Hidden Things

by Doyce Testerman

  He paused. “Once upon a time,” he said, “there was a story about a guy who met some mountain elves while they were bowling, and the next thing he knew, twenty years had gone by.”

  Calliope’s eyes narrowed in thought, then widened as she looked back at the alley. “He drank something of theirs.”

  “That definitely didn’t help,” Vikous allowed. “But mostly, I think it was the bowling.”

  She glared at him. “You knew this would happen.”

  “Of course I did. I was counting on it.”

  “You did it to me.”

  “I did it to both of us,” he pointed out. “And I didn’t do it.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He crossed his arms across his chest, a ghost of his former good humor still clinging to his features. “If I say ‘let’s go stand out in that big river’, and we do that, and our shoes get wet, I didn’t make our shoes wet: the water did. It’s what water does.”

  “You knew it would happen,” Calliope snapped. “And you didn’t tell me. You stole from me.”

  “I hid us,” Vikous growled. “I took us both entirely off the map until we needed to meet Gluen.”

  “Without explaining it or even asking me,” Calliope countered. “Johnson could have called again. Josh could have called again.”

  “Oh, please.” Vikous’s face twisted in annoyance. “We both know that’s not going to happen.” His voice lost force as he spoke the last word. He looked at Calliope, who was staring down at the pavement, her jaw clenched.

  Vikous cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

  “I’m going to the appointment,” Calliope said. Her voice was tight and quiet. She walked to the Jeep, her boots rapping on the pavement, and unlocked the door.

  “I should go with you,” he said.

  “Fuck off,” she replied, in the same hard tone. “Walk.” She swung into the vehicle, slammed the door, started the engine, and left.

  The same security guard from the night before sat behind the lobby desk. “Hey,” Calliope said, nodding at him with her chin and settling her arms on the counter in front of him. “I’m back.”

  The guard didn’t rise from his chair. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “There are no visitors allowed after seven.”

  She gestured at the elevators. “I was here way after that last night, and you sent me right up.”

  He looked up at her, narrowing his eyes as though he were trying to make out a small object at a distance. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember that.”

  “I was wearing a fedora and a gray suit coat for a costume?”

  He thought for a moment and shook his head.

  Calliope pursed her lips, unwilling to play her trump card, but finally relented with an annoyed sigh. “I was here with the clown.”

  “Oh.” The man’s eyes widened—not as much as they had the night before, but more than necessary. “Oh. The party.”

  “Yes.” Calliope nodded like a teacher urging along one of her slower readers. “I was here for the party last night, and now I’m back.”

  The guard leaned out to look behind her, his brow creased. “Just you?”

  “Just me,” Calliope assured him, noting the flash of relief on his face, mixed with an awkward kind of discomfort.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, “but the party was a special occasion.”

  “But I have an appointment,” Calliope persisted. “Same guy, same floor, same everything.”

  He made a show of checking his ledger, though even reading it upside down Calliope could see her name was not on the page. “No one mentioned it to us. I’m sorry.”

  Calliope’s head sagged under the weight of the conversation. “Listen,” she said. “Have you met this fat bastard I’m here to see?”

  “Mr. Gluen?” Again, a brief look of panic skimmed his features. “I mean, not that he’s . . . I didn’t mean to say he’s—” He cut himself off with a cleared throat. “No, I’ve never seen it. Met him, that is.”

  Calliope smirked. “But you’ve heard.” She leaned forward a bit. “So, based on what you’ve heard, do you actually think you’re doing me a favor by letting me go up there?” She shook her head, keeping her eyes on him. “It’s the last thing in the world I want to do. I hate his guts and, believe me, that is a lot of hate.”

  He glanced down at the registry again, eyes darting over the blank lines, then back up to her. “I could call up.”

  “Would you?” Calliope settled back on her heels.

  He picked up the handset and dialed. Calliope waited. Seconds continued to tick by, marked off by the nervous takking of the guard’s fingernail against the desktop. After about thirty seconds, he covered the mouthpiece with his hand and said, “It doesn’t seem like anyone’s answering.”

  “Mmm.” Calliope nodded, trying to keep her face from showing her growing anger. She was already at a slow boil after the fight with Vikous—getting stood up like this was going to permanently damage her mood.

  “You know what?” she blurted out. “I can wait.” She waved the guard’s phone away. “Go ahead and hang up.”

  He pulled the phone away from his head, hesitating. “Are you sure?”

  “As long as you don’t mind me using one of those chairs over there.” She indicated the lobby furniture nearby.

  “Doesn’t bother me, but . . .” He hung up the phone and leaned toward her on his elbows. “I’m on shift all night, so you won’t be able to wait me out and get someone nicer.” He smiled, and she returned it, letting him relax.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she assured him, turning toward the chairs but keeping her eyes on him, over her shoulder, as she walked. “I just want to sit down until my friend gets here.” She dropped into an overstuffed leather armchair and let out a sigh that was entirely unfeigned.

  The silence following that sigh stretched on for long enough Calliope began to wonder if the guard had caught her last words, but before she could figure out how to continue, his chair creaked and he stood, speaking to her over the tall counter. “Your friend?”

  “Mmm,” Calliope nodded, her head resting against the back of the chair. She closed her eyes and concealed a small smile. “He’ll get everything straightened out.”

  “The c—” The guard paused. “Your friend from last night?” The tone of his voice—like a boy who found out Mommy was going to tell Daddy what he did—almost made Calliope relent.

  Almost.

  “Yup.” She nodded, then chuckled. “The funny part is, he was supposed to be here with me right now, but I drove off without him.”

  “Really.” The guard’s tone had graduated to a deeper level of despair.

  She sat up, as though eager to share the punch line. “Yeah, we got in this huge argument, and I got in my car and took off. I told him to walk.” She laughed again, shaking her head. “He is going to be So. Pissed.” She leaned back into the chair again.

  More silence. The guard dropped back into his seat. Calliope began a slow count from one.

  She’d gotten to four when he stood back up. “You know what?” he said. “Go on up.”

  She turned her head toward him, letting a confused yet hopeful look spread across her face. “Really?”

  “Sure.” The guard nodded, swallowing. “It’ll be—” He paused, then nodded again, more emphatically, his eyes on the empty ledger. “I’m sure it will be fine.”

  Calliope leaned forward and stood. “I know it will be,” she assured him, starting toward him and heading around his desk to the bank of elevators. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “It’s no problem,” he replied, as he pushed the secured elevator call button at his station. She gave him one more smile, and he added, “I’ll send your friend up too, when he gets here.”

  “Excellent,” she said, and stepped into the elevator. The door slid shut with a muffled, heavy thump.

  “I’ll send him right on through,” the guard whispered, his eyes looking at nothing at all.

  Ca
lliope was expected.

  Two guards, their features eerily similar to the staff at the bowling alley, motioned her out of the elevator when the doors opened. When they realized she was alone, they exchanged a look, but said nothing. One indicated she should follow him with a move of his head; the other fell in behind her as they walked to the office.

  “My dear,” Gluen murmured, “it’s a pleasure to see you again.”

  “I kind of doubt that,” she replied, her voice clipped.

  Gluen settled his arms on his desk; the flesh around his elbows splayed out as though he’d set down two plastic bags full of pudding. He steepled his fingers before him. “Manners cost nothing. Where is our enigmatic Vikous this evening?”

  “Walking,” Calliope muttered.

  “Excuse me?” Gluen’s hairless eyebrow quirked.

  “He had better things to do,” she said, raising her voice to normal levels.

  Gluen stared at her. As Calliope watched, the corner of his mouth quirked, pulling at his sagging jowls. Then, the other side moved a bit more and his lips parted. His sharp, shining eyes disappeared as his mouth opened farther, squeezing them shut—a thick, wheezing breath hissed into him, then out, then in again, deeper, as though he were about to explode.

  In a way, he did.

  Gluen laughed.

  Anyone, if he is laughing hard enough, could be said to shake. With Gluen, laughter was something far worse. Watching as the fit of amusement overtook him, Calliope did not see shaking; she saw the sagging seam of a cheap garbage bag threatening to split and spill rotten food; she saw the swaying of an overfull colostomy bag being carried at a full sprint, she saw a visual representation of what vomiting felt like—her own gorge rising in response, the bile burning her throat and clawing at the root of her tongue. It was a nightmare worse than almost anything Calliope could imagine.

  The fat man laughed harder.

  She turned away and squeezed her eyes shut, thinking herself safe until she realized she could still hear him—not the laughter, but the actual swaying, sliding, sloshing movement the laughter caused. She clapped her hands over her ears, groaning through clenched teeth, wanting nothing in life at that moment but for the laughter to stop. She sank into a crouch, locked her fingers behind her head, and clamped her forearms over her ears, squeezing her head so tightly white spots flashed behind her eyelids as she rocked back and forth on her heels, her groan becoming a high, keening thing.

  When Gluen’s laughter did eventually subside, Calliope didn’t know it. One of the lithe guards tapped her on the shoulder with two long fingers, then again when she didn’t respond. She opened her eyes just enough to see his impassive, aquiline features, and, at his gesture, she stood and lowered her arms, moving like a gun-shy deer.

  In the aftermath, the silence in the room was almost as much of a shock as the sound; Calliope could hear only Gluen’s exhausted panting. Weirdly, with her back to him, he sounded like a much smaller person; each breath was a precise, frail thing that seemed entirely insufficient to the task.

  She didn’t want to turn around and see the expression on his face after being all but driven to her knees in front of him, but the only alternative was walking out the way she’d come, which meant going on without what she’d come for, and she’d already gone through too much for that.

  She turned, braced for whatever mocking he might muster.

  She had no reason to worry. Gluen sprawled in his chair, leaning back so far that he was nearly prone. His tiny gasps rushed into a mouth that gaped disproportionately wide, as though he were a fish trying desperately to suck life from the wrong medium. His face—in fact, every visible inch of him—was slick with sweat. His jowls slid over the folds of skin at his neck like mating eels; the printed silk of his shirt looked more like a full-body tattoo, it was so stuck to him.

  Worse, his proportions were wrong. Before, he had been grotesquely obese; uncommon, but hardly unique—strange enough Calliope could never quite ignore it. Now, it was as if he had come undone. His abdomen on the left side sagged out and hung over the arm of his chair, apparently held in place by nothing except the clinging silk of his shirt. On the same side, his ear had grown twice the size of its counterpart, while his right eye sagged in its socket, lower than the other by at least a half an inch and looking for all the world as though it might fall out and roll down his cheek.

  A low, impressed whistle wound through the room from the doorway. Calliope turned to see Vikous, his hands in his pockets, shaking his head slowly and clicking his tongue. “My goodness, Gluen,” he drawled, his voice rough. He took a few easy steps, stopping just short of the desk. “You’re really letting yourself go these days.”

  Still panting, Gluen could manage only a gesture in reply; his arm rose a bare inch from the chair, one quavering, nearly triangular finger indicating Calliope. Incredibly, his breath hitched and the corner of his gaping mouth quirked upward, as though his laughter might return. Despite her earlier resolve, Calliope tensed, ready to flee to the elevator.

  Vikous looked over his shoulder at her, his eyebrows raised. “You did this?”

  Calliope shook her head, at a loss. “No. He—” She swallowed against the burning in her throat and tried again. “He started laughing.”

  Vikous’s eyes widened, more in astonishment than any kind of worry. “What did you say?” Before she could answer, he waved the question away. “Never mind. Go . . .” He gestured at the doorway to the office. “Go grab some water. I’ll fix this.”

  Calliope’s eyes slid back to Gluen; she didn’t bother trying to hide her disbelief. “How?”

  Vikous shook his head. “You couldn’t handle the bowling alley,” he murmured. “Trust me when I say you don’t want to know about this.” Calliope felt the urge to voice some kind of protest, but she let it go.

  At the doorway, she turned, her mouth open to call something back, but Vikous was right there, his hand on the door. “Sorry,” he said, his voice gruff, but not unkind.

  “Me too,” she murmured, hoping he understood.

  He nodded and pulled the door shut.

  The last thing Calliope saw was Gluen’s eyes, filled with suspicion, watching her companion as Vikous turned away from her.

  “Come on back in.” Vikous stood in the doorway, silhouetted in profile.

  Calliope stood. She’d been waiting outside the office for the better part of a half hour. In that time, she’d realized she’d lost more than that during Gluen’s laughing fit. She didn’t like to think about how far away she’d gone in her own mind to survive it, and she had no desire to go back into the office again.

  “How bad is it?” she asked. “What happened?”

  Vikous paused. “You want to know?” His voice was low, darkened by a shadow of irritation. He hadn’t turned toward her. His head was lowered and cocked slightly to the side; he seemed to be watching her sidelong. “Because it doesn’t seem like you really want to know about any of this.”

  Calliope worked her jaw. “I said I was sorry.”

  “Okay.” He straightened, sniffed, and cleared his throat. “Everyone has to keep control over themselves, or bad things happen. That’s just life.” He jerked his head toward the office. “Sometimes those bad things are more obvious than others, and the way they lose control is a little weirder. That’s what happened: you said something funny, and he lost it.”

  “I didn’t say anything funny,” Calliope replied. “He asked where you were and I said you had something better to do.”

  “Ahh,” Vikous said.

  Calliope waited, but he said nothing else. “What? That’s not funny.”

  “It is if you’re us.” He motioned with one hand. “Come on.” He turned away and returned to the office.

  Reluctantly, she followed, keeping her eyes averted until she was close enough to Gluen’s desk that there was simply nowhere else to look but at their host. When she did, her eyes widened. “Damn,” she breathed.

  Gluen glanced up from
a stack of papers he was skimming. “And with that, both our lovely Miss Jenkins and her profanity reenter the scene.” The corners of his mouth turned up in a perfunctory socialite’s smile that never reached his lips, let alone his eyes. “Lovely.”

  Calliope stared back, lips slightly parted, brow furrowed. Gluen returned her look with one of calm reserve. His clothing was the same, but immaculate and fresh. He not only showed no signs of the previous trauma, but was actually improved from when Calliope had first arrived. She looked at Vikous, at a loss for words.

  “I am not, I assure you, unfamiliar with the wonder and astonishment my presence engenders in the fairer sex.” Gluen picked up the stack and handed it, without looking, to one of his guards, leaving one sheet of paper on the blotter. “But I’m on something of a tight schedule for the rest of my evening, so you will excuse me if I move things along.”

  “How—” Calliope turned back to Gluen. “When we were talking before, and you asked me where Vikous was—”

  “That’s not a conversation I wish to revisit, Miss Jenkins.” Gluen scratched lightly at the corner of his mouth with a fingertip. “I’m sure you understand.”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “Yes, well.” Gluen folded his hands on his desk. “That’s not a problem with which I can help.” His eyes flicked to Vikous. “I’m not convinced anyone can.” He sniffed. “But a spark of curiosity, however dim, shows some promise. Perhaps you will find your Professor Higgins.” Gluen leaned back, causing a now-familiar ripple beneath his clothes. “The goal of your quest lies, of course, within the Hidden Lands.” His fingers played over the single paper on his desk. “Your lost young man—”

  “He’s not my man.” Calliope muttered, defensively. “And what the hell are the Hidden Lands?”

  Gluen shrugged. “Mr. White is something to you or you are something to him; in any case, you are tied to one another in such a way as makes your involvement requisite.” He peered at her. “You . . . have a talent? You dance? Draw? Perhaps sing?”

  Calliope frowned. “No.” She glanced at Vikous. “Not anymore.”