Bleak History

by John Shirley

“Forsythe's a fanatic about it, obsessed. I'm not sure what he might pull.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning...I'm not sure he's in his right mind.” Swanson craned his head at the surveillance window on the computer, squinting. He put on a pair of half-glasses. “What's going on in there now? Looks like they're prepping Krasnoff for a projection.”

  ***

  LORAINE WAS STARING UP at the skylight shaft when a brisk knock came at the door of the concrete cell. “Just wait out there!” Helman called. “Just stand ready if I need you! The door is unlocked!” “Yes, sir!” came the muffled response from the hall.

  “Go ahead, Orrin,” Helman said. “Your access to the sky is open. The suppressor is off.”

  Krasnoff looked up at the shaft of light, clutched the scepterlike rod tighter, and closed his eyes. 99 “Shiny Fella...” Loraine had the distinct impression he was speaking to someone not in the room. “I'm sorry, Shiny Fella, but I am scared to go crazy. That's worse than dying to me.” Krasnoff seemed to be talking to the light coming down the little shaft in the ceiling. “If I go into a crazy place, I'll be in the Wilderness before I'm dead.”

  The Wilderness again. Loraine had seen a briefing paper on this ShadowComm notion. Spirits in the afterlife were protected if they were aligned with “spirits of light.” If they weren't protected, they were propelled into “the Wilderness”—something like hell, a place where predatory spirits roamed free.

  “And”—Krasnoff paused to swallow hard, before going on—”and tell my ma I'm sorry too, if she's gone on. They won't tell me if she died yet, with the bone cancer, and I can't get word, with the way they keep me shut down, so...sorry.”

  Having said an apologetic prayer to the Shiny Fella, whoever that was, Krasnoff opened his eyes, took a deep breath. Clutching the scepter, he looked like an inbred king on a stony throne, at that moment, as he gazed up at the sky, his face awash in the beam of sunlight coming down.

  “What is it you want to see, Doctor?” he asked softly. Looking longingly up at the sky.

  Loraine watched as Helman hunkered by the briefcase and took out two more items. A piece of paper and a vial of—was that blood? He brought them to Krasnoff. “There's a man named Gabriel Bleak. We have a document he signed, for a bail bonds agency. He touched it and signed it. We want you to show us where he is. And here is blood, taken for a DNA sample from a man named Gulcher, when he was in custody. This man has gone missing too, and we need to know where he is and what he's doing. Both men are Shadow Community, but Gulcher didn't know it until recently. We think he has come into very great power. Can you make the connection for us?”

  “Might could do it, one thing at a time. Put the paper in my left hand.”

  Krasnoff kept staring up at that patch of blue sky, his mouth slightly open, as Helman put the folded piece of paper in his left hand. In his right he clasped the rod of wood and copper, and he ran his fingers up and down it, over and over, rubbing each part of it with his thumb. 100

  Helman glanced toward the camera lenses set flush with the concrete walls, one per wall near the ceiling, and Loraine, noticing an iris flicker inside the lenses, realized all this was being recorded—and perhaps witnessed by someone else.

  “Shiny Fella,” Krasnoff muttered. “And you who call yourselves...” He spoke a series of names. Loraine would try to remember the names later, discovering that not a single one remained in her memory. And she had a near photographic memory.

  She felt a weight in the room then, as if the air pressure had doubled. It made her eyes hurt, her head throb. Then a red and green-blue swarm of tiny lights spiraled down the small shaft over Krasnoff. They moved like a swarm of insects, but she could see they had no wings, no bodies, they were just minute lights swirling around Krasnoff's head. So many they almost hid his features.

  He jerked his head back down so he was staring straight ahead...his mouth open wide, slightly drooling.

  And the glittering swarm entered his ears and eyes and mouth, vanishing into him.

  Strong beams of colored light suddenly projected from his mouth and eyes. Red light from his left eye, green-blue from his right, yellow from his mouth. The lights seemed to converge on the wall in front of him, as if his head were a movie projector. A circle of the tiny lights churned on the wall, then began to converge. Loraine's mouth dropped open, in awe; she could hear her heart thumping in her ears as an image, almost three-dimensional, formed in the wall: a man walking down the street. The man pausing to glance around. Walking on.

  “Gabriel Bleak!” she blurted.

  “Yes, I believe that is our Mr. Bleak,” Helman said, nodding, pleased.

  The circle of light on the wall, its edges restless with glimmering specks, showed Gabriel Bleak wearing a white business shirt, unbuttoned and untucked to hang over the back pockets of his jeans. Loraine suspected he had a gun back there, under the shirt. Under the open shirt he wore a new-looking tee that said BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB across it. He looked focused, in a hurry, intense.

  Loraine suddenly became aware that Dr. Helman was watching her. She turned, saw him looking at her—then looking at Bleak, on the wall. Then back at her. The light from the overheads seemed to collect in the lenses of Helman's glasses, washing them out, masking his eyes.

  “Was there something, Doctor, that...?” she asked, not sure herself what she was asking.

  Dr. Helman shook his head. He pursed his lips, as if suppressing a chuckle, and took a small cell phone from his inside coat pocket, fingered it, and spoke into it as he looked back at the projected

  vision of Gabriel Bleak. “Andrew? The moment you see identifying indicators, get a drone over it—I believe that's a street sign behind him, and I believe that street is in New Jersey. Collate with satellite imagery.”

  But suddenly, on the wall, Gabriel Bleak stopped walking—and looked pensively around.

  “He senses Krasnoff, even at this remove,” Helman said, with the cell phone still pressed against his ear. “Very impressive!”

  A small voice muttered from the air. After a moment Loraine realized it wasn't a supernatural voice. It was from Helman's cell phone.

  “Ah,” Helman said. “Good. He may not sense the drone too.”

  Loraine, watching Bleak, who looked both powerful and vulnerable at once, had an impulse to shout out a warning to him.

  She shook her head wonderingly. Whose side was she on? She had better get a grip and soon. Or she'd be in deep shit.

  “Now, let the contact with Bleak go, Orrin,” Helman said, taking the folded paper from Krasnoff's hand. “And take this blood...and show us what this man is doing.”

  The light ceased to beam from Krasnoff's mouth and eyes, as if a plug had been pulled. Clasping the vial, Krasnoff panted for a moment, blinking—then looked dazedly at Loraine. “Doctor-does she know about her and Bleak? I seen it and I think somebody should know, if...if they're—”

  “That will be enough digression, Orrin,” Helman said quickly. “Now focus on the blood. Where is the source of that blood?”

  Krasnoff looked again up the shaft at the sky. Again he spoke, and summoned.

  Again the sparkles spiraled down. He looked at the wall—and once more light shot from his eyes and mouth. The image formed on the wall. A point of view looking down a street in...

  The street looked familiar to Loraine. Was it Atlantic City? She'd only been there once. Was that a casino, a few blocks down?

  Then a black spot appeared in the midst of the image—and grew. It was like petroleum gushing from a hole in the bottom of the sea, spreading out in a blackening cloud. The black cloud widened, boiled, bubbled...and blotted the entire image.

  The colored light still beamed from Krasnoff's eyes, his mouth—but the blackness seemed to boil up from the wall, into the projected beams, as if working its way toward him.

  “You...” Krasnoff sounded distant, and almost drunk. “You got to untie my left arm here, maybe I can get a picture past this blackout
mess.”

  Helman hesitated—then turned toward Loraine, nodded toward the restraints.

  Why we? horaine wondered. But she circled behind Krasnoff, undid the buckle of the strap that was holding his left arm.

  He lifted up the vial, so that it caught the light...the blackness receded for a moment, then resurged. And suddenly, as if in angry response, something was on the wall besides murky cloud. Faces—angry faces. Some of them appeared to be multiple images of the same face as if seen in a kaleidoscope, the face mirroring itself and folding and unfolding within the bubbling blackness...and then a face that seemed to sum up the others, a face with a sharply drawn, three-dimensional, leathery exposition of mute fury, formed in the center of the cloud and burst out toward them—coming right at them, its gaping jaws stretching impossibly, opening too wide.

  Krasnoff screamed and shut his mouth and eyes, stopping the image—though a little colored light leaked from his lids and lips—and he threw the vial of blood from him so that it smashed on the wall, its contents dripping down, dripping red. Small shards of glass from the vial clung to the wall, pasted by blood, and slowly slipped down, the bits of glass forming into the rough shape of a face.

  The face from the boiling black cloud.

  ***

  NOT LONG AFTER THE session with Krasnoff, Loraine found herself the only one in the cafeteria. She sat alone at a stainless-steel table, in the center of the low-ceilinged room.

  The coffee had gone cold in the carafes, but Loraine had poured some into a plastic cup anyway, and now she held it clasped between her hands. She sat listening to the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead and the ticking of a big brushed-steel refrigerator in the kitchen behind the tray counter. The windowless walls held paintings of autumn woods, with a great deal of brown and dull gold in them; tw her eye they looked like paintings of paintings, bereft of feeling.

  “Doctor—does she know about her and Bleak? I seen it and I think somebody should know, if... “

  From the way he'd been looking at her, Krasnoff had meant Loraine. Not some other her. What had he meant by that? And why had Helman cut him off so hastily?

  Looking at a painting of a stream running through a boulder-strewn wood, it seemed to her that the shadows under the trees and rocks grew darker, thickened, and stretched out to meet one another; to form a deeper, interconnected blackness that blotted the painting like a big spill of ink, and in the dark spill was a face—

  “Loraine?”

  She jumped in her seat, sloshing coffee on her blouse. “Dammit!”

  “Seems you've startled Agent Sarikosca, Doctor,” said General Forsythe, chuckling. “We should have made more noise, coming up.”

  It was Helman and Forsythe; the general—the chief of the CCA—was wearing his USAF uniform.

  She put the cup down. Helman picked up her napkin—and started to dab at her blouse. She could feel his fingers press her breasts, and she stepped back, deftly took the napkin from his hand, muttered, “Thanks,” and finished on her own.

  “Sorry about the coffee, young lady,” said Forsythe, in his Florida accent, “but, Lord, you startle easily.”

  “No apology necessary, sir. I'm a bit shaken, I guess.” She glanced at General Forsythe. “We had our session broken up by an unexpected UBE.”

  Forsythe was short, with broad shoulders, a tanned face shaped—it seemed to Loraine—like a shovel. He had once been almost movie-star handsome, but his face was sagging now, in middle age, as if the wax on a Madame Tussauds sculpture of some golden-era actor had just begun to melt. His gray eyes looked almost painted on; the lines under his fixed smile were like the incisions on a puppet's mouth.

  She looked away, shuddering internally.

  Maybe, she thought, he looks so unpleasant to me because of what I've seen today; what I've been through. Everything looks kind of off to me. Even cheap decorator paintings.

  “You seemed a bit upset,” Helman said, looking with solemn concern at the stain on her blouse. “When we left the containment chamber, I mean—you seemed shaken. Mr. Krasnoff can be an upsetting character.”

  “But from what I saw on the recordin', we made progress,” Forsythe said, clasping his hands together with a clapping sound. “We got him contained and at the same time we got him working for us, all at once. Got our cake and chowing down on it too. Haven't been able to get that with many of them.” He pursed his lips and looked at Loraine with a touch of amusement, adding patronizingly, “I understand you think we're going about it all wrong, Agent Sarikosca.”

  “Oh, well—I just thought you might catch more flies with honey, sir.” She balled up the wet napkin and tossed it into her coffee cup. “And it seems to me”—she felt a bit reckless, now, and thought she ought not to say these things, but she had to, somehow—”it seems to me that we are trying to contain things that can't be contained. Not for long. Like trying to catch moonlight with your hands. What happened in there today...” She thought of the face forming in the boiling blackness on the wall. “It wasn't contained. It wasn't controlled.... To think you can control the supernatural...” She shook her head. “I don't think you can. In ancient times, people made deals with it. Maybe that's what we need to do—but after today, I'm not sure we should.”

  Dr. Helman was making tsk sounds. “Now you make me wonder if you're suited for this job, Loraine. The whole point of this facility—well, shall we say a fundamental, preliminary point—is to demonstrate that so-called magic is not spiritual, not supernatural, it's just another form of natural energy; an unknown branch of physics. You know, radio waves are invisible to people. They can seem mysterious. Primitive people hearing a radio for the first time assumed there were spirits in the box. It's the same principle. And if it's a product of nature, it can certainly be mastered by human beings.”

  Forsythe was watching her closely. She didn't think she'd gain anything by just buckling under to Helman, here. For a woman in an agency dominated by men, it was better to show strength. “Yes, Doctor—I'd guess the Hidden must be something 'natural' in a way. But some kinds of natural are just past our understanding. We can't control them with machines. We can't hem them in.”

  Dr. Helman and General Forsythe exchanged looks of amusement. “Oh, girl—” Forsythe shook his head. “Wait—am I being politically incorrect, saying girl?'

  “I believe you are, General,” Helman said.

  “Then I'll say, Agent Sarikosca, you'd be surprised what can hem in the supernatural. And how long it's been goin' on. I think you're just too valuable to us, with that inquirin' mind you've got, to stay out in the 'waiting room' of the CCA, any longer. Doctor—I think you should take our young agent here up north.”

  Helman nodded. “I was a bit dubious. But I'll honor your instincts, General.”

  “Well—she's got that special connection. And Sean...you know how Sean feels.”

  She looked back and forth between them now. What were they talking about? Special connection? Sean?

  “I was a bit dismayed by the break in connection,” Helman said. “That black-cloud effect. Curious. I've never heard of anything quite like it. As if a particular geographical area was being curtained off from us.”

  “Yes...” Forsythe's eyes had gone even blanker. “You know—it might be best if you focused on the other one, for now. On Bleak. This whole Gulcher business—just a distraction. Let it go. I'll deal with it my own way.”

  Helman opened his mouth as if about to object—then shut it. He looked puzzled—and annoyed, it seemed to Loraine.

  “Hokay, ladies and gents, I'm off,” Forsythe said, looking at his watch. “I've got a meetin'.” He ducked his head in a fractional bow to Loraine. “Ma'am.” And hurried off.

  Dr. Helman watched him go. Then muttered, “That's truly odd. He was quite hot on finding Gulcher a few days ago. And Troy Gulcher escaped from a prison using ShadowComm abilities which are beyond any we've known, in terms of sheer aggression, judging from the stories of the few survivors. Quite d
angerous. And if that was a UBE we saw, in the session with Krasnoff...I'm not conceding it was, but...” His voice trailed off.

  “If it wasn't an, uh, yube—what was it?” Loraine asked.

  “Hm? Perhaps—something fabricated by our Mr. Krasnoff to scare us. It's difficult to understand them, you know. They're a volatile lot, these ShadowComm types. Innately rebellious. Troublesome. Not to be trusted operating on their own.” '°s

  She picked up her plastic cup. Then put it down again. “I knew, when I came aboard the CCA, that there was graduated briefing here, and a lot of need-to-know levels. But...if it concerns me personally...” She looked Dr. Helman in the eyes, to let him know how seriously she felt about it. “If it concerns me personally, I think I should know exactly what's involved. Krasnoff said something about 'her and Bleak.' He seemed to mean me. And the general mentioned something of the kind. And who is Sean?—”

  Helman raised a hand, his eyes brittle with warning. “All in good time. What Krasnoff was referring to...I'm not convinced it's the case, what he thinks, but you've been picked to work on the Gabriel Bleak matter for a good reason. Let's just leave it at that. We find him to be surprisingly elusive. We believe you may be particularly useful.... Well. The details will have to wait.”

  “Isn't he just one more ShadowComm subject? Why focus on him?”

  “No, he's not just another. General Forsythe has some particular use for him. Now...if your nerves are mended, we'll return to the lab and review the recording we made today. And we should be able to see some live drone surveillance of our Mr. Bleak. The UAV has been in the air for some time, and I believe they have him on camera.... So—if you think you can deal with what, after all, is your assignment...?”

  He looked at her with raised eyebrows.

  She hesitated. Thinking maybe now was the time. Now was the moment to say, I am not cut out for this. For containment. Seeing what happens to people like Krasnoff. I just don't like the way it's being done. It seems wrong to me.

  But things were different, now. Four thousand people had been killed in the terrorist attack on Miami a couple of years back, and even more basic rights had been suspended—it just wasn't safe, anymore, when you worked this close to the heart of Spook Central, to say, /just don't like the way it's being done. It seems wrong to me.