Manchester House (25 page)

“Lars!” Night yelled, holding out his hands.

By the same mysterious reasons as before, the deaf man seemed to sense his master’s call and his needs. Reaching into Night’s conjure kit the deaf man produced a pair of funny goggles, placing them into Night’s callused hand.

“Night goggles?” Holzer asked.

Night turned, giving his young friend’s curiosity a friendly nod. “Something like that. Yes, my friend.”

Night put on the goggles.

A Tibetan monk he had met in China gave the goggles to him during the revolution that nation had in the fifties. They were made from a stone which, it was said, fell to earth from “the tears of God.” Night had discovered long ago that the goggles saw what mortal eyes could not-they had saved his ass more than once.

“Oh my!” Night said, adjusting the focus of the lenses.

Manchester House was indeed aware of their attempt to get to the haunt’s heart. Manipulating the air, Night could see several invisible tentacles arching from wall to wall, creating a sort of psychic spider web in the entire entrance to the basement. So thick were these invisible strings of energy, they seemed to make the very air dense and more difficult to pass through. In all his life, this was a unique thing for an experienced warrior of the supernatural.

“What do you see, Ingrid?” Holzer was heard asking.

Night turned, looking at Holzer. With his goggles on, Night looked like an alien bug of some kind. He was clearly excited.

“Jonathon, the Lancelot-Pool ley line is real! There is proof of the energy coming from as well as stopping at this site.”

“Proof?” Holzer asked.

“Proof!” Night confirmed. “The energy seeping up from this foundation is amazing. Quite extraordinary, if I do say so!”

Night turned back, motioning with his hands to have everyone follow him.

The energy rods seemed to stop their attack once Night had made everyone aware of them. Kind of like the old superstition of saying “Boo!” to help alleviate one’s fears on a cold autumn night.

The rustling of plastic started to attack everyone’s ears.

“Here comes the plastic sound,” Sinclair said, his voice clearly frightened.

The mood of the basement was dark. Upon descending, they should have ventured down a seven-foot decline, fourteen stairs, and two concrete steps, onto a cobblestone foundation.

What they found wasn’t on the blueprints.

Night took off his goggles. He rubbed his eyes.

“Dear God!”

* * *

Holzer, looking up from his EMF reader which he didn’t like as much as the EMR detector-less reliable around electrical wiring-realized that the line had stopped. He too was feeling uneasy. He had counted thirty-eight steps to the bottom of the stairs.

“Professor?” Teresa asked, placing her shaking hand on his shoulder. “Why have we stopped?”

Holzer looked up at what Night was marveling at and he too was at a loss for words.

The entire foundation of Manchester House had changed, grown, and broken free from its normal time and space. Where there had once been a simple natural stone foundation, four walls and a furnace basement, there was now an endless space that seemed to stretch out as far as the eyes of the SOURCE team could see.

Holzer had once investigated a haunting on board a famous naval aircraft carrier and had befriended a retired Commander. It was during this friendship that Holzer learned that the average eye scan could pick up ten miles of the earth’s circumference.

Holzer believed that he was seeing at least that much in mileage below the mansion-which, according to science, was impossible.

“What is all this, Ingrid?” Holzer asked.

Night looked down at his trusted servant, Lars.

Lars had seen much in his life, some of it even beyond Night’s comprehension. What Night was seeing reflected back up into his own eyes was fear in Lars’.

“Jonathon, I do not know.”

Holzer dropped his EMF reader. It spiked as high as the detector would allow.

Ingrid Night swallowed a nervous gulp as he tried his best to hold a poker face. He was scared and there was no way around that fact. The wondrous labyrinth that he and his friend had run into, which had once been the basement of Manchester House, was more than he was mentally ready for.

The hanging plastic tarps, which seemed to hold some kind of importance in all of this, were stretched out by the millions, spanning across both time and space, taking on a maze-like structure. Night could only compare what he saw to the inside of a giant nautilus shell.

Purplish skies greeted the entire SOURCE team where there had once been boards from the overhanging floors. They could all feel a healthy wind spanning across the entire underground world. And they all seemed to realize that they were being watched.

“Jonathon,” Night said. He waited for his friend to join him.

“Yes?”

“Look up toward the entrance to the basement and tell me what you see.”

Holzer gazed back and was surprised to see that the staircase they had traveled down was no longer visible. However, hanging in the air above them, at least a hundred feet off the ground, floating, teasing, was the halfway open door to Manchester House. Holzer could clearly see the inside of the mansion.

Something was moving inside the house.

Police officers!

“We can’t leave, Ingrid,” Holzer said. “We’re trapped.”

“Not trapped. Kept where we can be controlled.”

“Ingrid, I saw police officers in the mansion.”

“Perhaps we have been gone a very long time.” Night gave his young friend a horrid look, one that did not produce much positive reaction from Holzer.

“We’ve only been down here a few minutes.”

“By our reckoning, Jonathon,” Night stated. “By our reckoning.”

Holzer shook his head.

“I want to leave this house, Ingrid. I have had enough.”

Night patted Holzer on the shoulder.

“Then we need to win.”

“Then win.”

Night placed his hand out for Lars to see. The deaf man again seemed to read what the tall man in black needed to proceed. Night’s face lost all emotion. All he could think about was the task at hand.

A silver Star of David was resting in Night’s hand.

He raised it above the small group of people with him and waited.

Nothing happened.

“Oh-oh!” Night said, looking at Lars with worry.

“Oh-oh?” Holzer repeated. “What do you mean by that, Ingrid?”

The winds started to grow stronger and the sky above them turned a little darker. If they all stared hard, they could barely define the outlines of the overhanging boards of the mansion’s basement. Although the icon Night had produced did not seem to have the effect hoped for, it was producing some results.

The ground started to shake.

Spirits of all types, shapes, and sizes began to fling themselves upon the members of the SOURCE team. Before any of them realized it, they were covered with corpses. Clawing, begging, and screaming for salvation.

“Ingrid, get us out of here!” Holzer screamed. The professor was busy taking a loose notebook and hitting a headless corpse of a Native American who was frantically searching for her head. The unfortunate spirit’s neck oozed with thick black blood. The smell was enough to have caused a battle-educated soldier to get sick in his helmet.

“This is only round one, Jonathon,” Night reassured.

Lars opened up Night’s kit and produced another crossbow weapon. This time Lars was going to join his master in the fight. The deaf man put on a pair of goggles not unlike Night’s, although more scientific-more normal.

“The creature seems to be growing in strength, Jonathon,” Night explained, motioning Lars to join him. Both men stood back to back. Each was scanning the area in all directions.

“Creature?” the SOURCE team members all said in unison.

“There is a creature at the heart of this maze,” Night explained, cocking back the firing trigger of his crossbow.

Holzer stepped forward, almost frantic. “Ingrid! No one said anything about a creature. What are we talking about here?”

“The energy of Manchester House has gathered so much power that it is taking on consciousness itself. It wants to become.”

“And that is the thing that wants to enter our world?”

“Precisely.”

“Okay,” Holzer said, “let’s kill it.”

The SOURCE team looked at Holzer as if he were crazy. It had always been Holzer’s point to explore, study, and create. Never once had anyone ever heard the wise professor say destroy.

“Jonathon, we have enough data so far to keep us occupied for a lifetime,” Miranda softly protested. “We cannot turn our backs on what we’re afraid of. Can we?”

“Miranda, do you want this thing free in our world?” Holzer asked, his hands motioning toward the horror around them.

Miranda couldn’t speak. She only shook her head. Returning to her work, gathering up all the information that she could, she avoided eye contact with Holzer. She was angry and the college professor knew it. It would take time for her anger to subside, but in the end Holzer knew that she would forgive him.

Holzer turned to Night, who was staring at him, studying.

“Something to say?” Holzer barked almost rudely.

“No,” Night replied softly. Taking in a deep breath and filling his face with conviction, Night turned his attention toward Lars. “Lars!”

The deaf man turned to face his master.

Using his hands, motioning them in the air, Night prepared his friend and manservant for battle. Reading Night’s hand gestures, Lars was all attention. Finally Night resumed his position and Lars meekly followed.

Both aimed their crossbows up at different points in space.

Both fired.

The two streams of blessed oil shot out of their weapons and traveled about half a block before landing, hitting, and causing the area in which they landed to bubble and steam with great violence. A tremble could be felt in the ground beneath the SOURCE team members’ feet as the oil sank into the ground. Color seemed to leave the area in which the oil had been placed, and more than a few spirits seemed to freeze like statues.

“What’s going on there?” Holzer had been hiding behind a wall of monitors Miranda had managed to set up, bringing them down with her in the basement before all went strange. Holzer had to thank her later for her ingenuity.

Night looked up from his left shoulder over at the three frozen spirits that had reacted so violently towards Lars’ attack. “It is their salvation, Jonathon. That is all.”

The three spirits were all men ranging from thirteen to their late sixties. One was dressed in a World War II uniform and appeared to have been one of those unfortunate hitchhikers who had taken the wrong road, winding up at Manchester House. Night had a weakness for WWII GIs-after all, they saved him from the grips of hell. Night closed his eyes, holding back tears, waiting for the final effect of the oil to take hold.

The spirits began to quake, yelling at the top of their spiritual voices. Their skin started to crack and turn to dust. In the blink of an eye, all the frozen forms had crumbled down to three piles of white dust. A wind blew by, scattering them all into the abyss. Free forevermore.

“Are they dead?” Teresa asked.

“No,” Night assured. “They have found what they were looking for.”

“Which is?” Miranda inquired.

Night could hear the woman working on a notebook computer, adding facts to the observations she had just seen. He turned, wondering how the woman had managed to bring down so much equipment in such a short time and surmised that half of it had to have been down in the basement in the first place.

“Rest, Mrs. Wingate,” Night said. “They have now the time to rest.”

“You destroyed their souls,” Teresa barked angrily.

Night’s eyes turned sad. He shook his head with regret. “It was the only way.”

Holzer walked over to Teresa, who seemed to have felt the agony Night’s attack had caused the three unfortunate spirits. The professor took the crying woman in his arms, giving Night an understanding glance. Night in turn avoided the scene by returning to his work.

“Mr. Sinclair,” Night barked.

The cameraman had been cleaning the lens on his camera, doing his best to focus his mind at the job he was on. Being back in the dimensional void was not a curiosity to him-he was reminded of his first encounter. Perhaps that was why he was more cautious than terrified.

“Yes sir,” Sinclair said, springing to Night’s side.

“How many pictures do you have left?”

“Two.”

Night looked down at the tiny camera, inspecting it. “Does that include a flash?”

“Ever know a professional cameraman not to have one?” Sinclair returned Night’s question with a question. “In any case, even though I hate these little disposable cameras, I never buy one without a flash.”

Night shook his head with understanding. “As you have noticed, we are in the void into which you first ventured the other day. It is very dark in here. No light.” Night paused, studying Sinclair’s reactions. “Do you see where I’m going with this, Mr. Sinclair?”

Sinclair at first was busy putting his camera back on his belt, hanging from a piece of string. Then the cameraman’s eyes widened with understanding. “The flash!”

“Exactly.” Night chuckled. “You are not that dumb after all.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I still do not like you,” Night reminded the cameraman. He slowly walked away, leaving Sinclair alone with his thoughts.

“Guy talks like my editor,” Sinclair protested, returning to his friends.

Night pulled down his goggles, readjusting them, studying the plastic maze that lay out in front of him and his friends. The attack he and Lars had just accomplished seemed to get rid of most of the spirits guarding the entrance to the maze, but other than that very little damage was done-besides the return of the basement’s rafters to the purplish sky.

“Hmm,” Night said, adjusting the focus closer toward the maze.

It appeared that Night’s attempt to stop the creature had caused it in turn to only grow stronger. Whatever was at the heart of the giant maze, it was a great power. Night only hoped that it was a demon. Demons he could kill.