by Unknown
“When I thought like that, I… I guess I figured she’d taken the secret to her grave. Other times, I felt so, so goddamn guilty I’d ever suspected her. And I couldn’t know. I couldn’t ever find out. So most of the time I just didn’t think about it.”
Again, they paused, and this time the only sound was the creaking of old furniture as they shifted their weight.
“So… should we go get blood tests?” Joe asked.
“What for? Jesus, what’s the point? It’s been twenty-one years! What could you possibly gain?”
“I don’t know, but come on! I mean… that old guy was probably my father, wasn’t he?”
Ralph Kimble slammed both his hands down on the coffee table, palms flat.
“I’m your father! Jeeziz, what’s the matter with you? Ain’t I put a roof over your head for all your fucking life? Didn’t I put food in your mouth, clothes on your back, give you a job when the army kicked you out? If I ain’t yer blood daddy, you ought to be goddamn grateful!”
“Well shit, Mr. Kimble, sorry you had to put up with me for so long! I guess I should just shut up and not wonder about anything—the way you did for twenty-one years, huh?”
“I didn’t wanna ruin my family!”
“I’d appreciate that more, if it was my family too.”
“You ungrateful little bastard!”
Joe jumped to his feet. “I ain’t a bastard, I was just switched at birth and raised by a moron who couldn’t put two and two together!”
Ralph surged to his feet too. “Oh, and you think this, this Fred asshole is going to welcome you with open arms?”
“At least he bothered to look for me!” Joe flung the photograph at Ralph. “Here, take a good look at your real son! Too bad Mom isn’t here to meet him! Too bad you never got off your ass to get this straightened out!”
“So this is my fault? My fault?”
“No Dad… oops, sorry, ‘Mr. Kimble.’ No one could blame you for anything, since you didn’t do jack shit except sit down, yell at your wife, and try not to think about it.”
“I don’t have to take this crap.”
“No, I guess you don’t, not from someone who ain’t even your son. Hey, I guess that means I don’t have to put up with your bullshit either!”
“I didn’t hear you complaining about putting up with me when you washed out of the army!”
“Well, I’m sorry I was such a big burden. Since you ain’t got no more blood tie, I guess I ought to pack my bags and go, huh?”
“Son or no son, I won’t be sorry to see you move out. About time you learned to stand on your own two feet!”
“Look on the bright side: Your real son is probably a total winner, went to college, maybe even a doctor or something. Just think of it: Your son could be anything, instead of a fucked up, second rate bug smasher like me. You must feel like a kid on Christmas morning, getting ready to unwrap a brand new son! Hey, maybe you should see about getting a new damn wife while you’re at it!” Joe stomped down the hallway to his room and slammed the door.
Ralph almost followed him. Almost said “I don’t want another son.” But it felt too wrong, too alien to him. Showing vulnerability in front of the boy wasn’t in Ralph’s vocabulary, and suddenly admitting how much he cared would have been as bizarre to him as continuing the conversation in Japanese.
* * *
On the other side of town, at the Sleepy Teepee hotel, Seth Dobbs was indulging himself. He was always vaguely embarrassed when he watched reruns of “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch” on TV. He only did it alone and would have been mortified if anyone in the know had caught him at it. A carping, critical interior voice excoriated him for watching a kid’s show, centered on a fantasy of magical power. Talking cats and wish fulfillment and flying around on a vacuum cleaner: He thought it was fucking stupid, told himself he watched it for camp value and because the chicks on it were cute, but at a deeper level he knew that for some twisted reason, he found it comforting.
Seth Dobbs knew things. He was small fry, but even a small fry in the know saw things most people never even glimpsed in nightmares. Seth had seen men reach through walls like ghosts to slap their imprisoned children. He’d been in a blood bank when the ranks of bags started slithering one against the other, he’d heard a hundred voices whispering out of the chilled, taut rubber. He’d watched Simon Linnbid blacken the sun, causing an eclipse that only ten people in one block of downtown Kansas City had seen. He knew men who trapped demons in blue robins’ eggs, then ate them to gain insight into the lands beyond death. He knew women and men, adepts, nicknamed “dukes,” who knew how to turn their obsessions and needs into poisons for natural causality. It might be books or flesh or suicide, but they followed their fixations and brought their will to life. They were the occult underground, and he’d lived a decade on its hairy, weird inside. He didn’t even have any power: Only experience.
“Sabrina, the Teenage Witch” comforted that part of him that wanted all the blood voices and tarot sorcerers and homunculi to be lies. By showing a stupid, insipid version of magic-with-no-k, it could temporarily dull the fear of the real thing.
(Experienced as he was, Seth still thought spelling it “magick” was stupid, but that was how the big timers who could melt skin with a harsh word or turn your dreams inside-out spelled it, and he figured they had the right.)
His little unconscious smile vanished when a knock came at the door. Hurriedly, he clicked off the TV, ground out his cigarette, flicked a glance at his valise, then scrambled to the peephole.
He felt a tiny bit of relief when he saw it was Fred Mundy. Fred was paying their way on this junket across what Seth considered America’s bland back side, but Dobbs couldn’t find it in himself to respect the man. Mundy might have a little juice, but everyone knew what had happened to him in ‘68. Power without will, without the guts to use it—Seth felt he could handle that, even as he enviously wondered how far he’d have gotten with Mundy’s abilities.
He put on his best smile and opened the door.
“Hey Fred, how’s it going? You eaten yet?”
“Yeah, I grabbed a burger.” The adept slowly entered the room while Seth scuttled past him and took the chair by the window. Fred looked around, then sat on the edge of the bed.
“So… you find the kid?” Seth asked.
Fred put a fingernail in his mouth and cleaned it on his lower teeth. “I thought that was what I was paying you for, Seth.”
Seth paused before answering. He felt there was something wrong here, but decided to bluff it.
“Well, you know how it is. I’m following leads, you know, looking around, but this stuff takes time. I mean, I got you to this town, right? Now it’s just a matter of, er, narrowing in.”
“Really.” Fred’s voice was flat. “I talked to him this afternoon.”
Seth began to sweat. His forced grin got a notch wider. “No shit? That’s great! I guess that means you don’t need me any more, right? Man, you sure are on the ball!”
Fred’s breath hissed out of his nostrils, and Seth crept towards the edge of his chair as he watched the other man’s face flush. Seth gulped as Fred reached into his pocket, and flinched as the other man produced a card and flung it towards his face.
“My son gave me this. Said some ‘old weirdo’ gave it to him.”
Seth didn’t need to look to know it was his own card, but he looked anyhow.
“Who was it?” Dobbs asked, feeling a pearl of sweat roll down the side of his chest. “It was that exterminator guy, wasn’t it? I thought he might be the one. How’d you, um, narrow it down to him? ‘Cause you know, I was thinking it might be him, but I wasn’t sure. Are you positive he’s the one?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Dobbs,” Mundy said in a tired voice.
“Me… fuck with you? Fred, I’m, you know I… I respect you way too much, and… and…” Dobbs felt a wash of despair that he was so frightened by Fred Mundy, by a man who was a joke in occult circles. The shame an
d exasperation crashed on him with such force that he recklessly lunged across the table to his valise, reached inside and pulled out a gun.
Fred leaped to his feet as Seth made his move, but he’d have to take two or three steps before he could reach Dobbs. Seth pointed the gun—a huge, .50 caliber semi-automatic—at the other man and chambered a round.
“I don’t… you’re… I, I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, Mundy.”
Mundy didn’t look scared. Eyes wide and tight, nostrils flared, mouth hard, he looked mad as hell.
“What are you gonna do, Dobbs? Blow me away? In a hotel full of witnesses?” He took a step forward, and the hairs on Dobbs’ neck stood up.
“I’m unarmed,” Mundy said in a low, close voice. “You let me in here yourself. You think you can get away with it? That’s a big gun. You’ll probably kill me with the first shot, and that’s murder two, manslaughter at least.”
Dobbs was not an adept. He could not reshape events just by grabbing reality with desire and shaking it with symbolism. He could not draw in mystic power though the specialized avenues of the true initiate: But he was sensitive. He could feel the flow, and he felt it flowing towards Mundy.
“Chaos is my meat. You know that, Dobbs. Every risk I take just makes me stronger. So you’d better kill me now, before I get the power to really fuck you up.” He took another step. He was close enough to grab the gun.
Seth slipped his finger inside the trigger guard, licked his lips. “Fred, look, don’t get crazy, maybe we can work something out. You’re a good guy, right? You’re a, a reasonable man? Look, I’ll give your money back and we’ll call it even, that’s cool, right?”
“Too late for that,” Mundy whispered. He lunged in and seized the gun with both hands, wrenching the barrel to his right so that it faced neither man.
The two struggled in silence for only a second before Mundy hissed, “Let go!” and Dobbs screamed.
Mundy had done it, and blood was pouring from Seth’s right hand. As Dobbs pulled it back and cradled it against his chest, he saw the words ‘LET GO’ were inscribed in his flesh, over and over, on each finger, on the palm and the back of his hand, up to his wrist.
Seth whimpered as Mundy took a step back, raising the blood-stained pistol. Fred frowned, then flicked off the safety catch.
“Dobbs, you’re a fucking idiot. You know that, right?” Mundy sucked his teeth a little, thinking, then turned on the TV. He cranked up the volume.
The injured man was weeping, but he sucked in his mucus and tried to give Fred a hard glare. “So, what? Now you’re gonna shoot me? You got the guts for that much risk? You in the mood to go back to the slam, this time for a crime you did?”
“Dobbs, you got no idea how close I am.” Fred’s face twisted with rage and contempt. “I am good and goddamn sick of being the good guy who gets fucked up the ass and walked over, you understand me? I am tired of trusting people and getting screwed. I’m fed up with little sneaky shits like you taking advantage of me. Fuck it.” He switched the huge gun to his left hand and reached into his pants pocket. “Meet the new Fred Mundy. This one doesn’t let people off so easy. You’re gonna help him with a little experiment.”
Seth’s eyes widened as Fred pulled out a lock-back knife, about four inches long. It was the cheap kind of knife you can buy at Target, but as Fred opened it one-handed, Seth’s eyes were drawn to a series of swirling symbols that had been hand-etched onto the blade.
“No, Fred, no, c’mon,” Seth muttered as Fred approached, still pointing the gun at him, knife in his other hand.
Fred jabbed the blade into Seth’s thigh. Not hard, not really deep. The extraordinary investigator yelped with pain at the inch long slit, and tried to cower deeper into his chair.
Then the wound began to shriek at him, and Seth began to howl with fright.
“Give up!” yelled the injury in a high, grinding voice. “You’re mine you bastard, faggot, weakling, shitbag! Submit! Give in to me!”
In terror, Seth slammed his skinny fist into the gash, but the sharp flare of pain made him gasp.
Fred took a step back, eyes wide, gun raised.
“Submit! Give it to me!” The voice was actually painful, like a dentist’s drill or nails on a chalkboard. The sides of the gash moved like lips.
“No, no, noooo…”
“Quit fighting! Give up! You’re mine!”
“Please, aw God, aw Jesus, no, please, no…”
The two voices rose, mixed, mingled, and suddenly the high, harsh tone was all that remained.
“Yes! At last! At last!”
Now the voice came from Seth Dobbs’ mouth. Dobbs’ body leaped to its feet, standing with an eager posture totally alien to its habitual cringe.
“You remember our deal, right?” Fred bit his lip, taking a deep breath through his nostrils.
Seth—or the spirit possessing him—looked at the huge gun and grinned. “I remember, don’t worry. I’m not eager to go back.”
“You take off, and keep the cops off my tail, and in return you get the body for as long as you can keep it.”
“It’s pretty beat up,” the spirit said, looking at its red right hand and the spreading stain on its left pants-leg.
“Yeah, well, play square with me and you might get another when that one wears out.”
Someone started pounding on the door. “Hey, what’s going on in there?” yelled a muffled voice.
“Nothing’s going on! Can’t I just watch a little television in peace?”
“Turn it down!”
“Screw you!” Nonetheless, Fred leaned his hip against the “off” knob on the TV. Seth’s possessed body was wrapping a towel around its hand and making a crude bandage for its leg. Fred was unwilling to put the gun down, but he grabbed one of Seth’s shirts and wrapped it around the bloody knife. Awkwardly, feeling his age, Fred opened the window and kicked out the screen, then clumsily let himself out into the parking lot. Seth’s body followed him a moment later, grinning wildly, car keys in hand.
Fred went off to the right, pausing only to stuff the gun in the back of his pants and pull his shirt over it. Dobbs’ body went to the left, looking for a car that matched the key in its hand.
As Fred headed back towards his own room, a plum-colored Honda Accord pulled into the parking lot. Its headlights swept briefly across him.
Inside the Honda, Leslie Mundy spoke. “Christ, I think that’s dad.”
Blood will tell
CHAPTER THREE
Fred Mundy was of two minds as he drove away from the Sleepy Teepee motel. At one level he was horrified by what he had done—that he had, with cold calculation, put a dead soul in a living body to punish a man who was (in his estimation) more pathetic than dangerous. He could not kid himself that he had acted in the heat of the moment. No, he had passionlessly checked out of one motel and checked into a different one specifically to create a space between himself and the man who had become his victim. He had taken care not to touch the doorknob. He had opened the window with his hand swaddled in cloth, so as not to leave fingerprints. Not to mention the effort of preparing a demon-blade knife.
Yet, even as one part of Fred regretted his own actions, another part worried that he had done a poor job of them. Like all mystic adepts, Fred was very good at thinking in contradictions.
“Okay, evidence,” he muttered to himself as he drove. “Fingerprints on the gun—gotta wipe that off. Blood on the gun is his, that’s okay. Shit, I really shouldn’t have shoved it in the back of my pants, now they’ve got his blood on them… blood on the knife too, gotta wipe it. Keep the knife? There’s thousands like it, it’s not like a bullet, they can’t trace it if the blood’s gone, right?”
If he was in his hometown of St. Louis, he would have been looking for a good river to chuck the gun into, but all saw were trees and streetlights. He wondered what the trees were saying. (He’d known someone who could read the future, sure as a newspaper, in the shapes taken by growing twigs and
branches.) The density of the small town was thinning as he got towards the highway, towards the town’s other motel. Then his eyes widened. He left a tiny dab of Seth’s blood on his turn signal as he turned it on.
He turned into a truck stop. Instinctively he drove under the flickering, dying lamp post at the back of the parking lot. He pulled up behind a hulking trailer full of cars and took a deep breath.
He bent down and pulled the shirt-wrapped knife from underneath the driver’s seat. The blood was starting to dry and clot, sticky. He wondered if the cops could get fingerprints off cloth as he scrubbed the knife with the shirt. When he couldn’t see any more blood on it, he closed the blade and put it back in his pocket, vowing to boil it later. Even if it messed up the knife, the runes would still make it worth something.
Next, the gun.
“Damn,” he muttered, marveling at the size of it. “How’d he even hold this thing?”
The grip had quite a bit of blood on it, so he put that in the armpit of Dobbs’ shirt and wiped around it. He took the bullet from the chamber, fingers clumsy through cloth. He put on the safety and popped the clip—wouldn’t do to put a bullet from Seth’s gun into his dashboard, no way—then moved on to the barrel, rubbing it briskly. When that was done, he wrapped the rest of the shirt around it, leaving him a vaguely L-shaped white cloth bundle. Someone who looked close might see faint stains, but most of the bloody fabric was inside, against the metal.
Not bad.
He took a deep breath and tried to control his shaking hands. No dice. Then he closed his eyes and tried to control destiny, with more success. There’d been a real chance that Dobbs would cap him, a chance he’d taken. He’d spent part of that chance scrawling his will through Dobbs’ flesh, but there was enough left for a little request.
“Privacy,” he muttered.
In the truckstop, a family that had just about gotten its act together to set out again for their uncle Steve’s had to stop and search for a dropped toy rabbit. A waitress who’d been about to leave her shift got a phone call from her husband, asking her to pick up some milk and cereal on the way home. A trucker leaving the bathroom stepped on his own shoelace, which broke when he tried to retie it. All ordinary things, but they meant that no one went into the parking lot because Fred wanted to be alone.