I Come with Knives

by S. A. Hunt

  Damn, she thought. Bunch of dead cats.

  The witches are planning a siege.

  “I’m so sorry about your brother.” Robin’s remaining hand clasped Joel’s.

  His eyes sank to their combined hands and he stared at their knuckles. When he’d given the moment room to settle, and he could talk without choking up, Joel told her about yesterday. “The county cops came to talk to us after we told the nurses how we got hurt … I guess the hospital called the law. I rode out to the Mushroom Mines with a couple officers to show ’em the cat truck and Bowker’s body, and told them what happened up at the quarry. I let ’em know it was self-defense, told ’em about Fish. They’re investigatin’ everything, I guess. We’re not being charged with anything—nothin’ yet, anyway—but neither one of us can leave town until it’s finished. They said something about dredging the pond, but with all that acid, I don’t think it’s possible.

  “Anyway, it turns out Bowker and Euchiss were the only two cops on the take. None of the others knew anything about it. Or at least none of them admitted anything.” Joel took his hand back and studied it grimly. “They didn’t believe me when I told ’em who was behind everything, though. For all I know, they’re all in on it, and they let Foghorn Leghorn and Chickenhawk eat shit and washed their hands of the incident.” Joel darkened. “The cops may come and talk to you.”

  “That’s fine.” She opened her Styrofoam cup and crunched some ice. “So, they said they’d been dumping stray cats in that drainage pond for years?”

  “Euchiss said there was two or three thousand down there.”

  Robin studied the people around them—nurses, doctors, patients. She wondered how many of them were carrying around a secret cat. God, that sounds crazy as hell, she thought, not for the first time realizing the things she had to talk about, and the things she had to deal with, were just as crazy as anything Mike/Mark from Medina Psychiatric had to tell her. Ten thousand shillings in a potato sack. “They’ve been familiarizing the city. With that many cats, they’ve probably got their claws into a third of Blackfield’s population.”

  A man in a white lab coat standing in line for hamburgers stared at her. Even from here, she could see his honey-colored eyes and the vertical slits of his pupils.

  Maybe not so crazy after all.

  “My mama burned these into me and my brother when we were little.” Joel showed Robin the algiz branded into his hip. “Must have been what kept me and Fish from being taken over.” He leaned an elbow on the table, supporting his head with a hand. He looked exhausted. “So, what happened with Fish’s cat?”

  “Must have been Cutty.” Robin stole one of his French fries. “She took over the cat and tried to familiarize one of you with it kamikaze-style. I’ve seen it before. It didn’t work, though, because you had the algiz on you. But if it didn’t go into you and it didn’t go into your brother, where did it go? Who else was around?”

  “Your boo Kenway.”

  “Kenway?” she asked, eyes widening. “Really? He didn’t say anything about it to me.”

  “I don’t think he knew. I don’t know if he blocked it out or what.”

  “There you are,” said the big veteran, sitting down. Wayne Parkin was with him, wearing a bookbag. The boy stared down at the table and ate a granola bar in tiny, disconsolate bites.

  “Speak of the devil.” Robin reached over and squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t worry, dude,” she told him, staring into his eyes. “We are absolutely going to save your dad.” Speaking to the whole table, she announced, “Tonight. I’m going to go up there and end this. Tonight.”

  Kenway frowned. “Are you sure you’re up to that?”

  Their eyes were all locked on her. A feeling of angry misery passed briefly over her, followed by a sensation of anxious responsibility. It was surprising to realize she actually sort of liked it, this feeling of purpose, and of being held to a task. It shouldn’t have been. She had grown accustomed to being relied on by the subscribers to her YouTube channel.

  But this was different. These people, they were real, physical, close enough to touch, and they had real stakes in the game she was going up to bat in. Robin took a deep breath and sighed through her nose, feeling burdened.

  “I’m goin’ with you.” Joel tapped the table as if he were putting down a poker hand. Cool resolve materialized in his eyes, a steely effect Robin wouldn’t have thought him capable of. Pride swelled in her chest. “They killed my brother. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let ’em get away with it without puttin’ in my two cents’ worth.”

  “You know I’m goin’ too.” Kenway folded his arms, his elbows on the table. “Being your cameraman sidekick, and all.”

  The ball was really rolling now. Robin regarded them all with respect and anxiety and only hoped she could keep them all alive to the end. “I’m used to working alone,” she said, giving them the Batman spiel. “I can’t protect you all.”

  Shit, I can’t believe I forgot to mark Kenway.

  “Speaking of protecting, I am such an asshole,” she said, grabbing Wayne’s backpack and digging a black marker out of it. She pulled up Kenway’s shirt and drew an algiz rune on his chest. “With everything going on, I totally forgot to put one of these on you back at the house on Underwood the other night. That thing with the cat is totally my fault.”

  “We can protect ourselves—I think we’ve proven that to be true.” Joel sat back and folded his arms. “I ain’t afraid to smack a muhfuckin demon with the phone. Ring-ring!”

  “Maybe,” said Robin, drawing another algiz, and then one on each of Wayne’s hands for good measure. “But these help.”

  * * *

  “You said you quit taking your antipsychotic medication over the weekend,” Kenway said when they got back to the hospital room. “How long have you been taking that stuff? What did you say it was?”

  “Abilify.” Robin climbed into the bed and sat on the duvet. The TV was still on, and it was still turned to a horror movie, this one being Psycho. Anthony Perkins’s black-and-white face filled the screen as they talked.

  “What does it do?”

  Wayne sat in the chair next to the bed, rummaging through his bookbag, which looked quite full. Kids these days have a lot of homework, Robin thought, watching him. He still seemed despondent, always watching the floor with a frown, and she couldn’t help but feel for him. He’s still broken up over his dad missing. Man, I have got to pull through for this kid.

  “Umm…” She rubbed her face in thought. “It’s a dopamine agonist.”

  Kenway shrugged in confusion. “Mickey Mouse–style, please.”

  “Okay: dopamine is the pleasure chemical. Your body releases it when you do pleasurable things, like cocaine, sex, when you get chills from listening to orchestral music. An agonist makes you more receptive. It’s used to treat low-dopamine conditions.”

  “You really know a lot about this stuff,” said Kenway.

  Robin shrugged. “A couple of years living with taking them every day, you eventually learn a few things about them.”

  He paced back and forth between the bed and the TV. “Since we found out you don’t actually have schizophrenia—the voices and hallucinations have been Andras trying to draw you here, back to your childhood home—then I imagine the Abilify’s been, what, double-dipping your dopamine? If that’s even possible?”

  “I guess it has. Maybe? I don’t know.” She laughed. “I guess that makes me double-dopey, dude.”

  Putting his weight on one foot, Kenway leaned his elbows on the footboard. He did that from time to time, presumably to give his prosthetic foot a rest. He looked like he needed a break too. Beat all to hell, with bags under his eyes. “So, maybe it’s what’s been suppressing your demon side all this time. Maybe having a high load of dopamine in your system keeps a lid on that side of you.”

  Another tingle of itchiness. Robin rubbed the dressing again, wincing at the deep ache. “When you lost your leg—” She hesitated. “Did it i
tch all the damn time like this does?”

  “Yeah,” said Kenway, tugging at his jeans leg so the prosthetic foot glistened in the sunbeam coming through the window. “It still does, sometimes. I can tell you a trick they taught me at the VA for dealing with that kind of thing if you want.”

  “Please. It’s driving me nuts.”

  “What I do is, if my phantom foot itches, I take a hand-mirror and put it next to my foot so the reflection of my good foot overlaps my fake foot, so it looks like I still have two real feet. And then I scratch the real foot.”

  Robin angled her head so she could see her shoulder out of the corner of her eye. “Where would I put the mirror? Between my boobs?”

  “Uhh. Good point, I guess.”

  Someone knocked at the door and a doctor let herself in, checking her watch. “Good afternoon, folks,” she said quietly. Despite the authoritarian white labcoat and clipboard, the visitor’s shock of dark hair and youthful face made her look like a teenager.

  To their surprise, it was Fisher’s girlfriend, Marissa Baker. Robin was glad to see her eyes were normal and not the gimlet screwheads of a familiar, but her face was drawn and dark. “I’m Dr.—oh. Hi.”

  “Hi,” said Robin.

  “You’re … Joel Ellis’s friend, right? Robin? I remember you from Game Night.” Marissa noticed the other people in the room. “Hi, Kenny. It’s good to see you.”

  “Hey,” said Kenway. He stepped in for a hug, which Marissa stiffly accepted. “Are you doing okay? Hey, why are you here? I mean—”

  “Please.” Marissa warded away any further questions with a hand. “This is how I deal with things. I work. If I go home, I will be by myself, with nothing but my thoughts, and that won’t be good for anybody, least of all me.” The room paused, everybody awkwardly assessing each other. Marissa stared at Robin’s chart as if it had been written in some other language, then looked up at them. “Ms. Baker will have a hard time later. Right now, Dr. Baker has shit to do.” She glanced at Wayne. “Sorry—stuff to do.”

  The boy shrugged.

  “I’m going to take a look at you right quick.” Her very human eyes rose from the clipboard and widened, magnified by her glasses. “Wow, you’re already up and moving around?”

  “I come from hearty Irish stock,” said Robin, closing her MacBook.

  “Evidently. Your paperwork says you were … in a car accident?”

  “Yep.”

  “Jesus.” Marissa hung the clipboard on the end of the bed. “How fast were you driving?”

  “Not fast enough, apparently.”

  She shot Robin a look of grim concern and glanced down at the scars running up the witch-hunter’s wrist. “It pains me to ask and I know you probably don’t want to hear it, but … you’re not having suicidal ideations, are you?”

  “Not these days.” Robin sucked her upper lip, noticing her noticing the scars. “So sue me, I took it really hard when they stopped making 3D Doritos.”

  “Gonna have to take your gown off for me to examine you.” Marissa stuck her hands in her coat pockets, eyeing Kenway and Wayne. “Are you all right with your friends being in here for that?”

  Wallowing around in his chair, Wayne faced the wall. “I can turn around like this.” He opened the textbook he’d been reading again. “Is that okay?”

  “That’s fine,” said Robin.

  She met Kenway’s eyes and he stood there obliviously for a second. “Oh, right.” He turned to face the TV and watched an Arby’s commercial.

  While Robin shrugged out of her hospital gown, Marissa’s brow went up in recognition as she glanced over her glasses at Wayne. Digging in her pocket, she took out a pair of purple nitrile gloves, wriggling her hands into them, snap, snap. “I thought you looked familiar. I didn’t expect to see you back so soon, Mr. Parkin. How’s the leg? I trust you’ve been staying away from the snakes this weekend.”

  “It’s a lot better,” Wayne said over his shoulder, pushing his glasses up with his knuckles. “Thank you. No, no more snakes.”

  “You aren’t into country cures too, are you?” Marissa went to work peeling off the adhesive gauze and removing the dressing. Orange Betadine and dried brown blood made a pit in the center of the absorbent padding. “It’s been one hell of a weekend,” she was saying in her clipped Midwest cadence. “I’m starting to wonder if my medical license is becoming obsolete. First, some lady brings in a kid with a snakebite she’s put a witch-doctor poultice on and he’s walking around that night and even sneaking out of the hospital. I mean, really? And now I’ve got a girl that lost her arm in a high-speed car accident and she’s up two days later, joking about oh … What the hell is that!”

  An iceberg dropped into the pit of Robin’s stomach.

  Even though her chest was still on stage, Wayne and Kenway immediately turned to look. Marissa had completely removed the dressing, revealing the angry, gnarled flap of skin where the wound had been sealed over in a huge U of whiskery stitches and glinting steel staples.

  A black tendril four or five inches long was tonguing its way out of the surgery scar, reaching out like a time-lapse video of a tree-sprout germinating from an acorn.

  “Unnnh!” grunted Kenway. “What the hell.”

  Wayne stared. “Whoa.”

  The tendril writhed and explored like an earthworm seeking moisture, groping around Robin’s armpit.

  On closer inspection, it was the red-black of red wine or a dry kidney bean. The worm-thing didn’t stink—didn’t even have a smell outside the fact her armpit was right there—but the sight of it was enough to turn her stomach. Robin covered her eyes and faced away like a little girl getting a vaccine, but she could still feel it licking insidiously at her ribs and the swell of her left breast, the faint tickles of a ghost-finger.

  She stared in terror at the insides of her eyelids, shaking. “What in the world is that? Why is it inside me?”

  “Hell, I don’t know!” Marissa’s voice broke.

  Panic set in and then she couldn’t seem to get enough air, there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room no matter how hard she gasped for it. “For the love of God, get it out of me. Get it out get it out get it out.”

  Marissa licked her lips in thought and her head darted this way and that, searching the room. “Dammit,” she said, patting herself down. “I don’t have anything to grab it with.”

  “Use your fingers!” cried Kenway.

  “Yes, well, all right, then,” said the doctor, and she put her left hand on Robin’s ribs, gingerly taking hold of the tendril with her right in a sort of pen-grip, as if she were going to sign her name on the surgery scar. It snaked back and forth, curling around her finger, and she tucked her face into the pit of her own shoulder to gather herself.

  “So help me God,” Marissa said with a muffled cough, and pulled the tendril.

  Even under the Percocet, it hurt like it was stapled to her very heart. Robin shouted into the quiet hospital room as tears flooded her eyes. “RRHHAAAAAAAAHHHH!!”

  The doctor let go and stepped back with her hands up in surrender, shaking like she’d been shot at. “Wait right here,” she said, ripping off her gloves as she strode at the door—at, not to; she pretty much walked at the door in her haste to get out. “I’ll be back in two shakes.” She snatched the door open and stepped outside, pulling it shut.

  “Come on.” Robin slid out of the bed and crammed her feet into her combat boots, digging through the overnight bag Kenway had packed from the clothes in her van. She wriggled into a T-shirt and jeans and zipped the bag shut, picking it up. “We need to get out of here.”

  “What? Why?” asked Kenway.

  “Because I don’t know what this thing in my shoulder is, but I feel like they’re not going to be able to get it out without really hurting me.” Robin went to the door and pulled it open a crack, pressing one eye to the gap even though she didn’t know who she expected, if anyone at all. “Also … I think it’s got something to do with Andras, and I really
don’t want hhh—I don’t want doctors messing around with it.”

  Good God. Skin crawled down her spine. She’d almost said human doctors.

  Other than a few nurses bustling up and down the hall and a man sitting in a wheelchair at the end, there was no one on the wing. She looked back at the man who had followed her this far and told him with her eyes she needed him to go a little farther. Kenway’s face tumbled through concern and confusion, settling on grim acceptance. He put all of Wayne’s stuff back in his bookbag and grabbed the baggie of pain meds off the nightstand.

  “Okay,” he said, shoving the pills into his pocket, “let’s go, lady.”

  The nonchalant scurry down the hall and past the nurses’ station was a lot less intense than Robin anticipated, though she couldn’t have told you who she thought would show up to stop them. Riding four floors down in the elevator was an exercise in restraint, because the tendril was nosing around inside the sleeve of her T-shirt like a cat lost in a bedsheet. Looking at it made her want to throw up. Wayne happened to see it out of the corner of his eye and he sidled away against the wall, folding his arms.

  “Did that really hurt as much as that scream made it sound?” asked Kenway. “Is it attached to something?”

  “I think so. Felt like it.”

  The elevator door clunked open and the three of them hustled through the lobby. “Ma’am?” said a woman sitting behind the help desk. She called again, a little more insistently this time. “Ma’am?” Robin pushed the front door open.

  To her surprise, the sun made her sneeze, and with the Percocet in her system, it jarred her like a blow to the head, and she had to steady herself against one of the protective pylons in front of the crosswalk. As soon as she gained her bearings, she took off running into the crowded parking lot, her combat boots clopping across the tarmac. She forgot Kenway said he’d driven his land-yacht of a pickup into the acid lake, so she half-expected to see it in the parking lot, but her Conlin Plumbing van was parked out there instead.