by Mike Duran
Zeph ran his fingers through his hair. “How’d you find me?”
“Were we not supposed to?” Chat glowered.
“Some newfangled science,” Lacroix said. “Facial recognition technology—compares pictures with a database of stored images. Mugshots. Real high tech. And I guess your info was in the system.” Lacroix cast a sidelong glance and let it linger. “Now why would a nice young man like yourself have a mugshot, hmm?”
Zeph’s mouth was as dry as a salt flat.
“Look.” He forced down a swallow. “That was a long time ago. I–I barely go out anymore. The Book Swap—you saw it, right? People come and exchange books. Not many, five, six customers a week maybe. Usually the same folks. But there’s no one who …” Zeph glanced at the corpse. “I go fishing, but it’s always alone. And the Food Warehouse. I–I go there once a month. Monday mornings, usually. But this—I mean, this is the first time in weeks I’ve even been off my property.”
“So you are in hidin’,” Chat quipped.
Zeph’s gaze faltered. “Well, I suppose you could say that.”
Chat straightened and nudged up the brim of his Stetson. Then he looped his thumbs behind the thick rawhide belt. “No offense, boss. But word on the street is they call you …” A slight smile creased his lips. “Zipperface.”
Zeph blinked.
Zipperface. The name stirred something inside him, an emotional toxin lying just below the surface of his psyche. Zipperface. That’s what the kids would yell after they pelted his house with pomegranates and ran hooting down the street. Zipperface. That’s what High and his gang at the diner used to call him before Zeph went into exile. Zipperface. It’s the name he’d been running from for the last eight years.
As rage and self-pity uncoiled inside him, Zeph countered the detective’s jab the only way he knew how. “The last person who called me that got his face rearranged.” Zeph winked at the detective. “No offense, boss.”
Chat plucked his thumbs from the belt and glared at Zeph.
Lacroix stepped between them. “You’ll forgive my partner for his impertinence. But being uncooperative in a police investigation is not wise. Not only might it incur the wrath of said police—it might hinder the circumvention of another crime. Whoever did this is still unfettered and wandering the streets of this beautiful city. And if you are the target of this gunman, Mr. Walker, for whatever reason, then there is no guarantee that the next victim will not be you.”
Zeph took a step back, his combative posture wilting before them.
“That’s what I thought,” Lacroix said. Then he went to the counter, retrieved some blue surgical gloves, and wormed his fingers into them. “Now there is one more bit of information that may prod you toward cooperation.” He returned to the corpse. “And I warn you—it is not a pretty sight. Mr. Walker.” He motioned Zeph forward.
The thought of looking into that face again, going anywhere near that papery shell of a man, sent chills of nausea up his spine. Nevertheless, Zeph drew a deep breath and wobbled toward the body.
Lacroix nodded as Zeph approached, took the edge of the sheet, and gently lifted it, forming a tent over the lower half of the corpse’s body. The detective stared underneath and shook his head. “I will admit, it has us flummoxed. Not only are we unable to extract fingerprints from this man—” Lacroix leveled his gaze on Zeph. “—but we are undecided as to whether or not he is a man.”
Before Zeph could turn away, Lacroix pulled the sheet back. What Zeph saw knocked the wind out of him.
Instead of legs, two dry casings, much like skins shed by a large reptile or grub, lay in uneven folds atop the shiny metal. Either the lower half of this man’s body had been drained and dry-cleaned or he was the world’s first reptile-human hybrid.
Zeph opened his mouth, but there were no words to fill it.
“It’s decomposing fast—whatever it is.” Lacroix squinted in thought. “And apparently they are unable to slow the process. The CDC fellas already done their thing—in case you’re wonderin’—assured us that viruses or biological agents are not involved. Whatever is happening to this man is purely organic, a physiological anomaly of the highest order. Not contagious in any real sense … unless you count the willies as somethin’ that can be contracted.”
After a moment staring at the inhuman appendages, Lacroix drew the sheet back over the lower half of the corpse and let the white cloth settle.
Zeph stared blankly, shaking his head in slow incremental beats. Was there any way to explain this? Miracles were one thing, but this person—this thing—seemed like something of another order. The world Zeph Walker had carefully cultivated for the last eight years had been punctured; he stood helpless as his already dwindling sanity deflated.
And with it came a familiar sound rising inside him.
Lacroix removed the gloves, deposited them in the trash can, and returned his gaze to Zeph. He started to speak, stopped, and then said, “You look pale, young man. You’d better sit down.” He gestured toward the stool.
However, sitting would not stop what was about to happen.
Inside Zeph Walker something was brewing, something that he hadn’t felt in a long time. A murmur, beyond the range of the human ear but as tangible to him as the wonder it evoked. It was as if heaven was drawing a breath to speak. The room seemed to bristle with expectancy, the synapses of his nerve endings firing in anticipation. Was he breathing? Was his heart still pumping? It didn’t matter. Zeph’s world was on mute. Everything—the detectives watching him like dumb brutes, the bizarre doppelgänger that lay mocking him under the fluorescent light—all of it seemed utterly inconsequential to the words that were unfolding inside his head.
The wound festers.
His mother had called it ruach, the breath of God.
The land awaits.
Sometimes the words came in his sleep or in the middle of conversation.
Between them …
Yet whenever they came to him, Zeph knew they came for a reason.
Stands your darker self.
He only wished he could stop the words from ever coming again.
Zeph tapped his forehead with the heel of his hand, as if doing so would dislodge the words from his brain. Sometimes if he shouted at the top of his lungs, the prophecy would vanish. Yet no amount of shouting could erase the words he had just heard.
“What the—” Chat’s eyes were the size of silver dollars.
Zeph ignored the detective’s startled gaze and kept tapping his forehead, his jaw clenched, his mind battened against the magic of the Telling.
Finally the words evaporated … and the nausea came.
“Walker!” Chat stepped toward him. “You all right?”
Zeph swayed, punch-drunk by the premonition. The wound festers. What wound? The land awaits. Awaits what? Between them stands your darker self. He peered at the look-alike but did not have time to decipher the cryptic words. His head was spinning.
Zeph barely made it to the trash can in time to vomit. Luckily he was nowhere near the detective’s shiny eel-skin boots.
Chapter 3
Waking to gray.
Something skittered behind him, and Fergus Coyne tried to turn, but his legs weren’t working again. Where was he? How’d he gotten here?
Fergus tried to focus, but a veil seemed to drape his eyes.
“Ghaww!”
He managed to turn his head, but not without white heat shredding his temples. His vision cleared just enough to recognize the bone chimes dangling overhead, plinking out a discordant tune.
Then the mallet fell.
According to Pops, the shadow of an eclipse traveled at eighteen hundred miles an hour along the earth’s surface. Fergus had witnessed an eclipse firsthand, the terror of that black wall racing along the loch, swallowing everything in its wake. One could not help but scream at its approach. Fergus did. Like a little girl. Of course, he was only a child then. The shadow wall had roared toward him, eating up the land as
a black hole does the light. He’d learned afterward that hysteria was common during a total eclipse. And hysteria aptly described what Fergus had felt.
However, this darkness, the one now battering his brain, was something altogether different. It had a voice.
Seer, seer,
Come hither yonder hill.
It was a nursery rhyme, he thought. Dark and dreamy, the kind that summoned the kelpies and the merfolk.
Where the hollow waiteth
And the word is yet unhewed.
The unhewed word. Like a slab of granite waiting for the chisel, Fergus wielded the power to shape what was not into that which is. In the beginning was the Word. Yep, he believed that. Pops said twenty-two fundamental letters comprised the Hebrew alphabet, and with only those letters God formed the world.
If God could do it, why couldn’t they?
His eyes were open, but Fergus could not see. The roaring night beat down on him, a cataract of silence drowning out everything else. Deafening. Churning up debris.
Plink.
She hung herself with an extension cord on the balcony, overlooking a white-capped sea.
Plink.
Bad Fergie! You drove her to it. Bad Fergie!
He tried again to wrench himself from the nightmare. Yet the lunar cone of that dark trance settled on him with deathly quietude, a curtain sheer but intractable, lowered from the scaffolds of his own mind.
The void raged, waiting for Fergus to fill it.
With words.
Grimel. Nun. Vau.
It was like a second language to him.
Daleth. Zain. Samech.
If I speak in the tongues of men and angels. The tongues of angels. It was a verse from the Bible. No matter—he could do both! Fergus Coyne had deciphered the tongue of angels.
As he lay cocooned in that trancelike web, listening to the darkness, someone came near, and his breathing stopped. Tall. Angular. Broad. Hands glowing like nuclear copper. Bending over to witness his torment. Who was this stranger? Perhaps he would be so kind as to put Fergus out of his misery …
That’s when he heard the woman’s cry—a thin, catlike mewl, intertwined with the whisper of subterranean air.
Mum?
Then Fergus Coyne could no longer bear it, and his world went black.
Chapter 4
Mystery Spots and Magic Landscapes?” Tamra Lane read the words, lowered the sticky note, and cast a skeptical gaze at her grandmother. “They actually publish these kinds of books?”
“Shh!” Annie stopped brushing her long gray hair, leaned back on the rocker, and glanced at the doorway of her apartment. “If it isn’t out of print or been burned by the government—yes!”
“So that last book on angels and Armageddon wasn’t enough?” The sarcasm was thick in Tamra’s tone.
“No.” Annie peered defensively. “Now please go shut my door.”
“Okay.” Tamra huffed. She laid her Vespa scooter helmet on the sofa and shrugged off her backpack next to it. As she reached the door, she glanced into the hallway. Both ways. Despite her grandmother’s worries, no one was spying on them. Tamra clucked her tongue and closed the door. Now she was becoming paranoid.
A beam of morning sunlight pierced the curtains, and through them the Sierra Nevadas’ snowy crags glistened. Tamra returned to the living room and held up the sticky note. “Well, I doubt there are any mystery spots around here anyway.”
Annie laid a length of hair down one side of her blouse. “Maybe that’s why they stay a mystery—some people just don’t want to see them.”
“You don’t need to get snippy.”
Annie looked away and began plaiting her hair.
“Look, Nams.” Tamra approached her grandmother. “If it’s that bad here, why don’t you come stay with us?”
“We have already been through this.” Annie lifted her chin in defiance.
“Yeah, and you never have a good answer.”
“I’m tired of being a burden to everyone—that’s my answer.”
“Nams, you’re—”
Annie held up her index finger and silenced Tamra. “You and Dieter deserve more than what you got. You don’t need me crowding your space. Besides, I’ve got work to finish here.”
Before Tamra could counter, Annie closed her eyes and continued weaving her hair into two long elegant ponies.
Tamra shook her head in frustration. “Here, let me do that.” She stuffed the sticky note into her jeans pocket and began to braid her grandmother’s hair.
As far back as Tamra could remember, her grandmother had donned two plaited ponytails, remnants of her old-world background. As Tamra separated and then wove the silken strands, she found herself hoping that her hair would be this beautiful when she reached her grandmother’s age. Seventy-two and going strong. Annie Lane worked out at the facility’s gym and could probably outlast people half her age. Tamra once suggested her grandmother enter a triathlon, but athletic competition was the last thing on Annie’s mind. Her stubbornness was legendary. And the way she was going, it would probably be the death of her.
Tamra finished and patted the long fine braids into place. Then she looked straight at Annie. “Are you still having problems with Eugenia? Is that what this is about?”
Annie studied her granddaughter for a moment, as if hesitant to continue. “It isn’t just Genie. It’s a lot of people.” Then she leaned forward and whispered, “They’re changing, Tam. They aren’t themselves.”
The conviction in Annie’s eyes sent chills up Tamra’s neck. Her grandmother trafficked in conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific nonsense. However, she was anything but part of the lunatic fringe. Annie’s background as an English teacher was evident in her prim and proper manner. She was exact in her words, precise in her mannerisms, and unnervingly direct in her pronouncements. Annie Lane possessed the type of tenacity that was born of certainty or utter madness. And if the look in her eyes was any indication, she was dead certain about people changing at the retirement facility of Marvale Manor.
Tamra pulled away and attempted to sound unflustered. “Changing? Is that so weird? I mean, everybody changes.”
Annie remained solemn. After a moment she rose from the rocking chair, crossed the room, and stood before the mirror, surveying her braids. “The other day there was a commotion down the hall. Someone yelled, and then there was a loud crash. I thought maybe the General was up to his tricks.
“It was Vera’s son. He comes down from Tahoe every couple of weekends to visit. Stays with her the night. Very nice man, about twice your age. Divorced. Well, he was standing in the hallway, across from her room. White as a ghost. Apparently, he’d broke something on his way out—a vase or one of her nice figurines. But he was just standing there, staring at her, ranting that this wasn’t his mother. That she was … different.
“People came out of their apartments—he was making such a commotion. And Vera …” Annie turned and peered at Tamra. “She just stood there with a little smile on her face, without saying anything. It was disturbing, to say the least.”
Tamra gazed at her grandmother but could not find a reasonable rejoinder. Surely a son would not mistake his mother for another woman. And surely a mother would not allow such accusations from her son—much less in a public place.
Before Tamra could query, Annie resumed. “I guess he sent someone later, a doctor or some sort of professional. He had them check her out. But nothing came of it. Apparently, the woman living there is still … Vera West.”
Tamra shifted her weight. She did not like where this was going.
“Then last night,” Annie continued, “I was up, reading my Bible. I haven’t been sleeping with all this going on. And I began putting the pieces together. Something big is going on—I’ve always believed it. And now I’m sure of it.” Her voice was hushed, rapt with certitude. “It’s the Madness—the Madness of Endurance. It’s here again.”
“I knew it!” Tamra wilted. “I thought you’d giv
en up on that!” Then she put her hands on her hips. “No—there’s gotta be another answer.”
“Then how else do you explain Vera? And Genie? And Leland Feather down at Laurel House? And—”
“Okay!” Tamra crimped her lips. “Okay. I don’t know. But it can’t be some … some crazy Old West fairy tale.”
Annie shook her head. “The Madness of Endurance is not a fairy tale. It’s a matter of record.”
“Yeah, but here and now? In the twenty-first century?”
“Why not here and now? Just because we have computers and the Internet and fancy telephones like yours doesn’t mean there aren’t devils. No. The devils have not gone away. We’ve just become blind to them.”
Tamra remained obstinate, her lips pursed in skepticism. Of course there was more to life than what one could smell and touch. Twenty-five years old, growing up in the shadow of evil, Tamra could not help but believe in devils. However, at the moment, conceding the point would only enable her grandmother’s paranoia.
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Annie continued. “I was up, sitting right there reading my Bible.” She pointed to the rocker. “It was late, after one o’clock. And I heard someone walking down the hall. Real soft, as if they were trying to be slippery. So I put my ear to the door. And then I heard someone else.”
“Okay. So it’s not against the law to be out after one o’clock.”
“No, but around here? And with everything going on? So I decided to investigate.”
“Nams! You promised you’d stop that.”
“Shh!” Annie glanced at the door and lowered her voice. “I promised no such thing.”
Tamra folded her arms and glared at her grandmother.
“Please. Just hear me out.” Annie matched Tamra’s glare, and Tamra softened. “So I waited until they passed, then I peeked out. Well, they were down the hallway—Vera and Genie—in their nightclothes. At one o’clock a.m.! They disappeared around the corner at the Back Nine, and I heard them go into the courtyard. Now, what would they be doing outside at that time of night?”
As much as she wanted a good answer, Tamra did not have one.