The Price of Salt (The Grim Arcana)

by Geoffrey Thorne

  She didn’t move, only stared up at me and Bobby with eyes like china plates. I took a step her way, meaning to drag her in with us if I had to, but stopped when I got a good look at her face.

  The moon was still up, not full but bright, and there were a couple of anemic street lamps around. Under the covering of grime, under the mascara and the pancake, under the nagahide bustier, this chick was scared out of her tiny mind.

  “Yeah, okay,” I said to her. “Stay. But right here, yeah? Right freaking here.”

  She nodded and squeaked out about a hundred thank-you’s before I told her to shut the hell up.

  “That’s it, though,” I said, rejoining The Bug. “It’s you and me from now.”

  Bobby said nothing. Just gave me a look, something I couldn’t read, but he didn’t move to go.

  The door shifted easily enough, though The Bug was no help with that. It screeched a bit as I shoved it to the side, making a space big enough for us both to get through and, more importantly, for me to make a quick exit if things went South.

  It wasn’t the best place to come looking for some lowlife who might or might not already be dead but it wasn’t as bad as I expected either.

  The first floor was just the little front foyer followed by a long thin hall with openings into rooms on one side. The wallpaper, what was left of it, was some kind of faded flower pattern on a color that had probably once been yellow. Mostly the walls had been stripped either by rats or time, showing the bare red brick and plaster below. There was a staircase leading up to the second floor which also looked fairly sound though the second floor itself was completely dark from where I stood. At the far end of the hall I could just make out the kitchen, a chiaroscuro of shadows, peeling paint and rust. The floor, amazingly, was completely intact. I don’t know what I expected to see in there but normal– even this decaying and wrecked version of normal– that I could handle.

  “Which way?” I said to The Bug. He jerked his thumb toward the staircase and started up.

  The second floor was not normal. It was too dark, for one thing.

  It was still night outside, sure, but the shadows we found at the top of those stairs were so thick and textured I could almost feel their weight as we passed through.

  What little light there was trickled through the breaks in the cardboard and two-by-fours, cutting thin slices in the otherwise complete blackness. There was something sickly about the light too, as if it had broken into this place, realized it wasn’t wanted but could not now find its way back out.

  The boards didn’t creak under our weight but just gave gently. It was more like creeping along the back of some huge animal– a dinosaur maybe– than walking on a floor.

  It was also too cold. I couldn’t see it but I could feel my breath fogging in the air ahead of me as I walked. I didn’t need a neon sign to tell me this was a whole big bucket of Not Good.

  “What the hell is this?” I said to the Bug. My words had a muffled quality too, like the shadows would only let them penetrate a little distance before squeezing the life out of them.

  The Bug didn’t answer except to say, “Come on.”

  He was lucky I could follow him at all in that place but our own bodies, shadows themselves, seemed to stand out from the rest of the darkness somehow. I could make out his scarecrow outline, like gray paper on black, bobbing along ahead of me.

  It took a lot longer getting to the rear of the place than it should have. The brownstone was big but not so big we’d lose a half an hour getting from front to back. Something truly hinky was up. I was really starting to rethink the whole I-Can-Do-This-Without-Grim scenario when The Bug stopped walking.

  The light wavering on the other side of him made his body a silhouette framed between the chipped and rotting edges of a doorway. I was happy to have more light but the fact that it did absolutely nothing to the shadows all around us put a damper on any celebration I had planned.

  “In here,” said The Bug without turning to me.

  I followed him through the door and into what felt like a huge space– like an auditorium or a church.

  The floor was just a black sheet under us, but, even with the weight of all that dark pressing in from all sides, I could still sense the high vaulted canopy and, yards away, the walls. It felt like yards anyway.

  The only light came from a little bonfire burning a few feet ahead of us. Somebody had made a pyramid of broken fruit crates, newspaper, pizza boxes and anything else you might find lying in an alley. Somebody had set the pyramid on fire. I saw a face in the blaze– one of those old-fashioned kewpie doll things– smiling and blinking at me as it melted away.

  The Bug just stood there like a statue between me and the flames. The whole scene had me a little on edge. I mean, how could this room be as big as it felt like? How could it be so dark? Who set the fire and why hadn’t it caught on any of the debris I could see lying around in the flickery light?

  This is the kind of thing Grim eats up.

  Me, I was fingering the steel hidden on my hip and wondering if I could find the exit on my own if I had to make a quick bail out.

  Where was the staircase exactly?

  Then something moved in the shadows on the other side of the fire. I say something because, even though I couldn’t really see it, I could tell it was massive and it wasn’t shaped anything like a person. It seemed to writhe and bulge around in the dark, pushing the shadows around the way the meat pushes out a sausage skin.

  “Bug,” I said, soft in his ear. “You see that?”

  If he did see, he didn’t answer. In fact he didn’t do much of anything but stare into the fire like a freaking idiot.

  “Hey,” I said in a harsh whisper- something about the place made you want to keep quiet. “Snap out of it. I don’t want to grow roots in here.”

  But The Bug ignored me. He was just standing there fixated on the fire and totally mum.

  “Hey, Bug,” I said and took a couple of steps his way. “What’s the score here? You and Vinnie better not be greasing me up for something ‘cause if you are–”

  I didn’t finish the threat. I could tell it was wasted on him. I don’t know what he saw in those flames but he obviously thought it was worth the beat down I’d be handing him when we got out of that place.

  I got up next to him, close enough for him to feel me filling the space there. I figured that the fact of me had shaken out of that little rat brain of his and a reminder was in order.

  “I’m sorry,” said The Bug but it was like he was talking to himself or, you know, like praying or something. His voice had that reverent sound people get when they’re backtracking a lie they told the cops or when they’re mumbling to their doctor about the cough they just can’t shake.

  “Yeah, whatever,” I said. “Just point me to Vinnie so we can drag his sorry ass out of here.”

  “Please,” said the Bug. “I tried. I really did.”

  This time I was sure he wasn’t talking to me. He was crying, see. There was just enough light from the fire for me to pick out the traces of tears trickling down his face. And, just when I was asking myself what they hell Bobby the Bug had to cry about right then, I noticed he was also swaying there a bit, rocking gently back and forth like he was listening to music or something.

  I gripped his shoulder tighter, enough that he had to know I meant business. The layer of crap that still covered him slithered between my fingers, cold and runny. I might as well have dropped a feather on him for all the attention he paid. Maybe he’d slid down into a K hole or some other kind of junkie depression while I wasn’t looking. I probably would have used both hands– given him a shake to bring him back to reality– but, at the same moment, I noticed something weird about his coat.

  It was soft– too soft– and the Bug himself was soft underneath.

  The material of his jacket and the shirt and skin beneath- they’d all seeped into each other congealing into something with the consistency of the stuff you find inside the li
d of a jelly jar that’s been left out too long.

  What the hell? I thought. My hand felt like I’d shoved it into a plate of thick pudding.

  My skin went cold as a realization washed over me. The sludge wasn’t just a covering on the Bug’s clothes. It had found its way into him, oozed through his pores like sewer runoff down a million tiny drains. It had done something to him– was still doing it probably- and, if the activity around my own fingers was any hint, it wanted to do the same to me.

  Something, some animal voice deep inside me, told me to get my hand the hell out of that goo like yesterday. It was the same voice that told me to duck when Priscilla almost brained me with a skillet that one time so, when it talks, I listen.

  I yanked on my hand, trying to whip it back out of whatever it was Bobby the Bug had turned into. It wouldn’t come. It couldn’t have been stuck tighter if I’d shoved into a bucket of molasses. The more I pulled the less of my hand came free.

  “Damn it, Bobby,” I said, wrenching hard enough to pull my shoulder nearly out of the socket. “What is this?”

  He didn’t answer. A tremor ran through him and I could feel the remaining hard parts– what was left of his bones and cartilage– breaking away, being sucked down into the muck that he’d become.

  With my free hand I reached across my body into the pocket where my gun was concealed.

  “Bobby,” I said. “I swear to God. Let go my hand, man. I mean it.”

  Again his body shuddered, this time more violently, and I could actually hear the last of his skeleton breaking away- breaking down. He didn’t let go. Maybe he couldn’t.

  I brought the gun up and fired eight times point blank into the back of his head.

  My gun’s a Baretta– semi auto– carries a clip with eight nine millimeter bullets that keep exploding out of the thing as fast as you can pull the trigger. It’s no magnum or shotgun but, at close range, it’ll stop all manner of badness in less time than it takes to talk about it.

  I couldn’t hear the impacts over the sound of the gunfire but I saw them hit. They went into what used to be his skull the way fondue meat goes into the hot cheese.

  My hand came free suddenly and I toppled over backwards, frantically rubbing the pasty leftover bits of Bobby the Bug off my sleeve. My right hand looked and felt like it had been through a meat grinder; all red and raw and skinless. I didn’t have time to think about that though, because, as I watched, Bobby the Bug turned and looked at me.

  Well. His head turned. The rest of him just bulged and collapsed into itself until he looked more like a blob in the shape of a man than an actual human being. His face was almost gone too, running like wax until it melded with the goop that had once been his neck.

  “That hurt,” he said. Only, with most of his throat gone, the words were all low and gurgley so they sounded more like Dod huuurd.

  I didn’t answer. What was there to say? I scrambled to my feet, dropping my spent clip and popping the fresh one into its place. My hand was screaming by then but I had other concerns, like getting my ass out of there.

  “U gannd go,” said the thing that used to be Bobby. “Uu avv do zee Vinee.”

  “Yeah,” I said, backing towards where I thought the exit might be. “Gonna have to get back to you on that one, Bug.”

  “Uur da buuug,” said the thing and moved towards me. If it had still had bones and muscles in there it might have caught me but it didn’t. It was just a lump, a pastel jelly slug undulating at me.

  A bit of it, part way between a snake and a tentacle, lanced out at me but fell short. Another one of the ropy digits erupted from the other side of its body but, thankfully, didn’t come my way.

  The thing that had been Bobby stopped, shuddering even more than it had before.

  “Please,” it said– only with no throat or lips so the sound came out like a gurgling, lisping pu-weese. “Please. Ah dride. Ah dride do-”

  I had no idea what the Bug tried to do or what kept him from doing it. While I stood there- wishing I had been smart enough to bring a damn flashlight instead of just the gun– he collapsed into the floor.

  No. Not collapsed. Dissolved.

  Right in front of me the last of Bobby the Bug’s body just sort of fell into itself, sinking slowly down into the floor until there was nothing left of it but a puddle of foul smelling slime.

  As he slipped down into that eternal liquidity there was this great rush of air around him, as if some huge carrion eater had chosen that moment to exhale.

  The voice inside came back, told me to haul ass out of there if I knew what was good for me. I would have too. I tried. I took maybe three good steps back the way I thought we’d come but then that something– that other thing that I hadn’t quite seen yet– moved in the dark again.

  I shouldn’t have stopped. Every movie you’ve ever seen tells you, if there’s an invisible something tracking you from the shadows, the best thing you can do is keep moving. But I did stop. It’s not like I had much choice. Whatever it was oiling around out there was big– bigger than me for sure. You could tell from the sound it made dragging itself across the floor.

  It was fast too.

  When I first noticed it, or thought I noticed it, it had been on the far side of the fire- twenty feet away easy. Somehow it had crossed that distance in the time it took me to get two steps. It set itself between me and what I’d decided was the exit.

  A feeling came over me that I should stay here, that there was no point running or shooting or doing anything but letting the dark have its way.

  All of a sudden I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do but sit down where I was and wait for the fire to burn itself out. Then everything would be dark and I would be in the dark, it would be in me and that would be the best thing in the world.

  “No,” I said, trying to shake the feeling off. “No, wait.” It was no use. The dark was just too heavy, too thick, too right.

  I dropped to one knee. The shadows above slithered down just as the ones around me and below me moved in. The weight of it all was crushing.

  In front of me a tiny point of whiteness appeared in the dark. I watched as it grew bigger until it resembled a small egg, then a football and then, finally a face.

  It wasn’t a human face, not really. More like somebody who’d never actually seen a person attempting to make one out of butter. There were shallow grooves where the eyes should be, a vicious gash for the mouth and, between them, a hole in the shape of an upside down heart- the nose.

  Was this what was left of Big Vinnie? If so, it sure didn’t match the paunchy cup of recycled sharkskin I had in my head.

  “That you, Vin?” I said.

  The corners of the mouth hole twitched and curled up in what I guessed was a smile. At least that was what I was supposed to think watching that barely formed mouth work up and down and hearing the slurred bubbling speech. Trouble was the sound came at me from everywhere at the same time. It was all around me like a fist that hadn’t quite closed.

  “Uuu wunt to zztay,” said the face.

  “Sure,” I said. “I can stay as long as you like.”

  “Guuuuud,” said the voice. “Ztilll zzzo unngeryy.”

  “So eat,” I said. “What’s stopping you?”

  I think it would have taken me right then. I think it needed permission or something and that I had to ask it to finish me off before it actually could. Grim told me something about that once I think– about even the things from the Other Side having rules to follow. Or maybe I just made it up. Either way, with how I was feeling and how that voice and that thick warm blanket of shadows just surged over me, I was happy to be lunch.

  The smile got bigger, twisting the face around it into a strange distortion of the Mask of Comedy. Then the face moved towards me or, rather, the Something in the shadow moved, pushing the face ahead of it like the ocean moves bits of driftwood. The smiling mouth began to open, showing a toothless, black maw behind the face– a tunnel with no bottom.


  Damn, I thought. If only it had something better to eat than me. If only it had a pie from Machiavelli’s Pizzeria, or some of Priscilla’s home-made bouillabaisse.

  I don’t know why but the thought of Pris took some of the weight off me. She’d love seeing me like this. She’d think it was so funny– me half kneeling there, offering my body, head first, for the hanging face to eat.

  “That’s just like you,” she’d say. “Never bringing anything to the party that anybody wants.”

  Then she’d laugh and her eyes would go all squinty and she’d grab her sides to keep her breasts from shaking too much. She was always self-conscious about that.

  God, I loved her.

  She was crazy as cats in a sack and drove me nuts as often as not but there was nothing better than the smell of her on those Mornings After or the look in her eye when she was about to say something goofy. There were a lot of good things in the world but nothing, not even the thick rolling darkness, was better than Pris.

  “What the hell?” I said, my brain coming out of what felt like a three-day bender. “What the hell is happening here?”

  It took me a couple more seconds to remember where I was– who I was.

  “Wann-ted daa Bilgrimm,” said the mask of yellow grease hanging in front of me. “Godd ju instead.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Everybody wants to see Grim tonight.”

  “Budd ahmmm ztilll ungry,” it said. Its mouth was as big around as my whole face by then. “Zztill godda eat.”

  “Eat this,” I said.

  Okay, I didn’t really say that but I should have. Instead I let the Baretta talk. The gun was up in front of me, firing into the dark, before I realized I was squeezing the trigger.

  The ugly smiling mouth collapsed into an uglier howling frown before breaking into pieces as my bullets shattered it to greasy shards. For a moment nothing else happened. Then there was this moan, this low pounding sob that bubbled out at me from the dark like a storm front. The sound did something to me, sent my mind running back to a time and place before Grim, before Pris, before all of this.