Mark shifted his balance from one leg to another, nervously. “Will you help me?”
Trey sat up in his chair. He leaned forward. He was a tall man, so when he leaned like that, he seemed to stretch and almost reach where Mark was standing. “With what?”
“I want to dive.” “Now? It’s getting late. How about tomorrow morning?”
“Well,” Mark said, slipping his tee-shirt over his head. “You always say ‘Better late than never’.”
Trey chuckled. “That’s true.”
“I’ve been thinking how I’ve been a fraidy cat. And it’s dumb. It’s dumb because Teresa can dive. I’m just scared when I look in the water and see me staring back. But with the lights out, I don’t see me in the water. It’s just water.”
“You sound too logical for your age,” Trey said, mussing up his son’s thick, dark hair. “Okay. I’ll get on the edge with you.” Trey unbuttoned his shirt, tossing it on the chair as he rose. He unbuttoned and unzipped his pants, stepping out of them. He wore blue boxer shorts. Mark laughed out loud and pointed at them when he saw them.
“That’s not your swim suit,” Mark’s eyes went wide. “It’s your wonderwear.”
“Them’s my swimmin’ trunks now. Okay, what you do is...” Trey went to the edge of the pool, leading Mark by the hand. He leaned forward, his arms all the way forward, too, palms flat. “Pretend you’re like a dolphin. Push with your feet, press with your hands.”
Mark imitated his father’s position beside him. “I’ll fall.”
Trey said, “You won’t. You’ll dive. And you know how to swim, so once you’re in, you just swim. Let’s both go at the count of three. Okay?”
Mark nodded, but felt uncertain. He leaned forward and closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see how far the water was from him.
Trey counted to three, and Mark pushed with his feet and pressed with his hands. He did a belly flop, and sank down into the water. His stomach burned, and it was so black around him, he didn’t know which way to turn.
He swallowed water, and thrashed around, until finally his father grabbed him around the waist and brought him up.
“Marky, Marky, it’s okay, it’s me, are you all right?” Trey said, lifting him up to the side of the pool.
Mark coughed. He was crying, and felt like a baby. “I can’t do it right,” he said. “I get too scared.”
Trey hefted himself up the side of the pool, and out of it. He went to get a towel. He brought a big striped one back and wrapped it around his son. “You did fine,” he said, sitting down beside him on the concrete. “Let me tell you a little trick I do to get through difficult things.”
Mark leaned his head into his father’s chest. “What’s that?”
“I use the ‘As If’ rule. The ‘As If’ rule states that if I don’t know how to do something, I act as if I do, and then it works.”
“Like pretending?”
“Kind of. But it works because it’s not quite pretend. It’s something that our minds have within us already. It’s already in your body and brain to dive, Mark. You’re half fish as it is. Look how well you swim.”
“Yeah. But I can’t dive.”
“But act as if you can. Nobody can do anything until they work at it. But if you never try it, you’ll never do it. Sometimes I do things I didn’t think I could until I think of the ‘As If’ rule.”
“So I’m supposed to act ‘As If’ I can dive? But what if I crack my head open?”
Trey grinned, rubbing his shoulders with the towel. “Then you act ‘As If’ you meant to do that. Want to try again?”
“Really?” Mark asked. “I’m almost dry. Won’t Mom get mad?”
“I don’t think so. Not if you’re learning something new. Here,” Trey pulled the towel off, and stood up, holding his hand out. “If we keep trying ‘til you get it, you won’t be afraid tomorrow and you can show off.”
Mark took his father’s hand. “I might still be afraid.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m afraid sometimes when I dive, too. But fear is there to help protect you, so you’ll think about how to do it safely. Let’s give it one more try.” He took his son over to the pool’s edge.
“ ‘As If’,” Mark said, leaning forward towards the dark water.
“ ‘As If’,” his father repeated.
“Are you afraid of anything, Daddy?” Mark asked, solemnly.
“Everyone’s afraid of something, Marky. We have to overcome fear to face whatever it is that we’re running from. We have to live as if we’re brave.”
This time, Mark did a good dive, and came up, dog-paddling towards the pool ladder.
“Know what?” He asked his father.
“What?”
“I don’t have to be afraid of nothing no more.”
“That’s right. Not grammatical, but still correct.”
“Know what else?”
Trey shook his head.
Mark climbed up the ladder to the concrete. Then he leapt over the edge, cannonballing, making a huge splash when he landed. When he came up giggling and sputtering, he cried out gleefully, “That’s what!”
34
The woman with the neatly trimmed reddish brown hair, wearing jeans and a light blue cotton sweater, glanced around the oyster bar. This was the sixth dive she’d entered along the waterfront that evening. It stank of fish and even urine, from the open men’s room door.
It was only eight p.m., but already the place was packed, wall-to-wall with people drinking beer or devouring oysters and shrimp. The place was filthy, although the management had tried to cover this up with sawdust on the floor and dim lighting all around the bar and tables.
It reminded her so much of her past, of the very reason she was here.
In an ordinary saloon, or restaurant, no one would look twice at this woman. Her hair was an obvious over-the-counter dye job. Her eyes were pretty, but small. Her face was pale, as if she hadn’t been in the sun in years. Her lips, thickened with glossy lipstick, were curved nicely. She would be considered moderately attractive in another setting.
But in the particular bar, near the harbor, she might be the most ravishingly beautiful woman in all creation.
There were seven men sitting at the bar itself, and when she entered the bar area, four of them turned to look at her. The others slowly turned, also, when they noticed their compadres doing so. She tried to read them, but it was difficult with the noise from the jukebox, and all the talking. She had been to three other such bars already, and was exhausted. It took a lot out of her to get a good reading of someone, particularly in this sort of environment.
One of the men winked at her. He was twenty two or three. Five o’clock shadow. Dark, thick hair. Brown eyes. Well built, but short. His eyes stayed on hers the longest. She counted the seconds until he looked away. Then, he glanced back again.
Boldly, she walked over to stand by him.
“Hi,” he said. His breath was spit and beer. He was horny. That was enough.
“You’ll do,” she said.
“Huh?”
“You got a boat?”
He nodded. “Sure. Me and a hundred guys down here. Why? You into boats?”
She felt chilly, and was afraid for a moment that someone else was watching her. Someone who was threatening in some way. She felt that way whenever one of her own species was nearby. She could feel whoever was watching her just as if they were touching her face. She didn’t particularly like that feeling. It passed, however, and she returned her attention to the man on the bar stool.
“Yeah,” she said. “I really get into boats.”
She turned slightly to the right, but could not tell where the threat was coming from.
When the dark-haired man ordered her a beer, she knew.
It was the bartender. One of us.
A former surfer boy. Blond, six foot, well-muscled, pre-melanoma. His hair was cut short and flat on top, long and stringy on the sides. He was not handsome at all, except for the a
thleticism of his body. He had pale blue eyes. Crow’s feet about their edges. He was still, the way an animal being hunted was still. The bartender glanced at her, and she knew that he was one of her kind. He was reading her as much as she was reading him.
They didn’t have to say anything.
When he went down to the far end of the bar, she followed him.
“Do you have a boat?” she asked.
He nodded. He kept his hands in the pockets of his yellow shorts. She assessed from his bad posture that he was weary. He had possibly been doing speed for a couple of days. He would need to wind down. He said, “I can get a sailboat. Do I know you from somewhere?” His voice was raspy, as if he’d spent years raking it with razors.
“I don’t think so. I need a boat with a motor. It doesn’t have to be very powerful. Can you help me?”
“Sure. They call me the Cobra.” He thrust his hand out to shake hers.
She didn’t return the gesture.
That was all it took. His shift was off by midnight.
Off-shift, he wore a Hawaiian shirt that was blue with blotchy yellow flowers over the black muscle shirt he’d worn at the bar. He kissed her as soon as she stepped up to him outside. His kiss was dry. He smelled like whiskey and Old Spice after-shave.
She stepped back, away from his kiss.
“I thought you liked me,” Cobra said.
“I do. Not like that.”
“Okay, whatever.”
“The boat?”
Cobra cursed under his breath. He walked ahead of her, then stopped and half turned. A nearby streetlight cast a pale glow around his form, like a halo. “I swear we met before.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Do you believe in past lives?”
He answered her with a laugh. “My VW’s around the corner. I can take you to my buddy’s boat. Where you headed?”
“Catalina,” she said. She stood beside him, and watched the darkness as if she expected something to attack her. Yet she did not seem afraid. Just wary.
“Tell me another one.” He smiled good-naturedly as she caught up with him.
“All right,” she said. “If you won’t take me there, I’ll find someone else. There’s always someone else. But I can give you something you’ve never had in life before.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Fulfillment.”
Then she reached up to his face, holding it in the palm of her hand. She knew what the animals wanted. I will train you, dog, and you will understand your place in life. I will lead you to where you need to go.
She kissed him, and held him there for several moments.
“I thought you didn’t want that,” he whispered.
“Now I do,” she said, feeling her eyes glazing over. Feeling her mind glazing over, too. “In this alley. Against this wall.”
She pulled the sweater over her shoulders and head. She leaned back against the cold bricks. She moved out of her body, to a vantage point above them, as if she was not the woman below at all. She watched the animals bite and kiss and explore each other’s bodies.
Then, the lightning of time and space struck her, and its flash erased all memory of the present life.
October was a month of rain that year. A constant beating against the roof far above, and leaking down into the crawlspace where she slept. She slept too much, but she was too weary afterwards, after what she and her lover did, to do anything else. She awoke when a rat scurried across her leg. She crawled down to the opening, into the coal storage room. He was beating at the door again. Beating so hard, she thought he would break it down, or call attention to their nest.
She couldn’t let anyone else know about their nest or it would be all over.
She was sure that even her neighbors, if they knew what she did there with him, would set them both on fire inside it.
She glanced at the great oven, with its twin doors. Remembering a childhood fairy tale of a witch being thrust inside it by evil little children. Of being baked alive by evil children.
All children were evil.
She didn’t like to think of the times she’d had to sleep in that oven with her lover, doors shut. Just to keep from being discovered, mashed in together, as if they were one person and not two. Hearing the hounds and the whistles as the coal basement was searched. Feeling his hands about her...Thinking of the children lighting the fire in the oven, laughing as the witch burned.
She hoped that he would take her away from here, as he’d promised.
She prayed that they could use the lifetimes they’d collected to fly away.
He was, after all, a gentleman. And she would be his lady
She stooped down, pushing open the small door, he was there. He grabbed her, dragging her into the night. His kisses were like poison, for she felt herself die with each one.
He cupped his hands against her breasts, squeezing gently, then more harshly. The gaslight was dimmed in the fog and drizzle, and she could hear the clatter of horses as the carriages went by on the street. She smelled garbage and sewer run-off. Rats squealed at the doorway to her left. She had never been so cold and so hot at the same time.
She felt her blood burning within her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist.
He had the most beautiful face she had ever seen. It was like a pagan god, wild and ravishing and golden.
“Do it,” she moaned. “Do it.”
He took the small scalpel and touched it against her breastbone.
She met the cold metal, and pressed herself against it.
The blood was warm, and he brought his face down to it, tasting it.
He kissed her lips, passing her blood back to her.
Rain began to fall, and she heard the others, in the alleys, among the tenements, their cries of lust, their tender moans.
Lightning cut across her vision.
“You a vampire or something?” Cobra asked. He touched the side of his neck, and examined the blood on his fingers. “I dig vampires. I tasted blood sometimes. That was some love bite you gave me.”
Agnes Hatcher’s eyes came back into focus.
She was in the wrong skin. It was the wrong place. She wanted to be back there, back with her beloved, back with the only man who truly understood her.
She wept for all she had lost over her lifetimes. Cobra held her tight.
His friend’s boat was small, just a sloop with a nine-horsepower engine. It had a single cabin, with two narrow sleeping bunks, and a hot plate and bathroom. They kept the sail tied to the mast, and used the motor.
Agnes Hatcher fell asleep in the cabin. When she awoke, it was still not morning.
The boat was docking on the island.
She felt his power, his pull. Jack. Beloved.
Cobra wanted to fall asleep, but he was too keyed up. He told her how much he loved her. He confessed his crimes: the stolen things and the murdered people. He murdered like a child, from a quick temper. He loved like a child, too.
“Do you love me?” he asked.
“No,” she said, truthfully. “But I knew all about you when I saw you. I knew what you had done.”
“I saw it in you, too,” he said, nodding off to sleep. Agnes knelt beside him and watched the dreams come to his closed eyes. Then, she went up on the small deck and waited in darkness.
The threat of memory enveloped her, not her beloved, but the man from her childhood:
The man tying her to the chair, carving into her skin with the wood-burning iron. Teaching her about the life they had been a part of. Teaching her about how he had been there, had witnessed what she and her lover had done in the previous existence, and he had taken her in order to punish her for what she had done.
After days of the torture, the memories of the past life had come so strong and vividly that she could not see the present world for the past one.
The past life exploded across her vision: She was nineteen, and living on the streets of London, occasionally sleeping in the great sweat-shop basements, whic
h were warm at night, even though the machines clattered all through the dark hours. She had been forced into the life at twelve, by her mother, and did not enjoy any man’s touch, no matter how much he paid.
Then, one night, she met the gentleman surgeon. He promised her more than money. He promised her immortality.
“Each life we take,” he whispered into her ear as he made love to her, “we gain another. The ancients knew this. That was their reason for human sacrifice. I have taken several lives. If you will believe in me, I will never abandon you.”
She had delighted when her lover scarred her, or drank a drop of blood from the tip of her finger. He had a hunger to consume life in every way. He taught her how to use the surgery tools, how to peel flesh back so as not to traumatize it.
They took the other girls, together. She held Mary Kelly’s head down while her lover operated. She watched the terror of their victims’ faces, and finally, the love, too, for in suffering these whores achieved a great beauty. She watched for the police, or she sat in the carriage, waiting for him to run out swiftly so they could drive off.
Her life was never the same afterwards. It was full of gorgeous moments, of the taste of blood, of the understanding that the immortal soul was in the body itself, in the part of the body which was most important to its owner. Sometimes, their victims lived in their hearts, and sometimes in their genitals and sometimes in their brains.
And always, afterwards, he brought the scalpel to her, to taste. He would combine their bloods: their victim’s blood, and then hers, and then his.
Communion for eternity.
She took the scalpel from his hands. She pressed it lightly against the thick skin of his collar.
His eyes burned with excitement. She could tell that he was aroused in a way that he had never been before.
She brought her face to his and kissed him as a man kisses a woman, hard and deep and conquering.
“We are the gods,” he said, after the kiss.
Criminally Insane: The Series (Bad Karma, Red Angel, Night Cage Omnibus) (The Criminally Insane Series) Page 10