Unholy Dimensions (17 page)

Gabrielle glanced about the room, not yet having ventured another step forward, partly afraid to wake Dianna. It hadn’t changed much; it was an office, a study, a library whose walls were built-in book shelves full to overflowing, as if the room was in fact constructed from books alone. They were even stacked in the corners, covered several chairs.

The shades and curtains were drawn, but Gabrielle could still make out the artifacts that hung on those portions of the wall, and which stood on those sections of shelf, that the books had not claimed. There were Egyptian canopic urns, topped with the heads of animal-headed gods. Paleolithic hand axes, early Bronze Age daggers, a gallery of masks: a green-skinned woman from India, a narrow face with a six-pointed star in its forehead from Nigeria, masks from Sri Lanka, the Eskimos, the Cherokee. Their leering eyes, whether painted or empty holes, all made Gabrielle uncomfortable.

Yes, Dianna had taken souvenirs from her many travels, her many adventures as archaeologist, anthropologist, author. But her most recent, her last souvenir had been a bullet in the spine from an unknown source while on a trip to Tibet. Now her legs were of less practical value to her than these hollow visages on the walls.

But there had been some artifacts added in the past few years that Gabrielle had never seen. Most noticeably, to either side of the broad desk a sturdy table had been set. And atop these flanking tables were identical plain stone cubes. The stone was
of an odd pale violet color, which almost seemed faintly phosphorescent. At last, Gabrielle took a number of steps further into the murky room. The cube on the right proved to be a basin, hollowed out from a single block of stone, but empty. The cube on the left, though of identical size and form, served as a pedestal for an odd sculpture. Gabrielle drew even closer to this table for a better inspection.

The sculpture was carved from a black stone as glossy as obsidian. It was an icon, a figure, a monster of some kind. The creature was like some perverse genetic splicing of a wild boar, a frog and an obese human male. Gabrielle found its incredible detail impressive, particularly if it had been rendered somehow from volcanic glass, but its realism made it far more unsettling than the abstracted masks around her. She found the icon repellent.

And yet it was mesmerizing. The hybrid’s eyes were closed as if in sleep, and Gabrielle knew she was letting her imagination become far too agitated when she thought she saw the travesty’s gross belly rise with a deep intake of breath. She timidly reached out to touch the thing...as much to break her self-induced spell as to see if the sculpture was as glossy as it looked.

“Don’t touch it!” a voice cried out.

Gabrielle withdrew her hand sharply for the second time that afternoon, her heart rocketing in her chest. She whirled to see Dianna’s eyes upon her. They were wide and darting, as if she had just been startled, herself.

“I’m sorry, Dianna,” Gabrielle stammered. “I...just never saw that piece before.”

Dianna Wallace pushed herself as erect in her wheelchair as she could manage. She had composed her wild look, and even offered a wan smile, a shadow of her former grin. “I’m sorry, hon, I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s one of my most recent finds. He’s called Tsathoggua.”

“He looks like a sitting hog,” Gabrielle joked, in regard to the name. “Is he some kind of god?”

“Compared to us he is,” Dianna said, her smile taking on an odd taint. “You look enchanting, Gaby, as always. And don’t waste your time telling me I look good. I know I don’t.”

“You don’t,” the petite young woman admitted, her lips pursed in an unhappy pout that she knew brought out the protective instinct in men, but it was a pout that men often inspired themselves.

“I’m so glad you agreed to come back. I need you now more than I ever did before. Back when you were a house-sitter, not a baby-sitter. I know you were reluctant...”

Gabrielle couldn’t explain to Dianna the nature of her reluctance. The woman had suffered enough. Instead, she lied, “I just wasn’t sure I could offer you the care you need. I’m a housekeeper, and I’ve been a nanny...but don’t you think a private nurse is what you need most?”

“I need my little Gaby back”

Gabrielle smiled shyly, and diverted the embarrassing compliment by asking, “Who is the guy with shades who showed me in?”

Dianna smoothed back her disheveled hair with both hands, turning her eyes to the curtained windows. “His name is Smith. He helps move me around, runs errands for me in my research, serves as a watchdog in case my would-be assassin has friends in the states, who don’t realize that the nature of my research is benign. He won’t be in your way, Gaby...you’ll run the house as you see fit. But he is a mute, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Who would want to kill you in Tibet, Dianna?” Gabrielle asked, coming close to her employer and taking her hand. “Don’t they have any leads?”

“I was following an esoteric path of study, hon,” Dianna replied softly, squeezing the young woman’s small hand as if she were a child. “Something I had never even heard rumors of before. A kind of ancient cult. And the sniper proved to me that the cult still exists, and takes its religion very seriously.”

“And what religion is that?”

“The worship of the Dreaming One.”

“Who is the Dreaming One?"

“Tsathoggua.”

Gabrielle glanced behind her again at that fat toad/warthog/human, seated like some obscene Buddha atop the block of violet stone.

“They were trying to kill me, but they didn’t. I can’t explore the way I once did...but I’ve found a way that’s even more exciting. It’s like exploring the bottom of the ocean, exploring space. And better than either. More frightening. More exhilarating...”

Gabrielle thought Dianna was referring to her involved computer set-up, which dominated most of the desk top. The internet, the web that now linked a world it had taken bygone explorers months, years to traverse.

“I’m glad you haven’t let this stop you,” the young woman said awkwardly, trying not to sound patronizing. “You have the right kind of attitude to fight this...”

“I can’t fight what’s happened to my body. And I don’t care to. My mind is free. I can still dream.” Dianna’s eyes had taken on a kind of wildness again, and it was unnerving. She had
always been obsessive about her work, and Gabrielle had always admired her for that. But this seemed different. This was the look of a zealot. A fanatic. As if she had joined some strange sort of cult, herself.

Gabrielle squeezed the woman’s hand again. “Can I get you some tea?”

“Yes, darling, that would be wonderful. That ass of a husband of mine can’t even boil water to save his life.”

A flicker went through Gabrielle’s face at the mention of Mr. Wallace, but her smile only faltered a second. “I’ll go make you a pot.”

“It’s good to have you back here, my little Gaby,” Dianna told her.

“It’s good to be back,” Gabrielle replied, only half truthfully.

Gabrielle was setting out a tray to bring to Dianna when she sensed a presence enter into the kitchen behind her. The flesh of her nape prickled, and she turned -- expecting to see the mute bodyguard Smith looming there. Instead, it was someone who unsettled her even more. A handsome white man, bearded, with longish dark hair and a wide grin. Kevin Wallace held a glass of liquor in his hand. He didn’t care for tea.

“Hello, Gaby,” he said.

Gabrielle turned back to her duties, murmured, “Hello.” She heard Dianna’s husband move a little closer behind her.

“You look as lovely as I remembered you. I missed you.”

Gabrielle said nothing aloud, but to herself she said that this was a mistake, her returning here, a terrible mistake.

“I know you’re hurt,” Wallace cooed. His soft voice at the back of her neck, though several feet away, felt like a dirty caress.

“I’m not hurt,” she replied coldly. “It wasn’t me you hurt, but your wife.”

“Di isn’t hurt, Gaby. At least, not by us. How could she be? She never found out.”

“If she knew, she’d hurt. And she’d hate me. As much as I hate you.”

“Well, that’s convenient, isn’t it?” Wallace said with amusement, sipping his drink. “You’re a victim, and I’m some evil seducer? I don’t recall raping you, Gaby. I seem to recall that you were quite...amorous toward me, at first.”

Gabrielle turned to glare at the man. “I was nineteen. I was stupid. I made a stupid mistake. I betrayed the best friend I had. I was sorry about what I did...I felt guilt, and pain. I still do. But you...you don’t. You betrayed your wife and you feel nothing. That’s why I hate you.”

“Oh come on, Gaby, you know it’s more complicated than that. You hate me because I didn’t give up Dianna for you.”

“I never wanted that!”

“You fantasized about it. You had to have.”

“Listen to me, Kevin,” Gabrielle hissed. “I’m here to help my friend. To make up for my betrayal, whether she’s aware of it or not. But you are not invited to make any attempts to seduce me again. I won’t stay here if you do...and you’ll only be hurting Dianna. You’ll only make it so that she has to hire someone else. Can you be that cruel to her?”

“Gaby,” Wallace said, drawing nearer, causing Gabrielle to back into the counter. “I never stopped thinking about you. To be honest, I would leave Dianna for you now. I should have done it three years ago, when I lost you and thought I’d never see you again.”

A sneer came to the young woman’s face. “You should have been an actor, Kevin. Of course you’d love to be with me now...now that your wife is paralyzed from the waist down. You’re vile, you know that? You’re absolutely vile.”

“Listen...”

Gabrielle took
up the tray and whisked past him. “Don’t talk to me any further, Mr. Wallace. Unless you want some tea.” And with that she was gone from the kitchen.

Kevin Wallace watched after her, and sighed, smiling bitterly. “Coffee, tea or me,” he muttered, and looking up saw the black man Smith standing at the other end of the kitchen. He must have just come up from the cellar. Wallace hated the man; always sneaking around quiet as a shadow. Mockingly, Wallace saluted him with his drink. The black man only stood regarding him a moment, and then drifted out of the room as well.

“She sleeps a lot these days,” Wallace remarked, watching Gabrielle emerge from Dianna’s office the next day. She carried a tray containing a barely eaten meal. As Gabrielle walked briskly toward the kitchen he kept up with her, and went on, “Did she tell you about her new...research?”

“Not really,” Gabrielle answered, eyes ahead.

“I’m a bit concerned about her. I
think she might be better off elsewhere, under more professional care.”

Gabrielle stopped to glower at the man. “You had better not mean institutionalized!” she snapped.

“You haven’t heard her mad talk. She’s afraid to disturb you with it, as she has me.”

Gabrielle glanced back at the closed office door, and then whispered, “Come into the kitchen...”

When both were well out of range of Dianna’s hearing, her husband explained, “She swears she’s exploring in dreams, Gaby...the world of dreams. I understand why she would be drawn to this notion. A woman who once traveled every corner of the world, and now can’t even cross the room easily, but that doesn’t mean it’s a healthy delusion.”

“You’re misinterpreting her! She must mean she’s studying dreams, interpreting them, like Jung...finding cultural similarity in dream symbology, or...or exploring the idea of the collective unconscious...”

“Ah, nnno. According to Di, there is something like a collective unconscious. But it’s a dream world, that most of us only glimpse, and not too clearly. But Di swears she’s taught herself to enter her consciousness into this world. To send her spirit, her astral self into this place to explore it. She says it isn’t so much a dream world, Gaby...as another dimension.”

Gabrielle gaped at the man, horrified that these ugly accusations might be true. She remembered the fanatical sheen she had witnessed in Dianna’s eyes. “She can’t mean literally,” she protested. “She must mean...”

“Quite literally. She says she’s been to a place called N’Kai, which is deep inside the Earth...or a variation on our Earth. She says she’s trying to find her way back again, to learn more, but her first trip took a lot out of her. And that much, at least, is true. One night I heard her gagging in her office, retching...being sick. I ran in and saw her on the floor, where she’d fallen out of her wheelchair. She was vomiting into her trash basket.”

“Did you call a doctor?”

“Yes. A doctor came out the next morning. She was all right, considering. But it was very alarming, Gaby. And her vomit...well, not to nauseate you, but it was black as oil. And when I tried to take the bucket to dump it out she wouldn’t let me. I persisted but she threw such a fit that I was afraid for her, so I left it alone. I don’t know what she wanted it for, or what became of it. Or what it was. I wish she had shown it to the doctor the next day, but...”

“My God ...”

“Yes. And shortly after that she hired that Smith person. I don’t know where she found him, and I took the liberty of checking our accounts to see what she pays him, and as far as I can see he works for nothing but a room to sleep in. He runs errands for her sometimes. He brought her those two purple stone tubs in her office.”