'Listen,' said the second cop, 'she's doing real good, let her smoke if she '

But the girl wasn't letting it go. 'You'd rather I didn't smoke?' she said. She got up from the chair and threw open the office door. The glaring fluorescent light of the drugstore beamed into the dim office. 'Look out there. Do you see that?' Immediately beyond the door was the pharmacy section of McCray's. The first team of cops had taken the body bags away but the wide splashy stains were still fresh all along the floor.

'Okay, smoke,' said the first cop, following the girl out of the office. 'Bobby Prescott gets away. And then what?' The second cop followed, bringing the tape recorder. He helped Vincent to get up and walk.

'And then the thing came after them,' said the girl.

'Okay. And I guess you're still saying this thing is '

The second cop interrupted quickly. 'We'll get on to all that later.'

'It came after them. Walking through here.'

'Walking?'

'Sure. You've seen it. That head. Two arms. And two legs.'

'Jesus,' said the first cop, grinning and shaking his head. 'I guess when you work in pharmaceutical retail there must be certain perks, huh?'

'The kid saw it, too. Look at him. He's shaking. Hey listen, don't make him look at it again.'

'Too late,' said the cop.

Vincent stared down at the drugstore floor. The bodies were gone but the thing was still lying there, motionless, at the point where all the long dark smears converged.

'It used to be a Ryohin Keikaku bicycle. Now it looks like a sculpture by Modigliani. You know, one of these metal skeleton statues,' said the girl.

The zincfusionplated diamond frame of the bicycle had been stretched, distorted and reshaped into a parody of a human being, about two metres tall. It had long tubular legs and stalks of metal that pa.s.sed for arms and a stubby torso. The sidepull caliper brakes looked as though they had been melted and resculpted into delicate threetoed feet. The dull metal of the ATBtype pedals had fused into a blunt dagger jut of genitals. But the allterrain tyres were the worst. They were split open and welded on to the ends of the arms to make huge grasping hands, the sprung spokes stretching out like long sharp fingers. The tips of the spokes were still wet and red.

'At least, I think I mean Modigliani,' said the girl.

'It looks like one of those stick figure men you draw in that game. What's it called?' said the first cop.

'Hangman.'

'Personally it reminds me of a bad episode of Jack Blood Jack Blood,' said the second cop.

'Are you really saying that thing moved?' said the first cop.

'It didn't just move,' said the girl. 'You saw the bodies.'

'Well, it's not moving now. Was that your bike, kid?'

Vincent shook his head.

'Do you know whose it was?'

'The subject is shaking his head, indicating that he doesn't know,' said the first cop, into the tape recorder.

'Just let the poor kid go home, right?'

'Thanks for keeping me out of it,' said Calvin. He stood on the front porch of his parent's house, half in and half out of the door. For a moment it seemed as if he wasn't going to invite Vincent inside, but then he stepped back and held the door open. 'And thanks for coming around tonight.'

'It was good to hear from you,' said Vincent. 'When you didn't show up at school last week I started to get worried.'

'I wasn't feeling too well.'

'I'm not surprised after last Friday,' said Vincent.

'Maybe I shouldn't have run away and left you like that. Were the cops okay?'

'Yeah. I would have run away, too, if I could. You were just lucky. The girl in the drugstore didn't see you. n.o.body saw you.'

They went into the kitchen, where Calvin stopped to pour Vincent a gla.s.s of mineral water from the fridge, then through into the living room. 'My folks are out of town for the weekend,' said Calvin. 'I thought I'd have a few friends around.' Calvin's living room had a floor plan as big as Vincent's entire house. Sitting on cushions on the floor were Sean, Warren and Guthrie. All members of the Cthulhu Cyber Club. They looked up and nodded as Calvin and Vincent walked through. But they didn't say anything as the two boys went up the staircase to the upper part of the splitlevel living room.

'The games room is up here,' said Calvin. It was the first time Vincent had been to the house. It was an honour to be invited, something he'd been working towards for years. He wondered why he felt nothing now.

The games room had a couple of computers in it, a clamsh.e.l.l Mac and Sun workstation. 'The Sun's my dad's,' said Calvin. 'He runs his business on it.' In the corner was a bigscreen television to interface for games. On the woodpanelled walls were posters featuring some of the most memorable monsters from the Cthulhu Gate gaming modules. Vincent sipped his mineral water. He recognized the white monkeys on one poster. They were one of the most popular software monstrosities, swarming over eager players in the virtual reality of the gaming zone. Dragging you down with damp pink paws and suffocating you. On a shelf over the fireplace there was a limited edition ceramic sculpture of three of the monkeys. Vincent estimated that it probably cost as much as his mom earned in a month. Calvin sat down at the Sun and Vincent expected him to load some exotic software on it, showing off.

But all the boy did was check departure times on an airport database. The screen listed flights to Turkey. Calvin scanned them quickly and then logged off. 'Come on,' he said, leading Vincent out of the games room, down a corridor watt doors on either side. 'There's someone I want you to meet,' said Calvin. He paused at one door, looked at Vincent, and opened it. They stepped into a large bedroom which looked undecorated and spa.r.s.ely furnished after the rest of the house. A guest room. Sitting on the bed was a girl. 'You know Becky?'

Vincent knew her from school. She had dirty eyes and a nice laugh and she read weird European horror novels. Her full name was Rebecca c.o.x. 'Excuse me a second ' said Calvin, stepping back out of the room as soon as Vincent was inside.

'Hey,' said the girl. Vincent turned to look at her and she smiled at him. Her dark eyes were wide open and luminous, deeply stoned. She had her hand on Vincent's shoulder. Just one hand on his shoulder, touching him lightly. She moved forward and put her mouth on his. As she kissed him she put one arm around him and pushed him back. Vincent felt something against the back of his legs. She pushed him further back and he fell on to the bed. It was the first time Vincent had kissed a girl. She had her tongue in his mouth now and he could taste something she'd been drinking. Something strong and aromatic. Some kind of foreign liqueur, maybe. A taste of bitter crushed herbs.

Rebecca c.o.x broke the kiss and smiled at him. She drew back from him, still smiling. Vincent wanted to reach up and touch her. Pull her towards him and kiss her again. But he felt a wonderful drowsy lethargy. Reaching up would be too much effort. The girl patted his shoulder and got up from the bed. He could hear her in the bathroom as he lay there on the bed, savouring the drowsy feeling. He heard water running, then the sound of Rebecca rinsing her mouth and spitting into the sink. The bed seemed to be moving a tiny bit under Vincent, undulating, riding smoothly on big soft waves. He licked his lips. They felt numb. He tried smiling and it felt funny, which made him smile even more. Now Calvin was standing, looking down at him. Calvin had come back into the room. When had Calvin come back in?

'I'm glad you invited me over,' said Vincent. When he'd first arrived he'd felt tense. His mom didn't have the kind of money that Calvin's parents had. He'd felt out of place here. But not now. Now he just felt relaxed. He could explain things to Calvin. He could talk to Calvin about anything at all.

'It wasn't me last Friday,' said Vincent. Calvin was staring down into his face. Looking serious, like he was concentrating. Like he was listening hard.

'It wasn't me who did those things. I didn't do that stuff to Bobby Prescott's friends.' Vincent frowned, trying to explain it. The frown felt funny. The muscles in his face felt tight and warm. 'Something like that happened once before, when I was a kid. My old man was. .h.i.tting my mom. And he grabbed me and I did something to him. I did it with my mind. At least, that's what I always thought.'

Vincent licked his lips. He could still taste Rebecca's kiss. The bitter herbal taste. 'Last Friday at McCray's I tried to do the thing again. To fight back with my mind. I gave it everything I had. But nothing seemed to happen. I thought I'd got it wrong. Maybe I didn't have the power after all. But then you touched me.' His mouth felt very dry now, and that herbal flavour was part of the dryness. 'Then the power came through. And it took your bicycle and it made that thing out of it. And the thing went after that woman.' Vincent winced. 'She was going to kill us and everything, so I guess it was okay. And then it went after those guys. The power made all that happen.' He looked up at Calvin, looking for any sign of disgust on the boy's face. But Calvin's expression hadn't changed. 'You see, I do have this power. But I'm not actually the source.'

Vincent licked his lips again. He was licking them raw. His mouth was so dry he'd have to ask for a gla.s.s of water in a minute. 'It's more like I'm a kind of amplifier, Calvin,' he said.

Rebecca c.o.x was coming out of the bathroom now. She walked through the bedroom and out of Vincent's line of vision. 'Like when I was a kid. Nothing happened to my dad until he touched me. And then my power came out. But it was his power, too. His emotions. Like his anger running into me. I channelled it. And I amplified it and it came back out, stronger. It cut him up with a mirror. The mirror where he chopped his blow. They were always arguing about that mirror.' The bedroom door closed as Rebecca went out. Vincent stopped talking and looked up to see if Calvin believed him. But Calvin still had the same expression on his face. Noncommittal, listening.

'And then when you touched me the same thing happened. I took your emotions and amplified them. Those feelings came out of you and into me. And they came out stronger. And they came out sort of Oh, I didn't hear you come in.'

The boys from the living room had come up. They were standing in the doorway of the bedroom now.

'Maybe you should all hear this. Three people got killed at the mall last Friday,' said Vincent. 'Three of Bobby Prescott's people. But I didn't do it. You might say I helped. What really killed them was Calvin. His fear and anger. I just had the power to make those feelings turn into something real.' He looked at the boys standing in the doorway, reluctant to enter the bedroom, but coming in slowly. 'All that violence came out of him. I could see it. I could see Calvin's feelings and his memories. Then it went through me. Then it came out. It tore up Calvin's bicycle and built a monster out of it. Then it sent the monster after those people and killed them.'

The other boys joined Calvin and stood beside the bed looking down at Vincent. He felt the strange certainty that something was about to happen. So he spoke faster and faster, wanting to get the explanation out. 'But, you see, it wasn't my fault. Not all of it anyway. That monster came out of Calvin's mind. Because that's the way Calvin thinks. It's the way you guys think. You play those horror games. Demons and monsters on your computers. You're into gore software and Splatternetics. And maybe you believe in those demons and monsters just a little. So Calvin's fear and anger took that form.'

The boys moved around either side of the bed. Calvin and Sean to his left, Warren and Guthrie to his right. 'There's really nothing to be afraid of. There aren't really any demons or monsters, guys,' said Vincent. He said it softly. Then he shouted it as loud as he could. It didn't matter. He was only speaking the words in his mind. His numb lips and dry tongue were incapable of speech. Vincent wondered if he had managed to say anything at all. Maybe when Calvin had first come into the bedroom.

The boys were reaching down to the bed now and lifting him off it. Vincent didn't struggle, of course. Maybe Vincent had been able to make a few feeble sounds to Calvin, or maybe he'd been completely silent, chattering away without saying a word. The whole conversation had been remarkably realistic, but sometimes hallucinations were like that. Hearing his own voice in his mind was no big deal. Vincent felt a little sorry that he hadn't been able to explain things to Calvin, but it didn't really matter.

The boys were carrying him out of the bedroom and down the hall now, two on either side of him, carrying him on their shoulders. Vincent couldn't move at all. The drug had paralysed everything except perhaps his respiratory system. Perhaps that as well now that he thought about it, he could feel his breathing slowing down. He wondered if he was about to die. The ceiling of the corridor was close to his face as they carried him. He saw cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling and he was pleased. His mom would have liked that. Rich people had cobwebs in their houses, too.

Vincent wondered what the drug was. Its effect was frighteningly pleasant. He felt relaxed and euphoric, even now. The boys were carrying him down the stairs to the living room. Rebecca c.o.x was sitting there on one of the big cushions. She glanced up as the boys carried Vincent past her, but her only expression was one of drowsiness. Vincent wasn't surprised. She must have ingested some of the drug, too. She'd probably held the capsule in her mouth and bitten into it just before she kissed him, pa.s.sing the drug across in her mouth. He wondered if Rebecca had been holding lifelike conversations in her own head. The boys were carrying him through the side door of the house, out into the car port.

As they lowered his body Vincent saw that there was a big sheet of plastic spread across the floor of the car port. Standing at the centre of it was a tall grey barrel.

It was the last thing he saw before the drug began to encroach on his field of vision. He lay there on the plastic sheet with the darkness coming in from all sides. But he could still hear the boys talking as they worked on him.

'Somebody cut off his underwear.'

'Let Guthrie do that. He's a h.o.m.o.'

'Shut up, Warren.'

Sleepily, distantly, Vincent felt his bowels let go.

Distant voices ran musically in the darkness.

'Gross.'

'Shut up, Warren. Careful with that gel.'

A sensation of being lifted. Being placed naked into the barrel. The gel inside the barrel closing over his body, over his mouth and nose. Over his eyes. It wasn't at all an unpleasant sensation. Then he heard the lid being sealed over the rim of the barrel. It echoed through the liquid that covered his ears. The rim of the barrel had a curving inner lip that collected moisture and the last thing he heard was the sound of liquid dripping from that lip. Droplets. .h.i.tting the surface of the gel and transmitting heartbeat sounds through the thick mixture to his ears.

A restful sound.

The sound of liquid dripping.

Steady dripping.

Now he was hearing that sound again. Irregular splashes of liquid on liquid.

Deep in his sleep in the barrel Vincent heard the droplets gather, wait, fall. Whatever drug they had given him suspended his vital processes in an interesting way. He found that he was still dimly conscious, floating in the gel. It was the sort of fleeting consciousness you have between dreams in deep sleep. And the dreams came, too.

Some of the dreams were unpleasant.

Other dreams were comforting and cheerful. Like this one.

Vincent was dreaming he heard a dripping sound and that when he opened his eyes he wasn't in the barrel any more. He was in a bathtub full of warm water. In a big old bathroom with a gla.s.s shower stall against the far wall. Someone was in the shower, just a pale shape through the misted gla.s.s. The person in the shower was singing. A girl.

It was very nice dreaming that he was out of the barrel. Dreaming that he was sitting here in the warm water, listening to the girl sing. But he was terribly sleepy. Time to roll over and find deep, restful sleep. Leave all the dreams behind forever.

Vincent let himself lay back in the warm bathtub, easing his legs further down. He dreamed that his face went under the water.

He dreamed pretty bubbles rising up in front of his face. And he dreamed the warm water invading his lungs.

When Ace had finished washing the goo off herself she took the handshower and aimed it at the floor of the stall. She used the spray to wash it clean. All around her feet there was a thick clinging layer of the coagulating gel. Ace drove it down the drain with needles of water. Her toes were completely numb, as if they'd frozen standing in the gel that floated in the warm runoff. She hung the shower head back on its fixture and slid the gla.s.s door open.

The first thing she then was the front door closing downstairs, a boneshaking vibration transmitted through the st.u.r.dy joists of the house.

The second thing she heard was the boy in the bathtub drowning.

15.

Vincent was having a new dream. The old dream kept trying to come back, the warm bathtub and the choking water, but it was growing more distant. Floating away into vagueness. Now Vincent had a dream that he was back home in his bedroom. It was Sat.u.r.day afternoon and his mother had just gone up the road to have a few beers with Mrs Kielowski. She'd be gone for at least three hours. As soon as she was out the front door, Vincent went upstairs and locked himself in his bedroom. Now he was lying on his bed, wearing his gaming unit over his head and eyes, booting up some new software with his tongue.

It was a new version of MacPet that was circulating among the grade 9 kids. The computer game displayed colour graphics on the inside screen of Vincent's gaming helmet, filling his field of vision. The opening sequence showed him a stream of beautiful faces of women, moviestar faces, all smiling, all radiant with health. They flashed across his vision, the images changing with almost subliminal rapidity.

Then the screen changed to a background of gleaming red crushed velvet and a menu appeared.

Select hair colour.

Vincent chose Blonde Blonde.

Select eye colour, said the menu. said the menu.

Vincent chose Blue Blue.

Select behaviour.

Three long menus followed this, with submenus attached. Vincent scanned them and chose Submissive/zany Submissive/zany.

Select surroundings.

Vincent paused and considered. The options on offer included Bed, Bathtub, Tropical Lagoon, Elevator, Backseat of Car Bed, Bathtub, Tropical Lagoon, Elevator, Backseat of Car and and Abandoned Warehouse Abandoned Warehouse.

Vincent selected Elevator Elevator and set the program running. and set the program running.

Immediately he knew that something was wrong. There was a loud splashing sound, in lifelike stereo, and the image before his eyes distorted, giving an illusion of movement, as if his face was being dragged up through water. And then he broke surface. The computer graphics were amazingly convincing. Vincent stared around himself, the screen image tracking with him in virtually perfect 3-D. The bathroom was presented in beautiful detail, right down to the cracks on the tiles and the tiny froth of bubbles riding the agitated swell of the bathwater.

But, d.a.m.n it, he hadn't selected Bathtub Bathtub. And here he was, slopping around in hot water with the girl.

And the girl was all wrong. She was lovely and she was naked, all right. But she was darkhaired rather than blonde and she didn't have the standard busty MacPet physique. Water shone on her smooth brown shoulders and her sleek muscular stomach. A dark brown disc of nipple flashed across his vision as the girl leaned over him. She was crouching in the bathtub, dragging him up out of the water. He studied the movements of a smooth brown forearm slick with hot water. The computer graphics really were lifelike. But there was definitely something wrong. Her skin wasn't perfect. Vincent could see a broad purple bruise on one shoulder, a flash of dark hair under her arm as she reached for him.

Clearly this was some kind of cheap pirate software. Maybe a Korean copy of the real MacPet game. And yet, he found it oddly exciting. Vincent decided to relax and enjoy the game anyway. He reached out to touch one small brown computer graphic breast.

He was shocked at the sensation of touching warm taut skin.