What I’m trying to say is that I don’t hobnob with the otherworldly the way my readers think I do. The first time Wendy used that little magical red stone of hers, opening a threshold into the otherworld, where a doorway leading into the professor’s kitchen was supposed to be, I was so overcome with the sheer impossibility of it that I literally went numb. For a long moment, I couldn’t move, couldn’t even think. My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton batting.
Wendy offered me her hand and said something I couldn’t hear. But I understood. She was asking me to join her as she stepped through the arch of the kitchen door into this stunning vista of red rock canyons. It took me awhile before I was finally able to reply. But the bigshot writer, as Geordie likes to call me, so rarely at a loss for words, could only shake his head.
No one could understand why I declined to cross over, except maybe for Jilly. But it’s like I told Geordie last night, what interests me about these kinds of phenomena centers around how they interact with the World As It Is, and how those of us living here react to these intrusions. I don’t like the idea of a mundane world, devoid of wonder or mystery. But I know I wouldn’t be any happier in a world where it’s all wonder and mystery.
Up to that moment, I’d always been equal parts skeptic and believer. That might also explain the success of my books. My readers see that in me: The skeptics think I agree with them, but isn’t it interesting to consider anyway? And the believers just assume I’m in their camp, only more experienced than most of them.
I guess now I am.
I hear the sound of the hellhounds again. Closer.
And once again I’d just as soon decline the invitation to step into the unknown territories of the otherworld. But I’ve got Saskia to think about now.
“Let it go,” Bojo says.
Robert shakes his head and keeps playing his guitar. That music of his could make angels swap their celestial harps for a blues harp, just to try to capture even an echo of what he’s calling up. It’s earthy and slinky. It’s a gospel choir wrapping their voices around a twelve-bar blues. It promises and it delivers. It reaches right inside to your most private place and says, I know you. I know your pain, but I know your joy, too.
I don’t doubt that he can call up any damn thing he wants with it—not just some doorway into an errant Web site, hidden away in a digital version of Never-never Land.
Trouble is, we’ve just discovered that we’re not the only ones listening.
The hellhounds bay, closer still.
“I’m telling you,” Bojo says. “You’ve got to let it go.”
Robert doesn’t even look at him. “Hell, no,” he says. “We’re almost there. I can pretty much taste that Wordwood spirit.”
“You don’t stop playing,” Bojo tells him, “the only tasting that’ll go on here is the hellhounds taking a bite out of you.”
I glance at Raul and he’s looking more nervous than I am and that’s not easy, considering how I’m feeling. Over by the stairs, Dick is hiding his face in his hands. Geordie and Holly are staring wide-eyed at the shimmering wall behind me. Snippet’s trying to be invisible and fierce, all at the same time, and not doing a good job of either.
“We’ve got time,” Robert says. “You just open that door when I tell you.”
“Oh, yeah, time,” an unfamiliar voice says from behind me. “Funny how it works. Sometimes it moves like molasses and you’ve got all you might ever need to do any damn thing at all.”
I turn slowly, realizing now that Geordie and Holly weren’t just looking at the shimmer of the wall. Three men are standing there—having stepped right out of the wall, I guess, because they certainly didn’t come down the stairs.
Up until this moment, the biggest, darkest-skinned black man I’ve ever seen is Lucius Portsmouth, this friend of the professor’s that Jilly says is the raven uncle of the crow girls, her personal favorite of the animal people that figure in local folklore and stories.
These men are as big, but where Lucius reminds me of a serene, black Buddha, our uninvited guests are grim-faced, with a mean look in their eyes, and they’re built like weightlifters or linebackers, seeming as wide across the shoulders as they are tall. Their skin isn’t just black, it’s pure ebony—that absence of light you find in the heart of a shadow. Like Robert, they’re wearing suits, only theirs are solid black broadcloth, with white shirts, narrow black ties, and fancy, tooled leather boots.
One of them shifts his foot and I hear what sounds like the low, deep-throated growl of a hunting hound. Snippet whimpers and burrows his head against Holly’s leg.
“And sometimes,” says that same unfamiliar voice I first heard, but now I can see it’s coming from the man standing in the center of the three, “time goes by so fast you never can catch up with anything.”
Robert holds his guitar by the neck and stands up to face the men.
“This has got nothing to do with anybody but you and me,” he says. “Don’t you go bothering these folks.”
“They’re with you, aren’t they?”
There’s absolute menace in that voice, despite its mild tone. Another of the men shifts his feet and again I hear a low, throaty growl. That’s when I realize that these are the hellhounds. I don’t know if they’re shapechangers, animal people like Jilly loves to talk about, or something else again. The only thing I’m sure of is that they’re dangerous and we’re in big trouble.
But Robert doesn’t concede one iota of defeat. He stands there stiff-backed, radiating strength, guitar dangling from his left hand. He slips his other under the front panel of his suit coat.
“I’m only telling you this one more time,” he says. “Maybe we have ourselves a difference of opinion, but don’t go dragging anybody else into this business.”
“Or you’ll what? Pull out that old Colt of yours and try to shoot me? After all these years, do you really think something like that can stop us?”
“That your final word?” Robert asks, his voice as mild, but as full of threat as the hellhound’s.
“What do you think?”
“I just need to hear you say it, plain and clear.”
The hellhounds’ spokesman looks left and right, grinning at his companions, before he turns back to reply.
“Then I’m saying it,” he tells Robert. “All your lives are forfeit.”
Robert just smiles. “I was hoping that’d be the case.”
That earns him as puzzled a look from the hellhounds as I know we’ve got on our faces, but Robert keeps smiling. The hand that we all thought was reaching under his jacket for a weapon comes out empty. He hefts his guitar in front of him and when he pulls a chord from that old Gibson of his, I swear the brick walls shiver around us. The concrete trembles at our feet. The hellhounds make like it’s no big deal, but I can tell they’re running down a list of what Robert’s got planned. They know he’s up to something, but they can’t figure out what, any more than I can.
But Robert just pulls another chord from his guitar—a minor chord, rumbling with dark promise—and turns his back on them to look at us.
“I should explain something to you,” he says. “What we’ve got here are some of les baka mal, hellhound spirits who like to lay proprietary claim to les carrefours—or at least they will at whatever crossroads they think Legba isn’t watching. These particular ones have stolen the names of the three Rada drums for themselves. Guy in the middle calls himself Maman. The other two are Bula and Seconde.”
I can’t believe he’s taking this time-out to fill us in. I give the hellhounds a nervous look over Robert’s shoulder, but they still seem confused. The two on either side of the one Robert called Maman are trying to get his attention. He ignores them, his gaze fixed on the back of Robert’s head. Behind his eyes, you can tell his mind is still in overtime, trying to work out what Robert’s up to.
Well, the hellhounds and me both.
“They know about this engagement I’ve made with Legba,” Robert’s saying like none
of this is any big deal. “I’m not going into the whys and wherefores. All you’ve got to know about that part of our pact is that I can’t defend myself against les baka mal. It’s why I work so hard to keep out of their way. They’re not more powerful than me. My problem is that I can’t break my word to Legba and raise a hand against them. If I do, dying’s the least of my worries. Legba won’t just have my soul, he’ll have it in pieces.”
Now he finally turns back to the hellhounds.
“But what you forgot, Maman,” he says to the lead hellhound, “is that Legba never said anything about me not being allowed to defend somebody else from your kind.”
The understanding comes to them at the same time as I get it. Whatever this deal between Robert and Legba is, it left Robert helpless against the hellhounds—unless they happen to threaten someone else.
I can see their indecision. Attack, or break and make a run for it? I wonder that they even hesitate. There’s three of them. We might outnumber them, but except for Bojo, not one of us looks like much of a fighter. Doesn’t mean we won’t try—at least I know Geordie and I will. Our brother Paddy taught us a long time ago: You may get the crap beat out of you, but it’s better to go down fighting than not stand up at all. Funny thing is, once or twice, I’ve even come out still standing on my own two feet.
But it doesn’t come down to that.
“We’re not alone,” Maman says. “You know how many hounds are out there on the wild roads?”
Robert nods. “But you’re alone right now.”
“We can have a pack on your ass so fast—”
Robert breaks in. “But you’ve got to be alive long enough to call them down on me.”
I don’t see the man on the left of Maman draw the knife. One moment his hand’s empty, the next there’s a length of pointed steel flashing through the air at Robert. Robert manages to pull another chord and lift the body of the guitar at the same time. The knife bites into the wood, setting up a discordant echo to an already dissonant music. Something dark starts to take shape in the space between the les baka mal and Robert. The hellhounds hesitate a moment longer, then they turn and make their escape through the hole in the basement wall behind them.
“I can’t let them go,” Robert tell us. “I do and they’ll be back ten times as strong and there’ll be no finessing our way out of that encounter.”
Bojo takes a step forward. “But you can’t just go on your—”
“That place we’re looking for is close,” Robert says, interrupting. “You should be able to find it.”
He pulls the knife from his guitar and drops it on the floor, then starts for the hole where the hellhounds disappeared.
“Robert!” Bojo calls after him.
The bluesman stops at the edge of the hole and looks back.
“You don’t understand,” he says. “That was my one ace-in-the-hole— that they’d come on me when I was with someone else and they’d threaten whoever I was with. Unless I stop those three, I can’t use it again.”
“But—”
Robert shakes his head. “They weren’t lying. They’ve been hunting me a long, long time and now I’ve gone and put them on the run. That’s something they’ll never forget or forgive. Give them half a chance and they really will have an army down on us. And let me tell you, they’ll be wanting you as much as me, seeing as you were here to witness it all.”
And then he’s gone.
Silence fills the basement.
You ever have that moment when you just know what’s going to happen? I know everyone’s going to start talking at once. We’re going to be divided on whether we follow Robert or proceed with our initial undertaking. I can feel it coming and I’m trying to decide how to forestall it when we hear a hammering on the front door of the store upstairs.
Our reaction time is still molasses slow. Finally Geordie says, “I’ll go see who it is.”
I nod. When he starts up the stairs, I look over to where Bojo’s picking up the hellhound’s knife. His gaze rises from the polished blade to meet my own.
“We can’t just let Robert go after them on his own,” he says as he stands up.
“I don’t see that we have a choice,” I tell him. “There are a lot of people trapped somewhere in the Wordwood and I get the feeling that we’re their only hope of ever getting back.”
“Yeah, but—”
“He looked like he thought he could take care of it. I don’t know much about Robert, but if the reaction of those hellhounds is any indication, I’m guessing he’s not just some snappy dresser who plays a mean guitar. Those men were … if not scared, certainly nervous. I didn’t see them sticking around.”
“I suppose.”
Holly comes walking up with Snippet in her arms. I get the sense that if she put the little dog down, Snippet would be up the stairs as fast as her legs could carry her. Dick’s still sitting on a riser, shoulder pressed up against the wall, eyes large. Raul stands beside me and his eyes seem almost as big. I can feel the nervousness still coming off him in waves. Or maybe it’s only my own anxiety that I’m feeling.
Holly steps by us to take a closer look at the opening in the wall with its shimmering edges. There’s an odd optical illusion at work because not only can you see the wall, but you can also see what’s on the other side of it, the two images seeming to occupy the same space.
The other side appears innocuous. We’re looking at a moonlit crossroads, but all that are crossing here are a pair of narrow footpaths with an old oak tree towering above the spot where they meet. There’s a heap of stones under the tree and a hint of forest and fields beyond.
But the hellhounds came out of that world we’re looking in on, so I know it’s not as innocent as it seems. And being a crossroads … didn’t Robert say Legba hung around them?
Voudoun’s not a major study of mine, but I recognize the name. Legba is one of their loa—the god of gates and crossroads. All the ceremonies begin with a salute to him because he embodies the principle of crossing, of communicating with the divine world. He’s usually depicted with a cane and a tall hat, and his brother is Baron Samedi, the loa of the dead.
I don’t know that I want to meet either of them.
“I can’t believe this is real,” Holly says.
“Welcome to the weird world,” I tell her.
She turns to look at me. “I guess this is old hat for you, but I have to tell you that it’s giving me the major heebie-jeebies.”
I shake my head. “I just write about it. I can count my actual experiences on one hand. Bojo’s the only expert we have left.”
But he shakes his head. “Keep a low profile is the tinker’s way. When we’re in your towns, we stay clear of the sheriffs and lawmen. In the other-world, we stay away from the spirits. The more powerful they are, the less I want to do with them, and there’s the real trick.”
“What’s that?” Raul asks.
“Figuring out how powerful they are. Some of the smaller, more harmless looking ones, are actually the most powerful. The best thing is to avoid them all if you can.”
“That hole … portal,” I say, pointing to the opening in the wall with its shimmering edges. “How long is it going to be there?”
“I can keep it open,” he says. “Robert’s music was like a cardsharp shuffling a deck, honing in on the place we want to get to. We needed the music to find the Wordwood because I’ve never been there, but that’s not the only way. Trial and error works, too. It just takes a lot longer. The otherworld’s a big place—you can’t imagine how big a place. The worlds it contains fold in on themselves so that there are places where one step can take you through three or four of them, and you won’t even know it without a guide.”
“So without Robert, we’re screwed.”
Bojo shakes his head.
“If he says we’re close, we should be able to find it now on our own, without magic. It’ll take longer than it might have with Robert’s help, but not as long as it would have with
out his getting us this far.”
I feel a clock ticking in my head—it’s been there ever since Saskia was taken away from my study. Each passing moment without her, this world, the World As It Is as the professor likes to call it, feels emptier and emptier. And I can’t shake the fear that the longer she’s gone, the less chance we’ll have of getting her back. Of getting any of them back.
I nod. “We’ve got to go on.”
“We will,” Bojo tells me.
He’s about to say more, but then we hear footsteps at the top of the stairs. We turn to see Geordie leading Aaran and his friend Suzi down to where we’re all gathered.
“Apparently we’ve got more problems,” Geordie says.
My heart sinks as Aaran and Suzi relate what happened at Jackson’s apartment. And I have to admit that my earlier suspicions about them aren’t put to rest by their story. Suzi’s like Saskia, a part of the Wordwood? They managed to escape while the others were taken away? Aaran’s genuinely remorseful?
“So you just got away?” Geordie says, putting into words what I guess we’re all feeling.
“They wouldn’t listen to us,” Aaran says. “To Suzi.”
I can see how it wouldn’t have been their fault—if things went the way they said they had.
“And there are more of these … scouts?” Bojo asks.
Geordie gives me a look, and I know what he’s thinking, but I only shrug. I really don’t see what talking about Saskia’s origin is going to add to the discussion at this point. But I can’t let it completely go. Not when I know how it was for Saskia and seeing that strong suspicion towards Suzi that’s on Holly, Raul and Bojo’s faces. Dick’s still on the stairs, so I can’t judge his reaction.
“They aren’t necessarily the enemy,” I find myself saying. I feel confident telling them that, because Saskia certainly isn’t. “I mean, think about it. They can only operate on the information that they’ve been fed by the Wordwood spirit. There’s a good chance that, given the whole story, they’ll come over to our side. Suzi’s proved that.”