“Mad old car,” Phister said quietly, after a moment. “Filing your unheard complaints.” He patted the scarred quarter panel. “And there is a problem with our understanding. You’re right. We don’t understand half the stuff you talk about.” Trying to smile now, and looking at McCreedy again, but of course he got no reaction, so he flushed, fell silent, cursing himself for trying once more to break the barrier between him and the driver. The insane car would be better company. Phister wanted to apologize to the vehicle but would never hear the end of it if he did. He touched it once more.
“You know,” the car said, “I nonetheless feel an obligation. To fulfill my duties. Whoever you are. You asked about the weather outside? Well, let’s see. Today, the weather outside is. The weather. Today? Outside? The weather?”
There was a quick burst of static from under the hood. Phister yanked his hand back and McCreedy’s laugh was cruel. With a motion of his head the old man spat, dark fluid spattering the flags and strands of moss sap running down the stubble of his chin. Wiping these away with the back of one hand, McCreedy stared into the haze ahead. “You hear that garble? Sure shut the fucker up. Weather outside always do that.” His voice was dry, his eyes glassy with moss.
The car, indeed, remained quiet.
The hallway, too. Deathly quiet.
Phister tugged at the plughead, breaking contact. He stowed the plug quickly and regained his seat.
“Always wants to tell you about the weather,” McCreedy said, leering horribly as he put the car into gear. “Wants to talk about
outside
this and
outside
that and the fucking weather and it never can.” He laughed that unpleasant laugh again.
Screw you, Phister thought, holding onto the brass handrail with both hands as the car, fully charged now, picked up speed. Screw you. Mists, like cobwebs, whipped through what few strands of hair Phister had on his head. Moisture cooled his exposed skin. They passed a puddle reflecting light up at the poorly illuminated ceiling — a silver scale — and then it was gone.
These hallways did go on and on and on.
Despite his better judgment, Phister soon said, “McCreedy?”
No response.
“What do you think it means, anyhow? The car, when it says that. This old machine?”
Still nothing.
“About the weather. About outside. About staff, and guests and parents.”
“How the fuck should I know.” McCreedy flicked across a quick glance, glazed eyes narrow. He shrugged. “Things it remembers. Things it thinks we give a shit about. But I don’t really have a clue and I don’t really care. So shut up and let me drive, all right? There’s a canteen coming up. You’ll see. We’ll eat there and be home by nightfall.”
“Yeah. Home . . .” It occurred to Phister that he and McCreedy could, with the car now charged, continue driving for another three days.
Farther away. Farther away from home.
What would the halls be like then? The same? Changed in even more subtle ways? Without water, he and McCreedy would be dead anyway. They neared that final cul-de-sac. Should have kept mum about spotting the outlet in the first place, he thought, and we’d be out of juice soon, maybe talking about turning around, or walking back in the opposite direction. Better yet, maybe we would have split up.
“McCreedy, I was just asking. I was
thinking
.”
“Well don’t.” McCreedy shifted gear and the motor hummed. “They tell me you’re the lookout, the eyeballs. So look out.
Eyeball
. That’s why you’re here.
I
do the thinking.”
Young Phister leaned back. He closed his eagle eyes. He felt sick. Sicker than usual. More than just hunger and general malaise — those he was accustomed to. This amplified degree of unpleasant sensations had begun with the onset of the present predicament, three nights prior, a lifetime ago:
Milling around the entrance to the moss room, dazed people stood listless in the dark there, while inside the room itself, Young Phister — among others — got quietly wasted.
A night like any other.
But at some point in the hazy chronology — the point when the night became unlike other nights — Crystal Max and her boyfriend, Simpson Lang, started to fight. Reclining together on a dark green hillock near the corner of the room, the couple had been chatting, chewing — like everyone else — when their voices suddenly rose. Simpson had said something that caused Crystal to scream: I’m so tired of your suspicion!
And Simpson: You don’t understand anything I say!
Stoned, huddled by himself on his own mound, Phister heard the tirade of venomous spite that quickly followed, each lash of words cutting deeper than the previous. He listened, his back to the pair before turning openly, to stare, as the argument escalated, becoming louder, more animated, until it flayed every personal aspect from Crystal and Simpson, everything that made them human, until there was nothing left of either to tear down, only an ugly, empty beast that coiled the two spent bodies and rose up, twining, to the ceiling. The nasty tones and tense postures had fractured the night, sliding it into an unwelcome place, aggressive and tumultuous.
Phister’s buzz was
totally
wrecked.
Holding onto Simpson’s sleeve, Crystal shrieked hysterically, tearing at him, and Simpson tried to pull away from her, one hand held up —
In his petrified state, Phister was unsure if he should interfere. Perhaps go fetch someone more decisive than he? He told himself he would wait to see if Crystal started in with her fingernails: she’d been known to.
Then
he would go for help. Or hold her back himself.
All around, paired or in small clusters, the others in the moss room chewed, dozed, talked. Somebody sang. No one else seemed to notice the fight. Phister could not understand this. For him, time was charged, poised.
Just as he assured himself that he was finally about to try getting to his feet, to do something —
anything
— Simpson Lang broke free, stumbling backwards, his shirt torn. There was blood on his face. He stood livid for a second.
Then time resumed with a crash, and Crystal’s shouting; Simpson turned and stomped away, across the crests of moss as a wave of relief broke over Phister. No action had been required of him. He could tell himself he would have acted, if the fight had continued.
Crystal stood very still. Quiet now, watching Simpson recede. Only when the gloom had swallowed him altogether did she sit down, hard, crumpling to the green hump and holding her face between cupped fingers. She shook.
Recalling Crystal’s misery, Young Phister wished, for an instant, that he could be someone else, or that someone else might move into his skin and take control of him.
Get things done for once.
He caught his breath. And let it out again.
The car rumbled on.
Phister harboured sentiments for the girl. Undisputable. These lurched up in him from time to time, veering perilously close to what he suspected might actually be love. Yes, to see her cry was painful, rending his insides, but to watch her laugh, Simpson Lang at her side? Tenfold worse.
When Phister was even younger, fourteen or so — before he had been called Young Phister — he and Crystal had nurtured a relationship. Of sorts. Seeds of one, anyhow. He was sure of it, with the hindsight that two years had given him. He had certainly
liked
her — though they were only kids — but he had hung around her too much, she’d said. At that age, he had little of interest to say. She had told him he was getting pesky. Too small, besides. Too young. She liked
men
, not boys.
Crystal Max was a full year older than him. A head taller. At seventeen — spotty and pale, toothless and bald — she was the most beautiful girl Phister had ever known. He’d actually kissed her once, but their faces inappropriately canted: their noses met, squashed, and he’d had to break away for air.
He never got a second chance.
Should he have tried harder to keep the relationship alive? Maybe things she’d said to him were meant to be tests, to see if he would pursue. He reasoned this now, as he often had, as he watched Crystal grow older, as he sprouted and then promptly lost a hair or two on his chin, as he gave up trying to decipher her, and surrendered his cherry to another girl, Simone, very sweet and nice and tiny and who had since succumbed to the Red Plague. He thought about the lost relationships, and he thought about the inordinate amounts of time he’d spent thinking about them, trying to come to terms with the fact that he might never find anyone to spend his days with. Not that there were any days left to worry about now. His shot with Crystal, if it had ever existed, was certainly long gone, diminishing into the past just like his hopes of reaching home were diminishing right now. How many countless nights had he dreamt of Crystal: the smell of her skin; the grime on her hands; the sneer of dismissal that set her beautiful lips thinner when he tried to be funny?
He would never see her alive again. He would never see anyone again.
The car slowed. The hallway split, left and right. He looked over at McCreedy. Phister would have picked right. Without a word of consultation, McCreedy chose left. They rumbled onwards, down more unfamiliar paths.
Fervently, Phister hoped Crystal was safe, warm and breathing out there, somewhere, perhaps even back home.
Stumbling up suddenly from the moss bed, and heaving ragged breaths, she had gone over to the doorway. And turned back. The image of her from that moment would never leave Phister. Never. She’d been a broken thing.
Broken
. No longer even a girl, the bones of her face collapsed, structures of her wondrous physiognomy fallen in on themselves, streaked with dirt, tears, and snot. Lurching, hanging from the jamb to shout at Simpson Lang (was he still in the room? Phister never was sure, though he had looked; was not sure now, remembering): “Don’t follow me! I wanna be alone! I’m leaving this fuckin hole! I wanna fuckin
die
!”
No one got up. Certainly not Young Phister. Because he weighed seven hundred pounds. He weighed four tons. Four tons of inaction.
He just watched her go. The last time he saw her.
Several of those who had been loitering on the landing outside the moss room — Lenny, Penelope, and Cassandra, the mute — told Phister as the lights were coming on the next morning (well, Penelope and Lenny did, anyhow) — that they hadn’t seen Crystal at all. Hadn’t seen her run past, hadn’t heard her shouting or crying. But she sure wasn’t in her cot when they checked. Simpson, brooding, half-asleep in his own little cubby, dried blood on his cheek, hadn’t seen Crystal since leaving the moss room. She wasn’t anywhere. Headachy, hungover, unsure, the group managed to work each other up into a state of genuine concern.
“But she’s run off before?”
“Yeah. Only for an hour or two. And then she was just hiding.”
“Maybe she’s just hiding now.”
“Where?”
“She said she was leaving? Where can you go?”
“And she said she wanted to
die
?”
“Yep. Fuckin die, she said.
This time I wanna fuckin die
.”
“What about those bloody rags that Jeb found last week, in the glower room, behind vent twenty?”
“What about them?”
“
What
bloody rags?”
“Rags with shreds of
flesh
on them. Maybe there’s a connection?”
“Aw, shit . . .”
So they told others that Crystal was missing: bleary-eyed folks, only now heading to their rooms. Trying to impart the urgency they felt, and Boy Harbour overheard. He stood against the wall, one foot flat behind his butt. Boy Harbour ate no moss and felt sanctimonious because of it. He said, “A scream, in the middle of the night. But you mossheads was messed up, as usual. I heard
terrible
screams.”
This comment — predictably dire, and given in a mean-spirited tone, that being Boy Harbour’s leaning — nevertheless caused a collective intake of breath and exchanged looks. Something horrific
had
happened! Phister felt the certainty of this in his gut. Biting the inside of his cheek, he watched Cassandra — who could read lips as well as anybody could listen — respond to the story with equal alarm.
Crystal was in trouble
. She had done some rash and foolish act. Had she run away?
Or was she taken
?
Sensing an audience — and loving the drama of a missing person — Boy Harbour lifted his voice: “Worms the size of pinky fingers live in your stool out there. The water’s bad. Them worms eat your insides. And there’s people, too, that live above us, in the ceilings. Those stories you scare each other with are true. Only they’re not the same as us. They’ll tear Crystal apart if they catch her, long before the worms kill her. My daddy went up there once, after the war with the men in the blue suits. He was never the same after that. Couldn’t even talk about what he’d seen.”
Needless to say, search parties were formed. Phister and the old man — the driver, McCreedy — would take the ancient car, checking the outer halls, driving around the perimeter of known turf and maybe even into halls uncharted. As long as they didn’t go
too
far. (This was Linden’s suggestion. Linden sometimes assumed the role of leader. Linden agreed Phister had good eyes and McCreedy drove real good.) The rest were to split up, on foot, and look in every conceivable place within the known turf. Each hall, each room.
Only thoughts of Crystal Max, in peril, made Phister climb into the passenger seat.
Well, she sure wasn’t out here. Sure as
shit
. Nothing was. No canteens. No water spigots. Only strange halls with power outlets in odd places and who knew what else up ahead, McCreedy driving on and on. Oblivious through it all.
About to touch the sleeve of McCreedy’s coat — because he wanted to vomit, and wished the car to stop — twenty metres ahead, unflinchingly, directly into the car’s path, stepped a man.
Young Phister gripped the seat under him; the cover tore in his fingers. On the steering wheel, McCreedy’s gloved hands twitched.