Spirits in the Wires

by Charles de Lint

  “Everybody’s got a few of them floating around in the old parts of their minds—the places inside them where instincts still work and the soul spends its time. Most of them just don’t know it, which is probably a good thing. You speak one of those words and things … change.”

  “You know any of those words?” Bojo asked.

  “Only one. It’s what keeps the hellhounds circling around, but they never can quite find me.”

  Bojo nodded. He wanted to ask about these hellhounds Robert kept mentioning, but his years on the road had taught him that you didn’t ask after personal information, you only took it when it was offered. So instead he sat there on the other side of the booth and listened to the music his companion pulled out of that old Gibson. It had shifted back into a major key, but when exactly that had happened, Bojo hadn’t noticed.

  “So I take it you like this girl,” Robert said after a few moments.

  His fingers never stopped their spiderwalk up and down the neck of his guitar, his right hand pulling the notes.

  “What do you mean?”

  Robert smiled. “Well, for someone you just up and met, you seem pretty fixed on wanting to make a good impression. You know, save the day, have her in your arms when the story’s done.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Every time a mention of her comes up, your heartbeat tells me different.”

  Bojo shrugged. “Can you help us?” he asked, wanting to steer the conversation back to something that might be useful.

  “Don’t know that you want my help, exactly,” Robert said.

  “Why’s that?”

  Robert shrugged. “Trouble’s always got an eye out for me—it’s why I keep a low profile. I come along to your friend’s store and I could be bringing more problems than we’re trying to solve.”

  “You mean these helldogs you keep talking about.”

  “Hellhounds,” Robert said. “And they’re not necessarily dogs. They come in all shapes and sizes. The only thing they have in common is their interest in me.”

  Since Robert had started the personal questions by asking how he felt about Holly, Bojo thought maybe he could satisfy some of his own curiosity without appearing impolite.

  “Why are they chasing you?” he asked.

  Robert smiled. “You might say we had us an altercation. That was a time ago, but there’s some that don’t know the meaning of either forgive or forget.”

  “Old spirits.”

  Robert nodded.

  “Well,” Bojo said, “I think the ones we’re talking about here are new ones. Technological spirits, I suppose we could call them.”

  “Unless it’s old spirits wearing new clothes.” Before Bojo could comment, Robert added, “But you’re right. It doesn’t feel like it, does it? Because that’s the thing about spirits—they get more set in their ways than we do.”

  “Maybe because they’ve been at it a lot longer.”

  “Could be,” Robert agreed. “So will you help?”

  “How about if the most I promise is that I’ll come along and have a look-see?”

  They took a cab up to Holly’s store, the two of them sitting in the back with the guitar in its case on the seat between them. Bojo hadn’t seen where the handgun had gone. One moment it was on the table in the diner, the next it wasn’t, and the classic cut of Robert’s suit didn’t sport any new bulges to show where it might have been hidden. For all Bojo knew, it could be under the fedora that Robert had put on before they left the diner, locking the door behind them.

  “I know this store your friend owns,” Robert said as the cab took them north. “Though I don’t think I ever went in. I’m not much of a book reader.”

  “Me, neither.”

  “But there used to be a coffee shop I liked a few doors down. I spent many a morning sitting in there, drinking my coffee and looking out the window. I’d read the papers, play a few tunes.”

  “What made you stop?”

  Robert shrugged. “It got to be a pattern and I try to keep patterns out of my life.”

  “Because of the hellhounds.”

  “Partly. Partly I just don’t like to acquire habits. And then that coffee shop went all upscale on me. I don’t blame Joe—Joe Lapegna, the guy who owns the place. He saw which way the wind was blowing and had to stay competitive, what with all the high-end cafes coming into town and all.”

  He looked out the window as the cab turned onto Holly’s street.

  “Guess what I’m trying to say,” he said, “is that I miss the place.”

  Holly

  “She really just … disappeared into your computer?” Holly asked when Christy finished his story.

  The part about Saskia’s disappearance had come early on, but Holly was still trying to get her head around the idea of it. Even with the pixie infestation that she and Dick had experienced, not to mention living with the hob for the past two years since then, what had happened to Saskia and Benny still seemed impossible.

  But Christy nodded. “Like she never existed.”

  Holly heard the catch in his voice and reached out across the table to put her hand on his.

  “We’ll get her back,” she said. “Saskia and Benny and all of them.”

  She knew they were just words, but sometimes people needed words, even when the promise held in them couldn’t necessarily be fulfilled.

  They were sitting around in her apartment—just as she’d sat with Dick and Bojo earlier, except the tinker had been replaced by the Riddell brothers, and they were in the kitchen rather than the living room. She got up now to make a second pot of coffee and pulled out a tin of day-old, homemade scones that were still fresh enough to serve to company if you slathered them with jam. The coffee went quickly, but no one seemed to have much appetite.

  There was a restlessness in the air—a need to be doing something, anything, but no one knew what. The only one who appeared to be immune was Geordie, but Geordie was always able to put a calm face on things. As Jilly would say, “It’s just this gift he has.” But Christy kept opening the screen door and standing out on the fire escape to have a cigarette, and Dick was wearing a path in the floor between the kitchen and the front room windows that overlooked the street, though what he was expecting or looking for he didn’t say.

  Holly was feeling a bit jittery herself. It looked like she and Dick had come so close to getting pulled into the computer themselves. If Dick hadn’t accidentally broken their Internet connection, not to mention her monitor …

  Don’t think about it, she told herself and poured herself another half-cup of coffee.

  “So they’re all coming?” she asked. “Estie and Tip and all?”

  “Apparently,” Geordie said. “Do you still have that old computer stored away somewhere?”

  Holly looked to Dick, but he was in the front room again.

  “I think so,” she said. “Dick’d know better.”

  Geordie stirred at the sound of the hob’s name and looked around. Holly knew exactly what was happening to him: magical being that Dick was, his existence kept slipping Geordie’s mind, the way it did for most people. You’d forget, then you’d hear his name or see him again and you’d wonder how you’d ever forgotten.

  “It’s okay,” she told him. “Dick has that effect on pretty much everybody until you get to really know him.”

  Geordie nodded. “That’s what Christy keeps telling me. But it’s still disconcerting when it’s actually happening to you. Makes you wonder what else you’re missing.”

  “Who’s missing what?” Christy asked, coming in after having another cigarette.

  Geordie shrugged. “Me. Missing all the hidden things in the world.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Christy said. “You just don’t have the trick of it yet, that’s all. You need to immerse yourself in—”

  He broke off as Dick came running back into the room.

  “The tinker’s back,” Dick said. “And he’s brought a friend.”
>
  “Tinker?” Christy asked.

  “He’s that fellow taking care of Meran’s place,” Holly said. “I told you about him.”

  They heard the buzzer ring in the store downstairs, followed by a knock on the door. Holly stood up.

  “I’ll get that,” she said.

  She was happy that none of the others had come down with her because she immediately started to blush at the warm smile Bojo gave her when she unlocked the door and let them in. His companion was a dapper black man with a relaxed look about him, belied only by his penetrating eyes. He was easily as striking as Bojo, though his neat suit and fedora were a far cry from the tinker’s more Bohemian look, and he carried a battered guitar case in his left hand. He took off his hat, tucking it under his arm when he came into the store.

  “You’ll be Holly,” he said, offering her his hand. “I’m Robert Lonnie.”

  They shook hands, then Holly stepped aside to let them by. She closed the door behind them and locked it again. When she turned, Bojo laid a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

  Be still my heart, Holly thought.

  “I told you I’d be back,” Bojo said. “With help in tow and all. Robert here—”

  “Doesn’t know much about anything when it comes to computers,” Robert broke in, “but he’s seen a thing or two that doesn’t make sense in this world.” He paused, then smiled. “He also hates it when people talk in the third person about themselves, so I’m going to stop right about now.”

  “There’ve been some complications since you left,” Holly told Bojo.

  “You and Dick are okay?”

  Holly nodded. “We’re fine. But—well, you should just come upstairs and I’ll let the others fill you in.”

  She started for the stairs to her apartment, pausing when only Bojo followed.

  “Aren’t you coming, Mr. Lonnie?”

  “It’s Robert,” he said, looking up briefly before his gaze tracked through the store, settling on the desk again.

  “Are you looking for something?” Holly asked.

  Robert shook his head. He continued to study the desk for a long moment, then finally turned and joined them at the foot of the stairs.

  “I was just taking in a sense of this place,” he said. “Getting a feel for things. Something almost came through here tonight—from the other side, I mean.”

  Holly nodded. “If Dick hadn’t been as quick as he was, we could’ve been sucked away just like all those other people.”

  “What other people?” Bojo asked.

  The question was repeated in Robert’s eyes.

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Holly said. “It’s not just me and my weird little computer woes anymore. But Christy can tell you more.”

  “Lead on,” Robert told her at the same time as Bojo asked, “Who’s Christy?”

  “Christy Riddell,” Holly said over her shoulder as she started up the stairs. “He and his brother Geordie lost someone to a computer last night and there have been other disappearances, too. Apparently it’s been on the news and everything. Christy thinks it’s all tied to the Wordwood site.”

  “Wordwood,” Robert said, repeating it as though he was tasting the way the two words came together into one.

  Before Holly could explain more, they were upstairs and she was too busy introducing everybody. Geordie and Robert had already met, though only in passing. Everybody else needed an introduction. Robert appeared to be particularly delighted to meet Dick.

  “I’ve never met one of the little people before,” he said, then paused. “Do you mind being called that?”

  Dick shook his head. “Oh, no, sir. You’ve been calling us that for hundreds of years now, just like we’ve been calling you big folk, or tall folk.”

  “Well, I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance,” Robert told him.

  “Borrible,” Christy said to Bojo. “That’s an unusual name. I’m a bit of a collector of names and I’ve never come across it before. Is it a given name?”

  Bojo nodded. “It comes from the time before we became a travelling people. We lived in a mountainous area of our homeland and when the traders first came to our villages, they referred to us as aboriginals. Later, when relationships became more acrimonious between us, they started to call us horribles instead. My father, apparently, decided that we should reclaim the term and replace its negative associations with positive ones. So he changed his name to Borrible and named me the same. I’m told he hoped that I’d name my firstborn son the same, but I don’t have a cruel streak in me.”

  Holly shot him a hurt look, disappointed to find out that he’d lied to her, but Robert only laughed.

  “Sounds like you’ve got a different story for everyone you meet,” he said.

  Bojo shrugged. “Depends on how you look at it. Somewhere, some-when, each of those stories is true.”

  “I don’t understand,” Holly said.

  “It’s how the tinkers circumvent time,” Robert explained. “Travelling in and out of worlds, they have many lives, rather than just one. It makes it hard for the years to catch up with them.”

  “Is this true?” Holly asked.

  “My Aunt Meran notwithstanding, we’re a restless people. Few of us settle down the way she and Cerin have.”

  “Though,” Geordie put in, “the pair of them are still away touring for half the year or more.”

  Bojo gave a slow nod. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

  There was a brief lull in the conversation then. Christy went out onto the fire escape for another cigarette. Dick got up as well.

  “What do you keep looking for out there?” Holly asked him.

  This time he had an answer.

  “Pixies,” he said over his shoulder.

  Bojo poured himself and Robert another coffee, the others declining when he offered the pot to them. Robert took his mug and returned to the chair in the corner. He slipped his guitar out of its case and began to noodle on the strings, the unconnected notes finally falling into a simple twelve-bar blues.

  “From the residue I sensed downstairs,” Robert said when Christy and Dick had both returned to the kitchen, his voice following the rhythm of the music, “and with what I’ve been hearing now, I think Bojo is right. This is a deep magic, but it’s not an old one.”

  “Does that mean there’s nothing we can do?” Holly asked.

  The bluesman shook his head. “On the contrary, the fact that it’s not an old spirit works in our favour. It’ll be less experienced and that means we’ll have a better chance to get it to do what we want—so long as we do it right. But we’re going to need some way to start up a conversation with it.”

  “Without a monitor, the store’s computer isn’t going to be much use,” Holly said. “But if we can find my old one …”

  This time when she looked at Dick, he was still in the room.

  “It’s still in the basement,” he said. “Behind all those boxes of National Geographic.”

  “So, should we set it up?” Holly asked.

  Robert nodded. “But since it doesn’t seem like any of us is particularly computer-adept, we should probably wait for your friends before we try to use it. When you’re working a mojo like this, you pretty much only have the one chance to get it right. Spirits learn fast. We won’t get a second shot.”

  “But we do have a chance?” Christy said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Robert told him. “People always have a chance. Only trouble is, once we get that thing we need so bad, it doesn’t always work out the way we thought it would.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Robert slipped from the Eb blues pattern he was playing into a minor key.

  “Come on now,” he said, his gaze mild as it lifted from the Gibson’s strings and settled on Christy’s features. “I know who you are. You’ve studied on this for years. Don’t tell me you can’t be surprised anymore.”

  “I don’t understand,” Holly said.

/>   “What he means,” Bojo explained, “is that some spirits just have it in their nature to play unfair. Maybe you asked for wealth. So you find you’ve got a cave full of treasure stashed away somewhere safe. Except you’re sitting on Death Row and there’s nothing you can do to get to it.”

  Holly glanced at Dick and the hob gave her an unhappy nod.

  “It’s true, Mistress Holly,” he said. “Some of the old ones delight in thinking up new ways to keep their word but at the same time make it impossible for you to benefit.”

  “I’ve still got to try,” Christy said.

  “ ‘Course we’ve got to try,” Robert said. “We’ve just got to step up to this with our thinking caps on. Figure out what the spirit wants. Figure out how we can guarantee we get what we want with no strings attached.”

  “But you’re telling us it’ll be hard,” Geordie said.

  Robert nodded. “Oh, yeah. It’ll be hard. But hard doesn’t mean impossible.”

  Aaran

  One of the great side benefits of being the newspaper’s book editor, so far as Aaran was concerned, was that he got an endless supply of freebies. And it wasn’t only books and galleys that got packed away in his briefcase every day to be taken home. Because he made a point of writing reviews for other parts of the entertainment section, he got to cherry pick all the various promotional items that arrived at the paper. Prereleases of new CDs, videos, and DVDs. T-shirts, stickers, mugs, shooter glasses, watches, posters … whatever a company might use to promote their product.

  It was a running joke at the office that Aaran would take home anything. What they didn’t know was that he made a tidy little profit on the side, selling the various items on eBay, or to a few select record and book shops in Crowsea. Like he’d actually ever wear an Eminem T-shirt, or put a signed poster of Mariah Carey up in his living room. Or drink his morning coffee from a mug with the characters from The Simpsons printed on the side.

  He also got to snap up tickets to concerts, films, and shows, which was what had brought him out to the Standish Hall last night for a concert by the Australian country singer Kasey Chambers. She was obviously a huge success with the sold-out crowd that had filled the 3000-seat concert hall, though Aaran couldn’t understand why. He just didn’t like this kind of music—alt-country, Americana, whatever you wanted to call it. But attending the odd dud concert such as this—or at least the first twenty minutes or so of the headliner’s set, which was invariably enough for him to write a review—was the price he paid for also being able to score front-row Elton John tickets.