Hound of Eden Omnibus

by James Osiris Baldwin

  The eyeless man pushed his head forward a little, fixing me with unblinking nothingness. He was still smiling. “What? Don’t remember your old buddy’s name?”

  Under the frigid gravity of his stare, I did remember his name... But if I spoke it, it would unmake me.

  “They call you the ManyShaped.” I exhaled thinly, nostrils clenching in, and joined him at the table. The wood was cool and hard against my thighs, the wind hot and smoky with the remains of the fire that had torn through the forest. I couldn’t remember how I’d arrived… but the chair and the tension felt very real. “The NO Thing.”

  “Nothing? Do I look like ‘nothing’ to you? You just call me Patroclus. Mister P.” He smiled with teeth. They were gleaming white. "You like my little story?"

  “That wasn’t your story,” I said, sourly.

  “Sure it was. It’s the greatest story around, and I tell all the best stories. Always have. In fact, there wouldn’t be a story if it wasn’t for me.” Mister P – the name was as good as any other – motioned to the board. “I mean, look at this. Best chess board in the universe, I’d say. Only the best for you, Alexi. You played this growing up, but think about it: you can’t play chess without black and white, can you?”

  I looked, studying the pieces. The white and blue pieces that I could make out were carved with near-perfect realism. Some of them were blurred out in my vision, while others stood out in sharp relief, bearing the features of people I remembered and people I had never met. The pawns were all individual. Two of them were small, fierce, beautiful men, their long hair frozen in flashes of ivory, swords and spears in their hands. Vassily stood with his arms crossed over his chest, a crook and flail in his hands. His piece was beside that of a large stranger, a man with clenched fists and one lifted knee, balanced like a fighter on his other foot. There were others, their faces and forms mostly indistinct. Crina was visible among them. Her piece had her crouched in a perfectly carved torn dress, an AK-47 braced against her shoulder.

  The knights were weird tentacle creatures, something like an octopus mated to a plate of cooked spaghetti. The rooks were Gift Horses. The one on the left was Zarya, her eyes open and blazing blue. Her hand was extended, her finger pointed forward. The other rook was an older man I didn’t recognize, but whose aquiline, proud face transfixed me with a desire so intense and so powerful that for a moment, I thought I would choke. He held and aimed two revolvers, a preacher’s hat low over his face, a long coat frozen in elegant waves around his boots.

  “What is this?” I whispered.

  Mister P beamed like a proud father. “See? I told you. Only the best.”

  The king was someone else I didn’t know. He was huge, bald, his face craggy with determination. He carried a flamethrower, and his expression was one of mingled joy and bloodlust. The queen piece… was me, prim and straight-backed, a knife raised up high in my hands, my ivory eyes downcast. I was looking down, as if preparing to strike a sacrifice on an unseen altar.

  My opponent was playing with amorphous blocks. The features on them were unrecognizable. When I frowned, trying to make out their shapes, Mister P clicked his tongue.

  “Now, now,” he chided. “No cheating. What’s your wager?”

  “You leave, and I get something to eat.” I didn’t even hesitate. Even in the dream – and it had to be a dream – I was delirious for need of food.

  “Suits me.” Mister P shrugged, suit jacket sighing across his upper arms. “But a man’s time is worth more than some chow, you know. Your move.”

  It felt strange to be on the attack. I was still reeling from the scale of the victimization of Eden, and the moaning sky mocked me as we began, furiously focused over the board. I played the Vienna Opening, one of the most aggressive plays for white, a set of tactics I’d perfected in high school against Vassily. My opponent fell silent, barely considering his moves in response to mine. Finally, there were none left to make.

  “Checkmate,” he finally said.

  I laughed, a short, harsh sound of derision. “Liar. It’s a stalemate. You can’t move, and neither can I.”

  Mister P’s brows twitched, though he didn’t frown. He was still smiling, though the corners of his mouth were unpleasantly twisted at the corners. When he spoke, the jolly Southern accent had faded into cool nothingness, clipped and formal. “We’ll see about that, won’t we? Go, then… enjoy the bounty your dead GOD so generously provides for you.”

  “Even though it’s a draw?” My eyes narrowed.

  “Sure. Man’s got to eat,” he said. “But I won’t leave. Ceteris paribus.”

  All things being equal. I stood back, wary now. “I don’t want you in me.”

  “Too bad, pardner.” The smile turned into a grin. “I’m in everyone you know. Bon appétit.”

  Disquieted, I left the clearly, picking my way down the soft, fire-warmed path. I heard Patroclus sweep the pieces off the table… and heard them hit the ground, thumping as they fell. He threw the board next, his sounds of rage receding as I picked my way through the ashen path, out of the clearing, and into the woods. The wasteland stretched for what felt like a quarter of a mile or so before it began to green.

  The laughter of crows led me to a rotted stump fence, just like the one at Bozya Akra. No… it was Bozya Akra. I recognized the shallow hillocks, the freshly turned-over earth covering Snappy Joe Grassia. Standing up from his grave was a single tree, a strange horsetail-like tree on which grew a lamb, dripping with nectar. Disconcerted, I approached. The lamb’s feet padded slowly in the air, as if it too were dreaming. It had to be a dream. I knew what this thing was: it was a Yeduah, The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, something straight out of Jewish myth.

  My stomach growled at the smell of meat and honey. Compulsively, I reached out and pulled it to my mouth. The lamb didn’t react as I bit into its flesh, more fruit than beast, and its meat parted under my teeth with an indescribable sweetness. I ate like a starving animal. It tasted like Zarya, like incense and honeysuckle and pure magic: a taste so familiar, so poignant, so powerful that it woke me up.

  To the smell of rotten meat.

  I was squatting in the middle of a cracked, wet road. There was a dead raccoon on the ground between my feet. The head was destroyed, mashed into the pavement. The rest of the animal was torn apart like a bag of trash, limbs splayed, guts tumbled across the ground. I was halfway through cramming handfuls of it into my mouth.

  Dizzy, I looked up to see a group of young men staring at me from down the way. They had sticks and bats in their hands, and they were staring at me in abject confusion. I stared back, waiting for my stomach to turn. But it didn’t.

  “Holy freakin’ shit, man.” One of the kids said.

  I willed myself to feel ill. I strove for nausea, and found nothing except confusion and dawning distant horror as, mechanically, I continued to chew. The stench should have been overwhelming. The odor of rot was definitely present, but my body and brain interpreted the smell as meat. Food. The pain in my gut was gone. And I felt… okay. Not well, but stronger.

  To my right was the Eee-Zee-Pawn. The sun was high overhead, but it was a cold, dim white disk through the rain. The boys had the look of looters. One of them, the largest, was carrying an empty duffel bag.

  “Whatever you planning, you might just want to turn around and fuck right off,” I said. Speaking English for the first time in weeks, and as tired as I was, my accent was thick. The mouthful of raccoon didn’t help.

  They didn’t move until I stood up, which made them shift back like a herd of frightened horses. I took a single step forward, lunging and stamping a foot. The one with the bag hitched his loose pants, and without a word, the group walked away into the rain.

  I swallowed, and idly noticed that I still had very little sense of taste. That didn’t mean I could bear to turn myself back to the dead animal on the ground. I washed up as best I could outdoors, drank some trapped rainwater, and went back to my shelter. The queasiness didn’t really hit
until I lay down again. No amount of water was able to chase the dulled taste of filth and rotten flesh. It burned a hole in my mouth the way that the sudden, crushing humiliation burned a hole through my soul.

  I was drenched from my sleepwalk, and worse, the ground was sodden. The sloped roof was keeping the worst out, but it was still dripping through the seams of the cardboard around me. I rolled back, huffing as I tried to sit up, and accidentally put my foot through the wall. Water splashed down and hit the makeshift mattress.

  "Blyat’ suka!” It was hopeless. With a sheet of cardboard over my head as a makeshift umbrella, I rolled the empty dumpster to the end of the alley and pitched it onto its side. There was nothing in it but crumpled plastic sheeting and soda cartons. I gutted it and crawled inside with my bag. It was bigger than the lean-to, thought the reek of old milk clung to the walls and floor. It didn't matter: I already smelled like a graveyard ghoul, and the dumpster was dry.

  Curled on my side, the knife resting under my hand, I slept for a third time. This time, I did not dream.

  I knew as soon as I woke up the next morning that I did not have the strength to mug a newborn kitten. I barely had the strength to drag myself out of the dumpster. To my disgust, my body yearned to go back to the raccoon and finish what I’d started. I was still crouched on my heels outside my new residence, wondering what the fuck to do, when someone rounded the corner and started down the alley: A bearded black guy, thin, with rolling white eyes and big white teeth that were both on display.

  "Hey!” He called out. “The fuck you think you’re doin’ out here?"

  What to say? I cleared my throat. "This is your shop?"

  "Damn right this is my shop, my alley, and my fuckin’ dumpster. Now get the hell out." He pulled a set of keys from his jacket, staring me down. There was a wire-screen door set in the wall to my left.

  "People giving you trouble around here?" I jerked my head to the door.

  “I ain’t worried about no trouble.” His eyes narrowed.

  “I stopped three guys from robbing your store last night,” I shot back. “How about that?”

  He paused for a moment, wavering in place. “You did what?”

  “Kids were trying to steal your shit. I stopped them.” I shoved the fatigue and the pain and the loss down under the mask, the game face. Talking my way out of things had never been a native talent. It was Vassily who had taught me how to spin, with his easy grin and expressive hands. He was a consummate salesman, the kind of man who turned money out of other people's fantasies. A magician in his own right. My heart ached.

  "You did? You ain't no fuckin' bum." The pawnster’s mouth quirked to one side. Curiosity, I hoped.

  I shrugged. "It’s true. Help me out, and I’ll keep people away from your store."

  "What? You for fuckin' real?" He grinned broadly, but his shoulders relaxed. "You fuckin' serious?"

  Pitch a benefit, Vassily told me. Never look away from their eyes. Don't touch your nose. Try and smile, when they do. Don't tell them that you need anything – make it all about them. Make them feel good, powerful, and you'll get whatever you want.

  "Of course," I said. "There’re all kinds of things in your store people around want, right? TVs, jewelry. I'll watch this place."

  "Well, I don’t want no drugs near my shop, okay? You a junkie, you know, a drug addict?"

  "Americans don't like anything that's too free, if you know what I mean. So you pitch someone, and they ask you what it'll cost. So give them another benefit, then a high price." Vassily had told me to expect this question, in its many variants.

  "High?" I asked him. I remember clearly how little sense it made.

  "High prices are more believable," he'd replied, smooth as an oiled razor over soft leather. They give you room to cut a deal.

  My price wasn't that high right now. "I’m no junkie. All I want is food. A sandwich or something, for trade."

  "So you gonna live in my dumpster and chase off gangbangers for sandwiches?" He regarded me with plain disbelief. "And that's all you want? No girl or crack or anythang?"

  I grimaced. "Only drug I want comes in a cup with cream and sugar."

  He laughed out loud, and moved further in to the alley. "Man, you one funny son of a bitch. Right, fine. You watch the street as much as you want, shorty. I'll get you a damn sandwich and some coffee. What’s your name?"

  I was mildly disgusted at how pleased I was: the risen feeling of expectancy, the raw, base need to eat. When he asked me my name, I blurted out the first I could think of. “Rex. You?”

  "Me? Ali. You Italian, Rex?" Ali watched me from the corner of his eye as he unlocked the door. "You look Italian."

  I shrugged in a way that could have meant yes or no. “Just not from around here.”

  "Fuck if I don't believe it. Insha’Allah." Ali shook his head as he went inside, the door banging shut behind him.

  There was nothing to do except rest and recoup, and hope he'd bought the deal. I lay down again, but was too tired and too wired to sleep, so I glanced at the bag across and rifled through it properly. There was a five-dollar bill in a jeans pocket, and my spirits lifted briefly before slumping again. I'd packed proper full-finger gloves, at least. Tucked deep into the corner of the calico bag was a blue velvet pouch I didn't recognize. Frowning, I pulled the cord and tipped the contents into my palm.

  It was a tarot deck: a fresh black-and-white set of BOTA cards. The Builders of the Adytum were an Occult organization who published small, uncolored tarot cards. The Wheel of Fortune was on the top of the stack. Amused and somewhat disconcerted, I turned the next card. The Chariot, card of mastery, and beneath that, the five of pentacles. Kutkha couldn't speak to me directly... but perhaps there were other ways we could communicate.

  The thought brought an odd smile to my mouth, and a stirring in my belly and chest that had nothing to do with hunger. I shuffled the cards, nearly fumbling them with clumsy cold fingers, ran one slowly along the edge of the deck, and drew one out. The Star; the 17th Major Arcana card of the tarot. One of the cards of hope.

  "Alexi's psychic readings.” I repeated one of the jokes Vassily had made when he was still alive, echoing him without irony. “Five bucks a pop.”

  I slot the card back in the deck and sighed, leaning back into my makeshift shelter. The fullest extent of my hope, at that moment, was that Ali wouldn’t flake out on me and he’d come back out with the coffee and his promised sandwich.

  Chapter 7

  The urges caused by the upir blood peaked on the dawn of the second day, leaving me unable to rise, arms wrapped around my tearing, aching abdomen. My dreams felt prophetic, even portentous, but they were confusing and disconnected from any greater meaning. I dreamed of the Garden. I saw places I’d never been, heard the names of people I’d never met. The vision I’d had the first time I’d touched Gift Horse blood, down in Jana’s oratory, haunted me from a million different angles. Another me chased Zarya to the ocean’s edge over and over again.

  True to his word, Ali bought me food and coffee in the mornings. He was a recent convert to Islam and a Gulf War veteran who’d been discharged with chemical burns, and it turned out that he really was having trouble with the store. On the third night of my stay, the kids who’d found me eating the raccoon came back around and tried to smash in Ali’s windows with a brick. I went at them with razor in one hand, knife in the other, and chased them all the way down to the waterside. When I told Ali about it the next morning, he started adding steak to the sandwiches.

  Fifteen bucks was enough to buy a sharpie, some colored pencils, a cheap cushion, soap, vinegar and baking soda. The first thing I did when my energy began to recoup was clean out the dumpster – my kennel, Ali joked – and wash my body and my clothes. On day four, I took the subway to Times Square and set up camp in the mouth of a narrow alley facing the street. On one side, I lay a bowl of salt. On the other, I set up a sign: Fortune Telling and Tarot Readings – $5.

  While I waited,
I started coloring in the monotone tarot cards. I was well onto The Emperor when a yuppie in a navy suit and white loafers stopped and looked down at me.

  "Hey buddy, wanna tell me my fortune? I'm a, uhm, a Taurus, I think."

  I rolled my eyes up from the card, pencil poised. "Lay down the five and ask a question."

  "Fuck you." He threw up his finger and stalked off into the swirling crowd of suits, umbrellas, and teased hair.

  After that, the sign read: Fortune telling and tarot readings – $5. No stupid questions.

  It worked well enough. I began making money, ridiculously small amounts of money I fed into food, water, packing tape, and a screwdriver.

  The tape and screwdriver were for boosting cars. On the evening of the ninth day, I jacked a hatchback and drove out to Brighton Beach to case my apartment. I pulled up along Banner Avenue, hunched down in the seat with my cap pulled low, and watched the upstairs window. The plants that lined the kitchen windowsill were still green, and sure enough, the lights were on. Someone started moving around inside come six o'clock.

  I knew of a prolific Polak hitman called The Iceman, one of the top names who worked with one of the big Italian families out of the Gemini Club. He'd had a long, successful career, mostly due to a policy of periodically culling all of his friends. Watching the shadow passing back and forth in my kitchen, I wished I’d thought to do the same thing. Nic was too thorough by half. But how had they gotten in past the wards? Ah... dammit. The Wardbreaker.

  Nine days turned into two weeks. I got to know the gangs in the area. They were more curious than hostile: everyone wanted to know why some crazy Euro bum was living in a dumpster near Ali’s store, hounding off anyone who tried to fence his TVs. The cigarettes I'd taken from the Yao Shing dockworker came in handy. Guys with names like Dogg – with two G’s – Kenny Main and Choonie got smoking and talking with me during the daytime. My low opinion of the police and my ability to teach them some Krav Maga went a long way.