The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

cell phones. Care about animals more than me.”

“Hey listen, I wanted to ask you something.”

She shrugs in the heat, wipes her face again with the bandana, takes a drag.

“Yesterday a man was outside that building.” Kierk points to the CNS, a hermetic tower rising over the other buildings, not even a full block away. “He was saying that people there were taking street people, the homeless, inside of it and doing things to them.”

“Why are you asking?” Glia says, suddenly attentive but also cautious.

“I’m just trying to figure out what happened. Seeing if there’s any truth to it. Do you know anything about it?”

Glia gestures. “There’s been lots of rumors about the park.”

“Rumors about what?”

“Just to avoid it. That it’s not safe. Especially at night.”

“Why isn’t it safe? What’s been happening?”

“I don’t know, just weird stuff.”

“Be specific.”

“People who sleep around here, total creeps lately. I did know one nice guy who used be around. Hung out with him. But he got weird. Like the area got to him or something. He just changed overnight. Started getting so angry. Didn’t really remember me. It was totally unreal. So I don’t sleep here in the park. Not anymore. I head to one of the eastside shelters.”

“So the people who normally sleep in the parks, or around here, they’re getting strange?”

“Uh-uh. Yeah. And also . . .”

“What?”

“A guy comes around here too. That’s the rumor. That he’s experimenting on people. You know. Messing with their brain.”

“What? Who is he?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, I’m trying to stay out of all this stuff. Always drama. All the time it’s drama.”

“Glia, it is extremely important you describe this man to me.”

“Well, let’s see. Big. Very big. And they call him ‘the Nazi.’ Everyone scaring themselves. The Nazi is coming, the Nazi is coming.”

“Why the Nazi?”

“I don’t know. ’Cause he sounds like a Nazi.”

“He has a German accent?”

“Yeah.”

Kierk rocks back on his heels. His thoughts are following an anxious beat, his mind racing down the corridors of the CNS, plowing over memories, overturning comments, trying to reconcile this. The dog laps at his hanging hand.

“Hey, you okay mister?”

“What? Oh yeah, yeah thanks. Anything else you can tell me?”

Glia shakes her head, pinching off the cigarette to save it for later.

“Alright. Hey, listen, stay here. I’ll be right back with something.”

Kierk walks while dialing Carmen. It goes to voicemail. Eventually he finds an ATM. Punching in his PIN to the account containing his stipend he looks at the remaining, still large, amount. He withdraws the maximum, five hundred dollars, then walks back to Glia.

“Hey,” he says, as her face wars toward amazement. “Take this.”

She’s hesitant, like the money comes with some unspoken consequences. But after dumping it into her lap Kierk just pats the dog on the head.

“Stay away from this park, okay?” he says, and then is jogging off through the arch.

She shouts, “THANK YOU” from behind him, scaring the pigeons to flight.

Night falls over Sunday. Kierk has been going back and forth within his apartment, a blur of energy. His impending eviction from the program is mixed with the discoveries of the day, and he’s been moving from depressed to frenetic within the same hour. He wonders if it’s better if Carmen never calls him back. He’s been trying to get through since the afternoon. Sitting in his apartment he broods, throws the tennis ball, stampedes over the books, takes a bath, sobs a few times, punches the wall, screams once or twice, reads, waits, indulges in suicidal ideation, washes his hands under water hot enough to purposefully scald himself. Finally, he grabs his electric shaver and in the bathroom slowly and surely buzzes away all his hair. Blood from where his hand punched the wall mixes with the hairs falling into the sink. When he’s done he looks extremely skinny again, his figures sharp, a totally new primate just arrived.

Exhausted by himself he lies on his bed, rubbing at this prickly new sensorial dome. He’s nowhere near sleep when his phone rings. It’s Carmen on the other end. He scrambles to pick up.

“Hello? I’m sorry.”

“That’s it? I mean . . . wait, okay, I shouldn’t have said—

” “—well no but I also—

” “—because it wasn’t right to suggest—”

“—and I’m sorry that—”

“Listen!” Carmen says over him. “It doesn’t matter now. Because you were wrong about my mystery being nothing. I just got an email. From the code you wrote. The fMRI machine is running.”

“It’s like midnight.”

“I know.”

“Are you heading to the CNS?”

“Right now.”

“No, don’t do that. I’ll meet you outside. I have new information. Where are you?”

“I’m almost there. Like two blocks away.”

“I’m on my way. Carmen, don’t go in! Just wait outside.”

She’s already hung up. Swearing, Kierk fights on a shirt and pants and then is out the door still putting on his shoes.

The heat is a syrup that fills the dark streets. Kierk runs down Broadway, which is empty except for some couples walking arm in arm and the odd lone figure that stands to the side to let him pass, and soon he’s near the great black steeple at night, sweat already pouring down his back, accompanied only by the pounding rhythm of his shoes echoing off buildings, a Doppler effect left behind. Without a breeze he’s his own wind as he turns a corner, dodges another couple, crosses the street to the honk of a cab as he sprints through its headlights, then he’s turning the corner to the lightless CNS and just catches the form of Carmen opening the door to enter.

He calls out to her and she holds the door for him as he thunders in. The lobby is dimly lit and empty.

“We’ve got to hurry.” Carmen is jamming the elevator button. The doors ding open and then they’re both in the elevator, Kierk bending down to catch his breath.

“We should talk first.”

“Kierk . . . What did you do to your hair!”

Her fingers are cool on his prickly skull.

“No time,” he says, and then quickly fills