When I look back, the Witch wearing Norman’s body floats closer, hanging fifteen feet in the air and within a stone’s throw of me. She’s waving her hand like someone directing a friend into a narrow parking spot. Eventually, she bunches her hand into a fist and comes to a stop.
She’s not flying under her own power.
“Delicious boy, so nice to see you.”
“Looks like you’ve lost some weight.”
S/he laughs. Not a man’s rich, bellowing laugh. Not a woman’s high, bell-pitched cascade. Both and neither, all at once. “How droll. I might say the same for your appearance. You look positively famished.”
I don’t like where she’s going with this, and I wish we could just get to the main wrestling match, but I’m scared. Okay? I’m scared. I’ve got balls big enough to admit it.
“Yes, it’s been a while since you’ve indulged yourself, has it not?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you do, my little greedy guts.” Wearing poor Norman’s face, she licks her lips. She waggles her hand behind her, telling her handlers to bring her closer, and she floats near, not ten feet away. I get the impression of some ancient potentate waggling his glistening, fat, and beringed fingers to his couch bearers and porters, too large to move on his own.
The ground beneath the Witch is lower than where I stand, sloping down to the river, and we look at each other eye to eye. “You and I contain multitudes, do we not? We can remain immortal as long as we have the sustenance we need.”
“I don’t…”
“Nonsense. I know this is true. I’ve inhabited some of your victims, the poor unhappy souls of Casimir Pulaski Juvenile Detention Center. Those boys, those men and women you cannibalized.”
She tosses the word out there like a grenade. And she’s right. I did feed from them. Their happiness, I siphoned it away to ease my own existence.
You’re born into pain, your constant companion through life. How could I have forgotten that?
But never again.
“All that’s over now.”
“It doesn’t have to be. You come with us. You join your friend Jack, and you will have all the sustenance you require.” S/he chuckles, and it’s the same piggy throat sound I remember from so long ago.
I try to remember the light and the heat on the roof where much of me burned away, sublimed into the air. I remember the clatter of raven wings and the feel of the thousands of people I’ve been and who live inside me. I let my heart expand and the shibboleth swell.
Because I’m gonna fight the Witch.
Before, in the BMW, I was on the run, driving, snatching directions out of drivers and pedestrians. But now … I’m here. I’m centered.
And I’m not just some crappy punk kid she can push around.
I’m the original crappy punk kid.
“I’m stronger than you,” I say. And I believe it.
This makes her laugh and laugh more.
So I prove it.
It comes from somewhere beyond me, from the black unlimited spaces between atoms or the empty spaces between the stars or the finite space between my molecules. It comes from the blood surging in my veins, pulsing, driving forward, the unspent semen in my testicles. The saliva swelling in my mouth and the tears at the corners of my eyes.
It comes from my youth, the pure tenacity of the young. It comes from my age, having lived countless lives. It comes from guilt, from those I’ve hurt, I’ve stolen from. It comes from the leathery beef jerky of my soul. It comes from the million times I’ve wiped my brother’s ass and dressed him for school and fed him breakfast and fed Moms dinner and served her drinks. It comes from scarcity and a life of discomfort and hunger and want.
It comes from the pain. It comes from love. The love I bear Coco and Vig, Jack and Rollie. Booth and poor, doomed Sloe-Eyed Norman.
It comes from the multitudes that infest me and the multitudes I infested.
I am Legion, for we are many.
No dicking around now. No fancy footwork or strange visualizations.
I am the sharpened stake. I am the bullet in the brain.
And I am stronger than her.
Her eyes widen in alarm, terrified, but I’m already past. I’m inside her. I’m inside him.
I am you and you are he, two makes one and one makes three.
SEVENTEEN
She was born in 1824 in Switzerland with a caul over her oblong, glistening head. Her father, on spying her, wanted to snatch up the bundled infant, take her into the snow, and dash her brains out on the cobblestones leading to their small house, down the lane from the mill. But her mother, fat-chested and full of love and the milk of human kindness, clutched the newborn to her breast and cooed over and over again, “Ilsa. Mein liebes kind. Mein geliebtes kind, Ilsa. Ilsa,” leaving Herman, her father, to look on in shame and disgust and question how he could hate something that was so new to the world.
One thing is clear: they should have walked the child into the frigid waters of Lake Brienz and drowned the damned squalling thing.
It’s a foul place, the vaulted chambers of her mind. Filled with thousands of moments ringing like a chorus of bells swelling into some hideous chord. It mocks the idea of music and happiness. Each memory is a moment of cruelty, a moment of hunger.
It is almost too much for me to bear. But I am stronger than her.
All those moments of cruelty. Three lifetimes’ worth.
I eat every one.
I am you and you are me.
When I’m done, what’s left of Norman/Ilsa collapses and hangs motionless in the air with a gasp.
I thought I knew pain. Disgust. Hatred.
I ate her cancer. I ate her past. She’s in me now. Forever.
Her black-clad minions, the Flying Burrito Brothers, give a collective floating lurch at her fall, and before I know it, there’s a red flower blossoming from my shoulder and a dramatic sharp pain.
I seriously hope that dart doesn’t have any Haldol in it, I think before staggering, taking two steps, and face-planting on the ground.
I awake from a dream of eating children in Munich, devouring their minds in mad, gluttonous abandon. Frau Rhinehart hired me as their maid with a letter of recommendation from Hans Trienne, the Brientz constable whom I had seduced into submission, and now their incessant bawling and demands drove me into a frenzy. Each mind with its memories, its raw untapped emotions, was like warm schokoladenpudding. They huddled together and cried in the nursery, but that didn’t last long as their minds evaporated like water on the hot skillet of my appetite.
I’m strapped to a gurney now, a saline drip—or something eviler—in my arm. I can tell by the rumble and whine and the curved ceiling that we’re in a plane. I can turn my head just enough to see the husk of Norman lying near me, eyes open, mouthing unheard and unfathomable words.
“He will recover, I think,” Quincrux says from a seat nearby. His legs are crossed, and he seems relaxed. The space we’re in looks like a hospital room schtupped an office building and the resulting mongrel was born with wings. Despite being on a plane, Quincrux withdraws a pack of Peter Stuyvesants, removes a cigarette, and delicately tamps the loose tobacco on his wrist before he lights it. “He will be reborn into the world new, pink and squalling. His past lives almost all forgotten.”
“Ding, dong, the Witch is dead.”
“Quite. A very impressive feat, Mr. Cannon. She was one of the strongest of us.”
“Us?”
“We …” He inhales deeply and then expels the smoke into a cloud at the cabin’s ceiling. He points with the glowing cherry of the cigarette at me. “We are members of a very old society.”
“Like the Shriners?”
He ignores that. “And now you are also a member, will ye or nil ye.”
“I don’t want to be in any club that would want me as a member.”
Quincrux sighs, puts down his smoke in a crystal ashtray on the desk. He uncrosses
his legs and adjusts his chair to where he’s facing me. He opens the laptop on the desk and turns it to where I can see the screen.
“Ah, Mr. Cannon. The difference between you and me is—”
“Good looks and morals?”
He smiles at that. It was a weak one, I agree. I don’t have any morals. And my looks are gone. “The difference is, I actually respect your abilities. You do not.”
Not much to say to that. He likes who he is. I don’t like who I am.
“Well,” I say, doing my best to let the good old sneer creep back in, “aren’t we getting chummy, now?”
He doesn’t respond except to turn back to the laptop and tap the touch pad, bringing the screen to life. He types in a password, waits, types in another, waits. I figure now’s as good a time as any to make my move. I’ve got the Witch in my belly. Why not snack on one more monster?
“Before you get too belligerent, Mr. Cannon,” he says, swiping the touch pad with his fingers, “I’d advise you to watch this.”
He taps again, opening some sort of video file, and the screen fills with a flickering moving image. It’s a living room in what could be any home in America: couch, two comfy-looking chairs, drapes, a pile of toys peeking from the open lid of a wooden box in the corner. A flat-screen television with game console. Books and board games on shelves.
My heart skips a few beats when Vig barrels into the room. Looks like he’s had a snootful of sugar. And he’s grown some since I’ve last seen him. He’s with an older boy, shaggy-haired, and they look comfortable together; Vig is smiling, talking to the other boy, who laughs a little. They don’t look at the camera, like they don’t know it’s there.
A gray-haired man wearing a tank top, with thin arms corded with muscle, comes on-screen and says something to Vig and his companion, and they turn to look at him, talk back, but it’s hard to make out what is being discussed. Eventually, the boys turn back to the television, flip it on, and begin playing some sort of video game that involves shooting things.
The man, with the boys’ attention on the television, turns to the camera and gives a single, unsmiling nod.
“Cat got your tongue, Mr. Cannon?”
“If you hurt him—”
“That is entirely up to you.” He shifts in his chair. Unblinking. “I require your cooperation.” He cocks his head in the inquisitive, birdlike manner I remember so well. The plane rumbles, and I feel the lightness in my stomach that accompanies altitude change. “No. Let’s phrase it like this: I require your services, and in this, you haven’t a choice if you wish no harm to come to your brother, Vigor, who—” He gestures at the computer screen, where Vig leaps up, controller in hand, saying something to the older boy. Excited. Triumphant. Happy. “—is apparently thriving at his new foster home. Indeed, he seems very well. His grades are up, his school outbursts have ceased, and the state-appointed psychologist says that he is acclimating very well.”
“You’ll regret this.”
“That remains within the realm of the possible. But it all depends on you,” Quincrux says. I think he’s talking about something different than I am. “You were stronger than Ilsa, this is true. Will you risk your brother just to find out if you can best me? I am old, boy, and know all the wiles of mankind.”
I remain silent for a while. Ilsa was nearly two hundred years old, hopping from body to body. Who knows how old Quincrux is?
It’s not a hard decision to make.
“What do you want me to do?”
I’ll give him this: if he’s gloating, he doesn’t let it show on his face.
“I require you to obey me, first and foremost. There are strange forces moving in the ether …” His eyes narrow, gauging my reaction. “Surely you’re aware of the entity?”
“In Maryland?”
“Of all the people in the world—even those of our society—only a handful are aware of its presence. You and I seem attuned to it more than other people.” For a moment, he looks as if he is woolgathering. “When our game first began, it was solely Mr. Graves I was interested in, and you were merely a by-blow of that acquisition. However, now you are one of my main concerns, equal to, if not more than, Mr. Graves. Possibly because of the entity’s interest in you.” He smoothes out his slacks in a finicky little gesture. “And your besting of Ilsa. In all honesty, you have done me a favor there. She was …” He thinks for a moment. “She was unruly and hard to control.”
“Not shedding any tears for the Witch, then, are you?”
“And should I? You know her now as well as anyone. Do you feel remorse for her?”
“Not one damned bit.”
“Why would you assume that I would be any different?”
“Go figure.”
“‘Go figure’ indeed. And the impenetrables?”
It takes me a moment to figure out what he means. “You talking about knuckleheads? Or the Riders?” Being able to talk with him about them somehow makes it all worse. It’s like the opposite of unspooling my story to Jerry. It’s like gravity has increased, pushing me down into the gurney. Or maybe the plane is gaining altitude once more.
“Always glib, Mr. Cannon. But apt. I am referring to the ‘Riders,’ as you call them. As you probably have surmised, no one is totally impenetrable to people of our abilities. It is just a matter of will.”
That makes sense. My will had grown, or the Witch’s had weakened. Or both. “So, the knuckleheads …”
“They are just normal people with extraordinarily strong will. Sometimes survivors of great trauma. Often, it can be the love of the invader himself that puts up the walls—”
“You mean, those people I can’t get into, it’s because …”
“You don’t want to.” He smiles as that sinks in. “But the ‘Riders’ are many orders of magnitude beyond that—”
“They’re something else.”
“Indeed.” The silence that falls is like the awkward ones at a funeral. But Quincrux is thinking, eyes narrowed, watching me. “Tell me of your contact with the Riders.”
“Just banging my head against the walls.”
Before the elder awakens, it said.
I can’t tell him about the message. Not yet. Not until I get some idea of what he’s planning. “What about the thing in Maryland? The insomnia? What are we going to do about it?”
“‘We’? Is it ‘we’ now?”
“You do know that whatever it is in Maryland is causing the insomnia?”
He chortles. It’s a dry, humorless sound. He picks up his cigarette and puffs on it. “Of course I know.”
“Well, what are we going to do about it?”
“That is not your concern. Your concern, for now, is to obey. He closes his eyes, apparently to think for a moment. Maybe he’s tired. “Now, with what you’ve done to Ilsa, and your knowledge of the entity, I must consider your position most closely. Should you pass the testing, I will set you to training Mr. Graves.”
“The testing?”
He nods, a slight smile curling at the edges of his mouth. “Yes, Mr. Cannon. The testing. We shall see how strong you have become.”
That doesn’t sound good. A thought occurs to me. “Jack, he pass this test?”
“It is not a pass-fail equation. However, Mr. Graves is not progressing as he did when you two were on your own, trying to evade me. It seems—” he shifts in his seat and holds his cigarette in a kind of effeminate, European manner, palm halfway pointing at the ceiling. “It seems your natural abrasiveness was the perfect goad. You were the electric rod, and he the cattle’s rump.”
I think about all the times I pissed Jack off. Pushing. Making him do what he didn’t want. And before that, Vig. Pushing, punishing, manipulating, just to get him to brush his teeth and eat something other than chips. Turns out I’m the obnoxious big sister. That might have bothered me before … but now it’s just another day in the salt mines.
“So you’re not going to do anything about the insomnia?”
“Oh,
efforts are in place. Those suffering from sleeplessness will soon pass into slumber.” He looks at his watch as if he’s dosed the general public with a massive horse tranq and now he’s just waiting for it to keel over so he can have his way with it.
“People are dying, man.”
“That isn’t my concern, Mr. Cannon. And there’s more at stake than a few people’s lives.”
“A few? We’re talking hundreds of thousands. There’s been plane crashes, nuclear meltdowns!”
He stands. “This has been quite entertaining, Mr. Cannon. Yet I have much larger matters to attend to and cannot spend the rest of my day answering the questions and demands of a mere inductee.”
“An inductee? More like prisoner.”
“Hang whatever name you want upon your condition, it matters not to me.”
A change of tack might be required. “Hey, dickweed. The girl with the tattoo on her neck—what’s her name?”
His eyes go even narrower, his gaze boring into me.
“She’s kinda cute, in a supernerd kinda way.” I do my best to sit up. “You are old, hoss, but that don’t mean you know everything. And remember, you might have peeked from behind my eyes before, but I’ve taken you out for a test drive too. And I didn’t need a phone connection to do it.”
He says nothing. He stands stiffly, and it doesn’t take a mind reader to know his leg is hurting. I make no effort to hide my amusement as he limps past me, toward the forward cabin. He leaves the stink of cigarettes behind him.
When he’s gone, I say, “You don’t have to be such a tremendous dick.”
EIGHTEEN
They call it Big Sky Country.
We fly over countless mountains blanketed in trees, over landscapes that look dry and lush by turns, over swirls of mineral deposits in flatlands and the bizarre fractal patterns of hot springs viewed from a great height. Very few roads and even fewer buildings.
The pilot is a military knucklehead, Captain Steve Lawson. Now that I know from Quincrux that the knuckleheads aren’t truly impenetrable, just stubborn bastards, worming my way inside his noggin is easy. Okay, not that easy. Blood trickles from my nostrils, just a little, and my eyes water by the time I’m done. But by then I’m watching from behind his eyes as my abandoned body rocks and shudders on the gurney in the back of the plane. I wonder why an air force pilot would be chauffeuring Quincrux around and do some pearl diving in the brainmeat, but he doesn’t know himself. He’s got his orders, and the check clears every week.
The Shibboleth Page 14