8 Gone is the Witch (5 page)

I held the EMF meter up for him to see. The needle was still swinging off the chart. “We’ll need it to blow up the research center.”

“Are you
insane?”

“Tony, if we
are to get to the Eighth Sphere and somehow manage to get out again with our asses intact, we’ll need to blow this place up in order to scramble the conversion points so that neither Dr. Lowell nor anyone else can ever follow us back here.”

“I get it,” said Carlos. “It’s like blowing out an oil
rig fire so you can cap it.”

“Exactly
. A large enough blast might knock the transient wave patterns askew and break up the conversion points. It’s our only chance for closing the portal.”

Dominic said, “It makes sense, Tony. What do we have to lose? The building’s
slated for destruction anyway.”

“It’s getting
razed,” said Tony. “Dismantled in an orderly and controlled fashion.”

“Fine,” I said. “Then Leona can rot in hell, or worse, in the Eighth Sphere, because I’m not opening up a hole to that place if we don’t have a plan for shutting it
down again.”

I knew that would do it. Tony took a deep breath through his nose and let it out with a snort. He walked over to the window and peered
down at the parking lot below.

A couple of officers from the K9 unit had arrived and w
ere already searching the grounds around the building and in the woods. They would find nothing. I knew that, and Tony knew it, too. He turned back on his heels and said to me, “Okay. What do we need to do?”

I gestured out the same window. “I have to go downstairs to my car and get some stuff out of the trunk.” I turned and headed out, slapping Carlos on the
chest as I passed. “Come on, big guy. I’m going to need a hand.”

We returned a couple of minutes later with two heavy boxes. Well, Carlos’ box was heavy. Mine was just big, and so I grunted as I carried it
in to make him think it was heavy, too.

“
What’s all this?” asked Dominic. He seemed about as excited as a kid on Christmas morning.

We set the boxes down and gathered around them. The mood seemed considerably more somber than it was before I went downstairs. I wondered if I had missed anything, a conversation perhaps, an awkward last kiss between Dominic and Ursula. They were holding hands. Tony’s eyes told me nothing. Dominic and Ursula’s were on each other. Carlos cleared his throat, and that got me moving again.

“Now listen everyone.” I waited until Dominic and Ursula turned their attention to me. “Before we do this, it’s important to understand some fundamentals concerning trans-dimensional travel. It’s a serious and dangerous business.

“
When attempting to breach the divide forcibly, which, by the way, is what we’re doing, we have to understand something about light, more specifically, something about light waves. You see, between the Seventh and Eighth Sphere, light waves act like particles and particles act like waves. It’s this wave particle duality that allows matter to flow from one spot to another without moving through the intervening space.”

“
You mean like a wormhole,” said Tony.

“
Exactly. It’s a form of quantum tunneling.”

“
Why is it important that we understand wave particle duality?”

I scoffed at his naivety before realizing he was not alone in wondering about something I considered so obvious
and fundamental. I wiped the smirk from my face and answered, “Because, when you’re traveling through a wormhole, you want to stay in the light as much as possible, otherwise the outer fringes might deposit you prematurely into the abyss between the two dimensions.”

“
You’re not serious, are you? Why would I….”

I caught his gaze
with mine and held it, arresting his words in mid-sentence and flushing the rest from his lips. “Why would you what, Tony?”

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“All right then.” I continued. “We talked about conversion zones already and how they’re often identified by vortexes. But there are times when a conversion zone is completely invisible, as is the case here.” I rolled my eyes up and around the room. The others followed instinctively. “The EMF meter tells us that the conversion points are here, even though we don’t have a vortex to verify that.”

“So?”

“So we have to make our own vortex. That’s why I brought these boxes up here. In order to initiate a vortex designed to coordinate with a specific location, we need vector point attracters.”

“
Geez, Lilith.” This from Tony, who was clearly growing frustrated with me. You’re getting way too technical over here. Can you just give us the bullet points in simple English?”

“Fine. You wa
nt simple English? I’ll give you simple English.” I opened the first box. “These are magnets. I use them to establish the precise contact points for vector triangulation. This,” I opened the second box, “is a truck battery. We’ll use it as an energy source to hold our vortex open.”

I then reached
into the top of my shirt through the neckline, pulled out a small gold pendant on a chain and let it fall against my chest. “This, you may recognize, is a witch’s key, a consecrated object that, along with a witch’s ladder, we’ll use as an energy concentrator.”

“That’s going to do it?” Dominic asked.

“I’m hoping.”

The others seemed
concerned with that answer, but I let it ride. “Okay then. Once we open the vortex, travel between dimensions remains possible only as long as the battery continues providing power, or until the transient waves surrender the pulse point convergence.”

Dominic, “That’s where I come in. Right?”

“Yes. That’s where you come in. If the convergence points wander out of sync, you’ll have to relocate them, set the battery and magnets back up and reinitiate the vortex. If you can’t do that, well….”

I trailed off, seeing no use in finishing a thought that everyone had
already concluded.

Tony
, who had been looking out the window again, turn to face me. “Lilith, how much time do you think we’ll have?”

“That’s a good question. In some instances, as with the Bermuda Triangle, the convergence lasts for years, so it’s hard to say. I can tell you this, however, if convergence is lost, and Dominic can’t relocate the points, reestablishing it from the dark side of the vortex will be next to impossible.”

“You mentioned it’s dangerous,” Carlos said.
“Were you talking about the actual travel through the wormhole or about the Eighth Sphere itself?”

“
Both. Although the ride through the vortex is violent and unpredictable, it’s nothing compared to what we might find on the other side.”

“
What
will
we find on the other side?”

I tried not to smile, but it’s an involuntary defense mechanism of mine, often triggered by
anticipation of the inevitable.

“
What will we find,” I said, stalling in search of words that would not derail our intentions. “As you might imagine, the Eighth Sphere is inhabited by the evil souls once cast aside from this world, and possibly from other worlds as well.

“
The Grimoire describes these souls as spectersoma, dark matter entities incapable of absorbing or emitting light while here on Earth. One account from 1806 tells of a spectersoma that somehow slipped past a similar matrix barrier and into our world. It seemed incapable of colliding with atomic particles, but the fact it maintained position and momentum sufficient to exert gravitational force in reciprocal capacity, proved its existence.”

Dominic said, “You
’re talking about a ghost.”

“Yes, a very evil ghost.”

“What became of it?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s still around
as far as I know, wreaking havoc in someone’s life, no doubt.”

“
Dr. Lowell wasn’t a ghost,” Tony remarked. “At least not when he came here and abducted Leona.”

“No. I don’t suppose he was.
I suspect Doctor Lowell has learned to dissimulate dark matter among moderate particles of sub-atomic intangibles for reconstructive use outside the ES.”

“He what?”

“He gave form to his ghost.”

“Oh.”

Carlos asked, “What else should we know, Lilith?” He seemed hesitant, perhaps on the edge of backing out. I figured I might as well lay it all out on the table for him. For Tony and Ursula, too. I mean, the last thing I needed was to have us all go there, get killed, and then listen to the three of them whine for an eternity about how I didn’t tell them everything they needed to know.

I told them all to take a seat on the floor, which
they did, sitting Indian style in a circle around the boxes. I sat next to Tony and began to explain.

Chapter Three

“According to the
Grimoire, the ES has an atmosphere, although its helium content is probably higher than in our world, so our voices may sound funny.”

“
Funnier than Dominic’s?” Carlos joked.

That earned
him a jab on the arm from Dominic. Carlos laughed it off.

“It’s grey,” I said, not letting their foolery distract me for an instant. “Everything
in the Eighth Sphere is grey. There’s no moon and no stars. It’s a black void in the black vacuum of never-ending space. It has two black suns, which are invisible, of course, so they give off no perceivable light. Because of that, visible lighting is scarce, and what light there is, seems to have no particular source.”

“That makes no sense,”
said Dominic.

“No. It doesn’t, and neither does most things in the ES. It’s a world
, in some ways, much like our own, yet in others, nothing like ours at all. And even though spectersoma in our world are usually non-dimensional entities, there, they are three-dimensional forms, appearing basically as they did when they walked the Earth.”

“How
’s that?”

“I don’t know.”

Ursula said, “`Tis perception is all.”

“What do you mean?”

“They are to the eye what the eye doth see and nothing more. Mayhaps we, too, shall have no cheek to turn, but appear as thee in thy own fleshed state.”

“What?”

Dominic translated. “She’s saying that maybe there you’ll all be non-dimensional entities, too, but that you’ll look like three-D figures to each other.”

“She said that?”

“Aye,” said Ursula. “Have thee wax in thy ears so thick thou cannot hear?”

Tony came back more irritated than before.
“Can we get on with it?” The sharpness in his tone caused everyone to sit up straight. I cleared my throat and continued.

“According to the
Grimoire, there is no reliable measure of time in the Eighth Sphere. Sunrises and sunsets occur randomly and often simultaneously. An inconstant wave in the fabric of space distorts predictability and alters any perception of celestial continuity. Events seemingly lasting only a few seconds can take hours to unfold. Likewise, episodes that appear to take hours or even days may be experienced in the blink of an eye.”

Carlos
said, “That’s crazy.”

“
I guess what I’m saying is that I have no idea how long we’ll be gone.” I looked at Dominic to make sure he understood. “It could be years before we return, if ever.”

I watched the lump in his throat bob as he swallowed. “Ever?”

“
Yes. Ever,” I said, and then gauged his expression with a cold stare so that he knew I meant it. He nodded lightly.

I continued.
“I should also warn you that the laws of physics, as we know them, don’t necessarily apply in the ES. In a quasi-dimensional universe, quantum irregularities dictate the fundamental frequencies of life. The science of matter and energy and their interactions all go out the window. For this reason, we’re likely to find many confused souls wandering around in a state of shell shock, unable to reconcile what they see with what they know, or thought they knew.”

“
Sounds like you’re describing a dreamscape,” Carlos remarked.

“It’s worse. I don’t know anyone who dreams the things we’re likely to see there.
”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, like I said, the laws of physics are all turned upside down. Take inertia.”

Dominic said,
“That’s the tendency of an object in motion to remain in motion, or one at rest to remain at rest unless acted upon by a force.”

“Exactly, except i
n the ES, one might manipulate that law by mere proximity alone. For example, reaching for an object could just as easily cause that object to come to you, as to retreat from your outstretched hand before touching it.”