Repairman Jack [09]-Infernal (34 page)

“Besides, what would carbon dating tell me?”

“Well, the Lilitongue is said to be ancient, fashioned in ancient Babylon or even earlier. If you brought in an object that was, say, five or six thousand years old, you might really have something.”

Jack already knew he had something. He pushed himself out of the chair.

“Well, thank you for your time, Professor. Any suggestion as to where else I can look?”

He smiled. “To learn about a mythical object, you might want to consult a mythical book. According to lore there once existed a book, a ‘forbidden’ tome, that supposedly catalogued the histories and workings of all seven of the Infernals, along with much other ‘forbidden’ knowledge. But the book is most likely as fanciful as the objects it discusses.”

“When and where was this nonexistent book last heard of?”

“The fifteenth century. Supposedly it fell into the hands of the Grand Inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada, during the initial phase of the Spanish Inquisition. He tried to destroy it—burn it, tear it apart, slash its pages—but legend says it’s indestructible.”

Jack felt a chill. He’d heard about this book not long ago. From a lady with a dog.

But he couldn’t remember its name.

“So Torquemada buried it. But more than that, he designed and built a monastery over the spot—the Monastery of St. Thomas in Avila—where he spent his final years.”

The professor’s words were like a head butt: Tom had claimed the
Sombra
map had been found in a Spanish monastery.

One more piece of the puzzle.

But he still couldn’t remember the book’s goddamn name. He’d had a lot of distractions at the time, but now he wished he’d paid closer attention.

“Let’s just say I come across this book. Would you be able to translate it for me?”

Dr. Buhmann’s eyes got a faraway look. “If I could see such a thing, hold it in my hands just once before I die…” He shook himself. “What am I saying? Forgive an old man. I’m sure there once existed a forbidden book that was so well made that it was difficult to destroy, and thence came the legend. But should the book truly exist, and if the whispers about it are true, you won’t need me to translate it.”

“Why not?”

“Because the story goes that anyone who opens it sees the text in his native tongue.”

“I don’t get it.”

“If you open it, you will see modern English. I, on the other hand, born and raised in Vienna as I was, will see German.” He laughed. “Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous?”

Yeah. He had. And he’d seen worse. A book in everybody’s native tongue was a walk in the park compared to his experiences in the past year or so.

But he forced a laugh of his own. “Now that’s pushing things a little too far.”

Dr. Buhmann shrugged. “Nothing is ‘too far’ when talking about a book that doesn’t exist. The sky’s the limit.”

“I suppose so.”

He adjusted his glasses and looked at Jack. “But tell me, are you a scholar? Researcher? Student?”

“Just a repairman.”

Dr. Buhmann shook his head in wonder. “I must confess I’m amazed that anyone outside the academic community has heard of the Lilitongue of Gefreda.”

“I’m much more interested in this book that’ll tell me about it.”

The old man’s expression turned grave. “I sense this means a lot to you. I won’t ask why, but I must tell you: If this book exists, I doubt anyone alive has ever seen it or even knows where it is.”

…
anyone alive
…

That gave Jack an idea. If he couldn’t ask a living person, maybe he could ask a dead one.

He was willing to try anything.

3

-68:42

Jack called ahead to see if Lyle and Charlie Kenton were entertaining any clients at the moment. Nope. Didn’t he remember that Monday was their day of rest? No séances scheduled until midafternoon Tuesday.

So he grabbed the empty sea chest from his apartment and drove out to Menelaus Manor in Astoria. He wished he could have brought the Lilitongue along too, but since that was fixed in its spot, and since Charlie couldn’t leave his house, the chest would have to do.

He parked in front of the attached garage. Hadn’t been back since the summer. With its dark stone walls and vaguely colonial design, the house could look menacing at night. But in the wan light from an overcast sky, it looked merely old.

Lyle met him at the door and, after making nice-nice with the handshake and small talk and why-don’t-you-ever-come-to-visit preliminaries, they settled in the high-ceilinged channeling room on the first floor.

The array of spiritualist and New Age junk displayed around the room among the statues of everything from Christian saints to Hindu gods brought back memories, not all of them pleasant. The heavy drapes, usually drawn tight, had been pulled back to let in some light.

Lyle, tall, lean, black, maybe thirty, wore his hair in long, tight dreads. He was dressed in jeans and a V-neck sweater. He led Jack to the large round oak table at the far end. Lyle seated himself at the twelve-o’clock spot, directly in front of a chalk-smeared blackboard; Jack took the three-o’clock position.

Letters began to form in the chalk dust on the board, one at a time, as if written by an invisible finger.

Yo Jack

“Hi, Charlie.”

The skeptic in Jack reflexively recoiled at the idea of communicating with a dead man—after all, Lyle had been an expert at faking that very thing—but his experiences in Menelaus Manor this past summer had opened his eyes. And now Lyle seemed used to, even comfortable with, being in touch with his dead brother.

He seemed to be listening, then he said, “He wants to know why you brought that chest.”

“Well, my brother Tom and I—”

“—found it in a shipwreck off Bermuda. He knows. He wants to know why you brought it here.”

“I need to know something, anything about what was in it. It’s called—”

“—the Lilitongue of Gefreda.”

“Right.” This was good—very good. Looked like he was finally going to get some answers. “I need to know what it does—if anything.”

Lyle didn’t answer. Jack couldn’t tell if he was waiting or listening. Finally…

“Charlie doesn’t know. He says it comes from a different place and age when the rules were different.”

Oh, shit. “The Otherness?”

“He doesn’t know. He can’t be sure.”

“Can he at least tell me if it’s harmful?”

“He says that’s relative. If you want to escape your troubles, it will help you do that. But in a case like Vicky’s, it’s harmful.”

Jack stiffened. “You know about Vicky?”

Lyle nodded. “Charlie does.”

“Harmful how?”

“She’ll be taken away from everyone she knows and loves, and will never return.”

Jack felt his gut freeze.

“Taken where?”

“Charlie doesn’t know.”

“Is that what’s going to happen to her?”

Charlie could see the future at times—at least he thought he could.

“She’d have to be here in person for him to tell you that, but even then… this Lilitongue is so unique, so alien… he’s not sure he’d know.”

Vicky… oh, God, Vicky… what am I going to do?

Giving in to a sudden, irresistible urge to move, he sprang to his feet and paced the room. The air felt thick, he couldn’t seem to draw enough of it into his lungs, his fingertips tingled. He’d never felt it before but he had a pretty good idea what was happening.

Panic.

“Goddamn it, Charlie, there’s gotta be something I can do!”

“There is,” Lyle said. “Find
The Compendium of Srem
.”

Jack halted his pacing. “I’ve heard of that.”

That
was the book Herta had told him about, the one Dr. Buhmann had alluded to. But Herta hadn’t been talking about the Lilitongue of Gefreda.

The Compendium of Srem
…

“That’s got the answers?”

“Charlie doesn’t know. He can’t pierce its covers.”

Then what good is he? Jack wanted to say, but bit it back.

“Well, maybe
I
can. Just tell me where the damn thing is and—”

“Charlie says you already know. In fact, you’ve seen it.”

Jack stared at Lyle, blinking in confusion. What the—?

And then he realized what Charlie meant.

4

-65:55

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Tom said.

Jack ground his teeth, thinking about what a jerk he’d been. But then, he hadn’t heard the whole story until it was too late. If Tom had told him about the Lilitongue’s supposedly magical powers, if he’d told him about the girl and the dog, Jack wouldn’t have allowed Vicky within ten miles of that thing.

He glanced at his brother the
shmegege
and thought about a quick chop to his Adam’s apple—not hard enough to crush his larynx, just enough to shut him up. But knowing how that mark was growing larger on Vicky’s back, he wasn’t sure he could pull the punch.

“Not exactly. So can the chatter and let me think.”

On either side of the two-lane blacktop, evergreens stood tall among the bare branches of their deciduous neighbors. The dull, overcast sky threatened snow. He hoped it held off—prayed it held off. The last thing he needed was to get stuck with the
shmegege
in the mountains of upstate New York during a blizzard. Talk about a nightmare.

Jack had been to this area twice last month. But both times at night—once with a passenger who knew the way, and the other following someone—so he was feeling his way.

“I’m still not clear on this: We’ve come out to the middle of nowhere to sneak into a house you might not be able to find so that we can search for a book that might or might not be there?”

“I have it on good authority that it exists, and that it belongs to the owner of this place we’re looking for.”

Jack hadn’t wanted to bring the
shmegege
along, but he didn’t know if he’d need an extra pair of hands at the cabin—if he could find it. He’d told him about his meeting with Dr. Buhmann, but not about Charlie. He didn’t want to have to explain his connection to the disgraced Luther Brady either.

Jack rounded a curve then and slowed his Crown Vic.

“What’s wrong?”

“This looks familiar.”

He eased ahead until he saw the uphill gravel driveway. On impulse he pulled in and climbed the grade.

“This the place?”

“No, but if it’s the place I think it is, then we’re almost there.”

Halfway up the driveway he looked for traces of the explosion that had ripped a man apart last month, but found none. A cleanup squad—whether human or the carnivores among the local fauna, he couldn’t say—had come through and left no trace.

As the house hove into view he slammed on the brakes. The tires skidded on the gravel.

“Oh, shit.”

“Wow,” Tom said, craning his neck for a better look through the windshield. “Somebody sure had their fun with this place.”

Not exactly the traditional idea of fun: The front door stood open, its off-kilter storm door swayed back and forth, and someone had smashed every window in sight.

Tom snorted. “Vandals. The jerk who built the place probably thought he’d leave their kind behind when he came up here. But they’re everywhere.”

Jack hoped the destruction was due to garden-variety vandalism. Not a hell of a lot to do in these parts: Add drugs or booze to boredom and just about anything could happen. If that had been the case, fine. But he feared the destruction might have been motivated by something else.

Seized with a sudden urgency to find Brady’s cabin, Jack put the Vic in reverse and started turning it around. Took him four moves before he could nose back into the driveway again.

“Jesus, what are you doing driving a tank like this? It’s a cop car. Or a retirement-village car. And you’re neither.”

Jack could have told the
shmegege
that this black Crown Victoria was the exact match—right down to the license plates—of a car belonging to a big shot in the outfit’s Brooklyn wing. But then he’d have to go into a long explanation of why he’d want something like this.

He turned back onto the blacktop and continued west. Now he had an idea of where he was going. He just hoped that Brady’s cabin hadn’t suffered the same fate.

A few miles farther on he found a similar driveway and turned into it. The rear wheels kicked up gravel as he spurred the car uphill. Hurrying wouldn’t change things—if damage had been done, it was done.

When he saw the place he slowed to a stop.