Spirits in the Wires (30 page)

And then, over the roar of the burning pillar as it pierces the sky like a searchlight, we hear them.

The leeches.

I turn and see the first one coming through the nearest wall, the faux stones melting away like wax from the contact of its slick black body. The stench of sulphur and hot metal fills the air.

Suzi was nervous as soon as
she set foot in the tenement building from which Jackson Hart had so mysteriously disappeared the night before. It didn't help that, except for Aaran, everyone was making it pretty clear that they didn't much like her and were suspicious of her tagging along. Even the landlady, who'd had a friendly smile for everyone else, had given her a weird look. Aaran was good, lending her some moral support by staying close to her, but she knew that even he couldn't quite figure her out.

She couldn't blame him, not being entirely sure herself why she felt so determined to stick it out. It was no longer simply to be supportive of Aaran—at the moment she was getting more from him than he was from her. And it wasn't even a need to know how this would all play out, though that was certainly a part of it.

It was more as if she was being compelled to come here, that she
had
to be a part of it, for all that she was feeling progressively more nervous the closer they got to Jackson's building.

She was edgy entering the tenement. Going up the stairs to Jackson's apartment made all the little hairs stand up on her arms and once she actually followed the others inside, ail she wanted to do was turn around and walk right out again. There was something too creepy about the place. It was nothing specific, nothing that she could put her finger on. There were no visible signs that this was other than what it was supposed to be: the home of a techie, filled with all the latest computer, stereo, and video gear. But from the moment she crossed the threshold, she sensed that they were all in danger.

She listened to the others make small talk. Watched Estie and Tip decipher Jackson's computer setup. When Claudette offered to help the landlady get the iced tea, she wished she had the nerve to ask if she could accompany them, but she knew she wouldn't be welcome. Not that she was particularly welcome here in the apartment, either. But at least going with them would have got her out of this room and let her think about something other than the inexplicable foreboding that had taken root in her head.

Finally she had to say something. Estie agreed with her that there was an odd feeling in the air when Suzi expressed her concerns, but then she went right back to talking to Tip about the computer connections. Tip hadn't even looked up.

“Don't worry,” Aaran said. He spoke softly so as not to disturb Estie and Tip. “They sound like they know what they're doing.”

Do they? Suzi thought.

It didn't feel like it. Nothing felt right about any of this.

“I just … I get the sense that something's about to open,” she said. “In this room. Maybe in me. Or that… I don't know. That something's approaching. Something big, that can't be touched or held. Something … dreadful.”

She managed to give him a half-smile to show that she knew she was overreacting, but Aaran returned it with a worried look.

Suzi sighed. “Look, I know how stupid this must sound—especially since I was pooh-poohing the whole idea of Internet spirits just a few hours ago.”

“It doesn't sound stupid,” he told her. “I'm just not sure I understand what you mean. Is it like a premonition?”

“I guess.”

She could hear Claudette and Jackson's landlady coming up the stairs behind them. Aaran had turned away from her to listen to what Estie and Tip were saying to each other. It took Suzi a moment to register what the words meant. They rasped inside her like glass, sharp and brittle. The air in the apartment grew more close, almost oppressive.

“No,” she said. “You can't bring it here.”

But it was too late. She saw that Estie had already connected her laptop to Jackson's system and turned it on.

“Bring what here?” Claudette asked from behind her.

Estie looked up. “We've got another mystery,” she said. “Jackson's computer is still on-line, but as Tip's discovered, the ADSL connection is broken.”

Tip held up the outside phone jack that he'd disconnected from the router.

“But that's not possible,” Claudette said. “Is it?”

Estie shrugged. “Apparently it is. Tip seems to think that by my having connected my laptop to the router, the Wordwood spirit is going to come to us.” Her gaze went to Suzi. “And so, it seems, does Suzi.”

Tip stood up from behind the desk. Claudette came into the room, with Mrs. Landis trailing behind her. The landlady looked from Suzi to Estie, plainly confused.

“I don't understand,” she said. “What do you mean about a spirit?”

“Maybe we should ask Suzi,” Estie said. Her gaze stayed locked on Suzi. “What
do
you know about all of this?”

Suzi wanted to bolt. The room was suddenly too small. Too close, too confining. The air too heavy.

“I… I don't know anything,” she said. “I can just… feel something. Like … like there are things in the corners of the room that we can't see. Waiting. Watching us …”

Oh, just shut up, she told herself. You're sounding like a lunatic.

Except she didn't feel crazy. She
did
feel that they were in danger. It was just that the words to explain it didn't seem to exist.

“It
is
oppressive in here,” the landlady said. “We should open a window and see where Jackson keeps his fans. We need to move the air around a little.”

“Suzi's not talking about the heat,” Estie said. “Are you, Suzi? At least not that kind of heat.”

Aaran stepped in between them. “Stop bullying her. It
is
hot in here.”

“Sure, it is,” Estie said. “We're all hot. But we're not all hiding something.”

Suzi's gaze darted from one face to another. They were all staring at her, even Aaran, though at least in his case, it appeared to be out of concern for her. The weight of their combined attention was almost as bad as the
sense
she had that there was something watching them from the corners of the room.

“I'm not hiding anything,” she said. “It's just… can't you
feel
it?”

Mrs. Landis stepped forward. “Maybe if you have some of this iced tea.”

Suzi stepped back as the landlady held out her tray, offering her a glass.

Why couldn't they feel it? It reached right into her, like it was trying to pull something out of her chest.

But from their expressions, the only thing they sensed was that she was losing it. Maybe she was crazy.

Except there
was
something in the corners of the room—though not what she'd thought at first. There weren't monsters or evil spirits coming for them. It was that the room itself was … fraying at the edges.

There was no other way to put it.

She couldn't see the dissolution when she looked directly at any part of the room, but seen from the corners of her eyes the walls and corners were shivering. No longer solid. Unraveling.

It was like the difference between a real photo and a picture in a newspaper. The walls weren't solid like a photograph. Instead they were made of hundreds of tiny dots of colour, all pressed in tight against each other. And now all those tiny dots weren't holding together anymore.

“Suzi… ?” Aaran said.

She focused hard on his face. Maybe if she didn't look at anything else, it would all go away. The fraying walls. And this new sensation … like something was grabbing at her, reaching deep into her chest…

Don't look away from him, she told herself. Focus.

But a mild vertigo slid through her. She swayed and then made the mistake of looking down to keep her balance.

And saw her hands.

She lifted them up, not quite sure what she was seeing.

“Jesus,” someone said.

Her hands were unraveling, just like the walls. She could see the molecules that made up her flesh and bone, except they looked more like the pixels of a Web photo with really bad resolution.

She lifted her gaze back to Aaran's face. It was like looking through gauze, as though her eyes were shivering apart, just like her hands.

“What…” She could hardly speak. “What's happening to me?”

No one replied. She looked at them, one by one, but they only stared back at her with incomprehension, in horror.

Her own growing panic exploded full-blown.

Her legs crumpled beneath her, but before she hit the floor, a shaft of light burst out of Estie's laptop and darted for the three computer towers around Jackson's desk. Parts of it were blue, others gold, all of it woven together like a braid. In an instant all four machines were connected by it, forming not quite a circle, not quite a square. Then the braid of light sent out a shaft, straight as a laser beam, right for her chest.

There was no time to dodge. No time at all.

At the moment of contact, there was a brief instant where nothing existed for her. The light entered her like a flashlight beam cutting through shadows. It enveloped the pixels that her flesh had become, and she was gone, lost in a soundless void, devoid of any tactile sensation. But almost before she could react to her new environment, that void was gone as suddenly as though a switch had been thrown. She was back in Jackson's apartment, floating a few feet up in the air, and everything was changed.

The flesh and blood world was gone, or if not gone, utterly transformed. This new version of it was like finding herself transported inside a Saturday morning cartoon. Or some computer game with primitive graphics that was making a valiant, though less than successful, attempt at three-dimensionality.

Almost as strange was that her panic had disappeared along with the world as it was supposed to be. Here, in this new version of the world, she was the calm eye in a storm of garish colour, bold linework, and bad animation.

The looks on the faces of her companions now seemed exaggerated, almost comical. She wanted to laugh at Estie and Tip's big round eyes, the exaggerated “O” that was Aaran's mouth. Mrs. Landis appeared to have fainted. She lay in a slapstick sprawl that made her limbs seem to be out of proportion. Claudette stood with her back pressed up against the wall, cartoon hands held defensively in front of her.

But Suzi's humour faded as she returned her attention to the braided bands of gold and blue that still connected her to Estie's computer and Jackson's three towers. The ray had changed from a laser-straight beam to an undulating tendril that felt as much a part of her as her arms and legs. And now it connected her to … not so much an orb of light, as a portal of some sort, in which the beams of light had broken up to become pale swirls of blue and gold. Forming in the pattern they made was the impression of a figure, indistinct, but shaped like a human. Beyond the figure she could see endless rows of what looked like bookcases, hundreds of thousands of them disappearing into an infinity point.

“Child,” the figure said.

The voice was soft, but resonant. It had a mother's strength, a father's warmth, and that one word it spoke was like a key, unlocking knowledge inside her. She knew who this was, half hidden in the swirl of blues and golds.

It was the spirit of the Wordwood.

At first she thought it was addressing only her, but the same inner knowledge that let her recognize the spirit for who it was also told her that she was only one of many. In other places—she didn't know exactly where, some close, some distant—other people floated in the air just like her, connected to the Wordwood spirit through the closest electronic device and by their own undulating braids of light. They were all individual, but once they had each been a part of this being in its library of light. The life history she remembered had been constructed for her, just as each of the others had had their own life histories constructed for them. They'd been sent out … sent out to …

It took her a long moment to pull her gaze from the world inside the swirling lights to focus on Aaran's cartoonish features.

They'd been sent out to track down those responsible for the virus that had crippled the Wordwood spirit. Sent out to track them down and bring them to a place such as this, where the spirit itself could have physical access to them.

“Our enemies are found,” the spirit said. “You can come home now where I will deal with them, or you may keep your new life. The choice is yours. Consider it payment for how you have helped me.”

“What will you do to him?” Suzi found herself asking.

The spirit's gazed settled on her and she knew that it was seeing only her now, not all the other pieces of itself that it had given individuality to and then sent out into the world.

“That remains to be decided,” it told her. It paused a moment, then added, “He was not alone.”

Suzi nodded. She knew. The spirit had probably found out about both Aaran and Jackson through her.

“I think,” the spirit went on, “that I will bring the tenets of the Old Testament to bear upon them. I will do to them what they did to me. Sever all the ties that link their minds to their bodies. The ties that give their thoughts coherence. That link their cells to each other.”