Dead Waters - Anton Strout [77]
When we reached the room full of film equipment once more, Connor spoke up, using his full voice now that we knew we were alone here. “Why the hurry, kid?”
“You don’t find this place creepy?” I asked.
Connor shrugged. “Not really,” he said. “I mean, nothing has tried to kill us in here yet.”
“Call me crazy,” I said, “but I actually take comfort when I have something tangible to deal with, something I can take a bat to. Getting a spooky feeling just gets under my skin, especially when nothing stands out.”
Connor laughed. “That is crazy,” he said.
Jane interrupted the sound of his laughter. “None of this explains why Professor Redfield was killed,” she said. “Or any of those ghosts you mentioned.”
“She’s right,” I said, “but here’s a theory: maybe he set up his crazy film studio too close to her ship-sinking business. Maybe the professor awoke her ancient spirit while making his documentary or something.”
“Maybe,” Connor said, “but if she killed him for his knowledge of her, wouldn’t she have destroyed all this, too?”
“Probably,” I said, “but let’s look around. There may be something here that’s of use to us.”
We spread out around the room, picking through the film equipment for anything that didn’t look like the professor had accumulated it from the film department of NYU. I went over to a long table along the right side of the room that was cluttered with bits and pieces of broken wood. I put on my gloves as I shifted them around. Peeking out from beneath two of the boards was a white, halfrusted plate with the letters SLO carved into it. The rest of the piece was torn away beyond the O. I pulled it out from underneath everything else and held it up for Connor to see. “This looks promising, yes?” I asked.
“We’re definitely taking that with us,” Connor said, over by the film projector set up in the center of the room. “Make sure you bring it to the boat.” He pulled out his flashlight and started examining the machine.
“What are you doing?” I said. “You want to watch movies, we’ve got stadium seating back in Manhattan.”
“I’m trying to figure out how to unthread this film reel to pack it up and take it with us,” he said. “It’s the last thing the professor was working on. Maybe it will give us some insight.”
“Thank God you don’t want to watch it here,” Jane said, nervous. She wrapped her arms around herself.
“Not here, no,” Connor confirmed. “I don’t want to hang out here any longer than we have to, especially if more of those river-bottom zombies come knocking. The professor was passionate about film. Let’s take it out of here and see where his passions really lay.”
21
The boat made it back to the docks over by Chelsea Piers even though I thought the engine and motor might have been clogged with aqua-zombie bits from earlier. Cleaning the guts and ichor off it would have to wait. After tying off, the three of us headed back and reported to the Inspectre about Mason’s secret film-production lighthouse. When we showed him the film canister, he insisted on kicking all the norms out of the Lovecraft’s theater as the credits on The Picture of Dorian Gray rolled.
A fair number of agents from a variety of divisions gathered in the theater, along with most of Other Division and some faces I recognized from some of my Fraternal Order of Goodness training sessions. The Inspectre watched the theater fill up before looking down at the film reel in his hands. Jane, looking a little more tired now that we were off the water, collapsed into one of the theater seats in the middle of a row halfway back.
“I’ll take care of loading the film,” the Inspectre said, lifting up the canister. “See to the girl.”
I nodded. “You know how to run the projector?” I asked him as I sat down next to her.
“Can’t be that hard, can it?” he scoffed. “I’ve solved the riddle of the cube at Astor Place, fought the Geissman Guard. . .”
“You also got lost in the Black Stacks at Tome, Sweet Tome for half an hour,” Connor reminded him.
The Inspectre