by Chuck Wendig
Worse, she can’t feel him at all. It took her a while to find him at first—she had to probe the holes in Alison’s mind, creating an image out of negative space, the Cason Cole-shaped cut-out in her memories, an elegant act of psychic surgery with the fingerprints of Psyche’s husband all over them (incurring in her no small swell of pride). Once she had him, she had him, and it was time to hunt. But now: nothing. Gone again. As if he never existed.
She goes inside the house, of course—no stone left unturned and all that. She finds the splintery wooden dolls in the walls. She sees and smells the residue of the creature that lived here: some foul skunk-ape from the local pantheon, nobody of any consequence, but worryingly dead just the same. She finds the plants. The bones. The blood. The mold. A wild-man with a wild-house, all wildly out of control. Ugh. So unpleasant.
It takes her far too long to find the passageway.
It’s more cellar than basement—dirt floor instead of concrete, rock walls. A great many bugs. Cockroaches and crickets and pill-bugs. Spiders, too—thin-bodied, diaphanous spiders with long, wispy limbs hiding in the nooks and crannies.
Behind a water heater is a hole.
She smells Cole’s scent: his blood, his sweat. His fear and uncertainty.
But there’s someone else, too. The smell of blistery skin. Lotion and eyedrops. Fear, too—but more overpowering is the hatred lurking there. It’s a smell she knows. One she hasn’t caught scent of in quite a while, now. Decades.
The smells are fading. The breath from the tunnel is old, stale, carries only meager strands of scent. Still. It’s what they have, and the hunt must go on.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Ants And The Elephants
THE COLD CONDENSATION on the outside of the pint glass feels good against Cason’s palms. The splinters are all gone, now: picked out in the bar bathroom and dumped in the toilet before a flush. He knows he should be afraid of infection, but right now he’s afraid of so much more. Afraid for his wife and son. Afraid for himself. Afraid for the world, and most of all, afraid for his own sanity; because none of this can be real.
Except it sure feels real.
The symbol on his chest is a reminder of that. Drawn there by Frank with a permanent marker. Frank snorted as he drew it, muttering, “Bullshit it’s permanent, you’ll wish it was permanent, shoulda let me use the knife.” The symbol only added to Cason’s fear and frustration—it offered him little psychic solace.
Now: the two of them sit in a red leather booth not far from Citizens Bank park, where the Phillies play. Frank totters back over, drops a wooden bowl of peanuts on the table. The floor is littered with peanut shells: everywhere you walk, crunch crunch crunch.
“I like to make bombs,” Frank says, out of nowhere.
“That one I already figured out.”
“My bombs are special. Different.”
“Yeah, they’re different all right. That last one was filled with dolls.”
“Ohtas. Little wooden ceremonial dolls made by the Lenni-Lenape.”
“The bomb that killed E.—”
“Eros.”
“That wasn’t filled with little dollies.”
Frank shakes his head. “Nah. Arrowheads. Specifically bronze arrowheads. Paid a pretty penny to have those made. I mean, I guess I coulda just robbed a bunch from the Art Museum—they got a whole collection and I know a guy—but it felt wrong somehow.”
“You seem like a guy who’s real concerned about right and wrong.”
“You’d be surprised.”
Cason sips the beer. Dark. Bitter. Cold. Good.
“Can I tell you a story?” Frank says.
“Can I stop you?”
“It’s an important story.”
“They have my wife. And probably my son. Nothing’s more important than that, Frank. You understand?”
“I do, and that’s exactly why you need to hear this story.”
He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. Fingertips with too-long nails—each overhanging a half-moon of filth—pull tight across the table.
Then he tells it.
“YOU KNOW HOW, in the 1980s, the 1950s were big again? Peggy Sue Got Married and Back to the Future and Oldies Stations and all that garbage. I was young, twenty-two at the time, and a buddy of mine convinced me to go to this... sock-hop. A dance, a fake high school dance where they played Chubby Checker and ‘Johnny B. Goode’ and you danced for hours—but you had to take your shoes off, like in the original sock-hops, so your shoes didn’t screw up the floor varnish.”
It must be hard for him to talk this long. As he speaks, he dips a paper napkin into a glass of water, wets his lips with it. A little tub of petroleum jelly comes out of his pocket, too, and occasionally he dabs a blob onto a pinky finger and smears it around his mouth—not just on the scar tissue that forms his false lips, but a good half-inch radius in every direction. His crater mouth shines in the light.
“I didn’t know what I was doing at this thing. I couldn’t dance worth a good goddamn. I was like a bug trying not to burn his feet on a hot plate. Better than how people really danced in the ’80s, I guess, but I didn’t have a lick of rhythm.
“Good thing is, while I may have danced like a drunken orangutan, I still looked damn good. I know, you’re sitting there thinking—but how could he look sexier than he does now?—but trust me, I did. I wasn’t just handsome. I was what you might call a ‘pretty boy.’ Hell, that’s what my friends actually called me. Pretty Boy. Frankie ‘Pretty Boy’ Polcyn.”
The words are made imperfect by ruined lips. Consonants are breathy and ill-formed; the ‘p’s don’t pop, the ‘b’s buzz unnaturally, the ‘m’s are a whisper that never quite connect. His s-sounds are sometimes mushy and slurred (thatsh what my friendsh actually called ffffee).
His eyes glisten. They stop watching Cason and drift toward the dim bar lights hanging from the ceiling.
“So I attracted the eyes of an equally pretty lady. Hair the color of straw. Freckles all up and down her cheeks. Some girls there did the Pink Lady Grease thing, but not her—she was all sweetness and light and twirling seafoam poodle skirt. And she came up to me. That’s how she was. Forward but not forward, you know? Still made you feel like you had to work for it. She didn’t come up and ask me to dance. She hovered. Acted all coy. She still made me do the work, right? I still got to feel like a man. She gave that to me.”
He draws a deep breath.
“Sally. That was her name. Sally Delacroix. Sweetness and light and seafoam. Did I say that already? Whatever. We danced. Danced for hours until the music wound down and the lights came on and for a second I thought the dream was over. Dead and done. The lights killed it—bright, harsh, hot. But then she asked if I wanted to go out and get a drink, and at first I thought maybe she meant a milkshake or something—keepin’ in the spirit of things—but she said no, a proper drink, and we did. We went to a bar not unlike this one. The Buttonwood. I remember I had a beer. She had a gin and tonic.
“We made love that night. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s easier just to say that we fucked like two ferrets in a tube sock—but this was something different. It wasn’t just the in-and-out of the thing, it was the way we moved together. Way I felt nervous. Way she...” He pauses. “I remember she shook, you know? Trembled. And I could smell her deodorant, a powdery smell, light and airy, but I could smell her beneath it. Could smell her sweat and her body and then her hair would fall across my nose and I’d smell strawberries and cream because that’s how her shampoo smelled. She was soft and long and moved against me like a pillow stuffed with angel feathers (and just so we’re clear the air on this, angels are real, don’t you dare think they’re not—scary motherfuckers each and every one of ’em).”
He sips his beer. A long slow pull.
“We got married a week later. I know, right? Fuckin’ bad idea, and maybe it was, but nothing in my life has ever felt smarter than that one decision. We went to Las Vegas. At the time I lived out on the West Coast
, so driving to Vegas was a thing you did; and so we did it. We did the whole Elvis schtick. I guess continuing that whole 1950s vibe. We did the Elvis chapel where you get married by him—though not the young jailhouse Elvis, nah, they stick you with the bloated toilet-clogger Elvis all stuffed in his sequined jumpsuit, like some kind of fat-ass Evel Knievel. But it felt great just the same. We loved our Fat Elvis. We hugged him and laughed and he watched us kiss.
“So began the honeymoon. We didn’t have a lot of money—she answered phones for a local construction company and I drove a schoolbus—so we ended up at this little motel way off the Strip. But it was nice. Pink flamingos. Palm trees. A kidney-shaped pool that had waters so green it glittered like emeralds—though thinking back it was probably just the tile they had at the bottom of the pool, but fuck it, the illusion was the illusion and was good enough for me.
“First couple nights we did our thing—that’s when we fucked like ferrets, boy. We did it up-down-left-right-sideways. We were like deep sea divers, having to come up for air from time to time. Towel off. Drink some water. Get back into it. The room was like our womb. I’d filled it with flowers, you know, like, tropical flowers. Not roses, but—well, I don’t know my flowers, but the kind you’d find strung on a hula girl’s necklace. It was perfect. Best days of my life.
“But on the third day... that’s when we had our first ‘marital disagreement.’”
It’s here that Frank lifts a finger to call over a waitress. The one who comes over is different from the one that brought them their beer—this one’s older, more haggard, stringy red hair hanging in front of deep-set eyes. She stares at Frank like he’s a pile of roadkill, but Frank’s expression says it’s a look he’s used to. He just mumbles an order for a shot of Dewar’s. Gets one for Cason, too. Cason tells him no, it’s too early, but Frank just tells the waitress to bring both shots and they’ll figure it out.
“Sally wanted to sit by the pool for the day. Maybe go get a drink at the little cocktail lounge down the block. Tiki bar, I remember. Tiki Tom’s? Something. But I said, shit, we’re in Vegas. And we hadn’t done any gambling yet and I just wanted my one day to play the blackjack tables. She said pool-and-lounge, I said gambling, and in the end it wasn’t a fight—nobody raised their voice, everybody stayed smiling. We just decided to each do our own thing that day and we’d meet back up at night at Tiki Tom’s.”
Shots arrive. Frank pincers his with thumb and forefinger, then lifts his craggy chin toward Cason. “Go on. Drink.”
“Seriously?” Cason says. “It’s early.”
“You’re already drinking beer. Go harder, boy. You’re gonna need it. Or I’m gonna need you to need it. Or something.” Frank’s jawline tightens, and when his face tightens, you can really see it—all the scar-lines tug and pull like a net with a fish thrashing in it. Cason shakes his head and figures, what the hell, it’s been that kind of morning. Both men tip their heads back—the amber liquid disappears. Frank coughs, tinks the two glasses together, and continues.
“So. She stays poolside. I go to the casinos. I started at the Circus Circus because it was closest, but what a mistake. Clowns are bad luck. I lost a couple bucks. Moved onto the Harrah’s. Lost a couple more bucks there. I was starting to feel shitty, like I was being punished for leaving Sally behind. So I’m there at the third casino—the Mirage—and a little voice like a little bird starts pecking at me. Asking, what if something happens to Sally? While I’m gone? I don’t know Vegas. I don’t know what can happen. And there I sat, thinking I should leave, and so I plopped down the rest of my chips just to get rid of ’em, and what happens? I won. Boom. Big money.
“The rush hit me. Like a warm wave. And I kept playing. And I kept winning. Each win quieted that voice a little more until I couldn’t hear it at all, and I was up $1200 by the end of the night. I looked at my watch and saw that it was 8pm—and I was supposed to meet Sally at the lounge at 7. And it wasn’t a short walk off the strip, either.”
Eyedrops, now. He fishes them from a pocket, squeezes a few into each eye. Cason finds it hard to watch. The man can’t blink. You put eyedrops in your eyes, that’s the first thing everybody does is blink. But Frank’s big bloodshot eyes remain open as the drops slide across them—water running off a blister. Cason’s own eyes feel suddenly dry and he finds himself blinking a whole bunch without meaning to.
“I go to the lounge. Gaudy, kitschy old Hawaii. Makes me think of the flowers in our room. But Sally’s not there. I ask the bartender if he’s seen her and he doesn’t know shit from shinola. Now I’m getting worried. Anxiety starts to crawl in my gut like a big fat hairy spider and that voice is back, loud now, real loud, what if something happened to her—? So I get up and I hoof it back to the motel. And I go to our room and I remember fumbling with the fuckin’ keys and I drop them—and I hear a cry from inside the door, a cry of what sounded like someone in pain. Sally. I finally get the keys in the lock and throw open the door.”
He hisses air through his teeth.
“And I find her there on the bed. She’s face-down between the legs of some broad. Straw-colored hair sliding against this other woman’s milky thighs. They’re both naked as they were born. Making sounds. Sally’s moaning like she never moaned for me. The woman’s fingers are in Sally’s hair—gentle one minute, tightening her grip the next, then back to gentle. Sally’s fingers are curled up under this woman’s knees, with her elbows out. All around them are flower petals. Petals from the flowers I bought. Torn up and sprinkled around the room and on the bed.
“The strange woman gives me this look. She just... smiles. Like she doesn’t give a fuck.” Frank’s tongue slides out. Snakes along his non-lips, leaving a slug’s trail of spitty slime. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, way to go, Frank, lucky fuckin’ ducky, every man’s fantasy right there—you shoulda just hiked down your dungarees and got into the mix because one day the honeymoon’ll really be over and shit like that won’t happen anymore. But that’s not what I was thinking. I was mad. And sad. And this deep well of jealousy started burning me up from the inside like I just poured boiling water down my throat.
“I start yelling. Try to pull Sally out from between this bitch’s legs, and Sally just looks up at me—eyes unfocused, mouth all sloppy with juices and lipstick. It’s like she doesn’t even know me. That just makes me madder, so I really pull this time and yank her ass off the bed—not to hurt her, but just to break apart this—this horror show that’s playing out in my motel room, on my goddamn honeymoon.
“I pull her off and she rolls and cracks her head into the set of drawers. You’re thinking that this is where she dies or I kill her, but that’s not it—she’s fine. It’s just a bump on the noggin, no blood or brain scrambling or anything, but before I know what’s happening, the strange woman is up and standing on the bed like the fuckin’ Queen of Sheba, and she’s got me by the throat...”
He rubs his face. Dry hands scrub across hard scars. He leans in suddenly like he’s sharing a secret. Voice low and slow.
“Listen. This was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Green eyes, red lips, hair wild and blonde like a fire-flare coming off the sun. Curvy, too—not like the twigs they call women these days. A chest you could sleep on. Hips you could build a home on. And she smelled like—like the beach. Not like the nasty beach, not like dead fish, but like sand and salt air and the perfume of tropical flowers.”
Cason’s innards twist.
The Lexus. The forest. The apple.
He sits up straight. Suddenly tense.
“Next thing I know, she’s got me outside. Carrying me by the neck like I’m nothing. And...” He swallows hard. “You won’t believe this part; or maybe you will, I dunno. But she whispers in my ear, Sorry, Pretty Boy, and then she tosses me into the pool. But the pool isn’t just the pool anymore. It’s like a... a hand, a cradle, the water catching me in a geyser. For a moment I bob there and then I feel the pain. Water forming whips—sharp like razors,
like needles—and cutting across me. Lashing my face and arms and fuckin’ everywhere. My lips and couple toes and ears and—”
Here he stops. Crossing his legs under the table. Nervously he fumbles with the eyedrops and plops a few more upon his peepers.
“The water was hot. Burned me, too. When I awoke I was in a hospital. Cops said it must’ve been some kind of gang thing. Initiation, maybe. Nobody saw anything. And I never saw my bride again.
“That was love, what we had.
“And love... love dies.”
So ends Frank’s tale.
OUTSIDE THE BAR, Frank smokes a cigarette that he bums off the haggard waitress. She probably doesn’t want to give it to him, but he leers and sneers and she’s likely afraid to do any differently, so there he stands, puffing comically on a Virginia Slim.
Cason doesn’t tell him about his own meeting with the pretty, pretty lady. The lady of the sea. The lady of wrath.
Instead he changes the subject.
“This thing. That you drew on my chest—?”
“Mm,” Frank says, exhaling smoke, not by blowing it out, but just by letting his mouth hang open like a door—the smoke tumbles out of his maw. “Sigil. A symbol of protection. One of Solomon’s seals. See, the Old Testament still admitted that other gods and demons and monsters and all that shit were real. Yahweh’s the One True God in that book, but only by comparison to all the gods that are considered His lessers. New Testament rolls around and all those other gods are gone—just false idols that never existed. But Solomon knew his shit. Knew how to keep those assholes away from his door. This seal hides us from them. They can’t just... smell the air and find us by our stink.”
“Oh.” Cason doesn’t know what else to say. This is all a bit much. He pats his chest.
“You’re gonna want to get that branded. Or inked. Because it won’t last.”
“Yeah. Sure.” He looks at his watch. It’s only noon. “Listen, I’m gonna get out of here. This has been a long, fucked-up day.”
