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

by Michael Stiles

  The young woman folded her arms and shivered. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.” Several of the others began talking to each other in hushed tones.

  “Quiet,” Seymour said. “Listen.”

  They all fell silent. At first Perla couldn’t hear anything. Then, from the darkness to the west, she heard a rapid thumping sound.

  “It’s a helicopter,” said Cindy.

  “Not just one,” Flem said. “Sounds like a whole bunch.”

  The sound was quite distinct now; they were getting closer. But there were no lights. “Shouldn’t we be able to see them by now?” Perla said.

  Flem stood for a moment, watching the sky. “I think,” he said, “we should find somewhere to hide. Now.”

  * * *

  Shortly after he had started sneaking around Nathaniel’s caves, John had managed to swipe a small flashlight. He had never had to use it until now, and so he had never noticed that the batteries were almost dead. The light came on feebly, then flickered out. He swore at it quietly and shook it until it came on again, a faint yellowish beam of light that didn’t help him very much.

  He had been following Ed’s girlfriend and the others at a distance until the power went out. After that, his sole focus was on finding a way out of the cave before his flashlight expired. The Horsemen took Sarah and the tall black man up into the higher tunnels, and all John could do was listen to their footsteps diminishing in the distance. It pained him to take the cowardly way out when people needed help, but he would be no help to anyone if he got lost, alone, in these tunnels a mile underground.

  A sound up ahead made him freeze in his tracks. Someone was lurking around the corner, waiting for him. John found a large rock—he’d lost his knife when it had gotten stuck in Arthur’s chest—and prepared to strike. He crept closer, raised the rock over his head, and was about to strike when he realized that the hiding man was his old friend Charlie Burkholder. He diverted the rock at the last instant and whacked the wall with it instead.

  “Jiminy H. Fucking Cricket!” John exclaimed. “What are you doing down here, CB?”

  “John,” said Burkholder. “Is it really you? We all thought you were dead. Nobody’s seen you since…”

  Another man came out of the shadows behind him: Jim Rokus. Both had been allied with John in his mutiny at Society House, before things had gone bad for them. “I’m not dead,” said John. “Just been trying to find a way to save your pathetic asses. What the hell are you doing, standing around in the dark?”

  Burkholder mumbled an incoherent answer. John waved him off and started up the tunnel, shaking his flashlight whenever it flickered out. “Either of you guys got some batteries on you?” he said. They did not.

  Now that he had some company, John wished he hadn’t let Sarah and the others get away. He hurried to catch up, reasoning that they must be on their way up to Nathaniel’s private chamber. The flashlight flickered again; he shook it, but his palms were sweaty and it slipped out of his hand. The light went out with an audible pop when it hit the floor. The other two got down on hands and knees to look for it, but John saw no point. It was broken for good.

  “Forget it, guys,” he said. “CB, stop whimpering and put your hand on my shoulder. No! Not there, my shoulder.” Burkholder obeyed. “Now Rokus, your hand on his shoulder. Make a chain. Get it?” He waited until they were lined up behind him. “We’ll keep going uphill and feel around for anything familiar to show us the way. If anybody panics, he gets left behind. Let’s go.”

  To their credit, the men handled themselves well. John felt like panicking a few times himself, but he didn’t tell them that. He just kept walking along and humming a song to keep his mind off of the crushing, clammy darkness. He knew the upper tunnels well, but these deeper levels were unfamiliar. It was impossible to tell which direction he was heading or whether he was going in circles. Sometimes he would follow a path that seemed to lead uphill, only to find that it sloped downward again. Twice he heard the waterfall somewhere to his right. As they felt their way in the dark, he talked to the men quietly to calm their nerves (and his own).

  “So she shows up wearing a potato sack,” he was saying. “I mean, it probably wasn’t an actual potato sack, but it looked like one. Brown cloth like burlap. And here I am, all ready for a nice dinner date, shirt and tie and the whole ten yards.”

  “Nine yards,” said Rokus.

  “Shut up,” said John. “Anyway, I had this reservation at Sorrentino’s that was damn near impossible to get, too late to cancel, and this girl shows up in burlap. So I told her―”

  “Hold it, John,” Burkholder whispered. They paused as a yellow light appeared up ahead, swinging crazily and casting shadows that danced and swirled all around. It was disorienting to look at. Whoever was holding it was running away from them as fast as they could go. Burkholder broke formation and tried to run after it. John caught his shirt and held onto him until the light had dwindled to a faint glow in the cave ahead.

  “We don’t know what we’re chasing,” he whispered to Burkholder. “Could be one of them.”

  “Or it could be one of us,” Burkholder said.

  From the direction of the light came a woman’s scream, shrill and bone-chilling. The light vanished at the same instant. The echoes bounced around the cave for a long time. John muttered a couple of four-letter words and led the other two very quickly in the direction of the scream. He hit his head on a low part of the ceiling, lost his hat, and fell down a few times. By the time they came to the spot where he thought the sound had come from, there was nobody there.

  The darkness was absolute, and they were lost. All intentions of helping whoever had been screaming had left John’s head. Now he was concerned only with his own survival. He ran his hand over his bald and sweaty scalp, trying not to let fear take over. “Just give me a minute to think, guys.” He put his hands against the wall to steady himself. “Just a minute.” His head was cold. That meant something important. The sweat on his head was cold because there was a breeze blowing. But it wasn’t blowing sideways; it was blowing down at him from straight up. That made him laugh.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Burkholder wailed. “John’s gone crazy.”

  John looked up and felt the air blowing in his face. “No crazier than you two loons,” he said. There was a tiny sliver of gray light far above his head. “I just saved us.” He reached out and slid his hands across the wall until he found it: the rung of a ladder. “I hope you gorillas can climb.”

  They popped up out of the ground in the middle of an open plain. It was dark out, but there was a bright, pink strip on the horizon that meant dawn was almost here. They fell down on the ground and enjoyed the sensations and smells of being outside.

  “Still think I’m crazy?” John said as he lay on his back, looking up at the stars. He enjoyed the cool air for a minute longer. Then he rolled over and started to get up. “Break’s over, gentlemen. Let’s go buy some flashlights so we can go back inside.”

  Charlie Burkholder had pulled up two handfuls of grass and was smelling it. He gave John a wary look and said, “Not funny, big guy.”

  “I’m not trying to be funny. There’s a gal in there who needs saving. We’re all going back to get her. My car’s parked right over―”

  “Helicopters,” Rokus said.

  “Huh?” John looked at the sky. He did indeed hear the sound of helicopters. They were close enough to feel the thump of the rotors, but he couldn’t see anything.

  “Not up,” said Rokus. “Over there.”

  A helicopter was landing less than fifty yards away. It was painted black, and therefore was visible only as a shadow against the glowing sky. He turned and saw another to his left, and heard a third one behind him. Men in dark uniforms began pouring out of them as soon as they were on the ground. The pilots kept the engines running as the soldiers spread out, rifles at the ready.

  John scrambled to his feet. “Out of the goddamn frying pan,” he muttered. Behind the nearest
helicopter, he saw a strange sight: a man, silhouetted against the pre-dawn sky, was pushing someone in a wheelchair across the grass. It was rough terrain, but he was moving pretty quickly just the same. Whoever they were, they made their escape without being spotted by whoever was arriving in those helicopters.

  A few seconds later, several men in black uniforms and black helmets emerged from one of the choppers. Four of the soldiers pointed guns at John and his companions while a fifth one searched them for weapons. All they found was a pack of matches that Burkholder had been carrying in the pocket of his jeans.

  “Really, CB?” said John. “You had those the whole time?”

  Charlie shrugged, looking sheepish. John didn’t have time to be angry, because a moment later some asshole hit him on the head and everything went dark.

  * * *

  Joy knew she had found the machine room when she tripped over the body in the dark and fell into a pile of something warm and slippery. “Yuck, yuck, yuck,” she said as she tried to wipe the slimy bits off of her face and clothes.

  The room with the machine had something she needed. The man with the ugly teeth had dropped it earlier. She hoped it wasn’t broken. Feeling around (and desperately praying that she wouldn’t stick her hand into another nasty surprise), she found it: the square-ish flashlight Mike Ludd had been using. She found the switch and clicked it on and off a few times. Nothing happened. She refused to let this bother her. Instead of getting upset, she found the release for the battery compartment and opened it. A piece of broken plastic poked her finger. “Ouch,” she said, and almost put her hurt finger in her mouth until she remembered what it had just touched.

  The plastic case had cracked, leaving a gap between the battery and its metal contact. She squeezed the whole thing together and tried the switch again, and immediately she was dazzled by a shockingly bright light shining directly into her eyes. Quickly she turned the light away from her face, lighting up the grisly remains of the man who had been cut in half. That was not pleasant to look at, so she pointed it at the ceiling instead. There was a little blood up there, but no guts.

  Solving one small problem raised her spirits considerably. If she could get a broken flashlight to work, she could most likely do anything. Most likely.

  There were several boxes around with spare parts and tools. In one of them she found a fat rubber band which she put around the flashlight to hold it together. Then she set off in the direction the others had gone, taking the left fork where Croaker Norge had taken her to the right. She was well on her way up the gently sloping tunnel when she heard something that made her freeze in terror. It sounded like a cough.

  Just a single cough, and it really could have been anything. She had not been making an effort to be quiet, so the sound could just as easily have been her own echo. But then she heard it again, and this time it was unmistakable. She started hurrying, then jogging, then running. And behind her, in the darkness below, she heard someone running after her.

  Faster and faster she ran, flailing the flashlight about. The swinging light made the rock walls seem to spin and swirl around her. There was a narrow passage that sloped steeply upward as it wound back and forth, like passing through somebody’s small intestine. Then she came out into a big, open space and bumped into something that moved and grunted. That something turned out to be Rayfield.

  “Joy!” Rayfield said. “You’re all covered in guts!”

  “We have to run,” said Joy. “Somebody’s after me. I think it’s the guy with his skin coming off. I killed him and now he’s chasing me.”

  Most people would not have been able to make any sense of what she was saying, but Rayfield always seemed to understand her. He smiled and said, “We need to do something about these dudes first.” Only then did Joy notice that the two men in blue were still guarding Rayfield and Sarah, who still had their hands tied behind their backs. Up to that point, Joy had assumed that Ed’s large friend would have freed them by now.

  She was sorely tempted to run away. She turned the light back toward the tunnel from which she had just emerged, and screamed in utter terror at what she saw coming up the passage.

  His face looked the same as ever: round and blotchy, with big flakes of skin peeling off his forehead and cheeks. What made her scream was the huge, still-smoldering hole in his throat. Pink flesh, blackened at the edges, surrounded a dark hole that hissed when he breathed. His lips moved, mouthing a word that looked like “fishy,” but no sound came out. There was only the gurgling hiss of his breath, in and out. Joy could see his pupils contracting in the bright light. She shut off the light and backed up against Rayfield, who positioned himself so he was standing between her and Norge.

  After that, things became quite confused. The two Horsemen tried to keep their prisoners contained in the dark, but they seemed to be as frightened of Norge as she was. There was shouting and pushing and someone jabbed her in the eye with an elbow. The sound of Norge’s hissing breath seemed to be coming from everywhere. Joy clutched the flashlight to her chest, desperate not to lose it. Rayfield put a protective arm around her—somehow he had managed to untie himself. “I’ve got to find Sarah,” he whispered into her ear. “Take your light and go hide.” Then he was gone.

  Just when she felt like she was ready to start screaming hysterically, everyone fell silent. Joy realized that she could see, just barely. There was a faint reddish glow illuminating the cavern.

  “Oh, God,” Sarah whispered from somewhere to Joy’s right. “It’s him.”

  Joy turned the flashlight on again and pointed it in the direction of the red glow. She had seen the man with the silver hair before, at the show in Toronto. His hair was longer now, and he had a feral look in his eyes that she found deeply unsettling. The glow was coming from his right eye. Beside him stood someone she recognized.

  “Ed!” Joy tried to run up to him, but someone grabbed her hair and held her where she was. The hissing breath told her who it was that was holding her. “Ed, are you… you? You’re not somebody else, right?”

  Ed smiled. “It’s me, Joy. Rayfield. I’m glad you’re all right.” He turned to Sarah. “Have they hurt you?”

  Sarah touched the big, fresh bump on her head. “I’m okay.” Then she frowned. “What are you doing here? Nathaniel took me to use as bait, to get you to come here. I thought you’d be too smart to fall for it.”

  Ed shrugged.

  She turned her head to the right and left to wipe her eyes on her shoulders. “You’re such an idiot.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  “I would’ve found a way out, somehow. Now he’s got both of us. You should’ve known better than to come here.”

  “He had you,” said Ed. “I had to come.”

  Sarah smiled weakly. “Thanks.”

  “You’ll be going home soon,” said Ed, giving Nathaniel a sharp look. “Nathaniel agreed to let you all go. As long as I stay.”

  Rayfield was bristling with anger. “You can’t do that, Ed. It’s not just your choice.”

  “I’m sorry, Rayfield.”

  Nathaniel held up his hand to silence them. “I said she could go,” he said quietly. “These others are new. Not part of the arrangement.”

  “You’ve got everything you need, Nathaniel,” said Ed. “You have me. Let my friends go. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  Nathaniel stared at Ed, pondering. “You’ll do whatever I want anyway, once the machine is fixed.” He thought for a moment. “A new deal, then. Help me find Kitty before he gets away, and I’ll let them all go.”

  Ed exchanged a confused look with Sarah. “Who’s Kitty?”

  Nathaniel closed his eyes, clenched his fists, and said, “Gaah! Arthur. Arthur has to be found. It took so much to bring him here. If he gets away…” He trailed off, staring at something on the floor behind Ed. Everyone turned to see what he was looking at, but there was nothing there. “Kitty,” he whispered. “Who let you go?” There was a long pause as he waited for a respons
e. “No, you come back here. Right now.” His voice rose to a shout. “You come back here! I made a chair for you! Come back or I’ll… NO!” He leaped forward and grasped at the empty air. “Bad Kitty! Bad! BAD!”

  No one spoke for a long moment. Everyone seemed afraid to move, even Norge. Nathaniel rose and turned to face Ed. His eyes were not quite focused. “No more deal,” he snapped, spittle flying from his mouth. “You all stay. All of you! Kitty got away, so nobody leaves!”

  * * *

  Kajdas couldn’t remember how long he’d been inside of the whispering tower. He had crawled in through a small opening and found a strange sight inside: most of the interior space was taken up by a river of red light, too bright to look at, flowing straight up through the middle of the tower. It looked like lava, but didn’t give off any heat. It was the river that was whispering. There were many different voices in the river, most of which were unfamiliar to him. Only one voice was recognizable, and that was his own. He could not understand most of the words, but it was definitely his own voice.

  The walls inside the tower were rough stone, with ledges and crevices that he could easily stand on. For reasons that were unknown to him, he felt an overwhelming compulsion to go up. So up he went. He had learned long ago that his body would not get tired in this strange world, and his attempts to climb out of the hole in the ground had taught him that a fall would not hurt him. So he climbed fearlessly, finding footholds in the rock and gripping the rough surfaces with fingers that had no trouble bearing his weight.

  An eternity went by as he climbed. The voices came and went, and as he climbed higher they became easier to hear. Soon he was able to make out entire conversations. But the conversations didn’t make sense. He heard his own voice giving orders, shouting at people, and sometimes muttering quiet obscenities. This was confusing and he had no idea what to make of it.