The Paranormalist 4: The Unearthly Page 8

  “Who’s they?”

  Good question. From all appearances, the haunted observatory had sent an agent of darkness after Vesper. With both Plevins and Coleman dead, who else served the master of that hellish place? Had the building lured other people into its web and twisted their minds and souls to do its bidding?

  “There must be others. Other folks unfortunate enough to walk into the observatory and be corrupted by its evil,” I said.

  Delgado shook his head. “Are you serious with that shit?”

  Anger flared inside me as I met Delgado’s skeptical expression. The stubborn bastard refused to acknowledge the possibility of the supernatural.

  I resented Delgado’s unwillingness to open his mind to the truth. Resented—and, to be honest, also envied him.

  Pull yourself together, man, my inner voice barked at me. Not everyone confronts paranormal evil for a living. The man’s trying to understand what’s going on here to the best of his abilities.

  I took another series of deep breaths, determined to calm my frayed nerves and regain my equilibrium. I had to keep it together. If not for my sake, then for Vesper’s. Losing it was a luxury I couldn’t afford.

  “Hey, what’s that?”

  Deputy Woods’ shaky voice pulled me out of my thoughts.

  She was pointing toward the log wall above the fireplace. I had been so focused on the visible destruction that I had missed the strange wood carving there. It was a spiral, identical to the one my athame had magically removed from Jeremy’s neck back in the art gallery.

  I walked up to the strange carving and studied the circular patterns etched into the wood.

  It was a message, no doubt about it. And it confirmed my earlier theory. My knife’s magic had removed a ward from Jeremy’s neck. In essence, my athame had destroyed one of the many wards imprisoning the demon inside the observatory. And now that dark entity had gone after Vesper.

  The demonic force probably planned to use her as leverage—Vesper’s life in exchange for the magic of my knife. It was the only explanation that made any sense to me, and the reason why I wasn’t looking down at Vesper’s corpse right now.

  After over a century of imprisonment, I had become the demon’s best chance at freedom. It was going to trade Vesper’s life in exchange for its freedom.

  Or at least that was the lure here.

  I held no illusions that the demon would spare Vesper once it escaped its confinement. Demons were fundamentally the same. You could not trust them, no matter what they promised.

  I turned away from Delgado and Woods and headed for the deck. I had to confirm that Vesper’s lifeless form wasn’t buried somewhere outside in the frozen forest.

  The tarp covering the hot tub had been torn off on one side and flapped in the violent wind. Blood speckled the plastic—more indicators of the intense battle that had raged here earlier. Was it Vesper’s?

  I forced myself to study the scene like an investigator. Calm, rational—even though every part of my being wanted to shout Vesper’s name.

  I studied the deck and took note of the footprints cutting through the snow in the yard below. The tracks belonged to just one person and were the right size for a female. Vesper had managed to make it out of the cabin!

  For a split second, I entertained the hope that my assistant might be hiding out in the nearby woods, and I felt tempted to call out her name again.

  Fighting back this impulse, I walked down the wooden staircase into the snow-covered yard and tracked the footprints. They circled back to the front of the property.

  Vesper must’ve made a go for the BMW. No prints chased hers, which suggested she’d successfully defeated her attackers or slowed them sufficiently to escape. So why hadn’t she gotten in the car?

  I followed the footprints, my nerves on edge, my breath condensing in front of my face.

  Up ahead, a stand of trees had been knocked over and displaced in a circular pattern. It was almost as if someone had bulldozed the area. The image was identical to the scene we’d found earlier at the GSP coordinates from Coleman’s camera.

  I cursed as realization set in. The observatory must have materialized in front of the cabin. Vesper was too smart to run inside, but if she’d had no choice…

  There was no telling where the haunted building was, most likely hurtling through time and space. If I missed my chance to rescue Vesper, I’d have to wait another ten years.

  “Kane, wait up.”

  I turned slowly toward Delgado, who was stomping toward me in the snow, kicking up plumes of white. His face paled when he recognized the familiar pattern of destruction in front of us. He eyed me questioningly.

  “Talk to me, Kane. What happened here? ”

  Evil, I thought. I wished I could tell Delgado about Rockmore, the history of the observatory, and my theories relating to the wards. I wanted to share my terrifying insights with the sheriff and thereby ease the dark weight pressing down on my soul, but I knew it would be a waste of time. Delgado was a good cop, but he was so far out of his depth here that to tell him the truth would only make matters worse.

  I couldn’t afford to let his skepticism slow me down now.

  Instead of answering his question, I merely shrugged and played dumb. At the same time, I studied my surroundings and noticed other prints in the circular clearing. They weren’t human but belonged to several different animals. I spotted the massive paw prints of a bear and thought again of poor Ralf Coleman being torn apart, the flesh of his face ripped off to expose the bone beneath.

  The nightmarish memory was still going through my mind when I detected movement at the edge of the woods encircling the property. A dark silhouette flitted through the underbrush, grew still, almost as if it was observing me from the shadows. Delgado had spotted the sudden movement too.

  He reached for his service weapon. “What is that?”

  I ignored his question and instead took a step toward the snow-laden trees.

  The vague shadow moved again. Was something out there, or was my imagination playing tricks with me?

  I tracked the strange activity, my heart slamming in anticipation as I continued to advance toward the forest. My hand hovered over my Glock in its holster, ready to draw. But there was the faintest possibility that the shadow belonged to Vesper.

  “Hello?” I called softly. “Come out where I can see you.”

  A beat. Then, the flitting shadow peeled from the darkness, became solid and real.

  A bobcat faced me, about fifty feet between us.

  My head sank in disappointment. It was only one of the many wild denizens of this forest…

  Then the bobcat turned, and I realized with a mixture of horror and morbid fascination that the creature had two heads, the other belonging to a coyote.

  This sure as hell was no ordinary beast. The creature’s inhuman, expectant gaze held mine for a second.

  “Oh my God, what the fuck is that thing?” Delgado said, coming to stand beside me.

  I felt terrible for Delgado. His whole world was collapsing on him.

  The beast nodded one of its two heads at the woods, a clear sign it wanted me to follow it.

  “That, sheriff, is an invitation.”

  As the mutant bobcat turned away from me and headed back into the thick woods, I hurried to catch up.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As soon as Vesper stepped into the observatory, the massive steel door slammed shut with a reverberating clang that shook her whole body.

  On the bright side, the door kept the beasts chasing her at bay. No animal, no matter how sharp their teeth and claws might be, could break through three inches of solid steel. Still, she was far from safe.

  A strange and formless danger lay within the walls of the observatory, one which couldn’t be seen or heard nor smelled but palpably felt.

  Her eyes slowly adjusted to the rays of sickening light punching through the holes in the domed ceiling. Snowflakes drifted through the openings, dancing in the air
before raking her face with frozen kisses.

  Each step required an enormous amount of effort, as if someone had cranked up the gravity. The heavy atmosphere pressed against Vesper’s skin, bones, and teeth. Her sinuses ached, and her eyes teared.

  “Who the fuck are you?” she asked the darkness. “What the fuck are you?”

  Her voice echoed in the round chamber. No answer was forthcoming.

  Up ahead, the massive telescope loomed, the key to the mystery surrounding this place.

  As Vesper circled the gargantuan cylinder, her eyes took note of the wards carved into its surface. She recalled Ralf Coleman’s photograph of the telescope and the strange geometric ward near the base of the device. The same triangular ward had appeared on Simon’s athame, he’d said, and subsequently disappeared from Jeremy Plevins’ neck.

  Well, not only had it vanished from Plevins’ neck, but there was now a blank area on the telescope where it should be.

  Vesper grasped the implication. By removing the ward from Plenvins’ body, Simon had also removed it from the telescope. That meant the athame might have the power of removing all these wards. And if that happened…

  I’LL BE SET FREE!

  The darkly distorted baritone voice cut through her thoughts like a knife, and goosebumps pricked her skin.

  “Not going to happen,” Vesper said. The measured tone of her voice belied the chill spreading through her insides.

  She knew all too well that the presence within these walls was using her as bait. It wanted Simon to come to her rescue so it could fully exploit the magic of his knife. She’d been kidnapped by an evil building to trap the man she… cared about a lot. That wasn’t the shittiest thing that had ever happened to her, but it ranked in the top five.

  Vesper didn’t know how she found the strength to speak her next words.

  “You’ll never win, asshole. Simon Kane will destroy you. He’s going to—”

  Without warning, the observatory erupted to unnatural life. Her words had pissed off the demon imprisoned within the observatory. Good.

  Her satisfaction turned out to be short-lived as the world around her transformed into a hallucinogenic horror show. Waves of energy rippled through the walls and floor, making them feel immaterial and ghostlike. Everything warped and bent surreally. The structure pulsated with a terrifying life, and abruptly the ground disappeared.

  There was no up or down, and Vesper felt like she was floating in mid-air. The walls started to tilt toward her, almost as if the observatory was about to collapse in on itself.

  Terror cut off the scream lodged in her throat. Desperately struggling to maintain her balance, Vesper stumbled toward the telescope.

  The invisible floor tilted sharply, and she flung herself against the massive cylinder, holding on to it for dear life. As the dark forces inside the observatory launched an all-out assault on the laws of physics, Vesper struggled to hang on. Reality around her began to spin and twist and stretch; melted into new patterns that defied her imagination. Nausea washed over her, and her stomach lurched.

  The world had become a living Dali painting. The artist in her appreciated it, even as she struggled not to puke.

  And that’s when the telescope started to radiate an unnatural heat. Instantly, all the geometric wards carved into its surface exploded with light.

  Vesper’s grip on the telescope intensified. It hurt, but the thought of falling into the nightmare was worse.

  Another glance at her shifting surroundings revealed new terrors. She made out strange figures suspended in the endless, void-like space beyond the walls, floor, and ceiling. Pale ghostlike figures swam through the plane beyond physical reality. Some appeared to be far away; others were pushing against the walls and floor, an invisible barrier preventing them from entering this reality.

  Not one demon, but many. So many. The souls of the damned demanding access to our world.

  Their efforts grew even more violent, a tireless onslaught. The presence of a living person was driving them into a frenzy.

  More and more of the albino figures pushed against the bending walls, floor, and curving ceiling, their unearthly features distorted into silent screams. Each time they threw their phantom bodies against the structure, the wards on the telescope erupted with renewed flashes of brilliant light.

  Would the wards hold? What would happen if they failed while she was trapped in here?

  Vesper grabbed the crucifix around her neck and started to pray. Unfortunately, her words held no sway over these lost creatures. God was far away, and she was all alone.

  “Why are you doing this?” she shouted. “What do you want from me?”

  The deep baritone voice answered. Look inside, and it will all stop. Everything will make sense…

  Vesper shuddered as she turned toward the telescope’s eyepiece.

  Vesper tried to resist the voice, but it was impossible. The steady, insistent whispering in her ears wouldn’t let her go, refused to release her form its hypnotic pull.

  There was only one option: Obey the voice. Do as she was told.

  Vesper peered into the eyepiece, and her blood turned to ice.

  She had expected to see sparkling stars set against a black canvas. But jagged rocks and canyons framed the night sky.

  Nothing about this image was right.

  An arid desert had replaced the snowy forests of Big Bear Lake, and a bloody light painted the sky red. There was something hauntingly familiar about the scene.

  Wanting to gain a better look, Vesper adjusted the telescope slightly.

  The view tilted down, and the source of the reddish light stood revealed.

  She finally understood why the scene looked so damn familiar. Vesper had barely left that place alive.

  A giant bonfire dominated a desert clearing, flames carving out a patch of light from the encroaching darkness. Parked motorcycles formed a circle around the fire. Men and women decked out in leather biker gear stood near the flames, their eyes hazy from the drugs pumping through their system, their heads held low in deference to the dark god that they worshiped.

  Not a god but a devil, she mentally corrected herself.

  A woman was tied to a rock nearby. She was naked, and her terrified eyes pointed at the hypnotic light of the raging bonfire.

  The woman was her.

  Once again, Vesper was about to be sacrificed to the devil that these demented bikers worshipped.

  The leader of the biker gang, a six-foot-four, three-hundred-pound beast of a man sauntered up to her. His face seemed to only consist of tattoos, piercings, and facial hair, his clothes layers of ragged leather. He held a large rock in his meaty paw, leaving no doubt as to what his intentions were. They’d already kicked the shit out of her, and now it was time to finish the job.

  His lips mouthed words that still haunted her nightmares even though she didn't understand what they meant.

  In the real world, this was right about the time that Simon Kane and phalanx of cops had shown up on the scene. Gunfire had shredded the night, and the cult leader had fallen at her feet as the first bullets took him down. The twisted bastard had survived and now was rotting away in a California jail—another detail which kept her up at night.

  Tied to the rock, she had not been able to follow the details of the fight. For a small eternity, her world consisted of the burning bonfire, the flames streaking toward the endless starfield above her. The scene would have been eerily beautiful if it hadn’t been for the soundtrack of gunshots and screams.

  And then a handsome man had appeared in her field of vision. He leaned over her, backlit in scarlet light. Had he come to rescue her or to finish her off?

  Almost delirious with pain and fear, she couldn’t be sure.

  The man held a pistol in one hand, a knife in the other. The blade gleamed in the moonlight.

  He didn’t look like any of the devil-worshiping bikers. He wore a suit and a neatly trimmed beard. He smiled at her warmly as he began to cut the ro
pes, murmuring words in a low voice. Were they words of comfort or a ritual meant to rip her soul from her body? Panicked beyond rational thought, she couldn’t understand what he was saying.

  Vesper squirmed as she worked to free herself from her restraints and then shrank away from him. She was unable to trust anyone after what had happened, especially if they sported a knife. Her whole body and soul were gripped by the fight or flight response. She lashed out at the man, pummeling him with her fists.

  And then his strong hands closed around her arms. He pulled her close, his whispering voice strong and soothing.

  “You’re okay. You’re safe now. Nothing bad is going to happen to you.”

  His words, combined with the comforting weight of his body pressing against her, finally calmed her down, and she went limp in his grip. Sporadic gun blasts rang out in the night for another minute, and then those too died down.

  Back in the present, tears streamed down Vesper’s face. Simon Kane had saved her from a fate worse than death and changed her life in the process, allowed her to go from victim to warrior…

  At least that’s what had happened in real life. Good had triumphed over evil, life over death.

  But the scene she was following through the telescope’s eyepiece was following a different script. This time the cavalry didn’t arrive in the nick of time. This time there was no knife-wielding knight in a skinny suit to pry her out of the clutches of certain death.

  Vesper watched in growing horror as the biker cult leader brought the rock down on her fear-stricken face with all his strength…

  “NO!”

  She screamed and closed her eyes. Shaken to the core, she staggered away from the cursed telescope. Shaking and disoriented, she struggled to catch her breath.

  A sound behind her made her whirl.

  Even though the observatory had returned to normal, the walls and floor and ceiling solid again, new terrors awaited her. The ghosts of her past were coming to life.

  Humanoid shadows bled from the walls, grew from the floor. As they zeroed in on her, the shadows morphed into the members of the devil-worshipping biker gang.