Weavers

by Aric Davis

  As disconnected as he felt from them, Bryce still knew a great deal about his mother and father. As he began to type on his keyboard, blood started to pour from his left nostril, but Bryce made no effort to wipe it away. Threads of pure amber spilled from his head and his fingertips, all of them brushing over the keyboard and screen of his computer, but the only things Bryce was moving were his fingertips. He was a zombie, a sight that would have made his mother scream and dial 911, but Bryce was hard at work. Despite the fact Bryce felt like he didn’t know his parents very well, his father’s online banking security information collapsed at his fingertips.

  Darryl knew he was shitstomping the kid, but he didn’t care; he couldn’t care. Bryce was a victim of circumstance, nothing more and nothing less. He had no aura, no ability to protect himself from someone, like Darryl, who could bend him. It was perfect and couldn’t have been any easier if Darryl had held a gun to his head. The kid knew everything that Darryl needed, and in just forty-five minutes the work was done.

  Darryl gave Bryce one last push, a hard one, before leaving, and though he didn’t hear the gunshot, he knew what he would see if he looked at a Phoenix newspaper the next day. Bryce Rucker had never fired a gun, but he knew where Dad kept his .357, always loaded, and as soon as Darryl was out of his head, Bryce was going to retrieve that gun, put it in his mouth, and pull the trigger.

  “Shit, are you all right?” Terry asked when Darryl came back, the walls in the apartment swirling as his mind realized that he was no longer attached to Bryce.

  “I’m fine,” said Darryl, knowing that it was the farthest thing from the truth. He felt sick, dirty, and diseased, but he had only done what he had to. Darryl had no idea if there were other people like him who had kept their ability to bend past adolescence, but if there were, he had to imagine they would be doing the same things he was. “I need coffee,” he said, knowing even as Terry scrambled to get him a cup of the black that it wouldn’t be good enough.

  Terry returned with the coffee. It was ice-cold and double brewed, and Darryl slammed it like the sludge was a cold beer at the end of a hard and hot day. The caffeine went to work immediately, making him feel alive again, as if there were springs under him.

  “Again,” said Darryl, and he handed the cup to Terry, who once again made the trek to the kitchen. Darryl slammed the second cup, set the mug down next to the keyboard, and sighed.

  “Do you want me to get you a bump?” Terry asked, and Darryl shook his head as he looked for a new person to chat with.

  “Not yet,” said Darryl. “We need to save it, anyways. I’ll be ripping through the stuff soon enough.”

  “Did you get anything?”

  “Twenty-four grand,” said Darryl. “It would have been more, but his dad just bought a boat. It had a big down payment, bigger than what he told his wife by almost triple, so he was a little lighter than I was hoping. The next one will be better.”

  “Twenty-four thousand dollars is a lot for one,” said Terry. “That’s a record.”

  Darryl nodded as he punched keys and entered another web-based chat, this one for lovers of the Final Fantasy games. “It won’t be the record for long,” he said. “This is going to be a hard night.”

  Terry said something else, but Darryl didn’t hear him. He was racing through the wires and static into CAiT$iTH, known to her friends as Ericka Hurley. Ericka was seventeen, a big fan of Final Fantasy VII, and the daughter of two veterinarians. As Darryl took her, Ericka’s cat, Thumper, leapt from her lap and began to hiss at her best friend and the yellow strings running from her scalp. No one else in the house heard anything, not until the tub ran over with pink water and began to flow down the stairs.

  “That’s two,” said Darryl as he snapped back, and Terry came running from the kitchen with another cup of room-temperature coffee. Darryl took the coffee, drank, and then belched loudly. The caffeine was cutting through the fog, but he could already feel the shadows racing in. Darryl had made two teenagers kill themselves to cover his footsteps, but he harbored no guilt. They were casualties of war, a necessary mess while making an omelet. There was no guilt, but he could feel his aura fading and couldn’t even imagine what a mirror might tell him about his current state. Black and purple, black and purple—like your liver, like your guts, like everything inside of you, just waiting to die.

  “Cut me a line,” said Darryl. “A big one. Cut me a fucking worm.”

  Terry nodded, then ran to the bathroom and grabbed the small mirror they kept for just such an occasion. Darryl watched his friend—no longer a fatboy but instead a man with a very unfortunate attitude toward women—and then took the offered mirror with its requested line. Darryl grabbed the glass straw that was next to the line of coke, which was fat enough to be a leech instead of a worm, and then hunkered down and got his Hoover on. He shut his eyes as he snuffled up the coke—the last thing he needed to see was his topknot when he was doing blow—and then he felt reborn.

  “Take the mirror,” said Darryl, and dutiful Terry did as he was told while Darryl dove back into the machine.

  Darryl stole, committing acts of rape far worse than he ever could have with his dick and a gun, and then he was really steamrolling. He’d pop out, sniff coke and chug coffee, and then dive back in. Looking at the clock made him sick, so he stopped looking, and then, what turned out to be two days later, he wandered into a chat room based around the Legend of Zelda games and started a conversation with a boy named Vincent Taggio. Darryl sunk his teeth in like a vampire, but it wasn’t until he was all in that Darryl realized his victim was himself a vampire.

  Vincent wasn’t like the rest. He was playing his own game, using his own skills. Vincent was a bender, too, and he’d already figured out the trick that Darryl was using, but he wasn’t ready to be struck back. Darryl was on him like a hungry dog after a sack of Ol’ Roy. Vincent asked him, “What the fuck are you?” and the voice was accompanied by a sizable jolt. The boy thought he was invincible. He fought back, and they never fought back—not in person, and so far, not over the wire, either. Vincent’s defenses crumbled, of course—he was just a boy, after all—but a part of Darryl still wanted to get the hell out of him.

  Darryl dove into Vincent’s mind and took all the important things. It was quite a load. Mom and Dad were rich, Dad was connected with the Chicago Outfit, and he was a player, not a kickstand. Vincent knew all that, but even better, Vincent knew his dad’s friends—goombahs with names like Ricky and Sal and Tony—and Vincent had done his own exploring into them. Instead of one bank account, Darryl had been given the keys to the vault, Cayman Islands keys, and he got to cleaning house while Vincent pissed himself and shuddered at his desktop.

  When Darryl was done, he slid free from Vincent with a snail trail of shit dripping behind him. Darryl had never been inside another bender—he’d never even thought about it—but he’d cleared almost half a million dollars in under an hour. Vincent had been easy to shove, and Darryl hated that he couldn’t use the boy again and was leaving him to a slow death at the end of a rope, but he came clean of Vincent with a sheen of sweat and a new knowledge.

  “You’ll never fucking believe this,” said Darryl as Terry ran to him with a coffee and the mirror. Darryl could see light outside and didn’t even want to think about what day it was.

  “What?” Terry set the goods down in front of his friend, but Darryl shook his head at both the coke and the coffee.

  “I need booze,” said Darryl as Terry cocked an eyebrow, no doubt wondering how his friend could already be done. “I’m serious, Terry. I need a drink.”

  “All right,” said Terry, a wounded tone in his voice. He’d only been trying to help.

  “This last kid was like me, he was doing the same thing we are, and I was able to make him do things, everything. Half a million, Terry. Half a million because this kid was a bender like me. Can you believe it?”

 
“Holy shit.” Terry could believe it as it turned out.

  “If there’s one, there’s a million,” said Darryl. “They’re all kids—remember me telling you that? For whatever reason, there’s just me and then all these kids that can do this, and the ones that can do it all have access to their whole worlds.”

  “Let’s get a drink and talk about it,” said Terry.

  Darryl ran a hand through his hair. He could see that Terry thought he was crazy, and not for the first time.

  “Yeah, let’s get a drink. I can explain better, I think,” said Darryl, but he didn’t really care either way. Terry didn’t need to understand for it to be true. I’ve been wasting my time.

  Terry drove them back from the liquor store in the shitty car. Being in it now was just a reminder that they would have a better one soon, that soon Austin and the car and the porno apartment would all be in the rearview mirror. Freedom from all of that would carry its own weight, of course. The need to always be moving was rough, and some of Terry’s tastes could be tough to deal with as well, but they’d finally have money to grease the wheels. Darryl didn’t talk as his friend drove, didn’t even want to think yet. There were three cases of beer in the trunk, along with a couple of handles of Johnnie Walker Black, and he didn’t want to think about any of it until he could get a drink in his hand.

  Darryl had only been bending over the computer for two days—an eternity in his mind, but nothing compared to the marathon sessions of his youth. Of course, with the computer they weren’t just tricking guys into emptying bank accounts from strip club ATM machines. This new way was better, cleaner, though the kid—fucking Vincent with his gangster dad—had shown Darryl that he was still operating penny-ante scams when he could have been fishing for whales all along.

  Terry finally parked at the apartment, and the two of them humped the booze up the stairs. The neighborhood was quiet, almost as if the psychic energy coming from his topknot was enough to warn the rest of the apartment dwellers to stay inside. Not that he cared, of course. Darryl wanted a drink in each hand. He wanted to shut it off. He wanted to walk past a mirror without squeezing his eyes shut.

  They piled booze on the kitchen table, and then Darryl went to work on getting a scotch. By the time he got to the couch, Terry was already there with a beer and a lit cigarette, waiting to hear why Darryl had bowed out so quickly. Darryl sat down beside him and slammed the scotch, loving the burn as it curled through his chest and down into his belly.

  “OK,” said Darryl at last. “Like I said, the last kid was doing the same thing that I was, Terry. He wasn’t stealing, but he was thinking about it. His dad is some mobbed-up guy, and the kid was making a list of his father’s connections in his head.”

  “He couldn’t just kick you out?”

  Darryl shook his head, letting Terry keep rapid-firing questions.

  “What made this kid so special but made him unable to eighty-six you from his head?”

  “I don’t know, not exactly,” said Darryl. “I do have some guesses.”

  “Spill.”

  “I think he could have kicked me out—that is, if we’d been face-to-face,” explained Darryl. “The thing is, he had no idea that someone could do what he was doing. This isn’t exactly well-documented shit, you know? Point is, I pulled close to a half a million out of that kid, and all I had to do was let him do what he already knew. There was no discovery process, no rooting around in his head for maiden names or old addresses so that I could try and figure out a likely password. He’d already done all of the work. Do you know what this means?”

  “That we got lucky?”

  “All I need to do is find kids like Vincent, maybe even ones more powerful, both mentally and in terms of family. Can you imagine if the Clintons’ kid was a bender and we could get to her? Or maybe the son of a stockbroker, or head of the FBI? As far as we know, I’m the only adult who can do this, but how many of these scammy little kids are out running the same kind of racket, but without the stones or smarts to set up offshore accounts and actually take? I mean, when I was a kid, just knowing I could do something was usually good enough, but that’s what makes them so ripe.”

  “What if you didn’t make them off themselves?”

  “We’ve been over that, Terry,” said Darryl. “I don’t like that part any better than you do, but if they didn’t die, the kids might be able to remember what happened. And without the deaths, the empty bank accounts are going to be noticed a lot faster. These kids might not deserve to die, but I don’t deserve to be broke, not after what we’ve been through.”

  “Couldn’t you, like, explain to one of these bent kids what you’re doing?”

  Darryl couldn’t figure out what his friend was suggesting.

  “Not permanently, of course,” Terry went on, “but think how much shit one of these kids could gather up, but at no risk to us. What if you could trick them into getting access to all sorts of stuff for a week, and then came back?”

  “It wouldn’t work,” said Darryl, but he was thinking, already considering that maybe it could. That would make even this run look like a kid’s game by comparison. Darryl had long believed that there was a better place for him in this world, if only he would reach out and grasp it. He knew that this, finally, might be his chance to catch hold of the brass ring. “Even if it did work, it’s going to be really hard to find any more of these kids.”

  “If all you’re doing is scouting, you wouldn’t need to stomp the kids. If you kept off of caffeine and cocaine, you could be careful.”

  “I’m not sure,” said Darryl, but he knew he was lying. Already, thoughts of making it work were swirling in his head. He’d still need to stay off of the booze—he doubted he’d ever conquer that mountain—but he could be more surgical, and rather than bombarding a bent kid with commands, he could try and communicate with them. Think about how you felt as a kid, how miserable you were. A voice in your head would have made all the sense in the world.

  Darryl’s beer was empty, and there were three dead children in his wake, but he was smiling. Terry was on fire right now: first the idea of using the web to get at people, and then the idea of farming any bent kids he came across. Even better, now the two of them finally had enough of a nest egg to put some miles between themselves and the States. Move first, and then hunt. For the first time in years, Darryl was looking forward to going dry and putting the bend on someone.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Call fucking 911!” Dad screamed next to her, and Cynthia’s eyes fluttered open. The smell of beer was ripe all around them, and even after what had happened it was a happy smell. Dad owned a liquor store but rarely drank more than enough to get silly, and the smell of malt and hops reminded Cynthia of summer days that seemed impossibly far away. Cynthia could see Mom fumbling with her phone, and as Mom tried to dial, Cynthia sat up and said, “I’m fine, it’s OK. I just came inside because I wanted a drink of water and I got dizzy.”

  “Oh, thank God,” cried Mom as she fell to Cynthia’s side next to Dad, and then Linda appeared opposite her.

  There was a truce in the air. Cynthia could feel it even if the threads were gone again, but it was only because they were worried about her. Is Linda worried, or is it still an act? Cynthia decided it didn’t matter, not right now, and then Mom was pushing a bottle of water into her hands and splashing liquid all over both of them.

  “Drink,” said Mom, and Cynthia did, hoping as she swallowed that Mom would forget Cynthia had plenty to drink in the car.

  “I got dizzy,” said Cynthia again, and Mom and Dad nodded their heads.

  “I know, Cynth,” said Dad, “but you’re OK now. Can we get you anything else?”

  “I’ll grab the poor thing some paper towels,” said Linda. “She’s covered in beer.”

  Cynthia smiled at that. It was true, and she wasn’t sure how she’d even noticed the water that Mom had spille
d. Cynthia was covered in the smelly drink, and though she figured Dad would be mad about the loss of product, he didn’t seem to care in the slightest.

  Cynthia let Mom and Dad help her off of the floor and onto a small stool that the bottle sorters used, and then Linda was wiping her down with paper towels from the roll in the bathroom. Cynthia felt good, but as the memory of what had happened came back to her, she found it hard to look at Linda. Linda was younger than Mom, with no family of her own, but she wanted Dad, wanted the liquor store, and wanted the money. Of the last part Cynthia was the most sure. And she was also quite sure that Dad intended to give her all she wanted. Cynthia wanted to warn him, to tell Linda she knew about the plan, and to tell Mom they needed to run from this place, but instead she allowed herself to be comforted by the three of them.

  Cynthia managed to talk Mom out of taking her to the hospital, and by the time she and Mom left for the car she could tell that Dad was starting to finally think about the broken beer. After all, his daughter was fine, so why not worry about the cost to the store? Especially when / They’re going to bleed you bleed you bleed you dry / The thought was ugly, but it only lasted for a moment, and then Dad was smiling again.

  “Cynthia, can I trust you to stay in the car while I run inside?” Mom asked, and Cynthia nodded. It wasn’t really a question. Adults always did that, asked things like, “How about hot dogs?” but would then get furious if you said anything but what they wanted to hear. Cynthia was used to that world. She found it almost a comfort after the strings and all of the things that just didn’t make any sense.