Seven Devils

by M. Chris Benner

  As the plane descends, there’s a second pop – this one is far worse, excruciatingly painful. David howls in pain as the plane touches down on the tarmac, his hand covering his left ear as he crouches into a seated, fetal position. Though he can’t hear his own screams of pain, everyone else on the flight can. A stewardess runs down the aisle while the plane is still navigating the runway, kneeling beside them.

  Kate describes everything leading up to the moment of his howl of anguish but David can’t hear any of it, grimacing as he looks over to see why no one’s making a sound. His scream turns to an agonizing whimper when it finally dawns on him that it’s not his vocal cords malfunctioning. To make matters worse, when the paramedics arrive he finds himself unable to balance himself when he stands and so they lay him out on the stretcher.

  Their first destination – which was supposed to be a cab ride to David’s old neighborhood – is the nearest hospital.

  PHASE ONE – OPERATION YELLOW HARDHAT

  The door opens to a small, quaint apartment. A burly Hawaiian man clothed only in boxer-shorts stands on the other side of the door.

  “Oh my. Hello – Mr. Forest?” Travis asks him.

  The burly man nods, obviously a bit surprised about the visitor.

  “Your landlord should’ve called,” Travis informs him, the result of one arduously drawn out call that Steve had made the day before I arrived. The building is a duplex, sectioned by entrances and floors. The third floor has no barrier wall between buildings and it’s used for all excess equipment, backup ingredients, extras, and so on from a pizza shop. The floor below, on either side of this building, are apartments with separate entrances, one of which is on the other side of the corner pizza shop. One man owns the property from the pizza place to the book store – all of it except the first floor “room” we’re trying to get into – but the owner lives in Florida and hasn’t stepped foot in the buildings in some time. He was miserly, argumentative, and incoherent at times.

  Travis continues.

  “I’m with the pizza place next door. There’s some rotten wood in the third floor.” Steve and I have known Travis long enough that we can tell he’s using his nerdy voice in an attempt to sound “less black” as he calls it: it’s a voice he uses when he’s trying not to sound threatening to white people. Augustus is at his computer in the hotel room, the clicking of the keyboard faint in the background.

  The burly man nods, yawns, rubs his left eye, and returns to his bedroom, closing the door and audibly landing flat on his bed. It’s one in the afternoon but the man had only been home from work for a few hours. Travis had seen him leave for the night shift numerous times and Augustus was able to pull up an online copy of his work schedule.

  In minutes, loud, undulating snoring erupts from the bedroom.

  “Alright, I don’t even need to whisper,” Travis says to the mic under his lapel. He’s wearing a button-up shirt, tie, slacks, and a yellow hardhat. Both Steve and I had protested vehemently against the helmet, as it didn’t make sense; his argument, which Augustus sided with, was that you always imagine a building inspector wearing a hardhat. “All you have to do is mention ‘building inspector’ and you picture a nerdy thin white guy with maybe glasses. And definitely a hardhat.” He had already procured one and, since we couldn’t rule it out by saying it would serve absolutely no purpose, he wore it.

  “Dude’s gone. That whole helmet conversation was totally unnecessary,” he says, walking into the living room. There’s a backpack hanging over his shoulder and he sets it on the ground – inside it, there’s a drill, a tiny fiber-optic camera, and the contraption he recently assembled. “Glad I wore it anyway ‘cause it makes me look super-badass—holy shit!” his hand had been riding the rim of the helmet but stops as he sees…

  “This stereo is amazing.”

  “Seriously?” Steve says, exhaling.

  “You scared the shit out of us,” I let him know.

  Travis is already pulling out the couch a bit, ignoring us; then, standing against the outside wall, he makes an approximation of where the middle of the far wall might be located. He had already figured it out with the blueprint but he wanted to eye it up as well – his machine wasn’t going to be precise, but it needed to be relatively center of the building.

  He bends next to a bookcase against the opposite wall, beside a television. [“This guy owns some nice shit for living in north Philly,” he says, to which I respond, “Quit it with the knocks on north Philly. That shit pisses me off. They can’t help it.”] From the bag, he removes something that looks like a metal spider: it has long, glistening legs with a thick, square strip for a body, the whole thing maybe two feet in length. Once the thing stands on its legs, up maybe six inches from the ground, Travis plugs his phone into an outlet on the back…

  “Got it,” we hear Augustus say immediately, followed by faint clicking.

  Travis puts his palm along the phone-sized body of the metal contraption and presses it flat against the ground, each leg arcing more tense. An odd pulsating begins from the legs; it remains low in volume, sounding like the bass of a neighbor’s speakers.

  “How long?” Augustus asks.

  “Ummm, good question,” Travis answers.

  “Did you give it any thought—” August begins the duel from his seat in the hotel room.

  “Of course I gave it some thought but it depends on—” and Travis continues it from a stranger’s apartment.

  “If it works?” Steve mock-finishes the sentence from a back room in the Public Works building.

  There’s an angry silence.

  Travis had modified a piece of equipment that he had been modifying for some time (so it was re-re-re-modified now) but it was one that had started out as a sonar; through its various generations of re-modification, it had become notorious for not working. I hadn’t encountered it before but, once they met, Steve and Travis hadn’t separated from one another, ever, and Steve had seen the metal spider’s gradual progression, where several of the stages were outright malfunction; however, with a well-staged trial, Travis and Augustus recently combined efforts to show us what a person was doing in the room three floors directly below us in the hotel. The image came up green and blurry but you could make out an overhead view of someone pacing as they talked on the phone.

  “It’s coming,” Augustus says.

  I had been pacing the sidewalk outside a body shop. The mechanic promised that it would only take two hours to reinforce the Dotson I had purchased that morning; it was approaching two and a half and I enter a nearby diner. Once seated, I order a coffee and pull out the modified smart phone Augustus had given me, which blinks and flashes with the beginning of an image…then a series of thick green lines form and shift, taking shape. Before anything is distinguishable, there is the prominent form of a large rectangular outline.

  More definition, more lines, borders, translucent shapes.

  Once the image settles, one thing becomes apparent:

  There is a prominent rectangle below the first floor that’s bigger than the room above it and spreads past all lines signifying the four walls of the first floor, continuing past the boundaries of the image.

  Whatever it is, the glowing box is huge and appears to be shielded.

  Individual, semi-transparent green details fill out what appears to be the area on the first floor, though they’re scarce and obscure due to the vibrancy of the giant glowing box that lies beneath it.

  “So…it would appear that there is, in fact, a subterranean enclosure…and it’s…a big fuckin’ metal tomb or something, I don’t know.” Augustus clicks several buttons and tries to move the bird’s eye view to the side for a better look but it only slightly decreases the downward angle. “It appears no one is directly below you. You should be able to drill down and get a look. Hold.” Augustus clicks a few things and the screen on our phones goes to a black and white command prompt. He types furiously; we hear it faintly but see the words appear on our screens. A n
ew image appears – this time all in white but unmoving, a snapshot – and there’s now more of a side-view where we can establish a few defining images of the first floor.

  The basement enclosure looks like a box of solid granite.

  “Make the hole,” and Augustus checks the layout, moving the mouse to try and locate the best vantage point, “hmm…I guess do it where’s it’s inconspicuous. I’m not finding,” he twirls the 3D image with the mouse and we watch, “any entrance into the basement. As far as I can tell, the downstairs is one solid room. No bathroom…nothing but—what is that?” And then it dawns on him, “Oh, the coffee machine’s there. On a small table in the corner. There’s a few tables and chairs, a fridge. It’s not picking up any electronic interference in the room except from the shell of the basement. It looks like a small kitchen, I guess. But no one’s in there so have at it.”

  Augustus makes a heaving noise as he rises to his feet. There’s the sound of shuffling, accompanied by deep, close breathing.

  “Your breathing gives me the willies,” Steve says. “It feels like you’re behind me.”

  “Seconded,” Travis adds.

  “Fuck all ya’alls—BOOM!” Augustus proclaims, flicking switches. Steve in the Public Works building, Travis in the apartment building, and I in the diner – we all stare anxiously at our phone’s screen, waiting, when Augustus appends his exclamation with, “It uh…it takes a moment.”

  The image is black but there’s the distinct noise of rubbing, as if it’s recording the inside of someone’s pocket.

  “Better not be nothing sharp in your pockets scratching up my lens,” Augustus threatens Travis.

  “My pocket’s like the room you’re in – nothing sharp inside. Boom, count it.”

  Steve and Travis chuckle together, a city apart.

  There’s the sound of a drill against wood. Silence. Shuffling. The television changes from black to Travis’ face while he inspects the lens; then, in a dizzying spin, he sticks it into the hole.

  And we finally get a look inside the room.

  MOROSE DIAMONDS

  David folds the doctor’s note, stuffing it into his front pocket as he carefully walks into the waiting room. His ears are packed with gauze and his head feels a bit like a vise is tightening on either side of it.

  Surrounded by their luggage, Kate sits in an uncomfortable chair in the waiting room and doesn’t notice him enter, her gaze out a nearby window. Her hair is in a state of disarray from a nervous habit where she unconsciously stuffs her fingers in and gently pulls outward; he’d seen her do this before and she said it was something her mother used to do when young Kate would rest her head in her mother’s lap.

  “You—” she looks up, startled, and he tries to make himself sound normal, “you look beautiful.”

  She beams up at him, her cheeks a rosy pink.

  Her mouth opens and words come out in a faraway whisper.

  “Doctor says my right ear will recover pretty quick,” he says at a moderate volume, “but I won’t be able to hear you very well for a little while. At least I can walk now.”

  She nods.

  For the rest of the day, David has to watch Kate’s face – particularly her lips but her eyes, as well – in order to decipher what she says, though she doesn’t speak as often as he does.

  “My brother hates coming back here,” David tells her as the cab drives through his old neighborhood. “I don’t know why, he was the one that liked our parents.”

  They pass row houses and David points to one without saying anything.

  It’s not ceremonial and once they pass, David has the cab drive them to a hotel in Center City. At the front desk, he says the word Suite several times before Kate has to step in and procure the room. They get their room key and head up to drop off their bags. The plan had been for David to take Kate sightseeing around Philadelphia before catching a train to New York from thirtieth street station; instead, they decide to spend the night since he doesn’t have to be in New York until his meeting with the publisher at four the next day.

  He takes her to the Liberty Bell. She feigns interest and shows even less enthusiasm for a trip to Constitution Hall so they leave for drinks on South Street. Neither of them talk much as the afternoon turns to evening. As they head for dinner, David has the cab driver drop them along an expensive stretch of Arch Street.

  Instead of dinner, David makes a detour into Tiffany’s.

  “This may be the last time I get to buy you something,” he tells her when she hesitates; the statement draws attention to the morose mood of their visit to Philadelphia and the depressing nature of the trip entire.

  They peruse the glass cases of sparkling diamonds and gold until he comes across a silver necklace with a diamond base. Kate’s on the opposite side of the store, bored. An awkward situation follows, where David shows Kate the necklace and she consistently refuses to accept it; try as he might, she outright refuses it and he can’t understand why.

  After a silent, expensive dinner in a French restaurant whose name David repeatedly mispronounces (because he can’t hear the correct pronunciation), they step back out on the street…

  “My parents died a few blocks that way,” David says three times before Kate hears him and understands the information.

  Her eyes fill with a sorrow as he only has to say once:

  “They were stabbed to death.”

  They stand on the sidewalk without a destination.

  David watches Kate as she says something, then says it again, then she mouths one word:

  “Hotel.”

  He nods and they take a cab back to their hotel. Once in the room, David takes off his shirt and kicks off his pants and underwear on his way to their luggage. Bent down, shuffling through his clothes, he pulls out a bathing suit and dresses in it; then, carefully, he removes the gauze from his ears, which come out with a thick red/yellow goo.

  David motions hand-over-hand, simulating swimming.

  “I – can’t – go under water!” he says too loud.

  Kate nods in understanding and shakes her head at the invitation.

  Kate sits on the bed once the door closes and David’s gone. There’s a level of shock that’s taken her a while to shed, and it’s not just over David’s loss of hearing – though there is a prominent gloom emanating from him; whether from the absence of Lizzy or the momentary loss of hearing or that she wasn’t going to return at the end of the trip, something was obviously weighing heavily on him.

  While David swims in the hotel pool – watching a lone black fellow dive to the bottom of the twelve foot section for a minute at a time – Kate attempts to keep herself busy, organizing the stuff in her suitcase, setting aside her clothes for the next day, unpacking her toiletries, and so on. With a bag for dirty clothes in her hand, she crosses the room, picking David’s shirt from off the floor and shoving it to the bottom. There’s a moment when she goes to lift his pants up and do the same but she freezes – there’s a moment of sad realization before Kate empties the dirty shirt back onto the floor.

  Had she picked up David’s pants and checked the pockets for trash instead of repacking her suitcase to rush out of the hotel, the city, and the country, she would have revealed the fact that they both had a secret.

  FROM A CITY OF ASH

  “This…take it!” Augustus says, annoyed when I don’t immediately take the large, black-and-white photo from him.

  “What?” I respond, also grumpy.

  We’re in his hotel room and the heat affects me one of two ways – sleepy or irritated, and today I’m irritated as there’s been a surprisingly small amount of progress made so far. The scene inside the first floor room was exactly as predicted by the 3D image: chairs, tables, a half-empty coffee pot on a corner table, and a refrigerator. All the windows were impenetrably covered and there was a narrow hallway leading to the front door – it was in this hallway that there was an entrance to a lower level but, having assumed the passage would be in the
room itself, we didn’t have an especially good view of them opening and closing the “door”. At 2:00 p.m. sharp, we watched two men, clad in thin black suits with black ties, enter through the front door and sit at adjoining tables (they didn’t even face each other, as if enemies); they passed time drinking coffee, eating lunch, and sitting silently until 2:45, when two other men appeared from out of the hallway and joined. There was no discussion as the first group of two men entered the hallway and disappeared into the mysterious entranceway to the basement, while the second group drank a quick cup of coffee and exited through the front door at exactly 3:00. The slanted camera angle down into the room gave us the location of the door, as we could see the bottom edge of it swing open, but nothing more. Before entering, the men would shuffle in front of the entrance for a moment, and we assumed there was a second lock (aside from the magnetic lock on the front door) to get down to this area.

  Also, Steve had had little success in the back rooms of the Public Works building. We sent Travis to join him and help but they had yet to turn up with any pertinent information.

  Plus, I was plain aggravated when the car took four hours to reinforce.

  “That’s the man that called you,” Augustus answers sharply.

  The photo (obviously taken while the subject in question was under surveillance) is of an older man with white hair parted to the left. His piercing eyes flare with anger, the object of the gaze outside the picture. He has a trench coat with the lapel pulled up over his neck and chin dipped down in a menacing, Dracula-esque fashion. There aren’t many details to take in beside the evil glare and old, worn features of the man.

  “His name is Henry Fox,” Augustus’ tone shifts back to haphazard, “but this is the man you need to worry about.”

  The second photo Augustus hands over (this one in color) is that of a younger Asian man. The first noticeable feature is his different colored eyebrows, one black and the left one pure blonde. Almost just as noticeable is a thin, symmetrical scar from the corner of his right ear down along his cheekbone, ending just under his right eye.

  “Henry Fox is the man that called but this man, Sinto, he’s the man that’s going to show up. CIA nabbed this photo of Fox about two years ago during an investigation. The investigation was into the disappearance of,” Augustus clicks away at the computer, “…someone. Either way, that investigation was called off almost as quickly as it started. And this man – Sinto – they snapped this photo of him but there’s no reference to him anywhere, no other photos, no history, nothing. However,” and he clicks away, “I was able to determine through many dubious and hard, hard,” he really stresses the word, “haaard hours of work and research, that this Sinto is probably his right hand man.”