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

by Michael Stiles

  “Someone should call the police,” said Cruller. That smile never left his lips. “Oh! You know what? Someone did!”

  Lights were flashing outside the windows. Red lights. Ed couldn’t turn his head to look, but he knew what was coming. There were footsteps coming up the stairs to the front door. He heard a heavy knocking, and a voice called, “Police!”

  A moment later they were inside, four police officers with their guns out. Cruller patted Ed tenderly on the cheek. Then he stood, straightened his tie, and walked out the door, right between two of the officers. The cops never saw him; they only saw Ed with his Beethoven, and the body of Emanuel Wilson.

  It was only then that Ed regained his ability to move. He tried explaining to the police, but they were shouting at him to be quiet. Guns were pointed at him and one of the cops was taking out a pair of handcuffs. He looked helplessly at the door as the officers closed in.

  35

  The Dark Man

  Rayfield woke up suddenly. Joy was shaking his shoulder and talking to him. It took a moment to understand what she was saying. “I’m here,” Joy said. “You’re safe. Stop yelling.”

  It was a little past two in the morning, and he had only been asleep for an hour. He and Joy had stayed up late discussing what the Slav had told them, and what they should do about it. It was clear that they needed to warn Ed, but first they would have to find him.

  At some point during their conversation, he had dozed off and fallen into a terrifying dream of being taken prisoner, dragged by three men into a cavern in the ground from which there could be no escape. They pulled him inside and shut the door, and then he woke up shouting. His throat was raw, as though he’d been shouting for some time.

  Rayfield lay back on his pillow, breathing heavily, and took Joy’s hand. “Baby,” he said, “that was one nasty dream.”

  “You’re safe now. Those men can’t get you here.”

  “I should’ve been able to fight ’em off.”

  “It was three against one, Rayfield.”

  “Yeah,” Rayfield said. “But I should be able to take three. They weren’t that big.” He stopped for a moment to think. It wasn’t easy to think so soon after waking up. “How did you know how many guys I was fighting?”

  It was dim in the apartment, but there was enough light to see her smile. “Because I had the same dream, silly.”

  Rayfield sat up again. “Say what?”

  “Same dream, I said. Being pulled into that door in the ground. The men were wearing blue.” She gasped suddenly. “Blue men! Rayfield, they were the blue men! And there were mountains off in the distance.”

  “Big ones,” Rayfield said.

  Joy sat up and pulled on a t-shirt. “I know those mountains!” she said. She got up to search for her jeans, which she found in the far corner of the room. “I grew up with those mountains.”

  Rayfield began getting dressed as well. “Whose dream was it?” he asked. He was not used to having other people’s dreams, although he knew several people, Joy included, who did that sort of thing all the time.

  “Perla!” she exclaimed. “It was Perla’s memory, and Sarah was there too! Perla must have planted it in our minds. They’re in trouble. We have to go.”

  He had some money in the top drawer of the dresser. It wasn’t a lot, but it was all the gas money he had at the moment. “Where you want to go?”

  “To Denver, Shnookie. Oh, you can meet my dad while we’re there! He really wants to meet you.” She continued talking as they got ready, but all Rayfield could think about after that was the sheer terror that filled his heart at the thought of meeting Joy’s father for the first time.

  “That’ll be great, baby,” he said, trying not to show his dread.

  * * *

  In spite of all he had experienced, Ed had seldom been in situations that called for panic. Right up until Eleanor’s murder, about the scariest thing he had experienced in his life was driving on the Los Angeles freeway. But in the noise and flashing lights, as cops were forcing Ed’s face to the floor and pinning his arms behind his back, a part of his mind went a little crazy. He knew, on one level, that the policemen were doing their job; he couldn’t blame them for thinking he was a killer. But he wasn’t a killer. The person they should be arresting was getting away. The more he thought about this, in the slow-motion moments while they were trying to subdue him, the more frantic he became.

  He thought he might be able to do something similar to what Sarah did—disable them with a blast of energy from his mind. This was one of the tricks he had refused to allow Jonathan to teach his followers, but it wasn’t a hard thing to figure out. If it did work, it would likely kill at least some of the policemen. Then a better idea came into his head: he thought of Cruller, and the way he had seemed to move from place to place instantaneously. Somehow Cruller had slowed Ed’s mind, making the world appear to move more rapidly around him. Ed thought he might be able to do the same.

  It was hard to breathe with four men pressing down on him. He felt the cold metal handcuffs pressing against his wrists, about to snap closed. There was no time to be careful about it. He reached out with his mind and tried to imitate what he’d felt Cruller doing to him.

  The cop with the handcuffs suddenly lurched to his feet, gasping for breath. The cuffs clattered to the floor, forgotten for a moment. The other men hurried to help their fellow officer, who was staggering about with his hands clutching his chest. Whatever Ed had done to him, it was not what he had intended.

  The policeman dropped to his knees. His face was pale in the flashing red light. Ed sat up and watched in horror as he fell face-down and stopped moving. Two of his companions rolled him over, checked his pulse, listened for breath. The fourth cop kept his gun trained on Ed.

  “I’m sorry,” Ed told them. He stared at the officer on the floor, whose eyes were staring lifelessly at the ceiling. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Shut up,” said the one with the gun. The other two turned to Ed with fury in their eyes.

  Where was Mason? Ed was quite annoyed with him.

  Two more guns were pointed at Ed now. “Hands on your head!” shouted one of the policemen. “Get down on the floor!” yelled another. “Don’t move!” the third one bellowed. Ed stopped with his hands in a halfway-raised position, unsure of which instructions he should follow.

  In the end, adrenaline won out over reason. From the look in their eyes, Ed was not at all certain that he would survive this encounter even if he surrendered himself to them. Their faces were full of terror and rage mingled together.

  He didn’t want to kill anyone else, but he had to do something to throw them off. Recalling one of Jonathan’s lessons, he reached very gently into the mind of the nearest man and found the part of his brain that controlled eyesight. He had tried, under Mason’s tutelage, to learn how to make people see things that weren’t there. That lesson had not gone well, but he had managed to create the illusion of lights and motion. He did that now, making the officer think he was seeing bright objects flying out of the darkness. The cop cried out in surprise and turned his weapon that way, which confused his two companions. Ed did the same to the second man, this time making it appear that lights were swirling around his head. The third one, with another nudge from Ed, saw nothing at all as his vision was temporarily darkened.

  As all three looked around in bewilderment, Ed ran out the door and down the steps. He nearly collided with Jonathan, who was running the other way. Ken Driscoll was right behind him. “Ed!” Jonathan said, gasping for breath.

  “Where were you?” Ed demanded. “I needed your help!”

  “I saw someone… going inside,” said Mason, pausing in mid-sentence to breathe, “and then… he came back out, but there were police cars everywhere. I was…” He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “I was trying to figure out how to get to you without getting shot at.”

  Ed decided not to pursue the subject for now. He didn’t see any more
police outside, but it wasn’t worth taking any chances. He led Mason and Driscoll down a dark street. “Did you see which way Cruller went?”

  Compared to Jonathan, Driscoll was barely winded. “He’s the one with the curly wig? Down that way. Toward the river.” Mason nodded.

  “Let’s go.” Ed ran south along Wisconsin Avenue with the other two trailing behind. He was not in excellent shape—every step brought a sharp pain to his right thigh where Ken had once shot him—and he only made it two blocks before he ran out of steam and had to rest for a moment. The chilly air made his chest ache. Mason and Driscoll caught up a moment later, Jonathan huffing and puffing as if he’d just run a marathon. Driscoll was having much less trouble. A siren approached; they hid in a doorway and watched a police car race past. Another one followed it a few seconds later.

  “There!” said Mason, pointing up ahead. It took a little time for Ed to see what he was pointing at, but soon he was able to make out a human figure hiding in the shadow of a building. “Wait,” said Driscoll, but Ed was already running again.

  Cruller was no longer there when Ed reached the spot where he’d been hiding. His foot slipped on something soft and slippery in the darkness, which he took at first to be some kind of dead animal. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a wig, dark and curly. It reeked of oily smoke. When the others caught up with him again, Ed showed it to them.

  “We’re on the right track, then,” Jonathan panted.

  Ed sniffed the air. The stench of the wig was overpowering, so he threw it aside. “I think he went down toward the waterfront,” he said.

  “Then we’ll catch him there,” said Mason. “You and Ken go on. I need a minute.”

  Ed and Driscoll continued on to M Street, which was still full of life at this late hour, but Cruller wasn’t anywhere in sight. They stopped for a moment to rest while Ed looked for signs of smoke. “There,” he said. He could see a faint haze on the far side of the street.

  Driscoll waited for the light to change, but Ed ran right out into traffic, waving an apology at the honking drivers. Driscoll followed him, cringing at the sound of every horn. When he reached the other side, Ed stopped to look around. Beyond the lights of the busy street, he couldn’t see the smoky haze anymore. But he thought he could still follow the reek of the smoke.

  They crossed beneath an overpass and found themselves in a park that ran along the northern bank of the Potomac. Wisconsin Avenue ended there, and so did the trail of smoke. “Unless he’s swimming for it,” said Driscoll between heavy breaths, “he had to go either left or right.”

  “I can’t smell him anymore,” said Ed. “I’ll go right, you go left. If you see him, just start hollering.”

  “I don’t like this one bit.” Driscoll looked more uneasy than Ed had ever seen him. Ken turned left, to the east, and set off at a brisk jog. Ed went the other way, but only managed to run a dozen paces on the paved pathway before he had to slow to a walk. In the dark he felt vulnerable and alone.

  There was no moon, and although the park was lit at night, many of the lights were not in working order. There were plenty of places to hide, which meant there were plenty of opportunities for Cruller to wait for him and jump out of the shadows. This was the only thought in Ed’s mind every time he passed a tree or a bush large enough to serve as a hiding place. But there was no smell of smoke. If Cruller was lurking nearby, there should be at least some small trace of it.

  A lone walker came toward him on the path. Ed held his breath and watched the man suspiciously as he passed, but it wasn’t Cruller.

  After a bit more walking, he stopped altogether and tried to think. Would Cruller be more likely to attack him, or would he run to safety? Ed had no idea what Cruller looked like without his hair and glasses, so it would be possible for him to disappear into a crowd without too much trouble. But he had passed right by the crowds on M Street without doing that. What was he up to?

  His thoughts were interrupted by Mason’s voice—not hollering, but speaking in a low and urgent tone. “He’s got Driscoll! Ed, come quick!” The voice sounded like it was right behind him. Ed spun around and saw only the pure blackness of the nearby river, invisible in the dark night. “Ed!” The call came more insistently this time. He was speaking directly into Ed’s mind. Ed was annoyed that Mason had never taught Ed this trick; it would have been useful to know. He went back the way he had come, moving in a zigzag path to stay in the shadows.

  He found Cruller and Driscoll grappling in an open area near a fountain. Driscoll had an open gash on his forehead and was having trouble staying on his feet. Cruller had his hands around Driscoll’s throat. He had no wig and no glasses; his head was mostly bald, with a fringe of dark hair around the sides, and his eyes were too small for his face. What made him instantly recognizable was the cloud of darkness and smoke that surrounded him. He was enveloped in a black aura, infinitely darker than the natural darkness of the night. He appeared to absorb the light around him. Behind him the smoke formed two hazy, pointed wings, like those of a demon. As Ed came near, Cruller looked at him and smiled.

  “Terrrrrwilliger,” he hissed. Ed realized with sudden terror that he was looking at the true face of Elmer Nosgrove, the dark man.

  “Ed,” Driscoll rasped. “He’s killing me. I can’t―” Cruller squeezed and Driscoll could no longer speak.

  There were people around. A couple walked past the fountain, hand in hand. The walker who had passed Ed stood some distance away, smoking a cigarette. They paid no attention to what was happening. “Hey!” Ed called to them, waving his arms. “We need help!” The people didn’t look at him.

  “They can’t hear you,” Cruller said. “Like everyone else in this city, they see only what they want to see.”

  Ed looked around for Mason, but Jonathan was nowhere in sight. He was on his own. “Leave him alone!” he called. He stepped forward into the glow of a nearby streetlight, hoping Cruller would not notice that his knees were shaking.

  Cruller let go of Driscoll’s neck. Driscoll fell to his knees, coughing. “Come closer, Terwilliger,” said Cruller.

  “Ed, stay back!” Jonathan Mason stepped out of the shadows. In his hand was a revolver, aimed at Cruller.

  The dark man laughed deep in his throat. “What’s this? You’re going to shoot me?” He seemed to think this was very funny.

  “I can’t let you kill an innocent man, Nosgrove,” said Mason. “Pick on me instead, why don’t you?”

  Cruller considered this. “All right.” He waved his hand, and Driscoll suddenly stood up. Tendrils of black smoke curled from Cruller’s fingers and wrapped themselves around Driscoll’s head. Driscoll staggered, caught his balance, and then began to approach Mason with a lumbering gait. His face was contorted in an expression of pain and horror.

  “Stop this, you lunatic!” Mason backed away from Driscoll, who was advancing with his arms raised toward Jonathan’s face. Ed tried to approach, to help in some way, but his legs failed to work and he fell to the ground.

  “Jonathan!” he cried. “I can’t move!”

  “I’m trying to take back Driscoll’s mind,” Mason said with some effort. “But Urizen is strong. So strong…”

  Driscoll took another step forward. Blood dribbled at an alarming rate from the nasty cut on his head. Mason tripped, falling on his back with a grunt. The gun tumbled from his hand.

  Ed struggled to move his legs, but they were numb and wouldn’t move. He could sense the mental battle taking place between Cruller and Mason—a battle that threatened to tear Driscoll’s mind apart. Mason felt around for the gun. It was inches away from his hand, but it might as well have been a mile.

  With a terrible scream, Driscoll broke. He fell to the ground, convulsing and whimpering, as the two men fought for control over his mind. The convulsions lasted only a few seconds, and then he was still.

  There was a long moment of silence. “Pick it up,” Mason whispered.

  Ed found that he was able to move aga
in. He rubbed his tingling legs and sat up.

  “Pick it up,” Mason said again. He was talking about the gun, Ed realized. Ed crawled to him and picked up the revolver. “Shoot him,” Mason said.

  Cruller was watching Driscoll’s dead body with an almost childlike fascination. He seemed to have forgotten all about Ed and Jonathan. Ed pointed the revolver at his chest. There was a loud noise, but it wasn’t the sound of a gunshot. It was more of a clang, like someone had dropped a manhole cover.

  “What’s this?” said Mason.

  The clanging noise had, in fact, been the sound of a manhole cover hitting the ground. The manhole was about twenty feet behind where Cruller stood. Someone had pushed the cover off from the inside. Three men climbed up out of the opening. Their faces were painted in a dark color that appeared black in the dark of night, but Ed knew the color wasn’t quite black. Moving silently and efficiently, they seized Cruller and slapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists. One of the men stuffed a wad of cloth into Cruller’s mouth.

  “Give me the gun!” Jonathan snatched the weapon out of Ed’s hand. He took aim and pulled the trigger. The gun fired with a loud pop, but the shot missed. He took another shot, and another, but he missed every time.

  The three men dragged Cruller to the manhole. The cloud of black smoke thickened around the men; the black wings beat at them. Ignoring this, they dragged him to the manhole and forced his legs inside the opening. Then they let him drop. One after another, the three men descended into the hole. The last one slid the cover back into place. It slammed shut behind him, and he was gone.

  Mason stood up and went over to examine the manhole. Ed joined him. “That was strange,” said Jonathan.

  “Blue men,” said Ed. “Nathaniel’s men.”

  Mason nodded. “They’re going to have their hands full with him.”

  They returned to Ken Driscoll’s body. Ed stared at it, unable to comprehend what he was looking at. The face looked like Driscoll’s face, but there was no Driscoll in there. Ed bent down and straightened Ken’s glasses on his face, because they had been knocked askew.