Hellraisers (23 page)

“Sure,” he said, wanting to add,
No, I'm nowhere near okay, please just get me out of here, I don't want to be part of this anymore.
But the truth was he was tired of running. “Sure,” he said, firmer this time. “I'm ready.”

Pan breathed out a laugh, like it was the stupidest thing she'd ever heard, then she smacked a hand down on the pad. There was a moment of hesitation before the room was full of noise, a siren blasting out the same time as a light began to flash above the door. It felt like they were inside a prison waiting for the gates to release. Why did they need a door this size? Who were they trying to keep out?

Or what were they trying to keep
in
?

The hydraulics inside the door hissed, then there was a clunk as the locks disengaged. It swung open lazily, and Marlow's last fingerhold on the rock of reality popped loose, plunging him into the abyss. The onslaught was overwhelming—a feast of rotting flesh and howling screams devoured every thought. He gripped his head, blinking away tears, feeling exhausted, like he'd been crying for hours. He felt Pan's hand on his arm, and for once her expression had softened.

“Come!” said Seth, pushing past them both. “We must begin, this is so exciting!”

Exciting
wasn't the word Marlow would have used, but there was definitely something inside him—past the churning terror, the maddening horror—that made him giddy. Part of him was still convinced that they were all trying to trick him—
They're lying to you,
his dreams had told him—but he'd seen it, seen what they could do.

You've seen the price they have to pay, too.

He closed his eyes, tried to force away the image of the girl Brianna, being torn to pieces, her soul dragged into the burning ground. It was okay. That wouldn't happen to him. They'd look after him.

Right?

Pan led the way through the door and Marlow kept close behind her, his heart pounding so hard at his ribs that it was as if it were trying to break its way loose to be closer to her. A strong, cool breeze blew past him, stinking of something that could have been smoke or rotten eggs. He put his hand to his nose and coughed out the phlegm in his throat. His inhaler was all but empty now but he was trying not to think about it. If he had an attack, he was thousands of miles away from his spares, from his nebulizer.
Deep breaths, calm and steady, just don't panic.

He stepped through the door and the panic hit him like a punch to the gut.

It was like being on a vessel in the dark heart of space. Beyond the door was nothing, just a vast, black emptiness that took his breath away—literally snatched it from his lungs. It was impossible to get a sense of how big it was because there were no landmarks, but somehow he knew it was vast, something in the immense stillness of the air. He felt as if one more step would send him spinning out into that depthless silence and he'd be smothered by it, swallowed whole.

Gasping, he reached out and grabbed hold of the first thing he could find—a cold metal handrail—clinging on as if his life depended on it. Even like this, rooted in place, he felt as if the entire world might flip upside down at any second, cast him off like somebody shaking a bug from their hand. He screwed his eyes shut, but that only made it worse, made him feel like he was already spinning into oblivion.

There was a distant crunch and he opened his eyes to see a microscopic dot of light in the distance, as tiny as a firefly seen from the top of a mountain. Another one joined it, then a third, a row of lights flickering toward them forming a line that could have been a runway. More lights buzzed to life, sparking, and Marlow's jaw dropped as the size of the space became apparent—bigger even than he'd imagined it, bigger than a dozen football fields, a hundred maybe. The hanging lights blinked on, thousands of them, until the cavern was blazing.

And what they illuminated was almost enough to make him want to shout for darkness, to pluck out his own eyeballs so as not to see.

He stood at the top of a steep, narrow metal staircase that plunged to the cavern floor. Down there was a ledge the size of a classroom, dwarfed by the rest of the chamber. There was nothing there aside from a rectangular pool filled with something that rippled like water, but which gave off no reflection.

It was what lay beyond the ledge, though, that was surely impossible. It might have been an ocean, but one made of mechanical parts. It was hard to get a sense of it from up there, but he could make out cogs and levers and gears and springs and spindles, hundreds of thousands of them—no,
millions
of them. It looked like a dumping ground for old clocks, for clockwork toys and mechanical oddities. The scale of it made him feel like an insect, something minuscule and insignificant, something worthy only of being crushed. And the thought seemed to make the Engine grow larger still, made it appear to rise up, to tower over him even though it lay below. It was as if a vast wave was approaching from the far side of the cavern, roaring and blasting and thundering toward him.

Then he blinked, and the ocean of parts was once again still, like it hadn't moved in a thousand years.

He suddenly wanted no part of this thing, this vast and ancient device. What had Pan told him? That it had been constructed by the Devil? That was impossible, of course, there was no such thing,
right
? But here now, seeing this abomination sitting fat beneath him, a boundless leviathan of razor-sharp parts, he could easily believe it. It was something that had no right to exist, and he tried to turn, to run back through the door, but found that he couldn't.

Don't you want to know?
said something in his head, a warm, sour breath like somebody had clamped their cold lips to his and whispered right into his mouth. He put his hands to his ears, but still the words came.
I can give you anything you want, anything you desire. All you have to do is ask.

Another image flooded his battered brain, him running down a track. He couldn't quite figure out why it felt so good until he realized that he wasn't wheezing, wasn't fighting for every breath. It was so vivid that when it dissolved he almost mourned it, until another one took its place—Pan, her hands on his chest, her lips parted as she moved in for the kiss.

All you have to do is ask.

Somewhere out in the vast silence of the machine there was an insect's
click
, a soft mechanical chirrup. Marlow's head was suddenly empty again, his cheeks burning with the sheer power of the fantasy. There was a blissful moment of silence before another one took its place, filling his head like he had a home cinema between his ears. And this one almost made him cry out with joy.

He and Danny, walking up the steps to their house, everything drenched in sunlight as they laughed their way through the front door. His mom, hugging him first and then his brother—smelling of dewberry the way she used to, not a single empty bottle in the sink. Danny turned to him, older now, lines on his face, a patch of gray hair by his left ear, but those eyes so full of life, so full of kindness.

All you have to do is ask,
his brother said, ruffling his hair.

And then Marlow was dropped back into the cavern, blinking the sun from his eyes like he'd actually been there. The scent of his mom's moisturizer was still in his nose, his scalp tingling from Danny's touch. Pan had reached the bottom of the stairs and she looked up at him curiously.

“What is it showing you?” she asked. “Money?”

“No,” he said, clattering down the steps and standing beside her while Seth shuffled laboriously after them. “No, I saw my brother, Danny. He … he died.”

Pan nodded knowingly, looking out into the Engine. From down here Marlow got a closer look, seeing that it was even more intricate than he'd imagined. It stretched to the left and right for as far as he could see, a shoreline of needles and prongs, each one perfectly still. Huge cables stretched into the Engine, and unlike the rest of it, these looked brand-new.

“Don't,” Pan said. “The Engine tries to control your choices, tries to make you wish for something impossible. If you deal to bring back the dead…”

He thought he saw her shudder and she ran a hand over her stomach as if to settle it.

“I thought the machine could grant any wish,” Marlow said, his voice feeble, like the vast silence out there was pushing it back.

“Oh, it can,” Pan said. “You can wish your brother back and he'll be back. But it won't be him. He'll look the part, maybe even speak the part, but he'll be rotten inside. It's a ghost of a memory wrapped in someone else's dead flesh. We call them wormbags, and they're nasty. Not to mention when you break somebody out of death like that, sooner or later all hell comes after you to get them back.”

“And it will cost you everything,” Seth shouted down. “Because that's one contract we cannot break. The Engine knows it, too, the damned thing.”

Marlow shuddered, but the image of Danny was still etched in his head, as real as anything else in his life.

“Remember, the Engine isn't your friend,” Pan said. “It lies, it deceives, that's its purpose. That's what it's been doing for centuries, tricking people into making a deal, signing a contract.”

“In return for their soul,” Marlow said. “It can't be real, though. How the hell does it take your soul?”

Pan shrugged.

“We don't know,” she said. “Nobody does. Not even Gramps there.”

“Yes,” said Seth as he reached the ledge. “There are things even I do not know.” He stopped, panting for breath. “But Pan is right, you must be very careful what you deal for.”

“Listen,” said Marlow. “I don't think I should do this, I don't think—”

“It will be fine,” said Pan. “Everyone bricks it the first time. You just need to focus, keep your mind clear.”

“Yes, know exactly what it is that you want. It is the man who wants everything, and he who does not know what he wants, who lands himself in trouble.”

Marlow shook his head, about to give his excuses and leave, but there were suddenly voices from the top of the stairs. A face appeared through the door, the British guy Hanson, still wearing his sunglasses. Next to him were the two guys from the elevator, Hope and Bullwinkle.

“Looks like Herc's Jerks have beaten us to it,” said Hanson, galloping down the stairs. “Past your bedtime isn't it, Amelia?”

“Screw you,” Pan said. He just laughed.

“One day maybe I'll let you,” he said, turning to Marlow. In the harsh light of the cavern he looked older than he had before, lines etched into his face. But without seeing his eyes it was impossible to know for sure. “Gonna throw the new dog in the pool? See if it drowns?”

“Call someone a dog too many times,” Marlow said, speaking slowly so he wouldn't trip over his tongue, “and they might just start to bite.”

Hanson considered this for a moment, then leaned forward. The lenses of his shades were mirrored and Marlow could see his own face there, greasy and drawn, about as intimidating as a wet blanket. For a second he thought he could almost see Hanson's eyes, too. But he must have been mistaken because they looked like two empty pits in his head.

“Then they get put to sleep,” he said softly.

“What do you want, Hanson?” Pan asked with obvious disgust. “If you're not here to make a contract, then just piss off.”

“No,” he replied. “I think I'll stay. It could be fun.”

“Nothing better than watching a new fish cock up his first contract,” said Bullwinkle.

“That look in their eyes when they realize they've made an unbreakable deal,” said Hope.

Marlow felt sick, felt the asthma start to fill his lungs with gunk the way it always did when he was angry. He coughed, trying not to make it too obvious.

“Just ignore them,” Pan said, walking to the edge of the pool. “They're not worth it.”

Marlow glared at Hanson for a fraction of a second before turning away. He walked swiftly over to Pan, speaking low. “But maybe they're right. I mean, I have no idea what I'm doing.”

He looked at the pool of water, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. It was filled with a liquid that didn't look real. It was as black as tar, and yet ripples danced lightly across its surface—like there was something in there. Even though there were lights hanging right above it, there was no sign of their glow in the pool, and when Marlow leaned over he saw no reflection there. Small silver flecks floated in it, like stars. The movement of the liquid was mesmerizing, sickeningly so, reminding him of liquid mercury. Seth was busying himself with a control panel on the other side of the pool, something that looked like it belonged inside NASA.

“Seriously, Pan,” Marlow whispered, “can't we do this another time? Tomorrow?”

His voice must have carried because somebody behind him made a clucking-chicken sound. He blew a wheezing breath out of his mouth, wanting to reach for his inhaler but refusing to look weak. He wasn't even sure if there was anything left in it. Pan looked at him, raising an eyebrow.

“You gonna let these guys get to you?” she asked. “It's your choice, Marlow. I'm not going to force you. Just remember that most people would give anything to be here right now, to have this chance.”

“What are you going to wish for?” Seth interrupted. “To be able to breathe without impediment? I would recommend it, we know how to deal with that contract. We had a young woman with terrible asthma many years ago.”

Had.

“And something else, perhaps? It seems a bit of a waste to limit yourself to that. Pan, any suggestions?”

“How about making him smell less disgusting,” said Hope.

“Give him strength and speed,” said Pan. “Start with the basics, have some fun.”