by A. R. Moxon
“There are times when I think it will never open, Janey.”
Surely he heard her gasp, but if so he made no sign. He continued without turning, without pause or inflection. “There are even times when I stop believing it’s me on the other side. You see? The true me, the real me, not this shell. More and more I think I’m going to die trapped in my shell. And then what will happen to all of you? When the light goes out, what happens to the shadows?” Jane backed away, slow and quiet. How he had sensed her she didn’t know—was it even possible he was unaware of her, that he was simply speaking out to the air to which he ascribed her person? Even as she retreated, his measured voice came reaching out to her. “No blasting through. Whatever material those walls are made of confounds all explosives, every diamond-tipped drillbit, each hope and desire. No admittance, no admittance, no admittance, impenetrable as gray matter. No matter. None. I have learned the lesson. Matter is useless. Now I will open it with the best tool, the only tool. I will open it with my mind.” He gestured to the great silver wall. “Then they can all come out, then I will call them all back to myself. I love them all as I love myself.”
Jane, still retreating, not daring to look away from him, forcing herself into deliberate movements—for she was convinced if she ran he would rise and charge her—looked up at the oubliettes and for the first time allowed herself to understand the full terrible scope of them, row after row after row, drawer handles upon which Finch had terrified her, climbing monkey-nimble, each one of them at last representing more to her than a handhold; they were no longer irrelevant, no longer ignorable, no longer a bad potential fate to avoid, but a bad actual fate already consummated. Each handle, each file-drawer rectangular outline stacked up and up and up, each one had at one time closed shut with a bureaucratic snick upon a human face; each represented a Finch, a Jane, each placed there at a madman’s whim, conveniently warehoused, catalogued and labeled, in anticipation of his time of muchness, of fullness, of allness.
She thought: Why were we spared? How? For what? Up and up and up and over, and running out of sight, the shelf doors. Each of them Finch and Finch and Finch and Finch. So many of them, and nearly full. When would the digging equipment come to add to their number? They were in there, right now. Screaming even if those screams could not be heard. People who had passed in front of her, on their way to be shown the sign of the spade, six months before, twelve months, eighteen, twenty-four, thirty. Thirty. Thirty months. Thirty. They were in there. Hours, minutes, seconds. Thirty-six months. Forty-two.
“Jane. Wait. Don’t go.”
But she had already stopped. Halted by the accumulation of months. The horror of days. The insanity of seconds. Forty-eight months. Fifty-six. Sixty.
Morris hid submerged in the shadows ahead, but his echoes chased her, less measured, no longer without inflection, and now he sounded more like a child.
“I’m afraid, Janey,” he said.
The silver wall wheeling above her, pressing on her lungs stealing all her air so many of them so many sixtysix how long have they been there seventytwo how have they been there so long?
“I’m afraid I can’t do it. It won’t open. It won’t. I’m afraid it’s all lost.”
She knew the words to reach him, and so she said: “You will do it. How is it possible you won’t? Then all these prisoners can become you, when they see you are already them.” From the formless dark came no hint of sound. In her ears, only her own breathing. She spoke again: “But it isn’t good for them. They’ll be insane when you’re ready for them, if you don’t let them out.”
“They are distractions. They are what prevents me.”
“You’ll want them whole when the day comes for them to return into you. Somebody should help them. Somebody who can afford distraction.” And then she ran, certain he was on her heels. She locked the door behind her—futile gesture against one who certainly had the key—and collapsed onto the bed. Weeping bled into a long and troubled sleep. When she awoke, there was a note pushed under the door. The note was written in his hand. It read:
~ tend my sheep ~
After all this time, a further unfolding; his tragedy unfurled for her in three scrawled words. Her first realization of his perverse tenderness toward those treasonous bits of himself gone astray—but she delivered him no absolution for it, indistinguishable as it was from self-pity. Again and again she returned to her fulcrums: a movement of the eyes, a boy beneath the bleachers; a girl flitting about her cage, yet always returning to mother for rest, placing, for an instant, a solemn finger upon her familiar nose.
This was how she had become the caretaker.
Upon each captive Jane bestowed the most solemn care she could muster, gathering herself before cracking the seal, steeling herself against her great irrational fear: of cracking a crèche and seeing her own child entombed within. Even knowing her little bird was back in their room wasn’t enough; the fear was never far off. Soon they all became Finch to her, each howling for a long-forgotten mother. Now, she longed to heal their shattered minds, repair muscles long gone waxy from lack of use. Teeth and hair fallen out. Eyes bulging from fluorescent staring. Memories wiped. All she could do was change their pajamas, sponge them down, and murmur to them not to worry, not to fret, mommy’s here, dear, mommy’s here…
“And from then on, you and Finch helped…” Gordy has awakened in a curious mood, and this time she indulges it; she wants his attention. Soon she will leap to him across the void.
“No. Just me.” By no means would she have permitted Finch to see what she saw in those tombs of the living. The boxes were constructed for preservation: intravenous tubes serving up protein, calcium, an alphabet of vitamins; manacles, connected to servos, lifting the captives seven inches, bringing them face to face with their mirror-selves, and, while hoses spray the fetid crèche beneath, the manacles move slowly, forcing the limbs into nominal exercise. Every crèche she opened, she braced herself against that rare but dreadful occasion: an oubliette in which the life-sustaining mechanisms had malfunctioned—an air filtration unit fouled, hydration or protein-drip dried up, bath drain clogged—weeks ago, months ago. These she learned to swiftly close, to mark “X” in glowing tape, indicating the need for cleansing and disposal.
Tending to the higher shelves required a motorized scaffold. Making a complete circuit of the crèches was a matter of months, yet even in these infrequent visits she grew to recognize some of them. A man with a gold front tooth who never screamed, but only whimpered. An elderly lady, in a place where the elderly were rare. A boy with enormous ears. Signposts of familiarity amidst all the sameness, all headshaved and skeletal and gone. Had she known Gordy? Had she recognized her new hope of salvation on the day his oubliette opened of its own accord, when his shackles had dropped like grass rope, when he had floated from an upper shelf, walking his way down the air? She had. Naturally she’d recognized her boy beneath the bleachers; she’d watched him grow.
After he escaped, she’d followed him carefully as he left her apartment and climbed the great slope. Morris sat in his familiar posture at the top, facing his door. Her first thought had been to call out, but whether to warn Morris of the fugitive’s silent approach, or to warn Gordy before he came upon Morris unaware, she could not say. But the words had caught, held by fear or instinct, and she watched mutely as he walked past Morris, opened the door as if it were any other door, and closed it, before Morris—his consciousness rising from deep meditation—could comprehend what had happened. He rushed forward, but the door was shut already, as unyielding to him as it had ever been.
She watched him. He would be dangerous now. He would be wild.
But he had been calm. He wasted no time in screaming or petition. There was a console set into the wall and he made for it at once, keyed an alarm to alert nearby trustees, identified the serial number imprinted on the open crèche, called up all the information associated with that
number, and printed it out, stashed the printout in his pocket, then hid himself in ambush deep in one of the tunnels on the sides of the door.
No more than a few minutes had passed after the prisoner entered when he emerged again, still holding the ticket she’d given him, and then all the oubliettes had opened at once, all her imprisoned mandrakes began screaming out their orchestra of pain. She saw Morris emerge from the hole his ancestor had dug long ago. He had a long knife in his hand as he crept from behind toward the prisoner. The prisoner did not see him; there was distraction enough. Inmates floating down from the high places, crawling on the ground. Clutching their heads. Tearing at their eyes.
and
time began to stretch oddly for her, but whether the effect emanated from Gordy or simply resulted from so much simultaneous activity she could never afterward decide
and
Morris drew closer to his prey; soon the knife would do its work
and
all the newly freed prisoners bleated and screamed and brayed confused and betrayed like shorn sheep naked save for black singlets and the harness hooked at the shoulders elbows knees along the spine
and
the first of the guards to answer the alarm now arrived at a run bursting from the stairs brandishing a sword making immediately for Gordy and Gordy spoke and the trustee exploded into a profusion of white granules that collapsed and spread across the floor a miniature white dune marking the place where he had stood
and
Morris, seeing this, retreated at once into shadow
and
a woman, the nearest freed prisoner, crawled eyeless and weeping on the floor
and
Gordy advanced, gazing down the great slope at the misery below and then he spoke and behind him the ceiling bled down to meet the floor, the floor rose up to meet the ceiling
and
she saw a new-freed man leaning against the wall dashing his head again and again into an open steel shelf door as if to silence some internal clamor
and
Morris clambered over the rising wall, rolling over it before it met the wall descending, the two merging with one another seamlessly, sequestering them from both the stairs leading upward and the door from which Gordy had so recently emerged
and
prisoners howling, Gordy making his way among them, passing from one to another, speaking to them each in turn, touching them, and they calmed like nursing babies. She made her way forward to help, but Morris was at her arm, pulling her to him. He had a terrible look in his eyes and his voice, too, was terrible and calm.
“Come. Now.” he said, and pulled her toward her rooms, her sanctuary. He had in his hands the singlet and harness of an oubliette prisoner. Once there he shucked his clothes and put these on.
“Shave my head,” he said. Fumbling in the bathroom for scissors and razor, she prayed Finch would not wake and disturb him. He had a tranquil aspect, but she knew him; he was holding back vast reservoirs of rage wanting nothing more than an apt target. Jane returned to him and began shaving him. What was he holding? Morris asked, in an earnest but detached tone. What was he holding? What was he holding? What was he holding? The tone never changed. I don’t know, she answered. I don’t know. In this way they passed the minutes as his hair hushed to the floor.
what was he holding what was he holding what
I don’t know I don’t know I don’t
And even then hope was snaking through her heart. Gordy had exploded a trustee into a pile of salt. This was a new and disturbing chaos, but if she could find a catch at the end of this leap, she might—might she not?—perch her bird on her shoulder and swing them both to a safer place? When his head was shaved, Morris considered himself in the mirror.
“Well? Do I look like one of them?”
“No. It’s good you’re thin. But you’re not malnourished.” And not destroyed, she did not add. She had learned with chemist’s precision how much honesty he required, and how much to withhold, to avoid adverse reaction.
“I’ll have to claim recent imprisonment, then.”
“You wouldn’t know how long you’d been in.”
He seemed ready to argue, then realized the truth of it. “They’ll accept me anyway.”
She said nothing; either they would or would not.
“Wait five minutes after I’m gone before coming out. Don’t look at me, and don’t come near me. Out there we don’t know each other.”
“Of course.”
“But eyes and ears open. Learn what you can. Get close to him. As close as possible.”
“I will.”
He looked at her directly to ensure transmission of his meaning. “As close as possible.”
She understood. “Yes.”
“I’ll come to you when I can manage to do it secretly. Plan to have something interesting to tell me.”
Then he was gone and she could let herself panic; gave her whole self to it for three minutes, screaming into pillows. Then she locked and barricaded Finch’s door and let herself out of what had been her sanctuary. Braced herself for the cries of the freed, but Gordy had already ministered to them. In her short absence the cavern had already expanded into the impossible vastness of what Gordy would come to refer to as the vault, but it was not yet modified or partitioned; the entirety of it was visible in all its blasphemous immensity. An empty room the size of a city. From somewhere above lambency bloomed, not sunlight but something approximating it. Birds soared in the middle distance between. On her right hand lay the banks of oubliettes, now opened. This was before he grew them into dwellings; they still retained their original dimensions. Previously they had dominated the cavern, but for the moment they were dwarfed by the wall into which they were set, a postage stamp affixed to a ship’s sail, a silver kite set against the sky.
She allowed herself to feel, for a final moment, a panic something like awe. The power to do such a thing…
holding what is he holding
i don’t know no I don’t, no
The freed prisoners stood in a huddle, blinking and empty, in depleted weary wonderment staring at one another and at their surroundings, but most of all at the young man standing in their midst. He was holding his hands up and speaking to them, but she was too far away to hear. By the time she reached them, a horrible, awkward welcoming party had begun. She scrawled her name upon a HELLO MY NAME IS sticker—he had used his power to materialize them—and joined it. As she drew near, she heard him speak to them all in a loud voice. This is when he told them all about God’s revenge. This is when he told them about the coming wave.
* * *
—
Jane decides. No point in putting it off further. “I need to ask you something.”
“Anything.” God, he’s burrowing up against her again, availing himself of some rather unchivalrous handfuls. He has his moments—he can make her laugh, certainly—but is there nothing else in the world for him but clutch-and-feel, rub-and-tug?
“A serious question.”
“Anything.” Burrow. Squeeze.
“Stop. I want you listening.”
He listens. “What is it?”
“Why are you waiting for the wave?”
“Pardon?”
“Destruction. Revenge. You could bring them. Why are you waiting on a wave?”
There’s a silence. When he speaks again she can’t read his tone, but he’s withdrawn from her. “It’s not me. I’m not the one waiting.”
“You said you’d made this…wave. I still don’t see how this is supposed to work.”
“I don’t know how it works, either.”
“You said you’d made it.”
“In a way. I was told to make it. I’m not in control of it.”
“And until then we wait?”
“Yes. Until
then we wait.”
“Even if the person most responsible, who did…all this…to us…even if he were right here, right in front of you? Even then you’d wait?”
“But he’s not here.”
“But if.”
She sees his eyes go cold. “Well. I suppose then I would get started early.”
She waits and waits and builds herself up to it. The biggest leap is the one where you’re not sure of the catch. Finally, she shakes him awake again.
“What is it?”
“I have something more to tell you.”
“Yes.”
“The person who imprisoned all of us.”
He snorts. “Yes. You told me. Finch’s father. You told me all about him.” She hears the stiffness in his voice. Baffling to think, with all the better reasons this man has to despise Morris, there still is the capacity for romantic jealousy.
“I never told you his name.”
“OK.”
“And I never told you the rest.”
“I’m listening.”
“He’s down here with us. Posing as one of us.”
And so, here it is, the leap. A long slow deadly silence uncoils around her. Desire for vengeance clouds its invisible way through the air.
“Who.” His voice is changed, sharper; now he is fully awake.