Catskinner's Book (The Book Of Lost Doors)

by Misha Burnett

  “Sure.” I found myself setting up a meeting next Tuesday morning. I gave her the phone number for Quality Electrical.

  “By the way,” I said, “I noticed that the tanning place seem to be closed today. Do you know if they are closing for good? I'd hate to be the only store in the whole mall that was open.”

  She turned to look at the darkened door. “I really don't know anything about them.” Her voice seemed strangely flat. Then she turned back to me. “I should be going.” Big smile. “See you on Tuesday.”

  “Yeah, see you then.” I looked around. “I'll just . . . check out the neighborhood.”

  She headed back towards the street and I went in the direction of the laundromat. There were four cars parked outside it and about that many people inside, sitting and watching their clothes go round. The man who had been outside smoking was inside now, still talking on his phone.

  I crossed in front of the doors and went around to side of the building. The wall was cinder block and blank. Someone had spray painted a crude profile of a woman, an exaggerated figure with high heels and oversize circles for breasts. One of her feet pointed backwards, maybe to indicate spread legs.

  Behind the strip mall was an alley with a high wooden fence on the other side. I looked through the boards and saw a parking lot full of cars and what looked like a chain restaurant.

  I stepped back from the fence and looked around. I could hear cars going by on the street, but they seemed small and far away. I was alone.

  I counted out the back entrances to the empty shops, miscounted, and realized I had gone too far when I saw the Mexican restaurant's back door. So the one next to it must be—

  dangerous. be careful.

  It didn't look dangerous. It looked like the back door of a retail storefront. No name on the door, just a blank metal door with a shiny new knob. Can you open that? I asked in my head.

  yes.

  My hand took hold of the knob, gripped it tight, and twisted. It resisted, and my hand twisted harder, and then something in it snapped and the knob turned easily. My hand was my own again.

  Deep breath. I didn't even know for sure that this place was connected with what had happened to Victor and me. Maybe someone stole the van. Or maybe the van I'd heard on Friday wasn't the same one I'd seen on Thursday. The locks looked suspicious and it was odd that the place was’t open today, but that wasn't proof of anything.

  To hell with that. I knew in my gut that the people who killed Victor and paralyzed me had something to do with this place. That was good enough for me.

  Nothing beeped, buzzed, or blew up when I pushed open the door. It was dark in there and warm, hot, even. The air was humid and smelled . . . organic somehow. Like I walked into a greenhouse. I was in a hallway that stretched the length of the space. At the end I could see hints of sunlight around the edges of the dark film on the window.

  The hallway had doors on both sides. There was light—electric light—coming from under one of the doors on my right. It seemed a logical place to start. I closed the door behind me as quietly as I could and stood waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. With the door closed the smell was thicker and sweeter. Orchids and . . . yes, sandalwood. It smelled like the tall woman in the Botanical Garden T-shirt.

  I slunk down the hallway. The doors I passed were closed. I didn't hear anything. I grabbed the knob of the door where the light was, took a breath and slammed it open.

  Inside was a tiny room. In the center of the room was the tanning bed from the picture on the van. Sitting on the bed—it was open—was the young lady from the picture.

  She'd been reading some thick paperback when I burst into the room. She gave a little cartoon squeak and dropped the book. Her bikini top, lips, and sunglasses were matching pink and her blue jean shorts were cut off raggedly at mid-thigh.

  Not what I expected. She looked up at me and I looked down at her. I stared. I couldn't help it. Her body was simply perfect, full and rounded and lush and her skin looked so smooth and so soft, glowing with health.

  She drew her legs up to her chest, folded her arms around them, hugging herself. Looked up at me.

  I had no idea what to say.

  “I need answers,” I tried. It sounded less threatening and more petulant than I'd intended.

  She nodded gravely.

  “Uh, look, yesterday some people broke into my shop and killed my boss and took what was in his safe. I think they came from here.”

  Another nod. Her sunglasses had big round mirrored lenses. Under them her mouth was serious.

  “There was this woman, she was tall and thin. She had, uh, dark hair, cut real short.”

  She spoke then. “There's nobody here.” Her voice was both deeper and softer than I expected. There was something strange about the way her face moved when she spoke, as if her jaw stayed closed and only her lips moved. She reached up to settle her sunglasses on her face and I noticed that her fingernails were also that same pink shade.

  the human has been compromised.

  What do you mean, compromised?

  altered. changed. it is no longer entirely human.

  She, I corrected Catskinner, not it.

  she is also not entirely female.

  She looked like a girl to me. What I could see of her face looked young enough that I would have carded her and taken a good hard look at her ID.

  “I'm looking for that woman I told you about. Does she work here?”

  She nodded. Her tongue darted out and touched her lips. Again I had the feeling that there was something wrong with the way her mouth moved. Maybe that was the change Catskinner meant.

  She stretched her legs out. Her toenails were pink, too.

  She cocked her head to the side. I got the feeling she was studying me from behind her glasses. She leaned forward. Licked her lips. Looked up at me.

  “I'm hungry,” she said. “I'll blow you for some food.”

  Oh, God. This was not going at all how I expected.

  Chapter Four

  “normal is the name given to the most common miracles”

  I was speechless. This kind of thing didn't happen in the real world, did it?

  The girl was looking up at me, smiling. Her lips were shiny, and her glasses reflected tiny copies of my dumbstruck face. I looked away, tried to get some composure.

  One wall was covered by a huge print, a photograph of a beach scene. It was the pier at Huntington, I'd been there. The girl would have fit in there, lying on a towel, soaking up the sun, laughing and talking with the boys. On the other wall was a poster that detailed how long you could stay in a tanning both before it was dangerous.

  A thought struck me. “Did everyone else just go away and leave you here?”

  A nod.

  “I'll get you some food.” I felt myself blush. “You don't have to do—

  —take off your glasses.” Catskinner interrupted me suddenly.

  She recoiled a bit at the sound of Catskinner's voice. Slowly she reached up and took off her sunglasses.

  Her eyes were green. Not green like people usually mean that, white on the outside, black in the center, green in the middle. Her eyes were all green, lighter at the edges, darker in the middle. Not human eyes, more like a dog's eyes.

  She blinked at the light, lowering her head.

  “You can put them back on,” I said. “I—what's your name?”

  “Godiva,” she said.

  Godiva. Yeah, sure, why not. “I'm James.”

  She smiled at that, a small, tight smile, and I saw that she didn't have any teeth, at least in front.

  “Okay, Godiva, let's take a look around, and then we can go get some food, okay?”

  She hopped up to her feet. Human or not, female or not, her body was distractingly lovely. Standing, the top of her head came up to my chin.

  We started at the front door. There was a counter with some brochures about how to get toned, fit, and sexy by giving other people money. There was a space on the coun
ter where a cash register or computer once sat, the shape of the box left in dust. The drawers behind the counter were empty except for a couple of paper clips and a pen that had bled all the bottom of the drawer.

  There were a couple of chairs and a low table with magazines and catalogs scattered on it. A bulletin board with a few push pins, a couple of scraps of paper that looked like the corners of fliers, and a few staples. Godiva poked through some of the magazines.

  Nothing that looked like a clue to me. It did make me think of something, though. “Godiva, if you see me, uh, freeze up and not move, put your hands in front of my face, okay? See, when they broke into my store they had this card that kind of hypnotized me. As long as I could see it, I couldn't move.”

  She nodded seriously, just as if that made sense, and went back to looking through the magazines. She grabbed one and held it out to me proudly.

  Natural Glamour. On the cover a woman with feathers in her hair looked vacantly at some distant mountains.

  “You want that?” I asked her, “You can have it.”

  “Look,” Godiva said, sounding a little exasperated. She pointed at the address label. Dr. Madeline Klein, with an address that wasn't this one. “That's her.”

  “The tall woman with black hair?” I took the magazine. “Madeline Klein?”

  Godiva nodded.

  “Thank you,” I said, “You're better at this investigation stuff than I am.” A name and a home address. Maybe this was working after all.

  The hallway was lined with doors. Most of them led to the tanning rooms, pretty much identical to the one where I'd found Godiva. The beds were like exam tables with lids, the lids packed with short florescent tubes. They looked even more like props in a low budget science fiction movie in person, but maybe all tanning beds look like that. There was also one bathroom, which looked just like the tanning rooms, only with a toilet and sink instead of a bed.

  The two doors at the end of the hall, closest to the door I'd come in, were different. For one thing, both were locked. The one on my right was no problem, I stuck my pocketknife in between the door and the jam and we were in there. It was an office, only slightly larger than the booths. There was a desk, a wall calender, and a filing cabinet. The desktop was conspicuously bare. I looked through the desk drawers and found a stash of granola bars. I gave them to Godiva.

  “I told you I'd get you some food.”

  She flashed me a grin, wide enough that I could see she was entirely toothless. Somehow, it didn't look bad on her. I wondered, though, if she had worn dentures in the model shop, or if teeth had been photoshopped in.

  She seemed to have no problem with the granola bars, she skinned off the wrappers and started devouring them. She turned away from me, looking embarrassed. I respected her privacy and turned to look at the filing cabinet.

  Paper clips, rubber bands, a couple of torn off ends of paper that might have meant something to the techs on CSI but were useless to me. Godiva had finished the granola bars—five or six of them—and stood with the wrappers in her hand.

  I picked up the trash can by the desk and paused. It hadn't been emptied. There were a handful of empty envelopes in there, incoming mail, slit open at the top. What the heck. I stuck them in my pocket along with the magazine.

  The door on the other side of the hallway was another story. It was metal and had the same kind of lock as the back door.

  “Do you know what's back there?”

  “Dr. Klein's . . . medicine stuff.”

  “Did she give you medicine? To . . . change you?”

  Godiva looked at the ground and nodded, then glanced back at me. I smiled at her. “It's okay,” I said. “I'm different, too.”

  Would you? I asked Catskinner.

  gladly.

  This time he didn't just break the lock, he kicked the door. The door held, the jam held, the wall gave way and the whole door and frame slammed to the ground. Subtle, it wasn't.

  Fortunately there wasn't anything on the other side of the door. I reached to take my body back, but Catskinner wouldn't yield.

  “godiva,” he said out loud. “we haven't been introduced. i don't have a name, but james calls me catskinner.”

  “Hello,” Godiva said hesitantly.

  What are you doing? I asked, trapped in my head.

  “i'm what's different about james. what's different about you?”

  Godiva looked down at the ground. “You don't know?”

  I fought harder. He fought me back.

  “i know what. i don't know why.”

  She looked at him—at me, helpless behind my eyes.

  “It's for sex,” she said, contemptuously. “Something like you wouldn't understand that.”

  Catskinner released me and I stood there with Godiva glaring at me. I looked away.

  “I'm sorry,” I said.

  “Is it always there?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “He's not always active, but he's always there. My whole life.”

  I turned to the door that Catskinner had kicked down. There was a short hall and a larger space, it had to be the vacant storefront next door.

  “Your whole life?”

  I sighed. “When I was an infant my parents tattooed something on my back. It summoned him and bound him to my body. Like a magic circle or something. I don't know how it works.”

  I stepped on the fallen door, walked across it to the open area.

  Godiva followed me. “Why?”

  “I don't know,” I said without turning around, “maybe there was nothing good on TV.”

  There was a good sized chemistry lab in there. One of the long walls had a row of tables against it and the tables were covered with glassware and tubing, a couple of big heavy boxes that could have been centrifuges or could have been toasters for all I knew. The smell was very strong, a mix of compost and spices.

  There were a couple of the tanning beds, both of them looking like they'd been partially broken down for parts. There was a lot of the usual junk that seems to accumulate in spaces like this, broken chairs, an aluminum extension ladder, a wheelbarrow, a rolling coat rack with what looked like a random selection of clothes on it, a bank of gym lockers.

  Godiva went to the coat rack and started picking through it. I started opening the lockers. The first one seemed to be full of belts, canvas and leather, with big buckles. I went on to the next. There was a dusty lab coat hanging on a hook, a bunch of empty plastic tubes at the bottom.

  Godiva joined me at the lockers, starting at the other end. She'd pulled a baggy gray T-shirt on, it made her older, somehow. More respectable.

  I found a couple more lab coats and a stack of old, thick books. Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, Common Reactions and Reagents, Physicians Desk Reference. Benway's Guide to Endocrinology. Fun stuff.

  “Hey,” Godiva called to me. I looked over and she smiled. She had teeth, very white and very shiny. She had a cute smile, but it looked odd, artificial. Maybe that was just because I'd seen her without them.

  At the bottom of the next locker was a green metal cash box. I opened it. Cash, a couple of hundred at least. Godiva was at the locker next to me. I handed it to her. She glanced inside, then back at me.

  “I figure it's your severance pay.”

  She clutched the box to her. For a moment she looked very lost. “Can I touch you?”

  “Sure,” I said and then I realized that she wasn't asking me. Can she?

  i don't like it.

  I'm not asking you to like it, I'm asking you not to hurt her.

  if you must.

  “It's okay,” I told her. “He won't do anything.”

  She came to me and put her arms around me, still awkwardly clutching the cash box. Her body was very warm, soft and small. It was like holding a kitten. She pressed her head against my chest and her hair smelled like flowers.

  “They're not coming back for me,” she whispered into my chest. “They're really not.”

  “No,” I agree
d. “I don't think they are.”

  “I don't know what to do now.”

  I put my arms around her. I could feel Catskinner's revulsion. I ignored it.

  “I don't either.” There didn't seem to be anything more to say.

  She looked up at me. Her glasses slid down her nose and I met her strange animal eyes.

  “Are you going to kill Dr. Klein?”

  “If I find her.”

  “I'll help you find her.” Her eyes were shining and she blinked away moisture. She stepped back. It was hard to let her go.

  She went back over to the clothes rack and found a black clutch purse. She dumped the cash in it. She took a deep breath and pushed her glasses back up.

  “Let's get out of this fucking place.”

  “Yeah. And let’s get some lunch.”

  She smiled at me, her artificial teeth bright and her pink lips shining.

  I could get used to that smile, I thought.

  predictable.

  Just shut up, okay?

  Just before we left, Godiva stopped and held up a hand. “Wait just one minute, please.”

  I nodded and she ducked back into the both where I had first found her. She came out with a pink Victoria's Secret shopping bag. The book she had been reading was sticking out of the top.

  Catskinner tensed. search the bag, but it was a suggestion, not an order.

  Instead I said to Godiva, “You've been living here?”

  She nodded. “Just temporary.” She looked down and I wondered how long “temporary” had been, and what she had been doing to pay the rent.

  The address on Dr. Klein's magazine was in West County. I pulled up to the first drive thru place we passed and we ordered a lot of food. As we pulled away Godiva sorted through the bags then looked up at me shyly.

  “I can't eat with the teeth in,” she said quietly.

  “Take them out. Nobody will see in.”

  I didn't look over at her while she was eating. I kept my eyes on the road and snagged a couple of burgers. On the highway she put her hand on my arm and I glanced over at me. She looked serious, her teeth back in place.

  “Are you going to kill Dr. Klein now?” she asked.