Billy and Crawford led him through a maze of hallways and down the stairs into the basement. Ray had a hard time walking—seeing through only one eye had skewed his depth perception. Billy kept the cold metal of the gun barrel pressed against the back of his neck. He passed a row of doors that looked like cells; in the dim light he saw what looked like shapes of people huddled within. This was where they were keeping Ellen and William, probably, but he couldn’t stop. Crawford opened a door, and Billy shoved Ray inside.
A dentist’s chair sat in the middle of the room. Crawford waved his arm toward it. “Have a seat, Ray. It’s time we got to know each other better.”
Billy pushed him into the chair and held him. Crawford helped tighten thick Velcro straps around his arms and legs and put on a long white lab coat. “And no spitting this time,” he said. “You’ll want at least one good eye to see what we have in store for you.”
“I have a question,” Ray asked.
“I am all ears.”
Ray strained his arms against the straps. No give at all. He might as well be encased in concrete. “Why won’t you let Ellen and William go now? You have me. I’ll cooperate. You got what you wanted. They have nothing to do with this.”
Crawford tilted his head from side to side, as if trying to remember the punch line of a joke. “You know, you do have a point. I’d consider letting the little boy and his mommy go. Just wipe their minds clean of this entire incident and send them merrily home. As far as I’m concerned, the less ugliness and the fewer messes to clean up, the better for everyone. But it all depends upon your cooperation.”
Maybe he was bluffing. But Ray had to take the chance. “I’ll cooperate. Keep me. Let them go.”
Crawford scratched his chin. “Let me ask you a favor. If you accept, the waitress and her adorable boy wake up tomorrow all snug in their beds, dreaming of sugarplums and free to live out the rest of their lives as if you never existed.”
“Ask.”
Crawford bent over and moved his face closer. “You know what I want, don’t you?”
“You want something locked inside me. In my memories.”
Crawford clasped his hands. “Yes! Yes, Ray. That’s exactly what I want.” He turned to the door. “Billy, please wait by the door. We need some quality alone time.”
Billy left the room and stood quietly outside.
Crawford reached up and turned on a circular light, then angled it into Ray’s eyes. “Looks like I did a real number on you there, Ray. Once we have a nice long discussion, I can clean that up for you.”
His good eye watered in the glare. “What do you want?”
“It’s pretty simple, really. You just let me in. Let me look inside you.”
Ray squirmed. “How?”
“I’ll inject a little something to help you relax. And then I’ll ask you some questions. And you’ll answer them. And when you feel me, you won’t resist—you’ll let me in. Free to roam. To wander. Wherever I want to go.”
The image of Crawford wriggling through his mind made him ill. “And then?”
“If you aren’t hiding anything—if you truly open yourself—they both go free.”
“I’m not sure I believe you.”
“You have no choice but to believe me, Ray. Look at you—do you look like you have any choice? If you play by my rules, I let them go.”
“And me?”
Crawford wagged his finger. “We’ll work that out later. Time is slipping away. So … shall we get going? If you cooperate it will go very quickly.”
Ray swallowed. His throat was dry as chalk. “What if I don’t? You won’t get what you want if I resist, will you? So maybe I do have some say in this deal. Let them go first—prove to me that you’ve set them free—and you can do whatever you want to me.”
“Oh, Ray. Now, now. Don’t do this.”
“Let me see that they’re okay and then let them go. Then you get everything. Prove to me I can trust you, and then you can do whatever you want. No resistance.”
Crawford sighed. “I had so hoped it wouldn’t come to this.” He walked to the other side of the room and switched on a TV monitor mounted on the wall. “But if you won’t cooperate, I have no choice.” The monitor glowed cold blue.
Ellen. In her bra and panties, curled into herself, rocking slowly in the corner of a concrete room with black-and-white checkered tiles. William, next to her, holding his mother, his face hidden.
Ray strained against the straps. “You fucker! You motherfucking—” he grunted, pushing with every bit of strength. “I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you if you hurt either of them!”
Crawford ignored him. “Billy, get Mother in here and then go to the studio. I think I’ll need a little help convincing Ray.” He smiled and shook his head at Ray, as if he were watching a toddler throwing a tantrum.
Icy water in his face. Burning cold. He’d been screaming and cursing, jerking around in the chair like someone being electrocuted. The cold water brought him back. He stopped screaming and caught his breath.
Lily stepped into view, blocking the closed-circuit TV. “Oh, dear, look at his eye.”
Crawford sighed. “Nasty, isn’t it.”
Lily moved behind him. On the screen Ellen still rocked and William still clung to her, as much to comfort her as to be comforted. They were both so small and fragile.
Lily’s face, upside down, moved into his. “Listen closely, Ray. Watch what we can do. Show him, Samael.”
Crawford pointed a remote control at the TV. A volume bar moved across the image as he turned up the sound. Ellen cried, a horrible, low keening.
“Ellen. Ellen!” His voice was hoarse, and raspy.
“She can’t hear you,” Crawford said. He walked to a desk and pressed an intercom button. “Go ahead, Billy.”
The sound of a door opening came from the TV speakers. Ellen looked up. Billy stepped into the picture.
Ellen screamed.
Billy looked up at the camera. He waved. “Hi, Ray.”
Ellen looked at the camera. “Ray? Ray? Ray, can you see me? Ray, Jesus, please, what is going on—”
Billy lunged at her. “Shut up!” He reached into his pocket. Withdrew something long and thin that caught a reflection from the light above.
“Ray!” Ellen wailed. She moved her body in front of William, holding her arms up like a shield. William hugged her tighter, his face hidden.
A straight razor.
“Stop it!” Ray’s sanity was stretched and fragile as an old rubber band. Frothy spit ran from his mouth. “Please stop it, oh God, please, I’ll do anything, you can do anything. Take it. Take me. Just stop. Please.” This was all his fault. Ellen was going to die, William was going to die, and it was all his fault.
Lily’s face again, upside down, leaning over him. Moving closer. “Let us in.”
Crawford’s face, haloed in light and out of focus. “Let us in, Ray. And he’ll stop.”
Ellen screamed his name.
“Stop.” He had broken. Completely broken. “Stop it. Stop him. Stop. I’ll cooperate. Just stop.” The voice of a robot. A ventriloquist’s dummy.
Lily’s upside-down face met Crawford’s. They kissed. Slowly.
Ellen screamed again.
Crawford stepped to the intercom. “Enough, Billy.”
Billy let go of Ellen’s hair and folded up the razor, looking disappointed.
Crawford turned off the TV. “Splendid, Ray.” He beamed. “Mother, get the syringe, please.”
The needle stung briefly. It hit immediately—a sense of the floor dropping away. Floating.
“What is it?” Ray asked.
“SP-17. Soviet recipe, an oldie but a goodie. Just relax.”
Crawford’s voice trailed off, as if it was echoing down a long hall. The drug hit like a freight train.
Lily’s fingers stroked his temples. “Shhh. Just open up, dear. Let yourself relax and let us in.”
Crawford’s face moved closer. Dark eyes drilling into his one good eye. “Let’s take a trip back, Ray. Back to when—”
He’s seven. He’s spent the day in the recreation room, in the big building. An hour earlier one of the doctors had given each of them a Dixie cup full of punch. The old man, Dr. Green, watched to make sure they’d all swallowed. He hates all the doctors, but he hates Dr. Green the most. He was in charge of the rest of them, and his breath always smelled like puke.
His head hurts. This camp sucks. He especially hates the games. Some of them hurt, the ones when they stick the wires to his head. And no amount of ice cream can make up for that.
Kevin tugs at his sleeve. “You okay?”
He isn’t okay. This is worse than school and Sunday school and church combined. His mom and Uncle Bill said he’d have fun, that he’d learn to build fires, and hike, and tie knots. But it’s nothing but stupid games and tests. Always tests. And other stuff, the stuff that when he thinks about it makes his head hurt and his stomach sick. No campfires, no sing-alongs, no roasting marshmallows and tracking raccoons and jackrabbits.
Kevin tugs again. “You okay?”
Forward through time.
Stars overhead. So bright, like spotlights against the blackness. Their beams extending down to him like strings of light. Piercing him.
Uncle Bill leans over. Upside-down Uncle Bill.
“It’s okay, Ray. Relax.”
He rolls his head to the side. Kevin is next to him, eyes wide, staring into the heavens. He turns his head to the other side. Another kid—Michael, with red hair—entranced by the sky. They’re in a circle, their feet together, heads out, like the petals of a human flower. And their little circle is inside a larger circle of ugly rocks stretching to the sky.
“Remember your lessons,” Uncle Bill whispers. “Stretch out with your mind. Open up. Ask them to come to you.”
He opens. And asks. He’s done it a hundred times already.
“Zero,” Uncle Bill says. “One. One. Two. Three. Five. Eight.”
Something hears him. And it listens. Something far away.
“Thirteen. Twenty-one. Thirty-four. Fifty-five.”
It’s so close. So fast.
“Eighty-nine. One forty-four.”
And the sky opens like the craziest summer thunderstorm ever.
Crawford’s face emerges from the blackness. “Go back. Go back, Ray. Two thirty-three. Three seventy-seven. Six-ten. Nine.”
Kevin grasps his hand. Squeezes it until it feels like his bones will break. But Ray’s too deep now. He can’t talk.
The lights appear overhead. Seven of them, ten of them, a hundred of them. He can’t close his eyes, can’t blink, so he watches them swarm like fireflies. Like ice. Like eyes. Each point of light moves to the center, and they merge into one. One huge, orange, throbbing sphere.
The distance between him and the light contracts. It’s not like it moves closer to him, or that he moves closer to it. It’s as if the space between them vanishes.
He’s inside it.
And then it’s inside him. Looking out through his eyes. Like he’s squeezed into a tiny corner of his head, while this thing moves around inside him. Its fingers—its hundreds of blobby fingers—poke and prod around beneath his skull. The fingers sweep through his head, rearranging and reconfiguring. His bladder empties.
And the voice that comes through him—Its voice, or Their voices, a thousand buzzing, chattering, droning insects—cracks his consciousness neatly in half along a fabricated fault line. The half that was hidden—the secret place the men and the doctors created—awakens, pure, receptive, paying intense attention.
The sounds fill his eyes. The symbols sing. Synesthesia, sound breaking apart and coagulating in front of his eyes, tasting light, a profusion of lines, circles, and angles. An alphabet dancing in the air. Patterns, and numbers, and tones.
It’s a map. A map of a way to reach them. Through space and time and dream. A method of contact, of communion.
It breaks.
Crawford’s eyes are wide. Unmoving. His mouth slack.
Ray snaps back into the present, and it’s like being dropped from an airplane and slamming into the ground. It’s dizzying.
Crawford stares. His eyes and expression are blank.
“Samael,” Lily cries. She steps behind him and holds his head. “Samael? Crawford?”
Crawford smiles. His eyes expand. His mouth stretches so far it looks like it’s going to rip. A sound comes out of him that could not be made by human vocal cords. Insectoid. Demonic.
Lily cackles.
Ray screams. And screams. And closes his eyes.
Lily sticks him with another needle. Crawford howls like a mad dog.
“Goodnight, my dear,” Lily whispers in his ear.
“Welcome back,” she says.
He tries to say fuck you but the words come out wrong. Still too drugged. Like being underwater and looking up at her face above the surface.
“You’ve given us a tremendous gift, Ray.” Her hair brushes against his face. The smell of her perfume is overwhelming.
“F-f … ffuuu …”
She puts her finger to her lips. “Shhh. Save your energy for the party.”
He can’t lift his arm to grab her neck. If he could get his hands free, he’d jam his thumbs deep into her snake-green eye sockets up to his wrists. Blind the bitch if he couldn’t take them both down.
“Hi, Ray.”
Crawford is standing, grinning.
Ray forces out the words, his tongue a useless piece of rubber. “What … do you want?”
“Nothing. You’ve given me everything. Everything, Ray. The sun. The moon. The stars.”
“Then … let them go. I kept my … word. Let them go.”
Crawford sighed and shook his head. “I’d like to. I really would. But there’s still one thing I need to take care of.”
Ray closed his eyes. His hands clenched into fists.
“That black fellow, his boy wonder, and their little social club. Little children playing spies and hiding in a tree house. They’ve started to annoy me. Skulking around like dogs. Sniffing around in my business.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Crawford laughed. “Whatever. Anyhoo … I have a very strong feeling—scratch that, a near certainty—that your friends are going to come looking for you. And I am so looking forward to meeting them. Because we’re going to have a party tonight. A party like we’ve never had before, thanks to you, my friend.”
Of course. Now he was bait for Micah and his people, as Ellen and William had been lures to draw him. But would Micah come? Or were he and Ellen and William expendable?
Crawford’s eyes danced. “It’s going to be a night for the history books.”
Lily’s voice. She had been standing behind him. “The invocation. You will help us bring them through the doorway, Ray.”
“You’re going to die,” Ray said. “Both of you.” It came out of him without thought and surprised him.
The two looked at each other and laughed.
“We’ll see you soon,” Crawford said. “Rest up. You have a big night ahead.”
Lily winked. Crawford turned out the lights as he left.
He tried fighting the drugs, but drifted back into unconsciousness.
He woke up when the light came on. Billy and the guy in the acid-washed jeans, White Sneakers, had come to get him.
“Hello, assholes,” Ray said.
They said nothing. Billy extracted him from the chair, and the other man tied his arms behind his back. Billy held the gun, and his hand was shaking. His jaw waggled back and forth as if completely unhinged. Whatever he was on was tweaking him hard. “Let’s go,” he said.
They led him up a flight of stairs, through a windowless corridor, and into a candlelit room. A man in a robe stood in front of him. The robe was long, deep red, and hooded, and the folds of the hood hung over his head, hiding his face. Just like in Micah’s video. It would have been comic in any other situation, a Halloween costume, a cheesy horror film cliché come to life.
“Spooky,” Ray said. He had little energy left, but he’d mock them until the bitter end. One thing he’d learned was that they didn’t like that. His swollen-shut eye was proof.
The robed figure didn’t speak.
“You gonna offer me up to your dark lord?”
No word.
“Oh. You’re the ghost of Christmas future. I get it.”
Silence. He could have been talking to a mannequin.
Billy pressed the gun against the back of his head. “You’d better shut up.”
“Look at yourself—playing dress-up. Well, fuck you. You don’t scare me. You’re a piece of shit.”
Billy reached over and pulled the man’s hood back.
Ray’s breath caught in his throat.
Kevin. His glasses reflected the candlelight. His nose was swollen and purple and his cheeks were bruised from the self-administered beating. He seemed dazed. “Ray … I’m sorry.”
The room swayed. Ray swallowed, his mouth dry. “Kevin … why? How can you do this?”
Kevin’s Adam’s apple rose and fell, but he didn’t speak.
“Jesus, say something to me. It’s me.”
Nothing.
“Kevin, for fuck’s sake, talk to me.”
Billy laughed.
Lily walked into the room, in her shimmering crimson robe. “Oh, how cute. Two old friends having a little chat.”
“Why don’t you die, bitch,” Ray said.
Lily snickered. “Kevin, go help our new arrivals get dressed. It’s almost time.”
Kevin’s eyes went blank. He turned and left the room, his robe sweeping along the floor.
“You’re not one of them!” Ray shouted after him.
Lily laughed some more. If he had a knife, he’d cut her tongue out to make sure she’d never utter that jagged sound again. “He’s not the person you used to know,” she said. “He hasn’t been for years. He’s family now.”
“Your family can’t just do this.”
“Oh, no? Maybe the Negro Cub Scouts will save you?”
“They’ll get you,” he said. “Maybe not before I die, but they’ll get you.”
“Oh, Ray, please stop scaring me,” she said.
Now Crawford entered, dressed in his robe. “Bind him,” he said. Billy wrapped the rope around his arms, cinching it until Ray cursed in pain. Not only were his hands bound behind his back, but his entire upper body was immobilized.
“It’s time,” Crawford said.
Billy nodded. He yanked Ray up by the back of his shirt and walked him through the house and out the back door in the gallery. Two cops in uniform stood guard. They both glanced at him and turned back to the garden and the woods beyond. They’d witnessed this scene before. Many times, perhaps.
Ray shivered. It was getting cold, and the mist settled on his skin, threatening to draw out his last bit of strength.
The rest of the group emerged into the night air. One at a time, all in their red robes with the hoods hanging over their faces.
“Follow me,” Lily said. She walked slowly into the gardens, followed by Crawford and the rest.
“Move,” Billy whispered. He pushed, and Ray stumbled forward. He followed the procession through the gardens, along a stony path past the pool, and into a grassy field. His feet sank in the mud. The others followed.
His foot caught on a rock and he fell on his face in the dirt. He turned his head and spat out a mouthful of mud. Damn. He’d cut his cheek—he could feel a sharp sting and the warmth of blood.
“Up,” Billy hissed. He lifted Ray to his feet.
They marched on. Through the field, past two more armed guards, into the woods, and up a hill. Billy held the ropes across Ray’s back to keep him steady. Ray could barely see the robed figure in front of him through the fog, and the path they were walking on was rough. The hill grew steeper.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ray thought he saw an arc of light zipping across the sky. Billy didn’t seem to notice. Then he saw it flash again—just over the treetops.
He stumbled again, but Billy caught him.
On they went, deeper into the trees.
After a long time, an orange glow burned ahead. As they moved closer, the glow danced, illuminating huge, gnarled trees and a very familiar arrangement of rocks.
Of course.
The fire from within the Hand had burned away much of the fog. The group stopped and parted in front of one of the jagged rocks, and Ray cried out.
On a flattened slab in the center of the circle, in a thin white robe, tied up, spread-eagled and blindfolded, was Ellen.