The Faceless One (12 page)

He clicked the e-mail, opening it up.

The message made no sense although there was the phrase “you must not” and “God,” which seemed particularly dire. Steven checked the date of the e-mail. It had been sent the day Daniel died. He felt a prickling travel down his spine, a small phantom spider of unease tickling his skin with a malevolent delicacy.

He needed to tell the police. Before he could move, the message fluttered, distorted, then winked out. The computer shut down, and the screen went dark. He rebooted it, and waited for three agonizing minutes as the machine informed him that it had been shut down improperly and would now check itself for errors, viruses, and God knows what else. At last, it politely told him that all was as it should be.

Steven went back into his e-mail.

The message was gone.

He knew that there were ways to pull deleted material off the hard drive, but that was beyond his competence. He tried to transcribe what he had seen, but the preponderance of gibberish made it impossible. He could call the detectives in New York, he guessed, but would that do any good? For all he knew, the message was telling him something positive, like “you must not grieve” or “you must not miss a chance to live every day to the fullest.”

Still, Roberts had asked him to call if he thought of anything.

He thought of his brother, glasses fogged and face smudged with dirt, smiling broadly just before breaking the water pipe.

Someone had hurt him. Someone had taken him away.

He pulled the scrap of paper with the detective’s phone number out of his wallet and dialed the number.

“Roberts.”

“Detective? This is Steven Slater. I’m here at my store, and just found an e-mail from my brother.”

“What did he say?”

“A lot of it was gibberish, as if he had hit keys at random. But one phrase was ‘you must not.’ ”

“ ‘You must not’ what?”

“That’s all there was. That, my name, and the word ‘God,’ I think.”

“Mr. Slater, could you forward that e-mail to me? I’d like to look at it.”

“Well, that’s the thing, Detective. It’s gone.”

“You erased it?” Roberts sounded annoyed.

“No, no. I was trying to make sense of it and the computer just went dead. When I rebooted, it was gone.”

“Damn. Do you know when it was sent?”

“Sunday. The day Daniel was killed.”

Roberts let out a low hiss of breath.

“I could see if someone could pull it off the hard drive,” Steven offered.

“No, that’s all right, Mr. Slater. We’ll check your brother’s hard drive. Chances are it’s on there. It may be in some kind of code. You two didn’t have a secret language, did you?”

“Just in-jokes and such.”

“Well, maybe it’s encrypted or maybe the file got corrupted when it was sent to you. If I find out anything, I’ll let you know.”

“Okay, thanks.” Steven hung up. Suddenly, he very much wanted to be home, close to Liz and Bobby. He locked up and drove home to the one place of safety he knew.

Martin Breckforth looked out over the expanse of Central Park and fumed. Purcival had failed to show for the meeting, and he had had to reschedule with Hoeniger. The need to do so had made him appear foolish, and Martin Breckforth did not like to appear foolish. His assistant had said that Purcival had had some kind of meltdown, screaming at Theresa before running from the office.

Breckforth sighed. Purcival would not be the first high-profile attorney to crack under the pressure. Breckforth decided to discuss the matter further with the senior partners, lest future Purcival lapses reflect poorly on the firm.

He was reaching for the comm button on his phone when out of the corner of his eye he saw something move. He glanced over to his left.

A tiny man was standing on the arm of his chair. He was four inches tall and waving frantically. He was dressed like Peter Pan. No, Robin Hood. In fact, he looked a little like Errol Flynn. The little man put his hands on his hips and laughed silently. It was Errol Flynn, all right. Four inches tall and standing on his armrest.

When he was nineteen, Breckforth had dropped acid while studying at USC. It hadn’t been very illuminating; he had just seen some bright colors and thrown up all over some library books. He remembered reading at the time about flashbacks. Christ, that had been forty years ago.

Breckforth closed his eyes and counted to twenty, sure the tiny apparition would be gone when he opened them. He suddenly felt a sharp pain in his left wrist.

Breckforth looked down. Blood was welling up from a series of tiny punctures in his wrist. The little man wiped blood from his mouth. He smiled, and his mouth was filled with dozens of needlelike teeth.

Breckforth instinctively backhanded the little man, and he was knocked from the armrest. Breckforth’s head began to pound, and he thought he might vomit. He decided this was some sort of anxiety attack brought on by Purcival’s unprofessional behavior. He lurched over to the maroon leather couch to lie down.

Purcival—that idiot. But what about the wound on his wrist? Probably a spider bite, nothing more. It looked inflamed and was starting to swell. There was a whitish area around the
wound. He squeezed it tentatively, and a small amount of pus and fluid oozed out from the cut. Breckforth felt an extreme sensation of dizziness and grabbed the side of the chair. Was it getting infected? Already? Jesus, what if it was venom or something?

He should make an appointment to see his doctor—hell, maybe he should go straight to the emergency room. He started for the phone and was nearly overcome with vertigo. He tried to call out to his secretary, but his throat was too dry. Though he was frightened, a more rational part of his mind reassured him that there was nothing in a Manhattan office building that could kill within minutes. He was developing a fever, that’s all—a fever that led to visions of little men in Lincoln green with bright needle teeth. Shaking, he lowered himself onto the couch to lie down for a few minutes.

He felt the coolness of the leather underneath him and wished that he had a cold, damp cloth to put on his forehead. He slipped off his custom-made shoes and put his feet up, placing his unwounded arm up behind his head. He felt better. He closed his eyes, thinking a short nap would probably do him good.

He drifted off, aware of the pulsing heat in his left forearm.

* * *

Martin Breckforth awoke, feeling a soothing coolness across his fevered brow.

He opened his eyes, and his granddaughter Amy was there. She dabbed at his forehead with a cold, moist washcloth.

Amy smiled at him, an angel in small bib overalls and a lilac-colored tee shirt. She had pigtails and was missing her two front teeth, and Breckforth loved her more than any other person in the world. He smiled back at her and wondered where her parents were. His son, Amy’s father, was supposed to be in London on business. Come to think of it, Amy and her mother were supposed to be there as well.

Despite the cool comfort of the washcloth, his head felt like it was packed with warm, wet cotton. There was a scent of cloves on the washcloth, and it was very soothing.

He started to speak, but she put a finger to her lips and made a “shushing” gesture. Her blue eyes twinkled in the fading light from outside.

She dipped the washcloth down into an unseen basin and wrung it out, her golden hair catching the light from overhead.

Breckforth lay there, not wanting to question this soothing interlude with his granddaughter. As she wrung out the cloth, he saw something move along the back of the couch.

The little man.

He crept along the couch like a figure in a melodrama. He was very near Amy, and Breckforth wanted to cry out, to warn her.

He found he couldn’t talk. His vocal cords had been paralyzed somehow. He strained to speak, but all that would come out was a harsh wheeze that tore at his throat.

Amy turned and smiled, unaware of the creature behind her.

She held up the washcloth, and he could see that it was red with blood. Blood was running down her arm and dripping onto him, staining his shirt.

He tried to raise his arm, and it was as if twenty extra pounds had been affixed to it. With a strain, he brought his arm up and saw with horror that the forearm was shapeless and elastic, as if the bones inside his hand and forearm had been removed. His hand was like a small balloon, five small mounds marking the place where his fingers had been. The skin was mottled in hues of yellow, white, and purple. It was the most repulsive thing he had ever seen. He tried to scream, but only a shrill hiss would issue from his mouth. He tried to get off the couch, but Amy held him there with surprising strength.

She smiled, and he saw that she was no longer missing her two front teeth.

They had been replaced by jagged shark’s teeth. Her tongue flicked over these serrated blades, and he saw with horror that her tongue was long and hollow, fitted at the end with lamprey teeth.

Panic drove him up off the couch, throwing her off him.

She giggled, still sounding like a girl of four.

She scrambled after him and bit him in the right calf, her monstrous teeth ripping through gabardine and finding the flesh beneath. The pain was beyond belief, and he almost passed out. He was barely able to drag himself away from her as his leg began to go numb.

Amy scrambled up the wall like a spider, her pigtails swaying as she clung to the ceiling. She hung down by her heels and began to recite the alphabet.

“A-b-c-d-e-f-g …” Her voice was that of a little girl’s coupled with a horrible, clicking hiss, like some hideous insect mimicking a child.

Breckforth struggled toward the desk, intent on calling Denise or security. His left arm dragged along like a balloon filled with bloody slush. His right leg was also going shapeless, making it more difficult for him to propel himself across the luxuriant carpet. His skeleton was liquefying. It made no sense, but it was happening. It had gone beyond the sense of an acid flashback. This was real—a terrifying, nauseating, harsh reality.

“H-i-j-k …”

He struggled toward the desk, which seemed to be a quarter mile distant. His flaccid left arm was dragged over an errant paper clip, one of the ends digging into his leprous flesh. The pain was beyond imagining, as if his nerves had become ultrasensitive to compensate for his lack
of bones. He shrieked, but his scream was a mere whistling hiss, lending counterpoint to the singsong recitation of the girl-creature above him.

“L-m-n-o-p.”

Breckforth, sweat glistening both on his brow and changing flesh, finally reached his desk. He tried to reach up with his right hand to grab the lip of the desk but saw with dismay that his right arm was also losing its stability, becoming as flexible and hard to control as a long length of rubber hose. It whipped back and forth, finally smashing his hand against the mahogany desk. He started to black out but was able to thrash his way back to consciousness, gorge rising in his mutilated system. He could feel his chest altering, mutating. Soon his entire body would become a shapeless, fleshy obscenity, a jellyfish with the memories of a man.

“Q-r-s-t-u-v …” Lilting notes delivered through predatory jaws.

He did not so much collapse as ooze back onto the floor, his clothing now keeping him in a rough approximation of a human shape. He lay on his back, as if the term had any meaning, and saw his view changing as his skull began to soften and flatten.

The thing that might have been Amy leaped down from the ceiling easily, landing with a soft thud near Breckforth. She flipped over onto her back, then pushed up on her hands and feet. Her limbs all bent the wrong way, giving her the appearance of a crab clothed by Baby Gap. Her head rotated around until she was facing him.

“W-x-y and z,” she whispered as she approached.

Breckforth was crying now, immobile and frightened. He prayed someone would come to his aid but knew no one would. Even if they did, they would probably shriek in revulsion, then kill him without preamble. He had become a monster, and he knew no hospital or radical breakthrough in gene therapy could save him.

The creature’s tongue flicked along his chest, nimbly plucking the buttons from his shirt. He shuddered, his body moving peristaltically like some obscene water-bed mattress. The lamprey teeth raked along the soft flesh, sending bright shards of pain through him. He prayed that whatever was happening to his body would kill him before the creature continued, but that was not to be. Its curved and hooked incisors punctured his skin, and the bulbous opening pressed hard against the wound, sealing it. For a full half hour, Breckforth watched and felt it feeding on him, drawing his liquefying organs and skeleton into itself through that obscene process. He finally lost consciousness, remembering at the last moment with utter clarity where he had left his bicycle. He hadn’t ridden a bicycle since he was ten.

* * *

Outside Breckforth’s office, Denise glanced at the clock on her PC. Five fifteen. She was supposed to have left fifteen minutes ago but was unsure what to do about Mr. Breckforth. He had said he didn’t want to be disturbed, and Mr. Purcival had never checked in. Denise knew that Mr. Breckforth had theater tickets for the evening, and they had been difficult to come by. Maybe he had fallen asleep. If he had, she might be doing him a favor by waking him.

She buzzed his office. She would just tell him she was on her way out unless he needed her for something. There was no reply. She could tell by her phone that he wasn’t on a call unless he was using his cell. She buzzed again, lingering a moment longer on the buzzer than propriety dictated.

No reply.

Maybe he had had a heart attack or a stroke. Maybe he was in there at that very moment, gasping for his life while she sat there doing nothing.