Dragon Tears

  First everyone you love…

  Harry got up as far as his hands and knees, choking on carpet fibers that were stuck to the back of his throat. Every cough sent a quiver of pain through his chest, and he felt as if his rib cage was a vise that had closed around his heart and lungs.

  Ticktock was screaming in Connie’s face, words Harry couldn’t understand because his ears were ringing.

  Gunfire.

  She had managed to draw her revolver and empty it into her assailant’s neck and face. The slugs jolted him slightly but didn’t loosen his grip on her.

  Grimacing at the pain in his chest, pawing at a stark Danish-modern dresser, Harry lurched to his feet. Dizzy, wheezing. He pulled his own gun, knowing it would be ineffective against this adversary.

  Still shouting and holding Connie off the floor, Ticktock swung her away from the wall and threw her at the two sliding glass doors to the balcony. She exploded through one of them as if she had been shot from a cannon, and the pane of tempered glass dissolved into tens of thousands of gummy fragments.

  No. It couldn’t happen to Connie. He couldn’t lose Connie. Unthinkable.

  Harry fired twice. Two ragged holes appeared in the back of Ticktock’s black raincoat.

  The vagrant’s spine should have been shattered. Bone and lead shrapnel should have skewered all of his vital organs. He should have gone down like King Kong taking the plunge off the Empire State Building.

  Instead, he turned.

  Didn’t cry out in pain. Didn’t even wobble.

  He said, “Bigshot hero.”

  How he could still talk was a mystery, maybe a miracle. In his throat was a bullet wound the size of a silver dollar.

  Connie had also blown away part of his face. Missing tissue left a large concavity on the left side, from jaw line to just under the eye socket, and his left ear was gone.

  No blood flowed. No bone lay exposed. The meat of him was not red but brown-black and strange.

  His smile was more terrible than ever because the disintegration of his left cheek had exposed his rotten teeth all the way back along the side of his face. Within that calcium cage, his tongue squirmed like a fat eel in a fisherman’s trap.

  “Think you’re so bad, big hero cop, bigshot tough guy,” Ticktock said. In spite of his deep and raspy voice, he sounded curiously like a schoolboy issuing a challenge to a playground fight, and even his fearsome appearance could not entirely conceal that childish quality in his demeanor. “But you’re nothing, you’re nobody, just a scared little man.”

  Ticktock stepped toward him.

  Harry pointed the revolver at the huge assailant and—

  —was sitting on a chair in James Ordegard’s kitchen. The gun was still in his hand, but the muzzle was pressed to the underside of his chin, as if he were about to commit suicide. The steel was cold against his skin, and the gunsight dug painfully at his chin bone. His finger was curled around the trigger.

  Dropping the revolver as if he had discovered a poisonous snake in his hand, he bolted up from the chair.

  He had no memory of going to the kitchen, pulling the chair out from the table, and sitting down. In the blink of an eye, he seemed to have been transported there and encouraged to the brink of self-destruction.

  Ticktock was gone.

  The house was silent. Unnaturally silent.

  Harry moved toward the door—

  —and was sitting on the same chair as before, the gun in his hand again, the muzzle in his mouth, his teeth biting down on the barrel.

  Stunned, he took the .38 out of his mouth and put it on the floor beside the chair. His palm was damp. He blotted it on his slacks.

  He got to his feet. His legs were shaky. He broke into a sweat, and the sour taste of half-digested pizza rose in the back of his mouth.

  Although he didn’t understand what was happening to him, he knew for certain that he did not have a suicidal urge. He wanted to live. Forever, if possible. He would not have put the barrel of the gun between his lips, not voluntarily, not in a million years.

  He wiped one trembling hand down his damp face and—

  —was on the chair again, holding the revolver, the muzzle pressed to his right eye, staring into the dark barrel. Five steely inches of eternity. Finger around the trigger.

  Sweet Jesus.

  His heart knocked so hard that he could feel it in every bruise on his body.

  Carefully he put the revolver in his shoulder holster, under his rumpled coat.

  He felt as if he were caught in a spell. Magic seemed to be the only explanation for what was happening to him. Sorcery, witchcraft, voodoo—he was suddenly willing to believe in all of it, as long as believing would buy a pardon from the sentence that Ticktock had pronounced on him.

  He licked his lips. They were chapped, dry, burning. He looked at his hands, which were pale, and he figured that his face was even paler.

  After getting shakily to his feet, he hesitated briefly, then started toward the door. He was surprised to reach it without being returned inexplicably to the chair.

  He remembered the four expended bullets that he had found in his shirt pocket after shooting the vagrant four times, and he recalled as well the discovery of the newspaper under his arm as he’d walked out of the convenience store earlier in the night. Finding himself three times in the kitchen chair with no recollection of having gone to it was, he sensed, merely the result of a different application of the same trick that had put those slugs in his pocket and the paper under his arm. An explanation of how the effect was achieved seemed almost within his grasp… but remained elusive.

  When he edged out of the kitchen without further incident, he decided that the spell was broken. He rushed to the master bedroom, wary of encountering Ticktock, but the vagrant seemed to have gone.

  He was afraid of finding Connie dead, her head turned around backward like Ricky’s had been, eyes torn out.

  She was sitting on the balcony floor in glittering puddles of tempered glass, still alive, thank God, holding her head in her hands and groaning softly. Her short dark hair fluttered in the night breeze, shiny and soft. Harry wanted to touch her hair, stroke it.

  Crouching beside her, he said, “You all right?”

  “Where is he?”

  “Gone.”

  “I want to tear his lungs out.”

  Harry almost laughed with relief at her bravado.

  She said, “Tear ‘em out and stuff ‘em where the sun don’t shine, make him breathe through his ass from now on.”

  “Probably wouldn’t stop him.”

  “Slow him down some.”

  “Maybe not even that.”

  “Where the hell did he come from?”

  “Same place he went. Thin air.”

  She groaned again.

  Harry said, “You sure you’re all right?”

  She finally raised her face from her hands. The right corner of her mouth was bleeding, and the sight of her blood made him shiver with rage as much as with fear. That whole side of her face was red, as if she had been slapped hard and repeatedly. It would probably darken with bruises by tomorrow.

  If they lived to see tomorrow.

  “Man, could I use some aspirin,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  From his coat pocket, Harry removed the bottle of Anacin that he had borrowed from her medicine cabinet a few hours ago.

  “A genuine Boy Scout,” she said.

  “I’ll get you some water.”

  “I can get it myself.”

  Harry helped her to her feet. Bits of glass fell from her hair and clothes.

  When they stepped inside from the balcony, Connie paused to look at the painting on the bedroom wall. The headless human corpse. The hungry ghoul with mad, staring eyes.

  “Ticktock had yellow eyes,” she said. “Not like before, outside the restaurant when he panhandled me. Yellow eyes, bright, with black slits for pupils.”

  They headed for the kitchen to get water to
chase the Anacin. Harry had the irrational feeling that the ghoul’s eyes in the Goya painting turned to watch as he and Connie passed by, and that the monster climbed out of the canvas and crept after them through the dead man’s house.

  1

  Sometimes when he was weary from exercising his powers, Bryan Drackman grew sullen and petulant. He didn’t like anything. If the night was cool, he wanted it warm; if it was warm, he wanted it cool. Ice cream tasted too sweet, corn chips too salty, chocolate far too chocolaty. The feel of clothes against his skin, even a silk robe, was intolerably irritating, yet he felt vulnerable and strange when he was naked. He didn’t want to stay in the house, didn’t want to go out. When he looked at himself in the mirror, he didn’t like what he saw, and when he stood in front of the jars full of eyes, he had the feeling that they were mocking rather than adoring him. He knew he should sleep in order to restore his energy and improve his mood, but he loathed the world of dreams as much as he despised the waking world.

  This crabbiness escalated until he became quarrelsome. Because he had no one with whom to quarrel in his seaside sanctum, his temper could not be vented. Irascibility intensified into anger. Anger became blind rage.

  Too exhausted to work off his rage in physical activity, he sat naked in his black bed, propped against pillows covered in black silk, and allowed wrath to consume him. He closed his hands into fists on his thighs, squeezed tighter, tighter, until his fingernails dug painfully into his palms and until the muscles in his arms ached from the exertion. He pounded his thighs with his fists, knuckle-first to hurt the most, then his abdomen, then his chest. He twisted strands of hair around his fingers and pulled on it until tears blurred his vision.

  His eyes. He hooked his fingers, pressed the nails against his eyelids, and tried to generate enough courage to gouge his eyes out, tear them loose and crush them in his fists.

  He didn’t understand why he was overcome by the urge to blind himself, but the compulsion was powerful.

  Irrationality seized him.

  He wailed, tossed his head in anguish and thrashed upon the black sheets, kicked and flailed, screamed and spat, cursed with a fluidity and vehemence that made his tantrum appear to be the work of some spawn of Hell that had possessed him. He cursed the world and himself, but most of all he cursed the bitch, the breeding bitch, the stupid hateful breeding bitch. His mother.

  His mother.

  Rage abruptly turned to piteous distress, and his furious cries and hate-filled screams shivered into agonized sobs. He curled into the fetal position, hugging his pummeled and aching body, and he wept as intensely as he had shrieked and flailed, as passionate in his self-pity as he had been in his wrath.

  It wasn’t fair, not fair at all, what was expected of him. He had to Become without the company of a brother, without the guiding hand of a carpenter father, without the tender mercy of his mother. Jesus, while Becoming, had enjoyed the perfect love of Mary, but there was no Holy Virgin this time, no radiant Madonna at his side. This time there was a hag, withered and debilitated by her greedy appetites and self-indulgence, who turned from him in loathing and fear, unable and unwilling to provide comfort. It was so unfair, so bitterly unjust, that he should be expected to Become and remake the world without the adoring disciples who had stood at the side of Jesus, and without a mother like Mary, Queen of Angels.

  Gradually his wretched sobbing subsided.

  The flow of tears slowed, dried up.

  He lay in miserable solitude.

  He needed to sleep.

  Since his most recent nap, he had created a golem to kill Ricky Estefan, built another golem to tie the silver buckle to the rearview mirror of Lyon’s Honda, practiced godhood by bringing to life the flying reptile from the sand on the beach, and created yet another golem to terrorize the bigshot hero cop and his partner. He had also used his Greatest and Most Secret Power to put the spiders and snakes in Ricky Estefan’s kitchen cabinets, to place the broken head of the religious figurine in Connie Gulliver’s tightly clenched hand, and to drive Lyon half crazy by returning him three times to that kitchen chair in various suicidal postures.

  Bryan giggled at the memory of Harry Lyon’s utter confusion and fear.

  Stupid cop. Big hero. Almost peed his pants in terror.

  Bryan giggled again. He rolled over and buried his face in a pillow as the giggling built.

  Almost peed his pants. Some hero.

  Pretty soon he had stopped feeling sorry for himself. He was in a much better mood.

  He was still exhausted, needed to sleep, but he was also hungry. He had burned up a tremendous number of calories in the exercise of his power and had lost a couple of pounds. Until he quelled his hunger pangs, he would not be able to sleep.

  Pulling on his red silk robe, he went downstairs to the kitchen. He took a package of Mallomars, a package of Oreos, and a large bag of onion-flavored potato chips from the pantry. From the refrigerator he got two bottles of Yoo-Hoo, one chocolate and one vanilla.

  He carried the food through the living room and outside, to the Mexican-tile patio, part of which was overhung by the master-bedroom balcony on the second story. He sat on a lounge chair near the railing, so he could see the dark Pacific.

  As Tuesday ticked past midnight and became Wednesday, the breeze off the ocean was cool, but Bryan didn’t mind. Grandma Drackman would have nagged him about catching pneumonia. But if it became too chilly, he was able with little effort to make some adjustments in his metabolism and raise his body temperature.

  He washed down the whole bag of Mallomars with vanilla Yoo-Hoo.

  He could eat what he wanted.

  He could do what he wanted.

  Although Becoming was a lonely process, and although it seemed unfair to be without his admiring disciples and his own Holy Mother, all was for the best in the end. While Jesus was a god of compassion and healing, Bryan was meant to be a god of wrath and cleansing; for this reason, it was desirable that he Become in solitude, without having been softened by a mother’s love, without being encumbered by teachings of solicitude and mercy.

  2

  So this stinky man, stinkier than rotten oranges dropped off a tree and full of squirming things, stinkier than a three-day-dead mouse, stinkier than anything, stinky enough to make you sneeze when you smell too much of him, goes from street to street and into an alley, trailing clouds of odors.

  The dog follows a few steps back, curious, keeping his distance, sniffing out the trace of the thing-that-will-kill-you which is mixed in with all the other smells.

  They stop at the back of a place where people make food.

  Good smells, almost stronger than the stinky man, hungry-making smells, lots of them, lots. Meat, chicken, carrots, cheese. Cheese is good, sticks in the teeth but is real good, much better than old chewing gum from the street which sticks in the teeth but isn’t so good. Bread, peas, sugar, vanilla, chocolate, and more to make your jaws ache and your mouth water.

  Sometimes he comes to food places like this, wagging his tail, whining, and they give him something good. But most of the time they chase him, throw things, shout, stamp their feet. People are strange about a lot of things, one of which is food. A lot of them guard their food, don’t want you to have any—then they throw some of it away in cans where they let it go stinky and sick-making. If you knock over the cans to get the food before it goes all sick-making, people come running and shouting and chasing like they think you’re a cat or something.

  He is not for fun chasing. Cats are for fun chasing. He is not a cat. He is a dog. This seems so obvious to him.

  People can be strange.

  Now the stinky man knocks on a door, knocks again, and the door is opened by a fat man dressed in white and all surrounded by clouds of hungry-making smells.

  Dear God, Sammy, you’re a bigger mess than usual, says the fat man in white.

  Just some coffee, says the stinky man, holding out the bottle he’s carrying. Don’t want to bother you, really,
I feel bad about this, but I need a little coffee.

  I remember when you first started out years ago—

  Some coffee to sober me up.

  —working with that little ad agency in Newport Beach—

  Gotta get sober fast.

  —before you moved to the big time in L.A., you were always so sharp, a real dresser, the best clothes.

  Gonna die if I don’t get sober.

  You’ve spoke the truth there, says the fat man.

  Just a thermos of coffee, Kenny. Please.

  You ‘re not going to get sober with coffee alone. I’ll bag you some food, you promise you’ll eat it.

  Yeah, sure, sure I will, and some coffee, please.

  Step aside there, away from the door. Don’t want the boss to see you, realize I’m giving you anything.

  Sure, Kenny, sure. I appreciate it, I do, really, ‘cause I just gotta get sober.

  The fat man looks behind and to one side of the stinky man, and he says, You got a dog now, Sammy?

  Huh? Me? A dog? Hell, no.

  The stinky man turns, looks, is surprised.

  Maybe the stinky man would kick at him or chase him away, but the fat man is different. The fat man is nice. Anybody who smells of so many good things to eat must be nice.

  The fat man leans forward in the doorway, with light from the food place behind him. In a people-who-will-feed-you voice, he says, Hey there, fella, how you doin‘?

  Just people noises. He doesn’t really understand any of this, it’s just people noises.

  So he wags his tail, which he knows people always like, and he tilts his head and puts on the look that usually makes them go ahhhhh.

  The fat man says, Ahhhhh, you don’t belong on the street, fella. What kind of people would abandon a nice mutt like you? You hungry? Bet you are. I can take care of that, fella.

  Fella is one of the things people call him, the one they call him most often. He remembers being called Prince when he was a puppy, by a little girl that liked him, but that’s long ago. The woman and her boy call him Woofer, but Fella is what he hears the most.

  He wags his tail harder and whines to show he likes the fat man. And he just sort of quivers all over to show how harmless he is, a good dog, a very good dog, good. People like that.

  The fat man says something to the stinky man, then disappears into the food place, letting the door go shut.

  Gotta get sober, the stinky man says, but he’s just talking to himself.

  Time to wait.

  Just waiting is hard. Waiting for a cat in a tree is harder. And waiting for food is the hardest waiting of all. The time from when people seem to be going to give you food until when they really do give it to you is always so long that it seems like you could chase a cat, chase a car, sniff out every other dog in the territory, chase your tail until you’re dizzy, turn over lots of cans full of sick-making food, and maybe sleep a while and still have to wait before they come back with what you can eat.

  I’ve seen things people got to know about, says the stinky man.

  Staying away from the man, still wagging his tail, he tries not to smell all the smells that are coming out of the food place, which only make the waiting