by Tim Waggoner
He ran back to Surveillance Van Number Two and climbed inside. Olivia was on the phone with Deanna.
“Yes, I understand. We will.” She disconnected and returned the phone to her pocket. She then turned to Kevin. “Deanna said an Intervention Team entered the house and contact with them was lost. A second team was dispatched, with the same results. The Surveillance Team then disobeyed orders and went inside, and they were lost too. Deanna wants us to assume monitoring duties but under no circumstances are we to leave the van and go inside. She’s requested additional Intervention Teams from the Columbus office, and they should be here within the hour. She sounded nervous. I’ve never heard her like that before.”
“She must be worried if she called Columbus.”
Columbus was the state capital and the center of Maintenance operations in Ohio. Their Intervention Teams were some of the most highly skilled in the Midwest. If she’d called for them, the situation inside the house had to be dire.
“Joan may not have an hour.” Kevin reached behind his seat and grabbed the shotgun they’d taken from the Bishops. He then turned to Olivia and held out his free hand. “Give me the rest of the shells.”
“Do you know how to work a shotgun?” she asked.
“I’ll figure it out,” he said. “Now give me the shells.”
She looked at him for a moment, expression unreadable. Finally, she sighed.
“Hand me the gun and let’s go,” she said.
* * *
They didn’t bother bringing any sensors. They knew the level of negative energy in the house would be off the charts. They’d left their smart glasses behind too. The last thing Kevin wanted was to be distracted by Deanna yelling at them for disobeying her orders. She’d have plenty of time to yell at them later—assuming they survived.
The front door had been kicked open, so they didn’t have to worry about finding a way in. The lights were off inside, and Kevin carried a penlight to illuminate their path. They proceeded slowly, Kevin standing beside and slightly behind Olivia so he wouldn’t get shot if she needed to fire her weapon. The cautious pace frustrated him. He wanted to dash straight to the basement, but they had no idea what defenses Maegarr might’ve set up, and a number of their people had already entered and been lost. They couldn’t afford to be reckless, he knew that, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
They moved through the kitchen and then the dining room without incident before coming to an open door. There was no molding and no knob, and it was obvious where wallpaper had been torn away to reveal the door. And although Kevin knew it was standard procedure for an Intervention Team to leave a door open in case they needed a quick exit, it still struck him as an ominous sign. The spider extending an invitation to the fly. Two flies, in this case. They paused at the doorway to listen. Kevin didn’t hear anything at first, but he caught the faint, distant sound of rock music. He recognized the tune: “Eat the Night,” from Mark Maegarr’s band Slogeny.
He looked at Olivia, and she nodded. She stepped through the open doorway and started down the wooden stairs, Kevin right behind her, shining the penlight so they both could see. The music didn’t get any louder as they descended, and Kevin had the sense that it was coming from a long way off. A very long way. The air—instead of growing cooler as with most basements—became warmer and more humid, and by the time they reached the basement’s concrete floor, both he and Olivia were sweating. A slow sweep of the penlight’s beam proved the basement was empty. No sign of the missing Maintenance agents, and no sign of Joan Lantz.
“Over there,” Olivia said, nodding toward the far end of the basement.
All Kevin saw were shadows, but when he directed the penlight toward them, they didn’t dispel. They seemed to absorb the light, to pull it in and swallow it whole. And although it was hard to tell, Kevin thought the music seemed to be coming from beyond the shadows. This had to be it, whatever it was. The Intervention Teams—and the two Surveyors who’d followed them—must have gone in there. Or something had emerged to greet them. Neither possibility was comforting. Kevin tried to work out the best strategy for entering the darkness. If the penlight wouldn’t work inside it, then they’d be at a severe disadvantage once they entered. Olivia had the shotgun, sure, but if she couldn’t see to aim it, it would be next to worthless to them.
He turned to Olivia to ask her what she thought they should do, but before she could speak, an emaciated form emerged from the darkness. It was an old man, naked and skeleton-thin. At one time his penis had been deformed, twisted like a corkscrew, but it was gone now, and all that remained between his legs was a dark gash above a pair of dangling mottled testicles. His left hand ended in a ragged stump, the wound raw and wet with black blood. The man grinned as he stepped into the illumination of the penlight beam.
“Told you I’d see you again, Kevin.”
Harris might have been naked, but he wasn’t unarmed. In his right hand he carried a weapon made from bone, a sharp-edged scapula lashed to a femur with strips of dried tendon. Blood coated the weapon and stippled his sagging, wrinkled flesh.
“Your friends walked right into the darkness, and it was so easy to kill them in there. After all, I am a creature of darkness, aren’t I? But I didn’t want to kill you like that, Kevin. We’re old friends, you and I. I wanted you to see my face one last time before I serve you to the Gyre.”
The old man seemed even more insane than he had when he’d killed Barry or even in Kevin’s dream. His eyes twitched, and his facial muscles contorted randomly, as if he were suffering from an ongoing stroke. But as disturbing as Harris’s countenance was, the gore-coated bone weapon he carried was far more intimidating.
Kevin tried to sound calm as he said, “You can’t hurt us. You killed yourself. You’re dead.”
Harris let out a cackling laugh. “There’s dead and there’s dead. I’m the first kind. I’m no longer part of the world of the living, but I haven’t gone on to my reward yet. And there are all sorts of things I can do to hurt you.”
Harris raised his bone weapon and stepped toward them. Olivia shouldered her shotgun and fired. The wound where Harris’s corkscrew cock had been exploded in a fresh spray of ebon blood, and he fell to the floor, screaming, hands clapped to the space between his legs. Kevin looked at her, and she shrugged.
“What can I say? I got tired of looking at his balls.”
Harris had dropped the bone weapon when he went down, and Kevin moved forward to grab it. The femur handle felt mildly slimy to the touch, and he could feel the negative energy that suffused the object. He experienced a deep instinctive disgust that almost made him hurl the weapon away, but he forced himself to hold on to it and stepped back to rejoin Olivia. She kept the shotgun trained on Harris, but she edged away from Kevin slightly, as if she couldn’t stand to remain too close to the bone weapon.
Harris’s screams dribbled off into what Kevin first thought were wrenching sobs, but then he realized the old man was laughing. He lay sideways on the floor, cupping his ruined crotch with his remaining hand, the stump on his other arm jammed up against his wound to also help staunch the blood flow, but it didn’t help. Blood dark as ink ran between his fingers and spread out in a widening pool on the concrete. His face had gone pallid, and it was almost as white as the bone weapon he’d carried.
“You know why I lived close to this house, Kevin? Why I’m here now? It’s because I used to live here myself, back when I was a doctor. An orthopedic surgeon, actually. I did all sorts of terrible things here, right down in this very basement. Always put plastic down to catch the mess, though. I filled this house with so much corruption—what I gather people in your line of work call negative energy—that it was perfect for Maegarr’s needs. This house became rotten enough on a metaphysical level that it was possible to create a passage between this world and the one Maegarr exists in now. So he had two of his helpers buy it off me, and I moved into a new home not far away and started over. I was able to corrupt that one even fa
ster. I’d gotten pretty good at it over the years. After you caught me and I checked myself out”— he removed his handless arm from the blood-soaked hamburger where his genitals had once been and held it up to illustrate his story—“Maegarr was gracious enough to allow me to play a part in his farewell performance. Kind of a thank-you for my contribution to helping set it up. Even gave me a new body formed out of Shadow, even if it wasn’t much more durable than the original. Shame I won’t get to stick around to see his finale, but that’s how it goes. First your money, then your clothes.”
He laughed again, but it soon turned into a coughing fit. Then he fell limp, his head hitting the concrete with a dull smack. His eyes remained opened and staring, and the blood pool—which had been widening steadily as he spoke—stopped its expansion.
“Do you think he’s dead?” Kevin asked.
“Dead or dead-dead?” Olivia replied. “Best to make sure.”
She stepped forward and nudged his shoulder with the barrel of the shotgun. He didn’t move, didn’t blink. Something about this didn’t feel right to Kevin, but before he could warn Olivia, Harris moved with inhuman speed. He plunged his hand into his chest, snapped off one of his ribs, and hurled it at Olivia. At the same instant, she jerked the shotgun’s barrel so it pointed at Harris’s head, and then she pulled the trigger. Harris’s head exploded like a rotten melon filled with black pulp. Olivia’s head then snapped back as the rib plunged through her eye and into her brain. Blood spurted and she stiffened. She staggered backward and—still holding on to the shotgun with her right hand—started to fall. Kevin dropped both the penlight and bone weapon and managed to catch her. He then gently lowered her to the floor.
He was such a fucking idiot! Harris had already become something other than human before he’d killed himself, and his death had only furthered his transformation—especially with Maegarr’s help. Kevin should’ve known he could perform a bizarre trick like the one he’d used to hurt Olivia. After all, bones were Harris’s thing.
Blood trickled around the edges of Olivia’s wound, but the rib was solidly lodged, and it kept the blood loss to a minimum. Not that bleeding to death was her biggest problem right now. He looked at her blood, and a thought drifted through his mind. Guess she’s not a robot after all.
He knelt beside her, took her free hand, and held it in both of his.
“Olivia…can you hear me?”
Her breathing was rapid and she stared up at the ceiling with her uninjured eye. He thought her brain had been too damaged for her to talk, maybe so damaged that she could no longer think. But then her breathing slowed some, her remaining eye focused on him, and she smiled.
“Deanna assigned me to work with you because she wanted me to observe you, assess your performance, and give her my opinion on whether you should be demoted. Or even voided.” Her voice sounded dreamy as she spoke, as if she’d been given a strong sedative and was on the verge of falling asleep. “Do you know what I’d report to her now?”
He shook his head.
“You’re a shitty Surveyor, but you’re a hell of a man.”
Her breathing stopped then, but there was no other indication that she’d died. No tremors in her limbs, no faint groan rising from deep within her. It was as if some unseen hand had simply reached inside her and flicked a switch to OFF. He started to reach out to close her eyes, but then he thought better of it. Olivia hadn’t been the kind of person who would look away as she was being pulled toward the Gyre. She’d rather face it head-on and eyes open. He drew back his hand.
“Flavor to the Feast,” he said softly.
He stood then and retrieved the penlight. He looked down at the shotgun—which Olivia still held—and at the bone weapon. He gently removed the shotgun from Olivia’s hand, and then removed the remaining shells from her pocket and transferred them to his. He thought about taking the bone weapon too, but in the end, he decided against it. The damn thing practically oozed negative energy, and he didn’t want that shit infecting him the way it had Harris. He then turned off the penlight. The light wouldn’t work inside the darkness he was about to enter, so why bother wasting the battery? He tucked the penlight into his pants pocket and headed in the direction of the darkness, careful to avoid tripping over Olivia’s or Harris’s bodies. Given how inhumanly fast the old man had been able to strike at Olivia before he died for the second time, he wondered why Harris hadn’t tried to kill him then too. Maybe Harris hadn’t wanted to make it too easy on him. Maybe he’d known there were worse things waiting for Kevin on the side of the darkness than death.
With that cheery thought, Kevin continued forward, and Slogeny’s music—once so distant—began to grow louder.
* * *
“Wasn’t that fun?”
Maegarr grinned at her with his permanent rictus of a mouth, and his eye tendrils stroked the air with lazy, languid movements. He was naked and covered with scratches and bite marks, a number of which bled. Jon, also naked, stood next to Maegarr. He too had been scratched and bitten, but the substance that oozed from his wounds looked more like tar than blood. She’d managed to hit his injured jaw several more times, and it now hung slack and canted at an odd angle. It didn’t seem to bother him, though. He might not have been able to feel pain anymore, but she sure as hell could. She lay on the ground, naked, free of the strips of flesh that had bound her, but hurting too much to move. She’d fought the two of them the entire time they’d been raping her, and not only did her every orifice feel as if it had been scoured with broken glass, she was covered with scratches and bite marks herself, and her breasts felt as if they’d been used as punching bags. At times her hair had been pulled so hard by one of them that clumps of it had been torn out, leaving her scalp dotted with patches of bleeding skin. Often one had kept hold of her wrists or ankles as the other did something to her, and her thrashing had pulled muscles and strained joints. She’d been hit, too, and her jaw hurt so much, she figured it probably didn’t look much better than Jon’s, and her left eye was so swollen that she almost couldn’t see out of it. She didn’t think she’d lost any teeth, though, so that was something.
She didn’t think she could’ve made it through the ordeal if there had been only one of her. But right now, in this place, she was both Joan and Debbie. She didn’t know if Joan was a reincarnation of Debbie’s spirit, or if Debbie was a separate being who’d somehow merged with fetus-Joan, but it didn’t matter which was true. What was important was that together they were stronger than either had been separately.
She pushed herself up into a sitting position and allowed her chin to drop to her chest. She wanted to look like she’d been traumatized by what they’d done to her and that she would no longer put up any resistance. She wanted them both to be off guard when she made her move. Not that she knew what that move was going to be yet, but she was working on it.
She didn’t respond to Maegarr’s question. Given his ego, she doubted it was rhetorical, but not only did she want to maintain her shell-shocked act, she wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction of answering. Maegarr regarded her for a moment, and then he nodded to Jon. The thing that had been her husband walked over to stand behind her. He didn’t touch her, but it was clear that he was there to guard her.
One of the worst things about the entire experience had been the way Slogeny’s music had continued to blare from the speakers the entire time they were raping her. Debbie had once thought of Maegarr’s music as essential to her existence as food, water, and air. Now, if she ended up dying again in this place, she wouldn’t mind, if for no other reason than because she wouldn’t have to listen to that shit anymore.
The music was still playing, but Maegarr gestured and the volume lowered.
“Well, all good things come to an end.” He paused. “Bad things, too.”
His clothes lay on the floor, along with Jon’s and the remains of hers. He didn’t bother putting his back on before walking to the stage, climbing onto it, and taking his place at the
podium, the dead bodies hanging from the rafters forming a grisly backdrop for him. He looked out over the crowd of faceless men and women—all of whom had sat quiet and unmoving while he and Jon had raped her. His eye tendrils flicked the air, and he asked, “Is everyone ready?”
The Faceless didn’t respond.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Maegarr said. He looked at Jon next. “How about you?”
Jon got down on his knees behind her and clamped his hands on her shoulders.
“Yesssh.”
Maegarr nodded, then he looked to the side and raised his voice. “Are you?”
The Durg clacked their mandibles together loudly. Like the Faceless, they’d remained where they were during the rape, surrounding the Pavilion, but never setting so much as a single segmented leg inside.
“Awesome!” Maegarr said. “Time to rock!” He looked out at her and spoke in a near-whisper, as if imparting a secret. “The Durg don’t really have a role to play in tonight’s festivities—except to serve as an audience, of course. Every artist knows, it’s the audience that really makes a performance.”
He then turned his attention to The Book of Masks and began flipping through its pages.
He raised his voice again. “You and I are the last ones standing, Debbie darlin’. Soon we’ll join our brothers and sisters, and when that happens, the Rite of Dissolution will be concluded at last. Our sacrifice will tear open a wound in the universe so wide and so deep that it can’t be healed. Entropy will pick up speed, like a snowball rolling down a hill, getting bigger and bigger as it goes. Existence may stagger on for a century or two, maybe even longer. But it will come to an end much earlier than it was destined to. And then we can start over. Everything will be better. You’ll see. We’ll make it that way.”
