The Flicker Men (22 page)

“And you think that pattern does that?”

He shrugged. “Reality does it. We just don't know how.”

We were silent for a long time after that, looking out at the night sky.

“So what happens now?” I said finally.

He turned toward me. “There are no investors anymore. The money dried up. It's over.”

“There must be something you can do.”

“No,” he said. “Look around you. The intellectual property is worth something, but it'll be parceled out like everything else. I thought I'd be able to raise the capital I needed, but I was shut out. The investors fled. But at least I got to see it first. And I got to show you.” He stood up straight. “Why is it you left?”

“It was a decade ago.”

“And you've still never said. You ran away from the work. Later, I heard about you getting arrested, acting crazy.”

Crazy
. A word that had loomed since childhood.

“I was drunk.”

“Something about your sister's hand.”

I watched his face in the fading light. There was no recrimination. Just puzzlement.

I stepped away from the railing. It was almost full dark now. The lights had come on in the parking lot. “That was another life,” I said. “I've moved on.”

“Whatever you have to tell yourself.”

It was time to go. I saw that now. Some things were best left in the past. We both looked out at the growing dark, and neither of us spoke for a while. When he did speak, it was on another subject.

“Your friend Satvik didn't tell me where he was going, but he did mention a name—Vickers. He asked me if I'd heard it.”

“Have you?”

He shook his head. I racked my brain, but the name meant nothing to me, either. “Was there anything else?” I asked. “Anything you can think of?”

“One strange thing, just before he left. He told me to be careful.”

“Careful of what?”

“He said there was a boy. He told me to be careful of the boy.”

 

29

On the plane, I closed my eyes. The red-eye back to Boston.

Pills to sleep, but sleep didn't come. Instead a disconnected hum: a sense that everything that happened was happening to someone else. I was an observer of myself—of what I was about to do or was doing still. Observing myself into existence as I held out my hand in front of me.

“Don't believe your eyes,” I heard myself say to the darkness.

I wanted a drink so bad.

The darkness came.

And with it, forgetting.

I was thirteen when it started. Movement at the edge of perception. The space felt but not seen. A gaping, looming maw. And I could not explain it, did not have the words.

And my grandmother held me and rocked me as the dark thing revealed itself and spread—a wave cresting above that would crash over me and sweep me away, and I cried sometimes and called it the
feeling
, though it was not a feeling at all but a thing seen when my eyes were closed. And later, my grandmother's face grew concerned, then scared for her only grandson. A boy who had by then seen too much, and lost too much.

So I stopped telling her when the dark thing happened. I no longer cried and told her when the feeling was back. And in my room I felt it grow. A surge of madness.

I'd face it, this churning darkness that I could not quite see—and it was like I was standing too close to a train whistle, so loud you can't stand it; only it wasn't sound but something else. Something bigger.

And then I, too, became scared and clenched my hands over my eyes and screamed numbers at it, two, three, four, five, and on, because it was all I had—and I learned something that I did not expect. I could drive it away, this craziness, this dark nothing.

I could make it go away with numbers.

The plane landed. Bright airport lights.

In the parking garage, I found my car. And on it, wedged in my windshield wiper, a note.

I thought it was a ticket at first, until I opened it:

Soon.

In the car I took two more pills.

A long, winding drive. In the city darkness, streetlights were the new constellations, and I queried my father about where he'd gone, whispering to the void, but there was no answer. Only death. Like Satvik might be dead. And the dead are always silent to the living.

I turned the wheel.

*   *   *

In the middle of the night, I startled awake, arm jerking to catch myself, as if I'd tripped and fallen from some height.

I woke sweating, heart hammering in my chest.

“Shhh,” she whispered. She ran a hand across my sweating brow. “Go back to sleep.”

“I felt like I slipped.”

“It happens to everyone,” she said. “That was just your soul falling back in place.”

I sat up. “I need to go.” I'd driven to her apartment hours earlier. I'd needed to feel solid, to feel something, in order to climb outside my own head, but it had been a mistake. My head had followed me here.

“Stay,” Joy whispered. “You're fine.” Her hands were on my bare shoulder.

“How do you know?”

“Everything's going to be fine.”

I thought of her words to me months earlier. “No,” I said. “Somehow I don't think it is.”

*   *   *

In the morning, I woke sick.

Cold tile floor. I puked in the toilet.

The nightmares had been bad. A rising fire.

In my sleep my lungs had burned, and I snapped awake, realizing that I'd been holding my breath.

I washed a pill down with milk.

“Are you sure that's a good idea?”

She was standing near me in the kitchen darkness. She'd heard me fumble with the pill bottle.

I kissed her on the forehead and left at first light. Outside her apartment door, the sky was falling—the rain coming in sheets. I ran through the puddles to my car.

*   *   *

Near my motel, through the rain, I saw the unmarked cruiser. So obviously a cop, I wondered why they bothered. Or maybe that was the point. The kind of vehicle that screamed official business. Black midsize sedan. Tinted windows. Step away from vehicle, nothing to see here. Rain pounded the glossy paint.

Here to question me?
I wondered.
Another interview about the fire?

I passed the car without looking, but instead of pulling into the motel parking lot, I continued on and pulled into the gas station across the street.

I thought of the note on my windshield.
Soon.

As I approached the gas station doors, I glanced up the street toward the parked car. Although I couldn't see anyone through the tint, I noticed the windshield wipers cycled every few seconds, wiping away the deluge.

I bought a loaf of bread. Peanut butter. A six-pack of Coke. Dinner of champions. I was inside only a few minutes. When I came out, the car was gone. I glanced around, scanning the traffic; I couldn't see it anywhere.

I climbed back in my car and crossed the street to the motel. I was out of my car and hustling toward the staircase when I heard the gunning engine and the tires splashing through puddles. I didn't bother to turn.

At that moment, a man in khaki pants and a dark polo shirt stepped from around the side of the staircase and stopped in front of me. He was big, blocky, midthirties. He looked like an ex–college wrestler or maybe a small safety—thick neck straining the polo's middle button.

“Eric Argus,” he said.

I stopped. I looked at him as the rain came down, soaking us. For a moment, I considered lying, but what would be the point? He obviously knew who he was looking for.

“Yeah.”

“There's someone who'd like to speak with you.”

As I was trying to decide how to respond, I heard the car door open behind me. I turned to look. The same car from earlier. Black tint. Not a cop car after all, unless Polo Shirt was a cop, and that didn't seem likely. They'd been waiting for me. I dropped my bag to the pavement.

“Who'd like to speak to me?”

“We'll be happy to introduce you.”

“You mean now.”

“If you please.” He took a step closer. And I almost bolted. I could do it. The guy was too big to have much stamina. All those oxygen-hungry muscles working against him. If I got the jump, stayed out ahead …

As if reading my mind, the driver's door opened, and another man stepped out. This one taller, thinner, a few years younger. The runner of the pair, if a runner was needed.

I turned back toward Polo Shirt. “And if I don't want to?”

He raised an eyebrow. Answer enough.

I glanced around, but they'd picked their time and location perfectly. We were around the corner and out of sight of the main office. The staircase blocked the view from the road, and the rain kept most people inside.

“I made this easy for you, didn't I?”

Polo gestured toward the open car door. “It was always gonna be easy,” he said.

In college I'd seen bouncers roll drunks through double doors, rolling them like tumbleweeds. It would go like that if I resisted. Or I could still sprint left, take my chances on foot.

I glanced up toward my motel room door, and that decided it. A dark room. Unanswered questions. Whoever had set this up had gone through a lot of trouble. They must have reasons to see me. And where there were reasons, there might be answers.

I let myself be ushered into the car. Polo Shirt climbed in after me and shut the door. The car pulled away.

*   *   *

We drove thirty minutes. South, toward the city.

“Who am I meeting?” I asked. Then a few minutes later, “Where are we going?”

If either man had a tongue, he chose not to reveal it. Eventually, we rode in silence.

The rain had stopped by the time we took the off-ramp. Five minutes later, we came to a parking garage entrance, and the wooden arm rose automatically. We took the curve down, tires protesting, and second thoughts began creeping in. I thought again about running—opening the door and making a dash. At this speed, I could jump free and roll.

Before I could make up my mind, the car pulled through a small set of doors and parked nose against the wall. There were walls to the left and right as well. The men didn't get out. Instead, the doors closed behind us. For a moment I was confused; then I felt the floor begin to move. We were rising. An elevator for a car? I'd heard of such a thing but never seen one in real life. It was an experience reserved for the superrich. Those who wanted to keep their Aston Martins close. The elevator rose quickly. There were no glowing numbers above the doors. No ding as we passed different levels. This was an elevator with one stop.

My stomach lurched slightly as the elevator came to rest. The heavy doors opened, and beyond, through the windshield, I could see a grand entranceway. Bright lights and a chandelier.

The two men climbed out of the car, and I followed. They led me wordlessly into the penthouse. High ceilings. Marble floors. It wasn't just rich but a different thing entirely. A multimillion-dollar flat. I'd never seen anything like it. There was a step down into another room, and the men led me deeper into the home, crossing a racquetball court–sized swath of white shag carpeting. A red ball, the kind a child might play with, sat in the center.

Through the open veranda doors, I could see a large patio and beyond that, other towers rising against the dark blue sky. We were twenty stories high, I guessed. Maybe thirty.

“Eric.”

I turned, looking for the voice.

Standing near an enormous mahogany table was Satvik.

 

30

“Satvik!”

I crossed the room as Satvik's boyish features spread into a wide smile—a cherub's face beneath graying hair.

He held out his hand to shake, but I grabbed him and pulled him into a hug.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

I clapped him on the back. “You're alive.”

“Of course I am alive. What did you think?”

“I didn't know what to think.” I glanced around. We were in a grand lounge of some kind. Two large couches. A white-brick fireplace. A sitting room perhaps, but I wasn't sure. I lacked the vocabulary. No house I'd grown up in had had a room like this.

“Do you have any idea…” I was at a loss for words. The shock was too much. “Where the hell have you been?” I tried to keep my voice down, but relief was quickly turning into something else. Anger. Outrage.

Satvik shook his head. “Two weeks I've been here. What's going on, I still cannot say.”

It was then I noticed the cut over his eye. The wound had healed—or was healing. It was deep, just between his hairline and eyebrow. It looked as if it had probably needed stitches but hadn't gotten any.

My anger ebbed. “Your forehead…”

“And you,” he said, gesturing to the bandage that was still on my hand. “What happened?”

I glanced down at my own hand. I'd forgotten the bandage. “There was a fire,” I said.

“Fire?” His brow furrowed.

“At Hansen,” I said. “The warehouse burned down.”

His eyes widened. “Burned down? Was anyone hurt?”

I shook my head. “Just me.”

“What happened?”

Where to even begin? Everything I thought to say seemed dependent on some earlier detail. “A lot has happened,” I said. “But we have to call your wife first. And then Jeremy. People are worried about you. We need to let them know.”

His face changed then. “I'm sorry, Eric.”

“Sorry about what?”

“This place is not what you think.”

At that moment, a pair of doors opened with a bang, and a small group filed out from a study, talking noisily among themselves. When I saw who led the way, I felt my stomach drop. It was Brighton. A smile slid across his face as he approached us. “Look who is here,” Brighton said.