by Harvey Click
“That’s too bad,” Grimes said. “If we don’t keep our eyes on the gallery, you soon won’t have a head to ache. The trick is to visualize—”
A faint buzzing interrupted him. He cursed and removed the thimble from the projection-ruby on the mantle, and Letha appeared on the smoke screen. Mary had seen her a few times years ago on the screen at Grimes’ townhouse in Chicago, and she hadn’t aged a day. She was wearing a sheer white gown showing as much flesh as she could show without being naked.
“Who’s the girl?” she asked. “No, don’t tell me it’s that scrawny little thing I met in Chicago. Bitter Ember, the Indian orphan. Well, I declare. You put on some weight, I see.”
“My name’s Mary.”
“Whatever. You disappoint me, Dexy. I can’t believe this little scrap got you hot enough to steal your Horn. De gustibus non disputandum est.” She glared at Grimes. “So you brought a couple more pieces of bait, just in case the Lost Rats decide you’re not worth chasing. I know perfectly well what you’re up to. Where’s Garrick?”
“Up in his lab,” Grimes said.
“Get him down here right now.”
“I’m here, Mother,” Garrick said. He stood in the doorway.
Letha’s face softened, but the way she smiled at him didn’t look any more motherly than her transparent gown.
“How’s my tall, hunky, handsome boy?” she asked.
“I’m . . . I’m . . .” Garrick glanced at Mary and tucked his long white hair behind ears pink with embarrassment. “I guess I’m tall,” he said. He trudged in and sat on one of the chairs that Grimes said he had made.
“Come on, can’t you perk up a little?” Letha said. “At least you’re alive.”
“Some life,” he said.
“Cheer up, Sugarplum, things are going to improve very soon. Mommy has a plan, but first you need to get your deadbeat dad out of here and throw his trashy friends out too.”
“I . . . I . . .” He stared at Mary and squirmed. “They’re in danger,” he said.
Letha’s eyes darkened. “Maybe you didn’t hear Mommy. I said kick them out.”
Garrick hunched forward so his hair covered his face, and he played with the greasy strands for a while. When he finally spoke, his voice was small and about twelve years old. “They need a safe place to stay,” he said. “Maybe . . . maybe . . .”
“I don’t invite just any old kind of trash,” Letha said. “I didn’t mean you, Sugarplum. Mommy wants to see you.”
“You do?” His twelve-year-old voice piped small but hopeful.
“Yes, but I won’t tell you my address until you throw some riffraff out of your house. Give me a call when they’re gone.”
Garrick squirmed and stammered, but Letha wasn’t looking at him. She kept watching Mary.
“Tell me something, Sugarplum. Do you find this Indian girl attractive?”
“I . . . I . . .”
“Yes, you’re a little bit sweet on her, aren’t you? Tell me the truth, is she as pretty as Mommy?”
“Please, Letha,” Grimes said. “This is tasteless, even for you.”
“I just want to know if my son finds this Indian girl attractive,” Letha said. “What is she, Aztec or something?”
“We waste time while the Lost Ones don’t,” Grimes said. “Shall we speak dry, or will you let them find your boy?”
“We’ll speak dry,” she said. “Start talking.”
Grimes stood and removed his glasses, and something transpired between them. There was a silver light in his eyes that made hers sparkle with tiny stars. The moment ended, and Grimes sat down and rubbed his forehead. He looked exhausted.
“I’ll give it some thought,” Letha said. “You missed your calling, you know. You should have been a used car salesman.”
“When I was young enough to be poor, there weren’t any cars,” he said.
“There probably weren’t even carriages,” she said. She kept staring at Mary. “Well, Bitter, it’s been real,” she said. “You know, you should see a good hairdresser or something. They can do miracles.”
The screen went blank, and Grimes smiled.
“You see?” he said. “She’s beginning to come around.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mary wasn’t squeamish. Her father had taught her to hunt, and by the age of ten she knew how to skin and gut game. But a quick kill was one thing, and prolonged suffering was another. The tomcat was still tied to its metal cross, gazing at her with cold yellow eyes that looked intelligent. A worm slipped out of its brain and fell into the enameled basin beneath the cross.
It wasn’t the only animal in the lab with an opened skull. Garrick had been busy with his surgical tools.
“Most parasitic nematoda are host-specific,” he said, “but as you can see these worms are able to thrive in different classes of animals. Mammalia, Reptilia, Rodentia—and over here we have a pigeon that seems to be infected.”
He extracted a worm from its tiny brain with a pair of tweezers and licked his teeth as he stared at it. He put it in a Petri dish and said, “Now let me show you something really exciting.”
His stammer disappeared as he showed off his experiments. There was a boyish pride in his voice, but it was wasted on Mary. The smells of fur, feathers, and formaldehyde were oppressive. She wanted to be outdoors and far away.
Garrick lifted a hamster from its cage by the scruff of its neck, and it growled like a threatened cat.
“Did you hear that?” he asked. “Though I haven’t opened its skull yet, I expect about one-quarter of this hamster’s brain has been devoured by now. It was infected by an injection of blood from the cat. Is it possible that the cat’s memories and behavioral modes have been transferred to our little friend here? Experiments have been performed where they teach a flatworm to navigate a maze, then they grind it up and feed it to a second flatworm and, lo and behold, the second one already knows the maze. They are capable of ingesting information. Now let’s see what this little fella can do.”
He placed the hamster in a large maze on the floor. It arched its back and twitched its tail like a cat. It examined the walls of its new prison and crept down a corridor.
“The cat learned this maze several weeks ago, long before I infected it with worms,” Garrick said, “but our little friend here has never been inside it. Look, not a false turn yet!”
The hamster made it through the complex labyrinth and was rewarded with a small pile of grain.
“Interesting,” Grimes said, and the single word of praise caused Garrick to show his jagged little teeth in a jack-o-lantern grin. “But obviously Cypher can’t transfer his whole set of memories into a few worms,” Grimes added.
“There seems to be another process at work,” Garrick said. “I brought home a sample of Toya Jones’s brain and examined slices of it under the microscope. Some of it is ordinary brain tissue and some of it is something else—a strange gelatinous imitation of brain tissue, complete with neurons. I haven’t yet determined whether the worms excrete this gelatinous material or if their own bodies somehow metamorphose into it after they eat but, one way or another, after they devour a portion of brain they replace it. No doubt the new brain material is telepathic, and thus Cypher is able to control his victims because their worm-brains are all telepathically linked to his. In fact, you could say that each new victim becomes Cypher, another set of his eyes and ears and collective mind.”
Mary stared at the bound tomcat. The way it watched them seemed more human than feline.
“Maybe Cypher’s listening to us,” she said. “Through the cat, I mean.”
Grimes peered at the cat. “Has this occurred to you, Garrick? It’s an interesting question—no?”
“I can’t believe . . . through a feline nervous system . . .”
“Not much of an answer,” Grimes said. “Well! Look at this—they’re getting out of the basin.” He pointed to a worm wriggling across the table and glared at Garrick. “This is a bit careless—no
?”
Garrick picked up the worm and put it in a Petri dish. “Sorry,” he said.
“Sorry? For God’s sake, Garrick, they may be crawling all over the house.”
Grimes sounded as if he were scolding a child. Garrick’s lips and ears blushed, but the rest of his face was white and frozen.
“I . . . I . . . put the basin here to catch the worms,” he said. “There’s poison on the rim so they can’t . . .”
“Well, it’s not doing a very impressive job, is it?” Grimes said. “Look, there’s another one.”
Garrick caught it and examined the cluttered table. He found another stray worm and another. Mary began to imagine them crawling on her skin.
“Maybe we should spray the whole room with poison,” Dexter said.
“Oh no, we couldn’t do that,” Garrick said. “My animals.” His gray eyes flashed pink, flitting from cage to cage. “I’ll find them all.”
“You’d damn well better,” Grimes said. He pointed his walking stick at his son’s face. “You’re too careless, Garrick. I’ve warned you many times—no? Careless, careless. For God’s sake, I wish someday you’d grow up.”
Garrick searched for worms, his ears red with embarrassment, and the tomcat watched him. It seemed to be smiling.
***
Ryver tapped out Big Bessie’s secret knock on the door of her apartment, then stepped into the shadows and waited. At last the door opened and she stared out at the empty sidewalk. That meant she was alone, because she’d never climb those stairs herself if she had company to do it for her. He emerged from the shadows.
“Dead Man!” Bessie said. “How you been?”
The look on her face meant she already knew, but then she would.
“You go up first,” Ryver said.
He locked the door behind them and followed her up the dark stairs to her sitting room. She had her three candles burning on the table as always and her glass of brandy and her glass of water and her ashtray sitting there. She lowered herself into her big armchair at the head of the table and said, “You acting mighty peculiar.”
He came up behind her, reached down between her sweaty breasts, and pulled out her little gun. “Who’s Rebus?” he asked. “Where does he live?”
“Ain’ nobody know who Rebus is,” she said. “Even I don’ know, and that be the God’s truth.” She emptied her brandy glass and refilled it. “I always been straight with you, Dead Man. You know I ain’ fool ‘nough to be lying to you.” She turned her big face around and looked at him. “You making me nervous back there.”
“Tell me the access code to invoke the Philosopher,” he said.
“I don’ know that neither. Why you think I know something like that?”
“If you don’t, you know who does,” he said. “Make it easy on yourself.”
Bessie lit a cigarette with trembling hands and sipped her brandy. “Word be a man named Krickbaum know how to call up the Philosopher,” she said. “You heard a him? Professor Krickbaum, down Cincinnati way.”
“I’m listening.”
“Some say he be playing a double game,” she said. “Some say Professor Krickbaum turn into Rebus when the Philosopher ain’ looking. That’s all I know. Why you be wanting to call up the Philosopher anyhow? He ain’ no friend a Cypher.”
“I reckon you know why,” Ryver said.
“I ain’ heard nothing,” she said. “I just be sitting up here by myself all day. Got a little bit a the flu.”
“You’re no good at playing dumb, Bessie.”
“Okay, so maybe I hear a little something, you and Cypher be having a little spat. But that ain’ none a my affair, and you know me, Dead Man, I always keep my mouth shut.”
“I wish that was true,” he said. “Have a few more puffs on your cigarette, Bessie, then put it out.”
“I won’t tell nobody I saw you,” she said. “I swear on a pile of Bibles.”
“You and me don’t own no Bibles, Bessie. Go ahead now and put out the cigarette.”
She struggled, but there didn’t seem to be any muscle beneath all that fat. He gave her the touch until the struggle went out of her.
“Tell you what,” he said. “You just sit there nice and still like a good girl, and maybe I can do it without killing you.”
Ryver slid the tip of his wire into her nostril and guided it through a hole in her cribriform plate up into her cranium. Over the years he’d studied books and explored living specimens until he knew the name of each part of the brain and what it did. He could hear her fear singing through the wire as it snaked across the floor of her brainpan.
Bessie’s memories blurred through his mind, thousands of days and nights sitting in her dark candle-lit room knowing everything going on in the world outside without ever going outside to see it. He searched for useful information about Rebus, about the Philosopher, about Krickbaum, but couldn’t find any. Finally he probed with the wire until he found that sleepy lump that books called the pons, and then he punctured the midbrain above it.
A hot jolt of terror shot through the wire and turned the room blood red. Bessie’s big body went limp, and Ryver eased the wire out of her nostril.
He lifted her carefully from the chair and laid her on the couch. She was still breathing, but that was about all she’d be able to do from now on. He kept shifting the pillow under her head until she looked comfortable.
“There you go, Bessie,” he said. “I’m sorry I had to do this. I’ll call an ambulance for you as soon as I’m gone.”
She stared at the ceiling, paralyzed and helpless, and Ryver shivered. Her little apartment felt cold and dark, and the stale air smelled like blood.
***
Everything smelled like blood. It trickled from her nose and seeped from her ears. It lay clotted in her stomach like an indigestible meal, belching its hot sweetness up her esophagus to the back of her throat, where it gathered in a thick pool too sticky to be swallowed. Whenever she moved her head, the whole room swam in an aching pink nausea of blood. Blood leaked through her synapses, daubing and blotting her thoughts and replacing them with bloody ideas and memories not her own.
Too sick to walk, Kat sat in a wheelchair beneath Burne’s cocooned body. There was no longer any need for the green egg. She had already stripped his memories naked like data on a hard drive. She asked questions and he answered them, reciting important and trivial details in the same lifeless voice. Emily wrote his answers on a stenographer’s pad and Rebus watched silently from the corner, a dim shuffle of unreadable faces.
“You’re cleaning Grimes’ car,” Kat said. “What do you find on the front seats?”
“Nothing.”
“You reach under the driver’s seat. What do you find?”
“A cellophane cigar wrapper.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“You reach under the passenger seat. What do you find?”
“A quarter, a book of matches, a blue button, a receipt.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
Kat felt a kinship with the insentient carcass dangling above her head. Her consciousness was being blotted out as well, memories receding into a tunnel and beginning to belong to someone else. She was being evicted from her own head to make room for a new tenant.
“Read the receipt,” she told the mindless husk.
“ ‘Ray’s Certified Oil, US Route 23, Circleville, Ohio, fuel total 35.40. Beer and wine at state minimum.’ ”
Kat glanced at Emily to see if she’d recorded the address. Emily nodded.
“Read the book of matches.”
“ ‘Dan’s Pipes and Cigars, 122 Elmview Street, Circleville, Ohio. Thank you. Please visit our humidor.’ ”
“Now look in the back seat. What do you find?”
“A can of Planters mixed nuts, empty, and something wrapped in newspaper.”
“What’s in the newspaper? Unwrap it.”
“Cookies with raisins and nuts.”
>
“What’s the newspaper?”
“The Wall Street Journal.”
“Is there an address label?”
“Yes. ‘Garrick Haldan, 2210 Newhaven Road, Circleville, Ohio 43113.’ ”
Kat tried to blink the red haze from her eyes. She was too sick to smile, but she sensed the grim pleasure of whatever was invading her brain.
***
The sun glared low through the woods behind the log house, dazzling the red and yellow leaves that spun down from the trees and crunched beneath Mary’s feet. A crisp evening breeze stirred the long shadows. After the stink of the laboratory it smelled better than perfume, and she drank it deep into her lungs. She wished Dexter were beside her so she could talk some sense into his head, which was probably why Grimes had asked him to stay inside and practice using listening shells. But what kind of sense would she talk? Grimes was probably right: they wouldn’t be safe anywhere by themselves.
She came to a small bright clearing, and her wire bracelet began to writhe languorously over her wrist like a snake sunning itself. Damn thing always knew when she was horny. Truth was, she wanted to do more with Dexter than talk sense. A twig snapped, and she saw someone approaching through the trees. Maybe he was done with the listening shells and thinking the same thing.
No such luck. It was Garrick lumbering toward her, and when he got to the clearing he just stood and stared at the ground and shifted his weight from foot to foot. The smell of fur and formaldehyde clung to his clothing.
“Hi,” he said. “Thought you might want . . . want . . .”
“I don’t.”
“Oh. All right. I . . . I . . .”
He shuffled and stammered with his head down, hair hiding his face. Mary started to leave but changed her mind. Better to deal with him here and now and see what he wanted, as if she didn’t already know.
“Talk,” she said. “You’ve been trying to all day.”
Garrick sat down and picked up some leaves. “They’re pretty this year, aren’t they?” he said.
“Yeah, but that’s not why you’re here.”