Tim Akers - Dead of Veridon

My first visit to this house left me nervous. I came out with the impression of a house full of dark rooms, rooms that may be full of silent people or completely empty. It was a house of strange noises and unsettling quiet. That had changed, but not in a good way. Walking through the house now, I felt like I was sitting in a room with a dead man. No sound, and all the more maddening for the quiet.

There wasn't much to the first floor. The doors off the hallway were empty. There wasn't even dust to disturb. Crane was the tidy sort of criminal. Other than the staged items in the foyer, the hallway and the fireplace room, there was not one scrap of personal detritus. The whole first floor could have been deserted when we held our meeting with Crane. I began to think the whole thing was a set up, until we found the stairs and went up. Things were different upstairs.

It didn't seem like the same house. Everything was painted white, walls to ceiling; even the floor had been drenched in a thick, tacky coat of white paint. The stairs came up in a central room that was ringed by eight doors. Six of them had heavy padlocks that were hanging open. The two without were on opposite sides of the room. One corner of the room was littered with children's toys. Wilson crossed quickly to the toys and poked through them with absolute attention.

"They're all broken," he said with clinical detachment. "Some in quite ingenious ways. Do you think Crane had a child up here?"

"No. I think he kept those for himself, Wilson." I crept to the nearest door without a padlock and put my ear against it. Quiet. "How the hell do I know?"

"Don't you want to do the locked rooms first?" he asked.

"Those are obviously empty. Hopefully. They're hopefully empty." I shrugged and nodded to the door I was standing next to. "Come on."

Wilson put down his toys and stood behind me. The door opened easily. Inside was a bedroom, or something like a bedroom. A room with a bed, at least. A bed, a dresser, and two traveling cases, like you would take on a cruise. Their lids were bound in brass, and the wood showed a great deal of wear. The bed was iron, with a thin mattress and the barest of covers. It was the cheapest piece of furniture we'd seen in the house yet. Where the rest of the house had been compulsively tidy, the covers on the bed were twisted and stained, like they held a madman and his nightmares, night after night. There were no pillows. The dressers were empty.

"That leaves these," Wilson said, and bent to pick up the traveling cases. He scrabbled at the first for a while, fishing around in the tumbler, his face slack with concentration. Longest I'd ever seen him take on a lock.

"Having trouble there, master thief?"

"Yup."

"You want me to handle it?"

"Handle it?" His voice was barely a whisper, barely more than the inhalation of breath. "Shut up. I'll get it."

"Because it looks like you're having trouble there. With the lock."

He let the pick clatter to the floor and sighed.

"Jacob, you're just about the biggest-," he said, turning to look up at me. His eyes locked beyond my shoulder and his body stilled. "Ah."

"Ah?" I asked, then turned quickly. I couldn't see anything. "Ah, what?"

He stood and went to the bed, standing on the sweat-stained mattress to reach the ceiling. Something was nailed to the boards there, just above the theoretical sleeper's head. Wilson pried it free and peered at it.

"Ah," he said.

"What is it?" What I could see was that it was black, about the size of two hands together. He handed it to me.

A mask, black. There were words in iron etched across the face. Other than the eye holes, there were no other features.

"What the hell is this?" I asked.

Wilson came down from the bed and sat wearily on the chest he had failed to pick. I knew the look on his face. It was his scholar look.

"That is what we were meant to find." He drew a pair of reading glasses from one of the innumerable pockets in his vest, rubbed some river water off them, then returned them to the pocket. "We can look in the other rooms if you'd like, but that's going to be it."

"Doesn't answer my question, Wilson." I held out the mask. The words meant nothing to me. Even the letters looked funny. "What is it?"

"I'm not sure. But the lettering is Celestean. It roughly translates into 'Cull.' Or 'Purge,' I suppose. Yes, purge is probably a better translation." He ran his tongue across his hundred teeth, deep in thought. "The image imposed is of a tree stump, burned down to the roots."

"You read Celestean?"

"Tricky question. It's not really a language." He stood and took the mask, holding it at arm's length. "The Celesteans seemed to communicate in unformed ideas. Images. The pictograms we use to program foetal metal cogwork are a derivation of their form. The idea is to let the words interact with the unconscious part of your brain. They impose meaning directly into your…" he searched for the word. "Soul, I guess. Directly into your heart."

"That was perfectly clear," I sniped. He grimaced like a schoolmarm.

"Hold still," he said, then held the mask about an arm's length away from my face. "Look at the words without looking at them. Unfocus. Just let your head talk directly to the…"

"Look, this is bullshit. You told me what it means. Cull. I get it. I don't need to…"

It fell on me like a nightmare. The room disappeared and I was filled with the smell of blood and fire. Ashes in my mouth and the sky was coiling cinder. The earth below me sagged under the weight of blood and my veins crumbled like dry leaves. I gasped, but the only air was thick as steel wool, and just as harsh. On my knees and I could feel the life being dug out of me, out of my heart, out of my blood. Behind me I felt death reaching back for generations, rooting out everything I had known or been or remembered. It was like a fire that burned through time. And before me, nothing, nothing, just the empty night and nothing.

And then I really was on my knees, and Wilson was shaking me with both his stone-hard hands. The mask was on the floor between us, the words in my head coiling like that sky of cinder. I hurled myself back and banged into the cheap iron of the bed.

"Well," Wilson said, standing. "That's the thing about the Celesteans. They said different things to different people." He carefully picked up the mask and wrapped it in a bit of sheet he tore from the bed. I realized I was still staring at him, and tried to compose myself. "Don't. Just relax. Let it get through you. Let it go."

I watched him numbly as he went around the room. He got the chests open, finally. He went through them meticulously, unfolding and then refolding things, rearranging the contents, open pouches, sniffing, closing. My mind was a smooth stone in a babbling brook, the room around me sliding coldly over without penetrating. It was minutes before I understood the things I looked at. I stood.

"What the hell is that thing?" I asked. My voice was harsh, like I'd been crying.

"What we were supposed to find," Wilson answered. "The question is why. And if we were the ones who were supposed to find it, or if he left it for someone else."

I rubbed my hands together and stretched my shoulders.

"I'm ready to go," I said. Wilson shook his head.

"Not yet. This is what we were meant to find, but…"

"I'm ready to go, Wilson. As in, we're going."

He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. It hurt.

"Jacob. This isn't the worst thing we've seen. It's likely not to be the worst we'll see before this is over. You need to pull yourself together."

"Sure. But first we're going to go somewhere else." I made for the door. Wilson stopped me.