The heat of it all was nearly unbearable. A mist of oil and grease rained in the air that was clogged with smoke and nearly unbreathable. Beyond the odors of lubricants, hot iron, wax and melted plastic, there was a darker odor, an ever-present slaughterhouse stench of well-marbled meat, blood and marrow and burned hair.
Then he saw the machine.
Maybe it was what he had been looking for the entire time.
But was it real? Was any of this real? Yes, it all had physical dimensions and all of it could slash you open, crush you, scald you, electrocute you, or boil the skin from your bones, but that did not make it real.
And the machine not twenty feet from him could not possibly be real.
It was forty feet long at least, machined out of some black metal that was knobbed and ribbed, gaping with chasms and spiraling protrusions. At the back end of it he saw men, women, and children lined up like stock. One by one, they gave themselves to the machine and grinding spiked wheels pierced their hands and fed them into its labyrinthine depths. Through mesh fine as wires, he could see spinning saws slicing them open and dragging the bloodied halves into a boiling vat where they were rendered to a superheated liquid that was fed by transparent arteries into a great aluminum press that smoldered and whined with gouts of escaping gas. The mold was cooled and when it opened at the other end with billowing clouds of steam, a doll person stepped out and joined ranks of other synthetic people that stood around like gape-jawed mummies in a Mexican catacomb.
Lex blinked his eyes again and again.
He didn’t believe for a moment that this was how they were made, but something wanted him to and he had to fight against an impulse to join the others at the feeder end.
It was then he looked straight up through dissipating clouds of hot vapor and saw an immense web up there, a spider’s web, but made of some pink silk that looked oddly like needle-thin sections of human skin. A man was crucified up there. He was dismembered, but all parts of his anatomy were arranged in comparative relation to one another.
Lex knew it was Chazz.
And as some immense spidery horror of wriggling doll parts hovered over the dismembered man and jabbed him with needles, he was certain of it. He could even hear his voice: “God… God… God… help me… oh please let me die…”
Lex was speechless, struck dumb by such an atrocity.
At least, until his own mouth opened and he heard his voice say, “You’re being pulled into this… you’re making this dark fantasy real… you’re getting weak…”
Yes, he blinked it away and concentrated and it was only then that he noticed something that had escaped him thus far—everything in the factory maze was connected with gossamer web-like filaments. Every piece of machinery, every gear, wheel, and press was connected to something that was coming out of the darkness now, racing out of it, an immense black shape connected to what seemed millions of white filaments like a gruesome puppet with a thousand strings.
It was time to meet the master of the maze.
52
Close now, so goddamn close.
Ramona was nearing the axis of chaos and she could feel the dark magnetism of it pulling her in just as it simultaneously tried to force her away. She was afraid of it and it was afraid of her, only she did not know why and she feared she would die before she found out. In the distance there were the loud industrious sounds of a foundry—clanking and gnashing, snapping and popping, metal grinding against metal and an ever-present hissing of hot gases.
The corridor would lead her there.
Step by step, she was closer.
Thoughts scurried through her head, things she did not want to be thinking about but kept sprouting like weeds nonetheless. This night had been endless. It might have been going on for hours or days now. Time had lost all meaning here in the devil’s playground. She knew the fate of Soo-Lee, and Creep was probably dead, too. Same for Danielle. But she wondered about Lex. She even wondered about Chazz. She still had feelings for him—struggling, fleeting things though they were—and she wondered if he was still alive.
But a voice in her head said simply, No. He was physically strong but mentally weak and morally corrupt. Once you stripped away his muscles and good looks, there wasn’t anything beneath but a frightened whiny little boy and you know it. Easy prey for Mother Crow.
Ramona wasn’t going to think about him anymore.
He was gone. He had to be gone.
And what they had, had been gone even longer.
She scanned the corridor with her light. She was heading in the right direction; her instincts assured her of this. The floor was messy, unlike the rest of the town. Did that mean anything? Where was the precision, the sterility, the obsessive neatness you saw in the streets? Underfoot was a carpet of leaves, cigarette butts, candy wrappers, metal shavings, wood splinters, and an extremely aged water-stained copy of Playboy. There were gray doors set in the walls. One said PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR and another PLANT MANAGER. Something brown and crusty like old shit had been rubbed on them. Maybe it was blood.
At the very end there was a large six-paneled oak door. Very elegant compared to the others. It was shiny, well-waxed and polished. It gleamed like a table in a Pledge commercial. There was a plaque on the door. It read:
MOTHER CROW
PRESIDENT
Ramona knew it probably hadn’t said anything like that back in 1960 or the decades preceding. But there it was, black letters emblazoned on a gleaming brass plaque. MOTHER CROW, PRESIDENT. She was struck by the absurdity of it. Could it possibly have said something like that back in the day? Was the old lady that crazy, that arrogant, that full of herself? But the answer to that was obvious. The hag thought she owned the town. She had cursed the fleeing workers when the orders dried up at the factory. She had fucking survived death and created this sideshow.
Yes, the old lady had certainly been that crazy, that arrogant, and that full of herself. Typical despot. Typical tyrant. Typical matriarch of a fallen dynasty. MOTHER CROW, PRESIDENT. It was enough to make you fucking puke. In fact, it was enough to—
Wait.
It didn’t say Mother Crow now. It said something else:
RAMONA CROW,
PRESIDENT
That made Ramona take a step or two backward. A sick joke perpetrated by a sick mind. She realized then that the old lady could have insulted her, her mother, her entire family and Ramona would have shrugged it off. But this was more than an insult, it was disturbing. It was like having the old hag cackling in her ear with her sour old lady breath.
“Stop it,” Ramona said.
But the plaque persisted: RAMONA CROW, PRESIDENT.
“FUCK YOU!”
RAMONA CROW, PRESIDENT AND CEO, it now said.
“STOP IT!”
RAMONA CROW, MAKER AND UNMAKER, CREATOR AND DESTROYER.
She rubbed her fists against her eyes to make it go away, but it would not go away. Mother Crow had found a weak nerve and she was going to work it, nip it, pluck it, yank on it. And the pain was almost physical, but more so it created a building misery in Ramona, a bottomless grief, a black chasm of despair.