The Dark Net

by Benjamin Percy

  “Did you call the police?” she says to Cheryl.

  “The line,” her sister says, her voice cracking. “The line was cut. Do you want me to use yours? Your cell?”

  Then they observe something Lela likens to time-lapse photography. The black-bearded man is no longer young but old. A slow exhalation comes from him, and with this he appears to deflate and wither, a kind of hurried dry rot setting in. There is a sound like thousands of termites chewing their way through rotten wood when his skin grays and tightens and cracks and crumbles, everything sloughing away, so that his teeth and then his bones rise out of the mess, until they too yellow and fissure and crumble to a chalky residue, and then there is only a smear of ashen waste in the shape of the man who once filled these vacant clothes.

  “No,” Lela says. “Don’t call.”

  Her sister whimpers and covers her mouth, and the dog goes over to sniff the remains. Lela closes her eyes and opens them, and the scene remains the same. Just like that, as if a switch has turned, her entire belief system changes. She’s always said—show me proof, where’s the evidence—and now here it is. Maybe the feeling won’t last. Maybe this night will fade like the bad dream it seems. But right now, she believes. The New Testament, the Qur’an, the Tipitaka, the Book of Mormon, the Śruti and the Talmud and the Tao Te Ching. All of it. Everything is true. Anything is possible.

  Right now there are thousands of transmissions streaming through everyone. Emails, phone calls, text messages, Wi-Fi and radio and television signals. Right now there are billions of particles of dark matter swirling through this very room, millions of bacteria creeping across her hand, and she can’t see any of it. Right now there are thousands of smells that her dog perceives and she does not. Is it that much of a reach to believe that other forces might surround her? Not anymore. Not after what she has witnessed.

  This isn’t about chasing a story anymore. The story has found her. She is living the story. She is the story. Letters on a page don’t matter. Deadlines mean nothing. For the first time in a long time, she feels a singularity of focus. She isn’t researching old files and she isn’t dreaming up future headlines. She is firmly lodged in the blurred-edge present, where she is being hunted and her sister and niece are in danger because of it.

  Hannah is calling for her mother, but her mother isn’t answering. Cheryl’s eyes are closed and her fingers are sewn together as she mutters a prayer. “St. Michael, St. Michael, let blue flames surround me. St. Michael, St. Michael, let blue flames surround me.”

  Lela stands and grabs her sister by the shoulders and squeezes her fingernails into the flesh, and Cheryl’s prayer trails off as a stare seals between them. “Your daughter needs you. And I need you. Okay?”

  Cheryl doesn’t complain or scold, doesn’t make any bullying demands. Instead she looks at Lela needily and wilts before her as if she were the big sister. “What are we going to do?”

  “Get your shit under control. Pack a bag for you and Hannah.”

  “Where are we going? The police?”

  “I think we need a different kind of help.”

  By the time Lela washes Hemingway’s face off with a wet washcloth, her sister and niece are ready. She shoulders her purse, weighted with the skull. “Give me the keys,” she says, and snaps her fingers.

  Cheryl says, “I can drive,” and Lela says, “You drive like an old lady.”

  “Well, you drive like a crazy person.”

  “A night like this, the crazy people are in charge.”

  Cheryl looks like she might fight her, but Hannah utters a sick whimper and she attends to her instead. Lela snatches the keys, swings open the door, and says, “Let’s go.”

  Cheryl doesn’t have a garage, her Chevy Malibu parked in a weed-choked spit of gravel alongside the house. Lela hurries there. Hemingway limps beside her. She looks up and down the block, where the night swells around the pools of streetlamps, before hoisting Hemingway into the passenger seat and cranking the key. “Come on,” she yells at her sister.

  But Cheryl lingers in the yard, hovering near Hannah, who looks as pale as a mushroom. One of Hannah’s knees buckles. She wobbles in place. Then leans forward and pukes between her feet. It takes a minute for her to get it all out, and then her mother ushers her into the backseat and belts her in and says, “It’s like she’s got some darkness in her.”

  Lela shifts into reverse and stomps on the accelerator. The driveway’s entry is so steep that the rear carriage strikes the street with a screech. “Sorry,” she says, and then drives randomly for a few blocks, left, left, right, left, left, right, keeping her eyes on her rearview mirror, making sure they aren’t followed.

  Chapter 16

  THROWING UP HELPS. It helped earlier too. Hannah knows the feeling won’t last, but for the moment her balance feels more stable and she can think her way through the pain rather than being owned by it. Her head pulses. Her bones might be rotten chalk, and her muscles might be wet clay. The bite marks and scratch marks burn. If she were a color, she would be some shade of yellow veined with green, the color of infection.

  Her mother dabs at her cheek with her sleeve and says, “It’s going to be all right,” and her aunt Lela crushes the gas and cranks the wheel one way, then another, making Hannah lean so hard at one intersection that her head hits the window.

  “Lela!” her mother says. “Please. You’re going to get us killed.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid.”

  “Slow down. For Hannah’s sake.”

  Their speed ebbs slightly, but their direction keeps changing and the engine still whines like a strained lawnmower. Hannah feels another twinge of nausea and thinks it might help if she could see. Mazing through darkness bewilders and dizzies her. Her hands find her backpack, the zipper, the Mirage. Cool and slippery in her hands. “Can you help me?” she says to her mother, who seems relieved by the question. A simple task, a way to serve.

  “Of course,” her mother says, “but are you sure you want to wear it?”

  “I don’t want to be in the dark right now.”

  Her mother fits the visor into place and lifts the hair behind her ear and tucks the plug into the lightning port there. Then Hannah takes a deep breath and presses the power button on the stem. It takes a minute, but gradually her mind makes sense of the sensory data flooding through it. It’s like growing a new hand, she supposes, and trying to figure out how to peel an orange, sign your name.

  In the front seat sits a woman. Her aunt. Lela. That is Lela. She strangles the wheel with her hands while they fall down what looks like a lighted tunnel, a nighttime street. Lela’s eyes jog between the road and the rearview. She’s watching Hannah. Their speed decreases further, and the car slides briefly into the other lane before she corrects their course. “Wow,” Lela says. “Cool. They’re like Jetsons’ sunglasses.” She’s trying to make her voice sound happy, joking, Hannah can tell, and she’s mostly succeeding. “Can you see me?”

  Hannah studies her aunt for a long moment. “I can see you.”

  “Well?” Lela says. “Come on—what do you think? Is this how you imagined your crazy aunt Lela? How do I look?” She twists her head around and gives her a quick, goofy expression before returning her eyes to the road.

  Hannah can’t help but smile. “You look . . . like one of my favorite people.”

  Over the next few minutes, her mother prays and her aunt babbles. She talks about all the movies they’re going to watch—“Hearing Star Wars isn’t exactly the same as seeing it”—and all the sports they’re going to play—“I can throw you a baseball and not knock your teeth out”—and all the volcanic sunsets they’re going to enjoy.

  But Hannah only half hears her aunt’s voice. In part because the sickness is rising in her again, making her nerves feel haywire, her skin cold, her stomach sloshy and acidic. And in part because she’s distracted by the nighttime city. The marquee of the Laurelhurst Theater, which flares upward like an electric peacock
feather. The yellow squares that stack into the windows of a high-rise apartment. The neon smears of a bar, pizza parlor, Chinese takeout. The clusters of crowds, the streams of bicyclists, so many bicyclists, their wheels spinning with reflectors and their handlebar lights flashing a warning. It’s kaleidoscopic.

  And then they start over the Burnside Bridge, and the downtown rises before them, pillars and tiers of light that range the sky and slur their reflection across the river. Above the city, clouds gather and sop up the yellow-green glow. But something cuts through them. Something darker than anything else in the night. Hannah leans so close to the window, her breath fogs it. “What’s that?” she says.

  Her mother keeps praying, but her aunt ceases her idle chatter and says, “What? What do you see?”

  Hannah tries to describe it. Up the river, north of downtown, in the Pearl District, something binds the earth and sky, a thick black pillar. Like an unlit skyscraper. Or a massive spotlight, except one that specially casts darkness.

  Lela leans over the wheel and squints. “I don’t see anything.”

  “It’s like before,” Hannah says. “Like in the woods,” and only then does her mother stop praying.

  ❖

  Ten minutes later, they find a parking spot and walk two blocks. Or maybe walk is the wrong word. Hannah stumbles, resting often against garbage cans, light poles, her mother. The night air feels good at first, but then it begins to seep into her and she shivers. Her mother takes off her cardigan and wraps it around Hannah like a bandage. They stop before a building tucked between buildings. Its sign reads: THE WEARY TRAVELER, ALL ARE WELCOME.

  Through the glass Hannah can see a lit cross hanging above the reception desk. She’s still making sense of colors, but she pegs the glow of the cross as somewhere between ice blue and dying lilac. The lights inside are dim otherwise. Lela tries the door and finds it locked. She raps her knuckles on the glass. Waits a few seconds. Then starts pounding with the meat of her fist.

  “What are we doing here?” Cheryl says, and Lela says, “Just trust me, okay?”

  A minute later the door opens and a man stands in the crack of it, studying them. His forehead juts out and throws a shadow over his eyes. His shoulders are so muscular they seem to round out of his neck. One of his arms is mummied in bandages. He looks like a caveman in flannel and denim. But his voice is gentle. “What do you want now?” he says to Lela.

  “Shelter. Like the sign says.”

  He touches his bandaged arm then, as if reminded of the pain. “Whatever article you’re working on, I’m not interested in helping.”

  “I’m not here for an article. I’m here for help.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, and starts to close the door.

  Hannah feels heavier by the second. Like a darkness is pooling inside her, weighing her down. Something gives. Her ankles, then her knees, her hips, a slow and total collapse. Her mother tries to catch her, but Hannah slips through her scrabbling hands and slumps to a rest on the concrete stoop.

  Their voices sound farther away than their faces. They kneel beside her and touch her face and pet her hair and ask her if she’s all right. She tries to say, “Clearly,” but can’t find the breath.

  She is vaguely aware of cool air on her belly. Her aunt has lifted her shirt. She is showing the man something. The bite marks. The scratch marks. The hot streaks that offset her otherwise marble-cool skin. “You see this?” she says, yelling now. “We need your help. You need another reason? Because if you need one, I could tell you the story about the guy who broke into her house and crumbled into a pile of ash that looked a lot like the one on your kitchen floor.”

  Only then does the man nod. His body is so big that it seems to take him a long time to lean down, to scoop Hannah up in his arms. She has never felt so small.

  ❖

  Inside, he cradles her with one arm and uses the other to swipe a tablet that hangs near the door. He engages a security code. Locks slam into place. An alarm chirps once to confirm the seal. In this building, with this man, for the first time since the restaurant, she feels safe. He smells like leather and straw. “This way,” he says, and leads them down a hallway and into the dining room that runs up against the kitchen. He sets Hannah on one of the tables, and she nearly blacks out from exhaustion.

  She isn’t sure how long she lies there. Voices fade and bodies slide in and out of view. Sometimes she is awake and sometimes asleep. Every part of her aches. Even the tips of her fingers. It is a poisoned feeling, a rotten feeling, as if her skin sleeved over a black and gelatinous core.

  She hears something. A busy sound. The air wing-beaten with whispers. They’re talking about her, she realizes. The voices overlap, like wind currents wrestling for control of the air, shrill and deep, calm and questioning.

  It’s then that a face swings into view. A woman. Not her mother and not her aunt. Silver-haired except for a long black stripe running back from her temple. She’s a tired kind of pretty. Her skin drooping and puffing off her face. Her breath smells like menthol cigarettes when she says, “She’s got a hitchhiker.”

  “What are you talking about?” Her mother’s voice. Sounding far away, underwater. “What do you mean by hitchhiker?”

  The woman doesn’t answer, so the big man does. “Somebody’s put a mark on her. Something’s taken an interest in her,” he says. “Jumped on her back, so to speak.”

  Hannah’s mother always said you can tell a woman’s true age by looking at her neck. This woman’s is long and wrinkled and wired with ligaments that rise from the sharp anchor of her collarbone. Her leather jacket hides how thin she is. She wears something else. A redness that surrounds her. Like a fiery cloak. Edged with yellow and black. It ripples from her body and gives off heat when she leans in.

  “You see me, don’t you?” she says. “You see me as I am?”

  When Hannah doesn’t respond, the woman says, “You’re like me, aren’t you?”

  Hannah tries to flinch away, to say, “No!” but the woman takes hold of her face and says, “Don’t be stupid. I’m trying to help.” Then their mouths come together in what might look like a kiss, but is more a joining of breath.

  Hannah sees then. In a rush, she sees everything about this woman. The experience is like falling through a vast house tipped on its side, doorway after doorway, room after room, window after window, crowded with so many views of a life.

  The feeling goes beyond her mind and tracks through her whole nervous system. Hannah sees a dark-wooded courtroom full of men with powdered faces and white wigs. They hear arguments that a young woman has blighted crops and spread disease and committed lewd acts. She is stripped and a birthmark along her thigh declared the mark of the devil, and she is named a witch and sentenced to death, and she resists the guards, and they knock her over the head and carry her dumbstruck to the holy river where she will be drowned and purified surrounded by a cheering rabble. She is tied to a kind of seesaw that plunges her below the surface, and she holds her breath and slices through her trusses with a blade she kept hidden in her mouth, and she swims downstream to escape, and when minutes later the seesaw rises from the river dripping and empty of its victim, the rabble goes silent with terror.

  Hannah sees a long line of men, bearded and filthy and jeweled with sores and rib-slatted from starvation, stripping off their clothes and folding them into piles and proceeding into the showers at Dachau. The guard tells them to hurry—Beeile dich!—and then clangs the door closed behind them. He grins through the small glass window, which splatters red with his blood a second later. The lock turns and the door swings open, and the woman steps through holding a pistol. She uses the same words as the guard—Beeile dich, Na los—but with a different sort of smile on her face. Now is their chance, she tells them. The guards are dead and the fence is down, and they must run and they do, and the sky above the camp is gray-ceilinged from the smoke that rises from the furnaces that would have been fed their bodies.

  Hannah sees
mountains. The moon hangs overhead, silvering the patches of snow and the surrounding peaks. A long line of luxury cars is parked along a winding, pine-bordered road that leads to a chateau. The windows shimmer with the uncertain lights of candles. Inside, some people wander around in robes, all of them wearing masks. Bird masks and goat masks and wolf masks and devil masks with twisted horns rising out of them. Someone slits the neck of a lamb and with its blood paints a giant cipher on the marble floor. Everyone gathers around it and begins to chant so that their voices become one voice heard even through the windows. Outside, the woman glugs and spritzes gasoline. Then she steps back and sparks a match and tosses it, and the flame catches midair. Just like that, the chateau is surrounded by a roiling blue skirt that brightens orange as the flames take to the wood. Glass shatters. Metal warps. At first the people remain inside, shrinking away from the fire, and then they scramble out the front door, out the windows, and when they do, they die. Gunfire sounds all around the house as the woman circles it. Bodies drop, one after the other, a pile of them by the front door. Some make it out of the house, but their robes catch fire and make them easy to find in the dark. Her breath smokes and the gun smokes and the house smokes. She waits until the roof collapses, until the glowing frame is visible, and even then a torch-lit body comes screeching from inside, and the woman fells it with a single shot to the head.

  The woman—Sarin, that is her name—has lived many lives. She dies and then she comes back, dies and then comes back, always fighting for the light, like a sun wresting away the night morning after morning.

  The images continue to unscroll, and Hannah feels visually gorged, as she sometimes does with the Mirage, unable to close her eyes, to stop the influx. Her mother always says she is growing up too fast, but now she is growing in too fast, her mind filling with memories and understanding that are not her own.