Ink

by Jonathan Maberry

  There was no destination in mind, no real plan. He simply drove. Mike lived with his adoptive parents, Crow and Val, out at the Guthrie farm, but town seemed to call to him tonight, and so he drove along Corn Hill. Thinking about things. It was a strange year, and getting stranger. Last winter had been cold and snowy but overall ended without incident. No blizzards, no traffic deaths, no homeless people freezing to death. Spring came late, but when the flowers bloomed they rioted with colors of such drama that it even trended on Twitter. #PineDeepColors and #PineDeepFlowers. Beautiful at first, but the flowers persisted in an odd way. Even cut flowers stayed bright and cheerful for a few weeks. It bothered Mike, because it felt only as real as a clown’s smile, and he was no fan of clowns. Mike was suspicious of anyone who smiled too much or too often. Even Crow, who was a legendary goofball, didn’t go around grinning all the time.

  Spring spilled over into summer like a bunch of drunks falling out of a bar. The flowers stayed bright until that one week when the temperature spiked to over one hundred and just stayed there for day after scorching day. Then everything withered, even those damn flowers. Sports games were canceled left and right, and farmers began to worry about their young crops—both what was already growing and what needed to be planted. You could see heat shimmer up from every stretch of road, and the pavement was too hot to even walk dogs.

  The heat dropped, took a breath, and came back harder than ever. There were a few days where it hit 110 and only dropped into the low nineties at night. Old people on social security skimped on air-conditioning and died in their beds. There were some suicides, too, including a murder-suicide of a pair of newlyweds who set themselves on fire. Hell of a damn way of going out.

  Crime stats shot up, of course, because that’s always worse when it was hot. Mike had to bust some heads here and there. And he started having run-ins with the Cyke-Lones, a biker gang that had settled into that part of eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. That problem hadn’t gone away when the summer finally wound down. If anything, there seemed to be more of them, and Mike knew he’d have to do something about them. That was likely to be messy.

  When fall came, it came big and it brought cool temperatures and rain. A whole lot of rain. The skies always seemed ready for a downpour at the drop of a hat. There was some kind of rain every day or night, and several big storms, like the one that had smashed down last night and seemed to be building tonight.

  Mike drove past the hospital and glanced at it, wondering how that couple, the Duncans, were doing. When he’d last seen the husband he was sitting on the edge of a gurney in the ER scrolling through photos long ago uploaded to his Facebook and Instagram pages. Photos that showed his tattoo. The missing tattoo. The poor bastard kept saying the same two words over and over again.

  I don’t … I don’t…”

  Never finishing the sentence because, really, where could he go with it?

  It was one of two things that day involving tattoos, the other being the old vet. Crazy days, he mused.

  At the corner of Corn Hill and Boundary, Mike turned right and rolled along past stores and clubs. Eyes turned toward him, and he knew that he didn’t fit in here. Not in this world and not anywhere. He was huge, still dressed in uniform pants but with a bomber jacket over it. Not much of a smile because any smile that found its way onto his face rarely stayed. Mike knew that about himself. He was not a smiley kind of guy.

  Eyes followed him, and he knew it. Conversations tended to falter when people became aware of him. He knew that it wasn’t just because he was easy to spot as a cop. No, it ran much, much deeper than that. It was because of who and, more to the point, what he was. Even if they had no trace of a clue, and not many people ever did, they could all sense that they—the collective they—were one species and he was obviously something else.

  Mike was a realist. He accepted that.

  It was one of the reasons he liked the newcomers to town, the people who lived and worked along Boundary Street and the side lanes. The Fringe. They were all outsiders as far as the town was concerned, and none of them seemed even a little apologetic about it. They were who they were, and the level of overall acceptance within their community was huge. Everyone was aware of the strangeness or uniqueness or personal definition of each of the others and took it as normal. That’s what it was. Different was normal in the Fringe.

  That bit of insight made Mike smile.

  There were signs everywhere for the Fringe Festival, and although Mike had to work it, he was hoping to maybe make some friends there.

  He drove on, eventually turning onto a feeder road and following it out of town. Road became road, way turned onto way, and the evening shed its town clothes to become country. Out there the darkness was deeper, the air cleaner, the road empty. It was not safer than town, though. The countryside, especially at night, was so deceptive. So many things could hide in the trees, concealed behind the corners of empty farm buildings, crouched down among the cornstalks, wriggling through the wormy soil of pumpkin patches. And all around the farmlands were the arms of the vast Pinelands State Forest. All those acres where a tourist could get lost within a hundred feet of the road. He knew, because Mike had found some of those bodies.

  Besides, down in Dark Hollow there were shadows so dark they could not be explained by geography or weather. Mike knew all about that kind of darkness, too.

  He drove on, feeling the internal shift move from random to specific as he headed to the farm where he lived. Right there, pressed up against the forest and edge by Dark Hollow Road.

  Home.

  As they whipped past his visor, Mike thought he heard something. A voice?

  He slowed, looking to either side of the road. Nothing. Even when he stopped, cut the engine, and took off his helmet all he could really hear was the wind. Just the night wind. Only the exhalation of a storm hungry to take another bite.

  Only that.

  He sat there, still as a statue for more than two minutes. Doing nothing except listening, trying to interpret what the night was trying to tell him. But if there was a message then it was whispered in a language too strange even for someone like Mike Sweeney to understand.

  The engine came to life and now it did seem to growl. Mike growled, too, low in his throat. He did not like that murmuring wind. Not at all.

  He drove home, feeling as if the night was in close pursuit.

  INTERLUDE FOURTEEN

  THE LORD OF THE FLIES

  Owen Minor moved to Pine Deep and settled in. He enrolled in school, finished his degree, and got a good-paying job. He worked extra shifts in order to save money and vacation days to fly all over the country to attend tattoo conventions. There were a lot of them. Often they were the same people—artists, tattoo junkies, artists’ groupies, a few celebrities—and he cruised the edges of that world. By now he had forty blowflies on his arms and chest and stomach. And one each on his upper thighs whose wings brushed his hairless testicles.

  Owen volunteered his services at the conventions. Very few of the cons had any kind of medical staff on hand, though they should have. Regulations for those events were sketchy, leaving hygiene and first aid up to the individual artists. Most of those artists were conscientious enough to handle things themselves, but things happen. Accidents, newbies who panic when the needle begins grinding, people who bleed too freely. A registered nurse volunteer was a godsend. Everyone was happy to see him. And Owen was always careful about who he touched, and when. He listened to the stories people told as they browsed the various stalls. If they were merely looking for novelty or impulse-buy ink, Owen could not have cared less. Those memories were worse than trying to find decent nutrition by gorging on cotton candy. Empty memories rather than empty calories.

  Patience and paying attention helped him find the right targets. A broken heart, a lost friend, a buried child, failed hopes. Grief, survivor’s guilt, shame, regret, bittersweet nostalgia—those were the choicest cuts. Bloody and juicy.

  He wore
nitrile gloves, but on certain days there were tiny holes in the pad of one or two fingers. Only for a few minutes, only long enough to make a touch. And almost always on the last day, before the con broke up and people scattered back to their lives.

  Owen would also head back home, too. To Pine Deep. To the new Fringe neighborhood that was growing larger and more interesting every day. To his job at Pinelands Regional Medical Center. To that abode of ghost stories and urban legends, of darkness and despair.

  To the only real home he’d ever known.

  76

  Val built a fire while Crow got plates and silverware for the takeout delivered by a soggy, disgruntled Grubhub driver. Indian food spicy enough to eat its way through the cardboard containers.

  He offered to open a bottle of wine for Val, but she shook her head. They were years past the point where she felt obliged to drink nonalcoholic stuff around him, but she rarely drank anyway. She drank spring water and he washed his pork vindaloo and phaal curry down with three bottles of Yoo-hoo.

  Solomon Burke was crying the blues via the Echo speakers, and the fire cast a golden carpet of warmth over them as they ate sitting on the floor. The twins had come home, turned up their noses at what looked way too much like the parents being romantic, and fled upstairs to wait for pizza delivery. Crow overpaid the same driver, now even more bedraggled, and handed over the pizza to the twins, who once more escaped any chance of being around romance. Particularly of the parental kind. Loud hip-hop created an impenetrable barrier to the third floor.

  With the detritus of dinner around them and the logs chuckling in eloquent denial of the storm outside, Val and Crow sat wrapped in a blanket, their backs to the couch, watching the flames dance along the burning cherrywood.

  They talked about a lot of different things. She told him about how her staff was managing to reduce damage from rain and flooding. He told her about Patty Trang and Monk Addison.

  Val’s face went white as paste. “She forgot her own daughter?”

  “At least for now. Argawal said it could be head trauma.”

  Val got up and walked over to the window and stood for a few long moments looking out at the storm-lashed trees. It was warm in the living room but she hugged herself. Crow watched, waiting, knowing where her thoughts had gone. To two small graves under the big oak. To names that Val sometimes could not say out loud. To the iceberg of memories to which her ship of sorrow so often sailed.

  “Whatever it is,” said Crow, “it’ll probably pass. She’ll get her memories back.”

  “What if she doesn’t?” asked Val without turning. Lightning painted her in blue light that made her look like a ghost.

  “Hey, come on, nothing can take away all of her memories. Not sure that’s medically possible. Not for one specific aspect of her life. What she’s going through is probably just the result of alcohol abuse, malnutrition, and some minor head trauma. They scanned her for brain tumors and she was clean. Same for an aneurysm. She’s clean there, so there’s no reason those memories won’t come back.”

  Val looked over her shoulder. “If it was her short-term memory, or recent memories from just before that Monk person took her to the hospital, then that wouldn’t bother me as much. Forgetting memories from all those years ago. Forgetting her little girl … that’s so … so horrible.”

  “Right, right,” said Crow, “but there are a whole bunch of things that can futz with long-term memory. Sleep deprivation, smoking, depression, stress—all of which pretty much describes the Trang woman. Not to mention prescription drugs. Antidepressants, antihistamines, antianxiety meds, muscle relaxants, sleeping pills, tranquilizers, and painkillers. I’d bet you a six-pack of Yoo-hoo she has more than a passing acquaintance with prescription meds.”

  “Mm,” she said, noncommittally.

  “But, like I said … I’m sure those memories will come back,” Crow assured her. He held out his hand and after a moment’s hesitation Val came over, took the hand, kissed it, and sank back down next to him. Crow pulled a big fleece from the couch and wrapped it around them both.

  They were quiet for a bit, during which he could feel her relax by slow degrees. Logs shifted comfortably in the hearth, Then Val came back to the story of Patty Cakes and Monk Addison.

  “Do you think he abused her?” she asked, brow furrowed and jaw set.

  Crow shook his head slowly. “I … really don’t think so. I mean, if you saw the guy you’d immediately put him on some kind of watch list. But I’ve been checking him out and he’s just that kind of mook. A big, scary sumbitch who looks like the kind of guy who does what he does. That said, he has no criminal record, and I got in touch with a couple of cops up in New York. This one detective, Anna-Maria Martini, had a lot of things to tell me about how much she dislikes Monk, but when I asked her if he was the kind to put his hands on a woman, she laughed at me.”

  “Meaning no?”

  “She said about the same thing the lawyer, Twitch, said. Monk won’t put his hands on women or kids, and don’t get between him and someone who does.”

  “Reminds me of someone else I know.”

  “Thank you, my dear.”

  “I was thinking about Mike,” she said.

  “Ouch.”

  “But you’re pretty okay, too.”

  “‘Pretty okay’ will not get you laid tonight, Ms. Guthrie.”

  “Will this?” she asked and began unbuttoning her blouse.

  “Egad, woman … there are young and impressionable children upstairs.”

  “Yes,” said Val, “and they know that once we have a fire going down here and some sultry blues playing, they would rather be eaten by ginormous rats than come down and see anything. More or less direct quote from Faith.”

  “Sounds like her.”

  Val’s fingers lingered on the button just above her heart. “I can stop if you’re too much of a prude.”

  He set his Yoo-hoo bottle aside and sidled closer. “No, ma’am, not a prudish molecule in my body.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “Call me ‘ma’am’ again and your body will be found in a ditch.”

  He kissed her and they fell sideways in exaggerated slow motion until they lay cuddled together, lips touching gently, hands very busy.

  77

  They drove in separate cars.

  It was the strangest drive of Gayle’s life because every single street corner she approached seemed to beckon as an escape route.

  What am I doing? she asked herself a hundred times.

  She even glanced at her own eyes in the rearview.

  Her inner parasite gave her no answers and the look in her reflection’s eyes was that of excitement. Interest. Hunger.

  Yes.

  All of those.

  The house looked old but was one of the faux Victorians that had sprung up after the Trouble. Beautiful and ornate, with turrets, dormers, and a wide wraparound porch with decorative railings and turned posts. And everywhere outside was lovely trim work, including gingerbread cutouts and spindle work. They ran up onto the porch, both of them laughing because the rain was so fierce and cold that hiding under umbrellas was a complete waste of time.

  Dianna unlocked the door and held it open for Gayle to enter first.

  The place was clean but not neat, with stacks of magazines and books everywhere, untidy shelves of crystals, musical instruments from cultures Gayle couldn’t even name, and an improbable number of cats. They seemed to be everywhere and of every species—smoky gray, orange stripes, calico, and one named Noapte, which Dianna explained was Romani for night, and who was midnight black except for a white heart-shaped patch on her throat.

  Dianna took her wet coat and hung it up and offered her a towel.

  “I’m soaked to the skin,” said Gayle, and then flushed because it was obvious to both of them. Her silk sweater clung to her and the cold made her nipples stand out in undeniable points.

  “I can get you a robe,” said Dianna, and went off to do that before Gayle could
protest. She came back with a thick dark blue terry-cloth and indicated the guest room where Gayle could change. It was done without a hint of suggestion about anything that might follow, and as Gayle undressed she wondered if she’d read the whole thing wrong. Despite the passion of the kiss at Tank Girl, there had been no understanding that they were going to make out.

  She realized that’s all she was thinking about. Making out. She caught a look at herself in the mirror—soaked, bedraggled, and in her underwear—and had to laugh. Her hair hung in rattails and she was covered in goose bumps.

  “Oh, yes,” she said to her reflection, “total sex goddess.”

  She debated leaving her bra and panties on, but they, too, were soaked. So she took the plunge and stepped out of them, hanging everything on the shower curtain rail and towel racks in the en suite bathroom. Then she pulled on the robe and cinched the belt tightly around her waist, taking care to tie a knot that wouldn’t just pop open.

  There was a soft knock and she opened the door to see Dianna also in a robe. Hers was purple and had embroidered tulips on it. Her hair was back in a ponytail and she’d washed all the makeup from her face. Her skin was a medium brown and there were some small acne scars from long ago. A real face, without a trace of pretense.

  They stood for a moment, looking at each other without sound.

  Then Dianna touched her own cheek. “Me in factory settings,” she said. “Don’t be scared.”

  “No,” said Gayle quickly. “No … God, you’re beautiful.”

  They stood a yard apart, but Dianna smiled faintly and said, “Come here and say that.”

  Which Gayle, after only a moment’s hesitation, did.

  * * *

  They made love in Dianna’s big bed.

  It was very sweet and very slow and very strange for Gayle.

  At first it was merely tender, with them holding each other and kissing. Rediscovering and deepening the rhythm of the kiss from an hour ago. They wore their robes and Dianna did not touch her in any sexual way. No, she left that door for Gayle to open. After fifteen minutes or more, Gayle touched Dianna’s cheek and then let her fingers drift down along the side of the woman’s neck and over her collarbone and along the V neckline of the robe. There was another pause—a mere heartbeat—and then she flattened her hand and ran it very lightly over one full breast. When her palm brushed over the cloth tented over the nipple, Dianna shivered. So did Gayle.