Ink (24 page)

He tossed the book aside and turned on the television, mindlessly switching from one channel to another as he waited. He’d already sent his boss an email informing him he wouldn’t be in on Monday. At the moment, he didn’t care about the repercussions. What he wanted, what he feared, was the griffin tattoo.

Mitch felt it.

Jason dropped the remote on the cushion and ran his hands through his hair. Tattoos didn’t move, even if they had a name like Frank. And they didn’t come out and hiss. They were just ink. Not real. The coffeemaker gave up its last drop of water (and didn’t that last hiss sound vaguely familiar? Oh yes, he thought it did), and he went into the kitchen for another cup.

Maybe not, but I know what I saw. It looked at me. It was real. And I smelled it.

He shuddered and carried his mug back into the living room. What choice did he have? He had to see it. He had to know. And what would he do if it was real, if it stuck out its head, or worse? What could be worse? His hand shook as he lifted the coffee mug again. Too much caffeine or the fear that had wormed its way into his gut? He picked up the remote and flipped through the channels again.

An hour later, his heart beat heavy in his chest. His thoughts flickered from one thing to the next, and his fingers played piano on the edge of the coffee table, but it was a mad concert with an insane conductor. He got up and turned on every light in the house, even the small lamp on his nightstand. When he finished, tiny beads of sweat dotted his forehead. He contemplated a shower, but the thought of the griffin’s head emerging from a veil of soap bubbles made him toss the idea out the window. Jason flopped back down on the sofa and picked up the book, but the words didn’t even resemble English anymore.

Come on, Frank, I’m waiting.

His skin tingled but the tattoo was only ink on skin. Nothing more.

Just caffeine jitters. How much coffee have you had? Two pots? Three? Good one. You’ll be up for days.

And what would he do if he did see the griffin? Grab it? Push it back in? He went back into the kitchen, humming under his breath. Shelley had taken the good knives, and he hadn’t replaced them yet, but he thought he had a set of metal skewers. He dug around in the drawer.

And what are you going to do?

“I don’t know,” he said.

Poke it in the eye maybe?

“Shut up.”

Shake its hand and say nice to meet you?

“Shut. Up,” he said between clenched teeth.

Come on, seriously. Your tattoo is alive, and you’re looking for a skewer? Going to have a little barbecue. A little griffin kabob? With a side of what? Madness?

“Shut the hell up,” he shouted.

He slammed the drawer shut and opened another. It stuck halfway. He pulled. Nothing. He pulled it again. “You son of a bitch.” He wrenched the drawer open. It flew out and fell to the floor, in a crash of serving spoons and spatulas. Metallic rain. No skewers though. He barked a short, hoarse laugh and went back to the other drawer. It slid out with one quick pull. He turned it over, dumped the contents on the floor, and tossed the empty drawer to the side.

“I know they’re here somewhere.”

Two more drawers, including the little drawer that held nothing but junk. He wiped sweat from his brow and yanked the larger one out first. He flipped it over and when the last spoon clattered to the floor, he threw the drawer across the room, wincing when it landed with a loud, wooden crack.

Crazy, this is cra—

“Shut up.”

The junk drawer, the last drawer, came out with a sharp squeal. “I should fix that,” he said. After one good shake, takeout menus rained down on the floor, along with rolls of tape, pens and several small screwdrivers. He laughed and picked up a handful of menus.

Pizza, Chinese, Indian, but where in the hell are the skewers?

He ripped the menus into pieces and knelt down on the floor, in the middle of the mess. Plastic and metal bounced and bumped together with a dull rattle. He pawed through the pile, sending utensils and pens scattering across the floor. A rubber-handled ladle spun in crazy circles, bounced off one of the legs of the kitchen table, and came to rest near the trashcan. Finally, he gave a sharp cry of triumph. There, in the mess of silver and paper shreds, standing out like an exclamation point—a skewer.

I knew I had them.

He curled his fingers around it, brandishing it like a sword, and grinned. “Come on out now, Frank.” As he walked out of the kitchen with skewer in hand, he cast a look over his shoulder to the chaos strewn across the floor.

What were you thinking?

“I’m fine. The drawer was stuck. That’s all.”

12

At two o’clock, his hands still shook, and his blood pressure protested every sip of coffee, but the griffin was still just ink. He muted the television and played twenty-five games of Solitaire on his laptop. An hour after that, he threw in a load of laundry, carrying the skewer with him. At four-thirty, he felt like a fool.

A bird chirped outside his window and he jumped, sloshing lukewarm coffee over the back of his hand. Another bird answered, and he laughed, the sound high-pitched and alien. He rubbed his arm. Nothing happened. Then he picked up the skewer, running his finger over the sharp point.

What if I—

A crazy thought. Crazier than the kitchen mess, if he wanted to be perfectly honest. If he wanted to be perfectly
frank
. He brought the skewer closer to his arm and tapped the side on his skin.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

He knew where it was—under his skin, hiding. If he stuck the skewer in just a little, maybe it would come out. But for what? To play hide and seek?

Jason’s heart thumped and thudded, and he gripped the skewer tight in his hand. Could he do it? He pressed the point in atop one of the griffin’s eyes, not quite hard enough to break the skin. When he pulled the skewer away, a tiny, red indentation remained. He shifted the skewer over to the other eye, pushed it in a second time, then waited.

Nothing.

He moved the skewer over to the tip of the tail, pressed again, and hissed under his breath as he broke the skin. A thin trail of red trickled out, nothing more than blood—his own blood. Five more strikes with the skewer in rapid succession, along the edge of one wing, five more tiny holes, grunting under his breath at each sharp sting of pain.

“Come on out, Frank,” he said, tapping his arm with the side of the skewer again, smearing blood across the amber and gold.

And again. And again. And again. Hard enough to leave red welts on his flesh that distorted the tattoo’s edges.

“Come. On. Out.”

He gripped the skewer tight in his fist and raised it high.

“I’ll make you come out.”

Jason caught a ghost of his reflection in the television screen and froze. What the hell was he doing? He dropped the skewer on the coffee table and put his head in his hands. Maybe he was going nuts.

The blood dried in dark streaks as he sat on the sofa, staring out at nothing. At five-thirty, with the edges of the sky lightening with the sunrise and birdsong chattering in the air, he went upstairs and took the skewer with him.

Just in case.

13

Jason drove down to Fells Point on Thursday after work, stumbled into McAfee’s, and ordered a beer before he sat down.

Brian frowned. “You look worse than you did at the office. Are you okay, man?”

“Yeah, I just have a headache,” Jason lied. His head didn’t hurt, but the ache in his arm had popped back in to say hello. A steady throb under the skin, almost in perfect time with the music playing in the background. Jason downed half his beer in one gulp and ignored the look Brian gave him. Inside, a disjointed sensation turned his limbs heavy, as if his body no longer belonged to him, as if everything right had turned wrong. And that everything started with the tattoo. With Frank.

Jason took another swallow. No, everything started with Sailor. At the bar. A chill raced down his spine; he shook it away and ordered another beer. Brian spoke to him, but his voice floated in the air, vague and formless. Jason nodded in the right places and smiled when needed, but his own thoughts claimed center stage.

The bar near his house. The night Shelley left.

The chill again. He turned to look out at the bar. Waitresses walked with trays in their hands, girls in tight tank tops sat in groups of four or five and guys crowded around tables with beer bottles—empty and full—glittering in the overhead lights. Nothing strange or abnormal, but a prickling on the back of his neck said someone watched him. A thick, growling laugh pierced the air, radiating out in an overhanging, mirthless cloud.

Sailor.

Jason whipped his head around. No gray halo of hair, no rolling walk, no Sailor, but the laugh, that unmistakable sound, belonged to no one else. The chill turned to a finger of ice, teasing, tickling. A waitress put another beer in front of him, and his hand shook when he picked it up.

It’s just a bad case of the creeps. That’s all.

Jason set the bottle on the table, hard enough to send beer splashing out onto the table.

“What’s wrong?” Brian asked.

Nothing. Everything. I didn’t read the fine print, you know. That was my mistake. My dad said so.

“My head is killing me. I’m heading out.”

“Are you okay to drive? You really don’t look good.”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” Jason threw money down on the table and headed for the door. The laugh drifted up again, softer, and the finger of ice stabbed and twisted. As he passed a table of guys in tan uniforms, one nodded and looked up with pale green eyes. Moist eyes.
Sailor’s
eyes. Except it wasn’t Sailor at all but the orderly from the hospital. Even seated, he looked big enough to break Jason in two without breaking a sweat. The hanging light over the table reflected in his bald head and his skin, darker than Jason remembered, gleamed like polished ebony, in stark contrast to the pale

Sailor’s

eyes.

No, it’s just the lighting.

When one of the other orderlies said something and the not-Sailor laughed again, the taste of beer burned in Jason’s throat, and a slice of pain dug into his stomach. The bite of stale cigarettes clung to their uniforms. The orderly lifted a beer bottle and tipped the mouth in Jason’s direction. He tilted his head back and drank, and Jason’s vision blurred into an image of the homeless man on Shakespeare Street with his bottle of rum, then it was just the orderly again. The pink nightgown on the pinup girl tattoo was bright, even against his dark skin. Her lips were the same vibrant shade of pink, parted suggestively. He’d seen it before and not in the hospital.

He couldn’t take his eyes from the tattoo. She was a work of art—perfect. She wore a smile that promised sin, but her hidden hand promised hurt and pain. Her breasts were full, straining against the nightgown, her waist tiny, and her hips wide. Long legs peeked out from the nightgown, one drawn up high. Dancer’s legs. Perfume, soft and sweet, like rain and roses, drifted up. A woman like that would make you forget about everything. She would wrap those legs around yours and her hand—

“Find everything you’re looking for, mister?”

Jason shook his head, the thoughts of dancer’s legs and full lips drifting away.

The voice.

The orderly grinned and gave a short whistle. Part of a song? Jason’s stomach clenched again. Another orderly turned around in his chair. Eyes dulled with too much beer peered out from a broad, not unkind, face.

“You need something, man?” he asked.

Jason’s tongue pressed against the back of his teeth, a fat worm looking for the way out.

No way out of this one, buddy.

“Hello? Need something?” The same broad–faced orderly.

Jason pulled his voice up and out. “No, sorry.” He stepped away from the table with heavy feet. He needed to get out.

Behind him, the orderly broke into a snippet of song. “Had a girl and she sure was fine.”

The colors of the room swirled brighter; the words of the song wavered and stretched out like the discordant tune from a carousel. The other men burst out laughing, and Jason fled from the bar with the gravelly voice and the whistle echoing in his ears.

14

Jason drove home, his thoughts chaos, the city blurring past his windows as sweat seeped from every pore. The orderly had Sailor’s voice and his eyes. It didn’t make sense, but it was the truth. And the laughter. All the same. Sailor without his sailor suit.

Jason shuddered. And the song. Had he heard it before? He thought he had.

What did he say?

“Find everything you’re looking for?” Jason said. His hands clenched on the steering wheel. The homeless man had said the exact same thing. When he stood in front of the tattoo shop, where the door should’ve been. He’d said those same words.