by Tim Lees
“Maybe we can get a transfer for you. Somewhere a bit less . . . Cuckoo’s Nest, maybe?”
“Ha! Cuckoo’s Nest. That’s it, all right. Promise you’ll do it, will you Chris? Please?”
“I can ask Seddon to look into it. Might help if you could give me a better lead on Assur, though.”
“Shake,” he said. He pushed himself up in his chair, held out a hand. “Go on. Give me your word. Shake on it.”
“Assur . . . ?” I said.
“You’ll find Assur . . . somewhere like this. Somewhere people suffered, I expect. Somewhere people were . . . confined. Now, shake, Chris, will you? For me?”
I half-rose from my chair, leaned towards him. He clutched my hand. His fingers wrapped around mine. It was a strong grip. He shook my hand, up, down. Then, in a single movement, he swung his other hand up, seized my wrist, and pulled me forwards. I lost balance. My free hand went out and it sank into his belly, and I heard him wheeze and felt his spit on my face. But he wouldn’t let me go. My fingers caught at the fabric of his shirt, trying to get a purchase. My other arm was twisted back, and he was holding it with only one hand, now.
And then he cut it.
I didn’t realize that was what he’d done. The pain was like a burn. Everything slowed down. I tried to back away but he was holding me somehow—between his knees, I think—and I swung my free arm, trying to hit him. He had me in a way so I could not get to his face, nor see the arm he held. I felt a sharp stab somewhere in my forearm, and then a ripping, tugging, an awful pain. My veins were on fire. I threw my weight to the side and jabbed my elbow in his chest. His head was back, his eyes were white slits. There was spit gleaming in the corner of his mouth, and in his beard. Someone was coming through the door. I could feel the air shift, bowling back like water from the open door. I could trace its currents, its waves, I could feel it slowly splash against the wall, rebound and return . . .
And I wasn’t hurting anymore. The room was full of people. I was aware of hands all around me, of someone lifting me, taking me away from Dayling. Others were crowding over him, holding him down. Someone was cradling my head. An alarm blared. I knew that if I wanted, I could stop it, just by thinking. I could hear the silences between the noise. I could see each moment, every fraction of a second, opening around me like a flower. Everything was very calm. There was no sense of duration. It might have lasted hours, or seconds, but at the time that wasn’t how it felt: more like a single, perfect moment, a pinpoint in time, extending endlessly . . . so when the world began to move again it was at first so leisurely I hardly noticed, but it grew faster, faster, and I felt myself starting to fall, then plummeting, headlong, and the sounds rushed in around me like a sea.
“–out,” someone was saying, and someone else was pressing on my arm, and bit by bit the hurt came back, stinging, hot. There was a stink of disinfectant. Dayling was still in the chair across from me. Several nurses stood around him, two of them holding his arms. He seemed to have passed out.
“Chris? Mr. Copeland?” Mark, the bearded nurse, was leaning over me. He looked very large and his voice was abnormally loud.
“You’re going to be OK,” he said. “Ambulance is on its way, and we’ve got someone out front, waiting for it. I’m going to use some Steri-Strips here, just to patch you up a bit. OK?” I felt someone doing something to my forearm. “Lucky he didn’t hit an artery. What did he use? What kind of blade?” He said, “Did you see what he did with it?”
“I . . . didn’t see a blade.”
“Did he have it on him? Or was it something in here?”
“I didn’t see.”
To the staff behind him, he called out, “Pat him down. Body search if needs be.” To me, “I’m sorry. You’ll be OK. I’m sorry. Security is getting so slack here. I am so, so sorry . . .”
Chapter 63
Still Life
“How did it feel?”
“It hurt.”
Angel peeled the bandage from my arm. She pulled the lint away . . . wrinkled her nose.
“Chris, this is awful . . .”
“It looks worse than it is.”
The skin was swollen, candy-pink, and soft from being covered up so long. It looked just like a baby’s skin. Soft. Tender. Several lines were scored across it, curving sweeps of wound, the flesh puckered around them, here and there dimpled with stitches.
“Most of it’s not deep,” I said.
“I thought those places were secure.” She gently turned my arm, inspecting it. “What did he use?” There was a point the wound became a jagged, ugly set of lines, a kind of join-the-dots. “It looks like it’s been torn, not cut . . .”
“Yeah. Ow. Careful. They were pretty puzzled, too, at first. Couldn’t find the weapon.”
“Scissors . . . ?”
“No.”
“Don’t keep me guessing, Chris.”
“Sharpened thumbnail. You believe that?”
She screwed her face up.
I said, “He’d grown it long, rubbed it on the wall to get an edge. They said it was like horn.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Yeah. Luckily my tetanus was up to date.”
“Chris,” she said. “How did it feel?”
“I said. It hurt.”
“No. The other thing. After . . .”
“It felt—” and I stopped. I’d spent most of the flight trying to work it out, to put it into words.
“I don’t know,” I said.
She placed new lint on my arm.
“Hold that for me,” she said.
“Shock. Surprise. Then everything got very, very slow, like when your adrenaline’s up. But it didn’t stop there. It went on slowing and then . . . then it sort of jumped.”
“Jumped.”
I flexed my fingers, felt something pulling in my forearm. My shoulder ached, twisted in the struggle and not exactly soothed during the long flight out of England.
I said, “Time just stopped. Or slowed so much it might as well have stopped. And everything got very . . . bright, and sharp, and kind of super-real. Like—there was an armchair there, just this old armchair, only I swear, it looked like it was carved from stone. So solid, and . . . just real. And nothing hurt. Not just the cuts, but nothing, nothing in my life, ever, ever, ever. No consequences, no meaning . . .”
“It sounds awful.”
“Angie.” I couldn’t look at her. “It was—it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever known. Will ever know. I still can’t really think about it without . . . I don’t know. This sense of loss . . .”
She held the new bandage, but just stood there, and she frowned.
I said, “You know, like when you’ve got a film in a projector, and you slow it down, and it’s all stills, hundreds of stills, and the movement’s only an illusion, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, what if your life were like that, too? We think it’s moving, we think it’s going somewhere, but what if it’s all just a series of frozen moments, all self-contained, all separate from one another? And then each frame, each frame made up of more frames, more and more, down and down, and each of those divided up, the differences so subtle, so, so—fractions of a second. Fractions of fractions . . .”
“ ‘Every moment infinite’.”
“And I was safe. Nothing could happen. Nothing. He’d cut me, and I knew it, but the blood was just hanging, caught in midair—”
“Chris—”
“It didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt.”
“Chris . . .”
“I got a taste. Only a taste, that’s all. Not like Dayling. I can’t imagine it what it must be like for him. Full strength. I don’t . . .”
She wiped my face, and it was only then I realized I was crying. The tears were rolling down my cheek
s, soaking my shirt. I couldn’t help myself.
“It’s over now,” she said.
Only it wasn’t, and we both knew that.
Early afternoon, the first of our callers came by. Woollard rang the downstairs buzzer. Angel let him in. He wore a lightweight brown suit with a watch chain on the waistcoat. He was polite but ill at ease, shifting in his seat, checking his phone, and wasn’t too much comforted next time the buzzer blared and Shailer came to join us.
The third visitor, around 2 p.m., did not use the buzzer. He gave a sharp rap on the apartment door, making Riff bark fiercely. I glanced at Angel. I saw Shailer chew his lower lip.
Then I got up, and went to the door.
Chapter 64
The Deal
Seven B. Steven Benedict.
He stood there in the hallway, in the half-dark, tall and lean and with a kind of stillness that was not quite natural. It felt as if the air around him were in some way different from elsewhere, dependent on his will, more than on the laws of physics.
“Chris,” he said.
His movements marked him out from me, the fluid motion of his step, as graceful as a dancer’s, or an animal’s.
I wanted to move back, away from him. The impulse was intense, and almost overwhelming. Only the fact I’d been expecting it helped me to hold my ground.
He read me anyway. He saw my fear, gave me a slow half smile, then stepped right past me.
Riff began to growl.
Benedict, the newcomer, positioned himself by the side of the piano, taking in the room, the people. Shailer, in the kitchen doorway. Woollard, seated by the window. Angel, clinging to the dog’s collar. Riff strained, struggled. Seven B frowned. Then, in a single, rapid movement, he bent from the waist, his head shot forward, he looked straight into the dog’s eyes and he snarled with a sound like a steam valve opening.
Riff yelped. He’d not been touched, but he wrestled free of Angel’s grasp and fled behind the sofa.
She was on her feet immediately. She towered over Benedict.
“Mister, you try that ever again, I will throw you the fuck out of here, I don’t care what you are—”
I stepped between them. But Benedict just leaned back, smiling. He seemed pleased with things.
To Angel, I said, “Maybe you should put him in the other room.” Then to Benedict, “You listen to her. Don’t try that again.”
He raised his brow.
“You need me.”
“Maybe.”
Shailer raised his hands, placatory.
“Guys. We’ve got business to discuss . . .”
Only Woollard had stayed seated, watching us over his coffee cup. His eyes grew narrow, his lips thinned. He watched while Angel shut Riff in the back room with a bowl of treats. He let us all sit down.
Then he said, “You two twins or something?”
“No.”
Benedict said, “That’s mean, Chris.”
Shailer said, “Mr. Benedict here, he’s, um, he’s . . .”
“He isn’t human,” I said.
“What?” Woollard laughed, a little awkwardly. “He’s like a man from Mars, yeah? That what you’re telling me?”
“More like a god,” I said. “Same thing they had down at the Beach House. Or a demi-god, maybe.”
Shailer, ever helpful, said, “He’s a delegate of those entities we employ in our system. He’s our liaison with them. He takes Chris’s form due to an incident a few years back when—”
“Due to you being an arsehole,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say and I knew I should have kept my mouth shut, but I wasn’t going to take it back.
This time it was Angel who said, “Chris . . .”
“So he’s a god.” Woollard glanced at Shailer, glanced at me. At Benedict himself. “Don’t look like no god I ever heard of,” he said.
“Of course,” said Shailer, “god is a misleading term. We’d really prefer—”
“ ‘God’ is fine,” said Benedict.
“God,” said Woollard. “Small g, right?”
“Small g,” said Shailer.
“Well, my pastor’s gonna be relieved ’bout that, at least.”
Shailer started talking again, setting out some form of plan, but Woollard cut across him. He spoke calmly, quietly, but there was no question he wanted us to know who was in charge.
“You need to understand something. So listen up. You bring me in, you drag the whole Chicago PD in my wake. Clear? Best think on that awhile. Any lawlessness, any wrongdoing—any withholding information,” and his eyes lit briefly upon Benedict, “there will be consequences. God or no god. That goes for all of you.”
Shailer said, “People are dying, Detective Woollard, and with all due respect—”
“People are dying. Yeah. Who sees ’em? Who deals with ’em? Me or you?” He sniffed noisily. “So spare me your respect, Mr. Shailer. You,” he said to Benedict, “whatever you might be. If you can give us these guys, then that’s what you need to do: give.”
Benedict—Seven B—took an empty seat, crossed one leg on the other, and folded his hands together in his lap. Such perfect, perfect gestures. I watched him with a kind of fascination. He seemed so much at ease, and it was only after several minutes that I realized what I was looking for. I was trying to find a flaw. Some sign he wasn’t human. A joint that didn’t turn the way it should, a patch of skin that didn’t look quite real. But he was perfect, as it seemed to me. I could see the creases in his knuckles, the hairs on his wrist. My simulacrum, my almost double. My younger ghost.
“I’m here to make a deal,” he said. “That’s something Adam taught me. Right, Adam?”
Shailer said nothing.
Benedict said, “We learn from you. It’s in our nature. We watch, and we absorb. From beasts, we learned to bite and scratch. From men—so much, much more.”
“Get to it,” Woollard said. For the first time now, I heard the harshness in his voice. He’d kept a lid on things, but he was rattled, just as we were.
“I have something that you want. A little knowledge I can share with you.”
Shailer was hunching forward in his seat, hands between his knees.
Woollard said, “And in return?”
Benedict, as if just by the by, inquired, “These men you want. What’s to become of them?”
“They’ll be subject to due process. Trial. There’s no death penalty in Illinois, which in this case I’d say’s kind of a pity. So they’ll go to jail for a long, long time. With luck, the judge’ll throw away the key.”
Benedict said, “I’d propose something a little simpler. Perhaps more in order with your own views.”
It was his eyes, I thought: the brightness of his eyes. Constantly alert, untiring. That’s what wasn’t human. His eyes.
“I’ve been here for a time, living on the Old One’s castoffs. On the scraps from his table.” Benedict pursed his lips, as if remembering a taste, a texture. “My proposal is a simple one. No prison. No due process. No key to throw away. These men, they come to me. I’m hungry. They come to me, and then they’re gone. Does that sound good?”
Chapter 65
A Bigger G
“This,” said Woollard, and he sighed, as if long ago worn out by life, “is not something I can be party to.”
He stirred in his chair, and I thought he was about to go.
Benedict held out his hands. “Please then. Arrest me, officer. Arrest me, and carry on alone.” He said, “I hear there was another body found last night. This isn’t over. The Old One is no longer held in check. But he’s certainly not gone.”
Woollard said nothing.
Shailer said, “We’ve gotten caught up in these—what you might call, legal niceties. We want to stop the killings, right? The killings and, and, and the torture,
right? By any means necessary? And to get the project back up and running, and the power on in the city, and everything just back to normal. Isn’t that what we want, now? All of us?”
Behind the door, I heard Riff snuffle and whimper.
I knew exactly how he felt.
“It’s a large building,” said Benedict. “It’s been empty for some time. The power is off. There’s no link to the city’s grid. The place has history, a history they like, and which the Old One finds . . . acceptable. The people that you’re looking for are careful. They hide their comings and goings. Or the Old One hides them. No one sees.”
“The Old One,” said Woollard.
“This is what it’s all about,” I said.
“This is another small g god?”
“Slightly bigger g on this one. But pretty much, yeah.”
“From the Beach House.”
“Yeah.”
“I saw that thing. It hurt my eyes just looking at it.”
“Hurt your mind,” said Angel.
“Huh. Whatever.”
I said, “It reacts to feeling. I think they all do, to some extent.” I was aware of Benedict, Seven B, sitting across from me. I didn’t look at him. “This one . . . it’s cruder, maybe. Less refined.”
“It made a deal,” said Benedict. “Like Adam always says. It takes, it gives. That’s how it works.”
I said, “Pain’s a source of feeling. Simple to inflict. There’s a kind of person that comes easily to, I suppose.”
“Pain.”
“People get off on pain,” said Angel.
“This is S and M?” Woollard sounded disbelieving.
