Ink and Shadows

by Rhys Ford

  Cutting through the parking lot, Kismet turned into the alley behind the store, Chase’s singsong chant of chocolate echoing in his ears. The blue roof of his motel poked out coyly above the squat buildings nearby, the sky hue vibrant amid the gray. As he approached the motel, Chase’s voice softened before falling away, hiding from the light.

  A lean form huddled against one of the dumpsters at the side of the motel, the battered hunter green metal providing little shelter from the elements. Her tobacco-tinted hair a tangled mess around her worn face, the woman blearily looked up from picking at her fingernails, the cuticles raw and bleeding.

  Black stumps poked up from her gums, teeth rotten down into the root. She waved out a bony hand, sun-dried fingers stained sienna from cigarettes, her gaze dropping to the pavement. Kismet stepped in close, crouching at the woman’s side, placing a five-dollar bill in her outstretched palm.

  “Hey, Lucy.” He spoke softly. Kismet kept his breathing low, trying not to pull the stink of her unwashed body into his nose. Dried urine caked dirt at her crotch, the stale clotted grease of human skin rank in his throat. She was a familiar sight. He hurt every time he saw her.

  The woman raised her face, weathered and beaten skin stretched thin over her blunt facial bones. There was nothing left of the laughing beauty who had slipped him money for a hamburger or candy, one of his mother’s many casual friends who were quick to baby the pretty-faced boy running wild among them. Now she just looked wrinkled and parched dry of life.

  “Kizzie!” she exclaimed, her breath fouled by the drugs eating off the enamel on her teeth. Lucy patted the damp ground beside her, more comfortable sitting in a garbage-strewn alley than most women would be in a fine parlor. “Sit down. You shouldn’t give me money. Keep it. You need it more.”

  “I got some ink done today. I’ve got enough,” he murmured. She’d given him a place to crash when he’d first been turned out by one of his mother’s lovers. Money was the least he could give the broken woman sitting at his feet.

  With her face turned up to him, Kismet spotted the writhing black tadpoles eating away at the sores in her skin. Without anything in his system, he saw the shapes clearly, vicious chewing shadows wiggling to pull bits of her flesh into wide, razor-lined mouths. They consumed her sanity; Kismet was sure of it. One in particular nearly pushed in through her cornea, its head enveloped by the clear membrane. Kismet cracked open the fortified wine nearly hidden in the sack, took a hefty swig, then passed it to Lucy, his teeth worrying at his lower lip.

  “You’re not taking your meds, Luce.” Kismet swallowed the mouthful, grunting at the burn of his soft throat tissues. “You know you have to.”

  “They make me… crazy, Kizzie.” Lucy held the bottle with both hands, trembling as she raised it to her mouth. Widening her jaw, she splashed a dollop into her gullet, not touching the mouth of the bottle to her lips. “I can’t think when I’ve got one of those things in me.”

  “Lucy, you have to take them. And you’re supposed to keep taking them until your body gets used to them. You just can’t stop because you’re feeling better.” Kismet helped Lucy take another swig, holding the end of the vessel before taking it back, filling his mouth with the numbing liquid. “Stay still. I’ve got to get this crap off of you.”

  When he was young, he’d watched the small shadows eating away at his mother’s breasts, slithering trails of eyeless creatures working under her skin until nothing remained but very real pocked scars and a burned blemish on her pale flesh. Over the years, the people who drifted through his life were often riddled with the inky dollops, sometimes dripping from sores on their faces or arms, all the while oblivious to the creatures feeding on them.

  Kismet still checked his own body when he was sober enough to see, looking for the telltale divots of forming tails over his crotch or heart. He hated the things. More than hating the touch of them on his skin, he hated the stink they left behind when he pulled them off someone, their wriggling and screaming shapes twisting between his pinches.

  Steeling himself, Kismet plucked at the one fixed under Lucy’s eye, peeling it free from her lashes. As he pulled it off, he crushed it between his fingers, its high-pitched squeal cut off in midscream. Gagging at the rank odor, he worked carefully over the woman’s face and shoulders, removing what he could see. Fighting an overwhelming urge to puke, he dug through the matted, greasy locks around her neck, unwinding a long, serpentine trail from behind her ear.

  With a final inspection, Kismet dug through Lucy’s belongings, a faded crocheted knapsack run brown with dirt. She protested the intrusion, silenced only when Kismet passed over the bottle, muttering under his breath for her to keep it. The woman squirmed about, her legs hooking around Kismet’s ankles, nearly toppling him into her wastes. A brown plastic container rattled when he grabbed at it, the pills inside dusty from being tossed around during her daily travels.

  “Here, take one.” Kismet steadied himself, resting a kneecap on the wall next to Lucy’s head.

  He shook out a dose, then held it for Lucy to take.

  “I only have the stuff here.” Lucy held up the bottle, her trembling hand shaking the container. “Doctors said I shouldn’t drink as much.”

  “Yeah, well, chances are I won’t tell the doctor that you’ve taken a hit with your drugs.” Kismet stroked at the woman’s temple, weary to his bones. She slurped at the bottle, cradling the wine to her chest and burping delicately behind her free hand. “You doing okay, Lucy?”

  It wasn’t hard to reconcile the beaten, sparse woman sitting in cast-off clothes and runoff fluids with the brassy, come-hither flirt who ran around with his mother. He’d seen others decline, a well-traveled path they all seemed to take. Kismet figured Lucy was merely keeping his own place warm in the meantime, the alleyway sheltered from the wind, although the flat side of the building offered no protection from the harsh San Diego sun. One day she would drop out of sight, a rumor of a person leaving nothing behind but a drying stain.

  “You tell your mom I said hi. And tell her not to be a stranger.” Lucy’s faded brown eyes peered up at him, a flicker of something in their depths. It was funny how often she’d spoken of the woman they both barely knew, never seeming to remember his mother died years before. “You take care of her.”

  “Sure, Lucy.” Kismet forced himself to kiss her forehead, tasting the smear of rank shadow on her skin. It crept into his tongue, burning bitter and spreading thin in his spit. Taking only the cloves, he left her with the Buckfast and chocolate.

  The side gate let him into the cracked paved courtyard a few doors down from his room. At some point in the motel’s history, someone optimistic tiled the edge of the sidewalk with festive turquoise tiles. Time had faded most of the colors, but a glimmer of sand-frozen sky remained in the traces along the wall.

  Closing the wrought iron gate behind him, Kismet stood in the cold, the sky nearly burned free of the day.

  Opening the door, Kismet reached for the light switch, driving back the dimness in the room. The stench of the wraiths clung to his hands, foul and greasy when he rubbed his palms together, hoping to get a hint of warmth under his skin. A quick washing in the tiny bathroom took most of the stink off. Just a lingering moldy smell caught under his nails, the shadows’ rank ooze spurting under his pressed fingers and staining his nail tips.

  A dresser drawer held a stash of half-full bottles, a vodka, cheaper and rawer than the Buckfast he’d given Lucy, and a few off-colored tequilas. Kismet seriously doubted agave had any part in the making of the tequila, its taste more like the thinner he used when oil painting than anything else.

  His back ached from being hunched over, and his arms throbbed from the rattle of the machine. The stress on his shoulders tugged along the ache in his muscles, tight and knotted from staying in one place too long. If he made more money, he would get one of the chairs the others used. Of course he’d have to work more to make more money. Kismet wasn’t sure if he could stand the assholes
working at Steel Sin long enough to earn enough for the chair.

  He snagged the vodka from the drawer, then unscrewed the top. Kicking off his shoes first, Kismet slouched down on the lumpy queen-sized bed dominating the room. His paintings took up most of the spare space near the bathroom door, stacked like tossed-away card soldiers. The canvas he currently argued with sat waiting on the easel, pencil marks loosely creating a framework for the nightmares that crawled out of his imagination and onto the stretched white fabric.

  The first gulp kicked him back, nearly making him choke. He needed to hold off the needle until he’d gotten some sleep and food so he could spend the night painting. If he was lucky, he could get one of the large pieces finished. The blankness bothered him. There were things that needed filling in.

  The nightmares waiting in the darkness had other ideas for his evening.

  A stygian mass curled up over the edge of his bed, weaving through the broken filament stitching of the bed’s comforter. Kismet swallowed, pulling his feet up, hoping to keep his toes out of the creeping shadow’s reach. Talons clawed free of the shadow, a sibilant menace gleaming in its crimson eyes.

  Blinking, the young man shook off the dread in his belly, willing the figment away with a whispered prayer.

  “Shit.” He nearly fumbled the bottle over the edge of the mattress, a large splash of the potent liquor soaking into the battered industrial carpet. Licking at his fingers, Kismet suckled the coarse fluid, choking at its sting. “Come on, Kiz. Keep it together. This shit’s not real. It’s never real. Just crap that your brain makes up.”

  Kismet gulped at the bottle, and the acidic liquid hit the back of his throat. The oozing dark crawling toward him shimmered, pieces of the flotilla roiling beneath the slick, oily surface of its skin. The thing pulsed, growing thicker until it formed a wide, flat body. It approached cautiously, sinking into the bedspread as it hooked its claws into the fabric, a trail of loose soot marking its progress.

  When he was young, the shadows were a welcome diversion at first, a break from the hunger in his belly. When the faces took on familiar forms, hands reaching inside of him and pleading for surcease, he turned to the mind-numbing comfort of his vices, keeping the shadows at bay. Now they took the shape of monsters, fangs and red eyes glowing out from pitch molasses, snapping jaws or reaching talons raking at his vulnerability.

  The vodka would serve as a stopgap, a foul-tasting placebo compared to the bite of steel into his veins. Heroin gave him some space from the shadows, but used too much, it would blunt the river of images he needed to paint in order to clear his mind. Used too little, the shadows would feed on him while he lay helpless beneath their raging maws, little bits of his soul consumed in pinprick appetizers. He just wasn’t ready for the drug yet. If he took it now, the early-morning hours would be haunted by demons he couldn’t get away from.

  But the shadows rarely attacked him until all of his defenses were worn thin. He wasn’t so far along that he needed drugs. Kismet knew he’d had hours before they would have closed in. The rules were changed. And no one had told him.

  A man’s voice hid under the creature’s low, rumbling growl. Kismet heard snatches of conversation, a low drone buzzing behind the words. Kismet’s bare ankle burned where claws ran over his skin, red welts bubbling to raised peaks with frightening quickness.

  Choking on the mouthful of vomit on his tongue, Kismet spat, gasping for air. He hurt. Deep inside of his skull, a hurt burned away his thoughts until he wanted to claw his eyes out, anything to make the pain stop. Another sharp stab of agony lit up the back of his head, and Kismet cried out, twisting as he grabbed at his hair.

  Fighting to stay above the pain, Kismet forced himself to swallow again, the bile in his stomach rising to fight the influx of vodka. Willing the creature away, he felt something shift inside his brain, a breach of fluids popping suddenly behind his eyes. Fiery agony ran loose in his nerves, hitting the soft spots of his temples and curdling his testicles up into the hollow between his thighs. Crying, he struggled to be free of the creature, flailing wildly. The bottle tilted over, its meager contents splashing out and running into puddles over the moisture-resistant comforter.

  He followed the bottle with a tight-boned tumble onto the floor.

  The smell of the carpet hit Kismet’s face, a stale sourness reeking of puke and piss. A hiccup brought up a mouthful of his own belly’s fluids, the rough scratch of the rug pile harsh against his skin. Slithering over the edge of the bed, the creature’s mouth reached for the front of Kismet’s face, its lower jaw unhinging to bite at his skull. Kismet barely heard the echo of the man’s voice again, a barking order stopping the large wraith.

  The air folded up around the creature, spines of wind snapping through its body and shoving it back into the curtain of shadows. It left nothing behind except the stink of its oily scent.

  A final burst of white washed his vision clear, and Kismet felt his body surrender. Welcoming the numbness seeping into his bones, he let go, allowing a heavy slumber to settle over him. If the creature came back, he thought before the hard blackness tugged him under, it could have him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE ELEVATOR air shifted cold as the Veil thickened around them, a perceptible chill in their bones. Ari no longer felt the slicing cold, but Mal still shivered at its touch. Glancing at Pestilence, Ari kept his grin tight and began humming, a short ditty about a girl from Brazil, as the lift slid down into the garage.

  “That’s annoying,” Mal commented, stepping from the elevator when the doors opened into the garage.

  “Yep.” Ari jingled his keys. “That’s what makes it so fun.”

  Mal wasn’t sure who paid for the private garage level or, for that matter, the two-storied penthouse they lived in, four quarters divided around a large living space and kitchen area. The enormous dining room meant to host dinner parties instead was a training room for the Horsemen, its walls Pitted and scored from mock battles. When asked about finances and the like, Death shrugged and told him it was taken care of.

  Mal hated secrets, and Death had many.

  The garage’s low lights glowed a sickly tangerine. The level’s retaining walls came up nearly to Ari’s chest, thick expanses of grooved slats, nearly blocking the skyline vista. Shadows pooled thickly on the ground and lapped at the occasional column, dust blurring the white painted lines on the ground. As they walked, the Horsemen’s shoes made hollow sounds, echoing against the emptiness of the private level.

  Ari’s sleek red Mustang chirruped in response to his thumbing the alarm. He missed his old one, a broad Grande Coupe from the ’60s, but it met a tragic death. He’d fallen in love with the reissued Pony, grinning like a young boy with a new plaything when he brought it home. Death properly admired it. Min showed her disgust at being dragged down to the garage to look at a chunk of steel. He’d not asked Mal his opinion, and he’d tried to pretend it didn’t matter, but Mal beamed when Ari took him for a drive down to Ocean Beach, the car screaming around the tight curves of Point Loma in the middle of the night.

  “I could drive,” Mal offered, longingly glancing at his reliable SUV, a squat monster of hammered steel and much safer on the road than Ari’s car. Min’s motorcycle leaned on its stands next to Death’s ashen Aston Martin, a fine layer of dust coating the Vanquish’s gleaming waxed metal skin. Ari snorted at Mal’s suggestion, hooking his hand into the Mustang’s door handle.

  “You could walk.” Ari cast a glance over his shoulder, jerking his head toward the passenger side of the car.

  “I think you’re scared of my driving. Big bad Ari is frightened of my SUV.” Mal stepped toward the Mustang.

  And slipped on a puddle of shadow.

  Arms flailing, Mal fought to regain his footing as a hand rose from the inky black. The hand’s claws stretched upward and tore into the cement as the creature pulled itself up. Elongated arms, spindly and thin, snapped forward, digging long hands into Mal’s leg. A head appeared, red eyes
nictitating in a featureless oval. Its skull stretched out into a point, a jutting jaw bristling with brilliant white teeth.

  The creature’s squat round body swallowed the light, shaking itself free from the ground and opening its maw to snarl at War. Pulling free, its legs shook out, three truncated limbs ending in nearly flipper-like appendages, wide to balance its heavy body. Keeping a firm grip on its captured prey, the Veiled creature licked its lipless mouth, a dusky serpentine tongue dripping saliva on Mal’s sneaker.

  Mal twisted, his leg burning where the creature’s nails dug into his skin. Shouting for Ari, Mal clawed at the creature’s hand, working his fingers under its talons to break loose its grip. It tightened its hold, bending Mal’s fingers back until they strained under the effort of fighting the creature’s strength. He kicked out with his free foot, slamming the wraith across the forehead. A tilt of its jaw giving under the blow gave him little comfort when its head slid back down, mouth widening over his stomach. A popping noise drove panic though Mal as the creature’s distended jaw opened wide, easily leaving more than enough space to fit his rib cage into its mouth.

  “Shit,” Mal hissed, eyes widening, shock creeping into his limbs. Nearly numb from the pain in his leg, he caught a blur of movement to the side of the creature. Relief flooded through him when he saw War easing around the Mustang.

  The wraith’s right eye jerked to the side, catching sight of Ari, a single crimson orb bright in its deep sockets. The creature growled deep in its chest, warning the immortal off its prey as War circled, wary of the snapping mouth, sharp teeth glistening in the muddy light. Sliding a long knife from its sheath at his back, Ari drew near, testing the creature’s reflexes.

  Threatened by the more powerful predator, the creature reacted in a panic. It struck, flinging Mal at the crouching War. The immortal flew wide, his body loose from the shock of leaving the creature’s grip, and he windmilled, trying to right himself. War lunged, trying to get a hold on him as the youngest Horseman flew by, his fingers a few seconds too late.