This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

Driven

This is a story I wrote after I read a book arguing that the root of sin, the root of evil, came from regarding other people as things. A cursory overview of history will show that the concept has already been explored by any number of tyrants, but I wanted to see how far it could be carried out in fiction...

No one could figure out how the car worked.

The story was like something from a chain email, and Alfred Carnicera himself seemed like a character from a bad political thriller. He had once been an environmental entrepreneur, selling eco-friendly products, until his company went bankrupt. Before that, he had been a “spiritual consultant”, promising to channel positive energy into his clients’ lives for seventy-five dollars an hour, until the FBI investigated him on racketeering charges. And two years ago, he founded Carnicera Motors, and released the Anima, the world's first car without a conventional engine. It seemed like every other scam in Carnicera's checkered career.

Except for one difference.

Carnicera’s car actually worked.

The car had no motor, and it still worked.

Where a conventional car or a hybrid would have a motor, the Anima had a hollow steel sphere perhaps a foot across, suspended in an aluminum cradle. Remove the sphere, and the Anima became inert. Return the sphere, and the Anima ran again. Needless to say, people pried the spheres open. Inside they found a heavy steel nail, six inches long, held in place by copper wire.

And nothing else.

It caused a frenzy.

Overnight, Carnicera Motors became the most valuable company in the world. Every government, corporation, and university on the planet tried to figure out how the Anima worked. They dissected Carnicera's sample cars, rebuilt them, took them apart again. They subjected the cars to every known physical test, and even invented a few new ones. And every last test, every single one, indicated that the metal sphere was nothing more than a hollow metal ball with a nail in the center.

Yet when the researchers removed the sphere, the car stopped running.

Several scientists investigating the Anima wound up committing suicide, no doubt from sheer frustration.

More than one thief attempted to steal Carnicera's secrets, but the meteoric rise of his company had given him the money to hire competent security, and the thieves wound up dead. Or were never seen again.

In the end, the researchers concluded that some hitherto unknown property of electromagnetism powered the Anima, and gave up in disgust.

No one cared. Dozens of governments entered into negotiations to host Carnicera's first factory. Carnicera claimed to build each car himself, producing only a few hundred a month - but soon he would go into mass production. And the Anima, he argued, would put an end to pollution, to global warming, to wars over oil.

The United States won the bid, and Carnicera started his factory in Arizona, not far from the border with Mexico. The press praised him as a new Henry Ford, a man whose genius and invention would remake the 21st century.

But not everyone was convinced.

###

Among them were Carrie Harker's superiors at the Arizona FBI office.

She didn't know why she had gotten the job. Most likely it had to do with the failure of her previous assignment. No one blamed her for it, at least on the record. Even the internal investigation said that she had done everything right. She had done everything right - and still found a trailer full of dead children.

She saw it every time she closed her eyes.

Her superiors expected her to fail, she realized. They didn't really care how Carnicera's magic car worked, so long as it did. But they still had to try, and so they sent her, the agent who had wound up with a trailer full of dead children.

Carrie had been set up to fail, but she didn't care. It kept her from thinking about that trailer.

###

After a few weeks of groundwork, she posed as a journalist and got an exclusive interview with Alfred Carnicera himself.

His assistant, a bubbly blond who couldn't have been more than twenty, led Carrie into Carnicera's office atop the half-constructed Anima factory. The massive floor-to-ceiling windows had a grand view of the sunlit Arizona desert. Several widescreen computer monitors sat atop a stainless steel desk, and plasma TVs hung from the walls, playing ads for the upcoming mass-production Anima over and over again.

"Catherine Harper from Car Beat to see you, sir," said the assistant.

Carnicera rose from the desk and walked to meet her, a wide white smile on his tanned face. Tall and fit, with gray-streaked black hair and glittering black eyes, he made a show of bowing over Carrie's hand and kissing the knuckles. More than reporter had gushed about Carnicera's Old World charm. Carrie merely found it creepy, like those guys who went to bars to try out seduction tips they had read on the Internet.

"Ah, Ms. Harper," said Carnicera, with just a hint of a Spanish accent. At various times, he claimed to have been born in Spain, Nicaragua, or Argentina. Thanks the Bureau's files, Carrie knew that he had been born in New Jersey. "Tiffany, leave us."

The assistant smiled and hurried from the office.

Carnicera put his hand on the small of Carrie's back and guided her to a seat upholstered in expensive leather. "May I get you anything? Coffee? Or wine, perhaps?"

Carrie tried to smile. "No, thank you. I don't drink while I'm working."

"Most admirable," said Carnicera, settling himself in a chair opposite hers. "Right to business, eh? I like that in a woman. So I shall follow suit. You work for the FBI, no?"

Carrie felt her smile freeze. "Excuse me? My name is Catherine Harper, and I'm a freelance writer for Car Beat, and I wanted to talk to you about the Anima..."

Carnicera's white smile flashed below his hard black eyes. "Why, I'm sure you do. But I know that your name is Carrie Harker, and that you work for the FBI, and you've been assigned to find the Anima's power source."

They said nothing for a moment.

Carrie sighed. "I suppose you're not going to save yourself a lot of trouble and just tell me?"

“Of course not,” said Carnicera. “That’s what people like you don’t get.”

“Get what exactly?” said Carrie.

“I’m going to change the world,” said Carnicera. He walked to the massive windows and waved a hand at the construction equipment, at the town rising from the desert. “I did this. It was my invention that made this happen. And my invention is going to remake the world. A new world, one without pollution, without environmental disaster, without war.” He smiled at her. “Without meddling government functionaries, intruding upon matters that are beyond their understanding.”

“Energy isn’t free, Mr. Carnicera,” said Carrie. “It never is. There’s always a price to be paid for it.”

His charming smile turned to a smirk. “Rest assured, Agent Harker, that the price for the Anima is low, and one that humanity will never be unable to pay. But I’m sure you know all about paying prices, don’t you? This assignment of yours is one of them, isn’t it?”

Carrie said nothing.

“My friends at the Bureau warned me you were coming for a little chat," said Carnicera. "And they told me all about you. You were trying to shut down a...ah, human trafficking ring, that was it? Except that you pushed a little too hard and a little too fast and your targets panicked, and they ran for it. After shooting their inventory, of course. That must have been a nasty little surprise, eh? A trailer full of dead kids?"

Carrie said nothing, but her fingers sank into the arms of the chair. Punching Carnicera would have been just excuse her bosses needed to sack her, so she didn't. However much she wanted to.

"Fortunately," said Carnicera, "most of the high-ranking officials at the Bureau understand the importance of what I'm doing. But they needed to look diligent, so they set up their little embarrassment to fail." His smirk returned. "Unpleasant, isn't it?"

"Why don't you just tell me how the Anima runs, and we'll be done?" said Carrie.

"You're half-right," said Carnicera, taking something from the desk. "We're done. You can't do anything. You have no support from the Bureau, and if you do anything to annoy me, I'll have your job on a platter. But have a parting gift."

He flung a set of keys at her face. Carrie's hand snapped up, caught them an instant before they would have bounced off her jaw.

"Keys to your very own Anima," said Carnicera. He laughed. "Go see if you can figure out how it works."

"They're not legal in this country yet," said Carrie.

"Oh, but they will be," said Carnicera. "You should probably go now, Agent Harker. Before I get bored with you." He winked. "Unless you want to go to bed with me, of course. All the guilt you're carrying around...I bet that would make you an interesting lover."

Carrie left, Carnicera's laughter following her.

###

Her new Anima waited outside Carnicera's half-built factory.

He had given her a red one, the sides gleaming with fresh wax. Carrie unlocked the door and dropped into the driver's seat. Expensive leather pressed against her back and legs, and the dashboard sported a high-end stereo, an iPod dock, a built-in GPS, and a dozen other little gadgets.

Carrie stared at the wheel for a moment, wondering what to do next. She closed her eyes, and again she saw the sweltering interior of that trailer, the air heavy with the stink of blood and bowels...

She decided to go back to her hotel room and get very drunk.

Carrie lid the key into the ignition (or whatever it was - she doubted the Anima's ignition actually ignited anything) and turned it. There was no sound, none at all. Yet the car trembled, and the dash lit up.

All at once she felt colder.

The air conditioning was on, that was it.

She put the car into drive and pulled away from the factory.

The Anima handled like a dream, with smooth acceleration and responsive turning. The silence was uncanny, and soon became oppressive. Carrie switched on the radio, fiddled with the dial until she found a classical station.

It was a thirty mile drive to Blue Paradise, the nearest town, a hamlet of a thousand people where absolutely nothing was blue. Carrie kept the Anima at ninety the entire time, and arrived in twenty minutes. The car remained whisper-quiet.

It started to bother her.

Driving down Blue Paradise's main street, she had the sudden sensation of eyes upon her back, and craned her neck, half-expecting to see a crowd gaping at the Anima. But the town's residents ignored her. No doubt Animas were a common enough sight here.

And still the car remained silent, silent, silent. Carrie couldn't figure out why it bothered her so much. To hell with getting drunk. She wanted to find a bar, someplace with a lot of loud music and loud people...

The car shuddered, started to slow down.

She pressed the accelerator, but nothing happened. None of the warning lights on the dashboard had lit up, but since the car didn't have an engine, why bother with warning lights? She looked around, hoping to find a place to park before the car died entirely. She saw a gas station, a church, a pair of bars...

The Anima trembled and picked up speed. Carrie tapped the accelerator again, and the car went faster. Had Carnicera given her a defective car? She shrugged and kept driving.

The silence grew heavier, even through the classical music, until Carrie wanted to scream.

She pulled into the hotel's parking lot, slamming on the brakes. She looked in the review mirror, certain, so certain, that she would see someone sitting in the back seat, watching her.

Nothing. There was nothing.

Carrie clawed open the door and scrambled out, breathing hard. She heard the rumble of trucks on the nearby freeway, the tinny music playing in the hotel's lobby.

Bit by bit the terror, the anxiety, drained away.

What the hell was wrong with her?

Carrie looked at the Anima, wiping her hands on her skirt. She'd been in law enforcement for fifteen years, had seen some nasty situations, and she'd never reacted like that. Not even to the trailer full of blood.

Maybe that had screwed her up worse than she had thought.

Then why had the terror stopped when she'd gotten out of the Anima? No one knew how the car worked. Some unknown property of magnetism, like the researchers said? Carrie had heard of people who claimed that cell phone transmissions made them feel sick.

But she hadn't felt sick.

Only terrified.

She looked west, in the direction of Carnicera's factory.

Something was wrong about the Anima. Technological wonder or not, planet-saving invention or not, something was wrong. And to hell with Alfred Carnicera, and to hell with her superiors.

She was going to figure out how this thing worked.

Carrie went to bed without getting drunk.

###

She had nightmares.

Ever since that last assignment, there had been nightmares every night. The trailer. The stench of blood and death. Hoping, somehow, that this time when she opened the door, heart pounding, that it would be different. That she would arrive in time, that the children were alive.

The dream always ended the same way.

But tonight, the nightmare was different.

Her wrists and ankles were bound together, and hard hands carried her. She tried to scream, but a gag filled her mouth. The hands threw her upon a surface of rough stone. She heard Carnicera's voice, saw him standing over her, a steel hammer in his hands.

Carrie awoke with a scream, her heart pounding, sweat pouring down her face. She clawed her way free from the tangled blankets, staggered across the room, and ripped open the curtains. In the darkened parking lot, three stories below, she saw her Anima sitting in its spot.

The car was empty.

She had been certain, so certain, that she would see someone in the car.

But why?

She had never been tied up in her life. Why start dreaming about it now?

And why had she been so certain that someone was watching her from the Anima?

Carrie pulled the curtains shut and went back to bed.

###

The next morning she got dressed and walked to the parking lot.

The Anima still sat where she had left it. Carrie walked around the car, inspecting it from every angle. She opened the side door, went over every last inch of the interior, pried open the dashboard and looked around. Perhaps Carnicera had bugged her car, hidden a microphone and a camera in the upholstery. Perhaps that would explain why she felt watched.

But, nothing.

Carrie popped the hood, looked at the engine. Or, least, the empty space where a normal car would have had an engine. The Anima's shiny metal sphere sat suspended in its cradle over the pistons. Somehow that sphere had generated enough force to propel the car at ninety miles an hour for thirty minutes.

She brushed the sphere with a fingertip.

It was ninety-five degrees out, and would only get hotter. Yet the sphere felt icy-cold to the touch.

Carrie frowned.

The Anima had worked flawlessly, except for that strange hiccup in downtown Blue Paradise. She hadn't even been going that fast at the time.

Would it do the same thing again?

Curious, she swung into the driver's seat and started the Anima. Again the silence of the car became oppressive, and she twisted around, half-suspecting to see someone watching her from the back seat.

Nothing.

It occurred to Carrie that if the car used some sort of magnetic force to propel itself, and if she was sensitive to it, that the force might induce her feeling of terror. That the magnetic field was altering her brain waves or something. In which case using the car might be dangerous.

She remembered Carnicera's mocking smirk.

The hell with that. If the Anima was dangerous, better than she find out now, before it had a chance to hurt someone else.

Carrie put the car into drive and headed for downtown Blue Paradise, doing her best to ignore the silence. Despite the fear, she felt a little silly. The car had glitched once, slightly. Had it been a conventional car, she would have thought nothing of it.

But she didn't have anything better to do.

And it wasn't like this would cost her gas money, after all.

###

And as it turned out, she could reproduce the glitch every single time.

The first time Carrie came to the intersection with the gas station, the church, and the two bars, nothing happened, and she felt foolish.

But the car shuddered, and began to slow. After she passed the intersection, it sped up again.

She circled around the block, drove through the intersection once more.

Again, the car slowed.

Once more around the block.

The same thing happened.

After the sixth time, Carrie pulled to the curb in front of the church. Every single time the car passed between the church and the gas station, it slowed down. As soon as she passed the intersection, it sped up again, as if nothing had happened.

Weird. Maybe there was a power line under the street, an electromagnetic field strong enough to disrupt the car. But the radio had no static, and her Blackberry had full bars.

She got out of the car to think, walking along the front of the church. It was an old church, its adobe walls weathered and cracked. A historical marker next to the door claimed that the church had been built by Jesuit missionaries, before there even had been a United States, and its missionary school and cemetery had been among the first of its kind in America...

"Miss?"

An old man in a clerical collar and a cassock hobbled towards her. Carrie wondered how he could stand wearing so much black on such a hot day.

"Your car is probably fine, miss," said the old priest, pointing at her Anima. "The Animas tend to have little hiccups in front of the church, that's all. Once you get past the intersection, you should be fine."

"This happens a lot?" said Carrie.

The priest chuckled. "Oh, yes. A couple times a week, we'll see one of the Carnicera Motors people stopped in front of the church with the hood of their Anima up. Not that it does any good, since the Anima doesn't have a motor." He sighed and shook his head. "I even called the Carnicera Motors company about it, asked what was happening."

"What did they say?" said Carrie.

The priest smiled. "They said that the Anima was fine and any problems were the result of driver error. Or, in fewer words, they said nothing." He shook his head. "Off the record, the young man I spoke with said that buried power lines can, in certain circumstances, cause drops of five to ten miles an hour in the Anima's speed."

"You don't seem to believe that," said Carrie.

"I don't," said the priest. "I called the power company after that. There aren't any buried power lines near the church."

"Really," said Carrie. Something began to scratch at the back of her mind, and she stuck out her hand. "My name's Carrie."

The old man shook it. "Father William."

"What do you think of the Anima?" said Carrie.

William shrugged. "Supposed to save the world, or so the media says. No more pollution, no more wars over oil. I reckon that will be a good thing."

"You don't believe it?" said Carrie.

William laughed. "No, I don't. I used to teach physics in a Catholic high school in Chicago, before I came out to Arizona for retirement. I taught the first law of thermodynamics for thirty-five years, Miss Carrie."

"Energy can neither be created nor destroyed."

William smiled, and for a moment the old priest did indeed look like a teacher. "Yes! Very good. Energy has to come from somewhere. And I think it is suspicious that Carnicera Motors will not tell anyone where the energy for the Anima comes from."

"There's more to it than that, isn't there?" said Carrie.

William hesitated.

"What is it?" said Carrie.

"What do you think," said William at last, "of the Anima?"

Carrie shrugged, decided to be honest. "I don't like it."

"Why not?"

"I don't like the way it makes me feel," said Carrie. "The silence...it's just too much. And this might sounds crazy, but whenever I drive that thing, it feels like someone is watching me."

William sighed. "This will sound even crazier. But when I was a young man, I helped my bishop with an exorcism." He looked away, as if embarrassed to admit it.

"An exorcism?" said Carrie.

"I know that people do not believe in demons nowadays," said William. "I didn't, not at first. And the young woman we saw...I thought she was psychologically disturbed. But the things I saw her do, heard her say, the fear she made me feel..." He shivered, despite the heat. "I took a ride in a Anima once, a few weeks ago. Miss Carrie, I felt exactly the same way in that car as I did during that exorcism, and a million dollars wouldn't make me get into an Anima again."

"Really," said Carrie. She did not believe in demons, or angels, or in God. Not after all the horrible things she had seen during her career.

But she could not deny that getting into the Anima made her want to scream.

"I think," said Carrie at last, "I think I know what you mean."

"If I had known that Carnicera Motors would build their plant in Blue Paradise, I would not have retired here," said William. He shrugged. "I feel better, sleeping on consecrated ground, to tell the truth."

Wait.

"Consecrated ground?" said Carrie, her thoughts racing. "The historical marker says there's a cemetery here. Where is it?"

"It was moved," said William, blinking. "When Blue Paradise widened Main Street back in the seventies, or so I'm told. The graves were moved out back and the coffins reburied. The cemetery used to be right where...right where Main Street is now..."

He looked at her, blinking.

"Right where the Animas have trouble," said Carrie.

"Exactly there," said William. "Miss Carrie...I don't know who you are, or what you are looking for...but I will pray for you. I think you will need it."

"You're probably right," said Carrie.

###

She hurried back to the Anima, thumb working over her Blackberry. She pulled up the map application, and did a search. There was another Catholic church in a town twenty miles north of here.

And undoubtedly the church had been consecrated.

Carrie wondered if she had gone insane, if the pressure of her last assignment had made her snap. She couldn't seriously be considering this.

Six times. Her Anima had glitched in front of the church six times.

Right where the consecrated cemetery had once been.

She got into the Anima and drove, covering the twenty miles in fifteen minutes.

###

The town’s name was Green Rock. It had plenty of rocks, a few houses and struggling businesses along a cracked road, but nothing green. The Catholic church looked even older than the one in Blue Paradise, but a sign out front said that masses were held every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday at six, eight, and ten.

Carrie drove around the church, pulled into the parking lot. Nothing happened. The Anima did not so much as tremble. She did a circle around the empty lot a few times, feeling ridiculous. Then she sighed and drove past the church, aiming for the back driveway.

The car shuddered, slowed down, almost halted. Her right front wheel had gone off the crumbling asphalt, onto the red gravel of the church's yard.

Onto consecrated ground, presumably.

She drove around the parking lot a dozen more times. And every time, every single time, that one of her wheels touched the church's yard, the Anima shuddered and slowed down.

This was madness. She couldn't seriously be considering this, could she?

Again she brought up the map application on her BlackBerry, and drove another forty miles to the next Catholic church. This town seemed a bit more prosperous, and its Catholic church looked like a thriving modern parish. No doubt the priest gave his homilies with a PowerPoint presentation playing in the background.

And the Anima reacted the exact same way. When she drove past the church, the car shuddered, slowed down. When she pulled away, it speed up again.

She did it five more times.

Then she had seen enough, and the strange silence within the car had gotten too much to bear. She pulled over to the curb, got out, and leaned against the door, shaking.

What the hell had Carnicera done?

###

It was time for some research.

Carrie drove back to the Blue Paradise hotel as fast as she dared. Once she reached the parking lot, she scrambled out of the car, stopped, looked back at the Anima.

She stooped and popped the hood.

The steel sphere rested on its cradle. Somehow Carnicera had found a way to make this thing power a car...and it faltered whenever it passed consecrated ground. Carrie picked it up, the metal icy beneath her fingers.

Energy had to come from somewhere.

Where had Carnicera gotten the energy for the Anima?

Carrie returned to her room, set the sphere on the desk, opened up her laptop, and started typing. Her research had focused on Carnicera the environmentalist, on Carnicera the industrialist. Not on Carnicera the New Age guru.

Or, she soon realized, on Carnicera the occultist. The press, in adulation of the man who would save the world, had papered over the darker parts of his past. But the information was there.

Before he had became a New Age charlatan, Carnicera had claimed to be a magician, and not the sort who pulled rabbits out of hats. He self-published a book of spells for contacting the pagan gods of pre-Christian Europe, complete with detailed instructions for blood sacrifices. He claimed to speak to the dead, and had held séances for grieving relatives, right up until the racketeering investigations began. He had even gone to Iraq, shortly after the war had begun, claiming that he would commune with the spirits of long-dead Sumerian and Babylonian priests. His antics offended the native Shiites, and the provisional government threw him out of the country as a troublemaker.

Carrie leaned back from her laptop, gazing at the sphere.

Carnicera's career was that of a huckster, and by rights he should have been operating a psychic hotline or selling tarot cards on late-night television. Yet he had somehow built a car that required neither gas nor a battery, a car that had no discernable power source.

A car that stopped working on consecrated ground.

It was past midnight. Carrie went to bed, half-hoping, half-fearing that she would have the strange dream again.

###

She did.

This time, though, she stood in a scene of mist and swirling darkness, watching as an observer. Two grim-looking men dragged a girl of ten or eleven between them, her mouth gagged, her wrists and ankles bound. They flung her upon an altar of rough stone.

Or was it an altar? It looked almost liked a tablet, a stele, laid upon its side, its surface covered with strange writing that Carrie could not place. Wait - cuneiform, that was it, she recognized it from a college class.

As she watched, the two men tied the girl to the altar, just as they had in the first nightmare. Even as the thought came to her, Carnicera appeared in the gloom, a massive hammer in his left hand.

In his right he carried a shining steel nail.

###

Carrie awoke, blinked sweat from her eyes, and hurried to the desk.

It took her sixty minutes with a hammer and a pair of pliers to tear open a hole in the metal sphere, but it gave way in the end. She reached inside and pulled out the metal nail in its heart.

The shining steel nail.

Identical to the one she had seen in the dream.

Her hands were shaking. She was hallucinating, or she had a brain tumor, or...

A drop of blood fell on the desk. She had cut her hand on the jagged edge of the torn metal sphere. More blood dripped from her hand, smearing across the steel nail.

The nail turned cold, as if it had been in a freezer for days. Carrie yelped and dropped it. The nail clanged against the desk, the noise echoing inside Carrie's head.

When she looked up, the little girl from the dream sat across from her.

Carrie did not remember moving. One second she sat at the desk. The next she stood with her back against the wall, breathing hard, gun gripped in both hands.

The little girl did not move. Did not blink.

Did not breathe.

"Who are you?" said Carrie.

The girl did not move. But her eyes rolled to the laptop, still sitting open on the table. The keys began to clatter, moving of their own volition. Microsoft Word appeared on the screen, and letters appeared on the blank white pixels.

Katrina.

"Your name is...was...Katrina?" said Carrie.

Again the keys clattered.

Katrina.

"You're dead? You're a ghost?" said Carrie.

The girl's expression did not change. But the room shivered, the furniture rattling, the walls thumping and shuddering, the curtains flapping, even though Carrie felt no breeze.

The laptop's keys clattered.

Dead. Murdered. Murdered. Murdered.

"Who murdered you?" said Carrie. "Carnicera?"

Again the room shuddered, and one of the chairs fell to the floor.

Murdered. Murdered. Murdered.

The room shook, and some dust fell from the ceiling. Carrie grabbed at the wall for balance.

Murdered. Murdered, murdered, MURDERED MURDERED MURDERED HE MURDERED ME HE MURDERED ME!!!

Bit by bit the shaking stopped, but the dead little girl's eyes remained on Carrie the whole time.

"That's you making the room shake, isn't it?" said Carrie.

He hurt me. He hurt me.

"Jesus," muttered Carrie. "You're a...a poltergeist. A psychokinetic spirit."

She knew the terms. She had read up on parapsychology hoaxes for a case, years ago. She had thought the only people who talked about parapsychology and psychokinesis were hucksters looking to defraud the gullible of their money.

Apparently, she had been wrong.

"That's how Carnicera is powering his Animas, isn't it?" said Carrie. "With...poltergeists."

He murdered me so he could be rich.

"How?" said Carrie. "How is that even possible?"

Katrina's lifeless eyes rolled towards the laptop. A squeal of static came from the speakers, and the screen flickered and danced.

When the image cleared, Carrie saw her nightmares on the screen.

She watched as the two men dragged the little girl, dragged Katrina, to the stone altar. But it wasn't actually stone. It was a car-sized tablet of sun-dried mud, its surface covered in lines of spidery cuneiform. The two men tied Katrina to the tablet and stepped back as she struggled and fought and wept into the gag.

Then Alfred Carnicera stepped into the picture, hammer and nail in hand.

The very nail, Carrie realized, that she now held in her hand, smeared with her drying blood.

And as she watched, Carnicera placed the nail against Katrina's temple and pounded it through her head with three heavy blows of the hammer. Katrina shrieked, shuddered, and died, her blood spilling into the grooves of the cuneiform like water flooding an empty canal.

The tablet began to glow, the symbols burning with their own inner fire. The spike in Katrina's temple flared with a light of its own. Carrie heard Katrina screaming in agony, even though the girl lay lifeless in her own blood. Then the screams dimmed, and Carnicera stooped and wrenched the nail free.

"Who would have thought," he said, "that going into automotive manufacturing would have been so easy?"

His helpers laughed, and the image faded from Carrie's laptop.

"That's how he's doing it," whispered Carrie. "That...tablet. It trapped you in that nail. And then he uses the nail to power the Anima."

He murdered me.

Carrie's hand closed into a fist, the edges of the nail digging into her palm. Somehow, Carnicera had found a way to power his cars with the souls of murdered victims. And Carnicera Motors had put out thousands of Animas since last year. God, how many people had Carnicera fed into that tablet of his?

She didn't know, but she was going to find out, and bring him down.

She slipped the nail into the interior pocket of her jacket, returned her gun to its holster, and headed towards the door.

The keyboard clattered, and Katrina looked up at her.

They are coming for you.

Carrie blinked. "Who?"

Right then her hotel door burst open. Two men stood framed in the doorway. Carrie recognized them both. They were Carnicera's helpers, the ones who had carried Katrina to the tablet.

One held a Taser.

Carrie scrambled for her gun, but it was too late. The Taser's needles drove into her belly, and the shock knocked her to the floor. The men stooped over her, pressing a damp cloth over her face, and a chemical smell flooded her nostrils.

Everything went black.

###

Carrie awoke on a concrete floor, her wrists and ankles tied. Her gun was gone, and the nail in her pocket dug against her side. Her eyes focused, and she saw the interior of a gloomy, empty warehouse, lit only by a few lights hanging from the ceiling.

And a short distance away, she saw the mud tablet.

"Ah." Carnicera's voice, with that faux-Spanish accent. "You're awake."

He stepped into her field of vision, barefoot, wearing only a black track suit.

"You..." He hadn't gagged her. She worked moisture into her throat. "You...I know what...I know..."

"You know how the Anima works?" said Carnicera. "You don't, not really. But I had you followed. When my men saw you driving in circles around that church...well, we knew you had figured at least part of it." He sighed. "In retrospect, building the factory in a state with so many churches was not a good decision."

"I know how you do it," spat Carrie. "I know that you murder people on that damn tablet, turn them into ghosts to power your cars."

"Really," said Carnicera, and for a moment unease flickered across his face. "You're cleverer than I thought." He gestured at the tablet. "I found it in Iraq, in some Sumerian ruins. The ancient Sumerians had legends of priests who could create chariots that moved without horses, without oxen. I found out how they did it. This tablet. They called it the Shackle of Souls. The spirit of anyone killed upon this tablet can be bound into a physical object, their rage and pain eternally preserved, like a fly in amber. And that pain and rage can create psychokinetic force...hence, the Anima." He smiled. "Elegant, no?"

"You're a monster," said Carrie.

To her surprise, he seemed hurt by that. "Am I? No. No, I am a visionary. Fossil fuels will run out someday. Pollution is destroying our world. The only truly renewable resource is people. All those people, those worthless, resource-consuming people. They shall build the future. I foresee a world when my cars fill the roads, when our factories and cities are powered not by fossil fuels, but by the limitless rage and despair of those who otherwise would have led wasteful, useless lives."

"And you're telling me this," said Carrie, "because you're going to kill me."

"What?" said Carnicera. "That would be wasteful."

He looked at the Shackle of Souls and grinned.

Fear struck Carrie like a bucket of freezing water. " No."

"Yes," said Carnicera. "You've caused me a lot of trouble. Even before your superiors sent you here. That trailer of dead kids? They were supposed to have come here. You set my production schedule back by months. So I suppose it's only fair that you help fill the gap, no?"

Fear vanished in white-hot rage. "You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch!"

"That's good," purred Carnicera. "That rage will make you all the more potent in your new form. You should consider it a blessing. You will have a form of immortality. Your rage will still power a car a thousand years from now."

He reached up, opened the front of his track suit, tossed his jacket aside, and Carrie flinched in revulsion. Dozens of steel nails pierced his arms, running up his forearms and biceps in a neat row.

"What the hell?" she said.

"Psychokinetic force has many uses," said Carnicera. "It can power a car or a factory. Or...it can enhance one's physical strength and speed, rejuvenate the flesh. I can move faster than a bullet and lift more than ten men, now. And I will live for centuries, long enough to see my new world made."

He lifted Carrie with one hand, as if she weighed nothing at all, and tossed her upon the tablet. She hit it with a bone-rattling thump, the nail digging hard into her side. She tried to scramble away, but Carnicera reached down and tied her hands and wrists to posts at either end of the tablet.

“Keep struggling," said Carnicera, laughing. "It will charge your spirit with all the more psychokinetic power.”

He turned away, walking to a nearby table.

Carrie felt nothing but fury. He was not going to get away with this!

But it looked like he would.

She could not move her wrists or her ankles, and she watched as he picked up a hammer from the table, examined it for a moment, put it down again. The muscles in his arms flexed, as if in anticipation of the killing blow, the nails in his skin glistening...

The nails...

The nail in Carrie's pocket dug against her side. She had landed at an angle, the tip resting hard against her skin.

"Help me," whispered Carrie. "This is your chance. You want to take revenge on Carnicera? Then help me. Help me now."

The nail grew icy cold, so cold that it seemed to burn against her flesh.

Carnicera turned, smiling, a hammer in hand.

Carrie gritted her teeth and slammed against the tablet as hard as she could. The nail plunged into her side like a spike of burning ice, and she gasped in sudden agony.

Then the agony vanished, drowning in a growing tide of rage.

But the rage wasn't hers. She heard Katrina's voice in her head, heard her screaming. And her screams were not of pain, or torment.

Of rage. Of vengeance denied.

Carrie turned her head, watched Carnicera approach, and realized that she could see the enslaved spirits in the nails, sobbing and wailing, enslaved by the blood spilled upon the Shackle of Souls.

Carnicera stopped, shifted the hammer to one hand, and produced a long steel nail in the other.

Carrie moved.

Katrina's rage surged through her like a drug, and the cords binding her wrists and ankles parted like wet paper. Carrie exploded to her feet, moving so fast that the air around her roared. She saw Carnicera's eyes widen in sudden shock, and then she was on him. Both her fists drove into his belly, and the power of Katrina's psychokinetic rage seized him and flung him spinning into the air.

But Carnicera had the power of dozens of enslaved spirits at his command. His tumble righted itself, and he landed in a loose crouch, his eyes amused.

"Well done, Miss Harker!" he said. "It seems you figured out even more than I expected. Now let me show you what I have learned!"

He smashed his fist down, shattering part of the floor, and began flinging bowling-ball sized chunks of concrete so fast that they might have been bullets. Carrie dodged, moving with the speed Katrina's wrath gave her. But she had only one spirit augmenting her strength and speed, while Carnicera had dozens. A chunk of hurtling concrete clipped her shoulder, knocked her off balance, while the next brushed her leg, sending her to the floor.

Carnicera's scornful laughter filled her ears.

Carrie stumbled to one knee, painting. Blood dripped down her side from the nail wound, from the gashes the concrete had torn in her leg and side. She felt light-headed. Blood loss, probably, combined with terror and exhaustion. She remembered how the blood pouring from Katrina's head had bound the child's soul to the nail, the blood spilled upon the Shackle of Souls...

A Shackle...

Blood had shackled Katrina and the others to the steel nails.

Could blood also free them?

Carrie grabbed the hammer and staggered to the ancient clay tablet.

"Good!" said Carnicera, still laughing as he strolled towards her. "You see the inevitable!"

Carrie ripped the nail from her side, hot blood welling over the cold steel. The strength and power of Katrina's bottomless rage vanished. Dizziness rushed through Carrie's head, and she dropped to her knees before the tablet. But she still had enough strength to slam the nail against the ancient clay, to raise the hammer over her head...

Carnicera's laughter came to an abrupt stop.

"What are you doing?" he said. "Stop! Stop!"

He rushed at her in a blur, moving faster than her eye could track.

But he was too late. Carrie brought the hammer down with all her strength, driving the bloodstained nail into the tablet.

The tablet rocked out of all proportion to the blow. For a moment crimson fire blazed in the cuneiform grooves. Then the Shackle of Souls shattered with a deafening crack, knocking Carrie backwards, jagged chunks of clay ripping at her face and arms. The nail rolled from her fingers, bouncing off the leg of the table, and shattered into a dozen jagged pieces.

Katrina's spirit had been freed.

And Carnicera screamed, falling to his knees, clawing at his arms. He managed to rip one nail from his arm, then two, then three. But it was too late. All at once every nail in his arms shattered with explosive power as the captive poltergeists fled, freed from the Shackle's binding power. His arms vanished in a crimson mist, his face and throat and chest torn to shreds by flying metal fragments.

Carnicera, or what was left of Carnicera, toppled in a pool of gore, and did not move.

A wind blew through the warehouse, wild and fierce, and Carrie heard a storm of voices whispering in her ears. Satisfaction. Vindication. Vengeance taken.

And gratitude.

Then the wind faded, the voices stopped, and she was alone.

She tore her jacket into strips, bandaged her wounds, stole a conventional car, and managed to get to the clinic in Blue Paradise before she passed out.

###

It was the biggest scandal of the century.

The night Carnicera died, every single Anima ever produced stopped working, all at once. No one could figure out why. For that matter, no could figure out how Carnicera had died. His body looked as if it had been ripped apart by a bomb, but the warehouse bore no trace of explosives, nor could the police explain what a shattered Sumerian tablet was doing among the wreckage. Finally, the police blamed his death on radical environmentalists, an explanation that satisfied no one.

Carrie never told her superiors the truth. It was not as if they would have believed her. Her career more or less stalled, and she found herself shuffled into increasingly unimportant assignments.

She didn't care.

Her nightmares, at least, had finally stopped. The children had been avenged.

Concession Speech

This is a short story I wrote after the American presidential election of 2008. I don't think any politicians have actually made pacts with evil extradimensional entities, but I wouldn't rule it out.

Jim Meslier sold his soul to become President.

This, in itself, did not trouble him.

“You never really believed in souls, did you?” said the teenaged medium he paid to make the pact. She looked like a typical street prostitute; pale, too thin, needle tracks on her bony arms. Yet her glaring eyes never, ever blinked, and her expression looked as if something wore her face as a mask. “So you’re not really losing anything, are you? Sign here, my dear, and you will be President.”

Jim pricked his finger and signed the contract in blood.

All in all, he thought it had gone rather well. Besides his soul, he had only been required to give daily speeches praising the noble spirit that strove to free men from all weaknesses, limitations, and laws. It wasn’t hard. All the consultants said the proles ate that religious shit up. None of it troubled him.

What troubled him was the fact that he had sold his soul, and he was still losing the goddamn election.

The devil was a freaking incompetent.

Close to midnight on Election Day, Jim sat slumped in his chair, watching the enormous screen covering one wall of campaign headquarters. CNN was on, showing the Electoral College returns. His opponent’s total started with a 3.

Jim’s count started with a 1.

Not good.

“You’re going to have to concede,” said Bill, his campaign manager, looking stricken.

Jim threw his coffee mug at the man.

Bill stepped aside. “All your supporters are gathered in the auditorium. We’re ready for the speech.”

“Fine,” said Jim, rubbing his forehead. “Fine. Let me just splash some water on my face.” He walked across the room, feeling the eyes of his staff upon him. His Secret Service escort fell around him.

He was going to miss the Secret Service escort.

Jim locked himself in the bathroom. What had gone wrong? He’d done everything right, hadn’t he? Said all the right words, mouthed all the necessary banalities, kissed the appropriate minority asses. But he had been promised! Sure, Wall Street and Hollywood had promised him the election, but that didn’t matter.

He’d gotten it in writing.

Jim reached into his suit jacket and pulled out the contract. The thin black lines of scrawled Latin and the scabbed smear of his name infuriated him. He ripped the contract in half, and in half again, and threw the confetti into the toilet. Some contract! The prince of this world indeed.

“Screw you,” muttered Jim, flushing the toilet. He sighed and splashed some water on his face. He’d been had, that was clear. That baleful-eyed teenager had probably laughed herself sick as she spent his forty thousand dollars.

He shut off the faucet and looked in the mirror.

His reflection winked.

Jim stepped back. He waved his hand in front of the glass. The reflection waved back. Jim blinked a few times, and saw nothing but his own face. He really ought to get some more sleep. Well, he’d have plenty of time for it now.

He left the bathroom, the toilet still gurgling, and the Secret Service agents formed up around him. Jim walked through the hallways, a knot of his aides following, and paused at the entrance to the auditorium. Bill the campaign manager went on stage to introduce him.

A strange reluctance seized Jim. For a moment every fiber in his body screamed for him to turn, to walk, to run away. He could concede in the morning. The sight of the stage filled him with dread. Sweat dripped down his face, his hands shaking.

“Sir,” said one of the Secret Service men, “are you all right?”

“Fine,” mumbled Jim. “I’m fine.”

“Jim Meslier, the next President of the United States!”

Oh, hilarious.

Jim staggered out on stage, shook hands, and took the podium. Ten thousand people filled the auditorium, chanting his slogan over and over again.

“Freedom! Freedom from boundaries! Freedom! Freedom from boundaries!”

Jim opened his mouth. He intended to say the usual concession tropes, the general banalities about the nation’s future. Needed to keep himself viable for the next election, after all.

Something else came out.

“I concede nothing!” Jim thundered. “Now is our hour. The strong take, and weak submit!”

The words were coming out of his mouth, but it was like listening to someone else speak.

“Look!” screamed Jim, wheeling on Bill. “I will show you how to make yourselves free!”

He ripped open Bill’s shirt and plunged his hands into his chest. His fingers drove through the flesh like knives through clay. Bill fell to his knees with a shriek, blood gushing across Jim’s hand. Jim ripped free the heart, held it aloft, and took a massive bite. The blood poured over his chin, and strings of red meat flew from his lips as he shrieked.

“Freedom!”

The crowd screamed it back to him.

###

Three and a half years later, the resistance was crushed. Cities had been razed, pogroms carried out, reeducation camps filled, mass graves dug.

And Jim Meslier, or at least the thing that had taken up residence inside his skull, got to be President of the United States after all.

Mary Jane's Garden

From 2006 to 2008, I had the misfortune of living in an apartment complex inhabited by college students. My next door neighbors smoked marijuana at all hours, and regardless of one's feelings about the War on Drugs and the legal status of weed, marijuana smoke is the most absolutely vile smell (rather akin to burned hair), and it gets in everything. One night, after coming home to the customary haze in the hallway, I wrote this story in a fit of pique...

The building was neither a hospital nor a rehabilitation clinic, but instead sort of an outpatient home for addicts. Assisted living for men and women whose minds had been shattered by their poison of choice.

The institution didn’t advertise. Mitchell had worked hard to find out about this place.

And he’d found out a few other things, things that would make one hell of an article.

He walked to the secretary’s desk, notebook and folder in hand. She looked up from her typewriter and gave him a polite smile. “Good morning, sir. What can I do for you?”

“I’m here to see James Brauch,” said Mitchell, scanning the doors behind her desk.

The woman’s smile didn’t waver. “Do you have appointment?”

“Nope,” said Mitchell, “but he’s going to want to see me.” He spotted Brauch’s name on one of the doors and strode around the desk.

“Sir, you can’t go back…sir! Sir!”

Mitchell opened the door to a cavernous office with a thick carpet and wood-paneled walls. Behind a massive desk sat a thin, graying man, leafing through a stack of papers. He looked up and blinked watery eyes as Mitchell approached.

“I know how you made your money, Brauch,” said Mitchell.

“Mr. Brauch, should I call the police?” said the secretary.

“That’s all right, Rachel,” said Brauch, in the raspy voice of a lifelong smoker. “This will take just a moment. Could you wait outside, please?”

Rachel gave Mitchell once last glower and left, closing the door behind her.

Brauch folded his hands on the desk. “You know how I made my money?”

“I do,” said Mitchell, taking a deep breath. His big chance was here at last. “See, back in the Sixties, there were stories about marijuana and rock musicians.”

“There were?” said Brauch. “Rock musicians smoked marijuana, you say? What an astonishing thing.”

“Don’t play dumb,” said Mitchell. “According to the story, all the musicians who really hit it big bought their pot from the same supplier. Joplin. Hendrix. The Beatles. The Stones. All the big ones. They all got their weed from the same man. They said this guy sold the good stuff, stuff that could really inspire you.”

“Magical inspirational marijuana?” said Brauch. “Indeed. Perhaps you’ve indulged in a bit too much yourself. This is certainly quite a flight of fancy you’ve spun.”

“It’s not a flight of fancy,” said Mitchell, “if you can prove it.”

He opened his folder and began pushing photographs across the desk. The first showed Jimi Hendrix backstage, a joint in hand. Brauch was clearly visible in Hendrix's entourage. The second picture showed the Beatles at a party, also smoking. Brauch stood behind them, a paper bag in hand. The third showed the Grateful Dead at Woodstock, Brauch standing to the left, paper bags in either hand.

Brauch said nothing, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

“Should I show you more?” said Mitchell.

“No, you've made your point,” said Brauch, letting out a breath. “We take care of people here, people who don’t have anyone else to help them, but you want to shut us down. I suppose you’re with the FBI?”

“What?” said Mitchell. “No, no. I’m not a cop. I’m a writer.”

Brauch blinked. “You’re a reporter?”

“Mitchell Conner. You might have heard of me? I’ve written a bunch of stuff for USA Today.”

“I’m afraid,” said Brauch, “that I don’t reach such lowbrow publications.”

Mitchell chose to ignore that. “Look. All I want to do is interview you, that’s it. I’ll keep everything anonymous. Think of the article it’ll make. The mysterious pot dealer who inspired the Sixties’ biggest stars. See, all the Baby Boomers, they’re all working at conglomerates and voting for Reagan now, but they like to think that they’re still hippies. They love the nostalgia. An article like this, it’ll make me famous.”

“You only want to write an article?” said Brauch.

Mitchell nodded.

Brauch stared at him for a long time, so long that Mitchell felt a tremor of fear. He pushed the absurd feeling aside. Mitchell could call the cops on Brauch at any time.

Yet he still felt uneasy.

“All right,” said Brauch, smiling. “You can write your article. In fact, I’ll tell you everything. I’ll even show you where I harvest the marijuana.”

“You’re still in business?” said Mitchell.

“Of course,” said Brauch, standing. “There are still artists out there who need inspiration, you know. And this facility doesn’t pay for itself.” He crossed to the wall and touched a switch. A section of wooden paneling swung aside, revealing a set of concrete steps leading into the earth. “This way.”

Mitchell followed Brauch. The stairs ended in a cellar with cinderblock walls and a concrete floor. Mitchell expected to see rows of marijuana plants, perhaps with sprinklers and lamps hanging from the ceiling. Instead, the cellar was empty. Well, almost empty. A pile of heavy burlap sacks sat in one corner, and the floor had been covered in spray-painted gang graffiti.

Or, at least, it looked like gang graffiti. Sort of. In fact, it looked more like hieroglyphics, really, the symbols tracing a spiral across the floor.

“What’s this place?” said Mitchell.

Brauch picked up one of the sacks and crossed to the center spray-painted spiral. “It’s where I get the product. The good stuff, as you might say.”

“You grow it down here?” said Mitchell.

Brauch blinked. “Grow it? No, of course not. I merely harvest it.”

“Down here?” said Mitchell. “What, you grow weed through a concrete floor? That’s quite a…”

Brauch produced nasty-looking knife, and Mitchell’s heart fluttered in sudden alarm. Before Mitchell could say anything, Brauch slashed the knife across his own left palm. Drops of blood fell upon the floor, upon the crude symbols, and Brauch began speaking in an odd, sing-song voice. Chanting, almost, in what sounded like Latin.

“What…what are you doing?” said Mitchell, stunned. Had Brauch started sampling his own product? He’d never known someone on a marijuana high to self-mutilate, but…”

“I’m bandaging my hand,” said Brauch with a smile, wrapping several layers of gauze over his palm. “Where we’re going, you definitely don’t want to get a cut dirty. Trust me on this.”

A wind sprang up.

It was cold, bitterly cold, and reeked of rotting meat. Brauch took a quick step sideways, and an instant later a pillar of blazing fire sprung up from the floor. Mitchell stumbled back with an alarmed shout. The fire started to spread, and Mitchell thought that a gas line had ruptured, that the building would explode…

But the fire stopped, and seemed to condense somehow…and became a portal, a doorway. And through that doorway Mitchell saw an alien place.

Skies of writhing fire, the flames seeming to form screaming faces.

Hills and mountains the color of congealing blood.

And fields of the biggest cannabis plants he had ever seen.

“Come on,” said Brauch, his voice low and urgent. “We don’t have much time.” He stepped towards the strange doorway. “Don’t you want to write your article?”

This had to be a hallucination. Maybe Brauch had drugged him. Yet it would make one hell of an article. Mitchell nodded and followed Brauch through the doorway.

The air beyond stank of sulfur and dead things. Brauch led Mitchell into a broad valley, jagged mountains rising in the distance. The marijuana fields covered the flat ground in all directions, rippling in the stinking wind.

“Hold this open,” said Brauch, pushing the burlap sack into Mitchell’s hands. He knelt and began shoving marijuana plants into the bag.

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Driven

Concession Speech

Mary Jane's Garden