Paint it Black: 4 (The Black Knight Chronicles)

by Hartness, John G.

  RED FOX LANE was a quiet city street. Nice houses, clean lawns, moderately expensive cars, but nothing too flashy floating around. There was nothing about the neighborhood that screamed, “Serial Kidnapper Living Here.” Which was probably what made the place appealing to a serial kidnapper. We found the house quickly enough, then parked the El Camino a couple blocks away. My ride had serious badass capacity, but the car was for shit on stealthy approaches. Some things you just can’t do with a 454 Big Block, and sneak up on somebody was one of those things.

  I took point, with Nester behind me and Greg as rear guard. The problem wasn’t that I trusted Nester less; I put Greg at the back of the pack so that when the inevitable happened and he tripped over something, no one would trip over him. I just hoped that he got the whole falling down thing out of the way quickly, before we were close enough for the suspect to hear us swearing.

  Nester filled us in on the suspect on the way over. Richard Asa was a retired electrician, which explained the van. He was an oddity in Charlotte these days, a native Charlottean. Never married, no relatives that Nester could find a record of, no church affiliation, no social groups, nothing. Basically, he was a hermit these days. His house was a standard ranch three-bedroom affair, but we were more interested in the shed he’d built back in the late eighties. Set almost a hundred yards back from the house in a neighborhood where most of the lots aren’t anywhere near that long, tax records showed an outbuilding of six hundred square feet. If he had anybody tucked away, that’s where they’d be. Or at least where they’d been.

  Starting our search with the shed had the added bonus of avoiding our little threshold problem. Storage buildings weren’t an issue for us, but we had to be invited into homes or permanent dwellings. If Asa was in the house, either Nester was going to have to take him down alone or we’d have to wrangle an invitation. And with us in full tactical gear, I didn’t see an invitation forthcoming.

  So we split up, sending Nester to cover the entrance to the shed while Greg and I made a quick scout of the perimeter of the house with our vamp-senses and regrouped at the back door. “You hear or see anything?” I asked Greg.

  “Nada. You?”

  “Zip.”

  Nester stood on the back porch, his gun trained on the shed’s front door. “There was movement in the shed a second ago, but I can’t see any details.”

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “Good deal. Now put your gun away, and pull out your Taser.” He did as I asked. “Remember not to shoot me or Greg. Because he’ll be upset if you shoot him.”

  “And you won’t?”

  “No, I’ll just very calmly rip your arms off. I believe in consequences as life lessons.”

  He pointed the Taser at the ground.

  “Good boy,” I added, patting him on the head.

  I waved Greg over, then continued. “Here’s the plan. Greg’s going in first, because he’s the strongest. He’ll take down the door, and I’ll go in over him.”

  “Over him?” Nester asked.

  “Don’t interrupt unless it has to do with what you’re supposed to do. You don’t have to understand what we do. You just have to do your part and NOT shoot me in the ass with a Taser. Clear?”

  “Crystal.” He didn’t look very happy at being talked to like a four-year-old, but I didn’t have time to worry about his feelings.

  “You will stay outside securing our perimeter until you get the all clear from our sweep of the shed. Then you will come into the shed and take up a position opposite Greg, who will make sure that no one gets out of that room without my approval. If this guy somehow manages to overpower Greg and I, you call for backup and pursue. Do not engage this man. If he can take down two vampires, you have about as much hope bringing him down as a snowball in a microwave. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  That’s what I love about working with trained professionals. Once you lay the whole plan out for them, they do what they’re told. Even if some of it is completely batshit crazy, they’ll go for it.

  We crept to the door of the shed, and I looked back to see that Nester was in position. He nodded to me, and I tapped Greg on the shoulder. He and I stood up at the same time, and he charged the door. He hit that shed door like a fanged rhinoceros, and it exploded inward in a shriek of mangled aluminum and a cloud of splinters. Greg dropped flat as soon as he was past the doorway, and I dove in over him, tucking into a forward roll that carried me into the center of the room. I rolled to my feet and spun around, gaze finding and locking onto Asa almost as soon as my roll was complete.

  He stood against a wall, ten feet away, unarmed. He was a big man, run slightly to fat as he aged. A shock of white hair swept back from his brow, and thick grey eyebrows stuck out wildly. He wore jeans and a tattered work shirt spattered with blood and grease. I hoped the blood didn’t belong to the two bodies hanging from the wall.

  They were alive; I could smell that from where I stood. I couldn’t tell much about them except that they were female. Asa had black pillowcases over their heads, and judging by the noises coming from under the makeshift hoods, he had taped their mouths shut. They dangled from handcuffs which were attached to chains hanging from the rafters. Their feet could touch the ground, but just barely. Having recently been tied to something and forced into one position for a long time, I felt a burning in my own arms and legs in sympathy.

  As much as I wanted to pull them down, I had to deal with Asa before I freed the women. I turned my attention back to him, and was amazed to see him striding toward me, holding his hand out for me to shake.

  “You must be the Dream King’s Honor Guard. At last! You’re here to bring me over to the Other Side for all my years of loyal service. I am so pleased to finally meet you. I’m Richard, Richard Asa, and I have been the King’s supplier of dreams for this Market location for forty of our years.” I shook his hand, mostly because I didn’t have any idea what else to do. Then I punched him in the side of the face and knocked his ass out cold.

  Chapter 26

  ASA CAME TO A few minutes later, after a little slapping and a little water thrown in his face. Plus, I finally got frustrated with his sluggish response and punched him in the testicles a little. That got his eyes wide open, and his hands clutching convulsively around his privates. Or they would have been if Asa hadn’t been handcuffed, arms over his head, and suspended from the rafters.

  We’d cleared the girls out of the shed and sent them home with a very satisfied Officer Nester, leaving just me and Greg to interrogate our kidnapper. I had Greg lean what was left of the door back against the hole in the wall, just to muffle the sound of the screams. I figured we were probably far enough back from other houses to question our prisoner without disturbing anyone’s rest, but I wanted to be sure.

  Once we had him awake and had his undivided attention, I pulled a chair over and sat down in front of him. I had an inkling this guy’s elevator didn’t stop on all the floors, so my best shot at getting information out of him might be to play into his psychosis. “You’re Richard Asa, the Dream King’s faithful and loyal servant. As the Dream King’s envoys into the mundane world, we must test your knowledge before you are allowed to cross over. So tell me all you know of his need for humans.”

  “He requires human sacrifice of dreams to keep his Land of Nod running smoothly, so I help him by selecting appropriate sacrifices.”

  “Land of Nod?” Greg asked. He was busy searching the shed, and kept adding things to a small pile he was building on a workbench. I hadn’t taken a good look at the pile yet, but the items looked like random crap you’d find in an old shed. Watches, a wallet, a bracelet—weird tchotchkes and shit like that.

  Asa smiled like a loon, making me glad he was in handcuffs. “Nod. Where the Dream King keeps his castle. He lives there in the clouds and walks through our dreams every night, keeping order in the mortal realm by making sure our dreams are perfect and happy. Unless you’re bad, then he sends you nightmares.” That la
st bit was in a whisper, and he gave me a nasty wink, like we were conspirators or something.

  I lost it. I tried, but I couldn’t hold onto the ruse of working with the Dream King anymore. I stood up, waving my arms as I shouted at Asa, “I can’t tell if you read too many Sandman comics, did too many drugs, or are just the stupidest human I’ve ever met. The Dream King didn’t live in the Land of Nod. He lived in a shitty little tent in the middle of the Goblin Market, which is one of the nastiest places I’ve ever been in my life or death. He was a three-foot-tall Yoda-looking rat bastard without even the good graces to be green. And he sure as hell wasn’t doing anything to help anybody but himself. He sold those dreams, you jackass! And when he was done selling the dreams, he chopped the people up into chunks and sold them off to a goblin. A friggin’ goblin! A short, fat, smelly green bastard called the Chef! And do you know why he was called the Chef? Because he made the most popular stew in the Goblin Market. Stew made from people! People you kidnapped and sold to the Dream King!”

  I was panting and red in the face from screaming at the stupid bastard, but then I took a good look at his face. He had no idea what I was talking about.

  I took a deep breath and said, very quietly, “What did he tell you he was doing with the people you gave him?” I thought if he had been duped by the Dream King then maybe he was just another poor schmuck taken in by an evil wizard.

  “He didn’t really ever tell me anything. He just told me to bring him pairs of people, so I did.” The dumb son of a bitch didn’t seem to realize that lying might not be the best move for his longevity.

  “Why pairs?” Greg asked. I looked over, and he was holding a small box with several high school rings glittering in it. I didn’t want to think about how many rings there were or what that pile being amassed actually was. The rings alone would account for more missing persons than we had on our list.

  “He asked me for them,” Asa said, as if it made perfect sense.

  Greg was on him before I could blink. He’s not as fast as me, but he’s still vampire fast. He was across the shed in half a second and had Asa by the throat. I grabbed his hand and pulled him back, trying to pry his fingers loose.

  Finally, I pulled back and slapped Greg across the face. “He can’t answer you if he can’t breathe.”

  Greg dropped the guy, and he let out a little yell as his body dropped like a cement bag, almost wrenching his shoulders from their sockets. Asa had been pretty careful when he hung the girls from the rafters, making sure they could touch the ground and carry some of their weight. I hadn’t been so careful hanging him. He could stand on tiptoes if he really stretched, but mostly he was just swinging. I looked around in the recesses of my soul to see if there was any sympathy floating around for him but came up empty.

  “Why did you give those people to the Dream King?” Greg asked again, speaking very slowly and very clearly. Asa tried to dance back on his tiptoes to get away from the angry vampire in his face, but he had nowhere to go. The touches of his toes threatened to spin him in a circle rather than take him to safety.

  “I wanted to go back,” he finally whimpered.

  “What?” I asked. “Go back where?”

  “Faerie. I crossed over when I was a little kid, and all I’ve ever wanted to do since was get back. It’s the most amazing place ever, and the Dream King told me that if I was a good servant here in the mundane world, that when the time came, he would take me back to Faerie. I was hoping this trip would be my turn.”

  “What do you mean ‘this trip’?” Greg asked.

  “The Market only comes here every twenty years. It moves around all the time, and this is the fourth time it’s been here in my lifetime. The first time was when I was a little boy, about nine or ten years old. I found my way in by accident. I was playing in the woods and crossed over into the Market. I spent days in the Market wandering around, exploring. It was the most amazing place I’d ever seen. Then, after I’d explored a lot of the Market, I found an exit to Faerie proper, and I went through. I couldn’t believe what I saw—the creatures, the colors, the food, the plants—everything was so wonderful I never wanted to leave. But when the Market moved, I found myself thrown back here. Back here, where everything is dull and grey and boring and there isn’t any magic or any cool monsters or anything. And nobody believed me, not my parents, not the kids at school, nobody.” He looked so pathetic I almost took pity on him and reminded him that he was currently being held captive by two real monsters, but decided to just let him keep going.

  “I kept trying to go back. I went back to that same spot every day that summer, then once a week, then once a month. Finally, I just went back on the day I first found the path every year, until one day the way was open! I was older then, and that time when I wandered the Market I found more information. I met the Dream King. He showed me such wonders in human dreams that I’d never even contemplated before. The things he could do were amazing. And all he needed to make his magic and keep the Land of Dreams running properly was a sacrifice of a few dreamers each time the Market stopped near me. He was growing old, and couldn’t venture from the Market to collect his own sacrifices, so he needed worshippers like me to collect the offerings for him.” His face glowed with a religious rapture, and I knew without a doubt that this guy was around the bend a long time ago.

  “And I was happy to do it! There are so many people, and they all want to follow their dreams. I just gave them the opportunity to become dreams, to serve the greater good. That’s all I ever did—I helped people live out their dreams and grow the dreams of others.”

  I felt sick to my stomach. I leaned forward and grabbed his face in one hand. “You gave people to that sick bastard so he could reach into their head and yank out their dreams. Even if they lived, they would have been mindless shells. You gave them to this sicko to be destroyed, even if he didn’t kill them. Who knows? Maybe by the time he was done with them, killing them was a mercy, but nobody deserved to end up in the Chef’s stew pot!”

  “Most of all not us, asshole,” Greg grumbled. I looked over, and his pile of trinkets was really big now. There were enough rings, watches, and necklaces to open a small jewelry store.

  “But it was the only way he’d take me with him. To let me stay in the Market forever and live out the rest of my life in Faerie.” He grinned that beatific smile again, and I could see the madness in his eyes. This moron not only believed the Dream King was going to take him into Faerieland, he still believed the little bastard was coming for him.

  “News flash, dumbass. We killed the Dream King. Actually, a witch friend of ours did. He’s dead, his shop is closed, and now it’s time for you to pay for all the pain you caused.” I moved in, ready to end it right there, but Greg held up a hand.

  “But first, how many people did you give to him?” my partner asked.

  “I was to provide him with eight sacrifices each time the Market stopped here. I only managed six the first time I went in as an adult, and this time you spoiled my last two sacrifices, too.”

  “Last two?” Greg asked. “We only know about six people you took recently. There was a bartender and her friend that you kidnapped downtown.”

  “Then the Carmichaels,” I chimed in.

  “Then the women we rescued today. Who are the other two and where are they?”

  “I don’t know who they were. I never knew who any of them were. That would have been . . . uncomfortable. But they were a couple. A man and a woman in their thirties. I found them on the interstate. Their car had broken down, and I offered to help. They were my first sacrifices this year.” He didn’t even talk like he’d done anything wrong. I felt chills run along my arms as I listened to him. I’d fought monsters, humans and demons, but this guy was creepier than any of them.

  “How many others?” Greg asked.

  “What do you mean?” Asa didn’t look at my partner.

  “How many others? I’ve got a pile of jewelry and wallets here, and I bet none of them ar
e yours. There’s too much stuff to all have gone to Faerieland. There must be thirty different sets of stuff here. So I’m going to ask you one more time, then I’m going to pull your big toe off. How many others did you kill?”

  “Oh good God, who counts? I don’t know, and I don’t care. So I started to take an extra here and there. The Dream King never cared if they were beat up a little when I delivered them, so I started to play a little before he got them. Then I took one between visits to the Market, and I realized I had a knack for it. It’s easy, once you get the hang of it. You just make yourself look as harmless as possible, then when they least suspect it, BAM!” He yelled that last part and jumped forward. I didn’t blink. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

  “Is this everything?” Greg asked, waving to the pile of stuff on the workbench.

  “There might be a few samples still in the fridge.” Asa smiled up at me and my blood ran cold. I really, really did not want to open the big freezer he had chugging away in a corner of the shed. But I did. I walked over to it and flipped up the lid. I didn’t scream, and I didn’t puke. I was pretty proud of myself for that. I looked inside the freezer, and stacked neatly along one wall were small clear Tupperware containers. There must have been five or six dozen containers. And in each container was a neatly severed pair of thumbs. Taped to the top of each container was a Polaroid picture. And in each picture was a face. A terrified face.

  I whirled back to where Asa dangled, grinning. I was close enough to feel his breath on my shirt. I could hear his heart pounding, and he looked up at me and said, “The Dream King told me I could keep the thumbs. No meat on those, you see, no resale value to the Chef.”

  “You sick bastard . . .” I started, but turned away before I could finish the thought.