Into the Dim (Into the Dim, #1)(20)

From the way he was beaming at me, and based on the large photo taped to his desk, I knew I’d found a fellow fan.

“Yeah, I’ve seen the pictures. It was supposed to transmit power wirelessly,” I said. “But it didn’t work. What are these? Prototypes?”

Lucinda cleared her throat. “Not exactly. Earlier I explained how my ancestor Hubert Carlyle and his friends found this chamber, quite by accident. When they experienced the same sensations you just felt, Hubert contacted his son Jonathan, who was attending university at Oxford. On a recent trip to Paris, Jonathan happened to have become acquainted with a young inventor named Nikola Tesla. Jonathan wrote and entreated his new friend to come investigate.”

“Alternate power source,” Doug put in. “That’s what Tesla thought at first. He was keen on finding a way to harness it.”

“But . . .” I glanced around the chamber, empty but for the machines and the people scattered about. “What kind of power? From where? I don’t understand.”

“They didn’t either,” Moira said. “Not then, anyway.”

Aunt Lucinda approached and held out a hand. I hesitated, gnawing at my cuticles until I nipped into tender flesh. Ignoring her outstretched hand, I stepped down onto the floor. I felt it immediately, like an invisible current. As we walked the perimeter of the room, stepping carefully between the wires, the power seemed to flow from every direction at once.

The lines beside Lucinda’s mouth deepened. “Tesla’s machine did not work as he’d hoped. Oh, it harnessed the power here, no doubt. But in a way they could never have dreamed.”

Collum snorted and leaned against the wall. “Aye. No one could’ve predicted that, could they?”

When Lucinda gestured to Doug, his wide face lit with glee. “Oh, I’ve been waiting forever to show this to someone new.”

He flicked the switch on a small metal box lying near the door. When it kicked on, white smoke blasted from holes in the top.

“Don’t worry,” he called over the hiss. “This is just a fog machine. Helps you see it better.”

It?

A fan blew the heavy mist toward the ceiling. Soon, I could smell it. Damp and cold and vaporous. He clicked it off. “Okay. That’s enough. Get the lights, will you Coll?”

The lights went out. And so did all the air in my lungs. Above our heads, laser beams seared across the room in the exact pattern I’d seen on the computer screen upstairs. Lines of brilliant neon green, with a few flashing red in a continuously changing pattern. Hundreds of them, all intersecting at the very center of the chamber, like a psychedelic spiderweb.

“What is this place?” I whispered.

“The first time it happened,” Lucinda said quietly as she stared up, “was in 1888, during a soiree to celebrate the engagement of Jonathan Carlyle to Julia Alvarez, Dr. Alvarez’s daughter. Tesla had given up and moved on, but the three men—Hubert, MacPherson, and Alvarez—filled with whiskey and swagger, decided to operate the machines for themselves. Jonathan and Julia followed their fathers down the stairs, worried that in their drunken state they might come to harm. The young couple arrived just in time to witness the three men, standing directly in the center of the symbol, being surrounded by a whirling cyclone of rippling power. Julia was struck dumb with horror, but Jonathan acted quickly to power down the machines.”

“When everything settled,” Moira spoke. “The three men were gone. Vanished into thin air.”

I flinched as the lights clicked on. The lasers dimmed, though I could still see a phantom glimmer through the remnants of the fog.

“They didn’t die, you know.” Collum gave a cool shrug. “Only took a bit of a holiday.”

“What?”

Collum waved a hand at Lucinda. “Lu, put the poor thing out of her misery, won’t you? We’ve got work to do.”

As she approached, my aunt’s tired features looked so like my mother’s, it made my throat ache.

“I’m sure that in the course of your studies, you’ve likely read how there were some ancients who believed in lines of power that thread through the earth,” she said. “That they often erected monuments where those lines supposedly crossed. Standing stones, cave markings, and the like. This cave was one of those places. Though we believe the language is far older, the closest translation of the carvings you see here is ancient Gaelic. Slighe a’ Doillier,” she said. “The Dim Road. We just call it the Dim.”

The Dim. Soundlessly, my lips formed the words. A horrifying idea rippled just below the surface of my mind. My mother’s face, trapped within the tapestry’s weave. Costumes. Computers. Tapestries. Machines.

“Aunt Lucinda.” My voice sounded very small against the rock. “What happened to my mom?”

Lucinda spoke in a voice so bland, she might’ve been reading the weather forecast. “In rare places around the world, these ley lines intersect in huge concentrations. Here—amplified a thousandfold by Tesla’s machines—they create a passage into the past.”

“It works something like a miniature wormhole, see,” Doug started, but Moira shook her head, quieting him.

I stared at the machines, stupified, as Lucinda finished. “Yes, Hope. My sister is alive. But she is also lost. In London, as far as we know. In the year of our Lord 1154.”