The Company Man

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  The alley turned ahead and somehow he knew his leg could not make the turn, so he gripped the wall and slid around the corner. He heard more pops from behind him and his right hand lit up with pain. He looked at it as he ran and saw the bone exposed and blood oozing from the side of his palm. He stared at it, amazed. As if it were some marvel or miracle. The blood ran down and pooled in his palm and he tried to move the gun to the hand with his briefcase but it clattered to the ground. He limped on, abandoning it, reeling and breathless.

  He got onto a main street and staggered by a barber shop. A woman inside saw him and screamed and a man shouted to get back, get back. There was a crowd of children down the sidewalk, watching him solemnly. A woman shrieked and rushed down the front steps of her house and grabbed them and pulled them inside.

  “Help me,” Garvey said as he ran. “For God’s sake, someone help me.”

  He heard another pop. He looked behind as he limped and saw two of the men on the street behind him, aiming carefully. He tried to find cover behind a doorway but as he moved his right shoulder erupted in pain and he stumbled forward. There was another pop and his ankle screamed. He began crawling away on all fours, trying to reach the gutter to hide behind the trash pails lined up there. He moved through them with shaking, clumsy hands and the pails tumbled over, spilling papers onto the sidewalk. He tried to pull them up over himself to hide among the piles. His blood brilliant red on their white surface, like blood on mountain snow.

  He heard them running toward him but somehow his mind did not register it. They stumbled around the doorway, guns firing wildly, randomly. He knew they had hit him in the chest and stomach, felt ice dripping through his rib cage and fire along his pelvis. He stopped moving. Held the briefcase to his chest and lay there gasping. The two men stood looking at him. As if they were uncertain of what they were seeing, or none of this could be real.

  Garvey tried to say no. Tried to but did not have the breath or the strength. Then one of the men walked forward and put his gun against Garvey’s cheek and pulled the trigger. His head snapped back and he slumped to the side and lay still.

  The two men stared at him. A man came out of the doorway across the street and looked at the body.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s him.”

  Bells began ringing not far away. The three of them looked in the direction passively. One of them stooped and picked up the briefcase. “We’d better go,” he said.

  Then they walked in different directions without looking back.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Hayes sat in Skiller’s tenement room in silence. Meditating, almost. The building was empty now, devoid of all the screaming tenants and the filthy children he had seen before. This part of the Shanties had been abandoned after the fire.

  He looked around the little room. Looked at the two little beds. The tattered Christ calendar on the wall. Prostrate peasants, still laying their palms before the approach of the Lord. Always approaching, never here.

  He knew when the child entered the building, felt him rushing up the stairs like a bolt of lightning, leaping from floor to floor. Hayes felt something new here right away, some intense, deep connection. He suspected he knew why. He and the boy had both beheld something similar, and come away different.

  When the boy entered Hayes could not see him but he knew he was there, watching. He said, “Hello, Jack.”

  There was a quiver in the air before him. It slowed to show a fiercely vibrating form, moving so fast it confused the eye. It slowed further and somewhere in the blur he saw a child’s face, eyes mad and confused, teeth bared in rage.

  “Calm down,” said Hayes. He could feel the boy more viscerally than any other person, as if his very thoughts were painted on the walls. Hayes held up his hands to show him he meant no harm, and the boy began to slow further. Then more until Hayes could finally see him.

  He looked nothing like a boy anymore. His hair was sheet-white and his skin was devoid of all pigment and his eyes were wide and hollow. He looked like a starving thing or perhaps some specter from a medieval painting come to life. His teeth chattered as though he was agonizingly cold, and Hayes saw they were tinted with red. One of his hands was horribly mauled, streaked with red and black.

  “Can you speak?” Hayes asked.

  The boy shivered and watched him. He blinked rapidly. It was an unnerving sight.

  “Can you speak, Jack?”

  He saw the boy open his mouth. There was a whining noise like dozens of flies by his ear, and somewhere in it he heard a stammering voice say, Who are you?

  “I’m like you,” said Hayes. He pointed to his white hair, then to the boy’s.

  The boy’s shivering stopped. He looked at Hayes and furrowed his brow as he tried to remember speech. “Like me?” he asked, his voice still shuddering.

  “Yes.”

  He looked Hayes over, eyelids fluttering jerkily. “I know you,” he said. “You’ve been here before.”

  “Yes. Twice. I was looking for you. To take care of you, Jack.”

  The boy watched him for a long while. “Did you see it, too?” he asked.

  “See what?”

  “The monster. The monster in the basement.”

  “The golden one? Yes. Yes, I did, Jack.”

  The boy stared at him a moment longer. Then suddenly he was gone. Hayes looked at the empty space and then searched for the boy and found him standing in the kitchen, arms at his sides, face furious.

  “I don’t like that,” he whispered.

  “What?” said Hayes.

  “I don’t like that!” screamed the boy. He picked up a nearby pan and flung it against the far wall. It punched a hole through the plaster like it was paper and daylight streamed through. “I don’t like it! I don’t! I don’t!”

  “I don’t like it either,” Hayes said. “I’m not here because of it.”

  “Then why?” demanded the boy. “Why are you in my house?”

  “Here,” said Hayes. “Here. You’ve hurt yourself. Does that hurt?”

  The boy looked at his injured hand. Then he looked back up at Hayes, mistrustful.

  “I can help that,” said Hayes. “Come here.”

  The boy shook his head.

  “Come here, Jack. Come here.”

  He relaxed. Then he walked to Hayes and sat down before him, staring blankly at the floor.

  “Let me see your hand,” Hayes said.

  The boy stuck out his ruined arm. Hayes knew it would hurt the boy were he to touch it, so he took out a handkerchief and wrapped it around his upper arm, pinching off the blood flow. The boy did not squirm. Perhaps he felt the strange connection as Hayes did and trusted it, like they were linked somehow by what they had passed through and seen. It was like a window into one another’s minds.

  “How did you do that?” Hayes asked.

  “I hit a door,” said the boy. “There was a lock and I had to get it off.”

  “I see,” said Hayes softly. “Does that feel better?”

  The boy nodded.

  “How old are you, Jack?”

  Jack watched him, eyes wide and uncomprehending.

  “How old?” asked Hayes again.

  “I don’t know,” said the boy.

  “You don’t?”

  “I used to know. But I don’t anymore.” He stopped and said, “It doesn’t work that way anymore.”

  “What doesn’t? What doesn’t work that way?”

  The boy shook his head. Hayes thought for a second. “Time?” he said. “Does time not work for you anymore?”

  Jack did not answer.

  “How old were you before, Jack? Before the monster in the basement?”

  “I was ten.”

  “All right. You’re ten, so you’re a big boy. And I’m going to treat you like a big boy. Do you want to know why I’m here?”

  The boy nodded again.

  “I’m here about your daddy,” said Hayes.

  The boy’s eyes went wide and he
stared at Hayes. He began shuddering and flickering again and there was a sound like two ship hulls sliding over each other, grating and maddening. Hayes raised his hands, hoping to smother his anger before it could grow.

  “No, Jack,” he said. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m not. I’m like you, remember?”

  The boy relented and became solid again. “My daddy’s dead,” he said softly.

  “I know, Jack.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “He was killed.”

  “I know. I know that. I need to know how.”

  “How he was killed?”

  “I need to know what happened.” Hayes felt the boy’s thoughts flow before him. He seemed terribly stunted. He had the mind not of a boy of ten but perhaps one of five, maybe even younger. Hayes was not sure if he had been like this before he had been altered.

  “What happened?” repeated the child.

  “Yes. On the day that he left.”

  “When he left to go to the boat?”

  “Yes. On that day.”

  “Why?”

  “I just need to know. Someone needs to know what happened to people like your daddy. We can’t just forget about them.”

  “No,” said the boy. “No, no.” He frowned, blinking back tears, and said, “I loved him.”

  “I know, Jack.”

  “He was my daddy. I loved him and I didn’t want to be bad but I had to see where he was going.”

  “Yes.”

  “I had to see. So I followed him.” And he began speaking while Hayes watched his memories unfold.

  His daddy had said not to follow. He’d said he couldn’t follow, that the boy should stay home, and then his daddy had crept out in the night beforehand, trying to get away without him knowing. But the boy had been awake all night and had just been faking sleep, so when his daddy put on his shoes and put the letter on the chair the boy knew. He knew, and when the door shut he went and read the letter. Read it as best as he could. He knew what it was saying and he did not even cry, he was too old to cry, he just tossed the letter aside and went downstairs and saw his daddy walking away down the street. Walking down the street, north. Alone.

  “I followed him,” Jack said then. “I’m good at it. I’m good at being quiet.”

  It was a long walk, and they took trolleys sometimes but still the boy followed him. Away from the city, to the far northwestern waterside. Cold and wet and dark and alone. And there his father met a whole lot of other men and waited with them. Waited, staring out at the water, looking at a dark black boat that waited with them. And when the second boat came they all seemed scared at first but then they got to work because one man said they had to. Moving things from one boat to the other. Working. Working like daddy did at his job, and the boy wondered if this was part of his job but he didn’t think so, daddy never did work with boats and ships on the water, but deep down in the ground.

  Then one man dropped one of the crates. The others swarmed to the dropped box, trying to scoop up what was inside, but his daddy saw it, and his eyes got big and he started shouting. So mad he was almost crying. The boy had been too far away to hear what was said, too far, but it had to be bad. No one looked that upset and said good things, and he knew what his daddy looked like mad. But still the men put the boxes on the boat and then they got in the boat and went away. And his daddy went with them, away toward the city.

  “I was scared,” the boy said. “They left me there. I wanted to tell them not to leave but if I did that my daddy would know I had followed him.”

  “I see,” Hayes said.

  So the boy waited. Hunkered down below a tree and waited for day. It was too dark to see and there could be things in the woods. Hungry things, waiting. And soon the boy fell asleep.

  He awoke when he heard something walking through the bushes, and at first he was scared but then he saw it was his daddy again. He wondered if his daddy had come looking for him, but he didn’t seem to be. He walked right past Jack and kept walking along the beach, looking up into the hills from time to time. And the boy waited, and hesitated, and followed him again.

  “I didn’t want him to be alone,” he said. “But I didn’t want him to be mad, either.”

  Sometimes it was hard to follow him. Hard to see him in the dark, walking into the hills. But then he hit a path and all the boy had to do was follow the path. After a while he saw his daddy stop and look at something. The boy had to creep close and he saw it was a fence, a big one. His daddy stared at what was inside of it, at the building he could see beyond, and he seemed to figure something out because he turned and ran away, back toward the city.

  But the boy stayed. There was something inside the fence. Singing. Singing to him. Singing a song that only he could hear.

  “It was beautiful,” the boy said dreamily.

  “I’m sure it was,” Hayes said.

  The boy climbed the fence and went out into the field. There was a big building there and there was a voice in it singing. Like an angel. He walked to it and listened to the song and sneaked inside. It was easy, because the voice told him who to watch out for. Where to go. What to do.

  He went down in the dark. Down to where the thing waited. Where the voice was singing. And he found it burning in the darkness like a big golden coal and he reached out, reached out to touch the song and try and see if he could sing it, too…

  What happened next was hard for Hayes to discern. The boy did not really know either. He just knew something had changed.

  The world stopped. Froze and drained of color. And then stars lit up along everything, like everything was made of light, and between the stars was so much, so much emptiness, so much space, so much everything and so much nothing, and in between every second was another second, and inside of that second was a day, a month, a year, and suddenly Jack was lost, stretched out among the years and the stars and all the hidden nothingness that lurked below everything, between everything, around everything…

  “I was everywhere,” Jack whispered. “I was everything. Forever.”

  Hayes pulled away, gasping. He could not touch that memory. He knew that if he did it would destroy him. But he realized then that in that instant the boy had been alone for what must have felt like weeks. Perhaps years, perhaps centuries. Left alone to stagnate and go mad, isolated within that one unending moment.

  Hayes noticed the boy was quivering and flickering again. His voice whined and rose higher and higher and Hayes’s ears began to pain him. Hayes waited it out, watching. When the child was done he gasped and shook his head, tears running down his face.

  “Then what happened, Jack?” Hayes asked quietly.

  The boy sobbed and shook his head.

  “What happened?”

  “I didn’t know what was wrong with me,” the boy cried. “I didn’t know what it was. I was sick. I was sick and I had to find my daddy. But I didn’t know where he was. So I went to the giant’s playground. It was all I could see, where I was. The only thing I knew.”

  “To the big stones? Out on the water?”

  “Yes,” the boy said, eyes baleful. “And there he was.”

  Hayes saw the image laid out before him. A lone man, running toward a group of people carrying boxes. Lost in the shadows of the tomb-like stones lined up around them, waving his arms and saying to drop them, to let them go. Shouting that it wasn’t what they thought it was, that they had been betrayed and that this wasn’t the way. They could not do it this way. They had to stop. It was a trick, he said. It was a trick.

  They told him to be quiet. Told him to shut his damn mouth. He said he couldn’t, said he wouldn’t let anyone die. They told him to be quiet. Again he said it was a trick. They said this had been set up by the boss men, by Tazz himself. And he shook his head and said that they had been tricked by Tazz, too, if that was the case. He wouldn’t let anyone die, he said again. Not like this. There’s a better way. There has to be. He’d go to the police if they didn’t listen.<
br />
  Then they hit him. Struck him across the face with something hard and heavy, and he crumbled. They looked at him and then looked at each other and then they started to beat him. Kicking him. Punching him. Then somewhere in their movements there was the glint of a knife and someone stabbing down and across, quick. And then he lay there. White and shaking. Clutching his face. His neck. The ground around him. And then he lay still.

  “My daddy,” whispered Jack quietly.

  “I know,” Hayes said. “I know.”

  “They couldn’t do that to him. They couldn’t. They can’t,” spat the boy. “I went and hid. But then I found them. I found them later. All of them.” He flared up again, his face growing indistinct, his words a stuttered buzz. “My daddy,” he cried out. “They killed my daddy! They killed him! I’ll kill all of you! All of you! For what you did to my daddy, for what you did!”

  “I know.”

  “I found them. Most of them.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I got so mad that… that things stopped. And I could hear the blood inside them and all the angry things inside of them and I thought of my daddy and… and…”

  Hayes saw the door of the Third Ring. He watched as the men filed out, Naylor, Evie, Eppleton, all of them laughing, and they descended into the trolley station. The boy watched from across the street and then picked up a waste bin from in front of a diner. He waited, steeling himself, and then bolted after them through the darkness to where the trolley was now standing frozen in the tunnels, curiously still like all time was stopped around it since the boy was moving at unimaginable speeds, and then the boy threw the trash can at the door and screamed at the top of his lungs and charged in. Windows cracked and lights erupted in dazzling fireworks as the boy descended on the trolley like a lightning bolt. And inside the people were like statues, eyes wide, waiting to die. Waiting to die, as they should have. All of them.

  There was a glitter from something in a woman’s hands. A pair of scissors, clipping yarn. Hayes saw the boy’s gray-white hand reach forward and pick them up and turn to the nearest person and raise the blades up…