by Alan Ryker
I stare at them. It doesn’t take long for Jackson to get exasperated and say, “So, what? Why did you wake me up?”
“What do you know about Madison’s disappearance?”
He rolls his eyes and flops back into the couch. “Jesus Christ…Are you just playing detective? I thought you had something interesting to say.”
“Humor me.”
Jackson smirks. “It’s pretty humorous all around, because from what I hear, a lot of people think you did it.”
I expected this, but it brings up the old anger, feelings of persecution, rage and just plain frustration at having to explain myself over and over, first to the cops, then to everyone else as the truth of what happened to Maddy receded further.
“I had nothing to do with it. What else did you hear?”
“I haven’t heard shit else. I saw what everyone else did when they played that footage on the evening news: she got in her car and drove off.”
“And you haven’t seen her since?”
“We haven’t seen her for years, not since she was a precocious little school girl.”
I feel a strong urge to break Jackson’s jaw. Apparently Connor sees it on my face and says, “We really haven’t seen her in forever. Do you think she’s back into…”
I shrug. “Yeah, I think she might be. I didn’t think you guys had probably seen her, but she mentioned something, and I thought that you’re connected enough to know about it.”
“You should have started with that. Spill,” Jackson says.
“Ouroboros.” I lean forward, scrutinize them for a reaction.
“What?” Jackson says, screwing up his face in disappointment. “I can’t even say that. What is it?”
Damn it. That was my lead. My one lead. I rub my eyes. I’d been running on hope and when it goes it leaves exhaustion. “If I remember right from the show Millennium, it’s the snake that ate its own tail.” I stand to leave.
“Alright. Sorry to wake you so early in the day.” But I don’t even feel the sarcasm. I don’t feel anything except my systems crashing and my ability to tolerate the outside world diminishing quickly. I need to get back to my dark condo and my nightmares, and I leave the brothers without saying another word.
* * *
With the heavy blinds shut and the lights out I lay in the direct center of my big bed, covers pulled up, not sleeping.
My mind spins relentlessly, but not smoothly, instead in fits and starts as it hits the jutting irregularities of the world it’s trying to process. My head is a whirring hard drive and the read head is colliding.
I should let it go. I tried. I thought for months that Maddy abandoned me. I worked through that. With Janet’s help, I moved on, created a new life. But the core was rotten.
But now I know that Maddy didn’t betray me. In fact, I think she somehow saved me. I should take it. I should live this amazing life I’ve been granted.
But my mind spins. My mind is Ouroboros eating his own tail, spinning, spinning, and being self-sustaining, never slowing.
This is a great life.
I need to know what happened to Maddy.
I hadn’t remembered Maddy saying Ouroboros until I was talking to the brothers. The memory nags at me. Is it a clue to what’s going on, or was it just the confused rambling of a drug-addled mind.
At my desk, I open my laptop and start researching.
The symbol is old. Really old. It has been found on ancient Egyptian engravings from 14th century BC, and since that time its been passed through different mystic traditions, representing the infinite, the cyclical nature of time, and self-sufficiency. Those first meanings fit with what I’ve experienced, in that I’ve lived the same time twice, but I don’t know how self-sufficiency fits in. Plato described a creature that was fully contained, even to the point of eating its own waste as nourishment. A closed system.
That’s gross.
Moving to more relevant information, I discover that the symbol is still associated with secret societies due to its association with Zoroastrianism and Gnosticism.
Now I’m wondering if this could involve the occult, if Maddy fell in with people more dangerous than the Dorset brothers.
I’m freaked out following this path, but then I read something which I find strangely comforting. The symbol also represents Karma. What I find comforting about this is that it’s said that even if only a portion of the serpent can be seen, the entire system is still intact, just not yet comprehensible. Even if I can only see a small part of what’s going on, what’s going on does make sense, somehow, and I will discover how. For Maddy’s sake.
I’m so deep in thought that I jump when my phone rings. It’s not a number my phone recognizes. I reject it.
A minute later the voicemail buzzes.
“Cody, it’s Jackson. We have information for you.”
I return the call with shaking hands. Hope is light stuff, amorphous enough to fill any sized void no matter how slight the amount.
“Cody, I have news for you about what we talked about earlier.”
“Yeah, I got your voicemail. What is it?”
“Just a second.”
“Quit jerking me around. What is it?” I say, but I get the feeling that there’s no ear at the ear piece of the phone at the other end.
My phone beeps. I see it’s a media message from the number I’m currently talking to. I open it, and there’s a picture of Madison.
My heart flops, feels for a moment like it’s going to stop.
She’s dirty, sitting in a corner with her knees hugged to her chest, her long dark hair matted and wild, chunks shooting off in all directions. She barely peeks at the camera, showing it one eye. All around her, shiny vertical bars reflect the flash. Some kind of cage, maybe?
Someone who didn’t know her so well would have a hard time identifying her, but it’s her. It’s her.
Her arms are different. They’re veiny. She always had a youthful softness, and however she’s been living in the last few months has taken that from her.
But the most dramatic change is the tattoos on the back of each hand. The light is dim. The photo a bit blurry because of it. They look like thick circles, but I recognize it from my research as something more.
Ouroboros. The serpent eating its tail.
A tiny, tinny voice awakens me, and I realize it’s been talking for some time.
“Cody?! Cody?!”
“Tell me where—”
“First of all, don’t say her name. We can’t have this conversation over the phone.”
“I’ll be there in twenty.”
* * *
You’d think twenty minutes would seem like an eternity with something like this hanging over your head, but it’s not. As I drive to the Dorset’s, my brain spins in my head, but it’s my subconscious. At the forefront, I can only see Madison. What did she get herself into? What does this have to do with my duel memories?
A couple of times I nearly drive off the road when I can’t keep from looking at the picture of her on my phone, and can’t keep from getting lost in it.
Before I know it, I’m pulling into the Dorset’s circle drive. But by the time I reach the Dorset’s front door, some of the shock has worn off. They might have made a big mistake by inviting me over, because I’m half insane to understand what’s going on.
Connor holds the door, and I step past him.
“Where the fuck did you get this picture?” I say, shaking my phone at him.
“Hold on. You need to chill out.”
“No, you need to tell me what the fuck is going on, because this is chill.”
Connor puts his hand on my shoulder. I shake it off. He puts it back. “Cody, we’re trying to help. We’re sticking our fucking necks out here. Madison is in deep, and if we don’t all play this right she could take any of us down with her.” His hand is still on my shoulder, and he gives it a squeeze.
I grab the hand and twist. I learned this in my undergraduate PE elective Aikid
o class.
“Fuck you and your good intentions. It’s not us against the world. You are this world. Talk, motherfucker.”
“Jackson, no!” Connor isn’t looking at me, but at his brother in the sitting area where he probably expected to lead me. Jackson’s hand is shoved down between the arm of the couch and the cushion and he stopped in mid-stand.
Trailerpark junkie or trust-fund Scarface wannabe, there are only so many places to hide a gun for easy access.
I let go of Connor’s wrist. Jackson sits back down, but leaves his hand shoved out of sight.
We’re going to leave things concealed, and as long as they stay that way, we can continue civilly. But once they’re brought out into the open, someone will have to die. I agree to go along with this because they have what I need.
That thought wakes me up, turns my rage down from boiling over to simmer. Because that thought begs the question: why are they agreeing to this arrangement? What do they need from me?
“That’s quite a move,” Connor says, rubbing his wrist. “Were you a bouncer or something?”
I shake my head, walk to my arm chair, let the weird brothers sit beside each other on the couch, let Jackson glare at me, his forearm muscles twitching.
Connor says, “Let it go, bro.” Then to me, “When you said that weird word yesterday, neither of us knew what it meant.”
“Ouroboros.”
“Yeah. But when you said it was a snake eating its own tail. Well, everyone in our world knows that symbol.”
I think of the worlds the Dorset brothers occupy. The idle rich. Drug dealers. The brotherhood of scumbags. For which did the image of Ouroboros hold special meaning?
“I’m not following you. You’re being cryptic.”
“I’m not trying to be cryptic, but it’s hard to reveal an entire hidden world to someone when they’re really only interested in one person. I’m trying to show you the whole city and you’re zoomed in with a high-powered telescope.”
I nod. I agree. Something bigger than one missing girl is going on here, even if that one girl means more to me than all the rest, even if I’d burn down the rest of the world to get her back. But to get her back, I need to work through the rest of the world.
“We’ve been doing this awhile—”
“Doing what?” I ask. Connor talks around things. Jackson is a dick, but I almost wish he’d take up his usual role as the brothers’ blunt spokesperson.
“Selling drugs. Living the party lifestyle. Watching people who can’t handle it destroy themselves. We were happy to see Madison get away. We really were.”
He looks at me earnestly. I nod to start him talking again.
“There’s constant turnover among our customers. Some people get help, get out, and we don’t see them again. Some people die suddenly. They OD. They get murdered. They murder someone else and go to prison. Obviously, we don’t see them again. Some people start sliding, like we’re up here in the sun at the top of this hill, and they slip and start sliding down this muddy side that leads into darkness and filth and eventually death. You try to give them a hand up, but at some point they’re too far gone and you just have to let them go.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that when a person starts losing teeth and hair and gaining seeping track marks and a certain aroma, when someone loses the ability to maintain, we refer them to someone else.”
I’m having a hard time disguising my impatience. I’m trying to see the big picture, but it feels like I’m being shown an entirely different picture, like one at the other end of the gallery.
“But there’s one other group who disappear suddenly. It seems like maybe they dropped out or got murdered or went to some foreign rehab, but then someone spots them marked with the sign of the Serpent. And after that, people stop asking questions. That person is as gone as if they were dead.”
“No. Fuck that. What does that mean?” I say.
“If you see that symbol on a building, on a package, on a person, whatever it is, you pretend it’s invisible. You do not touch it. You do not talk about it.”
“You talked about it. You asked someone about her and got an answer.”
“We like Madison, and this doesn’t happen to people like her. This happens to people who are already in deep, not people on the right path. The Serpent is like a sudden pitfall in a downhill slide, a drop straight to the bottom, to nowhereland. But on a downhill slide. It doesn’t just happen. So at first, I couldn’t believe it. When I got that picture in response, I thought about deleting it.”
“So why didn’t you? Why tell me?” The slope they mentioned, I feel myself sliding along it. I have been for awhile already. The people who disappear, they might start like this, with the world slipping around them. The only question is if a hidden pitfall is up ahead.
“Because we’re already in. If the wrong person finds out about this and decides we’re a liability, we’re all gone. We stuck our necks out and we’re waiting for the ax, but if it’s gonna fall it’s gonna fall and we might as well do something with what all this trouble bought us: that photo, and an address.”
I jump forward in my seat. My eyes flick to Jackson. I expect to be staring down the barrel of a gun, that the sudden movement spooked him, but apparently he’s got a short attention span, has forgotten that he’s playing a tough thug with a short fuse.
I turn back to Connor. “So who sent you the picture?”
“That’s the thing; I don’t recognize the number. I contacted a guy who contacted a guy who contacted a guy, and this is what came back. I don’t know how this person got my number, but it probably means I’m fucked.”
I look him in the eyes, and I see real fear there. For all the talk, the fear is real.
“Thank you for this.”
“Save it. I never would have asked if I’d thought I’d get an answer. Here.” He hands me a folded sheet of paper. There’s a phone number and an address. “That’s the number the picture came from, and that’s the only message that came with it.”
“Did you try to call it?”
“Hell no.”
“I want your contact.”
“Who?”
“You know who. The person you asked in the first place.”
Jackson has been squirming. I don’t know why he’s been keeping quiet, but it hasn’t been because he’s got nothing to say. He finally busts. “You’ve got what we’re giving. Get out.”
I meet his eyes. He wants a reason. I can’t believe someone like this isn’t in prison or dead, but his family has a lot of money and a lot of connections. He’d probably do it. He’s probably looking for an excuse.
I nod, stand. “Thanks for this,” I say to Connor. “For whatever reason you got involved, thanks.”
He nods. “I hope it turns out. For all of us.”
They let me see myself out.
6
The address they’ve given me is in a bad part of town, and night is falling. The closer I get, the more activity there is out on the sidewalk and in the street. Young men and boys stand on corners in groups, trying to look casual but watching everything. Women approach slow-cruising cars. I actually see two pit bulls running down the sidewalk with no leashes, one chasing the other.
The address is deep into the bad neighborhood, sitting almost on the edge of the Burnout, the necrotic circle that no one enters. I’ll drive through the shady but inhabitable areas. I wouldn’t fly over the Burnout.
I’m driving slowly, looking for little numbers as the sky gets darker and darker on streets bristling with mostly unlit street lamps. I’m looking at houses with plywood nailed over the doors and windows. At one point, I actually find myself scanning a pile of burnt rubble for numbers.
Finally, I spot the house. It’s abandoned, the windows are all boarded up, and a large sheet is leaning against the railing of the small porch.
I should be better prepared than I am. I should have brought a flashlight, or better yet, a gun with a f
lashlight on the end. But I’m here, and I’ve never fired a gun anyway.
I park and get out. At the corner I see two teenage boys. One points me out to the other, who cranes his neck to get a look at me.
I feel like a moron when I click my lock button twice so that the alarm sounds. Besides doubting that it is any sort of deterrence, I worry that I’ve shown fear, and also that the squawk has gotten the attention of anyone else lurking in the darker corners. The scowling young men standing in the light seem like the least of my worries.
Weeds attempt to strangle the narrow walk like a closing fist. Brambles grab at my pant leg as I go by. I wonder if anything hides in the knee-high grass, and marvel at milk thistles almost as tall as I am.
The porch creaks beneath my feet, announcing my presence as well as a knock, so I just go in.
There is a smell, but it’s not as bad as I’d expected. There’s the pulpy smell of water damage, mildew and mold. There’s the smell of the house itself, the disintegrating plaster and the hardwood floors, the smell that the more overwhelming aromas of human inhabitation usually drive away. No one has lived here for a long time.
I pull out my phone and turn on the phone’s camera flash.
There’s no furniture. No trash. No one is squatting here, I suppose because there are so many unoccupied houses that not even the swollen ranks of the dispossessed can fill them.
There’s dust. A lot of dust. It burns my sinuses, sending snot running down the back of my throat until I finally sneeze and get that one moment of nasal clarity.
An acrid smell. A smell I know.
I follow it through the living room, turning down a hallway.
And then I freeze.
There, tacked to the wall, is a print of the photo of Madison that was sent to my phone.
It hits me: I will not find answers here. I will only find more questions. I should turn around and leave and live my good life. I should go home and play video games until Janet shows up and make love to her or fuck her, whichever she wants because she wants different things on different nights, and I should fall asleep holding her, breathing in her wispy blond hair until I can’t take the tickling and roll away and she follows me and buries her forehead in my curls and breathes so hot between my shoulder blades. And then I should wake up and go to my dream job and live my dream life.