“Yeah well that’s just great,” Lenny said, his mouth going slack with disgust, his whole frame radiating resentment—and he stuck his fists in his pockets, the way he always did when he was mad at his father, so that the seams started to pop. “I need to get my own place. I can’t be babysitting all the time, Dad.”
“Well until you do, you’ve gotta do your part, Lenny,” Dad said, gazing out the window at downtown LA. “Just . . . just help me out this summer, while you figure out what college you want, get a day job, and all . . . all like that. And, and you’re responsible, while I’m gone, for your sisters, you have to be, I just don’t have time to find anyone reliable. ”
“Like we need him to take care of us,” Jean said. “Like Mom would leave us this way.”
They all looked at her and she stared defiantly back. Finally Dad said, “This building is very safe, really safe. I mean, it’s high security as all hell. You have your door cards. But you shouldn’t even leave the place while I’m gone if you can help it. Everything you need’s here. Supermarket, clinic, it’s all in the building. There’s even a movie theater.”
“It doesn’t open till next week,” Lenny said bitterly.
Dad cleared his throat, looked out the window again. “There are kids to meet here.”
“Hardly anyone’s moved in,” Jean pointed out, rolling her eyes.
“Well,” Dad hesitated, taking a pull on his Diet Coke. “only go out in the day and . . . and don’t run around in downtown LA. Downtown LA is dangerous. You can go to Hollywood Boulevard and go to a movie. Lenny can drive the car, I guess. But just . . . try to stay . . . to stay here. . . . ”
His voice trailed off. He gazed out the picture window, watching a plane fly over.
She met Jorny in the Skymall when they got their iPods mixed up in the frozen yogurt shop. “Yo, girl, that’s my iPod,” Jorny said, as Deede picked it up from the counter. He had blue eyes that glimmered with irony in a V-shaped face, dark eyebrows that contrasted with his long, corn-rowed sun-bleached brown hair, a tan that was partly burn. He was slender, not quite as tall as her; he wore pants raggedly cut off just above the knees, with ANARCHY? WHO THE FUCK KNOWS? written on the left pants leg in blue ballpoint pen, and a way-oversized T-shirt with a picture of Nicholas Cage on it hoisting a booze bottle, from Leaving Las Vegas. He had various odd items twined around his wrists as improvised bracelets—twist-its worked together, individual rings of plastic cut from six-packs. He wore high-topped red tennis shoes, falling apart—probably stressed from skateboarding: a well worn skateboard was jammed under his left arm.
“No it’s not your iPod,” Deede said, mildly. “Look, it’s playing The Hives’ ‘Die All Right’, the song I was listening to.”
“That’s the song I was listening to. I just set it down for a second to get my money out.”
“No it’s—oh, you’re right, my iPod’s in my purse. I paused it on ‘Die All Right.’ I thought I . . . sorry. But that really is the same song I was listening to—look! Same one—at the same time!”
“Whoa, that’s weird. You’re, like, stalking me and shit.”
“I guess. You live in the building?”
“You kids want these frozen yogurts or what?” asked the man at the counter.
They bought their frozen yogurts, and one for Jean, who was in the Mall walkway looking in store windows. It turned out that Jorny lived downstairs from them, almost right below. He was three weeks younger than Deede and he mostly lived to do skateboard tricks. His Dad had “gone off to live in New York, we don’t see him around much.” When she said her mom was dead he said, “Between us we almost got one set of parents.”
Jean told him she did rollerblading—he managed not to seem scornful at that—and he and Deede talked about music and the odd things they’d seen in the mall shops and how they didn’t seem to be the same shops the next day. “One place seemed like it was selling faces,” Jorny said. “LATEST FACE.”
“I didn’t see that one. They must mean masks or maybe makeup.”
He shook his head but didn’t argue and tried to show her some new skateboard ollies right there in the mall but the putty faced guard began jogging toward them from the other end of the walkway, bellowing. “You—hold it right there, don’t you move!”
“Security guards everywhere hate skateboarders,” Jorny declared proudly, grinning. “Fucking hate us. Come on!” He started toward a stairwell.
“Jean—come on!” Deede shouted, starting after him. Sticking her tongue out at the security guard, Jean came giggling after them as they banged through the doors into the stairwell and the smell of concrete and newly-dried paint, and pounded down the stairs, laughing.
“Hey you kids!” came the shout from above.
They kept going, Jorny at the next level down jumping a flight of stairs on his skateboard, and landing it with a joint-jarring clack. “You actually landed that!” Deede shouted, impressed—and privately a little dismayed. It was a big jump, though skateboarders did that sort of thing a lot. She was also pleased that he was evidently showing off for her.
“Yeah, huh, that was tight, I landed it!” Jorny called, clacking down the next group of stairs, ollying from one stair to the next. Jean squealed, “Agggghhh! Run! He’s coming! That blue helmet weirdo’s coming!”
They ran down the stairs, easily outdistancing the security guard, and bolted onto the mid-level observation court and community center. They took the elevator to the Hanging Gardens, where they went to check out Jorny’s place, an apartment almost identical to their own. Deede didn’t want Jean to come but couldn’t think of way for her not to.
Jorny’s mom was there for lunch. She was a lawyer, the director of the county Public Defender’s office, a plump woman in a suit with a white streak in her wooly black hair, and a pleasantly Semitic face. She seemed happy to see Deede, maybe as opposed to some of the rougher people she’d seen her son with—all that was in her face, when she looked at Deede. She smiled at Deede, then glanced at Jean, looked away from her, then looked back at her, a kind of double-take, as if trying to identify what it was about the girl that worried her.
It had only just recently occurred to Deede that what she saw in other people wasn’t visible to everyone. It wasn’t exactly psychic—it was just what Deede thought of as “looking faster.” She’d always been able to look faster.
“Come on,” Jorny said, as his mom went to make them sandwiches. “I want to play you the new Wolfmother single. It’s not out yet—it’s a ripped download a friend of mine sent me.”
The notice was there on Saturday morning, when Deede got up. Dad had left at six that morning, not saying goodbye—they all knew he was going to be gone several days—and he wouldn’t have seen the notice, she thought. Someone had slipped it under the door from the hall. It read:
NOTICE
DUE TO SECURITY CONCERNS ONLY AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL WILL BE ALLOWED TO LEAVE THE BUILDING THIS WEEKEND, AS OF 8 A.M, SATURDAY MORNING EXCEPT FOR DESIGNATED EMERGENCIES (SEE SKYTOWN MANUAL PAGE 39 FOR DESIGNATED EMERGENCY GUIDELINES). RESTRICTIONS WILL BE LIFTED IN A FEW DAYS. PLEASE BE PATIENT.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.
SKYTOWN OFFICE OF SECURITY
“What the fuck!” Lenny burst out, when Deede showed it to him. “That is totally illegal! Hey—call that kid you met, with the lawyer mom.”
“Jorny?” It would be a good excuse to call him.
Jorny answered sleepily. “Whuh? My mom? She left for . . . go see my aunt for breakfast or something . . . s’pose-a be back later. Why whussup?”
“Um—check if you got a notice under your front door.”
He came back to the phone under a minute seconds later. “Yeah! Same notice! My mom left after eight, though and she hasn’t come back. So it must be bullshit, they must’ve let her go. Maybe it’s a hoax. Or . . . ”
“We’re gonna go to the bargain matinee over on Hollywood Boulevard. You wanna go? I mean—then we can see if they really are making peop
le stay. ”
A little over an hour later they were all dressed, meeting Jorny downstairs outside the elevators at the front lobby. They walked by potted plants toward the tinted glass of the front doors . . . and found the doors locked from inside.
“You kids didn’t get the notice?”
They turned to see a smiling, personable, middle-aged man standing about thirty feet away. He wore a green suit-and-tie—maybe that was why his face had a vague greenish cast to it. Just a reflection off the green cloth. Behind him were two security guards in the peculiar uniforms.
“That notice is bullshit,” Lenny said flatly. “Not legal.”
“You look a little young to be a lawyer,” said the man in the green suit mildly.
“Your face is sort of green,” Jean said, staring at him.
But as she said it, his face seemed to shift to a more normal color. As if he’d just noticed and changed it somehow.
“Or not . . . ” Jean mumbled.
The man ignored her. “My name is Arthur Koenig—I’m the building supervisor. I’m pretty sure of the laws and rules and I assure you kids, you cannot leave the building except under designated emergency conditions.”
“And I’m pretty sure,” Jorny said, snapping his skateboard up with his foot to catch it in his hand, “that’s what they call ‘false imprisonment’—it’s a form of kidnapping.”
The security guards both had the odd translucent-blue helmets. They stood behind and to either side of Koenig—one of them, who might’ve been Filipino, stepped frowning toward Jorny. “That’s the boy who was doing the skateboarding in the Mall—I saw him on the cameras. Boy—you give me that skateboard, that’s contraband here!”
“Not a fucking chance, a-hole,” Jorny said, making Jean squeal with laughter. “Come on,” he said to Lenny, “we’ll go to my place and call around about this.”
“Building phone line’s being worked on,” said Koenig pleasantly. “Be down for a while. Building cable too.”
“We’ve got cell phones, man,” Lenny said, turning toward the elevators. “Come on you guys.”
As they went back to the elevators, Deede glanced over her shoulder, saw that Koenig was following, at a respectful distance—and while they were walking at an angle, the shortest way to the elevator, he seemed to be following a straight line—then he turned right, and she realized he was following the lines of the square sections of floor. And she saw something coming off his right heel—a thin red cord, or string, like a finely stretched out piece of flesh, that came from a hole in his shoe and went into the groove between the floor tiles . . .
A thread, stuck to his shoe, is all, she told herself. It’s not really a connection to something inside the floor.
“That skateboard!” The blue-helmeted security guard yelled, following Jorny. “Leave it here! I’m confiscating it!”
But Koenig reached out, put his hand on the guard’s arm. “Let him go. It doesn’t matter now. Let him keep it for the moment.”
Deede followed the others into the elevator. She didn’t mention the red cord to them.
“This is 911 emergency. May I have your name and address?”
Lenny gave his name and address and then said, “I’m calling because we’re being held against our will by the weirdoes in this building we live in. The manager, all these people—no one’s allowed to leave the building! It’s totally illegal!”
“Slow down, please,” said the dispatcher, her voice crackling in the cell phone, phasing in and out of clarity. “Who exactly is ‘restraining’ you?”
The skepticism was rank in her voice.
“The building security people say we can’t leave, no one can leave, there’re hundreds of people who live here and we can’t—”
“Was there a bomb threat?”
“I don’t know, they didn’t say so, they just said ‘security concerns.’ ”
“The security at that building interfaces with the police department, if they’re asking people not to leave it’s probably so they can investigate something. Have they been . . . oh, violent or. . . . ”
“No, not yet, but they . . . look, it’s false imprisonment, it’s . . . ”
“They are security, we’ll have someone call them—but they’re probably doing this for your protection. It could be a Homeland Security drill.”
“Oh Jesus, forget it.” He broke the connection and threw the cell phone so it bounced on the sofa cushion. “I can’t believe it. They just assumed I was full of crap.”
Jorny was on his own cell phone, listening. He frowned and hung up. “I can’t get my mom to answer, or my aunt.”
“Jorny? ” said Deede thoughtfully, looking out the apartment’s picture window at the smog-hazy sky. “You think maybe they stopped your mom—took her into custody ’cause she tried to leave?”
Jorny stared at her. “No way.” He shot to his feet. “Come on, if you’re coming. I’m gonna ask if she’s at the security office . . . ”
Deede looked at Lenny to see if he was coming but he was on the cell phone again. “I’m trying to call Dad . He’s not picking up though.”
“Lenny—where’s Jean?” Deede asked, looking around. It wasn’t like Jean to be so quiet.
“Hm? She left. She said she’s going to that coffee lounge where those kids hang out.”
“What kids?”
“I don’t know. She started hanging with them yesterday sometime. She came back at three in the morning. I think she was, like, stoned. ”
“What? I’m gonna go get her. And help Jorny! ” She called this to Lenny as she followed Jorny out the door. Lenny waved her on.
Another notice had been taped up on the wall next to the elevator call buttons:
NOTICE
ELEVATOR MOVEMENT HAS BEEN RESTRICTED TO THE UPPER SEVENTY FLOORS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. ELEVATOR WILL NOT DESCEND FROM THIS LEVEL.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.
“What the fuck!” Jorny said, gaping at the notice.
“I wouldn’t have put it that way,” said a white-haired older woman standing a few steps away; she wore thick, horn-rimmed glasses and a long blue dress. “But that’s generally my feeling too.” She had her purse over her shoulder, as if she had planned to go out. “I was going to Farmer’s Market but . . . I guess not now.” The woman went back toward the doors to the apartment complex, shaking her head.
Jorny shook his head as the woman walked away. “Everyone just accepts it.”
“Security office is downstairs,” Deede said. “We can’t get to it on the elevators. But we could take the stairs. Only, I want to find my sister. But then she could be down there too . . . ”
He was already starting toward the door to the stairwell, skateboard under his arm—you can’t skateboard on carpet.
But the stairwell door was locked. “What about the fire laws and all that?” Jorny said, wondering aloud. He looked toward a fire alarm, as if thinking of tripping it. Deede hoped he wouldn’t.
“Okay,” he said, “let’s go upstairs on the elevators to that lounge, see if we can find some way from there to go down. There must be a way—the security guards must be able to do it.”
“I want to get my brother to go with us.”
They went back to the apartment . . . and found the apartment door standing open.
Inside there was a lamp knocked over. Lenny was gone. He’d left his cell phone where he’d thrown it and he was just . . . gone. She looked through all the rooms and called up and down the halls. No response except a Filipino man looked out a door briefly—then hastily shut it when Deede tried to ask him a question. They heard him lock it.
“I’m sure he’s okay,” Jorny said.
Deede looked reproachfully at him. “I didn’t say he wasn’t.”
“You looked worried.”
“I . . . I’m worried about Jean and . . . this whole weird thing. That’s all. Lenny gets in a snit sometimes and goes off and says ‘Screw everybody’ and wanders away . . . gets somebo
dy to buy him beer somewhere and he gets a little smashed and then he comes home. But leaving the door open that way . . . ”
Jorny was on his cell again, trying to call his mom. He called his aunt, spoke to her for less than a minute in low tones—and hung up. “She never showed up. She was supposed to meet my aunt—and she never got there.”
“It’s too soon to call it a ‘missing persons’ thing. We could look for your mom in the building. And Jean.”
“You want to try the lounge?” Jorny asked. She nodded and they went to the elevators and rode up toward the lounge. On the way he tried to call his mom on the cell phone again—and gave up. “Doesn’t work at all now. Just static.”
“There are places in the elevators for keys,” Deede said, pointing at the key fixture under the floor tabs. “The security guards must have keys that let them go to restricted floors.”
That’s when the moaning started up again, in the elevators above them—and below them too. As if the one down below were answering the one above. A moan from above, the ceiling shivering; an answering moan from below the elevator, the floor resonating.
Jorny looked at her quizzically, but saying nothing.
They got out at the coffee lounge, a big, comfortable cafeteria space spanning most of one side of the floor, with a coffee shop and a magazine stand. Both were closed. But there were kids there, about nine of them, five boys and four girls, middle-schoolers like Jean, in a far corner, crowded together in a circle near the rest rooms. Deede hurried closer and found they were standing in a tight circle around Jean, circling, and each one pointing an index finger at her, one after the other, like they were doing “the wave”, the fingers rippling out and pointing and dropping in the circle, and each one pointing said, “Take a hit.”
“Take a hit . . . ”
“Take a hit . . . ”
“Take a hit . . . ”
Like that, on and on around the circle, and when Deede and Jorny got there, Deede looked to see what Jean was taking a hit of, what drug or drink, but there was nothing there, no smoke, no smell, no pipe, no bottle, only the pointing fingers from the rapt, feral faces of the other kids, their eyes dilated, their lips parted, saying, “Take a hit, take a hit, take a hit . . . ” And Jean was swaying in place, rocking back, staggering in reaction from each pointed finger, each ‘take a hit,’ her eyes droopy, her mouth droopier, looking decidedly stoned. Was she playacting?
New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird Page 31