Half-Resurrection Blues

by Daniel José Older

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “Yes. No.” She sighs. “Yes, I do actually.”

  “I don’t have any tea. But I do have beer.”

  She smiles again, the sadness momentarily retreating from her eyes before crowding back in. “Such a dude. A beer would hit the spot, actually.”

  I pop the tops of two bottles and put one in front of her. “It’s my brother,” Sasha says, straining for evenness. “I’m pretty sure he’s dead.” She sighs. “All the way dead, that is.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Trevor was working with . . . Maybe that’s not the right word. He was working for this guy named Sarco. An old-time sorcerer.” She looks at me intently for a second, reading how her first breach into supernatural territory is sitting. I nod at her to keep going. “Real shady character, if you ask me, but brilliant, unfortunately, and there’s a certain”—she hesitates, searching for the word— “truth to him. To what he says. It’s hard to explain, Carlos.

  “He showed up more than a year ago, talking all kinds of what seemed like dementia at the time, both to me and Trevor. I pretty much brushed him off, but Trevor has a more curious, wide-open nature than I do. He heard Sarco out and pretty soon was doing work for him.”

  “Work?”

  “Trevor was . . . is a historian. A morbid one, yes, but that comes with the territory of being . . . what we are. He’s a master of digging up old sorceries and witchcraft, figuring out various incantations from the different realms of the dead. It’s quite stunning when you get the filtered, nonboring parts recited over dinner and don’t have to thumb through thousands of pages of drivel. But Trevor can sort through drivel like no one else out there. He’s like a computer with it.

  “We’d been running with a group of other folks like us.” I look at her strangely. “You know, dead but alive. Inbetweeners.” I nod. There’s others. Folks like us. My whole body tingles with the thought.

  “Go on.”

  “It was just an informal thing, a loose band of survivors, so to speak. That’s what we called ourselves: Survivors. For obvious reasons. Anyway, I do work for them still, here and there, and at the time Trevor and I were both pretty heavily involved. It’s supersecret, as you can imagine. A small, close-knit community, not necessarily harmonious, sometimes fraught with strife and bullshit, but still . . . a haven nonetheless.

  “Sarco shows up one day talking big talk about the dead and the living and the space in between.”

  It doesn’t have to be so far apart, Trevor had said. A quote perhaps. I keep it to myself.

  “And people became somewhat enamored really. He does have a way of sweet-talking. We had our reservations—I still do—but Trevor went in headfirst, despite my cautioning him. He started unearthing all these old secret incantations and things for some project Sarco had him on. He’d tell me about it at first.” She looks away, and for a second I see a sliver of memory slip through the barricade around her mind. It’s the two of them, brother and sister, having breakfast early one spring morning. He’s going on about some old file he dug up; she’s looking skeptical.

  Then it’s gone; she’s closed it all back away.

  “Then . . . he started keeping quiet about it. I think Sarco had him on some real silent pact type of shit.” I light up a Malagueña and hold one up toward her. She shakes her head.

  “Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  She pads into the kitchen behind me and I start washing out the steel cafetera.

  “The more Trevor disappeared into himself and his research, the less comfortable I was with the whole thing. Finally, one day, he started talking about making a run of some kind. Whatever it was Sarco had him on was coming to a head. He was out all hours, sometimes gone for days. At first, my stomach twisted into knots each time. You have to understand, Trevor and I have been through everything together. He’s the only person in the world who knows who I really am. We literally died together. Going our separate ways is one thing, but this . . . it was like Sarco was eating my brother whole right in front of my face and there was nothing I could do.

  “The worst part was, he made some sense, from what I could gather. I mean, he wasn’t totally insane. If he’d just been some fucking nut, I’da just taken care of him and Trevor woulda gotten over it, but . . . well, maybe you can understand this, Carlos: we live in between two worlds, not wholly part of one nor the other. Here comes this man, this force of nature, and he wants to do something radical to bring those two worlds crashing together. Something huge. A total breakdown of the borderline between the living and the dead. It’s a terrible, beautiful thought. Galvanized the shit out of the Survivors. Tore us apart too. Infighting broke out pretty soon after Sarco showed up, mostly over the ideas he was talking about, and soon there was a faction and then we scattered.”

  She looks so sad. I want to wrap around her, but I know the story needs to come out. The cafetera chortles out a steady burst of steam. I click off the burner and let the coffee settle before pouring it into two white cups. “Milk and sugar?”

  “Black and bitter, please.”

  I hand her the coffee. She breathes in the steam with a smile and we return to the living room.

  “I kept my eye on Trevor as long as I could. Followed him to the Red Edge, where he was meeting with some hipster kids. I just wanted to make sure he was safe, but . . . of course he took it personally. Little sis trying to play big sis. We argued and I backed off. He went out New Year’s Eve and has been gone ever since.” She’s stony faced, holding back the ocean. I think she’s done, but then she says: “Sarco . . . came to me . . . a few days later.”

  “Oh?”

  “He wanted me. To recruit me,” she adds quickly. “To the cause. I asked him where Trevor was and he said he didn’t know, that he’d been looking for him too. ‘Scouring the heavens and earth’ actually, because Sarco can’t say anything plain. And he said he needed my help, that he was so close to something. Sounded just on the edge of that end-of-times hysteria but still somehow coherent. It’s so hard to explain, Carlos, the way that man is. He’s got a way about him, all at once repellant and charming. Not in a sexy way, just . . . the way the truth can be intoxicating after you’ve gone without for so long, you know?”

  A painfully apt analogy. I nod.

  “We were all there just trying to get by, struggling through life in the intersection, and here comes the cat with some big-ass ideas about life and death and yeah, part of me is all ears even though there’s a an even deeper part that’s horrified, that doesn’t trust his ass at all whatsoever in any way, shape, or form.”

  She says it all so matter-of-factly, but she’s plainly shaken.

  I open my mouth and close it again. An epic saga sits on the edge of my tongue, and for a second the whole night seems to lean forward to see if I’ll say it or not.

  “You have your own stories, I know,” Sasha says, “but what I wanted to tell you . . .” She stops and touches her lips like she’s not sure whether she should let the words out. “The reason I came here tonight. I don’t know how to explain it: after you left this morning, I . . . I understood, for the first time since January, that he’s dead. I’d probably known all along, but I was trying so hard to fight it. Hoping some other truth would figure out a way to make sense. But I knew. I did. I just couldn’t . . . face it.

  “When you left, I lay there and felt so alive and so sad and so happy all at once, like someone had pulled the protective coating away from my heart and I was just raw for the first time in so long.”

  I must’ve made a face because she’s smiling, putting her hand on my leg. “Not in a bad way, Carlos. I mean, yes, it hurts. I’m broken-hearted, and I don’t think I’ve fully dealt with it at all. But in a way, maybe I was dealing with it all that time I was in denial, bit by bit. Who knows?

  “But the reason I let you into my house. The . . . that night you showed up at the Red Edge, I was . . . I didn’t know what to do. I’d been going ther
e night after night, waiting for Trevor to show up. I’d stalked those stupid kids he’d met up with, all the way back to their stupid Clinton Hill apartments, and found no trace of him. I said no to Sarco that first night, but he kept reaching out to me, trying to bring me in, and that night I was just about to give up the ghost and go find him. I was . . . I was more angry than anything, at Trevor and whatever stupidity he’d gotten tangled in, at myself for considering jumping in after him, at Sarco, at the dead. Everything. The Survivors are mostly scattered. Seemed like all that was left for me to do was put in with Sarco and hope I could at least find out what happened to my brother, if not get him back.”

  I love and am terrified about where all this is going. I sip some coffee and blank my face.

  “I don’t know who the fuck you are, Carlos, or where the fuck you came from or why the fuck you walked into the bar that night at that very moment when you did. But I know that I had been asking, asking without even realizing, for God or the universe or someone to send me some kind of reminder that there was life outside the stupid triangle of my missing brother, this wild sorcerer, and me. Because that’s all I’ve been able to be about for the past couple months, and it’s wearing me out. It really is.

  “I woulda settled for a goddamn butterfly or something, you know just something small and momentary to snap me out of it. But they sent me you, you ridiculous, tall, beautiful man, cutting through the crowd of nobodies at the Red Edge and sitting down at my table with a glass of wine and a rum and Coke. I don’t know where all this is going, but I know you did something huge without even meaning to.” She moves closer to me; her hand’s on my leg. “And I know you held me in all the right ways last night.”

  I’m hard as a rock.

  “And I know you’re like me in a lot more ways than just the obvious one.” I’m laying her back on the couch, tearing her clothes off.

  No, I’m not.

  I’m letting her nearness wash over me, sinking into the bliss of the moment. Letting go . . . “And I know I want you . . .” She’s hovering over me, levitating for all I know. We’re barely touching, but she’s all around me, her face millimeters from mine. “. . . inside me.” My hands are on her shoulders, peeling away her blouse, sliding off her pants, she’s lowering herself onto me. We’re about to be one, about to once again . . .

  “Carlos.”

  “Hm?”

  “Stop thinking so hard and fuck me.”

  Gleefully, I comply.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Trevor stares at me. His eyes are soft, sleepy. We’re in a mostly dark room; my heart beats heavy in my chest; tears streak my cheeks.

  Trevor rubs a hand over his face. “What is it, Sash?” My screaming woke him up. Again.

  I shake my head; a nightmare’s tendrils still cling to me. Frozen faces, mouths open, reach out of the darkness. Trevor’s always known how to be there for me. I know this instinctively more than anything else. In one of my few shards of memory, I had squeezed my little body into the back of our closet, lost in the forest of Mom’s and Dad’s long winter coats. Trevor squatted patiently outside, telling me stupid stories until I giggled and finally emerged, still teary eyed. Now he watches me for a few seconds and smiles, waits a beat, then asks, “You want to talk about it?”

  I don’t even have words. I’m just tired. My whole body shakes.

  “You want some tea?”

  “No.” Voice gravelly; I try to push back the sound of irritation. He wants to help and, after all, I woke him up. But it feels like something’s clawing up inside of me and I have no strength to play nice.

  “Coffee?”

  “No.”

  “Video games?”

  The smile opens across my face so fast I don’t see it coming. I hate video games. Trevor knows this. But he loves them, and that mischievous chuckle of his has always been contagious. It’s one of the few things I remember from life. A laugh powerful enough to survive the shredding of most of my other memories.

  I can’t say no to that and even feel a glint of joy surface as he scrambles to set up the game console. The blue light of the screen throws his shadow back against the far wall, and then he turns to me. His face is in darkness, but I can still see his smile.

  * * *

  I wake up dead.

  I must be dead, because my blade has been shoved through the right side of my abdomen and into the couch. I’m literally stuck like a goddamn butterfly. And whatever life force I had is fading fast. I’m thinking it must be a dream and then I remember my own dream, which was Sasha’s dream: a memory. Which means we both opened while we slept.

  And she must’ve had one of mine.

  She knows about Trevor.

  I gasp and then cringe as needles of pain dance up and down my right side. Sasha walks into the room. She’s not holding anything in anymore. Rage dances a maniacal circle around her head. She doesn’t have to speak for me to understand that she saw everything while I slept. Everything.

  I groan, and pain radiates along my midsection. She’s putting on her jacket, moving toward the door. There are words trying to come out of me, but even breathing feels like it tears the wound deeper. Nothing leaves my mouth but a cruel gurgling sound.

  Sasha opens the door and someone’s standing in the hallway. Someone tall, with long greasy hair. At first she looks terrified; then she nods at him and shoots me a glare that is two parts rage and one part regret.

  And then she’s gone.

  The man that I watched cut open Moishe’s head strides up to the couch and smiles down at me with long, rotting teeth.

  “Hello, Sarco,” I say.

  “Hello, my son.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Get away from me.” It doesn’t sound very convincing coming from a man with a shard of steel in his gut, but it’s all I got. Some supernatural entity types really respond well to basic instructions.

  Not Sarco.

  “They named you Carlos Delacruz. How interesting.”

  I squint at him, partially through the pain but also because it’s such a cryptic and absurd thing to say. Yes, they named me Carlos. The fuck? “They named you Sarco.”

  He laughs, a hoarse and humorless gargle. “One of many names I’m known by, yes.”

  “What’s so interesting about my name?”

  “Who gave it to you?”

  Ugh. I don’t feel like playing twenty fucking questions with this junky while I’m all speared up. “I don’t know, man. Riley, I guess.”

  He just nods, smirking.

  Great. Now what? I try to relax into the moment. There is, after all, not a single goddamn motherfucking thing I can do to make my situation any better. But getting even remotely comfortable is out of the question. Sarco rolls within a sour cloud of dread. I can feel it all over my body like it’s some contagion; the feeling grows as he gets closer. My muscles tighten involuntarily, and all my damn hairs stand tall. Everything inside me screams to run, rebelling against the obvious physical impediments. Just fucking go, my body begs me. Blade in your gut be damned. Just go.

  “Stop fighting it.”

  “What?”

  The man is full of surprising and random things to say; I’ll give him that.

  “Stop fighting. That feeling you have, it’s not me; it’s you.”

  I’m forced to squint at him again, because I don’t know what else to say. I haven’t quite worked up the nerve to be as rude as I feel like being, so instead I just make faces and pant. I’m pretty sure the blade has blocked off whatever major blood vessel it sliced. From what I can tell, I’m not actively bleeding, but I suspect that breathing slightly wrong or, God forbid, chuckling, would jostle it just so and lead to instant exsanguination. Which might be better than whatever Sarco has planned for me, but still . . . I’d like to live.

  “I don’t . . . understand what . . . the fuck . . . you’re talking about, Sarco.”

  He flashes that toothy smile, and I seriously consider dislodging the blade and op
ting for the quick out. “That horrible feeling you have when I come near.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s your resistance. Your fear, Carlos.”

  “I’m not afraid.” I even manage to say it with a steady voice.

  He laughs again. “Your body is. And you’re in shock. Concentrate on calming down your body. I’m not going to hurt you. You may not believe me, but it would help you stop shivering if you did.”

  I am shivering, dammit, but I figured that was from the stab wound more than anything else. I take a deep, very careful breath and let it out. I believe he’s not going to hurt me, not yet anyway, for the simple fact that he’s already had plenty of opportunity. Surely down the road, I’m in for some torture, but for now, I’m probably relatively safe. Also, cringeworthy though it is, he’s right: allowing the wretchedness to rule me is not helping. Another deep breath and I’m somewhat calmer.

  “There,” Sarco says in a chillingly soothing voice. “That’s better.”

  I shake my head, very carefully, because nothing’s really better. I’m just more prepped for whatever nefarious nastiness he has planned. Fine, so be it.

  “Relax, Carlos. I have a proposal for you. Very simple. Very easy. I need your help.”

  “Seeing as I’m in a terrific position to negotiate, by all means, out with it.”

  “Excellent.” I wish he wouldn’t grin though, seriously. I remember Sasha’s strange story about Sarco trying to recruit her, but then I get distracted thinking about how she stabbed me in my sleep and can’t concentrate. “I’m sure you’ve heard many strange and terrible things about me, Carlos.”