Tormented

by Robert J. Crane

  Darkness swam in front of my eyes, the shadow swirling in the reflection like a cloud of darkness closing in across a stormy sky. Searing tendrils of raw nerves ran over my scalp, causing me to cry out as I fell back, my gaze still locked on the dark shape in the mirror staring back at me with an implacable, unceasing darkness.

  A low, rumbling voice rang in my ears, sending icy fingers of fear rippling across my back and up my neck in the moment before I hit the ground. “GET … OUT!” it said, and then I struck the floor of the bar and everything went dark.

  14.

  Reed

  I rose to my feet and stared at Anselmo Serafini, who was grandly holding his scarred hands up in a gesture that seemed to encompass everything around him. Plates rattled and people gasped at the sight of the man with the sloughed skin. There was a smell of food in the air, sharp and tangy, but it was tinged with a burnt aroma that wafted into my nose and came to rest on my tongue. It was bitter and ashen, and I lost my appetite immediately.

  “Reed Treston,” Anselmo said, staring at me from behind one of the folds of burnt flesh that partially covered his left eye. “I have waited for this moment for … oh, so long.”

  “And here I thought we’d resolved our issues back in January,” I said, sliding out into the aisle between tables to face off with him directly. There were twenty civilians or more within the fifteen feet between us, tables filled with families who were watching us but who hadn’t scattered out of fear just yet. “You know, when you … lost your cool.”

  “Terrible,” Augustus said behind me with a groan. “That was one of the ones you should have kept to yourself.”

  “Save the critique for later,” I whispered without looking back at him. “So, Anselmo … I have to admit, I’m surprised you’re not in Italy. Feels like America isn’t really your … uh, speed?” I’d started to say, “I figured the heat here would be too much for you,” but Augustus’s previous rebuke held me off.

  “How could I leave when I have business yet unattended?” Anselmo took a step toward me slowly, almost non-threatening. He looked calm, relaxed, like he was just here to talk. But then again, that was how Anselmo had always looked until he became completely unhinged.

  A sensation like spiders crawling up my back made me want to shiver, but I held it in. “You know you’re a fugitive from justice, right? I’m obligated to arrest you and return you to jail.” That got a few of the civilians moving around me, sliding out of their tables slowly.

  Anselmo hammered a wooden segment of counter holding up the servers’ computer and printer for bills. I blanched as a rain of splinters flew into the air surrounding him. I heard a few shouts, cries, and saw a woman hold up her forearm, pinpricked with blood in four places. She looked at him fearfully, but Anselmo did not take his eyes off of me. “No one move,” he said, but he barely got the words out before screams tore through the restaurant and panic flooded in.

  People broke and ran, and only a small part of me was surprised it took that long. Anselmo blinked, casting his gaze around as the panic rose. I watched a Hmong man wearing a polo scoop up two toddlers, one under each arm, and flee, bent low, a raven-haired woman I took to be his significant other close behind him with a baby in her arms. They kept the line of booths between them and Anselmo; very wisely, I thought. I watched a few others following their example.

  The family closest to Anselmo was a couple with a girl that was probably ten, and they seemed to have fallen into a state of catatonia, of panic turned to paralysis. The father held his fork six inches from his mouth, though now it was shaking so hard that the chicken he’d had speared on it was splattered on the table, lying in a little pool of its own sauce. His wife and daughter sat across from him with twin looks of horror matching each other almost as closely as their auburn hair.

  “You,” Anselmo said, addressing the man as the cacophony of the exodus raged around him. “What is your name?”

  The man put his shaking fork down with a clatter. “Duane,” he said, and his voice matched the fork, the pitch leaping all over the place.

  “What is your daughter’s name, Duane?” Anselmo asked.

  Duane’s head swiveled slowly, robotically, as though he were articulated by gears that ratcheted into place one tooth at a time. His head turned two clicks to rest on his daughter, whose mouth hung open just an inch. Her hands were on the table, shaking, no plate before her.

  “What is her name, Duane?” Anselmo asked, so calm, so pleasant, like he was standing over a family dinner table making conversation. “Tell me, or I shall snap her neck as though I were cracking one of these crab legs.” He reached down and delicately picked one up from Duane’s plate and snap! broke it, sending tiny shards of carapace into the air.

  “C-c-Clarissa,” Duane said, not taking his eyes off his daughter.

  I started to move but Anselmo held up a hand to stay me. “Do not.” Anselmo’s eyes gleamed. “Clarice,” he said in that thick Italian accent, somehow mangling the name and turning it more lovely all at once. Duane did not correct him. “It is a beautiful name. Did it take you long to have your Clarice?” Anselmo’s eyes narrowed, showing me veined scars on his eyelids. “Was she an accident?”

  “Not—an accident—no,” Duane said, between breaths. He sounded like he was starting to hyperventilate. “And no, not—long.”

  “She is important to you, yes?” Anselmo asked, taking another step forward. His scarred hand came down slowly, gently, on the back of Clarissa’s neck, and I tensed, my fists clenching. He waited for Duane to nod. “You wanted to have a child. It was planned.”

  “Yes,” Duane said, and how he let out a high rasp, nearing complete panic. I couldn’t see his face because he was looking at Anselmo, but I could imagine the pain, the fear, that had to be written across it by now.

  “I am certain you enjoyed your many, many attempts to have her,” Anselmo said. “What would do if someone took away something you wanted?” His fingers kneaded the back of Clarissa’s neck soothingly. Clarissa’s eyes were riveted downward, at the table, and then they closed as I watched a tear streak down her pale, freckled cheek. “She represents … years of time invested, yes? You have loved her, poured your life and effort into her, cared for her, nurtured her?” Anselmo drew a steady breath and looked right at me. “What would you do if someone put to death all that you had labored so hard for? If someone came along and ripped from your very hand everything you wanted?”

  “I—I –” Duane’s voice became a keening sound, only an octave lower than a wail, and I judged him seconds from a panic attack.

  “Leave her alone, Anselmo,” I said, feeling the bitter plunge of guilt right to the ground floor—in this case, my guts. It was an icy sensation, and I wasn’t far from panic myself. “Your quarrel is with me and Sienna.”

  “I have no quarrel with your sister,” Anselmo said, massaging the back of Clarissa’s neck. “My quarrel with her is done.” He lifted his other hand and pointed a finger at me, and there was a pit between his first and second knuckles like a blister had popped and never healed. “My quarrel with you, on the other hand, has yet to come to a similar close.”

  “What do you want, Anselmo?” I asked. Perspiration welled up on my palms, making my fingers slick as I held my balled-up fists together.

  “I want to hurt you, of course,” Anselmo said, quiet, not breaking off his gaze from me. “To make you suffer.” There was very little menace in the way he said it, so simple a statement of fact. From anyone else it might have meant nothing, a declaration with as little power behind it as carried in a wind-up toy.

  From Anselmo, it felt like it had the power of a hurricane. He was loud by nature, boisterous and swaggering, full of life and energy even now, in his questioning of Duane as he used Clarissa as a prop in his little drama. “You know,” I said, “Ricardo Montalbán said that a lot better in Wrath of Khan. But then, you’ve always been a second-rate villain.”

  Anselmo smiled, and if possible, this made him lo
ok even worse. He leaned in close to Clarissa, and I watched her shudder as he brought his deformed cheek within inches of hers, never breaking his gaze with me, predator to presumed prey. “I am no villain. I was to be a god.” He took his fingers from Clarissa’s neck as he straightened up, smile disappearing as rage filled his eyes and coldness knotted his rasping voice. “Do you know what gods do to those who defy them?” He waved a hand magnanimously toward Duane. “You should leave. She does not need to see what is about to happen.” There was a brief pause, then Anselmo looked straight at Duane. “Be a man, not a coward. Get your daughter out of here.”

  That snapped Duane out of his rising panic and he clawed for Clarissa’s hand as the girl’s mother slid out of the freestanding booth on the aisle opposite the one where Anselmo and I were facing off. She wrapped her arms around Clarissa and pushed her forward as Duane’s face, a panicked sheet of white interrupted by a black hole where his mouth hung open while he gasped for breath while running away, followed behind. I’m sure Duane’s body was following, but honestly, his face was all that I remember seeing as he retreated.

  “Thank you,” I said to Anselmo as we stood there.

  He cocked his head at me and regarded me with something on the measure of disgust. “For what? You think I would hurt the girl?” He made a sound like a furious bull. “You are a depraved and sickening creature, and my revenge on you will punish you for all the affronts you have leveled against me, starting with—”

  I’m sure Anselmo would have kept talking, but a rock twice the size of his head zoomed out from behind the booth next to him and hit him squarely in the face. It shattered into pieces as it struck, clearly meeting an object stronger than it. Another followed, sending Anselmo rocketing into the booth Clarissa’s family had been occupying only moments earlier, shards from the impact showering me as I rushed to cover my face.

  “I know y’all forgot I was here,” Augustus said from behind me, “but I feel like I should take an active part in this conversation.”

  “Didn’t forget you,” I said as I raised my hands, “just didn’t know how much use you’d be in the middle of a restaurant without an ounce of dirt in sight.”

  “Oh, there’s plenty of dirt,” Augustus said, leaping onto the table behind me. “But I figured against a guy who’s pretty much invulnerable, I might borrow a few of these loose rocks from the koi pond out front before I start resorting to the dirty tricks.”

  “‘Dirty tricks’?” I asked. “Funny.”

  “Huh?” Augustus asked. “Oh. You people and your puns—”

  “‘You people’?” I threw back at him.

  Anselmo came up from behind the table by throwing it at us, and I had to duck to avoid decapitation. The throw was rough, and the wooden support that affixed the table’s base to its top hit me with a glancing blow as it flew past. I heard Augustus making an oof!-ing sound behind me, and knew he’d not been quite as artful a dodger as I had.

  I was barely straightened back up when I saw Anselmo charging toward me. I threw my hands out and summoned the winds at my disposal. Over three years ago when I’d first faced off against Anselmo, he’d been insanely strong and possessed of near-invulnerability. In fact, I’d never actually beaten him, not really. I’d made him run, I’d hurt him in a couple different ways, but I’d never really beaten him. Sienna had beaten him. Just like she had everyone else.

  But I’d had three years to practice my skills while Anselmo probably hadn’t put an ounce of effort into anything but sitting around, being a giant, throbbing penis. I’ll give Sienna credit for this: training was important. Vitally important. And no one had realized this like her. She’d had these giant, industrial fans installed in our facility when it was rebuilt, and I’d spent every day for the last six months building up my strength until I could reverse the currents within them. For the Reed that faced Anselmo Serafini three years ago, this would have impossible, right up there with the idea of flying through the streets of New York City.

  Which is why when I hit him with the focused gust of air I summoned up as he leapt at me, it caught him mid jump and hurled him twenty-five feet into the wall behind him.

  Beige-white wallpaper broke as Anselmo smashed through it and disappeared into a hole the size of a door. I didn’t harbor any belief that this would be the end for him, though, and so I moved swiftly as I could as soon as I saw him vanish into the cloud of dust and darkness.

  “Augustus!” I shouted, swiveling to look behind me. Augustus popped up, holding the side of his head. I could see a little blood in his short-cropped hair, dripping down his shoulder and onto the white shirt beneath his suit jacket. “You all right?”

  He cringed, rocking his head left to right on his neck as though he were testing it out. “Barely got me. I’m good.”

  I spun back and saw one of the waiters hiding fearfully almost twenty feet from me, ducked behind one of the wooden pillars that stood at the back of a booth where there was no other to meet it. I could see one of his eyes peeking from behind cover, astonishment and fear mingling on his features as he alternated his glance between me and the giant hole I’d just put in the wall by flinging Anselmo through it.

  I advanced on the hole in the wall, hands out defensively, until I could see into the space behind the wall. It was certainly dark, but looked like an empty shopfront, with light streaming in through windows in the distance. I heard the shattering of glass and watched one of them, almost two hundred feet away, break into pieces as the colored paint with the foot-tall “GOING OUT OF BUSINESS” message fell to the ground and broke. “I will see you again soon, Reed,” Anselmo called from across the space between us. “Consider well how I might be using the intervening time to prepare my revenge.”

  With that, Anselmo leapt out the window and disappeared at a run. I watched him go, pretty sure I couldn’t catch him and equally certain that chasing after him unprepared would result in very bad things for me more than him.

  “He’s getting away,” Augustus said from just behind me. He made to shove past, but I held him back.

  “We’re not ready,” I said, feeling that queasy, icy sensation in my gut. “And he can outrun us both.” I was already reaching for my cell phone and dialing a number I knew by heart. “He’s already gone.”

  “You just going to let him go?” Augustus asked, fingers tense on my shoulder. I got the feeling he still wanted to push past me and go into hot pursuit.

  I didn’t answer him; I just waited for the voice at the other end of the line as my cell phone trilled in my ear. When Andrew Phillips picked up, I didn’t even wait for him to get out more than a syllable before I spoke. “Anselmo Serafini is back in town. We need to add a manhunt for him because, unless I miss my guess … he’s here to cause some havoc.”

  15.

  Sienna

  There was cool liquid seeping through my shirt as I awoke, a rude awakening if ever there was one. Faces swam into view above me and I took a sputtering breath, my head hard against the floor. It wasn’t the first time I’d woken up on the floor, not by any means, but it was the first time I’d done so on the floor of a bar a long damned way from home.

  Jake and Brant were on either side of me, faces heavy with concern. Just above me, upside down but much more neutral about the whole thing, was Sarah, who looked just about the same when she realized I was awake as she had a few minutes earlier sitting at the bar.

  “Can you hear me?” Sarah asked, calm and collected, like this was a thing that happened all the time. For all I knew, it did.

  “Hear you, see you, smell the martini on your breath,” I said, lurching up to sitting position while the three of them gave way for me to do so. “You know what I’d like to hear, though?”

  “Postmodern Jukebox do some Sinatra?” Brant asked innocently. “I feel like they’d knock it out of the park, really. Just a fantasy I have.”

  “That wouldn’t be very postmodern,” I said, focusing on the bar beyond the three of them. “And no. I me
an, yes, it would be amazing, but not right now. I want to hear someone start spilling their guts about what’s happening to me here.”

  Sarah regarded me as coolly as ever, while Brant and Jake exchanged a look. Brant ended up speaking first. “What do you think is happening here?”

  “I think someone is messing with my mind,” I said, getting to my feet. Cool drops of my drink slid their way down my belly under my shirt. “A telepath.”

  “Uhh … can’t say I have much experience with telepaths,” Jake said, probably trying to sound reassuring. “Are you certain you’re not just … overworked or something? We tend to get a lot of folks that have trouble unwinding when they first get here.”

  That brought a stock-still quiet, and I looked past them to see that the place had cleared out, that we were the only ones left in Shorty’s. “Where’s the lawman?”

  “You talking about Z?” Brant asked, looking toward the door. “He left a while ago.”

  “Z?” I asked, looking around the bar. “Please tell me his middle name is also Z, and his last name is Top.”

  “Hah,” Brant said, pointing a finger at me. “Good one. No, his name is Zebulon Darwin, so people call him Z.” He looked toward the door nervously. “Uhh, you want me to call him back over? He’s probably off for the rest of the night.”

  “Does that mean if I dial 911, he’ll show up sometime tomorrow morning?” I asked, brushing past Jake to head for the door. I went down the ramp and burst out of Shorty’s into a torrential downpour. Rain fell from the sky in a steady flow, and my hair was soaked two seconds after I got out there. The little overhang of Shorty’s roof did nothing to stop the hard-blown rain from blasting me like it had been turned loose from an elephant shower.

  “Aww, you didn’t need to go out in this,” Brant said from a few steps behind me as I stood on the edge of the sidewalk, staring up and down the street.