Zanesville: A Novel

by Kris Saknussemm

  Aretha set out to see the dwarf. But when he arrived at the Information Station, the Cube was empty.

  Aretha logged on to Finderz’s thinkstation with the master password placebo domino. Not even the dwarf had that key.

  In the dwarf’s WIP file, Aretha noticed the letter to Julian Dingler that Finderz had drafted for Clearfather, but not the communication that had been sent to Dingler. That seemed odd. He’d have to raise the issue with Keeperz. In the meantime he summoned THE ENTOMOLOGIST.

  Up out of the cyberdark the netted face formed. “Good morning, my friend,” the soft voice oozed. “More fisshhing perhapsss?”

  Aretha shivered. “Do you know what happened to a message Finderz sent last night to Pittsburgh? A coded message to Vitessa.”

  “I know nothing of ssucch a messsage,” the soft voice answered.

  Finderz had said THE ENTOMOLOGIST was one of their stronger assets. If he was twisted, all of Fort Thoreau was in jeopardy. The drag queen dispatched THE ENTOMOLOGIST back to cyberdarkness and resolved to speak to the dwarf the very first moment they had alone.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Whispering Cage

  The experience at the organ clinic killed Clearfather’s appetite. For the next couple of hours he wandered through the vaccinators and legal advice terminals, trying to steer clear of the quarantined areas. Something terrible had happened . . . maybe lots of terrible things. The name Vitessa rang bells, but what was Al-Waqi‘a? And what were the little patches that people wore on their skin? When he looked at them closely, he saw that they had an almost living sheen—ultrafine microcircuits suspended in some form of skin-sensitive glycerine. He sensed that there was something individual about each one and yet they were all linked, like pieces in a huge jigsaw.

  For a while he sat watching the Allegheny, fondling the little ivory ball in his pocket. He contemplated tossing it into the river but couldn’t bring himself to do so. Instead he flung the soft wheat of his hair. He tried to concentrate on a plan. How was he going to get money? Who or what was he there to find? The problem was that every few minutes he’d hear voices. Sometimes they were like angels singing hymns or voices in an unknown language that made him think of Indians and buffalo . . . wind in tall grass. Other times they were like frenetic insects. Roaches on aluminum foil. He caught the phrases level upon level . . . chain reaction . . . the Holy Ghost in the machine . . .

  Maybe I’m a schizophrenic, he thought. I just need some medication.

  If so, he wasn’t alone. He noticed many people wandering around talking to themselves. More people than he thought there should’ve been. That was another puzzle. The checkpoints, the eidolons, the Securitors, the talk of the Holy War and the disaster in LA—the Voyants and TWIN, which he’d worked out stood for The World Integrated Network—the number of damaged people—everything made him feel as if he’d been asleep for a long time. It was as if everyone who could afford it now was on psychoactive medication. An epidemic of mental illness had taken hold of America and possibly the world. The trouble was, it didn’t explain the bizarre effect he had. In moments of clarity, I can project and control, he thought.

  He glanced up at an ad for the Christian Investment Fund. It was an eidolon of Jesus saying, “For I came down from heaven, not to do mine will, but the will of him who sent me.” It reminded him of his map. Perhaps I’m being projected and controlled, he thought, just like the eidolons. And like Dooley Duck and friends, I’ve somehow broken free.

  He was just starting to unpack this possibility when he found himself confronted with another of the old-fashioned billboards.

  MAKE A MISTAKE WITH THE SACRED AND YOU GET SCARED.

  —Stinky Wiggler

  This one was at ground level so he walked up to it to see if he could touch it, but the moment he did, it disappeared. Before, when he’d seen the signs, they’d triggered a flurry in his head. This time there was a parade of grainy images that wrinkled like photographs in a fire. A man outside a radio station. A circle of women kneeling around a pillar. Then the boy in the bathroom—and a Catholic church. He had a misty recollection of an Aunt Vivian and Uncle Waldo. But they were without faces. They gave him a sense of warmth and hope—and yet of sadness. He felt the letters engraved in his back come alive with heat, and it was all he could do not to fall to the pavement. Then he looked down the street and saw a real Catholic church. St. Aloysius.

  The empty sanctuary was echoey and cavernous, as if built to contain the largest of the eidolons he’d seen, but old and grim even where daylight seeped through the stained-glass panels, all grimed with a layer of dust so that they seemed more like grafittied monitor screens than leadlight windows. A row of candles burned. In the corner, the confessional chamber. Like a Voyancy Terminal. In a small chapel alcove was a mural of Jesus with the words HE THAT LOSETH HIS LIFE FOR MY SAKE SHALL FIND IT. An eidolon console flickered out the stories of St. Nicholas of Tolentino, the noble protector of children, followed by a feature on Clare of Assisi, patron saint of television. A priest approached.

  He was stiff and creaky, smooth and indefinite of face. His breath had a scent of raisins. “Welcome to Saint Aloysius,” he breathed. “I’m Father Dominic. Are you all right?”

  “I came in . . . to seek . . . guidance . . . ,” Clearfather said.

  “Well, I’m sorry that VatiCom is down at the moment so the Pope isn’t here. We had a lightning strike last night. But . . .”

  “The Pope?”

  “The Apotheosis. The eidolonic presence. We’re having technical difficulties after the storm, but we expect to be back online soon. Could I be of assistance? Or would you like to just sit and pray?”

  Clearfather felt a searing pain in his back and saw again the image of the boy in the bathroom mirror, candles glowing. Then the flashlight that made him choke. The raisiny smell was very strong now and the burning in his back so bright he could see the letters before him.

  “Come,” whispered Father Dominic, noticing his distress. “Into the confessional booth.”

  In addition to the priest’s discomfort in speaking face-to-face with strangers off the street, he liked showing off the confessional booth, with its mesh grille made of pressed zinc. The metalwork had such a delicate and almost moist quality, it made Father Dominic imagine that it retained the voices that passed through and, if stroked with the right touch, might reproduce those hushed admissions.

  “How long since your last confession?” the priest asked when they were settled. The privacy and the scent of the pressed metal enlivened him.

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m even Catholic. But I’m having visions and hearing voices,” said Clearfather. “I see a young boy. Candles . . . and a mirror.”

  Just to describe it sullied him.

  “Is the boy naked?” Father Dominic asked.

  “What? Yes. Well, he’s bent over a toilet or the counter in a bathroom. I’m afraid this is something I’ve done. A ritual.”

  “Tell me about the boy,” came the priest’s soft voice through the grate.

  “His buttocks are arched.”

  “And is his skin smooth?”

  “What?”

  “I mean . . . are there signs of violence?”

  “N-no,” Clearfather stammered and he caught again the scent of raisins, a hint of corruption like halitosis and rosewater.

  “How do you feel when you are with him?”

  “I don’t know if I have been with him! I don’t know who he is or where he is!”

  “But you want him.”

  “No! I don’t like little boys. Are you listening to me?” Suddenly the priest’s hoarse breathing made Clearfather think that the old man was listening too closely.

  “You know what I think?”

  “No!” the priest gurgled. “I haven’t!”

  “You’re lying,” Clearfather said, and he imagined he could feel the old man’s soul, tumorous and ulcerated, smushing through the grate like some dank cheese.

  “Who
. . . who are you?” the old man gasped.

  Clearfather swallowed hard, fighting back the sickness he felt in his gut. And he heard, like a voice reverberating through the sanctuary, but inside his own head . . . a Man of Storms . . .

  “Who . . . who are you?” the old priest cried again, the tremor in his tone rising.

  “I’m not a pheasant plucker, I’m the Pheasant Plucker’s son, but I’ll keep on plucking pheasants till the Pheasant Plucker comes.”

  The priest choked and laid his head against the mesh. “Father forgive me . . . I dream about it like you do. We are the same.”

  “No!” sighed Clearfather. “We’re not. I don’t know how it works . . . but those dreams aren’t mine! But you, Father—as if you deserve that name!”

  The quotation scraped into his back burned like magnesium.

  “I know!” the old priest shrieked into his trembling hands. “But it’s not just me! There are many—and they really do things! All the time! I only have evil dreams.”

  Clearfather retched and stomped out of the box, smashing the door on his side behind him. Outside, the air was full of grit and ethanol but now it seemed refreshing. A troop of Hare Krishnas paraded past. He fell in behind them and followed their chanting and drumming to the next street, where his head started to clear and the wicked burning on his back began to ease.

  Father Dominic checked his pulse and waited until he was sure the man was gone. Then he heard a sound between a whisper and a snap. He moved to open the panel in the chamber but the door wouldn’t open. He had to stay calm, compose himself. The dreams of the boys—they’d misled him. He prayed under his breath and then had to inch closer to the grate. He had the funny feeling that the confession box was getting smaller. He dabbed the moisture from his brow. His hands were shaking. The door wouldn’t open. He called out. The air was as thick as old velvet. How could the box shrink? This is crazy, he thought. But he couldn’t shake the idea that the space was contracting. He found it hard to breathe. There was no room! But it couldn’t be. This is what comes of listening to people unburden their hearts and open their heads. It was just a moment of weakness—not like years and years of actual . . .

  Oh, my God, he thought . . . the confessional chamber is getting smaller . . . it’s closing in on me . . . “Help!” he called. “Someone! Please! Forgive me . . .”

  CHAPTER 7

  Ghost Meat

  Clearfather felt a pain in his brain. Everything seemed repellent. Degenerate. Time to get back to the bus station and back on the road. An obscure little town with a name like Dustdevil, Texas, sounded like too small a place for someone not to know him if he had any connection there. And if he didn’t, then he’d know the map was a dud and he’d have to form another plan.

  He headed back toward the depot, trying to stay in line with the radiant Chung Center. Before he knew it, though, he found himself in a maze of derailed boxcars and shanties. Crushed car bodies stood balanced like houses of cards—colored smoke clouding between charred mannequins. Women of all ages fell back on disintegrating couches or in the trunks of cars with their legs spread. They called to him in trance-weary voices. He saw people with artificial limbs, naked men and boys sprawled over car hoods, drift nets stretched like spiderwebs, bodies wriggling—the smell of unwashed genitals like rancid lard and rotting fish. He turned to run and then he heard a scream very close by.

  Behind a fluorescent graffitied Dumpster a gang of dark youths had stripped a white boy. Standing guard was a tall black man wearing a wig of fiber-optic glass nails, a codpiece that featured an LED display flashing the word SLICK—and emu-hide boots under a full-length wolverine coat. Cradled in one arm was a sawed-off Mossberg, while at his side was a genetically modified Presa Canario dog.

  “What you want, Cue Ball?” the man said.

  It occurred to Clearfather that he could get killed if he didn’t get out of there right away. But if he did, then the boy was dead.

  “This little faggot’s rich,” one of the kids panted. “Whatchyou think we should do?”

  “Why doan you cut off one-a his arms an’ fuck ’im widdit?” The black man smiled. “Violence is golden, baby.”

  “Stop it!” Clearfather shouted, heaving a brick against the Dumpster.

  “Girl,” said the black man, frowning. “What up with you, huh? Cain’tchya see ma boys got bad head shit they workin’ out? Ya know, therapy?”

  “Stop,” Clearfather said, feeling a hot pain fill his head. “Now.”

  “Now? Muthafukka, did I hear you say now . . . to me?”

  The gangstas, sensing fresh meat, eased for a moment. The white boy spluttered up a bubble of blood. Clearfather saw that it was the same kid from the Greyhound men’s room. He’d lost his Madonna and Child lens.

  “Leave him alone,” Clearfather said. Then the pain was gone and the words of a song began to form in his mind—a song that for some reason he thought Aunt Vivian and Uncle Waldo had taught him.

  “Stand back,” Clearfather instructed, and one of the boys let go.

  “Girl, you startin’ to annoy me,” the tall man spat. “You do not want to annoy Sir Slick—Dr. Double Barrel, the Wolverine Dean. Ma dick is longer, ma gun is bigger, ma dog is badder—”

  “First of all,” said Clearfather—and to the gangbangers’ surprise he unzipped his pants.

  “Shit, homes! Check it out!”

  “¡Por Dios!”

  “Second, that’s a funny-looking gun you got.”

  Sir Slick raised the Mossberg but found that he wasn’t holding a shotgun anymore, it was a golf club—a sand wedge to be precise.

  “Fuckin’ hell!” one of the kids cried.

  “¡El Diablo!”

  Slick flung the club away.

  “And third . . .” Clearfather snapped his fingers and the 160-pound dog came over to him and sat down beside him.

  The attack dog was a mass of gristle and muscle packed under a scabby coat of brindle and black hair that looked like beer and bonemeal mixed with mud. Its chest was as deep as a mandrill’s but it was the head that was the biggest worry—a blunt-force trauma skull with little crusted razor-blade ears and lacerated jowls frothy with saliva. Still, behind its lockjaw ruthlessness, in the dim black sump holes of its eyes, Clearfather could see an anguish and a fear that reminded him of a child in hiding, a boy in a closet—waiting for a bad man to pass by the door. He held out his hand and the mutant lolled out an engorged wet tongue that still had the faint but distinct iron odor of blood.

  “All ’ight. So y’all doan scare easy.”

  “I’m not sure I scare at all,” Clearfather said and patted the great beast.

  “Man who doan scare end up daid fast,” Slick spat.

  “You ever die before?” Clearfather replied, still smiling.

  “¿Qué hacemos?” one of the streetfighters called.

  “Well, bro,” Slick whistled, shaking his glass-bristling skull, trying to regain his cool. “Y’all got some gear on ya, I gotsta admit that. And ya got a serious hocus psychosis thang happenin’. Butchyou still wrong about the gun, son. That’s why we all have ’em!” And the other six demonstrated his point. “Now, let that little white punk go or cut his throat quick. ’Cause I want to castrate this bald muthafukka. I’m gonna slice yer dick off an’ keep it in a jar in ma crib—whatchyou think a-that?”

  “They don’t make jars that big.” Clearfather shrugged. “Now toss all the guns in the Dumpster and let the boy go.”

  “Who are you muthafukka?” Slick cried.

  “I’m not a pheasant plucker, I’m the Pheasant Plucker’s son, but I’ll keep on plucking pheasants till the Pheasant Plucker comes,” Clearfather answered, and one by one the punks lobbed their guns into the Dumpster and let the white boy go. Half naked, cut and bleeding, the kid staggered off between the mangled cars.

  Slick was truly scared now. Nothing like this had ever happened even when he was Hexing.

  “Now,” Clearfather said. “We’re going t
o sing a song. It’s an easy song to remember. But very hard to forget.”

  In his mind he heard the cheerful voices of Aunt Vivian and Uncle Waldo, as if teaching a small child a nursery rhyme.

  “Just you boys now. Ready? Here comes Peter Cotton Tail . . . hoppin’ down the Bunny Trail . . . hippity, hippity, hop, hop, hop . . . hippity, hippity, hop, hop, hop . . .”

  The gangbangers’ faces glassed over.

  “C’mon now, everybody sing along!” Clearfather called. “Here comes Peter Cotton Tail . . . hoppin’ down that ole Bunny Trail . . .”

  One by one the boys began to chant the words until it became a song.

  “Now put a few moves to it,” Clearfather directed. “Some hopping and clapping.”

  And off they went . . . all singing and clapping.

  Alone now, Slick was beyond fear.

  “I’ll let you take off your boots,” Clearfather offered.

  “Y-you w-want my b-boots?”

  “I’m just thinking you’d run faster without them.”

  “P-please!” Slick whimpered, his head pouring sweat, his illuminated codpiece trembling ridiculously until it sparked.

  “I believe you’ve pissed yourself,” Clearfather remarked. “I’ll give you a head start to make it sporting.”

  The gang leader was talking to himself in a high, crazed whisper now. He stripped off his fancy coat, his boots, and the damp, shorted-out codpiece. His wig he hurled at the Dumpster, the com-links shattering—and with a yelp he shot off through the wasteland. Clearfather waited.

  “What are you gonna do? Let the dog loose?” he heard a plaintive voice ask.

  It was the white boy. He’d struggled into what was left of his dirty clothes and had wiped the blood off his face, but his lower, cosmetically thickened lip had been split.

  “No,” Clearfather answered. “What Slick thinks is chasing him is much scarier than this fellow . . . and a lot faster.”