by Rune Skelley
Half to himself he said, “I wish I knew what the hell’s going on around here.”
Rainbow knitted her brow at him.
“Last night, the demolition derby out on the porch. Can you believe Severin would participate in something like that?”
“That’s not the weirdest part,” Rainbow said. “Who’d he take up to the attic?”
Marsh had no idea. He was probably the closest thing Severin had to a right-hand man, and even he didn’t really know the guy.
They all knew it was Severin’s money they were playing with, and that he was exponentially more hands-off than any corporate or university research director on Earth. If he was a bit eccentric and creepy, that usually felt like a pretty good trade for such unparalleled lack of supervision.
But winning a new girlfriend in a fistfight, or whatever the hell happened on the porch, was probably over the line.
Marsh shook his head. Before he could say anything Leaf rushed in.
“Turn on the news!”
Marsh worked the remote, and Rainbow folded down a page corner and set aside her magazine.
Helicopter footage showed a smoldering heap of glass shards while a male announcer intoned the sketchy specifics known so far.
When the announcer said, “If you’re just joining us,” Marsh muted the television.
“A cult uprising, huh?” He looked at Leaf, then at Rainbow.
“Convenient that the rebellion’s leader disappeared, and can’t be interviewed or interrogated,” Rainbow said.
Leaf chuckled.
Marsh thought they were missing the most important point. “Someone really wanted that jewelry.”
Marsh, Rainbow, and their cohorts at the TEF had, until very recently, been reverse-engineering a cache of body jewelry stuffed to the gills with gobsmackingly ingenious nanotechnology. The upstart preacher Kyle Tanner sent armed mercenaries to re-steal it, and now his empire was a smoldering ruin.
Rainbow shivered. “I’m glad it wasn’t here anymore.”
“Some of it is,” Marsh said.
All three looked around at each other.
Leaf said, “We’ll have to take extra precautions. If we lose those pieces, we’ll never be able to contact the aliens.”
“You and your aliens,” said Marsh and Rainbow together.
Leaf folded his arms and glared at the television.
Rainbow looked pointedly at Marsh. “Should we tell Severin?” By ‘we’ she meant ‘Marsh’ and everyone knew it. He was the only member Severin spoke to anymore.
Marsh sighed. “Maybe tomorrow. Now doesn’t seem like a good time to go up.”
Cliff walked in from the kitchen and took a bite out of the apple he carried. He chewed, then asked, “Does anybody know what happened to the basement door?”
Various shrugs and other noncommittal responses met this question.
“It’s busted. Somebody kicked it in, or something.”
“Nobody ever goes down there, except Severin and Gale,” Marsh offered.
“Come to think of it, where is Gale?” Leaf asked. “I mean, has anybody seen her?”
Marsh thought about the mysterious new woman, and he and Rainbow shared a significant look.
*** *** ***
Neither Brad nor Willow had ever installed an infant car seat before, so it took the better part of an hour before they were satisfied they’d done it right. With Zen strapped in, they started out for Donner. Brad was relieved to be on the move.
The plows and salt trucks made the roads passable and the trip through the crystalline landscape took only a little longer than usual.
At the hospital, Willow and Zen were examined and pronounced fit. Zen weighed in at 7 pounds, 7 ounces. She received her first round of inoculations, which did not please her, got her footprints taken to dissuade her from ever becoming a foot criminal, and received the name Zen Promise Tanner on her birth certificate.
With his girls squared away, it was time to locate Kyle. Brad had managed to keep worry for his son at bay by focusing on his daughter. Without that distraction, the terrible, crushing concern hit him all at once.
Willow handled talking to the hospital staff and they were escorted to Kyle’s room.
Kyle lay in the hospital bed, his right knee bandaged and elevated. He was hooked to an IV and had a heart monitor clipped to his finger. Despite what the doctor told him on the phone, Brad expected much more equipment. Aside from the knee and a few scrapes on his face and knuckles, Kyle looked uninjured. What on Earth happened to him? There were no bandages on his head. If he’d been rendered nearly brain dead, wouldn’t there be some outward sign of trauma?
Willow squeezed Brad’s hand and gave him a little push into the room. She stood in the doorway gently bouncing Zen to keep the infant amused.
Brad approached Kyle’s bed, feeling the sting of tears. He touched Kyle’s hand, the one without the IV. It was warm but unresponsive.
“Hey, Tiger,” Brad choked. He bent over and kissed Kyle’s forehead. Surely that would offend Kyle enough to wake him, but no protest came. Brad broke down into sobs. He knelt beside the bed and clasped Kyle’s hand between both of his, hugging it against his cheek.
A few moments later he felt Willow’s hand on his shoulder. She stood behind him, offering him her support. This would be unbearable without her.
Zen gurgled.
“This is your brother, Kyle,” Willow explained. “He’s not well right now, but we hope he wakes up soon so he can meet you.”
Once Brad regained his composure they talked to the doctor to find out what happened, and arrange Kyle’s transfer to the hospital in Webster. The doctor told him tests showed no alpha or beta waves in Kyle’s cerebrum. He did exhibit lower-level brain function, meaning the only life support he currently required was an IV. “The knee surgery was a splendid success,” added the doctor, but Brad didn’t allow the shift of topics.
“How serious is the brain damage?”
“Your son’s case gives us conflicting clues. Strictly speaking, there is no brain damage. No significant injuries, apart from the knee. Our best guess at the cause of his state is drastic psychological trauma.”
“He wasn’t in an accident?” Brad recalled the previous time Kyle ruined his knee.
“No, Mr Tanner.” The doctor sounded puzzled.
“Then what happened to him?”
“Haven’t you seen the news?”
Brad indicated Willow and the baby. “We’ve been distracted. Please tell me what happened to my son.”
The doctor would only say Kyle was dropped off at the emergency room, and reiterated that Brad should watch the news. He offered to let them use a private waiting room.
An orderly showed them to the room, handed them the remote, and left.
Brad turned on the news and got up to speed on the story of the Shaw Ministries coup, but the story made no sense. Kyle was mentioned, but Brad couldn’t understand how he tied in. The footage of Kyle preaching made him laugh. There was nothing else to do. Kyle as a televangelist was beyond disbelief.
Willow looked nonplussed.
“He told us he worked for a security firm,” Brad said.
“Like a bodyguard?”
“He never said. I guess maybe he was working undercover at this church.”
“Pretty far undercover.”
Brad nodded. What other explanation was there?
“I need to tell you something unbelievable now,” Willow said in a hushed tone.
“I don’t know how many more unbelievable things I can take in.”
“I think that Brian Shaw person was my real father.”
Brad remembered Willow telling him her father was a cop, but that was when she thought her mother died in childbirth. Now they knew she’d been lied to about her past.
“It’s confusing,” Willow continued, “but I think that’s something I learned while I was — wherever I was.” She shook her head and shrugged.
“That is pretty unbel
ievable.”
She furrowed her brows. “Yeah. Maybe it was just a dream.”
“I’ve heard that lots of girls dream of being a televangelist’s daughter,” Brad joked. “It’s more popular these days than being a princess.”
Willow chuckled and swatted him.
To Zen, Brad said, “You won’t do that, will you? You’ll be Daddy’s princess.”
*** *** ***
Prophecy.
An eloquent portrayal of the deeper reality, encapsulating all of time from the dividing of the seed to the restoration of the light. It was perhaps unflattering to find oneself referred to as a hidden plague, but for the spiders it remained a potent truth regardless. Dwelling in the asteroid belt did hide them from humanity, after all. They took comfort in knowing the setbacks and suffering they’d experienced had been foretold, and they drew even greater strength from the knowledge that all would come right in the end.
The spiders’ mind reveled to once more have something on which to meditate. And what a marvelous key this gave them! Like a decryption algorithm for the human psyche, it led them to a miraculous discovery. They beheld the true author of the prophecy, for whom Reverend Shaw had merely been a utensil.
They saw the collective human mind.
A magnificent being, not attenuated across light years like the Floating Wisdom but concentrated on Earth in billions of minds. Minds so imperfectly joined that they remained ignorant of it. Yet its strength was boggling. If the harmony could be perfected, and all those thoughts aligned, this collective would become a god.
The meshing of human minds was at present confined to the raw, tempestuous Id. A roiling cauldron of conflicting impulses, a creature built of wants piled upon urges, fight on top of flight. Made of what everyone else wanted, the Collective Id had wants of its own.
Prophecy.
The spiders themselves were birthed from the Id, complete with their fabricated history as cogs in the Floating Wisdom, that caricature of the true collective. In their manifestation as aliens, as giant arachnids, they represented something humanity needed and dreaded simultaneously.
The Floating Wisdom’s ambition to assimilate humanity had been its juvenile attempt at deepening the unity of all human thought, echoing the Id’s aims as it was, itself, an echo.
Having accepted their status as a shared delusion, the spiders embraced their role as agents of prophecy.
They alone knew how to restore light upon the Earth.
They would fully awaken the Collective Id.
CHAPTER THREE
A FORMER MOTEL
Individuals with known ties to the late Reverend Shaw have made contact with this agency regarding technology we have an interest in, offering to disclose the location of aforesaid hardware in exchange for special treatment with respect to specific legal matters which these individuals characterize as belonging to the class of events this agency prefers to give special handling, to minimize public disquiet, suggesting the arrangement constitutes a win-win.
Operation Lullaby internal communication, 11-7-2000
Fin halfheartedly kicked his mini-fridge. It didn’t provide much of an outlet for his rage.
Rook had been right. All it took to gain access to their room was an awkward apology to Bishop for being a lousy friend. Now she was with Bishop, retrieving her clothes from the bomb shelter, which gave Fin privacy for his tantrum.
He flung himself into his battered recliner, thrashing the air with his fists and wanting to scream. Why does Brad have to be such a dick? A scalding brew of images roiled in Fin’s mind, forming no coherent pattern, just violation and fury.
How was he supposed to protect Rook with Brad invading their sanctuary? How did Brad even know about it?
When else has he been in there?
Fin pounded the armrest, which yielded with a loud creak.
He slumped. Willow. All these years, half his life, Fin held to his faith that she’d come home. But she was with Brad all along. Making babies.
Fin wept, snot and sticky tears pouring out, his shoulders heaving.
Someone said his name. He opened his eyes, and heard a familiar deadpan voice ask, “Are you all right?”
“Hey, Vesuvius. Yeah, I’m fine. How ’bout you?”
“Great. Good to be home.”
Fin pawed at his wet cheeks. “Uh huh.”
“It was strange when those people came to the bomb shelter. Brad, Willow, and the baby.”
Fin scowled. “Yeah, I know.”
“I wondered if Willow would remember me. I said hi, but she couldn’t hear me. She seemed confused.”
“What do you mean, ‘confused’?”
“She didn’t believe what Brad kept trying to explain to her.”
“Start at the beginning.” Fin wanted to hear about Willow, even if his feelings were too jumbled to cope with her actual presence.
Vesuvius recounted the unexpected arrival of Fin’s family. How Willow demanded to know what Brad meant about twelve years, and Brad’s insistence that was how long she was missing. Her contention that it was biologically impossible, that it had to be six months, based on her pregnancy. Brad admitted he couldn’t explain it, but he could describe the bizarre circumstances of her imprisonment. Hearing about the stone altar surrounded by magic dominoes changed Willow’s mind about the impossibility, and she let him leave to get diapers.
“A little later you and Rook got there.”
Because Vesuvius presented his tale as a complete transcript, it took about half an hour to get through it.
Fin mulled.
Rook came in with her backpack slung over one shoulder and her laptop hugged to her chest, lugging a beat-up trash bag full of — Fin hoped — clothes.
She dumped everything on the mattress and hoisted herself onto one of the cafe stools.
Fin belatedly stood so she could have the chair, but she waved him off.
“They aren’t down there anymore. They left you a note.” She handed over a folded piece of paper.
He opened it and spread it on the table so they could both see.
Fin,
We’re going to a hotel. There’s a lot we need to talk about, so we hope to see you again soon under better circumstances.
Love, Mom & Brad & Zen
*** *** ***
Bubbles of light surround him. Clear and bright, blinding white.
He is lost in the thick, murky darkness, unable to find his way. Unable, even, to find himself. He should be in agony. The bitch, his beautiful, devoted wife, destroyed his knee. It seemed the rest of him was destroyed along with it, shattered into malignant green grit and diffused among the pure bubbles of light.
The bubbles speak to him of another, baptized in this same way, and how they miss him. Kyle understands that the bubbles are speaking of his brother. Of course they are speaking of his brother. He and his brother are the Divided Man. They must share everything, even this.
Kyle’s brother never spoke to the lights. They hope Kyle will.
Kyle knows that a small, almost insignificant portion of himself has remained with his wife, buried inside her. He wonders if it will help him return to his body.
For now he floats among the bubbles and listens.
*** *** ***
The charred flesh smell had finally been eradicated from the unfinished attic. The windows were closed again, slowing the arctic outside air’s infiltration. Melissa Tanner huddled under an electric blanket in the hammock and stared at her uncle. A short, dumpy man with scraggly, graying hair and beard, a hawk nose, and fiercely blue eyes under wild, dark brows. Being her mother’s twin put him in his sixties. His lecherous behavior made him the epitome of a dirty old man.
What the hell did Brad get me mixed up in?
Severin refused medical attention for his amputation. He wrapped it in a bandage to hide the protruding bones. And that was all.
Whenever Melissa tried to coax her body into movement, to leave this freak show before anything worse could
happen, fear of the inevitable crushing return of the patterns stopped her short.
Without a buffer, every sensory impression struck Melissa with amplified force, triggering cascades of pointless trivia. A flock of birds on the wing doused her with minor league batting averages from the 1920s, the rattle of a pot lid conveyed a tide chart for Galveston. Useless information contaminated all five senses, drowning out her life.
These patterns had wrecked her life until she found Brad.
Brad’s simple presence shielded her from the tumult of inane facts.
So did Kyle’s.
So did her uncle’s, she recently learned.
She must get Severin to teach her to master her ability, like he promised. She must be able to function on her own. Without Brad or Kyle or Severin. Without anyone.
Brad had traded her in for his mistress, the woman Severin was all too happy to tell her was her long-lost twin. What sort of negating mystical balm did Brad provide her?
Severin grunted and stepped away from his table. He was frustrated in trying to ‘use it’ one-handed. Not that Melissa knew what he was trying to use it for. He refused to share that information. She assumed it was supposed to be magic.
What had her life become? She’d fucked her uncle, a virtual stranger, in the hopes he would teach her magic tricks. Melissa lifted the bottle of white wine and took a long drink.
Wine was the only thing she’d ingested in the 48 hours she’d been in Severin’s house. The stench of his burnt flesh killed her appetite for a while, but she would need to eat soon.
She took another swig of wine.
When she opened her eyes, Severin stood over her.
“It’s time for a lesson,” he said. “Get undressed.” He took the wine and placed it on the floor, then hauled her to her feet.
Melissa’s head swam and it took her several seconds to stop swaying, by which time Severin was naked and climbing into the hammock.
“Hurry up,” he said. “Unless you don’t want to learn.”
Learning was the only way she would escape. Melissa reluctantly stripped. These were the clothes she’d worn to work two days ago, now rank and wrinkled. She dropped them with Severin’s garments.
