Hang Wire (34 page)

“OK, fine, fine.” Anger replaced John’s fear. “What do you want?” The weirdo might have been armed and might have been talking like he was straight out of an amateur production of
Oklahoma!
, but if he was going to die then John wanted to go out with a fight. He was on the wrong side of middle-aged and weighed too much, as the creak of the camp chair reminded him, but dammit if he couldn’t do some damage before the morning came and the ranger found his bloody body in a pile next to the smoking embers of the campfire.

The man lifted his hand and pointed at John. He held it there a while, and the fire cracked and the camp chair creaked and the gentle evening breeze dropped to nothing. The atmosphere suddenly felt close, softly pressing in around John and the campsite.

John lifted his own hand and pointed it at himself as he caught the meaning. “Me? You want… me?”

The man laughed and dropped his hand. “Yes and no,” he said. “I’m actually more interested in what you have in that car of yours.”

Relief swept over John. The car? The weirdo wanted to steal his car? Well, fine. It was a piece of shit and John had wanted to upgrade for a while now, especially as he’d be needing something even bigger than the station wagon once his shop was set up, a small van maybe to carry –

“To carry antiques and heirlooms and all manner of paraphernalia from one place to another,” said the man, nodding his head. “The dealing of antiquities and curiosities is a fine profession, my friend, a fine profession. I am something of an expert myself in the finding of artifacts of rare interest and beauty. I’ve walked this land from top to toe in a quest of what you might call a personal nature. Maybe you might even say it was a calling, a journey guided not by my conscious mind but by the powers that be, shining a light which I can do nothing but follow.”

John blinked, ignoring most of the man’s rambling.

“How did you know I was an antiques dealer? Do I know you?”

The man shook his head. “You do not, but I think you will, in time. You see, friend, this journey of which I just spoke is coming to an end. I’m near to it, you see, near to the source, the magical spring, you might say, from which the mighty river flows.”

John shifted his weight in the camping chair. He took a breath, and paused. Then he leaned forward. “What the hell are you talking about?”

The man sighed and pointed toward the silhouette of the station wagon under the tree. “You have something I need, friend.”

“You’re gonna steal my car?”

“I want what’s inside your car, friend, and I’m not going to steal it. I come in peace, as I have laid out to you, and would do nothing that might breach this pleasant accord we’ve come to.”

“OK…”

“Having said that,” said the man, looking now into the fire, “there is something in your car that I have come to collect and I can’t let you or anyone else stand in the way of that. But I have a feeling I’ve been led here for another reason. We’re so close to it now, you and I. It’s down there, in the city, sleeping under the rock. And maybe this close to the source, this close to the end, maybe it doesn’t need the power. Doesn’t need to feed on the murder of others.” The man found a long twig by the fireside and poked at the fire with it.

Holy shit. Murder? John’s heart kicked painfully in his chest, and he wanted to throw up.

“OK …” he said. How could he get out of it now? Something in the car? He was on his way to San Francisco and was due to meet the realtor the day after tomorrow to look at the empty store on Fell Street. There was nothing in the car but a suitcase of clothes and a very small collection of things he thought he’d try and sell to another antiques store, to test the market, so to speak. Two pieces of jewelry, both pretty but both costume and pocket change only; a small table with folding leaves, oak, early twentieth century, nothing flashy but a solid piece; and something more unusual, a–

“A carved wooden monkey with red crystal eyes,” said the man. The fire cracked, and John nearly jumped out of his chair. He felt sweat on his brow, and when he wiped it off he found his hand was shaking.

“How did you know?”

The man smiled. “I told you I was following a light, and the light it shines on thee, my friend.”

“Fine, whatever you like.” Maybe he wasn’t going to get murdered. The psycho said something about not needing to, but not much of what he said was making any sense. “Take it. I’ll get it for you.” John lifted himself off the chair and made a half-turn around but then the other man spoke, more firmly now.

“Oh now, time and again things proceed in an untoward direction.” He tossed the stick into the fire and shook his head. “Sit yourself down, friend. There’s time a plenty for that.”

John lowered himself back into the chair. His stomach did loops and his bladder was fit to burst.

The other man looked into the fire and slipped one hand into the pocket of his waistcoat, where maybe a fob watch would have comfortably sat a hundred years ago. He extracted a coin from the pocket and held it up between two fingers. The coin was large and bright, silver or maybe even gold, the firelight giving it a coppery hue that made it hard to tell. He slowly twisted it between his fingers, this way and that, this way and that, his eyes fixed on it, studying the detail. John couldn’t see what it was, but he felt a dangerous twinge of curiosity.

The man flipped the coin and caught it, but he kept his fist closed. He looked again at John in his camper chair.

“You ever wondered about those eyes, the ones in the monkey, and how they came to be?”

John blinked, the spell cast by the shining coin broken.

“Ah, well,” John paused and thought. “There’s a label on the bottom. Says the gems were cut out of a meteorite that fell in, oh, eighteen hundred and something. Load of baloney, but–”

“But you’ve wondered now and again, when the hours are small and looking up you see a star fall. What if that were the case? What if those eyes were alive, and what if the monkey were alive and waiting.”

Maybe he was dreaming. Maybe he’d fallen asleep in the camper chair, the warm and humid night pressing in, the heat of the fire unnecessary. Maybe it was the mountaintop – being alone in such a place, maybe it did things to you. John hadn’t needed to build the fire yet he had felt compelled to do so. He vaguely recalled a few stories about Mount Diablo, the Devil’s Mountain, about strange sounds and strange creatures that lived there. The night was warm and the fire, as impressive as it was, didn’t really feel very hot. His imagination, surely.

And the stories? John snapped out of it, shaking his head. Baloney, pure and simple. And yet… there was something in the other man’s eyes, something deep and old, like the man had sidestepped out of time and–

John blinked again. He was asleep, he was dreaming, and the ranger’s truck would wake him up in the morning and the ranger would ask why he’d made such a big campfire.

“I can tell you things about the earth and the life within it,” said the man. John rubbed his eyes, watching the other man over the haze of the campfire, sitting on the ground with one pale eye alight like he was the devil himself. “I can tell you about the light that I follow, about the power it seeks. I can tell you about what lies asleep under San Francisco, how it will wake again, with my help and with yours, John.”

The man smiled, and reached into the fire. John wanted to stop him, but he found himself bound to the camper chair, hands clenched tight around the arms.

The man pushed at the fire and the fire sparked and cracked, flames licking at the sleeve of his jacket. John wanted to call out for him to be careful. His hair would catch fire, that close.

The man pulled out a stone, large and elliptical, from the edge of the fire. It glowed dully in the man’s hand, but the man didn’t seem to be affected at all. In fact, as John started finally to lever himself out of the chair to get a closer look, the other man began to laugh. He raised the stone above his head, and brought it down on another stone, still
in situ
in the fire surround. There was a sharp click, and the stone in the man’s hand split open.

John was on his feet now. He shuffled around the fire to stand over the man sitting cross-legged on the ground. In front of him was the stone from the fire, neatly cleaved along some natural fissure into two equal halves. In the middle was a cavity, and in the cavity sat a frog, almost black in the firelight, its skin glistening as it breathed quickly, in-out, in-out, in-out.

“What in the world…”

The frog shifted in the cavity and hopped onto the other man’s knee. Then it turned again and hopped off and was lost to the darkness of the campsite. John stared after it but could see nothing but black, the afterimage of the fire dancing in front of him like falling stars, like a comet streaking through the heavens.

The other man uncurled himself from the ground and stood up. He straightened his jacket and brushed his hands, miraculously untouched by the fire and the glowing rock. He held out his hand. John looked down at it for a moment, and then found himself shaking it with his own.

“My name, friend, is Joel Duvall.”

“John,” said John, like he was in a dream, falling toward the man in the black suit, the man with the gray eye, spiraling toward the cold black of space. “My name is–”

“Mr John Newhaven, of St Albans, Vermont, on his way west to seek his fortune like so many of his kin before him. But you prefer Jack, don’t you? Or you did, back home. Out west in your new life you want to be called John, but you can’t escape the past. Jack.”

“Yes, I, but… but how do you know? Who are you?”

Joel squeezed John’s hand so tight it cracked like the fire, and he stepped closer, his gray eye bright in the firelight, his smile the smile of the devil himself.

“I follow the light, Jack, and the light it shines on thee,” said Joel. “We’re close, friend, close to the source.”

“Close to the source,” repeated Jack, lost in Joel’s gray eye.

“And we’ve an empire to build, you and me, Jack, you and me. We’ve come west, both of us, as far as west will go.”

Joel released Jack’s hand and then rested his arms on Jack’s shoulders.

“And with the last piece, we can begin.”

Joel slid his arms away and walked toward the shadow of the Oldsmobile. Jack stood and rubbed his eyes. Then he turned and followed.

— XL —

SHARON MEADOW, SAN FRANCISCO

The pounding in his head finally dragged Ted back to consciousness.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump
. A heartbeat. Not his heartbeat, but that of something large, something near.

Ted groaned, and when he moved his head it felt heavy and the pounding only increased, like his head was inside of a big bass drum, the kind a beefy guy in a leopard skin would carry in front of a marching band, each side of it thumped with a huge soft mallet.

He moved again, but only managed a slight wriggle. He felt bile rise in his throat and made to swallow it back but too late. The hot, bitter liquid filled his mouth. He spluttered, and sprayed it out of his mouth in an odd direction. Ted snorted in a mild panic as some of it went up his nose, the stench hot and strong. He coughed, clearing his burning throat, and realized he was hanging upside down. In front of him was a confusing array of angular shapes lit in bright colors.

“I’m impressed, my friend. Most impressed.”

Ted stretched against his bonds, but it was no use. He was held fast, head-down, to the side of the Ferris wheel by a metal framework, the structure tight against his arms and legs. As he rolled his head, he felt something else too. The round, woven edge of steel cable, around his neck.

He jerked his head, ignoring the thumping in his head, trying to get a fix on who had spoken. It wasn’t the voice in his head, not this time. That was still silent

Then the world flipped. The colored lights spun and resolved themselves into the illuminations of the carnival. Ted’s head spun as the blood rushed from it. Dizzy and sick, he closed his eyes as the pounding in his head seemed to reach a crescendo before fading to a steady background rumble. He felt much better the right way up. Ted gasped for breath, and looked around again. So, he was in a fairground, behind the tents of a circus. Ted scrolled back, trying to piece the fragments of memory together. He remembered the apartment, the hospital, then someone else’s place – Benny’s.

Then… other things. He remembered flying through the air, but he knew that couldn’t have been him. He remembered sitting at his laptop, his fingers flying across the keyboard as Chinese characters filled the screen. But again, that wasn’t him. He remembered a trapeze, remembered walking around the city, watching himself in reflections. But it wasn’t him. It was like he was watching a movie, his body being piloted by someone else. A whisper in his ear. A presence over his shoulder.

And then he remembered a fire escape, bodies hanging, twisting. Blood, murder, power, the wail of police sirens. An escape across the rooftops.

And now he was here, at a circus.

Maybe it was all just a dream. He remembered being in the hospital clear enough. Getting checked out after… what? He couldn’t remember. The restaurant, the exploding fortune cookie. That was it. He was getting checked out, and they’d sedated him, and he was having a dream in which he thought he was a serial killer who strung victims up with steel cable, and that he was now being held in a circus fairground by the arms of the Ferris wheel.

Arms? Ted’s head thumped.

“Oh, friend, don’t fall asleep now. We have much to do, much to do.”

Ted opened his eyes. He was ten feet off the ground. Below him stood a man in a black suit and tall hat. Beside him stood the slight, slim figure of a naked woman. The pair was silhouetted by the lights of the carnival behind them, especially the carousel, from the center of which shone twin red lights, almost like a pair of spotlights. There were others there, too: a circle of tall men dressed like old fashioned Redcoat soldiers stood unmoving, each with a rifle. Farther back, around the edge of the space formed by a ring of carnival rides were more people, maybe twenty or thirty. They were just shadows, swaying back and forth, back and forth, in time to the thumping in Ted’s head, in time to the machines of the carnival rocking on their bases. It was like the circus was alive, one single creature split into different, smaller pieces.