The Revenant Road (15 page)

“As to why you should care?
That
I can help you with.”

She stood up and walked to the kitchen door.

“Come on.”

I got to my feet and followed her into the living room.  

The fat woman was still speaking as Lenore led me to an empty chair. I sat down, feeling like an intruder, out of place among strangers. I’d only noticed the fat woman and the disfigured man before being hauled off to the kitchen. Now, I had the opportunity to study some of the other guests.

It was with some shock that I recognized several of the people who’d attended Marcus’ funeral. A pallor that had little to do with race, creed, or ethnicity seemed to cling to their bones. Even the darker-skinned guests looked pale. They were a motley crew, drawn from many different races and socio-economic backgrounds. But each of them carried a haunted air. Many of them flinched whenever someone looked their way. No one looked anyone else in the eye for more than a brief glance before looking away at something or someone else. Most of them were wearing black.

In contrast, Lenore seemed to flicker around the room like a giant humanoid butterfly: a bipedal monarch shimmering between moving clots of shadow.

The fat woman who had been speaking when I came in, sat down, and a thin, dark-haired woman took her place in the center of the circle.

“Hello, everyone,” she said. “My name is Tamar, and I’m a Survivor.”

The group responded: “Hi, Tamar.”    

Tamar smiled. Something about her expression pricked at my emotions. After my breakdown in Lenore’s kitchen, I felt raw, too vulnerable. I eyed the front door. It seemed tantalizingly close.

“This is only my second meeting. It’s been two years since the incubi took my son Benjamin. My husband Peter and I moved here from
Israel
last May with our three daughters. We were living with my parents on
Long Island
until last month. They don’t know what really happened to Benjamin. The doctors said it was ‘sudden infant death syndrome.’ But they weren’t
there
. They didn’t see the thing my Benjamin turned into before he died.”

Tamar visibly suppressed a shudder of revulsion.

“But my grandmother knew. My parents ignored her when she tried to tell them about the
banim shovavin
, the ‘mischievous sons.’ the demons who trick women, seduce them, use them as breeders to create... monsters.”

The Israeli woman swiped at the tears that sprang into her eyes.

“It’s alright, Tamar,” Lenore volunteered. “Everyone in this room understands what you’re going through.”

Tamar nodded gratefully. “I know,” she said. “That’s why I came tonight. My grandmother Elaine died last winter. My husband doesn’t want to talk about Benjamin. Since Benjy wasn’t really
his
in the first place, it’s hard to argue with him. But since she died... I have no one to talk to.”

Tamar smiled. “I thank God for you guys,” she said.  “No one else understands.”

22

Destiny’s Child

Finding my way back to Kalakuta the next morning was easier than you might imagine: How many haunted mansions can there be in
Yonkers
?

The house squatted at the top of its long driveway like a drunken troll groaning beneath an ancient curse. As I drove through the black iron gates, the noise from the street faded, blocked by the high stone wall that girded the property. I parked the car and walked up the driveway to the throbbing tones of Marilyn Manson. Heavy bass and pounding rhythm thundered out of the open downstairs windows as I rang the bell.

“Fuck off,” Kowalski bellowed. “I’m retired!”

The Beautiful People
increased in volume.

I walked over to the window: Iron bars covered it, but I could see into what looked like a small office. Inside, Kowalski was nowhere to be seen. It was
11:12 AM
. I was due at the she-creature’s mansion in
Bedford
at
8:00 PM
sharp.

I’d spent the rest of the previous evening listening to the stories of the Steppers. The Israeli woman, Tamar, had given birth to a creature that only looked like a human infant: Little Benjamin had actually been fathered by an incubus, a creature from Jewish folklore.

The changeling had wrecked Tamar’s home and nearly destroyed her marriage before it was reclaimed by its father, a creature Tamar had encountered while traversing the dreaming forests of the Wraithing.

But the turmoil that had overtaken the Israeli woman’s life had been no dream. She and her family had become pariahs, shunned by their community, unable to convince the news media and therefore the public, that they had not murdered their son. They’d finally been forced to leave
Israel
simply to find work to support the family’s surviving children.

Tamar had met Lenore after being referred by a mutual acquaintance. Somehow, my mother and the other Steppers were helping Tamar cope with her fears and her loss.

I’d left somewhere around four in the morning, feeling humbled by Tamar’s simple courage in the face of so much devastation, and shamed by my mother’s unexpected ability to help. Now, after sleeping most of the morning locked in my apartment with the curtains drawn and the phone turned off, I needed guidance.  

I needed to find my own path through the forest.

“Neville, please,” I shouted. “It’s Obadiah.”

From somewhere close, Kowalski’s scratchy baritone thundered over the music: “Goddamit!”

The front door flew open and Kowalski appeared, hair askew, wearing a stained undershirt and boxers and clutching a rolled-up copy of
Jugs
.

I choked back the urge to laugh.

“What’s so goddamn funny?” Kowalski said.

I shrugged and said, “You up for Hobo of the Year Award?”

Kowalski scowled. “Funny guy,” he retorted. “Why don’t you save it for your crappy books?”

“Neville...”

“Didn’t you hear me?” Kowalski barked. “I’m worn out, man. I’m gonna take my old VW bus and hit the friggin’ highway. I got friends up in
Woodstock
. Figure I’ll head north and check out that cream soda enema I told you about.”

“Neville, I talked to Marcus.”

Kowalski dropped the magazine.

“What’s that you say?”

“And it was a cream soda spinal tap, by the way.”

“You mean it?” Kowalski said. “You really spoke to your old man?”

I shrugged, disgruntled by the ease with which the impossible had become irritatingly acceptable.

“He saved my life in
Central Park
two days ago.”

“You wouldn’t gaslight a beat-up old alky, would ya, Junior?” Kowlaski said.

“He told me to ask you about the Bent,” I said.

Kowalski clapped his hands and broke into the kind of jig you only see in movies about toothless old prospectors.

“Holy Christmas!” he crowed. “That wily old son-of-a bitch really did it!”

Kowalski reached out and grabbed me by the arm.

“Christ, don’t let’s stand out here like a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Get your ass inside!”

Kowalski yanked me into Kalakuta and slammed the door behind us.

“Marcus came to me, you know?” he said. “The day of the funeral. He told me what he had in mind.”

Kowalski peered around warily.

“I wasn’t sure if it was really him or...
somethin’ else,
y’know? Somethin’ from...
over there?
I told myself, ‘Kowalski, you’re just grievin’ over your best friend.’ Hell I thought I was re-trippin’ from all the acid I cranked back in the sixties. But then
you
came along and...Hot Damn!”

As he spoke, Kowalski danced back and forth in the big entry hall, his forefingers poking holes in the air around his head like fleshy exclamation points.

Despite my earlier paranoia, the iceberg in my chest began to melt, just at the edges. Then again I’ve always had a soft spot for toothless old prospectors.

“You asked me about the Bent,” he said. “In your old man’s case, it was the ability to sniff out the residents of the Wraithing whenever they reared their ugly heads in his general vicinity. That was his
Bent
, his talent.”

I nodded, only half-getting it.

“You’re saying my father was a medium?”

Kowalski shrugged. “Call it psychic, or sensitive. Different hunters have different Bents. Most of us, like me, don’t have anything other than gut instinct. Usually we get paired with a Sensitive, a Bender, each hunter augmenting the other. Like Danny Glover and Mel Gibson in those shitty Lethal Weapon flicks. That way, the burden is shared.”

“And Marcus, my father was a... He had a Bent?”

Kowlaski nodded. “That’s why you were able to see him. Hell, I’ve been chasing squatters for forty years. I’ve developed what I call my ‘Ass-clench Intuition.’ When a scenario doesn’t feel right my ass muscles get hard as a couple of silicone titties.”

Kowalski belched and leaned forward, like a dying man imparting the secrets of the universe. “But
you
got the knack,” he said. “Marcus must have passed his bent down to you, sure as I got the worst case of
hee
-morrhoids in the
Hudson
Valley
! No offence.”

“None taken,” I said. “You said something about a burden?”

Kowalski’s expression hardened and his smile disappeared faster than grits at a Baptist brunch.

“Sit down, son,” he said.

I sat on the dusty armchair in the sitting room off the entryway. Kowalski dragged an old armchair over to the sofa and sat facing me.

“The Bent is many things: a gift; a weapon. It’s also the responsibility to put the squatters down when the need arises. Since most people wouldn’t accept the existence of the supernatural if it pooped in their Christmas pudding, the task falls to folks like us. But your father’s was a rare talent, even among the Benders.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, my heartbeat racing. “Are you telling me that Marcus... that
I
have... some kind of super powers?”

Kowalski scowled. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “We’re not talkin’
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
or any o’ that daffy shite.”

“Oh,” I said, visions of Keanu Reaves/
Matrix
-style
jujitsu
fights disintegrating in my head.

“Call it a modest ‘gifting,’” Kowalski said. “To offset the gross supernatural advantages enjoyed by the squatters.”

“Squatters?”

“Yes,” Kowlaski said. “You see, we’re alerted to any breach of the Nolane’s defenses by the Referral Service. The Service helps us locate the squatter and clears the way for us to intercept it, thereby ‘sealing’ the breach.”

“You mean you have to just run out whenever someone from this Service calls?”

“Yep.”

This information evoked an upwelling of financial self-interest. How the hell could I be expected to pack up and leave at the behest of some shadowy organization I’d never heard of?

“Who are they?” I said.

Kowalski shrugged. “Haven’t the foggiest. But they’re never wrong. You may not hear from them for a month, sometimes two or three at a stretch. There’re always minor pinpricks in the Nolane’s defenses: a malignant sprite, maybe a goatsucker down in ol’
Mexico
, but when a full breach occurs...”

A telephone beeped somewhere. Kowalski stopped and stared at me. “Well I’ll be…”

“What is it?” I said.

“Hold yer water.”

Kowalski walked out of the sitting room. From somewhere close by I heard him answer the phone.

“Yeah,” he grunted. “Go ahead. I see. Yep. Ahhh, well, he’s right here. But I don’t think... Where?”

Kowalski was quiet for a long time.

I glanced around the sitting room.

The walls were lined with bookshelves. As Kowalski grunted in the next room, I walked over to the shelves and perused the titles. Many of them were familiar:
Moby Dick,
A Christmas Carol, Fahrenheit ...

But one large leather bound volume caught my eye. Its spine was unadorned; no title graced its length. Curious, I reached up and slid the book out of its place between
Lord of the Flies
and
The Lord of the Rings.

The book was old, heavier than it looked. The leather binding glistened as if it had been recently oiled.

I flipped through the first few pages.

Handwritten text lined the yellowing, wafer-thin sheets from top to bottom. Some of the pages featured illustrations, intricate renderings of battles between what looked like entire human armies against a slavering demonic horde.

Each of the illustrations, some in black and white, some rendered in colors so vivid they seemed to leap up from the page, displayed startling skill. These had been rendered with an attention to detail that seemed almost otherworldly. Each image had been painstakingly reproduced, each character captured in a moment of ecstasy or grief so visceral that I felt a lump rising at the back of my throat.

I turned to the last page.

The illustration featured a demon squatting atop a mountain of corpses. A screaming black man lay cradled across the demon’s lap. A loop of the black man’s entrails dangled from the demon’s open mouth, its end still anchored within the gaping red hole in the man’s abdomen.

Behind the demon, a dark figure stood on the edge of a black forest, its form partially hidden among the trees. The figure towered above that dark landscape. It was part man, part tree, with eyes that burned like branding irons.