The sailors laughed and called out to each other with sea-roughened voices. Jason took a deep breath and exhaled a mouthful of dust. The floor moved under his feet, the angle even more pitched. His hands slipped on the doorknob as his body lurched to the left. He grabbed the frame again with his right hand and the knob with his left.
Don’t forget, the door opens in, not out.
With a shout, he twisted the doorknob and pulled. The sailor on the mast cursed the sea again and laughed, then he called out Jason’s name.
“Come on, boy. A little swim will do you good.”
Jason clenched his jaw and pulled the door. It gave one horrible squeal, then opened, crashing back against the wall. In front of him, a huge wave of dark water rose up, too high to be real. It climbed higher than the ceiling, higher than the building. He opened his mouth and the wave crashed down with a roar. Hot air rushed over him, filled with the stinking reek of dead and dying things. Jason reached out, grabbed the other side of the doorframe, and as the floor lifted again, pulled his body forward and out. His feet skipped a step, and he crashed into the wall above the stairs.
The sailor laughed one last time. The door slammed shut. Jason’s knees gave out, and he sank down against the wall. His arms were streaked with dust and cobwebs and blood. His left arm burned; his right screamed in agony. The silence of the hallway wrapped him in its sanity. No ships, no ocean, no sailors. The back of his shirt stuck to his skin. He raked his fingers through his hair, dislodging a long cobweb strand, thick with dust. His Alpha knot gave a little tug.
Still with me?
A tiny hand touched his cheek—a wallpaper hand. The Alpha knot unraveled. Jason lurched to his feet with a sob behind his lips. He took the stairs down two at a time. When he stepped over the thirteenth stair, the door, the front door to the real world, was still far away. An ache grew in his chest.
Fifteen steps.
The sob broke free.
Nineteen.
The door receded farther away. His feet barely touched the steps. He rushed down, skipping two, skipping three.
Twenty-seven steps.
Not right, there are thirteen. I counted them.
Small voices whispered. Trapped in the walls, in the horrible paper. They pleaded with him, but Jason ignored their cries.
None of this is real. Just another one of Sailor’s games.
Thirty-five.
Impossible.
The door receded, then faded into a brick wall. Far away.
Thirty-seven.
The brick faded and the edges of the door mocked him with its changing proximity.
Forty-three.
I’ll never get out.
Forty-nine.
Jason ran. The door loomed up, suddenly there, and he skidded across the bottom landing. He reached for the handle
it won’t be there, not now
and his fingers touched metal.
The door pulls in, don’t forget.
His hands, desperate for the real, the safe, remembered. He stumbled onto the street, bending over with his hands on his thighs as he gasped for air. Tears, snot and sweat dropped onto the pavement, and he spat out a huge glob of gray phlegm that tasted like seawater. A knot tightened in his chest, but it wasn’t the Alpha knot. The knot exploded into pain. Jason staggered across the street. He coughed up more phlegm, got in his car and locked the door behind him. A glance in the rear-view mirror revealed a stranger’s face, streaked with dust and grime. Sticky, half-dry blood matted his arms. The sky was purple, not yet full dark, and he turned on the car and flipped on the headlights.
The sky had been clear and bright blue when he walked
broke
into 1303. Now twilight hovered at the horizon.
It can’t be right. I wasn’t there that long.
A low, ominous laugh drifted through his open window. The door to 1303 still hung open. Beyond the door—blackness, like a dark mouth. The laugh again, then a shape hovered in the open doorway. Taller than a man. Two eyes, pale green. One eye closed in a wink, and Jason shattered the speed limit as he fled Shakespeare Street.
5
John S. Iblis shut the door and ascended the steps to his room. Smoke trails curled up from his fingers, and his eyes blazed. He entered the room at the top of the stairs, and as he strode to the center, something small moved in the corner. One small mouse who’d come out to sniff the charred corpse of his cousin, perhaps. He held out one hand, and the mouse burst into orange-red flame. It burned brighter and brighter until it was nothing more than a small pile of smoldering ash.
“That is what happens when you go into places you have no business going into,” he growled. “You burn.”
Chapter Ten
The Center of the Whirlpool
1
Once home, Jason peeled off his shirt and the ruined bandages beneath. The gashes on his right arm oozed blood in a slow trail. Cobwebs and dust turned his hair and skin gray. His cheeks were gaunt, his eyes drawn and filth was caked in vertical lines across his forehead. He opened the medicine cabinet, not wanting to see his reflection anymore.
Could this get any worse?
On the top shelf of the medicine cabinet, propped up next to a tube of toothpaste and his deodorant, a white card answered his question.
Why, yes, of course it could.
He didn’t put the card on the shelf. It most certainly was not there when he left this morning, but it sat there now. A white card with raised black lettering. The name. The phone number.
John S. Iblis, Tattoo Artist.
The answer had been there the entire time. Why didn’t he see it before? The guy from the shop in Maine had said, ”Different religion and all, but whatever. It’s still funny.”
Because I thought it was just a joke.
His name. His fucking name.
John S. Iblis.
I didn’t see it because it’s not exactly there. It’s like the door on Shakespeare Street. You don’t know it’s wrong right away.
A joke. A grim joke.
John S. Iblis.
The voices from the dream came flooding back.
Father of Lies.
I don’t even believe in him. How can he be real? It’s all made up. God, the devil, the Bible. Just stories to keep people in line. He can’t exist.
Jason gripped the edge of the sink, tight enough to turn his knuckles white, almost tight enough to still the shaking of his fingers. “He can’t. I don’t believe in him.”
His father’s voice, paper-thin. “I don’t think he cares much about that, son.”
Jason stared at the card. “You don’t exist.”
Heat bloomed in his left arm, and the griffin twisted underneath his skin as if it stretched like a dog. Oh yes I do, that stretch said. I am very real.
What does he want from me?
But Jason knew. He knew exactly what Sailor wanted. The orderly-musician with the pinup tattoo. The sailor, laughing like a fiend at the ocean. Who else? The homeless man with his bottle of rum. The snarling bear tattoo. The old man at the bookstore.
“Had a girl and she sure was fine,” Jason said.
The song. Their song. All the same man. Except he wasn’t a man at all. How many others? How many times had Jason seen him and not known? All with the same walk. The roll. Not the end result of a life at sea at all, but the result of forcing limbs into ill-fitting flesh. Yes, Jason knew exactly what he wanted. He’d laugh at the absurdity, if he could, but the laughter would turn to screams.
The tattoo wasn’t just magic. It was Iblis magic. The devil was all in the details. Sailor had even said it at the shop. When Jason had signed the consent form, he’d signed a contract. “Dad tried to tell me, and I didn’t listen.” The fine print—the spidery handwriting underneath the print he thought he’d imagined—was a trick, but it didn’t matter; he’d willingly signed his name, and the hanging coats of human skin in his white room not-dream had belonged to all the other fools who’d done the same.
Jason lifted his hand and reached out for the card. His fingers weren’t shaking. They were convulsing in a mad dance of flesh and bone.
Don’t touch the card.
His father’s voice? His own?
“He wants my skin.” Jason said and slammed the medicine cabinet shut. His gray face peered back. “He. Wants. My. Skin.”
He opened the cabinet and slammed it shut again. The bottles inside danced and shook against each other. His voice rose. “My skin.” He opened and slammed it again. And again. The door shook. The hinges squealed.
“You can’t have it. It’s mine,” he shouted, slamming it shut one last time. The mirror shattered, and the door bounced back open from the force. Jagged shards of glass spilled down into the sink. One long piece remained on the door, revealing half his face, and he recoiled from his own eyes. He reached out, pulled the piece from the frame and dropped it in the sink where it broke into a dozen, smaller pieces. The white business card fluttered down through the air, far too slow to be a normal business card. It tilted to the right, then to the left
like the ocean, like the floor
and Jason snatched it out of the air, hissing at the paper’s heat. He dropped it into the sink, and as it fell down onto the
bad luck, seven years of bad luck
broken mirror, a smell, like ash and cinder, drifted up and wrapped around him. Like smoke.
Like skin.
And what exactly did Sailor look like underneath his human disguise?
Jason shuddered.
2
After a shower, Jason ordered a pizza (because that’s what people, normal people, were supposed to do—things like order pizza, go to work, hang out with friends) and turned on the television. He checked his cell phone. Six messages. He listened to them with no expression on his face. The first from his mother, her voice thick with tears and anger. Why didn’t he tell her about Shelley? Why did she have to find out from his brother? He pushed a button, and the automated voice told him the message was deleted. The next message from his brother, calling to yell at him for not telling their mother.
Click. Delete.
Mitch, calling to say hello and that she missed him.
Click. Delete.
From Brian, a quick ”Sorry, man.”
Click. Delete.
Another message from his mother. ”Please call me, Jason. The minister asked about you again, and I really think you should talk to him. Especially now.”
He laughed. Sure, talk to the minister. Maybe he could introduce him to Sailor, and they could discuss good and evil, souls and skin. He could come over, sprinkle Jason’s arm with holy water, and say a few prayers. Maybe perform an exorcism. Except the devil wasn’t inside him
not yet
just his unholy ink.
Click. Delete.
And the last, an apologetic call from his boss. Everyone knew about Shelley, then.
Click. Delete.
The white card, no longer hot to the touch, sat on his coffee table, lined up next to the edge. He liked it where he could see it. A hint of smoke lingered in the air.
Even though it was late, he dialed Mitch’s number, hopeful her voice mail would pick up.
“Hey.”
She sounded tired. More than I do. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s been a long day. I’m looking forward to coming home.”
“Me too,” he lied.
Unless I can’t take care of Frank. Then I can never see her again. For her sake.
“What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your voice. There’s something definitely wrong. I can hear it,” she said.
Yes, there’s something very definitely wrong.
Jason’s hand tightened around the phone. “My ex. She was killed.”
“Oh my God. I’m sorry.”
“She and Nicole both.”
“Both of them? What happened?”
Frank happened.
“They don’t know anything yet.”
“Jesus, that’s horrible.”
Silence.
“I don’t know what to say,” Mitch said.
“It’s okay. It’s all a little strange right now.”
An understatement.
“Mitch? Do you believe in God?”
“What?”
“God. Do you believe in him?”
Another silence.
“I believe in something. I don’t think there’s a man with a flowing beard sitting on a gilded throne, watching over us, but I think there’s something more, something bigger. Why? Do you?”
“I’ve been an atheist since I was thirteen,” Jason said, even though he wasn’t so sure about that now.
“My brother was an atheist, too, even at the end,” Mitch said.
“And the, the devil?”
Mitch laughed, a quick little laugh, and he could see her so clearly in his mind, it hurt. “No. I think the devil was made up to make people think twice about doing the wrong thing.”
To keep people in line.
Jason reached out and slid the card to the center of the table. The scent of ash and flame flared stronger.
Nope, he exists all right, and get this. He likes to wear human skin, and he wants mine next.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head.
I’m still not sure how I can keep that from happening.
“Jason? Are you okay?”
“No, I’m really not. I will be, though.”
I hope.
“I’m flying in Wednesday night. I’ll call you when I land, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I love you, and I’m so sorry. I know she was your ex, but still.”
“I love you, too.”
Jason disconnected the call and turned the phone over in his hand. Her words rang in his head. ”Made up to make people think twice about doing the wrong thing.”
I wish you were right. I really do.
What the hell was he going to do? Laughter, reed-thin and shaky, rose up in his throat.
Funny choice of words there. What in the hell am I going to do?
Mitch was coming home Wednesday night. It was Monday night. He had one day to figure something out, because he couldn’t risk seeing her until the griffin was gone.
Jason dialed the number on the white card. A hissing noise buzzed in his ear instead of a ring. A strange series of clicks, like a clearing throat, then a message for him to check the number and dial again. He did.
“Come on, you son of a bitch,” he said.
The phone clicked then played the same message. He dialed the number a third time and hung up when the clicking started.
“The parents of fifteen-year-old Alex Marshall are asking anyone with information regarding the missing teen to please contact Baltimore County Police.”
Jason dropped his phone and whipped his head around.
“At this point in time, police are not calling his disappearance suspicious. Alex suffers from depression and has run away several times over the past few years.”
A photo of Alex replaced the newscaster’s face. A school photo, featuring unsmiling lips and sullen eyes.
I warned him. Why didn’t he listen to me?
“I could help you kill it,” Alex had said.
Had he tried to kill it on his own?
Three hard knocks sounded at the front door and Jason froze. Had Alex been found? If so, maybe the police were back. Maybe they’d found parts and linked it to Shelley’s death. It didn’t take a lot of stretch to the imagination to realize the common denominator was Jason—ex-wife, neighbor, strange animal bites, and, ”Mr. Harford, we’d like you to come down to the station.”
The knocks came again and Jason edged over to the door, his heart thudding in his chest. When he looked through the peephole, he laughed. His pizza had arrived.
3
Jason’s cell phone rang after he’d thrown out the pizza uneaten. The display read Unknown Ca
ller, and he smiled.
“You rang,” Sailor said.
“Yes, I did,” Jason said. “I know what you want.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps you do. You should come down to the shop so we can discuss it.”
“How do I even know you’ll be there?”
“I will be here. You have my word,” Sailor said, then chuckled and the phone went dead.
4
The door to 1303 Shakespeare Street hung open; Jason took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the tiny wallpaper hands as they brushed against his arms. The door to Sailor’s shop also stood open, revealing nothing but darkness. He took a deep breath, swallowing his fear (Sailor could simply kill him, he was sure of that, but he was also sure he wouldn’t, not yet), then stepped inside.
The lights of the bar were low, and shadows lingered in the corners. The neon signs in the front window flashed primary colors in regular intervals. The faces of the patrons all wore the same vacant expression. Dull eyes. Slack jaws. Hopelessness and despair.
Jason sat down in the closest empty booth; the slick vinyl seat gave an almost human sigh. He wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t expected Sailor to play fair. Music played in the background. An unfamiliar tune. No fine women at all.
Right where we started.
The sad fates of the unwary mixed in with the stale smell of beer. It should have given him comfort to know he wasn’t alone but it didn’t. Anger bubbled up. Futile, perhaps, yet it burned deep. The knot inside the anger twisted even tighter. He needed it here.
Sailor rolled in the bar, wearing a bright blue Hawaiian shirt, with a smile on his lined face. On anyone else, the shirt would appear whimsical. On Sailor, it looked macabre. He rolled over to Jason, and the patrons he passed shied away with terror in their eyes. When he slid into the seat opposite Jason, his green eyes sparkled with good humor. A great deal of it.
“Bartender,” he called out. “A round for everyone. On me.”
A patron in the corner lowered his head, sobbing.
“Well, well, well,” Sailor said in his gravelly voice. “So you know what I want.”
Ink Page 24