Poison Ink

by Christopher Golden

  She tried to stop the descending fist. Katsuko aimed for her face, where her cracked cheekbone was still healing. Sammi twisted, and the blow struck the other side of her face. Pain flared in her ribs. She tried to buck Katsuko off her, but though she must have weighed thirty pounds more, the petite girl was much stronger.

  Sammi punched her in the face with the cast on her left hand. She struck Katsuko’s already bleeding nose. Still Katsuko wouldn’t let go. With a powerful hand she gripped Sammi’s throat and began to squeeze, cutting off her air.

  “Get off of her, you crazy bitch!” Zak snarled.

  He picked Katsuko up with both hands. When the girl tried to attack him again, he threw her across the room. Katsuko pinwheeled her arms but couldn’t keep herself from crashing into the wall. A whole shelf of knickknacks and a small painting fell to the floor with a crash.

  Sammi spared one glance toward T.Q., who tried to rise from the floor, eyes heavily lidded, but collapsed as though she’d had far too much to drink.

  “Stay there!” Zak screamed at Katsuko, pointing down at where she crouched on the floor amid the rubble of knickknacks. Then he spun on Sammi. “Have you totally lost your mind?”

  Sammi saw Katsuko move. “Zak, watch her!”

  Zak started to turn. He would have been too late if Rachael hadn’t been there. She grabbed Katsuko’s arm, yanking her back. Katsuko pulled herself free, but by then Zak was ready. He grabbed her by the wrists, tripped her, and drove her down to the wood floor, sitting astride her to pin her in place.

  “Just stop!” he shouted.

  Sammi started toward them and Zak whirled around. “Goddamn it, Samantha, you too! Just stay right there.”

  Katsuko writhed beneath him, snarling and panting like an animal, her eyes beginning to roll up in her head.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Zak screamed into her face.

  But Rachael’s expression had gone slack and pale. She stared at Katsuko, and as Sammi moved a little nearer, she saw what had captivated Rachael’s attention. The girl’s shirt had ridden up, exposing her belly.

  “Zak,” Rachael almost whispered.

  A wave of icy cold swept through the tattoo shop. Zak looked at Rachael, saw her expression, then looked down at Katsuko’s bared stomach. Neither of them would have seen anything like it before, but Sammi had. Once.

  The black tendrils of ink that made up the spreading poison of her tattoo covered her belly like intricate calligraphy. But as they all stared, and as Katsuko spat at Zak, the tattoo vines were moving beneath her skin, slowly twisting like a basket of vipers.

  “Holy shit!” Zak shouted, and he started to get up.

  “Don’t let her go!” Rachael snapped.

  Zak looked at her and nodded, gone quite pale himself. Both of them turned to look at Sammi.

  “You better tell us what’s going on here now, Sam. Don’t leave anything out. And you better start with what the hell you did to the redhead over there,” Zak said, nodding toward the unconscious T.Q.

  Sammi took a breath, forcing herself not to think about the setbacks she might have suffered because of her struggle with Katsuko. As unnerving as it was to see the tattoos moving and to see Katsuko go almost mindlessly feral, it had given her the opening she needed.

  This could still work.

  “I drugged her. I powdered four of the painkillers I had left over from the hospital.”

  “Oh my God,” Rachael whispered.

  “I had to,” Sammi said, staring at her. “And I’ll tell you the story, starting right now. But while we’re talking, there’s something you’ve got to do.”

  “What’s that?” Zak asked, incredulous.

  “Rachael needs to destroy their tattoos. Katsuko’s first, then T.Q.’s.”

  “Why?”

  “Are you blind?” Sammi asked. She pointed at Katsuko’s exposed stomach. “Have a look. Use that ink. The stuff that they brought with them. If I’m right, that’ll work better. Go to the center of the tattoo, the original tattoo, before it started to grow. Fill in the hollow. Color in around it, where the waves were—where those lines start. I don’t care if it’s just a blotch or a square or whatever. Just do it. You’ve got to ruin the original design.”

  Zak and Rachael stared at her.

  Katsuko had begun to hyperventilate and to make a low keening noise with every swift breath. Her eyes were focused now, though, and she glared at Sammi with a hatred that made her recoil. Being looked at that way made her feel hideous, but one look at the twisted ugliness that Katsuko’s face had become also served to remind her why she had done all of this.

  “Why?” Rachael repeated. “You want me to do this, Sammi, you have to tell me why.”

  Sammi pointed at Katsuko’s belly. The black vines of the tattoo had almost completely stopped writhing. It might have just been ink on the skin now. But it was impossible to miss that those lines were not entirely still. One would shift, just slightly, and then another, as though they were attempting to go unnoticed.

  “That’s why.”

  “Sammi—” Zak started.

  “Listen to me. There’s this guy, Dante. You heard them talk about him. That’s his ink. He’s the one who did the tattoos. He’s done something to them, don’t you get it? With the tattoos. He’s controlling them. Maybe you think that sounds crazy, but your own eyes aren’t lying to you. I’m not asking you to kill her or even hurt her. Just blot out that tattoo, using that ink—I think that’s important, because if they brought it for you to use on me, it’s got to be a part of the…”

  “The what?” Rachael asked.

  “The spell,” Zak said.

  Frowning, Rachael turned to look at him. Sammi stared.

  “Not you too,” Rachael said.

  Zak took a breath and let it out. “I read about something like this. I did this paper on African tribal magic. Tattoos were a part of it.”

  “So what did you learn?”

  He laughed. “Not a lot. I got a C. But there was something about ritual tattoos. And Sammi’s right. Whatever this is, the ink on this chick is severely not normal.”

  Rachael looked from one to the other, over at T.Q., then back at Zak. “I am so going to jail.”

  Sammi started toward her. “Rachael—”

  But the diminutive tattooist held up a hand. “Just get her on the table, the two of you. And try not to trash any more of my place than you already have.”

  Rachael shot a dark look at Sammi. “And you. Talk.”

  So Sammi talked. She and Rachael stripped off Katsuko’s pants and Sammi lay across her legs while Zak pinned her shoulders. And Sammi talked. She told them the story from beginning to end, and from time to time she glanced up and saw the horror in their eyes. If they hadn’t seen evidence for themselves, she knew they would never have believed her, even having been witness to the way Letty, Caryn, T.Q., and Katsuko had beaten Las Reinas in a fight and then stomped the crap out of Sammi.

  But they’d seen it. They could never unsee it. They had to believe her.

  “Rachael?” Zak said when Sammi had finished.

  But his girlfriend didn’t raise her head from her work. She had started, as Sammi suggested, by filling in the hole at the center of the tattoo—the hollow in the world, Dante had called it, though surely it served some other purpose. Then Rachael had moved out from there, using that ink to broaden the central circle, working out toward what would have been the edges of the original tattoo.

  “I can’t—” Rachael said.

  “Can’t what?” Zak asked.

  “I can’t think about it.”

  She lifted the needle from Katsuko’s skin. Half the time they’d had to wait for pauses in her cursing and spitting and bucking for Sammi to continue her story and for Rachael to continue eradicating Dante’s original design. The work went slowly and the tattoo needle moved a lot. The work Rachael had been doing would not be pretty. There were lines where the ink had striped Katsuko’s skin when she had tried
to twist away.

  “What do you mean?” Sammi asked.

  Rachael looked up at Zak. “I’m afraid. I don’t want to think about it. I just want to get it done. Mostly, I’m afraid it won’t work, because then…what happens to us? What’s this guy going to do?”

  She shook her head and looked over at where T.Q. lay mumbling blearily on the floor, disoriented but no longer unconscious. Sammi had planned for her to be the first to have the tattoo destroyed, and that would have been so much easier. But Katsuko hadn’t left her any choice.

  Rachael glanced at Sammi. “I mean, what even makes you think this will work? We don’t have enough ink to cover her whole body, and if the tattoos are spreading…” She shrugged. “You don’t know anything. You’re totally guessing. Why didn’t you take that book from this Dante guy’s place, figure out what the hell he did to them?”

  “Do I look like some kind of witch to you? What the hell do I know about this stuff? I had to get out of there, and I didn’t want him to know it was me. That grimoire or whatever wasn’t even in English.”

  “So this is all just a guess!” Rachael said.

  “What do you want from me?” Sammi cried. “I’m sorry I got you into this, but I didn’t know what else to do. You saw what he did to them. You saw what they did to me.”

  Zak lifted one arm to reach for Rachael and Katsuko grunted, tried to get up. He forced her back down, cursing at her. Then he glanced at Rachael.

  “Just get it done. I get what Sammi’s saying and I know you do, too. If the design’s the thing, if it’s such a part of this guy’s magic, then screwing it up is the only thing I can think of. If you’ve got a better idea, Rach, I’d love to hear it.”

  Rachael’s hand shook as she lowered the needle again.

  A few minutes later, Sammi noticed that the twisted black lines on Katsuko’s body had stopped moving entirely. She frowned, staring at them, waiting for movement, but there was none.

  Then she saw the tears sliding from the corners of Katsuko’s eyes and the wretched humiliation on her face.

  “Oh my God,” Sammi whispered.

  Rachael set down the needle. Zak stepped back and Rachael got up, sliding into his arms. They stared at the girl on the table, holding each other. Rachael shook a bit, fear and relief and this final bit of evidence overwhelming her.

  “It’s all true,” she said.

  Zak said nothing, but Sammi saw the terrible truth of those words settle on him. They had been frantic before. Now the reality had created a new fear in them.

  “Katsuko,” Sammi said. She sat on the edge of the table.

  Katsuko pulled her legs up into an almost fetal position, lying on her side. She began to sob softly and Sammi lay across her, putting her arms around the girl.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Katsuko whispered.

  Sammi’s heart broke for her, the horror of it coming to her all at once. What must it have been like to be a passenger in her own body, able to see out through her own eyes, aware of the things that her puppeteer had done to her body?

  “You’ll be all right,” Sammi said. “We’ll all be okay, now.”

  “You don’t know what I did. What I did, Sammi,” Katsuko whispered.

  She opened her eyes, gaze full of anguish, and Sammi shook with relief to see the real Katsuko in those eyes. People always said that eyes were windows to the soul. Sammi held Katsuko close again.

  “It doesn’t matter. We’ll help the other girls now. Then we’ll all be together again.”

  “And we’ll make the son of a bitch pay?” Katsuko asked, her voice thick with emotion.

  Sammi scowled in disgust. “Oh yeah. Yes we will.”

  Somewhere inside Skin Colors a clock ticked the seconds away. Sammi let the sound become white noise, focusing instead on the softer, more intimate whispers and moans that came from deep inside Katsuko. She cradled the girl in her arms, sitting on the floor of the tattoo shop, just holding Katsuko against her. The ugly behavior Sammi had seen had been only a fraction of the horrors the girl had performed with Dante pulling her strings, and more of those came out with every passing moment, as though Sammi had become her confessor. Katsuko and the others had caught up to girls in dark alleys and beaten and violated them. They had made whores of themselves for Dante’s amusement, debased themselves in ways that made Sammi physically ill, and descended into a maelstrom of drug use that would have intimidated the biggest coke fiend at Covington High.

  All Sammi could do was hold Katsuko and tell her none of it had been her fault, that she had to treat it like a nightmare from which she’d awoken.

  But the nightmare had not really ended. All through the long minutes when Sammi held the traumatized Katsuko, Rachael worked to eradicate the tattoo on the back of T.Q.’s neck. Zak had lifted the tall redhead from the floor. Already she had started to awaken, but she remained too disoriented and unable to function to fight him.

  Sammi heard the hushed mutterings of Rachael and Zak. T.Q.’s tattoo had spread its poison vines in whorls and swirls down the girl’s back and over her collarbones and down onto her chest as well. The dark lines etched upon Katsuko’s skin had begun to fade, and Sammi expected that T.Q.’s would do the same, once the tattoo had been blotted out.

  “I’m so sorry,” Katsuko said.

  Sammi pulled back from their embrace and held her shoulders. Katsuko’s dark eyes were wide. Despite the sorrow in those eyes, Sammi felt so much hope at seeing them.

  “You keep saying that. You don’t need to. Please.”

  Katsuko took a breath and nodded. She seemed to be coming out of her shock somewhat as she glanced around the shop, ending on the table where Rachael continued working with the tattoo needle on the back of T.Q.’s neck. The machine whirred.

  “What about the others?” Katsuko asked.

  “What?” Zak asked, turning toward her.

  But Katsuko wasn’t ready to talk to him. She turned to Sammi. “Letty and Caryn. What about them? How are we going to save them?”

  “The same way,” Sammi said, smiling. “There’ll be five of us, now. We’ll get them down here together and we’ll hold them down if we have to.”

  Katsuko nodded thoughtfully. She winced and reached up to touch her swollen, blood-encrusted nose.

  “Sorry about that,” Sammi said.

  “I had it coming.”

  Sammi smiled at her, and Katsuko managed a thin, tired smile in return.

  “What’s she saying?” Zak asked.

  At first Sammi thought he meant Katsuko, but when she glanced up she saw Zak staring at T.Q. The redhead had her face down on the padded table and mumbled something muffled by the padding.

  Rachael paused and pulled back the tattoo needle. T.Q. felt the release of pressure and her head lolled to one side. Her bleary gaze locked on Sammi immediately. Though she spoke as though in a trance, those eyes never wavered.

  “Coming,” she said. “He’s coming. Riding fast.”

  Sammi froze, staring at her. Abruptly she rose, pulling Katsuko to her feet and glancing quickly at the front door of the shop.

  “Are you almost done?” she asked Rachael.

  The diminutive artist shrugged. “Kind of hard to tell, but I think so.”

  “Hurry.”

  Zak raised both hands. “Um, hello? What was that? She’s totally whacked on painkillers. It’s gibberish—”

  “No,” Katsuko said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Neither do I.” Sammi rushed to the heavy drapes that hung across the front windows and peeked outside. A car passed, headlights washing over the shadowed pavement, but it did not even pause.

  “What are you saying?” Rachael asked.

  “I’m saying I think maybe when you cut the strings, the guy working the puppets is gonna notice,” Sammi said. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I think he felt it.”

  Zak swore, then tapped the table next to T.Q. “Rach, hurry up, honey.”

  Rachael nodded. The tatto
o needle whirred softly as she got back to work. A terrible quiet descended upon them. Zak and Sammi and Katsuko glanced back and forth at one another and at the front of the shop. Sammi opened the door into the storage room so she had a clear view of the back door.

  “Maybe you should make sure it’s locked,” Katsuko said.

  “I’ll check the front,” Zak said.

  Sammi went into the storage room and tried the back door. The knob had a lock and there was a deadbolt as well. She tested it and found it secure. As she turned, her eye caught something in the corner next to a metal shelf full of art books and inkpots. Rachael kept shovels here for the wintertime. On the ground in front of the shovels was a gigantic bucket of ice melt. One shovel was for snow, but the other was a long garden tool with a square metal blade. Sammi figured Rachael must have used it for chopping ice.

  When she went back into the studio, she had the shovel in hand. Rachael didn’t even look up from working on destroying T.Q.’s tattoo, but Zak’s eyes widened. Katsuko gave a small nod.

  “Sammi?” a soft voice said.

  The whir of the tattoo needle stopped. Rachael pulled back and they all looked at T.Q. Again she let her head loll to one side, but this time her expression had changed. Her eyes were slitted and her face contorted with such wretched sadness that for the first time, she looked ugly.

  “T.Q.? Is that you?” Sammi asked.

  “Oh my God,” the girl mumbled, her words slurred. “Oh my God.”

  She managed to bring one hand up to cover her face. Katsuko went and sat beside her, talking softly and stroking her hair. Rachael paused for a moment and then set down the tattoo needle.

  Sammi would have spoken, would have offered gratitude and apologies to Zak and Rachael and comfort to T.Q. But before she could utter a word, the whole shop trembled with the rising thunder of a passing motorcycle. Its engine roared, revving, and then it quieted to an idle for a moment before cutting out.

  Katsuko and Sammi exchanged a glance.

  “Is that him?” Zak asked.

  Sammi looked at Rachael. “Call the police.”

  She didn’t hesitate. Running to the small reception desk at the front, she picked up the phone and dialed. As frightened as she was, Rachael didn’t so much as tremble. None of this had anything to do with her. Not once had she tried to blame Sammi for dragging her into it. Now Sammi wished she could have gotten Rachael and Zak out of here before trouble arrived, but fate had not worked out that way. Desperation had driven her, and now it was too late to make other plans.