The Knights of the Cornerstone by James P. Blaylock Page B

and flinging water in every direction. In a few moments he was a mere shadow disappearing quickly downriver.
    Calvin headed back down toward the Temple, hearing talk and laughter from within. He had to admit that the day had moved from curious to ominous: first the mystery of the Aunt Iris veil, then the theft and the second veil, and then Bob Postum needlessly pretending to be Fred Woolsworth, apparently having quit pretending to be King Baldwin, perhaps because of a murder that was half a century old. Calvin was evidently a pawn, entirely in the dark here—literally and figuratively. And of course there was the levitating toilet seat—another variety of mystery—and his uncle’s unconvincing talk about air currents off the river.
    That was the problem, though. So far there had been no
convincing
talk about anything. He wouldn’t say that anyone owed him an explanation, but surely he couldn’t be blamed for
looking
for one.
    He stopped just outside the window, where he glanced around, looking back toward the bridge and the trailer parkand then out toward the river again. He was entirely alone, and it would be the work of a moment to have one small peek through the window, just so he would know what the lurking boatman had been up to. If nothing was going on except beer and skittles and the mystery of the secret fez, he would go home to bed and sleep it off. Tomorrow he could live the carefree life of the unwitting tourist. On the other hand, if the man at the window had seen something that would put the Knights at risk, then Uncle Lymon would want to know, delicate as the whole matter would be. Half convinced by this rationalization, he peered in through the blinds.
    There were six people inside, including his uncle. All of them wore hats, although not the typical fez sort of hat, but something that looked more like a helmet from an old suit of armor, fish-scaled with silver circles the size of dimes. The people were girded with beaded sashes, and wore white tunics with the red cross on the chest. He recognized Whitey someone, who had an unmistakably large nose and bald head, as well as a portly man in suspenders with wildly bushy eyebrows, a retired college professor whom he remembered as Miles Taber. Two of the people in the room, he realized abruptly, were women—something that had been obscured by the costumes and low light and by the fact that he wouldn’t have expected any women in the Knights. It was difficult to tell their ages, but one was old enough to be his mother, and the other was slightly younger, with bright red nail polish—something that looked incongruous to him under the circumstances.
    The six of them stood around an old wooden table built on a base of slender, gnarled tree limbs topped with rough-hewn planks. Oddly, there were authentic-looking leaves sprouting from the table legs, as if the legs were alive androoted in the earth. On the table sat the cardboard box that Shirley Fowler had given him. His uncle pushed aside his tunic to reach into his pocket, coming up with a pocket-knife with which he carefully slit the tape on the veil box.
    He shut the knife and returned it to his pocket before opening the flaps and then removing several layers of folded bubble wrap and drawing out the veil that lay beneath it—a piece of yellowed and tattered muslin-looking cloth. Even from Calvin’s perspective it looked to be more like a thousand years old than a hundred. There was a charcoal-like smudge on it that resolved itself unmistakably into a human face as the veil was unfolded, a face that didn’t look anything like anyone’s Aunt Iris. It was the craggy shadow of a man’s visage, seen straight on, as if someone, or the shadow of someone, were looking through the veil from the other side.
    Calvin glanced away, consumed by the feeling that the image was an actual physical presence, and that it had looked straight into his eyes. He peered up at the starry sky, and he knew that he had no business