The Shadow Project (20 page)

D
anny blinked. Moses was standing in the gateway. At least, Danny thought it must be Moses. He looking just like Charlton Heston, for one thing, with his gray beard and long locks of gray-white hair. He even carried a great wooden staff and the same stone tablets tucked underneath one arm. Except it couldn't be Charlton Heston, because he was dead. But it couldn't be Moses either, because Moses was dead as well, far longer dead than Charlton.

All the same, the characters with him were carrying the Ark of the Covenant.

Danny knew for sure that had to be the Ark. He'd had the description read to him years ago at Sunday School. The box itself was covered in gold plate. So were the rods used for carrying it and the rings they fitted into. There was a gold chair on top with golden cherubs spreading golden wings. More to the point, the whole
thing writhed and crackled with static electricity.

But if that was the Ark of the Covenant, the character up front had to be Moses. It was Moses' lot that made the Ark and carried it around half the Middle East before the Philistines or somebody nicked it. So maybe the astral plane was where you went to when you died, not heaven or hell after all. You'd have thought old Hector might have mentioned it.

Moses casually turned his staff into a serpent, stroked his beard, and stared with deep-brown eyes at Danny Lipman.

D
orothy walked over to the creature at the gate. “Hello, Harry. Up to your old tricks again?” she said.

“What's happening?” Danny asked. Opal was standing like someone in a trance, a look of bliss on her face. Michael had a look of terror on his.

“Harry's not his real name,” Dorothy said. “Tell you the truth, I can't pronounce his real name—Hari-something-or-other-Indian, leastways it sounds Indian to me. What are you seeing, then?”

“Moses,” Danny said. He hesitated, then added, “And the Ark of the Covenant.”

“Nice touch,” Dorothy said admiringly. “Very clever.” She poked the immobile Opal. “Who is he from where you're standing, dear?”

“Jesus Christ,” Opal breathed.

“Well, he's not,” Dorothy said. “What are you seeing, Michael?” Then, when he didn't answer,
“Michael! I'm talking to you!”

Michael snapped out of his paralysis and said, “One of the Nommo.”

“What's that when it's at home?”

Michael said carefully, “It's part of my country's religious tradition. Gods who came from the sky to teach mankind.”

Danny, who could
still
see Moses, whispered, “What is he—a shape-shifter?”

“Naw,” Dorothy said. “If he was a shape-shifter, we'd all see the same thing, wouldn't we? He's what's called a Lord of the Flame. Everybody sees him different, like pictures in the fire. What you see depends on your religion.” She grinned suddenly. “'Spect you couldn't see him at all if you were an atheist.”

Frowning, Opal said, “What do you see, Mrs. Bayley?”

“That would be telling,” Dorothy said. “And it's Dorothy. Or Dot.”

“What's he want?” Danny asked quietly.

“He's come to help us,” Dorothy announced. She dropped her voice. “We've got Hector to thank for this. He has some peculiar contacts through that Priory of his.”

It occurred to Danny suddenly that living on the astral plane was like waking in a dream. The whole place
had a dreamlike quality about it—the way you could look down into a flower, the tricks his Nan played with that mirror, meeting up with Moses straight down from the mountain. But at the same time it didn't shift around the way dreams did. They were still outside the pylon gate, the road was still there, the flower was still there, growing in impossible sand that still stretched out endlessly around them. And he was awake. He
knew
he was awake.

“We've come to get the Spear of Destiny,” Dorothy said. “You going to point us in the right direction, Harry?”

The biblical figure before Danny suddenly erupted into a towering pillar of flame that gradually transformed itself into humanoid form. He should have been impressed, but he kept thinking—
Flame on!
—it looked like something you'd see in
Fantastic Four
. The heat radiation was immense. Danny glanced at the others and deduced from the angle of their necks that they were seeing what he was.

“Thy adversary has hunted by the Lake of Unt,” rumbled the Lord of the Flame. “With the spear he has pierced the Everlasting in the Shenlu Chamber. Have care when you release him.”

Not one word of it made any sense whatsoever to Danny.

T
hey halted for the night in the desert, their surroundings flat and silent, illuminated by a blue-white moonlight that somehow appeared without a moon. They had walked for what seemed like hours, but Michael got antsy about stopping. “Do we have time for this?” he demanded.

They all turned to look at Dorothy, the one who seemed to know how things worked around here. Dorothy said, “We got time. Besides, we need to sleep to get us to the lake.”

“Lake?” Danny frowned.

“Unt,” Dorothy told him.

But Michael still seemed anxious. “Uncle Hector said it would only be a matter of a few hours before the Devourer could manifest in our reality. We've been here for at least two hours already.”

Dorothy said, “Don't fret yourself, Michael. Time
runs slower here for some reason. Varies a bit, but you can usually rely on a day to an hour, and we ain't been a day here yet. We got time to do the job. Only we need to be fresh. And us girls need our beauty sleep, don't we, Opal?”

Opal said, “Aren't we a bit exposed for sleeping here? There's no shelter and we've no sleeping bags.” She hesitated, wondering if Dorothy might produce sleeping bags the way she produced a mirror, then added, “And mightn't there be scorpions or creepy-crawlies? I mean, you always get scorpions in the desert, don't you?”

Dorothy smiled. “Just you sit down on the sand and dig a little hole.”

“Pardon?”

“Like you were going to build a sand castle. You can dig with your hands. Go on—humor me.”

Opal glanced suspiciously at Dorothy, but crouched down and cautiously pushed one hand into the sand. She struck bedrock at once. “It's not very deep.”

“Keep going,” Dorothy said. “Clear a bit of a space.”

Opal pulled back a thin layer of sand. “That's not bedrock,” she said. “That's not rock at all.” If anything it looked like polished metal, or even plastic.

“Nobody ever believes it unless they see it,” Dorothy said smugly. “This looks like the desert and feels like the desert when you're walking, but it's not the desert. It's
not real. None of this is real, not the way you think. Not this place, not the city, not Hari-what's-his-name.”

“Then what are we doing here, Nan?” Danny asked.

Dorothy gave him a look. “Saving poor old Opal and a lot more besides. Real or not, what happens in our world depends on what happens here, always has done, always will do, apparently.” She smiled at Opal. “So you don't need to worry. You just get some sleep, and when you wake up, there we'll be in Unt, ready to do what we were sent for.”

“You said that before, Nan.” Danny frowned. “You said we had to sleep to get to Unt. What you mean by that?”

“Sleep's the fastest way to get to different places here,” Dorothy said.

“How does that work?”

She shrugged. “Beats me, but then I can't even set a DVD player. Just one of the differences with this place. There are lots of them. Won't get any colder, for example, even though it's a clear night. No creepy-crawlies either. Or scorpions or snakes or any of that sort. Won't find superbugs lurking around here, I can tell you.”

“Wait a minute!” Opal said suddenly. “I met you in the clinic, didn't I? That
was
you, wasn't it? I'm so sorry I didn't realize it before. You seem so different now!”

Dorothy grinned. “Wondered if you'd remember.
No need to apologize—I scrub up a lot better than the way I look traipsing around in my nightie. But you know me now, and that's a good thing—shows we were all meant to be together, doesn't it? Me and Danny, you and Michael. Sort of fated, know what I mean? You get a lot of that in this line of work—fate. Hector always calls it destiny. Amounts to the same thing, I suppose. Makes you feel somebody up there's looking after you, although you do have to mostly fend for yourself, in my experience.”

Michael lay down first. “Well, if this is the fastest way to get the job done…”

Danny stared at him for a moment, then squatted down nearby, but didn't stretch out. “Nan…?”

“Yes, Danny?”

“You know your way around this place.”

“Maybe I do and maybe I don't,” Dorothy said. “Been here before, if that's what you mean, but it's different every time. Bit like dreaming. You never know where you'll turn up next.”

“But we
aren't
dreaming, are we?” Danny asked, voicing an earlier thought.

“Don't think so. What you do in dreams doesn't make much difference to what happens when you're awake. What you do in this place definitely changes things back home. I can tell you that for a fact.”

Danny said, “Hector told us we can't die here—is that true?”

“You sure that's what he told you?” Dorothy said.

Danny frowned. “I think so.”

“What he actually said was that he would look after our physical bodies,” Michael put in, glancing at Dorothy.

“Not the same thing, is it?” Dorothy remarked. “Actually it's tricky. The astral body you're in now can't be killed, Danny—that's true. But it can be hurt, all right—hurt badly—and that can affect the link with your physical body. If it goes too far, the link will snap. You'll still be alive on the astral plane, but on the physical, your heart will stop.” She trailed off with an expressive shrug.

“You mean I
can
die, whatever Hector said?”

Dorothy gave him a worried look. “Depends what you mean by dying, doesn't it? You won't be dead here. Just…”

“Not able to get back into my real body!” Danny exclaimed. “You'd think Hector might have mentioned that!”

“Uncle Hector had other things on his mind,” Michael said defensively. “Besides, we aren't going to get hurt here.” He hesitated, then added, “If we're careful.” He looked at Danny. “So we've really nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing to worry about?” Danny exploded. “Depends what else slipped Uncle Hector's mind, doesn't it?
Conveniently
slipped Uncle Hector's mind.”

Michael flared at once. “Listen, Danny—” he said angrily.

“Now, now, boys.” Dorothy moved quickly between them. “Let's not get silly about this. I think Hector might just have been trying not to upset you.”

Or maybe just making sure we agreed to do the job,
Danny thought. He glared at Michael but said nothing more.

Dorothy said, “You and me can lie down over here, Opal, away from the boys. They'll snore. Men always snore. So we'll just keep well away.”

Opal lay down, but despite Dorothy's promise, found she couldn't sleep. Her mind was racing. She was worried about her father, of course, worried about Farrakhan, worried about the Devourer, worried about the job they were supposed to do in this weird place, but more than anything else, she kept thinking about Michael.

She lay on her back in the sand, staring up into a starless sky, listening to the faint sounds of the two boys snoring. She'd been so certain he liked her, so sure of the signals he was sending. In fact there'd been times when she'd caught him staring at her. But then he would unexpectedly turn cold. “Can't sleep?” Dorothy
asked quietly beside her.

“How did you know?”

“Could tell from your breathing. You worried about your prince?”

Opal sat bolt upright and looked down at her. “You couldn't tell
that
from my breathing.”

Dorothy gave her little grin. “Saw the way you look at him. You two an item?”

Opal subsided a little. “I wish.”

“Maybe he's just shy,” said Dorothy. “Why don't you ask him out? Girls can do that now, not like my young days.”

“I tried that,” Opal grumbled.

“Said no, did he?”

“Yes. I mean yes, he said no.”

“More fool him,” Dorothy sniffed. “You're a lovely girl. He don't know what he's missing.”

“Thank you,” Opal said, lying down again.

“What did he say when he said no?” Dorothy asked. “I mean he didn't just say no, did he? Must have said why.”

“He just ran off,” Opal said, her voice rising at the memory. “I mean, walked away as if I'd offended him or something. I have no idea why.”

“Cheeky bugger,” Dorothy said.

They lay in silence for a while. Eventually Dorothy
said, “You still thinking about him?”

“Yes.”

“It's this place,” Dorothy said.

“What is?”

“The astral plane. Stirs up your emotions.”

Opal said, “Do you have a thing for Uncle Hector, Dorothy? Speaking of stirred emotions.”

“Noticed that, did you? It was a
long
time ago.”

Despite everything, Opal smiled a little. “I'm not sure he's entirely over it.”

“You think so?” Dorothy sounded pleased.

Opal finally fell asleep soon after that. The next day—if it could be counted as a real day in this place—they woke up by the Lake of Unt.