Spirits in the Wires

by Charles de Lint

  Mrs. Landis went into her own apartment to get her keys, then led them up the stairs to Jackson’s.

  “I don’t know that you’ll even be able to start his computer,” she said as she unlocked the door to the apartment. “It’s not in very good shape after … after what happened last night.”

  “It’s probably not as bad as it looks,” Estie said. “If the hard drive’s intact, we’ll be able to access his data.”

  “I still don’t understand what you hope to find.”

  Estie shrugged. “We thought if we looked through his agenda and his e-mail, we might find something. Perhaps he made an appointment to see someone. Or there could be e-mail about some plans he might have made. We really won’t know until we look.”

  “I’m surprised the police didn’t think of this,” Mrs. Landis said.

  “I’m sure they would have eventually,” Claudette said.

  “And whatever we find out,” Aaran added, “we’ll make sure to pass along to them.”

  The landlady got the door open and stood aside to let them in.

  “It’s all so mysterious,” she said.

  Mysterious didn’t begin to describe it, Estie thought. She wondered what the landlady would think if they explained what they really believed and why they were really here.

  She’d have the police here in minutes. Or at least the men in white coats from the Zeb with their one-size-fits-all straightjackets.

  Estie slipped past Mrs. Landis and walked into the middle of a familiar room. It wasn’t that she’d been here before—she’d simply been in a lot of apartments much like this where bachelor computer geeks set up shop with all their computer paraphernalia, stereo equipment, oversized TV sets, and other tech toys. There was no room left over for traditional furnishings.Though she shouldn’t talk. She might keep her living room relatively geek-toy free, but the rest of her own apartment wasn’t much better.

  “Do you see what I mean?” Mrs. Landis said, pointing to the main desk. “I really don’t see how you’ll ever be able to get it up and running again.”

  Estie’s heart sank when she turned her attention to the main computer. It really was a mess. It looked as though it had been through an electrical fire—much the same as Raul had described the condition of Benny’s computer to be. The faint scent of burnt wiring still hung in the air. The monitor was especially scorched, the glass webbed with dozens of tiny hairline cracks, the beige casing streaked with dark burn marks.

  “I thought there was some kind of oil,” she said.

  Mrs. Landis nodded. “There was. An awful black liquid.”

  “This looks like it’s been in a fire.”

  “That’s the way it was when I came in last night. I haven’t touched a thing and neither did the police.” Mrs. Landis paused, looking at the mess. “I suppose it’s hopeless.”

  Estie wasn’t sure they’d get anything out of this machine, but she put on a good face.

  “We don’t necessarily need to actually get it up and running,” she said. “We just need to access the hard drive and see if the data on it is salvageable.”

  Mrs. Landis gave a slow nod, but though Estie could tell she had something else on her mind, the landlady didn’t say anything more. If anything, she seemed nervous, even uncomfortable. Estie might have put it down to Mrs. Landis having second thoughts about letting all these strangers into one of her tenant’s apartments, except she felt something, too. There was a feeling in the room. A sense of wrongness that appeared to originate from the area where the computer sat. It was as though the machine was casting shadows, the way a bulb casts light.

  Estie stole a glance at Suzi, curious as to what her reaction would be. The small blonde woman stood very quietly beside Aaran, her gaze slightly unfocused.

  “God, it really is a mess,” Tip said.

  Estie blinked, his voice pulling her out of her reverie. Tip had walked over behind the long desk and bent down now to look at something that was below her line of sight.

  “There are two more towers down here,” he said, “all connected to each other and the one on top of the desk through a cable router. Even if their hard drives are only twenty gig each, we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

  Estie joined him. She cleared a space on the desk so that she could set down her laptop’s case, then studied the setup herself.

  “Looks like there’s an ADSL line connected to the router,” she said.

  Tip nodded. “Yeah, here’s the modem.”

  Estie was happy to see the cable router. That was going to save her a lot of time. Instead of having to try to set up a dialogue between her machine and the towers with the gear she’d brought, she could just plug the cable from her network card directly into the router and access Jackson’s towers the way she would any other drive connected to her laptop.

  Tip leaned a little closer to the modem.

  “Okay, this is weird,” he said.

  “What is?”

  “See that little green light? The system’s still on-line.”

  “So now we know why he’s got three towers,” Estie said. “He must be running a little service provider business on the side.”

  “Or he just does a lot of FTP exchanges.”

  Estie nodded.

  “But when Benny got taken,” Tip said. “Didn’t you say that it fried all the phone lines?”

  “That’s what Raul said. But it didn’t at Christy’s place.”

  “Okay. Still, maybe we should unplug the modem anyway … just to be safe.”

  “I suppose.”

  She stood up and was about to start unpacking her laptop when she glanced at Claudette and the others. They were all standing around by the doorway, obviously unsure as to what they should be doing.

  “I’ve just made some iced tea,” Mrs. Landis said when Estie’s gaze went to her. “Can I bring up a pitcher?”

  Estie smiled her thanks at the offer. “We don’t want to be a bother,” she said, but she was only being polite. She was absolutely parched.

  “It’s no bother.”

  “Then that would be lovely,” Estie told her.

  “Let me help you,” Claudette said.

  The landlady smiled at Claudette and the two left the apartment. Now it was only Aaran and Suzi standing awkwardly by the door.

  “You guys should find someplace to sit,” Estie told them. “This could take awhile.”

  Aaran nodded. Before Estie could turn away, Suzi spoke up.

  “Do you feel … nervous at all?” she asked.

  Estie gave her a puzzled look. “Why should we be nervous?”

  “I don’t know. There’s just something in the air. I felt it as soon as we stepped into the apartment.”

  “I did, too,” Estie told her. “I think it’s just some residual … I don’t know. Vibes, I guess. Left over from what happened.”

  Suzi gave her a doubtful nod.

  “Estie?”

  She turned from Suzi to look at Tip. He was holding up the end of a phone cord.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “The outside phone cord going into the modem. I’ve unplugged it.”

  “So?”

  “So the modem’s still working.”

  Estie bent down to see that he was right. The small green light on the modem was steadily pulsing. She started to reach for the cable connecting the modem to the router, but Tip stopped her.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think you should be linking up with Jackson’s system while it’s still on-line—especially considering that it shouldn’t even be on-line anymore.”

  Estie nodded. “You think it’s the Wordwood.”

  “What else?”

  “Well, we wanted to talk to it. This could be our chance.”

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

  Estie smiled, trying to project a confidence she wasn’t really feeling. Perhaps she was being foolhardy, and certainly she understood and felt some of Tip’s nervousn
ess, but if this was an opportunity for them to communicate with the spirit of the Wordwood, she didn’t see how they could pass it up.

  She took the Ethernet cable coming from her laptop and plugged it into the router, then stood up.

  “Only one way to find out,” she said as she turned on her laptop.

  Christy

  Now that we’re actually ready to go, Raul seems to be getting cold feet. I don’t blame him. This isn’t like taking the subway downtown.

  We’re in the basement of Holly’s store, the two of us with our backpacks and wearing more clothes than I’d normally have on in this heat: good walking shoes with thick socks, jeans, T-shirts, flannel shirts on top of that, jackets, baseball caps. Normally it’d be shorts, sandals and a T-shirt for me. But Robert told us to be prepared because we wouldn’t necessarily find the same hot August weather where we were going and I took him at his word.

  Mind you, neither he nor Bojo have changed, though Bojo does have a leather shoulder bag with a jacket lying on top of it. Robert’s still in his suit, fedora tilted at a jaunty angle. All he’s carrying when we come down to the basement is his guitar case.

  “I don’t know about this,” Raul tells me. “I’m feeling really nervous.”

  “Me, too.”

  I’m not just saying it to make him feel better. I had a nervous prickle at the nape of my neck the whole ride from my apartment with Geordie. We had to park a couple of blocks away from the store—there’s not much in the way of close parking for anyone at this time of day. Walking back to the store in the sun, even with the temperature having climbed into the nineties the way it has this afternoon, my skin goose-bumped thinking about this trip I’m about to take.

  “Have you ever … you know, been over there before?” Raul asks.

  I shake my head. “But we’ll be with guides who have,” I say, glancing over to where Robert’s laying his guitar case down on the floor.

  “Don’t look at me,” Robert says. “I’ve crossed over into the borderlands a time or two, but I like to stay clear of the spiritworld itself.”

  “Keeping your low profile,” Bojo says with a smile.

  Robert flashes him a quick grin. “Keeping myself alive.”

  I can feel Raul tensing up even more beside me at that. I guess Robert notices, too.

  “Don’t worry,” he tells us. “You’ll be okay. There’s nothing actively hunting you.”

  The others have come down to see us off: Holly, with Snippet in her arms. Dick and Geordie. None of them look particularly happy to see us going. When Robert takes his old Gibson out of its case, Holly pushes her glasses back onto the bridge of her nose.

  “Why do you need music to cross over?” she asks.

  “It doesn’t have to be music,” Robert says. He adjusts the tuning on his guitar while he talks. “It’s whatever you need to help you focus your will.”

  Holly’s gaze goes to the tinker. “But I thought Bojo could just step in and out as he wanted.”

  “I can,” Bojo says. “But only to places I’ve been before. If I don’t have the familiarity, I have to do the same as anyone else. Make my own way by foot or whatever transportation I can find until I get to that new place.”

  “So that’s where the music comes in,” Robert explains. “Music can take you to places you’ve never been before. I guess any kind of art can, when you do it right. I got a good sense of the spirit we’re looking for from the traces it left behind in your store. What I’m going to do now is let the music reach out and find us a way to get to wherever that spirit might have hidden itself away.”

  “That sounds too easy.”

  Robert smiles. “The world’s a pretty simple place. We’re the ones that make it so complicated.”

  I can see she’s got more she wants to ask, but Robert starts to pull a twelve-bar from the Gibson, a slow bluesy number in some minor key, and then no one wants to say a word. We’re caught, listening, mesmerized, just like that, no more than a couple of chords and a handful of lead notes into the tune. I may not have Geordie’s ear, but I can tell right away there’s something different in this music.

  “Mmm-mmm-mmm.”

  Robert’s humming. It’s not a melody, more like a soft, growling counterpart to the melody that the guitar hints at, like a fragment of conversation that only he and the instrument understand. But if I can’t be privy to that conversation, I am aware of a change in the air.

  One moment we’re in an ordinary basement under Holly’s store. An old oil furnace crouches in the corner, like a hibernating bear, drowsing the season away until it can be useful once more. There are boxes floor-to-ceiling along one wall, full of books and magazines, I assume, from the black marker itemization scrawled on their side. “National Geos,” one reads. I glance at some of the others. “Sci. Amers.” “Hist.—pub pre-60.” “Ace doubles.”

  Another corner holds a tall pile of cardboard flats. Under the stairs is a tidy array of snow shovels, rakes, skis, a bicycle with a flat tire and other, less readily identifiable objects. There’s a long worktable set against the wall near the stairs going up to the store, with tools hanging above it. Its surface area is covered with material necessary for shipping books: more box flats, padded envelopes, shipping tape, address labels and the like.

  The four of us would-be travellers are in a clear space in the middle of the floor. Dick and Holly are sitting on the stairs with Snippet on a riser between Holly’s knees. Geordie leans up against the worktable.

  One moment, that’s all there is. The next, nothing changes physically, but suddenly the air is thick with … possibilities. I can’t think of any other way to put it. I just know that the music has opened the potential for us to be anywhere. Perhaps Bojo and Robert are seeing these doors to the other-world that they spoke of earlier. I don’t know. I can’t see anything other than what was here when we first came down the stairs. But I can feel the difference.

  I suppose time passes, but I don’t know how much. But now I begin to see flickers in the corners of my eye. Still not doors. They’re more like heat mirages: ripples in the air that are gone before I can turn and give them my full attention.

  “We’re getting close,” someone says.

  I’m not sure who. Either Bojo or Robert, I assume, because who else among us would know? I turn to look at them.

  “Just tell me when,” Bojo says.

  So it was Robert who spoke earlier.

  I’m not that familiar with blues music, but this sounds darker and, at the same time, full of joy and more languid than any I’ve heard before. And I’m not always sure that it’s just Robert playing. Sometimes I think I hear the whisper of another instrument, here one moment, gone the next. A scratchy fiddle. The soft wail of a blues harp. Another guitar. A banjo—or some banjo-like instrument playing softer, almost muffled notes. Robert isn’t using a slide on the strings, but occasionally the notes he’s playing ease, one into the other, the way they do on a dobro.

  It’s confusing and satisfying all at once. And so full of promise.

  “Get ready,” Robert says.

  I see Bojo nod. He gives Raul and me a look and we both stand a little straighter, waiting for I don’t know what. One of these invisible doors to open, I guess. I take a look behind me and see the wall has a shimmer to it, like it’s not quite solid anymore.

  And then we hear something else. Another faraway sound, but this one grates against the music.

  For a long moment, I can’t place what it is.

  “You better stop,” Bojo says.

  Robert doesn’t look up, but he shakes his head. “No, we’re almost there.”

  “And so are they.”

  Then I recognize that new sound. It’s the distant baying of dogs. And I know what it must mean.

  Robert’s hellhounds have caught his scent.

  Christiana

  “Do you know this woman?” Jackson says.

  I walk slowly toward the coffin and lay my hands on the cool glass. This woman,
he says, like she’s some picture we’ve come across while flipping through a magazine. That’s Saskia lying in there. Of course I know who she is.

  “What makes you ask that?” I say, which is no reply at all.

  It’s just the kind of thing you say when you have nothing you can or want to say. I’m sure not telling him more than he needs to know.

  “You had this look on your face,” he says. “Like you’d seen her before.”

  I shrug. “It’s just … pretty surprising.”

  Saskia asks.

  Of course not, I tell her.

  But all I can give her are words. Neither of us knows anything for sure. Not anymore. Because this is beyond understanding.

  I stare at the body lying there under the glass and try to figure out where we go from here. Whatever I expected to find in this cyber world, this isn’t it. But I suppose it figures. The Wordwood is loaded with fairy tales, so why wouldn’t it use a fairy-tale touchstone as a motif for what it’s done to Saskia? Only what happens now? Do we have to find a way to get Christy into this world so that he can give her the traditional prince’s magical kiss? Or am I supposed to do it?

  There are no seams in the glass, at least none that I can see. The body’s lying on a covering of crimson velvet. Maybe the casket opens from underneath. I wonder if we can tip it over to see.

  I rap on the glass with my knuckles.

  Or we could just break it open with a rock, though Jackson says he’s already tried that without any luck. Obviously.

  Then there’s the whole question of, what if her being in this glass casket is what’s keeping her alive? If she’s even alive.

  No, I tell myself. Don’t even go there.

  But I can’t stop thinking about it. That she’s already dead and I have a ghost in my head. Or that if I break into the coffin, she really will die. She’ll disappear from my head and be gone forever.