Blood & Rust

by S. A. Swiniarski

  The car was a little too old to be totally anonymous. It was a tan Olds that was made prior to the streamlining of the nineties. Mid-eighties was my guess, though they never let me have a good look. Best I could see, there were at least two people in the car, both large males. Nothing much else I could make out through snow and distance.

  I finally lost track of them when the cab turned to Coventry. I suspected they’d held back at the intersection of Coventry and Mayfield. By the time the cab went a block, I had lost the intersection beyond a white fog of snow.

  It was two blocks to the next tangled intersection when the taxi stopped. It confused me for a moment before I realized that we had made it to my destination. I had to squint past a snow-draped courtyard to see a storefront, but the neon sign was lit up reading “Arabica.”

  I paid the cabby and stepped out into the snow.

  I stood ankle-deep in a snowdrift in the center of the courtyard and stared through the windows into the well-lit shop. Looking in, I felt a nagging sense of familiarity. This place meant something—a lot of teenagers, more punk than anything else. I saw a lot of weird hair and body piercing. I also saw a lot of the bearded-poet type, the kind of folks who wear dirty army jackets, write longhand on yellow legal pads, and quote Nietzsche a lot.

  I knew this place.

  At one of the tables near the window, a lanky kid with a blond ponytail was having an animated discussion with a shadowy-eyed girl. They both wore abused leather jackets.

  I stood there a long time before I walked to the door. The familiarity frightened me, as if this place might make me remember something that I didn’t want to remember. But after a few minutes the cold drove me inside.

  Stepping from the empty night street into the babble of humanity crowding the coffee shop was a shock. A wave of irrational enmity froze me in the doorway. No one actually looked in my direction, but I felt as if everyone in this place were paying attention to me, weighing me.

  I forced myself to walk to the counter. It’s just the crowd. I’m not used to crowds. That’s what I told myself at least.

  I was certainly in the midst of the largest group of people I’d seen since walking up sans memory. It was only natural to find it disturbing, after what I’d been through.

  Of course that was just me bullshitting myself, but it helped to steady my hands as I took a cup of espresso and two horrendously-priced Danishes to one of the few free tables. The table was way in the back, in the smoking section. It was somewhat dark, and smelled like an ashtray, but having my back to a wall helped steady my nerves.

  For a while I just sat there, cradling the warm mug in my hands, letting the cold retreat. I forced myself to moderate my paranoia. While some of the patrons gave me some odd looks, I was sure that they were the ones who gave everybody odd looks. I didn’t look terribly out of place here, it just felt that way to me.

  At the table next to me, two chain-smokers were playing chess. I classified the young clean-shaven one as an eternal grad student, the middle-aged bearded one as another unemployed poet. I didn’t know where the assumptions came from, but it reinforced my impression that I had been here before....

  It made me wonder if being here was a good idea. If the cops were looking for me, and someone here recognized me—

  I lowered my gaze. My sunglasses didn’t seem much of a disguise.

  As if spurred by my thought, someone slapped my back and said, “Hail Eris, you bastard. How goes the hunt?”

  “Huh?” I said. I put down the espresso without drinking from it. I turned around. The speaker wasn’t Sam or Bowie, I could tell from the voice.

  I looked at him hoping for some twinge of memory. He seemed like someone I should remember. He had wild blond hair and wore at least seven earrings, though his ears were all he had pierced. He wore a denim vest over a linen shirt whose drawstrings left the neck open on a pentagram necklace. He wore a pair of John Lennon glasses with slightly blue lenses. He looked like an avatar of the sixties, though he couldn’t be more than nineteen years old.

  He awoke no memories. He didn’t even awake a sense of deja vú.

  He slid into the chair opposite me, folded his arms on the table, and asked, “Find her yet?”

  I was glad for my sunglasses. If he had seen my eyes, he would have seen my confusion. “No, I haven’t,” I said. “Do you have anything new to tell me?” It was a strange question, but one that came to me automatically—a rote question, something a policeman might ask.

  My guest sighed and leaned back. “How’d I know you were going to ask that? Sorry, my friend, nada. I haven’t seen them since that open circle I told you about. Not her. Not Childe. But you’ve been asking around; you know that. Vanished, poof.” He flowered open his fingers, “Good riddance.”

  I nodded.

  He held up his hand. “Not the girl, you understand—but that Childe freak. Just gave the fundies and the cops something nasty to have us confused with. Hey, but that’s why I like you.”

  I looked up at the guy, feeling lost. “Why do you like me?”

  “You never came in with that Satan-cult bullshit.”

  “Why would I?” At this point the questions were becoming a defense mechanism, to keep him answering questions so he wouldn’t ask me any.

  “Hey, man, you’re rare. Most people, if you say you’re a pagan, they think you’re out torturing cats somewhere. Take any fundie and talk about any non-Christian spirituality, boom, you worship the devil. Somehow pointing out that Satan is a Christian invention doesn’t seem to faze them. Childe’s as close to the devil as I’ve ever been.”

  I still couldn’t give him a name. However, as I talked, I got some feeling that I knew his community, that I had brushed against it before. His words held a familiarity that he did not.

  And there was that damn name again. “Is there anything else you can tell me about Childe?”

  He shrugged. “That I haven’t told you already? Not really. English accent, snappy dresser, on a power trip that’d make Alister Crowley and Anton Le Vay look like altruists.” He sighed. “Hey, I want you to find this girl. I don’t like the idea of anyone stuck with Childe. If there was anything I could do....”

  He trailed off.

  Behind him, the chess game continued. I heard a slap-ding as the grad student slammed the top of a timer next to the chess board. The poet immediately moved his queen and made his own slap-ding.

  “What is it?” I asked. My companion seemed to have lost himself in a thought.

  “Are you as open-minded as you seem?”

  “I try to be.”

  He grinned, “Then perhaps I can offer some sort of aid.” He fumbled in his pockets and retrieved a bag. Behind him I heard the timer again.

  Slap-ding.

  From the bag he pulled a stack of cards. Slowly he began shuffling. “You’re not someone who comes believing the oracle, are you?”

  I glanced at the cards. “You mean fortune-telling?” What came to my mind when I thought of divination was more con artistry than the supernatural.

  The kid shuffled cards and said, “More than that. We attach complex symbols to the cards, manipulate them, arrange them into patterns. The patterns they form are reflections of the patterns around us. This is as much us truly seeing as it is the cards telling us anything.” He looked up and gave me a disarming smile. “Sounds pretentious, doesn’t it? Just started reading up on chaos theory and emergent behavior.” He placed the cards down on the table between us; a slap-ding echoed his motion.

  I decided if this kid was about to try a con on me, that would probably tell me more than any oracle. “Go ahead, it can’t hurt.”

  “Form a question in your mind, something for the cards to focus on. Then cut them for me.”

  I reached over and cut the cards. As I did so, the only question that would come to mind was, Who am I?

  “Do you want to know the question?” I asked.

  To my relief, he shook his head. “Sometimes the reading is m
ore profound if only you know what is being asked. At this point I am only helping you to see.”

  He drew the top card, laying it on the table between us. There was a look on his face I did not like. The card I liked even less. On it a corpse lay facedown, pierced through the back by ten swords. “The Ten of Swords.” He swallowed. “This card is the past, the basis for what is to come. You’ve come through something tragic and unpleasant. Relationships have ended, maybe badly. You’ve perhaps felt a feeling of abandonment. Things have not gone as you planned or wished them to....”

  He took another breath and laid down a card above the first. This one showed a man upon a throne, holding a sword. “This card represents you, and the situation surrounding you. The King of Swords, not a great surprise since he deals with law enforcement. You have a determination to overcome the obstacles that confront you. There is a lot of stress around you, you’re fighting your way uphill, but you are fighting.”

  He laid down a card above the other two; this one showed a woman on a throne, holding a staff in her right hand and a flower in her left. The card was upside down, her flower pointing down at the king’s sword. “Ah, this represents your hopes or fears. In a sense, it is what you are looking for. A woman, I suspect that Cecilia that you’ve been asking about, though the Queen usually has blonde or red hair. The Queen of Wands, reversed. A troublesome woman, vengeful, she may turn on you or others.

  “Your immediate past....” He flipped over a card to the king’s right. “Whoa.”

  A skeletal horseman bore a black banner toward the king. Corpses fell across the steed’s path. “Death,” he said needlessly. “Not necessarily a bad card, but you are in the midst of some change, a major severance with the past. With the swords I see a lot of struggle, but the change is powerful and won’t be denied.

  “The forces arrayed against you, the obstacles you must overcome....” He turned over a card and laid it across the king. A bat-winged demon squatted on a pillar, raising his hand toward me.

  Behind the kid, the chess players went on. Someone hit the timer again. Slap-ding. We sat there, quietly for a moment or two before he went on with the reading. Most of the lightness had gone out of his voice. “The Devil,” he said quietly. He placed his cards down and ran his hands through his hair. “Evil forces are blocking your path, and escape from them seems doomed to failure....” He looked up at me and said, “Do you want me to go on with this?”

  I nodded, not trusting my voice. His anxiety was infecting me, even though I found it hard to credit the idea that cardboard rectangles could say anything about me.

  “The immediate future,” he said, slowly picking up the deck. He turned over a card, looking at it for a long time before putting it down. The color drained from his face. I wondered what could be worse than Death or the Devil.

  He slowly placed the card down on the other side of the king, opposite Death. “The Tower,” he whispered. Lightning struck a lighthouselike structure, people tumbled off the precipice, and flames danced from the windows. “Chaos, disaster. Your upheaval has yet to end, and the tribulations you are about to face will be worse than what you’ve already endured.”

  He shook his head. “That’s enough, man. I just don’t like seeing those cards.” He began picking up the spread shoving the cards back into his bag. “Look, I’m sorry. It was a bad idea.”

  “Don’t worry, I don’t believe in it,” I told him.

  He stood up and touched my hand. “Man, I know where you’re coming from. But even if I didn’t believe it, that kind of spread would freak me.”

  With that, he left me.

  Who am I? I thought.

  He was right. Even though I didn’t believe it, those cards bothered me. I turned to ask him another question, but he had disappeared into the crowd.

  The student and the poet had set up a new game. The poet was busy arranging pawns. Smoke hung low in the air, like fog on a battlefield. Change, evil, and disaster....

  “Yeah, I have seen her, ” said the blond pagan. His name is Neil, but he calls himself Sunfox. He hands back the picture I showed him of a dark woman named Cecilia. She is missing, and I’ve been paid to find her.

  “Where did you see her last?” I ask him.

  “A week ago last Sunday. She came to a few open circles. She’s one of those people who’re looking for something, but they’re not sure what. The kind of kid that Childe bastard’s supposed to prey on.”

  “Childe?”

  “Yeah, that was the last time I saw him, too. A bunch of us got together and asked him to leave....”

  The memory evaporated with a slap-ding from the next table.

  I tried to hold on to it, but that made it escape all the faster. The young man in my memory was the same one who read my fortune in his cards. Again I was hearing Childe’s name, again I was looking for someone....

  Am I a cop?

  “... The King of Swords, not a great surprise since he deals with law enforcement...”

  The poet moved a pawn. Slap-ding.

  I cradled my espresso in my hands and thought that Sunfox had given me a lot of information outside of any debatable tarot reading. I looked into my cup and felt a wave of thirst and hunger wash over me, an intense and weakening feeling.

  I took a bite of Danish and my first sip of espresso.

  Queen takes pawn. Slap-ding.

  The coffee slammed into my stomach, constricting my throat. The liquid hit my stomach as if someone had napalmed my abdomen. My gut started spasming violently.

  Knight takes queen. Slap-ding.

  I managed to drop the mug on the table without spilling it all over myself. I had my hand over my mouth. I knew that I was going to throw up. It felt as if someone were slamming me with an ax handle.

  Rook takes pawn, checkmate. Slap-ding.

  I stumbled the dozen feet to the rest rooms barely in time. I could feel the contents of my stomach rising as I pushed open the door. I was kneeling over the bowl before the door had swung shut behind me. It took me ten minutes to expel that single mouthful of coffee; it felt like an hour.

  The worst part of all was the steely taste of blood that came with it. I couldn’t ignore it, much as I wanted to. Streaking the bowl, swirling with the ugly liquid mass, were trails of bright crimson. The sight of it made me nearly too weak to stand.

  As I got unsteadily to my feet, I knew I could no longer pretend that I was okay. Okay people don’t vomit blood.

  I turned around and leaned over the sink. My eyes refused to meet the mirror, even though I still wore my sunglasses. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I still felt a perverse thread of denial. It was only a little blood, after all.

  I laughed, though I didn’t feel at all amused. I was in serious trouble. However well I felt when I woke up, right now I was light-headed from hunger, and probably thirst. My gut was too torn up to handle anything without puking. I needed a doctor.

  I ran water into my cupped hands and drank a tiny amount. It washed the taste from my mouth, but from the tightening in my stomach I knew that drinking any more would send me back to the john.

  I had a longing thought about the three bucks’ worth of pastry sitting back at my table, and almost threw up again. I finally raised my face to look at myself in the mirror.

  “Kane,” I whispered, “you look like shit.”

  Part of my face was obscured by a “Silence=Death” bumper sticker. But what I saw showed that, whatever was wrong with me, it must have been getting rapidly worse. I certainly didn’t remember looking this pale back at the motel. The stubble on my chin looked black against my skin, and my lips were almost white. Shadows carved out too much of my skull on my face.

  I backed out of the bathroom.

  Behind me I heard a familiar voice say, “Kane, what the hell happened to you?”

  I turned around to face Sam. I was expending what little exhausted effort I had to keep from shaking. I knew him, and the sight of his face inspired a feeling of trust that mana
ged to find its way past my lack of memory. I knew this man was a friend, even though I couldn’t remember him.

  “Sam,” I said. “Get me out of here.”

  4

  Sam helped me out of the coffee shop. I was past embarrassment or any worries about being noticed. He supported me even though he was a head shorter than I was. It wasn’t until we were outside and the snow was biting my face that Sam asked again, “What happened to you?”

  “Get me to a car,” I whispered. “I need to see a doctor.”

  The whole world felt distorted, wrong. I still tasted my own blood, and I felt as if blood tainted my other senses. Colors were too vivid. The street lamps shone like magnesium flares. Each windblown snowflake was a pin piercing my skin. The only warmth I felt was from Sam’s neck against my hand.

  He lay me against the side of a red Saturn and began fumbling for keys. As he did so, a question came to me, unbidden. “How’s Gail doing?”

  “She’s as well as she can be after losing her mother. We’ve a car watching her.” He pulled the passenger door open and said, “She’s worried about her dad, and so am I. What’s wrong? This isn’t just a missing kid anymore, is it?”

  I slipped into the passenger seat and placed my face in my hands. “Kate is dead, isn’t she?” My voice had degraded to a whisper. “My wife is dead.”

  Sam gripped my shoulder. “Christ, what’s wrong with you? You identified the body—”

  The smell of blood somehow reaches me through the smell of disinfectant and alcohol. She lies on a stainless-steel table like dozens more I’ve seen before. I haven’t had to see this since I left the force. I never wanted to see this place again.

  Seeing Kate here is almost unbearable. It would be unbearable even if they hadn’t torn at her body. There is an awful stillness, a motionlessness that’s perverse and unnatural. Sam is there, holding my arm. He is the only reason I haven’t fallen to my knees.

  “Kane?” Sam shook me out of the memory. “Are you with me? Are you going to tell me what the problem is?”