by Curtis Hox
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
With the curtain drawn, Corbin Lyell sat alone at home in his favorite chair, a tall rocks glass in hand. He sipped his Jack-and-Coke and mumbled to himself. He heard the voices that refused to let him see the world as others did.
Dreya should understand, he thought. Only a handful of individuals knew the history he had with that bitch, Hattie.
Instead, Dreya had told him not to call. “You fucked up too many times.”
“Dreya,” he replied, “you think my work is a twisted hobby, secondary to your secular pursuits. So what if it’s twisted? I encourage others to engage the Deep because people need to be inspired. What great acts ever came from timid thinking?”
“You’re insane,” she said, then hung up.
Corbin had always known his success at Hexcom would lead him here to this moment, when he and Hattie Sterling would learn who was right. His wife had never recognized his true motivation in investigating the N.P.B. Because of Hattie, he had taken his alternative path, and it had led him to wonders.
He realized the endgame had come when he’d learned that Hattie was still alive.
The voices in the apartment snapped just behind him, as if a gaggle of creatures with pincers for tongues nipped his ears. He knew not to struggle; they would only increase in volume. He had stopped taking his medication days ago because he missed the voices. They ridiculed him, often, but sometimes they comforted him, as he hoped they would now that he faced the inevitable confrontation with Hattie.
Corbin sat in his chair, enjoying the numbing warmth of the alcohol. He let his eyes glaze over and the waking-dream begin.
Whispers, first, swept around him and darted off to darkened corners, their echoes lingering in the room. He watched ethereal traces in the air form lines like ribbons. His mind wandered, and the room temperature dropped.
He set his glass down, nearly frozen.
Frost formed on the outside around the heat outline of his fingerprints. He grabbed a throw, wondering at the reason for the drop in temperature. He never understood that … except, they come from the Deep. He waited for the horrors to fill the living room that should drive him over the edge. He would give faces to the voices, and they would commune with him instead of ripping his mind from his body in unholy fire. They needed him, as much as he needed them.
“Give me strength, please,” Corbin asked.
An amorphous mass struggled to incarnate but failed because (he believed) of the immense void that separated this world from the others. It roiled in a mass of electrical current and crackling energy. His old man’s heart beat much too rapidly as he basked in the power, his mouth open in a rictus. The thing disappeared with a flash and a bang, leaving him alone, but with a living room blanketed in frost. He also now had a vision of what to do at the symposium.
“Yes,” he muttered. “Yes, finally. It’ll be perfect.”
Corbin rose on shaky legs and walked up wide stairs to the second level. He headed for the end of the hall past his and his wife’s separate bedrooms, the sauna, two guest bedrooms, to where he kept his things in a corner office.
Boxes filled most of the room, and stacks of old paperbacks lined the walls in neat piles. Painted, plastic and pewter figurines stood in two ornate wood-and-glass bookcases. He even owned a life-sized Creature from the Black Lagoon. Its reptilian/amphibian form reached outward as if to grasp you. He had ordered that special from a studio in California.
He created a path through the clutter until he reached the far wall covered with a red velvet piece of cloth the size of a beach blanket. He removed the cloth and revealed a steel rack holding a massive sword, still glimmering with the protective oils he had applied. It was a gift he’d given himself years ago. How long had it been since he’d cleaned it? A year? Two?
Corbin had commissioned the single piece of metal from a smithy that built them by hand. Several layers of tempered steel formed a double-edged blade the width of his palm. Parallel edges ran straight until breaking into a point at a sixty-five degree angle. The center was beveled with smooth fillets to create a slight hollow that framed inscribed symbols Corbin believed came from the Deep. Stitched leather wrapped a steel grip. This was topped with an ornate cross-guard that ended in deadly tips. The bottom of the haft bore a bronze filigreed pommel in the shape of a demon’s head. He’d designed it himself, with the hopes of one day putting it to use.
He dug around until he found its custom case. He retrieved two heavy gloves, which he put on, then reached for the antiquated sword. Light glinted off the sharpened edges as he lifted the weapon from its place on the wall.
“Finally,” Corbin mumbled to the steel, as if the blade might hear him, “we get to see what you can do.”
He placed it in the case, then closed the lid, gently locking the clasps.
Barely managing, he removed the case from the room but had to rest in the hallway. The damn thing banged against his knees as he tried to walk.
He dialed his private helicopter, and his personal assistant.
Yes, he’d be returning to Hexcom tonight, yes. No, he wouldn’t be coming home for a few days—not until after the symposium at Riodola University where he and Dr. Harriet Sterling would have their reckoning. Oh, and prepare the young man, Towns, for another projection. Which one? I’ll tell you when I get there. He’s going under for days. We need to prepare him to peak at the symposium.
* * *
Towns lay in a comfortable haze of some sedative meant to cushion his crash when he saw the door crack. It produced a bright white slit that hurt his eyes. He saw a skull hanging there, thinking it was a monster, before realizing it was his torturer, Mr. Corbin Lyell.
They had kept Towns’s room as dark and quiet as possible, as he recovered from his last projection. After his immersion in the horrendous story of the demon that escapes from the box, they had put him under a number of times, none of which was that demanding. But each time they’d reinforced his need for the opiate-crossed psychotropics that allowed whatever sensitivity he had to the N.P.B. to project itself into reality. He was hooked and he didn’t even know it.
Mr. Lyell pushed the door all the way open and entered. An orderly entered carrying a large case, which he set on a table, then opened.
Mr. Lyell pulled up a chair. He leered at Towns.
“What do you want?” Towns croaked, his voice still hoarse from all the howling he did inside the cocoons.
“I’ll make you a deal. Finish this last one, and then a break for a while. You get to relax, see your mother, rest. Your relationship with Hexcom can be renegotiated.”
We negotiated? “How is she?”
“Doing just fine. She’ll be going home next week. We told her you’ve been busy. She understands.”
Towns wanted to feel angry, but whatever meds they had given him dulled his edge.
“Great.”
A rush of opiates surged through his blood. Already, his outrage at …
What had they done, really?
Except make him project … which he thought he agreed to. He knew they had given him a lot of money, and that was why he was still here and why they refused to let him go. Had he signed a contract? He couldn’t remember.
Towns felt himself falling into a comfortably resigned place.
I probably agreed to this, he thought. Already over ten grand in real cash in his bank account required some work. Right?
Towns thought he was lucid dreaming when Mr. Lyell appeared with a massive sword lying flat across his arms. Towns forgot he had been having a conversation as the old man set the tip on a night table and righted the blade, upside down, letting the steel dig into the tabletop to handle the weight.
“Wake up,” Mr. Lyell said. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Wow,” Towns replied, forgetting where he was. “Fucking cool-ass. Where did you get it?”
“I had it made.”
“Sweet.”
“Let me tell you about Harriet Sterling.”
“Dr. Sterling?” Towns shut his eyes, the strain of looking at the blade causing a wave of vertigo.
“She’s a cunning bitch, that one.” Towns tried to listen, but he had trouble focusing. Mr. Lyell went on and on about how he and Dr. Sterling had been at odds for years, that it had all begun in some book club. “She won’t admit it, Mr. Packer, but she wants to use the N.P.B. to make herself into a witch, or some sorceress. Has she told you that? I bet not.”
Towns hadn’t heard that accusation, actually, but in his addled state it made a sort of strange sense.
Spinners, they’re called.
“I explained to her,” Mr. Lyell said, “that in American pulp fantasy the wizard is always at a disadvantage when facing a determined, superstitious hero with a sword and a will to survive. There have been many examples. My favorite was always Howard’s Conan, although Solomon Kane works as well.”
Towns had heard of Conan, of course, because of the first Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, which was still watchable, but he had never heard of Howard.
“I got tired of her arguments, Towns, about how women were the new warriors. This was only because TV and film had tired of the classic American hero and began doing just what she’d suggested: making women into warriors. What a crock of shit. I want to shove her feminist heroism up her ass—literally. And I want you to help me.”
“Shove it up your own …” Towns heard himself say.
Mr. Lyell leaned in. “You have no choice, Mr. Packer.” He tapped Towns once on the forehead. “This’ll be fun, my boy. You just wait and see.”
Towns made the decision to escape right then. The man had threatened to harm Dr. Sterling. It all made sense to him. Somehow he sensed that the demon projection had been intended to attack her. He realized he had been duped; maybe his mother’s sickness and recovery was their fault as well.
* * *
He dozed, until some time later. In a moment of clarity, he disconnected his IVs, crawled out of bed, and spotted an orderly asleep in the hallway. The nurses’ station at one end was visible through glass windows.
No one there.
Towns walked out, and soon got lost.
He eventually stood in the middle of a long hallway lit in dull incandescent light, staring at a doorway, maybe ten yards away, he had just exited. He was sure orderlies were about to slam it open and retrieve him. He had been out of his bed for maybe a half hour. They had to know by now, he thought.
Towns wore a hospital gown, open in the back and revealing his skinny, white ass. Long socks and oversized slippers covered his feet and calves. He looked like a ragged body of bones, barely kept together with ligaments and tendons made of Scotch tape. He stumbled forward to the opposite door.
Find a phone.
After that, if they hadn’t gotten to him, maybe, just maybe, get outside and find someone who might help.
Each door he exited was unlocked going, but locked coming. He knew he was somewhere under headquarters, near the cocoon facility. How to get out?
Towns walked right into two orderlies without realizing it.
They gently grabbed him by the arms and escorted him back to his room.
“He got farther than most,” he heard one say.
* * *
The technicians began on Towns soon after. He knew the routine. Since he was strong enough—and clean enough—to try to escape, they moved him to a simple cell not much different from his recovery room, except he had plenty of distractions.
A flat screen on the wall played a constant stream of sword-and-sorcery films. He had no idea so many bad ones had been made. They also left a stack of old books as well. He stuck to the graphic novels and the entire box of comics. He sat in the room, while they brought breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He had a nice shower to use. Every four hours they walked him to a private gym, where he could run or swim in a nice-sized pool. Only thing odd was that he never saw anyone else. It was as if they cleared any space he was entering.
Towns sat on his bed working through an old Tarzan comic when the door cracked.
They wheeled a cocoon into his room. His mouth instantly watered, and he felt a strange tingling in his belly as he anticipated the rush. A seductive voice told him it wouldn’t be so bad this time. You’ve gone under before, right? And those times weren’t so bad.
In his eagerness to climb into the cocoon, he forgot about who he was before Hexcom when he’d wanted to learn about N.P.B. theory, when he’d walked into Riodola and become the center of something that had seemed so big but now seemed …
They didn’t actually strap him down at this point. All they did was hook up an electroencephalogram harness to his head. They also pricked veins in both arms. He hoped they’d begin with the good stuff right away.
The inside of the cocoon was a high-tech display. They dropped the lid so that he was fully enclosed in a dark bubble, until one of the films began to play.
Towns shut his eyes, waiting for the good feeling, as they wheeled him out of the room. The combination of video and audio began; strange patterns of repeated, sometimes in rapid succession, worked on his subconscious. They pumped him full of medicine—that was what he told himself it was, medicine, to keep him awake. He inevitably entered a liminal state in which he dreamed while watching the material. He would sometimes try to get up, but he found himself strapped down. Always better to remain where you were, he remembered. Besides, when you moved around you destroyed the warm feeling and, sometimes, the vision.
And the vision this time was of a barbarian.
* * *
The hours Towns spent jacked up on a mind-expanding cocktail in the cocoon, then the recovery crash in which he could barely mumble a word, was a blur. They cushioned him from clarity during those critical hours in which they nearly turned his brain to mush.
“He’s young, though,” Towns heard one of the technicians say. “Maybe he can survive another marathon session. Maybe.
Unfortunately, this was just a trial run.
* * *
Corbin stood behind the technicians in the observation booth as they finished the process of loading the media into Mr. Packer’s feed. No one had attempted this particular projection since he did it himself years ago. And Corbin had Hattie to thank for its existence.
She had always been able to read, as she liked to label the general process of determining meaning in the N.P.B. His sensitivity emerged during intense, dream-like moments when his mind wandered and the unreal became real. However, he had always desired to control his ability, with no luck. Then Hexcom began to attract other lovers of pulp who would spend days in the archives immersed in their obscure material.
In the early days, his company had started a newsletter asking for any examples of the N.P.B., just as Hattie Sterling’s institute still did. He hired individuals with claims of sensitivity to randomly screen bleedover examples sent to Hexcom.
Hattie originally claimed they could only be found in static texts. She never admitted she was wrong about this, even after the multiple examples of films in which mysterious shots appeared. The insertions ranged from simple examples of a random person in the background to entire scenes. The classic example that had stumped the film industry and one about which Dr. Sterling actually wrote (without having the decency to contact Corbin and admit he’d been correct) came from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
A blog posted a clip that everyone said had been doctored until numerous other people began posting, saying they had digitized their old DVD copies (and even VHS) and found the insertion. When Indy casually shoots the sword-wielding Arab wearing a black robe and red sash, you can now clearly see in the crowd of locals a man in full neoclassical costume, with an aristocratic wig and white facial makeup, hopping up and down on one foot for no reason at all. Corbin could not read, but enough people seemed to think it was a true example of cinematic bleedover. Those who he believed could read (like Hattie) refused to comment. Corbin projected the wig-wearing insertion on his first try. Not noi
se at all.
He had never found anyone reliable, not like her, who could determine information from noise with a high rate of accuracy. So, he tested certain insertions in Hexcom’s laboratories. His formula was simple: add randomly selected material to someone with sensitivity to the N.P.B. and see what stuck.
Hexcom eventually found a visual bleedover insertion that would become a private obsession of Corbin’s. On that propitious day, he watched one of their top projectors summon a nearly seven-foot-tall barbarian from a low-budget Conan rip off called Krall the Destroyer. Krall the barbarian stood in the middle of the projection chamber, shimmering, almost fully real.
The character even had the long black hair, square jaw, and blue eyes so often abused by fantasy writers they had become clichéd. Still, when Corbin saw the broad shoulders and long arms, the compact but lean muscle, he knew the man was as untamed as a wild dog. The real-time footage of the projection showed him standing in the protective cylindrical chamber in only a hide loincloth, his body scratched and scarred from previous encounters, his eyes roving around him searching for a way out. He didn’t seem overly perturbed by his surroundings. Eventually, after realizing he couldn’t scale the walls, he sat down with legs crossed, bowed his head, and slept.
Corbin experimented with this insertion several other times with Hexcom projectors, who consistently summoned the barbarian. Each time, Krall repeated the same behavior, as if unaware he had been there before. Corbin was smart enough to realize each instantiation was a separate occurrence. The barbarian could not take back his experience with him when the projection ended.
One session, Corbin ordered the technicians to leave a large prime rib steak in the chamber, which the barbarian ravenously ate. Then he disappeared. Corbin’s dreams of being able to manipulate a projection only lasted a few minutes, at best. No one, until Towns, had given him the opportunity for any real fun.
The demon attack had been careless.
His barbarian would be poetic.
This final time, Corbin planned to risk everything. His last attempt to humble Hattie Sterling had failed. This time, the symposium would provide the perfect venue to unleash havoc, and to prove her wrong. She was going to pay for her disrespect.