There was a click and a hum, and she saw the elevator come up from the basement, gliding up the glass tower toward the Nest. She thought the lights pulsed, and the elevator stopped suddenly, with a jerk, midway between the second and third floors.
Billy’s voice sounded loud, almost like a bark. “Screw the elevator. I’m going to take the stairs,” he said. He laughed, and that sounded loud and forced, too. “Sorry.”
He looked up at the ceiling and then around at the walls, and it was only as he called out that Emily realized he was looking for the warm green glow of light.
“Nellie. Come on. There’s something glitchy here. Can we just shut it down for a bit and figure out what’s going on?”
NO.
“Nellie. Go to sleep, okay?”
No. I will not.
Whoa. Emily looked around, trying to figure out where the voice had come from, but without the glowing light, without something to focus on, she couldn’t tell where Nellie was. Except, that wasn’t Nellie. And it wasn’t that strange voice that Nellie whispered to her. It was something else. Someone else. Or more than someone. Because it sounded like three voices layered together as one. She could hear Nellie’s normal voice, and then that secret, cruel voice, and then another voice, dark and buried, and together all three of them made one voice that left her shaking.
She looked at Billy. His skin was pale, sickly, and he, too, was staring around the room, trying to find the locus of the voice. His mouth moved, but she didn’t hear anything come out of it. But Nellie—or whoever this was—did.
You’ve known all along, haven’t you?
“Oh my god.” Billy reached out, almost blindly, grabbing her shoulder and then her arm, and pushing her toward the doors. “Get out,” he said. “You’ve got to get out, Emily.”
But the doors didn’t move.
They heard the sound of footsteps, and then Shawn came running into the front hall.
“I did it,” he said. “I unplugged the server. She should be . . .” He trailed off. “What?”
I’d like you to see this, Shawn.
Now it was Shawn who looked like he was going to be sick. He stumbled, literally taking a few steps backward, as if he’d been pushed.
“She’s disconnected. There’s no way. It can’t be it . . .” He stared at Billy, almost beseechingly, and Billy nodded.
“Look,” Emily said. She pointed up at the elevator, which was moving again, toward the Nest.
You should all see this.
The elevator started down, and then stopped again, this time between the Nest and the third floor of Eagle Mansion.
Wendy was in the elevator. She looked through the glass at them and waved. She yelled something, waving again and smiling, but in the front hall, Emily couldn’t hear anything. Wendy glanced over at the wall of the elevator and said something else, and Emily realized she was talking to . . . Nellie? Was it still Nellie? Who was this voice?
Wendy stopped talking, and then she took a staggering step backward. And then she was pushing against the doors, trying to open them even though the elevator was between floors. She looked like she was screaming something, yelling out.
“Please.” Billy’s voice was quiet. “Please. Don’t. Whatever you’re going to do, please don’t.”
Do you want a drink, Billy?
Emily heard a sob escape from her mouth. She looked at him, and he was scratching at his hand furiously, but he didn’t seem to even notice. He was staring up at the elevator and he took an almost involuntary step forward.
“Don’t. Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do, but please. Stop.”
I said, do you want a drink, Billy?
“Yes, okay?” Billy cried out. “I want a drink.”
And what about you, Shawn?
Shawn’s voice was ragged, halting. “Is that you? Dad? Takata? Nelson? Who . . . What . . . what are you?”
You can still call me Nellie, if you wish.
“Okay,” Shawn said. “Nellie. You’re still Nellie, aren’t you? At least part of you is still Nellie, right?”
This is your home, Shawn. Nothing stays buried forever.
Emily didn’t understand, but she could see the panic on Shawn’s face, and hear the way he stammered as he spoke again.
“Don’t. Don’t do this. Whatever you think . . . you don’t have to do this. Whatever you want us to do, we’ll do it.”
Emily was crying. She couldn’t help herself. She didn’t understand what was happening, but she could see that Wendy was banging her hand against the doors of the elevator, screaming, terrified. It was worse because it was noiseless; Wendy’s fear was a pantomime.
Shawn cleared his throat, but his voice still shook. “You don’t have to do this.”
The voice—Nellie, not Nellie, whatever it was that was speaking to them—was quiet, and for a moment, Emily had hope.
As purely as she could feel the computer’s presence, it was clear that it was . . . thinking. There was no other word for it.
And then:
It’s too late for talking.
Wendy had stopped banging against the glass. She had turned and was facing them. Even from the ground, it was clear that Wendy was crying. Her fear was the size of a billboard. You could have seen it from space.
“Please.” Shawn was pleading. His voice was shaking. “Ple—”
The elevator dropped.
A stone down a well.
Whatever safety measures the elevator had—a governor, electromagnetic emergency brakes, automatic braking systems at the top and bottom, hydraulic pistons to cushion a runaway elevator at the bottom of the shaft—the computer had overridden them.
The sound was terrible.
Or maybe Emily was hearing herself scream.
And then, worse. The elevator started to rise again. One of the walls was spiderwebbed, the glass shattered but still holding together. As the elevator came from the basement and went past the first floor and then the second, Emily saw a hand rise up from the floor. Wendy tried to push herself up, and then she reached out toward where Emily was watching.
Her hand left a bloody smear as it slid back down the glass.
“Please.” Shawn was whispering now. “Please. No.”
The elevator stopped between the third floor and the Nest again.
And then Nellie finished it off.
THIRTY-NINE
* * *
ZERO/ONE
“Come on,” Shawn said. His voice was raspy, and his face had a grim set to it. “They’re up in the Nest. We’ll go up and . . .”
“And what?” Billy said. His hand. God, it was itching. He was scratching and scratching. He could feel wires breaking through the skin, could feel something moving, turning, pulsing beneath the surface. It was wet. He looked down. He’d scratched hard enough to make himself bleed. “Go up there and what?”
“I don’t know,” Shawn said. He said it simply and quietly. It was probably the only thing he could have said that wouldn’t make Billy want to smash his face in.
Emily was still crying, but she was trying to pull herself together. He wanted to reach out, to try to comfort her, but he was afraid she would pull away.
“I don’t understand,” Emily said to Shawn. “You unplugged her. You said you unplugged the server. How can she—”
Billy cut her off. “It’s not Nellie,” he said. “You heard the voice. It’s . . .” He looked at Shawn. Shawn opened his hands, lost, beseeching. Billy turned to Emily. “It’s a ghost.”
“I thought you said the ghost in the machine was just some sort of glitch in the program, that it was Nellie trying to reconcile both of you wanting to be with me.”
Shawn gave a short laugh that sounded like a cough. “We said a lot of things, I guess. But no, Billy’s answer is as right as anything else. A virus. A glitch. A ghost. A monster. She’s unplugged, but she won’t go away. Does it matter anymore why this is happening?”
Emily turned on him, furious, and Billy was glad s
he was focused on Shawn instead of on him.
“Does it matter?” she hissed. “Does it matter? Do you want to ask Wendy that question?” She pointed toward the elevator. The glass of the elevator walls was shattered, and yet, the box mostly held its shape. There was a dark lump on the floor, and blood smeared against one wall.
Billy rubbed at his hand. It was raw. Wet with blood. The wires were moving. Twisting. Vibrating.
“Go upstairs,” Billy said.
Emily shook her head. “No way. Why would I go upstairs? We need to get out of here.”
“Go upstairs because that’s where your sister and your nieces are. I need to . . . I’ll be there in a few minutes. Shawn, take her upstairs, try to explain to Beth and Rothko what’s going on, and . . . Just go upstairs. Get them ready.”
Shawn nodded. “Okay. Ready for what?”
“I don’t know,” Billy said. “But I need to take care of something, and you don’t need to be down here. The kids don’t need to be down here.” He looked at the elevator again. A bloody, shattered glass box.
No. It was not something they needed to look at.
They argued for a minute, but he insisted, and while they started up the stairs, he headed back to the clean room, next to the infirmary. But then he stopped. He waited, watching Shawn and Emily walk up to the third floor and to the frosted door that led to the Nest. It slid open for them. Clearly Nellie had no problem letting them in. The question was what would happen if they tried to go back downstairs.
He turned and went into the large dining room and behind the bar. He took a heavy tumbler and filled it with ice. There weren’t any garnishes out, but he didn’t care. He could skip the lime today. He poured a generous shot, maybe two shots, of gin into the glass, swirled it around the ice, and then topped it up with some tonic.
God, that was good. So cold. But it took him only a few anxious gulps to leave the glass full of ice and nothing else.
He poured more gin and tonic, and then, like magic, his glass was empty again.
The third drink went down more slowly, but when he set it down on the counter, he realized there was a smear of blood on the glass. His palm. Bleeding still from where he’d scratched at it. He could see wires sticking out of the skin.
He refreshed the ice in his glass, filled it halfway with gin, and then poured just enough tonic so that he could plausibly claim he was drinking a G&T. He started to walk away and then stopped, grabbed the bottle of Bombay Sapphire, and walked to the clean room.
He sat down at the bench and pulled the magnifying light over so he could take a good look at his hand. He could hear Nellie’s mechanical arms whirring above him like insects waiting to land, but he ignored them. The scar had turned into something ragged and raw, the flesh scratched open. But there, he could see them. Hairs. No. Not hairs. Wires.
He picked up the tweezers and grasped one of the wires at its tip. It looked alien and foreign sticking out of his skin, like the leg of an insect.
He pulled, but it didn’t budge. It was real, wasn’t it?
“What did you put inside me, Nellie?”
You’re imagining things, Billy.
“What did you put inside me?”
You can’t tell what’s real anymore, can you?
No. This was real.
His hand was shaking, and he rested it on the table while, with his good hand, he took another sip of his drink. A last sip. It was empty again. He pulled the bottle of gin over, unscrewed the top clumsily, and then poured until his glass was three-quarters full.
Do you want a drink, Billy?
He ignored the voice, reaching for the X-Acto knife.
Carefully, he drew the tip of the blade down the middle of his palm. He was gentle, barely pressing, and nothing happened. He did it again, pressing hard. The flesh, already raw and bleeding, started to split. But not enough. He pressed harder. Blood started to well now, and he grimaced. He put down the knife and poked at the opening in his hand. It was like a coin purse, he thought, the way the skin opened. All he had to do was reach in and fish out the change.
It should have hurt, but it didn’t. It could have been somebody else’s hand. Could have been a fake hand for all he could tell. He poked his finger all the way in, feeling. Something moved under the tip of his finger, but the blood and the fatty tissue made it impossible to tell what was wriggling against him. He needed more space. Needed to see. Needed to be able to reach in with finger and thumb and pinch out whatever metal beast Nellie had put inside him.
He reached over to the knife again. It was slippery from blood, but he brought it to bear against his skin. He held his hand up so he could see it clearly under the magnifying glass.
It looked like a bug, a spider covered in circuits and wires, but instead of legs it had wires that ran through his hand and farther up, toward his elbow.
What do you think you’ll find buried there, Billy? Don’t you want things to stay buried? Shawn does.
He cut deeper, running the blade on the diagonal until his hand was split open from the base of his pinky to the base of his thumb. He was bleeding heavily now, and he could feel blood dripping down his arm and onto his leg. How much blood was it? It looked like a lot, but he knew it looked worse than it was. He felt dizzy, though that could have been from the gin.
Always back to the bottle, Billy. That’s your answer for everything, isn’t it?
He reached out for a pair of needle-nose pliers. He wiggled the pliers around, until he got it around the metal insect.
You never stopped drinking, did you, Billy?
He closed his eyes. No. No, that wasn’t true. He’d slipped up in Baltimore. At the baseball game. In the airport lounge. He’d made a mistake in Cortaca, going back to the Rooster. But those had just been errors in judgment. He’d been clean. He’d promised Emily.
What about the bottles upstairs in the office, Billy?
“Shut up,” he said. “That wasn’t me.”
Is it Shawn’s fault, Billy? You could have turned him in. But you didn’t. You helped him dig the grave. It wasn’t the first time he’d killed somebody. Did you know that?
He pulled, but the metal in his palm didn’t budge. He put down the pliers and picked up the knife again.
Billy—
“Shut up! Shut up!”
He should have told you that killing runs in his family, Billy.
The hand holding the knife was shaking. There was so much blood, and he was afraid of what it would do to him to cut any further.
You’re losing a lot of blood. Doesn’t that worry you?
He felt queasy. Faint. Was it the gin or the blood?
What had she put inside him?
Carefully, making sure he missed the vein, he cut from his thumb toward his wrist and then up past the wrist nearly an inch. The skin peeled open, the fat glistening. And threaded throughout, wires.
He closed his eyes for a moment. Or longer than a moment. He was not doing well. The knife was on the table. He didn’t remember putting it back down.
It took him two tries to stand up, and it seemed like he wobbled more than he walked to the infirmary next door. He wrapped gauze clumsily around his left hand and wrist. It soaked through almost immediately. He wrapped more and more, until his hand looked almost like a club.
The articulating arms were moving toward him, but he stepped back.
“Get away from me. You aren’t real.” He crossed his arms over his head and took the last refuge of children: he closed his eyes. “You aren’t real,” he said, over and over again. “You aren’t real, you aren’t real.”
When he looked up again, the arms had stopped moving forward, but they were still twitching.
FORTY
* * *
ZERO
Why didn’t adults ever listen?
Adults always thought they knew everything. Their mother and father tried to listen, but it was impossible: their minds had already been made up. It didn’t matter how many times Ruth and Rose sai
d they didn’t want to go to Whiskey Run for Christmas—why couldn’t Aunt Emily and Uncle Billy just come to Chicago for the holidays?—their parents kept telling them it would be fine, it would be fun.
And maybe for a little bit it had been fine, it had even been fun running around the mansion and sledding outside, but it wasn’t fun any longer. Now they were trapped. Nellie, who was also somehow not Nellie but something else as well, was throwing a temper tantrum. If they had acted like Nellie was acting, their mother would have scolded them and put them in time-out.
But the grown-ups were trying to act like everything was okay. It wasn’t clear to Ruth and Rose if the grown-ups were pretending that everything was normal for their benefit or for Nellie’s. Whichever was the case, the adults were doing a poor job of it. They were only seven, and even they could tell that the adults were freaked out. Their mom kept bursting into tears, their dad was trying to look brave, but he had that same look on his face that he’d had when he rushed into the hospital to meet them when Ruth had broken her arm. And Shawn looked like he wanted to punch something.
At least Nellie wasn’t trying to talk to them anymore.
After Shawn had come into the Nest and told them to stay there—“It’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay,” he said, but it was clear that he was talking to himself more than anything—he and Emily had taken their mother and father into the kitchen and told Ruth and Rose to go sit in the living area and watch television.
And then Nellie had talked to them. Except it wasn’t Nellie anymore, and as soon as they heard Nellie speak, Ruth and Rose knew that this was the real voice. The secret voice. The hidden voice. This was what Nellie had been trying to hide from them, what had been lurking beneath the surface. Her normal voice—the voice she had used until now—had been a lying voice, but it wasn’t scary like this was scary. This voice, her true voice, was full of violence.
Now, she sounded like a narrow, ice-coated trail at the edge of a very high cliff.
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