Pandemonium

by Daryl Gregory

  “Hey,” a voice says.

  Bobby looks over, and it’s the little Johnson girl walking on the road, barefoot and in her white nightgown. “Did you sneak out?” he says.

  “Read me another,” she says.

  A wind ruffles the comics lying on the wall behind his head. He reaches up to hold them down, but one of them takes off, fluttering in the air over the water. He twists and grabs it, crumpling it in his fingers—it’s Action Comics #32—and then he’s slipping off the wall. His left hand scrabbles for the edge, but his fingernails scrape uselessly off the cement surface, and he drops.

  He’s rolling as he falls, and strikes the water on his back. The creek is shallower here, only three feet deep, and choked with rocks. He doesn’t feel anything when he strikes bottom and the stones jam against his spine. He lies there for a moment, stunned. He’s almost reclining on the rocks, his face only six inches from the surface. His vision is blurred, but he can see the wavering gray rectangle of the bridge, the bright sky, and between bridge and sky a dark blot. It’s the silhouette of the girl’s head. She’s staring down at him. His breath’s been knocked out of him. He should sit up now. He tries to lift his head, but nothing happens. He can’t move his legs or his arms either—it’s as if he’s become buried up to his ears in quicksand. The one thing he can feel is a burning at the top of his lungs. He tries to open his mouth, but not even that’s working.

  He stares up at the bridge, and the girl is still looking down at him. Stupid girl. She was too small to help him anyway. He thinks, if only one of the

  P A N D E M O N I U M

  2 5 3

  Johnson brothers would run out of their house right now they’d be able to save me.

  The burning in his chest goes away, and he stops feeling anything at all. He’s not thinking of anything either except the hole that’s appeared in the sky. It’s a black blot, growing larger, like the mouth of a tunnel rushing toward him. He’s seen that blackness before. He’s heard the voices that come out of it. He’s always been careful to look away, to run from it when he could.

  But not this time. He can’t run from it, but now he knows he doesn’t have to. Now he knows what it is.

  The blackness is a door. All he has to do is open it. The Boy Marvel, on patrol high above Olympia, Kansas, looked down to see the farmboy slip from the bridge and plunge into the rushing stream. Someone’s a little clumsy! the hero exclaimed. He swooped toward the lad and landed with a splash.

  Need a lift? he queried. He picked up the boy in arms as strong as Her- cules, and zoomed down the road with the speed of Mercury. As luck would have it, there was a hospital nearby. The Boy Marvel kicked open the doors and walked through with the sopping wet boy in his arms. Is there a doctor in the house? he called jauntily. The nurses were amazed. Someone said, Why, that’s the Noon boy! And someone else said to the hero, How did you carry him all this way—you’re just a boy yourself!

  But the Boy Marvel only smiled and said, All in a day’s work, ma’am. Before he left, the hero leaned down to Bobby Noon and whispered, I’m going to teach you a secret. He told Bobby how to make a high- frequency whistle that only superheroes could hear. Whenever you need me, the Boy Marvel said, just whistle.

  And with that the caped hero vanished.

  Bobby couldn’t move or talk, but the doctors and nurses knew how to take care of him just the same. They put him in a clean room with windows that faced his farm. For the first few years his grandmother came by every afternoon to read to him. After that, he told stories to himself. He measured the hours by the calls of the freight trains. He watched the skies.

  2 5 4

  D a r y l G r e g o r y

  Sometimes he got bored, so bored that he dreamed of running wild. He’d jump out of bed and knock over the food trays and yell at the nurses. And sometimes, especially at night, he got scared. He’d hear what sounded like the drone of a Japanese Zero, or the pad of small bare feet on the hallway tile. He’d tell himself to be brave. There were heroes in the world. And Bobby could call on the most powerful one of all. Someday he’d put his lips together and whistle, and the Boy Marvel would come speeding out of the Kansas skies like a bullet. 15

  I awoke to the distant howl of a freight train. The sound was familiar, comforting. I blinked up at the dark, content to be safe in my bed, thinking about the train coursing along the prairie. I could almost hear the engineer shouting into the wind as he leaned out the window.

  The mash-note chord sounded again, then again, louder. In the second or two of silence between the blasts I heard a car engine start up.

  I got to my feet, still sleep-drunk but rapidly waking. This wasn’t my house, wasn’t my bed. Outside the star-cracked window—past the fields, past the highway and the black bulk of the hospital silhouetted against the slate gray of the sky—the headlamps of a train plowed through the dark. The thrum and clack of the wheels carried easily through the damp air. It was impossible to tell how far away the tracks were, but the train seemed to be moving extremely fast. I reached the window and looked down at the front yard. The headlights of O’Connell’s pickup flicked on, and the truck backed up, turned toward the road. I yelled her name.

  Where the hell was she going?

  2 5 6

  D a r y l G r e g o r y

  I looked up at the hospital, its top windows still lit, and suddenly understood what O’Connell had seen from the window a few hours ago. How the farm must look from a window in the top floor of that hospital. How the Painter had always painted it that way, looking down, from a distance.

  Bobby Noon was watching the farmhouse. He’d always been watching.

  I turned and started for the door, then realized I was barefoot. I found the first gym shoe, finally found the second under the bed. I yanked them on, sockless, stamping on the heels as I reached the hallway. I called O’Connell’s name, not expecting an answer, and ducked into her room. Even in the gloom I could see that her bed was empty. I turned and plunged into the pitch-black staircase, taking the stairs two at a time, using my arms as guides and shock absorbers, and stumbled into the living room. The front door was ajar. I knocked it wide and ran outside. The bones of the barn raked the gray sky. It was near dawn, and the crescent moon hung low behind the house.

  O’Connell had taken the road, but I could head straight for the hospital through the high-grown fields.

  I ran.

  The frost-hardened grasses whipped at my arms and hands, tangled my feet. I could see nothing but the night sky, the blur of grass, and the lights of the top floor of the hospital jittering in my vision. Invisible rocks and depressions tripped and jarred me, and several times only momentum kept me upright. Finally I saw a slice of deeper black through the tops of the weeds—the road.

  Something seized my foot, and I slammed onto my chest. I lay for a moment, the breath knocked out of me, and finally pushed myself up onto hands and knees. I sucked air, and began to cough. My foot was still trapped. I reached down, felt the metal teeth of barbed wire biting into my shoes, gripping the cuff of my jeans. My ankle burned. Nearby I could see now the outlines of a fence, knocked

  P A N D E M O N I U M

  2 5 7

  flat in this section, but still connected to upright posts through strands of wire. A few feet in that direction and I would have run into the wire at full speed.

  I stood awkwardly, my right foot and leg still trapped. I carefully pried the wires away until only my jeans were still snagged. I hopped forward and ripped them free. Then it was a long step over a drainage ditch, and I was standing on the road.

  The hospital’s peaked entrance was perhaps a hundred yards away, lit by sconces to either side of the double doors. O’Connell’s pickup was parked under it.

  I jogged up the road, huffing now, exhaling clouds, my feet slapping the black pavement. I’d stopped trying to think. The top-floor windows watched me approach, unblinking.

  Car lights swept up from behind me; I glanced back, then jumped as
ide as a long black car roared past. The car swung into the hospital entrance and skidded to a stop just behind the pickup. I slowed, catching my breath. Fifty feet away, the driver’s-side door opened. A figure stepped out: gleaming black shoes, razor-creased charcoal pants, black trench coat. He straightened, flexed gloved fingers, and adjusted his slouch hat, each movement precisely choreographed. He slowly turned his head in my direction. A hatchet-nosed man. His eyes were in shadow, but his gaze pinned me like a prison searchlight. I froze, waiting for him to lift those hands, waiting for the glint of pistols.

  His head tilted forward in what could have been a nod. Then he spun away from me, the trench coat fanning, and stalked through the hospital doors.

  I almost knelt then, my legs spongy with fear and relief. I bent over, hands gripping knees, and breathed deep. It’s only a demon, I told myself. Just like you. Sirens approached from the distance.

  I reached the front doors before I realized I was running again.

  . . .

  2 5 8

  D a r y l G r e g o r y

  To my night-widened eyes, the lobby was lit like an operating room. The front desk was abandoned, but nearby a woman’s voice made a sound like a scream or a squeak. I leaned around the corner. A dozen yards down the hallway a heavy woman in a blue pastel smock tried to press herself into the wall, her head down and arms crossed over her chest. The Truth stalked past her without turning his head. When the demon reached the next intersection of hallways he glanced back, as if making sure I was following him. Fuck you, I thought. I’m not following you anywhere. The Truth disappeared down the side hallway. I ran toward the nurse, touched her shoulder. She cringed but didn’t scream. She was maybe fifty or sixty, with carefully hair-sprayed black hair.

  “Have you seen a bald woman?” I said. “Kind of thin and angry?”

  She stared at me, then shook her head.

  It didn’t matter. I knew where O’Connell was heading. I’d find her on the third floor.

  “Call the police,” I said to the nurse. “Then try to keep people in their rooms.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t, I can’t—”

  I heard someone shout in fear, then the slam of a door. I yanked the woman upright and said, “Where are the elevators?” She gestured vaguely in the direction the Truth had taken. “Okay,” I said. “Now please call the cops.”

  I reached the intersection. The hallway to my left seemed to stretch the length of the building. Several people in patient gowns and bathrobes peeked from their doorways. They were looking at the Truth.

  The demon strode down the middle of the corridor. He reached the bank of elevators and stopped, turned. He looked in my direction. Waiting.

  I ran out of the intersection, away from him. There had to be another elevator, or a set of back stairs. Anything was better than getting into a box with a serial-killing agent of justice. I slowed to a jog, and started looking at signs, trying to find a way upstairs.

  P A N D E M O N I U M

  2 5 9

  “Hey you!” a voice said angrily. I looked back. A man in blue scrubs, not much older than me, marched down the hallway toward me. “What are you doing in here?”

  That question had too many possible answers. I picked the simplest. “I need to get to the third floor,” I said. The young man—doctor or orderly or whatever he was—was passing an exit sign when a tremendous bang stopped him in his tracks. The fire door beneath the exit sign bulged inward. Incredibly, the man started to walk toward it.

  “I wouldn’t open the door,” I said. But it was too late; a second blow sent the door clanging open.

  A big man dressed in blue spandex stepped into the hallway, a disc of metal big as a manhole cover hanging on his arm. The Captain. Leaning on him was Smokestack Johnny, wearing his traditional overalls and his blue-striped cap. He had one arm draped over the Captain’s shoulder. His right leg was missing below the knee. The Captain pointed at the man in scrubs. “Corpsman! This man needs medical attention.”

  “I had me a bit of an accident,” Johnny said cheerfully. I turned and ran.

  The hallway ended a dozen yards later in a left turn. I stutterstepped around the corner, then found myself in a long corridor that ran along the back side of the hospital. A few seconds later I saw a white plastic sign that said stairs. I threw myself against the door and got inside the stairwell, chest heaving.

  Five seconds, passed, ten, and my breath began to slow. How many demons were here? How the hell had they all decided to converge?

  And where the hell were the cops? Even Mayberry had two cops. I slid to the side and slowly raised my head to look out the door’s square window. The length of hallway visible to me was empty. I turned and started up the stairs, using a hand on the railing to haul myself up. I forced myself to ignore the burning in my legs, the sweat running into my eyes.

  On the second-floor landing I swung around the bend and was almost bowled over by a middle-aged man hurrying down. He was 2 6 0

  D a r y l G r e g o r y

  dressed in pajamas, and a length of IV tube hung from his arm. He jerked back from me, terrified. “No,” he said. “No.” As if I were a mugger with a knife at his throat. I stepped aside, raised my hands. “Be careful down there,” I said.

  “It’s crazy.”

  No, that wasn’t the right word. All those demons—the Captain, the Truth, Smokestack Johnny, little ol’ me—it was too much at once. Too much for anyone to take.

  Pandemonium.

  He ducked his head and swept past me, heading down. I looked up. Somewhere above me, a small voice was crying. The sound grew louder as I climbed. When I rounded the final landing I found the source: a white girl, eight or nine years old, dressed in a white lacy nightgown. Her glossy brown hair hung in curls to her shoulders. She sat on the step in front of the third-floor exit, sobbing into arms crossed over her knees, her shoulders shaking. Her feet were bare and dirty up to the shins, as if she’d walked for miles through fields.

  I stood very still. There was no way past her. She lifted her head, looked down the stairs at me. Her eyes glistened, and her cheeks were wet. “No one will help me,” she wailed. I put a hand on the rail, moved up a step. They said the Angel could kill with a touch.

  “I haff to get inside, but he won’t let me. I try and try, but he’s so big and strong and I’m just a little girl.” She wiped at her nose. “None of the others even listen to me. And you won’t help me, you’re just a kid and you never listen to anybody. All you do is play nasty pranks.”

  “I’m not like that,” I said. “Not . . . now.” I took another step, stooped a bit.

  “I’d like to help you,” I said. “Let me go up there. There’s a friend of mine, a woman with no hair, and I’m afraid she might be in trouble.”

  She rolled her eyes. “The bald lady? What kind of girl would make

  P A N D E M O N I U M

  2 6 1

  herself so ugly like that?” She sniffed. “She said she’d help me, but she was no help at all.”

  “What happened?” I said quietly.

  The Angel shook her head, exasperated. Glossy curls swayed and bounced. “See for yourself.”

  She stood, wiped at her cheeks, and leaned back to pull open the heavy door. I followed her out.

  The long hallway was empty for most of its length. At the end, where it T’d with another corridor, a man stood in an open doorway, arms crossed over his chest. He wore a red top and red tights, and a white cape that hung down his back. A figure lay on the floor in front of his white boots.

  I walked forward, a sick feeling in my stomach. It was O’Connell. She lay sprawled at his feet, one arm flopped across her chest, the other stretched in my direction, reaching toward a pistol that lay on the floor. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth pooled with blood.

  The caped man looked at me, smiled. His face was square and handsome, and his hair, so black it was almost blue, shone as if coated with Vaseline. “Hi there,” he said. The Boy Marv
el, I presumed. But a full-grown man, just like in the comics.

  I slowly walked forward. “I just want to take her out of here,” I said to him.

  The Little Angel spun to face me, her small fists clenched. “What did you say?”

  “I’d like to move her,” I said to the man, and stepped closer. He moved too fast for me to see. One moment his arms were crossed over his chest; the next they were straight in front of him, and I was flying back. My shoulder hit the floor first and I tumbled. I landed on my chest. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs felt like they’d been smashed to the back of my ribs.

  “No one gets to the boy except through me,” the caped man said. His voice carried easily, like a radio actor leaning into the mike. I turned to my side, gasping. Twenty feet away, at the other end of 2 6 2

  D a r y l G r e g o r y

  the hallway from the Boy Marvel, the Truth stood with his hands at his sides, his face shadowed by the brim of his hat. Beside him stood a gray-haired man wearing only pajama bottoms. His chest and wide belly were covered with white hair. The old man looked at me for several seconds, then he opened his hand and showed me the silver butter knife he was holding. I got my elbows under me, pushed myself to a sitting position. Who the hell was this now?

  The old man closed his fist, then turned to the wall and plunged the tip of the knife into the drywall. He dragged down, slicing a line that puffed chalk, then slashed sideways. Three more quick strokes and he’d carved the suggestion of a hallway and the outline of the door. He looked over at me and winked.

  The Painter. Well, fine. At least there’d be a record of this night. The demon wouldn’t help me, but neither would he get in my way. That wasn’t his job. And the Truth wouldn’t interfere unless somebody violated his code of honesty.