The Devil's Dream: Waking Up (17 page)

J
ake opened his eyes
, looking at the sun peeking through his office blinds. What time had they gone to bed last night? Two? Was that when they finally got into the office? There just wasn't any sense in going home—and home for Jake would have to be Art's house now—so they came back to the office.

What time was Art supposed to wake them up? Six? So why was the sun shining and why wasn't Art in here waking him? Jake sat up and looked at his watch. Ten in the morning. That didn't make any sense; Art was about the timeliest person Jake had ever met, and more, a workaholic.

Jake stood and stretched his arms above his head, letting out a groan.

He pulled an undershirt over his head, one of the five that he had tossed under his desk, and then wandered out into the main office. It was Saturday and no one else was here, not on this floor anyway. There were definitely people working on other floors, the entirety of the manhunt hadn't been called off for the weekend, but their floor was quiet—another reason Jake had just overslept. He walked down to Art's office and opened the door.

It took him a few seconds to move.

He hadn't, until that moment, ever thought of Art as a friend. Not an enemy either, they worked together and that was enough. Seeing him on his desk, with shiny, silver tape glinting in the sunlight, Jake realized he cared about the man. He could see Art's face from where he stood, see the crusted blood covering his eyes, nose, and mouth, see the swollen cheeks and eyelids, see the purple flesh underneath the dried blood. The word
how
never crossed his mind. He didn't care how. He didn't care why.

Jake rushed into the room, picking up the phone from the floor, and dialing nine-one-one.

"Art. Art, you hear me?" He said, holding the man's face with one hand while he waited on the operator to pick up on the other end of the phone.

* * *

G
yle was
on his way to the hospital.

No one else though.

That was it, just Jake and Gyle. What a life. You try to save the world and the world repays you by letting you die in a room, broken and alone.

He's not going to die. Just shut the fuck up with that.

Jake sat in the waiting area of the ER. The ambulance had arrived, they slapped a mask on Art’s face, and Jake hopped in the back for the ride. Art didn't say a word the whole time, didn't open his eyes—if he even could. It looked like Mike Tyson had unloaded on Art, his face swelling up worse than if he had stuck his head in a doorway and let someone just slam it on him repeatedly. Jake had been waiting two hours so far, and he finally remembered to call Gyle an hour ago. Finally remembered to report the whole thing. He had been in shock, he realized. Gyle said he would come as soon as he could, but for now, Jake was in charge of the whole operation. Gyle wouldn't be promoting anyone else and so Jake assumed command.

"You won't be making any speeches, for obvious reasons."

Jake didn't care. Not about speeches and not about operational command. He wasn't leaving this hospital until he knew two things: his friend was okay and how this happened. Everyone else could continue searching for Matthew Brand however they saw fit, but Jake wasn't doing anything until he understood those things.

"Jacob Deschaine?"

He looked up from the spot on the floor he had been staring at for the past hour.

"I'm here."

"Will you come with me?"

Jake didn't know who the man was, only that he wore the white coat of a doctor. He stood and walked across the room, where the man turned and began leading. They went into an office, and Jake noticed the X-Ray charts lighting up on the wall. They showed a skull, that's all Jake knew. He couldn't tell whether or not it was Art, whether it looked good or bad.

"You brought Art Brayden in, correct?"

"Yeah. I'm, I don't know, his partner I guess. You know who he is?"

"I do," the man said, looking down at a clipboard he had picked up from his desk.

"What can you tell me?" For the past two hours, Jake sat and thought, nothing else. The country—hell, the world—wasn't going to continue without Art Brayden in it. That's what they didn't understand, that's why more people weren't in the waiting room and crowds gathering outside holding candlelight vigils. They didn't know that only Art could save them. That he was the only man standing at the gate while the barbarians surged forward. He was their protector, all of them, and if he wasn't here, Brand would snuff out the sun. Jake could lose a friend here and the world could lose a savior.

"I can tell you it's not as bad as it looks."

Tears filled Jake's eyes as the last word passed the doctor's lips. His head lifted above the water just before his body decided it could no longer live without oxygen. Safety. Joy. Goddamn relief.

The doctor looked up. "He has a concussion, a fractured cheek bone, but the majority of his skull was spared. There was some slight brain swelling, but that's been brought down as well. His nose is broken, obviously. Whoever did this to him...well the way you found him, they could have done a lot worse. Had they aimed for his throat? He would have died after two or three punches. They didn't want to kill him, just hurt him. He's in pain for sure, a lot of it, but that's it really. We've reset the bones and are monitoring the swelling. He's going to be fine."

"Jesus Christ," Jake said, stumbling backwards and collapsing into a chair. He put his face in his hands, not trying to hold back the tears, not trying to hold back any of the emotions rising, the emotions he had shoved away the entire morning.

"I'll give you a minute," the doctor said. "He's been asking about you, so when you're ready, his room is the last door on the left, right here in this hallway, okay? If you or he need anything, just hit the button on his bed and a nurse will be there shortly."

Jake couldn't talk; he just gave a thumbs up and kept crying into his hands.

It took him ten minutes, but he finally stood up and went to the bathroom. He looked at his eyes in the mirror, splashed water on his face and then used a paper towel to dry himself. He wasn't going to be able to cover up his red eyes. Art would know, but fuck it, what did it matter?

Jake walked down the hall, paused out front of the door and prepared himself for Art’s face. Swollen. Bruised. He took a deep breath and then another before finally opening the door and walking in.

"Goddamn. I told that doctor to get you like thirty minutes ago," Art said as Jake walked around the curtain surrounding a quarter of his bed. "Oh, shit. Jake, tell me you haven't been crying."

Art smiled, and it looked somewhat grotesque, like a monster discovering humor for the first time—but his teeth weren't chipped and his smile was full even if the rest of his face looked bloated and purple.

"No. My eyes are red because I haven't slept much, and that's primarily because you keep getting beat up and I'm having to rush you to the hospital."

"Yeah, yeah. Sit down." Art pointed at the chair next to the bed. "Gyle know?"

"Yeah. I called him an hour or so ago; he said he was on the way."

"When we're done, you call him back and tell him not to come. I'm getting out of here within the next two hours or I'm going to arrest them for interference." Art pressed a button on the remote which connected to his bed, and the back of it began rising. He grimaced a little at the movement, but made no noises. "Stop looking at me like that. I'm not dead. I got banged up a little bit; I'm going to be fine."

Jake didn't realize he had been staring so hard, looking at the blue and purple tints where Art's face had once been the color of flesh. He didn't look away, but found his friend's eyes instead, hiding inside puffy skin.

"It was Brand. I don't know how he got in, but if you check everything out—all the cameras and shit—you should see him. It doesn't matter. He's...he's insane, Jake. Not insane like he used to be, thinking that he had some moral justification for what he was doing. He's insane in that reality doesn't exist to him anymore. I'm not sure that he really can understand the world around him. He knew who I was, but he showed up, and get this, he showed up to ask me why I kept on trying to find him? He could have been captured any second he was in that building, but he wanted an answer to that question." Art paused, fiddling with the remote a bit, adjusting the seat up a few more inches. "It's bad. If he knows how bad it is, if he knows what's happening to him, I don't see how he cannot set this thing off immediately. He's going to die soon, on his own, and if he realizes that, then our time is almost at zero."

"
W
isssssshhhhhh
."

Joe made the noise to remind himself that he could still hear. That his senses hadn’t completely disappeared. Pain was long gone. Sight was something he only remembered. The water they brought in was tasteless. He could hear though. They hadn't taken that away from him, not yet anyway.

He hung in the same room, next to the same people. There were fewer of them now though. Every day, people wearing masks came in, and if someone died during the previous night, they yanked them from the wall and dragged their bodies out. Four had been pulled out so far. Probably died because of the way they hung from the wall; they created the position, most likely, as a short term solution, one that would keep the 'owners' safe from possible retaliation, but not one the body could sustain for a long time. Something wasn’t right with the operation; Brand should have picked them up by now. After they dragged the fourth body out by its feet, the dead woman's arms and hair stringing out across the floor as they pulled her away, their captors started letting them stand some each day. Joe didn't know how long, and the first time they released him, he collapsed directly to the floor, unable to hold up his own weight anymore. They kept at it, though, giving him a little bit of time each day to stand on his own feet and take the pressure off his shoulders. He knew the joints inside were ruined, that even surgery probably couldn’t correct them. Luckily, it seemed like the nerves inside had died away, because all he felt was a cold numbness, even when standing.

For Joe, everything had died away.

That's what he understood now, in this dark room surrounded by the smells of dead people and unwashed bodies. Everything was dead. His wife, his child, the world outside. The people hanging next to him and the people coming in to feed them scraps and water. Nothing in this world was left alive and Joe would join all that death very soon.

There was no reason to be here anymore. He would die, gladly now, if he could. They wouldn't let him though. They were going to get their money on him, and then maybe he could die. Joe still remembered why he had come here, what the point had been, but it no longer mattered. Matthew Brand or the darkness of this room, it was all the same. To Joe, now, Charles Manning was nothing other than a memory that fired through his brain's synapses. Charles Manning wouldn’t rescue him. Charles Manning wasn't going to show up when Brand did, kill Brand and then release Joe. Charles Manning was dead, just like the rest of the world.

He thought of his wife still, of Patricia. Even his son had faded from his mind in this black place. He woke from a dream screaming, and those around him started screaming, until the entire place sounded like a pit inside hell—Satan’s own fire burning the prisoners. He had seen his wife, but not with her throat being slit. He looked to his left and his wife was there, hanging just like him, naked, her hair unwashed and falling limply around her face.

Joe would rather her die with blood running from her throat than to hang in this room next to him. He started screaming, and she turned her head at his voice, but her eyes were gone. She couldn't see him. She didn’t know that he hung next to her, that all of this had been for her. She couldn't see he loved her because she didn't have any eyes.

He only dreamed once. Most of the time, he didn't know whether he was awake or not. It was all the same anyway, just dark silence. Life was death and decorated with dark silence. Brand could come and Joe realized he would welcome him with open arms, not to kill him, but in hopes for his own death.

Y
our time's done
,
Morgant says.
It's over. You're hanging on for something that isn't going to happen. You're losing control and you know it.

Matthew hears him clearly for the first time. This isn't the sex fueled thoughts that run through his head normally, Morgant's usual attempts at getting his wishes out into the world. This is Arthur Morgant. This is him, alive, awake, and inside Matthew—addressing him as a man would address another.

Not yet,
Matthew says.
Not. Yet.

Matthew watches his arm rise upward, knowing that he did not move it. Morgant did.

Look at that. Try to force me down. Try to put your arm back at your side. If you can, then I'll agree that your time isn't over. If you can't, then just shut up and go away. Go to the back where I can't ever hear you again. Try.

Matthew looks at the arm, not his arm anymore, but
the
arm. He doesn't try to lower it because he won't give Morgant the satisfaction of being right. Instead he only looks at the arm and remains silent.

Not even going to try? Is that it? Do you want to watch the things I'm about to do? Because that's what will happen if you decide to stay. You can watch me go from woman to woman, body to body, and you can live inside me and view it just like I've viewed some of the things you've done. But I know that's not what you want to do, because it disgusts you, what I am. So die, Matthew Brand. Die and be done with all of this.

Matthew could die; he knows this. He could let the consciousness of Morgant surge forth and blot his out, melting away into it, himself becoming so diluted that eventually there is nothing that can actually be called Matthew Brand at all.

Do it. You don't want to see what's about to happen.

Matthew is having a tough time remembering why he is here. Why he is in this body to begin with. Why he is sitting in a car outside of a lighthouse with one arm raised to eye level. And this voice, talking to him, demanding him to die—why not just listen and stop worrying about the rest? He is tired. His mind feels like it has been thinking, non-stop, for decades. His body, it doesn't listen to him anymore. Why keep going? What's here at this lighthouse for him? What's here at all for him?

Matthew lets his head fall back against the headrest and closes his eyes.

It's not blackness that he sees as he lets go. It's his son. It's Hilman as a child, and Rally, both of them lying on the couch with Rally's arms around Hilman and them watching a cartoon. He sees it and then he's gone.

* * *

A
rthur Morgant didn't
like what had happened to his body. He didn't understand it, either. When he went away, all those years ago, frozen in a deep blue—that's what he remembered the whole experience as, one long, deep, blue freeze—his body had worked fine. Better than fine. It took five cops to bring him down when they finally caught him, even with billy clubs and mace. Now, things didn't work as well as he'd like.

Brand had really left him a mess here. He was in Massachusetts and the bastard had somehow shut the lights off on the entire state. That meant a bunch of things, but two were the most important—one, there was no doctor that could look at this shattered body of his, and two, there wouldn't be many women to jump. He wasn't completely sure he should go to the doctor though, given all the shit Brand had gotten himself into. Then again, though, maybe if he told everyone he had stopped Brand, they might give him free healthcare. That could wait, though. He would have to drive out of state to get help and he wasn't driving out of state without having humped something first.

He remembered pieces of Brand walking through Boston. He remembered that the place was empty, but he also remembered Brand thinking that people might be hiding inside the buildings. They might be crazy people, but that was fine. A crazy person could get it the same as a sane person—Arthur was an equal opportunity rapist. He laughed at that as he parked the van up on the curb. An equal opportunity racist—that was good shit.

The word rapist never bothered him. They threw it at him like it was mud that wouldn't wipe off. Arthur didn't want to wipe the mud off, didn't care in the slightest. They could call him whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted; he wouldn’t stop. Their words were just that to him, words, and Arthur was in control of the rest of this place. Or he had been. Then they threw him into The Wall because apparently he couldn't get HIV. Which was good, given his proclivity for sex.

He laughed again. His body was fucked up but his brain was working fine.

He looked in the rear view mirror and saw his grandma sitting in the back seat.

"You ain't got him gone for good, you know dat right?" She said.

She would never leave. Never. He had the slightest bit of hope that when he took over in a full-time capacity she might be discarded the same as Brand. But there the old bitch was, sitting behind him, trying to advise him. She'd advised him plenty, with cigarettes and the metal pieces of belts and her hand if nothing else was around. She gave him enough advice and he didn't want to hear anything else. That was the problem though, wasn't it? It didn't matter what he wanted, it never did to grandma, to Sheeb. All that mattered was what
she
wanted. He loved her at one time—surely, he did. Right? Yes. He had to, at one point. He had no mother besides Sheeb, had no family besides her, but eventually, blood wasn't enough to make him put up with her. He strangled her to death in that old Detroit apartment, leaving her body there for the landlord to find. At eighteen years old, she couldn't hurt him anymore. He’d grown too large for her to do anything besides try and dictate his life with her words. He couldn’t handle that anymore either, though. So he put his big hands around her little neck and shook her until there wasn't anyone left to shake, just bones and dying flesh.

He thought that would rid him of her, but it hadn't. Sheeb, grandma, wasn't leaving. Not ever.

"He's gone," Arthur said, stepping outside of the van. He was going to find someone in one of these buildings and then he was going to drive south until he found a hospital. He heard the door to the van open and Sheeb step outside, following him.

"You need tuh wait. You need tuh make sure."

He didn't turn around to look at her. There was a CVS building in front of him, all of the windows broken. Arthur shuffled forward and managed to step over the jagged glass sticking up from the bottom of the large windows. This would be as good a place to start as any. He had no idea how many stores he might have to go through before he found someone, but CVS had medical supplies and stuff, so maybe people would tend to congregate here?

Sheeb's feet crunched on the glass behind him.

Arthur started on the far left row, dragging his left leg behind his right, moving slowly but with a surety that he would get there eventually.

"You got tuh make sure. You cain't be goin' and doin' this stuff if he's still in there. He'll come out. He'll come forward while you're distracted."

"Shuutth uppp, ya old bitsh," Arthur said, not hearing how his own voice sounded—slurred and broken. He was going to find someone to poke on and Matthew-Fucking-Brand wasn't going to stop him. Matthew Brand was a freak of nature, something that shouldn't have happened and certainly not someone that could dominate Arthur. He'd only spent as much time in control as he had because Arthur needed to thaw out. Needed to get his brain up and running. Now though? Sheeb didn't know what she was talking about. Brand was a fly to be flicked, nothing else.

He turned around the aisle, and praise God, he saw what he wanted. A white woman sat in the corner holding a knife. She held it in both hands, in between her knees with the tip pointed straight up. Her hair was wild, stringy, some of it having fallen out in clumps. The woman was thin and scabs ran up and down her arms like tiny brown ants. The knife might be a problem—

"Ya gotta leave, Arthur. Ya don't wanna do dis right now."

He heard Sheeb but shuffled forward, not caring in the slightest. Old bitch could follow him around forever if she wanted, but that didn't mean he was going to pay her any more mind.

The knife could be a problem. He would need to get rid of that and then she wouldn't stand a chance. She weighed, what? A hundred pounds? Not enough to even think about. Arthur took another step, his left leg dragging behind him. "It won't hurrrhtt," he said.

The woman let out a short shriek, moving the knife up and down quickly.

"Juth puth that thing dowwwhhnn," Arthur said, unable to get a single sentence out correctly.

He felt his cock stiffen in his pants and knew that whether or not she put the knife down, she was going to find him bearing down on top of her shortly. When his cock started rising, there wasn't a lot Arthur could do. He had to get on her. Had to get inside her. Had to—

It felt like a rod being shoved straight down his spine. Like some form of metal filling in his bones rather than the marrow that normally resided. He straightened up, his whole body, even his eyes looking straight forward instead of down at the woman. Arthur thought this might be the worst thing he could ever feel, worse than the freezing temperature of The Wall, worse than the beating taken at the hands of the cops when they finally subdued him, worse than any of the pain his grandma inflicted on him. His whole body was out of his control even though he was conscious, here, willful.

And yet, he quickly realized it wasn't nearly the worst feeling ever.

Matthew Brand came forward, surging like a tsunami making landfall, breaking down any structure in its path. Arthur saw the white woman out of his peripheral, unable to look down, and heard his grandma say, "I told you tuh wait."