The Third Gate

30

“How long will it last?” Logan asked Ethan Rush. It was evening, and they were traversing the near-deserted corridors of Maroon.

“The productive period, you mean?” Rush replied. “Five minutes, if we’re lucky. The lead-in period is much longer.”

He stopped beside a closed, unmarked door, then turned back to Logan. “There are a few ground rules. Keep your voice low. Speak slowly and calmly. Make no sudden movements. Don’t do anything to disturb or alter the ambient environment-no brightening or dimming lights, no moving chairs or equipment. Understand?”

“Perfectly.”

Rush nodded his satisfaction. “At the Center, we’ve learned that crossings are most successful if triggered by the environment of an NDE.”

“The environment? I’m not sure I understand.”

“Simulating the actual experience. This is done via a medically induced coma-very light, of course. Along with psychomantetical techniques. You’ll see what I mean.”

Logan nodded. He knew that psychomanteums were rooms or booths, frequently mirrored and very dark, constructed in such a way as to induce a trance or state of psychical openness in the occupant, thus helping enable a portal, or conduit, to the spirit world. Psychomanteums had been developed by the ancient Greeks, and several still operated in the present day in America and around the world, helping-many believed-people contact the spirits of those who had moved on. Logan had thought about the mirror he’d seen in the testing chamber that first day, with Jennifer and Ethan Rush. It had been one of the things that led to his deduction of why Jennifer Rush was at the Station.

“Do you induce the Ganzfeld effect?” he asked.

Rush looked at him curiously. “The meds make that unnecessary. Now, please observe everything closely. Keep your comments to a minimum until we speak afterward. The more you know, the better equipped you’ll be to-to help her.”

Logan nodded.

“One other thing. Don’t expect revelations. Don’t even expect what you hear to make sense. Sometimes we need to analyze a transcript for some time afterward before we understand-if we ever do.” With this, Rush opened the door and quietly stepped inside.

Logan followed. He recognized the room. There was the hospital bed, with its banks of medical and other instrumentation. There was the large mirror on the wall beyond the bed, polished to a brilliant gleam. The lighting was just as dim as it had been the first time he’d seen the room.

And, once again, Jennifer Rush lay on the bed, garbed in a hospital gown. EKG lines snaked away from her arms and chest; many more electroencephalograph leads were attached to her head. The red and gray stripes of the medical leads looked out of place against her cinnamon-colored hair. A peripheral IV line was fixed to the inside of one wrist. She glanced at Rush, glanced at Logan, smiled faintly. Her eyes had a vague look, as if she was sedated.

To Logan’s surprise, Stone was standing at the head of the bed, one hand on Jennifer’s shoulder. He gave it a reassuring pat, then stepped away. He nodded at Logan, turned to Rush.

“You’ll ask her?” he said in a low voice. “About the gate?”

“Yes,” Rush replied.

Stone looked at him a moment more, as if considering speaking further. Then he simply nodded his good-bye and quietly left the room.

Rush indicated for Logan to take a seat near the head of the bed. For perhaps five minutes Rush busied himself connecting various pieces of equipment, calibrating monitors, checking displays. Logan sat quietly, taking in everything. The room smelled faintly of sandalwood incense and myrrh.

At last, Rush approached the bed, hypodermic in hand. “Jen,” he said softly, “I’m going to administer the propofol now.”

There was no response. Rush inserted the needle into the connecting hub of the IV cannula. Jennifer went as still as death. Glancing at the instrumentation over the head of the bed, Logan saw her blood pressure dip, her respiration and pulse slow almost by half.

Rush carefully monitored her physical state from the devices at the foot of the bed. Neither man spoke a word. After several minutes, Jennifer stirred slightly; Rush immediately took two leads with cotton disks at their ends and affixed one to each of her temples.

Logan glanced at him in mute inquiry.

“Cortical stimulator,” Rush replied. “Encourages pineal activity.”

Logan nodded. He knew studies had demonstrated the pineal gland’s neurochemical effects on previsualization and psychic activity.

Rush returned to the forest of monitoring devices at the foot of the bed. For another minute or two he watched as his wife slowly drifted back into semiconsciousness. Then he came forward again and inserted a second needle into the IV’s connecting hub.

“More propofol?” Logan asked in a quiet voice.

Rush shook his head. “Versed. For its amnesiac effect.”

Amnesiac effect? Logan wondered. Why?

Approaching the head of the bed, Rush slipped two items out of the pockets of his lab coat. One, Logan saw, was an ophthalmoscope. The other, to his surprise, was an ancient-looking amulet of untarnished silver, a small white candle set into its upper edge. Rush examined her pupils with the ophthalmoscope, then lit the candle and gently dangled the amulet from its chain, between Jennifer Rush’s face and the mirror.

“I want you to stare at the amulet,” Dr. Rush said, his voice a low, soothing murmur. “See nothing else. Visualize nothing else. Think of nothing else.”

He continued murmuring instructions. Logan recognized this: a standard hypnosis tool known as an eye-fixation induction text. But then, the text changed.

“Now,” Rush said, “breathe slowly, deeply. Let your limbs go limp. Relax your neck. Relax your shoulders. Relax your arms: first the fingers, then the wrists, then the lower arms, and then the upper. Relax your feet. Relax your legs.”

For a minute, maybe two, there was no sound in the room save for Jennifer Rush’s soft breathing.

“And now, relax your mind. Let it go free. Let your consciousness slip from your body. Leave it an empty shell, unpossessed.”

In the sandalwood-fragrant room, Logan watched. After another minute, Rush blew out the candle and put the amulet aside. Quietly, he walked back to the foot of the bed, examined the instrumentation. Then he returned to her side, waiting.

Jennifer Rush’s breathing grew louder, almost stertorous. The room seemed to darken, as if strange, antique mists were gathering.

All of a sudden, Logan became alarmed. He did not know why it was, not exactly-but for some reason his fight-or-flight instinct began to go off, five-alarm. It was all he could do not to leap to his feet and run from the room. He felt his heart hammering, struggled to get himself under control.

From the bed, her breathing grew more labored.

Rush turned on a digital voice recorder, which he placed on a nearby tray. Slowly, he bent over the bed. “Who am I speaking to?”

Jennifer’s mouth worked, as if trying to form words. Logan saw her hands ball into fists, as if from the effort.

“Who am I speaking to?” Rush asked again.

A hissing sound emanated from Jennifer Rush. “ Nut,” she said in a dry, distant voice. Or perhaps it was “Set”-Logan could not be sure. All he knew was that merely speaking this syllable clearly took enormous effort.

“Who am I speaking to?” Rush asked a third time.

Again, Jennifer’s mouth worked. “Mmm… mouthpiece… of Horus.”

Rush adjusted the recorder, seemingly encouraged.

But Logan did not feel encouraged. It wasn’t only the chill sense of evil that had come over the room, all too similar to what he’d experienced the day of the generator fire. It was also the evident strain, both physical and emotional, that Jennifer was undergoing.

“Can you tell me about the seal?” Rush asked. “The first gate?”

“The… first… gate,” she repeated.

“Yes,” Rush replied. “What should we-”

Suddenly, Jennifer’s eyes bulged, their whites a sickly green in the faint light of the instrumentation. The tendons of her neck stood out like cables. “Infidels!” she said. “Enemies of Ra!” Her head rose menacingly from the bed; a half dozen of the EEG leads popped loose and fell away. “Leave this place. Or else He Whose Face Is Turned Backwards will feed upon thy blood and take the milk from the mouths of thy children. The foundations of thy house will be broken, and thou will die an endless death in the Outer Darkness!”

Logan rose quickly from his chair. Her voice was infinitely more awful for being a mere hissing whisper. Instinctively, he put a hand out to calm her. But the moment his skin touched hers, he was staggered by a flash almost like lightning: he felt the presence again, implacable, violently angry, its hatred radiating toward them from the blackness of the abyss. With a groan of dismay he sank back into the chair.

As quickly as it began, the imprecation ceased. Jennifer Rush fell silent. Her head sank back to the pillow and lolled to one side.

“That’s it,” Rush said. He snapped off the recorder, returned to the monitors at the foot of the bed. He seemed oblivious to the brief but terrible drama Logan had experienced.

Logan passed a hand over his forehead. “Is that-typical?”

Rush shook his head. “The very first crossing-the first that made contact, I mean-was actually beneficial. It helped pinpoint the location of the tomb with greater accuracy by providing a point of triangulation. But after that…” Rush sighed. “It’s almost as if the entity now understands who we are, why we’re here.”

Logan glanced at Jennifer Rush, supine on the bed. Now he felt even more like a fool: assuming such experiences had been pleasant for her, congratulating her on her abilities. He looked back at Rush. “Is all this trauma really… really necessary?”

Rush returned the look. “Most spiritual exchanges at the psychomanteums back at CTS are pleasant. But then, they usually involve loved ones who have recently passed over. This… this is a very different animal. Remember that Jennifer won’t have much memory of the actual crossing. That’s what the Versed is for. We’ll try a few more crossings in the days to come. If they aren’t of any additional help, then…” He shrugged.

Logan glanced back at the woman on the bed. He knew that some people, particularly March, thought she was faking, grandstanding-perhaps at the urging of her husband, who after all as head of CTS had something to gain. But after seeing this crossing in person, he felt absolutely sure there was no fakery. Something-someone-had been speaking to them through Jennifer Rush. Someone who was very angry indeed.

Rush made a few notes on a clipboard, snapped off some instrumentation. “She’ll rest comfortably now,” he said. “As you’ll discover, she rebounds very quickly.” He pointed at the equipment arrayed before him. “Jeremy, I want to input some of this data into the computer right away. Would you mind staying with her for a minute or two while I get the analysis started?”

“Of course.” Logan watched as Rush picked up his digital recorder, then left the room.

For a minute, perhaps two, all was quiet. Logan, still shaken, tried to calm himself, tried to focus on evaluating and understanding what had just happened. Then there was a faint movement from the bed and he glanced over to see Jennifer Rush looking at him.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

She just shook her head. Then, suddenly, she reached out and grasped his wrist, tightly, almost painfully. He tensed for a moment, fearing another explosion of sensation, but there was nothing.

“Dr. Logan,” she said, her silky voice low and urgent, “when we spoke in the lounge, I told you I experienced what everyone else who ‘goes over’ does.”

“Yes,” he replied.

“And that’s true. I did-at first. But then I saw things that were completely different. Completely different.”

Her grasp grew even tighter, and her amber eyes held his own. There was something in those eyes, in that face, he couldn’t read.

“Help me,” she suddenly whispered, almost below the threshold of audibility. “Help me.”

The door handle rattled. Immediately, Jennifer Rush released her hold on his wrist. She kept her gaze on him for another few seconds. Then, as the door opened and Rush stepped in, she slowly lay back on the bed-and passed out.