Wetbones

by John Shirley

  Ephram, meanwhile, slipping up behind the girl and sliding his mercifully small member up into her anus.

  Ha ha, if her father could see her now!

  Ephram wondered briefly if the postcard he'd made her write had convinced the police she was just another runaway. It should have. He shouldn't have sent that one, though he'd made her cross out the signal she'd tried to send – and of course he'd punished her severely for that – but he'd been tired, feeling lazy, and they had no more stamps in the shop and he wanted to get it done so he'd sent it off instead of making another card. She'd scribbled over it well, so it shouldn't be a problem. So, he asked himself, why are you letting it nag at you? Concentrate on the pleasures at hand.

  But there was another distraction: Ephram saw something from the corner of his eye, that made him freeze. Was it some errant shadow from the TV set?

  He turned and looked, and saw it clearly. His cock shrank inside the girl. No, no shadow, or not a shadow merely: it was the Akishra.

  He saw them swarming in through the window, wriggling with hideous purpose, ectoplasmic and urgent with hunger, sending out squirming feelers, scouts trying to locate him. The Astral Protection he'd put on himself was fading or… perhaps the girl had attracted them… perhaps she had some latent Power…

  The Protection is not enough, at this close proximity, Ephram thought. They'll sense me. They'll know me.

  I won't be enslaved again!

  He drew back from the bed, doing up his pants, dragging the girl physically away from the dying man on the bed – and then jolting the man hard with a pleasure impulse, releasing the energy in him that would draw them over…

  There. The cloud of wrigglers had drifted through the air, were hovering over the bed, descending to feed. They were a young, blind Mass of Akishra and they hadn't sensed Ephram or the girl yet – or anyway hadn't identified them. They were interested in the transmitter and the boy was transmitting beautifully now, his suffering and pleasure all murkily intermixed. The cloud of Akishra clothing him with their etheric maggotry. Oh Lord, the repulsiveness of their motion, how it ever sickened Ephram.

  Now the boy's mind opened. He saw what had happened to him and he perceived the Akishra and his scream made the windows vibrate.

  Ephram had got the girl roughly dressed and dragged her out the door. They fled across the parking lot. Behind them someone was shouting. The manager of the motel.

  The police would find this particular stupid young man's body. Ephram had to get back to his motel and away before they came out to see who had left this horror… Too bad they couldn't see the Akishra, that'd cloud Ephram's trail, ha ha…

  Well, it was not so grave, Ephram decided, when they'd got the car loaded and were away. No one had noticed them running away, evidently, for they were allowed to depart unmolested.

  He put the girl to sleep, so that she slumped, snoring, in her seat, and he drove to the next cluster of generic motels and restaurants, for a rest before beginning again…

  Alameda

  Typical Bay Area weather, Garner thought irritably, as he locked up the house about ten-thirty in the morning, hunching his old brown leather jacket against the moist wind. He went hurriedly to the Econoline van – he'd traded in the Toyota for it, thinking he might need a free place to sleep when his money ran out. He sat behind the wheel, asking himself if there was anything else he should have packed. He kept himself busy that way, with details, so that he didn't think about Constance too much, because if he went crazy he could never hope to find her.

  And it was all on him, finding her. It was obvious the police weren't going to be much help. Which was partly his fault: he hadn't written down the license number of that Porsche, when he had the chance. He thought he'd be able to confront the guy and take Constance back. It never occurred to him he'd be struck unconscious before he could utter a word; that Constance would be taken beyond his reach…

  Stupid. He should have realized it might be abduction. He should have written the number down. You stupid son of a bitch, he told himself.

  He leaned against the van, and took the post card out of his pocket. It was postmarked Fresno, the day before. A picture of the Sunken Gardens. Constance's handwriting on the other side. Dad I'm okay, don't worry and don't look for me. Am with friends. There was one line more that had been scribbled over. Then her signature. He had used a pen-eraser on the scribbled-over line. The result was hard to read, but after looking at it for a long time, he was pretty sure the line under the scribble had said, Please take care of my doggie. That was a code they'd set up when she'd been twelve and he'd got her fingerprints done and they'd talked about avoiding child-snatchers. She didn't have a dog. She didn't even like dogs. Whoever had her, had become suspicious, made her scribble out the signal line.

  Of course, Garner had showed the cops the card, pointed out the message she'd tried to plant in it. The Oakland detective had squinted at it and made a wavering motion with his hand in the air. ''Maybe, maybe not. Hard to say what it says. Can't really make it out. You think it was the signal line but to me it looks just as much like Please take care of yourself."

  "Why would she cross that out?"

  "Who knows? Maybe she thought it would make you mad, like it was patronizing or something. This card seems to indicate to me that she left voluntarily…"

  "Then why did they hit me on the head? My kid would never voluntarily leave me lying there on the ground…"

  "Maybe she wasn't there, at that point. Maybe – and this is just as likely – you had the wrong room. And whoever it was, was getting loaded – that happens a lot in those motels – and they were tweaking out with crack paranoia and put out your lights because they thought you were busting in to rob them… We just don't have enough to assume she was kidnapped…"

  He'd gone to the Alameda police, the Oakland police, and the FBI, and none of them seemed convinced it was definitely a case of abduction and not runaway. But they were "looking into it." Fuck.

  And he'd gone to a couple of memorial societies for kidnapped youngsters. Her picture would appear on milk cartons. He'd stay in touch with them.

  Now he was going to look for her himself and it was, maybe, as stupid as not writing down the Porsche's license number. It seemed likely they'd continue going south. The guy seemed less likely a drug-dealer, now. Drug dealers just don't up and leave their territory.

  Garner looked up at the house. He had a kid from his therapy group house-sitting for him, an act of faith if ever there was one, and he had paid the rent for three months in advance out of the savings he had, and the rest he had with him in traveller's cheques…

  Maybe she'd come back when he was gone. She'd need help and he wouldn't be here, he'd be out on some freeway with his face in a wild goose's ass.

  James was going to be here. Give the kid some responsibility, taking care of the place, and he'd be here watching the house if she came back. Garner would call the house every day.

  James. Garner hoped the little son of a bitch didn't try to fuck Constance if she came back.

  He slammed the side door of the '77 van. The door didn't latch, slid open again. He got more of a running start on its rollers this time and slammed it so hard the whole van shook and it stayed shut. He walked around to the driver's side and got in. The van started on the first try and he put himself in the stream of traffic for the freeway. Got onto the 880 headed South to San Jose. First step on the trip to Los Angeles. The sky was clumped with low grey clouds. A faint drizzle slipped across the road from time to time; filmy membranes of dirty water. Precipitation would slow traffic, but he almost wished it would really pour down rain.

  He tried listening to the radio but every damn song seemed to have some sinister meaning for him, seemed to mock him about Constance. He remembered having read about the two human monsters who'd kidnapped a number of twelve and thirteen year old girls, tortured them to death, raping them in the intervals, and videotaped the whole thing… One of them had gleefully told the c
ops in his confession about having put an electric drill into the girl's ear and how she flopped about like a fish on a hook as he pushed it in and…

  The tears came painfully out of Garner, coming out so hard and thick they hurt.

  The motherfucker could be doing anything to her!

  Pray, Garner counselled the drug addicts and the alcoholics. Even if you don't believe, pray. Its called Fake It Till You Make It, Garner'd tell them. Just pray whether or not you believe in God. You'll reach Something. It'll help.

  But those little girls in the hands of those total assholes, those human monsters… You knew they'd prayed for help. But had God helped them? Hell, no.

  The tears, achingly, ran dry. His face was sticky and hot. He kept driving. Just to make him feel as if he was doing something for Constance…

  He thought about Aleutia and the baby, dead on that table. Just two more casualties to tick off on the endless list, two more taps of the calculator button.

  The traffic was heavy. Crenellated rows of condos and ranch homes crowded the hills around the freeway, some of the projects with only a thin fence and thirty feet of dirt separating them from the roar of the freeway; many of them only half constructed. He was stuck for a while behind a double trailer semitruck emblazoned Miracle Merchandizing. He knew what that was, he'd seen something about it on the Good Morning show. A business that specialized in lighting manufacture and overnight delivery of hot, media-merchandizing, goods. Big money in Bart Simpson dolls, Bart Simpson keychains. Before that, Garfield – some of the cars around him still had the stuffed cartoon cat stuck to their windows trying to claw its way out, very funny. And lately it was Chomper, the Simpsons' clone show which had the cartoon toddler, Chomper, who ate and drank everything in sight and once, isn't it funny, smoked a whole carton of his alcoholic Mom's cigarettes… Cut to a beer commercial.

  And that semitruck trailer blocking his way was in all probability filled to the gills with Chomper dolls, Chomper keychains, Chomper posters, Chomper chewing gum.

  Garner had to search for his little girl in this endless sea of irrelevancy and indifference and preoccupied people and deteriorating places. This is crazy, this is hopeless…

  Not necessarily, Garner told himself He'd been on the streets himself for twelve years. A crank addict, then a downer addict and alcoholic. And there were ways to find people, down near the street level. If the guy was keeping Constance some kind of prisoner it might be that he'd have to hide himself and her in parts of town where he could get away with it easily. And if Garner was right, the son of a bitch would go to L. A…

  Line up the ifs like toy soldiers, move them around the way you want, try to make yourself feel better. It's still just playing with ifs.

  It's better than doing nothing.

  He wanted a drink. If ever he had a reason to drink, he had one now. How long had it been? How many years?

  He was owed a drink.

  He laughed at himself, bitterly, and shook his head. Mentally changed the subject.

  Suppose Constance had gone voluntarily. Who knew for sure what went on in her head? There was a lot more to her than the California airhead in the pump hairdo and the ankle bracelets and a greater interest in watching Dynasty re-runs than in reading. There had to be so much more under the surface. And in trying to give Constance "her space" all the time, he had maybe lost touch with her completely. They'd talked, they spent time together, but lately it had been superficial. The apparent shallowness of the girl was probably just a result of her being a teenager, with all the stresses of wanting to be liked.

  Garner, himself, in high school, had been the school nonconformist, had worked strenuously on not being liked. Had been borderline pathological in his insistence on autonomy. Constance wanted to belong and his stupid prejudice had made him perceive that as shallow, kneejerk conformity. When in fact it was just healthy, human nature. Something the misfit in Garner was never comfortable with.

  He ached, thinking about it. He'd lost her. It was easy to hate the bastard who'd taken her. It felt better to lay it all on the prick in the Porsche.

  She hadn't run away. He just couldn't believe it. He knew – he knew – that she had been taken.

  For no particular reason, he remembered when she was a toddler, the first time he'd taken her into a wading pool, a little plastic pool with the Flintstones in their caveman swimming togs printed all over it, the blue water a foot deep, and she'd been scared of the little pool at first. And why shouldn't she be? A toddler could drown in a foot of water, if she fell face down and panicked. If her Dad didn't watch over her all the time…

  The guy might have his hands on her, right now.

  To keep from screaming, Garner began a marathon of talking earnestly to God, praying for everything, everyone, as well as for Constance; for himself, he begged for strength and guidance and patience.

  It took him another twenty minutes to get around that fucking truck.

  Culver City, Los Angeles

  "Where the hell did you get that?" Jeff asked, sitting at his breakfast bar next to Prentice. "Isn't it illegal for you to have that shit?"

  "Maybe," Prentice said, distractedly, running his finger down the scribbled doctors' evaluations on the photocopies he'd fanned out on the table, "but I was married to her, right?"

  "You bribe somebody?"

  "Desk nurse. Gave him a hundred bucks which probably went to crack cocaine, from the look of him. It's pretty scary, what I hear about people in hospitals, nurses and doctors and orderlies, using hard drugs. They're gonna be pulling out your organs and selling them on the blackmarket to get drug money or something… Anyway, yeah, the guy photocopied Amy's files…" He tapped his finger on one copy-faded line. "Check it out."

  Instead, Jeff got up to make capuccino. He had an espresso machine and a milk-steamer. He was going to be buying a house soon. Prentice felt resentment and jealousy chasing tails through him, and he stuffed it away, concentrated on the admissions form, reading aloud to Jeff. "Patient repeats certain phrases at intervals, eg: The Morman won't let me come home… patient is frequently labile…" Blah blah blah, the usual psychoguff… But check that out: 'The Morman'."

  "The Morman?" Jeff said, over the hissing of the steamer. "Like… The More Man, you mean?"

  "It says 'the Morman'. But yeah. She probably was saying, The More Man. Like Lonny said." Prentice waited for Jeff to react.

  Bingo. Jeff turned, stared at him. "Come on. Mitch and Amy hooked up with the same guy? Bullshit."

  "Hey – they both mutilated themselves, right? More or less the same way." Prentice smiled in quiet triumph. "I went to the Pinkertons, I was thinking of hiring them to investigate the whole shebang, but they're too fucking expensive. But – they do traces on credit cards and stuff for a pretty reasonable fee. So I had 'em trace the account she had that Gold Card on – it came from Sam Denver."

  "You're shitting me!"

  "You know, that's a revolting expression. No, I'm not 'shitting you'."

  "Who are you, Miss Manners? Listen, bro – let's go out to the Ranch. No more talking about it, let's do it. Denver's ranch. See if we can find Mitch. I mean, right fucking now. Just look into it. If it doesn't pan out, we go to the cops."

  "Just go out there? Just us?"

  "Hey – chances are the Denvers are like my old man used to say about spiders: 'They're more scared of you than you are of them.' They won't want any trouble." He sipped his capuccino. Sprinkled more chocolate on the foam. "And I got a gun, bro. I got a bunch a guns. I got a fuckin. 357, they want to play games – "

  'You been playing paintball too often, man. Spend too much time writing action pictures. Dirty Harry 's a fantasy, Jeff. But yeah. Let's go check it out. Only I want my capuccino first, with extra chocolate."

  Near Malibu

  Jeff was driving like a fucking lunatic, Prentice thought. There was a slate of thin cloud over the sky, but it was hot, the light suffused with an eerie sameness over the dry hills, the manzanita and stunted
pine and purplish underbrush, the punky stands of yucca spears – all of it sometimes broken up by improbable squares of lushly green, manicured lawn where an irrigated estate or gated cluster of luxury condos wedged in between hills.

  The Cabriolet made a razzing sound as it attacked the curves, fishtailing from time to time. Maybe Jeff's way of working up his nerve for the confrontation…

  They had directions from Jeff's agent, who used to come out here, years earlier. But Jeff almost missed the dirt road. They were supposed to look for a redwood mailbox on a big, four sided post made of smooth quartz river stones. They saw the post at the last moment – Prentice spotted it and stamped an imaginary brake, yelling, "Shit – there it is!"

  Jeff hit the brake and the tyres made crooked marks on the cracked white highway, Prentice grabbing the dashboard to keep from slamming his head into the windshield. "Coulda told me sooner," Jeff muttered.

  "Not at those speeds, A.J. Foyt."

  They backed up, turned onto the dirt road. There was a little gravel left in its deeper ruts. Jeff paused to look at the stone post. It was almost hidden in high fiddlehead ferns and sage. The wooden mailbox was gone. On the concrete post, the rounded quartz stones glowed faintly in the sunlight.

  "Gotta be it," Jeff said. "They really let it go to seed." The car made a noise like a trumpeting baby elephant as he changed gears. They gunned up the road, pluming dust, tailbones banging on the seat springs as the car jounced in the ruts. The trees got higher nearer the top of the hill; there were hoary palm trees, here, transplanted long ago, looking over the shoulders of mistletoe-darkened oaks. Another curve and they came to a high, dust-coated hurricane fence, with a heavily padlocked gate made of the same stuff. Ten yards beyond it was a stone fence and a black, wrought iron gate figured with rusting cherubims holding a bullet-pocked sign that had once said, Welcome. Over the cherubims was a wrought-iron figure of two crossed skeleton keys. The Doublekey Ranch.