Tales From the Black Chamber (32 page)

“Okay, now we need a double post hole
here
, said Anne, at the northernmost point of the middle circle, the one intersecting the other posts. Steve obligingly got out his spade, dug the hole, and tested it with the two posts from the ends of the V, then replaced them in their original position, while Anne walked around the circle to the vertex of the V and kicked a foot of flour off of the outermost circle directly behind the post.

Everyone dragged their shovels back to the vertex and sat on the ground.

Anne looked at them and said, half joking, half despairing, “Look, folks, let me apologize in advance if this gets us all killed and ends the world. It's the best I could do.” Everyone nodded in silent sympathy. “Here's the plan. We need to bait Abaddon, and the only bait around here is us. So what we do is stand inside these posts. Doesn't matter who stands where, though we probably need the two strongest guys at the farthest points of the V.” Steve and Rafe volunteered. “Okay, that'll put Claire and John at the middle posts, and me at the vertex,” Anne continued. “Stay there as long as you can, then at the very last minute, duck behind the pole. John and Claire, watch your feet. Do
not
kick any of the flour around. I can't stress that enough.”

“Noted,” said John.

“I am tattooing ‘do not kick flour' on my wrist as we speak,” deadpanned Claire.

“Excellent. Now once Abaddon hits the Aleph, it's supposed to stop him. I'll shout when he's there. At that point, and not before, Steve and Rafe, pull up your posts and run as fast as you can to the double post hole at the top of the circle, and plant the posts. I have no idea what you'll have to face in trying to do this, but it's absolutely critical that you do so. Otherwise, it can get back out the way it came. As long as you're closing the gap and then sealing it with the posts, it's not supposed to be able to get out. In theory. And again, let me emphasize that when you get near the top-of-the-circle post hole, do
not
kick the flour.”

“Hey, I have an idea,” said Claire. “How about we each take some flour with us to our posts—ha, literal as well as figurative—and then if we do mess up the circle, we can fix it? I mean, we'll have to try and memorize our area in advance, of course, but it's a fallback, right?”

Oh thank God they're buying this
, Anne thought, starting to get a little excited about the prospect of actually trying this lunatic science project from Hell. “Excellent idea. Anyone have buckets?” asked Anne.

“Shovels will do just fine,” said Steve.

“Okay, everyone take a shovelful of flour,” said Anne. “Thanks, Claire. Okay, and then the grand finale is my connecting the circle at the bottom. The posts should trap him in the circle, and once the circle's complete, Abaddon shouldn't be able to exist within it. I have no idea what will happen, but the guy who did this near Nizhny Novgorod in 1408 said that ‘the wood shall be a bower,' by which I'm guessing he means ‘hide behind the posts.' And that's all I've got.”

“Okay, thanks Anne,” said John. “Let's just go over it a couple times to make sure everyone's got it cold.” They reviewed the plan pro forma, but with their adrenaline-fueled focus, no one needed the repetition.

“How much time do we have?” John asked, merely curious, but sounding like a terminal patient.

Rafe said, “Twenty minutes, more or less.”

“Well, let's go to battle stations,” said Steve, “in case the son of a bitch is early. Turn on your throat mikes and earpieces so we can all hear each other.”

They looked around at each other, and nodded in silent valediction. They embraced each other solemnly in turn, knowing it might be the last human touch they'd feel. When it was his turn, Rafe looked longingly into Claire's eyes, pain and regret comingled. Claire put her hand on his cheek and met his gaze with understanding. He embraced her fiercely. When John approached Claire a few moments later, she began, “John—” with brow furrowed, as if to explain or apologize for something. He just shook his head and waved his hand in open-handed acceptance. She nodded in tacit agreement and relief, and they embraced.

Goodbyes technically unsaid, they walked silently out to the posts, tiny vertical sprigs on the vast, empty horizontal of the grassland. They gingerly stepped over the lines of flour and positioned themselves inside the posts, minnows baiting a shark.

Five minutes later, Steve, at the northwesterly end of the V, said, “Does anybody hear that thumping noise?” Everyone checked in ‘no,' agitation in their voices.

“I hear it,” said John a minute later. Then Anne heard it. “Me too,” she radioed.

“It's not coming from the north,” Steve said. “I think it's from the west.”

They all turned away from the horizon they'd been glued to and saw a strange, inhuman figure coming across the plain towards them. They had to squint behind their sunglasses, as the figure seemed to radiate light. Its outline was approximately man-sized, but much more hulking, and long, brachiating horns sprung from its head.

“What the fuck is
that
?” John asked, and Anne heard him cock his rifle.

“Easy,” said Steve authoritatively. “Fingers off triggers, everybody. Let's not overreact. Anne, looks like he's heading towards you.”

“Um, ok.” Anne shouldered her gun as the figure and the rhythmic thumping got closer and louder.

The figure seemed to glide across the plain towards her.

“Does anyone else think that looks like Obi-Wan coming to scare the Sand People away from Luke's landspeeder?” asked Rafe.

“
Quiet!
” said Claire. “But, yes.”

“Hello?” Anne shouted.

Anne saw an arm raised in salutation.
Well, that's good
. She heard the jingling and clanking of metal.
Huh?

When the figure got close enough that Anne could make out details around the light it was emitting, she realized it was a man in a strange costume.

“It's a guy,” she radioed. “I'm not sure what he's wearing, but I don't see any weapons. He's got a big walking stick.”

She watched as the man got closer, fascinated by his outlandish garb. He was wearing a kaftan covered with little metal plates and jingle bells, a tiger-stripe apron of alternating orange-and-black cotton strips, a wide leather belt with nine mirrors attached to it, and one large circular mirror over his chest like a pectoral cross. The mirrors had been reflecting the morning sun back towards them. His hulking shape came from a large, heavy deerskin cape. His horns were a magnificent set of antlers on a helmet. Under the helmet, his head was wrapped in a cloth of red silk. In his right hand was a long staff, with horse and wolf tails atop it. In his left was an unusual curved drumstick, one end a horse's head, the other a hoof. He was beating a constant rhythm on a round drum on his belt; iron rings jangled from the drum.

“Anne?” came John's concerned voice.

“Ah, stand down? I think?” said Anne. “It's a guy in a weird costume.”

She lowered her gun as the man got closer. When he was about ten feet away, he looked at her with kind, intelligent eyes out of an ageless, weathered Mongol countenance and nodded. He looked over the arrangement of posts and flour and smiled. He said something in Mongolian, pointed to Anne, pointed to himself, and then pointed to the northern horizon.

“You're here because of the monster?” Anne asked, knowing the question was futile as soon as it was out of her mouth. The Mongol just smiled.

“Ah, guys,” Anne said, incredulously into her mike, “he seems to be some sort of Mongol shaman or something. I think he's here to help.”

“Awesome!” said Rafe.

“Oh, that's great!” said Claire.

“Hey, we'll take all the reinforcements we can get,” said Steve.

John finally stopped laughing and said, “Tell him the
koumiss
is on us afterwards.”

Anne went back to her position. The Mongol's drumming continued. After a while he began chanting softly to the sky, then making what sounded to Anne like birdcalls.

After what seemed like a long, long time, Steve's voice came over the radio. “He's late.”

Rafe said, “Fucking apocalypse demons can't keep to a schedule. Buy a damn watch, Golgoroth. I got a bus to catch.”

Another age passed underneath the Eternal Blue Heaven, which the shaman doubtlessly invoked. Then Claire's voice came over the radio. “There. See it?”

Anne couldn't at first, but then, “Yes,” she said, “dark cloud, due north?”

“You girls have better eyesight,” said John.

“Better everything,” said Claire.

“Ah shit, I see it,” said Rafe.

“Roger that,” said Steve.

“Hey, now even I can see it,” said John.

The Mongol raised his voice in a series of cries.

“Come on, you son of a bitch,” muttered Steve. “Get over here.”

“HEY!” screamed Rafe off the radio, but loud enough Anne could hear him just fine a hundred yards behind him. “ABADDON! APOLLYON! HÜSKER DÜ! OVER HERE, YOU BASTARD!”

Suddenly, like a football team before a big game, all the Black Chamber agents were all yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs, taunting the specter of death, jumping up and down. Anne realized she was close to jumping on some flour, and dialed back her catharsis.

It took the cloud a half an hour to close, which seemed as long as the rest of their lives. It was huge and black and coming right for them. It howled deafeningly. It swept into the V, and Anne saw Rafe and Steve spin outside the posts, and John and Claire slip behind theirs, watching their feet. She saw John drop to his knees to grab some flour out of his shovel and frantically pack it on the ground.

Anne waited a fraction of a second and spun around her pole. The front of the cloud hit her post like a freight train. The post didn't move, but a shock wave knocked Anne off her feet. As she fell, she peered through the blackness to see if Rafe and Steve were moving the posts closed. She couldn't see a thing.

“Rafe! Steve!” she screamed into her microphone. “Run! Run! Run!”

As she feared, the blackness began to recede like a tide, the evil attempting to find a clear path.

Suddenly she heard the howling of a wolf next to her, and turned to see the Mongol shaman letting out the spine-tingling cry of a lone wolf, then of a pack of wolves. His drumming was so loud and fast Anne could barely hear the rhythm. He planted his staff in the ground in front of him, then drew from a pocket what looked like the scapula of some large animal carved and painted with symbols. He screamed a horrible cry and threw it into the blackness. Flames erupted where it hit. The blackness surged again towards Anne and the shaman, coming through the gaps in the posts, like a prisoner lunging out between jail bars. Anne shrank down behind her post, where the air was oddly still. She saw blackness to either side of her, but nothing but blue sky above and behind her, a wedge-shaped anti-shadow of sun and light stretching out from the post.

“THEY'RE IN! ANNE! NOW!” shouted Rafe and Steve semi-coherently over the radio.

Anne grabbed her flour and, hands shaking, carefully connected the last arc of the magic circle she'd derived from examples in the
Key of Solomon
, Bruno's
Triginta Sigilli
, Kircher's
Œdipus Ægypticus
, the
Testament of Carnamagos
, and the
Grimoire of Pope Honorius
. She screamed as much in surprise as pain when the wet flour of the completed circle burst into searing blue flames inches under her fingers, burning her wrists and scorching her face. She fell back, and through her tearing eyes watched in amazement as the blue flame spread across the whole of the circle.

A sound like a million cows being slaughtered and a train being shredded and a bomb going off and Hell's purest, thundering rage blasted out of the circle. Anne saw the blackness twitching and thrashing, huge strange distorted shapes appearing in the cloud, wings, an eye, a huge, fanged mouth, more eyes, and shapes geometers couldn't describe. Pure hate flowed from the circle. Anne could almost taste it in her little lee. She looked over at the shaman, who chanted and drummed on, seemingly entirely unaffected, as if in a bubble of his own.

Then the blackness became flame. A pillar of blue fire shot up into the sky from the circle, poisonous-smelling black smoke billowing in the wind.

Then silence.

Anne slowly got up off her backside and looked around. The air was vile with black smoke. The entire circle was a solid black, charred waste, the posts eerily unscathed. The shaman stopped drumming.

Then she heard the screaming. The happy, cheering screams of the other Black Chamber operatives running across the steppe towards her, ecstasy on their faces. They gang-tackled her like she was two yards from their end zone and bawled crazed congratulations. Anne closed her eyes with relief, felt any number of people kiss her cheeks, eyes, and lips, and let herself collapse.

When they'd regained their senses, they got up off the ground and dusted themselves off, as the thick, oily, foul black smoke dissipated in the gorgeous azure of the Mongol sky.

John pulled out a satellite phone, and he, Steve, Rafe, and Claire took turns shouting the good news down the line to Mike, Joe, Lily, and Wilhelmina.

Anne, feeling a little like an outsider, just looked around at the landscape, thinking it was the most beautiful sight she'd ever seen. She noticed the Mongol shaman putting away his drum and taking off his helmet, stashing them in a large sack that he slung over his shoulder like an Altaic Santa Claus. He smiled broadly, a beautiful, joyous, gap-toothed smile that warmed Anne's soul, then raised his hand in valediction, calling, “
Sain suuj baigaaray
!” in a high, tight voice. Anne waved back. He turned and began walking off into the west.