Ink

by Jonathan Maberry

  She did not call his name. She did not call God’s name. She said, “Please.”

  Over and over again.

  * * *

  Afterward he held her. Naked, small, curled into him.

  She wept against his chest for a long, long time. He didn’t own any of those tears and did not need to know who did. Sandy required a witness, and that’s what he was.

  Then, her fingers touched his hardness through his jeans. He had shucked his jacket but was otherwise dressed. She sniffed and reached for his zipper, but Monk touched her hand.

  “No,” he said.

  “But I can’t leave you like that,” she said in a tiny voice. “You need to—”

  “I don’t need a thing, Sandy.”

  “But guys—”

  “No,” he said. “Guys don’t need to come. There’s no such thing as blue balls. Any guy who says different is hustling you.”

  She gave him a quizzical look. Her eye makeup was smeared by tears, her lipstick gone, her black hair in disarray. “Don’t you want me to … you know … help you?”

  “As an obligation? No. And definitely not right now. Let’s just be for a minute, okay?” He kissed her. “I have the taste of you on my lips and that’s all I want right now.”

  She settled back against him, wriggling closer still. Monk was deeply aroused, but all of his instincts told him to stop where and when he had. Maybe there’d be another time with her. With them. Right now, though, the echo of those tears filled his mind, and he wondered when the last time was that someone had been kind to her? Had valued her above their own hungers?

  The night was so black that he couldn’t even see the rain beyond the windows. Monk leaned over and kissed her head, nuzzling in her hair.

  110

  Gayle, Dianna, and Patty sat for hours. Telling impossible stories, drinking wine, crying. Sometimes laughing. Frequently terrified. They talked it all out. Gayle had to walk Dianna through the steps of what happened at Tank Girl and after. She was deeply embarrassed to do so and flushed a furious crimson. She was also devastated that Dianna didn’t remember more than fragments.

  Dianna went through the story from her side, including the fugue where she saw a pale man in ecstasy as he fed on her memories. She also told them about the tarot reading and what it meant.

  The Ten of Swords.

  The Magician.

  And the Tower.

  “He’s the Magician,” she said. “He’s the one who’s come here to destroy the town. Maybe not the brick and stone, but … us.”

  No one called her a liar. No one said that this was New Age woo-woo stuff. Not even Gayle. Somewhere in the middle of the second big bottle of wine and Patty talking about Tuyet, a lot of that resistance crumbled away.

  And Patty told as much of Tuyet’s story as she could, mostly quoting Monk Addison. She opened boxes and pulled out photos, weeping when she saw some she ached to remember.

  “We have to tell Monk,” said Patty.

  “Do you think he can find this man?” asked Gayle. “This … fly pervert?”

  “The Lord of the Flies,” said Patty and Dianna at the same time.

  “Fuck,” breathed Gayle, and shivered. Dianna wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and then Patty came and wrapped her thin arms around both of them.

  The storm raged outside, but they were safe inside. With each other. Three women, three violations. Three horror stories to share as the thunder tried to bully them and the lightning attempted to burn the whole world down.

  It was a long road until dawn.

  111

  “Want to come over?” asked Sandy. She almost whispered it, and there was remembered passion but also need there. Not desperation, but a genuine desire for more of him. More of them. “For the night, I mean?”

  It was so tempting. It was an offer made with trepidation and caution, but wrapped up in her pride and her history of being harmed. Monk knew that this was an offer rarely made, and it was all the more appealing and lovely for that.

  But he saw Patty and Tuyet in his mind. He saw pain and horror, and he saw his own anger thrown like a goblin shadow on the wall. He came to Doylestown for answers and so far had none, and he was feeling guilty for the time spent with Sandy. Monk did not want to paint this moment with those colors.

  “I can’t tonight,” he said, trying not to wince. “I gotta get back to Pine Deep. This thing I’m working on…”

  She looked immediately hurt and suspicious, but Monk took her hand and kissed it very gently.

  “Listen to me, sweetness,” he said softly, “you’re amazing. I’m not joking. You have no idea how long it’s been since I met someone like you. You’re beautiful, smart, funny, and sexy. If you’re asking if I want to spend the night, then yes, I really do. I think it would be something of real beauty even if all we did was curl up together and sleep. But this case I’m on is doing real harm to my friend. She’s an old friend. Not a girlfriend. We’re family. Another one of us who’ve been through the Valley of the Shadow. You’d like her, I think. She just got out of the hospital today and she’s a mess. I need to make sure she’s okay. You can understand that. I know you can.” He paused and dug a card out of his pocket. “This is my cell and my email. Text me so I have your info. And as soon as this shitstorm is done, let me take you out on a real date. Not joking. You put on your pretties and I’ll—so help me God—wear a tie. Maybe we’ll go down to Philly and catch a concert. Or we can hit the movies and find a really nice place for dinner. Somewhere they’ll wait on you and treat you like the queen you are. We can—”

  She stopped him with a kiss. And that turned into a smile and then a laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” he said, pulling back an inch.

  “You are so corny, so old-fashioned,” she said. “So sweet. I don’t think I know any guys like you. You might even be the real deal.”

  “I’m never going to lie to you and never going to hurt you,” he said, and he meant it. There was no way to look into those dark-brown eyes and tell anything but the God’s honest. “I give you my word.”

  She kissed him again and was still smiling as she put the big Expedition into gear and drove him back to his car. He stood on the wet pavement and watched her go, rain falling on his shoulders. His cell vibrated and he glanced at the screen. She must have stopped at a light around the corner. The text said two words.

  White Knight.

  Below that was her phone number.

  “Sandy,” he said to the night.

  There was a faint cawing sound and he turned to see that the nightbirds he thought he’d left behind in Pine Deep were standing in dense rows along the rooftop of the one-story building that was INKcredible. Dozens of them. Scores.

  Monk studied them, trying to read something from the way they stood, from the agitation of their oily black wings.

  The tattoo parlor was still closed, the sign exactly where it had been before. Nothing was really different.

  Or was it?

  He went to his car and opened the trunk, unlocked the gun safe, removed the Sig Sauer, and tucked it into the back of his belt. He didn’t feel like getting soaked by taking off his jacket to slip the shoulder rig on. Monk looked past the open trunk to the store, then took a few additional items from his gear bag: his leather case of lockpick tools, and an old-fashioned blackjack with its wafer of lead sewn between thick black leather. That went into his right front pocket. He preferred to use his hands in a fight, but there was something wrong about the energy. Those nightbirds were spooked, and that spooked Monk. The blackjack had a short, springy handle, and if used with the right flick of the wrist, transferred a lot of kinetic energy to that dense lead core. Lay it just so and he could daze someone and take the fight out of them; put a little more English on it, and it would shatter a wrist or a skull with equal precision. Cops used to carry them but too many were heavy handed, resulting in brain damage or death for their victims. Monk wasn’t technically allowed to have one, either, but he operat
ed on the philosophy that he’d rather be tried by twelve than carried by six.

  He closed the lid and approached the parlor. The rain was steady but not hard, although it was icy cold and wormed its way down into his clothes. On his skin the faces of all those dead girls and women were stretching their mouths and trying to say something. He glanced around and saw their ghosts. He’d long along learned that even the dead can be frightened.

  112

  Out on Route A-32, just shy of the bridge to Crestville, was a tavern that nobody in their right mind ever went to. It was exactly that kind of place. Broad, squat, and ugly, looking like what it was—a biker bar. Twenty-six bikes were lined up beneath a long canvas tarp. The thump-thump of Alabama Thunderpussy playing “None Shall Return” rattled the windows and crashed like artillery in the night air.

  Johnny Ray Kenton, a massive lump of a bald man six and a half feet tall, with a furious red-gold beard and a line of skulls tattooed across his forehead, sat on a stool just inside. He was the doorman and bouncer and kept an eye on the bikes.

  Beyond him, spread out around a bunch of tables or in a hunched line at the bar, were the members of the Cyke-Lones. Not all of them. Not even half, but some of the more senior members. None of them even cared that they were stereotypes, with cliché biker nicknames or lifestyles that came straight from the Hell’s Angels movies of the 1960s. To them this was living a legacy, and they lived it hard. The crew ran coke and crack up along I-95 and took laundered cash and bearer bonds down to other clubs who ferried it in links to the cartels. It was an old business that ran smoothly and with little change as the years went by. There were members who were designated to take falls for more senior riders. And there were some who had been born into the club and who considered it their true family.

  They didn’t care what anyone else thought because as far as they were concerned, fuck the world.

  The place stank, but the barbecue was good, the beer was cold, and most of them had wives or girlfriends. Old Lenny Snicks in the corner had this week’s crack whore on his knee and his hand up under her blouse. Nogs and Panhead were playing liar’s poker with two of the younger guys. It was a rinse-and-repeat night, with nothing new happening. They were chilling out until the next big shipment, and were amusing themselves by dropping hints or starting rumors that they were going to hit the Fringe Festival. Which they were not. Bragging on it meant that half the cops in the county were going to be in Pine Deep, while they were going to be in New Jersey, heading south on back roads until they crossed over in Philly and got on the interstate. Cops would be looking their own way and holding their dicks. Fucking cops.

  None of them noticed that there were more flies in the place than usual and certainly more than were at all common on a cold night of wind and rain. There was a dressed buck hanging on a hook out back because Nogs liked to hunt and they were planning a venison roast if the rain ever goddamn stopped. Dead meat draws flies. Who cares?

  The flies, however, noticed them.

  And, far away, in his bedroom, a dreaming Owen Minor looked through dozens of multifaceted eyes, searching for the toughest, the meanest, the deadliest of them. Finding everything the Lord of the Flies desired.

  113

  Monk checked the street in all directions and then walked up to the front door of the tattoo parlor. He could still hear music from the bar where Sandy worked, but it was some old Guns N’ Roses song. “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” Nobody gets worked up into a rage when that eighties stuff was on.

  Once he was sure he wasn’t being observed, Monk tried the door again, but didn’t bother knocking. Above him the birds shuffled nervously.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he told them. “I can feel it, too.”

  Saying it made him realize that he actually could feel something. There was an odd feel to the door, to the whole place. He hadn’t paid enough attention earlier, but now he was on high alert. He leaned close and put an ear to the glass.

  No sound.

  Except …

  Except that wasn’t exactly true. There was something in there. It wasn’t so much a noise as a sense of something. He was spooked enough to imagine that as he listened at the glass, some alien ear was pressed against the other side listening to him. Listening to his breath, to his heartbeat.

  He cursed under his breath, mocking himself for being stupid. The feeling, however, persisted. There was something in there. It was the same feeling he had when he came to Patty’s place the previous day. That feeling of being watched, but not necessarily by human eyes. By something. By who? By what.

  And that fast, Patty’s voice echoed in his head. He is the Lord of the Flies.

  Monk licked his lips that had suddenly gone dry.

  His car was eighty feet away and he could be behind the wheel and hauling ass in under four seconds. To hell with this place and to hell with whatever was in there. This wasn’t even his case.

  Patty’s voice was still in his head. Her, trying to say the name of her little girl. Trying to say …

  Monk had to fight to remember the name, too.

  Tuyet. All the ghosts on his skin whispered the name of their lost little sister.

  Monk forced himself to say it aloud. “Tuyet.”

  He wanted to cry. He wanted to kill someone. He wanted to put his hands on something that would scream for mercy that he was not willing to give.

  “Tuyet,” he said again as he fished his lockpicks out of his pocket. The lock was a good one, made to resist burglars. Monk heard the tumbler click and then the door sagged inward on its hinges. Not much, a half inch.

  He stuffed the lockpicks into his pocket and drew the blackjack as he pushed the door open and went inside. It swung on hinges that made no sound. Oiled and smooth. He took a breath, let it out, and moved fast, going in to the left, crouching, turning to scan the room, trying to capture flash images in his brain. Assembling the whole place.

  Like Patty’s place there were barber chairs.

  Like her place there was a long worktable with pots of ink, boxes of gloves, books of art samples, and several kinds of tattoo guns.

  Like her place there was art on the wall.

  After that … there was nothing that connected Patty’s studio of art and beauty to what filled this place.

  The walls were painted with dark colors. Blacks and purples that Monk knew were tinted wrong by shadows. When lightning flashed outside he could see the real colors. The scarlet. The crimson. The red of death and pain.

  He saw that each of the barber chairs was occupied. By something.

  They had been human once, but virtually everything that defined them as human, as people, was gone. Stripped away. Carved down to horror. In an irrational fragment of thought he wondered why they were tied to the chairs if they had no hands or feet. Or skin.

  The floor was a lake of blood.

  Lightning flashed again and in the middle of that lake, naked, legs spread wide, body painted the same color as the walls, stood a man. Sixty or so. Hair wild and caked with blood. Lips hung with pendulous beads of drool. He held a tattoo gun in one hand and a butcher knife in the other. Black flies crawled over his face. His eyes were wide and staring, and there was nothing human or sane in them.

  With a howl like a demon from the deepest pit of hell, Spider came rushing at Monk, teeth snapping and blade flashing as thunder tore the night apart.

  114

  The man was older than Monk but he was fast as the deeply insane are fast. A sudden rush propelled with a mad fury that tightened the entire body into a fist. The impact slammed Monk backward against the arm of one of the chairs with crushing force, driving air from his lungs and exploding pain in his lower back.

  Monk was starting to turn, to try and slough off the force of the rush when Spider hit, and it was enough to keep those teeth from his throat. They banged together an inch from Monk’s windpipe. Hot spit spattered his throat and chin and lip. Spider was bizarrely strong and Monk felt himself being bent further backward over the arm
of the chair and onto the lap of a skinless dead man. Flies erupted from the corpse and spiraled in the air like vultures. There was a strange sound mingled with Spider’s animal growl—a harsh, high-pitched buzzing. With a swift and terrible insight Monk realized that the tattoo gun the madman held was turned on. A powerful battery-operated device dripping with red ink.

  No. Not ink.

  Monk’s injured left hand shot out and caught Spider’s wrist, stopping the needle as Spider tried to stab him in the eye. The act of grabbing hurt like hell, but it made Monk grab even harder. Desperation takes weird turns.

  “Stop it, you crazy fuck,” he roared, but the man was beyond understanding. The lights that burned in Spider’s eyes were kindled in some other world than this.

  Monk tried to hit him with the leather sap, but the angle was bad and the weapon bounced off the bunched meat of Spider’s deltoid. Spider head-butted him, catching mostly cheekbone but bashing enough of Monk’s nose to detonate white-hot pain.

  “Fucking hell,” cried Monk and brought his knee up between Spider’s thighs. It was an awkward angle but the man was naked. He crumpled, uttering a high whistling shriek. Monk twisted and tumbled sideways off the chair, falling to hands and knees but immediately hurling himself forward into a sloppy roll. Had he not done that the tattoo needle would have stabbed him between the shoulder blades. The groin kick had slowed the maniac, but did not stop him. Spider charged at him, aiming a kick at Monk’s chin.

  This time Monk was set and he whipped the blackjack sideways, using all the muscle of his shoulder, arm, and wrist, and putting a heavy snap at the end of the move. The leather-clad lead disk struck Spider’s ankle and exploded the bones. Spider shrieked, but there was more fury than agony in the sound. He collapsed forward onto Monk, driving him down onto the floor, his head darting in like a jackal’s to bite into the meat of Monk’s chest. In Monk’s mind a ghost screamed so loud it threatened to break the world. Monk could feel the teeth breaking through his skin, tearing the face on his chest.