Eximere (The River Book 4) (16 page)

They retraced their steps back through the house and the
front yard, making their way to the door and the stairwell.

“We’ve got a long set of steps to climb,” Steven said, “Let’s
pace ourselves.”

◊

Steven lifted himself from his bed. After they returned from
their trip to Eximere, he felt an overwhelming need to sleep, and he told Roy
and Eliza he was going to take a nap. Checking his phone, he saw he’d been asleep
for a couple of hours, and it was nearing dinnertime. He wandered into the
bathroom to splash some water on his face, and tried the door to Roy’s room. It
opened.

Inside Roy and Eliza were scanning the pages of Roy’s book.

“Any luck?” Steven asked, wishing he had some coffee.

“Ah, sleepyhead!” Roy said. “Yes my boy, we’ve had some luck.
We’ll need to go dig up some dirt in the yard outside before dinner.”

“Why?” Steven asked, still a little groggy.

“We’ll need it for the focus,” Roy said.

“Focus?” Steven asked, his alarm bells going off. “I really
don’t want another encounter with Anita.”

“No, this one won’t attract her,” Roy said, “at least, I
don’t think it will. We’ll need a bowl from the kitchen, too.”

“Tell me what’s going on,” Steven said.

“The River,” Eliza said, slipping in. The others followed.
We’ve
found something that should negate the effects of that substance and allow us
to communicate with whoever is in that grave,
she thought.
But we have
to make it. The ingredients are simple enough, but you need a good dose of
power to bind them. That’s why the focus.

The three of us aren’t enough to do it,
Roy added.
Eliza and I are too
weakened.

Are we bringing in the others on our discovery?
Steven thought.
What about the
rat?

We’ve already thought of that,
Roy thought.
We’ll tell the
others we found the instructions for this substance in my book, and that we
believe it will help us locate alternative passages. We’ll tell them we’re
going to spread it in places where we think a passage might be, and it should
help reveal the passage. But, really, we’re going to use it on that grave.

Do you think they’ll go for it?
Steven thought.

What other options do they have at this point?
Roy said.
And I’ll be interested
to see who agrees to it and who resists it.

Steven, you were right about Eximere
, Eliza thought.
Being in it
accelerated the drain – or, at least I can feel it now. When Roy and I were
going through the book, it was much harder to read and understand than it has
been in the past. While you were sleeping I tried a trance and it took real
effort to enter it, as though I was still a novice.

You won’t know for sure until you talk to the others,
Steven thought,
and compare with
them. Try to get them to tell you where they’re at with it. If they’re better
off than we are, then we’ll know your sense of it is right.

Eliza nodded, and they slipped out of the flow.

◊

After dinner and a long set of lies Roy made up to explain
where they’d been all day, he produced the bowl of dirt and set it on the
dining room table.

“We’ll need your help for this,” he said. “Eliza and I aren’t
at full capacity, and it’ll take more than the three of us to bind it.”

“And you think it will help us find the device?” Myrna said,
eyeing the dirt skeptically.

“It’s the only idea we’ve been able to come up with after combing
through my book,” Roy said. “It’s worth a shot.”

“Aren’t we risking an attack from Anita?” Jonathan asked, his
toothpick tucked into the right side of his mouth. “She threatened to kill us
all if we focused again.”

Another negative verdict from Jonathan
, Steven thought. “She threatened to
kill us if we focused on James,” Steven said. “This will be different.”

“Short and sweet,” Roy said, “and only about the dirt.”

“Do you have areas in mind where you’d like to spread it?”
Russell asked.

“Well,” Roy said, “I was hoping to get your input on that. I
can think of a few places, yes, but I’m hoping you’ve all been working on a
solution and can make some suggestions.”

“I have a place I’d like you to try, in the library,” Myrna
said.

“Very well,” Roy said. “We’ll need to make it, first.
Everyone game?”

Steven looked at Eliza. He could see she was watching
Jonathan closely.
If he is the rat,
Steven thought,
I wonder how much
he knows. Does he know about the house downstairs, and the graves?

The group assembled around the table and looked at the bowl
of dirt that was sitting in the center.

“Like I said, short and sweet,” Roy said. “Just jump in,
drop, and focus. Then out.”

They each nodded at Roy, and then lowered their heads and
began the focus.

Steven stepped back from the table, observing. He knew he
wouldn’t be able to participate, and he didn’t want to be surprised by Anita
coming up on him from behind. He watched for a while, then jumped into the
flow. The focus was already established, and they were wrapping up.
Nice and
quick, like Roy wanted it,
he thought.

“Are you going to start using it tonight?” Russell asked.

“I am,” Roy said. “I’ll spread it around, and let you know
how it has worked in the morning.”

“Very well then,” Russell said. “Let me tell you a few places
you should consider. I’ve been studying them for some time now, and I have the
strongest impressions when I pass by them.”

Roy humored Russell and joined him to get the list of places
Russell felt were important. Eliza walked over to join Steven. “There’s got to
be something more portable than this glass bowl,” Eliza said, then added under
her breath, “thinking about that ladder.”

Steven nodded. “A plastic bag, maybe?”

“I’ve usually got a couple in my luggage,” Eliza said. “I’ll
see if I brought any with me.” She turned to walk towards the velvet wallpaper
hallway. Russell, Roy, and Jonathan were talking in the far corner of the room,
and didn’t notice her leave.

Steven walked up to the bowl of dirt.
It still looks like
dirt
, he thought.
But it’s not, not anymore. If Roy is right, this dirt
is how we’ll solve this.

“How well do you know Eliza?” Myrna said, behind him. He
turned to face her.

“I’ve known her for a little while,” Steven said. “She helped
Roy and I with a problem in Oregon a while back.”

“Do you trust her?” Myrna asked.

“I do,” Steven said. “I don’t think she’s the rat.”

“I don’t either,” Myrna said. “I think your father was right
about Jonathan. I overheard a phone conversation earlier while you were gone.
Very suspicious.”

“Really?” Steven said, turning his back to the others so they
wouldn’t be overheard. “What did you hear?”

“He was pacing in his room,” Myrna said. “I could hear him
when he got close to his door, but couldn’t when he walked away. So I only
heard him say two things.”

“Which were?” Steven asked.

“Something about ‘you assured me I’d be fine,’ and ‘two
days,’” Myrna said.

“‘Two days’?” Steven said. “Do you think he was talking to
Percival?”

“Well, if he was,” Myrna said, “two days might mean how much
longer we’ve got until the device has finished with us. I know I’m not as
powerful as I was. That focus was much harder than the ones we did the other
night.”

“And the other thing you heard,” Steven said. “Sounds like he
thinks he won’t be affected?”

“Do you remember when you observed that first focus, Steven?”
Myrna asked. “Was Jonathan tagged? Was he really focusing with the rest of us?”

Steven thought back to that first night. He remembered seeing
the lines of light extend from Roy and Eliza’s heads, and ultimately converging
in the center between them. How many other lines of light were there? He racked
his brain.
Once the convergence happened, the dark light shut down the focus
so fast, there wasn’t much time to observe details,
he thought. “I’m afraid
I don’t know,” Steven said. “I can’t say I saw the focus coming from him like I
did with Roy, but I wasn’t watching him to see. And it all happened so fast, I
wasn’t counting. I was trying to join you, and failing. I was more worried
about that.”

“Well, that turned out to be good fortune for you,” Myrna
said, eyeing him.

Steven noticed her look and took a step back. “I can assure
you it’s not me,” he said, a little indignantly.
I
am
hiding things
from her
, Steven thought.
I hope she can’t see that.

“No,” Myrna said, “I don’t think it’s you. You wouldn’t have
gone with Marilyn, and you wouldn’t have subjected yourself to Anita’s attacks.
You’re a good person, I can tell, though you do have some secrets about you,”
she said, squinting her eyes a little at him, and smiling. “No, it’s Jonathan.
I’m almost sure of it.”

“Grab the stuff, Steven,” Roy said, joining them. “Meet me
upstairs and we’ll get started. Do you have any suggestions for where to apply
it, Myrna?”

“I’ll show you,” she said, “in the hallway as we walk back.”

Roy gave Steven a wink as he turned to walk away with Myrna.

Steven opened the door with the large golden oval and saw the
house again. It was darker than their last visit, but other than that, nothing
had changed.

They approached the house using the brick path. Lights were
on inside the house. Eliza carried the dirt in a plastic bag she’d found.

“Something’s wrong,” Steven said, stopping on the path and
wanting to back up.

“What is it?” Eliza asked. “Did you see something?”

“Yes,” Steven said. “We need to go back. And fast.”

Steven turned and walked, then ran back to the door. Roy
looked at Eliza and they exchanged a confused look, then followed him.

“What’s going on?” Roy asked him once they were back inside
the stairwell.

“She’s here,” Steven said. “We can’t go in there.”

“Who’s here?” Eliza asked.

“Anita,” Steven said. “I’m not going through that again, not
if I can help it.”

“Calm down,” Roy said. “How do you know she’s here?”

“I saw her, in the upstairs window of the house as we were
approaching it,” Steven said. “I’m surprised she didn’t see us.”

“Are you sure?” Eliza asked. “I didn’t notice anything.”

“I’m sure,” Steven said. “One hundred percent. We can’t go in
there, not with her there.”

“Let me check,” Roy said, poking his head out the door and
straining to see the house. “I can’t make anything out.”

“Your eyesight isn’t that great,” Steven said.

“Here, I’ll look,” Eliza said. She walked a few steps out of
the door to get a better angle at the house.

“Come back in here!” Steven said. “She’ll see you!”

“I can’t see anything either,” she said, walking back to the
stairwell to join the others.

“You’ve got to trust me,” Steven said. “She’s there.”

“OK,” Eliza said, “I believe you.”

“What do we do?” Roy asked.

“It makes sense that she’s here,” Steven said. “We’ve seen
her descend from her room upstairs every night at dusk. Eximere is where she
goes.”

“And back upstairs in the morning?” Eliza said.

“Back and forth, on schedule. When we were in town, Roger
told me that many people have seen her do this over the years, it’s a bit of a
legend,” Steven said. “And it’s exactly what we’ve seen her do.”

“Ghosts love routine,” Roy said. “Doesn’t surprise me.”

“But there’s a reason,” Steven said. “I don’t know what it
is, but there’s a reason she comes down here. She’d rather be up there, but
she’s afraid of something. When I first met her, when you were all trancing,
she was in the process of interrogating me. She wanted to kill me at one point,
but she suddenly stopped and left to go down the stairs.”

“That’s just the routine thing,” Roy said. “They’re stupid,
they can’t give it up no matter what’s happening.”

“No, she said she had to hurry,” Steven said. “She said
‘they’re coming.’ She was running away from something, running down here, where
presumably she’s safe.”

“And she goes back up in the morning, at sunrise,” Eliza
said. “Maybe it’s the marchers? They’re out at night up there.”

“Maybe,” Steven agreed. “Could be she’s running from them.”
Steven remembered the look of Anita’s face – the flesh peeled away.

“But they don’t come in the house,” Roy said.

“We don’t know about her room,” Steven said. “They might come
in there. Percival did warn us to stay out of it.”

“Well, in any event, we’re not getting back into Eximere
until she leaves,” Eliza said, “which, if she stays on schedule, will be in
eight hours from now.”

“I guess we try again in the morning,” Roy said. “Come on,
let’s head back.”

◊

The next morning they assembled in the dining room before
beginning the trek to Eximere. The others weren’t up yet.

“I’ll go watch and make sure Anita climbs the stairs,” Eliza
said. “Here Roy, will you hold this?” she extended the plastic bag of dirt
towards him, then turned to walk down the hallway. “Back in a bit, once she’s
out of the way.”

“What are we going to do about Jonathan?” Steven asked Roy.
“Myrna overheard a phone conversation he was having in his room. She’s pretty
sure he was talking to Percival. She overheard him say ‘two more days.’”

“Bastard,” Roy said. “All the time keeping secrets. What I
don’t get is why he’s willing to risk his own abilities by doing this.”

“Myrna thinks he’s got a deal with Percival,” Steven said.
“She overheard him say something about being safe.”

“Fucking bastard!” Roy said. “And a fool. Whatever this is,
he’s wrapped up in it too.”

“Unless he wasn’t tagged somehow,” Steven said.

Roy turned to look at him. “Was he? Did you see?”

“I can’t be sure,” Steven said. “It happened too fast.”

“Damn,” Roy said. “Well, it doesn’t change anything, either
way. He’s the rat, and he’s going to have to pay, somehow.”

Eliza joined them from the other room. “She’s upstairs now,”
she said. “Safely in her room.”

“Are you going to tell her about Jonathan?” Roy asked.

Eliza looked at Steven. “What about him?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you on the trip downstairs,” Steven said.

◊

They emerged again from the door’s threshold and onto the
brick path, Steven leading. The light had returned, and it looked exactly as it
had the day before. Eliza was carrying the bag of dirt, and Roy followed in the
rear.

“Sense anything?” Eliza asked Steven as they approached the
house.

Steven was scanning the façade, checking each window
carefully.

“No,” he said. “I don’t see her, and I don’t feel her.
Yesterday I could sense both. Now, nothing.”

“I think our theory about her coming and going at sunrise and
sunset is correct,” Roy said. “We’ll be fine here as long as we’re gone before
sundown.”

“I’d like to make it faster than that,” Steven said, reaching
the door frame that led into the house. He stepped into it and walked through the
house to the second doorway that led to the back yard. “I think we should keep
our exposure to the device at a minimum.”

They walked into the back yard and towards the large banyan
tree. Roy led them to the grave he’d identified the day before. He knelt down
in front of it, as though he was about to place flowers on it. Instead, he dug
his hand into the bag of dirt that Eliza held open, and spread the dirt over the
surface of the grave. He repeated the process several times, spreading multiple
handfuls. Slowly, the material under the dirt began to lighten in places where
the dirt had been rubbed. Steven noticed the material becoming translucent, and
the clearness dropping slowly into the grave. Eventually it reached the body,
and the features of a man’s face came into view, followed by the rest of his body.
The clearing continued until it was an inch or two below the corpse.

Steven was surprised. The body looked like Roy.

“Roy,” Eliza said, staring down into the grave. “Is that
you?”

“Of course it’s not me,” Roy said. “I’m right here.”

“Looks an awful lot like you,” Steven said.

“I told you it was family,” Roy said. “Come on, it’s time to
try the séance again, while this soil is doing its thing. Steven, I think you
should join us this time. I don’t think there’s any threats here we need to
worry about.”

The three of them sat on the ground next to the grave,
cross-legged. They joined hands, and within a moment they were all in the River,
with Roy leading the séance.

“Who are you?” Roy asked. “We are speaking to the body that
lies in this grave. We know you want to communicate with us. We have made that
possible now. Tell us who you are.”

“I am Thomas,” they all heard.

Good, no more writing in the dirt,
Steven thought.

“Automatic writing was my preferred way to commune with the
dead when I was alive,” they heard. “For the reverse I found the lady
susceptible, so I used her. No need for that now. How did you release me so I
could speak?”

“Your son, Thomas junior,” Roy said. “His book. A section in
it described how to lighten the effects of the block that covers your body.”

“He used it once to talk with me, many years ago,” they heard
from the grave.

Steven was confused.
Who exactly are we talking to?
he
thought.

“I’m Thomas’ father,” they heard. “Thomas senior. I was buried
here many years ago. I presume you know by whom.”

“James Unser,” Roy said.

“Correct,” they heard Thomas say.

So the book we have
, Steven wondered,
the first section of our book, that’s
from Thomas junior?

“Yes,” Roy said. “Did you have a book, Thomas?”

“I did,” they heard. “In the house is a library. Have you
seen it?”

“Yes,” Roy said. “We’ve seen the library. Full of volumes
from families like ours.”

“My book is there,” they heard Thomas say.

That’s what Thomas was referring to in his book
, Steven thought.
Those references
that didn’t seem to match up to any page we had. He was referring to locations
in your book, his father’s book, which we didn’t have.

“Correct,” he heard Thomas say. “My book has been in that
library for many years, placed there by James Unser after he buried me here.
You can see his handiwork around me.”

“It continues,” Roy said, “in a different way. A device he
built to drain our abilities is in operation somewhere nearby. It’s working on
us now. We need to find it, and stop it.”

“I know the device,” they heard Thomas say.

“You helped him build it,” Eliza said.

“Yes, I did,” Thomas said. “Although I thought it was for a
different purpose. I thought it would enhance our gifts. James used me to
perfect it. Once I realized what it was, what his intentions were, he killed me
and buried me here. He couldn’t afford to have the secret of his device known.”

“What were his intentions, exactly?” Roy asked.

“Killing us achieved his goals, but he knew it would draw too
much attention, sooner or later. He wanted something he could use that would
continue to work until all of us were impotent without anyone suspecting, and
that meant it needed to work silently and quickly, perhaps for generations. It
was his plan to locate one of us, then keep the device nearby until we were
drained, then move on and find another. We’d never know what caused the drain;
we’d just slowly lose our ability with no way to stop it. As long as it was
within a mile of its victim, it would work. I guessed what he was up to, and he
poisoned me. He knew death wasn’t good enough with our kind, so he used this
substance I’m in to block us from communicating. And he kept our writings
locked up, making sure they were never passed on.”

Steven felt himself leaning back in the circle attempting to
take all of this information in. He opened his eyes, and glanced into the grave
that was not more than ten inches from where he sat. He could see the body
suspended in the material, about six feet down. He thought perhaps Thomas would
open his eyes, or make some kind of movement, but the body was still. Only
Thomas’ thoughts were active. But the clearness of the material was beginning
to fog. There were parts of Thomas that he could see before, but couldn’t see
now.

Roy was reciting the family genealogy to Thomas. “You had
Thomas, Thomas had Charles, Charles had David, David was my father, and I’m
Steven’s father. I have all their books.”

“You must add mine to yours,” Thomas thought. “Inside it you
will find a solution to the device.”

“Do you know where your book is, in the library?” Steven said.
“There’s hundreds of volumes in there, and we can’t stay here long.”

“Mine had a green spine,” they heard. “I do not know on which
shelf it lies. You will have to look for it. But use caution, be sure you
replace anything you touch exactly as you found it. If Anita discovers that
something was disturbed, she will know someone has found a way down here, and
she’ll hunt you down.”

Steven felt a cold chill run up the back of his spine. He
resolved to ensure the books in the library looked as though they had never
been touched.

“You must stop the device,” they heard, “but your real enemy
is Anita. James always hated that she was dark. I thought he was obsessed with
trying to repel the dark, in reaction to his mother and how he was raised. But
I discovered he hated it all. Dark, light, didn’t matter. He hated her so much,
he despised anyone with the gift, because it reminded him of her. She knew what
he was doing, and she was horrified by it, but she couldn’t stop it. James was
more powerful than her, and she knew it. So she found ways to steal from him,
to use what he was doing as more power for herself. I expect she plans to take the
power that’s currently draining from all of you. She’s the real enemy you must
deal with.”