The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen (57 page)

Something was standing in front of him. It wasn’t a machine. It was a man. But not just any man. He was two heads taller than Felix and twice as wide. His twisted and contorted face was a Cubist nightmare, like the subject of one of Picasso’s stranger paintings. His mouth was set halfway between a ghoulish smile and a snarl, his teeth gold and polished and shaped like spikes. His nose was missing a nostril; what remained was an amorphous glob of flesh. One ear was gone. The other was hard and balled up like a chunk of dried cauliflower.

Felix felt his mouth working silently, trying to articulate words that his brain wasn’t capable of formulating. He took a numb, clumsy step backward, but there was nowhere to go. His back was brushing up against a wall. He had a hard time believing,
really believing,
what was happening, what he was seeing. How could he be standing in an abandoned house in no-man’s-land looking at the Faceman?
The Faceman
. The last person in the world he expected to see. His brain started spewing up random disconnected images of the Faceman that he’d seen on TV and the Internet, comparing them to the giant towering over him. Then it occurred to him that this situation was really, really bad; he’d come here to find Lucas, and instead, he found the Faceman. A hundred meth addicts, or even the Protectors, would have been preferable to this.

“I assume you know who I am?” the Faceman said conversationally. The veins in his rippling forearms were as thick as ropes. “I apologize for my lack of hospitality. But I’ve found with athletic types it’s best I set a certain tone. I think it prevents, shall we say, misunderstandings.”

Felix used the sleeve of his jacket to wipe the blood from his face. The air was cool with an undercurrent of something nasty. Maybe garbage. Maybe something else. Something much worse. They were in the kitchen in the rear of the house. The light was dull and artificially yellow, dreary but adequate. A tiny sane part of him told him to be quiet. To do as he was told. He ignored it.

“Where’s Lucas?” Felix shouted, standing up straight.

“Ahhh, so you’re a feisty one, eh? That’s good. But we’ll need to establish some ground rules if we’re going to get along.”

“Where’s Lucas?”
Beads of blood shot from Felix’s mouth, spattering the checkered linoleum floor.

The Faceman frowned but only one side of his mouth turned down. The other was fixed in a perpetual rebel yell. He reached behind his waist and came away with a silver handgun. He wheeled it around and pointed it at Felix’s face. It shimmered beneath the fluorescent tube lights on the ceiling. The Faceman stood at the entrance to the hallway just inside the kitchen, but with his arm extended, the tip of the muzzle was close enough for Felix to sniff if he leaned forward on his toes. The Faceman’s wingspan was tremendous. He could easily dunk without jumping.

“Rule number one: I ask the questions. Understood?”

Felix’s eyes were trained on the gun. It was huge. The Faceman’s index finger was resting against the trigger. One little twitch and a steel bullet would smash into his forehead and wreck his brain.

“Where’s Lucas?”

The Faceman shook his head, his expression disappointed but slightly amused, a patient teacher dealing with a gifted but headstrong student. “I see that following rules may be a problem for you. Every so often, I get a kid like you. Off with you. Go! Now!” He motioned with the gun toward the room off the kitchen.

Felix started toward the living room, slowly. Blood was flowing into his mouth and dripping down his chin, falling into the grimy loops of a forest green shag carpet. His eyes danced all around, taking inventory. The living room was ten feet across and narrow. Thousands of flicked cigarette ashes speckled the threadbare carpet, like flies on vomit. Sections of it had been torn off the floor for no reason Felix could think of. A sofa sat against the wall facing the outer wall. Many years ago, it might have blended in reasonably well at the Caffeine Hut. Now it was mostly demolished and crusted over with things he didn’t want to think about. Foam, stained yellow by time and smoke, bulged from long gashes in the upholstery. He stopped at the far end in front of a mint green wall. There were no pictures. Just holes. Some looked like people had made them. Fists. Heads maybe. Others looked like the work of mice. The Faceman stepped forward until he straddled the line between the kitchen and the living room, still pointing the gun at Felix.

“If you say
Lucas
just one more time, I’ll put a bullet in your head. Is that a concept you understand?”

Felix said nothing. He wasn’t scared. It could have been shock or concern for Lucas that dulled his fear. But he knew it was something else.

“Please respond verbally. I tend to perceive silence as insubordination.” The Faceman spoke like he was giving instructions to a child. He waited for Felix to answer.

“Okay,” Felix said.

“Good. Let’s start over. Do you know who I am?”

“The Faceman.”

“Correct. Do you know what I do for a living?”

“You shoot kids in the face.” Felix searched the room with his eyes. No sign of Lucas: no jacket, no backpack, no phone.
Good.
He breathed out a silent sigh of relief.

The Faceman laughed. “That’s true. But that’s only part of my job.”

Felix shook his head, trying to clear out the cobwebs. His ears were ringing and blood still flowed freely from his shattered nose. His face felt heavy from the swelling and throbbed with pain. But he was thinking clearly and his peripheral vision was back to normal. He wondered, briefly, why he didn’t have a concussion.

“I serve the highest power in the universe,” the Faceman proclaimed.

Felix started for a moment. Then he stared at him, thinking the Faceman was a cliché. Just another psycho who believed some higher power—God—wanted him to kill people. He could have guessed that.

“But if you pass the test and demonstrate you’re not a Wisp,” the Faceman went on, “you’ll have the honor of serving him.”

Wisp?

A line from the journal snapped into Felix’s head with limitless clarity, like a blast from a foghorn on a still morning:
This rival group of Sourcerors, calling themselves Drestianites, believed that non-Sourcerors—Wisps—were responsible for damaging the Source…

“Who’s
him
?” Felix asked.

“The one who’s going to set everything right.” The Faceman let the gun fall to his side. “And all you need to do is pass the test. If you’re special, you’ll join him. You’ll serve him with the others.”

The others?

“What test?” Felix asked.

“It’s simple. See that brick?” The Faceman pointed at a sliding glass door boarded up from the outside, preventing any light from brightening the room. On the floor beside the door was a brick, badly weathered and whitened with striations in a marble pattern.

Felix nodded, and then remembered the insubordination threat. “Yes,” he answered.

“Make it move. If you’re special, you can move it.”

“What? The brick? What do you mean?” This was starting to feel a lot like his first trip to Inverness.

“Move the brick with your mind,” the Faceman instructed. “If you can do it, you pass the test. Only Sourcerors can pass the test.”

Sourcerors? He’s testing for Sourcerors?

“What if I can’t?”

He raised the gun, leveling it at Felix. His face darkened. “You die.”

“How many have passed the test?” Felix asked.

The Faceman regarded him curiously for a moment. “Twelve.”

“How many have failed?”

The Faceman took one gigantic stride toward him, cocking his head questioningly. “You’re very inquisitive.” He ran a hand over his chin, as if he was considering something. “Eighty-five.”

Eighty-five?

Felix couldn’t even comprehend that number. So much life. Lost. Taken. By one man. “You’ve killed eighty-five people?” he managed to choke out.

“People?
Oh dear me no. I’ve killed eighty-five
teenagers
. All Wisps. Of course. I’ve killed many others. More than I can remember. I used to keep a list somewhere.” His lips peeled back over his teeth in a smile as he patted down the pockets of his hunting vest. “But I think I must’ve misplaced it.”

“Are there others like you?” Felix was pushing it, but he had to know. “Other testers?”

“Of course!” the Faceman growled. The smile was gone. “No more questions! Move the brick or you’ll die where you stand. If you want to be number eighty-six, then by all means, please ask another question.”

Felix didn’t hesitate. “Where’s Lucas?”

Felix’s brazen defiance seemed to stun the Faceman. Then he bared his teeth and raised the barrel, aiming it directly at Felix’s face. “You’re not very bright, are you? But you don’t seem… scared. You haven’t screamed once, or even begged for your life. You remind me of someone I recently had the pleasure of meeting. Her name was Gabriela. Great name. Terribly deluded. I hope you’re not thinking God is going to strike me down.”

“These people,” Felix said, pressing on. “What’d you call them? Sourcerors? You have another name for them?” Asking the question was risky, but he wanted to remove all doubt. He had to be sure. And he didn’t think the Faceman would pull the trigger until he administered the test.

“You are an annoying little punk. I’m beginning to hope you don’t pass. Another name?” The Faceman paused. “He calls them his Drestianites. One more question out of you and—”

“I can move it,” Felix said quickly. “I can move the brick. I think I’m a… I’m one of those Sourceror people. So you don’t wanna shoot me. I can serve him, right? I can be a Drestianite. So tell me what happened to Lucas.”

The Faceman’s wide brow furrowed with deep horizontal lines. He nodded slow and unsure once, twice and then a third time. Finally, he took the gun off Felix’s face. “So you want to know what happened to Lucas Mayer?”

“Yes.” Felix already knew the answer. Or at least he thought he knew the answer. Lucas had never been here. The Faceman had just used his phone to lure Felix into the house. The Faceman wanted to test Felix. Not Lucas. Lucas was fine. He was probably in their room right now looking for his phone.
But what if he was wrong?
What if he’d missed something? Misread what was going on here? Fear clamped down on him. Sweat started to trickle down his neck. His heart hammered in his temples.

“As you wish.” The Faceman dipped his head for a moment, giving him a bow. “Late last night, your friend left the library and went out for a walk, probably in search of one of his late-night trysts. I executed what the authorities like to refer to as”—he made quotation marks with his fingers—“an
abduction
. I brought Lucas here. He stood right where you’re standing now. No. He was actually two feet to your right.” He motioned with the barrel, two quick shakes to his left. “I asked him to move the brick.” He nodded at it. “I’m afraid Lucas wasn’t special. He wasn’t a Sourceror. He failed.” He paused, smiling, his dark eyes glittering with cruel pleasure. “So I shot him in the face. And then I shot him in the face again. And then I shot him in the face again, again and again. You get the picture.”

Felix went numb. His nose no longer hurt. He didn’t feel any pain. His heart thundered in his chest, charged currents raced over his skin, the blood roared in his ears like a derailing locomotive.

“I hope this isn’t upsetting you,” the Faceman said mockingly. He grinned his livid, malicious grin. “You wanted to know what happened to your roommate, right? Well, so after I blew his face off, I took his body down to the basement. I used a saw—two saws actually—and a knife to make your friend more
portable
. I stuffed his arms, his legs, his torso and his head into a bag which I took to an abandoned factory not far from here. There’s a furnace there I used to dispose of the body. It’s one of my favorite techniques. There’s really nothing left of your friend. Maybe a few scoops of ash. Ashes to ashes, right? And so concluded the short happy life of Minnesota Mayer.
Minnesota Mayer.
It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? I’ve always liked alliterative names. Minnesota Mayer. Minnesota Mayer.” His smile widened, reveling in the anguish he was causing Felix.

Felix locked eyes with him. He’d come here for only one reason—to find Lucas. Encountering the Faceman hadn’t changed that. If he’d found Lucas alive and well (or if Lucas had never been here) Felix would have probably tried to escape. Or so he imagined. But escaping was now the furthest thing from his mind. Every cell in Felix’s body was screaming for vengeance. He wanted to kill the Faceman. He wanted to see him lying in a pool of blood.

“Now move the goddamn brick!” the Faceman bellowed, and the walls seemed to vibrate. “I’m going to count down from ten. If you haven’t moved it by zero, I’m putting a bullet in your head.”

“You want me to move the brick?” Felix said softly.

“Ten, nine, eight…”

“You want me to move it?” Felix said, this time a little louder.

“Seven, six, five, four…”

“You want me to move it?” Felix screamed.

“Three, two, one…”

Felix pointed at the brick and shouted: “Move!” He didn’t see the brick fly across the room—it went too fast for his eyes to trace—but he saw the Faceman’s features erupt in a cloud of blood, bone and teeth. The brick found its mark, smashing into the center of his face, crushing his mouth and severing his jaw, destroying everything below his nose.

Slowly, understanding dawned in the Faceman’s eyes and they grew large. The impact had caused his arm to fall alongside his leg, the muzzle pointing at the floor. He looked down at the gun, the enormous muscles in his shoulder straining as he attempted to raise it against the weight of some unseen force, his eyes clouding with dark confusion. The veins swelled in his trembling forearm as the barrel began to rise, the deadly cylinder drawing Felix into its sights. The Faceman’s arm suddenly straightened out hard and rigid and locked down tight next to his body, the muzzle, once again, aimed at the floor. A red line, no wider than a pen mark, formed around his wrist, and it started to bleed. The line became wider and the blood began to flow more steadily, the wound expanding and deepening, revealing bones and ligaments. His trigger finger twitched and the gun fired into the filthy shag, shaking the floor and rattling the little house like a sonic boom. His hand bent back grotesquely, the remaining flesh and bone snapped, and his hand, still clutching the gun, dropped to the floor. Blood fountained from the stump.