The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) (22 page)

She’d just admired how easy it all seemed and kind of tuned out the details when now she wished to hell she’d been scribbling notes as fast as she could. How the fuck was she going to figure out how to cross over and find him, them, little Skeezix as well? They didn’t even have a blanket between them. She almost laughed, as though everything would be fine if they just had a nice wool blanket and a Hershey bar. She could not give in to despair, she would just tackle this the way she would any other problem, that’s all.

She would study up, she would figure it out. Matthew said the information you needed was always there, it was just a matter of freeing up the mind to make the right connections. She would pray for guidance, if that’s what it took, something as close to prayer as she knew how to do. It certainly was not helping that she also missed Matthew so physically, right now, wishing she was in his arms, wishing she could smell his hair, wishing he was inside her.

She shuddered again. And then, alone in their bedroom, in spite of her best efforts, Chantal cried. She may even have wailed a few times, her chest wracked with giant sobs, though she would certainly have denied it later.

P
ART
F
OUR

“It is only the conceit of the scientific and technological postindustrial societies that allows us to even propound some of the questions that we take to be so important. For instance, the question of contact with extraterrestrials is a kind of red herring premised upon a number of assumptions that a momen
t’s
reflection will show are completely false. To search expectantly for a radio signal from an extraterrestrial source is probably as culture-bound a presumption as to search the galaxy for a good Italian restaurant. And yet, this has been chosen as the avenue by which it is assumed contact is likely to occur. Meanwhile, there are people all over the world — psychics, shamans, mystics, schizophrenics — whose heads are filled with information, but it has been ruled a priori irrelevant, incoherent, or mad. Only that which is validated through consensus via certain sanctioned instrumentalities will be accepted as a signal. The problem is that we are actually so inundated by these signals — these other dimensions — that there is great deal of noise in the circuit.”

Terence McKenna, talk given at the Lilly/Goswami Conference on Consciousness and Quantum Physics, Esalen Institute, December, 1983.

“How conscious an organism is of the world which surrounds it may be fundamentally related to the charge transfer capacity of the endogenous DNA and RNA intercalators which the organism has evolved. Serotonin may be one of many possible resonate transmitters of the information hologram that is stored in DNA. Harmine, we suggest, may be another, and perhaps more efficient, transmitter.… The shift of emphasis from serotonin pathways to beta-carboline
and methylated tryptamine pathways is, we speculate, the molecular evolutionary event that is responsible for the intimations of transfiguration that have recently characterized mass consciousness. It is easy to see that the actualization of a functioning system of the type described, when coupled with a controlling intellect, would be, in effect, a hyperdimensionally mobile cybernetic entity. It would be the practical equivalent of a transdimensional vehicle.… It would be comparable to a flying saucer that moved in time and space, not in any conventional sense but rather one which IS all time and space, warped through a higher topology into the boundaries of conventional space-time.”

McKenna & McKenna, “The Invisible Landscape,” pg. 97

“One of the things we were saying in ‘The Invisible Landscape’ is that there are avenues of understanding in the human body that have not been followed because of epistemological bias; for instance, using voice to effect physiological change in one’s own nervous system. This sounds on one level preposterous, but … chanting and singing are world-wide shamanic practices. The shamanic singers navigate through a space with which we have lost touch as a society.”

Terence McKenna, interview with Will Noffke in the winter 1989 issue of “Revision,” from the book “The Archaic Revival.”

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

It was probably good Chantal had things to do. Suddenly the clock said half the workday morning was gone. She left the old 19th Century house by the kitchen door to the side yard, not wanting anyone in the store to see her in her present condition. She forced herself to trudge downtown at a healthy pace, drying her eyes and making mental lists of what she’d have to accomplish in the next … couple of days? Yes, it might take her that long. “To move quickly without hurrying,” someone had once said. Possibly Bill Hickock.

First off, if she crossed over, where would she do that? Crossing over from here on College Hill would leave her to hike 20, 25 miles south to the Fifth Dimension equivalent of Quonset Point through unknown terrain and potentially unfriendly fauna, which apparently was exactly where the problem arose for the two button men who’d quantum jumped out of the courthouse after whacking Judge Crustio and had not been seen since. Given that Matthew and Skeezix had jumped from Worthy’s facility down in North Kingstown — Quonset Point — she’d want to take off from approximately the same starting point.

Her mind was whirring fast enough that she almost walked past the entrance to the lawyer’s building. She took the elevator, it whooshed upward with impressive speed. She stopped at the bathroom down the hall to splash some water on her face, strode in and announced she was there to pick up a few letters the man had been holding for her and Mr. Hunter. She’d expected some kind of cross-examination about Matthew’s absence, but it went well, all routine, she smiled and said Matthew was fine, sent his regards, which was kind of half-true, pretty much. It wasn’t like the Cthulhians were
holding him at gunpoint or anything, and what she’d told Cory was perfectly true — a bunch of chest-pounding cops raiding the facility down at Quonset Point and proving they were in charge by giving everyone the third degree while wrapping everything in yellow police tape would certainly not help her find and recover Matthew or the Skeezer at this point.

Then it was back up the hill, lovely summer day, the exercise helping to clear her head, the “to-be-mailed-in-the-event” letters tucked safely away in her purse. She walked in the front door of the bookstore, the little bell on the door rang merrily, she waved a greeting to Marian, waited for her to finish ringing up their sole current customer, which left only Les and Marian in the store with her. Then she spoke to Les in a tone that had a little more ice in it than business-as-usual:

“Les, would you do me a favor and lock the door and put up the ‘Back in 10 minutes’ sign?”

“Sure, Chantal, no problem.”

She had their attention. Not a time for chit-chat. “You know Captain Jack took Matthew and Skeezix and me down to Quonset Point last night, that’s where Matthew figured Worthy Annesley had set up the resonator he found in the attic from the Lovecraft story, ‘From Beyond.’”

“Yes,” Les said.

“We found it, and him. Worthy and his team have made some improvements, designed a regeneration circuit that allows them not just to see into the next dimension, but to actually open a vortex, to cross over and come back.”

“The Crustio assassination,” Les figured.

“Almost for sure. But it sounds like the two button men who took out the judge and then escaped into Dimension Six never made it back. Last night, Worthy tried to open another vortex to send in a team to find them and bring them out. Something went wrong. The equipment went haywire. They opened a vortex, alright, but then they couldn’t shut it down. Somebody had to get to the main breaker
and throw it, even though the vortex kept getting bigger, and by that time the breaker box was on the other side of the, uh, the threshold. So, needless to say, while a dozen of their guys in white shirts and pocket protectors who should have been taking care of business stood around with their thumbs up their asses, Matthew and Skeezix ran in and did it, thank God, ’cause otherwise by this time we’d all probably be living in Jurassic Park.”

“It’s bad news, isn’t it?” Marian asked.

“Matthew and Skeezix are gone.”

“You mean they’re …?” Marian couldn’t say it.

“Not dead. At least we don’t know they’re dead, so I sure as hell am not going to assume that. Worthy assures me he’s gotten people through these vortexes and back again, safe and sound, plenty of times. Matthew and Skeezix were just on the other side when the thing shut down, that’s all. They’re in that other dimension, as far as we know. They’re not … here. Worthy says the air and the water are fine over there, which is the main thing, although I doubt there’s anyplace to get a nice mushroom pizza.”

“So he just has to open this vortex again and bring them back?” Marian asked.

“Yeah. Only there was some damage to the equipment. So they might not be able to accomplish that for a while. Needless to say, I’d appreciate it if none of this goes any further. Press and police descending on Worthy’s operation wouldn’t exactly help our chances, at this point.”

“Of course,” said Marian.

“How long?” asked Les.

“I don’t know,” Chantal said, her voice finally breaking a little. “They say days, but I don’t think they really know, either.”

Marian stood up, hesitated a moment, then took Chantal in her arms. “Oh, honey,” she said.

“So this means I’m gonna be a little distracted here for the next few days, I’m afraid.” Chantal didn’t want to push Marian away, though it felt kind of awkward. Chantal was not a naturally huggy
type of person. She patted Marian on the back, which was probably wrong. What the heck were you supposed to do, stick your tongue in their ear? “Unless they move a lot faster than I’m expecting, I may have to go in myself, and try to bring them out.”

“I thought you couldn’t do that without their new … regeneration circuit,” Les frowned.

“I’ve got one on order.”

“They’ve got those at Radio Shack, now?” he asked.

“No,” she said, laughing a little, which did at least break the tension, as she backed away from Marian and pulled out a Kleenex. “Not at Radio Shack. Cory, the guy who looked at that homing beacon thing for us? He’s tied up with Worthy and the Cthulhians, he’s going to get me the equipment I need.” Of course, Chantal was pretty sure Cory was actually still taking orders from someone else, someone in a fancy white suit, but there was no sense blabbing about things no one else needed to know.

* * *

Chantal found Darcie in the greenhouses, as usual. Most of the doors were locked, but a departing graduate student finally held one open for her, giving her a hopeful smile and then lingering an extra few seconds to check out her butt after she’d walked by.

“Hi, Darcie. Glad I found you, summer vacation and all.”

“The plants always need taking care of. We do stagger some vacation time. How’s Matthew?”

“That’s what I’m here about.”

“Trouble?” Darcie looked serious, which bought out the vertical lines alongside her mouth, made her look a little older. A petite little number, all green eyes and freckles and auburn bangs and elfin smiles, she could usually pass for a teen-ager. Chantal knew from personal experience that wasn’t always a blessing. Women couldn’t do what small men often did — grow a beard so people would stop calling them “sonny” and asking why they weren’t in school.

“Matthew has crossed into the sixth dimension and I’m going to have to go in and bring him back.”

“You can’t wake him up?”

“No, I don’t mean he’s gone that way. I mean ‘gone.’ Worthy Annesley found his great-uncle’s resonator and they’ve got it working. With the new regeneration amplifier they’ve developed, they can actually open a vortex and cross over. Like, for real. Physically.”

“And Matthew’s working with them? He’s actually a part of that?”

“No way. Matthew was adamant that sending people through without any preparation, people who’ve never followed the narrow road, who have no experience with the entheogens, no knowledge of the doorways, is crazy.”

“Well, good. That’s just what I would have expected from Matthew. These people have no idea what they’re messing with. So how did he end up … on the other side?”

Chantal quickly brought Darcie up to date. Darcie grasped the problem, but allowed as how she’d have to give the solution a little thought.

“The first time we met I was very jealous of you,” Chantal took the opportunity to admit, figuring they should be square with each other.

“Of me? Why?”

“You and Matthew had such an easy way of communicating. It was obvious there was some history between you.”

“That was a long time ago, Chantal.”

Chantal managed to not ask “Like, when you were in elementary school?”

“I’m the one who should be jealous,” Darcie continued. “You obviously have what he’s looking for. He speaks very highly of you, says you’re the most promising apprentice he’s ever seen.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I suspect he just likes my ass.”

“That, too.” They laughed.

“The way the entheogens interact with the neural receptor sites,” Chantal started, a little hesitantly, after a pause, “the reaction that the Annesley resonator is simulating, or enhancing? I don’t know the neurochemistry the way Matthew does, but I figure I need a plant helper that’ll contribute to the effect of that tone on the pineal. Is it possible to use ayahuasca and the
Stropharia
together?”

“Of course. That was the McKennas’ original experiment at La Chorrera. They figured the vocalization of the harmonics of the harmine-DNA resonance frequency would cancel out the double wave form, dropping the electrical resistance to zero and causing the neurons to become superconductive, allowing access to the genetically coded memories.” Darcie evidently expected Chantal to be following along with this like she was talking about how to make a yogurt smoothie.

“Oh-kayyy.”

“Which would emerge on the standing wave like holograms. Both the tryptamines and the harmines are derived from tryptophan, the effects are related, so that would be a wonderful combination to try. Unfortunately, we’re very constrained in what’s available now, Chantal, in what I can lay hands on.”