Wetbones

by John Shirley

  It was a pretty dark night out, Lonny noticed, now, looking around. It hadn't seemed so dark up on the road. Maybe they should have done what Orphy had suggested: drive the ripped-off truck right through the gate, bash it in, bash into the next gate, then right up to the house, guns blazing, yelling for Mitch and Eurydice. But that kind of shit, he was fairly sure, only worked in movies.

  There was only a sliver of moon, and the stars seemed interested but didn't shed much light. The stars just wanted to watch.

  Oak trees and some pines and little Manzanita grew around the borders of the place; there was a sickeningly strong smell of roses from where they overgrew the front fence. There was a guard over there, so they'd snuck around, outside the fence, to the flank of the place. Here, between the two fences, was sage and yucca and thatches of dry yellow grass and grotesquely twisty manzanita that seemed to shift and hunch toward him… No, that was the breeze that had been coming up. One of those Santa Ana winds. Warm and kind of weird. It picked up again, skirling dust around his ankles and making tree branches scratch out off-key notes against the chainlinks.

  The inner fence should be easier. But they had to hurry, a place like this would probably have…

  He heard their running feet, coming through the brush, before they started barking: Guard dogs. Probably attack dogs.

  "Get your ass down here, Orpheus, goddamn it!" Lonny yelled. "The fuckin dogs are comin'!"

  Orpheus was just lowering himself to drop when he heard the dogs snarling and Lonny yelling, "Look out here come the fuckin dogs!"

  "No way man I'm goin' back over!" Orphy shouted, his voice panicky. He tried to scramble up the fence again, his shoes ringing the links, as the dogs bounded into view. Sleek, dark animals, streamlined as sharks.

  Lonny drew the. 45 from under his coat, as the bigger dog went for him, the other one bounding to leap at Orphy's legs where he dangled from the fence. Orphy screamed as Lonny fired – and for a moment Lonny thought he'd somehow shot Orphy but then the bigger dog folded up in mid-leap and fell at his feet, convulsing, jaws frothing blood. He couldn't see where he'd shot it.

  Orphy was screaming " Shit shit shit motherfucker! " as the other sleek, slick-furred attack dog tugged at his ankle, gnawing and pulling with nasty jerkings of its whole body, putting its weight into jerking him off the fence – he fell onto his butt, and the dog lunged for his throat.

  Lonny had spent the last ten seconds aiming carefully, for fear of hitting Orphy. He fired, putting a round into the back of the dog's head, and it collapsed with a single yelp on Orphy's legs. It lay there, splayed and quivering, like a cartoon of a dog sleeping contentedly on its master.

  Orphy gave a grunt of disgust and rolled the dog off him, then peeled his bloody socks away from his ankle. It was rent in three places but not deeply. "Fuck! I hope that shit-eating hound wasn't rabid, man!"

  "They ain't gonna keep no fuckin' rabid dogs to guard their place, dude," Lonny said. "Oh fuck – here comes the guard now."

  He was a big, dark silhouette with a blaze of light at his gut like the light of an oncoming train bearing down on them. Orphy scrambled to his feet and followed Lonny, sprinting into the brush between the chainlink fence and the black iron one.

  They expected the guard to follow – Lonny could see the shotgun in the guy's other hand, a black bar in the dimness – but the dude ran to the dogs, babbling and bawling. Lonny couldn't make out what he was saying. "Dude sounds fucked up on something, to me," Lonny said.

  "Maybe he just crazy for those dogs."

  "Maybe both. Come on…" He crept in a halfcrouch back out the way they'd come, coming from behind and one side of the security guard. By the time the guard heard Lonny coming and looked around, Lonny had the muzzle of his gun three inches from the corner of the dude's jaw. "Drop that shotgun, motherfucker, or you are dead meat in two seconds." He didn't hear Orphy behind him. He wondered if the son of a bitch was backing him up like he ought to be.

  Clunk, the shotgun fell to the ground. The guard said, "You ain't gettin over on shit! You try to rob these people, it just ain't gonna happen, these people here, you illin to fuck wid em. I know, I seen some shit, bro -"

  In the backlight off the flashlight, Lonny could see the guy's eyes, the pupils small, for it being so dark out, and his face glistening with sweat. Maybe it was just because of the gun in his face, but something about the dude, like he was going to go off like a hand grenade, made Lonny think there was more happening here. "What you loaded on?"

  "Dust," the guy blurted. "Or you wouldn't a got the drop on me."

  Great. PCP. This guy was still dangerous. "Sittin up here smoking dust joints all night? We ain't here to rob shit. There's a boy in there, his name Mitch?"

  "Up at the house? You the third people to ask about him. Was his brother up here, then a private detective,

  I told em I don't think he's here. Denvers say he's not here – but what I know? I never even been to the house."

  "Bullshit!"

  "It's true! I never been up there! That's part of the deal. I never cross that inside fence – I'm not supposed to, unless I see someone climb over it. You the first to get past the outside fence." The dude's voice getting higher-pitched, babbling faster, like he was working himself up to something, "Fuck yeah I see it, I know some shit, I seen some shit, but I never ask nobody nothin. They pay me three times what I get working in town, then you motherfuckers come and murder my poor hounds and you – now you fucking up my motherfuckin

  JOB! "

  A blaze of light blinded Lonny as the flashlight swung and thunked hard into the back of his gunhand and he felt the. 45 fly from his fingers and then the guy was reaching for him -

  Crack, crack. Two red fingers of light and two shots: the guard staggered back, Orphy's. 38 smacking him in the gut. The guard groaned and dropped the flashlight. Lonny grabbed it up, swung the beam to find the. 45 as the guard went stumbling off wailing something about "Now you fucked up, you done hurt me -"

  Blood singing in his ears, dizzy from hyperventilation, Lonny pointed the. 45 at the guard's back, in a sudden panicky need to blow somebody away. But Orphy stepped up, shoved Lonny's gun-hand down, and hissed, "No forget it, let him go. He don't matter. With the shooting, the people at the house probably already call the cops by now – if they going to. Let's get over the fucking fence.

  The guard had gone ahead of them, stumbling through the gate up toward the house, looking for help. They could hear him cursing as he crashed through bushes.

  Orphy and Lonny were within sight of the house. Looked like two houses, a smaller one in back; you could just see a corner of it from this angle. They saw no lights.

  Orphy muttered, "I think my ankle's swelling up."

  "Can you walk?"

  "Yeah. You know what? It looks to me like nobody's home."

  "Bullshit. They switched off the front lights when they heard those shots, so we'd think so."

  "I don't know, man, that don't -"

  "Just come on, Orphy. Let's hurry and get it done. We doing all right. I watched your back, got that dog; you came in for me with that asshole, we doing okay. We got the juice on, so fuck it, let's do it."

  With the flashlight doused they followed a path toward the house; it was an old brick path, the cracks between the bricks lumpy with moss; Manzanita and miniature palms and a riot of bird of paradise crowded in thickly on both sides.

  About fifty yards from the darkened columns of the main house, the trees and brush were cleared for a lawn that had gone to seed; the yellowish grass was knee-high now, and clumped with thistles. The brick path skirted the lawn on this side – on the far side of the lawn was a gravel driveway, thatchy with weeds beside it, an old, stone watering trough and a plaster jockey lawn ornament. Lonny saw no cars and wondered where they kept them.

  To Lonny's right was a passageway of trellis, heavily coated with rose vines and morning glory. There was a statue of a woman that had become overgrown with the rose vines. He found
himself staring at it.

  Then the statue moved. It was a woman. A woman stuck in the vines.

  Orphy saw her first. "Jesus Christ…" Lonny followed him up to the woman and switched on the flashlight. Thinking it would show she wasn't real; was some kind of dummy.

  When the light hit her she squirmed and chuckled miserably to herself. "Fuck!" Lonny breathed. She was nude except for a tattered, brown-stained bra. She looked like she'd been wedged into the vines, but some of them seemed to have grown in around her. Which was almost possible; she was so emaciated – her skin more blue-gray than pink, her skeleton pushing through – she might have been there for weeks or months, if someone was feeding her. The thorns had dug permanent pockets into her skin, which was streaked brown with old blood. When she squirmed, fresh blood runnelled down…

  Lonny shone the light on her face. It wasn't Eurydice. It was some white woman, who had maybe once been blonde. Her hair was mostly gone now, and her right eye was scratched out. A shiny green-black centipede ran from the light back into its home in one of her nostrils. She shuddered and sneezed.

  Orphy was cursing him. "Get the fuck away from her, man…"

  Lonny lowered the light; it pooled at her crotch. One of the thicker vines ran up between her legs, wedged deeply in her crotch…

  "Jesus, lady!" Lonny burst out, trying to pull a vine free from her.

  "Don't!" she rasped. With that sound giving out a smell of supreme rot. "Go… way."

  Orpheus took Lonny's arm. His tone humbled now as he said, "Let's go. We get her out later. Police or ambulance or something."

  Lenny let Orphy pull him onto the path. "These people are fucking illin', Orphy." His voice breaking; tears burning his eyes. What he'd seen was only just beginning to sink in. "They're sick motherfuckers."

  But fear gave way to repugnance when he saw, only a few steps farther on, the men on the other side of the trellis. He couldn't see much more than their silhouettes, dappled with starlight and twisty with vine-shadow. Most of them wore clothing but at least two of them were naked. All of them were men – no, there, a woman moved into view. She wore a dress but no underwear. She stood with her legs well apart, her hips thrust forward, the skirt lifted, her gray pussy caught in a patch of thin moonlight. Like the others, she was masturbating.

  "Fuck!" Orphy burst out. "They're all…"

  They all were. Jerking off.

  Lenny shone the flashlight on them just enough to be sure that none of them were Mitch or Eurydice. The woman had her hand in a hole dug in a tall, hollow-eyed man's side; he was standing there wobbly and shaky as she worked her hand around in the wound up to the wrist…

  Lenny quickly took the light off them. They whispered to Lonny. He wasn't sure if he was hearing the voices, imagining them – or if they were just coming into his mind from somewhere…

  "Some of this…?" The woman asked, in a whisper.

  "Hey little boys, have you ever wanted to see the roots of your own penis?" A man's voice.

  " You guys like to party down, right? That's what you party animals like, huh? Party party party party party…" Another man's voice.

  " Hello, hello, how are you today, taking a walk, taking a walk, come to visit, come to visit? Look at this, look at this! "

  No human voice.

  Lonny pointed the gun, fired convulsively through the trellis. A fully bloomed rose became a fireworks burst of petals as the bullet passed through it and someone whispered, " Good. Again! "

  Orphy was dragging Lonny along, then, in a run down the path toward the house. Lonny's palpitating heart telling him, This is the wrong way, you should be running to get the fuck out of here!

  But they kept going. They almost stumbled over the security guard lying half in the grass, his legs sprawled across the walkway. They made the mistake of pausing to look. There was a woman squatting over the guard's face…

  There was a man playing with the guard's cock. He'd twisted wire around its base to keep blood in it, force an erection. In the darkness it was a moment before Lonny saw the other people crouching in the long grass. Waiting.

  Then the dark figures were up out of the grass and coming at them. Hands outstretched. Laughing.

  " Shiiiiiit! " Lonny wasn't sure if it was him or Orphy who screamed this as he fired the gun impulsively at the dark shapes. Heard a grunt and then a giggle and they kept coming and he turned to run toward the fence but there were others on the walk back there, coming after them, the illin fuckers jerking off as they came. He fired at them, too, and then the gun was empty and there was no time to reload so he sprinted toward the house, his lips drawn back in the rigidity of total fear, babbling, "Orphy come on goddamn come on and -" Gun shots behind him. ''And don't waste no bullets we gotta get over here we gotta – we gotta – we gotta -" Not sure what they had to do. And then he stumbled, going down on his hands and knees, grinding his teeth at the pain as a brick-corner smacked into his right kneecap, cursing when the flashlight glass shattered on another brick. His little totem of light snuffed out. He tossed the dead flashlight away as he heard running footsteps behind him, someone calling to him mixed up with a moron's giggles. Lonny jumped to his feet and took off again, chest heaving, thinking he should try to load the gun. But these people (the house was looming up in front of him now, dark and motionless) didn't seem to care if they were shot and oh no where was Orpheus?

  As he reached the front steps he paused, panting, looked back for Orphy – and didn't see him.

  A whisper in his head. " Hey kid, wait up, we wanna parrrrrtay! "

  And then he heard Orpheus's voice. Yeah. For sure. It was him. How could a dude as hard as Orpheus make noises like that? Screaming piteously, from somewhere in the darkness behind the screen of rose trellises.

  Culver City, Los Angeles

  "When's that party you're going to?" Jeff asked, coming into his office. He seemed agitated, Prentice noticed, looking up from the word processor's display. Jeff was putting his hands in his back jeans pockets, taking them out, crossing them over his chest; the lines of his narrow face were tauter than ever.

  "Tomorrow night, Jeff. What's got you so…?"

  "My brother is still fucking missing man, that's what!" He chewed at his upper lip; it gave him a bulldog look.

  "I talked to that fucking detective. Blume. He doesn't know shit except that kids are turning up dead. Teenagers, young women. One man so far – his body was all crushed -"

  "Oh, that. Yeah, I read about it."

  "- so they don't know much about him except they're pretty sure he was in his mid-twenties or so which means it wasn't Mitch."

  "Why should it be Mitch? Kids go missing all the time, Jeff – if they were all murdered there'd be bodies everywhere – "

  "Now you sound like that fucking cop. This detective was your idea. Blume went out to Doublekey and just gave up at the gate, the way we did."

  "He didn't circle around the place?"

  "He did. With binoculars. He said he didn't see anything but trash on the ground and a couple of drunk older guys sitting by a dirty swimming pool. He watched for a long time – he claims. From different angles. Waste of time. If they've got Mitch he's in the house."

  Prentice felt a twinge of guilt. What if Mitch really was out there?

  He thought about Lissa. He had mixed feelings about her. He couldn't get over the feeling that she'd manipulated him. He still felt sort of spaced out and odd after the drugs. It'd felt good at the time but since then he'd been prone to brief, bizarre anxiety attacks. Sudden fears of – nothing at all. Still, he hadn't been bothered by a sense of Amy's nearness, since then. The drunken rapture of Lissa's touch had driven it out of him. At times, though, he could almost sense Amy, not quite but almost, just on the periphery of his awareness…

  "I'm going to the fucking Feds," Jeff was saying,

  "much as I hate to. And I'm gonna start in with the lawyer again."

  "Tell you what," Prentice said. "Hold off on that just three days. I'm goin
g to talk to this detective, and do a little research on the Denvers." Maybe he could get Arthwright to sign him after Monday. And then Jeff could sue to his heart's content.

  "Three days?" Jeff took a deep breath. "Yeah. Okay, three days. Keep me posted, man." He turned to go, then paused at the door, remembering to be civil. "How's the script?"

  "Finally starting to happen. But slow."

  "Slow is all right as long as it's steady. How's that pussy you been getting?"

  "You're so sensitive, Jeff. A real modern, 'sensitive' man."

  Jeff laughed, paradoxically pleased by the dig, as Prentice had known he'd be, and went back into the living room to catch CNN's Sports Update. After a few minutes of pretending to work, Prentice joined him.

  Near Malibu

  The gunshots had given Eurydice hope, for a few minutes. She'd thought maybe it was the police. But now they'd stopped and there was only distant laughter and a scream from out there, and no sounds of sirens. It hadn't been the police. It had been the More Man and friends – playing.

  There were other sounds, now – from the room beneath hers.

  There was a hole in the floor, near the bed. It was too convenient, this hole being there, looking accidental but somehow punched through two layers of floor. She was pretty sure this hole and the one in the wall were put there for her and Mitch to find.

  So she told herself she shouldn't play along; she shouldn't listen to what was going on downstairs. Shouldn't try to see down there.

  She put her fingers in her ears and kept out most of it. Still, she heard the mesh of laughter and wailing, like roses and thorns on the same vine, and she heard someone whimpering, " Don't let it get on me don't let it get on me don't let it -! " and then she heard someone else say in a calm voice, "Plant them in his wounds." And then there was a panting… and then a pissing sound…

  The crackle of bones slowly breaking. A bubbling wail.

  She started yelling, just a lot of wordless noise to cover up the sounds. She dragged the mattress from the bed and dumped it over the hole in the floor. She could still hear it, faintly. She clapped her hands over her ears and paced around the room feeling she was going to rip open from the razor-sharp unfairness of it.