Ink

Dedication

For Taylore and Ashton

(They know why.)

Acknowledgements

Although the act of writing is a solitary art, turning that writing into something other than pages of chaos is not. First of all, thank you to Don D'Auria and Samhain for liking
Ink
enough to want to publish it, and to the art department, for creating a gorgeous cover that made me shriek in delight.
 

To Linda Epstein, for plucking
Ink
from the slush pile, and to Mark McVeigh, for helping me add flesh on the right pages. To my beta readers: Ellen Collins, David McAfee, Jennifer Payne, and Sean Connell. To the Hellions and the Horror Hounds at Absolute Write. While the names might sound frightful, the people are anything but. To all my friends who've offered encouragement along the way. There are far too many of you to list, and I would never forgive myself if I forgot a name or two. You know who you are.

To my father, for gifting me with a love of books, and for taking me to see
Alien
one and a half times in the theater. To my mother, who I wish were here to see this happen. To Stephen King and Peter Straub, for scaring me to pieces when I was a child. To Christian and Hunter and the rest of the staff at Saints and Sinners in Fells Point.
 

To my children, the best kids a mom could have. To the babies, Jeremiah and Chloe, for making me smile. To my favorite brother (would that I had more than one so they could ponder over which one I meant), my sister-in-law and niece, and the rest of my family. And to my husband, for his endless support, encouragement, and love. Always and ever, babe. Always and ever.

And last but not least, to you, the reader. Thank you for taking this journey with me. I have, in the name of artistic license, made some alterations to places and such within Baltimore.
 

Chapter One

Topside

At first glance, nothing made the man in the tailored suit memorable—no cleft chin, no razor-sharp cheekbones, no scars. An ordinary face, an unremarkable man, albeit dressed in an expensive suit and a silk tie—the second-best part of being William, in his opinion. He doubted the previous owner, the real William, felt the same.

He moved with a hitching stride, a sort of low-slung walk as if unaccustomed to the fit of the pants. A far from ordinary gait. The city buzzed and hummed around him, but he paid it no mind; he had things to do.

Baltimore smelled of overflowing trashcans, stagnant water and dog excrement. Old, familiar smells, although it had been a long time since his last visit. He walked until he came to a row of brick buildings with darkened windows and a door with faded paint, a door a hundred passersby would never notice.

He did not bother to lock it behind him. Anyone who wandered in would find nothing at all if they were lucky, a bit of darkness and pain if they weren’t. A narrow staircase with old, scuffed wooden stairs led up and up and up, and at the very top, another door swung open with a long, high-pitched creak.

“Had a girl and she sure was fine,” he sang out in a deep, gravelly voice. “She was fine, fine, fine.”

Once inside the room, his words echoed away. The floorboards were warped and stained, the wallpaper hung in tattered shreds and a smell lingered in the air, faint but somehow liquid. The stink of rot and ruin, of old dreams, broken screams and wicked, dirty little things.

With a sigh, he peeled off his suit and smiled a terrible smile. He was ash and cinder, pain and sorrow, and he was always clever.

Chapter Two

Ships in the Night

1

“Bitch.” Jason whispered the word and took a drink from his beer. Beer, not a fancy “let’s pretend we’re literary thinkers” drink, not a Shelley-approved drink at all. He looked down at his left hand, smiling at the little stripe of fish-belly pale flesh across his finger. “Bitch,” he repeated, and the word rolled off his tongue with unexpected, but welcome, ease.

He finished his beer, belched, and for one quick instant the words
I’m sorry
crept up, but he caught them before they came out. He caught them hard and shoved them down. No more sorry, no more “you can’t buy that book” (complete with
the
look
, all turned-up nose and narrowed eyes, because heaven forbid any husband of hers might be interested in a creepy tale or two), no more twelve dollar martinis, and the most important no of all?

No more Shelley.

Jason was the only customer in the bar. The bartender, a bored-looking twenty-something, wore a black T-shirt that displayed the slogan
Real Women Swallow
. A real class act, definitely not Shelley-approved. After giving Jason his beer, he sat back down on a stool behind the bar and opened up a paperback. A horror novel.

A television hung in the corner, its screen silent and dark. Not many people with a reason to drink at one in the afternoon on a Tuesday, Jason guessed, but he didn’t care. He had no interest in conversation or company; he wanted to consume copious amounts of impolite beer, stagger home and maybe puke on Shelley’s side of the bed.

Jason had his third beer in hand when the sailor walked into the bar. Probably in his mid-fifties, with a fluffy gray halo of hair and several multi-colored tattoos on his long, muscular arms, but neither the hair nor the tattoos made Jason think sailor. The walk did. He moved with a strange rolling step more suited to a cartoon character. If Jason had been drunk, he would’ve laughed.

He used the big mirror hanging behind the bar to watch the sailor’s progress; as he walked—rolled—closer, the lines on his face popped into view. Deep lines, as if someone had taken the dull edge of a knife to damp clay. The sailor rolled up to the bar, climbed up onto a stool four away from Jason’s and with a thick, gravelly voice, a smoker’s voice, asked for a beer. The bartender handed him the drink and went back to his book. After a few minutes, the sailor turned watery, pale green eyes toward Jason and raised his bottle. Jason did the same, very glad he’d held in the laugh. Those watery eyes weren’t right somehow. The sailor gave Jason a long look before he turned back to his beer. Jason finished his third and ordered a fourth.

“I will take another one as well, and pay for them both,” Sailor said.

“Thanks, man,” Jason said.

Sailor replied with a nod.

Halfway through the fourth beer, Jason took a trip to the bathroom. On his way back, with a loose, swimmy feeling in his head, he noticed Sailor had moved over to the stool next to Jason’s. A cold finger of dread traced its way down Jason’s spine. He shook it off, blamed it on the alcohol and took his seat. This close, Sailor’s eyes weren’t the only thing off. He smelled…odd. Sort of a gray, ashy smell. Jason shook his head.

It must be the beer.

“You do not mind, do you?” Sailor asked.

“No.”

“You look like a man who has had a rough day.”

Sailor looked like a guy whose higher education had consisted of ropes and pulleys, but despite the growl in his voice, he didn’t sound like one. His words came out formal and clipped, like a college professor. English, maybe, minus the tweed jacket and wire-rim glasses. The funny, off feeling disappeared. Jason smiled and took a swig from his bottle.

“My wife left me today.”

“Let me guess, your best friend?”

Make that psychology.

“No,” Jason said with a shake of his head. “Her best friend.”

“Well, I am sorry.”

“Don’t be. Shelley was a—”

“Bitch?”

“You got it.” Jason drained the last inch of beer in his bottle. It was quite funny when he thought long and hard about it, even if he didn’t feel much like laughing. He didn’t feel much of anything.

“Bartender, may we have two more?”

“Thanks again. I owe you one—well, two now.”

“Do not worry about it. You can pay me later. So your wife left you and you are here. Celebrating?”

“Something like that.”

Several beers later, Jason was riding a happy train wreck of intoxication. He couldn’t quite follow the conversation anymore, and his words were well past the point of slurring into nonsense, but it didn’t seem to matter. All was right in his world. No more Shelley.

“Well my friend, I must be going,” Sailor said after he finished his beer. He climbed off the bar stool, his watery eyes sober. “Have you ever considered getting a tattoo?”

Jason blinked. Where had that come from? He thought they were talking about football, unless he’d missed a sentence or two, which, given the way his eyes couldn’t focus on Sailor’s face, wasn’t really a surprise.

Sailor sighed, a deep, wet sigh that pushed out a small wave of smoke-scented breath. “A tattoo. Ink and skin?”

“No,” Jason said, turning away from the lingering smell. They didn’t allow smoking in bars anymore, a stupid law, but he didn’t remember Sailor stepping outside.

“That is a shame. If you happen to change your mind, call me.”

Sailor handed him a business card. When Jason tried to read it, the letters blurred together into one large, illegible smear of ink.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Jason.”

“Yeah, you too.”

Sailor tapped Jason’s upper arm twice, tipped his head forward in a nod, and rolled out of the bar.

2

Jason woke up with a headache the size of Texas and a sour taste in his mouth. When he tried to pick up his head to look at the clock, his brain said yes, but his body ignored the command. It wanted to sleep. He took a few deep breaths and tried again.

Liftoff.

He couldn’t see the clock. That was bad. He couldn’t see the clock because he was curled up on the bathroom floor next to the toilet. Even worse. And he was naked. That wasn’t so bad, just odd. He pulled himself up with a groan, and his head screamed in some alien language filled with squeaks, screeches and weird little hitches in between the chaos. Why had he thought drowning his sorrow was a good thing?

He should be with Shelley on a beach in Cancun, a drink in his hand, on a nice little Wednesday through Sunday vacation getaway, and he would have been if not for her little announcement. But her announcement had changed his plans and his plans only. She and Nicole got the warm sand and clear water; he got the cold tile and the sour smell of vomit.

Great.

Using the edge of the sink for leverage, he managed to pull himself upright. Once his legs steadied, he splashed cold water on his face, avoiding the bleary-eyed reflection in the mirror, and dry swallowed several aspirin. The alien voices still chattered away, but a long shower turned their noise into something more manageable. He popped another aspirin, pulled on sweats and a T-shirt, and when the headache backed down to the size of Maryland, he realized it wasn’t going to get any smaller, not without food and coffee.

The clock on his nightstand said 2:00 p.m. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept that late or the last time he drank (or was allowed to drink) half as much as he did.

He found his jeans, underwear and one sock in the hallway and his polo shirt on the stairs. The stumble up the stairs was a half memory, but the final trip into the bathroom was lost to the drunk gods of fortune. On his way into the kitchen, he passed by his shoes, discarded in the dining room like old thoughts or unneeded husbands. His wallet and keys were on the kitchen table along with his other sock, which made no sense at all.

He vaguely recalled the taxi ride home. The driver ran half a dozen red lights, afraid Jason would throw up in his car. The struggle to get the key in the lock was a little blurry around the edges. He’d leaned up against the dining room wall next to the door into the kitchen to kick off his shoes, but how in the hell did his sock get back in the kitchen? Even if he took it off and pitched it over his shoulder, it would’ve landed on the floor. He’d have to be a magician to get his sock to veer over to the table. All things considered, the sock's placement was incidental, but it bugged him nonetheless.

He pushed it out of his mind, made coffee and opened the refrigerator. The contents were a dietician’s wet dream—all organic, all healthy, all from a grocery store with high prices and employees with nose rings and tie-dyed shirts. Shelley insisted. He could eat whatever he wanted for lunch at work, but at home? Not a chance. Jason wanted something greasy and un-organic, like pizza. He grabbed his wallet to check for cash, and a white business card fell out face down onto the floor. When he bent down to pick it up, he almost fell on his face.