Zero, p.5
Zero, page 5
The first raindrops pattered his cheeks and arms as Brian reached up over the slat he had looped the end of the leash around.
Buck whined.
Brian’s eyes dropped to the conglomeration of papers pinned and stapled to the withering wood.
Have You Seen Me?
Reward: Missing!
Have You Seen Me?
Missing: 11/28/10.
Faded faces stared back at him from the multicolored paper chaos amidst the collage of signs advertising fraternity parties, concerts and stage play auditions.
The rain dampened his hair as his stare drifted from one hollow-eyed face to the next. Jennifer Porter. Melinda Valentine. Aaron Rutherford. Deborah Hawley. Peter Matthews. Teresa Brown. Now just faded black and white faces reduced to pixels watching over the empty commons.
“Come on, boy,” Brian said, looking to the sky.
Lightning flashed, reflected in his eyes.
Ø Ø Ø
Brian stood outside the fence, the gate slamming backward against the slats like gunfire.
Buck whimpered over the sound of the gurgling brooks forming in the gutters.
Lightning snapped from the belly of one cloud to the next.
“It’s okay,” Brian whispered, looping the handle of the leash around the head of one of the pickets. He tugged the dog through the gate into the yard, soundly closing the gate behind him.
At the left side of the yard was the hole that Buck had carved into the dirt the day before, tearing out chunks and divots of the lawn at the base of one of the strange statues. In the bottom of the cleft was a thick black cord – at least three inches in diameter – sticking out of the puddling water, connecting the rusted metallic spire to the house.
Brian walked up the cement path to the front door. He took hold of the doorknob, water trailing in rivulets through his soaked hair and down his face, the brass knob frigid and unforgiving in his hand, and looked back to Buck, sitting in front of the fence, drenched.
“Good boy,” he said, thunder cracking overhead.
And with a turn of the knob, Brian opened the door and stepped into the house.
Without even pausing in the entryway, he strode straight into the living room and right to the couch where he had left the hammer the night before. He was going to drive the head into the wall over and over until he was able to—
The mirror.
The gold veins running through the mirror hummed with voltage like overhead power lines, snapping and crackling. The edges to either side of the inlaid wiring were black and melting, reeking of the stench of burnt rubber.
They were all there. All of the faces he had seen on the posters. Ratted hair wet with blood, skin bruised to the point that it looked nearly purple. They were all pressed up against the mirror from the other side as though trying to force their way through like cattle, pawing at it with bloody swipes that stained the glass in crimson arcs.
He looked back over his shoulder, already knowing what he would see. There was nothing but the empty room.
When he turned again, the girl from the night before had worked her way through the mess of bodies. Her eyes locked onto his. Slowly, she reached out and pressed her fingers into the film of blood on the opposite side and smeared a clear circle. Removing her hand, she placed it above the circle, and drew a diagonal line down through it.
Brian seized the hammer from the couch and stormed out of the room.
The hallway passed like a breeze, as did his bedroom, and before he knew it, he was standing beside the tub in front of the hole Buck had gnawed through the plaster. Raising the tool, his lips curled in preparation of the exertion, he brought it down over and over, tearing chunks from the wall with both the circular head and the forked tongs behind.
White dust billowed from the destruction, filling the room like a cloud of talcum powder, yet still Brian slammed the implement into the wall over and over, until finally a section gave in the middle, crumbling to the floor. The hammer’s handle slipped from his grasp and he reached for the new hole, grabbing the edges of the wound with either hand, tearing them violently back, dropping clumps of debris to the floor. Thin lacerations opened across his palms and fingers, but he didn’t even feel them. The plaster dust packed into the slices and congealed with the blood into a thick black, scabrous compound.
Then he saw it.
Brian quickly averted his eyes and slapped his hand over his mouth to prevent the rise of bile.
There. Within the wall, flirting in and out through the dusty haze like a lighthouse through the fog, was what he knew he would find.
It was pressed between the vertical support joists, wrapped impossibly tight in so many layers of plastic wrap that it was nearly opaque, yet through the airless seal of the cocoon, he could see the clearly defined shape of two legs pinned tightly together to the knees, though only one lower leg made the trip down toward the floor. The waist and torso were wrapped so tightly as to bruise the skin.
Brian closed his eyes and pawed the crusted dust from the corners where it thickened with his tears.
He reached and grabbed the upper extent of the hole, sinking his fingers into it as hard as he could, and with a great heave, tore the wall away to expose the upper chest and face of the corpse.
So much blood was matted beneath the plastic wrap that the face was a black smudge, the hair pressed awkwardly down to cover the face.
Holes had been drilled through the joists to either side of the corpse, large enough to force the arms through, almost as though the body were crucified within the wall.
Silver ooze seeped from the tatter of chewed wrap peeled back from the amputated knee.
Brian closed his eyes.
He couldn’t breathe.
Brian stumbled into the kitchen to where the telephone rested on the table before finding the courage to open his eyes.
His palsied hands slapped at the receiver, knocking it from the cradle before finally securing a grip and bringing it to his ear.
The dial tone bored through his skull, but he didn’t get a chance to dial the first digit.
He gasped, the receiver falling from his ear and clattering to the floor.
Ø Ø Ø
The stab of lightning preceded the thunder by a heartbeat, strobing through the windows all around him, illuminating the entire house. Through the open front door he could see that long electrical blast snapping back and forth from the top of one of those metal posts, jerking from side to side as though trying to rip the blasted pole right from the ground.
Every light bulb in the house popped with a loud electrical snap, turning everything not lighted by the slanted rays from the window to shadows as thick as tar.
All around him, the walls came to life with banging sounds as though hundreds of people had gathered around the house to beat on it with their fists.
All of the fine hairs on Brian’s body rose to attention, his wet hair tingling against his scalp. The fillings in his back teeth issued a taste like biting aluminum foil.
His heart stalled.
They filled the room around him. So many that Brian’s brain resisted the urge to count.
In that moment, the entire house smelled like a slaughterhouse floor: that pungent rush of air that explodes from a suspended cow’s abdomen after ripping the serrated blade through the hide, the festering contents washing out in a tidal rush that floods the ground past the ankles.
They were soaked with it. Each of them. Dripping with fluids as dark as molasses.
Naked and shivering, arms wrapped tightly across their chests, they cowered around the room, cooling blood draining down their bodies and puddling around their feet on the floor. Their outlines were fuzzy, vibrating so infinitely fast that their silhouetted edges appeared blurred with motion like hummingbird wings.
Their shadows snapped from side to side like long black flags, thrown violently from the ferocious electrical bolt whipping back and forth outside. Their features were alternately lit and shimmering with blood, then darkened with hollow white eyes peering out like snowballs stamped into mud; all of them focused their attention on Brian.
As one, their heads bucked back, necks snapping against shoulders, throwing sprays of congealing fluids into the air. Mouths were wrenched inhumanly wide, producing a scream that sounded more like a digitized siren, ear-piercing in its intensity.
The wail crackled with electrostatic energy.
Electricity sparked from their eyes like embers trying to summon flame.
Horizontal bolts of blue lightning arced between their parted teeth.
And then the lightning tore free of the creation in the front yard, dousing the light that flooded the windows.
He was again alone.
There was no blood on the floor as there had appeared to be a moment prior. The room was simply empty.
The walls had faded from a bone white to a smoky gray, bubbling and blistering in spots, smoldering as though holding back a mass of flames.
Brian turned in a slow circle, surveying the house.
His gaze shot through the front door to the metal pole, to the hole beside it where Buck had exhumed the cord running toward the house.
Then the electrical current from the wall stimulates the nerves to conduct an impulse through the leg as though coming directly from the brain.
Dr. Connell’s voice.
Brian thought of the lab.
Rather than blood, we use a synthetic substitute composed of an electrolytic paste capable of both sustaining oxygenation and conducting an electrical current.
“It’s a circuit,” he whispered, now panting, looking hurriedly to the mirror.
In essence, Mr. Niemand, we just translated biological energy into its electrical equivalent.
“And the mirror’s an electronic circuit capable of translating that energy back to biologic—”
Lightning tore the sky, blasting bluish-white light through the windows and the open front door.
The house trembled on its foundation.
The pounding within the walls resumed with such furor that plaster powder shivered from it in a sparkling cloud.
Outside, a snapping bolt of lightning connected one of the metal pillars to the roiling thunderheads; the electrical current slamming violently from side to side, struggling to tear free before finally splitting into two bolts. Like filings drawn to a magnet, the freed lightning jumped immediately to the pole at the opposite corner of the front yard, a horizontal streak of lightning whipping madly between the two poles like a flaming jump rope.
When he whirled to the living room, they were all there again, drenched in blood and quivering naked on trembling legs. Shivering violently like the lightning bolts outside, as though they were made from the same electrical composition.
With a loud crack, the closer of the two ceiling fans fell into their midst in a pile of rubble. The glass dome shattered on impact, scattering across the floor.
Wires dangled from the hole, firing a shower of sparks. In the tangle of cords was a thick length of chain, at the end of which was a blood-crusted iron shackle.
Brian looked down to the ground.
The drain in the floor was positioned precisely between the two fans.
“Oh God,” he gasped.
The vibrating bodies shivered before him like a forest of hacked and bloodied tree trunks.
And then were gone with the sudden rush of darkness racing in with the cessation of the lightning, finally torn free to dissipate into the sky.
Buck barked riotously outside, finally tearing loose from the weathered slat to race through the muddy yard toward the front door.
Brian heard the clatter of the dog’s nails hitting the hardwood entryway over the drumming of raindrops bludgeoning the roof, but he was already halfway down the hall, sprinting through the pitch black toward the bedroom.
Ø Ø Ø
Snatching the hammer from the floor, Brian headed back into the hallway to where the wall had once contained a window, raising it high over his head. Teeth gritted between peeled lips, he swung the hammer into the wall with every ounce of his strength. Over and over. Tearing chunks of plaster away with each exertion, he finally hammered into something soft, forgiving. When he jerked the handle back, a spray of that silver fluid followed the hammer’s arc, splattering across his face.
He spat out a mouthful of the metallic paste, took a step to the left, and raised the hammer once again, trying hard not to look at the corpse buried behind the maw of that splintered plaster mouth. Wrapped tightly in a cocoon of industrial cellophane. Arms forced through the support posts to either side, run like wiring through the walls. Face nothing more than a plastic-sealed corpuscle. A spout of shimmering fluid spurting from the wound pounded through the mangled thorax.
With a scream, Brian beat at the wall again, destroying the drywall until the hole was wide enough that he could toss aside the hammer, force his hands in and tear it back to either side with an explosive crack and a barrage of chalk.
All he could see was the middle length of the preserved arm running horizontally between beams.
Throwing his weight into it, he jerked and jerked and jerked until he tore back another section of the wall. Through the swirling white dust, he could see the forearm tapering to a wrist, then expanding to a hand, and then—
“Another hand!” he thought, swiping at the thick crust forming on his face with the congealing artificial blood and plaster powder.
He reached straight into the wall and ripped at the plastic wrap bundled over the hands until he was able to feel the pulpy bare flesh. Small tubes protruded from one wrist, forming a network of smaller tubules between the clasped hands like a tangle of capillaries, before widening again to connect into the matching vessels on the adjacent wrist.
“Oh God. Please,” he moaned, falling to his knees to swipe at the ground until he regained the hammer.
Buck cringed just inside the doorway to the house, wide eyes reflecting back at him from the cowering form.
The ground shivered beneath him with a blast of thunder so close it sounded like a plane crashing into the roof. Electric-blue light exploded through the doorway with a barrage of raindrops like shotgun pellets.
The pounding in the walls began immediately.
The body he had exposed bucked back and forth as though being electrocuted, knocking even more plaster down into the hallway.
From this angle, he could see the entire wall throbbing visibly.
“They’re everywhere! The walls are stuffed with them!” he sputtered, backing up quickly. When he retreated into the wall behind him, he jumped forward and placed himself in the middle of the hallway.
The woman walked directly toward him in twitching jerks, blood-streaked blonde hair snapping about her head, crackling with static discharge.
Against the flare of the lightning, he could see a half dozen blackened silhouettes shivering behind her.
He’s coming! she screamed, though he could only translate her moving lips as all that came from her mouth was a furious hiss of feedback.
A tall shadow slipped into the foyer, heavy shoes slapping the accumulated water.
“What’s going on here?” a man’s voice shouted over the tumult.
All of the people in the room turned to look at the doorway.
The man stood still, breathing in everything going on around him. His silhouette turned from one bloodied spectre to the next, appraising them from a distance.
“He did it,” the man gasped, crossing slowly through the entryway and into the living room.
Pausing in front of one of the vibrating bodies, he raised a gloved hand, tentatively at first, as though hoping his tactile senses wouldn’t ruin the illusion, then slowly grazed the side of the face. Electricity crackled and sparked against his hand, the form losing horizontal hold momentarily before regaining its almost holographic density.
“My God,” he whispered, shaking his head from side to side as though even he couldn’t believe it. “They’re real.”
With a tearing sound like a tree being wrenched from the earth, the crackling lightning bucked free and raced back to the clouds. The muted darkness swarmed them again.
Now, only Buck separated the intruder from Brian.
The man looked down at his gloved fingers, rubbed them together.
Brian recognized his silhouette, his voice.
“May God have mercy on us all,” Dr. Connell whispered, looking from his statically-charged fingers to the smoldering mirror.
Ø Ø Ø
Lightning pounded the ground with a simultaneous bang of thunder that shook the entire house.
The second ceiling fan dropped from above with a crash of shattering glass. Sparks snapped loudly from the severed cords dangling from the hole left in its stead.
The naked bodies materialized around them as though Brian and the professor were standing in a thicket of them, unmoving, trembling like willows against a forceful gale.
The metal spires outside held the lightning, draining the energy in a steady stream from the sky. It shot from one glowing pole to the next until all four of the poles were connected by lightning like a barrier of electricity around the house, tapering back up into the clouds where the four bolts of lightning met like an infinitely tall pyramid. Sucking and sucking all of the current from the sky.
“What’s happening here?” Brian screamed, racing through the maze of bodies to Connell. He seized the doctor by the shoulders and shook him sharply.
“I...” Connell stammered, his eyes fading out of focus. Brian could see the minions of the dead reflected in the sheen of Connell’s dawning tears. “I knew about the one.”
“What one?”
“The girl. An engineering student. Jessica. We… we found him with her. Naked. Cuffed to the ceiling with chains. He... he was bleeding her. She had a tube sock...” His eyes drifted and Brian shook him again. “A tube sock... tied around her mouth. The rapid infuser. He was using the rapid infuser to force the artificial blood into a hole between her ribs. Into the superior vena cava. While he... while he, while he drained her lifeblood from her inferior vena cava with... with some kind of spigot. Jesus. Jesus Christ! There was blood everywhere. All over him. All over the floor. God. The drain was blocked with clumps of her hair...”
