Beyond the Pale Read online

  Old photographs in antique gilt frames lined either wall of the stairwell. One caught Travis’s eye. He paused and peered more closely at the photo. It showed a group of grim-faced men and women clad in somber attire. Some gripped shovels or pickaxes, and a hole had been torn open in the earth before them. A caption was written at the bottom of the photo in spidery ink. Travis strained to make it out: The Beckett-Strange Home for Children, 1933. It was the groundbreaking ceremony for the old orphanage. However, it was something else that had caught Travis’s attention. A rectangular shape floated in the picture’s background, blurry and half-obscured by a woman’s hat, but he recognized it all the same. The old billboard by the highway—only in this photo it was not covered by the cigarette advertisement. Although dim and murky, he could just discern the wild landscape. So the painting had been there back in 1933. Yet what was it advertising? There seemed to be flowing words written at the bottom of the billboard, but Travis could not read them.

  A perturbed voice broke his concentration. “Travis, do stop dawdling. There simply isn’t time.”

  Travis tore his eyes away from the old photo and hurried up the steps after Jack. The odd staircase ended in a blank wall. Jack pressed against a mahogany panel to his right, and an opening appeared. Travis ducked his head and followed his friend through the small door. Bronze light flared to life as Jack used the candle from his hurricane lantern to light an oil lamp atop a wrought-iron stand. Travis adjusted his gun-slinger’s spectacles in amazement.

  “Jack, what is this place?”

  “Minerva’s Thread! You can’t stifle your questions for five seconds, can you, Travis?”

  Travis hardly heard him. The windowless room was circular, and by that he knew it to be somewhere within the house’s tower. He was familiar with the rooms above and below. Why had he never considered what might lie between? Now he stared in wonder.

  The walls were covered with artifacts. Flat-bladed swords gleamed in the light of the oil lamp, their blades etched with flowing designs and incomprehensible symbols. Beside them hung half-moon axes hafted with bone and leather, and massive hammers that obviously had been designed for pounding in skulls, not nails. There were wooden shields inlaid with silver, and neck-rings of fiery copper, and helmets crowned with goat horns and yellow horsehair. It was like a collection from a museum, but not quite. For what startled Travis most of all was the way the objects shone in the warm light. Most of them were worn and well used, but none seemed to display the signs of decay and corrosion that came with centuries of burial. Well-oiled leather still looked supple, and steel glowed without a speck of rust.

  This was too much for Travis. “Jack, I have a request, and I really don’t think it’s all that unreasonable.” He advanced on his friend. “Tell me what is going on.”

  Jack gave him a sour look. “Do spare the dramatics, Travis. And sit down.”

  As usual, Travis found himself obeying. He sank into a chair beside a table that occupied the room’s center. Jack filled a glass from a decanter of brandy and handed it to Travis.

  “I don’t want it,” Travis said in a sulky tone.

  “You will.”

  Something in Jack’s voice made Travis hold on to the glass. “Jack, what are all these things?” He gestured to the artifacts that decorated the walls of the room. “Where did you get them? And how come you’ve never offered any of them for sale?”

  Jack waved the questions aside with a dignified flick of his hand. Jack could do things like that. He paced around the table, lips pursed in thought. At last he spoke. “I’m dreadfully sorry to have to involve you in all this, Travis. However, I’m afraid I don’t have any choice. There simply isn’t anyone else I dare trust. And these matters are far too crucial for me to take unnecessary chances.” He sighed, a sound of profound weariness. “I am going to be leaving.”

  Travis stared at his old friend in shock. “Leaving? You mean Castle City?”

  The older man nodded in sad affirmation.

  “But why?”

  Jack sat down, folded his hands neatly before him, and met Travis’s eyes.

  “I am being hunted,” he said.

  5.

  Travis gripped the empty brandy glass and listened numbly while Jack explained in a tone of infuriating calmness that certain individuals had been searching for him for a long time. Now they were on the verge of discovering him at last, and Jack was obliged to leave Castle City, at least for the time being. Travis started to wonder if Jack was dealing in black-market artifacts. Maybe the swords, axes, and helmets that adorned the walls of the hidden room had been smuggled into the country, and others who wanted them were after Jack. Hard as it was to believe, it seemed the only logical explanation.

  Travis realized Jack had asked him a question. Dazed, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jack. What did you say?”

  “Pay attention, Travis,” Jack said with a disapproving frown. “This is important. I said I was hoping you could keep something for me while I am gone. It is a small object—of no market worth whatsoever—but of great personal value to me. I would rest far better if I knew it was in good hands while I am away.” He unlocked an oak cabinet and pulled out a box, black and small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. He set it on the table before Travis. “Will you keep it for me?”

  “Of course I will, Jack, if you want me to.” Travis picked up the box. It was heavy, and he realized it must be fashioned of iron. Its surface was decorated with angular symbols he did not recognize, and a simple hasp held the lid shut. Travis started to undo it.

  “By the Lost Fraction of Osiris, don’t open it!” Jack clamped his hand down on the lid of the box and glared at Travis. Then, with a chagrined look, he leaned back in his chair and smoothed his waistcoat. “Forgive me, Travis. It really would be best if you left the box closed.”

  “So I gathered,” Travis said.

  “There’s no need to be flippant. Just promise me you’ll keep the box safe and secret.”

  Travis sighed in defeat. “All right. I promise.”

  “Thank you.”

  However, Travis was not finished. “Jack, what’s really going on? Who are these people who are after you? Where are you going? And when will you be coming back?”

  Jack’s tone was reproving, if not unkind. “You know better than to ask such questions, Travis. I have already told you more than I should.” With that Jack stood, giving clear indication that the conversation was over. Travis knew there was nothing else he could do, although that didn’t keep a heaviness from weighing on his heart.

  Travis picked up the iron box and slipped it into the breast pocket of his sheepskin coat, then followed Jack downstairs. The two paused before the antique shop’s front door. Travis chewed his lip. Was this the last time he would ever see his old friend? “I’m going to miss you, Jack.”

  Now a wistful expression touched Jack’s mien. “And I you, Travis. You are a true friend. Thank you for understanding.”

  Travis didn’t bother to say he didn’t understand any of this. It would be no use. “Good-bye, Jack.” He couldn’t believe he was speaking these words. “Wherever you’re going, take care of yourself.”

  A spark flashed in Jack’s blue eyes. “Oh, you can be assured of that.” Without further ado, he opened the shop’s door and ushered Travis outside.

  Travis started through, then halted in mid-step. A chill coursed through him. “There it is again,” he said.

  Jack’s bushy eyebrows knit themselves together. “What is it, Travis?”

  Travis reached a hand toward the upper left corner of the door, and his fingers brushed over a design scratched into the paint. It was the same symbol he had seen on the front door of the saloon and the other doors around town. Except this one was different in that an X had been scrawled beneath:

  Jack peered at the scratch marks, and at once his blue eyes went wide. “Oh, dear,” he whispered. “This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all.”

  Travis looked at his fr
iend in astonishment. “You know what this symbol means, don’t you?”

  Jack brushed the scratch marks with trembling fingers. “It is the mark of their servants. I had not guessed they were this close, not yet. But if their minions have been here, they cannot be far behind.”

  Travis shook his head in confusion, but before he could speak a beam of blue-white light tore apart the fabric of the night. Travis raised a hand to shield his eyes. It was like the searchlight of a police helicopter, except it was too low to the ground, and there was no sound accompanying it, only the murmur of the wind. Whatever the source of the light, it was coming toward the antique shop. And coming fast.

  “Go inside, Travis.” Jack’s voice resonated with low urgency.

  “What is it, Jack?” Travis squinted against the light. He thought he saw something moving within—tall silhouettes backlit by the glare.

  Jack’s voice became a stern command. “Now, Travis!”

  This time Travis didn’t argue. He stumbled backward into the shop. Jack hurried after him, slammed the door shut, and slid the dead bolt into place. He shut the drapes that covered the shop’s iron-grilled front window, and the room was plunged into gloom. Only a razor-thin plane of hot white light found its way through a gap in the curtains: It sliced the dusky air like a glowing knife.

  Alarm surged in Travis’s chest. “It’s them, isn’t it? The people who are after you.” Jack did not disagree. That was all the confirmation Travis needed. Alarm crested into outright panic.

  “Calm yourself, Travis,” Jack warned with a stern look.

  “I don’t want to be calm,” he whispered. “Now is definitely not the time for calmness.”

  “On the contrary, there is no better time to remain calm than when one is in danger.”

  Travis groaned. Jack had to go and say the word, didn’t he? Danger.

  Jack moved to an old-fashioned typesetter’s desk, opened a drawer, and drew out an object wrapped in black silk. He unfolded the cloth to reveal a slender, murderous stiletto. A bloodred stone glistened in its steel hilt. He handed the knife to Travis.

  “Take this, just in case.”

  Travis fumbled with the weapon as though he had just been handed a live snake instead. However, a scowl from Jack kept him from dropping the knife. Travis had never owned a weapon of any sort in his life. It felt cool and disturbingly smooth in his hand. He slipped it through his belt. At least that way he wouldn’t have to hold it.

  “Just in case what?” he asked in a croak.

  Jack ignored the question. “Follow me,” he whispered and moved through the chaotic clutter of the shop.

  Travis started to stumble after him, then froze. An electric humming pierced the silence, and a line of brilliant light flared beneath the front door. With menacing slowness, the doorknob turned right, then left, then right again. Travis felt a warmth against his hip and glanced down. The gem embedded in the stiletto’s hilt now shone bright crimson.

  “Travis, get over here!”

  Jack stood beside an open doorway that led down to the shop’s cellar, but Travis could not move his feet. His eyes locked on the antique shop’s front door. A sharp beam of frosty light shot through the keyhole. The doorknob twisted faster, until it rattled in its socket, then the rattling ceased. A moment later the entire door shook with a thud. There was a long pause, followed by a second strike.

  “Travis!”

  The roar of Jack’s voice shattered his paralysis. Travis lurched toward his friend and bit his tongue as he barked his shin on a cedar trunk. Just as Travis reached Jack, one last blow resounded behind him. Hinges shrieked, old wood exploded in a spray of splinters, and searing light flooded the shop.

  Jack pulled Travis through the cellar doorway onto the top step. As one, they turned to shut the door at the head of the staircase. For a fleeting second, through the closing gap, Travis glimpsed a figure silhouetted against the blazing light. The outline of the intruder was tall and slender, and moved toward them with swift, sinister grace. Then the door slammed shut and blocked out the sight. Hands shaking, Jack slid a stout wooden bar across the doorway. Together, the two men half ran, half fell down the staircase into the cellar below. Sheet-draped furniture clustered around them like a spectral chorus, and the cellar air was as cold as a tomb. Above, the first violent blow struck the cellar door. Ethereal light poured through the crack beneath and drifted down the steps like livid mist.

  Jack’s thin gray hair flew about his head. “That bar will only hold them for a few moments. You must go, Travis. Quickly.” He hurried to the far wall and opened a small wooden door. Beyond was a dark passage. “This tunnel leads to the garden shed out back.”

  “What about you, Jack?”

  A second blow struck the cellar door.

  “Don’t argue with me, Travis. There simply isn’t time.”

  “But why aren’t you coming?” Every instinct told Travis to flee, to scramble through the tunnel, to run as fast as he could into the late-October night. Yet he couldn’t just leave Jack like this.

  “I have my reasons for staying.”

  Jack’s voice was flint, his expression steel. Travis had never seen him like this before.

  “Then let me help you.”

  “You don’t know what you’re dealing with, Travis.”

  Travis shook his spinning head. “I can’t just leave you, Jack!”

  At this Jack’s expression softened a fraction. “Don’t be afraid, Travis. I had not planned this, but I see now it is the only way. If I am fortunate, I can give you time to escape. However, you must use it.” A sad light shone in his blue eyes. “You are our hope now.”

  He reached out and took Travis’s right hand between his own two and gripped it firmly.

  “Forgive me, my friend.”

  Agony raced up Travis’s arm. For a fractured moment it felt as if his entire body was on fire. White-hot radiance washed over him, pierced flesh, blood, and bone—streamed through the very substance of his body as if he were as transparent and brittle as glass. Travis tried to scream, but his voice was lost in the roar of the wildfire that engulfed him. In another heartbeat it would burn him into nothing.

  The moment shattered. Travis reeled away from his friend. The blazing fire had vanished, and now chill sweat trickled down his sides. Although he dreaded what he would see—crisped flesh and blackened bones—he looked down at his throbbing hand. The skin was smooth and undamaged. However, all that was left of the hair on the backs of his knuckles was a fine gray ash.

  He looked up at Jack with a mixture of fear and wonder.

  “Go, my friend,” Jack said. “May the gods walk with you.”

  Travis shook his head in dull incomprehension. Another impact shook the cellar door. The thick wooden bar cracked with a sound like breaking bones.

  “Go, Travis!” Gone now was the kind and slightly absent-minded old man Travis had known for seven years. In his place was an imposing stranger: face sharp, voice commanding, eyes vivid as lightning.

  This time Travis did as he was told.

  He dived into the cramped tunnel. Cobwebs clung to his hands and face. With a cry he tore them to shreds. From behind came a crash as the cellar door shattered. A high-pitched sound crackled on the air, like dry ice on metal. Travis ran hunched through the tunnel, propelled by terror. Seconds later the passage dead-ended. For a panicked moment he thought he was trapped, then his groping fingers found the wooden rungs in the blackness. He clambered up the ladder, threw open a trapdoor, and found himself in the cluttered garden shed. He stumbled out the shed’s door and into the frigid night.

  The antique shop loomed thirty feet away. Light—hot and brilliant as a burning strip of magnesium—flickered behind the windows. Travis took a staggering step toward the antique shop. At that moment every one of the shop’s windows exploded outward in a spray of glittering glass. The shock wave struck Travis like a clap of thunder, threw him to the ground, and knocked the breath from his lungs in a grunt of pain.
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  He gritted his teeth and struggled to his feet. Now the flames that poured out of the antique shop’s windows were red and orange. Fire, real fire. The place was going to burn.

  Travis whispered a single word. “Jack.…”

  Then he turned and ran into the night.

  6.

  Just north of town, the billboard faced blindly into the moonlight.

  The highway was empty, a silent river of blacktop cutting across the high-country plain. The night was still. Stars glittered in the purple-black sky, and added their glow to that of the crescent moon. Somewhere a coyote warbled a mournful sōng that would have spoken of cold rushing water, of old splintered bones, of lonely mountains stretching to the end of the world, had anyone been there to listen to it.

  The moon brushed the sharp horizon. That was when it began. Like a drop of water on a hot iron skillet, a spark of blue light skittered across the face of the old billboard. The spark burned itself into a cinder of darkness and was gone. Another pinprick danced across the billboard. Before this one dimmed another spark joined it, and another, and another. In moments the entire face of the billboard sparkled with blue incandescence.

  A faint hum buzzed on the air. As the sound grew louder, a strip of the faded cigarette advertisement peeled itself off the surface of the billboard and fell to the ground. Sparks clustered like blue fireflies around the edges of the hole left by the chunk of old paper. Bathed in their sapphire glow, a patch of the picture beneath showed through—a jewellike fragment of a wild landscape.

  Winking like tiny eyes, the sparks spread outward. More strips of paper curled themselves into tight coils and dropped to the ground, then still more, to reveal the long-hidden image beneath.