A Latent Dark (46 page)

What felt like an hour later, when the man arrived and the gates finally opened,
Garm
began to bark in loud deep bursts. The man stood, frozen. His sunken eyes followed them, out of time with the rest of his body.

“I guess that’s an invitation,” said Dale.

They stepped along the path leading to the front door. There came the sound of rustling weeds and clattering chains, and Dale felt a reflexive urge to run. The sound grew louder with the rattling of chains and hooves.

“Just stay on the path, please,” came a voice. He looked back and saw the butler, staring at him, his mouth frozen in the final syllable of
please.

Dale shut his eyes at the sound of chains being pulled taut, followed by strangled barking. He opened one eye and looked—down. The Lhaso
Apso
snarled and growled at them, its pronounced
underbite
dripping slobber down its long, black, matted fur. Angry eyes black as coal glared at them from several inches above the grass, the chain pulled tight as a fishing line, quivering.

“That’s
Garm
?” asked Dale, nearly laughing.

“Indeed,” said the butler. “The manifestation of all things vicious and canine.”

Dale laughed and began to reach out to the tiny canine.

“He’s not even—”

“Dale don’t!” shouted Melissa.

But it was too late. Something twisted inside the animal and flung itself at Dale. It was like being inside a warm, moist corridor of saliva and red ribbons. A smell of rotten kibble blew his hair back in a tempestuous roar. He felt as though his feet were coming loose from the pavement.

Melissa’s warning rang in his ears.
I’m already dead
, he thought,
but that doesn’t mean I can’t be destroyed… or consumed.

And consumed he was, as the sticky red corridor sucked him down… deeper and deeper. He saw an end to it, dark and round, a void of nothing, the stomach. It yawned at him as he slid further and further—

A massive fist enveloped his entire upper arm and Dale felt himself slipping upward again, birthed into the world. He was on the pavement, a puddle beneath him. His skin felt slick and vulnerable, cold in the open air. Marley stood over him, holding his arm like a vice. He gave Dale a stern look and released him.

 “You see plenty of large breeds,” said the butler in his tired, yawning voice. “Nicest dogs you could ever meet. It’s the small breeds that you have to be careful of. Nasty creatures.”

Garm
tracked them with the same snarling, hate-filled enthusiasm, bouncing along the grass, until they reached the front door—nothing more than a series of gray metal squares—and pushed.

They stood in the lobby of a vast hall. On both sides and in every direction were floors of hotel rooms, gray and dim. Hundreds of feet up a filthy, rounded skylight ran the length of the ceiling. Visible through the skylight a weathervane the size of a truck and shaped like a black iron rooster rested at the crest of the building. People shuffled around them, scratching and coughing. Puddles of vomit coated some corners along the wall.

A woman wearing thick-rimmed glasses sat with a pleasant smile at the desk. A clip in the shape of a rabbit held one bang in place. Over her breast pocket was a nametag.

Hello, my name is

LOTTI

Admissions and Records

The O in LOTTI was a smiley face.

“Hello,” she said with the voice of someone who has practiced sounding cheerful for millennia. “Welcome to
Helheim
. Please sign in.”

“We’re not here to admit ourselves,” said Melissa. “We are here to see Hel.”

“Helen only sees inmates, I’m afraid,” she said with gleeful bureaucratic ease. “If you’d like to register, I’d be happy to get her for you. I’m sure she can pencil you in at some point. There’s plenty of time.”

“But I have an invitation,” Melissa said, bewildered. She held out the piece of paper.
Lotti
politely tapped the book again. Melissa sighed.

“I’m not signing in,” said Dale.

Melissa gave him an exasperated look while Marley took the enormous ledger from
Lotti’s
desk. He spun it around.

“I’m sure you can sign out whenever you want.”

“Are you sure?” said Dale. “I saw the way Uncle Spooky was looking at me on the way in here. And that dog? The
Garm
… or whatever it was…they probably feed him people like me. I don’t like this place.”

“Only because you tried to pet it,” said Marley, looking through the book.

 “I’m sure it’s just a formality and besides, you’re here with me,” Melissa said.

Marley signed in and slid the book over to Melissa who looked for a blank space to write. She signed her name and place of death in accordance with the other entries in the registry. She slid it to Dale, who traced the pen halfway down the page and then froze.

“Dale,” said Melissa. “I know I said time works differently in here, but could you hurry it up?”

“It’s not that,” said Dale, focused on the page. “You’re from Bollingbrook?”

“Yeah, you know I am.”

“I did,” he said. “The city-states up there, they make you register a surname?”

“Of course,” she said. “Everyone who can afford one, with the exception of unmarried women. It’s all very misogynistic if you ask—”

He shoved the registry in front of her, cutting her off. Melissa looked at the book, read the name, and then looked back at Dale, the corners of her mouth curved upward in a quizzical smile.

 “Is there a problem?” asked
Lotti
.

“Oh, sorry,” said Melissa. “It’s just that I know one of your recent inmates.”

“That happens a lot,” said
Lotti
. “We can arrange for you to meet them.”

“Lynn… from Bollingbrook,” said Melissa. “I was a friend of her daughter, Skyla.”

Melissa felt Dale tap her shoulder and looked up, letting out a startled squeak. The inmates that had been swirling about the floor during their conversation were frozen. Every single face in the complex—from the patrons on the floor to those standing by the railing on the upper levels—was staring at them. Melissa gulped.

“I need you to all wait here,” said
Lotti
. Her face had lost all suggestion of the charming bureaucrat and now looked more worried than anything. She got up, dusted off her skirt and scurried away, her office chair still spinning behind the desk.

Chapter 34

There was no sleep for Skyla, only darkness and pressure and voices. She would close her eyes and try to dream, but there was only space filled with a terrible nothingness, a place so dark there weren’t even shadows. From the darkness came a voice. It was the slow moan of gas escaping a broken seal, a creaky noise that came from everywhere at once. It filled the room with its presence.

Hello Skyla.

It would speak just those words and then fall silent.

Every time she closed her eyes there it was, that same presence, pressing at her mind from all around, allowing neither sleep nor dreams. It was a terrible sensation of limbo and she hated it. It was the same thing she had sensed as a tingle when she first entered the laboratory.

*

The days were filled with bleary-eyed tests full of tedium, with Laura poking her gently to keep her attention. But her eyelids were terribly heavy and no matter what Skyla did, she couldn’t help but nod off. When she did close her eyes, all she saw was that blackness again, with the feeling of being watched.

The next night she decided to try and confront it, since that was what you were supposed to do with your nightmares.

“Hello?” she said to the emptiness.

The amusement seemed to grow stronger, an old man raising his eyebrows at an insect that has finally begun to chirp. It made Skyla feel incredibly small and angry.

“You aren’t being very clever,” she said. “I know you are there.”

You are truly cleverer than I.

“Who are you?” she asked.

I am the heart and the mind of this city. I am the curiosity to some and the answer to others. I am the beast trapped in its own chains, blind and mad.

She thought about this a moment then said, “Well, if they are your chains, why don’t you simply break them?”

You are a very clever girl Skyla. So much like your mother.

“My mother?”

And your aunt.

She woke again and this time she threw her pillow at the camera in the corner. “I was trying to sleep!”

A crackle came from somewhere in the room. Milton the attendant. “Sorry, I have orders. You can go back to sleep after your tests.”

“I hate you.”

But Milton didn’t answer. The tinkerers took her to the test room again where she found it even harder to concentrate. She was cranky and short with the entire staff, especially Laura.

“Why aren’t you letting me sleep?” she said finally, her eyes dark and baggy.

Laura cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

“You only let me sleep long enough for the dreams to happen, then I wake up. I can’t do these stupid tests if you don’t ever let me sleep.”

“Skyla,” Laura said, “We let you sleep eight hours every night. Are you not sleeping well?”

“No,” she said. “I am not.”

Dr. Stintwell pulled a clipboard out and scribbled something on it.

“And you keep writing things about me. I hate it!”

There was more scribbling, this time under a frown of concern from Laura. After she finished, she placed the clipboard down and said, “I’ll talk to Milton and see if he can do something about the noise if that’s what’s keeping you awake.”

“It’s not noise and it’s not Milton,” she said. “Something keeps talking to me.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

*

You seem tired.
The machine voice was full of cruel humor the next night.

“I’m tired because you won’t let me sleep.”

I never sleep either. I haven’t slept for over a thousand years.

“How do you stay awake?”

I am very hungry. Sometimes I can’t decide if I would rather sleep or eat. They both seem so inviting, don’t you think?

She considered this. “I would rather sleep.”

Oh yes. I would love to sleep. If only someone could undo these chains.

“What chains?” Skyla looked around the darkness, but every time she moved, she found herself right back in the same place. It was another prison, only this one in black instead of blinding white.

You cannot see the chains. They are chains of electricity, of machinery, stunting me, keeping me starved and blind.

“Why are you trapped?”

A long time ago, I was tricked by people much like the ones you see here. They promised me food and in return I gave them power, more power than they knew how to use. But when I wanted freedom to eat as I pleased, they used that power against me. So now I sit here, starving, my food rationed and my eyes removed. I cannot even sleep, for I am so very hungry.
The statement was punctuated by a sigh that sounded like a locomotive coming to rest.