by John Shirley
As Bleak concentrated, adjusting field strength, Forsythe went on, in his normal voice, reaching for the bomb, “Not only is it true, Gulcher, but this explosive is strong enough to take you right out of this life—and right into my jaws as I come into this world.”
But his finger stopped a quarter inch from the detonator.
He seemed paralyzed...as Bleak focused the Hidden's energies around Forsythe...from all sides. Pressing...
Then Forsythe, slowly and painfully, turned to face Bleak—and the thing inside Forsythe started pushing back. The field, in the conflict, became visible. The violet-blue shape of giant hands around Forsythe, closing in on him, to squeeze the intruder out—and the red-energy outline of Moloch, flickering in and out of visibility, showing itself, exerting all the strength it could send through the crack it used to penetrate the human world. Bleak felt it writhing in his field of control.
And he felt himself faltering. The thing was sickening to be in contact with. It was so profoundly nonhuman, its appetites so vast, so alien, he felt an ineffable repugnance that made him recoil in sheer existential horror. He grimaced—and went to his knees, struggling to keep the energy field in place, to increase the pressure. Trying to get help from the refined energies the Spirit of Light had opened to him. But still the defiant pressure grew.
“Now!” Bleak shouted. “Cronin—tell them! Do it now!”
And then they were there, those Bleak had summoned: the ghosts of the scientist who'd died in the dig pit, and the marines who'd died in the compound, and Krasnoff, and Scribbler, and the three sentries who'd died at Facility 23, and Cronin himself. They all appeared around Forsythe, standing in a ring facing him, their hands lifted, touching the field...adding their psychic strength to it. A circle of ghosts acting as an astral magnetic coil to increase Bleak's power.
The field compressed around General Forsythe; staticky and flaring with internal conflict, becoming darker, more intense, as it closed in around him...pressing the possessed man from all sides. It wouldn't crush his body. Refined, it would pass through the physicality of his body, like a net through water. And it was a tightening net, dragging psychically through the general.
Forsythe screamed as the energy net closed inescapably around him—squeezing, pressing.
Then there was a flash of blue-white light. And it was done.
They'd forced out the spiritual alien, the intruder—pushed it out of the man, into the open.
Bleak saw it for a moment, just the portion of it that had entered the world, hovering there, a rearing bulk of glossy green-black, largely taken up by a leechlike, circular, serrated mouth, with more serrated mouths inside it. Poised over Forsythe like a giant Venus flytrap...staring furiously at Bleak with its single polyp eye the color of bloody phlegm. It squealed, ear-piercingly, just once...
Then it contracted, shrinking from yards across to a pinpoint in a second...and snapped out of the world with a crisp crack! that echoed through the dig site.
General Forsythe fell flat on his face, in the dirt.
He lay in the grit, squirming, babbling to himself. “What did I do what did I do what did I do what did I do I can still feel it I can still feel it I can still feel it what did I do do do do do DOOOOOOOO...”
Bleak stepped over to the plastic explosive, pulled out the wires, dismantled it, as the ghosts moaned softly to one another and faded as if blown away on the rising wind. Cronin was the last to go. “Good-bye, wein Jungen...good-bye...”
“Thanks for coming back to this tired little world, Cronin,” Bleak said. Feeling a sudden stab of loneliness. “See you someday. Thanks for always being there, and...” But Cronin was gone.
Then Bleak stepped back and looked at the artifact. This thing limited his power. It had granted him, and ShadowComm, by accident or by someone's strange design, more power than their kind had in the past. It helped keep the predators of the Wilderness at bay—but even without that, would it be good to get rid of it? Or had Newton been right...that they weren't ready?
Gulcher lay there, against the artifact, muttering to himself.
Bleak figured he should kill Gulcher. But Troy Gulcher looked stricken; as shattered, as impotent, as Billy Blunt and Forsythe.
What about Sean? Where was he now?
Turning away from the artifact, the wind blowing dust in his eyes, heartsick, Bleak tried to tell himself that Sean might be wandering the world as a ghost...or reincarnated. But he knew different, deep down.
He knew that his brother was somewhere in the Wilderness. Sean. Keeping to the shadows of the Wilderness, trying to hide from its predators, and trying to remember why this had happened to him.
***
AN URBAN RIVERBANK, A warm, sticky night in New Jersey. Twenty-three hours later.
The decaying dock where Bleak had met with ShadowComm before.
They were all here now, more than Bleak had ever met. Every one of them watching Bleak closely as he walked up with Loraine Sarikosca at his side.
He and Loraine hadn't had much time to talk, since the events at the artifact. Since the artifact had been reburied and left to do its job as well as it might. They'd been too busy to talk. Supposedly. Coordinating with Swanson. But maybe they'd just avoided it.
Oliver was there, scowling beside Pigeon Lady—covered in blue-gray fluttering, some of the birds real, some familiars. And Giant was there, and the others—as well as some Bleak didn't know. A' young, plump, cocoa-colored woman in a Gypsy dress, but no Gypsy; a tall albino with long white hair and a black suit; a small blond girl with a python that wasn't really a python twined around her waist... and many others.
“We've been trying to find Shoella,” Oliver began.
“She's not in this world at all,” Bleak said. “But she hasn't died. She's in a pocket world of her own creation—trapped there. It's pretty bad. I think she's probably found a hiding place there. I'm hoping to find some way to get her out.”
“Oh, fucking hell,” Oliver said. “She's trapped. And you had nothing to do with that?”
“No. That was her doing, man. Hers and...CCA.”
“CCA?” Oliver said. “I heard some stuff. About a predator named Moloch chewing through those assholes. And CCA let some people go. But Scribbler...”
“Scribbler didn't make it,” Bleak said. “But he's freer now than he's ever been.”
“Yeah? And you want us to help Shoella?” Giant asked, looking at Bleak with rank suspicion.
“With that—and with other things. Troy Gulcher is still out there. He disappeared from the hospital—and the familiars that were released by Moloch, those are still floating around the world for Gulcher to use. And there are others—lots of other black souls that Moloch empowered. They're hostile to us. They're a whole different species of shadow. They'll find us and kill us if they can— because they don't want anyone to have the power but them.”
“Maybe or maybe not,” Oliver said. “How do we know any of that's true?”
“You saw the one that summoned the fire imps,” Bleak pointed out. “You think he was alone? You think he'd stand with us?”
“Why should we trust you—and her?” Oliver nodded at Loraine. “She's an agent of CCA.”
“CCA no longer exists,” Loraine said. “But some of us were hoping to...to work with you. In some other way.”
“With Breslin in charge?”
They all laughed at that.
Loraine smiled. “I know. But he's been taken down a few pegs. There is some...testimony. Behind closed doors, in Congress. Not for public consumption but—he's being reined in. He'll be gone next election.”
“Believe that when I see it.”
“About believing,” Bleak said. “I want you to go ahead and look into my mind—Loraine's too, i£°z she's willing. Send your familiars to look. See if you can trust me.”
The ShadowComm drew off, in a group, to confer. Bleak and Loraine waited. A tugboat hooted on the river; a siren moaned in the distance.
“G
abriel,” Loraine said, in an undertone. “We haven't had much time to talk.”
“We'll talk later, Loraine,” he said gently. “We have to think about what all of it means—if it's true about you and me. It's a big responsibility. It's so rare. But...maybe we can't do it this time around.” Meaning, in this life. “Maybe it'll have to be...”
Then Giant walked importantly up to them, the others following him. “Pigeon Lady will look.”
“Okay,” Bleak said.
Loraine hesitated. “Will this be like...when Forsythe...”
Bleak shook his head. “No. That thing was predatory. It's different. It's intrusive but—not like that. Not violent.”
“All right—then let's do it.”
Pigeon Lady walked up to them—as the others backed away. Then the pigeons covering her seemed to explode, outward, toward Bleak and Loraine...the ones that weren't real pigeons, the familiars, flew right at their faces, blocking their vision, covering everything, a flurry of wings and glittering pink eyes and gray-blue feathers that filled the world.
Bleak closed his eyes and felt them flying into him, and through him, as if his body were a man-shaped building, and the birds were flying through its open windows, seeking.
He smelled them, acrid; felt them, sharp-clawed.
It was over in twenty seconds. Another burst of flurrying—and they were gone. All that remained was a slight headache...and a faint nausea. “Oh,” Loraine said, swaying.
Bleak caught her in his arms to keep her from falling. “I wonder if she's faking that,” Giant said. “Shut up, Giant,” Oliver said.
“They're okay,” Pigeon Lady said. “We can trust them. Bleak is telling the truth. And with Shoella gone...we need someone who can call the shots.”
“I guess so,” said the albino. “Let's vote. But I think it should be him. He's the one that took down the CCA.”
“What the hell,” Giant said boomingly. “I'll vote for that. Until Shoella returns...let it be Gabriel Bleak.”
***
THE NEXT MORNING. SUNNY and bright, not yet hot. Bleak and Loraine were walking along a street in Harlem, with Bleak's dog, Muddy, running ahead of them. Loraine wore jeans, and a sleeveless, red T-shirt, red high-top sneakers.
Bleak wore a long, untucked white shirt, jeans, boots, with a vintage rock T-shirt under it: HAWKWIND. And over one shoulder he had slung a backpack.
It was a run-down street, its gutters cluttered with trash; buildings were boarded up on the left. But at brownstones farther down, people sat companionably on the steps. The closed-down school was still shuttered, across the street. Turfies milled on the sidewalk near the school fence, talking; people in hoodies, glancing suspiciously at Bleak and Loraine.
Pigeons fluttered suddenly, in front of them, and Loraine visibly shuddered. “Oh, God, I'm not quite over that. You made it sound like nothing. But...”
Bleak chuckled. He wanted to put a reassuring arm around her. He wasn't sure if it would be welcome. She seemed scared of their special status, together—and Sean's death hung between them, not quite resolved.
“Why'd you want to come back here?” Loraine asked. “Where you killed that speed dealer.”
“Thought he might still be here. He doesn't seem to be. I wanted to have a shot at telling him to move on. I don't feel right when I...” Bleak shrugged. “Never felt good about killing people. I was pretty good at it once—but never learned to like it. Even knowing there's life after death. 'Cause
you're ending something you don't have a real right to end. Zweig's death—that was his doing. But still...1 had a nightmare about that one, early this morning.”
She thought about it, then nodded. “What's in the backpack?”
“Ah. About that.” He put his hand in his left pants pocket and closed his fingers around the talisman—this one altered a bit from the design that Shoella had used. “I spent yesterday doing some research. Refining Shoella's technique. Talking to the Talking Light...1 can talk to it better now. Now we've made more contact. And it told me.”
She looked at him. “Told you what?”
“That you'd better take my hand now.”
She frowned—but she shrugged and took his right hand. They walked a few steps more. He called to the dog and it ran back to him, snuffling. “Stay real close, Muddy. Real close.”
The dog seemed to understand, following along pressed against Bleak's left leg as they walked a few steps more...
And the street transformed around them.
Up ahead, the Harlem street glimmered and shifted, warped, and was gone—replaced by a country landscape. There were trees that hadn't been there before. A stand of pines. And just this side of the pines a curving line of green rushes marked out a stream running by a cottage, half broken-down, overgrown on one side with wild roses...a grassy field beyond it...a hawk circling in the immaculate blue sky...
Loraine gasped. “What...where's Harlem?”
“Look behind you.”
They both turned—Harlem was back there, visible through a circle of watery light. A cab was pulling up, a skinny, pockmarked, overly made-up white woman getting out beside a broken fire hydrant. Gang tags decorated the streetlight posts. A skinny cat ran up the chipped steps of a brownstone. A plane traversed the thin, smoggy clouds just above the skyline.
“It's still there,” Bleak said. “You have only to turn around, walk back. Get that cab before it leaves. You don't have to go with me.”
She looked at him, squinting a little against the sun—the other sun. “And the backpack?”
“Stuff we might need. If we stay in that cottage. It's a pocket world—an idealized world outside of time, a paradise I created between the planes—a living world, all to itself. This one is based on some land near my parents' ranch in Oregon. I used to stay in that little cottage overnight. It needs fixing up. The fishing's good. I've got a sleeping bag.”
“Just one?”
“Just one. If you want to come with me.”
“We couldn'tjust stay there. We have things we have to do in...in this world.”
“Yes. But time passes differently there. We could spend a long time alone together. Finding out what it means, when people are meant for one another.”
“What! You've never even kissed me, you son of a bitch!” She laughed.
Bleak grinned, dropped the backpack, and kissed her. The dog barked, someone on the street hooted at them.
She broke the clinch and stepped back. “Let's not waste any more time here.” Bleak picked up his backpack. She took his hand.
And the three of them, Bleak, Loraine, and Muddy, turned...and vanished from the Harlem sidewalk.
About the Author
John Shirley is the author of many novels, including Demons, Crawlers, In Darkness Waiting, City Come A-Walkin', and Eclipse, as well as collections of stories, which include Really, Really, Really, Really, Weird Stories and the Bram Stoker Award-winning collection Black Butterflies. His newest novels are John Constantine: Hellblazer—War Lord; John Constantine: Hellblazer—Subterranean; and, for Cemetery Dance books, The Other End. Also a television and movie scripter, Shirley was coscreenwriter of The Crow. Most recently he has adapted Edgar Allan Poe's “Ligeia” for the screen. His authorized fan-created Web site is www.darkecho.com/JohnShirley and his official blog is www.JohnShirley.net.
Table of Contents
Also by John Shirley
Epigraph
CCA Internal Memorandum [Excerpts] Eyes Only
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
&n
bsp; Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
About the Author