The Malice Box Read online

  ‘I think you might be forgiven, in the circumstances. Is it safe for us to meet? I soooo want to see you.’

  ‘I really want to. But not quite yet.’

  ‘How hard was it, my darling?’

  ‘Lawrence is dead.’

  She was quiet for a few seconds.

  ‘You said he would die one way or another. What happened?’

  ‘Killed himself. Shot himself. He made a call first.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘Robert Reckliss.’

  ‘Is that good or bad?’

  He paused, trying not to let the conversation spin out of control. ‘He’s trustworthy. Didn’t I tell you that?’

  ‘Yes. I can’t believe you’ve done this. Were you scared?’

  ‘Yes. I thought of you. A lot.’

  Now he could almost feel her smile.

  ‘I got something for you,’ she wrote. ‘Want to see?’

  The blinking cursor. He felt like a teenager.

  ‘I’d love to.’ He added a smiley face.

  ‘OK. What’s the password, baby?’

  Now she asks for a password? Fuck. ‘The password to your heart?’

  ‘The password to all of me, lover.’

  He took another educated punt. ‘Vitriol.’

  ‘Interesting one. OK, baby. Sending.’

  For a moment nothing happened. Then, in that vapidly cheery AOL male voice, the computer said: ‘You’ve got mail.’

  Terri trilled again. ‘Hope you like it, sweetie.’

  He clicked on the little yellow envelope. She’d sent a photograph, inserted in the body of the email, no other text. It began to reveal itself from the top, counting off in percentage points of completion: 8 per cent, 23 per cent…

  The top of a woman’s head began to appear, black hair… forehead… He realized it was a painting. Eyebrows spiralled into eyes like spinning galaxies in a heart-shaped face, very white, a long swan neck, a black form-hugging dress with ample decolletage, black gloves to above the elbow… an attractive, half-abstract head-and-shoulders rendering of a young woman in her twenties, with a little Gothabout her…

  ‘I shot it yesterday on the street in Chelsea. Doesn’t it look like me?’

  Did it?

  ‘Beautiful. Very nice.’

  The blinking cursor. His breathing. His mouth was still dry. He licked his lips. Now he felt embarrassed, creepy.

  He was reaching for the keyboard when the asinine friendly AOL voice kicked in again. ‘You’ve got mail.’

  Another picture from Terri. He hesitated, his finger in the air over the mouse.

  Another trill, another IM: a little red devil face from TerriC 1111.

  He opened it up and watched it slowly reveal itself on the screen. It was a photograph of a real woman this time, short black hair, slim with implausibly long legs, wearing a long black evening dress slit almost to the waist, one hand on her hip, the other parting the dress just enough to reveal a hint of black lace at the top of her stocking.

  He felt a rush of blood away from his brain. Katherine and he had barely made love in eight months.

  ‘Stop,’ he wrote.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Just getting started. It’s my latest photo shoot. Tell me a story.’

  ‘Wait. Please.’

  ‘You don’t like?’ Pouty face.

  He hesitated. ‘I like. Very much.’

  ‘You’re not Adam.’

  He couldn’t afford to lose her. But he didn’t know how to sustain the fiction. Fearful of losing the connection to her, he cracked. ‘No,’ he typed.

  The blinking cursor. A minute passed.

  ‘I’m… intrigued.’

  ‘I’m trying to find him. To help him. I’m a friend.’

  Silence. Another pause.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I believe he may be in danger.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was asked to come here. To trust. Are you and he together? I assume you are? An item?’

  ‘Lovers? Ohhhh, yes.’ Winky face.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘Adam is elusive at the best of times…’

  How not to frighten her off?

  ‘I’m sorry for pretending to be Adam. I didn’t know quite what to do when you appeared here.’

  ‘Yes, you’re a bad boy… Did you like it?’

  ‘Seeing your pictures? Yes, they are lovely.’

  ‘Pretending to be Adam. I think you liked that.’

  ‘OK. Maybe.’

  ‘I take it you are Robert Reckliss? The man he calls Rickles? I hear you share everything.’

  What the hell?

  ‘How did you know who I am?’

  ‘He said there were three options: it would be him, it would be you, or he’d be dead and it would be his killer. You have no idea what he just did. What he just risked. He said if it wasn’t him, I’d have to guess whether the person imitating him was the killer or you.’

  ‘How do you know which of us it is?’

  ‘He said if he were dead, the killer would imitate him perfectly, but that I’d feel he was evil.’

  ‘And I didn’t imitate him perfectly?’

  ‘The real Adam would have been more direct in his lust by now. Especially after just surviving what he went to do.’

  ‘What did he go to do?’

  ‘One thing at a time. He talks about you a lot, Robert. Says you saved his life.’

  ‘I did. A long time ago.’

  ‘He saved mine. In a way. So now we have a triangle to close. I save yours?’

  ‘How did he save your life?’

  ‘He protects me from a bad place. Makes life seem joyful and happy even when it’s not. Do you know how he does that?’

  Robert smiled, almost laughed. It was Adam’s maddening gift. He suddenly felt as though Adam were in the room. He could make you laugheven while you were knee-deep in manure. Usually the mess you were in was of his making, of course.

  ‘I don’t. But I know exactly what you mean.’

  ‘He makes things turn for the better, even if it feels like a train wreck.’

  She knew him, that much was clear.

  ‘Does this mean Adam is safe?’

  ‘No. I’m not sure what it means. I think it means he’s not dead yet.’

  ‘What’s going on? Please tell me.’

  ‘I need to think first.’

  ‘You said Adam knew Lawrence was going to die?’

  ‘One way or another, he said. I didn’t understand.’

  ‘What can I do to help?’

  ‘Slow down. I need to think.’

  They were both silent for a moment.

  ‘Where are you, Terri?’

  ‘Adam calls me his Red Hooker.’

  ‘Red Hook. Brooklyn.’

  ‘Got it in one.’

  ‘Tell me something more about you. And him.’

  ‘We’ve been lovers for about a year. Since the Blackout. As for me, here’s my usual line, I have it saved: I’m a retired bike messenger. I’m in identity management. I seek God. I make videos. I’m an empath. I switch. I blog. I’m a geo-cacher. I like sex in public places. I’m an ex-suicide girl, but I won’t tell you which one. I’m a tour guide. I’m a healer. I scare people.’

  ‘Er… I don’t even know what some of those things are. How old are you?’

  ‘I’m twenty-two. Don’t fret. You are so serious. And about you: he says you are entangled for life. He says it’s shared history.’

  Images Robert had forbidden himself to recall for two decades suddenly came hurtling back at him. He saw himself kicking over the table in Katherine’s college room and knocking its terrifying contents to the floor. He felt again the raw fear and confusion of that night. He saw Katherine making love to Adam, and to him. He saw fire ripping through Adam’s room at Trinity, and the face of death in the smoke – the single, unblinking, beautiful eye – staring into his soul.

  He fixed his eyes on the wall,
remembering, his hands motionless on the keyboard. He lost track of time.

  She typed: ‘Now I’m losing patience.’

  His heart started as he came back to the conversation. ‘It’s hard to explain. Shared history’s a good way of putting it. We shared a woman once.’

  ‘Just one?’

  ‘Just one. As far as I know. Look, Adam asked me to help him. Do you know what kind of trouble he’s got himself into?’

  ‘Do you?’

  He didn’t know how much to reveal of what Horace had told him. He opted for caution. ‘No. Something about some people he’s fallen in with, who won’t let him get away from them. Something about an act of great obscenity. He says I can help.’

  Terri was silent again.

  ‘Terri?’

  ‘I’m making up my mind about you. Wait.’

  Suddenly he felt a sharp sensation of being watched. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck. But it was as though he were being seen… known… from the inside. The sensation deepened, becoming more acutely physical. He breathed in sharply. He was being… strummed. Teased. Explored.

  ‘Jesus! What the hell is that?’

  The sensations faded as quickly as they had come. Then Terri was back. ‘OK. You check out. So be it.’

  ‘Woah! What did you just do?’

  His head buzzed. It was as though he’d been kissed, such was the unexpected intimacy. Had that really been her? Or had it been just his imagination, a reaction to the intensity of his flashback? Who the hell were these people?

  ‘I just tried to get a read on whether you’re up to this. You have a lot of fear, Robert Reckliss. But we can work on that. Now pay attention.’

  She sent him another email. It was a letter. To Terri, from Adam.

  My darling Terri,

  Soon I will be going to the dark place I told you about. You know I must go, that I would rather stay with you, that more rides on my going than simply our own lives, and that therefore I have no choice. I must undo the potential harm I have created.

  Here’s what you may say:

  A plot is afoot. A device of extraordinary power is hidden somewhere in Manhattan. It goes by many names, including Gnosis, Ma’rifat’, the Soul Engine. The Ma’rifat’ is a window into the place where our potential darkness resides, where we are called to turn our fear into light, or else perish. It is at once a place in the mind and a state of matter. The science that made it is astonishing and very ancient.

  It can be disarmed only by beings of great psycho-spiritual power. Sucha being is rare indeed, but there are two in Manhattan at this very moment. One we may call a Unicorn, a creature of pure light. The other is a Minotaur, a lost one. The Minotaur serves evil masters. It is within me, corroding me. It has no interest in disarming the Device. On the contrary, it wants to drive me to detonate it, as do the people I am now going to see. I am resisting. The Unicorn is within a sleeping man, one unaware of his power. If I die, my killer or the sleeping man will come to you, I don’t know which. You must help him awaken. You must take him as far along the Path as you can, so that he can become powerful enough to stop what is going to happen.

  The Device is armed. To deactivate it will require seven minor keys and a master key. The seven minor keys are hidden in Manhattan, in a geometric array, and must be recovered.

  The master key has been sent away for safe keeping.

  Perhaps, please God, I will succeed in this endeavour.

  I am doing this for us. Please forgive me if I fail.

  ‘This was written just before he vanished?’

  ‘Yes. He went to see these people he refers to yesterday. I’ve heard nothing since. Until you.’

  ‘What else did he say about this damned Device?’

  ‘The Ma’rifat’. That’s what he called it most of the time.’

  ‘Arabic?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Meaning, among other things, knowledge of the divine. Knowing as you know a person, not as you know a fact. And he kept saying the last thing we can do is call the cops. None of us can. They’d need to send in a priest or a chaplain, and you can bet your ass they wouldn’t. Can you imagine? Cops defending New York? Army, even? If a SWAT team got within fifty yards of it, knowing what it could do, they would set it off. It would read their fear. Like I just read you.’

  It didn’t make sense to him. Then it did.

  ‘Only psychopaths aren’t afraid,’ he said. ‘Ordinary people are scared, soldiers and cops are scared, but they learn how to put it aside. The fear is still there.’

  ‘Adam said the Device would find it out. Amplify it. Feed off it to detonate.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Think Hiroshima, if the authorities find it. If the Minotaur’s masters set it off, think something far worse. A kind of soul bomb. Think of what people do when their souls are poisoned, turning on each other. Think Auschwitz in America. Think damnation.’

  Robert thought of his friend facing down such evil. The dilettante finally facing his destiny. Choosing to fight, not to cut and run. He felt irrationally proud of Adam.

  ‘I think he sent me the thing he called the master key. I’ve been calling it the Malice Box.’

  ‘You have it safe?’

  ‘Define safe. It’s in my pocket.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘What is the Minotaur?’

  ‘A parasitical thought-form, an unappeased soul. Suffering. It was once good. It has become evil.’

  ‘And the Unicorn?’

  ‘Work it out.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It’s in you, Robert. It is you.’

  He closed his eyes. By all that was holy… He swore to himself. Fear and panic surged again.

  ‘No. I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Believe. Look into your heart.’

  She had seen something he had been trying to hide even from himself: the unspoken knowledge, forced deep away into the depths of his mind, that one day this would happen. And, in the midst of dread, a sense of pride that it should be him.

  His mind spiralled back to his parents, both now long dead: hard-working, honest people who’d insisted the old ways were nonsense, that backward superstition was a family curse, to be finally laid to rest in their son. They had brought him up to disbelieve, alone on the great estate, cut off from distant aunts and uncles and half-heard stories of dark events thirty years earlier, during the war. There were no family get-togethers among his people.

  Only once, when he reached eighteen, had a relative contacted him. He’d received a single, unsigned letter in his first weeks at university.

  You are of my kin. There are things it is your right to know. Neither side of your family will tell you, so I will, God preserve me. This is the marrow of the knowledge. You will understand each line when you have need of it. Preserve them.

  The rest of the letter had consisted of seven sentences on a single page. He had dismissed it as bunkum and burned the letter at the end of his first term. But he had never forgotten what it said:

  To live well, know death

  In love, give to receive; seed is not sensation

  Seek freedom’s far bourns

  Walk the path of the Other

  Be your own weather, through intention

  As above, so below; as within, so without

  Die to live

  They were both silent for a moment. Then Terri came back. ‘OK, I’m going to help you, I’ve decided. Brace yourself, because things are going to speed up from now on. The clock has started ticking.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since you began to believe.’

  Another email landed. It was a photograph of a small monument of some kind, surrounded by railings.

  She asked, ‘Do you know what that is?’

  ‘No. A gravestone?’

  ‘Yes. It reads as follows:

  ‘Erected to the Memory

  Of an Amiable Child

  St Claire
Pollock

  Died 15 July, 1797

  In the Fifth Year of His Age

  ‘It’s up by Riverside Church. A child. Caged off in perpetuity from everything that goes on around it. Hold that image in your mind. You’ll need it later. Trust me. It’s going to look like a game, but it’s not. Is there a Quad Plus there? You know what that is?’

  ‘Yes, he left one.’

  ‘That’s going to be our main means of contact from now on. He set it up as a way we could help him. Call home if you need to. You may be late. Don’t tell your wife what’s going on. It won’t help. It might make things worse.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Listen. You are going to need to go somewhere, solve some riddles, post some pictures to a website. It’s the first bookmark. The email and URL to use are already loaded into the Quad. Do a test now. Hurry. We can help him, but there isn’t much time.’

  ‘Stop. Hold on.’

  ‘Adam is in great danger, Robert. Trust me now. Go to GPS Waypoint 025. Meet me there. Go.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘When you find the waypoint you are going to have to solve a riddle. When you solve the riddle, you will find a cache. In the cache will be one of the keys to the Ma’rifat’. These are also stages of the Path. Each stage will be meaningful, in a way you will need to show you understand. I will help you as best I can.’

  ‘How did you get these GPS locations?’

  ‘Adam captured them on Blackout Day. There were hundreds in a PDA that belonged to the creator of the Device. Most were dummy waypoints, but the good ones have all been loaded on to the Quad. I just don’t know which are which. I received a text message to tell you to go to Waypoint 025 just a few minutes ago.’

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘That’s the thing. I don’t know. Adam just told me to trust anything I received from the Watchman. So we’re both flying blind here. Now go.’

  Then the computer made the sound of a slamming door, and she vanished.

  He sat staring at the screen, utterly bewildered.

  He had to make a decision. Meet her? Believe her? Believe Horace and Adam? His mind spun. Dismiss them all and go home? Disbelieve?

  While his thoughts raced, he cut and pasted their IM exchanges into an email and sent them to himself, from Adam. Ditto Adam’s letter and the pictures she’d sent him.