Next of Kin

by Dan Wells

  The killer was one of the Gifted.

  It was no surprise the police hadn’t seen anything, for this Gifted had been careful to leave no trace. Frank hadn’t recognized the dark, slick tendril reaching out from the folds of the man’s scarf, but I did. It was like a twig of withered soul, black as the pit of Hell, and it reached through Frank’s mouth and down his throat to pierce his heart. If someone got suspicious enough to do an autopsy—and somehow convinced the state that a nameless drifter was worth the money—they’d find his inner organs sliced or ground or pureed, maybe even missing completely. I knew the method as surely as I knew my own, the knowledge coming not from Frank’s memory but from my own. There were too many holes in it to recall the details—too many thousands of lifetimes to ever have hope of keeping them sorted. I didn’t know who this Gifted was, but I knew what he did, and I knew how. And I was deeply, unfathomably terrified.

  I pondered on Frank’s killer for the rest of the night and all the next day, too agitated to sleep. There weren’t supposed to be any other Gifted in this area—I had chosen my home based on solitude as well as sustenance. The more I thought about it, the more I focused my newly heightened thoughts on the image of the killer, the more certain I became that Billy Chapman had seen the same man right before he died. He’d fallen on the ice, already unconscious by the time the monster took him, but he had seen him first, in the darkened streets and in the bar before that. This was not a pair of random deaths, and it was not an errant killer passing through. There was a monster stalking our shadows, gaining in power and boldness, and the deepest dungeons of my rat-gnawed mind cried out in horror at his coming.

  I thought about going to the police, but what would that accomplish? I couldn’t tell them what was happening without looking crazy, and I couldn’t tell them how I knew about it without looking crazy and dangerous. I’d lose my job at the very least and face stiff fines and charges at the worst, possibly even ending up in jail. Either way, I’d lose access to the memories I needed to fuel my mind. In prison, I’d have to kill or lose my memory completely, a harrowing experience that could last decades and risk exposing my secrets to the world. If I lost my job, I’d have to leave town, and who knows how long it would be before I could find another ready source of memories.

  Besides, I couldn’t risk leaving, because that would mean leaving the killer alone with Rosie. I loved her more—

  —Billy loved her more—

  —I didn’t know how to think. I hadn’t seen the people I remembered, up close and in person, in years. In centuries, maybe. I had grown complacent, letting my careful measures grow lax; now I’d seen Rosie, and I couldn’t leave her. I loved her as much as Billy ever had, for all his love was mine now, but now that I’d seen her, I loved her too, myself, whatever shreds of me remained inside the scattered library of my brain. Leaving her alone—with a killer on the loose—was unthinkable.

  Protecting her, I knew, would be just as bad.

  Part Five

  I don’t know if I arranged my next meeting with Rosie or not. I didn’t actively try to find her, but I didn’t try to avoid her, either. I knew where she lived, and where she worked, and where she shopped; I knew all her friends and her relatives. These things and more were the cold remnants of a life that wasn’t mine, but that didn’t make them any less prominent in my memory. I could have gone to her gym, but I didn’t; I could have followed her on her runs through the park, but I didn’t. I’m not a stalker. But we shopped at the same grocery store, and I didn’t change this habit, and sooner or later, perhaps inevitably, we met again.

  She spoke to me this time, in the pallid light of the bright fluorescent bulbs. “Hi.”

  I looked up, not surprised or resigned or scared or sad but somehow all of them at once. I tried to hide it. “Hi.”

  “Are you all right?” she asked. She was always so concerned about people. “I saw you in here last month.”

  “I remember.”

  “You looked . . .” She paused. “I don’t know, like maybe you needed help. Is there . . . anything wrong?”

  Everything and nothing, I thought. I smiled, but only faintly, for I knew that everything I was doing was wrong. “That’s very kind of you,” I said. “I’m fine, though.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t want to pry, and I know it’s none of my business, but . . .” She hesitated. “Well, I just lost someone very dear to me, and when I saw your face, I thought . . . well, I guess I thought I recognized something.”

  I clenched my teeth, biting down on the joy that threatened to burst up through my chest—that she knew me, that she remembered me—but I knew that couldn’t be true, and I waited for the next words that tumbled out in a helpless rush.

  “I thought I recognized a little of myself,” she said, “of my grief, I guess you could say, and I thought maybe here was somebody else going through the same kind of pain I was going through, and maybe he had someone to share it with and maybe he didn’t, and I’m certainly not a poster child for quality grief management, but at least I have someone to talk to, I have my sisters and my parents and my in-laws, and maybe I’m completely off base with this and I’m seeing things that aren’t there, and you’re probably wondering who this psycho is that’s trying to dump all this angst on you right here in the produce section, and I’m sorry to even bother you—”

  “I lost someone too,” I said softly. Not just Rosie, but a hundred thousand more. “I’m okay, though,” I said. “I’m not . . . whatever.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Rosie. She could never stop herself from helping any sick neighbor or broken-winged bird that crossed our path, and I felt a sharp pang of guilt that I had somehow arranged this, that I had known her foibles and attracted her on purpose, even subconsciously.

  I nodded. “I’m fine.”

  She looked at me a moment, and I wondered if I had made it through another encounter without ruining my greatest love’s life, and if that meant she was going to leave me now, again, and I cursed myself for wondering which would be worse. Better to ruin my own life a thousand times than to hurt her any more than my death already had. But I didn’t move, and I didn’t speak, and then she did: “Who did you lose?”

  “My wife.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She put a hand on my arm, and I felt myself die all over again. I held myself still, as long as I could, but it was too much, and I pulled away. She looked at me with renewed pain in her eyes. “Do you have other family? Someone to talk to?”

  “I get by,” I told her, but it wasn’t a real answer, and she knew it. She thought for a moment, pursing her lips in that way she does, so familiar I could wrap myself in the gesture like a warm, soft coat.

  “I’m in a counseling group,” she said. “Like a group therapy thing, but not as hippy-dippy as that probably sounds.” She dug in her purse for a card while she spoke but found nothing and finally wrote the address on a scrap of an old receipt. “If you need to talk to someone, about anything, we’d love to have you. Everyone there is so nice, and I think it might—well, I know it’s helped me. It’s still helping me.” She held out the paper. “Please come.”

  I had rules to follow. Traditions that had kept me safe, along with all the people I loved. The lives you take are not yours to live. The people you miss aren’t yours to miss. Don’t talk to them, don’t tell them the truth, don’t tell them anything. Remember them because you have to, but no more. Don’t follow them, don’t hurt them, don’t drag them into the hell of your own impossible life. But there was a killer in town, now—a Gifted, a Cursed, a Withered. I wanted to protect the woman I remembered as my wife.

  I had followed these rules for thousands of years, but I would break them all for Rosie.

  I took the address. “Thanks. I might.”

  Part Six

  “Meshara.”

  I looked up from my puzzle book to see a man standing in the doorway to my small office in the morgue’s garage and two more men behind him in the hall. The word they u
sed was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time; one of the many things I’d learned and forgotten in my vast, patchwork life.

  “I assume that’s a name?” I asked.

  “Typical,” said the man, walking in and sitting down in the other chair. He was improbably handsome, but pulsing with feral power, like a hyena disguised as a god; the kind of killer that could easily bring down a healthy antelope but chose instead to tear the sick ones to pieces. He grinned, showing off his teeth as if to complete the metaphor in my head. “Understandable, though, isn’t it? I think the phrase is: You’ve forgotten more than the rest of us have ever learned.”

  “All of us but Hulla,” said one of the other men. He was taller and broader, with a web of scars across his face that sparked a distant, unformed memory. The third man was whip-thin and silent.

  The Gifted had come for me.

  “Hulla doesn’t even go by that name anymore,” said the first man, leaning back in his chair. “Calls herself ‘Nobody.’ Can you believe it?”

  “Called,” said the second man.

  I sighed and closed my book. “Not all of us like those old names,” I said. “Elijah’s good enough for me.”

  “It shouldn’t be.”

  “I can’t even remember who I was back then,” I said softly. “I certainly can’t remember my name.”

  “Meshara,” he said again. “And I’m Gidri, and this is Ihsan and—”

  “You know I really don’t have any interest in your little . . . Gifted club, or whatever it is.” I shrugged, not really sure what else to say. “I said as much to the last one, whatever his name was, when he came here a few years ago. Forman, I think? Nothing’s changed since then. If anything, it’s changed in the other direction, and I’m less likely to join you now than I was.”

  “Kanta,” said Gidri, “or Forman, as you insist on calling him, is dead.”

  I straightened, feeling the import of his words like a blow to the head. “He is?” I looked at the tall man—Ihsan, Gidri had called him. “And you said . . . Hulla, as well?”

  “And Mkhai,” said Gidri. “And Jadi. And, as of last week, Agarin.”

  “Agarin was . . .” I tried to remember, struggling against the void in my mind. “She was a healer.”

  “In name only,” said Gidri, “and not for centuries. Most recently she worked as a nurse, right here in your own city.” He grinned again, flashing his yellow teeth. “If you’ve picked up any infant bodies from the hospital, you’ve seen her work.”

  I shook my head, sickened by the thought. “I had no idea.”

  “That’s the whole point,” said Gidri. “She was lying low, just like you are, just like all of us are, but that’s not working anymore. They’re fighting back now.”

  “Who is?”

  “The humans.” Gidri said the word with a wicked blend of disgust and excitement, the way one might refer to a dogfight. A creature worth nothing but scorn had surprised him with its competence, and he was practically giddy at the violent implications. He sat up straight in his chair, leaning forward with tightly coiled strength. “They’ve hated us as long as they’ve known about us, or at least as long as they haven’t been worshipping us, but now they’re fighting back—not just one, here and there like they used to, but organized. A concerted effort of extermination.”

  “Kanta organized you first,” I said. “He attracted too much attention.”

  “If it wasn’t for Kanta, we wouldn’t even have known they were hunting us,” said Gidri. “How long have you been alone? How long since any of us had any goals at all beyond our basest instincts to hide and survive? For all we know they’ve killed dozens more—there are still so many Gifted we haven’t even found yet.”

  “Well, you’ve found me, and I’m alive,” I said firmly, reopening my Sudoku book. I glanced nervously at the third man, whose name I hadn’t heard and who had thus far remained silent. He stared back, unmoving, and I looked at my book uncomfortably. “Go back and tell the others I’m fine, and while you’re at it, tell them to leave me alone.”

  “You’re one of us.”

  “In name only,” I said, echoing their description of Agarin. “I’ve always been closer to the humans than to you, even since the beginning.” I looked up. “You keep yourselves apart from them, but I can’t. I know them too well—I’ve been them more than I’ve been myself.” I shook my head firmly. “I wouldn’t join Kanta, and I won’t join you.”

  “They are hunting us,” Gidri hissed. “Do you love them enough to lie down and let them kill you?”

  “I . . .” I started and stopped, unsure what to say. “The more you kill, the more they’ll see of us, and the more they see, the more they’ll hate us. You’re starting a war that can only end one way.”

  “With godhood!” he shouted, slamming his fist on the desk. He lowered his voice and hissed through clenched teeth. “They used to worship us, Meshara—they used to worship you. The god of wisdom, the god of beginnings, the god of dreams. They chanted your name in the darkness, dancing naked around the first fires of the ancient world, and now you’re here, hiding and tired and worthless, as scared of living as you are of dying.”

  “Maybe it’s time for us to die,” I said, though my voice was weak. I didn’t want to, but his description gave me pause. What was I really living for? After thousands of years and the reigns of kings and the rise and fall of civilizations—why was I still here, when I had no plans beyond the next dose of memory? If my only ambition was the absence of death, was that really a life?

  I remembered the hopes and goals and dreams of a numberless host of humans. I remembered nothing of my own. I hadn’t wanted anything for as long as I could remember . . . until Rosie.

  “War is coming,” said Gidri, “whether you want it or not, and with it comes death: yours, or theirs.”

  “You’re talking about the end of the world,” I said.

  “Now you understand,” said Gidri. “Either we die, or we reclaim our place as gods.”

  Ihsan’s voice was deep and ominous. “Guess which one we’re choosing.”

  The third man, sharp-faced and sinister, merely watched me from the corner.

  Part Seven

  “Who’s there?” asked Merrill.

  “It’s me, Elijah. I’m your friend.”

  “I have friends?” He unlocked the door, and his face was etched with worry. “Come in here, where they can’t hear you.”

  I stepped inside, wondering what new paranoia was worming its way through his brain.

  He closed the door quietly, locking it behind him with fumbling fingers. “Do you know where my house is?”

  I gestured around at his room. “This is your home, Merrill.”

  “This place?” He looked at me with wide eyes. “I don’t live here. I live in a house! I need to get back there, or the neighbors’ll start complaining.”

  “There’s nothing for anyone to complain about.”

  “Have you seen the snow out there?” He shuffled to the window, pulling open a gap in the slats of the blinds. “I need to get home and shovel the walks, and these people won’t let me.”

  “Your son is shoveling the walks,” I assured him, though it wasn’t true. His family had sold his old house to help pay for Merrill’s care—augmented secretly by my own payments. It was the least I could do. But I’d learned over the years that any talk of selling his house worried him, even more than not knowing where his house was; there was a link somewhere, buried in his mind, that tied him to the idea of his home more strongly than to the home itself. It was the work, I think, not the bricks or the mortar, but the effort he’d put into maintaining them. As long as he thought someone was taking care of it, he’d eventually forget about the whole thing. Until another snowstorm brought the memory gasping to the surface.

  I sat down, hoping the sight of me relaxing would help him to relax as well. “How have you been, Merrill?”

  “They won’t tell me anything in here, and they won’t let me le
ave.” He looked at me with a mix of suspicion and embarrassment. “Did you say you’re my son?”

  “I’m your friend, Merrill. My name’s Elijah.”

  “Then who’s my son?”

  “Your son is named David.”

  “And he’s taking care of my house?” He could get so fixated on things.

  “Of course he is. Have a seat, Merrill. Tell me about your day.”

  He looked at the door and whispered loudly, “Do you think you could get me out of here?”

  I sighed, but nodded. “Not out of the building, Merrill, you know that, but I can take you for a walk around the halls.”

  “I don’t want to walk around the halls,” he said bitterly. “I don’t even know what this place is.”

  “You live here.” I stood up. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  “And good riddance.” He started fumbling with his jacket—not a heavy coat, like he’d need outside; I didn’t even think he had one. I took the light jacket from him and draped it over my arm.

  “Let me hold that for you.” I opened the door and closed it again behind him as he shuffled out into the hall.

  “I hate this place,” he said, brushing past the red vase on his hallway shelf. He looked at me with a sudden twinkle in his eye, as if the simple act of passing through the door had changed his mood. “Too many old people.” He chuckled, and I laughed with him. We walked down the hall, slowly but smoothly, and waited at the elevator. “Where are we going again?”

  “Just down to the lobby for a walk around the halls.”