Twice Dying

by Neil Mcmahon

  Late that night the devil came to Monks in shadowy form and offered him a deal: no catch, straight across, quid pro quo.

  For Monks, complete oblivion. Annihilation of being. Rest.

  The price: that he would be powerless ever again to help anyone he cared about. His children, Alison, the sick and the wounded: anyone he might ever lay hands on would just have to get along without him from now on.

  In his half-sleep, surrounded by cats that seemed strangely alert, he nodded, and reached out to sign the pact. It was the best offer he had ever gotten. Everything he had ever done or could foresee doing amounted to fuck-all anyway.

  But caution had been driven into him too hard over the years. His hand pulled back.

  Let me think about it.

  It’s a one time offer, came the warning. It’s what you want most. You know it and I know it.

  I need to think.

  When he awoke, it was gone.

  Chapter 13

  Alison dreamed of water, of drifting along a clear murmuring stream that gathered in the near but unseen distance to a rushing cascade. As she began to wake, she was no longer on the water but in it, swimming her way to the surface, finally breaking into consciousness. For several heartbeats, the part of her mind that was usually in charge, the pilot, stayed missing: off behind a wall, doing something unknowable.

  Then, with the instant shock of panic, it was back.

  There was water running somewhere in the house.

  For seconds longer she lay without moving, straining to hear other sounds over her own quiet, tight breathing. It was deep night, with only the dim light she had left on in the kitchen when she had given up and gone to bed.

  She put on a robe and stepped carefully to her bedroom doorway. As she leaned into the hall the sound jumped louder in her ears: a cheerful steady splashing. It was not from either bathroom. She crossed the hall in slow silent steps and waited. No other noise came, no shadows moved.

  The dining area was empty, undisturbed, her purse on the kitchen counter where she had left it. She stepped past and peered around the cabinets to the living room. Fresh sea breeze touched her face. Curtains were blowing gently.

  The French doors onto the deck were open wide. The splashing was coming from the Jacuzzi outside.

  She stood absolutely still. Two minutes. Three. A sudden buzz made her knees jerk, almost buckling them. It was the refrigerator kicking on.

  The switch to the deck’s single light was beside the open doors. She flicked it on, her gaze searching rapidly. There was no one in the Jacuzzi, no crouched figure clinging to the railing. The drop was almost twenty feet to the bluff below.

  Then she looked back at what her gaze had at first refused to acknowledge. Perched on the rub’s edge was a silver tray. It held an ice bucket containing a misted bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne, two fluted glasses, and a white gift box, eight or ten inches square.

  She turned once, staring into the blankness of the house behind her. Then she stepped out and opened the box.

  Her fingers parted the tissue inside and looked down at a chalk-white plaster mask of a man’s face. His features were agonized, his teeth clamped in a snarl.

  Garlick.

  She touched the mask to lift it. Her fingers indented the still soft plaster. Beneath it, they brushed something soft and bristly, like fur. They pulled back of themselves. The touch was not unpleasant: it was wrong. An odd sweetish smell, real or imagined, came to her nostrils. She held her breath, lifted the mask aside, and peered close.

  There was just enough light to make out a patch of spiky dark hair, a frayed edge of skin, a bloody mass of paper towels beneath.

  Very carefully, Alison replaced the mask over this mortal remnant of John James Garlick, gripper of women’s hair, and backed into the house.

  “Are you here?” she said. “Are you listening?”

  She turned as she spoke, moving a careful step at a time.

  “I can’t accept this gift. Don’t be angry.”

  She reached the kitchen counter. Nothing moved. With measured slowness, she picked up her purse, clasped it under her arm, and started toward the front door.

  “Please let me go,” she said. “You’re right, I’m a quail. I know now. That’s all I’ll ever be.”

  She closed the door quietly behind her and walked, a little more quickly, down the endless path between the thick, shadowed oleanders to her Mercedes.

  The car’s inside light came on with the open door. Seats and floor were empty. She slid in, moving fast now. Shaking fingers jammed the key into the ignition. She sobbed with relief when the engine caught, threw the gearshift into reverse, wheeled around to face the black swells of Bolinas Bay, with San Francisco rising like a fairy kingdom of tight as far away as the noon. The road to town was unlit and deserted. The rearview mirror showed only the pale oval of her own reflection.

  A sharp curve made her slow down. In the same instant, she became aware of a rustling, leathery sound behind her. Her gaze lifted again to the mirror.

  This time, the glittering eyes staring back were not her own.

  She jammed on the brake and grabbed for the door handle, but a gloved hand gripped her jaw and the sharp sting of a needle pierced her neck. The hands went to the steering wheel, closing over her own.

  The car coasted to the side of the road.

  Monks became aware of a heavy weight on his chest, and paws kneading his skin insistently. His hand found the cat and identified it by touch: Omar, the big blue Persian. He tried to quell its stirring, but Omar was agitated and would not stop.

  Then the phone rang. He opened his eyes. His bedroom and the world outside were dark. It was 5:17 A.M.

  He groped for the phone and said, “Hello.”

  “There’s someone here who’d like to talk to you.” The voice that spoke was high, hollow, eerily childlike. There was a humming, rumbling in the background. Machinery. A moving car.

  Monks said, “Who is this?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  He sat up, aware of a rippling through the hairs on his forearms. Omar jumped clear of him but stayed on the bed, watching him with the solemn round eyes of an owl.

  “Who’s the someone?”

  “Your little psychologist friend.”

  “Put her on.”

  “Just a moment,” the voice said with a secretarial air.

  Seconds passed. Then he began to hear snuffling sounds of increasing urgency: the phone held close to the face of someone choking. In the background, the high, reedy voice crooned something that sounded like an aria.

  Monks shouted, “What are you doing?”

  Abruptly the choking sounds burst open into gasps, the hacking cough of a woman frantically sucking for breath. The singing stopped.

  “I’m afraid she’s not at her best right now.”

  He stared into the darkness, trying to keep his own breathing calm.

  He said, “She’s done no harm, to you or anyone else. She trusts you, cares about you. She knows you’ve been badly hurt.”

  “I care about her. I’m making her dream come true.”

  “You can’t believe that. You’re forcing her.”

  “She’s just contused. Quite understandable.”

  Monks swallowed tightly and waited.

  “You’re her lover?”

  “We were close.”

  “She lied to me about you, the little bitch,” the voice, but sounding amused now.

  “It’s over between us.”

  The car sounds diminished, as if the vehicle was slowing, pulling to the roadside.

  “Why did it end? If I’m not being too personal.”

  “She was—exploring. In ways that became unsettling to me.”

  “Because of what you saw in her?”

  “No,” Monks said. “In myself.”

  “Very perceptive. Very honest,” the voice said, thoughtful now.

  “You know, I really don’t meet that many interesting people these
days.”

  He said, “I’m not opposed to your work.”

  The ignition sounds died off. There came the clicks of an opening car door.

  “She’s going to be missed, soon,” Monks said. “You can’t just make someone like her disappear.”

  “I don’t intend to make her disappear. I intend to make her understand something.”

  Another metallic sound: creaking. A trunk opening.

  “I can have every police unit in California looking for her in sixty seconds.”

  “Really. It pains me to be taken for an amateur.”

  “Nobody knew about you until now. Somewhere, you left tracks.”

  A weary exhalation. “Hold on just a minute, will you?”

  A murmur in the background, away from the phone: “Here we go, dear.”

  Shuffling, rustling, the sounds of something heavy being moved. Monks gripped the phone, fearing he had lost contact. He strained to hear, willed the line to stay open. Ten seconds. Twenty.

  The background murmur again:

  “Whoops, almost forgot your present.”

  Then, the unmistakable whump of a closing trunk.

  “Don’t crowd me, Monks,” the voice said, cold and edged now. “No official involvement. Believe me, I have ears in many places.

  “Oh, yes. I left you something in her house, just by way of insurance.”

  “What do you mean, insurance?”

  The line went dead.

  Instantly, Monks punched Star-69. There came static, a pause, and then a woman’s stern voice, sounding as if she was scolding a child:

  “That number cannot be traced. Hang up now.”

  For seconds longer, his finger stayed poised to punch the numbers 911.

  He slammed his open hand down on the nightstand, pulled on jeans and shirt, and ran for the Bronco. Omar darted in and out between his feet, something Monks had never known him to do. He swore and swept the cat aside with his ankle, then looked up and stopped hard.

  There was just enough moonlight through the clouds to illuminate the two other cats, on top of the vehicles hood, facing the windshield. Like worshippers in some witchy rite, they crouched belly low, then leaped high into the air, hunched, ears flat and tails stiff. Low, menacing wails erupted into sudden screams and spitting.

  Monks stepped forward carefully.

  Something was moving in the front seat: a slim, upright shadow that weaved from side to side with alarming swiftness.

  His mouth opened. He stepped closer.

  The shadow lunged forward in a dark blur, sending both cats howling and leaping. There was a thump against the windshield, then a slimy stain dripping down.

  The regal hooded shape of a cobra’s head remained poised, weaving furiously.

  Monks walked away, dropped to his knees, and vomited. He remained there for perhaps three minutes, head in hands, body jerking in random shivers. Then he returned, crouching, to the cats.

  “Come on, you guys,” he said quietly. “This is mine now. Come on, you’ve done your job.” He encircled them with his outstretched arms, drawing them in, flinching as the cobra attacked the windshield when his hands got close. The cats struggled, but allowed themselves to be gripped.

  Inside the house, he blocked the cat door and spooned out large portions of fresh food. He brushed his teeth and rinsed his face, and went to the safe for his shotgun.

  Monks gathered a powerful flashlight and several white bedsheets, and walked back outside, remembering things he had read about cobras. They were fearless and aggressive; the word “insolent” was frequently used. One description from an Englishman in India spoke of a released snake entering a house “like an arrow from a bow.” Some species could spit blinding venom at a victim’s eyes, ten or fifteen feet with pinpoint accuracy. Bites not treated immediately usually brought death, in agony, within hours. Monks had seen a couple in captivity in Asia himself, and the overwhelming impression was that they were made to kill, and they knew it.

  He circled the Bronco again, with the flashlight close to the windows. The cobra followed, upright head lunging to stay with the light. There seemed to be only the one; no other shapes came into view.

  He spread the bedsheets on the ground outside the driver’s door, giving him a twenty-foot radius of light-colored surface. He positioned the flashlight on the ground to illuminate it. He jacked a round into the shotgun’s chamber and clicked off the safety. He hyperventilated three times.

  Then he stepped in, yanked open the door, and leaped back.

  The snake came out like a dark streak, moving in a rippling line of impossible swiftness. It had almost reached the cover of night when Monks fired. It reared up, head twisting, then flopped down, writhing.

  He stepped closer and aimed carefully. The second shot flopped it over again. This time it lay still except for the eerie squirming of muscles triggered by nerves that did not yet know their brain was dead.

  He walked around the Bronco again, thumping and kicking, then opened the other door and tailgate and searched with the flashlight. There was nothing visible.

  Monks gathered up the still jerking snake in the bedsheets, careful to avoid the fangs, and put it in a closed garbage can. It was at least five feet long, with a dense rubbery weight. He got surgical goggles and gloves and a bottle of ammonia, and swabbed the streaked venom off windows and dash.

  Was that what Jephson had been doing with a rattlesnake when he was bitten?

  Was he the phony detective who called himself Stryker?

  Trying to catch it?

  Practicing snake-handling?

  Monks drove as fast as he could to Bolinas, shoulders tensed against the sight or sound of another weaving head mat might have been lying hidden.

  Monks arrived at Alison’s house at 6:27 A.M. He sat in the Bronco for half a minute, grasping for the fantasy that this was all a dream or malarial hallucination, that this was all, he would ring the doorbell and she would answer, sweet with sleep, surprised but not displeased.

  Gone to stay with a friend, she’d said.

  And he had believed her.

  It was still night, the house dimly lit. With flashlight and shotgun, he scanned the ground for twisting shapes in the grass. Insurance.

  There was no alarm system. Years ago, he had lobbied to get her to put one in, but she was convinced that she could not be touched.

  He tried the front doorknob cautiously. It was unlocked.

  An invitation to him, from Naia.

  He shoved the door open, gun ready. The kitchen area was still, with a single light on over the counter. Nothing seemed out of place.

  He walked down the hall, checking the empty rooms. Her bedroom was the last. On a chair, he recognized the clothes she had worn yesterday, with the torn blouse trailing to the floor. The bed was neatly made, and Monks almost missed the tiny face that smiled up from a pillow.

  He stepped forward, staring. It was an antique china doll, with hand-painted porcelain face and real blond hair, tucked into the bed like a child.

  Recognition hit his heart like a hammer. A doll that had belonged to his ex-wife’s great-grandmother, passed down through the generations of women to his daughter Stephanie.

  Monks turned, sweeping the room slowly with his shotgun, finger on the trigger, about to shoot at something, anything in futile rage.

  He put the weapon down and, with shaking hands, phoned his ex-wife’s home in Davis. His eyes went damp with relief when Stephanie answered. In the background, he could hear the sounds of breakfast.

  “Daddy, what are you doing calling so early?”

  “Stef, this is very important. Where do you keep Grandma Annie’s china doll?”

  Pause. “In my bedroom. In the closet. Why?”

  “I’m afraid somebody took it.”

  “What?”

  Monks listened helplessly to her sharp breathing as she hurried down the hall to check. A door banging. The sounds of rustling cloth. And then, Stephanie’s panicked voice:


  “She’s gone.”

  “Here’s what I need you to do, baby. You and your mom get some clothes together, enough for a few days, and get to another city. Vegas, L.A., someplace not around here. Find a nice hotel, go shopping, whatever you want. I’m going to pick up the bill.”

  “Daddy, I can’t just leave in the middle of the semester—”

  “Stef, I’ll work this out with your teachers. You’ve got to do this and you’ve got to do it right now. Remember Dr. Kasmarek? When you get there, call him and tell him where you are. Don’t call my phone for any reason. Okay?”

  “What is this?”

  “I’m dealing with somebody dangerous. I can’t believe it’s spilled over onto you, but it’s a fact. We’ve got to get you safe, and then we’ll worry about the rest.”

  “Why me?”

  “I know some things about this person. He’s trying to keep me from going to the police.”

  “Daddy, how long is this going to last?” Her voice was breaking with panic now. “If they don’t catch him, does that mean—”

  Monks squeezed his temples with his fingers, weighing the value of lying to lessen her fear, but gave it up.

  “You’d better put your mom on.”

  In the background, he could hear Stephanie trying to explain to her mother, and Gail’s questions rising in quantum leaps from incredulity to fury, along with the harrumphing of her new husband, Barry.

  Gail’s voice cut into the phone. “Carroll, what in the hell have you gotten us into now?”

  “There’s no time to argue, Gail. I’ll explain as soon as I can, but right now you’ve got to get out of there. Take Barry too, if you want.”

  “Is this for real? You’ve got someone stalking us? Who’s been in my house?”

  Monks started to say, For Christ’s sake, I didn’t ask for it, but remained silent.

  “This is our life, dammit,” she said. He could hear her anger giving way to tears. “That’s all I ever wanted; a normal life. What do I have to do?”

  The line went dead.

  Monks walked to the French doors and pulled back a curtain. The sky was turning faintly lighter with the dawn.