Oh Jesus, what the h.e.l.l is happening to me?
He’d killed Bill. Tricked him, stabbed him, dragged him into the apartment like a trapdoor spider s.n.a.t.c.hing a hapless insect back into a lightless, hopeless den, nailed him to the wall and tortured him before letting him bleed to death. Bleed to death while Perry shouted questions in his face. It was a s.h.i.tty way to go.
He’d just murdered his best friend. He should have been swamped with guilt, overwhelmed with it, yet surprisingly he felt nothing but a cold, icy satisfaction. Only the strong survive, and that little informant hadn’t been strong enough to cut the mustard.
“We’ve got to get the h.e.l.l out of here.”
The high-pitch searching sound echoed in his head.
W e need to go to Wahjamega.
It was a strange comment, but nothing the Triangles did seemed to surprise him anymore.
“What the h.e.l.l is a Wahjamega?” Perry asked quietly.
N ot a what, a wher e.
W ahjamega.
I n a place called M ichigan. Do y ou kno w wher e it is?
“Michigan? Sure. You’re in it. I’ll have to look up Wahjamega. Let me MapQuest it.”
Perry turned toward where his Mac used to sit before he remembered he’d smashed it to bits.
“Uh, I think I have a regular map.”
We need to go ther e.
Ther e ar e people who can help us.
He felt their excitement, pure and unbridled. Images flashed in his head: a dirt road he’d never seen before, black movement in a dense forest, a pair of sprawling oaks, tree limbs vibrating in tune to the throbbing forest floor — and a brief flash of the green door from his dreams. Another image: a pattern, a set of lines that looked like a j.a.panese kanji character. The symbol was nothing from his memory, it was theirs, and it held power.
Can w e see? S ho w us.
He hopped to the junk drawer. In the back was a much-abused Michigan road map. Most of the Upper Peninsula was obscured by a huge ink stain in the rough shape of a kidney bean, but it didn’t mar the map’s southern area. He found Wahjamega in the “thumb” area that was Michigan’s hand shape. He folded the map a few times, leaving Wahjamega visible, then found a pen (one that didn’t leak) and circled the town. Perry scrawled, This is the place. The phrase, and the circled town, seemed to call to him, and he wondered why he had written the words.
He turned his arm so that the Triangle could see the map. There was a pause, then a brief flicker of the searching sound, and then overflow emotion exploded in his body.
Yes that ’ s it! That ’ s it! Wahjamega!We must go to
Their joy felt exquisite, all-encompa.s.sing, a drug that instantly roared
through his veins and pulsated in his brain. The strange symbol again filled his world.
A pattern of lines and angles. The image seemed to swell before his eyes, glow with power like some mystical talisman. Everything else faded away, the world turned to black, leaving only the symbol floating before him, powerful and undeniable. This was Triangle overflow, he knew, but he couldn’t stop it. He didn’t want it to stop. The symbol was their purpose, their meaning for existence. They wanted it more than they wanted food or even survival.
They have to build this, and I have to help them, help them build...it’s so beautiful . . .
Perry shook his head, fought his way out of the narcotic trance. His breath came in short gasps. The fear again, but different this time, different because he’d actually wanted to help them. They’d been in his thoughts before, but never so bad as that.
He realized he was holding a knife in his left hand. The map lay on the counter, drops of blood blocking towns like the craters of some nuclear bomb run. He saw that the knife tip was b.l.o.o.d.y before he felt the pain. Like a ventriloquist’s dummy, he slowly turned his head to examine the underside of his right forearm.
In that short trance, he’d carved the symbol into his skin. Three inches long, it shimmered in wet red lines. The deep scratches oozed a little blood that trickled down in thin rivulets, rolling past either side of his thick biceps. He hadn’t felt a thing. He stared at his handiwork:
The Triangles wanted to go to Wahjamega, needed to go the way a junkie needs another fix. Wanted to go to Wahjamega and build something this symbol represented, whatever the h.e.l.l that was. If they wanted something that badly, it couldn’t be good for him. But he didn’t have anywhere else to go. The Soldiers were coming, and at this point one direction seemed as good as the next. The important thing was to get the flying f.u.c.k out of the apartment.
Putting his exhaustion up on a mental shelf, he hopped to the bedroom. That strange smell hit him again. A nasty smell, a rotting smell. This time it didn’t waft away on some invisible air current, but lingered. He ignored it — he had more important things to worry about.
He hauled a duffel bag out of the bedroom closet, then thought better of it and grabbed his backpack. Nothing big, just the nylon one he’d used to haul books around campus a million years ago. He imagined that hopping with a weighted duffel bag hanging from one arm might prove difficult.
As he put the backpack on his bed, he saw that it glistened with spots of wet blood. It took him a few seconds to register that the sticky red smear had come from his hands.
He was still covered in blood, both Bill’s and his own.
Time was a factor; he knew that far too well. After all, there was a man crucified to his living-room wall. A dead guy with friends and coworkers who wore snappy little uniforms and who would love nothing more than to put several bullets into Perry’s diseased body, but he couldn’t go outside covered in blood and gore.