by Martin Rose
In short, she was everything I was not.
Whereas Niko was darkly intriguing, with a somber air that hinted at mystery, Madam Astra was a high school cheerleader in gypsy garb. She’d traded in pom-poms for tarot cards, and her blue eyes were oddly empty, like a puppet’s. Button nose, perky breasts. Her bright, bubbly blondness only served to highlight my monstrosity; my sunken eyes, my rotted face falling apart in strips and seams, the skin cracked like hard packed mud where I used to smile.
I had the pleasure of noticing that, as she drew closer, her walk slowed, considering me for the first time, truly seeing the awful face beneath the shadow of my hat. My rotted lips peeled back to bare crooked teeth as I watched her approach. I know what the wolf felt when Red Riding Hood came to his door, the hunger in his bottomless belly, his bottomless heart.
Most people who stole close to me, close enough to see and smell the decay and the carrion, the meat rotting off my bones, chalked it up to unusual skin diseases, cancer, even leprosy. Amazing what we’ll overlook in favor of what we prefer to see. Few used the word zombie, though it lingered on the tip of their tongues, too unbelievable a notion to voice. She stared longer than she should have before finding the center of my opaque, decayed eyes.
“Can I help you?” she asked. Her voice was steady, and she disguised her distress well.
“I’m interested in the future,” I began.
“Unusual. Most of my clientele in this town are women, you know. The majority of men I receive as customers are those looking for their wives.”
“I’m looking for someone,” I said. A knot formed in my throat. I swallowed it back into my esophagus.
“Oh?”
I pulled out the picture of Owen Rogers, laying it flat on her counter and pushing it over to her. I studied her face as she leaned over it, blond hair brushing her red velvet sleeves.
“I’m looking for my son,” I said. “His name is Clay Adamson.”
Zzzzt.
I responded to the noise instinctively, gaze flicking to the glass countertop like a snake. A fly—brilliant emerald green thorax punctuated with black wings—buzzed lazily by her fingertips, sampling the counter with a tube-like proboscis. Nausea roiled in my belly.
I hated flies.
Attempting to ignore it, I concentrated on Madam Astra once more. The sound rang in my ears like a humming electrical line, making conscious thought difficult.
“I’ve seen him,” she said.
Confirmation. A knife thrust into my belly. I choked on my heart, which was steadily climbing through my throat and out my mouth. If this was what hope felt like, I longed for my days of despair.
“He goes to my church,” she continued. “But his name isn’t Clay; you must be mistaken. He’s Owen Rogers, and his parents are a lovely couple.”
Interesting. I could feel heat creeping through my collar and up my neck, a building rage. I was tired of playing these interrogation games, pretending to slowly circle my prey; I was tired of being cautious. Weapons and instruments of torture took the place of my heart. I wanted it to beat again, trade my vena cava for a firearm and blow out bullets with each pulse.
With a long sigh, I reached up and took my hat off. I was a monster. It was about time I acted like one. Thin light cast over my barren skull, bleached bone showing through the top where the flesh peeled away around wisps of straw-like hair. Her face grew slack as her lips parted and her saliva dried up, turning her tongue to bone.
I left the hat on the counter and turned back to lock the door with a quick flick of my hand. Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates when I faced her.
“Now, let’s have us a real conversation,” I growled. “You have my son, and you know Mr. and Mrs. Rogers are dead, so why don’t we cut the shit and get down to business?”
I pulled out the Glock and let it hang by my side, my arm loose and relaxed, a precursor to a storm. I was ready. The hour was growing late, and I was due for my medication soon. I could taste her meat on the air, the blood pulsing through her veins and capillaries. Enough time without my medication, and she would be sweet. Ripe with all the hectic juices fear could provide.
Her face held the same stunned, confused, innocent-me expression for a long moment as I stared at her. Then her features smoothed out and one small hand picked up the photograph, holding it up so I was confronted with the face of my son.
“You and your son have been chosen, Vitus Adamson. It is an honor to stand in the presence of our Lord.”
And to my astonishment, she genuflected, as devout as a nun during a Sunday mass in her red velvet skirt and downcast eyes.
*
Beep-beep.
I cursed, stepping away from the woman. She bowed so low before me the tips of her blond hair brushed the carpeted floor, and I reached into my pocket without looking, popping off the cap and shoving two pills into my mouth. Anything to stave off this wild and unrepentant hunger. They always tasted so bitter, each time.
“You’re keeping the kid in a cage, that it? You got him shacked up in a house somewhere, like an animal, because you think he’s a god?”
She lifted her head. Her pupils narrowed to black pinheads with her eyes fevered and bright. Her cheeks flushed with new blood.
“We are honored to have him. But you are mistaken, Vitus. We must cage him for his own safety. What of your pills?”
I blinked and looked down at the orange prescription bottle in my hand.
“Are those any less a cage? Are they not designed to protect you, as well as those around you? We can no more set Owen free than you can roam loose without your medication. He does not understand the Lord inside himself any more than you understand the Lord inside you.”
“What Lord?” I asked.
Her voice floated on a deep, husky undertone and, if I were to close my eyes, I knew I could easily imagine a sex phone operator. She could have been describing her underpants with a voice designed to seduce and lull me. Selling me propaganda off the tip of her tongue with a smile behind her glassy eyes. Her mascara turned up at the edges to accentuate their shape, but her gaze was disconnected and out of sync. A smear of—was that dirt by her temple, wending into her scalp? Grave dirt, I thought without reason, and attempted to clamp down on my meandering thoughts. Why was I so distracted? What was it about her that was setting me on such an edge of nervous anxiety?
“Lord of the Flesh Eaters, the King of Dark Matter. The Master of Monsters.”
She bowed once more before me. I could see the lacy edge of a bra showing through the plunge of her shirt and the view invited and implied desire; deep in the gutter between her breasts and ribs, I caught a flash of something black (mold? Was that mold deep in her core? No, it must be more lace, why in the world would I think mold?) and then she rose.
I held up a hand between us as though I could ward her off, but she insisted on taking a step forward. She posed me no real physical harm—she was too small and fragile for that. It was her religious fervor I found frightening and even more the jitters rammed up my limbs and through my nerves the closer I got to her.
“We have read your scripture, your dark gospel; we know the pain of your existence. You have been called upon to do terrible things.”
I laughed. “That’s an understatement.”
“You see, Vitus? We know your hate, your rage. How long have you been living now, like this? No purpose, no direction? The pills aren’t keeping you upright—it’s your seething hatred. It’s your bitter anger. And you carry it alone.”
I said nothing, blinking and stupefied. The truth was, I’d never heard my life summarized in such a way, through another’s eyes. It caught me off guard and cut loose a howling voice on the inside of me. So I listened to her, spellbound by the rhythm of her voice.
“And so he will build a life of sweet things, a thin wall he erects against the darkness. One by one, he will eat his security, his love, his happiness to fill the void that can never be filled. So it is written, praise the Lord of
Flesh Eaters! Master of Monsters! He can only be sustained by flesh and blood.”
She brought her hands together until her fingers formed a steeple.
“You worship this condition, is that it?” I gestured to myself, tapping the edge of my frayed lapel. “I’m a corpse. Pre-deceased.”
“That’s not who you really are. You think you’re a monster? Who told you such a lie? Jamie? You’ll believe him, the one who arranged for you to be like this in the first place? What proof do you have that you are such a monster?”
I stared at her.
“I ate my wife.”
“Did you? Or did Jamie have her killed so he could keep you to himself? Why do you think Owen’s been in hiding all this time? We couldn’t let Jamie find him.”
I was prepared to dismiss her words as ravings, as though she were only a Kool-Aid cup from madness, but her last words emptied my mouth of protest. How much did she know about me? Enough to know about Virus X, about the experiments, and about Jamie.
Enough to have my son in captivity?
“They showed you scraps of your wife. How did you know it was her?”
“They found me with them,” I protested. An odd tremor built from my legs into my spine and punctured the decomposing muscles of my arm as though the dead nerve endings came to life and sent racing flames through my veins. “They found me with her! I had her blood in my mouth, I tasted her perfume . . .”
“Is that what you remember, or what they told you?”
My breath caught; I had no memory of the event, only Jamie’s version, how he had found me in a room strewn with body parts and blood.
Jamie would never have killed Jessica. He would have done everything to save her. He was the best man at my wedding, for Christ’s sake . . .
But oh, lying was very much Jamie’s style. Him and the old gray fox.
A most uncomfortable sensation formed in the center of my guts, where my stomach churned with the bile and venom and the bitter pills holding my existence intact with a thin chemical veil—doubt. Doubt was opening a crack inside me that would widen into an abyss.
She inclined her head so the light from the window caught her hair like a halo; thin wisps of incense smoke filled the air until the room spun and chased the tail of the horizon. Only the gun in my hand was real, burning an outline into my palm.
Kill her, I thought grimly. I could stop this vivisection of the past and break her hold over me and all it would require was her life. Kill her.
“In all the time, with all that you’ve been through, did Jamie ever say he saved you because he loved you?”
I should have stopped breathing. I gave up air in the well of my lungs I didn’t know I had left. Scattered tarot cards beneath the glass counter and constellations charted out until their shapes resembled grinding teeth and then she was pressing a hand over my chest. Fabric crinkled and rasped as she pressed my white button-down shirt with her palm. My chest an iceberg, her fingers icicles.
I couldn’t remember the last time anyone ever said they loved me.
“We need you, Vitus. Come with us, and you will know your son again. You can have the life they took from you.”
“Nothing can change this,” I whispered. “You’re lying.”
“No, Vitus. But we will wait for you, because we love you for what you really are.”
She stepped away, withdrawing her frozen hand from my cold chest. My gun hand twitched. I wanted to put a bullet between her eyes, but all I could hear was the question, over and over again: Did Jamie ever say he saved you because he loved you?
Not once.
Never.
*
I slammed the door hard enough to crack the glass as I left and trudged out into the mist. I clutched the gun in one hand, heedless of the pedestrians. Some gave me wary stares and others were too stupid and distracted by their techno-gadgets to notice. I holstered resentfully.
Before the car, I hesitated. Where was I going, what was my plan? What kind of life was I returning to? With my hand clutching the door handle, I saw the panorama view of my life unfolding forever in one endless loop. Just one case after the other, of foolish people doing dangerous things, dirty things. Watching people tear themselves apart, husbands and wives without trust or faith, children abducted and ruined, employers and employees spying on each other—I was looking at an eternity of watching people tear at themselves as though they were . . . zombies.
I slammed a fist against the car hood. The metal popped as I clenched my broken, wasted fingers inside the glove. I felt nothing, I felt everything.
The bitch had my son. And she wasn’t giving him up—not without gaining me as her own personal chess piece. I couldn’t trust anything she had to say, and no doubt she knew about the Rogers—emissaries designed to draw me in? The conspiracy widened. I took in a short breath that thrilled my muscles with a sensation of panic. Had this all been an elaborate ploy with one intention—to entrap me?
How did she know so much about Jamie, about Virus X?
I feared to ask—the answers may be terrible to behold.
Get a grip. Start from the beginning. Unravel the mystery. You have an objective: you want your son. All the rest is bullshit. How do you get your son back?
“Force or persuasion,” I muttered.
I cast away the feeling of the moment and refocused. Logic and strategy would lead my way out of the mire. Use of force was questionable; she was as vacant as a churchgoer who charms snakes and writhes on the ground in a pantomime of demonic possession. I could threaten her with death, but in the eyes of a religious fanatic, that was a reward. She’d jump at the chance to be a martyr for a cause, so physical threats were out of the question.
Come with us, and you will know your son again.
She wanted my participation in their church in exchange for my son.
“It’s a fucking Roman Polanski film,” I hissed and shoved a cigarette in between my lips just to keep my mouth occupied. I got into the car and started the engine.
I guess that leaves persuasion.
I groaned and pealed out of the lot.
*
Rain came down in heavy drifts by the time I pulled into my driveway, making it difficult to see and navigate. From the porch, with keys in hand, I paused warily before the entrance.
My front door stood ajar into a slice of darkness. I hovered with one hand over the weapon as a gambler might his talismans. Prick-eared and alert. I heard nothing and detected no movement from within. I tapped open the door with fingers spread and entered the house.
A shadow on my left.
I choked the figure back against the wall. My arm locked over his throat and I pinned him. An umbrella clattered beneath a kicking foot and a picture frame see-sawed in a ninety-degree angle before dropping to the floor and exploding glass across our scuffling feet. I yanked the gun free. All shadows and smoke, he squirmed beneath my grip.
“Vitus!”
Shit. I released the shadow and stepped away. The gun fell to my side like a heavy pendulum.
“What are you doing here, Niko?”
I moved aside a curtain to let in the feeble rain-light. She stood illuminated in a slicker, black hair curled and moist with the rain; her lips an inviting apple red.
“I had to talk to you.”
“So you broke into my house?”
“Like you broke into my work and forced me to fix your jaw at gunpoint? You don’t have a phone, and I had no other way to reach you. And anyway, I was going to wait for you outside. You left the door open.”
I sighed and lit a cigarette, breathing in the hot fumes of tar and tobacco. Her eyes glistened in the half-light as she watched the ember trace an orange outline in the air. I’d locked the door before I left; perhaps one of Madam Astra’s minions had paid my house a visit in my absence. I’d have them doing my landscaping next, at this rate.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what, exactly?” I asked, suspicious.
&nbs
p; “I remember you now.”
An uncomfortable silence bloomed between us. I looked away to the window. In the yard, trees bent and twisted and cut dark paths against the neglected yard. While she spoke, I listened to the interior of the house and scanned the world around me for movement, watchful. Hyper-vigilance dogged me even in the quiet.
While I leaned by the window, keeping constant vigil over my surroundings, Niko unfolded her story. Earlier in the day, the fumes from the formaldehyde began to bother her. Dizzy, she took a walk out among the graves where she passed my wife and child and the headstone above my empty grave. The flowers I left behind were still fresh and blooming, and latent memory in the background of her thoughts pulsed through her splitting headache until the feeling passed; clarity replaced pain.
She found me then, in the long lost corridors of her mind, like a pressed flower buried in the gutter of a book. The white roses I left propped against the gravestone set off a cascade of recollections.
“I remembered you,” she whispered.
I did not look at her. I exhaled smoke and tasted my own blood sandwiched on either side of my decomposing tongue. I wished all that was left of me was a memory; if I could dream, I would dream of living six feet underground in a six-sided box. I would not be here, looking out a dirty window and pretending to look at everything but her, play-acting a monster with a mind as dead as my heart.
She waited for me to speak, and I know I disappointed her. This was the moment I was supposed to give her the tender heart of me, to show her I was a human, that I had once lived and loved. Maybe even procure tears for her amusement. My tear ducts were as dry and broken as abandoned tunnel ways from a dead civilization. I had nothing left to give her that I had not eaten or cannibalized in the end.
Beep-beep.
The siren song of Atroxipine broke the silence. I remained still until the digital beep faded and then took out the bottle, uncapped it, and knocked a dosage into my mouth. Pills rattled against the back of my throat. My broken teeth ground them into dust against my molars. Metal clicked inside my jaw.