The Portal

  RUSSELL JAMES

  The Portal

  FLAME TREE PRESS

  London & New York

  •

  For Christy,

  For putting up with all that being married to a writer entails.

  Chapter One

  1720

  At minutes before midnight, five matches flared in the darkness, and then five tallow candles flickered to life.

  The dim yellow flames illuminated a large circle etched into the drafty barn’s dirt floor. The circle encompassed two triangles, one inverted upon the other, all six sides radically concave. An upside-down wooden cross impaled the ground at the star’s center. The musty air smelled of dried dung.

  Five girls carried their candles to their designated points on the circle. Providence Neely’s wick’s amber glow lit her face, which brimmed with anticipation. In moments, Mr. Blackwell, agent from the East India Company, would fulfill his promise and whisk her and the others on a journey to a place far away, where sermons did not fill each Sunday, where drink and dance were not forbidden. They would exercise control over all creatures that walked the Earth, and they would be forever young.

  Beside her, Sarah Rogers giggled. Providence stopped herself from slapping the stupid girl. If Sarah’s barn had not been the place the East India man had selected for the ritual, Providence would have never let the silly, freckled girl into the group. One of the other girls shushed Sarah.

  Thoughts of Mr. Blackwell swirled in Providence’s head. Though stout and bald, he was somehow captivating. His presence set a fire between her legs she’d never felt before, a fire he promised in private to quench, after the girls opened the Portal to the magic place beyond.

  “This is the time,” Providence began, “and this is the place Mr. Blackwell chose. Are you ready to commit yourselves to his service?”

  “Yes, we are ready,” the girls answered together.

  “Are you prepared for the Cleansing,” she asked, “to strip away the impurities heaped upon you by the church and your families?”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “Then clear your minds.”

  Providence went to a stall in the rear of the barn. On the ground lay a burlap sack adorned with the gold twin-lion crest of the East India Company. She knelt, opened it, and pulled out the Portal, a disk three feet across, carved in thick, polished cherry. The symbol from the barn floor covered the center, inlaid in actual gold. Each triangle point hosted a picture of a strange, unrecognizable creature. Mr. Blackwell had taken her to find it, washed up on the shore outside Stone Harbor. Its arrival was a mystery, Mr. Blackwell’s refusal to touch it even more so. He explained this was the door to his kingdom, and the girls were the key to unlock it.

  The far doors to the barn flew open. A mob of men with blazing torches charged in. The girls screamed. The torches’ flames overpowered the candles’ dim light and the girls squinted against the sudden brightness.

  Providence gritted her teeth at the sight of the Stone Harbor elders. The men were armed, two with muskets, the rest with knives, pitchforks, one a rusty whaling spear. Reverend Snow, the aged, scrawny windbag, led the pack, ever-present Bible clasped against his chest. His eyes burned with his usual self-righteous fire.

  “There!” He pointed his bony finger at the cowering girls and their flickering candles. “Just as I warned you! Witchcraft afoot in Stone Harbor!”

  Providence doused her candle and ducked into the stall’s shadow. She shoved the Portal back into the burlap sack and dragged it over to her feet.

  Sarah’s father muscled his way to the front of the group. His hard, angry face melted into shocked disbelief as he recognized his daughter at the strange symbol in the dirt.

  “Sarah? How…how could you…?”

  Sarah dropped her candle and scrambled over to her father’s feet. She wrapped her arms around his legs. Her face, white with fear, turned up to face his.

  “Father, it wasn’t me!” she implored. “’Twas the East India man. He bewitched us.”

  “Did I not warn you all?” Reverend Snow said. “That man’s promises to make us a great seaport were falsehoods.”

  “We are but his pawns,” Sarah said. “Surely compelled we are, by him and by Providence.”

  Providence wanted to beat the whiny weakling with the Portal. Sarah had never been worthy of following Mr. Blackwell.

  “Providence is here?” Reverend Snow said.

  “She’s the full witch,” Sarah said. “Not me. She rides a broomstick and speaks black magic to cats.”

  Providence knew that pack of lies would earn her a perfunctory trial and a death by pressing. She needed to get out of here now. She hoisted the heavy sack, grasped it to her chest and stole out the rear door and into the night.

  A blast of cold wind off the harbor whipped her long skirt around her legs. She clenched the ponderous sack tight and ran for the sheep pasture. Behind her, torches lit the night as some of the elders left the barn.

  In spite of her pounding heart, she tried to think clearly. Above the other four girls, Mr. Blackwell had entrusted her with the Portal, and with special instructions for its care. Should the Cleansing be unfinished, she had to hide it, to keep it out of the hands of the reverend and the others. Mr. Blackwell promised to keep her under his protection forever if she would protect the Portal.

  She crossed the pasture at a run. The sack seemed to gain weight with each step as her arms grew tired. Bleating sheep scattered ahead of her. As the sheep’s cries rolled down toward the barn, the clamor of men’s voices echoed back in reply.

  “She’s up there!”

  “Grab her, brother! Use care for her spells!”

  She cut right and entered the forest. The autumn’s bare branches reached for her like goblin hands from the darkness, each revealing itself a split second before ensnaring her. She ducked and weaved, but one branch snagged her skirt at the knee, and ripped it all the way down to the hem. Then another branch whipped against her cheek and drew blood. From behind her came the sound of men charging across the pasture. Their voices grew louder as they closed on the forest.

  Her heart seemed about to burst, her leg muscles burned. The Portal felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. She sagged against a tree and scanned the forest for a hiding place.

  Moonlight lit a large, flat piece of shale amongst the fallen oak leaves. She stumbled over, dropped the sack beside the rock, and fell to her knees. Her hands shook as she grabbed the stone’s sharp corner and pulled with all her strength. The stone yielded and revealed a patch of soft, dark earth. With her bare hands, she attacked the ground. Her nails split and tore as she dug through roots and rocks. She scraped a shallow grave for the Portal.

  Sheep again bleated a warning. Torches flickered at the forest’s edge. She tossed the sack in the hole. It was just deep enough. She grabbed the rock and heaved it back over the exposed earth. It landed with a sharp crack. The edge of the stone shattered, leaving a jagged border along one side. She kicked the soggy leaves back over the rock. Trickles of icy sweat ran down her face. She stood and raised her chin in triumph.

  I did it, she thought. I saved the Portal. Its resting place shall never pass my lips. My East India man will shield me from their torments. Even if they capture me, no stones will crush my chest. Mr. Blackwell will rescue me. I know he will.

  Leaves rustled at her feet. A flash of tan and copper lunged at her exposed leg. Twin spikes of pain lanced her calf as a copperhead snake clamped onto her leg. She dropped to one knee with a scream. The snake released her, slithered off, and coiled a few feet away.

  Her leg went numb. Panic surged within her. She knew that many
had died of copperhead snakebite. But didn’t snakes slumber this late in the fall?

  The heavy shuffle of a dozen feet through the detritus of the forest floor came closer. Torches bobbed between the thick tree trunks. The voices grew louder, but the words less distinct as the poison made Providence’s head spin.

  What grievous fate befalls me? Providence thought. How can this happen? All he asked, I have done.

  She collapsed to the ground. All around her went dark. Her last breath passed her lips, and she wondered why her East India man had not protected her.

  * * *

  A little higher on the hill, Mr. Blackwell, as he called himself this time, stood in the shadow of a great glacial boulder. A broad black hat shielded the stocky man’s face from the cold; only his chin and black goatee poked out from its shadow.

  With a sweeping hand gesture, he sent the copperhead retreating into the woods to return to its interrupted hibernation. Blackwell was indeed there to protect, just not to protect Providence.

  This window of opportunity had closed. But the Portal lay safe. He’d be back in a few hundred years. Immortality bred amazing patience.

  Chapter Two

  2020

  A persistent fog still blanketed Stone Harbor, though by 9 a.m. it should have long burned off. It suited dockmaster Charlie Cauble just fine. As far as he was concerned, the fog’s embrace brought comfort, not the eerie unease mainlanders associated with it.

  It also slowed down the boat traffic, and that was fine with him as well. He pumped gas from the dock house at the pier’s end, but he didn’t work on commission, so less work didn’t bother him at all. Not that there was much work after fall rolled in anyway. The thrice-a-day ferry service to the island cut down to twice a week after Labor Day. The pleasure boats from Long Island and New England that made the thirty-mile run either way had all nestled in boatyard cradles for the winter. Commercial fishing, like he used to do, collapsed in the mid-1960s with the crash of the cod. Some winter days, he happily spent eight hours without interruption. His old bones didn’t mind the respite.

  With hands long gnarled by life on the sea, he pulled his heavy corduroy coat tighter against the still-chilly air inside the dock house. He flipped on the radio to the AM station out of Rhode Island that carried daily rants about government conspiracies and a damn accurate weather forecast. A tinny voice fought its way through the static to announce the market prices for a lengthy list of fish. Charlie clicked on the coffee maker for the first pot of the day.

  The radio announcer’s voice suddenly sounded like it got twisted sideways. A burst of static obliterated the signal. A high-pitched whine faded in, then out. The announcer’s voice returned with a Bruins hockey score.

  An engine rumbled off in the fog. Charlie raised an eyebrow. He’d memorized the burble of every local boat in the harbor. This one wasn’t one of them.

  He listened harder, past the gurgle of the coffeepot. The low, loping rumble meant twin engines, idling in the fog with a tiger’s bass growl. The unseen ship had massive power lurking one stab of the throttle away, big V8s, over four hundred cubes. Big thirsty V8s, he thought. He flipped on the power to the pumps, stepped outside, and peered into the swirling mist.

  The boat materialized just to the right of the dock. A sharp black bow, only a few feet above the waves, nosed out of the gray. Then the long, sleek twin hull of a glossy speedboat appeared out of the gloom. A low mid-ship cabin, wrapped in blacked-out windows, tapered back into an open rear cockpit.

  She idled up at dead slow, left no wake. The boat slid past him. Each sharp pop of the exhaust spit an angry, oily slug of cooling water back into the harbor. The name on the transom in gold script letters read:

  Killin’ Time

  Charlie’s skin crawled. It was the same feeling he had when he was out on the Atlantic, and the advancing line of clouds loomed large and dark.

  The ship’s engines roared in reverse for a second, and then shut down. The boat did not stop and drift. It froze, perfectly aligned with two pier pilings. Water lapped the hull, but the ship did not move. Goose bumps rose along his arms. In a lifetime near the sea, Charlie had never seen the likes of that.

  The door at the back of the cabin popped open. A squat but beefy man stepped out. He was bald, with a black moustache and goatee. Despite the fog’s dim light, he had on a pair of round, rimless dark glasses. He wore black pants and a black long-sleeve shirt, the polar opposite of the usual tourist-faux-nautical attire. His shirt’s open neck exposed a ropy gold chain.

  The man went to the bow and picked up a black nylon line. He walked to the stern and picked up a second line secured there. He stepped up onto the dock. Every other boat on the sea would have bobbed when someone with this visitor’s girth stepped off it. The Killin’ Time remained deathly still.

  The man in black whipped the lines around cleats on the dock. The lines hung limp. He started toward Charlie. Charlie swallowed hard and his palms began to sweat.

  “Charlie, how ya doin’?” asked the stranger. The hairs on the back of Charlie’s neck stood straight up at the unnerving familiarity.

  The man’s voice rumbled and scraped like rocks on an iron plate. His accent hailed from deep within Brooklyn. He grinned as he held out his hand, a grin somehow completely uninviting, devoid of warmth, more rictus than smile.

  Charlie shook the man’s hand in vacant reflex. The visitor’s hand was cold, normal coming off the water this early. But this hand was lifeless cold, like a fish on ice. He dropped it immediately. The man in black’s grin grew slightly wider, as if they’d just shared a secret.

  “Joey Oates,” the man said, introducing himself. “You top her off for me while I visit a pal, okay?”

  “Yeah, s-sure,” Charlie stammered. A rising tide of black dread threatened to drown him.

  Joey tapped his fish-hand against Charlie’s cheek.

  “That’s good,” he said with condescending approval. “We’re gonna have a good relationship while I’m here. I can sense these things.”

  Joey Oates turned and headed down the dock toward Main Street. The fog enveloped him and he vanished. Charlie shivered.

  He quickly topped off the Killin’ Time and headed back into his small office. He already decided he wasn’t asking Oates to pay. If he volunteered it, Charlie would take it, of course. He got the feeling that asking Oates for anything would be a bad idea. He looked out the window. An isolating wall of gray obscured the view of the town.

  “Jesus, why doesn’t the damn fog burn off?” he said to himself. “Who needs all this fog?”

  A ferry full of tourists sounded pretty good to him right now.

  Chapter Three

  Allie Layton woke up feeling all right. Not great, but all right, and all right was a major achievement.

  She pulled open the curtains on her bedroom’s sliding glass door. Fog masked the rest of the world. The muffled, soothing whoosh of breaking waves drifted up from the unseen rocky beach at her property’s edge. She sighed at the fog’s comforting insulation. The rest of the world was at least thirty miles away from the island. The fog made it seem even farther, as if the world ended just beyond her back patio. Right now, that was as much world as she needed.

  She’d felt just the opposite growing up in Stone Harbor. The island bred claustrophobia. The small town, virtually unchanged since the 1960s, scared her, made her fear that she too was destined to remain small. The ocean she saw now as protection then had been a barrier, a living creature intent on constricting her dreams until they suffocated.

  Ten years made a difference. Now the relaxing, repetitive pounding of the surf all night and waking to the fresh, tangy smell of the Atlantic made each day fresher, cleaner than the hazy daybreak over the Los Angeles foothills had ever been. It didn’t hurt that this furnished summer house she leased from a mainlander was only six years old and sparked no memories. Not
hing in the place reminded her of anything. She could be someplace new while being someplace old.

  She padded into the bathroom and flicked on the light. The wrinkles around her brown eyes were a few years early, the dark circles underneath still more pronounced than she wanted to admit. But she looked better than she did before rehab at Santa Linda Valley, and way better than she did in her infamous LAPD mug shot, an internet favorite when anyone searched celebrity arrests.

  She twirled her long dark hair into a knot and clipped it in place. It had grown in thick and full after she’d shaved her head into a Mohawk that last crazy night. And then dyed it green. Santa Linda Valley had shaved the rest as a courtesy when her agent checked her in. Her hair had helped make her famous, but she liked it in spite of that.

  Allie had the misfortune of fulfilling her dreams. After moving from the island to attend her freshman year studying drama at UCLA, she landed some small parts in cheesy commercials. Her long, silky black hair and soft brown eyes made for a great headshot, and a curvy body sealed the deal for a number of small roles. The break came months later when she landed a supporting, then starring, role in the afternoon soap Malibu Beach. She dropped out of college. Millions tuned in each day to see Allison Layton play good girl Britney Daniels and her battle against the revolving cast of two-dimensional villains bent on turning her life upside-down.

  Money, fame, and fans poured in. She acquired all the trappings of Hollywood success: a mansion in the hills, a personal trainer, a Jag convertible, a romance with a high-profile actor, and finally, slavery to a very expensive, illegal habit.

  She told Santa Linda counselors many reasons why she started using cocaine. She was always tired, it helped her keep off the weight, and in Hollywood, it was as easy to find as a Starbucks. She told her agent she tried it first on a whim, like grabbing a cookie when passing through the kitchen. All through rehab, she kept to that lie. At any rate, deep addiction soon supplanted her true initial reason, escape.