Razor Dreams: The Seventh Jonathan Shade Novel

by Gary Jonas

  “But there would have been cops everywhere!”

  “There were. I avoided them but talked to one of Isabel's neighbors.”

  “Why?”

  “I couldn't save Isabel, but I could at least save Sancho.”

  “Who's Sancho?”

  “Isabel's cat. I got a neighbor to take him.”

  “That was good of you. I'll be back.”

  “Where’re you going?” I asked.

  “To talk to Kelly,” Esther said. “This case just got dangerous.”

  “Right. Good luck with that,” I said. “Kelly made up her mind. She's leaving.”

  “I have to try.”

  Before Esther could pop away, someone knocked on my door.

  “Just a minute,” I called. I went to grab a pair of pants while Esther stuck her head through the door.

  She popped over to me. “You're never going to guess who's here to see you,” she said.

  “Rayna?”

  “No.”

  I grabbed a pair of jeans and stepped into them. “Kelly.”

  “No.”

  “Sharon.”

  “No. I told you, you'll never guess.”

  “Jessica Alba.”

  Esther rolled her eyes.

  I walked over to the door, opened it.

  “We need to talk,” Martin said. “Right fucking now.”

  He pushed into my room.

  “Good morning to you,” I said. “How did you find me?”

  “I have my ways.”

  “I'm not doing any more floors,” I said.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Mopping.”

  “I'm here to talk to you about the goddamn demon, you idiot.”

  “I'm listening.”

  Martin glared for a moment then stabbed a finger at me. “I told your sorry ass to leave. But no, you had to keep going back.”

  I stared at him for a moment, and something seemed off.

  “What's your point?” I asked, trying to understand what was different.

  “Forty years we kept that son of a bitch locked up. Forty years!”

  “You said you hadn't set foot in the building since 1981.”

  “You had to keep pushing, didn't you? Couldn't leave it alone. Everything was under control. Turn around.”

  “What?”

  “Turn your ass around,” he said.

  I turned around.

  He pushed on the smudges on my back. “You've been marked,” he said.

  I turned to face him. “Marked?”

  “It can get to you now whenever it wants. Did it cut you?”

  I glanced at my shoulder. “I don't know.”

  “Shit,” he said and ripped the bandage off. He flipped it over to show me the blood on the gauze. “That ain't never gonna stop bleeding.”

  “It's just a scratch.”

  “Uh-huh. You got three, maybe four days.”

  “Sorry, what?”

  “Oh, that scratch ain't gonna kill you. Three, four days you'll need a transfusion. Every three or four days for the rest of your life. You should have listened to me, but no, you had to keep coming back. You had to break the chains.”

  “You were a smoke demon thing yourself,” I said. “Kelly sliced you open.”

  “That's right. Your dumb ass told her to kill me.”

  “Actually, I told her not to kill you, but what the hell are you?”

  “I'm in my real body now. You talked to me in this body already too. Now we're one again.”

  “You lost me.”

  “We had it contained, you stupid son of a bitch! Do you have any idea how hard it was to contain it?”

  “It?”

  “We call it a demon. It's a manifestation of anger, pain, suffering, anguish, fear, loss, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. You already figured some of that out.”

  “Ellis Island.”

  “Bingo. Step up to the table and get your prize.”

  “But it was outside,” Esther said. “I followed it into the hospital.”

  “You followed a piece of it. Bits and pieces have been coming over from the island more and more. They could get into the hospital, but they couldn't get out.”

  “Until my dumb ass shot the chains,” I said.

  “Took the words right out of my mouth.”

  “So you, Dr. Anderson, Stuart—”

  “We were Guardians.”

  “I saw Stuart on Ellis Island.”

  “He worked there in his dream life.”

  “Dream life?” I asked.

  “When we could sleep at Kings Park, we were alive here in the real world.”

  “I don't follow you.”

  “We set up what you'd call a pocket in the afterlife, where we trapped the demon. Sometimes a ghost will wander in.” He glanced at Esther. “So we pretend we're an asylum. Somehow, you and your friends were able to get into our pocket world.”

  “Because we're not supposed to exist,” I whispered.

  “I didn't catch that,” Martin said.

  I shook my head. “Doesn't matter.”

  “Did you say you ain't supposed to exist?”

  “Drop it,” I said.

  “No. Stuart said you didn't exist.”

  “He was possessed by the demon.”

  “What?”

  “On the island.”

  Martin rolled his eyes. “When you shot the chains, you shattered the spell holding the pocket to the afterlife in place. We went back to our dream bodies, which are now our only bodies, thanks to you. Stuart wasn't in control.”

  I nodded. “So you each had two bodies—one in the pocket dimension, and one in the real world.”

  “Yes.”

  “And when I shot the chain, you somehow no longer had bodies in the pocket dimension?”

  “Exactly. We live one life now.”

  “So when I punched Stuart, smoke came out. But if you’re each down to one body, why did that happen?”

  “He hadn't reintegrated enough, but he needed to talk to you. He just couldn't assert himself yet. We'd been in that pocket for forty years. Separate. Now we’re trying to settle into our old bodies again, but with both halves awake, it ain’t so easy. Only one can be in control, and the other has to be asleep.”

  “If you say so. Why are you here?” I asked.

  “Because Stuart was right. You and your friends are the only ones who might be able to stop the demon.”

  “It killed Isabel,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Isabel Sanchez.”

  “Any relation to Pedro and Juanita Sanchez?”

  “Their sister.”

  “Shit. We need to find their parents.”

  “They died years ago.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Isabel told me. She had no reason to lie about it.”

  “Get dressed, get your friends, and come with me.”

  I shook my head. “My friends aren't with me.”

  “I am,” Esther said.

  “You two will have to do,” Martin said. “Get dressed and come with me. There are two people you need to meet.”

  “Not until you tell me who I'm meeting.”

  Martin stared at me in silence for a moment then said, “Pedro and Juanita.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Rayna sat in a plush chair in the hotel lobby. Two large suitcases stood on one side of the chair, and I wondered how she'd managed to buy so much stuff in such a short time.

  Martin marched with me toward the exit. Esther popped in front of me to point at Rayna, but I'd already spotted her.

  “Say something to her,” Esther said.

  I turned to Martin. “Give me a minute?”

  “We only have until nightfall,” he said.

  “This won’t take long.”

  I left him to fend for himself while I approached Rayna. She turned and spotted me before I reached her.

  “Hello, Jonathan,” she said.

  “Hello y
ourself,” I said. I shoved my hands in my pockets and stood in front of her chair.

  “I'm waiting for my ride to the airport,” she said.

  “You could have taken a cab.”

  “Am I doing the right thing?” she asked.

  “You're asking me?”

  She shrugged. “I'm sorry I snapped at you yesterday.”

  “I'm sorry I upset you.”

  “All you had to do was say you wanted me to stay.”

  “I do want you to stay,” I said. “But I also know that you can still have a life back in Colorado.”

  “So you really don't want me to stay.”

  “Rayna, I—”

  “Don't,” she said. “I'm not the woman you want to spend your life with. I understand that.”

  “I didn't say that.”

  “You didn't have to. If I were the woman you wanted, you'd have fought to get me to stay with you. I thought we had something, and maybe we did, but that was a long time ago, and you were a different man. Now you seem . . . distant.”

  “I spent a lot of years alone.”

  “You used to need me. It hurts me to think about it, but the truth is that you really don't need me anymore. What's worse is that you don't even want me.”

  “I care about you, Rayna.”

  “I should really be more pissed at you right now but I'm not. Kelly and I both saw this coming. I've had time to think about it, and when you gave me so much space in the twenties, I knew something was wrong. I hoped you were just busy trying to get us home. Now I realize you were avoiding me.”

  “I wasn't avoiding you.”

  “We didn't once make love after you got rid of Winslow.”

  I looked around but while people were passing by, nobody paid us any attention. I started to respond, but she held up a hand.

  “It's all right, Jonathan. I can't say I understand it, but for whatever reason, I was no longer what you wanted.”

  “I was in a strange place.”

  “You're still in a strange place.”

  Martin tapped his foot and leaned against a wall near the bar. Esther waited beside him.

  “And,” Rayna said, “you're not even paying attention. Thanks for confirming it all.”

  “The case took a turn,” I said.

  “Fuck you. There is no case. My ride is here; I need to go.”

  “Do you need anything?” I asked.

  Rayna rose and sighed. She gave me a hug. Before she released me, she whispered, “Whatever it is you're looking for, I hope you find it. Have a good life, Jonathan. I'll miss you.”

  When she pulled away, I started to speak, but she put a finger to my lips.

  “Don't,” she said. “I'm going to pretend that you said, 'Thank you for everything, Rayna. I hope you live a wonderful life.' There's nothing else I want to hear from you.” She pulled her finger back, glanced at my shoulder. “You're bleeding.”

  With that, she grabbed her bags and walked out of the hotel.

  I looked at the small bloodstain on my shirt then watched her go. To her back, I whispered, “Thank you for everything, Rayna. I hope you live a wonderful life.”

  ***

  Martin led the way to the front door at Kings Park. Dr. Anderson and Stuart stood at the entrance waiting for us.

  “You know Stuart and you know the former Dr. Anderson,” Martin said.

  “Former?” I asked.

  “I got married in this world,” Dr. Anderson said. “I have a different name here.”

  “Not going to share?” I asked.

  “You don't need to know.”

  “We should go inside,” Stuart said. “But I really don't want to go back in there. Can I wait here?”

  “No,” Martin said.

  “Just being here creeps me out,” Stuart said. “I used to dream of this place, and it was a nightmare. I used to dream of my other life, and that's what I accepted as reality. Now the two are blended, and I don't even know what's the real me.”

  “Blame him,” Martin said pointing at me. “He's the dumb fuck who set it free.”

  “Hey,” I said.

  “We tried to warn you,” Dr. Anderson said.

  I sighed. “Next time just come right out and say whatever it is you need to say.”

  “You don't get it,” Martin said. “We had to be careful what we said because it might have heard us, and we couldn't risk waking it up with so many new bits of it flowing in from the island. It had been sleeping for years.”

  “Stuart here said it was a demon,” I said.

  “You tell ’em,” Esther said.

  “Stuart was a patient here,” Dr. Anderson said. “And yes, he did tell you it was a demon.”

  “And you downplayed it.”

  “If you'd stayed away like I told you, this wouldn't have happened,” Martin said.

  “You should have told me that when you were awake. Or asleep. Or whatever. The you I met in the real world should have told me.”

  Martin sighed. “The me in this world didn't have a clue about the me in the pocket afterlife. When I'd go to sleep there, I'd wake up here, but he didn't have any knowledge of me until your friend cut me apart and you shot those chains. Up until then, my life here was a forgotten dream to him. His life was a half-remembered dream to me.”

  “Let's not waste any more time,” Dr. Anderson said. “It's time he meets Pedro and Juanita.”

  “I can wait here, right?” Stuart asked.

  “No,” Martin said.

  “Oh, come on,” Stuart said. “Bad memories, man!”

  “Get over it,” Martin said and pushed the door open. “Ghost lady, you lead the way.”

  Esther frowned. “My name is Esther.”

  “Whatever,” Martin said. “You go first so we can all enter the pocket.”

  “I can pop in and it will open around you,” Esther said.

  “We all go together,” Dr. Anderson said.

  “It's all berries,” Esther said. “Not.” But she led the way into the hospital.

  As before, the lights were on, and it looked like it had back in the seventies. The difference now was that it was abandoned. No patients in the hall. No open doors. No movement.

  “I heard a girl scream the first time I was here,” Esther said.

  “Juanita,” Stuart said. “She screams every night.”

  “Can I ask a silly question?” I said as we moved down the hallway. “Why is Stuart so much younger than you?”

  “We age here at the same rate as in the normal world,” Martin said. “But Stuart got here later than us. I was here from the start. Dr. Anderson arrived next. Stuart was a recent arrival.”

  “Not sure I follow you,” I said.

  Martin stopped in front of the door I'd seen Dr. Anderson exit with her clipboard that first time. He pointed at the room. “Juanita is in here.”

  “You going to explain things?”

  Dr. Anderson stepped up to the door. “I have the key,” she said and inserted it into the lock. She did not turn the key. “You might want to prepare yourself for this.”

  “Fine, ignore me,” I said.

  “We ain't ignoring you,” Martin said. “We arrived here at different times. Stuart was a patient back in the nineties, and he found us because he heard the screams. The barrier between worlds is razor thin. Juanita and Pedro are . . . suspended between those worlds, and I, telling you now that you ain't gonna like what you see.”

  “I don't want to go in there,” Esther said.

  “You're already dead,” Martin said. “Juanita can't affect you.”

  “Jonathan, don't go in there,” Esther said. “There's a feeling coming from that room, and it gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

  “Don't worry about it,” I said. I gave Dr. Anderson a nod. “Open the door.”

  Now she turned the key and pushed open the door.

  I took a deep breath and entered the room.

  The walls were red and flowing with blood. The floor had black and white ti
les, and the edges stopped a good ten inches from the walls, so the blood flowed straight down without getting on the ground. The ceiling was clouded in dark smoke that swirled around. Chains hung through the dark fog and rattled as they tapped against other chains. The smoke swirled around a hole in the center of the ceiling, such as it was. There, a spotlight cast a greenish glow onto a contraption one might expect to house Hannibal Lecter.

  A metal slab stood upright, suspended by chains. Long bars jutted from the sides, angled back toward the front with sharp spikes toward the teenage girl strapped to the table. Electroshock cables wrapped around her body. Her hospital gown was soaked in blood. Tubes shot into her emaciated arms and legs and through the gown into her gut. Her chest was a gaping maw exposing bone and viscera. Her face had been torn off from just below the nose down to her neck so it was bloody mandibles and teeth held open by a pair of tongs gripping her tongue. Blood matted her dark hair, and her eyes were rolled back so far, they showed only white.

  Her hands clenched into fists then unclenched over and over and with each clench, blood pumped through the tubes in her wrists to spit onto the walls and drain ever downward.

  She screamed then went silent and still.

  “Meet Juanita Sanchez,” Martin said.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “What the hell?” I said.

  Juanita's eyes snapped to normal for a moment and fixed me with a moment of clarity. Then the eyes rolled back and she screamed once more. The sound pierced my soul and I grimaced. When the scream ended, her head lolled to the side and blood drooled between her teeth and spilled to the floor. Grooves along the tiles channeled the blood to the sides to drain into the ocean of red below. The room smelled like a slaughterhouse, and I had to breathe through my mouth to avoid puking.

  “We call her the living nightmare,” Dr. Anderson said.

  “She’s not a ghost, but she’s not alive,” I said. “And that's more than her blood. What the hell is going on here?”

  Esther stared in disbelief. “That's just wrong.”

  “Smoke demon tore her up,” Stuart said.

  I stepped closer. “There's some seriously dark magic involved here.”

  Juanita raised her head and her eyes fixed on me again. “Kill me,” she whispered, though the M sound wasn't there as she didn't have lips.

  “Don't get too close,” Dr. Anderson said. “If you go past the blood grooves, you're within her range.”