“I dunno, but there’s a lot of ’em and they’re wearing suits.” Rarely, if ever, was it good news when a suit showed up unannounced on a farm. “And they’re asking for you. So go up there before you cause this family even more grief.”
As Mollie mounted the stairs, she could hear Jeff calling a report to the rest of the family. His bedroom looked out over the porch. “They have a dog. And I think one of ’em’s carrying a gun!”
Mollie stopped. The soft yellow glow of the porch light through the frosted glass of the storm door showed human silhouettes standing on the porch. She opened a hole in space to make sure the barn was locked up tight before opening the door. Then she reached through a portal to Bismarck and grabbed a silk scarf from the closet.
Three people stood on the stoop. Some sort of K-9 unit, apparently—the dog Jeff had seen from upstairs was a big-ass mastiff. The men wore suits, and they didn’t make an effort to conceal their sidearms.
“Mollie Steunenberg?”
“Yeah. And you are…?”
The dog stepped forward, leaned toward Mollie, took a long deep sniff, and stepped back. Weird.
The man who spoke had a face that looked like it had been sculpted in a hurry. Not the crowbar kind of sculpting, not like Jim and Troy had done to each other. At least this guy had a face, of sorts. But a network of faint scars ribbed his features, his eyes weren’t quite on the same level, and his chin seemed the wrong shape for his jaw, almost as though it was lacking some bone. He wasn’t hideous, but he seemed not quite right. She didn’t recognize the Fed or his backup singers. She’d know if she’d met him before—his face was off just enough to be pretty memorable. She stopped staring at his face long enough to glance at the badge he flashed in her face.
Redundantly, he said, “William Ray, SCARE.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “These are my colleagues: Agents Moon, Huginn, and Muninn.”
The scarecrow-tall guys hanging back behind the badge-flasher were twins. They shared the same pale complexion, the same sweep of inky feathers on the scalp instead of hair, and identical eye patches over their left eyes.
“You’re either way early or way late, but Halloween is in October and we’re all out of Tootsie Pops.” Probably because it was the middle of the night, she hadn’t slept well, and because he was being an asshole, it took a second for what he’d said to sink in.
“I only count three of you,” she said.
The dog growled. Oh. Mollie suppressed a sudden urge to flee like a startled fawn. “Let me guess,” she said. “You must be Agent Moon. Strays have to sleep in the barn.”
The SCARE guy with the mashed-up face rolled his eyes. “What happened to your family, Mollie?”
“Nothing happened to my family.” Mollie tightened the scarf around her neck, wincing slightly when it rubbed against her abraded skin.
“Is that the story you’re sticking with? Because the hospital’s telling us a very different story.”
“We live on a farm. Sometimes people get hurt. It’s dangerous work.”
The Feds looked at each other. Agent Ray said, “Uh-huh. It must be even more dangerous than I realized. The occasional pitchfork stabbing, sure, I can see that. But bite marks? Human bite marks?”
Mollie wondered how they knew about that. So she shrugged again. The gesture tugged at her scarf; she reached up to catch it before it fell loose.
One of the backup singers, either Huginn or Muninn, piped up. In a voice that sounded like it was meant to be funneled through a beak, he asked, “How did you get those ligature marks on your neck?”
“What’s a ligature mark?”
“The purple things you’re trying to hide under that scarf,” said Agent Ray. “If we found a corpse with those wounds we’d say she’d probably died of strangulation.”
She said, “Uh-huh. Well I’m obviously not dead but I really appreciate the concern. So, hey, thanks for dropping by.” She made to close the door.
Ray blocked the door with his foot. “Don’t jerk us around. We’ve been to the hospital. I’ve seen entire platoons just back from their third tour in the most war-ravaged backwaters suffering fewer casualties than your family. So how about you fess up and tell us what the hell happened here?”
“Oh, yeah? Why don’t you go take a long walk off a short pier? In fact, let me help you with that.”
She reached for a doorway, something over the South Pacific, but the fucking thing kept slipping away because she couldn’t quite picture it. Just as she got it fixed in her head, the dog leapt forward with a growl that could have felled the walls of Jericho.
Mollie retreated a step. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Let’s all calm down here.”
She decided against dumping Fido and the Feds into shark-infested waters. Not because the portal wouldn’t open, that wasn’t the problem at all, but merely because it was prudent. She could have. She just chose not to.
“Can we come inside?”
“Nope.”
Instead, Mollie joined them on the stoop and closed the door behind her. She beckoned them away from the house, where she knew Mom and the boys were listening to every single word. They walked a dozen yards toward where the rusted cattle guard spanned the culvert at the end of the drive. Wind whickered through the moonlit stubble in the adjoining field. It dusted Mollie’s skin with a fine layer of grit.
Either Huginn or Muninn screeched, “We want to thank you, Ms. Steunenberg, for returning Agent Norwood’s body to the States. That was thoughtful.”
“Oh, yeah.” Billy Ray yawned. “The way you dumped his corpse on the floor, that was super touching.” He stretched an arm over his head, twisting until his joints popped.
The other twin continued, “But we won’t lie to you. Plunking heavily armed gangsters into the middle of the precinct was less helpful. But Agent Norwood’s family will be very grateful. You did the right thing there, so we’ll call that one even.”
“Jamal was, um … You know. He wasn’t so bad. He deserved better than to be left—” Mollie cut herself off before she said something incredibly awkward. Something about abandoning people in Talas. In cannibal central. She shook her head, pinched the bridge of her nose until the tears went away.
Oh, screw it. Jamal had been working with SCARE, so maybe …
“Hey. Um. Do you guys happen to know a cop named Franny Black?”
“Are you kidding?” Ray laid a hand over his breast. “He’s like a brother to me.”
“Did he, uh … I was, you know, just wondering if he’s back from Kazakhstan yet.”
“You mean you’re wondering if he made it home after you abandoned him in the middle of nowhere?”
Mollie shrugged. “Look, I’m just asking.”
“Worry not. He got home safe and sound.” Ray paused, then held up a pair of crossed fingers. “He’s like this with your old pal Baba Yaga now.”
“She’s here? In the States?” Mollie tossed her gaze back and forth across the farm, looking for another passenger in the Feds’ car, or for a flash of Baba Yaga’s hair as she bulled into the house, or even ohcrapohcrapohcrap into the—
Mollie set off toward the barn at a fast walk. Moon leapt ahead and blocked her path. Ray said, “Relax, kid. She’s in New York.”
“Oh.” The tension went out of her shoulders like a spring uncoiling. Her teeth actually squeaked when she stopped grinding them. “Okay.”
“But just out of curiosity, what’s in the barn that you don’t want Baba Yaga to see?”
“Nothing. Just cows, cow shit, and hay. What do you expect to find in a barn?”
“Okay. In that case, how about you give us a tour? Because, you know, I’ve never been inside an actual working barn before and I’d just love to see it.”
Mollie said, “I’d just love to see a warrant.”
Ray chuckled. “Uh, you saw my badge, right? You think I couldn’t get one?”
“So what? Even if there was something in the barn we didn’t want you to see, and there isn’t, we
all know I could have it long gone by the time you came back with the paper. So you’d be wasting your time. And as taxpayers who pay your salary we’d call serious bullshit on that.”
Oops. Ffodor had warned her that there were certain subjects a professional thief would be wise to avoid. But he was such a jerk, this Fed, he got under her skin.
Ray nodded. “Income taxes. Yeah. That’s an interesting topic. But let’s put a pin in that one and come back to it later.”
Huginn or Muninn said, “Why the sudden interest in Detective Black?”
“I just, um…” Don’t think about the baby. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about pitchfork tines and people tearing into a twitching infant on iron spikes and desperately needing to pull out people’s guts. Don’t don’t don’t. Just don’t. “I, uh, I was just wondering if he saw anything weird when he was over there.”
Quick as a rifle shot, the twin agents exchanged a look. The dog stood taller, its ears swiveling toward her like a pair of fuzzy radar dishes.
Ray glanced toward the barn again. The penny dropped. He slapped a palm to his forehead as though he’d just had a flash of insight.
“Oh. Got it. You went back to loot the casino, tossing the money in the barn as you went.” He spoke to her, but looked at the others while he did. “You went back to Talas and something happened while you were there…”
One of the twins spoke again, his screechy voice pitched lower. “What happened in Talas, Ms. Steunenberg?”
Mollie shrugged. The wind tugged at her scarf. The loose end flopped over her shoulder. She didn’t bother to hide her throat. Or wipe her watery eyes. “I dunno. Just some majorly fucked-up stuff.”
She concentrated on breathing, filling her lungs with one long shuddery breath.
Ray said, quietly, “You witnessed some serious stuff going down. Different from the fight club. Worse. Right?”
Mollie nodded. Sniffled. She didn’t bother to deny it. For one thing, she was too busy trying and failing not to weep, not to fall apart into a blubbering mess. And for another, these assholes knew more than she did about what happened. And that was somewhat reassuring.
One of the twins asked, “And is what you witnessed in Talas related to what happened here?”
She couldn’t talk. Her throat was too tight; her face was beet red now, she knew, for she burned with shame and fear. All she could do was keep nodding.
“Oh, my God,” said Ray. The SCARE agents studied their surroundings again, looking slightly jumpy. The dog growled at the barn, fur bristling. Their agitation was less reassuring.
“It’s over. It passed,” she sobbed. “Why are you guys here, anyway? If you came to arrest me you’re taking your sweet time. Do you understand what’s going on?”
Ray sighed like somebody who very much disliked what he knew. “Yeah. Sort of,” he said. “Things are not good right now. And we need your help.”
Mollie shivered. How was it suddenly so cold out here? She crossed her arms. Hugging herself in a pointless attempt to ward off a bone-deep chill, she said, “No, no, no, no fucking way am I going back to that hellhole, not in a trillion years.”
… a howling newborn, twitching on iron spikes while men and women tore into the baby fat like wolves devouring a felled deer …
Ray raised his hands, palm out. “If you want to understand what happened to you and your family, and if you want to prevent it from happening again—and I know you do, Mollie—your only bet is to come to New York with us.” He took a deep steadying breath, as if preparing for something he didn’t do very often. “I have … There’s a lot on the line, okay? So I am asking you, one human being to another, to come to New York and hear us out. Please?”
He even ventured a smile. It was about as attractive as a cheap toupee on a hairless cat. But … goddamn. He really meant it. This was personal for him.
What if she’d known somebody had the power to prevent the rage-riot in the barn? What if somebody had had the power to prevent her brothers from pounding each other’s faces into hamburger? She would have pleaded, too.
Mollie sighed. “Do you really know what’s going on?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know how to stop it?”
He hesitated. “Not yet. But we’re working on it.”
Well, at least he was honest.
“Very well. One red-eye express to New York, coming up.”
She was so exhausted and emotionally wrung-out that creating another fold in space felt like trying to do a push-up with her tongue. But she managed to create a doorway to a Manhattan taxi stand on the third try.
After a moment’s resistance, a shimmering doorway appeared in midair. A whiff of exhaust wafted through the portal. Traffic noise was light this time of night, but the loud rambling of a drunk echoed down the steel canyons. The hotel bellmen unloading luggage from a late-arriving tour bus stepped around the hole in space as deftly as though it were nothing but a dog turd on the sidewalk. New Yorkers: it was impossible to faze them. Mollie supposed that when you lived just a few subway stops from Jokertown you either got accustomed to the weird stuff pronto, or you moved.
Huginn and Muninn went first, followed by Moon. The dog hopped lightly from the moonlit gravel drive of an Idaho farm to the halogen glare of a New York sidewalk. Billy Ray waved her forward and followed so closely—practically grinding against her—that she couldn’t have left him behind if she wanted to. But she was too tired to try.
He waved his SCARE badge at a sleepy taxi driver and ushered her into the backseat. Mollie was asleep before the driver had the car in gear.
Franny walked the streets of Jokertown.
It was a warm night and the streets were crowded. Jokers sat on stoops, passed cigarettes and conversations. Kids rode skateboards, tossed footballs. The flavors of a hundred different cuisines filled the night air. A pair of deformed joker lovers twined arms and stole kisses while orbiting each other in their wheelchairs. Through open windows the sounds of televisions, radios, and iPods spun their harmonies.
Occasionally there would be the serious tones of a news reader describing rape, murder, people eating their own flesh. And worse. People being changed. The way they had been changed on that long ago day back in ’46 when the wild card virus had been released.
He hurried past those windows because now he had heard it all. And after hearing the tapes he realized the full magnitude of what he had done. The world as they knew it was ending. Knew that death or worse was coming for them all unless a young woman could find a solution.
If he had known would he still have gone to rescue the kidnapped jokers?
He thought about the beaten body of José Neto, the dead joker who had started this entire clusterfuck. The forgotten people had been first to be stolen. The dregs, the derelicts, people no one would miss. Then the losers like José whose family would be ignored when they reported him missing. Eventually Baba Yaga’s claws had snatched away the worthy people, people whose absence would be noticed, and it had finally culminated with IBT and Father Squid.
Preserve and protect. He’d had to go. He didn’t have a choice. And he’d really only accelerated the day of reckoning. The aging body of Hellraiser was going to die. Or Baba Yaga would die without passing on her formula to keep the monster at bay. Franny really hadn’t caused this. The justifications rang hollow.
Organ music sang through the open door of the church of Jesus Christ Joker for indeed this was where his wandering steps had brought him. Word of the priest’s death had clearly spread because there was a carpet of flowers all around the walls of the church and spilling down the steps. Franny hated that he hadn’t thought to buy a bouquet. Of course he still had no money. Tomorrow he was going to have to start the laborious process of reestablishing his identity.
But really, why? What is the point? he thought.
He walked up the steps and into the church. Pausing at the holy water font he dipped his fingers, genuflected toward the altar, and crossed himself. The
re were a lot of people in the shadowed space, hunched over the back of pews or kneeling staring up at the Joker Christ hung above the altar. Others were lighting candles. The space smelled of melted wax and incense.
Franny slipped into a back pew and knelt. He said the rosary and the familiar cadence of the words were a balm to his bruised spirit. He covered his face with a hand and offered up a prayer for the soul of a good man then whispered, “God forgive me for what I’ve done. I may have destroyed your creation.”
This time prayer offered no comfort. His guilt was too great. He left the pew but before he could reach the door he found himself looking down into a pair of eyes peering out from a face deformed by lumps and knobs of twisted skin. It was Wartface. One of the jokers he’d freed in Talas.
“Hey! It is you, man! Where were you? I looked around and you weren’t there and that hole was gone, too.”
“There was fighting. The girl who helped get us there…” She abandoned me flat, the fucking bitch. He swallowed the angry words. They shouldn’t be uttered in this holy place. Instead he said, “She panicked and she ran.” He remembered Mollie’s upthrust middle finger and the look of bitter triumph. Yeah, some panic.
The organist stopped playing. People were starting to stare. Franny saw more of the jokers who had been Baba Yaga’s prisoners. People stood and gathered around him. A gentle-faced man with a chitinous insectile body laid a hand on Franny’s arm.
“Thank you,” he said softly. He paused to push his glasses back up on his nose. “I thought I was going to die there. Thank you for giving me back my life.”
Only for a handful of days, Franny thought. “You destroyed the world. I hope it was worth it.” Baba Yaga’s voice echoed in his head. He wanted to confess, to admit his sin to more than God, but he couldn’t bear to destroy their joy and happiness however brief it might be. He just stood, accepting their congratulations and thanks though every grateful word seemed to scald his soul.
“Excuse me.” A woman’s voice, soft and husky.
Franny turned and found himself facing an older African-American woman dressed in a conservative woman’s business chic. Her hair was lightly silvered and her eyes were red from crying. An older African-American man stood next to her. He was big and powerfully built. Franny saw echoes of Jamal Norwood’s features in both their faces.
High Stakes: A Wild Cards Novel Page 38