Nathaniel laughed. His laugh was higher-pitched than Kajdas’ laugh had been. “It takes some getting used to, doesn’t it? Seeing him but knowing it’s me. But I feel so much better in here. Much, much better. My old brain was not too good. Kajdas messed up my head. Now I’m in his head. It’s easier to think in here.” He leaned in close and sniffed, as though checking to see if Ed had body odor. “What’s that smell?”
Ed sniffed his own armpits. “I don’t smell anything.”
“Burning,” Nathaniel said. “You let him in, didn’t you?”
“I don’t feel like playing games,” Ed sighed. “Just say what you mean.”
“Urizen. He got inside your head. I can smell him.”
The hum rose to a scream once more. They both waited for it to subside before they could manage to speak again. Ed could hear Nathaniel grinding his teeth. “Fix the machine,” he muttered under his breath. “Why isn’t he fixing it? It’s going to break.”
“Cruller,” Ed said. “You’ve got him down here, don’t you? Why not just kill him and be done with it?”
Nathaniel shook his head. “Nooo, no, no. Why doesn’t anybody get it?” He spoke slowly, as if to a child. “If I can move into a new body, Orc and Urizen can do it, too. Don’t you see? They’re stuck with the bodies they chose, but only until those bodies die. Then they can find new ones.”
“But you can’t keep them down here forever,” Ed said.
“Not forever! Just until I’m ready.” Nathaniel looked up at the ceiling, deep in his own thoughts.
“Ready to do what?”
“To use my machines. To play my music for the world.” He closed his eyes as he envisioned it. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and almost soothing. “Arthur wanted to win everyone over to his side. He’s a crusader. I know better. I know how the mind works. No need to convert or convince. Just play my music and the people will come to me. Some of them. Those who don’t…” He drew his finger slowly across his throat. “With my machines and my Horsemen I can take over half the world, and the rest will be better off dead.”
The hum rose again, battering at Ed’s mind until he could feel his will bending under its weight. His brain fought against it until the hum receded. He was not sure how much more of it he could take. “So everybody ends up a slave, or murdered.”
“Then,” said Nathaniel. “Then those two can die. When there are no more bodies left to sneak into.” He snapped his fingers. “It’ll be easy.”
“You need to cut those nails,” Ed said, grimacing at the grime under Nathaniel’s untrimmed fingernails.
“There’ll be time for fingernails, too. Later. Right now I need you to stop trying to break my machine.”
Ed rubbed his temples. He was developing quite a headache. “I’m not trying to. It’s… fighting me.”
Nathaniel leaned forward and put one of his dirty hands on Ed’s arm. “No,” he said. “You’re fighting it. Stop fighting and listen. I need you. You can do something I can’t.”
“What?”
“You can read the mind of God. See the future. That’s what you will do for me, once I make you forget everything else.” The hum continued to buffet Ed’s mind, attacking the part of his brain that was resisting Nathaniel’s will. His mind was putting up a good fight, but the hum was winning.
* * *
The deep droning sound made Danny dizzy as he stood at the edge of the black hole in the ground. The sound changed from time to time, rising and falling in pitch, and when it reached its high note he felt the ground trembling. No, not trembling—it was a rhythmic vibration, like the ringing of a gigantic bell. The resonance shook the leaves on the trees and made the dirt on the ground dance.
There were two cracks, long and narrow. He was standing next to the larger of the two, looking down into it, but he could see nothing inside. It was utterly dark. Penny and the others stood behind him. Her thoughts were confused and frightened. The two young men were frightened as well, but their fear was on the verge of turning to aggression. “You won’t ever come back out,” Ricky said.
“I’ve been down in a hole before,” said Danny. “There’s always a way out.” Then he jumped.
It was cold inside. Danny felt a tightness in his face, like someone was pulling back on his hair. The air was thick and hard to breathe. He fell for a long time before coming to rest gently on a soft, flat surface that felt like gravel under his feet. Looking up, he could see no light overhead. It was as if the hole had swallowed him up and sealed him inside.
The subterranean realm of Ed’s mind was dim, but not perfectly dark. There was a thin, gray light all around that provided enough illumination to see a short distance. There were no colors, but he could make out gray shapes around him, shifting and moving constantly. They made soft scraping noises as they moved across the ground, which was spongy and felt like it was covered in ashes. One of the shapes moved toward him and he saw that it was human—a woman, or at least he thought she was a woman. Her black hair was so long that it nearly reached her knees, and she wandered aimlessly with a blank look in her eyes. She was bent into a strange posture and moved as if all her bones had been broken, and with every step she moaned in a cry of constant pain. What was most striking about her, though, was that she looked very much like an older, female version of Ed. Could that broken person be Ed’s mother?
Danny shrank back from her in horror and backed into another person, a man who was pale and enormously fat. His eyes were black rocks, his nose long and pointed, and he had no mouth. The fat man grunted and reached for Danny with a hand that was made from a wooden twig, flailing blindly until he caught Danny’s arm in his grip. Danny pulled away with a cry of terror and backed away. Several other people, or things, turned at the sound of his voice and started to creep closer.
The fat man began to chase him. It had no legs, but ran with a waddling motion that was surprisingly fast, grunting with each step. A bird-like creature, tall as a man and impossibly thin, joined in the chase until it collided with the fat man and they began fighting viciously. Danny took the opportunity to make his escape before other things came around to investigate.
He saw many more people, some walking purposefully toward some distant goal while others stood and stared at nothing. He passed a man with a painted face who had been buried up to his neck in the ground; the man appeared to be screaming, but no sound came out. There were creatures, too. He saw an enormous white spider with a woman’s face that kept its distance and whispered quietly as it watched him go past. After that he saw a dog as big as a horse that was eating something that still cried out in pain. There was something else in the distance, something big that made itself known through its growls and the thump of its heavy feet. As long as Danny was quiet, these creatures seemed not to notice him—but every time he moved they turned to look for the source of the sound.
Danny found himself falling back on his military training, keeping his head on the swivel to see if anything was sneaking up from behind. He looked to his left, then to his right, and when he looked left again he leapt backward with a startled cry. Just a few feet away stood a little man, no more than ten inches tall. He had a broad smile on his bearded face and wore a tall, pointed hat on his head. But something was wrong with his face: there was a crack from his hat down the left side of his face, and his left eye was a glowing red coal. In this world of gray, it was the only color to be seen. The little man stared at Danny with that red eye, filling him with fear. He was beginning to understand what existed in this part of Ed’s subconscious mind.
“You’re not real,” he whispered to the smiling man with the red eye. It didn’t answer him. Danny backed away slowly.
As he went further on, he found a place where the darkness was deeper. That darkness drew him in; he felt compelled to go closer to it. Soon he found himself at the edge of a lake, vast and oily-black. At its edge stood a man—not an apparition, but a real man. He was bald on top, with a fringe of hair around the edges that would
have been red if there had been colors in this place. Danny had seen him before, and was grateful to find another real human being in this haunted land. The denizens of this nightmare-world seemed to be keeping their distance from the lake, which was just fine with Danny.
“Do you understand? Don’t answer any of his questions,” the man was saying, even though there was no one around for him to be talking to. “Use the pill when the time is right, not before.” Then he noticed Danny approaching. “Ah, hello again. Excuse me for talking to myself. It gets lonely down here.”
“Jonathan. What are you doing down here?”
“Just trying to clean things up. It’s not safe here, but you’ve figured that out by now. You must be a good friend to come down into this dark corner of his mind.”
“I am,” said Danny. “Something’s wrong with him.”
The man sighed. His face was kind and his eyes had wrinkles at the corners from many years of smiling. “Urizen has touched him,” he said. “I’m trying to clean out the infection before it claims Ed’s soul. This lake… it’s not natural. The demon put it here, and it’s killing him.”
“The smoke,” Danny said, and the man nodded.
“Did Penny and the others let you come here, or did they put up a fight?”
Danny shrugged. “They were too tired to stop me.”
“Mmm.” Jonathan pursed his lips. “They’re worn out, all of them. I keep saying it’ll only be a while longer, but this problem is a big one.” He cocked his head to the side. “Maybe you can help. Are you willing?”
“To keep Ed alive, I’ll do whatever I need to.”
“A very good friend,” Jonathan said. “This looks like water, but it’s not. It’s… I don’t know what it is. The essence of Urizen. A distillation of his evil. From here it’s seeping into other layers of Ed’s mind, slowly corrupting him. There is a way to get rid of it, but I can’t do it alone. Maybe if I weren’t so damn tired.”
“Just tell me what to do,” he said.
Jonathan nodded in approval. “Thank you. We have to make a channel to drain it. Think of it as lancing an infection. But it doesn’t flow like water does. Do you see how the ripples move?”
Danny knelt down at the edge and watched the surface of the black liquid. He could see it moving, as though blown by the wind, except there was no wind.
“It follows its own rules. Here, try dropping this in.”
Jonathan handed him a piece of black debris he’d picked up off the ground, an object that looked like a scorched and melted piece of plastic. Danny took it and held it out over the dark fluid. Jonathan came over and stood right behind him, watching. Circular ripples began forming and moving across the surface, even though he hadn’t dropped it in yet. As he held the object close to the surface, something suddenly felt very wrong. It was a palpable wrongness that made his stomach turn with its intensity. He pulled his hand away from the black lake and stood up suddenly, backing into Mason as he moved away from the edge. But the wrongness wasn’t coming from the lake. It was coming from…
He turned and looked at Jonathan, who was watching him expectantly. “Is something the matter, young man?” said Jonathan. His tone was casual, but his eyes were narrow and his nostrils were flaring.
How had he missed it? Danny was so accustomed to reading the sparks that came from other people’s minds that it was quite alarming to realize that no sparks at all were emanating from this man. He was completely blank. Even animals threw off sparks, although Danny had never learned how to interpret them. Jonathan was unreadable; there were no sparks at all.
“Ah,” Mason said, smiling. “You’re that friend. Looking for my thoughts, right? I never let anyone see them. They’re private.”
Again, the words were not alarming, but there was something in the way he said them that was not quite as it should have been. “I’ve never met someone who could hide their thoughts from me,” Danny said. That wasn’t entirely true; Sarah had always been a closed book to him. But Sarah was different. She blocked Danny out as a defense mechanism, because of her vulnerability. Jonathan didn’t seem vulnerable. On the contrary, he looked like he was quite at ease. He was still smiling, but Danny gradually came to realize that the smile was not quite right—it was an imitation of a real, human smile.
“I’m not like other people,” said Jonathan.
“You were about to push me in,” Danny said. He tried to make himself sound confident and brave as he made the accusation, but there was a tremor in his voice that he couldn’t control.
“As I said, you’re a good friend. Ed only has room for one good friend. So…” He nodded toward the lake. “In you go.” He moved in a flash—one moment he was several steps away, and an instant later his hand closed around Danny’s arm, right over the monkey tattoo. There was a sizzling noise, like cooking bacon, and Jonathan drew back his hand with a hiss.
Danny knew an opportunity when he saw one, and he had learned in the jungle that you never let an opportunity go to waste. He lunged forward and shoved the older man as hard as he could. Jonathan lost his balance and fell into the lake, disappearing beneath the surface. There was no splash. The surface remained perfectly calm.
He watched for a minute, then two. The only sound came from the shuffling of the creatures, several of which came around to see what the fuss way about, although they still stayed a good distance away from the lake’s edge. After the third minute, Danny decided Jonathan wasn’t coming back.
He wasn’t done yet. There was still the matter of the black smoke. Had Mason been the source of it? Would it go away now that he was gone? Danny was contemplating these questions when a bubble rose to the surface of the lake and popped. It was followed by another, and then Jonathan’s head burst out of the dark liquid. He began wading toward Danny, rising up out of the lake. He emerged perfectly dry; the oily fluid did not stick to him.
“You want to read my mind?” Jonathan said. His smile was gone. He stepped onto dry ground, leaving no sign that he had been immersed in the dark lake. “Go on. Read it!”
Thought-sparks burst in a vast torrent from Jonathan’s mind: black as night and full of evil. They were unlike any human thoughts Danny had ever seen. The sparks bored right through him, penetrating every part of his being and filling him with all the terrible things that were in Jonathan’s head. There were images of murders, battles, entire wars fought by men who had been poisoned by Urizen’s touch. The entire bloody history of Urizen’s scheming was laid out for Danny to see. He fell backward, covering his eyes with his hands. He could hear himself screaming, but was unable to stop. The black sparks drove deep into his brain.
“Now you know me,” Jonathan said. “Better than anyone else ever has. Is that what you wanted?”
Danny shook his head. The sparks were too much for his mind to handle. He felt close to passing out.
Mason stood over him. His mouth was open; his teeth were dripping dark drops of liquid onto Danny’s skin, burning wherever it touched.
“The smoke,” Danny whispered. “It was you all along.”
“There is no smoke,” said Jonathan. “There is only me.”
Through the rush of black sparks, Danny saw through the man standing over him. Behind Jonathan stood a huge, dark thing with a vaguely human shape. It controlled Jonathan’s movements like a puppet-master. The sparks came not from Jonathan’s mind, but from the mind of the beast that controlled him.
“I wanted him dead,” the beast said. Its voice was a combination of Jonathan’s pleasant tenor and the rumbling bass of the demon behind him. “He exists to break the Cycle, and I can only rule the world once he is gone. But I couldn’t kill him. Whenever I tried, he sensed me and escaped. So I did the next best thing: take away everyone he had until there was no one left. Leave him completely alone, except for his trusty friend Jonathan. Convince him that everyone he knew was corrupted. All that was left was to make him destroy himself.” The beast drew in a long, deep breath. “And now it’s almost finishe
d.”
“What are you?” Danny whispered.
“I am Mason. Thornwood. Nosgrove.”
Danny was suddenly reminded of something Ed had said. “Three heads.”
Jonathan nodded. “But I have another name. A much older name. Do you know what it is?”
Danny knew, but he was desperate to buy a little more time. “No,” he said. “Tell me.” The onslaught of black sparks had made his vision go blurry. He felt around with his hands for anything he could use as a weapon. But there was nothing. All he found was the ashy dirt on the ground. That would have to do. He scooped up two big handfuls, waited for the right moment, then rubbed the dust into Mason’s eyes. Demon and man both howled in pain as Danny dragged himself to his feet and began to run, hollering with all the strength he could muster.
40
The Machine
John looked down at Arthur, who was still breathing but appeared to be in dire straits. “Seymour, I’ll be needing your help. I’m taking over,” he said.
Between the hum and Arthur’s mind-control, Flem was having a difficult time getting his wits about him. He blinked several times and said, “Taking over what?”
John stood up a little straighter, although he looked very tired. “The Society. It’s time to get our men out of here.” He frowned and tilted his head to the side like a dog listening to a sound that humans couldn’t hear. “Something’s different. The hum.”
“It’s stopped,” said Flem.
Perla listened and realized he was right. The cavern was silent except for the soft rattle of Arthur’s shallow breathing. Almost immediately she felt her brain clearing, like the prickly feeling returning to an arm that has fallen asleep. It was blessedly silent. She could remember her name now. “Perla!” she said. The men both looked at her. “Perla Mildred Russell!” She was proud of herself for remembering.
“Mildred?” John said with a smirk.
“It was my grandmother’s name, so zip it.”
The Music of the Machine (The Book of Terwilliger 2) Page 57