Ink

by Jonathan Maberry

  The biker, Slider, looked around with an expression of practiced contempt on his craggy features. He even gave a clichéd snort that was an eloquent dismissal of everyone and everything in the place. While waiting for his order, the biker turned on his stool and studied the bustlines on two high school girls, who colored and looked at their phones; at a brawny farmworker who suddenly found something interesting on his plate; and then at Owen.

  “The fuck you looking at, you bald faggot?”

  Owen quickly looked down. He felt his testicles crawl up inside of him and his hands went cold with fear. In that instant Owen did not want to steal this man’s tattoos or peer into his memories. What he wanted to do was flee. To get up and get out of there and maybe never come back to that diner.

  However, as he thought that he suddenly felt a shiver ripple along his skin. Not goose bumps rising. No. It was the flies. Their tiny wings fluttered in agitation. Not in fear, not sharing Owen’s discomfort. It was a totally different reaction. The flies were angry. Mad as wasps. Buzzing, buzzing with hate.

  “I wish you would just fucking die,” said Owen, but no one else heard him. Certainly not the biker. “I hope a truck grinds you into paste.”

  And then he saw something that nearly tore a cry from him. A fly crawled out from under the cuff of Owen’s shirt. A blowfly. One of his blowflies. Not merely buzzing on his skin but somehow—impossibly—alive. Separate from him. Moving with total independence. Real. And yet … it was a thing of ink and pieces of borrowed flesh, torn from Owen’s own skin.

  In terrible fascination, he watched the fly’s wings become a blur as it lifted off his wrist and soared into the air. It swerved uncertainly for a moment, moving as awkwardly and sloppily as a newborn ripping free from its maggot husk. Within a few seconds, though, its flight became more deliberate, more controlled. It soared up to the ceiling and landed upside down, crawling over the acoustic tiles. Then it dropped down again and lit on the back of the man’s biker colors, high, near the collar. Slider was now leering at the waitress, who was arranging a plate of Salisbury steak and potatoes in front of the man. The fly, silent as a shadow, crawled up to the collar, poised on the edge of the material, and then vanished inside Slider’s shirt.

  Owen sat for a long time, fingers clamped around his coffee cup, feeling it go cold, shaking his head when the waitress offered a refill. The biker ate his food, farted, laughed at the expressions of the patrons, tossed a twenty on the table, and walked out. Slider paused to look down at Owen’s cup, then bent and stuck a dirty index finger in it, studied the wetness, and wiped it clean on Owen’s sleeve. Then he left.

  The waitress hurried over with a clean cup, but Owen barely noticed, instead staring with his whole being at the biker, who walked across the street to where his bike was parked under a tree. Slider mounted, fired up the bike, but did not drive away. After four minutes of sitting on the rumbling machine, he got off, turned to watch traffic, and, when a truck heavy with four tons of harvested pumpkins came rolling fast to try and beat a yellow light, walked right in front of it. The truck was going forty miles an hour. More than fast enough to smash Slider into red jelly and hurl his broken body ten feet into the air. Everyone inside and outside of the diner screamed. Even Owen.

  They all rushed outside, and Owen, dazed, followed along. The flies on his skin buzzed with a crimson joy.

  I wish you would just fucking die.

  The flies on his skin buzzed.

  I hope a truck grinds you into paste.

  That night Owen checked his body and saw the empty place where one fly was no longer inked. He touched the smooth skin.

  “What…?” he asked aloud. It took him forever to fall asleep.

  When he did, he was the biker. He was actually Slider. He was not inside the biker’s memories. Not really. Not the way he was when he was feeding on pain and grief and loss. But he was Slider. He was that crude man as he stepped into the street and was smashed to ruin.

  I wish you would just fucking die.

  That memory did not vanish after Owen took his first bite.

  Or his second.

  I hope a truck grinds you into paste.

  He relieved those few moments a thousand times that night, crying out in orgasmic delight each time the grill of the truck crunched into flesh and blood. Each time, the remaining flies on his skin buzzed so loud it tore holes in the night.

  83

  Mike Sweeney lived in a suite of rooms in the back of the big Guthrie farmhouse. The rooms were big, lined with bookshelves floor to ceiling, and private. He even had his own entrance.

  As for Crow, he was also cracking jokes, even when things were at their worst, but a lot of that was reflex. An old survival habit learned when Crow was a kid and being knocked around by a drunken father. That was a territory Mike knew well, though he had gone deep inside instead of trying to lighten everyone’s mood. Scars take all sorts of forms.

  Val’s survival skill was throwing herself into work. She owned the largest farm in Bucks County, thousands of acres that included some of what had been neighboring farms before things went bad. For a while the primary crop had been garlic—hard-necked German White variety, with scattered patches here and there of elephant, wild, Rocambole, softneck, Silverskin, porcelain, artichoke, and purple stripe. For ten years after the Trouble, garlic was the region’s biggest crop. That changed over time, and Val was back to her father’s profession of corn farming, with large fields of pumpkins, hay, soybeans, oats, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, and cabbage. All of which smelled better than garlic, and it had taken years for the stink to fade.

  Mike was a creature of habit. He woke precisely at six in the morning, every morning unless he was on night shift. He rolled out of bed onto the floor and did four sets of fifty push-ups, alternating with slow-burn and speed crunches. Then he did two kung-fu forms—the Yang Tai Chi long form and then Wing Chun’s Biu Jee. Sometimes he did one of the more difficult Shotokan-karate katas, either Gojushiho Sho or Unsu. Then he put on sweats and ran seven miles through the forest, following deer paths, much of it done in sprints. After that he showered and came through into the main house for breakfast, dressed in a freshly ironed uniform, with creases so sharp they could draw blood.

  The kitchen smelled of breakfast.

  Val was a truly awful cook, one of the worst in North America—a fact she readily agreed with. Crow wasn’t much better, but he could scramble eggs and toast bagels. And there was always coffee brewing, with mugs for any of the hands who wanted to come in for a cup on a cold morning.

  That morning, it was just Val and Crow in the kitchen. She was going through harvest reports and Crow was doing a crossword puzzle. A chafing dish heavy with eggs sat next to a plate of bagels. There were tubs of country butter and local-made cream cheese.

  Crow looked up over his reading glasses, amused at the mountain of eggs Mike ladled onto his plate, and nodded his approval.

  “You were out late,” said Val, bringing Mike a steaming cup.

  “Yeah,” said Crow, “hot date? You finally ask that psychic lady out? What’s her name? Diane?”

  “Dianna, and no. She’s gay.”

  “She is?” asked Crow, surprised.

  “Very,” said Val.

  “Well, how ’bout that,” said Crow. “I’ll stop shopping for wedding gifts for you two crazy kids.”

  “Ha ha,” said Mike, who had—in fact—asked Dianna Agbala out a few months ago, and gotten a very polite no. Accompanied by a courtesy explanation that Dianna did not have to provide, but for which Mike was grateful. He’d tried to apologize for his presumption, but Dianna just laughed it off and told him he was a handsome hunk. Just not her cut of meat. They’d since become friendly acquaintances. He stuffed a massive forkful of eggs into his mouth.

  “So what were you up to last night?” asked Crow.

  “Not much,” Mike said, his cheeks puffed like a squirrel’s. “Just cruising the Fringe.”

  “In the rain?” asked Cr
ow.

  “Sure. Felt nice.”

  “You’re insane, you know that, right?”

  Mike pointed to Crow. “Pot.” And then to himself. “Kettle.”

  Val sat and poured Splenda into her coffee. Mike privately wished he could find someone like her. His age, of course, but with her intelligence and toughness. She was lovely, but cold and hard, too. Everything she’d ever endured was just there behind the hard blue of her eyes, and etched in lines around her mouth. Crow called them laugh lines, but they weren’t. She was his adopted mother, but Mike would always be a bit in love with her.

  “Yesterday was a pretty weird day,” Mike said aloud.

  Crow snorted. “In Pine Deep? You shock me.”

  “No, I mean about that tattoo thing at the hospital.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Crow finished a clue and set his pen down. He sipped some coffee. “She seemed so certain.”

  “The wife? Sure.”

  “No,” said Crow, “the tattoo artist.”

  They looked at each other for a beat.

  “Wait, what are you talking about?” they said at the same time.

  “The woman from that new tattoo shop on Boundary Street,” said Crow. “Isn’t that why you were in the Fringe?”

  “No. And what woman?”

  “The woman with the missing tattoo.”

  “No, you got it wrong,” said Mike, “it was her husband who had the missing tattoo.”

  “Husband? You mean Monk Addison? He’s not her husband.”

  Mike blinked. “Who’s Monk Addison?”

  Another beat.

  Val said, “I hate to interrupt but this conversation is going sideways. Each of you has something to say. Maybe take turns instead of turning this into an SNL skit.”

  Crow took a bagel from the plate, picked up his knife, scooped some cream cheese, and pointed the knife at Mike. “You first.”

  So, Mike told them about the Duncans and the husband’s pink ribbon tattoo and his wife’s cancer remission dates. Then he explained about the vet whose entire chestful of tattoos had gone missing. Crow had begun spreading the cream cheese but stopped and stared open-mouthed throughout the narration. When he was done Crow finished preparing his bagel and ate a bite, chewing slowly and thoroughly before he spoke.

  “Crow…?” prodded Val.

  “I’ll see your cancer tattoo and inked vet,” said Crow slowly, “and raise you a tattoo artist in the ER last night.” With that he launched into his story about Patty Cakes Trang and Gerald “Monk” Addison. When he was done, the three of them looked at each other without speaking for nearly a full minute. Mike saw Val’s hand stray to her sternum and he knew that she was touching the ladybug and lightning bug tattoos that kept her heart beating.

  “Can’t be a coincidence,” said Mike. “I mean … seriously, it can’t.”

  Val looked at him with her cold blueberry eyes. “This is Pine Deep.”

  “Sure, sure, this is Pine Deep. We all know that. Town’s weird. Hell, I’m weird.”

  “Truth in advertising,” agreed Crow, and Val whacked his wrist with her coffee spoon.

  “But this is weird even by our standards,” continued Mike.

  “Yeah,” said Crow slowly. “It’s kind of freaking me out. I mean … it’s just so weird. So … hell … I don’t even know what to call it.”

  “Weird works,” said Val under her breath. The lines around her mouth were deeper and now there two vertical lines etched between her brows.

  Mike ate another forkful of eggs, shaking his head while he chewed and swallowed. “Where do we even go with it? It’s not actually a crime. And the injuries—Mr. Duncan’s head, that Tran woman’s injuries, and that Monk character’s hand—those are incidental. No bad guy here. What now? Do we react to this? If so, how? What’s the play?”

  Crow got up and poured himself more coffee, sat back down, and stared deep into the brown depths as if there were some oracle there. He shook his head and glanced at Val.

  “Open to suggestions,” he said.

  Val raised her eyebrows. “Don’t look at me. I’m just a humble farm wife. I have cows to milk and hay to bale.”

  “We don’t have any cows,” said Crow. “And you have thirty-six employees.”

  “Doesn’t change the fact that I don’t have any idea. I joked about this being Pine Deep, but maybe it really is a coincidence. No, don’t look at me like that. When you told me about Patty Trang last night it freaked me out. I know her. Kind of, I mean. We’ve met. I talked to her about adding something to…” She touched her sternum. “And she knows Dianna—and, Mike, you could have asked me about her. I’ve known her for ages.”

  “Oh,” said Mike and Crow at the same time.

  “But this tattoo thing,” continued Val, “that’s not just weird, it’s freaky weird. Three separate cases, all on the same day. That’s scary.”

  “It’s weird,” agreed Crow, “but, as you said, this is Pine Deep. Let’s keep some perspective. It’s very strange, but it isn’t anything dangerous. It’s not like the Trouble is starting up again.”

  “Might be worth poking at it some,” said Mike softly. “Ask around.”

  Val nodded. “Maybe so.”

  Crow nodded. His cell rang and he made a face when he looked at the screen.

  “It’s the evil bitch-queen of the universe,” he said, then punched the button and leaned back in his chair. “What’s up, Gertie? Did I forget to clean the coffeepot again?”

  Mike and Val watched him as he listened. Crow sighed heavily and then cursed under his breath.

  “Okay,” he said into the phone, “Mike and I will head over now and check it out.”

  He set the cell down carefully, as if it were eggshell fragile.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” asked Val.

  “Mort Peters and his daughter went up to the Crestville Bridge to fish for rainbow trout, and … well, damn … the girl—little Maddie—sees a body. Guy either fell or jumped, but he splashed himself real good on the rocks.”

  “God,” said Mike, “that’s a horrible thing for a kid to see. Maddie’s what? Ten?”

  “Eight,” said Val, looking stricken. “Poor kid.”

  Mike looked down at the eggs still on his plate, then shook his head and pushed it away, his appetite gone. “That tattoo thing can wait, I guess,” he said.

  “Yeah,” agreed Crow. “Let’s go.”

  84

  Dianna stared at her phone, mouth open, totally perplexed by the text that just popped up.

  Last night was beautiful.

  You are the gentlest, sweetest and most beautiful woman.

  Thank you for everything.

  They came in from someone named Gayle.

  But … she did not know anyone by that name. Not that spelling, and the only other Gail she knew was an old friend who now lived in San Jose.

  She almost deleted the text and blocked the number, thinking that it was some kind of scam. She got as far as loading the screen that allowed her to block.

  Did not, though.

  Instead she scrolled up from the text from this unknown person. And nearly screamed. There were other texts. From Gayle.

  And texts from her.

  A lot of them. And they were from last night.

  She read and read and read. Over and over, piecing together an encounter that started at Tank Girl and ended in her own damn bed. There were photos of Gayle, taken at—apparently—Dianna’s request. A lovely nude of a beautiful white woman with dark hair and a nervous smile. And a reciprocal photo of Dianna, also naked, touching her fingertips to her sternum over her heart, lips puckered as if blowing a kiss.

  The sheets on which Dianna lay were the ones on the bed right now. New sheets, bought less than a month ago. She’d put them on fresh yesterday morning.

  She whirled and ran upstairs and stared at those sheets, and the blanket. She bent and sniffed, capturing the fading scents of perfume and sex. Dianna backed away from the bed, stumbling, gas
ping as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. Her back thumped against the dresser. Her knees, already weak from shock, buckled and she sat down hard on the floor. The bed seemed to crouch there, sneaky and full of secrets that made no sense.

  Dianna had no idea how long she sat there. A minute or an hour. Her mind was reeling and she kept her palms flat on the floorboards to keep from falling off the edge of the world.

  “Gayle,” she said. And a moment later whispered the name as a question. “Gayle…?”

  There was something there. Buried so deep it was barely a shadow. A face filled with hope and self-consciousness and need and desire and fear. Soft lips speaking her name in the night, then brushing against her cheek. Inexpert hands, used to different kinds of curves, discovering the art of touching another woman.

  “Who are you?” Dianna asked aloud as panic flared in her. She could feel her heart hammering and the room was suddenly too bright.

  Why can’t I remember?

  There was a momentary flash of horror as she wondered if she’d been drugged somehow. Date rape was not exclusively a hetero thing. Dianna knew women who had been raped by other women. Was that what this was?

  She searched her heart and also her insights, the part of her that was able to peel back the ordinary layers of perception. She focused everything that made her who she was on the question.

  “No,” she said aloud. And believed it.

  Not rape. Not a roofie or some other drug.

  Then … what?

  The bed, with its rumpled sheets, and the text messages on her phone remained immutable, challenging the emptiness of her memories with their truth.

  And it was then, in that moment, as she was reaching for the phone, which had fallen from her hand when she hit the dresser, that she saw her forearm. Saw the tattoo.

  Saw what was left of the tattoo.

  Suddenly her mind was gone. Shifting hard away from the absolute moment and into something approaching a fugue state. The room vanished. The three-dimensional reality faded. She stood, naked and terrified, in the bedroom of someone she did not know. A room she’d never been to.