ACT III

 

 

“All you need is love.”

—John Lennon



“Some assembly required.”

—any instruction manual

CHAPTER 22

 

The sun is up when Simon awakens.

He rises to his feet.

He feels . . . great.

He rips the bandages off his left arm, flexes both hands, blinks and focuses both eyes, runs a finger up and down the wholeness of his ribs. All the cuts and bruises and wounds are gone. Even Jane’s name is erased from his arms.

Hector’s body is gone. Simon’s shadow is gone. A quick inspection of the apartment turns up nothing of interest—except for an unidentified hunk of meat in the fridge.

Simon sits in Hector’s chair, pulls the jack of diamonds from a pocket and considers it. Then he tears it up. Simon pulls out the jack of clubs.

“Joe Camino.”

Outside, one lone, grinning pumpkin remains. Simon picks it up and grins back.

There was much work to be done.

 

* * * * *

 

Simon stalks the streets, an Edward Gorey sketch creeping through a Raymond Chandler night. Simon carries a handful of scalpels in one hand, a syringe in the other.

The work is mostly the same: the absinthe, the Dead Water, scalpel in hand, extracting answers with surgical cuts. Soundproofing the basement was not so very difficult.

He’s chasing the girl.

Simon follows the trail—clues and names, patient to living patient. When the Dead Water runs cold in his veins, they all talk.

“You startled me, Simon.” His mother had said that when he was a boy. He had never even meant to sneak up. Now they never see him coming. Eccentricities become strengths and Simon feels alive. The hopeful romantic, chasing the girl.

He wanted to talk to Dr. Reeves, tell him that he had improved his people skills. Reeves, though, had vanished. It makes Simon a little sad. He’d hoped to share his newfound wisdom: A smile and a syringe will get you a lot farther than a smile.

“Trick or treat,” he says, under the brim of his black bowler hat, just as the needle slides into their necks. It all comes so easily. Everything’s easy. He feels faster, stronger.

The living patients speak on the steel table, just as the cadavers once did. The vibratory whine of electric tools awakens dormant, childhood nightmares of dentist chairs and drills.

These are the days of high romance.

 

* * * * *

 

Simon’s first patient is Jeffrey Conway.

“Trick or treat.” Simon says as he slips the needle in, fast as slapstick, with a Charlie Chaplin flourish.

Conway wakes up on cold steel, shivering, naked, and blindfolded.

“Who are you?”

“That’s not important, Mr. Conway.”

Officer Conway has a relationship with Dr. Reeves—or, rather, had a relationship, back before Reeves vanished. Where Reeves supplied the bodies, parts, and organs, it was Jeffrey who fenced the loot, found the sorts of customers looking for samples of human anatomy. Sometimes they sold whole corpses. Most of the time, it paid just to chop for parts.

A veteran cop, a tough man, Jeffery is unwilling to answer Simon’s questions at first. He proves more talkative after Simon cuts off his ear with a vibrating saw. A string of exclamations and expletives two minutes long follows. And then: “Christ! What do you want to know?”

“Where is the Jane Doe cadaver? She has golden eyes. All records of her existence disappeared with her body.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Honest!”

Buzz, says the saw.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!,” says Conway. “Alright! We sold her. Cut her up for parts. Different parts went to different customers. But . . . but that was mostly decided before I was involved. Before she was even dead, I think. I don’t know anything about her records disappearing. I swear. Reeves never talked to me about that.”

“What do you know about Club Wendigo? Arthur Drake? Apex Consumers?”

“Those . . . those Wendigo guys, some of them are pretty regular customers. And I think—I think some of my buyers get parts on behalf of Drake.”

“What do they use them for?”

“How should I know?”

“I think you do.”

Buzz, says the saw.

“Shit!” says Conway. “Alright-alright-alright! I think—I mean, from what I heard—they eat the shit. They eat the human meat. Okay. I don’t know for certain. I mean, the bodies are already dead, so what the hell do I care what happens to them?”

“Do you ever make cadavers, Mr. Conway?”

Buzz, says the saw.

“Yes! During the lean months. Homeless turds. I don’t . . . I don’t tell Reeves. He doesn’t goddamn ask.”

“Mr. Conway, listen to me with every ear you have left.”

“Wha—what?”

“Give me a list of your customers, the ones who bought Jane’s body. Leave nothing out. Do that, and I’ll give you your ear back.”

“I’m done. I’m a cop! Do you even understand what you’ve—?”

“Mr. Conway, you should really answer my questions. I’m not interested in practical concerns. I am a man in love with a cadaver and I have an electric saw in my hands.”

Jeffrey talks. He gives Simon the list, including Ichabod Knock, who bought her head, and Mama Bone-digger, who bought the left arm. The right arm, the upper torso, and the lower body were also sold. Jeffrey tells Simon where to find those. And then, the bad news: The eyes and heart were sold, too, but Jeffrey says the purchase was done “all cloak and dagger like.” He never knew who paid the good money for the organs.

“I think you’re lying,” says Simon.

Buzz, says the saw.

“No! I’m not!” screams Jeffrey.

“My mistake.”

And then Jeffrey sleeps. Simon drops him off at the ER. Tucked under his arm the staff finds an ice-filled Tupperware container holding his ear. Later, Simon would send excerpts of Officer Jeffrey Conway’s confession to the Chicago Tribune and to several select individuals.

 

* * * * *

 

“Who the hell are you?” says Sid, strapped to the table.

“I’m a nasty thought that hatched out of a pumpkin,” the lovesick scarecrow says from inside the rotting, hollowed-out Jack O’Lantern he is wearing as a mask.

“Fuck you.” Sid’s voice is pitched too high to really be tough. “Fuck your mother.”

“You really ought not to use such language,” says the pumpkin head. “You really ought to answer my questions.”

“Why’s that, chief?”

“Because, all and all, it is much easier for me to cut off the top of your skull and watch the information fall out.”

The saw says, buzz.

Sid talks.

Sid sells date rape drugs in Wrigleyville—sells tainted love by the pill. Simon found him by the ballpark, scrawny and twitchy. “Nothing up my sleeve,” Simon said, walking toward Sid, both hands held up in front of him, palms out, showing empty hands and rolled-up sleeves. Then, with manic alacrity, Simon pulled a syringe from behind a surprised Sid’s ear.

I’m growing. I never used to perform tricks for an audience. Eh, Jane?

Sid was moving up in the world. He’d given Club Wendigo lowlifes enough discounts on his roofies, even a few freebies, that they finally took him in as a probationary member. That had opened up a whole new clientele.

“They taught power and pride, man,” says Sid. “Gabe and Alex know the way.”

“Pride?” says the pumpkin head, cocking to the side. “You are a rodent-looking wretch who sells—and no doubt uses—date rape pills to get what you cannot otherwise obtain.”

“Nah, fuck that, dude,” says Sid. “It’s not about the sex. It’s not even about eating human meat. It’s spiritual. We devour virginity from prissy little bitches. That’s just one source of power. It’s about consuming power. It’s about being a multitude.”

And with that, little Sid howls—big. He thrashes at his bonds with renewed strength, eager to show Simon his power.

The bonds hold.

Simon slaps Sid on the forehead, and Sid stops struggling with a whimper.

“Yes, yes,” says the pumpkin head, “very impressive. Now tell me, virgin eater, tell me about the human arm you recently purchased.”

“I . . . I wanted to get ahead in the club, be a full member. I got a deal on the arm and thought I’d do my first bite of human flesh.”

“Did you eat it?” Simon asks, trying to keep his voice calm.

“I—no, not exactly. I took a bite. But I wasn’t ready. You can’t just eat, man. You have to be centered right. You got to digest it right. You got to—”

“Where is it?”

“No way, man. I don’t have to say. Alex and Gabe, they taught me how to be strong. Taught me how to be with the bitches and the sows. I eat their doubts. Seeds of doubt, man. Under all the pretensions, they want to be dominated, controlled, sedated. Get with the fucking program. I devour—I get stronger. They will tremble!”

Simon slumps and sighs. “I’m not good at this.”

“Fuckin’ right. Now recognize, and let me out of here.”

“It would be much easier to open your arteries and let the blood flow into the drain. It’s a very good drain.”

“What?”

“If I open you up, all the information would come to me, start my head on fire. The fire is green. Your chest cavity would scream all of your sins.”

“You’re just fuckin’ with—”

“I would be inside. I’d know you more intimately than any lover. I’ll pull out your intestines and read every lie you ever told, then dig deeper for every lie you ever told yourself. I’ll weigh your heart and find every way that you are wanting, everything you lack, every insecurity. There is a membrane that covers the things we hide from ourselves. I’ll tear it away and show you—naked, stripped of all protective delusions—all of your shrieking inadequacies.”

“What—what are you doing?”

Simon gently finger traces a Y in Sid’s chest. “I’m going to tickle your innards.”

The saw says buzz.

Sid talks.

And then Sid sleeps.

Simon finds Jane Doe’s right arm in a freezer, just where Sid told him to look. One bite had been taken out of the shoulder, raw.

When Simon returns, Sid is still asleep.

In his dreams, Sid hears a buzzing sound.

This buzzing, though similar to the one made by Simon’s saw, is of a different character, perhaps a different tenor. Simon bends over Sid’s sleeping form like a night terror—buzzing and buzzing and buzzing.

 

* * * * *

We can imagine Sid coming to.

The drug wears thin. He tries to move, but finds himself in a world that seems submerged in Jell-O, quivering in the night.

Where?

Simon is a recluse by nature, yet he possesses an oddly detailed mental map of Chicago. Not one drawn in the broad lines of experience, but one rendered in dots, a stippled drawing of glimpses and perspectives. Simon sees through the eyes of the dead, hundreds of dead a year. He sees all the places they knew. He knows from where the corpses most frequently originate, in what places they are left in the worst ways. These are places the police fear to tread. It is to one of these that he assigns Sid.

What is Sid’s first coherent thought? Does he remember the pumpkin head? Does he wonder why he is naked? Most likely his mind is consumed with the ferocious itching, not in random blotches, but itching with a syntax.

Does he scratch? No. He is bound. But does he recognize what he is bound to? Does he see the bulbous head and plastic smile?

Simon is no artist, but his hands are surgically precise, even with an unfamiliar tool.

He would have to return Nyx’s tattoo gun if he saw her again.

It is amusing to imagine that the painful itch is so acute, Sid can understand the writing and symbols. The itching on his chest is from the logo of a doomed fast food franchise. The itching all over the rest of his body is from other alien symbols, the esoteric equations the voice in the static gave to Simon, the ones he once carved into the walls of his home.

They grew in my mind, Jane. I can almost sound them out, like a mostly forgotten song. I can hum it. . . .

Certainly Sid can hear the static hissing above. Does he struggle? Does he look up at the harlequin face? Does he weep?

His sacrifice delivered, Simon walks away. The crackling static grows louder. He glances back. Is it just the play of dark shadows, or does he see the speaker opening like a great mouth over Sid’s head? Unauthorized use of logos is a serious affair.

I released Sid in Roseland, Jane, where the gangs execute their own child-soldiers and leave them face down in the mud beneath the underpasses. The terror-hardened locals would have left him there, on the clown altar, until it was done with him. And even if he got away, or it left enough of him to stagger away, I suspect he never found his way home.

 

* * * * *

 

Simon scribbles love poetry:

 

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

 

Simon writes, ignoring the muffled noises. Simon smiles, thinking of her. Simon transcribes each letter lovingly. It is his favorite poem.

The trail to Jane is paved with characters of the worst sort. Not all of them buckle at the merest whisper of an electric saw.

Simon writes:



For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

Take LeBraun. Simon found him in the depths of Englewood. LeBraun trades crack to broken whores, and he trades crack to his mama and the other women living in the old brick house.

“My LeBraun hangs with a bad crowd, but at least he takes good care of his mama,” Anabethika had said. “They never want much. Just enough to gnaw on.”

Simon found her and the other ladies in the old brick house with the decaying wooden porch about to fall off like a dead limb. He found them with their bodies wrapped thick in stained bandages.

Somewhere outside, a cat shrieked.

Simon noticed some of the many children also wore stained bandages on small portions of their arms or legs. When he asked, one of the ladies shrugged, in a crack-cloud daze, and said, “I already traded my titties.” He could smell the collected infections.

The cat kept shrieking.

Anabethika warned Simon to be careful of LeBraun’s friends. They did wicked things, not just sell crack—LeBraun had done that since he was twelve—but very bad things.

And that cat kept shrieking; Simon imagined it swimming in barbed wire.

He waited until LeBraun was alone, away from those friends, those men who had no teeth and spoke in gumming babble that LeBraun seemed to understand. The men that LeBraun took to his mama’s house, with their strangely curved knives. The men who traded rocks of crack to the ladies for little strips of flesh, maybe a little scar tissue and muscle underneath.

When he had him alone, Simon whispered, “Trick or treat,” from behind.

LeBraun knows where Simon can find Joe Camino, the jack of clubs. But LeBraun is a tough man; he was not impressed with Simon’s patter or his tools. This vexed Simon, at first, broke his rhythm. But he took a deep breath, gagged LeBraun, and wrote love verses until he felt calm.

And so Simon writes:



And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride

In her sepulchre there by the sea—

In her tomb by the side of the sea.

It is not easy to write. LeBraun keeps thrashing, and Simon is composing with a scalpel.

Eventually, LeBraun talks.

 

* * * * *

 

Simon awakens tied to a chair, with Phil telling him how he does it, about the meat in the freezer. And maybe, the most disturbing thing to Simon is the realization that the tabloids were right.

There is a Vegetarian Cannibal.

The tabloids didn’t get all the details, though. He lives in the North Shore. He recycles. He drives a hybrid. He is very polite. His name is Phillip.

“Oh, call me Phil. Are the ropes too tight?”

“No,” says Simon. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. You shouldn’t suffer needlessly.” Phil’s voice is all positive attitude. “I’m surprised you’re still with us.”

Simon looks at the bloody, sharp corner of the heavy iron statuette on the floor and has to nod in agreement. For having his head bashed in, he felt surprisingly good, if a little drained.

“You really are resilient. What’s your diet?”

Simon tells him. Phil frowns. He says that he’s a vegetarian. He’s considering going vegan, but wants to read a few more books on the subject first, get the nutrition right.

“I just can’t eat anything that used to have a face.”

That is why, Phil explains politely, he has to decapitate Simon.

“You understand, don’t you?”

Simon nods.

“That chair, it’s not too uncomfortable, is it? Tell me if it is.” Phil is just starting to go bald, but keeps a very neat ponytail on the back of his head.

“It’s fine,” says Simon.

“I’m afraid I made a mess of your hat. It’s very nice, very vintage, I like the look, very vaudevillian.”

“I like it.”

Simon is tied to a chair, in a partially finished basement. He can smell the newly installed hardwood floor.

“It’s Brazilian cherry, actually,” says Phil, proudly. “That’s a sustainable wood.”

Plastic sheeting covers everything.

“I’m sorry about the state of the basement,” says Phil. “I hope to have this sucker finished by December. I’d do this in a more comfortable room, the study or the living room—you should see the couches in there—but it’s going to be a bit messy. Are you sure that chair is comfortable.”

“Yes,” says Simon. “Thank you.”

“So . . . Simon,” Phil says, looking through Simon’s wallet. “You saw what I keep in the big freezer, didn’t you?”

Simon nods.

“You were not too terribly surprised by what you saw. So it’s just safe to say that you had an idea of what you’d find.”

“Yes, Phil.”

Phil nods and smiles back, warmly. Phil is a swell guy. He had been on Simon’s list. Getting into his place hadn’t been difficult. But Simon, seeing Jane’s body wrapped in plastic, in the big freezer, got careless and stared. For how long he couldn’t tell, but it was obviously too long, because before he was done, everything went black.

Simon refocuses to find Phil explaining the process of being a vegetarian cannibal, cheerfully, energetically. It reminds Simon of watching the Food Network. Phil beams with pride and a sort of foodie monomania.

“You see, Simon, to absorb a person’s essence, you have to ingest their flesh.”

Phil makes a presentational shiver.

“But I don’t eat meat, Simon. I was in a pickle.”

Simon nods.

“So I took a negative and turned it into a positive!” Phil flourishes his hands, illustrating manually taking a negative and turning it positive. “I didn’t dwell on what I didn’t have, I dwelled on what I have, and I have a garden.”

Phil is very proud of his garden. He grows everything there.

“You should see my tomatoes when they’re fresh. Bright and red and bigger than your fist!” Phil motions to a plate of sun-dried tomato slices. “Would you like one?”

“No, thank you.”

“The essence—it’s all in here.” Phil bites into a slice—still so red.

Phil buries his human bodies, sans faces, in the garden. He does his little ritual “to align our energies,” then buries the human meat in the black soil. The plants eat the bodies, feed on the nutrients and convert them into vegetables.

“Of course, winter is coming, so my little garden is sleeping, but it’s never too early to start stocking up on supplies.”

What else, Jane, what else did the tabloids get right?

“Now, thanks to my method, I’m a member of the Gastronome Irregulars,” says Phil. “That’s my little story, Simon. How about you? Why did you come here?”

“I’m in love with Jane Doe,” says Simon “I want her back.”

“Who?”

Simon nods his head toward the big freezer.

“You knew her when she was alive?”

Simon shakes his head.

“But . . .” Phil looks back and forth, a quizzical expression on his well-plucked eyebrows. The frown inverts and he laughs. “Well, I guess you don’t have to tell me the real reason, Simon. Mystery is the zest of life, and it’s not like I could force it out of you. I’m no good at torture. I just don’t have the stomach for it.”

Simon decides there is no more information to be had. The chair wobbles with his tight contortions, the practiced moves of an escape, and . . . nothing. Simon tries again. The knots hold him. He was always better with handcuffs.

“Oh dear,” says Simon softly.

“I guess I’d better not loosen those ropes after all.” Phil lifts a small chainsaw. “I’m going to have such a good garden next spring.”

The saw revs and Simon mutters something under the noise. The saw goes silent.

“What was that, Simon?”

“You would be better off with an electric bone saw. A Stryker, maybe,” says Simon.

“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”

The chainsaw has a deeper growl than Simon’s tools.

“Wait,” says Simon. “I—I’d like a tomato now.”

“Well, Simon, this is my dilemma: I want to be a good host, but I think you’re stalling now. I promise you this will be over quickly.”

With that same cheerful, welcoming smile, Phil advances on Simon.

I wonder what other oddities go on behind the fences of the perfect communities of the North Shore. Eh, Jane?

Phil raises the chainsaw.

It happens almost too fast for Phil to follow. Simon’s right hand finally slips free with a painful bend, and something steel appears in the hand with a wrist flick. Simon lashes out, desperately, but cannot reach anything vital. The scalpel blade manages to slash Phil’s left hand. Phil does not scream, only looks surprised. His left hand releases the chainsaw and pulls away, but his right hand is locked onto the power tool. The unbalanced blade roars and slips downward, into Phil’s hip, which opens to the world in a spray. Blood pelts the plate of sun-dried tomatoes. The Vegetarian Cannibal slips, thrashing in an attempt to right himself, then falls backward onto the floor, chainsaw following after. There is gore and mechanical roaring and flailing limbs. Phil never screams, only looks more and more surprised until the expression freezes.

Eventually, the chainsaw goes silent.

Splattered as red as the tomatoes, Simon breathes rapidly, staring at the most unlikely hack-and-slash slapstick recently performed at his feet.

And through it all, the plastic protected the hardwood floors.

 

* * * * *

 

The early A.M. hours and Simon cannot say exactly when it happened. One moment, his kitchen table was empty. And another moment, a glass of red fluid stood there. Simon knows what that fluid is.

He had felt so drained since his encounter with Phil.

And then he remembers blacking out in Hector’s apartment, and the coppery taste in his mouth, waking healed and full of mad energy. A gift from his shadow.

The Corbies warble and shift side to side, unconvinced.

But he has to get Jane back. He has to be strong and fast.

Simon lifts the glass and drinks.

 

* * * * *



I bought you flowers that day, Jane.

Simon works carefully, methodically, lovingly. He connects the head and the body and the arms. He caresses and washes her with perfumed soap and wine. He preserves her as best he can, using a combination of common and obscure embalming techniques. He takes out his reassembled queen of hearts card, heavy in tape, and looks at it longingly.

Music plays.

Simon drinks absinthe.

He lifts the still-incomplete Jane, light as moonbeams—and they dance.

Around the basement, holding her torso close, he tries to recapture the first time he visited her in the Dead Water.

It’s not the same.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 23

 

 

“Hello, Nyx.”

“Knock?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you calling from? My caller ID is showing wingdings.”

“I’m between the walls. I went through the door. It only cost me my epidermis.”

“You’re insane.”

“But high functioning. Wave, loveling. I can see you.”

“How’s your nose?”

“No one can hurt me anymore. I am mythos.”

“I’m sorry, my creepy loser minutes are about up for the month.”

“Ever have sex with a ghost, Nyx? It’s like masturbating with ice cream.”

“Typical. You’re not half as crazy as you pretend to—”

“If I were half as crazy as I pretend to be, I’d be pretty—fucked—up.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“How are your little soldiers on the short bus that is the Obsidian Sanctuary? Are they enjoying Wisconsin? I heard some of them got hurt. Poking around after Arthur Drake, right? Maybe I could offer some words of advice.”

“Fuck you. What do you want to mess with Drake for?”

“Maybe I’m just bitter that he’s getting better Amazon reviews on his books.”

“This is me hanging up.”

“An action you’re so keen on taking that you are forced to mention it twice. Bet you’re really sweating over those bites and scratches.”

“How did—? Yeah.”

“It was poor Clara, I gather.”

“She bit and scratched a few of the troops.”

“And she got you, too. Kept that a secret, did you?”

“I . . . yeah.”

“Where is she now?”

“Chained in the basement.”

“Hmmm, doll’s eyes . . .”

“Tell me there’s a point to you—that maybe you know the cure.”

“Her head has to swallow two bullets. There may be mild side effects.”

“You twisted-bent fuck! That’s not going to happen.”

“And the others—”

“That’s not happening either. We’re keeping an eye on them. We cleaned the wounds very—”

“No-no-no-no! That’s not how it works! It doesn’t transfer via bodily fluids. It’s not about pathogen. It’s about footholds. The hunger buzzes. Well, not a buzz but a howl—not a howl . . . a moan. No, not a sound, but it vibrates. It’s an angry meme.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“Footholds! It can enter you through the meat and sometimes through the air, but you have to have a hollow inside of you, just the right size and shape, a Bugs Bunny-shaped hole in the soul membrane. Clara had the right hollow before the meat ever touched her lips. Clara’s foothold to hunger is loneliness. It is a mere progression of infinitesimal baby steps from feeling empty to trying to be full—from being terribly alone to shoving people into your stomach. Then you hear the whisper in the river. I could tell you about all the other footholds, all the greeds, gluttonies, and avarices—thousands of offal piñatas cracking open across the city. There’s young Alex Drake—his foothold is total lack of self-identity. Some people are shallow, some are actually convex. Father Gary has a hollow the shape of his lost faith, and he tried to fill it with Officer Polhaus.”

“Gonzo, what did you see out there?”

“I remember when you used to call me that. I saw two pretty windows. A lifetime of fondling forbidden doors, and it’s a pair of windows that does me in. Simon looked through those very same windows.”

“You leave Simon alone.”

“Oh my. Defensive? That’s precious. How chummy are you? Did you tell him about the truth of your daddy? Sorry, but I love that old chestnut, and I have a compulsion for tickling scabs.”

“Yeah. Simon and I shared. Jealous?”

“Is he stranger than me?”

“You’re nothing alike.”

“The lad and I have some things in common. We both know a smile is a skeleton giving you a striptease.”

“You are jealous.”

“Concerned. You think you know the young man so well. Do you really know why he’s tearing about town, looking for a dead girl?”

“He’s trying to give her peace.”

“You’re so innocent.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Would you like to hear a story? This is a good one. And very short. This is the story and the story goes: Simon meets Janie D. at work. She tells him who hurt her. She smiles. This is love. This is rigor mortis. The end.”

“What—what are you doing?”

“There is a longer story. The devils all lurk in the details . . .”

 

* * * * *

 

The knife misses Simon’s throat, but just barely.

Joe Camino found him first.

Simon instinctively feels the warmth in his belly, the gift of his shadow, and he moves just that much faster. Another syringe, and it’s over.

 

* * * * *

 

Simon gives his tools a troubled look. They did not normally fail him.

Like LeBraun, Joe did not scare so easy.

When Joe did not answer, Simon went to work. And when Joe still did not answer, Simon went to work some more. And in the end, Joe bit out and ate his own tongue. He bled to death laughing.

He lays silent and still on the stainless steel table.

“You’re not getting away that easily, Joe,” Simon says to the cadaver.

Simon drinks absinthe.

The wormwood tree grows.

The Corbies revel, and black feathers rain in Simon’s head.

Simon cuts the Y-incision and dives in after Joe, a freefalling chase into the dark at terminal velocities.

 

* * * * *

 

Where are we?

Sleep has no place to call its own.

 

* * * * *

 

Simon cleans his tools.

He tears up the jack of clubs.

The dead love high surges through him, more powerful than the crimson gift from his shadow. Joe knew about the sledgehammer, that blood-crusted relic with the nasty history, but he did not know why it was important.

“MacGuffin!” caw the Corbies. “MacGuffin!”

Gabe wanted the hammer but Joe did not know why. Alex didn’t seem to care. But Joe knew about the monsters, the hunger sickness. It was spreading through Club Wendigo and Apex Consumers. Alex had caught it. But his father, Arthur Drake, had some sort of pill to suppress it. Alex swallowed them by the bottle full.

“Two to go,” Simon says.

He produces the jacks of spades and hearts.

“Alex and Gabe.”

He shuffles. He looks at the queen of hearts, heavy with tape.

“Jane . . .”

He shuffles.

He produces the queen of diamonds. The Mother.

“Candy?” he says, less sure.

There were more cards to play.

 

* * * * *

 

A woman with just a lower body—Polhaus had made a crude joke regarding “the perfect woman” once, with that as the punchline. Jane’s lower body went to Terry Ross, a high school history teacher in the southwest suburbs. Simon did not wait for dark, but he was more careful this time around than he was at Phil’s.

When the world’s tabloid monsters turn out to be real, everything is suspect.

Simon finds Jane’s lower body, legs and all, in a loud refrigerator, low to the ground and top-opening, in the garage. No bites taken. No other body parts collected.

Terry is at work, so Simon looks around. The man’s bedroom shows no sign of Apex Consumer paraphernalia. From what Simon can see, he doesn’t seem like the type they’d let into Club Wendigo. But he does have a large collection of pornographic material and a backlog of porno websites on his computer browser.

Simon shudders at the thought of what uses Mr. Ross had in mind for Jane’s lower body. He looks through Terry’s email, frowning at a few exchanges between the teacher and some teenage girls. Even more telling are the pictures of girls younger still hidden in a vaguely labeled folder. After all the strange horrors he’d witnessed, it seems almost quotidian.

Simon packs Jane’s remains away and is about to leave when he stops. Reconsiders. And takes out a pen.

On the refrigerator, he leaves a note:

 

I came back for my legs.

If you lure those girls into your house, I’ll come back for you.

I’M WATCHING.

—Jane

 

* * * * *

 

“Hey, Simon,” says Nyx.

Simon drops the body bag.

“I . . . hey,” he says. Surprise and horror and relief mix in an odd alchemy in his chest. “You startled me.”

“I let myself in.”

“I’m glad to see you’re all right,” he says.

“I’m glad you’re concerned. How—how did you arm get better so fast?”

“Did all of you come back or just you?” Simon asks, obviously changing the subject.

“For now, just me.” The smile on those purple lips fades as she looks about Simon’s basement. “What are you doing down here?”

“I, er—”

“The truth.”

“I’m getting Jane. I’m seeing that the ones who did this to her pay. I’m trying to get to the bottom of it.”

“Is that—are those . . . parts of her there?”

“Yes.”

Nyx paces. “Simon, when you first said you were trying to get her body back, I thought it was because of your connection with the dead. Quiet the restless spirits by recovering the corpse. Bury it or burn it. Let the spirits move on—that sort of thing. But this—” Nyx points to a partially constructed glass case in the middle of the basement “this is something else altogether. For one thing, it looks pretty permanent. What’s it for?”

“For when I make Jane whole.”

“Doesn’t that seem the slightest bit strange, Simon?”

“I’m afraid my barometer on that would be highly suspect.”

“All right,” Nyx says, “I know you’re a strange guy. I’m a strange girl. Hell, it’s part of why I find you so unbelievably fucking adorable. But this—” and Nyx motions across the basement. “This is bad strange, ’kay? This is bad obsession. This is yearning for the unattainable. Tragic ending kind of shit. And I don’t even want to know whose blood that is on the table.”

Simon looks at the floor.

“Why, Simon? Why are you doing this?”

“I made a promise.”

“Let it go. None of the outcomes this leads to are good. You go walking into the dark, and it swallows you up, like Neil. Or you can’t take it, like Jasper. Or you go so deep into it, you become another Knock.”

She steps in, close.

“Come back with me, Simon, to the Sanctuary—what’s left of it. We miss you. I miss you.”

“I . . . can’t.”

“Why not?” Nyx asks, cupping Simon’s cheeks in her hands. “I really like you, Simon. Are you telling me that’s not mutual?”

Simon’s mouth opens and closes. Opens and closes again.

“I—” he stammers, “I—it’s just . . . I do. I just . . . can’t—”

“Why not?”

“I love her.”

“You never knew her. Even those of us who knew her alive didn’t really know her. Granted, she was something special. I don’t know what, exactly. But all you know is a corpse.”

“I knew her in the Dead Water,” Simon says.

Nyx let’s go of Simon’s face.

“Simon, have you really thought that through? I mean about what this Dead Water really is?”

“What do you mean?”

“You have a gift. Have you really thought about the nature of it? Maybe you pick up things, subtle things, that we can’t explain yet. Or hell, let’s call it supernatural. Can you be sure you’re talking to the dead through their guts? Why do you have to pull out their insides for a chat? Maybe you’re just some kind of diviner; you read little prophecies in the entrails.”

His mouth quivers.

“Unnatural or supernatural, either way, maybe you just have such a brilliant, powerful mind, that you can’t handle the slipstream of information. Maybe you go to that powerful subconscious muscle, the dreaming mind. The intuitive stud you are, you create constructs and outlets that filter out all that information until it makes sense. Call it the projections of a very lonely mind.”

“No,” Simon says, malachite eyes glistening. “I talk to them. I help them. Tamara wanted her Teddy bear and I brought it to her. I tucked her in.”

Nyx points at the body bag. “There’s nothing for you there. You can’t interface with that.”

“Yes, I can!”

Simon paces about the basement, then leaps up and perches on the autopsy table. He crouches and looks down at Nyx.

“When was the last time any of them felt this strongly about anything?” He gestures up, to the world outside the basement. “You toss words like ‘obsession’ about, but that—that’s just the culture: ‘Try not to feel anything too strongly or you might look foolish.’ You hear it in the language, phrases like, ‘Don’t try so hard.’ What is that? ‘Don’t try so hard’! Is that the battle cry of the millennium? And-and-and, most of them out there don’t interface.”

Simon stretches a hand out to the side, producing pennies from the air with a motion of fingers.

“Marriage is a fifty-fifty coin flip. Heads—stick together. Tales—divorce.” Simon tosses a penny to the ground at Nyx’s feet. And another. And another. “My mother and father, they—Look. A lot of them, these relationships, how many of them do you think are real connections? How often do the people in them get beyond the world in their heads? The marriages of quiet desperation, even a lot of the reasonably happy ones, they just happen to have an illusion that matches their partner’s illusion close enough that they don’t conflict too often.”

Simon takes off his glasses and perches on the edge of the autopsy table like one of the Corbies perching in the wormwood tree in his head.

“If you take two televisions, each with its own VCR, each with its own copy of the same movie, and you sync them up and play the shows simultaneously, while each TV happens to be in the same space, facing each other—it doesn’t mean they are communing.”

Nyx nods, the anger flashing across her features. “You Burton reject, self-delusional bastard! I swear to goddess, Simon, you are the only man on this fucking sphere who can have a codependent relationship with a corpse!”

She turns and stomps up the steps, stopping halfway.

“I hope you change your mind, Simon. If you do, we’re waiting.”

Nyx starts, again, up the stairs.

And she stops.

“I’m glad you’re all right, too,” she says.

Then she’s gone.

Simon falls to a sitting position on the stainless steel autopsy table. He reaches down and pulls the body bag up to his lap. It crinkles as he hugs it close.

 

* * * * *

 

Simon works all night, but he puts her back together, puts the pieces back in their proper places.

Better than all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. Eh, Jane?

He puts the pieces back together, but wishes the mystery were as pliable as the flesh. So many questions remain unanswered.

Simon places Jane Doe in the new refrigerator—a glass case he has built just for her. Inside the glass, she lays like a fairytale heroine waiting for her rejuvenating kiss.

But she will not go to the Dead Water with Simon. Not yet. She is still missing her eyes and her heart.

He misses her golden eyes.

He wants to win her heart.

 



INTERLUDE:

The Little Princess

Fairy tales are not true.

They are truer than true.

I never doubted.

The world knows it, too. The wide-wide world always recognizes the Little Princess, even if she is in disguise. Even if she is lost or has lost her memory from a bump on the head or a malevolent spell. Even if she were kidnapped as a baby or given a witch’s curse and turned into an animal or trapped in plain clothes in a small village. Even if her handsome Prince has yet to come and give her his kiss, to make her officially a princess.

Even so, the world recognizes the Little Princess.

Roads will lead to safety and to good fortunes. Trees—but not evil, enchanted, clawed trees—and animals—but not, of course, wolves or dragons—will help the Little Princess and try to keep her safe. Always there is some impossible chore or horrible mess to clean, but the Little Princes need only sing a pretty, pretty song and all the animals of the forest and birds of the sky respond—for she is the Little Princess, beloved by all. They all swoop and scamper in. The adorable and the majestic creatures help complete the chore or clean the mess and make everything right. For she is the Little Princess, beloved by all—not just the animals—but strangers, peasants, and little folk recognize her even when they do not know it. They have only to look into her fair eyes and hear her sweet voice and they cannot help but love her and do what she requests. For she is the Little Princess, beloved by one and all.

Except evil Stepmothers.

Evil Stepmothers hate the Little Princess. They always try to do her harm. Evil Stepmothers are always angry at the Little Princess. Stepmothers say, “No,” to the Little Princess. Stepmothers say things like, “Where did you get that mark?” and “Take that off this instant; it is not Halloween yet and you’ll get stains all over it.”

I do have stains. There are little droplets all over my stuffed animals, too. And bright red stains down my chinny-chin-chin and all over my Little Princess dress. My, what big teeth I have.

Stepmother is on the floor. She will never again say, “No.”

It is a horrible, horrible mess.

I sang a pretty, pretty song. Now my friends are swooping and scampering in: rats and crows and cats and stray dogs. They have come to help clean this mess. Little sparrows flutter around the room with red beaks. I told Father he should sleep and he looked into my fair eyes and heard my sweat voice and could not help but love me and do what I requested, for I am the Little Princess.

My handsome Prince will come for me soon. He gave me his kiss and said he would take me away and introduce me to the royalty of his kingdom, where one can stay up all night forever and ever and ever after.

While I wait, my friends chew and chew.

Soon there will be no mess at all.

And the story will end happily ever after.

 

 

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.