CHAPTER 14. NO USE IN CRYING
We walked over the last bridge without incident. Gil had a nice bump growing on the back of his head and a fair dose of blood running through his hair, but he was apparently seeing just one of everything again. Jane was walking with a limp, but otherwise she was back to her surly self.
When we reached the island on the far end of the room. Fehr’s ghost was gone.
We’d all seen it, nobody could claim it was an illusion. Hell, with Gil’s head injury, he’d seen it three times. It didn’t help us digest it, though. On one level, things were coming together. On another, nothing was making sense.
“How can a ghost control a grimoire?” Jane asked. “From what I read–”
“You read that ghosts can’t harness the power of a sacred text, right? Well that is right,” Gil said. “Really, it’s like an otherworld check and balance. If any old Joe Ghost could use the power of a grimoire, then they’d use it to resurrect themselves. If they could use it to resurrect themselves, we wouldn’t have any dead people. Everybody would be looking up grimoire stuff online like Sega Genesis cheat codes and nobody would ever die. Ever.” He shrugged. “Clearly that’s not the case right now. Unfortunately, we've got lots of dead people.”
“So what does that mean, Boss?” I asked.
“One of two things, big man. One? Fehr is really a ghost and he is super powerful. I mean it’s weird and unlikely, but nothing’s impossible. We can assume that for one reason or another, he can use the power of the grimoire and he’s behind all this. Two? That specter wasn’t real, and it was nothing but a lure to get us to walk across that last bridge.”
“There’s a third choice, too,” Jane said. “And I have no problem being the first of us to speak it aloud: it’s possible that there is someone else here in Callowleigh with us.”
“Someone Fehr has been working with? Someone alive?”
She nodded. “That is possible, right Abercrombie?”
Gil was silent. His face had taken on a more somber air since Fehr’s ghost had made its appearance. The fear that had originally surfaced with the prospect of ghosts had returned.
“Boss?” I asked.
He looked up, apparently not having heard anything. “What?”
We were standing before the doorway cut into the wall. A white torch in the hall ahead flickered.
Jane sighed. “I said it’s possible there is someone else here. If Fehr had a living person helping him, could he use them to channel the book’s power?”
Gil’s eyes cleared a little, but he was still distracted. “Use them to...? Um. No. No, he couldn’t do that.”
Jane was skeptical. “What do you mean? Why not?”
Gil ran a hand gingerly through his hair. It came back bloody. “Uh, a ghost can’t channel. Not magical energy, at least. They can channel energy, but their otherworld magical clout dies with their corporeal bodies. A ghost is literally just a shell. In a spiritual sense, without what amounts to a soul, a ghost cannot channel any otherworld energies.”
“Hold on, so what you’re saying is that the person channeling everything, drawing all the dark energies and magics from the grimoire can’t be Deacons Fehr?” I asked.
He looked up at me. “That’s right.”
With a little less enthusiasm, Gil took the lead once again, walking past the white torch and into the shadowy hallway. Jane was second. As usual, I was the caboose.
The hall was short, and we emerged on the other side in a dark room lit only by about a million flickering candles. Somewhere in the hallway, the floor had changed from coarse rock to perfectly cut square tiles of granite. The ceiling above us was a well-carved cathedral ceiling that rose in a dome to a point. The main area of the rectangular room was empty, the walls leading to what looked like an altar on a dais against the back wall.
“It’s a church,” I said.
“This ain’t no church,” Gil muttered.
Even speaking as softly as we were, our voices carried, echoing endlessly in the room. Soft whispers turned into infinite hushed murmurs. At the front of the room, I saw movement in the shadows. What I’d once believed to be nothing stirred, the flutter of black cloth taking shape in the darkness. The shape turned, throwing back a hood.
It was Dawkins. I recognized him from the picture Eleanor Robbes-Grillet had given us earlier that day. It felt like a lifetime ago.
“Holy friggin’ shit!” Gil shouted, pointing. “It’s the caretaker! It’s the freakin’ caretaker!” He turned to me, a jubilant idiot grin on his face. “I told you, man! I told you!”
“What?” Jane and I asked in unison.
He pointed. “Dawkins!”
At the far end of the room, Edward Dawkins began walking towards us, the hard heel of a wingtip tapping on the granite floor. As he approached and my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw that he was not happy to see us.
I was a little confused. “No, wait, I thought...”
“Who are you?” Dawkins asked. “What are you doing here?”
Gil was still not finished. “It’s the caretaker! This is just like that episode of Scooby Doo about the mansion! And the one about the old zoo! And the one about–”
“Silence!” Dawkins yelled. “Answer me. Who are you? And what are you doing here?”
Gil continued to gibber about Scooby Doo, so I tried to take point.
“Uh, Mr. Dawkins? We were hired by your employer. Eleanor Robbes-Grillet? She expressed some concern that she hadn’t heard from you? Apparently it’s been... days, sir.”
Dawkins had opened his mouth–presumably to scold us further–when he stopped. “Eleanor? She called me? I mean... Well, you really shouldn’t be here.” Suddenly very self-conscious of the circumstances, he shuffled in his robe and pulled out a cell phone. The old man squinted at the screen. “Oh damn, there’s no signal down here. No wonder she couldn’t get through.”
There was a silence as Gil and I shared a glance. Finally I said, “What?”
He sighed, all the patience of a very old and very jaded school teacher. “You shouldn’t... Oh this is so awkward. See, I must apologize. Had my phone been working, I would have received Eleanor’s calls. If I had received Eleanor’s calls, you would not have been hired. If you had not been hired, you would not be here in this room right now. If you were not here in this room right now, you would not have to... well, die. For that I am sorry.”
“Hold on,” I said, trying to sort things out. “What did you say?”
Dawkins cleared his throat and gestured upwards. “I’m far too busy to entertain, demons to summon, circles of hell to unleash, you see. My friends will have to bid you goodnight for me.” He gestured with a wave of his hand.
Gil, Jane, and I looked up. Four Gallas hung suspended in the darkness above us. A marbled grey one and a brick red one joined the aforementioned white and chartreuse. A pretty colorful quartet of hellspawn, really.
“Four?” Gil said. “Four? If my Babylonian mythology is correct–and I’d like to think that it is–aren’t there supposed to be seven?”
Dawkins sighed and shifted his weight uncomfortably. “I could only manage to summon four out of the seven. That’s very respectable–”
Gil nodded. “Oh, of course, of course.”
“–I mean, I’m still pretty new at this.”
“That’s all right,” Gil said, throwing a look in my direction. He motioned me with his eyes, but at the time, I must not have been speaking “Abercrombian” so well. Probably because I’d been awake all night in a haunted house.
There was an awkward silence. Well, truth be told, the whole thing was awkward. I looked around for a blunt object or something, anything I could brandish as a weapon. There was nothing, no weapons to speak of. Not even a fork. Gil busied himself by digging around in his pockets and whistling.
Jane, on the other hand, decided to speak. She said, “So do you need my blood or something? How worried should I be? Like, on a personal level?”
“What?”
asked Dawkins.
“My blood. You sent the telegram to bring me here. I’m the one looking for the book and so you called me here.”
Dawkins squinted at her. “I did not call you here. Although, now that you mention it, your blood.” He rubbed one hand on his chin, kicking around ideas he’d never even imagined. “Your blood,” he said again. His lips curled back from his yellow teeth. “You know...” He trailed off, weighing his options. Finally, he said, “What the hell. It can’t hurt.” He looked up into the shadows of the ceiling. “Come legion. Come and fetch me blood.”
With the flapping of wings, the four Galla fell from the cathedral ceilings, dive bombing us. Weaponless, we scattered.
Jane and I took off towards the rear of the temple, hitting the deck and moving quickly back towards the hallway and what little shelter it provided. Gil had other plans. Hunched at the waist, he hustled across the room, making a beeline for the altar. Dawkins intercepted him by leaping on his back. The two grey haired men went down in a struggling geriatric heap.
“The book!” Gil groaned as Dawkins put him in a headlock. “Get the book!”
I was staying low, but one Galla hit me as it passed overhead, wings flapping. The beast lashed out at me, catching me in the chest with one hoofed foot. I stumbled to all fours as a second Galla landed in front of me.
On the other side of the room, Jane was doing her best to avoid her Galla, which had landed in front of the exit, effectively blocking it. Over my shoulder the last Galla had landed beside Gil and Dawkins. With no effort, it grabbed Gil by the hair and lifted him off of Dawkins, tossing him backwards like a child’s toy.
I backpedaled a few steps and rose up, balling my two fists together and swinging them as one. I caught the Galla across the jaw, snapping its head back. I swung again and it caught my two fists in one claw. With a snort, it pulled me towards it and leveled a hoofed kick to my solar plexus, knocking me ass backwards onto the granite. My head snapped back and hit the floor, nice and hard.
Stars. Big bright stars. They filled my field of vision for about the fourth time that evening and my limbs all went numb. When I opened my eyes, I saw two of everything. Just like Boss, I thought. That can’t be good.
The Galla dragged me to the center of the room and dropped me in a pile along with Jane and Gil. I didn’t have much fight left in me. None of us did.
From inside his robe, Dawkins pulled a thick piece of chalk. “Move them aside,” he said to the Gallas. “I will draw the runes and summoning circles. We will try the ritual once more.” He smiled down at us.
“This time with blood.”