Résumé With Monsters (21 page)

Whup
. They rolled on the floor. Philip had his hand on her mouth. PLEASE, AMELIA, PLEASE. JUST BE QUIET JUST LISTEN TO ME. YOUR MIND IS PRESENTLY IN THRALL TO POWERFUL ENTITIES TRANSMITTING ACROSS SIX HUNDRED MILLION YEARS. YOU ARE NOT—

She bit his hand.

OW!

Philip watched himself struggle with his lover, watched with some of the same sadness that hovered over their lovemaking.

Perhaps trickery would have worked better than force. But he had never been able to fool Amelia.

Amelia, I'm sorry.

He watched himself bind and gag her.

Don't hurt her.

What else could he have done? There was no time to spare, and although the Old Ones might wait to attempt a second crossing over, it was not something Philip could count on. He had to act. Reasoning with Amelia was out of the question. She had been subverted by Quality Management. Her wrist bore the tattoo, the writhing star that was the mark of the Old Ones. No doubt she had felt the eldritch light of photocopiers flood her mind and the damnable ecstasy of being faxed across the limitless reaches of black space.

The next day, before curfew, he had gone to the fifteenth floor, where Amelia slept at night, and he had jammed the lock on the fire exit door.

That night he had stolen to her room. And when she had opened the door, a protest on her lips, he had entered and wrestled her to the floor. Now as she struck at his face and chest, he felt no pain, just the jostling of vision, and he thought he probably hadn't felt pain then, either, being so full of larger fears.

He had prepared during the day. He placed his trussed lover in the mail cart he had commandeered, tossed the tarp over her, and said, I COULDN'T LEAVE WITHOUT YOU, AMELIA. LATER. LATER YOU'LL UNDERSTAND.

Don't bet on it.

He pushed the cart into the hall. Since last night, the building itself had altered. Did others see this? Perhaps they saw it with greater clarity, with eyes attuned to the Old Ones, or perhaps this sense of ruin and decay (strange bulges in the walls, dark burn marks on the carpets, damp, gray fungus on the ceilings) seemed only familiar, not new at all but some comfortable, amphibious memory unworthy of remark.

He would never get used to being a helpless observer in a younger self.

Don't get in the elevator!
he screamed, but to no avail. He was a wraith, with no volition. What had happened had happened. It was ordained, because it was done.

So what exactly
had
happened? The memory was so damned clouded, so tumbled and twisted—

He got in the elevator, the doors shut, and the lights went out.

That's right.

He blinked at the darkness. What had he done? He had fumbled his hand over the buttons, banged the one for lobby, or what he thought was lobby, and descended slowly.

The doors opened on the basement; he saw the bulletin board and the cafeteria carts lined against the wall.

The light coming through the hall allowed him to see the buttons. He pressed the one for lobby. He watched the doors slide closed.

A black gloved hand reached out, caught the door and held it while the man swung into view.

Oh yes, I remember.

Hal Ketch, in full security regalia, smiled his long-toothed grin. His eyes flattened a little as the corners of his mouth made dark incisions in his cheeks. He was holding a small television under his left arm, nestled in the crook of his elbow, and a blurred black and white image was rolling across the screen.

He held the television up. "Would you look at this?" he said. "They'll show anything on cable."

Philip stared at the two figures rolling over the floor. Perhaps recognition would have been slower, but he had seen it before. He was wrestling with Amelia, there on the floor of her room, under the cold, bleak eye of the video.

"You can see right up her
nightie
. Look there." Ketch tapped the screen, tapped it with the gun's barrel.

"I'm going to have to ask you to step out, Mr.
Kenan
. And just roll Ms. Price along too, would you? That's right."

Philip watched himself step into the hall, saw the mail cart in front of him, the tarp under which his true love lay.

Ketch pointed the revolver at Philip. "We will just park your lady friend here in the hall." He put the television down on the floor (Amelia was on her hack now; Philip was tying her feet). Ketch grabbed the mail cart and shoved it down the hall. It came to rest against the wall.

"Come with me," Ketch said.

They were going down the stairs again, to the basement beneath the basement, and it was going to be very, very bad this time but he could not remember a thing about it. Not one thing. Why was that? The answer, he thought, was simplicity itself. His brain, his consciousness, refused to go to that dark place of recall. He was not so unlike Amelia, who had chosen to block it all out. Any consciousness with an interest in self- preservation might have done as much.

6.

Are you comfortable?" Lily asked. She sat I in the chair opposite Philip. She was wearing a shirt advertising a new Austin rock group called Biff and the Bellyachers and their album
Buttload
of Blues
. The T-shirt, and a tendency his therapist had of sucking in her lower lip and thrusting her chin forward in a manner that suggested senile
addlement
, did not inspire Philip's confidence.

"I just don't think this is a good time for this experiment," Philip said. "I'm in real trouble at MicroMeg. I thought that was over and done with, that at least that battle was over, but I suppose I had never really thought it through. If the Old Ones move as effortlessly through Time and Space as I think they do, then maybe they can hammer away at an event until they reshape it."

Lily nodded. Her gray hair was particularly unruly this morning, as though field voles had played a game of soccer in it. "All the more reason for getting you out for good," Lily said. "And hypnosis can't hurt. And Ann Beasley has given the go-ahead."

"Dr. Beasley is convinced you can do no wrong," Philip said.

Lily nodded brightly. "So show a little faith yourself." Lily reached over and turned the little portable tape recorder on. She adjusted the volume.
Lub
dub
Lub
dub
Lub
dub.

"Heartbeat," she said. "I want you to listen to this heartbeat, Philip. Close your eyes. We are going to go through a series of relaxation exercises and when you are ready, I'm going to put you into a trancelike state where you will be more susceptible to suggestion."

Philip nodded his head.

His therapist began to speak in measured tones, adopting a rhythmic cadence. "Let's see about those shoulders, first." She led him through some physical, muscle-stretching exercises, then breathing exercises, then imaging.

"The hill you are standing on is covered with the world's greenest grass, untroubled waves of grass under the bluest sky. Let's bring flowers to bloom. First dandelions, those hearty, yellow stars. Dandelions flashing into exultant life, dotting the hills. Now smaller, sprinklings of pink, let's say..."

Lub
dub
Lub
dub
Lub
dub.

"Your heart sounds like the ocean, is in unison with the ocean. Sometimes this bigness scares us, this huge oneness, but there is nothing to fear because you can assert your individuality at any time. The great wheel of the world can contain you and hold you, but it cannot rob you of yourself."

Lub
dub
Lub
dub
Lub
dub.

"You are safe."

#

Lub
dub
Lub
dub
Lub
dub.

Huge, blue-black pistons rose and fell in Philip's field of vision.

They were in the basement of the basement at MicroMeg. And they were moving through a forest of machines, the huge trunks of oiled black cylinders rising and falling, the hiss of vented steam, and the hum of some monolithic generator.

They came to a door.

"Open it," Hal Ketch said. Philip could not see Ketch, but he assumed the security guard was behind him. He also had some memory of being prodded by the revolver, although now he felt nothing.

They entered the office.

I remember.

Desks, row upon row of desks, stretched out like mirrored reflections echoed into infinity. On each desk, an identical computer terminal rested. And seated at the desks were men and women, or what had once been men and women.

Ronald
Bickwithers
, Philip's supervisor, came briskly down an aisle.

"Philip, Philip,"
Bickwithers
said, rubbing his hands together, "congratulations."
Bickwithers
smiled broadly and extended his hand. As usual, the man's suit appeared to have been slept in, and his shoe-polish-black wig had the unsavory sheen of a South American river leech.

Philip did not take the offered hand.

Bickwithers
dropped his hand and nodded. "It's unsettling at first, I suppose. You have to see the big picture before you can truly appreciate what's happening here, what technology has wrought. And, of course, none of it would have come about without the transcendent help of the Old Ones."

Bickwithers
shook his head. He extended an arm. "Look, there's someone here you know. Follow me."

The floor of the room was strewn with junk: old screws and bolts and bits of wire. Philip's vision was troubled by that same silvering of the air that he had witnessed the previous evening at the ritual.

"Say hello to an old friend, Philip."

The thing at the terminal turned and grinned. A small, mossy stubble of hair (crew cut) grew on the single fragment of skull that sat like an island on the naked brain. The eyes were lidless and so robbed of much expression, or rather preserving an expression of constant surprise. A scaffolding of punched metal strips, like the toy girders in an erector set, held the features in place, but the naked musculature was plainly visible, and the way tendon cooperated with tendon when the creature grinned, sickened Philip.

"Welcome to the team," the man said. He sat upright in the chair and wore a white shirt, sleeves rolled up.

MERV? The voice was unrecognizable, but the inflection was familiar.

"We are golden on this,"
Merv
said. "Golden."

I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD.

"Love to talk,"
Merv
said, "but this deadline is stepping on my dick. Gotta roll." He leaned toward the screen.

"Death is so inefficient,"
Bickwithers
said, throwing an arm around Philip. "We asked
Merv
if he would like to participate in this project. He was excited. He's a trooper, you know."

Philip saw that the computer had no keyboard, that wires sprouted from
Merv's
fingers feeding directly into the computer's back.
Merv's
hands trembled as the screen scrolled, a rolling sea of glowing green letters.

Philip read the words as they scrolled by, too fast for full comprehension. He recognized phrases, though.

Dear God.

THE NECRONOMICON.

"Ah,"
Bickwithers
said. "You're familiar with Abdul's book. A masterpiece—and sadly corrupted by bad translations. Until now the only English version available has been Dr. Dee's immensely flawed one. We are correlating every translation, and using some other sources that seem relevant. It's quite a project, and when it is finished the book should be much more useful. I was hoping we could persuade you to pitch in. A terminal has come free, and we could really use you."