Krokodil Tears df-2

by Jack Yeovil

  There were seven levels of spirituality, Hawk had told her, and she must ascend through them all before she was readied for her appointed task.

  It was all new to her, but the Indian seemed to know what he was talking about, and so she had gone along with him.

  The Navaho knew what the moon wanted of her. On their first night in the monastery, with a silver crescent faint in the sky, Hawk gave her a gnarled root, and told her to smear a little of the juice of it onto her tongue before sleep.

  Frankenstein's Daughter though she was, she still dreamed. That night, she dreamed of the Great Crocodile in the Moon. Then, she dreamed she was the Great Crocodile in the Moon. Finally, she was herself and the crocodile at the same time. When she told Hawk of her dream, he told her she had reached the First Level.

  She didn't feel any different.

  By day, she exercised her body as Doc Threadneedle had advised. Hawk joined her, and, clad only in breechclouts, they ran through the sands, wrestled to a standstill—Hawk was wiry, but strong, and agile enough to compensate for her bio-improvements—and climbed the outer walls of Santa de Nogueira. She continued to surprise herself with the capabilities of her augmented flesh.

  By night, they made love and shared their dreams. Doc Threadneedle had been right about the sex. At last, she realized what all the fuss was about. She could experience the pleasure of lovemaking with every nerve-ending in her body. Sometimes, she thought she disconcerted Hawk with her love, but he kept apace with her. She told him about the Elder, and of the eternity of memories he had poured unasked into her head. He taught her a position for sleeping that placed the forepart of her brain at the apex of a pyramid. Nguyen Seth's past faded, and became the memory of a memory. Without realizing it, she had reached the Second Level.

  "Your body has advanced beyond the human, Jesse. Your spirit must catch up with it, or you will fail the moon."

  Hawk was a Dreamwalker. That meant he could project his spirit as he slept, and wander the material world and even the spirit lands. She asked him to teach her the trick, but he said that she was not ready yet. She must keep spirit and flesh wedded. She was to be a Spirit Warrior. He showed her old pictures, drawn with pigments on hide, and she recognized scenes from her life. There she was, being battered into the roadway by Nguyen Seth, struggling with the reanimated corpse of Herman Katz's mother, wandering the desert on all fours, tossing Holm Rodriguez's severed hand into Manolo's DeLorean. All these had been drawn before she was born, and yet they were exact prophecies. The pictures of her life yet to come were as vivid, and yet she could see no meaning in them. The background of one was recognizably Santa de Nogueira, and she was locked in struggle with an ordinary-looking man about whom a dark cloud was gathering. Others were disturbingly abstract, and Hawk could give her no clue as to their exact meaning.

  There were other Spirit Warriors, she was told. Even now, they were following their own destinies, being drawn towards some Last Battle in which they would stand against things Hawk called the Dark Spirits, whose front man on Earth she recognized as Elder Seth. If she survived, he said, she would eventually meet the others, but there were many possible destinies. Several of the pictures were ominously ambiguous. Jesse found it hard not to see in them versions of her death. In one, a woman with red hair and red hands—another Spirit Warrior, Hawk said—was throttling her, face turned into a mask of hate. In another, she was a small speck overwhelmed by a vast and writhing darkness that reminded her of nothing so much as pictures she had seen on the cover of Tcherkassoff's album Black Holes, and Other Singularities.

  Sometimes, Hawk was like the masters she had seen in Chinese martial arts movies, talking in parables, and drawing out his pupil's skills through subterfuge. But, at other moments, he was as lost as she was, another slave to the whims of the moon. This frightened her. She needed no doubts. She learned about Hawk's life as he learned of hers, and they became close. She had never had time to think about love before, had thought that Bruno had burned that out of her. Now, she wasn't sure whether she truly loved the Navaho, or whether he simply happened to be the only human being she had contact with. Love used to be just something she heard about in sove songs or followed in picstrips. The songs came back to her now, and she thought of all the things she hadn't had: a junior prom, dates, valentines, flowers. All the things that Tuesday Weld and Debbie Reynolds had in the movies, she had missed. When Tuesday and Debbie were arguing with their Moms whether they should wear a strapless dress to the dance, she had been carving up gang-girls in warehouse arenas, then picking out some cock-for-the-night from the stud line. She was eighteen now, and it was too late to be a teenager.

  She became pregnant, but lost the baby in the fourth month. At first, she hadn't wanted it, but the miscarriage devastated her. Somehow, she knew it had been her one chance to reproduce, and that it had passed. There were other things she had to do in her life, things forces beyond the reach of her mind deemed important. That night, for the first time, she cried uncontrollably. Her tears seeped through the cotton mattress of her cot and fell, onto the European stones. Hawk was gentle, and she sensed his feeling of loss was even greater than hers.

  Red-eyed and hollow inside, she was appalled when he told her she had reached the Third Level. "You have found your heart, Jesse. You will bear no more children, but you can now travel into the spirit world in safety, anchored by your heart in the world of men. Now, you can be a Dreamwalker."

  Her tears had been the pathway. The Doc had told her something of the sort as he died. But, once the flood was dried, she could cry no more.

  A month passed. The moon swelled, filling out as her belly ceased to, and then dwindled again. She spent a lot of time thinking about her father. She was sure he had told her the story of the Moon and the Crocodile when she was a child, but she couldn't remember it. At the time, she had thought he had made it up himself. Now, she wondered whether the moon crept into his mind too, driving him to pick up his rod and mark her back. Those woundings had been steps on the path that brought her to Santa de Nogueira, she realized. Everything in her life—all the pain, blood and death—had been pushing her onwards and into the desert.

  When the time came, Hawk mixed up the blood of her menses with peyote, plain brown sugar, mescal, ground-to-flour stonechips from the oldest walls of Santa de Nogueira, water, his own seed, whisky, buffalo grease and an ampoule of smacksynth. He told her to shut her eyes, and smeared the paste over her face, leaving breathing holes over her nostrils. It hardened to a mask, and she lay under it for three days, wandering inside her body. She appreciated Doc Threadneedle's handiwork, but also she learned to love what had been done for her before the biowizard came along. He had just provided some polish for a machine that was already a miracle of design.

  When the mask came off, she knew she had reached the Fourth Level.

  Hawk built a fire in the courtyard, and kept it burning for a week, producing dried wood from God knows where. Jesse sat and stared into the flames, seeing faces in the patterns.

  There was Seth, and Doc Threadneedle, and Hawk-That-Settles and her father. There was Mrs Katz, impossibly animated, chopping at her mind. And others she didn't recognize: a young woman from over the sea, sometimes dressed in a nun's habit, sometimes holding a clear-handled gun; a foreign man, dark-complexioned and dangerous, his hands red with blood; a beautiful young-old man with generous lips, picking up a guitar and smiling; and a man in a tropical suit, with a deathshead skull behind his smile. But, most of all, there was the crocodile, full moons in its eyes…

  The faces twisted, and scenes were played out. Some, she recognized: the NoGo walk-up she had shared with her Dad, Spanish Fork, the Katz Motel, Dead Rat. Others were obscure, yet-to-come images that meant nothing to her. A gathering darkness over a white plain. Graves opening to spew the dead. An ocean as smooth as glass closing over things vast, alive and hateful.

  When the fires burned down, Jesse was afraid. She had reached the Fifth Level, and she could no long
er go back. She could not turn from the destiny that had been alotted to her.

  She looked and looked at the place where the fire had been, searching for the future, but could only see ashes.

  IV

  To get him from his "confinement space" to the conference room involved leading him down Monsters' Row. This was where the United States of America put the Worst of the Worst. Hector Childress, the Albuquerque Chainsaw Killer, considered so dangerous that he was welded into his cell; Spike Mizzi, the New Hampshire Ghoul; Rex Tendenter, the smiling Bachelor Boy who had butchered and cannibalized around 50 middle-aged women, and still received three sacksful of fan mail every week; Nicky Staig, the author of the Cincinnati Flamethrower Holocaust; Michael Myers, the Haddonfield Horror; "Alligator" McClean, the Strangler of the Swamp; LeRoy Brosnan, the Sigma Chi Slumber Party Slasher; Jason Voorhees, the Camp Crystal Lake Cheerleader-Chopper; Colonel Reynard Pershing Fraylman, the Express executioner; "Jane Doe," the grandmotherly Columbus poisoner whose boarding house rated four stars in the Guide Michelin, despite the high turn-over of clients headed for the graveyard; Herman Katz, the Arizona schizoid who stuffed his mother and stabbed women who caught his eye; "Laughing Louis" Etchison, who carved bad jokes into the flesh of blue-eyed blondes.

  And somewhere in the facility, thanks to the Donovan Treatment, scientists could poke at the disembodied brains of the Great Names of the Past: Gacy, Bundy, DaSalvo, Gein, Berkowitz, Sutcliffe, Starkweather, Scorpio, Krueger. This was where they kept Dillinger's dong, too.

  If there were ever a Serial Killers' Hall of Fame, it would have to be in the Sunnydales Rest Home for the Incurably Antisocial. The monsters had a name for the Home, Uncle Charlie's Summer Camp. It was officially classifed as a private research institute, and Dr Proctor knew from his government contacts that the care and upkeep of the monsters did not come from the public purse but from a corporate subsidiary with interests in mental abnormalities. It sounded high-toned in the reports, with the odd announcement that there might be a cure for homicidal mania, but Sunnydales added up to a zoo-cum-freakshow for rich scientists.

  Sergeant Gilhooly's bulls had held him against the wall with the threat of cattle-prods as Officers Kerr and Bean shackled his hands, feet, knees, elbows and neck. He had about 200 pounds of chain over his dress whites. He gave them no trouble. He didn't need to. He enjoyed this monthly ritual.

  Sometimes, to amuse himself, Dr Proctor would break the chains. To look at him, people could never see the Devil inside. His strength was in his brain, he knew, but he had not neglected the cultivation of his body. He needed an instrument to carry through his schemes. As they clapped the manacles around his thick wrists, he remembered the sharp snaps of the spines he had broken. It was a good, clean method. In Tulsa, he had taken out the linebackers of the local pro ball team, one after another. All it took was a little dexterity, a little pressure, and a lot of muscle. He smiled at Gilhooly, imagining how little it would take to break him.

  As he was led down Monsters' Row, the chanting began. It was McClean who began it.

  "Otto-kar! Otto-kar!''

  Then Staig, Brosnan and Mizzi joined in.

  "Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar!"

  He smiled, and did his best to take a bow.

  "Otto-kar! Otto-kar!"

  They were all at it, Voorhees in his sub-mongoloid gargle, the silent Myers with a nod of his usually immobile head.

  "Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar.'"

  A man should be king of something, Dr Ottokar Proctor thought, even if it was only King of the Monsters.

  Etchison rattled a plastic cup against the bars.

  "Otto-kar! Otto-kar!"

  The serial murderers punched the air. Kerr, the officer in charge of the block, snapped out an order. Guards hurried up and down the row, administering reprimands, waving cattle prods. That just encouraged them.

  "Enjoying this, aren't you. Otto?" said Gilhooly. "Makes you feel like Colonel of the Nuts?"

  "I don't like to be called Otto, Sergeant. My name is Ottokar."

  "Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar!"

  "Shaddup, yah goddamn freakin' looneys," yelled Officer Kerr. "No privileges, no visits, no lawyers, no nothin'!"

  In his cell, Herman Katz refrained from harming a fly.

  He nodded to Dr Proctor as the nice man was led past. He didn't join in the chanting, but he approved.

  "Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar!"

  Childress rumbled like a chainsaw as Dr Proctor was led past his cell. They didn't call them "confinement spaces" on Monsters' Row.

  "If you ask me. Otto, this is where you ought to be, not in that luxury room out back. You should be with all the rest of the whackos."

  "I told you, Sergeant. My name is not Otto."

  "Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar!"

  Gilhooly muttered to himself, something about finding another route from Dr Proctor's quarters to the conference room.

  Voorhees shook his bars, and the whole row vibrated. He strained against the hardcrete-rooted durium, and plaster fell from the ceiling. He had taken his machete to over a hundred teenagers before they caught him.

  "Good morning, Jason," Dr Proctor said, "how's your sciatica?"

  Voorhees roared, and Gilhooly flinched, his hand twitching towards his gun.

  "I don't think shooting him would do any good, Sergeant. They tried that back in '82. They also tried drowning, stabbing, burning and electrocution. Nothing doing. It's a tribute to the endurance of the human spirit, don't you think?"

  They were nearly at the end of the row.

  "Miss Doe, how are you?" Dr Proctor was courteous to the poisoner.

  "Very well thank you, Ottokar. When are you going to come over and try some of my home-baked apple pie? You're looking thin, you know. I'm sure you're not eating properly."

  "Maybe next week, ma'am. I'm a little tied up at the moment." Apologetically, he lifted his manacled hands. "Thank you for the cinnamon cookies. They were delicious."

  Incredulously, Gilhooly asked, "You ate them cookies? After what she did?"

  "She's no threat to me. Sergeant."

  The cell nearest the door was Tendenter's.

  "Rex, good to see you…"

  Tendenter flashed his million-dollar smile. "Hey, doctor, how are you doing?"

  "Can't complain."

  "I've nearly finished that book you lent me. I'd like to talk to you about the Greater Rhodesian economy sometime. I've had some thoughts about it I'd like to share with you."

  "That's a fascinating field, Rex. I'd like very much to confer with you, but my President calls…"

  "That's okay, doctor, I understand."

  "Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar!"

  "That's it," screamed Officer Kerr. "Lockdown in the booby hatch! No exercise periods! No teevee! No porno!"

  "Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar!"

  The door guard opened up, and Dr Proctor was bundled through. He tried to wave goodbye to his peers, but the chain between his knees and his wrists was too short.

  The door slammed shut, and the soundproofing cut out the chants. The hospital corridor was almost unnaturally quiet after Monsters' Row.

  "Ahh," said Dr Proctor, "my public."

  "Come on, Otto," said Gilhooly, dragging him.

  "I believe you are being deliberately obtuse. Sergeant."

  Gilhooly didn't reply. Dr Proctor did his best to keep up with the sergeant, rattling his chains as he jogged down the corridor on his leash, like a good dog. Bean kept up the rear, riot gun cradled like a baby in his beefy arms.

  Dr Ottokar Proctor liked dogs, cartoons, Italian opera, Carl Jung, French food, Disneyworld, The New York Times Review of Books, pre-Columbian art, good wine, walks in the park on Sundays, horse-racing, Percy Bysshe Shelley, the romantic novels of Margaret Thatcher, and killing people.

  They were waiting for him in the conference room. F. X. Wicking of the T-H-R Agency, Julian Russell from the
Treasury, and a dark-faced man he didn't recognize.

  "Good morning, gentlemen," he said.

  "Dr Proctor," said Russell, "can we get you anything?"

  Dr Proctor chinked as he shrugged. "My freedom would be nice."

  Wicking sighed and dropped his papers. This was going to be just like all the other meetings, he was thinking. He was wrong.

  Dr Proctor sank into the specially-adapted, floor-rooted chair, and Bean padlocked his chains to the spine.

  A secretary came in with coffee. She did her best not to look at Dr Proctor. He was reminded of the girl in the Coupe de Ville between Coronado Beach and Chula Vista three years ago. The one who had lasted for two nights and a day. She put cups in front of the delegates, and handed Gilhooly a child's dribble-proof plastic container. The sergeant propped it on Dr Proctor's shoulder-shackles, and angled the nipple so he could suck it, snarling as he did so.

  "Thank you, sergeant." He took a mouthful. "Ahh, real coffee. Nicaraguan?"

  Nobody answered. Russell spooned three loads of sugar into his cup.

  "Watch your blood sugar levels, Julian," cautioned Dr Proctor. "You could be cruising into heart-attack country."

  Wicking pulled out his filofax, and switched it on. It hummed as the miniscreen lit up. The Op would be in contact with his home base throughout this consultation.

  "How is Ms Harvest?" Dr Proctor asked. "Well, I hope." Wicking snorted. "I do wish she wouldn't take so many unnecessary risks out in the field. I've been following her stats, Francis. The odds get shorter every time she takes a solo action. She should never have come for me alone, you know."

  "She got you, didn't she?" Wicking wasn't giving anything away.

  "Yes, of course, but she had an unfair advantage."

  "And what's that, Ottokar?"

  Dr Proctor smiled sweetly. "Let me put it this way, what's the difference between Redd Harvest and, say, Jessamyn Bonney?"