“Even deeper. We are moving through darkness,” Ashna said in a creepy ghost voice. “Our path is unilluminated. The future is unknown, unseeable.”
“Fine. It’s not any worse than your metaphor searching for something to be metaphoric about.”
“Why did they go to the asylum? That’s what we should be thinking about.”
“Yeah. I have a guess. Given that Jutting used to be a member of the Masonic order, I’m guessing he’s into weird rituals.”
“That seems like a fair guess.”
“And judging by his subterranean ritual room, he likes a creepy location for his weird rituals.”
“Yes.”
“And, knowing that he is obsessed with the occult, his weird rituals in creepy locations are probably going to involve demons, spirits, blood, sacrifice…”
“Naked orgiastic sex rites!” Ashna broke in.
“Maybe that too. Anyway, where else would he go to do his deciphered Cellini via mad Cellini descendent via Elgar magic spell? He’s got to be planning some kind of ritual at the asylum. Maybe that’s why he bought the place, aside from the connection to his youth.”
“You’re probably right. What are we going to do about it?”
“A plan is percolating in my brain. We’ll need to hide this car somewhere and hike in though.”
We left the car on what looked like an unused side road leading out into a field, tucked into a group of trees that would keep it hidden from the highway. The sky was still nearly black with a faint tinge of blue at the horizon. Morning was approaching. The cool, damp air smelled like mossy soil full of fat worms. We were three quarters of a mile from the housing development. With nowhere else to walk, we stuck to the shoulder of the main road. Only two vehicles passed during the fifteen minutes it took us to get to the entrance to the estate. One was an old panel truck, the other a motorcycle. Both times we crouched amongst the trees until they were well away.
I had been driving a car through the housing estate on my previous visit but I had a rough idea how to get where I was going on foot. I led the way, dead reckoning through the silent, Stepford-like lanes until we stood in front of the model house the agent had showed me.
“What’s special about this one?” Ashna asked.
“It’s the model home. Electricity is on, water is on. It even has WiFi.”
“Got it. So we hole up here and use it as our base?”
“What if they decide to do a tour?”
“I doubt they’ll be showing any homes to potential buyers until after Jutting calls up the spirits of the dead, becomes a mighty necromancer, and seizes power.”
“Yeah, probably not.”
“How do we get in?”
“Front door. I memorized the combo for the key box when the agent opened it.” I glanced down the street to where the old asylum crouched in the darkness, its one, cyclopean chimney jutting up black against the dark sky. Something about the scene made me think of Goya’s terrifying depiction of Saturn devouring his own son. It was something in the composition, the colors, the brooding, claustrophobic horror. I turned away quickly.
“Is that it?” Ashna asked.
“Yes.”
“Creepy looking place.”
“It wasn’t so bad in the daylight. Let’s get settled. We have work to do,” I said, opening the key box.
Inside, we planted ourselves on the conservative, uncomfortable furniture in the living room. It was the kind of furniture that looks substantial but lacks proper weight. As soon as you sit down you realize it’s nothing but thin pine lumber, fiber fill, and fabric. We left the lights off and the blinds closed.
The Wi-Fi was open so Ashna connected and got back to work right away. I was prepared for several more hours of frustrated grunts punctuated by inventive curses but after only a few minutes she raised her hands in triumph. “Ha! Jutting’s own stupid laptop!”
“What do you mean?”
“My little hacker box that you placed in the asylum found another client on the network called mjutting. It’s running Windows ten. Probably a laptop. Probably not patched frequently. Sometimes the boss machine is the easiest one to hit. Sysadmins are afraid of the bosses so they let them get away with not running updates. I’m going to try a few exploits.” Ashna worked for a few more minutes, typing commands into a terminal window. I watched the output scroll by.
I had that feeling you get when it’s almost morning and you haven’t slept—gritty eyes, senses deadened and heightened at the same time. I was lying on the floor, stretching my neck and had just felt a very satisfying pop around my C-7 vertebra when Ashna raised her arms again.
“I’m in,” she said. “Good old remote desktop services remote code execution vulnerability CVE two thousand nineteen one two two six.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“You don’t need to. You just need to know that I am now the master of Jutting’s laptop.”
“Great. How does that help us?”
“He’s on the machine right now. I can view his screen just like I was standing behind him. He’s on a Skype call. Let’s listen.”
I got up and crouched next to Ashna’s chair. A window was open on her laptop that showed Jutting’s full desktop in miniature. He appeared to be on a video chat. The person on the other end of the call was an elderly man with white hair and a face like haggis. He seemed agitated and was talking quickly which made his jowls quiver with a stop motion animation-like video latency effect. Jutting’s face was visible too in a smaller box in the corner.
“…cannot use the ritual structure when you are no longer a member. Nor can you borrow ritual items or in any way associate your fiasco with our order. It’s inconceivable.”
There was a pause while Jutting presumably said something in reply. We couldn’t hear it because his end of the conversation was not being played back through his own computer.
“We’ve got to get Jutting’s audio,” Ashna said. “I
