Most men can't make it through even five words of what I'm about to tell you (17 page)

a headache. "Do you know what it's like for me to listen to you say this shit and to watch three other people nod like it's the time and temperature? What the hel is wrong with this town?"

The man in black said, "It's about to get a lot worse, detective." He turned to me, eyes hidden behind those glasses. I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong with the man. There was something... artificial about him I guess. He said,

"Finish it, David. Tell him the rest."

I hesitated for a long time, not sure where to start.

I took a deep breath and said, "Have you ever noticed that when you hear a new word, a word you've never heard in your

life, you'll hear it again within 24 hours? From a completely different source?"

"I don't know," Falconer said, through a sigh. "I guess."

"And have you ever noticed sometimes when you're driving along, you'll see like one shoe on the road?"

"Okay."

"And do you ever hear on TV that an actor has died, and you
swear
that you heard about that guy dying like five years before? I mean, you can clearly remember the memorial bits they did on TV and everything and now, here they are, doing

it again."

Falconer actually nodded this time. "Yeah, actually. Yeah. Richard Pryor."

"Okay. Okay. Now, have you ever woken up one day and felt like something just wasn't right with the world? No, no, don't

get that look. I don't mean in general, people being mean to people and little kids shot in gang wars. I mean specifical y.

Like al of a sudden you wake up and something has changed, maybe something small but maybe not. Something's... off.

And the whole world goes on about it like it's nothin' and you're the only one who thinks it's strange?"

"No."

"You wil , now. One guy, he wrote me a letter, saying he came home and stood there expecting his dog to greet him, then

remembered he didn't have a dog. Another lady, she swore to me the thing with eating meat with the blood still in it was

something she had never heard of until last year. She says she can clearly remember a time when serving somebody a

steak that was red in the middle would get the cook fired. Now, you ask for the thing cooked and it means you're a

redneck. Me, I hear gangsta rap, see 13 year-old girls with their iPods singing along with a guy who's celebrating how well

he just mutilated a whore and think,
that doesn't belong in this universe.
It's wrong. Not morally wrong, but...
incorrect.

Because I can pretty clearly picture a world without it."

There was a pause where Falconer gave himself away, where I could see he was taking time to consider this. He wasn't

going to admit it, not here and not now, but I knew I had struck a chord with him. All he said was, "Get to your point."

"Take what I said about the shadow man, and the girl. Expand it. These beings, whatever they are, wherever they come

from, think what they could do to the world. They can reach back, make changes, change events in chain reactions to

sculpt the world to whatever shape they want."

I stopped, hoping to let that sink in. John said, "I sort of remember Al Gore being president."

Falconer shrugged and said, "Well, hell, so do I..."

"No, no, no," said John. "Not the recount shit. I remember him becoming president in 1997 because Bill Clinton was assassinated, by an anti-abortion nut. Al Gore became president and ran in 2000 as the incumbent. I wake up one day

and I see the governor of Texas on screen and every channel is carrying his press conference and I'm thinking, what, did

this guy get caught with a hooker or something? Since when do we care what George Bush's kid has to say? And then I

see the tag on the screen and it's talking about 'Oval Office Address' and I get this muddy feeling in my head, like waking

up to a hangover, and I think, oh, yeah, that's right. He's president."

Nobody responded to that. John pulled out his pack of cigarettes. "A girl in Ohio mailed me a magazine. She found it in

the basement at her library. Issue of
TIME
, from July of 1997. Bill Clinton on the cover, dead as Lincoln. I remembered the cover the second I saw it. But you go back and look at the actual
TIME
archives and that week's issue has a picture of

that Mars rover. And obviously Bill Clinton is still out there now, alive. But that magazine, that one issue, it's real. I've held it in my hand. Somehow it survived."

John lit his cigarette.

Falconer suddenly looked very uncomfortable. He waited for one of us to go on and when we didn't, he stammered, "I

don't even... I mean, what the fuck do you even want me to do with that? Come on."

John said, "It's the Fifth Wall. Go behind the wall and I think these things are behind it, the shadow people. Like the

people behind the camera, in the control room."

I looked at the man in black, said, "Well? Is that about it? Why don't you just tell us and then we'll know?"

He brushed some lint off his knee and said, "They are the X'ellnuu, the offspring of Gornoth the Zuulnaarrk."

John said, "Are you just making up words?"

"Yes. And so are you, when you call them 'demons' or 'ghosts.' Come now, what percentage of existence do you real y

think can be described by words you know?"

John said, "But I've heard they don't like crosses. And music, pretty music drives them away. I think it's in the Bible."

Falconer said, "Crosses? So would the Ankh work, too? You know, the Egyptian symbol for life the Christians borrowed

the cross from?"

"I don't know, we've never tried it. Holy water, that also works."

"Yeah, yeah," said Falconer. "Like regular water only with the Holy molecule attached to the two Hydrogens and one Oxygen."

Falconer slid his gun into his shoulder holster and said, "Okay. I'm going to the elementary school to collect Franky's

body. You guys can sit around and hash this out. I don't give a fuck at this point. Pile myth on top of myth until you're

scared to leave the house. Turn off the lights, shine a flashlight under your chin. But don't bother me with any of it until

you have evidence. I don't have room in my head."

He turned to the man in black. "Nice meeting you. Fax me a copy of your report and I'll add it to the file."

"How can you just shut all this out of your mind?" I said. "After everything you've seen..."

"What do you want, Wong? Seriously. I'm on the clock here. If I go to that school and find a bigfoot crapping leprechauns,

I'll document it for the file and move on. But I'm not playing this game."

He turned to leave.

"Is that your choice, detective?" said the man in black.

Falconer stopped, said, "Yes. Thank you."

"Are you sure? Because there's something you should know before you leave."

"And that is?"

"The answer to my question. Is that your choice? Or was the choice made for you?"

"
What?
"

"When's the last time you've eaten, detective?"

"I'm gone."

He headed for the door again.

"I understand you, detective," said the man in black. "You believe only in what you can see and touch and label and measure with a machine. Well, let me tel you what
we
can see and touch and quantify, detective Falconer. You."

Falconer stopped once more, his back to us.

The man in black said, "We have a scanner. It can trace the workings of your entire brain, down to the neuron, in real

time. I've seen it, it looks like a sombrero. When you made that decision to leave the room just now, I could have hooked

up your brain and showed you exactly which of the 1,102,576,226,996,453 synapses fired first, the rest falling like

dominoes, to form your 'decision.' I can rewind it, show you the exact stage of your physical development when that

particular connection formed between two neurons, trace back the exact series of impulses from your eyes and ears that

triggered the chemical response. I can take you on a tour of your brain, show you the exact physical roots of the neural

pattern you call 'justice' and another that you call 'love' and even the one you call 'critical thinking.'"

"Who gives a shit. Real y."

"Very old and very powerful parties give a shit. You do believe in ghosts, detective. The ghost in the machine. Every time

you speak of the 'mind' or you claim to 'choose' what you do. These kids cal it a soul, you call it your 'self' or' personality.'

Both of you are speaking of mysterious, ghostly things haunting a meaty, wet web of cells inside your skull. A force that

somehow chooses to do one thing or another, to make one synapse fire instead of another. And you believe, despite

knowing that the rest of the entire physical universe is nothing but a series of physical reactions, just pebbles bouncing

down a board. The only object in fifteen billion light years in every direction that can choose rests inside the boney bowl

atop your shoulders. Right?"

"Look, I'm responsible for what I do. That's al I know. That's why I have to-"

"-Are you sure?"

"That I'm responsible? Yes."

"Then you've set yourself as their enemy. The shadow people, as David cal s them. They're watching us. If you, as a man,

if you're just protoplasm, cel s lumped together and crawling over this rock like maggots on a piece of meat, then you're no

threat. You're a plant, a fungus, a bacterium. Raw material for them to grow and use and harvest."

The man paused, turned his head slightly and I thought he was looking at me.

"But if you can really choose," he continued, "as you said you could just seconds ago, then you're sitting on a bolt of lightning. Will, detective. The magical ability to alter the world that almost every human thinks he has. The most powerful

magic this universe knows. The
only
magic it knows. I've seen the future, detective. I've seen mankind leave this planet, and land on the next planet in ships. And then the next solar system, and the next, the species flashing across the

surfaces of worlds like wildfire. Nature spends five billion years carving the surface of a world and here comes man,

cutting and shaping it according to his own imagination in a blink. According to his
will
. Can you choose, detective? Can you? Because if you can, then you've thrown down chips in a very high stakes game. Because human wil is about to

explode across this universe like a Hydrogen bomb."

The man in black stood, lifting himself from his non-existent chair.

"Look at the girl over there, Detective. She's missing her left hand. You know, when we miss a limb we often feel 'ghost'

sensations, itching or heat or pain, in the missing appendage. Let's see how infectious that bite was, detective. Look at

her wrist. Look at the space where the hand should be."

Falconer did. Amy fidgeted, not comfortable with him staring at the scarred stump where her hand was years ago. She

wanted to cross her arms.

Falconer said nothing. Then, his mouth fell slowly open.

The man in black asked, "Do you see it?"

Falconer's eyebrows came together, trying to think his way through the impossible. Again.

Falconer was seeing her hand. I know, because, I can do it whenever I want. It's not easy, it takes concentration. Like

choosing to see water spots on your windshield instead of the road outside. I tried it now, and in seconds I saw Amy with

two perfect hands. I blinked, and the left disappeared again. I could see it, for the same reason I could see the shadow

people, or those strange creatures from the other side.

The man in black said, "The ghost in the machine, detective."

Falconer slowly shook his head, back and forth. But said nothing. His mouth never did close al the way.

I said to the man in black, "The bug thing, it showed up in my bed. Did it come for me? If so, why?"

"It didn't come for you. It came because of you."

"I don't understand."

"You don't want to. Haven't you ever wondered why these events seem to follow you? You're fond of saying this town is

haunted. And it is. By you."

Falconer turned to me, something clicking into place in his brain.

He said, "It's
you
, isn't it? You're the one doing all this."

"No, no. No. It's not like that."

"You're one of them, whatever they are."

I didn't answer. John and Amy stayed silent as wel .

The man in black said, "It's not his fault. By the way, you never answered my other question."

"I'm sorry, I've lost track," Falconer said. "What question is that?"

"When's the last time you've eaten?"

"I... what? I don't know. I'll get drivethrough on the way back from the school. I... I gotta get outta this fucking house..."

"Think about it, detective. This isn't an idle question." The man in black took a step toward him and again asked, "When's the last time you've eaten? Think."

Falconer started to dismiss him, started to leave, then stopped himself.

The man in black said, "It's been more than 24 hours, hasn't it?"

"I... I haven't been hungry. Too much going-"

"-Maybe you should go look in a mirror, detective."

And there, with that phrase, came fear in the detective's face. The first time I had seen it, through all this.

"Why?"

"How's your finger? Where the creature bit you?"

"What?"

"Why don't you go look in a mirror. You'l be surprised what you can see now."

Falconer stood there, maybe feeling the same falling sensation I felt earlier, my hand on the closet door.

Final y he said, "Go to Hel ."

He turned and went to the front door and went out into the day. He slammed the door behind him. I heard his car door

open a moment later.

I said to the man in black, "You came to me in a dream, right? You showed me Franky's body. Is it in the school?"