Still

by Charlee Jacob

  Dunkel’s face wasn’t smiling. It was livid—also frightened. For hadn’t Peter just proved what the German said? A true relic of power and proof of beyond.

  Peter held his head up, whipped off the dark glasses so he could stare down anyone who dared provoke him as he went back to his seat and Nika. But in truth he was scared to death to go past these nuts.

  He didn’t know the precise moment his new skin began to itch. He thought it was right as the images on his old skin vanished. He scratched as he walked back down the aisle. And when he got to the last row, Nika told him, “There’s blood on your shirt. Why are you scratching yourself, and so hard?”

  He unbuttoned it. She gasped and he could have sworn the temperautre of his blood dropped twenty degrees.

  A movie played on his chest. Not in black and white.

  Technicolor.

  ««—»»

  He made a little clock. Tick tock, tick tock.

  There was a box under the seat of his chair. And the wheels of the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round.

  In a pouch filled with cushioning gel, he tenderly carried his explosive, sensitive to every motion. All of his secrets—unlike his heart—worn closer to the trousers than to the vest.

  Pearly had told the guard who’d frisked him that it was a colostomy bag.

  Then after removing his mother’s picture from the detective’s scrapbook, he told Dunk, “Have your auction, make your money. Don’t bother me. You’ve recognized me…”

  The German nodded.

  “…and know how many friends I have.”

  Pearly then retired to a bathroom in the mansion, locked the door, and took down his trousers to carefully remove the bag. He put the explosive in the box he’d built last night, set the timer he’d constructed with his own hands—by fitting in and turning Mary Kelly’s key which he’d always carried around his neck. Both hot and cold it was. The key still glowed pus yellow/rage red/peculiar green.

  Tick tock, tick tock. Round and round. His secrets, very like his heart. Mary’s key no longer lay against his breast. That was reserved now for his mother’s photograph. He’d kissed it and cried some, remembered huddling in the corner, unable to move as she went out the window.

  “You are my red angel,” he told her. And then he softly sang, “Just a violet I plucked from my mother’s grave.”

  He’d shown up a bit early for the auction, as soon as he’d ascertained that Peter and Nika were nowhere to be seen. He knew they were probably off trying to find him.

  “Could someone make a place for me? Preferably at the front. Because if anyone gets excited and stands up, I won’t be able to see,” he’d explained with a self-effacing grin.

  He’d spied the German at the door to The Grand Ballroom, rubbing a sore jaw and carefully adjusting the crotch of his pants. But Friedhof didn’t give him away. He could’ve had Pearly killed on the spot. Might’ve had him delivered to the fun and games upstairs where the real horrors played out.

  He was given a first row location, a seat removed to make room for his wheelchair. Now he kept track of time on his watch. He’d allowed for two hours. Was it 2 A.M. or 3 A.M. that it was said most people died? He didn’t recall. He hoped the skin would be brought out before the clock struck two.

  Pearly hated these people. They had defiled his mother’s memory. And they would pay.

  ««—»»

  What bloomed on Peter’s new skin wasn’t from Zane’s book of past crimes. It showed the man they knew as Clay McFadden blowing everyone present to kingdom come.

  And what did that mean, Kingdom Come? Well, it sure didn’t mean The Rapture. (Judgement, maybe.)

  Nika leapt from her chair and dragged Peter toward the door.

  Peter began crying, “Bomb! There’s a bomb…everybody get out!”

  ««—»»

  Pearly was as amazed as everyone else when Peter touched the flayed skin and the nightmare disappeared. How intriguing. Too bad he didn’t have time to do a scholarly investigation.

  He glanced at his wristwatch. Three minutes until 2 A.M.

  Yes, this was destiny.

  He jumped up out of the wheelchair, ready to hightail it from the ballroom, through the hallway and foyer and then out of the house. He wanted to watch the whole place go up and listen to the screams of the damned bums. Katrin would’ve been gentler with them. But Pearly wasn’t gentle.

  He heard Beta shouting, “Bomb! There’s a bomb…everybody out!”

  Well, maybe Pete and Nika might get away, seeing as how they were the nearest to the exit. Pearly rather hoped they would. It wasn’t Peter’s fault what happened, and Pearly did want Nika to protect Devon Goode’s book.

  Somehow Peter Beta had found out. Why was he warning them? Why didn’t he just keep his trap shut and leave? These were the lowest creatures on the planet, so why did he try to save them? The only way to save wretches like these was to release them to death.

  People panicked, utterly believing their Messiah. They knocked over chairs and tripped over them, stomping each other, fists flying to get two inches ahead to reach the door. Pearly couldn’t get through them as they tangled into a frenzied knot. It pissed him off but he had realized the possibility that he might not be able to get out. That some clusterfuck would happen and he’d been shit out of luck. It was why he’d given the book to Nika.

  Their expressions were wild, freaked-out animals. Mouths stretched in terror.

  Pearly heard no screams.

  He rotated in the mob. There was Mrs. Death in a gown of fire. She held open a purse of flame, collecting screams.

  There was his mother, beautiful and beckoning, a voice of silver rain. “Helaas moeten wij nu weggan. Komen met moeder.”

  (“I’m afraid we have to leave now. Come with mother.”)

  He began pushing to return to the front row. He had Dunkel’s switchblade—such a flimsy, amateurish weapon—and he used it to stab people who wouldn’t, couldn’t get out of his way as they struggled forwards to his backwards. He crawled over folks, hearing Katrin Soloway murmur, “Kunt u ook komen, mijn parel?”

  (“Are you coming, my pearl?”)

  He gasped, managing to finally call to her what he’d not been able to tell her those years ago, as she’d summoned him to her and he’d been only a frightened child, huddled in a corner on the floor. “Kunt u op mij wachten, moeder? Alstublieft?”

  (“Could you wait for me, mother? Please?”)

  He did reach his wheelchair which she stood by patiently, her pale hand out, shrieks funneling silently into the bag. The bomb exploded. Together they went out the window to fly.

  ««—»»

  Peter and Nika had just made it out the front door, past the guards who still stood sentry duty, when the explosion rocked the old mansion from its foundations to its roof. A lucky few Videre made it out behind them, three or four dozen out of the approximately three hundred who’d been in the auction. More were blown across the foyer and through the entrance. Several got up to stagger away, the others lay on the ground—either wounded or dead. Windows opened on one end of the second floor, the furthest from The Grand Ballroom. People jumped.

  The couple fled hand in hand, Nika lifting her ridiculous split skirt. A second, larger detonation knocked them down in the driveway.

  “The casino!” Nika shouted because she’d been deafened.

  Pete cried it again, “The casino!”, because he also couldn’t hear beyond a torturous thunder in his head.

  The third blast had to be fire reaching the gas main. Even the driveway cracked from the force. A few limousines, parked close to the building, were blown up in the air, then landed like so much crumpled tin foil. The house lay in ruins, burning.

  On the hill’s top, grass scorched and trees were blazing torches. Flames and smoke brightened, then obliterated the sky. About a hundred Videre faced Peter. They got down on their knees and pressed their foreheads to the earth.

  They were bowing. They w
ere kowtowing to him.

  He shouted (because that’s what suddenly-deaf people did sometimes), “If I told you to all go to Hell, would you go?”

  But, naturally, they couldn’t hear him either.

  He rubbed his arm, scratching. Nika pointed at it. He could tell she was yelling but didn’t get a word of it. He looked.

  And saw a little movie blossoming. Every color of a sordid rainbow.

  He took off running, down the slope of the driveway which wound down the hill. The drive was littered with pieces of bodies and items blown up, out, and away. Peter stooped to scoop up something he’d seen in the dealer’s room. A metal baseball bat—not aluminum but steel. More of a cudgel than any American League slugger’s sporting tool. It bore the lettering W.W.B.D.?

  Would he be too late? He’d barely had time to warn anyone about the bomb.

  Had he needed to heal the other skin of the past before this one would show him the future?

  He spied the man with the miniature lady slung over his shoulder, headed for his car. She wept and beat at him with her little fists as he fondled her between the tinsel she wore. This guy must have left just before the bomb went off. And he’d heard it, all right, but he didn’t give a shit about anybody back there.

  Peter rushed up, yelling, “Hey, asshole!”

  The man calmly stopped and turned, arrogant and self-possessed.

  “What Would Beta Do? This!” Peter swung the bat into the side of the Videre’s head. The skull caved, blood and brains flashing out in red mud and pink sponge.

  The man dropped the little lady and then fell over himself.

  Peter discarded the bat and hurried to help her. He removed his sports shirt and draped it around her.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s over.”

  She saw the little movies. One on his chest, the other—of herself and the man who’d taken her—on his arm.

  Nika came up at this time, clutching Devon Goode’s book.

  The miniature woman pulled away from Peter in disgust and terror, crying, “You’re him…you’re him! You’re the shroud-man, the murder-beast!”

  She ran away.

  Pete simply stood there, shaking, despondent.

  “Did you hear what she called me?” he asked Nika.

  Not that the doctor heard him but she got the gist of it. He’d spun away from her to watch the small woman flee down the hill. Nika stared at his naked back where he reached around to scratch. Between his shoulder blades: a movie. Rape, violence, murder.

  All that was coming next.

  — | — | —

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Charlee Jacob has published some sixteen years in the horror and fantasy genres. Her publishing credits include more than 700 poems and around 240 stories. Her novels include THIS SYMBIOTIC FASCINATION, HAUNTER, VESTAL, and her novel DREAD IN THE BEAST won the Bram Stoker award for best novel of 2005. Now fully disabled, she has taken up painting as one of her forms of physical therapy.