Now it was night. I shook my head to paint the sky with zigzag moon-streaks. Across the water the antenna was aglow and poking at the darkness, sending "The Bionic Woman" into hundreds of thousands of cozy homes. The punchcard pattern of lit-up windows below it had to be some kind of code. I thought I might just break it if I really let go. Really let go now.
Lord, you can see that it's true, sang the band.
I tried to make myself innocent. I tried to make myself worthy of the truth. I remembered what Magic Girl said before. Was something happening now? Surely something was happening. Something.
The bass player was out of tune and he tried to fix it in the middle of the song, playing a note again and again as he adjusted. He made it sharp before he made it right, and he played three slow, sharp notes in a row that sounded like the moaning of some beast from another universe. I was staring at the towers at the time. Ohhhw, ohhhw, ohhhw. Everything – all I thought I knew and trusted – disappeared – not from sight but from being – and I hung in the void, alight with terror. Ohhhw, ohhhw, ohhhw –
For a moment I saw it. The thing without a name.
The song ended. A pop went off and bright-red, incandescent trails arced across the sky.
I felt some kind of warm fluid flowing over the corner of my mouth. Blood? Was I bleeding? I touched it and examined my fingers. No. I was crying.
"Hey!"
I turned around to find Rick leaning weirdly towards me and Jim.
"Hey! Hey!"
"Hey what, man?" said Jim.
"Hey!"
"Hey man, what. What's up?"
"Jenny," Rick replied. More fireworks popped and cracked behind us.
"What about her, man?"
"She's gone."
"What do you mean, gone?"
"Gone can't find her, man."