Ink (18 page)

Dad, I’m really not okay. Not this time.

The coffin rested atop a metal frame and underneath, the waiting hole gaped mouth-like, waiting to swallow his father whole. In front of the coffin, a portable awning covered several rows of folding chairs. Jason guided his mother to one of the chairs in the front, and she sank down without a word. He tugged at his collar but didn’t sit. He couldn’t. It was too warm for a suit, even underneath the awning. Another duck quacked, and Jason sighed. He didn’t care how many ducks there were; it was still a cemetery, and his dad was still gone.

The minister, an old man with thick, white hair, bent down and spoke to his mother in a hushed voice. He’d married Chris and Lisa, but Jason didn’t know his name. He’d stopped going to church in high school, when he decided he didn’t believe in either God or the devil. It had upset his mother, but after her initial protestations she didn’t nag. His father’s doing, no doubt. Jason knew his dad went with her on Sundays to make her happy, not for any great spiritual reasons of his own. A memory returned, as vivid as the grass—the day he walked downstairs and told his father he was an atheist.

Of course I told Dad first. I told him
everything
first.

His father had put down his newspaper, gave him a small smile, and said, “Son, I believe every man has the right to make his own decision about politics and religion. You might not legally be a man yet, in the eyes of the law, but I think you’re old enough to know what’s in your mind and your heart.”

Jason could hear his father’s words as clearly as if he stood next to him right now, and he brushed tears away with the back of his hand. After a few minutes, the minister rose, smiling when his knees creaked in protest.

“How are you holding up?”

My father’s dead. How do you think I’m holding up?

“I’m okay.”

“Good,” the minister said. He reached out his hand, patted Jason’s left arm, then drew it back with a low hiss.

What the hell?

A wave of bright pain exploded in Jason’s arm, and he rocked back on his heels. It was like a million needles digging into his skin all at once, or a dozen razors scraping down deep. His breath rushed out with a small sound; the minister stepped back and looked down at his own hand with an odd look, then he looked back up at Jason and rubbed his palm on the leg of his pants.

The sharp pain subsided slowly, leaving a dull ache in its place. Jason tasted blood in his mouth, sharp and metallic, and fought the urge to spit. Soreness on the side of his tongue confirmed the source of the blood.

Good one. The minister was trying to be nice, now he’s looking at me like I’m the Antichrist.

Jason squirmed under the weight of the minister’s stare, but he turned the movement into a small stretch. He didn’t like the way the minister’s eyebrows had drawn together or the questions in his eyes.

What happened when he touched me?

Lisa walked over and put her hand on the minister’s shoulder, and Jason took that moment to turn his head away. He reached up and touched his arm. Heat pressed against his palm.

Of course it’s warm. You’re standing out in the sun.

No unexpected shock of pain, no screaming knives, only an odd ache. Jason sat down next to his mother. She had her head down and her eyes closed. Whatever had happened, she’d missed it, and Jason sighed in relief.

Just a muscle cramp. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to explain.

The minister finished talking to with Lisa, and when she sat down he began to speak. When his mother raised her head, her cheeks damp with tears, Jason reached into his pocket and handed her a small packet of tissues. He stared at the coffin as the minister droned on and on. When he started to read a passage from the Bible, Jason tuned out the words. They weren’t important, anyway.

12

The minister cornered him in the kitchen at his mother’s house. When he approached, Jason’s mouth went dry and he stepped back.

“I wonder if I could speak with you a few minutes, son.”

No.

“Sure.”

“I felt something very odd when I touched you at the cemetery.”

Jason bet it was nothing like he felt.

“I just got a tattoo,” Jason said. Neither a total lie, nor the total truth. “You happened to touch the spot where it is. The skin is still tender.”

“Oh,” the minister said, his features twisting in confusion. “I could have sworn, well it may sound odd, but your arm felt warm, son, almost hot. It was a little…strange.”

If you call me son one more time, I might yell. You’re not my father. He’s dead and in the ground. Remember?

And maybe Frank just doesn’t like you.

Jason smiled at the ridiculous thought. “Not really, sir. We were out in the sun.”

“Yes, that could be the explanation. That could be it exactly.” The lines on his forehead smoothed out, then he smiled. “Please forgive this old man’s fancies. I shouldn’t have troubled you on this, of all days. I’m not sure what I was thinking.”

Jason just nodded. What else could he say?

Yes, I felt it too. It felt like my arm was on fire.

The minister opened his mouth as if he had more to say, then closed it and shook his head. He offered a small smile. “In the days to come, if you need someone to talk to, to help you cope with your loss, my door is always open. I know you’re not a member of our church, but your parents have been for many years.”

Sure, right. Just please go away.

“Thank you,” Jason said, breathing a sigh of relief when the minister finally walked out of the kitchen.

13

Jason called Mitch as soon as he left his mother’s house; when she answered the phone, tears burned his throat, trapping his voice inside his chest.

“Are you okay?”

He forced out a sound, his tears turning the streetlights into streaks of white light.

“Come over, please,” she said.

Jason found his voice. “Okay. I’d like that.”

She opened her front door before he had a chance to knock, and without a word she wrapped her arms around him and held him close. Her soft, coconut smell brought fresh tears to his eyes.

Later, in the dark, he whispered, ”I love you,” and she said the words back.

14

Jason’s shoulders slumped as soon as he unlocked his kitchen door Sunday night. He pushed the door open, stumbled into the kitchen, and tossed his keys toward the table. They spiraled down and landed with a clink on the floor. He didn’t bother to pick them up. The twilight outside turned the corners of his living room into dark, secretive places, banished once he turned on a lamp and the television.

Dad is dead.

The words played over and over in his head and he flipped through the channels without thought, the actors’ faces passing in a blur. With a sigh, he turned it off, tossed the remote on the coffee table and put his head in his hands. His dad had been fine when he got to the hospital. Pale, tired, but fine. The damn heart monitor had chirped away, pronouncing everything well and good, but it lied, nothing more than a pretty illusion of happy ever after, like a seemingly perfect beach hiding poison shells in quicksand.

Jason swallowed, tasting tears. He cried into his hands until his palms were slippery. He cried until his throat hurt and he couldn’t see through the tears. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair.

It is what it is.

His father’s voice. He’d give anything to hear his dad say the words for real. Not this false ghost voice. When the tears stopped and his vision cleared, he stared at the darkened screen, catching a glimpse of his own reflection.

He rubbed his upper arms and winced, then pushed up the sleeve of his shirt. Bruises, five of them, marred the skin on his left arm, fingertip shaped and pale purple, almost concealed by the tattoo’s ink.

He grabbed me, right before he said his last words.

The look on his father’s face, the horrible, scared look was burned into his memory. And his words. ”
I saw
.“ What had he seen? Death coming for him in a gilded carriage? Jason’s mother living out the rest of her days alone? The knowledge that he wouldn’t see his grandchildren grow up?

Jason rubbed his arm again, and pain rippled just underneath the skin, reminding him of the sensation when the minister touched him.

No, I am not going to think about that. No way. Not tonight.

15

Jason was sitting at the kitchen table when his father, in a dirt-encrusted suit, knocked at his back door. He whispered his name with a wet voice (a wrong voice), the S nothing more than a gentle hiss of exhaled air, but Jason made no move to get up and unlock the door. It would be a mistake.

Because they can’t hurt you until you let them in.

Then his father walked
through
the door and came to a stop in the middle of the room, holding out his hands with something inhuman and awful in his eyes, something that shifted, liquid and loose, behind the irises. “Daddy’s home now, son.”

Jason tried to speak, tried to tell him he was dead and needed to go back, but as his father walked toward him with pale hands outstretched, the words fled. He ran upstairs, slamming his bedroom shut behind him and flipping the puny lock meant only for privacy, not protection.

His father’s steps on the staircase, each one heavier than the last, carried dark promise in each weighty thump, and when his hands scraped the door, Jason pressed his back against it to keep him out.

When he comes in, he’s going to tear me apart with those hands.

The slippery whisper of his name again.

It’s not my father, no matter how much he looks like him. My dad is dead. He’s nothing but worm food and this is just a dream. A dream.

A terrible pulling sensation ripped through his chest as his not-father walked
through him
. A foot and leg emerged first, between his own, then a shoulder and arm. One final pull, and the rest came through, reeking of grave dirt and rot, flesh turned foul and rancid. The not-father took two steps forward, turned around, and his features changed.

The cheekbones melted and reformed, high and sharp. The chin widened, exposing a gaping maw with hot, fetid breath. The nose stretched, elongating into a razor-sharp protuberance that dripped saliva and blackened red gore. The unrecognizable thing let out a high-pitched shriek and the dark suit ripped in two and fell to the floor as the rest of its bones shifted. A terrible creature rose from the ruins of the suit, something so terrible, Jason’s mind shrieked in protest. A dadmonster, all claws and fur and furious anger.

It opened its mouth, and his father’s voice screamed, “It is what it is! It is what it is!”

The dadmonster rose with the frenzied flapping of wings, pushing foul air into Jason’s face, circling over his head, higher, then back down again, moving close, then pulling back, spinning and screaming. Jason fell to the floor, covering his head with his hands as the not-father, the dadmonster, the thing, spiraled and descended again and again and again until finally, his mind rolled over and sent him elsewhere.

16

John S. Iblis reread the paper he held in his hands and smiled. He wondered how Jason was sleeping as of late. Not well, he presumed. Perhaps Jason even had strange pain in his arm. He wondered if Jason suspected anything at all. In his mind, good old Sailor (a clever nickname, he would admit) was nothing more than a tattoo artist.

John S. Iblis traced his fingers over Jason’s signature, then rubbed his palms together in anticipation. The weak-minded were such easy prey.

The game itself was just for fun.

17

Jason was late for work on Monday. Again.

Chapter Six

Red Sky at Night

1

On Thursday morning, Jason opened his back door and froze in place. The tail draped across the doormat in a comma of bloodstained brown and white fur did not belong to a cat.

That little piece of shit.

The morning air held a chill, enough to prevent the stench from rising up in the air, though not enough to dissuade the flies. They circled what remained of Jasper, or some other unfortunate collie, landing, then flying off, only to buzz around and take up residence elsewhere amid the fur, as if testing to find the sweetest spot. Or the most vulnerable.

His arms broke out in gooseflesh. Rubbing them briskly, he stomped into the kitchen and grabbed a trash bag. He guessed cats weren’t good enough for the kid now. What in the hell had he done to attract the kid’s attention? Why was his doormat the unlucky recipient of his psychosis? When he got home from work, he planned to walk across the street and have a little chat with Alex Marshall’s father. He thought it was time someone let him know what a sick little shit he had for a son.