M.L.N. Hanover: Vicious Grace

Aubrey was the first one to put his finger on what was so dislocating.

“There’s nothing here ,” he said.

Every one of Uncle Eric’s properties had shown the effects of his occult life. Strange books and unsettling objects were arranged in boxes, crates, and shelves all around the world. This place was so simple, so clean, so empty that it felt wrong. I saw it in their faces that it set us all on edge.

“Do you think . . .” Ex began. “Did Harlan rob the place?”

“We wouldn’t know if something was missing,” Chogyi Jake said. “There’s no inventory to compare it with. And it does seem . . . spare, doesn’t it? I thought it would be bigger too. Did anyone else expect it to be bigger?”

We stood silently, each of us looking at the others.

“Okay,” I said at last. “Is there anything we can do about that?”

After about a heartbeat, all three of them shook their heads and made negative grunts.

“Then let’s table it and move on. How about we see if there’s any food here, then unpack and clean up a little, and I’ll call Kim.”

AN HOUR later, Kim was sitting on the cowskin couch. She had a new haircut that softened her features and left her looking a little less like Nicole Kidman. Still, the last year hadn’t been kind to her. She’d put on five or ten pounds, and they didn’t actually suit her. Her skin was paler than I remembered, and her eyes had a sunken look. Her expression was the same, and I had to remind myself that her closed, brittle manner had put me off the first time I’d met her too.

Ex had moved one of the kitchen chairs into the living space, Aubrey sat in a chair that matched the couch, Chogyi Jake sat on the floor with a cup of green tea in his hands, and I stood in the door frame to the dining room as if I wasn’t sure I was supposed to be there.

I hated it that my gut went tight, seeing her with Aubrey. It had been easier that first time in Denver. Aubrey had been in a coma, for one thing. By the time he’d come back, she’d left. From the way they talked now, you wouldn’t know it was the first time they’d seen each other in years.

“But what’s this Oonishi guy trying to prove?” Aubrey said. “I mean, does he have a hypothesis?”

“It’s an exploratory protocol,” Kim said. “The idea is to provide a baseline for further work. And yes, it’s hey-look-at-me science and exactly the sort of study that pisses you off. But what can I tell you? He gets grants.”

Aubrey shook his head, but his expression was easy. Yes, he thought the sleep guy was doing lousy science. Yes, it pissed him off. But the fact that Kim knew all that even before she started talking pulled the sting. All this was part of a conversation they’d had countless times before I knew either one of them, complete with the private shorthand that comes from knowing someone well for a long time. They didn’t mean to exclude me. It just worked out that way.

“So the weird dreams,” I said. “Are they the only thing we’re seeing? Or is there something else we can go on, maybe get a toehold on the problem?”

Kim turned to me.

“It’s the only hard data,” she said. “But I’ve been asking around a little bit since I called you, and . . . well, there are stories. Anecdotal evidence.”

“What kind?” Ex asked.

Kim settled back into the couch, her brow breaking into half a dozen tiny lines. She waved vaguely with one hand, holding her fingers as if she had a cigarette between them. I wondered if she’d ever been a smoker.

“Little things,” she said. “One of the recovery room techs was talking about people coming out of anesthetic saying words and phrases in languages they don’t speak. And apparently there’s been a huge upswing in walk-aways in the last year.”

“Walk-aways?” Chogyi Jake said.

“Patients on the care floors go missing,” Kim said. “Walk out on their own, AMA.”

“Against medical advice,” Aubrey said, anticipating my next question.

“Any signs of riders?” Ex asked.

Kim’s sigh was sharp.

“ I can’t find anything,” she said carefully. “I used some of the things Eric taught me. The Mark of Kadashman-Enlil and de Lancre’s candle meditation.”

“De Lancre?” Chogyi Jake said, a little taken aback.

“What’s de Lancre?” I asked.

“Seventeenth-century demonologist,” Ex said. “Witchfinder. Burned a lot of women and Jews. He’s not generally very well regarded.”

“Be that as it may,” Kim said, “I can’t find anyone who seems like a good suspect. I won’t say there aren’t any riders in the hospital, but if there are I haven’t found them. And I can’t explain what I have seen.”

“Meaning Oonishi’s data,” Aubrey said.

“Yes,” said Chogyi Jake. “Could we actually see that recording?”

While Kim fished around in her purse, I went back to my bedroom to get my laptop. I had the master suite with my own bathroom and a king-sized bed and a window that would probably look better in the morning. Aubrey’s bags were in there too, open and empty. I stopped for a few seconds to open the dresser and see his socks there beside my own. The little bits of cloth tangled together calmed me, and I went back into the living room feeling a little more grounded. Kim handed me a thumb drive, and I popped it in one of the laptop’s USB ports. It took a minute to get the right application up, but then a huge window opened. We all crowded close to watch. The resolution sucked, but if I squinted, it was like seeing some old silent horror film. Count Orlok rising from his grave. The dream images went white, then flickered with strange things. An eye. A mouth. An oddly shaped hand. I felt a deep stillness in me, like they were things I recognized except for the bit where I didn’t know what they were.

“Well,” Aubrey said from just behind me, “the box looks like maybe an interment binding?”

“Symbolic burial,” Chogyi Jake said with what sounded like agreement. “But if it’s leaking like this, not a totally successful one. It could also be some kind of historical echo.”

“What about that hand?” Ex said. “Did that seem familiar to anyone?”

“Couldn’t tell much about it,” Aubrey said. “It was pretty blurred.”

“Could it have been a Masonic reference?” Kim asked.

“Maybe Daughters of the Nile,” Ex said, but his voice carried a weight of skepticism.

The conversation dove into references and occult theory deeper than my personal bookshelf went. I detached myself from the group and headed for the kitchen. When they’d hashed it out, I’d get the FAQ version. That was how it usually went, and the scheme worked for me well.

There wasn’t much. Eric hadn’t stocked the place with anything that wouldn’t last more or less indefinitely. Some canned beans. A few boxes of antiquated tea. The only thing in the cupboard was a box of Twinkies. None of it looked appealing. My cell phone said it was already after midnight. I’d woken up in Montana, and now, looking out over Lake Michigan as lightning arced over the water, I let myself feel a little tired. A hard gust of wind bowed the dark glass of the window, and in its dim reflection, the door opened behind me. Kim stepped in.

“Hey,” I said, turning to her.

“Is there any tea water left?” she asked.

“Can be,” I said, scooping the kettle off the stovetop. As I filled it, the tame water from the tap like a parody of the falling rain outside, Kim stood behind me, her arms crossed.

“How have you been?” she asked.

“Busy as hell. You?”

Kim pushed a lock of hair back from her eyes and I lit the fire under the tea kettle.

“The same,” she said. “Half the time I’m writing grants. I got on a good study with some guys I know over at UIC’s public health department tracking Toxoplasma gondii strains. The data’s not all in, but I think we’re going to have some pretty good papers coming out of it. I’m linking the extent of behavior modification in the host with the virulence of the strain. The correlations are pretty nice.”