Blackout can-6

by Rob Thurman

  But is there anything wrong with free rides?

  Things were going great, working out, and I had no time for more voices whispering in my head, especially when the two already there kept contradicting each other. I ignored them. Basically, as they were my voice times two, I was ignoring myself. That was fine by me. I finished my beer. “Maybe I could try a shift at the bar. I’m getting some stuff back up here.” I tapped my temple. “It might be … fun.” A different type of amusement than I would’ve considered this morning when I’d asked Leandros what I did for that sort of thing, but fun all the same. “Mummy fun.”

  Wahanket, the boggles, Wolves; I could protect myself against them all, but I could also do more whether I had to or not. I didn’t have to kill. I could … play. Make them sorry. Didn’t they deserve it? Didn’t every one of them who’d scorned me or tried to kill me deserve a little of their own back?

  Scorned me—why had they scorned me? Did it matter? For being human. For kicking their asses? For keeping monsters in line.

  The one voice laughed. Monsters? There are no such things as monsters. Not to you.

  It didn’t make any difference, none of it—the whys, the reasons, the schizophrenic confusion. It didn’t matter, because I was on my way. I was coming back all right.

  Coming home …

  I was on the path and turning that last curve in the woods, almost in sight of home. A dark path, but I liked the dark. I controlled the dark. Then there were times that it controlled me.

  Fair is fair. Share and share alike.

  I felt a sudden spasm in my stomach. Shit. My hand resting on my knee was shadowed where a shadow shouldn’t be—like that dark film covering my face in the Halloween picture. Leandros and Goodfellow didn’t say anything. They didn’t see it; they couldn’t see it. If they had, they would’ve said something—something like Wake up, Cal. You’re having a nightmare. But it wasn’t a dream and it wasn’t a nightmare. Nightmares never are nightmares when you want them to be.

  I held my hand out under the brightest light by the couch and it was still there, that murky film. The Cal of the worst day ever … pathetic, lame excuse. The Cal of the Halloween picture with ice in his eyes and a flat expression that said killing was nothing but a hobby. You—in the sights of my gun? Sorry—you’re nothing but a pastime. You didn’t come close to ranking as personal. Hope you had a littermate who cared you died, because the only thing I cared about was making sure your blood stayed off my new sneakers. Your blood? That was easy to come by. But good shoes? Much harder.

  Shit. Shitshitshit. It hurt. Why the hell did it hurt? “My head …” It wasn’t my head, but I couldn’t say where exactly it was. I knew what it was, though, not that it made any sense.

  It was my soul; my damn soul hurt.

  “I feel wrong. Something bad is coming.” They were stupid, overly dramatic words I couldn’t stop myself from saying. I hid my shadowed hand under my leg, sandwiched by the couch cushion. They couldn’t see it, but I could. Why had I said that? Something bad is coming? What the hell did that mean?

  Something bad is coming.

  No, something gooooood.

  “Wrong?” Niko echoed, the corners of his mouth tilting downward.

  “Sick. I meant sick. Not right. Just a headache.” With my other hand I took the dish towel my brother handed me and wiped my suddenly sweaty face with it. It was a cold sweat, like beads of ice frozen to my skin. “Why did I do that to the mummy?” Because he deserved it and I’d liked it. I’d slipped my leash and let myself like it. I shouldn’t have, but I did. I’d chopped him up and I’d enjoyed every second of it. Whether it killed him or not, how could that be right?

  How could it be wrong?

  Jesus. If you were going to have voices, your own voices, screwing with your head, they ought to have the fucking decency to agree with each other at least once. I wiped my face again. “Why didn’t I just leave him like he was? Why’d I go that far?” I asked it aloud, to myself but not to the others.

  “You see?” Leandros said to Goodfellow quietly.

  Before I could ask what he was meant to see, Goodfellow stood suddenly. “If you’re sick, then I had best be off. I can’t afford to come down with some ancient, dusty disease you picked up in that equally ancient and dusty basement. I have places to go, things to do, peris to puck.” He put on his coat. “I don’t suppose you had a chance to tell Wahanket about my monogamous ways before you roasted and chopped him into Mongolian barbecue? Don’t bother with excuses. My condition is everyone’s concern.” He tossed a handful of business cards on the table. They were green with bronze-colored lettering. Trying to cover up my confusion, reaching for casual, I picked one up with a hand that wanted to shake. I didn’t let it, and read the lettering aloud. “‘Robin Goodfellow, Monogamite, established 2010.’” Beneath that was a phone number.

  “What’s the—”

  “Suicide Hotline,” Robin answered before I had a chance to finish. “I’ve heard their call volume has increased tenfold.” He bowed his head in a solemn tilt. “I do what I can.” Then he was heading for the door. “Niko, I left you a few things as you’ve not been eating much while we looked for your wayward, apron-wearing brother. Enjoy. I’ll see the two of you later. I just have time to surprise Ishiah before he heads to work.” He paused as he opened the door, his eyebrows rising as he smirked. “Forget mice and men. The best-laid plans of vice and sin never go astray.”

  He added more seriously, “But other things often do, well intentioned or not. Something to keep in mind.”

  As the door slammed, I said, “There’s a lot I didn’t understand with that whole conversation and a lot I wish I hadn’t understood. Maybe I’ll skip the Ninth Circle.” There was no way I was going to the bar. Halloween Cal waited at the bar. I wasn’t ready to be Halloween Cal. At that moment I wasn’t ready to be any kind of Cal. “You don’t think Goodfellow and my boss have done it on the bar, do you? Where I serve drinks? Gah. I think I need a nap to wash my brain.” That was good. That sounded offhand, not on the edge of losing it at all … Never mind the sweat still soaking the back of my neck, the pain, the sickness so sharp I’d have left my own body to escape it if I could.

  Leandros was already in the kitchen area, investigating the bags Goodfellow had left behind. He pulled out containers of yogurt, soy cheese, and various other inedibles, but then he tossed me a boxed tube of toothpaste. Minty fresh. Chocolate minty fresh. “You took your own with you to South Carolina and judging from the sounds of gagging coming from the bathroom last night, mine doesn’t meet your approval.”

  “Seaweed is apparently not my dental care of choice. Hard to believe, I know.” I pushed up off the couch, steadying myself while he watched from the corner of his eye.

  “Are you all right?” He tried to sound casual too, but he didn’t pull it off well. Not with me. Leandros … No … Niko. Niko—he’d always hated lying, all the lying we’d had to do as kids when we had run from … from …

  The pain sharpened, leaving only thoughts of bed and collapse. “Just a headache, that’s all,” I repeated, my lie not much better than his. I avoided his face and a concern as sharp as the sickness in me and headed back for my bedroom. I didn’t stop by the bathroom … until Niko spoke up as I passed it.

  “Chili cheese dog with extra onions.” That would’ve been the vendor five blocks from the museum. “I’m surprised your breath alone didn’t do to Wahanket what lighter fluid and a lighter did. Brush.”

  I was barely on my feet, but I didn’t argue. That would only lead to more time wasted before I made it to my bed. I also knew bitching about it would result in an educational beat-down on the sparring mats or toothpaste squirted into an unsuspecting body orifice. I chose to brush my teeth. I wasn’t afraid of my brother, but I was aware of his limits—none that I knew of.

  None that I remembered.

  Memories, feelings, pain, fear—fast, coming so damn fast. I was close—God, I was right there, as if it all were on
the tip of my tongue. It was, surprisingly, not the best taste in the world. Not sweet, almost bitter with a copper hint of blood. Should coming home taste of blood? I brushed quickly, but extra hard. Chocolate and mint had it all over seaweed, even if the mint had a helluva tingle. If that didn’t erase onion breath and the metallic taste of a brand-new penny, nothing would. Then I made it across the hall to my bed. I didn’t stagger, but it was close. I could feel my brain bunched like a fist, one that was getting ready to relax into an open hand. I had every expectation that a little sleep would finally reset my brain and when I woke up, it would be back.

  All of it.

  And fighting it was senseless. There’d be no more wondering who I was. No wondering if I was Halloween Cal. I was thinking bad things, wrong things, because all the knots unraveling in my brain were confusing me; that was all. I wasn’t wasting any more time on the imaginary right and wrong of them. I’d spent only days in this life. How the hell could I know right from wrong in this bizarre world in just days? When I woke up, I would be who I was meant to be. No more doubts, no more freaky voices or hallucinations of shadows that didn’t exist. I’d had enough, and I didn’t mind telling myself or my brain so. I yanked the covers up and rolled over as the afternoon light spilled down from above. I closed my eyes and yawned. The pain, wherever it was, head or heart, was suddenly fading, slipping away like sand between my fingers—Egyptian sand. The sickness and pain disappeared along with the last grain to fall. God, that was better.

  I was coming home, all the way this time, I thought, foggy and dim.

  For better or worse? I didn’t know. I’d find out soon enough.

  The next time I opened my eyes, I’d know.

  The next time I opened my eyes …

  8

  I opened my eyes and had no fucking clue where I was.

  There were twilight shadows spilling around me. They came from windows almost two stories up. Damn. Too high. Dropping my gaze, I faced a wall full of holes where Screw you was spelled out, connect-the-dot style. There was a flash of pain behind my eyes and I grunted, sucking in a breath. Don’t panic. Think it out. Okay, okay, what was all this? What … Leandros. I exhaled harshly in relief. That was right. Leandros, my brother. He’d found me at the diner in Nevah’s Landing and had brought me back. I was in his apartment. My apartment too, he’d said. We’d gotten here yesterday, or had it been the day before, two days before? I wasn’t sure. Goddamn it, I couldn’t remember. Shit, keep it together. Let it go and concentrate on something you are sure of.

  Monsters.

  There’d been monsters, a shitload of monsters. We fought monsters for a living. Giant lizards in Central Park, a Wolf who’d jumped me from the top of a building—a beautiful predator and gone now. Hopefully to a place that welcomed the wild when they died. Then there’d been a mummy. It was mostly clearing up until the mummy part—that memory cut out almost instantly to the smallest of bits and pieces. There’d been someone choking me, a fire, and an axe. That was all mixed up. Fuzzy and distant.

  I was leaving it that way. Whatever memory I was not having, I was completely happy to not be having it. It felt wrong, as if something best locked in a box and shoved under the bed. The smell of burning frankincense, myrrh, and wine—I could forget that too, because I didn’t know what frankincense and myrrh smelled like, did I? How would I know that?

  Oh. The cat. The damn dead mummy cat from the bar. She’d smelled like the world’s most expensive deodorizer. Leandros had used her as a tool to bore me with a lesson in how mummies were made and what ingredients were used in the process. He’d said it was the fourth time he’d told me and I could blame only one of those times on amnesia.

  The mummy in the basement and the mummy cat smelled the same—if you took away the smell of burned flesh, which I did. Or tried and failed. All right then, the smell I couldn’t forget, but everything else I could. We’d been in a museum basement. There was a talking mummy and somewhere along the way a fire. I could’ve tried to push past that, but I didn’t want to. If I didn’t want to, then I probably had a good reason.

  “Cal, are you feeling better?”

  My hand started automatically for the gun under the pillow. I managed to stop it halfway. It was Leandros. Niko. My brother. At the diner, he’d disarmed me. I stabbed a guy with a fork… . Goodfellow; all monsters weren’t bad; NYC; peris; vamps; Wolves—it all ran through my head. It was faded, not nearly as sharp as I thought it should’ve been, but it was all there—a little muddled, but not gone. I moved my hand back from the gun, although I knew the shadowed figure standing in my doorway had seen the movement. I ran the gun hand through my hair instead. It flopped into my eyes, making me feel like a predator peering through the grass on the plains waiting for its next meal to pass by. Or I could be an ill-groomed Shetland pony. I was going to get that barber one day.

  “Cal?”

  I tried again with the hair and this time succeeded in actual sight. “Not bad. Why?”

  “You said you felt sick before you went to bed and slept through the afternoon and all night. Are you running a fever?” The figure formed from shadows into my brother, braid and sparring sweats, as he stepped into my room. I didn’t know if he was going to go for the mom’s-hand-on-the-forehead TV commercial, whip out a thermometer, or wave a hand around me to judge the ambient temperature of the air in my immediate area. All sounded as if they would kick me several slots down the list of most macho badasses in the city.

  I slid out of bed on the other side, keeping it between us. “No, no fever. I’m not sick.” I barely remembered going to bed. Only a bad feeling … dread—good old hokey Edgar Allan Poe type of black houses, withered graveyard trees, ravens-at-your-door dread, and pain. Hadn’t there been pain? I couldn’t remember. There had been the darkness of sleep, and now I was up and I felt okay. Not fantastic, but all right. “I think,” I said, hesitating, but he was my brother. If anyone had a right to know, he did—my primary babysitter. A babysitter. Jesus, how embarrassing. “I think I might’ve had some kind of relapse with the spider venom. When I woke up, things were foggy. They cleared up for the most part. I remember you finding me in South Carolina, bringing me back. I remember this place and going to a bar where a Wolf tried to kill me. I remember nearly everything trying to kill me, including Ammut. And then I remember the museum and that there was a talking mummy, but that’s about it. Once I hit the mummy, things are gone. I don’t remember much of any of that or after that. There are a lot of gaps. I don’t remember what the mummy said. I don’t remember leaving the museum. I remember getting back here … a little. I think Goodfellow was here.” I shook my head. “And then I went to bed.”

  Because it had all been coming back. Coming in your sleep. The best place to keep hidden treasures.

  The best place to lock up the worst nightmares.

  I was within seconds of grabbing the gun and smacking my own head with the butt. Amnesia was enough. I was tired unto death of dealing with squabbling inner voices too, especially when it was literally my own voice I was hearing. I was actually beginning to hate the sound of my voice. Enough was enough.

  “Come here.” A hand reached over my bed to pull me around it and across the hall into the bathroom. “Sit.”

  I put the toilet lid down and sat. That, at least, ruled out one less-manly place to get my temperature taken. Niko’s hand pushed my head with care to one side as he examined the puncture with gloved fingers. Whoa. “Um … Where’d the surgical gloves come from?”

  “Goodfellow. He’s a proctologist on the weekends.” Before I could comment on how wrong that was, how very, very wrong, he continued. “Amnesia and gullibility, I didn’t know they went hand in hand. We have gloves because we have many medical supplies as our on-thejob injuries are frequently the kind the hospitals rarely see, which would lead to questions we can’t answer. We make do with our own medical skills.” Now there was the cool feel of ointment being rubbed on the bite, as casually as he’d done it a thousan
d times before. The question he asked was less casual. It should’ve sounded casual… . It was only hair, but that wasn’t the vibe I was getting. “Why did you cut your hair?”

  Could they come more out of the blue than that one? “To get the Goodfellow seal of approval?” I snorted. I already knew there was something wrong with my haircut if the puck liked it. “It’s just hair. What’s the big deal?”

  “Our clan, the Vayash, some intermingled a time or two with the Northern Greek centuries ago. We picked up a custom of theirs—when someone dies, you cut your hair to mourn their passing.” That … That was yet less casual than before. But before when? When no answer was forthcoming in my memories, I let it go.

  I could see his point, why it was important to him and not casual at all. In a way someone had died when I’d first woken up—me. But that person would be back. Resurrected, although it was taking longer than three days. I ran a hand over the mop of jaw-length hair. “I had spider goop stuck in it. I couldn’t get it out for anything. That stuff is worse than superglue. I had to chop it off. Nobody died but a bunch of spiders, and I think those bastards had it coming.

  “That they did.” Discussion over. I couldn’t tell for sure if he was relieved or not at my answer, but I thought he was. No, I knew he was. Leandros had a labyrinth of a brain, no getting past that, but I was getting better at navigating it. “The bite isn’t infected,” he said. “I would say your immune system is still fighting off the venom, but even at whatever reduced dose you received, it’s a challenge. As with any other allergic reaction or flu, you’ll get better, get worse, and get better again.” He taped a square of gauze over it. “As you remember the important things such as where you keep your guns and how to use them, this is nothing but an inconvenience.”

  I plucked at the bottom of my T-shirt and held it out to better see the lettering. It must’ve been the one I’d worn to the museum, because I didn’t remember changing when I fell into bed last night. King of the fucking universe. That was above and beyond the one I’d been wearing on the beach, which I wouldn’t have thought possible. “I’d say being an inconvenience is something I’m good at.”