Shifters (36 page)

Authors: Edward Lee

BOOK: Shifters

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A differentiation of
reality.

Locke continued to witness, however extremely, a similar differentiation.

By now Martin had made use of the ax once more, to reduce Darlie’s legs, pelvis, and chest into bloody hanks and now engaged upon arranging the pieces. Meanwhile, the blonde prostitute’s shoulders and head continued to bitch.

“Jesus Christ, Marty! What did you do
that
for?”

“A montage,” he murmured back in the least acknowledgment. His Keds stepped gingerly amongst the tableau’s component parts, leaving prints of gore. The eyeless redhead twitched and sputtered as if to offer subverbal suggestions. Then Martin rearranged a knee-joint and a foot, and stepped back.

“I think that does it, huh? The montage is done. Fuck Kline and Mondrian and all those gimmick assholes. Christ, any dickbrain can slop shingles and housepaint on the floor and call it art. This is the real thing… I think I’ll call it
The Truncation of the Crack-Whore.
Whaddaya think?”

The blonde—with her hands, of course—climbed back up onto the mottled couch. “Fuck, Marty! How am I gonna turn tricks like this? What, I’m gonna walk up and down the main drag on my
hands?
”

“Look at it this way, babe. You don’t have to peddle your ass anymore.” Martin gusted laughter. “Now you can peddle your head!”

“Oh, that’s real funny,” the blonde’s head came back; one skinny arm extended to give him the finger. Then she gawped. “Aren’t you ever gonna finish this shit?”

“Darlie, the artist’s inspiration isn’t subject to
time.
My creativity won’t let go—I’ve still got more work to do.” Busied by more of this inspiration, Martin ran an errant hand back over his mohawk, then took up a long carving knife. “Yes, yes, I’ve got it!” In a frenzy now, he cut off the redhead’s tiny breasts, quick as an Oriental waiter carving Peking Duck. And—

SPLAT!

—threw both breasts against the wall where they stuck amid swashes of blood.

“Yes! It’s my best work to date!”

“Great, Marty,” the blonde pecked. “What’s the new Rembrandt gonna call that masterpiece?”

Martin made a long face at her. “Not sure. I guess it’s a toss-up between
Madonna With Child
and
Two Little Junkie Tits on a Wall.
”

The eyeless redhead jerked and mewled.

Locke, at last, was released; he stumbled backward, away from the atrocious window into drenching darkness. The putrid ground fog billowed around the clumsy back-steps; more things crunched beneath.

This was a different place, yes, but also the same. He knew that all too well, like Faulkner’s narrator. Only one mission occurred to him now…
Find Lethe. I made the door, but Lethe is the key.

Locke swatted at winged bugs with thoraxes fat as gumballs. They splattered lumpen-yellow against his skin, and stank like cheese mold. Some sunk stingers into his skin but he scraped them off, leaving trails of mucous. His feet stomped down the fog-topped path, stopped at the French doors which led into the mansion, then he yanked open the doors—

“Hooooooly
SHIT!”

An
avalanche
of corpses poured from the doorway as though one of Belsen’s grave-pits had been emptied onto him. Mortified, Locke trudged backward, no longer knee-deep in noxious fog but knee-deep in a mass grave. The death-stench rose to kill him—perhaps that would’ve been better now—and burn. Skulls with bits of parchment-thin flesh still clinging to them lolled on spindly necks, limbs as gaunt as broomsticks lay scattered like a madman’s latticework.

A corpse-pile, falling out the French doors. A bilge of putrefactive slime flowed, low between the bodies, staining Locke’s pants. Eventually, gagging, he trudged back out.

Lord,
he thought, looking at the pile.

To get into the house—it was clear—he’d have to crawl over the bodies.
Next suggestion?

There must be some other way.

The brick fence…

It was a start but somehow Locke knew that the spillage of corpses was a tactic, forcing an alternative direction.
He wants me to find another way…because there’s more he wants me to see.

Locke trod back through the swamp-like fog, meaning to find a break in the sullied hedges and scale the fence. But as he moved past the fourth cottage…

He stopped.

The fourth cottage.
The only one he hadn’t checked.

A tenuous, clear slime seemed to bathe the door when he kicked it open. It was more macabre disrepair he saw when he first entered: furniture so old it had begun to decompose. Streaks of foxfire and fungus grew up the bare walls, fed by the humid air. But in the corner, the top of a trap door stood open.

Locke descended down slatted, bending steps into darkness tinged with light like a roasting fire. Wet cobwebs spread and snapped across his face as he tromped downward into the tinted murk. A narrow passage like a gangway in an old 1700s ship took him under the house. To aid his bearings, he ran his hands along the sidewalls, through some fluid sweating through the wood slick as blood. Eventually, he tripped over another set of wooden steps, and took them up—

Into a room so clotted with dust, cobwebs, and fetid mold that Locke imagined a den that hadn’t been entered for centuries. But once he stood up in the room, he saw that he was wrong.

Footprints through the dust led from a far door to the edge of a pile of junk: pieces of furniture tossed onto more, old paintings, old implements, boxes, crates, bottles, etc. The footprints, however, made no secret of the room’s most recent deposit.

A coffin.

Locke knew that the coffin would be empty when he opened it. Or…not empty but devoid of a cadaver. Instead—

Shit.

It was filled with several gold bars.

Not many—seven, in fact. Just enough to…
Feign the weight of a human being,
Locke calculated.

A cursory inspection of the heaps that were the room’s contents seemed innocuous at first, until he made a closer examination: three rust-pitted hand-forged nails, a blood-stained silver platter, a vermiculated wooden staff, a felt sack containing exactly thirty silver coins imprinted with the likeness of King Herod.

And more:

A tri-layered cloak, one layer, green, one scarlet, one black. A butted .46 caliber piece of lead ball ammunition, like the type that would’ve been manufactured in, say, 1865. A skull in a box with a black-tarnished plate that read D.F.S. A black medical bag with a similar plaque that read
Doctor Neal Creame.
Locke grew bored quickly, knowing the implications. Lethe was a collector, all right. The last thing Locke looked at was something he didn’t get. It was a book that weighed at least thirty pounds, nothing on the cover, no title, no author. The cover’s substance seemed to be fashioned from some manner of reptile skin. Locke flipped it open and saw the first page, so old it had yellowed to a hue that was more brown. Arabic script. Locke dropped the book back into the dust.

A
click
resounded, and his eyes shot up.

The far door had opened, and a tall figure filled the frame in silhouette.

“I’m happy to have guessed correctly, Mr. Locke. You’ve found my junk room. When you’re done with your perusal, please follow me.”

The rich, sibilant voice, of course, was Lethe’s.

SEVENTEEN

Interstice

(i)

“Six more feem reds, they look like, Ms. Brock. Can’t say for sure but—”

Jill Brock’s surgical-gloved fingers whipped the ev-bag from the tech’s hand. She held them up to the ceiling light. “They’re feems, Jerry. Less kink in the line-curve, more micronically narrow. You want to bet paychecks they’re the same?”

“You kidding me?” the kneeling technician replied.

Cordesman was smoking in the corner, leafing through a stack of 8 1/2 by 11 paper sitting in a plastic bin labeled: ROUGHS. He was reading a crudely-typed sheet of paper:

Irrelative time ticks towards one o’clock

when you walk in

and flense my poet’s discipline:

Siren atrocity of verse and rhyme,

so I leave as I’m sure I will

every other time.

Cordesman’s eyes narrowed. He picked up another one.

But the moon

is full tonight!

It’s beautiful

like you…

pristine white

radiant teeming

like my love

all and forever

within me

dreaming of you

in my arms again

“All right,” Cordesman muttered. “Love. Big deal.”

“What’s that, Captain?” Jill Brock’s voice boomed across the small room.

Cordesman winced at her. “Just keep doing what you’re doing, huh?” He picked up another.

R.I.P. (to Ian Curtis)

by Richard Locke

A sullen face,

a hangman’s noose.

Bright life unfurled,

dark heart unloosed.

Oh, jubilant promise,

a fading apparition.

Welcome, dear poets

to the atrocity exhibition.

“Jill?” Cordesman called out over her crew of kneeling men. “Who the hell is Ian Curtis?”

“A singer, I think,” she replied from the round hole in her red-polyester anti-hairfall pullovers. “The name’s familiar from college. Some singer who killed himself…or, maybe it was a sports star. Not sure. Some basketball player at Maryland, maybe?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What is that you’re—”

Cordesman’s upraised palm cut her off. He was reading with an intentness that was desperate.
Locke’s a poet, his poetry is his guts.

EXIT by R. Locke

Low moon above the state house

smiles wanly as the pallid

light of rage.

When I close my eyes

I think I can see you

shredding every page

of the paper of my heart.

Yes, I can see you