The kid had kept one of the nurses for half a week while he systematically cut her fingers off. To this day he wrote letters to her family, asking her sisters to forgive him and come for a weekend visit. Roger had all the letters and love notes stacked in the bottom drawer of his desk.
He intently read on, file after file, signing his name at the bottom of the review sheets.
After a while the twisted bit of metal began to feel like silk—though he did not consciously feel it at all—and then like warm flesh, and then like nothing that had a name.
Twenty-eight years earlier the fragment had been a bullet fired from an AK-47 at a distance of no more than a hundred yards into the brush line. The damage it caused had almost forced the surgeons to amputate his left leg and right arm—the vicious angle proving the sniper was in the treetops to the west, not even facing into the sun and still nobody could cap him—in the hopes of getting to a more seriously wounded soldier first. No time or facilities for meticulous microsurgery or resewing of minuscule arteries, not when you’d stamped on fléchette mines and had beehive rounds slicing chunks out of anyone standing over two feet high, and the Fucking New Guys were setting off trip wires all day long. If the doctors were going to take precious minutes saving his arm and leg, then the other soldier there painting the walls with arterial spray, trying to plug his holes with his own fingers, was going to do more than just weep and growl his wife’s name; he’d flop off the stretcher and die in a pool under their feet, and the bad juju would grow on Wakowski like moss.
The other guy was a hard-stripe sergeant named Kevin Brooks U.S.M.C., and he did First Lieutenant Roger Wakowski the favor of dying quickly so that the surgeons could save his arm and leg.
He shut the files and finished his coffee. Heated by the friction of his constant rubbing, the metal grew extremely hot now. The calluses and scars on his fingertips kept them from blistering.
Over the years he’d held on to the fragment as a talisman of sorts; the bullet had failed in its duty to murder him, and now that he owned the round he’d stolen its power, and to this day possessed a piece of the sniper who’d fired at him from the treetop bush. Wakowski had been superstitious before East Asia, growing up in the backwoods where men and myth met in the swamps. Afterward, he’d returned even more animistic than he could understand, carrying with him revenants he usually only saw in nightmares, in walls, and staring out certain windows. They crept on him through the fire-fights like smiling children screaming banshee suicide prayers, wired with explosives that made C4 charges look like sparklers.
Rolling the bullet under his knuckles, staring at the steel mesh over the windows, he waited for the end of his shift so he could go and grab something to eat at the all-night diner, hoping he’d be able to get into bed and not look at the ceiling for six hours straight. Maybe this would be the end of his insomnia. It felt like tonight could be the end.
After twenty-eight years and a dozen wars—only five of which had made the U.S. papers—he still hadn’t gotten used to the faces of his dead friends gazing down at him from the walls.
He signed the sheets and put the fragment back in his pocket.
And then pulled it out again.
Trapped, as always, or at least feeling that way, now on her stomach the way they make you when they’re about to rape you or shoot you in the head. With feet entangled, a hand on her ankle and screams edging up her throat, Jodi spun over in her sleep.
She kicked and shifted, sank into darkness, nearly shrieking if she hadn’t been suffocated by the crocheted blanket. She awoke floundering and flung her arms out to keep from dropping to the floor, uttering pleas. These sounds snapped the room’s utter silence, and because her throat was so dry and raspy, so hideously masculine in the middle of the night, the husky and unfamiliar voice terrified her.
Pressing her palms over her eyes, Jodi flipped the curls of her disheveled hair out of her face, coughed cotton from her mouth. Disoriented, she looked around, with only the orange glow of the small night-light from the kitchen to focus on. Oh yeah, what a wild life I lead. She’d fallen asleep in front of the TV again, in the middle of a stale rerun of a desperately unfunny sitcom. There’d been nothing better to do. How could there have been nothing better to do? Action-packed chills, spills, and thrilling adventures … It was becoming a habit, this napping, and tomorrow she’d pay for it once more with a spineload of aches and cramps.
“Where do you go from here?” she whispered. Leaning forward, she stretched and whirled her arms, tilted her neck back and forth, shrugging out the kinks. She felt more tired than when she’d drifted off earlier, and the now dark bags under her eyes would blacken further. Great, this was just great, all right.
She’d awakened with a brush-stroked face painted heavily in her mind. Jeez, her erotic pubescent fantasies rising to the surface after all this time? Having a dream of their old paperboy. Where in the hell had he come from? Jodi couldn’t guess why, after all this time, she’d envisioned him of all people. So she’d read a couple of his plays and occasionally looked at the oil painting of him in the Town Hall. She hadn’t thought about Mattie Galen since that heart-pounding crush on him had been transposed to Gigantor Davidson the basketball star, in the ninth grade.
Strange, side effects of too much radiation from the television. She had tumors, she knew she had tumors. I’m just horny.
Sitting in darkness, she wished for a cigarette, and promised herself not to wind up a couch potato yet another night. It started screwing with her head, all this lying around the house with nothing to do—except helping Dad out every now and again when he’d allow it, while Mom visited Aunt Martha.
Three days before, Jodi had come downstairs smelling smoke and discovered her mother gone, her father in the kitchen surrounded by splashes of flame. He stood like a performance artist, making some incomprehensible point on the stage. Burning black lumpy pancakes on the grill, waffles smoking in the toaster, hash browns in the microwave, a grease fire in the frying pan, as if hoping to burn himself to death in the center of the conflagration. This was his first attempt at cooking on his own in thirty years. He smiled through it all, even as the flames came for him. If she hadn’t found two full boxes of baking soda and been able to put out all the burning breakfasts with them, there would have been serious trouble. He’d only grinned at her and said, “I suspect you may have to help me here until your mother gets back.”
After cleaning the place and serving cornflakes and muffins to Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Kessner—they didn’t seem to mind, not that or anything else—her father explained that Aunt Martha was ill and Mom, despite not having seen her for more than a year, went home again. Grandma’s phone chewing was another matter.
We’re all getting weird.
Jodi had no choice but to face the truly awful facts at hand: Shit, it was time to get a job. “Ba-lech,” she said, and tossed the pillow to the other side of the couch. She hadn’t been able to wait any longer for a DJ slot to open at the radio station; a friend of a friend had promised her the next available position, but she’d heard the station’s plans to expand had fallen through. Now she had to get any lousy job she could grab onto, even if she had to work checkout or shelve books at the library. Or, hell, maybe go back to that bastard Farlessi and serve up another million overcooked Krunchburgers to snotty asswipes who thought they were tough. Keep on Krunching until she was too fat and old to escape Farlessi’s groping, sweaty meat-hook hands. Since she’d quit four weeks ago she’d made the rounds to all the other diners and restaurants, only to go through the endless repetition of leaving her application in bins overflowing with similar applications of similar girls hoping to get out from under their parents who threw blankets over them on the couch, and trying to make the very same buck she was trying to make.
The radiator clinked with rushing water as Jodi cursed Frank Farlessi’s greasy ways, his total lack of manners, tasteless speech and food, and the slimy come-ons. You could forgive him some of the time and ha
ndle a lot more, but not all of it. In the year she’d worked at the Krunch she’d seen at least six girls quit because of the vile things he’d implored them to do in the back of his ’61 pickup. Some had left because of the snaking fashion his hands reached out to touch those glorified G-strings he made them wear as uniforms.
She was amazed at how few of their fathers ever came back looking for a fight. But it was well-known that Farlessi was loud and obnoxious, but otherwise harmless. Her own daddy, though, yeesh, if he’d only known about half the crap she’d gone through, Daddy would have stuck his shotgun in Frankie’s face and reprimanded him for his vulgar ways. Double click. Boom. That was her dad—always quiet and considerate, but damn, oh so pernicious when you got him riled.
Jodi stood, folded the blanket, and laid it over the back of the couch. Whatever happened tomorrow she’d have to worry about it in the morning, after she got through covering the bags under her eyes. Maybe Mom would call, give her a pep talk. She turned off the outside light and sleepily headed off to get a glass of water before going to bed.
She hadn’t taken three steps before tripping over Gus and kneecapping herself on the recliner. “Jeez, Gus.”
Gusto came over, rose, and ploomped his front paws onto her belly. His breath brought tears. He followed beside her as she stumbled into the kitchen, got a glass of milk, and refilled his water bowl. Passing the den, she saw that Kessner and Hoffman were still playing chess.
“Good night,” she said, walking by without waiting to see if they would respond, knowing they wouldn’t.
Gusto curled into a lump at the back door. The clock in the hallway read five to midnight.
The radiator rumbled off.
Jodi went upstairs and hit the bathroom, brushed her teeth quickly, and went to her room. She set the alarm for eight o’clock.
Thinking of the pale empty stares of the cashiers in supermarkets, she said, “Uh, I can’t believe this, I just can’t.” She wondered once again where in hell her thoughts of Matthew Galen had come from.
She shut the drapes but didn’t notice the roiling cloud above parting to show the moon, surging silver-tipped and tacked on black, a mutating shape with ten thousand rushing wings, heading for a window.
Chapter Eight
A dream could kill. He opened his eyes inside the nightmare and realized he’d been invaded.
“Idiot,” he said.
An obscenity in the sky, the sun rose bloated and plague-ridden. Birds fell from the air with their feathers burning, eyes bursting, screeching as they plummeted around him, striking the sand like dying streamers.
The book writhed in his hands.
Flames spelled out his name, GALEN, in blue-flame script, charred through the cover. Rain sizzled where it touched the binding, hissed and smoked as it pounded against his skin.
Throbbing methodically, the book shuddered and quickened its pace to match his racing pulse, beating steadfastly to the rhythm of his heart. GALEN bulged, a growing cancer. Its cover stretched toward him, laced with barely distinguishable veins like those at the edge of Helen’s jawline, weaving up to her ear. He gritted his teeth and the pages erupted, throwing blood into his face.
He wiped his eyes. Crouched before the boulders that rimmed the area north of Etcher’s Point, he looked at the lighthouse. The rocks cracked in the heat. The diseased sun sagged. Waves struggled forward, tide rising with the flaming rainfall.
“Subtle,” Matthew said. “Very sophisticated.”
From the center of the nightmare he watched Helen seated and crying offshore, a symbol of his redemption. Damn it, now that he was home the evil could slither through his mind and touch others. Pressured by longing and fear, his throat closed when he saw the silver cord at the base of her neck whipping fiercely in the wind. They were still tied. Thank God, she still loves me.
The scene receded, and he made a stab at the cord. It squirmed before his face, thrashing so wildly it threatened to rip free from her neck; he got his hands around the line and struggled to control it. If the cord snapped she’d die in her sleep.
He’d done this to her, my baby, allowed the Goat access through his affection; just for being devoted and dreaming about Helen now, the beast might reach into her.
“Like hell.”
She seemed to stand in a whole other nightmare. It proved to be difficult for him to grasp her. Matthew doubled over, straining to keep the astral line affixed to Helen, the cold sweat dappling him now. He had to hold on. The cord was freezing. Ice rimmed the ethereal silver. In the winter she sat with snow sprinkling her upswept auburn hair, snowflakes thickening on her lengthy eyelashes. Her coat was open; she’d always hated the confined feeling of anything too near her neck, and she’d gripe whenever he nibbled her throat.
Helen remained as beautiful as ever. Another aching skewer shoved into his heart, turning there. How could I have ever left her? He mouthed his father’s name, and his scars rasped out a pledge to Beli’ya’al, Aztorath, and Mammon.
Her tears dappled her lovely face, nose running.
The crimson-tinged pages of his life and death twirled and spun in the clawing winds. Nah, this game wasn’t going to work. He saw only Helen, kept his focus on her, where it always belonged. Rain scoured blood from the beach. He got as close to Helen’s dream as possible, but couldn’t breach her sad winter thoughts. It made him grin, that red Rudolph nose of hers. This game played him. Matthew pulled until the slack in the silver thread was taken up, and the cord stabilized and straightened. He let it go safely as her astral self sniffled on the shore.
Gritting his teeth, he abruptly felt drunk, and laughed once, a short bark of madness. He could accept death, guilt and loss, loneliness, and even damnation, but not a cheap insult like this, a little trick meant to chip at his resolve. Helen stared through him as he stepped away from the book in order to break through the scorched walls of his vision. “Idiot,” he chastised himself. “This is what you get for not putting up the protective sigils.” In a way it was true, he might have been able to fend off this initial brush with the Goat.
But perhaps it would work in his favor, the beast needing and wanting him to such an extent that it came to him even in these droll dreams. It was getting too eager for his love, and that could work to his advantage.
Kneeling in the sand, his hands out in front of him, moving into position, Matthew concentrated beyond the illusory rain. Tightening his muscles, he attempted to vanish behind these false eyes he saw with now, created from the fiber of phantasm. The sun sank in thirty seconds and the sky blackened. Silly, he thought, he and his enemy were both making the wrong moves, too hungry. He dealt with the deceiver.
The beacon of the lighthouse came on, and the cruel ambience of the world grew worse as the thrum of the signal’s generator became louder.
The lighthouse was alive, and it hated.
It stooped to one side like an old man asking a scared girl to come closer, its flecked paint stripped in long jagged strips, the rails rusted.
If you knew what to listen for, you could put an ear to its weather-beaten wood and hear the loathsome murmuring. You’d learn the hard way that it was built over another temple, one meant to sacrifice whatever innocence was left in you, counting on rape and rage, insecurity and humiliation. These winds grew worse as it waited; it had great faith in the keels of shipwrecks to crush their drowning captains and crews against the rocks, and for the undertow to gather and sweep the mangled remains into the caves below.
Footsteps striking the rickety metal stairs inside resounded in the surf.
Who?
This Helen chimera peered at nothing, forever weeping. The beacon revolved and shone down upon Matthew. An intense whiteness brightened the beach, sparkling like the sneer of fangs. At his knees, the book of his life and death crawled in the sand and rubbed against his leg.
The light filled Etcher’s Point with grandeur, a scalpel ripping the sea wide open. Everything it touched became reality, as the sense of his childho
od overshadowed his adult life. He shut his eyes and sought the prayers, muttering the words, but his concentration kept snapping further and further apart.
More burning birds fell toward the boulders, cawing pitifully as he attempted to back out of this double-helix snarl of nightmares. The beam of light swung and fell on the seething ocean, chewing through the surface and dragging dead fish up from the bottom. The generator squealed painfully, its motor on the verge of seizing.
He saw Debbi on the lighthouse platform, her black hair billowing, arms outstretched to him, features twisted into an inhuman scowl.
(Debbi was dead.)
Oh no.
She giggled and disappeared down the stairs, coming for him.
She’s calling, she’s coughing. Red strings of spittle hung off her chin. Blood filled the marble canals chiseled into the cave floor. The Goat’s face was painted over the carved pentagram, and he backed away. She weakly touched his ankle and he flinched from her hand, too stunned to do anything else. Her mouth was crimson and drooling; the stalagmite lifted the back of her dress like a tent, but it hadn’t torn through yet. She blinked and tried to speak.
He could hear the pounding of the ocean behind the cave walls. A.G. and Ruth were screaming for more than their lives, running up the tunnel as the cave began to glow with life, lost, searching for the stone stairs, demented with horror now. There was laughter.
Debbi reached out and clung to the cuff of his pants with one hand, stroking his ankle with a feeble back-and-forth motion with the other, her eyes pleading with him to help her, save her, to do something, but there was so much blood he could only watch it dripping off her braces, thick and syrupy, trickling from her nose. There was no time for it to well or pool beneath her as it was siphoned off into the thin trenches, flowing down the rock. Her tented dress ripped apart and the red was beginning to show through as she groaned and her body roughly slipped another inch down the sharp stalagmite. The pretty dress tore in half and he saw the rock gouging up through her stomach, her insides sticking to the tip of the point, and she wanted him to help her, her fingernails catching in his sneaker laces.
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