Harry didn't wait for the fire to come. He made a dash for the stairs, hoping to God that Ted had escaped ahead of him. The killing fire sighed past him, close enough for Harry to feel its sickly heat, then burst against the opposite wall, its energies tracing the cracks as it dispersed. Harry looked back towards the prophet, who had already forgotten about the phantom and had turned towards the dark crack that let on to Quiddity.
Harry's gaze went to the sliver. In the diminishing light of the chamber the shore and sea were more visible than they had been, and for a moment it was all he could do not to turn back; to race the prophet to the threshold and be out under that steepled sky. Then, from the murk off to his left, a pained and weary voice.
"I'm sorry, Harry... please... I'm sorry-"
With a sickening lurch in his stomach Harry turned and sought out the source of the voice. Ted lay seven or eight yards from the bottom of the stairs, his arms open wide, his chest the same. Such a wound, wet and deep, it was a wonder he had life enough to breathe, much less to speak. Harry went down at his side.
"Grab my hand, will you?" Ted said.
I'll ve got it," Harry said.
"I can't feel anything."
"Maybe that's for the best," Harry said. "I'm going to have to pick you up."
"He came out of nowhere
"Don't worry about it." "I was keepin' out of the way, like you said, but then he just came out of nowhere."
"Hush, will you?" Harry slid his arms under Ted's body. 'Okay, now, are you ready for this?"
Ted only moaned. Harry drew a deep breath, stood up, and without pausing began to carry the wounded man towards the stairs. It was harder to see the flight by the moment, as the last of the light in the filaments died away. But he stumbled on towards it, while little spasms passed through Ted's body.
"Hold on," Harry said. "Hold on." @
they had reached the bottom of the flight now, and Harry began to climb. He glanced back towards the center of the chamber just once, and saw that the prophet was standing at the threshold between Cosm and Metacosm. No doubt he would step through it presently. No doubt that was what he had come here to do. Why had it been necessary to slaughter so many souls in the process was a mystery Harry did not expect to solve any time soon.
"It's late, Harry," Norma said. She was sitting in the same chair beside the window, with the televisions burbling around her.
Hour-before-dawn shows.
"Can I get a drink?" Harry said. "Help yourself."
His passage lit only by the flickering screens, Harry crossed to the table at Norma's side and poured himself a brandy.
"You've got blood on you," Norma said. Her nose was as keen as her eyes were blind.
"It's not mine. It's Ted Dusseldorf's."
"What happened?"
"He died about an hour ago."
Norma was silent for a few seconds. Then she said, "The Order?"
"Not exactly," Harry sat on the hard, plain chair set opposite Norma's cushioned throne, and told her what he'd witnessed.
"So the tattoos were a good investment after all," she said when he'd finished the account.
"Either that, or I was lucky."
"I don't believe in luck," Norma said. "I believe in destiny." She made the word sound almost sexy, the way she shaped it.
"So it was Ted's destiny to end up dead tonight?" Harry said. "I don't buy that."
"So don't," Norma said, without a trace of irritation. "It's a free country."
Harry sipped on the brandy. "Maybe it's time I got some serious help," he said.
"Are you talking therapy? 'Cause if you are, I'm telling you right now I've had Freud through here-least he said he was Freud-and that man was sofucked up-"
"I'm not talking about Freud. I'm talking about the Church, or maybe the FBI. I don't know. Somebody's got to be told what's going on."
"If they're inclined to believe you, then they've already been recruited by the enemy," Norma said. "You can be certain of that."
Harry sighed. He knew what she said was true. There were people out there wearing uniforms and cassocks and badges of office whose daily agenda was the suppressing of information about the miraculous. If he chose the wrong ear in which to whisper what he knew he was dead.
"So we choose carefully," Harry said.
"Or we let it be."
"The door's not supposed to be open, Norma."
"Are you sure?"
"That's a damn stupid question," Harry replied. "Of courve I'm sure."
"Well that's comforting," Norma said. "Do you remember when you first decided this?"
"I didn't decide it. I was told."
"By whom?"
"I don't know. Hess maybe. You."
"Me? Don't listen to me!"
"Then who the hell should I listen to?"
"You could start with yourself," Norma replied. "Remember what you said to me a few days ago?" "No.,'
"You were talking about how maybe it was time to stop being human?"
"Oh that-"
"Yes, that."
"That was just talk."
"It's all just talk till we make it true, Harry."
"I'm not following this."
"Maybe the door's supposed to be open," Norma said. "Maybe we have to start looking at what's in our dreams, only with our eyes open."
"We're back to Freud."
"No we're not," she said softly. "Not remotely."
"Suppose you're wrong?" Harry said. "Suppose leaving the door open is some kind of catastrophe, and if I don't do something about it-"
"Then the world comes to an end?"
"Right."
"It won't. It can't. It can change, but it can't end."
"I have to take your word for that, I suppose?"
"No. You could ask your cells. They'd tell you."
"We don't talk much these days, me and my cells," Harry said.
"Maybe you're not listening carefully enough," Norma replied. "The point is: So what if the world changes? Is it so dandy the way it is?"
"It could be a damn sight worse."
"Says who?"
"Me! I say so!"
Norma raised her arm, reaching out for Harry. "Let's go up onto the roof," she said. "Now?"
"Now. I need some air."
Up they went, Norma wrapped in her shawl, onto the roof nine floors above Seventy-fifth. Dawn was still a while away, but the city was already gearing up for another day. Norma looped her arm through Harry's, and they stood together in silence for perhaps five minutes, while the traffic murmured below, and sirens wailed, and the wind gusted off the river, grimy and cold. It was Norma who broke the silence.
"We're so powerful," Norma said, "and so frail."
"Us?"
"Everybody. Powerful.
"I don't think that's the way most people feel," Harty said.
"That's because they can't feel the connections. they think they're alone. In their heads. In the world. I hear them all the time. Spirits come through, carryin' on about how alone they feel, how terribly alone. And I say to them, let go of what you are-"
"And they don't want to do that?"
:'Of course not."
'I don't like the sound of it either," Harry said. "I'm all I've got. I don't want to give it up." "I said let go of it, not give it up," Norma said. "They're not the same thing."
"But when you're dead-"
'.What's dead?" Norma shrugged. "Things change but they don't end. I told you."
"And I don't believe you. I want to, but I don't."
"Men I can't convince you," Norma said. "You'll have to find out for yourself, one way or another." She drew a little closer to Harry. "How long have we known each other?" she said.
"You asked me that."
"And what did you say?"
"Eleven years."
"That long, huh?" She lapsed into silence again, for a minute or so. Then she said, "Are you happy, Harry?"
"Christ, no. Are you?"
"You know what? I am," Norma said, her voice tinged with surprise. "I like your company, Harry. Another time, another place, we would have made quite a pair, you and me. Maybe we did." She laughed, softly.
"Maybe that's why it feels like I've known you longer than eleven years." She shuddered. "I'm getting a little chilly," she said. "Will you take me back downstairs?"
"Of course."
"You sound so tired, Harry. You should sleep for a few hours. I've got a mattress in the spare room."
"It's okay, thanks. I'll go home. I just needed somebody to talk to."
"I wasn't much use, was I? You want plain answers and I don't have any."
"There was something I didn't tell you."
"What's that?"
"I almost stepped through." "Through the door?"
"Yeah.
"And why didn't you?"
"I couldn't leave Ted, for one thing. And-I don't know-I guess I was afraid there'd be no way back."
"Oh, maybe the best journeys are the ones with no return ticket, Haffy," Norma said, with yearning in her voice. "Tell me what it was like."
"The shore? It was beautiful." He conjured it in his mind's eye now and could not help but sigh.
"Go back, then," Norma said.
Harry didn't reply for a moment, but instead scanned the glittering panorama before him. It too was beautiful, after its fashion, but only from this angle, and only at night.
"Maybe I should," he said. "If you're thinking about me, don't," Norma said. "I'll miss you, but I'll be fine. Who knows, maybe I'll come after you one of these days."
He went back to his apartment to clean up (his shirt was glued to his chest with Ted's blood) and gather a few items for the journey. It was an absurd procedure, of course, given that he had no clue as to what lay on the other side, beyond sea, sky, and stones.
He pocketed his wallet, though he doubted they traded in dollars. He put on his watch, though surely time was redundant there. He slipped on his crucifix, despite the fact that he'd heard the tale of Christ had been fashioned to distract attention from the very mystery he was about to enter. Then, with the new day barely dawning, he made his way back to the building between Thirteenth and Fourteenth.
The door he'd opened using the prodigile, less than a dozen hours before, was open. With the steady beam of a flashlight to precede him he made his way to the top of the stairs. There he paused, listening for any sound from below. He'd escaped the prophet's murderous ways once; twice was tempting fate. There was no noise, however; not a moan. Extinguishing the flashlight, he made his way down the stairs by what little illumination came from the door above. It had given out by the time he reached the bottom of the flight, but there was a second source below, this far stronger. The blood of one of the murdered celebrants, spilled liberally from head an I t irew up a lilac light from its pools, like the phosphorescence of something rotted.
Harry halted at the bottom of the step until his eyes had become properly accustomed to the illumination. After a time, it showed him a scene he had prepared himself for as best he could, but which still raised the hairs on the nape of his neck.
He'd seen death arrayed before, of course, all too many times, and seldom neatly. Bodies carved and corroded, their limbs broken, their faces erased. But here was something stranger than that; twice stranger. Here were creatures he'd thought unholy-worshippers of the Anti-Christ, he'd thought-whose flesh was not the stuff of any simple biology. He had a primal suspicion of things that looked as different from himself as these beasts had. Such forms had in his experience housed malice and lunacy. But surveying this scene he could not bring himself to rejoice at their dispatch. Perhaps they'd been innocents, perhaps not. He would never know. What he did know was that in the past week he'd spoken of moving beyond what he'd once assumed were the limits of his species. He could no longer afford to scorn any form, however unlikely, for fear in time it might turn out to be his own. Anything was possible. Perhaps, like a fetus which resembled a reptile and a bird before it came to its humanity, he would revisit those states as he moved on. In which case he had siblings here, in the darkness.
He looked beyond them now, towards the center of the chamber. Though the filaments had lost their light, a few scraps of the misty veils that had hung from them remained. But they could not conceal the absence at the heart. The opening that had led on to Quiddity's shore was gone.
Stumbling over corpses as he went, Harry crossed to the spot, hoping with every step that his eyes deceived him. It was a vain hope. The prophet had closed the door behind him when he'd stepped away into that other place, and left nothing to mark the place.
"Stupid," Harry told himself.
He'd been so close. He'd stood on the threshold of the miraculous, where perhaps the mysteries of being might be solved, and instead of taking the opportunity while he had it, he'd let himself be distracted. He'd turned his back, and lost his opportunity.
as this the destiny Norma had spoken of? That he be left among the dead, while the miracle train moved off without him?
His legs@rained of the adrenaline that had fueled him thus far-were ready to give out. It was time to go, now; time to bury his frustration and his sorrow in sleep for a few hours. Later, maybe, when he had his thoughts in better order, he'd be able to make better sense of all this.
He made his way back across the slaughterhouse and up e stairs. As he came to the top of the flight, however, someing lurched out of the shadows to block his path. The phet's massacre had not been completely thorough, it appeared. Here was one who'd survived, though even in the paltry light of the passageway it was plain she could not be far from death. She wore a wound from the middle of her chest to her hip, its length gummy with dried blood. Her face was as flat as an iron, her eyes gleaming gold in her noseless, lipless face.
"I know you," she said, her voice low and sibilant. "You were at the ceremony."
"Yes I was."
"Why did you come back?"
"I wanted to get through the door."
"So did we all," she said, leaning in Harry's direction. Her eyes shone and fluttered eerily, as if she were reading his marrow. "You're not one of us," she said.