Chapter Nine
10 April 2018
“I found someone else who made it back from the Shadow Realm to reality,” Miller said the next morning at breakfast. He turned to Diindiisi. “The event was after you crossed over. Did you run across a Lady Mallowan at any time?”
Diindiisi thought. “No. The name isn’t familiar.”
“There’s a lot of crap in the archives, but this one appears real,” Miller said, handing around a sheaf of papers.
“You have to be kidding me,” Dalma said. “Agatha Christie?”
“Explains why she wouldn’t talk about the missing eleven days, doesn’t it?” Holt asked.
“That explains why I felt like I was back in England before I ran into Amelia and Fred!” Diindiisi said, clapping. “But if she were only here eleven days, how did she get back?”
“Apparently there was more to Conan-Doyle’s medium than the press knew. She was able to contact Lady Mallowan on this side, directing her to a rift in,” he rifled through the pages, “Mother Shipton’s Cave, about four miles from Harrogate.”
“So, communication is possible between the planes. Anything on how she got back?” I asked.
“According to the records, they used Mother Shipton’s ‘Ye Grate Spelle.’ No, I don’t have a copy of the spell. According to the notes I do have, it has to be worked on both sides, fairly simultaneously. The practitioner has to be fairly powerful to open the rift from that side,” Miller said.
“So, not quite go,” I said.
“It’s more than we had last night,” Miller replied.
“True but…” I started.
My phone started playing “Gallows Pole” by Robert Plant.
We all stared at it. I’m not a big fan of coincidence, but it starting to play after a discussion of communication from the other side was just that—or worse.
“Huh,” I said. “I thought that thing was dead.”
“I plugged them all in the other day,” Padgett said, shrugging. “Force of habit.”
“Are you going to answer it?” Hiebert asked.
“Nah,” I picked it up. “That’s the message tone. Besides, the only folks I know who could spam my text message inbox like that are…yup, my bosses.”
I keyed in the password, opening the text message page to fifteen copies minimum of the same message.
“Ninja Pigeon your message received. Respond if you can. If not, same location as original contact. Repeating, your message received, respond if you can…”
I typed, “Message received. Verify?”
“How so?” appeared on my phone.
“Where did we meet Hotel Kilo?” I asked.
“I’ll Take a Dump. How’re you doing?”
I sighed and typed, “I’ve had better days, Gunny.”
“More information to follow. How many in your party?”
“Eight,” I replied. “Suggest you research Mother Shipton’s ‘Ye Grate Spell.’”
“Roger that. Keep your damn phone charged and with you, Jesse.”
“Roger that, Gunny. Ninja Pigeon out.”
“We’re saved?” Hiebert asked.
“Sort of. We’re back in contact, at least,” I replied. I thought for a minute. “Who else has a cell phone, here? Give me the number.”
I sent one more text, with all the numbers, getting a thumbs up emoji from the other side in return.
“How’d they know to use the phones?” Holt asked.
“Damned if I know,” I replied, shrugging. “The incident with Lady Mallowan indicates that communication is possible. After all, it’s not like there aren’t psychic types working for Group.”
“So, how long do you think it’ll take them to figure things out?” Diindiisi asked.
She’d accepted a lot of the miracles of modern living far better than my grandfather had, but she also came from a time when technology was thought of as a savior, not the end of the world. My grandfather, on the other hand, had been convinced the Army had planted a chip in his brain to read his thoughts when he was outside the house, so he’d put aluminum foil in every hat he owned to jam the signal.
“Jed’ll probably put his team on it,” I replied. “Michael will probably be involved too. One good thing about working with a vampire—they don’t have to sleep. Michael will probably see this as a challenge and work on it twenty-four-seven if we’re lucky.”
“I still can’t believe Michelangelo is a freaking vampire,” Padgett said.
“Eh, he’s not that freaky,” I replied. “Dresses pretty conservatively for a six-hundred-year-old guy. No tights or ruffled short pants, or anything like that.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Padgett said.
“I know. But if you only knew how many vampires we’ve caught because they thought wearing a leather banana hammock with straps topped by a gimp mask during a Blue Norther in Austin was a good idea, you’d be amazed.”
“What is a banana hammock?” Diindiisi asked.
Miller spewed coffee across his papers and the table.
“Father Salazar, you get to answer that one all on your own,” he said when he’d recovered from the coughing fit.
I thought for a second. “It’s a garment, in this case of leather, made to enhance or display a man’s genitals while covering them minimally.”
“So, something like a codpiece or a koteka?” she asked.
“What’s a koteka?” Dalma asked.
“A penis sheath,” Diindiisi replied, “worn by the tribesmen in the highlands of New Guinea as clothing.”
“Oh, wait, I think we talked about them in one of my anthropology classes,” Dalma replied. “I had to look up the reference.”
I sighed.
“Something like that, yes. Point is, if you see someone walking around in thirty degree weather wearing nothing but a mask, a pair of leather underwear, and a bunch of straps, you glass them real quick to make sure their body temperature is above ambient,” I said.
“You can read their body temperature from afar now?” Diindiisi asked.
“Yes. With a thermal camera we can tell their temperature from across the street,” I replied.
“We used cameras as a way to detect a vampire,” she replied. “If you took a photo of someone, and they didn’t show up in it, but everyone else did, it was a good bet they were a vampire. It took time, though.”
“How’s that work?” Dalma asked, intrigued.
“Silver,” I replied. “We don’t know why, but vampires won’t appear on silver film stock, which means we couldn’t film them until color film got big. But when digital replaced analogue sources, and we could look at the thermal imaging? Then it was on.”
“The Church’s research indicates it has something to do with silver being a pure metal. Or maybe it’s the thirty pieces of silver Judas received for betraying Christ,” Father Miller said.
“If it had anything to do with Judas, why are there Roman accounts of werewolves being killed when struck by silver that predate Christ?” Hiebert asked.
Everyone looked at him.
“What? I saw it on In Search of…or was it Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World?” he asked.
“Either way, he’s got a point,” I replied. “I know that the Church has the records on killing vampires and werewolves prior to the birth of Christ. I’ve seen them. Copies and bad translations, anyway.”
Miller pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes, you’re right. You and I are going to have a talk about this, alone.”
“Why? It’s not like anyone here is going to be able to go back to being a mundane after having spent time in the Shadow Realm. I mean, if the USG doesn’t keep an eye on them for ‘their own good,’ your Church and Order will,” I said.
“Yours won’t?” Miller replied.
“My church? Perhaps. But my employer will offer them jobs,” I said.
“All of that depends on us getting out of here,” Miller replied, “which means I’ve got more work to do.”
He rose walked out of the room.
“What is the USG?” Diindiisi asked.
“United States Government,” I replied.
“There are so many abbreviations in modern life,” she replied.
“Occupational hazard,” I replied. “Started after World War II, creeping in from military and government usage into everyday English, probably because so many men were exposed to the military by conscription. The fact that I used to be a Marine and now work for a somewhat secretive organization doesn’t help either, you know.”
“True,” she replied.
“So, what are we going to be doing on this fine, ectoplasm-less day?” Padgett asked.
“Day off. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em,” I replied. “I’m going to set up the reloading gear Dalma found. Y’all can do whatever you want, as long as you’re not fire dancing anywhere near where I’m working.”
“Sweet!”
The first thing I did was dishes. I can’t cook, unless you count dropping an MRE into a heater with water and adding Tabasco to the food in the pouch when it’s done. But I can wash a mighty clean dish, kinda like doing weapons maintenance. Cooking, on the other hand, involves chemistry and heat, making it—in my book—one step up from magic. Mel had laughed about that during the years we were together.
Dishes done, I checked my weapons then went down to the garage, pulled out a portable bench, and started to read the manual for the reloading gear.
“I knew we forgot something,” I said to the world at large.
Hiebert had come downstairs and was watching me work. Probably out of boredom. “What did you forget?”
“The tumbler for the brass,” I replied, putting down the manual.
“Hard to find one?” he asked.
“Not really. I just wanted to do some reloading today. Oh well, it’ll wait,” I said.
Hiebert helped me stow the gear. “Can I ask a question?”
“Shoot. On the more philosophical ones, I might have to ask Father Miller, but as long as we’re not trying to see how many angels can dance on the head of the pin, I’m game,” I replied.
“No, nothing like that,” he said. “Do you really think we’re going to get out of here?”
“I’d say the chances are pretty good,” I replied. “We’ve got a good base here, with Father Miller and the folks on the other side working on it. I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed, eventually.”
“Good,” he said, sighing. “When I first realized things were different, I was scared I was in hell. Worse, the priests might have been right about my life style.”
I looked around. “I can see how coming here would have that effect on someone.”
The sky was still the dirty gray of an unused TV station. Ectoplasm was falling to the ground somewhere to the south of us. Just another day in the Shadow Realm.
“How did you…how did you get into this business, if you don’t mind me asking, Father?” Hiebert said after a couple of minutes of silence.
“My wife was killed by a lich,” I said. “But I knew about it before that. My company got tasked with supporting a SEAL team that was looking for intelligence on a site that Saddam had run in Iraq.”
“I take it there was more to it?” he asked.
“More to it is an understatement,” I replied. “The SEALs weren’t real SEALs. I’m sure they had been before they’d gone to work for QMG, but by the time we’re talking about, they were civilian heavy hitters. Paramilitary contractor types. The guy leading the team? Henry Keith is a lot of things, including older than Michelangelo, and he probably was with the teams at one point. Hell, he probably was there when they formed the teams, for all I know, but I didn’t know that at the time. What I saw was a bunch of SEALs that went down into a hole at Saddam’s Primate Research Facility.”
I took a breath, and sipped some water.
“I’m not really sure what Saddam was using the chimps for—probably hunting stock, knowing that sick bastard. But it was the deep underground parts that the QMG team was interested in. Rumor had it they were looking into a secret weapons of mass destruction factory for either biological or nuclear weapons, to prove that the WMDs were there.”
“I take it that was wrong?” he asked.
“Depends on how you define ‘biological weapon.’ Ever heard of a ghoul?”
“Arabic legendary creature that eats corpses?” he asked with a shy smile. “In Search of again, if I remember correctly.”
“Something like that. Although, if they haven’t been fed for a year, they’re not that picky about how long their food has been dead,” I said, shuddering. “Watched one pull the face off of a Marine in my squad and eat it with the kid standing there screaming. I hated that fucker Morrison, you know? He was a malingering shitbird, but he didn’t deserve to have something straight out of myth eat his face.”
“That sounds horrible,” Hiebert said, placing his hand on my shoulder.
“Thing is, we still went into that hole to get Henry’s team out of that hell, no questions asked. We found a ghoul queen there,” I said. “Ghouls aren’t nothing without mamma.”
“Bad?”
“Ugly bad. Fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down bad, coupled with an insatiable hunger, with an overwhelming desire to succor its young and ensure the success of the hive,” I replied. “Basically, the queen from Aliens with all the redeeming features removed.”
“The queen from Aliens didn’t have any redeeming features.”
“Exactly. Anyway, Gunny Thomas led us into that hole to pull what was left of the SEAL team out. We got Keith and two of his guys out of the twenty who’d gone down the hole. We brought back ten of our own.”
“Damn.”
“We pulled back to the vehicles and filled the entrance to the facility with ghoul corpses until the Air Force got its thumb out of its ass and vectored in a strike with GBU-28s. Five thousand-pound bombs will put paid to even the strongest of ghoul queens, if you drop enough of them on her. We did just that.”
“Then what happened?”
“After that, I came home, hugged my wife, and finished my obligation to Uncle Sugar, then I went to seminary. Got out of school, she got attacked by a lich, and I went to work killing the things that make humans fear the night,” I said.
“I didn’t get a chance to thank you, yesterday,” he said.
“Eh, it’s what they pay me for,” I replied.
“Really? You get paid to rescue people from giant pig daemons? Where do I sign up? More importantly, what’s the insurance coverage like? Do you get dental, or just general health care coverage? What about vision? Is there a chance at life insurance?”
I laughed. It was infectious. We sat there laughing long enough that Diindiisi came out to check on us.
“You two all right?” she asked.
We were both red in the face, gasping for air.
“Yeah,” I finally said, mastering my breathing. “Hiebert here just asked the weirdest job interview questions I’ve ever heard, is all.”
“If you’re sure you’re good?” she replied.
“Yes’m. Just fine. I have to admit, they were weird questions,” Hiebert said.
“To answer the question, we get health, dental, and vision coverage,” I answered with a straight face. “The life insurance policy comes with riders for ‘special’ coverage in case of demonic possession or falling to a vampire or other undead.”
Hiebert broke up laughing again. Diindiisi gave me a look that said I was an idiot, then went back inside. It was going to be one of those days.
* * * * *