowing, and at this stage of my life, that’s not a small thing to accomplish. Believe me, I know every game that’s available, and this one never got any publicity, which surprises me, given the money that went into the first-class packaging. I know you’re using this plastic bag because you’re worried about marring fingerprints, but if there’s a way to do it safely, I’d like to take the disc out and play the game.”

  “I’d like that, too,” Balenger said. “But when we found the case at the house where the fake professor gave the lecture, the disc wasn’t in it.”

  “You found this where you heard the lecture?” Professor Graham peered through
the plastic bag and read the text on the back of the case. “‘Scavenger is the most vivid action game yet created. It has an astonishingly realistic appearance that allows you to identify with characters trapped in a mysterious wilderness, proving that wide-open spaces can be as threatening as any haunted house. The characters engage in a life-and-death obstacle race and scavenger hunt, using high-tech instruments to discover a message to the future to be opened in the present to understand the past.’”

  Balenger felt cold. “Part of that was in the invitation Amanda and I received for the lecture. It’s what caught my intention and made me go there.”

  “‘The objective is to find a lost hundred-year-old time capsule,’” Professor Graham continued reading. “‘In the process, both the player and the characters discover that Time is the true scavenger, sucking our lives, even as we and the characters spend an irreplaceable forty hours playing the game.’”

  The professor lowered the case and stared at them. Dark circles under her eyes made Balenger suddenly wonder if she was ill. But before he could ask her about that, Ortega had a question of his own. “Is that typical of the descriptions you find on the back of video-game cases?”

  “Hardly. They usually talk about ‘blood-rushing action,’ ‘spectacular graphics,’ and ‘battles with Hell.’ They emphasize effects rather than what the content means. This is so brooding it’s almost existential. ‘Time is the true scavenger, sucking our lives?’ You’d think Kierkegaard wrote that on one of his darkest nights.”

  “What does the reference to ‘forty hours’ mean?” Ortega asked.

  “That’s the length of time most video games take to be played,” Professor Graham answered.

  Balenger rubbed his arm. “Is that how long I’ve got to find Amanda?” In anguish, he peered at his watch. “It’s after five. Shortly after midnight yesterday, I woke up in Asbury Park. That was more than forty hours ago. God help me, I’ve lost her.”

  LEVEL FIVE

  THE MIND OF THE MAKER

  1

  “Have any of you read Dorothy L. Sayers?” the Game Master asked.

  Amanda adjusted her headset, convinced that she couldn’t have heard correctly.

  “Who?” Viv asked.

  Amid the ruins of the church, Derrick stared up at the glaring sky. The rocks of the fallen walls radiated heat. “First, you want to know if we can guess what this Sepulcher thing is. Now you ask about—”

  “Amanda,” the voice said, “you ought to be able to tell us about Ms. Sayers.”

  “Why would she know?” Ray demanded. “You already told us she’s your favorite. Are you giving her the advantage, asking questions only she can answer?”

  “I work in a bookstore,” Amanda told them. She deliberately used the present tense, needing to convince herself that life could be normal again. “Yes, I know who Dorothy L. Sayers is.”

  “Prove it,” the voice said.

  “She’s a British mystery writer who created an amateur detective named Lord Peter Wimsey. Her most famous novel is probably The Nine Tailors, which is about bells in a church steeple and a body that’s found there.”

  “This is more bullshit.” Ray wiped his sleeve across his forehead. “The clock’s ticking, and we’re wasting time, yacking about a mystery writer.”

  His stomach rumbled, the noise so loud that everybody noticed.

  “Good heavens, Ray,” the voice said. “Are you hungry?”

  His face turning scarlet, Ray glowered at the others. “Talk to this guy all you want. Waste your strength as well as your time.”

  He yanked the empty water bottles from Viv and Derrick, then programmed the latitude and longitude numbers written on them into his GPS receiver. “While the rest of you dick around, I’m going to find out how to win this game and get away from here.”

  He picked up two full bottles that the toppling wall had exposed. After stuffing them into pockets, he rushed down the hill.

  “He’s right,” Viv said. “We need to get to the next coordinates.”

  Viv stooped toward the rocks and took two bottles. Derrick did the same. When Amanda reached down, she discovered that only one bottle remained.

  Furious, she ran after the others. The red needle on her GPS receiver pointed toward the narrow end of the lake, before which lay the remnants of Avalon. Trying not to lose her balance running down the hill, she felt a shadow to her left and looked toward the west. Clouds gathered over the mountains.

  “Storm’s coming,” Derrick said. “A couple of hours.”

  “Amanda,” the Game Master said, “You didn’t mention that Dorothy L. Sayers translated Dante’s Inferno.”

  “Will you shut up?” Ray yelled below them.

  “I’m trying to make things easier for all of you,” the voice said. “I’m trying to help you understand the game. Sayers wrote The Mind of the Maker. Have you ever read it, Amanda?”

  “No!” Amanda breathed hard. Reaching the bottom, she chased Derrick, Viv, and Ray toward the ghost town.

  “That disappoints me.”

  “It isn’t a huge bookstore, damn it!”

  “But you have an M.A. in English from Columbia University.”

  Racing, Viv turned and shot Amanda an angry look.

  “We didn’t study mystery writers!” Amanda shouted.

  The voice sighed with disappointment. “Sayers was a devout Anglican. But she was troubled by the contradiction between God’s omniscience and the free will humans are supposed to have. If God knows everything, He’s aware when each of us will sin. But that means our future is locked into place, and we don’t have free will.”

  “Shut up!” Ray yelled, almost at the ghost town.

  “That’s why Sayers wrote The Mind of the Maker,” the Game Master explained. “She decided that God’s like a novelist. God establishes the time and place for the story. He creates characters and knows generally what they’ll do. But as any novelist will tell you, characters often assume a life of their own and refuse to abide by the story. They exist in the novelist’s mind, and yet they’re independent. They’re almost like method actors. ‘I don’t think I should do this,’ one says. ‘My character would tell the truth in this scene.’ Another says, ‘I think I’m more motivated to turn down the promotion rather than work with someone I dislike.’ Sayers realized from personal experience that characters in novels have free will. In that same way, she thought, humans have free will. The plot’s laid out for us, but sometimes we choose not to follow it. Sometimes, we surprise even God. That’s how we gain salvation, Sayers believed. By showing how resourceful we are and surprising God.”

  Ahead, Ray lurched to a stop, working to catch his breath as he studied the screen on his GPS receiver. “This is it,” he said. “The coordinates.”

  Derrick, Viv, and Amanda caught up to him. Sweat clinging to his beard stubble, Derrick pulled a water bottle from a pocket and gulped from it.

  “Make it last as long as you can,” Viv said.

  They were in the remnant of a street. Sagebrush grew from the dust, straight lines of collapsed buildings on each side. Unlike the church, which was mostly stone, these buildings were made of wood, their walls and roofs lying in heaps from which weeds sprouted. The boards were gray and splintered with age.

  “Look around!” Ray ordered. “These receivers are accurate to within ten feet! Somewhere close, there’s something we’re supposed to find!”

  Ray searched the ruins on the left while Derrick kicked under sagebrush and Viv checked the ruins on the right.

  The immense sky made Amanda feel dwarfed. Dizzy, she stared up. “Are you telling us you think you’re God?”

  Derrick stopped and frowned.

  “I told you I’m the Game Master,” the voice said.

  “Are you telling us you think we’re characters in your mind?”

  Viv, too, stopped and frowned.

  “We’re not in your mind!” Amanda shouted. Desperate, she remembered Frank telling her that criminals were mo
re inclined to abuse their victims if they considered them objects instead of people. At all costs, she had to make the Game Master relate to her as an individual, a personality, a human being.

  Frank. The thought of him sent a shudder through her. Grief welled through her with the renewed apprehension that Frank was dead. She knew with all her heart that if Frank were alive, he’d be here, helping her.

  “I’m twenty-six! My favorite food is spaghetti and meatballs, even though the carbohydrates put on weight! I like Brad Pitt movies! I like to watch the History Channel! I like to play with my father’s Irish setter! I like to jog through Prospect Park. I like to—”

  “Stop wasting your breath!” Ray shouted. “Help find whatever the bastard hid at these coordinates!”

  “I imagined Bethany would run,” the Game Master explained. “That was all right because I needed someone to make an example of. The thing is, it could have turned out another way. She could be there with you right now. Honestly, all she needed to do was surprise me.”

  “Like God wants to be surprised?”

  “Damn it,” Ray said, “help us search!”

  In the ruins on the right, Viv yelled, “I found something!”

  “What?” Derrick scrambled toward her.

  “Part of a sign.”

  “Let me see.” Ray charged over and grabbed the fragment. The letters on it were faint: RAL STOR. “That could mean anything.”

  “General store,” Derrick blurted. “I bet that’s what it means. The store would have sold a little of everything, including food.”