The Bone Man slid a hand into the back pocket of her jeans and withdrew something.
“Leave that alone!” she yelled through the blood taste in her mouth. Her tongue was bit to pieces.
Through a chorus of tittering, Maribel’s letter ended up in the hands of the cook. Not pausing to consider, he ripped it into pieces and sprinkled it over the soup like a seasoning. A few minutes later, her left arm accompanied it.
More Bone Men gathered around the cauldron, leaving her laying there to bleed out, but Dara didn’t feel completely incapacitated. She rolled over and put out a knee, pushed up, staggered and crashed into a block, the large eyelid of the block’s eye blinking rapidly in surprise. She looked for another passage out.
There wasn’t any.
She was still trapped in the maze, closed in on all sides. The vestibule seemed even smaller, and now a hundred Bone Men filled the space, clucking their tongues and beating madly on their war-painted chests. Their eyes and the eyes in the walls…
All of them on her, starving and big.
Chapter 18
Luke didn’t think the world was ending.
But Johnny did. By the time they’d worked their way back to the treatment plant parking lot, a dozen police cars showered the area in arcs of red and blue haze. Several ambulances had arrived as well. Seeing his bloody face and shirt, a pair of response crew gravitated to Johnny, who promptly cussed them away. They went a few feet and stopped, discussing how to go about manhandling someone Johnny’s size. Behind them approached a detective in a wrinkled, blue-collared shirt and black slacks. He had no tie on but looked like he had an invisible noose cutting off the circulation at his neck.
“Good evening. I’m Detective Edle. Just curious if any of you could help me out. Were you around when the alarms first went off?” Johnny furrowed his brow. “Alarms?”
“Yes, several security alarms went off earlier when the equalization basin ruptured and the alien attacked. Some of the plant’s systems had failed from the flooding. We came when no plant operator responded to our calls.”
“We didn’t hear the alarms,” said Luke quietly. “You know about her—I mean, the Alien?”
“No worries. Its dead but yes, we know. We’re reviewing the security cameras. They have most of the event recorded.”
“Um, excuse me. I don’t know about any of this. I don’t know how I got here,” Mandy added. “I’m from up north—I don’t live here anymore. Can I have a ride to my sister’s house?”
Edle evaluated Mandy in her nearly bursting, dirt-and-blood crusted lingerie. “You must have been abducted somehow. Does your sister live in this town?”
“Close by.”
Edle looked over his shoulder. “Abrams?”
A handsome black police officer poked his head up from the other side of his squad car. “Yeah?”
“Have time to give her a lift home? It’s nearby.”
The flat look on the man’s face said that he didn’t have time, but he motioned Mandy over.
Johnny threw up his hands. “You’re not going to ask her any questions? Just let her go off in her nightie. Like that?”
“Calm down,” said the detective.
“What about all these dead bodies? Aren’t you going to ask one of us about that? We’re the only people left standing. So out with it. You cannot possibly be out here just for some stupid alarms at the plant.”
Edle’s mouth thinned, and he nodded. “I’ve never survived an alien attack, so I have no idea what you’ve gone through, but I would suggest you go home and get some rest. Have those cuts looked at first. Count yourselves lucky. One guy had his face forced under raw sewage and he’s already showing signs of severe viral infection.” Edle’s head canted for a moment, and he stepped back, concerned. “The alien didn’t give you those cuts, did it?”
“No….” Johnny glanced at Luke. “Is he for fuckin’ real?”
“I think so.”
“But I’m not dreaming anymore—we’re not inside the dream, so why is this guy being such an asshole?”
“Hey!” Edle looked at them both, frowning. “Get on your way, both of you, before my good nature takes a detour.”
“We’re going.” Luke grabbed Johnny under the forearm and pulled him toward the parking lot. They walked in stunned silence for a while, the sound of crickets buffering the air.
“You’re not wearing your glasses,” Luke said.
Johnny felt the pocket of his shorts. “Still got them. I just don’t need them anymore. Not since… what happened. Jesus H Christ, what’s this all about Luke? How did you know about that dollar bill? Or any of this shit for that matter?”
Luke stopped at his Volt, put his hands against the hood and leaned into it. Closed his eyes. “You, me, and Dara are the only people who know about these nightmare realities—Dara calls them Lifemares. We each have something in our dreams that brought us lucidity. Mine was a red ducky.”
“Say what?”
“Dara’s was a plastic toy bug. Yours was the two-dollar bill. We found those items in Maribel’s classroom in a box. Her teacher’s aide had written our name under each one of them.”
“The ugly chick married to the composer guy?”
“The one you tried to talk into bed, yes.”
Johnny put his hand over his forehead as though to squeeze the new information away. “So are they doing this? Is this like witchcraft?”
“I don’t know. Who does? I know we have to get as far away from people as we can, before one of us remembers the music again. To tell you the truth, I feel like it could happen for me again at any moment.”
“Holy shit.” Johnny looked up to the dark sky. “I remember Dara brought one with her to the bar, and that’s what happened back at the yard…with the dog…that was when the nightmare started, when I remembered the song…although that copper yard was pretty much a cocksucking nightmare from the start.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Forget it. What about Maribel? Did she say anything about her assistant?”
“Allie? That woman’s been trying to destroy her for quite a while. Don’t you ever pay attention to anything I tell you?”
“No,” said Johnny, thinking for a moment. “This is like Armageddon stuff…my wife, Luke…she was alive for fuck’s sake.”
“Only in the Lifemare.”
Johnny didn’t appear in favor of believing this and changed the subject. “Why are the cops being so stupid?”
“Nobody questions these things. Remember just before you touched that dollar bill? Remember your state of mind? Everything that happened to you was completely acceptable, as though the nightmare wanted us ignorant, marching along like idiots.”
“To our deaths?”
“I think so. And if the outside world knew, that would bring attention to us—I don’t think the balladeer wants that.”
“Balladeer? You mean Allie or her husband?”
“I don’t know. Okay?”
Johnny tried to open the car door. “Get this open and take me home.”
“You should come to my house. You’re safer around us.”
“No, no, fuck that and fuck you. I’m going to find my crappy work cell phone and I’m gonna call Beltran. I’m gonna tell him I love him one last time, and then I’m going to get fuckin’ tanked.”
“You’re going to risk other people’s lives?”
“Hell no!” He pointed to the door again.
Luke took out his keys and unlocked it. They both got inside.
“Well?”
“I’m going to buy a shit load of tequila and go rent a cabin. Stay clear of everybody.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” said Luke, starting the car. “The cabin, I mean.”
“You’re not invited.”
“Fine…try to find a cabin in a place you’ve never been before.” Luke put on his seat belt. He realized as he did so that his hands were trembling like crazy. The music slowly uncoiled like a snake inside
him.
“What difference does that make?”
“Remember the black curtain?”
“Sure. The exit. You have to go to a place you’ve never been before. I figured that part out when we crossed into that ravine in the field. I’d always been afraid to go down there as a kid. Someone told me once….” Johnny laughed dryly. “That a fucking crocodile lived down there.”
“Good thing for you there was a place out there you’d never been before.”
“Oh yeah, I’m so lucky.”
For a few minutes, they drove down Palm Street, saying nothing. Just to break up the stinging silence, Luke asked, “So you’re really calling your boy? At long last?”
Johnny lowered his chin to his chest and studied the dried tracks of blood over his hands. “It’s the end of the world. I’ve got to make peace, right? As long as this music is buzzing in the back of our ears…we’re living on borrowed time.”
Luke pulled up to the shadowy façade of Johnny’s house. “Well, call me too, if you decide to come with me and the girls. I still think all the lucid people should stick together.”
“Thanks for asking. No.” Johnny got out and slammed the door.
“Take care of yourself,” said Luke, and he watched his friend’s lumbering shape disappear into the deepest shadows near the front door. Luke pulled away and headed for home. As much as he needed to see Dara and Maribel right now, he began to have second thoughts. The music was closer. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, mimicking the beat. The conversation with Johnny had helped him keep his thoughts off the ballad, but now it all came speeding to the forefront of his mind. Fragments of the sound chased each other, notes colliding with notes, rhythms starting and stopping, unusual instruments wheezing and howling and thudding. Petunia (oh God that poor girl) had done a number on him. Whatever connection he’d had with the Balladeer was tighter now. The song wiggled at the cusp of his memory.
With a plaintive animal whine, he turned on the stereo. It was the jazz station he listened to, but the saxophone was too smooth and his attention abated, the nightmare ballad cutting through. He hurriedly changed the channel to the preprogrammed hard-rock station Maribel and Dara loved.
Luke gradually let the car accelerate through the twilight-soaked suburb. He didn’t know this song or the band. It was some form of Heavy Metal and he despised it, started to tune it out (the ballad inched forward), and then increased the volume to the max, power chords punching him from every side, thrashing the Bose speaker system, sweat popping up around his collar, his broken hand throbbing with the beat (the metal song, or the ballad?).
Luke switched on the air conditioner and set the fan to high. He shivered. His nose began to run with thin mucus. Things were unraveling again. The song was a whisper on his neck, jet-black lips about to kiss him there, remind him of the ballad’s every refrain.
Johnny was right. He couldn’t take this home with him. Luke had to get away. Far away from Dara and Maribel and anybody else who would be caught in this poisoned spider web. He pulled into a 7-11 where he’d seen a payphone. Gathering up some change from the center console, he said a silent prayer for the phone to still work. A couple of black teens huddled around the phone station, drinking sodas and making fun of one of their friend’s shoes.
“Can I get in there?” Luke asked.
The teens gave him a sidelong glance, each equally indifferent, and their gathering shifted a few feet away. Luke popped in three quarters and picked up the cracked plastic phone. The dial tone stuttered a bit before it took on its normal meditative hum (sounded like something in the ballad). Luke bit his lip, hoping the pain would give him a head change. He couldn’t remember Dara’s number because she’d recently changed it, so he dialed Maribel. After two rings she picked up and spoke to him through a wall of static. Her phone was always cutting out, but she didn’t want to bother changing services like Dara had. After a moment the static thinned.
“Luke,” she said, “you there?”
“Yes, I hear you.”
“Come home. Dara’s trapped in a maze.”
“A maze?”
“Yeah,” Maribel answered, matter-of-factly. “Something smells good…something good is cooking.”
Luke let the phone drop and ran for his car. He jumped inside, turned the ignition, and blasted the radio again. Now a DJ rattled on about winning Anthrax concert tickets. Luke pulled into the street and gunned it. Visibility in the neighborhood wasn’t all that great, but a stop sign had to be coming up soon. The pepper trees lining the street became sparser, and he could see the moon poking out from the clouds. Moonlight lit a large black curtain cascading from the night sky. Luke tapped his brakes at the stop sign, nobody else was on the road, and the engine roared as he crushed his foot down on the gas pedal again.
He took a turn a little too wide and bumped the curb. The music on the radio set his teeth on edge but seemed to distract him from the nightmare ballad. He panicked at the thought of getting home. What happened if he brought his own nightmare into Dara’s?
He couldn’t worry about that right now. He just had to make sure the girls got through the curtain. Where had he left his headphones and iPod?
Popping open the glove box, he had a look. No, of course, never there when I need it. He slammed the little door shut, brought his eyes to the road, just as a massive dog stepped in front of him.
Luke slammed both feet on the brake, and the Volt shimmied left and right, the rear tires screeching. The dog, a mean-looking thing with large jowls, watched him with bloodshot eyes that said I’m not afraid of you or your car. The skid ended just a foot from impact.
Heart in his throat, Luke stared at the animal, blinking, unsure if the nightmare had penetrated his reality again…but no…in fact….
Slowly, he reached forward and turned off the radio.
Nothing.
The thoughts in his head were clean. The notes of the ballad no longer stained them. He watched the dog for a moment. It turned its massive head to the skyline, to where the curtain had been. Its tail stopped wagging.
The curtain had vanished completely.
Had Dara and Maribel gotten through?
That wouldn’t change anything with me, though. At least, it hadn’t back in the field with Johnny. Hell, even back on the day at the pool, stepping through the curtain hadn’t taken the song away completely, like it was now.
The dog trotted off and disappeared into the trees.
Luke blew two red lights the rest of the way home. He roared into the driveway and jumped out of the car, running across the grass. The front door was open. He stormed through, looking left and right.
“Out here,” Maribel called from the backyard.
Luke navigated around the coffee table and through the living-room sliding-glass door. His breath caught as he took in the devastation. Most of their fence had been crushed to pieces, and large impressions checkered their backyard and the backyards of several other houses, as though stone blocks had rested there. In a raised area between a series of impressions, Maribel hunkered next to Dara.
He charged over to them, almost twisting his ankle in one of the formations. His broken hand ached as he accidentally braced himself on it.
“Ambulance is on its way—it’s her arms.” Maribel caressed Dara’s cheek.
Luke got on the other side of Dara. Her sleeves had been torn away. Some atrocity had been committed on her arms. The flesh looked burned and watery, the shoulders blue and yellow and black with bruising.
“Uh, fuck,” Dara mumbled in pain.
“What happened? Can you tell me?” he asked.
“I don’t understand, Luke,” she said, tears dropping down fast around her dirt-smudged cheeks. “I don’t understand.”
“We’re here. Don’t worry. The music’s stopped.”
Maribel turned her head at this but said nothing.
“For you, too?” Dara almost tried to sit up and thought better of it. “They were breaking me�
�I was almost there. I almost wanted to…let them do it. Be done with it. Then I heard a buzzing sound, like an electric razor the size of a house, and then the nightmare stopped. I didn’t leave through the curtain. Things just went back to normal.”
Luke felt his own tears on his cheeks. “What did they do to you baby?”
“Took my arms and put them in….” Dara cringed and her face broke. “They were going to cook me.”
“Who?”
“The Bone Men.”
“The tribal people with spears?”
Dara nodded. “They cut them off. My arms reconnected somehow, when it ended. Not everything that happens can happen completely…I guess?”
Luke wiped away some tears with his wrist. “Maybe it’s not all real.”
“The deaths have been.”
“The lesson from this,” Maribel said, leaning over her with a goofy smile, “is don’t get trapped in mazes!”
They both looked at her in awe. It was a very Maribel-thing to say, but absurd at the same time. She was still clueless. Would she have accepted finding Dara dead out here? The thought almost made Luke angry with her, but he thankfully shook the emotion away. It wouldn’t do them any good.
The whine of an ambulance lifted in the distance. Dara shut her eyes to rest, and Luke touched her face.
“Why, Maribel, why?” she muttered.
Luke glanced at his other wife. “What’s she talking about?”
Maribel shook her head. “Stay with her, I’m going to make sure the medics find their way back here.”
“Okay,” he said and looked down again at Dara.
Maribel kissed him on the temple, her chocolate locks caressing his face as she pulled away. “She’ll be okay. We just have to watch where she wanders off to next time, right?”
“Right,” Luke replied miserably.
She stood up, her knees softly popping. “I’ll be back soon.”
Luke wanted to hold Dara. The music had stopped but he had a feeling the true injuries had yet to really be revealed. The scarier, hypothetical part of this gripped his gut with a menace like no other.
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