Chapter #5In the Halls of the Mountain King by: Nostrum   You’ve barely caught any sleep since leaving Saratoga Falls. Joe asked you questions all during the flight. They started as basic ones—name, date of birth—but turned increasingly absurd. "Just answer the first thing that comes to mind," he said when you challenged him, and recorded your answers in a sketchbook with utmost solemnity.
After you arrived at a small airport, you were driven a hundred miles or more up into the Rockies, to a small town nestled in a wide, shallow valley. It was like a town out of time, untouched since the Fifties, with small houses and large lawns surrounded by chain-link fences, dotted by the occasional tree and free-roaming dogs and an old man placidly mowing its lawn with a push mower rather than a gas-powered one. It was close to noon when you arrived, and the sun was triumphantly, almost furiously, bright, and its rays warmed you though the air was cool.
You are now sitting on an old and frayed sofa in the living room of a small house like the ones you drove past. Your brother is sitting next to you, though he is not looking like himself. On Joe's instructions, he is still wearing the mask of Marc Garner. Judging by his bright and self-satisfied expression, he isn't eager to take it off.
One more thing to add. You’re sitting across from fucking Santa Claus.
At least, that's who he looks like. He has a large gut and a fluffy white beard, and though his expression is grave, his eyes twinkle with a gentle light, and there are laugh lines in his cheeks. Joe introduced him as "Dad," then added that his name was "Charles Brennan." A large woman in a pantsuit, too young to be "Mrs. Claus" but otherwise built for the part, added to the slightly holiday air by serving freshly made cookies and hot cocoa with marshmallows before withdrawing.
But you know there's much more to the old man than that. This old man, in the faded trousers and frayed suspenders, is the chief of the organization to which Frank and Joe belong, the organization that, they assure you, will lift the burden from you and give you a home.
The Stellae Errantes.
"I pray I may give you my best welcome," the old man now tells you, "though I wish I could give it in happier circumstances. My other son—" He glances at Joe. "The one who doesn't smile quite so much." Joe's lips quickly twist into a more neutral shape, but his eyes still dance with mischief. "Has already told me of your bereavement, and I give you my condolences, and whatever aid and service you may need and ask."
"Thank you, sir." There is a knot in your stomach as you say it.
"But he did not live your story, and cannot know it so well as you. I wish to hear it from you, although—" He leans forward. "If you would like to sleep first, Laverne can take you to your bedroom now."
You are tempted to accept this offer, but you decide you'd just as soon get it over with. Joe warned you that you'd have to share your story with his dad—"And you'd better come clean. He can sniff a lie a mile off."—and you had been dreading having to relieve the whole thing. But the kindly tilt of the old man's head, and the earnest but forgiving curiosity in his eye, give you comfort now.
So, after a long sigh that is like the breaking of a dam, you recount to him the nightmare of the last few weeks.
How you bought an old book and showed it to your dad, and made a mask with it. How in your carelessness and impatience to understand the magic you fought then befriended a schoolmate who had been trapped under a similar mask. How your father forced you to relinquish the book to a university professor, and how from the house of that professor—a warlock of deep malice, you learned—you rescued a girl and stole certain magical items. And how, despite the help of Frank and Joe, you lost everything to the warlock. How first he replaced your own father with an obedient doppelganger, then transformed him into a kind of statue. How he kidnapped your mother. And how he arranged a very public motor accident involving your younger brother.
You find it remarkably easy to relate all this. Not only does it come out in a logical order, so that not once does the old man interrupt with a question or seek a clarification, but it eases you somehow to share it. But it's a drain as well, and you are more exhausted still at the end. Charles Brennan too looks far more drawn and melancholic at the end of your story than he did at the beginning, as though he drank not only your words but the emotions you felt as you relived it for him.
"It is very terrible," he says in a whisper when you are done, "what has befallen you." With a seeming distaste he dips his hand into the box of items that Joe brought and presented to him—the props of your adventure—and pushes them around. A notebook and primer on sigils that you took from Professor Blackwell's house; a book of your own notes; and several masks. "Very terrible. It must be put right, and we will bend every thought and effort toward that end."
"Thank you, sir."
But his frown deepens in a way that makes you anxious, and you quail a little when he lifts his eyes from the box to give you a searching look. There is pity and sympathy in his gaze, but something else as well.
"I do have questions for you," he says. His voice is soft, and there is pain in it, which somehow makes you even more nervous. "I am afraid they may discomfit you."
You hesitate, then answer, "You can ask me anything you want. I don't— I don't want to hide anything from you."
A small smile appears on his face. "Why did you try performing the spells in the book?"
You draw a deep breath. It seems like an easy question, and you give the easy and obvious answer. "Curiosity? I wanted to figure out what it was all about." But you sense another question behind it. So: "I think I was a little greedy, too," you add. The confession doesn't surprise you, but the felt truth of it does, a little. "Yeah. Not everyone finds a magic book, real magic, I mean. It made me feel ... special ... to have it, to play with it. It made me feel—"
Oh God, it's like the feeling you get when you have to throw up. A horrible heaving that you want to fight down, but it feels so good after it's up and out of your system.
"It made me feel like I was better than anyone else," you say. "Because I had something they didn't and could do things with it they couldn't."
"Is that why you tried getting the book back, after it was taken from you?"
"Yes. It was mine, along with all the stuff it made." It seems like an ugly admission, but it feels good to make.
"It was mine," Robert corrects you with a grumble. "We made a deal."
"Let your brother speak," the old man tells him in a kindly tone. "You'll have your chance later." He turns back to you. "What about now? Do you still want to get it back?"
"No!" It gives you the shivers to think of it returning to you. "But," you add, "I'd take it if—" You swallow. "If it was the only way to fix everything again."
"Is there anything you wouldn't do, in order to fix everything again?"
A rash of gooseflesh rises on your back, and you look up to stare Charles Brennan in the face. His expression is grave and querying. There is no other emotion in it.
And yet ...
Almost, you could see that kindly face twisting into a grin of evil. Almost you could imagine him extending a claw-like hand, and inviting you into a world of depravity and malice. Almost you could see him offering instrument of torture and madness. Take these, he gloats, and let me show you how to realize every dream of vengeance you ever had!
You find yourself looking at him in horror.
"No sir," you whisper. "I mean, I wouldn't do that!"
"Do what?" he murmurs. Is his smile the smile of a Santa? Or of a Satan?
"That!" you repeat. The word stands for every unarticulated depravity he seems to be offering you.
The old man smiles, and instantly the demonic leer vanishes, so completely that you are sure it was never there—it never could have been there—save in your imagination.
"Well," he says, "I think that's a good enough answer for now. Would you like that nap?"
You don't have to answer. Joe helps you to your feet, and you discover that feel as though you are made of lead from the neck down. Your feet stumble as Joe leads you to a narrow staircase.
"Is Robert coming?" you mumble.
"He needs to have his own talk with Dad." Joe pulls your arm over his shoulder, to support you as you sway on your feet. "They need to talk about his face, for a start."
Bobby's face. That's right! He's wearing that mask of ... Who is it of? You are finding it very hard to concentrate.
"You did good," Joe says. His voice seems to be coming from very far away. "I can tell, because I'm practically having to carry you."
"Hmmm?"
"That's the way it works. Worry and guilt's what keep us awake. Consider the lilies of the field. They toil not, neither do they spin. So they spend their days a'dreaming. You came clean, so now—"
Your head is lolling, and hardly feel it when you plow face down onto a bed. Your feet are lifted, and your shoes come off, and ...
Were you dreaming, or did Joe say, "Every star starts the night with a good day's sleep."  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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