Twice Dying

by Neil Mcmahon

  It was not hard to understand how desperate that urge for freedom must have been.

  Tanager’s dream was an empty one: there was no way he was going to put his hands on eighteen hundred dollars. But Naia told him that she worked for “the hospital.” They wanted to take Caymas back, but were afraid someone might get hurt, like last time. They would be glad to pay eighteen hundred dollars if Tanager would show them Caymas’s hideout back in the woods. That way, they could wait for Caymas there and take him back safety.

  No one else would ever have to know about Tanager’s part in it.

  He sniffled in the silence. Alison stood and moved to stand behind him, her hands rubbing his shoulders. “What does everybody else think happened to Caymas?” she said.

  “He’s just gone.”

  “Maybe they took him to a different hospital,” she said soothingly. “That could be what happened, Tanager.”

  “Caymas, he had this belt buckle.” He blurted the words, as if he had been holding them back. “He showed it to me one night. He was laughing, doing crank. He said, ‘You know what this is? Money’ He said, ‘The bitch thought she was getting me to take somebody down. But she liked sucking on me so much, she forgot to be careful. I made her buckle me back up when she was done. Now I got her prints.’”

  “Do you think that’s who Caymas meant? Naia?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “What happened then?” she said.

  “Caymas got some money in the mail. I think it was a lot.”

  “And then Naia came?”

  Nod.

  “Do you know where the buckle is?”

  “No. Caymas buried things.”

  Monks stepped to the sliding door and pushed it open. Cool misty air blew in, heavy with the smell of the sea. Beyond the rocky headland bluffs, he could see a fishing boat coming into Noyo Harbor, channel lighted by buoys bobbing on the dark Pacific swells.

  Caymas buried things. Like the body of a nine-year-old boy.

  “Tanager,” Alison said. “What did Naia say about me?”

  “I found a note, day before yesterday. Taped to my handlebars.”

  “Do you have it?”

  “I threw it away.”

  “But you remember what it said?”

  “‘Take Alison where you took me. Tell her to look in the stovepipe.’”

  “Will you take us there?”

  “Am I going to have to talk to the police?”

  She looked at Monks again. Her gaze warned him not to contradict her.

  “You won’t, Tanager,” she said. “We promise.”

  In the parking lot, Monks watched the boy hurry off to his motorcycle.

  An unidentified she had enlisted Caymas Schulte to “take somebody down,” offering a sexual favor in the bargain. Whoever she was, she did not want her identity known. But Caymas had been cunning enough to get her fingerprints and blackmail her.

  Soon after that, Naia showed up.

  And Caymas disappeared.

  It was hard to escape the conclusion that “she” was Naia, who had come to eliminate the threat of Caymas and the telltale belt buckle. But Tanager had been able to ignore cause and effect, convincing himself that Caymas had been taken away for everyone’s good.

  Until tonight. Now, every time he looked at that bike, he was going to think about how he got it.

  Caymas Schulte’s hideout was an abandoned logging camp. The long-disused roads that led to it were covered with redwood duff and brush, unrecognizable to anyone who did not know them. Tanager led the way on his motorcycle, Monks following cautiously in four-wheel drive, trying to keep the bike’s taillight in view through the fog. He reckoned they had gone about two miles from the highway when Tanager stopped.

  They went the final few hundred yards on foot, Monks lighting the way with a flashlight. Tanager was half-running now, in a hurry to get this over with. The camp was in a clearing on the bank of a stream. There were several ruined old wooden buildings, with one iron-roofed shed still standing.

  Alison jerked at Monks’s coat and mouthed the words in his ear: “That photo.”

  This was where the picture of Caymas had been snapped.

  “In there,” Tanager said, pointing to the shed. His voice was barely above a whisper. “I’m going now, okay?”

  Alison turned toward him, but he was already skipping backwards, then gone in the fog.

  The shed held a bunk with a tattered mattress and several shelves. A crude table had been built like a workbench under the single window. Monks walked across the wooden floor where a child had given up his life. His steps made a hollow sound.

  Whatever stove might have been there was gone, but the pipe was still in the wall, filled with ashes and debris. He reached in, brushing them aside, and touched a smooth cool surface. Plastic.

  It was a food container about the size of a shoebox. Monks lifted it out and set it on the table. He opened his pocketknife and gave it to Alison, then held the flashlight while she worked open the lid. The contents were wrapped in several layers of tissue, as the photo had been. Her fingers parted them to reveal a man’s face.

  It was chalk white, sculpted out of ceramic or clay, life-sized and extraordinarily lifelike. The nose was thick and the cheeks heavy, suggesting strength. But the impact was in the expression: desperation, pain, rage, forcibly captured. As the box turned in her hands, shadows played across the features, making them seem to move. Monks felt his scalp prickle.

  Alison said, “Caymas.”

  She lifted the mask out delicately, as if it were a wounded bird. Beneath it in the box lay a second object: a red, much worn, 49ers baseball cap.

  Monks glimpsed something quivering on the mask’s back, like moonlit water.

  He said, “Hold it up.”

  The something was a dark image of his own face, reflected in an oval mirror imbedded in the clay.

  He moved beside her, so he was looking over her shoulder.

  “Turn it around,” he said.

  As her face came full-sized in the mirror, he saw that two red circles had been painted onto its surface, so that her eyes appeared to be ringed in blood.

  Monks said, “A death mask?” He steered carefully along the fogbound road, heading back toward the motel.

  “They made them in older cultures. Pressed wet clay against the face, then used it as a mold.”

  “What’s the message?”

  “The mirror. Naia wants to tell me there’s a bond between us.”

  “You’re talking about someone who seems to have killed a very dangerous man.”

  Alison crossed her arms tightly. The plastic box rested between her feet on the Bronco’s floor.

  “This is about trust. Not trying to threaten me.”

  “It’s about murder, Alison. We’ll stop at the sheriff’s on our way in.”

  “We promised Tanager he wouldn’t have to talk to the police.”

  “You did,” Monks said, and immediately regretted his tone. He recognized the too-familiar strain of adrenaline and fatigue. “Sorry to bark. This is no game.”

  “I know it’s not a game, Rasp. I’m around violent men everyday.”

  “You might see the potential. I see the results, in the ER.”

  “It’s my ass on the line.”

  “What are you telling me?”

  “I don’t want to go to police yet. I think she’s asking for help.”

  Monks stared at her. “Are we talking pity here, Alison? What about the kid? She could have found Caymas’s place without using him. Now he has to live with selling Caymas out. There’s a cruelty at work.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t see it that way. Maybe she was giving him a chance to get even for what Caymas did to him. Means for him to be proud.”

  The rain had gotten heavier in Fort Bragg. The streets were deserted. Monks pulled into the motel parking lot.

  He said, “It seems to me you’re trying goddamned hard to put a pretty face on Naia.”

  She
picked the box up from the floor and turned to face him.

  “I started doing this work because I wanted to find out what makes people turn into monsters. But if you dig too deep there, the mainstream brands you as a freak. So I’ve been a good girl, played by the rules. And you know what I am? A prison guard, with Haldol for a gun.”

  She opened the door, moving away from him in a way he could feel.

  “If this was a mistake,” she said, and tossed her head in a gesture that included everything but centered on the bed in her room, “it was my mistake. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Monks walked unhappily to his own room. When he called her twenty minutes later, she did not answer. The desk told him that she had checked out.

  He packed and started his own long drive home.

  Chapter 10

  The ring of her telephone brought Alison awake, fumbling to reach it. She was on her living room couch, sail dressed, covered by a quilt. The clock read 3:53 A.M. She had gotten home from Mendocino less than an hour earlier, exhausted. The bedroom had seemed too far away.

  She said, “Hello?”

  For several seconds, there was no sound but faint static.

  “Hello,” she said again, annoyed now that it was probably a wrong number. “If you can hear me, I can’t hear you.” Her finger moved to click off the phone.

  “It was awfully late at night to go bird watching.” The voice was an eerie whisper: high-pitched, childlike.

  “Bird watching?”

  “You went looking for a woodbird?”

  Woodbird. Tanager. She woke up fast, scanning the windows as if a face might be there.

  “Who is this?”

  “Did he sing for you?” the whisper asked.

  “We—talked. Yes.”

  “I’m more and more impressed. At first I was afraid you’d be just another pretty face.”

  Alison tried for the same playful tone. “Where have we met?”

  A hint of laughter. “Did he tell you my name?”

  She said, “Naia?”

  “Do you know what it means?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “It’s the genus name for cobras. Naia is the queen.”

  Alison said, “Cobras?”

  “You know.” The tone was a child’s firm insistence.

  She hesitated, off balance from the responses that did not seem to follow any logic.

  “Do you have another name?”

  “I’d like to start therapy with you,” the voice said.

  “I’d like that too.”

  “Don’t. You. Ever. Condescend to me like one of your filthy patients.”

  The tone had changed instantly to cold fury. Alison swallowed, a dry, hard knotting of her throat.

  “I’m sorry.”

  A pause. “Did you enjoy your gift?”

  Her gaze moved to the plastic box on the coffee table.

  “It’s—disturbing.”

  The unseen tongue clucked mockingly. “You’re shocked?”

  “I can’t condone murder.”

  “I think you’re lying to yourself. Don’t you sometimes tell your patients that?”

  “I don’t say it that way.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you really feel, instead of what you think you should?”

  Alison lifted the lid off the box and gazed down at the chalk-white death mask of Caymas Schulte. She thought about the child he had murdered and buried, with no one knowing how many others he might have damaged. The terror in his own brother’s face. The queasy sense she had felt in his presence, that some alien thing was hiding inside him, barely contained, waiting for its instant to leap out, rend, destroy, then disappear back until its next chance came.

  She said, “I feel relief that he’s gone.”

  “Is that all? A man you were terrified of? It thrills you. Admit it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “He’s yours now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The laughter again. “What else did the wood-bird tell you?”

  Fear for the boy touched her. “He was very-careful.”

  “But you weren’t so careful. There was someone with you. A man.” The tone was dangerously edged again.

  She inhaled deeply and stared out the French doors as the implication hit. The lights of the San Francisco coastline shimmered through the rain, distant as stars.

  She said, “I was afraid to go alone. You can understand that, can’t you?”

  “Is he someone special?”

  Her mind moved swiftly, searching for the right course.

  “He’s not in this. He was just company.”

  “Tell me then,” the voice said archly. “Did you fuck your company?”

  Alison hesitated. “No.”

  “No? I can smell your lie, you slut.” The voice ripped into her. Her teeth came together in a quick clattering.

  “Yes,” Alison said. “I did.”

  “What a generous girl.” The voice was calm again, gently inquisitive. “Suck him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he make you come?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “He knows what I like.”

  “I want to know, too.”

  “He went down on me. Then I was on top.”

  “Go on.”

  “I think—he hadn’t had a woman in a while.”

  “Was he too quick?”

  “Very hard.”

  “That pleases you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course,” the voice repeated musingly. “What will we do about him?”

  “There’s no need to do anything. I’ll just tell him nothing more has happened. He’ll go away.”

  “This is just between us, now. Yes?”

  Alison said, “Yes.”

  Silence. Thirty seconds. Forty. Rain splattered the windows in a sudden hard gust.

  “I’m not interested in birds,” the voice said. “Let’s talk about noble prey. Serpents. Considered by the ancients to be immortal, because they regenerate their skins. Symbols of wisdom and healing. The caduceus. And hermaphroditic, when depicted as circular, with the phallic tail penetrating the mouth. Have you ever seen a cobra? A live one?”

  “I’m—not sure. Maybe when I was little, in a zoo.”

  “They’re particularly splendid. Intelligent. But the deadliest species of cobra walks on two legs.”

  “Like Caymas?”

  “Like him. Let’s go for a stroll, shall we?”

  “All right. Where?”

  “A dark place. A lair, a den. Close your eyes.”

  Alison did.

  “There’s a dangerous creature loose,” the voice said. “A cobra. Very vicious, very cunning. You have to be more dangerous. Faster, smarter. See in the night.”

  “I’m not strong like you are.”

  “No,” the harsh voice said. “You’re a little quail, mincing around the entrance. You peek in at the cobras to get your dreary, timid thrills. You tease them with a stick you hold in your little beak. But you’ve been oh, so careful.”

  Eyes still closed, Alison said, “What happens then? When you walk into that den?”

  A high skittering laugh. “Oh, darling. Everything changes. You become a cobra hunter.”

  For an instant, she glimpsed again that dark inner landscape, with its searching presence that promised to reveal the longed-for mystery. Her senses returned slowly, as if she were reawakening. The room was warm, fragrant with the greenery of plants.

  She said, “How can a quail hunt a cobra?”

  “You already know. You just have to realize it. Hold your gift. Turn it over.”

  Alison gazed down into the mirror, into her own blood-ringed eyes at the someone she was supposed to be.

  “Tell me who I’m looking at,” she said.

  “She got lost.” The voice was smaller now, subdued. “In a dark place, a cellar. A cobra found her.”

  “Were you there?�
��

  “That’s how Naia was born.”

  Alison stood and walked to the French doors, watching her reflection approach in the rain-streaked glass.

  She said, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “You can use your gift.”

  “How?”

  “The mask traps the escaping life force, dear. That’s its purpose. The purest form of power.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will. Do you know what happens if you throw a piglet into a cage with two hungry cobras?”

  “No.”

  “They start eating it from either end. Then one will swallow the other. That’s what Naia does. She turns them on each other and harvests the victors.”

  Alison opened the French doors and stepped onto the deck. A hundred yards away, down the rocky slope, dark surf boomed and ebbed with a cold sucking sound.

  “You’re going to get strong,“the voice said.

  Alison said, “You haven’t told me what I can give you. In return.”

  “The lost girl isn’t really lost,” the voice said softly. “She’s coming home. Soon.”

  The phone clicked.

  “Hello?” Alison said. “Can you still hear me?”

  She stood clasping the mask of Caymas Schulte, her fingers moving over the cold pain-wracked features. Approving of him at last, for being dead.

  Chapter 11

  Dr. Roman Kasmarek was a youthful forty-five, slender, dark, with wire-rimmed glasses and dabs of Vick’s glistening under his nostrils. Monks found him preparing for his first autopsy of the day in Mercy Hospital’s morgue, a windowless concrete room with drains set into the floors. One wall had a bank of what looked like giant filing cabinets, one of which might still contain Ismael Esposito.

  Roman said, “Let me run this through once more. You want me to check surrounding counties for coroners’ reports that may or may not exist, using hospital facilities, even though this is in no way related to hospital business, and not disclosing the true reason for the inquiries. All of which violates professional ethics in several ways that could have serious repercussions for, say, me.”

  “I didn’t put it quite like that.”

  “Is this related to your investigation work, Carroll? Or just a new hobby?”