The Labyrinth of Souls

by Nelson Lowhim

  My drink’s strong. I make a note not to drink too much as it’ll knock me on my ass. But as the silence between us is punctuated with a handful of screams, I take another sip.

  Yet another scream echoes from the hallway. It sends a chill down my body. Immediately a cascade of thoughts tumble forth, and I realize that there might be more to this than I’m thinking. Why is he goading me into such seditious thoughts? Is he recording all this? What am I saying? If he has even a cell phone, someone is listening.

  “Do you have a cell phone?” I ask.

  “Of course,” he says, squinting at me.

  In the back of my head I wonder about him being a snitch for the Feds, for the men who want to liquify me.

  Another scream, and I turn this time, not even attempting to hide my concern.

  “What is that?”

  Mathews seems to have fallen into the shadows, and he nods upwards, as if telling me to go on. Do I trust him? Is all this part of his informant mask? But then, a man alone, what do I have to lose?

  I walk up to the first room; the door shakes, as if it’s being punched by air. I push it open. Inside there’s a small lamp shining above a tussled loft. Across a floor littered with needles and glass bottles of some liquid, there’s a slightly overweight man hunching over a desk. There are three keyboards, two tablets for drawing, and ten screens in front of him in rows of three.

  I blink as my eyes adjust to the darkness. Everything seems dead quiet, and surprisingly this place doesn’t smell anything like it should. In fact, I smell the sea and perhaps some whiskey. A slight crash sounds off and I look over to see that there’s a window with a view of a dark sea on a rainy day.

  The smell is strong enough that I don’t disbelieve it, but my body does, and something in the stem of my brain does too because I start to feel nauseated. The door slams shut behind me. The man doesn’t budge. Then, he pulls back from the desk, his hands tearing at his long and tousled hair, and screams. So it was him.

  “Hey,” I say. The screens in front of him are all different. Some have what looks to be Python programming. Others have a scroll running up and down in binary. I stare at that for a few seconds. Then I turn to the other screens. They have CC TV feeds. Some have news feeds. And others still have what seem to be laptop computer feeds.

  They switch, every now and then, to things that seem random.

  “Hey,” I say louder.

  He startles, jumps from his chair and turns to face me. He’s chubby, but there’s a very certain and courageous energy to him.

  “I heard your conversation,” he says and sticks out his hand. He’s about my height and has a limp handshake.

  “Oh?” I say.

  He sweeps his arm behind him to indicate the screens.

  “An Empire was spoken to in its own terms. In its detritus, a cog caught its machinary, the bloodlust that its people had always had rose to such levels as was preordained,” he says.

  Is he mad?

  “Well?” he says. “Am I right?”

  I don’t answer and take a break from his stare by taking in the screens.

  “Do you know what I do?”

  “No.”

  He sweeps his arm back towards the screens again. “I know all.”

  “Do you know why I’m here?” I ask, because a simple search could have told him that.

  “Ah,” he says, wagging a finger at me, giggling. “You’re a paranoid one, aren’t you? Well, I suppose that’s why they haven’t caught you yet.”

  “How—“

  “Coincidences do happen,” he says.

  It’s like one of those games where someone tries to tell you something but you’re thinking that maybe they know you’re going to think the opposite of what they’re saying. So maybe he’s saying this just to assuage my fears when they should be heightened.

  “See?” he says.

  “Okay,” I say. “It does seem odd, you have to admit.”

  “It does.”

  “You hack?” I ask, now thinking about whether I should try to use him to find out what’s going on in my life. Perhaps turn the tables.

  “Oh, I do. But I don’t think I can help you,” he says. He walks backwards to his desk. I follow him.

  “Why not?” I ask, feeling alone.

  “Because I can’t. I don’t have the resources to take them on.”

  “Then what do you do?”

  “I try to help a few people, help get out the word.”

  “You mean like Twitter?” I say; it comes out more derisively than I wanted it to.

  He twitches. In that I see a lifetime of being picked on for his passion in life.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I know,” he says, his voice cracking. “You’re under a lot of stress.”

  “What have you heard about me?”

  He shrugs and points at a book, a single leather-bound book, on the floor.

  I lean over and pick it up. The cover is soft, supple, unlike anything I’ve ever touched. “What is this?” I ask.

  “It’s human skin,” he says.

  I drop the book.

  “Don’t!” he yells, then covers his mouth and picks up the book, dusting it off and examining it. “This is the writer’s skin. I forget his name. But he wrote his final book and only had one copy ever made. This one. And it’s his skin.” He places the book in my hand, only releasing when he knows that I have it in a firm grasp.

  “He did?” My voice cracks.

  “Well, I’m sure there are ebooks or digital copies somewhere. But I couldn’t find them.

  “What’s it about?”

  “I think you’ll find it very interesting.” He hands me a small cloth bag.

  “Is this human skin too?” I say jokingly.

  He doesn’t answer and instead stares at me like I’m a pitiful man.

  A beep goes off on his computer. He nods and sits down, fingers slamming into the keyboards and track pads.

  The beeping continues and now one’s coming from out in the hallway. I wonder if the hit men have come for me finally.

  “What’s that in the hallway?”

  He waves his hand at me, as if he wants me to leave. And to make his point, he slips on a pair of headphones.

  I take one last look at the window. It has to be real.

  I step back out, the same hallway with the light on one side and the darkness with the small lights—one now flashing—on the other. I stare, squint, and try to make out the blinking light and the beeping, but nothing. I don’t see Mathews either, so I wonder if perhaps he’s the reason. I take a step toward the darker end, but a slimy feeling comes over me.

  “Mathews?” I yell out. The echo bounces down the hallway before it opens into that highlighted-as-if-by-search lights living room. No reply.

  A growl rumbles from the dark end of the hallway. My knees tremble, I try not to notice. This is New York City. I need to find out what this is. I remind myself about the men hunting me. It’s them I should be frightened of, not the monsters in my mind.

  I start to walk. I realize that the carpet has ended and now there’s nothing but tile, my footsteps too loud for my tastes, but soon that gives way to something soft. I reach down; it’s moss. I touch the walls: they’re stone. I look back. The living room is a dot that I’m not sure exists. Have I been drugged? I touch my hands and my feet; I’m too grounded with myself to be drugged. And yet, this hallway could not exist in the city. Not in a building this size.

  I keep walking, the air turning cooler, and that sea smell returns, though I don’t hear anything that indicates waves. I want that. I want anything because now silence has enveloped me and I can hear my heart beating hard and I can taste blood. Is this a trap?

  And as I walk—noticing that there are no more slits from doors, just wall and darkness, with fireflies! lighting my way—I think on the men who are after me. If it’s a team moving in on me and trying to end me, then they would be FBI. So all the m
en I know in the other units, the Death Star units that work overseas, all of them aren’t involved. But perhaps that’s wishful thinking. I know how these leaders think. They are obsessed with future historians seeing them as tough men who made tough decisions because this is a tough world. So they would do something like send my old friends after me. After all, all they’ll have to do is dump my body in the ocean somewhere and claim I was gallivanting with terrorists, and that would be that. Who’s going to look into it? If I’m lucky a journalist with some integrity may tweet something that says this isn’t the whole story.

  A scream, that of a little girl, echoes at me, slaps me. I notice a light underneath a door and I run to it.

  I knock on the door—silly I know—and when the screams and the scuffling stop, I burst inside.

  What greets me is a horrid stench and the sight of cages, stacked higher than I can see. The stench I’ve smelled before. Shit and urine rise to the top, but there are other tangible smells that one can make out: there is the smell of sweat, body odor, feet that haven’t been washed for too long, and blood. Dried blood and fresh blood. And, lingering behind all this organic decay and ostensibly even life trying to find a way, there’s perfume. I try not to gag.

  After taking a few steps, I finally find it in me to look inside a cage. This one is empty. I look at another. There’s food on a plate on the floor, some hay, some feces, but that’s about it. The next cage is splattered with blood. I stand on my toes and try to peer into the others. Nothing. But there must be people somewhere here; after all, I just heard the screams.

  And like that, the screams fill the air again. It’s coming from the other end of the room. I feel more empowered, and reaching into the bag I was given, I pull out the book. It’s titled: When you don’t pick sides, the devil smiles. An odd title, this. I’m reminded of a children’s short story that speaks of a people who live happily until a devil shows up and asks, which side are you on, but they didn’t know he was the devil and all but one wise men went with the devil to their ruin. It wasn’t a good story.

  Another scream pulls me out of my thoughts. I turn back and face the rows of bars. As I’m thinking about what to do next, I realize that the cages far above me are shaking. And suddenly the entire room, or warehouse is shaking with the rattle of bars. I walk, slow at first, then break out into a jog.

  Finally, I see a bright light in front of me. The cages end, and I come out to an open stage. In front of me is a man standing and a woman tied to a chair. There’s a table in front of the woman covered with papers.

  The man is tall with a bent back and a bent nose and cheeks so sunken one would think that he were starving. But he’s not, because there’s an unbridled energy in his walk, and his look is wolfish enough for me to understand that I’m on thin ice.

  I make the mistake of looking over to the girl. I’m close enough that I smell her perfume—was it her I’ve been smelling this entire time?—and I see cuts on her otherwise plain face. One nostril is ripped apart, and I see a bloody nose ring on the table. I flinch as I feel the man’s eyes caressing my body, and I wonder if he’s one of the hunters from the death star. There is no one else in the room. I stare back at the cages, all still shaking, some cries bursting here and there.

  “Hi there, George,” he says.

  “How—“ I stop when the woman gives a slight jerk of her head, as if telling me to shut up. “How do you know my name?” I ask.

  The man, gives me an inquisitive look and walks over to the table strewn with the papers. The papers are spread out haphazardly, and he fishes underneath them before pulling out some pliers. I see more tools underneath the papers. He steps towards the woman.

  “Hey,” I say, but it’s too soft because neither of them react.

  “Hey!” I yell with furious anger.

  He spins; the pliers fall to the ground, clanging against the concrete floor. One step and he’s in my face. His skin, smooth and white, his eyes, blue glaciers, his breath, minty. He screws his face up, then smiles.

  “You need something, George?”

  I don’t take my eyes off him, though I’m not sure if that’s by choice.

  “I need you to leave her alone,” I say.

  “Why? Do you know her?” he says, feigning concern.

  “No.”

  “Do you know what she did?”

  “No.”

  “I’m confused, George. You don’t strike me as the kind of man to act foolish. Are you?”

  He’s reasonable sounding. He has nothing but the best in mind. But there’s something lurking in that smile just begging to break out from the corner of his lips.

  “I’m not. But I know wrong when I see it.”

  He mutters what I’ve said, then says, “You sound like a child.”

  I sense that he’s playing with me, yet I flinch. Used to be a saying that states a man who believes in nothing will fall for anything, and I feel like I just might be that man. For why else would a scene so wrong, a scene where a human is suffering, not push me to immediate action?

  “You don’t know that,” he says.

  “I don’t what?” I ask. This man might be mad.

  “You don’t know that she’s human.”

  I look her over. “What you mean?” I ask, wary.

  “Ahhhh,” he says and placing one arm across his waist. He scratches his chin with the other hand and squints one eye, as if trying to size me up.

  “What?” I say.

  “I know why you’re on her side,” he says and wags his finger at me.

  I feel my face growing red.

  “Ohhh,” he says. The woman twists her arms trying to break free of her bonds.

  “What?” I say.

  “You haven’t been good, have you?”

  I know this game. When you’re being accused of something immediately launch into counter accusations that will throw the accuser off balance. This man is good. Well-trained. I need to be careful.

  “You need to let her go,” I say, almost growling.

  But he doesn’t budge, he merely slows the speed with which he wags the finger.

  I take a step towards her.

  He jumps in my way.

  I pause. The woman lets out a small cry.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Behemoth.”

  I nod and stick out my hand.

  “My pleasure,” I say.

  He’s still in the study pose of his. I lower my hand when he doesn’t meet mine.

  “You want to save her. Why?”

  “It’s wrong,” I say pointing at her.

  “Why? You know nothing of what she’s done before this.”

  “That’s irrelevant,” I say.

  “Ohhh,” Behemoth says. “You’re one of those.”

  “I know what to believe.”

  He smiles. His teeth are perfect.

  “Is this why they’re after you?” he says.

  “Maybe.”

  He scoffs. “Again, you sound like a child. If this thinking has turned you into a hunted man, then perhaps you need to think less.”

  “With that logic there would be no progress.”

  “And when they kill you, turn you into fish feed, what will you say?”

  “Won’t be much I can say.”

  “I see they’re probably right,” he says, his voice growing colder, lower, as his face darkens.

  I’ve had my share of confrontations, but perhaps I’m only a weak person who naturally shies from them, but I step back, and feel a shudder in my chest. I don’t like this. It’s never good to meet someone who knows more about you than you about them. I look away from his eyes, those moral traps, and take in the edges of the room. I see movement, the movement of something inorganic.

  “What about your family?” he asks his voice is soft now, almost caring. “What about your wife.”

  I try. I try really hard not to shrink, but just the reminder of my wife, the one I hope is out of harm’s way, floods my head—t
here we are, lovers, her pressed up against me, her eyes close up—I go weak-kneed. My wife. Light of my life, fire of my loins. I know these men. They will come after me. They will massacre me, and that includes my wife, my family. I teeter for a second. I sit down.

  “Oh,” he says, his warm minty breath washing my face. “Sensitive boy, aren’t you? Well it’s not her we’re after.”

  I know how this works. They slam you in the face with the truth: that they’ve been watching your every move for months, maybe years now, and when that starts to dawn on you, and then you, who thought this would be a mere matter of pain, realize that it will be much more. They are going to tear you down and they will use everything they have, and they will try their hardest to be God to you. And the things you’ve been doing, possibly in secrecy, possibly with elaborate schemes to keep them secret, now seem like nothing more than a child’s game, because they know. And you’re putty in their hands.

  I swallow. I’m thirsty.

  “I—“

  “I know!” I yell, spittle flying out of my lips. This isn’t good, this losing it. This is what they want, for you to expose something true, for then they will pick you apart, even the tough parts.

  “Oh?” he says, this time tilting his head. He can so easily switch between disgust and kindness that I know he’s been interrogating for a long time. “Someone’s found their balls? Good.” He’s talking about an interrogation and how it plays into the interrogator’s hand when the suspect is tough, talking back. It makes for a more enjoyable break—because trust me, everyone breaks.

  A moan reminds me that the woman still needs help.

  “You were telling me about all the evil this woman has done to deserve this?” I say.

  He examines me, then looks back to the woman. I take this moment to stand up, steadying myself since I feel dizzy, and walk over to the woman.

  In a quick stride he’s beside me, though he doesn’t say anything, he only stares at me, his breathing increasing. He starts to tremble. He must really believe in the good he’s doing.

  “Well?” I say. I notice a scalpel in his hand.

  “You don’t know shit,” he says, this time spittle flying out of his mouth. “You—“