The Hidden - Urban Decay Ch. 3

This is part of a podcast novel. If you like what you're reading, you can visit http://mindofbryan.com/thehidden for more news and to hear the chapters. Chapter 3 The beginning of the paperwork was as close to a ritual as Nami ever came. He started with a meditative review of the initial evidence, laying out the ingredients that would eventually lead to a reading and a suspect. It began at the end, the scene of the crime, where the visualization of the evidence begins. Each piece was a node in a matrix, waiting to be connected together, coalescing to form a whole picture of the crime, a visual network in Nami’s cortex. The paths of the individual pieces of the tale of why Fadil Marak was found dead on the floor of his convenience store formed brightly lit paths, like a complex molecular diagram. As he introduced new evidence the diagram would shift, new links were made, a new result was formed eventually leading to an ending point, a solution. The paperwork was the first added chemical, the first process of review, where some suspects were ruled out, some were flagged for their potential as the protagonist in this drama. Nami’s gut told him who to focus in on, and in some of his cases, he was right even this early in the process. At this point his list of suspects was thin. The only people known to have been in the store in the morning were the victim, a delivery driver, and this gang kid out for an early morning robbery, who instead called in the ambulance. There had been no credit card transactions, and the security cameras had picked up only a couple other customers who had paid and left prior to all of this happening. This was not looking like a homicide. On the other hand, there had been a gun in the store, and nothing could be ruled out quite yet. He would have preferred to hand this off to street crime, since it appeared to be a robbery with utterly bad timing. Suspicious circumstances were the only things keeping this in his current case load. He started in on the typewriter, filling in the first of many forms, but had hardly forefingered his way through a word when he heard a knock at the door. Detective Garcia, a relative newbie from street crime walked in. “You ever going to use more than two fingers to do that?” he mockingly asked Nami. “Call me when you’ve ended the gang problem,” Nami replied without looking up. You had to hold your own in the ego games of the station. Garcia smiled, he didn’t have a comeback to that one. “I saw your tape. The kid on the surveillance camera.” “You know him?” “Grew up with him. When I was working juvie, he was a regular. Now that I’m on gangs, its like he never left.”

Nami stopped to assimilate this into his story, his motion picture of the event. “What’s his name?” “His name is not quite as important as exactly who he is. Tobias Stinson, the youngest brother of Wesley Stinson.” These names meant nothing to Nami. He shrugged and shook his head. “Wesley is in the upper echelon of The Blooddogs, a younger brother, Lavon, is in middle-management, but is never going to make it. Your boy Tobias is Wesley’s protégé, but when you look at it, he’s got even less potential than Lavon.” Nami immediately wrote the name down on a note pad for inclusion to his files. “We know how to get our hands on any of them?” “Tobias has to keep a permanent residence at his mothers, terms of his probation. But you probably won’t find him there. Not after something like this. You’ll have to find him on the street.” “Great.” “Don’t worry. He’s not too smart. He’s still a kid. You’ll find him,” Garcia reassured Nami. “You know, I’m not too sure this is a homicide. It might fall back into your lap. You want me to pass it your way if it is?” Garcia considered this for a moment, then dismissed the thought. “Attempted armed robbery, probation violation, maybe assault. Not much on the camera, no witnesses. The gang retains a local Johnny Cochran for their defense, so the whole affair is a time consuming wash.” He started to step out, but realized it might be a bit of a high-profile case if it came to all that. “Still, call if it turns my way. I’ll see what I can make of it.” Somewhere in the wilds of Chicago, another side of the death of Fadil was running scared, unsure of exactly what kind of trouble he was in, but certain that it didn’t bode well for him. Tobias tried to avoid eye contact with everybody he encountered on the street. Nearly every face seemed hostile now, threatening, and the hot chills of a fever sweat had begun to run through his body. He wasn't sure if his nerves were driving him, or he really was sick. His judgment seemed so clouded right now, he couldn’t trust his instinct. Over seven hours had passed since he'd left the convenience store, so he figured the police may have come up with his ID if they were on their game. Response time was at least one of the characteristics of the police with which he had intimate knowledge. When they finally got it into gear, he’d catch wind of it long before seeing a cop. He kept to the side streets and alleys, he was in his territory, so he felt a degree of comfort and ease to get around inconspicuously. Still, he didn’t want to be seen, just in case the cop that landed on the case was a young go-getter. Tobias carried a rider on his shoulder that he wasn't aware of, it was invisible, and had no weight at all. This world was very new to it. On its home world, there was nothing like what he was experiencing now. It knew of cities, but had never been to one, it had only sat on craggy desert mountains and looked at them from afar. If its kind ever went near cities, they would be chased away or killed. The cities there didn't look anything like this. This was huge. It'd never seen anything as tall as the formations around him that were built with intelligent hands. They

looked like cliff walls, but straight and regular. It didn't know why it wasn't being thrust away, expelled, destroyed. It didn't even know how it had found its way here, and so it went about its ways cautiously. It just knew it was hungry. In the outskirts where it lived on its homeworld, food was scarce and it was nearly always hungry, but not like this. The food it had taken so far should have been able to last months, but it had been hours only, and it was already weak with hunger. Its belly was gaunt, it could see its sinews and organs outlined. It would need to feed again soon, or it wouldn't survive. The things in the places its host had taken it had shown little weakness, its last meal had taken nearly as much energy to consume as it had given, but it was necessary. The prospects were looking better, though. It could smell frailty in the air. Where it smelled frailty, there was easy prey. It was only a matter of time. Tobias crossed 113th and headed west on a one-way, ever deeper into his neighborhood. The bricks of every building bore the familiar tags of his gang, which were repeated on the aluminum surrounding every payphone, on every street sign and every streetlight. His plan to avoid capture started with a change of clothes. In order to last much longer, his appearance couldn’t match what was on the security camera tapes. Every step he took, though, made him more angry. Why the hell did I follow Levon’s advice, he thought. What the fuck does he know? Show Wesley that I’m ready for advancement by robbing somewhere? Fuck. How stupid can I be following that advice. Dumb piece of shit. When he rounded the corner to his block he stopped and waited. He didn’t see any cars that might be police, marked or unmarked, there didn’t seem to be anyone just sitting in a car somewhere, which would have been a suspicious enough sight to make him deviate from his plans. He waited for ten minutes, but the cars that passed by were all locals, no patrols were out looking for him, at least not yet. Even so, he took the back stairs up to his mother’s apartment, hesitating still to be sure no one waited for him in the alley. He took the stairs with apprehension, stepping as light as he could, one decrepit paint-peeled step at a time. He didn’t need anybody hearing his footfalls, the creaks and bumps that brought the residents of this neighborhood to glance out the window from around a corner to see if they were going to be broken in on or not. Behind all of his hesitation hid the reality of why he didn't want to go back home: he was ashamed of what he did. The back door to his mother’s apartment led directly to the kitchen. Through the narrow holes in the old lace curtain in the window he could see the silhouette of his mother, lumbering about the kitchen. Tobias’s mother was a large woman, who bore the rough complexion, gray hair and the strained voice of a hard life. Her presence meant she hadn't gone in to work at the church, which was just fitting for the way today was going for Tobias. He’d been hoping not to run into her. He slipped his key into the lock with dread, as if he was a kid who had played hooky from school to have his own adventure and was now expecting his punishment. The lock was a new deadbolt that Wesley had installed for protection, but more for his merchandise than for them. It was about the only shiny new thing in the house.

The lock popped open, and the door jumped a bit; Wesley hadn't done a great job aligning the lock with the jamb and it was impossible to sneak in. He opened the door with as little noise as he could, as if to do so with any more noise would disturb a delicate natural balance. But the balance had been disturbed, and the disruption provoked a startled and spastic movement from his mother, and he heard, half concealed, a hard object sliding across the counter. She was trying to hide her bottle of booze. Tobias pretended not to hear, not to notice her sudden start, her alcoholism was beneficial to his own purposes at the moment. If she was drunk, she was easier to deal with when there was trouble. Smiling wide, she turned around to face him, slipping a fifth bottle into her purse with the discretion of a kid caught with his hands in a candy jar. He could smell the alcohol from across the room, gin, by the smell of it. The demon smelled her. She would do. She was ready. It could smell liver damage, and a hint of arthritis. “Tobias. What are you doing sneaking up on me like that?” He didn’t answer, just gave her a gruff look. “I— I’m just heading off to work.” She clutched her keys. “You’ll be alright honey?” He looked at her expressionless, feeling nothing but anger. He forced out an excuse. “Just stopping by, Ma. No worries.” She held on for a second, waiting for something else to be said, but nothing was. She grabbed her purse, stepped past him, and headed out the door, closing it with a hard push that shook the house. The demon didn't worry that she'd be back. Traces of her disease were all around. Tobias didn’t dwell on his thoughts, though. He had an objective. They’d be looking for him sometime, and this was the first place they’d come knocking. He rushed into his bedroom, and pulled off his basketball jersey, donning instead a PMZ Gangsta Designs shirt. His shorts were traded for jeans, they’d be hot now in the sun, but if he had to stay outdoors tonight, they’d keep him warm enough. He dug into the hip pocket of his shorts, and pulled out his cell phone, which was a Swiss army knife for street survival. He found the lead for his power adaptor on his floor and connected it, five minutes would top off the charge. He also pulled out a knife and a dime bag of weed. The weed he tossed on his dresser. The knife he slipped into his jeans pocket, he knew how useful even the glint of a knife could be on the street in the right circumstances. There were plenty of pitfalls on the street, even the street people were dangerous. Some of them would kill you for the few extra cents they needed for a dollar bottle of gin, but a weapon would dissuade them easily. He flipped open the phone and hit speed dial for his brother’s number. It picked up immediately to the grating static of wind noise. His brother was in convertible, or a car with the windows down, Tobias never knew what he found for himself to drive on any given day. “Yo,” Wesley said. “Wesley, I--,” Tobias started, but he was cut off. “Hey, little bro! What’s shaking? You take care of what I asked you to?” Tobias

heard the car accelerate and horns. “Wesley, see, I—“ “I don’t want excuses little bro. I need it done. It’s important for you if you want out of that house. Other people are watching your performance on this one.” Tobias pulled hard on his dresser drawer out of frustration. It fell to the floor, dumping out socks, underwear and large satchels of weed. He'd never felt so put in his place, suffering the results of his own actions, unable for the sake of pride to tell Wesley what he’d done, and staring down at the dresser that he’d had since he was a kid, beaten and worn out long ago, nailed together several times and barely still standing. He stopped everything, too helpless to do anything. Then he swallowed his pride and tried to tell Wesley everything. “Yeah, sure look, I’m in—“ “Hold up, hold up.” He heard Wesley talking to someone else, quietly. “Lavon. You see this shit? What the hell is Latrell doing here? This is our territory.” The wind noise disappeared from the phone. He had no choice but to wait. Tobias picked up two t-shirts from the floor, and a pair of socks, not even looking at them, and then grabbed a pair of Calvin Kleins, and stuffed them into his backpack as well. Through the muffled phone, he heard Lavon’s deep voice mumbling, but couldn't make out what he said. Lavon wasn’t one for precise elocution. Then he heard Wesley’s voice again, “No, no. We’re going to call the cops on him. Gotta go, little bro. Remember, to take care of that for me.” “Hey Wesley I—,” Tobias tried to get him back, but Wesley’d already hung up. That settled that, Tobias decided. He’d have to go it alone for the day, try to hide on the streets since he didn’t have a real safe house to run to. It was almost better that Wesley hadn’t heard yet. Maybe he could find his own way out of this trouble. He looked at the weed. The big packages weren’t his, and he’d have to offload them to someone with less heat. He decided that the dime bag had to be flushed. It was part of the private stash and Wesley had sacrificed good money for it, but leaving it would only compound the problem. The police would search the house for the gun that was on the scene if they hadn’t found it already, and if they found any drugs, it would be almost as bad as if he had it on him. He didn’t need to add possession to the list of charges, he was already going to need enough defense to make Wesley very angry. He ran to the bathroom down the hall and emptied the contents of the little plastic bag in the toilet and then tossed the bag in after and flushed. As the water swirled down the drain, so did his world, his head felt like it was flowing around a bowl, he wavered forward and back, he felt like he was seeing from far behind his eyes. He fell back to the door, then his knees weakened, faltered, gave way, his whole body dropped to the floor, and his head dropped to the porcelain, catching his forehead. After a moment, it cleared, and he stood, using the doorknob for support. That had never happened to him before. He returned to his room to grab his phone, verified the charge, and pocketed it. Next, he had to find a way to get rid of the kilo in his bag. That was intent to distribute, and any bit of anything that he had going for him in the Blooddogs. He ran through his list of contacts, and the closest and easiest was Droob, who lived upstairs and three apartments over. He tossed the kilo in his bag and ran out the

back door. He pounded on Droob's door for a minute or two before it opened. Droob looked strung out on something, but it was better than being caught out in the open with the stuff. "Droob, I got trouble. Can you do something for me?" Tobias asked. He heard a television with some talk show on in the apartment. "Man, I just got my shit on. What you need?" "I got somebody on me. I can't get this over to The Doctor's. Can you do it?" He held open the bag so that Droob could see what was in it. "Man…What's in it for me?" "They said they'd give me a hundred bucks. Its yours if you get it done today." "I could turn this into a couple G's myself." "You know if Wesley knew you did that, you wouldn't make it two days." "Shit, coupla days'd be all I'd need." "But if you helped Wesley's little brother out in a jam like this, you know he'd look favorably upon you." "Really?" he said, still hesitant. "Alright. Alright, I'll do it, soon as I come down, you know what I mean?" "Yeah, sure." Tobias handed over the package and turned away before the door was closed. Now there was nothing for him to do but brave the streets. Malcolm arrived home, still hungry, but with milk, eggs and other victuals, but it wasn’t time for food. It was the time for processing the information he had collected. There was something more involved here than just a simple death, something that Nami wouldn’t be able to fight, wouldn’t be able to stop. That was what he'd learned at the Convenient Store. So he put the eggs and milk in the refrigerator and left the non-perishable goods in the bags on the counter, to be put away later. He thought for a second that after being in the store this morning, he’d have to reconsider his notion of non-perishable goods, and maybe buy another refrigerator. But there was a time and a place for that as well. He opened a drawer and pulled out a dishtowel, ran it under the faucet for just a second, and then opened his freezer for ice. Using this, he wrapped his hand. Maybe the swelling would come under control, the throbbing would end, and he’d be able to move his fingers without pain again. It was just like his mother had done. He knew about ice packs like they had at hospitals, but preferred his utilitarian approach to life. Modern conveniences were not so great when you needed them and they weren't there. He headed to his study. The first clues in a case like this were always elusive, but he had his means to suss them out. They came to him from the papers he collected, miscellaneous bits of information that seem to gather relevance by direct experience of the environment and then a viewing through Malcolm’s perception. He arranged them on his desk, finding a grocery list with six of eight items crossed off, and a phone number written on the side in another person’s writing; an address scrawled under the words "massage therapist," though, by the name next to it, “Thumper”, she’ll probably give a bit more than a massage. These and the rest he arranged on his desk. He didn’t need to look at them to know another demon was on the loose, he was looking for his starting point.

He spent a minute in complete silence, breathing slowly, letting go of the weight of the day and taking in the calm and quiet of his home, and when his heart had reached a slow, normal pace, and his breathing had relaxed into deep breaths and longer exhales, only then did he look at the papers. Nothing happened. No revelations. Nothing. He moved the pieces around a couple times at random, thinking maybe the recombination might spur a further clue, but they still gave him nothing. He could never make the messages materialize on command. This fact that told him that whatever his ability may be, he didn't produce the messages, he received them. The papers were silent, and that was just the fact of the matter. He put them aside until they found it a fitting time to say something to him. He turned to his journal. June 24th, 2003, cont’d: I’ve handled more demonic cases so far this year than in the previous two combined. Things are on the increase, and I can’t keep up on my own. Understanding the mechanisms of the crossings is, in the long run, most important. Fadil didn’t die a natural death, and the kid didn’t kill him. The message at the fire showed me whatever the inspector determines, the fire started with a demon. Unfortunately the messages were as obtuse as usual, and I have nothing else to go on. Demons are something separate from our religions, though many of our historic religious demons have been transplants mistaken for religious experiences. Rather they are invasive species, come from a higher plane of the universe. Lenore told me, their world is dying, and they’re trying to escape into ours. The demonic underworld has a tight grip on the scene in town. Any newcomers are discovered and either assimilated or dealt with quickly. Lenore may have information about any new crossings. She would be able to check her contacts and find out. She can be hard to find at times though. You can’t summon a succubus, they have their own ways of finding you when they need you, and rarely does it work the other way. I’ve learned much from Lenore, despite her understandable reluctance to give up too much information on this subject. She says they have to feed quickly when they’ve crossed over, to establish some stores of power, or return. Or die. The old breed were content to lay low, feed slow, establish themselves over eons.

It doesn’t work like that anymore. People move faster, there are more to feed on. People don’t perceive demons like they used to. We’re too busy, we don’t notice them until they’re in your face, sucking the manna from you, and sometimes not even then. Somewhere about the eighth ring, when the answering machine picked it up with the clicks and whirs of its tape decks, Malcolm realized the phone was ringing. He decided to ignore it. The machine clicked to life, the cheap plastic box vibrated harmonically and distorted while playing the message. It was from his boss. “Malcolm, remember that job you didn’t come in to today? I hope you do, because you don’t have it anymore. I’ll mail your final paycheck.” This didn’t hit Malcolm, it was of very little consequence today. He stood to look at the north wall of his study. There was no window, and so it afforded him the greatest possible surface area with which to post pressing issues. Years ago, Malcolm had covered it with corkboard, floor to ceiling and long enough to pace in front of when he had to take in the bigger picture, and occasionally the bigger message. The wall did to text what Jackson Pollock did to paint, and Malcolm was the artist that oversaw the confused placement of the materials. Covered with papers, clippings, and notes pierced through the heart like an insect collection mounted for study, the papers were tacked in a specific and irregular arrangement that defied all logic save Malcolm’s. Some had been up long enough to be yellowing with age, but most were quite recent, cases that were most pressing. Malcolm removed some clippings from a spot on the wall that hadn’t had any action for weeks. Either the demon had died of natural causes, or the trail was irrevocably lost. He collected those papers, bound them together with a large paperclip, and labeled the stack for filing according to specifics, symptoms, locations. He'd developed an easy reference system to track demonic attack. The bundle was moved to Malcolm’s files, a card catalog spared demolition from a library that got the computer budget early in the previous decade. The drawer was labeled “Cold Case”, a drawer Malcolm hated to open, because it represented so many failures. The new scraps of paper were put up in this case’s place. The Polish menu. A piece of notebook paper with hastily scribbled directions to a sordid hotel rendezvous, a cast off advertisement for a pest control outfit. This one read, in full: Direct Pest Control Certified * Licensed * Insured 20 years in the neighborhood. Reasonable rates. Safe and effective. Call Brad 773-145-8900 It had pictures of various home pests in the margins. A second glance, and Malcolm saw none of that. He saw, in irregular, uncertain script only one word.

“Decadere.” “Latin root. Decay,” Malcolm said, translating and interpreting automatically. Malcolm’s eyes fell on an article cut from an obscure journal of scientific study that a layman would never have heard of. The article, by a Dr. Algauer, described a new theory which was gaining momentum. In it he outlined how our universe is only one of many universes in what he called a megaverse. It also described a possible mechanism for the crossing over of matter between these universes. Malcolm removed it from the wall, and sat back down to his journal. Maybe there are more demons now because there are more ways to get here, more places that are worn thin. It was rare in the past, but now with our science experiments, our super colliders and reactors, the doors are opening wider and more frequently. So here’s their world, our world, a supercollider in the middle. Is this how it works, or just another dead end? And in all of this, where do I fit in? I've tried to figure out the physics of this theory, and I have some difficulty getting from the equations to what I observe. It's not exactly my field, but not entirely unrelated either. I have studied independently, I can at least speak with some intelligence on the subject. Malcolm picked up his phone and dialed information. When the operator came on, he asked for Fermi Lab, Head of Theoretical Physics. The operator turned the call over to the computer, which automatically spouted the number, and began the offer to connect at no extra charge, a pre-programmed routine it repeated millions of times daily. Malcolm had already disconnected by the time it offered, the number was a permanent fixture in Malcolm’s memory. He wouldn’t ever forget it. The phone rang three times before picking up. “Hello. This is Dr. Algauer,” said a small, dry voice. Malcolm looked at the photo of Algauer that accompanied the article, a little, bespectacled man in a lab coat beside a large mural of a nebula, a galaxy and miles of space, bisected by red lines and notation. His voice fit the picture. Malcolm suddenly seized, he was unable to speak. He was breaking out of his tightly organized world again, and that never sat well with him. His throat became pasty, uncomfortable. It was hard for him to form words correctly when this happened. “Dr. Algauer, I was interested in um, well,” a false start. Malcolm hadn’t thought this all the way through, he knew better than to act on an impulse, but didn't think about it until it was too late. Start again, he told himself. “I’m sorry. My name is Malcolm Pierce and…I’m interested in your experiments.” “Oh. Okay, uh, Malcolm. What can I do for you?” Algauer sounded somewhat puzzled. This wasn’t the way he was usually approached. He was getting apprehensive to this curious disruption. “I’ve been conducting my own research and it’s led me to your work. I’m in the area. I was wondering if I could stop by to ask you some questions?”

Now Algauer knew that this was not an established scientist, but he cautioned himself that Einstein did his best work as a patent clerk, you never knew when another one of those would come along. “What field is your research in?” “I’m working on something along the lines of your multiverse theory, concerning naturally occurring points of weakness between the universes, and specific types of matter crossing between,” Malcolm offered. “A little early for that type of work, isn’t it? We haven’t even proven the existence of other universes yet.” Algauer countered. “This is more speculative.” Malcolm was very tentative. He was in over his head. “You’re a writer, aren’t you? Sci-fi? Is it a novel, or maybe some ill-conceived film script?” Malcolm thought he’d lost it. This would never work. He backpedaled, turned himself, adjusted. It was always this difficult, gathering research without letting on what he knew. “No. I’m not. I’m investigating a case for the police, and I think your work might help my investigation.” “You’ve been reading too much Douglas Adams.” Algauer was having his fun now. He thought he had Malcolm figured out like a Bose-Einstein Condensate. He was wondering who put this guy up to it. “You propose that the disappearance of gravitons into another dimension should be detectable, but you haven’t found your evidence. I think that the collision creates a void, and something from that dimension must rush in to fill it. Something that wouldn’t be detected as a graviton, it wouldn’t even be detected because we aren’t even looking for it. I think it's some form of mirror matter.” Malcolm said it quickly, as if it were much more difficult to think than to actually say. This statement changed everything for Algauer. He stopped his work for a moment, stopped typing. He thought for a moment that whoever this Malcolm was, he’s an amateur, but he’s read up on the subject. And there was the director's community outreach program to consider. Malcolm, on the other hand, didn’t know what was happening, he thought Algauer’s hand might be slowly placing the handset back on the receiver, to get rid of whoever this crank was. The fear was allayed as the scientist became aware of his ellipsis, and muttered something just for the sake of muttering something. “I…I’ll be free tomorrow morning. If you’re here at 9:00, I can see you.” Malcolm released a relieved breath. “Thanks. Nine o’clock. I’ll be there.”