like the others. You've always known that. You can feel that I am trustworthy. You have the taste for things that are true. So listen to me. Reach out with your other hands...your inner hands. “
It came to Gabriel naturally, like a baby's first attempt to pick things up with its fingers— clumsily at first. Still, he reached into the luminous surging of the Hidden and felt it respond, something like clay in his fingers, but more malleable, less definable; he extended the energy field he was giving off, used it to manipulate the field, to extend himself telekinetically, enfolding the object nearest to hand: a pitchfork, leaning on the cobwebby wall beside him.
And made the pitchfork lift up into the air. It hung there quivering, its tines thrumming like a tuning fork...then dropped with a clang.
“The energy of the Hidden is condensable,
“ said the voice.
“Make a ladder, like Jacob, and rise up!”
He compressed the energy field in front of him—and stepped up onto the energy compression.
To find that he was standing in the air, hovering two feet over the ground.
He was dumbfounded and yet, on some level, not surprised. This was what he'd always unconsciously known was there; this was the missing part of himself. This was the real world, to him.
“It is always there, but your connection to it has been locked away, muted. The device that has hidden it from humanity is weakening, and those with the gift can feel the living radiance rise.”
“Who's talking to me?” Gabriel demanded, as he hovered there. “Who are you!”
As if in reply, the shape of a man formed before him, naked but sexless; the body, Gabriel knew instinctively, was a formality. It could have taken the shape of an octopus or a giant rabbit named Harvey or a Coca-Cola bottle. But just now it was solidifying, shaping to resemble a medium-size man, the body molded of the shining medium that swirled around him. The entity's “head” seemed detached, floating over the neck. There was no definite face, just an impression of eyes, gazing back at him.
“It's long since I've been here,”
said the spirit. That familiar, gentle voice. Gabriel thought of it as the Talking Light.
“There are others who want to speak to you, where the spirits of the dead linger. The Hidden is their world.”
The dead wanted to speak to him? Gabriel's mouth went dry at the thought. Who? His grandmother? His brother? “I don't think...I'm ready to talk to them. Just tell me—do you have a name? Who are you? Are you one of the dead?”
“T have never been subject to death. As for a name, some in your world have called me Mikha 'el.”
Mikha 'el?
“I'll call you...Mike. Light Mike.”
“All right. You cannot sustain this contact long.... It is too new to you. If you remain, your mind will melt into it, and you will lose all shape. So quickly: ask me what you want. “
His mind would melt? He would lose shape? He felt like running then. But this bright thing knew secrets. This was a chance to ask...
“What...what actually happened to my brother?” Gabriel blurted. “Sean was really little when he died but—is he there?”
“You will hear from him, in time. Someone else stands behind him, and he stands in that shadow. The wall of force is cracked and may fall completely, and when that day comes, we will see who is stronger. An enemy hides itself from you.... And now someone approaches, in dark ignorance, behind you. We are not alone here. “
“Oh, God—oh, what is he—what have they done to him!” A choked exclamation from behind.
And for the first time in his life, Gabriel Bleak saw himself from behind. He saw himself through” someone else's eyes: his father's eyes, dad at the door to the barn, seeing him framed by the doorway to the corral, surrounded by luminous fog...and floating in the air several feet over the floor, talking to something that wasn't there. And Gabriel saw that in his father's eyes, at that moment, his son was unnatural.
Gabriel shuddered, felt sick at the emotional repugnance he felt in his father's regard. The emotion broke his contact with the Hidden—and Light Mike vanished; the Hidden became hidden once more. The energy field disintegrated below him, and he dropped to the ground.
His father's point of view on him receded, and all Gabriel could see, then, was the barn around him, the ordinary world. He turned around to look at his dad, who'd put his boots on, sock-less and unlaced, to protect his feet so he could go and look for his son; his father, in overalls and T-shirt, a big man who never showed fear, backing away from his own child...backing away from his son and muttering the Lord's Prayer. His mother, he saw then, standing a few steps behind him, in her long, peach-colored nightgown.
She'd seen him too, talking to something invisible, and floating in the air.
They backed away and turned their backs, his father circling an arm around his mother, drawing her protectively with him; his mother softly protesting, the two of them hurrying back to the house. Away from their son.
Gabriel heard crickets, and the horses snorting. He turned to look out across the corral again. He saw bits of mown alfalfa blowing across the dirt of the corral, and star-lit clouds parading overhead, and no other motion, nothing else. Mike the Talking Light was gone; the slow-motion sea of energy— the field of the Hidden—was gone.
No. The Hidden itself was still there. When he did as he'd been taught, stretched out his sensations, he sensed the Hidden...but now it was muffled. Seen through several pairs of sunglasses. Felt through a damp, sweaty sheet. A few degrees separated.
Never again would he see it quite so nakedly. And rarely would he sense the presence of Mike Light.
But he knew...the light that spoke was still there, removed to some metaphysical distance, but not'' gone forever. And it was possible to disclose the Hidden, to delve into it and manipulate it...and someday he would do it again.
What else was left to him?
***
YEARS
AGO
,
THAT
WAS
,
Bleak thought, as the train ground to a halt at the station he wanted. But it felt like seconds ago. It ached that much. Glorious and painful, both.
Now, just a few hours after seeing a demon chew through someone's brains at a bar on the Hudson, Bleak was rushing out of the PATH train, hurrying across the platform toward the street-exit stairs, gazing at subway ad posters but not seeing them. Seeing only his father's horrified face, that night long ago.
He never quite got over the look on his father's face. Or what happened soon after. His father, refusing to discuss what he'd seen—muttering about diabolic influences, warnings from the Reverend Rowell at the Lutheran church—making the arrangements to send him away to military school. Telling Mom, “The boy's always been into the military, let him get a good close look at it and see if it's for him.”
And Gabriel hadn't been entirely sorry to go, though he hadn't been ready to leave home so soon. He'd known why his dad had sent him there, really. Because his father was afraid of his own son.
Something had seemed to block his attempts at contact with Light Mike, after that night. He was not able to ask the question, to get the answer that had been snatched away from him when his father had interrupted his first real exploration of the Hidden.
What did you say about my brother, Sean ? I don't understand. Tell me about my brother!
Coming out of the PATH train station, Bleak winced at the morning light, looking for a cab. Hard to find at this hour. Glancing at the sky, half expecting the feds' chopper to be up there. But the CCA helicopter was gone.
He wondered if he'd meet her again. Agent Sarikosca. Something about her...
***
THEY WERE ALL TIRED, dead tired, gathered around the car, Loraine and Zweig and Arnie and the other agents, on the helicopter pad, outside CCA headquarters in Long Island.
It was about seven thirty the same morning. They hadn't slept—always feeling close to their quarry. Never quite catching up till that moment, hovering over the broken-down old dock. Then they'd lost him again.
The chopper was cooling off behind them, its rotors lazily turning. Loraine Sarikosca and Dorrick in the chopper had found Bleak again—and others, it appeared—then lost him almost as quickly.
“I'm not sure what we can do legally, once we've got them,” Dorrick was saying.
“Theoretically we don't need evidence for an arrest,” she said, “long as we've got the Homeland Security stripe.” There were things Dorrick didn't get, yet. “But even CCA likes to know they've got the right guy. I saw what I saw, but—in our line of work sometimes people start to imagine things so administration's never sure till there's film and a lot of witnesses. And it's not like we can get the police to do a Code Three on him. We'd have to explain why we want him.”
“We could tell them he's a terrorist,” Zweig said, thumping the hood of the car with the flat of his hand.
“We're trying not to use that one,” Arnie pointed out. “Confuses the antiterrorist guys. Crosses 'em up and they get mad.”
“Pretty impressive, that thing he did at the end,” Dorrick muttered. “Back there in the alley. Walking on air. Can't do that with any ordnance we get issued. I kept looking for a wire.” He shook his head.
“There wasn't any wire.” Loraine remembered that mother and child out in Nevada...going straight up, in that blinding plume. Witnessing that was part of her CCA training, and she'd thought, then,
I'm in over my head.
But the paranormal had always fascinated her. She couldn't walk away.
“You could've been killed, taking him on alone, Loraine,” Arnie said, with more feeling than he probably intended to show. He was leaning against the car near her; took off his sunglasses, tapped them on his knee. She stood awkwardly by the car's open door.
Loraine was aware that Arnie was sweet on her. Nice-looking guy with one of those close-cut beards, sculpted four-o'clock shadow, big shoulders, big hands, quick smile. But she didn't have time for his crush—CCA was still defining itself, and she was still finding her footing in it.
“If you're sure of the ID, what do we have on him, Dorrick?” she asked. “God, I need some coffee. Let's get in the damn car.” She got in the backseat.
She'd been notified about Bleak only an hour before she'd met him. She'd been told that a CCA study subject had been located—they'd lost track of him in recent years—and she was to use one of the new detectors to track him, try to bring him in. Not much time to study his file.
“Most of what we got is right here.” Dorrick, getting in the driver's seat of the car, tapped the little computer display on the dashboard. Zweig climbed in beside him.
Loraine leaned forward, looking between the two men at the small screen tilted out from the display under the dashboard. The screen was scrolling military data. Lots of it. She saw
recommended for a MoH, Silver Star....
She made an impatient gesture. “I want to see early history. We know he was a war hero.”
“The hell he was,” Zweig said. “He was using this damn power, gave him an edge.” “Doesn't protect you from bullets,” Loraine observed.
Dorrick scrolled to early history. “Says he grew up on a ranch in eastern Oregon. Horses...goats.” “Goats?” Arnie laughed, rubbing his eyes. “A goat ranch?”
“They raised alfalfa, had a small dairy, and he bred some kind of fancy goats, along with horses. The boy liked rock music and animals. He was in the goddamn FFA, can you believe that? Teenager, they sent him to a military boarding school. Two years of college, dropped out to enlist, Army Rangers. Made sarge. Left that and now he's a bounty hunter.”
“Hmph,” Loraine said, yawning. Stretching as well as she could in the confines of the car. She just wanted to get back to her condo in Brooklyn Heights, check on her cats, get some rest. “No documentation of his power early on, but apparently someone was monitoring the power and... expecting it. He could be going back home if he's tight with his parents...friends back there.”
“Says Bleak is mostly a loner,” Dorrick said, reading ahead. “Makes 'friends' with bartenders. Had girlfriends, only one that was long-term, she split. Played rhythm guitar with some rock band a “ while back, not an expert musician. Some kind of bad incident at a minor concert, exploding equipment, a fire, no one hurt but there was a small-claims lawsuit from the club—and the band split up. Bleak had a brother...who vanished when he was a kid. When he was a toddler, according to this.”
“Vanished?”
“What it says. There's nothing more about that...says material was redacted from the file.” “Really.” What had they censored? Loraine wondered about some of the prototype-CCA programs—she'd heard some stories about their blackest black ops. “He knows about the device,” Zweig pointed out.
Loraine shrugged. “They'd have found out soon enough anyway. The thing to do is to make more of them—we only have one that really works—and increase the range so that we can find them wherever they are. Dr. Helman says it can be done. We just need the budget.”
“Who decides CCA's budget these days?” Dorrick asked. “I asked when I came on, but everybody shrugged me off.”
Loraine rubbed at her tired eyes. “Couple of generals at the Pentagon got the purse strings— Erlich and Swanson. They're kind of dubious about the whole thing. We need better detectors.”
She wondered if “find them wherever they are” was what she really wanted to do about ShadowComm types. After that fatal containment incident in Arkansas, her loyalty to CCA started to waver.
Loraine suspected the agency knew she wasn't completely committed to the job. General Forsythe, who ran the CCA, knew her record at the DIA—knew why she'd quit. Knew she wasn't always knee-jerk about being a team player.
She wasn't sure why she'd let them talk her into coming into the CCA. She'd always had a fascination with the occult. But was that enough? She wondered why they'd given her an assignment, authority over a crew, with so little relevant background.