The Broken Ones

by Stephen M Irwin

  The neighboring yard was a dark clot of shadows: a maze of vegetable gardens, compost bins, and fruit trees covered in nets. There was no sign of the man.

  Oscar dropped to his knees and pulled the sheet from around Zoe’s neck. She had a weak pulse but wasn’t breathing. He quickly felt the skin of her throat—the thyroid cartilage and the structure of the larynx felt whole. He pinched her nostrils closed, put his mouth over hers, and inflated her lungs. Listened. Inflated. Listened. Felt her pulse, weaker.

  “Zoe,” he said sharply in her ear, and clamped his mouth over hers, exhaled.

  A choking gasp, a rattling suck of air.

  She rolled away from him, pulled her hands to her neck and her knees to her chest. She coughed harshly, and he heard a liquid spill and smelled the tang of vomit. From the front of the house, Oscar heard a car start—and, a moment later, the heavy clatter of Lovering’s motorcycle falling on its side.

  “We have to go,” he said.

  She rolled back. In her hand was a tiny wink of silver. He ducked back as the knife sliced the air. He clamped his hand over hers.

  “You sent them,” she said. Her voice was a croak, her breaths harsh. He simply shook his head.

  Her wrist vibrated in his hand. He let her look at him.

  “We have to go.”

  Her green eyes were dark, shining.

  “You sent them,” she repeated. But he could hear the doubt in her voice. She let him lift her.

  Oscar raised Paz’s bike. It had a dented tank and a huge gouge through the chrome of the gearbox housing. He put the key in and twisted the throttle. It started. He looked back at Zoe.

  “You can’t stay here,” he said.

  She watched him for a long moment. Then she climbed on behind him.

  He stopped the bike at the top of his street and scanned the shadows under the trees. Then he switched off the headlight and did a loop of the block. No dark cars, no one surveilling his house. He parked the bike down the side of the house and helped Zoe up the stairs. She walked on weak legs, most of her weight on his shoulders. He winced with every step. She was sleepy, a natural aftereffect of shock.

  He took her inside and put her on the couch. She curled her knees to her chest and in moments was breathing deeply. He lit the kerosene lamp and saw the bruising starting to rise on her long, thin neck. He went to the fireplace, placed the .44 on the tiled hearth, opened his cache, and pulled out a box of cartridges. Slowly, carefully, he loaded his service pistol.

  He boiled water, opened one of his few remaining packets of tea, and made a pot. He drank slowly, cup after cup, feeling the caffeine sparkle in his blood. He pulled a chair close to the front window and watched the street.

  In the empty bus shelter opposite, the dead boy stood, watching. He raised his fingers to his chin. Oscar licked his lips and looked up the street. No cars came. Nothing else moved.

  When she began to stir, he checked his watch. It was after nine. He poured her a cup of tea from the pot—it was still warm. When he went to her, she was sitting up, watching with green eyes tinted bronze by the orange lantern glow. He handed her the cup. She didn’t take her eyes off him.

  “I don’t trust you,” she said quietly.

  He nodded. “But you have to.”

  A long moment later, she took the cup and sipped.

  On the roof, a tick. Tick-tick. The first drops of rain.

  “Why did you want to talk to me?” he asked.

  She watched him over the rim of her cup.

  “Someone needs to know.”

  “Know what?” he asked.

  She watched him with catlike eyes and shook her head. “I don’t trust you.”

  They sat in silence as hard and fragile as glass. He reached into his jacket and pulled out his service revolver. She lifted her chin, and he saw her shoulders tense. He handed the gun to her, grip first.

  “The safety’s on,” he said.

  She slid it off with a practiced thumb, pulled back the slide, and chambered a round. The semiauto’s hammer remained cocked. She raised the muzzle level with his belly.

  “Did you send him?”

  “No.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What happened to Penny Roth?”

  “They cut her, a symbol. A ritual killing. We found her. Someone on the inside tried to destroy her body. I saved it, for a while. But they got to it again. Like you said, she’s burned.”

  The gun pointed at him didn’t waver.

  “Someone on the inside,” she said. “You don’t know who?”

  He shook his head. Her eyes traced over every square centimeter of his face. The cuts, the bruises, the singed hair, the plasters. With every flick of the eyes, she connected mental dots.

  She had him place down the Taurus and she put it in her pocket. She made him take off his jacket. She checked the pockets. She patted him down. Then she clicked the semiauto’s safety back on, took the lantern and went around the room, looking in the dusty vases, under the tabletop, in the kitchen cupboards.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked.

  “Bugs. Recording devices.”

  It made Oscar wonder. He let her go.

  Maybe we’ll both discover something, he thought.

  She sat on the table, cross-legged.

  “You should sleep,” he said. “I’ll keep watch.”

  She laughed. Her teeth were white; her eyes were sharp.

  “You’re alone, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “I told you. My partner was killed.”

  “Why doesn’t anyone else trust you?”

  He watched her carefully. “I think they think I’m going mad.”

  “Are you?”

  He thought about that a long time—about the creature in the garage, its claws and the smell of the dead.

  “I hope so.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  It was after ten. He watched her while he lit candles and disconnected the gas cylinder from the lantern and screwed it to a heater element. The space between them warmed.

  “What did you see at Elverly?” he asked. “Tell me about Frances White and Taryn Lymbery.”

  She held his pistol in her lap but said nothing. Growing warmer, she undid her jacket. Beneath, she was thin, but not as thin as he’d thought.

  He found the phone and called the hospital.

  “He’s just gone in for surgery,” the cardiology nurse said. “Call back in a few hours.”

  Zoe watched him.

  She returned to the couch, and he to the window. He watched the street. Rain fell softly, a whisper. No cars. The dead boy stood under the bus shelter across the road. When he raised a hand, Oscar tentatively raised his own. Then he turned around and saw that Zoe was asleep.

  He went to his room and found a blanket, returned, and put it over her. She didn’t stir.

  He heard the sound of a motor. A car was turning into the street. Oscar froze and listened. The vehicle went slowly past. He hurried to the candles and puffed them out. The room was lit only by a warm, red glow of the heater. He went to the window.

  The car had gone. He watched for a long moment. The rain was almost silent. Across the road, the dead boy was still beneath the bus shelter, but he wasn’t looking at Oscar; he was staring down the street. The boy seemed to feel Oscar’s gaze and glanced across the road to him. Slowly, the dead boy raised an arm and pointed down the street to a deep pool of shadow under a large satinash tree.

  Oscar went to Zoe and carefully pulled the Taurus from her pocket.

  He crept down the back stairs and into the rain. He climbed his neighbors’ fences and cut across their backyards, traveling parallel with the street, through spiny pumpkin vines and gardens and spiderwebs. He was ashamedly grateful that Terry/Derek was dead. In a backyard six houses down from his own, he turned and struck up toward the street, holding the silver Taurus in one hand.

  On the footpath, the dead boy was waiting. When he s
aw Oscar he nodded and pointed again. Behind the boy, under the satinash, was a dark sedan. This one had plates. Oscar could make out a figure behind the wheel of the car, staring up the street toward his house. The figure shifted, and Oscar felt his feet and hands tingle. The driver held a shotgun.

  Oscar licked dry lips. He wiped one hand on his trousers, got a better grip on the Taurus, and strode across the footpath. He flung open the passenger door, darted inside, grabbed the stock of the shotgun, and pressed the silver pistol’s muzzle against the stranger’s neck.

  “Fuck!” called the figure.

  The car’s dome light was bright, and Oscar blinked. The man behind the wheel was Anthony McAuliffe.

  Emotions wrestled on McAuliffe’s gray, unshaved face. Fear, embarrassment, anger, and his dirty teeth chattered. The air in the car stank of cheap alcohol.

  “Mariani,” he said.

  “What are you doing?” Oscar asked.

  McAuliffe looked from Oscar to the pistol to the shotgun. “I’m leaving,” he said.

  Oscar saw a taped-up cardboard box and a patched, fraying suitcase on the backseat. He watched the former professor.

  “And what did you want to say to me?”

  McAuliffe said nothing, but his thin hands still gripped the barrel of the shotgun.

  “What about Megan?” Oscar asked.

  “You’re losing your job,” McAuliffe said. “I rang, asked for your unit. It’s closed. You have no job. Megan’s screwed anyway.”

  Oscar stared, his heart beginning to pound harder. “And after me? Was she your next visit?”

  McAuliffe tried to pull the shotgun away. His two hands were stronger than Oscar’s one. Oscar thumbed back the Taurus’s hammer.

  “What are you going to do, Mariani? Kill me like you killed her?”

  The men stared at each other. Rain tapped on the roof.

  “Mr. McAuliffe?”

  Zoe stepped up to the driver-side window, into the glow of the car’s inner light.

  Oscar looked up and watched her green eyes take in the pistol, the shotgun, the two men.

  McAuliffe looked from Zoe to Oscar.

  “You two?” McAuliffe asked.

  Oscar yanked the shotgun away. The man seemed to deflate without it—he sagged against the steering wheel.

  “Hurt your daughter and I will kill you, McAuliffe.”

  The man shook, and Oscar could see that his cheeks were wet.

  “Get out,” McAuliffe whispered.

  Oscar did.

  McAuliffe’s car started loudly, and a moment later it disappeared up the street.

  Chapter 29

  Oscar lay on one side of the bed, clothed, holding the shotgun and listening to the house shift and creak. When he felt Zoe’s weight press on the other side of the bed, he didn’t move. He listened.

  For a long time, they were both silent and still.

  Finally, she spoke so softly that Oscar wondered if he was dreaming her voice.

  “Franky,” she said.

  “Franky?”

  “Frances White. But she liked to be called Franky. She had Fragile X syndrome. Learning-impaired; she had lots of trouble with remembering things. Little problems would get her upset. But such a sweet girl. Tall, but not very strong, always anxious. But so sweet. She loved her pencils. Loved to line them up, just so. Very shy. She had agoraphobia. She wouldn’t run away.” As she spoke, he heard her fingers move on the grip of the pistol she held. “It was five in the morning. Pretty dark. I’d just finished work and was outside on the street, about to walk to the train when I saw a car come by. Big black car, dark windows. I stepped into the shadows till it went past. And I saw it switch off its headlights and drive into Elverly. My next shift, I was told Franky had run away.”

  Oscar waited.

  “And Penny?” he asked finally.

  Zoe let a breath out through pursed lips.

  “I was on shift. I was supposed to be in B-Block, at the back. Everyone was asleep. I went across the lawn to A-Block, the old building, and broke into the kitchen. I was in the pantry. They don’t pay us very well, you know?”

  “I know.”

  She nodded. “Elverly is on a slope, and the kitchen is half-underground, yeah?”

  “Like a basement.”

  “Only with some windows, high up, so you can just see out of them. They’re level with the drive almost. Well, I saw a little flash of light outside, out those windows. And I climbed up on the bench and looked out. And there was a car. The light I saw was the one that comes on inside when the door opens. I just saw the door close, and the car drove off. No headlights. I checked all my kids in B; they were fine. But the next morning Penny was missing.”

  “You told Chalk?”

  “I told her I thought I heard a car in the night. I didn’t tell her where I was when I saw it.” He felt her roll toward him. “It was a cop car,” she said.

  Oscar felt a chill ride up his neck.

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “It had the little lights on the back parcel shelf. The red and blue lights. It was an unmarked cop car.”

  Oscar rolled and looked at her. Her face was a carved mask in white and black: pale skin and shadow.

  “Come with me,” he said. “Come into headquarters; I’ll take a formal statement.”

  “No.”

  “We can subpoena vehicle records for the last month—”

  “No.” She shook her head. Unrushed. “You knew a cop was involved.”

  “I have no proof,” he said.

  “Neither do I. But they know we know.”

  Oscar shifted, and he felt the muzzle of the gun she held against his ribs. Then the metal pulled away.

  They lay still for a long time. Eventually, he heard her breathing become slow and deep. It was hours, though, before he slept.

  Wind rushed like a foaming ocean in his ears, and the world beneath charged up at him like a crushing wave. Then he was caught—great fingers wrapped around his head, and iron spikes drove into his spine and through his cheek. The momentum of his body swung it through and his neck snapped like celery, and the last thing he heard, as the mighty fingers squeezed his head and ground bone against bone and his skull crushed like an egg, was the steady beating of monstrous wings.

  He jolted awake, covered in cold sweat. In another room, his phone had beeped. He felt her eyes on him as he padded out of the room.

  Crossing into the kitchen, he checked his watch. It was nearly three in the morning.

  The message was from Gelareh. She had finished repairing the idol.

  Chapter 30

  She answered the door wearing a robe; her hair was wet.

  “I didn’t expect you to come straight over,” Gelareh said.

  “I was up,” he replied. “Sorry to intrude.”

  “Not a problem.” She stood aside and let him in. “We can eat together.”

  He closed the door behind him and wandered into the apartment. In the kitchen, soup simmered over a flame. Her cleaner’s uniform hung over the back of a chair.

  “A minute?” she asked.

  He nodded, and she went into her bedroom to dress.

  On the table was a gas lantern, and a shape covered by a cloth. Oscar turned on the gas and lit the lamp’s mantle. When it was glowing white, he dropped the shielding glass and lifted the satin cloth off the form. He’d seen the idol whole only by flashlight while he was ankle-deep in ashy slop. Now it was rebuilt, and in the white glow of the gas lamp he could see it in awful detail. It was spiderwebbed with cracks, and some small missing fragments left dark triangular or rhomboid holes—but it was whole. It stood about two feet tall and was half that in diameter. Its legs were spread obscenely wide, exposing a gash two-thirds the width of its body and traveling a third of the way up its bloated abdomen. Its feet were avian, with horned plates and long talons. Its breasts were small, goatlike teats. Its mouth was an alien chasm: the upper and lower beaks divided horizontally so the orifice was op
ened like a quartered orange, exposing a split tongue that led to a flat disk of woven metal—a tiny grille separating the mouth from the belly space below. The demon thing’s eyes were wide-set and owl-like. Even though this was merely clay, the eyes conveyed unsettling intelligence and ruthless hunger. From its head sprouted two horns, curled and mismatching. Its wings were more like a bat’s than a bird’s: like the rest of the idol, they were covered with markings that Oscar had first taken to represent feathers or scales but which he could now clearly see were the letters of a strange language. On the idol’s back was the seven-pointed star, and the fissured flaw where an air bubble in the clay had exploded during its firing.

  Oscar was drawn back to the idol’s eyes and the mouth. Wide eyes, predator’s eyes, round and unblinking and as rapacious as its gawping mouth, split widely not once but twice, so eager to consume some kind of special flesh.

  “She’s no oil painting, is she?”

  Gelareh’s voice startled Oscar. She now wore tracksuit pants and a woolen cardigan, and was pulling her hair back into a band. He saw by the way she looked at the totem that she found it both intriguing and repulsive.

  “And every time I see you, you look worse,” she added, taking in his fresh batch of wounds. “Next time I see you, you’ll be dead.”

  He smiled, but felt an ominous chill. Mother Mim had said something all too similar. He nodded down at the idol. “How did you go?”

  She crossed to the table. “It was interesting. Whoever made this had spent quite some time getting it right. The languages, I mean.”

  “There’s more than one?”

  “I can make out three. Soup?”

  He realized he was hungry. “Please.”

  “Sit,” she said. While she ladled, she continued: “The Aztec glyphs, like I said before, I really can’t help you with. But the rest, yes. Some are Akkadian, but just single terms. The majority of the writing is Sumerian. Some of the cuneiform were ruined by the flaw here”—she touched the ragged hole on the idol’s side—“and some when it was broken.”

  She handed him the bowl of soup. It smelled delicious: spiced and hot. She returned the pot to the flame.

  “And?” he said.

  Gelareh sat beside him and opened a notebook. There were twenty pages filled with the wedgelike symbols scrawled into the pottery, accompanied by words in Hebrew and English. There were tables of letters and symbols, and dozens of instances where words had been scratched through and new interpretations written above them. There were sketches of the idol from four angles, highlighting spots where key phrases of ancient text were written.