Weavers (25 page)

CHAPTER 58

Robert was up and running.
Darryl had the kid functioning like an investment banker, using Robert’s already impressive computing skills as deftly as he could. Robert was stealing like a career criminal, snuffling out and snatching little bits and pieces from everywhere he could gain access. On top of that, there was no sign that the work he’d done was attracting the slightest attention. Darryl could feel the kid’s excitement as the numbers in his personal bank account grew from five figures to six. Robert was off of the leash and loving every second of it. Best of all, he had no idea that he’d been bent. The boy thought that every move he was making was of his own invention.

“It sounds perfect,” said Terry, and Darryl smiled in answer. It sounded perfect because it was perfect. The kid was turning out exactly like Darryl knew that he could, how Vincent should have turned out. Before he’d unearthed him and set him to work, Darryl had envisioned running a few kids like Robert, but the more he thought about it now, the more that seemed like a mistake. As it was, he already wasn’t in Robert as much as he would have liked. The boy could go off the rails so easily. All he’d need to do was get a little too greedy too fast and he’d get caught. Darryl wouldn’t be in any legal crosshairs, of course, but the money would still be lost. At the rate Robert was paying out, that number would be in the millions in just another month or two, and Darryl had no intention of giving that up.

The plan the kid had invented to steal from his dad’s clients was blisteringly simple: steal so little that no one would notice, and even if they did notice they wouldn’t care very much. After all, who monitored the amount of spare change in their bank account? Darryl certainly never had, and he had a feeling that the bigger the dollar column number got, the more invisible the pennies became. Not that they stayed pennies for long, of course. A million of the copper disks were worth ten thousand paper dollars. Ten million pennies? A hundred thousand, and that was still just the beginning.

Darryl was chuckling to himself as he ran these happy little calculations when he became aware of the sounds coming from Terry’s room. Terry had been hiding out more and more lately, leaving only for food and to use the bathroom, but Darryl didn’t mind as long as he stayed in the apartment. It was troubling to think of what was happening just a wall away, but Darryl knew it was a lot better than if Terry decided to wander into the world to work out the purple on his own.
He’s just doing what he has to
,
thought Darryl, just like Darryl was doing what he thought he had to. Darryl had no illusions about the dark parallels between what he was doing to Robert and had already done to Terry, but there was just no other way to play it. If he was going to live the life he wanted, some backs were going to bend, and some were going to break.

Darryl stood, walked to the coffeemaker they’d finally purchased, and poured himself a cup of coffee. Terry had quieted down in the bedroom, and that usually meant about an hour or so of peace. Darryl brought the coffee back to the dining room table, smiling at the memory of cocaine benders and pounded coffees full of ice. There was no reason to work that hard. This time he was working much smarter. He knew there would be a point where he had to take the money and cut off Robert, but that was nothing to worry about at the moment. Right now Robert was going to keep earning, and that was all that there was to it.

CHAPTER 59

Cynthia’s vow to never weave again lasted only until that evening.
Mom was on the phone with her sister again, and Cynthia found it easier to leave the apartment for a little bit than listen to the two of them talk. Mom said things to Aunt Laura that Cynthia had a hard time believing she would ever follow through with, but they scared Cynthia just the same, especially since she could tell from the way Aunt Laura was apparently agreeing with her on the other end that these ideas were being encouraged. Dad was still missing, still wanted by police, but Mom was still mad and wanted more. Cynthia had a feeling that was going to go on forever—Mom wanting to hurt Dad, to punish him for whatever he had done—and didn’t know where she could possibly fit into any of Mom’s plans. As far as she could tell, Mom was giving that issue no thought at all.

Once outside, Cynthia took to the sky without even thinking about it. Looking down over North Harbor from an impossible place above the trees, she eyed the apartment complex as a bird would and then glanced to the apartment where the new men in the truck had moved. Cynthia had been to their place only once and found it lacking in anything of interest. One of the men did nothing, and the other just sat at his computer.
What if you marked it?
The thought made her skin feel itchy. She knew that she could do it, and the two men seemed like the perfect candidates because they were so boring.

All Cynthia would need to do was go in, look at their threads, and then leave. She could get in their heads if she wanted, but Cynthia couldn’t imagine a reason to do so. What would be in there? Numbers and blank walls? There weren’t even any books in the apartment.

Cynthia went from thinking about her new idea to zipping into the apartment. She hovered over the computer man as he worked, and she could see the threads coming from him were green and yellow, with a few of them even crossing over a white box on the table.
He must really like computers
. She loved her toys but had never considered trying to weave with them. What would be the point?

Already bored with the computer man, Cynthia went to the other room. The plan was pretty simple: verify that this man was boring as well and then color a blue dot onto the map above the apartment. But the instant Cynthia entered the next room, she regretted doing so. The man in there was sitting and doing nothing, just like she’d suspected, but his threads were nothing but black and purple. Cynthia might once have tried to help him, but all she could think of was Dad and how she had been hurt when she tried to help. The man in the room was worse than Dad—he looked like he was going crazy, just sitting in there by himself. She left the room quickly, not wanting to know any more about the man than she already did.

Cynthia paused as she came back to the little apartment’s living space, taking just a moment to look in on the computer man again, and what she saw there was just as shocking as the stalk of purple and black atop the man’s roommate. The man at the computer sat slack-jawed before the desktop, his hands rigid on its keyboard.
He’s weaving
. There was nothing else the man could be doing, but his threads were connected only to the computer. It took Cynthia a moment to realize what that meant. He was weaving with someone
through the computer
, through the wire that connected it to the wall.

Cynthia knew that she had to leave, had to get out, somehow sleep through the night, and then tell Mrs. Martin what she’d seen the next day, but she couldn’t. She could only stare raptly at this strange man, seeing in him for the first time what she must look like when she went out of her own head. It was incredible to see, but there was more to it than that. There was something not right with what he was doing, something that Cynthia couldn’t quite put her finger on. She moved closer to look at the screen he was staring at, but there was nothing there but a few sentences of conversation.
You have to find out what he’s doing
,
thought Cynthia, but she could also hear Mrs. Martin begging her to be smart at the same time. Cynthia stared at the man for a while longer and then dove in.

The man at the computer was looking through the eyes of someone else, and Cynthia could see what he was seeing. The person on the other end of the wire was furiously clicking and typing on his own keyboard, golden threads spewing from him and over the keys. It took Cynthia just a few moments to see that he was working with money, and then only another moment to realize that he probably wasn’t working at all but stealing.

Cynthia wanted to run screaming from the man’s mind like she would have wanted to run from a haunted house, but she knew instinctively that slamming the door on her way out would just let the monster know where she was going.

Cynthia pictured the room in the apartment where the man sat slack-jawed, then the scenic map over North Harbor, and then finally her bedroom—flashing in and out of each point—and when she opened her eyes in her room she realized that she had been tucked into her sleeping bag by Mom.
She must have found me lying down and just assumed I was sleeping
. Of course Mom would think she was sleeping, but it was another close call.

Cynthia shivered as she gathered the covers to her chin. She was scared to tell Mrs. Martin what she had seen, but even more frightened of what the man had been doing. Up until that moment, it had never occurred to her that Mrs. Martin might not have been telling the truth about bad people being able to weave.
If he is bad, then he can probably do whatever he wants
.

And so could she.

Couldn’t she?

Yes. And this was for some reason more frightening still, the knowledge that she could easily cajole Mom into letting her stay up later, or into buying her a new doll, no matter how tight money might be. The apprehension of this power should have excited her—and it did, a little—but mainly it scared her. She wasn’t sure she
wanted
it.

But she was quite sure that that man at the computer shouldn’t have it. What was she supposed to do about it, though?

Mrs. Martin will know what to do.
Cynthia felt sure of it. But then in the next instant, a new, even colder fear gripped her:
But what if she doesn’t?

CHAPTER 60

1945

“This is far enough,” says Katarina, “at least for now.”

I’m not sure that I agree with her. The sounds of war surround us still, but I’m glad that she has finally stopped dragging me along beside her. My legs, weakened from years of disuse in the camp, are on fire from our run through the woods. Then Katarina is abruptly sitting, tugging me down next to her, and her voice is in my head.
/ Be quiet / So quiet /

I worry about the sound of my labored breathing, but I feel Katarina begin to soothe me. My heart rate drops, my breathing slows, and I feel safe. There is gunfire to the left of us, then to the right. Men are shouting in German—I can tell they’re surrendering—but the sound of them is quickly drowned out by more chattering gunfire and screaming.
It is the Americans executing the guards from Dachau.
But my heart still clings to Katarina’s warnings about the American troops and how desperately we needed to avoid capture
.
I have no idea what to believe, but I know that after such a long internment that has cost me so dearly, I have no desire to be caged again.

The gunfire slows after just a few minutes, though sporadic shots can still be heard. I can feel ribbons of sunlight through the canopy of trees above us and realize that it must be midday. My throat begs for water, my stomach rumbles, but these are problems to be dealt with later. Katarina is on my arm, and she hisses at me, “There are troops just ahead of us—Americans. Stay down.”

Katarina pulls my arm to drag me closer to the floor of the forest, and I follow her lead, pressing against a fallen tree and feeling the cold ground against my skin. It’s not a bad feeling after all of the running, but I have been cold too many times in the last few years to really enjoy it, so cold that I may never enjoy the cold again. For the second time in my life I’m glad that I cannot see, that I’m blind to how close they are, nor can I see a watch and fret over how slowly time is passing.

Finally, Katarina pulls me to my feet, and the two of us begin to move again. My legs are still sore, my breath short, and the sounds of battle have picked up again when it at last comes crashing down on me:
I’m free.
There’s guilt with that thought, too, but also an immense joy in doing what so many could not. Despite my blindness, I survived one of the worst places in the entire world, a hell for the Jewish people. There might be time to sit and think of this later, to realize my fate and to know that the best path for me is to be like Katarina, to seek out young people with this gift and help them the same way she has helped me, but first I must survive.

There are so many ways to die in a war. An errant bullet could be my undoing, a bombing, artillery. We could run into a German patrol and be cut down immediately. The same thing could happen with any troops we might encounter, really. If this war has proven anything, it is that there are no rules anymore.

The rising light and then the sun on my cheeks are the first indicators that the woods are thinning, and the ground changes. No longer am I stumbling over broken timber and across gullies and over low hills. Now the ground is flat. Katarina’s grip is as tight as always on my arm, like an aggressive schoolteacher’s, but I can’t help feeling relieved. If she feels that we can leave the woods, even for a moment, then things must be getting better. My feet cross pavement as we sprint across a road, and then we’re pushing our way through spring wheat in a farmer’s field. We must be visible for miles, but of course I have no choice but to allow Katarina to gauge how safe we really are.

Finally, after what feels like forever in the open as the war rages around us, we are in the woods once more. I let out a sigh of relief and hear Katarina do the same thing.

“We can slow down now,” says Katarina. “We should be able to cross the American lines soon.”

Katarina would know this if anyone would, I tell myself. After all, she talked to the commandant on a daily basis. She had access to news and maps, even while she was stuck in the camp. In any event, where she goes I must go, and I just hope that when we get to safety we can find some food and water. It feels so good to be free, so magical, but the thought of real butter and bread without maggots—such a meager thing to wish for, but impossible in Dachau—is so good as to be almost nauseating.

“We’ll find food soon,” says Katarina, possibly reading my thoughts, but possibly only giving voice to her own hunger pangs.

“That sounds wonderful.”

“Soon,” says Katarina again. “We’ll rest here, then get moving again and try to find a farmer who might agree to share a quick meal with us. And if he won’t, we can use our tricks to make him see our way of thinking. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

“No, of course not,” I say. “That seems a minor crime in the middle of all of this.”

As if to punctuate my words, the rattle of gunfire can be heard, the noise terrifyingly close to our position.

“First we need to travel farther from the fighting,” says Katarina, and for this I have no argument. The machine gun has settled the discussion for us.