The Changeling

by Victor Lavalle

  Kinder Garten nodded. “Well…thanks.”

  Apollo, to his own surprise, jabbed a finger directly into the hole in Kinder Garten’s chest. This made the man pop upright. The pain would’ve made him jump right to his feet if Emma hadn’t stepped on one of his ankles.

  “He tried to protect you,” Apollo said.

  Kinder Garten sighed. “You know what’s worse than being abandoned? Being raised by a man like him.”

  “He did what any good father would do.”

  “You sound like him!” Kinder Garten shouted. “A good father protects his children. If that moron had put some money aside, if he’d planned for the future in any way instead of taking his fortunes for granted, then I wouldn’t have had to do what was necessary.” He lost his breath for a moment. “I wouldn’t have had to make such a big sacrifice.”

  Behind them, on the computer table, the iPad scrolled through photos, all of them of the same small child, various moments from the first six months of her life.

  “Why didn’t any of you ever kill it?” Emma said. “That’s what I don’t understand.”

  “You can’t kill it,” Kinder Garten said. “Come on.”

  “Why?” Emma snapped.

  Kinder Garten shook his head. “You don’t understand. I don’t blame you. I mean you weren’t raised…like us. You can’t change history. All you can do is make the best of what you’ve inherited. So that’s what I did.”

  “By taking my son?” Emma asked. She pressed her weight onto his ankle.

  Kinder Garten raised a hand, pleading. “He’s alive,” he said. “You understand he’s alive, right?”

  “How do you know?” Apollo asked.

  He gestured with his chin. “Bring me to the computer, and I’ll show you.”

  Emma took her foot off his ankle, and Apollo grabbed Kinder Garten by the arm to lift him. If it hurt to be raised so quickly, neither Apollo nor Emma seemed concerned.

  “Why’s it so hot?” Kinder Garten asked, looking up. The beams above his head were starting to spit smoke.

  “We set your house on fire,” Emma told him.

  Kinder Garten adjusted his chair, though this was difficult. It seemed like his right arm was losing movement. The whole thing hung loosely from the shoulder. The wound to the chest had brought up more blood. He touched at his ribs—the large patch of dried blood, an older wound lay there.

  When Kinder Garten returned to the computer, the family on the middle screen were at their kitchen table, eating breakfast, basic morning business down in Charleston. They were completely unaware of the vulture in the room.

  Kinder Garten shut off the remote camera feed from the family in South Carolina. Meanwhile the men on the other screens, the ones who’d also been watching the remote feed from their locations, now gawped openly at the scene in Jorgen Knudsen’s basement. Eight men leaned forward, every mouth hanging open. They could see Kinder Garten had company, that he’d been injured. Were they concerned for their friend, or had they decided this might be an even better show?

  “I’m going to activate subject zero,” Kinder Garten said, as if addressing the men on the screen instead of the couple in the basement. Maybe it was easier to do all this if he continued to think of the child by his designation rather than his name.

  “Brian,” Apollo said.

  Kinder Garten nodded faintly. The middle screen went black, but a small numerical counter appeared at the bottom right of the screen.

  “There’s nothing there,” Emma said.

  “Let me move the camera,” Kinder Garten said.

  He tapped at two keys on the keyboard, and the image on the screen swiveled side to side. Now Apollo understood they were looking at an underground scene, packed earth and stone.

  “It’s the cave,” Apollo said. “You put a camera in that cave.”

  “I told you,” Kinder Garten said. “All you can do is make the best of what you’ve inherited.”

  “So what did you do?” Emma asked, leaning forward, squinting at the hazy screen.

  “I monetized it,” Kinder Garten said, clearly proud. “My father did his service for free, but that was never how it was supposed to work. The pact was that we, the Knudsen men, would make the ultimate sacrifice. But in return, we would prosper. My father failed to make the proper sacrifice and received no blessing. He kept the troll from rampaging, but that didn’t pay my goddamn mortgage, let me tell you.

  “So I spread the word on certain specialized boards. For a monthly subscription, you log on to the camera anytime you want and watch the proceedings. These men are watching all of you all the time. No act is unknown to them. If people put a little electrical tape over the cameras on their laptops, we could never see. A little thing like that is all it would take, but most of you don’t think that far ahead. In Apple we trust. For guys like this you need to offer a special treat, a mystery, something they’ve never seen. That’s worth more. The only thing worth anything. I don’t have a big pool yet, but I think word will spread. Subject zero has been our beta test. I’m hoping to set things up so I can take payment in bitcoins. Harder to trace.”

  Kinder Garten slumped back in his chair.

  “Honestly, things could be better. I’ve only got one camera down there. I couldn’t risk being in there long enough to place more than one. What I want to get is a 35-millimeter full-frame CMOS sensor camera for full HD video capture. Then we’d be able to see everything. Of course, what they’re really waiting for is the finale. That’s what I advertised anyway.”

  He looked up at Apollo, then at Emma, grinning, the excitement of a promising start-up company acting like a painkiller.

  “You promised they’d get to watch the troll eat our child,” Apollo said.

  Then his face dropped. “I’m sorry,” Kinder Garten said. “In the past it didn’t take this long though. It tries to raise the children, but it’s terrible at it. What it wants to feed them, they can’t always eat. Or it forgets its own strength. But it’s been different with Brian. I can’t say why, exactly.”

  “It’s like he’s being protected,” Apollo said, looking to Emma. She hadn’t looked away from the screen.

  Kinder Garten peered up at the ceiling. Impossible to ignore the smoke slipping between the floorboards now. A black cloud formed above their heads.

  Then Kinder Garten raised his good arm. “But let me show you!” he said. “I have proof he’s okay. I’ve got pictures of him.” He reached for the iPad, tapped in his code, and carried on.

  “You’ll see,” he muttered.

  He opened the photo gallery and swiped from one file to the next.

  “You’ll see.”

  But before he could find the image, Emma stepped back and raised the mattock. She swung sideways, with better aim this time. The pick lodged in the side of Kinder Garten’s head, right above the left ear.

  The power of the attack sent Kinder Garten over just like before, but this time when he landed, the force of the fall tore the mattock from his head. When it pulled free, it took a portion of his skull with it. Kinder Garten thrashed on the ground, and the side of his head bled wildly.

  Apollo and Emma watched him from a distance. They could see his brain. It looked like uncooked, gamey meat. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He seemed lost in shock, but then his eyes shifted toward Apollo.

  Kinder Garten bled and choked and cried, and even though the house above them had broken into flames, even though the whine of a fire engine could be heard in the distance, even though they had to get back up the stairs and escape, they couldn’t go yet.

  They couldn’t move as Kinder Garten’s blood pooled on the ground. It reached the iPad, face up in its case. It reached their shoes and soaked the soles. His eyes lolled back in his head until only the whites could be seen.

  His hand tapped at the ground three more times and went still.

  APOLLO BENT AND pulled at the iPad, watching the body. Its eyes stared up at the ceiling. The protective cover had been so
aked through with blood, but when he slipped the device out, it was fine. When he looked at the other monitors, five of the eight men remained in their seats, watching with a nearly catatonic glassiness. What would this show offer next? Apollo pushed both monitors off the desk, and they fell backward and cracked on the floor.

  Curiosity overcame Apollo. There was one thing he had to see, a question he needed answered. They pulled at Kinder Garten’s sweatshirt, lifting the right side.

  “I think Cal must’ve hit him at least once,” Apollo said.

  But when he lifted the shirt high enough, the wound didn’t look made by a bullet. Instead the flesh hung loose, and the skin appeared to have three long parallel tears.

  “Good for you, Cal,” Emma said.

  The heat above became powerful enough to make both of them sweat. More smoke curled down into the basement through the floorboards. Soon it would fill the space. The sound of wood cracking, crackling, played through the basement.

  The heat turned oppressive, and the smoke now obscured the exposed beams in the ceiling. Apollo and Emma covered their mouths. Outside they heard the sirens. No doubt the neighbors were out in force. Apollo and Emma weren’t going to be escaping via the driveway anymore.

  They scanned the basement. An old blue washing machine and dryer set sat side by side. There was a supply closet containing a threadbare broom and two nearly toothless rakes, a shovel with a splintered handle, and worn-down work gloves.

  Because it was an unfinished basement, the ceiling showed the woodwork and floorboards of the first floor, and even piping was visible, running from the kitchen connections and the bathrooms, leading to a boiler tucked into the far corner of the basement. The large upright cylinder looked like a missile. Pipes ran from its top and up into the ceiling.

  “Why did they have so many space heaters if they had this big boiler down in the basement?” Apollo asked, staring at the machine.

  “The pipes are cut,” Emma said, pointing to the ceiling. “All of them.”

  Kinder Garten’s blood appeared in their peripheral vision. The pool had found the level of the ground, slightest of angles, and begun rolling downward. It turned into a tributary, searching for its confluence. It ran toward Apollo and Emma, and for only a moment Apollo imagined the man’s blood sought them out. Instead it found its way to the boiler, rolling underneath it. From below the boiler, as they moved closer, they heard a faint, dribbling sound.

  Apollo set down the iPad. He and Emma moved to one side of the boiler and pressed their hands to it. Together they pushed, and the boiler rocked slightly. It was like trying to upend a fridge or a grandfather clock. Push again, and the boiler tipped. When it fell to the ground, it clattered and cracked.

  And below it they found a large hole cut in the concrete. Kinder Garten’s blood dribbled into that darkness. The hole, not even or neat, looked as if someone had spent many nights here, chipping and chopping. The work did not seem recent.

  They looked into the portal. Hard to even say how far down they would fall. Firemen barked to each other on the street. The floorboards above Apollo and Emma were burned black by now.

  She sat and scooted to the hole, but before she dropped through, Apollo stopped her.

  “Wait,” he said. “We need one more thing.” He took out his phone, turned it on.

  “You’re making a fucking phone call?” Emma said.

  He reached for the iPad and opened it again. He swiped, and a series of apps appeared.

  On the other end of the line Patrice picked up. “You’re still alive then,” he said, sounding relieved. “Your mom came by here this morning, looking for you. She’s real worried. Did you call her? She said you sounded off.”

  “Patrice, you have to shut up. I won’t be able to call you again.”

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “Do you have Daylight up in the App Store?”

  “You saw it yourself,” Patrice said. “Biggest bug is that you still only get one use out of it. Drains so much battery power.”

  Emma sat at the edge of the hole, looking like a woman hanging her feet off a pier.

  “I need it,” Apollo said.

  Patrice sighed on the phone. “Well, it’s there,” he said. “It costs $3.99. I can change the price so it’s free, then you just download it.”

  When Patrice said that, a new idea came to Apollo. One so good it actually made him laugh, even in the midst of all this. “I do want you to change the price. Is there a maximum you can charge?”

  “It’s supposed to be $999.99, but there’s an easy way around that.”

  “Can you do it now?”

  “This is me,” Patrice said. “Of course I can. How much?”

  “Seventy thousand dollars,” Apollo said.

  The laughter on the other end of the line came so loudly, even Emma heard it before Apollo hung up.

  By the time he found the app in the App Store, the price had been changed. He tapped to purchase. He squatted beside Emma, and together they watched the download bar progress.

  “But what’s the point if we can only use it once?” Emma asked. “The park is half a mile north of here.”

  “The old man told me a story,” Apollo said. “Do you know what kills trolls?”

  “Daylight,” she said.

  The house above rumbled, a thunderous crash, so loud it seemed possible a wall had collapsed. Soon the second floor might come down on the first, and then the first would be driven down into the basement.

  Emma looked back to where the stairs had been. Hard to say if they were still there, through the black smoke.

  Emma gripped Apollo’s hand, and he lowered her into the hole. Not as deep as they’d feared. He handed the iPad down next. The Knudsen line, and their centuries of service, had come to its end. By evening, there’d be nothing left of them but scorched wood and bones.

  APOLLO EXPECTED EMMA to make magic. He climbed down into the dark alongside her, the passageway walls of compacted earth tight around them, hardly wide enough for one person, let alone two, the path ahead a long dark gullet, and above them a house on fire.

  Though they were standing chest to chest, it was so dark he couldn’t see her face. His eyes hadn’t yet adjusted. He wanted to reach out and touch her cheeks or her nose to be sure this was really her.

  “What are you waiting for?” Emma asked.

  “I’m waiting for you,” Apollo said. “Your light.”

  “You said we could use this only once,” she said, tapping him with the iPad.

  “Not that. I’m talking about, you know, that light I saw in the forest. It floated all around you. It was like a cloud.”

  Emma remained quiet. He couldn’t see her face to read any expression.

  “You controlled Jorgen’s dreams,” Apollo said, sounding exasperated and desperate. “The trees parted for you. Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about!”

  Emma finally spoke. “I’m not saying that. I’m saying I was on my own and keeping Brian alive, keeping myself alive, working on Jorgen day and night, and it was killing me, Apollo. You saw me, didn’t you? I wasn’t able to do it because I was so powerful, I was able to do it because I had no other choice. I had to do it alone, so I did. But now I don’t have to do it alone. At least I hope I don’t. We could be stronger together, but that means you have to help me. Can you do that? Will you?”

  Apollo nodded. They moved forward.

  The passageway became even tighter, the roof coming down at an angle so they had to lower their heads. It felt like a funnel, a chute, the same as one might use on a cow, or a pig, in a slaughterhouse.

  “Don’t be mad at my sister,” Emma whispered. “Please.”

  “You’re thinking about that right now?”

  Both spoke in hushed voices, though it sounded louder down here.

  “Please, Apollo. It seems ridiculous to you, but it matters to me.”

  “Kim lied to me,” he said. “I put a check in her hand, and she didn’t blin
k.”

  Here Apollo stopped moving. Their eyes had adjusted enough that he could make out her outline behind him.

  “Why did she believe you?” he asked. “What did you say that convinced her?”

  “She didn’t believe me,” Emma said. “But she’s my sister. She wasn’t betraying you, Apollo. She was protecting me.”

  They scrambled forward in the dark.

  —

  The passageway finally opened into a large space, an earthen amphitheater, a series of ringed ridges that fed down to a broad floor of flattened earth. Kinder Garten had shown them the camera. Were those other men watching Apollo and Emma now?

  They moved down the ringed levels, shallow as stairs. As they approached the floor of the amphitheater, Apollo felt Emma’s eyes as surely as a touch. He felt himself shiver with the desire to tell her about Brian West. The dream that was not a dream, but a memory. Kinder Garten had clung to his belief that he’d cared for his family, that he’d done something so horrific as an act of love. Did Brian West feel the same when he’d plunged his only child into steaming hot water, when he held him under? He must have; against all common sense he must have. When Apollo had become impatient with Emma, when he’d become cruel, how had he justified it to himself? He was trying to focus on Brian, to be the kind of father he’d never had. What lengths will people stretch to believe they’re still good?

  Apollo scanned the higher ridges of the arena. The darkness hid everything more than two feet away, the effect more disconcerting in this open space. In time their eyes would adjust to the dark, but just now they felt nearly blind. In the tunnel they’d been cramped, but out here a tank might be sitting at arm’s length, and they wouldn’t realize its main gun was pointed at them until it fired. Hands outstretched, skitching forward in small increments, legs slightly bent as if expecting a blow. They moved forward until they reached the far end of the arena’s stone wall, then pawed alongside it to traverse the space. Because of the shadows, because of the almost hypnotizing rhythm of their feet on the loose dirt, they felt dizzy as they moved.