CHAPTER 21

 

Simon lets the wormwood twist his brain.

The roots dig and stab and feed off the nostalgia that’s collected over time—dead love residue. He lets it grow and grow, all root-bound in his head. The Corbies cry. Sufficiently twisted, he’s an underworld unto himself. Souls shriek through his Lethe veins, blurring past like white lines on lost highways in the night.

Simon circles Buckingham Fountain.

During the summer season, a lightshow would paint the spraying waters and music would play. But now, just past October, the night paints the still waters black.

Simon tosses pennies into Buckingham Fountain.

He tosses two at a time. Every time they hit and ripple the ebon-mirror water, Simon sees a face form around dead-penny eyes.

Plunk—Jane Doe.

Plunk—John Polhaus.

Plunk—Toby Reynolds . . . and all the other child victims of Myer Twiss.

Plunk, plunk, plunk—his newfound friends in the Obsidian Sanctuary.

Simon circles the giant fountain, throwing pennies—a boatman’s toll at a time—into black water. Simon sips the green until the fountain bends, until the dead in the water animate at silent film frame rates, until the Chicago skyline turns to monolithic tombstones.

Bones scrape jagged in his broken hand. The sharp ache of the busted rib. The blindness of the left eye. The bruises. The claw scratches down his leg. And her name, itching, always an itching, tingling, prickling, tickling, yearning, burning, desperate ache under the bandages of his arms.

Love in the scars—romance in the razor cadence. Eh, Jane?

Simon gulps down the green and, eventually, the pain in his hand muffles to a background throb, like her lost heart beating in his hand. He smiles and lets himself be fooled by the fiction of the phantom Valentine.

A prophetic throb—the echo of the beat preceded the still heart. Eh, Jane?

Simon tosses pennies, thinks on promises made and Jane’s eyes like golden coins sinking into the dark.

“Once you see the Abyss, it sees you!” says the memory of Mr. Knock. The Abyss had seen them all—a story behind every door and a door in every story, and Simon standing there, like he did as a child, pulling the shower curtain open.

He watches pedestrians differently.

Did that one breathe?

Does anyone else notice?

Do they notice the non-breathers speaking gibberish? The antenna crosses on the roofs? The bodies swimming in the bogs? The shadows in the fog? The skulls beneath the skin? Does anyone know when those clown burger restaurants were built or operating?

Coins for memories.

Fourth Grade. Little Simon walks through the empty halls, holding a pass, leaving the school to talk to yet another specialist. And there is George, the largest, toughest bully of his school, standing in the way. Simon feels a panic stab. Surely George will give him trouble, offerings of pain and humiliation. But George stands frozen, shivering, staring into the boiler room. Simon notices the telltale puddle on the floor. Simon creeps by quietly and leaves the school.

Not a story. No resolution. Just a memory fragment.

Simon never looked into the boiler room—never saw what had scared giant George in the pumping, contriving, muggy dark.

Simon sits on the side of Buckingham Fountain, hugging his knees, our moping scarecrow. The cracked lenses of his glasses cut a single tear into two: one for Jane Doe, and one for gaining friends and camaraderie, for the first time in his life, and losing them all. The Halloween dance was over, all over again, and he was alone.

November the first.

The Day of the Dead.

“What are you going to do?” say the dead in the dark water, staring with their penny eyes.

“What can you do?” say the Corbies.

“What can I do?” Simon says, thinking of Dr. Reeves, the monsters, and Arthur Drake, smiling from the self-help empire in his TV screen.

“No, what are you going to do?” asks a voice, smug as an invisible cat.

“It’s your shadow,” whisper the Corbies.

There’s no one there, but Simon feels like, if he could just turn his head at the right angle, he could see the source of the voice. Simon looks back into the water of Buckingham Fountain. There, in the water, lurks a blurry reflection on the glass surface, like an unreachable itch. Simon yearns to turn his head and look at the unseen speaker, but he’s afraid that if he looks away from the water, he will lose his shadow again.

“I told you things would get weird,” says the shadow.

“My friends got hurt.”

“They stepped in too far. But you’ve always had a foot in it, haven’t you, entrail-reader?”

“The Dead Water?”

“The Dead Water. Got your fix for free. You’re aura’s got track marks. Now she’s making you pay up.”

“It’s not an ideal relationship.”

The shadow chuckles. “No. Guess not. Have you asked?”

“She isn’t talking to me.”

“Domestic problems? Why do you think?”

“I think I have to get the rest of her.”

“Boy loses girl, boy gets girl. I love it. But, are you sure?” The voice comes closer, right behind Simon’s ear. “There might be another reason.”

“What?”

“You made a promise, Simon. Those four men are still out there. Maybe you have to make that right before she’ll talk again.”

“It’s bigger than that now. There’s Reeves and Club Wendigo and Arthur Drake. . . .”

“But you didn’t promise her anything about the others.” The shadow shifts. “Some of them might not even be your problems. Not for long, anyway. But your promise to her—well, that could make things square between you.”

Simon frowns. “I don’t know.”

“Me neither,” purrs the shadow.

Stomach drop—lost keys—missing homework—and the shadow is gone.

Simon throws pennies into the dark water, two at a time, and this time, they become the eyes of those who should be dead: the jack of diamonds, the jack of clubs, the jack of spades, the jack of hearts.

Hector Gomez.

The Hanging Man.

The jack of diamonds.

Simon stares him in the penny eyes, and the obsessions burns again with green ghost fire. Doubts evaporate. Reassurance comes with surgical steel in the hand.

“Happiness is a cold scalpel,” the Corbies say.

 

* * * * *

 

“My advice to you is a grand romantic gesture.”

“Yes, Mom,” Simon says, his cell phone cradled on his shoulder. His right hand arranges the torn bits of the queen of hearts card.

“That will win her back.”

“Yes,” says Simon, tearing lengths of tape.

“Good luck, Simon. I know you can do it. Your mind is like a steel trap when you focus on something.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Go with your feelings on this. From the heart.”

“I love you too, Mom.”

Simon closes the phone and puts it away. “A grand gesture,” he says, lifting the queen of hearts, newly assembled, smiling.

“From the heart.”

 

* * * * *

 

Dr. Reeves stops to look at himself in an ice cream shop window. The reflection returns a handsome smile. He congratulates himself on giving them the slip again.

“Stupid thugs.”

He had seen them, of course, shadowing his every move. Those purple skull tattoos, none too subtle, made them easy to spot. He had received the messages: headless black rooster in the mail, odd chalk drawing in his parking space. Those kinds of things might impress the idiot ghetto trash, but not him.

“The gaudier the tricks,” he mutters, “the cheaper the crook.”

A boy eating ice cream stares at Dr. Reeves through the shop window. Licking. Licking. A palely reflected clown face stares from the opposite direction, across the street. How many of those closed-down fast food restaurants were there? When had they closed? Dr. Reeves tries to recall, but the thought is interrupted by the sound of children singing skipping-rope rhymes—all the lines rhyming with Twiss. Inside, the child staring, face caked with chocolate stains, licking and licking and licking.

The doctor’s smile melts as slow as ice cream in November. He reaches into his pocket for his mobile, but pulls out a doll head. It looks at him with a jagged-stitch frown. He backs from the window, tossing away the head.

“Fuck. Shit.”

Reeves turns to leave, planting himself face-first into a wall of muscle. The wall smells pleasantly of jasmine and vanilla. Reeves backs away and squints. With the afternoon sun behind it, the figure before him is a silhouette, but he recognizes the outline—the clean-shaven head, the tall musculature. Dr. Reeves straitens his clothes, smoothes his hair, and remolds his plastic smile.

“Listen—James, is it?—you tell Mama Bone-digger that if she has a problem with my services, she can come and speak to me directly, like an adult. This hoodoo nonsense does not impress me.”

The silhouette stands.

“Did you hear me? Getting all this? Tell Mama Bone-digger to call me. Call. Me.”

The silhouette stands.

“Hello? Am I boring you? What the hell are you looking at? I . . .”

Reeves turns. She’s behind him. A young girl on her hands and knees, dragging her long tongue up the length of his shadow on the sidewalk. She’s sighing deeply.

Reeves jumps to the side, tearing his shadow away from her, making an involuntary sound like a boy whose toe just crossed the sidewalk crack.

“What did you—?”

James stands next to the young girl. She stares at Dr. Reeves.

“Alright,” Reeves clears his throat. “I get it—scary. You had me for a minute there, but can we get serious now? You ordered. I delivered, as per usual. So why all the showboating now? You have nothing to be upset about.”

The little girl stares.

“What? What do you want?”

The little girl stares.

“Is—is this about the whole ‘arm of a sorceress’ thing? Seriously? Do you think we get a lot of those? Yeah, we have a piece of equipment that dings every time we get a witch or warlock stiff.”

The little girl stares.

“It’s a human arm! What the hell is the difference? Tell the crackheads and peons that it’s the arm of the fucking Wicked Witch of the West. Listen, there are no refunds in my business. Besides, I am the only game in town. You bought it, it’s yours.”

The little girl stares.

“Say something! Speak. Speak to me, you little—”

There are lines and muscles and expressions on the little girl’s face that only belong on an adult. Reeves’s words die and bury themselves in the graveyard of his throat. James and the little girl turn and walk away. Reeves feels compelled to look to his shadow, and when he looks up, they are gone. He finds his voice again and shouts.

“Hey, wait! Come back! You can . . . you can have your money back.” He shudders. There’s something wrong, but he can’t tell what. “I said, you can have your money back! You can—what did you do to me? Hey! I’ll give you a whole corpse. On me. Damn it. What did you do to me?”

Dr. Reeves looks at the passing children and parents. He wipes the drool from his mouth. A deep autumn day, and the sun is already tired. He walks away, in no particular direction.

Did he hear something whispering?

Did something move at the edge of his vision?

Did his stomach just twist?

It’s just nerves. It has to be.

He runs. Dr. Reeves runs and runs, but wherever he goes, his shadow follows. We each have our very own shadow, loveling. Sometimes it takes the prompting of another to turn it mean. Sometimes it grows tired of us all on its own. Sometimes there are other things that become like a shadow to us, usurp its place or merge with it. But they all share one trait, these disparate dark shapes: they always comes tumbling after us. Always.

 

* * * * *

 

On the drive over to the apartment building, Simon hears a radio news segment announce that the agent of local writer Ichabod Knock committed suicide last night. She threw herself from a high-rise window.

Day of the Dead and the children smash pumpkins, killing monsters in embryo. The world is full of weirdness: the sugar skulls, the absinthe-minded thoughts, the ominous vibrations, apartments on chicken legs, gory pigeons on bat wings, the clown face, green witchery, assorted nasties.

Simon looks to apartment 4C.

Hector Gomez: the Hanging Man. Jack of diamonds.

The absinthe takes hold.

Simon does not go to the Dead Water. It comes to him, icy and black from veins to heart and back. Lethe rivers, but the dead will not forget. Stygian rivers, teeming with souls. Ghosts swim in his blood, collected over the years.

Simon stomps a pumpkin and steps inside.

Through the high, he can close his eyes and see his heart, now a rotting gourd, a tiny, putrid pumpkin. It cracks open and something nasty hatches out.

Stare too long into a mirror and your reflection goes strange. And if you are nothing, you can become anything. Eh, Jane?

Simon climbs the stairs. The first two steps creak. As he continues, he does not walk more stealthily so much as he frightens the boards to silence.

“I love you, Jane Doe,” he whispers.

This is me at my most romantic. Eh, Jane?

 

* * * * *

 

Everything is green, and the hallways warp in anticipation. Simon hushes them with a finger raised to his lips.

“Shhhhhhhhh.”

Hector’s lock is difficult with one hand, but the tumblers inevitably tumble. Simon seeps inside.

The jack of diamonds sits, gigantically, watching TV. Hector looks up, appraises Simon. Great masses of muscle swim under his skin, flex and flow and coil, hidden jaguars under the skin. Hector smiles and Simon sees all those gold-capped teeth, all long and sharp. Long dark hair hangs in tendrils down his face. Hector looks like a Central American cannibal god, sitting on his throne, waiting for a blood sacrifice.

Consider now, this still moment, as they regard each other, two cards in a mad man’s tarot: the Cannibal God Giant and the Silent Film Specter.

Simon sees the muscles undulating, sees agonized faces under hot wax, feels the space between them turning to fangs. But Hector plays cool, stays seated.

I needed him to make the first move, Jane.

“Uh oh,” Hector says, impossibly deep. “We have us a crazy crackhead. You busted into the wrong joint, Spook.”

“You hung her on the beer garden tree,” Simon says. “There were four of you, but you held the rope. You are the Hanging Man.”

Hector’s muscles tense. Simon hears them growl.

“Man, you really are dusted. This bitch got a name?”

“Jane Doe.”

Hector laughs, hard, droplets of liquor spilling. Simon watches them in the hours it takes to splash on the floor.

Hector smiles his golden maw.

“You’ll have to do better than that, Spook. If you can’t be more specific than Jane fucking Doe, I can’t help you. Can’t expect me to remember every cunt I come across.” The gold-fanged giant laughs at his own joke. He stands at his full height and the room shrinks. “I rape and I kill every day, primo. Can’t keep track. Just yesterday, I had me a cute little puta. Little thing. Petite. Preteen. You know the worst part about fucking a preteen, Spook? When the pelvis cracks!” Hector laughs, loud and ugly.

It was not going well, Jane. I was supposed to get under his skin.

Simon feels very alone in this monster’s den. But then the Corbies raise their voices.

“I bet Gabe was pretty mad,” Simon says.

Hector’s golden grin vanishes.

“I bet it stung when she scratched you.”

Hector frowns like a fault line.

“You raised her three times and then she got you and you lost control. You killed her before you got the information. I bet Gabe called you lots of bad words.”

A vein pulses to the surface of his oaken neck, up to his temple. Close, but Simon has not drawn blood. The Corbies get excited. They caw and call in one voice, into Simon’s ear, from the inside.

“She kissed him,” Simon says.

“H-How did you—?” Hector stammers.

“She kissed Alex before you hung her for the last time. You were jealous. Alex got a kiss, and you got a scratch.”

Something wild flashes behind Hector’s eyes. But Simon knows he’s missed vein, just barely. What was he not seeing? Simon looks with Dead Water eyes. He reads the scars and their runic rhymes. He reads the writing in the scratch marks on Hector’s face.

Simon smiles.

“No, I was wrong. You were jealous, Hector—insanely jealous.” Was that Simon’s voice? “You had a big, jealous hard-on, but not for her. Tell me, Hector, does he know?”

Hector’s eyes widen.

Simon hears the Corby words in his mouth, their grinding voice like two skeletons snogging. “Does Alex even know, Hector? Did you ever tell him how you feel? Does Alex know he was running with a . . . sissyputa?”

Hector’s howl shakes the room and he charges. Simon has cut deep.

From the heart. Eh, Jane?

Hector devours the space between them, moving fast for something so large. Simon does not evade. He does not raise his arms, does not get ready for a fight. Simon cannot win a fight against Hector. He can’t beat something grown that huge on chemicals, human meat, and hate.

Simon gives him a target with his grinning Jack O’Lantern face.

The howling giant dutifully launches a wrecking-ball fist straight at Simon’s face. The scarecrow does not move. Simon’s nose disintegrates in a red explosion.

He crumples to the floor. Hector pauses, confused by the liquid snorting sounds coming from the heap that is Simon.

“The hell you laughing at, Spook?”

“I got you good,” Simon says between giggles, rising like a doll coming to awkward life. “Got you so good.”

“What—?” The first thing Hector notices is the wet warmth in his pants. His face gets confused, almost embarrassed, before his hand comes up red.

Realization.

Like a good ballplayer, Hector had kept his eyes on the target.

He never saw the scalpel appear in Simon’s right hand, never saw it sneak under his crotch. He never saw the flick of Simon’s wrist on his inner thigh. Simon’s hands are dexterous, and they are fast, and he was not fighting Hector. Hector wins in a fight. Simon’s hands, instead, move with the deceptive speed of a casual gesture. Like a seamstress threading needle, he has made this gesture a hundred thousand times.

The femoral artery gapes open in a wet scream. Arterial blood, bright, red, oxygenated blood, comes in distinct gushes, in time to the heartbeat. Hector’s heart is beating fast.

He never even felt the pain, Jane. My girl’s kiss is so light and precise.

Hector’s first reaction is wild—a random obscenity and an instinctive blow. The backhand flings Simon. He crashes into a TV stand, scalpel tumbling away. Hector grabs a limp Simon, holding him up one-handed by his shirt.

“The fuck you done to me, man?”

Checkmate.

Simon’s lifts his head. Under the broken ruin of his nose spreads a bloody, wide smile. The larger man shivers.

“What’s your plan after you knock me out, Hector? Are you going to kiss me to death?”

Simon laughs and cackles in hobgoblin heaves of air and blood. He feels the fists rain viciously all over. Simon feels bones break, feels part of his skull cave in over his blind eye, like an avalanche over a cave.

The attack and the thousand obscenities transform from surprise to anger, to deep hatred. Hector picks Simon up, flings him into a wall. A pop and an agony as Simon’s left arm separates from the socket. But the more Hector attacks, the faster his heart beats and the quicker he bleeds.

Simon actually feels his head hit the ceiling before his body crashes into the ground. A boot heel drives into his chest and several more ribs break with wet snaps and evil wishes.

The tempo of the blows and the four-letter words change, reaching an angry crescendo. Then they quickly weaken, get desperate. Hector pants between curses.

Finally he stumbles away from the bloody, broken scarecrow wreck.

The obscenities turn higher in pitch and then they are sobbing. Hector mutters incoherently, like a child. He shivers. He’s going into shock. He sees all his blood in the room.

“The fuck . . . you . . . do, Spook?”

He falls to a sitting position.

Simon sits upright, rib bones biting his innards like barbed spears. He knows he is badly hurt, but the absinthe helps keep some of that a secret from his body.

Hector teeters, and Simon gently helps him to the floor. “Shhhhhhh,” says Simon. His finger leaves a red mark over Hector’s lips. Simon pulls Hector’s hands away from the thigh, gently folding them on his chest, letting the blood continue its now-lazy flow.

“I’m so . . . tired,” says Hector. His eyes are distant.

“I know. But I need you to answer some questions first. Are you part of Club Wendigo?”

“Yeah,” says Hector.

“Who started the club? Who runs it?”

“Was . . . Alex and Gabe. They started . . . they showed me the way.”

“What are those creatures, with the white skin and the sharp teeth?”

“I . . .”

Hector is fading.

“What are those creatures, Hector?”

“Some catch it . . . when they eat . . . but we got pills for that.”

“Who is Joe? He was with you, that night, laughing.”

“Joe? Joe Camino? He’s . . . just . . . just wop muscle . . . of Gabe’s.”

“Who are Gabe and Alex? Hector.”

“Alex . . . Drake. Son of . . . guy on TV . . .”

“Hector?”

“I want . . . to sleep now . . . I want . . .”

And Hector slips away.

Simon closes Hector’s eyes respectfully. He should search the apartment. He should get his tools and go to the Dead Water with Hector. Simon gets up, but falls back down.

“Great plan, Simon,” say the Corbies.

“Shut up,” Simon mumbles through the blood and the pain. He coughs up red. He feels concussed, feels stabbing pains when he breathes. Maybe he can just rest a bit.

Simon lays down on his back.

“Some avenging angel,” mutter the Corbies.

“Maybe I should sleep,” Simon says to the ghost crows.

Sleep is the little death, and death is the big sleep. Eh, Jane?

Simon stares at the liquid ceiling when he hears the voice.

“Wow. You really drained him dry, didn’t you?”

“Your shadow,” say the Corbies.

Then there is a pale face above him, bent down, looking at Simon. The pale face is licking red off his fingers, like a kid tasting batter from mother’s spoon. His face is blurry, blurry as the reflection that has haunted Simon. The face lowers as hands put Simon’s glasses back on his face. Everything gains a cracked focus.

Simon’s shadow has dark hair, spiked and wild; silver rings and a dangling silver hourglass on the ears; pale skin; sharp cheekbones; blue-gray eyes. It’s a surprisingly boyish face. He’s just a kid—Simon realizes—in high school maybe. He looks like he’s at least ten years younger than Simon. Was it time for his ten-year reunion already? It’s difficult to stay focused.

There is blood on that young, pale chin.

“What are you?” Simon asks.

The answering grin is youthful. The blue-gray eyes are not.

“I told you, Simon. I’m your shadow.”

Simon flutters in and out of consciousness. Lucid, absinthe dreams bleed into the waking world, splashing the inside of his fluttering eyelids. And the pale youth says that line, about being his shadow, and Simons sees that mischievous, boyish grin, and cannot help but hallucinate scenes of Peter Pan chasing his shadow, trying to reattach it. Simon sees the blood on the youth’s chin and cannot help but see him and the Lost Boys, flying in the night sky, laughing and making animal sacrifices to the dark gods of Never Never Land.

Simon forces himself back to reality for just a moment.

“What’s your name?”

“Loki,” says the shadow. “You can call me Loki.”

Darkness oozes in, and Simon slips into unconsciousness, but not before he notes to himself that the darkness tastes like copper.

 

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.