by Jackie May
“Got it.” Hillerman opens her door, jumps out, and marches around the back of the car to jerk Brenner’s door open. “Out.” She grabs him by the neck in a pincher grip. Her prisoner.
Rolling my window down, I make a quick guess about which type of underwear Brenner prefers. I lean out the window to get a peek as Hillerman marches him up toward the front of the car. “So which is it, fish? Boxers or br—”
OH, HE’S NAKED. I blurt the first thing that comes into my mind: “Oh, he’s naked.” I slap a hand over my mouth but lean out the window again for another look. Hillerman barks at him to sit on the front of the car. His compact and blindingly white butt cheeks flatten against the hood. With knees hugged to his chest, the picture is complete. Between the humiliating nudity, the swaths of bruising on his body, and his crestfallen face, anybody watching will think Brenner is just a poor junkie who crossed the wrong girls.
The one problem with this charade is that if trouble arrives, I can’t simply stomp on the gas, or Brenner will go flying. Even as a fox, I never go into the east or west side demon neighborhoods. The only way I’d do it is how we’re doing it now—in my Crap-pile. Crap-pile is my safe place. In my Crap-pile, I can always turn and run. But not with a nude guy hood ornament.
Hillerman drops into her seat, places both feet on the dash, and slouches way down, so her eye level barely clears the window. She places her elbow on the door’s armrest, with the black gun dangling casually in her hand. “That street up ahead,” she says.
I see it, just past a pawn shop and an adult video store. “Not blocked.”
“Drive in the middle of the road.”
I idle forward. Hillerman says to go faster, and when I do Brenner rocks a little, then steadies himself with a hand propped behind him. The speedometer needle points barely past twenty, but the fear of spilling him makes it feel like I’m doing sixty.
As I take the corner, passing the point of no return, Hillerman makes a few taps on her phone. With a sudden blast, my speakers blare an awful noise that sounds like men dying in a horrendous car crash. After a screech like nails on a chalkboard comes a feverish drum solo, and I realize the noise is Death metal music, the kind with lyrics that are screamed as though the lead singer is having his guts pulled out through his belly button.
“And you just have this in a playlist?” I shout. “Got any other surprises in your phone?” Just then my monstrous, custom-built subwoofer hidden behind the back seat kicks in, shocking the car with a violent rattle.
Hillerman’s eyebrows raise above her sunglasses. “Bluetooth and subwoofers? Got any other surprises in your car?” Her tone is a challenge, as if calling me out, and I wonder what she thinks she knows. With a swipe of her finger, she lowers the volume to less than earsplitting.
Our first sighting comes from a rabble of little boys playing with a deflated soccer ball in a dirt lot. One of the boys, spying the naked white guy, stops to stare, until the flattened ball slaps him in the face. The other boys shriek with laughter, until they too see Brenner. After a stunned pause, they all rush to the house adjacent to the lot, jabbering excitedly to three teenage girls lounging on the front steps. The girls, sitting up, raising hands to shield their eyes from the sun, drop their jaws in unison, and then strain their gaze at me, apparently less interested in Brenner than in knowing who’s behind the wheel.
“Don’t look at them,” Hillerman instructs. “Don’t engage, no matter what happens, even if somebody stops us. We want to draw them in, make them wonder what the hell’s this all about. They won’t pull a trigger without knowing exactly what they’re dealing with, and nothing keeps them guessing more than the silent treatment. You already know that, from poker.”
I do know that, and it’s strangely gratifying to hear Hillerman point it out. It seems probable to me now that her overly critical, prejudiced, bully attitude from before was something of an act. Maybe Special Agent Hillerman has been playing the part of tough love mentor all this time, poking at me to see what I’m made of, and perhaps she hasn’t been disappointed. Maybe transforming into Super Agent Hillerman was a sign that I’ve gained her trust. I’m in.
“I wonder something about foxes,” she says. “Can I ask?”
“If I can ask you how many crunches it takes to get abs like yours.”
“Is it true you can feel directions?”
“It’s true.” Like homing pigeons and some kinds of bats, foxes are able to use the Earth’s magnetic fields to orient themselves, which comes in especially handy when hunting field mice in several feet of snow. The fox can hear the scampering of tiny feet beneath the snow, and using the magnetic fields trick, we can zero in on the exact location of the sound. Once locked in, we pounce straight up in the air and dive headfirst into the snow, buried up to our belly. More times than not, we’ll pop back up with a tasty treat between our teeth. The mouse never knew what hit it.
“If you were dropped in a maze and told which direction the exit was in, you would have a major advantage over humans.”
I see what she’s getting at. “Are you asking if I can remember how to get back out of this neighborhood?”
“After driving randomly for an hour.”
“Like spinning me around with a blindfold on?”
“And you have to get out in a hurry.”
“Sure,” I say, even though there’s no way I could know something like that. It’s not like I go around testing my abilities in case I get into freak situations like this. But I can see why she asks. Already we’ve run into two more blocked streets, forcing us down certain paths that wind around the neighborhood. Very much like a maze.
So far, I’ve seen only one other car—a maroon El Camino, that ugly car-that-wants-to-be-a-truck thing. After it follows us for two blocks, I begin to wonder if I should worry, but then I turn down a side street, and the El Camino keeps on straight.
“One other thing,” Hillerman says. “I need you to point out any underworlders you see.”
“Won’t they all be? They’re all demons?”
“No.” There’s a pause long enough for me to think she won’t elaborate. Then: “Those kids back there. You feel anything from them?”
“No, but I can only feel them if I’m close.”
She nods. “Still. Most here won’t be demons. Just regular people living in the wrong place.”
“So what else about demons? I’m taking us into the damn Heart of Darkness. Tell me more.”
To my surprise, she does. “Not much to tell. Demons come from a realm they call the Deep. The closest concept humans have is Hades’ underworld.”
“A world of spirits.”
“Right, but it’s here, sharing our same space.”
“Invisible.”
“And there’s only two ways a Deep One can come into this world. The powerful ones can possess a body. All others are born, just like normal babies, from a mother who has participated, willingly or not, in a Deep mating ritual.”
“Like those movies about pregnant ladies who suspect their baby is the spawn of Satan, and the ultrasound looks like a demon face?”
“Exactly like that.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“The baby is a hybrid—human body, but inhabited by a Deep spirit loyal to the horde master who created it.”
“The demon baby daddy.”
“A horde master moves into a neighborhood, say like Grandy district. At first, maybe he’s alone, or he seems to be alone. It’s important to realize that a horde consists primarily of Deep Ones who haven’t yet come over into our world. So even though we can’t see them, they’re always around.”
“Like ghosts?”
“Not like ghosts. They are the ghosts that humans have always been so fascinated by.” This last part she says with derision, as though humans are just so ridiculous. As though (I notice with curiosity) she weren’t one of them.
“So ghosts are real,” I say.
“And even though we rarely, if ever, see them, t
hey can always see us. They can interact with us.”
“With the whispers you talked about?”
“They act as agents for the horde master, spreading out and attaching themselves to people. They influence by very literally whispering into a person’s ear. So when we say that a horde master has a kind of aura, we’re actually referring to its unseen legion of minions in the Deep world. They infect the minds of people living close to the horde master, and in return, the master may reward his most worthy subjects with physical bodies to inhabit.”
“The demon babies.”
“Correct.” Her voice sounds rote, almost bored. “The more people who are taken over, the more Deep spirits are drawn to the area, like a gold rush. The horde master’s influence increases, which gives him greater hold over the area, which leads to more converts, and so on. Over time, a horde master may have a large family of spawn in human or nonhuman bodies, plus a legion of spirits in the tens of thousands, and, as we’ll probably see here, entire neighborhoods of people under the master’s influence. These people don’t even have a clue.”
“Wait, you said human or nonhuman bodies.”
“Animals. Watch for stray dogs.”
Oh my…if she’d meant to scare me, that’s all she needed to say. I hate dogs. Ask any fox; we all do.
Hillerman lets go an aggravated sigh. “A whole neighborhood. Free reign. No police. Nobody watching. This never should have happened.”
It’s obvious when we cross into a deeper level of East Side, the inner ring just outside the bullseye. The houses here aren’t just overgrown—they’re destroyed. Yards strewn with trash, windows broken, roofs caved in, walls sagging with rot, covered in graffiti.
Oddly, there are many more people here. Or they used to be people. Maybe they’re not all demons, like Hillerman says, but they long ago abandoned the outside world. They’re from all walks of life—men, women, tall, short, fat, skinny, white, brown, black—but all of them have the same dead eyes. Nobody home. Or maybe somebody is home, but it’s not somebody you want to meet. Cold, calculating, unfeeling, uncaring. They huddle on porches all but lost to jungles of weeds. They sit on roofs, smoking from pipes or sticking needles in their arms. Most of them have guns jammed into their pants and a mean look on their face just begging for a reason to shoot. Those mean looks turn to open-mouthed gawks when we drive by.
Oh, Brenner’s a big hit in this place. Men leap to their feet and come running from porches. Women razz, catcall, laugh into each other’s shoulders. Most of the onlookers walk half a block with us before losing interest. Some, however, don’t ever turn back. For several blocks, they trot after us on the sidewalk, shouting to each other, staring bloody murder at Brenner with their drug-fueled, bulging, dead eyes. They’re sharks that smell blood in the water, meat on a hook. Brenner’s body trembles, and I don’t think it’s only from the cold.
“We should charge a viewing fee,” I say. More whistling in the dark. My fingers strangle the wheel with white knuckles. In the rearview mirror, I see that the maroon El Camino is back, following at a distance, now with four guys piled in the truck bed. Up ahead, the street branches, but one of the roads is blocked by a brown truck with three guys leaning against it, staring us down. “I guess we’re turning right, then.”
Deeper into the maze.
“Is this going to be like in the movies, where you think these demented psychos are closing in to murder you and there’s absolutely no way out, but at the last second one of them just says boo and everybody laughs, and then we all share a peyote pipe?”
“No.”
“Okay.” I recall what Hillerman said about the silent treatment. Poker face. I decide to keep quiet. No more talking. “But I don’t see a white car or a white van. Maybe we should—”
I lurch forward, slamming the brakes. With a painful, streaky sound, like the needle scratching a record player, Brenner’s butt cheeks slide right off the hood. He’s flung like a rag doll into the street. There’s a gasp from the crowd. A few laughs.
“Sorry,” I hiss to Hillerman. “I just…” I just felt a predator, that’s all. Like the feeling from earlier in the woods, when a more dominant coyote was approaching, only the feeling I have now is worse—werewolf. I spot him immediately among a group of thugs playing street ball with a homemade hoop nailed to a wooden telephone post. He’s enormous, and covered with so much black hair that you might, at first, think he was wearing a shirt.
“See that bear? It’s not a bear, it’s a guy with shoulders that won’t fit through a doorway.”
“Underworld?”
“Werewolf.”
When I say that word, Hillerman does the last thing I expect, followed by the dumbest thing. She gets out of the car, and she stares directly at the wolf. At his eyes. So of course his nostrils flare, and his eyes grow wide, and he immediately pushes through the other thugs on a beeline for us. Primal fear scorches hot, then cold, down the back of my neck, all the way down my spine. It’s all I can do to keep from stomping the gas and speeding away. I can’t do that without running over Brenner, who is pulling himself to his feet, picking gravel out of elbows and knees. Behind us, the El Camino blocks the street. The crowd closes in.
“Hillerman,” I whistle through clenched teeth. I pound the wheel with a fist. “Hillerman, I don’t see any peyote pipes!”
Everything’s happening so fast now. We’re surrounded. It’s useless to sit cowering behind the wheel. If I stand outside to do my cowering, at least I’ll lend some solidarity to our group. I pull the parking brake (ratchet rasp sound), throw my door open (pinging door ajar sound), and step outside (teeth chattering sound). Peering over the roof of my car, I first see the werewolf bear man, but when his eyes flick to mine, I’m immediately forced by his dominance to bow my head and avert my gaze.
When I look up again, he is crashing down off the sidewalk, followed by his thugs. I’m horrified to see that Hillerman is not backing down. In fact, she stands up straighter and raises her face to the wolf, a challenging display of superiority that would send any male werewolf into instant berserker mode. My heart stops.
And the werewolf stops.
I’ve never seen anything like it. He was barreling, he was charging, he was stomping…and then he blinked, and his step slowed, and now he is stopped a good ten feet from Hillerman, cocking his head to the side. While he has not broken eye contact with Hillerman, his body is turned ever so slightly away. It’s not a posture of submission, but clearly the wolf is now wary enough to keep his distance. The shock of it seems to take the air out of the entire street. Everybody goes quiet. Just watching.
Hillerman takes advantage of the silence to say, in a casual, indoor voice you might use to ask what aisle the mustard is on, “We’re looking for Carcosa.”
All heads turn to the wolf as he considers her statement for a long moment. At first, he only appraises Hillerman with a deranged look. Then, all at once his posture slackens, his face turns neutral. He looks at Brenner, looks at me (I lower my eyes, dammit!), then back to Hillerman. When he speaks, his voice rumbles as much as my subwoofer. “No guns. No phones. I drive.”
Hillerman does not hesitate. “Good.”
His eyes returning to buck naked Brenner, the wolf scowls. “And he ain’t going like that, shit. Get him some shoes.”
When the pillowcase is removed from my head, I’m trying to decide if I’m more afraid or more angry. It takes me only half a second to decide that I’m definitely more afraid, but trying to push back against that fear with anger. The fear is very basic and primitive—I’m in a dark place, there are predators close by, and all escape routes are blocked.
The anger is harder to place. Am I angry at Hillerman for getting us into this mess? For not telling me that her plan all along was to let the demons take us into their court? What had she called it? Carcosa? Was that a place or a person? Am I more angry at myself for believing she was starting to trust me? Or am I the most angry at the werewolf, who forced me to sit in
the back of my own car, put a pillowcase over my head, and then adjusted the driver’s seat all the way back to accommodate his enormous body behind the wheel? Besides me, there’s only one other person in the world allowed to sit behind the wheel of Crap-pile, and even still, he knows not to move the seat.
The werewolf had driven us around for twenty minutes in lazy circles that got tighter and tighter, wheeling like a vulture toward a central location which I could still—despite being blind—easily pinpoint on a map. I might have congratulated myself on being such an amazing compass if I weren’t also reminded that Hillerman must have known we would be blindfolded. That’s why she grilled me about foxes and their extraordinary talent for directions. She had also banked on me pointing out an underworlder, knowing that only one of them was likely to be in a position to take us in. With her dumb keyword—Carcosa—she had basically said, “Take me to your leader.”
We now stand in what might be taken, at first, for an enormous cavern, except that caves don’t have glass windows, and I can clearly hear the sound of rain falling in sheets against windowpanes. And no, it had not been raining outside just seconds ago. The skies had been clear. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I see that we must be in an abandoned factory, likely one of Detroit’s countless forsaken auto plants.
When the pillowcase is pulled from Hillerman’s head, she is still wearing her sunglasses and makes no effort to remove them. I wish I could smack them off her face and crush them under my shoe.
That wish flies away on a surge of fright when a hand suddenly closes around mine. Brenner tugs me close to his side. Annoyed by the gesture—why does he think I need protecting?—I press in even closer, gripping his bicep with my other hand and touching my chin to the back of his shoulder. He’s still shirtless but was able to get pants and shoes on in the car.
The thought occurs to me that if anything attacks me in here, if something comes at me, I should let Brenner intercept and take the hit, be my meat shield. He would, you know he would. He wants to, even. I shake the odd, heartless thought away. Don’t be stupid. That’s not what I want. Are the demons already whispering to me? I remind myself that Brenner owes me nothing.