The Dwarves of Whiskey Island

Whatever was going on, I was getting the feeling that even if the dwarves weren’t exactly on my side, they weren’t on the side of my daughter’s kidnapper either. Whoever was hiding behind the tarot Devil was at odds with the dwarves themselves.

Perhaps it was Magetech itself. It wouldn’t be the first time a corporate entity took on its own life and started cannibalizing its workers and founders.

Whoever or whatever it was, the dwarves were afraid of even referring to it indirectly. And given what happened to Nina and Teaghue, they had good reason. But it was clear that they didn’t serve that master willingly.

I looked for any obvious wards. I didn’t see any, but if this was the house key, the St. Christopher medal was probably keyed to them. Even so, once I unlocked the door I stood and waited.

If any neighbor called the cops, or a warded alarm was tripped, I might get away with misdemeanor trespass if I was outside the house when they showed up. I gave them enough time to show up.

I let myself into Mazurich’s house. I gagged a little. Death still clung to the air in here, as if an evil rot had sunk into the walls.

I stepped into the darkened house, unclear exactly what I was looking for. I left the lights off. The glass may not have attracted attention, but I wasn’t about to press my luck. I let my eyes adjust until the glare from the streetlights outside was enough for me to navigate by.

I left the kitchen and entered the living room. A sectional couch, coffee table, not much else. Family photos crowded the mantel. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I knelt down and picked up the remains of a picture frame, a partly torn photograph fell from it. I set down the frame and picked up the damaged picture.

It was a digital shot, the strange ghosting marked it as probably coming from one of the first post-Portal cameras. Given the date on the back, and the subject matter, probably a prototype.

The picture showed Mazurich, Dr. Pretorious, a cluster of dwarves recognizable from their portraits at Magetech HQ, and Mr. Simon Lucas. The tear in the photograph split Lucas in two, and there was a heel print in the center.

I suppose that once suicide was the obvious cause of death, the cops stopped bothering with evidence. And the Democratic party machine, which drove most everything in the county, might have discouraged any close examination of the council president’s connection to Magetech.

Mazurich’s house made me uneasy. It wasn’t squeamishness as much as the look I was getting into Mazurich’s personal life. I knew how much money this man had collected from Magetech. Even if the money was sheltered and hidden, one would expect to see some of that in the man’s home. What someone chooses to spend money on is one of the keys to their character.

Mazurich hadn’t done much of anything. It was almost as if he hadn’t changed anything in the house since he separated from his wife. The impression came from the fact that every room seemed to have broken patterns. Pictures on the wall that formed lopsided, unbalanced designs. Matching end tables in a child’s bedroom, but with no bed between them. Throw rugs on the wall-to-wall carpet arranged around furniture that wasn’t there. Chairs facing blank walls . . .

I knew many, many people who put too much of themselves into their work. I counted myself among them. People whose residential address was little more than a place they went to go to bed. Their homes became shells. This felt worse.

The master bedroom was the scene of the suicide. Here, the smell of death was the worst. Even though I could see that crime scene cleanup had been through here. The mattress was gone from the bed, leaving the naked box spring, and a large square of the wall-to-wall carpet had been cut away, baring the hardwood floor. In the streetlight glow from the window, there seemed to be a darker spot on the wood. Ink-black and shiny.

I saw the bullet hole. It went into the wall above the headboard. Around it, the wallpaper had been stripped baring the plaster. More attempted cleanup.

I stepped forward and suddenly saw the wall spotted with gore, tufts of hair, shiny bits of—

The mana from the Portal used the environment around itself as an organizing principle. The patterns could be chemical, like the crystalline structure of the salt under Lake Erie; or ritual and cultural, like the New Age occultism that Nina had practiced. It could be geographic, such as in the mystical woods that had enveloped the North Chagrin Reservation; it could be architectural, like innumerable churches, or the maze the dwarves had made of the Huletts’ remains.

“Shit.” I whipped around and grabbed the knob and tried to pull it open. It was shut fast by something more powerful than the latch.

“Only the damned follow me here.” Mazurich’s voice was little more than a whisper. He sat above the bed, hovering above the box spring where the missing mattress must have been. Blood flowed from his mouth, turning his chin and the front of his shirt a glossy black. His skull was shaped wrong, and when he moved, I could see that it was because of a massive crater in the back of his head.

He turned his face toward me and stared into my eyes. I couldn’t look away. I knew the face. I had interviewed him innumerable times. I also knew he was dead, and the specter before me couldn’t be him . . .

Mazurich laughed again. When he lifted his head, I could see through his mouth to the wall behind him.

“He has an infinity of names: the morning star, the bringer of light, the father of lies.”

I screwed my eyes shut and clenched my fists. I tried to anchor myself against the fear. “What the hell are you?”

“No,” I shook my head. “You’re the mana-animated guilt of a poor bastard that couldn’t accept the decisions he made.”

A chill wind blew through the room, making my bones ache. For a moment I could actually feel my heart stop.

I opened my eyes, blinking, and the phantom was gone. No specter, no blood, and even the smell of death seemed to have receded.

Mazurich was a good Catholic, and if that’s really what Mazurich thought, I could understand how he might end up killing himself. I was shaken myself as I backed out of the bedroom.