Chapter #16Sulva Comes to Oswego by: Seuzz   You pick your way carefully across the carpet of the forest, trying not to make any noise as you brush over dry twigs and leaves. It's not really a forest, of course, just an incursion made by the surrounding woodland into the outskirts of the town. But it's better to approach from this angle than from the road, even though it is already quite dark. You glance over your shoulder as you top a small crest, and through a gap in the trees you see the surface of Lake Ontario twinkling under the moonlight. You follow the bend of the hill, and soon your destination looms over the trees.
The long-abandoned State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. It's a vast, gaunt shadow, and even less inviting in the dark than it is in the daytime. But even under the noon-time sun the dark stonework -- unbroken even by windows -- grimly deflects the gaze; at night, the walls are an obsidian nightmare of shadow.
You hurry across the open space between the woods and the walls of the asylum, and it's so dark that you're nearly on top of him before you see him in the shadows. "Shackelford?" you whisper.
The shadow jumps. "Jesus, Medoff," he hisses. "About fucking time. What are you--?"
"I snuck through the woods. Those guys here yet?"
"No," he says. "You were cutting it close, though. Come on."
He leads you along the wall, crouching and feeling at the tall weeds, until he finds what he's looking for. He kneels and pushes the grass away, exposing a dark, basement window. It squeals as he pushes it open, and squeezes through. "Come on," he calls. You clamber through as well, and a shudder passes through you.
Shackelford has a flashlight, and by its dim beam the two of you pick your way through the abandoned office and into a dusty, airless hallway. At the far end, a set of winding steps take you up to the first floor, into a wide atrium. "There's an operating theater that way," he says, indicating the end of a hallway.
"How do you know?"
"I broke in earlier this afternoon." The floor creaks under your footsteps as you walk toward the heavy doors. Shackelford goes in first; as soon as you're through, you feel strong hands seize you. Lights blaze on. Half a dozen men, three of them in state troopers uniforms, surround you.
* * * * *
"Listen, jackoff--"
"Medoff," you correct him.
He cracks you across the jaw again. "I can keep softening you up until there's nothing left of your face," Bradley says, and rubs his fist. "And then we can start moving down to soften the rest of you up. Where's that shit you stole?"
"I didn't steal anything," you mumble through a hurting jaw. "Ask that asshole over there." You nod at Shackelford.
"We did. He told us you had it."
You look at Shackelford, who stares back at you levelly. His face doesn't show any sign of trauma, and he's the one who led you into this ambush. You just don't get it. You'd checked him out thoroughly after Rick put you onto him as the undercover cop in the drug ring; and "checking him out thoroughly" had included a deep cavity search of his mental imago. There wasn't a crooked bone inside him that you could tell. So why the sudden shift in allegiance?
Bradley hits you again. "Okay, okay," you slur. "I hid it out in the cemetery."
"Where?"
"Under a big double-yew." He hits you again. "I don't remember, I wasn't paying attention. But take me out there, I can find it with the landmarks."
They briefly confer, then untie you from the chair, and two of the troopers seize you by the arms. "Don't try anything smart, you haven't got the brains. And if you do try anything smart, you sure as fuck won't have the brains afterward."
The two troopers hustle you outside and into the passenger side of a sedan. One takes the wheel while the other gets into back, and presses a pistol to the back of your head.
The driver puts his hand on the gear shift; you put your hand over the back of his; without even a sigh, he sags to the side.
For a moment the one the back says nothing. Then: "The fuck are you waiting for? Yo, Terry!" He puts his hand on his partner's shoulder; you feel the pistol move from your head, and you put your hand on his. You have the presence of mind to duck as you do so, but the pistol doesn't discharge.
* * * * *
"The fuck are you doing back here, Sean?" Bradley demands. He, Bill, and Brian are sitting at a desk in one of the abandoned offices; Shackelford is standing in a corner, staring out a window. Brian is shuffling a deck of cards.
"Fucker started crying out in the car," you say, and hike your pants up. "Says a buyer in Oneida offered him seven hundred-fifty for the package, and he's already delivered it."
"Jesus!" Brian exclaims, and the cards explode from his hands in a cloud. Bradley smacks him.
"So -- " You lean over the table, and put your hand over Brian's and Bill's. "Terry sent me back in to find out what you want to do about it."
Brian doesn't answer; like Bill, he has slumped in his chair. Bradley looks around in confusion; with a smile, you grab him by the wrist, and he too slides onto the floor.
"Shackelford!" You whistle through your teeth at him. He turns to gaze at you calmly. "Wanna explain this little double-cross to me?"
He comes over, to stare down with faint bemusement at the collapsed trio. "I don't know, Sean. Why did you double-cross them?"
You have to admire his sang-froid, at least. You reach up and touch his neck. You'll just have to get the story out of him--
But he doesn't collapse. He remains on his feet, even though you can feel the sigil burning in your fingertips.
His mouth parts, and his eyes glint. And before you can react, he swings at you. His punch is much harder than any mere human should be able to pack.
* * * * *
You wake at the slap of water to your face; you blow and snort it away, and shake your hair out. You blink. You're awake, but Shackelford pours the rest of the water bottle into your lap with a cold smile. "It's almost ready," he says. "You might as well wake up now."
You're back in the operating theater, bound at the wrists and ankles to a chair. There's a table nearby, and Shackelford crosses over to it. "Only one more ingredient," he says softly. "Last of the original batch. I wish they'd used it on you first."
"Used what on me?" It seems too much to hope he'll monologue you the answers.
But he does, after a fashion. "The drug they were making. They only had enough to make three doses." There's a large coffee urn on the table, and he opens the top to dump a jar of white powder in. "The first they used on that man in Binghamton, to get the special meth they needed. The second they used on Shackelford, when they found the whole stash missing." He turns on the coffee urn, and puts a Styrofoam cup under the spout. "The third is for you. I can only hold three at a time, but with the right three, I'll never hibernate again. You will be one of my three."
He started off making sense, but then veered off into cuckoo-land, and the feverish look in his eye suggests something has gone seriously wrong with his head. That and the way he's muttering to himself. He flips the tap over the spout, and a thick, viscous stuff, like gravy, pours into the cup.
He brings it to you. "My health," he toasts. He seizes your throat; foolishly, you gasp, and he tips the contents into your mouth.
* * * * *
Shackelford unties you, and you stand. You stretch, and crack a kink from your neck, and smile. Your legs carry you toward the doors, and Shackelford walks along beside you. Your mind is blissfully empty.
Except it isn't. Sean Brown's mind is empty, spinning out of your control. You yourself are just along for the ride.
This better work, you think to yourself, and rip Brown's imago away and pull Frank's on. You stumble in mid-step, and stop. "The fuck is going on here," you say aloud with quiet deliberateness.
Shackelford swings around. Again, his fist flies at you. But this time you're ready, and Frank's instincts are among the quickest you've got. You catch his fist in mid-throw, twist him around, and with no hesitation break both his arms, then his ankles for good measure. He doesn't howl, only quivers on the ground where you drop him.
You stalk back down into the operating arena, to the urn. You lift the lid and look inside. For only a fraction of a second does the thing inside blight your eyeballs, and then you slam the urn shut. You grit your teeth, count to ten, and look inside again. Then you put in a call to Rick.
* * * * *
"They ain't pretty, are they, squirt," he says as he lugs the urn out to his car. He drops it in the trunk with a grunt.
"Is that really one of the things that you, uh--"
"One of the smaller ones. You don't wanna see the big ones. This'n--" He looks back at the asylum and sucks on his teeth. "A hundred years, and hundreds, maybe thousands of patients? Was that enough madness and despair for it to suck on, until it finally turned real?" He muses silently for a moment, then grunts again. "Eh, probably still not enough. Probably they just built this place on an old Indian burial ground."
To wake from this reverie: "The Boy from Before Everything, Part 2"  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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