The Collected Horrors of Tim Wellman (3 page)

"Give me the book, I can search faster than
you," she said. He didn't argue. She put her thumb on the edge, and
flicked through without looking, then stopped about halfway
through. "Here."

He took the book back. "You can't read,
though."

"I can see the underline marks," she said. "I
can taste the old woman's desperate actions."

The underlined passage was there on the page.
"
Lady Arabella took from her girdle another small key, which she
inserted in a keyhole in the center of a massive lock
."

They both looked at each other for a moment, and
then shrugged. "We need a key for a big lock," she said. "I know
the lock, but I've never seen the key."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the
ring of keys given to him to make his way through the house. "One
of these?"

She smiled again and he flinched. "Oh, stop it!"
she said. "I'm not going to eat you."

"Is it just these three clues?" he said. "Should
we look for 'O'?"

She nodded. "
Lydia
," she said. "There are
five letters, right? I've seen her name on papers."

"Yeah." He got to the end of the shelf without
finding an 'O' and then dropped to his knees to get a better view
of the lower shelf. "There might not be an... oh, here it is." He
pulled the tome from the shelf. "
Once Upon A Time: A Collection
Of Fairy Stories
."

Izbet grabbed it, but it was so heavy she
couldn't hold it. It fell to the floor, and just happened to open
to the page the old woman had marked. They both looked closer.
"What does it say?"

"Snow-White and Rose-Red," he said. "I remember
a bit of it... two girls and their mother... a bear who is really a
prince... an evil dwarf who cursed the prince..."

"That!" she said, putting her little hand on his
mouth. "A small curse on a large object."

He shrugged. "Makes sense, I guess. Maybe after
we unlock the door it will fit into the spell?"

"We need the next letter," she said. "'T'?"

"'P'," he said.

"Yeah, okay, you can read," she said. "Big deal,
I can lead a demon army and destroy your world."

"Can you really?" he said.

"Well, maybe the greater tri-state area."

He nodded. For some ridiculous and completely
irrational reason, he was beginning to like Izbet. Maybe it was
just the combination of child-like innocence and objective evil,
but she was more tolerable than most of the human children he had
been around. But there was still the thought, the hope even, that
he was passed out from heat stroke in his car, imagining
everything. But on a basic level, he knew that wasn't true. He knew
it was all really happening and he was racing along on the edge of
a very high cliff and could fall at any moment. "Here," he said,
pulling another book off the shelf. "
Pride And Prejudice
?"
He thumbed through it. "This isn't scary, though, it's in the wrong
section."

"But one of the characters' names is
Lydia
," Izbet said. "I've heard it read several times."

"I found it before you!" he said.

She threw up her hands. "It's not a
competition."

"
I am not afraid; for though I am the
youngest, I'm the tallest
," he read.

"The youngest is the biggest?" she said. "The
youngest controls the biggest?"

"Makes sense. So, what have we got?"

"There's one thing missing," she said. These
five books and five letters have to have a magical element. There
has to be an occult thread running through them to give them
power." She thought for a moment. "Spell Lydia."

"'L'," he said.

"Twelve," she said. "The location in the
alphabet."

"You know the alphabet?" he said. "Oh, I guess
that's different than putting them together into words, though,
huh?"

She nodded. "Next letter."

"'Y'."

"Twenty-five."

"'D'."

"Four."

"'I'."

"Nine."

"And 'A', which is one," he said. "So that
equals..."

"Fifty-one," she said quickly. "That means
nothing I know of. If you add five books, it becomes
fifty-six."

"Does that mean anything to you?" he said,
expecting the number fifty-six to have some profoundly evil
purpose.

She shook her head. "Nope."

"Okay," he said. He turned to put the book on
the table, but another book on the shelf caught his eye.
"
A
."

"What?"

"There's a book by itself on the top shelf, just
called
A
." He pulled it down and opened it. The pages were
blank. "There's nothing in it. It's like a Diary or something that
was never written in."

"Let me see," she said and grabbed the small
book from his hand. She thumbed through it quickly. "I don't feel
anything." She thumbed through again. "Oh!"

She folded the book open and handed it back to
Allan. There, tucked close to the binding and written so small it
was hardly a mark at all, was '-1'. "Minus one," he said.

"Now it works," she said. "Fifty-five. Five
books, five letters. Written as '5' '5', is an
occult
number
... five plus five is ten, fifty-five divided by five is
ten. Five times fifty-five is two-hundred and seventy-five; if
written as '2' '7' '5', two minus seven plus five is zero. Two
times seven is fourteen, fourteen times 5 is seventy. Subtract
fourteen and you have fifty-six. Minus one, fifty-five." She tossed
up her hands. "See? Very simple numerology."

"I failed math," he said. "But,
occult
number
, let's work at that." He smiled. "What about 'L' through
'P'."

"Seventy," she said. "Five times five times
five, minus 55."

"So that verifies there are only five letters in
the spell? Should I write this stuff down so we can remember
it?"

"I can remember every heartbeat I've had for a
hundred and forty years," she said.

"We're all set, then," he said. "Let's look at
that big lock." He looked at his watch. "It's five o'clock."

****

He hadn't meant to visit the basement at all on
this trip. Basements scared him, always had. There was another guy
at work, someone hired just for the jobs he didn't want to do, and
it was going to be his job to catalog the basement. But here he
was, standing in front of an ancient wooden door made from oak
planks, with a huge old brass lock securing it in its frame. The
basement itself was dark: dark and scary. But Izbet had conjured or
created several small floating balls of light and the main area
where they were standing was well lit. The dark corners, well, he
decided not to think about it.

He held up the keyring. "Any idea which..."

"That one," she said and touched a key with the
tip of her finger.

He singled it out, approached the lock, and then
paused. "Are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, what if there is
something locked up in there?"

"You mean like a demon?" she said.

"Yeah... oh." He put the key in the lock and
turned it. There was no blast of otherworldly fog or screams of
torment, so he pulled the heavy door open.

Izbet made a few gestures with her hands and the
balls of light went through the door. Izbet followed. Allan
followed her.

It was an old root cellar, made originally for
holding food before refrigeration was invented. Three walls were
pressed against the clay ground outside which regulated the
temperature, but also insulated it from outside forces.

"This room is special," she said as she walked
around the small space. She was too short to find the cobwebs that
hung from the ceiling slats.

"Great!" he said, wiping the webs off his face.
He looked around. "What's special about it?"

"It..." she looked around. "It could actually
hold
a demon."

"So, the old horror movies were right?" he said.
"I
knew
I should never go into basements!"

She shrugged. "Guess so." She held the palms of
her hands toward each of the walls and seemed to be calculating
their strength. "The thing is, it would keep a demon locked up
because it would contain almost all of its magic. But, that also
means any magic done in here would be incredibly more powerful
because it's being compressed, held tightly in such a small,
earth-clad room."

"Oh, so do you think that's why Lydia used the
room for her spell?"

"Definitely," she said. "Even a mortal could use
very effective magic in here."

"Well, cool, then, we know the first part of the
riddle," he said. "It's after five, now, will you have enough time
before dark?"

"I don't know," she said. "There is no handbook,
you know? We have to learn everything on our own."

"Izbet?"

"Hmm?" She seemed to be thinking about something
and not listening very closely to what he was saying.

"Are you sure about this?" he said. "Do you
really want to die? You seem to be doing fine as you are."

"Why does it matter to you?" She looked up at
him. He had her complete attention.

"My wife and I have been trying to have a kid,
you know?" he said. "It may take her a little time to get used to
you, but..."

"I have a soul someplace," Izbet said. "Not
here, not inside me, but someplace. I can only release it by
finding it again."

He smiled and nodded. A part of him was
relieved, but a part, perhaps just a single blue stone of his soul,
wanted her to accept the offer. "So, what do you want me to
do?"

"We need something that will renew the marks on
the floor," she said.

He hadn't noticed them before, but there was a
faint outline of some sort of design, a double circle and a diamond
shape. He looked around the small room. "Oh, wait, there's a
workbench out in the basement, might be something there." He was
gone only a few seconds and came back into the root cellar.
"Carpenter's chalk."

"Okay, good," she said. "Now, just trace over
the lines."

"What is this design?" he said. He finished one
line and it became perfectly clear. It was the number '5'. The
other side of the design was also a '5', but drawn as a mirror
image, so that the two numbers, '55' came together to form the
design. "Very clever, you demons."

"I prefer being called
devious
," she said
with a smirk on her face.

"Okay, traced out," he said. "Do you just go
through the numbers?"

"Yes," she said. "Lydia's plan was to spin time
ahead so quickly that the contract would lose its magnetic hold,"
she said. "I pronounce the renewal spell, but then have to reverse
the big to small section and make it small to big so it applies to
my contract."

"And the last part, the 'youngest is the
biggest' part?" he said. "What does that mean?"

She shrugged. "Not sure, it might not even be
needed, or it might be something that will be obvious after the
first part of the spell has opened the portals of time." She walked
to the design and put one small bare foot in each circle.
"Ready?"

He nodded. "If I don't get the chance to say
goodbye..."

"Close the door," she said. And as he did, she
began the ceremony. "
Kehr mir die Zung im Arss umb
!" she
said. She held out her arms and closed her eyes and as she chanted
M
arukka Asaruludu Namru Asarualim
, she rose off the floor
and her hair turned black again. And as the tiny sparks appeared,
she opened her eyes which had turned solid white and seemed to
emanate light. The room began transforming itself, but not renewing
itself, it was falling even more into decay. The wooden ceiling
slats began falling, spider webs disintegrated to dust. "The small
curse on the large one be reversed!"

Allan backed away as the sparks got bigger and
hotter, falling to the floor like the flairs from a child's
sparkler. But, nothing else was happening.

"
I am not afraid; for though I am the
youngest, I'm the tallest
," she said.

Still nothing. She suddenly fell to the floor in
a lump as her hair changed to blonde and her blue eyes
returned.

"So?" he said. "Anything?"

She waited a moment, and then got to her feet.
She waited a while longer. "Nothing," she said. "Something isn't
right."

"It's that last part," he said. "I could tell.
It all fell apart right after you said that last part."

"I know, I know," she said. "Dammit!"

"Why would Jane Austen be a part of a demonic
ritual, anyway," he said.

"It's not her or even her book, it's the way the
words fit the situation!" She dusted off her butt and looked
around. "The first part worked, though, the room got older."

"Yeah," he said. "It's that last part."

Suddenly Izbet's eyes grew larger and she
gasped. "What time is it?"

"It can't be more than around five-thirty," he
said as he looked at his watch. "Shit, it's eight-thirty!"

"Near dark!" She seemed to panic. "The spell, it
took more time than it seemed," she said. "I guess because it was
an age progression."

"That means..."

"I can hear them coming!"

"Them?!"

"The ancient ones!" she said. She was genuinely
scared. "Lock the door!"

He quickly turned the blade on the old lock and
jiggled the handle to make sure it had fallen into its slot. "This
won't hold them, will it?!"

"Shhhh!" She motioned him back across the room,
and then they both slid down the wall and hunkered down
side-by-side in a corner. Above them they could hear the heavy
footsteps. Their voices boomed like thunder and seemed to rattle
the glass in the windows of whatever room they visited.

"They'll harm you?" Allan whispered.

She nodded. "But they'll kill you," she said.
"Think about how humans treat ants. They treat humans the same way.
No talking or reasoning with them; they believe they are so far
above you, it's foolish to even acknowledge you as a sentient
being."