Shell Game Turns     Previous     Next

Shell Game 1:
Before the Fall

Chicago, during the Paranormal Chernobyl.

Edward.

He was not asleep, and not quite awake. Some time ago they'd moved him to a new cage, a confining space with solid walls and no window, and the air stank of some chemical. The cage had been hoisted into the air; the whole thing had swayed like a pendulum, and with his arms bound he'd banged from one side of the box to another. The walls felt springy and strangely slick, as smooth as his force fields, but there was no light to tell him what they were made of.

At some level he knew he was aboard a helicopter. His inner ear felt each tilt and lift, and rhythmic thrumming penetrated the walls of his cage. The chemical stink never went away, and his head hurt. They'd taken the credit card thing off his forehead when they moved him, but he still found it hard to keep his thoughts in order.

But that was okay. He didn't want to think. He just wanted to shut it all down.

Edward!

His own thoughts were a mess, but there was Gram's voice again, clear as if she was standing next to him in the dark. He'd been hearing her all day, ever since he'd stepped off the bus this morning. At first it was just a game he was playing with himself, imagining what she'd think of what he was doing. He'd always done that, because Gram always seemed to know the right thing to do.

But all day her voice had grown clearer and clearer. And at the end there, when the JigSaw Man's madness threatened to overrun him, Gram had snapped him out of it. He could practically feel her shaking him, telling him she loved him, that she'd never let him become something bad.

Listen to me, Eddy. There ain't much time.

"Hey Gram." Ed replied softly. His tongue felt like it was wrapped in cotton. What was the crap they were pumping into him anyway?

"There sure ain't much time. I think they're going to send me to jail, Gram. They've got me in this box, and I can't see or think or feel anything. I figure I've really screwed the pooch on this one, pardon my French."

He rested his head on the funny wall behind him and stared up into the darkness. Further back, in the darkness of his mind, he could see the door marked "Pender." There was a light beneath it, and he could see the memories it contained casting shadows as they crossed back and forth behind it. Sometimes the doorknob rattled, but he'd put a pretty good lock on that one. Yesirree Bob.

"Do not open 'till Christmas." Ed whispered, and shivered.

"Oh Jesus, Gram… What am I gonna do? How do I fix it now? How come I'm so fucking stupid?"

Edward! Mind your tongue!

Even though she was just a voice in his head, he felt himself flush. Jesus, shamed by an imaginary voice. He was going nuts.

Gram's tone softened.

You'll find a way, Eddy, she said. You'll have to. I didn't raise you to be no coward. You're a man now, and I only wish—

The voice went silent for a moment.

I only wish. Oh, Eddy, there's not much time. I don't know how I found you. I was gone, gone into the dark, and I reached for you, but now I can feel the dark all 'round me—

"Not much time…"

"I was gone…"

"Gone into the dark…"

"Not much time…"

No… It's not that. It can't be that. I need her. I NEED her!

Fear tried to grab him, but there'd been so much of that in the building he was numb to it.

"She's just sleeping, that's all," Ed whispered fiercely to himself in the dark. "It's happening in her sleep, just like it happened to you when you first got the power remember? Ain't nothing more than that you dumbass. She ain't leavin' you, she ain't dy—"

But oh the suspicion, the not knowing if this was madness or desperation or… He tried to gather his talent, use it to seek her out, find her in the dark. But it was like trying to herd cats. Whatever they were pumping into him, into the box, had scrambled his ESP like breakfast eggs. Maybe she wasn't here at all. Maybe he'd finally snapped. Maybe Maybe Maybe…

"Gram? Gram, don't be afraid. It's just the dark, that's all. Nothin' wrong with the dark. That's when we sleep, and sleep is good. It was always dark when you'd come into my bedroom to tuck me in. There'd be that hall light on, and you'd come in and ask 'How's my boy,' and I'd say 'I ain't sleepy,' and you'd say 'Hush, yes you are,' and you'd kiss me and I knew I was safe and everything would be okay. You're just sleepin' is all, and dreamin'."

"Don't you worry 'bout me ok? I'll do the right thing and I won't run. No more running, Gram. I swear it. I'll make you proud."

He brought her face into his mind, opened all the doors of memory he could that held her behind them. And he knew he'd do whatever it took to become in truth what she saw when she looked at him.

"I'll do it. I will. I promise."

A warmth ran through his body. His mind was wide open for her, and suddenly he saw her, with him, more alive than any memory.

Oh! Her eyes were wide with surprise. There you are.

She touched his cheek, and he felt her.

My strong boy. You're shining, do you know that? Like a bright copper penny. Bright as a lighthouse, even in this place.

She looked around at the dark that surrounded them. I don't know what's happening, Eddy. I don't know what it is you're doing to me. I'm feelin'… clearer, somehow. The dark don't feel so cold.

Then she looked up at him, and her eyes turned suddenly sad.

Oh, Eddy.

She lifted a hand to his other cheek, so that she held his face in her hands. Her eyes searched his own.

I remember now. I have to tell you somethin', somethin' important. Quick, before I forget.

She pulled his face down to her, and ran a hand across his eyes. He closed his eyes, and she whispered something into his ear. Then she turned his head, and whispered something into the other ear.

When he opened his eyes, she was gone.

"NO!" Ed shouted. He lurched forward, trying to reach out to his grandmother. He smacked his forehead into the wall of the cage, then slumped to the floor. He was pissed, and he was confused, and more than anything he wanted her back here with him in this horrible place.

This had never happened before. He knew it was more than memories, more than a ghost he'd conjured to hold the monsters at bay. Something real had occurred, something he couldn't explain. He sneezed, the chemical taste thick in the back of his throat.

"God-dammit," he whispered as he lay in his cage. "God-dammit-all-to-Hell."

Miami.

Gram's body had become the center of a great machine. Tubes and wires tethered her to several machines in the room that ate for her and pissed for her, and those machines were wired to other machines that monitored and recorded and sounded alerts, and those machines were wired into a network of backup monitors and power supplies that reached deep into the power grid of the city.

Ed sat in the chair beside her bed, holding her hand. Her hand was warm, the wrinkled skin surprisingly soft. Her chest rose and fell peacefully, and the machines beeped in steady cadence. He'd been here through the night, and in all that time neither Gram nor the machines had deviated from this rhythm.

The doctor in charge, a woman named Dr. Haffsteldt, had told him not to give up hope. His grandmother had only been admitted the day before, but so far the MRI's and CAT scans revealed nothing physically wrong with her, at least anything that could cause this coma. No tumor, no evidence of a stroke, not even cranial swelling. She could wake up any time.

But Ed was a telepath, and he knew she'd never wake up. What he held was simply an empty shell. Her mind was beyond empty: it was simply not there. The brain still functioned, keeping her lungs moving and her heart beating. But the mind, the consciousness that made a person more than a machine, had been removed as cleanly as an engine yanked from a car.

He'd known she was gone in Chicago. All the time he'd been making his statement to Hammersmith, he'd been fighting a growing sense of unnease. The rush he'd gotten from taking down the shapechanger evaporated, to be replaced by mounting dread. He'd left Maggie and Pender and the others with only a few words of goodbye, and then headed for O'Hare. The flights had resumed, fortunately, and he paid for his last-minute ticket with most of his remaining cash. The flight to Florida seemed interminable. When he'd finally reached the retirement village where Gram lived, the nightmare scenario playing in his head was confirmed.

Gram's neighbor had found the body and called the ambulance. The village administrator, feeling guilty that he hadn't been able to reach Ed himself, drove Ed to the hospital. It had taken Ed only seconds after reaching the room to confirm that in every way that mattered, Gram was dead. Only sentiment, some unreasoning emotion, kept him by the bedside, holding on to her hand. It took only a glance from his copper eyes to convince the doctor to let him stay past visiting hours.

Two nurses entered the room. One of them went to the window, fiddled with the blinds, and sunlight burst into the room. He hadn't realized it was morning. The second nurse went to the foot of Gram's bed, and lifted the chart. She glanced at him. "If you're hungry," she said, "there's a cafeteria downstairs."

"No, I'm fine," he said automatically. His voice was gravelly with phlegm, and he coughed to clear it.

She nodded as if he'd agreed with her. She was a black woman in her mid thirties, maybe forties. The floral print smock she wore over her blue scrubs was a bit too busy for this early in the morning. "There's coffee, too," she said. "We're just going to update the charts and freshen the room. Why don't you take a few minutes. We'll be here for awhile."

He hadn't eaten since the plane, and that had only been coke and pretzels. He stood up, rubbed a hand through his hair. He was wearing the t-shirt and jeans he'd worn when he'd stepped off the bus in Chicago. The expensive suit he'd bought on Michigan Avenue was in the duffel bag next to his chair. The suit had been cut up and abused in the fight with Sontag, but he couldn't bear to throw it away.

"Thanks," he said. He went out into the hallway and blinked against the harsh fluorescents. He looked around for a bathroom, and finally saw some signs halfway down the hallway. He moved slowly, the fatigue making him feel like he was walking under water. The men's room was empty. He went to the first urinal and leaned into it, one hand against the tile wall to hold him up. He liked being this tired. It meant that he didn't have to think about what had happened to Gram. He didn't have to think about what she'd whispered to him back in the GodBox. He could just shut down his head and breathe in and out, another empty shell.

The door opened behind him. Ed pissed with his eyes closed, not wanting to talk with anybody, and for damn sure not wanting to pick up anything from their heads.

"You must be Ed," a man said.

Ed's eyes sprang open. He stared at the chrome pipe. The figure was behind him, an indistinct funhouse reflection in the metal. He started to turn—

—and the floor disappeared from under him. He was in air. Wind slammed into him, buffeting his clothes, twisting him around. He glimpsed a wall of black glass rushing past him to his left, and then the wind twisted him again, and he was looking up at a tall straight building, the top of it invisible against the night sky. Above him, following him like a comet trail, was a glittering rain of shattered glass.

He threw up an arm and started to scream, and realized that he was already screaming, that he had been screaming for some time. His body continued its twisting tumble, and suddenly he was staring down at a city street, four or five hundred feet away. The street was brightly lit, the streetlamps and car headlights blurred in his vision by wind and speed. The lights rushed toward him.

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