Mask of Flies (34 page)

Something stirred on
the other side, she felt it from within, so faint it was scarcely
detectable: a low hum and bizarre vibrations. “I know you’re out
there.”

After an hour a slot on the door
opened, a folded sheet of paper popped through and floated to the
floor. The aperture snapped shut. She grabbed it off the ground—a
letter

Allie,

You need to remain calm, for the health of the child growing
within you; her wellbeing is of the utmost importance, greater than
everything. I understand that these accommodations lack in the
freedoms you are accustom to, be mindful it is to your benefit. Your
mind must be teeming with questions; I will do my best to explain the
situation at hand.

First off, I am not Rick. I know you have been puzzled by your
boyfriend’s behavior. Consider me a visitor borrowing his body for
divine work, making sure your child makes it into this world. Rest
assured, Rick is in a safe place for the time being, however, his
return is something out of my control. At any rate, his living body
seems to be rejecting my presence, hence the mess from earlier, and I
am unsure how long I will remain.

Regarding your confinement, again I apologize, but I found no
other way to keep you protected. Certain interests will be incensed,
to say the least , when they find out about your child of natural
conception, for she is the blade of light in the gathering darkness.

I will deliver supplies on an as needed basis

~A.K.

Allie didn’t know
what to think; the writing, formal and strange, was not like Rick.
Perhaps he truly thought he was someone else, this angel sent forth
to protect Allie’s fertilized egg—the female second coming of the
messiah, at least that’s what this A.K. proclaimed. Maybe the
alternate personality was brought about by the trauma of almost being
murdered, some sort of manifestation of PTSD. She came to the
conclusion that she had to find a way out.

“One-two-three,
Charlie’s in the tree,” a voice startled Rick from slumber.

He sat up in The Jane’s
unnatural body, covered in sweat from fitful sleep. Turning to search
for the source, he hoped to see Marco bedside, but there was no one
in the room. Rick hadn’t seen his friend in days; now it was a big
blonde woman, either new hire or temp, that took his charge. She
changed his clothes, flogged his nose with the feeding tube, and
scrubbed the Jane’s scaly skin clean. Her mind dense as the rest of
her; when Rick had tried to communicate, as he had been able to with
Marco and Tony, but the block of a woman didn’t even blink.

He looked down at
scaled hands and thought about Allie, hoped she was okay and not spun
up in this mess. But the Jane was on the other side
with
Allie. After a moment, Rick mustered all his strength and commanded
atrophied legs to swing out of the bed. When he stood, the room
wavered. Fighting for balance, he opened the door to the hallway.
Gravity pulled at him, every fiber the foreign body wanted to quit on
him.

A nurse’s supply cart
was parked two doors down.
The
supply closet
. The entrance was cracked open, and he slid
through, no one the wiser. Inside the temperature dropped, cold
pierced through Rick’s pajamas— he needed winter gear.

The term “supply
closet” was a vast understatement of the storage area that branched
an arm into each hallway; Rick came to the vacant break room of the
orderlies and caretakers, furnished with a couch purchased from the
Salvation Army and an ancient tube television that sat precariously
on an undersized nightstand—it only got the basic channels, but it
was better than nothing. Along the wall were a full coat rack and a
stack of lockers. He hobbled over and grabbed a parka with a
fur-rimmed hood.

“Charlie—I’m a
comin’ for ya’.” It was that voice again.

Rick turned—no one.

“You think it’s
your show? Think we’ll lay down while you trample over us, you’re
crazy.”

The sound of a woman
crying; she was close by, and another voice comforted her, a man with
an accent.

Rick turned
again—nothing. “What do you want?”

“We want to go home,”
the crying woman said.

“It’s that damned
house?” It was the man with the accent, Hawaiian or Caribbean.

“Mr. Villanueva, I
don’t know what is happening, but I assure you we will find a way
out of this,” said another woman’s breathy voice.

“Who are you people,
come out where I can see you?” Rick asked. He felt the air shift
over his shoulder. He turned, not to a person, but a gapping mouth of
a tunnel set in the far wall that was comprised of brick a moment
ago. A red flicker lit the passage as he went to the entrance and
felt the jagged cutout of the passageway, deciding if he should go
through. When a glowing red fly buzzed his head, he knew he had to.

The path sloped
downward in darkness through a cavernous space until it opened to a
stony isle, at the base of the tallest tree he’d ever seen—was it
the same passage that had first led him into the woman’s body?
Crimson light danced above, casting specters on the murky water, and
thousands of flies swarmed the branches above, like a smoldering
fire.

Four figures
congregated on the stony patch underneath the tree. Three huddled
together, forming a clumped shadow, while a man with a matted hairdo
stood away with his arms wrapped behind him. Approaching them, Rick
thought that something looked odd. They looked depleted, like
discarded sketch work.

“Who are you?” Rick
asked.

“There are no
answers, Charlie, just questions.” the sallow man continued to hold
his hands behind his back. “But we do know a bit about you.” Then
he swung an object out from behind.

White light seized
Rick’s vision; it wasn’t until his face slapped gravel that his
eyes began to work again. On the ground he touched the back of his
head, no blood.
What is this?
It was his own hand, not the Jane’s. Sitting up stunned, he saw his
attacker run past, the matted pony tail swaying like a mangy
companion, through the mouth of the tree. Rick staggered to his feet
after him.

Now the tunnel wormed
through the darkness, twisting around corners of dark stone, the
passage somehow more narrow than before. Finally, a sliver of light
peeked from around a bend, and Rick made out the rabbit ears on the
old TV. A figure moved past, towards Summer Hall’s entrance.

When he made it to the
end, something swept him up; completely disoriented, he went directly
from the edge of the cavern, looking out into the break room, to
standing in the middle of Summer Hall. He examined his hand, scaled
and pruned, the Jane’s. But then something snapped to life inside.

Damn
it, Charlie.
Legs pushed forward.

Jarred, Rick fought to
stop the impulse. The Jane’s body locked up, and her leg buckled,
and then it stumbled into the parked supply cart, spilling cleaning
supplies and linens onto the floor.

The big blonde
caretaker scrambled out of the room, like a linebacker, and snatched
Angeni’s body by the waist and began walking towards the room
numbered 137. “Look who got out, a wild one aren’t cha’.”

The woman set the body
down in the chair by the window and exited, a lock clicked into place
from the outside.

“Looks like we aren’t goin’
anywhere for a while, huh?” the vagrant said from some unknown
cache in the woman’s mind.

Something vibrated
from the inner pocket of the parka Rick had stolen. Reaching in he
pulled out a bedazzled cell phone, the stones formed a set of big red
lips on the back. He was tempted to kiss them until he caught his
reflection in the touch screen.

He dialed the home
phone—it rang four times. On the fifth a voice answered.

“Yes.”

“Put Allison on.”
Rick spoke with The Jane’s mind, unsure if it would work over a
cell phone.

“She doesn’t want
to talk to you, Rick. I am taking fine care of her,”

Rick realized it was
his own voice coming back to him, his own vocal cords manipulated by
a skilled puppeteer. “If you do anything to her, I swear I will
fucking kill you.”

“That could be quite
a problem: In order to kill me, you have to kill yourself.” The
perpetrator laughed. It sounded alien. “But don’t worry, she’s
doing great. Quite beautiful actually, I think it’s safe to say she
is much too good for you. Oh, before I forget to mention it, she is
carrying our child.

Elias led the
way—holding his headlamp down into the inner depths of the Farseer
compound. Through the musty hallway, Johns muttered directions from
behind, stopping occasionally to light scattered lanterns. Most of
the oil had solidified into a murk of charred amber, but he got lucky
on several: the wick flickering to life in a needle of black smoke.
The first level of the old safe house was mostly plaster walls that
opened up to bunk rooms. The skeletal bed frames still intact, but
the bedding had been stripped.

Deeper down, the
hallway led to a room with a long table centered.
The
meeting place.
Elias recalled the last bit of his Great
Grandmother’s journal when they forced her here to the chambers
below. As Johns lit up a stump of a candle, he saw a door—an
Ouroboros etched into the wood.

Elias went to it and
traced the snake with his finger, “You never been down here
before?”

“Not past the top
floor.” John’s pointed at the door with a heavy revolver. “All
these damned locks and no keys...” With his free hand he pulled
Angeni’s skeleton key from his pocket and tossed it to Elias. “Open
it.”

He hesitated, wondering
if the government man really wanted to see what was below or sought a
better place to dump a fresh body. Elias wagered the latter.

“Go on.”

The metal click echoed
through the corridor; the door swung opened to wood steps that
descended into darkness. Walking down they were greeted with caged
air, it smelled like wet earth. At the bottom Johns found another
lamp in an alcove, its glow exposed an abandoned mess area—long
benches pulled up to a grand table, enough space to sit a hundred
people.

The ground felt strange
under Elias’s boots, much softer than above. Shining his light
down, he saw the ground writhe in a knot. Thin worms entangled in
clumps all around. “What the hell.”

“Earthworms, or of
the sort, this shithole must be a palace to them.” Johns poked at a
mass of them with the tip of his boot. “Harmless enough, keep
moving.”

Past the mess area,
they came to a waiting room with a secretary’s desk—covered in
cobwebs. A door to the rear led to an empty office. The only decor in
the room was picture of an orchard hanging on the wall. Specks of
dust orbited in Elias’s light.
Morrow’s
office?

Johns disappeared and
the sound of a door opened somewhere. “A cedar closet back here?”

Elias found him
squatting inside a dark cutout, holding his lit Zippo up to paneling,
running the flame’s light across quarter sized holes.

“Those worms tore
through the cedar.” Johns knocked on the wall; hollow. He
unsheathed the knife commandeered from Elias and began to pry at the
corners. “Gonna stand there mouth-breathin’, or you gonna’
help?”

Elias dug his fingers
underneath the edge and yanked. The wood cracked and broke away.
Behind the façade a walkway opened to another descending staircase
that spiraled downward. Shining his headlamp, he couldn’t make the
bottom.

They twisted downward
and attempted to avoid the worms. At the bottom they covered the
floor, ashen grey clots that smashed into a putty when stepped upon.

Down the corridor,
Elias found a heavy door with a rusted placard attached: “Facility
Director- Thomas Morrow”. It was locked. Elias tried the master key
but it didn’t fit. He tried to force it with his shoulder. It
didn’t budge.

“Outta the way,”
Johns pushed him aside.

A whip crack surged
from behind. It took a second before Elias realized what happened.
His ears rang and his eyes watered. He dug a finger in his ear canal
to ease the discomfort, to no avail.

“Looks like I had
this key all along.” Johns holstered his revolver and kicked open
the door, now splintered between the jam and handle. “After you.”

Inside, an L–shaped
desk rode the walls; one end had three neat stacks of aged paper, the
other completely disheveled. A glass decanter sat on the desk; the
inside coated with a brown film.

The search of the desk
drawers, cabinets, and overhead cubbyhole proved fruitless in
producing the minutes. Elias began to rifle through a small
bookshelf: government contracting law, Introduction to
Parapsychology, no minutes. Johns stood in the corner, admiring
various species of moths that Morrow had pinned up in frames on the
wall. He leaned on a podium that bowed under his weight, chin resting
on palm, elbow propped on a thick book.

“I had a bug
collection as a kid, but nothing like this—”

Elias slid the book out
from underneath him, “This looks like something.”

“Whoa there.”

“Could be the minutes
I was telling you about. The reason I came here.” Elias faced the
book’s cover towards him, showing him the snake threaded in crimson
stitching and then opened it.

“What kind of chicken
scratch is that?”

“It’s written in
cipher. We’ll have to go back up to make sense of it—the codex in
my bag.”

“We ain’t leavin’
yet. I’m not done looking around and that means that you’re not
either.”

“I’m not in a
position to argue, but this book may answer all your questions.”

The government man’s
thin lips cracked a smile. “Sorry, I’m a hands on kinda guy.”