He remembers the dream he was having when the phone rang, and it occurs to him that when he first saw her name in the book he’d immediately envisioned them walking together down by the water. And something else…glimpses of the ocean, fog, something moving through the water…
Mythical Beings in a Mortal World calls to him from the table. He opens it to the same passage he last read: Sirens.
Mr. Tibbs rounds the corner from the bedroom, eyes bleary.
“What do you think, Tibbs?” he asks, tossing the book back on the table. “Maybe she’s a siren, luring me to destruction.” The cat yawns and wanders over to his dish as Dignon takes a box of Cheerios from the cupboard and fixes himself a bowl. “I can only hope, huh?”
He’s reminded of an expression Jackie Shine used to have: A woman like that could ruin a man…if he’s lucky.
But his good humor is short-lived. The earlier nightmares overshadow his thoughts of Bree, and he sees the factory, the cop, the older man, the little girl and the tenement again. The images, fresh and disturbingly vivid, flip through his mind like a slideshow, and then just as quickly, they vanish.
Somewhere in all this there’s meaning. Dignon is certain of it. Jokes, dreams, nightmares and hallucinations brought on by lack of sleep and food aside, something real is taking place. He can feel it to the very core of his being. Something is happening here, drawing him closer to an answer, or perhaps a climax of some kind. Could all the strange things of late and the odd memories and nightmares be connected somehow, or is it all just a jumble meant to throw him off some greater, more important trail?
He checks his watch. If he showers and gets himself looking presentable within the next couple hours, he’ll still have time to go by that old tenement before his lunch appointment with Bree. The concept of returning there is less than appealing, but he feels he has to, and only knows that if he doesn’t, things will get worse.
Dignon sits at the kitchen table, and finally, he eats.
The book, just a few inches away, continues to beckon. Crunching Cheerios, he again scans through it. Barring further mishaps, this will likely be his last chance to do so. Most passages are of little interest and fail to hold his attention beyond a few seconds, until toward the back of the book he notices a subtly bent page. Only the very tip at the corner has been folded, such a tiny portion it easily could’ve happened mistakenly rather than by design. But he checks it anyway.
~DEATH MAKER~
The earliest mention of this concept as a living being is found in ancient Greece, when creatures described as: “Thanatos Kataskevastis” (which literally translated means “Death Maker” or “Death Constructor”), are said to have existed, although in very small numbers. It is believed they are relatively peaceful, sad, isolated and lonely beings, essentially human but damned by the gods, through no fault of their own, to wander Earth while being involuntarily trailed by death. As a result, those around or close to them experience death or destruction as an inadvertent consequence. The Death Maker (or Death Magnet, as the being has been coined in modern Western slang), carries a curse from its ancestors, usually those of a parent. This is a lifelong affliction that begins at birth and ends only when the Death Maker dies. According to legend, they are often sought after, enslaved or destroyed by a myriad of evil beings or practitioners of black magic, who seek to draw power by possessing the darkness engulfing a Death Maker’s soul. Though melancholy and nonviolent by nature, given the right conditions, these beings can also be consciously dangerous and extremely volatile.
A chill skips across the back of his shoulders. He stares at the page a while nonetheless, his mind slithering its way through a labyrinth of possibilities. Why of all the pages in this book, of all the entries of various allegedly mythical beings was this one marked? Was he meant to see this? Could it be more than what it appears to be? Could it be something extraordinary, a communiqué perhaps, intended specifically for him, another clue waiting to be found?
It’s like I’m some sort of death magnet.
Don’t say that.
It’s true, isn’t it? I have been right from the start.
Mr. Tibbs hops up on the table and begins to wash himself. Dignon finishes the last spoonful of cereal then slides the bowl over to the cat, who postpones his bath. He laps up the remaining milk, purring heartily.
Sounds of movement downstairs are followed by a new wave of Christmas tunes. Aretha Franklin belts out Winter Wonderland.
Dignon looks to the window. It’s still snowing.
* * *
Bundled in a heavy winter coat, scarf and knit hat, Dignon walks to the retail district, hoping to catch a bus to the neighborhood where the old tenement is located. As he hurries toward the stop, a large see-through hut on the corner, he comes upon a man with a gleam in his eye distributing something to passersby. It’s not an uncommon practice for people to be handing out flyers on the street, but this man, a blond with a 1950’s haircut, crystal-blue eyes and a dazzling smile, has such a clean-cut, squeaky-clean look so meticulously groomed he stands out in the crowd. As Dignon gets a bit closer, he realizes the man is peddling buttons.
“They’re free, please take one,” the man says, thrusting one at Dignon. “God Bless the USA!”
Dignon smiles awkwardly and moves on without taking it.
“Sir?” the man calls. “Sir, they’re free, take—sir, hey!”
He stops, looks back at the man.
The smile still in place, the man waves the button as if Dignon hasn’t seen it. “It’s free, please take one. United we stand, right?”
Dignon reads the button. It’s an American Flag across which has been written in bold letters: proud to be american. “I’m all set,” he says. “Thanks.”
“But they’re free,” the man says.
He nods, continues on toward the bus stop.
“Hey!” The man stomps after him, cuts in front of him and blocks his path. “Didn’t you hear me? They’re free.”
“I don’t really wear buttons.”
“Well that’s not exactly the point.” He thrusts it at him as fat snowflakes fall between them. “It’s about showing your patriotism.”
Dignon glances around uncomfortably. “Thanks, but I don’t want one, OK?”
The man’s smile slowly vanishes. “So you’re not then, is that it?”
“Not what?”
He aims the button at him for emphasis. “Not proud to be an American?”
“I didn’t—no, I didn’t say that, I—look, I have to catch a bus.”
“Could you tell me why you don’t want one? It’s free, and it’s a positive and powerful message about our patriotism and unity as Americans.”
Dignon notices a few people slowing but few have taken notice of their conversation. “You expect me to explain myself to you?”
“I’m just trying to figure out what it is that’s offensive to you about this. What American wouldn’t want to show their pride? Unless they weren’t proud or—you are an American, right?”
“I’m Canadian,” Dignon says, moving past him.
“No you’re not.” The man continues to block his way. “You’re lying.”
“Excuse me.” He again tries to get by but the man refuses to move.
“Are you one of those Blame-America-First types? Don’t you love and support your own country for crying out loud?”
“I just don’t want a button, OK? Move out of my way.”
“I bet you make fun of people that fly an American flag outside their home or go to church and have traditional moral values.” The gleam in his eyes gone, he wrinkles his nose like he smells something rancid. “Sorry I don’t have any ‘I Love People Who Hate America’ buttons, bet you’d wear that one.”
Through the snow, the man suddenly looks less than human, more like a mannequin left there mistakenly, with his perfect hair and immaculate clothing. Dignon sighs and holds out a hand. “Fine, I’ll take one, all right?”
“No,” the man says
huffily, finally moving away. “No, I don’t think so.”
Shaking his head, Dignon continues on until he reaches the bus stop. Due to the snow, most of the others waiting for the bus have gathered inside the clear Plexiglas structure. He steps inside as well, and as he turns, sees the man has ducked into a phone booth. With a grave expression, he dials. Seconds later his lips begin to move. He continually glances over at Dignon and then away while talking into the phone.
“Unbelievable.”
Dignon follows the voice to a Hispanic woman standing behind him. Perhaps sixty, she is bundled in winter gear and holds two plastic bags of groceries, one in each hand, down along her sides. “The Ken doll,” she says, motioning with her chin to the man on the corner. “Unbelievable.”
Noticing they’re the only two at the stop not wearing buttons, Dignon gives her a halfhearted smile. “I think he’s telling on us.”
“Probably calling Malibu Barbie, we’re in for it now.”
The man hangs up the phone, steps out of the booth and removes a small camera from his coat pocket.
“World’s going to hell and he’s passing out buttons,” the woman says, shuffling closer to him and cocking her head toward the wall of the bus stop. “Look at this thing, for instance. They used to make these out of wood years ago, and there was a nice bench for people to sit down on. But nobody could see what was happening inside and people were getting attacked. So now they make them out of this stuff and they’re standing-room-only and see-through so people don’t get mugged or raped or worse. At a bus stop, can you believe it? What kind of mastermind criminal mugs somebody waiting for a bus?” She rolls her eyes. “Oh that’s right, all the folks with big bucks ride the bus, I forgot.”
The man holds up his camera and points it at the bus stop.
“What the hell’s he doing now?”
“I think he’s trying to take our picture,” Dignon says gravely.
A bus ambles around the corner and pulls to a stop in front of them, blocking their view of the man, and his view of them.
Moments later, from his window seat, Dignon watches the man glaring at the bus as it pulls away, his camera apparently returned to his coat pocket. Before they turn the corner and Dignon loses sight of him, the man’s perfunctory smile returns, and against an otherwise picturesque backdrop of whirling snowflakes, he resumes his button giveaway.
The bus slogs its way from street to street and neighborhood to neighborhood until it reaches a stop not far from the tenement. Dignon gets off and moves quickly past a small market, across an empty playground and onto a side street. The neighborhood, soiled and forlorn, is the worst in town, and includes an entire block that is deserted, the buildings condemned. With the delivery he and Jackie Shine made more than a year in the past, it takes Dignon a few moments to get his bearings and remember exactly which building it was.
He stands alone on the sidewalk, his breath escaping his lips and bleeding vines of smoke into the air that form a halo above his head, the polluted thoughts escaping his mind in search of clarity and daylight come to life.
It is quiet on this street, the sounds of nearby neighborhoods softer somehow, muted. Dignon is reminded of the retail district before everything opens and how odd it is to see something that should be vibrant and populated, instead sedate and abandoned. But this is different, more extreme, death rather than sleep. Here, catastrophic events have occurred and this is all that’s left behind, the buildings shrines to something once relevant but now lost. There is something unnatural about all this, and yet, the city itself is unnatural, a synthetic intrusion to a world of spirits and nature, overflowing with beings obsessed with building walls and roads and piles of concrete to seal themselves off from whatever may have existed here before them, or perhaps to keep even the prospect that such things might still exist farcical and improbable. Regardless, this is a dead zone, a cannibalized limb, its redemption beyond even the intrinsic beauty of snowfall. There are only nightmares here now, Dignon can feel them, hear them, smell them, even taste them as he inhales, draws them in with the tainted city air, just another carcinogen along for the ride.
The tenement is long abandoned. Even back when he’d made the delivery here, it was clear no one actually lived at the address, but the building was in better shape. It has since deteriorated to an extent barely possible, the windows boarded over and marked with spray paint, the door paneled as well, a tattered orange flyer announcing its condemned status stapled to a pair of planks crisscrossing what was once the entrance. Dignon couldn’t get inside and look around even if he wanted to. But it’s all right, that’s no longer necessary.
The banshees have come out to play. They’ve found him instead.
The snow continues to accumulate, covering the sidewalks and draping the buildings, concealing it all. Through curtains of flakes, a man appears on the tenement stoop. With a subtle nod of recognition, he moves down the steps and onto the street.
It isn’t until the man has come much closer that Dignon realizes who it is. How fitting to come across him here, before this rotting monument to misery. He looks much the same as he did years ago. The same black, intense eyes, the same dark receding hairline streaked with gray, the same pasty, pockmarked flesh and the same sinewy build. He even remembers the long coat and the lace-up Florsheim shoes he wore nearly every day, the Timex watch with the fake gold face on a black cowhide band. His hands, the fingers, the nails, the wrists, even the smell of his cheap cologne, it’s all the same.
Dignon knows he should be afraid, but he’s not.
The man watches him with analytical detachment.
“Are you going to speak to me?” Dignon asks him.
“I don’t have a lot of time.” His voice has not changed. “Where I am, it’s like a prison. They don’t let me leave for long.”
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”
“Not looking for your pity. Just need you to listen.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Once you hear, you’ll have to act on it. You won’t be able to keep it buried anymore.”
“Why’s that?” he asks defiantly.
“Because I’m your father, that’s why.”
“My father’s dead.”
“I’m paying for my sins, Dignon, don’t think I’m not. I can’t get away from the things I’ve done. The fires burn almost all the time, and the flames destroy, but they also purge…eventually.” He looks down the street, distracted by something. “I can’t say anything more about that.”
The desire to attack the man before him is relentless. Dignon wants to tackle him and punch him again and again until his face is an unrecognizable pulp. He wants to see his blood and snot and spittle stain the snow, to hear him moan in agony and beg for mercy. He has no idea how to execute such a beating, but he can feel the rage and violence building in him, a fury he has only allowed himself to feel in tiny increments before banishing it back into the void from which it comes. “I’m not a little boy anymore, you sonofabitch,” he says, heart racing. “I’m a man. Do you see me? I’m a man.”
“You have to go back and find the truth about when I died,” his father replies. “And then you have to make it right, you understand?”
For the first time Dignon sees not just flesh and bone, but all that lies behind it standing there before him. Along with the rage comes something unforeseen that leaves him ashamed and helpless. He feels love. Perhaps not for his father, but for what he wished his father had been, for what he and Willie so desperately needed him to be. Then, and now.
“Running is easy, son.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“It’s finding and facing the truth that’s hard. That’s where the danger is. And believe me, you’re in more danger than you realize.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
His pale lips twist into a sardonic grin. “Remember.”
“You saw to that a long time ago.”
Moving away, his father—or wha
tever it is—strolls quickly toward the end of the block, turns the corner and disappears back into the storm.
He leaves no footprints in the snow.
NINE
He remembers waiting in the snow for some time, frozen on that deserted street. Despite being shaken to his core, the cold eventually snapped his trance. He inspected the neighborhood once more for specters or signs but found nothing. The world had returned, pale, icy and shrill, its secrets concealed in the misdirection of everyday life.
After another bus ride and a few block walk, Dignon finds himself at the front entrance to 36 Borges Lane. Number 18, Bree told him. He does his best to wash the memories of his father’s ghost from his mind, but his is a persistent phantom and that’s easier said than done. In his coat pocket, Dignon’s hand tightens around a small plastic bottle, a prescription for Valium the doctor gave him along with the anti-depressants. With his heart racing and a slight headache still lingering along the back of his skull, he thinks a Valium might actually be a good idea right about now. He’s not sure he can face Bree without one, and fears he’ll otherwise stare at the building a while then turn around and go home. In response, the voices in his head grow louder, exploring every conceivable reason why he shouldn’t go inside and every scenario of disaster that might happen if he does. He knows if he doesn’t find a way to either shut them off or ignore them, he’ll weaken and turn around. It’s happened countless times in the past in situations far more trivial.
Blood In Electric Blue Page 10