by Eli Easton
“Send Janet.”
“It’s your turn. She went to the last one, remember?”
“The last one was in Akron, Carla. That doesn’t count.” He gave a small shrug. “Besides, I’m not up to it right now.”
She leaned back in the chair and regarded him for a long time. “Look, kid. You’ve been through a hell of a lot over the past eight months. Jim’s death, the accident, the—”
“I know.” It wasn’t like he needed a list to remind him.
“A lot of people don’t face that much stress in a lifetime. You’re strong, Bram, but you’re not unbreakable. You need help.”
“I’m doing my job!” he snapped. He felt slightly guilty about his outburst but didn’t tone down his glare.
Carla looked neither cowed nor offended. “I know you are. It’s not your work I’m worried about. Lean on someone, honey. I know you don’t get along well with your family, but you have friends. And there are professionals who can give you a hand too.”
“Professionals,” he growled.
She looked sad as she stood. “At least a vacation. Palm trees. Drinks with paper umbrellas. Cabana boys in sarongs.”
Despite himself, he smiled at her. “Sounds like you’ve been fantasizing, Carla.”
“A girl’s gotta dream.” She patted him again. “Think about it. I won’t mention the conference to Janet until Monday.”
HE DID think about it. Not right away, but later, while he jogged home through air so thick and hot he could practically drink it. He and Jim had visited Hawaii a few years earlier. Not Honolulu, though—Maui and the Big Island. They hiked lava fields and rain forests, they sunbathed, and Jim attempted to teach Bram how to surf. They watched romantic sunsets from their lanai. They ate piles of tropical fruits. They made love to the sound of pounding waves, then cuddled in bed together and daydreamed about buying a retirement condo on one of the islands.
Although Bram was exhausted, he didn’t run straight home. He put in an extra mile or two, his feet pounding the tarmac and the sweat blinding him, his lungs laboring for every molecule of oxygen. By the time he staggered into the house, his legs were so shaky they could barely hold him. He came damned close to blacking out and couldn’t make out why—until he drank some water and remembered he hadn’t eaten anything all day.
“Not good,” he said as he headed to the bathroom. He stripped off his sodden clothes and ducked under the shower before the water warmed. The cold spray made his breath catch, but he stood there anyway. “Stop punishing yourself,” he said as the rivulets chilled his body. “It won’t bring Jim back.” Wouldn’t make the whole last year unhappen.
He cooked a decent meal that night—a big cut of pan-seared steak, a salad, a bunch of cherry tomatoes his next-door neighbor had grown. And no beer, just ice water.
The only thing he disliked more than cooking alone was eating alone. He refused to take his dinners in the dining room, where he and Jim used to entertain occasional guests, or even at the smaller table in the kitchen. Instead he sat in the living room with the plate perched on his lap as he pretended the television made good company. After washing up, he channel-flipped until he found an ancient Spencer Tracy movie. An early bedtime, he decided when the movie was over. He’d get some decent sleep to make up for the previous night. And the many nights before that.
He even smiled a little when he slipped naked into bed and heard the first rumblings of a distant thunderstorm. Rain would be good. Might cool things down.
HE DREAMT of a rainstorm. He wandered through a graveyard at night, searching for something, hunching his shoulders in a vain attempt to keep the water from running under his collar and down his back. When he came to a large mausoleum with its door wide open, he ducked inside. The interior smelled like wax and dust. It was a much bigger space than it should have been—so big and dark he couldn’t see the walls. In fact, as he turned around, he realized he could no longer see the door. A small pool of bluish light illuminated the space immediately around him. The floor was sandy like a beach, and his bare feet sank in, making walking difficult. The light followed him as he slowly struggled forward.
“Hello?” he called. There was no answer, not even an echo.
He walked for what felt like miles, but nothing ever changed. Maybe he was going in circles. He collapsed, sat with his back bent, and sifted the sand through his hands. If he could only deduce the sand’s chemical composition, maybe he could find his way out.
“Calcium carbonate?” he mused. “Basalt? Quartz?” No, he realized with a start—with that weird but definite knowing common to dreams—the sand was made of crushed coconut shells.
“I do like coconut,” someone said before stepping into view. He was a very skinny man with very dark skin. He wore a long black duster, a purple feather boa, and a black top hat. Bright lipstick accented his lips, and his eyes were dusted with gold and purple eye shadows. He had an unlit cigar in one hand and an ornate black-and-gold walking stick in the other. His hips swayed as he walked closer. He stopped when he was almost within reach, and then he smiled coquettishly. “Do you like coconut too, Abraham?”
“Bram.” The correction was automatic.
The man had a trilling laugh. “All right, then. Bram it is.”
“I want to go home.”
“You are home, mon cher. You are curled up very beautifully in your bed. This is only a dream, yes?”
“Then I want to wake up.”
“Why? Is your waking life so good you cannot bear to leave it?” The man sank gracefully into a cross-legged sit opposite Bram. He balanced the stick across his bony knees. “I think maybe you have been trying to escape that life for some time now.”
“I don’t….” Bram wasn’t sure how to respond, so he shook his head. “I’m confused.”
“Humans often are. You chase yourself in such tight circles, you never see the truth. You don’t take enough time to celebrate what you ought to.”
“What should I be celebrating?”
The man smiled at him. “Life. Death. It’s all one thing, mon cher, all part of the dance.” His expression turned more serious. “But we must take our steps in time. I think now for you, it is time for life.”
He picked up his cane and tapped the end against Bram’s chest. The metal tip was either very hot or very cold—Bram couldn’t tell which. Either way it burned him, and he yelped but couldn’t move away.
One more tap and the man resettled the stick in his lap. “Death seeks you now. It is not time yet for you to die, mon chou, so I have been helping you. I might continue.” The corners of his lips lifted into a grin that was more like a leer. “But you must ask me nicely. You must please me. Then perhaps I will help you more.”
“I don’t believe in you!”
The man threw back his head and laughed. “As if your belief matters to me,” he said, still chuckling. He rose gracefully, executed a deep curtsy, then turned and walked away. But even after the darkness swallowed him, he called back. “I like coconuts and white rum. Or you could sacrifice a black goat!”
Chapter Three
BRAM WOKE up sandy-eyed and sticky with sweat. The sun had not yet risen, but when he squinted at his alarm clock, he decided it wasn’t worth trying to get more sleep. Besides, he had to piss. He untangled the sheets, stood and stretched, then shambled to the bathroom, where he emptied his bladder with a satisfied sigh. At the sink, he splashed water on his face while he considered whether to take a quick shower—just enough to wake himself up—or get into his running clothes and jog to the office early. Maybe he could put in a little time with the weights at the gym.
He was idly mulling over this conundrum when his hand strayed to his chest.
“Ow! What the—” His surprised yelp faded away when he saw the marks near his sternum: two angry red circles the size of silver dollars, their edges slightly overlapping. He bent his head for a closer look. Blisters. The marks were fucking blistered.
He ran back to his bedroom and rumm
aged through his bedding in a frenzy, but some part of him knew the truth. He wasn’t going to find any weird bugs or mysterious electric devices or anything else that could have burned him while he slept. But only when his mattress was bare did he sink down to the floor in defeat.
It had to be psychosomatic. He’d taken a psych class back in college, and he vaguely remembered a lecture about how certain extremely pious Christians sometimes developed stigmata, their deep religious convictions translating to physical marks on their bodies. Not that Bram was a devotee of anything, but the mechanism could be the same. As Carla had pointed out, he’d been under a huge amount of stress lately. And that visit by Daniel Royer had been unsettling at best. Surely Bram’s sleeping mind could be forgiven for taking a quick vacation into Bizzaro-land. Christ, maybe he should take Carla’s advice and see a shrink.
The explanation made him feel a little less unsettled, so he stood and set his bedroom back in order. After that, he returned to the bathroom, where he smeared aloe vera gel on the marks and covered them with bandages. Another thought hit him as he pulled on his T-shirt. Maybe he wasn’t even a little bit nuts—maybe he was just developing hives. He’d recently switched brands of laundry detergent, so that could be the culprit. He’d pick up some hypoallergenic stuff after work.
He felt much better as he jogged through the dawn-lit streets. And after he got to the office and spent thirty minutes in the gym, he felt better yet. There was a slight hiccup in his relief when he hit the showers and removed the bandages on his chest—the water stung the burns—but he forcefully pushed the worries out of his head. His work was engaging enough to keep him occupied all day; so much so, in fact, that he skipped lunch again. Maybe he should stock up on some protein shakes or something, or at least remember to bring a sack lunch. Janet had one of those dorm-sized fridges on her side of the office, and Bram was reasonably certain she’d share if he asked.
By the time he left work, he had a plan. It was almost six on a Friday night. He’d go home and shower, then hit the mall for some new clothes. He’d take himself out to dinner afterward. And then he’d go to the grocery store and stock up on stuff he could eat while he worked—and new laundry detergent as well. Finally, he’d head back home and wash his sheets.
Yeah, he was all about the wild weekends.
As pathetic as his plan was, he felt pretty good about it because it meant he wouldn’t spend the entire evening at home, brooding himself into a variety of skin conditions. The plan was a good omen—a sign that he was coping with life’s setbacks in a reasonably healthy way. He was so pleased with himself that he upped the volume on iTunes. Jim used to make fun of Bram’s exercise playlist, but if the Go-Go’s and the Cars kept his feet moving at a swift pace, Bram figured the music was doing its job.
At a quiet intersection not far from home, Bram ran in place while he waited for the light to change. He hummed along with the J. Geils Band and, for lack of anything better to do, tried to make sense of the lyrics. What the hell was a lipstick reflex anyway?
Through the din of the music, he heard an angry engine. He turned to the left, where a dip in the road obscured oncoming traffic. And that was when a red sedan came racing up the hill and through the intersection, jumped the curb, and headed straight for Bram.
Through pure reflex—not the lipstick kind—Bram threw himself to the side. He caught a blurry glimpse of the driver, a middle-aged white lady with bleached-blonde hair and a manic grin, and as he fell and rolled, the car zoomed past with only inches to spare. He tumbled through the grass and onto the street. Brakes squealed. He tried to get up and run, but his legs wouldn’t obey. The car’s motor gunned, and he bunched into a fetal ball, waiting for the impact. With a squeal of tires, the car sped away.
Bram stood slowly, cautiously. He yanked the tangled headphones out of the jack and shoved them into his pocket. The phone remained undamaged in his armband. He instinctively thought to call the police, but what was the point? He hadn’t gotten the car’s license number, and his description would be vague and uncertain at best. As far as he could tell, nobody else had witnessed what had happened. The car had left physical evidence—skid marks on the tarmac and tire tracks in the grass—but that was all. The cops would likely chalk up the whole incident to reckless driving. But although Bram had seen the driver’s expression for only a split second, he had no doubt that she intended to run him over.
He conducted a quick self-assessment. Grass stains on his clothes, gravel and dirt embedded in his skin. He was going to feel bruised and achy by morning. And those fucking burns on his chest—they stung like a sonofabitch. But he wasn’t dead.
Yet.
He walked the rest of the way home instead of running, took a long cool shower, then ate a bowl of pasta with chicken meatballs. He walked into the living room, picked up the slip of paper he’d left on the shelf near the front door, and called Daniel Royer.
BRAM CHOSE Chili’s as a meeting place because it was the most mundane location he could think of. On a Friday night, it was also crowded and noisy. Toddlers tossed food from their high chairs while their older siblings squabbled over crayons. College kids shouted happily at each other over glass beer steins. Waiters scurried back and forth with food-laden dishes, and in the bar, TV screens flashed baseball and soccer.
Yet somehow Daniel Royer managed to exude an aura of calm as he sat in a corner booth, a little island of quiet within the tumult. He wore tight blue jeans and a plain red T-shirt, and he sipped from a glass of iced tea spiked with several packets of sugar. He was even more beautiful than Bram remembered, and once Bram sat down, he had to fight the wild urge to reach across the table and stroke Daniel’s face.
“It’s not about zombies or sticking pins in dolls,” Daniel said. Although his voice was soft, it somehow carried well.
“Yeah, okay. I got that. But this is Chicago. It’s not New Orleans or, or….” Bram flapped his hands.
“Or exotic Haiti. Or deepest, darkest Africa.” Daniel looked amused. “I know. I was born here. We’re white-bread, NASCAR, football-on-Sundays, church-picnic, red-white-and-blue-wearing folks here.”
“I’m… I’m a man of science.” Christ, that sounded pompous and ridiculous, but Bram kept talking anyway. “When I was a kid, my friends had posters of sports teams, rock stars, pinup girls, movies…. I had Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. They asked for video games for Christmas; I asked for chemistry sets and microscopes. I won science fairs. I have a PhD!”
Daniel shrugged. “I was the county-wide spelling bee champ three years running, and I have a master’s degree. That doesn’t change anything.” He took a pull of iced tea through his straw.
Bram sank against the upholstered seat back. “A master’s in what?” he asked, as if it were especially important right now.
“Social work.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t think that counts because it’s not a hard science.” Daniel’s mouth twitched into a crooked grin.
“No, I’m sure it’s, um….” Bram squirmed uncomfortably. “I’m not here to judge your academic credentials.”
“Why are you here, Mr. Tillman? Excuse me. Dr. Tillman.”
“It’s Bram. You said someone’s trying to kill me.”
“I did. And you didn’t believe me. What made you change your mind?”
Bram ran his fingers through his hair, and when that didn’t help settle his thoughts, he started folding a paper napkin into complex origami shapes. “Things have been pretty… weird lately.”
“Not just my brother?”
Bram shook his head. “No. A few weeks after that, I was in a car accident. This man… I was driving to work, and he swerved right into me. Head-on. Bang.” He shuddered, remembering the sickening reality of the collision, the horrible sounds of crunching metal and shattering glass.
“What happened?” Daniel asked gently.
“He died. My airbag saved me. He was a retired guy on his way to have breakfast with his buddies. No
body knows why he lost control like that. Except I saw his face right before he hit me, and he didn’t lose control. He was aiming for me.”
Daniel didn’t look doubting—just sad. “Another death.”
“Yeah. And today when I was jogging, some lady almost ran me over. She was trying to hit me too. She didn’t die, though. She just took off really fast after she missed.”
“You’ve had very good fortune.”
“Good fortune?” Bram shook his head. “That’s three times I almost got killed.”
“Almost. Three times you just barely escaped. I’d say that’s amazingly good luck.”
The perky waitress appeared with a plate of nachos and a refill for Daniel’s iced tea. “Anything else, guys?” she chirped.
They declined and waited for her to bustle away before they continued their conversation. Daniel took a tortilla chip, and when he stuck out his tongue to catch a bit of melty cheese, Bram was transfixed.
“There’s something else,” Bram said, more to distract himself than because he really wanted to share the next part.
Daniel swallowed and lifted his eyebrows expectantly. “Another near-death experience?”
“Not exactly. I had… I had a dream last night.” His cheeks heated, and he realized he was blushing as furiously as if he were admitting to a wet dream. “There was a strange man, and he said the same thing you did—someone’s trying to kill me. He said he might help me if I pleased him, whatever that means. Something about a goat. And, uh, he touched me. With his staff.” Yeah, that particular choice of terminology didn’t decrease his embarrassment one bit.
At least Daniel looked neither amused nor scandalized. Instead, his eyes were wide and shocked. “You had this dream?”
“Yes. And, well, look.” Feeling more ridiculous by the minute, Daniel unfastened the top several buttons of his shirt. He deliberately hadn’t worn anything underneath, so now when he parted the fabric as much as restaurant propriety allowed, the circular burns were easily visible.