Big Machine (39 page)

“If you have to use it,” Snooky said, “don’t pull the trigger, just squeeze it.”

They went in together, side by side.

THERE YOU GO
.
Good girl
.

How do you like this room?

Come, now. No crying
.

Oh, I see. Those aren’t tears. That’s blood. Your scalp’s not holding up well
.

But it doesn’t even hurt after a while, isn’t that right?

My special flower
.

If they do let you into heaven when this is over, tell God how I plucked you tonight
.

THE CEILING OF THE EARTHEN AMPHITHEATER ROSE
to thirty feet. After being stuck in those cramped tunnels, it felt as disorienting as deepest space in there. Adele felt nearly weightless, and she went cockeyed trying to adjust to the dimensions of the new room. She’d become used to reaching out and touching the tunnel walls or ceilings, and without this she drifted. If there hadn’t still been water around her thighs, cordgrass bunching around her shins, she really would have believed she was floating. Adele stood a mile below Laguna Lake, but it felt like she’d left this old world.

Snooky Washburn rose to his full height for the first time in an hour, and even Adele’s back felt better when she saw him stretch that way. The room was darker than the tunnels, but her eyes adjusted. The beams from her flashlight seemed to float in the air, pockets of illumination that helped her see.

The cordgrass below the water had been growing and dying for centuries. All manner of tiny organic life had come to be and come to pass in this chamber too. Their fats and cellulose and proteins broken down by bacteria in the mud and sediment of the marshy floor. This process produced swamp gas. Methane, mostly. Colorless and odorless, but not exactly harmless. The Devils’ Well appeared empty, but it was actually quite full.

Snooky walked ahead, into the middle of the chamber, where Solomon stood too. The water rose as high as each tall man’s waist in that spot. Adele hung back a bit, staying closer to the only door, and took the gun out of her pocket. She pointed it down, toward the water.

Really she was aiming at her own foot, and when she realized this, she lifted the gun, pointed straight out, and moved her arm until she had the gun aimed at Solomon Clay. But she couldn’t maintain the pose for long because the weight of the gun exhausted her shoulder.

Solomon Clay said, “I’m disappointed in you, Snooky. And the Voice is too.”

WHEN YOU SCREAM
,
it forces me to put things in your mouth
.

SOLOMON CLAY PURSED HIS LIPS
. He made a long slow hummed note. He hummed all the way through Snooky Washburn’s protests. And when Snooky raised his voice, Solomon only hummed louder. Finally Snooky stopped trying.

“I didn’t bring you down here to talk about your money Snooky. I didn’t bring you here to have a debate about your
wealth
. You could say I’m concerned about your soul.”

Snooky groaned. “Not one of these talks—”

Solomon interrupted. “I first met you when you were eleven years old. At your father’s funeral. I walked down the line of family and most of them didn’t even want to shake my hand. Maybe they blamed the Library for your daddy’s death. Maybe they thought of us as a god damn cult, I don’t know. But then I got to you and I introduced myself, and do you remember what you did?”

Snooky looked away from Solomon, into the empty dark all around him.

“I offered you my seat.”

Solomon nodded. “And you wouldn’t let me say no. You had me sit with all the Washburns, like I was just as much your father’s family as any of them, and I knew you had an honorable heart.”

“That was years ago,” Snooky said.

“Not so long, Snooky. And I still see that upright young man today.”

“I appreciate that,” Snooky said. “I really do.”

The chamber returned to silence. Adele and Snooky had entered shoulder to shoulder, but just now she couldn’t help feeling a little like the odd one out.

I’M GOING TO PUT YOU
in the bathtub now
.

Can’t have you bleeding through the mattress
.

ADELE COULDN’T SEE QUITE RIGHT
. Solomon had turned his flashlight in her direction. She squinted in the glimmering cave.

Snooky shouted, “But how long am I supposed to keep bankrolling you? For real.
How long?
Fifty more years? A thousand?”

Now Adele sloshed forward in the water, only two steps, raising her free hand as if she had the proper answer.

Solomon pointed his light back at Snooky. “I told you, I’m not talking
about your
got damn
money! Keep it all, I don’t care. I want you, Snooky Washburn the third, to come with me and meet the despised children.”

Snooky spoke wearily. “I meet them every time the Dean sends them from Vermont.”

Though she knew Snooky meant every Unlikely Scholar who’d arrived by bus, plane, or car, she couldn’t help thinking of when they’d met, tussling on the Greyhound station floor.

“You think I’m talking about a bunch of puffed-up washouts? They think a brand-new outfit means now their shit don’t stink. Well, the Voice isn’t just a path to prosperity.”

“I have a family!” Snooky shouted, as if his family were a weapon hidden in his sleeve. “And an inheritance that’s running out. I have to worry about my own.”

Adele tried to see Snooky’s face. Was he looking her way right then, begging her to squeeze that trigger and protect him? The swamp gas was making her faint, woozy; she swung her flashlight wildly, trying to find him. The light seemed to hover in the swamp gas until a sickly yellow fog filled the chamber, covering the waters like a shroud, obscuring the two men even more.

There were great splashes, and the water sloshed around Adele’s knees, and in her confusion the water seemed to bubble and churn as if she were being boiled alive.

“That’s
Judah’s real legacy,” Solomon said. “He was selfish down to his soul too.”

Adele jiggled the gun, which rested in her grip, but her shoulder wouldn’t work as expected. It wouldn’t lift. Too tired. She ran forward, into the cloud of swamp gas, and found the two men wrestling.

Solomon huffed. “But I’m going to beat that demon out of you.”

Snooky was fifty pounds heavier and fifty years younger, but the old man was filled with an unquenchable fire. He had Snooky stooped forward, head down toward the water, both arms pinned behind the back. They looked like prehistoric beasts, like two dinosaurs battling. They gasped and panted, and their breath seemed to mingle with the swamp gas until Adele really felt she’d stumbled into a clash at the dawn of time.

She shouted, “Let Snooky go!”

Solomon raised one arm and brought the elbow down on the back of Snooky Washburn’s head. The big man went down with a splash.

Mr. Clay turned to Adele. “Or what?”

Her right arm felt stronger now, thanks to a sudden rush of self-preservation. Adele held the grip of the pistol loosely, and with a grimace she raised the gun.

DON’T YOU WANT TO TALK?
The others always do
.

Come on. Eyes open
.

I like to hear the begging
.

SOLOMON CLAY PUT HIS ARMS UP
, but his smile told her how little he feared.

“I’ve survived a bullet or two, Ms. Henry.”

“How about six?” she asked.

Adele didn’t want to duel with this maniac. Didn’t want to hear about the Voice or Judah Washburn. Real or not, none of it mattered. Not at all. This is why her religious grandmother had never made headway with Adele or Maxine. Her grandmother thought that if she just made a convincing argument for belief, her daughter and granddaughter would come to God. Just as Solomon seemed to believe he could convince Snooky to become magnanimous through the word or the fist. But she suspected Snooky, like herself and Maxine, just refused belief. It held no value for them. A concept that baffles believers. Adele wanted to leave this cave and return to the life she’d been enjoying. That’s it. Whatever got her back to that comfort was the plan she endorsed.

Snooky recovered and rose from the water. His soggy jeans and sweater clung to him, and he looked like a child who’d been dunked in a pool. He turned to Solomon Clay, whose hands were still up because of Adele and the gun.

Snooky raised his fists. “You won’t catch me sleeping twice, Solomon.”

Adele shouted a question, but it was for Snooky not Mr. Clay.

“Why now?” she said to Snooky. “Why shut it down now?”

Snooky heaved, caught his breath. “When would be better?”

“After I’m gone,” she said. She couldn’t help it.

Snooky nodded gravely. “It’s not personal, Adele.”

That was the most hurtful thing he could’ve said.

“It is for me.”

Adele stepped forward and felt the ground beneath the water dip just a little, but she kept her balance. The tide rose to her pelvis. Her tired arm shivered, then lowered involuntarily.

Solomon dropped his hands. “You’ll be back to selling your rotten twat within a week when he closes the Library. At least I can take some comfort in that.”

With great sadness, and exhaustion, Adele Henry raised the pistol one last time.

And then the Devils descended.

WAKE UP NOW
.

Wake up
.

We’re not done
.

THEY CAME OUT
of the swamp gas, gliding down from the dark. When they twisted in one direction, she saw them clearly, but when they turned again, they seemed to disappear. They were as thin as sheets, human forms but only two dimensions. They fluttered like the fumes above a fire. They had two arms each, a head, a torso, two legs, and the skin looked sea-green in the dark chamber. They looked like they belonged in the deep rather than on land.

And now she thought the queasy yellow glow in the chamber hadn’t been her lights playing against particles in the swamp gas, but these … things. A yellow radiance seemed to emanate from their bellies. It seeped out through their slick skin.

Adele felt sympathy for the Heurequeque in an instant. Their repulsion must’ve felt just like hers now. Her mouth pinched as if she’d tasted something sour, and her throat closed until it felt like she was choking.

There were five of them. And when they landed, they surrounded Adele, and with her free hand she covered her eyes. But then she felt a touch, on her skin, and when she looked, she saw one of them had grabbed her hand. The hand that held the gun.

Adele tried to remember the lesson of Joyce Chin’s story. The face of goodness may surprise you. But the
feel
of them against her. Cold and tough. She couldn’t see their faces, couldn’t see if they even had faces, and this made her shiver from her scalp to her toes. Somehow her throat closed even tighter and she thought she would black out. It was an instinctive reaction.
Terror
is the word.

She watched as all five now wrapped their slippery arms around her. They grabbed at her wrist, her elbow, her shoulder, her fingers. She thought they were attacking her, but in a moment she realized the weight of the gun had disappeared. They were helping her lift it. They were helping her aim. They pointed the pistol at Solomon Clay.