once committed to the cause in this case, to finding Jimmy Wing and good
Orsonhe would neither surrender nor retreat.
Likewise, I could never leave a friend behind. Our convictions and our
friends are all we have to get us through times of trouble.
Friends are the only things from this damaged world that we can hope to
see in the next, friends and loved ones are the very light that
brightens the Hereafter.
“Idiot, ” I said.
“Asshole, ” Bobby said.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
“I’m the only one here.”
“I was calling myself an idiot. For not getting out of here.”
“Oh. Then I retract the asshole remark.” Bobby switched on his
flashlight, and immediately the silent fireworks dazzled across the
lining of the egg room. They didn’t well up slowly but began at the peak
of intensity that they had previously achieved by degrees.
“Turn on your light, ” Bobby said.
“Are we really dumb enough to do this? ”
“Way more than dumb enough.”
“This place has nothing to do with Jimmy and Orson, ” I said.
“How do you know? ”
“They’re not here.”
“But something here may help us find them.”
“We can’t help them if we’re dead.”
“Be a good idiot and turn on your light.”
“This is nuts.”
“Fear nothing, bro.
Carpe noctem.”
“Damn, ” I said, hung with my own noose.
I switched on my flashlight.
A riot of fiery lights erupted within the translucent walls around us,
and it was easy to imagine that we were in the canyons of a great city
stricken by insurrection, bomb throwers and arsonists on every side,
blazing rioters ignited by their own torches and now running in terror
through the night, cyclones of tempestuous fire whirling along avenues
where the pavement was as molten as lava, tall buildings with orange
flames seething from the high windows, smoldering chunks of parapets and
cornices and ledges trailing comet tails of sparks as they crashed into
the streets.
Yet at the same time, with the slightest shift of perspective, it was
also possible to see this panoramic cataclysm not primarily as a series
of bright eruptions but as a shadow show, because for every
Molotov-cocktail flash, for every roiling mass of hot napalm, for every
luminous trail that reminded me of tracer bullets, there was a dark
shape in motion, begging interpretation as do the faces and figures in
clouds. Ebony capes billowed, black robes swirled, sable serpents coiled
and struck, shadows swooped like angry ravens, flocks of crows dived and
soared overhead and underfoot, armies of charred skeletons marched with
a relentless scissoring of sharp black bones, midnight cats crouched and
pounced, sinuous whips of darkness lashed through the bale fires, and
iron-black blades slashed.
In this pandemonium of light and darkness, wholly encapsulated by a
chaos of spinning flames and tumbling shadows, I was becoming
increasingly disoriented. Though I stood still, with my feet widely
planted for balance, I felt as if I were moving, twirling like poor
Dorothy aboard the Kansas-to-oz Express. Forward, behind, right, left,
up, downall rapidly became more difficult to define.
Again, from the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the door. When I looked
more directly, it was still there, formidable and gleaming.
“Bobby.”
“I see it.”
“Not good.”
“Not a real door, ” he concluded.
“You said the place wasn’t haunted.”
“Mirage.” The storm of light and shadow gained velocity. It seemed to be
escalating toward an ominous crescendo.
I was afraid that the furious motion, the increasingly spiky and
disturbing patterns in the walls, foretold an onrushing event that would
translate all this energy into sudden violence. This ovoid room was so
strange that I was unable to imagine the nature of the threat rushing at
us, couldn’t guess even the direction from which it might come.
For once, my three-hundred-ring imagination failed me.
The vault door was hinged on this side, therefore, it would swing
inward. There was no lock wheel to disengage the ring of thick bolts
that were currently seated in holes around the jamb, so the door could
be opened only from the short tunnel between this room and the airlock,
from the other side, which meant we were trapped here.