CHAPTER 17

“Hello, my name is Clara.”

“Hello, Clara,” answers the Obsidian Sanctuary.

Clara shivers at the response, nervous at the prospect of speaking in front of the strangers. They said this wasn’t even a full meeting, but the prospect is still daunting. They seem nice, though—encouraging. A small, mousy woman in her early thirties, all her plain features are eclipsed by the very large, very thick glasses that magnify her eyes to amphibian levels.

“I, uh . . . I was told maybe I could find help here. I don’t even know how to start.”

An encouraging murmur runs through the Sanctuary. Clara smiles, still shivering. She’s as awkward as a newborn fawn spat into a dark forest.

“I guess I have an addiction. I’m addicted to funeral food. But that’s a long story. Recently I joined a, uh, ‘self-actualization’ group. Apex Consumers. Now I think my hungers might have . . . changed.”

* * * * *

Nyx finds the door unlocked.

She follows the trail of dried mud to the bathroom and finds that door open as well. And she finds Simon, still mostly clothed, still wearing his cracked glasses, sitting in the tub, the hot water coming down from the showerhead, washing the muck away, soaking the tiled floor with its spray. Simon holds both of his mutilated forearms out, trying to keep the scalding water from torturing the bloody script of Jane Doe.

Nyx: the Maiden. Queen of clubs.

She does not scream. She does not gasp. She does not say a word, just helps clean Simon up. All the while, Simon tells her in a distant voice about how he found Mr. Knock. About the jars of unborn, the mad conversation, the cats, Jane’s head, the bone, and the bog. Nyx does not say a word, only dries Simon and wraps his arms in white bandages. But, as in Simon’s mind, she always bleeds through and floats to the surface. Red letters on white: Jane Doe.

Jane Doe: the Hanging Girl. Queen of hearts.

He tells her about all those roads and none of them leading home, the cracked world, the nonsense signs, the black dogs and bog bodies catching up. He details the next morning, finally being allowed to drive back to Chicago—a strange reef in a stranger sea.

The queen of hearts. Off with her head . . . off with her head. Eh, Jane?

Simon finishes talking and Nyx does not yell at him, does not lecture him on going off alone to explore the dark. She does not even give him a grim and grave “I told you so.” She just gives him a very hard hug and says, “Come on. We need to go eat some tacos and waffles.”

Simon stops short, his eyes turning less distant, snapping back to the now. “Why tacos and waffles?”

“Because,” Nyx says, “you need to commune with the living. Once a month the Obsidian Sanctuary has Taco-Waffle-TP Friday. That’s today. It’s tradition.”

* * * * *

It is not so very difficult, loveling, to picture the motel room door opening.

You can imagine the cleaning lady. You’ve seen her before, in one motel or another, pushing that cart of cleaning agents with all the enthusiasm of Sisyphus. Not too, too difficult to picture her stretching painfully, her back already throbbing the staccato Morse code message: Today’s going to suck. It’s the barest stretch of the imagination to name her pains: long hours, grinding monotony, escalating bills and out of control APRs, and domestic troubles recently aggravated by the discovery of her husband’s lust for hardcore amputee porn, via that copy of Humping Stumps discovered under his pillow.

Just a sketch of everyday life.

And there she stands in the doorway, when the banal line of her life interrupts.

The cigarette falls from her mouth.

It’s not the circle of salt on the floor. She has cleaned much nastier, more mysterious phenomena from the bed sheets.

No.

It’s there in the muddy handprints and footprints that run up the walls and along the ceiling. It’s in the way the mud glistens with moisture, never drying. It’s in the worm-orgy smell of fermented moss. It’s in the faint, dirty silhouettes smeared in the wallpaper and the inexplicable wrongness of their postures, like souls trapped in ash-shadow on still-standing Hiroshima walls after the sun split.

What conclusions go through her mind?

Who can say?

Omniscience has its degrees.

* * * * *

Strange pockets and hollows of safety and hearth can form in the ocean of late night. The Obsidian Sanctuary found theirs at a local diner. The restaurant is open twenty-four hours a day. The food is cheap and they serve both tacos and waffles. The late shift manager even lets Jolly Roger bring Byron into the building.

Simon and Nyx arrive to find a dozen Sanctuary members already present, already eating, gossiping, joking, and passing around the blueberry syrup.

“Taco-Waffle-TP Friday!” they chant.

“Why tacos and waffles?” Simon asks.

“Because,” Nyx says.

“And where does the TP come in?”

“You’ll see.”

Jolly Roger nods a greeting with his gold-platinum smile while feeding Byron bits of sausage. The black-and-white bird, perched on the Goth-pirate’s shoulder, greets Simon and Nyx by bobbing his head and singing:

“T’was on the good ship Venus,

By Christ you should have seen us.

The figurehead was a whore in bed,

Sucking a dead man’s penis.”

“Wow. Thanks for that, Byron,” says Nyx. “Roger, what the hell are you teaching this creature? That’s not Poe.”

“No,” says the gold-platinum teeth. “If it were Poe, the man would be living and the woman would be dead. I’m teaching Byron old maritime tunes.”

Byron continues singing:

“The captain’s name was Lugger.

By Christ he was a bugger.

He wasn’t fit to shovel shit

From one ship to another.”

Nyx and Simon take seats amidst the chaos of laughter, multiple layers of conversation, wildly gesturing hands, and eyes and mouths. Simon feels his heart pounding, the stabbing of social anxieties that he’s possessed so long they can almost be counted as comforts, but he resists the urge to hide in a closet.

Officer Polhaus shovels eggs and bacon into his mouth, arguing with another Sanctuary member between bites.

Nyx and Jolly Roger whisper something back and forth.

Zack and Kenny busy themselves in a discussion while building bigger and better catapults out of silverware, disposable tubs of cream being the artillery. They pause only to introduce themselves to Simon as the resident “techies.” Both are college students. They might be confused for twins if they looked anything alike.

“I’m telling you, man, the Sanctuary needs to raise money via merchandising,” says Zack, returning to the interrupted discussion.

“Merchandising? Like what?” says Kenny.

“Like things carved out of obsidian. Like jewelry.”

“And cutlery.”

“Yeah! Obsidian letter openers. Obsidian shot glasses. Obsidian toilet seats.”

“Who the hell would have an obsidian toilet seat?”

“Michael Clark Duncan.”

“Okay.”

Byron bobs and sings:

“The second mate was Andy.

By Christ he had a dandy.

Till they crushed his cock on a jagged rock

For cumming in the brandy.”

“Egads,” says Nyx. “That’s a pretty vile song, wouldn’t you say, Roge?”

“It’s supposed to be, poppet,” says Jolly Roger. “Debauched drinking song and all. You have a bunch of men on a ship and you’re not sure if you’ll make it to the next port ’cause you have to worry about illness and storms and starvation and pirates and the monsters. So you and your mates tell dirty jokes and sing dirtier songs. You one-up each other, making each verse more and more depraved, and you have a few laughs.”

Nyx ruffles the feathers on Byron’s head. “Well, Captain Nyx’s ship happens to have a pair of young ears aboard, mate.” She indicates Robin, sitting quietly at the other end of the table.

“Sorry, Mama Bear,” says Jolly Roger. “Once Byron starts, I can’t stop him. Animal cruelty and all.”

Nyx laughs and conversations resume.

Simon turns to Robin, sitting next to him, with her wounded bird stare, not paying attention to the conversations or her half-eaten meal. She instead draws pictures in crayon on her paper placemat, mostly of monsters and sharp teeth and eyes. Tonight she wears a Jason Voorhees hockey mask.

“Hi, Robin,” Simon says quietly.

Robin looks up at Simon and waves.

Loud, bawdy conversations continue. Simon’s order arrives but he only nibbles. He sifts through his breakfast skillet with a knife but only sees the clammy contents of Jane’s Y-incision. Simon sighs longingly.

He looks at Robin and her drawings—goes into his head and imagines growing psychic bat ears so he can decipher the memories and origins of those crayon-rendered echoes. It’s not a pretty picture. Simon steadies the shake in his dead-withdrawal hands and takes his napkin, expertly rolling and folding and working it until it is a white paper rose. Then the odd scarecrow presents the flower to the little wounded bird. Robin squeaks with delight, taking the flower as if it were a precious jewel.

Simon notices Nyx looking at him, from the other side of the tables. She’s smiling.

Byron sings:

“The captain’s wife was Mabel.

By God she was most able

To give the crew their daily screw

Upon the galley table.”

“Ohhhh,” Kenny groans, looking at his empty plate of waffles and his still half-full plate of tacos.

“You know, you don’t have to finish that,” Zack says.

“I must,” Kenny says, pointing to the remaining tacos. “This is my Everest.”

Still tentatively welcoming the camaraderie, but not taking direct part himself, Simon only samples the conversations around him.

“. . . so he’s just this guy they let work as an orderly on the weekends. Seriously retarded. I mean, he has trouble tying his shoes. Yet he somehow knows where to walk to avoid the cameras even as he’s swiping key cards and stealing bags and bags of blood. When we finally find him out, it takes five of us just to wrestle him to the ground. The whole time he’s sobbing and begging us to let him finish and . . .”

“. . . and that’s how I learned paranoia,” says Nyx. “From the song ‘Rock Lobster.’ It made me realize nothing can be trusted—even rocks are suspect. You’d think if there was one thing you could count on, it’d be a rock. But, no. Rocks might, as the song aptly notes, be something else. So everything is suspect . . .”

“. . . you gotta figure that ninety percent of it is all bullshit,” says Polhaus, showering his listener with bits of egg and pancake. “Complete, utter dog shit—bat shit crazy ramblings from crackheads and hicks, abductions stories from lonely losers, claims of psychic power by fat chicks who need a self-esteem boost. Then you got, say, ten percent—and that’s being freaking generous—of the stories that have some basis in . . . something. But then you gotta figure—tip of the iceberg. You’re not seeing the whole picture any more than one percent of the time. Then there’s gotta be that X percent to represent all the things that are not bullshit, that are out there, that we don’t know anything about. So you carry all the ones and zeroes, and you have to remember that none of us really know anything about anything. So the math is completely fucked. Take, for example—hey, Meeks!”

Polhaus points a meaty finger across the table at Simon, who flinches. That voice saying his name had never led to anything good.

“Yes?”

“How many autopsies do you figure you did last year?”

“Four hundred and twenty-six.”

“About four hundred and twenty-six?”

“Exactly four hundred and twenty-six.”

Polhaus stares a moment. “Yeah, right. Anyway, out of that number, how many stiffs were made stiffs by something unnatural?”

Simon has to think a moment. Given all he had seen recently, he might need to view some cases under different criteria, but all in all: “None, Officer Polhaus. None of the causes of death seemed conclusively ‘unnatural.’”

Polhaus turns to the teenager he’d been talking to. “See. Out of four hundred-plus bodies—nada. Yeah. They might be all around, but not every mugging, murder, or plot is supernatural.”

Conversations continue around the table. Simon slips inside his head; our misfit can take only so much unshielded socialization. He imagines the diner turning into a ghost pirate vessel: Nyx as its captain, wielding Bob, and Jolly Roger as first mate, hanging from the post as the living flag. The ship is piloted by a crew of Chicago’s cement skeletons, all singing filthy songs, led by Byron.

Somewhere, distantly, Simon is aware that everyone is discussing racehorse names. There is a pause in the background noise. With horror, and a flashback of blind date dread, Simon realizes he’s just been asked something and snaps back to the present. “Uh . . . what was that?”

“Come on, Boo Radley,” says Polhaus, with a smile or a snarl—it’s hard for Simon to tell. “If you had a racehorse, what would you name it?”

Simon thinks for only a moment. “Catherine the Great’s Death.”

There is a pause. Simon knows that pause. What comes after, he does not expect: laughter. There are exclamations of “Gross!” and “Oh, that’s wrong.” But laughter underscores it all. Even Polhaus’s scowl cracks.

“That’s—huh—that’s pretty fucking funny, actually,” chuckles the fat cop.

The Island of Misfit Toys. Eh, Jane?

The comment leads to a series of jokes about bestiality, which leads to jokes about dead hookers, which leads to jokes about dead babies. All of them gross, tasteless jokes that excite wheezing fits of laughter. All of them irreverent wards against the dark.

And Byron sings:

“The cabin boy was Kipper.

By Christ he was a nipper.

He stuffed his ass with broken glass

And circumcised the skipper.”

Finally Nyx gathers the scattered attention of the group.

“Okay, troops, game faces. Mama Bear says, shhhh.”

And with that, all is silent. Simon is admiring Nyx’s control of the group when he’s nudged from behind by another Sanctuary member who whispers, “They say she’s the daughter of an incubus demon.”

Simon nods. “I heard.”

“The Obsidian Sanctuary gathers for a reason,” says Nyx. “We give each other strength. We are stronger than the sum of our parts.” Heads nod. “I won’t spend a lot of time explaining that. You’ve all had a glimpse or a loss. Suffered your own horror story that brought you here. We gather to survive. Maybe to heal. And tonight we bring that strength to bear, to help a new member: Simon.”

Nyx indicates Simon with a purple-nailed hand. The gesture is answered by quiet applause.

“Simon is a gifted young man,” Nyx continues, with a wink aimed at Simon. “He’s a forensic pathologist. He has a gift with the dead.”

At this Simon hears, with a wince, the murmurs rise in the group, quiet whispers shared back and forth:

“. . . some kind of necromancer. . . ?”

“. . . special powers . . .”

“. . . maybe he can help me talk to my dear Jimmy, God rest his soul. . . .”

Simon shifts uncomfortably and stammers a whisper to Nyx, “I—I don’t know if you’d call it a—I mean, it’s not—”

Nyx doesn’t wait for him to finish. “Simon recently got his own glimpse of the dark. That makes him one of us.”

Fellow misfits and the supernaturally scarred murmur their agreement amidst the carafes of coffee and multiple flavors of syrup.

“A cadaver came to Simon. He came to know her as Jane Doe. Some of us knew her, too, but we never had a name for her.”

More energetic murmurs in the group.

“. . . those golden eyes . . .”

“. . . she healed poor Robin, you know . . .”

“. . . she was an angel sent to us . . .”

Whispered theories flit back and forth, and genuine tears streak down the faces of some of the misfits.

You were a saint to them, Jane. A ghostly saint. A fleshy holy spirit. And these dolls were damaged but not broken.

“Let’s call her Jane,” says Nyx, “for lack of anything else. We know Jane was murdered.”

More murmurs.

“Soon after,” continues Nyx, “Ichabod and his crew fell apart. Members lost it, got gacked, or both.”

“. . . they delved into some scary shit . . .”

“. . . Poor Neil, he was a bright boy . . .”

“. . . Jasper offed himself . . .”

“That’s why, before we go any further, I’m going to say it plain,” says Nyx. “We are not going down Knock’s road. We are not hunting the ultimate X-File. We are not discovering the secret of the universe. But we can help Simon. Carefully. As a unified force. We can—maybe—help set things right for Jane.”

Murmurs of assent.

Byron sings:

“The captain’s lovely daughter

Liked swimming in the water.

Delighted squeals came when some eels

Found her sexual quarters.”

“Right,” says Nyx. “John, tell us about the crime scene.”

Officer Polhaus takes a gulp of coffee and clears his throat, loudly. “Closed-down pub over on Lincoln. Set to be torn down and renovated. Big tree in the back beer garden was the hanging tree. They found . . . Jane, hanging there, in the beer garden. No eyewitnesses, except some poor kid who had the misfortune of seeing her dangling there.”

I think the boy was lucky, Jane, to see you dance.

“Didn’t look right. Definitely not a suicide. But it was a sloppy murder, too. I don’t know. You get the impression that the fucks who did this were interrupted, and not by no kid, but by something that made them rush out of there before they could tidy up.”

It was my shadow, Jane. Sometimes your shadow arrives before you, and sometimes it trails behind.

“What happened to Jane’s body?” asks Nyx.

“It vanished,” says Polhaus. “Queerest thing in the world. After she got shipped to the morgue, I kept on eye on the body and an ear to the ground because I, uh, recognized her.”

Polhaus’s mouth tightens.

Officer Polhaus knew you, Jane. He knew you in the before.

“One night her body’s there, next it’s gone. I mean gone. No records. No toe tag. Nada. No one remembers her being there. The world goes crazy. No one remembers—” again a meaty finger points at Simon “—except this guy.”

“Simon, what can you tell us about Jane?” asks Nyx.

Simon stammers to a start, the prospect of speaking in public again paralyzing. Then he remembers the ritual. He calls her name. “Subject: Jane Doe. Subject died by hypoxia. Subject had . . . beautiful eyes. Subject liked to play on playgrounds after hours, liked the chill of October sand. Subject—”

“The murder, asshole!” interrupts Polhaus. “What can you tell us about the fucking murder?”

Nyx glares, her humor vanished, replaced by something dangerous behind the eyes.

Polhaus looks down. “Sorry.”

“There were four of them,” says Simon. “There was Hector . . .”

The Hanging Man. Jack of diamonds.

“Joe . . .”

The Laughing Man. Jack of clubs.

“Gabe . . .”

The Question Man. Jack of spades.

“And Alex.”

The Crying Man. Jack of hearts.

“Hector held the rope. He’s very big, very strong. They raised her three times. Gabe asked the questions. Joe laughed when she choked.” Simon finds he has sliced his knife into the smiley face he made of his pancake. “Alex cried. She . . . kissed him before they killed her.”

“What happened to the body?” asks Nyx.

Simon tells the tale, in more detail, of “the Mondays,” the odd events at the morgue, Jane’s vanishing body and the vanishing memories, and the nightmare thing that stalked him. The Sanctuary listens in rapt attention as another story enters the tattered, autumnal quilt of their mythology.

Tensions tighten as the children huddle around the fire, fearing the wolves in the darkness.

And Byron sings:

“The cook, his name was Freeman.

He was a dirty demon.

He fed the crew on menstrual stew

And hymens fried in semen.”

Pepsi explodes out of Nyx’s nose and she coughs and chokes. “Goddamnit, Roge. We’re trying to have a serious meeting here!” But she does not resist the wave of laughter that comes, a laugh that grows contagious and sweeps across everyone in the restaurant—the collective, unspoken middle finger raised to the lurkers in the darkness.

“Moving on.” Nyx lays three pieces of paper on the table, very poignantly. “These belonged to Jane.”

Everyone peers in, as if at artifacts—as Simon might peer at a length of intestine or a ladleful of stomach contents.

“Let’s take these one at a time,” says Nyx. She picks up a pamphlet. “What do we know about Apex Consumers? Let’s start with the general info.”

Zack and Kenny stand up.

“Everyone here has probably seen Arthur Drake’s smiling face,” says Kenny.

“Either on one of his self-help books,” says Zack.

“Or an infomercial.”

“Dude’s more cheerful and peppy than that OxiClean psycho.”

“You’ve heard the cheesy slogans.”

“‘Be the apex consumer. Don’t be the consumed!’”

“‘Be at the top of your food chain, in business and in life!’”

“‘Start small, dream big!’”

“‘Take a bigger bite out of life!’”

“You get the idea,” says Zack.

“Drake’s built a self-help empire: the books, cassettes, classes, all that. It’s all about being more aggressive and getting what you ‘hunger’ for—money, success, etcetera,” says Kenny.

“But he’s also got the pyramid scheme going,” says Zack. “You can join Apex Consumers and buy and sell their junk and they promise you’ll get rich. There are even books and cassettes and classes you can buy to help you sell that shit.”

Zack takes out a laptop and positions it so the majority can see. “Here. A cable channel did a story on it recently, from the scam angle. I got a few clips.”

The video clips play. The handsome journalist reveals the “truth behind Apex Consumer.” Images flash on the screen—hidden camera footage showing a small recruitment gathering in the banquet hall of a Holiday Inn and then a large-scale Apex convention, with tens of thousands of people crammed into a stadium, holding up candles, chanting cult-like mantras, all worshiping at the altar of money, success, and self-rewarding dreams. Impassioned speakers screech catch phrases, show off their wealth, and promise the same to anyone who jumps on board, all while images of sports cars, homes, and yachts play on a big-screen backdrop.

“Start small, dream big!”

Cut to faces of attendees caught up in rapturous emotion. They weep openly as the speakers promise that they, too, can be rich if they simply apply the Apex principals and continue to demonstrate their dedication—that is, continue to invest rigorously in Apex products and services.

The handsome journalist cuts in to reveal that ninety-nine percent of these people will not get rich. They will, in fact, loose money through this system. The secret of Apex Consumers, he explains, is that only the tiny inner circle of Drake’s friends and colleagues get rich off of it, from income made speaking at the conventions and hawking special books and CDs not available for sale by the rank and file drones. The journalist transitions to a brief interview with Gregory Mitchell, a former member of that inner circle, who leans forward to spill a few secrets before retreating back into dramatic shadows. Then comes the predictable parade of sad scam victims telling tales that are all minor variations on the same desperate, misguided search for wealth and “the good life.”

Zack pauses the video.

“You get the idea,” he says.

Byron sings:

“When we reached our station,

Through skillful navigation,

The ship was sunk in a wave of spunk

From too much fornication.”

“So it’s a scam that sucks in desperate losers,” Polhaus grunts.

Nyx scowls and glances at an older woman sitting quietly on the fringe of the group. Polhaus, oblivious to the glance, snorts and bulls ahead. “Well, isn’t that all this Apex crap is—a scam?” he says, licking boysenberry syrup from his immense knuckles.

Simon plays with his silverware, performing feats of dexterity, listening in, ears at the ready for the sentence or phrase or bit of information that would bring him closer to Jane, or at least a part of Jane—a hand to hold, a torso to hug, eyes to look into longingly.

“There are some weirder rumors,” says Kenny.

“Yeah?” asks Polhaus.

“It’s mostly online,” says Zack. “Chatter from some folks who claim to have done the program, and speculation from the conspiracy geeks—”

“Geeks like me,” says Kenny.

“Like Kenny,” says Zack. “He’s a regular conspiracy nut, when he can pry

himself away from those phone sex lines.”

“Chat lines!” Kenny snaps.

“Whatever,” Zack says. “The point is this Apex stuff adds up to some weird mojo. The higher you get into the Apex pyramid, the less the whole predator the whole predator, king of the jungle bit becomes a marketing gimmick. It’s really a statement of Arthur Drake’s philosophy.”

“It’s pretty esoteric stuff,” Kenny chimes in. “I’m paraphrasing here, but the gist of it is: the money and success and all that—they’re just a means and not an end. The whole point is the act of devouring. You’re devouring money and your desires and the things you want to achieve. It’s not enough to achieve them. It’s like you have to know how to digest them properly.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” asks Polhaus.

“It’s a spiritual thing, like meditation. You get the money, but you enjoy it on some higher level, too.”

“There are other rumors,” says Zack, “that this esoteric philosophy gets more . . visceral. One dude said that at this high-level workshop he went to—one that set him back a few grand to attend—they were eating bugs.”

“Bugs?” someone sneers. “Ick.”

“Yep. The attendees were handed one of those giant, hissing cockroaches, like the ones on Fear Factor. They were supposed to take the giant, squirming, nasty thing and say something like, ‘You are the yearly income I want to be making’ or ‘You are the sports car I hunger for.’ Then they had to bite into that crunchy bastard and chew it and swallow every twitching, chitinous bit. That supposedly moved them a step toward getting what they hungered for.”

Murmurs in the crowd.

Jane Doe itches in Simon’s forearms. He resists the impulse to scratch.

Your voice, Jane. I hear you in sweet scar whispers.

“The rumors get weirder from there, depending what you’re willing to believe,” says Kenny. “And, of course, we’ve not been to any of the meetings ourselves.”

“Hold that thought,” says Nyx. “Clara? Why don’t you come over here, honey?”

Owl eyes glance and blink through huge lenses as Clara meekly steps forward, taking a seat next to Nyx.

Introductions.

Pleasantries.

Story.

“A few of you have heard this before—the ones who were at the other meeting. There weren’t, uh, nearly so many of you there. Of course I’m happy to see you. I m-mean, uh—” Clara stutters to a stop, shivering, nervous. Nyx gives her a reassuring pat on the back. “It’s funny, actually—me being nervous around you. I think I’ve always been hungry for company. I used to be addicted to food at a funeral, but I think I was just addicted to food with company. Anyway. I got caught and had to give up sneaking into funeral parties. That’s when I found Apex Consumers. They promised to change my life. Make me more assertive. I don’t think I ever cared about money or luxuries. I just—I just liked the company.”

Simon notices Clara’s pallor and bloodshot eyes.

“Hasn’t been sleeping so good,” yawns a sleepy Corbie.

Simon notes her body language.

“Tightness in the stomach,” mutters another wraith crow.

And what is that mark on her arm?

“It was just like those young men described,” says Clara. Zack and Kenny beam. “The Apex people told you what you wanted to hear. They chanted catchy phrases. I went to one of the big conventions. It was almost religious. And I paid a little extra to go on a little side trip during the convention, a motivational outing to a nearby campground. It didn’t cost thousands, but it wasn’t inexpensive, either. We heard a speaker, around a campfire, and did a few activities. Then two men—they were motivational councilors for Apex or something. They whispered to me, said they were breaking off from the main group to have a midnight picnic—would I like to join them?”

Byron starts to sing, but Jolly Roger grabs his beak.

“I don’t know if we were supposed to break off from the group like that, but . . . they were both very handsome and—well, no one ever picks me for anything special. So I went with them. We walked through the woods, on a path of pine needles. Then they broke off from the little road of needles and wandered into the dark woods. I hesitated, but then strayed from the path.

“We had a picnic under some trees, by some wildflowers. It was a big moon. I brought little cakes and a bottle of wine. They brought a container of meat. It looked raw. ‘It’s so red,’ I said. They called it something fancy sounding—something tar-tare.

“‘Have a piece,’ one of them said.

“I didn’t want to be rude. He held out a bite to my mouth and I ate it. It was so good.”

Clara shudders, lips parted, at the memory.

She missed it, Jane. As much as I missed the Dead Water, she missed it.

“It was better than funeral food,” Clara says. “Better than anything. I ate more. They kept handing me strips of the red, red meat and I ate more and more and it was so good that I did not notice. I didn’t notice till it was all gone and my hands were red. Then I noticed them . . . laughing. I know that laugh. Like—like at school, when Bobby Barlow pretended to be interested in going to the dance with me and I was blushing and giggling and I didn’t notice one of the other boys sneaking dead toads into my locker behind my back. That kind of laughter. I hate that kind of laughter.

“‘What?’ I said. And they laughed harder. Something was wrong. The meat was so good, but something was very, very wrong. And they kept laughing. And I was in tears and I said something like, ‘I have to go to the bathroom.’ And they kept laughing. I ran away, into the dark, trying to find the path. I could hear them laughing through the woods, and—”

Tears fall below the owl eyes of Clara’s lenses.

“Since then . . . I don’t know. Something is wrong. I don’t know what I mean, but I feel it. Inside. Nothing tastes right. I feel watched. I feel stomach aches and guilty and I don’t know why and—”

The levy breaks and the sobs flow, wracking and harsh.

“I can’t—I can’t sl-sleep anymore. I have—these—horrible dreams—I—I’m at my father’s funeral and it’s really a feast—and I’m eating him—so red!—I’m eating him right out of the coffin! Or I’m at my therapist’s and—and—he’s asking questions—and I—oh God—I slice his throat and he falls on his desk—and—I—I start eating his—throat—but we’re also kissing—and I’m tearing him apart and—and eating him—but—but—we’re also having—we’re doing—it . . .”

Nyx stands up and puts a supportive arm around Clara.

“I wake up screaming—’n’—’n’—dry heaving—’n’—heaving—’n’—I don’t know what’s . . . wrong—with—me . . . just—I just want it out of me!”

The words drown in sobs.

Simon looks more carefully through his cracked lenses at the mark on her arm: a bite mark.

“From her own teeth,” say the Corbies. “She bit herself in her sleep.”

“Yes,” Simon whispers in agreement.

The restaurant manager comes toward the group, looking as though he intends to tell them to be quieter, but Polhaus stands, to full height and full girth. He shakes his head and gives the manager a look that sends the smaller man scurrying back into the kitchen.

“Samantha, why don’t you drive Clara home,” says Nyx. A teenage girl steps forward and helps Clara up. “Thank you, Clara, for sharing again so the whole group could hear this time. It’s brave of you. Please keep coming to the Sanctuary meetings. You have a place with us. Always.”

Clara nods vigorously, sobs subsiding.

Nyx hands her a card. “This is my private cell phone. You call that any time you feel like it. Doesn’t matter when. I’m a fellow night owl. I know the words to every infomercial. You call that and I’ll be right over with popcorn and some really bad movies and we’ll have ourselves a slumber party. Right?”

Clara intakes a big gasp of air, frown curling upward. “Yes,” she says. “Thank you.” Tears still streak, glistening on a wide-wide, grateful smile. Samantha walks Clara out.

Queen of lonely. Eh, Jane? All Clara ever wanted was company.

“What do you all make of that?” asks Nyx. “Is Apex Consumer more than just a scam?”

“She sounded sincere to me,” replies a voice from the group.

“We all like to believe each other’s stories,” says Jolly Roger. “But we have to be open to the possibility it ain’t true.”

“He’s right,” says Polhaus.

“Besides,” says Zack, “who were the two men who took her out to the woods? Was that standard Apex treatment or are they deviants? Maybe it was just a prank.”

“Or maybe . . .” says Kenny, trailing off.

“Right. Maybe . . .” says Nyx.

Cannibalism is the word left unsaid, its phantom hanging in the air.

“So what’s next?” asks Nyx. “Where do we begin further inquiry?”

“Easy,” says Polhaus. “That Gregory Mitchell guy, the former high muckity-muck that quit Apex. He’ll know what’s going on. News report said he’s local. I’ll go find him. We’ll have a chat.”

“After all the research Kenny and I did, we should—” begins Zack.

“No,” interrupts Polhaus. “We’re not fooling with your shenanigans. I’ll do it. And I’ll do it right.”

“Fine,” says Zack. “If you want more info, Nyx, I can try and hack into Apex Consumers’ email. That might turn up something.”

“You always have to do that,” says Kenny. Amongst the Sanctuary, Zack was known as the “computer guy.” Kenny liked gadgets and electronics and maintained the night vision equipment and electromagnetic field meters the groups used in their occasional ghost hunts. “Just because you know a little about computers does not make you a hacker. Don’t assume you can just break into the company’s system.”

“I bet I can!”

“Moving on.” Nyx grabs the Club Wendigo flier. “Roger, tell us about Club Wendigo.”

Flash of gold and platinum. “Not too much to say, Nyxy. They’re a floating club—change locations. Secretive buggers. Seem to pitch to the subversive sector. I think they’re some Tyler-Durden-wannabee-fuckers.”

“That’s it?” asks Nyx.

“Sorry, Mama Bear. I tried to get into a meeting. But everyone knows I’m Obsidian, and that seemed to queer my pitch and spook my leads. All I’ve got are a few random, unproven rumors.”

Nyx rolls her eyes. “Great. As if we didn’t have enough of those. Shoot.”

“Hunger themes, Mama Bear. Seems to fit tonight. I’d heard things about them, like they do some freaky-deaky ritual combat wiz or whatnot. Then the rumors start to sound a little familiar: raw meat eating challenges, meditative exercises to teach members psychic vampirism—”

“Is that real?” asks Simon.

“Don’t know,” says Nyx. “But Tuesday nights, Samantha teaches classes in aura reading and protecting yourself from psychic vampirism.”

Polhaus points at the invitation to a Gastronome Irregulars party. “What about that?”

“More eating,” says Nyx. “Gastronome Irregulars is some sort of Chicago elitist club that goes back a hundred years or more, near as I could find. They throw parties and eat rare and unusual dishes. Exotic ethnic foods, game animals, bygone recipes from the past. That kind of thing.”

“So it’s just about food?” ask Kenny.

“It’s not about food,” says Polhaus. “Same as with all that elitist crap. It’s not about the trappings of the organization, it’s about being in the most exclusive club—about being a powerful fuck and rubbing elbows with other powerful fucks. They could be the League of Extraordinarily Queer Stamp Collectors and it’d be the same thing.”

“How are they connected?” asks Jolly Roger.

“Well,” says Nyx, “when you get to the spooky rumors portion of things, it starts to get familiar. Supposedly, the Gastronome Irregulars got bored with merely strange dishes decades ago. They’ve evolved. They illegally acquire rare animals to eat. They keep track of endangered species lists and, if it ever comes down to extinction, they make certain they have the last specimen. Supposedly, they’ve cooked up frozen mammoth meat. They illegally purchase human organs from donation banks—or make secret, high-priced deals with the terminally ill or the financially desperate, to get their parts. To keep things fresh, they invite the debutante daughters of all their pals over and throw a big orgy to ‘devour’ the virginity of dozens of girls. And so on. Twisted stuff.” Nyx eats the last of her omelet. “Or it’s all PR-driven crap.”

“Okay, so we got a common theme with these groups,” says Kenny. “Fucked up gourmets. But how are they connected otherwise?”

“Well,” says Nyx, “maybe nothing. But Drake, as head of his own self-help empire, might be rich and powerful enough to be a member of the Gastronomes, or influential enough to wow his way into Club Wendigo.”

Several of the people gathered around the table nod.

“We need to check those kinds of connections, people,” says Nyx. “But—and I repeat and double repeat—we are not going the way of Ichabod Knock. You all understand? We take a peek. You get a funny feeling, you get out. You let others know where you are. Pretend you’re in a movie and if you hear anyone saying, ‘Don’t open that door!’—then, for Christ’s sake, do not open that door.”

“Yes, Mama Bear,” everyone replies, in practiced unison.

And then they talk and they laugh.

Byron finally, loudly, finishes his shanty:

“Though our good ship was haunted

The crew remained undaunted.

We stayed right drunk and sprayed our spunk

Till all the ghouls avaunted.”

They hold a syrup-drinking contest. Polhaus wins.

Outside, the darkness waits.

* * * * *

“Why the TP in Taco-Waffle-TP Friday?” Simon asks again as they leave the diner. Nyx informs him that on every such night, after the tacos and waffles are consumed, the Obsidian Sanctuary buys bundles of toilet paper and TPs the houses of local sex offenders until dawn.

And that night, they set out and do just that. They find the houses with a special application on Nyx’s smartphone. It’s the most fun Simon can recall ever having—without the participation of the dead, anyway.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOSHUA ALAN DOETSCH once built a flesh golem out of grave-robbed parts and leftover Halloween candy. By strange chance, this golem is fueled by rejection slips. Every day it begs and it pleads, “Please, kind sir, keep me alive!” And so Joshua writes. You can thank White Wolf for making the poor golem go hungry for another day.

Joshua is from October Country, Illinois, but currently writes video game dialogue in Montreal. He has a fondness for fedoras, does a mean Christopher Walken impersonation, and, once upon a road trip dreary, wrote a blues song about necrophilia.