She closed the door behind me, leaned back against it, and then, feigning modesty, pulled her robe in tighter around her.
“There any running water in this building?” I asked.
The Dahlia pointed a bright red fingernail at a small basin on the floor next to the bed I hadn’t noticed previously. Filled with water, a washcloth was draped over its side. “There’s enough there to wash up with.”
I pulled off my coat, tossed it over the foot of the bed, then crouched next to the basin, grabbed the cloth and submerged it in the tepid water. It slowly turned crimson as much of the blood on my hands drifted free.
“Did you kill them?” she asked just above a whisper.
She already knew the answer, and it turned her on. She was that type. I could tell. I’d seen plenty like her before, those who couldn’t bear to watch such things but lived to hear about them. I peered down into the basin instead, and the swirl of blood curling through the water.
“How did…” Her breath caught in her throat. “How did you do it?”
I squeezed out the washcloth and brought it to my face, feeling the water drip and run along my throat and down onto my chest as I cleaned the blood from my face. My ears were still ringing, and my body was sore and stiff.
“Tell me,” Dahlia pleaded. “And I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
I pull the shotgun from my leg, level it, pump and fire then pump and fire again, blowing both Afro and Road Dog back toward the bar from which they’d come, their bodies airborne as chunks of abdomen and chest explode, spraying the floor, the walls, and me.
She didn’t understand yet that she’d tell me what I wanted to know regardless.
I come up out of my chair, the shotgun in one hand and the chair in the other. Hurling the chair toward the door, I spin, pump and fire again, this time hitting the bartender as he rounds the end of the bar. He screams as the lower portion of his right leg below the knee separates from the rest of his body, flopping onto the floor in a grisly spray of bone, blood, flesh and muscle.
I ran the washcloth over my throat and then around to the back of my neck. “I’m not here to make deals,” I said.
The two cretins blocking the front door avoid the chair and try to run, stumbling out the entrance fast as they can. I shoot them both as they try to escape, one in the back of his head, the other between the shoulder blades. The first dies instantly, the second flops around a while before he goes quiet. The bartender continues to scream and writhe about on the floor in a pool of his own blood, shit, piss and tears, clutching at the grotesque mangled stump that is now his leg.
“You can tell me all about it. It’s okay.”
“I’m here for information,” I said. “And you’re going to give it to me.”
I shoot the jukebox so I can hear myself think, then I kneel on the bartender’s chest, reach down and cup the side of his face. “Shhh,” I whisper, repeating it again and again until he finally quiets down. His body continues to convulse beneath me, his eyes wild with disbelief, horror and agony. “Close your eyes now, it’ll be all right.”
“You didn’t have to kill them, did you?” she persisted. “Your kind just likes it, huh? You like it, right? You like the violence, the kill.”
“Is there anything to drink in here?” I ask.
“I don’t have any beer if that’s what—”
“Something harder,” I tell her.
She motions with her chin to the bureau and a small bottle of vodka there.
As the bartender closes his eyes, I lay the shotgun on the floor and cup his face again, this time with both hands, my thumbs under his eyes. Slowly, I slide them higher and press them into his sockets. He groans, and I lean closer, close enough so I can whisper in his ear and tell him more lies. Then I press my thumbs into his eyes, popping and exploding them in the sockets as he grips my wrists, gags and cries out. I push deeper and impossibly deeper still…until the crying stops…until the convulsing stops. And then he is quiet and still, our dance is over, and I am alone with the dead.
Rain sprayed the window. I tossed the cloth into the basin and rose to my feet. “The woman in the photograph,” I said, moving toward the bureau. “She was here?”
The Dahlia nodded. “Last night.”
I was still a day behind her. “Was she alone?”
She nodded again.
“Did you talk to her?”
“A little, but she mostly talked to Rodney. That’s the guy was tending bar.”
“What’d they talk about?”
“I don’t listen in on other people's conversations.”
“Sure you do. What’d they talk about?”
The Dahlia frowned. “She said she needed help, said she was running. She told Rodney she needed a weapon.”
“And did he oblige?”
“Huh?”
With a sigh, I grabbed the bottle from the bureau. “Did he give her a weapon?”
“Oh. Yeah, he gave her a pistol. Not sure what kind. I dunno much about guns.”
“And what’d she give him?”
She smirked but remained leaned against the door. “Three guesses and the first two don’t count.”
That explained the attack. Once you got close to her, once you felt like you knew her, you wanted to be a hero for her, to help her, to save her. Julia. Goddamn Julia.
“Odd question for a Dreamcatcher to ask,” she said. “You know her, huh?”
I spun the cap and threw back a long pull of vodka. The burn felt good. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I walked around to the foot of the bed and sat down next to my coat. “She’s my wife.”
“Sweet Georgia Brown! Your own wife’s a runner?” The Dahlia slapped her bare thigh. “And you’re chasing her?”
I unstrapped the holster from my thigh and tossed it, along with the shotgun, onto the bed. “Just trying to find her and bring her home is all.”
“Doesn’t much sound to me like home is a place she wants to be.” She delicately traced her circus lips with the tip of her tongue. “Why’d she run?”
“Why’s anybody run?”
“So it’s not business then, strictly personal, huh? Or maybe you’re running too.”
Rather than answer, I took another swig of vodka.
“She looked scared. I felt bad for her. It’s tough for a gal all alone out here.” She twirled her hair with a fingertip. “It’s tough for gal all alone everywhere.”
“Have you been farther out than this?” I asked.
“Not much. Those are the outlands. Crazies out there worse than anything we got here or in the city, that’s nightmare land.”
“And Julia’s headed right for it.”
“So are you.” She finally pushed away from the door and came closer, but slowly, cautiously. “They say there’s an ocean on the other side…and beyond that…the Promised Land.”
“You believe in that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen a for-real ocean. Do you believe it?”
I held the bottle out for her.
She took it, and once she’d figured out I had no intention of answering her, said, “It’ll be light soon. Do you want to stay? You look like you could use some sleep, and we could”—she wiped the bottle with the sleeve of her robe before bringing it to her lips—“maybe…get to know each other better.”
“Don’t you have anything else to do?”
“Not a lot of work for me these days. I’m kind of a specialty, you know?”
“An acquired taste,” I said.
“Just like you.” She took another sip, then smiled at me with bright, beautiful teeth. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“They call me Monk.”
“Monk?” She arched an eyebrow. “Gee, mister, that’s kinda creepy.”
I laughed, albeit lightly. Couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.
“Lucky for me,” I said, “so are you.”
She became oddly silent, and the flirting routine receded.
“I saw a Dreamcatcher once before, but I’ve never actually talked to one. It’s a little scary.”
“I’m thinking you don’t scare too easy.”
“I’m not a tough girl.”
“You’re tough enough.”
“I’m lonely,” she said, then looked away as if the words had escaped without her permission. “I ride out the nights here.”
“Why here?”
The Dahlia shrugged. “Nowhere else to go, and I’m not cut out to run.”
“Could always take over the bar,” I said. “It’s just become available.”
A coy smile returned to her face. “Maybe I will.”
I unbuttoned my shirt, pulled it off my shoulders and tossed it aside. It was specked with sprays of blood. Her eyes immediately went to the long scar on my chest, which began under my throat and arced across my pectoral muscle nearly to my navel. A little souvenir a runner had given me in an alley a long time ago—exactly when I couldn’t recall, like all memories, they were sketchy and vague—but I remembered the broken bottle he’d used to cut me, slashing it at me out of the shadows like a knife. I also remembered tearing out his throat while he was still alive, then watching him die in that alley while I bled all over him. The others were scattered across my abdomen, back, shoulders and arms, two ugly scars from bullet wounds, the rest from knives or whatever else runners could get their hands on when they were cornered. Every one of them was a reminder to me that every assignment could be my last, and that if I’d done my job properly, they’d have never had the chance to do me any harm.
The Dahlia handed the bottle back, her hand shaking.
I downed another gulp of vodka, maybe two, as her eyes glided back and forth between all the mayhem on my flesh and the numerous black tribal tattoos I had emblazoned nearly everywhere else.
“You’re not gonna hurt me, are you?” she asked.
I felt myself drifting away, lost in the booze, my exhaustion and her sadly tragic beauty. “Do you want me to hurt you?”
She slowly slipped off the robe and let it fall to the floor. Standing naked before me, several scars of her own littered her otherwise pale, porcelain-like skin. Blood-red lips trembling, she ran a hand up her long white neck, around to the back of her head and pulled loose her hair. It cascaded down to her shoulders in dark waves as she cupped her breasts and cocked her head to the side. The rose fell free, spiraling to the floor like a broken promise. It had turned brittle and black, rotten. “What do you think?”
There was no remedy, only the coming dawn.
And just like that, the Devil was back, talons clicking on the window and disguised as God’s rain.
8
Once the light burned away, day turned to dusk, and night finally fell, life—or something similar—returned to me, filling my body and mind like a rush of oxygen fed directly into my lungs. Returned to darkness, home in my labyrinth of dreams, the world was a rumor no more.
The Dahlia was already awake, lying there next to me, her falsely innocent eyes batting at me. “You were talking in your sleep,” she said. “Sounded scared—terrified—like something was chasing you. I guess even a Dreamcatcher has nightmares, huh?”
You have no idea. I pawed at my eyes and tried to move, suddenly aware of every ache and pain and injury my body had ever endured. Reaching down to the floor, I located my weapons, as they’d been knocked from the bed earlier. They’d become as much a part of me as my eyes, hands or legs, my heart.
“When you leave…” she said, delicately dragging a fingernail through the tuft of hair on my chest, “can I come with you?”
“Can’t let you do that.”
“You mean you won’t.”
I slid out from beneath her, swung my feet to the floor and sat up. Night bled through the window. “You don’t want to go where I’m headed. It’s no place for you.”
“And this is?”
As I forced myself to my feet and reached for my clothes, she scooted up into a sitting position, bringing the sheet with her. I found my cigarettes on the nightstand, placed two between my lips, lit them both, then handed one to her. “Go somewhere else,” I said. “Where are you from?”
Baffled by my question, she was quiet a moment. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “I…I’m not sure, really. Here, I guess. I have memories, but…they all seem so far away. Sometimes it’s almost like they’re not even really mine. I’m just…here. It’s kinda like when we work, you know? It just…happens. You’re there and doing your thing but you’re not really sure how or why. Then it’s over and hard to remember.”
“Go to the city,” I suggested.
“I hear it’s dying.”
“Everything’s dying.”
“Even us?”
We can only hope, I thought.
“Do you remember being a child?” she asked rather abruptly.
Strange flashes of what might have been childhood memories blinked across my mind’s eye—a beautiful field where a little boy played with his puppy, blurry visions of my home—but they were so disjointed and surreal I couldn’t get a useful or meaningful read on them.
“Not really,” I said, stepping into my pants.
“Me neither. Why do you think that is?”
My shirt was stained with blood, but it was the only one I had, so I slipped into it and then pulled on my boots. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“Do you think it’s because…maybe…we were never really children at all?”
I scratched at the stubble along my jaw. The same shrieking demons from my nightmares were still gnawing on my bones, safely hidden in the land of sleep, their war cry echoing in my head. Or perhaps the screams were my own. Who could be sure?
The Dahlia smoked her cigarette and looked away, apparently mulling over her question. “They say that’s where the children are, you know, in the outlands. They say that’s where they live. I mean, I’ve worked with kids a few times, but other than that, you never see them.”
“I don’t deal with children. They don’t run.”
“Maybe they don’t know any better.”
Cigarette dangling from my mouth, I threw a foot up on the edge of the bed and strapped the shotgun to my leg. “Maybe they do.”
She shrugged, took a drag on her cigarette and exhaled through her nose. “Some say they keep the children out there because that’s where they get older, and once they do, they come here. If that’s true, that means we all come from there. We all grow up out there. So why can’t we remember?”
I grabbed my coat. “Maybe we’re not supposed to.”
“Or maybe we’re not allowed to, because it’s all a lie and we were never there, because they never grow up and we never grow old. We all just…are.” She moved to the edge of the bed, letting the sheet fall as she rose to her knees. “Do you ever remember being anything other than what you are now? Can you remember being ten—or even five—years younger than you are right now?”
I couldn’t, but I said nothing.
“They say a Dreamcatcher knows things the rest of us don’t, that your kind isn’t like the rest of us. Is that true?”
She looked so different now, her hair mussed, her makeup all but gone. I liked her better this way. I just wished she’d stop talking. “We’re no different than anyone else,” I said. “This is just what we do.”
“But why?” she asked, her eyes suddenly moist. “Why do you do what you do?”
I pulled on my coat. “I don’t make the rules.”
“Who does? Tell me,” she said, tears streaming her face. “Please, Monk.”
“I don’t know.”
“Would you tell me if you did?”
“Why are you crying?”
“Because it’s all so sad, isn’t it? Isn’t it all so sad?”
“Stop crying and listen to me.” I reached out and wiped her tears away with my thumb. “Did Julia warn the men in the bar that I was coming?”
She seemed to deflate just then, and a look of even
greater hopelessness and despair washed over her. Gathering the sheet in around her, she covered herself again and slumped back, the cigarette burning in her hand as if she’d forgotten it was there. Maybe she had. “She said someone would be coming for her,” the Dahlia eventually answered, sighing. “They knew it was only a matter of time before a Dreamcatcher showed up. We all did. But she never said it’d be her husband, never said it’d be you.”
But she knew, I thought. She knew.
Julia’s face came to me, her voice in my ear. I’ll always love you…always…but will you always love me?
“If I were your wife,” the Dahlia said, bottom lip quivering as she fought back more tears, “I wouldn’t run away. I wouldn’t betray you. Not ever.”
“Sure you would. And who could blame you?”
I leaned closer, kissed her on the forehead, and said goodbye.
* * *
The rain had stopped earlier, but the night was alive with its memory. There were puddles everywhere and everything was soaked from the downpour.
I didn’t see her until I’d left the building and rounded the side of the bar. Falcon. Or Eddie, to those of us who knew her. Falcon, because of her tattoos. Eddie, because her real name was Edna, but no one ever dared call her that. Had she come to kill me, I’d have already been dead. She was, without question, the best Dreamcatcher in the business. Some considered her the best there’d ever been, and I was among those who did.
Leaned against my car, arms folded over her chest, Falcon Eddie offered me a wry smile. Tall, thin and athletically built, she was clad in her usual thigh-high boots, black gloves, and one-piece outfit of black leather, the front zipped down to her midriff. An enormous tattoo of a falcon was perched between her small breasts, and her peroxide blonde hair, piled high on her head, was held in place with two ornate red sticks that looked like something you’d eat Chinese food with. For the uninitiated, at first glance it appeared as if her heavy, dark eye makeup was running, but closer inspection revealed the black streaks under her ice-blue eyes were actually matching tattoos of talons. Her look, while dynamic, was only for effect, to initially startle and frighten. The real horror was what she brought to the table, the real killer beneath the over-the-top outfits and tattoos.
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