The Midnight Men and Other Stories (7 page)

And in his head a deathly susurrus:

I am yours, and you are mine . . .

He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and found the dirty rags still on the table.

The woman and her daughter stared at him fiercely.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll take them. For the agreed price.”

The woman’s shoulders dropped and she closed her eyes. He noticed a tear slip from her right eye.

Carter stood up, producing an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket. “Thirty thousand pesos. That was what we agreed.”

The old woman would not look up, would not raise her hand to take the money. In the end, the girl took it.

The mother muttered something in Spanish that he failed to catch. He looked to Alita for a translation.

“My mother wants you to understand,” she said, embarrassment darkening her features, “she wanted a woman to take over the guardianship.” The woman looked directly up at him, her bloodshot eyes staring out of cavernous sockets. “She says men find the temptation too hard to resist…”

He shrugged. “I told you at the beginning: they’re not for me, honey. I’m just passing them on to another buyer.”

“Man or…”

“It’s a woman,” he said with an irritable snarl.

He’d put up with enough voodoo bullshit for one evening. All he wanted was to grab the prize and get out of this stinking room.

He reached over and grabbed the bundle, feeling a strange tingle in the palms of his hands. Before he could lift them away, the old woman’s hand seized his wrist. She stared up at him through a mask of fear, speaking hurriedly in Spanish.

“What’re you doing?” he snapped, looking at the girl and back at her mother.

“She says you are weak,” the girl translated. “She can see it in your eyes.”

Anger flooded through him. “Lady, you don’t know me at all.”

He tried to pull his arm away but she held him fast.

“She says don’t give into the temptation. She is begging you, do not touch the bones.”

The mother suddenly convulsed, releasing her grip. She coughed violently and doubled over. Her breath smelled of rotting meat, of something dead inside. Alita placed a cloth over her mouth as her body was wracked with harsh wet coughs. Carter saw the slick of red on the cloth, and the beginnings of pity rose from somewhere deep inside.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “What’s wrong with her?”

The girl didn’t seem to hear him. She stroked her mother’s damp hair and rocked her like a baby, lost in the embrace.

“I can get help,” Carter said.

“Just go,” the girl said, her voice thick with emotion.

“What? I can’t. Your mother . . .”

“Is dying,” the girl finished bitterly. “She has not moved from this room in ten years. She never even noticed the cancer that’s been growing inside her, never complained. Two weeks ago she stopped eating altogether. She needs treatment, expensive treatment.” Her eyes passed momentarily over the filthy package in Carter’s hands. “That is the kind of willpower it takes, senor. I hope you are as strong.”

Carter turned the bundle over slowly, feeling that strange tingle in his palms.

On unsteady legs, he walked to the door.

“I’m truly sorry,” he said.

“You got what you came for,” the girl told him. She glanced at the crumpled envelope in her fist. “So did my mother.”

Carter bowed his head, then turned and fled into the Mexican night.

***

Monday morning dawned as one of the most beautiful mornings in the history of Mexico City. Carter sat on the balcony of his apartment, a half empty bottle of
mezcal
resting on his bare belly, staring into the blinding orange light of sunrise. A solitary tear spilled over the lower lid of his left eye, rolling slowly down his sun-blistered cheek before falling, absorbed into the dirty cloth bundle resting in the crook of his arm.

He had not slept for days, and everything was beginning to take on a dream-like quality. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate something solid. He seemed to be drinking a lot, mostly wine or spirits, anything that would dull the awful ache in the core of his being, the insatiable desire to unwrap the bones . . .

From somewhere within the apartment he heard the sound of a telephone ringing. It seemed to ring a lot lately, but he couldn’t remember the last time he answered it. Who’d be calling him anyway…?

Without warning, the name Jasmine appeared in his head and he saw a pretty face framed with blonde hair. For a moment his old life began to emerge like sunshine breaking through a cloud of dirty smoke. He clutched the bundle closer to his chest, and the sensation of the cold hard objects within pressing against his own fragile bones made everything all right again.

Still, the thought of that face and all that it promised forced him to rise from his lounge chair, knee joints cracking, the skin of his arms and chest reddened and sore from too much sun. As he staggered across the bedroom, he realised absently that he had pissed himself at some point in the recent past. He also realised that he didn’t care.

He fell onto his back on the bed and snatched up the phone receiver.

“‘Lo?” he grunted.

“Christ almighty, Carter! What the hell are you doing?”

“Who’s this?”

“Don’t give me that horseshit, Carter. You know damn well who this is.”

“Hey, Jas.”

“Why are you still in Mexico?”

He grinned to himself. “I like it here.”

“You were supposed to be back Wednesday, Carter!”

He searched his memory, trying hard to find his reasons for coming to this place, but the past was a misty shore.

“Are you drinking again?” she asked, some of the anger in her voice evaporating.

He raised the bottle of
mezcal
a few inches, staring the maguey worm in the eye. “I guess I am,” he said.

There was long silence from the other end of the line. Then: “Where’s my prize, Carter?”

“Prize?” he said after taking a deep swig. He could hardly remember her face, let alone some stupid prize she was due.

“That thing you said you were going to get me. Some voodoo trinket?”

He remembered. He had gone to Mexico to find her a talisman, something to impress her full-of-shit friends in New York. She gave him a blank cheque.

The Mexican girl…

The old woman…

Oh God, that wretched old woman . . . He looked at the bundle once more and felt an overwhelming surge of emotion. Tears came without warning.

“Carter? What’s happening?”

“I made a mistake, Jasmine,” he said. “I’m not strong enough. I never realised how strong you had to be. That old woman, I thought she was just some stupid old hag, but she knew, she knew how much strength it took.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The bones,” he said in a strangled whispered, as if just naming them would bring about some terrible cataclysm. “I can’t think about anything else. Oh, Jas, I just want to touch them so much. Can you understand what that feels like?”

He recalled the need to touch her, the ache of passion, but even that most powerful of desires had never been as intense as this. This was like drowning slowly, and knowing the only air left in the world is cradled in your arms. This was like the vampire’s craving for blood.

He held the bundle up, trembling. “I’m going to touch them, Jasmine. I know I am. But I can’t, you see. If I do . . . I don’t know what’ll happen. I need help, Jas.”

She was silent for a long time. “I’m going to come down,” she said eventually.

He was gripped by a sudden panic, the thought of her here in this dangerous place, here with him and these deadly bones . . .

“No, don’t do that,” he told her.

“Too late,” she said. “It’s already done.”

Then the line was dead, and the tone drove into his brain like a nail. He slammed the receiver back in its cradle.

He had to sleep. Sleep and dream. But somehow the constant presence of the bones robbed him of the ability to switch off. When they were near he sensed a tiny insistent voice in the back of his brain, always talking, always convincing him of their need to be together, united.

I am yours and you are mine…

Summoning all his strength, he turned over and carefully, reverently, placed the bones onto the floor beside the bed. He stared down at them for an unknown time, as if staring down at a beloved child; then, with great willpower, he slid them under the bed and out of sight.

When he rolled over, he felt a vast weight fall away from him. He closed his eyes and was asleep in seconds.

***

Day into night, night into day.

Outside his apartment rooms the world rumbles by like the distant mournful sound of a slow-moving freight train. His dreams are lurid and fragmented, the images appearing in a flickering blur, like a movie reel showing in a darkened theatre: a moving canvas of writhing flesh, a tableau of bottomless carnal lust and depravity, of sex and brutality and everything in between. Occasionally, the moving kaleidoscope focuses on a moment in time, lingering over it with voyeuristic pleasure: a girl, no more than eighteen, naked and tied to a filthy mattress, snot and blood running from her nose, her eyes streaming with tears, not in ecstasy, but in pain and fear. Another washed-out image from the same point of view: the man, the bastard they called the Devil, standing over a man and woman, forcing them at knifepoint to have sex. Somehow their grief-stricken faces tell Carter everything: they are not a couple, or strangers even, but brother and sister, and the man is getting off on their enforced incest, smiling his gleeful smile as he pleasures himself in the shadows . . .

In the midst of this grim carnival, he realises that these are not just troubled dreams, they are memories. Not his, but that other man’s, the man whose bones had once been the framework on which choice cuts of mortal flesh had performed those long-forgotten acts of depravity.

The bones call to him from their resting place below, tempting him, enticing him to return them to their rightful place at his side. There is a moment when he almost wakes, ready to do their bidding . . .

But he fights it, encouraged by the old woman’s caustic accusation:

I know you are weak . . . I see it in your eyes . . .

Not anymore, he tells himself. Not anymore.

When he descends back into the deepest recesses of sleep, the nightmares fade into the background and he begins to dream good dreams. And they soothe his aching spirit . . .

***

He surfaced from the depths of sleep, vaguely aware of a figure standing over the bed. He felt a momentary stab of fear, before the figure leaned over and placed a finger across his lips.

“Shh. It’s me,” Jasmine whispered. “You left the door unlocked, stupid.”

He watched her undress in the dim light, the sight of her supple body acting as a curative to his aching senses. When she slipped between the covers, he shivered at the feel of her warm breasts pressing against his narrow chest, her honey-scented hair, her expensive perfume, her soft skin. He pulled her close, kissing her carelessly, overcome with passion.

She climbed on top of him and held up something long and silky in her hands, smiling down at him with her secret lustful smile.

“Just like old times, honey,” she said in a husky tone, reaching for his willing hands.

In the ensuing passion, he never once thought about the poisonous relic beneath his bed.

***

Snik. Snik-snik.

He opened his eyes, blinking. The room was still dark, the ceiling above him dappled with bizarre shadow-shapes. Thunder rumbled ominously in the distance.

Snik
.

He tried to sit up but found his hands still bound to the bed by her neckties. He was just able to peer over the end of the bed, where he could see Jasmine, still naked, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the balcony window with her back to him. She was holding something in her hands, but he couldn’t see what it was.

“Jasmine?” he said.

Snik-snik
.

He heard a low guttural laugh.

“Jas? What are you doing?”

“Are these for me, Carter?” she said; but her voice sounded odd, different, so deep and coarse that it was only barely recognisable as being female.

“What?” he said, but then he realised what she was holding. An icy finger of dread slid through his gut.

With unnatural grace, Jasmine stood up and turned towards him. Her hair, still damp with sweat from their passion, fell down over her face in a ragged veil. From the shadowed area within, she peered out at him with narrowed eyes, pupils like charcoal pits. The bundle of rags rested in her cupped hands.

“Jasmine,” he said slowly, trying to maintain his composure. “Put them down.”

She shook her head, a grim smile stretching her features. “No. They’re mine!” Her voice was deafeningly loud, filling the chasm that yawned between them. She raised the bundle of filthy rags out towards him. Then, deliberately, she unwound the rags and exposed the bones. They seemed to glow in the moonlight, to bathe in the silver rays spilling in through the window. His eyes were drawn to their dull white tone. They seemed to speak to him as before:

I am yours and you are mine . . .

“Jasmine,” he said. “Please don’t…”

Still smiling, she placed her fingertips on the smooth length of a short, thin bone—he thought it might be a rib—and recoiled suddenly. She threw her head back and let out a short gasp of ecstasy. When she looked back at him, her eyes were wide and dancing with naked desire. She touched it more fully now, running her open hands over the different bones: a broken femur, a phalange, a section of shattered skull.

There was a flash of white light from the window, followed by a deafening clap of thunder. The light was so bright Carter was forced to look away. Jasmine’s laughter filled the room; not her light, feminine laugh, but the ugly cackle of an insane creature. When Carter looked back, her eyes had rolled up into her head, exposing the whites.

The bones were gone. In her hand was the empty, dirty rag. She let it drop slowly to the floor, the first leaf of autumn. Disbelieving, he looked around for the missing bones, but he knew intuitively what had happened, and his fear gave way to acceptance. The man was invading her now, but in a different, more fundamental way.