Pain, ill-gotten and raw.
She absentmindedly took a spritz of sanitizer that stood in the lobby of the funeral home. Perhaps a subconscious need to cleanse herself of what she was about to do. She felt like a predator. Mourners milled about, the men in suits carefully delineated from staff by the presence of certain expressions.
The place was tan all over, its carpet patterned inoffensively. Rooms and byways were symmetrical. A thought occurred to her: Why in hell would they make it so that you might accidentally mistake one room for another?
A man in a dark blue suit, freshly shaven, stood alone with his hands clasped before him. He looked like he’d just gotten rid of a full beard--naked and sheepish. His suit bunched at the shoulders. This, after all, was a rare occasion for him. He was full of pain. She could practically drink the runoff.
Her palms began to sweat.
And she chased a word to the back of her mind, into the corner where there were shadows. The word was hidden, but of course she was aware it was there, waiting to dart out like a trap door spider.
The word was victim.
She never considered any of them victims. They were just people in need, and they were always in need. They were stagnant and languishing, too full of pain to move. She relieved them of their misery. She used it for them. And when it was all used up, well, that was it, and there was always more pain out there.
But this man, this—the word darted out and grabbed at her—victim, stood alone in his bunchy dark blue suit with his hands clasped and waited there like the prey that he was—too full of pain to move.
She smiled and held out her hand, which felt the full weight of gravity on it. He smiled forcibly—no teeth—and took it.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said, her voice pinched.
She closed her eyes, not wanting to see the change in his face as the pain flowed out of him.
It was a lot.
And as would happen in times like this, she received impressions. A mother. Embraces, the way she smelled. A wonderful laugh. A sweet song cooed over a sleepless child. A name—Helen. A book—The Seven Story Mountain.
The pain flooded her. She inhaled deeply with each gush of it, feeling the fullness of it. She wanted to laugh, but she held it together. She wanted to cry as well. And she was suddenly deathly afraid.
She was suddenly aware of people behind her. She snapped her eyes open and snapped her head back to see a young couple waiting to greet the lonely man whose hand she still clasped. She let go and caught a glimpse of his face. It was one of deep questioning, and it had transformed from the wan mask it was just a moment ago to something... unique. The face of a mannequin with a forever smile.
The weight of the gathering mourners behind her forced her to move into the room. Pools of quiet conversation overflowed. She splashed though them, keeping her head down and heading quickly toward a seat in the back.
She felt pulled by the image of the open casket She didn’t want to look but could not help herself. It was a magnet for attention for everyone in the room, who in one way or another contended with all its ugly associations, by either looking away or finally succumbing to its draw by approaching it, all with the knowing appreciation of onlookers—we’re finally doing what we’re here to do, and we all pretend it’s not grotesque, or a vestige of unenlightened times, and we behold the cold, powdered, painted thing with...what? Fear? Reverence? Or was it shame? This is what we become. Every one of us. How many wills are being revised in this room right now? she thought. Don’t put me on display like that, you fuckers. Burn me back to dust.
The pain in this room was overwhelming. She felt ill, and bloated like a tick. Why hadn’t she just turned away instead of entering into this strangely perfumed place? She’d been compelled by new emotions. Not even done digesting and she had already begun to use up her fuel. She needed this pain for Mary Brach. That was the payment.
Ill gotten—she’d taken it from someone who needed it.
Raw—yes, it was raw alright. Practically green. Practically fruity.
The doors closed and her stomach flared with heat. A man of the cloth was making his way toward the casket. And people took their seats and conversations dried to nothing.
There are 2589 counted citizens in East Metoac. Shall we take a look at one? Macy Greene-Tallow? She of auburn hair and gouged cheek? She of total disdain for modern art, preferring folks like Caravaggio because his paintings “actually look like what they’re supposed to be”? She of small stature, of the fixedness of gaze, and of the lap-lustered palms from a lifelong habit of stroking pant legs when sitting?
Visiting hours at Elias T. Bayles Memorial Hospital were nearing their end. Macy, a nurse herself and frighteningly calm under medical pressure, sat stroking her knees, speaking with only a teaspoon of panic in her voice. (Macy Greene-Tallow, she of dampened distress.)
Dr. Stang had met Wade a couple of times and found him to be every bit as odd as Macy was now describing him, just in a different way. She knew the doctor felt this way before he ever confessed it to her in the car, in the parking lot, one night when the darkness grew thick around them—when there were chapped lips and a tongue that did not so much dart but heave itself all at once in a soft muscle rape of her mouth. It was a shared secret--that night, the car, and a shoulder to cry on that turned into one over-scrubbed hand inside another, and then a tasting of foreign, sticky breath. Like all shared secrets, this one needed no actual reference, for it stained every word between them the color of a bruise.
“It doesn’t look like he ingested anything,” said Dr. Stang. He took the seat across from her on the Slurpee-colored couch in the waiting room, put his hands on his lap, and stroked his knees in semi-conscious mimicry of her. He seemed to notice that she noticed and stopped it at once. “Do you know if he’s been under any stress?”
It was annoying that he phrased it like this. She let her mouth hang open for a half a second. “I wouldn’t know.”
His lips folded inwards and the tip of The Tongue poked through. She noticed then that his hair was thinning. And his nose had a downward hook like some killing bird. He was also a bit gangly, and something like a soupy smell came off him, probably from the corner of his neck. His hands, too, were gross. Despite the fact that they were steady and straight, they were knuckley with hair in weird places. A strange relief came over her then, as she realized she was no longer enslaved to extramarital attraction. At least not now, and not to this one.
“If anything,” she said, “I’d say he was unusually hyper when I came home.”
“How so?”
She ceased her lap-rubbing as if suddenly self-conscious. “Unusually energetic?”
“Mmm,” said Dr. Stang—‘Peter,’ when in the car at night. “By the way, we can move into the breakroom, you know. Employee privilege?” He smiled, showing a mouthful of olive teeth.
“No,” she said plainly. And the two sat for a long moment while she thought back to that moment in the bedroom. Wade, on the floor and sobbing, sounding as if he had an infant caught in his throat. Comparing that scene to the stuporous state he was in now—lying there, eyes open, a soft mewling escaping from him, sounding physically distant.
“He’s got wounds on his arms,” said the doctor.
“I think he cut himself,” she said, remembering the clang of the plate.
“No, these are,” he shaped the air with those knuckley monstrosities of his, “I don’t want to imply anything, Macy... I’ve seen defensive wounds...”
“Okay?”
He bore into her. “And so I’m just asking, there wasn’t any kind of—”
“Stop,” she said, glaring at him.
He held up his hands. “You realize I’m only asking—”
“And you’re an asshole.”
“Macy.”
“I can’t believe it.”
His voice lowered. “They look a lot like fingernail scratches.”
“Whatever.”
He opened both palms to her. “You know you can trust me?”
“No drugs in him, huh?” she said, turning a sharp corner in the conversation.
He shook his head. “We’ll look a little longer, but he’s not exhibiting in any way. Rest of the bloodwork is fine.”
“Electrolytes?”
“All that.” He paused. “Um... the next step is an MRI. And then I’m thinking we ought to do a spinal tap.”
Heat flared in her collar. “Meningitis?”
“Mm hm.”
She took a breath. “Okay.”
He let that stay in the air for a moment. “You gonna be okay?”
“Yah.”
“You answered that rather quickly.”
“I’m fine, Peter.” It felt strange calling him that here, and now.
“Okay,” he said as if de-escalating.
She put her head in her hands and chuckled. “I can’t believe this.” She looked at him. “I can’t believe you think I scratched him.”
“I didn’t say it was you.”
“Not in so many words.”
“What would you think in my place?”
“Fine.” Her head began to shake, as if denying reality as it happened in real time. “You want to know what the funny thing is?” A tinge of disgusting self-pity came on her like nausea. She didn’t want to confide in him. Not him.
“What is it?” he said.
And then their conversation rippled and turned pink and shimmery, and became an echo that rushed through the hall, stopping once to play footsie with a green EXIT sign, and then it moved on and wafted over a biohazard container, then moved on a bit further and finally came to rest into Wade’s open eyes.
Light became sound became thought.
“It’s funny, I haven’t felt... how do I put this without sounding like a psychopath? I haven’t felt any concern for him and now I do and it’s weird. Like, it’s actually strange...”
Ah, so Macy loved him. That would have been wonderful once. But there were more important things now. There was pain in the world. Yes, here was a sample of it. And how awful it was. But it was a part per billion per billion per billion and on and on, compared to all the pain. All of it. The Universe was but a single fucking nerve ending!
Now, the question remained: When would it be time for him to rouse? Oh yes, when the plate had its way with him, of course!
All done, plate?
Ah, good, very well then. And you’re right, yes, I need to preserve myself first and foremost. Yes, I was going to commit suicide and I know now that was childish and dumb, yes. But I’m better now and I know I need to live. After all, I am courier to Vyatha, who sits on her throne at the rim, eats our pain and vomits out worlds. Hail to her!
Hail to her son, half-breed Imlogga, the brood of bats with baby heads! Hail! Hail!
Wade’s heart monitor signaled something immense was about to happen. The nurse on duty summoned Dr. Stang.
“Er, uh, Miss Tork?”
Tork bobbed his round head to the death metal blasting from the poor Mini Cooper’s overworked speakers.
“Vomit up the fetus
Stomp on the remains
Rub it in your skin until it buuuurrrrrrnnnnnss…”
Mithras cupped a hand to the side of his mouth. “I say, Miss Tork?”
No use.
Mithras reached for the volume knob, paused, then retracted it. He grimaced at his own fingers, then reached again, paused, retracted. Anxiety was surging like a column of magma inside him. He didn’t like to upset Tork. And one way to do that was to lower the volume of a particularly good bit of death metal when the man was occupying a state of unbridled bliss while listening to it.
But there was a pressing matter, and Mithras had to act.
Resolved, he grabbed the knob and turned it down quickly, then withdrew his hand just as fast. The sudden vacuum of silence sucked all joy from the tiny car, made all the tinier by the bobbing of the huge head atop the huge frame which sat behind the wheel. The owner of the frame stopped banging and looked perplexedly at the radio, alternating glances with the road. He then glanced at Mithras.
“Miss Mithras?”
Eyes out the window. “Yes?”
“Did you just...?”
Eyes still out the window. “Hm?”
“Did you... turn the music down?”
The heat in the skinny man’s collar only intensified as he realized that his plan of getting the fat man’s attention had not been thought out this far. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. He turned his derbyed head to his friend and partner and uttered a single, truncated syllable: “Ah...”
“You did turn the music down, didn’t you?”
“Ah...”
The fat man gestured to the air. “Here we are, enjoying a beautiful drive on a beautiful evening, and here I can’t even enjoy a bit of enervating music without you going and interrupting it. I swear on my life, Miss Mithras, I have never met a killjoy such as yourself. And that includes Maxie Cornish!”
The name struck a raw nerve in Mithras, who instantly called to mind his arch nemesis, a fellow who on more than one occasion had thrown a spanner into his works. It was rumored Maxie Cornish sought to usurp the skinny man’s role in the Vyatha organization. At least that’s what the fat man had told him.
“Yes,” continued Tork, “Maxie Cornish was indeed—until this very moment, mind you—the biggest killjoy I had ever met. Frankly, Miss Mithras, I’m saddened. Very saddened by it all.”
Sorrow hung two tiny weights at the corners of the skinny man’s mouth. “I didn’t—” a sucking sob interrupted his speech. “I didn’t mean it—” And now the shameful sobs gave way to a shameful, bellowing howl of misery, as the betrayal—comprised as it was of leftover agony he’d taken from others—flowed freely from his chest.
“Now, now,” said Tork, who was beginning to regret what he’d said. “Now, Miss Mithras, you know I didn’t mean that.”
“But you said... Maxie...” The dreaded name was cut off by another wail.
“Well, I’m sorry, Miss Mithras, truly I am. But the thing is, I was enjoying that music, I really was. But I’m sorry. Alright? I didn’t mean to bring up Maxie’s name. He’s a ne’er-do-well of the highest order and everyone knows it. And it was wrong of me to bring him up. Now stop crying, please. You’re wasting good emotion. I’ll even make it up to you, how about that?”
The skinny man’s sobs dwindled down to a sporadic series of twitches.
“All I wanted,” Mithras said after a sniff, “was to tell you that I’m ready for another divination.”
The fat man gripped the wheel and breathed a heavy sigh through his nose. “Well why didn’t you say so in the first place? Tut-tut, no need to answer. I’ll pull over.”
The Cooper settled onto the highway shoulder.
“I could have done it from the road. We need sleep, after all. The sooner we get to the motel, the better, don’tcha think?”
“Could have done it from the road,” Tork said under his breath, then winced and shook his head free of the annoyance, with an accompanying grunt for good measure. “Very well, I’ll continue on and you can divine the whereabouts of the plate.”
The Cooper sidled onto the highway once more. Mithras straightened his derby and smiled, close-lipped, then nodded once. And having done this, and having waggled his shoulders free of knots, he put two fingers to his temples, then paused to turn the radio volume all the way down, smile-nodding toward Tork as he did. Satisfied, he cleared his throat and resumed his divination posture.
The fat man took this as his cue to begin contributing his part of the process, clearing his own throat and uttering a high-pitched chorus of whoops, neer-neers, and leedle-leedles.
It wasn’t long before Mithras locked in. He snapped his eyes open and raised a triumphant finger in the air.
“You’ve got it then?” said Tork.
“Yes I do.”
“Shall we sleep first?”
Mithras twisted his face for a moment of deep thought. “No, I think we ought to go and get it. We can report to you-know-who and then get a good night’s rest, and tomorrow set out for home.”
The fat man nodded slowly. “Miss Mithras,” he said with an amiable grin, “I like the way you think.”
Twenty minutes later, with the navigational aid of a second-winded Mithras, who divined a route of one U-turn, two exits up, a right, then a left, then a right once more, the Cooper arrived at Elias T. Bayles Memorial Hospital.
“We understand that Kyle would like to say a few words,” said Father Whatever. Jen had been too distressed when he introduced himself to the mourning room.
She sat, trying to steady her shivering, which worked its way outward from her core in an unending stream of ripples. She wanted to be anywhere but here, but couldn’t have gotten up to leave. Not when the doors closed. She had to squelch the sadness she felt for the woman in the box—mother, sister, aunt, and everything else to everyone in the room. She couldn’t burn any of it off. Otherwise she’d have to feed again.
And speaking of, Kyle took his spot at the lectern.
God, yes, it was that Kyle, the one she’d fed from not moments before.
“Um,” he began, fumbling with a sheet of paper that was folded in half. “I wrote some things down.” He cleared his throat and continued.
And what was it about that voice with which he spoke those words? It was not monotone stripped of emotion by grief. It was some other kind of monotone. A voice used when reviewing a grocery list.
“Mom loved golf as much as her dog, Stuffy. Um, Stuff loved golf too? He loved chasing the balls? And...” He licked his lips and smiled, then continued as if ticking off the items, its tempo increasing with a kind of impatience of itself the longer he went on. “She loved cookies, and her husband, sometimes in that order? Let’s see... Mom, Helen, loved to exercise and did it until she couldn’t do it anymore? Um... yeah, um, I’m sure we’ll all miss her? Let’s see... the body in here—um, right here...” he gestured to the casket. “That isn’t Mom. Mom gave great Halloween parties? And I want you all to remember that, or in, um, any way that you remember her. I for one remember her tremendous laugh and I’ll be looking for it in all my dark places. Okay.”
With this, he stepped away from the lectern.
And Jen Quill put her hot head in her hands and prayed for it to end.
And when it did, after a neat recovery by the priest, and a Hail Mary, and the Lord’s Prayer, Jen rose from her seat, catching a glimpse of Kyle as she did.
He sat with a crazed, perplexed look in his eyes, while the rest of his face took on all the qualities of a man bored to death. Had he been a photograph, she would have covered the face with her palm and studied the eyes, then repeated the exercise by covering the eyes and studying the face. He was bored to death, yes, and was wondering how the hell it happened. He got up suddenly and walked out. She followed him.
He stopped in the parking lot to light up a cig.
“Kyle?” she said.
He turned, that insane look of split-emotions still present, even as his cheeks caved in for the drag.
“I’m...” she began. “That was a nice...” she began again.
He gave a strange sort of smoke-speckled chuckle, then blew the rest of the drag out to the side.
“I loved your mother,” she said, and rushed past him, and kept on going, until she was far enough away so that he wouldn’t notice her vomiting into the bushes.
Ten o’clock approached, and the air was leaden on this side of East Metoac. 2030 of the town’s citizens were still awake at this hour. The town itself slept. A malarial hue splashed down from lantern-topped streetlights. Cats cut through manicured yards. The highway just beyond a choking cluster of dogwoods threw up a glare toward the sky, and periodically praised it with motorized hymns coming out of the guts of semis.
Jen Quill pulled up to the curb in front of the ranch house. Mary Brach’s house was nondescript, unassuming, meant to be a blur in a passenger side window. Cream with fading shudders of an unknown hue. Were they once green?
She got out of her car and summoned her raw, ill-gotten pain. There was enough, thank god.
(Was she walking? Or was the door growing before her?)
She finally reached it and rang the bell.
Blackness within. She could practically smell it.
There was something inside the house, something wholly alien, something that ate the light itself, and it mewled hungrily...
Yes, it had smelled her too.