It had occurred to the white wizard that these two morons might try to beat him senseless again, might try to kill him. It also occurred to him to let them. But he’d decided against it; he’d been beaten up once already, and the value of repeating the experience would have been negligible.
Besides, he was pressed for time; things were moving faster than expected. The derelicts were intended only to teach him humility. That purpose fulfilled, their usefulness was at an end.
Well, nearly.
Cho lurched awkwardly to his knees as if trying to stand but unable to remember how. His eyes turned up to Kreiger, unfocussed and dark, his nose a bloated mat of blood running down over his lips and chin. He gawped at Kreiger as if searching for words he could no longer remember, a voice he was no longer sure how to use. He was a fish on land wondering what to say to the man with the hook and line.
Kreiger stared back, searching Cho’s eyes. It was still there, exactly what he needed.
The pointed staff shot forward in a blur, boring smoothly through Matthew Cho’s side and punching straight through his heart. Kreiger yanked the staff back, a dark spurt of blood following to splash hot against his legs. There was only the one surge, the final efforts of a muscle newly aware of its own destruction. Cho’s heart stopped, and the air sagged from his punctured lung with a low whistling sound. His mouth worked like he was trying to swallow and force something out both at the same time. The result was a thick mixture of saliva and bright blood spilling over his lips and down his neck in a bubbly froth.
Matthew Cho was dying, but he was not dead yet. Not quite.
Kreiger seized Cho’s ruined face in his hands, throwing him back to the floor and straddling his chest to search the man’s dying eyes. It was still there … but not for long. Seconds only, no more.
But seconds were all he needed.
Snatching Cho’s knife from his dying fingers, Kreiger jabbed the tip into the corner of Matty’s eye socket, digging down and in until the eyeball popped free, the roots severing with a sound like the last vestige of water spiraling down a drain. Cho did not resist, his body squirming only slightly in defiance of what must seem comparatively minimal to what had already befallen it. With death fast approaching, the excision would seem nearly painless.
Nearly.
Kreiger plucked the eyeball instantly into his mouth, swallowing it whole even as he turned his attention to digging out the other.
It was not ideal, he knew, but one learned to take dreams where one found them. He was Gusman Kreiger. Cast Out. Sorcerer. Survivor. It made all the difference.
Kreiger stood up slowly, breathing heavily; it was exhausting trying to keep up with Jack. Exhausting, but necessary. Come hell or high water, he was not about to let the Caretaker strand him on this miserable plane, trapped in this miserable life. Jack was welcome to hate him, revile him, even hunt him down to the ends of reality and kill him like a rabid dog. But Jack would not forget him. Kreiger would see Ellen Monroe killed first—by his own hand if necessary—before allowing himself to be dismissed.
That would certainly get your attention, eh Jack? That would just fuck you up but good.
Him and you, both, old man.
Kreiger shelved the notion, not yet that eager to secure Jack’s undivided attentions. Such notice could prove painful, how well he knew.
He walked to the front door of Ellen’s apartment, his knees and hands aching. He had pushed himself too far. A pair of quick kills, useless pieces of garbage taken down, their dreams stolen, his savior protected. But still, too much to ask.
Idly, he wondered if Jack appreciated all he was doing for him.
Probably not.
Kreiger flicked the light switch, cognizant of the small stains of blood left behind on the switch plate, expressionistic flower petals, bad bed-and-breakfast decor. Then he turned, surveying Ellen’s living room.
If the wall switch was art, than Ellen’s living room was a gallery, a post-modernistic expression of the apocalypse. Marco lay in a thick puddle of red, the slow pool of something left to drain for the sake of the meat, spilling out with the slow methodical steadiness of an old, cracked bucket. In contrast, Cho lay face up, most of the blood trapped by his clothing except for what ran across his face and clotted in his hair. Crimson flecks splayed out from his nostrils and thick red drool ran down his chin. He cried tears of blood from empty sockets. One of the derelicts, probably Cho, had survived just long enough to squirt a ragged ribbon of heart’s blood across the floor. And of course there were bloody boot prints walking from the bodies to himself, punctuated by dark crimson splats falling from the length of the lightning rod.
Kreiger walked into Ellen’s kitchen, and started running cold water down the sink. He then ran the staff under the aerated stream until the metal was clean. He switched the water over to hot and let it run while he rummaged under the sink for a bucket, a scrub brush, some all-purpose spray cleaner, and a roll of paper towels. He found dishwashing soap on top of the sink by the faucet. The first order was to wash his hands of this. He used the steaming hot water and dish soap along with the scrub brush for his nails and the lines of his skin. When he was finished, the flesh was immaculate, pink and clean. He used paper towels to wipe his boots and pants dry. They were still bloodstained, but at least they wouldn’t leave tracks. Finally, he turned to the trail behind him, squirting each footprint, stain, or mark with a quick blast from the bottled cleaner. Then he bent to his knees and started scrubbing.
He backtracked from the kitchen to the wall switch to the bodies, and stopped. Behind him, a trail of discarded paper towels, grimy and red. Ahead, two derelicts lying in pools of blood congealed to the consistency of tree sap, their bodies already turning cold. There was a pungent stink in the air; one or both corpses had emptied its bladder, maybe its bowels.
“This could take all night.” He regarded the corpses with a sour expression as he climbed slowly to his feet, joints singing painfully, hands already cramping. “I’ll need some help.”
THE DREAMING MOON
“You spoiled the catch!”
Ellen stared defiantly at the rude, little troll—it would have been incorrect to call either of these two men, they were so twisted and misshapen. For five minutes straight, the one had complained: about her, about her in the net, about her in the sea, about her ruining the night’s fishing. As if she had asked to be trussed up like a cod and dropped on their deck.
“There should be at least a dozen souls in tha’ net,” the idiot troll carried on. “A dozen if it’s one. A dozen men ta ‘oist sails and pull oars and drag nets.”
Ellen could not fathom what he was talking about, and doubted he would explain if she asked, the lantern bobbing and weaving with the animation of his complaints. His partner—twin save being a few inches shorter and less vocal—nodded, occasionally parroting the other’s remarks for emphasis like a brain-damaged color commentator.
“Do you know what we ‘ave instead? Do you?”
“Do you?” the second echoed.
The troll answered before she could reply. “Fish an’ garbage!”
“Garbage an’ fish,” echoed his partner.
“What the ‘ell are you doing out ‘ere, scaring away our catch, gathering all these friggin’ fish?” He kicked at one, trying to shoo the bottom-sucker back towards the pile. Instead, it latched toothlessly upon his foot, flipping and thrashing angrily. The troll let out a squeal and started gyrating and kicking, sending the hapless fish through the air. It bounced upon the deck with a wet, squelching sound before sliding overboard. Again, the lantern bobbled and wavered, shadows skittering about the strange vessel. “Friggin’ fish!”
“Dirty friggin’ fish,” the second echoed.
“If you don’t plan on catching fish, you shouldn’t drag your nets in the sea,” Ellen challenged back. “Most sensible people would agree that’s how you do it.”
Both trolls gaped at the brazen response. “An ‘ow are we s’posed to catch s
ouls, miss, if’n we don’t drag for ‘em?” the one asked. “Lean over the bow an’ whistle?”
The other troll snorted laughter.
Ellen glared angrily. She had been so close to finding Jack that she could actually feel the warmth of his lips through the water’s skin, and now he was gone … as if he had never been at all. Perhaps he never had; perhaps you’re crazy? “You did catch a soul, you fucking moron! You caught me!”
“Exactly!” the troll shouted, thrusting the lantern at her. “We got garbage!”
“You got me,” Ellen said in a dangerous tone. “What else did you expect to catch in an ocean besides fish?”
“Not fish, tha’s fer damn sure. They’re only ‘ere ‘cause o’ you.”
“They’re here because it’s an ocean, idiot!”
The troll looked at her as if she were mentally deficient. “This ain’t the ocean, miss, it’s the sea. An’ there ain’t no fish in the sea but what you brought with ya.” Light scattered pell-mell about the deck as he continued to punctuate his ramblings with shakes of the lantern. “Just what the ‘ell are you, anyhow? Ya don’t look like no ghost, tha’s fer sure. No tail neither, so ya ain’t no mermaid.” He reached out skeptically, jabbing a finger at her.
Before she could think better of it, Ellen punched the unsuspecting troll square in the eye. With her other hand, she snatched the lantern, easily jerking it from the troll’s unsuspecting fingers. “Stop poking me, stop yelling at me, and stop waving that damn light around, you jerk!”
And there they stood, squared off against one another, Ellen brandishing the lantern, her other hand still tightly fisted and ready, knuckles smarting from the troll’s boney face. The troll only stared back at her from his one eye, hand clamped tight over the other, mouth agape but not saying a word.
The other troll, the one Ellen was convinced might be retarded, remarked, “Well, she ain’t no ghost, tha’s fer sure.”
“And what’s all this about?”
The two trolls jerked about suddenly at the voice, not so much startled as terrified. Ellen momentarily forgotten, they dropped to their knees and pressed their foreheads flat to the deck in exaggerated veneration. Ellen looked back at the ship’s empty mid-deck and held up the lantern, panning the light back and forth, its glow barely reaching the ends of the boat. She glimpsed motionless figures standing in the shadows, haunting sailors, slack-featured and statue-still, puppets with no master. Perched upon the side rail was an enormous cat, gray as November, staring back at her. A pet of the speaker, maybe, or property of the ship’s captain? The cat’s eyes threw back the lamplight with almost unnatural ferocity, sending a shiver up her spine, and it was the first time Ellen remembered feeling cold in a dream.
And maybe this isn’t a dream.
The trolls groveled and quivered, but remained otherwise motionless, and the speaker remarked, “Oh, I see.”
His voice was refined and luxurious, pleasant like an actor’s, soft-spoken and genteel, almost a purr of Queen’s English.
And it was definitely coming from the cat.
“Are you…?” Ellen’s voice caught, and she swallowed nervously. “Are you in charge of these two?” She tried directing the question in the general direction of the aft deck, uncertain if she should be addressing the cat or someone as yet unseen. If nothing else, she hoped whoever was in charge of this boat and its idiot crew would at least hear her and respond.
“They do what I tell them, if that’s what you’re asking?” the cat answered.
It wasn’t, but it was an answer of sorts.
Ellen turned back towards the side rail, letting the light fall upon the cat’s face. As big as a lynx, its ears were extraordinarily long, the jowls and whiskers thick with long drooping fur. Its body was fastidiously folded together, feet tight to the rail, claws steadying it against the rocking of the ship by digging tightly into the wood. The cat’s tail twitched high in the air, the tip bristling like a bottlebrush; the rest of its fur as thick as an Angora rabbit, a dark gray-blue like autumn thunderheads in the evening sky. Its eyes glowed back at her like amber, regarding her with a kind of strange intelligence, questions and suppositions and thoughts flickering across their surface in a rapid, almost dizzying array that seemed to suggest a staggering intellect.
But it was, after all, a talking cat.
I don’t care if you are cold, Ellen. This has got to be a dream.
“You’re the biggest fucking cat I’ve ever seen,” she said.
“And you’re the whitest fish I’ve ever caught,” the cat replied back.
Ellen stepped back without realizing, her fist opening. “You caught me?”
“The net caught you,” the cat clarified. “And it was Simon and Piotr who pulled the net on board. But the net, these two, and everything else you see and don’t see on this vessel are mine.”
“Except me,” she pointed out.
The cat’s tail swayed gently like a marsh reed as he turned upon the trolls without answering. “Why have we sailed out of the mist? And why haul in a net full of fish? Did I say anything to suggest to you that I was hungry?”
The trolls nudged one another on the ground, each jabbing elbows into the other’s ribs in an effort to spur an answer that neither wanted to give.
“Do I need to repeat the question?” the cat asked.
The one Ellen was coming to think of as the smarter of the two—the one who complained the most—hesitantly climbed to his knees, eyes on the ground. “Beggin’ ya pardon, sah, but the mist’s lifted clean away. One minute it was there, and we was skimmin’ fer souls like we’s supposed ta. The next, it turned clear as a bell. The mist and the witch light just … vanished. It was spooky, I tell ya.”
When the cat refused to comment either way, the troll pressed on, his words desperate and quick. “The net was startin’ to snag on all manner o’ things. We had no choice, sah. We had to pull it in ta empty it.”
“And that was when you decided to drop a load of fish on my deck?” the cat asked.
The troll paused, making an effort to recall the exact chain of events that had led him to the supposition that he should do just that—a supposition that was apparently incorrect. “Well … we thought we could figure out what was happenin’, ya know? Figured the net might catch whatever was responsible. Anyway, that’s ‘ow we found this thing,” the troll concluded with an offhand gesture at Ellen.
“Well, you certainly have caught something here,” the cat murmured softly. “Quite the mystery you are, young lady. You were drawn up from the sea, which suggests that you are dead for there should be naught else there. But quite evidently you are not. In fact, you smell very much alive. And that perplexes me. The living belong no more in the sea of the dead than the dead belong in the land of the living. You are an enigma, whoever and whatever you are, a riddle that must be solved and resolved before it starts to unwind and sweeps us all down in the resulting maelstrom.”
The cat stretched its back in a deep arch, claws carving small curls of finish from the rail, then straightened and sauntered closer along the narrow beam. “Well, I expect introductions are in order, as you are going to be my guest for the time being, and I detest the overuse of generalities. It lends to sloppy thinking. My name is Podak. You are aboard the Dreaming Moon. The two imbeciles beside you constitute my crew, Simon and Piotr. Don’t worry which one is which; it doesn’t really matter. Who are you?”
“Uh, Ellen. Ellen Monroe.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Ellen Monroe. Simon, fetch Ellen a towel then help push these fish off the deck before it starts to smell like a cannery.”
The two trolls spun away, glad to be out from under Podak’s watchful eye.
“And one more thing,” the cat said before the trolls could make good their escape. “Save any squid you come across in a bucket. I’m warming to the idea of calamari.”
“I thought you didn’t want fish,” Ellen said softly, the words out almost before she realized she w
as speaking. Almost.
“Spirited. You’d think your name was Alice chasing white rabbits in the skirls of opium smoke and the visions of half-eaten mushrooms. Or maybe you already have.” The cat tilted his head, his stare weighing upon her, as physical a thing as stinging insects or the bite of windblown sand. When the cat’s eyes narrowed, tightening upon her face, her form, her soul, she felt her arms fold self-consciously over her nakedness.
Podak turned away suddenly, mumbling “One day a riddle will be the death of me.” Then more loudly, “In answer to your observation, Ellen Monroe, squid are not, strictly speaking, fish. And as captain of the boat on which you stand, what I choose to do, contradictory though it may seem, is my prerogative. It is a right and privilege that I have earned.”
Beyond that, he would not elaborate. Behind her, one of the trolls was using a broad shovel to push piles of fish and clams over the side. The other returned with a towel, presenting it wordlessly to Ellen before rushing off to assist with the cleanup.
Ellen dried herself, noting an embossed seal on the towel’s corner, the gold-stitched insignia of the Sands Hotel. She looked at Podak questioningly, but the cat simply rolled its shoulders and blinked. “A souvenir from Vegas,” he answered unapologetically. “Come with me.”
The cat turned easily on the narrow rail and marched towards the back deck. “What brings you here, Ellen Monroe? Why were you swimming in this sea tonight?”
“I’m … I’m not exactly sure.”
“Lost your way, did you?”
Lines and rigging and nets festooned the boat like something left in an old attic, layered with cobwebs. Wooden lobster pots were lashed outside the rails, and the deck was littered with thick coils of rope and grappling hooks; what purpose they served, she could not fathom. Even in the darkness, Ellen could make out two enormous objects dangling from the side of the boat’s forward deck by chains. They looked like the skulls of some kind of sea creature, perhaps whales, and like the boat itself, both resembled vestiges of some long ago age gone dry and gray. Everywhere, the wood had turned old, bleached like driftwood, a musty smell clinging to every surface, the miasma of rot and even death. It hung in the air, saturated the planks and rigging, coated the iron nails and brass fixtures, and even the seamen standing patiently about the deck, unmoving, unseeing, little more than phantoms, the inanimate ghosts of seafarers lost long ago.
The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) Page 19