Bleak History

by John Shirley

  There was a marina in Hoboken, New Jersey, near where Riverview Drive meets Harbor Drive. It's across the river from the Westside Highway, and Greenwich Village, Lower Manhattan. Most of the time, Bleak lived in the marina, in a tired, old thirty-five-foot Chris-Craft fiberglass cabin cruiser. Unregistered, so he couldn't be traced to it. Technically you weren't supposed to live in the marina either, but he had a friend, Donner, an old stoner who ran the place from his combo office and studio apartment overlooking the docks, and Donner pretended he didn't know Bleak lived there. He valued Bleak's chess game—Bleak could usually be counted on to lose, in the end, even though Donner was smoking pot while he played. But then, Bleak didn't try very hard to win.

  Looking at the marina, now, from the screen of trees in the park across Harbor Boulevard, Bleak didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Didn't see any police cars, didn't see any obvious CCA agents over there. But they knew who he was. They'd been tracking him. So they might know where he lived, registered or not. They could be waiting in his cabin cruiser. Or watching from the small yacht tied up in the next berth. They could be a lot of places.

  And he felt something. A faint sense that someone close by was thinking about him—and not Donner.

  He was cautious enough to keep a small metal boat tied up, little more than a skiff with a one-cylinder, barely functional outboard motor, about a quarter mile downstream on the Hudson. There was enough gas in that little vessel to get up to the cabin cruiser, check it out from the water where they might not see him coming. He'd feel them for sure, if they were in there, once he got close enough.

  He looked around, before leaving the park, though he knew they hadn't spotted him. If anyone was looking at him in any fixed and purposeful way, he'd have felt it.

  ***

  IT WAS ABOUT EIGHT o'clock when Bleak got the boat out from under the crumbling pier downstream, started it upriver, hugging the Jersey shore. It seemed to take a long time to push against the current up to the marina. He stayed inshore, in the long shadows of the buildings with the sunset behind them.

  The boat rocked in the wash from a barge. He was tired and didn't want to end up rowing. Now and then the boat's putt-putting engine missed a putt, like an old man's failing heart. And he wondered how long Cronin would be around for him.

  The river oozed past. The field of the Hidden whispered.

  Usually he kept his consciousness of the Hidden bottled up. But being out on the river, in the slow, contemplative living stream, his senses tended to flow out of him, to widen, to reach out...

  Until finally—a face looked up at him, from just under the dark surface of the river.

  He was used to seeing them out here. Lots of guys had been dropped into the river, disposed of, i weighted but alive when the water closed over their head. Funny to see the clean-shaven man in his suit, complete with a wide, checked tie; his hair smoothed back, his features quite intact, his prominent nose not nibbled by fish. His eyes looking at Bleak from under a thin sheet of dirty water. But he wasn't a corpse; only a confused ghost.

  “Pal,” Bleak said, “that tie is way out of fashion. You've been under there too long. You gotta get to a mall.”

  The man's mouth moved. No bubbles came out of it, no sound.

  “Can't hear you, bro,” Bleak said. “Just let go and drift with the stream. Your body's long gone. Just drift, and once you get far enough from the spot where you died, someone'll tell you where to go next.”

  The man sank away, emanating disappointment. Bleak remembered another river ghost, a couple years back, when he'd been out in his cabin cruiser. The perfectly preserved body of a chunky, bald man in a jogging suit, maybe from the 1990s, talking to him. Unheard. He had decided to see what this one had to say, and he'd tuned in to its mind—to its mindless muttering, really. An uncomfortable, tiring, risky process. And he'd heard, “Tell Buddy I'm going to pay him off, he don't have to do nothing. I'm gonna get all the shit for him. My wife took it and sold it in L.A., it's gone, but I'm gonna get some more, I'm gonna replace all seven ounces, he don't have to do nothing. Tell Buddy I'm going to pay him. Tell Buddy... “

  “Buddy already did you,” Bleak had tried to tell him. “Or somebody sent by Buddy. You're already dead. Hey, if you're gonna be a ghost, try to remember yourself slimmer and, like, in a better outfit.” Bleak sometimes tried to kid the ghosts out of their self-centeredness. But they clung to it— though their fixations kept them ghosts.

  “Tell Buddy I'm going to pay him off, he don't have to do nothing. I'm gonna get all the shit for him. My wife...”

  Feeling headachy and sick to his stomach, Bleak had cut the connection, like hanging up on a phone call.

  Remembering the jogging-suit ghost, Bleak shook himself, looking around to reboot his mind. He was really good at keeping bad memories at bay. It was a skill a combat vet learned.

  Bleak looked up from the river, saw that he was about to reach the marina. His cruiser, the HMS Crackbrain, was a wedge of darkness against the backlights of the marina, rocking gently on its mooring. He saw no one on it. Felt no one watching him, not from anywhere.

  He cut the engine, put the oars in the oarlocks, and rowed the rest of the way. He was sweating despite the evening cool on the river. He could see lights on at Donner's place, overlooking the dock, ashore. More than one light on. But if Bleak went up to Donner's place, asked him what he'd seen, he might involve him. If he was under surveillance, they might take Donner in as some kind of accessory, or even a suspected Shadow Community rogue.

  Bleak shipped the oars and let the boat drift up to the dock, near the prow of the cabin cruiser. He sat quietly in the inky darkness of its shadow, both hands holding the rope that held the cruiser to the dock, and closed his eyes. He extended his senses into the Hidden, enlarged the field of his awareness to take in the Crackbrain—and immediately sensed someone in the boat. No one should be there. He'd locked it, and no one else but Donner had a key.

  Whoever this was, it wasn't Donner. But a faint fibrillation of familiarity tingled from the person in the cabin cruiser. And something else. Whoever it was...

  Was wide-awake. Tensely aware. And waiting for him.

  Instinct told him to get away from the dock—from any CCA backup that might be waiting nearby. And do it quietly.

  But Bleak tied the metal rowboat to the line dangling from the aft of the cabin cruiser and clambered up the built-in ladder, into the larger boat. He paused on the slightly rocking deck, near the cowl for the inboard engine, listening. Nothing but the sound of a distant siren from the city, the lapping of small waves on the fiberglass hull.

  He moved down the steps to the door of the cruiser's cabin—and saw that the door was slightly open. He stepped back, curled his right hand, built up power—the river helped, immediately, as running water always did—and readied himself to create an energy bullet.

  The door suddenly popped open. A willowy figure came sinuously through, her eyes glowing with power.

  He stared. “Shoella!”

  A tall, slender black woman, her hair bristly with dreadlocks. She glared at him for a long moment—then gold teeth gleamed amidst a broad white smile.

  “Bleak. Where yat? Pigeon Lady told me what happened today. If they're onto y'alls, maybe they onto us.” She was a mix of Creole and other New Orleans strains; had a soft Cajun accent, though she'd been living in the North for almost ten years.

  He released the energy bullet and shrugged. “If they're onto all of us, maybe they're following you, Shoella. Maybe they followed you here.”

  She shook her head. “We both know when we being followed. But cher darlin'? I made up my mind. You got to meet with our people...and decide whose side you're on.”

  She came a step closer, into the light from the marina. Shoella was a little older and taller than Bleak; she was almost storklike, six foot one, bony, with ropy dreads past her collarbone, a green-and-red silk Chinese mandarin jacket, a wraparound skirt of red silk, high-top, dark green snea
kers, jangling copper bracelets. A sardonic expression on a faunlike, cocoa-colored face of indeterminate age. Bleak didn't know her well, though a flirtation had existed between them—at times it had seemed to break through flirtation to something more. He figured her for somewhere past thirty-five. Except for her tallness, she was not the exotic woman some expected to meet. If she was summoning ancestral spirits, or using the strange birdlike familiar that followed her, though, she took on a different aspect. She seemed to grow in bulk and density, and gravitas.

  Just now she was strolling up to the railing, to gaze out at the oozing-slow water, her bracelets jangling, singing softly to herself. Watching a barge pushing by way out on the river. Its wake slowly, inexorably worked its way over to them and lapped on the pylons.

  “What I want to know,” she said, “were they just after you, or they after all of us? What do you figure?”

  “Right now, I'm trying to figure out how those high-top sneakers go with all that silk. Does, though. The feds are after all of us, Shoella. You were right about that.”

  “Then it's time to call a meeting.” She made an odd twitchy gesture at the air, and in response a strange cry, and a flapping sound, came from above.

  Bleak glanced up, saw a darkness shaped like a large bird—a very large bird—descending toward them. Something dark, big as a large seagull, settled on her shoulder. The Bird That No One Knew, some in the ShadowComm called it. Shoella called it Yorena. Referred to the familiar as a she though it was doubtful the creature had real gender.

  The bird was dark crimson. Very dark. She was flecked with jet and a lugubrious yellow, sprayed across her belly; her beak was like a falcon's. An ornithologist had seen Shoella with the familiar and had begged to examine the creature, but when he'd stepped closer, Yorena viciously attacked him, bloodied his cheeks, and drove him away.

  She wasn't exactly a real bird; she didn't eat or leave droppings. Sometimes she shed small feathers, but if you put one in your pocket, the molt was gone, soon after, like a piece of ice.

  “Time to call a meeting,” Shoella repeated, to herself now.

  She whispered something to Yorena and the familiar took to the air, in a dark flurry of purpose. Shoella muttering, “And laissezles bons temps rouler.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  That night. The Hudson River.

  The place smelled like beer—and like the river.

  River Rat's Bar and Grill was built on a dock, on the Jersey side, a little more than a quarter mile upriver from the marina where Bleak had docked his boat. The place was lit by lamps hanging from the ceiling over the bar, and not much else. It was still a bar, but had given up the grill. River Rat's was just a large shack, to Bleak's mind: warped-wooden, saw-dusted floor, wooden walls decorated with paper money brought from foreign places, lots of Italian lire; poker chips from foreign casinos, nailed up; a few cobwebby fishing nets, with dusty glass floats, hung from the ceiling. A gaunt, white-haired old man in a stained white shirt, sleeves rolled up, worked behind the dented oak bar. He had an expression on his face that wasn't far from looks Bleak had seen on refugees, walking mile after mile, in Afghanistan: a lonely look of determined endurance.

  A few sailors, from the big freighter tied up down the shore, drank at one end of the bar; two other men, their backs to Bleak, sat talking at a shadowy table in the far corner.

  “How'd you come to choose this place?” Bleak asked. He had never been entirely certain of Shoella's motives—in anything.

  “It wasn't that far from where your boat was tied up and...I thought it'd be interesting.”

  Uh-oh, Bleak thought.

  They ordered a couple of beers—the old man served up the drafts with surprising dexterity and speed—and they took them to a circular wooden table under an overhead lamp; a fishnet draped from the ceiling was spread close under the lamp, making a mesh of shadows over the table.

  Bleak sat where he could keep an eye on the door and the rest of the bar. Thinking, Is this a date? Almost feels like one.

  “You said it wasn't just you they were after.” Shoella was speaking low, so he had to lean closer to hear her. “What makes you think so?”

  “The agent had some kind of detector that kept her right up on me...but I managed to get outside its range.”

  “Or you're not outside its range. And they're about to bust in on us here.”

  “Maybe. Thing is—you think they developed that device just for me? Uh-uh. Had to be for all of us. And you know they want to find all of us.” He shrugged. “Maybe I overreacted. She talked like it was just recruitment.”

  Shoella sniffed. “They always talk that way. But their recruitment—mo' like enslavement. What this detector now?”

  “Something new. But I don't think I'm mistaken about it. The Hidden has its own energy signature.”

  She nodded. “When we open the gates, it's like canal locks—something has to spill through, into that space, level the energy flow. Power clings to us—and this thing smells it.” She toyed with her glass, tossed her head, making her dreads bob. “That all you know, what's going on? This run-in with one agent?”

  “Pretty much. It's CCA. An agent named Loraine Sarikosca all over me like white on rice. And the detector. Kind of disturbing. They can use that thing to ferret us out, make life hell.”

  “So maybe you want to come over to La'hood, join up close. Quit being a Rambler. La'hood watch your back.”

  La 'hood. That's what she called the New York-Jersey branch of the Shadow Community. “I come over when I need to.”

  “That's more selfishness than solidarity, Bleak,” she said, leaning toward him, eyes glittering. Her accent always thickened when she was feeling emotional. “I've had bad luck with 'solidarity.

  “See, little white boy cheats us out of important resources when he don't come round.” Shoella sipped her beer and put the glass down with a clunk. The table wobbled. “We each got our talents. We got some overlap for sure. But we might need your especiality.” Another Shoella term, especially. “More especialities we have, more we—”

  “More power Shoella has?” he interrupted, his tone casual, but knowing it would make her mad.

  Shoella tensed—but after a moment he could feel her letting it go. It was something he could feel, when she let it go, as if someone had invisibly grabbed him by the shirtfront...then suddenly loosened grip.

  “No,” she said softly. “That's not it, cher darlin'. It's not about my power.” There was a peculiar longing in her voice. Her gaze settled on his, for a moment, and he felt her longing psychically, as palpably as Spanish moss whipped by the wind to trail across his face. “Could be that you and I...with all our differences...are still...” She broke off, looking away. Left it unsaid.

  “Our differences, anyway, aren't that important,” Bleak said. Not sure if the two of them were talking about the same thing anymore. “The Hidden is a field, and wind makes shapes in it...in the apeiron field.” He shrugged. Made a sweeping motion in his hand as he tried to articulate it. “And mind enters the shapes, and sometimes the shapes survive and call themselves spirits...and it's everywhere.” As Bleak spoke, he was aware of someone across the room looking at him fixedly—he could see himself, talking to Shoella, from the man's point of view—one of those men at the table in the other corner. That attention was hostile. He tried to ignore it. “But it's all one thing, in the big field of the Hidden, Shoella. So the especialities don't matter.”

  She looked at him with her head tilted, her dreadlocks bouncing with the motion. “And listen to y'all—hidden depths. So t'speak. Oh, here the man comes.”

  A figure loomed up at the table, and Bleak groaned inwardly, recognizing him. Donald Bursinsky. A refrigerator-size man in a gray hoodie, with a slack mouth and a faux-hawk and tiny, dirty-blue eyes and an ink-pen swastika tattoo on his neck.

  “Yuh the bounty-hunter azzole ahright,” Bursinsky said. “Yuh put me in Rikers jail.”

  “No,” Bleak said, sighing. “No, man, yo
u went to Rikers because you skipped out on bail. You should've shown up in court. All I did was take you back to the system—they decided where you went from there. Just doing what I get paid for.” He saw a second, taller, less substantial man coming up behind Bursinsky, looking over Bursinsky's shoulder; second guy was gangly, with his hand in his pocket.

  Gun in there, Bleak thought.

  “Yuh know I go ahead 'n' kill uh bounty hunter, it ain't like I kill uh cop,” Bursinsky said. “Yeah, nobody gonna get that worked up about it,” the other guy said.

  Bleak was sorry he didn't have a gun. He didn't want to use an energy bullet here in front of these people.

  He realized that Shoella was watching him, seeming bemused. “I get to watch your especiality now?” she asked.

  “Nope,” he told her, sizing Bursinsky up. The damned fool was standing much too close. “Not the technique you're thinking of, Sho'. I work with a team, when I'm bringing a man in. I've got people I call.”

  “Yeah, this bounty hunter was a little bitch,” said the gangly guy. “Had to use a buncha guysta help him.”

  “If being professional aboutajob is being a little bitch...,” Bleak said, shrugging. Bursinsky was so close Bleak could smell the big lug's sweat and the corn dog he'd been eating. “You want to go back to jail, Bursinsky?” Bleak asked, levering his feet hard against the floor and leaning forward. “You've gotta be on probation.”

  “Now yuh threatening me wit' jail again? Gleaman...?” Bursinsky turned to the skinnier guy. “Give me the—”

  The moment Bursinsky looked away, Bleak launched himself out of the chair, slamming his right shoulder into the big man's solar plexus; feeling Bursinsky fold up, wheezing over him. Bleak gave another shove, with his whole body, and Bursinsky fell heavily back onto the wooden floor, making it boom hollowly; making the glasses on the bar rattle. Gleaman gaped, confused.