Something Bad, page 11
Mac tried to control his breathing but it echoed in his ears. Midway through a protracted inhalation, a figure emerged from the rectory porch. The small stature and the shuffling, irregular walk confirmed it was Thibideaux.
Mac watched the little man shuffle down the steps and turn right, toward the two houses Mac had just circled. Thibideaux ambled past the house where a dog had a newly acquired case of whiplash, and on into the night. Mac stayed in place until Thibideaux disappeared into the distance. When he stood up, something wasn’t right. His knees felt strange. He looked down and pulled on the legs of his pants. The dive into the brush and the knee-crawl to the rectory produced two large rips in the knees of his dress slacks. He bent over and pulled closer to the rips. Fortunately, his skin hadn’t suffered the same fate.
Mac did a mental calculation of Thibideaux’s distance and his maximum speed, and then sprinted for the back of the rectory. Better to snoop from the inside than to try to see from black-to-black through the windows. He was comforted by a dense fog that circled the back of the rectory and enveloped the building and surrounding yard.
Mac hurried to the nearest window and pushed upward. He expected resistance, but it offered none. It slammed open. He paused. No sound from inside. He jumped up but misjudged the height—his center of gravity pulled him past the ledge and he tumbled, head first, into the room. The initial sting singed his forearms, and then his right side as he rolled onto the floor. He waited for a lingering pain to flare somewhere on his body, but only the residual rasp from his initial contact remained. He stayed still. It would take a little while for his eyes to adjust to the abyssal darkness in the rectory.
He reached for his flashlight, but paused. Only if necessary, he thought. Once on, it would have to be left on or his night vision would be reset. The move became moot as the dimensions of the room started to take shape. He released the flashlight and pushed himself upright.
The large bedroom was at the rear of the house. The hall to the left led to the front of the house, past the living room—the main objective of the search. Mac knew the layout well. Two years ago he tried to liberate the toilet from the bathroom halfway down the hall. His plan to sell the used fixture was foiled when the nut on one of the two floor bolts refused to release its rusty grip, even when the largest pipe wrench was enlisted. Hack sawing through the bolt or bringing in a blowtorch was out. In the Tri-counties, it wasn’t a crime to claim an unused object as long as two conditions were met. First, there had to be no doubt the object was never going to be of use to the owner. Second, the object had to be removed in such a way that no permanent resident was forced to look, or listen, the other way. It was necessary to avoid the gossip mill.
Mac slipped into the bathroom, partly to see if anyone had managed to free the commode, and partly to see if it was functional, since it was the only refuse receptacle in the building. It was there, in the same non-functional, partly dissembled condition he had left it. He slapped his forehead with his right palm. There, next to the rusted nut, was the crescent wrench he’d been trying to find for ages. He pocketed the wrench and reflected on his good fortune, then on his carelessness.
A sudden chill hit his back and Mac spun on his heels to see nothing. The cold penetrated his clothing like it wasn’t there, and an icy cloud puffed from his mouth with each exhalation. He crossed his arms across his chest and slipped out of the bathroom. The next room on the right was the living room, but he stopped short of the opening. A low whirring sound came from the room.
He leaned around the doorway and moved first one eye into the opening, then the other. The hardwood floor complained with a loud creak. The whirring noise increased in tone. He pulled his head back. The whirring stopped.
Mac leaned his head into the doorway again and peered in. He quickly withdrew his head. Only a chair. A big chair. He leaned around again, this time long enough to scan the nearest half of the room. Still only the chair. Another step and the floor groaned again, but this time, there was no whirring sound.
The living room was silent. He leaned his head farther into the room and scanned the other half. As far as he could see in the dark, it was empty. The large chair was the only piece of furniture, and it was placed in the geometric middle of the rectangular room, centered in front of the fireplace. It had a conical pedestal base and a high back of enormous proportions. It faced directly toward him.
He inched closer. His breath came fast, forcing an almost continuous stream of mist. It seemed to get colder the closer he came to the chair. His hand extended, index finger twitching, and touched it. It wasn’t cold like he expected, but it wasn’t warm either. He put out his palm and the chair turned with his touch. A harder push and it swung halfway around. It moved freely, like there was little friction between base and seat. Harder, and it turned a complete circle. He pushed harder yet, and he had to reach out and stop it when it came back to his position.
The chair was carved in some ornate way, but in the dim light, he couldn’t make out the pattern. To get a better look, he walked around in front of the fireplace and swung the chair around to face him. In a single smooth movement, his hands grasped the arms of the chair and he catapulted himself upward, turning 180 degrees to land with his backside on the seat. Good thing I wore my Chucks, he thought. The chair didn’t rotate with the leap—it continued to face the fireplace.
Mac wiggled himself back into the seat and rested his back and head against the hardwood seat back.
His legs hung short of the floor by a few inches. He sat motionless and sniffed. An odor rose to him. It smelled like sulfur, but sweet. It was familiar, but he couldn’t place it. The smell intensified and Mac’s mind clicked. It smelled like the transformer of the electric train he got for Christmas when he was ten. The familiarity of the smell relaxed him, and he slumped into the seat.
Then, he felt the heat. It came from the seat, seat back and arms of the chair. In a matter of seconds, the entire chair seemed to achieve the temperature of his adrenaline-perfused body and hold there.
A crackle sounded below his right arm, then one below his left. He raised his arms and saw the flashes. Electrical arcs jumped between the slats of the chair arms briefly illuminating the sides of the chair. The smell of ozone replaced the transformer odor as Mac pulled his arms together, away from the armrests. He tried to move to the edge of the chair, to dismount, but his body didn’t obey his brain’s commands. He was frozen in place as miniature lightning bolts surrounded him in the chair.
A low frequency vibration rocked the chair base, then the seat, and then the upper chair. The vibrations spread to the floor, causing a rhythmic groaning that spread along the floor to the junctions of the floor and walls. A non-functional chandelier swayed overhead.
Mac moved his right side, then his left, and this time his body responded. He inched his butt toward the edge of the seat in a right-then-left bun-walk—the only way he could move without touching the electrified arms of the chair.
Before he could get to the edge of the seat and slide down, the chair back heaved forward, launching Mac through the air. He landed near the fireplace hearth with a loud thud, accompanied by a whine as the air was knocked from his lungs. He lay motionless, trying to regain some semblance of a breathing rhythm.
Gasping, Mac looked up at the chair. It was still. No electrical arcs, no vibrations, no smells, and it was cold in the room again. He pulled himself up, favoring his sore right ribcage, and sprinted toward the doorway and the hall. Misjudging the width of the hallway, he smacked his head into the door jam of the bathroom. The angle of the impact stopped the upper part of his body, but allowed the lower part to rotate off the ground until his left hip, leg and both feet slammed into the wall down-hall from the initial contact point. He lay crumpled on the floor facing back toward the living room, dazed.
This time, Mac didn’t wait for his breathing to recover. He clamored to hands and knees, then to hands and feet, and monkey walked to the back bedroom and out the open window. The disorienting film of fog triggered a pause while his mind tried to gain hold of landmarks and guideposts. A shadow—his shadow—broke through the confusion. It wasn’t much of one, but it was there, showing the direction of the one streetlight in town.
Mac sprinted along the rectory, past the church, and on a diagonal across the vacant lot toward the nearest sanctuary—his General Store. His feet barely touched the ground until they found the porch and the front door. Fumbling in his pocket for the key, he turned the pocket lining inside out. The key clinked on the wooden planks of the porch.
Once inside, he collapsed on the floor, straining with each breath. Then the pain came. With each inhalation, his right side burned. He tried to take short, shallow breaths, but it didn’t help. He shifted his position but the pain didn’t relent.
Warm sweat dripped from his skullcap onto the floor, so he removed the hat and threw it across the room. He lowered his head. The sweat that fell from his brow stained the floor red. He bolted upright, ignoring the pain in his side. A terrifying thought stopped his breathing—he had left a trail of blood for Thibideaux to follow.
Mac stood and nearly collapsed while he adjusted to the temporary dizziness. He reached in his other pocket and withdrew the flashlight. Flicking it, he opened the door. The thick fog reflected the flashlight beam directly back in his eyes. Squatting down, he duck-walked along the porch to look for a blood path, but he couldn’t find a single crimson spot. Back inside, he headed for the first-aid kit under the main counter of the store.
Normally, he would have walked the aisle slowly, admiring his organizational genius in the merchandise displays. The newer, desired items were placed low, in front, and the older merchandise of lesser demand in back, up high. Everything was in rank order. New to old. Front to back. Low to high. The oldest items were out of reach. Mac liked to fetch the ladder to get them down. It highlighted his joy at moving a long ago acquired item so he could celebrate clearing it from his inventory list and recouping his ancient investment. The oldest piece in the store was a wooden-handled de-thatching rake, which was bracketed way up near the rafters.
Mac limped into the garden section and stopped short. The floor vibrated with his weight more than he remembered. He took another step and the vibrations increased in both frequency and intensity. They continued when he stopped. The hanging merchandise swayed with the movements. All around him, items on shelves teetered, and then toppled from the displays. Up near the rafters, the de-thatching rake swayed slowly on its hooks, inching toward the ends of the restraints with each pendulum-like swing.
Mac didn’t take another step. The rake reached the limit of the hangers and fell. The weight of the rake-head turned the sharp teeth downward as it descended, and it crashed down on Mac’s head before he could react to its approach. The force of the impact created a sickening smack as the tines of the rake dug deep into Mac’s scalp and skull. He fell, motionless, in the main aisle of the garden section.
CHAPTER
22
“I’VE BEEN EXPECTING you,” Thibideaux said without opening his eyes.
The Councillor moved in front of the chair. “Why do you insist on breaking the rules? Didn’t I make myself clear the last time I was here?”
“Crystal.”
“Then why do you persist? You know you’re not supposed to kill citizens.”
Thibideaux opened his eyes. “I didn’t.”
“What are you talking about? Are you saying the tornado that killed that family wasn’t your doing?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying those weren’t killings.”
The Councillor’s brows pressed down, nearly covering his eyes.
Thibideaux scooted forward in his chair and rested his right elbow on the chair arm. “You just don’t get it, do you? They weren’t killings, they were just consequences. Acquisitions require set-ups, and set-ups sometimes have consequences. That’s all.”
The Councillor shook his head and exhaled through his open mouth. “I told you before. The rules are not open to your personal interpretation.”
“I can assure you I’m following the rules,” Thibideaux said, emphasizing each word. “I can quote the rules right down to the punctuation. ‘Never let personal feelings, such as glee, revenge, anger, boastfulness, pride, greed or conceit enter into the business at hand. Completion of the assignment is to be as emotionless as possible. Emotions can be used to set up completion of the assignment as long as setbacks are never dealt with through anger or revenge.’ How’s that? Or this. ‘Recruiters are to blend in with the general population. They are to be an invisible force. They are to avoid any activity or behavior that might make them stand out from the average person. They will take special care to avoid drawing attention to themselves, or to the activities of the Organization.’ Then, there’s my favorite: ‘Most recruiters will fit within an average physical phenotype.’“
The Councillor smiled. “Okay, you can quote from the training manual. How about working in accordance with what you just recited?”
“You mean like the part about blending in? Look at me. I’m afraid I break that one by just being.”
“You know what I mean.”
Thibideaux slid from the chair and looked up at the Councillor. “What does the government call it when a military operation results in civilian deaths? Collateral damage? They don’t call it killing. That’s reserved for the enemy. The civilians are not killed, they’re just consequences. Get it?”
“That’s still your interpretation.”
“Okay, you want to see me following the rules? Go back and pull my file from the last time I was here in Boyston, twenty-five years ago. Read it and think of our conversation today.”
“I’ve seen the file.”
“You have to do more than read it. You need to climb into it.” Thibideaux paused. He brought his hands up to his mouth, paused again, and then lowered them. “Have you ever wanted to kill someone? I mean really, really wanted to kill someone. To watch their chest rise and fall with the last breath. To watch their eyelids flutter and their eyes defocus to another plane.” He shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t have, would you? Mid-level officers are never on the front lines when the battle is raging. They never pull triggers.”
His eyes went wide. “Try to imagine that feeling—to want to kill that bad, but with rules that say you aren’t supposed to. If you obey the rules and don’t kill under those circumstances, that’s power. And that’s following the rules.”
He moved a step closer to the Councillor, who backed up an equal step. His voice danced, like that of a child who just struck on a great new idea. “Here’s what I think. The do-not-kill rule was written to develop that power, and for no other reason. Why? So we could use that power. When you go back to my file, see how I found a fate much worse than death for that individual. That’s power. That’s brilliance. That’s following the rules. That’s using the rules.”
The Councillor shifted his weight onto his right leg. “You make a strong point, but I still can’t totally agree. I don’t think the organization will, either.”
Thibideaux turned away. “What’s your given name?”
“You know I don’t have that information.”
“You haven’t seen your own file?”
“No. We aren’t allowed to see the files of councillors. Only of recruiters.”
“Then, what’s my given name?”
“I’m not here to play games. I can’t give that information.”
“Do you know where I was born?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me?”
“No.”
“Well, I know where I was born—in New York City.”
The Councillor looked down and shook his head. “Sorry, but you weren’t born in New York.”
Thibideaux spun around to face the Councillor. “Sorry to say this, young man, but you just broke one of the rules.”
The Councillor frowned. “I did no such thing.”
“Yes, you did. You’re not allowed to tell me where I was born, or any other personal facts. But you just told me where I wasn’t born, which is a personal fact that allows me to narrow down my search for my place of birth.”
The Councillor started to speak, but Thibideaux held a finger to his face.
“Don’t speak. Try to catch my point. If you interpret the rule about divulging personal facts strictly, you broke the rule. But if you interpret it more broadly, by saying you didn’t tell me my place of birth, then you’re in the clear. So, which is it? Did you break the rule or didn’t you? Do you want to take the strict interpretation or the broad one?”
“I understand your point. I’ll have to take it under advisement.”
Thibideaux jumped back into his chair. “Can you leave me alone to do my work in the meantime?”
“I’ll take that under advisement, too.”
Thibideaux attempted a smug smile but his mouth maintained its dimensions. The slight tug of the feeble muscles pulled on the scars, giving him the only sensation left in that part of his body. Pain.
CHAPTER
23
GABE LOOKED AT the empty glass in front of the one unoccupied seat at the card table.
“Do you think he’ll show?” Teddy said. “You told him it was tonight, right?”
“I told him,” Gabe said. “He said he needed to get out with the guys.”
The doorknob turned and Dr. Robert Halvorson stepped in and stopped. “This the place?”
“Come on in, Doc,” Billy said. “How’s Mac doing?”
