He landed in Prague in the early evening and had just found his rental car when his phone rang. The call, he figured, would cost a fortune to answer, but he did anyway.
“Malone,” he said.
“Malone. Where the hell are you man?”
He was surprised to hear the voice. Derek Vincent was a detective down in the robbery division, and he had been friends with both Malone and Sherrill. But he’d taken her side in the divorce and that had been that.
“Surprised to hear from you.”
“Look man, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but a guy from IA was asking some pretty serious questions about you. Word is, they are looking to talk to you about something. What did you get yourself into?”
Malone broke into a smile. It had finally happened. Now he could stop worrying about it. Dreading the end was somehow worse than the end itself.
“Know what, Derek? Fuck you.”
He dropped the phone into the console and headed out into the countryside as night began to descend on the city.
By the time he arrived at the outskirts of Český Krumlov, it was full dark. His destination was a medieval village, with the town proper on an island surrounded by a river. Cars were only barely allowed, so Malone left his in an autopark and walked across the ancient bridge that provided the only real access point for the town. The night was cold, the streets deserted, and he’d rarely felt so alone. The ancient windows stared down upon him from sturdy brick buildings, and Malone imagined that beneath any one of them could lay a dungeon equipped with torture devices that would make Torquemada envious. The pale light of gas lanterns did little to cut the gloom, and he wished for someone, anyone to break the stillness. And yet it was only him, as if he were the last man on earth. When he saw a boarding house with a light on inside, he didn’t hesitate to pull open the great wooden door and enter.
The change was dramatic, and instant. The interior was brightly lit, both by the lamps that hung from the ceiling and the fire that held back the cold which, despite the date on the calendar, refused to release its grip on the countryside. There were people, too, eating hearty meals and drinking from great steins of beer. A man appeared from the back carrying three of them, and as he sat them in front of their thirsty owners, he gave Malone a nod. When he spoke to him in words Malone couldn’t begin to place, the detective simply stood, unsure of how to respond. The man smiled.
“American?” he asked, and his accent revealed that he was, as well.
“Yeah,” Malone said. “Was beginning to wonder if I was the only one around.”
“You’d be surprised. This is the kind of place you come and never want to leave. My wife Veronica and her family own this restaurant,” he said, seating him at a small table in a far corner. “I came here, met her, and the rest is history.”
“So you’ve lived here a while?”
“Several years now. And I don’t plan on ever going back.”
A dark headed beauty, one that must have been ten years younger than the man, and who Malone assumed must be his wife, brought a tray of food to the men who’d just received the beers. She glanced in their direction, but did not approach.
“She’s shy around strangers. So what can I get for you?”
“I’m starved. A beer and a steak would be good. And I probably need a room for the night if you’ve got one.”
“I think we can take care of that.”
A few minutes later he returned with a flagon of beer and a thick piece of meat.
“So,” the man said, sitting down across from him, “I hope you don’t mind if I join you. We don’t get too many Americans on vacation. So where are you from?”
“Birmingham, Alabama,” Malone said as he sliced into the steak. “Wish I could say I was here on pleasure. Truth is, I’m looking for someone.”
“Here? In Český Krumlov?” The man laughed. “That’s a first.”
“Yeah,” Malone said, chuckling. “Truth is I can’t believe it either. Seems crazy, even to me.”
“Well, maybe I can help you find this guy. He got a name?”
Malone hesitated. “Well…sorta. I mean, I’m sure he does. But I only know his nickname. I’m looking for a guy who goes by Jack Rabbit.”
The reaction wasn’t exactly like you might see in the movies. There was no crash of dishes, no dead silence that fell upon the patrons, as all of them turned to stare. The other man’s smile simply faded. The only other person to react was his wife, who turned and looked at Malone with fear and venom combined.
“It’s you,” Malone said. The other man opened his mouth to speak, but said nothing. “I know it is, there’s no reason to deny it. I should have known I’d just stumble right into you. Limbus is all about coincidences, right? But why have you been sending me these messages?”
The man—Jack Rabbit—looked down at his hands and sighed. Then he turned to his wife, said something Malone didn’t understand, and then faced him again. He reached out a hand. “My name is Conrad McKay,” he said. “It’s good to meet you.”
Malone took his hand. “Thomas Malone, but you still didn’t answer my question.”
“Because I’m not sure how to answer it. I haven’t been Jack Rabbit in a very long time. I did my bit with Limbus. Then I retired here, where they first found me. Your Jack Rabbit is probably another person entirely, in another part of the world.”
“Or another time,” Malone replied. “Hell, maybe it was you after all.” He drained his flagon and leaned back in his chair, defeated. Conrad grinned at him.
“You catch on quick,” he said. “But I wouldn’t lose hope too soon. They don’t make mistakes.”
“Limbus, you mean?”
Conrad nodded. “You ever read Plato? No, I imagine not. Don’t worry, you didn’t miss out on much. But he’s got this one bit about a cave. Got a guy, chained up in the bottom, so he can’t see outside. Instead all he sees is shadows on the wall. So that’s what he thinks the world is, you know? Shadows. Then one day he escapes. And he crawls up the cave and stumbles out into the sunlight and he realizes that this is the real world.
“Lots of people know that story. And they always assume that they’re standing in the light. But they’re not. They’re still in the cave. But the real kick in the ass? It’s better there. They’re happier there. The sunlight is cruel, and the truth is far worse. Limbus is that truth.”
His wife returned from the back. In her hands were two bottles of beer and a manila envelope.
“You’d almost think I knew you were coming,” said Conrad. “Not only do I have some beer brewed in your home town, but I received this package earlier today. The instructions were simple. I was to give it to the right person. I think I found him.”
He slid the envelope over to Malone. He didn’t have to open it to know what was inside.
“What’s the point,” he asked, “of the stories?”
“Hard to say. Immortality for their exploits, maybe? Pride perhaps? Or maybe they just want you to know what you’re getting yourself into.”
“Oh, I’ve got no interest in working for Limbus.”
Conrad’s eyes twinkled. “Sure you don’t. Cheers.”
He took a long pull from the beer. Malone watched him, and then his gaze fell on the symbol printed on the bottom of the bottle. He picked up the beer in front of him, held it up to the light. And there it was—three curving, interlaced triangles made of one continuous line. The triquetra.
“Hops,” he whispered to himself. He leapt to his feet, grabbing up the package in front of him.
“Thank you, Conrad. Thank you for everything.”
“Good luck, detective.”
Malone rushed into the darkness, and it didn’t cross his mind that he never mentioned to Conrad that he was a cop.
An Atlatl
By
Laird Barron
Prelude: Doomsday Variations
KRAKATOA (ALPHA CONTINUUM) RECORDING 5:
Watching the Doomsday recordings used to b
e forbidden. The thumbdrives were locked in the governor’s strongbox and nobody talked about them. Talking about them earned you ten lashes. Sneaking a peek was a bullet behind the ear.
Way, way back in my youth, when I showed my fangs and claws more often. Back when folks still played the Star Spangled Banner, observed defunct federal holidays and figured humanity could get up from the canvas once more a la War of the Worlds. Yeah, the first twenty years after the dust settled was pretty much as dreary and uptight as the post-apocalyptic movies my generation adored until it was eaten alive.
Now, nobody gives a shit.
Sure, it’s against the rules, but I play a scene every night; lie back in my cot with a bottle of XO and marvel at how many goddamned eyes in the sky were floating around during the Information Age. Krakatoa’s archive is comprehensive; five or six hundred hours of viewing entertainment. I can choose from countless perspectives in two dozen countries. Often, I fast-forward and watch the mess unfold like a mushroom cloud in time-lapse photography.
I don’t listen to the commentary anymore. Don’t need to; tiny yellow subtitles, you see. I prefer the womb noises around me as the Krakatoa drifts. The Krakatoa is everything, our cocoon of warmth and light in darkness. I pay close attention to her creaks and rumblings. Her moods.
Sleep comes astride double flickers of blue static…
END RECORDING
Chapter 1 (Jane 1.0)
The universe tilted across the plane of midnight.
Dick squired his date to a romantic hilltop at the edge of town for their illicit rendezvous. He parked his sleek blue Mustang under the low-hanging limb of a cottonwood tree. A lonely kind of night. The woods were extra dark and full of coyotes, hoot owls, and one or two escaped lunatics from the decrepit asylum down the highway near the maximum security prison and the abandoned slaughter yard. A lunar eclipse would occur in two hours, forty-seven minutes and eleven seconds.
Dick turned on the radio (golden oldies, natch), killed the bottle of Jim Beam, and lighted cigarettes from the dashboard, and afterward, tossed them out the window still smoldering. While Chubby Checker did his thing, Dick loosened his tie and got busy doing his.
“My boyfriend’s gonna kill you,” Jane said without evident concern when his hand wandered to her thigh, then crept northward past the hem of her leather skirt. She leaned farther back and her knees swiveled outward, one knocking the door, the other coming to rest against the leather-bound gearshift knob. She closed her eyes and let her head tilt so the moon shone against the hollow of her throat. Her lips and eyelids were glossy and dusted with bits of diamond like the wings of a night moth.
“Who’s your man?” Dick said, not caring a whit, just exercising a bit of habitual professional courtesy. He slid her panties to the side. “You with that Samoan at the club? That monster.” He glanced up, a fox at the threshold of the coop. “Hey, the Samoan—you with him, or what?”
She sighed and shivered as his fingers went in to the second knuckle. “Nope. Little Mo’s got a regular thing with Candy. He walks me to my car.”
Something huge and dark landed atop the hood and whiplashed the couple in their seats. Metal crumpled. Cracks spread across the windshield. The Mustang’s sailcloth top opened in several ragged slashes and the naked moon shone upon poor Dick and Jane as they cowered. Then the top tore free and hurtled end over end, receding to a speck against the moon.
The shadow doubled at its middle and dug tusks into Dick’s face like a scoop excavating hard ice cream. Dick struggled and got his right hand snipped, then the left. Meanwhile, Jane leaped to safety and sprinted away from the crunching and gurgling and the arrhythmic groans of the car’s springs.
Forest closed around her and the moon stopped shining.
Chapter 2 (Manson)
The nondescript woman loitering in khaki slacks and a short sleeve shirt, maybe a real blonde, maybe not, it depended on the hair dye and the light; the woman with no discernable tattoos or distinguishing characteristics besides an athletic build, ponytail, and sunglasses—that was T.J. Manson.
Technically she had a bunch of names, kept them in a cigar box in a safe in the wall behind a faded copy of Van Gogh’s Starry Night at her adopted mother’s house, in lovely Van Nuys, U.S.A. She knew about the safe, Mama did. Her girl wasn’t Zorro, was she? She was not, for Mary’s sake, the Batwoman, was she? Mama tended her own knitting, as they say. Yesterday her name was something else; tomorrow, who could say? Today it was Manson.
It’s 11:00 AM and Manson should’ve been dead five minutes ago. The reason Manson was not dead had a little to do with Lady Luck and even more with the fact she pulled a double cross on Mr. Skald and Mr. Crane. Mr. Skald and Mr. Crane were currently at the end of a gravel road with a pleasant lake view, roasting in a new Tahoe with phony plates. Fire trucks had been dispatched. For now, however, the blaze was too fierce for any firemen to approach. The charred bodies would be identifiable by dental records only. The CSI team would discover a submachine gun and exploded shells that had Manson’s name written on them.
Manson wasn’t worried. She was cool. She still possessed the cylinder, and what’s more, thanks to an affinity for impromptu field interrogation, she comprehended its purpose. There were plenty more where those two came from.
*
Manson once worked for a company that insisted on code names. Hers was Tarantula. She’d always considered it to be a bit melodramatic, a bit over the top, but it was easy to remember. The Jackal, The Condor, The Tarantula. Manson resembled a tarantula in that she embodied an elegant delivery system of death.
Manson wasn’t a master of disguise. Manson took full advantage of genetics. She didn’t appear young or old. She wasn’t any particular size or height. She existed in a semi-static state, blending into whatever space she occupied at the moment. Anonymity, equanimity, and asocial tendencies were her natural gifts.
Manson didn’t train. Didn’t lift weights or read books about the deadly arts. Didn’t study either; she absorbed complex concepts by osmosis. Her old professors speculated she might be a savant. Generally, she didn’t do much except lie around her apartment on the lower end of town and smoke dope or drink cheap tequila and get serviced by every call girl and rent boy in the phone book. No need to screw with the epitome of predatory evolution. She watched cartoons on the tube, or Mexican soaps. When she slept she slept nineteen to twenty hours a day. She slept with a commando knife strapped to her thigh and an assault rifle within easy reach.
A few days before Mr. Skald and Mr. Crane get barbecued in their vehicle by a Molotov Cocktail Manson mixed up in her kitchen with dish soap and diesel while she listened to classic rock, there was a meeting. The meeting was supposed to occur in the marbled plaza of a fancy hotel with umbrellas over the tables and palm trees and waiters in bow ties who spoke pidgin English. Manson didn’t like hotels or open plazas, palm trees notwithstanding.
So they convened the face-to-face at a seedy titty bar instead.
Mr. Skald was the taller one. Mr. Crane was the asshole. Well, they were both essentially assholes, however, in Mr. Crane’s case he’d mastered the art, he’d made black belt. Mr. Skald did the talking. Not because he was supposed to do the talking, but because Mr. Crane’s eyes were glued to the ass of the cocktail waitress.
Blah, blah, blah, was the sum and substance of Mr. Skald’s verbal foreplay, which Manson pretended to absorb while she too admired the serving girl’s ass and contemplated how much it would set her back to have the chick over to the pad for a quickie. Maybe a bag of grass would turn the key, it usually did.
Also she wondered which acronym these cowboys rode under. They wore chintzy suits with clip-on ties and smelled of airport gift shop aftershave. Revolvers in shoulder holsters, the air-light aluminum frame model that everybody was carrying. Aluminum frame sidearms were chic like Uzis and Mac-10s had been in the 1980s. A couple of slicks. They seemed roughly as clever as highly socialized chimpanzees with a really well-written script. By the numbe
rs and by the sleazy book for these two.
Mr. Skald apparently considered himself a virtuoso. He endeavored to simultaneously intimidate and flatter Manson. “We are aware of your travels, Ms. Manson—if that is your name, which I am fairly certain it is not. Don’t worry, I don’t care. I mean, Carlos didn’t need no stinkin’ last name. Ha ha. Anyhow. Cuba, Chile, Argentina, Turkey, Angola—quite an itinerary. You have enjoyed the accommodations of our nation’s finest penal institutions—Rikers, CIW, Goree, SingSing. Clap on a turban and it could be Guantanamo. Kidding, kidding.” Like bad poetry it kept coming. “Of course, for you this sufficed as graduate work, eh? Took some powerful influence to, ah, extricate you from some lengthy schedules, I bet. Impressive connections.”
Manson wore sunglasses and a sleeveless shirt to accentuate her physique. She appeared extremely chic despite the fact she didn’t pack a fancy automatic pistol, or any weapon, unless one considered a switchblade a weapon, which most states did, although in Manson’s mind it hardly qualified. She borrowed Mr. Skald’s fountain pen, a veritable icepick, hefty enough to give a fellow an impromptu lobotomy, scrawled her number on a napkin, and pressed it into the waitress’ hand as she collected for the round. The waitress drooped gold-dust lashes in a wink, sexily and with lascivious promise, and wiggled when she set sail.
“Who do I waste?” Manson bounced the pen on her palm. Playing the dumb tough amused her, and so she projected the image of a thug while taking everything in and working out the angles.
Limbus, Inc., Book III Page 34