Sunglasses After Dark (Sonja Blue)

by Nancy A. Collins

  Two men loitered on either side of the aisle, watching Claude as he approached. They wore dark suits with narrow lapels and narrower ties. They both wore sunglasses. Claude recognized them as the identical killers. Only now they were no longer looked like one another. One of them stood with his head propped against his left shoulder, and when he shifted his weight to the other foot, his head lolled limply so that he was staring down at his feet. The other killer’s forehead was cracked wide open and his brains spilled out onto his suit. They moved in concert to block Claude’s path.

  “Get out of my way, assholes,” he growled.

  The mismatched killers turned sideways and disappeared. Claude kept moving.

  Archie Kalish leaned against one of the bookshelves, trying to smoke a cigarette, but most of it escaped through the ragged hole in his throat. He grinned at Claude, as sleazy in death as he was in life. Claude watched Kalish’s larynx vibrate as he spoke “Hey, Hagerty! So what d’ya think? Some kinda piece, huh?”

  Claude kept walking. Kalish’s laughter as it faded behind him sounded like a kettle whistling.

  Dr. Wexler was thumbing through a leather-bound volume of Freud. There was something wrong with his face. He quickly turned away before Claude could get a better look. .

  There was a door up ahead. An exit sign glowed over the threshold. He picked up his pace. He could see someone waiting for him by the door. It was a young woman.

  Denise Thorne’s long, straight hair was the color of raw honey. She was wearing a paisley miniskirt with a fringed buckskin vest and white go-go boots. She held a bouquet of flowers in her hands. She had a sad look on her face. “I told you to get away while you still could,” she said.

  Claude stopped and tried to touch her shoulder, but she shook her head.

  “Too late,” she whispered.

  Lozenges of mirrored glass dropped from her brow ridge, merging into the cheekbones below, sealing away her eyes. Her hair writhed, drawing in on itself. Darkness welled from her scalp, radiating outward like ink in a water glass. As she opened her mouth, her lower jaw seemed to unhinge, like that of a snake swallowing an egg. Her teeth were way too long and sharp.

  Claude could hear the train coming. The whistle blasts sounded like a woman screaming.

  He was surrounded by white. At first Claude thought he was in a hospital, then his eyes focused and he found himself staring at egrets. The birds were frozen in a ritual dance on the translucent surface of a rice-paper screen.

  There was a sound from the other side of the room divider. The egrets folded in on themselves, allowing the woman called Blue to enter and place a damp washcloth on his forehead.

  Claude dug his elbows into the futon mattress, desperate to avoid the touch of the woman who’d saved his life. He wanted to scream, but all that came out was a stream of profanity.

  “Get your goddamn motherfucking hands off me!” His throat tightened as if the words meant to choke him.

  To his surprise, she flinched.

  “I’m not the one you should be scared of, right now,” she said wearily.

  A sledgehammer caught Claude between the eyes as he tried to sit up. He struggled to keep from fainting. He did not want to lose consciousness in the presence of this woman.

  “Don’t move so fast, you’ll black out again.” Her voice carried a note of concern. She stood at the foot of the futon, watching with twin panes of polarized glass in place of eyes.

  Claude cursed and dragged the washcloth off his forehead. He didn’t want to look at her. Her very existence made his forebrain swell until it threatened to leak out his sinuses. It suddenly dawned on him that he was very thirsty.

  Just as the thought crossed his mind, she moved from out of his line of sight. Claude fought a surge of hysteria; as much as he hated looking at her, not knowing where she might be was even worse. Careful of the malignant throbbing in his skull, he studied his surroundings.

  He looked to be in a loft of some kind, and not one of those fancy ones the hipster yuppies were so fond of, either. The ceiling loomed far above him and the room was poorly lit. He could barely make out the geometric shapes of the rafters overhead. He tried to think about escape, but his mind refused to stay on the subject.

  Suddenly she was back, handing him a Mason jar full of water. Claude stared at the proffered glass but made no move to take it from her hand.

  “Okay. If that’s how you want to play it,” she sighed. She set the jar on an upended plastic milk crate next to the futon and stepped away, watching as Claude lifted the container with shaking hands, slopping water onto his bare chest.

  “You’ve been out for nearly two hours,” she said as she crouched at the foot of the bed, hands dangling between her knees.

  Without wanting to, Claude found himself looking at her. Her hair was an unruly mess and black as goddamn, as his grandpa used to say. She wore a battered black leather jacket a size too big for her over a sleeveless T-shirt the same color. The jacket was going out at the elbows, and an attempt had been made to repair it with electrician’s tape. The legs of her tight-fitting black leather pants were tucked into a pair of scuffed, low-heeled engineer boots, and she wore a pair of fingerless black leather biker gloves. And, of course, there were the mirror shades. Claude’s dream tried to resurface, but was quickly banished.

  “You, uhhh, look different,” was all he could think to say.

  “You mean I no longer look like a drugged-out madwoman?” She laughed without smiling. “Yeah. I guess I do look different to you now.”

  Claude heard himself speaking before he realized what he was saying. “What are you, lady?”

  To his surprise, she did not seem to take offense. Instead, she cocked her head to one side and regarded him with her mirrored eyes. “Do you really want to know, Claude Hagerty?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not anymore,” she agreed.

  She stood up in a single, fluid motion, like the uncoiling of a snake. She moved across the floor of the loft to the opposite wall and drew back the heavy blackout curtains that covered the windows. The staccato glow of neon illuminated the room, revealing a maze of rice-paper screens. She leaned against the windowsill, arms folded, looking out at street below. Claude sat upright, clutching the mattress with both hands until his knuckles ached.

  “You must have an idea as to what I am,” she said. “And it’s not an escaped lunatic, is it, Mr. Hagerty?” She lifted her sunglasses, exposing her eyes. Claude shivered like a man with fever. She let the glasses drop back into place.

  “Welcome to the Real World, Mr. Hagerty.”

  She was no longer in the loft, although he could not recall hearing her leave. She had undressed him while he was unconscious, but he did not know what she had done with his clothes, so he was forced to shuffle around his ‘prison’ in his underpants. He wondered what kind of movie he was in. If he could figure out the movie, then he stood a chance of surviving to see the credits. Was he the hero or the victim? But if the woman called Blue was the monster, why did she go out of her way to rescue him? The thought that he was living out a horror movie, especially one where no one makes it out alive depressed him so badly he gave up on the analogy and focused on exploring the loft instead.

  The large single room was subdivided into cubicles by a series of painted rice-paper screens. He moved from compartment to compartment, silently watched by sock-eyed carp, grimacing dragons, and stalking tigers as he searched for clues to what was going on. What he found made his head hurt.

  One cubicle contained a DVD player and monitor powered by an orange extension cord that hung from the rafters like a python. An unmarked disc sat in the open tray of the player. Claude gave it a nudge and the player obligingly swallowed the DVD. For a moment Claude felt safe, involved in the mundane ritual of technology.

  A woman in a gold lame pantsuit exhorted her audience to stand up and sway from side to side, hands held over their heads. The sound was off, but Claude had a good idea as to what s
he was saying. He watched the televangelist’s mascara mingle with her tears. It looked like her face was melting. He hit the stop button and the monitor screen returned to the gray nothing of an empty channel.

  Another cubicle contained a low, Japanese-style table. Three books rested on the table. One was a large, very old-looking tome with metal edges and leather binding. Claude did not recognize the language, but there were several pages of complex, overlapping illustrations that made his eyes throb when he looked at them. The second was a slender, hardbound volume in German. The third had a library and a shelving code affixed to its spine. The title was The Vanishing Heiress. The book fell open to a page with two photographs on it.

  The larger picture was a photo-portrait of the Thorne family in happier days: millionaire Jacob Thorne stood behind a small divan, looking every inch the self-made captain of industry. His women were seated before him. His wife, Shirley Thorne, a delicate woman with a gracious smile, held her daughter’s hand. Claude was surprised rich people could look so normal.

  The smaller picture was blurry, and looked to be an enlargement of a casual snapshot. It showed a slightly older Denise Thorne in a crowded nightclub. She was not looking at the photographer. She seemed distracted but otherwise enjoying herself. She held a champagne glass in one hand. The caption read: Last known photo of Denise Thorne, taken by club photographer the night of her disappearance at the Apple Cart Discotheque, London, 1969.

  Someone had drawn a circle with a ballpoint pen just to the left of Denise’s shoulder. Inside it was an even blurrier outline of a man. Claude squinted as best he could, but the figure n remained grainy and ill-defined. Scrawled in the margin, in the same ballpoint as the circle, were the words: LORD MORGAN.

  Claude shut the book and put it back on the table. For the first time since waking up, he noticed the layer of dust that seemed to coat almost everything. His hands were grimy with it and the soles of his bare feet itched. His hostess obviously had not yet found the time to catch up on her light housekeeping.

  The kitchen was located in a corner where the raw brick wall met the jutting angle of the roof. The only piece of furniture was a Salvation Army-issue dinette set. A pair of midget iceboxes, stacked one atop the other, sat on the rickety table. Claude tried the taps on the double-basin sink, only to be rewarded with the plumbing equivalent of an epileptic seizure and water the color of diarrhea.

  His stomach growled. As he opened the top cooler he heard containers clink together. He reached inside, fingers closing around chill glass. Soft drinks, milk…anything would be welcome. He stared at the pint container of blood for a long moment before dropping it. The bottle shattered, splattering his naked legs. Claude clamped his hands over his mouth and staggered into the tiny bathroom located off the kitchen. He sounded like a cat sicking up a hair ball.

  When he was through, he stood hunched over the sink, his palms pressed against the cold enamel, and stared at his reflection in the medicine chest. Although the swelling was going down, it was surprising he’d woken up at all. His right eye was covered by a bruise the color of a hybrid rose. His bottom lip looked like a piece of raw liver. A knot the size of a pigeon’s egg hung over his left eyebrow and it felt like his nose was broken. Again.

  He let his hands stray to the Ace bandages wrapped around his chest. It hurt a bit when he moved too fast; otherwise his ribs seemed okay. He spat into the sink and studied his sputum for traces of blood, then tried the same experiment with his urine. He was damned lucky to have escaped without serious internal injuries. That is if you consider being held captive in your underwear by a blood-sucking monster ‘lucky’.

  Claude laughed in spite of himself. Funny how good that felt. He was surprised to discover he was no longer in mortal terror. He experienced a sense of relief, not unlike emptying his bladder after a long road trip. He decided that while he did not trust the woman called Blue, neither did he fear her. Still, he’d learned the hard way never to rely on the semblance of sanity.

  Back when he was younger and his hair longer, he’d come to trust a patient who, on the surface, seemed perfectly harmless. Then one day the patient turned into a screaming, hissing wild thing and pulled out a handful of his hair out by the roots. That’s why he now he wore it cropped close to his skull.

  He remembered how she’d toyed with Frankie the killer before she finished him off. Claude had no love for the bastard, but he could not repress his revulsion at witnessing Frankie’s final moments.

  When he was fifteen, he’d found the family cat—a fat, good-natured old tom—”playing” with a mouse. The cat had snapped the rodent’s spine, leaving the creature alive but paralyzed. Then, gripping it by its head, the cat repeatedly hurled the tiny rodent against the garage door. The crippled mouse squeaked each time it rebounded onto the pavement, which prompted the cat to swat it again. The rodent’s eyes had gone white with pain and fear, its rib cage shuddering with every breath while blood leaked from its twitching nostrils. The cat continued its grisly game of handball for a couple of minutes then grew bored and bit the mouse’s head off. After that, Claude was never able to look at the old tomcat quite the same. Just like he could never look at her without thinking about the feline sadism lurking below the surface, waiting for a mouse.

  “There you are. Made a mess, didn’t you?”

  Claude yelped as if she’d poked him with a cattle prod. She was standing in the bathroom doorway, a grocery sack in one arm and a suit of clothes draped over the other. He was suddenly aware that he was wearing nothing but a baggy pair of BVDs.

  “Thought you might like something to wear. The clothes you had on were covered in blood. Hope these fit. You can change in here while I clean up.”

  Getting dressed in the bathroom was like changing clothes in a broom closet. Claude stopped swearing the third time he slammed his knee into the toilet tank. The pants fit him well enough, although his neck overflowed the collar of the flannel shirt, and the cuffs ended an inch above his wrists.

  He opened the door in time to see her wringing a mop in the kitchen sink. The water was the color of cranberry juice.

  “What the hell are you looking at? Expect me to lick it up off the floor with my tongue?” she snapped.

  Claude was taken aback by the realization that her feelings were hurt. It occurred to him that he was a lousy, ungrateful house guest. He didn’t know what to say, so he watched her mop the floor in guilty silence. She didn’t look up from her work, but motioned with a curt nod to the sack resting on the table.

  “I picked up something for you to eat at the convenience store. Haute cuisine it ain’t, but it’ll do for now.”

  Claude stepped over the pool of blood and tap water and rummaged through the bag. There was a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of white bread, a quart of milk, and three cans of potted meat. He stared at the cartoon demon on the can of deviled ham and smiled.

  The smile grew wider. He felt as if his lips were going to split.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked as she wrung the mop for the last time. The water was now the color of pink lemonade.

  Claude began to laugh. Tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes. His laughter carried the shrill edge of hysteria. He continued to laugh until he blacked out.

  Chapter Six

  I’m only really alive when I’m on the prowl. Alone. Unobserved. I’m glad Hagerty is too unsteady to leave the loft. I could not track my prey with him queering the game.

  The night is an origami rose, unfolding itself for those unafraid to look. As much as I hate them, my eyes allow me to know the half-glimpsed marvels and nightmares that fill this world; sapphires among the rot.

  My eyes are windows to hell, enabling me to spot those who Pretend. Their spoor hangs in the air, as obvious as street signs. Over there, lounging in a doorway, sharing a cigarette with its unwitting prey is a vargr. It rests its shoulder against the doorframe, holding a Marlboro between thumb and overlong index finger. I can see the animal in its eyes as it studies
me with the detached speculation of a predator. But I am not interested in such beasts tonight.

  I round the corner and enter the city’s tenderloin district. I like downtown. It’s my element. The porn shops, titty bars and adult cinemas are all very busy, like maggots in a corpse.

  Sensing my intrusion, a succubus glances up from her latest transaction. As she leans into the open passenger window of a nondescript rental car, she looks like all the other whores working the neighborhood. She lifts her head, tossing back a mane of copper curls, and scans the streets. Is she on the lookout for vice cops or other wayward children of Gehenna? The faltering neon of the marquee for the Live Sex Show illuminates her true face as it shifts and roils beneath a carefully constructed façade of humanity. I do not meet her gaze and hurry away. Such creatures are out of my league.

  The Pretender population in America is nowhere near that of Europe, but immigration is picking up. Standing in front of the Pussy Kat Adult Video Store, its deformities masked by a shapeless raincoat, an ogre watches me with the eyes of a rabid rat. His gaze follows me as I walk past. He knows I’m not human, but cannot identify my clan. That makes him nervous. I make a note of him. Child-eaters are a rarity nowadays, but missing children are not.

  I smell roasting flesh and burning hair, and almost collide with the pyrotic before I see it. It sidesteps me, leaving a vapor trail in its wake. It wears the flesh of a middle-aged man in a business suit, his skin the color of a boiled lobster. His hair is ablaze and smoke billows from his ears and nostrils. The pyrotic is either very strong or has been in possession of the husk for too long. Now it is looking for another body to inhabit; male or female, it doesn’t matter. Once elementals get a taste of being incarnate, they tend to become addicted to the earthly plane. Kind of pathetic, really. No one pays any attention to the burning man as he hurries down the street.