Even though this madman looked different, he was Killington, the organizer of the storytelling festival and the man who had tried to kill Giles. Giles licked dry lips and tried to think of what to say to the man who had caught them.
But Mary Hammond was as resourceful in his story as she’d been in his life. When they couldn’t afford the James Bond car he’d longed for as a boy, she’d rigged up something with paper clips and rubber bands to have an ejector seat.
Now, she made herself blush as though her boss had caught her emerging from a tryst in the broom closet.
As she looked at the floor and nearly wept with shame, he understood what he had to do.
He was in the body of a janitor named Ed Begley and Ed had the hots for anything in a skirt. He made himself leer at Killington and say, “Took my bonus for myself, Boss.” Putting an obnoxious arm around Mary and praying her forgiveness, he said, “Best pain medicine in the world!”
It worked. Killington (or whoever it was), mad and unpredictable as Richard III, was amused. “Sly dog, eh? Well, good dog, enjoy your new … trick.” He strolled on, chuckling.
In another minute he would be gone. And unless the control room door just happened to be unlocked, he was the only one who could get them into it. “Sir!” Giles called. Mary stiffened.
At the end of the dreary hall, Killington turned, a titan from beyond the end of the world. As he came back, Giles wondered, what the hell was I thinking? Massive, Killington looked them over.
He won’t be able to resist bragging. And he’ll be titillated by more scandal. At least Giles prayed that by telling it so, he’d make it so.
He leered again. “This little lady won’t like me telling on her, but she likes being around power. Gets her good and hot.” Mary turned to him with perfect mortified outrage and a muffled please hush.
Risking all, he concluded, “Any chance I could escort her on a tour of the control room, just for a bit?” As Killington tilted his head and regarded him, he added, “We won’t touch nothin’ … unless there’s a corner where she could crouch like a dog, get me, Sir?” Mary muttered, “Ye bastard,” with shining eyes like she was aroused against her will. Fighting down nausea, he put everything he had into a wink at Killington.
The mad eyes glinted. “On your own head be it, Begley. Come along, bring your skirt.” Again, Mary played it beautifully, the girl aroused against her will, the woman who wants to tell her boss that he can’t talk to her that way in this brave year of 1975 but doesn’t dare.
They followed in the wake of the presence which radiated danger even from behind (as well as an obnoxious fart which nearly gagged him). Mary gave him a frightened nod of encouragement and support.
There was no special approach to the control room. Halfway down this very hall Killington stopped at a door like any other. He pulled out an ordinary dingy brass housekey, one of the fat industrial kind and inserted it with a runk in the lock. He turned the knob, pushed the door open, gave a quick, sly look inside left and right as if he were making sure something was out of sight, then turned and crooked a finger at Ed. Heart pounding, Giles tugged Mary with him and they entered the control room.
The half of the room near the door was like every other room in the building: tired scuffed gray linoleum, a few metal cabinets painted battleship grey and a footstool. But halfway across the room a barrier of chairs had been set up (including one rotating office chair with holes in the seat) and on the other side of that barrier – Cloud Rock‼
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
His jaw dropped open and he heard Mary gasp with the shock of all that open space inside a room. But then a special gasp told him that something else had startled her even beyond that. He glanced at her, but she’d regained control. What had she seen?
It was comforting to pretend there was a movie screen just on the other side of the barrier but Giles knew that he was really looking at Cloud Rock. There was the conference center, the swimming pool, the shade of trees in the corner where the red rock rose and made a shadowy wall, there was the rock hill with the few hot pools on it.
But something was different. It took Giles a few minutes to realize that Cloud Rock was part of the real world. The red hill rose to higher red cliffs and there was a fierce desert blue sky over everything. Somebody was cleaning the pool and in the door’s shade a registrar took people’s information as they arrived, chatting. This was Cloud Rock just before whatever disaster had ripped it from the world. He even saw Doree leaning against a wall, sulky and bad-tempered as her parents checked in. A jovial Tanya Honey, strolled by and tried to talk to her. Doree gave monosyllabic replies until the large black woman laughed and walked on.
Killington belched and Giles belatedly tried to decide what his reaction should be. Should he recognize the place? Of course he should recognize the place, Ed had just been sent there through some hypnosis. Deciding on fawning admiration, he said, “So you found it, eh, sir?”
It was the right choice. Killington laughed, clapped Ed painfully on the back again and said, “Yes, I found him. Or very nearly. He’ll be dropping in soon, you understand? Dropping in soon. I just need to wait. A day, perhaps, no more. And what do you imagine I’ll do when he does?”
Giles racked his brains: who was Killington thinking of?
He had seen Killington on Cloud Rock. In the conference center, as everyone stood in a circle, Killington had appeared at the circle’s edge. He had closed his arms around somebody and then disappeared.
Doree straightened up and ambled nonchalantly into the building. Mary passed a hand over her eyes and Giles realized she had been staring directly at Doree the whole time. Of course. She had fallen in love with Doree when they were young and had never stopped loving her.
But he had to give Killington some answer. He had grabbed somebody when he appeared on Cloud Rock. “I reckon you’ll get him then, eh sir?” That seemed a safe answer.
But it was the wrong one. Killington’s face clouded up. Mary clutched his arm as Killington rasped, dangerously on the edge of explosion, “Perhaps I should push you over the edge. They’ll ‘get’ you with a crushed skull, then, and who will rescue you, heh?” His charnel house breath nearly made Giles faint. What would happen if Killington did push them onto Cloud Rock? Their skulls would not be crushed; the room was perfectly on a level with the swimming pool.
Killington glared with glinting eyes. “Didn’t mean no disrespect, sir,” he said cautiously.
Then Killington said something which gave Giles the key at last, although he didn’t realize it immediately. He muttered something about “Don’t insult a father’s feelings,” before turning angrily to Mary, snapping, “Happy to see so much power in action? A rip in the fabric of reality, does that excite you my dear?”
Mary tore her eyes away from the doorway into which Doree had vanished. “You did this, sir?”
Giles, wishing he had a moment to paw through memories (something about a father, something that had been mentioned somewhere in his story!), saw Killington eye Mary keenly. “Who were you watching until a moment ago?”
With perfect sauce, Mary answered immediately, “Snip of a girl, sir, reminded me of one I knew back home when I was younger, a playmate of mine. Chance resemblance caught my eye.”
But Killington’s interest was unhappily roused. (Father’s feelings, that father…). “Where was it you were from, my dear? I don’t recall.”
“Ehm, County Kerry, sir,” Mary replied reluctantly.
“Where exactly, my dear? Why are you reluctant to tell me? We must trace down this girl that you knew. Perhaps the girl you saw is her, now wouldn’t that be exciting?”
Giles sensed danger building all around. Killington was learning something else which he should not be allowed to learn.
“Her hands look perfectly normal, don’t they my dear?”
Her hands! When Cloud Rock cut loose from the world, Doree would somehow gain silver hands with golden palms and the ability to use some kind of force which she called The Gold. Doree would grow into Tiffany, and Killington somehow knew this.
Oh that was bad.