Gluttony Bay Page 4

  “That’s almost poetry,” Marcus praises him. “And yeah, you were. Now you’re going to do what we say.”

  Droopy’s eyes look to the corners of the screen. “I remember these,” he says. “I did my best work in them. Nobody believed children in those days. Humans were so wonderfully, willfully ignorant of reality. Not so anymore. I blame the Internet.”

  “So, that was your gig?” Marcus asks. “Take the form of a toon in a kiddy show, use it to siphon the essence of the kiddies?”

  “Innocence was a heavily traded commodity, even in those days,” Droopy assures him.

  “Right. And was that a union gig, or were you working freelance?”

  “I escaped from the bowels of hell before it became fashionable.”

  “I see. Were you human once? Some kind of Chester Molester or serial killer or both?”

  “Who remembers anymore?” Droopy laments.

  “So, Allensworth’s people eventually caught up with you, and instead of returning you to hell, he stuck you in this building’s protection charm.”

  “You’re very sharp, sir.”

  Marcus looks up at Cindy, who shrugs.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he says to the ensnared spirit. “I’ve got a new deal for you. I’m not going to tell you we’ll set you free, because that ain’t ever fuckin’ happening while I’m alive. But if you go along with our little system reprogramming efforts here, I can promise you you’ll finally taste blood again. And this time, it’ll either be Allensworth or his people or both.”

  Droopy is quiet at first, but his normally forward-focused eyes turn up toward Marcus.

  Eventually, his jowls spread in a menacing grin, so disturbing and unnatural to behold on the face of a cartoon designed and drawn to make children laugh.

  “You’re a bastard up to my own heart, sir.”

  Marcus laughs, shaking his head. He looks up at Cindy once more.

  “Feeling me now?” he asks.

  Cindy drops her head in an effort to hide the grin she can’t suppress.

  Marcus looks to Hara. “Big man?”

  Hara lifts one frying-pan hand and shakes it in a “so-so” gesture.

  It’s Cindy’s turn to laugh.

  Marcus smiles. “I’ll take it all day.”

  HOME VISIT

  The front door to Lena and Darren’s apartment is open when Bronko arrives, after hours and out of his executive chef whites.

  He refuses to be alarmed, at least right away, despite the deep sense of dread Bronko feels bubbling just beneath the acidic surface in his guts. A lot of folks who are comfortable in their little secure old buildings leave their doors open, he reasons. The super could be making some late-night emergency repairs. Lena could’ve run across the hall for just a moment to a neighbor’s place.

  There are a million explanations, none of them even the least bit reassuring to him in that moment.

  He steps inside.

  Everything appears, at a first glance, to be in order. None of the furniture is disturbed. The television set is off, as are most of the lights. Bronko flicks the switch nearest to the front door, illuminating the foyer and pieces of the kitchenette and living room.

  “Tarr? Are you home? Your damn door is open, girl!”

  No answer.

  Bronko wanders tentatively through the apartment, checking out the kitchen first, then walking over to the short hallway that leads to the bedrooms and bathroom. He flicks more light switches and briefly checks each room, finding nothing but made beds and dry showers. He returns to the living room, eyeing the couch, debating plunking down and waiting for someone to return or locking the door on his way out.

  As he mulls those two options, Bronko’s eyes lazily scan the foyer. They catch on a tiny flash of red glinting under the light beside the door. He moves around the couch and walks over to the spot, ignoring his aching joints and compressed fat parts as he crouches down to examine it. There’s yellow in the red, and it feels chalky as he drags a thumbnail against the stain.

  It’s blood.

  “Our mop-up crews aren’t what they once were, I’m afraid,” Allensworth says from the open doorway. “These new immigration laws are making it hard on everyone.”

  Bronko quickly stands, brain fizzing and fury in his eyes.

  “What’d you do to my girl?” he demands.

  “You see there, Byron? That’s precisely the issue. You became far too attached to this young woman too quickly. I imagine you see something of your younger self in her, and a potential protégée. That’s all understandable, but you’ve let it affect your judgment and, more importantly, your actions far too deeply. I simply can’t have it.”

  Bronko takes a purposeful step towards him. “You’re gonna tell me where she is, and she better be no worse off than when I last saw her.”

  Allensworth feigns hurt feelings. “Are you physically threatening me, Byron? Has it come to that between us?”

  “I got no reason left not to tear you apart from mouth to asshole except that girl.”

  “Really?”

  Allensworth reaches inside the blazer of his nondescript suit and removes a scroll capped at each end with ancient oak. He unfurls it with a flourish, revealing a two-foot document inked on papyrus in several languages, most of them deceased.

  Both his and Bronko’s signatures appear at the very bottom.

  Bronko barely glances at the contract.

  “You can give my damn soul to hell,” he says in the darkest of voices. “I don’t care anymore. But you ain’t gettin’ my people. Not a one of ’em.”

  “I’m not trotting out this document to remind you of your standing or obligations, Byron.”

  Allensworth reaches into his coat pocket with his other hand, and from it he produces a simple cocktail fork, holding it up for Bronko’s inspection.

  Bronko’s eyes slit, confused, and he hesitates.

  Allensworth, beatific smile on his face, presses the tines of the little fork to the surface of the contract and very gently drags it across the papyrus.

  The invisible claws that seize Byron’s innards in that moment reach a place inside him he’s never before consciously felt. They squeeze there, suffocating and cutting at the same time. It’s more painful and paralyzing than a heart attack, and occurring somewhere far deeper inside Byron. His knees fold and he collapses to the floor. His body is stiff and twisted, not even convulsing. He sputters and spittle flies from his lips, unable even to form sounds of agony.

  What seem like a million years later, inhumanly strong hands begin lifting Bronko from the floor. His vision is all morning fog, but through it he registers Allensworth standing idly to the side, still smiling.

  “I have a new job for you, Byron,” his very distant voice says. “A brand-new kitchen for you to run. You’re going to learn some much-needed lessons there, it is my sincere hope.”

  Bronko registers the words and their meaning, but he can’t find the questions he knows he should be asking in his mind. There are no questions.

  Eventually, there’s nothing but darkness.

  PART II

  WAKING UP

  SLACK

  Moon’s been knocking for five minutes at the door of Ryland’s disabled RV permanently parked in Sin du Jour’s loading dock. He’s ready to give up when he begins to hear rattling inside the vehicle, followed by the shatter of glass and what sounds like a witch from a Shakespearean play with tuberculosis.

  The door flies open so fast, Moon has to jump back to avoid catching it in the face.

  “What manner of uncivilized, clearly primordial creature,” Ryland demands, “thinks it proper to come calling at such a late hour of the evening?”

  “It’s the middle of the day, dude,” Moon informs him.

  Ryland pauses, squinting up at the afternoon sky.

  “That would explain why the moon has been uncustomarily and quite, I may say, ineffectively replaced by the sun.”

  “Look,” Moon begins, briskly, “Br
onko told me to report to you for alchemist lessons. He said we both need to ‘earn our keep,’ whatever in the hell that means.”

  Ryland doesn’t answer at first. Instead, he merely stares at Moon as if he were speaking Chinese, despite the fact Ryland’s Mandarin is quite adept.

  “I understand nothing of what you’ve just said, young man.”

  Moon sighs. “Dude, I don’t want to be here either, y’know? But Bronko’s talkin’ about cutting pay.”

  Ryland’s bloodshot eyes widen as much as he is physically capable of doing in his condition, which means he can still be construed as squinting.

  “Cutting pay?” he parrots back at Moon. “That’s outrageous! Has he any idea of the overhead a finely tuned operation like mine carries with it? The insurance? The upkeep? The . . . the . . . my medicinal . . .”

  He trails off, and Moon just watches him, half-fascinated and half-horrified.

  “Cutting pay!” Ryland repeats in terror.

  “Yeah, well . . . could you just teach me a few things?”

  “Teach you . . . what, precisely?”

  “I don’t know! When you turned those demonic Santa’s elves into stone, that was pretty badass. Teach me how to do that.”

  “I did no such thing!”

  “I saw you!”

  “You are clearly delusional!”

  “We were attacked by a demonic North Pole and you turned half a dozen of those fuckin’ things into lawn decorations. I was there.”

  “Child’s babble!”

  “Whatever, fine, let’s just forget it.”

  “You wish to learn alchemy? Very well, here’s all you need to know. It is a craft based around the concept of transmuting one thing from another. For instance, if I take this full bottle of fermented majesty,” Ryland continues, holding up one of the cheap brands of wine he swills, “could you turn it into . . . let’s say a pinch of the very fine marijuana you’ve clearly been smoking?”

  Moon is caught off-guard. He’s almost not sure he just heard what he clearly just heard.

  “Are you saying . . .”

  “I’m instituting your first lesson, and thus far, you’re an abysmal pupil.”

  Moon hesitates, then reaches inside his pocket and produces a small cellophane fold of pungent green vegetation.

  Ryland snatches it from him and pushes the wine into Moon’s chest until he accepts it.

  “There,” Ryland proclaims. “You’re an alchemist. Now, your next lesson will be turning this foliage into something smokable. Come inside.”

  Ryland disappears back into the RV with Moon’s weed.

  Moon, meanwhile, is left staring at the bottle in his hands. He looks up into the dark confines of the recreational vehicle and grins.

  “Okay, then,” he says. “These are my kind of lessons.”

  THE NEXUS OF SPIDERS AND SPIRITS

  The girl’s cries are angry winds echoing in a timeless canyon.

  Little Dove is staring at a handwoven rug hung as a tapestry over the north wall of the small tract home’s living room. The rug features colorful pictographs of four vaguely feminine figures. The two figures above have boxy heads and angular bodies with triangle hips, while the two below have been woven with larger diamond-shaped torsos, their legs reversed and red shapes stitched onto their bellies. They almost look like spiders with human heads.

  “She’s ready for you,” White Horse informs his granddaughter.

  Little Dove turns, watching him exit the room from which those cries continue to resound. She can smell the lingering spicy sting of burnt sage clinging to the air.

  “What is this?” she asks the old man, waving at the rug.

  “Spider Old-Woman, the spirit who taught our women how to build looms and weave. Do you recognize her?”

  Little Dove’s face compacts in an annoyed expression. “Why would I?”

  White Horse shrugs. “You’re seeing now, aren’t you?”

  She frowns. “I’m not the fucking Ghost Whisperer, Pop.”

  “Watch your mouth in other people’s houses, wiseass.”

  Little Dove seals her lips and gives him the finger.

  White Horse ignores the obscene gesture. “It’s time. She needs you in there.”

  “She needs you,” Little Dove insists.

  “You are ready for this.”

  White Horse steps aside and motions toward the open door to the bedroom.

  His granddaughter stares resentfully up at his ancient, lined face, practically marching past him like an angry battalion.

  The girl’s name is Marta, she’s nine years old, and her spirit is under siege by a darkness Little Dove can feel as she enters the room even if she can neither see nor understand it.

  The little girl is wearing a simple blue dress and no shoes or socks. Her parents have used towels as soft restraints to bind Marta to her bed. Her small body thrashes against them as she continues to squeal and cry. Her dark hair is pasted to the pillow with the same sweat that runs in heavy beads from her temples. Her eyes are affixed to the ceiling without actually seeing anything, and continually roll back into her head with her heaviest moans.

  Little Dove’s breath becomes shallow and sparse, and she can feel her heart throbbing against the wall of her chest. The blood in her veins feels electrified, the charge raising every tiny hair on her body.

  “Pop!” she calls to White Horse. “Please come in here! Please? I can’t—”

  His voice booms from the living room. “Stop running your mouth for once in your short little life and focus on what’s in front of you and around you!”

  Little Dove swallows, looking anywhere except at the tormented girl tied to her small bed. There is another energy in the room with them. Little Dove feels it like the warmth of a single sun ray cutting through clouds swollen black and filling the sky. She senses intention, a benevolent purpose reaching through the membranes separating the Fourth World from the Earthly plane. Little Dove concentrates, tuning out everything, the sensory input of the room around her, the encroaching malice of that dark force infecting Marta’s spirit, and even the myriad chaos of her own body and mind. She singles out that positive energy and exhales, doing everything she can to take it in and allow it to penetrate her.

  “It’s us!” she calls back to White Horse, a frantic relief in her voice. “It’s our people! Her people! Her ancestors and family that’ve gone beyond! I can hear them!”

  “They want to help the girl,” her grandfather says. “They’re trying to protect her, but they can’t breach the veil alone. You have to be the conduit. You have to guide them from their world to ours and give them the power they need to use their will. Without you, they’re wandering, lost, and the girl will be lost too.”

  “How do I guide them?”

  “Dammit, you know how, girl!” White Horse insists. “You know everything you need to know. If you can feel them and hear them, then you can reach them! Stop letting your fear and doubt control you. Be who you are, what you are! Let yourself become the Hatałii you were born to be!”

  She wants to argue with him, but Little Dove knows it’s futile. She also knows it’s not her grandfather’s decision, not really. She agreed to come here, to learn from him, to explore whatever it is she’s inherited that stirs within her, crackling and powerful like some caged beast growling to be free of its bars.

  It all comes down to one question: does she want this?

  Little Dove could go back to New York and become a baker under Nikki’s tutelage. She could reject it all, leave everything Navajo behind in this squalid place White Horse has brought her to. She tells herself they’re dying, all of them, and she doesn’t have to become extinct with them. She won’t be defined by something as random and out of her control as parentage or blood.

  Marta’s anguished cries pierce her thoughts and fill the space between Little Dove’s temples. Little Dove thinks of her parents then, her mother and father, who succumbed to the despair they inherited in different ways b
ut with the same fatal result. She remembers how much she wanted to help them both and how deeply it hurt when she found she could do nothing. Her mother cried like Marta, and those cries went unanswered until finally they ceased.

  They are her people, all of them. She can no more leave them behind than she can sever her own arm and lay it in the dust.

  Little Dove closes her eyes, her chin dropping to her chest as she raises her arms high, very much as she’s watched her grandfather do before speaking in a voice that radiates with power beyond an infirm old man’s possession. She can hear the voices of Marta’s ancestors crying out even more fiercely now, answering the call of the girl’s spirit in distress and under attack. Those voices and their energy are closer now but held back, restrained. Little Dove knows in that moment what the missing component is. She must let the darkness in, the malevolent energy filling this room as it spills out from Marta. She must open herself to it fully and use her own spirit to close the gap between the two opposing forces.

  Little Dove opens her eyes and stars directly at Marta for the first time. She focuses her gaze, letting her eyes be the open windows that allow the malicious thing poisoning the girl’s spirit to crawl inside of Little Dove as well. She feels the energy spark against her like a rusted plug in a faulty socket. She hears hundreds of young voices weeping in that darkness. They shed eternal tears there, trapped in the worst moment of their short lives. Little Dove realizes what malicious energy invades Marta’s spirit. Teen suicide has reached epidemic levels among indigenous tribes, and this reservation is no exception. Every young life given over to that crushing fear and defeat and depression leaves a mark behind, a stain of the most negative spiritual energy. When enough such marks converge, they form a psychic chasm, a sucking pit of pure spite that spreads like a virus, seeking new spirits to corrupt.

  Little Dove begins chanting, repeating the words learned from her grandfather. She becomes a nexus point in that moment, a bridge between Marta’s ancestral spirits and the blind, pure malevolence assaulting the girl. That spiritual energy, the sum of a thousand generations, rushes over the bridge to meet the darkness like a band of warriors pouring into the valley of their enemies. The two forces clash and the light pierces the malevolent pitch, overtaking it as light is forever destined to do when introduced to the darkness.