Devil in the Wires

by Tim Lees

  I shook my head. “It’s like a mystical experience. Almost. I got a taste of it in England, with Dayling.” I raised my injured arm. “He got a bit more out of the experience than I did. At least, I think so. Assur—­somehow it disrupts the flow of time. It’s like . . .” I could feel their eyes on me, all of them. Angel’s, too. But I didn’t want to tell them, not like this. It was too close, too personal. “I think we’re looking at some sort of an addiction here. They hurt someone, they get a buzz. So they do it again. And again, and again, and again. Of course, some ­people start a little further down the line than others, so—­”

  Woollard stood up. He coughed. He took out his phone.

  “Well,” he said. “I am going to send a message to my lords and masters, to let them know that—­personal doubts about this crock of BS notwithstanding—­I am going to follow up the lead so we can take it off our list. Then you,” he looked at Benedict, “are going to give me that address, and we can all go take a look. That clear?”

  “I can give you the address,” said Benedict. “You won’t find it without me.”

  “I call BS on that, too. In fact, I call BS on this whole happy party. BS and more BS.”

  “And you’re still here.”

  “Yep. And I’m still here.”

  Chapter 66

  Plans and Transformations

  Do u get it now? Do u understand?

  I was flicking through my messages. That one, I’d got yesterday. The next said, One moment. Fraction of a moment. See chris? See now?

  Angel said, “My car’s out front. Wherever we’re going, it’ll get us there.”

  She met my gaze, steadily, deliberately. I knew what that meant.

  Quietly, I said, “I don’t want you with us.”

  “You don’t have a say.”

  “I’m saying—­I’m asking—­”

  “I want to join Field Ops, Chris. I’m serious. And if I start here—­well. Who’s gonna tell me no, huh?”

  Woollard said, “We’ll take my car. And you guys—­you want your magic stuff, right? Your hocus pocus. Your ee-­quip-­ment.”

  “It isn’t magic,” Shailer said. “It’s technological. There’s nothing fanciful in this, Detective, nothing you can’t—­”

  “We go to the Beach House, then,” I said. “Pick up what’s there.”

  “Well, that’s good. You’ve got authority, right? You can requisition what you need?”

  Shailer nodded. He looked pale and nervous. Shamefully, I got a certain pleasure out of this.

  “Any more?” said Woollard. “Anything from you, then, Mr. God?”

  Benedict just showed his empty hands, and smiled benignly.

  Angel went upstairs to ask a friend if she’d look in on Riff. I still had hopes of changing Angel’s mind, keeping her out of things, even while I knew the sheer futility of it.

  God knows, when she’d said “Field Ops,” this wasn’t what I’d had in mind for her.

  Or me, either, come to that.

  There was a silence at the Beach House.

  It wasn’t just that they were on a skeleton staff. It wasn’t just that everybody there was acting like their kids had died. It wasn’t just that the visitors were gone.

  There was a deadness in the air. I’d felt something a little like it other times, mostly after Seven B had been around, doing his work. But this was different. Not so brutal. Just a sense of lifelessness, of drainage. It could make you feel there was no point in being there, no point in living. It could leach the strength right out of you.

  Shailer came into the storeroom with me. He spoke quickly, voice low.

  “You know what he’s doing.”

  “I think so.”

  “He’s watching us. You know that? He’s seeing where we’re weak. Every time we disagree or get angry at each other—­that stupid crack you had at me, just for a start—­he sees it. He makes a note of it. He’s learning all the time.”

  The gear was stacked on shelves held up with angle irons. I found bags of cables. There were four of them; I took them all, and piled them on the floor. Three flasks, in hold-­alls, bagged and ready. There were readers, too—­enough for everyone.

  “You’re disrespecting me, Chris. You’re disrespecting me and putting everyone at risk.”

  “And you’re too busy playing Let’s Make a Deal.”

  “He wanted to understand. He wanted to know how things worked, and I told him. That’s all. I thought it was the right thing. Straight up, honest—­”

  “He started with the animals, learning from them. And he worked his way up. Or down. Depending how you like to look at it.” I nodded to the bags. “Give me a hand here.”

  “Chris.” He reached out, touched my shoulder. I felt myself tense up. “Every time we fall out. Every time we disagree. He sees it, and he stores it up. He’ll use it against us. If he needs to. If he wants to.”

  He kept his hand on me. I wanted to just swipe it off. I wanted to hit him. It was like being a kid in the playground again.

  “That what you taught him?” I said. “Is that like, Sun Tzu or somebody?”

  “It’s what you taught him as well, Chris. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  “Fuck off.” I picked up a ­couple of the cable bags, swung them over my shoulder, grabbed the hold-­alls with the flasks. I felt a jolt along my injured arm.

  “I’m serious, Chris. You know it. There’s a part of you in there. You know it and he knows it. That’s why you’re here, Chris, that’s why he wanted you. That’s what this is about. Christ—­I don’t think it’s about Assur at all. It’s about you! It’s about you, Chris, and—­”

  He danced around me. I said, “You take the rest of the stuff. And the flashlights.”

  I turned my back.

  He said, “This time—­you think you can get him as well?”

  Woollard leaned against the hood of the car. He had his hands in his pockets. He said, “I thought you’d want to wait till dark.”

  Benedict stood very straight, watching something—­perhaps the flicker of the cars on Lake Shore, or something else that only he could see. There was a small smile on his face. I wondered whether I had ever looked that smug. I hoped not.

  I dropped the bags beside the car. Woollard was still on at Benedict. I gathered this had probably been going on a while.

  “So. What d’you call yourself? A god? But you’re talking like . . . I dunno. Some kinda vampire. Is that your thing?” He adopted an Eastern European accent. “ ‘I am hungry! I must feed!’ I’ve seen those movies. I got a kid who watches ’em, day in, day out. So, you know. Not impressed, a whole lot. Not impressed.”

  Benedict said, “I know something you want to know. Something you don’t.”

  “Yeah? What say I run you down to the station house and put you in a cell a ­couple of nights? Soon find out this big, big secret. What d’you think, huh?”

  “I lived in the earth a thousand years. I lived in stone and wood. I lived in rot and dark. A thousand years. What can you do to me?”

  Woollard slapped his thigh. “Wooo-­hooo. Now that—­I guess that takes the cake, hey? I guess it does . . .”

  I didn’t see him move—­Benedict, I mean. It was only afterwards I felt the rush of air, and by then someone was standing, facing Woollard. Someone as like him as a photograph: the thinning hair, the gleam of light upon his forehead, the black moustache, even the watch-­chain on his waistcoat.

  Woollard himself jerked back. His mouth opened and then it stayed open and you could see him try to process what was happening. His hand came up, grasping the fat knot of his tie. The double did the same, but slowly, slowly: hand to the knot of the tie, mouth hanging open and then bit by bit transforming to a grin, and he thrust his head forward, the way he’d done with Riff—­

  Angel s
aid, “That’s enough.”

  When he didn’t step back, she said again, louder, “That’s enough!”

  Benedict eased off, putting his weight on his heels. His posture changed, became more upright; his features melted back into that eerie semblance of my own. Woollard’s brown suit became Benedict’s plain, dark jacket and pants.

  Woollard straightened up. He frowned, he breathed out. He looked at Benedict.

  “Nice trick,” he said. “You’ll have to teach me that, some time.” But his voice was small and his face looked gray. “We going now?” he said.

  I looked at Angel. At Shailer.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Chapter 67

  South Shore Memorial

  Shailer and Angel took the backseat. I sat between them. Woollard and Benedict were up in front, with Woollard driving. He kept quizzing Benedict, practically third-­degreeing him. Trying to bolster up his own authority, perhaps. Not that he was getting very far. “How many of these guys, then?”

  A shrug from Benedict. Vague, lifted hands.

  Woollard said, “Gimme a number.”

  Nothing.

  “All of ’em in one place? Some kinda . . . clubhouse, say?”

  Benedict stared straight ahead. The movements of the other cars seemed to intrigue him, and he traced their passage with his fingers on the windscreen.

  At last he said, “Detective. Mr. Detective. How many do you think?”

  “Two, at least,” said Woollard. “Gotta be two. You give me names, descriptions, numbers, I’d be more impressed.”

  “Two, then. Or six. Probably . . . no more than ten.”

  I heard Shailer suck a breath at this.

  Angel said, “He’s trying to get you scared, is all. Don’t take it seriously.”

  Woollard said, “Oh. I don’t believe a word of it.”

  We passed by unlit shop displays. Power was still spotty in some districts.

  Woollard said, “And they got, what? Some kinda thing for pain? Some shit like that?”

  Benedict’s lips curled slyly. He enumerated, as if reading from a catalogue: “The flagellating monk. The sexual sadist. The gang enforcer.” His voice grew soft and earnest. “The doctor from the pain clinic. What number is your pain, sir?” He clicked his tongue. “Your obsession with identity. With motive. Your belief that motive is identity. You’re here for such a short time. Does it matter? Really?”

  Woollard, very quietly, spoke through his teeth.

  “It matters,” he said.

  “One of you dies a little early, that’s all. Do you care?”

  He drove with both hands on the wheel, his gaze set dead ahead.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I do. I care.”

  “Someone needs to stay here with the car,” I said.

  Angel looked at me. Then, deliberately, she lugged two bags out of the trunk: cables and a flask.

  “Field Ops,” she said.

  I whispered, urgently now, “You don’t need to do this.”

  “Field Ops.”

  “Nothing will depend on what happens here,” I said. “Nothing. It won’t do you any good. And it might do you a lot of bad.”

  “Field,” she said.

  “Angie—­”

  “Ops.”

  Shailer said, “Don’t we have, you know, backup or, or . . . ?”

  Woollard said, “Need more than just the word of this—­this little freak before I call up that.”

  There was a fence of corrugated metal sheeting. Behind that, a broad square building, eight or nine stories high. Peeping through the fence I saw a sign: EMERGENCY.

  “It’s a hospital,” I said.

  “I told you.” Benedict stood back, still watching us. “It’s a place where they feel . . . comfortable.”

  You’ll find Assur somewhere like this. That’s what Dayling had told me. Assur—­and whoever else . . .

  Woollard said, “It’s St Mark’s South Shore Memorial.” He ran a hand over his thinning hair. “Interesting fact: I was almost born here. Then Mom took it in her head to drop me at the Seven-­Eleven instead. I guess it saved on the co-­pay . . .”

  He went over, wrestled with a ­couple of the metal sheets. “No one’s been in this way, anyhow, I’d say.”

  To Benedict, I said, “They’re in there now?”

  He shrugged.

  “Assur’s in there?”

  “He’s always there.”

  “You let him out, though, didn’t you? From the Beach House. Whatever you say.”

  “Anywhere he is, he’s always there.”

  I said, “One moment that goes on forever. Yeah.”

  “One moment. Forever.”

  “I’m not so sure I buy all this.”

  “You’ve seen him in his aspects. The Lion. The Scorpion. The Throat with Teeth. The last is very old. Picture him as like a great, devouring worm, whose burrow runs from time’s beginning to its end. He’s somewhere in that burrow now, Chris. ­People love him. He makes them feel free. He takes away the dismal plod of life, the drudgery of every passing minute. You’ve felt it, Chris, I know you have. You know this gift . . .”

  He reached towards me and I pulled back, and he smiled. He read me, he read everything I did.

  Woollard smacked a hand against the sheet metal. It rattled.

  “The entrance,” said Benedict, “is a little further down. That way.”

  So that was where we went.

  Chapter 68

  Here, Now, Passing On

  The lobby smelled of dust.

  A shaft of light fell from an upper window, and within the light, the dust seemed to be falling endlessly, like static on a TV screen. The movement held the eyes; it was hypnotic in a way that it perhaps should not have been.

  We dropped our bags down in the center of the floor. No power here. That bothered me, though Dayling had been trying to warn me about that. Where the wires don’t run. Well, they ran, all right, but they weren’t linked up to anything. Nothing we could use, anyway. I reckoned we’d enough lead with us to fetch power from the nearby buildings. If we got a clear read on things. Which so far, hadn’t happened.

  I held the reader out, swung it around. It was like trying to find Dayling in Paris: there was a signal, yes, but nothing I could get a proper hold on. Ping-­back from an unknown source.

  “Something’s missing here,” I said.

  “I told you. He hides them. They feed him, and he hides them.”

  “Spare me the cryptic shit, will you?”

  “I’m not trying to deceive you, Chris. Only to show you: we can be of use to one another.”

  Woollard shone a flashlight up the stairs.

  “It’s an empty building. We can do a room search, but I’m betting it’s a waste of time.”

  Angel said, “They’re here. I know they are.”

  Shailer was standing by the entrance, swinging a bag of cables loosely in his hand. He looked as if he hadn’t made his mind up yet to join us.

  Angel said, “It’s the same feel. Like that night with Gotowski. That night in the swing park. Listen. What d’you hear?”

  “Nothing.”

  “The stillness. That’s exactly how it was.”

  “Angel. This is not your job.”

  “No?”

  “No.” I was whispering, but I noticed Woollard, watching me.

  “It’s something that needs doing, is all. Or I’ll be looking back over my shoulder every time I leave the house. You know how that feels?”

  “Yeah. I think I do.”

  “Then we’re on the same page.” She took her reader from her belt and checked it. “Let’s make this count.”

  Benedict walked out into the center of the room. He put his head back, sniffed the air.
r />   “He’s closer. Closer all the time.”

  “Closer from where?” said Woollard. “I don’t see no one hereabouts. This place been empty for a long, long time. You can smell it . . .”

  I said, “The light’s changing.”

  “Time is a direction for him. He’ll bring the ones you want. He’ll bring them with him.”

  “Then drop ’em in our laps?” Woollard was cynical. He crossed to the reception desk, picked up the phone, put it to his ear, then threw it down, dismissively. “You’d think they’d have stripped this place by now. You can sell a phone.”

  There was something written on the wall, low down behind the desk.

  Each moment opening

  Each moment infinite

  Shailer said, “We should set up a base, you know, get organized, and then—­”

  “Is there a map of this place?” Woollard said.

  I watched Angel prowling back and forth, her reader in her hand.

  “Here,” said Benedict. “Here, now.” He pressed his palm against the wall. “He’s in the building. He’s in the fabric of the place, in the wires in the walls. Do you feel him? This is how it feels when he comes through. This is his path, now. Here.”

  The window overhead dimmed suddenly. The shaft of light winked out. And there was silence—­a deeper stillness even than before. For one, two minutes. Then the light was back. The air seemed to loosen, become breathable again.

  “He’s come by, and passed on further,” said Benedict. “I wonder what he’s left behind?”

  Chapter 69

  An Encounter on the Wards

  We came into an upper corridor. There was debris on the floors. Wall cupboards all emptied out, doors removed. Black cables poured from plug sockets, looped and tied in loose knots.

  “Watch out where you’re walking here,” I said.

  “Chris,” she said, “I won’t break, you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’d just rather . . . well. You know. I know you’re OK, you can handle yourself. I’d just feel better if you weren’t here, that’s all.”