Dead Lines

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

  “You mean you actually go outside like that?” Meryl’s turn to be incredulous; she was having some difficulty imagining Katie making it half a block, unmolested.

  “Damn straight,” Katie asserted. “Gotta see it to believe it.”

  Meryl shook her head. “Okay,” she muttered, mostly to herself. She walked over to the kitchen area and started unpacking her bag of groceries onto the island counter. Katie followed her. There was a pile of Polaroids and an open bottle of brandy there, parked beside a jelly jar glass; two fingers of amber liquid already graced its bottom. Evidently the party had already started.

  “It’s really something to see,” she continued, reaching for the snapshots. “It starts over on the West Side and goes up Christopher Street, then snakes around all through the Village and eventually marches right down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square Park, where they just have this hellacious big party.”

  “Do they now?”

  “Mmmm-hmmm.” She smiled, handing the pictures to Meryl. “You ain’t never seen nothin’ like it. Last year they had four bands set up at different places in the park, all these really wild reggae and Latin and African groups, just poundin’ out this beat.” Katie leaned against the counter and tipped her head back, exposing the white expanse of her throat. “They got this giant skeleton puppet hanging from the arch, and they move it so it looks like its dancin’. And there’s just thousands of people there: all dancin’ and jumpin’ around, and most everybody’s wearing some kind of costume, and photographers are running around in packs…” Katie giggled and leveled a vampish glance at Meryl, “… I must have gotten my picture taken about five hundred times that night.”

  “Sounds like fun, all right,” Meryl said, flipping through the photos. Lots of pictures of Katie in similarly erotic attire, being ogled and/or groped by characters every bit as odd: ghosts, ghouls, clowns, fools, vamps, masked psuedocelebrities, and other pieces of performance art, up to and including a pair of six-foot garden vegetables.

  “Oh, it’s fun, alright,” Katie enthused.

  An elastic moment of silence.

  “So, whaddaya say… you wanna go?”

  Meryl studied her for a moment. “No,” she said slowly, “I don’t think so.”

  “Aw, c’mon, it’ll be fun.”

  “I don’t think so.” “Sure it will,” she insisted. “We can go out and kick out the stops, really knock em dead.”

  “No way.”

  “C’mon…”

  “No.”

  “Aw, shoot. Why not?”

  “Listen, Katie. I’ve done some crazy things in my life, but I’m not dumb enough to go out with you dressed like that.”

  “But it’ll be fine, so long’s we stick together. Really, you should’ve seen it last year. We—”

  “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “Get what?”

  “Unbelievable,” Meryl said to the ceiling, bunching the grocery bag into a tight little ball. “Jeezus, Katie, look at you!”

  Katie was taken aback. “What?”

  “You,” she began, “can get away with dressing like that. Whereas I, by way of glaring contrast, cannot. So let’s say we go out with you looking like Dracula’s dominatrix, to the delight of gawkers and onlookers everywhere. Then what am I supposed to be? Renfield’s twin sister? Your hunchbacked assistant?”

  Meryl’s stare flared at Katie, then turned away. She hurled the paper ball at the trash can, and missed. “Shit,” she spat.

  “You done?”

  Meryl nodded. Katie gulped the brandy down and said, “Good. ‘Cause I wanna say somethin’.

  “First of all, I think you’re full of shit,” she began. Meryl looked up, startled. “I think you’re full of shit because (a) I ain’t that pretty, and (b) you ain’t that ugly.”

  Meryl started to say something, but Katie cut her off. “Huh-uh, my turn.

  “Meryl, honey, for what it’s worth, I think you are one beautiful woman. You got a wonderful face… I mean, I’d kill for cheekbones like yours… and you got a pretty smile, and positively dreamy eyes.” Meryl actually blushed then, and Katie smiled.

  “As for makeup, and clothes, and all this shit”—she figered the lace—”it’s nothin’ but attitude, darlin’. It’s an act, just a role you take on for fun. It’s like being in a play. You can be whoever you want, whenever you want. And you ain’t supposed to take it so damn serious.”

  Katie nudged Meryl; Meryl smiled ruefully.

  “Hell, girl, I wasn’t asking you to go along to make you look bad,” Katie added. “I wanted you to come with me so we could both have some fun.”

  Meryl snickered then, and shook her head. “Kinda hard getting personal identity counseling from somebody who looks like a reject from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

  “Don’t knock it ‘til you you’ve tried it,” Katie said, pouring another shot of brandy. Meryl drank it. “So… you wanna?”

  “I don’t have a costume,” Meryl said.

  “Not yet.” Katie winked, and took Meryl by the hand.

  “This isn’t going to work.”

  “Shut up, and sit still. Now, look up.”

  A pulling along the lower rim of each eye, first one, then the other yielding to the milky soft tip of the brush.

  “Look to the left. Now, the right. Good.”

  “When can I see?”

  “When I’m done. Now, close your eyes and hold still.”

  Soft darting into the creases of each socket, deepening the shadow. A feathery brushing across fluttering lids.

  “Yeah, that’s it. Ooooooh, this is great.”

  “What’s great?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Is there any more brandy?”

  “A little. Here. Now, hold still.”

  “Mmmmm.”

  Music on the stero, pulsing insistently. Talking Heads, “Take Me To The River.” David Byrne’s voice in the background, crooning… “Hold me… Squeeze me… Love me… Tease me…”

  “Okay, open your eyes. Now, suck your cheeks in, like this.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Trust me.”

  Feathery brushing, soft, quick strokes across the hollows of her cheeks.

  “… ‘Til I can’t… ‘Til I can’t… ‘Til I can’t…”

  “Make an o with your mouth, like Mr. Bill.”

  “Ooooooh, nooooo…” Giggles.

  “Wider. Pull your lips over your teeth. Yeah, like that. Excellent.”

  Creamy gliding sensation over smooth, taut lips.

  “Now, smeck your lips together.”

  Smeck, smeck.

  “Lemme see. Look at me. Now, smile. Look evil. Oooooh, yes. Honey, you are done.”

  A black silk shawl obscured the cheval like a curtain drawn across a stage. Candles sparkled in the twilight glow of the room, shooting pinpoint stars twinkling through the weave of the knit. The mirror awaited, its secrets intact.

  Meryl bounced expectantly before it, curiosity mingling with anticipation and terror to heighten the buzz off the brandy. “I don’t know about this,” she said. “I feel kinda stupid.”

  “Yeah, well, you look kinda hot,” Katie answered from her stance behind the mirror. “Check it out.”

  She pulled the lace away, and the secret revealed itself.

  Meryl let out a clipped squeak that registered in a sonic range she hadn’t explored since puberty. A stranger stood before her. “Omigod,” she blurted. “Who is that?”

  “A whole new person, darlin’,” Katie said. “Whoever you want her to be.”

  Meryl watched as the stranger turned to one side, then the other, checking out the view. She was dressed, from the waist up, in an old square-shouldered man’s tuxedo jacket, its sleeves pushed up past the elbow and folded til the red silk lining showed. Underneath, she wore a white shirt so sheer that the dark points of her breasts stood clearly etched in shadow as she moved. A string tie with a brooch in the shape of an undulating serpent was
clasped at her throat. She turned around and looked over her shoulder.

  “Eeeek!” Meryl squealed. “Jeezus, Katie, my ass is hanging out!”

  “Yeah,” Katie said, eyes twinkling. “Ain’t it great?”

  She was dressed, from the waist down, entirely in suede and lace. The dense black overlap of lace on lace was all that shielded her: lace tap pants, slit to the thigh, covered patterned lace hose with a weave that looked as if her calves and thighs were spun with the webs of many delicate spiders. At the very bottom she wore a pair of low-heeled, crushed suede ankle boots. A solitary boot chain was strapped across one foot, its petite metal spikes bristling in the candlelight.

  Meryl stepped up to the mirror, boot chain clinking, her gaze transfixed on the face of the stranger coming to greet her.

  The stranger wore her face, and yet not. The eyes, the nose, the lips, the mouth—all were fundamentally the same, yet all were subtly transformed; as if another person had suddenly taken up residence behind her features. Her skin was perfectly white and smooth, redefined in alabaster and ashen hues. She brought one lace-gloved hand up to touch the smoky hollow of her cheek; the stranger in the mirror did likewise. She smiled; the stranger showed white teeth against taut black lips. Her eyes were shadowy wells that flashed like emeralds. She looked like some hungry and feral spirit.

  “Jesus, I feel like someone else entirely,” Meryl whispered. “Like… like some kind of seductress.”

  Katie came out from behind the mirror and put her arm around Meryl’s shoulder. “You are, honey. You are.”

  Meryl returned the gesture, smelling Katie’s scent on her skin. They stood together before the mirror, taking in the effect. Katie grinned and pulled her close.

  “Dracula’s dominatrix, and her date.” They giggled and swayed back and forth together. “So whaddaya think,” she added. “Are we hot, or what?”

  Meryl gulped. “I think I need a drink.”

  Katie gestured to the brandy bottle and laughed. “I think we’re out.”

  “I think that won’t do.”

  “We-e-ell,” Katie thought about it, “we could always go downstairs to the restaurant’s bar.”

  “Like this?” Meryl looked at their reflection, titillation and trepidation slam-dancing across her features.

  “Sure, why not? Start Halloween a day early.” Katie nudged Meryl, and they hugged. “Be worth it, just to see the looks on their faces.”

  Meryl gazed at their entwined reflection, the mysterious stranger wearing her face and the beautiful creature beside her. “Yeah, it would, wouldn’t it?” she replied.

  They looked from the reflection to each other, giggling. Their eyes met, and held. The giggling trailed off. Their gaze held. Meryl’s buzz spread like a sleeping nerve coming awake, becoming a hot flush across her skin. Then she pulled away, not wanting to break the contact, afraid to maintain it.

  “Drink,” she said.

  Katie nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Now.”

  “Yeah.” Katie disengaged and walked over to her dresser.

  “Katie—” Meryl began, and stopped. Katie turned around and looked at her, eyes sparkling.

  “Thanks.” ,

  Katie nodded.

  “Yeah.”

  She scooped up her keys, grabbed two twenties, and tucked them, winking, into the crease of her cleavage. Then she leaned over and cupped her hand around the candle. Meryl shivered and took one last look at her reflection just as Katie blew the candle out.

  The stranger was smiling.

  10

  EXTREMITIES

  In the walls.

  Alive like the earth, the room’s six walls. Alive like the air, and the infinite space beyond. Alive like the light. Alive like the darkness. Alive with the energy that bonds them all together.

  The room’s six walls.

  Ceiling and floor, to crown and ground it. Four lateral walls to complete the shape. Crystallized energy, molded in form. Alive in form. Trapped in form.

  Trapped inside the walls.

  Consciousness, dispersed and random. The ultimate consensus. The room, aware of itself as itself: one awareness unfocused, the gestalt of it clear. Awareness, lodged in every floorboard, every inch of plaster, every speck of glass or molded ore.

  And then the locus shifted.

  The focus became aware of itself as distinct from its surroundings. It pulled together, discovering that most basic, fundamental sentience, i am. Shifting, i am that. Determining, i am that i am. Replicating.

  i am that i am.

  i am that i am.

  The focus tightened around the core, i am that i am i am that i am i am …

  The focus achieved identity.

  The focus was a being.

  The being was a soul.

  Its awareness pulled tight as a fiber-optic beam, a narrow vessel stretched across a vast swirling oblivion,

  with a small circle of light at either end. At one end, the door to the world it had so recently departed.

  At the other, the doorway to the one that beckoned.

  And in the middle, wedged so firmly between, the soul. Hanging on.

  Afraid.

  It remembered some things: tiny scraps of feeling, of thought, of moments frozen in time. It hoarded them to itself, holding on. It had pitched itself into this place, wanting only to be free of the world it had thrown away, the identity it had shattered into a billion glittering shards. Now it could not let go, could not continue along the path it had chosen. Now, it wanted only to return.

  It clawed its way back with strength born of purest will, will born of raw, undistilled terror. Bit by bit, it crawled.

  Toward form.

  Some timeless point later it found a niche, a tenuous purchase in space. Its locus was a point in midair, some twelve feet above the floor: a nondescript stub of rope, knotted tightly around a steam pipe. It clung there: sucking the energy and awareness toward it, feeding the awareness of itself as separate, as distinct.

  Concentrating. Fighting for a singular point of view.

  i am that i am that i am that…

  Hovering directly above the couch.

  Looking down, then, at the sleeping women. Watching them curl together on the couch, their bodies (energy trapped in form) shifting beneath the blanket, responding unconsciously to the gaze upon them. Reaching out toward their lifeline, fighting the Pull from behind, the terrifying Pull that threatened to suck it back into the blackness, and beyond …

  The dream came like a thunderhead, rolling across the black plains of sleep.

  She felt it before she heard it, heard it before she saw it. The air bore its presence, heavy as the scent of a gathering storm. Every fiber of her being dreaded its coming. There was nowhere to run, no place to hide. Her conscious mind scrambled for shelter, fought to slam the doorway shut before the full force of it hit her. Her awareness struggled up from sleep…

  … and in the split-second before the clouds parted, she saw it clearly: the horror dangling above her, the air alive with buzzing flies and unbearable stench, the rotting human host, flexing extremities purple with settled blood, reaching blindly out and showering her with a slow pale trickle of maggot rain …

  Katie awoke with a strangled scream welling in her throat. She jerked upright, bathed in sweat, feeling the room spin madly before her. She looked at the ceiling and flinched.

  Above her, only darkness.

  She collapsed back into the sofa cushions, feeling Meryl’s sleeping form nestled hot beside her. Meryl stirred but did not awaken. Katie’s stomach churned and roiled. The buzzing in her ears subsided into a dull pinpoint ache in the center of her forehead. She wanted to get up, go pee, throw up, run away. But she didn’t. She didn’t move.

  She just stayed right where she was, staring at the ceiling, until just before dawn. Afraid.

  Of the dream. Of the realization. Of the vision with the horribly familiar face.

  Whose dead lips peeled back, black tongue loll
ing.

  And called her by name…

  THE SPIRIT OF THINGS

  They were screaming downstairs, in Bob Wallach’s apartment. He couldn’t tell how many people Bob had down there with him. He couldn’t even tell how much of it was human screaming. He really didn’t want to know.

  “Damn it all, I tried to warn him,” Wertzel hissed. It didn’t help. The floorboards thudded and death-twitched beneath his feet. Books and knickknacks threatened to tumble from their perches. Something snapped and shattered against a wall below: furniture, bone, he couldn’t be sure. A window exploded into tinkling shards. The stereo died in mid-song, groaning.

  The screaming got louder, crazier. Wertzel swallowed painfully and white-knuckled the handgrip of his .45. Something, decidedly not human, shrieked. The screaming got worse, if that was possible.

  A single light bulb burned in the center of the white ceiling. Jake Wertzel sat directly below it on a rickety wooden chair, his back pointed toward the only featureless wall in his third-floor walkup studio apartment. To his right were the windows that faced 37th Street. To his left were the doorways to his closet, his bathroom, the hallway and stairs beyond. Before him lay the kitchenette, the unusable fireplace, his bed.

  Every entrance to the room … the windows, the doors, the mouth of the fireplace… were completely boarded up and blockaded. He hoped that it would be enough.

  The walls and the floorboards were ceasing to shudder. The screaming, which had continued to mount, now began to disassemble into its component parts. He could distinguish maybe half a dozen voices, all veering off toward their separate grand finales: this one, a woman’s, spiraling up toward the ultrasonic as if someone or something were slowly twisting a dial; this one, a man’s, trumpeting dissonant jazz that closed with a jagged, moist burbling sound; this one, which could have been either sex, rattling off a string of syllables that ended, very clearly, with the word no. Wertzel knew for a fact that that was the word, because it hovered in the air for a good ten seconds before something made a sound like shredding paper and silenced it.