Nightjack

by Tom Piccirilli

  Faust stepped from the shadows at the bottom of the stairwell, there the whole time.

  “A laptop, Will? Where did you get that?” Dr. Brandt asked.

  “I found it.”

  He looked over at the embroidered pillows.

  Abide with me: fast falls the eventide.

  “You’ve been on the Internet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Putting together the pieces.”

  “Good, I’m glad. Which pieces?”

  That stopped him.

  Which pieces. It was a good question. Were they big ones or small, when you got right down to it? Important or merely more subterfuge that, in the end, despite all the effort and struggle, would mean nothing to anyone? Pace didn’t know.

  “There’s six hundred pounds on a barbell up there,” Pia said. “Can you really bench that much?”

  “No,” Pace told her. “Not a chance.”

  Hayden let out a high-pitched titter. It sounded near-hysterical and he knew it did so he snapped his jaws shut. He waited a second and said, “I think you can. I think Jack can do almost anything.”

  “Our father who art invincible,” Faust said.

  You didn’t invoke the names of the dark gods unless you were willing to pay a price.

  Dr. Brandt stepped in close, her lips almost at Pace’s ear. It wasn’t a whisper, but something softer and more luxurious, throaty with a heavy hint of promise. The muscles in his belly rippled.

  “Vindi said we’d been lovers,” he told her.

  “Ooooh,” Pia said, jumping onto the couch, legs crossed, arm braced on her knee with her hand up like she was holding a glass of champagne. “Do tell.”

  “Is it true?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Pia chimed. “Is it?”

  Hayden and Faust and everybody else, all the ghosts hiding in the house, were eager for an answer.

  Maureen Brandt glared at a point somewhere far behind Pace. A lot of patients used to do this sort of thing on the ward, staring so deeply into something that they went all the way into its atomic structure, watching molecular chains, electron clouds, and quarks leaping across higher quantum energy states.

  Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Prithee, why so pale?

  She had found photos upstairs. There were Jane and Pacella sitting out on the beach, the camera on a timer and going off two seconds before they were ready. Both of them starting to smile but not quite there yet. In the next photo they’d been grinning two seconds too long, happy expressions frozen and unnatural. The one after that, Pacella had said, Forget the camera, and him and Jane were beginning to kiss, lips about a half inch away. Pacella’s eyes shut and Jane’s open, adoring.

  “Who is this?” Maureen asked.

  “Jane.”

  “And the man?”

  Another trick question. He could say, It’s me, though it really wasn’t. It didn’t seem to matter that much because Jane was always the best part of Pacella anyway. Seeing the two of them together, you really wanted to be that cocoa-drinking, Chaucer-reading, wimpy son of bitch.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  “That’s right. William Pacella.”

  All of those degrees, probably twenty of them on the walls of her office, and she’d never learned that you can’t use logic to win out over a psychotic.

  Really, she just had to be fucking crazy.

  She drew out a photo of Pacella and Jane seated on a boardwalk sharing an ice cream cone while the waves rolled in behind them.

  “And this?”

  “Me and Jane.”

  “Yes.”

  But that wasn’t good enough. Maureen Brandt needed to drive home her point, spearing it in there so it would skewer him. She pulled out a folded up newspaper, dated six months after Jane died. Had it been here in the house or had she carried the damn thing all the way from the hospital? His face was spread across the fifth page. It was the first time Pacella had been brought in by the cops in connection with the Ganooch hits. He looked calm and a little tired, but very amenable and incapable of even winning at arm wrestling. You had to know what to look for. Pace saw that Pacella’s eyes were no more than twin blazing fissures of agony and fury.

  “And this is you, Will.”

  “No,” Pace said. “That’s Jack.”

  Thursday’s Child tells the lie that causes Friday’s Child to die.

  She let out an exhausted sigh. It had been a long day.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he said.

  “Fess up,” Pia said. “Come on, this I want to hear.”

  “No,” Dr. Brandt said. “We were never lovers.”

  Pia laid back on the couch in a sultry pose, smiling with pride in herself, like she’d caught the cat with the headless canary. “You’re a lying bitch.”

  Pace faced Dr. Brandt, feeling a little twitchy. He thought she was lying too. Had she hopped up on top of him while he was in that full body straitjacket, suspended in mid-air, weightless? Like one of those sex chairs with the ropes and chains, you get in and even if you can’t figure the thing out it’s still got to be pretty good. Was there some easy way to expose his crank in the jacket? Some kind of ripcord—she walks into the room horny as hell, yanks on a string and out falls his package.

  “Will—”

  “Vindi also said that Kaltzas and I had once been friends. He told me I’d met him before.”

  “It’s not true. His daughter was in Garden Falls, but he never saw her. No one did.”

  “Not even Vindi?”

  “Not so far as I know. A lot of reporters pretending to be friends of the family showed up, but we screened them out.”

  “He said he bribed people on the ward. For information. Maybe the guards let him in and out.”

  “Possibly. But I find it more likely that if you did know Kaltzas or this Vindi, you knew them before the hospital. Your selective amnesia allows you to remember significant amounts of your core personality’s history, as well as that of your alternates.”

  “I am an alternate,” he said. The fact didn’t bother him much.

  “A very highly developed provisional surrogate identity. You’re William Pacella’s stronger half, devoid of suffering. Without his need for revenge. You must allow those repressed memories forward.”

  “Fuck no!” shouted the other three as one.

  It got Pace smiling. “They’re right. You don’t want that. The memories are what drove Pacella insane in the first place. If they come back, you get Jack.”

  “He’s gone, Will. He had no reason to exist after Joseph Ganucci...died.”

  “You’re wrong. He’s still there, Maureen. Besides, didn’t you throw in with us because you trusted Jack’s skills?”

  “I trust Jack’s skills,” Hayden said loudly at Pace’s chest. “You hear me in there, Jack? I trust you, buddy. You’re a-okay in my book, seriously!”

  “Mine too!” Faust said, shouting.

  “We love you, Jack!” Pia called.

  Dr. Brandt said, “I trust you, Will.”

  Home is Where your Love Burned.

  The embroidery everywhere you looked.

  My Baby, Where Are You? Why Am I Still Alive Without You?

  Pace went to the window. He checked his watch. It was only nine o’clock, less than twelve hours since he walked out of the hospital. He didn’t have enough fingers and toes to count how many lifetimes ago. He pressed his temple against the cold glass and kept his eyes on the water, knowing there was a much longer trip ahead, a lot more lives about to come and go.

  There was movement. People walking around the house. He heard doors opening and shutting but couldn’t tell where.

  He turned his head and looked at another pillow.

  Definitely Do NOT eat at Tiny Bob’s Lobster Pavilion. That shit’ll kill you.

  Dr. Brandt wasn’t in the wicker chair, and then she was. Maybe his aphasia was kicking in again. He looked at his watch again and it was almost nine-thirty.
/>
  “What’s the matter?” she asked. “You have to tell me, Will. I need to know.” The urgency in her voice made him frown. She could really put a wifey tone in there when she wanted. Even if they had been lovers, even if she had unsnapped his PJ’s while he was in the jacket, where did this take-charge attitude come from? Like he had to answer because it was his obligation. He searched her eyes and they went from blue to green and back again.

  “Hey,” Hayden said, stepping in from the hall. “You might want to see this. I found enough knives back here to stab the whole world.”

  eleven

  They were out in the open, all these blades, proving that Jack didn’t really give a damn who found them. Maybe he was showing a certain amount of camaraderie and wanted Pace to have access to the weapons. Saving Pace in order to save himself.

  Nobody said it was going to be easy, trusting these people inside you.

  There was a separate, small back room off the kitchen that might’ve once been used for storing coal or canned fruit and vegetables. There were three long shelves which contained felt-lined, glass-topped cases. The fisherman’s wife had been very dutiful in cleaning the glass and leaving no streaks.

  Inside were the knives, laid out in simple patterns.

  Not that many, really, considering how obsessive Jack got about them. Only thirty.

  A couple were from the kitchen. Butcher knives. Like Jack had been making a point—it’s not the tool, it’s the result. Pace still had the three inch screwdriver in his pocket, and figured he knew some of what Jack had felt. Was still feeling.

  Several were antique surgeon’s tools—scalpel, lancet, bone cutter, curette, and a pair of Metzenbaum scissors. Jack looked ready to start operating again.

  The longest blade was a standard eight-inch Bowie with a trailing point and a brass guard. There was a 5 1/2 inch hunting knife topped with a gut hook, the handle made out of highly-polished carved antler.

  There was the Trident Two, one of the most versatile field knives, used by the Navy SEALS. Powder coated, partially yet deeply serrated. He shook his head and searched on until he found the Trident, the one the cops had been looking for. A Bowie style blade made of high carbon stainless steel married to a stacked micarta handle with a satin finish. The black, self-cleaning scabbard came with its own sharpening stone. You sat there honing your blade and your hate at the same time, until both were razor-sharp.

  Hayden reached into the case, grabbed the Trident and tossed it slowly, underhand at Pace, like a father throwing a ball to his kid. He whispered, “Catch.”

  Pia said, “Oh God.”

  And then—

  And then—then—

  The knife was in Pace’s hand.

  It seemed to pulse with warmth. He was drawn to its silky feel. His throat filled with a weird giggle and Jack started thinking about kidney pie again.

  The others scrambled around him, Pia letting out a sharp lament, Faust cutting loose with a plaintive cry. “Forsooth, dear Lord, forget us not!”

  Hayden yelled the same thing he’d shouted back in the apartment. “Is he Jack?” This had always been a kind of game to Hayden.

  Pia backed herself into the corner and tried to be alluring, sexually overpowering, like that would slow Jack down. It just made him laugh harder. Jack whirled and stared at her, knowing she did this because she wanted to die. She was begging him to kill her.

  The angels Rimmon and Sariel raced about in circles. Pace shut his eyes and filled himself with the exquisite balance and profound sharpness of the knife. A total of 12.4 ounces. The grip on the handle so comfortable it was nearly impossible to ever let go.

  How had he ever let go.

  How could he have ever let go. How could you ever put away the thing that gave you definition and purpose.

  Maureen Brandt, so effortlessly calm, her slender arm out to him, the wrist so delicate and pale you could see the map of her lifeblood.

  “Will—”

  Jack an extension of Pacella, the blade an extension of Jack. It was a different world now than when he’d stalked the black chilly streets looking for the wet, soft places of women. Those carefully turned-away bodies facing walls while he rutted them from behind, the arcing blood against the brick.

  “Will—”

  He’d spin them slowly as a final heaving breath blew in his face and those eyes—sometimes blue, sometimes green—began to dim.

  “Let him go, Will.”

  A moment of darkness and then intense, swirling light. Pace blinked twice hearing Dr. Brandt’s voice in his ear, a demanding but soothing tone. The same kind used by the whores in the East End as they called to the carriages, muddy skirts twirling, muddy skirts hiding their dirty cunts—

  “Please listen to me. Stop it now. Let him go now!”

  Flashing his sharp teeth, Hayden lay on the floor with the knife pressed lengthwise against his throat.

  Sam Smith was also talking now, in an equally firm voice, telling him, Never try to cut a throat the way they do it in movies, there’s too much cartilage. You gotta saw back and forth way too hard before you do any serious damage. Stick to the easy tricks. Nothing fancy needed. Go for the carotid artery. The tiniest flick of the wrist and they’ll never get the blood to stop.

  “Will, let him go. Now.”

  Pace let Hayden go.

  He sheathed the Trident, and put it back under glass in the case. He reached down and grabbed Hayden by the shirtfront and hauled him to his feet. Then onto his tippy-toes. Pace dragged him forward through the air until he saw his reflection looming in Hayden’s eyes.

  “Why’d you do that?” Pace asked.

  “You’re still holding it.”

  “What?”

  “The knife. You acted like you were putting it away, but you’ve got it tucked in your belt.”

  Pace checked and saw it was true. He hadn’t put the Trident back at all, it was right there at the small of his back, where he could pull it with either his right or left hand.

  The rafters groaned. The little room had a small window and the glass was covered with throbbing rain ignited by lightning. He wondered what the weather was like in Greece. He thought of Kaltzas’s jet at JFK, waiting for them.

  Hayden picked himself up and rubbed his throat. “I wanted to make sure Dr. Brandt wasn’t right. We all needed to know if Jack was still there.”

  “Feel better now?”

  “Christ, no.”

  “You play a game like that again and you might die.”

  “It’s not a game,” Maureen Brandt said.

  Still in the corner, Pia looked sexy and a little sad. Faust’s scar seemed to be watching Pace very intently, making up its own mind about him. Dr. Brandt appeared defeated, and she was even more beautiful for it.

  “I’m going to sleep for a while in the master bedroom. Don’t anyone bother me.”

  “Wouldn’t think of doing it,” Pia said, her eyes full of deadly mischief, thinking about doing it.

  ~ * ~

  Pace woke with a start, heard someone crying.

  He reached over and turned on the light, looked around the room.

  William Pacella sat there at the foot of the bed, crying.

  Pacella twisted his head side to side, his eyes clenched as the tears boiled out beneath them.

  Pace laid back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling. “You did the right thing, moving aside. We all have to do it. It’ll be my turn soon.”

  Pacella said nothing. The dead either talked your ear off or they just sat there silently.

  “Just leave. There’s no place for you here anymore. You did what you could. We all do. None of this was your fault.”

  Ineffective white-bread weakass that he was, the guy sure hung in there.

  Waves lashed the rocks at the shore, sending a pleasant booming staccato through the house. A contrapuntal to his heartbeat. The rain whipped at the glass and formed vivid designs. You were always this close to figuring your life out, but you just never qu
ite got there.

  Pacella must’ve felt the same way.

  “Why don’t you go to her?” Pace asked. “She’s been waiting for you for almost three years. She needs you. Go join her.”

  A scuffling under the bed made Pace roll over and peer over the edge of the mattress.

  There was a lot going on under there. He saw a bloody hand flash out, and several thrashing legs, the stock of a rifle, a copy of A Separate Peace, a girl’s forehead with strawberry blonde hair sliding aside.

  Pacella turned his face and opened his eyes. In him remained all the fury and heartache of a man incapable of doing what must be done. It wasn’t much different than the way Pacella’s father had looked a couple of weeks before the old man had died. Frail, ambivalent with disappointment. Broken by the large and small injustices done to him over his life, with the unfairness of his mediocrity.

  William Pacella remained at a puzzled loss to understand what had gone wrong and when and where, with Jane’s death or long before. He looked like someone chained to an anchor tossed in the shallows, an inch away from the surface but unable to get his nose above water.

  Scraping sounds erupted beneath the bed. Fists were jammed up into the box spring so the mattress jumped. Pace laid there, the calming presence of the blade tight against his back. He’d slept with it on his belt.

  Pacella looked away again and then, going slack, drifted forward and fell to the shadowy floor.

  The noises continued. Squeaks, murmurs, and more sobbing punctuated by whispered requests and occasional guffaws. They knew how to have fun, that was for sure. Pace glanced over the edge again and saw that a woman with tightly curled gray hair was looking up at him.

  She focused and said, You’re not my boy. Where’s William? What have you done with my son?

  ~ * ~

  It was midnight. He went downstairs and Hayden and Faust were on the couch watching a repeat of the ten o’clock news, passing a bowl of potato chips back and forth. Hayden was also scrawling on his notepad, writing out tremendous looping words. They were both drinking beer and had a couple of empty six-packs stacked on the coffee table. He couldn’t tell if they were drunk. He didn’t know if they could ever get drunk.