by Rio Youers
“My flowers,” Mother Moon said, still with that mad, desperate look on her face.
“Mine,” Edith corrected her, and slammed the window shut.
* * *
Pace had been right, Valerie thought later, when the girls were asleep and she was alone in the living room. The way to Glam Moon really was through a person’s energy, one who’d been torn apart, or had an exceptional gift. Edith was that person. She could connect to the place between up and down. She could open the portal—the throat between worlds.
“But how,” Valerie said, “do I keep it open?”
She imagined grabbing the axe from the woodshed, then coming back here and driving it through the little girl’s skull. Thonk! One swift, hefty blow.
Hello, Glam Moon. Momma’s home.
But what if that didn’t work, and all she managed was to extinguish the source of the energy? That would be like shattering a flashlight when you were lost in the dark.
There had to be another way.
Pace came to mind again. She saw him in the kitchen of the house they’d all shared, explaining that the White Skyway was a gateway between dimensions. In essence, a wormhole, he’d said, but with an exotic matter added, making it stable … traversable.
“Exotic matter,” Valerie mumbled.
Her mind ached. She went to bed. But not her bed. She dropped into the first one she came across, which happened to be Edith’s bed with the bloody letters smeared across the sheets. She dreamed about the tiger and the ox and the rabbit and the snake and the pig and the dog and the rooster and the goat. She dreamed about hammers and picanas and nail guns, and also about what the Society had given her—gifted her: Glam Moon. When pleasure is denied, the tiger had said, the channel to new possibilities, and alternate experiences, becomes broader. She dreamed about fires and bombings and shootings and death and grief, the numerous acts of terror she’d orchestrated to bring about the end of pleasure. And why? To replicate the horror and desolation she’d experienced in the room above the White Lantern. Why? Because there was always a price to—
Valerie sat bolt upright and kicked back the covers. She scrambled from the bed, flicked on the light. Shirley was in her own bed but Valerie barely registered her; she was too preoccupied with the letters painted on the sheets. P-A-V. Except it wasn’t a V. Edith had either run out of blood or been distracted by something else, but now Valerie could see that the crotch of the V had a very faint tail.
It was a Y.
“Pay,” Valerie said.
This was a message. An instruction. PAY. In blood. Edith’s blood. Valerie again imagined taking an axe to her skull. She even started toward the door, but then stopped and looked at Shirley.
Same blood.
Pain, she mumbled. A gateway. A spotlight on the soul.
The most exotic matter of all.
Valerie switched off the light but stood a moment longer, her skin tingling and her mind alive.
“There’s always a price to pay,” she whispered.
She crawled into bed with Shirley, kissed the back of her young, shapeable head, and held her close in the dark.
29
The White Lantern, Engine City. The vibe was friendly and relaxed, with Chinese folk music tinkling in the background and divine aromas wafting from the kitchen. Martin chose a seat by the window and ordered the famed Kung Pao chicken, but didn’t enjoy it as much as he should have. It was impossible to shake the restaurant’s history from his mind. He tried focusing on the lights glinting on the other side of the river, but his gaze kept drifting to the ceiling, as if expecting a pool of blood to form there and drip onto his plate.
He’d rented a car in Syracuse and arrived in Jersey early afternoon. His first stop was the Sternbridge Public Library, where he spent two hours digging through the Tribune’s archives, but found nothing new on the White Lantern Massacre. Reading the headlines from the 1970s and ’80s, an outsider would believe Sternbridge was a run-of-the-mill Jersey town, when clearly that wasn’t the case. Stories and truths emerged in later years, most of them centered around the Engine City mafia.
The library wasn’t a total bust; Martin spoke to an older gentleman in the periodicals section who told him about the Cellar Bar downtown, where retired cops were known to share stories in exchange for booze. Martin went there and got talking to a grizzled old cop who could’ve walked right out of a TV show, and who indeed gestured at his empty glass every time Martin pressed for information. He said he wasn’t part of the White Lantern cleanup crew, but he had friends who were. “Helluva goddamn mess. Triad hit, we think.” And yeah, it was true the vics were all wearing animal masks and rings. He couldn’t remember specifics; it was a long time ago, and besides, all the evidence was destroyed.
“All of it?”
“Every scrap.”
“Is it possible,” Martin asked, “that one ring and one mask made it out of there?”
“Anything’s possible,” the old cop replied. “Unlikely, though. The cleanup boys left nothing to chance.”
Which meant that Mother Moon’s mask and ring were a wild coincidence, or replicas, or had belonged to someone from a different, but perhaps connected, society.
Leaving the Cellar Bar, Martin was almost ready to call it quits. His verdict: Mother Moon had a darkness in her past that she couldn’t let go of, but she’d never shown this darkness to Martin. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“Bottom line, Sherlock,” he whispered to himself. “You’ve got zilch.”
It was a cold evening, a light snow in the air. Martin imagined his cabin with a fire blazing in the hearth, curled up on the sofa with Alyssa while the girls read or played board games. The image was vivid, perfect, and he longed for it. But before he could journey back to the island, and to his girls, he had one stone left to turn.
* * *
“Is the owner in tonight?” Martin asked the waiter as he paid for his half-eaten meal.
The waiter nodded. “That’s her at the bar.”
Martin thanked him, put away his debit card, and walked over to the bar. It was late and there was only one other customer, who downed his shot and left. Martin grabbed a stool. The owner acknowledged him with a smile. She had a kind face and striking eyes, and was younger than Martin expected. Maybe midthirties. Martin returned her smile and ordered a ginger beer.
“You know,” he said a moment later. “Your Google reviews rave about the Kung Pao chicken, and I have to say … it’s pretty damn special.”
“Thank you,” the owner said, and smiled again. “The secret’s in the peppercorns.”
She had an accent, as charming as it was surprising. Martin couldn’t place it, and while it might be delightful to listen to, he had to wonder—given her age and the fact that she’d likely grown up in a different country—how much she could tell him about what had happened at her restaurant thirty-two years ago.
“Martin,” he said, extending his hand over the bar. She took it and shook. Her own hand was small, warm.
“Sasha. I’m the owner.”
“I know that.” Martin said, and sipped his ginger beer. “The chicken was good, but that’s not the reason I came. I was hoping to speak to you.”
“Oh?”
“About the history of your restaurant—specifically about what happened here in May of 1986.”
Sasha had a small towel over one shoulder. She whipped it off and started drying glasses.
“You must be a writer,” she ventured.
“What makes you say that?”
“Only two types of people ask about what happened here: weirdos and writers … and you don’t look like a weirdo.”
“Well, thank you.” He raised his glass and smiled. “My daughters would likely disagree, but no, I’m not a weirdo. I’m not a writer, either. I’m an architect. A particularly boring one.”
She cocked an eyebrow. Dimples appeared in her cheeks.
“Hey, I’m drinking ginger beer,” he said. “Has there ever been a mor
e unexciting drink?”
Sasha held the glass she’d been drying up to the light. “You have a point.” Satisfied, she placed it on the rack, selected another. “So why the interest in my restaurant?”
“It’s purely personal,” he replied. “Whatever you tell me … you can rest assured I won’t blog about it.”
“A burning curiosity?”
“Something like that.” Martin nodded. “But there’s more: I know a lady, and I think she’s connected in some way.”
“Then you probably know more than I do.” Sasha shrugged and started on another glass. “Honestly, I can’t tell you anything that’s not already out there. I was two years old in 1986 and living in a small village in Wales. My uncle owned this place. He was a horrible man, mixed up with a lot of bad people. When he died, he left this restaurant to his sister—my mum—the only family member who had any contact with him. We were on the other side of the ocean, but we came over and made a go of it. This was in 2000. We’d heard stories about what happened here, but it was difficult to know how much was true. Business wasn’t affected, though, so we stayed, and I took the reins after Mum retired in 2012.”
“So you don’t know who the victims were?”
“Everything was covered up. No crime, no victims.” Sasha flipped the towel back onto her shoulder and started wiping down the bar. “No victims, no names. Right?”
Martin ran his finger around the rim of his glass. “And your uncle didn’t know who they were?”
“If he did, that was a secret he took to his grave. Along with many others. Most likely, he rented the room to a bunch of crooks—there were a lot of crooks in Engine City back then—and everything went tits up.”
“Tits up,” Martin echoed, and smiled. “That’s a colorful understatement.”
Sasha tossed the washcloth into the sink, folded her arms, and regarded Martin with her striking eyes. “The only thing I know is that some men were killed upstairs. I don’t know who they were, or what they were into. I tried to find out more when we first arrived, but all I got were rumors and tall tales. You get to a point where you just have to scratch a line through it and carry on.”
“I’m close to that point,” Martin said. “But just for closure, you think I could take a look at the room?”
“Hmm, maybe you are a weirdo.”
“Not me.” He held up his right hand, fingers split. “Vulcan’s honor.”
Sasha grinned and said, “Follow me.”
* * *
Martin brushed against a set of bamboo wind chimes in the upstairs hallway. Sasha explained that they’d been there since her uncle owned the place, and she’d take them down only they created a soothing music when the front doors were open and a breeze blew through. Martin thought they sounded like bones knocking together.
A door at the end of the hallway opened on a large room. Martin readied himself and stepped inside, as if expecting the victims to be scattered across the floor, or their tormented ghosts to howl the moment he set foot across the threshold. The room was colder, certainly, and smelled mustier, but there was no echo of yesteryear that he could detect. He walked around, looking at the pictures on the walls, at the two windows that, during the day, would offer views across the Meadowlands. A large white lantern hovered above a long table, the light inside glowing softly.
“No bloodstains,” Sasha said. “No boogeymen.”
“Just a room, huh?”
“Yup. One that needs a makeover. Badly.”
“What do you use it for now?”
“Different things.” Sasha ran her finger along the top of a picture frame and it came away dusty. “Storage. Private functions. Office space. We had a séance up here once—that was a whole group of weirdos, let me tell you.”
“A séance?” Martin raised his eyebrows. “Did it … reveal anything?”
“Nah. The whole thing was a sham.” Sasha smiled and rolled her eyes. “The medium called himself Dr. Hans Oculus. Thick European accent, ja? Except I overheard him talking on his cell phone outside, and his real accent was pure Joisey.”
Martin nodded, recalling some of the mediums they’d used when trying to understand what Edith was going through.
Sasha drifted over to the windows, where the snow had picked up a little. Flakes brushed against the glass. “I also have this woman—another weirdo—who rents the room every three or four months. She stays here for a week, sometimes two. Sleeps on the floor. It’s definitely odd, but she had an arrangement with my uncle, and my mum, and I try to honor that. Besides, she pays well and can be very persuasive.”
Martin turned away from the hanging scroll he’d been examining and looked at Sasha through narrowed eyes. He recalled Alyssa telling him that Mother Moon sometimes left the island, that she could be gone for up to a month at a time. A pilgrimage for Glam Moon, Alyssa had guessed, but maybe Mother Moon was revisiting her past—her ghosts. And Martin knew firsthand just how persuasive she could be; he’d looked into her eyes many times and felt himself buckling.
“This woman,” he said. “Fiftyish? Red hair?”
Sasha nodded.
“Valerie…”
“Kemp,” Sasha finished, then snapped her fingers. “Okay, got it. She’s the lady you mentioned, who you think is connected to whatever happened here.”
“We call her Mother Moon,” Martin said. “She runs a retreat—an intentional community, of sorts. I live there with my daughters. It’s all very easygoing and Zen. Only I found some items in her possession recently that got me wondering if she’s the peace-loving altruist she appears to be.”
“What items?”
“A tiger mask and a ring.”
“Christ. Burn her at the stake.”
“It’s a distinctive ring,” Martin added quickly, “set with a green eye and an unusual description: Derevaun Seraun. It led me here. All seven victims were wearing the same or similar rings.”
“Animal masks, too.” Sasha nodded. “Yes, I heard that. And whether it’s true, or only partly true, it’s fair to assume Valerie is connected.”
“Maybe not to the murders,” Martin said. “But to one of the victims.”
They took a moment with their thoughts. Sasha pressed one hand to the window and gazed out at the snow. Martin walked around the table with his mind racing. He imagined Mother Moon sleeping on the floor in here, or huddled in the corner with her memories. But why? He shook his head. Could he live with never knowing the connection? Could he ask his girls to live with it?
“Does she ever ask about what happened here?” he asked Sasha.
“Never.”
“And is she always alone?”
“Yes. For the most part.” Sasha turned away from the window. “She has one visitor. He always comes at the beginning of her stay. Her dealer.”
“Her dealer? You mean drugs?” Martin tried to imagine clean-living Mother Moon, who raved about the beauty of trees and the fresh lake air, tying a strap around her arm and shooting up. “Christ, what’s she into? Coke? Heroin?”
“Jesus, no. I wouldn’t stand for that.” Sasha offered Martin a serious look, and he had a feeling she really wouldn’t stand for that, no matter how persuasive Mother Moon could be. “I know the dealer. He’s a nobody. Used to deal pot to schoolkids. He sells insurance now. Married with children. He doesn’t deal anymore, except to Valerie, because, as we’ve established, she can be very persuasive.”
“Weed?”
“DMT.” Sasha folded her arms and stepped toward him. “It’s a hallucinogen used in shamanic ceremonies. Valerie insists the dealer calls it Rhapsody. Her little thing, I guess.”
Martin cupped his brow, thinking. Mind-altering drugs were definitely better than heroin, and more in keeping with Mother Moon’s spiritual vibe. They also went most of the way toward explaining Glam Moon.
Still doesn’t explain why she comes here, though, he thought. The room of death.
“She’s harmless enough,” Sasha continued. “Doesn’t interfere w
ith me or the restaurant. She’s quiet, too. I hear her talking to herself occasionally, but that’s about it.”
“Do you check on her?”
“Of course. I bring her something to eat a couple of times a day. A salad or a sandwich. Never Chinese food. She hates Chinese food. Most of the time she doesn’t even know I’m there. She’s usually staring up at the lantern. Totally spaced out.”
Sasha swatted the lantern and it moved in circles. Shadows glided around the room.
“Trippy,” Martin said.
“I always assumed she was one of my uncle’s exes—that they used to come up here and have wild, hallucinogenic sex romps together, and she’s been trying, in her strange way, to reconnect with that. I never associated her with the murders. I mean, who would?”
“I guess we’ve given each other some new information today,” Martin said.
“I know, right?” Sasha folded her arms and watched the lantern until it stopped swaying. “So now I’m thinking she’s related to one of the victims, and that she comes up here to feel closer to him. Perhaps the DMT helps create a fantasy—an intimacy.”
“I’m thinking along the same lines,” Martin said. “Although the scene of a crime—and such a violent crime—is a strange place to create intimacy.”
“I agree.”
Martin looked at the walls, imagining them splashed with blood. Traces of it would still be there—under three or four layers of paint, perhaps, but still there. He looked at the floorboards and wondered how many times they’d been sanded and recoated to hide all the stains. It was pure hack ’n’ slash, retired Sergeant Peter Baines had said in the Tribune, and the whiskey-soaked cop in the Cellar Bar had declared it a “helluva goddamn mess.”
The end of pleasure is pain, Martin thought, and there was no doubt this room had seen its share of pain. Mother Moon coming here and tripping out … there was something undeniably unsettling about that.
“You still curious about what happened?” Martin asked, dragging his gaze from the floorboards. Sasha had moved back to the window, silent as a ghost.
“A little.” She looked at his reflection in the glass. “But most of the properties along the waterfront have their own violent history. We’re all doing our best to move forward and not think about the past.”
