CHAPTER 24

 

 

The wheel turns.

Simon stares up into the night sky, takes in the stars and cosmos and the giant glowing wheel that spins at the center of it all. It spins like a memory, like passing years, like summer to bittersweet fall. It spins.

The armed men help Simon onto the Ferris wheel.

He never saw the gun that lightly pressed his back. Never saw the men in dark coats approach. They materialized, more efficiently than the men who so recently broke Simon’s hand. They searched him and systematically found every one of his assorted nasties.

And I thought I was so slick. Eh, Jane?

They put Simon in a car. They drove him to Navy Pier. Not a rude gesture, never a shove. Getting out, the lake wind stole Simon’s hat away, but it was quickly returned by large, strong hands. Bright lights cheered the evening dark as Simon and his dread escort moved through the people, so many people. Strong hands urged Simon on when, in fascination, he froze in front of a mechanical wizard in a glass box—a Punch ’n’ Judy grin—fifty cents for a fortune. The procession turned by degrees more and more surreal as they came upon the great Ferris wheel that dominates the pier.

Did I dream it, Jane?

A sign proclaims the ride temporarily off limits for maintenance, but these grim men seem to be above the sign’s authority. A final pat down and Simon is handed a bag of cotton candy. The spun sugar is a shade of pink that does not exist in nature.

The wheel stops turning.

Strong hands help Simon into a car. The door closes. The seat opposite Simon contains only shadows and an emerald ring worn on a disembodied hand.

The wheel turns.

The shadows move. The ring and hand are attached to a man in an ashen suit. He might be in his fifties, but his hair is still dark, his face still strong. Simon and the man rise into the air, treated to a grand view of Chicago’s lakefront on an unusually warm November night.

“Hello,” says Simon.

“Oh, you brought cotton candy,” says the man with the emerald ring. “Goody. May I?”

“Sure.” Simon hands him the plastic bag.

“Do you like cotton candy?”

Simon shakes his head.

“Me, I love the stuff. I can eat it till I’m sick. My one vice—that, and a pretty set of eyes.” The hand with the emerald ring holds a pinch of cotton candy reverently. “When they burn it, on the machine, it’s a very distinct smell—all carbon and sweetness. Memories get locked into scents like that.” He holds the bit of spun sugar to his nose, inhaling, eyes closing, making a long, deep sound in the back of the throat, a happy remembrance.

The wheel turns a full rotation.

“I’m sorry,” says Simon. “I don’t—”

“Do you know who I am?” asks the man with the emerald ring.

“No.”

“My name is Gabriel Stephano, Senior.” As Gabriel places the bright candy in his mouth, letting the sugar fibers dissolve without chewing, Simon cannot help but think of all those skeletons swimming in the cement holding Chicago together. “I know who you are, Simon. There is a little bedtime story, going round my circles, of a Jack the Ripper gent with a scalpel terrorizing some people that resemble the criminal element. That’s you, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And it’s something about a girl?”

“Yes.”

“A dead girl?”

“Yes.”

“Hmhm, women.” Gabriel savors another bite of cotton candy. “Nothing surprises me anymore, Simon. Except women.”

“Mr. Stephano, if I harmed any of your men, I—”

Gabriel chuckles. “Listen, son, if you had hurt any of my boys—not that you would have, you understand, because they would have killed you, but supposing you did—right now, you would be in a small dark room. Somewhere. And no one would ever find out what happened to you.”

The wheel turns. Smell of popcorn. Sounds of a live band.

“Then why am I here?” Simon asks.

“To talk, Simon. I like to talk, but my boys, they’re not conversationalists. You are my excuse for a night out. You tell me some things, and maybe I tell you some things, and the longer we talk, the more cotton candy I get to eat. Tell me about the girl. What’s her name?”

“Jane Doe.”

“I wasn’t able to find her name out either.”

“The police couldn’t—”

“A cop can’t find his dick with both hands and the help of his partner on a warm night. No surprise. But I couldn’t find out. That’s disturbing. I’m going to guess you never knew the girl alive. My question, then, is: why are you involved in all this? Whose interests do you serve?”

“I’m doing this for Jane. I met her in Autopsy Room 6. I love her.”

The wheel halts, abruptly. The car rocks back and forth at the apex of its assent.

“Oh, that’s spooky,” says Gabriel, his ring gleaming as green as the eyes of the young pathologist. “All right, Simon. Let’s let that little secret lie for now.”

No one ever believes me, Jane.

Gabriel takes another wad of candy. “Maybe you can tell me about your Jane Doe’s demise. Who was present?”

“Joe Camino.”

“Oh, Joe. Grotesque, but good at what he did. What a waste. Who else?”

“Alexander Drake. Hector Gomez.”

Gabriel nods his head to each name. “Who else was there, Simon?”

“Your son.”

Gabe Stephano, Jr.: the Question Man. Jack of spades.

Gabriel stops eating.

“My turn, Simon. Let me tell you about my son.”

The elder Stephano tells Simon of how his son, Gabe, and Alex Drake had been friends since childhood, and when together had a charisma as big as the sky. He details how they started their little “heathen cult,” how the duo populated Club Wendigo not only with the children of the affluent friends of the Drakes, but also with the youth of the kith and kin of the Stephano crime family. He tells Simon of the rituals, the horrors, and the eating.

The wheel turns. Smell of fast food grease and meat. Sound of complaining gulls.

“He was an altar boy, for Christ sake,” Mr. Stephano says, crossing himself. “I remember the day he took his First Communion. He was so little. He hated the smell of incense. He complained that it made him sick. But that day he knew I was watching, and he took his sacrament strong and mature—the body and the blood. My little man. And now? Body and blood. My stomach churns at the end of every mass. I’m only thankful his mother didn’t live to see this.”

Mr. Stephano resists a moment, then reopens the bag of cotton candy.

“I have Arthur Drake to thank,” says Gabriel.

“What can you tell me about him?” Simon asks.

“Arthur Drake is crazier than a shithouse rat. Apex Consumers—you’ve seen the commercials. Suckers are our greatest natural resource, and he harvests them into his meat grinder, sucks the marrow right out.” Gabriel devours the candy, fluffier than an angel’s cloud, by the handful. “Club Wendigo was Arthur’s idea. Little Alex thinks he’s rebelling, starting the MTV version of daddy’s cult, but it was Gabe who put the notion in his flaky head. Gabe did that because Arthur told him to.”

“Why?” asks Simon.

“Everything Arthur Drake does is to impress the Gastronome Irregulars.”

“They’re cannibals too.”

Gabriel makes a face. “That’s an oversimplification. They’re an epicurean club. Foodies. It’s all about eating the strange and exotic. But see, Simon, this is what happens when rich, bored, soulless fucks come together—they one-up each other. You get an ivory toilet seat; I get a golden toilet seat. You slather barbecue sauce on the last existing dodo bird; I fire up a steak cut from a Neanderthal frozen in a glacier. Now you go and eat human flesh; I might think you’re bold, but if that’s all you do, you’re going to get boring. ‘Oh, dear boy, instead of paying your illegal yard workers, you killed and ate them, again? How droll.’ So you got to get creative.”

I could see it, Jane—how a vegetarian might join this social club and be handicapped. Then he finds a way to eat people, and he one-ups his peers.

“Let me ask you, Simon: why did my son and his cohorts kill your Jane Doe?”

“I believe it was over a hammer.”

“A hammer?”

“An old hammer named Bob. It’s the kind used to kill cattle in the old stockyards.”

“If they wanted the hammer, that means Aruthur Drake wanted the hammer, though I could not tell you why. This town, Simon, it’s built on an ever-flowing runoff of blood.”

The wheel turns. The cityscape is all lights. The lake is all darkness.

“Mr. Stephano, why are you telling me all of this?”

“Old Testament.”

“Old Testament?”

“First half of the Bible, Simon. There is no turning the other cheek. A certain threshold of sin is forgivable, but sometimes the population gets so fucked up, choked on its own disgust, that everything must be cleansed with a terrible miracle. Divine wrath, Simon—locusts, boils, darkness, fire from the sky, cities to salt, firstborn torn from their cribs by angels of death, fathers called on to sacrifice their own sons. Old Testament. That’s when you realize that God is more terrifying than the Devil ever could be. That is what I model my life on. I’ve done terrible things, but sometimes intimidation—shattering a kneecap, a life—it’s not enough. Sometimes your retribution has to be so righteous that they fall to their knees and sweat blood at the mere thought of trespassing against you. Old Testament.”

Mr. Stephano licks his fingers clean of sugar.

“And you would like this sort of retribution to happen to Apex Consumers?” asks Simon.

“I want a biblical plague visited upon the house of Arthur Drake! Apex Consumers, Club Wendigo, the Gastronome Irregulars—I want every sick, sad fuck involved in them to be swallowed by something more horrifying than any of them could ever be. I want this because of every ungodly thing Drake has done, because of what my son has become.”

“Why do you think I can help with this?” Simon asks.

“Maybe you know a plague angel or two.”

“I do not understand.”

Gabriel points down to the pier below.

“People like their illusions of safety. Take the pier. It shows tourists that the big bad city is really nice, the shadows not so deep. Tourists go home and more tourists come back. Only, in this case, the illusion might as well be real. My family has certain interests in the pier and if the bad element ever messes with that illusion, they’d best hope the cops find them before I do.”

Gabriel looks Simon in the eyes.

“I, Simon, do not have many illusions. I’ve been around. I know there are things out there, nasty things, that pull strings. In the jungle there are systems of predators and scavengers. There are rats and there are jackals and hyenas and wolves and lions. When I’m at my most honest, I know that I’m a jackal. There is no shame in what I am. But knowing what I am means that I also know there are wolves and lions out there in the jungle.”

The wheel turns. A child laughs. Or screams.

“Simon, I have reason to think you know a wolf or a lion. I think something terrible follows you. I think any information I give to you will spread, like sickness, to the places it needs to spread, in order to make Drake suffer.” He smirks. “I know your next question. You want to know what I think is following you. Don’t bother. I’ve lived a long time. I know what rocks not to turn over.” He glances at his sugar-sticky fingers. “Ah, look what I’ve done. I’ve spoiled my dinner. Shame on me. Before we wrap this up, tell me one more thing, Simon.”

“Yes?”

“This girl, the one you say you’re doing this all for, what do you miss most about her?”

“Her eyes.”

“Tell me about them.”

Simon speaks about the golden eyes. His mouth moves all on its own. The great wheel turns and turns and turns. Simon’s mouth stops, though he does not know how long he spoke.

“Thank you,” Gabriel whispers, eyes closed. “You’ve got it bad. I had it that bad once.” Gabriel looks into his empty bag. “It’s gone now.”

The wheel stops.

“Ride’s over, Simon.”

The door opens.

Men in mean coats help Simon out of the car. A sheet of paper full of the addresses of Club Wendigo meeting places is put in his hands.

“Close the door,” Gabriel tells the men in dark coats. “I’ll be a while.”

“Wait, Mr. Stephano,” Simon says.

“Yes?”

“Your son. What if I encounter him?”

“Old Testament,” Gabriel says, and his voice is a gentle growl, and Simon—who has seen horrors both mundane and supernatural—shivers despite the improbably warm November night.

The wheel turns.

 

* * * * *

 

He has her but he does not have her.

Body, but no heart, no golden-eye bliss.

All he had now was desperation . . . and pigeons.

Simon did not have the heart to catch living pigeons. But he did manage to find two dead birds, which now rest on his table. He slaps down the queen of diamonds. He picks up the scalpel. He has no idea if this will work.

 

* * * * *

 

A left hand reaches for the ringing phone and the receiver rises to full, candy-red lips.

“Hello, thank you for calling 1-900-2STEAMY. My name is Candy and tonight I’ll be your—” She clears her throat impatiently. “Mom? I . . . no, Mother, I am working. Yes. Call me on the cell. All right.”

The left hand hangs up the landline and the right hand raises the ringing cell phone.

“Hi, Mom. Yes. I got the cookies. They were wonderful. Thank you.”

The landline rings.

“Hold on, Mom. I’ve got a call on the other phone. Okay.”

The right hand lowers and the left hand raises again.

“Hi, my name’s Candy. Would you like to find out how many licks it takes to get to my sweet center? Ah, hold on. Let me guess—Dan, isn’t it? Mmm-hmm. How old are you? No, no, Danny-boy. You’re not eighteen. I’m thinking . . . sixteen, going on seventeen. Late February, isn’t it? Never mind. I just know.” The smile that flashes across her face is tight, lips compressed to hold in a giggle. “Look, Daniel, you can’t call Candy if you’re under eighteen. I’m sure there are oodles of girls to talk to at school. What? Oh, geek is just a label. You have no reason to wear it, Daniel. I can tell you’re a sensual soul. I think you’re ahead of your peers. In fact, if you talk to that girl in chemistry. Melissa, is it? Talk to her and you will be pleasantly surprised. All right. Goodnight, love.”

The left hand hangs up and the right hand rises again.

“Hey, Mom. Hmmm? Oh, just an under-ager. No, he’s a good boy. Just needed a push. Where were we? Hmm? Yes.”

The landline rings.

“Sorry, Mom. Just a sec. Duty calls.”

The right hand lowers and the left hand rises.

“Hello, I’m Candy and I have a creamy center. I—what? Well, hello, Simon. Do I have time to talk? Of course I do, love. Time moves in mysterious ways, different from person to person. Sometimes frenzied. Sometimes achingly slow. Right now time’s moving at roughly two dollars a minute. What? At my front door? What do you—?”

An unsure knock.

The left hand hangs up the landline.

Candy walks to the front door, her expression curious and serene. She opens the door.

“Simon.”

“Candy.”

Candy: the Mother. Queen of diamonds.

“Mom?” Candy says into the cell. “A tall dark stranger just showed up. Hold on.” She turns to her visitor. “Come in, Simon Meeks.”

Simon walks into the room cautiously, watches Candy closely. She’s a middle-aged woman with golden hair, her curves still curve, her lips full, her voice bubbly. She floats about her apartment, a sensual, nurturing, ditzy but wise presence.

“You were supposed to be here earlier,” Candy says.

“Sorry?”

“How did you find me?”

“Pigeons. Two of them.”

“A fellow diviner!” Candy says, bouncing up and down happily. She takes Simon’s hat and runs a warm hand through Simon’s hair. “I don’t use pigeons. Please have a seat.”

Simon sits.

“Is Candy your real name?”

“Well, not exactly. I’ve gone by Candy for a long time, ever since I threw up all my candy corn in the third grade, when our teacher dressed up like a mime.” Candy giggles melodiously. “Mimes scare me.”

The landline rings.

“Oh. Just a moment, Simon. Busy night.”

The left hand picks up the phone.

“Hi, this is Candy and I can moan in almost twenty different dialects. Hello, Stan! It’s been weeks. Oh really? I’m sorry, love. I see better fortunes coming your way. This month, I would work on being prompt . . . Yes, that will be important. Oh! And Stay away from the sushi at that Japanese place near you this week. Yeah, bad mojo there. Hmm? Now, Stan, you know I don’t do lottery numbers. Bad karma. Mmmmmmm . . . but I am having the most delicious visions of a redhead, a tight white uniform, and a steamy encounter in the back of an ice-cream truck that melts all the deserts. Am I right? Good! I’ll let you hold on to that image and take it from there. No need to run up your bill until you get back on your feet. You’re welcome, love. Night.”

Simon looks at his queen of diamonds card. It has a few red fingerprints.

“You’re some kind of oracle,” he says.

“Yes, I am,” she answers cheerfully. Then those big, red lips frown. “But that’s a problem. People don’t want accurate readings. They don’t want to know that their child’s turtle will die in thirteen days, and they aren’t impressed that, once I hear their voice, I can tell them what kind of underwear they have on or their dead grandmother’s favorite cleaning agent.”

Candy sighs melodiously.

“They don’t want specifics,” she says. “They want vague assurances of job security and a strong love life. They want to huddle in little corners and receive promises.”

Candy taps the landline phone.

“But with sex hotlines, specifics are good. I’ve got a knack. When the receiver hits my ear I just know whether your turn-on is a blue-eyed farm girl on a green prairie or getting slapped in the ass with raw steak during foreplay. I just do. Job transition wasn’t very hard. I’m flexible. Go with the flow, that’s me. Very Taoist.”

Candy looks at the cell phone in her hand as if it were an alien that had crawled there on its own. She blinks.

“Oh! Whoops! Just a sec.”

Her right hand rises to her ear.

“Hey, Mom, sorry. This may take a while. Can I call you back? All right. Love you, too.”

Candy puts the cell phone down. She unplugs the landline.

“There,” she says. “That should give us a few minutes. I know that you want to talk about something.”

“Yes.”

“That’s why you found me so cleverly.”

“Yes.”

“You want to talk about the golden-eyed girl.”

“Jane Doe.”

“Oh, you’ve given her a name!” Candy says, clapping.

“Who is she?”

“She’s a mystery, love.”

“But—”

“No buts, Simon. She’s a mystery, a benevolent mystery. Leave it at that. It’s a dark, dark world out there, Mr. Scarecrow. Lots of pain. Lots of trauma. But sometimes, we find little miracles—the unasked for, undeserved, and unexplained gifts.”

“I see.”

“You’re trying to put your miracle back together.”

“Yes.”

“But you’re missing some pieces.”

“Yes.”

“You yearn for them so strongly.” Candy places a hand over her heart. “Oh my. It’s like an old, old fairy tale, pre-Disney. That I can help you with. Ask me a different question.”

Simon thinks.

“Why did Alexander Drake cry the night they hung Jane?”

“That is an interesting question,” says Candy. “It was a broken heart.”

Simon looks troubled.

“Oh, love, don’t fret over that. Monsters have hearts too. Jane, our clandestine girl, had insinuated herself into Alex’s life for her own mysterious reasons. She helped Alex. He suffers a nasty hunger, and Daddy’s pills become less and less effective. But Jane, and her golden eyes, helped alleviate his condition. She offered him a little peace.”

Simon nods. That, he does understand.

“But Jane,” continues Candy, “had her own mysterious agenda. That clever, clever girl snatched up something important before Alex and his buddies could get it.”

“The hammer,” says Simon.

Candy shrugs. “Broken hearts leak poison,” she says. “Alex’s friend—the jack of spades, right?—he whispered poisons in his ear. Then love became a wicked hate and they played their game of hangman. You know all about that. Alex cried. He wanted her dead and he already was missing her. They didn’t get the hammer. Still, Alex managed to get something, in the end.”

“What?”

Candy grabs a scrap of paper from by the phone and scratches something on it with a pencil, while sucking on her lower lip.

“Ta-da!” she says, showing her work.

On the paper, Simon sees a pencil-drawn eyeball, a heart, and the word you.

Eye.

Heart.

You.

“He has them!” Simon says.

“Yes,” says Candy. “Our broken-hearted monster wants a Valentine.”

Simon stands and grabs his hat.

“Thank you, Candy. You’re a very . . . cheerful person.”

“Thank you, love. I’ll take Transcendentalism over pessimism any day. I find happiness in voodoo doll smiles. I find happiness in the secrets I divine from my alphabet soup. Be careful where you find yours.”

Simon nods and leaves.

The oracle plugs in her phone and goes back to work.

 

 

 

CHAPTER 25

 

Once upon a midnight dreary, Simon ponders, weak and weary, over Y-incisions, scalpels, and volumes of cadaverous gore. Jane is as complete as he can make her. But no amount of absinthe or rooting of hands inside her chest cavity could send the two of them to the Dead Water together.

The Corbies heckle from the hollows in his head—chant their necro-beat poetry unbidden.

Pensive. Weak. The thrill he felt after Hector’s apartment is gone. The new strength is gone. He knows who possesses her eyes and her glistening Valentine, but not how to get them. And if some nasty or less-than-human thing was not already on its way to get him, it would be soon, as near as he could figure. Monsters and shadows and cannibals and pyramid schemes weigh heavily on his soul.

“I miss you, Jane.”

He folds her hands back over her chest.

The flowers he bought her are already dead.

Simon lays his head on the table, drifting in and out of the sleep that is the Little Death, next to Jane, who sleeps the Big Sleep, but he cannot make the two states intertwine. While Simon nods nearly napping, suddenly there comes a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at his basement door.

Startled, Simon lifts his head, absinthe dream-phantoms melting back into the corners. Simon ascends the steps and opens, wide, the basement door.

Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, Simon stands there, wondering, fearing. “Jane Doe,” he says, into the dark, finding the sound of it comforting, wondering if he should re-carve her name into his arms. And all is quiet, save the whispered name, “Jane Doe,” over and over again in breathy echo. Simon shuts the door.

Soon again he hears a tapping, somewhat louder than before. And Simon follows wet footprints that are not his, descending the stairs, leading to the source of the new tapping.

Metal clanking metal. A silver skull ring clanking the stainless steel table. Attached to the ring, a pallid hand, and attached to that is Simon’s shadow.

“Loki?”

“Hey, Simon,” the shadow says with a beguiling smirk. “You remembered.”

Not the least obeisance makes he; not a minute stops or stays he. But, with mien of lord or lady, perches on the rim of the autopsy table; perches and hugs his knees to his chest, looking rather like a carrion bird with his long black coat; perches and sits beside the pallid bust of Jane on the autopsy table, hair still dripping bleak November rain.

“Don’t drip water on the patient.”

“Sorry,” says Loki, leaning away, maintaining his balance.

“That’s a nifty trick.”

“Hmm?”

“Fading in and out like that.”

“I guess.”

Loki’s head cocks to the side, regarding the cadaver.

“Wow. She’s still pretty, even after everything she’s gone through. You do good work.”

“She’s beautiful,” Simon says.

Loki grins. “From the mouth of the beholder. Exciting times, Simon.”

“What do you mean?”

“Full circle. Our interests intersect. You want all her back and your little obsession keeps sidetracking you from punishing those who did this. But now, you know where to get the rest of her and it’s with them my interests roost. Two of her killers are still out there using your oxygen.”

Simon grits his teeth, but then this strangely pale eternal youth begins beguiling his homicidal fancies into smiling.

“Easy, killer,” says Loki. “I think we can help each other.”

“You’ll help me?” Simon asks. Something tugs at his insides, something that wants to trust Loki, his shadow, his own shadow, who gave him breadcrumbs along the trail, who gave him the gift of coppery warmth.

Simon’s shadow hops down from his perch. He holds up a stoppered vial with something red and viscous inside.

“Lookin’ a wee bit peaked, my friend,” Loki says. “Time you do a shot. I think you remember this stuff?”

Loki pops the stopper and swirls the liquid under Simon’s nose and, yes, he does remember.

“Blood?” Simon asks.

“Yeah, but it’s got a hell of an active ingredient.”

“Careful, Simon,” protest the Corbies.

But Simon drinks. He needs it, needs the strength.

I did it all for you, Jane.

It slides down thick and dark and strangely sweet—a rush, different from the Dead Water high. Simon’s belly warms. All his aches and pains fill in with heat. Everything is filled in and complete. Except for the ache of Jane’s absence.

Simon smiles. Loki mirrors the smile.

My shadow. Eh, Jane?

“I know that Jane Doe means a lot to you, Simon, but it’s time you put her aside—just for a moment—and concentrate on the enemy. You’ll do that, right?”

“Careful, careful, Simon!” caw the Corbies.

Simon nods. He can trust his shadow. It warms him to trust his shadow, puts everything right where it belongs.

“Good. Night’s still young. Let’s get started.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Oh, you’ll like this. We’re gonna get you your Dead Water fix, in spades.”

The two walk up the stairs, a boy and his shadow, with occasional glances back at the girl below.

“Loki?”

“Yes, Simon?”

“Do you really think I’ll get the rest of her back?”

Quoth Loki, “Nevermore!”

The shadow opens the door laughing.

“But, hey, what do I know? Prove me wrong.”

 

* * * * *

 

Simon and Loki ride the El.

The city streaks by.

When they are reasonably alone on their car, Loki turns to Simon. The atmosphere builds for a shattering revelation. Then Loki whispers, “I’m what you might call a vampire.”

“Oh,” says Simon.

The atmosphere goes limp with anticlimax.

 

* * * * *

 

Even the carpeting underfoot feels luxuriant.

“Welcome to the Palmer House, sirs. How may I be of service?”

“We’re here for the banquet.”

“Right this way.”

Simon feels out of place in one of Chicago’s grandest, oldest hotels, but Loki looks even more so. At first glance, he appears the archetypal blood-drinking Byronic demon-lover that stalks the covers of so many young-adult paranormal romance novels—a Gothic wardrobe puffed out with pale, lithe, brooding late-teen bad boy charm. But, no. He’s that archetype buried under a century of apocalyptic rubble, excavated by archeologists, but not yet properly restored for his place in the “Macabre Youth of the Turn of the Millennium” display. Hints of dirt and grime besprinkle him. His clothes are ragged—not with the expensive damage of the purposefully distressed and hip, but with real wear. His black boots linger on the verge of falling apart. The pant cuffs of his black cargos are tattered. His T-shirt, sporting a crazed Cheshire Cat grinning in mid-vanish, is marred by little holes and mildew stains. His black leather duster is slightly shredded, the membrane of a bat’s wing on the other side of a hale storm. His hair may have been, at one time, sculpted with an improbable amount of gel, but now was a matted, dark ruin.

And yet, he does not smell. He’s got almost an absence of smell, save for a faint trace of November rain and trampled leaves. Loki seems completely oblivious to his appearance and the staff pointedly ignores it. Simon wonders if they simply don’t see the shabbiness, if something about the vampire hides it from the casual observer. After all, he hadn’t really noticed it until now either.

They are shown into a very large kitchen. Extra tables are brought in. The staff is still dragging bodies from the room-sized refrigerator.

I had not seen so many, Jane. Not since all those heads in their tin barbecue pans.

“Dig in,” says Loki, crooked half-grin breaking his face.

Simon saw it. He’d only seen it a few times, but, intermittently, the cool confidence of Loki’s pallid face interrupted, distorted with a nervous twitch, a paranoid glance, a crazed grin.

When had that taint of madness started? Perhaps when he stopped changing his clothes. Eh, Jane?

“I’ve never done so many,” Simon says. “Not in one night.”

“Work hard, play hard,” says Loki.

Dozens of them, all cadavers somehow connected to Apex Consumers and Club Wendigo. Some had been hastily chewed and gutted and dismembered. Others displayed the various phases of the hunger disease—hair falling out in clumps, distorted bodies, wide mouths, claws. Chalk-white monsters with those doll’s eyes and rows and rows of teeth.

Each of them contains pieces of the puzzle. And Simon can cut to those pieces.

Dozens of Dead Water plunges, dozens of new friends, gallons of the dead love.

Simon licks his lips.

“I thought so,” Loki says.

Simon looks at the dead longingly.

The Corbies shriek, eager for the feast.

Loki watches Simon hungrily.

“It’s okay, Simon. I’ve watched you work before. I’m your number one fan.”

I think he was desperate too, Jane, for a glimpse of something . . . other.

“Should I be looking for something specific?” Simon asks.

“You do your thing. When you come out of it, tell me what you find and I’ll try to figure out how that connects.”

Simon drinks from his Thermos.

“I’ve already composed a profile, Simon. Obviously we’re looking for health nuts—people who were fixated on low-carb diets, that sort of thing. After all, people as a food are Atkins friendly.”

“We won’t be disturbed?”

“Oh, we’re all disturbed here, Simon. You. Me. Everyone. But, no—no one is going to interrupt us. My superiors run this place. The health inspector will never be the wiser. Enjoy.”

Simon snaps on the latex gloves and picks up his tools.

So many Y-incisions. So many portals.

Simon digs in.

 

* * * * *

 

Where are we?

Sleep has no place to call its own.

Where are we?

Sleep has no place to call its own.

Where are we?

Sleep has no place to call its own.

Where are we. . . ?

 

* * * * *

 

He comes to, stumbling, falling down on the kitchen floor, wondering when or where or in whom he lost his blue gloves.

“I think you’ve had enough, Simon.”

He can’t suppress the giggle, can’t escape the roiling, liquid floor. Loki helps him up. Simon wants to laugh and wants to cry. All those friends, all of them already swimming out in the ebony sea. All that time—dream time—stretches. How many months had Simon spent in the Dead Water these last few hours? Loki helps him to a chair, asks him questions, repeats the questions, and Simon does his best to respond with names and places and details, all the little things you carelessly leave in the spaces between your liver and spleen.

He’s holding so much dead love that he’s sweating it from his pores, luminous ghost plasma. He wonders why Loki doesn’t see it, but then he thinks maybe Loki does see it. His shadow watches him, fascinated.

But it’s hard to focus on the questions. The Corbies are cawing and singing. There are so many of them now—hundreds of them, thousands of them, multiplying in his head, dozens of murders in his mind.

“Life’s a bitch, and then Simon makes friends with you in your chest cavity,” the Corbies say.

Simon answers the questions and then tries to explain the Other. Just an outline, a silhouette in each of the Dead Water trips, but taken as a whole, after all those Y-incisions were cut, they formed a grotesque shape. It was too massive to see in any one trip, too huge to perceive, like the thing in the bog . . . but not the thing in the bog. Something different; yes, different. The voice in the river. Simon’s mind sewed it together, as best he could, from the mere fragments he saw spanning the entire horizon of each Dead Water trip. It dragged its heavy body along, the crawling naked god, flesh of the flesh and meat of meats—crawling on pseudopods composed of millions of flailing intestines. Gutted carcasses fused together, steaming masses of animate bloody pulp. Body bristling with broken bones and meat hooks, twitching cleavers and fidgeting hammers, and a sea of staring gelatin eyes. Its thousand invisible mouths whisper to all of us, kissing and suckling at all of us, biting. It opened its great maw, both sphincter and throat, for in and out are all one, and bellowed. Its voice was made of a planet of flies, grating animal cries, fearful squeals, the sound of everything chewing on each other and the scream of a bloody river changing direction. The voice told Simon that it was the ultimate eater and the ultimate feast.

“We are meat. Everything is meat. Everything has to eat.”

The voice promised Simon that everything around him, right now, was desperately begging him to eat it. Everything and everyone. There are no other truths than meat and the need to chew it. Simon saw a vision of the Union Stock Yard Gate, the limestone head of Sherman the bull staring at him with cold eyes, blood dripping from stone lips.

Once upon a time, Jane, they reversed the river, and something was born, or a door was open letting something in, or something was made from many ragged things stitched together and given life.

Simon tries to explain all this, numb-tongued, to his shadow. Then he’s in a hallway. Loki helps him walk. The patterns in the carpet speak and he understands. A woman walks by, and Simon knows the name of her dead grandmother—and the thing she hid in the back of the toilet tank.

And then they are in an elevator and Simon watches the dancing lights and he knows what it is that happened on the fourteenth floor.

And then he does not need Loki’s help to walk. He is strong. He is balanced. He is good.

And then they approach a figure.

“He’s a Kindred,” Loki whispers.

The vampires call each other Kindred. We don’t say “cow,” we say “beef.” Eh, Jane?

Simon can tell by the way Loki greets him that he is an important Kindred. So Simon tries to be polite to this tall, slender figure with Peter Lorre, rodent features. But then Simon hears the screaming inside Peter Lorre’s skin. Under the skin. Simon can hear the dead scream beneath the Kindred’s flesh. Whatever it is there’s more than one and they’re swimming in the black veins. Simon tries to answer. He’s not sure what he’s saying, but he’s shouting it even as he grabs this Kindred’s sleeve and pulls.

“Unhand me!” yells the deep, nasally voice.

Now Simon is flying through the air. But he flies so slowly, he has enough time to see the hand that flung him—the pasty, olive, waxen skin. The fingernails are gone, torn out long ago, and in those scars, Simon can see the echo of a night of torture and terror. He does not have enough time to ask the Kindred about the missing nails before he slams into the wall on the opposite side of the hall. Simon hits the floor with rubber-drunk grace.

Another giggling fit comes on, but he resists.

Loki helps him up. Simon cannot see or hear any dead inside of Loki.

“It’s cool, it’s cool,” his shadow says. “He’s my ghoul.”

It seems I can never escape that nickname. Eh, Jane?

“Perhaps sir’s retainer would be more comfortable in the waiting room?” says another voice.

Then someone else is helping Simon down the hall, away from his shadow and the tall, waxen Peter Lorre.

“Loki! Loki!” Simon calls.

His shadow is there.

“What is it, Simon?”

“I want to find Jane. I want to find her heart and eyes.”

“We talked about that. We’re going to put that on the back burner, right?” His shadow’s voice grows stern, and something in the chemistry of Simon’s belly responds. He wants to trust his shadow and obey his shadow and please his shadow.

But the thousand-thousand Corbies say, “Look! Look!”

Simon turns his eyeballs around, looks inside himself. He sees that the upside-down wormwood tree has grown until its limbs fill his entire body. And then he sees something else. Something squirms beneath the grim bark.

“It writhes!” caw the Corbies.

Simon is at a loss.

“Oh, fuck this noise!” the thousand-thousand Corbies say, grinding their beaks in frustration. They attack the tree with a thousand-thousand beaks, tearing away the grim bark, exposing the infecting parasite.

“It writhes! It writhes!” they caw.

A blood-red worm runs the length of the great trunk. A thousand-thousand carrion beaks attack it, root it out, tear it apart, kill and devour it.

Simon gasps.

The feeling is gone. The desire to trust his shadow and obey his shadow and please his shadow—gone.

“Right, Loki,” Simon says.

“That’s a boy,” the Corbies caw. “Play it clever, play it sly.” They roost back in the branches, their tree reclaimed.

Simon is led away to the waiting room.

 

* * * * *

 

As it turned out, the waiting room was not in the lobby.

They go to the basement.

Then they go a little lower.

Simon finds himself in a plain room, no windows, full of couches, chairs, and magazines. There is no clock. There is no time. Half a dozen people wait—sitting, standing, pacing, reading, talking—all utterly incongruous, a moldering box full of puzzle pieces from different puzzles. One wears leather and chains, another a formal suit, another a ruined dress and fallen leaves stuck in her hair.

“Who is your regnant?” asks a squat man. His features look pushed down, as if he has had to endure the gravity of Jupiter. With his squashed face and two large eyes, he looks very much like a toad in a cheap suit.

“Who?” Simon replies.

“Who is your master?”

It was a room full of ghouls, Jane.

“I’d hate him if I did not love him so,” mutters a girl reading a magazine. After every page, she shoves a pin in her hand.

“Loki,” Simon says to the toad man.

The room lulls with the lazy murmur of the ghouls, each vaguely aware of his and her fellows, but all trapped in their own odd worlds. Their comments come from those scattered vantages, fragmented and fractious.

“Loki.”

“Loki?”

“Who’s that?”

“Trey Fischer.”

“Never heard of him.”

“You’re ignorant.”

“One of the Prince’s Hounds.”

“Oh.”

“Just a kid . . . or was a kid.”

“What year is it?”

“One of them Circle of the Crone acolytes.”

“Wazzat?”

“Blood witches.”

“Mine complains that he’s spending too much time with Rowen these days.”

At the name of Rowen, a full half of the ghouls flinch or shiver. The lazy murmur picks up a few octaves. More join in on the conversation.

“Rowen!”

“Oh my . . .”

“Who’s that?”

“You’re ignorant.”

“She’s the head blood witch.”

“Old.”

“Features like a beast.”

“Seven feet tall.”

“No, at least eight feet tall!”

“She’s an Indian.”

“Native American!”

“Just half.”

“Either way, she could do their medicine and magic when she breathed.”

“Mine tells me she can turn into a bear.”

“She can call dead gods from the underworld.”

“I heard she ripped the head off of one of them wolf people. Clean off.”

“Bullshit.”

“Yeah. She took its head and turned it into a candle that drove all its kin insane.”

“Bullshit!”

“You’re ignorant.”

“Mine tells me she can talk to the voice in the river. Mine tells me all his secrets, because mine loves me best of all. The other ones don’t love mine like I love mine, and that’s why I had to put the broken glass in their tea and make them go away. Mine has made more and they don’t love mine like I love mine . . .”

Simon backs to the edge of the room and observes the murmur. He recalls all of those Thanksgivings and Christmases sitting at the children’s table. There always seemed to be one chair short at the adult table, and Simon always found himself at the kids’ table, all the way up to last Christmas.

Sometimes, Jane, I dream of the ghouls, still stuck in that waiting room. And sometimes I dream of what that adult table must be like.

Simon can see the one trait that links them all: the fog over the eyes. Once, as a boy, Simon’s parents tried an experimental medication on him. He lost a year, locked in a mostly functioning body, enshrouded in that fog. Simon has always had trouble expressing anger. But that made him angry.

One ghoul, a very dignified-looking man in an expensive suit, sits in a yellow puddle on a leather couch. He had to go. He could not make the decision on how to deal with the problem without his regnant’s blessing. He seems only mildly embarrassed.

Is that what my shadow intended for me, Jane?





 

 

INTERLUDE:

Into the Parlor



 

When I was a boy, I liked throwing bugs into spider webs. “Step into my parlor,” I’d whisper to each fly, before I ripped off its wings. And when the spider came, if I held my breath, I swear I could hear the fly scream tiny obscenities.

I don’t remember when the world lost its wonder, when everything just turned colorless. It was early on. After they killed Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. Throwing bugs into a web, that gave me some of the wonder back. Then I grew up, and even the parlor lost its wonder.

I saw the hole in the world while driving my route. I used to like my white truck, my white uniform, and the twinkling music that played as I drove. Everyone was so happy to see me.

I hate the music now.

Hate it.

The music was playing when I first saw the hole in the street, bigger than two manhole covers. It went down into a big tunnel—a storm drain, I think. The city set up construction horses around it, but they never seemed to get around to fixing it.

After passing it a few times, I stopped and looked in, and I’m glad I did.

Down in the hole, there’s a spider web. It was so big. I laughed. I cried. I went to a pet shop. I bought a white rat, the biggest they had. I threw it into the web.

“Step into my parlor,” I said and the echo made my voice big.

It wiggled and jiggled the web. Through the hole, I saw something large and dark take the rat, and I felt wonder again.

Then I gave it pigeons.

Then a dead cat.

Then a dog I lured with ice cream.

“Step into my parlor,” I’d say and toss them in. When it was done, all that was left were husks jiggling in the weird, underground wind.

The big dark thing got bigger. And the web got bigger, more intricate and more beautiful. Because of me. I helped build it. I felt wonder. I felt pride. I could do anything. I could even stand up for myself.

Like against Donald. He had been selling ice cream on my route for weeks. So I torched his truck.

Yesterday morning, there was an old homeless woman at the parlor, bent over, staring in the hole. At first I was angry at the bag lady. It was mine. But then I knew what to do.

“Step into my parlor,” I said.

I held my breath and heard her yell big obscenities. Soon, all that was left was a husk.

I’ve come back this morning to put my plan into action—my plan to lure children to the hole with ice cream. I look down into the darkness. The husk is gone. Then I hear something behind me.

I turn around to find another homeless bum watching me.

No.

It’s the same bag lady.

How’d she get out of the parlor?

She’s coming toward me, all shambly, like a child with palsy playing with a puppet. I scramble back, but I trip and fall on my rump at the edge of the hole.

She’s coming closer.

Her eyes are milky. Her skin bulges and writhes in weird places. I hear a voice. Her mouth hangs rubbery and slack, but I hear a voice—many voices—a chorus of high-pitched voices singing in unison from somewhere inside her. They rise, strangely, at the end of her sentences, making everything into a question.

“Step into my parlor?”

Her rubbery mouth yawns impossibly wide and giant arachnid legs reach out and now I see how horrible wonder can be.

“Step into my parlor?”

 

 

 

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.