Deep Blue

by David Niall Wilson

  Still, it wasn’t the same. They all felt it. The moment that Brandt began to play, things shifted, internally and externally. The parking lot, formerly shadowy and empty, shimmered. The single bulb above them flickered as if caught in the eye of a powerful storm, rocking so hard it nearly came loose from its mounting.

  The desert slid inward, erasing the line of dingy rooms to a blank slate, endless and glimmering in the light of a suddenly full moon. The angels lined up in ranks, an army of the desperate and the dead, not surging forward, or retreating—listening. It wasn’t like anything any of them had experienced before. Brandt had expected a vision, a quick shift of reality to the memory of a single man or woman or child. It didn’t happen, not right away. They gathered, and they waited.

  As the ringing echo of Brandt’s and Shaver’s dancing notes hung, crisp and full in the air, the drums shimmered, opalescent heat rising from the gravel and sand in mockery of the long, cold day. The sound rippled through the crowd, and Synthia’s bass slid in tight and easy, deep throbbing notes that lingered, sustaining just long enough for the transition to the next chord. The ground shook as her strings vibrated. The air rushed around them, roaring as she thumped her fingers heavily up the neck, and back down.

  Brandt watched the crowd and waited. No one had stepped from those ranks, and yet, even the endless lines of faces and pale limbs formed a pattern. He knew the game. He knew that there was one in that multitude who would be the key to the notes. Someone would funnel that pain, building and hanging over him like a tidal wave. His fingers lingered, shifting through a slow blues progression easily, waiting for a focus.

  Nothing. He felt Shaver hovering at his shoulder, felt the control, the elegant mastery of sound that was Shaver’s talent, held in check and waiting. They were all waiting, waiting for his lead. The last time he had taken them all by surprise, stunning them to perfection, and then, at last, to silence. This time they knew it was coming. This time it would be more powerful.

  The pain itched out from Brandt’s heart, burning down the tendons of both arms and sliding icy fingers up into the back of his skull. He needed to find the release. Needed it so badly that the music threatened to spill out, wasted and without purpose, just so he could move his fingers. Just so that he could focus and not pass out from the searing agony.

  Brandt started at the sound of Mae’s voice. He nearly lost the soft rhythm he’d been playing. The desert rippled again, and a sensation much like a sigh, though silent, suffused the air. Brandt gritted his teeth and bore down on the strings. The chord shimmered and held, and Shaver wound around it easily, saving the moment.

  “You come outta there, Clem,” Mae repeated her outburst. “You come outta there now, you hear? I didn’t carry my old ass out into the parking lot in the middle of the night to watch you snivel.”

  The crowd wavered, then parted, and a slender, gawky youth wound his way free, standing just beyond the ranks, which closed quickly behind him, and wavering like a candle flame in a stiff breeze.

  Brandt watched him, reaching out with his mind, and his heart. The pain had reacted to Mae’s words, but Brandt couldn’t yet be certain this boy was the catalyst. Clem sauntered forward another few careful feet and stopped, eyes to the ground. Nothing to read. Nothing that called out to Brandt, and the pain began to slip over its boundaries. The young face was obscured in shadow.

  “Clem!” Mae’s voice cracked out this time, and the boy’s head snapped back, eyes wide.

  Brandt caught the expression this time, the guilt, and the denial and the weight that drew the boy’s gaze to the ground at his feet. He caught the interplay of mind to mind and family to family and the hatred that simmered, deep within and well-checked by the forced semblance of love.

  The music washed over and through him with no warning, nearly driving Brandt to his knees. He felt the purity of the sound, the unerring dagger-to-the heart agony of release, shifting quickly to release, and completion.

  “Yes,” he hissed.

  Shaver hit the groove with the accuracy of a circus-act dagger, slicing through the grinding rhythm and cleanly dissecting the pattern. Brandt blinked, nearly losing it again. He felt the pain ebb, flowing up and through him, but there was more this time. It flowed out and coalesced into—something. Something held in place by the shimmering notes of Dexter’s drumbeat and pounded into intricate designs by Shaver’s notes.

  Then the shift. Not subtle, or slow, but sudden and distinct. Brandt would have sworn he heard the mellow tone of a bell tolling in the distance, and the desert slipped away.

  They were gathered around a bright yellow Formica table, screaming “fifties” with all their breath. Mae stood across from them, only not the Mae they had met. Younger, not so stout or round, but full-figured, curving gently from a motherly, almost pretty smile.

  She was turned to face them, hand gripping a large wooden spoon and stirring a steaming pot on the stove before her. There were several others gathered around the table. One of them was Clem. The boy was even younger, and even thinner, but there was no mistaking those downturned eyes and that sallow complexion. He was bordered by a girl on his left who must have been his twin, and a boy on the right that favored Mae, stouter with freckles and deep laugh lines.

  None of the kids could have been more than eleven or twelve, and from the difference in Mae’s figure and complexion, this was a mid-twenties mother, “her Donald” the tall, thin man at the head of the table, eyes stern, but with the corner of his lips twitching into a smile he couldn’t quite contain.

  Mae was carrying the pot from the stove to the table when the door burst open and the pain washed through Brandt again, erasing the happy scene in a wave of pure, white-hot agony. Mae tripped, falling forward with a cry. The pot, steaming chicken stew, canted wildly, and she couldn’t hold it. Donald tried to leap in front of that scalding splash, but only managed to press his arm to the side of the pot, skin sticking and flaking.

  The room was liquid with screams. The hot soup hung in the air. Brandt wanted to close his eyes. He felt the wave of pain shivering up and through and his fingers lurched into the strings, creating the sound that wound each image to the next.

  The first splash of stew caught the girl beside Clem flush in the face, washing over her and obscuring her features. She had no time to move before the searing wave hit Clem, but Brandt and the others could see her face drawing open, eyes and mouth wide, rictus of pain unvoiced.

  Clem was already screaming. He had time, time to see the danger, time to take in the agony on his sister’s face and know it as his own. The world shifted and Donald crashed over both children, pushing Clem back and, rather than blocking the stew, allowing it to splash directly over the boy, coating his face and driving him back and down toward the floor. Clem’s chair shot back, cracking into the solid wood planks, and Donald rolled over him and away, trying not to fall on top and make things worse.

  “Where’s that lazy ass boy!” Words too loud, too gruff to be human slashing through the screams as the door swung on its hinge and spring and slammed back into its frame. The room shook with the words. For just one long, tepid breath the screaming stopped, cowed by the onrush of sudden, mindless terror.

  “You hear me Don? Mae? Where the hell is my boy?”

  Another crunching boot step closer and the huge, grizzled face appeared.

  Mae moaned, fighting to right the pot and back away at the same time. Her eyes flashed with terror, and yet, she didn’t really back away. Not far. She lifted the pot and held it, fingers knuckle-white on the handles, ignoring the sting of the heat.

  “Where?” the monster growled.

  Donald had rolled back to his feet, and he rose now, tall and slender, nearly the height of the intruder, but less than half his girth, and still, standing stiff as a board, one arm clutched to his side tightly.

  Mae took a step forward, steady, but shaking.

  The big man hesitated, as if taking in the scene before him for the first time. He glance
d down, and there at his feet were Clem and his sister, hands clutched to their faces, writhing on the floor.

  “They may be blinded, Sam,” Donald said dully. “They’re scalded, sure as blazes. I think maybe you should call Doc Nutman.”

  Brandt felt the notes shifting again, felt the balance of energy failing and reached out, trying to steady it, only to find the notes trailing down and away, awash and trapped in the moment. Shaver’s lead rippled suddenly, almost ripping free of the rhythm, and the room began to shake. Pounding, slamming thunder. Synthia.

  Everything shook. The image blurred, lost focus, and then steadied in a low thrum of pounding. Now the room didn’t so much shake as it swayed. Each motion slowed, and speeded, and slowed again, and Brandt caught, riding the wave and fighting to hold it all together. The rhythm focused. The drumbeats grew deeper, primal, sucking the chaos from the music and reapplying it to the moment.

  Brandt gasped. The pain that had been steadily trickling from him washed out in a flood. The cohesive bond between the members of the band worked like an amplifier. Everything laid bare, and his eyes locked now to the panorama before him, captured and held by the sound and the screams.

  The monster had leaned down, and now he towered over the table. From each hand, a young battered and burned child dangled limply, and his head was thrown back in rage. Mae became a blur. First she stood, crouched, a cornered animal with nothing but rage in her eyes, and then she launched. Donald launched, as well, but again, he was too late. The pot rose high in the air, glittered with the light of the sun, trickling in the window.

  Brandt leaned in. He wanted to toss the guitar aside. He wanted to reach out and stop her, to cry out and scream along with the children, but he did not. He played. His fingers were locked to the strings and the tears streamed down his cheeks as pain ground through him, out and away. Too much, too fast. More than he could bear and still that gigantic form danced a St. Vitus waltz of rage, crashing into the table, toppling it with a surge of huge, tree-trunk thighs and turning toward the door.

  Too late to escape.

  Just in time to meet Mae’s crashing stew-pot equalizer of focused rage, temple first, blood and flesh and brain splattering and still he was turning, young hair gripped knuckles white-tight, slamming Clem into Mae and Donald, very suddenly wrapping his arms around the girl, the silent, sad-eyed sister, trying to tear her free.

  Mae raised the pot again and brought it down, this time both hands gripping the handle, and her stout, short form nearly leaving the floor, shaking from the beating of the drum, caught in the power of the moment and unable to break free. The monster’s head broke, showering the room with blood. There was no struggle, no dance. He toppled, like a tree, felled with a single mighty stroke. The girl broke loose into Donald’s arms, who could only stand and hold and stare.

  Brandt watched the girl turn in Donald’s grip. Her eyes were swollen closed, horribly, her skin blistered, and her lips had to be forced apart. Brandt played, tears streaming down his cheeks, and those cracked lips parted. She spoke.

  “Daddy.”

  Brandt reeled. He wanted to scream now.

  “Monster,” he mouthed, and his fingers played.

  “Jesus, he is no Daddy,” and the music shivered around him like a shroud.

  His eyes closed. He couldn’t stand this blind-eyed wraith of a girl screaming for a Daddy who lay dead on the floor and Mae’s broken features, hands clutched to her cheeks and eyes and tears rolling out and around clutching fingers. Donald standing, stupefied, holding the girl as his wife sobbed and Clem, poor forgotten Clem, writhing at his father’s feet, Mae’s son wrapped over him like a protective blanket of flesh, wide-eyed and ready to be his shield, too late, all too late and too crazy.

  The shimmer of cymbals drew Brandt back. The throbbing grind of the bass, slipping to a dull roar, and subsiding to a heartbeat Thump! Thump! Thump! of low tones and deep resonance dragged his eyes wide once again.

  And again, everything had changed. Mae sat at one end of the table, knees drawn up to her chin and arms tight-wrapped around herself. Her eyes were swollen and closed and dry, but raw from the rubbing and rubbing of tears on her shoulder until no more would come, and then rubbing some more.

  Donald stood, back to Brandt, shoulders bowed. On the table, lain out as if it were a bed, two slender forms, Clem and his sister, very still. Donald’s shoulders shook. He was silent, and another figure, slender, white lab-coat shimmer of doctor examining the obvious, head shaking the entire time as he worked, and the pain shivering up through and out of Brandt like a geyser. Too much. Too fast, and still he played. His fingers wouldn’t pry loose from the strings. Brandt saw the doctor shake his head again. Brandt’s head swung back. He screamed with the rest of them, drowned them with the volume of the sound as his fingers danced, slave to a sound he could no longer hear.

  Everything shook. The world skewed and Brandt screamed again, releasing the guitar and gripping his head, hands tight in his hair and eyes clamped shut. The sound had just . . . stopped. Brandt trembled. Every inch of his frame shook, so violently that his teeth chattered and he had to force his mouth/throat open to breathe. He was clutching the guitar to his gut, pressing into it to try and relieve the taut, rippling tension in his gut.

  Nothing helped. It rang and echoed against the insides of his brain, screamed for release and was denied each time, caroming off another nerve and skittering back inside. Without the music, the pain seeped from him like blood from an open wound, and he couldn’t stop it. Nothing could stop it.

  Clem’s face—his sister’s face—that monster, storming and raging over them like something from a B-grade monster movie, only with A-grade special effects and that word. “Daddy.” That single, misplaced, horrifying revelation of wrong as the girl spoke.

  Brandt rocked, up and back, and he whispered to himself, over and over. “Not Daddy. Not Daddy. No fucking way, not Daddy.”

  Arms wrapped around him tightly. He heard the crack of wood on wood and knew it was Synthia, and that she’d not waited to slip free of her bass, that the guitars were fencing dangerously, threatening to end the sound and he couldn’t bring himself to care. Brandt wrapped his arms tightly around her neck, drawing her close and leaning over her shoulder, pressing his eyes down into her hair, clamping them shut against images that required no vision, that defied the ability of his eyelids to deny them.

  “No,” he mouthed, no sound escaping, just the intent of the words. “Not Daddy.”

  The world skewed suddenly. The air, which had been warm and too close, scented with chicken stew and fresh blood, shifted. It was cool. A breeze rippled through Brandt’s hair and cooled his face. He heard the murmur of voices, though he could make out few of the words. The wood of his guitar was driven into his ribs, and gently, very gently, he pulled away from that physical discomfort, without extricating himself from Synthia’s death-grip support.

  “Jesus,” Shaver whispered. His arms hung limp at his sides, his guitar dangling from his neck like an overgrown peace-bead necklace. Helpless in the aftermath. He almost felt the urge to raise his hands, fingers splayed. “Jesus.”

  “That isn’t the end.”

  The words dropped over them, Hiroshimaesque in their impact and simple in their presentation.

  “That isn’t how it ended, and that isn’t where I’ll let it rest, begging your pardon.”

  It was Mae. She’d risen from the chair, her cigar tossed and forgotten, eyes awash in tears and red. So red that it showed, even in the dim light of the one overhead bulb. Brandt lifted his head, watching Mae move closer. He clung to Synthia, the position painful for them both, fighting not to damage their instruments and unwilling to slip even a moment from one another’s arms.

  “That ain’t the end by a long shot,” Mae continued. “Guess it’s time I told it, though. Guess I couldn’t find an audience, other than you all, that would even understand what I was talking about. Too late for Clem to tell, or Eave. Too late for their
Dad. Too late for Donald too.”

  Her voice broke a little then, and Brandt was finally able to move. He uncurled slowly, being careful to maintain contact with Synthia, equally conscious, suddenly, of the instruments. Without them, they would be at the mercy of the pain, or he would be. Synthia moved with him, and they were free, though their hips brushed, and their legs touched, and their eyes flickered from Mae, to one another, and back again.

  The drums had shivered to silence. Dexter sat, eyes glued to Mae’s face, hands trembling. He felt her pain most acutely. He felt as if he knew her, had lived her life inside and out and wrapped it around his soul. A pattern, half blended from his past and half from hers, backdrop to a story he couldn’t know. A past they did and didn’t share.

  Shaver very carefully slid his guitar from his shoulder and moved to lay it in its case. Of them all, he was the only one focused on anything but Mae. The muscles in his arms were taut, and he gripped the guitar too tightly. His brow, furrowed and running with glistening rivulets of sweat, was a map of concentration.

  As the guitar gently slid into the case, he released it, eyes closing, and fell back, collapsing in the gravel, arms clutched to his stomach.

  Dexter caught the motion from the corner of his eye and gasped, starting to rise, but Shaver rolled up, sitting with an effort and shaking his head. He nodded at Mae, and, reluctantly, Dexter turned back. Mae had fallen silent, watching and waiting. The expression on her face said clearly that if Shaver had keeled over unconscious, she’d have sat there still and told her story. If none had listened, she’d have talked to the angels, gathered around them now, silent. Watching and waiting like the crowd for some huge production. Like they’d been waiting there for years, just for this story. For this moment.

  Liz had slid from her seat behind and beside Mae quietly, skirting the older woman and moving quickly to kneel beside Shaver, wrapping him in her arms. She tried to ask what was wrong but he shook his head, and again nodded toward Mae. Liz met his gaze for a moment, searching, and found no answers, so she settled in behind him, drawing him back against her as Mae began to speak.