“Other dimensions,” I suggested. “And yeah. That was a theory, and it explained some elements of our case. It explained how things like the Necronomicon and other Unlearnable Truths wound up in Weird Tales magazines. It explained some of the images from Salvador Dali and others.”
“If so,” she said, pulling to a stop one hundred feet from the edge of the pit, “then that’s something that may have been happening for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. People having genuine visions of other worlds, other dimensions, and writing them down as stories or religious visions.”
We started to get out, but she stopped us.
“There’s another way to look at it, too,” she said. “If there are creatures from other worlds trapped here, and if they have somehow managed to invade the minds of certain people and fill their dreams with visions, surely it suggests a purpose. An agenda.”
We looked at her.
“Mr. Church told me that one of your cases dealt with a young man, a genius really, who found some kind of mathematical code in the Unlearnable Truths and used it to build and program a machine to take him to one of those worlds. That he was from there, or at least a descendant of people or beings from there. Church said that other people you’ve met may share the same connection to other worlds.”
Top cleared his throat, and Bunny looked away.
“It’s possible,” I said.
“So, if that young man used information to open a doorway to go home,” said Lizzie slowly, “is it really so far outside the realm of possibility that someone else might want to open a door to let someone or something come into our world?”
Bunny closed his eyes. “Well… holy shit.”
We got out of the car. The first of our equipment we unpacked was the guns.
4
THERE WERE SIX US marines standing watch over the site. They eyed us warily and a sergeant came over to meet us, giving my team a thorough up-and-down appraisal. We were not wearing uniforms or insignia of any kind.
“This is a restricted area,” he said. He was a lantern-jawed guy who could have come from Central Casting. His parents might as well have enrolled him in the Corps as soon as he was born.
“Your boss told you we were coming,” said Top.
The sergeant’s eyes narrowed, and I knew he wanted to ask for identification but had no doubt been told not to.
“I’m Mr. Red,” I said, then nodded to Top. “He’s Mr. White. The big guy is Mr. Blue. The lady is Dr. Corbett.” I read the sergeant’s name tag. “And you’re Brock.”
No one shook hands.
I looked past Sergeant Brock to where the car sat inside a circle of traffic cones. Guess they didn’t use crime scene tape here. More cones were set in a couple of places closer to the edge of the pit.
“Walk us through the scene,” I suggested.
Brock nodded and did so.
“The forensics team has been all over everything,” he said. “They left the car and other stuff in place for you but transported the bodies. Oh, and they took the murder weapons. So there’s not actually a lot to see.”
I made no comment.
The car was pretty much what I expected. Blood and broken safety glass on the seats, bullet holes from where Mercer’s rounds went through the driver. Small flags pinned to spots where rounds had been removed for ballistics.
“Window’s rolled down,” observed Bunny. “He didn’t know what was going to happen.”
“He had a Glock 26 in a shoulder rig,” said Brock, “but there was no indication he’d attempted to draw it.”
“Driver was American?” asked Top.
“Of Turkmeni extraction,” agreed Brock. “Guess that’s why he got the gig. Spoke the language.”
We stepped away from the car and he led us over to a heavy-duty briefcase that lay open on the ground.
“He’d have brought the book in that,” said Lizzie.
There was a blood smear inside and spatter all around. Before I was a special operator, I was a detective in Baltimore and had worked enough murder cases to be able to read a scene pretty well, but before I could explain what I was seeing, Lizzie spoke up.
“Mercer probably used a ritual knife to cut himself,” she said. Brock shot her a look, but I held up a hand to encourage her to continue. “It would be appropriate to the kind of ritual he was attempting. Historically accurate. It’s a sign of humility and commitment. Blood of the faithful. That smear inside the case is probably where he set the knife down afterward, while he opened the book and selected the page to tear out.”
“Pardon me, miss,” began Brock, “but how do you know all that?”
Top, who squatted down beside Lizzie, swiveled his head around and gave the sergeant a long, silent stare. The sergeant looked briefly contrite and straightened, clamping his mouth shut.
Lizzie gave him a brief, almost apologetic smile, then scowled down at the case. “Once Mercer tore out the page he would have needed to make his sacrifice. He took the page and the knife and would need a good spot to—” She looked over her shoulder for a likely spot. Brock cleared his throat and pointed to a small cluster of traffic cones near the edge. Lizzie added, “That’s where he sacrificed the guide.”
I saw Brock’s lips silently repeat that word. Sacrificed. He was going to have a lot of unanswered questions. As an NCO, he was probably used to some level of that.
“Hey,” said Bunny, who was scanning the area, “look at that.”
We all turned to follow where he was pointing. A line of spiders was running toward the edge of the pit.
“Yeah,” said Brock, “that happens. Spiders are always coming here. No one knows why. Maybe it’s the methane smell or something.”
“Or something,” Lizzie said quietly.
She met my eyes. I nodded, though a chill rippled up my spine, like someone walked over my grave.
Spiders. Shit.
We straightened and followed the spiders to the edge of the pit and looked into the mouth of hell.
It was twenty meters deep — not a single mass of flame but rather patches of it, as if fire was burning through the skin of the Earth to expose burning wounds. It looked like cancer and it stank of shit.
“Door to Hell don’t really cover it,” said Top quietly.
Bunny came up beside him. “More like the ass of Hell.”
Sergeant Brock cleared his throat again. “A lot of people have been all over this site, but I was one of the first Americans to arrive after we got the call. There’s something maybe you should see.”
We followed him a dozen yards along the curving lip of the crater and then stopped as he squatted down and pointed. At first all I saw was a cluster of spiders a bit heavier than elsewhere on the rim; and at least a dozen different kinds. But that wasn’t what he was pointing at.
Although partly obscured by scuff marks from what I presumed were police and forensics people, there was a line of footprints that led from the pit to this spot. I got up and backtracked, then walked the scene quickly to verify what Brock found.
“Those are Mercer’s prints,” I said. “Same prints go over to the car and back, go to where the guide was killed and back, and then from the briefcase to the edge.”
“Yeah,” said Bunny, “but I don’t see any prints coming back from the edge.”
“That’s ’cause he didn’t come back, Farm Boy,” said Top. He got down nearly into a push-up position and peered at the print closest to the edge. “See here? This one’s a little deeper, right at the sole. Like he pushed off right there.”