The first rays of sunlight streaming through the window of the MOONLIGHT Motel roused Jack from his half-sleep. He was half-naked, his hands on his knees, bent forward, aching like never before. His numb mind wandered between the events of the previous day. Dried blood was still caked under his fingernails. He knew more than he cared to know. He'd "woke up" too soon. He mentally scolded himself for the word "woke up." It seemed so damned wrong. But he couldn't find the right one. He couldn't explain to himself why he was doing it. It was as if it weren't him, as if someone else were controlling his body. He already knew this wasn't the first man he'd killed. Once again, the word didn't fit. Killing someone was something like shooting them in the head or stabbing them. What he'd done last night...
The sun was slowly creeping up from behind the forested hills, bathing the valley and the motel in its oily morning light. Sparks bounced off the chrome bumpers, on which drops of blood had long since dried. In the trunk, wrapped in the carpet, lay the eyes and heart of the victim, torn to pieces.
***
"I need to talk to Guere!" Hauling the same sentence over and over, the fat Pedro pushed his way through the crowd of security guards into the heart of the Tijuana Club. His thick arms stopped breaking noses only when he saw a man in a black suit standing at the end of the corridor. The man's voice was low and decisive. "Come on, Pedro!" The security guards parted like the Red Sea before Moses. Pedro, sweating and nervous, moved toward the dark figure who, ignoring his slowness, entered one of the rooms. "What happened?" the fat man shouted. "Is everything the same as before?" "Calm down," the man in the suit said.
The room was located in the basement. In the center stood a massive dark wood desk. A fan had been installed in the only window. A fan blew hot air inside, simultaneously cutting the setting sun's rays with its propeller. The darkness was momentarily illuminated by a lighter, and cigar smoke rose in the air. The dark-haired man in a suit with Latino features was called "Carbohydrate." "Calm down, Pedro," repeated Carbohydrate. "How am I supposed to calm down? Where's the puppet? Where's the promised heart?" "What's wrong with Guere?" The fat man was still shouting. Carbohydrate pointed decisively at the leather chair placed sideways to the desk. A cold sweat broke out under Fathydrate. He sat down heavily, as if against his will.
No one called his master Guere. No one except fat Pedro. That was Pedro's privilege, granted to him by his master. It irritated him strangely. Carbohydrate didn't like Pedro. Carbohydrate obeyed his master's will. Now he sat and poured two glasses full of the finest tequila. "Drink!"
"The heart is on its way, it will arrive here in a few days." He cut it off, the fat man took his glass and drank the liquid.
"Our arms are long, only our eyes are longer. Blackness coats our insides and fills our minds with will." When the Charcoal Eater recited this rule without emotion, a little ironically, as if tired of it. Both Pedro and Charcoal Eater knew hundreds of them, all by heart. After a moment of silence, broken by the whir of the fan, Charcoal Eater added. "
Remember, Pedro, do your duty and everything will be alright."
In the very heart of this building, deep in the earth, behind walls of black stone, in a room upholstered in black canvas, sat Siliant. Siliant, Homero Guerea.
***
The "connection" was broken. All day Jack lay numb in the motel. Something he had been experiencing for a long time, he guessed, had been disrupted. It wasn't sleep or sleepwalking. It was something far worse. Something like possession. Since morning, he had been feverish and delirious. Strange, "scar-like" marks had appeared on his hands. One reminded him of a dead fish, the other two letters "L." One seemed to mirror the other. He didn't have the strength to leave the room, though he often fancied he was leaving. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a drop of water. His swollen throat ached. His breathing was labored and irregular. The pain in his chest was sometimes so intense that Jack fainted, often drifting into the soothing blackness. Jack guessed that what he'd experienced the previous night was the cause. He was dying, there was no doubt about it.
Once again, he saw strange things. It seemed to him that the roadside motel room was lit by hundreds of tiny flames swirling on the walls, gleaming in some cruel and mercilessly cold blackness. These weren't warm lights, just as the blackness itself was dead and icy. He heard a faintly muttered prayer in a strange language, something like a combination of German and some Mexican dialect.
He didn't know what the words meant, but somehow he understood them. As if the very sound of those words held meaning. Suddenly, everything went dark; some invisible force immobilized his body. The prayer ceased. Now all he could hear was the rasping of his own breathing, quiet and distant, like a plane taking off into the sky. Everything blurred, vanished, the farther the plane moved away from him
.
In the evening, as the sun sank below the horizon, a blood-orange moon appeared in the east. From the north, it was bathed in darkness, from the west by the pinkish glow of the dying sun. It looked like a gigantic eye of night, languidly peeking out from beneath its eyelids to gaze carelessly before falling back to sleep. The night was exceptionally cool, but millions of stars, like small diamonds, appeared in the inky black sky. They had a powerful yet artificial glow that could make the eyes water. "Here you are," the voice said. "What kept you?" The voice had a Mexican-sounding name and reeked of sweat. The surroundings were as bustling as an airport. "I've been waiting for this," the voice said. "You took your time delivering this, dummy." A rasping voice, reminiscent of Hitler's rallies, flowed from the speakers placed all around what seemed to be a vast glass waiting room. The speakers wheezed and crackled, then concluded their discourse with a short beep and fell silent. "Well, it's time for you, puppet, have a nice trip."
***
The small television in the guard's booth at the Bahajarka airport had long since stopped receiving television programs. It only hummed and crackled. The image outside the window was indistinguishable from the one on the screen—a black field densely dotted with white spots. That night, far to the northern tip of Russia, it was as cold as a platoon. Sasha Nikolachinsky had only agreed to stay because Volodya had a son and had taken his shift. Of course, Volodya had promised to bring him bacon, canned ham, and a bottle of vodka as thanks for taking the second shift. Sasha was already licking his lips at the thought of the ham. He drank the rest of his now-cold tea and rubbed his numb hands. "Oh, Sasha," he said to himself. "You've got a brain.
" At half past two a.m., a crackling sound came from the radio. The incomprehensible rasp was, Sasha thought, the voice of the "Boss." The most vicious superior in this icy wasteland. He grimaced at the thought of meeting him, rather than having to leave the guardhouse and step out into the unearthly cold. The path from the guardhouse to the "control room" was long and arduous, considering the already covered path. Sasha walked, cursing at the "Chief" and at the blizzard. Finally, to his own delight, he got close enough to see the "control room."
Surprisingly, it wasn't there. Or at least, that's what he thought. Now, ignoring the deep snow, Sasha ran as fast as he could, just to find out what imbecile had turned off all the lights, even the ones on the runway. When he reached his destination, he opened the door and started shouting the names of the guards and radio operators. But no one from the ground crew spoke. Sasha searched for his colleagues, but no one was there. So he set off to check the power. It's true that in the navigation rooms the radio and some emergency light should be working on "emergency", but everyone is probably at the transformers, repairing them, Sasha thought.
On his way to the transformers, he had to pass by Hangar 17. He didn't particularly like it. This hangar belonged to the mafia, and the mafiosi's guards, who did business with American and even Mexican criminals, didn't like anyone hanging around there. He reluctantly had to go; who knew what would have awaited him if a plane carrying heroin from Mexico had crashed simply because "stupid Sasha," as he mentally called himself, hadn't fixed the power. A circle formed by the flashlight's beam guided Sasha through the driving blizzard. Strangely enough, he encountered no one at the hangar entrance, and there were always three or four "bastards" standing there. Today was a strange day, Sasha thought, and immediately continued on.
Just around the bend, he noticed the hangar door ajar. His natural curiosity overcame his common sense. The hangar door was enormous and heavy, and it opened with difficulty, making a terrible creak. A shiver ran down Sasha's spine.
He walked in. A flare lay in the center, smoking and sparking, emitting a pinkish light. Next to it lay a jacket, or something that at first glance looked like a jacket.
A hand was sticking out of the left sleeve. It must have been holding the flare. The rest of the body looked like a broken jar of cherry jam. Sasha vomited and tried to run away, but slipped on the "jam" that was covered in "The Boss's" jacket. This terrified him even more. The hand he had landed on hurt. Outside, despite the roaring wind, the plane's engines could be heard revving. Sasha could only repeat the words "God help us." He fainted. He froze to death before dawn.
A week later, the team, concerned about the lack of signals from the Bahajarka airport, dispatched a local gendarmerie patrol. What they found at the scene was not classified as a "normal event," so the Russian government erased all traces of the "Bajajarka accident." Volodya, his wife, and son moved to Moscow. The Mexico-Bahajarka/Arctic Circle flight was never found; it likely crashed into the ocean within Mexican territorial waters.
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