[The mercenary draws his weapon: SHOT in the general direction of the camera; dresser mirror shatters to pieces; he steps back: SHOT at the left side of the tape, SHOT, SHOT, light spreading and engulfing him, sound rising, tape burning.]
[CRASH.]
The water has stopped. Cyan waves dance gently across his skin. His hair is soaked. His arms are tracked by streams of blood.
His eyes are closed.
BEDROOM FRI DEC-22-1995 06:51:10
The ceiling lamp lies dead on the floor, a glistening pool of glass spikes and metal. Sparks pour out of the wires above. KRAUS is still holding onto the canopy, where he climbed to pull the lamp down. He stays perched there like a large ape, a useless revolver in his free hand.
He stares at nothing in the general environs of the camera. His eyes are red.
KRAUS: What the fuck.
[NIAMH rolls out from under the bed; she grips the broken, power-belching bedside lamp.]
[Kraus realizes, pulls the trigger: CLICK.]
[She cattleprods the bed: ZAP.]
[Kraus is thrown off the bed and through the window. CRASH.]
[Smoke rises from the point where his hand clutched the canopy as a thud comes from the garden.]
[Niamh runs out of the room.]
[She reappears, picks up the revolver, exits.]
The sound of her footsteps precedes her by a good ten seconds before she comes into frame in a sprint, Chucks splashing in the pool, and her bald head’s cool enough for her to check for his vitals before anything else. But he’s stopped moving, and he’s sunk deeper into the freezing pool, whole body hanging from his handcuffed, slashed wrist, which makes a very unsuitable position for CPR, so she has to pop off frame, yank something out of the shelves, return with an ax, try to strike at the cuffs, stop, aim first, then strike, let his hand drop, and now she starts massaging his heart, while he’s almost completely underwater, cold enough so that his vital organs might have been preserved and there might be a chance; she pounds on his chest with all her weight—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten—then puts her lips on his purple lips and forces air into his lungs, and once again, one, two, three, four, five, six, please, eight, live, ten, try his mouth again, force air into his lungs, push it, restart the heart, one, two, please, four, useless, six, please, eight, live, ten, make him breathe wake up massage his heart look around is that a broken crystal ball are those dreams and nightmares on the floor
It looked bad.
Of course, the swimming pool was supposed to prevent a fatality in the eventuality of somebody leaping out of the third-floor window. But the pool was required to be full of water in order to fulfill that function. And in liquid state, preferably. That morning it contained about five inches of melted snow from the previous day, which had frozen again during the night into a diamond-hard layer of compressed ice. Kraus broke both his legs against it. Very badly. You could see the splintered bone piercing through the thighs. Even he didn’t dare to look.
Of course, the view was hopeless anywhere he looked—trapped in the bottom of an empty blue container, six feet, three inches deep, both legs broken, crawling on ice. He’d lost his revolver. There were auxiliary steps on the shallow end of the pool, but whether he’d be able to climb them using only his hands was yet to be ascertained. His left hand, incidentally, was burned in a very peculiar way; you’ve never seen anything like it. The flesh on his palm was roasted, more like microwaved. On the back, black spider veins poked through. It smelled like chicken. And he didn’t feel it. So he’d have to climb on one hand. And if he made it out of the pool, he’d still have to crawl around the house and slither into a car before anyone arrived.
He had hoped that at least the cold would somehow relieve the pain. It didn’t. He was crying. His good hand was scraping the ice when Niamh hung the ladder and climbed inside. That seemed an eternity later, despite the evidence of the parallel tracks of blood from his legs showing that he had crawled about two feet.
She jumped in, landing soundly on her Chucks, walked two steps, checked his belt for a fresh cylinder of ammo, and loaded the revolver.
What with the excruciating agony and all, Kraus missed the irony.
“Please.”
The violent recoil made her lose the gun. Kraus’ brains were splattered over the ice.
SECURITY VIDEOTAPE: POINT BLESS POLICE STATION
* * *
07:59 AM
[A minor disturbance in the street causes Officer LINNEY to look up from the counter for a second. A passerby outside judged it worth stopping by the window, her sight line pointing at the black Audi that just flitted past from Market Street and must have parked near Musgrove, but Linney does not grant it that much attention and soon returns to his paperwork. A new form is loaded into the typewriter and he starts typing.
The door slams open: A head-shaved KID in an anorak comes to the middle of the room, and there she stops, undecided between Linney on the counter and Corporal JACKSON’s desk, and the impetus that carried her in is wasted. Linney and Jackson and the passerby outside the window stare at her. She’s wearing nothing but panties and an undershirt under the anorak. And those are splashed with blood.
Right before Linney and Jackson awake and run to help, she collapses onto her knees, face contorted in a blazing scream—but there’s no audio to the recording.]
SECURITY VIDEOTAPE: INTERROGATION ROOM VIRGINIA STATE POLICE, AREA 35 OFFICE, EMPORIA
* * *
12/22/1995 20:14
Dixie cups and candy wrappers have gathered around NIAMH’s end of the table while she stays, arms folded, waiting for Detective MORGAN Summers (standing, propped on the table) to finish reading her statement. A whole school of cigarettes has washed up in the ashtray too.
[Morgan puts out the last cigarette (not in the ashtray: on the table, three inches away, but he doesn’t notice) as he modestly hurries through the final lines.]
[Unmoved, he glances at the thickness of the statement and unloads it on the table.]
[Only then does he look at his witness.]
MORGAN: Not bad. I liked the character development.
[Enter Deputy TED Miller with papers in his hand, to prove he has something to say.]
TED: I just talked to the sheriff of Franklin, North Carolina. They got a Hank S. Blagowitz, aka Scar Bee. Apparently his mates dumped him at a hospital, where he was arrested. [To Niamh.] Your dog bit his nose off. That’ll make a nice scar story.
MORGAN: [Skimming through the papers Ted brought.] As long as he omits that the dog was a collie.
TED: There’s another thing. Last night’s videotapes of the house show two men, one woman in balaclavas crossing through the kitchen at twelve forty-four a.m.; then one shoots at the camera. CSIs think they hid in the coal room during the night.
NIAMH: [Snaps a finger for attention, then draws a letter P in the air.]
MORGAN: What?
NIAMH: [Encore.]
MORGAN: P-what? Oh, pee. Sorry. [To the door.] Anderson? Would you please accompany the witness to the ladies’ room?
[A FEMALE AGENT has appeared at the door; Niamh leaves with her.]
[Morgan hands the statement to the corporal, but he’s pushed back by the hefty volume.]
TED: So, is she clean?
MORGAN: [Sighs.] Well, she’s good. They killed everyone save her because she providentially locked the door to her room, and she shot one of them.
TED: [Shrugs.] Okay. Case is clear, right?
MORGAN: Perhaps.
TED: [Less reflective.] We got footage of Kraus’ people breaking in.
MORGAN: Circumstantial.
TED: We got Hank’s weapon. That will account for at least half of the bodies.
MORGAN: Yes, and her prints on a revolver will account for at least another one.
TED: In self-defense.
MORGAN: Point-blank to the head.
TED: On her property.
MORGAN: Actually, she pushed him out of the window, then w
ent downstairs and shot him.
TED: [Not seeing the point.] So what? Come on, “disabled underage white girl shoots an ex-con merc and sex offender”? The jury will build her a shrine!
MORGAN: [Scoffs.] Yeah, wait, it gets better: The thing is, she’ll never step into a courtroom. She’s a minor with Irish citizenship.
TED: So what? She’s a U.S. resident.
MORGAN: No, she’s not.
TED: [Perplexed.] She has a green card!
MORGAN: [Smirks.] No, she doesn’t. He did. She accompanied him with a tourist visa, expiring in January.
TED: Then her guardian is responsible.
MORGAN: You’re gonna love this. [Checks another paper.] Father’s dead, mother’s unfit, so the custody falls to an aunt Liza, who is already pulling strings to bring her back at once. And when her juvenile attorney heard that, he phoned the embassy so hard he almost sprained his dialing finger.
TED: Hey, hey, hey, hold your horses. If she can’t make a phone call, how does the auntie in Ireland know about all this?
MORGAN: [Proudly adding the cherry on top.] She *e-mailed* her before going to the cops.
[Silent ovation.]
TED: [Folding arms.] Wow. She is good.
[Still standing, he leans on the table, mimicking the detective.]
Okay, so what have we got?
MORGAN: Oh, plenty of things. Lots of unanswered questions, for a start. Like who would hire mercenaries to steal some jewels, or how can a ninety-pound girl fling Hulk Hogan out of the window. Plus a noseless suspect, a dead criminal wanted in six states, one fugitive, a missing lawyer, seventeen people in the morgue, two in surgery, and lots of paperwork.
[Ted lights himself a cigarette, offers one to Morgan.]
TED: Will the ones in surgery make it?
[A drag.]
MORGAN: God willing.
Christmas passed by, and then the snow washed away and so did the dismal clouds, and there followed a few days of that unearthly blue air of winter, too pure to breathe. And the woods looked still shrouded in stone, but high above, on top of their stretched limbs, their fingertips dreamed already with spring and longed to swing in the sunshine.
Some yards short of the woods, far enough to look monumental, two twigs made a cross in the front yard. Niamh had dug the grave herself, by the marble plaque on the ground that marked the solstice when the shadow of the weathercock fell on it. She had wrapped Help’s remains in his own blanket and left them in a shadowy corner in the snow, waiting for the funeral. The bulk looked so small, laid in the bottom of that hole. A hero had died. A pet was being buried.
She shoveled the earth on him before the prayers; even shrouded, he wasn’t a bearable sight. Then she dedicated him some words. They must be still pinned to the cross, if it stands, on a page from her notepad.
HELP
Guardian’s Guardian
She stood there not crying for a long while, until the sun had fallen behind the house, and the brightness of the sky had faded away, and a red-and-violet ribbon of dusk tapered in the west like the music of a rock concert far away.
Then I called her in and told her to pack.
VIDEO RECORDING
* * *
MUSIC ROOM DEC-31-1995 17:12:51
Dusk.
A pile of bags and suitcases lurk among the shadows in the foreground. The only lit lamp is the one on the piano meant to light up the score. Now it beams on A. sitting on the stool, reading from a folder.
[Enter NIAMH, holding something behind her back—the camera sees it; A. doesn’t.]
A.: Hey.
[He closes the folder, turns to her, strokes his left leg. It’s bandaged around the knee, twice as thick as the right one.]
[Their eyes stay locked for a while.]
You know, all this time I was wondering why you were supposed to protect me. I just got it.
[He opens the folder again, spreads a few photographs and typewritten pages over the piano lid.]
The funny thing is, Caleb mentioned the case. “A kid prevented a terrorist bomb from going off in a crowded station in London.” It must have been his subconscious, because he never got any farther. But then, while I was in the hospital, I remembered how Edward Cutler looked at you when you two first met. Of course, it was so many hairdos and a puberty ago, but one out of twenty was bound to recognize you. It was Cutler who did. I recalled him and Vasquez and someone else browsing through the file cabinets in the vault right before the showdown. I’ve just been there. I think this is the one they were looking for.
[Niamh is going through the photographs, mildly interested. A. reads from the file.]
Blah, blah, blah, “The kid dumps the suitcase inside the pool and disappears into the crowd … No one notices.” “Watcher, 1991.” “Quest assigned to Philip Beauregard, quit.”
[His free hand points at the photographs. He wears another bandage around his wrist.]
He found the place: King’s Cross Station, London. He even identified the terrorist: Dan O’Bailey, a rogue IRA, trying to buy an extension for the Troubles. But they never identified you. [After a pause.] You’re a Watcher. Did you even know this?
NIAMH: [Shakes her head, indifferent.]
A.: But Aunt Liza knew.
NIAMH: [Shrugs: “I guess.”]
A.: [Noticing the object she’s concealing.] What are you carrying?
[Niamh produces a small present box, fitting in her porcelain palm.]
[A. stays put, not trying to take it.]
[Cool.] Wow. What’s the occasion?
[Her fingers tap the piano keys: “Jin-gle bells / Jin-gle bells / Jin-gle all the way …”]
Oh. You’re right; we missed it.
[She keeps playing with a single finger: “Oh, what fun …” But then the notes become the opening of the “Bridal Chorus” from Wagner’s Lohengrin: “Treulich geführt / ziehet dahin” …]
[Astounded.] What?!
[Niamh stops playing, kneels down, her hand still offering the bowed box, exultant smile shining in the twilight.]
[A. stares down at her, wordless.]
Niamh. You’re kidding, right?
NIAMH: [She holds his amazed stare.]
A.: No, you can’t be serious. Are you?
NIAMH: [She shakes the box in her hand: “Come on, open it.”]
[A few seconds fly by.]
A.: Niamh, there are primitive civilizations in the Horn of Africa who know this is wrong.
NIAMH: [Stands up, shakes the box in his face: “Open it, you twat!”]
A.: Okay, okay. [He takes the present, unties the box, opens the ring case …]
[… Then there’s a dramatic pause …]
[… Then he scoffs.]
A.: God.
[He picks up the hexahedral object filling the small hexahedral box; then he twists one of the pieces, and he twists it back, and for a while he just gazes at the little Rubik’s cube between his fingers. And then at Niamh.]
Thanks a lot.
[She opens her arms. They hug.]
[Very tight.]
[Muffled by her anorak.] Thank you, Niamh. Love you so much.
[Night’s fallen.]
An article in The Richmond Sun, December 31, 1995
* * *
JANUARY
“Ken Matsuo lived,” I began, my hands surrounding at long last a cup of non-American coffee. “He’s still in the hospital, but doing well. The third intruder, the woman, is missing. Glew left the country the same day.”
Niamh sat by the window, having white chocolate. She seemed focused, less juvenile in spirit, but as eager for adventure as she did back in the beginning.
“Anyway, we have reason to believe that Glew was only in for the money, acting as a director in the field. The real mastermind is someone else. Probably Isaak Dänemarr. That was the guy who came up with the dream recorders. The Society had pointed him to the legend of the Eye, from which he took some inspiration, but I guess in the end he grew tired of replicas and became
obsessed with the original. He must have deduced that Wells and his friends had one, or perhaps Ambrose himself showed it to him.”
Niamh slapped a word on her notepad for my eyes only: Money!
“Yeah, true. The only thing that doesn’t fit with this theory is that a scientist from the former Eastern bloc doesn’t strike me as able to produce the big sums of money that Glew mentioned. So maybe he’s just a pawn too and there’s a sponsor behind him. Anyway, Glew surely cut expenses by hiring low-life thugs like those.”
Aunt Liza’s eyes checked the crutch propped on my chair.
“I’m so sorry you two had to go through all this.”
“It’s okay. The truth is the Society would have met again for the showdown anyway, and Glew would have sent the killers in, whether we were there or not. That couldn’t be foreseen.”
“There was the bed, though. That was dangerous.”
“I had Niamh to protect me.”
“I could do something about your knee, you know.”
“I’m sure you can.” I chuckled. “But no, thank you. I’ll handle it. I have a year of rehab ahead. But hey, my therapist is remarkably hot.” I flinched at my good leg being kicked. “And by remarkably hot I mean seven on a scale from one to Niamh.”
Liza laughed. Her skin was perfect, both now at her apparent thirty years old as at any age she wanted to look; she was gorgeous, out of the Niamh scale. Perennially beautiful like something carved at the prow of a galleon.
“You did great,” she said. “Both of you.”
“We lost the Eye,” I regretted.
“That was never the point. We never wanted the Eye. We knew nothing about Eyes or crystal balls in the beginning.”
The Supernatural Enhancements Page 25