The Faceless One (4 page)

Notices were now pinned to the walls, faded and torn flyers for pizza joints and fishing boats for hire. They stirred in the breeze, sounding like dried leaves tacked to the plaster walls.

He stopped to look at one of the flyers and was surprised to see it was for Milo’s charter business. He hadn’t talked to Milo in … what, ten years? There was a picture of Milo at thirty, holding up a huge halibut. Jimmy tried to get a closer look, but the flyer crumbled in his hand, the particles whirled away from him, a dust devil to lead him deeper into this new strangeness.

Around the gentle curve he spied a long, leather cloak, its edges tattered and frayed. The cloak hung from a bundle of tall sticks that leaned against the wall. For some reason, this made him feel nervous. He wanted to turn back the way he had come but felt compelled, in dream-fashion, to move forward. As he passed the bundle of sticks and threadbare cloak, he saw what looked like a waterskin on the floor. It appeared to be made of a whale bladder that was old and riddled with holes, its days of carrying water long gone. The smell of dry rot and mildew reached his nostrils, and he winced slightly in revulsion. These were smells of neglect and hopelessness. He moved on, wanting to put these sad artifacts behind him.

The corridor continued, the flyers and posters giving way again to featureless white walls. The ceiling overhead was also white though no longer weighed down with the profusion of fluorescent fixtures that provided every inch of Golden Summer with safe and uniform light—a perpetual 3:15 P.M., mid-April. Only the floor remained gray, which was fortunate; otherwise, it might have seemed as if he were floating in some ivory-colored void. As things were, the walls seemed to recede, moving away and out of sight. He reached out, and his fingers relayed the comfort of the wall’s surface, but his eyes still believed they were gone. This was some sort of
phantom wall, a grieving echo of a structure long gone.

At first, he thought he could hear drums near the ocean, then realized he was hearing the beat of his own heart, the roaring inside his ears. He felt sad, his newfound energy aching for a celebration by the water, a welcome to the Chief of the Salmon, perhaps, gratitude for the bounty he brought to the village. Such welcomes were filled with dancing and an abundance of food and drink.

As always, thoughts of the old times made him think of Rose, and he felt that sharp pang in his heart. Pain had become his companion over the last ten years, replacing her laughter and feather touch with a piercing jab at his core. The pain had not diminished but had become a sort of obstinate friend, one who knows you and is never afraid to hurt you. There had been times at Golden Summer when his pain over Rose had been his only clue that he was still alive.

He heard a small tapping, like a bird pecking at the linoleum. Remembering the raven from earlier, he turned back to see if it had come to guide him on some adventure. His welcoming smile faded as he looked down the corridor.

The Stick Man was coming.

Jimmy felt light-headed, terror seizing his throat in a tight and merciless grip. His fear was so immense that it made him ache, as if his bones no longer fit together properly. Every motion, even breathing, was fraught with agonizing friction and a pain that almost rendered him unconscious.

His great-grandmother had scared him with tales of the Stick Man when he was a small boy. When he misbehaved, shouting or pulling at the strands of her weaving, drool running from his mouth in bright and shimmering strings, she would point to a bundle of sticks near the cookfire and tell him the Stick Man was going to rise and catch him; that the Stick Man loved the taste of disobedient, fat little boys. The Stick Man would pull out some of its own ribs for the cookfire, then roast him on a spit made from one clutching, spindly limb. Then little Jimmy would look at the bundle of sticks, the shifting light lending them animation. He would think that the sticks were indeed gathering into some demonic entity and run behind his great-grandmother for protection. Then she would pinch him and hug him fiercely, and his terror would be forgotten.

What was coming down the corridor was no illusion of firelight and childish terror.

The sticks had gathered into the crude semblance of a man, long and spindly, full of creaking and splintering. It had donned the cloak like a skin, and the garment had stretched taut over the skeleton of kindling. He could see the makeshift bones moving under this false flesh with ever-finer precision, its tap-tapping along the floor the song of insect mandibles tearing and feeding.

Its face was the waterskin, two holes serving as its vacant eyes. There was no sign of life
in them, just an awful blackness. Long, dried grass hung from the top of its head, undulating with its puppet movements as it clicked and cracked toward him. A crooked horizontal fissure had opened in the waterskin, providing the Stick Man with a wide and serviceable mouth. Over the tapping of its progress he could hear the grinding of strange and powerful teeth, millstones set within ragged jaws. He couldn’t see the teeth but knew they would knife into him with cold, obsidian precision, tearing his flesh into warm, wet strips. This was a creature with no soul, and it hungered to feed on one. Its face billowed and collapsed rhythmically, a parody of breathing caused by the vagaries of air currents in the hall and its own spastic progress. Or perhaps there was true life in it, life enough to seize the small boy who had eluded it so long ago, that small boy now grown to a meal much more filling and tasty.

It seemed to see him then and reached out its arms, twig fingers clutching and grasping at the air, trying to tear that first hot morsel from him and shove it raw and dripping into ruined lips.

Jimmy backed away from it. He moaned, and the sound of his terror carried through the phantom corridor. It entered the eyes and mouth of the Stick Man and came back to him, soured and twisted, his own voice giving song to this terrible creature. Jimmy choked on his fear and struggled to put more distance between himself and the Stick Man.

Jimmy rounded a corner and was shocked to see it lined with human skulls stretching into infinity, some covered with blood gone the color of rust, cartilage hanging like brittle rubber, others bleached white and turning ever so slowly to dust. In this stark necropolis, among the many grinning scraps of bone, he saw George’s hat and bow tie, mounted like trophies under one brittle skull, and a small groan escaped him. His beloved friend was dead. The whole world was dead.

Jimmy thrust out his hands protectively and was shocked to see his long fingers and wide hands becoming small, his skin growing supple and smooth. His arms lost their knotted musculature; liver spots disappeared into cinnamon-colored skin that was smooth and untroubled, his flesh as it was before the traumas of age and its erosion. He felt his point of view shift as he shrank, becoming once again the perspective of a small boy. His adult mind stayed intact but was fully in the grip of a child’s terror. His mind flashed upon cave walls adorned with strange animal skulls, remnants of a forgotten age, all that was left of great creatures that had once held dominion over the Earth.

He whimpered as he backed away, a small boy with an old man’s mind trying to remain in control. The Stick Man clicked and snapped, frail twig skeleton popping and creaking with every movement. But it would be strong enough to eat him, oh yes—his blood would bring color to the ravaged visage, his fat would lubricate the splintered skeleton and make it shine.

Jimmy turned to run and found his uncle Will standing there, angry and impossibly tall, a
giant in this new world of childhood revisited.

His uncle grabbed him roughly and shook him.

“This is your fault!” Uncle Will shouted. His voice shook the hall like a thunderclap, and Jimmy heard himself wailing in response. He tried to reason with the man he loved so dearly, tried to find out what inspired such hostility.

“Your fault, Mouse!” Uncle Will shouted again, his eyes blazing with righteous rage.

Jimmy glanced back. The Stick Man was just feet away, its billowing face sending out gusts that smelled of death and mold and sickness and rot. It was the smell of dead fish in the summer sun, of a possum rotting under a log, of a wound gone to gangrene. It was the smell of rust and algae and unspeakable creatures that live far away from the light, things that emerge only when there is no moon, to prey on the unwary.

Jimmy shrieked and tried to bury his head in his uncle’s chest, thinking that surely the man would protect him, no matter how angry he was.

His uncle grabbed him roughly and held him out at arm’s length, his viselike grip strong and unyielding. Jimmy squirmed and wriggled in his panic, but the old man was far too strong.

Then he felt the sharp jab of jagged fingertips piercing his shoulder and heard the travesty the wheezing-billows face made of his name. He tried to call out but felt it skewering his tongue with one long finger, a tasty pink fish already on the spit.

A drum started then, perhaps calling other creatures to feed on him. It grew in intensity as he began to lose consciousness, a drum announcing the end of the world.

Jimmy awoke with a start on his balcony.

A raven was staring at him from the railing. Before he could speak, it dropped something from its beak and flew off.

The booming came from behind him.

Someone was knocking at his door.

Standing stiffly, Jimmy went to the door. He stood next to it, terrified to open it, even to touch it.

What waited out there?

“Jimmy, you awake?”

Jimmy sighed with relief. It was George.

Jimmy opened the door, and George stood there, dapper as always in a white shirt, bow tie, and cardigan sweater.

“You ready to clean out the Old Fart?”

George was grinning, but his toothy smile faltered as he saw how pale his friend was. “Hey there, Injun Joe, you okay?”

It was an old joke between them. George always called him Injun Joe or Cochise when he
wanted to get a rise out of him. Jimmy would sometimes retort by calling him Uncle Remus or Sambo, though mostly he just gave George a look that was answer enough. Those who didn’t know them were shocked by such exchanges, and it usually made younger people uncomfortable. But these were two old men who had seen and experienced far too much to be wounded by mere words.

“I’ll be okay, George, just a bad dream.”

And then George knew that his friend was badly shaken. For Jimmy to miss a chance at their old game was surely a sign of trouble.

“Why don’t you sit down, Jimmy. Let me go fetch you a Coke from the machine.”

“What about our game?”

“I’ll tell the Old Fart we’re not feelin’ up to it, let him get nice and cocky for the next game. We’ll pluck him like a Sunday chicken.”

Jimmy smiled. “Thanks, George. You’re a good friend.”

“Hell, you’d do the same for me.”

“Don’t bet on it, Uncle Remus.”

Now George smiled. Whatever the problem, Jimmy was okay. Maybe he’d talk about it when George returned with the soda, maybe not. But friends were a rare commodity, even outside the Golden Summer Rest Home; he wasn’t about to infringe on their relationship by prying. He would let Jimmy decide for himself whether he’d discuss whatever was bothering him.

As George turned to go, Jimmy resisted the urge to grab his friend and hug him. He was overjoyed that George was alive, that all that death had just been a dream.

But it must be more than that. Raven would not have left him a gift, otherwise.

Closing the door to his room, Jimmy went out to the balcony to see what the raven had dropped.

The balcony was full of deep shadows from the trees and an oncoming storm, and it took Jimmy a couple of minutes to find it. But his eyes were still keen, something he was proud of. He caught a glint of it under his chair, where it had bounced after being dropped by the bird the Tlingit considered both a messenger and an ally.

It felt warm in his hand as he picked it up even though the temperature had dropped another three degrees. He opened his palm slowly to examine it in the deepening gloom.

It was a medallion of some sort. Made of hammered copper, it was lozenge-shaped and well tarnished by years of exposure. On one side was a long house like in his village; only this one was so grand it must have been the home of some god. He turned it over. On the obverse it read,
CHIN EATER
in English.

Chin eater
.

It sounded like a demon although it was no demon Jimmy had ever heard of. Perhaps it was a hero, some legendary warrior. The words were in English, so they might have corrupted the original Tlingit meaning.

But what was the meaning? It was a talisman from Raven and therefore of great import.

As Jimmy regarded it, he felt a hot pain in his shoulder. He rubbed at it under his shirt, and was shocked to see his fingertips bright with blood. He placed the talisman in his pocket and pulled off his shirt.

There, on his shoulder, were three jagged scratches welling with blood.

And at his biceps, spreading with mean swiftness, a set of bruises on each arm.

Bruises like plum-colored fingertips.

Stan Roberts wasn’t happy.

First of all, it was July, which meant the humidity was somewhere just short of being underwater. He had stepped out of the shower that morning, toweled off, and immediately started sweating. His shirt and sports coat were already soaked in the back and under his arms.

Second, it was Sunday, and he had planned to spend the day in Jersey with his kids. Instead, he was investigating a homicide at some rich asshole’s home.

Stan didn’t like wealthy people—they looked down on cops and tended to treat anyone on the job like their own private security and errand service. He wouldn’t go so far as to say they were worse than the lowlifes or gangbangers, but at least those assholes were up front about their dislike of the police. It was a mutual hatred and more honest somehow.

He moved briskly down the street, a tall man with an unstylish crew cut that was graying at the temples and slight pockmarks from a severe case of acne when he was in his teens. He rarely smiled, and people tended to move out of his way. That was fine by him; he didn’t put much stock in the little niceties of society. He reserved his compassion for his kids and crime victims.