Ivory and the Horn

by Charles de Lint

  Newman forgets about the mask, and reaches for the zipper of my suit instead.

  “I’ve never fucked a ninja before,” he says. “This’ll be something to—”

  I’m the wolf with its leg in a trap, the bear that’s been shot, the puma that’s been harassed until it has its back to the wall. Panic whips my head forward and I close my teeth on his hand, biting through fingers, straight to the bone. I’ll give him this: He doesn’t scream. But the pain makes him loosen his grip.

  I whip up a leg from behind him and manage to hook it around his neck. I pull him back, off of me, heaving myself up to help the momentum. He falls backward out of the bed and I’m out of there. I almost lose it in the window frame, but my adrenalin lets me catch my balance before I go tumbling three stories down to the pavement below. By the time Newman gets to the window, I’m two floors above his apartment, spidering my way up the wall and onto the roof.

  I make the jump from his building to its neighbor, and then over one more before I collapse. The roofs covered with gravel, but I can barely feel it digging into my skin. Cramps pull me into a fetal position, and I’ve got the shakes so bad that my teeth start to rattle.

  It’s a long time before I calm down.

  It’s even longer before I’m scratching at Chris’s window.

  As I tell Chris about what happened, I start to remember things I saw in Newman’s bedroom, things I hadn’t noticed when I’d scouted the place out earlier.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Chris tells me. ^

  “But he’s seen me.”

  By which I mean: Now the monsters know I exist.

  “Don’t worry,” Chris says. “What’s he going to do? All he saw was a masked woman. It’s not like he can recognize you. It’s not like there’s any way he can find you. He’s probably more scared of you than you are of him.”

  “I don’t think so,” I say.

  On Newman’s night table: The police-issue .38 in its well-worn holster. The billfold with the shape of a badge worn into the leather.

  “Newman’s a cop,” I tell Chris.

  I remember more: What he was saying about payoffs.

  “A crooked cop,” I add.

  “Oh, shit.”

  We both know what can happen. Newman can have an APB put out on me. He can make up any old story he likes about why I’m wanted and they’ll believe him. Christ, he can tell the truth and I’ll still have every cop in the city out looking for me. The police don’t take kindly to anyone assaulting one of their own.

  I’m bone-tired, but I know what I have to do. Chris tries to stop me when I get up and head for the window, but I turn around and look at him.

  “What else can I do?” I ask him.

  “You’re in no condition to—”

  He’s actually a really nice guy, even though he acts a bit too much like a mother. I can see why kids, even abused kids, like him and trust him.

  “I know,” I say. “But I don’t have any choice.”

  I’m out the window before he can stop me. I make my way back across town to the roof of the building across from Newman’s. The September wind’s cold, but I can’t feel it through my bodysuit. Don’t need it to be chilled anyway. I’ve got a piece of ice inside me and that’s what’s making me shiver.

  I know I should wait until I’m stronger, but I’m not so sure I’m ever going to get any stronger. I get the feeling that I’m wasting away, as inexorably as the cancer that took Annie.

  I wait, crouching there on the rooftop, until I see the light in Newman’s bedroom go off. I’m like a ghost coming down the side of the building and crossing the street. I don’t feel strong, at least not physically. But I’m determined, and I hope that’ll count for something.

  7

  When I get outside Newman’s window, I realize he’s not asleep. I can sense him sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, gun in hand, watching the window. He knew I’d be back.

  So I go in through a window on the other side of the apartment. My entire being is focused on what I’m doing. Keeping silent. Staying strong—at least long enough to tidy up the mess I’ve made of things. His wife never stirs as I slip by her bed and out into the hall. I pass his daughter’s bedroom and that helps. She makes a little moan in her sleep. The plaintive sound brings everything into sharper focus— why I’m here, what I’m doing—and makes it easier for me to concentrate on getting it over with.

  Newman’s attention is fixed on the window of his bedroom. He never hears me come in the door and sidle my way alongside the wall to where he’s sitting. I’m sure of it. But something—sixth sense, cop smarts—has him turn just as I’m reaching for him.

  “What the fuck are you?” he says as he brings up the gun.

  The bandage on his hand is a white flash in the dark.

  Stupid, I think. I’m so stupid. I still wanted to make a try at keeping this clean. Step into his private place and shut him down instead of cutting him open. And maybe I can.

  I grab his hand, the one holding the gun, skin to skin. Contact.

  Everything stops. He can’t shoot me, I can’t claw him. We’re locked in a space between our heads. Not his private place, but somewhere else. There’s a sudden shift of vertigo, a crazy quilt strobing in my eyes, and then we’re somewhere else again. It takes me a few moments to realize what’s happened.

  We’re in someone’s head, all right, but it’s mine. This is my own dreaming place.

  I’ve never tried to step inside when the monster was awake before. It’s so easy to make the transition when they’re asleep, dreaming. But Newman was so focused, his will so strong, that even though he couldn’t have a clue as to what he was doing, he’s managed to push me out of his head and then follow me back into my own.

  I can’t seem to do anything right tonight.

  I try to take us back out again, but it’s no good. I give Newman a shove and he goes sprawling. As soon as he hits the ground, that crazy-quilt spinning starts up again. When it finally settles down, things have changed once more.

  My dreaming place looks like the kitchen in the house where I grew up. I look for Newman, but he’s gone. My father there in his place. He’s standing there, weaving slightly from side to side, grinning at me, smelling like a brewery.

  “Time to even the score,” he says, slurring the words but not so much that I can’t understand them.

  He takes a step toward me, mad drunk gleam in his eyes, and I lose it. This is too much for me.

  I never dealt with what happened to me as a child. I just left home as soon as I could. When I remade contact with my parents—before I told them I was gay—we all just pretended that all the drinking and screaming and beatings had never happened. That was just the way it worked, I thought.

  Keep the family unit whole, no matter what the cost.

  But I never forgot. And I never forgave. And seeing him like this now, it’s like I’ve stepped right back into the past and all the years between were just a dream. Except I’m not powerless anymore. When he hits me, I don’t have to take it. I don’t have to cringe and try to hide from his fists. Not anymore. Not ever again.

  With his first blow, all of my animal rage comes tearing through me and I lash back at him. My fingers are clawed, taloned, killing weapons. It’s like I have rabies. I cut him down and I’m still slashing at him, long after he’s fallen to the ground. Long after he’s dead. There’s blood everywhere. And there’s this screaming that just goes on and on and on.

  I think it’s me screaming, I know it’s me, until I fall out of my head and I’m back in Newman’s bedroom. I’m crouched over his savaged corpse, snarling and growling, and then I realize how wrong I’ve been. It’s not me screaming. It’s not me at all.

  I see her in the doorway, the monster’s daughter/The screams stop when I turn to look at her, but then I see her go away. She folds away inside herself, going deeper and deeper, until there’s just this blank-eyed child standing there, everything that ever animated her walled
away against the night creature that snuck into her Daddy’s bedroom and tore him apart.

  Doesn’t matter what he did to her. That’s gone, swallowed by the more horrible image of what’s been done to him.

  I stagger to my feet, but I don’t even think of trying to comfort her. I almost fall through the window, trying to get out. And then I just flee. Run blind. I’ll do anything to get rid of those emptied eyes, their blank stare, but they follow me, out into the night.

  I know I’ll carry them with me for the rest of my life.

  When I finally stop running, the cramps hit me. I lie on my side and throw up. I’m still dry-heaving long after my stomach’s empty, but I can’t get rid of what’s inside me that easily. The guilt’s just going to he there and fester and never go away.

  8

  Nothing helps.

  It comes out that Newman was on the payroll of Yukio Nakamura, the boss of Little Japan’s biggest Yakuza gang.

  It comes out that not only was Newman taking graft, he was using his badge to help Nakamura get rid of his competition. And when the badge didn’t provide intimidation enough, Newman was happy to use his gun.

  It comes out that he beat his wife, abused his daughter.

  By the time the investigation’s over, half the Yakuza in Little Japan are up on racketeering charges and there’s not one person in the city who has an ounce of sympathy for the monster. If they knew I’d killed him, they’d probably give me a medal.

  But all I can focus on is that fact that his daughter’s lost to the world now, locked up inside her own head, and I put her there. I tried to help, but I all I did was make things worse.

  “You can’t beat yourself over this,” Chris said the one time I let him find me. “It’s unfortunate what happened to the girl—an awful, terrible thing—but there’s still a war going on. The freaks are still out there.

  “You can’t walk away from the fight now.”

  He thinks I’m scared, but that’s not it. I’m not anything. All I can think of is that little girl and what I put her through, what I made her see.

  Susan Newman didn’t just lose her innocence. She had any hope of a normal life torn away.

  “Do you need anything?” Chris asks. “Money? Food? A place to stay?”

  I shake my head.

  “Give this a little time,” he says. “You’re suffering from trauma too, you know.”

  I let him talk on, but I stop listening. I’ve regained my strength. I can leap tall buildings with a single bound again—or at least spider my way up their walls—but I don’t have the heart for it anymore. I don’t have the heart to step into anybody’s dreaming place and then shut him down. And I certainly can’t see myself killing someone again—I don’t care how much he deserves it.

  After a while, Chris stops talking and I walk away. He starts to follow, but finally gives up when I keep increasing the distance between us.

  I don’t wear my bodysuit anymore; I don’t look like some dimestore ninja. I just look like any other homeless person, wandering around the street in clothes that are more than a few weeks away from clean, looking for handouts at the shelters, cadging spare change from passersby.

  A month goes by, maybe two. I don’t know. I just know it’s getting really cold at night. Then late one afternoon I’m standing over a grating by a used bookstore, trying to get warm, and I see, in amongst the motley selection of titles that crowd the display window, a familiar cover and byline.

  When the Desert Dreams, by Anne Bourke.

  I’ve got two dollars and eighty cents in my pocket. I’m planning to use it to get something to eat later, but I go into the bookstore. The guy behind the counter takes pity on me and sells me the book for what I’ve got, even though there’s a price of fifteen bucks penciled in on the right-hand corner of the front endpaper.

  I leave, holding the book to my chest, and I walk around like that all night, from one side of the city to the other. I don’t need to read the stories. I was there when they were written—almost a lifetime ago.

  Finally, I start walking up Williamson Street, just trudging on and on until the downtown stores give way to more residential blocks, which give way to drive-in fast-food joints and malls and the ‘burbs, and then I’m finally out of the city. The sun’s up for about an hour when I stick out my thumb.

  It’s a long time before someone stops, but when this guy does, he’s going my way. He can take me right up into the mountains. I find myself wanting to apologize for the way I look, for the way I smell, but I don’t say anything. I know if I try to say anything more than where I’m going, I’m just going to break down and cry. So I sit there and hold my book. I nod and try to smile as the guy talks to me. Mostly, I just look ahead through the windshield.

  I don’t know what I’m expecting or hoping to find when I get there. I don’t even know why I’m going. I just know that I’ve run out of other options.

  Without Annie, I don’t know where to turn. Only she’d be able to comfort me, only she’d be able to help me reclaim my dreaming place. I’ve had to shut myself off from what’s inside me, because when I step into my private place, I get no solace now; when I dream, I have only nightmares.

  What was my only haven is home to monsters now.

  9

  “Are you sure this is where you want out?” my ride asks.

  There’s something in the tone of his voice that tells me he doesn’t think it’s exactly the greatest idea. I don’t blame him. We’re out in the middle of nowhere, and Betsy’s trailer looks deserted. The lawn’s overgrown and thick with leaves. Her vegetable and flower gardens are a jungle of weeds. The trailer itself was never in the greatest shape, but now shutters are hanging loose and the door stands ajar. From the road we can see that a thick carpet of forest debris has already worked its way inside.

  I guess I’m not really surprised. Betsy was an old woman. It’s been over a year since I was here with Annie, and anything could have happened to her in that time. She could have moved. Or died.

  I don’t like to think of her as dead. There are some people who deserve to live forever, and although I only met her that one afternoon, I knew that Betsy was one of them. Eternal spirits, trapped in far too transient flesh.

  Like Annie.

  My ride clears his throat in case I didn’t hear him. This guy’s so polite. I was lucky it was him that stopped for me and not some loser who thinks with his dick instead of his heart.

  Or maybe, considering, it was lucky for those losers. I’ve still got the anima’s gifts; I just don’t use them anymore.

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” I tell him and get out. “Thanks for the ride.”

  I stand by the end of Betsy’s overgrown driveway and watch the car until it’s out of sight. There’s something in the air that calms me, smoothing all my nervous edges. No longer summer, not quite winter, everything just hanging between the two. I take it all in until I hear another vehicle coming up the road, then I dart into the woods, Annie’s book clutched to my chest.

  The glade doesn’t look anything like I remembered it, either, but I know it’s just because I’m here in a different season. The surrounding trees have all lost their leaves and everything’s faded and brown. Except for the fairy ring. The toadstools still stand in their circle, the grass is still a deep green, and there’s not a leaf or twig lying within the circle.

  I know there’s probably a sound, scientific reason why this is so, but I don’t have access to the paper’s morgue anymore to look it up, and besides, I’ve seen the anima. I’m more likely to believe that fairies are keeping the ring raked and tidy.

  I stand there, looking at it for a long time, before I finally step into the ring. I lay Annie’s book in the middle and sit down on the grass.

  I don’t know what I’m doing here. Maybe I thought I could call up the anima. Or Annie’s ghost. But now that I’m here, none of that matters. All the confusion and pain that’s sent my life into its downward spiral after I killed Newman just fades aw
ay. My pulse takes on the slow heartbeat of the forest. I close my eyes and let myself go. I can feel myself drifting, edging up on that dreaming place inside me that I haven’t been able to visit for months because I know the monsters are waiting for me there.

  I’m just starting to get convinced that maybe there is a way to regain one’s innocence when I realize that I’m no longer alone.

  It’s neither the animal-headed fairy women nor Annie’s ghost that I find watching me from the edge of the ring, but Betsy. I think for a minute that maybe she’s a ghost, or a fairy woman, but then I see how frail she is, the cane she’s used to get here, how her face is red from the effort she’s made and her breathing is way too fast. She’s as real as I am—maybe more so, because I don’t know where I’ve been these last few months.

  We don’t say anything for a long time. I watch her lean on her cane and slowly catch her breath. The flush leaves her face.

  “I read about your friend,” she says finally. “That must have been hard for you.”

  Tears well in my eyes and I can’t seem to find my voice. I manage a nod.

  “It’s always hardest for those of us who get left behind,” she says, filling the silence that grows up between us. “I know.”

  “You… you’ve lost someone close to you?” I ask.

  Betsy gives me this sad smile. “At my age, girl, I’ve just about lost them all.” She pauses for a heartbeat, then asks, “You and your friend—you were… lovers?”

  “Does that shock you?”

  “Land’s sake, no. I left my own husband for a woman— though that was years ago. Folks didn’t look on it with much understanding back then.”

  They still don’t, I think.

  “I think it makes it that much harder when you love someone folks don’t think you’re supposed to and she dies. You don’t get a period of mourning. Folks are just relieved that the situation’s gone and fixed itself.”

  “But you still mourn,” I say.

  “Oh yes. But you have to do your crying on the inside.”