Chapter 27
I have no answers, and I’m not sure how to get them. I refuse to believe most of the books on the occult that came through the shop are in any way genuine, but rather written by crackpots to ensnare the gullible. Perhaps some of them are real, but how can one tell?
Adrian sleeps in the seat beside me, his hat pulled down low. Eventually the long night catches up with me, and I lean my head back and close my eyes.
“Why did you shoot me?” Emerson asks.
I’m walking through a verdant jungle, the fifty-pound weight of my haversack on my back, my rifle heavy in my hands. The rest of our unit is gone, just the two of us making our way through this landscape that feels more familiar than it should.
I don’t look at him. If I do, I’ll have to see his lifeless and bloated face, uniform stiff with dried blood from the barbed wire. A brief flare of terror licks through me: where is the sniper? But no, that was another battlefield far away.
“Answer me,” he says in a hollow voice drained of all its warmth. “I came back for help, and you shot me.”
“It wasn’t real.” That’s what they told me, after I unloaded my rifle into the thing that looked like Emerson, with its eyes of burning marsh gas. “You weren’t actually there. It was my mind, cracking under the strain.”
“You know better than that.”
Did I? Magic is real. Emerson, or something wearing his corpse like a suit, walked back from the shallow dell where we left him, unable to retrieve his body thanks to the sniper killing us off one at a time. It wasn’t just my mind.
“I didn’t want to leave you,” I say. “None of us did. But the sniper killed Taylor, Murkowski, and Smith trying to get to you.” My throat constricts as I swallow.
“Even so, we waited all night, I swear it. By the time dawn came, you weren’t…
you weren’t making noise any more. It was too late for us to save you. ”
“You abandoned me. Then you tried to kill me.”
I quicken my stride. “I don’t know what you are, but you’re not Emerson.”
The jungle parts suddenly, and I find myself in a long corridor lit with cold blue light. A door waits at the end, its surface covered with ornate hieroglyphs whose meaning I can’t interpret. I’m not supposed to be here—no, we’re not supposed to be here.
Emerson isn’t here, but someone else is.
I glance over my shoulder and see three monstrous creatures behind me.
They each have a cluster of five round, black eyes atop their heads, and a long appendage like a segmented trunk, which ends in claw-like graspers.
Their bodies are similarly segmented, each segment bearing a pair of insectile legs; they move rapidly and smoothly on the last few segments, the rest of the body held awkwardly upright.
I should scream, or run, or shoot—except my rifle is gone. And…I’m not afraid.
These are my friends.
The jolt of the train over a switch wakes me. I pull myself upright, find Adrian watching me. Dawn light pours through the windows, gilding his brown skin and revealing his concerned expression.
“More dreams?” he asks. “Does this happen every time you sleep?”
“It didn’t used to.” I pass a hand over my face, willing my brain to pull itself free of the clinging cobwebs left by the dream. “Ever since I woke up in Widdershins it’s been bad, though. And the dreams are stranger than they used to be.”
He pats my hand. “You’re under a great deal of stress, so that’s no surprise.”
A few minutes later, the train rattles into Salem. We shuffle out after other weary travelers, grab a brief bite to eat at a diner beside the station, then make our way to the public library. Once it opens, we ask for the city directory.
I flip through the columns of names and addresses until I come to the L’s. “There—Anna Lovejoy. It looks like she’s on Pope Street, not far from here at all.”
We thank the librarian who fetched the directory for us, then make our way through the early streets.
Men and women hurry to work, most headed for one of the many shoe factories or leather tanneries that dominate the city’s manufacturing district.
It’s an easy walk to Miss Lovejoy’s house, a modest-sized home built after the Great Fire destroyed the older buildings in this part of the city.
Two marble sculptures of women in togas holding amphorae stand in her front garden, and I’m reminded of the driftwood people and the madman in the marsh.
“An unassuming house for someone who collects rare books,” Adrian remarks.
“Not everyone in the trade is rich, and not every person with money flaunts it.” I consider briefly. “If I were wealthy, I’d rather have books than a big house any day.”
“Sensible,” Adrian says with a chuckle. “It’s a bit early for a polite visit, but hopefully she won’t mind since she knows you.”
“Not well,” I object. “We met once or twice, but she mostly dealt with…with James.”
Grief hits me afresh. Adrian puts a hand to my shoulder, squeezing gently. “Do you need a moment?”
“No. No, I just want to get all this over with.” Though I can’t imagine what my life will look like afterward. Or even what “afterward” might mean.
I walk past the sentinel statues and knock on the door. After a few moments, the sound of footsteps approaches from the other side, and a woman I recognize as Miss Lovejoy throws open the door.
Her appearance catches me off-guard—the few times I’ve seen her, she was dressed for visiting the city.
Right now, she wears a salmon-colored velour robe, trimmed in brocaded corduroy, loosely belted over blue silk pajamas.
Her black hair is cut in a stylish bob, and she has a lit cigarette in a silver-tipped holder.
“Mr. Caine,” she says, the words smoking from her lips. “I thought I told you never to come back here.”