Page 58 of Bent Heavens

Music: It hummed from a hidden place.

Her first thought was a car radio, someone who’d followed her, maybe Carbajal, so he could murder her where no one would see.

Except this music came from inside the silo. On this scar of a property, nothing could be more unexpected. Liv crouched, her knees knocking, both to hear it better and to prevent her own collapse. She shuffled on all fours, pushing Mist along the ground, scattering mouse droppings, feeling the sharp, ancient corn on her palms. The music continued. It was tremulous but had a rhythm, a sleepy swing like a slowly plucked guitar.

There, she felt it. A seam in the concrete. She dug her fingers into it, then slid those fingers until the seam made a right-angle bend. Another hatch, just as Carbajal had promised, and she felt for a notch, a knob, a lever. Near her knees she found a heavy ring. She slid her body clear of the hatch and took the ring in both hands. And there she paused, her head bowed in prayer posture, hair dangling in dirt, the lackadaisical lope of the song vibrating her bones. Her fright approached paralysis. There was no closing this hatch once it was opened.

Hinges yowled like a cat. From below came a different variety of light, electric sources of varied wattage, bulbs, and shades. Silhouetted was the shape of a ladder, six rungs, and before Liv could arrange her body to take the first step, a new verse of the song began, and now she could hear it, the nodding pace of the guitar, the mournful twang of the singer. Country-western, Liv thought. Dolly Parton? Liv remembered a drive with her family, this same song coming on the radio, Dad wanting to change the dial, Mom deflecting his hand so she could sing along.

Liv picked up Mist, the weapon profane alongside this gush of warm memories. She dropped one foot on the ladder with a dull clang. Then the other: clang. She climbed down, her trembling legs brightening with orange light, the music growing louder, perhaps the safest, softest sounds that could have possibly greeted her in this underworld. Her heart pounded regardless, big fleshy smacks against her lungs. Her body would give out any second now, any second.

The first thing she saw was a needlepoint. She blinked, and shivered, and wanted to climb away. Its cheer was ghastly, unspeakable. God Bless Our Home, it read, in the aslant lettering of either a novice or someone too old to guide a needle. The phrase was bordered by crude likenesses of flowers. In the center was a clumsy depiction of a house with a peaked roof and red chimney, the Xs of the stitches so loose it was nearly abstract. It could be the house on this property, Liv thought, and the idea was appalling. There were no peaked roofs or brick chimneys, not down here.

She followed both light and music around a drywall elbow and like that, she was no longer alone. To her left was a living room. To her right, a kitchen. The rooms began abruptly, like one of her father’s theater sets viewed from a backstage wing. The living room was carpeted with incongruous strips, some colorful and shaggy, others drab and crewcut. There were two chairs, both of them wood, though augmented with misshapen, home-sewn cushions. A low, chipped wooden table was between the chairs. On it, a checkerboard, red destroying black.

Both chairs were occupied. Liv choked down her gasp. The chair backs prohibited her from getting a full view of the checkers players, but they had turned in their seats and were getting a full look at her. The closer pair of eyes looked normal, though the head in which they were set was oddly noduled, as if the skull were burled with bone. The second pair of eyes wasn’t normal. One rolled like a marble like A’s eyes; the other was focused but so bloodshot Liv expected actual blood to dribble. There were floor lamps, but they were dead, leaving the room to be lit by a single source of flickering blue light. Television light, Liv recognized, though when she edged closer, what she saw instead was a wooden crate from which a rectangle had been sawed. Sitting inside, a wad of blinking blue Christmas lights.

It was a fake TV.

All of it was fake, a flimsy copy of a dimly remembered domestic world. A fake living room. A fake carpet. The cross-stitch had a fake picture frame made of masking tape. Liv stared at the checkers players, unable to breathe. No one else breathed, either. No one moved. Slowly, as if on a swivel, Liv turned to face the kitchen.

It was brighter, four mismatched table lamps and a bulb over the sink. From where she stood, Liv had a partial view of a shelf, upon which rested the kind of knickknacks found in any rustic Midwestern kitchen. Each item was just wrong enough to be repugnant. The porcelain child holding a teddy bear had been broken, then glued back together, its face an abomination. A wooden rooster had been exactingly repainted, but by someone whose eyes didn’t work; the tail feathers were army green, the breast neon orange, the comb black. There was a jolly gnome, too, but only the top half of it, grafted to the tail of a rubber shark. Liv didn’t feel that any of it was meant to disturb, which only made it more disturbing.

On the counter was a record player. Propped beside it was an album cover, Dolly Parton stretching inside a tight red sweater alongside the words Greatest Hits. Dolly was still singing, the record still turning.

Another step toward the kitchen and Liv found the worst thing: more people. One man had been washing dishes; only the ripple of sudsy water proved he wasn’t a cardboard cutout. Two others sat at a folding table, each holding a hand of cards, the cribbage board between them forgotten. Slowly the man with his back to her lowered his face until his cards covered it like a hand fan. He was ashamed, Liv realized. The overalls he wore did little to hide the soft blisters that covered his long arms and gorilla back like Bubble Wrap. His cribbage opponent had no opportunity to hide. He was dressed in an old dress shirt tucked into baggy, belted slacks, and wore a broken watch. So humdrum was his attire that Liv had to force herself to accept the shape of his head. It was oblong and curved with doughy bulges at the chin and forehead. He set down his cards, and a strange shiver ran through his sleeves, as if there weren’t two arms inside but rather two braids of tentacles.

Liv’s whole body quaked. Why was she here? She could not recall. Right, yes, to find evidence to force Doug to stop, but this was so much more than she’d expected, and she was so much less—a single girl, down here all alone.

The man at the sink suddenly shielded his face and ran off into darker areas. Liv couldn’t see lower than his waist, but his footsteps sounded like a team of horses, a manifold clopping that made her wonder how many legs he had. Liv’s dry, blinkless eyes trailed back to the sink. Over the soapy dishes was a half-open window bedecked with summery yellow curtains. It looked out directly onto a cement wall.

A door creaked, same as any door in any house. Liv peered into the farthest reaches. Distant light gleamed off a floor. Bathroom tile, she thought. These men, whatever had happened to them, had to eat, hence the dishes. They had to use a toilet, hence a bathroom. She took a step forward and saw a man’s shape, unlike the others as straight and sharp as a razor. Behind the slim man huddled others, jostling for his protection, and only then did Liv notice that the two TV watchers had snuck away, their checkers forgotten, their disfigurements remembered.

From across the bunker, the slim man looked right at Liv. A sob emitted from her throat. The slim man straightened his sleeves. Liv shook her head, wishing him away. He began to approach. He did not move like the others; there was no fugitive scurry, no abnormal lope. He strode past a potted fern (plastic), past a bowl of fresh fruit (ceramic), past a rotary telephone (connected to nothing). This dwelling, Liv thought through a fearful haze, had everything necessary to make one feel right at home. No, that wasn’t right. She had yet to see a single mirror.

She’d wielded Mist a hundred times but never used it. Now it rose, sliding up her hip, behind her back, slippery in her spasming hand. The slim man wore dark clothes that made his face look paper white. When he was ten feet away, Liv recognized that his face was white—he wore a mask. She whimpered. The mask was a novelty from a dollar-store Halloween aisle, molded plastic and an elastic strap. At some point, it had been covered in white paint, and detailed with black-dot eyes and a smiley-face mouth.

Smiley Face stopped at handshake distance. Liv felt the sting of scared tears.

“You’ve come,” he stated simply, “to set them free.”

Liv drew a cold, quaking breath. Hearing intelligible English down here was this nightmare’s wildest detail. Though muffled behind plastic, the man’s voice had a musical quality. Liv regripped Mist and moved her head, intending to indicate that, no, he was wrong. But she felt the skin of her neck crimp: She was nodding. Despite the stifling fear, she’d try to get every one of them up the ladder no matter how many legs they had, through the silo hatch no matter the sensitivity of their strange eyeballs. To make up for how little she’d done to help A, she’d try.

“I can’t think of any other reason you would find us,” Smiley Face said. “And I thank you for the thought. Can I fix you a cup of tea?”

Liv wiped sweat from her eyes and stared into the indifferent black dots of the mask’s eyes. Did tea mean sitting down? In this ghoulish farce of a kitchen? She shook her head, and that shook her shoulder, which shook her arm, and she felt one of Mist’s points jab her in the backside. The pain emboldened her, and she spoke, her voice breaking over Dolly Parton.

“You’re keeping them down here,” she rasped. “You can’t do that.”

He gestured with long, delicate fingers.

“I don’t lock doors,” he said. “You saw yourself.”

“Then they don’t know,” Liv said. “They’re confused. They’re scared.”

Smiley Face folded his hands in front of him.

“Are you sure,” he asked gently, “it’s not you who’s confused and scared?”