No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) (7 page)

“Eric,” he
said and kissed him lightly on both cheeks before turning to me. “Welcome,
we’ve been waiting for you.”

He
repeated the gesture on me. I tried not to flinch as his face brushed against
mine. It was cold and greasy, almost like a corpse. I caught something salty
and spicy coming off him, and I shivered inwardly. It wasn’t a smell I recognized,
but it put me in mind of something only half alive.

Gently he
led me forward and pressed down on my shoulder, forcing me, however softly, to
kneel. A woman came around from behind me, carrying an object wrapped in cloth.
She handed it to the yellow King, who unwrapped it carefully as Eric took a
place just behind him.

It was a
mask, but not one made from plaster — rather from some sort of heavy ceramic.
He held it up to what light came in through the windows. I could see flecks of
what I thought was rust dotted along its edge, near a series of small holes.

He handed
it to Eric. The woman who’d carried it moved around behind me and gripped my
shoulders. She gradually applied pressure and pinned me in place. Eric smiled
down at me, but it wasn’t out of love. It was lopsided now, almost manic.

I
understood what was coming next and I realized what he’d promised them — what
he had to deliver so we could both be together, here in this place, no matter
the shape we were both in. Love is a kind of death — the giving of one soul
willingly to another. The obliteration of self and the act of creating
something other from two wholes, so giving becomes a kind of sacrifice, one to
another.

Eric kept
smiling his crazy smile as he moved the mask towards my face. There was a bit
where the mouth was, so I wouldn’t be able to speak once it was on. I knew what
the holes were for, and what I’d thought was rust wasn’t.

He was
still smiling when something small and cold pricked against the side of my head
and what could only have been a hammer connected with it.

The bit
reduced my screams to choked gobbles and sobs, and when the hammer stopped,
they filled in the eyes.

I’ve
watched the young couple living in my house, though I haven’t looked with my
eyes. I don’t need them to see anymore. Able to reach out from the lakeshore,
except it’s not a lake I’m standing next to, I can feel she is more open than
he is. All it takes is time.

Carcosa is beyond
death, and time is all we have.

One of
the women wore a necklace of scalpels and syringes around her neck.

After the
fire, they found rooms in the house that were absent from the original plans.
Although the dead were badly burned, the investigators identified both male and
female among them. The oldest was nineteen. The way they’d been found — the
rooms they were kept in — suggested the reason they were there.

Wade
handed me a thick file. She was agent in charge for this part of the border.

“There are
three dozen reports in there,” she said. “As many missing person cases as we
can fit to what we have.”

I was
surprised they got that many and told her so.

“A coyote
turned state’s evidence,” she said, passing another folder over. “Unrelated
case, but what she told us fits.”

“King.
Carcosa and Qassilda…you think they’re involved?”

“Beyond
owning the building, we can’t prove they knew about anything that went on
inside that place.”

That
place
. Everyone knew about “that
place” and enough of the details about what went on inside. The rest could be
filled in, which was worse than bare fact.

It was
hard to credit King, Carcosa, and Qassilda with not knowing about any of it.

Officially,
the three were partners in the law firm that carried their names, but reality
was murkier.

This side
of the border, there wasn’t much they didn’t have their hands in. Rather than
lawyers, the three were like little emperors. Nothing moved without their
knowing about it. Legal or illegal, it was all the same to them. No one ever
proved it, was all. “They’ll know why I’m there,” I muttered.

“Yeah,
can’t be helped at this point. You’ll be alone as far as they know.” I didn’t
like that, but let her explain.

“Local
sheriff knows, man by the name of Carr. A surveillance team will shadow you.
The less visible our profile is, the more at ease they’ll be.”

I still
didn’t like it, but I couldn’t fault her — not really. If they thought it was a
full-blown investigation, then they would shut down whatever business they were
doing. In terms of waiting games, they could outlast us and they knew it.

One agent
with local support would make them wary, but not overly so — at least in
theory. It would suggest the bureau wasn’t looking too closely at them, but
more at the events surrounding the house itself.

“What
happens if it goes to the wall?”

Wade
looked at me and offered the only answer people in her position can at times
like this. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

I arrived
in town near sun up, when the light from the dawn was turning the sand and
hills a deep shade of terracotta. I’d been to places like this all along the
border. In my experience, each is the same, but different in subtle ways.

Each has
its own kind of bleakness, standing at an edge I find most places in when they
can’t seem to decide where they should begin or end. For the people who live in
them, the rest of the world may as well not exist. There’s only the borderland,
and it’s a place where the normal rules don’t always apply.

My phone
buzzed in my pocket, and fifteen minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot
of a diner near a patch of wasteland. Carr’s SMS told me I couldn’t miss the
sign, and he was right.

He was
waiting for me, leaning against the side of his cruiser and sipping from a
plastic cup. A second cup was resting on the hood; for me, I assumed. Carr
wasn’t what I expected. Tall, but wiry where a lot of local law I met along the
border were beefy older men, almost all sporting some kind of handle-tache.

Wade never
gave me his file, only a contact number. To be honest, he looked too young to
be the sheriff of a border town. A soul patch dotted his chin, of all things.
Couldn’t help but wonder how that went over with some of the locals, but then,
he was an elected official. I figured he was doing something right.

“Agent
Schrader,” he greeted me.

I took his
hand, but wasn’t surprised by the grip. Something had to offset his offbeat
look — offbeat at least in terms of small-town lawmen.

“Pleased
to meet you.”

“Call me
Jack,” I told him. “Most people do.” “Will do, most people just call me Carr.”

He handed
me the untouched cup. It was still warm despite the chill in the morning air. I
knew by midday the temp would be pushing higher, enough to make people slow and
maybe a little irritable.

“Your
chief was a little vague on the details of how you’re to go about your business
down here.”

It was
better for him if it stayed that way. He seemed like an easy guy to like, and
Wade wouldn’t have brought him into the loop unless she knew something about
him. Time to see why, I thought.

“How do
you know her?” I asked.

Carr
pushed his hat back on his head and smiled laconically. It was a gesture meant
for an older man, but it seemed to fit his features.

“Worked
DEA taskforce for a while,” he said, tapping his tin star. “Didn’t always wear
this, but most of my files are probably still redacted.”

A phone
call to Wade could confirm it, but she probably wouldn’t offer much else beyond
what he said. I dropped it and got back to the case. “What do you have on King
and his associates?”

“Not
enough juice to spit,” he replied, tipping his coffee back. “They’re good at
staying squeaky clean, aside from a few accusations here and there. No
investigations stick to those fuckers, and it’s not for lack of trying.”

The
picture he painted was that everyone knew exactly what they did, but proving it
in a court of law was another matter.

“You ever
see anything like what they found in the house?”

His cup
was halfway to his mouth when I asked. Carr held it where it was and looked
inside, as though he was searching for the right way to answer.

“Saw some
things the cartels did along the corridor, but nothing quite like that.”

Carr was
probably undercover before he dropped out to see out the rest of his useful
time in a sleepy border town. I wondered if he’d thought about what could
happen in a place like this, or if he just wanted a way out.

“Disappearances?”
I prompted.

“No.” He
shook his head and finished bringing his cup to his lips. “At least nothing
since I came here. I’m still looking through the files from the last sheriff.”

“You know
him?”

“Nah, but
he died, from what I hear. Heart attack.”

Wade
hadn’t told me if the overwatch team would arrive ahead of me or on my heels. There
was no way I could actually know there was a team following me. Contacting them
wasn’t in the plan for this.

The whole
thing was a risk. I wasn’t unsupported, but this was about as far from normal
procedure as I could imagine.

“Where do
we start?” he asked me. “The scene, can you take me there?”

Carr
nodded and gestured at his cruiser. “You wanna follow me, or hop in?” “I’ll
follow. Best we don’t seem too chummy.”

“Fair
point,” he agreed, flicking his eyes left and right quickly. “Never know who’s
watching, especially where these fucks are concerned.”

It
occurred to me then that I didn’t entirely know if I could trust Carr. Sealed
records and Wade’s apparent trust aside, he could’ve been gotten to. I didn’t
have the luxury to question it, though. I just went with what I felt — that he
was a good man despite all the shit he carried now.

The house
was a charred wreck. Blackened timbers and brickwork all tumbled together as
though a child kicked it over before dousing it and tossing a match. Yellow
crime scene tape fluttered in the morning breeze; streamers flapping and
snapping open to let anyone inside. The place felt profane.

That’s not
the right word for it, exactly, but there was nothing good about it.

Out of the
way and shielded by scraggly hills on three sides, it was just the sort of
place where something horrific could happen without anyone knowing. Carr
must’ve read something in my face.

“Creeps me
out too,” he said, pushing his hat back from his forehead. “Bad place to end
up, given what’s inside.”

“You ever
get much traffic through town heading this way?”

“No, there
are dirt roads snaking all around here,” he said, pointing west and east for
emphasis. “If you knew where to go, you could slip in and out without anyone
noticing.”

I imagined
that was just what happened. I doubted the men who came here to do the things
they did knew each other’s names.

“What’s
the play here, boss?”

I thought
for a moment, knelt, and scooped up a handful of loose sand. “As far as
anyone’s concerned, there’s an investigation.”

“I hear a
‘but’ coming on the end of that.”

“It’s
stalled because of lack of evidence…no manpower, yadda, yadda.” The grains
drifted through my fingers to be snatched away by the wind.

“It’ll
fly,” he said behind me, accompanied by the snap of a lighter and the crackle
of a cigarette. “Sure I can manage to spread that around the station and the
Lantern.”

“Lantern?”
I brushed my hands together. “Local bar.”

Nodding, I
rose and walked forward towards the house, but stopped where the ground started
to blacken.

It felt
wrong to be here.

I’ve been
to dozens of scenes, most about as bad as you can imagine. This was different
for some reason. The idea of what this place had been reached inside me and
pulled. I was glad I didn’t have time for anything but coffee.

“Got you
set up in the Southway Inn just on the edge of town. Only place there is.”

Habit said
I should’ve gone inside, but the idea felt worn through here, like the place
was fraying it at the edges. The ruined walls seemed to give off a kind of
static charge; I could almost hear it like the drone of flies.

“Got one
of those to spare?” I asked him, and he fished out the crumpled pack and handed
me one along with a lighter. I’d given up a few years ago, but one wasn’t going
to kill me.

Need felt
excited here; underneath the taste of the cigarette, I felt an urge for a
drink. More than one, in fact.

That
night, I sat perched on the end of the bed in my hotel room. The room was
small, but it served.

Staring
out the window at the parking lot, I watched a stray dog amble past. It stopped
and stared at me for what felt like a long time, but was probably only minutes.

The look
in its eyes was a hungry one, and its body testified to that.

I thought
of that place and what those kids must’ve been through. Years on the job don’t
stop those kinds of thoughts; if anything, they only get worse.

It’s a
cliché because it’s true: you try to understand the mindset of people who would
do such things. Your mind rebels at the prospect, and a hole opens somewhere
inside you. The hole is black, like a chasm, but the wind that billows up from
it is hot as though an animal waits in the depths.

There’s a
kind of call in it, urging you to jump, but if you do that you’ll never find
your way out again. There is no bottom to that abyss. I saw more than one
friend fall in. It was usually the last thing they did before quitting the job
or ending up in the cemetery.

This town
was like a hundred other black holes along the border, except this one opened
deeper than most.

Why
this town?

The answer
was obvious, but if the three fuckers — as Carr had called them — were
involved, it was a ballsy move for them. It left them exposed to all manner of
scrutiny, notwithstanding their past ability to shrug it off.

Either they
no longer cared, or they were certain nothing could be connected to them.

I was raw
inside, like someone had run wire wool through my veins. There was a bad taste
in my mouth — faintly metallic and chalky. Ants crawled behind my eyes and I
couldn’t reach them to make it stop.

The bed
was too hard, but right then and there, it felt like the comfiest thing in the
world.

When I
fell into it, it was like being swallowed, and the darkness of the room caved
in around me in a cascading pool as I drifted off.

The town
had one street of any worth, and most of it was boarded up. I’d read the same
story in other places, staining and scrawled across the plywood covering
windows and doors.

When
people saw me, they looked away. Whether shame or fear or just indifference was
hard to say, but they weren’t why I was here. Not really, at any rate.

Carr’s
officer fit the stereotype, even if he didn’t. Papers piled high and an army of
coffee mugs with dark runnels smudging the rims and sides. His hair was bound
up in a tail, worked so he could hide it under his hat. Shot through with grey
streaks, it made him look older than I’d first thought.