The Bone Triangle (37 page)

I crawled upward into Sunset’s underbelly. Already, I could smell antiseptic and rubber. I felt grimly determined to get to the bottom of this. Too many people had died in my town lately. The Beast had to be stopped. If Meng was behind this monster, then
she
had to be stopped as well.

The brightness of the buzzing fluorescent lights was painfully intense. After lurking in the darkness of the underground passages, I was left squinting and blinking. I climbed out of the hole in the floor and got to my feet. Looking back down, the dark circular hole I’d come from
looked impossibly small. I replaced the cover as quietly as I could and walked down the passage toward the door at the end.

It was strange to be back in Meng’s domain. My earliest clear memories were of this place. According to Trujillo, I’d once been a child playing in the desolate town of Mercury, but I could recall none of that. Meng had damaged my mind, and she’d used me, possibly for years. After our falling out, she’d never been interested in helping me regain any of my early life—if it was even within her power to do so.

The room beyond looked like a classroom, oddly enough. There was an old-fashioned chalkboard and rows of wooden desks.

I put my hand on the door handle, but hesitated. I had a new thought as I peeped through the wire-laden glass embedded in the door, seeing no one was around. If I did kill Meng, I would most likely never get my past back.

I could remember flashes of things, of course. Sometimes, I’d be in a place and know I’d been there before. There were snatches of conversations, the smile of a young woman, a familiar span of music, or the smell of cotton candy. These things always provided a fleeting homey feeling.

But these teasing memories were like phantoms. They were not much better than recalling a detail from a forgotten dream, or experiencing déjà vu. I’d like to know more, to truly regain my past. Killing Meng would end the only possible route to full recovery.

I steeled myself against these doubts and worries. I knew what had to happen here tonight. Meng would not leave well enough alone. She’d made that abundantly clear. If Gutter Jim was right, and she was commanding the Beast, then I had no choice. She was responsible for hundreds of
deaths and countless more twisted minds. Whether she had government backing or not, she had to be stopped.

With the bottle glimmering in my right hand, I tried the door handle with my left. It wasn’t locked. I opened it as quietly as I could, but the hinges still creaked, making me wince. I stepped through into a large open chamber. I could tell by the plain concrete walls I was in the basement, in some kind of classroom.

I frowned, running my eyes over the scene. Each detail my gaze landed upon made the overall impression increasingly strange. The desks were very old, made of wood with lids and cubbies. Each had a feather quill and a small knife lying on it. What looked like brown ink was smeared on every desk. Yellowish, curling rolls of paper lay on the floor in heaps and on most of the desks. There was no order to this, no careful arrangement. It all had the look of hurried action, as if the students had been scrawling as fast as possible, then gotten up suddenly to leave.

My eyes were drawn next to the chalkboard. Big, black, and apparently made of real slate, the board itself was an heirloom. There was only one diagram drawn there, an odd shape that resembled a lopsided pentagon. Made with slashes of chalk, it looked almost like a wheel in shape, the extended lines curving slightly at the end of each deft stroke. The instructor, whoever he or she had been, had drawn this with quick, sudden motions and a surety of hand that seemed unusual for such a haphazard-looking pattern.

It was the center of the diagram that drew my eye next. That area of the chalkboard seemed darker somehow than the rest—blacker. Like a chalkboard that has been washed in only a single spot, while the rest was coated in a thin yellowy dust of chalk residue.

When I could pull my eyes away from that black hole in the center of the diagram, I saw the words above it at last. I don’t know how I could have missed them even for a moment. But when they finally did impinge upon my eyes, they screamed inside my head.

Thias Amasma!

I stared, transfixed. The words would not leave my mind. At first, they brought on a numbing sensation, not unlike the shock of cold water when one first falls into a lake on a winter’s day. But then, a new sensation replaced the shock: fear. I was overcome by dread. I felt it more strongly than ever before as I stood there, staring at something I did not understand.

Sounds awakened me from my stupor. I didn’t know how long I’d stood there, mulling slack-jawed over the haunting words and the diagram on the chalkboard. But when I heard people coming, I forced myself to move. If the approaching group was made up of Meng’s mind-slaves, they might well attack me on sight.

I walked over a hundred crunching, rattling pieces of parchment—for that’s what they were, I knew now: parchment scrolls. Made from flattened, limed skins, the scrolls were similar to paper, but thicker and more uneven.

At the back of the classroom was a door that stood open. It was dark inside the closet, but I was able to crouch there, gazing through the crack into the disheveled room. Around me, the gloom of the closet slowly revealed its contents as my eyes adjusted. Dozens of long, thin shelves lined the walls. Each shelf was thronged with jars. In each jar was a body part—most of them looked like human organs. There were eyeballs that floated in a liquid like honey, a collection of severed toes, and a single ear with a tuft of hair on it. An
entire shelf was populated by halved brain lobes, resembling something that grew from a seabed.

Most of the closet was full of empty plastic bladders. I didn’t have time to inspect these before the room outside filled with people. I turned my eye back to the crack of light and stared into the classroom. People flooded in from the hallway as I watched.

I sucked in my breath as I heard voices I recognized. Was that Abigail and Rheinman? I knew them. They were Gilling’s cultists, an association of ordinary people with minor objects. Rogues like me. I’d counted these people as my friends less than a month ago. Could they all be in league with Meng? Or had their minds been captured?

Then a final voice spoke from among the others. I knew that voice, and its ringing tones rose higher in pitch as she spoke. She had a certain easy authority to her voice. She was someone who expected to be unquestioningly obeyed.

It was, of course, Dr. Meng.

I was of half a mind to rush out of the closet and burn Dr. Meng down to ash. But she stood in the hallway, and her thralls would no doubt surge forward to defend her. These people were my friends, and I’d be forced to slay a dozen of them before I could get to Meng.

Unwilling to turn this into a bloodbath, I bided my time in the closet. Gilling stood at the front of the room. He looked quite natural playing the part of the professor, but he looked a bit paler than usual. The students, who all wore hospital gowns, shuffled to seats in front of him.

I didn’t know what to think about seeing Gilling here. A few days ago I’d risked my life to save his and taken a mauling along the way. I couldn’t tell whether he was Meng’s minion or her accomplice. I tried to reserve judgment, as I’d counted him a friend for a long time and didn’t want to believe he was in this mess willingly.

“Before we begin—yes, Abigail?” said Gilling.

I heard a murmuring voice. I could not make out the words.

“Oh? We have a visitor?”

I froze inside my closet, uncertain. I backed away from the crack and lifted my bottle. It gleamed in my hands. I didn’t want to burn Gilling. I didn’t want to burn any of them, but I couldn’t allow myself to fall into Meng’s hands again.

There was a loud rapping at the door. I figured it was the snakehead of Gilling’s walking stick. “Come on out, now. You’re not fooling anyone!”

My vision dimmed as I went invisible. A moment later, the door flew open and I faced Gilling. My weapons were in my hands, but not aimed directly at him.

It was strange to see his eyes slide right through me and focus on the countless jars and empty plastic bags in the closet. He frowned and turned to Abigail.

“Nothing here. Have a look yourself.”

“But I sensed something. I still do.” She rubbed a handful of what appeared to be rosary beads.

Gilling shrugged. “Back to work, everyone. Nothing to see here.”

I relaxed, realizing my invisibility was at least working on them. They left the door standing open and went back to their desks. I quietly stepped out of the closet to see what they were doing. Each had a parchment scroll on his or her desk. Their hands were covered with heavy rubber gloves, the type used for handling caustic materials.

I headed for the exit. I figured if Meng’s servants were here, I could more easily stalk her in the hallways above. In the basement, I’d yet to see any security cameras, and the lights were not harsh enough to cast full shadows. I should be able to catch her and bring matters to a conclusion quickly. At least, that was my hope.

As I passed by the scribbling group of people hunched over their scrolls, I chanced to see their faces. They were intense, focused, and single-minded. They had no room in their thoughts for anything other than the task at hand, which seemed to be copying the diagram and words on the chalkboard. Over and over they scribed these things.

I knew as I glided past them, nothing but a faint shadow moving past the wall, that none of them would see me now. They were too fascinated by their scrolls.

As I left, I did see one odd thing. Several of them were drawing the shapes and letters in a handicapped fashion. Their hands didn’t seem to operate properly, and they didn’t use all their fingers. The rubber gloves flopped in places, as if they’d lost partial control of their own hands.

This made me surge with anger and resolve. I thought of these poor deluded people, undergoing some kind of bizarre conditioning. I thought of the uncounted victims in the streets of the Triangle and the patrons of the Lucky Seven. Lastly, I thought of Cartoon, who’d died at my feet, battling Meng’s monsters.

Whatever was going on, I was now sure that Meng was behind it all. I wanted to appear before them and shout for them to stop, to free themselves from her unnatural influence. But I knew I could not break the spell they were under that way. There was only one path by which I could free them, and I stepped out into the hallway, determined to do it.

“I see you, Quentin,” a voice said, breaking me out of my thoughts.

I had been stealthily moving down the corridor, planning to take the nearest staircase up into the sanatorium’s main floor. I was invisible to prying eyes—or so I thought.

My feet froze, but my head swiveled. There, over my shoulder, I saw it. A security camera in a little plastic dome. She was watching me.

I turned and ran. At the end of the hall the corridor T’d off to the left and right. Dead ahead was a steel door. I could see dusty concrete steps through the wire-laced window in the center of the door.

I grabbed the door handle and pulled. It didn’t budge. I slipped on my sunglasses and tugged harder. I heard the latch give way, but the door still didn’t open. It was then I noticed it had been welded shut. Beads of melted metal were evident at many places all around the door, sealing it.

My breath came in hard puffs as I reached out and touched the welds, trying to weaken them with the power of my sunglasses. The back of my neck crawled as I felt sure a throng of so-called students was about to come padding after me, eyes unblinking, their teeth exposed, and their hands reaching for me like claws.

But instead of feet, I heard a tiny whirring sound. I whipped my head around to look. It was another camera, on the ceiling again, watching me from the end of the corridor on my right. I drew my bottle and took aim. A flash of energy turned it to slag, which dripped down onto the concrete floor and burned like candle wax in an oven.

I quickly burned every camera I saw, but the door had defeated me. I could see the stairway beyond but couldn’t get there. I checked the other doors up and down the passages and finally found one that opened. I slipped inside.

I found myself in a restroom. The only exit was the door I’d used to enter.

“I still see you, Draith,” said Meng. “You should talk to me, and stop damaging my doors. I’m not the one who brought the Beast. I don’t know if anyone did.”

I found the camera and burned it. I didn’t hear Meng after that. I closed the door and looked around the cramped, windowless bathroom. The room reminded me of every restroom in every hospital I’d ever known. There were support rails of heavy steel tubing along the walls for people to climb in and out of wheelchairs. The floor was stained, slanted concrete. The walls were covered with cracked white tiles.

Feeling a little strange, I talked to the sink first. I tried it with and without the water running, but got no response. I even pulled out the stopper, but no one answered.

I looked over at the toilet next. I flushed it, spoke to it, and knelt beside the bowl. Nothing.