Still woozy from the gastrointestinal tremor that had knocked him to his knees, Cody was less than fifty feet from the street and his car when he reached out to steady himself against the nearest sculpture. It was a sinuous, free-form needle of bolted-together pink and black granite boulders that aspired to inspiration but fell more than a little short of the artist’s lofty intent. It would be cool to the touch and, if necessary, would support his weight easily, providing a convenient backrest with which to ease his disturbed equilibrium for a few precious moments. His left hand fumbled in the direction of a stone protrusion.
And quickly drew back without making contact. Blinking hard, he gawked at the smooth, polished stone. At the approach of his hand, something had begun to emerge from within. It looked like a triplet of intertwined tentacles. Each tip terminated in a dime-sized sucker, and a handful of small, glowering eyes were scattered like black marbles along the slick, writhing surfaces.
Uttering soft guttural sounds that only resembled words, Cody staggered away from this hazy apparition. Still clearly visible and making no attempt to conceal themselves, the tentacles fluttered in the still night air, rampant eyes goggling at him, before finally withdrawing back into the hard granitic body of the sculpture.
His breathing rapid, heart pounding, stomach still threatening possible eruption, Cody forced himself to stand motionless as he contemplated the beguiling but deceitful work of art. It loomed before him in the darkness, belabored with sharply defined shadows cast by the overhead lights that illuminated pathway and street, no longer the innocent expression of an unknown artist’s aspirations. Bending slowly, never taking his eyes off the twisted, spiraling shape, he reached down to pick up a handful of white gravel from the decorative border that lined a flower bed. At the last instant he happened to look down, only to have his questing fingers recoil in horror.
Each thumb-sized chunk of river rock was twitching a tiny, ethereal filament in his direction.
Emitting a soft, startled cry, he lurched backward—and fell. The thick grass helped to cushion his fall. He lay there, panting like an overheated dog, and stared at the gravel. It lay like a frozen white river behind the boundaries of its decorative border, innocent and unmoving. Rolling onto his side, he let his gaze flick between gravel and sculpture. The ground was comforting beneath him, almost cushiony. Almost—massaging. Uncertainly, he turned his face to the earth.
Inches below his nose, miniscule, almost invisible threads were reaching for him, one for every single blade of grass.
With an inarticulate cry he scrambled to his feet, pulling free of the almost microscopic tendrils, and ran for his car, pursued by nightmares. Exhausted by fear and tension, he reached it without incident, though as he ran he thought he had felt the blades of grass clutching with individual, infinitesimal force at his shod feet. Afraid to look down, scared to touch anything, he was relieved to see that nothing sprang at him from the body of his little four-door, and that the surface of the sidewalk on which he was presently standing remained flat, white, and inanimate.
God, he thought wildly, oh God—what’s going on? What’s happening to me?
Slowly, he turned, believing he was prepared for anything. The carpet of questing filaments had vanished back into the lawn. The granite sculpture stabbed virtuously skyward. Smooth-surfaced river rock gravel shielded its bed of pansies and petunias. The sculpture garden sat silent, motionless, and sane beneath powerful overhead lights.
Espying an empty beer can, he bent to pick it up, his fingers halting less than an inch from the crumpled metal. Nothing coiled forth from the shiny, garishly decorated aluminum cylinder to fumble for his fingertips. Tentatively, he plucked it from the ground. It lay in his hand; inanimate, immobile, unmoving, wholly synthetic.
Artificial. His car was a complex aggregate of manufactured materials. The sidewalk on which he stood was made of concrete, another composite material. The beer can was refined aluminum covered with paint. These manufactured articles put forth no tentacles, writhed no filaments beneath his eyes. Those had emerged from the unhomogenized rock of the gravel bed, from individual blades of growing grass, and from facilely carved but otherwise naked granite. Or possibly just from his potion-addled brain. He needed desperately to find out.
Drawing back his arm, he threw the can. It ricocheted off the sculpture with a muted but clearly audible clang. The sculpture did not react to the impact. Nothing creepy or crawly thrust in protest from its smooth surfaces. Where the can landed in the grass, the grass did not react.
Someone else did, however. “Hey! What d’you think you’re doing?”
In the midst of his rounds, the security guard accelerated his pace. As the man approached, Cody made an effort to straighten himself and regain a little composure. He was aware that he was still young enough to pass for a graduate student.
The guard gestured meaningfully in the direction of the sculpture before looking back at Cody. “That’s university property, friend.” Small, intense eyes narrowed accusingly. “Lemme see your ID.”
Cody surprised himself by finding his wallet on the first try. The guard didn’t notice the slight trembling in the fingers that flipped it open. “Coschocton Westcott, Department of Archeology.” Realizing he was not dealing with a mischievous or destructive student, the guard metamorphosed from accusatory to concerned. “Are you all right, Professor?”
“I’m fine.” Cody did not sound so to himself, but the guard was satisfied. “I was trying for that trash can over there.”
The other man’s gaze swerved. The receptacle in question stood more than ten feet to the right of the granite monolith. “Not real close, were you?” The stocky guard was relaxed now, realizing he was not dealing with some nocturnal vandal. “Better stick to your digging, Professor Westcott.”
Cody nodded thankfully. “I intend to.”
The guard was now positively jovial. “You can’t really hurt those things, anyway.” He made a face. “They call ’em art, but to me it’s all garbage that’s been given a high polish. Steel and stone. Even though they’re supposed to keep off, I’ve seen students crawling all over ’em. Never seen one damaged yet, though after we beat U of A last year some kids did get drunk enough to tip a couple of ’em over. The art department wasn’t pleased.”
“No,” mumbled the archaeologist, “I imagine they weren’t. I’m afraid I don’t remember the incident. I was out of the country at the time.”
The guard turned wistful as he remembered. “Two touchdowns in the last ten minutes. What a game.” As if aware that he had lingered too long and that he had checkpoints to pass, the guard was already moving away. “Next time hold off until you pass a trash container and drop your garbage in.” As he sauntered down the sidewalk and prepared to turn the corner that led back into the silent depths of the campus, he ducked just enough to pass beneath the nearest branch of a lightly leaved palo verde tree.
Something dwelling within the tree reached for him.
It had a face, maybe, with little tooth-lined slits that passed for multiple mouths, and unidentifiable unwholesome protuberances that resembled rotten fungi, and a single vertically pupiled, brilliantly glowing golden eye.
“Look out!” Cody took a step in the guard’s direction.
Startled, the older man whirled, bringing his heavy flashlight up defensively. His eyes darted from side to side. The monstrosity that was living within the tree withdrew in silence. Part of the guard’s arm passed within millimeters of the branch from which the horrific vision had emerged—but never made contact.
“What, what is it!” The sentry turned a quick circle, searching the darkness.
“You didn’t see it?”
“See it? See what?” All friendliness fled, the older man was eyeing Cody suspiciously again. “Say, Professor—how many of those beers did you say you’ve had tonight?”
“None. I mean, just one. Only the one.” Denying ownership of the can he had thrown would only confuse the guard further, Cody felt. Better to acknowledge the consumption of one beer he hadn’t imbibed and get out of there before he found himself hauled off to the campus police station on suspicion of being drunk and disorderly.
Would he be safe from his nightmares in jail? he found himself wondering wildly. What did he have to look forward to in lockup? Steel bars, concrete floors and walls, manufactured bedding, ceramic john: Based on the hypothesis slowly forming in his mind, it should be a safe place. But then, so should his car. Hands shaking, aware that the guard was still watching him, he was relieved that he did not have to struggle with the simple business of inserting key into lock. The car’s remote entry system allowed him to press a button to access the door.
Slipping behind the wheel, he managed to get the engine started. Forcing a smile, he waved at the guard, who was still staring in his direction. Thank God, he thought as he pulled out, the campus was virtually deserted at this hour. The only traffic jam he had to deal with was in his head, where thoughts were slamming into each other one after another.
Turning left, then left again, he headed for the University Avenue exit, keeping his speed down lest he draw unwanted attention from someone else on patrol. He gripped the wheel so tightly that his fingers began to whiten, but at least it kept them from trembling. He had finally succeeded in calming himself a little when the explosion shattered his carefully nurtured complacency.
Swerving madly, the car jumped the curb and came to a halt with its front right wheel high on a sidewalk. Only the fact that he had been traveling less than ten miles an hour prevented more serious consequences. It took him three tries to get the door open. By the time he stumbled out and stood there, leaning back against the roof of the sedan, the central portion of the third floor of the building opposite was fully engulfed in flames. Those few students and late-working instructors who happened to be in the area were already congregating noisily in the street, their upturned faces strobed by the yellow-red glow of the fire. Responding with admirable speed, the aural burr of a distant siren was screaming its way toward the site. Shielding his eyes against the intense glow and heat, Cody gaped at the localized conflagration. Despite the rising temperature, a sudden and intense shiver shot right through him, icing him from head to feet. Preoccupied and slightly dazed, it had taken him a minute to identify the structure, especially since he was not used to seeing it from this side.
It was the chemistry building.
Kelli would be quietly frantic by now, or furious, or both, but he wouldn’t worry about that, couldn’t spare the couple of minutes it would take to find a phone and call to tell her he was all right. Stunned, he stood among students and colleagues and watched while the campus fire unit, soon reinforced by an efficient and better-equipped squadron from the city of Tempe, fought to bring the ferocious blaze under control. Operating with admirable efficiency, they quickly contained the flames, isolating them on the third floor and saving the rest of the building. Helicopters thrummed overhead as news teams from one after another of the metro area’s major stations arrived, each maneuvering for the most spectacular nighttime shots. At least if his wife happened to be watching the late-evening news, Cody reflected, the live pictures from the campus would allow her to infer a reason for his late-night absence.
The flames thoroughly devoured several of the third-floor labs and their contents. No one was hurt battling the conflagration, but come the following morning university authorities would be forced to make the sad announcement that Harry Keeler, senior professor of organic chemistry, had been working late and had perished in the blaze. He would be remembered fondly by his friends and colleagues, who would extend their sympathy to his stunned and devastated family.
A no less bewildered assistant professor of archaeology turned north on Hayden, keeping well below the speed limit while resolutely hugging the slow lane. Hayden was a busy north-south route and despite the lateness of the hour, heavily traveled. Ignoring the occasional irritated horn that loudly chided him for his snail-like pace, he crept homeward.
Harry was dead. He knew it as surely as he knew he had seen vaporous, intangible horrors emerge from rock and grass, gravel and tree on the campus he thought he knew so well. Unable to reach Cody, they had killed his partner in experimentation. Or caused him to kill himself. Cody didn’t know the details of what had happened in room 3447 on the third floor of the chemistry building and was sure he never would. Nor would anyone else. Certainly not the fire or police department’s forensics experts. How could they identify killers who were not even remotely human, when only he, Cody Westcott, could see them?
He could see them, and they knew he could see them, and they didn’t like it. They didn’t like it one bit.
How had they traced Harry’s participation, made the link to the luckless chemist? It had to be the potion, Cody knew. They’d smelled the residue in his lab, or sensed it, or in some other unimaginable way managed to trace it from its imbiber back to its maker. Then they had dealt with the poor, unwary professor. They would deal with him, too, Cody was certain as he gazed unblinkingly over the wheel, tracking the progress of his car lights through the night. Harry had touched, had made contact with, something containing one of them. Something natural and not manufactured. The thing living within had initiated the proceedings that had led to the chemist’s death.
Cody didn’t care about the potion. He did care about how long it would last. If it wore off and he could no longer see the creatures, would they be able to sense that and leave him alone? And if they did, how could he ever resume a normal life? How could he wade in a river and feel the rocks beneath his toes, or climb a tree, or play touch football on a clean, seemingly innocuous lawn? How could he explain any of what had happened to the empirically minded, no-nonsense, obstinate woman who was his wife? Fuliginous tentacles and tendrils extruding menacingly from inanimate objects were the stuff of cheap fiction, not science. If the night guard hadn’t seen the indistinct, inimical shapes reaching out for him from the tree even though they’d been fluttering eagerly mere inches from his face, how could Cody point them out to his wife and fellow scientists?
Point them out? Hell, he didn’t have a clue what they were! If partaking of the ancient potion was what had enabled him to see them, then perhaps the bas-reliefs located within the underground Chachapoyan temple might speak to their identity. Back in his office he had photographs of every carving, every pictograph to be found within those remarkable curving walls that had been shut away from the sight of man for hundreds of years. Like virtually everything else about the Chachapoyan culture, their meaning remained poorly understood.
Well, he now had a new perspective from which to examine them. But not tonight, no, not tonight. Dizzy and debilitated, all he wanted now was to make it home safely, to fall into Kelli’s arms, to stand for half an hour beneath a hot, cleansing shower, and to sleep. He would deal with all this tomorrow, in the bright light of a desert morning.
Among those who were now conscious of his new perception, however, the alarm had been raised. From the unsettled center of the uncommon disturbance, the awareness spread rapidly. Cody’s fervent desire to be left alone was not to be indulged.
The desert landscaping that fronted the junior high school he was passing boasted mature palo verde and ocotillo interspersed with barrel cacti and juvenile saguaros. Not every one of these trees and plants had been parasitized by the unknown, ominous creatures Cody could now see clearly, but enough of them were to cause him to jerk sharply on the wheel and send the car screeching away from the greenbelt bordering the school and over into the fast lane. Fortunately, traffic had now thinned out, and he crashed his vehicle only into empty air. The serpentine, misshapen, frightful shapes he saw coiling within tree and succulent unnerved him afresh. The effects of the potion he had ingested were as potent as ever. When a particularly long branch struck and scraped the roof of his car, he screamed out loud in spite of himself.
The car forged onward. He felt nothing. The branch had only made contact with the metal roof and not with him. Was intimate physical contact always required? he wondered furiously. In the sculpture garden he had aroused nothing until he had touched something; the sculpture, the gravel, the grass. What happened when that kind of contact was made and sustained instead of being quickly terminated? What did the questing, probing tendrils do to a person? Was it something that could be studied, evaluated, and measured, or would conjecture have to suffice?
A partial answer of sorts presented itself to him as he turned down the side street that led to his home. On either side of the road, neat one- and two-story homes painted or stuccoed in desert hues slumbered on in the darkness, oblivious to the abundance of horrid indistinct life that lingered all around. Trees and rocks and bushes, not every one but many, sprouted ghastly shapes that were visible only to the sole occupant of an innocuous Ford driving slowly and cautiously down the exact center of the street. From several houses the muted babble of families watching television or engaging in late-night household tasks filtered out onto the street, their occupants as oblivious as the rest of mankind to the supernal terror that stalked their neighborhood, their world.
Crawling eastward, Cody encountered only one other human. The man was walking his dog, a nondescript but well-groomed terrier. As a nervous, uneasy Cody passed, the dog tugged sharply on its leash. Without thinking, its owner allowed the animal to lead. While the dog did its business at the base of a mesquite tree, its idling owner reached out with a hand.
“Don’t!” Cody screamed, forgetting that his windows were rolled all the way up and the car’s heater was automatically warming the interior. The dog’s owner never heard him.
As the man casually fingered the leaves on the mesquite, a miasmic glob of pale mist emerged. It had eyespots devoid of pupils and two long, slender hooks like insubstantial hypodermics. These penetrated the back of the man’s hand—and began to suck. A shocked Cody could see them swelling with—with what? To all outward appearances the man felt nothing. The flesh of his hand, the color of his skin—nothing changed. Nothing at all.
Except his demeanor.
His face contorting, he suddenly glared down at the terrier and kicked it. Hard. The startled dog yelped and a light came on in the driveway of the nearest house. His expression still deformed, growled obscenities spilling from his lips, the man lengthened his stride, dragging the poor animal after him and half choking it in the process. Cody followed their progress in his sideview mirror.
Something significant had just occurred. His brain overloaded with more conundrums and inexplicable information than any one person should have to deal with in the course of a single night, he was still mulling over what he’d just witnessed as he pulled into the driveway of his own home and automatically activated the remote garage-door opener.
Kelli was awake and waiting for him in the den. The domestic fury she’d been keeping bottled up ever since nine o’clock had come and gone, vanished the instant she caught sight of the expression on her husband’s face. Tossing the heavy scientific tome she’d been reading onto the couch, she rose and rushed to his side.
“Jeezus, Cody! What happened to you?”
He allowed himself to be led into the comfortable, welcoming room. It was filled with pots and paintings, framed photographs of their travels and Indian artifacts: memorabilia of their time spent in the southern half of the hemisphere. The feel, the touch, the warmth against him of the person he loved more than anything else in the world calmed him more than any sedative or potion he might have taken.
Potion. Angrily, he fought to think of anything but potions.
It struck him that he was sitting down. He had not remembered dropping onto the couch, had been too preoccupied to wonder at Kelli’s momentary absence. But she was back now, with a glass of iced tea, sitting on the cushion next to his while gazing at him speculatively and with open concern.
“What’s wrong, Cody? What happened tonight?”
Raising the glass, he examined it as carefully as he would have a newly unearthed Moche earring. Tea, after all, was a natural substance, and in every instance, the frightful apparitions he had encountered had oozed forth from natural sites. But the processed, golden-hued liquid in the glass did not thrust out tiny tea-colored tentacles to clutch at his face. The clinking cubes of ice likewise seemed benign. The glass itself, being an artificial composite, did not worry him. He drank gratefully, feeling the cold fluid slide easily down his throat. By itself, unaccompanied by unwanted travelers.
Kelli had not stopped staring at him. “Something wrong with the tea?”
“No.” He slumped against the padded back of the couch. “The tea’s fine.” Was the couch safe? he wondered with a start. It had a wood frame, and cotton cushions. As an increasingly anxious Kelli watched him, Cody looked anxiously to left and right. Nothing vomited upward from the solid piece of furniture.
Maybe the process of manufacture and blending and combining with other materials and products reduced the purity of the nebulous horrors he had been seeing. Not every tree and rock provided a home for the abnormalities. Still ignorant of what he was dealing with, he found himself compelled to examine and discard one mad hypothesis after another.
Perhaps the effects of the potion had worn off. He wasn’t sure which was worse: to be able to see and detect the subtle frights whose unsuspected existence the foul-smelling liquid had revealed to him, or to be obliged forever after to wander the world cognizant of their existence, but unable to see them. In an environment awash in shadowy horrors, was it better to dwell in blindness? Having been, even momentarily, granted the gift of seeing what was invisible to everyone else, could he survive and maintain his sanity once forced to relinquish it?
All of the notes on the potion—its ingredients, their proportions, and the exact method of preparation—had been in Professor Keeler’s lab. But the Chachapoyan panel that revealed the recipe was still intact, as were numerous photos of the relevant reliefs and carvings. It would take time to assemble the necessary constituents anew, as well as to find another chemist to prepare and combine them—but it could be done. Did he want to do it? Was it the wise course? Looking to Kelli, seeing the concern writ large in her face, he wondered how she would react to the revelation. Would she even believe him, without demonstrable proof of his claims? If he told her exactly what had happened, she would want proof. She was as much a scientist as he, and he knew her well enough to be certain that in this instance, love would not be sufficient to obviate the need for proof.
“Harry’s dead.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “Professor Keeler? The one you’ve been working with these past weeks?” He nodded. “How . . . ?”
“There was a fire. His lab blew up. That’s why I’m so late. The building was burning as I was leaving the campus, and I stopped to—watch.”
“There was nothing you could do?” It was as much a statement as question.
“The fire department got there as fast as they could. With all those chemicals, the blaze was very intense. You could feel the heat of it across the street.”
“Damn.” As she leaned back against the opposite arm of the couch, he found himself staring intently at the rolled and padded armrest. Had he seen a flicker of movement there? What synapses ruled the fine line between reality and imagination, between observation and hallucination? He would have to be careful not to see what was not there. What was there, was horrifying enough. “He was a good guy,” Kelli added.
“Yeah, he was, and a first-rate chemist, too.”
Rising, she leaned forward to kiss him gently. Folding her arms around his shoulders, she gave him a loving, tender hug before straightening. “It’s too late to cook.” She smiled. “You know I have to go slow with anything that involves activating the stove. But I could nuke a lasagna for you.”
“You’re not going to eat anything?” He rose, darting a glance behind her. The house was silent, unmoving, a bulwark of familiarity against a suddenly hostile outside world.
“When you didn’t show at the expected time I had a couple of tuna sandwiches.” Rising and pirouetting coquettishly, she pranced off in the direction of the kitchen. “I love you, honey, but I ain’t gonna starve for you.”
“Wouldn’t want you to.” Holding his iced tea, he followed her into the other room.
The attached dinette area was mostly wood, laminated and varnished. Did such treatment render natural materials like lumber uninhabitable by the organisms he had seen? If the potion’s effects had worn off, how would he know? While she busied herself with the freezer, he slid reluctantly onto a bench. It was cool and unmoving beneath him. Outside, desert landscaping surrounded the small plunge pool, both chilled by the winter night. A reassuring electronic hum filled the kitchen—microwave Muzak.
Seventeen minutes and thirty-three seconds passed. The instructions on frozen-food packaging were designed to serve as benchmarks only, to be customized by consumers. Pulling a plate from a cabinet and a fork from a drawer, Kelli moved to join him as he dug at the plastic container. He took another sip from his nearly empty glass. And dropped it as he sprang from behind the table. Sweet tea and melting ice slid oil-like across the tabletop. The heavy glass bounced and rolled on the tile floor but did not break.
As he charged his startled mate, one hand swept up a long steel spatula from a wall rack. She screamed softly as he swung in her direction—not at her, but at the bonsai she had been about to caress. Because, trailing upward and out from the branches of the shrunken tree like the tendrils of a jellyfish were a handful of silvery filaments lined with barbed hooks, waiting to sink into the naked flesh of her hand.
The spatula struck the bonsai and sent it skidding sideways across the countertop, where it slammed up against the toaster, strewing dirt and decorative pebbles in its wake. Nothing emerged from this detritus, but filmy, questing fronds continued to wave in energetic frustration from the bole of the bonsai. Staring at it, breathing hard and clutching the spatula like a broadsword, Cody found himself wondering what to do next. From the bonsai came a faint, disappointed keening.
Interesting, he thought wildly. He could hear as well as see them.
Mouth agape, Kelli Westcott was leaning back against the butcher-block island that dominated the center of the kitchen, both hands gripping the uninhabited (as near as he could tell) laminated wood.
“Are you crazy? What’s the matter with you?”
“You don’t see it? You don’t hear it?”
Slowly she followed his gaze to the upended bonsai before looking back at him uncertainly. “Don’t see what? Don’t hear what?”
Ignoring her, he made a rapid search of the kitchen drawers until he found what he was looking for: a pair of oven mitts that were not made from cotton. Slipping on the oversized gloves, he approached the decorative houseplant with determined caution. The barbed tentacles writhed impotently as he picked up the bonsai and carried it purposefully toward the back door. The pot that was the plant’s home was a composite faux-stone material and ought to be safe to touch, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
A bewildered Kelli followed. “What are you doing?”
“Fumigating,” he snapped at her without turning around.
There were three trash cans out back, all gray plastic. He had never been especially fond of plastic before, but the past few hours found him developing a new fondness for any synthetic material. Removing a lid, he dumped the bonsai in the half-filled can before replacing the cover. Silvery tentacles twisted helplessly as they tumbled among the rest of the garbage.
Replacing the cover, he strode back to the house, his significant other trailing behind. “Have you lost your mind, Cody Westcott? That was one of my favorite houseplants!”
“It’s bad for you.” He pushed the door wide so she could follow easily. “Allergies.”
Her expression twisted. “Allergies? What the hell are you talking about, allergies?” She gestured behind her as they reentered the den. “We’ve had that bonsai almost a year. I’ve watered it and fed it without suffering so much as a sneeze!”
Dropping back onto the couch, he buried his head in his hands. “How about headaches?” he prompted her. “Or cramps, or dizziness. Any symptoms at all?”
This time she chose to sit in a chair opposite, with the glass-topped coffee table between them. “You’ve had a rough night,” she responded slowly. “You’ve lost a friend and colleague and you’re upset. You need to throw out a perfectly innocent little plant to make yourself feel more secure, okay. But it stops with that. The next unprovoked attack you make on my décor, I’m calling a therapist.”
Dropping his hands, he dug his fingers into his palm. “There was something in the bonsai, Kelli. Something dangerous.”
Her attitude changed immediately, though she was still wary. “What—a bug? A scorpion?” Since moving into the house they had killed several scorpions in the bathroom. The enterprising arachnids came up through the tub and shower drains.
“No, not a scorpion. It had—tendrils, or tentacles. It was going for you. I—I had to stop it.”
“Well, you sure stopped it, all right.” She glanced briefly in the direction of the back porch and the distant garbage cans. “Attack of the Killer Bonsai. I love you truly, Cody, but you’re going to have to do better than that.”
Slowly, patiently, he explained in detail the nature of the research he had been conducting in concert with the chemist Harry Keeler. Told of taking the potion and what he had seen earlier that night while walking from the chemistry building back to his car. Related the encounter with the patrolling security guard. Finished with the explosion and fire that had destroyed Harry Keeler’s office and lab—and Harry Keeler.
Kelli Alwydd Westcott was nothing if not systematic. She listened, waiting until her husband was finished. Her initial reaction was to categorize everything he had told her as the biggest piece of fanciful crap it had ever been her misfortune to hear and to reinforce her previous belief that he needed therapy. Understandable as it might be, such a response did not constitute good science. Given the intensity with which he had propounded his inanity, she would grant him the opportunity to provide substantiation. Then she would tell him he was full of crap, and suggest he seek professional help.
In the manner of one discussing a particularly controversial passage destined for inclusion in a soon-to-be published scientific paper, she responded calmly and rationally. “I didn’t see anything in the bonsai but dirt, pebbles, and fallen needles. You saw barbed tendrils.” He nodded. “To the best of my admittedly limited botanical knowledge, bonsai trees don’t put forth barbed tendrils, or tendrils of any kind. So you’re saying that there was something else in that pot.”
“Not in the pot,” he corrected her. “Living in the tree itself.”
She nodded slowly. “Something with barbed tendrils. And what might that have been?”
“I don’t know,” he confessed helplessly. “I only know what I saw.”
“And what you saw earlier tonight, in the sculpture garden: They were different?”
“That’s right.” He found himself wishing that he smoked. “These things must have different species. They only seem to inhabit natural objects. Trees and rocks. The sculpture was worked stone, but the original granite was still mostly intact. Turning a tree into lumber might reduce the habitability factor of anything residing in the original growth. I’m not sure about that yet. Remember, I haven’t had time to study these things, and I’ve only been aware of them since I drank that potion.”
“Which leads to my next, inevitable question.” She didn’t even have to ask it.
“I’m not suffering from hallucinations!” he replied tersely. “I know what I saw.”
“Everyone who sees things knows what they saw,” she countered. “What do these things do if you make contact with them?”
“I don’t know that either, but it can’t be good.” He thought of the man and his dog: one minute strolling and relaxed, the next violent and ranting.
She smiled thinly. “On what hard evidence do you base that conclusion, my love?”
“On the way they look, the manner in which they try to snag people. The gestures, the movements—they aren’t benign. And I think, somehow, they started that fire and killed Harry.”
“Now you’re really starting to worry me. Wouldn’t you call that reaction a little paranoid, Cody?” She said it gently, to minimize his reaction. “Couldn’t this fanciful story you’re weaving be a means of trying to rationalize his unexpected and tragic death?”
“It could,” he admitted, “except that I started seeing these creatures before the fire. What’s worse, I think they know now that I can see them.” His eyes scanned the walls, the floor, the innocent-seeming furniture. “They’re aware of me.”
“And obviously, these will-o’-the-wisps that live in trees and rocks and God knows what else murdered Harry Keeler to silence him, and to destroy his records of the formula.”
“Makes sense to me.” He ignored her sarcastic tone.
“Only to you, I think.” Laughing, she rose and settled herself forcefully in his lap. “Okay, Cody. It’s a great story, very imaginative. But for it to be anything more than that to me I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask to see a little teensy-weensy itsy-bit of proof.” Inclining her head to peer up into his downcast face, she smiled encouragingly. “That’s not too much to ask, is it? You know how it goes: Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Despite the seriousness of the situation, with her squirming around on his lap he found it hard to concentrate. “How can I provide proof of something only I can see? I’d let you try the potion yourself, except that everything went up in flames in Harry’s lab. It can be re-created, but I need to find another chemist as adept as Harry, and as willing.”
“I’m sure you will, Cody.” She kissed him on the forehead. “Maybe tomorrow morning everything will look different and you won’t have to. You’ve had a difficult evening, and I’m really sorry to hear about your friend. That’s one advantage that archaeology as a field of study has over chemistry. Our subject matter tends not to blow up.” Rising, she headed for the bedroom. “It’s late, and I’ve got to teach a two-hundred-level class tomorrow. Adobe construction techniques as exemplified by Lambayeque transitional period architecture.” She made a face. “I get to talk about mud-brick pyramids to mud-faced sophomores and juniors. And I believe you have an assignment or two yourself, Professor Westcott.”
“I’m not a full professor yet.” Suddenly very tired, he rose from the couch.
“You are to me.” Blowing him a kiss, she disappeared into the bathroom.
While he listened to the water run in the shower, he sat on the edge of the bed and weighed everything she had said. Could she be right? Was he hallucinating it all? Drinking an ancient shamanistic potion could be expected to provoke such a response. Viewing and interpreting hallucinogen-inspired visions was an important part of every South American shamanistic tradition. Dendrobates toxin was powerful stuff, even in tiny quantities.
Startled, he realized that he was sitting on a bed with a wooden frame. But he was fine, nothing had happened, nothing had materialized from beneath the sheets and blankets to assault him. He was almost convinced that reducing a tree to lumber expunged whatever might be abiding within when he saw the long, hooked tongue emerge from the wall behind the bed. It was the only wall in the bedroom that boasted natural, unpainted paneling. He stared at the wormlike protrusion for several minutes before it withdrew back into the wall. While visible, it had mewled softly.
Nothing made of wood could be trusted, then. Not a chair, not a desk, not even a pencil. Not until it had been inspected and pronounced clean. By him, since he was the only one who could see that which dwelt within.
Emerging from the shower, Kelli felt relaxed and in a better mood. Cody strove mightily to be his usual cheerful, contented self until and after they retired. Apparently he was successful, because among other things, Kelli did not notice that he’d dragged the bed a full inch away from the paneled wall, so that headboard and paneling did not make contact.