The Dark River

They stepped around the African drums and ebony statues of tribal gods and pregnant women. Winston pushed back a cloth banner advertising a drum festival in Stonehenge, revealing a reinforced steel door set into the brick wall. He unlocked the door, and they entered an apartment of four rooms attached to a single hallway. The front room had a folding cot and two television monitors that showed images of the shop and the entrance to the catacombs. Gabriel continued down the hallway past a small kitchen and a bathroom to a windowless bedroom with a chair, desk, and cast-iron bed. This had been his home for the last three days.

Mother Blessing opened up the kitchen cabinet and took out a bottle of Irish whiskey. Winston followed Gabriel into the bedroom. “Are you hungry, Mr. Gabriel?”

“Not right now, Winston. I’ll make some tea and toast later tonight.”

“All the restaurants are still open. I could buy some take-out food.”

“Thanks. But get what you want. I’m going to lie down for a while.”

Winston shut the door, and Gabriel heard him talking to Mother Blessing. He lay down on the bed and gazed up at the single lightbulb that hung from a cord in the middle of the ceiling. The room was chilly and water oozed from a crack in the wall.

The energy Gabriel had felt during the speech had faded away. He realized that he was just like his father at this moment-both bodies were lying in a hidden room, guarded by a Harlequin. But a Traveler didn’t have to accept these limitations. Light could search for Light in a parallel world. If he crossed over, he could try to find his father in the First Realm.

Gabriel got up and sat on the edge of the bed, with his hands on his lap and his feet on the concrete floor. Relax, he told himself. In the first stage, crossing over felt like prayer or meditation. Closing his eyes, he imagined a body of Light within his physical body. He sensed its energy, tracing its outline inside his shoulders, arms, and wrists.

Breathe in. Breathe out. And suddenly, his left hand fell off his lap and flopped down on the mattress like deadweight. When he opened his eyes, he saw that a ghost arm and hand had broken out of his body. The arm was black space with little points of light like a constellation in the night sky. Concentrating on this other reality, he moved the ghost hand higher, a little higher, and then all at once the Light cracked out of his body like a chrysalis emerging from its cocoon.

25

Standing on the porch of her two-story clapboard house, Rosaleen Magan watched Captain Thomas Foley stagger down a narrow side street in Portmagee. Her father had emptied five bottles of Guinness during supper, but Rosaleen hadn’t complained about his drinking. The captain had helped raise six children, gone out fishing in every sort of weather, and had never started a fight at the village pub. If he wants another bottle let him have it, she thought. It helps him forget about his arthritis.

She walked into the kitchen and switched on the personal computer in the alcove near the pantry. Her husband was in Limerick for a training class, and her son was working as a cabinetmaker in America. In the summertime, her house was filled with tourists, but in the cold months even the birdwatchers stayed away. Rosaleen preferred the quiet season even though very little happened during the day. Her oldest sister worked for the post office in Dublin. She was always prattling on about the latest movie or a play she saw at the Abbey Theatre. Once she was even rude enough to call Portmagee “a sleepy little village.”

Tonight, Rosaleen had enough news for a decent e-mail. There certainly had been some mysterious activities on Skellig Columba, and her father was the only true source of information about the island.

Rosaleen reminded her sister that a year ago an older man named Matthew had gone out to the island with a red-haired Irishwoman who had suddenly become the leader of the Poor Clares. A few days ago, an even more exotic group arrived at Portmagee-a little Chinese girl, a black woman, an American man, and a young woman with a British accent. One day after taking them out to the island, their father was told to transport the so-called abbess and the American man back to the mainland. Whatever is going on is certainly strange, Rosaleen typed. This might not be Dublin, but we do have mysteries in Portmagee.

Hidden within the computer was a spy worm that had infected millions of computers throughout the world. The worm waited like a tropical snake at the bottom of a dark lagoon. When certain words and names appeared, the program detected the new information, copied it, and then slithered off through the Internet to find its master.