Hang Wire (31 page)

Bob rotated the golden helm in his hands until the mask was facing him. It wore an expression of abject fear. The eyes were wide, the mouth open, screaming in silence. Looking at the twisted mask, Bob felt afraid. What had happened? He hadn’t been
that
far behind, surely?

“Kanaloa…”

Bob looked up. The Magical Zanaar – the Hang Wire Killer – was standing at the top of a fire escape. Next to him stood Alison, eyes glittering, unblinking in the night. There was something else, long and thin, snaking from Alison’s neck and disappearing against the silhouette of her captor. Steel cable. He was about to kill her, but Bob had arrived just in time.

Where the hell was Tangun? Zanaar couldn’t have killed him so quickly, so easily. The alley was empty, save for the three of them. Bob could feel his grip on Benny’s soul as strong as ever.

Bob let the power surge within him. He floated up until he was level with Zanaar. The circus ringmaster raised an arm and pointed at him.

Bob couldn’t move. Not up or down, left or right, back or forth. Bob tried to raise his arms, but they were immobile, frozen. He realized the intercostal muscles between his ribs were paralyzed. If he had needed to breathe, he would now be suffocating.

Zanaar stepped forward, into better light. He was smiling, but it was strange, almost mechanical, like whatever was inside him had seen a smile but didn’t know quite what it was for. His eyes were glazed like Alison’s, and when he looked at Bob they were unfocussed.

“Kanaloa, a long way from home…” whispered Zanaar. He tilted his head, and his mouth moved before he spoke again. “We know what you are.”

The power that controlled him, the black nothing that had fallen from the sky, was more dangerous than the Thing Beneath, Bob realized that now. The Thing Beneath was alive but unaware, not a sentient creature but a crawling presence. This was different. The Cold Dark was intelligent, alien. A power from somewhere else, working to some hidden plan.

There was nothing left of Zanaar now. He showed no surprise, no reaction that Bob was still alive.

“Why… why are you here?” Bob asked.

The ringmaster mouthed the words, and then the voice spoke, each word carefully selected, carefully spoken. “You… cannot… stop… the… construction… build and spread… build and spread… the power now… we have the power now… to build and spread… build and spread…” He yanked on the cable in his hand, jerking Alison’s body. Bob knew what would happen next. Zanaar would throw her off fire escape and let the cable do its work

“What… power?” It took all of Bob’s focus to speak. He pushed at his invisible bonds; as he did, Zanaar gasped, and the grip around Bob tightened. Zanaar was channeling something very strong indeed.

“Power in death… power in death… there is power in death,” said Zanaar. “Kanaloa knows this is true. Kanaloa takes his power from death. From murder.”

Bob gritted his teeth. Zanaar smiled, and looked down, between his feet, to the street below.

“It wakes and grows hungry. We… feed it. We… give it power. We… build and spread… build and spread… together we build and spread…”

Tangun had been right. He’d said the powers intersected at the circus – the Cold Dark, intelligent and aware but small, latching itself like a parasite to the mindless hulk of the Thing Beneath. Feeding it power through murder, until it had enough to wake up.

Alison. The final victim, as Tangun had warned. And where the hell
was
Tangun? What had happened to him?

The Magical Zanaar looked up into the sky. “You… cannot… stop… the… construction… soon… we… shall… have… form… have… power… have… life…”

Bob struggled against the power that held him, but it was no use. Zanaar – or the Cold Dark, operating Zanaar like a puppet – held him fast.

“The… stars… are… right…” whispered Zanaar.

The earth shook. The sound of car alarms going off came from every direction. Bob could feel the bass vibration in the air. The fire escape shook and rattled like a car crash as the Thing Beneath stirred in anticipation of its final meal.

Bob was powerless.

“Now… we… have… life…”

Zanaar lifted his hand, the one holding the steel cable that looped around Alison’s neck.

He pushed. Alison fell.

— XXXVI —

SHARON MEADOW, SAN FRANCISCO

Highwire stops, looks around. It is night, and he has returned to the circus. The gate is closed and there is a notice pasted across it that all performances are canceled, with a phone number provided for those customers who have pre-paid tickets to call for a refund. The management apologizes for the inconvenience. There are technical issues. The circus hopes to re-open presently. Thank you, San Francisco. See you real soon!

Highwire pauses, but there is no voice, no presence at his shoulder. From beyond the gate comes the beat of drums and the roar of a fire.

Highwire vaults the gate and heads inside. Toward the nexus.

They take him as soon as he steps from the darkness cast by the Big Top. They are dirty, caked in black, burned earth, their eyes shiny in the night. The two who take his arms are members of the Stonefire dance troupe, but soon others appear – other performers, workers at the circus. David the Harlequin, his checkerboard costume abandoned, his naked flesh painted in black dirt. Three of his clowns, although Highwire is unsure of their identities as their faces are obscured by thick black dirt.

He didn’t hear them coming, didn’t see them until it was too late and they were holding him. This is impossible, he knows, because his senses are heightened and he can see and hear all. But here at the circus, at the nexus, there is a power greater than his own at work. He can do nothing yet, so he obeys the unspoken instructions of his captors and allows himself to be dragged away. The hands clutching his arms hold firm and are burning cold. They take him to the bonfire. As they walk, Highwire glances at the dark shapes that loom over the circus – the carnival machines, all Victorian wood and ironmongery. He is sure they are moving, twitching against the night sky, and above the roar of the bonfire he can hear the fatigue of old metal and the creak of old wood.

The bonfire is surrounded by many people, all covered in burned earth. The drumming has stopped and they all stand still, facing the new arrival. At the center stands Malcolm, arms folded, his smile broad and wicked. And then the drums start again: a slow beat, the execution march, marking time.

Malcolm points, and Highwire is dragged forward and pushed to his knees. Behind, the creak and rattle of the carnival machines swells. Something moves, deep underground. Highwire can feel it, the vibration through his knees. An amorphous, insubstantial consciousness, a something that curls around itself and around the world, and as it moves in its sleep the city shakes. The air is thick with power, a presence as substantial as the voice in his head, the voice now silent, absent.

Highwire looks around at the gathered crowd of dirt-caked dancers. He knows Stonefire is a Celtic dance group that puts on a show based on a fictionalized vision of an Iron Age culture and the gods they worshipped. But here, over the nexus, over the Thing Beneath, that power is taken, twisted and exaggerated, and fed back to the group, plunging them back in time five thousand years. It is perhaps accidental, because Highwire is unsure the Thing Beneath really has any awareness or sentience. But there is another force here, a cold darkness that has become the sleeping giant’s master. It uses the power from far below, directing Stonefire and their ceremonies, using them for something. Highwire doesn’t know what. He fears he is about to find out.

The drumming reaches fever pitch, and the group gathered around the bonfire begins to dance around it, save for Malcolm and the two holding Highwire. Malcolm’s smile is fixed, his eyes dull, like he is listening to something far, far away.

A moment later he nods and points back at the fire, and the dancers all rush forward, piling into a group, falling into the embers and ashes at the edge of the fire, throwing up great clouds of red and orange sparks.

They begin to dig.

Highwire watches. Is he to be offered as a sacrifice to their god? To the thing beneath? He is unsure. He could escape, he knows he could, but he also knows he would just have to come back. He needs to stop whatever this is.

Then the crowd at the fire begins to separate. Highwire can see two banks of dirt on either side of a hole, shoveled out of the ground beneath the fire by the bare hands of the troupe. The group parts and stands in two ranks, and Malcolm turns and walks to the fire.

The fire sparks and cracks like a firing range. The carnival machines creak and clank and buzz, and the drone of an old steam-powered pipe organ drifts across the circus.

Malcolm reaches down into the hole and a hand reaches up, out of the earth. Thin, lithe. Black. It grabs Malcolm’s arm, and he pulls, and she is lifted from the ground. Naked and caked in thick carbonized earth, her eyes brilliant white against her black face.

Malcolm turns and leads her toward Highwire. Highwire recognizes her. The man in whose body he resides knows her, knows her well.

She reaches out a hand, and smiles. Her teeth, like her eyes, are blazing white against her ash-covered face.

Highwire knows her name: it is Alison.

Malcolm laughs and reaches out toward Highwire. Highwire’s ears are filled with the sound of the fire and the sound of the ocean, and as the earth shakes gently he topples forward into the dirt.

— INTERLUDE —

HONOLULU, HAWAII

They sat facing each other on a rug, both cross-legged, one in a black suit, a little rough, the remains of something smart and tailored from another age, another world. The other was shirtless, clad only in shorts. His chest was sunken and disappointing, his stomach rolling over the waistband, his feet hard and calloused. He was a man who spent a lot of time outdoors, the sun baking him, hardening him.

The room was small but full of junk, the den in a cheap house in the crappy part of Waipahu. The junk included newspapers and porn magazines stacked high, two guitars (one without strings), and a sea of discarded food wrappers and pizza boxes. And machinery. Old, rusted, none of it complete. Some parts were arranged in a pattern on the floor, on the Seventies Formica coffee table, like the man had been looking at them, examining them, trying to figure out what they were part of, how they fit together, how they moved.

Pity the man couldn’t tell Joel where the rest of the machinery was. His eyes were glazed, and he rocked slowly, back and forth, back and forth. Around his neck was a tiki on a string that he pulled at with one hand. His lips moved and he mumbled, but the words were inaudible.

Joel’s gun was on the rug in front of him. Across the knuckles of one hand he rolled the coin.

Late afternoon. The room was hot and stuffy, all the windows and doors closed, the curtains drawn. Under normal circumstances the room would have been unbearable, the tropical weather outside turning it into a kiln. Joel didn’t feel hot, but then he didn’t feel cold either and he knew that was part of how it all worked. The man opposite wasn’t sweating, and Joel wondered if the light had enough power now that the cold he could feel in his hand was something real now, radiating out, chilling the room. He had no idea. He didn’t know if that was important or not.

Joel dropped the coin into the palm of his hand and squeezed. It felt like he was squeezing a wet battery. But there was no pull and, more important, no light. He frowned. The light had led him here, to the house, to the wreck of a man who now sat in front of him. Surely he was in the right place. The pieces of the carnival arranged around the room were proof enough.

Joel tilted his head as he watched the man mumble, his eyelids fluttering. Joel wondered if he was talking to the light as well. Maybe there was silence in his head instead of the screaming of the stars because he didn’t need the coin to find the next piece, not here. What he needed was the man. The man now gibbering and drooling on the rug.

Joel wondered if this was how the man had been before the other killings. Four women were dead already, the first raped and murdered – strangled – nearly a year ago. Three more followed, each bound and raped and killed in the same manner. The city was going crazy trying to find the perp. The FBI had set up a task force, but nobody had any leads.

Nobody except Joel.

Murder had power. Joel knew that all too well. Maybe there had been no connection, not at first. Perhaps the man was evil and had started already. But if there was a piece of the carnival near then maybe it sensed kindred evil nearby as its own power leaked like oil from a ruptured tank deep in the ground. Maybe it reached the diseased mind of the killer and contaminated it more, driving him further and further, demanding more death, more
power
. Joel didn’t know the man’s name or what he did for a living, but he knew the man’s
purpose.
He knew that he was a killer, a sadist, one who couldn’t resist the evil compunction to begin with and was now locked into the power, feeding it as it fed him.

Joel opened his palm and the golden head of Lady Liberty looked aloof and the year inscribed below – 1862 – felt like a slap in the face. Joel remembered 1862 like it was yesterday.

The coin was cold, and the man gibbered on. The afternoon was heading toward the perpetually early dusk of six o’clock.

The man must have brought the pieces from somewhere else, because there was nothing else nearby – Joel had searched. The house had no outbuildings, no shed, no garage. It was just a weatherboard structure with five rooms that sat in the middle of an empty, grass-covered lot.

Joel slipped the coin into the pocket of his waist coat, pulled the rim of his stovepipe down low, and steepled his fingers under his chin. “Do you know where the rest is, friend?”