Mask of Flies (33 page)

Nicolette lit another
red. “Maybe they don’t want to sell it, there’s no for sale
sign.”

Elias pondered her
observation in silence—thinking of the government man who was
spotted heading in this direction—and concluded Nicolette was
probably right.

Calvin looked back at
Elias. “We can walk you close. It’s about two miles east of
here.”

When the three exited
the Bronco, Elias thought he saw something move from the second story
window of the house, white movement. He kept this observation to
himself as the group passed by, high-stepping through three feet of
snow, entering a crowded pine-copse. Here the snow cover lessened—the
ground shielded by an evergreen canopy. After a mile of zigzagging
east, the group came to the chain link fence, the top adorned with
razor wire. There was a sign, shaped like a shield and bolted on the
fence post: “U.S. GOVT PROPERTY, NO TRESSPASSING”.

“Looks like this is
my stop.” Elias unsheathed his hunting knife and pressed the
serrated edge to a link along the post’s edge. After a few sawing
jerks with big stainless, the link popped open; he repeated this
downward towards the ground, and then rolled a gap to crawl through.

“Pretty determined
for a history lesson, hope you find whatever you’re after in
there,” Nicolette said.

Elias said nothing and
pulled out binoculars from his bag. The slope of the ground declined
on the other side, and the forest outstretched into a vast corridor
of frosted trees, stripped of life. At first glance he found nothing,
but then saw an eave, powdered in white camouflage, amongst an array
of twisted wood thrust from the ground like a garden of broken
fingers. The structure sat on the edge of total collapse, but no
matter—Elias sought the cellars below and the answers sealed
within, encased in a century of decay.

He ducked through the
opening and turned back towards the couple on the other side. “Not
sure how long I’ll be. I don’t expect you to wait up for me.”

“It would take you
half a day to walk back to town,” Nicolette said. “We can’t
just leave you—.”

“C’mon Nikki, we’ll
wait in the car a little while, I got some fresh KB.” Calvin looked
over to Elias. “We’ll chill out for a few hours, you can call me
on my cell if you’re running late.”

“I don’t own a
cell.”

“Well, try to hurry then.”
Calvin took Nicolette by the hand, and they headed back the way they
came.

Standing outside the
old safe house, which looked like a roughshod barn, Elias felt
resonance, a swimming electric hum from inside. A rusted crossbar
latched the door shut; he had to bash it with the butt of his knife
to loosen it. The door opened with a dry yawn, and the caged air
smelled of dirt and damp wood. Against the far wall a staircase
collapsed down from the rafters—the framework of broken steps hung
uselessly, dangling into the ground like an outstretched accordion.
Behind the wreckage stood the cast iron door that led to the cellars,
according to his great grandmother’s journal.

He rummaged through his bag for the
brass key, reaching into the front pocket; he felt intense pressure
in his sinuses. Then his ears popped; he couldn’t hear.
What
the hell.
His vision subsumed by orange light—it was
like staring at the sun. His muscles tightened, pain uncoiled itself
from within his skull until it was all he knew. The bag and key fell
from his hands, and the partially digested Breakfast Presley erupted
forth. Everything went black.

A pinhole of light
dilated from the darkness. Elias attempted to open his eyes but the
room spun. Then a rush of freezing water slapped his face. He saw a
blur of a man in front of him. It took a moment for his vision to
clear, and then he realized it was the man from the Leolyn, Mr.
Johns, sitting across from him.

Johns sat and cradled a
wood bucket in his lap; in his other hand, he had Elias’s driver’s
license, “Welcome back to the living world, Mr. Kingbird.” He
looked up from the ID. “About time this assignment got interesting
. . . I am going to ask you a few questions. If you answer them
truthfully, things will go much easier for you.”

“Fuck off,” Elias
croaked and then attempted to stand but found that his hands and legs
bound behind him, attached to his chair.

“The hard road it
is,” Mr. Johns pulled out a small device out of his trench coat. It
looked like an iPhone, but it had an odd accessory attached to it: a
heavy wire split into two suction cups at each end. Johns latched
them onto his temples and the device powered on by some unseen
method. “Let me apologize in advance—sometimes I get a bit
carried away.”

Once the device booted
up, the touch screen had the aspect of a simple equalizer, three
sliding buttons and a red pushbutton. Elias had no idea what was in
store, but knew it wasn’t good.

Johns held up the
apparatus, “This little doohickey is like an amplifier. I
concentrate on hurting you, and the device controls the output of
pain inflicted on you. I guess you could think of it as portable
shock treatment, but probably much less enjoyable. Wanna see how it
works?”

Elias squirmed
violently in the chair, “Untie me.” His fit seemed to bind him
deeper into the ropes.

“How ‘bout you save
yourself some grief and tell me what brings you here?”

Elias said nothing.

“Have it your way.”
Johns slid the top bar of the amplifier a quarter-length over. He
pressed down on the red button and fixed his black eyes on Elias.

Pressure built in
Elias’s sinuses and he saw spots of light all around him. A dull
pain began to gnaw in his head. A lesser version of the attack at the
safe house entryway.

“I’ll ask you
again: what you are doing here?”

“Piss on your little
toy.”

“No need to be mean
about it.” Johns slid all three outputs to the midrange. Hard lines
creased in his face as he concentrated.

A bright red flash
burned out Elias’s vision, his neurons set ablaze. He screamed in
agony until blood filled his mouth.

“Your brain can only
take so much of this. I’d advise to start cooperating before you
wind up a vegetable.”

“All right, just
stop. Please,” Elias managed, with mucus and blood running out his
nose. “My great grandmother, she was experimented on here, over 100
years ago. Something went wrong—they opened some kind of doorway
through her. I have a cipher and key to the cellars in my bag.”

Johns reached in
Elias’s bag, which sat by his feet, and produced both items and set
them on the table. He smiled; there was a film of blood on his teeth.
“Curious, the lower levels have been sealed since the site was
compromised— at least what I was briefed. Always been a big
mystery, what happened here.” Johns popped the suction cups off his
temples, spit a wad of blood on the ground, and dabbed his mouth with
a handkerchief.

Elias sniffled up
blood. Finally the hemorrhaging subsided. “Why watch it if it’s
sealed up?”

“My organization
believes there is some sort of contamination below, and they don’t
want anybody going near it—that’s all I know.” Johns said.
“Funny, up until a few months ago, I thought this assignment was a
farce, like everyone else, something the vets scare the new recruits
with: ‘screw up, and you’ll be sent to the haunted hole in the
ground,’. Turns out it’s not bullshit after all.”

Elias nodded. His eyes
fell to the big key in his captor’s hands.

Johns bounced it. “Tell
me, why you would risk your hide to find out what happened to a dead
relative, over one hundred years ago?”

“She’s still alive.
I’m here to find a way to put her to rest.”

Johns sat silent for a
moment. “She’s the one . . .that shut this place down?”

“Yes, I think so.
Whatever they did to her here can’t be turned off—I tried.”

“Where the hell is
she now?” Johns leaned forward in his chair and rubbed at the gray
shadow on his chin.

“In a nursing home.”
Elias stopped, thinking how best to convey the situation. “When she
returned to the reservation, after the experiments, she was broken.
She destroyed my family, got into their heads, into their dreams.
Ruined us. I’m sure she’s doing the same in her new home.

“I need the Farseer
archives—there has to be something down there I can use to stop
her.” It was now or never. “Let me go, I don’t want to cause
any trouble. I just want to put my great grandmother rest.”

“I’m not much of a
sentimentalist, but . . .” Johns stared into at the wall for a hard
minute. “You hold the flashlight, I hold the gun; try anything
funny and I’ll blast your ass away.” Johns stood and went behind
Elias, untying the ropes binding him.

When Allie awoke
Thursday morning, a week since she had reunited with Rick, he stood
in her bedroom doorway holding the boxed pregnancy test in his hand.
Rick was pale and his eyes had a yellow tint.

“It’s time.”

“I’ve been on birth
control for years.” Allie said groggily. “After all this time,
don’t know why you would think this would happen now.”

“Just call it
intuition,” Rick said, his face devoid of expression.

Allie shook her head
and took the box. “Probably a million better uses for ten bucks
than this.”

Rick tried to follow
into the bathroom, but Allie slammed the door, almost catching him in
the face. She squatted on the toilet and removed the packaging. She
almost laughed, but stopped, while reading the instructions,
particularly:
Now detects
pregnancy hormones ten days after conception
. It had been
exactly ten days since she had sex with Rick.

She took a small Dixie
cup from underneath the sink, and peed in it, filling it up about
halfway. Emptying the rest of her bladder, she waited the necessary
five minutes for the specimen to settle, and then dipped the
applicator end into the cup.

The device beeped. The
test window affirmed, PREGNANT.

Allie stormed out the
door, “Is this some sort of joke?”

Rick’s skin drooped
lifelessly on his face; he aged about ten years in the past few days.

“Why won’t you
answer me, what’s wrong with you?”

Rick wheezed, coughed,
and spat up something onto the floor. He staggered, holding onto the
bathroom door knob. He vomited. It started as an opaque fluid but
turned black with the viscosity of cranberry sauce, the kind from the
can on Thanksgiving Day. Black clusters writhed in fluttering spasms
amongst the mess, in the throes of insectile death.

“Oh my god.” Allie
began to cry. “I’m calling 911.”

When she turned for the
stairs, his hand locked on her wrist. It forcibly spun her around,
snatching her from a full thrust forward.

“Let go of me, I’m
getting help.”

He didn’t; his grip
increased, and then he spoke a singular word in a strained whisper,
“
Basement
.”

Allie tried to wriggle
her hand free but got nowhere.“Let go
now
.”

Rick yanked her closer
and got to his feet in a violent motion. His arms pinned Allie’s
down at her ribcage with overwhelming strength, like two stone
pythons constricting around her. When he pulled her to the basement
steps, Allie screamed, hoping one of the neighbors would hear. As he
carried her downward, she clawed his thighs and kicked his shins, but
he was immoveable.

Reaching the bottom, he
stooped to pick her up, and Allie seized the chance to dig her nails
into Rick’s forearm. She dug deep and twisted, penetrating the
skin. At the end of her cuticles she felt cool meat—but the wound
barely bled, leaking a vague pink fluid, like the percolation of a
rare steak. He shook her off, unfazed, wrapped her up again in his
arms.

Newly hung drywall
partitioned off the sitting room, and a security door was left
cracked open to the interior. Rick opened it with his foot while
muscling Allie through. The room was completely rearranged, no longer
a part of her home—something else had taken over. He whirled her
onto the couch that now faced an old tube television and pointed to
the ground, a signal she understood as,
sit
put
. And in all her fear of the man she once loved, she
did.

Rick lurched out of the
door and shut it. Several
click
clacks
noised from the other side, locks being snapped
into place. Allie sat there stunned, examining her wrist, swollen and
from being twisted. Never, in their five years together, had he
struck out in violence.

The basement room was
no larger than her master bedroom—and cold. Some of the ceiling
panels were missing, exposing copper piping and the floorboards
upstairs. Last fall, the kitchen sink sprung a leak and water seeped
into the basement, melting the cardboard- like ceiling tiles as if a
vat of acid poured from above. The way Rick rearranged the room made
it seem more cramped than before. The couch moved, off center of the
TV, to make room for a mattress that lay crammed in the corner,
covered with an unrecognizable down comforter, deep red with flower
imprint—something definitely not a part of Allie’s décor. She
saw a metallic glint next to the bed. When she pulled it up she
recognized it as a bed pan.

Allie ran over to the
window and opened the curtains—finding the cutout sealed by bricks.
The room closed in around her; she paced in circles, attempting to
dissipate her anxiety. Around her third loop of the room, another
oddity seized her attention: a harvest gold refrigerator was
positioned in the nook next to the washer and dryer. Inside of the
relic, she found a variety of fruit juices, bottled water, and a
stack of Tupperware containers.

She sat for a time,
absorbing the fact her basement had been turned into a prison, her
fear turned to anger. Big bright red anger. She grabbed a hardback
copy of
What to Expect While
You’re Expecting
off the end table and whipped it at the
security door. “Why are you doing this to me?” she screamed.