Another nod.
“Course’ you are,” Cyrus said, shaking his head. “Why else would you come out here by yourself, cept’ to liven up a dull night? Am I right? Sure I am.” He turned around and waved a hand over his shoulder. “C’mon in and I’ll get you fixed up.” He walked over to the desk and with a grunt slid the left corner over about a foot. He opened a trap door in the floor and pulled out a sloshing mason jar full of clear liquid. Even with his meticulous storage (his product tended to evaporate in a hurry otherwise) the fumes poked fingers up his nostrils that were almost as familiar as his own.
A footstep scraped the floor behind him. The corners of Cyrus’s mouth perked. Finally he could get a real look at this lil’ lady customer. Maybe they could have a sampling before his mysterious visitor disappeared back into the night. “Now how was you fixing to pay for this here order?” he said, turning around.
Cyrus’s breath caught, “Oh, it’s you.” His heart (and prick) sank. He wasn’t getting a thing from the town’s dried-up old school marm. “Something wrong Missus Najarian? You feel sickly? You don’t mind my saying so, you don’t look very well.”
Charlotte Najarian’s clothes and hair were filthy. The creases of her elbows and the folds of her neck were lined with dirt. A purple-black stain flowed up her arm from her hand, following her veins and bringing them into sharp relief against her white cheek. The fingernails on that hand were black. The fingers on her other hand looked as if something had been at them. Her eyes were on him, but cloudy, empty. In the close confines of the cabin her smell enveloped Cyrus and he winced.
Out of manners, Cyrus forced himself not to cover his nose with the back of his hand. He took a step toward her and almost put his hands on her shoulders before thinking better of it. Whatever she had might be contagious. “Here,” he said, “sit yourself down on the bed here.” He was already going over what to do for her. He would have to leave her here and go for Constable Will in the Harvester. Much as he hated to drive the two leaf-covered ruts he thought of as the Woods Road after sundown, it was what a man did. This poor lady was sickly something awful. Could it have been a critter bite? Her hand did look, well, chewed.
“How’d you ever get yourself all the way out here?” he asked busying himself by his camp stove once he got her set down on the bed. “I’ll make you some tea. The Owenses gave me a packet of root tea—don’t ask me what kind of root—but it always makes me feel better when I’m feeling poorly.”
Cyrus turned up the heat on the stove and prayed the water would boil soon so he could get the tea steeping. Anything he could do to fight the stink coming off this poor woman would be a blessing. Maybe it was blood poisoning; that might explain the dark coloring on her other arm and her veins all showy like that. Would that explain the smell, though? Once a person had that gassy, sweet odor coming off them, well, flies made more sense than doctors. The reek actually intensified, making his eyes water. “Sweet Jesus,” he muttered, breathing through his mouth. He turned around and she was standing right behind him. “What are—?” he began.
She opened her mouth wide, wide, too wide and extended a long gray tongue. Perched on the end, like a tiny diver at the end of the board, was the biggest hornet Cyrus had ever seen. It was thick as his thumb and shone blue-black like a wet piece of coal. Charlotte pulled her tongue and its rider back into her mouth. “Oh. My. God,” Cyrus said shaking his head slowly back and forth. He took a step back and bumped into the wall of empty mason jars. They jangled like dream music. Charlotte smiled and darted at him, pressing her stinking body against his with uncanny strength. Mason jars fell and exploded. He opened his mouth to scream and she clamped her lips over his. Cyrus MacCoy’s eyes bulged as something sharp and buzzing passed between them.
Cyrus lay still on a carpet of broken glass, a web of black veins radiating from his lips and neck. He died with his jaw clenched and set. Charlotte stood over him, swaying gently, her mouth unhinged and tongue dangling. The forest hissed with the night winds every so often, but no animals called. After twenty minutes, a muffled buzzing stirred behind Cyrus’s locked teeth. A moment later, the triangular head of the wasp scissored its way through his cheek. It pulled itself through the hole and took a moment to pass its legs and antenna through its mandibles. It flicked itself into the air and alighted on Charlotte’s tongue. She hauled the wasp back into her mouth.
Charlotte shambled over to Cyrus and threw him over her shoulder like his near two hundred pounds were little more than a rolled up doormat. She pivoted and walked out into the night with her prize. She would take him home and together they would wait in the earthen root cellar. There was room. She’d been digging.
Chapter 16
Will sat in his mother’s favorite old rocking chair and watched Amy James sleep. Dinner at George’s had been a blast. They’d stayed up drinking, telling their stories and playing Trivial Pursuit. George, of course, trounced them all, but Erica gave him a run for his money. George hadn’t drunk any more than the rest of them the whole night and Will was pretty sure his best friend had laughed more in a single evening than in the year leading up to it.
Will rocked in the dark and thought about Erica. She was good for George, but he wasn’t sure how good she was for Shard. And what would happen to George when she was finished here? There was something between them, something big and true, anyone could see that, but would it be enough to survive when it came time for her leave? Amy stirred, rolled over and sighed something in her sleep about rhyolite. At least that’s what it sounded like. One tattooed arm lay stark against the sheet in the moonlight.
The sex had been amazing. Will had been a little nervous at first. It wasn’t like he couldn’t get himself out of Shard every so often. He had a couple of women he dated on and off in Lewiston and another in Somerset, but it had still been the better part of six months. He’d reached the point in his life when sex was something that left him empty if the emotional connection wasn’t there, and had begun to resign himself to the eccentric old bachelor model. Nothing wrong with being on the lonesome—he enjoyed loneliness to some extent—but Will was wired to love. Amy had surprised him. With all her tattoos and crazy hair he’d been sure she would be a wildcat in bed, but she’d been slow and gentle. It was he who had lost control (to her delight) and went all howlin’ wolf. The moon streamed through the window over his shoulder and brushed her cheek with blue-white.
Is this where it starts? Would he look back in a few years and remember this moment as the one when he fell in love with Amy James? No. Some question stood on his heart. There was something she wasn’t telling him and the other thing, the concussion dream, the hallucination, whatever you wanted to call it. It wouldn’t leave him be.
In the two days since he’d come back out of that hole in the ground, he’d been running from it, telling himself he hadn’t seen it, that it didn’t happen. It was just like Amy said: he’d fallen and banged himself up and his bruised brain had thrown some scary at him. That was it. But the cop in him wouldn’t let it go. Amy’s explanation would have worked just fine, but he’d seen his father before he fell. But it wasn’t his father. It was some kind of demon watchdog that looked like a spider most of the time, but could look like anything it wanted to. Yïn. The dragon had called it, Yïn. Dragon. Jesus. Will leaned back in the rocking chair and closed his eyes.
Dampf was waiting there in the dark, wafting through its different forms: the little girl, the celestial angel, the obscene devil, and the towering dragon. Will Two-Bears McFarlan lived a great part of his life in his imagination, the pages of books his stepping-stones into other worlds. He could tell the difference between make-believe and reality. He couldn’t un-know what he knew. The dragon and the spider were real. They had pulled him underground because they wanted his help.
“The Pompiliad returns,” he whispered in the dark.
Amy moaned and thrashed in the sheets, grew still.
Will tried to imagine it, the Wasp. Why couldn’t demon
s be bunny-rabbits or fuzzy little puppies? He closed his eyes and tried to see it, but for some reason all he got was an image of his motorcycle. Will got up and stood over Amy. He brushed a stray lock of cobalt hair off her forehead and stared a little at the swirls on her shoulder. There was enough here to love, wasn’t there? He walked out of the room. Give it some time; he’d only just met her.
Will walked out the front door without bothering to put any clothes on. There probably wasn’t another living soul even awake in Shard right now, let alone about to walk by his house. The August night was cool, but with just enough moisture to give it a velvety feel on his skin. His Indian Chief leaned in the driveway. There was a tiny spec of bug guts on the tank that needed cleaning, but other than that it was as gorgeous as always. Now, there was a love he didn’t have to question. It had been his dad’s bike and now his, the family sword rumbling down the generations.
Will sat astride the bike; that one rear shock squeaked its usual welcome. He put his hands on the grips and closed his eyes, The Pompiliad.
A flash of road blurring by under a front tire.
He opened his eyes. Just the driveway and his little rancher with the neat row of box hedges out front. Will closed his eyes again.
A horizon line, dead flat against a night sky sprayed orange with sodium light. Will scowled, what was this? Were these his thoughts? They felt injected. A city now, rising along that pin straight horizon. Great towers serrated with glowing windows and crowned with blinking antennae stretched up as the asphalt roared underneath him. He knew this city even before he passed the big green highway sign. The black tower, like a pyramid stretched long, with two great white horns, stood out in his memory from movies.
WELCOME TO CHICAGO
THE WINDY CITY
Will opened his eyes. It was getting close, eating the miles between the plains and the rolling Blue Ridge Mountains. How long until he heard the sound of another motorcycle echoing through the woods? Would it stop to eat or sleep? Or, would it wait until it got to Shard to feed? He wrapped his arms around himself. “Get a hold of yourself, gunslinger,” he said. The shake in his voice was not a comfort. Goosebumps tightened his skin and his scrotum squirmed on the leather saddle.
There was no use telling himself this wasn’t happening, or that it was some kind of dream. He knew what he knew. There would be no running from this into denial or craziness. Will let go of himself and gripped the handlebars. He was Authority, the Law, and there was no one else to take this job. How far was Chicago? Maybe eight hours. Will squeezed the front brake, expecting to hear that mousy little squeak and getting it. He’d fix that one day, but tonight it was like the voice of the Indian telling him he wasn’t alone. Would it really be here in eight hours?
Will breathed in the night air, cool, full of green and lavender. Frogs and crickets sang, the woods shushed and creaked. A whiff of sulfur found him and like the squeaky brake reminded him where he was and what was under him. He had more time. Shard wasn’t ready to receive the Wasp yet. He didn’t know how he could know any of this, how he could see these things in his mind, or how he could feel so certain about the time he did or did not have, but there it all was.
Will stared up at the stars, slow wheeling through the night toward dawn. Orion stood on the shoulders of a big oak, stretching his bow. Will wished his father was still alive. He needed some help. He swung off the bike and walked to the front door. He turned to survey the night one final time before heading in to bed… and froze.
His father was sitting astride the motorcycle.
No, not his father. The eyes were huge, black, anti-stars. The spider, Yïn. It tipped Will a wink and touched its index finger to its brow. You have time to prepare. Gather your forces. A smile split his father’s face. The Pompiliad gathers his. The image of the road flashed in Will’s mind, Chicago receding in the side view mirror and the giant electrified intestines, pipe and tank and tower, of Gary, Indiana.
Will shook his head and the images cleared. “Get out of my head,” he said and turned to walk into the house. He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “And get the fuck off my bike.”
* * *
“Giant shape shifting dragons and spiders, huh?” George said, sipping a fumy cup of coffee. Will could smell the gin in George’s mug even over the gourmet French Roast he’d had delivered all the way from Lexington. Even so, in these last few days George seemed to be getting a handle on his alcohol problem, dosing down. Will looked at his best friend across the kitchen table.
“I know exactly how it sounds,” Will said, keeping his voice low. The light coming through the windows was ashen, not yet full dawn. Erica was still asleep upstairs and George was half asleep in front of him, his hair corkscrewing off in several directions. “And I know how someone saying ‘I know exactly how it sounds’ sounds. You must think I’ve gone off my fucking nut.” Will paused a second. Loraine had said that same thing to him the other day when she told him about finding Darwin in the web. And what had he done? Not believed her. Shit. He was an asshole. Nothing worse than figuring that out for oneself.
George stared into his coffee mug and thought about adding another half shot of gin. He didn’t. He looked back up at William Two-Bears. Will’s eyes were red-rimmed with purple bags under them and were a little too wide and white, but he didn’t look crazy. George knew crazy. Up until just a few days ago he and mental illness met every morning in the bathroom mirror. So what did that leave? Will could have had a hallucination or a dream. He could have been sleepwalking. Or as Amy suggested he could have gotten a concussion when he fell through that hole. Jesus, what the hell was he doing down a shaft anyway? Everyone in Shard knew well enough to stay out of the damned mine, even the kids.
“Say something, man.” Will said. “You’re making me nervous.”
George took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair, spiking it up even crazier. “You’re not nuts, I can tell that just by looking at you. Not any more than usual, anyhow.”
Will blinked. “You believe me?”
George sipped his coffee, grimaced. “I wouldn’t so much as call it belief, friend of mine. I mean, how on earth could I possibly wrap my gray matter around what you just told me?” He held up a hand before Will could say anything. “I’m not saying that what you said isn’t true. I also have to wonder—have to, Will—if you had a somnambulistic episode or something like that. You know people have been known to drive cars and everything while they was sleeping. Hell, some folks get fat because they can’t stay out of the fridge while they’re dead to the world.”
Will clenched a fist on the table. “You think I haven’t been over that? I had myself convinced that I saw what I saw because I hit my head.” Now that he thought about it, Amy was the one who convinced him of that. “But I saw my father before I hit my head and blacked out.”
“You sure it couldn’t have been someone else, man? C’mon, Constable, you’re a cop for Christ’s sake. Figure it out.”
Will sighed. He needed to be patient. It had taken him three days to come around to believing and he had been the one who actually witnessed everything. He couldn’t expect George to just cotton to his story over a single cup of coffee at 5:30 in the morning. “I know, I know.” He sipped his coffee. “I been over this and over this. And I sure as hell didn’t have a concussion when I saw him, or it, that fucking spider-thing tonight.” He took on the rhythm of a witness reciting the facts at the scene. “I left Amy in the bedroom ‘cause I couldn’t sleep and walked outside. I sat on the Chief and had a kind of, I don’t know, a kind of vision, I guess—saw where the Pompiliad was.”
“The bad guy?”
“Yeah, the wasp thing. And then I got up to go back into the house, turned around and there he was sitting on the bike.” He paused a moment. “My dad.”
“And you told Amy?”
“Not about last night, this morning, whatever… no, but I ran into her the first time when I had just crawled out of the mine. That was a
fter Dampf.”
“The, uh, the dragon?”
“Yes, the uh, the dragon.”
“And what did Amy think of all this?” Now George had taken on the cadence of an interrogator—just the facts, ma’am.
“She was sure it must have been a concussion dream, too.”
“Uh-huh, uh-huh, and how was the sex?”
Will looked up.
“She as much of a hotrod as her detailing might suggest, Constable?”
“Aw, shut up, man,” Will said, but both men were laughing.
After a minute, Will sat up straight. “I got it.”
“Oh, shit. You got what?”
“I’ll show you. When it gets a little lighter, we’ll just go back there with some gear and I’ll introduce you.” Will sat back.
“I don’t think so, Constable.”
“The hell you mean?”
“I’m not going spelunking with you into a burning mine.”
“That part of it wasn’t even smoking,” Will lied.
“Yeah, and what are you not even smoking, señor Two-Bears?” George put his palms flat on the table and took a breath. “Listen, aside from persuading me that you ain’t gone on a trip to Wackeyland Farms, what do you need me to see this so bad for?”
Will thought of those towers of pipe and sodium light outside of Gary; he could almost feel the rumble of the alien motorcycle under him as it ate the miles. He thought of Dampf and Yïn: monsters, nightmares—they were the good guys. Will looked at George and admitted two hard things, “I’m scared, Georgie. I’m scared half to death and I need some help.”
George looked into his friend’s face and sighed long and tired. “I’m a little claustrophobic.”
“The main chamber’s really big.”
“You said it’s all full of diamonds and shit, right?”
“It’s a fucking dragon horde, George.”
“Right,” George said. “Well, I’m taking one.”
Will didn’t argue. Outside, the sun threw a burning leg over the horizon and hauled itself into Shard.
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