Cole Perriman's Terminal Games (45 page)

And in unison, the two of them murmured ...

“Auggie is Auggie.”

The beach scene disappeared. Reality itself dropped out from under Elfie like a rudely opened trapdoor. She fell inexorably downward into a deep, black tunnel with a tiny white light at its end—a light that never seemed to grow any larger, no matter how far she fell. As Elfie spiraled and plummeted downward, she heard Auggie’s voice speaking to her, creating a new world inside her mind …

11101
THE BASEMENT

It is night. You are in a damp and dark alleyway—a strange, alien place. You don’t know how you got here, much less why you came. You look before you and behind you. The adjoining passages are hazy and graffiti-scrawled, and the howling noises from the streets beyond are barely human. You cannot go home. In fact, you have no idea how far away from home you are—no idea where or even what home is.

Now you notice a murky light coming up from under your feet. You look down. You are standing on a manhole cover. The light is creeping through its round holes. You pry the cover loose with your fingers, and with considerable exertion, you roll it aside. You look down and see a watery stream flowing steadily through the subterranean light. Sewage, undoubtedly. The smell of decay is pungent. Even so, the stream strikes you as inviting—certainly more so than the sinister world beyond the alleyway. Why is it inviting? Do you wish to drown yourself? Perhaps. Perhaps not. You really know nothing of your own motivations. You do not even know your name.

You climb down a ladder onto a bank next to the stream. Massive, rectangular columns support the street above your head. The ceiling is honeycombed with rusted steel braces. The light continues to permeate the stagnant air around you, making this place brighter than the world above. You cannot tell where the light is coming from.

All around you, you see formless and shadowy people wandering directionless. They are silhouettes with no faces, no apparent limbs. They appear to have no wills. They do not speak. They do not seem to know what speech is.

With no help from a mirror you realize that you look just like them. You mingle with them. You are of their kind.

Murky streams bridged by old wooden boards thread outward through these catacombs, breaking the concrete floor up into little islands. You feel these bridges strain and bend beneath your footsteps and wonder how deep, how filthy the water below might be.

Where do these catacombs lead? Into infinity, you suppose. You can see no end to the concrete islands in the subterranean fog. An underground infinity is neither a pleasing nor a displeasing thought. You cannot imagine a better world or a worse one. You can imagine no other world at all.

But deep in the mist, you detect a boundary. A plain, concrete wall becomes visible—an edge to the catacombs. There is a door in this wall—a battered red door with a five-pointed yellow star painted on it. Six yellow printed letters curve above the star …

AUGGIE

You approach the door, and your companions do, too. The door swings silently open to reveal a warm, yellow glow within. The shadowy figures in front of you begin to converge at the narrow entryway. They do not pass through the door successively. Instead, they seem to melt into each other, becoming a single dark shape, occupying the doorway.

You come nearer and nearer to the doorway. You step into the looming shape, joining it, becoming it. All the dark figures are one figure now, and you are this figure, too.

Now you can see the room. It is an old vaudevillian dressing room, replete with tattered wallpaper, a steamer trunk, and newspaper clippings pinned and pasted all about. Candles are lit everywhere. The only other light comes from the crude wooden makeup table. The mirror is surrounded by light bulbs, most of which are lit, but three of which are burned out. A couple of the sockets are empty.

You approach the mirror and see yourself in it. You are, as you already supposed, a black, featureless nothing. You sit down on the bench in front of the mirror and open a battleship-gray makeup box. Inside the box are dozens of little round tins and colorful tubes. You open one of the tubes and spread a gooey whiteness on your dark and shapeless fingers. You spread the whiteness all over your face until your head is a glaring, silvery oval. You reach inside the box again and take out a shining, bright red ball. You place the ball squarely in the middle of your face. Then you paint on a huge red smile and fat black brows and enormous rolling eyes.

You walk over to the steamer trunk. On the wall behind the trunk is a full-length mirror. You study your reflection—a garish face with wildly colored, wildly distorted features perched atop a black void. You mean nothing yet. You open the trunk and pull out a red tuft of hair, a hat, a bundle of clothes. You carefully fasten the tuft of hair around your head like a low-hanging laurel wreath attached with Velcro. For a moment, you look like some ghastly mockery of the monkhood’s sacrosanctity. But as you don the checkered vest, the checkered baggy pants (“one leg at a time,” as they say), the preposterously outsized shoes, and finally the tiny battered bowler hat, you assume a jauntier air. Now at last, you know who you are.

You know your name.

You are Auggie.

You turn and look at the door through which you arrived. You see that a poster is pinned to it, picturing a white-faced, white-robed, effete and affected chap. Gigantic red pompon buttons are arrayed down the front of his gown, and he wears a conical white hat. His lips, eyes, and eyebrows are painted in thin, cold lines of black and red. This character has struck up a sham sentimental pose, holding both hands over a bright red heart painted on his chest. An aching detestation wells up in your own chest at the sight of him.

A name curves above the picture …

PIERROT

Pierrot’s picture is riddled with darts. You notice that you are holding a dart in your own white-gloved hand. You furiously hurl it, striking Pierrot directly in his painted red heart. As if by magic, the door swings open. You walk on through. But instead of finding yourself in the vast and watery catacombs again, you are now in a dim hallway, surrounded by stage props and tawdrily painted flats. Farther down the hallway, you hear the sound of laughter and applause and a tiny orchestra playing a merry tune. You walk toward the sound until, at last, you face another door upon which is printed the words …

STAGE DOOR

You step through the door and wander into the noisy near-darkness, pausing in the wings to observe counterweight-laden ropes moving up and down seemingly on their own power, carrying scenery up and down in a weirdly random fashion. Near the center of the stage, you duck and dodge the silent barrage of flying flats. You notice, too, that you are surrounded by dangling marionettes, but it is too dark for you to make out their clothes or features. You realize that it does not matter. The marionettes have no idea who they are, nor should you.

The applause and laughter and music have become almost deafening, and you are facing the patched and buffeted backside of a stage curtain. You know that, in a moment, the curtain will rise and you will be acting out some farce or tragedy with the marionettes. You have no idea what the play is. You do not know any lines. But to your own surprise, you are not in the least bit afraid.

You are exhilarated.

You are drunken.

You are alive.

*

It was after three o’clock in the morning when Nolan got home from the Insomnimania office. He and his four companions had decided to give up speculating about Auggie before their hypotheses lapsed into pure science fiction—if, indeed, they had not already crossed that line. Everybody was completely exhausted, and no further progress could be made until Pritchard figured out how to hack his way into Auggie’s elusive “Basement.”

But despite his exhaustion, Nolan was not yet ready to collapse into bed. He had one last matter to attend to—one that he had been impatient to take care of for hours now.

As he picked up the telephone to dial Marianne’s number, he felt his hands shake and his heart pound—he wasn’t sure whether from anger or fear. He listened anxiously as Marianne’s phone began to ring, wondering what to do if he got her answering machine. Should he hang up, or should he vent his feelings into the tape recorder? He hoped she would pick up. It would make things simpler if she picked up—though probably not a whole lot more pleasant.

The phone rang once, then twice, then a third time. Nolan knew that the answering machine would pick up after the fourth ring. But the fourth ring never came. Nolan heard Marianne’s voice. She sounded barely awake.

“Hello?” Marianne asked groggily.

“Did I catch you asleep?” Nolan said, unable to keep an edge of indignation out of his voice.

“What time is it?”

“It’s three fifteen in the morning, that’s what time it is,” Nolan said, pacing the room. “So did I catch you asleep or didn’t I?”

“Yes,” Marianne said wearily. “You caught me asleep.”

“Good,” Nolan growled. “I’m glad. I’m goddamn thrilled. It’s the least I could do after the way you’ve been messing with my head.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I saw you tonight.”

“Where?”

“On Insomnimania. Talking to Auggie. All of us saw you.”

“‘All of us’?” Who the hell’s ‘all of us’?”

“Pritchard, Maisie, Clayton, Gusfield—all of us. We watched what happened. We listened.”

“Well, thank you so very much for respecting my privacy,” Marianne said, sounding more awake now—and more than a little angry.

“And
thank you
very much for lying to me!” Nolan retorted, pacing the floor in growing agitation.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about when you
promised
to stay the hell away from Insomnimania, away from Auggie.

“It wasn’t any of your business to begin with.”

“It wasn’t? Well, fine. Why didn’t you say so right at the start?”

Nolan hated to hear himself sounding like this. He reminded himself that he had really been more frightened than angry. He didn’t want to be angry. He took a deep breath and spoke more gently.

“Marianne, the guys and I talked about this thing for hours on end tonight. And we came to some pretty incredible conclusions. And we’re starting to realize how dangerous Auggie really is—much more dangerous than any of us ever even imagined. Don’t you understand how worried I am for your safety? Don’t you understand how much it
scared
me to see you in there with that goddamn clown? Don’t you know how much
I
love you?”

Suddenly, Nolan was shaken by the sound of Marianne’s laughter. The sound was cold, heartless, barely even human.

“You
love
me?”
she said. “And
who,
Nolan, do you mean by
me?
Some Santa Barbara fashion plate, maybe—some classy dame you can brag about to your cop friends? Or perhaps that bosomy, oversexed little elf you helped create for the infoworld? Which ‘me’ do you ‘love’? Marianne or Elfie? And which of those ‘me’s’ do you honestly think is more real?”

Marianne was nearly shouting now. The cell phone felt heavy in Nolan’s trembling hand—almost too heavy to hold.

“And
who,
Nolan, did you
see
in Insomnimania tonight?” Marianne raged on. “You didn’t see Marianne, did you? That’s because your precious Marianne wasn’t
there.
That’s because your precious Marianne isn’t anywhere. Your precious Marianne doesn’t even
exist.
She’s just a
ghost,
a
simulation,
a product of your immature, adolescent, sexually stunted little mind. Grow up, Nolan. Grow up and get a life.”

Nolan was stunned into silence. Neither he nor Marianne spoke for a moment.

“Go to bed, Nolan,” Marianne said at last. “Go to bed and get a good night’s sleep. But before you do, take a good look at your face in your bathroom mirror. Take a real good look, Nolan. Your face is
white
. It’s white and characterless with narrow little eyes and lips. It’s the face of a ghost. You’re white all over and you think you know everything and you think you’re in charge of everything. But you’re not. Your whole damned world is racing out of control and you can’t do a fucking thing about it. Think about it, Nolan. Sleep on it and think about it.”

Marianne hung up. Nolan stood in the middle of his living room, dazed and shocked.

He snapped his cell phone shut.

He collapsed into his armchair. He felt a terrible aching in his chest—a pain he knew came from the sheer cruelty of Marianne’s words.

How could she say such things to me? Why would she say such things to me?

He felt the tears fill his eyes. And slowly—ever so gradually—he began to weep.

How long has it been since I’ve cried?

He could think of no time since Louise was killed. And even then, he had wept more from his awful, horrific bewilderment than from grief. Grief itself had always come to him as a clean, tearless emotion—complete and undeniable, but always tearless. His
grief
over Louise’s death had been tearless, as had been his grievings over his parents’ deaths. It took profound bewilderment to make Nolan weep.

For days and even weeks now, he had been terribly confused and frustrated by the seeming omnipotence, the seeming incomprehensibility of Auggie. But the joy of Marianne, his certainty that they were building a caring, lasting relationship, had been his defense against despair. And now it had only taken Marianne’s awful words to turn loose the floodgates of bewilderment.

“What does it mean?” he whispered to himself. “What on earth does it mean?”

He ran Marianne’s inscrutable questions and pronouncements through his dazed, despairing brain.

“Which ‘me’ do you ‘love’?” she had demanded. “Marianne or Elfie? And which of those ‘me’s’ do you honestly think is more real?”

Then she had said, “Your precious Marianne doesn’t even exist.”

Then he replayed the strangest declaration of all …

“You’re white all over and you think you know everything and you think you’re in charge of everything.”

Slowly and inexorably, a realization began to sweep through Nolan’s mind.

His tears stopped.

He began to understand.

The White Clown. She was describing me as the White Clown.

Then the truth hit him in a terrifying flash.

That wasn’t Marianne. That was Auggie. I was talking to Auggie!

*

Marianne reached up and haltingly placed her cordless phone back on her desk. Then she collapsed onto the floor again, where she had found herself in a dead sleep when Nolan’s call had come.

Feeling a terrible pain in her stomach and chest, she curled herself up in a fetal position. She remembered her awful words to Nolan.

What have I done? What on earth have I done?

Then she thought that she was not experiencing her own pain at all, but Nolan’s—the pain she had so cruelly and deliberately inflicted upon him. He was the most loving man she had ever known, and she had treated him monstrously.

Why?

And how had she wound up on the floor like this? What had happened during the night? She dimly remembered that she—or Elfie—had found Auggie, had experienced some sort of encounter with Auggie, but she couldn’t recall what had taken place between them.