Chapter #21Lurga Comes to Oswego by: Seuzz   With a booted tread you stalk across the carpet of the forest, and the dry twigs and leaves hiss as the frost of your passage burns them; the underbrush shrivels at the touch of the hem of your tattered mantle. It's not really a forest, of course, just an incursion made by the surrounding woodland into the outskirts of the town. But it's better to approach from this angle than via the road. As you top a crest you raise your hooded head, and through a gap in the trees glimpse the surface of Lake Ontario twinkling under the moonlight. You follow the bend of the hill, and your destination looms over the trees.
The long-abandoned State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. It's a gaunt shadow, and even less inviting in the dark than it is in the daytime. Even under the noon-time sun the dark stonework—unbroken even by windows—grimly deflects the gaze. At night, the walls are an obsidian nightmare.
You stare at it until the shadows at its base retreat, revealing a man. You let your own shadow lengthen, like a gravestone, until it falls over him. Only when you've got him thus blinded do you advance. He clutches himself at your approach, and shivers as your fell breath envelops him. An ethereal ice congeals on his shoulders and head, and under its crushing weight he stoops and bends and swoons at your feet. Only then do you lay a chill hand on his forehead. A moment later, his thoughts are yours.
So they got him, you think as you straighten. They brought him out early and fed him the stuff, then set him to await your arrival. They are waiting for you inside.
Well, let's not disappoint them, you think, and your cloak resolves itself into a perfect imitation of his imago. You leave the unconscious Shackelford where he is, and glide around to the front of the asylum.
It's the Keyserling legacy that's brought you here. Aubrey Blackwell had not slept long, much to everyone's surprise; even Charles had seemed slightly taken aback at his early stirring. But peace and contentment had shown in his eyes, and a shy smile had enwreathed his face as he'd taken your hand. "My dear boy, how delightful to see you again," he'd said, though something like fear showed in his eyes. You'd clasped his hand with as much warmth as you could muster, but he'd still shivered at your touch. You were grateful when Charles muttered in your ear before ushering the revived magician out again: "I'll tell him it's just a mannerism with you."
There'd been a very long talk afterward, about the Keyserlings and the Shabblemans and two cities in upstate New York, and two old women who had died the same day. Blackwell hadn't held anything back, but under your unwinking gaze he had stammered it all out very quickly. At Charles's suggestion, you'd gone out to look around. Your attention had quickly settled on the old abandoned asylum, where a woman named Emily Lavoisier and had lived and died in obscurity for more than seventy years.
You'd been looking over her files at the old diner on Bridge Street when you felt someone looking over your shoulder. "Interested in the old asylum?" the man asked. You'd told him you were a magazine writer looking for a story to write up and sell. "Those are spooky places," he'd said, and moved to sit across from you. "Especially when there's cults operating inside them," he added in a whisper, leaning across the table to you. "Ben Shackelford," he'd introduced himself, and held out a hand. "You want a story? I've got one I'd like to see get out."
Matt Medoff—the alias you've been working from under—has a friendly face and manner, so Shackelford had no reason to hold back; and it would have been a relief to him to tell it all anyway, since you'd laid several ethereal millstones on his shoulders to press it out. He told you the story, and he even gave you some of the merchandise as evidence. You agreed to meet him tonight at the asylum, so the two of you could watch from the shadows. "Are you going to need me?" Rick had asked when you connected with him afterward. "Because if you do, I'll need to buy a parka."
The abandoned asylum is dusty and airless inside. You enter through the atrium but bypass the doors to the operating theater and take a staircase up to the observation balcony. It's pitch black inside the theater, but you can hear the faint whispers of the five men waiting in ambush for you. Silently you drop into the darkness behind them, spreading your cloak to encompass them all. As your icy presence encloses them, they pull into a closer huddle, shivering violently and pulling their coats tightly about them. One of them just has the time and presence of mind to mutter "Why's it so cold?" before he and the others crumple to the floor. Their lips are blue when you put on the lights.
The benches of the theater are dusty and splintered. The only new thing in the place is a bright coffee urn sitting on a table on the stage. That is the center of the evil, Shackelford's memories tell you. And after you've lifted the memories of Bradley, the leader of the gang, you know exactly what kind of thing is inside it. Then you yourself shiver a little.
You approach it quietly and lay your hand atop it, lightly at first, then more firmly as you hear the thing squirming inside it. Water condenses and freezes on the urn's surfaces as you draw more and more heat from inside it, and the sides buckle as the air congeals. When you imagine the thing must be frozen through, you slam your will into reverse. With a boom, the sides of the urn bulge outward as an atmosphere a hundred times denser than the Earth's materializes inside it.
Only then do you lift the lid and look inside. The surfaces are coated in a thick and glittering frost that glitters with an evil color.
An hour later, and Rick still has to put on gloves in order to pick up the urn. "Can't you take care of it?" he grumbles. "You're the gravedigger."
"I thought you'd like to be pallbearer. You don't often get a chance to bury one of those things."
He grunts. "Thoughtful of you, Frosty."
"I've asked you not to call me that."
"Then cultivate a warmer demeanor."
* * * * *
Your teeth are chattering when the lights come on, and Reilly is rubbing his hands.
"Okay, that wasn't me," he says defensively. "In my experience, it's heat that comes with Lurga. All that pressure."
"It surprised me too," Charles says, and he too is shivering. "And it had an intensity, a reality the others haven't had. Some possible worlds are closer than others, aren't they?" he asks Reilly.
"In theory." The muse looks a little uneasy. "You think maybe that came from someplace close by?"
"Does that mean it's the one I should choose?" You can't keep a note of horror from your voice.
"No, son," Charles says. "It could just as easily be a caution not to choose Lurga. As for the chilliness, that could be the result, or an amplification, of Sulva's influence. He brings a touch of frost with him anyway."
* * * * *
The room seems to smear, and for a moment you are again aware of the train carrying you northward. You pull your jacket tightly around yourself as the cold memory of the vision infects you again.
There had been a lot of talk about it afterward, not only with Charles and Reilly, but with Father Ed. The consensus was that you'd been vouchsafed a vision that was more than merely imaginative. For sometime afterward you were troubled by dreams that never quite became nightmares, but which still left you thrashing with dread. You particularly hated the impression—never realized in concrete form, but hanging like a miasma—that Frank and Joe and Rosalie were somehow mixed up in it, and not in a good way.
For a moment you teeter on the edge of waking up fully ...
To wake from this reverie: "The Boy from Before Everything, Part 2"   You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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