Chuck studied his ice water as though he could divine answers from the beads of condensation trickling down the glass.
“Those boxes I signed for,” he said slowly. “Right before I crashed that fucked-up party. I say we see what toys Marilee has brought to play with. She may creep me out, but I don’t doubt that little girl knows her business. Maybe she’s got something we can use. Some sort of weapon or defense.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
An image of Nodens’s death throes replayed through Chuck’s mind, each moment of the Sleeper’s agony presented in excruciating detail.
“Well then,” he said softly, “I guess I’ll tell your sister you said hello when I join her.”
Chapter 5
By the time Chuck arrived at his office the next morning, Marilee already had half of the boxes emptied. Styrofoam packing peanuts littered the floor and plastic, antistatic bags crinkled underfoot as Chuck made his way through the mess. He rolled his eyes at Control, who slumped on the couch and watched the girl with an amused twinkle in her eyes. Marilee, however, was a study in earnestness. She inspected each piece of equipment with half-squinted eyes, turning it over in her hand and occasionally bringing it so close to her face that breath from her nostrils fogged plastic casings. Sitting cross-legged and surrounded by discarded refuse, she mumbled a running monologue.
“Seems t’ be intact. No visible structural damage. ’Course the calibration coulda been thrown outta whack…”
Marilee laid the piece of electronics on the floor in front of her as Chuck watched over her shoulder. The girl was extremely meticulous, taking the time to ensure that the black box was perfectly aligned with the meters, black boxes, and circuit boards already laid out. He glanced at Control again and forced himself to smile.
“Gee, honey, I’m sorry I overslept,” he joked. “But I’m glad you guys went ahead and opened the presents without me.”
“God bless us, Mr. Grainger,” Marilee muttered as she pried the lid off another crate with a flathead screwdriver. “God bless us every one.”
Chuck’s laugh surprised even himself. Maybe he’d been too hard on the girl, he thought. After all, he hadn’t been getting enough sleep. And he knew all too well how cranky he could become when his energy reserves were running low.
Sidestepping the little girl’s equipment, Chuck plopped down on the sofa and ran his fingers through his hair.
“So what is all this stuff anyway?”
“All I know,” Control commented, “is I’m not allowed to touch it.”
“What? Marilee’s not sharing her toys?” Once the words had passed his lips, Chuck regretted them. Though meant entirely as a joke, Director Murphy had warned them about condescending attitudes. And that was exactly the type of comment that could earn him a verbal warning…or worse.
Marilee, however, didn’t seem to mind.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you guys,” she said. “You’re professionals. Like me. I just need t’ make sure everything’s here. One missing part—or one piece in the wrong location—and this all might as well be useless junk.”
“So,” Chuck asked, “there’s a method to the madness then?”
Marilee glanced up as she pulled yet another antistatic bag from one of the smaller wooden boxes.
“There usually is, Mr. Grainger.”
Chuck stiffened and held his breath as mathematical formulas ran through his head. Eye contact with the girl, however, did not bring the mental probing he’d expected. No invisible fingers reached out to tug and pull at his thoughts; nor did he feel the uneasiness of sharing his mental space with an interloper after a lifetime of privacy. A crooked grin spread across the young girl’s face as she dropped her gaze. For a moment, she looked like an average eleven-year-old girl: slightly shy with a touch of embarrassment warming her face. She toyed with the bag in her hand as she spoke, her voice so low as to almost be inaudible beneath the babbling fountain.
“I’m sorry ’bout yesterday, Mr. Grainger. I was showing off. I know we work in the same building an’ all. But I didn’t think I’d ever actually meet you. When I did…well, I didn’t want you to think of me as just a kid.”
Control’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped open as she turned to look at her partner. Astonishment, however, quickly gave way to amusement as her eyes twinkled with a mischievous gleam.
“Our Chuck is really something else, isn’t he?”
Nudging Control in the ribs with his elbow, Chuck fidgeted on the couch. He felt like he was missing the punchline of a joke that should have been obvious and he frowned as he tried to piece together what was going on.
Marilee tucked her chin against her chest as her shoulders bunched up, almost as though she were trying to make herself as small as possible. Even her bowed head, however, could not hide the smile that covered the lower half of her face.
“Yeah…” Marilee whispered. “I never met anyone famous before.”
“You volunteered for this assignment, didn’t you, Marilee?”
The girl babbled so quickly it almost seemed as though Control’s question had been perceived as an accusation.
“I wasn’t th’ only one. Just about everybody in P.R.A. volunteered. I mean, who wouldn’t want the chance to work with him? I mean with you. You guys. Not just him.”
Control looked as though it took every ounce of her willpower to keep from laughing. Chuck, on the other hand, found this line of conversation to be increasingly awkward. Though the air-conditioning hissed through the overhead vents, the room felt a little too warm for his liking and the couch wasn’t quite as comfortable as it had been moments earlier. He shifted positions every few seconds as exasperation tightened his stomach.
His celebrity status within The Institute was hard enough to deal with; but now he felt like an outsider in his own office. It was as if Control and Marilee were communicating in some sort of secret code. And if there was one thing that frustrated Chuck Grainger to no end, it was being presented with a mystery that he couldn’t quite solve.
“So what is that anyway?” He tried to steer the conversation back into more familiar territory. “That you’re holding, I mean. Looks like a transistor radio.”
The girl relaxed as Chuck asked the question, almost as though she were as grateful for the topic change as he.
“This?” Sliding the object out of its bag, Marilee held it so both Chuck and Control could get a better look. The bottom half of the device consisted of a round, plastic grill that obviously protected some sort of speaker. Above the grill sat two rows of buttons and a small LED screen; gleaming at the very top was the chrome nub of a collapsible antenna. “This is a Spirit Box.”
“Ya don’t say. What’s it do?”
Marilee perked up at the genuine interest in Chuck’s voice and the girl scrambled to her feet as her free hand snatched a small, black cylinder from the floor. A cord dangled from one end of the cylinder and as she talked, Marilee jacked one end of the cord into a receptacle embedded atop the Spirit Box.
“It’s not as sophisticated as your Sleepers, of course. That’s some cutting-edge tech you guys work with. But I love Spirit Boxes. They’re prob’ly my favorite tool.” Marilee flipped a toggle on the side of the box and the screen radiated blue light as numbers flashed across it in rapid succession. Simultaneously, the office was filled with the hiss of static, forcing the girl to raise her voice to the point that she was almost yelling. “The white noise irritates some people. But I don’t know. I find it kinda relaxing.”
Control was obviously among the group who were annoyed. Cupping her hands over her ears, she winced.
“Do you think we could maybe turn it down a little?” she shouted.
“Nuh-uh. No volume adjustment. Auto-adjusts to the room’s acoustics. But it hasta be loud so you can hear.”
“That’s ironic. Because I can’t hear shit.” Marilee giggled at Chuck’s playful cursing. “Exactly what are we listening for anyhow?”
�
�The dead, Mr. Grainger.” Marilee flipped the toggle again. After the waterfall-like roar resounding from the cylindrical speaker, the gurgling of Chuck’s fountain might as well have been nothing more than a trickle. “We listen for the dead.”
Marilee explained that the Spirit Box worked by rapidly sweeping through a succession of radio frequencies. When used in the field, audio fragments sometimes came through: snippets of disc jockeys bantering with their audience, bits and pieces of music, and so on. Since The Institute was hidden so deeply underground, however, this was not an issue they currently had to contend with.
“Spirit Boxes aren’t proprietary. Anyone can order one off the Internet. Not as good as this custom job, but they’ll do in a pinch. Problem is amateurs sometimes think they’re hearin’ ghosts when all they’re really pickin’ up is a split second of Traffic ’n’ Weather Together on KIX-93.”
The principle, however, was similar. In much the same way that the living could broadcast over the airwaves, so could the dead. The radio waves acted as a carrier for voices from the other side, the main difference being that human communication was limited to a single bandwidth.
“So,” Marilee continued, “if you get a complete sentence—even a short one—you know what you’re hearing ain’t coming from the living. In the time it takes t’ utter a two-second phrase, even a dumbed-down Spirit Box has cycled through at least eighteen channels. Mine, though, is all sorts of tricked out. This one cycles through thirty-six frequencies a second. And it’s got this onboard digital recorder. Anything I capture is wirelessly uploaded to a server farm on Level G, so I never hafta worry about runnin’ outta storage either.”
Marilee beamed as she expounded on her favorite piece of equipment, her chest swelling with pride. It was obvious that she was talking directly to Chuck; the entire time, the girl didn’t so much as glance in Control’s direction. This, however, didn’t prevent the woman from chiming in.
“Still, though…two seconds? That’s not much.”
“Sometimes three if you’re lucky. We don’t know why yet, but they only seem t’ talk in short bursts.”
Chuck rose from the couch and walked to Marilee’s side. With his focus entirely on the Spirit Box, he rubbed his chin as the young girl smiled up at him.
“So,” he said slowly, “can you pick and choose? Which spirits you speak with, I mean.”
“Not really. Sometimes you just get what you get. But you can stack the deck in your favor. Like if you do a session in a location that a spirit was strongly connected with when it was alive.”
“Elaborate, please.”
Marilee thought for a moment before speaking. “Say, for example, you know that some guy died in his apartment. If you do a session there an’ get intelligent responses, there’s a good chance you’re talkin’ with that man. ’Course you can’t always be absolutely certain. You hafta go by clues the spirit gives you. If you can get ’em to tell you their name, that’s a good start.”
“Why not just have someone there who would recognize the voice?” Control suggested. “A friend or family member, maybe.”
“Nope.” Marilee shook her head so emphatically that her pigtails swished from side to side. “Most of the voices are affected by the frequency sweeps. It changes the pitch and tone. Cadence, too. Usually you can’t even tell if you’re talkin’ to a male or female. Unless they outright tell you.”
“Okay, we’re getting sidetracked here,” Chuck interjected. “Going back to my original question: Is there any other way you can stack the deck? Like if you really, really want to speak with a particular spirit.”
Control frowned as she stood and joined the two.
“What are you getting at, buddy? You’ve got that look in your eye.”
“Personal objects. Somethin’ they had physical contact with when they were still alive. They retain traces of personal energy. Sometimes that energy can form a link. Not always. But sometimes.”
“Marilee, I suspect that you are very good at what you do. Probably the best. Especially since you were selected out of all those volunteers.” Chuck had placed his hand on the girl’s shoulder as he spoke, causing her to smile and shyly look away. The hint of bashfulness, however, did not prevent her from taking pride in her accomplishments.
“Yeah…yeah, I am. The other Chipheads call me Bloody. Bloody Williams.”
“That’s horrible!” Control gasped, eliciting a giggle from the girl.
“It’s just a joke,” she explained. “We’re all mediums…but I’m rare.”
“Well then, Bloody”—Chuck smiled—“how would you like to show us what you and your Spirit Box can do?”
“I repeat, Chuck: What are you getting at?”
Chuck glanced around the office, turning in a slow circle as he considered his words.
“We know that Nodens was murdered in this office. We also know he was killed by a ghost.”
“NCM,” Marilee corrected.
“So you’re suggesting we contact the ghost—I’m sorry, NCM—who killed him? What makes you think that spirit would want to talk to us?”
“Oh, I’m sure it wouldn’t,” Chuck mumbled. “Revealing its hand at this stage in the game…that would ruin all its fun, wouldn’t it?”
Chuck walked to the area of the room the hospital bed had once occupied, studying the indentations its legs had left in the carpet before turning to face his companions again.
“Nodens died right here,” he continued. “But his spirit left. He passed over. We couldn’t see who killed him on that recording.”
Control’s eyes widened as Chuck’s plan began to dawn on her.
“But maybe he did.”
Chapter 6
Procuring an item that had belonged to Nodens required a bit of creative thinking. When the man had been recruited as a Sleeper, he’d come to The Institute with nothing more than the hospital gown covering his body. Though Chuck had been given no background information about his new partner, he knew the man had been married; when Nodens had first been wheeled in, Chuck had noticed that the skin encircling the base of his ring finger was not as dark as the rest of his hand. However, the wedding band that had kept this strip of flesh from tanning—as well as any other personal effects—had been claimed by surviving relatives when the terminally ill man had allegedly passed away at the hospital. Even the hospital gown had been incinerated, quickly being replaced by The Institute’s own disposable ones.
You can’t get much more anonymous than that, Chuck thought as he watched the digital display inside the elevator go through the alphabet. When it reached Level L, a bell chimed and the doors swished open, flooding the enclosed space with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and the perpetual clicking of administrative assistants at their keyboards.
Ever since he was a child, Chuck had loved puzzles. The logic required, the way they sometimes forced him to look at problems from different perspectives, and the challenges they presented: Every step of the process was as rewarding to him as hitting a home run was to other boys his age. The best part, however, had always been the euphoria that accompanied a correct solution; pride in a job well done and a personal sense of accomplishment were a combination that was almost intoxicating and it was this natural high that kept him coming back to the brainteasers time and time again.
This was also why Chuck whistled a nameless tune as he stepped out of the elevator. Beaming smiles at those he passed, he practically skipped down the corridor leading to his office, his steps light and bouncy as his hands jingled change in his hip pockets.
What he toyed with, however, was not the loose quarters and dimes; his fingers rubbed something even smaller, something so incredibly expensive that he’d been required to sign four different requisition forms acknowledging that his pay would be docked should anything happen to it while it was in his possession. Even sealed within a miniature ziplock bag, the object weighed less than a feather and Chuck knew he shouldn’t be messing with it at all. The slightest amount of pressure
could potentially snap the thing in half, ensuring an extremely fragile lifestyle for years to come. Yet, he couldn’t resist.
This was, after all, a brilliant solution to a difficult puzzle. One which he was particularly proud of, for it had demanded that he think far, far outside of the box.
Eager to share his success with Control, Chuck scanned his retina and entered his office only to find that the interior was dark. Light spilled through the open door and he saw Marilee and his partner standing beside a stack of large boxes that had not yet been opened. However they didn’t turn to look at him as the door swung shut, plunging the office into a darkness that was almost as complete as The Divide.
“Give your eyes a few minutes to adjust. Marilee’s got equipment all over the place.”
Something red flashed in one corner of the office, a small pinprick of light that winked out almost as soon as he registered it. Within a few seconds, there was another flash of crimson, just as tiny and short-lived as the first. This one, however, seemed to originate near the gurgling Buddha fountain.
“What are those?” Chuck asked as he acclimated to the darkness. “Those little lights?”
“Electromagnetic field detectors.” Control’s voice moved through the darkness, coming closer to him. Now he understood that his companions weren’t being rude when they didn’t turn to greet him; they were simply preserving their night vision.
“They’re for you guys’ benefit. I don’t need ’em. They haven’t made a machine yet that’s as sensitive as me.”
Control emerged from the gloom as nothing more than a moving patch of darkness. While Marilee tinkered with something near the stack of crates, she shared with Chuck what the girl had explained in his absence. Apparently, whenever there was any sort of contact with the dead, an electromagnetic field was created. This field acted as a bridge between worlds, allowing energies to flow back and forth.
“When those lights start flashing rapidly,” Control said, “that means the line is open, so to speak. That’s how we know that things are about to get interesting.”
The Realms of the Dead Page 17
