Mighty Unclean

by Cody Goodfellow

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Nottt ttto youuu.”

  “How do we get rid of it?”

  “Youuu can’ttt.”

  “Why not?”

  A pause. “Becaussse…” the thing says, at last. “Itsss yoursss. Bothhh offf youuu. Yourrre…”

  “…part of it,” Tom fills in, softly.

  Alicia snorts. “Like fun, tai pan.”

  (That phrase: Chinese? Nim knows she’s heard it before, just can’t think when, or how – then feels the down on the back of her neck go up again, ruff-stiff, as she suddenly recalls exactly where.)

  More snore-y breathing. The “doll” speaks on, ignoring them both. Says:

  “Ittt…hhhe. Knowsss youuu aaate himmm. Hisss liiife. Hisss…paiiin.”

  “Well,” Tom says, softly, “he would, wouldn’t he? Can’t really miss it while it’s happening, not even if it’s done expertly.”

  Alicia shoots him a look. “Enough of that crap,” she says, warningly, which gets her nothing but a single arched brow in return. As Tom points out—

  “Really, Lish: You’re the one who asked.”

  And all through this, Nim is backing away, her face and body held equally rigid. She feels the plastic bead curtain hit her spine, stroke up her back, then collapse together in front of her; Tom, Alicia and the puppeted puppeteer blur and distort between the strands, as they fall into place. Step by step, Nim forces herself through, drowning in plastic. The music’s getting louder again, still reverberant with distance and distortion, and underneath it there’s a strange cross-current of sound; phantom cellos, sawing up from below.

  Recognition’s a jolt of ice and adrenaline to the spine: That second layer, the Apocalyptica version of “Until It Sleeps,” is her ringtone. Nimue fumbles in her purse and digs the phone out, the muffled tinniness of its repeated music refusing to fade, like it’s wrapped in invisible cotton. She puts it to her ear.

  “Veruca?”

  Static, broken by arrhythmic crackles that might be words. Nim feels her balance going out. She can’t tell if she’s pushing or falling. Her feet have gone numb. The plastic beads trail slowly alongside, kelp fronds in a nightmare sea that cling, and clutch, and—

  Give way.

  Nim stumbles back out into the Speed, the noise disorienting for half an instant. Then her mind seizes on Veruca’s voice – now obscured by nothing but the ordinary background roar – echoing in her ear. “Nim, where are you? Nim, please, talk to me – ”

  “On the floor!” Nim shouts. She casts about, futilely seeking blonde cornrows or lens-distorted green eyes. “Where the hell are you? What happened? Why – ”

  “I couldn’t do it. God, I was so wrong – sorry—” A hiss and a coughing huff follow, sounds Nim finds almost welcome in their previously-infuriating familiarity: Veruca’s taking a stress-triggered blast off her inhaler. “But I was right, too, you saw – had to see – tell me you saw—”

  “V., where the fuck are you?” Nim yells back, jamming a finger past her naked tragus. “Your voice sounds weird.”

  “It’s HIM, Nimue. Looks exactly the same, just…young.”

  “Who looks the same?”

  Another huff. Then, even fainter – like Veruca’s talking through a mouthful of cotton—

  “…im…”

  Nim scans around again, frantically. Eventually, something – some light-sliver glimpsed from the corner of one tearing eye – suggests where Veruca might have gone. “Dude,” she says, “listen to me, okay? Are you in the john?”

  A fizzle-click “s”-slur is her only reply; might pass for “yes”, on a bad day. Nim takes it as her cue to head for the pertinent sign at speed, a flickering Georgia O’Keefe rubyfruit done in flickering neon. As Veruca keeps on chattering, between white noise waves:

  “…said, it’s him. Them. They DID it…like the story says, not made up, it’s all true. All of it.”

  “I’m comin’, man. I’m almost there.”

  Puts her hand on the door, poised to push. And hears Veruca’s voice from inside, twinned: Once via phone, once through the wood itself, but shit-scared either way. Suddenly droping to a dull, tiny whisper, cold inside and out, as she breathes—

  “ – Nim, stop, keep out. Somebody’s here.”

  The phone gives a half-silent pop!, drained battery abruptly dead. Yet Nim hears another voice fading in, nevertheless – well, not hears it, exactly. More like remembering what it must have sounded like when somebody else heard it, a long, long time ago. A juvenile voice, pitched high, with that wandering edge that usually means drink, or drugs, or particularly high fever, saying…several things at once, it seems like, each sentence butting up against the one before, overlapping slightly. Like so:

  I’m COLD…Where you goin’, man? You said I could watch TV… Can’t move my legs…Why won’t you look at me? I’m right here, man…Just LOOK at me. Please…

  Nim can’t stop herself from applying her full weight against the handle, leaning steadily inwards. The door flaps out and back, spitting her into a washroom so ultra-cold and bright it’s practically Kubrickian – and as Nim looks up into the mirror, for one split second, she thinks she sees somebody standing behind her, a shadow quivering against the crack between jamb and post on the nearest stall’s door. So she turns, finds it gone; turns back, and finds the room is suddenly properly dim. All except—

  —that other stall, the one within easy arm’s reach with its own door swinging half-open, a single black Nike trainer-encased foot…

  (Veruca’s)

  …wedged between hinge and jamb, not letting it rebound, let alone come to a full entropic stop.

  And: God, Nim thinks again, though it’s not like she believes in one. Not officially.

  Because Veruca’s inside, of course. Propped up on the toilet, pants securely fastened, that book wide open in her lap. But Nim can’t think of much to do about it except take “The Emperor’s…” from her, gingerly, holding it up by the corner like it’s sticky; let the spine flop open to expose its ill-glued core, its cracked and fraying threads. Or press 911 on speed-dial, hoping she was wrong about her phone, while simultaneously averting her eyes – resolutely determined not to look down, not to try and read over her dead friend’s shoulder.

  Kneeling there, touching the book with as little of one fingernail as she can manage, like she’s afraid it’ll rub off on her somehow, its rough cover slick and dirty as dead scale under her hand. And then there’s this sound from behind her, from the corner – somebody who doesn’t really need to breathe doing it anyway, deliberately clearing their no-throat, so she won’t crap herself with fear.

  Child-light footsteps approaching, wetly, from behind her. A skinless little hand, slimy on her shoulder. An unwavering, pitiless light like a fifty-bulb night-shooting rack igniting with no perceptible warning, back-haloing the floor, the stall, Veruca’s sprawling corpse…

  …while the voice, that voice, repeats every one of the phrases Nim heard through the bathroom door over again in an endless, profane loop: No ending and no beginning, just – pollution, ripples spreading outwards. Curdling everything in its path.

  Just LOOK at me, man. I’m right here. So…LOOK.

  (No. Not gonna.)

  Can’t move. So COLD.

  (I’m sorry for that, kid. I really, really am.)

  Yeah? Then turn around, right now. And look.

  (You can’t make me.)

  Oh no?

  (Is that what you think, little geeky girl?)

  You’d be amazed what I can do, I only take a mind to.

  Heart bruising itself against her sternum from the inside, a muscle-and-valve jackhammer. As the voice keeps on, never raising, never falling. Never slowing. Never stopping

  He said…he was gonna take…care…of me…

  Nim sits there on the bathroom floor with her eyes closed and two fingers jammed deep into the book, still automatically holding Veruca’s place for her, as hot red tears run down her face to dr
ip on the bright white floor below. Sits there until it stops talking, until she’s almost certain it’s gone away for good. Then keeps on sitting there anyhow, hips and knees burning, cold creeping up through her pant-legs; her eyes still downcast, still shut lid-tight, afraid to open them again, in case.

  Until, at last, somebody else comes in to pee. And the screaming finally starts.

  ««—»»

  Though the cops get there surprisingly fast, by the time they arrive, the Speed’s already cleaned itself up (and out) with alarming efficiency. No more bloodsports in the corners, no more pot-stink or bad behavior. Even the soundtrack manages to reel itself back a notch or ten, so nobody has to shout to make themselves heard while they give their deposition.

  They let Nim go at 3:30 AM, waving her briskly past the same ambulance they loaded Veruca’s bag-clad body into. And there, beyond the yellow tape, she finds Tom Darbersmere waiting for her.

  “Your friend…” He begins. “…the girl with the glasses, same one who came up to me, ‘round midnight?”

  “Her name’s Veruca,” Nim finds herself telling him, mouth suddenly too numb to quite form every syllable. A fact he doesn’t really seem to notice, observing only:

  “Veruca: Was it really. How absolutely marvellous.”

  A statement, not a question, odd to the point of insult. It stings enough to make her look up, into his eyes—

  —where she does see sympathy, of a kind. But only like a shallow sheen: All surface, china-cerulean, pale and dry and faded. And not young, when you come to look at them this closely – in no fucking way young, not at all. Not even a little, tiny bit.

  “My dear,” Tom Darbersmere says, pressing her hot hand between his two smooth, cool, dry ones, “I am so very sorry for your loss.”

  Sorrowful and civil, utterly archaic. And so much like Veruca’s treasured imitation of his late uncle, it brings sick to Nim’s mouth. Something burning in her nose, behind her teeth, choking her. Something deep down in her gut and lower still, sinking to where it makes her groin ache and her muscles flex, burning, burning, burning to cut and run.

  (“He’s exactly the damn same…”

  Who, Veruca?

  “…im…”)

  Him: Tom. Or, rather—

  – Tim.

  (The not-so-Late.)

  With Alicia – Ellis, Iseland – standing right behind him, at a middle distance, puffing away. Her smoke-colored eyes boring into Nim, slow-motion bullets. As though she thinks if she just does it long enough, she’ll be able to read Nim’s address off her DNA.

  And: “Thanks,” Nim husks, at last, dropping his hand like it’s radioactive. Before running off into the night, away from the Speed of Pain, never (hopefully) to return.

  Later, she’s over half the way home, sitting on the Vomit Comet with tears running down both cheeks – unsought, unstemmed – before she feels the edge of it touch her thigh as she shifts, and realizes she still has the only known copy of that nonexistent fucking book of his right there in her purse.

  Thinking: Something needs to come of this. This needs to COME to something. Bite your ass. Bite BOTH your asses, you lying, dream-killing, kid-eating, unspeakable fucking, FUCKING…

  Thinking: Because Veruca’s dead, and that thing, it’s dead too. But you’re alive, still.

  You always will be.

  Thinking, thinking, thinking: Nothing relevant, not really, aside from the dreadful half-sob that racks her now from head to toe, epileptic. Because it’s late, and she’s tired, more tired than she’s ever been in her life. Because her only friend in the world is gone, and – stupid fixations, obsessive eccentricities, annoying vocal inflections aside – the world she has to live in now, alone, is oh so much the poorer for it.

  Nim hugs “The Emperor’s Old Bones” to her chest with both arms, tight like she gave birth to it, and shuts her eyes once more, knowing she’ll have to keep moving now, but not knowing for exactly how long. Certain she won’t sleep ‘til dawn, at least. Or, maybe—

  —ever again.

  About Mort Castle

  Mort Castle has over 600 publications to his credit: You’ll find his work in classic men’s cheesecake mags like Cavalier and Mr. to literary publications like Riverside Quarterly and Bombay Gin, from the confessions magazines True Secrets and Intimate Romances to agricultural publications such as Hog Farm Management, from … Eclectic, okay? You get the idea.

  He’s published seven novels, with Cursed Be the Child having sales of near 100,000 and The Strangers optioned for film. His third short story collection New Moon on the Water, Full Moon Press, will be released later this year. Castle’s been nominated for a number of awards, including the Bram Stoker (six times), the Pushcart Prize (four times) and the International Horror Guild award (only once). Cited as one of “21 Leaders in the Arts for the 21st Century in Chicago’s Southland” by the Sun-Times Newspaper Group, Castle is finding new success in Poland (You like me, Mr. Walesa, you really …) where two of his books were among the “Best of 2008” according to Newsweek magazine.

  Writer-in-residence for Chicago Heights (IL) High School District 206 and a teacher in the fiction writing department of Columbia College Chicago, Castle has 12 feet of book shelf filled with the published work of his students and former students. Married to Jane for 38 years, Castle lives in Crete, Illinois, plays acoustic guitar like an un-reconstructed (if balding) folky, and has no plans to buy any digital book device until, like a real book, it can be dropped in the bathtub and easily if wavily set right with a microwave or clothes dryer.

  Moon On The Water

  By Mort Castle

  azzmen make it 10 or 20 years after they die. Fats Navarro, Yardbird, Coltrane … Sure, there were people who dug them while they were here to lay it down, but it’s now, years after the final bar, and gangbusters, right?

  So I’m thinking it’s soon going to be Breeze’s time. The past year, there’ve been a couple reissues of sides we cut years ago, decent sales and good reviews in Downbeat and even – hip to this? – Rolling Stone.

  And Breeze’s trip is the stuff that makes for a cult following. He was a junky, you see. Good box office there – check with Lady Day. And Bird and Chet Baker.

  And they did fish Breeze out of Lake Michigan one cold autumn day in ‘59, found him with his fingers on the keys of his sax.

  ««—»»

  Any city’s a rough-old, tough-old dues paying time for a jazzman, but Chicago was better than New York for Breeze and me. That’s why we blew the Apple Major, where cool and post bop and hard bop pretty much ruled, and where, pre-Coltrane revelations, if you were into something new, and you were Ofay besides, it was guaranteed nowheresville.

  And Chicago was a better scene, too, if you were in “the life.” If you kept your cool, the heat did not jump all over you when you went on the prowl in search of white powder.

  And Chicago had the lake. First time he saw it, Breeze said, “Yes.” I knew what he meant. Looking one way, all you’d see was city. Then you could turn your back on it, forget it, and there was endless water, frozen in two a.m. moonlight, making you understand loneliness and eternity. And maybe you had the kind of thought that’s like smoke, curling and disappearing, thinking about magic and just how small we all are and maybe you even dreamed the kid-dream of dream monsters that swim and slither just under the surface of water and just out of sight.

  Yeah, for the good solid citizens of Chicago, the city that works is also the city that sleeps and when the square johns were doing Morpheus, there were many times when you could find Breeze and me by the lake. Breeze would have his horn. Most everywhere he went – then – the sax was with him. Sometimes when it was really right, the heroin rushing through you and turning your vision incandescent, you could see the radiance, the notes shining on the water, perfect and pure for an instant before they shattered and changed into foam.

  So, for us Chicago did indeed make it. We had a two room dump just off Wells Street. We scored scag, did
not get strung out, did not get burned, did not get beefed and we swung enough gigs to pay the freight.

  It was Chicago that we found Micah and really started to get it together. Micah was stand-up bass. He was shadow-skinny and yes, he had the hands, long, long fingers and fast. Micah was younger than we were, a dude who’d dropped out of college to do the jazz thing, but there was a monkey on Micah’s back, too, so we got music-tight, junky-tight and it was like it was all supposed to happen.

  And we were working on and getting to and sometimes touching, really touching – close to the sound.

  Uh-huh, the sound. What was it we wanted? What we were after?

  What we did not want: tired-out, straight ahead swing. Not spit-it-out all flash and fingers be-bop. Not thud and boom and stretch it so they think you’re saying something when you’re only blowing smoke.

  A moment for metaphysics, okay? A moment to direct your eyes on what those Impressionist painters, Renoir and Monet and Degas and Caillebotte and Cassatt and Manet, the masters of the moment, were doing with hay stacks and rivers and sunrises and railroad stations.

  We wanted morning light coming through the clouds the second before the sun goes orange-pink. We wanted not a dream but the way you feel when you almost remember the dream. We wanted it be a little bit like you think maybe God is.

  And looking back and thinking back and sometimes, oh, way down there, really going back, I wonder if we didn’t want the moon on the water?

  Maybe that.

  Maybe.

  Breeze played alto. I was guitar. Micah, on the bottom, was the heartbeat. We didn’t have drums, didn’t need them with Micah. Here’s the root, here’s the core, here’s the center, that was Micah on bass. No reason to make a clash and clatter.

  Of course, Mulligan, the Jeru, with his quartet gigging out in Citrusland, did not have drums, either, but he was going his very own horn-rimmed academic glasses way and we were into something entirely else.

  There were times when we laid it down, the calm and the ease and the gentle. There were times when we found the song inside you that you didn’t even know was there.