The Realms of the Dead (19 page)

Chuck, however, felt as though he were paralyzed. He watched Marilee twist and squirm, his gaze fixated upon the small scar on her forehead. Was it just a trick of the light? Or was the skin surrounding it throbbing? Almost as if the microchip implanted there was trying to push its way out of her head.

Marilee's final protest was released as a scream so loud and forceful that the muscles in her neck bulged, the two syllables stretched over several seconds as she squeezed her eyes shut:
“GET OUT!”

Control bolted toward the little girl but before the older woman could reach her, the Spirit Box flew from Marilee's grasp and tumbled across the floor. At the exact moment it left her hands, the girl's face relaxed and she looked around the room as though she'd just awoken from a dream in a strange and unfamiliar location.

Something seemed different about her. Perhaps it was her posture. Or maybe it was the myriad micro expressions that give a person's face its distinctive look. When she moved toward the stack of boxes, her gait lacked the poise and confidence Chuck had come to associate with her. Her steps were tentative and faltering, almost as though she was unsure whether her legs would be able to support her own weight.

Control had sidled next to Chuck again and she leaned in close. The warmth of her breath tickled Chuck's ear as she whispered through the static still emanating from the Spirit Box.

“I don't like this, buddy. Something's not right.”

Marilee turned slowly with her gaze lowered. Her eyes fell upon the Spirit Box and as the girl cocked her head to the side the roar of white noise faded to a mere hiss. And then even that was gone. In the resulting silence, Chuck could heart his own pulse, blood whooshing and thumping through his head as he tried to convince himself that the shivers racing through his body were caused only by the cold.

“Chuck, something's definitely not right with this situation.”

Marilee's head snapped up at the sound of Control's voice. Her brow wrinkled and she breathed so heavily that her shoulders rose and fell as her hands balled into fists. However, she was not looking at the woman whose voice had drawn her attention.

Her gaze was solely fixated on Chuck and the little girl's eyes gleamed with loathing.

“You!” Somehow, she managed to make the word sound like an accusation. “I hate you. Do you hear me?
I hate you!
”

Though he wasn't aware he was doing it, Chuck took a step backward. Marilee's fingers flexed as she clenched and unclenched her fists. The girl's shoulders had hunched to the point that she no longer seemed to have a neck and the breath flowing through her nostrils sounded like a locomotive building steam. Her chin had tilted forward and she glared at Chuck from beneath a brow furrowed with rage.

“Marilee”—Control's voice was soft but encouraging, sounding more like a concerned mother than a colleague—“that's Chuck. You don't hate Mr. Grainger, honey. It's actually quite the opposite. Isn't it?”

If Marilee heard the woman's words, she gave no indication.

“You're gonna pay for what you did.”

“Sweetie, you have to listen to me, okay?”

“You're gonna
die
for what you did.”

For a split second, Chuck was no longer in his office. Instead, he floated in a vast expanse of darkness. Though he couldn't see anything, from somewhere close by someone—perhaps Marilee—giggled. The sound of the rope creaked and when he blinked Chuck found himself back in more familiar territory.

“You don't want Chuck to die. I
know
you don't.”

Marilee looked toward the stack of boxes and Chuck followed her line of sight. Covering her mouth with one hand, the young girl chuckled. The laugh, however, caused a lump to form in Chuck's throat as he took another step backward. For what Marilee gazed at with such glee was the screwdriver with which she'd pried open her crates.

One moment, the tool rested on the edge of a box. The next, it flew five feet across the room. Its yellow handle slapped against Marilee's palm and her fingers closed around it as she whirled toward Chuck.

With an inhuman growl straining her vocal cords, the girl charged, wielding the screwdriver at shoulder level like a knife. Her eyes blazed with murderous intent and before the shock of seeing an inanimate object move of its own accord had worn off, the weapon had already begun its deadly arc.

Chuck tried to scramble backward as Control darted toward the girl, but neither was quick enough. His scream echoed off the walls as the screwdriver sank into his flesh. Pain exploded through his torso and he felt himself falling backward as he tripped over his own feet.

Marilee, however, would not let him get away so easily. The girl was on top of him before he'd even hit the floor, the screwdriver now brandished in both hands and raised directly over her head. Blood pulsed and oozed from the wound, blossoming a red stain across Chuck's shirt as he crossed his arms in front of his face.

Such a simple defensive tactic, however, would prove fruitless against the flurry of stabs to come. Chuck Grainger knew this. Just as he knew he was only moments away from death.

As the screwdriver plunged toward the center of Chuck's chest, Control grabbed Marilee's pigtails with both hands. Throwing her body weight backward, the older woman simultaneously yanked, whipping the girl's head back so violently that the child stared straight at the ceiling. The throat-rattling scream that erupted from Marilee was fueled by both rage and pain, but the girl's smaller form was no match for the force exerted upon it.

As Marilee toppled, her arms flailed for balance and the screwdriver's blade thudded into the floor, mere inches from Chuck's throat. The jolt jarred the girl's entire body, yet she somehow managed to maintain her grip on the handle. As Control wrenched her away, Marilee lashed out blindly, driving the screwdriver down again and again as Chuck rolled to avoid the blows.

Spittle sprayed from the child's sneer as she snarled, contorting and writhing like a feral animal snared in a trap. Twisting her body in angles that almost seemed to defy physics, Marilee switched tactics. The screwdriver now slashed through the air, seeking not Chuck, but Control. The older woman still gripped the girl's pigtails and she leapt backward as she arched her back, keeping the whirling child at arm's length while also maximizing the distance between them.

“He saved you!” Marilee screamed. “He saved you,
but you'll die, too
!”

Using the girl's hair like reins, Control tugged and yanked, pulling the child toward the center of the room. She'd initially reacted out of instinct. There'd been no master plan, no thought about what she'd do with the young girl once she'd pulled Marilee off Chuck. Even though she was twice Marilee's size and clenched handfuls of hair in each fist, Control still found herself on the defensive in this skirmish. The screwdriver swished through the air tirelessly and Control focused on ensuring the beveled tip didn't rip a gash across her arm. There was no time to think ahead. No time to form some sort of exit strategy. She simply bobbed and wove, locked in a violent dance with a girl whose eyes burned with murderous intent.

Chuck scrambled to his feet and hobbled across the room. His left hand pressed against the wound in his abdomen, but the flow could not be contained so easily. Blood seeped between his fingers and left a perforated trail of splatters on the carpet as he shambled toward his companions with as much speed as he could muster. Every step flared pain through his midsection and he ground his teeth against one another to keep from crying out, but he knew there was no choice. He had to push through it, to help Control, and try—somehow—to bring the nightmare this experiment had turned into to an end.

“Chuck, no!” Control shouted over the cacophony of Marilee's inhuman snarls and growls. “I got this!”

Chuck, however, could not idly stand by and watch his partner grapple with the child. The soundproofing which kept outside noises from disturbing the meditative state required for his work also ensured no help would come; someone could stand just outside the door and not be aware of the violence playing out within the office. While biweekly visits to the fitness center on Level C had toned Control's muscles over the years, sooner or later either she or Marilee would tire…and Chuck suspected the supernatural entity controlling the girl would not be the first to give out.

Control's concern, however, had alerted Marilee to Chuck's intent. The child peered at him out of the corner of her eye as she slashed with the screwdriver. Though her gaze was only peripheral, the unadulterated hatred hit him like a concentrated beam of invisible fire. It burned into his soul before bursting into an inferno that consumed everything that made him human. Thought, emotion, and perception: For a moment they were all incinerated into cinders and ash, reducing Chuck to a scorched and hollow automaton that moved across the room with no true purpose.

Even when the far wall of the office crumbled, Chuck remained unfazed. The collapse began toward the ceiling with chunks of plaster falling away and turning into a fine powder upon hitting one another. This powder was immediately pulled into smoke-like wisps as it was sucked into a vortex churning where the hallway should have been. Within seconds, the entire wall was gone, revealing a panorama where eddies of pure energy spiraled forever inward upon themselves. The currents crackled and popped as sparks flashed within them, flooding the room with the scent of ozone, and from somewhere within the scene a rope creaked.

An unblinking blue eye stared from the center of the whirlpool and, as Chuck watched, something moved within its pupil. Silhouettes blacker than the darkness surrounding them rushed forward and spilled out of the eye; the shimmering currents of energy reflected off segmented exoskeletons, revealing them to be the same kind of bugs that had swarmed out of the severed head in Chuck's nightmare.

The insects scurried across the whirlpool in the opposite direction, using the energy like a spiral path and apparently immune to the vortex's pull. Their legs and shells clacked as they thronged toward the office in ever increasing numbers and the tempo of the creaking rope quickened.

Control's scream broke through the paralysis that had seized Chuck's mind. He blinked and the wall was simply a wall again. Though he had no clue how much time had passed, Marilee and Control's scuffle had led them toward the Buddha fountain. His partner still retained her grip on the girl's pigtails, pulling so hard that it almost looked as though her scalp was about to tear free from her skull. Control's arms, however, were covered in blood.

Slivers of black plastic jutted from her skin. Shards of the shattered EMF detector must have shot through the air in the same way the screwdriver had leapt into the little girl's hand. Perhaps the spirit controlling her realized the battle was at an impasse and decided to pull out all the stops, enlisting every weapon within its arsenal. Chuck, however, didn't waste time considering strategies, neither Marilee's nor his own. He simply rushed forward again, intent on helping his partner in any way he could.

He'd closed half the distance when the heavy Buddha fountain flew off its table. Water cascaded in its wake as the plug-in popped out of the outlet and the cord wavered in the air like a thrashing tail. Pivoting on the ball of his foot, Chuck whirled as his hand shot out. The fountain passed so close that Buddha's resin robes grazed his hair and Chuck snatched the cord within his fist.

He'd hoped that he could use centrifugal force to fling the statue back at the girl. Not at her head, of course, but toward her knees. If they could cut her legs out from under her, the child would fall, perhaps giving him and Control the upper hand they so desperately needed. Chuck, however, had underestimated the psychic force with which the fountain had been flung.

The cord snapped free from the base and the fountain created a crater of cracks as it thunked into the wall, leaving him holding something that vaguely resembled a whip. The insulation had peeled back, freeing a tuft of frayed wires from the end, and thoughts ricocheted through Chuck's mind.

Had he read once that medieval monks used flagellation to cast out evil spirits?

No, that was insane. He couldn't mercilessly flail a little girl in the
hopes
that flogging might drive out the demon inhabiting her. He wasn't even sure if this was a fact. Perhaps it was nothing more than a half-baked scheme born of panic and desperation.

All of this went through Chuck's head in a fraction of a second. In that same amount of time, the corner table the fountain had previously rested upon topped over and pitched forward as Marilee swiped with the screwdriver again. Control retreated from the assault, but the table slammed against her heels. The woman's body lurched backward and she was suddenly falling, her grip on Marilee's pigtails pulling the child to the ground with her.

With the young girl straddling her waist, Control released Marilee's hair as the screwdriver plunged downward. Control caught the girl by the wrist and squeezed as though she intended to shatter bones, though her hope was actually to make the child drop the screwdriver. Marilee, though, was stronger than an eleven-year-old should have been. Control's biceps quivered with strain as she struggled just to keep the screwdriver from plunging into her neck.

Chuck dove to his knees beside the young girl and his hands were a blur of coordinated activity. Holding the frayed end of the electrical cord in his left hand, he stretched out with his right. At the exact moment the prongs entered the outlet, he touched the bare wires to the child's forehead.

There was a bright flash accompanied by a sound that was partly a sizzle and partly a pop. The stench of burnt flesh wafted from the whiff of smoke curling from the girl's hairline and her small body collapsed like a marionette whose strings had been cut. The screwdriver slipped from her fingers and she lay on the floor, panting rapidly as she blinked in quick succession.

As Control scrambled backward, Chuck tossed the screwdriver across the room and turned his attention to Marilee. The once-smooth skin near the top of her forehead was now marred by a wound slightly smaller than a dime. Raw flesh glistened in the center but the edges looked gnarled and crispy. The singed tissue radiated outward in a miniature sunburst pattern and tiny blisters bubbled up at seemingly random intervals.

“Good God, Chuck,” Control gasped as she struggled to catch her breath. “What the hell was that?” Control crawled forward and hunched over the girl, spreading the child's eyelids with her fingertips as she examined the pupils. “You could've killed her!”

Chuck held Marilee's limp hand in his own, his fingers curled around the girl's wrist. As he mentally timed her pulse, he glanced up at his partner.

“I could've killed
her
? I'm sorry. My mistake. Next time I'll just let you be stabbed in the damn throat.”

“Marilee?” Control patted the girl on the cheek repeatedly. “Honey? Come on, sweetheart. Come back to us. Come on, girl.”

“Her pulse is erratic. Weak.” All offices were required to contain a first aid kit, but Chuck had always found them to be unsightly. His was stashed beneath the sofa and he now ran to it as Control cradled the child's head in her lap.

“What were you thinking?” she demanded. “You knew she has all that circuitry wired in up there. She'll be lucky if you didn't fry her whole damn brain.”

“Look,” Chuck snapped as he ran back across the room, first aid kit in hand, “I had to do something, okay? Lewis was using her abilities against us. He would've killed you, me, and probably Marilee once he was done with her. I thought it would just short out the chip!”

Squatting beside his companions, Chuck flipped open the kit and snatched a packet of antiseptic cream. Ripping it open with his teeth, he applied the cool gel to his fingertip before dabbing it on the girl's wound.

“Yeah, well you feel free to tell it to Murphy when we have to explain why P.R.A.'s star pupil is now a freakin' Sleeper.”

“Come on, Marilee. Come on, come on, come on. Don't do this, girl.”

“Jesus Christ, Chuck, you're bleeding all over her!”

“Will you get off my case, already? I'm doing the best I fuckin' can here!”

Marilee's eyelids fluttered and the tip of her tongue darted across her lips, eliciting a sigh from both Control and Chuck as their bodies relaxed.

“You guys sound like my parents,” Marilee croaked. Chuck's and Control's laughter was tempered by a shaky quality as they fawned over the child, Control stroking her hair while Chuck clasped her small hand in his and kissed her knuckles.

Marilee tried to force a smile, but a tear leaked from the corner of the girl's eye and rolled down her cheek. The tear quickly gave way to others and she curled into a tight ball, sobbing in Control's lap as her shoulders hitched.

The self-assured prodigy who seemed advanced beyond her years was gone, leaving only a small and frightened little girl.

Somehow, this unnerved Chuck more than anything else that had taken place. It was as though it were a harbinger of things to come, some dark omen warning of what lay ahead. After all, if this had simply been the first battle then the conflict to come would not be pretty. In fact, he suspected it would give a new definition to the old adage
War is hell
. For in this case, the meaning would be literal.