'Because it looks like you're having trouble there. With the lock.'
He let the pick clatter to the floor and sighed.
'Jacob, you're just about the biggest-,' he said, turning to look up at me. His eyes locked beyond my shoulder and his body stilled. 'Ah.'
'Ah?' I asked, then turned quickly. I couldn't see anything. 'Ah, what?'
He stood and went to the bed, standing on the sweat-stained mattress to reach the ceiling. Something was nailed to the boards there, just above the theoretical sleeper's head. Wilson pried it free and peered at it.
'Ah,' he said.
'What is it?' What I could see was that it was black, about the size of two hands together. He handed it to me.
A mask, black. There were words in iron etched across the face. Other than the eye holes, there were no other features.
'What the hell is this?' I asked.
Wilson came down from the bed and sat wearily on the chest he had failed to pick. I knew the look on his face. It was his scholar look.
'That is what we were meant to find.' He drew a pair of reading glasses from one of the innumerable pockets in his vest, rubbed some river water off them, then returned them to the pocket. 'We can look in the other rooms if you'd like, but that's going to be it.'
'Doesn't answer my question, Wilson.' I held out the mask. The words meant nothing to me. Even the letters looked funny. 'What is it?'
'I'm not sure. But the lettering is Celestean. It roughly translates into 'Cull.' Or 'Purge,' I suppose. Yes, purge is probably a better translation.' He ran his tongue across his hundred teeth, deep in thought. 'The image imposed is of a tree stump, burned down to the roots.'
'You read Celestean?'
'Tricky question. It's not really a language.' He stood and took the mask, holding it at arm's length. 'The Celesteans seemed to communicate in unformed ideas. Images. The pictograms we use to program foetal metal cogwork are a derivation of their form. The idea is to let the words interact with the unconscious part of your brain. They impose meaning directly into your…' he searched for the word. 'Soul, I guess. Directly into your heart.'
'That was perfectly clear,' I sniped. He grimaced like a schoolmarm.
'Hold still,' he said, then held the mask about an arm's length away from my face. 'Look at the words without looking at them. Unfocus. Just let your head talk directly to the…'
'Look, this is bullshit. You told me what it means. Cull. I get it. I don't need to…'
It fell on me like a nightmare. The room disappeared and I was filled with the smell of blood and fire. Ashes in my mouth and the sky was coiling cinder. The earth below me sagged under the weight of blood and my veins crumbled like dry leaves. I gasped, but the only air was thick as steel wool, and just as harsh. On my knees and I could feel the life being dug out of me, out of my heart, out of my blood. Behind me I felt death reaching back for generations, rooting out everything I had known or been or remembered. It was like a fire that burned through time. And before me, nothing, nothing, just the empty night and nothing.
And then I really was on my knees, and Wilson was shaking me with both his stone-hard hands. The mask was on the floor between us, the words in my head coiling like that sky of cinder. I hurled myself back and banged into the cheap iron of the bed.
'Well,' Wilson said, standing. 'That's the thing about the Celesteans. They said different things to different people.' He carefully picked up the mask and wrapped it in a bit of sheet he tore from the bed. I realized I was still staring at him, and tried to compose myself. 'Don't. Just relax. Let it get through you. Let it go.'
I watched him numbly as he went around the room. He got the chests open, finally. He went through them meticulously, unfolding and then refolding things, rearranging the contents, open pouches, sniffing, closing. My mind was a smooth stone in a babbling brook, the room around me sliding coldly over without penetrating. It was minutes before I understood the things I looked at. I stood.
'What the hell is that thing?' I asked. My voice was harsh, like I'd been crying.
'What we were supposed to find,' Wilson answered. 'The question is why. And if we were the ones who were supposed to find it, or if he left it for someone else.'
I rubbed my hands together and stretched my shoulders.
'I'm ready to go,' I said. Wilson shook his head.
'Not yet. This is what we were meant to find, but…'
'I'm ready to go, Wilson. As in, we're going.'
He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. It hurt.
'Jacob. This isn't the worst thing we've seen. It's likely not to be the worst we'll see before this is over. You need to pull yourself together.'
'Sure. But first we're going to go somewhere else.' I made for the door. Wilson stopped me.
'First we're going to search the rest of this house. Then we can go.'
'You said that we wouldn't find anything else. That we were meant to find that. So. We found it.'
'We did.' He gestured to the chests. 'But what about those?'
I looked over his shoulder. 'Looks like clothes to me.'
'Yes. Clothes that have been recently packed, and then left behind.' He spread his hands in a question. 'Why?'
'I don't know. Maybe he forgot them.'
'Jacob. Is there anything about Ezekiel Crane that makes you think he would just forget his clothes?'
Grudgingly, I admitted he was right. I didn't say anything, though.
'Which means that he left them behind. By mistake or by plan. And there's nothing in them to make me think it was planned. To me it looks like he brought them here from some great distance, unpacked them while he was here, and then repacked them with the intention of taking them somewhere else. And then he didn't.'
'So,' I said, slumping my shoulders. 'We search the rest of the place.'
Wilson nodded. I gave the bundled lump of the mask one more nervous look.
'Locked rooms first, please?' I said.
'That's fine with me. And look,' he said, then opened one of the chests. There was a revolver laying on top of the carefully folded shirts. 'A present.'
I tossed my water-logged iron on the bed and holstered the new revolver. Didn't bother checking the load, or the balance. Just hoped I wouldn't have to draw it. Mostly wasn't sure that I had the heart to draw iron right now. The Celestean nightmare was still howling at the edges of my mind. I didn't trust myself with a weapon. Distastefully, Wilson picked up my old pistol from the bed and stowed it in his coat.
'Always leaving things around, Jacob. You should know better.'
'Whatever,' I said, heading for the door. 'Let's get this over with.'
Whatever had been locked in those rooms was long gone. The rooms were devoid of furniture, although the windows were boarded up from the inside. The paint on the floors showed heavy wear, like someone spent all their time pacing back and forth, window to door to window to corner to door. That was the only difference in each of the rooms, actually. The pattern of wear on the floor was of varying complexity. And all of the rooms smelled, though not unpleasantly. Like fresh soil, and the harvest. It reminded me of summers in my youth, out on the estate. Back when we had an estate, and I had summers. Wilson stood in the door to each room, sniffing carefully at the air and studying the floor. He never went in. After the third room I got tired of standing in the hallway and pushed past him into the room. He frowned, but let me go.
'So, he was keeping someone in here?'
'Maybe. It doesn't seem like security was terribly good.'
'A padlock doesn't strike you as good security?'
He shrugged his complexity of shoulders. 'Those windows could be opened pretty easily. The nails are tiny and the boards aren't flush.' Grimly he walked into the room and went to the window. With two fingers he tore a board free and peered out into the light. 'Easy enough to undo.'
'Remember the toys. Maybe these were kids he had in here. They wouldn't have been strong enough to do that.'
