John Shirley - Wetbones

by Unknown

  "I will talk to you about that just a little later if you do not mind. I would like to take some notes. But now there is a man here with ES - he asked to speak to you. He said he knew what was causing his problem but didn't want to tell me. I think he is afraid . . . Oh, yes, here he is, here is - Mr. Kenson?"

  They'd stepped into a private room; a generic hospital room. Kenson was lying on a white hospital bed. He was strapped onto the bed, under the sheet, its mattress cranked up so he was near sitting position. The straps weren't psycho-restraints, Prentice judged - they were to keep him from falling off the bed. And Kenson looked as if he could fall off, quite easily: he was a shrunken caricature of the man Prentice had watched on TV years before. His eyes were sunken and unaligned, looking at separate parts of the room. His lips were flattened onto his few remaining teeth. His arms were bandaged wrist to shoulders. A bottle of glucose water hung from a portable stand, feeding into a tube that bit with a steel

  needle into a vein on the back of Kenson's bony hands. "It must have hurt like a bitch when they put that IV needle in," Jeff said softly, as they came to stand beside the bed.

  Kenson nodded. "Did."

  Drandhu seemed flustered by the lack of introductions. "I should perhaps say, this is Mr. Louis Kenson, and this is Mr. Teitelbaum and Mr. Prentice his friend. Mr. Teitelbaum's brother was the one I told you about, Mr. Kenson -" Drandhu turned hastily to Jeff. "I do not mean to lapse confidentiality, no, but it seemed so important to find the connections -"

  "Don't worry about it," Jeff said. He drew a chair from the opposite wall and sat down by the bed. "You wanted to talk to us, Kenson, I think?"

  "Yeah." His voice a croak. "I thought maybe you'd seen some things. I mean . . . You know what your brother was into? See, if I tell the doctor here, he's going to think . . ." He paused to wet the scraps that were his lips. "He's going to call in the psychiatrists . . . I figure if I have somebody else here who knows . . . I was hoping you might have found the kid. Brought him here too. I guess not huh?''

  Jeff shook his head. Prentice looked around for a chair. There wasn't another one. He was suddenly very tired. He hadn't been sleeping much. And looking at Kenson made him feel drained himself

  "Well - maybe we shouldn't talk about this," Kenson went on hoarsely. His voice drifting to join his gaze which was lost somewhere in the middle distance. "Maybe not. No I don't think so. If you haven't talked to the kid."

  Goddamn it, Prentice thought, I want to know. "We haven't talked to Mitch lately. But I know what really

  happened to a little girl named Wendy and her mother, for example." That was mostly a bluff.

  Jeff looked over with puzzled surprise. One of Kenson's eyes stopped its roving on Prentice. "Do you? Well then. Okay. Let's talk."

  "Drandhu to Pediatrics . . ." A nurse's voice from some distant intercom speaker.

  "Oh my gosh," Dr. Drandhu muttered. "They are calling me." He took a tape recorder from his pocket, no bigger than the kind of transistor-radio that mental patients carry about with them, and hung it on its little leather strap from the IV stand, just under the bottle of glucose water. "Please - I have to go upstairs and check in. But it is I think all right if I record this?''

  Kenson gave a leathery sigh. "Fuck I don't know. I guess so. I don't 'know why I'm bein' so careful. I guess it's habit. Thirty years of hiding things . . ."

  Drandhu switched on the tape recorder, then fluttered around Kenson for a few moments, writing down his pulse and temperature.

  After the doctor had gone, Kenson told them about Mrs. Stutgart, and the Akishra. Jeff listened with polite amusement. Obviously not believing a word of it. But Prentice felt the rightness of the story. And he could almost hear Amy, somewhere, saying, I suppose you know your girlfriend is one of them. A pleasure vampire, in more ways than one.

  "I was one of them for a long time," Kenson was saying. "But after a while, see, it's not enough for the Akishra just to be there to take their share of stuff psychically. They move in on your body. They get to be part of you. Physically. And I couldn't hang with that. So I started backing off - and then Denver started holding me prisoner. Using me for their games. Which

  sure, I deserved, I can see that. It's karma energy, you know? But I waited for a chance, and I stole a car. Denver's toy-boys came chasing after me and I took off into the desert and the car died under me and then this crazy old desert rat came along. He says he was watching us the whole time, following along. He puts me in his pick up and takes me to his place and the toy-boys leave off the chase. They're kind of scared of this old guy for some reason. Denver says the old guy's an unknown quantity and he's protected so they stay away from him. His name's Drax. So anyway, Drax brings me to town and leaves me at a doctor and they send me here."

  "The Akishra . . ." Prentice said. He could almost visualize them. Why? Why did it seem familiar?

  "You have to understand about the Akishra, man, or you don't understand anything. I mean, the real nitty gritty about these fuckers. Hand me that water glass, will you, I need to wet my . . . thanks." He paused to sip the water. Took a deep, weary breath and went on, "The name Akishra, see, is from Hindu mythology," Kenson was saying. "People in the Orient, they know all about 'em. They're astral parasites.They're . . . they look like worms, big transparent worms. Sorta silvery. Bunches of them. Never only one, except the Slabfathers. The Akishra Prime. You can't see Akishra with the naked eye. Your hand goes right through 'em without feeling a thing. But they're there. They seem immaterial, like less than fog, but they're material in a way. Some kind of subatomic particle stuff they're made out of, Judy says. And yeah, they're here. They're all around people. Especially addicted people. Mythical! Shit. I wish to fuck they were, fellas."

  There was just a touch of theatrical delivery left in Kenson. The actor in him seemed to enjoy telling the

  story, despite his wretchedness. "You have to get this clear: the Akishra are everywhere and always have been. Everybody - and I mean everybody - who is addicted to anything, well, the Akishra's involved. Cigarettes? Right. The ones we call the Alpha Flutters are there. The smaller Astral worms. If you could see a cigarette smoker the way a trained eye can see him -" He laughed bitterly. "- cigarette addict has this . . . it looks sort of like an Indian chiefs head-dress made out of these floating astral worms. They're stickin' out of the smoker's head, see. Attached to him at one end - their bodies floating up there like seaweed.

  "Your moderate drinker, he's generally free from astral parasites. But real alcoholics, they got a bigger kind of worm looks sort of like a tapeworm. A line of 'em running up their spine to their heads, streamin' back there. Cocaine addicts got another variety, looks like a big corkscrew. Mean, manipulative little fuckers. Heroin addicts get another kind look like leeches. You can have two or three different kinds at once of course. A whole fur of 'em. Barely see some people for the worms on 'em. Walk through a crowd downtown, it's enough to make you puke, once you learn to see 'em.

  "The addict see, is losing life-force. He's basically using up his life energy on his addiction - little bit by little bit. The Akishra suck that run-off. They get developed enough, they can encourage the addict to go farther and farther. Mostly, though, the Lower Akishra just ride along and stay quiet, take what they can get. Now, the Akishra come in lots of varieties, and there's the Prime Akishra - got one of those hatin' me and suckin' at me right now. They're coiled around you, those Primes. Any of the worms get big enough, they do that: twist around you like pythons. Now the Primes,

  they're the ones that we know how to communicate with, we can make deals with them, and they can have a lotta psychic influence on people. Those you got to sort of invite in - they're special. They got to be brought in on you with ritual, see.

  "And - we make these deals with 'em. What we do is, we bring in fresh people and put the plaything, as we used to call the people, through all kinds of sick fun and hell that releases the life-energy run-off. The Akishra suck that up and then re-route
some of the pleasure-impulses back to us. And they addict us, and pick one of us out to follow around, start drainin' off of us too. You followin' me? And if we let them actually move into our bodies, well, they regenerate the cells. On the outside, anyway. They keep an old body running. But the price for that's nasty to see, when it goes too far. Judy . . ."

  He shook his head and paused to rest, panting slightly. He reached up to a rack behind the bed and drew down an oxygen mask, making a "wait a minute" gesture with his free hand. He inhaled oxygen for a full minute, while Jeff fidgeted on his chair, embarrassed by Kenson's ravings, and Prentice shifted from foot to foot, wanting a drink. And feeling strange about wanting a drink, in light of what Kenson had been saying . . .

  Kenson put the oxygen mask aside and said. "I'm sorry. I'm so tired."

  "Maybe we should split," Jeff said. "Let you rest."

  "No! No, let me get this out. It's been years I've been wanting to . . . part of me wanting to tell someone . . ." He swallowed a little water and went on, "Now, some of the Akishra will let the victims wander out into the city in search of, well, sensation I guess you'd say. Just . . . sensation. Stimulation. They get to be sucked dry - like me."

  Like Amy, Prentice thought.

  Jeff heaved a sigh of aggravation. Kenson didn't seem to notice. He continued, "The Akishra withdraw after the victims are used up and too far gone to be helped. And not coherent enough to be listened to. They become withered up street people, if they live that long, you see'em dying in vacant lots, babblin' . . . It's kind of funny, though. I mean, it's not as if every kind of pleasure attracts the Akishra. Only the kind that's . . . like a sickness in you. That's the kind that uses up bits of your soul, y'know. Sometimes if you change direction you can break away from them. the addict voice they plant in you gets fainter and fainter, like, and they give up and leave. But if you were one of us, with the real psychic communication - well, eventually you come back to 'em. And that's because you're addicted to the Akishra connection itself. Addicted to the ecstasy. The Reward. It's . . . more than you can imagine, when you play along with the Primes. That's all I can say in my defense - some of the things I took part in, man, with no hesitation and no thinking, it's sickening to remember and it's easy to judge me but once your pleasure buttons are pushed like that, you're fucked. You get programmed. You get addicted. And the fuckin' Akishra take advantage of that. So it's like it's this addict part of your brain conspirin' with the fuckin' worms . . ."

  "That's it," Jeff said, standing up suddenly. "That's all of this bullshit I can handle. I'm sorry, Mr. Kenson. You were great, by the way, in The Bishop's Daughter. Now I gotta hit the road." He turned to Prentice. "I'm gonna call Blume again. You won't believe this message he left on my machine. He's playing with my head, the fucking drunk."

  "You like prostitutes, Mr. Teitelbaum?" Kenson

  asked, pausing to cough afterwards. "It's hookers, right? Maybe two a day sometimes."

  Jeff turned to gape at him. "What?"

  "I can see the sex addict worms on you, man. And it's a kind people get from using women in a professional way. Sick sex. Impersonal and nasty in your car. They give you head, most of the time, probably, right there in the car. Lots of guys with dough are addicted to it. The women are so accessible and some of them are surprisingly good lookin'. Sometimes you like to go to those brothels where they line up for you and you pick 'em, I bet. That's the part you really like - you point and say that one and she gives it up. And it's an addictive charge you get outta that. Your worms are real thick around your -"

  "Shut the fuck up, Kenson!" Jeff said dangerously. His face mottled red.

  "It's true, isn't it? And how'd I know? You going to tell me I had you followed?"

  Jeff looked at Prentice who was careful not to look back at him or smile. Prentice had been wondering how one guy could take so many "meetings".

  Jeff was breathing hard. He spun on his heel and shoved past Prentice, storming out the door. Prentice went to the chair and sank into it with a thump. "Kenson - you too tired to answer a couple of questions?"

  "You don't think I'm full of shit, too?"

  "I - don't think you're full of shit. No. Is there some way that . . . well, suppose I was having sex with a girl and she had an arrangement with these Akishra prime, could she, uh, enhance the experience through them to kind of draw me in and uh . . . ?"

  "Sure. That's Lissa's favourite thing. You know her?"

  Prentice's limbs suddenly felt leaden on his bones, as

  if truth had tripled gravity. In a small voice, he said. "Yeah. I do."

  Kenson nodded. He reached up and took another long hit of oxygen. Then he held the mask on his lap and said, "If you can crank my bed down a little I could go on for a few minutes more maybe . . ."

  Prentice was sitting within reach of the two control buttons, on a box just out of Kenson's reach. He pressed the lower button and the bed whined to itself as it lowered the top end of the mattress almost to horizontal. "That's good," Kenson said. "Right there. I need a little elevation . . . Well, now. What you want to know?"

  "Besides the Akishra - are there other creatures on the Astral Plane, or whatever you call it? Maybe something more . . ."

  "Benevolent? Sure." He scowled. "But they're haughty bastards. The higher spirits. The Akishra are just a kind of animal. Etheric animals. But the higher ones . . . some of them are things that only help you if they bother to take any notice of you, and some of them are nasty fucks that are always fighting. They're always playing a kind of game . . . well, Judy called it a 'dance' . . . the dance of the ones who construct, who grow things, with the ones who destroy things . . . I don't pretend to understand all that very much. All I know is, the so-called 'good' ones are there, but they never did shit for me. They're hard to get in touch with and what I heard it gets harder all the time.

  "See, the Akishra, and the other predators, all your garden variety demons, they reproduce in cycles. And they got going with this really big reproduction cycle a couple of times in this century - most recently in the middle 1970s. Started to spread through the world, usually showing their works through your serial killers,

  your child molesters, your Republican Secretaries of the Interior, vicious assholes of all kinds. Usually they aren't so - what's that word. Uh . . . symbiotic. They're usually not so symbiotic as they are with Denver and 'his toy-boys. Well anyway, the Akishra are gearin' up for another big repro cycle." He chuckled creakily. "You think there's a lot of murderous lunatics out there now? They cultivate those fuckers . . . Just wait a few days till the cycle's complete. Denver's got the incubator out there at . . . oh God." He lapsed into silence, his eyes closed, hands clenching.

  "You want a doctor?" Prentice asked.

  Kenson shook his head. His shoulders quivered. After a few moments his eyes fluttered open. He lay there looking into nowhere, murmuring, "One thing, Jeff . . ."

  Prentice didn't correct his confusion about who he was talking to. He could see Kenson was drifting.

  ". . . one thing to . . . get clear . . . the human hosts of Akishra . . . they always . . . always offer themselves up willingly. Whether or not they know it . . . know it consciously . . . they always . . ." He shook his head and made a shooing gesture-with his hand.

  Feeling unreal, Prentice got up to look for Jeff.

  He saw Jeff on the phone in the lobby, trying to reach Blume. Prentice called to him, "Hey Jeff - I'm gonna wait for you in the parking lot."

  Jeff nodded and said, into the phone, "He's what? When? So who am I talking to? Sergeant what?"

  Prentice thought, Now what? He didn't want to know, quite yet. The story Kenson had told him was too much to deal with already. If it were true. Now, stepping

  out into a chilly evening the blotted sky promising rain - Kenson's tale once more seemed like raving. He probably had some disease and some kind of occult hobbyhorse and he'd slung all this together in a paranoid fantasy to explain his illness.

  But he knew
Lissa. And he'd said -

  "Hello, Tom."

  She was there. Lissa, just getting out of a convertible BMW. Prentice felt his legs weaken, looking at her. He thought he felt Amy somewhere in the background, trying to tell him something. But he ignored the fantasy and walked over to Lissa. She wore black jeans, a red halter-top, red spike heels. The heels looked particularly sexy with the jeans, somehow. He stopped just out of her reach. "Hi! How'd you track me down!"

  She glanced past him at the hospital. He started to turn, to see what she was looking at, or who but she came closer and touched his arm as if to hold his gaze. "Hey - are you standing me up? Weren't you supposed to pick me up about an hour ago? For the party?"

  "Is there a party?"

  She looked at him in a fair reading of hurt surprise. "Why would I say there was if there wasn't?"

  "I don't know." He exhaled windily, suddenly feeling stupid. Why would she lie??

  He took a step back, looking at her in the indirect light of the parking lot's streetlamp. Was it there? A kind of tell-tale sheen in the air around her, that seemed to squirm a little?

  He shook himself and looked away. She stepped in and threw her arms around him, drew him close. And instantly he felt the warm, drunken sweetness pass from her to him. He found himself putting his arms around her, returning the embrace, as she said, "Listen -

  something's bothering you. Aren't we close enough we can talk about it?"

  "I don't know - for some stupid reason I feel responsible for Amy. What happened to her. And now I just talked to this guy who was sick with the same thing as Amy . . . If that's what it was . . ."

  It all seemed murky and distant, now that he held her again. This was real; this feeling. This was important.

  "Look - I want you to come to this party," Lissa was murmuring. "Because I want you to meet the people who saved my life."