“What’s that, Johnny?”
“Nothing, Todd.”
Through the door and into very cold air. John’s breath eked a loose cloud around his lips. The coroner strode through an aisle of bodies. Seldom were there so many at once.
And most were so small.
The children’s eyes (and eyeless) bulged as they stared. And John, thought, you idiot! Some of these bodies are theirs!
Todd yanked back dull black plastic.
“Like I said, not much left. It’s hard to see the resemblance anymore. Maybe you can catch it on the six o’clock recap.”
If that pile of gleaming bonesplits and powder-burned stumps had ever looked like John Piper, the similarity was missing in the pulp congealing on the gurney. His heart sank. He’d brought them here to show them…and they had been forced to walk past their own cadavers, mercifully concealed under sheets but they knew. He could tell that they knew.
“But he looked like me, right? If anyone hadn’t known that the S.W.A.T. team killed the real gunman, they might easily mistake me for him, right?” John babbled.
“Yeah, sure they would. It’d be a real case of mistaken identity.”
“See? That’s him there. That’s who did it. Wasn’t me. That’s the Bad Man,” John chattered to the kids. “You heard what Todd said. The killer looked like me.”
The children keened, swayed with their wounds, gazed up at him with forlorn eyes begging for mercy.
“John? You all right?” Todd asked suspiciously as he stepped back. “Who are you talking to?”
John ran from the cold room, breathing steamy dragons in the icy air that pursued him down the hall. At least another dozen puffs of fog misted around him, flickers of cottony St. Elmo’s fire.
“He’s finally lost it. Always knew he would,” Todd muttered smugly as he covered the remains of the killer.
««—»»
John found it impossible to sleep that night. He couldn’t even recline decently with the ghosts hanging off him, standing by the bed, or lying in fetal positions next to him on the rumpled sheets. They sobbed and snuffled, orphans of the twilight realm where they touched him until he thought he’d grown them in penance for some sin he’d committed. In a previous life if not in this one.
He wondered: did every murderer have the souls of the victims attached to him like this? Or was it only the spirits of the victims who’d been children who—having no understanding of their mortality and immortality—were forced to attach themselves to the last person to have influence over them?
(Yes, the killer had such a predominant influence on those he butchered.)
Did the maniacs who slithered through bedroom windows to kidnap sleeping children have the chain of their other tragedies crying out, “Wake up! Run for your life!” Only to not be heard from their in-between place? Did the beast who pulled up to the curb in the long black car to invite the little one for a trip to the ice cream store have the bleached and scratched-up faces of all the others who had taken the final ride sitting next to him? Or crammed behind him in the humid trunk? Ranting, yammering out fruitless warnings? (“Run! Don’t listen to him! This is what happens to you!”)
John saw the gaping chasms of their bellies where all the flavors of popsicles had gone. He could see in the canyons of their chests where their hearts had beaten. He could see in their head wounds the brain cells that registered delight upon first viewing Disney’s Aladdin. Wasted! Lingering, fingering him as the reason. They weren’t even furious. Very small children didn’t become righteously indignant at the outrages done to them. They merely went through a helpless puzzlement that feared you, hated you, but needed to understand.
They had him fastened to the mattress like a pinned butterfly.
“Mommy, the bad man, the boogie man…”
“Let me sleep. babies,” John croaked, pulling a pillow over his head.
Cold bodies pressed against him, rocking to lull themselves.
He didn’t know what to do about them. What did parents do to quiet their living children?
He’d wanted kids but his wife hadn’t. Julie had been adamant. NO BRATS. Then she got knocked up by a Dodge salesman and left John to start a family with Mr. Ram Charger. In between John’s stint as a cop and then fireman.
“How about if I told you a story?” he asked wearily. “Will you quiet down for a while? Let a guy with the face of a killer get some shut-eye?”
The kids blubbered tentatively. Maybe all they needed was some attention.
He almost smiled.
“Once upon a time there was a town full of rats. It was one of those medieval places where the guys wore panty hose, and they were afraid of the plague because half of Europe was already dead from it. Well, this drifter came to town…”
Their breaths hitched, fingers in gummy kewpie-doll mouths.
“Do you know what a drifter is?” John asked the half-headed youngster cuddled against his stomach. The one lapis blue eye blinked. “It’s sort of a homeless guy who goes from place to place. He came to town and told everybody he could get rid of the rats for a price. They said, yeah great, whatever you want. Just get rid of the rats before they make us sick and drive us crazy.”
Get rid of the kids before they drove him crazy. John felt a pang of guilt. It wasn’t as if this was their fault. They hadn’t asked to be killed by a fiend with his face.
But it wasn’t John’s fault either. And they were driving him nuts.
“So this drifter started playing his flute and the rats started to follow him. They dug their way out of basements and root cellars and from in-between the walls of houses. They jumped down in wholesale lots from the peaked roofs the buildings had, ran scratching over fences, even came up out of graves…”
John choked. Should he have mentioned graves? The children sniffled, rubbing their runny bloody noses, or in some cases just blotted where noses used to be. At least they were listening.
“The rats followed him by the thousands down the main street of town, fleas swarming in their fur, naked tails twitching in time to his music. He led them down the road, out of town, and marched them right into the sea where they couldn’t overrun people’s dinner tables or bite babies where they slept in their cradles.
“Then the piper went back to town to get paid for a job well done. Only the townspeople laughed at him and told him to get lost. They’d never had any intention of paying him. He left but returned just before the sun came up. He started playing his flute until all the children got out of their beds and began to follow him down the road, out of town. He played and led them to a mountain where the rocks opened up with a beautiful magical city inside where they could live forever. Oh, you should have seen it. Seashell palaces and unicorns to ride, lemonade swimming pools and never any homework. And when they slept at night, the moon came down to touch them with golden dreams. Any dreams they wanted.”
John yawned and closed his eyes. He started to tell them the part about the crippled boy who wasn’t able to keep up and got left behind, standing outside where the rocks had closed, hearing the other children laughing inside as they played. He wasn’t sure he remembered the story right at all. He thought the original depicted the pied piper of Hamlin as a wicked man, but John preferred the Hollywood shtick showing the piper as a hero who took the children from evil parents because he loved them most of all.
He closed his eyes, seeing the kids’ ghosts. He shivered as he drifted to an uneasy sleep, having perhaps not silenced them completely but at least making them quieter for a while.
Did they sleep? Having whatever dreams they wanted? For a moment he thought he saw the moon, but it was white. Not golden at all.
He hoped as he fell that he wouldn’t have to tell them a story a night for the rest of his life. He was no Scheherazade. Not even the Cryptkeeper.
John’s dreams were filled with smells of violent death, and he heard children crying everywhere. But he couldn’t see them no matter how he searched for them. These inno
cents in his nightmares weren’t within his reach or anyone else’s. No courageous cop or heroic fireman could rescue them.
When he woke up, he was the one crying.
««—»»
John’s coat flapped where there was no breeze. His arms jutted out in scarecrow mime as kids tugged. He decided this was how harried fathers must feel.
The bystanders who turned away from him in disgust thought this was how tipsy drunks looked. Guy was soused before noon, huh? Unshaven and wearing a suit he must have slept in.
As a matter of fact, he had slept in it…
John passed shiny store windows, gleaming like mirrors from the morning’s polishing. He saw the miserable crowd of blasted trooping fairies that surrounded him. Other people reflected without this as they went past. He stopped to stare at his hollow eyes, his mouth ticking nervously at the corners. What had he ever done to deserve this fate?
“Nothing,” he murmured, reading his own lips in the windows.
And the bawling, caterwauling, long mournful howling.
In reflection, a man shuffled past him. He was surrounded by a swarm of Oriental kids in tattered peasant garb. They were covered with burns and many had no hair left. John heard their grieving babble in terrified birdsong. The man ran a quaking hand through a thick shock of gray hair.
“Vietnam,” he told John with a frown, gesturing to his own waifs. “I dropped napalm. Missed my target. God forgive me. They won’t.”
He threw a resigned look back at them.
“Almost got the enemy, but almost only counts with horse shoes and hand grenades,” he added.
He seemed to be waiting for John to confess his own sins.
John shrugged, insisting, “It wasn’t me.”
The vet shook his head as if he didn’t believe him. He walked away, shambling his feet like he was being buffeted by a wind gusting from the caverns where Thoth weighed men’s hearts. John turned to watch him leave and noticed he couldn’t see the vet’s chain of kids anymore. They’d only been visible in the glass. John could now just see his own when he turned away from the reflection.
The man in the white suit came out of the coffee shop, cinnamon on his breath. His eyes widened slightly as he almost bumped into John. He looked to the left and right of John. His gaze back was solidly accusing.
(He saw them! Without the reflection!)
“I’m psychic,” he explained sternly without John having made any comment. As if the man in white were proclaiming I know what you’ve been up to.
You don’t know anything, John thought defensively.
“It wasn’t me,” John said for the umpteenth time. “He looked like me.”
The man in the white suit scrutinized John’s face.
The man nodded. “No, you are not a killer.” He smiled with sympathy. “Sometimes even ghosts may make mistakes.”
“Tell them,” he urged the man. “Please. They won’t believe me.”
“They are bound to you. They have been ever since they touched you. It is as solid a bond as if their ectoplasm were welded steel.”
John grimaced as he stroked the silky hair of the child sucking her thumb against his hip. “Know anyone with a good set of bolt cutters?”
The man slipped a hand into the breast pocket of his impeccable white jacket and produced a business card. He handed this to John,
MISTER MILK
DESTINIES
STARS
SPIRIT FIRE
“I don’t get it,” John mumbled.
“I’m a magician,” the man replied, a touch of accent here and there which was definable in turns as foreign, as deeply southern, as stilted.
The Destinies were probably the various methods of telling fortune through—what?—palms? crystal balls? Ouija boards? The Stars must be astrology. But what was Spirit Fire?
“Do you do exorcisms?” John asked as he lowered his voice so the kids wouldn’t hear.
Mr. Milk smiled. “In a manner of speaking. That is to say that I can free you of the spirits that haunt you.”
««—»»
John squeezed his eyes shut in the spacious Cadillac. Were some of the kids running along beside the card because surely not all of them fit inside? Were they passing spirit arms through the doors to keep their contact with him and the others so that none were broken away to get lost along the highway? Did they pick up their feet and float? He couldn’t bear to look.
Outside, the children’s voices of terror wisped and echoed in the freeway wind. Inside, they pressed to him, weeping inconsolably. He heard them screaming like the sirens from every emergency vehicle he’d ever ridden to a tragedy in. He imagined their bloodshot eyes spinning like red warning lights.
“How does anyone drive a car this way?” John wondered out loud between jammed jaws, gritting his teeth until they softly pulverized at the edges.
“I understand one gets used to it,” Mr. Milk replied blandly as he switched on the car’s stereo. A CD of “The Hallelujah Chorus” blared out.
The house was huge, leading John to conclude that DESTINIES, STARS, and SPIRIT FIRE must be lucrative. He worried about how much this was going to cost him. The subject of a fee hadn’t been broached by either man, and John wasn’t about to bring it up. If Mr. Milk suspected that he couldn’t afford this, he might not help him. John badly needed this guy’s help, even if it meant selling his soul for some peace and quiet.
The front room of the house was a shock. Lining all four walls were shelves stacked with milk cartons, all with grainy black and white photos of missing children. Mr. Milk slipped out of the tailored white jacket and donned a similarly white cardigan sweater. The buttons were silver teddy bear heads. He unfastened the clasp that held his long winter-moon colored hair back in a ponytail and let it stream across both shoulders.
“Uh,” John stammered, gesturing with confusion toward the milk cartons. They unsettled him, this apparent shrine with so many little faces that were almost as ghostly as the ones which surrounded him in ether. “This is a different decorating idea.”
“I often assist parents who are trying to find their disappeared offspring. Many will resort to the services of a psychic when they have found the police to be of no help,” Mr. Milk replied.
“Did you do all of these?” John asked, trying to pat the heads of two of his ghosts to comfort them.
Milk winked. “These are some of my success stories. Come this way, Mr. Piper, please.”
He led John down an over lit hallway. There were several closed doors. One door was slightly ajar. John caught sight within of a slivered bright light. It nearly blinded him. The magician snapped the door shut nonchalantly, opening another door he ushered John through. The walls and ceiling were roughened by smoke. There was a pit in the center of the wide floor but there weren’t any ashes in it. The room had an acrimonious scent. It reminded John of:
flaming Ford Pintos;
nameless itinerants doused with gasoline in hell’s alleys;
the aisles between the ice-and-morphine beds in the burn ward at St. Anne’s Hospital;
the clothes and curious gloves of George, the chain-smoking, fingerless janitor at Gracy’s Bar;
the breath of the unfortunate fire-eater that the ambulance had to fetch from the carnival during an electric storm one muggy October night;
parts of the body of the killer with John Piper’s face, powder-burned and Cajun blackened.
Mr. Milk spoke words, sprinkled a chalk white powder over the pit. The flames of a peculiar luminous fire darted in spectral tongues from it. It didn’t seem tangible as there was no heat. It shimmered the way of bands in the Northern Lights, only in bloody dangerous reds and feral perilous yellows.
“This is Spirit Fire. Do not be afraid. It will not burn you,” Mr. Milk assured him as he placed a firm hand on John’s shoulder.
John wasn’t certain. As a fireman he’d known about third degree roasting. He’d seen bubbling fat run like cheap wax, organs bursting in convection. Th
e kids were wailing around him until he recalled every child he’d ever seen engulfed by fire and beyond reach. That was always the worst part. Not being able to get to them in time. Half the lines in his face had come from those memories.
“What will it do to them?” he asked, suspicious.
“They will no longer be chained to you. They will be free. You will be free.”
“But not in the same way, right? I mean, they’ll be dead and free, but I’ll be alive and free, right?”
Mr. Milk nodded, patiently amused. The silver teddy bear heads glowed with the firelight until they might have been balls of smiling mercury.
The children groaned, their wounds reverberating until the room’s walls hummed with it, shimmering like desert summers.
A line from ‘A Christmas Carol’ came to John out of nowhere.
I wear the chain I forged in life, Marley said to Scrooge.
John hadn’t made this chain himself.
“Perhaps you need some privacy,” Mr. Milk said solicitously, seeing John’s hesitation. “I have work to do. When you have passed through the fire, see yourself out.”
Again no mention of a fee. Was he going to bill John for this? Would it arrive in the mails or would it be delivered by cherub-imps in little white Western Union uniforms?
The magician left the room.
John held his head with his hands over his ears, elbows tucked into his ribs defensively as the kids pulled his sleeves, yanked squalling at his coat. “Kids, it’ll be okay. You heard what he said. You’ll be free. No more boo-boos.”
Be quiet! Leave me alone! Take them all away!
He stepped into the pit, trembling, awaiting the torching pain of the fire. But still he felt no heat. His clothes didn’t smoke; his hair didn’t burst into flame. He didn’t even choke.
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