Spirits in the Wires

  “We might still need him,” I say.

  “What for? He’s the real cause of all our problems.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t think he planned any of this. He just took advantage of how the virus screwed everything up.”

  “You still haven’t said what possible use we could have for him.”

  Before I can frame a reply, never mind actually voice it, we hear a distant rumble. Not like thunder—it’s more like the sound ice makes on a lake when it’s cracking. Jackson’s head whips around, his anxiety immediately flaring.

  “What was that?” he asks.

  I don’t know why everyone thinks I’ve got the answers to anything.

  “Beats me,” I tell him.

  I go over to where Saskia is and help her stand. I put her arm over my shoulder, my own around her waist, doing what I can to support her. She starts out kind of like dead weight, but as I walk her back to where Jackson’s sitting, she quickly starts to improve.

  “God, I’m thirsty,” she says.

  “There’s a whole lake over there,” Jackson says. I detect more than a touch of hysteria in his voice.

  “I’m not drinking from that.”

  That rumbling crack comes again. It sounds closer, though it’s hard to tell for sure. There are too many echoes. I leave Saskia half-sitting, half-leaning on the arm of the chair and turn my attention to the giant.

  “We have to do something about the leviathan,” I say.

  They both look at me, puzzled.

  “Its being here is all wrong,” I tell them.

  I can hear the voice of one of the St. Cloud brothers in my memory,answering my innocent question about what would happen if a leviathan were to appear in the physical world. They went on about cosmic balances and ruptures in space/time continuums which I didn’t understand then any more than I’m able to make sense of now. I just remember that it would be a very, very bad thing.

  “Our being here is all wrong, too,” Jackson says.

  He has a point. But I don’t see that we can leave—even if we figure out how. We have to deal with the leviathan’s presence. We have to make sure that Librarius doesn’t get into some new kind of deviltry. We have to round up all the other people that were pulled into this site and try to find a way to get everybody home.

  The rumble comes again, closer still. The echoes bounce off the ceiling, invisible in the dark somewhere above us. But this time it’s followed by a weird gurgling sound. As one, we turn towards the lake and see the fissure that’s appeared in the stone floor right at the shore. Water’s pouring into it.

  I guess the first thing we have to do, I realize, reassigning priorities, is figure out a way to stop this place from falling apart around us.

  Christy

  Aaran just keeps surprising me. He’s acting so out-of-character, so not the cynical, self-serving Aaran Goldstein I’ve always known, that I can’t help but wonder where Suzi’s managed to trade him in for this new, improved version. It’s either that or she’s got to be a seriously effective role model herself.

  Take the business with the little fairy man he stepped off the path to rescue. Or how right now he’s offering to test whatever lies on the other side of the wall of mist before the rest of us go through. The old Aaran wouldn’t have considered either of those courses of action as an option. He wouldn’t have even stopped to consider them, never mind actually following through on one of them, unless there was some kind of profit in it for him.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Bojo says in response to Aaran’s offer. He turns away from where he’s been studying the way the path continues on out of the mist to face us. “The last thing we want to do at this point is to split up.”

  “So everybody should take the risk?” Aaran says.

  The tinker sighs. “Think about it. We don’t know what’s on the other side of the mist. More importantly, we don’t know if, once we go across, we can even come back. Or if we can come back, if it’ll be to this same place. So, let’s say it is safe on the other side of the mist. What help is that to us if you can’t come back to tell us?”

  “But we don’t know that.”

  “We don’t know that it’s unsafe, either,” Bojo says. “That’s why I’ve been saying that the decision we need to make is: Do we look for a way around, or do we continue on the path through the mist? Whichever way we choose, we should all go. And my vote is to stay on the path.”

  No one says anything for a long moment. The forest on the other side of the wall of mist draws our gazes. My memory holds the image of the pebbles Bojo threw earlier, the ones that never landed where the path continued on the other side of the mist. I’m not eager to find out where the pebbles went, but if that’s the way to the Wordwood, then that’s the way I have to go. I don’t have a choice. Saskia’s in there. And I suppose if I have to go, I’d just as soon have company. Especially Bojo’s since he’s the only one of us with any real experience in the otherworld.

  “I’m with you,” I tell him. “My vote also goes to staying together and following the path.”

  “Count me in, too,” Aaran says.

  “And me,” Suzi says, then she frowns at Aaran and punches him on the arm. “I can’t believe you thought you could leave me behind.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “What about you Raul?” Bojo asks.

  “I’ve come this far,” Raul says. “I’m not backing out now.”

  His gaze finds mine for a moment and I know just what he’s thinking. His own lover’s lost somewhere in there, just as mine is.

  We turn back to the mist. It’s so strange seeing that deep forest on the other side, knowing that when we step through, our feet will land in some elsewhere.

  “Everybody hold hands,” Bojo says. “Just for while we’re going through. To make sure we all end up in the same place.”

  I have this sudden incongruous thought. I remember the galleys I was correcting when all of this started, how I never called Alan to tell him I’m going to be late turning them in.

  “Christy?” Suzi says.

  Her voice makes me blink and I’m back. I put out my hands. Suzi takes my left, Raul my right. We’re strung out like beads on a necklace.

  “Hold on tight,” Bojo says.

  Suzi’s fingers press harder against my own as one-by-one we follow the tinker through the mist. I find myself doing the same to her and Raul.

  Stepping through that wall of smoky grey air is one of the weirdest things I’ve ever felt. And following the others as they disappear before my eyes might be one of the bravest. I can’t begin to describe the panic that tightens in my chest as I watch them go. Bojo, Aaran, Suzi. Then there’s just an arm, free-floating in the air, gripping me hard, and it’s my turn.

  I don’t want to go and it’s all I can do to not dig in my heels, to pull free of Suzi’s grip. But I force myself, wincing as Suzi’s fingers are gone and now it’s my own hand that’s disappearing.

  The mist doesn’t so much touch my skin as go through my skin. It’s like for one moment there I’m myself, but I’m also the mist, all our molecules mingling. I hear a sound in my head like faint radio static. The temperature seems to drop ten degrees. I expected another bout of nausea, like when we first crossed into the spiritworld, but it’s not like that at all. Instead I feel this intense, penetrating loneliness. An awareness that no matter how many people I surround myself with, in the end I’m alone in the universe.

  Then I’m through, Raul right behind me.

  For a long moment we all stand there on the other side, still holding hands, trying to see through the gloom. I feel like I have to learn how to breathe again, but at least that awful sense of isolation has eased. The air tastes stale, like in an old basement. There’s just a hint of damp.

  “Now that’s something I don’t want to make a habit of doing,” Bojo says.

  His voice breaks the spell that holds us. We let go of each other’s hands and look around.
br />   The light’s poor, but once our eyes adjust, it’s not as dark as it seemed when we first stepped through.

  “Do you know where we are?” Raul asks Bojo.

  The tinker shakes his head. “Somewhere underground.”

  As soon as he says it, I begin to really register our surroundings. We appear to be in a broad corridor or tunnel. The walls are brick, heavily patched with cement. The ground is a mess of rubble and junk: stones, pieces of brick, newspapers, and refuse of all kinds. I pick up the closest paper and squint at the words. Either the light’s worse than it seems, or it’s written in some language I’ve never seen before.

  I look up, trying to see where the light’s coming from. High up on the walls is a phosphorus glow. I can’t see the roof. If the air wasn’t so still and stale, I’d think there was only sky.

  “Look at this,” Suzi says.

  She’s moved a little further ahead and is pointing to what looks like a shelter of some kind: a crude lean-to, the supports made of obviously salvaged wood and covered with tarpaper and cardboard. Beyond it there’s a whole village of lean-tos and cardboard shacks, running the length of either wall for as far as I can see.

  “People live here?” Raul says.

  “More like lived,” Bojo says. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here for a while.”

  “But it’s like a sewer.”

  “More like an old subway line,” I say. I toe at the refuse underfoot. “We could probably find rails if we dug under this stuff. Or maybe it’s like Old Town, back in Newford.”

  “Except nobody actually lives in Old Town,” Aaran says. “Not since the quake dropped all those buildings underground.”

  “Are you so sure?” I ask.

  Aaran gives me a weary look and shakes his head. “Come on,” he says. “I suppose you’re going to tell us about those goblins—what did you call them?”

  “Skookins.”

  “Right. Are you trying to tell me they really live down there in Old Town?”

  “That’s what I’ve been told.”

  “And you’ve actually seen them?”

  “No,” I say. “But I’ve seen homeless people. It’s safer than the Tombs because you don’t get as many of the rougher elements down there—you know, the junkies and the bikers.”

  “What are you even doing down there?”

  I give him a smile. “Looking for goblins.”

  Aaran shakes his head again.

  “So what do we do now?” Raul asks. “Follow the tunnel?”

  Bojo nods. “The path’s still here. I can’t see it, but I can feel it under all this crap.”

  I know we all have questions, starting with how can this tunnel even be here when all we could see through the mist was an old growth forest, but when Bojo sets off, we fall in behind him, just like we did when we first crossed over into the otherworld. This time Suzi and Aaran walk together behind the tinker, leaving Raul and me to take up the rear.

  “You think we’re actually going to find them?” Raul says after awhile. “All those people that disappeared.”

  He means, are we going to find his Benny.

  I give him a quick glance. “We have to,” I tell him. “Otherwise I’d go crazy.”

  “I feel like I already am crazy,” he says, waving a hand to take in our surroundings. “All of this … all these different worlds …”

  “Yeah, it’s not like I thought it would be either.”

  “I don’t know how Bojo makes sense of it all.”

  “It’s what you get used to, I suppose,” I say.

  “Are you scared?”

  I nod. “Though not as much for myself as I am for Saskia. That we won’t find her. Or that we will, but…”

  I can’t finish the thought.

  “I’ve been scared my whole life,” Raul tells me. “Scared of pretty much everything, from the world at large to the kids beating on me back when I was growing up. I was a skinny little runt, always more interested in drawing than I was in sports or girls or hanging with the guys.” He gives me a humourless smile. “They were calling me fag and fairy long before I actually realized my sexual orientation.”

  I think of Tommy Brown, this kid in junior high, and the chant of “Fairy, fairy, fucking fairy” that would follow him down the gauntlet of halls at the school. I didn’t join in, but I didn’t try to stop it. Nobody did. Of course I was having my own problems in those days, and not just with bullies, unless you can include your parents in that designation. They didn’t treat Geordie or me any better than the kids in school did.

  “I know what you mean,” I say. “I didn’t get to enjoy the golden days of boyhood either, except when I was by myself.”

  “Yeah, it’s always easiest to be by yourself,” Raul says. “But it’s so damn lonely growing up like that, being on the outside looking in. Back then I’d have given anything to be able to get an erection from looking at a girl.”

  I have to smile. “I didn’t have any trouble with that—not unless you count actually getting a girl to talk to you as part of the equation.”

  “You think that was tough?” Raul says, smiling with me. “How about having daydreams about the football team? Talk about your unrequited loves. One wrong word or look and they’d really have gone to town on me.”

  “I got beat up by a quarterback,” I say, “but it was only because I was trying to make time with his cheerleader girlfriend.”

  “Which is acceptable. The law gets laid down, but you’re okay because why wouldn’t you want to score with his girlfriend?”

  “Sure. Those guys loved having the girls everybody else wanted.”

  Raul nods. “Imagine what the quarterback would have done if it had been him you were trying to chat up.”

  “Your not doing it wasn’t fear,” I say. “It was just common sense. In those times …”

  “I doubt it’s all that different now.”

  “Probably not, more’s the pity.

  Raul shrugs. “But the funny thing is I’m not so scared now. I think it’s because for the first time in our relationship, Benny needs me. For once our roles are reversed and he’s the one that’s counting on me to make everything right. I just hope I don’t screw it up.”

  “We’re doing everything we can.”

  “I know. But it still doesn’t seem even close to enough.”

  I understand exactly how he’s feeling.

  The tunnel saps at our spirits. It’s hard to see all these lean-tos and makeshift shelters, knowing that people have actually had to live like this. In some places they still do, under even worse conditions. Bojo can’t explain where the tunnel exists—somewhere in between the worlds in a kind of borderland—but he says it echoes a real place in the World As It Is.

  It’s probably another half-hour of trudging through the litter and rubble before we see a different light, far ahead of us in the gloom. As we get closer, we hear a sound that it takes me a moment to recognize. Then I realize what it is. Rain.

  Another few minutes brings us to the end of the tunnel and for a long moment we stand there under our shelter, looking out at a rain-drenched forest. I don’t know if it’s the same one we saw through the mist, or another one. It might just be a different view of that first one we saw. The rain falls heavy and steadily, the kind that would soak you to the skin in minutes if you were caught out in it. The leaves of the trees are all slick and dripping. The air smells so good—earthy and wet. The path that we haven’t been able to see emerges from the rubble and junk underfoot and heads off under the trees.

  “Is that the Wordwood?” Suzi asks.

  Bojo nods. “Or at least it has the feel of that spirit. Let’s rest up here for a few minutes. Maybe if we’re lucky the rain will ease off.”

  I’m not happy about the idea—I can hear that clock ticking in my head—but everyone else seems in favor of a break, so I don’t say anything. But once we do stop, I find my own body betraying me—all those days of sitting at my computer haven’t prepa
red me for the long hours of hiking that we’ve already put in today. My calves and thigh muscles are aching. The small of my back and my shoulders breathe their own sigh of relief when I remove my backpack and set it on the ground.

  We find places to sit in the mouth of the tunnel and break out granola bars and trail mix, washing them down with bottled water. There’s not much conversation. Mostly, we watch the rain come down, listening to the steady drum as it hits the ground. I look into those dark, wet woods and think of how Jilly’s always talking about the journeys the characters make in fairy tales, how their passage through the dark woods is an analogy for the struggle one has to go through to reach one’s goal.

  Right about now, I think I’d rather have an analogical wood than the real one waiting for us in the rain.

  After a moment I pull out my cigarettes and shake one out. Light it. I see there are only a couple left in the pack and who knows where the nearest corner store is? Looks like I’ll be giving up the habit again.

  “How do you think Robert’s doing?” Raul asked after a time.

  Bojo shrugged. “Robert seemed to me to be the kind of man who can take care of himself.”

  “But those guys … the hellhounds …”

  Bojo gives a slow nod. “Yes, I know. I’ve seen their kind many times before. Town sheriffs and tavern bullies. And those three were not only large and strong. They had real power to back up their threat.” He hesitates for a moment, then looks around at us. “I have something to confess,” he says after a moment.

  I get a sinking feeling hearing those five words and my imagination goes into overtime, thinking of all the terrible things the tinker might be about to tell us.

  “I remember the old stories from when I was young,” Bojo says, and then he smiles as though we’ve caught him out at something. “Oh, I don’t mean from books. I’m not much for reading now and was even less so then. But when I was a boy, there were always stories being told around the campfires and in the wagons, and like any boy, I was eager to hear them.

  “They weren’t about the heroes and kings like you might expect. They were about ordinary folk, usually tinkers like ourselves. What I liked the most were the stories about my namesake, Borrible Jones. Among the tribes, there are whole story cycles about him.”