Lincoln Child
The Third Gate
16
Oasis was the name of the Station’s lone watering hole. Half canteen, half cocktail lounge, it was located in a far corner of Blue, overlooking the vast, bleak expanse of the Sudd. And yet, Logan noticed as he entered the bar, the windows facing the swamp were covered with bamboo blinds, as if to obscure, rather than emphasize, the fact they were smack in the middle of nowhere.
The lounge was dark, lit indirectly in blue-and-violet neon, and almost empty. Logan wasn’t surprised. In the wake of the generator fire, the mood of the Station had grown subdued. There were no bridge games that evening, no merry chatter in the mess. Most people had retreated to their quarters, as if to deal with what had happened in solitude.
Logan felt just the opposite. The overwhelming sense of pervasive evil he had felt as the generator collapsed in flames had alarmed and unnerved him. His empty lab, his quiet room-these were the last places he wanted to be at the moment.
He walked up to the bar and took a seat. Charlie Parker was playing from invisible speakers. The bartender-a young man with short dark hair and a Sgt. Pepper mustache-came over.
“What can I get you?” he asked, placing a crisp cocktail napkin on the bar.
“Got any Lagavulin?”
With a smile, the man gestured toward an impressive array of single-malt scotches on the mirrored wall behind him.
“Great, thanks. I’ll take it neat.”
The bartender poured a generous dram into a glass and placed it on the napkin. Logan took a sip, admiring the heft of the heavy-bottomed glass, enjoying the peaty taste of the scotch. He took a second sip, waiting for the sharp memory of the fire, the smell of burnt flesh, to ease just a little. Rogers had suffered third-degree burns over 25 percent of his body: he’d been evacuated, of course, but the nearest burn center was hundreds of miles away and his prognosis was guarded.
“Buy a girl a drink?”
He looked over and saw that Christina Romero had entered the bar and taken a seat beside him.
“That’s a good question. Can I?”
“This isn’t the woman who reamed you out earlier. This is an upgrade. Christina Romero, release two point zero.”
Logan chuckled. “All right. In that case, I’d be happy to. What’ll you have?”
She turned to the bartender. “Daiquiri, please.”
“Frozen?” the bartender asked.
Romero shuddered. “No. Shaken, straight up.”
“You got it.”
“Shall we move to a table?” Logan asked. When Romero nodded, he led the way to a table near the wall of windows.
“There’s something I want to say up front,” she told him as they sat down. “I’m sorry about being such a bitch, back in my office. People always tell me I’m arrogant, but I usually don’t parade it around like that. I guess, your being pretty famous and all, I wanted to appear like I wasn’t in awe. I overdid it. Big-time.”
Logan waved a hand. “Let’s forget it.”
“I’m not trying to make excuses. It’s just-you know-the stress. I mean, nobody talks about it, but we haven’t found a damn thing yet in two weeks of digging. I’ve got a couple of major league a-holes to deal with here. And then, these-these strange goings-on. People seeing things, equipment malfunctioning. And now this fire, what happened to Rogers.” She shook her head. “It gets on your nerves after a while. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
“That’s okay. You can pay the bar tab.”
“It’s free,” she said with a laugh.
They sipped their drinks.
“Did you always want to be an Egyptologist?” Logan asked. “I wanted to be one myself, as a kid, after seeing The Mummy. But then-when I learned how hard it was to read hieroglyphics-I lost interest.”
“My grandmother was an archaeologist-but then, you already knew that somehow. She worked on all sorts of digs, everywhere from New Hampshire to Nineveh. I always idolized her. I guess that’s part of it. But what really gave me the bug was King Tut.”
Logan looked at her. “King Tut?”
“Yup. I grew up in South Bend. When the King Tut expedition came to the Field Museum, my whole family drove to Chicago to see it. Oh, my God. My parents had to tear me away. I mean, the death mask, the golden scarabs, the treasure hall. I was only in fourth grade, and it haunted me for, like, months. Afterward I read every book about Egypt and archaeology I could get my hands on. Gods, Graves, and Scholars; Carter and Carnarvon’s Five Years’ Explorations at Thebes — you name it. I never looked back.”
She grew more animated as she spoke, until her green eyes practically flashed with excitement. She wasn’t pretty, exactly, but she had a kind of inner electricity, and a refreshing candor, that Logan found intriguing.
She finished her cocktail with a mighty slug. “Your turn.”
“Me? Oh, I became interested in history my freshman year at Dartmouth.”
“Don’t be evasive. You know what I’m talking about.”
Logan laughed. It wasn’t something he usually talked about. But, after all, she had sought him out, apologized. “I guess it started when I spent the night in a haunted house.”
Romero signaled the bartender for another drink. “This isn’t going to be bullshit, is it?”
“Nope. I was twelve. My parents were away for the weekend, and my older brother was supposed to look after me.” Logan shook his head. “He looked after me, all right. He dared me to spend the night in the old Hackety place.”
“The old, haunted Hackety place.”
“Right. It had been empty for years, but all the local kids said a witch lived there. People talked about strange lights at midnight, about how dogs avoided the place like the plague. My brother knew how stubborn I was, how I could never resist a dare. So I took a sleeping bag and a flashlight, and some paperbacks my brother gave me, and I went down the street to the deserted house and sneaked in a first-floor window.”
He paused, remembering. “At first it seemed like a breeze. I laid out the sleeping bag in what had been the living room. But then it got dark. And I started to hear things: creaks, groans. I tried to distract myself by looking into the books my brother gave me, but they were all ghost stories-it figures-and I put them aside. That was when I heard it.”
“What?”
“Steps. Coming up from the basement.”
The cocktail arrived, and Romero cradled it in her hands. “Go on.”
“I tried to run, but I was petrified. I couldn’t even stand up. It was all I could do to switch on the flashlight. I heard the footsteps move slowly through the kitchen. Then a figure appeared in the doorway.”
He took a sip of scotch. “I’ll never forget what I saw in the gleam of that flashlight. A crone, white hair wild and flying in all directions, her eyes just hollows in the glare. My heart felt like it was going to explode. She started walking toward me. And then I started to cry. It was all I could do not to wet my pants. She stretched out a withered hand. That’s when I knew I was going to die. She’d hex me, and I’d just shrivel up and die.”
He paused.
“Well?” Romero urged.
“I didn’t die. She took my hand, held it in hers. And suddenly I–I understood. It’s… it’s hard to explain. But I realized she wasn’t a witch. She was just an old woman, lonely and scared, hiding in the basement, living on tap water and canned food. It was as if I could… I could feel her fear of the outside world, feel her miserable existence
