The image on the screen comes from a surveillance camera in a white room, somewhere deep in the bowels of a hospital for crazy people. The man sits at a table, bound in a straitjacket, his face a grim pockmarked zigzag of scars and burns, his eyes almost sparkling somewhere in the landscape like bloodshot crystal. His voice is brittle, his words forced out in confident spasms through a wrecked smile.
He’s talking about men and women and children being killed.
Giving every detail.
He talks about it with an insider’s ear, like he was there.
Creepy as hell.
He talks about slitting a four-year-old girl’s throat, the way her voice sounded just before he did it to her, innocent like a child in a fairy tale.
He describes the eyes of a man with dark hair in the moment the knife went in, the way his startled brown eyes bugged out and then went dead, like destroyed planets.
He spreads both forefingers apart to indicate the amount of blood that came out of an elderly woman’s chest cavity, a flowing river of deep, deep red.
He says it was all done so that the way could be cleared.
So that the Blacklight could shine on them.
A video time stamp at the bottom of the screen says the man’s name is Adam Protextor and that he’s twenty-nine years old.
The video is dated four months ago.
Jaeger stands next to the screen as we watch the man in the white room speak, allowing us to absorb a full ten minutes of it before he freezes the image.
“Terrifying, isn’t it, Mr. Carlsbad?”
“I’ve seen worse.”
“But it’s still terrifying. For one reason, more than any other.”
“What’s that?”
“The man in this video was not a participant or eyewitness in the murders he describes. He’s relating stories from someone else. It’s a phenomenon that might possibly be more in your line of experience than mine.”
“Tell me what happened to him. I need details.”
“There was an accident on the rail line about four months ago. You’ve heard the stories in the media about the Jaeger Laser being nine months ahead of schedule?”
“Yeah, I heard that.”
“Spin control. It’s actually a year behind schedule. We’ve had labor difficulties, of course—all the usual setbacks that occur with a project so ambitious. But what happened earlier this year was almost completely inexplicable.”
Eric Tate steps up, his face illuminated in the glow of the big screen, and the picture changes to a digitized topographical map of the rail line. “The Jaeger Laser is powered by a nitrogen-cooled electrodynamic suspension system,” he says. “It’s state-of-the-art magnetic-propulsion technology. They call it maglev in Europe.”
“Magnetic? You mean the train never touches the track?”
“Yes, but only at top speed. A wheel array is used for takeoff and docking due to limitations on guideway inductivity. That’s because of the massive magnetic field generated by the engines and the track system.”
“Like landing gear on a plane,” I say.
“Exactly.”
“Isn’t a field that intense dangerous in other ways?”
He titters some. “To people carrying laptops and credit cards, yes. Lead shielding is the key. We worked all that out years ago.”
“Good for you. Wouldn’t be much of a railroad without credit cards.”
He waves his hand, brushing it off. “Our main goal is innovation and efficiency. The Laser is capable of doing well over five hundred miles an hour. That’s faster than the most sophisticated Japanese bullet train ever designed. Our team is way ahead of the curve. Naturally, our engine has required years of development and research. A lot of trial-and-error comes into play. During field-testing, there were a few accidents. This one was the worst, and the most recent.”
A video window zooms in on a section of the topographical map and expands it, showing a spot where the rail runs through the desert.
“Here’s where it happened,” Tate says, pointing at the area highlighted in red. “We were running a speed test on a section of the completed track in the desert just inside the California border. There was an accident at three hundred miles per hour.”
“Your train crashed?”
“Just the engine,” Jaeger says. “The problem may have been a construction flaw in the track. Our inspectors went over every square inch before the run—there was nothing left to chance. And yet nearly all seven employees aboard that train were killed in an instant when it flew off the rails. My people still can’t give me a straight answer on what exactly happened.”
Eric Tate looks at his feet when the old man says that.
I point a grin at him. “Sounds like a lot of people afraid for their jobs.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Jaeger turns to the screen as it flicks back to the image of Adam Protextor in the white room. “The man you just saw in this video was the only survivor of that derailment. He emerged from the wreck a broken mess, babbling about men and women he’d seen murdered. He claimed the murders were visions given to him by God in the moment of his death, and that he’d been returned to earth to warn us all. He tried to kill his doctor with a hypodermic needle and was sent to a state hospital for three months.”
“But you kept him on a short leash, I bet.”
“Naturally. I own the building.”
“Figures.”
“I can’t take any risks in cases like these, Mr. Carlsbad. On the day before the accident, Adam Protextor was a valued member of my team—a respected man in the engineering community who held advanced degrees and pulled down a six-figure salary working for government contractors. A young professional with a very bright future. On the day after the accident, he was a mental patient.”
He points at the screen, and the video window switches to the topographical map again, expanding to show an area ten miles beyond the track in every direction. Three glowing points at the edge of the window.
The points of the Triangle.
He raises an eyebrow. “Do you know what you are looking at?”
“Prisons,” I say. “Where they send the worst criminals in the world. Three maximum-security pens housing death-row inmates, all within about three hundred kilometers of each other. At the Johnstown facility they were putting people to death by hanging as recently as 1987.”
Jaeger raises an eyebrow. “You know your history.”
I shrug, wondering what he expected. “I call it the Blacklight Triangle. It’s one of the worst spots ever recorded for paranormal activity. A lot of bad marks out there. Hanging is a nasty way to die, and bad death is what keeps most people hanging around later.”
“You have a way with turning a phrase, Mr. Carlsbad.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny.”
“Eric tells me you have some experience with this area.”
“It’s not uncommon, really. You have drifters and seekers in and out of the Triangle. Serial killers. Cults. Mediums die there all the time. I was almost one of them.”
“Tell me more.”
“I’d rather not.”
He shakes his head slightly, rolling with it. Then gives me a sideways look, his eyes slitted slyly. “In any event, I imagine you’d like to know why we’re running our train through such a bad area.”
“The thought did cross my mind.”
A chuckle rolls toward me, as he places his tongue deep in his cheek. “To a man of your experience, I expect it must be the equivalent of building a shiny new mansion over an ancient Indian burial ground. Isn’t that the old cliché?”
“Something started the rumor.”
He laughs thinly. “The answer is efficiency, Mr. Carlsbad. Our train is the fastest ever designed, but it’s also the most expensive. Before I can get my rail system on track, I have to prove that it works. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and that line runs straight through Johnstown and your Triangle.”
“The Johnstown prison was a hellhole. They closed it down in ’99.”
Jaeger takes a few steps toward me. “You probably also know that one of the most notorious inmates of that facility was a very charismatic individual who called himself Blackjack Williams. He was arrested in 1973 and confessed to his crimes. The descriptions were entered into the court records and then sealed by the judge in order to protect the families of the victims.”
“Those are the crimes Adam Protextor is describing?”
“Down to the last drop of blood, Mr. Carlsbad.”
“I guess it would be silly of me to ask how you got your hands on those sealed files, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes. Very silly.” He doesn’t smile at all when he says that. “As you probably know, Blackjack Williams committed suicide in the Johnstown lockup following his trial. That was in early 1974. No one ever interviewed him after he spoke in the court, and Williams never wrote a tell-all book either. There’s no way any employee of mine could have known about those murders in such detail without being told about them.”
“So you think Mr. Protextor is possessed?”
“What would you think?”
“I’d need to speak to the guy to know for sure.”
“Not possible.”
“Why?”
“Adam Protextor is dead. Suicide. He was released from the care of the State and threw himself in front of a subway train in downtown Los Angeles just two hours later.”
“Ironic.”
“Obviously.”
Adam had had a head full of bad shit.
And whatever it was, it didn’t want him talking to a professional about it.
“That’s not all,” Jaeger says. “Protextor also dropped some names. Eight, to be exact. They all turned out to be notorious criminals executed in the same prison. Some of the worst killers on record. We did a little research.”
Eric Tate picks up a dossier from the black table and hands it to me.
It’s a thick file, full of photos and papers.
I thumb through some of it, just glancing.
Crime scenes and mug shots.
Bad shit.
“There it is, Mr. Carlsbad,” Jaeger says. “An interesting equation, wouldn’t you agree?”
He centers his gaze on me, and I see wary fascination and vague concern on his face, like he’s asking me a question about all this. Asking if I buy it.
“One hell of a rap sheet,” I say, closing the file. “So let me see if I got this straight. You think these nine bad guys might still be out there giving you trouble?”
“I’m not saying it’s a possibility, and I’m not saying it isn’t. These are simply the facts as we know them.”
I look Jaeger right in the eye. “What other incidents have there been?”
He smiles proudly. “None at all since the one with Protextor, actually. We managed to keep the derailment quiet, and all further construction and speed tests have gone along swimmingly. In fact, during the last trial run of the train, I personally rode in the main passenger car.”
“Then why do you need me? Sounds like all your problems died with Mr. Protextor.”
“I didn’t get where I am by leaving things to chance.”
“You said that before.”
“I did.”
“So you want me along for the ride, just in case?”
“Important deadlines are imminent, Mr. Carlsbad. The election is in just three months. When Senator Maxton becomes president, he will push phase two of the Jaeger Laser rail system through Congress. The groundwork is already set. The launch of the project can no longer be postponed. When the Laser runs publicly for the first time, Bob will step off the train at the Dreamworld Casino and Theme Park in Las Vegas and announce his intentions to back the project at a VIP political rally, which will be held at the park’s amphitheater. It will become the backbone of his entire campaign strategy.”
“A political rally in a Vegas casino? I think now I’ve heard everything.”
He leans in on his cane one more time, and levels a serious eyeline at me. “I’ll be very honest with you, Mr. Carlsbad. I’m not a man who normally endorses the occult, or whatever you people like to call it.”
“We don’t call it that.”
“Fair enough. These recent events have made it necessary to adjust the parameters of my beliefs, but I’m not sure what I expect you to actually encounter. This is all very new to me. I’m taking a great deal of it on faith. But I have the means to cover our bases, so to speak. What is most important is the success of my train project and the safety of my guests.”
I take a deep breath. “If I do this job, it has to be done my way. And I’ll need some backup. At least one or two good men I can rely on.”
“That’s a reasonable request.”
“And I need to know every detail of that train. Need to be able to keep an eye on every compartment from a switchboard. That means electronic surveillance. I have a guy back in Austin, he can handle that.”
“I can allow that also. Within reason, of course.”
“There’s one other thing. This whole magnetic-propulsion system gives me the creeps. If there is an infestation and something bad happens, I can’t guarantee preventing another crash.”
“You won’t be held responsible.”
“I want that in writing.”
“Obviously.”
He looks at me with a dead stare, and he can tell I’m scared.
I’ve never pulled more than five marks at a time. That was years ago. And I wasn’t standing in a magnetically powered bullet going five hundred miles an hour straight through the heart of fucking darkness.
Blackjack Nine.
Eight bad ghosts led by a madman out of the Triangle, unbound and bad enough to knock the most powerful train in the world off its rails.
Is that what my parents found out there?
It could kill me, just like it might have killed them.
But this is the will of the nexus.
This is my last chance to go back.
There’s no choice.
Damn.
“Do we have an alliance after all?” Jaeger’s question floats across the dark room.
“I’ll think about it.”
“No time,” says Eric Tate. “We need an answer now.”
I think about it.
For about ten more seconds.
Then I tell them I’m in.
Jaeger’s smile is quick and inhuman, then he nods his head. For a moment I think he’s nodding at Eric Tate, giving the seal of approval to his hard sell. Then something moves in the room behind me, and I realize he was signaling to someone.
She was there all along.
Goddamn, why didn’t I see her?
Nobody can sneak up on me like that.
“Mr. Carlsbad, allow me to introduce you to a very important member of our team.”
Jaeger’s voice is proud, like he knows he’s surprising me.
Make a note of that.
Rows of dim lights come on, adding a rich yellow glow to the contours and shapes all around us, bringing the room into sharp amber focus as the ebony woman comes from behind me, her lithe form draped in formal yet formfitting black, mirrored sunglasses making mysteries of her eyes. Her skin the color of deep shadows, her long black hair immaculate in a tight professional braid. She moves with precision grace.
When she reaches up to remove her shades, the lights are all the way up.
Blue eyes in darkness.
“Hello. My name is Lauren Chance.”
She extends her hand, slipping the sunglasses into a pocket of her black jacket. I can see the nasty hidden glimmer of a Colt Python semiauto handgun resting in a shoulder holster under there also. She’s dressed a bit like the other bodyguards in the room except she’s wearing tailored slacks and a blouse beneath the jacket that hugs her curves. I’m reminded of Angela Bassett as a young woman, or a blacker Pam Grier. As I touch her hand, I expect to feel icy professionalism, programmed false piety, maybe even a stone-cold killer, but none of that comes. I can’t read her at all, the same way I couldn’t read Jaeger or Eric Tate.
I finally decide it’s the room.
It’s like a tomb in here.
It doesn’t distract me one bit from her eyes.
“Mr. Carlsbad, may I have my hand back?”
The spell is broken, and I let go, shaking my head like a schoolboy.
“Yeah, umm…sorry about that.”
Jaeger chuckles. “Lauren makes quite an impression, doesn’t she?”
I don’t lie. What’s the point? She can see my eyes moving all over her. “You’re very pretty, Miss Chance.”
“Please call me Lauren.” Her voice is like frozen honey, confident and sleek. She almost smiles at my compliment but stops herself.
Jaeger leans forward on his cane. “Lauren is the head of my personal security force.”
Figures.
She has the eyes of something deadly.
I search for the proper response but find myself saying:
“Cool.”
She almost smiles again.
“I assure you, she is quite a bit more than a pretty face,” says Jaeger. “She’ll be with you on the Laser, along with Senator Maxton’s own people. The Department of Homeland Security has assigned a small complement of men to safeguard Bob during his trip. I can tell you, it hasn’t been easy coordinating our efforts. Secret Service men can be very…impersonal.”
I shrug my shoulders. “They guard the president while he sleeps.”
“And Lauren guards me while I sleep, Mr. Carlsbad. She’s the best there is at what she does.”
“Is that so?”
“That most certainly is so,” she says.
“So,” I say to Jaeger. “You’ll be on board the train with your bodyguard?”
“No. Eric and I will be at the other end, in Vegas, awaiting your arrival in the Dreamworld amphitheater. I’ve assigned Lauren to protect you and our guests aboard the train.”
“I’m not very good with an automatic weapon,” says Tate, shrugging in a fake way.
“So you guys are going to miss your own train ride?”
Jaeger chuckles again. “I’ve already ridden the Laser many times, Mr. Carlsbad, and so has Eric. It’s more a…shall we say, political move? The inaugural run must be focused entirely on Senator Maxton and the selected guests who will be riding. The Jaeger Laser needs a brand-name face—a champion. I am content to place the keys to my kingdom in Bob’s capable hands.”
I put my own hands in my pockets, keeping an eye on Lauren Chance. “They were calling you on that. On the news, I mean. I think it was the Carolyn Lewis show. Something about who wears the pants at Jaeger Industries.”
Tate makes an amused noise, shaking his head. “Lewis has been one of our most acidic detractors. She’s a liberal pundit inhabiting a notoriously left-wing cable-news network. Bob Maxton is often the brunt of jokes regarding conservative political candidates. But it won’t be a problem.”
I raise an eyebrow. “That’s sounds a little sinister. You guys have plans for Carolyn Lewis?”
“We signed her just this evening,” says Eric Tate. “She’ll be riding the Laser next week as our guest. The first rule in politics and good business is to keep your friends close but your enemies closer.”
I shake my head. “They say that in the Mafia too.”
“We all play by similar rules,” Tate says. “And anyway, there’s nothing sinister about it. Carolyn’s people actually approached us two months ago.”
“She’s been sniping at me on the air ever since,” says Jaeger. “But I find it all very amusing. She’s an opinion maker, after all—and as I said, opinion makers can easily be swayed.”
I wonder how much they’re paying her.
It can’t be enough.
Welcome to the future again.
“Speaking of enemies…I heard you had some competition a few years back. The freaky Phantom of the Opera guy.”
“You mean David Brannigan,” Jaeger says. “He’s very…theatrical. Hasn’t spoken about anything publicly in well over seven years.”
I smirk. “Have you ever met him in person?”
“Nobody even knows what the man looks like. But my people did have some rough dealings with his company in the early days of the Laser project.”
“Some people think you bought him off—that he’s a silent partner.”
“Some people are misinformed.”
I’m not convinced. He doesn’t give anything away though.
I shrug it off, and Eric Tate gives me a strange little smile.
“You’ll be briefed on the rest of our guest list and given a full rundown on the layout of the train and its speed capacities,” Lauren says. “I’ll walk it with you personally in the morning and answer any questions you may have. Along with the Secret Service people and myself, we will have a full complement of six agents holding down security. I am instructed to assist you in any way relevant to your assignment.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard. I don’t even carry a gun.”
“That seems odd.”
“You can’t pump a spirit full of lead, not the way I work. Some other guys like me come packing, but they’re usually only gunning for the living—unhappy clients, bad neighborhoods, all that.”
She gives me a suspicious look. “A black jacket and a Walkman isn’t a bulletproof vest. I find it hard to believe you’ve never been assaulted by a client during one of your…I’m not even sure what to call it.”
“We call it pulling marks. And yes, I’ve seen a lot of trouble with the living on jobs, but I don’t kill people. You run the risk of becoming attached to the dead when you do murder. Plus, it’s against the law.”
She comes closer, begins to circle me. “That’s very interesting, Mr. Carlsbad. Our files tell us that you have been known to hurt people.”
“That does come with the job.”
“Pray tell.”
“There’s different kinds of ghosts. The most common are the ones you hear about on TV. Walkers are different—they can become attached to their own murderers when they die. It doesn’t happen that much. But they’re mean bastards, and they can do major damage on our side of the world, even kill people.”
“Poltergeists,” Lauren says.
“That’s the popular term. You have to be ready to go hand to hand with them. They can be really tough. As in superhuman tough. Other kinds of spirits possess human minds, and that gets tricky too. You have to use bioelectric shocks to shake the mark loose. The brain senses acute trauma, and the body goes into a sort of adrenaline arrest when you hit it in the right spot.”
“And gives up the ghost?”
“Yep. A mark is always at its weakest when it first enters the host’s mind. The longer it settles there, the more control it has over the body. Usually takes about ten or fifteen minutes for it to take over, sometimes less. If you get to the mark fast enough after it enters a body, you can pull it easy, without much of a fight. But that doesn’t happen a lot. I pulled one a few years back that was hiding out inside an old man for months—had to get really nasty with him.”
“I can only imagine,” Lauren says.
“You don’t want to.”
She sucks in a quick shot of air to distract me from her coiled fist, which slashes the air to my left in a blurred sucker punch that would catch anyone else off-balance—I saw it coming three seconds ago. I put up one hand and block her delicately at the wrist.
She pulls her blow and smiles.
Just a love tap.
Testing.
“Quick, Mr. Carlsbad. You have training.”
I nod as she takes her hand back.
“Started with jeet kune do,” I tell her. “Old-school Bruce Lee all the way. Then I got into some Filipino boxing, street-fighting techniques. Less elegant. Dirtier.”
She spins fast and puts one of her pretty legs in the air, sending the stiletto heel of her shiny black shoe like a guided missile just past my jaw, which I move quicker than she can see. But she’s fast on the rebound—tries to fake me out on a right hook, and comes back in with another wheel kick. I sidestep it with my hands in my pockets.
Neither of us have broken a sweat.
This isn’t even foreplay.
“My sensei told me it’s all about staying three moves ahead of your opponent,” I tell her.
“Which sensei?”
“All of them.”
She puts both hands into it this time, more aggressive now. Wants to see what I’m made of. I keep one hand in my right pocket, bobbing and weaving in a casual step away from her classic muaythai combination attack. She pulls each punch back hard when it connects with nothing, recoiling and striking again and again, all her forward thrust redirected and channeled with amazing control. She plays speed chess like a pro.
But classic is another word for dumb.
Ask the man who can’t stop listening to hair metal.
“It must be easy for a man like you to stay three moves ahead of your opponent,” she says calmly.
“When you fight the possessed, you need every edge.”
I almost don’t see the next attack coming but I duck it anyway, riding an adrenaline rush as one of the big guys comes in from behind me. Dirty motherfucker made his move when I was looking at the cute chick. She smiles and steps out of the way as he plunges into the center of the room, hammering the air I just occupied with his meaty fists. Those fists are as big and obvious as canned hams once I readjust my focus and bounce back in his direction, my hands still in my pockets.
This one I can read easy.
His flight plan is scrawled on his face like a tattoo traced in neon lights.
“Ghosts are sneaky, Miss Chance,” I say, circling him. “They often choose their hosts for the power of their bodies and the force of their minds.”
He swipes with those canned hams and misses me by a mile.
“But bigger isn’t always better,” I say, not even looking at him.
He swipes again, misses again.
Classic.
“Some people actually welcome a mark,” I say. “Those are harder to spot—the marks get together with the living, and the living take it like a drug. They cause all kinds of damage and you never even see them coming until it’s too late.”
Swipe.
Miss.
Hands in pockets.
No sweat.
“But in the end, those kind of marks all have the same weakness, Miss Chance—they’re riding the electrochemical impulses of a human body, and a human body has six nerve centers that engage a psychoplasmic entity.”
Swipe.
“The one that works best is coupled directly to the easiest bone in the human body to break—”
Miss.
“—and that’s this one.”
His fist is still missing me when I grab it and twist his meaty arm back hard, dropping him to his knees as the pain of his twisted-up muscles stabs a knife into his nervous system—and while he’s down there, wondering what happens next…
I break his little finger.
Then drop him there, this little piggy screaming all the way home.
Look back at Sidney Jaeger.
I shrug and put my hands back in my pockets, as if to say and now, for my next trick…but instead I lay it down calmly:
“If this man had been possessed by a mark, that mark would be all mine now.”
Sidney chuckles.
Claps politely.
“Son of a bitch,” says the blacksuit, waffling on one knee, his finger twisted like a mauled pastry stick. Knows better than to get up.
Demonstration over.
Lauren glances at her boss. “I think we’re done here for the moment, Sidney.”
I still can’t read her at all.
Couldn’t even do it when she was trying to kick my ass.
Strange.
She leads me from the room, and I feel the uncertain stares of Sidney and Eric Tate on the back of my neck, while the nexus burns in my heart.
Right here at ground zero.
The hotel suite is obscene, like a space capsule for rich folks.
A normal person could drown in here.
I’m escorted by one of Jaeger’s bodyguards though three rooms filled with thick white plush and expensive gold canyons, and he leaves me there to sink slowly. The bed lies in the rear section of the suite like a big pink monolith, or an expensive call girl waiting on her back for me, all done up in lace and ribbons.
It’s one fifteen in the morning.
My soul feels scattered.
One entire wall in the living room area is dominated by a giant screen and it’s already tuned to a news program. People in suits are arguing in a circle about the Jaeger Laser. Pat Buchanan thinks it’s a great idea, all full of his usual harmless piss-and-vinegar pep, laughing like your daffy drunk uncle at a Christmas cocktail mixer. Bill O’Reilly agrees with him a lot and tells a skinny kid who’s supposed to be some kind of political analyst to shut the hell up every other minute. I pick up the remote and click through the channels. It’s everywhere, they’re all talking. Big moves and future shock, coming at me in Technicolor and 3-D.
Tomorrow, Sidney drops the atom bomb on all of them.
Roosevelt is already on the way, and the urns are being delivered. Tom will be our backup on the train. And Lauren Chance. A wildcard that worries the hell out of me.
I pull my satchel off my shoulder and set it on the table.
Fall into the bed and stare up at the mirrored ceiling, seeing my reflection trapped between worlds.
I breathe in and out slowly, concentrating on Sidney’s words.
The image of Adam Protextor.
The Blackjack Nine.
Did they kill my parents?
Are they the monsters I couldn’t see when I was lost out there in the desert, hovering between death and the Blacklight?
The Pull glows inside my body, hungry for the truth.
I hover there on the edge of consciousness for a few hours.
Riding the Pull.
As the sun breaks over the plaza, I nod off for nearly an hour and dream about nothing. When I wake up, a suitcase sits on the floor in my room, filled with dirty clothes imported from Austin.
Next to the suitcase, a large crate from Father Joe.
I crack it open and inspect the urns.
Twelve of them.
More than I’ll need.