The Neon Boneyard

by Craig Schaefer

  Maybe that’s why not a single one of them had ever made that fantasy real. The One Last Score doesn’t exist, not really. And if it did, most of us would find some excuse not to reach for it. Because we don’t want to quit.

  I wondered if it was the rush that kept me going. Every day I rubbed shoulders with solid citizens. People who lived in the daylight Vegas, far from the underbelly I called home. They could go their entire lives without someone sticking a gun in their faces, or taking the kind of job that ended with spilled blood and closed caskets. For that matter, they’d never find themselves forced into a death match with a necromancer from another dimension because some alien “king” wanted to see what would happen.

  No. It wasn’t the rush. I was never much of an adrenaline junkie—I didn’t even like roller coasters that much—and I’d survived this long as a career criminal by balancing every risk against the potential for reward. That wasn’t it.

  So why, then?

  Answers eluded me as the shower steam wrapped warm arms around my weary flesh, tempting me with the pleasures of sleep. I wasn’t going to figure anything out tonight. I toweled off, stumbled to my bed, and crawled under a storm-gray comforter, losing myself in an oasis of soft linen.

  19.

  I dreamed of suburbia.

  I recognized it on instinct, even as my sleeping mind took the scene—manicured lawns and white picket fences scrolling past my car window—for reality. I’d had this dream before. It usually popped up when I wasn’t feeling sure of my way. More and more, lately.

  Neighbors were out and enjoying the warm desert sunshine. Cooking burgers on a grill, throwing footballs around. A couple of cherub-cheeked tots ran a lemonade stand on the corner. The air was clean and crisp, and on the other side of a plate-glass window, I watched a dad kick back on the couch with his kids to watch the big game.

  I guess everyone dreams of the things you can never have.

  My car stopped at the corner. I glanced to the kids at the lemonade stand.

  They didn’t have faces.

  The skin had been carved away with surgical precision, leaving wet ovals and glistening cherry bone behind. They grinned at me with skeleton mouths.

  The car was gone. The street was gone. This was new. I ran along a corridor of black marble, walls yawning and twisting ahead of me like a fun-house mirror.

  I emerged into a parlor, jolting to a stop. The only sound was the metronome tick-tick-tick of a grandfather clock. Elmer Donaghy perched on a regal chair, rubbing his spear of a chin as he studied a chessboard set out upon a French-styled dais.

  “Check,” he said.

  I stared at myself in the chair opposite his. The stumps of my arms and legs, cauterized black by fire, twitched as my sewn-together lips struggled to form words.

  “Time’s up,” Elmer said to my mutilated twin. He reached over and moved another piece. “You can’t win if you don’t play.”

  “He’s right,” said the voice behind me.

  I turned and the parlor ripped away, dissolving to gossamer smoke. Now I stood at a forest crossroads, torches burning at the three points of the path.

  “He’s a figment of your imagination, as your brain struggles to parse the events of the day through the process of dreaming,” the Lady in Red told me, “but he’s still right.”

  She was a vision in scarlet, the train of her vintage dress sweeping out behind her as the pale woman strode toward me. A spill of raven curls flowed down her shoulders, and her pomegranate lips curled in a vaguely taunting smile. A silver antique key dangled from a chain at her throat.

  “As for his unfortunate chess partner,” she said, “Elmer’s threat must have resonated with you.”

  I didn’t look behind me. I didn’t know if the tableau was still there, but I didn’t want to see it again.

  “I think the threat of getting turned into a living torso would resonate with anybody,” I said, trying to play it cool.

  “True, but for you…I think it speaks to a fear you’ve carried for a very long time.”

  She took hold of my shoulders. Then she spun me around and yanked me close, so I could feel her body against mine, her hot breath gusting against my ear.

  “It was born in this room,” she whispered.

  A plastic lamp with a tattered lampshade cast a puddle of yellow light across peeling powder-blue wallpaper. I knew this place by heart. The cheap beds, the toy chest with the broken lid, the two boys shivering under thin blankets.

  “Dan,” my brother whispered, “I think Dad’s gonna kill us.”

  I could hear him downstairs. Stomping, slamming the refrigerator. He’d gone on a beer run after work. Beer-run days were the worst. He’d come home with a case, half of it gone by dinnertime. He couldn’t drink on his meds, so he just wouldn’t take the meds. By midnight, the New World Order would be sending him commands through the television and the neighbors would be spying from electrical sockets.

  “Teddy,” twelve-year-old me said from the bed by the door, “you know I’ll protect you, right? We’re brothers. You can always count on me.”

  Downstairs, my father threw a lamp through the television screen. I knew he’d be here soon.

  “I don’t want to see this,” I breathed. The Lady’s hands, long-fingered and cold, held my shoulders tight.

  “You made your brother a promise.”

  “I tried. I slept with a butcher knife under my goddamn pillow. I tried.”

  “How did that work out for you?” she asked.

  Court day. My father’s lawyer had dressed him up in an off-the-rack suit from Sears, gotten him a twenty-dollar haircut, and made sure he was on his medication. We were all wearing suits that day. I couldn’t remember where mine had even come from. It was too heavy, too scratchy, and I tried not to fidget while Teddy, eight and a half years old, took the stand.

  “So you saw your brother, Daniel, attack your father without provocation,” the lawyer told him.

  Teddy bobbed his head. “Without provo…provo…he did it.”

  “And your father never hit you, did he?”

  Teddy’s head swayed. He bit his bottom lip.

  “Teddy,” the lawyer said. He crouched down, all fatherly now. “Tell us who broke your arm.”

  My brother pointed at me. “Dan did it.”

  I stood on the edge of the court now, invisible. I felt more tired than anything.

  “I never blamed him,” I said. “Even then, I understood. I was going away, and he was going back to that house. Alone, with the man who probably killed our mother. The fuck was he supposed to do? He had to protect himself.”

  “You blamed yourself, though,” the Lady said.

  “Sure I did. If I’d stabbed my father two inches to the left, he would have died that night. First time I ever tried to kill a man, and I blew it.”

  I watched the courtroom turn to smoke. Outlines of people wavered, gelatinous, their voices fading to indistinct murmurs.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked her.

  “Maybe I’m not real,” she whispered in my ear. “Just another figment of your imagination. You are dreaming, aren’t you?”

  “No. I’ve dreamwalked with other people before. You’re really here. Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Nightmares are gifts. They can show you the problems in the waking world you’ve failed to correct, or don’t even know that you’re struggling with. Tell me the core of your fear.”

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  We slipped sideways. Sideways into a room with white peeling paint and a barred window and a locked door. No furniture but a bare mattress on a wire frame, and there was me, fifteen years old, naked, facedown with my arms and legs in hospital restraints.

  The orderly, a kid in his early twenties with long, greasy hair and a jackal’s eyes, lit a cigarette.

  “The fuck is it with you, Faust?” he asked in a lazy drawl. “We only have a few simple rules around here, and you can’t go three days wi
thout starting a fight.”

  “I didn’t start it,” younger me snarled, yanking hard enough to make the bed frame rattle. “Syd and his asshole buddies were shaking down that new kid. It was three against one and he’s half their size. It wasn’t fair.”

  “Everybody says you threw the first punch. And now you gotta be segregated, and I gotta work more unpaid overtime and fill out an incident report. And every time reviews come around, we get graded on how many incident reports we had to fill out, you get me? So not only did you make me cancel a date tonight, you’re directly fucking with my chances of getting a raise.”

  I tried to turn around, didn’t want to see this, didn’t want to go back, but the Lady’s grip was made of iron.

  “Watch,” she hissed in my ear.

  I watched the orderly shove a knotted rag in my mouth. Then I watched him put his cigarette out on the small of my back.

  “Maybe this time you’ll listen,” he said as my teenage self screamed through the dirty rag and thrashed on the mattress. The flesh under the cigarette, when he finally pulled it away, was beet-red and blistering. It would leave a fresh scar to join the other three.

  “Oh, and that new little shit, the one you were ‘protecting’?” the orderly said. “He’s two rooms down. And I’m going to go down there now and give him the same treatment, and then I’m going to tell him it’s your fault.”

  “What are you feeling?” the Lady whispered.

  I tried to shut my eyes but my body wouldn’t do it. I was feeling the cigarette sear into my back like it was happening all over again, the plastic restraints cutting off the flow of blood in my hands and feet, the rage coursing through my veins like gasoline.

  Mostly the rage.

  “I want to kill him.”

  “Why don’t you?” she asked.

  The restraints pinned me to the soiled mattress. My younger self was still screaming through the knotted rag—not in pain, not now—as the orderly sauntered out of the room and the door slammed shut.

  “I can’t.”

  “What are you feeling?”

  My rage splashed like fire against a wall of iron, pinning me in, trapping me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t change anything, couldn’t save anyone.

  “Helpless,” I tried to scream.

  The word came out in a brittle whisper, then turned to ash. The world turned to ash, cascading, spinning, a snow globe from a mausoleum.

  I was on my knees, in darkness. Head bowed, shoulders slumped, all of my rage gone cold and turned to sludge inside of me.

  The Lady in Red crouched down, and her fingertips gently lifted my chin.

  “It’s good to know the things we fear most,” she told me, “and the wellspring that birthed them. The things that can be used against us.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “You will, when the time is right. I’m not often cruel without reason. And there’s one last thing to see. Come.”

  She took me by the hand. We walked through darkness, into darkness, something soft and loamy under our feet. Then, up ahead, a single gray spotlight captured our destination.

  “You aren’t the only one sleeping right now,” the Lady said. “Though he denies her freedom, even in her dreams.”

  Under the spotlight, Fleiss hung suspended from a column of liquid iron. Her torso dangled from the molten black pillar, her arms behind her and her hands and feet trapped inside the goo. The iron burbled as it slowly flowed, like a living blob of soot-stained mucus. Her eyes were closed and her head lolled from side to side.

  “Mother,” she whimpered.

  The Lady reached for her. As her pale hand brushed the edge of the light, the entire column rippled. The iron went rigid, yanking Fleiss’s arms tighter, wrenching her shoulders. The trapped woman groaned in pain. As she lifted her head, I realized her eyes weren’t only closed: dribbles of the liquid iron had welded them shut.

  “I try to comfort her as best I can,” the Lady said, “but the Enemy is a diligent warden.”

  “So…I was right.” I stood at the edge of the light, careful not to cross it, as I looked between them. “The real her, before the Enemy twisted her around his finger—she’s still in there, somewhere.”

  “And aware.” The Lady folded her arms, storms behind her eyes as she stared at the pillar of iron. “I promise you that. Every vile thing he forces her to do, every waking second of being under his dominion—part of her is aware. And screaming, but no one can hear her voice. Those memories I just walked you through, the helplessness you felt? That’s what my daughter feels, awake or dreaming, every moment of her life.”

  I knew what she was going to ask me next. She didn’t even have to say it. I sealed the pact between us with six words.

  “Tell me how to save her.”

  She favored me with the faintest smile.

  “You’ve already started the work. She has to be forced to confront the contradictions that surround her. She’ll dig her heels in, no doubt; he’s grafted a mask to her face. Push her until it shatters. Here’s something you can use: she’s an accomplished witch.”

  “Well, I knew that much,” I said. “How does that help?”

  The Lady wore a faint twinkle in her eyes.

  “Ask her who her teacher was. And remember what I teach all of my daughters: that freedom is a witch’s creed.”

  Her fingertips brushed my cheek.

  “I’ll be watching you, Daniel.”

  20.

  Morning in Las Vegas was a weird place to be, even if you hadn’t spent the night in the hands of a goddess. The free-floating party on Fremont Street started early, although the real show didn’t begin until the sun went down. I moved among packs of wandering tourists, most of them bleary-eyed and clutching plastic cups of cheap beer to stave off the hangovers they’d worked so hard to earn last night. Elderly gamblers roamed under open casino archways, queuing up for the penny slots. Off to my left, by a sound stage that wouldn’t see any action for another twelve hours or so, a busker dressed as Gandalf the Grey was trying to get sightseers to pay for a photograph.

  Fremont felt wrong by daylight. It had the self-destructive earnestness of a guy in his forties at a frat party, egging everyone on to keep drinking past dawn just to prove he could still hang. I wasn’t here for the crowds, anyway, or the penny slots or the two-dollar margaritas for that matter. I let my mind go blank as I strolled, thoughts drifting on an aimless sea—

  —and a copper bell chimed as I crossed a stained, worn-out carpet, suddenly surrounded by cool air and the aroma of Indian food. The Tiger’s Garden had sensed me on its street, decided I was worthy, and pulled me in like a fish on a line. Past the three-seater bar, lit by dangling paper lanterns from a ’70s garage sale, the tiny dining room only had three occupants. Jennifer was already here along with Bentley and Corman, and all three were starting the day off with a proper magician’s breakfast: greasy food and alcohol.

  Jennifer tore off a hunk of tandoori chicken, waving the bright scarlet meat at me in greeting. “Hey, sleepyhead. I was just tellin’ the guys about your entomological adventure.”

  “Better you than me,” Corman said, arching a bushy eyebrow as he sucked on a bottle of beer. “Good to see ya, kiddo.”

  Bentley got up before I could protest. His frail arms pulled me into a tight hug.

  “Be careful,” he fretted. “You should have called us.”

  “C’mon, I can’t be bothering you guys every time I run into trouble—”

  “You mean you don’t want to bug them?” Jennifer asked.

  I shot her a look and pulled out a chair.

  “Besides, you were there in spirit,” I said to Bentley. “The mailbag escape saved my life last night.”

  He lit up at that. “Handcuff key behind the belt?”

  “Never leave home without it.”

  Bentley saluted me with his gin and tonic. “That’s our boy.”

  Amar, the Garden’s only employee and maybe owner, swooped
by with a brass-rimmed tray. There were no menus at the Tiger’s Garden; Amar always knew what you were going to order, and more often than not, it would be waiting for you when you arrived. We didn’t know how he did it, and he wouldn’t tell us. He set a champagne flute in front of me, garnished with a perfectly cut wedge of orange.

  Corman snorted. “A mimosa?”

  “Hey,” I said, “it’s a classic brunch cocktail. Pass the chicken.”

  Between bites, Jennifer brought us up to speed. “Commissioner Harding’s ducking my phone calls, but Seabrook was apoplectic. Accordin’ to her, she did just what we told her and passed down a no-touch order on Container Park. And, like you suspected, Harding saw the chance to bust a few ink dealers and get some good press.”

  “And Santiago and his buddy blended in, just waiting to grab me.” I frowned. “Still don’t know if they’re real cops or just playing the part. Santiago wouldn’t give me a straight answer.”

  “Does it make a difference?” Bentley asked.

  “Insofar as how we’re going to handle it.” I sipped my mimosa. It went down like a boozy-sparkly waterfall. “Santiago got a dozen kids killed, for no reason but to draw me out. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a dead man walking. If his badge is real, though, we have to be a little more delicate; you can’t just green-light a cop. Also, if he’s legit, there’s a good chance’s he’s not the only real cop on the Network’s payroll. We need to root them all out. And preferably replace them with our own people.”

  “I’m still not feeling this weirdo alliance,” Jennifer said. “The Network and the Enemy joining forces? Far as we can tell, they’re after totally different things.”

  I had been doing a lot of thinking about that since last night, and I kept circling around to the same answers.

  “The Enemy’s got something the Network wants. Something they want bad enough to offer him a short-term alliance, but I guarantee it’s only a matter of time before somebody gets stabbed in the back. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to spin it to our advantage. In the meantime, though, they’re a lot more dangerous united than they were on their own. Our number-one priority right now is tracking down Elmer Donaghy. If we can squeeze him for information—”