Warlock Wolf / Bring The Night / Chapter 10

On the drive out of White Chapel, heading north on Route 9 until it became Old Matheson Road, he punched the address into his truck’s computer and it showed him the property was owned by a numbered corporation. Not necessarily nefarious, but it did make him wonder why the toymaker would want it to be kept separate—and if the place belonged to him at all. All the invoices and delivery slips on the cork-board had showed the home address in White Chapel, where his workshop was, or the address of the Main Street store. But a freight liner delivery slip and invoice, a rich one, showed the delivery address outside of town, while the invoice was addressed to the business. From what he could gather, the order was for bulk iron; metric tons of square iron plate and rebar, all from Changxing Construction in Shanghai, shipping carton on water, freight haulage all the way from a port in Vancouver, Canada. Almost twenty-grand total.

Ten minutes after turning east onto Royal Baptiste Line, he was slowing, reading the 911 number posted at the mouth of a narrow path that meandered into a dense wood. He followed that path, tires crunching on snow for half a mile through dense pines that choked the way at times.

Soon, though, the tree cover dwindled, and the drive opened on a pressed down thumbprint of cleared bush, a lone black steel outbuilding planted in the center. A plain square box with an unpainted steel roof, there was a door on the narrow end and on the broad side was a double-wide retracting door tall enough to receive a semi-truck or a tractor; and there was one, up near the door, an old yellow but rusting Case with a shovel attachment on its arm, knuckled over and resting on the snow.

As the Tahoe crawled closer, a feeling of foreboding passed over him, reminiscent of last night’s entry into the mansion called Rijkdom. He eased the brake pedal down, put the truck in reverse and let the gears pull the Tahoe back. The dread feeling lessened.

Truck shut down, he checked his pistol, tucked it back in its holster, sniffed. A wet sniffle. He plucked his nostrils with thumb and forefinger and they came away bloodied. There were napkins in the glove box, and he muttered Fucking great as he wiped, then blew his nose. The napkin showed red, but eventually it cleared. It was dry in northern winters, he’d heard, but it was unnerving that the nosebleed came in conjunction with that ominous wave that had washed over him.

Now he was out of the truck and standing in the snow staring at the black garage. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary; just a spot in the woods for a workshop, maybe a place to store your Peterbilt if you were a trucker, maybe your snowmobiles, dirt bikes, boat, whatever your seasonal activity might be. Still, there was a reluctance that kept him back. Not fear, because curiosity had a good hold on his inner cat, but a wariness—a sense that caution was a good idea. Fingers twitching in the cold air, he checked the Glock once more before approaching.

Again, only twenty yards off from the garage and on foot this time, that nauseous wave of dread passed over him. The phrase ‘black magic’ whispered in his mind, heard in Lizzy’s soft voice. It stopped his stride, and he stood still, unable to take his eyes off the side door that led into the building. There was something invisible that acted like a barrier, or a membrane, and when he passed through it, unseen fingers prickled at his skin. He plucked at his nose but it had stayed dry.

There was a paradox at work here and he shifted his thoughts to it before they became enamored with Lizzy and distracted him (just the ghostly whisper of her voice in his ears collapsed all his mental fortitude, stole his senses away so they could pleasure themselves at the close memory of her soft voice, the feel of her skin, the smell in her hair . . . ). The paradox . . . ? While he received that tingly passage as a warning, something inside him wanted to merely take it under advisement while driving him forward to find what was inside the black outbuilding—find it, confront it, vanquish it. A strange and unfamiliar primal confidence roiled in his innermost mind and pumped in his heart. It made him smile. Last night he’d faced a terrifying devil doll—so terrifying he’d let it get close, froze like a total newb—and here today he was facing black magic alone and yet something deep inside him urged him forward . . . 

The snowy approach to the garage’s door was undisturbed by footprints; no one had come into the building in at least twenty-four hours, maybe more. Of course, someone could be hiding in there, laying in wait for unsuspecting F.B.I. agents for the same amount of time. One thing last night’s adventure in the Cartwright Mansion had taught him was to eliminate the unsuspecting nature from his psyche; after what happened, he had to understand anything was possible.

What was the point in legalities? What was the sense in legal protocol when there wasn’t anyone you could prosecute? If you weren’t trying to build a case against an individual or a syndicate was there a point in preserving their civil rights? What civil rights would an evil magician have? How would you prove in a court of law someone had cast a spell that brought a Victorian doll to life and that Victorians doll stalked, assaulted, and caused the death of someone—who knows—maybe a thousand miles away? What jury would convict? So if you weren’t building a case…

Now he was standing at the door, knowing he would go in without knocking, without waiting for backup, without waiting for a court order or a search warrant—especially given the gruesome, scrawling design that someone had made with fingerprints, it looked like, on the battered steel door. That was proof to him he’d found the right place.

Dead center on the door, eye height, was a design drawn perhaps by a talented child using the point of their finger. A circle with a geometric design within—not a pentagram but reminiscent—dots and strange starlike symbols surrounded its circumference. Below were three straight vertical lines. It would be safe to assume that it wasn’t finger paint, but that it was indeed blood. It looked like blood. You could use your imagination and think it was human blood, but for the sake of courage he’d prefer to think it was a chicken’s. Then, stuck with a glue like organic-looking substance (who knows, maybe snot), three good-sized bird feathers hung below the lines in a staggered fashion. It reminded him of the dreamcatchers you’d see in gift shops and tourist traps.

The symbol meant something to someone, but the more he stared at it the more he realized nothing was coming to him. There was still inside him that omnipresent sense of dread, and the closer he’d come to the outbuilding the more his ears had filled with a droning buzz—like an armada of dying flies in an attic—but the design didn’t stop him from putting his hand on the doorknob.

He didn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t good—he could picture being electrocuted, a static shock, maybe a magic fireball erupting . . . But nothing happened. Just his hand on a round doorknob with a single dent in it.

The door was locked. He switched it left and right, but nothing happened. Even though he knew he was alone, his eyes scanned left and right, up to the corners of the outbuilding as well just in case there were security cameras. There were none. From inside his coat’s interior pocket he withdrew a slim leather fold-over case with the items one used for lock picking. He was no expert, but he imagined an outbuilding in the middle of the bush would be somewhere in the middle of his skill set. The lock was a common pin tumbler.

He used three pins to pick the lock, and it took him almost five minutes, and he bent one of them, the rake, but the lock surrendered and the door opened. Instantly he was punished with a foul smell. A balloon of sulfurous air billowed up into his face like a rotten egg. First year of college he was on an all-male dorm room floor where it was fart-city twenty-four-seven. This was similar but deeper, meatier. Bloody? Could sulfur smell bloody? Whatever it was, it had his hand inside his coat, withdrawing the Glock.

He pushed the door with his elbow until it was all the way open. There were no lights on inside, and the place was cavernous. An open vault twenty feet high and extending back maybe forty deep. It was dim and dry and it stunk—though his nostrils (after their initial singeing) had come to accept the foulness.

He stepped inside, let his eyes adjust, and didn’t close the door. Light spilled in from behind him, and he could see the interior of the garage in dim dusty illumination. Between him and the open center of the garage there were four sets of metal shelving about eight feet high. They were stacked with the odd but seemingly categorized components of Ernie’s toy making. Wooden boxes overfilled with doll head, arms, and the like; rocker rails, painted horse heads, rolls of fabric he assumed would be made into doll dresses . . . 

But what drew his attention (no, demanded it), was an enormous tarp-covered hump that sat dead center. Whatever was underneath the tarp was large and dome-like, the size of a vehicle, like a Volkswagen Beetle’s big brother on steroids. His eyes couldn’t leave it, and the more he stared the louder those invisible flies droned in his mental attic. His shoulders began to hunch, and he squinted his eyes, the insect cacophony almost overwhelming him.

He winced as if in pain, though he didn’t feel any, everything was within—more like the threat of pain. He dashed his eyes away, knowing what was under the tarp shouldn’t be seen. A metallic taste flooded his mouth, and he sniffled again. He knew his pump was leaking and touched an index finger to his nostrils. It came back with a red stripe. He hawked, spat on the concrete floor.

He stepped deeper into the garage, head oscillating from left to right but his eyes skipping a crescent over top of the thing in the room he did not want to see. It was like it spoke to him. The insect sound was its voice. A warning. This is too much for you . . . 

But his feet were still moving, shoes tight, stretching on his feet, and he had a sudden urge to kick them off, tear away the socks, too, and go barefoot. Ten more steps he went, moving beyond the lines of tall shelving.

On his left now were two rows of identical wooden rocking horses, these ones completed and probably ready to be shipped. Ahead, beyond the tarp-covered dome, there was more shelving, beaten work tables splattered with paint and littered with tools. Also a waist-high block made from cut 4x4s, stacked on their ends and braced with metal strapping. On the top of the block a large black anvil had been lashed in place, its top surfaces battered and dinged from use. Behind the anvil a massive raised plug of concrete rose up, big as a king-size bed. Above the concrete block, sitting on it, thick metal sheeting framed a massive heap of dead black coals. Four feet above the coals, a handmade sheet metal box designed to collect the intense heat that would have been generated led to a fat chimney stack that went up out the garage roof.

All the blacksmithing equipment made him uneasy and encouraged his eyes to the tarp again. His stomach lurched from side-to-side and he swallowed blood leaking down his throat.

A quick squeak on his left startled him, and it was followed by skittering on the concrete floor. He jumped and drew the Glock in a shooter’s stance, holding it in both hands, drawing a bead on the far left side of the room. One by one the back row of hobby horses closest to the wall began to rock and creak. First one, then two, then three, something moving behind them, something squeezing past to get around.