To keep my mind off my surroundings, I checked my Brave Bull shotgun and said, “Specter, you never answered my question. Do you know where we are?”
“No, I do not. Do you want me to initiate a sonar scan of our surroundings? The DRAFTlite is not meant for such an operation, but I can make do.”
“Yes, do that.” I pondered his statement for a moment. “Surprised you didn’t do that before.”
“I am unable to initiate actions without the command of the DRAFTlite wearer. This serves as a safety measure, Ms. Jacobs.”
“You sound like an English butler instead of an AI. I should call you Jeeves.”
“As you wish.”
I shook my head. “No. Just get on with the scan.”
“Already completed, Ms. Jacobs. The walls seem to bear some resemblance to basalt, although somewhat plastic in nature in a manner I cannot fathom. As for the veins, they move in a predictable pattern and are filled with an as-yet unidentified fluid bearing a greater density than water.”
“That doesn’t tell me much.”
“I am sorry. That is all I know.”
“Any guesses?”
“Such speculation without more facts is unlikely to be accurate.”
“Give it your best shot, Specter,” I said, my gaze darting to and fro. Sweat rolled into one eye and I wiped it away. My hand trembled slightly and that pissed me off even more. I was an Agent of the BSI, damn it. I should be able to hack the worst situations as if they were a walk in the park. That didn’t stop my throat from feeling like it was lined in sandpaper, however.
“As you wish, Ms. Jacobs. It is my best guess that we are currently inside a slumbering entity. The reason I postulate its current somnolent state is the mere fact that if it were mobile, we would sway to the rhythm of its strides. However, currently I see no reason for alarm. Either that, or we find ourselves in some sort of organic construct.”
“No need for alarm,” he’d said. That was a bunch of hokum because being stuck in the belly of a slumbering giant Bandersnatch or the Midgard Serpent was the very definition of a dire need for alarm. The thought of walking through a building made of living tissue was enough to raise the hairs on the back of my neck.
My blood pressure rose swiftly enough that black spots formed in my vision, momentarily blinding me, while my hands went clammy on the Brave Bull. I stumbled and used the wall to prevent my fall, my spine straight and hard against the somewhat pliable stone. As the blindness had its way, my knees almost gave way, forcing my body to push harder against the wall. For a moment I felt it give, flowing up and around me, sucking me into an awful embrace. I felt those veins throbbing, pulsing to the beat of my heart, and I could feel them seeking me out, moving beneath the bones of my back as I leaned against the semisolid surface. I couldn’t help it; I screamed long and loud, almost blacking out, the horror and fear and bitter loathing coursing through my throat and emerging as a wail of disgust and despair. Before I could gather my breath in another scream, I heard a voice, his voice, that hated voice I thought lost in the corridors of time, call out to me: “Come here, my little Dove, flap your wings my way.”
And that’s where the real horror lay, in a voice sixteen years dead and gone calling out to me. I remembered everything, those awful nights where his breath tickled my cheeks, the nauseous man-stink of him clogging my nostrils—that foul stench I carried with me for such a long time. I’d almost forgotten about it—almost—but the voice reminded me, brought it all back in a rush. I no longer leaned against the wall. I was running, my feet slapping against the resilient floor of the tunnel, the guts of the beast. Another voice, a buzzing drone, tried to interfere with my panic, my headlong rush, but I paid it no heed. I was lost to the terror.
The voice became louder as I careened off the walls, blindly following my feet in an effort to escape hideous memories. “Hello, Lovey-Dovey.”
My lungs burned and the coppery taste of blood slicked the back of my tongue as the hated voice kept crooning that sickening nickname, Lovey-Dovey. Vomit choked my throat and bile entered my nasal passages. For a second I thought I would drown in my own puke as that voice continued to croon at me—that I would die with it in my ears.
“Ms. Jacobs.”
There was no Ms. Jacobs, just Dove, a terrified girl running down a hallway that had no bend, no up, no down—an endless blackly purple corridor of living rock that radiated its sickening light. My lungs labored, weighed down by the armor encasing my body.
“Ms. Jacobs, I believe you should stop.”
Stop? Stop? There can be no stopping! I had to flee the voice that still followed, the one crying out that hated nickname.
“Ms. Jacobs!”
Forget Ms. Jacobs, there was only running, running, running, while tears and snot ran down my face. If the guys had seen me then, seen me in such a state, I’d have put a bullet in my brain to cover my embarrassment. Looking weak in front of all those macho dickhead types was beneath me, but I couldn’t put those thoughts into words …. I was running, running, running through the faint light and air that smelled like burnt dust.
“Agent Jacobs!” The voice came hard, electric, static-y, bursting the balloon of my panic, slowing my headlong rush. My armored boots slid across the floor of the hallway as I finally skidded to a stop.
Agent Jacobs. That’s right. Agent Jacobs. Not Dove, not the forgotten and frail lovey-dovey, but Agent Dove Jacobs of the BSI. I worked for the best and most badass federal agency in the U.S., a woman who hacked SEAL training and could break a strong man’s arm with little effort.
Time to act like it.
My lungs ached and sweat rolled down my forehead. I sank to my haunches and took great big breaths, crying to control my runaway heart.
“Good to see you have come to your senses, Ms. Jacobs.”
“Agent Jacobs, Specter, and don’t you forget that.” I wiped the sweat from my eyes and took stock of my surroundings.
“I certainly will not.”
The words barely registered because I was too busy gawping at the large cavern I found myself in. Kidney-shaped, it rose all around, the ceiling some forty feet above where the veins grew larger, pulsed harder. The smell of burnt dust was stronger, intense, as if someone had set fire to a mummy. The rock bore a deeper purple color here, with the black blotches darker and the light seeping from the rock/flesh brighter, but none of it illuminated the area; instead, it highlighted the almost diseased-looking colors more powerfully. If light could have cancer, then this was a fine example.
In the center of the room was an anus-like protrusion, a sphincter that thrust up a puckered mouth from the floor about a foot, as if ready to disgorge some strange and malodorous offal. The rock there was darker, less purple, the black more prevalent—veins more pronounced, thicker.
As I watched, the sphincter moved, quivering slightly, before opening wide, disgorging those words that almost shattered my bones with fright. “Hello, Lovey-Dovey.”
“Jesus God, Specter,” I blasphemed, my nice-girl, nondenominational upbringing flying out the window so fast it left a contrail. “Jesus God.”
“Although no deity and no follower of any religion, Agent Jacobs, I fully understand the sentiment and concur.”
While the sphincter throbbed, the thick veins upon its surface writhed like giant worms filled with awful life and purpose. Was it blood that coursed through those undulant conduits? Or some other matter too foul to name? Either way, I could almost feel the liquid oozing through them.
“Lovey-Dovey!” The words came stronger now, and the sphincter bulged upward suddenly, opening like a dreadful flower. With a loud, squelchy sound accompanied by an odor of feces and rot, an arm shot out of the opening, covered in blood and pearlescent slime, fingers outstretched as though intending to grab hold of the air itself.
I felt faint, my vision spotting as the appendage continued to emerge into the stale air of the kidney-shaped cave. Slowly, as if being born, the rest of the body emerged. Hea
d, shoulders, chest, waist, then legs. All covered in blood and slime and stinking to high heaven. I sagged, crouching on the floor, too scared to lean against the wall, lest it try to suck me in again. As for the Brave Bull auto shotgun, it lay at my feet, an inert potential for violence.
“Lovey-Dovey,” crooned the voice, clearly coming from the slime-covered, very naked, man who stood at the apex of the wrinkled sphincter. “So good to see you again, my Lovey-Dovey.” His voice sounded like the hiss of water circling a drain.
“Hello, Uncle Carl,” I replied, drool ribboning from my mouth to the floor.
“Oh, Lovey-Dovey, how I have missed you while toiling away in my dark and lonely room.”
I couldn’t help it; I retched until my belly clenched so tight the pain shot up my neck.
One step, two, and Uncle Carl was off the platform of the sphincter and standing twenty feet away. “Shall we play a game, Lovey-Dovey? A game just like in the old days. Didn’t we have fun?” Brown eyes rimmed in pearlescent slime regarded me with fierce amusement.
“I killed you sixteen years ago, Uncle Carl, and Dad never told.” My voice barely stirred the still, silent air.
“And I forgive you, Lovey-Dovey. I will always forgive you. I’ve missed you.”
“Leave me alone!” It was the plaintive cry of a lost and weak little girl before she found her steel.
He came a few steps closer, his footsteps squelching, the stench growing more and more horrible, a palpable force against my nasal passages. “You don’t want that, Lovey-Dovey. You want to play our game. Our special game, the one just between us. The game I know you love.”
“Go away or I’ll tell Daddy!” I shrieked, my mind spinning away into the darkness.
“You already did, but he did not believe you.”
No, he didn’t, not then. But he did eventually.
That hissing, slightly gargly voice, at once alien and familiar, continued, “We were meant to be together, you and I. Forever. Forever.” A dripping hand reached out for my cheek.
“Don’t touch me!” My cry was more animal than human, but the hand drew back slowly.
“You want me to touch you, don’t you, Lovey-Dovey? You always loved the games we played, even though you cried. Deep down in your heart of hearts you ached, yearned for me to touch you in that special place, the place all little girls love to explore. Admit it, my dear sweet Dove, you wanted me as much as I wanted you, and that made you very happy.”
“No, no, nonononononono!”
A slimy finger stroked my cheek, leaving an odoriferous snail trail. “Oh, yes, Lovey-Dovey. Ask me for my touch. Beg for it like the good little whore you are.”
I was on my feet and running, running so fast, trying to escape the hell that lurked behind me. Gone were the memories of taking a screwdriver to Uncle Carl’s neck, the semi-sharp Phillips-head sliding easily into flesh and the squirt of thick, rich blood onto my white cotton summer dress. The startled, glassy look in his deep-brown eyes as his life drained away onto the floor of the dusty stables. It all fled my mind in my mad dash from the cavern, returning back to where I came from, trying to run away from the most singular horror in my life, away from the man who hurt me most.
“Come back, Lovey-Dovey!”
Chapter Eight
Ghost Copy
Sympathy for the Devil
The others had vanished, disappearing without a trace. That, or he did. Either way the outcome was the same. Billings found himself in a hallway somewhere in the Quint Building without any memory of how he got there.
Thanks to someone being on the ball, the power was back on. Instead of darkness, the overhead bulbs provided enough light to walk around without using the DRAFTlite. The lights had a tendency to flicker, however. After a cursory reconnaissance, he found an outside wall and peered down to the street, dozens of feet below, still filled with a crowd of reporters and looky-loos.
“[CENSORED] tourists,” he rumbled in a voice like boulders rubbing together.
“They are merely curious, Mr. Billings.”
Hazel eyes narrowed at the voice buzzing in his ear. “Ghost?”
“Not quite, Mr. Billings. I am a poor copy placed here by the original in order to assist you in any way possible and to record your experience for the BSI files. Would you care to bestow upon me a name other than ‘Ghost’?”
“Don’t care,” came the reply as he stared out the window. “Ghost Copy works.”
“Suit yourself.”
A grunt, then, “Where’s the rest of the team?”
“From what data is available, they have disappeared.”
That seemed to put a crack in Billings’ normally inscrutable mien. “What do you mean? I thought I disappeared.”
“So you did; however, your DRAFTlite is no longer connected to the others’, which would mean they are out of effective range or an interference is preventing communication.”
Billing spat on the floor. “So?”
“It would seem that either the team has been teleported to a location that does not receive cellphone signals, something is blocking me, or that their DRAFTlites have been destroyed, along with the original Ghost.”
More grunting as Billings seemed to mull over that information. “Don’t matter, I guess. The force field is still surrounding the building and I’m trapped inside.”
“You do not seem to be emotional about the situation, sir.”
“I’m not.”
“If I may ask, why not?”
Billings scratched his head while staring at the AR-15 clutched in one big fist. “Don’t feel emotion,” he said finally. “Never have. Not like regular people.”
“Why not?”
Billings shook his hairy head. “Enough of this jibber-jabber. Let’s get to the ground floor.”
“Then what, Mr. Billings?”
“Then we see if bullets hurt that screaming orb thing.”
The program did not bother to reply.
It was not long before Billings found a bank of elevators. When the buttons didn’t light up when pressed, he opted for the stairs.
Armored boots clomping, he descended several stories before realizing that he had passed the same door three times. The door to floor fifteen.
“What magic is this?”
“I do not know,” said Ghost Copy. “Apparently some agency does not want you beyond this point.”
Billings looked down the stairwell and saw it terminate five floors below. Another lap down brought him to the FLOOR 15 sign posted next to the same brown steel door he’d passed before.
Nodding to himself, he dropped a small diamond. It tinked off metal several times before dropping out of sight. It did not reappear from above. Apparently whatever wanted him on floor fifteen didn’t care about spell gems.
“BARFNOODLE!” The activation word reverberated along the stairwell, but nothing happened.
“What happened?” Billings chewed at his moustache.
“I do not know, Mr. Billings. It seems that the spell gem did not work.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Care to tell me why?”
“There is not enough data for a reasonable hypothesis.”
A grunt. Then an explosive fart that echoed louder than the grunt. He dropped another gem, an emerald. This one avoided the metal rails and hit the tenth-floor landing square. It bounced out of sight before rolling back to rest within view.
“HEDGERAVEN!” yelled the big man.
Nothing.
“This one didn’t work, either. Care to hazard a guess?” asked Billings as he calmly eyed the gem worth more than most people made in a year.
“Given limited information, I would say that the magic has been drained from the spell gems.” After a brief pause, he added, “Yes, I believe that is the hypothesis that best fits the facts.”
Billings blinked slowly—once, twice—staring at the gem. “And how could that have happened?” he asked slowly.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
>
He pondered that a moment. “The orb.”
“Most likely.”
“It musta drained all the magic from our gems, our equipment.”
“Yes.”
“That sucks.”
He received no reply.
Nodding, the big main raised his weapon and opened the door to the fifteenth floor, keeping an eye out for something to kill. He saw nothing but empty hallways, their florescent bulbs flickering fitfully. On his left, right, and ahead dark blue pile carpeting covered the way to several dozen office doors made of chocolate-colored wood. Planters, once home to carefully tended dwarf trees, lay upended here and there, their contents strewn about along with dirt the color of coffee grounds sprayed across the floor. It looked as if a willful child had demolished them in a fit of spite.
“Which way?” he asked softly.
“If the being that is controlling the stairwell wants you on the fifteenth floor, then I posit that no matter which direction you choose, you will be led inexorably toward whatever awaits.”
Billings sighed. “No help.”
“It is the best I can do, considering the circumstances,” Ghost replied.
The big man cocked his head. “Didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“I have none to hurt, Mr. Billings. Nor, I suspect, do you.”
Eyebrows quirked northward as the big man stopped suddenly. “Interesting. What makes you say that?”
“From the evidence you have provided, I must conclude that you are a sociopath.”
For the first time, Billings looked confused. He slowly removed the DRAFTlite and gave it a good, long stare. “Do you even know what a sociopath is? What that word really means?” Menace lay thick on the words.
“A sociopath is defined as a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior—a person displaying a lack of what is commonly referred to as a conscience.”
The Spirit in St. Louis Page 8