Authors: null
“I know it’s somethin’ I’ve heard before, but I don’t know what. What’re you thinkin’?”
“It reminds me of a campfire,” answered Knight. “But, not when there are flames. I’m talking about when it’s at its hottest, when it’s all coals, that burning sound heat makes as it dries the very moisture out of the air around it.”
Dollins’ eyes went wide. He recognized the sound immediately, knowing the professor’s deduction was correct … but how could that be? Unlike some of the rooms on the station’s upper floors, which still retained much of their wood from the old days, the basement rooms were mostly stone, brick, and poured concrete. The property room was lined with nothing but metal shelves and cabinets. There simply was not enough flammable material within it to feed a fire of such intensity.
All right, let’s say you’re right about that, Jimmy
, the detective’s mind responded to him.
Fine—it’s impossible. But if that is the case, then just what the hell do you think that is that you’re hearin’?
Before Dollins’ brain could offer him anything in the way of an answer, however, suddenly both men began to notice the one thing they had been dreading since they began their descent. At first each of them had believed or at least sincerely hoped that the sensation they were detecting was only a result of nerves on their part. Taking another few steps forward, they both knew such was nothing more than wishful thinking.
“It’s starting to get warmer,” hissed Knight. “Too warm. There has to be something on fire in there.”
“Any ideas what?”
“What do you mean?”
Dollins turned to stare the professor square in the eye. Something was not right about their situation; of that the detective was
certain—the same kind of something that had been off-kilter every time he and Knight had ended up in the same place. During each of those occurrences things had gotten just a bit stranger, just a little more twisted. This time, however, as far as Dollins was concerned, he had stumbled into the Twilight Zone, and he had dragged his own personal Rod Serling along with him.
His eyes locking with Knight’s, his years of on-the-job experience watching for any attempt to mislead him, the big man snarled, “You and me, we ain’t got no more time for shittin’ around. Now tell me, straight-out and honest—just what the goddamned hell is in there?”
The professor was taken aback a trifle by the question. It was not, after all, his job to be there. He had accompanied Dollins out of concern for the Dream Stone. Knight would have done so even if he possessed no other relation to it outside of the fact that it was the property of the Brooklyn Museum. Considering his family connection to the piece, however, let alone Ungari’s revelations of its sudden, possibly history-shattering importance, and then its attempted theft, Knight simply had to know what was happening to the antiquity that, less than twenty-four hours previous, was considered utterly worthless.
Knight found the detective’s question, coming at the moment it did, not so much a request for help, but a challenge bordering on accusation. Dollins did not fully trust him, but then, considering the fact he was hiding a great number of things from not only the officer but the world in general, Knight could not very well take offense. Indeed, over the years he had grown used to such things. Although, like most of those who dabbled in magic, he strove to appear merely a harmless eccentric, the pose was no longer working with the detective.
Sweat had begun to bead on the professor’s forehead. It was nothing compared to the soak matting Dollins’ thinning hair to his
skull, but it was reminder enough that things were escalating at a fantastic rate there in the basement. Also, knowing their time was certain to be running out, Knight went on the offensive, snarling back at the detective;
“And just how am I supposed to know what in hell is in there until we open the door?”
His face going a deep red, from both the heat as well as frustration, Dollins took a step toward the professor, bringing their faces only inches apart as he growled;
“This is not over, wise guy.”
Then Dollins turned abruptly, moving on the door to the property room. Still carrying a weapon in each hand, the detective was just about to shove one into a pocket so he could safely open the door when he stopped—transfixed. Closing with him, a worried Knight caught sight of what the officer had seen and stopped moving himself. Both men blinked involuntarily, Dollins shaking his head violently, as if the motion might change the image before him.
It did not, however, and there in the silent, smoke-filled basement the center of the steel property room door continued to glow, a harsh electrical steam fizzing away from it as the thick metal of it began to melt.
“Back up—move. Hurry!” shouted Knight, coughing as his sudden exclamation caused him to breathe in far more of the acrid smoke swirling in the hallway than his lungs could handle. The taste of the smoke frightened him, its increasingly bitter tang telling him far more than he wished to know. Pushing at Dollins, trying to force the far larger man into moving even while still choking, the professor barely managed to add, “Now!”
“Why?” The detective snapped the word defiantly, as if whatever response he received to that question might answer many others. Grabbing Knight’s arm, he demanded, “What’s in there? Just what in hell is in there?!”
“Something that can melt its way through steel, you idiot!” Pointing at the growing spot in the center of the door, the academic focused the large man’s attention on the streaks of fiery liquid metal beginning to ooze downward from the glistening core. Then, shaking off Dollins’ grasp,
the professor began backing down the hallway, forcing words out in between coughs;
“I don’t possess … any means to combat that … whatever
that
is. We’ve got to get—get out of here!”
Free from the detective’s formidable grip, Knight took two more rapid steps backward. Working hard to control his breathing, desperate to stop coughing, to clear his eyes of the terrible burning sensation gnawing its way into them, the professor knew with an unshakable certainty that whatever was coming through the door could not be stopped by two mere mortals.
Because of the growing taste of copper in the air, Knight believed he might have some slight idea as to what might be melting the door. But, he also knew that if he was correct, he and the detective would be lucky to escape the building, and then only if they turned and ran—immediately.
“You know what it is that’s in there,” insisted Dollins. Following the retreating professor down the hall, he growled, “I
know
you do. Fer Christ’s sake, tell me what it is—what we need to do to put it down!”
Stopping for a moment, the last time he planned to do so before he reached the street, Knight placed his hand atop his head, wiping the remaining water in his hair down into his eyes. Then, placing his still-wet hand over his mouth and nose, he dragged down as deep a breath as he could through his fingers, then told the detective;
“Listen to me. Believe me when I tell you this. Yes—I might have some idea what it is that’s breaching that door, but even if my guess is correct, that doesn’t mean that we can stop it. Do you understand me—we can’t. We can … not …
stop it
!”
“Then what do we do?”
“There’s nothing we can do. I’m thinking the same thing you
are, that this all must be tied to the Dream Stone. It must be—
has
to be. And you have to believe me, if something was sent here to destroy it, to keep it out of the hands of others, then it’s surely a thing of great power. Far greater than we can deal with on our own.”
The large man looked deep into Knight’s eyes, then turned to stare back toward the property room. The door was glowing even more fiercely, giving off molten shimmers of orange and scarlet. Fiery slag was rolling down the softening steel, dripping from above, sending a scattering of dazzling sparks in all directions. And, as Dollins stared closely, he felt his heart stop beating for a split second. Blinking hard, he looked forward once more to determine if what he thought he had just seen was actually there. Leaning toward him, the professor whispered in a voice made small by fear;
“Yes. Those are
hands
!”
Slender and tapered, two glimmering, bestial sets of fingers were crammed inside the oozing, ever-widening circle forming in the door, tearing at it, scraping away the softening metal one mushing lump after another. Dollins’ eyes fixed on the horrifying sight, freezing his limbs, rooting him to the spot.
When the professor once again pulled on the detective’s arm to start him moving, the big man did not resist, too mesmerized by the lunatic scene playing out before him to make any conscious decisions of his own. Finally, however, when Knight had moved him practically the entire way back to the stairwell, Dollins muttered;
“No … stop.”
“We can’t stop. We don’t dare,” hissed the professor, reaching for the door to the stairs. “We’ve got to keep moving.”
“No.”
As Knight’s fingers reached the doorknob, Dollins stepped away from him, slipping his backup weapon into his sport coat’s pocket
while he moved toward a small cabinet built into the opposite wall. Throwing open its rectangular glass door, he reached inside the compact space, pulling out the fire extinguisher stored within it. Checking the heft of it, making certain it was fully charged, he told the professor;
“Go on—take off. I’ll stop this thing.”
“Don’t be a fool—you can’t stop it with that,” insisted Knight. Reaching for the detective once more, the professor insisted, “For God’s sake, man, it’ll roast you alive!”
“Gotta try.” Swallowing hard, Dollins added, “No one else did nuthin’ … just ran. Someone’s gotta do somethin’.”
Knight’s hand stopped short of the detective’s arm. Making any further attempts to get him to flee obviously would be futile. The professor was almost certain he knew why no other officers had made a stand against the horror just beyond. He recognized the aroma of a planted repulsion there in the harsh atmosphere of the basement. Whoever had sent the thing in the property room had first charmed it with a fear caster—not an overly long or powerful one, just enough to allow the thing to form and be about its business. No unprotected human could resist the urge to retreat in its presence. It was no wonder the area had been vacated so quickly and without question.
“Go on,” ordered Dollins, pointing with his weapon toward the door to the stairwell. “This ain’t your fault and it ain’t your fight. So, do it—go!”
The professor nodded, turning toward the door once more, then suddenly stopped. Touching the detective’s arm to catch his attention, Knight began removing the blue stone ring from his hand as he said;
“Last year, in Red Hook, when you survived the shooting … you remember, I was there. I was wearing this at the time. It’s … it’s lucky.”
The two men locked eyes one last time. Sliding the ring onto his left pinkie, the only finger he possessed small enough to accept it, Dollins said simply, “Thanks,” then turned and moved back toward the property room. Knight, knowing he had done everything he could, fled into the stairwell. Taking one final glance, the professor could tell from the amount of black sparks coming from around the corner ahead that the collapsing door would soon be no barrier at all to that which was behind it. Throwing Dollins a heartfelt salute, Knight then did the only thing he could, and retreated to the surface.
Alone in the smokey hallway, the detective started once more for the property room. He did so slowly but resolutely, walking with the heavy-duty fire extinguisher held high in both hands, waiting for the inevitable. In the last moments he had spent talking with Knight, the temperature had risen more than ten degrees. With each step taken toward the corner before him, sweat rolling off his head, down his back, into his eyes, Dollins could feel the wildly increasing heat—knew what it meant.
“All right, you bastard,” he sneered as he reached the corner. “Show yourself.”
With a sudden increase of light flooding the area, the detective knew the property room door had finally collapsed—that whatever had been restrained by it had freed itself at last. Swallowing hard, the large man took the final step needed to where he could view the situation for himself. And at that moment, suddenly there it was before him.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph …”
Tall it was, a willowy, vaguely humanoid frame, but one constructed out of bones cast from lava wrapped in fascia created of flame.
Seeing the entire thing at one time, Dollins understood why it had needed to melt its way through the door. The demonic shape’s
fingers were an illusion, a distortion caused by both the heat and the detective’s intense desire to understand, to assign comprehension to that upon which he was looking. The fiery imitation of a human form standing before him was not something that could turn knobs or press buttons. It was a gathered mass of elemental fury, forged into an approximation of being sent out to accomplish a task. Staring at the blazing shambler, struggling desperately to make his brain function once more, Dollins swallowed hard, then snapped;
“Okay, I guess you got your job and I got mine.” Flipping the restraining safety catch on the fire extinguisher, as the very plaster in the walls and ceiling began to liquify, dribbling all about him, the detective pulled hard on the trigger, screaming, “Drink up, Shirley!”
Frigid carbon dioxide blasted forth from the canister’s release nozzle, the streaming cloud of it splashing against the creature’s torso in violent reaction. Lungless, brainless, the thing made no verbal response as it reared back, the language of its movements suggesting Dollins had actually managed to wound it to some extent. Holding back from emptying the extinguisher, the large man moved his hand still holding his service automatic and fired, emptying the entire clip into the monstrous shape before him.
Every bullet fired entered the burning mass drawing toward him, but Dollins could see no effect. Dropping his weapon—discarding it as if knowing he would never need it again—he hoisted the fire extinguisher to his chest once more, pulling the trigger and releasing all the frozen ammunition he had left to him. Again the horror was staggered, but in nothing one might consider a hope-giving amount. Perhaps if there had been forty or fifty men all armed with such weapons, the detective thought, there might have been a chance of stopping it.