Ravenous Ghosts (3 page)

I had never considered the old man with the ruby eyes a friend but his face was a part of the neighborhood that had seen me grow into the fine, strapping young criminal that I became. And this most unpleasant of characteristics had brought me back to him tonight, to the bookstore with the name Kane didn
't like, to rob the old man.

"
So what pleases you on this dismal evening?" Arthur said with a silvery smile and winked, his wrinkled lid making a faint sucking sound as it slid over the scarlet gem in his eye socket. At my back, Kane snickered.

The rain hissed against the pavement outside, only slightly muted by the large plate glass windows. Kane
's boots clacked against the hardwood floor in a Morse code of impatience.

"
We're here for your money, Arthur. All of it."

If he
'd had an eyebrow, it would have risen where the pink bulb of flesh now wrinkled in surprise. Or was it amusement?

"
I see. Won't you check out my new comic line first? I managed to rescue some truly ancient copies of
Ray Gunn
and
Troll City
. There are some more recent copies of Salamander Nights too. You'll remember they sold out when that bizarre religion came over—"

"
Hey, did you hear what he
said
, old man?" Kane growled, pushing me aside and slamming his tattooed knuckles down on the counter. "We didn't come here for comic books. We want the money and if you intend to see tomorrow, you'd better haul yourself to where the credits are at, capisce?"

This time it was definitely amusement peppering Glimmsbury
's cheeks.

"
Salamander Nights
really took off though, didn't it? Who would have thought a comic book would have had such a resounding influence on such troubled times? You really should—"

"
No,
you
really should clean the wax out of your ears and do what you're told or I'm gonna have to show you a few antiques of my own," Kane said patting the bulge in his raincoat.  The old man shrugged and the movement allowed me to see the sparkling light in the wall behind him. Understanding flowed over me and I tapped Kane on the shoulder.

He spun, teeth clenched.
"What?"

"
Look behind him."

"
Yeah, what? I—" He trailed off and rage contorted his gaunt features. "He's a goddamn hologram?"

"
Looks like it, but he must be projecting himself from somewhere in the store."

Kane scoffed.
"No wonder he was so ballsy. Well this is just peachy. 'Straight in, straight out' you said. I'm a bigger fool for listening to you."

"
That could indeed be the case. It really does pay off to know the place you intend to rob," Glimmsbury commented. Without a word, Kane whipped out his revolver and pumped three bursts into the bejeweled Holo light in the wall. It fizzed and crackled and coughed black smoke as Glimmsbury shriveled out of existence.

We broke up and began searching the store.

While Kane made as big a mess as possible, knocking over bookshelves and overturning baskets full of cheesy paperbacks, I wandered down the aisles where I knew from past visits the old man kept the ancient comic books.

"
Where the hell is he?" Kane roared. "Is there a back room?"

"
Yeah, but make sure you lock the front door or we'll have vigilantes all over us before we get a chance to look." Bad enough we had the cops to contend with, now neighborhoods were amassing veritable armies to keep us from doing what we had to.

He cursed and a moment later, a lock snapped closed.

I found myself in an aisle, six shelves high on both sides and packed full of old comic books preserved like mummies in their dustproof shrouds.

Images of spacemen in laughably inept attire battling multi-headed aliens on barren dusty planets and sexy, scantily clad beauties caught in the act of shrieking as untold horrors bore down on them, filled the shelves. I smiled despite myself, remembering a childhood not always tainted by corruption and the many nights in my room reading
Ray Gunn
long after I was supposed to be sleeping. It was a warm memory that I shelved with the promise that it wouldn't stay there forever.

On the center shelf, just above eye-level were all twelve copies of
Salamander Nights
. They were priceless I knew, the dozen copies having sold out immediately on release by fans eager to escape the generic retreads being shoved in their faces in an attempt to restore commercial thinking and family values.
Salamander
Nights
had been a rage, a pop phenomenon destined to fade into obscurity but not without leaving a few lives touched by the experience.

Sadly, mine hadn
't been one of them.

"
What the hell are you doing back there?" Kane said and I looked to my left at his scarecrow-like silhouette at the top of the aisle. "Catching up on your reading?"

"
I'll be there in a minute," I said, my eyes alighting on something on the shelf nearest the floor. "Go check out the back room."

"
Hey, less ordering, buddy. I don't work for you."

I shrugged.
"Whatever. You want the money or not?"

He spat and stalked off muttering obscenities.

But at that moment, his attitude was lost on me. I dropped to my haunches and stared in bewilderment at the comic that had caught my attention. Water pooled around my feet as I reached out and gently picked it up.

"
This isn't right," I whispered.

The comic book had a color and ink drawing of the very bookstore in which I now stood clutching the comic book on the cover. The sign above the drawing read: THE BARBED LADY WANTS FOR NOTHING, complete with lovingly rendered green neon gorgon.

The name of the comic was
Salamander Nights: Issue #13.

"
Aha! Gotcha!" Kane yelled in triumph as the sound of screeching metal reached me through the shelves. "I found a door!"

I didn
't answer. Couldn't. Compelled by a curiosity long abandoned, I had opened the comic book and was now staring at another picture of the bookstore, smaller and less detailed but with no doubt as to what it represented. I felt my heart turn to cold crystal, sending shards of glass shooting into my throat.

Outside the store stood two men.

A speech bubble hung between them.

Written in small, barely legible lettering inside the bubble was:
"The hell kind of name is that for a bookstore?"

The thumping continued as Kane struggled to get the door open.

I flicked through the pages, my eyes stinging with sudden panic at the barely glimpsed images populating the pages.

It was a chronicle of this night, every detail, every nuance and every ounce of dialogue captured, our story set in gloomy colors for the world to see.

Or for
me
to see.

A trick. It had to be. I ran my fingers over the pages, testing it, hoping the ink would run beneath my damp fingers. Such a simple thing could have convinced me that this was an elaborate hoax perpetrated by Glimmsbury but the moisture on my fingertips did nothing but darken the images.

I heard the metal door shriek and clatter, followed by another triumphant holler from Kane. "I got it open! You comin?"

"
Just a second," I called to him, hoping the unease hadn't been evident in my voice. Kane would have a field day with any sign of weakness.

"
Fine," he answered. "But I get a bigger cut for doing all the grunt work."

I turned the page and there I was, down on my haunches, brooding over a comic book. It was starting to make my head hurt.

The next panel showed Kane battering the door, teeth clenched, with his thick-soled boots leaving muddy rainwater dripping down the blue metal. He had been drawn as the villain, a stereotype, the bad guy who gets his comeuppance in the end by less than pleasant means. Five o' clock shadow shaded his comic book self's jaw, his eyes dark as night as he focused on the task at hand.

The next panel showed him grinning at the open door. A speech bubble snaked from between his yellow teeth.

"It's dark back here," the real-world Kane said and I followed his progress inside by turning the page. I read my lines like an actor at an audition: "So find a light."

I flipped the page and terror stuck like a chicken bone in my throat. I jumped to my feet, almost slipping in the puddle that had gathered while I read. The last page.

"Oh Jesus. Kane!" I cried out, my eyes hopping from panel to panel, from one horrifying image to the next. Amid them all was Glimmsbury, red jeweled eyes sparkling in the gloom, looking like he'd always looked, benign and patient. But this image showed something in his face I had never seen before: Malice.

"
Kane!"

"
What, what? The hell you screeching for?"

"
Get away from the door."

"
What?"

I read my lines, the dizzyingly surreal quality of the scene perfect for the comic book in my hands, but utterly horrifying outside it.
"I said—" My caricature stopped in mid-sentence.

Four panels from the end. This panel devoted entirely to darkness except for the speech bubble representing Kane
's sudden terror. "Hey. What's—?"

"
Kane, get out of there!" I screamed, wanting to run from the store, wanting to run to help Kane but afraid of the thing the comic book told me was in there with him; refusing to believe this bundle of recycled paper could be right about anything and yet it was. I was watching it unfold.

My shadowed caricature showed my face stretched by fear. Ghostly bubbles over my head told me I could flee, that I could live with the guilt of leaving Kane to die just as I had lived with guilt all my life.

Third panel from the end.

"
Oh God!" Kane screamed and I flinched at the sound even though I had known it was coming. I looked back down at the comic book, suddenly and horrifyingly aware that only a series of shelves stood between that door and me.

The shadows in the back room parted like a curtain and Kane became the wearer of that oft-used defensive pose, so popular for comics of this type.

"Kane!"

The second last panel showed a slim pair of light green arms reaching for the stricken victim from somewhere offstage, thorn-like protuberances studding its skin, black tattoos threading their way over the flesh like vines. Over where the darkness concealed its face, the artist had speckled in amber sparks to convey a multitude of hungry eyes. A cheap way of doing it, but oh so very effective now.

And I had full sound effects to accompany the pictures.

I dropped the comic. It fluttered into the puddle on the floor like a dead bird. I ran the length of the aisle and wrestled with the door, forgot the lock, remembered the lock, opened the door and burst out of the store with a scream to drown out those at my heels.

I ran, and ran, propelled by that last scene in a comic book no-one knew existed, that perhaps didn't exist except for two men who'd picked the wrong store to rob.

The last panel.

That hideous image of the store's namesake...

Not nearly so absurd looking in the flesh.

HA
VEN

This story, I think, lingered for a long time in my subconscious before it stepped into the light and let me study it. It's an idea that has long haunted me: If you were to meet your childhood self, what would you say? Or what might
it
say to
you?
Variations of this theme have popped up in a number of my stories but in the case of
Haven
, I think it's a little more exposed, more obvious and perhaps more unsettling as a result.

"It's your mother. I'm afraid she's passed away."

Yes, yes. Old news. Never once has he stopped to think about how odd it is that he is so certain. The knowledge was just
there
, shortly before the phone rang, manifesting itself as an ability to breathe unrestricted, to straighten his shoulders and not meet the resistance of her eternal gaze, to dust off a genuine smile and use it without feeling it ephemeral.

Gone, and the days that follow are among the most wonderful he
's ever had. Scarcely had he dared to imagine the release could be so full, so overwhelming, allowing him to tread with lightened step and floating heart. He encounters strangers and rather than showing them the top of his head in a cowl of cowardice and shame, he beams at them and bids them the sentiments in accordance with the age of the day. That these greetings are seldom reciprocated bothers him little, for his resolve is growing ever more formidable now that he has only one shadow trailing behind him.