The Devil's Dream: Waking Up (15 page)

J
oe finally understood hunger
. It wasn't the ravenous need to eat that he had felt before, in another life when he hadn't eaten for eight or ten hours. It wasn't the drop in blood sugar that made one feel faint. It was, more or less, a dull pain housed in his gut. A pain that never left, always telling him to eat something, to eat anything, because his body would start consuming itself if he didn't. Hunger didn't only live in his gut, though; it resided in his bones as well, something that echoed out from even his marrow, saying he needed to do something, that nutrition had to be found or death was certain. It felt like every single cell in his body was aware of the situation, aware and letting him know that he couldn’t continue to sustain this current predicament. Something had to be done.

Except, Joe couldn’t do anything.

Joe could only hang in his position hour after hour, day after day, in darkness. He didn't call out. He didn't try to speak to anyone next to him. He hung and whenever he thought his eyes had fully adjusted to the black around him, that the dark might be his home now, someone turned on a light and brought water to him, which set the hunger aflame again. Like his body was searching through that water for a calorie, just a single calorie that might help him live a little bit longer. Eventually the pain from his eyes and the pain from his stomach would recede again and he would be left to hang in this room by himself. Technically, people surrounded him, a lot of people, with more brought in every few days, but they weren't real. They were dolls, lifeless beings that he only saw when the lights came on and water was brought in. Some gobbled up the water like greedy hamsters and others hung without a single want in the world. It didn't matter, none of them were real. They weren't anyone that Joe could feel for or bond with.

Whoever controlled this organization had to understand that the people he sold weren’t ending up as sex slaves, that something much worse awaited them, thus this treatment—it didn’t matter what they looked or felt like in the end, because they wouldn’t live long anyway. Why waste the capital on keeping them looking pretty?

All Joe could do was wait, and hope. There was still some of that left. Not a lot. Most of it had been spent liberally in the darkness of this room, spent on the pain that his shoulders screamed at him constantly. Spent on that large hose that sprayed him down and spent on the food that never came and the resulting hunger. But he hadn't spent all of it yet. He still hoped that this hadn't been for nothing. That the people holding him here, that the people barely keeping him alive, that they were doing it for a reason. They were doing it because they would sell him to Matthew Brand. That at some point, not in the too distant future, he would come in contact with Brand and then Manning would show up with guns and a whole lot of people ready to kill the man. Joe knew he wouldn't be able to kill Brand, but if he could watch, just witness him die—then all this would be worth it. Hanging here like some Christmas ornament would be worth it. Everything worth it if he could just see Brand die.

There was still just a little hope left for that.

"
W
e need him
."

Art paced back and forth in front of Gyle's desk, not realizing he was doing it. He wasn't even completely sure if what he said was true; they didn't exactly need Jake now. He had given them Brand, or if not exactly that, moved them as close to Brand as they would get. If Jake stayed in jail or got out, there wasn't much left for him to do. They were waiting, monitoring Welch—watching for Brand to show and Welch to begin moving. They didn't need Jake for that, and unless this fell through, they wouldn't need any more ideas. Now was the time for execution. They didn't need him and still Art couldn't handle knowing that Jake sat in a jail cell, wearing a white jump suit and living in a cage. He'd only been in less than twenty-four hours, but that was too long. He didn't belong in there at all; what he had done, whether or not Art agreed with it, had given them the greatest chance at finding Brand they had in this whole enterprise. He did what no one else wanted to, but did what was needed.

"There's no one else on my team that is going to generate the kind of ideas he does, Gyle," Art said, not looking up, just walking ten feet one way, then ten feet the other.

"Is there anyone else on your team?" Gyle asked. "It seems like Deschaine is your inner circle, that there's no one else."

Art shook his head, staring at the floor. "The kid is good, Gyle. We can't leave him in jail. I need him if we're going to finish this thing."

"No you don't. All you're going to need is for Brand to show up to the same place he's been showing up to for a month. Deschaine doesn't need to be there for that."

Art stopped, looking up. "So we just leave him in jail? We just leave him sitting in there?"

"What do you want me to do?"

Whatever it takes.
The thought was on the verge of leaving his mouth, but he couldn't say it. He had already said too much by questioning how they could just leave Jake in jail. There had to be a business case for this or else Jake wasn't getting out. It couldn't just be Art's desperation to see him freed from jail because no one else cared about that.

"Get him under house arrest; put him under my purview. He's not allowed to be more than one hundred yards away from me at any given time. I'll wear an ankle bracelet too; he'll be my responsibility."

"And if he does something else stupid?"

"Then it's my responsibility," Art said.
Stupid.
That's what Gyle was calling what Jake had done. He was saying that shooting a criminal, shooting someone that had hidden information from the FBI and put the entire world at jeopardy was stupid, something that shouldn't have been done. Art's eyes went back to the floor and he shook his head slowly. "You know what he did wasn't stupid, Gyle. What he did might have just saved us all. It wasn't legal, but he's not a murderer. Manning is going to make it—"

"He might not walk again, though, right?"

"Maybe not, but maybe he shouldn't have lied to us either. Maybe had he told us the truth when we showed up the first time, he wouldn't be in this situation. What Jake did wasn't stupid. It might have been the smartest thing any of us have done regarding Brand yet." He met Gyle's eyes. "If we catch Brand, we catch him because Jake decided to do something that none of us had the balls to do. He sacrificed himself, his own life and career, so that we could catch him. We can't just leave him in jail."

Fuck it.
That was the real reason, right there—the only reason. So much for the business case. They couldn't leave Jake in jail because he was braver than the rest of them, because he had thrown himself on a grenade and it just so happened that the grenade happened to be attached to laws.

"Maybe you're right," Gyle said. "Whether or not what he did was right is inconsequential to me, though. I can't have him doing anything like this again, because if he does, all of this comes right back on me. If he goes around shooting anymore unarmed US citizens, he's never going to get out of jail, you understand that? I'll make sure he stays in a cell for the rest of his life, because I don't need the headache, Art. Because I can't take the headache right now. So if I get him out, he's your responsibility. He plays by the rules until this thing is over."

Art nodded. "He will."

"Go ahead, then."

* * *

J
ake opened
the passenger door and stepped inside the car. "Any news on Manning?"

"He's going to live," Art said, sticking his key in the ignition. "They're unsure if he's going to walk or not, though."

"I want to go see him," Jake said as the car rolled out of the parking lot.

"You may, but that doesn't make it the best idea. You might be feeling bad right now, Jake, but that guy isn't going to want to hear how sorry you are or anything like that. If anything, he's just going to tell you to get the hell out. You don't have any business being in there."

Jake looked out the window and said nothing else. He wanted to see Manning, but knew Art was right, knew that he couldn't. He spent the last eighteen hours thinking about Charles Manning. Remembering how warm the blood felt on his own hands as he tied the sheets around his knees, trying to stop the flow, trying to save him. He had been certain Manning was going to die, was going to bleed out before Art or anyone else showed.
Trying to save him.
That had to be a joke, because one didn't try to save the person that one put two bullets into. And still, Jake tried to keep him from dying once he got the information he needed.

What would he say to Manning if he showed up? What could he say? Was he sorry? He didn't know. Something had hardened inside him after that second bullet, hardened and then cracked like glass, sending tiny spider webs throughout it. He thought he might have been sorry for whatever hardened in himself, for whatever broke—but not for Manning. Manning had been about to doom the world because of his own quest for vengeance, and someone needed to stop him. If those two bullets taught Jake anything, it was that Manning wouldn't have been stopped without them. He would have sat in a jail cell forever rather than open his mouth about what he was up to. The man was tough; it took two bullets and a whole lot of blood to get him to speak. Was Jake sorry for that? A week ago, he couldn't have imagined...torturing someone. And that was the word, he wouldn't try to shy away from it. But now?

"I had to do it," Jake said.

"I know. That's why you're out of jail," Art said. "No more though. Nothing that could even hint at illegality. Until this thing is over, everything you do falls back on me."

"I know."

"Gyle wouldn't have let you out, I don't think. What you did is creating a lot of waves for him and he's not happy about it."

Jake shook his head. "Wouldn't want to cause him any discomfort. Has there been any movement from Welch?"

"He let you out and that’s something. Don’t forget it,” Art said, looking at Jake. “Nothing from Welch, though. We're listening to everything, but it's mostly silence. We thought about showing up and just taking over the whole operation, then waiting for Brand to show up and apprehending him there, but it's too much risk. If anything slips and Brand gets wind that it's not right, we'll lose him again. We're going to let it play out exactly as it normally would, and when Brand moves him, we're going to be right there.”

H
enry watched
his mother walk around below him, which was strange, because he hadn't told his mother where he was. He hadn't sent any emails or postcards from his cross, now hanging high in the lighthouse again, thanks to Brand having hoisted him back to his normal position.

Sweat beaded on Henry's forehead and he felt like the lighthouse might morphed into a furnace. His body radiated heat.

A fever, Henry. That's what this is.

He thought it, but the thought flew away like a frightened bird, unable to gain any real traction. Few of this thoughts gained traction anymore, all of them disappearing almost as quickly as they arrived. He had a second to recognize them but no time to dwell, no time to process.

How long had he been hanging in here alone? He looked down at his blood below him, the blood that had fallen when Brand cut into his foot. It had dripped downward during Henry's ascent to his usual spot, and he listened to it pitter-patter on the ground beneath him. The blood was drying now, he could see that, so he must have been alone for a good bit of time. Where was Brand? Where had he gone? Henry was beginning to think that he might beg Brand to kill him next time they saw each other, rather than beg him to be let go. There was no surviving this, no walking away. It was time to die and Henry understood that.

Timetodietimetodietimetodie,
the thought fluttered through his fever induced mind.

His mother walked into the lighthouse, though, and that shocked him some.

"Henry?" She called out.

"Mom! I'm up here!" He tried to scream down, but his throat only allowed a raspy, phlegm filled whisper to come out. He spit out the garbage his lungs produced. It landed on top of his dried blood, but Henry didn't even try to listen to the splatter. Why was his mother here? Why had she come, and, dear God, what if Brand showed back up? What if he found her? She would be hanging, if not like him, then like the others—with wires sinking into her eyes and poles sticking from her hands and feet. "Mom!" He said again, his voice a bit stronger, but not much.

She didn't look up, didn't hear him. She closed the door to the lighthouse and took a step inside.

"Henry? Where are you?"

"I'm up here, Mom," he said, but the words turned into a sob because she couldn't hear him. Unless she looked up, she would walk around the entire time without ever seeing him hanging above because he couldn't speak loud enough. He couldn't make her hear him.

She walked directly below him, her right foot stepping in his blood. What was she doing? Why would she step in that?

She looked up and Henry saw her eyes for the first time. They were black—or rather they looked black, but there were no eyes in her face. Instead, the black spots were holes in her head, filled with black maggots that fell out onto her cheeks and slid down her face to the ground below. His mother was crying maggots.

"You left me, Henry. You left me and your brother and your dad's not here anymore. You left us alone to come here with this man," she said, those sightless eyes still seeing him somehow. "You left me."

"No, mom. No, I didn't. I didn't leave. I'm here. I'm up here. Just get me down and I'll come home with you and I'll never leave again."

Henry blinked and his mother was gone. No blind woman staring up at him—no foot standing in the middle of his blood and phlegm.

She wasn't there at all
, he thought.

And for the second time that day, Henry started to cry.

* * *

A
rthur Morgant looked
at the man and woman standing beside the pick-up truck. They were arguing about something and that was good. It looked like the woman might be close to slapping the man, actually.

He needed them focused on something else besides him—each other would work great. This Brand guy had fucked up his once perfect body. Now the thing barely moved. Each step he took hitched and he was even finding it hard to get a real deep breath inside him. All that was fine though. He was almost back for good and when he finally became the owner of this body again, he'd fix everything up.

He didn't know how much time he had right now, before Brand returned, but he planned on making the minutes count.

Fuck Brand
, he thought. He meant it too. He was going to take this woman because he wanted her, but he also recognized that Brand
would
return and Arthur wanted to leave a nice present for him when he did. A new body, one that Brand hadn't brought into this thing himself, and see how he liked that. Arthur understood, kind of, what Brand was up to. He didn't care about it too much because he understood that as soon as he took over once and for all, Brand's nonsense would end. The cops and all those other agencies wouldn't be interested in him anymore because Arthur didn't plan on blowing up the world or whatever else it was that Brand wanted to do.

Arthur caught glimpses of formulas and other random things that Brand polluted his mind with, although he didn't understand any of them.

"You gotsta be careful," his grandmother said. She was sitting in the passenger seat of the white van. "You cain't get caught grabbing this girl, you understand? They'll put you right back in that freezer."

He paid her no mind. The old bitch had been telling him to be careful his whole life. She missed the one fucking time he needed her though, the time he got busted, missed the fact that he was actually assaulting an undercover cop, and missed the whole troop of police officers when they ganged up on him and beat him to the ground.
Where had you been then, grandma?
Not there so he didn't give a shit what she had to say now. He'd be careful, of course he would—what did she think he was? Some kind of idiot? No one here would catch him. The bar was a single story building with a red, illuminated sign hanging from the front. The parking lot was full of cars and these two were fighting at the back of the pick-up truck, and empty vehicles surrounded them on both sides. It was only midnight and while there people were smoking cigarettes near the door of the bar, these two were at least a hundred yards away. No one would hear Arthur when he moved.

Another man named Arthur—Art—came to mind, floating through the same way those goddamn formulas did, but Morgant pushed the name away. He didn't know who the other Arthur was and he didn't care to know either. Just another memory Brand produced that soon wouldn’t mean anything. Soon those memories wouldn't exist at all.

Arthur opened the door of his van and stepped outside, using the door as a kind of crutch to make sure he didn't trip. His body was really hurting; he couldn't sit here and deny it. Brand had not been careful with it, and the thing had been a damn near perfect specimen when he first took it. Now it felt like some kind of zombie, hitching and stumbling when it once had moved like a machine.
It's okay. You'll have it back soon and then you'll get it to working right.

He reached back into the van and grabbed the baseball bat.

He wound his way through the cars quietly, slowly, being careful not to fall and careful not to make any noise. He could hear the man and woman shouting, hear them arguing about some nonsense that wouldn't matter in the slightest very soon. People were so fucking stupid, always arguing about shit that didn't mean anything.

Arthur moved forward, and for a few seconds, his body performed as it always had. Perhaps it was his focus or perhaps he was already fixing the damned thing, but all his muscles worked in perfect coordination. He lunged forward with the bat, swinging like a professional player, and connected with the back of the man's head. It hit with a dull
whack!
Dull because the man's skull gave away almost immediately, collapsing in on the brain beneath. The man fell to the ground, his knees unhinging immediately. Arthur didn't stop though, he went forward again, grabbing the woman by her hair as she stood in stunned silence. He grabbed the bat near the top and pummeled it into her temple with much less force than he used on the man. He felt the woman sag in his arms, without her ever having made a sound.

* * *

M
atthew looked at the woman
, no longer frightened. He held his head cocked to the side, staring at the body as if it was the first time he had ever seen a dead person. He had no memory of where she came from, no memory of anything, really, after stabbing Henry with the scalpel.

Morgant brought this woman back.

She was probably alive when he brought her in, but no more. It looked like Morgant had lost it somewhere during his rape, bashing the woman's head completely in. Matthew could see a piece of her skull poking into her right eye, could see the bone shoving through her skin, even with all the blood covering her face. How much force had Morgant hit her with? How much force did it take to crack the bone inside a human’s head?

Matthew sat down in the kitchen chair, his body actually falling as much as sitting. Had anyone seen this? Had anyone witnessed Morgant grab this woman, bring her back to this apartment? Matthew didn't know, couldn't know. How much jeopardy had Morgant put his whole operation in? Part of him was glad he hadn't had to witness the rape, hadn't had to experience it as he had with the old woman, but another part of him feared everything else he didn't know because he hadn't been there.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Matthew asked the air around him. The question was directed at Morgant even if no answer would come back.

He couldn't stay here any longer. He couldn't leave any trace of himself and little trace of this body either. His DNA was surely all over the dead woman, Morgant seeming to not care about anything but his next mount. There was no controlling him any longer—Matthew understood that. Sheeb was right; Morgant would return and Matthew wasn't going to be able to stop him. He was already losing the battle over this body, and in spectacular fashion. Deep wounds still crept up his arms from where he had used the blade on it, and how long did that keep the voices, keep Morgant, at bay? A few hours at most. Matthew didn't have enough skin, or blood in his body, to continue cutting—not with the short amount of time it bought.

He stood from the chair and walked out of the kitchen, heading to the closet in his bedroom. He went to the back and pulled out two gas cans, then carried them into the kitchen. Both brimmed with gas. He kept the gasoline in case he needed to destroy this apartment and evidence of himself, but not because he had raped a woman. Never because he had taken advantage of someone like that.

It wasn't you
, he told himself.

Ask her if she can tell the difference between you and Morgant,
Rally responded.
This is all so far beneath you I don't even understand how you got here. About to pour gasoline on a girl that's not even thirty years old to cover up a rape that you may or may not have participated in—you don't even know if you did or not. Why don't you pour it on yourself, Matthew? Just let yourself go up with it and stop all of this. If you hadn't sold your soul before, you're selling it now. Except you're not even selling it. Morgant is, and he's selling it one rape at a time. You're complicit though, because you could stop it any time. But you don't.

Matthew shook his head; she was too persuasive. Too—

Too right, Matthew. I'm too right. You're something barely recognizable anymore, something disgusting.

This woman's death was tragic, for sure, but no more tragic than Hilman's, no more tragic than Rally's own. Their deaths had not been mourned and no justice had been paid out for them. Not enough justice, certainly. So no, she wasn't right. If he had to sell his own soul to make sure that the world paid for what they did, then so be it. Even this woman—lying dead with her skull in pieces beneath her skin—hadn't raised a hand to help Matthew. Hadn't said a word to anyone that maybe the world should lay off just a tiny bit and allow Matthew a chance to breathe. No, she had sat quietly, probably even cheered Moore on four years ago. Matthew didn't wish rape on her but in the end, whether under Morgant's rule or his own, she was dead. He'd sell his soul, maybe not happily, but he would sell it because finishing was more important than any hope of an afterlife.