Cthulhu Unbound 3

by Brian M. Sammons (ed. )

  As he went, he glimpsed images of himself riding the elevator with Theresa, as if he had ridden with her instead. “Where are we going?” he asked her, averting his eye. She had put on her underwear but nothing else.

  Theresa turned to him, and he saw that tears had wetted her breast. “To see a doctor,” she said…

  …and her voice echoed into the stairwell as Justin passed the third floor twice. He figured he’d misread the exits, but then passed the basement before reaching the ground floor.

  By the time he hit the lobby, only Theresa’s cell phone remained, jamming the elevator doors—ding!

  VII

  On the MAX rails home, Justin debated whether to invade the privacy of her cell. He had a deep pocket. He could lose it easily, dig it out the next time he saw her. If he saw her ever again.

  He powered on the phone to its white glare.

  Theresa had stored no contacts, no pictures, no special ring tones. Her recent call list was empty as well.

  The phone featured some kind of GPS software, which far surpassed Google Maps. He searched for “cool shit around Portland,” and of course the Shanghai Tunnels made the list. OMSI, too. And Doernbecher.

  Justin chose to view the skate park under Burnside, and the satellite feed broadcasted live. Even in the sea of night, he could see people skating the steep bowls and jumping big.

  With a few screen gestures, he navigated to the street and watched the passersby. But then decided to type Specht’s address, just to see what he could see on the map.

  Then something caught his eye.

  On a bench near the cell’s periphery, a black homeless man sat in a quantifiably perfect ventral view. He stared at Justin across the universe of the cell—stared so severely sideways from the corner of his eye that he was but a cross section of a man. If he were to turn around, you might find nothing ever there.

  The phone emitted the most basic alien sound and Justin jumped. One New Message, said the popup obscuring the display.

  Someone had mailed a photo of Theresa.

  She wasn’t in her wig.

  VIII

  Less than a block from Specht’s, Justin huddled in a doorway like a bum. He watched the women show up for Friday night’s gazing: Sarah arrived first, followed by a few girls whose names Justin had never known.

  He had yet to see Theresa.

  Thursday evening, he had spent hours figuring out who had sent her picture. He had dialed the caller’s number several times; each time the static squeal of a fax machine surprised him.

  Oddly, the phone number matched the one on Specht’s business card—matched except for one digit. Justin believed in coincidences, but not this one.

  Readjusting himself in the doorway near the therapist’s office, he opened the phone to Theresa’s picture. He couldn’t go five minutes without peeking at it.

  The photographer had used a telescopic lens, zoomed in. Theresa stood outside in an undisclosed lot, showering in a stall made from timber and tarp. A bucket of water hung above her and drizzled through a showerhead screwed to the base. The rise of her breast hid just above the top rail.

  The shower looked like something from Dignity Village, a campground of stick-built homes and tarp shacks for Portland’s homeless and displaced. But Justin had checked there and hadn’t found her.

  The focus of the picture sharpened best on her scalp and the side of her face. Short hair lay flat and wet on the right side. On the left, where fake bangs usually hung, a scar had leathered her skin as black as his tattoo.

  Theresa must have seen the photographer, because the photo captured her startled glare so accurately that Justin felt as if she were glaring at him through her phone.

  So. She had seen the photographer.

  Justin looked from her picture to the street, where Beatrice was strolling toward Specht’s. She smoked a clove and wore a black tank top ridiculously too small.

  By Justin’s count, only Theresa had ditched therapy tonight. Theresa and himself.

  Maybe Theresa had gone inside the building before Justin had set up his stakeout. Maybe she had come early to look for her phone.

  Yeah, Justin thought, and to sext with Specht. “Screw it.” He stood to leave. Waste of time.

  Beatrice ran into him on the sidewalk.

  “You’re late,” she said. Somehow she had doubled back after entering Specht’s office.

  “I was just on my way home,” he told her, trying to figure out her magic trick—he had watched her enter the building. He certainly hadn’t imagined it. Cloves still scented her clothes. And her tank top: still black—except now it sported a white inkblot of a three-lobed burning eye titled ‘Vulva’.

  Beatrice grabbed Justin’s arm. “Come on, Lefty. You’re part of the family now.”

  She dragged him a few steps. He could have pulled away, but just as easily her fingers could have clamped down.

  This time Specht’s stairway started off at the exit to the roof, then worked its way to the floor above that.

  As he and Beatrice ascended, his fillings received transmissions from the past, snippets of the conversation in the elevator that he and Theresa never had.

  Justin remembered that tears had wetted her breastbone. He had asked where they were going and she had said to see a doctor.

  “But…Specht’s upstairs,” he said.

  The elevator whirred and wobbled around them, and Justin could tell it was falling.

  With a tear she didn’t seem to feel, Theresa said, “Beatrice was right about you…”

  And then her voice echoed down the stairwell as Beatrice opened the landing door: first to a tunnel of servers, humming and blinking their idiot lights; second to the old dance studio with its reflections ad infinitum.

  The women sat in their circle, no longer perfect but broken where Beatrice, Justin and Theresa usually sat.

  Specht said, “Welcome. Have you seen Theresa?”

  Justin asked, “Have you? I found your number in her cell.”

  “You have her cell?” Beatrice asked, suddenly eyeing Justin up and down. On Beatrice’s tank top, the inkblot had changed to an octopus with dragon wings, comically titled ‘Vagina Dentata’.

  “Yes,” Specht said, “I wouldn’t be surprised to find my number in her cell, as I am the one to have given it to her. But I imagine you, Mr. Devecka, would be surprised to find your name stamped on the motherboard.”

  “Do you know where she lives?” Justin asked, cutting the bullshit.

  Specht’s lens, because of reflected light, had turned into a one-way mirror. “That information is confidential.”

  Justin glanced at the women. “Anyone else know where I can find her? Anyone at all?”

  Sarah met his stare, but then glanced down at her nails.

  “Give me the phone,” Beatrice said, and dug into Justin’s pocket uninvited.

  “Hey!” He turned sideways and held up his hand to stop her.

  She yanked him forward by the wrist. Shoved down on his shoulder. Down to the floor, planting her knee in his back and wrenching his arm backward and up—he almost cried out.

  “Beatrice,” Specht called. “Stop.”

  “He’s got the cell, Henry, he—”

  “Let him up.”

  After a moment she did.

  Justin stood, shrugging his shoulder; she had practically pulled it out of socket.

  He measured out a look for everyone in the room and said, “I’m going to shut you all down.”

  Scales of some sort bristled along Beatrice’s jaw. “Better leave,” she said.

  He flipped her off and left.

  By the time he noticed he’d escaped Specht’s stairwell, the doors of the MAX were closing behind him—shish!

  IX

  An automated woman asked, “Will you accept this collect call from…”

  “Pay phone,” said a real woman’s voice, filling in the blank.

  Justin said, “Sure.”

  The collect call had startled h
im on first ring, that familiar alien tone. He had been staring at Theresa in the outside shower. He had been remembering what she’d said about how everything was beautiful and nothing hurt, yet also about how holes didn’t exist. He had been staring at the black scar on the left side of her head.

  “Hello?” he said into the receiver as the collect call connected.

  “I know where you can find her,” a woman replied.

  “Theresa?” It certainly sounded like her; although by the time her voice had traveled through space, it belonged solely to the electronic entity of the phone.

  “Look,” the woman said, “if you want to know where she is, meet me in the Washington Park Station.”

  She disconnected the call.

  The voice had been Theresa’s, he was sure. But the woman had said “if you want to know where she is”—who was she if not Theresa?

  On the train ride, everyone stared into the space of their cell phones. He did as well: into the space of Theresa’s photo.

  (everything full of space…)

  An idea occurred to him, and he typed ‘Washington Park Station’ into the cell’s GPS. The station, a tunnel, resembled the set of a sci-fi movie, with its strange curvature and beams. Amazingly, the mapping system could spy even underground. Justin saw the platform’s granite wall, into which a glass tube had been set to display a drill core. The tube’s mounting brackets segmented the strata into a geological timeline, for which labels had been etched above into the stone.

  According to the phone’s satellite footage of the tunnel, commuters had deserted the Washington Park platform.

  Justin glanced up.

  Engineered to go around corners, the segments of the MAX flexed at a joint in the metal. On the other side of the joint, a black homeless man sat at an odd angle. He stared sideways at Theresa’s cell.

  Justin recognized the transient from the first time he had messed with the GPS system: the man on the bench, who had stared and stared. Seeing him up close now, Justin recognized him from somewhere else. He couldn’t remember where.

  Having lived in the city most of his life, he knew the fine survival tactic of pretending people didn’t exist. So he kept his head down and mimicked texting, even when the train stopped and he disembarked.

  On the tunnel platform, Justin turned around to look through the train’s windows. Inside, the transient still stared sideways at the phone. And as the train moved out, the man slowly turned to face Justin. He opened up down his middle, layer by layer like some kind of sliced mushroom—and then he became whole again as a lefty and the train was gone.

  “That documentary was filmed here,” Sarah said behind Justin, and he leapt.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, hiding the cell deep in his pocket.

  A cardigan, blouse, and blue denim concealed Sarah’s burn scars. She said, “This is where they filmed the water experiment. Where the one water was told ‘I love you,’ and it looked like this kaleidoscope; but the other water…the one that was told ‘I hate you’…it looked like something’s sick spit.”

  “Yeah, the Dr. Emoto display—I’ve seen the movie. Was it you who called me?”

  Sarah pointed to the polished granite with the inset tube and said, “On the wall, there’s a mathematically incorrect inscription of Pi. Imagine what would happen to water if you read that to it.”

  “You said you know where to find Theresa,” Justin said.

  She crossed her arm. “Do you have her cell?”

  “Yeah. No thanks to Beatrice.”

  Sarah nodded. “Can I ask you to shut it off?”

  “What for?”

  She glanced at him, as if she’d known he wouldn’t understand. “Haven’t you noticed in the last few years: all cell phones, laptops…just about every electronic device comes with an eye, an ear, and GPS tracking?”

  “Yeah, and Google should rhyme with ogle. Welcome to the twenty-first century.”

  “If you don’t believe me, then why don’t you go Google yourself.”

  “Can’t, sorry. Left it at home.”

  “But you said you had it.”

  “Yeah, but not on me.”

  She eyed his pocket, which, he knew, was too baggy to reveal an outline. Sarah didn’t seem to be a grappler like Beatrice—she wouldn’t try to wrestle something off his person—but she did seem like a snatcher.

  He’d watch her closely.

  “Not to be a dick, but…where is Theresa?” he asked.

  Sarah shrugged. “Hop a couple trains: Blue Line, Green Line, Red Line—get lost. After about an hour…maybe you get off at the Old Town station, and maybe you’ll see me there. But you definitely won’t follow me too closely.” She looked again at his pocket. “Maybe.”

  She hopped the train back into downtown, and he returned to the other platform to see if anyone else had shown up. Like Theresa.

  A businessman, pretending to take a picture of the drill core, pointed his 3.2 macropixel phone at Justin, who pulled on his hood and pulled down his sleeve, wondering briefly whether Theresa and his tattoo had been captured by the same high-power lens.

  * * *

  Keeping his head down but his eye peeled, Justin lost himself in the network of rails. He wondered who Sarah was trying to lose, what shadow.

  He saw her a few times during his travels, just a glimpse here and there at various stations. He saw her less and less the closer he got to their destination.

  He expected to see the black transient, but didn’t. Which was a relief, because he had begun to think that the transient resembled Specht’s Mushroom Man.

  Using the phone’s GPS, he looked up his next stop: the Old Town platform. A few people were waiting for the train, and that was about it. He wondered if the phone would show Sarah as she arrived. He would have searched for her directly, if only he knew her last name.

  “Then why don’t you go Google yourself,” Sarah had crudely suggested. Justin decided to humor her.

  Using screen gestures, he panned his point of view for one last look at Old Town: he didn’t see a train coming; and when he tapped the little TriMet symbol hovering over the map, it opened the MAX schedule—his train wouldn’t arrive for five minutes.

  Ample time to Google himself.

  The GPS found him instantly, sitting on the MAX and fixating on the phone. He had never focused on a single person before, and was surprised when his full name and age appeared in a menu beside his head. The menu was expandable.

  So Justin expanded it: Vital Records, Medical Records, all sorts of data and statistics, and, he discovered, a submenu with different types of views. He chose Anatomical, and then chose Exploded rather than Sagittal, Coronal, or Transverse, which were also options.

  Onscreen, his body suddenly deconstructed to illustrate how everything worked and interlocked. His skull expanded away from the brain in cranial plates and layers of scalp. The tissues and bones of his arm spread out to show the tentacles of his inky design, his tattoo, which branched and spread like a fungus through cartilage, muscle, brainstem…

  The train stopped at the Old Town platform, and Justin got off. No Sarah. Not yet. Hiding the cell under his hoodie, he checked its clock. Almost midnight. He thought about checking the GPS again.

  Sarah brushed past him and he jumped, almost dropped the cell. She kept walking and didn’t look back. Luckily she hadn’t noticed the phone. She would have said something about it if she had.

  Justin took the time to shut off the device before losing it deep in his pocket. He couldn’t have it ring and blow his cover.

  At a safe distance, he followed Sarah through the night. His shadow seemed to be their only one.

  From behind the branches of the urban forest, some of the buildings spied with too many glassy eyes. Specht’s office wasn’t far, but Sarah turned down a different block. She almost lost Justin around the corner. He ran to catch up, and found her unlocking the door to the donut shop that he and Theresa had patronized the other day.
/>   It was Sunday, after hours.

  The store was dark.

  Sarah let them both inside, then shut and locked the door. In the gloom, Justin saw the empty stools along the bar. At one point, the business had been a tavern.

  “Maple bar?” Sarah asked. “On the house.” She reached over the bar as Justin stepped up beside her.

  “Look,” he told her, “quit fucking around—”

  A trapdoor opened beneath him.

  X

  He and Sarah landed together on an old stained mattress. She crawled off like she’d done this a hundred times. In fact, she had come prepared: her penlight cast a surprisingly strong beam and revealed an intersection of passageways.

  She pulled on a rope, and the trapdoor swung shut above them.

  “What the hell!” Justin said. He picked himself up off the mattress. “The fucking Shanghai Tunnels?”

  “No,” Sarah said, “these aren’t on any tour.” And then she left him in a maze.

  He jogged after her.

  These passages, unlike the ones he and Theresa had toured, did not parallel the city grid. They squirmed like wormholes in dusty wood.

  Although veiled in grime, the walls looked more and more like the corridors of a hospital. There were old fluorescent light covers in the paneled ceiling, a gurney far beyond rusting, and at one point, he swore that he’d glimpsed an elevator shaft.

  He tried to map their path in case he had to backtrack, but in the mad twisting and intersecting of passages, he got turned around.

  Sarah’s light lit here and there on cubicles crammed with old motherboards and computers, smothered in the same ages of dust as the relics from the other tour. Like a lightshow, the beam phased through smoke, aromatic and familiar as the sea.

  “Where’d all this shit come from?” Justin asked.

  Sarah said, “It was donated. By a great literary deconstructionist.” And then she said, “Did you know sometimes that ship captains will sacrifice slaves to the Kraken?”