McLain snorted. "Not on my shift, it ain't. Anyway, we've got lab and a chest X-ray cooking, and EKG is on the way."
"Who's on service?"
"Your old buddy, Alberts."
McClain was one of the few nurses still around who would remember that Alan and Lou Alberts had been partners – how many years ago? Could it be seven years already since they'd split?
"I'm sure they'll get along fine together," he said with an evil grin.
McClain barked a laugh. "I'm sure!"
On his way back to say good night to Joe, the man in the corner cot called to him again.
"Hey, you! C'mere! S'time!"
Alan waved but kept walking. The man was in no distress, just drunk.
"Hey! S'time! C'mere. Please!"
The note of desperation in that last word made Alan stop and turn toward the corner. The man was motioning him over.
"C'mere."
Alan walked to the side of the gurney, then backed up a step. It was the same bum who had banged on his car Tuesday night. And McClain hadn't been kidding. He was filthy and absolutely foul smelling. Yet even the stench from his pavement-colored clothes and shoeless feet couldn't quite cover the reek of cheap wine on the breath wheezing from his toothless mouth.
"What can I do for you?" Alan said.
"Take my hand." He held out a filthy paw with cracked skin and blackened, ragged fingernails.
"Gee, I don't know," Alan said, trying to keep the mood light. "We haven't even been introduced."
"Please take it."
Alan took a breath. Why hadn't he just walked on by like everybody else?
He shrugged and reached out his right hand. The poor guy did look like he was dying, and this seemed important to him. Besides, he'd had his hands in worse places.
As soon as his fingers neared the derelict's, the filthy hand leaped up and grabbed him in an iron grip. Pain blossomed in his fingers and palm, but from more than pressure. Light blazed around him as a jolt like high-voltage electricity coursed up his arm, convulsing his muscles, causing him to thrash uncontrollably like a fish on a hook. Dark spots flared in his vision, coalescing, blotting out the derelict, the emergency room, everything.
And then the grip was broken and he was reeling backward, off balance, his hands reaching for something, anything to keep him from falling. He felt fabric against his left hand, grabbed it, realizing it was a privacy curtain as he heard its fasteners snap free of the ceiling track under his weight. But at least it slowed his fall, lessening the blow to the back of his head as it struck the nearby utility table. His vision blurred, then cleared to reveal McClain's shocked expression as she leaned over him.
"What happened? You okay?"
Alan rubbed his right hand with his left. The electric shock sensation was gone, but the flesh still tingled all the way down to the bone.
"I think so. What the hell did he do to me?"
McClain glanced at the corner gurney. "Him?" She straightened up and gave the derelict a closer look. "Oh, shit!" She darted out toward the desk and came back pushing the crash cart.
From the overhead speaker the operator's voice blared, "Code Blue – ER! Code Blue – ER!"
Nurses and orderlies appeared from every direction. Dr. Lo, the ER physician for the night, ran in from the doctors' lounge and took charge of the resuscitation, giving Alan a puzzled look as he darted by.
Alan tried to stand, intending to help with the CPR, but found his knees wobbly and his right arm numb. By the time he felt steady enough the help, Lo had called the resuscitation to a halt. Despite all their efforts, the heart had refused to start up again. The monitor showed only a wavering line when McClain finally turned it off.
"Great!" she said. "Just great! Don't even know his name! A coroner's case for sure! I'll be filling out forms for days!"
Lo came over to Alan, a half smile on his Asian face.
"For a second there, when I saw you on the floor, I thought we'd be working on you. What happened? He hit you?"
Alan didn't know how to explain what had happened, so he just nodded. "Yeah. Must have been some sort of Stokes-Adams attack or something as he arrested."
Alan went over to the corner cot, stepped inside the drawn curtains, and pulled down the covering sheet. The old man's head was half turned toward Alan, his mouth slack, his eyes half open and glazed. Alan gently pushed the lids closed.
He cradled his right arm in his left. It still felt strange.
What the hell did you do to me?
He could think of no explanation for the shock that had run up his arm. It had come from the derelict, of that he was sure. But where had he got it? Alan had no answer, and the dead man wasn't going to tell him, so he pulled the sheet back over the face and walked away.
Alan will now be able to heal with a touch. But nothing comes without a price…
Learn the cost here… The Touch
…ends in September
The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling
Circus & Oddity Emporium
These characters – all touched by the Otherness – started out in Freak Show, an anthology I edited for HWA back in 1990 or so. I wasn’t content to do a simple anthology. I had to interconnect all the contributions and write a wraparound story and bits of interstitial material. Was I crazy? Damn right. Never do that again.
It sold, went out of print, and that was that. Except I hated seeing all that work go to waste. And since I held the copyright to my material, no reason it should lie fallow.
I added about 10k words of new material and let a small press do a limited edition. Well, the 500 copies sold out on publication and the price was tripling on the aftermarket. Lots of people who couldn’t afford the limited wanted to read it, so I self-published a trade paperback and an ebook.
The Device is another of the Seven Infernals. Oz appears in All the Rage and his father appears with the Device in Jack: Secret Circles. But Oz first appeared here…
The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling
Circus & Oddity Emporium
(sample)
"It will be a long trip, brothers and sisters," he said as he walked among the members of his troupe. "Long in distance and in days."
Half an hour ago Oz had watched them straggle in and seat themselves in a rough circle. He’d hurried through the mundane details of the coming tour, and now he segued into the important part, the crucial part, the part they would have difficulty grasping and believing.
"And perhaps it is good that we make a full circuit of this country – better yet if we could make a circuit of the globe – for it will allow us a chance to see it and remember it as it was – if we care to."
He let his gaze range over them as he allowed the words to sink in.
All the important ones were here. The special ones, the ones like him. Three-eyed Carmella sat with melon-headed Leshane Burns, flashing sidelong glances at George Swenson who sat alone; the bovine Clementine also sat alone, but not necessarily by choice; woody-skinned Bramble sat near green-skinned Haman who appeared to be staring at the closed tent flap while the eyeless Gerald Gaines stared at nothing yet saw everything; Delta Reid coiled around her chair as Janusch waved his stalked eyes about. Others sat scattered about. The troupe had no unity yet. They were not yet a team. But they would be by the end of this tour. They’d be family.
Tarantello hovered at the rear while the Beagle Boys manned the flaps – this was a private meeting.
The troupe. The freak show. People with green skin, white skin, furry skin, reptile hide, no eyes, extra eyes, no digits, extra digits, people with visions, with no vision, with one face, with two faces. A gathering to give many a townie nightmares for life. But to Oz they were beautiful. Because they were kin. Brother and sister were not forms of address he took lightly. Truly kin. For they shared a common parent, a third parent that had left an indelible imprint on their genes.
The Otherness. Each had been touched by the Ot
herness.
George Swenson looked up at him from under a furrowed brow and posed the question Oz had known someone would ask.
"Remember it 'as it was'?" he said. "I don't get it."
"I shall explain," Oz said. "But first I must tell you that I did not arrange this tour merely to make more money. We will do that, but the money is unimportant." He watched the brothers and sisters nudge each other and mutter. He'd expected that. "What is important is the search. For while we are touring we will be searching for a series of objects."
"Like a scavenger hunt?" Janusch said, his eyes standing tall.
"In a way, yes. But in this hunt there will be no single winner. If we are successful, all of us will be winners."
"What will we win?" George said.
"Justice. Understanding. Acceptance. Compensation."
The expressions facing him – the readable ones – were frankly dubious.
"I don't get it," said Carmella, blinking her third eye.
"And you never have," Oz said. "Justice, that is. None of you has. You've been shunned at best, and at worst you've been reviled, abandoned, beaten, and tortured. But never… never understood. With your cooperation, this tour will change all that."
"Will it give me hands?" said George Swenson.
"No," Oz said. "You won't need them."
"Will it give me arms?" said Earl Cassell.
"No. You won't need them."
"Will it straighten my spine?" said Ginny Metcalf.
"No. You won't need a straight spine."
"Will it let my branchlets live for more than a few minutes?” said Bramble.
Oz smiled and nodded. "Most definitely yes."
"Will it get me a keg of German beer?" said Leshane.
Everyone laughed.
"I still don't get it," said Delta.
"A change," Oz said. "We have an opportunity to work a change upon the land. And the instrument of that change cannot be activated until we find all its components and reassemble them."
"A machine?" George said. "A machine is going to change the world?"
Oz nodded. He'd known this was going to be a tough sell. He barely believed it himself. But he had to have their cooperation. He could not succeed without it.
"Yes. When the Device is activated at the proper time in the proper place, it will, quite literally, change the world – change the way the world sees us, change the way the world sees itself."
He paused and let them mutter among themselves, then raised his voice.
"You need not believe me. I realize that might be too much to ask. But I do ask that you trust me. As we make a circuit of the country I will from time to time ask one of you to venture into the town we are passing through and retrieve one of the missing pieces of the Device. You do not have to believe that it will change our place in the world; all you need know is that it is important to me and to those of your brothers and sisters who do believe."
Oz turned in a slow circle, eyeing each in turn.
"Have I ever lied to you?"
He noted with satisfaction that every head was wagging back and forth.
"No. I do not lie." He pointed to the outer world beyond the tent wall. "They lie to you. I do not. And I say to you now that the Device is monumentally important to all our lives. Is there any one of you who will not help collect its component parts as we travel?"
Oz searched the members of his troupe for a raised hand. He saw none.
"Excellent. And to give you some idea of the nature of the Pieces you'll be seeking, I've brought along a few to show you."
Oz withdrew the four objects that had been waiting in the pockets of his coat and handed them to the nearest members of the troupe.
"Here. Pass these around. Don't worry about damaging them – you can't. Just don't lose them."
***
George felt something like a cold shock when the first Piece reached him. The sensation ran through his boneless forearm up to the left side of his face; from there it seemed to penetrate his skull and shoot across his brain. Vertigo spun him and for an instant he thought he saw another place full of weird angles superimposed on the tent space – coexisting with the tent space – then he steadied again.
He looked down at the thing in his hand, blinked, then looked again. Dull yellow metal, but such a strange shape. A couple of the sides met at an angle that didn't seem possible – shouldn't have been possible.
He passed it on and reached for another.
This one looked hard and glossy but felt soft and fuzzy, almost alive; he thought he sensed it breathing.
He quickly dumped that one off and reached for the next – a flat ceramic oval.
But he sensed something wrong with this one too. He couldn't pinpoint it at first, then he noticed it didn't cast a shadow; it was solid, opaque, but no matter which way he turned it… no shadow.
The last object was a tennis‑ball‑size sphere and it did cast a shadow – but one with sharp angles.
George cradled this last Piece in his coiled left arm and stared at Oz where he stood in the center of the tent. One strange dude. Aloof and yet paternalistic; even the freaks who'd been with him for years knew little about him. He’d heard more than one mention that no one had ever seen him eat. Full trays were delivered to his trailer and removed empty, but he always ate alone. His only close contact seemed to be Tarantello, another one who never seemed to eat – never even got trays. The freaks kidded about taking "a walk with Tarantello." George didn't know what that meant but decided from the timbre of their voices that he'd rather not find out.
And now these Pieces. Strange little things to say the least. Almost…otherworldly.
One could only imagine the sort of Device their aggregate would produce. An instrument like that might be capable of almost anything.
Even Justice…
…Understanding…
…Acceptance…
…Compensation.
Hop aboard here… The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium
Tenants
The idea for "Tenants" had been wandering through the back of my mind for years. A simple little story about an escaped killer who thinks he's found the perfect hideout from the law in a remote house at the end of a road through a salt marsh. The old coot who lives there is crazy: He keeps talking about his tenants, but he's alone in the shack. Or is he?
I could have set it anywhere, but I chose Monroe because I was simultaneously working on Reborn, which is set in Monroe. Why were all these strange things happening in Monroe? Why had the Dat‑tay‑vao been drawn to Monroe in The Touch? Was it all random, or was there a reason? I realized Reborn contained that reason. So if the old guy in "Tenants" has some strange boarders, maybe they too wound up in Monroe for a reason. The locale had no direct effect on the novelette itself, but it gave me a little extra kick to know I was connecting it to the cycle.
George has a cameo in All the Rage, and he and his tenants play a crucial role in the Secret History, as you’ll see in Nightworld.
Tenants
(sample)
The mail truck was coming.
Gilroy Connors, shoes full of water and shirt still wet from the morning's heavy dew, crouched in the tall grass and punk-topped reeds. He ached all over; his thighs particularly were cramped from holding his present position. But he didn't dare move for fear of giving his presence away.
So he stayed hunkered down across the road from the battered old shack that looked deserted but wasn't – there had been lights on in the place last night. With its single pitched roof and rotting cedar shake siding, it looked more like an overgrown outhouse that a home. A peeling propane tank squatted on the north side; a crumbling brick chimney supported a canted TV antenna. Beyond the shack, glittering in the morning sunlight, lay the northeast end of Monroe Harbor and the Long Island Sound. The place gave new meaning to the word isolated. As if a few
lifetimes ago someone had brought a couple of tandems of fill out to the end of the hard-packed dirt road, dumped them, and built a shack. Except for a rickety old dock with a sodden rowboat tethered to it, there was not another structure in sight in either direction. Only a slender umbilical cord of insulated wire connected it to the rest of the world via a long column of utility poles marching out from town. All around was empty marsh.
Yeah. Isolated as all hell.
It was perfect.
As Gil watched, the shack's front door opened and a grizzled old man stumbled out, a cigarette in his mouth and a fistful of envelopes in his hand. Tall and lanky with an unruly shock of gray hair standing off his head, he scratched his slightly protruding belly as he squinted in the morning sunlight. He wore a torn undershirt that had probably been white once and a pair of faded green work pants held up by suspenders, He looked as rundown as his home, and as much in need of a shave and a bath as Gil felt. With timing so perfect that it could only be the result of daily practice, the old guy reached the mailbox at exactly the same time as the white jeep-like mail truck.
Must have been watching from the window.
Not an encouraging thought. Had the old guy seen Gil out here? If he had, he gave no sign. Which meant Gil was still safe.
He fingered the handle of the knife inside his shirt.
Lucky for him.
While the old guy and the mailman jawed, Gil studied the shack again. The place was a sign that his recent run of good luck hadn't deserted him yet. He had come out to the marshes to hide until things cooled down in and around Monroe and had been expecting to spend a few real uncomfortable nights out here. The shack would make things a lot easier.
Not much of a place. At most it looked big enough for two rooms and no more. Barely enough space for an ancient couple who didn't move around much – who ate, slept, crapped, watched TV and nothing more. Hopefully, it wasn't a couple. Just the old guy. That would make it simple. A wife, even a real sickly one, could complicate matters.