Codex - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by HF
Last updated: 09/18/2008 08:14:19 PM

Chapter 3

...hot, hot even though your soul freezes like the middle of winter, hot and close and thick with sewage and the stench of human waste how it oozes and grips like a fist around your ankles holdin’ you back so you can’t run an’ your chest heaves so bad it’s gonna burst ’cause your lungs are gonna go right through your ribs or maybe it’s the bony spikes stickin’ up from this lil’ girl’s chest thatr’re gonna go right t’rough your skin like they’s knives like de kind you c’n feel stabbin’ inta your side ’cause no body (even your body) c’n take shit like dis an’ keep goin’...

...but you are running as fast as you can and going nowhere as fast as you can and maybe if you run just a little bit faster you will be going somewhere and maybe you’ll be running away from what you saw down that stretch of tunnel and away from the smell of your own blood pumping out over your shirt and away from the sobbing of the little girl in your arms and away from your conscience REMY LEBEAU

But look at that tunnel up ahead of you, *Remy* look hard at it because it looks just like the tunnel you took to find those poor deformed people and the tunnel down which you took that beautifully efficient squad of hired killers and the tunnel you turned into a slaughterhouse and it will be the tunnel down which you will run for the rest of your life while you hold that child to your chest like she’s your last hope for salvation and not the reverse for you are her salvation Remy however much she does not deserve it but God always looks out for children and madmen and maybe God will be on the lookout for YOU one day Remy but until then you’ll just have to keep running and running down this tunnel with Creed and Scalphunter and the others behind you and your destiny before you and you’ll always be running towards this and away from it, towards and away, to and from, and there will never be any end to the circle Remy because circles don’t have ends do they?

DO THEY, REMY?

... hot, hot even though your soul freezes like the middle of winter, hot and close and thick with sewage and the stench of human waste how it oozes and grips like a fist around your-

A tunnel. He stared down it wildly, jerked, twisted, wondered why he couldn’t move. His mind blanked of everything except escape, he felt that flare deep in his gut, that burning rush along his veins and bones and tendons that meant the unleashing of his power-

"Hey, hey! Godalmightydamn, boy!" An elbow encased in cheap polyester jabbed into his side and the scent of cheap cologne and old sweat drifted through the air. "What the *hell* kind of a dream are you havin’?" Watery blue eyes glared at him from their cushion atop puffy cheeks. "Dinner wasn’t that bad, was it?"

Bewildered, Remy stared at the man from behind his sunglasses.

"You okay, pal?" the man asked, voice shifting from annoyance to concern. "That sounded like a bitch of a nightmare, if you ask me." The words quavered uncertainly and the man winced at his verbal slip. "Sorry for the cussin’," he said after a moment, and Remy only nodded, being too weak and overcome with relief to answer him any other way. His eyes slipped closed again.

The dull white-noise thrum of the 747’s engines pressed against his ears and the long tunnel of the fuselage closed around him. "Just the plane" he told himself fiercely. "Just the plane you been stuck on f’r de past six hours." Sighing, he tried to shift around in his seat, but airplane seats were one of the few things in the world even he couldn’t get comfortable in. His neck hurt a bit from the awkward position he had been in during dreamstate, and his muscles had tensed to such an extent he felt as if he’d been beaten with a two-by-four-and even then, he couldn’t remember that hurting this badly. He stretched again and ended up elbowing the man next to him, who grunted indignantly and muttered something about how they’d *better* be landing soon, or else. As if the man’s voice were a reminder, a fresh wave of bad cologne wafted over Remy and he shuddered. "Would *not* be good if I end up gettin’ claustrophobic..."

"Ladies and gentlemen," crackled the plane’s intercom, "just wanted to wake up those of you who were sleeping and let you know that we’ll be landing in Heathrow in approximately half an hour. The weather there is clear, it’s just after 6 AM, Greenwich Mean time, and we’re expecting a smooth ride in."

"Thank *God*," muttered Remy’s seatmate fervently.

"Madames et monseiurs..." began the French stewardess’s recitation.

With the announcement, Remy felt the old restlessness take hold of him again, and the minutes began to drag out like hours. Even with the sleep, useless and tormenting as it was, this had been the longest flight of his life. Thinking back on it, this was the longest time he had ever spent in one seat almost since he could remember. There had been a few longer flights, globe-hopping to Tokyo and Delhi and Istanbul with Claire and Gray Crow and even his father now and then...

Gray Crow who I sentenced to spend de rest of his life-lives, if it’s true and HE’S cloned him-as some mindless marchalong. No, he ain’t mindless... he knows ’xactly what’s happenin’ t’ him, an’ dat’s even worse...

Pere... who I ended up betrayin’ along wit de rest of the Guild... Henri, Theoren, Pierre... an’ even Belladonna, who coulda counted, if the Guilds could’ve been brought t’gether by de two of us... Ain’t there an end to it? When can I stop thinkin’ about dem?

He felt the plane descend, rocking gently, and through the window he could see the beginnings of London’s vast, brightly lit skyline and, in the distant horizon, the first hint of dawn. "Finally, finally, finally..."

Of course-and Remy kicked himself when he realized this-there wasn’t any ’finally’ about it. The plane landed after another century spent circling around London while the pilots waited for permission to land, taxied for another millennia or two from what had to be the airport in Salisbury, not Heathrow, and then (and this was the worst, because Remy was so close to freedom he could almost smell it) waiting to get *out* of the plane. He seized his single piece of carry-on luggage, in which was thoughtfully concealed some of the nicer X-ray blocking equipment that protected the codex, and almost bolted down the aisleway. He could already feel his body loosening, brushing off the time change with the same indifference with which it brushed off gravity and most basic laws of physical motion.

Much sooner than he thought, or even hoped, considering customs and the undeclared luggage he was taking through it, he got out of the endless labyrinth that made up Heathrow Airport. His car was waiting for him at the curb, and he slipped into it and began the drive north.

When he reached York, he had to ask around for a map of the area just outside the city, and out of the five maps he’d perused, only one had Haight’s Pond on it, a tiny postage-stamp of a town about a dozen long back roads away from the B1363 highway. Despite the increasing pressure of his curiosity and the vague, ill-defined need to be at St. Nathan’s as soon as possible, he found himself dawdling through the streets of York, impressed into rare silence by the looming presence of the Minster, the quick rueful thought that here was a city so much like his own beloved New Orleans (minus, of course, the heat, humidity, and spicy food): stuck somewhere between the very old and the very new, twisting brick streets almost swallowed up by new apartment buildings, reminders of the bygone days creeping in, though, where one least expected it.

"Sorta like life," he thought after leaving the city and heading north on what he could only hope was the proper highway. "It’s all new an’ shiny for a while an’ den BANG! It’s all back to de same ol’, same ol’..."

He didn’t expect to see any signs once he got out of York and went north, so he didn’t let his mind wander, however much it wanted to. The dismal temperature of the car didn’t help, either, and the cold dampness of northern English weather crept over him inexorably. Unhappily, he thought of having to go slogging through the snow and muck to a drafty monastery and-just as bad-having to spend the night there, if the darkening clouds meant a coming storm. He’d counted on being able to make it back to York and modernity that night, but that didn’t look like it was going to-

"You’re lettin’ your mind wander, idiot" he thought as he swung the car into a hard left turn. The wheels skidded out behind him, almost went into a ditch at the side of the road, but caught as the tiny vehicle surged forward, swerved a couple times, and got back onto the straight and narrow. Remy heaved a sigh of relief even as he directed a brief flow of curses at both himself and the car. When *had* this-this, this loss of control, forgetfulness, lack of awareness-happened? Why was he going downhill?

Questions for another time, and Remy strove to keep his mind of the road for once. As he turned to the northeast, the country became more rolling and open, a hint of what would soon become the northern moors. Snow patched the ground, not thick in what had become (so he understood) an unexpectedly mild winter, and the grass that poked through here and there was a half-hearted shade of greenish brown. Old farmhouses dotted the landscape, their holdings demarcated by long, twisting passages of both stone and wood fence. And the current road he was following, a tiny one-lane entity, could be seen twisting and looping to the horizon and a small, barely visible town in the distance, and the dark was rising swiftly.

It came even more swiftly than Remy’s car could move, and the evening gloom was sufficiently heavy enough to make the tiny sign saying HAIGHT’S POND stand out brightly in the headlights. The darkness was not that much a deterrent to Remy, who could see like a cat, but for the town’s citizens, evening and what was probably an approaching storm it meant an early day inside. Sighing with vexation, Remy slowed the car to a crawl and began to look for some kind of hotel. "Too much t’ hope dey have a Holiday Inn here." he thought ruefully as the car clacked and bumped over the medieval stone street.

Wonder of wonders, he came across a woman who was walking swiftly, probably bound for home. The dark in the town, even with the spill of lights from nearby windows, was so comprehensive that she was little more than a moving shadow in Remy’s headlights. She was bent over herself, shivering in her thin, unraveling excuse for a woolen coat, and almost didn’t hear Remy when he shouted for her. She did, though.

"’Ey? What do y’ want?" she demanded, sliding to a stop, arms wrapped tightly about her body. Only dignity kept her from bouncing back and forth from foot to foot, which is what Remy knew he would do if he had been in her place. "Do y’ know what time it is? Or what the weather’s like? You best be findin’ a place to call home for the night, young man."

Remy saw that she had her hair caught back in a kerchief, and this gave her face an age and severity he thought it might not otherwise have had; she sounded not very old at all, maybe thirty, although her face was lined by a life of northern weather and an outdoor life. Her dark eyes sparkled at him in the gathering night, and the light was not friendly. "First Sooze an’ now dis lady... where’re all de charm-able women goin’?" He didn’t say this aloud, but instead said, "I’m lookin’ for St. Nathan’s. Do y’ have directions?"

"St. Nathan’s!" the woman said, her impatience fading out in the presence of surprise. "Of course I know where that is, young man. Why do y’ want t’ be goin’ out there at this time of night, now?"

"Emergency," Remy said, thinking that it *was* true in a way. Number one rule in the Book of How to Lie: keep it as close to the truth as possible. Father Clay did want the codex given to Troy Marcus straightaway, didn’t he? And he wanted to be rid of it and the perverse sense of conscience and responsibility Father Clay had foisted on him along with the assignment. He thought, guiltily, of the $300,000 he had charged for his services. Where had Father Clay gotten the money? Filching from the collection plate for 50 years?

"Oh, you’re one of them as wants to speak with Dr. Marcus," the woman said, sounding both annoyed at being kept out at this time of night (and who could blame her? It was freezing) and intrigued as her gaze fastened on Remy’s sunglasses with no attempt to hide her sudden fascination-she probably figured he couldn’t see her very well with them on. "He’s always gettin’ all kinds, he is," the woman continued. "All kinds."

*Doctor* Marcus? Father Clay hadn’t mentioned that. He hadn’t had to-Remy had assumed everything for him. St. Nathan’s was a monastery, therefore Troy Marcus had to be in charge or it, or affiliated with it in some way. Doctor? Maybe he was a theological doctor, or a doctor in the way Suzette was a doctor, with ten thousand degrees attached to his name and none of them remotely medical in nature. Still, the sound of ’doctor’ sent Remy’s heart dropping somewhere into his stomach.

Doctor meant HIM. Him, Dr. Nathaniel Essex.

HIM, Sinister.

"I know what you are." Father Clay had said. "A friend... A friend to you who would not see you be harmed."

"You’ll want the third road down after you go left at that fork just out of town," the woman was saying now. "It’s kind of a bit of a ways out there, but you’ll know it when you come to it. Only big building out this ways until you come to York again, or Harrowgate."

"Left at the fork, third road down," Remy said to himself. "T’ank you, madame."

Surprisingly, she smiled; he could see it clearly. "You oughtn’t be out this time of night now, you know. Why don’t you come and spend the night with my family? We have an extra bed, it’s warm... It’s just too dark t’ be traipsin’ about on the moors, and there’s a storm coming."

"The kindness of strangers..." Aloud: "Your graciousness is overwhelmin’ cherie, but it is an emergency-promised Dr. Marcus I’d see him as soon as possible, an’ I meant ’soon as possible.’"

"Well, be careful." The warmth evaporated into the cold with astonishing speed, and the woman turned away to resume her walk back to wherever she was going. Remy nudged the car into gear, felt the engine creak reluctantly, and headed in the opposite direction, feeling the abrupt distrust radiating off the woman in waves. He sensed that-and not because *he* wanted to spend the night in a warm house and a warm bed-he had somehow given the wrong answer to her invitation.

He clacked and bumped out of town, and if possible, the road got even worse as he turned left along the fork and began to look for the third road. The darkness weighed heavily upon him, dark like a dreamless and frozen sleep- like seein’ all dose people in HIS labs, how dey be in dose holdin’ tanks, not movin’, attached to dem respirators, hooked up like Frankenstein... He shuddered at the memory, waited and watched intently for the third road. After about fifteen minutes of driving, he found it, or, what he *hoped* was it.

Minutes stretched out and contracted into meaninglessness, registered in little more than a diffuse glow from the car stereo’s digital readout. Even with his keen vision, Remy had a hard time penetrating the unrelieved blackness that pressed about the car, wrapping around it, thick and tangible like a blanket. The world dropped away outside of the pathetic beams of light issuing from the car’s headlights. Above the earth, clouds hid the moon and the stars. In the distance, visible only from the very top of a high hill, were the lights of Haight’s Pond, very desolate and alone, a tiny patch of light in the endless black.

The car’s gears creaked in protest as it descended the steep hill, and Remy found himself reflexively holding his breath as he eased down the slope. The headlights pointed almost straight down into an abyss.

"Holeee..." Remy slipped the car into a lower gear as he felt the tires catch and slide on a patch of ice. Rubber screeched in protest as the brakes caught and the rear of the car slewed over to the right. Remy’s spatial sixth-sense told him that there was nothing under the rear right wheel except empty air.

For a moment there was little more than breathless, timeless suspension. He gunned the engine, the tires screeched again, the car shot back out onto the tarmac. Expertly, Remy spun the steering wheel, guiding the car out of its dangerous zig-zag and into a stable, if swift, course down the hill. And there was nothing for it except to keep the car straight as the brakes fell away with an audible, overused groan, as the vehicle picked up speed and hurtled down the endless tunnel of its bouncing, weaving headlights.

With a terrific jolt, the front fender struck the asphalt as the car hit the bottom of the hill. Remy thought the car would flip for a moment, but it did not-instead, it bucked violently and caromed back up, coming back down on all four tires so ferociously that Remy felt his teeth cut through his tongue. Pitifully, the car rolled a few more feet under the remains of its once-great momentum, and came to a stop. The engine panted dolefully just before Remy turned off the ignition, and then came the long, exhausted sigh and creak of the suspension settling down. Remy briefly wondered what kind of shape the car’s undercarriage would be in, and how he would explain it to the rental company.

"Dis is de absolute *last* time I do somet’ing as stupid as dis" he vowed for the thousandth time, knowing that he would probably do something as stupid as driving down a blackened, deserted, and unfamiliar road in a rickety old car in the near future. If not, it would be even more stupid, if he could possibly help it. "LeBeau, you’re... what’s de word Henri always kept usin’?"

"Your problem is dat you’re too damn incorrigible, Remy," Henri said from the recesses of Remy’s mind.

"’Incorrigible’... dat’s it." Remy climbed out of the car, huddling deeply inside his jacket. The bitter cold of the moorland instantly sucked out whatever warmth he had accumulated from being inside the car, even given that the heater did not work well. His coat, which was the warmest thing he possessed, suddenly became woefully inadequate to the task of retaining body heat. Disconsolate, Remy stamped and snorted, trying to move around to keep active and keep from hyperventilating.

And as he stalked restlessly around the car, moving past the bright beams of the headlights, he saw it.

It was huge from where he stood, a massive stone edifice that loomed even more darkly than the night around him, a black hulk shaped in the form of two towers, a steeple, a long wall like a rampart. He could see moon-silvered clouds through crenellation in the very tops of the towers, see the dark outline of a bell. He could see the very tops of trees that rose above the height of the wall, ancient trees with withered, skeletally finger-like limbs that scratched at the air.

St. Nathan’s? Even if it wasn’t, he was going there. It had to be warmer than the car, certainly warmer than this exposed patch of road. And there would be food... Remy’s stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast that morning, an Egg McMuffin he’d grabbed in York. McDonald’s in northern England... It was like Disney World in France, somehow. Something intruding where it didn’t need to be.

It was like Remy felt now, a stranger and hopelessly foreign, made even more alien by being the only living thing venturing out on an inhuman night like this, with the cold wind and the starless sky. The world, vast, cold, and indifferent, loomed around him and he felt very small, dwindled down almost to nothing. Remy took up the book bag with the codex and began to walk straight for the building, feeling more exposed than he ever had in his life. This dark was not friendly to him-so often it was like second skin, the shadow, the night, but here it was inimical. He would drown in it.

The digital watch on his wrist told him it had been twenty minutes of walking before he made it around the building to what he could only guess was the front door. Twenty minutes? Twenty hours? Frozen and chattering, Remy decided that there was no difference between the two and, raising a shaking hand, he knocked upon the door.

His knock echoed pitifully against the heavy oak, so weak it surely couldn’t have penetrated the wood. But he waited, strangely breathless, vulnerable, hoping.

After a time, five minutes by his watch, there was a shuffle, a scraping and the clank and creak of a very, very old lock opening. The heavy door groaned on ancient hinges and the oak rubbed against the stones of the floor. Weak light, flickering and dancing like the kind that came from candles, filtered out of the opening, along with an exhausted and unexpected voice.

"Wha..? Another visitor? An’ this time a’ night?"

The man’s face was dark, but not with shadow. He was black, almost lustrously so in the dim light, and his accent was American-southern, blurred with a touch of Carolina or Florida, but not with quite the drawl of the Mississippi. And he was tall-Remy could see this as the man stepped more fully into view and his sensitive eyes adjusted to the light-and slender, dressed in a long robe and slippers and carrying a lantern which he held up uncertainly to inspect the newcomer.

"Who’re you?" the man asked, but the question was not demanding. He sounded enthralled, and maybe a little curious.

"I’m Remy leBeau," Remy answered, overcoming his own shock. The man-or at least his appearance-was not what he had expected. Exhaustion filtered in through the surprise, not giving him the chance to regain his equilibrium, and he found himself fumbling uncertainly in the puddle of light cast by the man’s lantern. "I’m from Father Clay in New York City. He said dat I had t’ give you dis..." He trailed off, indicating the back pack he held. "Dat is, if you are Troy Marcus an’ dis is St. Nathan’s."

"Oh, *you’re* Remy leBeau!" the man said, sounding genuinely shocked and contrite. "Ah’m so sorry-from Robert’s message, we weren’t s’posed t’ be expectin’ ya until sometime tomorrow. We honestly had no idea you’d come so quick. Come in, come in." He stepped aside and waved Remy past him, saying, "Ah’m Troy Marcus, as well, prior of St. Nathan’s. Welcome to it."

Blessed warmth sank into Remy’s bones, a deep warmth that might have been exhaled from the stones themselves. He felt his entire body relax, and with that relaxation came the realization that he had spent so many days running, walking, flying, on the move... He was tired. He wavered uncertainly.

Troy Marcus saw this immediately, and his dark eyes sparkled with something approaching sympathy. "You’re prob’ly dog-tired," he said, steering Remy down the long, echoing hallway with one hand. The lantern swung from the other, creating shifting, distorting shadows that played along the walls and knotted in the wooden rafters overhead. "We got a guest room ready for ya just down the hallway here, an’ we can talk t’morrow when you’re more rested. Don’t you get jet lag? Maybe you’re just feelin’ it now, don’t know, but damn, boy, you look like hell. Here we are now, here, here... in with ya. Did ya bring a suitcase? Everything in here? No? Nothin’? Well, I’ll find ya somethin’. Dominic, he’s about your size, I think. Now here, you just lay down nice an’ easy, kick them boots a’ yours off..."