The Music of the Machine (The Book of Terwilliger 2)

by Michael Stiles

  When he felt the hand grab his shoulder, it felt like the hand of Death. The one-eyed man wrapped his arms around him and they both tumbled to the ground. Only then did the exertion catch up with Kajdas. He felt suddenly more tired than he’d ever been.

  It bothered him that he couldn’t remember the one-eyed man’s name. Kajdas remembered everything about him except his name. He looked up into the hideous face, into the red eye that pulsated with evil light, and Kajdas heard himself wail in terror.

  “Nathaniel,” the one-eyed man said with a gravelly voice. “You will never forget my name again.” He waved his hand, and the ground began to shake. “You will never forget.”

  “What do you want from me?” Kajdas asked, struggling and failing to keep his voice from rising to a fearful cry.

  “You have something I need,” Nathaniel said. He put a hand on top of Tom’s head. It reminded Kajdas of going to church as a boy, when the priest would put his hand on each child’s head to pray for them. This was not like that at all. This hurt.

  “Yes,” whispered Nathaniel. “There it is.” He was pulling something out of Tom’s mind, ripping it free. Kajdas tried to pull away, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. The pain was unbearable. “Yes,” the one-eyed man said again. “Everything you know is mine.” He closed his eye and inhaled deeply. “Novus.” His lips curled in a hint of a smile. “Novus belongs to me now.”

  “No!” Kajdas cried. “You can’t have it!”

  “Shhhh.” Nathaniel patted his head gently, soothingly, like petting a dog. “No need to shout at me. Shouting never does any good.” There was a rumbling noise like an earthquake. It started quietly, off in the distance, and increased to a roar. The ground nearby rolled and buckled, and a great chasm opened up as if a gaping wound had been torn in the earth itself. Pieces of rock flew into the air. A cloud of dust billowed up, making Kajdas cough.

  Then there was silence. The dust blew away. Nathaniel grabbed Kajdas by his hair and dragged him toward the hole. It was dark inside, and as they came closer Tom could smell a stink of decay. He didn’t want to go in there. But his strength was gone. He fought weakly, trying to free himself.

  Nathaniel stepped up to the edge and looked down into the pit, still gripping Tom’s silver hair tightly in his fist. Kajdas couldn’t move, couldn’t escape. “It’s like death down there,” he said, “but worse. Death is like sleeping. But you won’t sleep down there. Oh-ho, no.”

  Kajdas finally found the strength to resist. He clawed at Nathaniel’s hand, trying to make him let go. Tom finally managed to pull away, leaving a clump of silver hair in Nathaniel’s bone-thin hand. But Nathaniel seized Tom’s arm with his other hand and picked him up as if he weighed nothing. He held Kajdas up over his head and let him gaze down into the pit for a long moment. “Down you go!” he said happily. Then he threw Kajdas over the edge into the darkness. Tom fell for a very long time, screaming all the way.

  * * *

  If you didn’t look too closely, it seemed like he was just sleeping. Emily was careful not to look too closely as she sat next to her father’s bed. Her sister Tanya had gone out for a walk, leaving her alone with Dad. Their mother had dropped them off there, not wanting to see her husband after the first time she had checked in on him back in September. The two of them didn’t get along anymore, and Mom had pressing things to do. She would be back to pick her girls up at five.

  Dad had been in a coma for eight months now. Something horrible had happened to him at work, some terrible injury to his head, but no one would tell them more than that. One time an Assistant Director of the Bureau, a grim, middle-aged man named Charles Witherspoon, had come to their house in Virginia to tell them the news. No one would say what had happened, or where he’d been at the time. Dad had been living in Los Angeles since the split-up, but they had brought him back to Virginia to be near his family. They had flown Dad to Fairfax Hospital, laid him in a bed, and the FBI suits had said kind words to his wife and girls about his selfless service. It had sounded like a eulogy. Then Witherspoon and the others were gone. Dad had stayed in the bed, never moving, showing no sign of any physical injury. He just never woke up.

  At first the girls had come to visit every day. That had tapered off to a couple hours every weekend. Mom would have stopped bringing them altogether, but neither of her daughters would have let that happen. So they came to the hospital after church every Sunday and sat with him for a while. Once Tanya got her license, Mom wouldn’t have to bother driving them anymore. But Tanya had failed her road test twice; on her second try, she had actually struck a pedestrian when she had botched a turn and gone up on the sidewalk. Emily doubted the third attempt would be any better. She would have her own license next year before Tanya figured out how to pass that test.

  Emily had become so accustomed to the soft sound of her father’s breathing that she was instantly aware of the change when it stopped. She was up out of her chair and at his side in half a second, shouting for a nurse. The nurse didn’t come immediately, though. Emily shouted louder and, not knowing what to do, took her father’s hand in her own. If this was it, she wanted to be holding his hand when he went.

  Dad made a sound that nearly made Emily jump out of her skin, like the hissing of an angry cat. He sat up suddenly, legs thrashing under the covers until his blanket slid to the floor. His eyes were open, but they stared in different directions without seeing. A nurse ran into the room just as he was starting to settle down.

  “Dad?” Emily tried.

  He ran a hand through his silver hair, touching the strands as though surprised to find hair up there. Then he touched his own face—ran his fingers over his right eye, then his left. He smiled.

  Emily put her hand on his shoulder. Her heart was pounding. “Dad, it’s me. Can you hear me?”

  His eyes finally managed to focus on her. He moved his tongue around slowly, as if tasting the inside of his mouth. “Who am I?” he rasped.

  “You’re in the hospital.” She tried to get the nurse’s attention. “Would you get him some water?” But the nurse was fussing with the equipment and paid no attention.

  “Mr. Kajdas,” said the nurse, once she had finished whatever she was doing, “I need you to lie back down, all right?”

  “Yes,” Dad replied, although he didn’t lie back down. He closed one eye, then the other, then opened them one at a time. “This will do.” He smiled a wet-lipped smile.

  “Dad,” said Emily. He was awake. It was too good to believe. “Daddy. Are you okay?”

  “Okay?” He turned to her, still winking his eyes in that strange way. “Yes. More than okay. This is perfect.”

  * * *

  Dalton Whitehead sat on the edge of his desk, tapping his fingers impatiently. Somewhere deep beneath his office, a machine produced a low, resonant hum that could be heard everywhere in the facility. He found the hum comforting, a familiar sound.

  The test subject, who was listed in the register as Subject 7, watched him suspiciously. Subject 7 sat in a chair with his arms and legs chained to a bracket on the wall. The chair was bolted to the floor. Dr. Whitehead did not mess around when it came to safety. He kept his test subjects locked up tight at all times.

  “The thing to remember,” Whitehead said, “is that it was just a dream.”

  “It w-w-wasn’t,” said Subject 7. Subject 7 spoke with a stutter. He was a heavyset man with gray eyes that were almost always open very wide, so you could see the whites all around. He had a chronic skin condition that caused big flakes to come loose from time to time. The last few days, he had been complaining of frightening dreams that woke him up in the middle of the night. The subject had damaged his fingers trying to claw his way out of his cell this morning, and Whitehead had kept him confined since then. For the subject’s own safety as well as everyone else’s. “It was a real horse.”

  “Real horses aren’t blue,” Whitehead pointed out.

  “This one is b-b-blue. It’s the… the… the…” He swallowed
hard and started again. “The horse from the carnival. I t-t-told you about the blue horse before. The horse always s-scared me.” Subject 7 had indeed told Dalton about his childhood in a traveling carnival, with the blue horse that had always frightened him. The carnies had dyed its hair blue, no doubt, to make it look unusual. “It talked to me in my dream.”

  “Peter, today is an important day. Do you remember what day it is?”

  “The horse said he’s c-coming today to g-get me.”

  Dalton checked his watch. He really needed to get the bus loaded. “The horse isn’t real. You’re moving today, Peter. Today is moving day.”

  “That isn’t—isn’t—isn’t my name.”

  “Mr. Shackleford is coming here in a few minutes to take you out to the bus. You’re going for a ride to a new home today.”

  “My name is Croaker Norge. And the blue horse w-w-will be driving the b-bus.” His eyes went wide again. “You’re gonna be riding the bus too.”

  “No, Peter. I won’t be on the bus with you. The bus is going to take you to your new―”

  “Y-you’ll be on the bus.”

  Whitehead gave up. It was never worthwhile to argue with a Novus subject once he got an idea in his head. The Novus experiments had warped their perception of reality to such a degree that they couldn’t tell reality from fantasy anymore. He went to the door and waved to the guard, Johnson Shackleford. Another guard, a somber man named Jim Boothby, stood by as Shackleford began undoing the chains that held Subject 7 in his chair.

  The hum of the machine stopped just as they started walking Norge to the door. With the shutdown of Novus, the machine was to be mothballed in some basement in DC, to be forgotten forever. Whitehead tried not to think about it. This experiment had been his baby for the last five years. Whatever Witherspoon or Wensel would have him working on now, it couldn’t be half as interesting as Novus.

  Whitehead went outside to breathe some fresh air. It was a long drive every morning from his home in Gaithersburg, Maryland to this remote building in the mountains, several miles north of Frederick. But it was a beautiful drive, and Dalton counted himself lucky that he didn’t have to commute into Washington or Baltimore as most of his neighbors did.

  A large white box truck was parked in front of the building, next to a yellow school bus. Mike Ludd, the engineer who maintained all of the Novus equipment, was rolling out pieces of his machine to load onto the truck. He looked utterly miserable. Ludd smiled a lot, showing off teeth that were so tobacco-stained that they were nearly brown. He wasn’t smiling today. The machine was precious to him, and he knew, just as Dalton did, that it was unlikely that anyone would ever hook it up again. Somberly, Ludd rolled the components up a ramp into the back of the truck. In another fifteen minutes he finished loading the vehicle and went inside the building to clean up.

  The school bus was running, but Whitehead didn’t see the driver anywhere. All the rest of the subjects were already on the bus, chained securely to their seats. He saw the big one named Tinch sitting near the front, where the driver could keep an eye on him. Tinch was a nasty piece of work.

  The guards came out with Croaker Norge walking between them. His hands were cuffed behind his back. They got him on the bus and began the process of chaining him to his seat.

  Dalton was suddenly aware that a person was standing right behind him. He spun around with a startled cry and saw a familiar face looking at him. “Agent Kajdas,” said Whitehead. “I wasn’t told you were coming.”

  Kajdas ran his tongue around inside his mouth, as though tasting himself. “Why are they all getting on a bus?” he asked.

  “The order came from Charles Witherspoon last Friday. Novus is shutting down. The subjects are to be moved to a secure place downtown. Didn’t you know?”

  Kajdas gazed impassively at Whitehead. He slowly closed and opened his left eye, then did the same with his right. “Nobody tells me anything.”

  “I’m sorry. I assumed you’d been informed.”

  “No prisoners are left inside?”

  Whitehead frowned. “Subjects. Not prisoners. They’re all on the bus, ready to go. As soon as the driver turns up. Where is the driver?”

  “Over there,” said Kajdas, waving lazily toward the nearby woods. Looking that way, Dalton saw something he had not noticed before: a man’s body lying face-down in the dirt. “He’s dead,” Kajdas said as Whitehead hurried over to the body.

  Dalton turned the body over. The handle of a knife was sticking out of the side of its neck. The eyes were wide open and staring.

  “Oh,” said Kajdas. “I forgot my knife.” He came over, bent down, and yanked the knife out of the bus driver’s neck. Blood drained freely from the wound to form a dark puddle on the ground. It didn’t spurt; it just flowed. There was no pulse to give it pressure. Kajdas stood, wiping the blade on his jeans, and looked at Whitehead. “Do you work here?” he asked.

  Whitehead stared into his eyes. Why didn’t Kajdas recognize him? They knew each other well, had known each other for years. Kajdas had visited Novus frequently to check in on his test subjects. Looking into his eyes, Whitehead saw nothing familiar there. This man looked like Kajdas, but it wasn’t him.

  “Do you work here?” the Kajdas impostor said again.

  Dalton realized at that moment that he had just wet his pants. That was embarrassing. He tried to remember whether he had a change of clothes in his office. Then Not-Kajdas took one step toward him, and Whitehead took off running toward the building, screaming for Shackleford and Boothby. The two guards couldn’t possibly understand his incoherent shouts, but they got the right idea and ran inside the building. Whitehead followed them in, locking the heavy steel door behind him. This building had once been an Army installation, and its doors and windows were highly secure.

  Except… Tom Kajdas had a key. Dalton heard him trying keys in the lock. “Shackleford,” he said. “Boothby. We’re going to the lab. There’s a telephone in there. I need to call Washington.” Kajdas didn’t have a key to the laboratory. Dalton ran down the corridor as fast as he could, which wasn’t very fast. The two guards were right behind him. Around the corner they ran, down two flights of stairs, and Dalton lost his footing and tumbled down the last few steps. Shackleford fell on top of him. They untangled themselves, apologized to each other, and sprinted to the lab. After locking the door, Whitehead picked up the phone—thank God they hadn’t turned off the telephone service—and dialed a number he knew by heart.

  “Charles Witherspoon, please,” he said when the operator answered. Looking through the reinforced window to the hallway outside, he saw Kajdas emerging from the stairwell. “Hurry.”

  1

  A Green Door

  May 1970

  Blake got off the subway at West 4th Street and walked a couple blocks to Bleecker. The evening was turning chilly, so he zipped his jacket. He checked for traffic, dashed across Bleecker, and stopped just before rounding the corner.

  His name wasn’t Blake. That was just what his followers called him. He had stopped bothering to correct them. After the things that had happened to him lately, he didn’t mind that they called him the wrong name. He wanted to disappear, never to be found again, and a new name was a good start.

  He took his time. He didn’t want to see his followers today. They were messy and obnoxious, and he felt guilty whenever he saw them camping outside his building. He leaned against a building and had a cigarette. Then, taking a deep breath, he peeked around the corner.

  They were still there, five of them, hanging around the door to his apartment building. Three men and two women—boys and girls, to be more precise. None of them was older than twenty, and Blake was pretty sure a couple of them were still in high school. They were Blake’s people, and they were waiting for him.

  Heaving a sigh, he started walking toward them. One of them saw him and pointed, and soon they were all on their feet, waiting eagerly as he approached.

  “How are you, Blake?” a young
man asked.

  “Blake!” called one of the girls. “Why won’t you stop and talk to us?”

  “Blake!”

  They crowded around him as he unlocked the green-painted door and let himself in. He tried his best to ignore them. He didn’t want to have followers. He wanted to be left alone.

  The metal door slammed shut with a clang, and the cries of the people faded to a low murmur outside. Blake scratched his beard, check his mail—nothing but bills—and trudged up the steps to his apartment on the third floor. She was waiting for him there: the one person in the world he actually wanted to see.

  “How was the job search today, Ed?” Sarah asked. The television was on—a news broadcast showing a grisly scene at a university in Ohio where some kids had been shot by some soldiers in the National Guard. She got up and turned down the volume.

  “I wish they’d go away,” Ed muttered. “They’ve been camping out for months now. Don’t they have homes to go to?” He opened the blinds and put his cheek against glass to see the people on the street below. “What are you cooking? It smells like mushrooms.”

  “Tuna casserole,” Sarah replied. “It’s your own fault, you know. They think you were sent from God because you planted your memories inside their heads. Maybe you shouldn’t have done that.”

  Ed opened the oven a crack to look at the casserole. “Looks good. Better than—it looks good.” Sarah was a little sensitive about her limited skills in the kitchen; saying that it looked better than her last attempt at a casserole would not be wise. He shut the door and went to get himself a glass of water. “I didn’t know what I was doing back then. That stupid gnome told me to hide my memories away, but he didn’t tell me where I was putting them. If I’d known I was sticking them in other people’s heads―” The gnome had taken him to countless minds to hide his memories from those who would steal them. It had saved his memories, but the people who owned the minds had noticed memories that weren’t theirs. Then, somehow, they had found each other and managed to track him down to his new apartment in New York City. Ed wondered how many more people were out there with his memories inside their heads.