The Realms of the Dead (20 page)

Now that adrenaline no longer numbed his body, the puncture wound in Chuck's abdomen pulsed with pain. He'd stacked gauze pads atop one another and taped them in place, but the squares were quickly saturated with blood. He'd need stitches, of course, but going to The Institute's nurse was out of the question. As far as anyone outside of his office was concerned, nothing out of the ordinary had happened that day. A cover story would need to be invented, of course; after all, they had to have some way of explaining the injury to Marilee's forehead as well as the cracks in the wall. But that bridge would be crossed when they came to it. For now, he simply concentrated on applying fresh gauze while Control plucked slivers of plastic out of her arms.

Marilee had only allowed herself to cry for a few minutes. After wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, she stood without a word and walked to the sofa. For a while, she toyed with the Spirit Box, seemingly inspecting it for damage. Her tight-lipped expression and distant stare, however, betrayed that her mind was occupied with something other than potentially damaged equipment and she eventually gave up the ruse altogether. Perched on the edge of the couch, she sat so stiffly it was easy to imagine that her spine had been replaced with a steel rod. Her palms rested atop either thigh with her feet planted flatly on the floor.

“Marilee”—Control winced as she applied antiseptic gel to the constellations of cuts dotting her arms—“we can't write this up in a report. I know you guys in P.R.A. are usually strictly by the book. But what happened…it has to be off the record.”

“Sums up what I was just thinking,” Chuck chimed in. “I'm pretty sure this would constitute that
cowboy shit
Director Murphy warned us about.”

If the girl heard either one of them, she gave no indication. Chuck and Control exchanged a glance. Neither one had to be psychic to know what the other was thinking: Perhaps there had been neurological damage, after all. Control gestured as though she wanted Chuck to say something else to the motionless child; his eyes widened and he held up his hands as he mouthed a single-word question:
What?

Control, though, would not be put off so easily. She gestured again, more adamantly this time.

“Yeah,” Chuck ventured, “this may not be the best time, Marilee, but I was just wondering. Do you know what happened to Nodens's recorder chip? I mean, I'm kind of responsible for it and everything.”

The girl's head moved a fraction of an inch, nodding toward a piece of silicon on the floor. Chuck sighed as he noticed that the thing lay in several jagged pieces; however, the knowledge that he would be living on an extremely tight budget for quite some time to come was offset by relief. Not only had Marilee heard the question, but she'd also understood and responded.

The initial movement, though small, almost seemed to remind Marilee that she was capable of moving. She rubbed the Band-Aid on her forehead with her fingertip, tracing its contours softly as her blank expression turned into a frown.

“Sorry about that.” Chuck's face reddened. Though sincere, his apology sounded ridiculously simple, even to his own ears and he blurted out words without thinking. “Really. I mean it. I really am sorry. Shit, you'll probably have a scar now.”

Control slugged him in the arm as she shook her head in exasperation.

“But hey, it's just a small one. I mean, it will be easy to fix. Or hide. Or whatever they do for scars. Hell, I don't know. I just feel like crap and I don't know what to do to make it better.”

Marilee turned to look at them. Her expression never changed, though her words were slow and calculated.

“I was chipped when I was three,” she said. “My earliest memory is wakin' up when they were wheeling me into the OR. It was like I was lookin' up and watching the ceiling tiles scroll by through a thick fog. The sound of the gurney's wheels seemed so far away…so distant.”

Chuck and Control remained silent, allowing the little girl to speak freely.

“There was a man in a mask. Not a Halloween mask, but one like surgeons wear in the movies. He leaned over me and put this little cuplike thing over my mouth and nose. I remember cool air blowing out of it and how the air kinda tasted like peppermint. An' then everything just kind of melted away.” Marilee had stopped rubbing the bandage and now simply rested her fingers upon it. “My chip's always been there. Always been a part of me for as long as I can remember. And I was
so
proud of it. I thought…well, I guess I thought it made me special. Unique. And the funny thing is, I know it's still physically there. I can feel it shift around, right under my skin. But I also know it's dead. It's like there's this hollow socket up here in my head. And I just can't leave it alone. Like how your tongue will keep going back to where your tooth used to be when you lose one.”

Chuck buried his face in his hands and felt as if his entire body had deflated. He wanted to say something; but what
could
he say? The feeling Marilee was describing was essentially his fault. He'd robbed the girl of something precious to her; and that was something that felt unforgivable.

Perhaps Marilee tapped into his thoughts. The chip had only amplified her natural abilities, after all. It wasn't as if it had been solely responsible for them. Or perhaps she simply read his body language: the slumped shoulders, heavy sigh, and how he couldn't force himself to look her in the eye.

“It's okay. I understand. You did what you had to do. It was logical. An' it's nice to see that your reputation isn't just legend. Killin' my chip was brilliant, Mr. Grainger. It was either the chip or you guys. An' chips can be replaced.”

“Look, Marilee,” Control said as she moved to the sofa and sat next to the girl, “there's something we haven't told you about this case. We thought it was for your own protection. But with what just happened…well, it seems like you have a right to know exactly what we're up against.”

Rather than joining his coworkers on the sofa, Chuck laid down on the floor, hoping that a more horizontal position would ease the pain radiating through his gut. Closing his eyes, he listened as Control filled Marilee in on their suspicions. She didn't have to tell the child who Albert Lewis was. Within the confines of The Institute, the serial killer had almost become synonymous with Chuck Grainger: If one was mentioned, the other's name was sure to follow. She did, however, detail Chuck's recent nightmares, the bizarre birthday party incident, and all of the details they'd discussed over dinner. Choking back groans of pain, he lay perfectly still, listening past the thudding of his own heart.

“So you really think it's him, huh?” Marilee asked when Control had finished. “You think it's Albert Lewis?”

“More so than ever.” Chuck tried to control the quiver in his voice, but knew he couldn't postpone medical attention much longer. He kept his description of the vision that had overtaken him brief, omitting how the walls had turned to dust and focusing only on the main points. “What I remember clearest about Lewis was his blue eyes. And the eye in the middle of that vortex was blue.”

“Not to mention,” Control interjected, “he saw me and assumed I was my sister.”

“I noticed that, too. So anyway, yeah, I'm positive it's him. Who else could it be?”

Marilee considered the information as she rubbed her index finger over the Band-Aid in tiny circles.

“I've never been ridden before.” Noticing the confusion that flickered through Control's eyes, the girl hurriedly continued. “It's what we call it when an NCM takes over. What you'd prob'ly call possession. Lots of souls have tried. But I've always kept 'em out. Always been stronger. But this one? It was bad news right from the start.”

“How so?”

“I barely felt it barrelin' down on me. It was like an atomic bomb went off an' I was right there at ground zero. All this anger an' hate just howlin' through the void. It was all over me before I even had a chance to raise defenses. That quick.”

“From your tone,” Control asked, “I'm assuming that's something of an anomaly?”

“To be ridden by a spirit means it has to expend a lot of energy. An' a lot of energy needs to be put out to create a Tier IV Manifestation like the one Mr. Grainger experienced, too. This spirit? It did both. At the same time. An' that's pretty darn scary.”

The trio sat in silence for a moment, allowing Marilee's statements to hang in the room like gathering storm clouds. Once familiar surroundings harbored sinister secrets in the shadows and gloom and even the air felt oppressive. It was as though the evil that had invaded the office had seeped into its molecules, bloating them with darkness until the atmosphere was dense and pendulous.

This was merely incidental for Chuck. He was keenly aware of the blood leaking out of his abdomen and the saturated gauze was warm and sticky against skin that felt increasingly cold. Rogue shivers chased chills around his body, but the pain had crystalized, leaving a patch of numbness that crept through his torso. He felt weak and wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and allow sleep to wash over him.

He didn't need to be told that this was a bad idea.

“Cut to the chase.” His voice sounded distant, even to his own ears. “What do we do now?”

“We get you to an ER. You're looking like shit, buddy.”

Marilee ignored Control's comment. The girl's hands had balled into fists and she glowered at some invisible point in the distance. At first, it almost seemed as if her words were not directed to her mortal companions, but rather served as a warning to the dark force that had swept through the office.

“I ain't no juju horse. You can't just ride me at will. What now, Mr. Grainger?”

Marilee allowed the question to hang in the air, even though the firm set of her jaw hinted that she already knew the answer.

“We kill that son of a bitch.”

Even though his gut felt like a white-hot shard of metal had been stitched within the wound, Chuck crumpled the prescription that had accompanied his discharge paperwork into a ball and tossed it into a trash can as he exited the ER. Painkillers definitely would have been a godsend: Every step was an experiment in agony; if he so much as inhaled a little too deeply he was punished with an explosion of anguish so intense the world swam in and out of focus. But he simply couldn't risk it. Whisks were required to report any and all prescribed medications to the Chief Safety Officer immediately. Given the covert nature of the experiment that led to his injury, this wasn't an option and—with no official record of the pills—one random drug test would send him to the unemployment office.

Instead, Chuck imagined his pain as a dark cloud churning around his abdomen. Hidden lightning flashed and flickered as the thunderhead roiled, drifting in and out of his body and growing darker as it absorbed the pain. Though he couldn't breathe as deeply as he would have liked, Chuck concentrated on the cool feeling of the night air snaking through his sinuses. He felt the life-giving breath descend into his lungs and envisioned its energy seeping into his bloodstream; from there, it coursed through arteries and veins, saturating his entire body with the most precious of gifts from the universe.

Turing his attention to the imaginary storm cloud, Chuck directed the energy flowing through him into its dark mass and reminded himself that pain was nothing more than an illusion. He hurt only because the firing synapses within his brain
told
him he hurt. The agony flaring through his gut was no more than electrical impulses zipping along his nerves to be classified and interpreted by his mind. He knew, however, that he could essentially reprogram his brain, that his perception could be altered at will: The pain would not be ignored, it simply would not exist.

Chuck visualized the edges of the cloud as they began to lighten. It was as though the pain darkening its mass evaporated with the influx of energy and oxygen, leaving a border that was as white and fluffy as a cotton ball. As the ring of brightness crept inward, the darkness grew smaller and smaller, seeming to condense into a tightly packed ball in the heart of the cloud. By the same token, however, Chuck's pain steadily decreased as well. What had once been searing torrents of agony were now nothing more than a minor discomfort, no different than if he'd strained a muscle while trying a new yoga position.

The honk of a car horn and a familiar voice calling his name snapped Chuck out of his meditation.

“Chuck! Hey, buddy…”

The sounds of the city came flooding back: Traffic hissed along the four-lane highway and a siren wailed in the distance, growing increasingly louder as it neared the hospital. A light breeze rustled Chuck's hair and he forced a smile he didn't necessarily feel as he raised his hand in greeting.

Control had already slid out of her green Accord, leaving the car idling as she trotted across the pavement that looped in front of the emergency room entrance.

“Damn it, you were supposed to call before you were released!” Though her words strained for a reprimanding tone, the sparkle in her eyes divulged how pleased she was to see her friend. “What the hell were you planning on doing? Calling a taxi home?”

“I'm not going home.” Chuck spoke softly as Control took his arm, wary of taking too deep of a breath. “Not yet. What are you doing here anyway?”

“I needed to know where you got that Buddha fountain. If we're going to make your office look like nothing ever happened, everything has to be perfect.” Control guided her partner toward the car as if he were a feeble old man. “So where then, if not home?”

“Back to The Institute.”

Control paused as she reached toward the handle on the passenger side door.

“You need rest, buddy. Marilee and I are taking care of everything back at the office. Go home.
Heal
.”

Chuck looked out across the city, watching as streetlights flickered on in response to the coming of dusk. The setting sun cast a radiant, honey-colored glow on brick buildings and shadows stretched away from parking meters and billboards. On the highway, men and women zipped along on their daily commutes, shoveling fast food into their mouths, bobbing their heads to music, and gesturing wildly as other vehicles wove in and out of the flow of traffic without the courtesy of turn signals.

Of all the people packed into this sprawling city, precious few knew the truth. Every day, they thronged over the sidewalks, never suspecting that a subterranean complex burrowed beneath their sewers. Even if they had, the work done in such a facility would have seemed like science fiction. Children with subdermal microchips designed to enhance innate abilities most would consider supernatural; comatose patients who served as physical bridges between the realms of life and death; men and women—like Chuck Grainger—who journeyed into these shadowy lands as routinely as others attended board meetings: This was a world beyond their comprehension.

Sometimes,
Chuck thought as a group of boisterous teenagers bounded along the sidewalk,
ignorance truly is
bliss
.

None of these people would ever stand within a world constructed by the soul of a dead child like he had; none of them would witness the dreamlike landscape torn asunder as an executed serial killer ripped away its energies for use in his own diabolical construct. They wouldn't experience the horrors such an evil could call into being when unhampered by what they had come to think of as
natural laws
or understand the true meaning of the words
depravity
and
suffering
. Their baseline perceptions of reality were simple and naïve, unfettered by the extraordinary—and often appalling—situations Chuck had come to take for granted over the course of his career.

For me, the miraculous has become mundane…

The events of the last twelve hours had changed all of that. Crossfades and Cutscenes had become commonplace, but these new manifestations—the ones Marilee had referred to as Bleedovers—were entirely uncharted territory. Chuck knew how to protect himself while journeying into The Divide: His mantras, separating emotion from reason, and the channeling of cosmic energies…these were his tools and he'd become quite adept in using them. But how could he protect himself when the metaphysical world spilled over into the physical? His own mind, obviously, was fair game.

Time and time again, Albert Lewis had twisted Chuck's perceptions, plunging him into surreal nightmares that didn't even require that he be sleeping. And now the battle had transitioned; no longer limited to psychological warfare, Lewis had proved his growing power with a physical altercation that had left Marilee's forehead burnt and scarred, Control's arms riddled with cuts, and a quarter-inch puncture in Chuck's abdomen.

How the hell do I fight something like this?

Fingers snapped three times directly in front of Chuck's eyes.

“Control to Chuck…Control to Chuck. Come in, Chuck.”

Blinking away the thoughts racing through his head, Chuck saw that Control had opened the door and was patiently waiting for him to enter. Lowering himself onto the seat reawakened the pain and he clenched his teeth as he swung his legs into the car. As was often the case, jazz played softly through the Accord's speakers; a muted trumpet wailed slow and sad over the melancholy strains of a piano while a percussionist softly brushed a snare drum. That particular sound had always reminded Chuck of sand being raked in a massive Zen garden and he closed his eyes as images of intricate loops and swirls in white sand combatted the agony in his midsection.

He held the visualization as Control's door thunked shut and the car crept out of the parking lot and into the flow of traffic. As she drove, she filled Chuck in on the events of the last several hours. The crack in the wall had been repaired, but it had required her agreeing to a date with Jorgensen, a maintenance worker who'd asked her out several times over the years only to be met with polite refusals.

“It was the only way to make sure an official work order wasn't needed,” she explained. “And Jorgensen isn't so bad. He's got that annoying habit of clearing his throat every other word, but I can deal with it.”

She'd also reviewed the footage captured by the cameras mounted in Chuck's office. The video had dutifully recorded their initial contact with Nodens, but at the exact moment the EMF detectors had gone haywire the screen was overtaken with static. If she squinted, she could almost make out portions of the office but said it was like trying to peer at something in the distance through a raging blizzard.

“Marilee wasn't surprised. She said electromagnetic interference from a Bleedover usually has that effect, making video documentation extremely difficult.”

Chuck finally opened his eyes. Looking past his own reflection in the window, he watched the city scroll by, silently contemplating the street musicians and storefronts. Somehow, everything looked different now. He'd traversed these streets so many times that he'd actually stopped seeing them. The tattoo parlors with neon and framed flash adorning plateglass windows, narrow bodegas with brightly colored awnings, and people hunched over coffee at sidewalk cafes: It all seemed alien now, like a parallel dimension that he could glimpse but never truly be a part of.

The Accord braked at a stoplight and pedestrians flowed across the crosswalk, chatting and laughing with shopping bags and briefcases in hand. The urge to open the door and silently slip into the anonymous masses was so strong that Chuck's hand had closed around the handle as the car idled. He'd always enjoyed his work as a Whisk and actually taken more pride in his professional accomplishments than anything he'd ever done. But on this particular evening, he almost wished he'd never set foot within The Institute.

Everything that had happened, after all, was essentially his fault. Nodens's death, Marilee's possession and the flurry of violence that had erupted as a result: If not for Albert Lewis's vendetta, Control and Marilee would never have been put in harm's way. Exactly how far, Chuck wondered, would the killer's spirit go to exact its revenge? How many people would have to suffer and die?

Control's monologue was an indistinct murmur, no different than the hum of the engine as the car moved forward again, and Chuck ran his fingers through his hair as he sighed. He knew he could walk away from it all. He could become just another face in the teeming masses, a bored office worker or jaded civil servant; hell, he could even leave this city far behind. Cashing out his 401k and pension plans would provide enough capital to purchase a bit of land somewhere, perhaps a rustic cabin in the mountains where he could drink all the coffee and eat all the red meat his heart desired. But would that really keep Marilee and Control safe? Now that they were in Lewis's sights, would the serial killer simply forget about them and move on?

No. That much was certain. Events had been set into motion. Now there was no choice but to see them through to the end. No matter what that end might entail.

“She's been very tight-lipped about it, though.” Chuck forced himself to focus on Control's words. “I know she put in an emergency requisition request with P.R.A….but she won't say exactly what it's for. If I try to force the issue, she just mumbles something about paybacks being hell.”

Control steered the car into a parking garage. The RFID chip in the pass dangling from the rearview mirror caused the yellow and black striped arm to rise automatically and she drove through the gate without slowing down. On the third level, there was an elevator stenciled with the words
Deliveries Only
; the few times Chuck had used this particular entrance to The Institute's undisclosed subway system, he'd wondered if any of the garage's other patrons ever questioned exactly what was being delivered in a structure that wasn't connected to any other buildings or stores. Tonight, however, such musings were the furthest thing from his mind.

The call button on the elevator was useless until Control inserted something that looked like a handcuff key into a slot on the panel. The doors dutifully slid open and Chuck leaned against the chrome railing as they descended five stories into the earth.

One subway ride and twenty minutes later, the pair entered Chuck's office to find Marilee kneeling with a power drill in her hands. The tool whirred as she drove a screw into what appeared to be the frame of a box that was roughly closet-sized and Chuck counted himself lucky she'd only had access to an old-fashioned screwdriver when he'd been attacked. Shipping crates were scattered around the girl, most of which were larger than the ones that had previously been delivered, but there didn't seem to be any instructions for whatever she was constructing.

“Mr. Grainger.” Marilee nodded her greeting, but her eyes never left the wooden frame as she shook it with her free hand. Satisfied that it was sturdy, she stood and walked to an oblong crate that had already been opened. “Someone's gonna pay for what happened to you. Payback's hell.”

Chuck arched his eyebrows and glanced at Control who mouthed the words
I told you so
as she shook her head. It wasn't so much what the girl said that caused him to feel as if he'd just walked into an invisible wall, but how she'd said them. Marilee's words were tight and clipped and her tone simmered with a rage that roiled beneath an icy exterior. The intensity of this anger burned in the child's eyes and she went about her business with focused purpose; not a single movement was wasted as she pulled a thick sheet of glass from the crate, tucked it beneath her arm, and pivoted on the ball of her foot. The girl obviously had some sort of endgame in mind and knew the exact steps required to reach that point.

“Yeah,” Chuck said slowly, “I bet it is. Do you need any help with that?”