TIM HAWKER.

w.i.l.l.y's skull throbbed. He touched a bruise on the back of his head. It was caked in dried blood. He stared up at the ceiling still seeing double vision. It required him to blink, shut, hold, and blink his eyes again to regain his sight. w.i.l.l.y got up to his feet with an "Ahhhgawd." Standing, he noticed every coin-operated machine in the room was turned off. The bas.e.m.e.nt was quiet, giving his head a chance to calm. w.i.l.l.y rubbed his eyes and his neck, and in that time, w.i.l.l.y made an easy decision.

I'm getting the h.e.l.l out of here.

w.i.l.l.y launched up the stairs, though staggering backwards when he felt dizzy again. He clutched the handrail and gradually made it to the top again. The door was closed. He knew there was no other way out except through this door.

He twisted the k.n.o.b.

Locked.

"Come on!" w.i.l.l.y punched the wood and then drilled his shoulder into the barrier. He kept twisting and turning the k.n.o.b. "Come on! Come on! Come on!"

w.i.l.l.y felt his blood pressure rise. He was suckered in. He went right along with his uncle's plan. He followed the coins downstairs. He did this without questioning anything.

What's your next move, smart guy?

The room stirred. One of the mechanical machine's lights were flashing. It was a dull red color. He was scared, but standing there, he wondered if something or someone was going to come after him. w.i.l.l.y decided to speak before this could occur.

"Look, I don't want trouble. If that's you Uncle Tim, you have to know why I'm a bit scared-"

There was a deep released sigh. It sounded just like his uncle when he was about to say something he didn't want to say. It bought the man more time to really articulate his words.

"Walk back down here, w.i.l.l.y/so we can talk/just me and you/nothing will disturb us/it's just you and me, Chuckles."

Another sound at the backmost wall of the bas.e.m.e.nt happened. It sounded like rocks being sc.r.a.ped by other rocks. The noise was so out of place and continuous, w.i.l.l.y shot back down the stairs to check it out. The sc.r.a.ping, scratching noises kept occurring. A thin window, what was actually a window well, allowed him to view outside. He couldn't fit through the window, the shaft being too thin for even a small child to slip through. The slit, however, was big enough for him to view what was happening outside.

The backyard was a wide open s.p.a.ce with no fences or trees. The gra.s.s was disturbed as coins, dollar bills, and jewelry was drawn up to the house, as if something were sucking it in. w.i.l.l.y saw the collection of things dragging along on the nearby road, cutting through stands of trees, sluicing through a pond and breaking the water to reach the house.

The scratching of the coins circulated throughout the bas.e.m.e.nt, echoing off the walls, the floor, the depths of the foundation. Money was coming to the house, and the house seemed to be sucking it in like the very coin-operated machines.

"Come here and see me, w.i.l.l.y."

w.i.l.l.y had no choice but to turn and answer the summons. This battle was a lonely one, and if he didn't reach out to a familiar person, the person who invited him here, he'd keep sinking in questions.

When most people died, the ones who survived them remembered the deceased in their best of days. For w.i.l.l.y, that was Uncle Tim. The man was a father figure when his real parents fell out of his life. Tim was in his early seventies, with hair as silver as the refraction of a mirror. His eyes were green and welcoming, fun-loving, and inquisitive. Tim retired as a structural engineer and became a full-time hobbyist. His hobby made him a G.o.d to any young child looking for fun. Tim traveled, sent for through the mail, and acquired mechanical machines of every variety. He wanted to open up a mechanical museum free of charge to the public, but that was before the place was burned down, and of course, his untimely death.

What w.i.l.l.y walked up to wasn't how he remembered his uncle. Uncle Tim was a machine version of his former self. The cherry oak box stood chest high in the shape of a coo coo clock. Steel plated the front with etchings of naked women with their bodies outstretched to nothing, their fingertips grazing each other's fingertips. The top was a gla.s.s cage with a head made of wood, lacquered and giving the flesh a polished sheen. The hair was painted gray and looked as if a knife had cut grooves for the threads. The eyes were carved hollow, and from within, a red light glowed, giving it a demonic expression. The face was carved into a smile, the wooden teeth an off-yellow of tobacco and coffee stain. Tim's voice emanated from a speaker from within the oak cabinet.

"Sit down, w.i.l.l.y/catch up with your uncle."

w.i.l.l.y suddenly remembered how his uncle died again. w.i.l.l.y was playing in the bas.e.m.e.nt with the machine called "The Lover Tester." He kept squeezing the steel grip to make the gauge jump from "Wimp" to anything higher. If only the gauge would bob past "Wimp," w.i.l.l.y would be satisfied. He just couldn't beat the machine no matter how hard he tried. His uncle left the house after his German Shepherd, Daisy, had escaped from the fence. That's when he heard a crash from the upstairs window, then another crash from the kitchen and living room. The smell of smoke and burning soon followed. w.i.l.l.y didn't think anything of it. By the time the smoke was too thick to breathe, his uncle had seen the house burning and ran to the bas.e.m.e.nt to save his nephew. Tim carried him up the stairs, but when the stairs broke from underfoot, w.i.l.l.y somehow made it to the upstairs level. Tim didn't. The man was caught in a billowing pool of flames. The last he saw of his uncle was his outstretched arms that were soon engulfed in black smoke and fiery orange hands.

Now his uncle was a wooden head in a box.

He was just like one of his cherished machines.

w.i.l.l.y wanted to run back up the stairs and force the door open. This wasn't real. This wasn't his uncle. The longer he stared at the wooden face, he noticed flecks of black stained the gla.s.s. Tears of black edged out of his uncle's eyes and wormed out his gums between the fake wood teeth. It was the same black that boiled up from the ground, and he knew it because of the smell, that stench of infernal death from the blackest and deepest depths. The very abyss.

"W-what's happened to you?" was all w.i.l.l.y managed to say when his feet didn't work. w.i.l.l.y couldn't move, suspended in a state of shock.

The wooden head was inanimate, unable to blink or move its mouth. The small speaker inside the box was the only form of communication his uncle owned. The tinny, scratchy words were the best the dead man could produce.

"Death isn't the end of ambition/enough people have died and been buried in the earth over so many centuries/they're strong enough now that their ambitions can live on/the things they loved, their ideas, their regrets, the dead can finally address them from beyond/so many rot in the earth/our ambitions rise up from the earth in black/I give you my greatest achievement/my collection of machines!"

w.i.l.l.y wasn't sure what to make of the string of statements, though it made his belly rage with b.u.t.terflies. His uncle's voice was amped up with an energy unknown to his previous existence. It was jilted, projecting with a power he didn't own, machine meets old fashioned record player, meets pure evil.

He didn't care for an explanation as much as why w.i.l.l.y was brought here to this house. Why had so many people died? Why was he delivered here to the house? Did his uncle concoct the reading of the will to bring him here? w.i.l.l.y asked these questions at throat splitting levels and got this in response: "I can't expect you to understand everything, w.i.l.l.y/life is so simple, but death is complex/being dead used to mean nothing/now it means everything/I died remembering the happiest times of my life/they were of you and me and these machines/I can lose myself in them, and you could too/I loved you like my son, and that's why you're here/I'm sharing my greatest achievement with someone who could appreciate it/but something holds us back, w.i.l.l.y, from enjoying this blessing right this moment/being dead didn't just involve remembering my happiest moments/I burned to death/I'm burned saving you, and I'm proud my death wasn't in vain/life is precious nonetheless, but death is a finer reality/for killing me, punishments must be doled out/justice will be served/and I'll show you just what I mean."

The bas.e.m.e.nt door shot open. He couldn't see the staircase from his angle, but w.i.l.l.y could hear numerous footsteps coming down the staircase.

Somebody was coming down to join them.

FREE THEM.

"Feel for the bolts," Brock repeated under his breath, clutching the power drill in his hands. He noted the steel slot over the drill's trigger. "d.a.m.n it, we need change." And that's when the steel slot snapped off by itself and four coins jangled to the ground. Spinning and rolling, the coins flew across the room, tearing through the wall. Brock ducked, dodging other coins as each of the power tools in the workshop were disturbed, jostled on their posts and somehow unlocked and their coins flying across the room. One coin shot past catching Brock in the back of the leg so fast it inflicted a cut across his calf muscle. Hannah caught a dime that caused the cartilage in her ear to split at the tip. The fuselage of change shot through the living room door and out the walls like bullets.

When the din ended, James stared at them astounded. "What did Chuck mean get out of here before it happens. What else is going to happen?"

Brock said, "Whatever's at Tim Hawker's house, it's collecting all the money in town."

"That doesn't answer anything," James griped. "It's nonsense."

Brock thought back to what Chuck was saying about freeing them from the machine inside them. "I have to get the machine out of you." He turned to Hannah, wondering how she felt about the crazy idea. "Let me feel your shoulder blades."

"You're not coming anywhere near me with that power drill. I love you, but come on!"

Brock leveled with her, "You said you saw Chuck work on bodies. He'd cut them up. He'd install things in people's backs." Brock kicked at the boxes strewn about the room stuffed with metal bits, steel boxes, and springs. "Just let me feel for the bolts in your shoulder blades. Humor me that far. You want out of here alive, don't you?"

James stepped up to Brock when he head the voices of the dead rekindled on the night air accompanied by random jangles of change cutting through trees, the earth, crashing and clanging together at impossible speeds. "I'll go first. I don't care. I've lost my family, what else can I lose that isn't already gone?"

"Your life," Brock said.

"At this point, life and death are monads n.o.body will ever f.u.c.king understand. I always hated that philosophical bulls.h.i.t."

"I'm not sure what the h.e.l.l I'm doing," Brock said, testing the power drill, and the bit spun, roaring to life. "This machine works without change. I don't know what that means."

"So what else is new?" James lifted up his shirt and turned around. Brock ran his fingers along the man's shoulder blades.

"Your hands are cold."

It slipped out of him, "Shut up."

Dead center of the bone on the shoulder blade, there was a metal indentation. He felt a large screw and the corresponding groves for the drill bit to fit in. "It's there all right."

Hannah was watching Brock nervously.

James asked, "You stopped feeling around. What is it?"

"A steel b.u.mp." Saying this, Brock shied from the thought of delving the drill bit into his back. "What if I hurt you, James?"

"Soon enough, I'll be dead by something one way or another, and if this works, that means you save your favorite lady and your sister too. It's worth it to me to see some good come out of this situation. The people I love are dead."

"Angel's still out there," Brock said, once again feeling bad he had to leave her body outside. "I hope she's okay. Maybe I should go get her."

"Don't waste anymore time. I have a feeling we don't have much time until the next thing happens out there."

The voices on the air continued, though they were everywhere, circulating from the sky and resounding from the ground and mixing together.

Brock took a deep breath and placed the drill bit on James's shoulder blade. He fidgeted the end so it matched the bolt. The tip finally sunk into the skin a few centimeters, locking in. James placed his arms on each side of the wall. "Okay," he said, gathering courage. "Just do it. I asked for it."

"Be careful." Hannah was so close to Brock now.

"Brace yourself." Brock focused harder to keep his wrist and arm steady. "Here goes."

He pressed the trigger.

Hannah closed her eyes and turned her head.

James screeched in pain. "Faaaawwck!"

The drill bit carved a circle of skin. Blood flicked up from the shoulder blade. The crunching of bone, the screw underneath was gradually lifting out. The skin around the screw was expanding with the look of taught canvas about to break.

"Hurry, Brock," Hannah demanded, unable to take the jarring noise of the drill. "He's bleeding all over. You're hurting him."

"Steady hands win the day," Brock a.s.sured her. "Steady hands."

The bolt came undone with a pop of a cap gun. The screw was four inches long. Brock held it in his hands and showed it to James. "Wow. That was inside of you."

"Whatever else is inside of me, I want it out of me. Keep doing what you're doing."

Brock scanned James's other shoulder blade, and pinpointing the location of another screw, he placed the bit against the screw head beneath the skin. When Brock started the drill, a cold hand seized his neck and spiked him to the ground.

UNDER ATTACK.

"Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" James's howled, then his screeches abruptly ended. Hannah's terrified, blood-curdling peals of terror followed Brock to the ground as he was pelted by sheets of blood. An arm, a leg, a head, a torso, every appendage from James's body smacked into Brock. The man's extremities were spring-ejected from James's body, the stumps made of sprung steel coils. Out James's back, a black box was ejected. The top opened up like a wall safe and coins jangled free onto the floor. The money was drawn up the stairs, sailing in the air and then fired right through the ceiling.

"Brock! Watch out, watch out, watch out!" Hannah kept warning him, her body bent against the far end of the wall terrified. "Don't let the coins. .h.i.t you!"

Brock was replaying James's dismantling again in his mind. He realized whatever had grabbed him from behind had caused the screw to shift the wrong way. The mechanical system in James's body reacted accordingly and dismantled the man.

What was worse was who had tossed him to the ground.

Angel.

Her eyes were catatonic and empty of thought and function. The way she moved was like a living puppet. She was compelled by another master.

"Why are you doing this?" Hannah demanded Angel. She helped Brock to his feet as they both cowered to the opposite end of the room away from the enemy. "Stay away from us."

Before Hannah could completely guide him to the door in the hallway, Brock reclaimed the power drill. "Angel, it's us. Don't you remember me? I'm your brother."

Brock pointed at her hair, hands, and clothes in horror. Black oil stained them. The colors of death had seeped into her skin. It stained her lips and eyes. "It's like Chuck said earlier. The dead were controlling him, and now they're controlling Angel."

They backed into the other door in the bas.e.m.e.nt that didn't lead upstairs. Brock urged Hannah inside and then threw it shut. Brock locked it behind him. "I have to remove the box out of your back."

"But you saw what happened to James."

"Yes, I know, but it only failed because I was disturbed. The screws can't be jostled as they're coming out. You said you've seen Chuck at work, and that's what happened when he screws up. The people's body parts fall to pieces."

"But you don't know what you're doing. How do you know any of that is right?"

Before Brock could argue his point, out from Hannah's shoulder blade shot out a dime. It fired straight out across the room, nearly hitting Brock dead on. It burst through the ceiling, suddenly heading to its own destination.

The pain staggered Hannah to the floor. Brock bent down and lifted up her shirt. "We don't have a choice. We have to get this box out of you, or those coins are coming out of you like bullets."

Hannah griped in pain, mincing curses under her breath. "f.u.c.king do it then."

Brock traced his hands along her shoulder blade and located the bolt. Gearing up to remove it, the door was split by a golden axe from the other side. The axe head gleamed momentarily before it was jerked back and disappeared back to the other side. Hannah wouldn't stay still, so Brock whispered to her, "I love you. You have to stay calm. I'm not leaving you here. I will get you out of here alive. Just hang on."

The words lightened her distress, though Hannah was still shivering in fear. Antic.i.p.ation had its way with her body. She exploded in a fit of curses when a quarter shot out of the sole of her shoe, the coin levitating, then spinning from side-to-side, before it fired up into the ceiling.

Brock pinned his free hand on her back, centering Hannah. He began to work, doing his best to block out his lover's screams. Splitting skin and sc.r.a.ping bone, the first bolt was edging upwards.

The axe struck again, claiming a narrow triangle of wood from the door that was slowly turning into cheap cardstock against the force of the tool.

Blood spilling down her back, the bolt came loose and tinged against the floor, rolling into the heaping pile of corpse pieces spread all across the room.

Brock located the other bolt.

Three more strikes, the axe broke a square-panel. Brock could see Angel's vacant face at work in his peripheral vision. Both her hands were raising the axe to plunder the door into smithereens.

"Braaaaaaaaaaaawck!" Angel howled when a quarter shot out of her forearm and her hamstring simultaneously. "Hurry before another coin shoots out of me!"

Hannah was squirming, abating her pain so much so that Brock was having difficulty keeping the drill bit straight.

"You can't fidget. I know it hurts. You have to hold still."

"You don't know s.h.i.t. You don't have this box inside of you! You're not bleeding!"

"Okay, I don't know s.h.i.t. Fair enough. Now stay still."