Forest of the Mind (The Book of Terwilliger 1)

by Michael Stiles

  “Shit,” said Danny. He followed in the direction the man had gone. He caught a glimpse of that red hair from time to time, but before long he fell behind and couldn’t see him anymore. Danny reached the cinder track at the edge of the football field and stopped.

  Just ahead, across the track from where Danny stood, was the base of the stands. There was a dark doorway there. Had the man gone inside? He was nowhere in sight, although it would have been easy for him to slip away in a different direction while Danny had been fighting the crowd. If he’d noticed that he was being followed—but no, Danny didn’t think the man had seen him. Lacking any better ideas, he walked to the doorway and went inside.

  Danny strained his eyes to see in the sudden darkness, blinking rapidly to dispel the bright afterimage on his retinas. He was in a dim, empty corridor that ran beneath the bleachers. The red-haired man was nowhere to be seen. Amplified bass and drums echoed so loudly in the concrete hallway that Danny feared his eardrums would pop. He spun around when he heard a voice behind him.

  The man was there, holding something in his hand and talking. Danny couldn’t hear a word over the music. Then the man gestured with his right hand and Danny, seeing that he held a gun, got the point without having to understand the words.

  * * *

  Dusk was approaching. Ed got up after a short rest and walked another circuit. He picked his way carefully across the matted and damaged grass of the football field, squeezing through the crowd. A couple was making out on a blanket nearby, and doing a damn good job of it as far as Ed could tell. He edged around the blanket, trying not to step on their feet, smiling in amusement at the enthusiasm with which they were pursuing their goal. He was still looking down at them when he bumped right into a lanky boy who was chatting with a friend. The boy with whom he had collided had a big head of long, dark hair and a regrettably large nose, but his frame was small and thin, making him look rather top-heavy. Ed apologized and began to walk away.

  “Hey,” said the youth with the large nose, “it’s him! That’s the guy from my dream!”

  “Leave the guy alone, Ged,” said the friend. “You’re imagining things.”

  Ed flinched involuntarily from the unwanted attention and hurried to disappear into the throng. Soon he came to the running track at the very edge of the field.

  There was a brief pause in the music, and he heard someone calling his name. Turning, Ed saw the red-haired man who’d been looking so bored earlier in the day. He was dressed in sloppy clothes and his hair was matted with sweat. A scar bisected his upper lip.

  “Ed Terwilliger, is that you?” The man squinted and came a few steps closer. “It is you! How have you been?”

  Ed searched his memory for a clue to the man’s identity, and after a moment it came to him.

  Ralph. An image leapt into Ed’s head: sitting at a table in a restaurant, with a woman and this man and Kajdas.

  Ed spun around and tried to run, but Ralph caught up to him easily and hauled him backward by his shirt.

  “Unconquerable peppercorn,” Ralph whispered in his ear. Ed recognized those words. The fat man had said them in the hospital. They had the same effect now: Ed froze, unable to move as every muscle in his body tensed at once. He tried to shout, but no sound came out. Ralph caught him as his body started to topple over and began dragging him toward the edge of the field. Out of the corner of his eye, Ed saw a few people watching disinterestedly. They glanced at the man being dragged away, then returned their attention to the performance.

  Ralph manhandled him through a doorway into a cool, narrow hallway that led beneath the stadium seats. Feeble light bulbs cast strange, shifting shadows on the walls. In here, the echoing music was nearly deafening. Ed was pulled helplessly down the corridor and around a corner, and then Ralph dumped him roughly against the wall. He felt the impact and the pain as his head hit the concrete, but was unable to react. Tears dripped across his face and down onto the concrete.

  There was another person lying on the floor nearby, either unconscious or dead. Ed couldn’t see his face.

  “Astral sugarcane,” Ralph said to Ed in an emotionless and hurried voice.

  Outside, the band finished playing and the music stopped.

  Something changed in Ed’s mind. It felt like a door opening, like a solid barrier that had always been there had suddenly ceased to exist. He felt something creep in through the opening and steal silently into his head. His body thrashed momentarily on the floor, but it only took a few seconds for the new presence in his mind to take control. Ed’s left hand closed involuntarily into a fist, then opened. His left eye closed and opened again, followed by his right. He struggled against the other presence in his head, fought it with all his will, but he was powerless to affect it. He was now a spectator watching through his own eyes, able to see but unable to influence what was happening.

  Awkwardly, he got to his feet. He put a hand up to his left eye and cackled with glee.

  Ralph was standing nearby, grinning at Ed like a kid at a freak show. “You know what to do now, don’t you?” he said, his slight accent nagging at Ed like an unreachable itch. Ralph reached around behind his back and pulled out a small-caliber revolver, which he held out to Ed.

  Ed felt his mouth break into a wide smile. He took the weapon and caressed it. The barrel was very warm. Then he looked up at Ralph again. He closed his right eye, then his left, and then opened the left one again, gazing at Ralph with one eye.

  “Go on,” Ralph said, pointing back down the corridor the way they had come. “Don’t stand there winking at me, just go do it.”

  Giggling, Ed hefted the gun. With a deep rumble that shook the floor, the music started up again on the stage outside. Ralph watched him with increasing impatience.

  Ho-ho! a familiar voice laughed inside his mind. They weren’t expecting me, they were expecting another part of you! Tra-la-la.

  Nathaniel, Ed thought feebly. Get out of my head. He tried to push the monster out, the way he’d done so many times before, but this time nothing happened.

  “You’re impatient,” Nathaniel said aloud in Ed’s voice. “Impatience bothers me.” His arm raised the gun to Ralph’s head. He held the weapon unsteadily, wobbling a bit as he held it out at arm’s length. Evidently Nathaniel’s control was not perfect. “Where’s your friend?” Ed heard his own voice rasp. “Where’s Kajdas?”

  “I... I don’t know!” Ralph looked about ready to wet himself.

  Ed was gripping the weapon so hard his fingers were growing numb. His hand began to shake even more wildly. “You’re supposed to meet him after, aren’t you? He’s here!”

  “Yeah—we’re supposed to―”

  “Tell me where!” But before Ralph could answer, there was a loud pop and the concrete blocks behind his head were suddenly covered in a dark wetness. With a look of utter terror still on his face and a tiny dark hole in his left cheek, Ralph crumpled to the floor beside the other motionless figure. Inside Ed’s mind, Nathaniel flew into a rage.

  He tucked the gun into his pants, the hot metal searing his skin. Leaving the two bodies where they lay, he lurched on unsteady legs back through the doorway to the open air.

  The stadium lights had been turned off. The only illumination came from a single spotlight focused on the stage. With a dramatically rising progression of notes, the band whipped the crowd into a frenzy while a man walked onto the stage and—after waving his appreciation to the fans—took a seat at a piano and began to play. He wore a vest covered in tiny mirrors that caught the spotlight and broke it into a thousand minuscule beams.

  Ed hardly noticed any of it, wrapped up as he was in his immediate concerns. He continued to rage against the intruder, who ignored his struggles and forced Ed’s feet to carry him onward, shoving the people aside as he went. Keeping one hand under his shirt on the grip of the gun, he set off into the crowd.

  47

  In the Ladies’ Room

  Sarah kept a safe distance as she followed
the ugly girl through the press of people. When the girl disappeared into a doorway under the seats to the right of the stage, Sarah hesitated. If anyone had recognized her as a friend of Ed’s, they could easily ambush her once they’d led her away from the crowded areas. So she chose a spot where she could watch the doorway without being obvious, and waited.

  Five minutes passed, then ten. She began to grow nervous. What was the woman doing in there for so long? What if she had come out through a different door? Sarah counted slowly to one hundred and then, knowing it was a dumb move, stepped through the doorway into a brightly-lit corridor. In here, the noise of the music and the crowd became a deep roar that made her teeth vibrate.

  The corridor went straight back about thirty feet, ending in an intersection with a broader hallway that appeared to run the length of the stadium. Sarah took out her pocketknife and opened it, edging up to the corner, and then leapt into the wide hallway brandishing the little blade.

  The hallway was empty.

  There were several unmarked doors on either side. Sarah tiptoed on the bare concrete, listening and looking around with wide eyes. The swishing of her skirt seemed disproportionately loud to her ears. If the woman knew she was being followed, she might be hiding in one of the rooms off of this corridor, waiting to jump out at her. Sarah forced herself to move onward.

  A loud noise, metal on metal, came from a nearby room, and Sarah spun around with an involuntary gasp. There was a door to her left marked WOMEN, and the sound had come from inside. No one from the concert audience would be in there; they would be using the portable toilets outside.

  Holding her breath, Sarah shoved the door as hard as she could. It slammed open against the wall with a clang, revealing a restroom that appeared to be empty, then rebounded and slammed shut again.

  “Damn,” Sarah whispered to herself. “Damn damn damn.” Still holding the knife tightly, she pushed the door open more gently and looked inside. There were three stalls, each with an open door, and no feet visible underneath. She took one hesitant step inside and then screamed as a hand flashed out from behind the door and seized her left wrist. Sarah was pulled inside and thrown against a sink, still gripping the knife in her right hand. She turned around, gasping for breath and leaning against the porcelain sink to stay upright, and found herself face to face with the pug-nosed woman she’d been pursuing. For no good reason at all, Sarah rummaged through her brain to recall the woman’s name. Meg... Margot... Maggie. That was it: Maggie. A frumpy name.

  “I never did finish with you,” Maggie hissed. She was holding an empty beer bottle in her hand, hefting it slowly. There was a reek of alcohol that might have been coming from the bottle, but Sarah thought it came from the woman herself, who didn’t look entirely sober.

  “Have we met?” Sarah said brightly, trying to keep the knife out of sight behind her back, even though the woman had probably already seen it.

  “Oh, you’re real coy, aren’t you?” Maggie edged closer. “Don’t give me that superior look. You think you’re the only girl he’s gotten his fingers into?”

  Sarah waited for her to get close enough. Another step closer and she’d be near enough to cut. The thought of using a knife on someone made her knees wobbly, but the only other option was almost as bad for Sarah herself as it was for others. She didn’t want to have to resort to that.

  “My friend’s right outside,” Sarah said.

  “Ralph’s taking care of your friend,” Maggie said with an offensive smile. There was no doubt; the stench of alcohol was coming from her.

  She took another step forward, and Sarah saw her chance. Rotating from the hips, she brought the knife up toward Maggie’s abdomen. But the ugly woman was fast; she dodged backwards, and the blade touched nothing but air. The bottle whistled a low note as the woman swung it, meeting the back of Sarah’s hand with a sharp clink. Her whole hand went numb, and the knife fell from her grasp and clattered into the corner beneath the sink. Maggie took another swing, this time at Sarah’s head, but Sarah ducked just in time. The bottle caught the edge of the sink and shattered.

  “Goddamn it!” Maggie shrieked. She dropped what was left of the bottle and stared at her bleeding hand. “Look what you did!” Sarah took the opportunity to back into an open stall and slam the door shut. Her own hand was beginning to throb painfully, but it didn’t feel broken. Maggie beat on the outside of the stall door. “Get out here!” she cried. “Get out here and look at this!”

  As she contemplated her next move, Sarah spat into the toilet to try to get rid of some bits of glass that had somehow gone into her mouth. She could either crawl under the wall or climb over it; those appeared to be her only choices. Maggie was peering through the narrow space between the door and frame. “How about a little privacy?” Sarah said, poking at her eye with a fingernail. She failed to make contact, but Maggie pulled back just the same.

  Maggie growled in rage. “Open... this... door!” she said, throwing all her weight against the door to emphasize each word. Sarah stood up on the edge of the toilet to see about climbing out of the stall. Before she could do more than look around, the lock on the stall door gave way, and the pug-nosed woman lurched inside to fall face-first onto the toilet. Her hand went right into the bowl, splashing water over the rim. Sarah’s feet slipped out from under her and she fell on top of Maggie.

  Sarah looked around for the knife. It was at least eight feet away in the far corner.

  There was still the other option. But she needed her wits about her in order to help Ed. Using her trick caused her so much pain that she was practically useless for at least an hour afterward. Instead, she tried to catch Maggie’s flailing arms with one hand while grasping for the woman’s hair with the other, intending to use her long hair as a handle to bash her head against the floor.

  Somehow Maggie managed to get out from under her. She tipped Sarah over sideways and pushed herself up on hands and knees. Sarah slid across the top of the toilet and fell on her back on the other side of the stall.

  Maggie grabbed the flusher handle and dragged herself to her feet, flushing the toilet as she did so. Her lip was bleeding now, as well as her hand. Sarah had somehow gotten wedged between the toilet and the wall with one arm pinned beneath her, which prevented her from defending herself very effectively when Maggie pounced. She understood, too late, that she had no choice but to use her power to take Maggie down. But the concentration wouldn’t come. Maggie’s fist came down on Sarah’s face once, twice, three times, and all Sarah could do was hold up a hand and try in vain to deflect the blows. When the woman wound up to punch her a fourth time, Maggie’s knuckles were wet with blood.

  “Wait,” Sarah gasped. Instead of stopping, though, Maggie doubled her efforts. Dragging Sarah by her hair, Maggie wrapped an arm around her neck and squeezed.

  “Your boyfriend’s probably doing his thing by now,” the woman rasped.

  Sarah could only reply with a rattle in her throat. Doing his thing? She struggled against her assailant, but her nails dug uselessly into the woman’s arm. Maggie looked soft, but she was surprisingly strong.

  “It’s too bad he won’t make it out of here,” the ugly woman went on. “He was just a riot in bed. But I guess you know that too, don’t you, sweetie?”

  Sarah’s ears were ringing. The room seemed to be revolving slowly around the toilet. She scraped her nails painfully across the floor tiles. Then she felt something on the floor, just at the edge of her reach. Something smooth and sharp. Glass. Summoning all of her remaining strength, she pried the edge of the piece of broken glass off the floor, got a good grip on it, and slashed at her attacker’s face. The sharp pain in her own hand almost made her drop the glass, but she forced herself to hold onto it.

  Maggie screamed and let go of Sarah’s neck, blood streaming from a long gash on her cheek. Sarah used the wall-mounted toilet paper holder to pull herself to her feet, brandishing the bloody fragment of glass, but Maggie rushed at her before she had her balance and t
hey both went down again. Sarah punched her just under the ribcage, knocking the wind out of her, and then she was the one on top. Seizing Maggie’s hair, she banged the woman’s head against the tiled floor as hard as she could, again and again. After four or five bangs, the woman went limp. Sarah gave her head one more hard whack against the floor, then let go of her hair and stood up, breathing heavily. She was dizzy and her hand was dripping blood.

  Killing the woman wasn’t something she thought she could do, but she couldn’t risk anyone finding her too soon, either. In the end she decided to tie up the unconscious woman, using her shard of glass to cut narrow strips of cloth from her own long skirt to bind the woman at elbows, wrists, knees, and ankles. Another piece wadded up served as a gag, which Sarah tied tightly in place. After another moment’s thought, she cut another long piece and tied Maggie’s wrists to the toilet’s plumbing. That would keep her from crawling out.

  When she was done, Sarah locked the door of the stall from the inside and crawled underneath. She glanced in the mirror, then quickly looked away. She looked like hell. The adrenaline was fading, and in its absence the pain was beginning to kick in. She turned to the door to leave.

  Ed was standing there, just inside the closed door. How had she not heard him come in? “I remember this one,” he said.

  “How long have you been standing there?” Sarah mumbled. Her lower lip was starting to swell. “You could’ve given me a hand.”

  Ed took her in his arms and kissed her roughly. Sarah cried out in pain and punched him repeatedly on the shoulder with her good hand to make him let go.

  “I’m in pain,” she tried to say, although it was hard to talk with his lips pressed against hers. “Ed!” She pulled away and looked at his face. He looked unhurt, but there was something in his eyes that wasn’t right. “How did you get away from them?”

  Ed smiled, just a tiny twist of his lips. “No one can hold onto me,” he replied. “I’m everywhere now.” He gripped her by the shoulders and kissed her again. “Kajdas is here somewhere,” he whispered against her lips. “I’m going to kill him. But there’s something you need to take care of first.”