Slashback can-8

by Rob Thurman

  Considering once Cal made up his mind, thus it was written and so it would be, I should give serious thought to either making certain the college of my choice was far from a volcano or finding lava-proof shelves.

  This school, the Hermann T. Jeffries High School, didn’t have the worst library I’d seen, but it didn’t have the best either. Normally that would’ve bothered me as I spent study hour there, but today all I was interested in was the computer. The one single, solitary, slow enough ancient Egyptians could’ve carved the information I wanted in hieroglyphs into a pyramid inner chamber wall before it booted up computer.

  “Niko, are you waiting for. . Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I’m just checking my e-mail. I know you probably want to really work. You’re completely smart. I get that. You need it more than I do.” The girl stood up and spilled the contents of her backpack on the floor. “Oh my God,” she repeated. “Oh my God. Shit. Oh my God. I know you don’t say things like that. At least I never hear you. I’m sorry. Are you religious? Did I offend you?”

  That was Avery. She wasn’t in any of my classes, but she spent sixth period in the library too, more because she didn’t have anything better to do than a love for books. She didn’t wear makeup and was neither pretty nor plain, although she had autumn-gold eyes and dark brown hair that was thick and hung in long natural waves. She wasn’t smart and she wasn’t stupid; she was a nice average girl who didn’t realize that average can sometimes be the best thing to be. There was nothing wrong with walking the middle path, being neither the high nor the low. I liked being smart, but I knew it was an accident of birth, a genetic gift. It wasn’t encouragement on the home front. I enjoyed the escape that books and tailoring my future that intelligence let me have. The downside of being smart was realizing how hard it would be to get that future and the truly desperate need for escape I had.

  I saw too much.

  Cal was smart and Cal saw the things I did, but he reacted differently and saw what I saw in a way unlike mine. My intelligence had me clawing at anything and everything to get us free. Jobs, education, plan after plan. Cal’s intelligence had him seeing the only way out as patience. He was like a wild panther in the zoo, still as a stone, eyes unblinking, never sleeping, waiting for the one day someone got sloppy with that cage door and then it would all be over.

  I didn’t know which way was the best, the least painful, but I did know at times I wished I was average, normal. . even if that meant only I was somewhat less smart. I didn’t like seeing too much, as necessary as it was.

  Bending down, I helped a self-conscious, bright red Avery gather up her books, papers, a handful of discarded costume jewelry. “No, I’m not religious. My little brother curses worse than you. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Good. Great!” She took everything from my hands and stuffed it, Cal-style, back in her backpack. “The last thing I’d want to do is embarrass myself in front of you. You’re”-her blush intensified and she swallowed-“you know.”

  Avery also liked me. I thought it was another reason she spent her study period in the library. I liked her too. I wasn’t the kind of snob that thought I was too smart for certain people. With my life, I appreciated, wanted normal. Average and nice was better than brilliant and beautiful in my mind.

  But I also remembered what Cal had said, that we couldn’t have a normal life. That meant we couldn’t have normal people around us. . any people when it came down to it. He’d been right for now. I hoped I was right when I said the future would be better, that then we could have a normal life-normal for us at least.

  Now though. . now I couldn’t do anything about Avery liking me. When she finished zipping up her bag, I gave her the smile-it was a practiced one. It said you’re a nice person but you’re not for me. Friends? You could read a lot into that smile. He has a girlfriend at another school, he’s gay, he actually is screwing Miss Holcomb. It usually worked and as Avery gave me a wobbly but not a terribly upset smile back, I hoped it had worked again.

  When she was gone, I sat down at the computer, the itch now claws digging into my neck, and started searching the online news for New London. I wouldn’t find anything. There was no chance, I told the claws clamping tight. If Junior had taken that hooker and that was very unlikely, it wouldn’t be in the paper yet. Prostitutes disappeared all the time. Often they never make the news, vanished or not.

  Unless you happened to be the daughter of a cop. Doctor, lawyer, cop-it didn’t matter how high your parents were, drugs could take you to the lowest of places. Marcia Dawn Liese had known that. It was hard to recognize her with blond hair, a cheerleader uniform, and pom-poms from a two-year-old picture compared to the Goth wig and little else she’d been wearing when Junior had pulled up in his truck, but it was her. I remembered that distinctive mole at the corner of her mouth. Marcia had been missing at least twenty-four hours if not longer and that put her disappearance close enough to her interaction with Junior that I could’ve set my watch. The claws left my neck and now were ripping their way through my stomach.

  Our neighbor is a serial killer.

  He smells like blood.

  Like roadkill.

  The basement is full of bodies.

  Cal had told me and I hadn’t believed him. . because I hadn’t wanted to believe him. My life was an abusive mother and a little brother who wasn’t completely human and the monsters who watched him. I didn’t know what to do. Every day I straightened things, I kept schedules, I made rules, and it was all to cover up to Cal and to myself that I didn’t know what to do.

  I had known I couldn’t handle anything more. A serial killer? That was insane and I wouldn’t have cared what Cal had said; it absolutely was not an option. I couldn’t believe it, as I couldn’t deal with it.

  That was the joke-because now it was dealing with me and that was much worse than anything I could’ve imagined. Junior right next door. Cal’s school getting out a half hour before mine. I was already running for the door. It would be all right. Junior didn’t know. He hadn’t seen us follow him. He hadn’t seen me in the hospital. He was a killer-I tasted vomit in my mouth-but he wasn’t smart. I’d looked into his eyes. He was dull and slow. He didn’t have any idea we suspected him. . Cal had suspected him.

  I’d go home, get Cal, and we’d leave. Like we should’ve done from the start. . but hadn’t as I was too much of a coward to believe my little brother.

  Smells like blood.

  Home and then out of this town. It would be all right. Junior wouldn’t even suspect why we left. It would be all right. It would.

  I kept running.

  And my mind kept telling me no matter how true it was, I would always be stained a coward and a liar from this day on.

  By the time I ran the ten miles home I was drenched in sweat, my lungs raw, and my legs cramping from a speed I’d not pushed them to before. I jammed the key with a fatigued shaking hand into the lock and threw open the door.

  “Cal?” I slammed the door behind me and locked it. “Start packing. Hurry! We’re going. Now.”

  I heard the sound of a comic book being thrown against the wall and fluttering to the floor from our bedroom. “We don’t have time for this! Don’t pretend like you’re upset. You’ve been saying we should go for days.” Cal rarely threw temper tantrums or showed physical anger of any kind. Not since he’d found out he was half-Grendel. He was afraid what might happen if he did, that he’d start and not be able to stop.

  Grendels didn’t have the teeth they did only to play peekaboo through the windows.

  “Did something happen? Next door? Cal, seriously, we have to go. I looked up that prostitute. . ” I stepped into the bedroom and two prongs hit me in the side of the neck. I fell, convulsing. Every muscle locked, the pain hot and unrelenting through every nerve I had.

  “Something did happen next door, neighbor.” Junior grinned down at me with dull yellow teeth. “And a fuck’s sight more is going to.”

  I hadn’t expected him to be in our house.
It didn’t cross my mind. It should’ve. Every instructor I’d had told me the people who go down in attacks, the people who sometimes die, they weren’t watching. You watch every second and you don’t stop that, not for any reason.

  The prongs and wire retracted into the boxy shape in Junior’s hand. “Your kid brother didn’t much like this either. He’s pretty small. I thought for a minute I’d killed him and that would’ve been a damn shame. I have big plans for him and for you, so don’t you feel left out.” A hand covered my mouth with a folded cloth as I tried to get up, but I couldn’t do more than twitch. “It’s chloroform, but it’s homemade. I’m afraid it’ll give you one helluva headache when you wake up or if I mixed it wrong you might not wake up at all. You’d probably prefer that, but I wouldn’t. Keep your fingers crossed for me.”

  Yellow and black pools of hazardous waste began to puddle across my vision. It was almost dark outside. He had to wait fifteen or twenty minutes; then he’d be able to drag me over to his house and no one would see. I used all the energy I could gather to reach up a hand and claw at the rag across my face.

  “Now, Niko, that’s the name your brother screamed when I was waiting for him like I waited for you. That must make you Niko. Don’t be that way, Nicky. Don’t you want to see your little brother again? Whole anyway? It’s harder to make them out once they’re in pieces, the bodies. You have to blur your eyes, you know, like at those crazy posters with the hidden spaceships.”

  The hand across my face was unmovable. I thought Junior was fat and sloppy, but there was hard muscle under it. It was one more thing I hadn’t seen. I’d thought he was dim and slow. I hadn’t seen the cunning predator in his eyes or heard the lie in his words. And now. . now I couldn’t see anything. I could still hear the mumble of his voice, dribbling on, but that too faded. I faded with it with five words echoing over and over in my mind.

  Your little brother.

  In pieces.

  13

  Cal

  Present Day

  Pieces of eight.

  I’d wanted to be a pirate when I was a kid-after cowboy and before race car driver. I would rather have told a story about that kind of pieces of eight than the one I did have to tell. Eight men-eight pieces in a game-eight possible pawns.

  I told Niko about the other men by the Ninth Circle, members of the same prayer circle as the ones in East River Park, and I told him exactly what I’d done with them-how I’d sent them away, how I’d brought them back. I was honest though-about how near a thing it had been to leaving them gone for good. All he had to say was we’d had this discussion and while unfortunately it had been after the fact, he wasn’t going to insult me by repeating the lecture. He also said that while I had done it, I’d also fixed it. I should give myself credit for that. I’d overcome a bad impulse when it would’ve been easier not to. He was proud.

  Back in the recliner resting my ribs and my growing hangover, I thought about replying that he always enjoyed both insulting me and lecturing me, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to turn that pride into a smack to the back of my head. And he could be right. At the park I had asked Nik what the right thing to do was. I was trying. That I was trying less for my sake or the world’s sake and more for my brother’s sake, that didn’t matter. I was trying and the reason I chose to try was Niko. That counted. To me.

  Considering Niko brought me a Mountain Dew to keep me from getting it myself and forcing me into another swipe at the codeine, which he would promptly confiscate as it didn’t mix well with alcohol, made me think it counted to him too. My boss, Ishiah-they didn’t come too much holier-than-thou than him-had once told me Niko was a good man, among the best of men, but his fatal flaw was that he’d burn down the world to save me.

  That he was the sole reason that I wouldn’t burn down the world said something. . we were the flip side of a coin. That kind of balance was something the Buddha-loving badass that was my brother could understand. It didn’t matter what you’d rather have or that things would be easier another way-the world was about balance. I didn’t give a crap about Buddha and yet I knew that.

  Nik disappeared down the hall and returned without his coat. He shrugged out of the harness that held his katana and placed it on the kitchen counter. Normally he would’ve left it in the bedroom with his duster, but with Jack popping in and out, he’d want his preferred blade close. He had more than enough practice and nonpractice blades in the gym area, but your favorite was your favorite. If you were going to be prepared, you may as well be prepared with the best.

  “Goodfellow should be here by now,” I grumped, “with my pizza.” We’d called him to come talk about this new development, if it was one. I knew coincidences were rare, but I wasn’t looking forward to admitting I’d been jumped by a bunch of homeless men in white who wanted me to pray to Heaven while they killed me and I’d casually chalked it up to that Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs New York experience every tourist campaign told you didn’t exist.

  I would have stuck to coincidence, too, if it hadn’t been for the second attack. Jack working with his prey didn’t make sense and I wasn’t sure I believed that’s what was happening here. Didn’t believe one hundred percent, which was important. I wasn’t a gambling man. It was ridiculous to pin a theory on Niko’s estimated eighty-nine percent. He was throwing numbers around and if I had to hear one more time how he scored first in his college statistics class. .

  “I have arrived.” The door was wide, soundlessly picked and opened as always. “Where are the flower petals beneath my feet? Where are the virgins to feed me honey and grapes? At the very least where is my theme song? Some Barry White would be astoundingly appropriate.” The puck was grinning cheerfully, haloed by the weak sunlight. Ten hours away from Jack had either done him good or. . shit, he’d gotten laid too.

  Goddamn it, I remembered those days. I had to get back out there. Unfortunately the Auphe weren’t popular with paien just for a chat. Screwing was almost always a no go. Humans were completely out of the question. I couldn’t risk getting someone pregnant. I couldn’t risk making another Auphe mix-breed like me.

  “Where’s my pizza?” I demanded flatly.

  “I brought you pancakes the other morning. Once a year is my limit for taking pity on the celibate.” He clapped his hands together and kicked the door shut behind him. “What’s the lead on Jack? The sooner we put him down like a pack of plague-ridden squirrels, wretched rodents, the sooner I can stop babysitting you two and get back to the debauchery that is my life.”

  “Monogamous debauchery?” I tapped fingers on the arm of the recliner. “Is that possible? And what about Ish stealing all your cards from the bad old days of whoring, whoring, and a little more whoring?”

  “He made that all better. Kissed it better, isn’t that the saying?” The grin was all debauchery now, monogamous or not. “Would you like to know where he kissed it?”

  “Nik,” I said desperately, “how about you fill him in on my massive fuckup.” Forget the hundred percent bar. I would own that fuckup, propose to that fuckup, and marry that fuckup if it would stop Goodfellow.

  Niko, whose face was more impassive than usual, meaning his hangover was epic, was leaning against the wall while Goodfellow sprawled on the couch. I didn’t blame him. The wall looked safer. “We already told you about Jack’s victims being what he could consider wicked.”

  “Not that that explains why Jack first went after Niko and kept on him once he dumped me like bad chicken salad,” I interjected.

  “You have much in common with bad chicken salad. I’d not thought of that. Nausea inducing, occasionally deadly. A smell that is decidedly off. .”

  “Hey!” I protested. “I shower every day. Ask Nik. He keeps trying to charge me for that Amish soap of his I steal.”

  Robin waved it off, having accomplished his goal of pissing me off for the day. “Back to Jack. It is still true about Niko. He shouldn’t be wicked in Jack’s eyes,” Robin mused. “Wholesome and noble as a nun knittin
g socks for orphans, that is your brother. He is a warrior but not a murderer.”

  “Then there is the fact we have now run into two groups of humans. They’re obviously homeless, but they dress in white sweatshirts, don’t drink or do drugs, but they are very insistent that we pray to Heaven and God and they have large knives to force the issue,” Niko went on. “It seems unlikely Jack who is concerned with the wicked and these humans who are concerned with sending souls to Heaven would appear at the same time and not in some way be connected.”

  “And once again, they don’t give a damn about me, just Niko,” I said. “How would they know I wasn’t human unless Jack told them? They called me a Godless creature, which I’m guessing means paien and especially Auphe aren’t welcome into their Heaven.”

  They had been concerned about my soul at first and were now concerned about Niko’s. They wanted to save his soul for Heaven-just like Jack wanted to save the skin of the wicked. But Niko wasn’t wicked, not immoral, not. .

  Sinful.