Stones Unturned (33 page)

The entity laughed wetly. "Oh, we are each unique in our way. Perhaps when you meet my brothers and sisters you will realize that."

"When I meet your brothers and sisters, Yidhara?" Doyle asked. "Why would I meet them at all, unless a breach of trust has occurred."

The demon was silent, its body writhing as if something were attempting to escape from within.

"Just as I suspected," Mr. Doyle said indignantly. "An oath forged upon the field of battle has been broken."

"Pfaah!" the monstrosity spat, a thick wad of phlegm flying through the air to land upon the child's back. "What does it matter, Arthur?"

The little boy started to screech in pain as the substance boiled his flesh. It thrashed upon the ground, and Julia felt her motherly instincts kick in as her feet began to take her forward.

Mr. Doyle reached out quickly and clutched her arm roughly, pulling her back beside him.

"You dare much, Hellion!" he snarled.

"Come now, Arthur," Yidhara said softly. "Pit spawn, as you call us, have always crossed over from time to time, even after the treaty was signed. It's never bothered you before."

Julia could sense Mr. Doyle's growing anger, and then could see it, as his fingertips crackled with a blue electrical energy.

"There is something hidden in your tone, thing-from-the-pit," Doyle said. He lifted his hand, the energy forming a crackling sphere, and the hell-beast recoiled farther into the darkness. "Do not force my hand."

"You know as much as I that it is unraveling, that soon this plane of existence will be no more."

"Blasphemy!" Doyle roared, the ball of blue light growing all the brighter in his grasp.

"The Devourer is coming, and it will satiate its all-encompassing hunger on the sons and daughters of Adam."

With those words from its master, the beast child squatted and defecated, chattering wildly, eyes rolled back in its filthy head.

Julia thought she was going to be sick.

"You think this world already dead?" Doyle roared. "That your filthy kind can come and go as they please . . .that humanity's guardians will stand for it? That
I
will stand for it?"

Everything in the basement room was suddenly deathly quiet, and Julia focused her gaze upon the swirling ball of magic.

"In the amount of time it would take for me to send you hurling back to the bowels of Hell that spat you out, I have the ability to marshal the forces of a dozen dimensions: from Faerie to Paradise, to the most ancient, primeval chaos, I will call upon them to punish you and your kind for their assumption."

Yidhara yanked violently back on the chain it held, pulling its pet closer to its side. "I did not come to hear a declaration of war," the creature grumbled. "You have asked a question of me, and I have answered it. We of the hellish planes know of the Demogorgon's inexorable approach and seek to enjoy what will soon be no more."

Mr. Doyle seemed to calm slightly, closing his hand on the glowing orb of power. "Go back to your place in the darkness, Hellion. Go back and tell them that we shall be dealing with this devourer, that the earthly plane will not fall victim to its insatiable hunger. And until that time, and beyond, this world is off-limits to their kind."

Yidhara chuckled, reaching out with a rotting tentacle to stroke the head of the filthy child squatting by its side.

"Such confidence," the demon said. "I will tell them, and hopefully, it will deter any future visitations, but you know how difficult they can be. Now, as is the right of ritual, I require payment for my time."

"The indignities that your kind have perpetrated upon this world of late, and you require payment?" Doyle seemed annoyed although the crackling energies had dissipated.

"You command us to obey the rules of tradition, and yet refuse to do so yourself?"

Doyle sighed. "Take your payment, then. A single memory. One moment only."

"Not from you," Yidhara said. "From her." The demon pointed another maggot covered hand at Julia.

Julia shuddered in horror and looked to Mr. Doyle in desperation.

"She has nothing to do with this, take one of my memories or none at all," Doyle insisted.

"She participated in the parlay. She stands within the star. She is most certainly a part of this."

The child had begun to play with himself, yanking at his penis, and Julia looked away. She knew nothing of this world into which she had been catapulted. But the demon was right, she had participated, she did listen. And who would benefit more than she would?

Now it demanded its payment.

"Let him take it," she said, her voice barely a whisper.

"I'm not sure you understand," Doyle said, eyes narrowing with fear for her. "To have something like that even momentarily a part of your thoughts, in your mind, could prove quite devastating."

"I promise to be gentle," the demon whispered, laughing throatily. "Just a single human memory to take back to the pit. It is cold there, and this will be just the thing to keep me warm."

Mr. Doyle looked at her hard. "Are you sure about this?"

Julia nodded, even though she wasn't.

"One memory," Doyle instructed, holding up a single finger.

"Do you grant me permission to enter the pentagram?" it asked politely.

"I grant permission for you to enter and to remove a single memory from her, without causing her any harm and without touching me or the priest," Doyle said. "And I promise you pain unimaginable if you should attempt to take anything more."

A thin, dripping tentacle emerged from a brown, stained orifice, crossing the distance between them. It paused at the edge of a star's point, and passed within the confines.

"Are you sure?" Doyle asked again, and this time Julia knew that there would be no turning back.

She did not answer him, stepping from his side to approach the appendage that writhed in the air, waiting for her.

"One memory," she said to Yidhara-Thoth, and the child's head around its neck responded in kind.

"One memory."

The tentacle darted forward, its tip entering one nostril and slithering up into her nasal cavity. She could feel it go higher, up into her skull, and was surprised at how little the violation hurt her. Nausea churned in her gut.

The pain didn't begin until it stroked her brain.

Julia gasped as she felt the probe stimulate her memories. It was like being beneath an avalanche, the remembrances of her life tumbling from the storage closets within her mind. And the tentacle touched each and every one, sorting through them, careful to find the special moment it could claim as its own.

Before she knew, it found what it was searching for. She had been enjoying the recollection, the memory of holding her son in her arms for the very first time. Tears welled in her eyes as she recalled the weight of him, his very special baby smell.
"Oh, Danny," she whispered, all her love transferred to him as a bond between mother and son was forged.

Then it was gone, as if it had never happened. The tentacle withdrew from her skull, sliding the precious memory out of her mind.

A memory of love lost to her.

On its way to Hell.

The investigation into the murder of Dr. Graves had been an exercise in frustration. Clay felt more confused than he was willing to admit to the ghost, but he could see Graves felt the same. Each inquiry seemed to open up entirely new avenues of mystery. But his frustration had made him all the more determined. If they had to travel to Italy for answers, then that was precisely what they would do.

The flight from New York to Florence had a layover in London. Clay sat on a bench in Heathrow Airport, reading the newspaper and enjoying the whole feel of the place. He enjoyed the United Kingdom and its people. Every region of the world had its own texture, and the pleasant atmosphere of London had always made him comfortable. In the late twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the British had managed to combine a certain cultural propriety with a calm that defied the stuffy stereotype.

It was a phenomenon Clay had seen before.

This is what happens when an Empire falls to entropy instead of conquest.
The people of Great Britain had, over time, grown content to let someone else worry about holding the reins of the world.

He sat at his gate with the newspaper and a heavy paperback he'd bought at Waterstone's. A young mother played with her toddler a few feet away, tickling her so the girl giggled wildly. It was a beautiful sound. The television that hung above the waiting room showed a news report, but the sound was turned down and words scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

And the ghost of Dr. Graves hovered nearby.

Traveling with him had become maddening. Clay got along quite well with Graves and was pleased to be helping him. But the hours they had spent on the plane and now in the airport were torture. The ghost wandered the plane, and now the terminal, and whenever the whim took him he would come back and speak to Clay, even attempt to begin a conversation, though he knew quite well that Clay could not respond without seeming like a lunatic, talking to someone nobody else could see.

Driving around the northeastern United States had been no trouble. Graves had been an ideal companion. But traveling in public presented a challenge that set Clay to grinding his teeth and sighing.

Fortunately, it seemed the ghost had at last realized how difficult his attempts at discussion had been for Clay. For the past half hour he had stood by the broad windows that looked out at the tarmac and watched planes taking off, his spectral form like a strange, transparent human veil draped upon the glass.

"Ooops," the young mother said.

Clay lowered his paper to find that the toddler — a little girl no more than three — had fallen just inches from his feet. She looked up at him, face filled with the shock of her fall, and he smiled at her.

"You all right, princess?" the mother asked, hoisting the little one into the air.

Reminded of her tumble, the girl began to cry. The mother held her, whispering assurances in her ear and rocking her. The woman glanced past her daughter's head and saw Clay watching her. She smiled sweetly, acknowledging her motherly indulgence. Clay returned the smile and watched as the two walked around together.

Moments later, they were running around together again.

Clay lifted his paper and tried to find his place in the article he'd been reading. Even as he did so, the cell phone in his jacket pocket issued a familiar trill.

He plucked it out and glanced at the screen to find that the incoming call came from a blocked number. Clay frowned as he thumbed the TALK button.

"Hello?"

"Joe, it's Kovalik."

"Al. I'm usually a good judge of tone, but I can't read yours. You've got information for me, but is it good news or bad?"

"It's information, Joe. Good or bad, that's up to you. I can tell you it's odd."

Clay gave a soft, humorless laugh. "Yeah. There's a lot of that going around. You retrieved the remains of Doctor Graves, I take it?"

"We did, yes," Kovalik replied.

"And?"

The line went quiet, and for a moment Clay thought he might have lost the connection.

"Examination shows no evidence of a gunshot wound to the back. 'Course, it's possible the bullet didn't hit bone, so — '

"It did. At least, the way he remembers it."

Again, Kovalik went silent. Clay figured he didn't like to be reminded of his visit from the ghost of Dr. Graves.

"What else?" Clay prodded.

"DNA comparisons are a match. These are the bones of Leonard Graves, but as I said, no evidence that he died the way all of the reports indicated."

Kovalik cleared his throat. Clay heard the scratch of a match being lit and then the old man taking a drag on a cigarette and exhaling.

"You shouldn't smoke," Clay told him.

"I quit twenty-seven years ago. I took it up again this week. Indulge an old man."

"So, how did he die?"

"Fractures at the top of his spine lead my gravediggers to believe the cause of death was strangulation."

The toddler raced past him. Clay pulled his feet out of the way so the kid wouldn't take another tumble, and the mother gave him a coquettish glance in thanks as she pursued her little tornado.

Clay stood, phone against his ear, and glanced around for Graves. The ghost had wandered away from the window. Apparently he'd lost interest in the planes taking off and landing. Clay spotted him crouched beside an old couple who sat together, lost in their ruminations and yet still with their hands intertwined. They were so ancient by human standards that they were nearly mummified, but Clay understood why Graves was drawn to them. There was an air of satisfaction and contentment that surrounded them.

"I find that hard to believe," Clay said as he approached the ghost. "He was a formidable man."

"I'm just giving you the report," Kovalik said, a bit testy.

The ghost seemed to be studying the lines on the old couple's faces and did not notice his approach. Clay was forced to speak.

"Len," he said.

The old couple looked up. The wife seemed a bit put off and nervous, but the husband only raised an eyebrow.

"I know you, son?" he asked, Scottish accent thick.

"No, sir. My mistake."

Graves had glanced up at the sound of his voice. Now that Clay had his attention he started back toward his seat.

"You're sure about this?" he asked Kovalik.

The cell signal flickered. "…as I can be. It's impossible to confirm."

"What is it?" the ghost asked. Even as nothing more than a wandering spirit, a faded, transparent outline hanging in the air, Graves still had an air of power and command.

"Strangulation," he said.

The ghost shook his head. "I have no recollection of that. I told you how I died."

"Hold on, Al," Clay said into the phone, then he stared at Graves's ghost. "You told me how you remember it. But it's pretty obvious now that isn't how it happened."

Graves opened his mouth, spectral form wavering as though a ghostly breeze had blown through the spirit world. But he said nothing.