Big Machine (40 page)

They want me to kill him.

He and Snooky moved much more slowly than she did now. She and the Devils of the Marsh worked in accelerated time. Snooky’s mouth still hung open, his last sentence just finished.

It’s not personal, Adele.

They pointed her hand, the gun, directly at Solomon Clay’s head, guiding her.

The Voice wants me to kill him. That’s my fate.

But Adele Henry pulled her arm away from their influence. She tore herself from their control. If she was going to be guided by anything, it would be her own will. The Dean really had known her, even better than she knew herself. She would protect the Library.

Her shoulder hurt again as she aimed the gun, all alone, at Snooky Washburn’s chest.

She fired.

BIG AS HE WAS
, burly as a bull, Snooky Washburn couldn’t resist a bullet. The first one made him stumble; the second sent him flying. His body went into the water and floated off like a basket lost to the reeds. It drifted, and Adele saw it move.

I just killed a man, she thought.

I murdered him.

The Devils of the Marsh moved away from her then, like scattered birds. To fly they flapped their bodies, which were as flexible as wings. And when they did this, all together, a great wind blew through the room. Fresher air sucked in from the tunnels.

I defied the Voice, she thought.

I defied God.

She righted herself and waved the gun in Mr. Clay’s direction because she thought he should be next. Snooky, then Solomon, then those Devils. Then herself. She thought she might cry. In fact, she might have been crying already.

Solomon Clay stood in the same place he’d been, and watched Snooky’s lifeless body for a moment more. Then he turned to Adele. His eyes were wide and his forehead wrinkled; the lines around his open mouth were deep. He’d been stunned into looking his age.

He said, “You treacherous bitch.”

Solomon Clay stepped through the swamp gas, approaching her.

He snarled. “Human beings are no damn good! You’ve finally taught me that, Adele. The despised become despicable. God damn! We’re worse than animals! We’re like monsters.”

Adele didn’t argue. She just pulled the trigger again.

But this time it caused one hell of an explosion.

When Adele Henry pulled the trigger, the muzzle flash lit the fuse of methane gas newly mixed with the oxygen that had been sucked in when the Devils of the Marsh took flight. The gas had become explosive.

The methane blast shot toward the only open doorway, and the fire passed over Adele even as she turned instinctively. She went facedown
into the water and the fire singed the back of her clothes. She lifted herself out of the water when her breath ran out, and the air was still hot enough to prickle her face. The boom had left Adele temporarily deaf.

But why wasn’t the heat burning her? It was hot enough to melt the gun in her pocket. And yet, it hadn’t hurt her. These questions occurred to her slowly, casually, almost as if she’d left the tunnels far behind and had the time now to recollect with patience. She looked down and saw herself there, wading in the water. Down there and up here, both at once.

How am I alive? she thought.

Then her ear tingled, the way it does when someone stands right behind you and whispers sweetly. She felt the warmth of someone’s breath. She heard a sound, but it remained a mumble.

Adele felt a sudden desire to turn. Not to shift her head down there, but up here in this dreamy state. To turn and see who stood behind her. Perched right there, whispering into her ear. Would she see Maxine Henry there? Or the face behind that face? She tried to turn, but the more she moved, the slower she went.

Why did you save me? she asked.

I’m not worth a damn thing.

And now Adele could finally make out the phrase being spoken into her ear. No longer a mumble, more like a command. Four words …

Four words.

Adele’s head cleared, but a high ringing persisted, one long note running right above her noggin. She touched the tunnel walls, and the grit of loosened dirt felt soothing. She touched her scalp, and a few curls dropped into her hands.

They were all bone-white.

Splashing registered throughout the chamber. Her hearing had returned.

Then she saw one Devil of the Marsh, deep inside the chamber. It fluttered, snapping as violently as a flag, but it didn’t scream or moan. It was on fire, but it couldn’t wail. This only made it seem more anguished. Its body shook so quickly that it floated on the air. A levitating silhouette, all aflame. She saw that shadow die and drift back down to the water.

Did I kill them off too?

It was too much to bear, and this wasn’t the place to formulate answers. Adele ran back, toward the circular doorway. Just get to the tunnels and follow the path out. You’re the only survivor. No one has to know what happened. Get upstairs, get on a plane, get back to Vermont. Get in your cabin.

Run, Adele. Run your ass.

Behind her she heard a retching noise, coughing or choking, a person in great pain. She didn’t look back until she’d passed through the doorway. Then she turned, put her hand on the great stone door, and rolled it back. She closed the cave. The gun in her pocket, a lump of fused metal, still served a purpose. She set it down, under the water, so it blocked the door. So nothing inside could get out.

She looked inside now and saw him, Solomon Clay, shambling out of the darkness. How could he have survived when Snooky’s body had been burned to ashes?

Solomon’s body shivered; his legs were stiff as he stumbled. And his face. His face.

It glowed.

He slammed against the doorway. He pressed his lips to the small hole. He sang, out of key, an old Christmas carol. “Do you hear what
I
hear?”

As Adele ran down the tunnel, she listened to Solomon slam against the door again and again. In time he might actually break it down. The hole in the stone amplified Mr. Clay’s weak breathing, still going, still going. The panting lingered with Adele so long that eventually it seemed to be her own.

AFTER TWO DAYS
of torturing Adele Henry in that motel in Paterson, New Jersey, the mass murderer James Cuvell, who later demanded that newspapers call him Honeyspot, left her there faceup in a tub. The drain was clogged by all the hair he’d pulled out of her. Her big green purse was hooked over the bathroom doorknob, close enough to grab on to and pull herself out, but he believed she was too far gone for any such thing. He underestimated her. And as she slowly rose from the tub, she made a promise, to always get them before they got her.

James Cuvell left her there because he knew she was dead, had to be dead. The other women had all died. Absolutely dead because a body only has so much resistance. A body couldn’t possibly survive.

But a body did.

OKAY
, so Ms. Henry told me all this business, everything she went through two years before, everything she did, an ordeal that would’ve killed a dozen men, and yet I said only one thing when she finished.

“So you really
liked
that Snooky Washburn, didn’t you?”

Ms. Henry nearly stumbled to the ground.

“That cannot be the only thing you heard,” she said.

“Not the only thing, but it’s a big one.”

She stammered. “Well—that’s—not—”

She threw out her arms. “Why are you acting like this?”

A different question occurred to me.

“Didn’t you say you were
loyal
to Mr. Washburn?”

“Sure, I did. So?”

“You shot him in the chest!” I shouted. I regretted being so blunt just as quickly. “I’m sorry, Adele.”

“Yeah,” she muttered. Then she recovered. “But that’s why I went back to Vermont. To the Library.”

“Out of loyalty?” I said, totally deadpan.

She shook her head like I was the dunsky “I couldn’t just leave the Library to men like the Dean or Solomon Clay. Could I?”

“So you came back to honor Snooky’s memory?”

“Right,” she said, though she hardly sounded sure.

“But then you just locked yourself up in your cabin.”

“Why you have to ask so many damn questions?” She bared her teeth.

Only then did I realize what I’d been doing to her. A game of questions
and answers just like the Washerwomen once taught me. But I wasn’t feeling self-righteous or out to win any childish game. Listening to her fool herself had me thinking about, fearing, all the ways I might be doing the same. When this was over, if I survived, wasn’t I expecting to return to the Library? Didn’t I look forward to its comforts? What kind of backflips would
I
do to clear my conscience?

Adele, meanwhile, hadn’t been privy to my thoughts. Her skin still stung from the way I’d pinched her.

“And what about you?” she growled. “You never did anything you regret?”

I pointed at the gates of the Washburn estate.

“We’re back,” I said.

It was five
A.M.
when we entered the estate’s grounds. The sounds of early morning had begun: that first wave of snorting cars; the way night burns off as dawn approaches and the sky seems to hiss like paper thrown into a fire.

When we passed the guard booth, it was empty. Not closed, but abandoned. The little television on the desk hadn’t even been turned off. It flashed a local weather report. The day promised to be bright and cool.

“Come on,” Ms. Henry whispered. She looked down the main road that led to the mansion, but the only thing moving down there were the branches of the trees. They shivered in the wind.

We went down this road quietly, looking into each darkened utility building that we passed. There were no cars parked along the road, and I found myself wishing for the pickup I’d seen the day before, the one with the busted windshield. It would’ve been a landmark I recognized, one that would’ve helped make the grounds feel more familiar. But it was gone.

I had to stop and lean over and dry heave. Twice.

Morning sickness? I thought.

My God.

I just had to get to the cabin. Finding this thing, wherever it had hidden itself under my skin, wouldn’t be so hard if I had some time alone. All those years of tapping veins had taught me how to probe my body.

Ms. Henry said, “Let’s go see what the Washburns have to say.”

“Who’s left?” I said, and regretted it.

She recited in a monotone. “Snooky Washburn is survived by his wife, Cherise, and their two children.”

“You really think that woman will want to help us?”

“Who else can we go to? Snooky’s gone. The Dean’s in Vermont. The cops would arrest us or throw us in a mental ward. We’re running out of support.”

We walked in the road because neither of us even had the energy to climb back onto the sidewalk. I was finally going to get inside that mansion, but I didn’t feel awake enough to care. Just lead me to a guest bathroom. Give me a lighter, a spoon, and a few uninterrupted minutes.

As we got closer, I had a better sense of the mansion. Enormous, of course. Four stories tall, and it seemed a mile wide. There were dozens of sash windows in the façade. All their curtains were closed, so the mansion looked like some great sleeping beast.

Now there we were, hoping to wake it.

Up the circular driveway, across a little strip of lawn, to the front steps, onto the little porch, and finally, the front door.

I waited for Ms. Henry to use the bell or the brass knocker or the cable attached to a gong, but she just kicked at the damn door. Hard. When her foot got tired, she used her fists.

But no one came.

“They’re avoiding us,” she said.

“Maybe.”

“Well, what else could it be, Mr. Rice?”

I pointed at the dawn. “They might just be asleep.”

“Oh,” she said. “Right.”

Ms. Henry looked at her fist, the one that had just done all that pounding.

Then the door popped open. Not all the way, but enough for a little head to peer out. An older Filipina with a small bald spot in her hair.

“Uhh?” she said, sounding both tired and annoyed.

Ms. Henry smiled. “Tia Quina, I’m sorry to wake you up.”

The woman reached into her nightgown and pulled out a pair of glasses in big plastic frames. One of the arms of the glasses was missing so she had to hold the frames with her hand even as they balanced on her small, round nose. The woman scrunched her face, puckered her lips, squinting at Ms. Henry.

“Ehh? Is that Adele? My Lord and my God. How are you?”

“Tired,” she said.

“Yes, yes. I see. And I am tired too, from being wake up just now!” She laughed when she said this, but that didn’t hide her irritation.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Tia Quina looked at me. She held the glasses a little farther down her nose.

“I don’t know this man here. What’s this, Adele? You get marry, hah!”

“This is Ricky Rice. He’s one of the Scholars.”

“Ah, then it is good to meet you, but my Lord and my God it is too early!”

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

Tia Quina waved her other hand at me, as if I was being foolish for apologizing.

She said, “I will forgive. I can forgive.”

Ms. Henry said, “Tia, we’re looking for Ms. Washburn.”

“Ah-ha. I see. She gone, though.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. They pack up, pack up!”

“They?” I asked.

The sleepy woman became somber and dropped the hand that held the glasses.

“The Washburns,” she said. “They go. Even the kiddies.”

“So you’re here all by yourself?” I asked. It seemed spooky to be alone in fifty rooms.

Tia Quina smiled. “Ah, no. No, no. I bring my family in already! My sisters all are staying in the third floor. My Lord and my God, they like it here!”

She laughed quietly, and I thought it was funny too, but Ms. Henry seemed grim.

Tia Quina cut her off before the Gray Lady could lodge any complaints.

“You going now, Miss Adele? Ah? Back to your house they give you?”

Ms. Henry didn’t answer, so I said, “Yes, we are.”