Slices (23 page)

The
eye looked at him, deeper and deeper than he’d ever been seen
before, and the cold light and vision burned into him like needles.
He pressed himself whimpering as flat against the wall as he could,
but he felt naked, turned inside out.

Another
face appeared in the gloomy light, another face pressed in close and
prying. This new face was lined and dry and ancient, lines pulled
tight into a permanent scowl, bones tied here and there in a shock of
white hair.

“He
doesn’t look like much,” the new face said, and it was
the strong lazy voice.

“It’s
him, I’m telling you,” Timothy said again. “The
papers say he’s killed nine people.”

“Hmmm.
That true, boy? Don’t lie, now, or I’ll make you eat your
own tongue.”

Every
instinct, every impulse, told him to lie, say they had the wrong man,
but — “Twelve,” he said. “Twelve people.”

The
single huge eye closed, and everything was dark again.

“Hmmm,”
the old voice said again. “Twelve, now. That’s not bad.
That’s a respectable start.”

“What
— ” Maybe the sheltering dark gave him comfort, maybe he
was just too afraid not to be strong, but whatever the reason, Johnny
Lee found his voice again. “What the fuck is going on? Who are
you people?”

More
giggling.

The
old voice said, “He wants to know who we are, Timothy.”

“That’s
fair,” Timothy said, “Isn’t it?”

Little
hands were pulling at him. A small rough voice down near his waist
said, “Matches. He has matches. I can smell them on him.”

“Do
you, now? Well, then. Take a look at us, if you want. Timothy’s
right. It is only fair.”

Don’t,
his mind was screaming as his fingers fumbled for the match.
Don’t
look.

But
with shaking hands, he tried to light a match, failed, then lit the
next.

His
eyes had only a moment to learn light again, and he stared wide as
the match burned down to his fingers:

The
ancient man wore a priest’s collar and held a leather-bound
book tight to his chest, and bones hung like wind chimes from his
neck and wrists and waist —

The
headless girl in her torn white wedding dress, the skin beneath torn
as well, and shifting faces peering out through ragged gaps, and the
twitching way she moved just like a bird —

The
impossibly tall and whip-thin boy, too many staring black eyes and
spiderweb hair, his arms folded like a praying mantis and his
too-many fingers constantly moving and moving —

Something
that wouldn’t hold still. Something wet and raw and red.
Something shining like a beetle. Other smaller things winding in and
out between them like cats circling underfoot.

And
then finally, the match went out.

“Well?”
the Bone Preacher asked impatiently. “Do you know us?”

Johnny
Lee opened his mouth and it didn’t work. He could feel his lips
trace a “no” shape, but there was no breath behind it.

Another
voice — a woman, or something like one — said, “You’re
wasting our time, Timothy.”

One
of the giggling, skittering things near his legs said, “He
doesn’t know who we are.”

“That
doesn’t mean anything,” Timothy said firmly. “Maybe
he doesn’t know who he is, either.”

“I’m
— ” Johnny Lee managed to get out. “My — my
name is — ”

“Your
name,”
the Bone Preacher said, his breath hot in Johnny Lee’s face,
“is Johnny Lee Edwards. You’re the bastard whelp of Molly
Elaine Edwards and her husband’s best friend, Jack Williams.”

Johnny
Lee’s eyes stared wide at nothing. “How do you know
that?”

“It’s
all right here,” the Bone Preacher said, solidly tapping his
leather volume. “Right here in the good book.”

“—
The Bible? What does that
have to do with — ”

The
book struck the side of his head so hard it was like daylight.

“Shut
your mouth, boy, you don’t know what you’re talking
about,” the Bone Preacher drawled, and Johnny Lee could barely
hear him over the rush of blood in his head. “Have you ever
even read the Bible? Every last tedious little thou shalt not and who
begat whom? How can you sit there and call it a good book? My book
has a name for everything and everyone. We know exactly who you are.
We just don’t know
what
you are.”

“I
know what you are,” Timothy whispered, his arm around Johnny
Lee’s shoulder. “The papers say you’re a monster.
An inhuman monster. That’s right, isn’t it?”

In
the dark, the shuffling and skittering noises stopped as they waited
for his answer.

“No,
I don’t — I .... ” Johnny Lee stopped and really
thought about it. “But — sometimes — ”

There
had been so many things he had done and felt absolutely nothing. No
sense of connection, of commonality.

“I
know you are,” Timothy whispered. “I can tell. I have the
Sight. That’s how I knew. How I knew how to let them in.”

“—
Yeah,” Johnny Lee
said. “Sometimes I think I am.”

“Well,
now,” the Bone Preacher said. “Now we’re getting
somewhere. Snaptooth, if you would, please?”

Hands
and talons pulled at Johnny Lee’s shirt and pulled it apart,
stitches flying and buttons rattling to the floor like teeth. Johnny
Lee cried out like a child and dropped the matches he hadn’t
known he was still holding.

Something
grabbed them, lit one, shook it out, and laughing delightedly, lit
another. And another.

Johnny
Lee saw it coming closer, like a series of snapshots —

Something
all teeth, at all angles. Not a single recognizable feature, just jaw
after jaw working and grinding and opening and closing. A snuffling
sound, like a dog’s breath. Closer, and he could feel that
breath like steam against his chest.

Then
slowly, thoughtfully, it bit a piece out of his chest while Timothy
and the monsters held his arms cruciform, and finally he screamed.

It
chewed his skin carefully, blood spilling out between its exposed
teeth. Johnny Lee’s breath came in short gasps.

“Oh,
don’t
whine
so,” the woman’s voice said again, as the last match went
out. “It was only a taste.”

“Well?”
the Bone Preacher asked impatiently.

“Wait,”
Snaptooth said in a dozen voices. It swallowed.

“Well?”
the Bone Preacher asked.

“No
monster,” the voices said. “Just meat.”

Across
the tight space, the huge green eye snapped open again. But this time
its light fell on Timothy.

The
Bone Preacher reached Timothy in two great strides and picked him up
by his shirtfront. “You’ve fucked up for the last time,
boy.”

“I’m
sorry! I was so sure this time!”

“You
were sure
last
time, and the time before
that,
and the time before
that
— ” The Bone Preacher shook him like a rag doll. “When
will you learn, boy? There are no monsters in your world. It’s
not time for us yet. You are wasting our time.”

“There
are! There are monsters!” Timothy said, crying. “I see
them everywhere!”

“Then
why can’t you bring us one? You were wrong about your father.
You were wrong about your mother. The children who beat you at school
were just children after all, weren’t they? Weren’t
they?”

“I’m
sorry! I said I’m sorry, please! Next time I’ll — ”

The
Bone Preacher shook him again, and then dropped him to the floor.

“Next
time? Next time?” He turned away, a disgusted look on his face.
“Next time, you’d better be right.

“And
as for you,” he said, turning back to Johnny Lee, “you’re
nothing. Just another man hurting other men. Did you really think you
were something special? There are millions of you. You’re no
use to me at all.”

“Does
that mean — you’re going to let me go?”

Everything
laughed. Johnny Lee didn’t think the sound would ever stop.

“You’re
really not one of us,” the Bone Preacher said. “Or you’d
know. We never let anyone go.”

The
Dire Bride’s arms opened wide as unseen arms pushed him
forward. The faces under her skin spoke to him soothingly.

“It’s
all right,” they told him. “It doesn’t hurt for
long.” Her arms closed around him. “Not for long,”
they whispered.

That
would have been the last time Timothy ever saw Johnny Lee. It would
have been, if this were a story. Things end neatly in stories. But
this is the world; world without end, and he would see Johnny Lee at
least once more.

Months
had passed, and Timothy’s new boyfriend was sleeping fitfully
upstairs. Things had already started to go wrong between them, one
too many arguments and one too many cold nights spent angrily on
opposite sides of the bed, and Timothy had started to suspect,
started to look at him with doubt and with the Sight. Wondered if it
was time to call them out again. This time. This time for sure.

Timothy
was outside in the backyard, smoking a cigarette in the cool midnight
air. He had only recently started smoking, started by finishing the
pack Johnny Lee had left on his kitchen counter. Nights like this, a
cigarette helped him think. Cleared his head a little.

He
was standing by a pond toward the far end of the yard, nearly at the
edge of the house’s influence, but the angled tip of the roof’s
shadow still penetrated deep into the pond’s shallows. It was
old and unkept, its still water green and choked with Autumn leaves.

Timothy
flicked his dead cigarette into the pond, thinking that the leaves
looked like faces, and knowing that the Dire Bride was close. This
shadow, this pond, was another door, and idly he unlocked it and
pulled her closer.

He
watched her floating beneath the surface, her ruined dress drifting
like clouds, the faces under her flesh turning to look at him, and
the newest stared back at him accusingly.

“Hello,
Johnny Lee,” he said, lighting another cigarette. He couldn’t
hear Johnny Lee’s words, not really. But he could see his lips
move, could hear the words in his head:

They’ll
figure you out,
Johnny Lee told him.
They’ll
know, sooner or later. You can’t keep giving people to them
like this, or they’ll realize —

If
there is a monster here, it’s you.

Timothy
just stared and didn’t answer. After a moment, he turned and
went into the house.

He
didn’t sleep at all that night; he just watched his boyfriend
sleep in the moonlight, watched his eyes track back and forth as he
dreamed, and wondered, distantly, what the flesh above his heart
tasted like.

He’d
been on the bus for ten minutes before he remembered that this route
didn’t exist any more.

He
shouldn’t have come back here. In the city he’d come to
think of as home, it was easier to remember, to keep track of what
was new and real, and stay out of the dead spaces. But here, in the
streets he’d walked as a child, where everything felt old and
familiar, it was too easy to see a sign where a bus stop once stood,
wait for a bus that no one else could see, and climb aboard.

James
felt the cold biting into his skin, saw the steam of his breath hang
in the air, and it jerked him awake and made him sit up and start
paying attention to where he was. The bus driver’s fare box
didn’t have a card reader or a slot for dollar bills. No one
had smart phones or wires trailing from ear buds down to their
pockets. Some kid in the back, who glared back at him for staring,
had a ghetto blaster in his lap, size of a suitcase. Every
conversation around him was hollow and distant, the sounds distorted,
like an old and stretched tape being played back in another room.

He
closed his eyes and shoved his hand in his pocket — wrapped his
fingers around his cell phone. Held his breath and counted to ten.
Sometimes that worked. He opened his eyes and nothing had changed.

He
reached up and pulled the cord, but the bell didn’t ring. He
couldn’t interact — that was always a bad sign. He got
out of his seat and went up to the driver. “Hey. Hey. Let me
off here, please. Please, I need to get off this bus.”

The
driver looked up at him blankly, frowning. He said something James
couldn’t hear, and then turned back to the road.

James
looked out the window. He couldn’t tell what year it was
outside, and he wasn’t sure if getting off the bus was the
right thing to do or not, but he didn’t want to stay on it any
more. Small tight metal box, all these cold people and their dead
staring eyes. He closed his again, holding the phone in his pocket
white-knuckle tight. Deep breath, count to ten, and he made it to
five when the bus lurched to a stop and someone who couldn’t
see him pushed past on their way out. He followed, blinking, looking
around.

A
real bus shelter, this time — he rested a hand on one of the
metal beams that held up the walls, and it was warm from the sun, and
his breath was no longer visible. He took a half-hearted look at the
bus schedule, and decided to just walk the rest of the way, no matter
how far it was.

This
would be so much easier if he could still drive. But he hadn’t
been behind the wheel since he nearly got in an accident driving
through a dead space, and a car in a century he couldn’t see
missed him by inches, jerked his mind back to the present with a
blast from its horn.

He
didn’t know how long he spent walking, since he’d long
since given up trying to wear a watch, but he kept going until he was
exhausted.

There
was no use. He had no idea where he was. He thought he’d be
able to go right to the house, or what was left of it, see if its
bones were still standing. But things here had changed, just enough.
It was just past the school, less than a mile maybe, no more than
two, into the woods — but had he passed the right school? Were
the woods still there, or had they been cut down, the space given
over to condos and convenience stores? Hell, was he still even facing
the right direction? He looked at the angle the sun hung in the sky
and couldn’t be sure.