Chapter 22
Strangeness sparks fear in those who don't know how to dream. Trying to defend themselves, the four boys stare at each other and laugh. An identical desire darkens their eyes; they can't see her sensuous movement as anything but a naked body, offered to their l.u.s.t.
They move in, mouths spewing a puree of insults: the vomit of contempt, the bile that eats at the other. But Barbel is deaf, Barbel is blind, Barbel is entirely in the dance. She doesn't see the four boys circling her, she doesn't hear the words tying her up, she awakens only when she feels the contact of hands, tossing her to the ground.
Her back hits the gra.s.s. A superhuman twisting stops the fall, brings back up the body of the demon inside her, growling, curling its lip.
The boys retreat, bewildered as if by an acrobat's trick. They have misjudged their victim, who stands so much taller than before. They gather and flee. Barbel discharges the energy she collected in the storm, and with a roar the sun swoops down and blows the boys to fragments.
Crazed, she will stare until dawn at the four blasted bodies.
Back in the garden, she feels so weak it seems the demon must have left her.
On the stained carpet of the bedroom, her back against a cascade of soiled sheets. She eats a bit of uncooked meat. The blood runs down between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She wipes at it with an automatic gesture. Compare the Vermillion on the hand with the coagulated purple marking the thighs. Touch the source and sniff. The blood of the beast and her blood in her. Smell and taste both rusty, an oxidized dullness. She raises an arm, breathes in the bitter exhalation of her armpit, rubs her fingers in the sweaty elastic hollow, smooths the humid fur, licks her fingers, abandons herself to the strong saline taste.
Later. Night has fallen. Intense green light and flashes of bronze cut through the darkness. Barbel kneels before the standing mirror with the baroque cupids carved in its frame. In the somber blue of the gla.s.s, two orange circles regard her; within them the strange pupils are dilating.
"A glimpse of the other world, Barbel Hachereau. These are not your eyes."
Barbel turns on the light, returns to the mirror, searches in vain for the demon; finds instead that her skin is a strange color, the gold-green of a scarab. To the touch, it is dry, cold, scaly.
"You are not here, Barbel Hachereau. The other one has taken your place. These stripped features are just a sketch of your real face. Your teeth aren't so pointed."
In the mirror, the other contracts its pupils.
Tilting her head, Barbel hears a melody from the deepest depths. A prism of pure crystal is ringing, and hearing it she feels herself dispersed to all the bands of this sonic rainbow. But there is just enough of her primal being left to resist the rush of frozen color trying to carry her off; and the crystal shatters.
A triumph over the abyss.
But now she knows. She is the prey of an implacable fate. The demon will confront her, again and again, until she no longer has the strength to resist.
She finds her feet filthy, her room filthy. She who was once vitrified like quartz, clear and with perfect edges, now feels her being leaking away, seeping out of invisible fissures.
Eventually she realizes how to stop the slow hemorrhage of her self.
It is easier to die when it is an act of resistance. It turns the tables; now it's she who floats above the demon, bound to him by a cord of energy which thins at the same pace as her life. The demon lodges in a mental cylinder, attached to a complex little apparatus. The orange of its eyes is tarnished. Its mouth exhales bubbles of music, which float away and burst. At times the teeth show through the sound.
A language made of cries, Barbel thinks.
Although they're flecked with foam, trembling like a wave about to break, Barbel can distinguish forms everywhere. They rise, they vibrate around the cylinder; into it the suffering beast shrinks, unable to transfuse, unable to receive transfusion.
Closer. It's Barbel's turn to penetrate the alien body. Spread out in it. Understand then where she is. Somehow she has done the impossible: she has swept the demon into her death. The immortality of the demon-of all demons-seemed to her an unchangeable fact, a privilege absolute and irrevocable. How could a little Earthling change something like that? How could she have created a world where the transfusees know how to turn their deaths against their invaders?
A thick ooze wells out of the bloated flesh of the being with orange eyes. In the bloodless loops of that strange consciousness, the living essence desperately fights the imminence of the abyss.
In the instant that the too-taut thread of her existence snaps, Barbel smiles. Her torn body will claim the victory.
The Dark at the Corner of the Eye.
PATRICIA ANTHONY.
S.
ERGEANT TUNNY, wire basket in hand, stopped in front of Cohen's desk and started flipping out manila envelopes. The sound they made when they hit the steel-and-Formica top
Clink. Clink. Jewelry.
Tap. Something light: A photograph or maybe a letter. Plop. A wallet? The form inside the envelope was thick enough.
Thunk. Cohen eyed that one for a moment, his gaze briefly following the drawn curve of the five.
Tap. Whatever was in six was thin and bigger than a business card, smaller than a sheet of regular paper. He could sense that much without touching it.
"Come on, guys," Tunny said in his raspy ba.s.s. "We need witnesses."
Four cops left what they were doing or not doing to walk over: three uniforms; one plain-clothes detective.
"Begin," Tunny said to Cohen.
Cohen reached a hand out to envelope number one. Before he could touch the edge of the manila paper, the darkness was back. And it stayed for a count of twelve. Cohen had been timing it lately so that he could describe to any doctor who was interested the details of the symptoms.
It wasn't just his imagination. Everyone sees bright spots in their field of vision; Cohen knew that. Bright floating spots were indications of a brief lack of oxygen to the brain. Big deal. So sometimes the brain said send, and the circulatory system, like an overworked file clerk, said, send what?
And sometimes vision went dark. That was a circulatory problem, too, Cohen had learned. You have low blood pressure and you get up too abruptly and-blam-you're down again.
But vision wasn't ever supposed to go dark in precisely the way Cohen's did, and with precisely the same feeling. In that twelve seconds, he could dimly see, in the background, Tunny's blossoming smirk; and in the foreground, like a panel of smoked gla.s.s, the square of darkness.
The darkness was his private black hole, a thing that sucked in all thought and held it like a startled, caught breath.
After a count of twelve, it blinked out of existance and let him go.
"Worried you can't get it up, Cohen?" Tunny asked. "Forgot who the perp was supposed to be?"
When the darkness evaporated, Cohen found himself staring directly into Tunny's baby-blond good looks. The sergeant's eyebrows were so fair that they blended into the pale of his skin. He was a lump of flesh and a thatch of yellow, relieved by two primary-blue eyes. Simple, even in colors, Tunny was.
For an instant Cohen hated Tunny. I could be dying here, he thought. I could be having a stroke. If Cohen fell off the chair, he could picture Tunny saying, Worried you can't get it up?
Tunny upset him so much Cohen was afraid he couldn't go on and that he'd have to delay the lineup for a while.
Cohen pushed his anger into the tight s.p.a.ce where the black hole lurked, then reached forward and picked up the first envelope.
He could feel a chain inside; a thick, short chain.
"A cop's bracelet," Cohen said.
Tunny's smile soured.
Cohen stared hard into the sergeant's eyes, a cruel turn to his mouth. "His wife's running around on him."
One of the witnessing officers, a uniform, made a hasty s.n.a.t.c.h for the envelope. His face was purple.
Tunny tore the envelope from the uniform's hand and threw it back on the desk.
Clink.
"f.u.c.k it, Ojeda. You don't freak in the lineup, okay?" Tunny growled. His cheeks were pink from embarra.s.sment or perhaps anger. "Let the man do his thing."
Cohen picked up number two and held it a moment. Another man's bracelet, about the same size and weight. "Pimp," Cohen said. "He's not the one."
He glanced up to see if he was right, but this time no one was giving him clues. Cohen put the pimp's bracelet down and picked up the flat envelope, number three.
That was d.i.c.kerson, the murderer. Cohen's sensitive fingers could feel the quick, hungry pulse under the paper. All murderers had their own rhythm. This one was as steady and measured as blood in the veins, a beat that whispered i-want-i-want-i-want. Hurriedly, he put it down. "That's the same guy I felt on the victim's clothes."
Tunny settled his clipboard against his stomach and made some notes. "You sure?"
"I'm sure."
"You want to check again?"
"No." Cohen's hands were shaking. He hated the touch of murder. Murder was a darkness of another sort; a darkness shot with crimson.
"Keep going," Tunny said.
Cohen swallowed and reached for four, the one he figured was a wallet. There was a lump inside the envelope, but it didn't tell him anything. "Zero," he said, frowning.
"Let it be noted that the psychic received no concrete impressions." Tunny repeated the stock, formal phrase by rote.
"No feelings at all," Cohen said by way of correction. He couldn't tell whether Tunny made a notation.
Quickly he reached out for five. When his hand hit it, an instinctive smile erupted from inside him and spread itself over his face. He glanced around the broad form of Tunny and could see the receptionist watching him. Cohen felt Tunny watching him, too. He stifled his grin. "Lila's compact."
"You like that one?" Tunny asked.
Cohen looked down at the table, hoping that Lila had noticed his reaction; hoping Tunny hadn't.
And then Cohen reached for six. He had it in both hands before he realized something was wrong. By the time he sensed the danger, he was trapped. He couldn't put the envelope down. His hands clamped to it as an electrocuted man's hold moronically, helplessly, onto a live wire.
In the back of his brain, he could hear Tunny's voice rise to a shout. "Cohen? Cohen!"
A primal wail started in Cohen's chest, rushed up his throat and filled his mouth.
"Christ!" Tunny snapped. "Cohen! Let go!"
The policeman had hold of one edge of the envelope and was fighting a desperate tug-of-war with it. Finally, with a furious jerk, he tore it from the psychic's grasp.
Cohen dropped back into his chair. Tunny stood with the envelope cradled at his chest. He was breathing hard.
"Thank you," Cohen whispered.
Tunny licked his lips anxiously. "Was it the murderer?"
"No. Something else." Whatever was in that envelope was something terrible: an unending, silent loneliness. "I want verification."
At first Tunny looked confused. Then his cheeks went pale, pale as his hair, pale as his eyebrows. "That's for amateurs, Cohen. You don't need that."
"Verification!" Cohen snapped. "Now! Right now!"
The policemen were ringed around him like a gathering of owls. Tunny tore open number one and upended it. There was a glint of gold, a clink. A bracelet dropped out of the envelope, and Ojeda quickly picked it up.
There was an identical bracelet in two. It was just like Tunny to have picked up two similar bracelets from two dissimilar men. The detective had a quirky sense of humor.
In number three was a lock of brown hair encased in plastic. He wondered how the cops had gotten it. Psychometrist's samples were governed by search-and-seizure rules. Had Tunny, scissors in hand, asked d.i.c.kerson to give him a lock? Or, more likely, had he staked out the murderer's barber?
"Four," Cohen said.
Tunny glanced to the other policemen and tore open the end of the fourth envelope. There was a wallet inside. It still had the price tag on it.
"b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Cohen whispered.
The sergeant quickly opened five. It was Lila's compact. The case was chipped, and makeup was caked in the ornate design of the white plastic.
Cohen picked up the compact and held it tenderly for a moment, as gently as he had always longed to hold her hand. The case was woman-scented, and the residue of the makeup outside was slightly greasy. Lila had a sweet, happy feel to her, like the feel of a gift of flowers or a surprise letter from a friend.
Without putting the compact down, he said, "Six."
Tunny hesitated.
"Six!" Cohen shouted.
The sergeant ripped open one edge and upended the envelope over the table. Cohen's MasterCard dropped out.
"s.h.i.+t," Cohen gasped as he lurched to his feet.
Tunny looked like he was about to cry. "I'm sorry, Nathan. Jesus, you know I..."
"Shut up! Shut up!" Cohen held onto Lila's compact as if he were suspended over infinity and the compact were his only lifeline. He was afraid to pick up his credit card. He was terrified to touch it.
Tunny was still talking. "You left your jacket on your chair again, Nathan. Your wallet right inside it. I just wanted to see what would happen..."
"You f.u.c.king cretin!" Cohen screamed. With a loud crack the compact shattered in his hand.