by Harvey Click
A man dressed in gray was sitting beside a small table across from the cells, and he stared at Amy and licked his lips as they went past him to a stairs leading up. The door at the top wasn’t locked; it opened to a large pantry that Amy recognized from the drawings Lucky had shown her.
They went through a kitchen to a long corridor, where they walked past doorways and a big foyer with a wide stairwell. Eventually they turned right into a shorter perpendicular corridor, and the bald man stopped at a door and knocked. There was no answer, so he opened the door to a large den lined with bookshelves.
There was a desk at the far side, and Sandoval was sitting in his wheelchair behind it.
Chapter 19
The bald man pulled Amy into the big room and shut the door, leaving Walter in the hallway. He motioned her to sit in an armchair that faced the large desk. He stood behind her, and they both waited.
Though Sandoval was seated just ten feet away from her behind his desk, he didn’t seem to be aware of her presence. His eyes were wide open but rolled upward, and his mouth was hanging open slightly as if he was fast asleep. He was motionless except for the occasional twitching of his hands, which rested on the desk, and the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.
He was a small man shrunken with age with thin white hair and a furrowed face that might have been handsome in its time, but now was freckled with liver spots and a few moles. He was immaculately dressed in a gray wool suit that looked too warm for this heat, especially since the house seemed to have no air conditioning, but then the elderly often crave warmth. An expensive gray silk tie was carefully knotted at his skinny neck, its wrinkled skin drooping slightly over the white shirt collar tightly buttoned against it.
There were a few stacks of paper on his desk and three thick books that looked very old. More thick books that looked very old filled some of the shelves that covered the walls, and on other shelves were talismans and arcane artifacts that also looked very old.
Standing above him on a shelf behind his shoulder was a black marble statue of Satan about two feet tall, looking down at his loyal servant like a guardian angel with his wings spread. Or maybe it was Lucifer—Amy had never understood the difference.
Suddenly Sandoval’s head jerked, and he blinked his eyes and stared at Amy. The irises were so black that she couldn’t tell where the pupils were.
“Xuthal was running loose in the hospital again,” he said. “I had to reprimand him.”
“I know that,” the bald man said. “Maybe you’re losing control of him.”
“Mazzikins can be difficult,” Sandoval said. “They’re too damned clever for their own good, but there’s no cause for concern. And who is the lovely young lady?”
“Don’t you remember?” the bald man said with a touch of irritation in his voice. “It’s Amy Jackson.”
Sandoval glanced at a piece of paper on his desk and said, “Ah yes, the one with the DNA.” He spoke with a Spanish accent, and his voice was rather high pitched, maybe due to his age. He scooted his electric wheelchair out from behind his desk, moved up close to her and smiled.
“I understand you had a bit of a knock on the head,” he said. “Are you feeling better now?”
Amy didn’t answer. The bald man nudged her shoulder and said, “Always answer the magus. When you don’t answer, you’re not cooperating.”
“I feel like shit,” she said.
“In that case I wish you a speedy recovery,” Sandoval said. “Well then, let me get straight to the point. You were part of a gang that killed a few of my men last night, and in fact I happen to know that your intention was to assassinate me and twelve of my men. I was aware of your plan and took the precaution of staying home last night, though I did send a few expendable associates to greet you. Do you deny your role in this unprovoked attack?”
“No,” she said.
Sandoval smiled and said, “I regret to inform you that all the members of your gang are dead except for you and one other. I’ve always found it useful to leave two of my enemies alive so I can check the stories that one enemy tells me against the stories the other tells. And in case you’re thinking that neither of you will talk, let me assure you that both of you will. If you tell true stories right from the start, it will save you a good deal of discomfort.”
Amy had shut her eyes when he said that everyone was dead except herself and one other. Maybe he was lying, but she doubted it. She wondered if Shane was dead and if Neoma was. Last night’s events still seemed dreamlike, but she remembered that Bloody Joe and Nyx had gone a different direction to try to steal a car, and she wondered if one of them had survived.
“I already know the answers to most of the questions I’m going to ask,” Sandoval said. “So if you lie I’ll know that you’re lying. First, please tell me the name of your organization.”
“I don’t remember,” Amy said. “I’ve had a concussion and can’t remember anything.”
Sandoval smiled and said, “Please tell me the names of your associates, the ones who were with you last night.”
“I told you, I had a concussion, I can’t remember.”
“She’s lying,” the bald man said.
Sandoval pulled a phone from his breast pocket and poked in a number. “I’m interviewing Miss Jackson,” he said. “She claims she’s suffering memory loss due to a concussion.”
He listened for a short while and hung up. “Dr. Leiber verifies her story,” he said. “He tells me he requested that she not be moved.”
“But you said you wanted to see her,” the bald man said.
“Sometimes you show poor judgment, Karl,” Sandoval said. “What good does it do to interview her if her memory is still cloudy? Take her below and let her rest for a few hours. And once she’s secured, take those cuffs off of her. We want her to rest well.”
“Yes, sir,” Karl said.
“The doctor also said she should be given some broth, so see to it. If by, shall we say, 4:00 p.m. she claims her memory is still cloudy, we’ll ask the doctor to examine her again.” Sandoval smiled at Amy and said, “We have a novel method to clear faulty memories. It’s effective but unfortunately not very pleasant.”
Karl led her out to the hallway, where Walter was waiting. As they escorted her around a corner she was startled to see a listener standing in the middle of the corridor. Walter drew his sword and said, “God, I hate those damn things. They shouldn’t be allowed to prowl around like house pets.”
“They keep us safe,” Karl said.
“That’s not my idea of safe,” Walter said. “All it takes is one little bite.”
The thing grinned at them as they edged past it. On their way to the kitchen, Amy peered into a large parlor and saw a harpy hanging upside-down from a chandelier. As they descended into the basement, Amy saw the same man sitting beside his little table with a flashlight, an apple, and a sword lying on it.
Amy took a quick look around while he got up to unlock one of the cells. The basement wasn’t nearly as large as the house, which made her think it must be divided into at least two compartments. She saw more evidence of this: three walls were made of large chunks of filthy dark stone, but the wall near the stairs was made of new-looking cinderblocks and had a steel door in the center of it exactly like the door at the opposite end that led to the tunnel. Maybe there were more jail cells in there, and maybe some other Unseens were in those cells, maybe Neoma, maybe Shane…
Mack Riley was awake now and pacing around his cell, looking agitated. He stared at her but didn’t seem to recognize her as the men led her past him. “Hey screw, I need a fucking drink in here,” he said.
The guard pushed her into a cell, and after he locked the door Karl reached in through the bars and removed her cuffs. There was a commode chair in the corner, and though her bladder was bursting she waited till Karl and Walter had gone up the stairs before she used it. The guard, who had sat back down and was eating his apple, watched her closely, but she really didn’t car
e. At least there was a roll of toilet paper.
The cot was a narrow wooden shelf with one thin wool blanket. She rolled it up to make a pillow, lay down, and with her fingers explored the lump at the back of her head. It hurt, but the skin didn’t seem to be cut. As she stared out between the bars she saw a security camera on the opposite wall staring back at her, a tiny green light glowing beneath it to show that it was awake.
She wondered why they needed a camera on her—it was obvious she wouldn’t be going anywhere unless they wanted her to. Even if she somehow got out of her cell, the basement itself was secure like a dungeon. The few windows at the top of the moldy stone walls were impenetrable glass block, and the door at the top of the stairs led to demons and men armed with guns and swords.
Everything that had happened today seemed just as dreamlike as her memories of last night, and she supposed this was a result of her concussion. On the other hand she felt less confused than she had even an hour ago, and her memories were intact even if they seemed unreal. Intact until the snakewalker started chasing her through the weeds, and everything after that was a blank.
She knew she would never get out of here alive, but the thought of death didn’t frighten her as much as torture. She didn’t want to betray her comrades, but she was terrified of what Sandoval would do to her if she didn’t. She had never been very religious, but just enough of her parents’ faith stuck with her to make her wary of suicide. The church she had attended as a child had said that suicide was a sin, and now that she had seen ample reason to believe in hell she didn’t want to become a resident. And besides, her nearly empty cell seemed to offer no means to accomplish the deed.
She tried to clear her head and think things through. Why had they taken her through the tunnel instead of bringing her to the house in a car? Apparently they didn’t want anybody to see her being led to and from a car, which suggested Sandoval was lying when he said that only she and one other had survived. Or maybe he wasn’t lying but was worried that she and her comrades were part of a larger organization. She wondered if she could string him along with this worry and make him believe that others would soon be coming.
There was a noise, and she saw Karl descending the stairs. He had a plastic bowl that he slid onto the floor of her cell through a small opening in the bars apparently meant for such things. She waited until he was gone, and then ate the tepid chicken broth and wanted more. Despite everything, she was hungry. She wondered if the plastic spoon could be modified into a knife sharp enough to slit her wrists.
There was one way to escape, at least in spirit, if she could make herself remember the spirit-travel chant. She lay back with her head against the wadded-up blanket, shut her eyes and tried. She pictured herself lying in Neoma’s bed with Neoma standing above her chanting quietly while she wove her hands in that mysterious way. Though the Latin words were difficult to remember, the haunting melody was simple and easy like some ancient lullaby, and as Amy pictured Neoma singing it the words became clear as well, and Amy sang along soundlessly with her mind instead of her mouth.
When she opened her eyes she was perched in a tall tree in front of a house, but this one wasn’t Billy’s—it was Neoma’s house at the compound. Neoma had said that when the spirit leaves the body it seeks a familiar home, and maybe her spirit now considered this place home more than the one she had grown up in.
It was a bright breezeless day and nothing was stirring, not even the leaves. She flew past the empty house and barn, past the picnic tables and the pile of charred belongings, and on to the empty cabins. There were no vehicles parked in front of them, and she wondered if Sandoval’s men had driven them to a chop-shop to be recycled, and somehow that made her think about the unburied bodies of her comrades. No doubt the demons had eaten them.
She flew back to the tree in front of the house. The sadness here was palpable and she could scarcely bear to remain, but she had a purpose much more important than looking at the abandoned camp. She wanted to talk to Neoma.
She spoke Neoma’s name over and over in her mind. She whispered it and shouted it. She sang the lullaby-chant again and again, hoping that Neoma’s voice would join hers. But it didn’t. Nothing answered her but the terrible silence of the camp.
She opened her eyes. The guard across the room was staring at her, and she pulled the wadded blanket from under her head and used it to cover her legs.
“Hey screw, I need a fucking drink!” Mack Riley yelled.
The guard looked at his watch, made a call on his phone, and a few minutes later another man in gray descended the stairs with a plastic bottle filled with what looked like whiskey. She couldn’t see Riley because of the cinderblock wall of her cell, but she soon heard him moan with satisfaction and murmur, “Ah, that’s real nice.”
She wondered if he knew that before long he would be sacrificed to a demon with no skin. Maybe he just thought he had been arrested for jaywalking and would soon be released.
She shut her eyes and slept for a while. When she opened them the guard was gone. She got up and saw his keys lying on the table beside his sword and his browning apple core. There were just three keys on the ring; maybe one for the door to the tunnel, another for the door at the opposite end, and one key that unlocked all of the cells.
The chant for telekinesis was harder to remember than the other one; there were more words and the melody was too plain to stick in the mind. She stared at the keys, doubled her fist, and sang out loud. Concentrate on the keys and the fist and the chant all at once—but what exactly was the chant?
She thought she had gotten the melody right and at least some of the words when Mack Riley hollered, “Hey, what’s that shit you’re singing over there? Don’t you know anything good? How ‘bout something by that redhead chick with the nice ass? You know the one I mean.”
She ignored him and kept singing, but she knew the words hadn’t been right before and now they were even less right, and nothing moved, not even the apple core.
She stopped when the steel door in the wall near the stairs suddenly opened. Karl stepped out from whatever room lay beyond it with the guard behind him.
“Time’s up,” Karl said. “I hope your memory’s as good as new now. Otherwise we’ll have to sharpen it, and you may not enjoy our method.”
He reached through the bars to cuff her hands and legs. The guard opened her cell, and Karl led her into the room they’d just come out of. It wasn’t large and it contained no jail cells, but it had another steel door at the opposite end, and maybe her comrades were locked up beyond that door.
There was a small elevator cage in one corner, and with a soft whirring sound the elevator descended into it. Sandoval opened the accordion-like gate and wheeled himself out.
“Well, Miss Jackson, has bed rest improved your memory?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s better now.”
“Well then, let’s get started. Please sit down.”
She sat on a wooden chair against a wall. Sandoval moved his wheelchair so he faced her from about six feet away, and Karl stood behind him. The black irises of Sandoval’s eyes rolled up so only the whites were visible and his mouth fell open. He appeared to be sinking into a trance or maybe lapsing into senility.
“What’s the name of your organization?” Karl asked.
Amy didn’t think the name could be of any use to them, so she said, “The Unseen.”
“How big is it?” Karl asked.
“They wouldn’t give me any specifics. They didn’t want me to know, in case something like this happened. But I overheard some things—I know the Unseen has headquarters all over the country.”
“Where are they?”
“I heard them say something about a headquarters in Cincinnati, but I don’t know where the others are.”
“Who’s the leader?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t tell me.”
“Who was the leader of your gang?”
“A guy named Red. I don’t know
his last name. We only knew each other’s first names. He’s a slender guy, medium height, with red hair and a short red beard.”
Sandoval’s head jerked, and he blinked his eyes and stared at Amy. “She’s lying,” he said. “We’ll have to use the memory-sharpener.”
Karl moved to the corner of the room to the left of the elevator. Fastened to a ceiling beam was a pulley with a thin wire running through it. One end of the wire was tied in a loop like a noose, and the other end was tied to a dumbbell that sat on a small table. A dirty narrow mattress lay on the floor beneath the noose.
“The dumbbell weighs one hundred pounds,” Karl said. “The wire is a triple strand of piano wire that can easily bear the weight. But if I roll the dumbbell off the table, will your neck be able to bear the sudden pressure of the wire?”
“It’s a crude device I know,” Sandoval said. “But it’ll be interesting to see if the noose will completely remove a person’s head or merely cut through the neck to the spine. What do you say, Karl?”
“Completely remove,” Karl said. “When the dumbbell rolls off the table it will fall with tremendous force.”
“The demons will be delighted,” Sandoval said. “They consider the head a special delicacy and will squabble and fight over it like hungry hyenas.”
“It might be fun though to lower the dumbbell very slowly,” Karl said, “instead of letting it fall all at once.”
“No, no,” Sandoval said. “I prefer abruptness—one moment alive, the next moment dead. But not immediately dead—it’s said that a severed head can remain alive and conscious for a full minute before the brain expires.”
“We can time it, for the sake of science,” Karl said.
“How would you do that?” Sandoval asked. “I mean, how can you know for certain if the head is still alive?”
“Hold a lit cigarette to its eye and see if it reacts,” Karl said.
Sandoval let out a high-pitched cackle and said, “The trouble is, nobody around here smokes except me. I still enjoy a good cigar, even though the doctor says no. Besides, hitting the floor would surely knock the head unconscious.”