Ghostlands

FORTY-ONE

It’s like tearing through different flats on a theater stage, Cal Griffin thought, ripping away layer after layer of illusion.

Along with Inigo and Tina (who still stared blankly at him, seeming not to recognize him at all), Cal had managed to utilize his armor to burst through the barriers and reunite them with Colleen and Doc, then reach Mama Diamond, Howard Russo and Enid Blindman. As he suspected, they weren’t far apart at all, just separated by walls of different settings, like themed rooms at some fantasy hotel.

So now here they were, Cal and Colleen in the lead, bursting through tiers of unreality in search of Larry Shango and Goldie.

“Cripes, what’s the deal here?” moaned Howie. “I mean, why not just kill us and get it over with? I do not need to be seeing that 1976 production of The Fantasticks again.”

“Old Devil likes his games, Howie,” said Enid. “But don’t you be dissin’ it. We still breathin’ here.”

“It seems to be rooting around in our minds,” offered Mama Diamond. “Searching out the threat to it there.”

True enough, thought Cal. But given what Doc and Colleen had told him of their forays in mock Russia and Thailand (Mama Diamond pointedly choosing not to share what picture postcard had been summoned from her memory; Cal’s quick glimpse of it revealing only that it looked like some kind of prisoner camp), the answer seemed more complex, the motivation and purpose of what set the scene and manipulated the players more diverse. Perhaps the Consciousness at the Source was not simply homogenous malaise in a bottle; maybe there were majority and minority opinions at work here, discrepancies and deviations….

“You got an opinion on this?” Cal asked Inigo.

Inigo looked furtive, hunched his shoulders. “I don’t ask questions.”

“Yup,” Howie agreed, “that’s always served me pretty well, kid-leastways, till now….” He shot Inigo a grin.

Cal caught the look of gratitude on the boy’s face, of recognition; the two grunters were outcasts both, even among their own kind.

Abruptly, they punched through to Goldie. He was standing beneath the swaying palms on a bustling, old-fashioned resort street, talking to a lanky old man blanched as an albino.

Cal heard Inigo suck in his breath. “Aw, man…” He sounded profoundly dismayed.

“It’s the second blind man,” Tina murmured, gazing at the old man. She turned her face to Enid and whispered enigmatically, “You’re the third.” Cal wondered who the first might be, and had an inkling he just might know.

“Who is that?” Cal asked Inigo.

“Sanrio,” Inigo said.

Cal shot Doc and Colleen a glance; they all knew that name from the list.

“Is he real?” Doc asked.

“That’s kinda complicated,” Inigo replied. “But yeah, mostly. Listen, we gotta get outta here before he spots us.”

But it was already too late. Cal saw that Sanrio had raised his head and spied them. Sanrio canted his head upward, as if in silent supplication, both a prayer and a summons.

A tumult rose up from ahead of them, insane shrieks of rage and belligerence, growing in volume.

Cal motioned for Colleen to flank him. “Get behind us,” he told the others; his and Colleen’s armor would help shield them from whatever the flare matter formed itself into.

“Goldie, get over here!” Cal cried out. Goldman seemed frozen in place beside the pale figure.

Abruptly, the buildings and sky and people shivered, and hunched, muscled figures burst through, screeching hideously and rushing toward Cal and the others.

Grunters, hundreds and hundreds of them.

“Hoo boy, some time for a family reunion,” moaned Howard Russo.

“They’re real,” said Inigo.

“Yeah, I figured that,” Cal said, drawing his sword while the others unslung their rifles and Howie pulled the Tech Nine from his belt. Cal glanced over to Goldie, just in time to see him rush up to Sanrio and embrace him.

Cal heard him scream as the world exploded in light.

Too late, far too late, Herman Goldman realized that something was terribly wrong, that he had miscalculated and this pillar of fire he was embracing, this mocking dark entity, was not Marcus Sanrio at all, at least not his physical self, but merely a projection, like the voice at the end of a telephone line, and Goldie could no more kill him than smacking a receiver against a wall would give the caller a concussion.

But hell, that didn’t mean taking a bath with the phone couldn’t electrocute you.

He had intended to draw all the power out of Sanrio, had in his hubris assumed he could do it as readily as he had sucked the ability out of that E-ticket Bitch Queen, and then hurl Marcus Sanrio into the distant reaches of nothingness, where he could be one with the space between particles until hell froze over and there were no innocent fragile ones for him to fuck with anymore.

But instead, grasping this radiant nonbeing, it felt to Goldie pretty much like someone had thrown lighter fluid on the hibachi of his mind and dropped a match.

The last conscious thought he had was, Oh Magritte, forgive me….

But if there was an answer, he didn’t hear it.

“No!” Cal shouted, and ran forward as Goldman fell. The others were right behind him. His eyes still strobing from the flash, Cal saw that the army of grunters had halted in their charge, too, blinded and momentarily dazed.

Goldie lay crumpled on the ground, his straw cowboy hat fallen away. His eyes were rolled back, unseeing. Currents of energy were coursing and snapping all over his clothing and skin, making the hair on his head snake about as in a blow dryer; in fact, his hair was the only part of him that seemed even remotely alive.

There was no sign of Sanrio, or whatever part of Sanrio had been there.

Doc bent beside the still form, reaching out a hand to touch his neck.

“Be careful, Viktor,” Colleen urged.

His fingers grazed Goldie’s carotid artery, and Cal could hear the arc of electricity as it bit at Doc. Doc winced, but kept to his task.

“No pulse,” he said, ashen.

“Get back,” Cal said and pulled Doc clear, for he saw now that the energy was surging up to envelop Goldie entirely. In an instant, there was nothing to be seen of him but the manic light playing all over his body. Then all of a sudden, he crumpled in on himself and turned to winking bits of dust, which the air seized and whirled away.

He was gone.

“Oh, dear God,” Colleen breathed, and Cal could hear her voice crack.

Then, with a cry that tore at their ears, the grunters were upon them. Cal drew Christina behind him, and turned to face the foul creatures, sheathing his sword and unslinging his rifle. He saw that Howard Russo was likewise shielding Inigo.

Colleen and Doc began firing, then Howie, too. Cal joined in their fusillade, choosing his targets, firing again and again, as the tang of gunpowder stung his nostrils and gray smoke swirled about them. White anger rose up in him, for what had been done to his sister, to Goldie, to all of them, and he felt a savage, guilty pleasure as the bullets found their mark, tore meat and gristle and flesh away from the brutes. Shrieks of agony rent the air, and blood was everywhere. The grunters that weren’t hit slowed in their advance but did not stop.

Enid was firing, too, and made a curious sight, rifle leveled and guitar slung over his back. Cal noticed that Enid’s gun had a fixed bayonet; he knew that blade well. Enid had wielded it back in Chicago, and told Cal of its heritage-Enid’s great-grandfather, the Lakota warrior Soldier Heart, had taken it off a cavalryman at the Little Big Horn.

Cal glanced at Inigo and saw that the boy was baring his teeth and growling at their attackers, his muscles taut steel waiting to spring. Cal put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, restraining him.

“Not yet,” he said. Inigo mastered himself, and nodded.

As for Mama Diamond, Cal could see that she held no weapon but was instead speaking in a low voice to several grunters who faced her. He couldn’t make out the words, but saw to his amazement that the grunters she was addressing were backing away from her in terror. Now wasn’t that interesting….

They kept firing until their ammo was gone, and still the little monsters kept coming, until it was close work now. Cal swung his sword in wide, practiced arcs as the others wielded machete and crossbow and razor, and whatever else came to hand. The grunters, for their part, brought their hideous strength to bear, reaching out with long arms to claw, darting their heads in with gaping, snapping mouths full of scalpel teeth.

Cal realized that he and his companions were outnumbered ten to one, that the grunters were driving them relentlessly back, until their backs were literally to the wall. Cal kept Christina (who was staring out in mute horror) behind him. It occurred to him that the grunters were making no effort to reach her, as if somehow she were exempt, or of a nature they preferred not to come in contact with.

Cal unleashed Inigo at the last and the boy threw himself into the fray with fang and claw, fighting with surprising ferocity. But he was clearly outmatched.

Three of the grunters leapt at Cal, brought him down hard. His sword went skidding away along the ground. They tore off his helmet, shredded the rough leather leggings and tunic over his clothes and ripped them away.

“Get the hell off me, you little creeps!” Colleen cried from nearby. Out of his peripheral vision, Cal could see they were doing the same to her, deliberately stripping her of the dragon armor.

As if they were ordered to.

Cal rolled and managed to throw the fiends off himself, scrambled for his sword and brought it home into the neck of one as it again leapt at him. He then dove for Colleen, kicking and slicing at her attackers, sending them scurrying away.

But then more were on them, burying them, hauling them down again. All Cal could see now were grunters in closer detail than any sane person would ever want to, their foul breath filling his lungs and nostrils. From the cries of Doc and Enid and Howie, and even Mama Diamond now, he assumed the same was true of them.

Suddenly, Cal heard a new commotion from some distance away, low squeals and shouts of pain, bones cracking. The grunters grappling with him paused to look up, and Cal did, too.

Larry Shango, grunters hanging off his arms and from around his neck, his armor torn clean away, was wading into the mass of grunters, hammer flailing. He pulled several clear off Doc and Mama Diamond, hurled them into a mass of their fellows.

Then he threw the homemade grenade at them.

It exploded magnificently, made mincemeat of them.

And okay, so maybe it was a double standard and, unlike their moment of horror with the flares, they felt little squeamishness about blasting these puny bastards to smithereens. But then, these guys were just plain nasty.

Shango, his face sweaty and glorious, turned to face the grunters still wrestling with Cal and Colleen, with Howie and Inigo and Enid.

“You want the same?” he cried, a god of serene fury. “That can be arranged.”

As one, the grunters released their prey and took off running, straight at the buildings. They connected with the stone facades, went right on through and were gone.

Shango helped Mama Diamond to her feet. “You all right, ma’am?”

“Yes, thank you,” she replied. Shango looked about at the others, who were on their feet now, bloody and breathing hard but intact.

Taking count, he said, “Where’s Goldman?”

Cal felt grief flood over him anew, was about to speak when suddenly there was a voice in his head, human and inhuman at once, incredibly powerful and malign.

MEMORIES HOLD POWER….

He gasped with the intensity of it, saw from the pain on the faces of his companions that they’d heard it, too.

He had known such a voice before; it had been Fred Wishart’s mind speaking to him in that devastated house back in Boone’s Gap, before Tina was spirited away.

This held some of Wishart in it, Cal could detect that, and others, too. But the main will, the dominant force of it, was someone far different.

The second blind man…

I WAS TWELVE WHEN THE ONE IN ’44 BLEW THROUGH HAVANA, it added, and even its thoughts held that distinctive Spanish lilt. LIKE A LIVING, MALEVOLENT THING COME TO RULE THE WORLD….

He’s talking about a storm, a hurricane, Cal realized with a growing sense of dread. He looked at the others, at Colleen and Shango, and his own unshielded self. We have no armor.

Then the mind that was Marcus Sanrio-and myriads and complexities far beyond-said, BUT WHY TELL YOU WHEN I CAN SHOW YOU?

Cal heard a roar like the soul of the world splitting in two. He turned toward the beach. The sky was black with storm clouds, and the sea was rising up to meet it.

It reached out and seized them.

It’s not touching me, Christina thought with a strange, calm horror. It’s not touching me at all.

But the storm was killing the others.

The rain and wind tore off the face of the ocean like a murderous Fury, blasting up onto the shore, tearing away the palm trees, hurling cars aside, ripping away awnings and knocking buildings to their knees, scattering the bodies of the dead grunters, and the living humans and Inigo, too. It reminded her of films she’d seen as a child, of the blast wave of nuclear explosions.

Then the wavefront came, rising up off the water a hundred feet and more, crashing down onto the land, flooding the street with foaming, turbulent mayhem. The level of the water was high above her, yet she felt none of its force, could breathe just fine.

I shouldn’t be able to do this, she thought. It’s not human.

And then the thought came to her, suddenly, shockingly-

But then, I’m not human.

Through the churning, deadly water, she could see the others slammed and tumbled like rocks carried along in the rapids to smash against boulders and shatter, their mouths opened in silent screams, the air bubbling out of them. They were drowning, all of them-Inigo, and the powerful black man and old Asian woman, the guitar player and the little gray man, and the younger woman and the Russian man, too.

And Cal.

Oh God, it all came back to her in a flash, like a curtain torn away, dawnlight cutting through the night. The one she had been waiting for all this time, the one she could not call to mind, no matter how hard she tried. Not the dragon man in black, nor Sanrio or Pollard, Sakamoto or Wu, nor any of the other shadows that peered over her shoulder…

But her brother.

I’m not gonna leave you, Cal had told her long ago in their apartment that was the real one, not the one that was just exactly the same.

And he hadn’t, he was here, finally, at last he had found her….

Only to die before her eyes.

By the will of the Thing that was driven by Sanrio, whose attention was away from her now, she understood, distracted by his whim of maelstrom, so that finally her mind could clear….

Cal was gasping and flailing, spinning in the murderous flood, helpless in its power, the power of those ones-

Just like herself.

She looked down at her hands, her human hands, and knew this outward form that had so assuaged and comforted her was a fiction she could no longer afford. She reached down into herself, searching, and found the dissonance, the alien music she had deafened herself to for time without mind. She embraced it, called it forth and opened herself to it.

The radiance blossomed within her.

She could see her fingers elongating and losing their color, the nails vanishing, and felt a lightness in herself that might have been mistaken for a body floating in water but which she knew was weightlessness of another kind. It filled her with despair and joy.

The corona about her flared to life, flowing with power and brilliance and certainty. She reached out with her mind, and the nimbus about her extended to encompass the others and draw them back to her. Looking out with her azure eyes, her face bloodless and wreathed in hair of palest silk, she merely had to will the water to keep back, and it was so.

The human ones, and the boy Inigo and the gray man who were neither human nor like her, slumped in on themselves, all water fled from them, gasping in great lungfuls of air, reclaiming their lives.

She held her brother in her arms, like a mother with a child, and kissed his fair, soft hair.

“I’m not gonna leave you,” she said, and for the first time in a long time she knew truly where she was.

She was home.