Zero Regrets
(October 8, 2017)
22: The Pines Army
Hazard had determined to stay overnight, with Ford's approval. She planned to borrow Wendy's sleeping bag and to sack out in the living room with Mabel, who would sleep on the sofa. Brandi came out of the bedroom after three hours, but the exhausted Allie was still in a deep sleep. "Let her sleep," Mabel said. "If she wakes up and gets hungry in the night, just come through and make her a sandwich. Let me show you what we got."
"We'll wake you," Brandi said shyly.
"We'll take that chance," Hazard said.
"Thank you so much. Not just for letting us stay or offering us food, or—thank you for just believing in us."
Mabel hugged her. "We college student-type women have to hang together!" she said. "Look, don't open the door tonight, no matter what you may hear outside. And keep Allie from doing it. If she wakes up and you don't—"
"I'll wake up," Brandi assured her. "I don't sleep that deep. Do you think it—it might have followed us?"
"Probably not," Ford said. "Come to the table. I want to see if you recognize this drawing."
Brandi bent over the sketch of the medallion's obverse and reverse sides. "No," she said. "This looks, you know, like some kind of cartoon monster on TV. Something the dog and the kids in the van might run into."
"And in the end," Mabel said helpfully, "they pull off its head and it's Old Man McGuire, the handyman!"
Wendy, whose burn had not blistered, was wearing shorts and keeping the pink spot anointed with aloe gel. She turned on Dipper's laptop—it was on the table—and found something online. She swiveled it. "Know what this is?"
Brandi said, "It says at the bottom it's the devil. Is that what—"
"No," Wendy said. "This is a picture of a Tarot card. Uh, Dip—?"
"It's from the 1910 Rider-Waite Tarot deck," he said. "The figure looks similar to the one in the sketch, but there are differences. The Tarot figure has a pentagram between its horns. It has bat-like wings, and its right hand has all the fingers together, not just the index and middle fingers. Its feet are talons, like an eagle's, not hoofs, and it's male, not part male, part female."
"And Tarot lore doesn't make this a card of death," Ford added. "It represents the dark side of human sensuality and materialism—attachment to pleasures and to the material world that distract one from spiritual development. It isn't a threat so much as a challenge to be faced and overcome."
"What's the thing in the sketch?" Brandi asked.
"It was a figure engraved on this medal," Mabel said. "I drew that, by the way. It was this—silver?"
"Think so," Wendy said. "Looked like real old silver."
"This silver medallion with that Scooby Doo monster on the front side and this cross-inside-a-cross on the back. Wendy got it from the sister of the first girl who had a run-in with the attic moaner."
"That's the traditional symbol of the Knights Templar," Ford said. "They go back to the eleventh century."
"I don't know anything about the devil man or the knights," Brandi said. "Sorry."
"Does Allie dabble with the occult?" Ford asked.
Brandi looked uncertain. "Like—ghosts? These fortune-telling Tarot cards?"
"Anything."
"No," Brandi said. "When one of those ads for psychic hotlines comes on TV, she makes fun of them. Once she said if we wanted extra money, we could set up one and charge like a dollar a minute and just make up shit—excuse me—as we talked: 'I can sense that you called because you're a little worried about some problem. It may be your health or someone else's health . . . no, no, I think it's a matter of the heart. Love or the loss or lack of love—' And the person asks something like, 'Does the person I love, love me back?' And then you string them along until you make like a hundred dollars."
"She ought to meet my Grunkle Stan!" Mabel said. "Couple of months of training from him, and she'd be rolling in money to burn!"
"I don't believe in phone psychics," Brandi said. "Allie doesn't eather."
"I think I've got it," Hazard said. "You live in or near San Francisco, correct?"
Looking surprised, Brandi said, "Uh, right. I was born in the Western Addition. How'd you know?"
"You don't have much of an accent," Hazard said, "but there's a trace. Mainly in how you pronounce middle t's."
"Cool!" Mabel said. She jerked a thumb at her own chest. "Piedmont, right across the bridge! We're neighbors!"
Brandi gave her a smile. "Well, friends, too, I think. You guys, seriously, thanks for trying to help Allie. She doesn't deserve what's been happening to her."
"We're off track," Ford said. "Did Allie ever play with a Ouija board? Or Tarot cards? Does she read Stephen King, perhaps? Or watch TV shows about paranormal things?"
Brandi shook her head. "No, like I said when I told you about her phone psychic joke, she's skeptical about all that. I don't know why this thing latched onto her."
Hazard asked quietly, "How is her home life?"
"Oh," Brandi said. "Um, well—her parents are divorcing. That's stressful for her."
"There you go," Hazard said to Ford. "This is one of those psychic leeches that preys on insecurities."
"Very possibly," Ford said. "Well. I won't bother you right now, Brandi. If Allie feels recovered when she wakes, I may want to ask her a few questions."
Wendy stood behind Dipper, massaging his shoulders. "I want to see the bridge, dude. Did you take photos?"
"No, sorry," he said. "I don't think we should leave the house yet. Maybe after we take care of the thing in the attic."
"Let me go take some measurements," Ford said. He went outside and remained away for a quarter of an hour. Just as Dipper was about to go look for him, they heard him coming up the outside steps to the deck. He came in by way of the sliding glass doors, his anomaly detector in his hands. "Good news, I think," he said. "No trace of paranormality except a weak flutter where the ashes are lying on the lawn. The medallion itself is safely isolated and insulated—no signal from it at all. If you two want to take a short walk, I'd suggest that Mason carry his anomaly detector and keep it on. At the first sign of trouble, call for help. Oh, and take this." He handed Dipper his pistol-version quantum destabilizer.
"I can't leave you here unarmed," he protested.
Hazard laughed. "Kid, we got more. In fact, I think I'll bring the heavy artillery into the house. OK, Chief?"
"The full-sized destabilizers," Ford explained. "We have three. Yes, it might be a good idea to get them out of the car trunk and closer to hand."
"Turn on your buzzer, Dip," Wendy said. "Let's go inspect a bridge."
Afternoon was tapering off to sunset, but it was a clear day. Tripper had decided to come along as tour guide. Dipper and Wendy walked, not ran, along the grassy bank. The shallow creek gurgled over stones to their left. It wasn't a long walk, and at the end Tripper went and posed in the center of the bridge, as if he'd built it himself and was showing it off.
"Good job, man," Wendy said. She took hold of both rails and tugged. "Nice and solid. And the treads have good drainage." Tripper led as she walked across. Wendy arched her back, her hands in the rear pockets of her shorts. "Very good job."
"Well, you did more than half of it," Dipper said. He noticed that she was rubbing the pink burn on her thigh. "Hurt much?"
"Hm? Oh, no, itches more than anything now."
Dipper crossed and said, "Hold still." He ran the anomaly detector over the injury. Nothing.
"Gonna recover?" she asked.
"Yeah, I think you'll be fine in a day or two," Dipper said. "Baphomet, huh? I can't get my mind around it."
"How come?"
Dipper made a face. "It's not real. It's not even not-real in the ghost sense! I've read up a little. Nobody knows what the source of the name is. It sounds like something that was made up to sound vaguely Islamic—some enemy of the Templars trying to suggest that the knights weren't only usurers but traitors, worshiping a foreign demon. I mean—ghosts have some trace of personality. Demons have detectable minds. This just started out as a name, and then an artist gives it a form."
"Yeah, but it's real in a way," Wendy said. "It's really evil."
"Not even a mind," Dipper mused. "A ball of—hatred of life. Blind desire to break through into our world. To make humans suffer and die. Like a parasite."
"Tomorrow we'll find it and wipe it out," Wendy said.
Dipper noticed that Tripper had strayed to the edge of the woods. He whistled, and the tan mutt immediately returned, wagging his tail. "Good boy," Dipper said. "Let's go home."
He held the anomaly sensor in his left hand and held Wendy's hand with his right. "I can feel you're tense about this," he said.
Well, yeah. Damn thing's killed four girls—or drove them to kill themselves.
—Amounts to the same thing. But it just came from nothing!
The four girls who had the séance back in 1952 created it, I guess.
—I don't think so. I think they summoned a thing—a form of energy that had no consciousness. Insensate force. And somehow their frustrations and fears and angers gave it a focus. I don't think it has any consciousness at all. But it's deadly. Lightning has no awareness, but it kills. This thing—it's less aware than a striking rattlesnake, but somehow fear and death feed it.
Yeah, well, don't think you're gonna capture it and study it, the way Ford did the Shapeshifter. I won't let you do that. Or him.
—No, the destabilizers should take care of anything material or immaterial. If it can influence or interact with people, it can be dissipated with the quantum ray.
They stopped at the back gate. "One thing," Dipper said. "Tomorrow when we go after this thing—up into the attic—please don't insist on coming along. It's already hurt you—"
"Really, dude?" she asked, sounding amused. "You think I'd stay away?"
"No," he admitted. "But I don't want you hurt."
"Then watch my back. But I'm gonna take a whack at this critter. It messed with me, so I am flat gonna mess with it. Besides, I owe it to Myrtle. Poor woman. More than sixty years and nobody listened to her, and she never stopped mourning her sister or hating whatever made her kill herself. I promised we'd take care of it and that I'd let her know when we did. Promised, man."
He embraced her. "Take your best axe," he said.
She kissed him. "You watch after yourself, Dip. I've been in this thing's presence. It's gonna try to make us all despair. Don't let it get to you."
"How could I ever despair when I'm with you?" he asked.
Tripper woofed impatiently.
"OK, OK," Dipper said, unlatching and opening the gate.
At ten that evening, the front door opened—it had been locked, but it opened!
A startled Dipper jumped up, fumbling for the destabilizer—
"What are you doin', kid, playin' cowboy and Indian? That's racist, ya know."
"Grunkle Stan!" Dipper said.
"Yeah, yeah, looks like you're throwin' a party. Whose car's that?"
"It's mine, actually," Ford said. He had been sitting at the table. "Company car. You made good time, Stanley."
Behind Stan, first Sheila, then Lorena came in, each carrying an overnight bag.
"I didn't know you were coming!" Dipper said.
"Eh, did Sixer make it a surprise?"
"I—forgot, I'm sorry," Ford said. "I've been rather preoccupied."
"Where's Mabel?" asked Stan.
"She and Wendy and Agent—uh, Deputy Director Hazard—are having a sleepover in the master bedroom with our two guests," Dipper said.
"Poindexter, the motel's full up, so—"
"I have a unit already rented for you and Sheila," Ford said. "Lorena will stay with me. Are you willing to help us?"
"Kick some spooky ass? Yeah, like old times with the Jersey Devil!" Stan said. "But I wouldn't have come just for that. I was bringin' you knuckleheads two cases of Pitt Cola."
"Mason," Ford said, "you bring Mabel and Wendy in. Amy can stay with the girls for the time being. We need to talk."
"Council of war?" Dipper asked.
"Yes."
"For the Pines army!" Stan said. "I like it."
It all had to do with the plan. Ford explained what he proposed: his wife and Stan's would remain in the house with the two college girls. "It's protected," he explained. "I don't think any paranormality could intrude, but just in case, Sheila can handle a destabilizer. So can Lorena, in a pinch, and she can keep an eye on the detector."
"So where do we go?"
"Dean Canova has agreed to evacuate the entire—"
"Hang on, hang on! Dean Canova? As in Carla?" Stan whistled and reached for Sheila's hand. "Darling, I gotta come clean. Long time ago, in high school, even, I used to date Carla McCorkle, back in Jersey. She moved out here, got educated, and now she's the dean of the university or whatever. But there's nothin' between us but old, old memories."
"Oh, shut up," Sheila told him, grinning. "She let you get away and I snagged you, and that's that. I'm not going to be jealous."
"That's a relief," Stan said. "Also kinda a letdown. Darn it."
"As I was saying," Ford resumed, "under Dean Canova's authority, the girls who live in the dorm will be required to leave. It's a holiday for the students, and University facilities are mostly closed, but they're opening the Student Center and the library and gym, so they'll have a place to wait it out. As far as they know, we're checking for some electrical flaw or gas leak. Fortunately, only forty per cent of the rooms are occupied right now, owing to the holiday. They're all to be out of the dorm by nine A.M. I have hazmat-style uniforms for our team. You, I, Hazard, Wendy, Mason, and Mabel will go in. Campus security will guard the dormitory doors."
"I think this is over planned," Stan said. "Mine's simpler. Go in, kick ass, chew some gum."
"I like this plan!" Wendy said.
"Please," Ford said. "We'll first examine Room 439. There's a bare chance that, even after all these years, something physical in the room is anchoring this phenomenon."
"Once more in English, Brainiac?"
Ford sighed. "The creature or force may be linked to something physical. Its powers were soaked into a medallion to an extent that it injured Wendy."
"What!" Stan looked furious.
"Come on, Poppa Bear," Wendy said. "I'm tougher than that. I'm OK, really."
"Something like the medallion," Ford said, "may still be concealed within the room. If it is, my sensors will find it. I think it more likely that there's something above the room in the attic. At any rate, our goal is to find and neutralize it. However—I won't deceive you, Stanley—the force may be very dangerous. It may try to destroy us to prevent our cutting it free of its anchor. We have to protect each other, keep our heads, and not go charging into peril."
"Got ya," Stan said.
"Then summarize what I just told you," Ford said.
"Kick its ass," Stan replied.
Ford nodded. "I'll accept that."
