The Truth Collector (18 page)

Malcolm paddled over to the pond's edge.

Cog waited there on his hands and knees, shrieking. Saliva bubbled in the corners of his mouth as he spit out nonsense and curses.

Malcolm looked at the man, opened his mouth to laugh, and shut it. There wasn't any fear left for him. Only pity. He clawed at the edge of the pond with his face twisted in pain, eyes fixed hungrily on the liquid. Some invisible yoke held him back.

Malcolm cupped his hand and splashed onto the shore. Cog started sobbing and jumped away from the little puddle. They watched it evaporate within seconds. All that it left behind was a golden stain where the liquid had been.

Cog held up his hands. “No! You can't
waste
… you have to stop.” More sobs. “You have to stop right now. Please.”

Malcolm lowered his hand. Spilling as much liquid as he could had been the plan before he got down here. But that was before he got in and felt what the pond did to him. Now, the thought of splashing all that precious liquid onto the shore made his stomach turn. It seemed like some ridiculous cosmic price…

A price he wasn't willing to pay.

But the pond had shown him another way.

Malcolm paddled over to the edge and stopped right next to Cog. The man had his head buried in his hands. He was too busy apologizing to his masters to even notice him. Malcolm forced his body forward, each movement a struggle against an intense, unseen current. That current wanted him to stay right where he was. It wanted him to float in that heavenly water forever.

He gritted his teeth and stepped onto the shore.

“Malcolm,” a voice called.

Malcolm turned and found Paul standing at the edge of the girls' playground with Nora and Carol in tow. Then he turned back to Cog. He rushed forward while that golden liquid still covered him. While the fear from before was still gone.

“No,” Cog said. He tried to scramble away, but his body went limp as soon as Malcolm's waterlogged hand touched his arm. Malcolm lifted the servant into the air without the slightest strain.

“Be careful,” Nora said, her voice echoing on the water. She and Paul watched from across the chamber while her friend covered her eyes.

Malcolm trudged forward with the man over his head. First there was pressure, then burning. It started in his hands and spread quickly. Each step from the pond was more difficult than the last. The incredible strength that liquid had pumped into him began to fizzle. Twitching fingers became twitching arms and twitching shoulders too. The man he carried seemed to suck the life from them, growing stronger as Malcolm weakened.

Cog stirred to life when Malcolm lowered him into a fireman's carry. His weight piled on his shoulders and pressed down. He screamed, raking fingernails across Malcolm's neck and opening up more cuts. But Malcolm pressed on with his reluctant passenger, one foot in front of the other up the little slope.

He pushed himself up the hill, trampling vegetation until the ground leveled off and turned brown. The tanks were close now. Malcolm lunged for them on wobbly legs. Paul and the girls were here as well, too dumbfounded to do anything but dive out of his way at the last second. Mortal men weren't supposed to rule down here. His dip in the pond had upset the natural order of things.

Malcolm aimed for the tank on the end – the one he'd floated in just a few minutes earlier. Cog kicked and clawed as the realization of what Malcolm was about to do struck him. “Put me down,” he said, hyperventilating into Malcolm's ear. “Once master and mistress get a hold of...”

Malcolm grunted, thrust his body upward.

He and the wretch he carried made it halfway up the ladder on the tank before his legs quivered and refused to climb higher. With one hand Malcolm twisted the manhole cover and revealed the churning liquid. The other was busy peeling Cog off him, guiding him towards the opening.

“No!”

Cog's mouth opened, words pouring out of it even after his face dipped beneath the liquid. His body jerked. He screamed once more and disappeared for a moment behind a column of bubbles.

Something began to hum.

Then Cog's body went limp.

They watched him float for a long time – Malcolm and the girls and Paul over at the control box he'd flipped on – unsure whether to trust their own eyes.

Finally Malcolm turned away from the tank. “That should… buy us a few minutes at least.” He held his stomach, but it did nothing to ease the churning there. Standing in this spot was draining his strength. The last of that golden liquid's effects pulsed through him in a final, agonizing burst.

Then there was nothing but the man who'd come in here. A man with all his foibles and complexities. A man with all his weaknesses.

Paul smiled at him, oblivious. “Look.”

Malcolm's eyes followed his finger. Above them, Charlotte had reopened the hole in the ceiling. She sat close to the mirror in the same bedroom as before, offering a weary smile when they noticed her. She looked like she'd been through an ordeal of her own.

Malcolm sighed. “Thank God. Can we get out of here now?”

“Yeah,” Paul said. “But what about the other girls?” He jerked his thumb at the boys on the other side of the chamber. They played on like they hadn't noticed a thing. “What about them?”

Malcolm looked up at Charlotte and raised his arms. She shook her head slowly, the smile disappearing from her face.
No time
, she mouthed.
I'm sorry
.

Nora's eyes filled with tears. She squeezed her friend's hand. “We have to take Carol. I'm not going anywhere without Carol.”

Malcolm put an arm around her shoulder. “Don't worry. She's coming too.”

Nora slipped away from his hand. “What about my other friends? Can we come back and get them?”

Malcolm looked over at the tanks. Cog was right where they'd left him, floating with his eyes closed. A layer of fluid covered the mark on his cheek. “Sure,” he said. “We'll come back and get them.”

Nora looked up at him with her huge eyes. “You
promise
? You have to promise.”

Malcolm swallowed. His tongue ached to lie to her. Yes. Of course we'll bring all your friends back. Then maybe we'll have a big party after. How does that sound? But the way that man floated in the tank with the lunatic piano music still piping into the room… here was a place that had drifted too far. Here was a place on the verge of destruction. He could almost feel its walls pressing in on them. He wasn't sure they'd ever see it again…

And what he saw next erased any doubt.

The dripping had started again. Malcolm heard it between one of the piano player's fumbles. He ran down to it without a word and stopped at the edge. He reached out his hands when he saw what spilled into the pond, but he didn't dare touch it.

Blobs of black ran through a pipe and dribbled into the golden liquid. They lingered at the pipe's edge, stretched down in long, sticky strings before falling off to pollute the pond. Each drop stabbed Malcolm in the chest. There was no coming back from those drops. That tank had sucked out the contents of Cog's heart and found only blackness.

Malcolm held his stomach and nearly vomited. That slice of unfathomable beauty – something he'd never be able to produce or even see in his own world – was gone. Now it was an oil patch, boiling angrily as the black mixed with the gold.

Paul came over and pulled him away from the edge. “Come on, man. We have to get out here.”

Malcolm nodded, his eyes still fixed on the festering pond. “All of that goodness. All of that purity of heart and mind and –”

“Stop it,” Paul said. “The girl knows how to get out of here. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you.” He snapped his head away from the pond before it sucked him in again. Paul led them back to the tanks where the girls waited. They set off at a run with Charlotte shining her light before them. Across the dirt patch and onto the boy's side of the chamber they went. They passed mop-headed boys and buzzed-hair boys and muscular teenage bullies. But they all stopped playing and lowered their heads when Malcolm and the others got too close.

They knew not to talk or even look. They knew not to ask questions.

“Up there,” Nora said. Malcolm had scooped her up into his arms, and now she tapped his shoulder and pointed. “The little stairs. See?”

Malcolm squinted and made out a faint wooden spiral at the edge of the chamber. They ran for it past groups of boys and their curious looks. Through fields and along footpaths they ran, even cutting through a soccer game without slowing their pace. Malcolm led them straight for the stairs. When he looked back Cog was still stuck in the tank. But why were his legs insisting to move so fast?

Paul was lagging, dragging an even slower Carol behind him. They panted and pleaded for him to slow down.

Yet Malcolm pushed on. “Later,” he said between breaths. He didn't look back at them. He didn't look at anything besides the spiral staircase across the grass. Larger and larger it grew. Closer and closer.

Just out of reach.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

They had just made their first turn up the spiral when the earthquake started.

Nora squeezed his neck and screamed. “They're home,” she said. “Master and mistress are home. And they're angry.”

Malcolm shook his head, unable to make sense of her words. He doubled his pace up the stairs instead. Climbing and winding and getting dizzy. He focused his eyes on the step right in front of them – even as the children still inside began to scream. No laughter now. No ball games. Just a giant whoosh of air. It circled the room as they circled the stairs.

Faster and faster. Angry.

Something else whooshed by in the other direction. There were two of them now, stalking like hawks for the perfect time to swoop.

“Come on,” Malcolm said, talking to his own feet as much as anyone else. He couldn't climb faster than those things flew. Any idiot could see that. But something pressed him on anyway. Malcolm climbed with Nora on his shoulders, pulling Carol along while Paul pushed her from behind.

He peeked back over the edge.

There wasn't a handrail, so Malcolm leaned into the staircase to steady himself in the wind. He saw the tower with its spotlight and the row of gleaming tanks. From there his eyes followed the pipes to where they jutted out over the golden pond.

Except it wasn't golden anymore. That pond glared up at him now. Darkness poured over the sides, spreading like a cancerous tumor, staining grass and flowers and trees. Around that pond buzzed two whirlwinds. They moved so fast he couldn't tell if they were running or flying. But they slowed as he watched them. Gradually the whirlwinds softened, transformed into man and woman. They stopped at the pond's edge and crumpled to the ground.

Then the woman screamed.

The sound chilled Malcolm in his bones. It was all the motivation he needed to start climbing again. He pulled the others behind him, driven by the whip of that terrible scream. It echoed around the chamber. And it grew louder. Louder and louder, until Malcolm swore he felt fluid coming out of his ears. But he couldn't stop to check. Every time she screamed a gust of wind buffeted and nearly knocked them off the staircase.

Paul yelled something, but a scream covered it up. Malcolm kept them pressed against the column running up the staircase. Up and up they went. The stairs turned away from the middle of the chamber, and Malcolm found himself almost even with the top of a cliff face. Another level of earth jutted out here. It spun when he looked at it from all the climbing, but it seemed flat enough.

Nora thumped him on the back of the head.

“Up there! That's where master and mistress watch us play.”

Malcolm kept climbing, covered his ears when the woman screamed again. A few more steps. Then they were even with the rock ledge. But instead of a landing or walkway, a gap separated the stairs from the earth. He stuck out his foot in the empty space just as a gust of wind whipped through the chamber. The staircase wobbled, leaning from side to side before a splintering sound filled Malcolm's ears. They clung to the support column as a torrent of loose stones fell from the cliff.

The staircase was unhinged from the ceiling now, ripped apart by the woman's scream. They surfed the stairs while others crumbled and fell.

“Jump!” Paul said.

Malcolm froze at the threshold. The gap was too wide. How was he supposed to make that suicide leap? Then the woman screamed again, the staircase tilted, and the decision was made for him.

Falling now, aiming his body at the ledge, leaping off and letting go. The world spun. He landed hard, but when he skidded to a stop somehow his body wasn't broken. Malcolm opened his eyes and found Nora wrapped around his neck and Paul kneeling on the ledge behind them. His mouth was open in a silent scream, swallowed up by the chaos below. The staircase was gone.

Malcolm and Paul worked together to pull Carol up onto the ledge. She'd attached herself to the cliff face like algae on an abandoned swimming pool: stubborn, and with a total disregard for all the events occurring around it. Malcolm and Paul pried her fingers off their holds and grabbed her under her armpits. She shrieked. Those dead eyes came to life for a moment, then shut off again when they got her to safety.

But it wasn't safety for long.

Malcolm looked down into the chamber. The man and woman were still kneeling at the pond's edge. They held hands and watched the blackness spill over the sides. It crept across the chamber quickly, withering grass and flowers and every living thing it touched. The boys who'd been playing watched the swath of black approach like a tide. They pointed and yelled and ran for the tiny doors leading to their bedrooms. The man and woman didn't even seem to notice them. They just sat in the black puddle without moving.

Then they tilted their heads back and screamed.

Their voices snapped tree limbs and swing sets and dislodged rocks from the walls. Around them the ground rippled as edges of the chamber trembled and fell inward. Malcolm blinked. The last drop of gold in the pond disappeared. Now that diseased liquid wouldn't stop. It wouldn't stop until it swallowed the room and everything in it.

Nora pounded on his back and pointed to the other end of the ledge. Paul was already running, pulling the older girl with him. Malcolm took one last look at the chamber floor. Chunks of it broke apart and stacked at the edge of the pond. They slid into its blackness, disappearing into a seemingly bottomless pit. Above them, the brilliant blue paint that had served as a sky cracked and flaked off to cover the scene in acrylic ash.

Malcolm turned away and ran. They ran for the shadowy end of the ledge while the ground behind them fell away into the abyss. Another flight of stairs waited in the shadows. A light flicked on, revealing these stairs were much shorter than the spiral. Malcolm looked up and found the pinprick light. Charlotte watched them, biting her lip and urging them on with her eyes. They ran up the little stairway where the light bounced, turned a corner, and hit carpet again.

Paul pushed through a set of French doors. They followed him into another corridor, this one even more ornate than the entryway. Charlotte's light led them past crowns and gems and fancy paintings along the walls. They pushed their battered feet over the carpet, never stopping to catch their breath or admire the art. Nora pounded Malcolm's shoulders. He didn't need to ask what she meant.

Hurry
, those pounds said.
As fast as you can
.

He passed Paul and took the lead. They tracked Charlotte's light along the hallway. It had been perfectly straight so far, but now it began to curve, switch back and twist in on itself. It narrowed and widened at random. One second they'd run shoulder to shoulder and the next they'd be forced into a single file. Malcolm looked at Paul and watched the desperation grow in his eyes.

They were lost. Hopelessly and completely lost.

Yet Charlotte's light and Nora demanded they go on.

Behind them came screams from the chamber. But they were softer now, replaced by the groaning and rattling of earth. The ground started to tremble and tossed Malcolm into the wall. He looked back and found black splotches mixing in with the velvet carpet.

“This whole place is coming down,” he said.

“We're almost there,” Nora said. “Where master and mistress sleep.”

They twisted deeper into the labyrinth until Malcolm was so dizzy he had to use the walls like handrails to steady himself. Breathless, stuck in an endless nightmare within nightmares. Yet those big brown eyes – the enthusiasm behind them – drove him on. They curved left, then right and finally the corridor straightened.

Another door stared back at them.

This one was simple oak. It filled Malcolm's body with a new vigor. He ran for it, pulled it open, and found himself in a master bedroom. The others followed, and Paul shut the door behind them.

“This is where master and mistress sleep,” Nora said. “There's another door here. Mistress said so.”

Malcolm opened doors which revealed closets and a bathroom. He went through them all, but they weren't the doors they needed. Paul and Nora took the bedroom apart, throwing drawers and bed covers to the floor while Carol stood and watched.

“Where is it?” Malcolm said. He looked up at Charlotte and the little girl beside him, but neither had any answers. Then the ground quaked and his legs buckled. He caught himself just before his face crashed into the hardwood flooring. When he looked back at the entrance he found the door hanging from its hinges. Beyond it the velvet corridor – once flat – bulged like a mountain range.

“Come on,” he said. He pulled the covers aside and looked under the bed. Empty. Then he turned his attention to a rug resting on the floor. He peeled it back. More floorboards, but
different
floorboards.

These were a single unit instead of separate planks. Malcolm tapped at the edges and produced a hollow echo. He wedged his fingers between the large plank and the smaller ones around it.

He pulled upward.

The large plank swung open, revealing a black hole. “Guys. I think I found something.” They gathered around it while the bedroom buckled and sent pictures clattering to the floor. Charlotte shined the light into the opening. It was dark and its edges were smooth – like they'd been polished. A tunnel dropped a few feet before it angled away and disappeared.

“Is that it?” Paul said, looking at Nora.

She bit her lip and looked into the hole. “Mistress told me she has a slide. She said one day I could ride on it. When she takes me home.” She nodded, more confident now.

Malcolm looked at Paul while Carol hovered nearby with that empty expression on her face. Another scream filled the air, this one much closer. It couldn't have come all the way from the chamber… but from the corridor? The ground trembled again, and a lamp shattered behind them. At the entrance to the bedroom, black fluid stained the carpet and oozed onto the hardwood.

“Woohoo!”

When Malcolm looked back at the secret door the girl was gone. Paul lingered at the edge with outstretched hands. Frozen for a moment until the realization of what just happened caught up with him. He closed his eyes, kissed his hand, and jumped into the opening after her. Malcolm and Carol listened to his scream bubble up and fade into the earth.

Then she shook her head at him, pointing obstinately at the corridor from where they came. Malcolm grabbed her and shoved her into the opening just as the bed frame snapped. She disappeared into the hole without a sound.

He looked into the doorway…

What he saw there made his face turn white.

Then he jumped into the hole after Carol, pulling the secret door shut on his way down. Twisting and turning he fell. A smooth tube dropped him into the bowels of the earth. Faster and faster, around and around, gathering speed in total darkness. Nora and Paul left their screams like landmarks for him to follow. Malcolm added his own. They screamed and screamed until he lost all sense of direction and time. The momentum whipped his hair back and glued him to the tube's surface.

Finally, after Malcolm had given up hope the ride would ever end, the tube began to flatten.

It shot him around a corner and spat him out into a pool of water.

When he came to the surface he found the others wading there, gathering their bearings with confused looks. Malcolm coughed up water and waded to a shallower part where his feet could touch. They were in a private cave – smaller than the one where they'd been shipwrecked. The water was fresh, and free of swimming horrors. A few paces from the end of the slide, a speedboat was moored to a post on a patch of seaweed and rocks.

Paul guided them over to it. Malcolm got onto the boat and untied the rope. The engine started cleanly, and Paul steered it away from the little beach. Charlotte's light splashed across the surface. They followed it until the rocks opened up, floating through the cave's mouth into open water. Malcolm watched with a kind of detached horror – like replaying a tape of a crime that had already been committed.

His head was elsewhere, still trapped up in that bedroom.

He closed his eyes.

The memory – the last thing he'd seen before half jumping, half falling into the tube – looped in his mind. The man and the woman watching him from the bedroom entrance, holding hands. Their faces were different – his cheek bore a spade and hers a piano – but they shared the same eyes. Inhuman eyes, burning red horrors without pupils or lashes or a shred of compassion. Neither of them said a word. They just watched him linger there at that secret door.

I'll find you
, those eyes said.
I'll kill you for what you've done
.

Then the woman screamed and nearly burst Malcolm's eardrums. The lovers lunged into the bedroom. He tried to scream, but terror had sewn his throat shut like a knitting needle. All he could do was disappear into that tunnel and hope his trembling fingers shut the door tight…

He shuddered. The long ride down hadn't done anything to dull that memory. “Hurry,” Malcolm said. “They're right behind us.”

Paul looked over at him. “They?”

“Master and mistress,” Nora said, holding Carol close. “They get mad sometimes. But I never saw them get
that
mad.”