score. Let me loose, I promise not to meddle in that business again; I'll just disappear off the radar and nobody needs to know where I went. I've got money, fake IDs, passports, all stashed. You let me go, and nobody ever hears from me again. I'll go down to Mexico and sip margaritas on the beach with pretty senoritas.'
'I'll run that past your daughter.'
'Julie's squeamish. She's a goody two-shoes like her mother. Believe me. I've learned from my mistakes. I'm done. Earl will tell you no. My dad will say no. They don't trust me. My offer is to you, kid. Think about it.' He smiled hopefully. I did not trust him as far as I could throw him.
'How about you give me a little information up front? Let me see if what you know is worth it.'
'I give you enough pieces of the puzzle, you'll figure it out yourself. You won't need me and I go back to Appleton. On good days maybe I get to play Ping-Pong in leg irons with Dr. Nelson. Look out the window while crazy people whine about what monsters did to them. Like those pussies know jack squat about real torment. Whoopee. No way, kid. I talk. I walk. That's the deal.'
'Screw you, Ray.' I took his empty plate and walked away.
'Wait!' he cried. I paused with my hand on the doorknob. 'You have to understand. I can't go back there.' I opened the door. 'Stop. Listen. I tried to bring my wife back. Is that so wrong? I loved her. I know I made a mistake. I was desperate. You would do the same. I loved her too much to let her go. I know not to try again. I saw things in that rift. Things you can't even begin to understand. I know what's out there. My mind is scarred worse than your face. Believe me. I promise that it won't happen again.'
'Good-bye, Ray. I'll send somebody up around lunch for a bathroom break.' I stepped out the door into the hall.
'Wait! Don't leave me alone! You want some information. Fine,' he shouted. I paused. 'There is no real Place of Power. It isn't a fixed piece of geography. There's a nexus of magical energy. The place is where those lines intersect. They are always moving. They are always changing. But I know where and when they are. Those professors that got killed, it's because some of the dead cultures they studied had their fingers on the puzzle. They maybe had bits and pieces. I can see the whole puzzle. I can see the picture. I can even see the box the pieces came in. It's going to happen at the full moon.'
'Tell me more, Ray.'
'You have three days before the concept of linear time becomes obsolete. Lord Machado thinks he knows what he's doing, but he's wrong. The world you know is going to cease to exist. Billions will die, and the handful that survive are going to be nothing more than cattle living in a blinded stupor. Mankind is going to be nothing but food and entertainment for the Old Ones. You had better think about my offer, kid. The clock is ticking. In three days it stops. Forever.'
'Your dad made me an offer,' I told Julie when I found her on the main floor. She must have gotten bored after cleaning and hauling up all of the interesting weapons from the basement, because she had busied herself by returning to her renovations.
'Make yourself useful and hold this.' She handed me the end of a tape measure. 'Put it against that edge there.' She walked a few steps and lowered the tape to the floor. She took a pencil from behind an ear and marked a spot on the floor. 'I need more flooring. I've got enough to finish the front hall, but not the main entryway.'
'You don't want to hear his offer?' I asked. I think that I already knew the answer to that one.
'Let me guess. Let me go. I promise to be good. No more demon summoning. Blah, blah, blah. I'll tell you what you need to know.' She let the tape measure snap closed in her hand and dropped it into a pocket.
'Pretty much. But he did say that the Cursed One is going to strike on the full moon. That gives us just three days.'
'Not much time. Figures. Bad stuff always goes down on the full moon. How did this get here?' She bent down to pick up a belt sander that was lying on the floor. Grunting in sudden pain, she paused, and slowly stood back up. 'Forgot. Big hole in my shoulder. Would you grab that for me? I need to put it away.'
I picked up the sander. 'You should take it easy.'
She shook her head. 'I can't. I'm a little tense. My insane dad is upstairs, in the home that I grew up in. It's just a bit awkward is all… I like working on the house. It keeps my mind off of things, you know?' I nodded. 'It helps me to keep busy. I feel better when I'm improving something.'
The whole mansion was torn apart. Every room that I had been in so far had some project begun in it, but very few had been finished. Apparently Julie had a lot of things that she did not want to dwell on.
'You seem to be pretty good at it,' I said. That was true enough. The work that was finished appeared to be meticulous and professional. Which was not really a surprise considering what I knew about Julie Shackleford's nature.
'Thanks.' She paused uncomfortably. 'Enough about my dingbat father. I'm just glad he didn't stab you with his plastic fork.'
'I did check the bathroom for guns before I let him go.'
'Beat you to it.' She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a. 38 Detective Special. 'Bathroom number three gun. I've got them stashed all over.'
'You really are my kind of girl.'
She smiled. 'Thanks. Most regular people think I'm insane.'
'Screw regular people. They suck.' It was good to hear her laugh again. 'Since you're too injured to lay floor, how about a tour of the Heart of Dixie Historical Preservation Society headquarters?'
'That I can do. And by the way, I never said thanks for saving my life from that gargoyle. That was a little too close.' She absently touched the bandage on the side of her head.
'No big deal. That was some pretty good driving.'
'If that jackass in the truck would have just let us pass, I could have lost them.'
'Jerk,' I agreed.
'Tour?' she asked.
'Gladly.'
Chapter 18
The Shackleford ancestral home was an imposing structure. Once one of the finest of the great antebellum homes of the Old South, it was the crown jewel of a once-massive plantation. Ages ago it had been the center of thousands of acres of timber and farming cut out of the woods of Alabama. The original builder's heirs had sold the home and the property to the first Raymond Shackleford nearly a hundred years before.
'You can see out this window where the slave quarters used to be, the kind of empty spot right there. You can still make out the foundations. They were pretty rickety and busted up by the time I was a kid.' Julie pointed out the back windows off of the main corridor. 'I burned them down when I was twelve.'
'Why? Some sort of protest against the injustice? A young girl trying to right the wrongs of the past?' I asked.
'Nothing so noble. Me and my brothers were learning how to make homemade napalm. Styrofoam packing peanuts dissolved into a bottle of gasoline. They make the best Molotov cocktails. I let one of mine get away from me. I'm just lucky that it didn't spread and burn the house down… Those were the days.'
'I can understand. I did something similar once when I was a kid. My brother and I built a pipe bomb. Big thing. We smuggled powder out of my father's reloading room for almost a year so he wouldn't notice. Mixed it with a whole bunch of other ingredients. Detonated it in the backyard when my folks weren't home. It was a little bit bigger boom than expected though, dug a four-foot trench in the yard, cut the gas main and forced the neighborhood to evacuate.'
'No wonder the ATF has your name on file,' she said. 'I wonder if all future Monster Hunters blow stuff up as kids?'
'Probably. The ones that live that long at least.' I shrugged. 'Hey, I was an upstanding citizen until I met you guys.'
'I bet… Anyway, I was sad when the old slave quarters burned down. I was just a little girl. I hadn't really understood what they stood for. I mean, I knew what they were, but not why they were important.'
