Devil Entendre Read online

  Afterward there had been much milling about waiting on the locals. When he inquired as to whether the indigenous population had a name for the place the state historic preservation officer shrugged and said the locals called it Old Leiden Manor, but when Michael pressed as to whether the indigenous Native Americans had named the area around them things were not quite so clear. After much back and forth on the phone with the preservation officer’s associates, and consultation with his own notes, there arose the possibility of multiple names. Many had tried to settle the area with varying degrees of failure, each endeavor under different identities, but two Pre-Columbian words affiliated with the surroundings were Riapoke and Cuppenauk, either individually or together. Michael and his colleagues discussed similar names in locales such as Ocracoke and Roanoke, the latter translating as “shell money.” With Riapoke bearing crude resemblance to Roanoke they made note to use the name as shorthand for the site, since site numbers quickly became wearisome among groups on the ground.

  Now, on descending to meet McGowan and perhaps convince him not to further corrupt the scene, Michael winced; the oppressive subterranean humidity, when saturated with the earthy odor of something organic which should never be exposed to air, was putting a strain on his senses. There could be no doubt the remains, increasing in number as he drew closer to McGowan, were not only mummified, but… “No way. This is too freaky.”

  McGowan agreed, throwing in some choice expletives in both English and French for good measure.

  When Michael blurted confusedly about fossilization being impossible with the acidity in swamp water McGowan cut him off. “Mikey, we’re not freshmen goofing off in the back of Introduction to Crystallography. Are you hearing me? I don’t know what to do. What do we do?!” While his friend lost his nerve Michael surveyed the area once again, deliberately and with a growing knot of dread in his belly. “I mean, it’s almost like I wish this were a hoax. Can we prove it’s a hoax?”

  “We need to get up to higher ground. We need to be up higher than those work lights.”

  “I’m pretty sure we can prove it’s a hoax, if—”

  “Hey! Get a grip. You asked what we should do, and I’m saying we need to get up to the top of this cavern to make sense of it.”

  “Make sense of which part, the mummified bodies, the millions of years, the—”

  Michael cut his friend off. “See this rut here? And these impressions here? These don’t strike me as natural, or even random. I think these are ones that didn’t take.”

  McGowan quickly came back to himself, nodding. “Not everything you put in the ground is going to fossilize, and even if it does it can be lost or destroyed. So if there were originally more in between all these…then you’re talking about connected lines and curves and, by all that’s holy, a pattern.”

  “Yeah. I was thinking—”

  “Look here!” McGowan proclaimed, leaping over several of the remains. He directed Michael’s attention to a twisted thigh and footless calf which, if one looked carefully enough, overlapped an impression similar to gaps they had been observing. “When some fossils had already been lost surrogate parts were added to—to—”

  “The mosaic.”

  McGowan flinched at the word. “Okay, we can call it that. This is just a cursory observation, obviously, but see here? That exposed track in mud had already started fossilizing.” He removed soft debris clinging to the rock for a better view. “Fresh mud and silt were packed on to hold this replacement leg.”

  They went back and forth about the time it would take for these fossils to be created, whether or not migrating Europeans or indigenous enemies would rearrange the deceased, and so forth, but of course it came back to the age of the rock itself—which was on the order of millions of years—not to mention the fact that the earliest written accounts of this area indicated it had been filled with water since before the ancestors of the natives started passing down legends.

  “Okay,” McGowan said. “We have Anatomically Modern Human remains, preserved before death. And fossilized.”

  “Those over there…those arms…are they children’s or…”

  “There is no record of anything before Anatomically Modern Humans preserving their dead, or even having sufficient tools for accomplishing such an end. I’m not going to—”

  “Not? Not? These things were set in stone millions of years ago! There were no humans at all, anatomically modern or otherwise!”

  An uncomfortable silence settled over them. One of the interns, Cerie, called over to them about the hydrodynamically unstable nature of the area, meaning the currents flowing through the caves would be insufficient to arrange these remains no matter what the time period or water level. Neither of them had the heart to look at her for fear of staring at her prosthetic left hand.

  “Eh yo,” one of the contractors called. “Y’all sayin’ these dudes was sacrificed and whatnot?”

  “No.”

  “’Cause it’s all kinds of legends ’bout muck monsters and all out here in these parts. Used to be the ole-timers left out a plate o’food on rainy nights.”

  “We’re trying to think here.”

  “Plates was always licked clean come the morn.”

  “Raccoons, bro,” one of the interns said. “There’s raccoons around here like a mofo.”

  Michael and McGowan were able to agree that external evaluation suggested the remains were mummified prior to being torn apart. Beyond that, it was impossible to derive any other conclusions.

  “Say,” Michael implored, “you folks didn’t find anything else of interest during your treasure hunt, did you?”

  The contractors exchanged shrugs, each looking to the other for answers, then to Gearey who said, “We’ve been over this.”

  The archeologists looked to each other, then gazed upward in agreement: in the darkness above them, where the cavern supplied an impression of outer space’s impossible vastness, they would find the answer. On closer scrutiny the cave’s ceiling was impossible to make out directly, but Michael was sure he could glimpse it seeming to move or shift from time to time, a trick of the light and surfaces still slick from the drainage process.

  4

  High above the cavern floor, hoisted above the work lights, the archeologists finally had a view of the entire site. Gearey had retreated to the historical preservation office with an intern, while the others focused on either surveying the site or operating the platform carrying Michael and McGowan up to their requested birds eye view.

  The more he studied the scene below them the more certain Michael grew that his instincts were correct. He snapped photo after photo for later analyses. With jaw tensed and eyes narrowed he halted his work, mind emptying of all but one thought. It was the memory of a theorized prehistoric squid-like creature arranging the bones of dinosaurs in self-portrait on the sea floor. On closer examination the remains did seem to be arranged in the form of something sinuous and waterborne…

  “You, uh, remember the vampire squid and ichthyosaurs flap a couple years back?” Then, “Hello? I say fossil octopod and anything click for you?”

  His line of questioning was ignored. “Are you seeing this, Mikey?”

  “What have you got?”

  “Some sort of, I don’t know, ceremonial entranceway? Door?”

  “Why ceremonial?” Michael asked, not bothering to turn around.

  “Because it’s just engraved in the stone, not an actual door or gate or whatever. Duh!” Then, “It covers the entire space back here around us. What else are we going to find in here? This is nuts!” Instead of replying Michael returned to the subject of soft-bodied predators proven, in their contemporary form at least, to have intelligence rivaling that of humans and the possibility of them leaving something for posterity. McGowan sighed. “There are no fossil octopods, but we know
the animals existed because damage to other fossils is consistent with that inflicted by contemporary octopods. Big whoop! You’re chasing a ghost—at best—when I’m sitting here looking at a friggin’ Sistine Chapel of Stone Age ornamentation.”

  “Stone Age? You giving up on the Itza Maya dream?” Although intended to sound flippant and lighthearted, Michael’s voice shook just enough to betray him.

  Silence crept in among them. At length Michael hesitated, realizing the configuration for a squid—or octopus, for that manner—represented in the mosaic was not quite right. Instead the remains were arranged in the form of something hideous and awesome unrecorded in the fossil record. He turned to chance a peek at the ceremonial gate, as it had been referred to. The contractor who had ridden up with them had apparently revealed something when placing his hand along the rock for support.

  Noticing his colleague’s curiosity McGowan whispered over his shoulder, “Yes. That seems to be a weight sensitive anomaly. Trigger. Trap?”

  “Hand-sized button. It is a friggin’ door, genius!”

  McGowan gesticulated at the enormity of it, spanning out of the light’s range, indicating that he could not accept it to be a functional door.

  Michael returned to studying the floor, wishing he had seized on an earlier urge to leave and not return. Something was off below, but he failed to place what exactly. Through his binoculars he was unable to locate the remaining team members on the floor. Instead, there were streaks of blood on the damp stone, and what may or may not have been bits of flesh. Scanning for a sign that the worst was not true he stumbled on something far more troublesome: where there had previously been gaps in the mosaic there existed new pieces of the puzzle, not mummified but fossilized all the same. Michael recognized Cerie’s prosthetic hand protruding from the stone, worn away by eons of exposure. While his mind raced his mouth worked, unable to form words…

  …until a low rasp emanated from above them, and the darkness began to unfurl. Then he urged McGowan to open the gate, not knowing or caring if it really went anywhere. Unwilling to wait for his companion to spring into action, Michael lunged forward himself, reaching desperately for the wall as something wet and alive descended the rock surface above them.

  5

  Hei Ryung stood in a forgotten subterranean storage chamber with something inspirational and grotesque looming over her. The records had not lied: it had to be the largest fossil amber on record, at least the size of her sister’s house in the suburbs. As she understood things, the process of amber formation should never allow for a piece of this size being formed. Far from beautiful it was murky and filled with various types of debris, from soil to crumbled leaves and other as yet unidentified substances. Much of what lurked below its golden surface was black or brown, but there was also a swath of maroon blending to crimson fading to pale red. Under other circumstances such coloring would be considered a curiosity short of testing core samples…however, just beyond this vivid swath, there was a human hand.

  Bits of this find had been chiseled away for testing, with increasing success, throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, and as 1970 approached technology became advanced enough that practical applications for this unique amber became possible. One brain trust or another concocted the notion to attempt excising the largest sample yet in order to aid the national space mission, but they were too aggressive in their methods and completely shattered half of the artifact. And there, obscured deep within the center, they unexpectedly discovered a perfectly preserved human hand. While the hand, modern in overall size and design, should have been the envy of anthropology and archeology departments worldwide—the quality was, after all, enough to put all embalmers to shame—two items accompanying the hand had made it something best kept secret, even moreso than the unique electrical properties government engineers sought to exploit.

  There in the silence, without even the steady electric hum or buzz expected in work environments, Hei Ryung felt herself slowly being sucked down into a pit of despair she was unsure she would ever pull herself out of. Every government employee and civilian contractor to work on the Marshington Sample, as it came to be called over the years, in its post-fracture state soon found themselves on medical leave. Linda Hoover was apparently the first victim of this phenomenon. The reason she had been brought in at all was to attempt deciphering what was in the clutch of the hand. Even through at least twelve inches of amber Hei Ryung knew what Linda, through no fault of her own, could not: that it was a cell phone, although people back at the time of discovery speculated the object was some sort of ceremonial obsidian plaque denoting authority. Neither this, nor the hand, nor the electrical qualities of the amber itself were the source of analyst malaise, however.

  The hand protruded from the beak of something monstrously large and alien, much of the details of its features lost to its depth in the turbid amber. Whatever the beast was it clearly had at least one great unblinking eye fixated on a space far over Hei Ryung’s head. The Marshington Sample had defied every generation’s attempts at scanning, be it sonic or radiological or on the light spectrum, and given that aggressive penetration had destroyed half already, investigations into the nature of this animal were hampered by a fear of damaging it beyond the capabilities of meaningful study. Unable to withdraw her gaze from the preserved hand in the preserved beak Hei Ryung could not help understanding why her future mother-in-law had lost it after spending months in close proximity to this grim tableau.

  The situation became too much to bear, inspiring her to whip out her cell phone in order to let her fiancé make it all sensible. He had a knack for seeing clearly through even the most disturbing developments so she could find a safe, comfortable place of reason and resolution. Always, without fail…if she could just steady her fingers to dial properly. At the moment she finished dialing something happened to distract her. Light emanated from within the amber. Something had come to life in a most jarring fashion. The screen of the cell phone in the preserved hand’s grasp flashed brightly. For a split second Hei Ryung questioned this before remembering the amber’s ability to sustain batteries indefinitely. On the screen within the amber was a wallpaper of the Chutes d’Ekom, with Michael and his Mami Wata smiling brightly at the future ahead of them.

  Hei Ryung’s mouth opened, sucking in a steady stream of air for a scream which she never birthed, cut off by the sight of the enormous eye inside the amber shifting to look directly at her, doing grievous damage to itself in the process.

  That, and the tensing of tendons in the hand extending from the beak as it struggled to move its fingers within the solidified liquid—if only micromillimeters—in the attempt to answer the phone…

  False Witness

  “I am a very lucky woman, Marquel,” Lizbeth says. “Know why? I get to spend a lot of time with you.”

  In the rearview mirror Marquel smiles at her, full of hope.

  Lizbeth emanates kindness, and has the air of somebody worth confiding in, to the point of disarming her potentially intimidating beauty and renown. She possesses the look of a celebrity doctor from reality television because she is one, with long blonde hair and pale blue eyes.

  As for Marquel, he is of average height for a ten-year-old, but slender. His creamy chestnut skin is unbroken by scars or injuries, and his eyes betray keen intelligence. Marquel’s visage is bright, despite his circumstances, impressing Lizbeth. “Children are so resilient,” she had commented to his parents before departing.

  Lizbeth steers her car toward something primordial looming at the edge of the urban landscape, growing larger with each passing second. The lush vegetation suggests a park of some kind save for the rusty water tower peering over the tree line, and the chained-off driveways bearing signs reading No Trespassing and Condemned.

  Marquel dislikes breaks in conversation so he blurts, “My dad says there’s no such thing as Satanic ritual abuse.”
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br />   “I can assure you SRA is very real. Many of the reported cases have been debunked, that much is true. Every legitimate SRA uncovered spawns hundreds of imitators.”

  “You mean people lie about it and whatnot?”

  Lizbeth shrugs, pulling into a left-turn lane. “Some people want money, or attention, or just hope it might have happened to explain away all the trouble in their life. The only thing I can say for certain is that you need to spend time alone with me in a controlled environment. Then we can get to the bottom of things.”

  Marquel scrutinizes Lizbeth. “Dr. Kipersztock—”

  “Please, call me Lizbeth.”

  “It’s just that the lawyer said my visit with you was ‘conditional.’” Marquel remembers his mother’s arm around him as she explained that he would be going with the doctor for a sleep over. His little sister Sondra had been busy chasing a ball, and did not bother to even say goodbye. She has grown increasingly jealous of the extra attention he receives as a result of the demon worshipers being exposed.

  “You heard me explain my credentials to your parents and their lawyer, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you know that I’m trained to help boys and girls figure things out for themselves after bad stuff happens to them.”

  Marquel attempts to recall her exact job title, so that he may seem more intelligent for slinging the jargon around, but all he can recall is the word traumatic. “Uh-huh.”

  “Okay. That means your parents believe I know what’s best. Are you big on belief?”

  Marquel shrugs, busying himself with worry as the car leaves pavement behind and instead navigates grass to avoid barriers erected around the abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium. “What is this place?”