Chapter 26 #2
saw that one of the big chunky buttons had clunked down on the reel-to-reel tape recorder. Another button slammed. The reels
screamed, running in reverse. A third button went bang. The reels began to play.
Warbling voices rose in harmony: BA-A-A-A-A-A-AD MISTAKES!
It was like hearing music while drowning—distorted and terrible. The tape stopped, rewound, began to play again.
BAAA-A-A-A-A-AAAD MISTAKES!
Colin looked wildly along the length of the table. The others were staring at him . . . or they would’ve been staring at him
if their eyes weren’t covered by those awful black scribbles. A dozen men and women, blinded by death.
I’VE DONE MY SENTENCE, the voices on the reel-to-reel shrieked.
Colin wondered if he was having a heart attack. It felt like he was being knifed. It felt like someone had pushed a broadsword
right through the center of his chest from behind. He hunched over the table, shut his eyes, wishing it all away, and when
he looked up, he stood alone behind the séance table.
I’VE COME THROUGH, sang the voices on the tape recorder. The tripod beneath the camera suddenly snapped shut and the 16mm tilted over and crashed
to the floor.
Then it was very still. The overhead lights had shut off while his eyes were closed.
There was a single door, to Colin’s right, with a pane of pebbled glass set in it.
A figure moved on the other side, a dark and shifting shape, turning to face the door.
Colin knew who was out there, and suddenly he didn’t want to see him anymore, or, far worse, be seen by him.
The thought that the door might be about to open made Colin want to scream, but he couldn’t fight a breath down into his lungs.
The doorknob began to turn and he squeezed his eyes shut again, wishing with all his ruined heart, Please, PLEASE, stop this, stop this right now RIGHT N—
He lurched awake, flung an arm out. His elbow struck the bedside tray and Wolf Messing’s helmet fell, clanged to the floor.
Water sprayed.
His phone had slipped face down in his lap. He didn’t know what had happened to the pillow it had been propped against. The
Aztec conch had dropped back to his side, was turned so he could look into its slick, vaginal interior. His hospital monitors
blipped softly.
Colin lifted his hand to wipe drool from his mouth. His pulse was still galloping. It was the morphine—the morphine had whacked
him good and hard, had put him to sleep, and even then, had not entirely ameliorated his pain. It felt as if a corkscrew were
twisting slowly in the center of his chest. It outraged him, that Donna could’ve brought him St. Helen’s blood, that he could
be healing now . . . healing instead of dying.
Colin had found the darkness of his room comforting, easier on his eyes, but now it frightened him. The room was plunged into
darkness in every direction. The depth of the shadows made it hard to breathe, made him wish for all the light in the world.
Even when he looked at the monitors, the one source of brightness in the whole room, black spots darted and drifted in front
of his vision. He had a thought then, so terrible he wanted to cry out, that there were black scribbles in front of his eyes,
that he had already joined the dead. He clawed for his phone, found the camera app. He needed to look into his own eyes, know
he was still breathing.
He was not reassured by the sight of himself on the screen.
What he saw wasn’t something to share with Instagram.
He felt he was staring into a dead man’s face, the features of someone who had died of hunger and thirst in one of the plague caves Arthur had talked about.
Although at least his eyes, feverish and bright, were still his own. No scribbles yet.
He felt a sudden fierce pulse of missing Arthur’s steadiness, Arthur’s boring, banal courage. Colin had a sudden notion that
the darkness around him would not be so dark if Arthur were still in the world. He had an idea—wild, imprecise, and worrisome—that
Arthur had been equipped with something Colin had lacked. Colin remembered how Arthur had brought the Cree hi-throwers along
for their underground walk, so they would carry daylight with them even underground. But then Arthur had brought daylight
with him wherever he went. Colin wished with all his injured heart for a Cree hi-thrower in his hand and Arthur by his side.
But it wasn’t Arthur by his side. Colin heard a boot step into the puddle on the floor with a wet smack. Colin studied the
screen of his iPhone once more and saw for the first time the man standing to one side of the bed and a little behind him.
His companion had been far enough back in the shadows that Colin had missed him at first: a skinny young fellow, with hair
the color of straw, and thin lips twisted in an unpleasant smile. Colin couldn’t see his eyes. Those were just hollows of
darkness . . . bottomless wells of shadow, a thousand times deeper than a troll’s cave.
“Elwood?” Colin whispered. “Elwood Hondo?”
The young man bent and found Wolf Messing’s helmet. He turned it over in his rawboned hands. “What’s this now? I like it!”
“It belonged to a figure infamous in occult circles,” Colin gasped. “A disturbed and dangerous man.”
Hondo set it on his own head. “Why, it’s a perfect fit for me!”
Colin’s ears were playing tricks on him. He thought he could hear, from a great distance, the sound of “We Are the Champions,”
slow and distorted. At first, he thought it was coming from his own phone, but when he glanced around, he realized it was
trickling from the conch. Bad mistakes. I’ve made a few. Colin nodded absently. Him too.
A bead of sweat crawled down his throat. It was important to stay focused. This was what he had hoped for. He had wanted to bring Elwood Hondo through to deal with Gwen’s accomplices.
“I need you to kill someone,” Colin told him.
“Hey, good buddy! You don’t gotta ask me twice,” Elwood said, and lifted the pillow he had taken from Colin’s lap while Colin
slept.
Elwood clamped it down on Colin’s face with both hands. Colin screamed a scream that made no sound. He gasped and inhaled
a deep wad of cotton. He grabbed for Elwood’s arms. Elwood’s forearms were cold and hard, like frozen legs of mutton, and
Colin couldn’t shift them. That corkscrew in Colin’s chest twisted harder and harder still. Lights flashed behind his eyes,
faraway sparks in the distance, at the bottom of a long hole. Arthur! Colin thought. It was Arthur down there, holding a light, a painted candle peeled right off a wall and made real. Arthur, help me! Colin thought again.
He pedaled his feet, thrashed with both legs. The conch fell off the bed with a glassy crack. In his mind, he was racing,
he was sprinting with all he had, toward that spark of light. But the small gleam of brightness was moving away faster than
he could run. It dimmed. He gasped but had no air and his legs began to grow tired. Arthur, wait for me! he wanted to scream. I’m scared of the dark! Arthur!
The light shriveled and winked out and Colin plunged on, blindly, screaming without words, without making a sound, screaming
with no one to hear, because in that darkness that seemed to last forever, he was alone.