Ink (35 page)

“You will never have my skin. Never,” Jason said.

“You are boring me with all of this. You have already discovered you cannot kill the griffin. What will you do? Kill yourself? Go ahead. Your skin will still be mine. Face it, boy, you have lost this game.”

“I will find a way.”

“Good luck with that. Are you really that naïve? That stupid? I think perhaps I should show you who you are dealing with.”

His skin rippled. No, something rippled
underneath
. His real skin, not the sailor suit. Through the skin, scabrous flesh and an inhuman face shifted into view—a nightmare of scales and fissures. He shook his arms, and the human coat slipped off his shoulders.

No. Oh, no.

Jason couldn’t help it. He screamed.

The face. Oh God, his face.

Sailor held out his hideous hand. “Give me some skin, boy.” He roared with laughter.

No more.

Jason ran for the door. Sharp rocks dug into the soles of his bare feet. He slipped and staggered but didn’t look back. The door wavered.

Just an illusion.

Sailor’s laughter echoed, louder and louder.

The door swung open.

“You will be back. I promise you. Everyone comes back.”

Jason ran through the door. Hot air turned cool and rocks turned to wood. The hallway. The door slammed shut behind him, but Sailor’s laughter followed him down the stairs and out through the main door. When he got in his car and locked the doors, he covered his face with his hands and tried to forget Sailor’s face. His real face.

His right arm burned. He took his hands away from his face and pushed up his sleeve. The bandages hung like strips of flesh, the open wounds gone, replaced with flat, pink scars. Fresh scars, the skin slick and shiny. The cuts on his hand were healed as well, with only thin, pale scars in their places.

He didn’t do it for my benefit, though.

“I won’t beg. No matter what. I will find a way.” The knot in his chest tightened.

Please let me find a way.

5

Jason’s bedroom filled with the gloom of an approaching storm, all shadows and gray. Appropriate weather, yet he wished for sun. Sunlight would make it a little more bearable. Jason flexed first his right arm, then his left. Of course Frank had returned while he slept, slinking back into his skin like a thief in the night.

“I’m going to find a way to kill you, you son of a bitch,” he said.

I am not going to end up in that pit, screaming along with the rest of them. I’m not.

Jason checked his phone as he walked downstairs. His mother had called again, back to angry this time.

“Dad, I’m really not doing so well. If you wanted to give me a hand or something, I would appreciate it.”

“Sorry, no more hands. You’re on your own kid.”

“Yeah, sure. I’m strong on the inside. Sure I am. Dad, I have to tell you, I’m not feeling so—”

He stopped just inside the kitchen. “Oh my God.” The phone dropped from his hand and slid across the floor in a crack of metal and plastic. In the center of the kitchen table, atop the last index card the kid

Alex, his name was Alex

left on his window, sat an eye. A human eye, complete with the optic nerve intact. Even in the clouded light, the sclera appeared very white. It stared at him with silent accusation.

You knew and didn’t do anything. Now look at me. All that’s left is this. I’m dead and it’s your fault, all your fault.

Jason held out his hands, fingers splayed. “Stop shaking,” he said. “Stop, stop, stop.” He couldn’t panic. Not now. The eye could belong to anyone, anyone at all. He grabbed a trash bag, wincing at the loud slap of plastic as he shook it open. “Had a girl,” he sang, his voice wavering. His heart beat a mad rhythm as he walked over to the table, dragging the bag behind him. “And she sure was fine. She was fine, fine, fine.”

He reached out, then pulled his hand back. “I can’t. She wasn’t fine, she wasn’t fine at all.” He took a deep breath. A smell, high and rottensweet, filled his mouth and he gagged. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, you son of a bitch.”

The bag at his side made a series of small, slithery sounds in his trembling hand. “Had a girl, had a girl, had a girl,” he whispered as he walked back to the table and pushed the card to the edge of the table. The eye wobbled but stayed on the card.

Just a marble, that’s all it is. Not an eye at all. Right, Dad?

“Okay, I can do this. I am fine, fine, fine.” The foul stink in his mouth stuck to his tongue. After he shook the bag open wider, he slid the card over the edge, and it dropped into the bag with a wet plop. “I don’t see you anymore. You don’t see me.”

6

The clerk at the home improvement store had a tic. Every few seconds, the corner of his mouth would lift up, revealing yellow-stained teeth, and the movement lifted his cheek in a one-sided grimace. He glanced at Jason, then lowered his eyes and rang up Jason’s purchases.

A small thump, a nudge in his left arm gave Jason pause. A small
I am still here
message from the griffin, not painful, but a very clear reminder that something lived and moved inside him. Something not him at all, but a dark and terrible child using his arm for its womb, waiting to make its way through his skin in an obscene pantomime of birth.

The gardening spikes jingled when the clerk dropped them into a bag, but he was careful with the propane torch. The axe gave him pause. He looked up, his mouth lifted, and he shrugged. “You know how much it is? No price tag.”

Jason swallowed hard, shaking his head. “No, I didn’t look, sorry.”

It doesn’t matter. If one of these things doesn’t work, I won’t be around to worry about the bill anyway.

Another thump in his arm, but only a slight push. He rubbed his arm, and under his palm, the skin stretched up. The edge of a wing, or a leg, or the top of its head? Unless Jason took off his shirt, no one would notice. His fingers shook as he pressed his hand down. The small lump of skin pushed back. He pushed harder, and the griffin slipped back down even more.

The clerk’s face twitched again as he called for a price check. While they waited, he picked at a scab on his arm.

Thump. A little harder. Insistent, but not painful.

Stop it.

“That’s a big axe. You chopping down a tree or something?” the clerk asked. His face twitched.

Jason flexed his fingers as several quick thumps in his arm sent pins and needles all the way down. “Something like that.”

Please call him back with the damn price. Frank isn’t supposed to come out during the day, but I don’t think he cares anymore.

“It’s sharp, you better be careful. My uncle cut off part of his foot with one of them things.”

Twitch.

“I will be.”

“Something wrong with your arm, mister?”

Jason pressed down on his arm again. The griffin pushed back, the warmth from its body seeping through the thin veil of flesh joining them together. Keeping it in. “Just a muscle cramp, that’s all.”

“I hate those. I get cramps in my back. The pills my doc gave me make me tired, so I can only take them at night.”

The griffin pushed hard, and Jason took a deep breath. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said between clenched teeth. He dug the heel of his hand in. His skin rippled as the griffin rolled out from under the touch. What if Frank decided to come out and have a snack?

“Looks like it’s a pretty bad one.”

Sailor’s words echoed in his mind.
Your skin is mine.

Jason shuddered. Pain raced down his arm as the griffin scraped talons on the inside of his skin in a gruesome caress. “It’ll be fine,” he said, forcing out the words.

The phone rang, the clerk listened, muttered, ”Thank you,” then hung up.

Twitch.

A steady rhythm of thumps this time, like a drummer pounding out the grand finale. His skin rippled again, faster, and beads of sweat ran down the back of his neck. He pulled his hand away, fighting not to shriek. After he paid, he lifted the axe over his shoulder, picked up the other bags, and headed for the exit. The griffin gave a huge push.

Patience, Frank. It’s not time yet.

As he raced across the parking lot to his car, rain began to fall in a soft mist, but the sky, a dull gray filled with churning charcoal clouds, promised more.

7

Jason drank three cups of coffee, ignoring the griffin’s random pushes. His skin rippled and rolled in a series of waves, visible even through his T-shirt. The griffin moved inside like a mythical sea monster floating beneath the surface of a dark lake. It didn’t need to remain still or secretive any longer. It wanted him to feel it sliding beneath and stretching up against his skin, ready to emerge from the depths of sinew and bone. When it fluttered its wings, his arm quivered, a slithery, damp sensation that stripped the moisture from his mouth and left a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

The rain fell harder, crashing down on the roof with wild intensity. The sky darkened from dull gray to blue-black. Jason turned on every light on the first floor. Although it didn’t banish all the shadows, it helped. Frank kept pushing away in his arm. He emptied the contents of the bags out onto his kitchen table and stared at everything for a long time.

He would not beg Sailor to take the griffin away. He would get rid of it himself, and his skin would be his own again. If nothing else, he had the axe. Even if he died in the process, it was worth the risk. He was not going to be a human coat hanging on the devil’s coat hook.

The griffin thudded in his arm, pressing into the muscle. Jason could see it in his mind: green eyes flashing, chest raised, talons outstretched. It waited and hungered and soon enough, it would break free.

Jason opened a bottle of whiskey and took a quick drink. It burned like liquid fire, but if it worked for Civil War soldiers, it couldn’t hurt. Of course, he couldn’t drink enough to make himself truly numb, but it was better than nothing. He pulled out a bottle of rubbing alcohol and stopped with the bottle in mid-air. How many others had tried this? He knew he couldn’t be the first. He had no idea how many people had Sailor’s tattoos on their skin.

He remembered all the screaming, skinless faces he saw in the chasm. Hundreds? Thousands? Were there more? Thunder crashed, loud enough to send the bottle skittering out of his hand. He grabbed it just before it struck the floor.

Sailor didn’t like the marks on his arm, but Jason was going to give him a few more. If Sailor didn’t like it, he could show up and stop him.

“What the hell,” Jason said, and drank another shot of whiskey.

When he wiped his arm down with alcohol, the griffin gave another sharp push. Jason picked up one of the gardening spikes. It had a knobby flat top and ended with a sharp point, like a giant ice pick. He gripped it in his fist, and his cell phone rang.

“Shit.” He dropped the spike. It bounced off the floor with a metallic ring.

He took the phone out of his pocket with shaking hands. Mitch. She would leave a message. If he heard her voice, he might falter. It would be too easy to pretend this was all a bad dream or a horror movie. And if he did that… He pressed the ignore button and flipped the phone over. The battery came out easily, and he tossed both phone and battery on the table, a table that looked like it belonged in
 
Dr. Frankenstein’s lab. All he needed was some needle and thread and a few spare body parts.

“Coming up. Sorry, Frank.”

Another crash of thunder, louder, and the rain danced chaos on the roof. The knot in his chest tightened. Jason took a deep breath, picked up the gardening spike, and shoved it in his arm, right in the middle of the tattoo. A strange heat spread out from the spike. Warm, tingling. Not pain. A runnel of blood, as thick as

a spike

his finger ran down his arm, a fat, lazy river of red.

No turning back, now. I’m changing the rules of the game.

The pain hit and Jason collapsed to his knees.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

Fire in his arm. A burning pillar of fire. He clenched his teeth to keep the screams inside.

But oh God, it hurts.

The blood ran faster, spilling down his arm in a waterfall. The spike stuck out of his skin like a tombstone. His fingers twitched. A flash of lightning brightened the kitchen, turning his blood from deep to vivid scarlet. Muted hissing vibrated up from under the skin. Frank wasn’t happy. No sir, Frank was not happy at all. The spike moved in his arm, moved up and out, wobbling as it rose, and the pain burst into a bloom of roses. A bouquet of thorn-tipped roses. The spike wiggled back and forth, back and forth, and the hissing grew louder. His fingers shook and shimmied. The spike leaned at a sharp angle, then clattered to the floor, followed by a spray of blood. A fountain of blood.