Bookburners: Season One Volume One

by Max Gladstone

  Another tentacle reached for the door. Liam jumped and blocked it from closing, so Sal got a nice view of what had become of Gabriel’s apartment.

  There was no apartment there anymore. It was a pulsing tangle of bone and hair, wood and teeth. Sal could see shapes lurching in the gloom. And Grace was fighting her way in. Something bellowed. Something else screeched.

  “Need some help, maybe,” Grace called.

  A vine slithered across the floor to Liam’s foot, grew a three-fingered hand, and wrapped itself around Liam’s ankle. It started to tug.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Liam said, and braced himself in the doorframe.

  Sal raised a questioning eyebrow at Menchú, caught his eye. He nodded and handed her the shroud he’d had in the library. He pointed toward the door.

  “Go,” he said. “Get it. Whatever it is.”

  Sal leapt over Liam. Her feet landed on something soft. She looked down. It was a carpet, except that now there were tufts of hair growing out of it. It growled and writhed, tried to fold itself up over her legs and trap her. She kicked it off and kept moving down the hallway. The carpet slithered after her. The walls were closing in, the floor began to buckle. The air itself seemed to be thickening, filling with something. It was hard to run, way too hard. She was moving too slowly, like in a bad dream.

  There was light, greenish light, coming from somewhere. To her left, out of the corner of her eye, she could see into what used to be the living room. Something was happening in there. There were two girls suspended in the air. They looked like they were floating in jelly. The floor was a heaving landscape of moss and spikes of wood, outcroppings of bone. A long, distended creature was curling around them in a corkscrew from the floor to the ceiling. A four-legged creature that used to be an end table but now had fur and spikes along its spine was crawling across the ceiling toward them. It was carrying something in its mouth. Sal couldn’t tell what.

  It was all too much, too much at once. For a moment it threatened to break her open. If she let it, it would put her on the floor, laughing or screaming or crying, or all three. But then her police officer’s mind kicked in, the one that had seen murder victims and traffic accidents and suicides and just dealt with it, just gotten down to work. She took what she was seeing and put it away.

  Later, later, she told herself. Keep moving. Keep moving. End the threat now.

  She made it halfway down the hallway. And saw at last what Grace was fighting.

  There were two of them, like spiders or crabs, things with bulbous bodies and spindly limbs. Things that were made of other things—tufts of hair, spurs of bone, thin muscles wrapped in papery skin. They both had huge, panting mouths, lined all the way around with sharp wooden teeth, and they made staggering lunges toward Grace, trying to catch her in their limbs. They would eat her alive if they did.

  But Grace was too fast. Way too fast.

  And Sal saw now why one of the things was moving slower than the other. Grace had pulled off three of its legs. The separated limbs lay in the muck on the floor. In the time Sal glanced down and glanced back up again, Grace ducked under the creature’s body and took two more legs in her hands. As Sal watched, she pulled. The legs came out and the creature, with only one leg left, toppled over. Grace jumped in the air and landed on the body with both feet. It caved in beneath the soles of her boots with a squelching pop. Its skin cracked and an orange-brown porridge leaked out of it. The other creature let out a long, angry wail.

  “Go,” Grace said. “I got this.” She was wet and spattered, but her face was flush, her eyes alive.

  She loves this part of her job, Sal thought. Loves it.

  Sal kept going. The doorway at the end of the hall was closed. Sal put her shoulder to it and busted it open.

  The first thing she saw was the policeman, lying face up. He was held down by a rug of long, thin fingers that looked like they were made of fat. They were growing from the floor, and they curled all around his body, into his mouth. The walls expanded and collapsed, expanded and collapsed, like a dying lung, panicking. The window at the far end of the room was coated in a translucent layer of skin. There was greenish-yellow light coming through the ceiling, through the walls, through the floor. And there, sitting at the desk at the other end of the room, a giant web of hair-pocked skin stretching from the ceiling to the floor and into his back, was a man, his head buried in a book.

  It looked at first like he had fallen asleep. Like he’d been studying too hard. Then Sal noticed that she couldn’t tell where his hands were. His hands, his arms—his face—were somehow inside the pages. As though the book had turned to water, and the man had dived right in, but then the book had solidified again when he was halfway inside.

  There’s no way he’s alive, Sal thought. But he was. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell. In time with the walls.

  It’s the book, Sal thought. Get the book.

  It was only a few feet to the desk.

  But she couldn’t run. She felt fingers grasping from the floor. They were enveloping her feet, they were climbing up her legs. She wrenched one leg free and took a step closer to Gabriel. The fingers came at her faster. She pulled the other leg free, took another step. One more step and she’d be able to do what she needed to. But the fingers were skittering up to her waist now, across her chest and back, over her shoulders. They felt their way over the back of her head and onto her face. She shot her arm out, made a wild reach for the man at the desk. She couldn’t reach him.

  The fingers crawled over her eyes, over her nose, over her chin. She felt them, then, slipping between her teeth, wriggling down her throat. Her feet left the floor and she was being dragged down.

  Who would come for her? Grace? Menchú? Who would save those girls?

  Those girls.

  • • •

  Sal opened her eyes.

  The fingers were gone. The room, the apartment, the entire city of Madrid.

  She was standing on the gentle, dark green slope of a soft hill under a pink sky, near the crescent shore of an orange sea. At the top of the slope was a low line of full trees. She could hear birds calling from far away in the darkness of the branches.

  But around her, it was quiet. It was bliss.

  Then she heard voices coming from the woods, instruments reedy and brassy, rattling percussion. A parade emerged from the shadows, heading down toward the ocean. There were dozens, no, hundreds of creatures in the throng, all knobby heads and spindly legs, and the music was frantic and joyful, full of expectation. The parade got thicker and thicker, and at last the trees parted and Sal saw that maybe twenty of the creatures were carrying a platform on which sat a huge, six-armed goblin with serene eyes and a benevolent smile. The goblin laughed, deep and echoing, and the creatures cheered in reply.

  The parade was heading down the hill. And Sal was in the way.

  She stood her ground.

  Where else was she going to go?

  The first of the creatures, a big drum strapped to its belly, got within just a couple steps of her before it seemed to notice her, and stopped. It let out a long whistle and the parade came to a shambling, wheezing halt. The giant goblin’s eyes, which had been fixed to the sky, looked down at Sal.

  “You’re interrupting,” the goblin said.

  Sal took a deep breath. She put the pink sky and the orange water out of her head, and focused on the voice.

  “You see that all is well,” the goblin said. “What are you doing here?”

  The man in the book, Sal thought. This is him. Or I might as well assume it is until I have a better idea.

  “You’re in danger,” Sal said.

  The goblin smiled. “I am right where I belong,” it said. “This is the Anywhere that I want to be.” The smile, friendly and peaceful, grew wider. “Would you like to join me here?” the goblin said.

  “I’m already here,” Sal said. “In fact, I’m not sure you gave me a choice.”

  “But it’s beautiful here,
isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Sal agreed. “It is. But I’m not sure I want to stay.” She thought of what was happening back in the apartment. She knew she didn’t have a lot of time. She took a chance.

  “I guess I just wish you’d asked first,” she said.

  The goblin, for the first time, stopped smiling, and Sal saw an opening. Whether the sky is pink or blue or plaid, she thought, it doesn’t change the fact that this is, in the end, just another hostage negotiation.

  She looked through the goblin’s enormous entourage and found them, quick, two pale little figures with thin limbs and heavy-lidded eyes. Those are the girls, she thought. They have to be.

  She made a leap that she hoped would work.

  “More important,” she said, “I wish you’d asked them.”

  The goblin’s eyes shifted downward to look at the girls.

  “They’re happy here,” it said.

  “Are they?” Sal said. “Did you ask them?”

  “They come over all the time, and beg me to let them stay. And I hear how they play. The things they imagine! They have the most creative minds.” The goblin’s smile returned. “In fact, everything you see around you now, from the trees to the hill to the sea—even to me—is from their heads. Did you know,” it said, gesturing with three of its arms at its own body, “that this is the way they see me?”

  Now all six arms spread out wide.

  “And this is the world they want.”

  “For a while, I bet they do,” Sal said. “But they live right upstairs from you, don’t they?”

  “Yes,” the goblin said.

  “So maybe they love all of this, just like you say. But only to visit. At the end of the day, they go home, don’t they? Their father or mother gets them and they go home.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well,” Sal said. “Their father is waiting outside right now, and he’s really worried about them.”

  “He’s a good man,” the goblin said, “but they don’t want to go yet.”

  “How do you know that?” Sal said.

  “Because we’re so happy.”

  “Because you don’t see what’s really happening. What you’re doing to yourself, and to your apartment, and to those girls. Back there. In the world.”

  “Everything is fine back there,” the goblin said.

  “No,” Sal said. “It isn’t. Look for yourself. You can see back there, can’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then look.”

  The goblin’s eyes rolled skyward and kept rolling. They rolled all the way around, looking inward, into its skull. The goblin’s mouth opened. It gasped.

  “Oh, God,” it said, and shuddered.

  Sal expected to feel some sense of victory, but it wouldn’t come.

  The eyes rolled back again and looked at Sal. Now the goblin’s huge face was pleading.

  “I didn’t know,” it said. “You have to believe I didn’t.”

  Sal nodded. “I believe you. Can you fix it?”

  “I can let them go, and everything else,” the goblin said. “But I can’t get myself out.”

  “If you let me go, I can do it,” Sal said.

  The goblin nodded. “Do it,” it said. “Though I don’t know how much of me will be left when you do.” It set its jaw. It had made its decision. “I’m sorry I caused all of this,” it said. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “I can’t imagine you did,” Sal said. “You’re Gabriel, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a good man too, Gabriel.”

  The goblin didn’t answer.

  “Now let us go,” Sal said. “Please let us go.”

  The goblin closed its eyes. The sky, the sea, the forest, the parade—they all winked out.

  • • •

  With a long shout, Sal pulled herself free. She was back in the room, back in the apartment. The fingers were gone. But the whole place was shaking around her, on the verge of collapse. Gabriel, the man in the book, was twitching and writhing. The walls were coming down.

  Sal stood up and took that final step, the last one she needed. She was close enough now. She fought her way through the sheets of skin around her, put one hand on the desk and the other hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, and pulled.

  He came free from of the book a lot more easily than she expected. There was a sound like a sheaf of wet paper being torn in half, and he just slid out, like a foal being born, bringing fat wads and strings of matter with him. She didn’t have time to see if he still had hands, or arms, or a face. In that moment, she didn’t care. It was the book. She slammed it shut, picked it up, took the shroud out of her jacket pocket, and wrapped the book in it.

  There was a loud gasp, a choking sound. The walls stopped breathing. The skin across the window dried out, cracked, and split open. Sal expected something awful to come out of the tear, but nothing did. The skin just hung from the wall now, brittle, flapping, letting in light. The fingers holding the policeman to the floor had already withered into twigs. They looked like they would break as soon as he moved. The mud, the moss, the vines, all dried out in an instant, leaving only dust and scraps.

  There was light from the hallway, natural light. Sal heard something in the hallway thump and clatter to the floor. Someone said, Whew!

  Grace.

  “I’m guessing you got it?” Grace called from the hallway. “Whatever it was?”

  “Yeah, got it,” Sal said.

  “All clear,” Grace yelled.

  Menchú was there in seconds. He saw Sal crouched on the floor. The book, wrapped in the shroud, was on the floor next to her. She was checking the policeman’s pulse.

  “He’s okay,” she said.

  “Great work,” he said. “Really fine.”

  “Not fine enough for him, though,” Sal said.

  Gabriel lay on the floor, panting. At first Sal thought that he was just covered in something; something was on him. Then she saw what it was. He had aged. A lot. He was old, older than he was ever meant to be. He was a thousand years old, and withered away. His eyes had sunk into their sockets. He turned his head from side to side and the last wisps of his white hair fell away from his cracked scalp. His white tongue moved behind his shriveled lips.

  “¿Lo vieron?” he said.

  “What’s he saying?” Sal said.

  “He’s asking us a question,” Menchú said. “He is asking if we saw it.”

  Menchú knelt down beside Gabriel, put a hand on his chest.

  “He’s dying,” Menchú said.

  “¿Lo vio?” Gabriel said again.

  “Sí,” Menchú said. “Sí.” It was a kindness, Sal realized. Menchú didn’t know what Gabriel was talking about. But Sal did.

  “Sí,” she said.

  Gabriel cackled. A flood of slurred words rushed out of him. Menchú smiled, said words that had to be of consolation, of comfort, though Sal didn’t understand them.

  Gabriel coughed. The words slowed. He coughed again, twice. He tried to say something else, but he couldn’t. A long, slow breath came out of him. Another one didn’t follow. Menchú said a quick prayer and closed Gabriel’s eyes.

  “What was he saying?”

  “He was telling me everything he saw,” Menchú said. “Beautiful, exquisite things. The most wonderful things he had ever seen in his life.” He looked back toward the hallway.

  “That’s not what we saw here,” he said.

  Sal didn’t say anything.

  The policeman opened his eyes and shifted on the floor, as if he was waking from a long nap. There was dust all over him, all that was left of the fingers holding him down. He opened his eyes and blinked. The first person he saw was Menchú.

  “¿Qué pasó?” he said.

  “¿Saber?” Menchú said.

  It was as though there had been an explosion in the apartment two hundred years ago and then it had been left to rot. The ceiling was falling in. The floorboards were split, breaking up. The walls were
losing their plaster. The furniture was toppled, overturned, broken, shredded. And everything was covered with dust and cobwebs. They hung from above. They lay in the corners and along the floor. The superintendent was walking through it in shock, shaking his head, moving from room to room—taking in the rusted oven, the shattered bathtub—in despair. Grace was in the hallway, dusting herself off. Liam already waited on the landing.

  “Come on,” he said. “Time to move.”

  The policeman was on his phone, calling for backup. He motioned for them to stay put. Grace already had her back to him and was halfway out of the place. Menchú was right behind her.

  “Come on,” he said to Sal. “This is the part where, right now, you’re more criminal than police.”

  Before Sal left, she got a glimpse of the two girls. They were standing amid the wreckage of the living room, not a wrinkle on their clothes, not a hair out of place, huge smiles on their faces, their voices bright and cheerful. They were telling their father everything. They had seen wonderful things, amazing things. They had been to impossible places. They had to tell their father all about it. And he was there, on his knees, first hugging one, then the other. Just thankful that they were alive. Two siblings, side by side.

  One of them recognized Sal and waved.

  Perry, Sal thought. She realized she’d managed to keep him out of her thoughts for a couple hours. The mission, its details and its danger, had pushed him to the side. But now there he was again, front and center. Unmoving in his hospital bed in the wood-paneled room. No, worse: the way he was just before he went under. Sal tried to dredge up an old memory to replace that—a day at the lake when they were kids, a fight in the backseat of the car, the stupid face he made at her when she graduated college. Anything. But she couldn’t do it. What the Hand had done to Perry was in her head now for good, and there was nothing she could do to get rid of it.

  8.

  Sal felt the crash from the adrenaline high as soon as they were headed out to the airport. They watched a police van fly past them in the opposite direction, sirens blaring. She wondered if it was the team dispatched to investigate whatever had happened in Gabriel’s apartment. She wondered what kind of sense the police would be able to make of it. They’d take a lot of pictures, do a lot of measurements, collect evidence. They’d get some vague sense of what had gone down by interviewing the superintendent and the father. There’d be some sketchy descriptions of everyone on Team Three, but not enough to incriminate anyone. And it would be clear that whatever had happened to the entire apartment, and to the poor guy with the book, couldn’t have been done by four human beings in five minutes. Team Three would be just one more anomaly in a mountain of anomalies in the police report. The only facts in the case would be the damage to the apartment, that two girls and a police officer were still alive, and the man who lived in the place was dead. Of unknown causes.