The Music of Razors (18 page)

He found a cavern filled to overflowing with wallets and purses of every description. He blinked. Then he ran in and started opening them.

“Don’t bother,” someone said. “They’re all empty.”

Suni dropped the wallet and looked around.

“The Nabbers put the loose change and driver’s licenses in other chambers.”

Suni looked up. Sitting on top of the mound was a small boy with neat, pale hair.

“I’m Walter,” the boy said. “They call this place the Drop.”

Suni nodded. “Dddd…duh-do you know a way out of here?” This boy seemed really familiar, somehow, yet for the life of him Suni couldn’t work out why. Each time he tried to hold it the association slipped and slid from his grasp.

“I know someone who can get you out of here,” Walter said. “But I don’t think he will.”

Suni didn’t like the sound of that. “Why not?”

“It’s complicated. I might be able to get you out, though. In exchange for a small favor.”

Suni rubbed his hands nervously on his pajama pants, looking around. “Ddd…ddd…duh-do you want to come down from there?” he said. “You’re making me nervous.”

“Okay.” Walter slid down on a small avalanche of leather and vinyl. He really was a lot smaller than Suni.

“Wh…what kind of f-fff-favor?”

“We’ll get to that,” said Walter.

“So that blue thing’s called a Nabber?” Suni asked, searching for something to say.

“That’s what the person who made them calls them,” Walter said.

“Then there’s more than one?”

“Oh yes.”

Suni nervously rubbed his palms on his pajama legs again. “So how long have you been here anyway?”

“Right now? Half an hour. Before that? Ten years,” Walter said.

“Ten years?”
The boy—Walter—didn’t
look
ten; more like five. Suni was liking this less and less. “Why?”

“Like I said, Suni: it’s complicated.”

“You know my name?”

There was the pat-pat-pat of oversized feet, and Suni spotted—a few chambers away—the blue thing waddling past an archway at high speed, prize held high. Without thinking, he took off after it.

“Suni,” Walter hissed, urgently. “Stop!”

But Suni didn’t. He ran through three more chambers—scattered with mounds of remote controls—and turned right, bare feet slapping on cold dirt. He could hear the pat-pat-pat of the thing’s feet echoing in distant chambers and used that to follow.

He jogged to a stop in one chamber (filled with little green plastic army men), looking back and forth among three possible exits. Listening to the thing’s pat-pat-patting feet receding…

He wandered for what seemed like hours from cavern to cavern, his stomach growling. Sometimes he would hear the far-off chatter of what he thought was the thing, only to lose it again, to be surrounded by the echo of his own soft footfalls.

Then he came to a larger cavern, and this one smelled far, far worse than the mountain of socks he had first plunged into hours before. It smelled wrong.

Last year Suni’s father had taken him camping and they had come across a half-eaten possum that had been dead for days. There were clouds of flies. One crawled across its dark open eye, and the thing that had made him want to be sick was the way the possum hadn’t blinked, only stared, as the insect crept across. He remembered how the taste of the stench had tickled the backmost point of his throat, thick and invisible clouds of rot-scent filling his mouth.

The smell of this cavern was unbelievably worse.

Suni approached the archway, feet crunching and sinking partway into a thick mat of glass marbles that covered the floor and spilled into adjoining rooms. Through the archway he saw piles and piles and piles of bones. Piles of bodies. There were no flies, but fluid was seeping from the massive mound, translucent and dark and absolutely vomitous. Suni was sucking air through the flannel of his pajama sleeve, trying to keep his gorge down, feeling it rise nonetheless, buoyant and acidic.

In the space between the four largest body piles was a square wooden table, around which sat four dead people with no heads. They were playing cards.

“You know how sometimes they never find the body?”

Suni shrieked and spun around, stumbling on uncertain footing into the body room, bare feet smacking and sticking on the dried residue that coated the floor. It was Walter. The words caught in his throat, ran into the tails of one another, stole his breath, made it hard to think. He pushed, gagged, squinting with the effort it took to speak. “Hhhh…hhhh…huh-huh-huh-how’d you get behind me? Www…www…wuh-what is this?” And Suni tasted the room again. He coughed, and his last meal splashed heavily to the already sticky floor, rising in thick waves from the very depths of him, his entire body now a massive reflex action that clenched every muscle until he thought they’d burst and tear, coughing and retching until there was nothing left. When he was finally done, one hand on his bent knee, the other wrapped across his drum-tight and convulsing stomach, Walter offered him a handkerchief. Shakily, like an old man, Suni took it, wiped the sick from his mouth and the tears from his eyes.

“When they never find the body, this is where those bodies go,” Walter said, stepping into the room. Dozens of marbles rolled lazily across the hard dirt floor. The sound of Walter’s tightly laced shoes smack-smacking across the sticky floor made Suni want to gag again. “Well, most of them. You might want to stand back.”

Suni was about to ask why when the room filled with a cacophony of meeping and murbling and a dozen or more Nabbers materialized out of nowhere, streaming from shadows and dark nooks, bumping and jostling Suni as he stood amid their traffic. Without hesitation, fumbling and climbing over one another—ignoring Walter and Suni completely—they each homed in on specific marbles, clutching them in their rubbery blue hands, and scuttled them back to their proper room. The last of them stopped in the archway to look Suni up and down with what he took for disdain, hmphed, and disappeared into the marble room. When quiet was restored not a marble remained.

Suni gestured feebly to the quartet of corpses seated at the table. One of them slapped down a card from its hand. Another drew from the pile. Their skin was gray, the stumps of their necks bloodless. “What…,” he began. “What…?”

“When I was still living with Henry, he wanted me to practice,” Walter said. “Get a feel for the business. This was homework,” he said solemnly. “Guess he never got around to clearing them away.”

Suni thought of the notepad in his backpack, and suddenly a two-hundred-word essay didn’t seem so bad.

“How…how do you know him, then?”

“He took me from my family when I was very small. He stepped out of the darkness and I wasn’t even scared…all starlight and assurances. That was when I first saw the instruments, and heard how strongly they sang to me.” Walter’s eyes shone at the memory, and Suni saw him smiling nostalgically. And then, abruptly, “He told me he could make my bad dreams go away…and all the while he was nothing but a bad dream himself.” Walter sniffed and shook his head a little, as if dispelling a fog.

“He…he’s the guy that could get me out of here?”

Walter nodded. “This whole place is his. He took it from a man named Dorian. They had a falling-out. A lot of bad blood. You know how it is.” Suni didn’t, actually, but he felt it wiser to just nod as if he knew all too well. “That’s how he wound up doing what he’s doing now.”

“Which is?”

“It’s a long story.” Walter straightened, and got that distracted, faraway look again. “He’s coming.”

Through the silence of the body chamber came the distant burble and meep of the Nabber, the patter of its feet getting closer. Suni would have run had Walter not placed a hand on his arm.

“There’s no point,” he said. “This network of caverns and chambers…it’s all circular.”

Suni swallowed and looked to the far arch. With mounds of corpses, bodies, and refuse piled around him he had no trouble believing he would be added to the stockpile within the hour. Just another missing body.

A figure moved into the archway, coat tinkling. He was tall, whatever he was, and the coat moved less and less as he came to a standstill, as though getting comfortable around his scarecrow frame. From within the coat Suni caught flashes of silver light.

He looked as though he belonged here, in this mortuary.

The figure was looking at Kristian’s card. Beside him, the Nabber wrung its rubbery hands and hopped impatiently from foot to foot, eager to have its prize back but unwilling to snatch it from the gloved hand of the being that held it.

“Pretty,” the figure said in a voice like dry leaves, distant thunder. He walked into the room, boots sounding solid on the ground. Beneath his wide-brimmed hat he didn’t look out of place among the dead at all.

“You’re Suni.”

Suni nodded.

The man turned to Walter. “You’re back.”

“Keeping an eye out.”

The man turned his attention back to Suni. “We don’t get many visitors,” he said. “In fact, we don’t get
any.
” He glanced meaningfully at Walter.

“I’m the doctor,” the man continued. Beneath the hat his head looked hairless, save for a few wisps that might have been red once upon a time. He looked over his shoulder to the four card players and moved for a closer examination. “Nice,” he said to Walter. “Always liked these. Your premise was flawed, though.”

Walter shook his head. “So they just play cards. The fear comes from the
expectation
they’ll do something.”

“Still don’t like it. Won’t work. Except as a setup, maybe, for something else.” He walked back over to Suni. “But back to you…”

Suni’s eyes locked wide. He didn’t move. He didn’t want to die. He was too young for this. He hadn’t been anywhere. He hadn’t done anything yet!

Walter took a step toward the doctor.

The doctor handed Suni the card. “I think this is yours.” Suni blinked. He looked at the card. Hesitantly, he took it. The Nabber meeped and hopped from foot to foot like it was going to explode. The doctor turned and pointed out of the cavern. “Get.”

Despondently, dragging its arms behind it, the little blue thing turned and shuffled out. It stopped, glancing hopefully back one last time. The doctor pointed again and the little thing moped away.

“Suni’s not your concern,” Walter said. “I brought him here…”

“Black bugs blood,” the doctor said.

Suni blinked again. “P…pardon?”

“Black. Bugs. Blood,” the doctor repeated.

“Henry…,” Walter persisted.

“I want you,” said the doctor. “To say ‘black bugs blood’ ten times. Fast.”

Suni blanked. “Y…you wuh-want me to ss-suh-say…bbb…buh-buh-black buh-buh-buh…”

“Yes.”

“And thh…thh…then I guh-guh-get to guh-guh-go hhh…hhh…hhh…home, wuh-wuh-wuh-with my card?”

“Yup.”

Suni looked at Walter and found him biting his lip. “This is his realm, Suni. I can’t contradict him. Not here.” He looked Suni in the eye. “I told you not to chase that thing.”

“I ccc-can’t do it!” Suni cried. “I cccuh-cuh-can’t.”

“Then you stay here,” said the doctor. “And you don’t go home. Except in your parents’ dreams, where all you’ll be able to do is scream or whine. After that I’ll turn you into something else.” The doctor leaned forward, hands on his knees. Inside his coat was a glittering array of tools and instruments unlike any Suni had ever seen. “It ain’t that bad,” the doctor reasoned. “I could give you wings…”

“I ddd…ddd…ddd…I ddd…ddd…duh-duh-duh
…don’t want wings
!” Suni cried out, unable to take his eyes off the scalpels and things. “I want to go home!”

“Then say it, ten times fast…,” the doctor said. “And home you’ll go.” He stood back once more.

Suni licked his lips. He didn’t want to be here forever, even with wings. He thought of all the things he’d miss if he were to never go back. He’d even miss school, and goofing around with Kristian…

Something occurred to him then. He thought about it,
really
thought about it, and wondered if it was such a good idea. Finally he knew he had nothing to lose by trying.

“Suni…,” the doctor said, impatiently.

Suni nodded, and said “S-So let me get this stuh-stuh-straight…”

“Mmhmm…,” the doctor said, patiently.

“You want me to ssss-ssss-say”—Suni said the words slowly and deliberately so as not to trip over them—“black…bugs…blood…ten times. Fast.”

The doctor nodded. “That’s right.”

“And then you’ll let me go?”

“Uh-huh.”

“With my stuff?”

“Yup.”

“And Kuh-Kristian’s ccc-card?”

“All yours.”

“Okay.” Suni licked his lips. And he began, pronouncing the words slowly once more. “Black…”

“Hey,” the doctor interrupted.

“…bugs…”

“Kid…,” he said patiently. “That’s not…”

“…blood…”

“…fast enough.”

“Ten times fast,” Suni finished.

The doctor’s thin face dropped. “Kid, do you have any idea how many times I’ve had people pull that one on me?”

Suni’s stomach sank.

“You really think I didn’t see that coming?”

“Bbb-buh-buh-but…,” Suni stammered. “I duh-duh-did it. You www-wanted me ttt-to say it ttt-tuh-ten times fast and I did. You guh-guh-gotta let me go.”

The doctor shook his head. “I make the rules and you know what I meant. I’m no demon bound by exactitude. I’m real, and you just lost.” The doctor opened his coat, tools tinkling in anticipation of use. “Sorry, kid.”

Suni grunted as Walter pushed past him, screaming, “Leave him alone!”

Suni was scared, but he was still quick enough to take the chance when it presented itself. He bolted through the archway for all he was worth.

The doctor’s voice rasped deeply. “When are you gonna learn?”

But that didn’t stop the little boy yelling, “
Run, Suni! Just keep running!
”

“And what’ll that do?” the doctor inquired.

Suni found himself in a room of black glass that seemed to go on forever. His throat burned with each ragged breath, his heart thumping. The space was like the central area of a great train station, filled with people milling about.