The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (4 page)

Not that he’d be around to see that
happen.

Jack made himself another sandwich
from the pile of food on the floor, ravenous; strange days gave one an
appetite. He sat cross-legged on the floor, enjoying the last meal he would eat
in his apartment and feeling strangely detached, as if all of this was
happening to someone else, an amusing story he was reading in a book.

Instead of worrying over his naked
apartment, or selling appliances that were not his to sell, he finished eating
and started gathering perishables up off the floor, collecting them in a large
bowl that wouldn’t sell because of a chip in the rim. He took all of it outside
and left it along with the bowl near the Dumpsters, assuming something would
eat it: rats, dogs, crows, whatever. Not his problem anymore.

When he got back upstairs, he packed
the last few things in the bathroom into a toiletries kit that he left on the
sink for tomorrow morning. Then he went back into the living room to lie down
on the sofa; even at thirty-five dollars, he couldn’t find a buyer. Some
setbacks were inevitable.

Anyway, it gave him a place to sleep.

He had barely lain down when there
was a knock at the door.
Perhaps Lou’s returned with the cops; come back to
check on the refrigerator and stove you sold
, he thought with detached
amusement.

But it wasn’t his landlord. It was
Jools.

“I saw the signs when I was driving
by,” she said by way of explanation. “Are you moving out?”

He realized he was dumbly staring at
her—not moving, not speaking, only staring—and a part of him wished it had been
his landlord with the police. It would have been easier. Jools looked
uncommonly beautiful framed in the doorway. He could smell her perfume; it had
not been so long that it didn’t still catch his attention and scramble his
thoughts. And Jools knew it.

Jack surprised himself by managing to
answer. “Umm, yes. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

She seemed a little surprised.
Perhaps she expected him to make some long, drawn out affair of it. Certainly
he was not the type to move in a matter of days, not Jack the stable, Jack the
predictable, Jack the dull.

He kept her standing there in the
doorway, knowing she would not ask to be let in, and pleased with himself for
not wanting her to. She was part of a life he was leaving behind as of
tomorrow, and good riddance.

But Jools seemed as content as he to
let the silence build between them, knowing him well enough to know he would
eventually break it.

And she was right. “Jools, why did
you stop by?”

“I just wanted to see how you were
doing.”

“I’m okay,” he answered. “I should
get my key back, though. Since I’m moving out.” His reasoning was sound, not
cold or vindictive. Still, it felt awkward.

Jools nodded reasonably and took his
apartment key from her purse; it was already off her key-chain. This moment
would likely have happened no matter what. Only before this morning and the
train ticket and the Writer, it would have eviscerated him. Instead, it felt
like nothing at all.

“So where are you going?” she asked,
key held out to him.

“I have a job opportunity out west.”
No sooner did he say it then he realized how vague the answer—and the truth it
concealed—really was.

“Really. Where?”

An easy enough question to answer. At
least, it should have been. But his situation was unique, and he found himself
searching for the most suitable answer that did not make him sound like a
lunatic. What he settled on was not really an answer at all. “Does it matter?”

Jools looked at him for a moment, and
he thought he detected a glimmer of hurt in her stare, a small flaw in the
veneer. Then it was gone. “No,” she answered coolly, “I don’t suppose it does.
Goodbye Jack.”

“Goodbye Jools.”

She turned and left, leaving him
staring out onto the empty landing at the place where she once stood, the empty
scene her character had vacated.

Burn all your bridges, Jack. Ever
forward, never back.

Jack shoved the extra key into his
pocket and closed the door. Then he stretched out on the sofa and read until he
got tired. He wasn’t sure he would be able to sleep, what with all that had
happened that day, his anticipation for tomorrow. Questions buzzed about his
brain like hornets, and each one he considered seemed to explode into a dozen
more. The one question that kept recurring was whether or not he had gone
insane; whether all of this was a lunatic’s first steps, or a desperate man’s
last charge at freedom—of the mind, the soul, the heart, take your pick.

He couldn’t decide which, but was
surprised to discover that whichever it was, it had freed him somehow, giving
him a strange sort of courage, even serenity. No sooner had he closed the book
then he was comfortably asleep.

*     *     *

Jack dreamed of a train, an old iron
locomotive belching smoke and puffing steam as it screamed into the station,
wheels squealing and grinding to a halt, rogue sparks smacking out from the
rails. He watched from the edge of the platform where he stood, ticket in hand,
wearing a vest and cowboy boots, an extra from a bad spaghetti western.

The door of the train slid back, and
the Writer stepped out in a conductor’s uniform and cap. “Ticket, please.”

And Jack handed one to him.

“Someone will take care of your
baggage, sir,” the conductor informed him. But he didn’t have any.

The conductor did not find this
unusual.

Neither did he.

Jack turned then to the sound of
footsteps racing across the platform, running towards him. A man in a
light-colored suit and white fedora halted behind him. “That’s my train, boy!”

The Writer frowned. “He has a
ticket.”

“So do I,” the man declared, a gun
pointing directly at Jack.

With exaggerated slowness, Jack saw
the revolver’s hammer rock back, the man’s finger tighten upon the trigger, the
movement agonizingly slow as though the gears of the universe were filling with
glue, jamming up, slowing down.

Then the hammer fell.

An explosion …

… and Jack woke up.

Outside, the roar of a transmission
and shifting gears, a truck pulling away from the nearby corner, farting out one
more backfire of smoke for good measure as it passed outside Jack’s apartment
window.

But not your apartment anymore, boyo?

Jack looked around with a foggy,
disconnected feeling. He did not exactly remember where he was (
an empty
living room
?), or why he was here (
sleeping on the couch
?). The
fading remnants of the dream were slowly being replaced by a flurry of recalled
memories from the day before. Kicked out of his office. Leaking radiator. The
crow talked to him, so he abandoned his car at work—only not his work anymore.
Then he ran through the rain until he found the Café Tangier …
and the
Writer
.

It all started coming back, a trickle
turning into a flood: raspberry-mocha lattés which tasted like Godiva chocolate
truffles, the offer to become a writer and the caretaker of some “special
place,” a ticket for a morning train—
this
morning! —at a mythical
station that did not exist. Then he walked home and sold everything he owned.

Or was he still dreaming?

Jack Lantirn looked slowly around,
first light pouring in through the open windows, bare walls and a naked floor
mocking him.

He sat up quickly, head still muddy
with sleep. He searched for a clock before remembering he had sold it, and
looked at his watch instead. 6:15 am.

“Oh God!” He rubbed the heels of his
hands into his eye sockets until stars sprayed across his vision like
hyperspace. “I’ve lost my goddamn mind!”

Had he actually left his car derelict
in a parking lot? Had he actually thrown away the keys for the sake of a busted
radiator? Had he actually come back to his apartment and sold
every … single
… thing … he … OWNED?
Goddamn insane! Nothing was spared. He even had the
balls to sell appliances that weren’t even his.

“Jesus, you’re fucked,” he chided.
“What the hell were you thinking, huh? What?”

By the door, his remaining
possessions were packed in a green duffel bag beside his laptop, two years old
and already out of date. He bought it with money left over from his student
loans; loans he was still paying off, though apparently not after today.

He was completely insane.

Then his eyes found the corner of the
ticket in the duffel pocket, a reminder of a question he couldn’t answer:
what’s
keeping you here?

He had over seventeen hundred
dollars. It would be possible to replace the appliances before his landlord
found out. He could buy a couple sticks of furniture with the remainder—not
much, but he couldn’t afford to be choosy—and get to work on finding a job. The
backfire probably belonged to the newspaper truck, which meant that the morning
edition was in the box out front. He should grab a copy and start perusing the
want-ads. That would be the practical, sensible thing to do.
You remember
being laid-off, don’t you, Jack? That you remember, right? Do you think that
sixty days plus six stinking weeks of severance is forever? It’s not. Look at
the jobless rates sometime. You’ll need a good five months to find a new job.
And by the way, a bum is currently wearing your only suit while he hocks your
only pair of dress shoes for a bottle of Thunderbird.

But there was still no answer to the question. What was keeping him here?
Was he any better off before he sold everything to follow a crazy man on a
train that likely didn’t exist?

Nothing and no. He was halfway down the rabbit hole, and trying to go
back offered no better prospects than the empty promises pulling him forward.
It was time to find a new place, make a new start. There was nothing for him
here. Less than nothing, really. Just questions he could not answer, and
actions he had to answer for.

No, better he go with his gut for a little while longer. In for a penny,
in for a pound.

Or penny wise, pound foolish
, the sensible voice in his head
answered back spitefully.
Pick your adage; they’re all equally useless
.

But the decision was already made. It
had been made a long time ago.

So Jack Lantirn started his first
official morning of unemployment much the same as any other morning. He got up
early, showered and shaved, then got dressed. Not for work, no. That was over
now. A comfortable pair of jeans, and a casual button-down shirt. Sneakers to
replace the leather shoes lost to the elements and his sad excuse for a
reality.

Jack placed his apartment keys in an
envelope on the windowsill before he left. On the outside of the envelope he
wrote, “
Lou, Something came up sooner than expected. Fuck you, too
.”

Then he grabbed his laptop and duffel
bag, lifted the box of food from the cupboard upon one arm, and left for the
Soup Kitchen down the street.

He never returned to the apartment
again.

GONE … BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

The Writer stepped from the Café
Tangier into the morning sun; a sun not at all like the one he was used to,
that burning, withering orb in a cloudless sky bleached near white by its
unforgiving heat. He carried two lattés, napkins wrapped around the heavy paper
cups to protect his fingers from the heat, a solution that worked only passably
well.

One was for him, the other for Jack;
a little positive reinforcement to bolster his resolve. Yesterday had been a
trying day for the aspiring writer, and, as it happened, Jack was fond of
raspberry-mocha lattés.

The Writer knew this.

In truth, he knew this before the two
of them even met.

The Writer knew a great deal more
about Jack than Jack ever would have guessed. And knowing what he knew, it was
easy enough to manipulate the circumstances that would push or lead someone
like Jack towards a certain path. Free will was an illusion, a lie believed in
by those who did not see reality from all the angles that the Writer was privy
to.

He started walking towards the
station, hoping he hadn’t misread his new protégé, hoping the young writer
hadn’t lost his nerve during the night. It was no lie that this was the
greatest opportunity of Jack’s life; his big chance to finally do what he
always believed he should be doing. A second chance. He was also being honest
when he told him that he needed a new Caretaker and quickly, someone who would
look after his special place and protect it from the others.

Had he mentioned the others to Jack? The Writer could not remember. He
hoped so. Jack should know that becoming the Caretaker would not likely go
without a challenge. Ownership of the Nexus was a prize much sought after by
those few who still knew what it was and how to use it.

The others—the ones he hoped he had
mentioned—were without right or claim to the Nexus, but custom and law had
little to do with reality. Survival of the fittest was an axiom that existed
universally—not simply in this universe, but in all of them.

“When did you last take pleasure in sunshine,
Algernon?”

The Writer felt the soles of his
shoes freeze to the sidewalk, a feeling come over him like ice water, chasing
the blood from his heart and turning him numb. Will alone kept him from
stumbling, a misstep that would have ended his life right then.

Only one other person still knew that
name, all others gone now to their grave and good riddance to most of them. But
there was still one who knew him, who still knew him as anything other than
whom he claimed to be, one who still knew the truth.

The Writer turned on the man standing
behind him. “How did you escape?”

“You opened a door,” the man replied,
his voice harsh and papery. “You’re a fool if you think something won’t come
through. Tell me you’re not surprised. You of all people should have known that
I would be coming. Or did you actually believe you could hide from me in this
pathetic shell of a reality?”

The Writer stared down the empty
sidewalk at the other, his cream-colored suit, loose and comfortable and
inappropriate to his malefic nature. He was leaning upon a walking cane, a Panama hat tipped jauntily upon his head, casting a shadow across half of his face. To the
casual observer, the man’s eyes might actually be normal.

But the Writer knew Gusman Kreiger
better. He was one of them, one of the
others
he had neglected to warn
Jack about. And of them all, Gusman Kreiger was the most dangerous.

“You’re not supposed to be here,
Kreiger. What do you want?” the Writer shouted back, preferring to keep his
distance for safety’s sake.

“I’m surprised at you, Algae,” Gusman said, one hand jammed into his
pants pocket, looking as if his fingers were struggling to keep hold of
something; something wriggling to get free; a pocketful of writhing adders. “I
think you know why I’m here.”

“I suppose I do.”

“Good. Then why don’t you save me a
great deal of time and effort, and yourself a great deal of trouble, and hand
it over.”

“Hand what over, Kreiger?”

“I lost the other four, but not this
one. You brought it here with you, I can tell, so don’t play with me. You have
no idea how difficult it is for me to be here.” And for one brief moment,
Gusman Kreiger seemed to be pulled sideways, as if caught suddenly in a wall of
hurricane-force wind that trapped him, tearing at him like wheat in a thresher.
Kreiger’s teeth ground tight, his muscles forming rigid lines beneath a thin
tissue of flesh, and his eyes locked with the Writer’s revealing a curious,
half-focused, half-manic glare.

“I’d say you overstayed your welcome
already,” the Writer remarked. “Or have you forgotten that you do not belong in
this place?”

“I
belong
where I please,”
Kreiger said tightly, regaining his consistency, if not his poise, the strain
evident in the gleam of sweat on his forehead and temples. The impression of
sliding sideways was gone now, replaced by a kind of rage that seemed to
manifest itself physically under the flesh of the others face and head like a
writhing knot of worms.

“Of course you do, Kreiger,” the
Writer remarked with a malicious grin. “But you don’t get to stay. That’s the
rule.”

“Don’t talk to me of rules, Algernon.
You treat the Nexus like a back alley whorehouse, a place to come and go as you
please. There are rules, true enough, and you’re breaking them with every
breath you take.”

“A lecture on rules from a Cast Out?”
the Writer admonished. “I am the Caretaker. The rules are mine to break.”

“You’re unworthy—”

“Have you any idea of how ridiculous
such an accusation is from one such as yourself? Cast from the Nexus for sheer
arrogance, the refusal to acknowledge that some rules are beyond your will to
control, and that you would have to bend to them, or be broken. Go away,
Kreiger. You were cast out. This is no longer any of your affair.”

“Isn’t it? You’re leaving, Algernon.
You’ve come here looking for another to take your place.”

“I came here to sell my manuscript. I
write books. I’m sure a hack such as yourself can grasp the premise, even if
its mastery eludes you.”

“You came here to pass on the final
ticket, Algernon. Don’t lie to me; it is an art at which you are remarkably
inept. And don’t pretend not to understand what I’m talking about! Give me the
ticket, now!”

Again, Kreiger appeared to slide
sideways, caught by some otherworldly wind blowing out of thin air, intent upon
blasting him straight through the molecules of the nearby building, his
features reduced to wet paint smeared across glass. It lasted only a moment,
but the duration was fractionally longer than before, and it took him longer
still to recover and pull himself back together. “I’m on borrowed time here,
and so, by extension, are you.”

“You’d better go, Gusman,” the Writer
warned softly. “Stay here any longer, and this world will tear you to shreds.
The Wasteland is already reaching out for you … and it wants you back. You’re
to blame for where you are, Kreiger—”

“No!” Kreiger screamed. “You are
right about rules that cannot be broken, but you are gravely mistaken as to
which ones they are. Now I want that ticket!”

“I don’t think so.”

Kreiger’s jaw worked slowly, side to
side, taut muscles threatening to grind his teeth to splinters. His eyes, one
blue, the other green, blazed beneath a fiercely knit brow, fixing upon the
Writer like barbed hooks. Then Kreiger started forward, long hungry strides
eating up the distance separating them. The Panama hat slipped from his head
and disappeared, smearing the air like a chalk etching brushed away by a
careless hand. The Writer saw it for a moment, a fading image growing long and
thin like smoke lost to the breeze, then gone without a trace.

Now nothing separated the Writer from
the malefic stare of Kreiger’s different-colored eyes. They were eyes that
understood hatred and loathing and the bitter pain of shattered aspirations
that fed upon the heart like a crawling mass of ooze-blackened maggots; eyes that
obtained some measure of satisfaction, even pleasure, from the pain they
witnessed in others. Caught within his eyes, the Writer stood stricken, feeling
like a small rodent caught in the golden stare of a serpent.

In his life, the Writer had seen many
things: some things so wondrous as to blind the eye of God, and some so
terrible as to shatter all the devils in hell like so many thin, porcelain
cups. But never before had he known the raw terror he felt now watching the
universe itself try to drag Gusman Kreiger back to the reality from which he
came … and Kreiger able to
resist
!

“What have you done, Kreiger?”
Algernon moaned, his voice sounding tired and feeble even to his own ears, the
voice of a very old man. “You’ve become a monster.”

“My skills have sharpened over time,
Algernon, and now I’m taking my due.” The other smiled, and for a moment only,
the stick he carried flickered with a ghostly image that was taller, more
ornate; the retinal echoes of a staff mystically hidden behind the air. “One
piece at a time.”

The Writer stood paralyzed, his mind
caught in the grip of demanding claws that sank deep into the soft tissue of
his brain, digging in and holding on with jagged nails. He watched as Kreiger
stepped closer, purposeful strides that would carry him up to the Writer until
the two men were standing nose to nose, and he could do nothing. Then the eyes
would swallow him whole.
How had Kreiger become so strong?
he wondered.
Years
in the Wasteland should have left him weak and mad. Instead, he was transformed,
made into an abomination!

A burning pain ate through the
Writer’s fingertips, urgent signals of anguish exploding through the spell of
Kreiger’s stare. For one dazed moment, The Writer looked down with
incomprehension, and saw the forgotten drinks in his trembling hands. A napkin
had fallen away and left his bare fingertips exposed to the throbbing heat
penetrating the cardboard cups, the pads of his fingers bright red and
agonizing. But instead of throwing them down and sucking on his burned fingers,
the Writer
luxuriated
in the pain, focused on the sharp stabbing, the
hard, slow pulses that rocked each digit and throbbed all the way to the base
of his palm like a heartbeat. Turning all of his attention upon the white,
excruciating source, the Writer slowly looked away from Kreiger’s mad eyes, and
deliberately turned aside …

… nearly colliding with the two
figures standing directly behind him, waiting.

How long have they been standing
there?
the Writer
wondered morosely.
How long have you been foolishly entertaining Kreiger,
trading remarks like two bullies in the schoolyard, him putting the pieces in
place all the while.

The Writer felt very much alone, a
man who has lost his world. And Gusman Kreiger … well, Kreiger made any place
he happened to be his. Two-thousand years ago, in another reality, Kreiger had
turned water into wine then walked upon the sea, if only to inspire a devout
following who would indulge his ego’s every whim and fancy. This plane was not
a barrier to Kreiger. That he could escape the Wasteland at all was a testament
to the extent of his control over reality. That he could bring others along
with him was meant as a demonstration of his resolve: Kreiger would take the
ticket—and thereby the Nexus—and the Writer could do nothing to stop him.

What were you thinking, old man?

The two creatures—there was nothing
about them that might be confused with human beings—stared back at him with
blank expressions, their faces a hodgepodge of leathery skin, jagged fangs and
bestial eyes. They were dressed identically: long coats of black, collars
pulled up as if against some imaginary storm, their monstrous appearances
concealed like comic book goons beneath the wide, drooping brims of their black
hats; they were images lifted off old cinema posters, bad pulp comics, the
worst kind of B-movie. One had a hawkish nose and ice-colored eyes, his face
carved and creased like an ancient, wind-worn statue. The other gazed absently,
eyes burned milky white, sightless, slits instead of nostrils covered with
folds of skin like some abstract artist’s perverse graffiti, a skull obscenely
fleshed. The flaps of skin bulged spasmodically as it sniffed the air, sensing
the Writer purely by smell.

Wasteland dregs!
The Writer thought in amazement.
The
pompous fool has actually carried Wasteland dregs with him into this world!

“Tell me Algernon,” Kreiger said.
“You call yourself the Writer, but how will you write when my creatures have
bitten off your hands? How will you see your words when they have gouged out
your eyes? How will you speak your stories when they are eating your tongue?”
Kreiger’s voice grew closer, his words punctuated by the steady footfall
against cement like the sound of hobnailed boots stamping iron catwalks in a
dungeon buried far below the earth and the sun and the sight of God. “There are
many of us who would like access to the Nexus, Algae. More than you could ever
imagine. Now, for the last time, where … is … that …
TICKET
?”