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

by Michael Stiles

  Nathaniel stared down into the abyss that had taken his Horseman. There were several cracks, but only that one was large enough for a person to fall into. “You idiot,” he hissed. “You don’t know what you’re doing! You don’t know what’s down there!” He continued to stare down into the hole, as if watching for something to come out.

  Ed had so far been balanced on a knife edge between fear and anger. Being called an idiot by this man seemed to tip the balance, and he found himself overcome by fury. Bellowing wordlessly, he picked up a large rock—much bigger than anything he could have lifted in the physical world—and charged at the one-eyed man. He heard Joy cheering him on.

  Nathaniel lifted himself off the ground and shot up into the air like a rocket. He stopped at a safe distance overhead. Arthur rose with him, as did the rest of the Horsemen. Their unconscious colleague woke up in the air and let out a terrified cry when he saw that he was hanging in mid-air. The six of them floated overhead, looking down at Ed from above.

  “You’re insane!” Nathaniel bellowed. “You’re out of your mind! I don’t want you in my house until you calm down!” Then he vanished, along with the others.

  Ed and the others were alone on the silent hillside. Steam still drifted out of the black holes in the ground. Heavier than air, it oozed down the hillside toward the forested valley below.

  “We won,” Rayfield said in disbelief.

  Ed rounded on him. “No, we didn’t! He was about to take me with him. Don’t you get it? I have to find him. I need to kill him!”

  The ground trembled again, groaning in a way that sounded like a giant in great pain. Ed realized that his head was hurting—not like a normal headache, but a deeper pain in the back of his head that felt unusual and disconcerting.

  “You can’t go up against that dude alone,” Rayfield said.

  “Killing is an expression of negativity,” said Joy.

  “Kicking them in the nuts is sorta negative, too,” said Rayfield. Joy just shrugged.

  “Ed,” Sarah said, quietly but insistently. “You have no chance against him. I know you want revenge for Eleanor, but―”

  Ed stamped his foot—painfully aware of how immature that was—and the ground shook again. “Go away. Just get out!”

  They all looked at him with their mouths hanging open. That made him even angrier.

  “Get out of here! I don’t want you around anymore! You’re not safe around me, you’re not helping, so just go!”

  There was a long silence as the echoes of his foot-stamping reverberated across the valley and back.

  “What about our meeting?” Joy asked him.

  “No more meetings,” Ed snapped. He knew he was acting petulant, but he just didn’t care.

  “But how will we stay in touch with you?” said Joy.

  Ed walked over to the big crack in the earth and stared down into it. The darkness there seemed to draw him toward itself. He wanted to step into it to see what was inside. But he held himself back. “You won’t,” he said. “I don’t want you to.”

  Sarah took him by the arm and pulled him away. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d been leaning over the hole, almost to the point of falling in. A part of him wanted to fall in. “You need us,” she said. “We can’t leave you alone with that… person out there trying to kill you.”

  But he knew that Nathaniel didn’t want him dead. “You’re safer if you’re far away from me,” he told her. “I can handle Nathaniel and his little blue men. As long as I face them in my own territory, they can’t hurt me.” That wasn’t true, and he could tell the others didn’t believe him. He didn’t know how many of these blue men he could deal with at once, if more of them arrived. But Sarah and the others had no chance against them, and he couldn’t let his friends risk their lives for him in such a useless way. “Don’t come back here. I’ll find you when… when it’s safe again.” That had been Mason’s advice, and Ed knew he was right.

  One by one, they said goodbye and vanished, returning to their own bodies far away. Sarah was the last to leave. She held him close and put her head on his shoulder for a minute.

  “I’ll be okay,” he assured her.

  “Think about what I said,” she replied. “You won’t be okay until you get things sorted out in your own head.” Then she disappeared from his arms, leaving him holding nothing.

  17

  The Eyes of Fire

  Nathaniel walked silently to the sleeping quarters. The Horsemen watched warily as he passed in the hallway, afraid to do anything that would draw his attention. There were more of Arthur’s soldiers wearing the blue clothes, now. Gradually, one by one, they were succumbing to the Hum.

  Dalton Whitehead caught up with him at the boundary of the newer section, where the rough rock walls changed over to gray concrete. “So you’ve heard,” the doctor said in a shaky voice. “Plunkett is unresponsive. No one knows what happened.”

  Nathaniel turned to look at him. The doctor was different from the others. He obeyed Nathaniel, but had never fully given in to the Hum as the others had. Whitehead had been the psychiatrist on staff when Nathaniel had taken over Novus. It had been impossible to let him go, so the doctor had been brought along to this new home and kept with the other men. The Hum had made him compliant, but still… the man couldn’t be trusted.

  “I know what happened,” Nathaniel said. “He happened.” Terwilliger. The man had been so promising. He shone with a light that few could see. Nathaniel could see it. What Terwilliger possessed was not like Nathaniel’s gifts. He had something akin to the power of Blake himself. Terwilliger could see the future. He could read the mind of God. He could do other things too, some of which Nathaniel himself had taught him. But seeing the future—that was something Nathaniel couldn’t do.

  “It was Chisholm who found them,” Whitehead said. He was sweating, and his glasses had slipped down toward the end of his nose.

  It should have been so easy. Nathaniel had intended to be gentle, to impose his will on Terwilliger through suggestion rather than force. He had tried to creep into the man’s mind quietly, masquerading as Terwilliger’s own hallucination. But that had proven impossible. Terwilliger was destined to break the Cycle, but he had no idea what he was doing and he refused to be helped. That fact kept Nathaniel up at night, chewing on Tom Kajdas’ fingernails and grinding Tom Kajdas’ teeth. Terwilliger was a fool, and he would never do what had to be done.

  Nathaniel knew exactly what had to be done. The Cycle had to be broken, and any who might remain to serve as host to either Orc or Urizen would have to be destroyed. He wasn’t a murderer, although that was what people would call him. A murderer was one who killed without a good reason. Nathaniel’s reason for killing was just. As long as a single man, woman, or child remained to be used as a host, Nathaniel was not finished with his work. All would have to die, all except those who had heard the Hum.

  Terwilliger would never willingly go along with such a plan. Yet he was—according to Blake’s own writings—integral to ending the Cycle. That left Nathaniel with only two options: change Terwilliger’s mind with logic, or change it by force.

  “I want to see Plunkett,” he said. “Take me.”

  Whitehead went with him to the cluster of sleeping chambers where the Horsemen slept. At this time of day, all the chambers were all empty except one. Whitehead led Nathaniel to the door and waited out in the hall.

  Plunkett looked peaceful, as if he was merely asleep. He was not dead; his chest moved with slow breath. But his soul was not at home. His consciousness was far away, trapped in the dark depths of Terwilliger’s mind.

  Nathaniel needed every man he could get. He could not afford to lose a single one. Even with the new men of Arthur’s Society, he did not have enough for what he needed to do. But it went even beyond that: the Horsemen were like his own children. He had a responsibility to them.

  “You failed him,” a familiar voice said. Nathaniel turned and saw his old stuffed kitty sitting near the open
door to the chamber. A bit of cottony stuffing was sticking out of a hole in its side. “I should have taught you better,” it said.

  “I’m winning,” Nathaniel said.

  “You haven’t beaten me.”

  “Yes, I have. You’re all chained up.”

  The kitty’s expression never changed, but its glassy eyes seemed to grow abnormally large. “Chains can’t stop me,” it said.

  Nathaniel shook his head and closed his eyes. He hated the kitty and wished it would leave him alone. “Just wait till I have the other one chained up next to you. I’m going to end your game for good.”

  “Only the child of Los can do that. Only Terwilliger. And you don’t have him, do you?”

  “Shut up!” Nathaniel snapped. “You’re never getting out of my house!” The kitty was right. Blake’s writings clearly indicated that Terwilliger was the only one who could win. Even so, it felt good to let off some steam. Nathaniel picked up a small wooden table and smashed it against the wall.

  The kitty was gone. Terrance Chisholm was standing just outside the doorway, watching Nathaniel with stark terror in his eyes. Chisholm was a pleasant young man whom Nathaniel had found working at a convenience store. He had always been obedient, never questioning. Nathaniel liked that about him. Chisholm didn’t ask about Nathaniel’s outburst; the men always pretended not to see whenever it happened. “I tried to wake him,” Chisholm said. “It’s like a coma. Won’t wake up no matter what you do.”

  “He’s lost,” said Nathaniel. “We’ll never get him back.” He touched Plunkett’s forehead with his fingertips. The urge to kill Terwilliger for taking one of his men was overwhelming. But that would not do. “Terrance, tell the leaders to come to my room for a meeting. We need to make some new plans.”

  * * *

  Ed opened his eyes and felt the usual disorientation for a few moments. The apartment was bathed in ambient noise from the city outside. Manhattan was never quiet, even in the middle of the night.

  Something felt wrong. His head still ached, and the encounter with Nathaniel had shaken him badly, but there was something else besides. He felt uncomfortably hot, even though the bedroom window was open and the air was quite cool.

  His bladder felt ready to burst, so he hurried to the bathroom and urinated for what felt like a good five minutes. This reminded him of Big John, who had once pissed for two minutes and thirty-eight seconds without stopping. John had been so proud of his record and had never failed to bring it up in conversations, especially with women. Two minutes, thirty-eight seconds. Beat that, assholes. Ed missed Big John.

  As he washed his hands, he looked at himself in the mirror with a critical eye. He had gained weight since Toronto—not a lot, but at least he could no longer count his ribs by sight. There was a round, pink scar just under his collarbone on his right side, where Kajdas’ bullet had entered him. He turned and looked at himself sideways to see the larger scar above his shoulder blade where it had gone out. It didn’t hurt at all, unlike the scar on his leg that still made him limp a little bit. He was still not quite sure how he’d come by that one, but he thought it had something to do with Ken Driscoll.

  Even with no shirt on, he felt uncomfortably warm. He ran some cool water in the sink and splashed his face with it, but the water felt hot by the time it touched his skin. Was he feverish? He didn’t feel sick.

  As he was turning off the water, he looked down into the drain and leapt backward in fright. Flames were coming out of the drain. Ed swore heartily and grabbed the faucet to turn the water back on, but the metal was too hot to touch. He wrapped a towel around his hand and tried again. When he turned the handle, no water came out of the faucet. Instead, more flames shot out, setting alight the towel on his hand as he pulled back with a grunt of pain. He threw the towel into the bathtub, where it quickly burned to ashes.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he muttered to himself as he inspected his hand. The hairs on the back had been singed. It seemed like a good idea to call the fire department, so he went back out to the living room and picked up the phone, but he couldn’t remember the number. He put the phone back down and tried to think. Was the whole building on fire, or just his bathroom? He shook his head; thoughts were coming slowly, like he was trying to find his way through a fog.

  He should be outside, not inside. He ran to the bedroom, pulled on a shirt, and stumbled toward the door. As he was reaching for the knob, he saw that the paint on the inside of the door was bubbling and peeling.

  There was a fire escape, wasn’t there? He ran to the window and looked out. A hot wind was blowing, making his face feel like his skin was about to burn right off of his skull. The wind was coming from the giant.

  On the street outside his window stood a man who was at least four stories tall. He had three heads. The left head had bright eyes that burned with yellow flames. Those eyes roved about, searching for something. Searching for him, Ed was somehow sure. The head in the middle had an enormous nose, and it was from its monstrous nostrils that the hot wind seemed to be coming. The air rippled and shimmered with waves of heat. Ed’s followers, just waking from their sleep on the sidewalk in front of his building, burst into flames. Their piercing screams hurt Ed’s ears.

  The third head, the one on the giant’s right, had a long beard made of dirt and moss. That head opened its mouth and a fountain of steaming water poured out, drowning those few who had survived the burning.

  Ed’s conscience was urging him to do something. He couldn’t just stay there and watch people die. The monster was looking for him; he thought he could draw its attention if he called to it. So he bellowed, wordlessly, until the monster turned its fiery eyes to look at him. Its heads were level with his window.

  All three of its faces smiled malevolently. One of its huge hands reached out to grab him.

  * * *

  Ed sat up in bed and realized that he’d been yelling in his sleep. The clock at his bedside said it was two in the morning. His room was cool, not hot. In fact, drenched as he was with sweat, he found it uncomfortably chilly. He got up and threw on a bathrobe, then took a quick look out the window. There was no three-headed giant. The street was dark and quiet. Putting his head close to the window, he could just barely see his people camped out in their sleeping bags below.

  It seemed strange to go to the bathroom a second time, but the previous trip had been just a dream. He relieved himself and went back to bed. But he wasn’t able to relax. Thoughts of the fire and the giant kept running through his head. There was still a sense of wrongness that wouldn’t go away. He tried to go back to sleep for half an hour before giving up and getting dressed.

  Someone was always awake in the little camp outside his door. There were six people, two young women and four men. Most of them wore at least one of the little BLAKE PEACE buttons. They gathered around him when he came down his front steps, and for once he didn’t try to shoo them away. After seeing them burned up and drowned by the three-headed man, he felt like he owed them something.

  “Who’s hungry?” he asked the group. A few hands went up, followed by several more. “Hamburgers!” he announced. Then he led them, pied-piper style, to the burger joint around the corner. Like all good burger joints, this one never closed—because if they ever turned off the grill, they would be forced to clean it.

  There was still a little bit of money left over from the stash he’d found in his hiding place more than a year ago. Ed waited patiently as they all placed their orders. Then he ordered a cheeseburger for himself, paid the bill in cash, and took a seat at a table with the red-haired young man.

  “Hello, Eugene,” said Ed.

  “Ricky,” the man replied.

  The one with the dirty old knit cap joined them, followed by the curvy girl who had flirted with Ed. They introduced themselves as Norris Plutshack and Penny Spivey. There was also a bearded young man named Timothy Capers, who was quite shy, and a girl named Krista who seemed very interested in Tim. The last one was a lanky
man with long, dark hair, who was sitting apart from the rest. “He’s not really into Blake Peace,” Ricky explained to Ed. “Come to think of it, I don’t think I know his name. He’s Norris’ friend.”

  “I thought he was your friend,” said Norris.

  The lanky man, who had evidently overheard them, suddenly pounded his fist on the table. “You’re all crazy!” he muttered. “It’s because of the R6 implants Xenu put in your heads.”

  There was a long, confused silence as everyone tried to make sense of this. “Have you sold any of your buttons?” Ed asked Ricky.

  Ricky shrugged. “Not so far,” he said sheepishly. “I’ve given a lot away.”

  “You’re selling them?” said Penny. “Far out! We can split the money all around. Once there’s money to split.”

  Ricky frowned at that idea. “Why would we split it? I designed the buttons. What did you do?”

  Ed decided he’d better step in before it got ugly. “Well, I don’t know how much you’d make, anyway. I was just curious.”

  But Ricky was thinking hard. His face became flushed, making his hair look even redder. “Shirts,” he said at last. “Why didn’t I think of shirts?”

  “Why would anybody want a shirt with my picture on it?” Ed asked him.

  Ricky tilted his head to the side and pursed his lips. “It’s like my brother always says,” he explained. “You start out with a brand nobody knows, of course nobody’s going to buy it. But you build the brand, get people to see it, maybe they don’t even know they’re seeing it. The impressions accumulate. Soon everybody knows the brand. They know it before they even know they know it, and then you’ve got ’em. We need t-shirts.”