A sadness in the pit of my gut rumbled and grew, filling me until it wanted to explode in a moan. What difference would it make? Even if the sudden savagery gave me a burst of energy, it wouldn't be enough to snap the handcuffs or the leather strap.
Funny. Ashby didn't lose what was left of his mind when he went in. Maybe I was right: He'd been damaged in a way that kept him static. Not me, though. Not damaged nearly enough.
Oh, well. I'd never been very good at the whole consciousness thing anyway.
But like I said, things usually don't work out the way I expect. This time it didn't work out the way any of us expected. So I wasn't in control, but it turned out neither were they. Something else was, and right before they got me over the rim, it came up to meet them.
A hand, pure, clean bone with a green liquid sheen, rose from the acid. It was followed by an arm. Together, they were more than long enough to grab Watt's meaty shoulder. A fleshless skull broke the surface next, acid rolling off the top. Chemicals oozed from its hollows as it lifted. The jaw lowered and made an impossible sound:
“Heh-heh.”
They'd miscalculated. The acid bath, whatever was in it, didn't work on bone. Maybe the Mask had read the recipe wrong, or maybe it was some crappy brand of acid made in China. Who knew? As for the thing that came out, Ashby's unearthly remains, the sight of it bitch-slapped me back into my body.
What the fuck? I don't believe in ghosts. Sometimes I don't even believe what my eyes tell me. Whatever energized our molecular structure may work on the bones, too, but that didn't come near to explaining how a thing without muscle was moving or making noises.
The second hand came up and also grabbed onto Watt.
“Heh-heh.”
Both hands pulled. Watt screamed.
Grandpa let go of me. Bad move. It gave me a chance to help the skeleton. I kicked with both feet, ramming Watt's chest. He tumbled toward the vat and that was all it took. The skeleton flipped him and dragged him into the acid.
As I fell to the floor, I heard his screams swallowed by a thick, horrible splash.
No longer held, I rolled away. Drops of splashing liquid hit my jacket and started steaming. Grandpa wasn't so lucky. He caught some on the side of his face. It started steaming, too. Ignoring the physical pain, the old man moved closer to the vat. Planning what? To pull Watt out with his hands?
Didn't matter. The skeleton, standing now, dug its hands into Grandpa's face, right where the acid was burning, and yanked him in, too.
As Grandpa bubbled away, I realized the pole attached to my neck strap was dangling. I looked around for the Mask, but all I could see was a slightly swinging chain near a door marked EXIT. Hands and ankles cuffed, I was in no position to chase him, but I tried. I got up, tripped, and fell after two yards.
“Heh-heh.”
I looked back as the meatless skeleton clambered out of the vat, acid dripping in a small puddle at its feet. It didn't look like it had any more idea what it was than I did.
When it was happening, I thought Ashby had attacked Watt and Grandpa on purpose, for vengeance, or whatever. From the way it moved now, bumping and crashing into everything, I started thinking it was just trying to get out of the tank, grabbing whatever happened to be around. It was blind. It had to be. It had no eyes.
“Heh-heh.”
Or throat. So how did it make that sound? Was it really his laugh, or just the way the bones creaked against one another? Was I only hearing it in my head?
It neared me, dripping, so I squirmed out of the way. I didn't know if it could hear, but I wasn't going to call. For all I knew it would run over to me like a wet dog and shake that crap all over me. So I stayed quiet and watched as it stumbled into the table, knocking over all those pretty tools.
I noticed that the duffel bag and the clippers were gone.
“Heh-heh.”
By the time I squirmed up to sitting, it was farther away from me, banging among some crates. It was no longer dripping so much, so I called out, softly, “Ashby?”
It didn't react.
“Ashby,” I managed again. “You in there?”
It hesitated. I don't think it'd heard me. It stood in front of an open door, the one the Mask must have fled through. Maybe it sensed the breeze.
And then the body, the moving bones, the thing that used to be a chak, that was someone named Ashby before that, threw itself through the door and creaked off into the night. I heard the acid bubble in the vat, the scrape of foot bone against concrete, and the fading sound of that crazy laugh: “Heh-heh, heh-heh, heh-heh.”
18
T
hough my immediate prospects had much improved, my hands and ankles were still cuffed, and there was a leather strap around my neck. Reaching my cell phone was out, but I was sort of mobile. I hopped when I stood, dragged myself when I fell. After about an hour, I made it to a pay phone and punched the keys with my nose.
Though it was free and only three numbers, I sure as hell wasn't going to try 911. They'd probably send Booth. Maybe he wasn't out to D-cap me, but that didn't make us friends. I could tell him about Mr. Gas Mask until I was even bluer in the face than usual, and Booth would only wonder why my legs hadn't been broken.
To pay for a call, I had to punch in my debit card. Took six tries before I got the number right. Then I did like E.T. and phoned home. When I was finished, I leaned against a streetlamp and scanned the dark, straight line of road between the warehouses. The sedan was gone, so I didn't expect the Mask to leap out at me, and there was no sign of Ashby. Just the same, I kept my eyes open.
It wasn't only outside threats I had to watch for. My rich inner world had gotten pretty bad, too. In the warehouse, I'd started moaning. Street wisdom said it was only a matter of time before I went feral. Then again, if the street was so damn smart, why would it be on the street to begin with?
Half an hour later, a cab showed. The door opened. Misty's legs slid onto the pavement, followed by the rest of her. She was so shocked when she saw me, she tripped twice running over, then wrapped her arms around me. The cabbie, who had two grisly beards, one on each chin, took one look at us, muttered something about not being into that kinky shit, and drove off.
Misty picked the handcuffs with a safety pin. Able to move my arms and legs, I checked my body, satisfied that everything was still working. She got the pole off easily enough. It just unscrewed. The padlock on the leather strap was a problem.
“It's too narrow for the pin. I need to cut it off with some clippers or something,” she said.
I rubbed my wrists. “Could you please not use that word right now?”
I told her a little about what happened, enough for her to ask if I was okay, enough for me to say sure. I wasn't. Yes, I was back in my body and didn't feel a need to moan right then and there, but it'd been a real long couple of days. I didn't know it, but it was about to get worse.
The second cab we called wouldn't take chakz. When a third showed, Misty offered the driver an extra twenty. He was hungry enough to take it. Thank the stars for the desperate among us, for they can still be hired.
Back at the office, while Misty worked at the strap with a file and a pair of scissors, I collapsed into my desk chair. She wanted to talk. I didn't. While she sawed away, I flicked on the set, hungry for anything except reality. I found what I was looking for.
Tea with the Dead
was on, one of a dozen zombie-themed shows. Most were comedies that portrayed chakz as a really lame, laughable threat, sort of like the Nazis on
Hogan's Heroes
.
After a while, I heard Misty's nails scratching, then felt the soft pads of her fingers on the back of my neck. She'd cut most of the way through the leather and was trying to tear the last inch. She grunted, strained, and I heard a sound disturbingly similar to ripping flesh. The collar came free.
“I keep thinking about poor Ashby,” she said.
“You and me both,” I told her.
“It's so crazy. Why would anyone collect chak heads?”
I shrugged as I rubbed my neck. “Because someone's a sick fuck, and sick fucks do fucking sick things.” After a pause and a look at her face, I got a little more introspective. “Could be a ritual thing. Psychos like to collect souvenirs, body parts. Y'know, in some primitive tribes warriors collected the heads of their enemies; gave them someone to talk to.”
Takes a lot to freak someone out when they spend all day with the dead, but she started rubbing her neck, too. “You joking?”
“I wish. I took some psych classes once, learned just enough to hurt myself. Freud wrote about some old chief who used to pull out the skull of his greatest foe, put a cigar in it, light it up for him, and have a good, long, one-sided chatây'know, âBuddy, you're the only one who understands me' . . . that sort of thing.”
I must have shivered or something, because she started rubbing my neck and shoulders.
“Try not to break anything back there, okay?”
She slapped at my back. “You're tougher than you think. Lucky, too.”
“Oh, yeah. My luck's been amazing. Got one chak D-capped and another melted to the bone. Think I should buy a lottery ticket today?”
“You blame yourself for Ashby?”
“It's not rocket science. I didn't have to let him come with me. Could've forced him to stay with you. I didn't, and he lost a lot of weight because of it.”
She shook her head, but I wasn't sure who she was trying to convince. “He'd have tried to follow, and it could've wound up worse for him.”
I had to laugh at that one. “You're the best, Misty, but get a bigger shovel, will you?
What
could be worse?”
“I don't know.” She stepped away, looked out the window at the beautiful alley view. A cop car rolled down the main street, flashing lights that glanced on her face through the slats in the blinds. “The police are out in force. It's because of the riot at Bedland and the . . . gas station explosion last night. When you called I was watching TV. Some talk-show guy was going on about how they should just get it over with, round up all the chakz, put them in a pit, and take a flamethrower to the pile.”
It figured. It was the same every time chak trouble made the news. Everyone would start talking bonfires. Good for ratings. It'd always blown over before, but I winced just the same. “That doesn't mean I did the kid a favor.”
She turned back to me. “No, I'm just saying . . . you didn't know. We never know what'll happen. It
could
have been worse for him, even if we can't imagine it. Did you . . . did you ever, ever see anything like that before, just a skeleton walking around?”
I shook my head. “If that's what I saw. It was dark; maybe there was more of him left than I thought. Otherwise, how could the bones move? How could he talk?”
She came over and put her hand on my shoulder again. “Hess, maybe it's his
soul
.”
Ah, the spaghetti monster in the sky again. I didn't know how to answer. Fortunately, I didn't have to. The sitcom was over and the news came on. They were leading with a story about a chak break-in on Wealthy Street. Cara Boyle was being interviewed. She was too upset to offer a decent description of what happened. I wasn't, not yet anyway.
I shot Misty a glance. “The riot and the fire, huh? Didn't mention my little part in the crackdown.”
“I didn't want to . . .”
I waved her off. “Never mind. I know what you didn't want,” I said. “Come to think of it, shooting that liveblood at the hakker attack probably helped a lot, too. I'm a one-man excuse for . . . what would you call it? Genocide seems redundant in this case.”
“Hess, you're just making it worse. Thinking like that won't help you keep it together.”
She was right about that much. I grabbed the remote, thinking I'd turn off the set. Given what happened next, it was the right instinct, but before I could hit the power button, the scene switched. A new face flashed up on the screen: the butler I'd socked in the gut. Only, according to the name on the screen, he wasn't a butler; he was the main man himself, Martin Boyle Sr., Frank's father. The guy who'd supposedly died from cancer.
What the . . . ?
For all my mistakes, the truth rushed me like a linebacker. “Turgeon!”
He'd lied. And I believed him.
I clenched my hands so hard it felt like I was driving my fingernails into my palms. No blood, of course. I stood and looked for something to smash.
“Fucking baby-headed Turgeon. He's the psycho. The son of a bitch played me. I led him straight to Boyle. I killed them both. I killed Frank, too.”
We'll talk soon.
It was his voice, muffled by the mask.
With nothing handy to throw, I punched myself in the head. When that proved too hard, I kicked the recliner. A loud crack filled the room. I didn't know whether it was the chair or my leg.
“Stop it!” Misty said. She pulled me back. “You'll break your leg!”
Electric syrup bubbled inside me. Frank Boyle and Ashby were perfectly safe until I'd led the son of a bitch psycho straight to them.
I planted myself in the recliner. From the way it bent under my weight, it was the thing that was broken. Misty looked relieved. I suppose I should've been, too.
“Hess . . . you couldn't have . . .”
I held up my hand to stop her. “Don't. I'm supposed to be a detective. I should've at least checked Turgeon's story before I did anything.”
She stood there not knowing what to say, the concern making her face vibrate. Looking at her was only making it worse. I clicked the set off. “Misty, don't take it personally, but right now I need some me-time.”