I was high above, looking down on a scene of odd beauty. The salmon light flickered, lit the room then poof, darkness-then a flare and sunrise again. I let my eyes roam across the scene. There was a man with a long beard moving a metal canister around, plumes of salmon smoke pouring from its holes as he traced patterns in the air. I saw people I recognized: Bernini in a high chair, his chest exposed, white hairs curling out around a yellow silk gown that was luxurious and oriental. Nigel standing rigidly in front of onlookers, naked, the musculature of his thin body defined and illuminated by the strange light. The smoke was burning my nostrils. Everything was an electric version of itself, the colors unnatural, neon, strident and explosive like the energies between people you feel but never see. The pulsing came from drums around them, men pounding and letting their bodies collapse and rise over the tuned skins. The beating grew faster. The man in the center threw his head back. There were dancers, moving naked and loose, letting their breasts swing, and behind them a device that mirrored their movements that pulsed and churned as they moved faster and looser, their heads whipping around, hair flying and sticking in clumps to their sweaty, flushed skin. The man in the center was calling out now. His beard was electric, neon green, his stare lost behind round eyeless yellow light. He held up his hands and his palms glowed red with wet electric blood. He opened his mouth and tossed his head completely back and let out a terrible noise in a merciless voice that sounded animal, made a sound like a ca ca and everyone was moving.
I tore myself away. The smoke was burning my eyes. I heard a noise down the tunnel. Fuck, I thought, fuck I should’ve paid attention. Someone was coming. I turned away from the salmon square, slid back as fast as I could on my elbows and stomach toward the end of the tunnel, back to the branch point. Whoever was coming was coming fast, getting closer, louder. The echoing of the tunnels, those drums still pounding, faster and faster, building toward some unnatural orgasm. I reached the branch point. I looked down both tunnels. Where was the person coming from? Which branch was mine? I waved the penlight around the bricks. My key mark seemed lost in the scratches and nicks on the hundred bricks around me. There it was! I heard the crawler, coming from the other tunnel. I took off on my elbows down my original path, following the key marks, turning again, the sound of the crawler advancing, but I tore forward, fueled by pure fear, following the branches until the sounds grew softer, more distant. I worked my way back until at last I found the very first key mark and across from it the letters dm written on the brick. I started back toward my original goal, the one Humpty set out for me, the end point that might save me from whatever hell those people had in store for me.
I went from path to path, following the marks for dm. It went on for God only knows how long, until I came for the first time to a hatch above me in the ceiling of the tunnel.
DEAD MAN, IT SAID.
I pressed the hatch up and it gave easily and slid away to the side.
I climbed up through the hatch into a narrow crawl space. It was dark, but light poured in on three sides. I moved toward the bright light and came out from under an object into a room. My eyes adjusted. I looked back and saw that the object I had crawled out from under was a bed. I looked around.
I was standing in my room.
22
What fear! Fear like I had never felt before. I remembered myself checking locked doors, locked windows, putting chairs under the doorknob-worthless! What a fool I was, thinking I could ever be safe with them against me.
I had to get out of my room. I needed somewhere to hide while I thought this through.
I cut a wild path through campus, walking with my head down and hands deep in my pockets, a wool hat pulled low over my eyes.
I knocked on Miles’s door and prayed he would answer.
Finally, I heard rustling. He opened the door, looking like I’d roused him out of a very deep sleep. Miles in pajamas-all six foot seven and three hundred pounds of him-was an unnatural sight. And considering my night up to that moment, that was saying a lot.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Miles said, rubbing his face.
“I’m sorry, Miles.”
“What time is it?”
I started to say something.
“It’s a rhetorical question. I have a clock. What I mean is, what the fuck?”
“Miles,” I said, “we need to get inside.”
That surprised him.
“Miles, I’m in trouble…”
He studied me. I watched it dawn on him.
“You didn’t,” he said softly.
“Miles, I-”
“You didn’t,” he said.
I couldn’t say anything. I just nodded.
“Damn it,” he shouted, and his voice thundered down the hall.
“Miles, we have to get inside…”
“IT DOESN’T MATTER,” he shouted at me. I saw a look in his eyes, one that I hadn’t seen in years. It was the look he used to get in debate matches. The one that said I’m going to destroy you. Forget his size. Forget his mass. That look was why they called him The Beast.
“I warned you,” he growled. “I told you not to mess with them. Didn’t I? You didn’t listen. Goddamn it. What did you do?”
I started to explain, but he talked over me.
“You came here?”
I paused. I hadn’t thought about that.
“You fucked up and then you come here?”
“Miles, no one followed me.”
“How do you know? You don’t know anything.”
He smacked the door with his massive fist.
“I could send you away right now. You haven’t told me anything. I could shut the door right now.”
“Miles, I don’t know what to do.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, rubbed his face.
“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck.” He slammed the wall and I felt it shudder.
He walked inside, but he left the door open. I followed him and locked us in.
He sat on the futon. The old thing groaned under him. He rubbed his face with both hands. He took several giant breaths. Some of the angry flush went out of his cheeks. When he spoke, he was calmer.
“It was Chance, right? You and Chance met up again.”
I hesitated, then said yes.
He nodded a couple of times to himself. The heaving of his massive shoulders slowed.
“It was a mistake, putting you two together. I thought I could control it. It’s my mistake.” He rubbed his neck. “It’s okay,” he said finally. “You’re frightened. It’s okay.”
“No. I shouldn’t have come.”
He shook his head.
“I know you and I know Chance. I’m the connection. They would’ve put it together anyway.”
“Miles,” I said. “I’m really scared.”
He looked at me, and the beast was gone from his eyes. They were calm again, philosopher’s eyes-warm, wrinkled at the corners.
“Scared,” he said, nodding. “That’s a good start.”
We called Chance. No answer.
“We need to go over there,” I said. “He might be in trouble.”
“Slow down. We need a plan first or you’re going to get us all killed.”
“We should call the cops,” I said. “Tell them everything. It’s the only way.”
Miles smiled at me, and it was an annoying, patronizing smile.
“Jeremy, these aren’t the kind of people you just report to the police. Or the FBI, MI6, Sydney Bristow, or Batman, for that matter.”
“Then what?”
Miles picked up a Rubik’s Cube from the table, smacked it down hard, then started pacing and fiddling with it. It was a nervous habit that went back to childhood. His dad had given him his first cube on his tenth birthday. Whenever he had a problem to solve, Miles would pick up the cube and start fidgeting with it.
It seemed so simple. Just nine squares on a side. In high school, Miles used to tell me there were forty-three quintillion possible configurations of the cube: forty-three followed by eighteen zeros. The Earth would fall into the sun before our fastest computers could find the best solution for every position.