The Devil's Dream: A Nightmare (16 page)

“Why not?” The woman pestered from behind. “You just gone kill ‘em all anyway.”

* * *

M
atthew carried
the last body out of the van, draping the girl over his shoulder and walking the ten feet to the open lighthouse door. He lay her down on the floor, perhaps more gently than he might have two weeks ago. The girl’s eyes followed him, alert, not deadened like some of the others he had brought in.

The sun would rise in another hour.

His body was a wreck. Even Morgant’s near super human strength was fading now. Had this been Matthew’s original body, none of this would be possible; he would have had to devise some other plan. As it stood, he had one more body to hang on his rings, and then today’s work was done. He would head home and he would sleep as long as he could. As long as the voices would let him.

The other fourteen bodies all hung naked, wires through their eyes, and rough metal poles shoved through their hands and feet. Blood dripped down, pitter-pattering on the ground below. Soon their bodies would close up the wounds and the blood leakage would stop. The only difference between the newest bodies and the others he had hung previously was that the new comers possessed a doping agent flowing through their blood streams. The fourteen he had already hung tonight didn’t feel anything. They were in a coma, more or less, unaware of their surroundings. Unaware of the holes in their body, unaware of their blindness.

He would do the same for the last woman.

What are you doing, Matthew?
Rally asked.

Matthew didn’t answer her. He was tired of talking to ghosts for tonight. He had sat out on that road, the back door open, for an hour, his eyes closed and concentrating on the stench growing from the men and women. Not a single car had driven by, but Matthew didn’t have the ability to think about that potential disaster; he only had the capacity to keep from dropping his pants and moving legs until he found a hole he could enter. That’s it. Nothing else. And he sat there for an hour, fighting an instinct that he didn’t understand and could barely control, sat for an hour with his back to the world and the possibility of everything falling down with a single pair of headlights.

And in the end, he stepped out of the van, closed the door, and rode home by himself—no ghost in the front seat, nobody lecturing him to go into the back and have his way so that their grandson could be a step closer to returning.

So, with all due respect, Rally could fuck off for the moment, because she wasn’t going to have anything great to add to this conversation. Matthew was going to add the sedative to the woman, then hoist her upwards and mount her to his ring. Then he would sleep. He was going to sleep knowing that he managed to not fall completely, not yet.

“
I
t has to be
. What other way could he have found out?” Jake said.

“Where’s the phone? Let me see it.”

“Here,” Jake said, pulling it out of his pocket. He took the battery from his other pocket, laying both on the desk. “I didn’t want any chance of him listening if I wasn’t using it, so I removed the battery.”

Art looked at the phone. How fucking dumb was he? If this had been going on, then it had been going on since the very beginning, since almost the day Moore showed up missing. If Jake was right, everything that Art knew, that Jake knew, Brand knew too. No wonder the homeless shelters weren’t panning out, no wonder the police presence in nearly every major city in Massachusetts wasn’t working. Nothing was working because Brand knew every step they were taking. He knew it as they were taking it, and all he had to do was make sure he wasn’t in their heavy-handed way. This didn’t take intricate planning on his part. This took their own stupidity and Art’s inability to move as intelligently as a fucking monkey. That’s all.

“You haven’t had anyone look at it yet?” Art asked.

“No. My dad called this morning and said something that got me thinking, so I brought it in immediately. I mean, Brand knows exactly where my father and mother are right now, knew from the moment I told them to go down there.”

Art sighed and placed his head in his hands, looking down at his wooden desk. “Jesus Christ. This means everything we’ve done over the past few weeks, every single bit of energy put into every single direction has been a waste. None of it was ever going to lead to anything because he already knew what steps we were taking. That’s why the reports are empty every day, full of nothing but what was there the day before. He knew, he knows, and GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!” Art stood up and shoved his laptop off the desk, the cords taking pens and notepads with it, all of it falling to the floor. He stood, hands at his sides, breathing in and out of his mouth, looking at the mess.

“Take that phone and you get it looked at. Get every single piece of it looked at, every single bit of possible technology inside and out of it examined, and you find out if that motherfucker has been listening. You tell those IT motherfuckers I want to know within the hour. Whatever else they’re doing, they stop it right now.”

Jake didn’t say anything else. He picked up the phone and battery, then walked out of Art’s office.

* * *

“
H
ello
?” Brand answered sounding confused, asleep.

“Wasn’t sure this would work,” Art said.

“Brayden?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Every time you call a number pops up, and obviously it doesn’t trace to anything. I just decided to call it back and see what would happen. Looks like it leads to you, huh?”

“Sure does,” Brand said, sounding a bit less confused. “What do you need, Art?”

“Oh, I can’t just call to talk like you do? I have to need something.”

“No. You can call to talk. You’re probably the closest thing to a friend I’ve got left, so I wouldn’t want to put you out if you need an ear. What’s going on?”

“Well. A lot actually. For the first time in a week, a lot is going on, and that feels pretty good. I think we might be able to actually stop this before you send us all into an icy oblivion,” Art said. The anger from ten minutes ago had disappeared. His computer still sat on the ground. His secretary had tried to come in and clean up, but he shooed her away. He had made the mess and he was going to be the one to pick it up. First though, he wanted to call Brand. All the anger had been misplaced. The anger was thinking about the past, thinking about the work they had put in, and how it had all been foiled by Art’s stupid fucking mistake. He overlooked the kid’s cellphone. Everyone else in his organization had their own, and yet, the kid was walking around talking on a private phone. That was in the past though. That was the reason they found nothing on Brand until he decided to call or blow up a building. Art understood the future wouldn’t resemble that. The future—once Jake returned and said,
yes, the phone was being tampered with
—would be completely different. The future would put Art in control of the situation.

“That’s great,” Matthew whispered into the phone. “How are you going to do that?”

Art couldn’t tell if Matthew was asleep or not; it sounded like he was walking a fine line.

“I’m not sure that would be in my best interest. What are you up to? You sound tired. Your brain finally quit on you? Am I listening to your death rattle right now?”

Matthew laughed quietly. “No. Brain is still trucking along. Just resting. Had a busy three days. Busier three days than I may have ever had before, and I just need some sleep. You gotten any sleep lately?”

“I got five hours last night, but I doubt I’ll be getting any tonight. Like I said, big things happening over here and sleeping will slow them down.”

“How’s Jake?” Matthew asked, sounding child-like. “I like him. You like him?”

“Yeah, Jake’s good. Green, but good. Why do you like him?”

“You got an insecure kid on your hands, and most of the time, those kids outwork anyone else. He’s probably working right now, isn’t he?”

Art looked out his open door. Jake was gone, was always gone, only showing up when he had some more news to deliver. The rest of the people under Art sent emails and reports, but none of them were developing Jake’s ideas. None of them thought about the lumber, even if they had been too late, and not a single soul in the entire FBI had thought about the phone. So yeah, the kid was working, the kid was always working—probably more than Art himself.

“Yeah, he’s off trying to find you.”

“Good. Good for him. I really do wish him the best of luck; he’d probably have a hellofa career if his first case hadn’t been this one, because now he’s just going to die like everyone else.”

“I talked to a priest, Matthew.”

“That’s right, you’re Catholic,” Brand said.

“He’s not too worried about what you’re doing.”

Again, the soft chuckle. “Well, one, he’s not a physicist, and two, he’s probably going to heaven. I wouldn’t worry either if those things applied to me. Are you still worried, Art?”

Art wanted to say no, but he wasn’t going to lie right now. He was worried, but also excited. Maybe the priest had been right. Maybe the creator doesn’t allow his pots to destroy each other. Art showed up in Texas, without any authority to do so, and found this kid sitting down there working a case that he probably had no business working—except he had busted ass the previous two years and so his superiors made him detective. Divine Providence. Art had never seen it. He’d read about it, knew the story of Jonah, knew the story of Paul being blinded on the roads and then going on to spread the Good News far and wide. Divine Providence happened before and it could happen now. Maybe miracles weren’t done with. Maybe God moved his hand when he was ready and maybe God had moved his hand with Jake, putting him in the right place at the right time, so that the madman on the other end of this call couldn’t damn them all.

“Yeah, I’m worried, Matthew. I’m going to be worried until you’re dead. Not in jail, not frozen, but completely dead. But I’m coming to realize something pretty important, something maybe the rest of the world doesn’t see fully. You’re not God. You never were.”

* * *

J
ake reported back to Art
. He was right; the phone was wirelessly tapped, beamed up into satellites which garbled the data before beaming back down to Earth, and then bounced through an endless array of servers until Matthew’s encrypted computer grabbed it up. Matthew Brand had access to everything Jake had said over the past few weeks.

There wasn’t any way to trace it.

“No fucking surprise there,” Art said.

The techies were fairly certain Brand couldn’t listen unless the phone was being utilized, as in Jake was on a call.

“There’s that at least,” Art said.

The phone sat by itself in the passenger’s seat of Jake’s car right now, battery in. He’d spoken with Art for two hours about it, brought in other people, all experts that Jake didn’t know in fields that he had never considered. They talked and talked and talked about what could be done.

“It’s a God damn miracle,” Art said at one point, looking at the phone on the table.

Art attributed a lot of today to God, and probably a lot of other people at the table did as well. Jake didn’t know whether that was true or not. Jake did know that they had an opportunity here and all the ideas that were passed around didn’t seem to fully grasp what they could do. Or maybe everyone grasped it, but they didn’t know how to fully capitalize on it. Jake didn’t either.

Not yet at least.

Jake grabbed his new phone from his pocket, the one now issued from the FBI, and dialed up his father, wanting to talk to him, wanting to hear something besides this case for a few minutes.

“Tell me a story,” he said, so his father did.

* * *

O
h
, Jesus. I’ve been drinking and thinking. Your mother is out with some other couple somewhere, and I’m just sitting here on our balcony with a scotch. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I didn’t know how to tell you, exactly. I suppose drunk isn’t the best way, but I might not have the courage later. I don’t know, just listen.

Vietnam wasn’t easy. I don’t really know any other way to put it. It wasn’t easy. I’m not going to sit here and go into detail about what went on over there because I think too many people have done that already. A lot of people that didn’t need to die, did, and that’s about all there is to say on it. When I came back though, to the states, my mind wasn’t right. I’m alright now, and that’s in large part to your mother. Woman can get as drunk as she wants on vacation, because if it wasn’t for her, I probably wouldn’t be much of anything right now. Not that I’m much of anything as it is, but I have enough money in my bank account to see me out of this world and I got it legally for the most part, so that should count for something.

When I came back from Vietnam, a life like I currently have wasn’t a possibility. I planned on drinking a lot, shooting some H, and having sex with as many women as I could find. That, at twenty-three, was what I considered the good life. I met your mom at a Waffle House. She was waitressing, and I was coming in and out of there every week or so. I made sure I sat in her section. Half the time I was drunk and the other half I was in there with some rowdy Army buddies after midnight. But I always sat in her section. She didn’t want anything to do with me, not a thing. She served me, but that’s because she had to. She wasn’t necessarily pleasant about it, either. I didn’t mind. She was a knockout, and trust me on this, you do what it takes to have a knockout serve you food even if you have to pay her. If you understand that, you’re ninety percent ahead of every other man in this world.

So months came and went and I stayed pretty much drunk. Your mom pretty much sober.

One day I said something like, “Why don’t you just go out with me? Just once?”