“Yeah, but they’re all saying different things. I don’t know what happened. It must be magic.”
They all thought that was pretty funny.
They talked for about twenty minutes before Andrew and Josh had to go. They both said goodbye and started towards the street, out of the park.
“It’s a shame they’re not staying,” Josh said.
“Josh, they’re in college.”
“I didn’t mean that, Andrew.”
“Yeah, you did.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Josh, you’re an idiot.”
They were still arguing as they stepped onto the sidewalk. Shadow floated back to the gazebo and reentered her body. She’d wanted to see Andrew, and now she had. She could wait until tomorrow to see him again. In the meantime, she watched television.
Andrew came by after school the next day. They played chess and talked. Andrew mentioned the girls he and Josh had talked to.
“Josh. Josh talked to them. I didn’t really want to.” Shadow didn’t argue. Andrew moved his king up a single space. “I wonder what he really thinks about what happened downtown.”
“You could ask him,” Shadow said.
Andrew shook his head. “I don’t want to get him thinking about it if he isn’t already. I don’t want him to find out about you.”
They finished the game. Andrew was getting ready to leave when he noticed that Shadow’s fingers were shivering.
“Is something wrong, Shadow?”
“I was just thinking. Do you remember the man who carried you into the park? The man with the gun and the bad breath?”
“Yeah, I remember him.”
“I’ve been thinking about him a lot. I thought it was all right to just leave him where he is, but I’ve never done anything like this before and I wanted to be sure.”
Andrew put his backpack back down on the ground.
“I thought he was gone.”
Shadow turned her enormous plaster head back and forth.
“I hid him in a safe place.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know how to explain it. You’ve never been there, it’s not like other places. He’s safe where he is, but I don’t know if it’s right to just leave him. But if he’s going to hurt other people, then I don’t want to just let him out either. What should I do?”
Andrew thought about it for a minute.
“I want to talk to him.”
#
They did it the next day.
For a split second everything went black, and the chamber was filled with the sound of stones grinding against each other. When the light returned, Jeremiah’s partner was on the other side of the room, curled up into a ball and shaking. Nothing had changed— he was wearing the same clothes, had the same raggedy hair hanging off of his head.
He clawed at his chest with his fingernails and gasped for air. Then he smiled and began to laugh.
“Here, I’m…”
He turned. His smile vanished when he saw Andrew. He ran at him screaming, his arms outstretched. Andrew closed his eyes and cringed.
When he opened them again, he saw the man standing in the middle of the room with his hands in the air, pressing against an invisible barrier.
Slowly, he started laughing again.
#
It took Mike the Kid an hour and a half to get rid of the owner of the fucking hotel. It wouldn’t have taken that long if he’d just been rude, but he didn’t want to be rude. You never wanted to piss off the person in charge of the bed you were sleeping in. So he spent half an hour listening to him talk about the hotel and when he’d bought it, and half an hour hearing what each of the “Deluxe” suites were like, and half an hour pretending like he might actually want to invest some money in this godforsaken town. Like that’s what he’d spend his money on, if he had money.
It was enough to make him never want to use somebody else’s credit card again. But it was done, and for the moment, Mike wanted nothing more than to hold onto his seat at the bar and look out for college girls.
As he put the glass to his lips, he saw someone he recognized on the second story balcony about a hundred yards away, a tall man with messy white hair standing next to a little guy in a suit who Mike didn’t know. The smaller man opened the door to one of the rooms and the white-haired man stepped through.
The short man followed him inside and closed the door. Room 207.
#
“You want information, right?” Chris said. Chris was his name— he’d offered it before Andrew had had a chance to say anything.
He walked the dirt from one end of the gazebo to the other, always stopping just short of where Shadow's barrier kept him confined.
“That’s what this is about, isn’t it? That’s fine, that’s fine. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, it doesn’t make any difference to me. I only want one thing.
"I want you to kill me.”
#
Mike stayed at the bar long enough to finish his drink. It was late— the pool was closed, and anybody who was looking to make a long night of it had already gone downtown. As soon as he was sure no one was watching, he took the stairs up to the balcony and pulled a shaving razor out of his pocket. He carved into the paint covering the door to Room 207, leaving three barely perceptible lines, a triangle.
He put the razor back into his pocket, walked away, went back to his suite, locked the doors, ripped a piece of paper off the pad on the desk by the window, sketched a simple pattern in pencil, and smacked his hand down on top of it like he was killing an insect. He closed his eyes. He saw the triangle and moved through it, past it.
The white-haired man was named Luke. Mike could see him up close now, his pale glass eyes deep in their sockets. Michael remembered the night he first slid them into place. He had to rip out his real ones first. He did it with his own fingers. Luke the psycho. Michael wished he had a handle like that. Maybe someday. He was still young.
The other man was talking on the phone.
“Are you having any more luck… not really, Paul’s shielded himself somehow... I don’t know… I don’t trust what he’s telling me…”
The man in the suit looked around, and suddenly Luke wasn’t in the room anymore. His eyes filled with panic, but his voice stayed the same.
“Yes, yes, of course I’m controlling him. Absolutely I am. I’d just appreciate some back-up…”
Mike lifted his hand off of the drawing and smiled.
He waited until five o’clock in the morning, killed the time by watching the news and taking trips to the vending machine for soda. Then he left his room and walked down the hall towards room 207. He kneeled down in front of the doorknob, whistled a tune, and kissed it. The lock clicked and slid open.
He stepped into the room. The younger man was lying in bed with a sheet and a blanket on top of him. Michael stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He leaned over the bed, took the switchblade out of his pocket, and opened the man’s throat with a single practiced cut.
He opened the door to the bathroom. Luke was sitting in the tub.
“Thank you,” he said.
Mike the Kid shrugged and smiled.
“It’s not a problem. You got something going on?”
Luke the Bastard nodded yes.
“Need an extra pair of hands?”
He nodded yes a second time.
CHAPTER 11
#
“I mean not just kill me any old way. I want you to use your pet there to do it. I want you to annihilate me, every trace of me, every last speck of dust on my body. Everything, you got that?”
It took Andrew a minute to think of something to say.
“Why?”
“Once we have a deal you can go ahead and ask me. But that’s the deal. I want your little art project over there to completely nullify my existence. Absolutely nothing left. That’s important.”
Chris su
ddenly disappeared.
Andrew turned to Shadow. “You didn’t…”
“No, I just put him back where I’d been keeping him. I thought you might want to talk to me. I can do what he wants, but I don’t know if I should. Wouldn’t that be the same thing as hurting him?”
Andrew rubbed his eyes with his fingertips.
“No… no, I don’t think so. Not if that’s what he wants. But I still don’t know if we should do it.”
He thought about it.
“Andrew…”
“Just give me a minute.”
Shadow didn’t understand what was taking him so long. But she waited.
#
A few minutes later, Chris reappeared.
“We’ll do it,” Andrew said. “Just answer all my questions and we’ll do it.”
His demeanor changed, suddenly and entirely. He crossed his legs and sat down on the floor.
“All right then. Whatever you want to know. Shoot.”
Andrew took a deep breath.
“Why do you want to die?”
“You were with Jeremiah— he didn’t tell you about me at all, did he?”
Andrew nodded his head. “He said you were partners.”
“Yeah, that’s a word for it. He couldn’t deal with it after I got killed, so he brought me back with that little glow-juice trick he figured out. But he didn’t know what it’d be like. You can’t even imagine, having to drag yourself around when the fire isn’t there anymore, when that little thing that makes you want to get up in the morning is just gone.
“It might not be so bad if I could just roll up the windows and crank up the gas, but it’s not that simple either. I don’t know what’s keeping me here. I don’t know if it would go away, if my body were just dead. Maybe I just wouldn’t be able to move or talk or close my eyes, but I’d still be in this fucking water bag, just thinking and not being able to do anything about it. I don’t know and I don’t want to find out.
“So I didn’t have a hell of a lot to do except chase Jeremiah around and try to get some payback. But now, with this thing, I could really do it. Just stop the whole show. You get the point now?”
Andrew nodded his head.
“All right. Well, there’s one question. What else do you want?”
#
Andrew cleared his throat.
“How does magic work?”
Chris laughed at him. Didn’t just laugh— laughed at him.
“I don’t know. Nobody does. If they knew what made it work they’d call it science. That’s what magic is. It’s what doesn’t make any sense.”
“Then how did you learn it?”
“Got started the same way you did, probably, poking my nose in things I shouldn’t have. A construction worker I used to buy drinks for let me know about this guy who’d just gotten a wall safe installed in his living room. I kept driving by the place every so often for a while and when I saw his car had been gone for a couple of days, I broke in.
“The only thing inside the safe was a bunch of old reel-to-reel tapes. When I listened to them they didn’t even make any sense, at first. The guy was mumbling like an idiot; you could only make out every other word he was saying. But what you could hear was pretty interesting, some pretty wild stuff. So I had a little bit of money, and I liked to travel, so I thought I’d maybe track down some of what he was into. Thought it’d be cheaper than going to Vegas like I usually did when I needed a break.
“That was a little over twenty years ago. It’s funny, I always figured I’d get sick of it sooner or later and go home.
“I met Jeremiah about five years after I left. I was in New York; people are easier to find there. They got a look in their eye, you can feel it. Sometimes a few of us who know what’s going on all end up in the same circles for a little while. So we got together. You know how it goes.
"What else?”
#
“I don’t know who killed me. There aren’t even any marks on me now. I spent my last night alive waiting for a guy I knew in a parking lot.
“He had some stuff I wanted. I had to make the trade in person, so I set up the meeting when there wasn’t any moon so Jeremiah could show up without them seeing. Figured that was all I needed for security, but I guess I was wrong. Last thing I remember is sitting there in the front seat of my car with ten grand in a suitcase. Then I’m digging my way out of a coffin.
“I’ve thought about it though, and I do have my suspicions. Here’s where you’re going to get your money’s worth, actually, because I don’t think just everybody’s put the pieces together on this. Guys like us die, but not just for the reasons you’d expect. Every seven years or so, a bunch of them just kind of disappear. I thought I was just imagining it, but I used to have the journal of a guy who was into this back in the thirties, and he had the same impression. If you ask me, somebody’s been thinning the herd, and doing it for a long time. They have fingers all over the place, they know how to keep quiet, and they’re so well organized they have this on a schedule. And we’re about due for another swipe.
“Don’t ask me anymore about it, there’s nothing else I can tell you.”
#
He started smiling again when he found out.
“You’re Paul’s nephew? No shit?”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“Not much, but still plenty. He’s real good. He knows things I don’t think anybody knows.”
“Like what?”
“At least half of what I’ve heard has got to be bullshit. Moving things with his mind, like he could go on talk shows and bend spoons if he wanted. Strangling people without touching them. I only dealt with him myself a few times, and he always played it close to the vest, just traded antiques, contacts. Didn’t talk to me, didn’t like me all that much.”
“Can you tell me anything else?”
“Yeah, he had a girlfriend. Don't know what her deal was.”
“Anything else? Do you know why he’d come here?”
Chris leaned back against the wall and smiled at Shadow.
“I do now. Paul was careful, but if somebody was looking for hot rocks to get rid of, he’d still be on the top of the list. Maybe he figured his own little pet god would be a good way to not get killed.”
#
“And you don’t know anything else about Shadow?”
“That’s a pretty name. No, I don’t. And I’m not surprised. It’s the kind of thing you’d want to keep a secret. If word got out, every half-assed pocket wizard in the country would swarm over here trying to put a leash on that thing. What’s that noise?”
Shadow’s fingers were vibrating, feeling the chamber with a low, constant note.
“Don’t call her a thing,” Andrew said.
“Her?”
“She doesn’t like it.”
Chris leaned back against the wall, still smiling. “Well shit, we don’t want to hurt her feelings…”
“Shadow, put him away, I want to talk to you.”
He disappeared. Andrew felt Shadow’s voice whispering in his left ear.
“Andrew, what’s wrong?”
“He called you a thing. It bothered you too, I heard it.”
“I don’t care. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Andrew was silent for a moment.
“Do it. Get rid of him now. I don’t want to talk to him anymore.”
“He probably has more to tell you.”
“I don’t care. I hate this. I don’t want to talk to him.”
Shadow didn’t say anything. Andrew stared at the wall. He let his head rest in his hands for a moment and rubbed his eyes.
“All right, bring him back, but only for a little longer.”
Chris reappeared, still smiling, trying to hide it but visibly shaken by his banishment.
“You said that others might try and come here.”
“What do you mean try? They might not know about your pet, b
ut they watch TV just like everybody else. They’re here already.”
“Who?”
Chris shrugged. “I saw one guy I knew at the hotel. He didn't see me. His name’s Mike. They call him Mike the Kid. And there’s Fat Rob, who actually lives here I guess, but you knew Rob. That’s all I got. I’ve been out of the loop for a while.”
“Okay.” Andrew looked to the side and thought for a minute.
“Is that it? Are we done? You didn’t even ask me about any technical stuff…”
“Shadow, do it.”
Chris disappeared. For a moment the room was silent.
#
Then Andrew spoke up.
“So he’s gone now?”
“He’s not here anymore. Why didn’t you ask him about the books?”
Andrew shook his head. “I don’t need him to teach me anything. I just didn’t want to talk to him anymore. How much time has passed, Shadow? On the outside?”
“About fifteen minutes.”
“Then I’m late. I’ll come by tomorrow and we can talk everything over, okay?”
“Okay, Andrew.”
Andrew picked up his backpack, stood in the middle of the room, and closed his eyes. Shadow’s head spun around, the room went black, and Andrew was returned to the top of the platform.
Shadow stayed in the darkness of the chamber for a few minutes.
The light came back, her head spun around, and Chris reappeared.
He looked around.
“What the hell…”
“I have a few more questions for you,” Shadow said.
“Where’s the kid?”
“He left.”
“Does he know what you’re doing?”
Shadow didn’t answer. Andrew didn’t always tell people everything. He kept secrets, even from people who were important to him. If he could do it, Shadow could do it too.
“When you said that you didn’t know anything else about me, your heart was beating faster than normal. You were lying.”
Chris looked down at the floor. It was a minute before he said anything, and when he did, he sounded almost disappointed.
“I don’t blame him for not asking for any details. It’s pride— he doesn’t want to feel like he’s on the bottom of the food chain, wants to figure everything out himself. I was the same way. I just hope he gets over it.”
White Rabbit Society Part One Page 10