The Twelve-Fingered Boy

by John Hornor Jacobs

  Where is Vig now? Where is Coco?

  I keep my eyelids closed, moving my eyes in their sockets like I am seeing Little Rock from a bird’s-eye view. There is Casimir, locked in chain-link and razor wire in the eastern section near the river port. And then, away there, off to the west at the foot of the Ozarks, Holly Pines.

  I’m picturing this in my mind, and I rise up and away. Now I’m really rising, and I can feel Jack’s presence below me like a frozen man can feel the radiant heat of a fire even from a distance. Jack and I are connected by a thin, bright filament—like a piece of gum you’ve chewed and then held between your teeth while you stretch out a piece until just the slightest tendril connects the gob in your hand to the one in your mouth. That’s how the filament connecting Jack to me feels—wispy and thin, but there— except it’s a filament of fire. A connection of gold.

  And then I see the other, fainter filaments spanning away from me off to the west. I’m suddenly reminded of when Marvin, that giant among prison guards, tased me and I entered him through the wires shocking me, my awareness becoming electric.

  So I follow these golden threads of fire. Over dark landscapes and the swell of the unknowing, massive ocean, over cities and fields and woods, I follow this fine thread of flame like a firebird on a highway in the sky. All I can think of is Coco. Leaving without being able even to talk to her broke a part of me that I’ll never be able to repair— not by words, not by deeds. Or maybe that part of me died bleeding out into the cab of Billy Cather’s truck.

  I follow the filament until I reach a core brightness, and then I’m suffused with memory. I see Coco, hair golden and laughing, in the piney woods—caught in a ray of light streaming through the canopy of trees. I’m caught in her kiss, and I feel myself dissolving.

  I can feel her. I know her. I am her. She is me.

  Vig.

  I stretch out and race down another thread, keeping Vig held in my mind like a lifeline.

  He’s warmer, fierce and stubborn and unhappy. When I join him, he fights me and pushes me away. But I surround him, and finally his spirit sighs and allows me to enter it. My little dude, so far away and all around me.

  He’s hurt and alone, like all of us, and he doesn’t know I’m there.

  I rise, and now I can see the filaments stretching away from my body. Thousands of filaments, golden and uncountable, connecting me to everyone I’ve ever met and ever might meet. I feel an instant of mind-numbing fear, because this is real. This is real. Whatever Quincrux did to me, even inadvertently, has left me open to this. I’m a puppet suspended over a vast abyss, webbed in billions upon billions of fiery threads. I rise, and I can’t tell whether the billions of threads piercing me lift me up or whether I’m pulling them. The mesh that connects me to everyone and connects everyone to me becomes so massive in my mind’s eye that I think my consciousness might be snuffed out like a tiny candle. How can you bear knowing that we’re all one tissue? How can you live with that knowledge, knowing what your fellow man can do?

  I pull and tear to rip myself free, sending tremors out along the threads like a fly caught in a web.

  I’m everything my mother said I was. Selfish. I’d give anything to be back with Coco and Vig. I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to give this all up; I want to go home.

  And then I feel the coldness.

  I want to close my eyes to the cold, but that’s impossible now because eyes are for those who remain incarcerado. I’ve gone out into the wild blue yonder; I’ve gone out into the beyond. And while the mesh of humanity keeps me tethered, I feel a great, seeping cold—a darkness growing along with my expanding perception.

  And then I’m high above the plane of threads and points of light, as though I’m standing on the peak of a mountain. To the north is the darkness like a black hole. I look that way and see a spot devoid of light, bare of the fine mesh of life and love and happiness. I see nothing but darkness there.

  I think it might be Maryland. Where we’re going.

  Suddenly I’m terrified. I’m terrified that Quincrux and the witch might be traveling these same threads; I’m terrified that the darkness might perceive me. I’m terrified I’ll be lost and never find my way back home. I squirm. I struggle. I writhe and rip and thrash, grasping for that one thread, that one brighter than all the others. Finally I seize it. I flee back down its length, and then I’m gasping.

  I’m in my body, back incarcerado. It feels foreign to me now; I’ve been so far away from it and been so many other people. I sink in, and there’s an instant, like in a heart transplant, when I think my body’s going to reject me. Just a moment and then I’m in, gravity-bound and gasping for air.

  Jack still sleeps below me. But when I close my eyes I can feel the pull of humanity, feel the pull from a billion filaments of fire.

  I lie awake for what seems like hours but could be minutes. There’s no telling time now that my perceptions have been so skewed.

  Finally, I close my eyes and make myself fade to black. Releasing my grasp on consciousness feels like drowning.

  FOURTEEN

  Making the train attendants not see us is easy enough. It’s such a little adjustment, really, I don’t even have to go all the way in. Just a smidge to make them look elsewhere, past our seats to the next row.

  I just have to go in with a crystal-clear picture of empty seats in my mind. And hold it.

  And hold it.

  While the other mind’s owner scrabbles and squirms to get back in control, confused as to what’s happening but not about to believe he’s being invaded.

  It’ll wear a person out. Me. Or the target. It doesn’t matter.

  The single-to-hundred scam is easier by far.

  The thing is, every person thinks he’s imaginative and strong-minded. Very few people really are. I’m not excluding Shreve Cannon, magician and man-about-town, in that statement.

  Most people are imaginative by reference; their fantasies are powered by images they’ve seen in movies, read in books. Most people couldn’t keep someone like me, or Quincrux, out for more than a second. If Quincrux comes a-calling, he’s going to get in. The dude is a monster. A demon.

  I guess that’s what I am. Quincrux, the witch. And me. Demons in human skin.

  Not what I dreamed about as a career path. But I guess juvie wasn’t much better for job prospects. And this pays better.

  The train rocks sideways beneath us. It’s strange and wonderful to me that Jack and I barrel down the track at fifty, sixty miles an hour to an uncertain future, but the only motion I can feel is the sway of the cars, left and right, contrary to our forward motion.

  Jack’s leaning against the window, eyes closed, and we pass through industrial parks and then woodlands and plains and fields and then city once more. The light from the sun is pale and yellow, coming in dappled flashes. It illuminates his body then casts it into shadow at a frequency of a failing fluorescent light bulb submerged in molasses. I can see his hands clearly, each finger, and his sleeping form reminds me of pale and bleached statuary at the state museum. A statue of the Angry Kid at rest. But the sculptor screwed up on the hands.

  Hands are always the hardest part to draw.

  Jack needs his rest. I close my eyes.

  We were in a brokedown little town in the Florida panhandle called Chattahoochee when I first possessed someone, full Exorcist. I was desperate.

  The bus hissed to a stop at a brown, weathered concrete Greyhound station near a strip mall with for-lease signs decorating the windows. The parking lot was littered with trash and empty bottles, smelling of yeast and motor oil. Jack gave me a concerned look as we exited the bus. It wasn’t hot this late in the year, and the sun was low in the southern sky, bracketed by pines and nearly hidden by a tree line laureling a trailer park. Dogs barked, and the bus chuffed and ratcheted behind us as we walked toward the sad, squat motel on the corner beneath the yellowed sign that read Stay-Inn! above a lit vacancy sign. It reminded me of home.


  After ten hours on the bus we were tired, and it was such a dump of a town, I thought we could rest there, at least for the night.

  The door gave a little electronic beep as we entered the Stay-Inn! Motel lobby, where there was a single old man at the counter, legs kicked up and reading an In Style magazine. Checking out the celebrity fashions, no doubt.

  Spying us, he dropped his feet to the floor, and his chair gave a little squeak of outrage as it shifted position beneath him. “Howdy, folks.” Scrabbling at his mind, I was broadcasting a hundred thousand watts of pure, unadulterated young male imagery, stubble, big muscles, Adam’s apples. Deep voices. Bull-like levels of testosterone and adulthood. Grave and serious. The full nine.

  Approaching the man, Jack smiled and placed one of his hands on the counter. He said, “We’d like a room for the night. We’ll pay in cash.”

  I don’t know if I didn’t have the illusion together enough, or it was Jack’s hand on the counter, but the old man’s eyes went wide, alarmed.

  “I, I—” he stammered, and his gaze shifted to me and then back to Jack and then to Jack’s hand lying there for the whole world to observe and count digits.

  For one instant the old man looked absolutely terrified, face white and mouth loose so that his dentures lifted a little from his bottom jaw and his cheeks went slack and empty.

  “We’d like a room,” Jack repeated, and I almost yelled at him to shut up, because something was so very wrong.

  Then a strange look came over the old geezer, like someone had flipped a switch in his noggin, and his face went blank. He slowly turned to the phone next to his reception computer, picked up the handset, and began to dial. A long number.

  My heart hammering in its cage of ribs, I reached out to Jack and grabbed his shoulder.

  “This isn’t good, man. We’ve got to—”

  In a dead, monotone voice, the old man said into the receiver, “Yes. Visual confirmation. They’re here.”

  Jack stepped away from the counter, and the look of pure terror on his face was electric. Things seemed to slow and gel around us: the air became thick, and heavy motes hung in the low light streaming through the windows from the parking lot.

  Inside I was screaming, “RUN!” but my feet seemed locked in place and Jack frozen into statuary.

  The old man shuddered and closed his eyes, the phone held still held to his ear. When he opened them again, he was smiling. A familiar smile. A how-good-it-is-to-see-you-again smile.

  “Ahh. Mr. Graves and Mr. Cannon. You’ve led us on a merry chase, but all that has come to an end.” The voice was familiar even through the sputum and clatter of the old man’s dentures. Quincrux, here.

  I forced myself to move, grabbing Jack and spinning him around. “Run!”

  The door’s electric chime dinged, and we turned to run.

  A big trucker of a man, shirt-tight barrel of a belly over a silver rodeo belt buckle, stood in the doorway, coming forward, sun behind him. For an instant I thought he might be one of Quincrux’s slaves, possessed by the man, but he drew up short and gave me a perplexed look.

  “Y’all okay, in here? You look like you seen a…” His eyes widened as he looked past us, toward the hotel register. I can’t help myself. I looked back, over my shoulder.

  The sight of him locked me in my tracks.

  Blood poured from the old man’s nose onto his clothes. It spread like a crimson oil slick across his mouth and chin and splattered on his shirt —plat plat plat—giving him a rapacious, hungry look. The old man at the desk said, “Do not run. I will have someone there in a moment to collect you. If you continue this foolish running, people will get hurt.” He tapped his chest. “This old carcass. And the other watchers I have waiting for you. So many watchers. They will not fare well. Nor shall you.”

  The old man leaned forward as if he were reaching for something, head down. When he raised it again, he had a pistol in his hand.

  “Or this unfortunate soul.”

  Freed, then, as if I’d pulled myself from quicksand. Everything happened at once. Jack and I leaped towards the glass lobby doors while the big belt-buckled man said, “Hey, wait a sec … ,” raising his hands.

  I ripped the door open as Jack flashed through the entrance toward the parking lot, and I was directly behind him as the boom and burst of light went off behind us like lightning and thunder and the air turned to shards of glass and a billion liquid particles of blood hanging immobile around us. Jack windmilled his arms wildly, his dark hair caught in a wild spray, his hands open like two fans, both legs extended, one in front, one behind, a wild look on his startled face.

  Then everything snapped back, and Jack’s foot came down on the concrete of the walkway and we were hauling ass out of there, into the parking lot, across the strip mall and into the trailer park and beyond.

  It was a young woman, chewing gum, who stopped her car in the middle of the street as I waved her down. She was blonde and had tired eyes and a Motorhead T-shirt, looking at us quizzically, saying, “You boys need some help?” when I went in full-bore like a bulldozer behind her eyes, took her over and booted her out like I’d done to poor Marvin. I walked her body over and away from the car, onto the scraggly lawn of a pillbox home and sat her down cross-legged on the grass. Her nose was bleeding.

  No better than Quincrux.

  I pushed Jack inside the car, jumped in the driver’s seat, and let the girl go. But for that second, that one instant, I felt like there was gum on my shoe, gum on my sole—my soul—and parts of me were stuck to her.

  She was wailing, once again herself, as we pulled away.

  We ride north. Another city, another state, another place where we don’t know anyone. And where no one knows us. And most important, where there’s no Quincrux. He’s out there, waiting. Every person we come into contact with could be a watcher like the motel attendant. One of the little toy soldiers Quincrux has scattered about the earth, programmed to spring into action once they see us.

  It doesn’t make me feel very generous to my fellow man.

  On the outside, every face can hide a monster.

  I haven’t mentioned this to Jack, but I think he knows and we’ll have to talk about it eventually. But not yet. Like a regular family, we have uncomfortable subjects we keep locked away in closets and under rugs. Under mattresses, like Wolf-boy’s older brother. I worry that Jack, when we get right to the nitty-gritty of the matter, might go off into his own private wonderland, that faraway gaze seeing other times and places.

  Gods, poor Jack. I think he sees a crib. A burning house. How can someone live with that?

  I think about my vision of the filaments connecting us all. I guess it was a vision. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to be open to something that strange.

  If it was real, then there’s some bad stuff waiting for us up north.

  The first hotel we find, I can’t get behind the receptionist’s eyes. I come at her from every angle, but no dice. She’s not as smooth as Jack, but she’s just as impenetrable— like craggy, porous rock. Wolf-boy’s father had been as defended, or more. He was steel to her rock. What are they feeding these people up here?

  I feel like a dragonfly spattering itself against a windshield, going at her like that. I don’t have time to wave Jack away before he steps up and starts the scam.

  He holds out his library card.

  “What is this?”

  “We have reservations, under…” He glances at me. “Horace Booth.”

  “This isn’t a library, kid. It’s a hotel. And you’ve got to be at least eighteen to check into a room.” She glances at me. I’m trying to crack her noggin like an egg. But it’s not egg-shelled. It’s stone.

  “What are you two trying to pull here? Where’s your mom? Your dad?”

  Jack’s not stupid. Those are words he’s learned to fear.

  “Just kidding!” Jack chirps and dashes off across the lobby. I follow. The woman stares at us, shaking her head and rea
ching for a telephone.

  There’s no percentage in waiting around to see who she’s calling. I run hard, pumping my arms, right on Jack’s heels. He’s a fast little dude, Jack is.

  We’re down the street in a flash, taking the first turn we can find and throwing ourselves against the wall in a caricature of fleeing heroes.

  “That was close.”

  “What happened?”

  “I couldn’t get in.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her head. I couldn’t get in. She was too strong. Like you.” Jack thinks about this for a moment. Then he says, “Well, I guess we better try again.”

  I sit down on the curb, between cars.

  “What are we doing?”

  “What do you mean? We’re trying to get someplace to stay.”

  “No.” I put my head in my hands. “I mean what are we doing here?”

  Jack sits down next to me, saying nothing.

  I sigh. “I’m just tired of moving. Quincrux’s watchers could be anywhere. We can never know. We’ll never be totally safe.” I bite my lip and then say what we’d been trying to ignore since Chattahoochee. “He shot that trucker. Killed him just to force us to stop.”

  “We didn’t pull the trigger,” Jack said.

  “No, but we could’ve saved him.”

  Jack shakes his head. “No, that man was doomed the minute he saw us. And Quincrux. How did he do that?”

  “What?”

  “Get in the old clerk. It’s like he programmed the old man to look for us.” He cursed softly under his breath. “You see how he never put down the phone? Creepy.”

  I want to explain that Quincrux could open the hood of anyone and tinker around inside. “Maybe Quincrux had to have some sort of connection with the guy to keep control.”

  “Maybe. But how did the old guy know us?”

  “It’s like when he commanded me to not remember. For some people, it’s like a mental computer virus he’s left behind, maybe. Quincrux plants one of his memories, and when they see us, recognize us…”