The Beast That Was Max

by Gerard Houarner

  Shots rang out from across the street. Bullets slammed into the brick face above Max, spraying concrete dust down on him. He ran, reached the corner, glanced back as he turned it.

  Men with coats flying open and weapons drawn pursued him. The car's tires screamed as they fought for traction, finally found it and took off down the street after him. The ghost floated past the pursuers and bore down on Max, crying out in a high-pitched voice that carried over the angry curses of the men below her.

  "Wait," she called, "I must speak to you. There is terrible danger—"

  The fastest of the pursuers broke stride and flinched as the ghost passed over him, shot at it once as its foot grazed his shoulder and finally slipped and fell. Max put his head down and sprinted around the corner.

  Wheels taking a turn too sharply warned Max that the car was closing in. Even as the car momentarily lost control and slammed against a parked van, a hail of Uzi fire raked the sidewalk and walls around him. Max pulled a string from the bag in which he had stowed his disguise, twisted a cap on a bottle sticking out of a side pocket. Metal ground against metal, snapped, and then the engine gunned as the car finally freed itself. Max turned and threw the bag. Its arc took it through the ghost and into the car's windshield. The incendiary and fragmentation devices exploded on contact, consuming the evidence of his alternate identity and destroying the front portion of the car. The flash turned night into day, the fireball made the winter summer, both for a moment. Neither scathed the ghost. It was almost on top of him, reaching a hand out for him, its wrinkled face twisted into a hideous mask. The spirit still called to him. Max heard the burden of fear its tremulous voice carried and wondered what might frighten something insubstantial.

  Max continued to run as the car, burning, crashed into the back of a parked truck. More pursuers rounded the corner and skipped, slid, stumbled, when confronted by the spectacle of flame and twisted metal. More shots rang out. Bullets whined past Max.

  The ghost hovered by his shoulder like a marker made from luminous mist. "Wait, I must warn you, or they will be lost—"

  "Fuck off!" Max shouted.

  "Their father wants them—"

  "Leave me!"

  "Their father has found them—"

  The rear window of an old Jeep shattered as Max passed the vehicle. "You'll get me killed!" He wanted to curse, to lash out at the creature, drive it away with his rage. The Beast, he was surprised to feel, was quiet within him, like a cat confronted by unpleasant mystery, haunches down, tail flat to the ground, its instinct to run paralyzed by curiosity. It had not done well by ghosts and spirits, and neither, Max realized, had he.

  "Their father has taken them," the ghost continued, "and they will die for his desire. I do not want to lose my children."

  Max spared the spirit a look. She had descended and was floating alongside him, effortlessly keeping pace with his frantic sprint. Her substance shimmered, thickened and thinned like a roiling cloud, and was veined with faint traces of red. Strands of ghost hair fell from her balding head to her shoulders, unaffected by her moving through the physical world so quickly. Her thin lips trembled and her mouth was open, revealing more mist and gaps in her two rows of teeth. Tears brimmed her eyes, crawled down her elevated cheekbones.

  Max reached the next corner, found the stolen car he had left for his getaway, threw himself against it. He was inside without remembering unlocking and opening the door. The engine turned as soon as he started it, and he peeled out of the parking space and down the street. The dull thunk of a farewell bullet clipping the bumper accompanied his turn around another corner.

  Sirens wailed over the sound of the car, and Max slowed, continued to drive with his lights off through a few blocks of industrial buildings, stopping to check for oncoming police at every corner. He focused on the wheel in his hands and the empty streets while he drove and caught his breath. He did not look at the woman's glowing form sitting next to him, did not listen to her incessant whispering about daughters and fathers and killing.

  Max did not relax until he was on the parkway, heading for Manhattan. He took a deep breath, arched his back, and slammed his fist into the seat next to him. His hand passed through the old woman and cracked the seat back a notch.

  "What?" he shouted. "What are you? What do you want with me?"

  The old woman turned to him. Her form shifted over the cushion like a restless television image trapped in a screen as the car took gentle curves, slowed and sped up with traffic. "I am their mother."

  "Whose mother?" Max met her gaze. "Someone I killed?"

  "No, the ones you love."

  Max tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "Alioune and Kueur?" He peered into the night unrolling in front of him.

  'The ones I brought into the world."

  "How did you die? At birth, or did their father kill you?" The ghost laughed. "I am not dead. Though I have come close over the years."

  Max shook his head. "The twins said they were orphans. Their mother was supposed to be mortal, and Vietnamese."

  "That is your name for my land. I am Chiao, the dragon. My true form sleeps in a maze of forgotten tunnels and bunkers dug by fighters during the last war."

  "You don't look like a sleeping dragon to me."

  "Dreaming, I take on an aspect, just as, killing, you take on an aspect of yourself." The Beast howled and squirmed under her attention. "The people of my land know this part of me as an old woman who comes to judge the wicked and save the innocent. I raise the water, to kill and protect."

  Max poked her belly with his finger. "Your womb doesn't seem up to the job."

  "My daughters were not born from this substance. During the last war for unity and identity, your people shook my earth with weapons, rained fire from the sky, spewed nightmares into the spirit world. So many conquests, so many wars—I had to fly from the blood and metal and nightmares. I found a young woman raped and left for dead. Her soul crippled. I joined her, and we traveled together. Found a way to leave the country, and had our adventures in the world."

  "And one of those adventures was in Africa?"

  "Many, in Africa. So many spirits, so much life. I thought, once, foolishly, I might make it my home." The spirit looked out her side window. They passed a minivan, and children looked out from behind the driver and made faces and gestures at them. "But I was tricked. Used, by their father. Driven away by so much pain that my adventure had become worse than what had disturbed my sleep. I fled back to my homeland. I left the woman in Saigon, and she spent her last days in an opium den. I returned to Chiao's sleep and let the other parts have their chance at adventure." She turned away from the scenery of homes and cars and night, focused on Max. "Do you believe me?"

  "Is it important that I do?"

  "It is, if you love my daughters."

  They passed La Guardia Airport, St. Michael's Cemetery, descended into a wall-bounded collection of lanes, and emerged onto the Triboro's ribbon of steel and concrete suspended in the night over water. Manhattan's towers glittered to the left. The jagged horizon before them seemed to reach out for the car. Water slipped under the bridge like oil. Wind keened at the windows. The Beast was quiet in Max, watching the spirit.

  Chiao ignored the city, staring instead at Max. "I do not have much time," she said. "You are their only hope."

  "I know," he answered. "I've always known that." They rolled into a plaza leading to tollbooths. The Beast growled in Max. It ached to hurt the spirit, sensing Chiao as kin to the ghosts who had recently tortured it. Max took a deep breath and reasoned with himself that, whatever the spirit claimed to be, it was not what had caused Max and the Beast so much recent pain. Besides, he could see no way to kill it. Max chose the machine booth lane. "What do you want from me?" he asked.

  "Do you listen? Did you hear what I said when I breached the wall between our worlds?"

  Max smiled as he dug out a token from the coin box under the seat. "That's what they say to me sometimes. `Don't you listen,
Tonton, when we speak of our past?'"

  "And do you?"

  Max waved his hand. "Sometimes I get distracted. The Beast, the thing inside me, you know, it makes me hungry. I find it hard to concentrate."

  "You are afraid of what they are."

  "I know Kueur and Alioune, what they are," Max spat, angry. "I am a part of them. We belong to one another." He threw the token into the toll basket. The Beast screamed in outrage. As they went down a ramp and onto the highway by the river, Max fought the urge to crash the car into the guardrails.

  "Your fear and love are their doom," Chiao said, gazing at the water and the lights from the other shore reflected in the flowing darkness. "My own fears and loves have already cursed me. I should have dared to go to their father and fight him, though he has the power to kill this part of Chiao, as you do not. My own fear of death and my hope for your strength drove me to find you, as surely as my love for them. I was stupid." Chiao veiled her old face behind gnarled hands.

  Max glanced at her. He could see through her more clearly. "You're fading."

  "It is not easy coming into this world. In my own land, with my own people, there is belief to sustain me. But in this land, where there is hardly any faith, I must await my opportunities. Death. The passing of a spirit. Running water, for I am a spirit of water. We make do with what we can, even if all there is is blood and water. Or blood and flesh housing an enraged, dead spirit."

  The work for the night ahead flashed in Max's mind. He took an exit, drove on the service road and side streets until he found an abandoned corner by the towers of a housing project. He stopped the car, knowing he had to abandon it, keep moving, distance himself from the slaughter. But he could not walk Manhattan's streets haunted by a ghost. "If I were to believe you," he said, eager to end the dance between them, "if the twins really are missing, what can I do?

  "Find them first." Her arm shot out, and her hand passed through Max's blocking arm and into his head before he realized what had happened.

  The Beast leaped, and Max smashed his fist into the passenger-side door. Cursing, Max pulled back, squirmed against his side of the car. Chiao's hand withdrew. The world spun for Max for a moment. Images of roads, lights, buildings superimposed themselves on each other. Nausea seized his stomach.

  "Can you see?" Chiao asked, fading more quickly, ghost hair and clothes a wisp of mist, the red tracery of her form only a suggestion, like the afterimage of a firefly's flight.

  Her voice sounded as if it came from one of the nearby building's windows. Blood-tainted water pooled on the car floor.

  "What? I don't understand. What am I supposed to do—" A leering face exploded like lightning across his consciousness, vanished, leaving him shaken.

  "I have nothing of my own, except for them," the old woman whispered, now only a dissipating column of mist thinner than a smoker's hurried puff.

  "Was that him? Their father?"

  "I should have stayed with my children," wailed the spirit in a voice nearly drowned out by the wind-driving rush of cars from the nearby highway. "I should be stronger than the pain . . ."

  "Who is he? Why is he taking them? What does he want?" Max shouted, jumping into the damp passenger seat, straining to hear the voice, to feel the spirit's touch in his mind again.

  ". . . not follow your fear, or your love . . ."

  The voice was gone, like the spirit. Max kicked the steering column in frustration, shattering the housing and rocking the car. He threw the door open and burst out, slammed the door shut again, headed for the nearest telephone booth. A cluster of youths, camouflaged in dark clothing and hoods, eased out of the shadows around the telephone. The Beast rolled out of Max as his stride lengthened and his fists balled. A frail, young voice cursed. The youths scattered. Max called the twins' loft, his own private line to them as well as their general number. The answering machines picked up. He did not trust himself to leave a coherent message. Instead, Max strode downtown, searching for either a cab or a car he could steal, riding the Beast's and his own rage. He had never liked threats against the twins. People had died for the hint of mistreating them when they had only been his charges. Now that they had moved beyond that relationship, now that he was tied to them in ways he had never thought possible, danger to the twins meant more to him than his life. He could not, would not lose them. He would not lose that part of himself he had found in them. Death was nothing compared to that loss.

  The dim voice of reason warned him. He had acted rashly before when it came to the twins. And suffered because of it. The last time—but the last time, he had been influenced by ghosts. Allowed his senses to be deceived. This time, he was going to make sure the twins were in danger.

  A gypsy cab stopped for him, took him downtown on the West Side. The doorman to the twins' building was missing from his station. The door to their loft was ajar. Inside, dishes and glassware lay shattered on the wooden floor. Something burned on the stove. The celebratory meal they had been arranging for his triumphant return was ruined, and they did not answer his call.

  Reviewing the recordings from the cameras he had installed for their security, he saw a man, dark-skinned, tall, with a drawn face and slightly bulging eyes, enter the lobby. He lashed out with a lightning-fast blow at the doorman's head. The doorman fell. The stranger dragged him to a side room. The stranger took the elevator up, smashed through the loft door, entered. The twins had turned to face him. The stranger looked up at the camera, smiled. And then the monitors went dead.

  Max paced the loft for a few moments, trying to filter another truth out of what he had seen. But he could see no trap, no trick. The twins were gone.

  He sat on the couch facing away from the picture window, head in his hands, remembering. Sifting through the images Chiao had given him. Tunnel. Water. Highways. Buildings. Max stood, went to the window, looked out across the Hudson to the Jersey shore. Kueur and Alioune were on the other side.

  Max went downstairs, roused the doorman. He went to the nearby parking lot to retrieve one of the cars he kept for work: an old, black Buick Le Sabre. The Beast's roar, as loud and constant as the sound of a mighty river going over a fall, followed him as he drove to find the twins and bring them back.

  ~*~

  The part of Max the spirit had filled with knowledge of the twins' location drove through the Holland Tunnel. Traffic was light, and the stuffy air tasted of exhaust. Driving with the window open, Max let the wind rush through the car, blow through his short-cropped hair, whip against his cheek, and cry in his ear. That part of Max which held his instincts, skills, and talents was filled with joy as it moved his body with cold purpose. He was preparing to kill again. He knew his target by the visage he had glimpsed in the flash of Chiao's memory, and he knew his enemy's location. The certainty of purpose was all the confidence he needed.

  Another part of Max listened to the wind, watched the tunnel unwind before him, felt the pressure of water bearing down on the walls, and could dwell only on the part of death that meant loss to him. He wondered if the wind carried their death cry, if the road they traveled was as closed and endless as the tunnel appeared to be, if the weight of all the lives yet to be rushed to fill the hollow space of their existence.

  Max slapped the outside of the door until his palm stung, trying to drive away the dull, agonizing threat of loss. He did not want to think of the twins as gone. Nor did he want to feel the tug of sympathy and hurt for those who had suffered from the loss of men and women he had made his victims. Madness stirred in dark corners, in the shadows of awareness, as he almost felt the connection between his pain and theirs.

  The tunnel mouth appeared at last around a bend, opening to night trimmed with streetlamps and service station signs and distant lighted windows. He wondered if the Chiao spirit had felt the same elation and surge of freedom when she had separated from the rest of the dragon buried under bombed, defoliated, and napalmed earth. Max spat out the window, hating that he had bothered to wonder.

&nbs
p; The car climbed up a ramp, proceeded along a skyway. His heart jumped at an exit sign for Bayonne. Images fell into place one after another in his mind.

  Like a commuter gliding through radio stations looking for a comforting song, Max searched for memories of himself with the twins and found the first, as he always did, almost immediately: two young, brown-skinned girls torturing a transvestite prostitute in the Bois de Boulogne. The prostitute cried out in pain. And pleasure.

  Max's erection grew with the fear and desire from that distant moment. Max shuddered as he went down the exit ramp, paid the toll, and pulled over to the side. The fresh memory of their first time together overwhelmed him: Kueur, giving him pain while Alioune teased pleasure from him; pain spiking through him to Alioune, while pleasure drained into Kueur; the flow reversing, coming back through him to them. He barely remembered the other woman with them that first time, though her body had served to amplify the experience before their passion had consumed her life. The nova brilliance of sensation did remain, however, etched into his mind and body.

  The memory of that sensation was enough to blind him for a moment. He bowed his head, caught his breath, shifted in the seat as his erection shrank into a warm pool in his lap.

  The part of him that was the ghost of his old Beast, still strong enough in death, Max understood, to drive almost any other mortal insane, let loose a roar that rose from his genitals through his guts and reverberated in his heart.

  Max took off again, winding through Bayonne streets, momentarily drained. Sad. Beyond the love he claimed for Kueur and Alioune. On the edge of his true desire: death. He wished for the heat of the twins' bodies, for the bright sound of their voices, the intimacy of their hungers playing over his senses in the Box, to drag him back to life.

  The images in his mind clicked into place on Bayonne's west side beyond Kennedy Boulevard. The roar of jets sounded from across Newark Bay; their lights danced in the black sky. Rundown warehouses and factories loomed all around him. Max hit the brakes. The car slid on the icy street, coming to a halt by colliding lightly with the only vehicle parked on the block: a small, windowless van. He stepped out, a hard, cold wind coming off the water to cut through his coat and chill his bones. Snow mountains loomed, spread over sidewalk and street.