The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2)

by Mark Reynolds

  Gravity reasserted itself as the edges of the net were hoisted clear of the water in a sodden mass of thick, folded silk. Ellen felt herself slip to the bottom along with the rest of the sea-going catch, swung high into the night—hadn’t it been day only moments before? —and dropped unceremoniously into a pile. Fish flapped and writhed against her in a panic of tormented sea flotsam. A shark, black on turquoise tiger-striping, snapped at anything in reach, and Ellen scrambled to avoid it along with a flopping manta ray whipping its tail-spike erratically at all encroachers. She slipped about in a rough pile of oyster shells and sandpaper scales, scraping her skin.

  Are you sure you’re dreaming?

  And then she was free, finding safety on a wooden deck awash in brine, the world bright with the white glow of lanterns brought to bear upon her. At the edges of the light, sailors worked the rigging, methodical and slow, deliberate actions that suggested animatronics, wind-up workers performing programmed duties, marionettes and meat puppets executing their tasks, repetitions they could perform in their sleep, or even in death.

  Two short, stocky men approached, their bodies gnarled and twisted, faces hidden by the glare of their lanterns as they investigated her presence on the ship’s deck, a struggling nereid beside a pile of angry fish. She shaded her eyes against the light as one of the men leaned in close and squinted.

  “What the hell are you?”

  GUARDIAN

  He waited until the sun set, street lamps throwing shallow pools of light against shadows teeming with darkness. He waited until the lights in the bookshop girl’s apartment went out one by one, filling her windows with night. And just to be safe, he waited another fifteen minutes more.

  Matty Cho was a cautious animal when it suited his purposes.

  It stood to reason that a woman living alone might take precautions against intruders. She would lock her door, use a dead-bolt and maybe a chain. She might also keep a weapon close at hand, perhaps by the bedside or near the door; something like a baseball bat or pepper spray … or maybe a small handgun. Maybe. She moved like someone who felt protected, a carefree indifference suggesting she was accustomed to being safe. She walked back and forth to work with no concern, lived alone, slept naked—so Crazy Moses claimed. So maybe she kept some means of protection that made her feel secure, what with no husband or boyfriend or doting sugar daddy around to protect her. Or maybe she was so privileged she believed herself above bad things. The rich were like that; figured nothing bad could happen to them because nothing bad ever had.

  Either way, Matty intended to find out why Crazy Moses wanted her, why he stalked her, watched but would not go near her. What value she was to him, no one knew. It might be real. It might just as easily be the imaginary value crazy people ascribe to the inherently worthless? Either way, he would find out.

  She left her windows open, perhaps hoping for a chance breeze to bring relief from the sweltering heat. No air-conditioning units hung from her windows—likely she couldn’t afford it. The building she lived in was outdated and too low-rent to come equipped with central air, which only made Matty more curious. Why was she worth stalking if she couldn’t even afford air conditioning? If he had the money, he’d have air conditioning, what with this heat. So if she didn’t have any money, what did she have that garnered the undivided attention of a head-case like Goose Man? Cho saw it in his eyes, and thought Lucas might have seen it too; seen enough to scare the hell out of him. Beneath the bluster and arrogance and insanity of Goose Man’s rants was a scary kernel of truth. The man knew things, important things, amazing things.

  And the woman from the bookshop was the key.

  Slipping across the street, two shadows accustomed to their invisibility—invisible because no one wanted to see them—crept to the back of Ellen’s apartment building. From the height of Marco’s shoulders, Cho caught the base of the fire escape and slowly lowered the ladder, careful not to let the rust-flaked gears and wheels rattle as it came down. Then, like rats in the night, they crept up the steps to the third floor apartment with its open window, and climbed in.

  It was that easy.

  Actually, it was too easy. He’d brought Marco as insurance, but what seemed a reasonable precaution earlier now felt like an unnecessary risk. Just one more thing that could go wrong, one more hand after a share—whatever that might be. Marco seemed the logical choice; Lucas and Johnny would ask questions, go soft, lose their nerve. But not Marco; loyal as a brain-damaged dog, he did exactly as told and little else. Marco didn’t need reasons. He lived in the moment, hand to mouth, day to day, sleepwalking through life and waiting for death to come out of the dark and run him through like an autumn pig. And God willing, he’d never see it coming.

  Marco was the only one who wouldn’t question Matty’s reasoning, the basis of his logic as elegantly simple as it was inherently flawed: Goose Man wouldn’t be stalking the bookshop girl if she wasn’t worth being stalked. The details after that were left to Matty’s fertile imagination. Maybe she ran away from her rich father or lover or sugar daddy, and now he was looking for her. Goose Man might have been brokering information on her whereabouts, or even planning to abduct her and sell her back. Or maybe the woman was secretly rich, one of those eccentrics living in the projects or the mouth of a storm drain, surviving on spare change and cat food while secretly hoarding thousands or even millions in cash or jewelry or gold in some bank somewhere. He had heard about their kind; he had never met one, of course, but he had heard.

  And it was this vague hope, this glimmer of fool’s gold that Matthew Cho seized upon, the possibility turning over and over in the course of the morning until it blossomed from idle fancy to full-blown obsession. Goose Man had to have a reason for stalking the bookstore girl, only none of them had bothered to ask. She wasn’t especially beautiful, though after following her all day, Matty had grown accustom to her simple prettiness, her shape. But that wasn’t the reason Goose Man was stalking her. Cho had known that kind of animal; the ones that prowled college campuses in beat-up delivery vans or hiked railroad tracks with duct tape and zip-ties in their pockets, eyes darting like hunters tracking small game. Goose Man wasn’t like that; he didn’t give off any of the cues. Goose Man was crazy. Dangerous and crazy. And he was stalking the girl from the bookstore like his life depended on it.

  What better reason did you need?

  A fisherman’s filleting knife, the cracked grip wrapped thick with tape, turned nervously in Cho’s hand. In his pocket, a spool of high-gauge wire; this was not his first home invasion, and while no expert—what expert would live in a fucking junkyard?—he was no novice either.

  Marco shuffled about the open floor of the sparse room, tape-patched work boots making soft thuds against the wood flooring. “Whadda we doin’ here, Matty?”

  Cho cuffed him sharply. “Why don’t ya call the fucking cops yourself, ya dumb fuck,” he whispered sharply. No way did he want someone with all the brains of the last pickle in the jar to fuck this up for him. “Now shut up before ya wake her.”

  Marco was rubbing the side of his head, face screwed up in pain. “But she ain’t got nuffin’, Matty,” he said, careful to keep his voice at a plaintive whisper. “Jus’ look aroun’.”

  This time, Matthew Cho caught Marco’s collar, pressing the point of the boning knife to Marco’s throat and dimpling the skin. “Shut the fuck up, stupid!” he hissed into Marco’s vacant eyes. “She’s got something, all right. Why else would he ‘ave been stalking her?”

  “Who? Goothe Man? Goothe Man’th crathy. Crathy people don’t need a reathon to do crazy thit. It’th what they do.”

  “No fuckin’ way,” Cho insisted. “Goose Man knew something, and I wanna know what it was.” Then Matty smiled that easy, reassuring smile that he used to use to get tail when that kind of thing still mattered. “It’ll be worth it, Marco. I promise. Now stay put, and keep your eyes open.”

  Marco nodded and grinned. “‘Kay, Matty.”

  Good
dog, Cho thought, leaving the other in the middle of the room to watch over an empty window of old moonlight spilling in from the night outside.

  * * *

  Marco listened absently as Matty skulked about the bookshop girl’s apartment. So small. An economy with an open kitchen and two other doors that could only lead to the bedroom and bathroom. So what?

  Matty would hit the bedroom first. That would be smart.

  Only nothing about this was smart. Matty was wrong about the girl; even Marco knew that. There was nothing here worth getting busted over. No TV. No stereo. No CD collection. No trinkets or pictures or silverware or anything. Probably didn’t even have any meds in the bathroom. Matty figured Goose Man for a stalker, but Matty was wrong.

  Goose Man wasn’t watching her; he was watching over her.

  Marco knew he should tell Matty, stop him before he stumbled upon the girl; a girl who had nothing except what any woman had. Goose Man claimed to have seen her naked. Maybe Matty wanted to see for himself. Maybe this had nothing to do with what could be stolen, fenced or used to get high. Maybe this was about Matty looking to tie the girl down and lay a knife to her throat so she’d spread it. Yeah, maybe. And maybe this wasn’t jail time, county lock-up, nine months of three meals a day and showers. Maybe this was prison time, beaten senseless in the yard every day, living out your days in fear.

  Maybe Matty was the crazy motherfucker, not Goose Man.

  And maybe—this thought with rare lucidity—this was not about him at all. Maybe he didn’t need to be here. Maybe, just maybe, he should get the fuck out of here right now, and not remember anything about this later if anyone should ask. Maybe he should find himself a bottle and make himself forget because it was easy not to lie about what you couldn’t remember anyway. Maybe.

  The unfortunate thing about revelations is how many are not acted upon in time—or at all.

  Marco saw the darkness take shape like a serpent uncoiling from a dark crevice. One moment, he was alone; the next, Goose Man was in front of him, stepping from the liquid night like a vampire, death itself armed with a glimmering spear. Not broken and bleeding, as he had been that morning; not dying or dead, as when they left him. But whole and alive, emerging from the shadows of the empty room as though he had been there the entire time, a dark spirit around which the building had been constructed, invisible and unseen, as omnipotent and unflinching as time or death or the universe itself.

  But the room had been empty! He and Matty had stood right here, had seen everything, the room so small and bare you couldn’t hide a loaf of bread, much less a tall, crazy fucker with a shabby overcoat and a glinting metal staff.

  Then all these concerns evaporated, and Marco’s attention turned solely on the long spire of steel buried in his chest.

  Goose Man’s hand shot out like a whip, clamping over the sagging flesh of Marco’s mouth and drawing his lips together like the open end of a cloth sack. Marco’s scream—a muffled hiss of surprise, really—died, stillborn in his throat.

  Kreiger wrenched the lightning rod from Marco’s chest like a bone from a piece of overcooked meat. There was the sickening shawk sound of a razor slicing through a wet bed sheet, and Marco dropped to his knees. It was as if the blood-covered lightning rod was every bone in his body, the staff holding his puppet’s parts upright. Without it, he was just a sagging bag of dying flesh. He watched a thick gout of blood splatter the floor, bursting out between his fingertips as he tried to hold himself in, and splash darkly upon Goose Man’s boots. He saw something dangling from the tip of the lightning rod like a forgotten bit of gristle caught in a predator’s teeth.

  Marco tipped forward like so much dead weight, prostrate before Goose Man, Ellen Monroe’s secret guardian. His flesh made a wet, splattering sound as it hit the hardwood floor, breath whistling in and out, strained, fragile, inconsequential.

  Goose Man bent to him, looking at him critically, seeing the inevitable in Marco’s empty eyes.

  “Wh-wh-who …?” Marco felt drool run from the corner of his lips, down his cheek. It dribbled to the floor in small droplets too dark to be spittle.

  “So many names,” Goose Man answered. “So little time.”

  “Whh-what … what …?”

  “Me wise magic.”

  Marco stared into the pleasant, aristocratic face, the godlike features, the devil’s leer tugging up the corners of Goose Man’s mouth. “You’s … D-death … sw-sweet … sweet Jesus Chr…”

  Gusman Kreiger looked both amused and indifferent, and nodded

  * * *

  The one thing Matt Cho did not expect as he entered Ellen Monroe’s bedroom was to find it empty. Passing by the bathroom—she might have drugs; gotta remember to check that later—he eased the bedroom door open with exceptional lightness, no squeak of the hinges, no thump of wood against some unforeseen object discarded behind the door. But the only thing waiting on the other side was an unmade bed, old clothes upon the floor, and a few useless things on her dresser: some worthless jewelry, earrings, a bracelet of colored string and beads, an old clock radio. Nothing.

  Most importantly, no girl from the bookstore.

  His grip tightened on the boning knife, the taped handle turning oily beneath his fingers.

  Where was she? He watched her go into the building, saw her turn off the lights. No one left afterwards; not her, not anyone! But her apartment was empty!

  Where was she?

  His balls ached, grown hard and desperate over the course of the day. He had not come for some pipe dream of fabled wealth or its opportunity. Maybe that was his plan at first, but not now. What sent him up the fire escape and through the window was the idea of her, the girl from the bookstore, the one with the mousey hair and the sweet figure, the girl who slept naked. Thanks to Goose Man, she had ceased to be just anyone, someone to be forgotten easily and quickly like every other face in the human river that moved careless and uncaring around him. Goose Man’s words, his devotion and desperation, had transformed her, elevating her from the simple anonymity of city scenery to a dream-turned-obsession.

  But she was gone. And he was alone, the dumbest criminal to ever break into an empty apartment, nothing left for him to do but jerk off or run rabbit.

  “Fuck!”

  Out in the living room, something fell on the floor, a sound like a heavy sack; a heavy, wet sack.

  What the hell is he doing?

  Then he heard the voices, and froze. There was Marco’s senseless gabbling—hard to mistake that—and someone else, someone he knew!

  Goose Man!

  “Shit!” Cho’s feet started turning in furtive circles, eyes darting, walls spinning. The room was bare; nothing but what he brought with him, the little boning knife, useless. There was nowhere to run; nowhere to hide. Goose Man would find him eventually. And Cho knew what would happen then. Goose Man was crazy. Worse, he was alive. Alive and crazy and, in all likelihood, very, very pissed off.

  Cho considered the window; a three-story drop onto pavement. Maybe he’d only break his leg.

  Or maybe you’ll break your fucking neck!

  The only sure way was through the door, and Goose Man waiting on the other side.

  What about Marco? He’s got your back. Good ol’ Marco. Good dog.

  Marco’s dead! Wet thump, pissed off crazy guy; do the math! You’re alone!

  Maybe he doesn’t know I’m here. Hide under the bed. Lay low and don’t make a sound, and he won’t find you.

  “Ellen’s not here, Matty,” Goose Man called softly from the other room. “I told you, I look after her.”

  Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! SHIT!

  “Now get out here.”

  And against all reason, against the screaming animal battering away at the walls of Matthew Cho’s mind, he reached out his hand, opened the door … and stepped into the short hallway!

  Goose Man stood with his back to the windows, reduced to absolutes of shadow and blackness. The only lighted part of him was the gl
immering metal rod he carried, its length shiny, almost wet-looking. He was standing beside a motionless lump that Matty thought might have been an old sack of clothes or garbage.

  It was a moment before he realized it was Marco.

  “You … killed him?” Matty asked.

  Goose Man shook his head in disdain. “I’ve eaten smarter animals than you.”

  Cho felt the maddened beast inside of him, the one crashing about his mind in a strange whirl of terror and hatred, burst free. The creature took hold of limbs turned numb by the sound of Goose Man’s voice, and made them snap to order. The knife shot up wildly, gyrating in his hand like a maniac’s last hope and nearly slicing off his own ear.

  Then he was charging straight at Goose Man with every intention, however disjointed, of slicing the man’s throat open. Not for fear or hatred or even desperation, but an instinct more primitive, more primal, less human. It was the same instinct that compelled him to try and beat Goose Man to death earlier. And now it was screaming at the inside of his skull like a siren wailing through his brain: Goose Man did not belong; he had never belonged. He was an outsider, an interloper, an outcast of the human race and all other manner of beasts under God’s sky. And he had to be destroyed, expunged from the world because it would not tolerate his existence, or suffer those who did.

  Cho’s mouth was open, a small string of slobber running to his T-shirt as he screamed an insensible battle cry that was a mixture of some prehistoric roar of challenge and the shriek of a terrified child as he charged the ancient white wizard with nothing more than an old boning knife.

  * * *

  Kreiger’s fist pistoned bullet-quick, striking Cho in the face, and dropping him in his tracks.