Splintered

by Jamie Schultz

  Anna headed toward the back as Dino began stuffing a somewhat smaller guy into the kid’s jacket. She could hear the tearing sounds from halfway across the room.

  She found a table at the rear of the room, far enough from the bar to avoid being heard and far enough from the dartboard to keep the bikers from getting any ideas for fun games. She pulled out a chair. “Have a seat,” she said, pointing.

  The kid held out his hand. “I’m Guy,” he said.

  “I figured. Sit down, Guy.”

  He dropped his hand to his side and sat. Anna took the chair across from him. His calm, stupid smile had returned. Just another day on this mildly interesting planet called Earth.

  “Didn’t think to dress down for the occasion?” she asked. “Not too smart.”

  “It seems fine. I’m down by a jacket, but it’s just a jacket.”

  Looking over his shoulder, she doubted it would even be that for much longer. “You’re not too concerned about keeping a low profile, are you? That worries me. Whatever it is you want, I’m not sure I want to help you.”

  “Robert said we can help each other. I believe him. You just have to have a little faith, is all.”

  “I don’t do faith. I do track record. Yours sucks, in the five minutes I’ve seen you. The only reason I’m still sitting here is that Bobby’s is pretty good. Now you tell me what you can do for me, and I’ll tell you if we’re gonna keep talking.”

  He folded his hands on the table in front of him and leaned in, giving her the impression he was trying extra hard to look sincere. “I don’t really know what I can do for you.”

  “You’re wasting my time.”

  “No! I mean, I saw you. In a vision. From God.”

  “You had me at vision. Lost me at God.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of white paper. He unfolded it on the sticky surface of the table. Anna’s face, rendered in near-photographic detail in what looked like blue ballpoint pen, stared up at her. Next to it was another drawing. Karyn.

  “I showed it to Robert,” Guy said. “He sent me to you.”

  “You’ve been flashing this around town, hoping to get lucky?”

  “It wasn’t luck. I’ve been guided.”

  “You draw that?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Sure.”

  She reached across the table and peeled the drawing off the surface. Then she tore it into half a dozen pieces and stuffed the pieces in her pocket.

  Guy’s smile didn’t waver. “You see? I had a vision, and now here you are.”

  She didn’t want to give him any credit for that, but, supposing he was telling the truth, the vision thing had her attention. “Yeah, I get it. So you have visions.”

  He nodded emphatically.

  “How do you get them to stop?”

  Confusion wrinkled the smooth terrain of his forehead. “Huh?”

  “How do you make the visions stop?”

  “Why on earth would I want to do that?”

  Anna had nothing to say. Behind Guy, the bikers had torn both sleeves off the jacket, reducing it to a ratty vest. At least they were getting something out of this.

  “You can’t make them stop,” Anna said.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  “Language, please.”

  She stood, the chair squawking against the floor as it slid out. “I wouldn’t wait around here too long if I were you. Those guys might get bored.”

  “Wait! Wait, please.” He reached out, maybe to grab her by the wrist, and she stepped back.

  “Try that again, and I will break your fucking fingers.”

  His face fell again, dropping into a sort of contrite chagrin, eyebrows drawn together and almost meeting in an inverted V at the middle of his forehead. She wondered if he was going to cry. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please, will you just listen?”

  She didn’t sit. “Talk.”

  “I can help you, I know I can. The Lord has shown me.”

  Anna prided herself on being able to spot a liar. It was a survival skill in her line of work. And as far as she could tell, either Junior here was utterly sincere, or he was the world’s most talented natural bullshit artist. “The Lord doesn’t come to this part of town,” she said.

  “There are—there are forces gathering. The hosts are assembling for battle.”

  “Hallelujah.”

  “I’m serious. You’re already in the middle of it. That’s why He sent me to you.”

  “You have ten seconds to say something I give a shit about.”

  He pulled an orange pill bottle from his pants pocket and put it on the table. For a moment, he held his fingertips to it, as though he couldn’t stand to be apart from it, but then he opened his hand and leaned back. “Here.”

  Anna stared him down. He met her gaze without flinching. Something shifted in her peripheral vision, and she was aware of the bartender watching as he cleaned a glass. “If that’s an illegal substance, I’m going to call the police,” she said.

  “It’s not.”

  She sat. The light coming in through the front windows shone through the translucent bottle. Inside it, she could see something with the shape of a toothpick or a fat needle.

  She took the bottle and opened it. Guy wasn’t looking at her anymore—the bottle had his attention. His lips were parted, his eyes wide and gleaming.

  Anna tipped the bottle upside down. A single sliver of black wood fell out onto the table. Guy seemed to be holding his breath.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

  “It’s a relic,” Guy whispered. “A holy relic.” He pulled his gaze up to hers. “It makes the visions come.”

  “I don’t need more—”

  “Take it to her,” he said. “The Lord spoke to me. He will speak to her. He showed me.”

  “This is bullshit.”

  “Take it to her,” he said again. “God will show her a true vision.”

  Her visions are already true, Anna thought. This nutcase can’t help her. Nobody else had been able to, either, though. She wouldn’t even be talking to this freak if she weren’t desperate. “Yeah, fine. Okay. What do you want for it? A hundred bucks?”

  His lips curled back and he recoiled in horror. “No!”

  “Two hundred?”

  “The relic isn’t for sale! That’s blasphemy.”

  “Then what are we talking about?”

  He lowered his voice. “I need help, not money.”

  “Just a different price, is all.”

  A roar of laughter went up from the front of the bar. The jacket had finally given up its struggle, tearing down the middle of the back and leaving the Mongol Prospect wearing two ragged halves. He held up his arms like he’d just won a prizefight. Guy didn’t even turn around.

  “I don’t want to talk about it like that.”

  “Okay, fine. What do you want for it?”

  He moistened his lips. “I need you to bring her. The woman in the picture. Bring her with us. To meet someone.”

  Anna didn’t at all care for the way his eyes refused to meet hers and his fingers fumbled with each other.

  “And do what?”

  A little twitch of the shoulders that suggested a shrug. “Nothing. Just talk.”

  “Fuck off. You’re creeping me out, and I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “Please.” The word came out a whisper, nearly inaudible below the raucous laughter from the bikers.

  “This stinks to high heaven. I’m not getting near it for a piece of wood you could have picked off a floor somewhere.”

  “I didn’t think so.” He paused, his mouth hanging open, lips slack, like his next words would be so painful his face had gone numb in anticipation of forming them. Anna could see his bottom row of teeth. Perfectly straight. “You . . . you can have that one.”

  “Have it. Your pric
eless relic, and I can just walk out of here with it?”

  His lips pulled back in a pained grimace. “Yes.”

  “And why do I ever come back to hold up my end?”

  “It burns itself down when you use it. That piece won’t last long.” He closed his eyes. “There’s a lot more where that came from.”

  That was enough bait on the hook to get Anna to bite. The way she figured, she had nothing to lose. Most likely, this was a giant waste of time, like the so-called Amulet of Isis, like all the potions and concoctions she’d bought off third-rate grifters and wannabes, like every other worthless dead end she’d found over the last month or so. In that case, she’d never see this asshole again, and that would be that. If it was actually useful, though . . .

  “All right,” Anna said. “I’ll take this. If it helps, I’ll get in touch with you through Bobby. If not, you’ll never hear from me again, and if I see you on the street, I’ll kick your ass.”

  “It’s a deal,” Guy said. “Please be quick.” He held out a hand.

  Anna ignored it. She picked up the toothpick with the nails of her index finger and thumb and put it back in the pill bottle, then put the pill bottle in her pocket. She stood. “Better stick close. I was you, I wouldn’t want to be left in here alone.”

  She headed for the door.

  Chapter 9

  Karyn thought she’d eaten earlier, though she remembered none of it. Her belly felt full, though, so unless that was the illusion, somebody had fed her. Maybe she simply didn’t remember—everything was so spotty now. It wouldn’t surprise her.

  She had reached a point where the worst part was the boredom. Boredom, of all things! But with everything around her varying shades of unreal, there was almost nothing she could interact with. One time she’d taken a book off a shelf, thinking she’d be able to distract herself from the insanity around her for a few hours, and never mind that there had been no shelf there earlier, let alone books, and the paper grew yellow and brittle and crumbled to musty-smelling flakes before she turned the first page. Conversations with the people around her were either futile or nonsensical. It was hard to remember she wasn’t in the future, she was just seeing it. Seeing aspects of it, anyway. And maybe the past now. Who could tell? But it was impossible to interact with the visions in any meaningful way.

  On the really bad days, the days when everything seemed to take the form of a cryptic symbol, thus rendering her entire world surreal and often threatening, she slept a lot. Other times she moved through a ghost world. The only thing she could be sure of was herself, which didn’t afford much in the way of anything to keep the mind busy. She did calisthenics sometimes, performing the first repetition of any movement very slowly, so as to avoid braining herself on a solid object she couldn’t currently see, or otherwise doing herself injury. She was up to three sets of thirty push-ups now, for what little that was worth. She might lose her mind, but she’d be healthy and fit right up until her brain threw in the towel.

  Today hadn’t decided yet whether it wanted to become one of the really bad days. Mostly it was recycled images of the Latino family that would be living in this spot five or ten years hence after this building had been bulldozed for apartments. It was kind of like watching a long family drama that had been chopped up and rearranged in no particular order. One moment the oldest kid, a girl, was seven years old, and the next she was seventeen, studying over some inscrutable textbook. A moment later, her neat school uniform had been replaced with khakis, a flannel shirt, and what looked like gang tattoos across the back of her neck. Possible futures, Karyn thought, even as the girl changed again.

  That probably would have been okay, if not for the truly surreal bits that kept creeping in. A small, dog-sized dragon stalked through the room after the youngest. A giant lifted off the ceiling and peered inside, and nobody paid any attention. Currently, a group of very tiny people, each about the height of a tall drinking glass, was hassling the family cat. Karyn had no idea what the hell that was supposed to represent, but it was mildly entertaining to watch, kind of in the same way that watching somebody with a poorly developed sense of self-preservation jump his motorcycle over a dozen cars was entertaining. Perhaps “entertaining” wasn’t the right word, but it was hard to look away in any case. One of the little fellows would run up and tweak the cat’s whisker or poke it in the side, then dodge as the cat whirled on it. Then another would provoke the cat from the other side, causing it to spin in that direction. It seemed like only a matter of time before one of them was a little too slow and the cat took his head off, or maybe it would learn to ignore the second provocation entirely and run the first little guy down and eat him.

  The youngest boy of the house, who evidently couldn’t see the little fellows, watched the cat’s leaping, spinning display and laughed.

  Something sharp pricked her under the nail of her middle finger, and she jerked her hand back. She turned her hand palm-up to see. A black splinter had been wedged under the nail, and a bead of blood traced a crooked path down from the injury.

  Real. Or something about it was. Pain didn’t just come from nowhere, or hadn’t before. Maybe this was a new, previously unglimpsed depth of her condition, or maybe something was happening.

  “Is someone there?” she asked.

  She heard nothing, but an image formed in her mind. Clouds in shades of blue, pink, and yellow, like a sunset in a painting by some Renaissance master. They parted, and a blazing gold light shone from them. She started to squint, then stopped herself. She wasn’t seeing this. Half her life she’d seen visions. Had to be thousands by now. And they weren’t like this. They seemed like real things, people or objects, existing in space around her, the information about them coming to her through her normal senses—usually sight, unless she’d been unmedicated for too long. They were indistinguishable from reality, which was the whole problem.

  This was something else. She could still see the family’s living room in all its details, and in front of her, the cat leaped after one of the gnomes, which laughed and fled. The image of the sky and the light wasn’t there, though. That had bloomed directly inside her mind, planted there by some unseen hand without the usual intermediaries of her eyes and ears.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  The image changed to bleak desert. Hundreds of people, dressed in archaic-looking clothes, like togas and crap, trudged through the sand in the direction of a swirling column of dust or cloud in the distance. Night suddenly swept over the scene, and the cloud was replaced with a pillar of flame. Something nagged at her about that, something almost familiar . . .

  The scene changed again. An arid mountainside, an old man with a long gray beard. Before him, a low scraggly tree erupted in flame.

  Not a tree. A bush. A burning bush. I have gone full-on, Voices From God schizophrenic.

  Then, bizarrely, the image was replaced by that of a telephone. The telephone changed to a microphone, one of the old-fashioned nineteen-forties-looking Frank Sinatra kind. It stood alone on a stage. The image point of view was from the stage, looking out at a nearly empty amphitheater. A single figure sat in the darkness out there, waiting. Abruptly, that image was gone, replaced by the drive-through menu at McDonald’s. No, Karyn realized. Not the menu—the intercom in front of the menu. I’m supposed to talk.

  “Um, hi?”

  A man’s hand, black hair prominent at the wrist, waving.

  “Who are you?”

  Nothing. The waving hand was gone, but nothing came in to replace it. Maybe it was her years on the street dealing with some of the shiftiest people imaginable or maybe it was just native paranoia, but that struck her as immediately suspicious. The images had been profligate and lush before, and the initial ones had been extremely suggestive—but not definite. Now they struck her as being almost like the “Look over here” bullshit attention-grabbing trick of a three-card monte dealer or clever pickpocket. And now, in response to the direct question, not even dissembling—flatly
refusing to answer.

  She waited. The splinter still stuck from her fingernail, but now she noticed that the other end of it was smoldering. And hadn’t it been sharp before? Now it was a rounded nub. She wasn’t sure, but she thought maybe this conversation, or whatever it was, had a pretty short time limit.

  What was going on here? Had Anna finally found something that could help? Or someone? She looked at the smoldering splinter again, at the bead of blood that had run to her wrist. She had a million questions, but this smelled rotten. She wasn’t asking any of them until she got an answer to the first one.

  “Who are you?”

  Again, nothing. The cat whirled, claws raking the air in front of one of the tiny men. A second one stabbed it in the flank with a tiny spear.

  “We’re done here, unless I know who I’m dealing with. One last time: who are you?”

  Another image—the room she was in. Cinder block walls. Dirty plywood floor. A single door.

  The back left corner of the room—not the real room, not the room she saw, but the room in her mind—began to fill with a strangely moving darkness. It wasn’t the retreating of the light, like sunset creeping across the land. It was like a liquid, as though the room were balanced on one vertex, and a black, oily liquid bubbled up through the bottom point, filling a space that was bounded by four triangles—parts of the three walls, and then a black surface, held in place by some unfathomable tension. Darkness boiled and billowed off the surface, sucking more of the light from the room.

  It felt . . . aware. As if it was looking back at her, with a sort of malicious curiosity that felt maddeningly familiar in some way she couldn’t place. Gooseflesh rippled down the backs of her thighs, and a shiver ran through her body. It seemed that something awful crouched at the center of that darkness, waiting for her attention to wander so it could leap out and immobilize her, then devour or vivisect her at leisure. Her breath came quickly, her heart began running sprints.

  It’s not here. It’s just in my head. That’s all.

  She didn’t believe it for a second. There was something awful in there, something dark and horrible, burning with hate.