Bleak History

by John Shirley

“How? I'll tell you, Gabe. We...Forsythe, CCA, and I, all of us... we'll stop all magic, except the magic that we control! Imagine it! A monopoly on magic! And that means that the country will be safe for the first time. That's what gets Helman and Breslin wet. No one would dare to threaten America if we had all the magic. The artifact in the north—the thing that makes that cracked Wall of Force—it'll seal up the cracks. But you and I, we'll be on the other side of the wall. You know—figuratively speaking.” Sean made an elaborate shrug, flipping his hand. “Main thing is, long-lost bro of mine, we'll have the full power of the Hidden! Only, we won't have enough power, working alone—not for what's needed. No, see, to do this, to extend control over whole armies, we've got to have an ally. An Unconventionally Bodied Entity—a more powerful one than you've ever encountered. A Great Power. All the big magic is done through working with the Great Powers, the real lords of the Hidden.”

  “An ally. Would that be-the Great Wrath?”

  “Very good! You were paying attention to what your Scribbler scribbled! Don't look so startled —we've got Scribbler in custody. Your woman buckled, first time Forsythe rammed her mind. Forsythe saw your Scribbler in her thoughts, found her notebook where she'd copied down the lines in red.”

  “What's going to happen to Scribbler now?” Bleak asked. Feeling sick, thinking of someone as fragile as Scribbler in the hands of the CCA.

  “He'll become one of us, that's all. A recruit. He's fine, don't worry about him. Don't worry about your precious darling Agent Sarikosca either. Worry about us! You and me! We've got to work together—meaning you come back with me. You'll just vegetate if you stay in this place.”

  “I've felt you watching since I got here,” Bleak said musingly. “Did you create this place?”

  “No—Shoella created it, just as she said, as a way of trying to get away from us. And to keep you isolated so she can use you for her little agenda. She was supposed to be working with us—we had her set up to bring you in, through Coster. He's not entirely the drunk he seems to be. He was supposed to tempt you to come looking for me. But he did manage to make a bridge to Shoella. Planted a little magical charm I had worked up—and made it possible for me to take over Yorena.”

  Sean floated down to the bank, walked back and forth—almost strutting as he talked. Bleak noticed Sean, in this world, had no shadow.

  It seemed to Bleak that Sean was boasting to him the way a little boy would boast to his father of something he'd done in school sports. “Then I talked to Shoella through the Yorena guise. She was angry at you because you just weren't taking her hints—and we told her that if she got you for us, her ShadowComm people could be free.” He smirked, enjoying the lie they'd told her. “Offered her something else. Told her that you would become hers! We'd basically give you to her! But”—he spread his hands, cocked his head—”something about that Scribbler session changed her point of view.” He grinned crookedly. “Shoella figured out the soul mate thing. She knew if you went to CCA, you'd be with her rival. That if you were with Loraine, any length of time, you'd never leave her— never could leave a soul mate. So she brought you here.” Sean gestured at the gorgeous junglescape around them. “Thought she was clever.” He made a dismissive gesture and grimaced—a grin with clenched teeth. “She has the talisman for the summoning—transported the two of you here. But...too bad for her! She didn't think I could follow but I came right along in the psychic slipstream.” He shrugged, very devil-may-care. “When you've got it, flaunt it.”

  When you've got it, flaunt it?'What old movie had Sean taken that from?

  “Well, Gabe? You coming with me? It's all waiting for you.”

  “I don't think so, Sean. At least not till you answer some questions.” Bleak felt close to tears, seeing his brother like this: a resentful, predatory liar. Too socially naive to hide his real intentions. Hostility showing nakedly on his face.

  “Questions.” Sean snorted dismissively. “Like what?”

  “Tell me about your...your talents. Like shape changing—to become something like Yorena?”

  “Yeah. I can do what you can do—and I can do wore. I can alter my spirit form—I can possess. That's a valuable ally, right? And I can open a path between worlds! I can take you out of this demiworld—this prison of love! You know you can't stay here with Shoella—you can't trust her! She drugged you, kidnapped you here.... You don't want to stay with her—and she can't go with us. That the sacrifice she made. This world emanates from her—she's part of it now.... Hard to pull her out of it and keep her alive.”

  Bleak's mouth was papery dry. Reeling inwardly with shock at all this, he hunkered for a moment, to scoop water from the pond—it would be safe to drink from, in this world—and to take a moment to deal with meeting his brother again...and with what he'd said about Shoella. Had she really been playing him against CCA?

  “I made you an offer, Gabriel,” Sean said. “You going to help your brother—or not?”

  Stalling, Bleak straightened up, wiped his mouth. “There a guy named Gulcher you're working with?”

  Sean tilted his head, looked at him with narrowed eyes. Then he levitated into the air, rotating slowly, arms outspread, making a whirlpool in the water beneath him. Despite reacting to him, the water did not reflect him. “Yeah,” he said, as he whirled slowly over the water, like a slow-motion ballet dancer. “We've got a little meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff planned. Gulcher's going to help us with that.”

  Bleak wondered if he too could fly, move objects about, in this world. He suspected flying wouldn't be possible because he was here in his physical body; Sean was here as an astral body. “You know Gulcher's a mass murderer, Sean?”

  Sean stopped spinning, stabbed an accusing finger. “And you fought in a war! Killed quite a number of people yourself. You shot a teenage boy once, in Afghanistan.”

  Bleak felt punched in the stomach, hearing that from Sean. But he said, “He was part of a team that killed my best friend. And he was trying to shoot me.”

  “I know—absolutely! You did what you had to. Gulcher figured he did what he had to do—to get out of where he was. And that's all we're doing at CCA, Gabriel! What we have to do. Even if it means working with losers like Gulcher.”

  Looking at Sean, Bleak had a sinking feeling there wasn't much left of the boy who'd been abducted from a ranch in Oregon. There was a man with special DNA, extraordinary talents—and inside that man was a disfigured little soul. That was all that was left of his brother. An imp where there should be a man. It was what CCA had made of him, with confinement and testing and isolation and “training,” all these years. It hurt to see it; hurt even more to feel it.

  “Sean...” There was so much to say. He didn't know where to start. “Sean, I'm sorry about what happened to you. From what I can find out, they didn't give our parents much choice.”

  The facade of brotherly fondness dropped away from Sean. He loomed in midair, staring down at Bleak. “They chose you over me. 'Sure, take that one, we'll keep this one.'“

  “I can't blame you for thinking that. But I don't think it was that way. Mom never got over it. She just retreated into her shell. They both got Bible-crazy. And that was a reaction to losing you.”

  Sean snorted. “Yeah? They told people I was dead! But I did okay without you and them—I adapted! I made them give me things, at CCA! I showed my worth...and now I'm on top of it.” And he bobbed ten feet higher in the air, for emphasis.

  “Sean—you know about Stockholm syndrome? You get kidnapped—and you adapt by identifying with your captor?”

  “So that's going to be your attitude! Patronizing, condescending. Disrespecting me.” “Sean—”

  “I can take you back. You coming back with me or not?” “No. Not right now. I don't trust them.”

  “I can stop you from ever leaving here] I can change the character of this place! I can make it so it's definitely not paradise. Heaven can become hell! You know how? I can bring things here. You going to make
me do that?”

  “Sean, let's just...start over. Why don't you come with .me? We can go back to earth—but we'll stay the hell away from the Central Containment Authority. Who wants to be centrally contained, or contained any other way?”

  “You don't understand. I'm the one who's doing the containing—the controlling!”

  “They've manipulated you into believing that.”

  “You're putting me down again! You deny my power!” Sean spread his arms, beginning to change. “Look at me and deny this, asshole!”

  Sean joined his outstretched arms up over his head, as if aiming himself into the sky—but suddenly Sean Bleak's whole body spiked downward, feetfirst into the pool of water, into the mud under it, vanishing, all at once, into water and murk, gone from his brother's sight. A geyser of water rising and falling away, a swirl of diffuse mud, was the only evidence, for the moment, that he'd been there.

  “Uh-oh,” Bleak said, backing away. Already beginning to draw on the energy of the Hidden. The ground shook. There was a count of three: Sean's voice, booming sourcelessly, from all around.

  “One! Two! THREE!”

  And on three, the spot in the water where Sean had disappeared erupted outwardly with a visible shock wave, an explosion of water and mud and shredded plants that made Bleak stagger; a shock wave that continued outward into the cypresses around the pool, making them bend and crack and splinter, one of the more slender trees uprooting, falling backward. A stench clung to the air, and a black cloud formed over the pool, starting small but quickly growing, a miniature thundercloud just fifty feet up that spread, extending tentacles of itself into the surrounding forest, crackling within like distant heat lightning. Then the electrical charge built up unbearably—and let go in the form of a crooked, branchy stroke of red-yellow lightning that smashed down into the pool, churning it with foam and sparkling it with electric death. Fish died and bobbed up, pale bellies turned to the darkening sky. The electricity crackled through the ground—right at Gabriel Bleak.

  And as Sean's baleful influences struck, Gabriel Bleak hardened the energy he'd drawn from the Hidden into a field of repulsion, a cocoon of light. The assault struck the shield of light and dissipated —into the surrounding forest.

  For a moment, an apparition formed, a shape of mist and smoke and dust—Sean's head, big as a dragon's, with a crocodile's jaws and eyes of polished obsidian. It reared over Bleak, its jaws agape. He saw Sean—the child Sean—replicated there in the crocodilian apparition's shiny black eyes, as if Sean were trapped in the obsidian, shouting with fury. “No one's going to pretend I'm not around, not ever again!”

  “Sean. This was not the course we agreed on, “ boomed another voice, from somewhere else entirely. A guttural voice, with a faint Deep South accent, Bleak did not recognize. “We need him alive.”

  “He won't come to us your way, General!” Sean roared. “It's better to crush him than to let him run free!”

  And the energies slammed at Gabriel Bleak again—and Bleak strove to hold them back, afraid he couldn't continue much longer, feeling the pressure more with each second.

  It was beginning to hurt, as the charge increased air pressure around him; he was beginning to feel his ribs close to cracking, despite the cushion of protective energy.

  “You 're letting your boyish resentment get the best of you. He will come to us. I withdraw you. Come.”

  Then came a whining roar of frustration, the force of the roar bursting the crocodilian apparition from within...so that it blew up—and drifted into smoke and mist, which blew away...into the forest. Bleak sank to his knees, resting, immensely relieved.

  Then the jungle was silent for three long seconds. One, two, three. And a whisper came, close to Bleak's right ear. Sean's voice.

  “Gabriel. I'm opening a way to Shoella's world, from the Wilderness. You won't want to stay here any longer. Don't trust that crazy bitch. She's been way over the edge for a long time. Let them have her... You can't stay here, I've opened the way for predators from the Wilderness. You'll have to leave! I'm going to go.... You'll find your way to us.... The general might not know... “

  “Sean...wait!”

  But a wind rose—and he felt Sean sweeping away with the wind; felt his brother withdrawn from the jungle paradise, making the leaves flash their paler undersides, the grass giving one long wave, the trees swaying with his departure.

  And the demiworld fell into a sullen quiet.

  Bleak sighed. Then he got to his feet, took a deep breath, and turned to hurry back to Shoella's house.

  But as he went, with each step he was a little more aware of Shoella's world growing dark within itself; it curdled; it began to rot; it sickened, like a woman with a tropical fever. The air grew close and heavy around him; the sun glared, growing hotter, the ground trembled, so that every few steps he stumbled. He heard a thundering and turned to see a great plume of black smoke rising in the distance —a volcano. He hurried on—but before long volcanic ash was falling around him, thick and choking.

  The sky was blackening with it. The path was hard to see, and the grass, it seemed to him, was twisting to conceal the way. He visualized the house, as Shoella had told him, and the path reluctantly opened up again, just the merest thread. He plunged along it, coughing, realizing that the protection had been lifted. This was no longer paradise—he was no longer safe from this jungle.

  The forest rustled—a large striped antelope ran in terror from a grove of trees on Bleak's left, pursued by hyenas. Seven hyenas, ululating hungrily, tearing at the antelope as it went, making blood spray. Only their bloodlust for the animal, he knew, kept them from going after him.

  The trees swayed in a rising wind...ash swirled red around the glaring sun. The face of a three-eyed demon formed from swirling ash—and watched him from on high. “I'm opening a way to Shoella's world, from the Wilderness. “

  Then he saw the house, up ahead. He ran toward the back door, shouting for Shoella over the rumbling of the unearthly earth. He saw the waterfall running red—with blood? No, it was dissolved red clay, but it looked like a waterfall of blood, blackening now with ash. A eucalyptus tree swayed, shivered—and fell across a corner of the house, and he heard Shoella shout in fear. The back door was skewed now, the rectangle geometrically distorted with the impact of the tree on the frame of the house.

  Bleak rushed through the skewed doorway, coughing, into the kitchen; blinking away black snow, stumbling down the hall, shouting her name. The living room was crushed—the bedroom looked intact.

  He found her in the bedroom kneeling on the cracking floor. She'd opened up loose floorboards, under that North African rug, had taken a talisman of brass and hair and glass from its hiding place, gripped it in the long, slim fingers of her right hand. She held it up to him, her mouth quivering, her eyes streaming tears. “Take this in your hand!” Shoella shouted, over the growing rumble.

  “Sean—he did this—he said you knew, that you were with them—”

  “I know—just take it! And laissez les bons temps rouler. “

  He took the talisman, not understanding at first what it meant to her—and realized then that the talisman had guided them here. She shouted certain words in another language. “No, Shoella!”

  But it was too late, blackness washed over him, then he was falling through a red-streaked vortex The demiworld was gone—and Bleak was spinning through the center of a tornado that whipped and rippled through space itself. He glimpsed faces flashing by—but one slowed and approached, to race along beside him, murmuring to him—the Talking Light he'd seen as a boy.

  “Now I will guide you to The Other... the one who completes you, “ said the spirit of light, its voice resounding in his mind. “As close to her as I can take you. They have protections, you will have to cross their barriers. But you will be close. “

  “Shoella!” Bleak yelled. Out loud—or in his mind? Where was his body? He wasn't sure. “We have to help her!”

  “Shoella is be
yond my help. She is trapped in her imagining, a world coupled with your brother's vision. But you I may guide.... Find The Other and heal her.... Look for my guidance inwardly. “

  Then the spirit of light was gone and Bleak could see nothing but the colorless vortex; he felt a tremendous force spinning him around ever faster, spinning him like in a cyclotron, and he felt gravity build up in him, but instead of crushing him it stretched him out, as if he were a man of rubber; his body stretched out to an infinite wire—which suddenly snapped like a broken violin string.

  Snap, and he was propelled by the recoil into...

  The atmosphere of the planet Earth. Clouds poured by him; a passenger jet was there and gone in a second. A passing crackle of lightning. The lights of cars on a nighttime highway far below...

  Down. Slowly, turning like a falling leaf as he descended. His body taking its old shape again. Approaching the solid ground and...

  Impact—not bone-breaking hard, but the breath was knocked out of him.

  And he was back. He was lying on the ground, facedown. Back in the world he'd grown up in.

  Bleak lay there a few long, stammering breaths, letting his heart quiet, his breathing return to normal.

  Then, the talisman in his hand, he stood up and looked around.

  It appeared to be early afternoon. He was in a copse of dying oaks. He was standing on dry, dead leaves. About a hundred feet away was a sprawling concrete building surrounded by razor wire. A sign said FACILITY 23.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Facility 23. That moment.

  Loraine sat alone in the cafeteria, drinking coffee. She was aware that the two guards who'd escorted her were still leaning against the wall behind her, weapons cradled in their arms. Bored but watching.

  She had finally slept a bit after the facility nurse had given her a sleeping pill. The nightmares had been persistent. But she felt better now than she had last night. The feeling of having been mentally violated was receding, though she still felt a dull ache, right through her.