Children of No One Read online

  * * *

  Krieg, the Englishman, and MacPherson sat in the conference room in the sewers. The Englishman poured hot water out of a kettle into three mugs with waiting bags of Earl Grey. “We might ’ave to keep things simple down ’ere, but we don’t ’ave to live like barbarians. This ’ere’s fresh, siphoned off from the ’otel.”

  “I see….so this area down here…around the sewers…it’s connected to the inn…does it somehow…well…connect to Nowhere?”

  “Nowhere is a series of underground tunnels out in the country,” Krieg said. “This…office…is very purposefully unconnected to Nowhere.”

  “What Mistah Krieg means to say is, this is the real bunkah. The War Room. Just like Adolph ’itlah ’ad. If there’s ever an emergency in Nowhere, this is a place we can all lay low but stay close by.”

  Krieg leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the table. “Hitler. Really? What a flattering comparison. I guess that would make you, with your lovely long tresses, my Eva Braun?”

  The Englishman whipped his tongue out and licked his own mustache, beard, and piercings. “I’m not just a pretty face,” he said. “I’m power ’ungry, too. More Eva Perón than Eva Braun.”

  Krieg giggled. “Well, what do you think of the way my second-in-command flaunts his ambitions, MacPherson.”

  “I’d say that’s truth in advertising. Honesty’s a rarity, these days, and good help is hard to find. I’d hang on to him.”

  Krieg stroked his chin. “Or…maybe…just plain hang him! What would you think of that, Mr. MacPherson? Would you enjoy the Experience of lynching a Brit down in the deepest bowels of Nowhere? Would that suit your aesthetic sense?” He reared his head back and let out a cackle. “Can you imagine the sight of those poor, idiot redneck bastards stumbling around in the dark until they find this stinking Limey’s even-stinkier-than-usual corpse hanging from the ceiling?”

  The Englishman chuckled. “Those feral brats? They’d probably eat me. At least then I’d know my death wouldn’t be in vain. I’d probably feed a whole gaggle of your Wild Children of Darkness for a few days. I guess you’d say that’d make me an Angel, in a manner of speakin’, now wouldn’t it? An’ if you don’t mind me sayin’ so, Mistah Krieg, I’d probably feed twice as many whelps as your scrawny arse could.”

  Krieg turned to MacPherson. “Such quick wit…you see why I keep him around? He gets my sense of humor.”

  MacPherson let out a titter. He instinctively reached toward his T-shirt’s breast pocket, looking for his Camels. Soon enough he realized he hadn’t had time to bring them down with him. He fidgeted in his chair. “So this is your assistant. What, exactly, does he assist you with?”

  “Please…Mistah Krieg is an artist, not some sort of mad scientist from a 1940s ’orror show. Mad scientists ’ave ’assistants’. Artists ’ave ‘students’…and ‘collaborators’—I prefer to think of meself as the latter. I’m not ’ere to learn from Mistah Krieg, as ’e an’ I have great differences of opinion on the nature of art. But that doesn’t mean we can’t work together—that ’is work can’t enrich mine and vicey-versa.”

  MacPherson nodded. Excited, finally, to move past the bullshit and onward into discussing the meat of the matter—onward into discussing just how Nowhere worked. “Do you have paper?” he asked. “If possible, I’d like to take notes.”

  “No notes,” Krieg said. “I’ve no way to guarantee you wouldn’t misquote me.”

  MacPherson sighed. “Very well, then. Can you at least explain to me how Nowhere works? What’s the division of labor between you, Mr. Krieg, and…well, I’m sorry…I never caught the name of this other gentleman…”

  “I don’t ’ave a name.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “A name…” the Englishman said. “I said I don’t ’ave one. You see, names imply fixed identity. If I were to use a name, I would be succumbing to the delusion that there is a real personality—something like a soul—lurking somewhere inside…hiding amid me blood an’ gore an’ nerves an’ sinew. I ’appen to know I’m just a sack of mobile meat. ’owever, if you do feel compelled to refer to me in the course of conversation, you should know I answer to the appellation ‘No One.’”

  Krieg rolled his eyes. “Don’t get him started, MacPherson. The big galoot is pleasant enough to hang out with until you get him started on that nihilist crap.”

  Mr. No One looked at MacPherson and sneered. “And Mistah Krieg is a nice enough bloke until you get ’im started on that sadist crap.”

  Krieg shrugged. Took his feet off the table. “I’m not a sadist, I’m just an artist who wants to provoke the strongest possible reaction from his audience. And what provokes a stronger reaction than observing another person suffer? There’s a demand to watch people suffer, because suffering is the foundation of all great drama…all great art. This was true even going as far back as those poor, poor dead children in Medea. The human species has an inherent yearning to watch its members suffer. Always has, always will. If I didn’t work to meet this demand, someone else would.”

  Mr. No One spread his long arms over the table and leaned forward. “So, what you’re saying is that you’re a sadist, but only because market forces compel you in that direction—’ow…American.”

  Krieg sighed, deep and dramatically. “Okay…just for the sake of argument, let’s say I really am this big, mean ol’ sadist you portray me as. At least sadism sells.”

  “Such a commercial approach. There’s that ‘pop art’ influence again,” Mr. No One said. He turned to MacPherson. “Did you ever ’ear where Mistah Krieg got ’is idea for the lovely black underground maze you’ll be seein’ la’er today? Ya ever ’ear who’s the true Father of Nowhere?”

  MacPherson shook his head.

  “Andy…Fucking…Warhol. True story.”

  “What the fu—”

  Krieg interrupted. “I knew him, back in the days before I changed direction. This goes all the way back before Beirut, if you want to know the truth. Once, at a party—while under the influence of a wee bit too much blow—I boasted that I could sell a totally black canvas and some poor dupe in Manhattan would buy it. Andy said he’d take me up on that bet, as long as I could make a sincere argument to him about why the art had any value…about why it interested me. I ended up taking a totally new direction with things, with my work in Lebanon…moving into performance art rather than painting. And then Andy died, of course, but his bet about the black canvas still haunted me.”

  “So,” MacPherson said, “Nowhere, Indiana, is your black canvas?”

  “Precisely. The way to make a black canvas interesting is to give it three dimensions, and animate it with human behavior! Behavior becomes the artistic medium.”

  “How did you get the kids? I mean, just logistically, that had to be a challenge. Prisoners in Beirut are one thing—it had to be comparatively easy to acquire them and get the rights to work in the prison. But using children…American children as your medium, right here in America…much harder, I’d imagine.”

  “That’s the best part, MacPherson. Those particular art supplies were obtained fair and square. The parents were well-reimbursed for my rights to use their children. I used the proceeds from the Lebanon show to help fund the project. I had to be careful, of course. Just one or two at a time…plucked from the poorest areas of the Rustbelt Midwest—not just Indiana, mind you. You see, poor children are so much more dispensable—both to society and to their families. While driving through town, did you notice any of the families? Two, three, four kids hanging off a doped-up single mom? The poor, like deer, tend to over-reproduce. In that way, a life in Nowhere might actually be more merciful to these children than life outside of Nowhere. After all…they get food—all they have to do is find it. And the clever ones, the strong ones, will find it. Yes, I give them food and I give them hope. Did you know, MacPherson, they believe in Angels? That’s who we’ve taught them brings the food. We’ve made them believe in manna. That’s what
they call the food. We’ve made them believe in Heaven. That’s where they believe the Angels come from. That’s the only place they think light exists. I’ve given them faith, MacPherson. Unshakable faith. I’m protecting them from all the outside forces in the world that would rob them of faith.”

  “But…” MacPherson said weakly, as though reluctant to press the matter, but being unable to help himself, “…some of them surely do die.”

  Mr. No One smirked. “Some of ’em starve. Some of ’em stop trying to find the food, ’uddle in a corner, in the fetal position, and stay there until they die rather than continue in the maze. Some of ’em seem to tear their own skin to pieces with their nails. Some of ’em seem to be torn apart by others of ’em. Some of ’em…”

  Krieg grimaced. “You’ve made your point, No One.”

  “But ’e’s not a sadist. Yes, let’s make that quite clear now, shall we? Mistah Krieg is not a sadist.”

  “Say what you will about sadism,” MacPherson said. “At least no one can call it boring.”

  “Listen ’ere, Fancy-Pants. One shouldn’t adopt a philosophy based on ’ow exciting one finds it.”

  “Does sadism qualify as a philosophy?” MacPherson countered. “Isn’t it more of an aesthetic? Á la Bosch?”

  Mr. No One shook his head. “Aesthetics are a distraction. Blackness is the alpha and the omega. That’s the important thing.”

  MacPherson cleared his throat. “So, um, Mr. No One, if you’re not crazy about Mr. Krieg’s use of the children, why do you bother helping him? Why put yourself at risk for something you don’t believe in?”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Mr. No One said. “I believe in Nowhere because I believe in Blackness. I believe I am Blackness. I believe the greatest gift I can give me species is to remove the gaudily-painted funeral shroud away from the corpse of the stillborn/ever-decaying universe, point to it, and tell everyone to take a big sniff and smell the rot!”

  “What’s that have to do with Nowhere?”

  “I’m a magician,” Mr. No One said.

  Krieg threw up his hands and giggled. “He’s mental.”

  “It saddens me,” Mr. No One said, “that Mistah Krieg isn’t better informed about ’is field. A wise, old magician back ’ome once explained it to me this way: back in ancient times, magick and art were one and the same. This fellow, ’e said that if you look back at early tomes on the subject of sorcery, they refer to magick as ‘the art’ and that this is to be taken quite literally: art is magick and magick is art. Magick and writing are even more specifically tied to each other. ‘To cast a spell’ just means ‘to spell.’ A ‘grimoire’ is just an old way of saying ‘grammar.’ In any event, I believe Nowhere ’as quite a bit more potential than Mistah Krieg could ever imagine. You see, I believe Nowhere, Indiana, can serve as a sort of battery for a magickal engine that will remove the gimcrack tarp from the universe and reveal the beautiful black nothing underneath. All I need to do is perform the proper ceremony to invoke the Great Dark Mouth, to invite it to come and gobble up our tacky delusions of light, life and meaning. I came to Nowhere with the specific agenda of elevating it from soft-core torture porn to ritual, and tonight—with the added power of the eclipse—that is exactly what I’ll do.”

  “That’s why he insisted I take you up on your request to observe Nowhere, MacPherson.”

  “For art and, consequently, magick to work, it needs an audience. Art isn’t art without it.”

  “I went ahead and humored him. I think it’ll be a gas when it gets to be the darkest part of night and he goes into the corridors of Nowhere, and says his magick words, and they merely echo back to him emptily.”

  “If I attempted the ritual earlier during my stay in Nowhere, then I’m sure that’s just what would ’ave ’appened. But I’ve convinced Mistah Krieg to make certain enhancements that raised this project’s magickal power exponentially.”

  “I was fine with them. The ideas seemed interesting enough, and No One bankrolled the whole thing from his trust fund. It would appear that No One’s grandfather was quite a Some One.”

  “That joke was funny the first ten times you told it,” Mr. No One said. “Now it’s just stale—like your approach to art. Anyway, Mac-pher-son, what I did ’ere, I revolutionized Mistah Krieg’s maze. Made it more complex.”

  “Now see,” MacPherson said, “this is the sort of detail I’d like to get my hands on. Before I go and take a look at Nowhere, I’d like to see a map. If I’m to be the first audience member to enjoy this exhibition, I must have access to a guidebook, just so I can find my way around the place.”

  Mr. No One snickered. “Sorry, chap, but there’s no such thing as a guide to Nowhere, Indiana. You see, one of the innovations I’ve introduced is the twenty-four/seven work crew.”

  MacPherson frowned. “Beg pardon?”

  “The maze is constantly changing,” Krieg said. “No One suggested the idea, and I liked it because I thought it’d bedevil the little guttersnipes, so I let him implement it. I’ve hired a handful of art students—devotees to my kind of work—to go down there and rearrange things each and every day. Some days they’re erecting walls where walls never before stood. Other days they’re tearing walls down and creating new paths.”

  “But always,” No One said, “always, they are commanded to grow the thing outward. To always expand. You see, that way, Nowhere is like a living creatcha. The tunnels always writhing in new directions.”

  “This way, the frustration of the children is always fresh,” Krieg said. “They can never learn the right way around, because Nowhere becomes ever more complex each day…but because they’ll follow the bells to reach the food they’ll always push forward.”

  This description of the project took MacPherson’s breath away. Krieg (or, more rightly said, his collaborator) had managed to impress him. “This just sounds”—he felt a shiver up his back—“delightful.”

  “You ’aven’t even ’eard the best of it,” Mr. No One said. “You see, back when Mistah Krieg was doing this project without a magician’s consultation, he had the kiddies only moving in two directions. Forward/backward. Left/right. I mean, ‘Zzzzzzz!’, right? I’m the one who came up with the notion of introducing pitfalls and ’oles in the ceiling, as it were. Just in the last day or two, thanks to me input, Nowhere is now three-dimensional!”

  * * *

  When the boys land after plummeting down the hole, there’s a collage of sound: two six-foot slaps onto the ground, a noise somewhere in between the snap of a tree branch and the crunch of breaking brick, the sound of air puffing out of lips, and—from the younger of the two—wailing, ever more wailing.

  “Fuck!” the youngster says. “That hole swallowed us up!”

  At this point, one might expect to hear the baritone-bass voice start ranting about how they’ve been cast down into even deeper bowels of the earth by angry Angels who are punishing them for entertaining blasphemy. But the only voice is the younger brother’s.

  “Hey!” he hollers. “Are you okay?”

  No response.

  Up, up, far overhead rings the distant chime of Angels’ bells.

  * * *

  When MacPherson ascended the ladder, the eclipse was no longer straight overhead, but had veered off to his left, toward the horizon. Rust-colored light stained the scattered clouds like blood leaking through a bandage. The English fiend replaced the manhole cover. Krieg cracked his knuckles. “Now we’re ready to take you to Nowhere. Excited, MacPherson?”

  “Intrigued,” MacPherson said, trying to contain himself.

  “Pshaw,” Mr. No One said. “I think ’e just got an erection.” Then belly laughs, deep and haughty, as No One pressed the button on his key that remotely unlocked his Humvee. A vanity plate adorned the rear: IAMNO1. The men piled into the vehicle. Mr. No One drove them off Mulberry and onto Main, then stopped at a traffic light three intersections up the road. While stopped at the corner of Main and Willow streets, MacPherson saw a woman
wearing sunglasses and dressed in dark slacks and a coat the color of Pepto-Bismol. She was leaning against a shopping cart half-filled with an assortment of garish garments—apparently her entire wardrobe—along with about a half dozen aluminum cans. Her short, thin hair was combed backward, like a man’s. She was pointing at the car (at him?) and laughing like a loon.

  Presently, the light changed and No One gave the Humvee some gas. As they sped past the intersection, MacPherson craned his head back until the laughing woman and buildings that surrounded her faded out of sight. In only a few more minutes, the town itself was just another distant, flickering light and all ahead of them in the windshield was blackness impaled only by the Humvee’s high beams.

  * * *

  The younger boy brings his own fingers to his mouth and begins to gnaw on them, nervously. He calls out, louder, to his brother. “I said, are you okay?” He begins to pace around this deeper-than-normal chamber into which they’ve fallen, his hands extended in front of him, feeling the contours of the walls, trying to gain some sense of the dimensions of the place. It’s big.

  Overhead, the tinkle and clang of Angels’ bells grows more and more faint, beginning to asymptote toward silence. Instinctively, the boy jumps. His hands find the place where the ceiling of this lower chamber opens up. The place from whence he came. But the passage from the room above to this one below is longer than he thought. There’s no way to climb up to there from here.

  He falls to his knees. His voice cracks. “Angels…I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Sorry. Sorry.” He feels his nerves jangle, and like a marionette shaking on strings he cannot sit still. He paces with his hands out in front of him, muttering. “Sorry, Angels. Angels, please don’t— Angels, I ask your forgiveness.”