Unholy Dimensions (36 page)

“Maybe that was one dimension he didn’t want to go.”

Meredith had gone. Andrea had returned. She found Leonard stripped to the waist and sweaty, crouched in the corner where his mattress had previously been. He was drawing designs in that corner, along the low ceiling where it slanted down toward the floor. She knelt by him and stroked his back while he referred to a diagram in the opened trigonal book and then took a measurement between two curves he had drawn.

“Did you make that ruler?” Andrea asked him.

“Had to; it’s in Smyth’s pyramid inch, a little off from the English inch. Smyth was Astronomer Royal for Scotland, found all kinds of interesting things in the measurements of the Great Pyramid. Marotta believed the pyramids were powerful centers for interdimensional travel.”

“You’re crazy, Lenny, you know that?”

“This is driving me crazy, trying to draw this. I've been at it for five and a half hours.”

“It’s hot in here...let’s go for a walk, get some oxygen, how ’bout?”

“In a minute...”

“Almost done?”

“This configuration has a few last vital curves. I won’t draw the last one in, though, until I’m ready to open the door...”

“Open the door, huh?”

Leonard twisted around to her with a tired smile. “Speaking of vital curves.” He slid his arm about her waist, drew her closer for a kiss. “Mm.” They embraced more tightly...

They ended up making love there in the corner, as if the mattress had never been moved, their clothing puddled around them. At one point Andrea glanced at a can of white paint by her head, asked about it. Leonard explained, “If I want to close the door fast, I have to obliterate the lines.”

“Oh, of course...right.”

He woke first, sat up to stare at her for a short while as she lay on her side bare on the bare floor, curled in a ball. She was sweet and dull – a refreshing contrast to his sister. Maybe it would be Andrea to help him break that hold. He only wished he loved her more. He wished he could lose himself so deeply in Andrea that Meredith would never find him...

He dragged his shirt off the back of a chair, dug cigarettes and lighter from its pocket. Then he contemplated the patterns he had woven web-like into the corner. Connect-the-dots to the secrets of the universe. Idly he took up his charcoal pencil, touched it to a nexus point in the strange anarchy of lines, curves, spirals. At this critical stage, could he switch channels, so to speak? Open different but related doors by varying the last lines? If he were to connect this point not to the curve running below it, but over here...to this nodal point to form a triangle. Yes – it was funny. Suddenly the whole drawing seemed to depend on this triangle one last stroke would create at its center. Even incomplete, the figure seemed to hum with its own vibrating energy...like the musical instrument...keys to keys...yes...a triangle...

He drew the pencil to that final point to complete the equation. He didn’t even use his ruler, but the line flowed straight and smooth, and even as he reached the nodal point he wondered if he had really meant to do this or if he’d been groggy from sleep, or if it had been the imp of the perverse. Or...if something close behind the barrier had influenced his foggy mind...

When the pencil point touched the nodal point a hand reached out of the plaster of the slanted ceiling.

Leonard was alerted to its presence by Andrea’s gurgle. He looked and saw her clawing at the hand where it had seized her throat. It was a man’s left hand. But the flesh was plaster white...and covered in the charcoal lines and curves Leonard had drawn. They smudged slightly from Andrea’s palms but the hand didn’t vanish.

“Oh God!” Leonard cried, leaping to his feet and backing away. He wanted to flee the apartment. Go find Meredith. Meredith was strong...Meredith could...

Andrea’s bare heels drummed and dug at the floor. Leonard forgot the paint. His reaction was more primitive. He tore into the kitchen, found a bread knife in a drawer. He could hear Andrea wheezing, rattling behind him. “Oh God,” he whispered. He still wanted to flee...but he whirled back toward the bedroom...

Andrea was gone. “No!” he shouted, and began to sob in fury and terror. “Let her
go!
Oh Jesus...let her
go,
God damn you!”

The hand returned. It passed easily out of the wall, again the patterns drawn there stretching out across its forearm like a fluid tattoo, coiled around the fingers like black rings. Leonard’s eyes followed the fingers in their stretching and clawing.

The long nails were raking the floor only inches from
The Book of Awe.

Leonard fell to his knees before the hand, plunged the knife down. The blade slammed into the forearm. The hand fluttered like a dying bird and a black blood like ink spattered its white surface. The hand and arm withdrew.

A moment later Leonard was sitting alone on the floor of his loft apartment, naked, the book hugged against his chest in both arms, his clothing and Andrea’s strewn around him. And he stared at the slanted wall, that black blood like ink spattered on it and a trickle drying from a point where the bread knife stuck out of the plaster.

When he could rise he phoned Meredith.

She came, dressed primarily in black as always. “I was hoping you’d get rid of that bimbo, Len, but couldn’t you have used a more conventional method...instead of using her for a human guinea pig?”

“I didn't use her like that, God damn it! I didn’t mean to open the door then!”

“So much for caution.” They had gingerly stepped into the bedroom’s threshold. The room smelled of paint.

“It didn’t look like one coat was going to be enough, but it’s gone,” Leonard mumbled. “I should have used black paint, anyway...”

“But even painted over...isn’t the pattern still present? Under the paint? Couldn’t there still be a danger?”

“I don't know,” he whispered.

“How long did you turn your back on this thing?”

“Just to call you. And to let you in just now.”

“Okay...let’s break some plaster out of the wall. Some nice big chunks. That should disrupt it pretty well, huh?”

“Good idea! Watch it...I’ll get my tool box.”

When Leonard returned he seemed reluctant to go near the wall again, so Meredith took a claw hammer from him, crept up to the corner, swung the hammer in a vicious arc and then danced back. She had expected a hand to lunge out and catch her by the wrist to stop her. One didn’t. The first blow only made a dent, so she danced in again. Again. At last the wall was cracking. A few strands of the web had to have been severed, by now. Leonard sighed, and moved in with a linoleum knife he had taken up more as a weapon than to obliterate his drawing. Crouching together, they dug several large slabs of plaster free of the slats beneath. Meredith seemed to ignore the paint smudges and the chalky plaster dust on her clothing. She said, “This week on
This Old House
we’ll be closing interdimensional portals...”

Leonard was so grateful for her presence, her strength. Meredith always knew how to take charge. Neither of their mothers or the father they shared had given them the love the movies and TV shows told them was normal, nurturing love. Meredith had almost been a mother to Leonard. Yes, he thought, she had...though she was the younger. She’d helped him get into school. Helped him when he dropped out. She was suffocating, dominating, as mothers could be, of course. Had he in turn been a replacement for their father, fulfilling some need daddy hadn’t? Given certain aspects of their relationship, Leonard didn’t want to imagine just what Meredith’s paternal
yearnings might be. At any rate, as often as he itched to be free of Meredith’s gravity, right now he was close to tears at her comforting nearness...

Even as the voice behind them spoke Leonard had caught a peripheral movement and begun to twist toward it.

“Now you’ve trapped me here...with you,” said Andrea.

Meredith spun on her heels. “Jesus!” She clutched at her brother’s arm with her left hand, raised the hammer in her right fist. “Go away!”

“I just told you...I can’t,” said Andrea. “You’ve ruined the corner.” She stood in the doorway, blocking their escape from the room. Andrea had always had a husky voice, but it was unnaturally deep and raspy now. Her eyes were closed and remained that way, as though she were hypnotized, sleepwalking. Her hair, blond and permed, was still gathered up in a plume above her head. But her flesh was so much paler than the brother and sister remembered it. And she was still naked. And her naked pale flesh was covered in grids and curves, angles and spirals. They were the same patterns from the corner – under the paint there was no longer any drawing – but this was a contoured map, with mountains and valleys of flesh and bone.

Leonard watched her lift her small right hand to her face, spread the fingers, flex them. Though her eyes remained closed she seemed to be studying the hand, testing it. Then he realized why, even before she said it.

“It’s been a while since I had use of my good hand.”

“Marotta,” Leonard breathed. “Oh God...”

“Where is my book, young man?” Andrea lowered her hand. “I’m flattered by your interest in me. Your friend here told me a lot...while she could. But now I have things to do and I need back what belongs to me.”

The grid seemed to pulse and writhe on her, and now t
hey saw why. Black pincered insects like earwigs had emerged from the centers of spirals, from intersections and nodal points, and were crawling along her body. None dropped off, or even strayed from the narrow black highways, but soon she was covered in a seething mass. Meredith repressed a gag and looked away. Leonard had begun to shake violently. His eyes strained out of their sockets and tears coursed down his face, leaving flesh-colored trails in the plaster dust that made his own face ghostly.

“Let Andrea go!”

“She isn’t important.”

“Let her go, God damn you, let her
go!
"

“She’s already gone.”

“You
bastard!
"

Meredith looked up in shock as Leonard leapt at the thing, swinging the linoleum knife down at its chest, one bare breast a spiral with the nipple at its center.

The knife disappeared into that pale flesh. Leonard’s hand disappeared into that pale flesh. His arm. His shoulder. Andrea took his head in both her hands and pressed it between her breasts, cutting off his scream before it could come. His head vanished into the soft white flesh without leaving a ripple. She hadn’t even flinched at his impact. His momentum had buried him half inside her, and she guided the rest, oblivious to Meredith’s hysterical shrieking and the mad thrashing and kicking of Leonard’s legs in the air. Andrea took one leg in each hand, guided them in. One shoe fell off a foot, thumped at her bare feet, then Leonard was gone.

“Now
I’m
a door,” Andrea said to Meredith. “This is what your brother wanted, isn’t it? Now you have a choice.
Shut up!
If the police come you’ll be sorry!” the thing rasped.

“Oh God...oh God...”

“Now you have a choice. Find me the book, or you can join your brother.”

“I'll find it, oh God, I’ll find it...
please!
"

Andrea stepped to one side to let Meredith pass from the room. “Look for it.”

“Please don’t hurt me...I’ll do anything...please...I’ll find it...” As she passed the creature it caught her elbow and smiled in her face, insects roving across its cute, slack features. Meredith swallowed a shriek, gagged on it.

“It’s been a long time since I had a woman. A human woman. And such a lovely woman. You did say you’d do anything...”

“No! Please! Please!”

Andrea let go of her arm. “Find the book.”

Meredith stumbled on into the parlor, shaking with sobs. Andrea shuffled behind stiffly. As Meredith searched in the drawers of Leonard’s corner desk she blubbered, “What’s going to happen to my brother? Let him out...if it wasn’t for him you wouldn’t be getting your book back.”

“If you miss him so much you can come in here and join him.’

“No! Please let him come
back!
”

“Find that book.”

It was atop the monitor of his computer, in the shadowed nook of his computer desk shelf. Meredith slid it out into her arms, pressed it against her breasts.

“Good girl.” Andrea spread her arms. “Give it here.”

“
Take it!
” Meredith screamed, and she leaped a step at the apparition, flinging the book by one corner squarely at its naked breasts. At this range she couldn’t miss...and Andrea was too somnambulistic to dodge. She hoped.

Andrea didn’t dodge. If anything, she spread her arms out farther. The triangular book struck her between the breasts...so hard that it lodged in the flesh deeply. It remained that way, half buried, for two beats. Andrea had not flinched, her peacefully shut lids did not quiver. But she smiled.

“Thank you,” she said, in the rasp of Louis Marotta, the lost explorer.

The book was sucked abruptly fully into her, was gone. But its passing left a twisted, funnel-like hole. And into that hole were sucked the lines and curves and spirals of the web of her body, like a net being pulled rapidly through a small opening. It took only seconds. Then Andrea stood rigid and totally white, like a soft cold statue.