Gary A. Braunbeck - Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

The video monitors came on, and Martin immediately jumped behind one of the reading tables.

Oh, some hero-to-the-rescue you are, jackass! First little sound and you’re scrambling for cover.

After the better part of a minute with Gash still a no-show, Martin realized that the monitors must be on some kind of automatic timer—or what passed for such a thing in this place.

He moved from behind the table in slow increments, not fully rising to his feet until he was certain company wasn’t coming.

Each screen was displaying a different image: Spring-greened fields; animals giving birth; scenes of war that shook and jerked from side to side because whoever was holding the camera couldn’t keep it still; an empty playground; a pair of gloves lying on a sand dune in the moonlight; silently screaming faces; children playing; old folks

(Bob, lying in that room in the Taft . . . no, he wasn’t among them)

dying; homeless ones begging for money from passing strangers; couples making love; people in uniforms torturing prisoners; babies being murdered by their parents; priests celebrating Mass; bright fireworks over rivers; assassinations; roses in bloom; wedding photographs; mangled bodies in bomb-blasted streets—

—Martin had to look away, shaking his head to clear it of the images.

Gripping the crowbar with both hands, he moved toward the center of the room, turning in slow circles as he did, not giving anything a chance to sneak up from behind.

The video monitors blinked, then returned to their previous state of silent electronic snow.

Overhead, something moved.

Martin looked up and saw what appeared to be a large, pulsating, organic black sac hanging from between two of the monitors. A thin red tube ran down from its center, dividing into several more that branched out in all directions like veins or exposed nerves.

He held his breath, then looked down at his feet.

The floor itself—already dizzying when stilled—was pulsing in rhythm with the sac overhead, as if the entire structure was a living thing, a single entity composed of several disparate parts, each one somehow alive—but not in the same way Martin himself was alive; this level of existence (if it could be called that) more resembled that of someone in REM sleep, or a hospital patient deep in a coma.

It took a moment for the impact of this to register, and when it did, Martin smiled.

Gash was sleeping again; maybe just a quick little nap, forty winks before finishing the job, but . . . yeah; asleep once more.

Stepping past a glass case containing something that looked like a giant insect carapace with angel’s wings, Martin moved toward a pile of bodies (Christ, how he hoped they were just life-sized and –like statues), all of which had been set aflame at some point in the past: they had melted in places, fusing together into a grotesque mass of entwined limbs and bloated flesh that encircled a glass case in the middle. At various points, a few of the red “veins” from the ceiling sac entered the mass through moist, puckered knots.

But this still wasn’t the worst of it.

Behind the mass and the glass case they encircled, the first in a series of naked human figures hung upside-down by its shackled ankles, swinging back and forth at the end of a rusted chain.

It wore Bob’s face, broken with grief, darkened by terror.

In the center of its chest was a moist, round, bloody hole.

It’s not him; remember that.

Easier said than done, because each succeeding figure not only shared Bob’s face and the gaping bloody chasm in the center of his chest, but built upon his original expression of grief and terror, his horror more defined, enabling Martin to witness the perverted evolution of his anguish: rage, euphoria, self-loathing, ecstasy, confusion, pride, and—on the final, hideously-realized figure—helpless resignation. This last image of Bob was looking directly at something massive that lay

(slept?)

under a gigantic tarpaulin at the farthest side of the room.

Martin thought: Oh, fuck me . . .

Because he knew what was under there.

( Make damn sure he doesn’t spot you—and more important than that, make sure you don’t see him. It , actually. Trust me on this: you lay eyes on that thing, you’d sooner rip them out of their sockets than have to look at it a second time. )

“Don’t freeze-up now, Dipshit,” he whispered to himself. “You got this far.”

He turned toward the body-heap once again, this time looking at the display in the center.

Even this far away, Martin could easily make out the words on the plaque:

As Was, As Is

This baby had no cranium, and was nestled on a bed of cotton in the large glass case filled with what he assumed was formaldehyde; whatever it was, years of soaking in the chemical had turned the baby’s skin a ghostly white. It sat in a semi-upright position, legs bent at the knees, feet horizontal, arms thrust straight out from the elbows as if resting on the arms of a chair: a wise old sage upon his throne, waiting on a lonely mountaintop for the truth-seekers to arrive.

Stepping as lightly as he could (the fucking floor would not stop pulsing ), Martin began to climb the body-heap, forcing himself to ignore the elastic, spongy softness of each face or torso he stepped on.

It didn’t help that he could fully use only one hand to assist his climb, the other busy gripping the crowbar.

Even though it took him only a minute to reach the top, to Martin it felt like an hour; by the time he was able to fully stand before the display, he was drenched in sweat, his heart trip-hammering in his chest as if trying to squirt through his rib cage.

He stared down at the malformed baby. “Let me ask you something, little man As-Was,” he whispered between gulps of air. “Could this be just a tad more ominous? I mean, seriously. Throw in some cobwebs and a cameo by Boris Karloff, and we’d have the serious makings.”

Keep joking , he told himself. As long as you can make with the smartasseries, you won’t have to think about what’s under that tarpaulin or admit how goddamn you-should-pardon-the-expression scared you are .

Leaning closer to the case, Martin said, “I take it from the notable lack of enthusiasm that you’re more of a Vincent Price man, am I right? I am right, aren’t I?”

As-Was made no reply. Extra cotton had been packed behind its neck and around its shoulders to prevent its head from lolling forward or around; only close scrutiny revealed the clear, thin wire that ran down from the lid of the case, snaking through the dense layers of cotton to attach itself—via a small silver hook—to a catch protruding from the base of his skull.

Despite his rising anxiety (it wasn’t quite outright terror yet, but it was probably within walking distance of the neighborhood), Martin couldn’t resist reaching out with his free hand and giving the case a small but solid shake, if for no other reason than to re-affirm that he was really here. The formaldehyde rippled once, twice, more, each rising disturbance pattern expanding into the one above and below it, creating hybrid ripples that looked like rolling lines of static on an old television screen, and as each series of ripples broke against the surface, As-Was began moving in response to the mild turbulence: first a finger—up, then down, tapping in rhythmic thoughtfulness, a smooth liquid reflex; then a hand—side to side, waving as if it were trying to attract someone’s attention; then an arm—shuddering; then both arms; and, finally, the head—up-down, up-down, the wise old sage nodding in sympathy as the truth-seekers spoke of their dilemma.