Then what Benedict said next made Robyn and Noel stare at him as if insanity had stolen his wits away. Benedict panted out ”Listen, I've got to warn you guys. Crows have started to settle on the roof.”
On reflection, Benedict realized the statement about crows sounded bizarre when the three people here didn't know about the ominous significance of the birds. But, in the blink of an eye, the insanity hat passed to Noel. ”Have you seen Ellery's face? I mean, have you seen what's happened to Ellery's face! Jesus H. Christ, it was-”
”Shine the light on Ellery. Let Benedict see!”This was Robyn, her eyes fixed on Ellery in nothing less than unwavering fascination. ”But you should have seen it, Benedict. Just twenty minutes ago!”
”The crows,”Benedict began. ”There're hundreds of crows…”Dear God, now I'm babbling. We're all babbling at each other and we don't know what the other people are talking about. Despite himself, he blurted, ”The baby was kidnapped here by something that didn't have a human face… but I need to tell you about the crows first.”Dear God, now I'm wearing the insanity hat. What had been important subjects he needed to discuss with these people came tumbling out of his lips in a series of sentences that must have sounded just plain nuts… crows… kidnapping! Only Robyn and Noel were too preoccupied to notice the wackiness of it. Ellery stood there with a quiet dignity, his arms straight down by his sides. As Robyn and Noel shone the flashlight in the poor guy's eyes, they exhorted Benedict to see something remarkable about Ellery's face. Not that there was anything amiss. The guy still possessed the same delicate fine-boned features, same high, smooth forehead. Same thin, dark eyebrows arching above a pair of gentle eyes.
”You should have seen his face,”Noel shouted.
”Now there's nothing,”Robyn enthused. ”Nothing! Not a mark!”
”Wait… Wait.”Benedict began to connect their excitement with what he'd seen before. ”You're saying that there was something wrong with Ellery's face?”
”Yes!”the pair shouted together.
Noel continued, ”He came here this morning with cuts here and here.”With his free hand, Noel pointed at his own lips and eyebrow.
”Now they've vanished.”Robyn's eyes shone with wonder. ”But they were there just a few minutes ago. You couldn't miss them. His lip was bleeding like-like-”
”But there's not a mark now,”Noel interrupted.
Benedict West thought back to the first time he'd seen Ellery. The guy had taken a horrific beating. His face was torn to hell and back, covered with blood. Only hours later when Benedict visited Ellery at home to return the wallet, there had barely been a mark on him. Okay so there was the faintest trace of bruising on his face, but the wounds looked two weeks old at least.
Now Ellery Han had gone and done the face repair trick all over again.
”How can you explain something like that?”Noel demanded as he blasted the light into Ellery's face. ”This has got to be a miracle… but how does anyone explain it?”
”I can't explain all of it,”Benedict told them. ”But I believe I can supply some answers.”He looked at Noel. ”You might want to stop shining the light in Ellery's face now. The guy's dazzled enough as it is.”
”You know what happened to Ellery?”
”Let's say I'm beginning to… I've also come with a serious warning.
You're in danger”
”Crows.”Previous to this single word, Ellery had said nothing. Hadn't moved. Hadn't even flinched when Noel beamed the hard white light into those calm blue eyes while raving about his face-like Noel had seen exclusive images of heaven, complete with full-on dancing angels projected there. Now that single word: Crows.
Benedict looked at him. ”Ellery? You know about the crows?”
Ellery nodded, his face serious. ”Crows are an omen of death. If flocks settle on a house roof that means someone in the house will die soon.”The words came in soft breaths from his lips without a trace of stammer. ”The crows are here?”
Benedict nodded.
Robyn stood back and extended a hand toward the lobby door, inviting them to pass through. ”We need coffee,”she told them. ”We also need to hear what Benedict has to tell us.”
***
Ellery sat in an armchair while Robyn and Noel chose the couch. Benedict decided to position himself facing all three so he could talk to them. A straight-backed chair that had to be an orphan from a long-gone dining-room suite stood against the wall. He picked that up and carried it to the position he'd selected. As he sat down, Robyn poured coffee into cups on the low table beside her.
”I'm sorry we don't have matching cups,”she began, then stopped herself, as if the apology appeared absurd in the light of unfolding events.
”Help yourselves to sugar.”
Benedict glanced out the window. More crows circled the building. They glided without flapping their wings. From the angle of their beaks, he knew the birds stared at the Luxor. For a second he could imagine the dark beat of thought inside the creatures' brains: Someone's going to die soon. Someone's going to die. Someone's going to die soon down there…
But who's going to die? Benedict looked around at the three young people in the room. Ellery met his gaze with an unblinking calm. He knew about the crows, too.
Robyn sat with a cup clutched in both hands. ”OK, who goes first?”
Benedict shrugged. ”In a way I guess it doesn't matter who talks first.
My feeling is that whatever we've experienced individually relates to the same central…”He shrugged again. ”Occurrence? Event? Situation?
How does one describe it?”
Ellery gave a ghost of a smile, ”Aw-aw-all r-roads lead to the Luxor.”
”He's not kidding either,”Benedict said. ”Think about it. All of us have been drawn to this abandoned building in the middle of a derelict wasteland. It's a magnet.”
Robyn nodded. ”We couldn't stop coming here if we tried.”
Noel shook his head. ”Not me. I don't feel its pull.”
”That's because you were loyal,”Robyn told him. ”You thought I was crazy at the time because I so wanted to be here, but you were prepared to stick with me.”
”And that's what I'm going to do.”
Benedict saw Robyn glance at him, then at Ellery. ”But you had Ellery, Benedict. I didn't realize you knew each other.”
Benedict sighed. ”All roads do lead to the Luxor… for certain people anyway. I was here indulging my own personal obsession with the place on Friday night when I saw Ellery here on the entrance steps.”
Ellery started to say something, found the words wouldn't detach themselves from his lips, and pointed at his face with a shrug.
”Ellery had been beaten up pretty badly. He'd taken a lot of damage to his face…”
Benedict explained what had happened. That he'd tried to help Ellery (whom he didn't know at the time) and that Ellery, overwhelmed by pain and a not unreasonable suspicion of strangers, considering, fled into the belt of woodland behind the Luxor. Benedict added that he'd found Ellery's wallet, so he set out to return it to him the next day. That's when he found to his surprise that Ellery's face had healed overnight.
As soon as Benedict spoke about Ellery's miracle recovery, both Robyn and Noel exchanged wide-eyed glances.
”That's exactly what happened today. Ellery came here, needing somewhere to stay because a bunch of thugs had threatened him. We saw Ellery had been hurt. Noel and I cleaned up his cuts in the kitchen.”She winced.
”There was a lot of blood. Ellery must have been in agony. Then…”She turned to Ellery. ”Is it okay if I tell Benedict or do you want to?”
”I… ah… mmm.”Ellery raised a hand in frustration.
The stammer had screwed his ability to talk. ”Robyn… you… ss-ss okay!”
”I'll tell Benedict what I know.”She shot him a reassuring smile, then turned to Benedict. ”Not that there's much to tell, other than Ellery told me he'd take a walk around the Luxor… or a hobble, rather. He'd wrenched his ankle escaping from those thugs. It had swollen like a balloon.”
Benedict noticed they all glanced at Ellery's bare feet. There was no sign of swelling in either foot. Benedict couldn't even tell which one had been injured.
Robyn continued, ”He'd been gone twenty minutes when I noticed your car, Benedict, so I suggested to Noel we come down to meet you.”Her shoulders gave a little hop. ”We walked across the dance floor to where Ellery stood. And we saw that where there should have been wounds on Ellery's face, there was nothing. No marks. No bruises. No scabs. His face had healed in minutes.”
Benedict looked at Ellery, their eyes locking. ”So what's the story, Ellery? How can you heal so quickly?”
”I… ah, uh… I…”
Ellery wanted to tell. He was bursting to tell. Only he couldn't free a single coherent sentence from the prison his stutter had built for him.
Benedict sensed the war being fought inside the kid, between his desire to speak and the cruel stammer that vandalized the words as they passed his lips. Veins stood out from his throat. Hands bunched into quivering fists. Perspiration formed glistening drops on his forehead. Ellery was going through hell.
”Ahm… there's, oh! There's a place… a place!”He grabbed on to the only words he could. ”A place”His face crimsoned with effort. ”I… was… am ththaay… Uh. I'm sorry. Sorry!”He dropped his head until his chin touched his chest. Total defeat.
”A place?”Benedict echoed gently. ”What kind of place?”
Benedict saw Robyn regard Ellery with deep sympathy. She spoke for him.
”Woods. A fast-flowing stream. In the distance, a city on a hill.”
Ellery's head snapped up to stare at her in amazement.
”I know the place,”she told them. ”Because I've been there, too.”
***
”I'd been in the gray forest when I was attacked by the creature,”Robyn explained. ”Benedict saved me from it. Before then I'd walked onto the dance floor but somewhere out there I found myself in woodland in winter with bare trees. Then there was a group of people… people?”She shuddered. ”Monsters.”Pausing to glance at Ellery she added. ”I think you and I have been to the same place, Ellery. The place with scary people. And the place where Ellery's injuries heal in the blink of an eye.”
Benedict realized it was time to fill the gaps. He leaned forward on the chair, his fingers knitted together. ”You know, I think we're all contributing to the big picture here. Ellery was right about saying all roads lead to the Luxor. Certain individuals, for reasons we don't know, are drawn here. They're compelled to walk across the dance floor, where they find a gateway to another place… The Place we'll call it for want of a better name. The Place is a forest inhabited by men and women who are different from us.”
”Different?”Robyn shivered. ”That's putting it mildly.”
”We know certain people can enter The Place via the dance floor. We know that those beings that dwell in The Place can leave it to enter this building. One tried to abduct Robyn.”
”Wait.”Noel frowned. ”Wait, you're making all kinds of assumptions. How do you know that monster guy was aiming to abduct Robyn? He might have…”He grimaced. ”Well, the freak might have had other ideas about Robyn.”
”No,”Benedict disagreed. ”My belief is it planned to abduct her.”He recalled Lockram's videotape that showed the figure with the monstrous mouth carrying Lockram's baby son into the pearl-white swathe of mist on the dance floor-and never emerging. ”You'll remember that for the last ten years I've been searching for my ex-partner, Mariah Lee. She moved to Chicago after she left our home. If you ask me, whatever's here in the Luxor called to her, like it called to you, Robyn, and to you, Ellery. Ten years ago to the very week I traced her to this town and followed her to the Luxor. I guess I needed to confirm to myself that she'd found another boyfriend. Maybe then I'd have returned home without any fuss, telling myself it was really over. But I sat out there in my car in the parking lot, watched Mariah enter through the main doors.
There I waited the whole evening. At eleven I watched everyone leave.
Everyone but Mariah. For some reason she stayed in the building and never left. Now I know why Call me obsessed but for the last ten years I've lived in Chicago, I kept looking for Mariah. Hell, come to that, I repeatedly drove out here to wait in the parking lot, expecting her to come skipping out of the building as if nothing had happened. Shoot.
Even when the dance hall closed I'd still drive here and wait. Some years ago I broke into the Luxor when I saw contractors had begun to strip out its fittings. I found a bunch of videotapes… those big old Betamax tapes… but then you've probably never even heard of Betamax.
That's an old VCR system that's been obsolete for decades. Anyway, I found the tapes. On one the owner of the Luxor had recorded a homespun film about the Luxor. He also included a shot of his dead wife.
”… Lying dead on the bed in that bedroom through there, with her eyes sunk into her head. Benedict was sensitive to the fact that including the fact about the corpse decomposing in the same place the couple slept wouldn't be a wholesome image for them. An image they'd conjure all too readily at bedtime.
”… What was missing was another tape. I began to realize that this must be the crucial one that went some way to explaining what's happening here.”
Robyn held up a hand as if in class. ”The missing tape was amongst those I found in the larder?”
Benedict nodded. ”And what amazing material it contained, too. At some point I want to show it to you. As you've got no electricity here, I'll drive you to my place to view it. But in the meantime, I've made notes.