Page 16 of Lion's Share
Her text came in around eleven o’clock.
I have some readings. They’re not what I was expecting. What’s a good time to meet and discuss them?
“Not what I was expecting” could have meant any number of things, but in this particular case, Ben doubted it was anything good. However, he wrote back and told Marjorie she could come over anytime, so she said she’d be at the cottage in about five minutes.
That gave him enough time to tidy up somewhat, making sure the books that had been scattered across the coffee table were now in neat piles, and that all the notes he’d spread out on the drop-leaf table in the breakfast nook were stuffed back into their manila folder so they’d be safely out of harm’s way.
He’d just returned to the living room after putting the folder in the nightstand drawer where he usually kept it — he kept meaning to go to Eureka to see if he could find a cheap file cabinet but never seemed to make the time — when Marjorie knocked on the door.
At least, he assumed it was her. He rarely had visitors, since when he met with Sidney, it was almost always at her house.
Sure enough, Marjorie Tran stood out on the stoop, a frown pulling at her brows. He didn’t think he’d made her wait for very long, so he wasn’t sure of the reason for the scowl.
Then again, he got the feeling that might be her usual expression.
“Some water?” he asked. “Or tea?”
“Nothing,” she said shortly. “I want you to take a look at this.”
She had her laptop bag slung over one shoulder and immediately moved toward the small dining table at the far end of the living room, where she set the computer down and opened it up without waiting for an invitation. Ben followed, noting that her usual prickly demeanor had been replaced by something that looked almost like excitement — or possibly alarm.
“Okay,” she said as she pulled up what looked like a series of graphs with jagged lines running across them, “I’ve been taking readings all over town since yesterday afternoon, and these results are….” She paused, then shook her head. Blunt-cut strands of black hair fell forward, and she impatiently tucked them behind her ears. “Well, they’re not like anything I’ve ever seen before.”
Ben leaned closer to the screen, trying to make sense of the data displayed there. “What exactly am I looking at?”
“Electromagnetic field strength over time,” Marjorie replied, pointing to the different colored lines that made up the current graph. “The blue line is the baseline readings I took about a mile outside town — completely normal. The red line is from Main Street, and the green is from the forest edge near those trailheads.”
Even to Ben’s untrained eye, the difference was stark. The blue line was relatively flat with minor fluctuations, while the red and green lines showed dramatic spikes and valleys, like seismograph readings taken during a powerful earthquake.
“These are from town and the forest,” Marjorie said, one finger running over the green and red lines. “They’re showing field fluctuations that are off the charts. We’re talking about electromagnetic pulses that should be frying every electronic device within a five-mile radius.”
“But they’re not,” Ben said. Not that he’d taken a survey of everyone in town, but while he’d had to reset the clock on his oven and his microwave more times than he would have liked, they still worked just fine. That seemed to be Sidney’s story as well, and he had to believe that if a bunch of people in Silver Hollow were getting their appliances and electronics blown up, he would have heard about it by now.
“I know,” Marjorie said. “That’s what makes this so bizarre.” She clicked to another screen, this one showing a different type of graph. “The energy appears to be cycling in irregular intervals. As far as I can tell, every once in a while, there’s a massive spike that originates somewhere in the forest and radiates outward. But instead of the electromagnetic interference you’d expect, it’s almost like the energy is being…. ” A pause while she stopped to think of the right words to use, and then she went on, “Contained, for lack of a better word.”
None of this sounded very good, and he didn’t like how there didn’t seem to be any real pattern to the energy spikes. If something had a real structure, you could work with it. But this kind of chaos?
“Contained by what?”
Marjorie’s shoulders lifted. Just like yesterday, she was wearing a black tank top, army green cargo shorts, and black sport sandals. Ben found himself wondering if she owned anything else, although he assumed she must switch into something with sleeves come wintertime.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” she replied, then pulled up another screen that looked like a topographical map with colored overlays. “I’ve been able to triangulate the source of the disturbances to within about a quarter-mile radius, all centered in this section of the forest.” She pointed to a red circle on the map, one he thought was right on top of the original location where he and Sidney had first seen the portal. “Whatever’s causing this, it’s not geological. It’s not atmospheric. And it’s definitely not manmade — at least, not with any technology I’m familiar with.” Marjorie clicked to yet another graph, one that appeared to show wavelengths. “The really weird part is the frequency signature. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was some kind of dimensional resonance, but that doesn’t make any sense.”
Ben did his best to keep his expression neutral. The last thing he wanted was for the grad student to realize he knew a little something about alternate dimensions…and how portals to them made occasional appearances in the forest outside town. “‘Dimensional resonance’?” he repeated, hoping he sounded more than a bit skeptical. “Is that kind of thing even real?”
“It’s mostly theoretical,” she said, appearing to warm to the subject despite her obvious perplexity over the readings she’d taken. “Basically, it’s the idea that electromagnetic fields could be influenced by….” The words trailed off for a second or two as she appeared to search for the right way to explain the concept to a layman. “…well, by spaces that exist parallel to our own reality. But that’s science fiction stuff. Except….” Marjorie gestured at the screen, and something about the wave of her hand seemed somehow annoyed and fascinated at the same time. “These readings suggest that something is creating brief tears or instabilities in local spacetime, and the electromagnetic disturbances are basically aftershocks.”
Ben crossed his arms. In that same careful, dry tone, he said, “And you think this is all coming from that area of the forest?”
“I’m certain of it.” Her frown deepened. “The question is, what’s causing it? Because if something in those woods is generating this kind of energy signature, then we’re looking at either the discovery of the century…or a potential disaster that could destabilize the entire region. I mean, this could be worse than the Cascadia Subduction Zone letting loose.”
The huge fault line off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, one that scientists kept saying could go at any time.
Just great.
Ben stared at the graphs on the laptop’s screen, his mind racing as he tried to grasp the concepts Marjorie had just explained. Although he’d expected that the electromagnetic anomalies pointed to something potentially dangerous, he’d still hoped it might not be as catastrophic as he’d feared.
But with an unknown person or persons creeping around and carving Ogham letters into the trees for a strange reason they hadn’t identified but which he feared might be tied to the current weirdness in town, all bets were pretty much off.
