She nodded.
The bigfoot stirred and turned. It looked at me. At least I think it did; it was hard to see it in the dim light of the fluorescent moss.
“Why do you have it?”
She didn’t answer. The bigfoot was staring at me. I could feel a pressure in my head.
Caroline flashed me a nearly toothless smile. “He’s scanning you, ain’t he?”
I flashed on the scene in the movie Scanners when the one guy who looks like Jack Nicholson but isn’t makes the other guy’s head explode.
“He’s looking for a way out, but you don’t know it.” She leered at the bigfoot. “She doesn’t know it.”
He turned to her, his teeth bared, his fur standing on end in a full-body afro. I braced myself, but the attack never came.
“Ha!” Caroline spit into the cage. “You’re pathetic.”
“Why didn’t it make our heads explode?”
“Cause it’s a wuss.”
“So you’re saying it could make our heads explode, but it chose not to. And you’re provoking it?”
She flashed me a look of pure bile.
“So why did you catch him?” It was definitely a him. I could see that, though its genitals weren’t flaming pink or swollen like chimpanzees I’d seen at the zoo.
“We tricked him.” She sneered a smile at me.
“That doesn’t sound very nice.”
She shrugged. “Killed a guy. Put two others in the loony bin.”
While she spoke, I had been staring at him. I’d always found animals to have wise-seeming eyes, which was an illusion, I think. Their eyes look deep and dark, but they lack that spark of intelligence. Maybe it’s compassion. I don’t know. This guy, though, he had the spark. And he had been studying me just as much as I was him, until Caroline mentioned the three guys he’d hurt. Then he looked down. He opened his mouth and puffed out a breath.
“How?” I asked.
“He teleported one guy into the ground.” I looked at her. She made a raspberry sound and expanded her hands outward.
“He exploded?”
She nodded.
“What about the other two, the ones in the…loony bin?”
“Beasts like him have powerful protective abilities.”
The bigfoot made another strong exhale. He sounded like he might hyperventilate.
“Why is he making that sound?”
She laughed again. “It’s acting guilty so we’ll feel sorry for it. They’re pacifists, in their way. They’ll devour you and eat you whole, if they’re hungry, but they act like they’re better than us savage humans who make war. They’re just too dumb to think up war.”
I didn’t even know how to process that. “So you made it kill one of you and now it’s guilty.”
“Pretending to be guilty.” She smiled.
“Why doesn’t it just teleport out of the cage and then find its way out on foot?” It was something that had been nagging me.
“Because it would have to fight, and we’re too strong.” She was almost giddy about it.
I didn’t believe that for a second. Looking in its eyes, seeing its body language, I could see he was saddened, truly saddened, by what he’d done. Maybe he wouldn’t teleport out because he was afraid of hurting anyone else. “So why are we showing me this?”
“One of them took your friend.”
That was a manipulative answer if I’d ever heard one. “So?”
“So they probably took him back to their lair. Maybe you could get this one to show you where it is. To atone for what it’s done.”
“So then you can go in and grab all the others?”
She shrugged. “Probably not all the others. Listen, Daisy, I know this is all new to you, but you need to understand some things. These beasts are relics. There’s no place for them in this world. They’re like eight-tracks, OK? And every year, people get closer and closer to their last little holdout places. It’s only a matter of time before they fight back. We can help them, Daisy. We can move them. But we need to study them, to understand them. You can help.” Her eyes lit up. “You can save an entire species of stinking, disgusting monsters. You’ll be a hero.”
I had no intention of ratting out the bigfoots, but I also didn’t have a lot of choice.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, why would he tell me anything? I guess he can’t understand English? ’Cause you just told it the plan…”
Caroline glanced at me. “Of course he can. They can speak any language. They pick it up telepathically, we think. And what I told you is a hopeful outcome. I believe he will trust you because you’re a prisoner like him.”
At this, Neck Beard and Tweedledee grabbed me. I hadn’t even noticed them creep into the cave behind us. Caroline produced a key and opened the cell door. The bigfoot stepped forward, but Caroline pulled out a locket I’d never seen before and pointed it at him.
“Ah, ah, ahh,” she said. The two bozos shoved me inside, and Caroline slammed it closed behind me.
“You guys suck so bad.” I rubbed my shoulder where Chest-Beard had grabbed me. “Listen, just because you’re pretending to be homeless so people don’t recognize your true evil or whatever doesn’t mean you don’t need to bathe occasionally. Seriously.”
“And just because you call yourself a friend of the Protector of Baltimore doesn’t mean you can run around willy-nilly doing as you please,” Caroline said.
“So I guess threatening to call Nathan Venator won’t really change your mind.”
She smiled again. I swear I could see the moss growing between her teeth.
“Guess the evil super-society membership doesn’t come with dental.”
She snapped her mouth closed before she could stop herself. The other two stepped back in a cave-wide flinch, but she kept her temper.
“So you’re just going to leave me here,” I said.
“Pretty much.”
Caroline motioned for the others to follow her out. I waited till they were gone and turned to the bigfoot. He raised his eyebrows and waggled them. The movement reminded me of a big, fluffy dog.
“All right, bub. If this is going to work, we have to stick together. Us versus the assholes. Groovy?”
He kept staring, waggling. I sighed and looked around. The cell was bare. Three of the walls were cave walls, and the fourth was made of bars. There wasn’t even a potty. No bed. Nothing to come even close to comfort, though the temperature was almost chilly.
I slid down the wall to sit. “My name is Daisy. And I’m going to sit over here because I’m tired as hell from being on my feet all day and walking freaking miles. The things we do for boys, huh?” I laughed but he didn’t. I laid my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. “How long have you been here, guy?”
There was no answer. I opened my eyes and screamed a little. OK, a lot. He was squatting about a foot away in front of me, staring at me. I hadn’t heard a thing. His only reaction to me screaming was to stare at my mouth until I clapped my hand over it to shut myself up.
“What’s your name?” I asked when I had recovered.
He continued staring at me.
“I’m Daisy.” I put my hand on my chest. I was pretty sure he checked out my rack. “So now tell me your name.”
He glanced down at my lips and then back into my eyes. He blinked. That was it.
“Wait, are you trying to tell me telepathically?” I closed my eyes and tried to open myself up to any messages. I saw darkness. And then myself, naked, on all fours, being humped by the bigfoot. My eyes flew open. He spread his lips and showed me his fangs. My rage froze, until I realized he was shaking with laughter.
“That’s not funny.”
He kept laughing.
“OK, it’s a little funny, but it’s also creepy as fuck.” Breath wheezed in and out and his stomach shook. He rocked on his heels, also. All of this made me think he wasn’t actually about to rape me, which eased my mind a bit.
“OK, well, I guess we bonded.
So how about telling me your name? You know, how do the other bigfoots refer to you?”
He nodded, still chuckling. I closed my eyes and received an image of him—at least I thought it was him—stepping in a pile of some animal feces, slipping, and sliding.
“Slips in Shit? For real?” He nodded again. “Well hi, Slips in Shit. My name is Daisy.” I offered my hand. He looked at it and then held his out in the same way. I grabbed it to shake—but the instant I touched him, I felt like a nuclear bomb had gone off in my brain.
A shockwave of images and ideas too jumbled to make sense of flooded through me. There were images of bigfoots and wilderness, mountain streams, deer hunted and eaten, howling at the moon. I saw female bigfoots, which weren’t that different from males, really, except they had boobs—saggy, hairy boobs. I saw an image of a man wearing old-timey clothing, but before I could latch on to any more images, the bigfoot jerked his hand away. The images didn’t disappear, exactly. They continued to loop through my head, but they began to fade.
I put my hand to my head, but it took a moment to find it. I brushed my nose and pulled back fingers covered in blood. My head felt like it was trying to give birth.
I blinked at him. He was squatting on his haunches, peering at me from a little farther away. Just beyond my reach, I realized.
“Remind me not to touch you again.” He nodded. “Sex for you guys must be pretty intense.” I regretted it as soon as I said it, but he grinned and hooted. He didn’t zap any weird images into my head, though. Which is good, because I think it would’ve melted.
“So, Slips in Shit,” I said, “How long have you been in here, anyway?”
An image eased its way into my mind like a mental whisper. It was of a sun rising and setting and rising and setting again. I counted four times.
“Four days?” He nodded. “Let me ask you a question. If I imagine an image, can you see it in my head?” He nodded again. I tried to imagine Caroline and the others hiding behind a curve in the cave with their hands cupped around their ears, listening. I had to close my eyes to do it, and when I opened them, he nodded. I nodded too, since it seemed like the thing to do.
“So this is how you guys talk, huh? Kind of cool, I guess. But be gentle with me. My head’s killing me.” I imagined my head with a knife, stabbing me. He grinned.
I wanted to ask him all sorts of stuff, but the thing that stood out most was the battle I’d stumbled into. If I knew what was going on, I’d know which side I could really trust. “It must be hard to lie to you guys, huh? Since you can read minds and everything.”
An image appeared of fog in the woods.
“Oh, I guess it’s hard to tell sometimes?”
He shrugged.
Another image appeared of Caroline. It was from a little while ago, when she was talking about me getting Slips in Shit to trust me. He looked at me expectantly.
I wanted to say that I didn’t intend to betray him. But I didn’t actually know one hundred percent if I could trust him. I conjured up an image of Quasi being taken by a bigfoot, and then of the Council members taking me.
He licked his lips and I saw Quasi in my head, lying back on a bed that I knew was just the softest, most comfortable bed ever. (Which was interesting. It meant Slips in Shit could convey more than images. He could convey feelings and ideas also.) He was naked, though a little blurry.
The whole thing was blurry, actually, which I guessed was because it wasn’t real. I heard giggling and two girls I recognized as actresses came in, naked, but again not real, kind of airbrushed-looking, like they’d been filmed through a lens with a lot of Vaseline on it. They stripped Quasi down. One started tickling his nether regions with a feather.
“Come on. So you’re saying he’s OK.”
Slips in Shit grinned.
“Something else.” I called up the battle, the Council members, as I now knew, versus the bigfoots. I didn’t know how to ask a question. I imagined a big question mark over the battle, but when I opened my eyes, Slips in Shit looked like he was concentrating and shook his head.
“I don’t understand,” I said, trying to sound vague in case they really were listening, which, let’s face it, they probably were. He nodded, though, I guess because he didn’t understand either. I chewed my lip and then imagined the scene with just the Council members. There were no bigfoots, and the Council members were coming toward me. I tried to communicate a sense of fear. The me that I imagined stood in the smelly path of the invaders. Do I run? Do I stay?
I opened my eyes. He shook his head. I closed them again, and this time, he took control of the scene. I stepped back and watched. The bigfoots approached the campgrounds. I would call it sneaking but that would be like calling the ocean damp. They materialized out of the darkness, motionless. The only way I could tell they were there was that the vision let me know it.
The bigfoots sniffed one direction and then another until they got the scent they wanted, which I realized was mine. They started to move into the campground, proper, but that’s when the Council appeared. I felt fear and confusion. The bigfoots were trying to reach the campground, but the Council started picking them off. There was a sense that the Council would start attacking campers.
The image faded.
“Are you kidding me?”
He cocked his head to the side.
“But why was the Council attacking?”
An image appeared of Caroline and quickly faded.
“Yeah, OK, but to what end?”
He shook his head. I guess he didn’t know. Or maybe it was too difficult to communicate through images.
I didn’t know what to do next. If it was true—and I felt like he was telling the truth—then I was smack in the middle of some nefarious scheme. That’s right, I said nefarious, and I’d finger my monocle if I had one.
My head was pounding, and I thought I might pass out from all the exertion of sending and receiving messages. But I needed to have one more conversation with Slips in Shit.
First, I pictured the conversation Caroline had with me, earlier, in which she tried to get me to trick Slips in Shit. I pictured myself agreeing to do it, but with my fingers crossed behind my back. He made a chuffing sound, and I opened my eyes. He shook his head.
“Don’t understand, huh?”
I pictured the scene again, and this time, I made myself turn and wink at him. I opened my eyes, but he shook his head again. I guess these were cultural things he didn’t understand.
I didn’t know how many more times I could do this before my brains drained out of my ears. I tried once more. This time, I pictured her talking again. I made myself put my hands over my ears so I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I opened my eyes, and he nodded.
I closed my eyes again and pictured us inside the cage and then outside looking back at the empty cage. I made us run away, toward the way out.
I felt pressure in my head, and with a wrench, the image shifted to us running and running without getting anywhere. The scene jumped forward, and we started to age. We kept running, and it jumped again, and we were both gray-haired. Then we were hobbling. Then we were lying on the ground, dying.
“You’re dark,” I said.
He cocked his head to one side. I wanted to try to explain, but my head hurt too much.
“Never know if you don’t try.”
I put my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. The ache in my head was a dull roar. I was so tired I couldn’t think anymore. I didn’t picture anything but blackness.
CHAPTER FIVE
My dreams were all images of memories, but most of them weren’t mine. I dreamed about the man I’d glimpsed in Slips in Shit’s memories, the one with the funny clothes. I saw him in the woods being chased by wolves, and then the bigfoots appeared and chased the wolves off. The scene cut to some guys wearing similar old-timey clothes, who grabbed a young bigfoot in the woods and took it away. Another cut, and the child’s mother—in the dream, I knew that was the relationship
—went to the man, who was suddenly on a ship and a moment later was walking ashore on an island, then emerging from a pit with the child, carrying it to a boat, and returning it to its parents. They were almost like stills in a slide show, but I was able to keep up. The bigfoots left and the man returned to the island.
The scene shifted. The man died, and I saw his children at his grave. An instant later they were grown with their own children, and on and on, dozens of people at gravesites, until I saw myself, and the whole thing slowed down. I flashed back to Emily asking me to go to the music festival, then me asking Lou and Magnus, my bosses at the funeral home, for the time off. It fast-forwarded through me talking to Mom about going.
Some part of my unconscious mind realized that Slips in Shit was scanning my thoughts like he was fast-forwarding through a DVD. But that didn’t mean I could stop him.
He came to the day we had arrived at the campgrounds and then when we’d sneaked in to the venue to see Shizknit play. I was embarrassed when he got to us having dinner with them later, because he slowed it down and watched me being awkward with Quasi. I tried to speed it up or block it out, but I couldn’t. I don’t know if it was because I was still asleep or because I was just too weak.
Then he got to the battle I saw that night. He slowed to watch each of the bigfoots fall. I wondered if they were dead, if he knew them. Was it racist to think all bigfoots knew each other? Would bigfoots be considered a race?
There was one thing I didn’t want him to know about, and that was the artifact I’d found. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him; I just wanted to understand the situation better before I shared all my information.
He stayed on the battle a long time, which made me think maybe he hadn’t known about it. Since I couldn’t seem to control my own memories, I struggled to rouse myself. He watched the memory of me going back to bed and then seemed to lose interest because I was able to wake up before he saw me go back for the artifact.
I felt like someone had given me a boot to the head. Dried blood flaked from my nose and upper lip. I got up. I was stiff from sleeping on the cave floor. Slips in Shit was sitting on his haunches looking at me but still keeping his distance.
Tall, Dark and Hairy (The Necro-Files Book 3) Page 7
