Shuttered Sky

leather. He threw himself on the lavender chair, and reclined in regal repose. This was station number eight. It had been his favorite in the old days. Ocean view and enough room to move around in. The ceiling was plastered with the disembodied smiles of celebrities—a regular grinfest, culled from popular magazines, and he could identify each and every mouth. There was a time that he had thought that was something to be proud of.

It was then, as he rested from his labors, that the reflector lamp above him began to glow. It should not have given off any light at all—the bulb was broken, but still it began to glow, its intensity in­creasing by the second. In a few moments it had become a spotlight. His eyes hurt from its brightness, but even when he closed his eyes, it didn’t fade—it was as if he had no eyelids to shield himself from this light. He gripped the arms of the chair. If this was a hallucination brought on by cheap tequila, it was a good one.

When he heard a voice resounding within his thoughts, he knew it was a violation from outside himself. “Martin Briscoe,” the voice said, echoing over and over, resonating louder and louder until he had to stop it by screaming aloud.

His mind rang in a sudden silence. And then the voice again, filled with such depth and disharmony, he couldn’t tell if it was one voice or a chorus. The voice, or voices simply said:

“We require your services.”

This made Martin laugh. To think that anyone who communicated in thought and blinding light could need a dentist was hilarious. But as his dance card was now open, he decided to entertain this delusion a bit longer.

“I’m a professional,” he said. “I don’t come cheap.”

A pause, and the voice spoke again with mind-splitting intensity. “Your task is one of retribution. Your reward will be forgiveness. Forgiveness and salvation.”

By now he was beginning to realize that this was neither halluci­nation nor dream—and that he could hear three distinct voices. Al­though spirituality had never been his strong suit, his brief service to the Shards had left him fertile for any seed of possibility. Right now forgiveness and salvation sounded real good.

“Who are you?”

“The beloved of heaven,” came the answer. “Those who dance on high.”

Again. Martin laughed wildly at the thought that angels, if that’s what they were, would actually suffer to speak in King James grandil­oquence. “How do I know that you’re real?” He asked through his laughter. “Will you make my palms bleed? Will you make my plastic Jesus weep?”

But the alleged heavenly hosts were not amused, and simply pro­ceeded with their agenda.

“Who do you despise most on this earth?” they asked Martin. “Who is the enemy of your soul?”

There was no hesitation on that one. “Dillon Cole.”

The hosts were pleased. “Dillon Cole,” they repeated. “He has taken away your family, and brought your life to turmoil. And still he lives.”

The thought that Dillon could still be alive was a thought he never wanted to entertain—but now that it was put into his mind, it awak­ened a fury that couldn’t be quelled by any amount of swings from the slugger.

He thrust his hand forward, reaching into the light to get a hold on these beings that lingered there, but he could not reach them. It was as if some membrane stood between their world and his. “You want me to find him?” Martin asked.

“We want you to defeat him,” they answered. “Defeat him, and prepare our way.”

“What do I have to do?”

“You cannot kill him . . . but death will be your tool for his defeat.”

“I don’t understand.”

And so the hosts explained. “Michael Lipranski and Tory Smythe are dead . . . ' they began. Martin gave up any reservations now, and lis­tened to their orders, letting them plant in him a mission and give a purpose to his ruined life.

* * *

Five minutes later, Eureka police arrived to find a bruised, bewil­dered security officer and a dental office in shambles. There was no sign of the culprit, because Martin Briscoe was already speeding south on the freeway, his hate now focused toward a single goal. He played the final orders the hosts had given him over and over in his mind like a mantra. The words calmed him, giving peace and direction to his troubled soul.

“Michael Lipranski and Tory Smythe are dead,” they had told him. “Now you must seek out their bodies . . . and once you have found them, you will scatter their flesh to the ends of the Earth.”

PART II -FALL BACK

8. Abyss

Two thousand miles east of eureka, and eight hours after the offices of Eureka Dental were vandalized, Dillon Cole awoke to the shrill chirp of a clock radio. The device was crippled by an inability to pick up any radio stations, the cell being so completely insulated. All it could do was chirp its alarm, and hum like a theremin whenever Dillon got too near it. He had time for little more than a shower before the chair began sounding its own alarm, far more caustic than the chirping of the clock. It would continue to blare until its sensors registered Dillon’s body weight in the seat, and it clamped down around him like a fly trap.

Once he was secured in his chair, the outer door swung open, and his personal zeroid came in to wheel him out, with Bussard right be­hind.

It was as he crossed the threshold of his cell that the oppression began to fill him. He had been neither claustrophobic nor agoraphobic before arriving here, but each day of his imprisonment brought anxiety swimming up from some inaccessible trench in his mind. It was always the same, and it only hit him when he was outside of his cell, when he could pick up the hidden vibrations in the frequencies of life around him. He was prepared for another onslaught of the mental malaise that funneled down the open mouth of the cooling tower. But he was not prepared for this.

It hit all of his senses at once as he was wheeled into the open cylinder of the cooling tower, like a sound so loud it painted a flash of texture on the retina. His head jerked within his mask as if he had taken a deep whiff of smelling salts, and with no space to turn, his neck took the force of the action—straining against itself. He gasped in staccato, halting breaths, his chest muscles suddenly too tense to take in the air he needed. He was floating in space, and there was not enough oxygen in the world to fuel his brain to process the wave of sensation that flowed through him.

The sensation that something had been triggered.

Whatever chain of dominoes he had set in motion, the last one had tipped and was beginning a long, lonely fall.

It was the man in the leather chair.

It was the three figures on the diving platform.

The sensation of falling was unbearable, throbbing in his nerve endings. Dillon couldn’t be here anymore!

“I have to get out!” he wailed. “I’m meant to be out! OUT OUT OUT OUT!” But he knew his ranting sounded as deranged as the brimstone ravings of a street-corner prophet.

He could barely hear his own wails, but he could feel the pain as he convulsed within the unyielding bonds of his chair, his saliva bub­bling into a rabid foam spewing though the mouth hole of his face plate, until one of the Coats mercifully jabbed a hypodermic into his arm, plunging his consciousness into a sea of white noise.