CHAPTER 10

SCREEEEEEEEAMfeeeeedbackSSSSSSSTATIChissssssssss.

WITNESS—Initiate signal—initiate REM syntax—WITNESS—through blood canals and eardrum pulp—WITNESS—weep—initiate signal birth—dilate black hole, the dead-star womb, event-horizon quim, ravenous, light-sucking vaginal maw—Initiate birth—multi-frequency cries break void—satellite-signal claws shred ebon placenta, invisible wings rip data-weave flesh, kick free of amniotic gravity—crawl, hobble, fly—particle wings flare on solar winds in shrieking void—seraphs sob at infomercial perdition—ORDER NOW!—end pupa—MEGA-SIZE FOR ONLY 49¢!—Initiate signal—Initiate sparagmos cadence—WITNESS—

*   *   *   *   *

“Jane?”

Soft caress of white hands and pumpkin-blood fingernails. Her pixy lips part, about to speak.

“No!”

But Simon can’t stop himself.

Every morning we kill our loved ones.

He decapitates her with the upswing of his eyelids.

Every morning.

Ever mourning.

*   *   *   *   *

“Jane?”

Nothing answers, except for the roiling in his stomach and the apocalypse in his head.

Simon groans.

He tries to grip the specter of Jane and the secrets in the static signal, but they evaporate. Neither can survive long in sunlight and the poison-oxygen of rationality. He remembers them too hard, and they crumble.

Static. Hissing static. The television is on. Simon is on his couch. Voices. But not in the static. It sounds like Dr. Reeves . . . coming from the answering machine. Simon tries to put the words together, something about being terminated. Something about thanking him for all his hard work. Something about “questionable conduct” and “substance abuse” and “if there are any hard feelings, Simon, please remember the talk we had earlier. Remember where the blame will fall. Remember who people will believe. Have an excellent day.”

Simon’s breathing escalates almost to gasps. He has trouble expressing anger and aggressive emotion. Reeves was taking it all away: Simon’s livelihood, his friends, the Dead Water. Your lively hood, your heroine fix, and all your pals from Cheers—gone. Simon jumps to his feet, and makes it to the toilet, just in time to vomit green, lots of green, incredibly green.

Looking in the mirror, Simon realizes he has lost vision in the left eye. Wormwood poisoning. Was it permanent?

Too much, too fast. Eh, Jane?

He hears the hated sound of his own recorded voice on the answering machine: “Subject: Simon Meeks. Please leave a message. Thank you.”

Beep.

“Hi, dear. It’s me. Your father and I are a bit worried about you.”

Bad news traveled fast, apparently.

“We heard from Richard and he says they had to let you go. Something about inconsistent conduct.”

They always called Dr. Reeves, Richard. He was a “friend of the family,” one of his father’s best customers.

“Is everything all right, Simon? I—we—we just wanted to . . . I . . . I know . . . I’m going to ask him. I’m going to ask him—”

Simon hears his father muttering in the background.

“—all right. Dear, your father and I are concerned that you might be into some kind of drugs.” Mr. Meeks mutters something under his breath. “Shhhh. Honey, we still love you, and you can come to us with anything that’s on your mind. Your father even thinks this might be a good thing, getting you out of that morgue. You can get back into cosmetic surgery, deal with nice, living people. But . . . dear . . . your father says you have to get into a good drug program. We love you and we’re here for you, Simon. Please call us back.”

Beep.

Thoughts of severed heads sitting all neatly in their rows, in roaster pans, on the soothing lavender of plastic tablecloth.

The headache is biblical. Simon puts on his glasses, left eye still useless. How much absinthe did he drink? How did he get back home? Memory fragments of falling onto his couch, and through the green mist he can see all his cells—pumping, thinking, multiplying, following primal prerogatives.

Simon opens the blinds. The sunlight slams into his head through his one good eye, rupturing his skull along the fault lines. He falls to the floor, vomiting battery-acid obscenities.

*   *   *   *   *

“This is silly.”

The tears come anyway. They always do. Every time, like it was the first time, like it was a surprise. “Sorry,” Simon says to the latest dead goldfish. The fish only stares, upside down, and offers no opinions, observations, or philosophies. Simon would have begun the normal ritual of flushing and mourning, but a scalpel stuck in the wall catches his eye, that is to say, the one that worked.

And another scalpel.

And another.

Every room has a scalpel—one of his—stuck into the wall. And every room had words and phrases scratched into those walls in surgical scrawl.

Writing on the walls. Eh, Jane?

“Who?” he asks, but Simon knows the answer. He tours each room, each with its dead and decaying plants, victims of his illimitable black thumbs. Each room with a scalpel and writing.

The static signal, Jane. I was their somnambulist. I was the sleep-scrivener.

Jane Doe, written in loving cuts, ran up and down the walls of every room. But there were other phrases and words scratched into the walls, syllables that ignited faint flicker-memories in Simon’s head. Memories of the demon static and that terrible smile.

Simon walks into the bathroom. Scratched in the mirror is:



The Maiden

The Mother

The Crone

Simon walks into his kitchen. Letters scratched into the wall read:

The Hanging Man

The Laughing Man

The Question Man

The Crying Man

Simon walks into his living room. Over the cemetery that is the goldfish bowl, scalpel-written letters read:



Sparagmos

The River of Scabs

Seek Sanctuary!

Obsidian

There are phrases Simon cannot catalogue so easily. There are markings that look to Simon like equations. He does not understand their symbols or meaning, but they seem to have syntax. They do not feel random.

Simon wanders in loops about his house, reading the writing on the walls. His hands play with a deck of cards to quiet his brain, to control the glass shards. He shuffles and cuts—produces and vanishes cards—manipulates cards through the deck—all while reading the writing. With the words come the echoes of the static signal.

Simon knows the four men. As he reads them aloud he names them and plucks the card that feels appropriate.

“The Hanging Man.” Hector, jack of diamonds.

“The Laughing Man.” Joe, jack of clubs.

“The Question Man.” Gabe, jack of spades.

“The Crying Man.” Alex, jack of hearts.

Simon cycles through the jacks and he can almost remember something from the static. Simon turns on the TV, turns up the volume, listens to the snowstorm. Something about “infant necropolis” . . . The Question Man and the Crying Man will . . . turn their bellies into an infant necropolis. Gabe and Alex. Spade and heart. The one-eyed jacks. They—

Then the fragments are gone. Simon remembers them too hard and they crumble into snow static.

Who are the three women?

I had to meet the three women, Jane, to find you.

Simon shuffles through the deck, plucking a card for each.

“The Maiden.” Queen of clubs.

“The Mother.” Queen of diamonds.

“The Crone.” Queen of spades.

Did that leave Jane as the queen of hearts?

Simon shuffles the deck, manipulating and chasing the jacks and queens.

*   *   *   *   *

Simon paces until he cannot pace anymore. Until he cannot peek out the window anymore, looking for the things that are stalking and whispering to him. Until he cannot stand to be in the same building as the thing under his bed, wrapped in oily rags.

The hammer, Jane. I once had a suspected serial killer on my table. He felt like that, inside.

Simon puts on his thrift store black suit, a black necktie, pins a desiccated rose to a tattered lapel, and grabs his hat.

Time to seek sanctuary.

*   *   *   *   *



Strange cards in this fifty-two pickup. Eh, Jane?

“I seek sanctuary,” Simon says because it sounds like the right thing to say.

Quoth the raven, “Nevermore!”

Actually, it is not a raven. It is an African pied crow, its ebony feathers interrupted by a patch of white on the chest. It looks more like a raven than a crow.

Jolly Roger tells Simon all about pied crows. Jolly Roger talks in a charmingly rancid voice, like a Gypsy’s accordion. Simon was told to seek out Jolly Roger.

The shadows and the dreams and the tragically painted people writhe on the dance floor.

“It’s against the law to own native corvids,” says Jolly Roger. “Oh, you can shoot as many as you want. Kill ’em by the hundreds. But the gods forbid you keep one as a pet. Is that daft or what?”

Jolly Roger talks to Simon, from behind the bar, but his eyes rarely leave the dance floor.

“Exotic corvids, on the other hand, are all right. Great birds! Great talkers. Smarter than most primates. They got a nasty sense of humor, too,” Jolly Roger says with a sneer. Half his teeth are gold. The other half are platinum.

The shadows and the dreams and the tragically painted people writhe on the dance floor.

“This one’s name is Byron.”

“Nevermore!” the bird shouts.

“Why didn’t you name him Poe?” Simon asks.

“’Cause he liked Byron,” Jolly Roger says, eyes to the dance floor.

“Death looks gigantically down!” Byron says in a voice with a remarkably deep register for a bird, eerily human and gravelly. Jolly Roger’s shadow-twin voice.

“Nevermore!”

Byron shows off to Simon, bobbing his head, ruffling the feathers on his neck and beak, showing just how very big his wingspan is. The bird shows off with bits of the Poe verses that must have been read to him.

With Byron sitting on his shoulder and his black boots, black peasant shirt, purple bandana, long strands of greasy hair—some strands beaded with little skulls—and silver jewelry, Jolly Roger looks rather dashingly like a Goth-pirate. A strange amalgam of Captain Morgan and Marilyn Manson.

Simon had been told that Jolly Roger knows how to find the Obsidian Sanctuary and that he could be found at Carfax Abbey, a Gothic nightclub near Clark and Belmont.

Jolly Roger fingers his beaded beard and spares Simon a glance. One of those mischievous eyes is glass, a winking smiley face, yellow and glowing under the black lights. The Goth-pirate winks at Simon with his good eye, while his glass eye winks—a disjointed, stereo wink—the kind of sight that could inspire epilepsy in the unhealthy.

A faint scar crosses the missing eye. But Simon has not imbibed much absinthe yet—just enough to soften the edges of things—so he could not read the scar. There was a story there, hunched and ominous.

“Like the hat, mate.” Jolly Roger flashes a gold-platinum smile. “Now, you said something about needing sanctuary. Did your nightlight fizzle out? You seen something?”

“Yes. I . . . yes.”

“Huh,” Jolly Roger says, looking back at the dance floor.

“It writhes!—it writhes!” announces Byron, “with mortal pangs. The mimes become its food, and seraphs sob at vermin fangs in human gore imbued.”

“I’m looking for the Obsidian Sanctuary,” Simon says, expecting the music to somehow abruptly stop, for the sound of a needle scraping vinyl to cut the air and every set of eyes in the club to turn and glare at him.

That does not happen.

“Then my heart it grew ashen and sober,” says Byron.

“Easy enough, squire,” says Jolly Roger.

“As the leaves that were crisped and sere—” continues Byron.

“It isn’t that big a secret,” says Jolly Roger.

“As the leaves that were withering and sere,” concludes Byron.

Jolly Roger hands Simon a flier.

“Just go to the tattoo parlor across the street and ask for Nyx. She’ll sort you out,” says the macabre buccaneer. “She helps organize the Sanctuary. Can’t miss her. Real character. In fact—” Jolly Roger leans in and Simon’s world is eclipsed by gold-platinum teeth “—they say she’s the daughter of an incubus. You know, a sex demon.”

All the strange cards in my fifty-two pickup, all with strange mythologies. Eh, Jane?

“Incidentally,” says Jolly Roger. “What started your problem?”

“A woman,” answers Simon.

“Ain’t that the way. What’s her name?”

“Jane Doe.”

“Heh, heh, heh. Right. You keep your mysteries then, squire.”

“And much of Madness, and more of Sin, and Horror the soul of the plot,” offers Byron.

“One more thing,” says the Goth-pirate, “I—”

“Death looks gigantically down!” interrupts Byron.

Jolly Roger shifts back to watching the dance floor, still with his crooked grin, but his one good eye is serious. Simon watches him watching. He watches the dancers on the floor the way a lifeguard watches children in the ocean.

Simon turns to leave, but Byron hops down from his perch and onto the bar next to Simon.

“There is no exquisite beauty,” says the bird, then pausing as if forgetting the rest, “without some strangeness in the proportion.”

“Thank you, Byron,” says Simon, quietly. Absently he picks up a black feather from the bar before he turns and leaves Carfax Abbey.

INTERLUDE:

The Riddle

It’s just a publicity stunt. No one really dies.

But 3:00 A.M. kind of exists in its own twilight dimension, you know? You’ll believe in the weird at 3:00 A.M. You’ll believe a riddle can kill.

I need out of here. Gotta get out of this third-shift convenience store bullshit. Sandwiches! Ugh. If I have to make one more greasy sandwich for an angry pack of drunks. Card one more kid. Listen to one more person yell at me because he wants booze ten minutes after I lock it up. I can’t deal with the people that blow in at 3:00 A.M. like used-up cigarettes. You know?

Need out of here. Maybe go back to school. Maybe I’ll write that comic book I’ve been thinking about. Or maybe I’ll just solve the riddle.

No one dies. It’s just a publicity stunt. Everyone knows that.

She comes in at 3:00 A.M. exactly. She calls herself the Sphinx. Doesn’t matter what station you’re on, there’s just hissing and static and she’s there. She abducts our radios. Must use some kind of voice changer, too, because she doesn't sound natural. Her voice is alien and deep and sweet. The kind of voice that’d lead a ship onto a reef. You know?

Her poetry, it’s freaky, surreal— insane, even—like experimental shit, like performance art weird. I once saw this girl who did live paintings, on stage, with her menstrual blood, and that wasn’t as weird. And those noises in the background—things you can’t quite identify. Scary, but kind of sensual, too, in a primordial way, like two giant squids fondling each other in an ink cloud.

Then, after her freak poetry riff, she gives the audience a riddle. She says the first caller with a correct answer will win “the ultimate prize.” The price of failure, she warns, is death. Every night she comes on. Every night someone calls in, and they always give the wrong answer, and their phone line cuts out, suddenly, and there’s a godawful noise, then static, then, like, your regularly scheduled radio music.

Just a publicity stunt, viral marketing dressed up like airwave pirating.

No one dies.

I need a way out. I’m not going back to school . . . am I? I don’t write anymore. I don’t read. Fuck, I don’t even watch DVDs. Just veg between shifts and broke-down circadian rhythms. The easier it gets making sandwiches, the more of a zombie I become, the more like these other walking, 3:00 A.M. husks. I need a way out. I guess at 3:00 A.M. a lot of people do.

She’s on right now. Her pseudopod-sex voice is addressing just me, like when the eyes in a painting follow you in a room.

She asks a riddle.

I know the answer to this one! I’m sure of it. I pick up the phone and dial.

Her voice.

It could lead a ship onto the jagged rocks.

CHAPTER 11

“When the pain comes, squeeze this,” she says to the young woman in the chair. “I know the usual phrase is ‘bite the bullet.’ Around here, we just say, ‘squeeze the rubber dildo.’”

She says her name is Nyx.

She says the dildo’s name is Bob.

She says Bob is the most statistically common name for an imaginary friend.

“Oh,” Simon says, and shivers.

“Nyx is the goddess of night and the daughter of Chaos,” she says, “riding through the skies on her chariot, spreading primordial darkness, making Zeus wet his pants.”

She gives a “hear me roar” kind of smile while whirling Bob above her head dexterously. Simon cannot help but imagine that, with a pair of dildos, Nyx could be quite deadly, her spinning rubber-member nunchucks fending off wave after wave of ninjas. Despite himself, he cannot help but find the odd, perverse image endearing.

When Simon first saw her, as he entered the tattoo and body mod shop, the Corbies jerked alert, squawking, “The Maiden!”

The Maiden. Nyx, queen of clubs.

She is a twenty-something jingle of piercings and enthusiasms. Her hair juts out in several directions, like an exotic plant, alternating in black and red. Purple lips and purple accents and black and black and black. Her mascara and eye shadow are layers of indigo and purple. The rubber soles of her boots rise several inches, the heels are rubber skulls, and the boots transition into purple spider web socks that transition into purple, torn fishnets, which transition into her black skirt. Small of frame, but strongly built, athletic.

“I’m looking for the Obsidian Sanctuary,” Simon had said.

“Oh? Got something under your bed?” Nyx asked.

Simon nodded.

“Jolly Roger send you?”

Simon nodded.

“Did Byron poop on you?”

Simon shook his head, and she giggled.

“Like the hat and suit. Where’d you get them?”

“Thrift store.”

“Cool.”

Simon blushed. A compliment. Twice in one day and he still did not know how to respond to them.

She told Simon she’d take him to the Sanctuary herself, if he didn’t mind waiting while she finished with her last customer. “Some people are squeamish about needles and blood and stuff.”

Simon said it would not be a problem.

Nyx began talking and talking and talking. She turned out to be a font of strange factoids, and Simon, sensing a kindred spirit, found himself enjoying her company, dizzying though it was.

“Bob helps us point out all the wonderful places a dude can get his wee-wee pierced,” Nyx says. “We also let customers squeeze down on Bob during a tattoo. It’s, you know, cathartic. A little fringe benefit we give the ladies. Truth be known, about one in five guys don’t seem to mind, either.”

Simon thinks of the evil hammer living under his bed.

“Got Bob?” asks Nyx.

The customer holds up the length of rubber.

“Want to hear a limerick about a dildo and a bloody hammer?” the Corbies ask into Simon’s inner ear. He ignores them.

The customer points to one of Nyx’s many tattoos—a stylized glyph just below her right collarbone.

“This tattoo? Oh no. You don’t want this tattoo.”

She touches the body ink with a forefinger and maybe there is something in her eyes. Simon has trouble telling, so he looks at the expressions of the finger and the hand, and, yes, there is a story, a pain, a hurt behind that tattoo. Scars unseen.

“It’s a rune,” Nyx says to her customer. “An old symbol for the incubus—a male sex demon that creeps through the windows, at night, and forces itself on women. Yeah, you don’t want that . . .”

The Corbies whisper factoids and incubus lore into Simon’s eardrums. He leafs through Nyx’s sample art book—pages of Halloweenish delights.

“A tribal rope?” Nyx says to the customer, despair and disappointment oozing across her words like smeared mascara. “Well, no . . . there’s nothing wrong with it, exactly. It’s just that Steve-o’s our tribal rope guy, and he’s out and—okay, I have to say it: asking for one’s like going into a guitar shop and asking the instructor to teach you ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ Everyone wants a fucking tribal rope.”

She talks cheerfully with the customer but steals a glance and a flashes a goofy face at Simon—mimes hanging herself. Simon smiles and looks down.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Nyx says. “‘Stairway to Heaven’ is a good song and Steve-o’s a good guy. He was born on St. George’s Eve. According to Romanian villagers, he’s doomed to rise from the grave as a vampire. ’Course, lots of ways to hit that pitfall: conceived on a holy day, born the seventh son of the seventh son, mother didn’t eat enough salt—or too much salt—born with teeth already erupted, an extra nipple, excess hair, two hearts . . .”

The Corbies whisper to Simon, urge him to join the purple blitzkrieg of Nyx’s banter, but he does not budge.

“Come on, Simon!” the Corbies say.

“Shhh,” Simon hisses, too loudly.

Nyx and the customer look up. Simon freezes with the expression of Fatty Arbuckle caught in an erotic birthday cake shop and a finger full of frosting. He shrugs and continues exploring the ink shop.

“You’re really set on the tribal rope?” Nyx asks, turning back to the customer. “All right. You’re the chick with a rubber dick in your mitt. Who am I to argue? Just lie back.”

Buzzing and needles and ink.

Simon watches intently.

It would not be so very long, Jane, before I used a similar tattoo gun on one of the men who hurt you.

“When were you born?” Nyx asks the woman as she works. “Christmas? No kidding? Children born at sermon time on Christmas can see spirits. Am I serious? Well, it’s peasant folklore. They took it pretty seriously. Then again, some of the beliefs sound pretty silly. Get this: Yugoslavian Gypsies believe that pumpkins left out to rot too long will—”

“Turn into vampires,” Simon and the Corbies finish. Though, to be fair, it is doubtful, sincerely doubtful, that anyone else heard the ghost crows.

“Yeah,” Nyx says, pleasantly surprised. “Huh.” The buzzing commences. “My landlord says that stuff’s all horseshit. But then, his dad had a uni-brow, which means he’s doomed to be a werewolf.”

The customer laughs.

“I don’t know what my father’s eyebrows looked like.” Nyx’s eyes go distant for a moment. “There are worse things than not knowing your father.”

Simon notices the look. “Remember that,” say the Corbies. “That’s important!”

Buzz.

“You know,” say the purple lips, “it’s funny—you choosing this symbol because you thought it was pretty. Back in the nineties, I think it was Reebok, released a line of women’s running shoes. They wanted to go with the whole strong, independent woman shtick. Without further research, they selected the name Incubus off a list of possibilities, because it sounded nifty-keen and it wasn’t trademarked.”

The buzzing ceases.

“Lean right just a little. Good.”

Buzz.

“So, later, after shipping the shoes, it came to their attention that the name on thousands of boxes of running shoes for strong, independent women, is the name of an evil, anthropomorphic male force that pounces on sleeping females, crushing and tormenting and defiling their victims, spiritually and physically.”

Nyx giggles.

“That had to be one hell of a memo! So, yeah, the Incubus running shoe was recalled. I bet Nike had a good laugh. I wonder if my high school gym teacher ever had a pair. She was born with a caul, which means she’s immune to drowning and evil spirits.”

Simon leafs through a bookshelf stacked with old issues of Playboy, biker magazines, comic books, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

“Now, according to the Malleus Maleficarum—that’s the Inquisition’s witch-hunting guidebook,” says the Nyx, “an incubus can reproduce. But it’s a process. See, the female demons—the succubi—seduce men and take their semen, and then transport it to an incubus, who goes and seduces a woman and implants it in her. Systematic demonic semen shipping—DSS. Wrap your mind around that shit job. Legions of demons waking up Monday morning saying, ‘God, if I have to deliver one more load of jizz . . .’”

The buzzing ceases.

Mutual girl laughter.

Buzz.

“So, yeah,” Nyx says, “the devil takes the sperm of wicked men and corrupts it further. According to the book, the children are born as half-demonic things. Children of monsters are monsters.”

Buzzing ceases.

“Hey, Simon! Can you stop all that jabbering for five minutes? I can’t concentrate on my work.” Nyx curls her purple mouth.

Simon smiles back.

“I’m going to get you to open up. You have no choice. I’m too, too ultra-charming.”

Buzz.

The customer says something.

Buzzing ceases.

“What? Goth? I hate limiting myself with labels like that. I mean, Goth’s not a bad label, but then people box you in with all the label’s negatives and suddenly you have to wear black lace and envy the dead. I just like wearing black, sometimes lace.”

Buzz.

“Now, I like Gothic. Gothic is like . . . seeing through bullshit thanks to a pair of purple shades. Shelley, Poe, Ann Radcliffe. Those are some of the oldies, but then, in the nineties, Gothic claws out of the ground into pop culture. The Big Bang came when Silence of the Lambs won best film—BAM!—now King and Rice rule the shadow realms of the genre as Hades and Persephone. Like a demon stud, Hitchcock spawns illegitimate children from the grave: Quentin Tarantino, John Carpenter, M. Night Shyamalan, the Coen brothers. Now it’s vampires and zombies and chainsaws, oh my! And Dorothy is wearing a black vinyl corset, combat boots, and a safety pin through her cheek, the Yellow Brick Road’s been twisted by Burtonesque vibes, and the Wizard of Oz just got shivved in the prison showers.”

Simon and the Corbies pause, stunned by the volume of verbosity.

“I’m not just talking horror novels and slasher flicks. Gothic has seeped into everything and painted it black—political discourse, local news. Most of TV is built around serial killers, repressed memories, molesting priests, celebrity murder trials. Quoth the raven, ‘O.J. did it!’”

The Corbies laugh.

“It’s a genre that says the past possesses. You ever watch Oprah? Talk show queen? No, no, no. Goth queen. She is the freaking ideal! Forget all those little kids in white makeup reading cutesy suicide poems and waxing Byronic between shifts at the bookstore. At least half the time she’s the real deal—the dark prophetess of fate, eating fat-free desserts in an ebony castle in the sky.

“Just turn her show on. If you hit it right, Oprah will be setting the stage and painting grand, Gothic epics full of villains and victims. True to form, the victims are sublimely innocent, easy prey. The villains seem to embody all that is evil. Then we learn they too were victims, once upon a time. Their evil becomes inevitable. If you were molested as a child, you’ll be a molester in turn. No way out. Sins of the father. The children of monsters are monsters.

“Oprah can be fatalistic in a way that would give Edgar Allan Poe a boner. And what do you do with that kind of a Conqueror Worm but spread the seed. Now every channel has a daytime ring master parading legions of freaks and deviants—all misunderstood phantoms of trailer-park rock operas. Many of them are addicted to drugs or sex or abuse—‘addicted’ being our modern word for the Gothic term ‘haunted.’ I prefer ‘haunted.’ It’s more romantic.”

Nyx affects a proper British accent. “The needle-tracked heroine was haunted by heroin.”

All the while the buzzing has continued, an insistent drone that only seems loud in those rare instances when Nyx pauses. And those never last long.

“I once read an online rumor that claimed our talk show empress was born with an extra nipple. You know what that means?” Nyx makes a fangs gesture with her fingers and the customer laughs.

“But Oprah has another mask. One minute she’s the priestess of fate, the next she’s advocating transcendence: ‘I was a welfare daughter just like you. How did you let yourselves become welfare mothers? Why did you choose this?’ So now the Gothic doom haze has blown off and you can change your fate. Now it’s the angel craze, self-empowerment programs, the inner child movement, Tae Bo. ‘Self-transformation is as easy as a fairy tale wish. Just click those ebony slippers and repeat after me!’”

Nyx clicks her heels.

“Gothic pessimism or New Age transcendence—which is it Oprah? I never thought about it before, but she’s actually a lot like that guy in the tabloid, the Vegetarian Cannibal. He’s two things at once, too. Chai tea and blood in one serving. I bet his power animal is a lemur. I bet he’s very polite when he’s not killing someone. I bet he has a ponytail.”

As it would turn out, Jane, he did.

“Lordy, lordy! Even the great serial killers have gone flakey.”

The buzzing continues.

The Obsidian Sanctuary awaits.

*   *   *   *   *

When Simon first enters the Obsidian Sanctuary, a silent little girl with streaks of white in her hair is the first to approach him. She looks at him with heartbreak eyes for a very long time. Everyone watches the little girl the way miners watch a canary.

When she flings herself into Simon, hugs him, he flinches before accepting. Only when she’s embraced him does everyone else relax. A little bit.

The little girl’s name is Robin. A very bad thing happened to her, Jane. A very bad thing.

Simon had heard rumors about the Obsidian Sanctuary, read about them on the Internet. While all sources agreed that the group operated out of the Belmont and Clark area, few sources agreed on the nature of the subversive organization. Were they a gang of Goths and punks? A demonic cult? A paramilitary operation?

“We teach radical individualism along with group cohesion,” Nyx said automatically—a practiced phrase. “We teach self-defense, street smarts, and urban survival. We also prepare for . . . special dangers.”

Simon had heard about the “special dangers,” heard that the Sanctuary knew something about the city’s preternatural dangers. The word “monster” is never used, but seems to hang at the tip of everyone’s tongue.

We don’t say “cow;” we say “beef.”

We don’t say “monsters;” we say “special dangers.”

We cope.

Simon did not know what to expect. Maybe a group of people with crosses and stakes and automatic weapons. Maybe rows of occult books and secret maps. Simon did not expect a support group for the Weird.

“Hello, my name is Anne.”

“Hello, my name is Jessica.”

“Hello, my name is Dave.”

“Hi, Dave,” everyone says in unison. Tonight is “witness” night, Nyx says. Different nights brought different meetings and activities, but witness nights allowed this odd collection of people to tell their stories, stories they might be afraid to tell their families.

“All my children wake up screaming in the middle of the night, missing locks of hair. . . .”

“In just a week, all the dogs in my neighborhood vanished. . . .”

“Every . . . every time I turn out the lights, light my scented candles—in the tub, this—this face always appears between my legs. . . .”

And so our hero finds himself in a crowd of misfits in the basement of a church. They were the counterculture kids, the Goths, the straightedge punks, and sprinkled in were souls of all ages, all types—shivering people, people that startled easily, people that hardly moved and stared like shut-off television sets. There were some who wanted attention, wanted to tell someone about their psychic gifts or their abduction stories, and still others who smirked and looked like they enjoyed the free entertainment and coffee.

“Hello, my name is Nick.”

“Hello, my name is Dori.”

“Hello, my name is Rob.”

Strange cards in my fifty-two pickup. Eh, Jane?

Though Simon had just walked in, off the busy streets of a brightly lit, modern city, where everyone walked about casually, shopping, dining, socializing—down here everyone huddled together as if around the lone fire of a tiny medieval camp, afraid of the things that skulked beyond the light. They saw eyes and teeth in all the cracks, shadows, and indefinite shapes of the world. Simon saw only Jane.

“Hello, my name is John.”

“Hi, John.”

“Mother Hubbard!” That’s what passes for a whispered curse from Simon as the fifty-two cards in his deck fly everywhere, in mid-shuffle. There at the front of the room, there amidst the glimmering galaxy of piercing and the disenfranchised youth, hulks a round, fat, grizzled sphere of incongruity: Officer John Polhaus. The ace of bullies. The gun-carrying, meat-eating, conservative, hippie-slaying, eccentric-bashing John Polhaus.

What was he doing on the Island of Misfit Toys, Jane?

Was he here to bust or beat down the kids for being subversive, weird, or “heinously queer”? Had he followed Simon just to torment him, take his lunch money?

No. He’s telling a story, bearing witness. The guy next to Simon whispers that Polhaus has been coming for years, and that he has some of the freakiest stories to tell.

“Mother Hubbard!” whispers Simon again.

“Oooooooo, dropping H-bombs,” cackle the Corbies.

Simon does not hear Polhaus’s story. He’s too shocked, too jarred, too busy picking up the cards, trying to make sense of it all. He picks up the joker only to flash back to the clown face and the demon static. He shivers.

Clap.

Clap.

Clap.

Polhaus sees Simon. For the rest of the meeting he eyes Simon threateningly.

It was like I was back in high school again, Jane.

The sharing of tales transitions into guided meditation. Inner sanctums, power images and animals, balls of light, opening chakras, everything. Polhaus does not close his eyes, does not meditate. He only watches Simon, meditates on Simon, and Simon is certain he can feel an angry force trying to squish his head.

Simon closes his eyes.

There is no reason to meditate to find power objects and animals. The tree and the Corbies are always there. They peck open all his bloody chakras.

“Imagine a ball of blue light in your chest,” says the meditation leader. “Allow that light to expand and flood from your body, growing in radius exponentially.”

Simon imagines a ball of light in his chest cavity, imagines his finger turning into a scalpel, slicing a Y-incision in himself to release the light. What would Simon find if he read his own entrails?

“Now strengthen that light, that pure, blue light. See the shadows disintegrate under it. Imagine the light holding back the night, keeping all malevolent influences at bay.”

My shadow laughed, Jane, when I told him about the meditation.

Then Nyx is talking. Her purple lips are as good at public oration as they are at personal banter—the queen of the Island of Misfit Toys. She thanks everyone. She says how proud she is of everyone’s strength. She tells them of upcoming meetings, self-defense training nights, urban survival lectures, parazoology discussions.

“Man, she’s hot,” says the guy next to Simon. He mentions how Nyx helps run the Sanctuary. He whispers that she used to be in the military, if you could believe it, stayed just long enough to learn a few things. He murmurs how they say she’s the daughter of an incubus. That’s why she knows about “them.” That’s why she helps other people. Her mom was the victim of a monster.

Simon nods.

“We have a newcomer,” says Nyx. Simon’s stomach drops.

“We should all congratulate him for being brave enough to come out tonight. I get the feeling he really needs someone to talk to. I also get the feeling that he’s not going to volunteer his story unless we drag it out of him with chains and a pack of Clydesdales.”

Nyx looks out into the audience and catches Simon’s eyes. She smiles and lightens the tone by adopting the voice of a game show host. “No, he’s not the ghost of Buster Keaton. Simon Meeks come on down!”

Everyone claps.

Simon gets up. Breathes. Feels the squeeze of hyperventilation. He wonders if he can make it out the door, if he can run fast and just face the shadows and the night on his own.

Most people fear public speaking over death, Jane.

Simon walks to the front of the room, hands jittering. He feels sick with the Dead Water shakes. He needs to cut into a cadaver. He needs Jane.

“Hello,” Simon says and the feedback in the mic screams the obscenities he cannot.

Everyone is watching. Polhaus stares. Nyx gives him an encouraging look.

Then the Corbies come to the rescue, all murmuring at once. Something builds in Simon’s chest—something below the fear—something he did not realize was there—a need.

“Hello, my name is Simon . . .”

And the dam breaks.

“. . . and I’m addicted to the dead.”

“Hi, Simon.”

Then, he tells them everything.

Everything.



*   *   *   *   *

How long had he been talking?

Simon’s throat feels cotton and cracked.

They all sat through it. All of them. Silent. They sat through Simon’s explanation of his job, of the Dead Water, his patients, Jane Doe, Dr. Reeves, Jane’s disappearance, the oddities that followed, everything.

Simon feels relieved and weak and spent, like an empty tube of toothpaste. He squeezed out all the pent-up words he’d hoarded away in his lifetime of socializing with corpses.

Now Simon waits for what he knows is coming: the reaction. He waits for the crowd to edge away, for someone to say, “Freak!”

Silence.

Clap.

Clap.

Clap.

Applause?

This is where the Omega Misfit finds acceptance. With no transition, Simon is in the center of a vortex of people. They’re all talking, yelling, congratulating, asking questions. All of them are excited and encouraging. Many of them are in tears.

I didn’t know at the time, but they cried for you, Jane.

All the voices. Everyone talking. Simon tries to smile and acknowledge each face, but he’s drowning in all the voices.

“You’re among friends, man!”

“Do you think you really talk to the spirits? Do you practice necromancy? I have books that—”

“Do you know more about them? You have to know more!”

“Could you examine my husband’s body if I get it exhumed?”

No fishes or loaves, Jane. I had no fishes or loaves for them. Only sharp things and chemical imbalances.

Simon nods. He starts many sentences, but does not finish any. The pressure builds again. He tries to breathe.

“Oh, man. Moses had the burning bush, and you got a glowing clown face,” says one voice.

“Dude, you said burning bush!” says another. They give each other five.

Someone else gives Simon five, a ritual he had never practiced.

All the voices. Everyone’s talking. Across the room Polhaus is arguing politics with the counterculture kids, but his eyes are on Simon. All the voices and Simon drowns in them.

But Simon knows many vanishes.

In fact, it is quite some time before everyone realizes the dapper young scarecrow is gone.

*  *  *  *  *

Knock-knock.

A door opens into darkness.

“Hey, you,” says Nyx.

“Hi,” says the shy darkness.

“We were wondering where you had gotten off to.”

“It is more than probable that I suffer agoraphobia, and many other things besides,” says the darkness.

“Oh.” Nyx bites her lower lip, a gesture so powerfully endearing she could not even guess. “I talked it over with the troops. I think we can help you.”

Silence.

“We can talk about that later,” she offers. “You probably want to be alone right now—”

“Yes,” says the overeager darkness.

“Mind being alone with me?”

Not waiting for an answer, Nyx slides into the closet and closes the door.

Blackness.

Crack.

A green glow stick illumines the small space, revealing Simon, huddled, rocking back and forth, arms wrapped about his knees, hat hiding most of his head.

The green glow reminds Simon of the Dead Water, and it calms him. Nyx sits back, waving the glow stick like a wand.

“You sure can pick the spots,” she says.

Simon looks out from under his hat, revealing his glasses and eyes.

“You’re not used to the group scene, are you?” she says.

“Oh-no-no-no, lady. He’s a murder of one,” cackle the Corbies. Nyx does not hear it.

Nyx slides closer to Simon. He can feel her warmth next to him.

“Why don’t we pop that personal space bubble?” Nyx says in a mischief-whisper, plucking Simon’s hat from his head. Simon flinches, snatches the hat back without thinking.

“Wow,” says Nyx. “You’re fast.”

“Sorry.” Simon swallows and hands her the hat through force of will.

“Coolest. Hat. Ever.” Nyx puts it on her head.

“Thank you.”

“Simon, don’t bolt.”

“What—”

“You’re thinking about bolting.”

“I—”

“Don’t.”

Simon sighs.

“You’ve been through a lot lately,” she says. Simon feels her hand creep under his unruly hair. It caresses and rubs the back of his neck where his skull kisses his spine. Simon’s head lolls. His eyes flutter a bit.

“One thing I know, Simon: With all of them out there, you can’t go it alone. You need the pack. And not just for safety.”

She rubs Simon’s neck and he thinks again of that touch experiment—the shivering baby monkey with the wire milk feeder, and how it leapt into the arms of the soft puppet when finally given the chance.

“Our fears,” says Nyx, “pick us off when we’re alone.”

“You’re a bit of a mother hen,” says Simon.

Nyx grins from under his hat. “Around these parts, they call me Mama Bear.”

The hollow steel rods of Simon’s frame loosen.

“Besides, Simon, with our little group, you can rest at ease in the knowledge that we know how important it is to smash pumpkins after Halloween.”

The laughter escapes Simon’s throat in ragged spurts.

“See,” says Nyx, “told you. You had no choice but to open up to me. I’m way too freaking charming.”

Simon and Nyx stay in the closet till dawn, sharing morbid trivia, from pumpkins to cadavers—theories on Oprah and how the media is trying to turn consumers into cannibals.

Simon even shows Nyx some shadow puppets.

*   *   *   *   *

Simon walks away from the corner of Belmont and Clark. In the predawn, everything is blue. The sleepy Corbies roost, not paying attention, and Simon doesn’t notice the giant hands until they grab him and slam him into the brick wall.

“Hey, Boo Radley.”

Simon’s arms twist painfully behind. Face still pressed into the bricks, he feels and hears the handcuffs click into place.

“Fucking Ghoul, had to come fucking here!”

Simon feels himself pulled back and slammed into the wall again. He can hear, feel, and smell the presence of Officer Polhaus behind him. The ace of bullies.

“Officer Pol—”

Slam.

“Shut up! Listen, Boo, you’re going to tell me why you’re here or I’m gonna paint graffiti with your face. Why are you creeping about?”

“I don’t know what—”

Slam.

“Cut the shit! My whole fucking life I’ve found you ghouls creeping at the edges of things. My whole fucking career you ghouls have been lurking around me. I’m still on the beat because—” Polhaus breathes heavily, voice cracking. “After the shit at the morgue, do you think I’m gonna let you taint the Sanctuary? I wanna know what brought you here. What’s the plot? Who do you fucking serve?”

The movements come to Simon without thought. His mind pillages the rehearsed slapstick routines, edits and splices the actions together in a new order, a new reel. Simon’s right foot kicks back, curling in behind him. The heel bashes deep into Polhaus’s genitals. Pain and surprise bring the big man back a step, giving Simon a few inches of space between him and the bricks. It’s enough. Shoulders pressed in to the cop’s chest, Simon runs up the wall until he is crouched, parallel to the ground, feet on the bricks and knees pressed tightly to his chest. Then Simon leaps straight off the wall. His wiry strength sends Polhaus back.

The big man loses his balance and crashes back with a thud. Simon falls against him. In the same motion he rolls backward, over Polhaus’s body, in a reverse summersault, ending back on his feet.

In the time it takes Officer Polhaus to rise, Simon leaps up, raises his knees, passes his arms under his feet, and brings his cuffed hands in front of him.

The corpulent cop’s eyes widen, perplexed at the antics of this mad mime. The Corbies shout methods for poking out an attacker’s eyes, but Simon runs off at breathless, silent-film speeds.

“Dammit,” says Polhaus as he chases after. “Simon!”

Simon turns a corner and vanishes.

By the time Polhaus gets there, all he finds in the lonely alley is an empty set of handcuffs.

“Shit.”

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.