Halfskin Boxed

by Tony Bertauski

  The dream eater. Survivors of dream disease described it that way—a cold breath on their shoulder, an inhalation that slurped away their very thoughts, waking up empty and void.

  “You…” Paul hissed. “I saw you.”

  “We were partners in this, Paul. I did not shut her down.”

  “I… saaaaw you.”

  It was all he could say. Marcus watched him curiously, as if Paul was a window with his thoughts and memories exposed. Raine was not privy to the scenes, but Marcus scowled at what he saw.

  “Her memories are corrupt,” the old man finally said. “I did not take her to Atlanta. She was to meet with a contact in Chicago. I waited for her there only to hear of her capture days later. I’m afraid what you were seeing in her memories was a distortion, Paul. I assure you, I did not want her shut down. She was my ally.”

  Ally? Jamie was useful to him, served his purposes. He needed her alive. But her death served him as well. He looked to the blank space next to him, listening to whatever his projection was saying, perhaps. Nodding intermittently, then humming in agreement.

  He seemed more relaxed when he looked back and sighed heavily.

  “By the time I arrived in Atlanta, she had been shut down. I didn’t anticipate that. If I had gotten there sooner, perhaps I could have stopped it, but she was gone, Paul. Even I have limits. We were closer to the truth than I anticipated. He took her from me, I believe.”

  He. His powers-that-be. He that eats dreams.

  “I need you,” the old man said. “I’m here because I need you both. I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived on the Settlement, but now I know it will take the four of us to find the truth.”

  The four of us?

  “You’re fabricating her, Paul You managed to salvage enough of her DNA that you could fabricate an organ at a time. A hand, a heart, a spleen. You’re bringing her back like only love can do.

  “I need Jamie, to see what she saw, to look into the eyes of the dream eater. But for us to find the truth, I will need both of you. You are the one to lead us, Paul. I can’t do this alone. I wanted to wait until spring when it would be easier to travel, but you were fabricating her too fast. You were taking risks that I couldn’t accept. And you’ve become unstable.”

  He wagged his finger.

  “Every once in a while, you fade out. I can’t sense you, like you disappear. The monitors are looking more closely at this and we can’t afford more attention. You’ve been lucky to have gotten this far. I had to put a stop to it.”

  A wave of bristling heat pricked Raine’s brow, her body an ill-fitting glove. Paul was shaking, anger flushing his cheeks, lips thinning.

  “Dennis was barely sentient,” Marcus continued. “Hardly more than a machine, I’m sure you’ve noticed. I would not consider his shutdown a death. You are not a murderer, you are not a bad man. But change has occurred. You can no longer continue what you were doing. And our stay on the Settlement is coming to an end. There is no turning back for any of us. They will find Dennis’s body, they will know what you did. And now here we are.”

  He sacrificed Dennis to force us into a decision.

  He drank and thought, listening to the voice next to him. Then he put the cup down, leaned forward and spoke intensely.

  “I know you want revenge, Paul. The gratification of savagely destroying me will satiate you fully, a blood meal that will fill your belly, but it will leave you emptier and thinner. I am truly sorry for where we are.”

  He nodded at Raine, including her in the semi-apology.

  “But this is bigger than us. I did not cast the future, did not design it to include you. Your suffering will not go unrewarded. I cannot force you to help me; I need you to comply. I need both of you to do that. Do you understand?”

  The long silence was filled by the crackle of the fire.

  Paul was no longer quivering. Did he exhaust his bottomless tank of fury, or was he contemplating the offer? She wanted to believe the latter because the old man’s words had snared her. There was no future on the Settlement, no reason to continue living, waiting for the People to restore her dreamland. Her only hope sat across from her.

  Without another word, the old man went back to the kitchen. Their confinement thawed like icicles in the afternoon, disappearing a drip at a time. Raine wiggled her toes, curled her tongue. Her body hummed with the weight of deep hibernation. It hurt to move.

  Paul stood too soon, tripped over the coffee table and collapsed on the couch. He flopped onto the floor and hunched on his hands and knees, slurping the air in deep, heaving breaths. He climbed onto his feet in a state of inebriation and lunged against the wall. Items fell from the shelf. When his balance returned, he threw himself at the front door and fumbled with the knob, falling off the porch. He crawled through the snowdrifts, emerging like a dusted stroke victim determined to run before he could walk.

  “Let him go.” Marcus closed the door. “He needs some time. It’s why I came to you first. You understand why we are together, Raine. You understand how important this is, what we all gain from understanding the truth. Your suffering will guide him. You are the one that bleeds.”

  He was speaking in riddles. But she was still sitting, and doing so calmly. So accepting. Did he bait her with promises? If he’d come with that story a year ago, she’d be running, too. But her suffering made her eager to follow.

  The one to bleed?

  He encouraged her to rest because there was much to do and very little time. He went to the kitchen to make her something to eat. She would need her strength, he told her.

  She went to the bedroom and closed the door, instead, sitting on the bed, wondering what the hell was happening. She showered, hoping to wash away the webby thoughts that clogged her mind. She needed to be clear, needed to know her intentions were true, that the old man wasn’t blinding her with a dazzling illusion. Hot water ran down her face, trickling over the silent prayer on her lips.

  Perhaps the angel had arrived.

  Paul

  “What are you doing?” Paul asked.

  The kitchen table was pushed against the wall, the oven tipped on its side. Raine on her knees, arm sunk deep into the trapdoor, a chilly breath heaving from beneath the cabin. Marcus sat on one of the chairs, the kind with bended metal legs and hard cushions. His hands were on his thighs in some imitation of alertness and rigid psychosis, the way a lunatic would watch someone dig their own grave.

  Raine slowly flexed her cold fingers. A fleeting moment revealed an emotion crossing her eyes, an admission of guilt—she was caught stacking body parts like firewood. But that guilt was quickly polished over, a hardened layer of angry shellac.

  “Where have you been?” she said.

  “What are you doing?” Paul aimed the accusation at Marcus.

  “Trust me, Paul,” the old man said.

  “Trust a murderer?”

  “I have murdered no one, Paul.”

  “You shut down millions with your halfskin laws and you’re asking me to trust that?”

  “You’re talking about Cali?”

  Paul choked on his next accusation, the words solidifying like black lumps of coal. Like Cali. The old man didn’t need to be all-powerful to pick that thought from his mind. It rested in Paul’s eyes, never left his mind. Of course the old man killed millions, but only one mattered to Paul.

  “You… you disappeared from the world,” Paul said. “You moved at will, hijacked our biomites, walked Dennis into the lab… what you’re doing is impossible. And you want me to trust you?”

  “There is a greater power out there, Paul. That you can trust.”

  “The powers-that-be.” Laughter limped out of him.

  Raine pulled herself up, her dark complexion somewhat chalky, the skin withered beneath her hooded eyes. Standing next to the old man, it was a creepy portrait of a wealthy old baron with his sickly concubine.

  “Did he promise you dreamland, too?” Paul said.

  The cold mome
nts stretched out, the hateful words nestling into place, clicking tumblers that unlocked his message and engaged a long-dead, dusty engine of rage that had lain dormant inside her. She leaped across the kitchen and snatched his frozen coat against his chin.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” she said, spittle flying. “You walk off and leave me to fix everything and then say that? We’ve all lost something, Paul. We all have!”

  He had hid in Dennis’s cabin for two days, planning to stay there with the corpse until someone came looking for it. But no one did.

  “What do you want from me?” She shook him. “You leave and disappear and I… I can’t even feel you out there, Paul. You turn your back and leave me sweeping up the pieces and expect what? To wait for you on the porch? Crying in the bed?”

  She shook him.

  “I’m tired, Paul. And I want my family back, can you understand that? I know you get that, I know you can’t stand it either, but I’m tired of waiting. I’m taking a leap of faith.”

  The wooden crucifix settled into the hollow V at the base of her throat, stuck between rigid cords of muscle. She had tied a leather cord to it and wore it like a necklace.

  “Faith?” he said. “Is that what this is?”

  “It’s all I have left. We’re out of options, Paul.” Her hands slid off. “Have been for a long time now.”

  Marcus sat like royalty in disguise, an offering of bloodless body parts at his feet. It was absurd. The entire scene was absurd. A small derelict kitchen, a strange old man on a cheap chair. A trapdoor with body parts. This was the dream. He would wake from this any moment and stare up from an afternoon nap. Sometimes he wondered if he never did wake that afternoon he lay down with Cali, the afternoon she turned herself off. Because he wasn’t supposed to wake.

  Maybe he never did.

  This was his afterlife, this ludicrous scene. In what reality could he possibly believe he could print body parts and piece them together?

  I failed Cali.

  That was it. When he couldn’t stop Cali from suicide, he decided to die with her. And he failed at that, too. And he failed Jamie.

  “We’re leaving tonight,” Marcus answered.

  “Tonight?”

  “Dennis will be discovered soon. The ensuing chaos, I’m afraid, will be beyond my control. It’ll have to be tonight.”

  Ensuing chaos? The Settlement is going to lose everything because of us. Paul felt the dull thud of a guilty fist sink deep into his solar plexus.

  “How? How are we getting out? There’s five feet of snow out there and another storm on the way.”

  “You fabricated Jamie.” The old man picked up a floppy hand still wrapped in plastic. “Despite the inaccuracy of her memory, you verified her DNA.”

  “What’s that got to do with escaping?”

  “I understand your pain, Paul. What you’ve done to bring her back is a father’s love for his child.”

  “Don’t patronize me.”

  “You risked everything for her. Risk—is that not the foundation of love, the vulnerability of being completely open?”

  “What’s all that mean?”

  “We leave at dusk. We’ll need twenty hours before the process is complete.”

  “What process?”

  “We’re going to the lab.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll explain once we’re there.”

  The old man muttered to Raine. She went back to the trapdoor, bleary-eyed and sluggish, and put an arm—one that went from shoulder to wrist, the pink end sealed in preservation wrap, bones exposed like rib-eye steak—in one of three large duffel bags.

  The curtains were open. If anyone drove by, they’d see them. The storm would keep that from happening, but the monitors would sometimes trek out to the cabins. He realized he hadn’t seen a monitor in days.

  Where the hell have they been?

  “Twenty hours is too long,” Paul said. “Someone will come out. The cloaking program I’ve been using can’t hide another process that long and complex. I’ll need to tweak it or alarms will go off, power will go down. We’ll put the entire Settlement at risk.”

  Raine continued unloading body parts; Marcus stacked them in another bag. Paul grabbed handfuls of his scruffy beard, turned away, and ran his fingers through his tacky mop of hair. Those aren’t Jamie.

  “We’ll meet at my cabin in six hours,” Marcus said. “I want you showered and shaved, both of you. Shave everything—head, arms, legs, everything. Clean yourselves, don’t come on an empty stomach and be rested.”

  “Why?” Paul said.

  The crawlspace was empty. The same bags Paul had used to smuggle the body parts were now fully loaded and zipped.

  “We’re taking them with us,” the old man said before Paul could ask. “We’ll need them.”

  “Just… hold on,” Paul said. “If we haul everything to the lab, someone will come out, they’ll find everything. Even if the alarms don’t go off, Pete will stop by. They won’t let us leave. You know that.”

  Marcus walked out of the kitchen. The cabin inhaled a long frigid breath before the front door slammed.

  Raine slung a bag over her shoulder, the weight pulling at the left side of her body. Eyes down, she marched across the room. Paul caught her arm. She wouldn’t look up. He’d abandoned her too many times.

  Another punch to the gut.

  She pulled away, put the bag in the bedroom and came back for the other two and locked the door. She was going with or without him and she didn’t want him near the bags.

  Falling on the couch, he listened to the shower run.

  Raine

  Paul slept with his head crooked over the couch. Still fully dressed, boots laced up. Unshaven.

  Raine slid the bags to the front door.

  The sun was deep behind the mountains, the sky bruised and quiet. She slept a few hours, but exhaustion was still draped over her. She considered leaving him.

  He won’t care.

  He would wake to a cold and empty cabin and sit and stare. Problem was she’d never get all three bags across the field. They didn’t contain Jamie, just pieces sculpted in a box. It was no more her than Venus de Milo was a living being. But Paul believed it was her, despite his attempts to deny it. She could see it in his eyes, saw the pain when they stacked the limp arms, the cold hips and globby organs like exotic meatpackers.

  He couldn’t kill that belief, couldn’t shed himself of the hope that Jamie was under the house waiting to be assembled. It was what kept him going, kept him clinging to a ledge of sanity by his fingernails. He had lost as much as Raine, been kicked in the ribs as many times.

  Maybe more.

  He was a plant duped by Mother to find Cali. He was a delivery boy of sorts, sent to convince the woman he’d fallen in love with to turn herself off.

  Raine swallowed the bitterness. It tasted like bile.

  “You coming?”

  He snorted awake, looked around expecting monsters. Glazed confusion gave way to indecision.

  “He said to shave,” she said.

  Her head was smooth, as was the rest of her body. She liked the feeling and hoped she wouldn’t be around when the stubble grew back. One way or the other.

  Paul went to the bathroom. The water ran.

  She considered leaving again, but there was still the problem with the bags. Maybe that was why Marcus left all three of them. Paul came out looking much the same, beads of water dripping from his whiskers. He hoisted a bag on each shoulder and led the way.

  Half an hour later, they stopped at the edge of the forest and looked across the snowy field. The wind had died. The subzero temperatures rested on them, nipping at the cracks and slivers of exposed skin. The ripe sky flickered with emerging stars, but there was still enough sunlight to glitter the snow like tiny stars had fallen.

  The cabins were dark and abandoned, all except the one on the end. A lone figure stood on the porch, slightly hunched with a bag, this one bright orange. More par
ts?

  Raine’s former cabin, now the old man’s, faced the distant lab that loomed in twilight. Faint light glowed in the cabin’s window like the furnace burning inside a dragon.

  Had he planned this, too?

  He lived within sight of the lab, an easy trek to the front door. Everything seemed to fit too neatly, as if someone had reached into the future and stacked the deck.

  Paul turned to face her. Steam oozed through the fabric covering his mouth. His sharp eyes, peering between the slit of his stocking cap and face mask, asked one last time.

  Are you sure?

  She slung the bag over her shoulder and walked into the open. Marcus, sensing them in the shadows, had already started for the lab. Raine high-stepped through virgin snow until she fell into the old man’s path. His bag was smaller and lighter. Something metal clinked inside.

  A path had been shoveled through a six-foot drift to expose the lab’s front door. It was locked. Marcus stepped aside, hardly winded from the walk. Paul pulled his glove off, pressed his hand on the lock pad and opened the door.

  Once inside, Marcus dropped the bag. Metal and wood crashed inside. He pulled out a handful of steel wedges gleaming with newness. Next, he retrieved a long-handled sledgehammer. After carefully placing the tip of a wedge between the door and frame, he swung like a railroad worker, driving the wedge halfway home—the grace with which the sledge arced betrayed the illusion of the old man’s frailty.

  There was nothing old about it.

  “Take these.” He kicked the bag. “Lock the other doors just like this. We don’t want anyone coming in.”

  “How are we getting out?” Paul asked.

  Marcus hammered the next one into place.

  Raine grabbed the bag and started walking. She finished the side doors and was halfway through the back door when Paul appeared. He helped her with the last wedge when the hall lights went down. They finished in the dark.

  The front doors were firmly pegged shut. The bags of body parts were gone. Paul began pacing, thoughts of betrayal turning a wheel of paranoia.