What the Hell Did I Just Read

  “Listen, the guy who did this is still—”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  Ted raised the shotgun. Pointing it right at John’s face. The father of the dead child bared his clenched teeth, rage and despair wearing the rest of him like a suit.

  John put up his hands. “Whoa! Look, calm down. I’m not who you’re angry at here—”

  “We used to have this saying in the marines. ‘Ten, ten, eighty.’ Ten percent of people are heroes, ten percent are assholes, and eighty percent are nothing. Just blobs that go along. Leeches. Sheep. You understand? The world isn’t in the shitty state it’s in because of people like Nymph. It’s because of people like you.”

  “You’re not thinking straight! You’re—hey! What’s the password?”

  “What do you think this is? It’s ‘bushmaster.’ And this is for Maggie.”

  Ted fired. John ducked, not sure if the shot had missed or if he just hadn’t felt himself die yet. Without pausing to find out which, John lunged for the gun. He didn’t have a plan, he just wanted that barrel pointed in any other direction.

  He got his hands around the shotgun and shoved the barrel up, aiming it at the sky. John’s and Ted’s limbs tangled and they went to the ground along the shoulder of the highway, splashing in the mud. Ted rolled over on top of John, rivulets cascading down around the man’s face, his crazed eyes just inches away. The hot barrel of the gun was between them, touching John’s chin.

  John growled and gritted his teeth and tried to shove off his attacker—

  BANG.

  And then there was a spray of warm blood and Ted Knoll’s face was gone.

  Me

  I waited for the storm to calm and then headed for the church at Mine’s Eye, passing downed trees and severed limbs. When I got to the church, I found that their sign with the clever slogans had been crushed by a fallen tree. The roof of the church had also been damaged and rain was cascading in; I didn’t know if that part was because of the storm or something John had done (his methods aren’t subtle). Otherwise, there was no sign of John or his vehicle. Had he already come and gone? Maybe he went somewhere to ride out the storm? Then I noticed the tire tracks—deep ruts and sprays of mud dug by a vehicle peeling out across a wet lawn. I could see where the tracks joined the inlet road that curved around the mine. This looked a hell of a lot like a pursuit. I checked my phone and again got the “no network” message.

  I followed the road for a stretch but found nothing and soon I was passing multiple points where a chase could have branched off in different directions. Eventually I just took two left turns and got pointed back toward town again.

  Well, shit. I’ve lost Amy and I’ve lost John, within five minutes. By this afternoon I’ll be the last non-missing person in Undisclosed.

  Could they be together somewhere? Maybe he’s the one who dropped by to have breakfast? I was lost, which as you’re probably gathering, is something of a regular state of being for me.

  My phone dinged the sound of an incoming text message—the cell network back up, apparently—and I got a text from John that said, simply:

  girls dead

  And then it dinged again with a second message:

  find nymph

  And then, after some hesitation, a third:

  im sorry

  I called, he didn’t answer. I texted back asking him to clarify:

  fuck?

  I slammed on the brakes and did a U-turn in front of a honking car. I headed to John’s house, the only place I could think to find him.

  * * *

  What I fear most in this “job” (the sarcasm quotes are there to denote the absence of a paycheck) isn’t some lumbering horror smashing its way through my windows. It’s the groupies—obsessed fans who make the journey to Undisclosed based on the legends, like they expect to find a bus running monster tours around town. They come to try to get a glimpse of us, or to ask us to solve their problems and/or to tell them scary stories. This is why I never disclose the name of the town—the way I see it, the monsters might try to eat your soul, but at least they don’t feel like they’re owed anything.

  That’s why I like to move around. From one apartment to the next, places that don’t require a lease, rarely leaving forwarding addresses (not that I don’t still get my packages—the local postal workers know who I am, they make sure the bullshit arrives). John, on the other hand, bought a two-story house in town and proceeded to paint the entire thing flat black, from top to bottom, including the roof and the windows. He joked that he was turning it into a stealth house, but of course the intention was the opposite. Every weirdo who managed to reverse engineer our location could spot that place from a mile away.

  I pulled up to that black house, John’s Jeep in the driveway. I went around to the other parking spot at the rear and headed to the back door, hearing the dog yapping from inside. I wondered if I’d have to kick that door down, but it was unlocked. I turned the knob and prepared to be incinerated.

  Oh, that’s the other thing: John’s entire house is now booby-trapped. The doors, for instance, are surrounded by four nozzles that in theory will fire four jets of propane-fueled flames, instantly turning any intruder into an intruder who is on fire. Won’t this almost certainly catch the exterior of the house on fire, you ask? Yep. And, once the flaming intruder stumbles inside, the interior of the house will also be on fire. When I raised these concerns to John he simply said, “It’d be worth it.”

  I stepped inside, found that I was not ablaze, and called out to John. No reply. His Yorkshire terrier—named Diogee—was at my ankles, barking his stupid head off. I told him to shut up. I started to reach down to him, then noticed I had the pink Disney phone in my hand. I’d grabbed it before I’d left the car, apparently, though I couldn’t fathom why. I tossed it aside.

  In the photo on Nymph’s phone, John was sprawled on the sofa, a cascade of dried vomit from his body having desperately spasmed out its contents prior to death …

  Entering from the back meant passing through the kitchen and into a partially open dining room/living room space that John had turned into what he called the “parlor.” John had decorated his home—either by accident or on purpose—to look like a more affordable replica of a rich person’s house in a 1980s action movie. Furniture of black “leather,” chrome and glass end tables, massive sound system surrounding an even bigger TV, both purchased used. It was unspeakably awesome, in my opinion—cocaine decor on a crack budget.

  John and I don’t talk about finances, just like we don’t talk about a lot of things. Each of us could see the argument lurking in the dark, so we just never flip on the light. I said earlier that there are reasons I don’t try to cash in on the freak show aspect of our lives, but those are my reasons, not his. John was never much for the nine-to-five and I have caught wind of him doing everything from charging for e-mail “consultations” for haunting victims to selling T-shirts. Occasionally, he’ll ask if I want in on it and I’ll say no, and assume he knows I mean I don’t want it to happen at all. He takes it to mean I just didn’t want any of the money …

  The living room area was just ahead, the sofa obscured from view behind a section of wall to my right. I didn’t move. I knew I was stalling. I didn’t care.

  In the photo there were drugs on the glass coffee table, a variety of them, an overdose buffet …

  I called out for John a second time, and once again got no answer. I didn’t expect one.

  Where a lesser person would have had a dining room table, John had a pool table. On the green surface were painted the words: IN HERE? DOOM. I ran my hand along the felt as I glanced around the room. One end of the pool table was too close to the wall, and you couldn’t extend your cue fully on the shots—it was a key part of the strategy to keep your balls away from that rail. The white wall bore scuff marks from the butts of cues striking it on the backswing, each mark representing a ruined shot. In the corner were stains on the carpet from where Crystal and Nicky had spent
two hours on the body-paint job that would get John arrested (it was Halloween, all right?). On the ceiling was a faint chili stain from the rowdy aftermath of Guilty Pleasure Movie Night (Amy’s had been Twilight, mine was Weird Science, John’s was Dude, Where’s My Car?). All these memories. Maybe I’ll just stand here forever, thinking about them, instead of going into the living room and seeing what’s in there. I thought, If you never look, it’s never real and for some reason I heard it in John’s voice.

  Peering into the living room, I could see where above the mantel of the fireplace John had mounted two huge chainsaws, their thirty-six-inch blades forming an X. Diogee was still yapping away, bouncing on his little paws with each bark. It was driving me fucking crazy.

  I forced my legs to move.

  The sofa slowly came into view and I saw the bottom of one of John’s Converse All Stars jutting out over the armrest. Lying at an unnatural angle, not moving. I could smell the gut-turning odor of a body that had purged itself at the moment of catastrophic failure.

  I came around and there he was, and there was the stream of drying vomit, and there on the coffee table was a lightbulb with a plastic straw jutting out the back—a homemade pipe. One half of the bulb was charred from where he’d touched it with the lighter, again and again. And there was a bottle of pills and there was a syringe full of … whatever. This was not the aftermath of a quick midday pick-me-up. This was someone coming home and cooking up a combination intended specifically to stop his heart in a way that would be painless. I know, because I had spent some time researching the method myself.

  I felt for a pulse. No need. He was cold.

  Half of my universe went dark.

  I collapsed into the black leatherish chair opposite the sofa. The dog, maybe sensing my mood, finally stopped barking.

  im sorry

  His last words had been a fucking text message.

  I would have to tell Amy. I tried to imagine the conversation. I would have to track down John’s father in whatever city his rockabilly band was playing. I would have to track down his brother, assuming he’s still alive. I would have to help arrange for a funeral and go through John’s stuff. Or maybe I wouldn’t have to do any of those things. Maybe I didn’t owe him any of that, because he had abandoned me. After he had talked me down half a dozen times, here he was taking the same easy way out he’d scolded me for. That was his final message. “It turns out, you were right. There is no other escape.”

  Why don’t you just fucking—

  There was a noise, from the direction of the bedrooms.

  Footsteps.

  7. THE BATTLE OF JOHN’S LIVING ROOM

  John walked into the room carrying a package of cookies. He said, “Hey, do you like Oreos? There’s something I want to try.”

  I jumped out of the chair and backed up, toward the kitchen. I looked back and forth from Dead John to Alive John.

  I said, “Back the fuck up!”

  John gestured toward the corpse with a cookie and said, “He’s not real.”

  “What’s the password?”

  “It’s ‘bushmaster’ but that doesn’t matter. He knew it, too, and the real Ted is still alive. The password thing doesn’t work, the clones or doppelgangers can imitate that, the same as everything else. I think they can dig into your brain or something.”

  I said, “Don’t move.”

  I cautiously approached and poked the standing John with a finger, to see if he seemed solid. He did. To be sure, I wrapped my arms around his torso and squeezed, to detect any anomalous reaction. I found none.

  “Okay. Yes, it is good that you are not dead. That is a positive. Wait, what’s this about Ted?”

  John glanced down at the sofa. “Wait, who do you see there?”

  “I see you. Dead from a drug cocktail.”

  “Huh. I see Ted. Face blown off. From when I shot him.”

  “From when you what?”

  John circled back and told me the entire story. I dropped back into the armchair, staring off into the middle distance, trying to make sense of it all.

  “First of all, the entire roof of the church didn’t blow off, I was there afterward. It was one corner, a few chunks of roofing and plywood. Second, did you say when you opened the door that doves flew out? Like in a John Woo film? Are you trying to parlay this series of events into a movie deal?”

  “What matters is, I find out five minutes later that the real Ted is still alive. I talked to him. It was the exact kind of trick we were expecting. It’s kind of encouraging, I feel like we were ahead of them this time.”

  “Wait, now how do you know the alive Ted is the real Ted? If the password thing doesn’t work…”

  “What you really mean is, how do you know I’m me and that’s not really me there on the sofa, if the ‘password thing’ doesn’t work.”

  “Oh. Shit. Wait, if you were the doppelganger, why would you tell me the password system doesn’t work? You’d have kept that to yourself, to use against me.”

  “Maybe I’m stupid.”

  “The fucking conversations we have. Okay, how about this—I ask you something that John would know, but that I or a replicant would have no way of knowing. Something we can verify, right now.”

  “Like what?”

  “Where’s your drug stash?”

  “Why Dave, you know that I would never—”

  “Goddamnit, John.”

  “Owl jar above the toilet. That way if I have to flush it, it’s right there.”

  A trip to the bathroom confirmed this was true.

  When I returned, John continued, “As for me and Ted, he just showed up out in the middle of nowhere. His car wasn’t there, he just kind of materialized behind me. That’s the thing—it used my state of mind against me. I was in such a panic, the whole flimsiness of the pretext was hidden from me until way later.”

  “And then you killed him. Or it. Whatever kind of shape-shifter this is, it can be killed, is my point. And it stays dead.”

  “Shot to the face. Pretty straightforward.”

  “Yeah, nobody likes that.” I looked over at the corpse on the sofa. “So … what is it? Specifically? I mean, there’s what each of us is seeing and then there’s what it actually is.”

  “Something new, maybe? We’ll need to come up with a name for it. It’s my turn.”

  “Later.” The naming of new creatures we encounter is something of a contentious issue. “For now, what do we do with it?”

  He thought for a moment. “I wish we could get it to Marconi.”

  That’s Dr. Albert Marconi. A famous expert in this sort of thing. He rarely returns our calls.

  I said, “Sure, let’s just cram it into a box and mail it to him. Wait, how did you get it back here?”

  “In the Jeep.”

  “Did you throw the corpse in your Jeep and drive it back here after you figured it out it wasn’t Ted Knoll’s body, or before?”

  “What was I supposed to do? Leave him out in the rain?”

  “But if you thought it was just a dead guy, a guy you shot, shouldn’t you have called the … you know what, forget it.”

  John said, “We need Amy’s brain on this. Is she still at work?”

  “No, I don’t know where she is.”

  “Wait, Amy’s missing? Why are we dicking around here then?”

  “She’s not missing, she’s out with somebody. They swung by and had breakfast, apparently. I don’t know where they went. Phones were down.”

  “Who’s she with?”

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe she was with you.”

  “You’re not worried?”

  “It’s not like she was abducted, they ate a meal together.”

  “Like she left with somebody she knew, you mean. Or something she thought was someone she knew.”

  “Oh … fuck. FUCK!”

  I dug out my phone and dialed. It rang through, but she wasn’t answering.

  “So help me, John, if all this shit was just a
diversion so they could take Amy—”

  Something grabbed my wrist.

  It was John. The dead one, from the sofa.

  Dead John’s mouth opened so wide that his head was about to split in half. Then a second, vertical slit opened from his chin to forehead, his entire face opening like a blooming flower. His skull was hollow, the inside covered in tiny wiggling filaments.

  The thing howled with its whole face. The floor shook.

  I grabbed at the fingers clutching my arm. Some of the fingers came off, then grew tiny wings and flew away. I was only mildly surprised by that.

  Dead John’s body contorted as if it was a clay model that a giant pair of invisible hands had decided to give up on and start over. For the briefest moment, I saw what I thought was a pulsing swarm of small creatures, each about the size of my palm. But then they were gone and so was John. A new figure replaced him.

  John screamed, “Nymph!”

  Ted had described Nymph as a foppish sexual deviant; John had described him as a sleazy stockbroker type. To me, he looked … like me.

  Not exactly me—a fit, tan, healthy version of me, with an expensive haircut. A version of me that hadn’t gone off the rails. Wearing a nice shirt and pants instead of a stained T-shirt and cargo shorts. Yet, I saw my own eyes, and the scar on my cheek.

  He said, “Greetings, knucklefuckers!”

  John said, “Where’s the little girl? And where’s Amy?”

  Nymph smirked and said, “The Master must feed.”

  “I don’t care what you named your dick, this shit ends now.”

  “Indeed it does!” said Nymph. “Granted, the mere chewing of their flesh takes only sixty-six days. But once consumed, their souls live conscious in the belly forever, for it is their anguish that nourishes the Master. But don’t worry, I will release one of the two, of your choosing. At this moment, I am posing this same dilemma to the mother and father of little Margaret. The four of you are voting. The girl with three votes will be released, the other’s screams will echo through eternity. If no one receives a majority vote, both will be consumed. Someone must vote against their own, to save another. So what will it be? You have one minute to decide.”