The Scream

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

  And besides, there were all those guys with guns. . . .

  Shut up, he told himself. Walker was talking. When Walker talks, people listen. He knew that with his shades on nobody could tell if he was listening or not, but that wasn’t quite the point.

  Then the second flash of dread went off, and he realized that, yes, maybe that was the point, because everybody in the band was wearing their shades and he couldn’t see their eyes. Alex always wore his, of course; besides, Rod had already checked. And with the guys in the rhythm section, Gene and Terry, it hadn’t mattered since Phoenix, when they’d tried to jump ship and wound up, no-eyed, on Tara’s team.

  So maybe it was Tara that made him want to run, but he didn’t think so. She was acting the same as ever: cool, silent, oozing dark wet serpentine power. She looked at him, as Walker talked, with the same superior smile he’d seen a million times.

  Maybe it was the fact that they were all smiling like that. As if they weren’t even listening. As if Walker’s words were for him alone.

  Because they already know . . .

  He glanced at the exit again.

  And the third flare ignited, but there was no time to think about it, because Walker was in front of him now, holding him by the collar, with his lone eye visible and eloquent as hell, so eloquent in fact that the words from his lips were like foreign language subtitles as they spoke to Rod’s ears.

  “Don’t even think about it, boy.” The eye, the voice, in perfect accord. “All you have to do is get through the first movement. That’s four simple stages. Tick tick tick tick. You pull that off, and everything will be gravy.

  “And you will do it. Right?”

  Rod nodded his head, and the band smiled winningly. As one. A fourth warning flare tried to spark in his brain, but the humidity was such that it never got off the ground.

  Little brother, he thought, as Alex tossed him a sparkling smile that was not his own and control flitted irrevocably away like tweetie-birds from a magician’s top hat.

  Then he turned to where the stage awaited.

  And began the long walk up to his rightful place.

  At the opening of the Way.

  7:56 P.M.

  Kyle looked at his watch and felt a thin trickle of sweat roll down the back of his neck. They were scrambling in the throes of last-minute prep. It had been hyped as the most elaborate show ever taken on the road. That was total bullshit.

  He knew exactly where this show was going. And it wasn’t on the road.

  Kyle rapped nervous little rhythms on the big metal drums stacked on the pallet before him and watched as the crew hustled like Olympic speed-freaks, running on too little sleep and too much adrenaline and the promise of the payoff at the end of the line.

  It was risky, he thought, to be pushing them so hard.

  But it couldn’t be helped.

  There were sixty-three men in the crew. Seventeen of them were actively involved in running the lights, the sound, and the standard special effects that The Scream toured with, which included the giant inflatable claws, which included the laser-cannons and the Cobra, which included the smoke guns and strobe lights and all the other bells-and-whistles they fed the kiddies to get them nice and lubed and make them think they were getting their twenty-bucks-a-pop worth of showbiz.

  Another fourteen were required to work in tight-knit synchronization on the computer-controlled hydraulics that animated the humongous articulated stage prop they’d set up, plus the crane operators for her arms. Knock off four to guard the front of the stage, another four for the rear, and that left him two dozen warm bodies with which to take care of his end of things.

  Of course, he could have as many cold bodies as he desired. Momma had made that very clear. But he couldn’t trust them.

  Not anymore.

  They were too fucking weird. Unstable, and getting worse the closer things got to the end. Kyle didn’t like playing nursemaid to a roomful of psychotic budget cuts anymore. There was too much at stake. They had to play things too close to the vest. When the shit hit the fan he had to get his men deployed and hold the fucking perimeter, until Momma was strong enough to hold it herself. They had the goods to do it—M-60’s, M79 grenade launchers, RPG7s, a regular smorgasbord of death—but manpower was critical.

  “I don’t want any of those fuckers out on the concourse,” he had said.

  And Walker had said no problem.

  His men dragged the great flaccid sections of fire hose into position and connected them; assembled, they formed an enormous loop that filled the center of the arena floor and completely encircled Hook’s five columns. Before him sat a hand pump and the fifty-five-gallon containers that housed Hook’s special sauce.

  He pried the cap off the first drum; the smell that leached out was as offensive as it was identifiable. It contained three very common, very plentiful ingredients, not very secret at all. And none of which were particularly hard to come by.

  Just gasoline. Liquid soap.

  And lots of fresh blood.

  Mix it all together till it’s just a little thicker than a good 10-40W motor oil so it will fly high and spread wide and what’s that spell?

  The special sauce.

  And, boy, did it stink. Kyle looked up at the T-shaped lighting scaffold that jutted out and hung over the front of the stage. Three of the light crew were inching carefully toward their positions along the catwalk; agile as spider monkeys, olive-drab ammo boxes firmly in tow. This was gonna be some show, alrightee.

  Kyle wiped the sweat off his neck. Checked his watch. Hooked the pump to the feed end of the hose.

  And got ready to rock ’n’ roll.

  7:58 P.M.

  Mary Hatch stood in the tiled doorway of the Section G ladies’ room, nervously waiting for Buzz to live up to his name and buzz off. She wished he would. She even prayed he would.

  But no. He stayed right where he was, waiting at the foot of the east stairs, looking antsy and anxious to get back to the arena. The warmup videos had started, their beat thudding along the corridor tiles. He was attracted by the sound along with everybody else, like iron filings to a magnet.

  She wished he would just go.

  It wasn’t anything against him personally. He was actually a nice guy. He had given her a ticket, lent her his jacket—which was a real blessing, since the culottes she was wearing drew stares at twenty paces and the jacket at least looked cool—and had otherwise been as best a gentleman as he knew how.

  He’d even bought her a drink and some popcorn and filled the last hour with enough ambient small talk that the nattering voice in her skull faded for whole minutes at a stretch.

  But it kept coming back.

  She felt guilty and very sad at the thought of just leaving him in this place; he had the same sweet loser quality that she used to find herself drawn toward.

  But she couldn’t help it. She was being drawn toward something much stronger.

  And a whole lot less pleasant.

  She peeked out again as two fishnet-clad, teen queens looked haughtily around her. She was surprised at the comingling of detachment and terror she felt: for them, for him, for herself. It was as though she were simultaneously elevated to woman-with-a-mission and reduced to a cog, deep in the mechanisms of a far greater process.

  Either way, it was time to get the heck out of there.

  And the girls’ tight little bouncing buns, as it were, formed the perfect diversion. Poor ol’ Buzz; his neck craned wanly to watch them wiggle by, and Mary took the chance to dart from her sanctuary and skitter up the western stairwell.

  She burst out onto the mezzanine heading in the completely wrong direction for her seating section, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was to put as much space as possible between them. She hoped Buzz would forgive her. It really wasn’t his lucky day after all. She was going someplace that he could not follow. So she’d gotten him out of that particular frying pan.

  And into an altogether different line of fire
.

  7:59 P.M.

  Hook scanned his console. Everything was powered up and purring, hundreds of happy little LEDs twinkling like tiny red stars, like the distant lights of the promised land. He sat down on his swivel stool and surveyed his handiwork. Just like Christmas morning, he thought. Before you rip the presents open.

  He turned to his assistant, beaming. “Chuckie, m’ lad. What’s the level on the pheromone sensors?”

  Chuckie hunched over the screen for a moment. “Three point one nine oh and rising,” he called back.

  “Hmmmm,” Hook grunted. He was genuinely excited.

  And, he thought, it looks like I’m not the only one.

  He drummed his fingers delicately across the sliders on the special subsection of the soundboard, the section only his hand was authorized to touch. The section that controlled the volume of the signals coming back from the stage. Coming back through the system.

  Coming back through DIOS.

  He’d waited years for this. He understood the beauty of his place in the structure; what Momma hadn’t made clear, common aesthetic sense did. Little Alex had his studio samples and his live samples, and he did his Alex-thing with them, making his little black soundtrack, his symphony of death.

  But Hook was next in the chain of command.

  And Hook made it all real.

  It was Hook who decided how much of what came through the mix and when. It was Hook who designed the impact of the sound, like charges in a daisy chain.

  True, little Alex had written the symphony. Momma had inspired it. And Walker himself had laid out the strategy.

  But it was Hook, in the end, who was able to make it happen. He scoffed at the mystic trappings of the stage and set, all the expensive trashy mumbo jumbo. Hook knew from experience that, given the will to do so, you didn’t have to conjure hell on earth. You could build it, with your bare hands. It was frighteningly easy.

  Not to mention surprisingly affordable.

  His right and only hand drummed across the sliders.

  It was the hand of an artist.

  * * *

  8:00:00 P.M. SYMPHONY OF DEATH

  Ted was almost in front when the lights went out.

  It happened all at once, as if a thick black curtain had been thrown over the Spectrum. The effect was shocking; the voice of surprise rang out from ten thousand invisible throats. “Omigod,” he whispered, abetting the din with what little wind he had.

  It was the moment he had come for.

  And now the moment had come for him.

  Ted stood, twenty feet from the front of the stage, sixteen from the hurricane fencing that separated the crowd from the curtain beyond. He stood and did not move a muscle. Paralysis, cold, had taken hold. Like rigor mortis in advance, he told himself, but he was not laughing. There were shapes around him, the bodies of strangers he didn’t know and couldn’t see.

  The terror was second to none.

  The floor of the arena was still half-empty; lots of kids were still up cruising the mezzanine, standing on line at the concessions or buying T-shirts or taking that one last leak. Right now, one last leak would feel really good. Preferably not in his pants and down into his boots . . .

  His knife was hidden in his boot.

  He thought about how much better it would feel in his hand.

  Because the lights had just gone out.

  And there was a moment of silence, as disturbing as the dead air that always preceded the this-is-only-a-test-for-the-next-sixty-seconds emergency broadcast blurbs on the radio. The silence where you wondered, however briefly, if this time wasn’t really a test at all.

  As dead air goes, it wasn’t very long: a split second at best.

  But it was long enough.

  There had never been a question as to whether he was allowed to go. A part of his brain, with teenage cunning, had sussed that out long before his flapping jaws could betray him. Shut up, he said, and let them tell you: “It’s too dangerous, it’s under control, you stay home and protect your mother.”

  Which, of course, they had done.

  Well, piss on that. You didn’t live through as much as he had—the death of a friend, the slaying of a monster, the kidnapping of Jesse—and then sit on your fucking hands while somebody else did the dirty work. No way in hell.

  Not when you were sixteen years old.

  And not when they had Jesse.

  So you pretended to go along, and you gave up your ticket for the greater good, and you waved bye-bye when the moment came.

  Then you waited for your own moment. And when it came, you took it.

  Taking Chris’s ticket with you.

  That had all sounded great at the time. Now he wasn’t so sure. His knife was as close as his foot, and he couldn’t stoop to reach it. It was worse than the time that he’d spent in his chair, fearing the shadows. Now the shadows were near.

  Now the shadows had teeth.

  The split second of silence had ended. Nervous laughter and dull murmurs took its place, punctuated by shouting and commotion in the distance. “Holy fuck! They’re startin’!” called one moron from the balcony.

  And then the sound began.

  The sound was leviathan, filling the room and rattling the rafters. A low bass drone, synthesized in origin, but with a little something extra.

  It was not just any sound. To the initiated, it was a trigger, Pavlovian as a ringing bell. Ted knew from the moment it started just exactly what it was. He’d heard that type of sound before.

  “Omigod,” he whispered again, and it was lost in the roaring wave of motion, and the crowd was pushing against his back, pushing him up and into the fence, against the fence, nearly through the fence as the faithful poured down from the mezzanine.

  To attend the Critical Mass.

  * * *

  8:00:31 P.M. EXPOSITION

  Hook pushed it a little more.

  Just a hair; there was no need to overload them yet. They had plenty of time. It was still ethereal; no drums yet, no rhythmic syncopated headlong drive. It was the intro, and it was still building: chanting in layers, thousands of shifting voices, each one a single, frozen moment. Suspended in pain, suspended in suffering, suspended in ecstasy and agony and dawning awestruck realization.

  Then transposed. And synthesized.

  And amplified.

  The effect was awesome. It was the twentieth-century extension of the same primal power that could drive human beings to pile one stone atop another, to vault the first cathedral ceiling, build the first temple in which to let loose and howl the first praise to the first god.

  The voices shifted, shaping into syllables, then words . . .

  “Magdhim DIOS! Satanas DIOS!

  Asteroth DIOS! Ellylldan DIOS!”

  It had the mounting fury of an electrical storm, the force swirling through the arena like storm clouds in a cavernous void, the words crashing like waves against crumbling seawalls . . .

  “Sancti DIOS! Omnitus DIOS!

  Malebog Baalberth DIOS! DIOS!”

  From Hook’s privileged vantage point it was glorious; his island was the calm in the eye of the hurricane. His was the hand that held the hammer, and he was about to let it drop.

  But not quite yet.

  Stage One was just beginning.

  8:01:02 P.M.

  The arena was filled with the lost. They were drawn to the sound like moths to a flame, willing to burn for that moment of glory. For the first time in his life, Pastor Furniss had an inkling as to what brought the children here.

  And, in understanding, knew the meaning of fear.

  Because the sound not only surrounded him, it filled him. It wrenched open his defenses, came sluicing in through every sense, every pore, filling the chambers where his demons were chained. They wailed up inside him like abandoned asylum inmates, howling for release.

  And he would die before he’d allow that.

  The sound became a Presence. It rooted him in place while the darkness swirl
ed around him. It spoke to him personally, confidentially, intimately. More intimately than God in their private talks together. In those conversations he did most of the talking. While God, in His infinite patience, had listened.

  The roles had reversed now.

  It was the sound that spoke. He listened with his body, but his soul was the one that discerned. It could hear beyond the sound itself, connect with the endless longing-turned-to-anguish that was its substance, feel the Presence at its core.

  As the sound assumed a voice that spoke to him.

  Spoke to them all.

  “IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS THE WORD,” it began; ambisexually, impossibly deep and lush and resonant. “AND THE WORD WAS LOVE.”

  “Oh, Lordy,” Furniss whispered, as his first chakra blazed up like a safety flare.

  “BUT THE WORD AI.ONE WAS NOT ENOUGH.”

  The Presence stoked the flame. He fought to dampen it.

  “THERE WERE OTHER WORDS, TO FILL THE GAP. THERE WERE WORDS LIKE BLOOD. THERE WERE WORDS LIKE FLESH.”

  Echoes trailed off the blasphemy like vapor trails. “Our Father,” he murmured desperately, “Our Father who art in heaven . . .”

  The curtains began to open.

  “Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done . . .”

  “BUT OF ALL THE WORDS EVER CREATED OR SPOKEN, THERE WAS NEVER ONE QUITE LIKE MOMMA.”

  “On earth as it is in heaven . . .”

  Blue light filtered through the slit in the drapes. The choral crescendoed. The voice grew stronger.

  “THEY LIKE TO SAY THAT GOD IS THE FATHER.”

  The slit folded back like black velvet lips.

  “Give us this day our daily bread and . . .”

  “BUT WHO GIVES BIRTH? WHO GIVES LIFE?”

  “And lead us not into temptation but . . .”

  “THE FATHER IS ONLY HALF THE TRUTH.”

  “Lead us not into temptation but . . .”

  “IT’S TIME TO KNOW THE OTHER HALF.”