Greywalker - Kat Richardson [96]
We got out of the car in silence and walked. I had no idea who Madison Forrest had been or why his house had become a historic building and museum, but it was an impressive pile. The foundation and ground floor were built of fitted stone. The second floor and the high, pointing gables were all native cedar. Lots of glass windows shone under the wooden overhangs and must have cost a fortune when the house was built. Four gas lamps, now converted to electricity, bracketed the path from the open iron gate to the front doors. Like the Danzigers’ house, it glowed, but the glow wasn’t so friendly.
Mara stopped and looked at the ground. “I didn’t realize there was a nexus of this size on this side of the lake. It’s just a bit off the property, about . . . here, in the street.” She stepped out a few feet from the curb. “And I can’t even draw on it standing right on top of it. I’m not at all sure there isn’t something rather unpleasant going on here. Maybe even the power blockage. Take a look at it sideways, like I taught you. Tell me what you see.”
I peered at it from the corner of my eye. The off-color glow of the house seemed to start under her feet, like a fog that wafted toward the house. “It looks . . . sick to me.”
“Funny way to describe it.”
I shrugged and tried not to look anymore.
We walked up the path to the massive, carved cedar doors. Mara and I paid the entrance fee and began to wander around. After a while, we found the upstairs parlor and the organ. It was hideous: six feet of tortured wood flecked with ivory, bone, and gilt and upholstered with garish red fabric panels, all of it wrapped in a sucking web of black and red energy I couldn’t avoid seeing. I stayed well back from the instrument, feeling ill and threatened.
“Is this it?” Mara asked, staring at it with horrified fascination.
“I think so.” I got the description sheet out of my bag and compared it as best I could from my distance. It seemed an exact match.
“Oh, my,” she breathed. “It’s dreadful, isn’t it?”
“It’s pretty terrible,” I agreed, feeling pain and nausea growing in my belly as a familiar anxiety began to rattle on my vertebrae. I closed my eyes, but the sense of the coiling horror in front of me didn’t go away.
“No, I mean it’s full of dread, though it’s terrible, too. It’s horrific, really. It gives me the wailing creepies just looking at it.”
“What do you think of it?” I asked.
“Interesting.” She made a glittering gesture and threw it at the organ. It dissolved as it hit the writhing mass of Grey. “Swallowed it . . . Very interesting, indeed. I think I’ve seen enough, what about you?”
I circled a little closer to the thing, like a wary cat, getting a better look at its shape, both physical and paranormal, while trying to keep my distance. It was impossible for me to ignore the warped, twined normal and Grey that had tangled around it, though I couldn’t imagine what had caused their knotting up. Sympathetic knots tied up my nerves and muscles with pain, disgust, and despair.
“I’ve had enough,” I gasped, backing off. “Let’s get out of here.”
Mara looked at me and saw my distress. She put an arm around me, which seemed to help. We hurried back to her car and sat in the front seats, staring back at the Madison Forrest House with combined horror.
Mara shook her head. “There’s an incredible amount of energy flowing round that thing, but none of it seems to be going anywhere. That must be the source of the blockage. And it’s so . . . dark. I’ve never seen an artifact that was dark like that one before. Of course, I’ve rarely dealt with them, so I’m no expert.”
“Artifact? I don’t understand.”
She turned to me. “It’s a dark artifact. That’s an object that’s acquired an energy aura. They store some of the energy, and if you know what you’re at, you can use it—directly or indirectly, depending on your skill and the object. You can tell a great deal about the object and what’s happened to it by looking at the color, size, and activity of the energy