Ink

by Jonathan Maberry

  A man lay naked on the bed. Pale, ugly, lumpy, hairless. Tattoos of flies covered his flesh. The air in the room was fetid and smelled of yeast, sweat, anger, and the wrong kind of sex. The ejaculate engineered through hate rather than a cleaner form of passion. There were stains all over the sheets, and more flies—real ones—swarming above the man. Dianna took a tentative step forward, repelled and compelled in equal measures. But there was something on the man’s skin. Images.

  Tattoos. Not only those of flies. Faces. Symbols.

  And …

  A green vine, delicate with the sweetness of early spring, sprouting from a blue vein near the wrist. Curling up the forearm, sprouting roses in dozens of shades, each flower larger and more vibrant than the last, and also subtly different—more realistic, more defined—until a final rose whose lush petals brushed against the tender inside of her elbow. Not a flower in transition, but one that was so clearly itself that seeing it was a celebration of joy.

  The tattoo seemed to writhe on his skin as if struggling to break free of him. It was very rich in color, but only in places. Some of it was pale, and there were pieces missing except for the faintest of outlines.

  She looked at her own forearm, at the same design, faded to a ghostly outline. Nearly gone.

  The man lay there on the bed, sweating, flesh wobbling, eyes glazed in ecstasy, chest rising and falling rapidly. Then he froze and gasped. His eyes instantly sharpened and he jerked his head toward her. Eyes locked on her. Seeing her. Actually seeing her.

  She watched his expression change from startled fear to something else. The eyes crinkled, the nose wrinkled, and the mouth widened into a wide, wet, leering grin of absolute delight.

  “They’re delicious,” he said, spit flecking his chin, his hand beginning to move again. “They’re so goddamn delicious and you can’t have them back. You can never have them back.”

  Dianna screamed her way back to her own bedroom.

  85

  Owen Minor laughed as he came.

  The look on that psychic’s face. The horror. The understanding. It was absolutely delicious. Perfect. Priceless.

  He looked at the vine and delighted in its vibrancy. This one was going to be a keeper. It was tied to that woman’s whole life. Not a single incident, like a stillborn child. Those memories went all the way back; they peeled back so many layers of Dianna Agbala. The woman as well as the professional psychic. They revealed so much.

  So much more than she ever told anyone, including her therapist.

  The doubts and fears, the image issues with race, with weight, and with the need for acceptance. The mockery about her outing herself as a sensitive, card reader, and spiritual healer. The process of fighting through the gender identity roles imposed on her by family, church, and community. The climb up that long ladder to find a version of her own skin she was comfortable wearing. Becoming the Dianna Agbala who liked being her.

  All of that was tied up in the buds and budding flowers on that tattoo. Patty Cakes had done an exceptional job. There was some kind of real magic in that ink.

  And now it belonged to him.

  He lay there, smiling at the flies buzzing overhead.

  But he was still hungry. If he couldn’t have more of Dianna right now, then why not go to the other tattoo that had Patty’s unique vibration on it. The face he’d stolen from the man covered in faces.

  It intrigued Owen that this was the same little girl’s face that was on Patty’s hand. The one that would not entirely transfer over to his. That face as a mother would render it—smiling, happy, beautiful.

  No, the one he’d stolen from the big man was that girl at the end of her life. Terrified, broken, violated, dying. It was there … right in the center of his chest. Waiting for him, like a frightened kid in a closet waiting for the punishment belt.

  Owen ran his fingers across the silently screaming face.

  And woke her up to him.

  86

  Monk was really damn glad there were no traffic cops bothering him on the way to the hospital. The body processes alcohol at the rate of about an ounce an hour, and even fumbling with fuzzy recollections he figured there had to be something like a pint of whiskey sloshing around in his system. He didn’t actually hit anything, but there was some horn-blaring and four-, six-, eight-, and ten-letter words shouted at him. He dared not let go of the wheel long enough to either wave an apology or flip anyone the bird.

  He veered into the ER lot, parked crookedly in a slot reserved for ambulances, ignored something a security guard said, and staggered inside. Patty was waiting for him in a wheelchair and the sight of her jolted him into a shocked sobriety. She looked tiny, withered, deflated. Her complexion, generally a pale tan, looked jaundiced and she sat slumped. Her eyes, though, had a shifty, feral quality to them, darting at him and away, back, and away again.

  Monk squatted beside the chair and took her right hand and held it against his cheek. She leaned over and rested her forehead against his.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Monk kissed her hand.

  “Get me out of here,” she whispered fiercely. “Please, Monk, take me home.”

  Which he did.

  87

  Owen lay facedown on the bed.

  Gasping.

  Weeping.

  His throat was raw from screaming.

  There were bloodstains on the sheets. A lot of it. From where he had tried to claw the tattoo off his chest. There was piss and shit on the bed, too. The bedroom stank like an outhouse, pummeling him with shame.

  He could heard his mother’s voice, screeching at him for having soiled the bed again. It didn’t matter that she was bones in a box in a cemetery whose name he’d totally forgotten. Her screams, her icy voice, and her knuckly fists, and the swish of the flyswatter with which she enforced her ever-increasing set of house rules—those things were as real as if she were still alive, still with him. Still filling the room, the house, the world, with the force of her glacial, implacable disapproval.

  Owen lay tangled in the soiled sheets, unable to move. Unable to do anything.

  Then he thought of the things he had down in the cellar. The knives. The scalpels. The acid. Surely they would save him.

  On his chest the little girl’s face screamed and screamed and screamed. And, as if somehow standing behind her, was the face of the man from whom he’d stolen that tattoo. The big, ugly man with the muscular shoulders and the air of ragged violence. The face of that man leaned toward him, emerging from the shadow of the tattoo-inspired dream, but also seeming to lean into his bedroom. Owen turned away, not wanting to see it, but it was there in every corner, smiling at him in such an ugly way. A dark smile filled with the wrong kind of magic.

  “Mine!” cried Owen, clapping his hand over the tattoo. But then he instantly snatched it away, hissing at the pain. He stared at his fingers and palm, watching as his skin puffed and then swelled with blisters. There was blood on his fingers, too, from where—in the heat of madness—he’d tried to claw it off his skin.

  The flies buzzed around, agitated, angry. Frightened, too.

  You’re a perverted little piece of shit, snarled his mother’s ghost.

  Mommy, don’t forget me, wept the little dead girl.

  “Mine,” said Owen weakly.

  In his mind he could see the knives, the acid, and the scalpel down in his workroom so clearly. So very clearly.

  88

  Mike had to help Crow down over some of the rocks. He did it without comment, knowing that Crow’s old hip injury had to be acting up with humidity this high. They reached the riverbed and walked along to where a pair of EMTs stood beside another cop, Rowdy Sullivan, who was a freckle-faced ex–high school football jock who joined the department when the college scouts all passed on him. Built with the narrow hips and broad shoulders of a tight end, but too short for college or pro.

  Rowdy already had yellow crime scene tape strung from trees along the bank, enclosing an a
rea of about forty feet by fifteen. A body lay sprawled on a cluster of big chunks of broken granite and smoother river rocks. His arms and legs were spread wide, but his head was bowed forward, chin shoved against sternum by the impact that had utterly smashed the skull. The rocks were painted with red that spattered outward in a textbook pattern consistent with a fall from the bridge. Crow looked up at the gray metal struts and down at the corpse.

  The victim was dressed in old, dirty clothes—sneakers and jeans, a flannel shirt, and a fleece jacket with a flag patch on the left shoulder and a round U.S. Army emblem above the heart. On the right, where a name was usually embroidered, the cloth was torn and the name missing. The jacket was two-tone, with the arms and a band across the chest originally navy or black, but faded now to a dusty gray, and the torso in olive drab.

  “Not a regulation jacket,” said Mike.

  Crow shook his head. “Custom. Danbury Mint used to sell these. This one’s Desert Storm.” He glanced at Rowdy. “You check for ID? Wallet, cell…?”

  “All he had was about four dollars in ones and change, pack of gum, pack of tissues, pack of Camels with three left, and what’s left of a book of matches.” Rowdy held out a plastic evidence bag. “Looks like he’s homeless.” He paused. “Was,” he added, but not unkindly.

  “You recognize him?” Crow asked, but the two younger cops and the EMTs all shook their heads.

  “You document the scene?” asked Crow, and Rowdy nodded, holding up his cell phone. “Took about a hundred pics and uploaded them to the department server. Took measurements, too, and I tagged the pics with GPS coordinates.”

  “Good job.”

  “There was no sign of a scuffle on the bridge,” said Mike, who was bending over the man.

  “No,” said the older of the two EMTs. “And no obvious bruising or marks of violence except for the head trauma. ME will know better, but I’ve seen jumpers before and that’s what this looks like.”

  Crow said nothing. He studied the dead man for a while, then glanced up again at the bridge.

  “What?” asked Mike.

  “I’m seen my fair share of jumpers, too,” said Crow slowly, “and a few right here.”

  “But…?”

  Crow ran his fingers through his curly salt-and-pepper hair. “Can’t recall a single one of them who fell backward like this. They do that in movies because it looks dramatic or artistic or some shit. But not a real jumper.”

  They all thought about it, and talked about other suicides they’d dealt with. Jumpers were not all that rare in the country. The Crestville Bridge was the only one of the several spans around the town that was high enough to guarantee death. Even the Songbird Bridge, which went over the Delaware into New Jersey, was lower. But Crestville, on the other side of the river, was—true to its name—built on a high crest of rocky land, formed by some shifting of the earth millions of years ago. Other suicides in the area were more likely the result of drug overdoses—Oxycontin was a problem—car wrecks, and handguns. Once in a while someone went very old school and hung themselves.

  “Guess he didn’t want to see it coming,” said Rowdy.

  Crow grunted. “That, or maybe he was going for the effect he got. Back of the head’s a lot more fragile than the forehead and face. Quicker, too.”

  The EMTs nodded.

  “Okay,” said Crow, “let’s bag him and take the poor son of a bitch…” His voice trailed off and he stepped closer and knelt beside the dead man. The others watched as the chief pulled on a pair of black nitrile gloves. He hooked a finger in the V of the man’s flannel shirt, which was buttoned to the clavicular notch, and gently lifted the material. He gestured with his other hand for Rowdy to move out of his light and all five of them looked at the exposed skin of the victim’s upper chest.

  “Looks like an old burn,” said the younger EMT.

  Crow ignored him and glanced up at Mike, who slowly lowered himself until he was sitting on his heels.

  “Not a burn,” said Mike.

  “No,” agreed Crow.

  There, partly exposed, was an area of skin that looked melted or smeared, and which was faintly stained, as if there had been a colorful image there that had been nearly—but not completely—erased.

  “Jesus Christ,” breathed Mike.

  89

  Owen Minor was sick.

  He tumbled out of bed and vomited on the floor. His skin was slick with sweat and there was a pain on his sternum hotter than fire. The bandage hid the spot where he had excised the tattoo of the little girl’s face.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d been poisoned by a memory, but that hadn’t happened for years. Many years. What truly alarmed him was the fact that it was nine hours since he’d removed the image and the skin had not regrown. There was still a shallow and bloody patch. Four ragged square inches. The dressing kept the blood from running down his belly, but he could feel how raw the wound was. The pain was like a fresh burn.

  “What the fuck?” he asked his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

  Owen Minor was almost never frightened about anything.

  He was terrified now.

  The flap of skin was in the trash down in the cellar. Wrapped in wax paper and shoved down under the other debris. Later he planned to dispose of it far from his house.

  Minor could feel it. He could almost hear it. The flies buzzed in long traffic patterns, around him, down the stairs, through the house to the basement stairs, down and around the trash can, and then back. Over and over again. They were frightened, too.

  They were angry as well.

  Minor was more than angry. He was furious.

  That motherfucker Monk Addison. This was his fault.

  “You’re going to goddamn well pay, you bastard,” he growled, then winced as a fresh wave of pain shot through him.

  He thought about sending one of his flies to find Monk and make him do something awful. Maybe force him to go stick his hands into a wood chipper. That sounded fun. But he hesitated. Even the flies seemed reluctant. There was something about Monk.

  Only once before had the flies refused to target someone Owen disliked. The big cop with the red hair. Owen had seen him flirting with Dianna outside the store where she worked. Owen wanted to do something bad to that big man. Partly because Owen lusted for Dianna, and partly because the cop scared him. Like that biker had scared him. But the flies absolutely would not go near him. And the one fly Owen sent to follow Monk to his house had never come back.

  “You fucker,” he snarled, but the snarl turned into a sob.

  He got dressed very carefully, filling his pockets with extra sterile pads and tape just in case the bandage leaked. Then he crept downstairs, moving like a man in a minefield until he reached the trash can by his workbench. The flies buzzed and swarmed and screamed in his mind.

  He knew that he had to get the tattoo out of his house.

  He had to do it now or go totally mad.

  90

  Chief Crow was at his desk, clawing his way through a mountain of expense reports related to the extra security his department would need to provide for the Fringe Festival. Because of threats and rumors of threats about the Cyke-Lones planning on causing some trouble, Crow was trying to conjure extra money from his budget for overtime as well as shift work for cops borrowed from Crestville and Black Marsh. Math was not his strong suit, so when the phone rang he lunged at it like a hungry bass.

  “Crow?” said the familiar voice of April Chung, a friend in the FBI. “I have some info for you on your John Doe jumper.”

  Crow leaned back in his chair. “Another blank?”

  “Actually,” said Chung, “no. We got something substantial. You know my niece runs the FDDU, right?”

  “Yes…” Crow said cautiously. The Federal DNA Database Unit was notorious for dragging their heels processing requests from small-town police departments. He’d waited as long as three months for results in the past.

  “Well, little Violet would like her fa
vorite aunt to cosign for that house she wants to buy. So, she’s been kissing my ass quite a lot. Mind you, that stops once she signs the lease, but until then she’s my minion. Anyway, she ran the sample you sent and we got a hit. The vic is Lester Mouton, originally from New Orleans.”

  “Did he serve in Desert Storm?”

  “Wait, you already know him?” asked Chung.

  “No, but he was wearing one of those Danbury Mint fleeces.”

  “Ah, gotcha. And, yes. Honorable discharge in ninety-two. Worked a bunch of odd jobs here and there, according to tax filings, but he dropped off the edge of the world around 2002. One arrest for vagrancy in 2003, but nothing after that, so figure he was homeless.”

  “That fits,” said Crow. “You get anything else?”

  “Not much. No relatives except very distant cousins. Never married, no kids.”

  “Rats. But this is great, April. Gives me a place to start.”

  “I have to ask, though,” said Chung, “why did you want a rush on a suicide of a homeless guy? I mean, don’t think I’m hard-hearted but it’s hardly a capital crime. Is this related to something else?”

  “I think it might be.” He explained about the rash of missing tattoos. There was a long silence on the other end of the call.

  “Okay,” she said, “this is going to sound really freaky—”

  “I’m chief of police in Pine Deep,” he said.

  “—but I think I heard about something like that.”

  “Wait … what?”

  “Yeah, you know how agents will talk over drinks? The freaky stuff. Everyone wants to story-top with some kind of X-Files bullshit. Well, about two years ago someone was talking about that at a Christmas party in Quantico.… Crap, I can’t remember the details. Let me go dig it up.”

  “Okay, but—”

  And she was gone.

  91

  It was raining. Again.

  There was no open spot near Patty’s store, so Monk double parked with his flashers on and hustled her inside. Somehow helping her—and the need to truly be there for her—was sobering him up fast. The effect might not last, and he was likely to crash hard later, but he was okay with taking the short-term lift.