Crossfades (11 page)

By the time sunrise illuminated the small window above his sink, cramps seized Chuck's hand with increasing regularity and he yawned between gulps of coffee, relying more on his scalding throat to jolt him awake than the caffeine. He'd sharpened the pencil so many times it was now nothing more than a stub, but the solution to the equation stayed maddeningly out of reach.

Rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand, Chuck sighed and looked again at the jumbled numbers. Something wasn't balancing. But what? Forcing himself to slow down, he checked and double-checked the math. He knew he was close. Closer than he'd ever been before. So why couldn't he make it work?

Pausing to rub his eyes again, Chuck stopped short as a phrase popped into his mind: The log of a product is the
sum
of the logs of the factors.

For a moment, he could only blink. But then he cackled and clapped his hands as he rocked back so forcefully that the chair teetered on its rear legs. It seemed so simple now, so obvious. How had he never seen it before?

Within minutes, he had the correct solution to the equation. Which also meant he had a map that would lead him straight into Lydia's arms.

The only thing standing in his way was a sadistic killer who refused to die. But he'd deal with Albert Lewis. He'd make the bastard regret each and every tear that had ever fallen from Lydia's eyes and enjoy doing it.

It was time for that son of a bitch to pay.

It was time to go to war.

Chuck strutted into Albert Lewis's stronghold with his silver cord gleaming behind him, his chin held high, and his chest puffed with bravado. He'd mastered the equation, had returned to the realm of the dead without the aid of the technological trappings even Level I Whisks relied upon, and walked into the place as if it were nothing more than a local pub. He knew that confidence bordering on arrogance would expose him to the denizens of this world, but he didn't care. In fact, that was precisely what he wanted.

“Lewis!” He swaggered like a returning champion, his challenge echoing through the corridors and halls. “Show yourself, old man! Come take my eye…if you can.”

When he'd reentered the castle, Chuck had made his way to the tower he'd entered the first time he set foot in the castle. From there, he'd followed the sounds of suffering, ascending the stairs at a steady pace, and knocking torches from the wall as he passed. He knew the flames could never burn through the cobbled floors, but these small acts of defiance bolstered an already inflated sense of
invulnerability.
He didn't fear the shadows or anything that lurked within them; his love for Lydia burned away any doubts he once may have harbored and would serve as his armaments in this land of evil.

As he passed one of the turret's windows, lightning illuminated the sky, flashing so rapidly that it almost seemed as if the world were attempting to warn its master of Chuck's return. The strobe-like effect spilled through the window and bathed the stone walls in flickering electric blue, momentarily making Chuck's stride look jerky and robotic.

As the lightning faded, he swiped another torch from its metal sconce and held it to a tapestry like the one in which Lydia had clothed herself. The dry-rotted material whooshed into a wall of flame as fire hungrily devoured the fabric. Black smoke roiled from the remains of the tapestry and Chuck tossed the torch over his shoulder as he called out again.

“Lewis!”

He half-expected Control to admonish him. But there were no
recriminations,
no memories conjured from childhood picnics or days at the park: He was utterly alone, a rogue Whisk with no backup or support.

“Come get me, you old fuck!”

The stairwell opened into a chamber that was as large as a football field. Moldy banners hung from the walls with woodcut-style scenes of the Inquisition fading into the moth-eaten fabric. Bound men and women roasted above open flames and a row of supplicants lined up for their chance to kneel as they kissed the ass of Satan; racks, iron maidens, bodies curved around gigantic wheels while robed cardinals looked on: The chamber was a gallery dedicated to man's inhumanity and the torches lining the walls imbued the crude drawings with lives of their own, creating the illusion of movement in dancing patterns of light and shadow.

There were no windows in this room, nothing to convey that anything existed other than impenetrable stone and the cathedral-like ceiling. Every few yards a column descended from the gloom overhead, planting itself firmly into the floor. The size of elevator shafts, these columns lined either side of the chamber, and the cobbles became a network of paths leading to each one. Iron gratings covered the gaps between the paths and wisps of smoke curled above blackened metal, born of the fires raging miles below. In the physical realm this would not have been possible: The lower levels of the castle should have been directly above the room, not an abyss that sunk deep into the earth. But here anything was possible. All it took was Lewis's belief.

The columns, however, did not serve as mere supports for the roof: Shackled to each one was a soul who'd been lured into this false realm. Trapped by their own beliefs, Lewis's prisoners endured fantasies so depraved that their mortal bodies would have given out long ago. Here their suffering was eternal; for in the land of the dead, even death could not deliver them from their torment.

The sounds of agony were deafening, but Chuck tried his best to ignore them. This, however, proved to be difficult. The screams were so harsh and shrill that they seemed to vibrate his skull with resonance; peppered among them were gasps of pain, blubbering sobs mingled with animalistic howls, and from the far end of the room a man with a childlike voice repeatedly shrieked the word
No
.

Underscoring the tumult were clinks and clanks as tortured souls fought against their restraints. The chains struck the stone columns as manacles scraped away layers of skin, transforming wrists into bands of glistening red tissue and frayed strands of muscle. The captives hung close enough to the floor that those with the strength to do so stood on tiptoe, defying their trembling legs; others, too weakened to fight, dangled limply from their chains. With knees bent and heads bowed, they slumped forward, swinging in slow circles as they gasped for breath.

Walking the central path was like strolling through the Devil's personal museum. A stringy-haired woman drooped in one display and her torso had been sliced with surgical precision. Peeled open and pinned to her back, the slabs of parted flesh revealed organs that squished and pulsed every time she shifted positions. In another tableau, a rat perched upon the shoulder of a pasty, overweight man and cleaned droplets of blood from its whiskers with swipes of its paw before darting in for another bite. Sinking its teeth into the man's lips, it pulled gristle that stretched like a rubber band before snapping free with savage shakes of the rodent's head.

Each step revealed atrocities more horrifying than the last. Chuck looked away as roaches scurried beneath flaps of skin sliced into a tribal warrior. His eyes clouded with tears as he passed a woman with an angelic face who was more skeleton than flesh, the sagging skin that remained held to her frame by hooks and twine so thin as to almost be transparent.

But still he persisted, checking each miserable soul and dreading that he would find Lydia hanging in this hall of abominations. Even if he didn't—even if she'd already managed to free herself and had left this place far behind—it had to end.

“Lewis!” Only echoes answered Chuck's repeated challenge, so he tried a different tact. “
Lydia!
”

Stealing a look at his silver cord, he knew he'd have to tread carefully. It was nothing more than a shadow, as thin and tenuous as a mortal's grasp on life. He tried summoning memories to strengthen it: the sour stench of a skunk and stinging, watery eyes; crickets and insects chirping as shafts of moonlight streamed through the canopy of leaves overhead…

It helped. But only a little. Chuck's subconscious did its best to imitate Control's cadence and inflection, but without the familiar rhythm of her voice he keenly felt the isolation. No one knew he was here. No one would call him back if things got too hairy. The words themselves, he realized, were not nearly enough; he needed Control's special gift, her ability to paint a vivid masterpiece with nothing more than timbre and a pause in just the right place. His own attempts were like a child's finger painting in comparison and his silver cord was still indistinct, portions of it flickering in and out of existence with each new swell of emotion.

From his right, a strained moan snaked through the other cries, nearly overpowered by their force. If he'd been just a few inches farther, he probably wouldn't have even heard it. The sound could have been a garbled vocalization of pain…or it could have been the word
help,
weakened by a throat that had screamed until its vocal cords were torn and bloody.

He ran to the column he thought the sound had originated from, all attempts at strengthening ties to the physical world cast aside and forgotten. As he neared the pillar, however, he slowed. Whoever was chained to this one was bound on the other side and currently hidden from view. Though no more groans reached his ears, Chuck heard the soft jingle of chains. A raspy wheeze greeted each new breath and a wet gurgle bid it farewell upon exhalation, the sound so wet and bubbly that it was hard to imagine the lungs were capable of filtering any oxygen through the mucus flooding them.

As much as he longed to be with Lydia again, part of Chuck didn't want to see who was chained to that column. He held his breath and tried to steel himself for what he might find as he rounded the corner.

The woman shackled to the pillar had been starved to the point that her stomach was a hollow cavity beneath ribs so clearly defined that it looked as though flesh and muscle had been shrink-wrapped over them. Her bowed head was obscured by a wild mass of tangles and knots, the hair streaked with gray and so oily that the torchlight reflected a yellow sheen. She'd been cut multiple times and scars existed side by side with open wounds, crosshatching her legs and torso to the point that little flesh remained intact.

Chuck's stomach tightened as his hand reached for the face hidden beneath all that hair. He didn't want this emaciated and battered woman to be Lydia, didn't want to have concrete proof of how horribly she'd suffered. He kept thinking that if only he'd been better at his job, he could have whisked her away from this place, could have helped guide her across The Divide, where she would've been welcomed into the peace, harmony, and beauty that she deserved.

“It might not be her.” He told himself. “It could be anyone.”

His hand cupped the woman's chin so delicately it seemed as though he were afraid she'd turn to dust with the slightest touch.

Please don't let it be her, please don't let it be…

His teeth ground against one another and the din of tormented spirits became nothing more than an indistinct lull.

A flex of the fingers was all it took for Chuck to tilt her head upward, her limp and gangly neck offering no resistance. Eyelids fluttered, struggling to open within the black and green bruises that had swollen them into narrow slits, and her cracked lips parted, emitting a hiss that may have been an attempted word.

Chuck pulled her to him, wrapped his arms around her frail frame, and shut his eyes, squeezing out a warm tear in the process. A void yawned within him, sucking down all the things that had made life worth living, and words burbled through a stream of snot and tears.

“Oh my God, Lydia…oh, my God. I'm so sorry. So very,
very
sorry. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to leave you. Not here. Not alone. I'm so, so sorry.”

Lydia's flesh was ashen and cold, and Chuck pressed against her more tightly, hoping to infuse her with his own warmth. But he felt the chill as well. It prickled the skin at the base of his spine, numbing vertebrae as the cold seeped into surrounding tissue; it burrowed deeply, sinking into his bowels and marrow, and his entire body shivered as he finally pulled away from her.

He had to find a way to free her, to release her, to carry her away to a place where nothing would ever hurt her again. His hands scrambled over the chains, searching for some sort of catch or release that would free Lydia's wrists from the manacles cutting into them. But there was no keyhole or hinge, not even a gap where one end of a cuff met the other. There were only unbroken bands of metal that almost appeared to have organically grown around her wrists, encircling them with no true beginning or end.

And still the cold spread, turning the emptiness he felt inside into a tundra where snow and sleet were whipped into a frenzy by howling arctic winds. His jaw clenched and anger crystallized his eyes, his wrath so intense that emotion seemed to beam out of them like icy rays of death.

Lewis would pay for what he'd done. The son of a bitch would beg and plead and curse the day he'd ever laid eyes upon this woman, screaming petitions to dark gods who'd turned their backs on him in his moment of greatest need.

Chuck's silver cord was entirely gone. He knew this without bothering to look. Its absence was felt as acutely as if one of his arms or legs had been hacked off.

There was no way home now. No way back to his body. He would float forever in The Divide, neither alive nor dead but stuck somewhere between. Even when his physical shell finally succumbed to
starvation—even
after it was no more than a decomposed mess soaking into his sofa—even then he wouldn't be able to cross into the place he'd helped so many others find. Without the connecting cord, soul and body were separate entities and death meaningless.

But he was beyond caring.

The floor trembled beneath Chuck's feet and a sound like the marching of an invading army echoed through the chamber. Whirling around, his eyes scanned the darkness bordering the room and he sucked in air, ignoring the rank fetor seeping through the air as he envisioned energy flowing into his lungs, twin streams of light so white it was blinding. The light converged into a pulsating orb halfway between Chuck's chest and abdomen, growing more intense with each new breath.

From the shadows, a golden throne emerged. Formed of gilded skulls, femurs, and tibia, it sat upon a riser carried upon the backs of a writhing mass of people whose mottled skin was stitched together with flaxen thread. A tangle of arms, legs, and torsos seemed to fuse into a single entity, and they moved as an uncoordinated unit, some scrambling for purchase but slipping in puddles of blood, others supporting the weight with quivering arms but never collapsing. Crawling forward with bent backs and scraped knees, they carried the throne on an undulating wave of flesh, and their lamentations rang through the room, heralding the arrival of their foul king.

Seated upon his throne of inequity, Albert Lewis glowered at all he surveyed. The man's white hair was a tousled mop of tufts that framed a lean face that looked as if it had been carved from stone. With wrinkles chiseled into alabaster features, he pulled his lips into a thin, tight smile.

“The prodigal son returns.” The voice boomed from the old man like thunder, and fresh gales of pain erupted from his victims as it reverberations quivered exposed nerve endings. “Kneel before my mercy seat, boy. Kneel and perhaps you will die easily.”