The Truth Collector (14 page)

“Shut up. I think I hear something.” He leaned over the boat's edge. He heard water running down there, racing forward and picking up speed. He dipped his hand in and felt frothy bubbles.

Then the catamaran began to shake. Water sloshed over the sides as the entire formation of boats rocked and collided. Malcolm ducked down and grabbed a rope just before some of their supply crates went overboard. There were more screams in front of them. They got louder and louder until they were overpowered by the
shhh
of crashing water.

Malcolm grabbed Paul by the scruff of his neck. “Rapids. I think we're going over.”

“Oh, God,” Paul said, yelling right next to Malcolm's ear. “Oh my God.”

“Think about the girl.”

“What if that doesn't work?”

“Just think about Nora.”

She was still crying, her tears lost among the cold water splashing Malcolm's face. Around them men screamed and prayed to strange gods. Things splashed – cargo, men, ship parts – into the empty spaces between the boats. There were gunshots, and crumpled corpses landing on decks. Malcolm and Paul slipped ropes around their waists and lashed themselves to the mast. The boats around them pressed closer. They moved as a single unit: the flotilla of the damned. The current and the wailing wind carried them forward, and then they began to circle. Around and around they went – limp cockroaches circling a drain.

Malcolm closed his eyes.

“Nora. Nora, Nora, Nora. Help us find you.”

Paul called her name too.

They pressed forward, teetering on the edge of some cliff or precipice.

Teetering.

Waiting without breathing.

Then falling.

Falling and twisting end over end when the ground fell out beneath them.

The rapids crashed so hard Malcolm couldn't hear himself scream.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

There was a shower of sea foam and a
slapping
sound, and then there was pain.

Malcolm opened his eyes and shut them again, but it made no difference. Water filled his ears, his mouth, his lungs. His head throbbed, cut open from where it had banged against the boat deck.

Water below him, above him. All around him. Sucking him into a little tunnel like the barrel of an endless wave. The rope around his waist had snapped, but somehow he still held a chunk of it in his hand. He held tight as the current hurtled him along, jostling up and down over wooden planks and rocks.

“Paul?” The rushing water swallowed his voice. “Paul?” Then a torrent of water shot into his open mouth and he was coughing, suffocating.

“Malcolm!” The voice came from far away, locked up in its own battle against the current.

He was alive, then. They both were… at least for now. They shouted at each other when their lungs weren't full of water, dragged along by the raging current. It beat them senseless, changing courses and snapping them back and forth so often there wasn't anything to do besides grit their teeth and hope it would be over soon.

Malcolm grabbed on to the rope with both hands, closed his eyes, and curled himself into a little ball. What was left of the catamaran banged against walls of rock formations, bouncing from side to side. The current squeezed them through a tighter and tighter space. “Paul?”

No answer.

Finally the current spit Malcolm out. It had chewed him up and digested all it could, and now it coughed the remnants onto a perch of mud and silt. The boat ran aground full speed ahead. The impact slammed him onto the boat deck. He pulled himself to his elbows, feeling his body for all the bruises and bloody spots.

“Paul?”

“I'm here.”

“Where?”

A light came on above them from the same pinprick as before. But this time it revealed a bedroom instead of a moonlit well. Inside that room, a lamp rested next to an oval mirror and cast warm light. Charlotte sat in front of the mirror on a stool, staring down at them with wide eyes.

She pressed her face closer.
I'm sorry
, she mouthed.

“What?” Malcolm said.

Her lips moved again, but her words were muted on this end. Malcolm turned away from her to check his surroundings. He lay on a rocky beach with catamaran pieces all around him. Paul lay about a dozen yards away. He had his legs and arms wrapped around what was left of the ship's mast. There was no sign of the sail or any of the other ships.

Malcolm looked back into the tunnel through which they came. He found only rocks – they looked like teeth belonging to a monster. Its mouth was open, but he couldn't see far in it because it rose at an angle and twisted. Water rushed out of it in a persistent stream, pooling next to the sandy spot where they lay.

“You all right?” Paul said.

Malcolm flexed his fingers and toes. “I wouldn't go that far… but I'm alive. I wonder where all the boats went.”

“Maybe they weren't so lucky.”

“Maybe
we
weren't so lucky.”

“I think that thing – whatever it was – was like the bottom of a big drain. Maybe other boats went down different holes.”

“Yeah,” Malcolm said. “Maybe. If that's true I just hope we went down the right hole.”

Paul stood up, coughed up some water, and started to pick his way along the rocky beach. Walls of rock surrounded them in a horseshoe. There were walls above them too, sealing in the moisture. Malcolm's body throbbed as he watched Paul explore the underground lagoon.

“Shit, man,” Paul said.

“What?” Malcolm sat up to face the sound of his voice and flopped back down when the pain hit him.

“We aren't the only ones who've been down here. Looks like a little dock or something.”

When Malcolm propped himself up – much more carefully this time – he saw that Paul was right. Someone had arranged some driftwood into a little ramp. A log with a rope tied around it jutted out at the end. Whatever boat belonged down here was missing.

“I'm trying to think of the girl,” said Paul, “but all I can think about is not throwing up.”

Malcolm nodded and slowly got to his feet “My stomach's still in my throat.”

The light from above flashed in his eyes, blinding him. When his vision cleared Malcolm looked up and found the same bedroom as before, though a new light bounced on the mirror.

Charlotte held one of the policemen's flashlights.

Now she aimed it at the mirror and tilted it to reflect a streak of light in the lagoon. She stuck her tongue out as she moved it back and forth, changing the angle until the light appeared at Malcolm's feet.

When Malcolm looked down she moved the light across the beach and onto a wall.

At least it looked like part of a wall.

But the way the rocks were cut…

Not by nature. But by human hands.

They forced their broken bodies over to it as fast as they could.

Paul got there first. Balancing on a pile of rocks, he reached for it and pushed. There was a lot of groaning and sweating, but no moving. Then Malcolm pressed against the wall too, adding his weight and desperation. He pushed until his arms gave out and collapsed against the rock slab.

Paul kept on. He worked his fingers around the edges for some secret trigger or release point. But it was no use. Cursing, he gave up and looked out at the cove. It would have been peaceful down here if the circumstances were different. But water rushed down the tunnel beyond their vision – water that had trapped them and sealed them in.

“Well,” Paul said. “That was a bust.”

“Wait.” Malcolm was on his feet again, rushing down to the catamaran wreckage that had washed ashore. He rifled through lamps and jewelry and coin purses. He didn't stop until his fingers landed on a leather canteen. It was empty, but he dipped it into the water and filled it.

When he came back to the rock he motioned for Paul to move aside.

Then he splashed some water onto the rock face.

Now colors appeared under the wet spots. What looked like splotches of white paint streaked across the surface. The markings were haphazard at the edges, but got more organized as they approached the center.

There was a pattern there.

Malcolm stared at it open-mouthed and almost dropped the canteen.

Before them glowed a giant white spade.

Paul stepped forward, blinking as Charlotte bounced her light up and down on it. “You've gotta be kidding me.”

Malcolm ignored him. Before the water dried, he reached for the marking and began to trace it with his fingers.

“H – how'd you know to do that?” said Paul.

Malcolm kept tracing. “I don't know.” He brushed across the rock face until his finger reached the tip of the spade where he'd begun. Next he pulled his finger away and held it in midair a few inches from the rock. He held his breath too. He'd knocked on the door…

But was anyone home? Would anyone answer?

Then that spade brightened.

It began to pulse like it had on Fielder's cheek when his blood and rage pumped through it. It brightened and pulsed until it swallowed up Charlotte's light and filled the lagoon with a sickly hue.

Paul stepped back, but Malcolm didn't move.

That thing was watching them, sizing them up like a discerning butler screening guests who dressed like they'd stumbled into the wrong neighborhood. Malcolm could hear its every pulsation. Like heartbeats. They mixed with his own, thumping in the lagoon.

Finally the door gave way.

It slid aside into some secret notch in the wall and welcomed them into a hallway of blinding light. Malcolm and Paul shut their eyes. It was like all the light of the underworld was stashed away down here, saved for this little corner and nowhere else. Malcolm turned his back on the light, grabbed Paul's arm, and backed him into the secret doorway.

Then a blast of air filled their prison jumpsuits.
Slam
. The door closed behind them, and Malcolm heard a lock clicking somewhere deep inside the rock face. The only way to go was forward.

Malcolm and Paul felt along a corridor as their eyes adjusted to the light. They tried to walk shoulder to shoulder, but the walls squeezed them so tightly they had to go single file. Each time Malcolm opened his eyes the pain lessened, but two red orbs still floated there like mini burning suns. He caught a few glimpses of the corridor in the corner of his vision. Instead of the rocks and water and darkness to which they'd grown accustomed, this world was just the opposite.

This was a world of plush carpet and faux plants and crown molding. They stumbled forward, knocking pictures and paintings from the walls until Paul wandered face first into a grandfather clock and demanded they stop. Malcolm leaned against an empty spot on the wall and waited for his vision to return.

He blinked away light spots and tears. The girl was still crying. Now she cried in sudden gasps with long spaces in between them. She cried like she was giving up.

“Nora,” Paul said. “Are you in here?”

More tears.

Malcolm opened his eyes. The fuzziness had finally cleared. They were in a long, carpeted corridor that stretched past the limits of his vision. It unrolled in front of them, climbed a set of stairs, and disappeared into darkness. Mirrors and other shiny things filled the walls, casting strange reflections like a fun house they couldn't escape. Every time he turned there was a nauseating second where all the Malcolms – countless reflections of them – turned with him. Landscape paintings were mixed in with the mirrors: vast desert scenes, open ocean, tropical islands.

The hallway lights flickered, unsure of themselves. Torches and candles and light bulbs with hanging cords that seemed to go nowhere. Malcolm and Paul pressed ahead. On the crimson carpet they left blood and tears and remnants from their treacherous trip down to the lagoon. They walked, chanting the little girl's name from time to time, until Malcolm's sanity left him altogether.

“We aren't moving,” Paul said, reaching forward into the corridor. “I swear we passed this stuff on the wall already.”

Malcolm looked down at his feet. He lifted one and put it in front of the other – just like he'd been doing all these past… minutes? Hours? “Where are you, Nora?”

Tears were her only answer.

Then there was another sound: a peppy piano tune that drifted into the hallway. It was barely audible, but persistent. Every few measures a note jarred them, the song stopped, and then it started again from the beginning. Someone was practicing. On and on they played. They hammered keys with tired, clunky fingers until Malcolm lost all sense of time completely. He and Paul put one foot in front of the other, but they might as well have been circling.

Caught up in an endless loop – just like that song.

Paul stumbled forward with his fingers in his ears. “Where is she?” He screamed at his reflections, launched into a rage that ended with paintings and mirrors heaped on the floor. He joined them there, adding to the pile, the shreds of his prison jumpsuit barely covering him. “I can't do this anymore.” Nora was his chant before, but this one swooped in and replaced it.

Malcolm opened his mouth. But he couldn't find any comforting words there. He looked down the hallway and listened to the endless music loop. It seemed louder now – almost to the point it hurt his ears.

Wait. That was it.

“Paul,” he said. “The song's louder now. Don't you hear it?”

He looked up at him and shrugged. “So what? We're closer to some damn speaker? Big deal.”

Malcolm waved him off with his hand. “Someone's playing that. Somewhere close. Now come on.”

Paul didn't answer. He just got to his feet and started walking again. They left dirt and blood and water spots all over the hallway. And Malcolm left his last hope there too. If this was just another illusion…

But the corridor began to slope upward. Gradually at first, then steeper. They ran up it, Malcolm first and Paul behind, until they had to cover their ears because the music was too loud. The little girl's name lived in their thoughts and on their lips.

“Nora. Nora, Nora, Nora,” they said.

Then they nearly flew into a wall.

Malcolm caught himself at the last second and cried out. Their legs tangled and they flew around a corner, landing in a confused pile. When Malcolm looked back he noticed the turn in the wall. He opened his mouth to ask Paul if he was all right, but a hand smothered his lips.

Paul lay next to him. He covered Malcolm's mouth with one hand and used the other to point across a vast expanse of empty carpet. A man sat on a piano bench. It wasn't a small bench, but his ass almost stretched all the way across it. He had his back turned to them, hunched forward like a tortoise shell. Stubby arms flew from his midsection striking piano keys. He held his face close to the keyboard and pumped his feet on the pedals as sweat dripped off of him.

The room looked empty with the exception of the man and his instrument. He played and played, oblivious to the intruders behind him. He and the piano molded together into a single breathing, sweating unit.