What she said was
“Make me forget. Him. This. All of this. Give me sleep and when I wake, I no longer feel. I’m dead. Make me dead. Inside. Do that and you will get what you want.”
And forever broken and no longer strong enough to fight, she sank next to Samuel’s chair and, too wounded for tears, allowed the shadow to lift and carry her into the deepest of sleeps.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I still remember,” Lucky said before taking a long drag from her Echo, the hungry ghosts swarming Eidolon below. “You lied because I still remember.”
She’d fled Paris for America. Had given the dark what was promised. Fed its hunger. Had felt nothing, but still had dreams, nightmares, thoughts. Could still see her husband in tenuous shafts of light or the corners of steamy mirrors. Could almost catch his name when she first woke or when exhaustion forced her to stop and think and consider. The guilt was growing. The regret was strong. Had she the chance, the choice, to do it all again, she . . .
But no.
The thought was banished.
A year ago, she’d settled on Eidolon. Soon thereafter, her shadow grew silent. Its hunger no longer drove her. Her ledger black, she could breathe easy.
She glanced at the seething mass of vitriol clogging the street below. It stretched from curb to curb, one end to the other. Their bodies, torn and gashed and trembling, reaching as far as the eye could see.
“And where is your dark?” Evangelical said. She stood in the doorway, shaking the rain from her coat. Then fast, too fast, she was in the chair, tea in hand. In the kitchen she now was, her arm shoved deep in a cupboard. Then gone, the lock turning as she let herself in. Then, again, in the chair, her hand reaching to press against Lucky’s forehead, concerned her charge was running a fever. It was too fast. The past rushing, bleeding into the present. All of it too fast.
Lucky turned away to look out the window, her head confused and light and swimming. There were so many, she thought. So many dead. “I couldn’t have killed you all,” she said, her voice a whisper.
And below, in the rain, the crowd parting like the Red Sea, she appeared, her blonde hair bouncing, groceries in hand, her coat shining and wet. A moment later, the key turned in the lock.
Lucky took a breath and turned back.
“You didn’t.” Her salvation stood in front of her in a bloody red raincoat, past giving way to present. And this wasn’t fast. This was real. With a smile, she plopped down in the chair, the red running down the shoulder, across the lapels and wandering along the seam before dripping onto the carpet. “We need to talk.”
Lucky looked toward the strip of concrete below.
“You won’t find your answer down there,” the blonde said. “And, no, you didn’t have to kill them all. For some, the death of those they loved was enough. Those wounds never heal. You know that.”
Swallowing fast and hard, Lucky squeezed her eyes shut. Samuel came. Snoring in the chair. The empty tumbler of brandy. The newspaper folded open and resting on his stomach. The strips of skin offered and accepted in the private hell of her bathroom. But not enough. Never enough. The blood bubbling from his throat as he tried to say
Why?
“Have you ever wondered where your dark went?” Evangelical, still in her bloody raincoat, leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “Didn’t it seem odd that, after so many years of holding you tight, it’d suddenly let go?”
Lucky shook her head and shrugged. She reached between the cushions of her chair for her cigarettes.
“And them, down there,” her salvation said with a nod toward the window. “Why there? And why now?”
Lucky ignored her.
Her heart thumping, she retrieved the cigarettes from between the cushion and the arm of the chair. “The blood,” she said as she fought to steal the last smoke from the pack, her eyes on the window. “On your coat. Tell me.”
“You really don’t know, do you?”
She looked at Evangelical and then shook her head.
“The dark can’t get to you here. Whatever’s here, whatever is in this ground or crouching over this building, it’s much stronger than your dark. Whatever’s here is ancient. Relentless. So your dark can’t get to you. It can’t reach you or touch you.” She smiled. A slow grin that crept from ear to ear. “But we can get you. We can reach you and touch you.”
Evangelical grabbed Lucky’s shoulder and, gripped tight, forced her to turn, to face her. “So why in the hell would I tell you why there’s blood on my coat?” she said, her lips rising in a snarl. Her face was smeared red, blood soaked strands of blonde sticking to her cheeks and her forehead. “I’m showing you.”
She grabbed Lucky’s head between her hands and squeezed. “You’re here, you can’t get away and the time, finally, is right. I’ve waited forever for this. And I’m showing you.”
The bus depot. Lines of people, tickets in hand. The rain pounding the pavement outside. The stone ceiling arching high above.
The last kill. The last job. The nameless blond man with the round face and thin lips. The one with the look of terror in his eyes and the knuckles clenched white. Evangelical, a younger Evangelical, happy and light as she strode through the swoosh of the sliding glass doors swinging her suitcase.
Memories. New memories.
The shadow called. The shadow falling. The world growing just dark enough. The people, those navigating their way to gates, tickets in hand, slowing and stopping. The quiet coming as time ceased. Evangelical and Bobby Lee—of course it was her brother Bobby Lee—frozen in a final embrace.
Lucky looked around.
The ghosts of Eidolon surrounded her. They’d found their forms. Heads with bullet holes in temples and throats slit wide sat on shoulders. Torn lips bled as they stretched into spiteful grins or angry sneers. Eyes awash in tears blinked and narrowed and stared. Men, women, children. Infants. Old and young and all the colors of the human rainbow, they stood watching her.
There is a price . . .
Father appeared as did Yin Ying.
A price that must be paid
The stranger from the dock, his intestines in hand, joined them.
when your life,
Madame Xuo, perfect, polished and as pale as moonlight, stepped forward.
this life,
And the whisper, the familiar whisper, moved from the dark and into the light.
comes to its close.
Lucky wanted to speak, but the lump in her throat stole her words.
Gates were called. People moved. Luggage was carried or rolled behind on wheels that jumped and squeaked. The low rumble of living conversation returned to echo off the walls. The ghosts were gone. Evangelical stood, Bobby Lee’s hands cupping her face.
Before she knew it, she had moved behind him. Before she could stop it, the knife had slashed and sliced. Before she could catch her breath, Bobby Lee had turned and, seeing nothing but dark, turned back.
This was when Evangelical had screamed.
Lucky had forgotten.
Bobby Lee had fallen, his hand to his throat. The red sloshed between his fingers as he gripped Evangelical’s arm, then her shoulder, and finally her neck as he pulled himself up and out and away from the pain. She sobbed in disbelief. And knowing it was useless, she screamed.
She lifted her head and looked right at Lucky.
“I see you,” she said, her voice rising to a shout. “I SEE YOU!”
And then she stopped. The world stopped. Bobby Lee lay dying. Evangelical’s face red and streaked with grief, her eyes dazed and in shock as they looked at her. Strangers, confused and shocked, trapped as they stood, or bent, or kneeled to help.
“That’s the moment that killed me, Lucky.”
She turned to find Evangelical sitting in the chair. The bus depot was gone as were the rows of chair, the crackling of the PA system. The cup of Lipton balanced on her knees again, Eidolon had returned.
Four—Father, Madame, the man from the dock, and the g
host from the corner—remained, standing shoulder to shoulder.
Evangelical took a small sip. “I was done after that. You didn’t need to stab me. You didn’t need to kill me. My Bobby Lee dying in my arms was enough. The fear, the desperation, in his eyes. It was enough.
“No,” she said, placing the tea on the low table between them. The one with the warped middle, the steaming pots and the small plates of funeral food. “It was not enough. It was too much. It would have been easier if you’d stabbed me. Would have saved me weeks of sobbing. Of suffering a pain so great I’d howl with grief. An agony that had no end and no answer. It would have saved me overdosing.
“And that would have saved my father discovering his only child, his last child, face down in her own puke. It would have saved my family the nightmare of burying me on a beautiful summer day.” She stopped, her hand rising to lay flat against her forehead, the imagined cool of her palm perhaps calm and comforting. “And maybe, just maybe, my folks would have lived their last year in peace instead of pain. Maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t have turned the gun on her and then himself. Maybe, just maybe, there would have been a happy ending. That’s what they deserved, you know, my parents. A happy ending.”
“I’m sorry,” Lucky said.
“Really?” Evangelical said. “You’re sorry? Your cruelty caused ripples, Lucky. Ripples that became waves. Waves of sorrow that destroyed souls and shattered lives. That robbed people of happiness. Saying ‘I’m sorry’ does nothing, absolutely nothing, for that.” She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. Her blue eyes blinked from beneath her blonde bangs. “There are no words that can wipe the red from that ledger. And you know that.”
“So I die,” Lucky said, her hands trembling, the cigarette still unlit.
“Here.” Evangelical plucked it from Lucky’s hand, shoved it in her mouth and, lighting it, handed it back to her. “It’s your last one, isn’t it? Enjoy.”
Lucky took a long drag, her eyes on The Four waiting.
“Come,” her salvation said as she stood, her hand out to her. Lucky rose to join her. They went to the window.
“Death is too easy for you,” Evangelical said, her breath warm on Lucky’s cheek as she stood behind her, her arms wrapped around Lucky’s chest, her chin resting on Lucky’s shoulder. “To stab you, or slay you, or flay you, well, what does that do?”
They grew restless below. Ambled toward the building. Their bodies colliding as they fought each other to reach the wall and crawl toward the window and press against the glass.
She moved away from Evangelical. Crept behind the chair, her hands gripping the back. Madame stepped forward to stand next to Evangelical. As did Father, and the man from the docks, the ghost from the corner joining them. The Four now Five, they watched her.
Lucky closed her eyes as she took another drag, sucking the smoke deep, the Echo reduced to a cylinder of glowing ash.
She opened them.
The walls were red. And they stood tall, Evangelical, Father, the man from the docks and the ghost from the corner. Shoulder to shoulder, they waited and watched. Everything was tall. And narrow. Lucky felt strange. Her skin was moving, her insides shifting. She licked her lips and found her tongue was thick. She felt like she wanted to kneel, or lay, her legs feeling weak and small.
“The Nameless Dead need more than that, Lucky,” Evangelical was saying as the light turned dusty crimson. “Every cut, every slice. Every tear and sob and cry. Something quick and simple comes nowhere near to repaying that debt.”
The four of them were now so tall, it was as if she was lying beneath them, their faces looking down on her. And her body was nothing but pain. Aches and creaks, pops and cracks. A relentless wave of tense muscle and burning flesh and breaths that were much too quick and much too shallow.
“A life without consequence has a price,” Evangelical said.
The shadow came. Spread itself across Lucky. The sudden heat followed by an almost unbearable chill laying flat against her flesh to sink into her bones.
Yes, Lucky thought. Take me. Save me. I’m yours.
A breath later, it was gone. Lucky looked up to see it slip down the hall, up the walls and along the ceiling, spreading wide to stretch from side to side as it stood tall before collapsing into a skeleton still wrapped in expensive gold, the silk rustling as the dark burrowed underneath.
Something bumped against Lucky. She turned to look.
She knew that face. She’d loved that face.
Oh god no.
Twisted and stretched, he crawled next to her, his arms missing, his feet beginning at the hip, his flesh torn and scraped and bleeding.
“I’m sorry, Samuel,” she tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come, her teeth too big for her mouth and her tongue too clumsy and thick.
This wounded thing no longer the ghost hissing
Lucky the Killer, Lucky the Devil, Lucky the Shadow
from the corner, he inched along the floor, seven sleeping lumps, her aborted beloved, wiggling from his naked spine, the skin parted and peeled, as they suckled his flesh.
Hearing her, and then seeing her, he lunged, his teeth bared. They sunk into her shoulder, driven by the endless anger of a love betrayed. His razor-sharp teeth tore the flesh and chewed the muscle, his body growing plump as he feasted on her guilt.
She screamed and tried to get away. But she couldn’t move.
The angry Nameless Dead drew near, a pile
three hundred thousand deep
worming her way in a line
four miles long.
At the end of the hall, Madame’s skeleton carefully stood. In the dusty red light, Lucky could see the flesh grow. Pale and white, it slithered from the bone and snapped around her limbs, reaching up to her neck and the smooth of her skull. The kimono fell and rose as the darkness pumped fetid air into her dry lungs. Fingers stretched. The head circled on the neck. Hands rose to find the black wig with the high bun still on the head and turned it, adjusted it, made sure it was sitting just so.
A moment later, the eyes opened to blink and look around and see. The moment after that, the chin quivered, the long fingers rising to press against her dried, peeling lips.
A door opened, Yin Ying soon lumbering toward Madame Xuo the Living. The favored servant approached the woman and whispered in her ear. The tears came then, Madame’s face trembling as Yin Ying took her by the arm and, together, turned with her to walk down the hall, the throng swarming them. Ravenous teeth champing at their ankles. Arms thumping their calves. Yellowing nails scratching their flesh, the beads of blood shoved into slobbering mouths to be licked and sucked and savored. Sightless eyes on slimy faces turning, their noses lifting to catch the scent of hope, of freedom, that waited outside the hall.
Madame and Yin Ying reached the door.
It opened.
“Wait.” Throwing her one arm forward, Lucky, legless and wounded, struggled to pull herself forward, her fingernails scratching wood. Samuel clamped to her shoulder, her seven aborted beloved wandering along her back to stab and dig and burrow beneath the flesh, pulling her skin back to suckle the naked bone of her spine, she watched Madame as she, Yin Ying and the dark moved through the door, slipping free from this seething storm of endless torment.
***
They say the house still stands somewhere in the middle of modern Shanghai. They say that Madame Xuo, now very old, sits, silent and never seen, still sipping a brew as old as China itself, shadowed by a servant who stands too tall, walks too heavy, and offers slow dangerous smiles from a lopsided face.
And, it’s said, trapped behind the walls of an infamous room of red panels and splintered wood, live dangerously unlucky souls, forever haunted by their sins, their blinded eyes and broken bodies on an incessant search for a freedom always out of reach.
Much like the dragon whipping along the baseboards chasing a tail it’ll never catch.
APARTMENT 1B
BULLET
Monday, 3:24
PM
Five blue. Seven red. Four yellow.
He blinked the sleep from his eyes. Lifted his head from the mattress. Saw the shit hole on Eidolon Avenue he called home. The TV with the cracked screen sitting on the plastic crate. The yellowing walls with the rust colored streaks running from ceiling to floor. The scattered pizza boxes and cheeseburger wrappers. And his friends . . .
five blue, seven red, four yellow
sitting on the cheap ass coffee table.
That’s right, he thought. They were all there.
Five blue. Seven red. Four yellow.
He stretched and turned to the window. Kicked the sheet away from his legs. It was raining. And late.
Fuck.
Hated that job anyway.
And FUCK his foot hurt.
He sat up and turned his leg.
What the fuck?
A new tat. A snake. A small snake. A fuckin’ cartoon-ass fuckin’ garden snake or something. Some punk ass shit a prom queen flyin’ on Molly would get before getting fingered in the back of some quarterback’s Chevy.
And it wasn’t even good work. It sat above his ankle bone like, what the hell, two inches long maybe? Not very thick. Lines sloppy. Mouth closed. No fangs. Straight and lifeless and fuckin’ boring. And the coloring was all fucked up. It was sorta green, but . . . fuck me, yellow? Kinda yellow-green-blue? Who the fuck knew.
He could do better work while shaking off a five day binge. Hell, he’d done better work shaking from a five day binge.
And fuckin’ hell, I’m on one now, he thought as his guts clenched.
He fell back on the mattress and closed his eyes. Didn’t remember getting that tat. Didn’t remember much. Last night a blur. Yesterday a blur. Day before that and maybe before that, all of it a fuckin’ mess of random shit. He thought of stretching, then realized his body hurt too much. That he was too tired. And his mouth tasted like funk and fuck and pussy and shit. And the tat felt fresh. It still itched. Still kinda hurt. More than usual. Like a fresh sunburn that’d just been smacked or something.
Fuck. If he had someone, someone special or something, he’d feel better. Probably. They’d help. Or at least talk with him. Help him figure out what the fuck was up. Who the fuck knew? Maybe not.
Eidolon Avenue Page 6