The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen

by R. T. Lowe

  “Rule number one: I ask the questions. Understood?”

  Felix’s eyes were trained on the gun. It was huge. The Faceman’s index finger was resting against the trigger. One little twitch and a steel bullet would smash into his forehead and wreck his brain.

  “Where’s Lucas?”

  The Faceman shook his head, his expression disappointed but slightly amused, a patient teacher dealing with a gifted but headstrong student. “I see that following rules may be a problem for you. Every so often, I get a kid like you. Off with you. Go! Now!” He motioned with the gun toward the room off the kitchen.

  Felix started toward the living room, slowly. Blood was flowing into his mouth and dripping down his chin, falling into the grimy loops of a forest green shag carpet. His eyes danced all around, taking inventory. The living room was ten feet across and narrow. Thousands of flicked cigarette ashes speckled the threadbare carpet, like flies on vomit. Sections of it had been torn off the floor for no reason Felix could think of. A sofa sat against the wall facing the outer wall. Many years ago, it might have blended in reasonably well at the Caffeine Hut. Now it was mostly demolished and crusted over with things he didn’t want to think about. Foam, stained yellow by time and smoke, bulged from long gashes in the upholstery. He stopped at the far end in front of a mint green wall. There were no pictures. Just holes. Some looked like people had made them. Fists. Heads maybe. Others looked like the work of mice. The Faceman stepped forward until he straddled the line between the kitchen and the living room, still pointing the gun at Felix.

  “If you say Lucas just one more time, I’ll put a bullet in your head. Is that a concept you understand?”

  Felix said nothing. He wasn’t scared. It could have been shock or concern for Lucas that dulled his fear. But he knew it was something else.

  “Please respond verbally. I tend to perceive silence as insubordination.” The Faceman spoke like he was giving instructions to a child. He waited for Felix to answer.

  “Okay,” Felix said.

  “Good. Let’s start over. Do you know who I am?”

  “The Faceman.”

  “Correct. Do you know what I do for a living?”

  “You shoot kids in the face.” Felix searched the room with his eyes. No sign of Lucas: no jacket, no backpack, no phone. Good. He breathed out a silent sigh of relief.

  The Faceman laughed. “That’s true. But that’s only part of my job.”

  Felix shook his head, trying to clear out the cobwebs. His ears were ringing and blood still flowed freely from his shattered nose. His face felt heavy from the swelling and throbbed with pain. But he was thinking clearly and his peripheral vision was back to normal. He wondered, briefly, why he didn’t have a concussion.

  “I serve the highest power in the universe,” the Faceman proclaimed.

  Felix started for a moment. Then he stared at him, thinking the Faceman was a cliché. Just another psycho who believed some higher power—God—wanted him to kill people. He could have guessed that.

  “But if you pass the test and demonstrate you’re not a Wisp,” the Faceman went on, “you’ll have the honor of serving him.”

  Wisp?

  A line from the journal snapped into Felix’s head with limitless clarity, like a blast from a foghorn on a still morning: This rival group of Sourcerors, calling themselves Drestianites, believed that non-Sourcerors—Wisps—were responsible for damaging the Source…

  “Who’s him?” Felix asked.

  “The one who’s going to set everything right.” The Faceman let the gun fall to his side. “And all you need to do is pass the test. If you’re special, you’ll join him. You’ll serve him with the others.”

  The others?

  “What test?” Felix asked.

  “It’s simple. See that brick?” The Faceman pointed at a sliding glass door boarded up from the outside, preventing any light from brightening the room. On the floor beside the door was a brick, badly weathered and whitened with striations in a marble pattern.

  Felix nodded, and then remembered the insubordination threat. “Yes,” he answered.

  “Make it move. If you’re special, you can move it.”

  “What? The brick? What do you mean?” This was starting to feel a lot like his first trip to Inverness.

  “Move the brick with your mind,” the Faceman instructed. “If you can do it, you pass the test. Only Sourcerors can pass the test.”

  Sourcerors? He’s testing for Sourcerors?

  “What if I can’t?”

  He raised the gun, leveling it at Felix. His face darkened. “You die.”

  “How many have passed the test?” Felix asked.

  The Faceman regarded him curiously for a moment. “Twelve.”

  “How many have failed?”

  The Faceman took one gigantic stride toward him, cocking his head questioningly. “You’re very inquisitive.” He ran a hand over his chin, as if he was considering something. “Eighty-five.”

  Eighty-five?

  Felix couldn’t even comprehend that number. So much life. Lost. Taken. By one man. “You’ve killed eighty-five people?” he managed to choke out.

  “People? Oh dear me no. I’ve killed eighty-five teenagers. All Wisps. Of course. I’ve killed many others. More than I can remember. I used to keep a list somewhere.” His lips peeled back over his teeth in a smile as he patted down the pockets of his hunting vest. “But I think I must’ve misplaced it.”

  “Are there others like you?” Felix was pushing it, but he had to know. “Other testers?”

  “Of course!” the Faceman growled. The smile was gone. “No more questions! Move the brick or you’ll die where you stand. If you want to be number eighty-six, then by all means, please ask another question.”

  Felix didn’t hesitate. “Where’s Lucas?”

  Felix’s brazen defiance seemed to stun the Faceman. Then he bared his teeth and raised the barrel, aiming it directly at Felix’s face. “You’re not very bright, are you? But you don’t seem… scared. You haven’t screamed once, or even begged for your life. You remind me of someone I recently had the pleasure of meeting. Her name was Gabriela. Great name. Terribly deluded. I hope you’re not thinking God is going to strike me down.”

  “These people,” Felix said, pressing on. “What’d you call them? Sourcerors? You have another name for them?” Asking the question was risky, but he wanted to remove all doubt. He had to be sure. And he didn’t think the Faceman would pull the trigger until he administered the test.

  “You are an annoying little punk. I’m beginning to hope you don’t pass. Another name?” The Faceman paused. “He calls them his Drestianites. One more question out of you and—”

  “I can move it,” Felix said quickly. “I can move the brick. I think I’m a… I’m one of those Sourceror people. So you don’t wanna shoot me. I can serve him, right? I can be a Drestianite. So tell me what happened to Lucas.”

  The Faceman’s wide brow furrowed with deep horizontal lines. He nodded slow and unsure once, twice and then a third time. Finally, he took the gun off Felix’s face. “So you want to know what happened to Lucas Mayer?”

  “Yes.” Felix already knew the answer. Or at least he thought he knew the answer. Lucas had never been here. The Faceman had just used his phone to lure Felix into the house. The Faceman wanted to test Felix. Not Lucas. Lucas was fine. He was probably in their room right now looking for his phone. But what if he was wrong? What if he’d missed something? Misread what was going on here? Fear clamped down on him. Sweat started to trickle down his neck. His heart hammered in his temples.

  “As you wish.” The Faceman dipped his head for a moment, giving him a bow. “Late last night, your friend left the library and went out for a walk, probably in search of one of his late-night trysts. I executed what the authorities like to refer to as”—he made quotation marks with his fingers—“an abduction. I brought Lucas here. He stood right where you’re standing now. No. He was actually two feet to y
our right.” He motioned with the barrel, two quick shakes to his left. “I asked him to move the brick.” He nodded at it. “I’m afraid Lucas wasn’t special. He wasn’t a Sourceror. He failed.” He paused, smiling, his dark eyes glittering with cruel pleasure. “So I shot him in the face. And then I shot him in the face again. And then I shot him in the face again, again and again. You get the picture.”

  Felix went numb. His nose no longer hurt. He didn’t feel any pain. His heart thundered in his chest, charged currents raced over his skin, the blood roared in his ears like a derailing locomotive.

  “I hope this isn’t upsetting you,” the Faceman said mockingly. He grinned his livid, malicious grin. “You wanted to know what happened to your roommate, right? Well, so after I blew his face off, I took his body down to the basement. I used a saw—two saws actually—and a knife to make your friend more portable. I stuffed his arms, his legs, his torso and his head into a bag which I took to an abandoned factory not far from here. There’s a furnace there I used to dispose of the body. It’s one of my favorite techniques. There’s really nothing left of your friend. Maybe a few scoops of ash. Ashes to ashes, right? And so concluded the short happy life of Minnesota Mayer. Minnesota Mayer. It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? I’ve always liked alliterative names. Minnesota Mayer. Minnesota Mayer.” His smile widened, reveling in the anguish he was causing Felix.

  Felix locked eyes with him. He’d come here for only one reason—to find Lucas. Encountering the Faceman hadn’t changed that. If he’d found Lucas alive and well (or if Lucas had never been here) Felix would have probably tried to escape. Or so he imagined. But escaping was now the furthest thing from his mind. Every cell in Felix’s body was screaming for vengeance. He wanted to kill the Faceman. He wanted to see him lying in a pool of blood.

  “Now move the goddamn brick!” the Faceman bellowed, and the walls seemed to vibrate. “I’m going to count down from ten. If you haven’t moved it by zero, I’m putting a bullet in your head.”

  “You want me to move the brick?” Felix said softly.

  “Ten, nine, eight…”

  “You want me to move it?” Felix said, this time a little louder.

  “Seven, six, five, four…”

  “You want me to move it?” Felix screamed.

  “Three, two, one…”

  Felix pointed at the brick and shouted: “Move!” He didn’t see the brick fly across the room—it went too fast for his eyes to trace—but he saw the Faceman’s features erupt in a cloud of blood, bone and teeth. The brick found its mark, smashing into the center of his face, crushing his mouth and severing his jaw, destroying everything below his nose.

  Slowly, understanding dawned in the Faceman’s eyes and they grew large. The impact had caused his arm to fall alongside his leg, the muzzle pointing at the floor. He looked down at the gun, the enormous muscles in his shoulder straining as he attempted to raise it against the weight of some unseen force, his eyes clouding with dark confusion. The veins swelled in his trembling forearm as the barrel began to rise, the deadly cylinder drawing Felix into its sights. The Faceman’s arm suddenly straightened out hard and rigid and locked down tight next to his body, the muzzle, once again, aimed at the floor. A red line, no wider than a pen mark, formed around his wrist, and it started to bleed. The line became wider and the blood began to flow more steadily, the wound expanding and deepening, revealing bones and ligaments. His trigger finger twitched and the gun fired into the filthy shag, shaking the floor and rattling the little house like a sonic boom. His hand bent back grotesquely, the remaining flesh and bone snapped, and his hand, still clutching the gun, dropped to the floor. Blood fountained from the stump.

  The Faceman glowered down at Felix, his eyes full of hate and fury, and charged him like an enraged bull, his chin dangling by strands of dripping flesh. He took one stride that covered half the distance between them before Felix knocked him sideways with the sofa. The Faceman stumbled, fighting to regain his balance, swiping at it wildly, batting it away. Blood poured from his arm, showering the dingy hovel of a room.

  Like a pendulum, Felix drew the sofa back and slammed it into the Faceman, pinning him against the sliding glass door, bludgeoning him with his makeshift battering ram. Stuffing spilled onto the floor from wide rips in the fabric. The glass shattered. The Faceman tried to stay on his feet, but the sofa pounded into him with the force of a speeding car and he plunged through the door. The rotting plywood detached from the house and collapsed under his weight, sending him sprawling out into the back yard, the jagged glass encircling the frame slicing deep into his flesh. He struggled to his feet and headed south, limping to the back of the property, a heavy trail of blood following after him.

  He was trying to get away.

  Felix waved his hand and the outer wall crumbled and burst into the yard like a wrecking ball had swept through, clearing a path for him. He stepped through the opening, glancing at the brick on the kitchen floor.

  The Faceman looked over his shoulder at Felix and quickened his pace. There was no longer any cruelty or hubris in his eyes. There was only fear. The hunter, the apex predator, had now become the hunted. He turned his head and started to run. He didn’t make it very far. Felix’s aim was pure. The brick entered the back of the Faceman’s head and exited through his face. The Faceman took one more stumbling step before collapsing in the bramble. He landed sideways lying on one shoulder, his chest turned up to the sky.

  Felix ran over to the body. Was he dead? He nudged him with his foot. He didn’t move. Felix would have checked to see if he was breathing but there was nothing to check—he didn’t have a face. He was allowing himself one brief but very firm sigh of relief when it occurred to him that he’d never seen a dead person before. The Faceman was dead. Very dead. No question about that. His face looked like a neighbor’s Halloween pumpkin he and his friends had smashed with baseball bats in junior high. Blood (and other stuff) was puddling around his head. It was disgusting. But it didn’t bother Felix. Not in the slightest. Being in the presence of a dead man—a man dead because of him—gave him no pause. And it wasn’t that he lacked the capacity to feel; he wasn’t blank or numb or bereft of emotion like a stunned survivor of a plane crash. Felix was saturated with feeling, dripping with it. But the only emotion he felt was rage. Bloodlust. He wanted to kill the Faceman. Again. If it was possible, he’d resurrect him so he could smash in his face and watch him die. One death wasn’t enough. He felt so much anger that—Lucas!

  Leaving the body in the thorny weeds, he turned and rushed back to the living room through an opening that would have been no less immense if falling space debris had struck the house. After a quick, frantic search, he found a door in the kitchen that led down to a basement. He fumbled for the light switch and flipped it on. He jumped down the stairs. There weren’t many. The ceiling was low, with exposed two-by-fours and hanging sixty-watt bulbs. The cold damp space was empty except for a foldaway cot and a worn duffel bag with a camouflage print. There was a workbench on one side that ran the length of the wall. Tools were on it: two saws and a long serrated hunting knife. I used a saw—two saws actually—and a knife to make your friend more portable. The wood all along the surface of the bench was stained a deep purplish color like it had been soaking in the wine Lucas’s agent had sent. Felix went over to the bench, picked up a saw, and examined the blade. Crusty red stuff—blood?—coated the metal, and even the wooden handle. It gave off a terrible odor, the odor of death. Then he saw the hairs stuck between the ridges of the teeth. Human hair. Brown hair.

  Felix’s heart sank. But he didn’t scream. He just whispered, “No.” He said it only once. What more was there to say? He sat on the floor and buried his head in his hands, staring at the concrete. It didn’t feel real. Maybe it made no sense—especially with so much evidence inundating his senses—but he didn’t feel like Lucas was dead. Lucas couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. Felix took a deep breath, exhaled slowly and pushed hims
elf up to his feet. A sickly sweet slightly metallic smell permeated the air. Was it blood? It had to be. Then a thought began to chisel its way through his calcifying sadness and misery, breaking it up, allowing an alternate possibility to emerge: What if the Faceman was lying? Maybe the blood on the saw was someone else’s? Maybe it wasn’t Lucas’s?

  Buoyed by the smallest shred of hope, Felix flew up the stairs, ran out the front door and sprinted toward campus. At 12th Street, he fished his cell phone from his pocket and tapped the screen.

  Allison answered. “Hey, Felix. What’s up? We’re studying at the Caffeine Hut if you wanna—”

  “He killed Lucas!” Felix shouted into the phone, panting.

  “What?”

  “Have you seen him? Have you seen Lucas?”

  She didn’t repond.

  “Have you seen Lucas?” Felix screamed.

  “No,” Allison said tentatively.

  “Are Harper and Caitlin there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ask them! Ask them!”

  Felix heard Allison ask the question and Harper and Caitlin say “No” in the background. He tore past a flatbed truck idling at a stop sign and crossed 10th Street without looking in either direction. Tires squealed on pavement. Horns sounded, long, irate.

  “They said they haven’t—”

  “I heard! Go to Woodrow’s Room and see if he’s there!”

  “He’s not,” Allison told him. “We were just there. Harper got spooked so we left.”

  “Meet me at the dorm!” He slipped the phone back in his pocket. The parking lots next to Stubbins Stadium were already behind him. The main part of the campus came rushing up. He stayed off the paths to avoid barreling into anyone, bombing along the fringes of The Yard, passing one building after another—Cutler, Stamford, Siegler, Jacobs—eliciting lots of shocked looks and a few startled screams. On the eastern edge of The Yard, he saw Allison. She was standing on the grass looking in his direction, waiting. When she spotted him, she came running toward him.

  “Your face?” she shouted, sliding to a halt, arms out like a surfer riding a wave. Her face went pale. Their paths crossed for an instant and then Felix blew by her.