The Shibboleth

by John Hornor Jacobs

  But he’s tough, my little dude, and pops right back up. He doesn’t have his hands up anymore; they’re balled into tight little fists even though his mouth is smeared with blood. When the larger boy steps forward, swings his fist again, Vig jukes to the side, scrambles forward, latches onto the larger boy and begins to grapple for his left arm. He clamps on and sinks his teeth into the boy’s forearm. He looks wild, my brother, his face smeared with blood and his expression screwed into a paroxysm of animal fury. My skin itches, watching. My heart throbs in my chest.

  The larger boy howls soundlessly and slings Vig away, sending him tumbling once more. Vig is slower to rise this time, so the boy’s shoe catches him perfectly on the chin before he can stand and flips his body over to fall on the grass, faceup, staring blindly at the sky. The older boy kicks him two more times, once in the head, once in the ribs.

  Before he stomps off, he spits on Vig.

  It’s a long while before Vig moves, rolling over and pushing himself to his knees. A thin dribble of bright red blood spools from his mouth into the grass. He stands unsteadily, looking about the yard. He sits down, hard, on his ass. Blinks a few times. Rolls onto his knees again and pushes himself up.

  He slowly walks toward the camera. He’s not crying at all. For an eight-year-old, his stare is remarkably cold. He’s pissed. I don’t know if that older boy knows what he’s got coming to him.

  Once Vig has passed out of view, the screen flickers and dies.

  “Reading complete. This concludes phase two of your testing, Mr. Cannon. Please wait for Mr. Negata to retrieve you.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  It’s twilight now as they take me back to the bunker. It’s hard to tell how far we travel in the back of the van, without windows.

  “Why aren’t there any windows back here?”

  Davies tugs at his bottom lip, considering, and then says over the growl of the van’s engine, “No need for you to get too cozy around here. No idea if you’ll make it through the testing.”

  The van turns, and the driver shifts into a lower gear. I think about what he’s said.

  “That’s crap,” I say. Davies’s shoulders tighten. “You don’t want anyone to see me.”

  Jack could be out there right now. But the dark. Vig.

  “I don’t give a damn who sees you. To me, you’re no one.”

  “My name is Shreve Cannon.”

  “I don’t care.”

  The Helmholtz is running but it’s not strong. So I touch his mind and see. He’s not lying.

  The van stops. There’s a rumble. I have to assume that’s the blast door opening. They get me out of the back. Two soldiers wait for us with rifles.

  They’ve gotten me out of the van before the blast door has shut. There are shadowy trees and a slight breeze. It smells wonderful. Like freedom. It’s dark now, but the stars have begun to scatter across the vault of sky. It will get darker tonight, I’m sure. At least for me.

  Fifteen minutes riding down. The elevator car shudders silently. I think about Jack. I think about Vig. The minds of these brutes are open to me. I could ride them to freedom.

  Vig.

  When the elevator doors open, the hall doesn’t lead to my cell. There’s a locker room here stinking of jockstraps and athlete’s foot and the cold, clammy smell of wet rock. A quick perusal tells me there are no cameras or sensors in here. Soldiers don’t like being filmed while they shower.

  “Get the clothes,” Davies says, and one of the soldiers tromps over to a locker and removes a folded stack of duds and hands them to me. Black military issue, like the Flying Burrito Brothers wore. White T-shirt. Tighty-whities.

  “What’s all this?”

  “You’re starting to stink. Disrobe.”

  “No.”

  “Disrobe. That’s not a request.”

  “No.”

  I can compel you. The memory of Quincrux comes unbidden.

  Davies’s jaw locks, and I can see he’s going to be Mr. Pushy.

  “Whitmore. Stevens.” Davies chucks his head at me.

  The soldiers set down their weapons. Davies unholsters a Taser.

  It’s easy enough to snatch up their minds and hold them. There are just four. I am not yet whole. If I was, I could make this whole yard of boys kill each other. Gleefully.

  For an instant, I have the urge to snuff out the burning matchsticks of their consciousness. To extinguish the light for them as they have done to me. And plan to do again. But it seems I’m haunted by ghosts. Jerry’s words echo through me.

  They’re staring, blank-faced, locked in the stasis of my possession. Turning to Davies, I open both pairs of eyes—mine and his—and allow them to find the other’s gaze in an infinite feedback loop. I’m looking at myself looking at this guy looking at myself.

  “Everything I say you will remember. Do you understand?”

  He nods, caught in my gaze.

  “There’s a man named Horace Booth. He is—or was—the assistant warden at the Arkansas Pulaski County Juvenile Detention Center. You can find his e-mail on the state website. I order you to contact him. You will use whatever resources you need to get this done. Once you find his contact information, deliver this message: ‘The man from the Department of Health and Human Services named Quincrux holds Shreve Cannon and Jack Graves prisoner in a military compound in Montana. The address is Number 15, Old US Highway 10, Montana.” I pause here because I can’t remember the zip code. But what else can I do? “Repeat that back to me.”

  He does.

  “You will tell no one about this. Do you understand?”

  There are small tremors running through his frame. His left eyelid twitches. I ride him hard, on the inside. He cannot match me.

  “Good. Davies, you will do as I have said. Otherwise, you will feel an unease.” Crap. That’s no good. An unease? It needs to be worse. It needs to be bad, if he doesn’t do what I say. It hits me now. I continue, my fists balling. “You will not be able to sleep. The insomnia will come back to you if you do not do as I say and contact Horace Booth. Do you understand?”

  I relinquish enough control to allow him to nod.

  “You will recall this exchange only as a punk kid talking smack. Say yes if you understand.”

  His jaw unhinges like a zombie’s, and the single word “yes” falls from his mouth.

  That’s good enough.

  The soldiers turn and face the wall as I peel off my clothes and shower.

  Davies leads me to my cell. The ether is aswarm with millions of wasps from the hive of the Helmholtz.

  Another MRE waits on the bed, this time labeled CHICKEN SPAGHETTI. I eat most of the contents before the lights die and I’m left in total darkness.

  I light the matches, one by one, but halfway through the pack, I stop. Knowing I can light them is enough.

  I lie down on the bed, and the shibboleth curls and twines within me. The ether thrums and shivers with poison.

  I think I sleep. It’s too dark to tell, really.

  The walls echo.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Negata waits, standing in the center of the oil-stained motor pool. There’s a Jeep up on a lift, no tires. A large H is painted on the motor-pool wall. He makes a strange, soundless welcoming gesture.

  The elevator doors slide open, and Ruark appears. Today she’s strapped down her prodigious physique with a man’s shirt, tie, and vaguely military jacket, all to diminish the lines of her curves. She’s at war with her body, truly.

  We all are incarcerado. The cages take different forms.

  No verbal sparring or banter today. Ruark’s all business. “Mr. Negata will be your escort today. Indeed, he will be your shadow.”

  I can smell a faint whiff of tobacco coming from her as she turns and bounces off. The smoke has nested in her hair and clothes; she’s been with Quincrux. He’s around here somewhere. I could try to find him, but Negata would quickly reduce me to component parts.

  Negata gives another awkward butler g
esture, indicating I should come with him. He walks by my side, constantly adjusting his pace to match mine so that he’s leading me but not pulling ahead, letting me fall behind him. It’s a neat trick, the leading from the side. I’m sure he’s full of neat tricks. Deadly neat tricks.

  Eventually, we stop at a door in another featureless hallway. He punches in the code and we enter. There’s another kid already in the room, watching me closely. She’s pretty enough, hair blonde and pulled back in a ponytail. She has the fresh, lightly freckled face of someone who spends a lot of time in the sun, outside, under the sky. She’s missing her right arm from the shoulder down.

  It’s so good to see someone else. Someone who doesn’t hold a gun or glare at me. I like her face.

  In the center of the room there’s a short, glass-encased pedestal. Sitting inside the glass case is an old typewriter with a piece of paper fed into it.

  The disembodied voice—the kind one from yesterday, the one I liked—says, “Please type your name on the typewriter. Proceed.”

  I walk closer to the pedestal. Negata remains watchful and waiting by the door. The girl approaches me.

  “Hi,” I say, but it comes out as a croak. I guess this is the first time today I’ve spoken. I try again, my voice dry and painful. “This seems kinda stupid. How’re we supposed to type our name on there if we can’t reach it?”

  She ignores me. Looking at her, I notice her one hand is normal, no extra fingers. After approaching the typewriter, she circles it once, as if taking its full measure, and then places her stump against the glass. The keys depress, and I can hear a muffled clack as the arm of the typewriter darts forward and hits the paper. Again. Clack, clack. Clack clack clack.

  When she’s done, she looks around the room as if waiting.

  “Miss Klein, you have completed this portion of the test. Please proceed to the exit. An attendant will escort you from the building.”

  “Hey! What about me?”

  “The test will be complete when your name has been typed on the piece of paper.”

  “Hey, um—” I look at the paper in the typewriter. “Casey. My name’s Shreve. Could you do me a huge favor? My name is Shreve Cannon.”

  She nods once, meeting my smile with her own. She steps forward, leaning a little. She has no arm, but the gesture is unmistakable—she’s reaching out to shake. I raise my own hand in response, and I can feel the warmth and pressure of hers. An invisible hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Shreve,” she says, and she places her shoulder once more on the glass. “It’s spelled …”

  I spell out my name slowly, and the keys depress again, making the muffled clacking sounds. When she’s through, the voice says, “Test complete. Please proceed to the next testing area. Your escorts will show you the way.”

  Negata takes me to another room. This one with a desk. Upon the desk is a stapled bundle of newsprint with the letters PSAT/NMSQT on the cover. There’s a pencil, a granola bar, and a bottle of water also on the desk. In the corner is what appears to be a bathroom stall next to a sink, paper towel dispenser, and small trash can. I wander over and peek inside. Sure enough, a toilet.

  “Mr. Cannon, please take a seat and prepare for the test.”

  “Prepare?”

  “Examine your pencil. You will have fifteen minutes for the first portion of the test.”

  I sit down at the desk. Pencil looks sharp.

  “Ready? Then begin.”

  Hours later, I’ve finished the water and the granola bar, pissed twice, and completed the PSAT.

  “Please leave your test on the desk.” The door hisses, clicks, and swings open, revealing Negata, silent and clad in black. “Mr. Negata will escort you to the next portion of the test.”

  “Does this mean you guys are gonna send me to college?”

  I hear a snort on the microphone, and then the voice says, “Please exit the testing area, Mr. Cannon.”

  I exit, falling in beside Negata. He walks forward, sees I’m not following, stops. Looks at me, dark eyebrows raised.

  “So, what, you’re a meat ghost? That it?”

  He stares at me.

  “Can you understand what I’m saying?”

  He nods, once.

  I take two steps forward and hold out my hand.

  He doesn’t take it.

  I tap my chest. “This is all you are? Just flesh? Nothing else?”

  He remains still. I go into the quiescent ether. He’s not there, not there at all. And while the ether isn’t quite space and doesn’t relate to one’s body like real space does, there is a component of location involved. I couldn’t suss out some random Chinese person on the far side of the earth. I don’t know if that’s because of location or the limits location places upon my imagination.

  “So, you’re their hit man? You kill people? Like Quincrux does?”

  He blinks. Frowns. Doesn’t indicate a yes or no.

  I shake my head. “I feel sorry for you, Negata. Someday I hope you have the balls to take a side. To become a real boy.”

  He makes the ever-polite gesture to follow/accompany him.

  As we walk, I can’t help but think that all of that was more for my benefit than his. He’ll never be a real boy. And he’ll kill me if he’s ordered to. It was stupid even thinking otherwise.

  I sigh and walk along with him.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I think we’re back at the room I was in yesterday. The one with The Liar. Reese Cameron.

  While we’re in the hallway, things look familiar, but all these bunkers look alike. Negata punches a ten-digit key code. The door clicks and I enter, Negata following closely behind.

  Inside, there’s a chair. It’s not plastic. It’s like a crash couch in space shuttles or airplanes. It’s a semireclining chair with numerous straps. The chair faces the screen but is also in view of the mirrored wall next to the other door. There are thick bolts affixing the chair to the floor. Negata stands near it and gives another one of his gestures.

  Welcome to the torture chamber.

  The disembodied voice doesn’t sound amused now. It says, “Please take a seat in the chair and allow Mr. Negata to strap you in. This is for your own safety.”

  “I don’t like the way that sounds. You guys have never really had my safety in mind before.”

  The voice repeats its original message.

  “What if I say no?”

  Maybe it’s the way I’m holding my body. Maybe this is old hat. But Negata moves like an oiled piston shuddering home, crossing the room in a black blur, his bladelike hands moving to smack into the small of my back, sending an explosive shock through my system, dropping me to the ground. Before I can recover, Negata has snatched me off the floor, holding me by the wrist and bending my hand in such a way that I can only move where he wants me to or my hand will be irrevocably broken in a colossal explosion of bone and blood. My ass hits the chair. My hands are strapped down on the armrests, and he works on my legs.

  Negata walks over to a blank, featureless wall and presses something, and what appears to be an oversized medicine cabinet swings open from the surface of it. A cabinet designed to not be visible when closed. Huh. I look at the rest of the wall, trying to puzzle out what else it could conceal.

  From a box he takes two blue latex gloves and puts them on his hands. He approaches me with a semitransparent piece of plastic held up, pushing it toward my face.

  A mouth guard.

  “Please open your mouth, Mr. Cannon. The dental guard is for your protection,” says the disembodied voice.

  I open my mouth to say something incredibly barbed and scintillating. Negata, faster than my wit, pushes the dental guard into my mouth and then snatches some kind of head harness and puts it over my face, preventing me from opening my mouth and spitting out the guard.

  I could go into the wild blue. At the restraint, the shibboleth bucks and frets within me, looking for somewhere to go. Negata is invisible. Where are the watchers? Can I reach them even
with the shib so wound tight within me?

  The moment I go still, Negata turns and goes to the door that is already opening for him. When it closes, the lights dim slightly and the screen flickers to life. Where Cameron was yesterday, there’s a girl. In the lower third of the screen it says 145b - Montgomery, Sarah - CN: The Bomb.

  She’s pretty enough, I guess, though her posture is horrible. She’s slumped over on a stool, wearing sunglasses even in the lowered light, with her arms crossed over her breasts as if fending off oglers. She’s wearing black fatigues, and they make her look like a rebellious high school freshman experimenting with punk and contemplating her first beer. Her hair is long and unkempt, like she’s refused to comb it. Behind her stand two women, two bull soldiers. Drab olive green. Carrying automatic weapons.

  The girl, Sarah Montgomery, straightens as if someone is speaking to her, and she says something. To the disembodied voice. She looks pissed, some. She talks for a while—none of it I can hear—and then, in a silent yet obvious huff, she whips off her sunglasses and looks directly into the camera for a long while. Once she looks away, she replaces the glasses on her face. Pissed.

  Her hand has the wide, extra-digit girth of someone with more nose pickers than usual. Twelve fingers.

  Eventually, one of the female soldiers moves offscreen. I hear another hiss and click, and the door by the mirror swings open, revealing the same soldier. On-screen, Sarah Montgomery, the Bomb, stands, crosses the room, and appears in the doorway.

  She moves in front of the chair I’m bolted in and stands, waiting.

  At first I thought the soldiers were there with guns to keep Sarah under control—her own version of Mr. Negata—but instead, they flank her to each side and point their weapons at me. Even though I’m totally immobile.

  “Mr. Cannon. The Helmholtz field is not engaged, you will notice,” Ruark says over the speaker system. Looks like they let her DJ during the fun stuff. “Should you try to flee your body or possess anyone here, you will be shot and killed. Nod your head to indicate that you understand the situation.”