Ghostlands mt-3

by Marc Scott Zicree

  “Who’s in charge here?” Goldie asked.

  “Batista,” the other replied, gazing out at the passing parade. His voice held the faintest trace of accent, cultured and lilting, caught more in the rhythms than the pronunciation.

  “Very funny,” Goldie said. “You wanna tell me whose past we’re looking at here?”

  Somewhere a band was striking up “Manteca,” a jazzy little Afro-Cuban number Goldman had first heard on a musty Dizzy Gillespie LP his dad had stowed long ago in their attic. The other inclined his head, as if to catch it better.

  “Quantum physics teaches us that the space between particles is more real than the particles themselves,” the apparition said dreamily. “That everything material is an illusion, beauty included, especially beauty.”

  He drew the smoke deep into his lungs and held it there, gestured out at the buildings with his cigarette. “An elegant facade, nothing more…one that can be blasted apart by a hurricane or an errant thought.”

  He brought his cold coffin eyes to look on Goldman once more. “I was a busboy here, in the Hotel Nacional…being spat on, cleaning the vomit of the turistas Americano, when their bored wives-as high strung and finely bred as racehorses-were not giving me their loving attentions…while their husbands practiced free trade in the casinos.”

  “Y’know, I just can’t see the Prince of Darkness moonlighting as a busboy,” Goldie observed. “Howzabout we take off the mask?”

  “I will if you will, Mr. Goldman.”

  Now, that sent a Popsicle straight up the old backbone. Not that it should be that much of a surprise, though, if this clown could peruse folks’ gray matter like strolling the aisles at Wal-Mart….

  Only how much has he been shoplifting?

  Goldie tried for an offhanded manner. “Mine doesn’t come off, try as I might.”

  The other shrugged as if discarding an overcoat draped over his shoulders, and with no seeming transition he was suddenly human, or appeared so; a pale, lean man with sickly white hair and long, nicotine-stained fingers holding the same cigarette, appraising the world with the same blind eyes.

  “How’d you get from here to South Dakota?” Goldie asked, figuring he might as well advance a few more feet along the tightrope, try to glean as much as he could.

  “An itinerant lecturer passing through on sabbatical recognized this untouchable, this invisible one with the phenomenal gift for numbers, for abstract thought. Was it any more unlikely than Einstein working as a patent clerk? No, although I was somewhat more striking than dear Albert, more compliant…. And so I was spirited away to Cornell and the Ivory Tower.”

  Goldie found his mouth was dry. He licked his lips, tried to keep his voice level. “You know my name…” he prompted.

  The corner of the other’s mouth lifted in the barest trace of a smile. “In life, I was known as Marcus Sanrio….”

  Bingo, a moniker right off the list of Source Project mucky-mucks, director of the whole nine yards, in fact.

  It may not have been Hawaii, Goldie realized, but he felt a vibrating certainty within himself (like that endless chord on Sergeant Pepper’s) that odds-on he was talking to the Big Kahuna himself. No floating green head with a man behind the curtain, but the man himself.

  “So I’ll ask again,” Goldie repeated, striving to sound casual, to sound anything but what he truly was. “Who’s in charge here?”

  Sanrio looked off into the distance and considered; not the answer, Goldie realized, but whether to answer at all. He parted his lips, and let the ghost vapor of the cigarette curl lazily from his mouth, the smoke gray-white like his empty dead eyes.

  “It’s a collective, of a sort,” he said languorously, at last. “But as for the governing aesthetic…you could say that it’s mine.”

  Bingo again.

  So the only question now, Herman Goldman knew, was how best to kill him.

  FORTY-ONE

  THE TIME OF BLOOD AND STORM

  It’s like tearing through different flats on a theater stage, Cal Griffin thought, ripping away layer after layer of illusion.

  Along with Inigo and Tina (who still stared blankly at him, seeming not to recognize him at all), Cal had managed to utilize his armor to burst through the barriers and reunite them with Colleen and Doc, then reach Mama Diamond, Howard Russo and Enid Blindman. As he suspected, they weren’t far apart at all, just separated by walls of different settings, like themed rooms at some fantasy hotel.

  So now here they were, Cal and Colleen in the lead, bursting through tiers of unreality in search of Larry Shango and Goldie.

  “Cripes, what’s the deal here?” moaned Howie. “I mean, why not just kill us and get it over with? I do not need to be seeing that 1976 production of The Fantasticks again.”

  “Old Devil likes his games, Howie,” said Enid. “But don’t you be dissin’ it. We still breathin’ here.”

  “It seems to be rooting around in our minds,” offered Mama Diamond. “Searching out the threat to it there.”

  True enough, thought Cal. But given what Doc and Colleen had told him of their forays in mock Russia and Thailand (Mama Diamond pointedly choosing not to share what picture postcard had been summoned from her memory; Cal’s quick glimpse of it revealing only that it looked like some kind of prisoner camp), the answer seemed more complex, the motivation and purpose of what set the scene and manipulated the players more diverse. Perhaps the Consciousness at the Source was not simply homogenous malaise in a bottle; maybe there were majority and minority opinions at work here, discrepancies and deviations….

  “You got an opinion on this?” Cal asked Inigo.

  Inigo looked furtive, hunched his shoulders. “I don’t ask questions.”

  “Yup,” Howie agreed, “that’s always served me pretty well, kid-leastways, till now….” He shot Inigo a grin.

  Cal caught the look of gratitude on the boy’s face, of recognition; the two grunters were outcasts both, even among their own kind.

  Abruptly, they punched through to Goldie. He was standing beneath the swaying palms on a bustling, old-fashioned resort street, talking to a lanky old man blanched as an albino.

  Cal heard Inigo suck in his breath. “Aw, man…” He sounded profoundly dismayed.

  “It’s the second blind man,” Tina murmured, gazing at the old man. She turned her face to Enid and whispered enigmatically, “You’re the third.” Cal wondered who the first might be, and had an inkling he just might know.

  “Who is that?” Cal asked Inigo.

  “Sanrio,” Inigo said.

  Cal shot Doc and Colleen a glance; they all knew that name from the list.

  “Is he real?” Doc asked.

  “That’s kinda complicated,” Inigo replied. “But yeah, mostly. Listen, we gotta get outta here before he spots us.”

  But it was already too late. Cal saw that Sanrio had raised his head and spied them. Sanrio canted his head upward, as if in silent supplication, both a prayer and a summons.

  A tumult rose up from ahead of them, insane shrieks of rage and belligerence, growing in volume.

  Cal motioned for Colleen to flank him. “Get behind us,” he told the others; his and Colleen’s armor would help shield them from whatever the flare matter formed itself into.

  “Goldie, get over here!” Cal cried out. Goldman seemed frozen in place beside the pale figure.

  Abruptly, the buildings and sky and people shivered, and hunched, muscled figures burst through, screeching hideously and rushing toward Cal and the others.

  Grunters, hundreds and hundreds of them.

  “Hoo boy, some time for a family reunion,” moaned Howard Russo.

  “They’re real,” said Inigo.

  “Yeah, I figured that,” Cal said, drawing his sword while the others unslung their rifles and Howie pulled the Tech Nine from his belt. Cal glanced over to Goldie, just in time to see him rush up to Sanrio and embrace him.

  Cal heard him scream as the world exploded in light.

&
nbsp; Too late, far too late, Herman Goldman realized that something was terribly wrong, that he had miscalculated and this pillar of fire he was embracing, this mocking dark entity, was not Marcus Sanrio at all, at least not his physical self, but merely a projection, like the voice at the end of a telephone line, and Goldie could no more kill him than smacking a receiver against a wall would give the caller a concussion.

  But hell, that didn’t mean taking a bath with the phone couldn’t electrocute you.

  He had intended to draw all the power out of Sanrio, had in his hubris assumed he could do it as readily as he had sucked the ability out of that E-ticket Bitch Queen, and then hurl Marcus Sanrio into the distant reaches of nothingness, where he could be one with the space between particles until hell froze over and there were no innocent fragile ones for him to fuck with anymore.

  But instead, grasping this radiant nonbeing, it felt to Goldie pretty much like someone had thrown lighter fluid on the hibachi of his mind and dropped a match.

  The last conscious thought he had was, Oh Magritte, forgive me….

  But if there was an answer, he didn’t hear it.

  “No!” Cal shouted, and ran forward as Goldman fell. The others were right behind him. His eyes still strobing from the flash, Cal saw that the army of grunters had halted in their charge, too, blinded and momentarily dazed.

  Goldie lay crumpled on the ground, his straw cowboy hat fallen away. His eyes were rolled back, unseeing. Currents of energy were coursing and snapping all over his clothing and skin, making the hair on his head snake about as in a blow dryer; in fact, his hair was the only part of him that seemed even remotely alive.

  There was no sign of Sanrio, or whatever part of Sanrio had been there.

  Doc bent beside the still form, reaching out a hand to touch his neck.

  “Be careful, Viktor,” Colleen urged.

  His fingers grazed Goldie’s carotid artery, and Cal could hear the arc of electricity as it bit at Doc. Doc winced, but kept to his task.

  “No pulse,” he said, ashen.

  “Get back,” Cal said and pulled Doc clear, for he saw now that the energy was surging up to envelop Goldie entirely. In an instant, there was nothing to be seen of him but the manic light playing all over his body. Then all of a sudden, he crumpled in on himself and turned to winking bits of dust, which the air seized and whirled away.

  He was gone.

  “Oh, dear God,” Colleen breathed, and Cal could hear her voice crack.

  Then, with a cry that tore at their ears, the grunters were upon them. Cal drew Christina behind him, and turned to face the foul creatures, sheathing his sword and unslinging his rifle. He saw that Howard Russo was likewise shielding Inigo.

  Colleen and Doc began firing, then Howie, too. Cal joined in their fusillade, choosing his targets, firing again and again, as the tang of gunpowder stung his nostrils and gray smoke swirled about them. White anger rose up in him, for what had been done to his sister, to Goldie, to all of them, and he felt a savage, guilty pleasure as the bullets found their mark, tore meat and gristle and flesh away from the brutes. Shrieks of agony rent the air, and blood was everywhere. The grunters that weren’t hit slowed in their advance but did not stop.

  Enid was firing, too, and made a curious sight, rifle leveled and guitar slung over his back. Cal noticed that Enid’s gun had a fixed bayonet; he knew that blade well. Enid had wielded it back in Chicago, and told Cal of its heritage-Enid’s great-grandfather, the Lakota warrior Soldier Heart, had taken it off a cavalryman at the Little Big Horn.

  Cal glanced at Inigo and saw that the boy was baring his teeth and growling at their attackers, his muscles taut steel waiting to spring. Cal put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, restraining him.

  “Not yet,” he said. Inigo mastered himself, and nodded.

  As for Mama Diamond, Cal could see that she held no weapon but was instead speaking in a low voice to several grunters who faced her. He couldn’t make out the words, but saw to his amazement that the grunters she was addressing were backing away from her in terror. Now wasn’t that interesting….

  They kept firing until their ammo was gone, and still the little monsters kept coming, until it was close work now. Cal swung his sword in wide, practiced arcs as the others wielded machete and crossbow and razor, and whatever else came to hand. The grunters, for their part, brought their hideous strength to bear, reaching out with long arms to claw, darting their heads in with gaping, snapping mouths full of scalpel teeth.

  Cal realized that he and his companions were outnumbered ten to one, that the grunters were driving them relentlessly back, until their backs were literally to the wall. Cal kept Christina (who was staring out in mute horror) behind him. It occurred to him that the grunters were making no effort to reach her, as if somehow she were exempt, or of a nature they preferred not to come in contact with.

  Cal unleashed Inigo at the last and the boy threw himself into the fray with fang and claw, fighting with surprising ferocity. But he was clearly outmatched.

  Three of the grunters leapt at Cal, brought him down hard. His sword went skidding away along the ground. They tore off his helmet, shredded the rough leather leggings and tunic over his clothes and ripped them away.

  “Get the hell off me, you little creeps!” Colleen cried from nearby. Out of his peripheral vision, Cal could see they were doing the same to her, deliberately stripping her of the dragon armor.

  As if they were ordered to.

  Cal rolled and managed to throw the fiends off himself, scrambled for his sword and brought it home into the neck of one as it again leapt at him. He then dove for Colleen, kicking and slicing at her attackers, sending them scurrying away.

  But then more were on them, burying them, hauling them down again. All Cal could see now were grunters in closer detail than any sane person would ever want to, their foul breath filling his lungs and nostrils. From the cries of Doc and Enid and Howie, and even Mama Diamond now, he assumed the same was true of them.

  Suddenly, Cal heard a new commotion from some distance away, low squeals and shouts of pain, bones cracking. The grunters grappling with him paused to look up, and Cal did, too.

  Larry Shango, grunters hanging off his arms and from around his neck, his armor torn clean away, was wading into the mass of grunters, hammer flailing. He pulled several clear off Doc and Mama Diamond, hurled them into a mass of their fellows.

  Then he threw the homemade grenade at them.

  It exploded magnificently, made mincemeat of them.

  And okay, so maybe it was a double standard and, unlike their moment of horror with the flares, they felt little squeamishness about blasting these puny bastards to smithereens. But then, these guys were just plain nasty.

  Shango, his face sweaty and glorious, turned to face the grunters still wrestling with Cal and Colleen, with Howie and Inigo and Enid.

  “You want the same?” he cried, a god of serene fury. “That can be arranged.”

  As one, the grunters released their prey and took off running, straight at the buildings. They connected with the stone facades, went right on through and were gone.

  Shango helped Mama Diamond to her feet. “You all right, ma’am?”

  “Yes, thank you,” she replied. Shango looked about at the others, who were on their feet now, bloody and breathing hard but intact.

  Taking count, he said, “Where’s Goldman?”

  Cal felt grief flood over him anew, was about to speak when suddenly there was a voice in his head, human and inhuman at once, incredibly powerful and malign.

  MEMORIES HOLD POWER….

  He gasped with the intensity of it, saw from the pain on the faces of his companions that they’d heard it, too.

  He had known such a voice before; it had been Fred Wishart’s mind speaking to him in that devastated house back in Boone’s Gap, before Tina was spirited away.

  This held some of Wishart in it, Cal could detect that, and others, too. But the main will, the dominant for
ce of it, was someone far different.

  The second blind man…

  I WAS TWELVE WHEN THE ONE IN ’44 BLEW THROUGH HAVANA, it added, and even its thoughts held that distinctive Spanish lilt. LIKE A LIVING, MALEVOLENT THING COME TO RULE THE WORLD….

  He’s talking about a storm, a hurricane, Cal realized with a growing sense of dread. He looked at the others, at Colleen and Shango, and his own unshielded self. We have no armor.

  Then the mind that was Marcus Sanrio-and myriads and complexities far beyond-said, BUT WHY TELL YOU WHEN I CAN SHOW YOU?

  Cal heard a roar like the soul of the world splitting in two. He turned toward the beach. The sky was black with storm clouds, and the sea was rising up to meet it.

  It reached out and seized them.

  It’s not touching me, Christina thought with a strange, calm horror. It’s not touching me at all.

  But the storm was killing the others.

  The rain and wind tore off the face of the ocean like a murderous Fury, blasting up onto the shore, tearing away the palm trees, hurling cars aside, ripping away awnings and knocking buildings to their knees, scattering the bodies of the dead grunters, and the living humans and Inigo, too. It reminded her of films she’d seen as a child, of the blast wave of nuclear explosions.

  Then the wavefront came, rising up off the water a hundred feet and more, crashing down onto the land, flooding the street with foaming, turbulent mayhem. The level of the water was high above her, yet she felt none of its force, could breathe just fine.

  I shouldn’t be able to do this, she thought. It’s not human.

  And then the thought came to her, suddenly, shockingly-

  But then, I’m not human.

  Through the churning, deadly water, she could see the others slammed and tumbled like rocks carried along in the rapids to smash against boulders and shatter, their mouths opened in silent screams, the air bubbling out of them. They were drowning, all of them-Inigo, and the powerful black man and old Asian woman, the guitar player and the little gray man, and the younger woman and the Russian man, too.