Hang Wire (15 page)

And with that she closed her eyes, her arms still up, her head still held to one side. Bob shook his head, took her hands, and stood awkwardly, wondering how exactly he could prevent what was to come. Was that even possible? It hadn’t been before. But now he was not alone in the city. That had to be some comfort, right?

Mrs Winters opened one eye and peered at Bob. She squeezed his hand. “Viennese Waltz to start, if you please.”

Bob smiled tightly.

“Anything you say, Mrs Winters.”

After they danced, Mrs Winters lit the fire.

Bob let her do it. He had a feeling. If what he suspected was true, then he knew what was about to happen wouldn’t obey the usual laws of physics. He needed to be sure, and then when he was he could go and find the other and talk to him.

Bob watched as Mrs Winters got on her knees and began fussing at the edge of the pile of dead furniture. Now she was old, frail, the strength and speed displayed during the dance and down at Aquatic Park gone. Her breathing had become heavy. Bob sat on the floor, legs pulled up to his chest, and didn’t interfere. He hadn’t for a long time. When he’d first come down, he’d wanted to become like them,
be
one of them. That was the whole point. But he wasn’t, and he couldn’t be. Bob had tried to live a normal life while everyone around him grew old and died. And then more people would come, their microscope lives infinitely short, and again, and again. Bob realized what was happening: the more he tried to be like them, the more he found himself distanced from them by time and decay and death.

So one day he stopped trying to be the same as them. He built the hut on the beach so he could live by his old home, the sea. That was years ago, and he watched the city grow around him. By the time there were authorities who might question what he was doing, he was part of the scenery. Then came the curious, a few at first, the wealthy who could get over to the park to gawp at the strange and handsome vagrant who lived in the hut. One night, a woman came alone, late, and instead of staring she knocked on the hut and they talked, and then they danced. She taught him ballroom, visiting at night for weeks, months. And then she stopped coming and later, years later, when she must have been long dead, Bob remembered her and thought of her often, and when the tourists came he decided to pass his knowledge –
her
knowledge – on. So the ballroom dancing began; a gimmick, a trick for visitors, but it made Bob happy. And, oddly enough, through the memory of his teacher and the contact with those he taught himself, he felt more connected to people than he ever had been when he was trying to fit in with their society.

Mrs Winters, apparently happy with the arrangement of kindling and rags in the room, reached for a box of kitchen matches by her side. She took one out, struck it on the third try, and lit the fire. She didn’t move from the pyre, which was dry and already cracking with flame. Bob drew his legs a little tighter to his chest. Within moments the whole room would be ablaze, and soon enough the whole house. In any other circumstances, it was arson, and suicidal.

In any other circumstances. But he knew what was about to happen. And so did she. He pointed at the fire “How do you know about all this?” he asked.

She smiled, the expression flickering at the corners, like there was something on her mind. Her eyes, glazed, told Bob what he needed to know. She was being influenced by something else. Not controlled, because the sleeping monster beneath them had no mind, couldn’t operate people like puppets. No, just…
influenced.
Caught in the field of power.

Mrs Winters ignored Bob’s question and turned back to the fire. She put her hands out to the growing blaze, like she was warming them over a Girl Scout campfire, out in the woods.

Except this fire wasn’t hot. While Bob could feel the warmth against his bare chest and face, it wasn’t hot like a furnace, more like a brilliant summer’s day. The smoke gathered against the ceiling, rolling into a turbulent gray cloud a foot thick and growing no larger.

The fire was growing quickly, consuming the old clothes, the splintered furniture, everything. The flames were tall and licked at the smoke above. But whatever heat – whatever
energy –
the fire possessed, it was being contained rather than radiated.

Or, Bob thought, not radiated but
directed.

He sighed. How long had the danger grown, under the city? How long had he been on the beach, dancing on the sand, oblivious to the approaching Armageddon? He’d been asleep, like he had been before.

But now he knew. Mrs Winters was under its spell; the fire proved it. But if she was connected to
it
, and she had come to him, then did
it
know who he was? They had both lived in the same place for long enough, one deep below, one in the city above. If Mrs Winters was connected then perhaps Bob was too.

No.
It
didn’t think. It had no awareness. Not of itself, not of Bob. Not of Mrs Winters.

Bob watched the flames as they ate through the broken shell of the sideboard. The fire spat a shower of sparks as a stack of three dining chairs finally lost structural integrity and slumped into the body of the fire. Out of the corner of his eye, Bob saw Mrs Winters smile as she tracked the path of the sparks as they swirled in a spiral toward the ceiling, caught on a hot thermal that by all rights should have set the house alight like the pile of dry firewood it was.

Bob knew what had to come next. “Mrs Winters?” He watched the light of the flames dance over her pale skin. Her cream ball gown was a rippling kaleidoscope of yellow, of orange, of red.

She flicked her eyes toward her houseguest and then back to the fire. “Patience, young man.”

“How did you know–”

The old lady clicked her tongue. “You got sand and salt in your ears or something? I said patience.”

The fire was dying now. A few black skeletal remains of the dining set and sideboard were the only items left taller than a foot. Above, the smoke had dissipated impossibly in the closed room, revealing a small circular burn directly above the fire, as if the whole thing had been a candle sitting on a table. Bob looked down, traced his eyes around the edge of the fire. Nearly perfectly circular, the blaze had charred the floorboards badly, yet hadn’t spread more than a half-inch out from its periphery.

“Almost time,” said Mrs Winters. She sat up from her haunches and pushing her legs back. Her eyes were fixed on the charred floorboards.

“Mrs Winters, why did you come to me? What do you need me for?”

The old woman turned to Bob and smiled, and then the smile broadened and her eyes closed and she began to laugh.

“I’m looking for my daughter, Bob. I’m looking for Lucy. I guess she led me to you. I knew you could help. I just knew you could. Will you help me?”

Bob frowned. Mrs Winters reached down and brushed aside the charcoal at the edge of the fire, revealing more of the burned floorboards beneath. She turned to Bob and pointed; her hands were black with ash.

“Here. We start scratching here.”

Bob looked at the floorboard, split and black. Beneath would be the foundations of the house, and below that, the ground.

He hesitated. He knew what lay under the ground. He knew the power that fire had, how it could be used.

“Oh here, let me.” Mrs Winters reached her lumpy, arthritic fingers into a gap in the board created by the warped wood. She pulled once, twice, and part of the board came away in her hand, nothing more than crumbling carbon.

If what he thought was down there, Bob wanted him to be the person who found it, not the old woman. She was drawing power from somewhere else, but Bob suspected it had limits. He had power he could control.

He grabbed the floorboard with both hands and wrenched. It came away with a bang – the wood was burned and fragile, but most of the nails were still firmly in place. Ordinarily, a crowbar would be the tool of choice here. Bob didn’t need a crowbar. He grabbed the next board, then the next, pulling them back and tossing them over his shoulder, until soon enough there was a hole in the floor, a black, carbonized hollow, the remains of the fire piled around the edge in a semicircle.

There was nothing there. Dirt and ash, lots of it. Bob dug a little, his heart kicking, but after a few black handfuls he hit something more solid. Brick and cement, and brown dirt. The foundations of the house, untouched by the fire. The energy of the blaze hadn’t penetrated far enough.

“Oh,” said Mrs Winters. Bob sat back and glanced at her. She knelt on the floor, her ball gown streaked with ash, her hands in her lap as she peered into the hole.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, oh dear…”

“Mrs Winters, I–”

There was a crack like a gunshot. Bob ducked instinctively but Mrs Winters didn’t move. Bob looked around, searching for the source of the sound. Then it happened again.

“What in the–”

The woodpile exploded into flame, like the remains of the bonfire had been doused in gasoline. Bob pushed himself backward but Mrs Winters didn’t move, her ball gown ablaze. She lifted her hands to her face and screamed, but Bob couldn’t hear her over the roar of the fire.

He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back. Then he lifted her to her feet, and spun around so his body was between the fire and her. He wrapped his arms around her, pushing himself against her body. Behind, the fire roared and crackled. Looking up, Bob saw the ceiling was on fire. The fire was hot now, like it should have been before. The energy that had been contained, that should have been directed down into the earth but hadn’t, was now suddenly released, like a nova.

Mrs Winters screamed again. Summoning the sea, the ocean, the power of gods, Bob put her dress out, and healed her burns, and ran through the front wall and into the garden as the house exploded.

— INTERLUDE —

BROWN MOUNTAIN, NORTH CAROLINA

He parked the car on the high road that wound up the side of the valley. The vehicle was large enough to block the road completely, but Joel didn’t think anyone would come by this way for, oh, maybe days.

In the valley cleft below, the river ran, heavy and fast. It washed down the valley and washed up its sides too, fed from the great thunderhead several miles to the north, where a prodigious amount of water was being dropped on the parched land. The ground was dry and cracked, and the water skittered off it like it was a hot pan.

There was going to be a flood. Joel knew this because
it
knew this and
it
had led him here. All he had to do now was wait, and watch. More would be revealed, a little at a time, a hint here, a push there, until he discovered the task he had to perform.

All he knew was that it would involve death and murder. Because there was power there, in death and in murder, power to feed the light. And the light fed Joel, and kept him moving, searching, for a decade at a time, sometimes more, sometimes less.

And the light had brought him here.

Joel sat on the running board of his car, and watched the hills on the other side of the valley, and waited for the light to shine for him.

When it was gone full dark, the lights did shine. Literally. Joel had watched the hillside all afternoon, listening to the roar of the river as it rose ever higher, breaching its banks, surging down the valley. As night fell and the stars came out, there was nothing but the roar of the water and the twinkling above. After a while, Joel could hardly tell where the valley was and where the hills ended and the sky began.

That was when he realized the twinkling stars were not in the sky at all. They were on the hills across the valley, and were small at first, then flared silently like the stars in the sky might on a cold winter’s night, the air full of ice and mystery.

The lights didn’t move, but they winked on and off, the entire ridgeway glinting like a box of treasure. Joel watched, fascinated. He followed the light, but the light was more of an idea, a suggestion, like the voices in his head that weren’t voices at all, like the little push on his shoulder, the memories that weren’t his. He stood from the car, took the Double Eagle coin from his pocket, and held it up at arm’s length, lining it up with the lights on Brown Mountain. The gold coin glinted, the light moving around it, although Joel held it perfectly still. He squinted, looking along his arm with his left eye, and it looked like the coin was just another of the winking lights, over on the hill.

The river’s roar was like an ocean. There was thunder, lightning, and the rain finally arrived. Joel stood in it a while. The coin in his hand was cold as it glinted, its chill crawling up his arm like icy death. The rain was warm: body warm, blood warm, and as it poured over his face he imagined the water lifting him up and floating him away.

Joel shook the rain off his face, pocketed the coin, and got back into the car. On Brown Mountain, the lights flared like beacon fires, and then went out.

In the driving rain, Joel drove out, down the road. Toward the river.

Toward the rail bridge.

It was dawn when Joel slowly drove the car down to the rail bridge, the vehicle rocking on its high springs as it negotiated the bumpy ground. The road had survived the flood, but was covered with stones from the river, some nearly half the size of the car itself.

The rail bridge had not been so lucky. It was single-track and had been low to the water already. On Joel’s side, the rail bridge vanished after twenty yards. On the other side of the river, it was missing entirely, along with half of the bank. Then the rails continued around the side of the hill like they always had.

The river roared below, still a churning cascade, furious and angry.

A ranger approached Joel’s car, waving his arms. Joel pulled up, the car lurching over a boulder enough for the ranger to duck out of the way.