Christy would never forgive me.
I don’t know if I would.
I haven’t known her for very long, but I like her. For a lot of reasons. And because we’ve both got these strange origins of ours, because of our connection to Christy, I feel as though we’re family. Sisters.
I don’t know, I tell her.
I wish I did.
I turn to look at Jackson.
“There’s got to be something you aren’t telling me,” I say, although I’m one to talk. “Something else you’ve seen. Something someone’s told you.”
He shakes his head.
“What about these other people you’ve met? Where can we find them?”
“I haven’t seen anybody for a while,” he says. “Except for the ghosts. And you.”
“And there are no other buildings or ruins like this? No other …” I stop myself from saying bodies. “… mysteries you haven’t told us about?”
“No. There’s just the leeches.”
I don’t even want to think about them.
I’m open to suggestions.
Well, since, best case scenario, Jackson’s virus has made it a little crazy,worst case, this whole world’s steadily disintegrating right under us, I don’t know how much help it would he even if we could find the spirit.
But—
< That’s what we came for, right? To talk to the spirit?>
That was the plan, I agree. At least it was until we got hijacked into this mechanical fairy-tale wood. Now we’re just trying to get back to the status quo.
Okay.
When I turn from the casket, Jackson’s got this strange expression on his face which makes me wonder what I look like when I’m having these internal conversations with Saskia. Do my features go all slack and I start to drool?
I stop myself from lifting a finger to check. At least I can’t feel anything in the corners of my mouth.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing. You just looked like you’d gone away.”
“Don’t I wish.”
“I mean gone away somewhere in your head.”
“Let’s focus on the other kind of going away,” I say.
“Don’t think I haven’t tried.”
I lean my hip against the glass casket, stick my hands in my pockets.
“Okay,” I say. “So what exactly have you tried?”
He gives me a puzzled look.
“You know,” I say. “Did you try to figure something out with the other people you met? Have you tried to contact the spirit? Where have you gone? What have you done?”
“I told you. Nobody seems to know anything. And I didn’t even know there was a spirit until you told me.”
“So, really, you haven’t done anything?”
He frowns at me. “I haven’t been this solid for very long.”
“I’m not getting on your case,” I tell him. “I’m just trying to find a place to start looking for some answers.”
“Yeah, well, good luck.”
I go down on one knee and pull at the ground, grabbing handfuls of the wiry lichen to reveal the dark loam of words underneath.
“Let’s start with this stuff,” I say. “You told me it was some kind of code.”
“HTML. Yeah.”
I dig through that first layer until the binary code is revealed, the ones and zeros flashing by at an incredible rate.
“And this stuff,” I say. “It’s what runs a computer?”
“They’re binary numbers.”
“Another kind of code?”
He nods. “The numerals represent bits that are read like electrical charges—T meaning on, #8216;0’ meaning off.”
“So everything in a computer comes down to these bits?”
“It’s like a basic language,” he says. “But it’s not that simple. I can’t actually do anything with it.”
“Why not? You’re a programmer, right? Isn’t this what you do?”
“I need to write code to manipulate the binary numbers. And I need a keyboard to write the code. This is like trying to mix the ingredients to bake a cake while you’re inside the oven. I can’t work directly with the binary. I can’t even read it. It’s going by too fast.”
Saskia says.
What does it say?
Because of the virus.
I focus back on Jackson. “So all those ones and zeros we see flashing by—that’s just information?”
“It’s raw data, yes.”
“And there’s no way we can tap into it?”
He starts to shake his head, but before he can answer, we all hear it. That now-familiar, high-pitched, hissing whine. Approaching.
Jackson’s face goes pale.
“Leeches,” he says.
“I thought you said they didn’t come up here,” I say.
“I said I hadn’t seen them up here before. Come on. We have to hide.”
“We can’t leave her here,” I tell Jackson. “Unprotected.”
He just looks at me.
“I don’t know who she is, or why she’s here,” he says, “but there’s nothing we can do for her now. We have to look out for ourselves.”
I grab his arm. “No, we can’t just—”
“Hey, for all we know she’s what they’ve been looking for all along.
Maybe she’s in charge—directing them with her dreams or thoughts or something. Who cares? We have to get out of here.”
He starts to pull his arm free, but I tighten my grip. That horrible sound of the leeches is getting closer.
I’ve been wondering the same thing, and I think I have an idea.
I don’t know what you being in the casket means, I say. But I’ll bet our coming here—the proximity of your spirit—has set off some kind of alarm. You’re either supposed to reconnect with your body, or it’s the last thing they want.
We don’t. Not until we try it.
“Help me see if we can topple it over,” I say to Jackson. “Maybe we can get into the casket from the bottom.”
He gives his arm another yank. This time he pulls free.
“Work it out on your own,” he says.
He goes over to the far end of the room and begins to pull up the wiry lichen.
“Every time you cover yourself up,” I tell him, “I’m going to pull that crap off of you. And then I’m going to wave and yell and call the leeches over.”
“What, are you nuts?”
“Just help me here.”
He glances in the direction from which the sound is coming, but it’s not coming from any one direction anymore. They must be coming up the hill from all sides, zeroing in on the ruins of this house.
“Jesus, we’re surrounded,” he says. “We’re completely screwed.”
“So help me.”
“Don’t you understand? I said—”
“You’re wasting time.”
He glares at me with a look I’ve seen before. He knows I’m not going to back down, knows there’s nothing he can do about it but help me. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to be happy about it.
“Fuck you,” he says.
But his heart’s not in it and he joins me by the casket. We reach underneath, fingers scrabbling for purchase, and find an edge we can actually grab. Looks like it’s flat on the bottom.
“On th
ree,” I tell him.
I count it out and we put our backs to it.
Nothing.
“You see?” Jackson says. “Now can we—”
“Stop wasting your breath,” I tell him. “Again. On three.”
From the sound of it, the leeches are almost at the walls of this ruined building.
Let me concentrate on this.
I count it out again. I feel like my shoulders are going to pop out of joint, I’m straining so hard. Still nothing. But just when I’m about to give up, I feel something. A shift in the casket. So miniscule, I could have imagined it. But I’m grabbing for hope here, and refuse to believe that.
“Put. Some. Muscle. Into. It,” I tell Jackson.
He doesn’t bother to answer. He doesn’t have to. We can both feel it now. It’s like when you’ve got your foot stuck in thick mud and you just can’t pull it out no matter how hard you tug. You get that mild panic feeling, that you’re never going to get it out, but then there’s that feeling, no more than the hint of a promise, and the next thing you know, there’s movement. The mud gives up its death grip and suddenly you’re free.
That’s how it happens with the casket.
One minute we might as well be trying to shift a ten-ton rock. The next the casket pops free from whatever was holding it down. Some kind of adhesive, I guess. It sure wasn’t because the casket was that heavy, because it weighs next to nothing, we find out all too soon. When the adhesive gives, it’s like somebody suddenly opened a door we were pushing on. The casket goes toppling over. I get a flash of the body tumbling from its velvet bed. It slides toward the top of the casket, which is now the bottom. Jackson and I both lose our balance and fall with it, adding to the casket’s momentum. When it hits the edge of the faux stone platform it was on, the glass cracks.
All along I’ve been hearing that wet, fingernail-on-a-chalkboard whining of the leeches. But it’s drowned out now as the casket breaks open and something—air, I guess—comes rushing out. More air than could possibly be in that small enclosed space. The roar of it fills my head—like standing beside a jet that’s getting ready for take-off.
Jackson and I tumble onto the wiry lichen, falling in different directions. We regain our balance at the same time and stare wide-eyed as the casket breaks apart. The glass is in five or six pieces and Saskia’s body falls out of it onto the ground. I want to go to her, but the body starts to glow.Electric blue. A deep gold. Blue again. And then a pillar of light explodes skyward, going straight up into the monochrome sky.
No. Not light. Or at least not just light.
Inside it are those binary numbers. The code. The flashing Is and Os are a part of the strobing blue and gold pillar of light.
I understand. I don’t have the words either. But Jackson manages to get out a whole sentence.
“What the fuck have we done?” he says.
And then, over the roar of the burning pillar as it pierces the sky like a searchlight, we hear them.
The leeches.
I turn and see the first one coming through the nearest wall, the faux stones melting away like wax from the contact of its slick black body. The stench of sulphur and hot metal fills the air.
Suzi
Suzi was nervous as soon as she set foot in the tenement building from which Jackson Hart had so mysteriously disappeared the night before. It didn’t help that, except for Aaran, everyone was making it pretty clear that they didn’t much like her and were suspicious of her tagging along. Even the landlady, who’d had a friendly smile for everyone else, had given her a weird look. Aaran was good, lending her some moral support by staying close to her, but she knew that even he couldn’t quite figure her out.
She couldn’t blame him, not being entirely sure herself why she felt so determined to stick it out. It was no longer simply to be supportive of Aaran—at the moment she was getting more from him than he was from her. And it wasn’t even a need to know how this would all play out, though that was certainly a part of it.
It was more as if she was being compelled to come here, that she had to be a part of it, for all that she was feeling progressively more nervous the closer they got to Jackson’s building.
She was edgy entering the tenement. Going up the stairs to Jackson’s apartment made all the little hairs stand up on her arms and once she actually followed the others inside, ail she wanted to do was turn around and walk right out again. There was something too creepy about the place. It was nothing specific, nothing that she could put her finger on. There were no visible signs that this was other than what it was supposed to be: the home of a techie, filled with all the latest computer, stereo, and video gear. But from the moment she crossed the threshold, she sensed that they were all in danger.
She listened to the others make small talk. Watched Estie and Tip decipher Jackson’s computer setup. When Claudette offered to help the landlady get the iced tea, she wished she had the nerve to ask if she could accompany them, but she knew she wouldn’t be welcome. Not that she was particularly welcome here in the apartment, either. But at least going with them would have got her out of this room and let her think about something other than the inexplicable foreboding that had taken root in her head.
Finally she had to say something. Estie agreed with her that there was an odd feeling in the air when Suzi expressed her concerns, but then she went right back to talking to Tip about the computer connections. Tip hadn’t even looked up.
“Don’t worry,” Aaran said. He spoke softly so as not to disturb Estie and Tip. “They sound like they know what they’re doing.”
Do they? Suzi thought.
It didn’t feel like it. Nothing felt right about any of this.
“I just … I get the sense that something’s about to open,” she said. “In this room. Maybe in me. Or that… I don’t know. That something’s approaching. Something big, that can’t be touched or held. Something … dreadful.”
She managed to give him a half-smile to show that she knew she was overreacting, but Aaran returned it with a worried look.
Suzi sighed. “Look, I know how stupid this must sound—especially since I was pooh-poohing the whole idea of Internet spirits just a few hours ago.”
“It doesn’t sound stupid,” he told her. “I’m just not sure I understand what you mean. Is it like a premonition?”
“I guess.”
She could hear Claudette and Jackson’s landlady coming up the stairs behind them. Aaran had turned away from her to listen to what Estie and Tip were saying to each other. It took Suzi a moment to register what the words meant. They rasped inside her like glass, sharp and brittle. The air in the apartment grew more close, almost oppressive.
“No,” she said. “You can’t bring it here.”
But it was too late. She saw that Estie had already connected her laptop to Jackson’s system and turned it on.
“Bring what here?” Claudette asked from behind her.
Estie looked up. “We’ve got another mystery,” she said. “Jackson’s computer is still on-line, but as Tip’s discovered, the ADSL connection is broken.”
Tip held up the outside phone jack that he’d disconnected from the router.
“But that’s not possible,” Claudette said. “Is it?”
Estie shrugged. “Apparently it is. Tip seems to think that by my having connected my laptop to the router, the Wordwood spirit is going to come to us.” Her gaze went to Suzi. “And so, it seems, does Suzi.”
Tip stood up from behind the desk. Claudette came into the room, with Mrs. Landis trailing behind her. The landlady looked from Suzi to Estie, plainly confused.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “What do you mean about a spirit?”
“Maybe we should ask Suzi,” Estie said. Her gaze stayed locked on Suzi. “What do you know about all of this?”
Suz
i wanted to bolt. The room was suddenly too small. Too close, too confining. The air too heavy.
“I… I don’t know anything,” she said. “I can just… feel something. Like … like there are things in the corners of the room that we can’t see. Waiting. Watching us …”
Oh, just shut up, she told herself. You’re sounding like a lunatic.
Except she didn’t feel crazy. She did feel that they were in danger. It was just that the words to explain it didn’t seem to exist.
“It is oppressive in here,” the landlady said. “We should open a window and see where Jackson keeps his fans. We need to move the air around a little.”
“Suzi’s not talking about the heat,” Estie said. “Are you, Suzi? At least not that kind of heat.”
Aaran stepped in between them. “Stop bullying her. It is hot in here.”
“Sure, it is,” Estie said. “We’re all hot. But we’re not all hiding something.”
Suzi’s gaze darted from one face to another. They were all staring at her, even Aaran, though at least in his case, it appeared to be out of concern for her. The weight of their combined attention was almost as bad as the sense she had that there was something watching them from the corners of the room.
“I’m not hiding anything,” she said. “It’s just… can’t you feel it?”
Mrs. Landis stepped forward. “Maybe if you have some of this iced tea.”
Suzi stepped back as the landlady held out her tray, offering her a glass.
Why couldn’t they feel it? It reached right into her, like it was trying to pull something out of her chest.
But from their expressions, the only thing they sensed was that she was losing it. Maybe she was crazy.
Except there was something in the corners of the room—though not what she’d thought at first. There weren’t monsters or evil spirits coming for them. It was that the room itself was … fraying at the edges.
There was no other way to put it.
She couldn’t see the dissolution when she looked directly at any part of the room, but seen from the corners of her eyes the walls and corners were shivering. No longer solid. Unraveling.
It was like the difference between a real photo and a picture in a newspaper. The walls weren’t solid like a photograph. Instead they were made of hundreds of tiny dots of colour, all pressed in tight against each other. And now all those tiny dots weren’t holding together anymore.
Spirits in the Wires Page 28