Ink

by Jonathan Maberry

  “No, no, nooooo,” roared Monk as he whaled on the side of the man’s head with the sap. The buzzing sound of the needle changed with every blow, becoming higher and thinner.

  The blows should have knocked Spider out, but all they did was break the grip of teeth on flesh. The man canted sideways, his mouth smeared with fresh blood. Monk saw something on his throat and realized that, impossibly, it was a fly crawling slowly from collarbone to ear as if there were no savage battle under way.

  Except that it wasn’t really a fly.

  It was a tattoo of a fly. Realistic, full-color. Ink and art. But it was moving. Crawling inside Spider’s skin. Above and around them other flies swarmed. These were real, but the moment no longer was.

  Lord of the Flies.

  Monk pivoted on his hip and kicked out with both feet, catching Spider in the gut, lifting him, propelling him backward against the chair. Spider hit hard and dropped to his knees, and Monk was after him, grabbing a fistful of hair and jerking the man’s head sideways as he brought the blackjack down with savage force. The edge of it caught the fly as it crawled over Spider’s chin. There was a burst of colored light so bright it stabbed Monk’s eyes and then Spider fell, battered to unconsciousness, his jaw crushed.

  He crumpled to the floor and lay in a boneless sprawl, eyes rolled high.

  On the side of his face was the crushed fly. The other flies swirled away, backward and up and then gone into other rooms or under cabinets. Hiding.

  Hiding from Monk.

  Hiding from what had just happened.

  Monk, gasping and wheezing, bent over Spider, staring at the splash of tattoo ink in the shape of a smashed fly on the broken jaw of the madman.

  He reached out with a trembling finger and touched the ink. It was dry. As if it were a real tattoo. Like it had always been there.

  Monk staggered back until he thumped against the wall by the door.

  115

  The whole place was a red nightmare. What had Conan Doyle called it? A Study in Scarlet? Yeah. That. Outside Monk could hear the nightbirds screaming, even beneath the droning hiss of rainfall.

  Monk stuffed his blackjack into his pocket and tried to figure out how much trouble he was in. His left hand was bleeding through the bandage and there was probably some of his own blood in the mix on the floor. He tore some electrical cords out of the wall and used them to bind Spider’s wrists and ankles, and also checked his vitals. He was out and hurt, but alive. The swatted fly now appeared permanently inked, and the fact of that was freaking Monk out.

  Monk forced himself to look at the three corpses, but there was not enough left of them to identify. He held his palm over the flayed skin, but there was almost no warmth left. They’d all been dead for hours, maybe all day.

  He searched around for clothing and found a heap of rags in a corner, each item sliced by a very sharp knife. Amid the debris were wallets, and Monk was bemused to discover that one of the dead men was Dirty Gus.

  How and why he had been selected as a victim was beyond understanding. Monk could not begin to construct a scenario that connected his hunt for the bail skip to this bloodbath. Or to what was happening in town. Nothing.

  “The world is fucked in the head,” he told the dead man.

  The other two men were strangers, but Monk made a startling discovery as he went through their ID cards. One of them was named Alan Carney, but his business cards had the name Carnival Al on them, and an address in South Philadelphia. The other man was from out of state. Way out of state. California license in the name of Marcus P. Sanders. He also had business cards that gave his trade name. Malibu Mark.

  Both of them were tattoo artists.

  Monk was studying the cards when his cell vibrated. It was Patty.

  “Hey, Pats,” he said, forcing his voice to sound normal. “You okay?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “Nothing’s okay. You need to get back here right now.”

  “I’m in the middle of something and—”

  Suddenly there was a different voice on the line. “Mr. Addison? This is Chief Crow. I’m with Ms. Trang at her store. There have been some developments on her case and I’d appreciate it if you could come here right away. We stopped at your house and you were gone.”

  “I’m out of town,” Monk said.

  “How far out of town?”

  Monk hesitated, but remembered what Jonatha had told him about this man.

  “I’m in Doylestown,” said Monk. “And … there’s been some trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “The really bad kind and I’m not sure I want to tell a cop about it.”

  “Mr. Addison,” said Crow, “it might be better if you think of me as an ally in this fight rather than a cop.”

  “And which fight would that be, exactly?”

  “The fight to keep some kind of goddamn vampire from feeding on the memories of Tuyet Trang,” said Crow. “The memories stolen from Patty and the ones stolen from you. How about we start there.”

  Monk closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. The storm was building again outside and it felt to him as if it were raging even more ferociously in his chest.

  “Sure, fine,” he said. “You want to know what’s going on? How’s this? I broke into a tattoo parlor in Doylestown and found three people tied to chairs. Dead people, and they’d been skinned by the guy who owns the place. That son of a bitch attacked me and I beat the shit out of him. During that fight I saw one of his tattoos moving—actually crawling—on his skin. How’s that?”

  There was a pause, then Crow said, “Was it a tattoo of a fly?”

  The world was so still that even the storm seemed to hold its breath.

  “Mr. Addison—Monk—I really do think you need to come back to Pine Deep.”

  “Yeah,” breathed Monk. “But what about this shit right here?”

  “Did anyone see you go in there? No? How about you do this: wipe down every surface you touched and get the fuck out of there. I’ll call it in as an anonymous tip and make sure the right people show up to take control of the scene. These are all small towns in this part of Bucks County. Everyone watches everyone else’s back. I can make sure none of this falls on you. So, clean up and get out of there right damn now. We need you here. Patty needs you here.”

  Monk looked around and took a ragged breath.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Monk found a rag and began wiping down any surface he might have touched. His hands shook as he did this. And while he worked his mind spun furiously. What the hell was happening? As if in answer there was a crack of thunder so loud it seemed to split his head in half. Outside the rain was so heavy that he could barely see twenty feet. No one could see him, that was for sure. He turned his collar up, ducked his head, and ran like hell for his car.

  Despite the storm and the wind, the nightbirds followed.

  116

  Mike Sweeney stood by the door of Patty Cakes’s shop and watched the rain wash the streets clear of traffic. So far this was the heaviest downpour yet, which was saying something for a brutal season. Crow came over and stood next to him.

  “Feel like I should be out there,” said Mike quietly. “There are going to be lines down and accidents.”

  “Let the state cops handle the fender benders and PECO can fix the lines,” said Crow. “We’re exactly where we need to be.”

  Mike glanced at him and then over his shoulder at the three women. Patty and Gayle were seated in the two farthest chairs. Dianna was standing between them, but no one was speaking.

  After realizing that the dead fly on Monk’s porch was made from tattoo ink—a fact that jolted the day into a new and bizarre shape—they’d come here to talk with Patty. And found that she wasn’t alone. Dianna was a friend of Val’s, and had come here with her when Val had the ladybug and lightning bug tattoos done. Val often went to Dianna for spiritual readings and counseling. Gayle worked at the school where the twins went.

  Th
e three of them, each moderately hammered, poured out their stories of stolen tattoos and fractured memories. Mike had been deeply uncomfortable when Dianna and Gayle explained how they met, and that they’d slept together. Crow seemed to take it in stride, and Mike—not for the first time—thought that Crow was at his best when things were getting weird in town. He’d been a key figure in the town’s survival during and after the Trouble. Crow had grown up knowing that Pine Deep was not like other places. He’d always believed that there were things going bump in the dark.

  Mike’s path was different. He’d been a victim of the Trouble in a unique way, and those events had changed the nature of who and what he was forever. As far as either Val and Crow—or Jonatha—for that matter, knew, Mike was absolutely unique in terms of his biological, spiritual, and existential nature. A lone wolf in very point of fact.

  He touched Crow’s sleeve. “Boss, after hearing all that stuff, and given all we’ve found out, what’s the play here? I mean, if we come up with a suspect, do we arrest him? If so, on what charge? We’re on really shaky legal ground here. And you just compounded a felony—a handful of felonies—with what you told that Addison guy to do.”

  Crow pasted on that smile of his. The strange one. That smile he never showed to Val.

  “Kid, I have no goddamn idea what we’re doing or going to do,” he said just loud enough for Mike to hear. “I’m making this up as I go.”

  “That’s not particularly comforting.”

  Crow nodded. “Wasn’t meant to be.”

  117

  Monk raced back to Pine Deep as fast as the storm would allow. The wind whipped sheets of rain at him and it felt as if the car were smashing through a series of plate-glass windows. His faith in the tread left on his old tires was failing.

  “Come on,” he breathed as he steered around massive puddles and veered away from cars pulled to the side of the road by more cautious drivers. “Come on.”

  Off to his right, appearing out of the midnight gloom, was a cluster of white lights. And he realized with amazement that they were motorcycles. To be out on a bike in this rain was suicidal. They were coming down from the north, maybe from Crestville or someplace beyond it, following A-32 instead of taking the smaller farm roads. They were looping around the town to come up from the southeast, a route that would dump them onto the road Monk was driving, but a few miles back. But all these roads were going to be lakes soon. Monk didn’t want to have to pull over like he did a few nights ago, but if he had to he could drop down to fifteen or twenty and pick his way through. Those bikes were in real trouble.

  “Should have stayed home,” he said, though he might as well have been talking to himself.

  118

  Nogs was riding point, with Big Karl beside and a little behind. The rain and wind blew past them, pushing along the road as if it wanted them to reach the town.

  The others were riding in loose pairs behind them, going only as fast as the conditions would allow. Taking no risks beyond being out in a storm. Needing to get to where the Lord of the Flies wanted them to be.

  A fly crawled across Nogs’s face, its inky body flattened into the surface of his flesh. The biker’s eyes were vacant but he wore a smile, as they all wore smiles, identical to that of the little man who was safe at home in his bedroom.

  119

  “He’s not coming, is he?” asked Gayle.

  “He’s coming,” said Patty, though she did not sound all that certain.

  Dianna went over and stood next to Mike Sweeney, staring out at the night.

  “He’s coming,” she said.

  Thirty minutes later headlights flashed through the window as a car pulled a U-turn and parked badly, the front wheel up on the curb. The door opened and a big man with a battered face ran for the shop. Patty was there to open the door and she pulled him inside.

  “Holy shit,” gasped Monk as rainwater sluiced down his body. “It’s like the end of the goddamn world out there.”

  Patty brought him a big mug of hot tea and a bunch of towels. Monk stripped off his jacket and shirt and toweled himself dry. He was acutely aware of everyone looking at his tattoos.

  “Oh my god,” said Gayle. “Those faces. I … I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be—”

  “No,” said Monk, “a lot of people have that reaction. It’s cool.”

  “Nothing’s cool,” said Patty.

  Monk sipped his tea and looked around him. He nodded to Dianna and Gayle. “Who are you?”

  Patty made introductions. “They’re caught up in this, too.”

  Monk noticed that Patty wasn’t wearing a bandage over her disfigured tattoo. Dianna held out her arm and showed the faded roses.

  “Okay,” said Monk, “you all got stories to tell. Let’s hear ’em.”

  “We need to hear yours, too,” said Crow.

  “Yeah,” said Monk as he sat down on the third chair, “we’ll get to that. You first.”

  Everyone already knew Patty’s story, so Dianna went next to explain what had happened to her and Gayle; then Crow and Mike tag-teamed to explain everything they’d seen and learned—Joey Raynor, Lester Mouton, Agent Richter, and other cases across the country. At one point Monk held up his hand.

  “Whoa, whoa, stop there,” he said, “go back to that last name. The guy the girl Tink worked for.”

  “Malibu Mark,” said Mike. “What about him?”

  Monk cursed. “I don’t want to make a weird night weirder, but he’s one of the dead guys back at Spider’s.”

  They all looked at one another.

  “Damn,” said Crow.

  “There’s a little more of our stuff,” said Mike, and he explained about going to Monk’s house and finding the dead fly made of tattoo ink.

  Monk got up and prowled around for a few minutes, chewing on his thoughts. He saw the shopping bags with one big bottle of wine left unopened. He twisted off the cap and tossed it in the bag and then chugged down at least eight ounces. He didn’t like wine very much, and zinfandel not at all, but it had alcohol and that was fine.

  “I think it’s my turn,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. It was the bandaged hand, which tinted the sodden bandage a pale yellow. He studied them all. Dianna stood against the workbench, one hand clasped around a crystal she wore on a pendant. Gayle, seated nearby, simply looked freaked. Like way freaked. Monk wondered how much more of this she could actually take. Mike Sweeney stood by the door. Or rather, he loomed there. Kid was a moose, and there was something weird about him. Spooky weird, and it made him remember Jonatha’s warning. No, in fact, he would not want to cross that son of a bitch. Crow wore the same shit-eating smile he had when they first met, and it was as false now as it was then. Like a plastic Joker mask that was starting to crack.

  Then he caught Patty’s eye. She gave him a small nod and even managed a fragment of her old smile. The sweet-sad one she wore every day. Her usual expression that was a shield between her and the reality of being the mother of a sodomized and murdered child. Everyone, he mused, had their defenses.

  “Okay,” said Monk, “you’ve all been through some weird shit. But I’m going to see your last couple of fucked-up days and raise you this.” He brushed his fingertips across the inked faces. All of them staring. All of them way too real.

  120

  MONK’S STORY

  I’m not like other people. I’m not like anyone you ever met.

  Little backstory first. I went from high school into the military. Trained special ops and then went higher up the food chain to Delta Force. Worked a lot of bad jobs in a lot of shit places. None of it’s going to earn my way through the Pearly Gates. Guys like me know that. And there was one gig that burned me out. Bad intel put us on a kill mission in a small village. We were told that there were zero friendlies and that it was what they call a target-rich environment, meaning if they aren’t on your team then they were to be put down. But, like I said, the intel was bad and it turned out the village had only
civilians. We killed them, but in a lot of ways we killed ourselves. I opted out and returned to the States when my tour was up. But … life likes to kick guys like me in the dick every chance it can.

  My sister—the only relative I really cared about—got sick and her shitty minimum-wage job was part-time. No health care, and her medical bills were skyrocketing. I knew how to make some money, a lot of it, and so I became a PMC. Private military contractor. What they used to call mercenaries. I had a certain reputation and there are groups willing to pay through the nose for that.

  I worked a bit for oil companies protecting their interests in the Middle East, then my team got hired to work freelance for Uncle Sam, for a department under the umbrella of the CIA. The Agency has very deep pockets, especially if they’re drawing funds from the black budget. We ran ops all over the world. Some of it was for the good, too, taking down some cartel assholes, ripping up a human trafficking ring. But most of it was way into the gray area. Let’s face it, if you’re cashing checks from the CIA you are not wearing a white hat, no matter how much you want to think you are.

  I was really good at what I did. Work flooded my way, and my sister’s bills got paid. That’s how I justified it, you see. The people I was taking down may not have been evil, but they were dirty. They were in some part of the game, and someone like me showing up in the middle of the night was a possible consequence. I took them off the board and kept my sister on her meds, paid for the chemo and the surgeries for someone who was clearly an innocent. A true innocent.

  But then I was on a job in Taklamakan Desert region. Bunch of small villages near poppy fields. The villagers swore up and down that they had no choice, that they were forced to harvest the flowers and process the heroin and opium. We felt sorry for them because we could see disfigurement from torture, and some of the women had that evasive look they get when they’ve been raped but aren’t allowed to go to the authorities. The black marketers owned the cops, and any woman who made too much of a fuss would be either shot in front of her family or shot with her family.