Memorymakers (9 page)

He spiraled through the Earth like a stone from the sky, dropping away from the desert storm. Somewhere children were laughing, and he saw a girl swinging a baseball bat at an object that dangled before her, at an animal, a pig. The pig was alive but constructed of paper and glue, and when the girl hit it the pig split asunder horribly, releasing gory gifts from its innards.

These were not toys or candies or bright baubles. They were snakes and body parts and puddles of slime and eyeballs, all writhing and smelling of sewage. The children gathered them anyway, laughing and squealing with delight, and they ate the stinking things, stuffing them down one another’s throats.

He saw Booger, his old friend, if indeed he’d ever been a friend. Booger who liked to smash things. Booger’s face leaned close, and he could see the gap between Booger’s teeth, with those thick, chapped lips opening and closing like the mouth of a giant, ugly fish.

“Hi ho, Tom-Tom,” said Booger. “Come to play? Remember all the fun we used to have? You had the toys and I smashed them. Wow, those were the times. Let’s do it again!” And Booger’s mouth opened so wide that Thomas could see the flabby pink flap at the rear of his throat.

Thomas was one of the eyeballs scooped up by the children. He entered the black tunnel of Booger’s throat and tried to prevent a plunge downward, but with no feet, no hands, and something slimy covering his body, he could only speed through darkness and obscenities to land in a pit of steaming, burning bile. Within his nightmare he blacked out. Or thought he did.

In a vision within a vision he saw an information booth before him with desks and computers on the other side. A single pair of eyes floated before one of the desks, green eyes with a ghost of gray face surrounding, a face so hazy that it could barely be seen. Then he saw another pair of eyes, darker and surrounded by a halo of gray hair. Recognition hit him.

“Panona, Nonna!” he cried to the bodiless faces. “It’s me, Thomas. Help me!”

“We give away a free case of orange soda with every purchase,” the brown eyes that were his grandmother said.

“The way out is not the same as the way in,” said the green ones that were his grandfather.

The sets of eyes, each from their hazes, gazed upon Thomas with great tenderness and sadness.

Beneath the information sign hung another, and it read, “no questions.”

Chapter 9

“How curious that Nebulons flow from tear ducts!”

—A trainee, to Director Jabu (from the Director’s notes)

Mrs. Belfer stood, sullen and uncommunicative, in the center of the Harveys’ living room. Her face was flushed, red wig askew. Near her, Victoria Harvey smoked a pink nicotine tube which she inhaled and exhaled in short, rapid bursts as though she were short of breath. A long blue and white scarf hung over one shoulder, and she tugged and smoothed the scarf nervously, trying to arrange it properly.

“Where are they, Mrs. Belfer?” Dr. Harvey said, picking up the alcohol stench of the housekeeper even at the distance he stood from her. “We come home from our trip and my kids are gone. Where are they?”

He flipped on a floorlamp, chasing evening shadows.

“I told you,” Mrs. Belfer mumbled in a thick voice. “Your phone message said they was goin’ with you. I don’t know nothin’ else ‘cept they was with their grandfolk yesterday.”

“I never left a message,” Dr. Harvey said. “You didn’t check for them last night?”

“Didn’t see no reason to, after the message. They mighta been here, I dunno.”

“Stop talking about a message, dammit!”

Mrs. Belfer wrinkled her features into a gargoyle expression, shrugged her shoulders and stumbled out of the room.

“Come back here,” Dr. Harvey demanded. When she didn’t, he said to his wife, “That woman is fired. She’s a liar, a drunken derelict and a lousy housekeeper.”

Victoria tugged on his sleeve and said, “But darling, she’s explained everything she knows. Don’t do anything rash. She’s a big help to me.”

Dr. Harvey tried to retain his composure, watched through the living room window as a streetlight flickered on.

“Darling?” Victoria said.

He wiped perspiration from his face with a shirtsleeve, and with measured words said, “Something’s terribly wrong here. I’d better call the police, like Mom and Dad suggested.”

“This isn’t an emergency yet. Nonna and Panona saw them less than twenty-four hours ago.”

“Well, I’m damned worried. This is a big city and-”

“I specifically told them to stay home today,” Victoria interjected with a tug on her scarf. “They probably went somewhere this morning and lost track of time.”

“God, I hope they weren’t out last night.”

Victoria’s voice softened and her quick, nervous gestures smoothed to fluidity. She collected herself into an attractive package: chin out, breasts high, skirt straightened, scarf in place. Her lavender eyes opened wide until they appeared childlike. “Sweetheart . . . Patrick . . . I know you love Emily, but she does have some serious problems. That’s why we send her to a therapist. She’s a difficult child. I’ve tried to get close to her, tried to give her love, but she resents me, pushes me away. She’s full of hatred. And her wild imagination . . . invisible bugs and other things. I think we need to talk about maybe . . . mmmm, uh, getting her into a facility.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She needs more care than a therapist can supply. Round-the-clock care, a year or two in a place where they can watch her and give her the kind of help we both want her to have.”

“Maybe she doesn’t like it here because of your incompetent parenting, Victoria. I’m tired of hearing you say she’s crazy. I think she’s a fine girl, and she’d be more normal if you let up on her. Maybe you’re the problem, not her.”

The stylish eyebrows arched, like the spines of cats. “Incompetent parenting? Where are you when these kids need you? Off in some hospital or talking about going to operate on Mexican companeros. You’re needed here.”

“Don’t try to dump it on me, you selfish, spoiled. . .”

She stared bullets at him.

“As far as Mexico goes,” Dr. Harvey said, “all those people who need me so desperately are going to have to wait. I can’t leave with all this happening.”

“And I suppose that’s my fault?” Angrily she snuffed her nicotine tube in the oxygen-vac of an ashtray.

“We’re wasting time.” Dr. Harvey lifted the telephone receiver and pressed the police button.

Victoria was an angry whirl of skirts in the hallway as she moved swiftly toward the kitchen and back porch. She yanked open the door of Mrs. Belfer’s room.

Bottle in hand, Mrs. Belfer lay sprawled across her bed, eyes closed. The room was cluttered with dirty dishes and clothes, and her red wig lay on a lace pillow beside her like an exotic pet that might suddenly rise on tiny feet to snap and snarl at an intruder.

“What the hell are you up to?” Victoria cried. “What are you trying to do to me? Where are the kids?”

The woman on the bed roused herself to a seated position. “How do I know? What do you care? You got the doctor all to yourse’f now. Ain’t that what you wanted? Mr. Rich and all his money, with no one to spend it on or leave it to except poor, sweet Victoria.”

Victoria felt the muscles of her mouth tighten. “Look here, you drunken bitch, don’t play funny with me. You’re only here because I allow it.”

“Ha!” screamed Mrs. Belfer. “Don’t threaten me, Miss Goodie-Sweet. I hold the gun, not you.” She paused, a poignant moment, and her eyes danced wickedly. “What if I was to walk right up to your husband and say, Doc, did you know I used to work for Victoria’s folks? Yessirree, I was the cook when they lived in that great big mansion on the hill. Before they lost all their money payin’ off their daughter’s liability suits and bills. I know all about Miss Goodie-Sweet, the spoiled sorority girl. And I know all about her parties when her folks was gone. Naked boys and girls playin’ nasty little games. I got my hands on nice videotapes of those parties. Triple-X stuff.”

“Shut up! Shut up!”

“And I’d say, Doc, Miss Goodie-Sweet and her friends wasn’t so stuck up in them days. Once in a while they’d even invite a poor kid over for a good time.” Mrs. Belfer caught her breath. “Remember, Victoria? The skinny little girl you invited up for a swim? The kid that drowned? And all you naked rich kids standin’ around laughin’ and makin’ a videotape while the kid yelled for help? I got that tape hid real good, Vickie-Sweet. Real good.”

Victoria’s eyes were dark with rage. “You have a permanent job here, a permanent home thanks to me. All it costs you is silence.”

The bottle touched Mrs. Better’s lips, and she tipped her head back, inhaled deeply and took a long drink. In a moment her gaze returned to level, and the bleary look in her small, blue eyes cleared a little. “Wouldn’t that make a good story in the society column? Local doc’s wife—”

Victoria’s hand shot out and snapped across the side of Mrs. Belfer’s cheek. “Keep still about this, or you’ll be still for a damned long time. Understand, bitch?”

Mrs. Belfer giggled, lifted her finger in an obscene gesture and fell back upon her bed. As Victoria watched through narrowed eyes, Mrs. Belfer closed her eyes, cradled her bottle and began to snore loudly.

Chapter 10

My brother spoke to me, but without moving his lips. The message was in his eyes, and I understood it completely.

—Recollections of Emily Harvey, Twenty-second edition

For a while after Squick left her alone, Emily stared through the semidarkness at the door handle. She thought she’d heard a lock click when the door closed behind him, but she comforted herself with the thought that the mechanism normally made such sounds, that she wasn’t locked in this room at all. She could turn the handle and leave any time she wished. But what if it wouldn’t open? She wasn’t sure she wanted to find out.

Emily was distracted and fascinated by the contents of the room, particularly by a row of big, cherubic-faced dolls. Their bland, innocent features gave her an odd sort of reassurance, a sense that nothing could go wrong with them around.

But her gaze flickered between the dolls and the door handle. It was an oversized, round handle, sculpted to resemble a ball of yellow yam. A tiny gray and white kitten with an end of yarn in its teeth was sculpted on one side of the ball, as if the yarn were a planet and the kitten an inhabitant.

A chrome machine on her left resembled a soda fountain unit with a row of flexible white spouts on its top edge. The mouth of each spout was formed differently, and from each mouth dribbled small amounts of a substance that looked goopy and reminded her of soft ice cream or cake topping, each dribble a different color. A blue and yellow sign on the unit read, “the artful looper,” and beneath that Emily found instructions in very small print for making “art loops.”

Tentatively she pushed one of the spouts and white, spaghetti-shaped material oozed out and bobbed into the air. According to the instructions, the substance was lighter than air. Emily bent over and read the balance of the written material. With one hand she grabbed the loose end of the artificial spaghetti, looped it around and completed a circle by detaching the other end of the substance from the spout. The goop was only a little sticky to her touch, but adhered to itself nicely and hardened in a few seconds.

She became immersed in creativity, and momentarily this soothed her concerns about Squick and the doorhandle.

Next she created eyes, a nose and a mouth, all of which she suspended in the center of the oval to form a face. She moved the loops around a little, and they remained where she wanted them, floating in midair. With more effort she made a body, a rumpled white suit, white shoes and white gloves.

“Hello, Chalk Man,” she whispered, delighted with the excellence of her work. “Talk to me, Chalk Man. I’m frightened here, and I don’t know what to do.”

She tried to imagine the Chalk Man’s mouth moving, answering her, but no sound came forth. The only movement she detected in her art piece occurred when she moved about and caused air currents to buffet the creature slightly, as a boat might do in the wake of another. She gave the creature a shove and it floated away.

“A stupid game,” Emily muttered, and her fears intensified.

The door squeaked behind her, and with that the Chalk Man collapsed to the floor, like a pile of spaghetti without any sauce.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, and for a moment she knelt beside her fallen friend, as if it had been a real, living creature.

A shadow loomed over her, and she looked up into the red-eyed countenance of Mr. Squick.

“I’ve decided we need to become friends,” he said with a thin, ugly smile that Emily found frightening.

“I don’t like you.”

Squick knelt beside her, and Emily didn’t like the way he stared at her, the way his eyes were hard.

“I think,” she said, “that you are not a nice person. I want you to let us go home.”

“You don’t want to be my friend, then?” he asked, wrinkling his face as if in pain.

“You’d better leave me alone.”

“Or what?”

“I’ll kick you.”

Squick laughed, but uneasily. “What I have in mind won’t hurt you a bit. There’s a little secret thing my people have practiced for thousands of years. Wouldn’t you like to know about it?”

“No!” shouted Emily, and she scooted away from him to the other side of her fallen Chalk Man.

“Aren’t you going to ask about my people?”

“Where’s my brother?”

“Resting.” Squick’s eyes were a brighter red than usual and moist, his full mouth now a thin, terse line.

Squick trembled and dabbed one of his eyes with a fingertip.

Emily leaped to her feet and darted for the door. She tried to turn the handle, but it wouldn’t move. So she put all her strength into it, and this time something broke off in her hand. When she spread open her fingers, she saw the sculpted kitten, broken free from its world.

A strong hand gripped her shoulder, pulled her backward and Emily screamed. As she went over she saw the row of fat dolls staring down at her with unblinking, uncaring eyes.

Emily lost her vision to a freezing storm that inundated her eyes, drowning her in an ugly ecstasy that did not belong to her. All of her senses succumbed to the storm, and every cell of her body froze into dormancy. She was a block of ice floating in midair—and like the Chalk Man, unable to speak. Then the Chalk Man’s words crackled through the air, in Emily’s own voice. The ice broke, splitting into particles that rocketed to all parts of the universe.

“
Lordmother,” called her voice, from thoughts not her own.

She was immersed within the great, pulsing heart of aliens who called themselves Ch’Vars. But they were human, much as she was human, and they walked where she walked, spoke her language, ate her food, and called her Gween. She sensed their thoughts, their pleasures, their pains, and within the depths of this illusion fused with reality, a presence touched her and gave her power.

“
Move with me,” said the presence,
“and I will help you.”

“
I’m beginning to understand,” Emily said.

She emerged from the darkness, and her sight returned. Emily lay on her side without movement, peering at Malcolm Squick as he knelt nearby and dipped his finger into a vial of clear liquid. He did not look in her direction.

“I know something,” Emily said in a flat, low-pitched voice.

Startled, Squick glanced at her, then looked back at the vial and cursed. “Turn purple, dammit.”

“I don’t want to turn purple.”

“The fluid, not you!”

“Your Nebulons are dead.”

“Damn!” Squick hurled the vial across the room, smashing glass and splattering liquid on a wall. “What’s gone wrong here?”

Emily continued in the same toneless voice. “I’ve defeated them.”

Squick’s cheeks reddened, and deep, angry ridges split his features.

“Your Nebulon count is zero,” Emily said.

“You’re crazy.”

“I know your history,” she told him, and she felt herself coming out of a strange dream. Or had it been a dream? The images were slipping away, fading. Still, she understood that Squick was a Ch’Var with an unpleasant black fog that consumed him and concealed a monster beneath the surface. This Ch’Var, like some others, had done terrible things to children, unspeakable things. He invaded their brains, left them to die . . .

I
see your filthy soul!
she thought, and she wanted to be free of it.

Desperately, Squick went to one eye with a fingertip, then to the other eye. Terror consumed his face.

She reached into her troubled, fading dream and said, “From your Nebulons I know that Gweenchildren disappear, and you are among those responsible. The sleeping sickness explained.”

The man was trembling before her.

Emily felt her eyes blazing. “And I know you’ve tried an extraction on my brother, you bastard. He resisted you, too!”

Squick shot to his feet and backed up, staring at her with eyes that had lost their redness. He fumbled with the door handle, nearly fell into the corridor trying to get away, and slammed the door behind him. The door made its clicking noise again.

Emily opened one hand. The sculpted kitten remained there, and righting it upon her palm, she ran her fingers gently over the tiny gray and white object. Its surface alternated smooth and rough, smooth and rough, smooth and rough . . .

A vast storehouse of racial information had arrayed itself before her, and though it eluded her momentarily she realized with mounting excitement,
I’ll never be like I was again. I’ve changed forever.

Had Thomas weakened the Nebulons during the extraction attempt on him, enabling her to go a step further? Perhaps, the girl thought, but she sensed more than this. Much more.

And she worried about her brother.

Squick, upset by Emily’s bitter words, paced restlessly in his office. Why the hell should he care if a Gweengirl insulted him? But he did care, in a way he didn’t understand.

He rummaged about in his desk for the chocolate nut bar he’d placed there earlier under his cash-expenditure book. A small, wild laugh burst from his mouth.
My damned pacifier. .
.
that’s what it is and it isn’t here. Did Peenchay get into my stuff?

He stalked down the hall, through the stealth-lock and out into the Gween world in the downstairs lobby. Walt, the cigar and candy shop vendor, called to him. “How you doing, Mr. Squick?”

Walt’s round face was as smooth as a baby’s despite his eighty-two years. He wore a baseball cap over wisps of white hair, and a string tie secured with an elk-horn clip hung from his neck. He liked Squick.

The feeling was mutual as far as Squick was concerned, even if this guy was a Gween. Walt didn’t make demands on a person and on top of that he sold the best chocolate in town. His candy was imported from Paris and Rome and Amsterdam. In spite of his appearance, Walt was a connoisseur of fine confections, and people traveled long distances to fulfill their addictions.

“Well, here’s one of your chocolate addicts back for a fix,” said Squick. “Got any more of those good nut bars I bought yesterday?” He glanced at a newspaper Walt had spread open on the counter.

“Darn shame what’s happening to kids in this town,” said Walt. “I got fifteen grandkids myself. Glad they all live out in the country.” He reached under the counter and handed Squick his chocolate bar. “This one’s on me,” the old man said. “You look kinda low. Anything wrong?”

Squick muttered an abrupt thanks and turned away. As he crossed the lobby, he stuffed the chocolate bar in his mouth, wadded the wrapper and made a basketball shot toward a nearby trash can. He missed.
Damn Gweens
. . .
damn
. . .
damn.