The last thing Lori wanted was to have more strangers in her apartment tonight – especially if any of them happened to have red-painted pinky nails.
“Okay,” she said.
Rauch held her gaze a moment longer, and there was something in his eyes that she couldn’t name, but which disturbed her greatly. A coldness, almost a loathing, as if the very sight of her offended him on some deep level. Then it was gone, and he turned, opened the door, and stepped out into the hall. He didn’t close the door, and McGuire made no move to close it for him.
Lori was shaken by Rauch’s glare, and she wanted – no, needed – to get away from McGuire and from Larry, too. She needed a few minutes by herself.
“I need to use the bathroom,” she said. “There’s one in the hall. I can use it instead of the one in my bedroom.”
“No problem,” McGuire said. She smiled then, and Lori tried to gauge whether there was anything sinister in that smile. It seemed genuine, but how could she be sure?
She rose from the couch without returning McGuire’s smile. Larry looked concerned, so much so that she expected him to offer to escort her to the bathroom. But he said nothing, and Lori walked down the hall by herself. When she reached the bathroom, she turned on the light, stepped inside, then closed and locked the door behind her.
She took in a shuddering breath and let it out. The madness that she’d encountered at FoodSaver had followed her home – not just in the form of the shadow creatures, but also in the form of Officer ‘Gill-Neck’ Rauch. If one of them was a cop, who could she turn to for—
Her thoughts slammed to a halt as something registered on her consciousness. She turned toward the mirror over the sink and saw there were letters on the glass, written with a substance she couldn’t identify. It was thick and greenish-gray, like snot, and it smelled like rotting vegetable matter. She held her breath as she read the words.
You know what you did. Confess and atone – or suffer. It was signed, The Cabal.
A small whimper escaped her throat, and she began to tremble.
Chapter Four
Lori found herself once more walking through a torchlit corridor. It took her a moment to realize that she was back in the Vermilion Tower, following the crimson-robed eyeless man who’d brought her here. She frowned. She’d been somewhere else, hadn’t she? Where – her mind cleared and she remembered the shadow creatures breaking into her apartment, remembered the police coming to investigate after she called nine-one-one. She especially remembered Officer Rauch and his highly disturbing neck gills. She remembered seeing a message written on her bathroom mirror, one she thought Rauch had left during the time he’d been away from the rest of them, checking her place out. She’d considered calling for Larry and Officer McGuire to come look at the message, but if Rauch denied writing it – which of course he would – she feared they’d think that she wrote it, and she’d seem even crazier to them than she already did. She’d cleaned the disgusting substance the message had been written in, wiped it off the mirror’s surface using a hand towel and then used toilet tissue to get off the remaining residue. She’d tossed both the towel and the TP into the small plastic trash receptacle next to the toilet and then returned to the living room without peeing. If either Larry or McGuire noticed she hadn’t actually used the bathroom while she’d been in there, neither said anything about it.
The crime scene tech – a gawky guy in his late twenties – arrived to do his thing soon after that. Lori had been relieved to see his left pinky nail hadn’t been painted. By the time he finished and left with the two officers, it was almost four o’clock in the morning. She was surprised to discover it was so late. She’d completely lost track of time. Larry closed the patio door, although he couldn’t lock it, of course, then returned to the couch, sat, and held her. She didn’t think she’d fall asleep, was way too wired, but she remembered feeling drowsy and closing her eyes after only a few minutes.
And now she was here, in the Vermilion Tower once more. It was weird. She couldn’t remember ever having a multipart dream like this, one that picked up exactly where it had left off. She didn’t want to consider the possibility that this wasn’t a dream, that it was some kind of…what? Alternate reality? If sure felt real. Cold stone beneath her bare feet, a damp chill on her skin…. She still wore the flimsy, see-through gown with no underwear beneath, and she once more crossed her arms over her chest. Modesty seemed foolish here, but it offered her some small measure of control, and she’d take what she could get.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
The eyeless man – who she was starting to think of as the Driver – didn’t stop walking or look back at her as he answered.
“To the Chamber of Revelation.”
The words meant nothing to Lori, and since she couldn’t see any other option at the moment, she continued following the Driver. It seemed they walked for a long time, but eventually the corridor ended at a pair of large doors fashioned from some nightblack wood that Lori couldn’t identify. Two thick metal rings were bolted to the wood – one for each door – and the Driver took hold of the ring on the right and pulled. She expected the door’s hinges to give loud creaking groans of protest, but they were silent, and the Driver easily opened the massive door as if it weighed nothing more than a papier-mâché prop. He walked in first, not looking back to see if she would accompany him or take this opportunity to make a break for it. She was tempted to do the latter, but she thought once more of the Nightway, of the vast dark plain it cut through, and of the unseen things that might dwell there. Running off now could very well be a form of suicide, and while dying might be preferable to what the Driver and his friends – the Cabal, if she could trust the word Officer Ralph Rauch had written in gray-green goo on her bathroom mirror – would do to her, she wasn’t ready to kill herself just yet. She knew the old superstition that if you died in a dream, you died in real life too, and while she’d always thought the idea was nonsense, it didn’t seem so to her now. Not at all.
She followed the Driver through the open doorway.
Whatever this place was, it was dark inside. The only light here was the flickering of torchlight coming from the hallway outside, and that was only enough for Lori to see the Driver’s red-robed shape walking ahead of her. It was cold in here, so much so that if there’d been enough light, she was certain she’d see her breath mist in the frigid air. She hugged herself tighter, more concerned about warming herself than concealing her breasts now, but the action didn’t help. She began shivering, and she was unable to make herself stop.
She had the impression that there was a large space around them, but she wasn’t sure why she thought this. She could hear no sounds beyond her own breathing, but she nevertheless felt the pressure of being surrounded by a great deal of nothing. Was this the reason she’d been brought here? Was this dark place to be her prison, punishment for whatever crime the Cabal thought she had committed?
A small red pinpoint of light glowed to life in front of her face, and she stopped walking to avoid colliding with it. It became brighter as she examined it, and as soon as she was able to make out the features of the thing that was giving off the faint illumination. She expected it to be some kind of insect, like a firefly, but one whose abdomen glowed red instead of greenish yellow. But no bug lay at the heart of this crimson glow. Instead it was a tiny humanoid figure, something like an infant curled into a fetal position. Its body was distorted, asymmetrical, arms and legs different lengths and thicknesses, features stretched out of true, flesh covered with tumorous growths. The small humanoid’s eyes were huge in proportion to the rest of its deformed body, and they were wide open and blazed with baleful red light, which accounted for the crimson glow surrounding it. How it floated in the air, she had no idea. It possessed no wings, and there was no sign that anything artificial held it aloft. No strings, no wire. The tiny thing’s body didn’t move – arms and legs remained motionless, fingers and toes didn’t twitch or wiggle. And there was no way to tell if the creature’s eyes were focused on her because of how they were glowing, or if it could see at all, for that matter. But she had the impression that it saw her just fine, and for some reason it didn’t like what it saw. She could feel hatred radiating from it, rolling off in waves like heat from a blazing fire.
More crimson pinpoints of light glowed to life around her, at their core other miniature infants, all deformed in various ways, eyes all shining red.
Firebabies, she thought, and the name seemed fitting. They were ugly and beautiful in equal measure, and she was both fascinated and repelled by them. She wondered if there was a word for this mix of emotions. If so, she didn’t know it.
At first there were only a few dozen, but more appeared, hundreds, thousands, maybe millions. They floated toward each other, packed tight together, and formed a single mass shaped roughly like a sphere. They rose into the air slowly, and their combined light illuminated the area around Lori in crimson. She was able to make out her surroundings, and she saw that her initial impression had been correct. She stood in a large open area like an auditorium, except instead of rows of seats surrounding her, there was an upward curving spiral ledge that circled around the chamber’s wall.
I’m within the horn’s inner core, she thought.
And she wasn’t alone.
The Driver was there with her, although he’d continued walking as the firebabies appeared. Now he stood next to the far wall opposite her. He had turned around and faced her, his red-washed features devoid of any emotion. He was far from the only robed figure in attendance, however. Others stood on the spiral ledge, shoulder to shoulder, all facing her. Their numbers began at floor level and continued upward, one after the other, around and around, going on so far that the mass of firebabies – which now hovered directly above Lori – couldn’t illuminate them all. The firebabies’ eyelight was more like that of smoldering red coals than a blazing inferno, and because of this, she couldn’t clearly make out the faces of the robed figures, even those close to ground level. But the shapes of their bodies varied widely, some looking perfectly human, others looking like…something else. Things whose limbs were too long, too short, too numerous, or more like animal or insect appendages. Their faces – what she could see of them in this light – were similarly twisted and alien. And while she couldn’t see it, she felt confident that all of the red-robed figures had one feature in common – a crimson-painted pinky nail on their left hand. She wondered if the goat-eyed woman was among those assembled here. The gill-necked police officer, too. She didn’t spot them, but she thought they might be here, watching her with the same cold, silent scrutiny as the others.
She heard a voice then, or rather a multitude of voices, speaking in unison.
“Confess.”
The word reverberated throughout the chamber, and Lori winced at the accusatory anger behind it.
They’re speaking through the firebabies, she thought. She knew what word was next.
“Atone.”
Louder this time, angrier. The sound hurt her ears, the pain like that of a seriously bad ear infection. She clapped her hands over her ears to protect them, but the sound of her doing so sent fresh bolts of pain shooting deep into her ear canals, and she moaned. She gritted her teeth then, and pressed her hands tighter against her ears, not giving a damn if it hurt. She knew another two words were coming.
“OR SUFFER!”
This time the chorus of infant voices seemed to come from inside her brain, and the resulting pain of their furious shout caused her to release a scream of agony. She fell to her knees, hands still pressed against her head, as if to keep it from exploding. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she could no longer see them – the members of the Cabal – but she could feel the weight of their scrutiny on her, as if they were waiting for her to give them the response they were seeking. The problem was, she had no idea what that response might be.
The firebabies’ combined voices seemed to echo forever in the auditorium, but eventually they faded. When they were finally gone, the pain in Lori’s head – far worse than any migraine she’d experienced – began to lessen. She lowered her hands and opened her eyes. She rose to her feet, weak and shaky. She spoke then, raising her voice so the assembled Cabal members could hear her, although she had a feeling that she could whisper or even merely think her words, and they would all be able to hear her just fine.
“What is it that you think I’ve done?”
The firebabies remained silent as the Cabal gazed at her, faces impassive. She felt tears of frustration building and as they began sliding down her cheeks, she cried out.
