The Revenant Road (27 page)

“I asked if you have a cell phone.”

“Where is he?” I said.

“Mister, we’ve gotta call an ambulance.”

The word “ambulance” galvanized me.

“Wait.”

I crawled toward Kowalski, propelled forward by a rising wave of terror.

Something was moving inside me.

It seethed beneath my skin, something cold. It coiled around my heart and drew away its warmth. The coiled thing had settled itself inside my mind.

I had to get it out.

I lifted my left hand, heavy with blood and terror, and dropped it on Kowalski’s chest.

Power.

It flowed out of me, through me and into him, a red/green shriek of power that blasted the nerves in my hands and feet, fired the synapses in my brain and sent a thrill of horror down my spine.

I closed my eyes and heard someone shouting my name. I think it was my father.

I found Kowalski huddled in the dark, floating in a place that was
no
place, a place that was simply
Outside
.

I called to him. He turned to me and I froze: I didn’t see a savior reflected in Kowalski’s eyes. I saw a monster.

But it was too late.

I opened my eyes.

A moment later, Kowalski hitched in a breath.

Sandra Woo screamed.

The bruises on his face were gone. The injuries he’d suffered at the hands of the Yeren were fading as I watched.

Kowalski sat up. He held his hands in front of his face and stared at them as if they belonged on the end of someone else’s arms. Then he turned to me.

 “My God, Grudge,” he said. “What have you done?”

35

Summing Up

In the days following the so-called “Seattle Wildman Murders” a series of truly unsettling events occurred.

Nurse Sandra Woo, the only survivor of the Wildman’s killing spree, led the authorities back to the Southwest Chinese Lutheran Sanctuary, only to find that it had been burned to the ground by a fire so intense that nothing, not even a single wall, remained intact.

The Seattle Police Department and the FBI found no trace of the suspect Woo had identified as the Wildman. Only the remains of his victims, preserved from the flames in a crawlspace beneath the Sanctuary.

But Woo was adamant. Her story, she insisted, was true. The SPD officers shook their heads and made googly eyes at each other behind her back. Only one officer appeared interested, a recently injured veteran named Athena Talbot.          

Talbot took Woo to lunch a few days later.

She listened to everything Woo had to say with great interest.

* * * *

In the ashes of the burned sanctuary, the Seattle Police Department’s task force found copious amounts of DNA from a man wanted for questioning in the murder of Glen Arthur Hong: a thirty-five year old illegal Chinese national named Chen Mao Liu.

DNA analysis of Chen’s blood samples taken from the Sanctuary proved inconclusive. Forensic scientists quietly determined that Chen’s DNA
had been cross-contaminated by that of an unknown animal.

The Mayor,
County
Medical Examiner
, Chief of Police and every Federal agent involved in the case agreed that the blood samples should be held for further study. They were stamped “Classified” and sent to a Federal research facility in
Washington
. The mysteries of Chen Mao Liu’s blood, they agreed, were better left unrevealed to the general public.

An anonymous tip led Federal investigators to the cramped studio apartment Chen Mao Liu rented in
Chinatown
. There they found more of Chen’s blood, and hair samplings from several victims and from the so-called “Wild Man.”

Police also found the half-devoured remains of several of the missing victims whose bodies were not recovered from the Sanctuary: Their organs were found in Chen’s refrigerator in Chinese food containers stolen from the stockroom of the Golden Fortune, the restaurant where Chen worked until the night Glen Hong was butchered.

The Seattle P.D. and the FBI issued a joint statement saying that Chen Mao Liu had been held for questioning by Homeland Security, but because of his status as a citizen of the People’s Republic of China (and a hastily-drawn relationship to an obscure Chinese Ambassador), they averred, Chen was deported to Beijing to await punishment in the Chinese criminal justice system.

The outcome of the Wildman murders was protested by the victims’ families and an outraged public. Congress launched a twelve-week investigation that was abruptly halted without explanation at a cost of nearly thirty-five-million taxpayer dollars. Lawsuits were filed and settled, quietly, away from the glaring light of public scrutiny.

Soon enough, the story faded from the front pages, replaced by perfectly ordinary terrors.

But one fact remains.

The body of Chen Mao Liu was never found.

Other than blood and a few hair clippings, some of them displaying human, animal, and
other
characteristics that one forensic scientist described as “utterly impossible to identify,” no physical evidence was found to confirm he had ever existed.

Chen Mao Liu’s bloody footprints had been smoothed over like tracks in the sand. Hidden beneath an eternal sea.

* * * *

I didn’t know where the Story would lead me. Didn’t know what doors might open, or down what dark pathways those doors might lead.

I spent the next few weeks healing, pacing the floors of my apartment and jumping at shadows, unable to sleep, unable to write, needing to write just the same. Mostly I sat in
Central Park
, alone at night, smoking, searching my soul for answers and avoiding the pigeons.

One night, needing the sound of other human voices I went to a local coffee shop in the Village. It was a place normally haunted by literary types. I went there whenever I couldn’t get the words out of my head and onto the page.   

One of the waitresses, an aspiring actress I’d seen many times at the coffee shop, sat down across from me. I’d always experienced an intense distrust of this woman. In the past she’d tortured me with her adventures as a Black Artiste in the Big Apple.

On this particular night, however, the actress/waitress invited me to join her in an adventure of a different sort. She was dark brown, with dyed red dredlocks and eyes the color of a glacier. Having no good reason to reject her, I accompanied her back to
Brooklyn
.  

I was lonely.

Kowalski had refused to return my calls. He’d left me unconscious and alone at Seattle Memorial. When I awoke I was told that all my medical services (stab wounds, several strained tendons in my neck and back, several cracked ribs, a broken wrist and a greenstick fracture in the ulna of my right forearm) had been paid in full.

It had been four months since we’d last spoken.

On the subway ride back to
Brooklyn
, the actress/waitress and I could barely keep our hands off each other. By the time we reached my apartment I believed I would have committed murder to possess her. When I opened the door, Kowalski and Hernandez were waiting for us.

The actress/waitress shrieked and leaped across the room. Hernandez fired her crossbow even as the actress/waitress shape-shifted. The iron shaft shot past her and buried itself in the wall inches from my head. The actress/waitress lashed out, moving faster than human eyes could follow, and slapped Hernandez across the room.

Kowalski fired next. His bolt passed through empty air. The actress/waitress
was standing on the ceiling directly over Kowalski’s head.
She reached down, grabbed Kowalski by the throat and lifted him off the floor.

Red fury burned the shock from my mind. I grasped the iron crossbow and pulled it out of the wall. A shock of force reverberated up my arm, and fire exploded across the range of my perceptions.

The actress/waitress dropped Kowalski. Black-veined folds of skin like bat’s wings burst from the flesh beneath her outstretched arms. Her limbs elongated and thickened. Fangs emerged from her jaws and drooled viscous black slime onto the floor.

The vampire dropped to the floor and lunged toward me even as I lunged, thrusting out with the iron crossbow bolt. The force of our clash carried us across the living room and through the big picture window that overlooked
Atlantic Avenue
.

We plummeted two stories to the concrete. The vampire took the brunt of the fall. Even so, she tore at my face, black claws dragging red runnels down my cheeks.

My mind filled up with a crimson shout, and I rammed the iron bolt into the vampire’s heart. The creature screamed, and spat ichor into my face. I ground the bolt deeper into its chest until I felt the cords of her unlife snap. With a warbling moan, the vampire settled into the asphalt. In moments, she was gone. Not even a skeleton remained.  

Exhausted now, abandoned by that shining red rage, I staggered up the stairs of my brownstone, back to my apartment. When I got there, a bruised and battered Hernandez and Kowalski were waiting for me.

Kowalski shoved Hernandez toward me. The one eyed hunter stared at me, almost sheepishly.  

The Blood Rose cleared her throat.

“We have to talk.”

* * * *

After the cleaners were gone, Kowalski and I sat facing each other across my kitchen table.

“I drove up to
Woodstock
you know,” he said. “Thought I could retire, like I’d always planned to do.”

He shrugged. “I was bored out of my tits.”

The crusty prophet stood up and looked out the new glass the cleaners had installed in my living room.

“I couldn’t sleep out there,” he said. “Not sleeping much anywhere these days.” He turned and faced me. “What did you do to me, Grudge?”

I shrugged. “I healed you,” I said. “I don’t know how.”

Kowalski grimaced. He glared at me without speaking for nearly a minute. Then he shrugged.

“I don’t think I’m fully human any more,” he said. “Hell, I’m supposed to be dead. I don’t sleep. And I’m seein’ things…things that I shouldn’t be seeing. Things I don’t want to see.”

He slammed his fist on the table.

“Why’d you do it, Grudge?”

I considered my answer for a long time. But finally, I settled on the simple truth: “You’re my best friend.”

Kowalski stared at me without speaking. Then he cleared his throat and nodded. For a moment, I thought the merest hint of emerald fire shimmered around him; a fleeting glimpse of corpse light, but I couldn’t be sure.

A crazy gleam that had nothing to do with Carlos Vulpe flickered in his eyes.   Kowalski smiled.

“Then maybe things ain’t so black after all,” he said. “No offense.”

I returned his smile.

“None taken.”

* * * *

Three hours ago, a man attacked two female joggers in
Central Park
. There has been a month-long spate of unsolved mutilation/murders in Midtown. Othello led Kowalski and me to a secluded section of the park where we found the werewolf. It was in the process of eating one of its victims.

I shot the human host with a gun loaded with silver bullets. Kowalski was right about one thing: religious artifacts only focus the natural gifts of
certain
hunters.

It takes a “modest gifting,” to use Kowalski’s words.

And the passion of the bereaved.

I’ve written this account to try and document these events, to tell the story from the viewpoint of someone who lived it. My time is limited. I know.

My Book arrived in the mail the other day.

It came in a plain brown envelope with no return address and no sender. I’ve left it sealed inside a safe deposit box at a bank in upstate
New York
. I haven’t opened the Book. I know what’s inside. I’m afraid I won’t have the strength not to look at the last page.

I didn’t know what to expect, but my father did, damn him. The old bastard must have known all along.

Now, I know as well.

And now a word to you, dear Reader.

You may have occasion to look up from your reading one night, when the moon is full and the wind rattles your bedroom window.