“I was sure he’d put her in his room,” Flem said. “Especially if Terwilliger’s on his way.”
“Ed?” said Perla. “He’s coming here?”
“That’s what Nathaniel was just talking about,” Flem said. He gave her an odd look, as though surprised she hadn’t already figured it out. She felt stupid and was grateful that he couldn’t see her blushing. Any attempt at logical thought was snatched away by the hum as soon as it came into her head.
They reached the Horse Room at the end of the long, sloping tunnel. A few Horsemen stood near the central platform, guarding Arthur. There was someone in the second chair now, too, but Perla couldn’t see his face. Flem stepped right up to the edge of the room, just beyond the range of the lights that illuminated the big chamber, and said, “Larson!”
This was followed by a short conversation, at the end of which Seymour somehow convinced the three men that Nathaniel wanted them up above. Perla pulled back as far as she could into the shadows as they went past. The hallway was dark and they didn't see her, although she almost revealed herself by coughing. She held her breath until they were out of sight around a corner.
The room was now empty, except for the two prisoners chained to their chairs and a big man who was standing next to their platform. With the guards all gone, Flem approached the platform and aimed his pistol at Arthur’s chest. “Hi, Arthur,” he said.
“Seymour,” the bald man said with a sneer. “I wondered how long it would take you to do something. You always were the most timid one we had. I always wondered what John saw in you.”
“Just waiting for the right moment,” said Flem. He cocked his pistol and took aim.
“Your new boss won’t be pleased if you shoot me,” said Arthur.
“I’ve got enough bullets for him, too.”
“No. You don’t.” Arthur caught Flem in his gaze. “You don’t know how to use that.”
Flem looked down at the gun in his hand and his eyes went wide. Muttering under his breath, he turned the weapon this way and that, trying to figure out which way to hold it.
“Why don’t you put it down over there?” said Arthur.
“I’m just going to put this down over here,” said Flem, setting the gun down on the floor.
Perla couldn’t contain herself any longer. “Flem!” she cried. “You moron, pick it up!”
Arthur whispered something else to Flem, who pulled his key ring out of his pocket. He located a padlock next to Arthur’s ankles and began trying keys.
“Don’t be stupid!” Perla gave up her cover and ran over to stop him. But Flem wouldn’t listen to her. He opened the lock and began working on another, located beneath Arthur’s left hand. Perla attempted to wrest the keys out of his hand, but his grip was strong. He pushed her away and she fell on her backside with a grunt.
Two more locks, and then Flem pocketed the keys while Arthur shrugged off the heavy chains. He stood up slowly and let the chains fall to the floor. Flem sank to his knees in front of him. “Thank you, Seymour,” Arthur said, patting Flem on the head like a dog. “You grew your hair out. Bald never looked good on you anyway.”
Perla quietly made her way over to the pistol that Flem had dropped.
“So nice of you to unlock me,” Arthur continued, stroking Flem’s hair. “But before that, you were going to kill me. Weren’t you?” He waited for Flem to answer, but Flem was too busy shaking and twitching to answer. “Ah,” said Arthur. “You’re caught between the hum and my commands. Ripping your brain apart, isn’t it? Don’t play with that, honey.”
As he said those words, Perla’s hands turned to Jell-O and it was all she could do not to drop the gun. But Arthur’s grip on her didn’t feel all that strong; perhaps his abilities were still limited by the hum, unsteady though it was. She focused intently on pointing the gun at him and putting her trembling finger on the trigger. “Don’t ever call me honey,” she said. Then she pulled the trigger.
* * *
Rayfield kept his hand over Sarah’s mouth and pulled her some distance down the tunnel. Joy followed, casting frequent glances toward the strange scene that was unfolding in the room with the horse on the ceiling. The big man was there—she remembered attacking him at the concert in Toronto—but she didn’t know which side he was on. The yellowish lightbulbs overhead were flickering and it was hard to see much.
The passage sloped downward sharply and twisted around to the right, taking them down into deeper levels. There was a sound of trickling water somewhere ahead of them, and the hum felt more powerful down here. Rayfield stopped when the ceiling became so low that he had to hunch over. He was panting for breath and kept reaching up to touch the top of his head.
“Why do you keep doing that?” Joy said. “Your hair looks fine.” She’d always liked his hair; it was the most impressive hair she’d ever seen.
“It’s falling out,” he said, holding his hand out to show her. “See?” But his hand was empty.
“I think you’re imagining it,” Joy said.
Sarah, now free of Rayfield’s grip, began pummeling him with punches. “Rayfield!” she said, emphasizing each word with another punch, “you… scared… the… shit out of me!” Rayfield lost his balance under the assault and fell down hard.
“Ow! Doris, I… Stop!”
“That’s not my name!” She gave him one more good punch and then caught him in a fierce hug.
“Guys,” Joy whispered.
Rayfield stood up suddenly and bumped his head on the ceiling. “Dor—Sarah. I was just trying to keep you from yelling. We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“I knew you’d come find me,” said Sarah. “Where’s Perla?”
“You guys,” Joy said. “Listen!”
The hum was changing. It swelled to a painfully high note that screamed in Joy’s ears like a jet engine. Then, just as she was sure her eardrums would pop, it deepened to a bass note that shook her bowels and made her queasy. Back and forth it cycled every minute or so.
“I don’t like that one bit,” said Rayfield.
“Me neither,” said Joy. “It sounds close by, doesn’t it? Like it’s―”
“Right under us,” said Sarah. She looked down the tunnel. “It’s coming from down there.”
Joy covered her ears as the hum rose and fell once more. “What do you think it is?”
“Big John says it’s a machine,” said Sarah.
“If it’s a machine,” said Rayfield, “we can break it.” He crouched and led the way down the steeply-sloping tunnel. The passage appeared to be a natural opening that had been enlarged and smoothed out by men a long time ago. Twice Sarah slipped on her smooth soles and crashed into him from behind. Several times they had to stop and plug their ears as the hum rose to a painful scream before dropping again to a deep rumble. Smaller tunnels branched off here and there, but only this one was wired with lights. The passage curved to the right and carried them down into another level far below the Horse Room. Further on, the lightbulbs were dark and they had to feel their way along in near-total darkness until the passage leveled out and joined with a long, gently curving tunnel in the rock.
As in the larger caves above, this space was lit by small bulbs that were strung up and fastened to the rock overhead. When the hum wasn’t drowning out all other sounds, they could hear other things: trickling water, buzzing machinery, and a rhythmic, mechanical clanking from somewhere down the tunnel to their right. To the left, the tunnel widened into a huge, open cavern where clusters of copper pipes came out of the ceiling and ended at a swift underground stream. The whole system of pipes looked a lot like a pipe organ, except water and other fluids were flowing out of those pipes into the stream. “Must be their sewer,” said Joy.
“Smells like it,” Rayfield replied.
Opposite the sewage room, the tunnel curved out of sight behind a bulging wall of reddish rock. The clanking noise was coming from that direction. Rayfield put a finger to his lips and snuck ahead to peek aro
und the corner. Then he motioned for the others to join him.
The tunnel ended at a brightly-lit room full of noisy machinery, with a floor that was a big step down from the tunnel. Joy could see control boards covered in switches and lights, a mechanical contraption as big as a small car with spinning gears and belts, and a box that looked very much like the shortwave radio Joy’s father had in his attic. This radio, though, was at least ten times larger than any radio Joy had ever seen. It had four long antennas sticking out of the top. Next to the radio, in a comfortable-looking armchair that would have fit in well in any nice living room above-ground, sat a woman. She looked pretty and sad, and her eyes did not seem to have any life in them. On her head was a big, hemispherical cap with wires that connected to the machine. She reminded Joy of a woman in a hair salon, except for her dead eyes. At a nearby bank of switches stood a lanky fellow with greasy brown hair and teeth that were nearly the same color. He was banging with a wrench on a lever that refused to move. Every so often, the machine with the belts and gears began to shudder and the radio antennas crackled with sparks. When that happened, the hum increased to an ever higher pitch until it was screaming like a jet engine. The woman in the chair went completely tense, as if she was having a seizure. Then, after a minute or two, the machine slowed down, the woman in the chair relaxed, and things seemed to return to normal for a while before it all started again.
“Brown Mike,” said Sarah. “He’s the guy with the wrench.” With all the noise in the room, she didn’t bother to lower her voice.
After several good whacks, the lever finally budged a little bit. Mike Ludd ran over to turn some dials on one of the consoles. This seemed to stabilize the machinery somewhat. “Feedback,” he was muttering. “Gonna blow this whole place apart. I told Nathaniel not to bring him here.”
Joy pulled Rayfield and Sarah in for a huddle. “We have to break it,” she said, feeling slightly silly for saying what was so obvious.
“I can sneak around the back and pull the plug,” said Rayfield.
“No,” Sarah said. “We have to destroy it. Really smash it or he’ll just turn it on again.”
Rayfield was touching his head again. He was still convinced his hair was falling out. “Who’s the lady in the chair?”
The machine started racing again. The woman in the chair began grinding her teeth and gripping the arms with white knuckles. Brown Mike cursed and ran over to twiddle some knobs, which seemed to get it under control again for the moment. While he was doing his thing, the woman in the chair looked up and saw Joy.
“Oh no,” Joy whispered. “I’ve been spotted.” She waited for the woman in the chair to alert Brown Mike that they had visitors. But the woman didn’t say anything; she merely looked down at her hands and chewed at her lip, waiting for the next surge from the machine. “She didn’t tell the brown teeth guy,” said Joy. “I think she’s a prisoner.”
“That don’t mean she’s on our side,” Rayfield said.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Sarah. “We have to set her free if we can.”
They all plugged their ears as the hum rose once more to a piercing scream. Brown Mike rushed from the console to the machine and picked up a big, boxy flashlight. He opened up a panel in the side of the machine and turned on the flashlight to see the controls better. Then he made some adjustments and the noise diminished, but only a little. “I need Zeke Halliwell,” he shouted at the woman with the metal cap. She looked up at him dumbly and he said it again: “Hey! Over here! I need Halliwell. Call him!” The woman concentrated for a moment, and then Joy saw an image carried on the hum. It was the face of a middle-aged man in the blue uniform of the Horsemen, with a scraggly beard and glasses. With the image came a thought that the man was being summoned, that he was needed quite urgently in the machine room.
Rayfield nudged Joy out of the way so he could get a better look. “So she sends the messages out,” he said. “I wonder why the brown guy doesn’t do it. He’d look better in that hat.”
“Never mind that,” Joy said. “They just called for help. Somebody else will be coming soon. Rayfield, can you…?”
“I can try.” Rayfield stepped out of the shadows into the room, to the great surprise of Brown Mike, who stared up at him with his ugly mouth hanging open. “Hey, man,” said Rayfield, “nice equipment you got here.”
Mike Ludd backed up until he bumped his backside against the control console. He dropped the big flashlight, which hit the floor with a loud crack and went dark. “Who are you?” he cried. “You can’t touch that!”
Rayfield went right up to the woman in the chair and pulled the metal cap off of her head. She looked at him, dazed. The image of the bearded man vanished, but the hum didn’t change.
“You can go,” Rayfield told her, and the pretty young woman got up and ran out of the room. Brown Mike looked like he wanted to follow her, but he seemed reluctant to leave his machine. The woman ran past Joy and Sarah, but stopped only a few paces down the tunnel, looking around in confusion. Sarah approached her cautiously and said some quiet, soothing things. Joy decided Rayfield needed her more than Sarah did, so she joined him in the machine room.
“Better not mess with me,” Brown Mike was saying to Rayfield. “Nathaniel don’t let nobody mess with me. I’m the engineer.”
Rayfield pushed him aside, politely but firmly, to get a better look at the controls. The panel was extremely complex, with many switches and dials, each one identified with a tiny label. “You want to tell me how to turn this thing off?” Rayfield said.
Brown Mike was utterly baffled by this question. “Turn it off? We don’t turn it off! This machine’s the only thing keeping the music on, and the music is what keeps Orc’s men from turning on Nathaniel.” He closed his mouth quickly and began to look quite sick. “You don’t want to turn it off,” he finished.
Joy picked up the wrench from where Brown Mike had dropped it. It was very heavy. Her father had always used an expression about “throwing a wrench into the works,” and now it crossed her mind that that was just what she should do. She went over to the machine and stared for a moment at its spinning wheels and belts, trying to determine where the wrench could do a good deal of damage without flying back out to hit her in the face.
There was a scream from the outer passage. Joy and Rayfield both turned to see Sarah, standing in the doorway and looking perturbed. “What it is?” Joy asked her. The question had barely left her lips when Sarah was shoved from behind, stumbling as she tripped over the low step. She fell hard on the floor, knocking her head on the stone, and didn’t move. Behind her was the man who had been summoned—Halliwell. Another of the Horsemen stood behind him with the armchair-woman, whom he held tightly by the arm. The room was not large, and it felt crowded with—Joy did a quick headcount—seven people in it.
“Go find Nathaniel,” Halliwell told the woman. Her captor released her arm and she ran back out of the chamber. Joy sighed. It had been too much to hope that she would show some gratitude for being freed.
“Away from the machine,” Halliwell said. “And give that to me.” He held out his hand and smiled, looking like nothing more than a friendly science teacher, and Joy almost believed that he might be as gentle as he looked. But then she saw the glint in his eyes. He didn’t look friendly at all. He looked creepy. And the other guy with him was big and surly—not at all the sort of person she wanted to have to fight. She stepped away from the equipment but held onto her wrench.
“Rayfield,” Joy said, speaking out of the side of her mouth to be subtle, “I can only take one of them. You got the others?”
“I dunno,” Rayfield said. “My hair…”
“Forget your stupid hair. Look out!”
Brown Mike had been rummaging through a toolbox next to the big control panel, and he came up with a claw hammer in his hand. He was preparing to take a swing at Rayfield with the claw end when Joy shouted her warning. Rayfield caught his arm and held him back, but it was clearly a strugg
le, even though Rayfield was much larger than Ludd.
Joy was torn. She could stop the hum by breaking the machine, but Rayfield needed her. And the other two men were closing in on her. They stepped carefully over Sarah’s unconscious form. Joy raised the wrench, holding it like a club, and tried to decide which of them she would go after first. The science teacher, she decided. He was not as imposing as the other one, but Joy had a sneaking feeling he was the more dangerous of the two.
Rayfield was losing his struggle with Brown Mike. He had his back to the big console and Ludd was pushing the claw of the hammer closer and closer to Rayfield’s eye.
“Hold on, sweetie!” Joy called. She took a hard swing at Halliwell, who caught the wrench easily and yanked it from her grasp. The hum was swelling in pitch again.
“That machine belongs to Nathaniel,” Halliwell said.
“No,” Brown Mike said, turning his attention away from Rayfield for a moment. “It’s my machine.” His wounded pride was evident on his face.
“You only take care of it,” Halliwell said. “Oh, never mind.” He raised the wrench high above Joy’s head, preparing to deal her a terrible blow.
Joy wasn’t looking at Halliwell or his wrench. Her attention was focused on another person who had just slipped silently into the room. He wore a silk shirt, unbuttoned at the top, and a nice pair of dark slacks. He wore his long, gray hair in a ponytail and his eyes were a disarming shade of light blue. In his hands he held a sword, which he used to cut Halliwell’s companion nearly in half with a single, mighty swing.
“Wow! Check that out,” Joy said to Halliwell.
“What?” Halliwell turned just in time to see the gray-haired man winding up for another swing. He ducked, narrowly avoiding decapitation. The wrench clattered to the floor and Joy picked it up.
The blue-eyed man held his weapon at the ready, eyes darting rapidly from Halliwell to Ludd and back again. But it was not to either of them that he spoke. “Please don’t break the machine,” he said.
“It’s causing the hum,” said Joy.
The Music of the Machine (The Book of Terwilliger 2) Page 55