“Mmmmm,” she cooed.
He heard, Never mind the country then. Your seat is here. Be at my side. Let death enfold you.
He heard, Kill the other first.
He came with an awful moan, tearing his eyes from her in that moment, and found Kilhauser right behind him, who fired twice.
Malloy stood bolt upright, clutching at his chest, his stomach. He wasn’t shot. He spun back to face the wreck.
Even the gown was gone. All of her was.
“We both saw her,” Kilhauser panted. “It’s all right. It means we’re on the same side, Malloy – whatever it is, it’s in both our minds – we’re the same.” He still had fear in his eyes. He wasn’t reasoning, he was pleading. Malloy wanted him to shrug it off and rudely wrest control from the King.
No no no! He couldn’t allow that. The woman had been placed here for him. That she had tried to lure him off the right path simply vindicated him further. He had passed this test only by the grace of Kilhauser’s trigger finger, but he would not surrender his crown for that.
“We walk now,” Malloy said, “Into the city. And I do want the gun.”
Kilhauser gave it to him, still shaken. “We’re both infected.”
“We’re not infected with anything,” Malloy said. “That wasn’t a hallucination. Follow me.”
He tried to ignore the dampness in his crotch as he climbed over the cars. He didn’t think Kilhauser had seen that.
X
She wasn’t his daughter anymore. It was the only thing he knew to be true.
Mother was hanging in the foyer. She’d made a noose from Nyla’s bed linens, white sheets now marred with the charcoal imagery the girl had etched upon every surface in the house.
Father swayed dizzily at the sound of Nyla’s song. He ripped out every drawer in the kitchen, spilling their contents on the floor and trying to sort through them. It was worse than being unable to remember the names of things. Nothing he saw made sense. He finally identified a knife by the way it bored into his wrist. He pulled the blade away from the wound and staggered upstairs.
All the while the wind howled.
Nyla’s door was wide open, flush with the wall, the wind stronger here than anywhere else in the house. Father couldn’t even look at the girl. Every time he tried, his eyes dried out and the breath was stolen from his lungs. He kept his head down and pushed along the wall until he could grasp her doorknob.
“This isn’t your fault, baby,” he said soundlessly. “Daddy doesn’t want to hurt you. He has to. He HAS TO!”
He pulled himself into her room. She sat in a chair, hands folded, mouth open, and the song was like church bells on a Sunday in Hell. It screamed every secret shame and shameless sin of his life. It screamed his failure as a father and a man. He looked into Nyla’s eyes and told himself again it wasn’t her. His little girl did not hear, nor speak, and she had never sung. This would not be a last transgression. He planted his feet, raised the knife and drove himself into hurricane winds.
Eleventeen
The sky had darkened from bone white to slate gray. Malloy couldn’t distinguish one cloud from another, not even a single cottony wisp; it was as if the planet were wrapped in a blanket, faded and dull.
Kilhauser sat down on the sidewalk and stared at his feet. “What are you doing?” Malloy asked.
“Just trying to... center... find my center.” Kilhauser rubbed his eyes, then let his hands drop. He hummed softly.
“What is that?” Malloy demanded.
“Please. My ablutions.” He was meditating. Malloy sighed and walked to the end of the block. He studied the symbols sprayed on various buildings. There were a couple he hadn’t yet seen. One was a sickly yellow and depicted what looked like a headless stick figure. It was perched atop a wavy line that might have represented water. Malloy approached the building. A weathered sign which said only CURIOS rested against the brick, having fallen or been torn down. The windows of the shop were caked with dust. Malloy reached out and tried to pull a fingertip through the grit, to draw a crown, but he couldn’t make so much as a smudge. Two-plus years’ grime coated everything.
Kilhauser joined him. “What do you see?”
“Nothing. It’s just dust.”
A bang against the glass made them both jump. The gun clattered on the sidewalk. Malloy’s face reddened as he scrambled to recover it. Kilhauser didn’t make a move for it. Malloy rose and pounded on the door of the shop. “Who’s in there?”
The door creaked open, revealing a small, white-haired man in a tweed jacket. “You’ve come for me, then?”
“Well, who are you?” Malloy asked.
The man gave him an odd look. “Tasel. You’re not – you don’t hear it, do you?”
“The song,” Kilhauser said. “No we don’t.”
The little man stepped back. “Please, quickly.” He ushered them into a candlelit space and closed the door.
Most of the shelves were littered with fantasy-themed knickknacks. Dragons in repose, winged maidens, castles growing out of rock. The little man grunted as he pushed a bureau in front of the door. “I have water, but little else I’m afraid. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” Malloy turned to him. “Do you know me?”
“I’m afraid not. I thought perhaps you knew me, too, but I’m glad you did not.” The man walked behind the cashier counter and produced a couple of bottles of water. They were warm to the touch, and only aggravated what Malloy realized was a desperate thirst. He hadn’t even thought about sustenance until now.
He set the bottle down and tried not to look resentful. After all, the old man hadn’t known. “I am The King Malloy.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know that one,” the man replied. He toddled into the back of the room.
“You said your name is Tasel?” Kilhauser asked. He’d returned to life in the presence of another seemingly-sane human. Malloy resented that too.
“Vel Tasel,” the little man said, seating himself at a desk covered in books. “One of the few. The few left.”
“The unaffected.” Kilhauser glanced over the books, as did Malloy. None of the titles were in English, and the print on the yellowed pages was of the same strange, flowing script.
“I’m surprised you are unaffected too,” Tasel told them. “Being out there as you were. See, I know you aren’t like the others because they don’t pretend. Either they can’t, or they simply have no reason to. I suppose it’s their world now.”
“What’s wrong with them? How did this happen?” Kilhauser leaned over the desk, and the candles there flickered as he demanded, “Who did it?”
“Ah.” Tasel smiled and patted the books. He took a pair of Coke-bottle spectacles from inside his jacket. “He has countless names.” He pulled down a thick volume from the largest stack of tomes and opened it to the middle. He began removing loose pages, saying words under his breath, most of which Malloy didn’t understand, though he picked out “The Black Man.”
Tasel handed Kilhauser a sheet upon which was drawn a great, bat-like monstrosity with a burning eye. Malloy laughed at it. “The Devil? Is that what you mean?”
“Oh, no,” Tasel said softly. “The Devil is but a mask.”
Kilhauser stiffened. Malloy, thinking it was that key word mask, put the gun behind his back and stepped away. But Kilhauser was studying the illustration.
“I’ve seen this,” he said. “In Bierce’s files...a patient, I can’t remember her name. Something with an N or a V.”
“Interesting.” Tasel sat back. “Funny.”
Neither Malloy nor Kilhauser asked what he meant by that. Malloy watched Kilhauser’s face pinch as he tried to remember. “Vy...Violet? No, no, it’s Nyla. Reed. She drew this. She drew this exact thing. What does that mean?”
Tasel shrugged. “The universe is an unthinking body. An idiot. Sometimes it feels a tickle and some involuntary reflex responds. That’s all, and the sole explanation for you two.”
The fire wa
s back in Kilhauser. “Speak human,” he growled.
“It’s too fantastic to be a coincidence,” Tasel went on, removing his glasses and folding them in his stubby hands, “that you saw her drawings. It’s just as fantastic that you wound up here. But see, I anticipate these little hiccups. I was waiting for you.”
“Of course you were.” Malloy raised the gun. Kilhauser stumbled out of its path.
“Another test, another liar,” Malloy said. “Like the woman. We wouldn’t just happen to run into an old man who knows all about what’s happening.”
“The real Tasel did know,” the old man said. “That’s how I knew to come and wait here. In this...not a test, Malloy, a mask.”
And then the mask began to melt away, and the world spun out of focus as Malloy’s own screams filled his head. Then the voice of the thing, not a voice but a pulse, a pulse like a needle at once white-hot and blindingly cold. “I don’t like to speak human, not at all – a vile idiot tongue – would you like to hear my real name? ARE YOU JUST DYING TO KNOW IT?”
Somewhere far away, the gun roared. The needle withdrew, and Malloy was on the floor, weeping, arms over his head and his knees drawn to his chest.
He shrieked when Kilhauser touched him.
“It’s all right,” the big man said, the smoking revolver in his hand. “He’s gone. Just like the woman.”
“Lies,” Malloy sobbed. “He told lies.”
“No,” Kilhauser said. “Only reality.”
He sat on the floor next to Malloy. “Aliens. I knew it. Goddamned aliens.”
“Aliens you’ll believe? But you reject me as King again?” Malloy pushed himself against the far wall. “You’ll accept what that thing said? That thing – I can’t even remember what it looked like, or what it sounded like, thank the gods – but I remember it called us the universe’s involuntary reaction to it. Like a sneeze. That’s what you think of yourself? I thought you were meant for great things, Kilhauser. Well? Answer me!”
“Jenkins said we must have really cleaned up back at Chamber Seat,” Kilhauser whispered.
“That’s it? That’s what you have to say?”
“Jenkins, and the other crazies, they’re hunting people like us. The people who were already head cases. Because we’re the only ones who aren’t affected. That girl Nyla Reed wasn’t crazy. She really was hearing something, and now all these people hear it too. But not us...you know what this means?” Tears were in Kilhauser’s eyes. “It means we’re really crazy, Malloy. That’s the reason we’re not hearing the song. Whatever room in our heads it means to occupy, crazy’s already there. We’re nuts.”
He tossed his head about. He looked like he was fighting with the knowledge, and finally he stammered, “So what I believe about the government’s involvement, about their involvement with me – I think that’s still objectively true, but my personal belief in it is born of delusion. Just a crazy, lucky guess. Lucky in that it’s shielded me from the song. Maybe that’s how my programming’s designed to work. I shouldn’t try to figure it out then.”
Malloy shook his head violently. Kilhauser put his own between his knees and said, “Yes, Malloy, yes. But no, I don’t think some random burp in space-time set me on this path. I’m here because I’m supposed to be. I am meant for something great. You can be there with me. You’re not going to be a king. But you can do this with me.”
“That’s fine. You go.”
“Malloy, this is better than predestination, this is you making the choice--”
“No really, I’m okay here, and I’m okay with what you think. You’re mad but you’re not, and I, meanwhile, am simply mad. That’s just fine. Incidentally, fuck your mother.”
“Malloy. Stand up. Let’s go. I think she lives here in the city. The girl.”
“You’re the one who recognized the drawing. You’re the one who figured it all out. It’s your game, not mine.”
Malloy lay on his side and closed his eyes. He stayed that way until he heard Kilhauser walk to the door and move away the bureau. He watched through slits as the man left the shop.
Infinity
It was pitch dark, every candle extinguished, the sky black outside and the wind bitterly cold. Malloy called into it, “Kilhauser?” But Kilhauser had been gone for hours.
Malloy stood in the street. He eyed the starless sky, expecting black wings to swoop down and slash at him. He searched for the burning eye of the god, the real god, but it was nowhere to be seen. Maybe the god was sleeping.
Malloy walked for a while, taking arbitrary turns until he was good and lost, then he went into a café through the smashed front window and found a phone book in the light of the streetlamp outside. He looked up REED. Thirty-seven listings ad no NYLA. Was she a child in her parents’ home? Kilhauser probably knew which listing was the right one. He was probably there already. Yet the wind hadn’t stopped.
He walked aimlessly a while longer. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, if any at all. He saw a traffic light up ahead, showing red, and watched until it turned green. So, then, time was passing, and he sat in the middle of the road and counted the seconds as the light cycled. It was like an eye, each segment regarding him with a different emotion. The green light was cool and detached, but the yellow was threatening, and it made him uneasy how quickly it became fiery red. He breathed I’m sorrys, rather than Mississippis, between the seconds.
Soon it was that the three-lobed eye was all he could see, surrounded by a perfect darkness, and all he could hear was the hollow click as the colors changed. His heart slowed to a peaceful rhythm. He thought this was what it must be like for Kilhauser when he meditated. Kilhauser. Nyla Reed. The unnamable god.
He lurched backwards, falling flat on the asphalt. A skeleton clothed in rags hung from the beam beside the traffic light. How had he not seen it before? He stood and, approaching it, saw that a papery skin still covered most of the thing. Sneakers hung from its feet. He pulled them down and slipped them on. A little tight, but he could break them in.
“Thank you,” he said to the skeleton,
There was a golden wristwatch on its right wrist. He jumped at it, but was unable to reach. Malloy was terribly out of shape, he knew, and so finally he asked the man what time he had.
“Mine,” the skeleton rasped, wind through bones, and turned its sockets from him in a huff.
“Well, you gave me the shoes.” Malloy stood and glared at the skeleton for a few moments. There was no argument. He walked away.
The wind picked up a little. He hugged his arms to his chest. It had been so much more pleasant during the day, seductively so. He didn’t care for this attitude at all. He wondered what he had ever done to displease the terrible god. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
Kilhauser lay under a blinking traffic light. It hung at an angle, the light, and flashed angry red. Kilhauser’s face was wet and a sort of metal rod protruded from just below his ribs.
“Who did this to you?” Malloy breathed.
“I did,” Kilhauser said, and laughed.
Malloy stooped and placed his hands on his knees. “Are you dying?”
“Yes,” Kilhauser said. He lifted his head slightly. “Malloy – there is no renewal. Just death. That’s all it wants.”
He coughed. Wetness speckled his chest, black beads falling in red light. “Malloy, you were right. You are King. You can stop it. You have to. You’re the only one.” He gripped Malloy’s hand and whispered the girl’s address, then the only thing in his eyes was the pulsing, clicking traffic light.
The King Malloy rose and looked at the nearest street sign. The address was all numbers. He could find it. He counted his aching footfalls.
X
Seven hundred and twelve. He ascended the porch steps and looked through the open door of the narrow house. It was in an affluent neighborhood, or had been, and in the foyer he saw a nice chandelier from which hung another skeleton. The wind issued forth from the house, out into the entire world, and Malloy
had to pull himself along the railing to the doorway and then grasp the frame to heave himself through.
The crystal drops hanging from the chandelier tinkled overhead. The wind was coming down the staircase. It tore at Malloy’s hair. He couldn’t hear anything but the wind and the chandelier, and then a high-pitched groan and he moved aside just in time as corpse and crystal came smashing down.
You want to see me again, Malloy? How soon we forget. This time I won’t let you forget. I’ll make you see until your eyes leap from your head and your feet stamp them into the carpet. And I’ll keep you alive. Forever, Malloy, with me.
He crawled up the stairs. The wind screamed around him. He had to keep his head down. The voice continued, that inhuman wail:
Come see me then! Come see infinity!
He fell into the upstairs hallway. There was no frame of reference anymore, sound and sight torn away, the wind as tactile as the floor and resisting every blow of his fists. He was enveloped in it, a womb of screams and razors which turned about a living corpse. His tears were driven back into his brain and they salted the meat as the shell of him began to crack, as he realized that he was as much the wind as he was Malloy, and that it was he who had murdered Kilhauser, poor Kilhauser. Kilhauser, who had realized that only their self-delusion kept the song at bay, who in dying had tried to convince Malloy again that he was indeed the King. But he wasn’t. Free now and forever of that beautiful lie, Malloy felt the song come into him.
Come and see.
Feet touched ground and he was able to enter the last room. The girl sat in a chair before him, mouth open, eyes open. A skeleton lay on the bed beside her, the dried remnants of its innards wrapped about its hands. A butcher knife lay in the cradle of its pelvis.
Become Everything and Nothing. The song turned the room around him and placed the knife in his hand. Give yourself new eyes, child. Give yourself new ears. Open a hundred new mouths and join the song.
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