A Blood of Killers

by Gerard Houarner

  A BLOOD OF KILLERS

  By Gerard Houarner

  A Macabre Ink Production

  Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition Copyright 2012 / Gerard Houarner

  Cover Design By: David Dodd

  Background Images provided by:

  Dan Verkys: www.gardenofbadthings.com

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  Gerard Houarner fell to Earth in the fifties and is a product of the NYC school system and the City College of New York, where he studied writing under Joseph Heller and Joel Oppenheimer and crashed hallucinogenic William Burroughs seminars back in the day. He went on to earn a couple of master’s degrees in psychology from Columbia University so he could earn a living. He’s worked in Hell’s Kitchen, on the Lower East Side at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and in the Bronx at the start of the crack epidemic before settling into a quiet, contemplative and genteel career as an uncivil servant at a psychiatric hospital.

  His publishing career includes four novels – a three book series about Max, a supernatural assassin, and a fantasy – and over 280 short stories, with over 50 earning Honorable Mentions in various editions of St. Martin’s Press’ Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and Best Horror of the Year anthologies, with dozens gathered into four collections.

  He has edited and co-edited three anthologies, and serves as Fiction Editor for Space and Time Magazine.

  For the latest news, visit www.gerardhouarner.com or www.facebook.com/gerardhouarner.

  He continues to write whenever he can, mostly at night, about the dark.

  Book List

  Novels and Novellas

  In the Country of Dreaming Caravans

  Inside the Works (with Tom Piccirilli and Edward Lee)

  The Bard of Sorcery

  The Max Series

  A Blood of Killers

  Waiting for Mister Cool

  The Beast That Was Max (Resurrection Cycle, Book 1)

  Road to Hell (Resurrection Cycle, Book 2)

  Road From Hell (Resurrection Cycle, Book 3)

  Short Story Collections

  Black Orchids from Aum

  I Love You and There Is Nothing You Can Do About It

  Painfreak

  The Oz Suite

  Visions Through a Shattered Lens

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

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  For my mentors and gurus in the horror field:

  Tom Piccirilli

  Matt Schwartz

  Doug Clegg

  Jack “Dallas” Ketchum

  Dave Barnett

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  “Like Smoke Rising From the Burning Ghats” originally appeared in the limited hardcover edition of Road From Hell

  “A Blood of Killers” appeared in Tomorrow v3.3, 1997

  “The Hard Kill” original Max, TFUJ

  “Do Nothing Till Your Hear From Me” original Max, TFUJ

  “Let Me Tell You A Story” originally appeared in Palace Corbie, 1999

  “Comes Love, Nothing Can Be Done” original Max, TFUJ

  “Assassin of Love” original Max, TFUJ

  “Painted Faces” originally appeared in Borderlands 4, 1994

  “Ghost Killer” original Max, TFUJ

  “Dead Man’s Park” originally appeared in Into the Darkness 2, 1994

  “The Soft Package” original Max, TFUJ

  “Hidden Agendas” originally appeared in Sinestre, An Anthology of Rituals, 1993

  “The Shape” originally appeared in Not One of Us 18, 1997

  “The Shadow of his Killer” original Max, TFUJ

  ‘The Haunted Killing Floor” original Max, TFUJ

  “The Keeper” originally appeared in Asylum 2: The Violence Ward, 2002

  “She Who Speaks For the Dead” originally appeared in Dark Fluidity, 2003

  “Through Love’s Sight” original Max, TFUJ

  “You Think You’re A Killer” original Max, TFUJ

  “Nests” originally appeared in Aberrations 15, 1994

  “Suspect City” originally appeared in Midnight Hour 1999

  “Ash Man” originally appeared in Flesh and Blood 15, 2004

  “The Mule” original Max, TFUJ

  “Say No” originally appeared in Pulphouse Hardback Magazine 7, 1990

  “Dancing With the Skeletons At the Feast of the Dead” original Max, TFUJ

  “The Man Who Wouldn’t Die” original Max, TFUJ

  “Afterword” original

  A BLOOD OF KILLERS

  CONTENTS

  Like Smoke Rising From the Burning Ghats

  A Blood of Killers

  The Hard Kill

  Do Nothing Till Your Hear From Me

  Let Me Tell You a Story

  Comes Love, Nothing Can Be Done

  Assassin of Love

  Painted Faces

  Ghost Killer

  Dead Man’s Park

  The Soft Package

  Hidden Agendas

  The Shape

  The Shadow of his Killer

  The Haunted Killing Floor

  The Keeper

  She Who Speaks for the Dead

  Through Love’s Sight

  You Think You’re a Killer

  Nests

  Suspect City

  Ash Man

  The Mule

  Say No

  Dancing With the Skeletons at the Feast of the Dead

  The Man Who Wouldn’t Die

  Afterword

  LIKE SMOKE RISING FROM THE BURNING GHASTS

  The boy ran.

  It was what he did best, what Jo away, run away, run from the reach of the predators who would consume him in a bite.

  His soles felt no pain though loose stones, glass shards, a bent Guru beer bottle cap all tore at his calloused, bare skin. Snakes darted at his ankles and rats squirmed to bite his toes as he stepped on them like Ganesha hitching a ride, but he was too quick. There and gone were his feet; his legs, a blur of pale, bony flesh.

  Through the humid weight of afternoon heat and the drenching wind of cyclones he’d run. Through the murderous traffic o
f rickshaws, cycles, cars and trucks, the fleshy fortresses of cow or goat herds, slipping on shit and piss, sliding through cracks at the backs of alleys like a turd from the narrow ass of a mendicant, scuttling like a bug across pools fed by tanneries and sties, ricocheting from one moving wall of flesh or metal to another, falling to be stomped, kicked, run over, crushed, before bouncing up again to run, run so fast he might have been a goshawk with legs instead of wings, always he’d run.

  But he’d never run from Jolly.

  There were always people in the streets of Calcutta who laughed. Where did he think he was going? they’d asked, their faces lit for once with the joy the city was named for. He always knew, though never told. This time, his silence was true—he didn’t know where to go.

  “They found you by the ghats,” Jolly liked to tell him, usually in front of others, to show what a generous and spiritual man he was. “Out of the sludge of the ashes of the dead, out of the sacred pollution of the Hooghly, you appeared, a bobbing bloody thing. One of my men picked you up to see if you were wearing anything valuable. But you were naked, and he was ready to toss you back into the river. A Sadhu thought you were desecrating the funeral ceremony we were attending for one of my sadly deceased rivals, and he was eager to have you cast back to the sacred wheel of your karma.

  “But you bit my man to the bone, right on his index finger, and when he dropped you, you bounced once on the ghat’s stone pavement, rolled, and went for his calf. Tore through the cloth of his pyjami. We pulled you free, and you took his flesh in your mouth. That’s when I decided to keep you. In a cage, at first. You reminded me of that bear girl, that story they tell of long ago. A demented child. Wild. Something not quite human. A pet. Maybe something I could sell.

  “When my man died from the bites you gave him, I thought you might one day replace him. That hope has not died. But neither does it blaze with Surya’s light.”

  He’d heard the story a thousand times. Noise, at first, until Sangeeta, a nurse in Jolly’s employ, noticed him trying to imitate words and taught him Hindi, then English. Her little Mukul, she called him. A bud, a flower not yet blossomed.

  This time, Jolly had told him, no one’s taking you from the river, or the ghats. When we throw you in the water, you’ll be ash.

  He’d thought of jumping the distance between them, sinking his teeth into the fat old bastard’s neck, after Jolly delivered judgment and sentence in the overcrowded office. His bite was still venomous, a condition Jolly’s doctors had not been able to explain, but which their employer had occasionally put to use despite the warnings of his personal fakir. It would have been just. But Jolly’d been surrounded by his partners—Burmese, Thai, Chinese, English and American; gangsters in durkas and military men from the embassies in Western civilian clothes. Quick and competent men, with their own guards.

  The musky scent of aftershave and sweat tainted with foreign spices and gunpowder was faint in the room’s thick fog of Calcutta stench, just strong enough over the smell of latrines and burning gasoline to serve as warning, like the buzz of a wasp.

  And there was Shishir by Jolly’s side, as well, standing tall and straight in his shimmering blue silk Pathani suit like an icicle the sun would never melt. Jolly liked him close, he said, because his coldness was refreshing in the oppressive heat.

  Though Jolly deserved to die, there were other karmic instruments in his life waiting to serve retribution. Sangeeta might have disagreed, but then she’d learned too much from Nutan and Helma Malini movies. Heroes did not come to the rescue. There were no happy endings. If she’d listened to her little Mukul, her little flower, she’d still be alive.

  So he flew out the window, so fast the American laughed like one of Calcutta’s street people, and pointed, as if to say, look at that, he thinks he’s a bird.

  He fell the three flights down, partially controlling his descent by bouncing from a balcony rail to a shop awning to the roof of the Ambassador cab he’d heard through the background din of horns, engine idling in traffic, fumes filling Jolly’s office.

  Unlike the movies Sageenta used to take him to for lessons about life, the car did not speed off with him hanging on for his life, but remained stuck in traffic, even as Shishir appeared, knife in hand, at the window. But just like in the movies, Mukul was not hurt. Bones aren’t set yet, Jolly always said. He’d witnessed enough of the boy’s talent for survival to trust him with important pieces of business. Sageenta disagreed: it’s your karma that’s not yet set.

  It was that kind of talk, from someone like Sageenta, that had moved Shishir to glance at her in ways that had always raised Mukul’s concern for her life.

  The boy dropped to the street and ran, with both the driver and passengers yelling after him.

  He was supposed to have brought back a message. Very important. Worth a lot of money. A phrase. Coded information, critical to a complex transaction involving Vietnamese supply lines and Pakistani tank deployments was at stake, not to mention a shipment traveling through the heroin pipeline and just about to reach an American cargo ship at Da Nang. None of the parties trusted each other. The boy was chosen to make the contact, as close to an innocent as could be found among them.

  But the phrase was wrong. The information garbled. One of the men in Jolly’s office had betrayed the others. The question of the traitor’s identity was complex, involving the unwinding of tangled allegiances and the transformation of inconveniences into terrible truths no wanted to face. He saw it in their faces. Easier to say, it’s the boy’s fault.

  Mukul was their scapegoat. They’d given him a trial, let him have his say, but the show was for their own benefit, to cover up layers of deception and levels of corruption no one wanted brought into the light. Judgment had already been passed. His years of service meant nothing. His talents were irrelevant, perhaps even a threat. His future, at least, was something he didn’t have to miss. He’d never had one. This was Calcutta. He had no value. There was no future.

  He ran.

  Through the day and into the night, his legs carried him. He wove through a procession of men chanting, singing, dancing, as they carried their god, dressed in finery and flashing strings of colored lights, through winding unnamed streets of mud. He never looked up to see who they were honoring, didn’t bother joining their prayers. He ran through markets, dousing his scent with a touch of perfume, stealing a scarf here, a wrap there, trying to disguise his short, thin form covered only in a black lungi. When he was hungry, he scavenged and snatched, and sometimes merchants rose up to pursue him, their number crowding the street at his back. But they always dropped away, unable to keep up. It wasn’t the ones he could see chasing him that were dangerous.

  He ducked into an excavation, where fortunate workers under foreign supervision were digging up the bones of the city’s colonial heritage. He took a moment to piss and shit on remains of the Raj. A priest observing the project frowned. Mukul wanted to laugh, but a chill breeze shredded the thin veil of his humor.

  Through the rest of the day, and the night, and another day, he ran. Past crumbling warehouses, docks collapsed into stagnant water, open latrines. Over rooftops where smoke billowed, and water pipes surrounded by street people waiting for the taps to open so they could receive their daily allotment. Between cows gathered, standing or laying down, or their piles of shit. Into the crumbling ruins of old colonial mansions; behind and between trams; along the rail tracks; in and out of warehouses bustling with trade or still, silent, abandoned; under plastic sheets spread over extended families. He skirted past butchers, who knew him because he’d practiced his skills in castration for them when Jolly didn’t need him, and they’d readily report his whereabouts despite their friendliness toward him. He flew. Like the weary hawk he’d become, without ever leaving the ground, through clouds of flies gathered for the blood at the Kalighat, Kali’s temple, the spot where the little toe of Sati fell, who was dismembered into 108 parts by Lord Vishnu and scattered over the world so that her fa
ther Siva would not dance the world to its destruction in his grief.

  Beggars left him alone. Relief workers threw morsels of what they had to offer as he sped past, in apparent recognition of his distress. The echoes of his footfalls quit him in the city’s long, silent midnight paths, and clay figures looked down on him in stiff reproach.

  He could run forever in Calcutta. The streets and alleys were endless. He could lose himself in the city and never be seen by his enemies again, if all his enemies had been from the outside world. But not all of them were. Jolly had survived these streets, and Shishir, and others who worked for them. They’d all risen above the places that had given birth to them. They could track him like a rat scurrying across one of the clean English lawns at the Royal Calcutta Turf Club. For all the maze of buildings and crowds surrounding him, burying him beneath flesh and stone, Mukul still felt a thugee’s knot slipping around his neck, tightening, gnawing, until no matter how hard he breathed in, he could find no air.

  Legs aching, ribs pinched, he stumbled, grabbed for his throat. There was no rope.

  He caught himself crying.

  Gasping, shaking, he stopped, melted into a niche in a wall. He might have been an ancient statue, forgotten, worn to slim, smooth stone by time and the rains. He hardly dared to catch his breath, and once his heart had settled and he’d stopped feeling as assassin’s instrument around his neck, he focused on yoga techniques Sageenta had taught him, becoming still, present, invisible.

  He waited.

  A holy man crawled by, legless, one arm ending in a filthy stump above the elbow, the other arm twisted, the hand balled into a perpetual fist. The holy man looked up suddenly, directly at Muluk, deep in his secret shadowed spot, and asked, “Who’s avatar are you?”