There was a tinny crackle of static and then Jason’s voice. The electromagnetic shielding around the vault’s speakerbox only enhanced the sense that my grandson’s voice was coming up from a very deep well or some shadowed corner of a distant moon. Given the circumstances, I don’t know those wouldn’t be preferable options.
“Are you all right, Jason? Be honest.” I tried to keep the worry out of my voice, but knew I only partially succeeded. Jason’s first words when he activated the speaker outside the vault had been “The Gravekeeper is out. I’m going with him.” Given that, I considered anything short of stark terror and mindless panic a feat of restraint.
“Yeah, I’m okay. It will be okay. He thinks I know things that I don’t, so he’s going to take me so he can question me more.”
I felt anger shoving aside my worry. “Torture you, you mean. Try to get inside your head and take you over, perhaps.”
A longer pause and then another crackle. I imagined that Jason’s voice sounded bleaker this time. “He says yeah, so at least he’s being honest. But try not to worry. I’m tough, remember? And whatever he thinks he knows about me, I don’t think he knows much about you at all.”
Jason was smart, very smart in fact, and he knew what he was saying was both valuable information for me and a way of testing the Gravekeeper. Seeing how it would react. We didn’t have long to wait.
A crackle followed by a voice that sounded like that of the man leading the House invasion party. “Why don’t you come on out and I’ll get to know you better?” His tone was light, but I could still feel the anger and violence bristling from every word.
“No, I don’t think so. Why don’t you leave Jason here and take your freedom while you have it? It’s such a lucky break getting freed like that. It seems a shame to waste it.”
If I was right as to who it had taken, that was bad. If that man had enough pull in the House of the Claw to lead a party to capture us, the Gravekeeper would have more leverage and access to resources wherever he went with Jason. It would make them harder to find and harder to get Jason back.
“Oh, I think I’ll be just fine. And me and your grandson go way back. I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t use this chance to catch up. But don’t worry. If I don’t get what I want from him, I’ll be coming back for you.”
What was it talking about? How did it know Jason? I’ve known since we first buried Mark Sullivan that the whole episode troubled Jason just like it did me. Both because of what happened to that poor man and because of the thing that lay nesting in him, waiting, wanting to be set free into the world again. My grandson was right to be scared of it. But I’ve also had a growing sense that Jason’s disquiet went beyond that. His unique intuition regarding the creature that he once described as a sort of strange memory. I’ve waited to push the issue, trying to give him time to either work through it or come to me on his own terms. Now I’ve waited too late. Now he’s being taken by something I don’t understand, much less know how to beat.
But no, that’s not entirely true. I don’t know everything, but I do know some things. I know it isn’t all-powerful or all-knowing. It can be trapped and tricked. It is able to control some people, but apparently not those like myself and Jason that have been touched by a seed, and with some limits based on distance, perception, quantity, or some combination of unknown factors. We know that it seems to jump from person to person, and there seems to be some quality that makes some people more suitable as a long-term host. This is due, at least in part, to the fact that it burns through other bodies it takes quickly, causing an unnatural rotting over time.
This was most likely an unintentional and undesirable side-effect of it being in a sub-optimal body, though the same decay likely happened at a slower rate when in one of its “special hosts”. That would also likely be undesirable, as having to move from body to body elevated its risk of exposure while also consuming significant time and energy as it periodically had to search for a new host. All this was based off of educated guesses and assumptions that its behavior was at least somewhat governed by something akin to human logic, but it did track with the information we had on what it had done in the past. And if that was all correct, then I did know one very important thing about the Gravekeeper.
It was a parasite.
In some ways it matched the behaviors of a helminth, though obviously it had a lot of characteristics that were closer to some form of possession than a tapeworm. Still, much like the monsters we normally dealt with, it relied on taking over a human host. The fact that it was unique and more formidable didn’t change the fact that it seemed to need a human body to survive, or at least to keep from falling into dormancy again. Which gave us a small advantage.
“You sure are quiet in there. No witty comeback or stern threat? Not even any begging for your grandson’s life? You see, Jason? In the end, your grandfather is just a scared old man hiding in a hole. No one is coming to save you. You’re all mine.”
Gritting my teeth, I triggered the speaker. “Not for long, he isn’t. That body of yours? It’ll be dead in 48 hours.”
A pause, and then: “What are you talking about? A bold threat hiding behind a steel door. Come on out and kill me then.”
“Oh, I’ve already killed you.”
Crackle. “I’ll play along. What do you mean?”
This time I didn’t try to hide the grim satisfaction in my voice. “Ten years ago I encountered a creature, what we call outsiders, that had a monstrous form that produced a very potent and unique kind of poison. It was one of the things that made me finally accept that there are some things that science cannot fully explain, or at least are far beyond my ability to understand.”
“The poison was tasteless and odorless. It could be distilled down into a liquid or a gas. And it included components that don’t exist in nature. Things that can be quantified, but not replicated. At least not by most means.”
“I saw the potential utility in this toxin and continued to work on it after the creature that had made it was long gone. I ultimately came to realize that combining the substance back with itself in a particular way not only didn’t consume the substance, it produced more of it. I have no scientific explanation for how this process works, but after years of working with it, I know that it does, and quite reliably. It’s how I’ve kept the air you’re currently breathing flooded with the stuff for the last several months.”
This time the silence was long enough I began to worry he had just left with Jason after assuming it was all a cheap ploy. But then came the crackle returned, followed by the man’s voice. This time deeper and flatter, the voice was somehow more terrible in its weight without the slight façade of human inflection.
“Explain.”
“A few months ago we had a visitor who turned out to not be our friend. I wanted to prevent similar unpleasantness in the future, or at least insure that any enemy of ours didn’t last long past the visit without my mercy. I had already installed the necessary equipment years ago. It was a simple matter to turn it into a self-sufficient cycling system for mixing the poison in with our air down here.” I could feel Janie’s eyes boring into me, but I ignored her. I knew she was worried I was telling the truth, that I was insane and had poisoned her, but she would need to bear with me for a bit longer.
“You’re lying.”
“Oh, I can assure you I’m not. But I’m also not a fool or suicidal. The poison can also be manipulated very easily to produce a cure that immunizes the person from any effects and cures past exposure if received while still asymptomatic. The monster it came from actually had a gland that produced the cure naturally, but it gave me enough guidance that I was able to sort things out from there. The three of us? All innoculated, though I must apologize to my two friends for not telling them this antidote was in one of the pokes and prods I’ve given them in the past. My hope was it would always be an unnecessary failsafe and I didn’t want to cause them needless worry.”
“But you? You and any of your cohorts you’ve left alive out there? Well, that’s an entirely different matter.”
When it spoke this time, I could almost hear fear in its voice. “I may not be able to control your grandson, but I can tell by his reactions that he believes what you’ve said. So I will too, for the moment. What does this magic poison do?”
I cleared my throat. “I never said it was magic, just inexplicable. But as for what it does…For thirty-six hours you have no symptoms at all. Between thirty-six and thirty-eight hours you have extreme fatigue, chills, sweating, dizziness, physical weakness, pallor, abdominal cramping and joint pain. Almost like a sudden and terrible flu. And at thirty-nine hours and twelve minutes, almost down to the second from first exposure, you suffer what can best be described as simultaneous catastrophic cell death across all systems of the body.” I found myself smiling slightly. “I know you’re good at keeping your hosts alive, but I doubt you’re going to have much luck with that.”
I did turn now to look at Janie. She looked horrified. The only question was if it was merely because of what I had said, or because of the implication that it raised. But it was Jason that asked the question I was dreading.
Crackle. “So how do you know all this? Who did you experiment on to find out it takes thirty-nine hours and whatever for someone to die from this shit?”
I sighed. “I wasn’t honest with you about the number of times I’ve encountered the House of the Claw. Over the years I have procured a known member here and there, hoping to get information and to have a more ethical testbed for certain theories. Rest assured, it was rare that I did it, and I always made sure they were, in fact, a dangerous member of the House and not just some misguided soul on the fringes of the cult.”
Jason again, his tone angrier than before. “So that makes it okay? You just snatch people up and experiment on them? What about this little girl out here? Is she going to die too?”
“Yes she is, unless that thing out there accepts my offer. I’ll provide the antidote for him and the girl if he leaves here now and leaves everyone, including the girl and you, behind and unharmed. Or he can refuse, and in less than two days he’ll be down to a rock sitting in a pile of liquified remains.”
Gravekeeper now, his voice still strained, but more full of his old cheerful malice. “You’re a hard man, gramps. If you’re telling the truth. Either way, thanks but no thanks. Thirty-eight hours is a tight window, but I think I can make it work.”
I triggered the intercom again, my hand trembling with both fear and rage. “This is not a bluff, you son-of-a-bitch. You’re going to die without my help.”
The thing uttered a harsh laugh that made the intercom pop with complaint. “Doubtful. But what you should be more worried about is what I’m going to do to your boy in the time I have left.” There was a pause and then “Girl, take us back.”
I called out again over the intercom, but it was no use. I knew they were gone. I went to the wall next to the door and opened a small panel that let me unlock the vault from the inside. Unlike the method of locking it from inside, this needed to be well-hidden, but I made a point of showing it to Janie as I performed the combination to release the door. It was an attempt at regaining some of her trust, but it was hard to tell if it was able to penetrate the shroud of fear and worry that was wound tightly around the girl.
I felt a wave of sadness for her. She had already lost so much, and because of me she was losing more. Her and Jason had seemed to be on the way to becoming good friends in the few weeks she had been with us, and I treasured that for both of them. She was a good person, and as I pushed open the door to reveal they were already gone, I heard her let out a short moan of despair for Jason and perhaps the little girl as well. We hadn’t told her much about the Gravekeeper, but she knew enough to know how much danger they were really in.
But when I turned back to look at her, she met my eyes with a fierce determination that impressed me. I couldn’t forget that all she had been through, all she had done, had made her into a very formidable woman before she ever crossed my path this second time. It gave me hope that I could still rely on her for what came next.
“Patrick, what are we going to do?”
I rubbed my mouth thoughtfully. I could try to soften it here. Ease her into the harsh realities of what I was about to undertake. But if I did that, not only was it dishonest, but it also increased the risk she might buckle at an inopportune time as she came to appreciate the magnitude of our actions. No, it was better to just be truthful from the start and see if she had the stomach for it.
“We’re going to get Jason back and we’re going to stop the thing that has him. Stop it for good.”
She nodded, but was frowning. “But how can we stop it? It can hop between people, right? What’s to stop it from just jumping to someone that isn’t poisoned or keep hopping until we can’t find it again?”
I wanted to look away, but I didn’t. I needed to see how she took it. If she could really be of use. “It won’t be able to jump to another body if there aren’t any around. I’m assuming it will surround itself with minions—cult members, guards, what have you—while it interrogates Jason. But whether its ten or ten thousand, it doesn’t matter.”
Janie already knew the answer, but she asked anyway. “Why doesn’t it matter?”
The next words should have been the hardest, but I found they were the easiest. This would have shamed some distant past version of myself, but that realization didn’t trouble me. Young Patrick had been a good but foolish man who had failed to understand the hard truths of the world. It had cost him the love of his life, and the bitterness of that loss had cost him his family for so many years since. But in recent months I had come to understand a great deal.
The value of love and family and hope. The necessity of risking loss to gain joy and fulfillment. And the true importance of the work that we do. We were going to get Jason back, yes, but we were also going to kill the monster that took him. It and anyone who tried to stand in our way.
“Because we’re going to kill them. We’re going to kill them all.”
---
Credits
Comments