by David Wong
Shelby Winder and another girl, Carrie Saddleworth, were found together. Each dead of a massive stroke. Shelby was missing her right hand, the wrist a ragged stump wrapped with a blood-soaked shirt.
The rest—Jennifer Lopez, Fred Chu, Big Jim Sullivan are nowhere to be found. They were all at the One Ball with John last night.
Now, only John remained.
You know all that, but you still can’t remember this cop’s name? You’re teetering on the brink of Crazy Man Bluff overlooking Weird Shit Valley.
“And to answer your next question,” I continued, “I didn’t know Jennifer well enough to know who her friends were or where she may have run off to. I’m sorry.”
Detective Freeman stepped forward and flipped open the manila envelope. He fanned out four photographs. One was a mug shot of a young black guy. Dreadlocks. I knew this was my fake Jamaican, knew before my eyes focused on the photo.
The next three pictures were vivid splashes of crimson.
Once, when I was twelve, for reasons that made sense at the time I filled a blender with some ice cubes and three cans of maraschino cherries. I didn’t know you had to use a lid on one of those things, so I hit the button and watched it erupt like a volcano. The room in the cop’s photographs looked like the resulting mess in our kitchen that day, everything a red spray with lumps.
He pointed to the Jamaican’s mug shot. “What about that guy? You know him?”
“He was there. At the party last night. Whatever John was on, this guy gave it to him. John told me.”
You already knew that, didn’t you, detective?
“That’s Bruce Matthews. Runs an amateur unlicensed pharmaceuticals operation on the corner of Thirtieth and Lexington.”
I nodded toward the red photos.
“What’s that?”
Morgan pointed to the mug shot.
“Before.”
He pointed to the red-drenched pictures.
“After.”
The first picture was just lumps on the floor, on carpet that was probably brown at one time but was now dyed a wet, purplish black. It looked like somebody had tossed down a bucket of raw steaks and chicken bones. The next picture was a close-up of one wall, deep red splatters over half the surface area, occasional bits of meat stuck here and there. The third picture was a close-up of a severed brown hand in a pool of red, fingers curled loosely, a bandage around the palm.
I turned my eyes away, suddenly sweating heavily. There was that tableau in the mirror again, just me and Morgan, face-to-face. Did he think I had anything to do with this? Was I a suspect? In my panic, I couldn’t read him. He let the silence congeal in the air, staring down on me. He broke me, and I broke the silence.
“What could even do that to a person? A bomb? Some kind of—”
“Nothing you know how to do, I’m sure of that. Maybe somethin’ not, uh, not within our bounds of familiarity.”
That fear again, on Morgan’s face. I understood it now.
But there’s more. Much more. He’s buried it so deep even you can’t read it.
The door opened and the detective’s words trailed off. A fat Hispanic cop ducked in and whispered in his ear. Morgan’s eyebrows shot up and the two of them left the room.
I heard a commotion outside, hurried shouts and feet shuffling on floor tile. After about ten minutes Morgan stormed into the room, eyes wide.
No, no, no, no-no-no. No. Don’t say it . . .
“Your friend is dead.”
CLICK!
A tape recorder, clicking off at the end of a cassette. Arnie had apparently set the thing on the table before me at some point. I hadn’t noticed. He grumbled an apology, fished out a new tape and went about changing it. I glanced over at his discarded notebook, saw he had abandoned his note-taking just after the word “Holocaust.”
I pushed away the plate of chicken, rice and snow peas that was the Flaming Shrimp Reunion. I had been picking through it for the last half hour, leaving the chicken. That bird, I knew, had lived a very sad life and I couldn’t bring myself to eat it. It also had spent its days covered head to toe in bits of other birds’ crap.
“When you got your cell phone bill, did it list the call you got at Denny’s?”
“What? I’m sorry.”
“The call you got from your friend at Denny’s when your friend was sitting there next to you without a phone. Was that call on your cell phone bill?”
“I never thought to check.”
The waitress swept by and claimed my plate, dropped off a fortune cookie and my ticket. She ignored Arnie. I held the cookie in my hand, tried to concentrate and “see” what the fortune said inside it. I found I couldn’t.
Arnie scratched his head, knitted a question with his eyebrows.
“So the black stuff, the soy sauce, it’s a drug, right?”
“Well, I’ll get to that.”
“And it makes you smarter? When you take it, it lets you read minds and all that?”
“Not really. It heightens your senses. I think. I don’t know. When you’re on it, it’s like overload, like if you hooked your car radio up to one of those interplanetary SETI antennas. You get shit from all over the place, can see things you shouldn’t be able to see, but I don’t think it would help you do your taxes.”
“And you still got some of this stuff?” He glanced quickly down at the silver canister.
“I’m getting to that.”
“You’re on it right now? That’s how you did the thing with the, uh, with the coins and the dream and all that earlier?”
“Yeah. I took some today. It’s fading though.”
“So the effects don’t last that long.”
“The side effects don’t last that long. The effects will last the rest of my life, I think.”
Maybe longer.
Arnie scratched his forehead.
“So, the kids that died, this is that rave overdose, right? I remember all that a few years ago, seein’ it on CNN. They thought they had gotten hold of some tainted Ecstasy or somethin’ like that? So you were the guy that—”
“I can’t figure out at what point the party got turned into a ‘rave’ in the newspapers. There was no techno music or dancing or PVC pants and there was certainly no raving. Freakin’ rave. It’s one of those words they throw around to scare old people.”
“What color is the interview room down at the precinct?”
“Uh, white. It’s flaked off in places, shows institutional green underneath.”
“And if I contact Detective Appleton, he’ll remember talking to you?”
“Good luck finding him.”
Arnie made notes.
“So?” I asked. “What do you think?”
“I think you’ve probably got a book here,” he said. “Flesh it out a little.”
“A book? Meaning a work of fiction? Meaning it’s all bullshit?”
Arnie shrugged. “It’s nothin’ to me. A story is a story. I’m just a feature reporter, so the fact that you think it happened is my story. But it’s like Whitley Strieber, writes that book about aliens. Nobody would ever have heard of it, except he sells it as nonfiction, swears to the end that it all really happened.”
His eyes flicked over to the little metal canister again. I realized my fingers had been fidgeting with it.
“Well, I’m not into that whole aliens thing, but I don’t think it’s right to label the guy a fraud, Arnie.”
“Exactly. He’s got a nice house, though. His own radio show. Played by Christopher Walken in a movie. Wouldn’t you like that? You know, I don’t remember leaving the house with any change in my pocket. You could have slipped those coins to me.”
“Without you feeling it? And the thing with your dream? Come on, Arnie.”
Gotta love the skeptic, mon.
“I saw a sleight-of-hand artist in Vegas who, as part of his show, would call somebody out of the audience and steal the glasses off their face. No kidding. He’d send the poor sap back to his se
at and he’d be squinting around, tryin’ to figure out why he couldn’t see all of a sudden. There’s no magic, Mr. Wong. Just knowing tricks the other guy doesn’t know about.”
I stood up. “Come with me. I wanna show you somethin’. In my truck.”
We made our way out to my rattly old Ford Bronco II. I bought it after my old Hyundai got totaled a few years ago in a manner that was undoubtedly unique among all vehicles ever totaled in vehicle history.
I approached the rear and dropped the tailgate, revealing a white sheet covering a large box the size of one of those plastic portable dog carriers. Not coincidentally, it was a portable dog carrier.
“What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen, Arnie?”
He grinned, looking over the box. Like a damn kid at Christmas.
Look, everybody! The crazy man carries around a big crazy box! Let’s all humor him at once!
“One time,” he began, “I was down in my basement and there’s just a couple of bare lightbulbs that hang down, you know? So it’s all shadows, and your shadow kind of stretches out across the floor. Anyway, one time, out the corner of my eye, you know, it sort of looked like my shadow back there was movin’ without me. I don’t mean the bulb was swinging and the shadow was just wavering back and forth, I mean the limbs were, like, flailing around. Real fast, too. It was just for a second and like I said, it was just one of those tricks of light you get out the corner of your eye. But I tell ya, I didn’t go back down there until it was broad daylight out. Is what you got in there gonna beat that?”
“I need you to get in that mind-set, Arnie. We’re out here, in public with lights on and the whole world’s solid and lined up real neat. But down in that basement, in the dark, alone, you believed in things. Dark things. I need you to open yourself up like that. Okay?”
“It was just somethin’ I thought I saw. I never said there was anything there, Mr. Wong.”
“Just humor me. Ready?”
I threw back the sheet. Long pause.
“Do you see it?”
“No. Or, you know, it’s an empty cage.”
“Turn your head, so you’re looking at me. You should see the box out the corner of your eye, just like the shadow in the basement.”
“Okay.” Arnie’s grin was fading. He was losing patience fast.
“Do you ever go in the bathroom at night, Arnie, and for a second, just a split second, you glimpse something in the mirror other than your reflection? Then you turn the light on and, of course, everything’s fine again. But for just a half a second, maybe while you’re leaving the room, you see out the corner of your eye that it isn’t you in the mirror. Or maybe it is you, only changed? And what’s looking back at you is something completely different? Something not very human?”
“Let’s go back inside, okay? Your story was more interesting.”
“You’re going to die, Arnie. Someday, you will face that moment. Regardless of what you believe, at that moment either you will face complete nonexistence, which is something you can’t possibly imagine, or you will face something even stranger that you also can’t possibly imagine. On an actual day in the future, you will be in the unimaginable, Arnie. Set your mind on that.”
Silence, for a few seconds. Arnie nodded a little.
“Okay.”
“Now, without turning your head, look at the box.”
Arnie did, recoiled, yelped, stumbled and finally fell on his ass.
“Oh, shit!” he gasped. “Shit!! What the shit is that? Sh-shit! Shit!”
I threw the sheet back over the box and closed up the Bronco. Arnie scrambled to his feet and backed up ten steps, halfway to the door of the restaurant.
“How did you do that? And what the fuck was that thing? What the fuck?”
“I don’t know what it’s called. Pretty freaky, isn’t it?”
“You—you made me see something. Something out of my own head. You freaked me out so I would see something.”
“No, it’s really there. I’m surprised you saw it so easy. You must have an open mind. Most people don’t see it that fast unless they’re stoned or drunk.”
Arnie kept stepping back, muttering.
“I was in the Navy. Diver. I saw some shit, deep-sea shit that didn’t look like anything that belonged on this world. But that was nothin’, nothin’ like that . . . that thing.”
“I want to tell the rest of the story, Arnie. I need to. I need to get it out. But you need to take it for what it is. The truth. Are you ready to do that?”
Arnie looked at me with uncertainty, then nodded. “Okay. Until I figure it out for real, okay.”
“Eh, that’ll have to do.”
After a moment we walked back toward the restaurant. As we passed through the swinging doors (still painted with the slogan HOLA AMIGOS!!) I picked up my story.
“Anyway, so the cop comes in and tells me John is dead . . .”
I WAS OUT of my chair before I knew it, halfway to the door.
“Wha—How??!”
The cop stopped me cold with a stiff arm to the chest.
“Now calm down,” Morgan said, not looking at all calm himself. “He went into a convulsion or somethin’ and his pulse stopped but—now listen to me here—we got ambulances, they’ll be here in thirty seconds. We got Vinny doin’ CPR on him. Vinny’s a lifeguard in his off-hours. That boy’s in the hands of people who know what they’re doin’. That don’t include you, so you got no business fartin’ around out there, gettin’ all hysterical and whatnot.”
I knocked his hand away from my chest. The white cop dropped his arms and came toward us, though looking a little less shocked than what I would have expected, having had somebody just drop dead in their police station. Apparently he wouldn’t have to fill out the paperwork.
Morgan’s lips peeled back slightly to reveal gritted teeth. He started to say something, stopped himself.
Oh, shit. This guy’s on the jagged edge . . .
“Here’s what you’re gonna do, son.”
He breathed.
“You’re gonna wait here. I’ll be back in five minutes and you are gonna start telling me the truth. I am gonna get to the bottom of this and if you obstruct me you will live the rest of your days wishing you had not.”
He stepped back, made sure I wasn’t going to rush the door, then turned out of the room. What chilled me wasn’t the cop’s threats. It was the single, dark thought I could read pulsing through his head:
The dead are getting off lucky in this deal.
That didn’t seem like a normal cop thought to me.
I stood there, lost, listening to the confusion of shouts and controlled panic outside. I heard sirens out front. Ambulance.
My cell phone chirped. On any other day I would have shut the thing off, but that seemed unwise somehow. I looked toward Officer Liddy, now standing placidly in the middle of the room, and I gestured toward my pocket as if to ask if he minded. He said nothing, I answered my phone.
“Yeah.”
“Dave? This is John.”
“What? Are you—”
Alive?
“—in an ambulance or something?”
“Yes and no. Are you still at the police station?”
“Yeah. We were both—”
“Have I died yet?”
A long pause from my end.
“Um, yeah, according to the cops.” I glanced at the white cop, who showed no interest in my conversation.
“Then there’s no time to explain all this. Get out of there.”
“But—I’ll be a fugitive,” I whispered, turning away from the cop. “They know where I—”
“Listen. Get up. Walk to the door. Leave the room. Leave the building. Whatever you do, see that big white cop standing there in the room with you? Don’t look at him in the mirror.”
“Huh?”
I glanced back over my shoulder at the cop. Something was . . . off.
“Just go. Now.”
I tried to get a read on t
he cop, and realized that’s what was off. Even with the soy sauce I was getting zero information from the G. Gordon Liddy–looking detective. I turned my head a few degrees to the right . . .
—Don’t look at the mirror don’t look at the mirror—
. . . to the reflective surface of the two-way mirror directly opposite the cop.
It was just you and Morgan in the mirror, Dave. Even after the white cop stepped forward.
In the mirror it was just me. Standing there, talking on my cell.
Alone.
I spun toward the cop.
“I don’t get it.”
“He’s not real, Dave. Not in the, uh, traditional sense.”
“He’s coming toward me!”
“Go, Dave. You’re gonna start seeing things like this from time to time. It’s important that you not freak out.”
The cop was one step away from me now. His mustache twitched, as if he was starting to grin underneath it.
“So he, uh, can’t hurt me?”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure he can.”
A hand clenched around my face. The cop’s fingers dug into my cheeks, squeezing, rigid as iron bars. I thought my teeth would crack into pieces. He pushed me back using my face and slammed me against the wall.
I clawed at his arm, but it was like trying to tear the limbs off a bronze statue. I smacked him across the nose with my phone. His mustache twitched again as if this amused him greatly.
The mustache kept twitching and twitching and then one end of it began to curl up and peel off, like a man’s disguise torn off by a hard wind. Finally the mustache detached completely, leaving a patch of pink, shredded skin. The thing flapped its halves like bat wings—no, it really did—and flew over and landed on my face.
The cop’s mustache bit me above the right eyebrow. I slapped at the thing with my left hand, then worked my leg up and, with all my strength, shoved a knee into the detective’s guts just below the ribs.
A jolt of pain shot up my thigh, like I had kneed over a pile of cinder blocks. But I felt him give, pushed back by the force. The mustache bat flittered over to my ear and clamped down, feeling like somebody doing five piercings at once. I slapped at it again, suddenly realized the cop had reeled back and fallen to a knee on the floor. I should have been free of him but the hand was still around my face—