Wetbones

by John Shirley

  Jeff pulled up in the shade of an overhanging bower of roses. Big roses, so red they were almost black. Looking closer, as the dust cloud parted around them, Prentice saw that the roses were overgrown up a dead oak tree; its trunk and lower branches a black, warped skeleton for the fleshy roses.

  From the midst of the rose bush came a wet, throaty snarling. No. It wasn't from the bush – why had he thought it was? It was coming from beyond the hurricane fence. Two Dobermans with spiked collars were running alongside the fence, snarling, teeth bared. They jumped at the fence, making it ring like chain mail, throwing their full bodies against it; shaking dust loose with each clank and making both Prentice and Jeff twitch back in their seats.

  Rose petals filtered down from above, pattering softly into the car.

  The dogs threw themselves at the fence again. Rose petals rained once more. Prentice looked up and saw that vines of another rosebush clung to the top of the fence.

  A black man, well over six feet and three hundred pounds, wearing a generic security guard's uniform, stepped from a small guardhouse at the iron gates and shouted at the dogs. They cringed back, wincing as if afraid of being whipped. The guard came striding up toward the fence, a shotgun aslant across his tubby middle, his eggplant pate shiny with sweat, dark glasses strobing. "Ya'll got an appointment?" he bellowed.

  Jeff looked at the glove compartment, where his gun was hidden.

  Prentice said softly, "Way too soon to even think about it, Jeff."

  Jeff nodded. Prentice could see him gather his courage. He took a deep breath and got out of the Cabriolet, ''Hi, how ya doin'!" he called, as the two men approached each other from opposite sides of the metal fence.

  'Ya'll got an appointment?" the black man repeated.

  Jeff shook his head. "I… I'm Jeff Teiltelbaum. I had word that my brother is here and I need to see him. I'm his legal guardian. His name's Mitch Teitelbaum."

  'Mitch Tuttle…?"

  "Teitelbaum."

  'Lemme call up. I'm sorry about these damn dogs." He turned on his heel, slapping his thigh. "Come on, hounds, up wid me. Lesgo." The dogs trotted after him. Prentice could see a metal rod strapped into the man's belt that might be a cattle prod. He walked laboriously over to the guardhouse and reached in to a wallphone.

  Prentice said, "This place is a paranoid's delight." Jeff nodded.

  The guard came back three minutes later shaking his head. "Got no Mitch Teitelbaum here – hasn't been here neither. You maybe on the wrong road."

  Prentice called, "This is the Denver place, right?"

  The guard turned his mirror-glassed eyes toward him. "Surely. But your boy, he ain't here." He turned and walked away with an air of dismissal.

  "Could we talk to someone from the house, the Denvers," Jeff began, "or – "

  The guard turned back to them but kept walking, backwards. "No sir, not today. Mrs. Denver not feeling good. Can't have visitors. She's just not up to it. I already asked." He turned his back on them again.

  At the guard house he hesitated, then turned toward them, raising the shotgun so its barrel rested casually against his right shoulder. Not so casually, really.

  Jeff hissed, "Shit, shit, shit, " under his breath as he turned and got into the car. He started the car, backed it up, went slowly back down the road. Making a statement with his slowness: You didn't run us off, I'm leaving because I want to.

  "Look, let's go to the cops," Prentice said, when they got to the edge of the highway. "Mitch was out of his gourd on something. Maybe these assholes are giving it to him. He could end up dead, like Amy."

  Jeff stopped the car on the verge of the old concrete road. Sat there, staring at it. "Fuck the cops!"

  "I know how you feel about them – "

  "Especially LAPD. They're total fuckers. And I swore I wouldn't go to them. I swore to Lonny."

  "That's just stupid, man. What is this, Tom Sawyer and Huck swearing on the bones of a pirate? For Mitch's sake, let's go to the cops."

  Jeff made a long sigh. He coughed, spat dust over the side of the car. Finally, he changed gears so violently Prentice feared for the transmission, and the car bounced up onto the highway. "Okay. Okay, fuck it. Let's try the cops."

  Near Malibu. The Doublekey Ranch.

  Late afternoon. But it was shadowy in Mitch's room; no light on, and the rosebushes around the window took all the sun for themselves. It was quiet, except for the sounds of ripping wallpaper and, briefly, in the distance, the sound of a car – a sports car, by the sound of it changing gears and gunning away.

  Mitch was peeling wallpaper. Starting it with a thumbnail, then peeling it away like the strips of skin he'd pulled from his own ribs, a few days before.

  Fucking roses on the wallpaper. Drooping rosebuds between that spiky shape from European shields. Let's see what's under it…

  He wasn't really seeing the wallpaper. His head was churning with pictures. Images of hurting himself, cutting himself, the nosing knife in his forearm. He tried to remember how it had started, how he'd got into something that sick. But it was like trying to see through a fogged window. It wouldn't come clear. Not quite.

  Just bits and pieces. The More Man telling him, Basically, it's a mystical discipline. It had sounded heavy, then. Now the phrase sounded totally bogus to him. Mystical discipline, bullshit. That kind of talk was supposed to fake him into seeing himself as some messiah type guy. Christ's scourging and crucifixion immediately preceded his exaltation, The More Man had said. And he'd talked about fakirs who laid on beds of nails and saints who whipped themselves all day. But the secret is, if you do it right, it's not painful! Mostly not. When it does hurt, it only hurts you for a while. Once you're in touch with that higher place, you can feel anything. Heal anything. The Spirit will heal you…

  They'd been on some terrace at a beachside condo. The More Man in shades, holding Mitch enthralled. I want to make you a star, Mitch – but that takes a godlike transformatian. To be a real superstar takes total discipline. Discipline need not be painful. It need not hurt – it needs only the courage to explore… This body is not your true body, so what you do to it doesn't matter. Your true body is ectoplasmic, Mitch. It's ethereal, a higher thing that cannot be hurt

  …

  And then he'd given Mitch the Probe, just a big silvery knife. And when Mitch hesitated, this girl just sort of drifted out onto the terrace and, holy shit, it was Jeff's buddy Tom Prentice's wife, Amy, wearing a bikini, tanned but her body with all these mooncoloured marks on her, and she'd taken the knife ( Mitch peeled another long spiral of wallpaper away) and knelt beside him and put her hand on Mitch's thigh – instant hard-on – and, with the other hand started carving her breasts with the knife.

  Mitch wanted to vault over the terrace railing and run, when the blood started guttering along the edge of her bikini top, curling down the round sides of her breasts. He saw the look on her face, the most totally awesome ecstasy and he thought, The bitch is sick…

  Until Sam Denver said, "Feel what she is feeling. Touch her arm, and it'll come through to you."

  "She – no. I can't. She'll stab me."

  "No. No she won't, Mitch. I promise you."

  So Mitch reached out and touched her arm – and the feeling went into him like a hot wet tongue running over his nervous system. The feeling expanded from there; it encompassed him with a monstrous pleasure.

  He was feeling what she was feeling, yes, he could even feel the hot, intense places where the knife dug in – where the pleasure was as intense as the flame of a welding torch, you couldn't look at it directly. He could feel her breasts (peeling another strip of wallpaper away) as if they were his own; could feel the blade slicing them an inch deep here and there…

  Could feel his pussy getting wet between his legs.

  He wrenched away from her, sick with gender disorientation. But wanting more of the pleasure. Immediately.

  "Give me the knife," he said.

  The next morning, he'd felt wrung ou
t, used up, depressed. The pleasures took their toll. The wounds? He couldn't feel them – not back then. He felt fear simmering slowly in a steel pot of emptiness.

  But by the next night he was ready for more…

  "Got some other little things I want you to do for me, first," Denver said. "Just to show us your devotion. Your dedication. There's a certain street…"

  Now, Mitch wrenched another strip of paper from the wall and ground his teeth, shook himself, though the movement sent shards of pain spinning through him, to drive out the memory of what the More Man had made him do on that street.

  But once you've felt the Head Syrup, The Spirit's Reward, the More Man called it, you'll do anything to get it back.

  You want more, the More Man had said, And it's all right to want more. They try to teach us that we should only want a little as it's doled out to us – but it's a lie, a conspiracy to make us slaves to Society, Mitch. The Spirit wants us to have more… and more and more…

  The slowed-down sound of electricity crackling. That's what tearing paper sounded like to Mitch, as he tore away another uneven strip of wallpaper. You could smell electricity, a kind of electrical burning smell, when the Reward was coming…

  He'd cleared an area of the wall about a yard square, next to the head of his bed. Under it, was just more wallpaper. Another kind of rose pattern. Shit.

  He wondered vaguely if they'd punish him for it. Probably not. They probably didn't expect him to be sane.

  He had no idea why he wanted to strip away the wallpaper.

  On the left side of the flame-shaped patch where he'd stripped the outer layer of wallpaper away, the under-paper showed a long, drip-shaped brown stain.

  His hands started to shake, as he tore away more paper on that side, revealing the old wallpaper beneath. More brown stain. Drippy brown stain. Where rainwater had seeped?

  No… But he kept clearing it away till he was sure that it was a splash that had come from the bed. You could tell by the way it was splattered outward from the top right of the bed. He pinched a piece of the discoloured underpaper with his finger tips, and brought it to his nose. A smell of rot and iron. It was blood.

  He thought, What'd you expect, dumbshit?

  But he kept stripping away wallpaper, revealing more and more of the splash – and then a place where the underpaper had been breached. Clawmarks, four of them, ran down the wall here, to the plaster beneath. In one spot exposing a crack in the wall. As soon as he'd exposed it, he felt a little puff of cool air from the crack. And a moment later heard the voices.

  And the edge of the crack was outlined in light.

  He bent, and pressed his right eye to the crack (an icepick, there'll be an icepick spike coming through the crack into his eye – no, shake that bullshit off…) and squeezed his other eye shut. He could just make out pink shapes moving, in the next room… fleshy pink…

  It took a moment for his eye to adjust. Then a piece of the neighbouring room came into focus. A man and a woman fucking on a bed. Fucking without rhythm on the bare mattress. He couldn't make out what they were saying. There was someone else, too, coming into Mitch's narrow field of vision for just a moment, moving to stand by the edge of the bed…

  The More Man? He wasn't sure. He could only see an arm, a bit of his side. Then the guy moved back, into the shadows, and there were only the man and woman on the bed.

  The couple on the bed were bleeding. They moved in sex like someone crawling across a desert. Like each movement was a fight with exhaustion. Each thrust a heave and a slump, a weak convulsion that was only technically sex. He could make out the knobs of the guy's vertebrae on his back. He looked so skinny, so used up. Blood runnelled down from a torn ear… the ear hanging by a flap…

  They were crying, too. Weeping softly, the both of them. "Please," the man on the bed pleaded. "Let us stop. I can't… any more…"

  "Yes please, please, please," the woman sobbed. "Just let us rest, we'll do a lot more later. A long, rasping, wracking sob. "Please."

  "More," said the man watching from the shadows. "More. More. More. More."

  Then the motion of the two on the bed changed. The whole quality of their movement changed. Mitch tasted burning electricity, shivered with lust for the Head Syrup, as the man and woman begin to giggle – hoarse, moronic giggles. Then they began to hump faster, writhing in puppeted semblance of sexual delight.

  The woman's leg was twitching… spasming. Her arm flopping like a live fish dropped on hot coals. The man turned his face from her – Mitch couldn't quite see the guy's face but he could see and hear what was coming out of it: a thick vomit of blood.

  Vomiting blood but still he humped into her.

  Mitch felt the strength go out of his knees. He slid down the wallpaper to the floor.

  Then he was up, lurching across the room, throwing himself at the window frame, smashing at it so that glass flew. But he couldn't get it open, it was completely blocked off…

  He stared at the splintery geometries of broken glass on the floor by the wall. He could use a piece of glass to slash his jugular…

  But then he felt the watcher. He turned, and no one was there, but he could feel the More Man watching him, and he could sense the hand of the Spirit poised over him. Waiting to punish.

  They'd never let him kill himself. He'd never be able to get the glass to his throat. The More Man would never let him get away as easily as that…

  5

  Culver City, Los Angeles

  "Hi – I'm Sargeant Sparks. I'm looking for Jeff Teitelbaum…?"

  Even the cops here had the irritating California habit of making statements sound like questions, Prentice thought, looking up at the open living room door. So, like, I'm going into therapy tomorrow? And I've got all these abandonment issues?

  Well, Prentice always wanted to ask, do you or don't you?

  Prentice got up from his perch on the arm of the sofa and stood awkwardly trying to decide if he should let the guy in or wait for Jeff to come out of the bathroom. "Uh, yeah -"

  But then the bathroom door banged open and Jeff crossed to the front door. "Yeah, officer, right here," Jeff said, opening the screen door for the cop who stood there. "C'mon in."

  Officer Sparks was shaped like a bowling pin, narrow shoulders and wide hips. He wore thick-rimmed designer glasses and an air of weary authority. He had a sad, panda face. He came in carrying a clipboard.

  Every so often the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt muttered to itself and cleared its throat of static.

  "Have a seat, officer," Jeff said, rubbing his palms against the hips of his khaki shorts. He was nervous, working too hard at not actively hating the cop for being a cop.

  "We've been looking into your report about your brother Mitch Teitelbaum?"

  "Right," Jeff said "Mitch." He stood by the door as if ready to open it for the cop again as soon as possible.

  "And we've gone out to talk to Mr. Denver?"

  "You personally?" Prentice asked. He wasn't sure why it seemed important.

  "Hm? Yes sir, I went myself. Me and another officer. We came to the conclusion that the boy is not there and Mr. Denver doesn't know where he is. But maybe I should ask – have you heard from him?" He smiled with one side of his mouth. "We're looking for him, too. He's supposed to be in Juvie Hall. For all know he's in the next room sleeping it off."

  "He's not here and we haven't heard from him," Jeff said. His voice flat. "What do you mean, sleeping it off?"

  "He was doing some time for -" He glanced at his clipboard. "Possession of cocaine. Chances are, he's on a run somewhere."

  "He's not a drug addict, he's not 'on a run'." Jeff crossed his arms over his chest, then dropped them by his side, then crossed them over his chest again. "Did you guys search the Denver place?"

  "No sir, we didn't have a warrant and we'd need a lot more to go on than the word of a kid you talked to in Juvie Hall."

  Prentice considered bringing Amy into it. Her turning up dead, her connec
tion to Denver. The credit card. The stories of the More Man. But it would seem irrelevant to the cop. One thing at a time, please. Just the facts. And it sounded kind of silly to Prentice, now, when he imagined explaining the connection.

  ''That guy Denver is up to some weird shit," Jeff said. "I know he is."

  "Seemed like a regular Malibu producer type to me," the cop said. "Which means he might be up to some weird shit, but probably not kidnapping. I get a feeling about these things, I learn to respect those feelings, you know? The kid is not out at the Ranch. That's my feeling… You have any evidence of kidnapping you haven't given us?"

  Jeff chewed his lip. Finally he said, "No. But -"

  Sparks scribbled on his clipboard, then glanced around, as if it had just occurred to him that they might be in "possession of cocaine" themselves, since Mitch had been. Thoughtfully, he said, "You have any evidence of kidnapping, best thing is to go to the FBI. One of their specialties." He looked at Jeff. "Do you think, sir, that Mitch could be hanging with some of his drug-using buddies? I mean – we have to assume, given his record -"

  "That's all. Forget it, man. We should have known better," Jeff said sharply, opening the screen door so hard its hinges squealed.

  The cop stood up, glancing around the apartment, stalling. "I was going to ask if I could use the phone -"

  "They got one at the donut shop," Jeff said, gesturing toward the door.

  The cop's jaws worked and his cheeks mottled. "This isn't a good way, sir, to get help from the police," he said, crossing the room.

  "Nothing from nothing is nothing," Jeff said, slamming the door after the guy. "Christ!"

  He and Prentice looked at each other. Then burst out laughing. Prentice's laughter more genuine. "'They got one at the donut shop!'" Prentice repeated, shaking his head, laughing.

  Then he stopped laughing, and said, "Hey."

  Jeff was crossing to the kitchen. He paused and looked over. "What?"

  "He said, The kid's not out at the Ranch. That was the way that fat-ass cop put it. Like…"

  Jeff nodded. "Familiar, calling it the Ranch. Like he was using a nickname for it. Like he knew the place pretty well…"