He was only partially aware of what she was saying. He was too mesmerized by her eyes to fully concentrate on her voice. It wasn’t just the weird rectangular shape of her pupils, although that was some of it. But what had captured his attention was how black those pupils were, a black so dark, so deep, that it seemed to go on and on forever. Those eyes held endless voids within them, and he felt the darkness calling to him, threatening to draw in his awareness, his mind, his very self, and swallow it whole.

“You fascinate me,” Goat-Eyes said. “You have two professions, one based in sound, the other in silence. Do you love both, or are you merely reluctant to commit fully to one or the other?”

These last words snapped him back to himself. As a bisexual person, he often got the Why don’t you pick a side? question from both straight and gay people. He’d given up trying to explain that it wasn’t about sides, wasn’t about choices. No one ever understood, not really, except other bisexual people – and Lori. She’d accepted who he was without question, and that was one more thing he loved dearly about her. So when Goat-Eyes said he was unable to commit to sound or silence, it had struck a very raw nerve in him.

He found his voice for the first time since she’d sat down.

“They’re different aspects of the same thing,” he said.

“Are they now?” Her mouth stretched into a slow smile. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

She reached toward her face, touched the doughy flesh around her eyes, and with thumbs and forefingers peeled off a pair of dime-sized pieces of thin, whitish skin. She held them out, as if for him to examine, then she flicked her hands forward and released the scales. They flew toward him like tiny shuriken, and he thought they were going to strike his eyes. But they veered off at the last second, and curved toward the sides of his head. An instant later he felt sharp pain in his ears, as if someone had inserted long needles into his aural canals. It hurt like a bitch, and he cried out in pain. He felt a wiggling-squirming sensation, and he had the impression that something inside him was being rearranged by the flecks of Goat-Eyes’ skin. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the pain stopped.

Goat-Eyes smiled. “Now you can hear everything…and nothing.”

At first he had no idea what she was talking about, but then the sounds within the coffee house began to grow louder. The cute barista was taking the order of a young woman wearing a short-sleeved top that displayed her colorfully tattooed arms.

“THAT’LL BE THREE DOLLARS AND NINETY-EIGHT CENTS,” the barista said.

Each syllable was like a cannon blast, a thundercrack, and he winced, gritting his teeth against the pain caused by the barrage of sound. The woman opened her wallet, removed a debit card, and inserted it into the reader on the counter. Each of these motions produced deafening sounds, and when the card reader began beeping, the noise loud as a fire engine’s siren, Larry moaned. He pressed his hands to his ears, pressed them hard, but this did nothing to shut out the noises assaulting him.

The conversation of the two people at the table next to his, talking about how their respective supervisors were assholes. The hiss of the espresso machine behind the counter, the whirring of a coffee grinder. People sipping their drinks, chewing pastries or cookies. The gurgling in their stomachs as acid churned. Air rushing through their nostrils, down into their lungs, then back up to be exhaled. The thudding of their hearts, the whooshing of blood flowing through their veins, the combined sounds of hundreds of bodily processes at work. He could even hear the crackle of electricity shooting between neurons in their brains, the soft moist tearing sound of cells dividing, the even softer sound of old cells dying…. All of it rushing in on him like a tsunami, invading him, overwhelming him, drowning him….

He let out an anguished cry – the sound of his own voice so loud he thought his brain might liquefy in his skull. He jumped up from the table, only partially aware of everyone else in the café – including the cute barista – looking at him with a mixture of puzzlement and alarm. He ran toward the door, bumping into tables on the way, knocking over people’s drinks, causing them to spill, customers yelling and cursing as he hurried past. He kept his hands to his ears, for all the good it did, and opened the door by slamming into it with his shoulder. He plunged out into the street—

—and was hit by ten times the amount of sound that he’d experienced inside the coffee shop, a hundred times, a thousand. Cars and trucks passing by on the street, engines roaring, brakes squealing, horns honking. Pedestrians’ shoes click-clacking on the pavement. A rumble of an airplane flying somewhere off in the distance. He heard disembodied voices and jumbled musical notes, and he realized he was hearing cell phone conversations and radio broadcasts, picking up the signals as if he were some kind of receiver. It was too much, too much. He couldn’t remember his name, who he was, possessed only the vaguest sense that he existed at all. Everything was sound and sound was pain and that pain had become his entire world, the center of his existence. He was pain, and pain was him.

He thought he was screaming, but he couldn’t hear his own voice over the sounds of the citizens of Oakmont going about their day. Some pedestrians glanced at him with pity, some with alarm, but all avoided him. Hands still clasped to his head, he fell to his knees, wailing, tears streaming from his face. He wanted to lean over and pound his head against the sidewalk until he was dead, anything to escape the mad cacophony buffeting him. He almost did it, too, was on the verge, when the sound suddenly ceased.

The relief was so immediate, so profound, that he gasped and nearly collapsed. Tentatively, he took his hands from his ears, waiting for the pain to return, but it didn’t. He looked at his palms, expected to see them covered with blood, as if something deep in his brain had ruptured. But his hands were clean. He rose to his feet, legs shaky, head swimming with vertigo.

It’s over, he thought. Thank Christ, it’s—

But it wasn’t.

All the sounds that had overwhelmed him simply didn’t return to their normal volume. They continued to diminish, growing softer, less distinct, until finally they cut out altogether. The world around him continued to move – people passed him on the sidewalk, vehicles drove on the street – but it did so in utter silence.

Just as he’d feared, the unimaginable din of the heightened sounds that had plagued him until a moment ago had damaged something inside him – his hearing. He was now as deaf as the people he interpreted for. He’d long thought that if he ever lost his hearing, he’d be able to deal with it, no problem. He already knew how to sign, and he was an okay-if-not-great lip reader. And he was around deaf people all the time. They and their culture weren’t alien to him. He figured he’d be able to adjust to being deaf fairly well, certainly much better than the average person. But the silence terrified him. He felt as if a large part of who he was had just died. How could he play music if he couldn’t fucking hear? And he couldn’t interpret anymore if he couldn’t hear people speak the words he needed to relay through sign language. Not only had he lost one of his primary senses – one he relied on more than the others combined – he’d lost the ability to do his job or pursue his artistic passion. He’d lost the things that made him who he was.

But then he began to become aware of something within the silence. Not sound, of course, but something like it. It reminded him of being aware of a signal that’s just out of the range of human hearing. You could feel it. It might make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, might make you wince and grit your teeth, make you look around to see if you could pinpoint the origin of the non-sound. But of course you never could. This non-sound was like that, and it quickly grew stronger, more intense. Shivers began to run up and down his spine, and a cold fluttering took up residence in his gut. He felt a headache building rapidly, and he thought of Lori’s migraines, hoped his headache didn’t grow into one of those monsters. But damn did it hurt. Another wave of vertigo came over him, different than the last. He felt imbalanced in every part of his body, as if his very atoms were quivering so violently the binding forces between them might break and he’d fall apart into nothing.

He became aware of a deeper non-sound then, one so vast it seemed to permeate all creation. It was the silent scream of the universe dying, a scream that had started less than a nanosecond after the Prime Event and which had continued ceaselessly for trillions of years. The universe was born to die, and it had been doing this since the beginning of time and would continue to do so after time itself had become a meaningless, forgotten concept. Hearing the deathscream of all existence was far more agonizing than the heightened sounds of before had been, for this non-sound affected him on a mental and spiritual level rather than merely a physical one.

He remembered what Goat-Eyes had said.

Now you can hear everything…and nothing.

She hadn’t spoken metaphorically. He had been able to hear everything before, and now he could hear Nothing with a capital N. He was hearing the unvoice of Nonexistence, of Nullity, of the Void, of Oblivion…and it wasn’t simply killing him – although it was doing that as well – it was obliterating him, reducing him to nothing piece by piece, bit by bit, and he knew that soon there wouldn’t be anything left of him. The consciousness that thought of itself as Larry Ramirez would be gone, and capital N Nothing would take its place.

Wild, unreasoning, animal terror gripped him. Although the thinking part of his mind knew he couldn’t escape the unsound, the instinctive part, the part that, when confronted with danger, reacted first and saved thinking for later, shrieked at him to flee, and that’s what he did. He ran into the street, mouth wide open as if he was screaming at the top of his lungs, but he could not hear his own voice, had no idea if he was producing any sound at all. Cars swerved to avoid him, the drivers behind their windshields looking shocked, confused, angry. When he reached the middle of the street, the rational part of his mind started functioning again, and it informed him that he had done something extremely foolish. Vehicles continued streaming toward him, and he knew he was in serious danger of being struck by one.

The deathscream of All receded in his consciousness as survival instinct kicked in, but he was still aware of it in the back of his mind, and he knew he always would be. He needed to get the hell out of the street before—

A big black car of indeterminate make came racing toward him. He caught a glimpse of the driver, a man wearing sunglasses even though it wasn’t particularly sunny this afternoon. He thought then of what Lori had told him of her dreams – no, her nightmares – of riding along the Nightway in a black car driven by a man who had no eyes. He didn’t question that this was the same man driving the same car. He could sense it, and even if he hadn’t been able to do so, the bastard’s cruel grin would’ve told him the man had come to kill him.

The black car came at him fast, so fast that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to avoid it. He was tempted to stand there and let the vehicle run him down. Now that he’d heard the deathscream of the universe, he understood in the deepest level of his being that death was the ultimate end product of life. There was no point in continuing, of delaying the inevitable. The only reason he didn’t let the car hit him was because he feared the universe’s deathscream would follow him down into nonexistence and he’d never be free of it.

The black car was mere inches from hitting him when he threw himself to the right. At first he thought that despite his expectations he was going to make it, but then the edge of the vehicle’s front bumper struck his left foot. The impact spun him around, flipped him over, and he hit the asphalt on his back. Pain shot through his body like lightning, and this time when he cried out, he was able to hear his own voice. His cry was a needle that punctured the bubble of silence, and the sounds of the world rushed in upon him once more. He heard the screeching of tires as drivers fought to avoid hitting him, and he heard people on the sidewalks shouting, although he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He still heard the non-sound of the universal deathscream, though, and he knew he always would. It was part of him now.

He hurt all over, but he pushed himself up on all fours anyway, ignoring the fiery pain in his left leg and his back’s shrieking protests. He faced the direction the black car had gone, but he saw no sign of it. He turned his head toward Grinders, and among the crowd that had gathered on the sidewalk, he saw the goat-eyed woman. She smiled at him as her hands began moving.

Next time, she signed.

Then she turned and began walking away. Larry tried to follow her with his eyes, but a wave of weakness came over him and his arms could no longer support him. He fell to the ground, and the impact – while mild – sent fresh pain shooting through his injured body. He heard people running toward him now, heard someone shout, “Call nine-one-one!” and then he felt himself slipping away into darkness. He didn’t know if he was dying or merely losing consciousness, and right then he didn’t care. But whatever was happening to him, wherever his spirit might end up, he knew the universal deathscream would be there to keep him company.

And then darkness rushed in and he knew no more.

Chapter Nine

“Tell me again why we have to go to the mall?”

Maureen McGuire sat behind the wheel of the police cruiser. It was raining, not too heavily, and the windshield wipers were doing a good job of keeping the glass clear. It was overcast, almost dark enough to be twilight, and she had the headlights on. The lights might not be absolutely necessary – it wasn’t that dark – but Maureen believed in being proactive when it came to safety. When you were a cop, especially if you’d been on the job as long as she had, it was too easy to become lazy, to start cutting corners, to think that just because you’re a cop, nothing bad can happen to you. Like doctors who don’t believe they’ll ever get sick or judges who think they’ll never be found guilty of a crime. That was why she always followed the rules. She drove to the speed limit – unless it was an emergency – and she always used her turn signal, always came to a full and complete stop at intersections. So if it was even close to dark enough to turn on the headlights, that’s what she did.

Next to her, her partner said, “Because we have work to do there.”

Rauch didn’t look at Maureen as he answered, and his tone was relaxed, almost amused, as if he were enjoying some joke that she wasn’t aware of. Maureen didn’t turn to look at him, though. She always kept her eyes on the road when driving. She wanted to ask, What kind of work? but she didn’t. If Rauch wasn’t in the mood to go into detail about something, no amount of coaxing could get it out of him. Rauch liked to play things close to the vest, and while this frustrated Maureen, she’d learned to live with it during their time working together.

She frowned. Just how long had they been partners? She couldn’t remember. Not all that long, she supposed. At least, that’s what it felt like. She honestly had no idea, which was weird. Weirder still, for most of her career she’d driven a cruiser solo. Oakmont wasn’t a big city, and there wasn’t enough money in the budget to hire so many officers that they rode two to a cruiser. Maureen hadn’t ridden with another cop since she’d been a green-as-they-come rookie. So why was she now partnered with Rauch? And hadn’t they been working the night shift yesterday? Yeah, they had. So what were they doing working this afternoon, too? She’d never been assigned a day shift immediately following a night one before.

Her frown deepened as she realized she couldn’t remember going home last night. She remembered responding to a break-in call at that woman’s apartment. Her name escaped Maureen now, but she remembered what she looked like well enough, and also the layout of her place. But as to what she and Rauch had done after leaving the woman’s apartment…. She didn’t have a clue. Had she and Rauch been driving around ever since then? Again, she didn’t know, but she had a feeling that Rauch hadn’t been with her the entire time. Sometimes he was there and sometimes he wasn’t. Where he went or what he did while he was gone was yet one more thing Maureen didn’t know.

Maureen was divorced, and the two children she’d had with her ex were grown and long on their own. She’d never remarried, so if she had been out all night, there was no one in her life to notice. The thought depressed her.

They were less than a mile from the mall when they hit a red light. Maureen braked to a stop and turned to look at Rauch, intending to ask him to explain what the hell was going on, because something sure as shit was. Rauch continued looking straight ahead, but before Maureen could speak, three slits opened in Rauch’s neck. They spread wide, revealing red flesh inside, and they remained like that for a moment before closing. Maureen was revolted by Rauch’s— What were they? Gills? But she wasn’t alarmed by them. She had the feeling that she’d seen this happen before, had seen it a lot of times. She couldn’t remember when, precisely – big surprise – but she felt certain she’d witnessed the slits opening and closing before, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. And while she didn’t know for sure, couldn’t with her terrible memory, she thought she’d never asked Rauch about them, that it had never even occurred to her until now that she should ask, that something wasn’t right – was in fact terribly wrong – about her ‘partner’. But she still didn’t find the words or the will to speak. It was as if some kind of force was keeping her from thinking or talking about certain things, subjects that Rauch might not wish to address.

Rauch’s neck gills opened and closed twice more before the light turned green and Maureen remembered to remove her foot from the brake and put it down on the gas pedal. The cruiser pulled into the intersection and neither Rauch nor Maureen spoke for the next few minutes. When they drew near one of the mall’s entrances, Maureen slowed, hit the cruiser’s right turn signal, and turned into the lot. The mall’s official name was the extraordinarily pretentious Horizon’s Edge, but no one seemed to remember why it had been chosen. Almost everyone in town simply referred to it as The Mall. Whoever had designed the parking lot had been overly optimistic. Maureen had never seen all the spaces filled. Even at Christmas, only a third to a half of the spaces were ever used by customers. Today was no exception. There were only a handful of cars in the lot, and almost all of them were parked close to the main entrance. The building was two stories high, long, and made of dull whitish-gray brick, which made it look more like a prison than a shopping center.

“Pull up to the entrance,” Rauch said. “Use one of the handicapped spaces.”

It was illegal for them to park there, and while Maureen would usually never do such a thing on her own, she did so now at Rauch’s command. She didn’t know why she felt compelled to follow the man’s orders, but she was and she did. Once they parked, Maureen left the engine running, headlights and wipers on.

“Now what?” she asked.

Rauch turned to her, and she saw that not only was the man smiling, he was holding a phone up, the screen facing Maureen. On the phone was a photo of a woman Maureen didn’t recognize – a petite blonde dressed in a gray blazer and looking every inch the professional working woman – her arm draped around the shoulder of a young brown-haired boy.

“Who are they?”

Rauch’s smile widened, and his neck gills began opening and closing rapidly, making wet flapping sounds, like the noises a fish might make flopping around on the bottom of an angler’s boat.