Transmission: A Supernatural Thriller (15 page)

Without a word, Dylan killed the engine. Then, limping out of the car, he made his way towards the door, eyes glued to the crisp grass. A cool breeze shot across the field, but he didn't seem to feel it as he lingered outside the shack. Kenji met up with him, reaching for the knob and pushing the door open. The light outside was quickly fading, and the pervasive inkiness of the shack was profound. Carefully, Kenji reached inside and sought out the light switch. Flipping it, the dull bulbs in the ceiling came on, bathing the room in light.

The desk. The TV and VCR. The window. The bulky radio. The videotape Reggie had brought with him during their first visit, only to subsequently toss across the room. Everything appeared exactly as they'd left it. At the center of the room were the folding chairs, where Reggie and Dylan had passed the night. Their footprints were visible in the dust that coated the floors, proof of where they'd tread.

Something didn't sit right, however. With a howling wind to his back, Kenji shuffled inside and shut the door as Dylan entered. The place was undisturbed, completely. Nothing had been moved since they were last there, more than a week ago. And yet, something
felt
awry. Walking into the tiny structure, Kenji picked up on the weight of some other presence. It was as if someone had been there only an instant before he'd opened the door, and had disappeared through an unseen exit. It was impossible, of course; he knew that wasn't the case. Still, the feeling persisted. The dusty air within felt as though it'd been stirred up by the movement of another inhabitant, just seconds before they'd made their nervous entrance.

Kenji sought to force the fear from his mind and set his bag down on the desk. “Hope Reggie gets here soon,” he managed.

Dylan paced through the room, arms crossed. His face was looking pale, and the quick, twitchy glances he cast about the room, and especially towards the single window, revealed just how uneasy he was. “Feels like someone's watching us,” he said through grit teeth.

“Don't...” began Kenji, shaking his head. “Just don't. Reggie will be here soon, I bet.” He furrowed his brow, recalling that Reggie lived in St. Paul. He lived a lot closer to Akeley than the two of them did. Kenji thought it strange that they should have made it there before him, but knew better than to say anything out loud. No good would come from speculating over Reggie's tardiness.

The two sat in the shack silently, waiting for the third member of their party to arrive.

TWENTY-TWO

It was roughly an hour after Kenji and Dylan arrived that Reggie showed up. The sun had fully set by then and the fields were draped in shadow. The moon was a sliver of gold in the sky, barely visible behind a knot of angry clouds.

The sounds of Reggie's LeSabre coming up the gravel drive stirred them both from their frightened stupor. A few moments later, he came inside, a leather bag slung over his shoulder and a bit of sweat dotting his brow despite the intense winter cold. “Hey there, fellas,” he offered, closing the door. “Sorry I'm late. Didn't set out till later in the day.”

Dylan nodded a greeting, but remained in his chair, staring at the window.

“Thanks for coming,” said Kenji. “Did you bring it?”

Patting the leather bag he wore, Reggie nodded. He walked over to the desk, sporting a seasick grin. “You ready for this?”

Kenji nodded. “Brought a book that should help me translate it more quickly.”

Slowly, Reggie rifled through his bag. His eyes widened as his grip closed around the book, and he slowly drew it out, setting it before Kenji on the desk. It landed on the wooden surface with a deep thud, the metal cover shining in the light. “What do you think of that?” he asked, chuckling.

Dylan looked over Kenji's shoulder and tongued his molars for a time before asking, “Where'd you get this thing, man?”

Reggie started into his tale, describing the events that'd united him with the strange book,
Carte de Umbra Lungi
. First, he detailed his meeting with the mysterious Mara Antall. Then, he told the two of them about his visit to the old house where Agnes and Mara had once lived with a number of other Hungarian immigrants. He described the room that had once been Agnes' in no little detail, and then told them about his visit to Victor's, giving them the bookseller's pointed impressions of the thing. When he was through, he sighed, as though the information had been weighing him down all that time, and shook his head. “It's damned crazy, I tell ya.”

Kenji touched the cover. The metal was slightly warm to the touch, despite the coolness of the air. Studying the outside, he ran his fingers along the impressions in the metal. Though he was no expert, it was clear that this was an exceedingly old book, likely hundreds of years old, and that it'd been shaped by someone who held its contents very dearly. The delicate flourishes spoke of a craftsman who cared a great deal about the book's message, and who wished to dress it in an exterior that matched its importance.

“This book was in Agnes' possession before she went missing, then?” Kenji frowned, opening the front cover and looking over the title page. There, rendered in flowing script, were the words Reggie had given him.
Carte de Umbra Lungi
. The work was not attributed to any author, and there was no other information to be gleaned from this first page. “Why did she have this? And if she was kicked out of the house by the other immigrants, why didn't she take it with her?”

Reggie shrugged. “She didn't take anything with her by the looks of it. The room was dusty, but nothing was out of place. A bunch of clothes and such were still there. Looks like she just skipped town. Didn't take a thing.”

“All right.” Kenji fished the Romanian dictionary out of his bag and set it beside the
Book of Long Shadows
. “I'm going to start now. Please, keep it down while I try and make sense of this. If it's really Romanian then it won't take me too long to crack it. I've studied Italian for a long time, and the two languages are fairly close.” Turning the page, Kenji looked over the opening passages, but suddenly stopped short.

The flowing script was very neat, and the black ink was still readable despite the passage of years. It wasn't the writing on the page that drew his attention however. Pictured on the lower portion of the leaf beneath a chunk of text was a picture that made his stomach sink to the floor. “What the...”

Dylan, who'd still been peeking over Kenji's shoulder, recoiled at the sight of it. “OK, what the fuck is
this
about?”

The subject of the picture, a masterfully-drawn piece replete with great and realistic details, was a woman. Her throat had been slashed, and a bright trail of blood gushed from the wound. Her attackers surrounded her on both sides, held her arms so that she couldn't break free. The victim's blood was flowing down her bare chest and into a chalice. It was all Kenji could do not to shut the book at once.

The imagery was altogether too vivid. Though this book had been written long before the days of photography, he couldn't shake the feeling that this was some kind of primitive photograph, such was the intensity of the detail. Otherwise, it was very likely a scene drawn from life-- a drawing done by someone who was there, witnessing the grisly events thus depicted and rendering them with the skill of a master in realism. He closed his eyes and looked away for a moment. The image burned on in his mind, however.

“Yeah...” began Reggie, pacing nervously behind them. “There's some... weird shit in that book. Lots of... pictures and whatnot. I should've warned you. Sorry about that.”

Dylan sat back in his chair, his curiosity surrounding the book completely diminished. “Fuck this, man. I don't think we need to be looking at this kind of crap in the dead of night, out in the middle of nowhere. You know, this Agnes chick was probably into some freaky shit, and now she's missing. It's
 
for the best; knowing what kinds of books she read, I'm not sure I wanna find her anymore.”

Kenji returned to the book, trying not to look at the picture and focusing only on the text. It was a battle he could barely win, though. If ever he let his gaze wander in the least, he found himself staring in horror at the grisly scene below. “W-well, it's an old book, guys. Stuff like this was featured all the time in b-books by writers in the ancient world...” Kenji stammered.

Dylan chuckled incredulously, standing up. “Bullshit, Kenji. You ever seen anything like that on the History Channel? I mean, what does this have to do with
anything
? We came out here because we followed this chick's message, but... now we're reading her old book and it's full of murder scenes? Nah, screw this. We should get the hell out of here, now.”

Kenji shook his head. “Just calm down, man. Let me try and read some of this. I'll get a handle on it and then we'll figure out what sort of book this really is. See if it has anything to do with Agnes' disappearance. OK?” He scooted closer to the desk and scanned the book afresh, tearing a sheet of paper out of one of his notebooks so that he could cover up the distracting image while he attempted his translation. “Just keep quiet. I'll tell you what I find in here in a little while. It's too early to freak out. For all we know she just... collected old books.”

Dylan grumbled, pacing around behind Reggie. “Yeah, that's why her Hungarian buddies shunned her, right? Not because she was a witch who slashed people's throats, but because she collected old books.” He pointed to Reggie. “That's what they said, right? That she was a
witch
? Something's not right here, and the more we stick around this place, the closer we're gonna get to finding her. Does that sound like a good idea to you, Reggie? You want to stand around waiting for ol' Agnes to come back, looking for her gruesome book?”

Reggie buried his hands in his pockets and ambled around the room, shoulders stooped. “Now.... let's just let Kenji here work his magic, huh? If we find... if something comes outta this we'll hightail it outta here, young fella. No doubt about that. No doubt. But we gotta... we gotta see what this thing's all about.”

“You guys are fucking hopeless,” spat Dylan, leaning against the wall, fuming.

Kenji had blocked out the chatter and was better able to focus on the text after covering up the grisly picture on the bottom of the page. Scanning the text, he could pick out several familiar words. It wasn't long before things began to fall into place for him. A couple of quick dictionary references hammered out the differences in tense and usage that he came across, so that, before long, he felt like he was reading straight Italian. It helped that the style was very formal and literary. Though archaic, he could make out a good deal without even having to glance at his dictionary. The only trouble was that the book was rather long; it would take him more than a single night to get through its hundred or so pages. Moreover, there was no telling what passage, if any, was relevant to Agnes' disappearance, or what other terrible images he might run across while attempting a translation. His skin crawled just thinking about the first image. Whenever he pictured it in mind, Kenji couldn't help but agree with Dylan: The owner of a book that featured such terrible illustrations as this must be rather depraved.

Kenji had started this investigation as an unbiased party. He and the others had been led to the shack without knowing a thing about the woman who'd fed them the coordinates. Now that he was learning a bit about Agnes' life and interests however, matters had taken on a very different cast.

As best he could tell from his readings on the first page, the contents of this book were extremely esoteric. It appeared to be something of a magical or alchemical text, referring to means through which supernatural abilities may be gained. In other words, it was something like a witch's spell book.

Outside of movies or books, Kenji had never seen such a thing. He knew books had been written on the subject of paranormal phenomena in centuries passed, but this wasn't like the historical texts he'd seen in documentaries. This, for all intents and purposes, was a grimoire chock full of
actual
spells and rituals. Whether these methods succeeded at conjuring what they proposed was open to debate, however it was clear in the volume's painstaking craftsmanship that the person who wrote the book thought it all to be true.

Kenji scoffed inwardly. No, this was a book of nonsense. It
had
to be. Magic, spells, rituals, the paranormal... these things didn't exist. He'd been listening to Dylan too much, entertaining too much ridiculous talk about EVPs and things of that sort lately. His unease about the gruesome art in the book had unseated his reason for a moment, made him consider the possibility that the book's contents were genuine, but he very quickly dismissed the notion and returned to his reading. Turning the page, he found a wall of neat text. Thankfully, there was no awful drawing on this or any of the next few pages. Sighing deeply, he pressed a few fingers to his forehead and treated the book like any other dry translation job. Kenji didn't bother taking notes; he simply wanted to get a good idea of the content so that he and the others could make sense of it. Possibly there would be some link in this book to real-life events, and it would lead them to the truth behind Agnes' disappearance.

The little voice in the back of his head seemed to mock him as he read on.
You just couldn't let this go, could you? You've spent so much time investigating this random string of occurrences, digging deep where you had no business doing so. You'll regret it...

Dylan and Reggie fell into small-talk while Kenji worked through the first few pages of the book.

Outside, the night deepened, growing darker and quieter than before. A gust of wintery air struck the shack and the lights overhead dimmed briefly. As the breeze settled down, it almost sounded like a far-off sigh. The trio glanced out the window almost in tandem, half-expecting to find someone there.

There was nothing.

TWENTY-THREE

Dylan paced. Reggie was sitting with his arms slung over the back of one of the folding chairs, looking up at him. They chatted in hushed tones, not wanting to interrupt Kenji's reading.