by Ian Fortey
“I don’t know. Maybe,” Vincent said.
Vincent could not remember his own life. He had woken up one day in a field with five dead bodies. Dalca was one of them. There were two other men, a woman, and a child. There was an altar, and the remains of a fire. Vincent had no memories of how he got there or who he was. If not for the ID in his wallet, he wouldn’t even know his own name.
The only friend Vincent had in the world was Fix—who also had no memories of his own. And worse, had no body. He was a voice in Vincent’s head. He may have been one of the dead men, but neither of them knew. Dalca had been able to speak in Vincent’s head for a time. He even took over Vincent’s body once. So it was possible Fix was one of the dead men. But who had killed them, or why, was still a mystery.
When Vincent freed himself of Dalca’s influence, more memories began to come clear in his head. There were a jumble of times and places in there, and he was sure now that they belonged to the other dead in the field. To Fix, to the woman, and the child—whoever they were. But his own memories were there as well. And some of them were beginning to scare Vincent. Because if they were true, then he may have been the reason those people died. And he did not want to face that reality.
With no way of knowing who, or what kind of man he was, Vincent only had his memories to rely on. But he didn’t feel like he was that man. The idea that he would kill people in cold blood, even someone as dangerous as Bogdan Dalca, did not feel right to him.
Dezzy’s uncle, Stanley Crisp, had told him that no matter what kind of man he used to be, he was a good man now. Vincent desperately wanted to believe that. He hoped he could believe that.
“What about a Reuben, man? You ever had a Reuben?” Dezzy asked.
“I don’t think he gets it,” Fix said.
“I don’t know, Dezzy,” Vincent said. It was weird not knowing if he’d ever eaten certain kinds of food before. But it was weirder not knowing if he was a sadistic murderer who may have had some evil plan to do God knows what.
“Yeah, man. You should try it. A good Reuben is life changing. I had one once, when I was like, eighteen, and I think it made me a better man.”
Vincent laughed out loud as Dezzy leaned forward and changed the dial on the radio. He flipped up to a different station and found It’s so Easy by Guns N’ Roses.
“Another Guns N’ Roses song,” Fix said. He and Vincent had noticed after the first day on the road that every time Dezzy turned on the radio, there was a Guns n’ Roses song playing. Every time he changed the station, he found a Guns N’ Roses song. They had literally listened to nothing but Guns N’ Roses since they left Alder Falls. It was apparently a power the former Scion had.
Vincent had also developed powers. Thanks to being possessed by Bogdan Dalca, Vincent had learned necromancy. He was able to raise the dead and also sense their power. He had even brought Dezzy back from the dead, but not in the way Dalca did things.
Stanley Crisp had explained that Vincent was able to use biomancy as well. The mirror opposite of necromancy. It was not the power of Death, but of Life. Where Bogdan Dalca could only reanimate dead things as dead things, Vincent had given true Life to Dezzy again. He had taken him from beyond the Veil—where he was serving as a Scion for a being known as the Prince of Nothing—and brought him back to life. Vincent did not know how. Neither did Dezzy nor Stanley.
A sign on the highway indicated there was a rest stop ahead. A truck stop called Red Bird Diner. If they had hot food, it was good enough for Vincent.
Dezzy had inexplicably found another Guns N’ Roses song as Vincent pulled the car into the driveway outside the Red Bird.
The building was a long, wood-paneled structure. The front was all windows that allowed diners in booths to look out on the parking lot. Vincent parked by the green double doors and followed Dezzy into the building.
“Just sit wherever’s open,” said a waitress. Her red shirt featured the eponymous bird from the Red Bird Diner on it. The place was huge, but there were only a handful of customers inside at the moment.
The front counter featured a display case of desserts that Dezzy paused to look at for a moment. Vincent headed down to the left and took the first open booth.
“That pecan pie is calling my name,” Dezzy said, taking a seat.
“Any blueberry?” Vincent asked. Dezzy shook his head.
“Nah, but there’s cherry. How long you figure till we get where we’re going?”
“Soon. Feels soon.”
“And there’s a witch there?” Dezzy asked. The waitress came over and set the menu in front of them, as well as two glasses of ice water.
“Welcome to the Red Bird. My name is Casey. Can I start you boys with some drinks?” she asked.
“I would love a Pepsi,” Dezzy said.
“Coke okay?”
“Oh, man. I guess so,” Dezzy said. “And can I get a piece of that pecan pie?”
“Before your meal?” Casey asked. Dezzy smiled.
“Oh yeah. You gotta eat dessert first. That’s, like, the best part of being an adult,” he explained. Casey smiled, not entirely convinced, and wrote it on her pad.
“I’ll just have some coffee,” Vincent said.
“Coming right up,” Casey said, walking away. Dezzy opened his menu.
“I don’t think the witch is there. But she used to be,” Vincent said. Dezzy flipped the page in his menu.
“Right on. Is she in your head like the necromancer?”
“Sort of? It’s hard to say. I think I have her memories, though. And I saw her once. Or I remembered her. It’s hard to explain.”
“Hey man, no worries. I used to usher souls through their journey beyond the Veil for an immortal cosmic entity that transcends human understanding. Life is nutty,” Dezzy said.
“Yeah. I guess it is,” Vincent agreed.
Casey returned with pie and drinks.
“Have you decided on what you’d like?” she asked.
“Could I get the bacon and blue cheeseburger with fries?” Dezzy asked.
“You bet, medium rare?”
“Oh, you know it. And also, can I get a Reuben sandwich?”
Casey raised an eyebrow at him but nodded.
“Hungry man,” she said.
“Oh, and I guess an order of mozzarella sticks? Is it a lot of sticks?”
“It’s five,” she said.
“Can I get two orders?” he asked.
“You sure can. Is that everything?”
“Um. No. Yes. Yeah. I think,” Dezzy said.
“I’ll have a Reuben, too,” Vincent said. He figured he might as well try one now. Dezzy smiled and reached over the table for a high five. He had taken to high-fiving Vincent a lot while he was driving. Vincent put his hand up and Dezzy slapped.
“My man. You’re in for a treat. So good.”
Casey left, and Vincent added some sugar to his coffee while Dezzy sipped his Coke.
“You think this’ll be like Dalca?”
“In what way?”
“In a ‘possess your body until a voodoo loa has to be summoned to separate the two of you’ way,” Dezzy said. His Uncle Stanley had called upon Baron Samedi to save Vincent when Bogdan Dalca took over. But that was not going to be an option again. Especially since Stanley was still in Alder Falls.
“Oh. I hope not,” Vincent said. He was not sure, but he felt like he was better able to control things now. He didn’t think he would let anyone get the drop on him the way Dalca had. Not again, anyway.
“He has a point,” Fix said. Vincent said nothing to the voice in his head. It was a concern. But he got a different feeling from the woman. Even though he was fairly certain she was a witch, and she had also been at whatever ritual ended with Bogdan’s death and Vincent’s memory loss, she felt differently in his mind.
The memories he was getting from the witch were not like Dalca’s. The necromancer’s had been clear and driven by powe
rful emotion. Rage, most often. His memories bowled over Vincent like a big screen movie, taking him over and wrapping him up in the feelings and events of Dalca’s past.
The witch was different. Her memories seemed to seep in like water through cracks. Sometimes Vincent felt like they were his own thoughts until the sights and sounds became unfamiliar to his conscious mind.
If there was rage behind the woman’s emotions, Vincent could not feel it. If anything, there was a sense of detachment, a scientific interest devoid of feeling, in the way her thoughts felt to him. But it was clear that whatever had happened to her in that field in which she died started in a town somewhere in Massachusetts.
Vincent took another sip of his coffee and got up, excusing himself to use the washroom. He walked along a row of booths lined with red, fake leather to a doorway marked Restrooms at the far end of the building, and stepped into the men’s room.
The room was less clean than he would have liked a diner restroom to be. The waste basket hadn’t been emptied recently and from the smell of things, someone needed to run a mop over the floor. But compared to some gas stations he’d stopped at, it wasn’t the worst, though.
Vincent walked across to a urinal. He started humming a song, reading some of the graffiti on the wall.
“What’s that song?” Fix asked.
“Hmm?”
“You’re humming,” Fix said. Vincent continued the tune. He did not recognize it.
“...wouldn’t you love to love her…” Vincent muttered, heading to the sink to wash his hands.
“Vincent?” Fix said.
“All your life you’ve never seen a woman, taken by the wind,” Vincent sang to himself.
“Vincent, what are you doing?”
“She’s like a cat in the dark.”
“Vincent!” Fix shouted in his head. Vincent looked up. His hands froze, half-lathered, as the water ran into the basin.
“Who are you?” Fix asked.
The red-haired woman in the mirror touched her face with a soapy hand.
“That is a good question,” she said. She stared through Vincent’s eyes at Vincent’s face. But it was now the face of the woman he had met in the field, in a dream he shared with Bogdan Dalca. The woman with the red hair. Sharp features and green eyes. The witch.
“Is this Vincent?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” Vincent answered. They both used his mouth to speak. Vincent could still see from his own eyes. It was not like when Dalca took over his body. The woman was not overtaking him. It was like she was sharing with him, two passengers in the same car. Only, her control seemed to exist in the mirror.
Vincent lifted his hand, looked at it. He was still in control. Or maybe just sharing control.
“My name is Selena,” the woman said. The words came out of Vincent’s mouth. The voice was not his own. The accent was subtle from New England.
“Oh. Nice to meet you?” Vincent said. He looked at her in the mirror. She stared back, unimpressed.
“We’ve already met,” she said. Her tone was icy.
“I don’t remember,” he answered.
“Is that so?”
“I met you in a dream, I think.”
“You killed me, Vincent Donnelly. Do you remember that?”
Vincent stared at the reflection in the mirror. He felt his body go rigid and his stomach knotted up. He had suspected he was the one who had killed the people in that field. But he didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t know why he would have done such a thing. Or how.
“I don’t. I don’t remember that,” he said.
“No. No, you don’t, do you?” She looked suspicious. She made his body lean in closer, looking into her own eyes in the mirror.
“Who is that listening to us?” she said quietly.
“What do you mean?” Vincent asked. She smirked.
“The one who asked about your singing?” she said. “There’s someone else in here.”
“You can hear me?” Fix said. Selena smiled, though it was not a friendly expression.
“Of course. And you are?”
“That’s Fix,” Vincent said.
“Fix. That’s your given name?” Selena asked.
“It’s the only one I have,” Fix answered. Selena’s eyes narrowed as she stared into them. As she stared into Vincent.
“And who are you, Fix?”
“I don’t know,” he answered quietly.
“Is that so?” she said.
“We woke up together. In that field. With... where you were,” Vincent said. Selena chuckled.
“Yes, our little ritual. Some trick that turned out to be. I assume you didn’t get what you wanted,” she said.
“I don’t remember anything,” Vincent said.
“I do, Vincent. I remember the way that knife felt sliding into my back. Again. And again. And again.” She pounded her hand on the edge of the sink to accentuate the point.
“I’m sorry,” Vincent said quietly. Selena laughed at him.
“You’re sorry? For murdering me?” she said.
“I don’t remember you. I don’t remember any of it. But I’m sorry it happened,” he said. His stomach felt like the coffee he had drunk earlier was pure acid now. He felt sick.
“How can you be sorry for something you don’t even remember?” she asked him.
“Because I don’t... know. I don’t want to hurt anyone. Maybe I did. But I don’t know why. I don’t know who I was.”
“And now? You are going to kill my sisters just because?” Selena said.
“What?”
“My sisters. In Burnham. That is where you’re going. I have seen that much,” she said as though it were an accusation.
“Yes. But no. Not to kill anyone. I don’t even know where I’m going.”
“Then why, Vincent?”
“Because it’s what you remember. I can see this place. Feel it. It’s a place you want to be.”
Selena cracked a smile and rolled her eyes in the mirror.
“Oh, I see. And you’re just being a good Samaritan, bringing me home,” she said. Vincent shrugged.
“I just thought I could find out who you were and what happened to you. Maybe find a way to get you out of my head,” he said.
“Brilliant plan predicated on a maybe, Vincent. Whatever gave you the idea that such a thing would work?”
“Worked on Dalca,” Fix said.
Selena inhaled sharply and stood up straight.
“Dalca?” she said. “Bogdan Dalca?”
“You know him?” Vincent asked.
“All of my coven know of the Necromancer, as do many others. Seems you remember enough of our ritual to recall that monster. And that is all I need to know about you and your lies,” she said in a hiss.
“I’m not lying,” Vincent said.
“I am not so gullible as to trust a friend of Bogdan Dalca,” she said.
“We killed Dalca,” Fix said. “Again.”
Selena cocked her head to one side.
“Again?”
“He possessed me. Tried to kill everyone in the world. But we stopped him,” Vincent said.
“How? Why?”
“Because I don’t want everyone in the world to die?” Vincent offered. Selena laughed.
“Oh, it was just me, was it?”
“I don’t—”
“Remember, yes,” she finished for him. “Dalca was powerful. Very powerful. How did you stop him?”
“I have his power,” Vincent said. “He took over my body. I had his thoughts and memories. I… learned it, I guess? The way he did it.”
“You are a necromancer?” she said.
“I can use necromancy. And biomancy, I guess.”
“Biomancy? Absurd,” Selena said.
“Why is that absurd?” Vincent asked. He found her tone more insulting than anything else. Almost like she didn’t believe he was capable.
; “They are incompatible. They are the sun and the moon,” she said.
“Well, eclipses happen,” Vincent said.
“This is not a joke, Necromancer,” Selena scolded.
“He’s telling the truth,” Fix said. “He raised a man from the dead. Fully back to life, not a corpse.”
“No one has that power except the Goddess,” Selena said.
“Well, tell that to Dezzy, he died in the eighties,” Vincent said.
“The Guns N’ Roses idiot?” Selena said.
“You’ve been listening to us that long?”
“I do not believe you,” she said. Vincent shrugged. He put his hands back in the water and finished washing, not looking at her reflection.
“Well, I can’t explain it, either. I never wanted this. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know you or Bogdan Dalca or the people in that field. I don’t know anything, literally. I remembered a town and wanted to take you there because I thought maybe it could help you, or me out. And I’m pretty scared that the same damn thing that happened with Dalca is going to happen with you, and I don’t know how to stop you from killing everyone in the world if you take over my body. So there. That’s where we are.”
He finished rinsing his hands and reached for a towel, but the dispenser was empty.
“This bathroom is disgusting,” Selena said. “Are all men’s rooms like this?”
“What?” Vincent said.
“I’ve never been in one before.”
“They’re...no. Most are fine. Some are worse.”
“Like people, hmm?”
“I guess,” Vincent agreed.
“What makes you think I want to kill anyone, Vincent Donnelly?” Selena asked. He looked at the mirror again. She stared back at him. She was a beautiful woman and very intimidating at the same time. She exuded a strength that was beyond whatever power she might have wielded in that ritual.
“Because you were with Dalca. You were conducting some kind of ritual with him. He wouldn’t tell me what you were doing. But he said the only way he could save the world was by killing everyone in it. He thought he was fixing whatever you had done.”
“What I had done?” she said, offended.
“All of you. Dalca, the skinny man. The child—”
“You really don’t remember anything, do you?”