by Laird Barron
“You’ve made a terrible mistake,” he said.
“Damn, I knew it.” I holstered the gun anyway. It was a necessary risk. He wouldn’t behave in the manner I desired if he worried about getting his head blown off at the first twitch.
“How you feelin’, big boy?” he said. His voice was thick and languid, as if from a long sleep. His eyes were alert and crackling, however. “You’re pale. Lotta blood soaked into those threads. Lotta blood.” He licked his lips and sidled a couple of inches closer. His tongue was longish. “Let me . . . have a look at your arm—”
“Danny, I’d love it if you didn’t take another step.” I stood and casually put the rocker between us. We were about fifteen feet apart. “You’re the watchman. Night off from the warehouse?”
“I come and I go.”
“Danny,” she said. Neither a question or statement. His presence seemed to wilt her further, to sap the brief surge of fight she’d demonstrated.
“Can you see him, Linda?” I said. “Sean presented the symptoms of early-onset dementia. Rare, but there’s precedent and it fit his behavior. I believed my theory. My lying eyes were wrong. He was afflicted by something else. Danny knows. Don’t you? Danny knows why you’re sick and growing sicker. Can you see him now?”
“See what?” she said. Uncertain. Very, very uncertain.
“Yeah, see what?” he said. “See what, Detective? What should she see?” He oozed closer with each utterance.
The light-headedness was back. Waves of pain coursed through my arm. Sweat covered my face. I leaned on the chair and tried not to make my weakness obvious.
“Sean’s condition developed when he took up with your boyfriend,” I said. “If you did an inventory, you’d find your symptoms are eerily similar. Mental fragility, mental fatigue. Names slip. Dates slip. Days. Physical weakness. Lingering cough. Most important—you’re psychologically vulnerable. You’d have to be to consider this bozo a catch.”
“I’m unwell,” she said. Looking at Buckhalter. Really looking at him.
I spoke in a soothing tone, coaxing.
“The money is dwindling, so the romance is too. Love and money aren’t the only forms of sustenance. There’s light and heat. There’s whatever animates you.”
Buckhalter’s sneer faded.
“Detective. Detective—”
“Drugs. Psychological warfare. Hypnotic suggestion. When was the last time you changed your clothes? The last time you bathed? Your breath could peel paint. When he hands you a mason jar of deer’s blood or a slab of raw meat, does it even register?”
Her gaze went back and forth. Her mouth moved as if she were reading aloud.
Buckhalter trembled. That would be the rage kicking in. He’d seen me handle his partners in Horseheads. He knew he couldn’t take me, not without help, not without getting into character. What had Mandibole called the feral side of the Mares? The Aspect of Night.
He made a shushing gesture. A plea.
“Detective. You should stop. I called him before I came down. The man is on his way.”
“Maybe he’s an emotional vampire,” I said to her. “Maybe he pokes a straw into your jugular while you’re sleeping and has a slurp. Maybe it’s a combination.”
“Danny, what is this,” she said. Again, a statement. Flat, rhetorical. She’d gained her feet. We formed the vertices of a triangle. The atmosphere hummed with a gathering electrical charge.
“I can’t explain how he did it to Sean then or how he’s doing it to you now. He is draining you. Your husband was meat, and so are you, lady. You’ve got to wake the fuck up and see him.” I said it in the rhythm of a right reverend driving home the psychological dagger. My own attempt at hypnotic suggestion, but in the service of revelation, of tearing away the mask.
Something had to give.
“You want to see me?” he said to Linda. “Bitch, you always knew.” He lowered his head and when he raised it, he was a brand-new Danny Buckhalter. Happier. A man comfortable with what was going to happen next.
I thought of Bundy and all those women. This was the last face Sean Pruitt ever saw. A trick. Actor’s stagecraft. This knowledge rendered Buckhalter’s affect no less terrifying.
Linda Flanagan didn’t scream. She didn’t protest. She didn’t appear to notice her overflowing tears. Her expression was blank.
“Now you see him for what he is,” I said. “He wasn’t Sean’s friend. He doesn’t love you.”
“Dan. What. What.”
“Linda, go.” My chest tightened. The fear was almost unbearable. “Get in that car and drive. Don’t look back.”
A suppressed inner light flickered and ignited in her gaze. Her expression animated with a cascade of dawning emotions—anger, disgust, and horror. Holy texts speak of scales falling from a person’s eyes. This was like that. She became instantly more recognizable as the person I’d come to know from a distance.
“Dan,” she said, but to me.
“If he moves, I’ll kill him. Get your ass gone.”
She walked slowly past him without a final glance. She picked up the pace, her body awakening, remembering. She ran out onto the porch.
Buckhalter and I had a stare-down. We listened to the car door clank shut; the engine whine and fail, whine and fail, then catch, then rev, tires on gravel, receding.
Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. Forever.
“Dan,” I said. “Admit it.”
“Well, dick, this is what Sean wanted. Until he didn’t.” He cracked his knuckles. He rolled his neck. “Are you happy?”
“We’re almost there.”
Yes, I’d gotten what I wanted. I no longer wanted it. How to put the worms back in the can? Headlights filled the window. The engine’s rumble vibrated glasses in the cupboard. A much bigger engine than the station wagon. Car doors opened and shut.
“Oops,” Buckhalter said.
Presently came a warbling flute trill that seemed to originate in my left ear and migrated to the right. Vampish cheerleaders Veronica and Betty waltzed in. One blonde, one brunette, flanking Tom Mandibole. Mandibole had chosen a natty black suit.
“Gettin’ tired of your shit, Dan.” Mandibole imitated a cornpone accent. “You and your granola-chewing druid chick. You and your schemes.” He’d discarded the accent and adopted a chiding tone. “You brought this creature to our doorstep.” He indicated me. “Where are the others?”
Buckhalter frowned.
“I didn’t, I haven’t—”
“Be quiet, Dan. They aren’t returning my calls. None of them. That’s impossible. They’re dead. Do you think they might be dead, Dan?”
“I’m sure they—”
“Shut up, Dan. Mr. Coleridge, hello.”
I considered going for my gun and decided to hold the thought.
“Evening, Tom.”
Mandibole stepped closer and eyed me with vicious mirth. He was a banty rooster. His spurs were honed steel.
“They really are gone. My children of the night. You scamp. You unmitigated fucker of mothers.” He smiled furiously. His hands opened and closed, opened and closed. “It was a good run. I have the girls and that’s not terrible.” He swept his arm toward Veronica and Betty. “I can rebuild. We’ll terrorize Hicksville again. Same as it ever was.”
Meanwhile, Buckhalter’s world was falling apart. His killer-jock side had abandoned him. The plaster mask affect cracked and crumbled. Feral power leached from him. He shrank into himself; gray, puny, afraid.
“Call them again!” he said. “Try again!”
“The Mares are a renewable resource. More of an idea. Bodies are replaceable as long as the spirit is willing.” While Mandibole spoke, Veronica and Betty slipped in on either side of a gibbering, handwringing Buckhalter. “Fresh start, girls? Fresh start, Dan? Fresh start!”
“I only did what I th
ought you wanted,” Buckhalter said.
Mandibole stared at me, hand raised. He crooked his finger and the ladies seized Buckhalter’s arms and made him a wishbone. It wasn’t easy or quick. He was hideously strong. There were two of them and they were gleefully determined. I recalled the painting in Redlick Manor of the horses tearing apart a soldier and averted my gaze.
When it was over, Mandibole continued to regard me with mild amusement.
“Keep the car warm, girls.”
Veronica and Betty dragged Buckhalter’s remains as they went.
“Cunning animal that you are,” Mandibole said, “what did you anticipate when you imagined how this evening would unfold? And if I may, you appear to be in need of a doctor.”
“We’re off script,” I said.
And how. I’d fervently hoped to rattle Buckhalter’s cage, get the proof I sought, and lacking that, book it without a shoot-out. Best-laid plans, et cetera. My worse angel had probably gotten a cackle at that plan.
Mandibole clapped once and rubbed his hands.
“Well, you won’t require medical attention. You have my undivided attention.” He didn’t draw a weapon, and that was surprising. He stepped forward, right hand open and reaching, left hand lowered and crooked into talons.
Maybe he wanted to dance. I’ll never know.
The rocker was solid and heavy. Two-brawny-piano-movers-grunting-to-unload-it-from-the-truck heavy. I turned sideways for leverage and flung the chair from waist level. He brushed it past his right shoulder. The chair veered wildly and splintered against the wall. That was okay; as he reacted to the missile, I drew the revolver, my finger tightening on the trigger as the barrel covered his center of mass. The lamps at either end of the house shrieked white hot and the room went black as the bottom of a well and the revolver kicked and spat fire. Mandibole wasn’t there. I shot a wall, pivoted right, trying to withdraw my extended arm, but in the next thunderclap he materialized, the top of his head even with my chin, half my mass, and grinning without a worry in this world or the next. He casually gripped the pistol’s barrel, twisting, and the bullet missed his eye and bored into the ceiling and he pried the weapon and flung it aside. I let go to avoid having my fingers snapped like a bundle of twigs. People aren’t normally strong enough to take my toys.
Sleep, he whispered into my left ear and my left ear faded with feedback snarl.
Sleep, he whispered into my right ear and my body grew heavy, as if I were in the clutches of a centrifuge and gravity had begun to multiply.
Sleep! His whisper was a barbed hook traveling into my brain.
Cold, disassociated, panicked, I screamed down the red light and it filled me with the power to raise Milo’s full-grown bull overhead. As the lamps flared to life again, I punched Mandibole’s jaw, exerting force enough to knock a hole in a sandbag, to snap a man’s neck. He flinched. I grasped his head in both rock-crusher mitts and tried, with all my might and main, to wrench his spine out of his body. If I could’ve uprooted a tree, I could’ve budged him. He slammed the heel of his hand into my nose and my nose squished. Made my heart skip a beat. I traveled some weightless distance, winking out of reality, then in, as I pinballed through furniture. My splinter-torn face pressed to the wooden floor; a galaxy wheeled beneath me, hell-bright, eating the boards, foundation, musty, wormy earth. Nebulae hummed a frozen, ethereal tune, calling to me as the Sirens once sang sweet murder to Odysseus while his oarsmen rowed for their lives. I yearned to dissolve into stardust and join the cosmic tide. It was pleasing to recognize every millimeter of my minuteness. Death was nothing to fear. Peaceful.
Mandibole crossed the room in a single stride. He lifted me by my right arm and a fistful of my coat until we were eye to eye. No one had done that to me since my angry, drunken father when I was a child. He probably meant to send me into the afterlife with a quip. Hanging limp at his mercy, knees bent, arm pinned, I couldn’t reach my jawbone knife on the opposite hip. And let me assure you, I wanted that knife in the worst way. My left hand went into my pocket and closed on something—the sharpened bone the Magician had fashioned into a recorder months ago and that I’d discarded with revulsion at the Hotel Roan. A mysteriously appearing recorder with a razor-sharp pointy end.
For when it’s time to face the music.
I gripped it like an ice pick and stabbed three-quarters of it through his breastbone. Mandibole released me, momentarily befuddled. He screamed. His mouth dropped open, wider than you’d expect. It had a linear, trapdoor quality, like you’d catch in a ventriloquist’s dummy if you did a freeze-frame. Blew my hair back with a ripe scent of green-black jungle and something dead and mummified and cuddled in webbing. I couldn’t see his teeth or his tongue. But it was dark in there and black spots floated before me. World-eaters. The screaming stopped, mid-breath. Blood squirted from the hollowed bone like a spigot. He sealed the aperture with his palm. Blood seeped and dripped, but it was better.
“Boy, I loathe that guy.”
I assume he referred to the Magician.
He turned smartly and walked away. Staggering, I followed him outside. There was an interesting tableau in the yard. Lionel had arrived. He stood near the van pointing his rifle at Veronica and Betty. The ladies dismissed him and continued stuffing Buckhalter’s remains in the trunk of the Bentley. He immediately skirted around and joined me on the porch.
We watched as Mandibole strode to his car like a businessman late for a meeting. Betty opened a side door. Mandibole, hand over his heart, nodded at me before he climbed inside. The big engine fired up and the Bentley rumbled into the night. I hoped he’d expire on the way to the hospital. Probably too much to ask of the gods.
* * *
■■■
Once our enemies were gone, I sprawled on the steps, grateful they were there to keep me from sinking into the earth.
“Goddamn it, Coleridge. You fucking love the hospital, don’t you?”
“It’s a fetish. Blood transfusions and the sound of money flushing down a toilet turn me on.”
“Adeyemi’s money.” He blew a cloud of smoke. “Couldn’t wait half an hour.”
“I couldn’t resist the urge to get stomped by a dancing ventriloquist.”
“Anything broken?”
“My face,” I said.
“I mean, anything important?”
“I can’t tell if the camera is in one piece.” I passed him my belt so he could detach the surveillance camera. “I stashed the big one inside in a cabinet.” My real worry was that despite the cessation of weird electromagnetic effects (I could wear an electronic watch again), the recording might be spoiled.
He apologized for missing the fight—the van’s front tire went flat after the collision and the lugs had proven a real bitch to remove.
“Everything went off without a hitch, eh?” He handed me a rag to sop my bloody nose.
I breathed through my mouth.
“Flawless execution.”
“Of the dumbest idea we’ve ever had.”
* * *
■■■
On the way home, I caught my reflection. Now, there was a dude deserving of pity. My swollen face looked as if it had blocked a cast-iron pan in flight. The sleeve on my left arm was heavy with caked blood and required an effort to lift. The rest of me was an orchestra pit of pain getting in tune.
All in all, I felt pretty okay for a guy who’d gotten his ass kicked.
We drove into an abandoned quarry. Lionel transferred the equipment to the Monte Carlo’s trunk. We torched the van and pushed it over a cliff. The sunrise was bloody as it climbed out of the black masses of trees.
We’d briefly discussed the farmhouse showdown. The reappearance of the bone mystified me something fierce. I said as much.
Lionel lit a cigarette.
“Since you mention it. I thought it was a weird trophy, but whatever;
you’re a weird dude. You’ve toted that thing around for months.”
My pains were momentarily upstaged by a chill.
“You saw me carrying that bone?”
“On several occasions. The other day, you fished it outta your pocket like car keys. You didn’t really acknowledge it. Held the thing for a few seconds, then dropped it back into your coat.”
“A long-term hypnotic suggestion,” I said.
“I’ll buy that explanation.”
“Holy shit. That creepy magician at Redlick Manor must’ve implanted an autonomic compulsion that I carry the bone, to use it as a weapon under the right circumstances.” Which sounded ludicrous as I said it.
“Told you those fuckers could mindfuck you,” he said.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Badja Adeyemi’s legal team wrangled me a personal audience at his newest residence, the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. My presence wasn’t strictly necessary. That dungeon wasn’t on my list of dream attractions either. Adeyemi wanted to see me, and so I reluctantly went. I emailed the case files to his lawyer prior to our security screening. We met in a private room. Adeyemi had lost a few pounds and gained some crow’s-feet. I told him the reddish-orange jumpsuit went with his eyes. His lawyer, Tambour, booted a laptop and played the videos I’d recorded at the farm. Adeyemi slipped the headset on. He studied the video, his mouth set grimly.
The footage became, to employ a technical term, janky in spots, and completely degraded a few seconds prior to Buckhalter’s murder. I would’ve edited that shit anyway. However, much of it was clean. Give me a hallelujah. The footage of Danny Buckhalter’s Mr. Hyde impression and the audio recordings of most of the debacle would likely be worthless in a courtroom. No smoking gun confession. Luckily, I hadn’t risked my life to gather courtroom evidence. The only person in New York whose opinion counted was hunched over the monitor. Adeyemi played it several times. He didn’t take notes. He simply finished and stared at the institutional beige concrete wall.
As agreed, the lawyer kept my report and deleted the sensational files. My copies were safe in a secret location.
