Dad pulled back a bit. Shook his head. “No, it’s not.”
“It will be.”
With that, my father calmed. He sat, which I took as my cue. “Leah,” he said, “this is Daveed.”
It took me a minute to figure he meant David, only pronounced differently. I needed coffee. David insisted on a cup of coca tea for everyone instead. And a quick breakfast.
He looked at me. No, he looked through me. Into me. It made me squirm in my seat. He seemed satisfied with whatever he saw.
Dad had brought us to this place in search of his friend the shaman. This guy with the magic eyes had to be him.
“Does she know?” the shaman asked my father.
Dad hesitated. I could tell he wanted to tell me the thing he’d been hiding, but didn’t really have a handle on how.
I didn’t care about how. I cared about now. It’d been him and me against the world for so long. Before I knew it, it would just be me against the world. I didn’t want to think about that. I had no choice. Neither did he.
Choice being the operative word. What would happen to me after he died? He had no friends at home left to leave me with. No one had stuck around. Okay, fine. Or not fine. Whatever.
“We’re almost broke,” Dad said.
I touched his arm. “I figured. You spent what was left of our money to get here. The tickets cost a fortune.”
“Not as much as you think,” he said.
I started to say there was no discount site that could make much of a difference. Stopped myself. “You bought one way tickets.”
He didn’t say yes. He didn’t deny it.
“Even mine?”
He held my gaze, steady. “I wanted to leave you with a little money for after I’m gone. It’s better I’m here than at home. My memories are here.”
“But not mine.”
“Leah.” Just my name. Nothing else.
I thought about how I’d seen all the memories in the house before he brought up the crazy idea of coming here. Had I known I’d never see the house again? Had I been storing up all those scenes in my mind and my heart so I could replay them later? Hell, no. I’d been acting like any girl whose dad could kick it any minute. I could imagine anything I wanted. Anytime. Anywhere.
He
was my memory.
“You were going to leave me here?” I asked.
“With David.”
My voice rose with each word. “With guns and danger?”
Dad lifted a hand. Pressed it down. “Lower your voice.”
Not fair. I laid my head in my hands. Only for a second. I looked at Juan. “Last night you said there’s a cure for my dad.”
“For people like your dad. It’s too late for him.”
“What kind of shitty cure is it if it’s too late?”
“The kind that researchers are investigating. They’re testing plants in the jungle. Making progress. If the miners with machines come in, the plants could be lost. We could all be lost.”
Saving them—us—that was worth braving guns and danger. It wouldn’t be enough. Not for my father. Could it be enough for Amber’s mom? For the rest of the world? Maybe.
Dad read my thoughts on my face. Not with shaman eyes, with dad eyes. “If you want, David has offered to teach you what he knows about the plants. About how to make medicine.”
As bribes went, that counted for the worst and the best rolled into one. I could help. I could make a difference. I could give people hope that didn’t stink of lies.
I’d left most of my luggage, including some of my best clothes, in a hotel room in Cusco. I’d never see Amber again. At least not for a very long time. Unless, of course, they had WiFi in the jungle. I’d never gotten to hang out with Vince.
I was only sixteen.
I’d never been only sixteen.
I looked at David. “Where were we supposed to go hiking today?”
“To my village,” he said. “It’s a long way.”
“My dad’s coming with us.” Not a question. A demand.
David nodded. “We’ll go slow. As long as it takes. I’ll carry him if I have to.”
I shook. All over. I didn’t think I’d ever stop.
We set off from Aguas Caliente as the sun rose. The dawn lit the faces of the people we passed on the road. Buses honked at us as their tires kicked up plumes of dust. They headed up the mountain to the lost city.
We took a different road.
Introduction to “
The Red-Stained Wishing Tree”
Eric Stocklassa lives in Germany in a “cramped apartment filled with tomes of forbidden knowledge whose bizarre secrets would drive any sensible person to madness.” I’m pleased to note that “The Red-Stained Wishing Tree” marks Eric’s first professional sale.
About this strong story, he says, “Writing it felt like sitting in [this guy]’s passenger seat.” Reading it feels that way too.
The Red-Stained Wishing Tree
Eric Stocklassa
Sam usually loved driving, but the storm was mean. The black sky was bleeding from several open wounds, gushing on the ash-gray hills, the pathetic excuse for a road and Sam’s windshield in opaque crimson. Lightning ripped up from the charged earth, to the suffering sky. Bright flashes of light, ear-splitting thunder and an echoing moan, as the shivering sky suffered another wound.
A hollow bumping noise told Sam that the passenger in his trunk had finally woken up. It was time to find a dry spot.
This was the Inbetween. People assumed that the notches on a ruler were evenly spaced, but they weren’t. There were wrinkles in reality. Hidden pockets where skeletons danced and swarms of intelligent rats gnawed the flesh of unwary wanderers. Between two yellow-green cornfields in Iowa, blood rained from the sky.
The cave was alight from glowing veins of ore. Walking around his silver Mercedes the copper smell of blood grabbed his nostrils and held on tight. Had Sam been human, he would have had to fight a gag reflex by now. Good thing Sam was not. Not really anyway.
***
The taste of cigarettes had almost faded from his mouth, so he lighted up again. It didn’t give him a buzz. Never had. It was one of his bastions of normalcy. A way he could fit into a society that had the ability and need to eat, sleep and drink once in a while.
Sucking in the blue smoke, he opened the trunk.
He expected a hand to shoot out and grab him. Instead he got complaints.
“Your driving is shitty, you know that?”
The boy was fourteen at the most. He already had tattoos on his arms and hands. The fingers on his hand proclaimed F-U-C-K and O-F-F-!.
“And what the fuck is in this bag? That thing has been poking me for over an hour.”
“Bones,” he said.
Naturally the kid opened the ancient brown burlap sack. Even in the dim-light, the skull shone brightly. It was acid-cleaned and well-preserved. Sam had personally waxed every single bone. The kid picked it up and examined it from all sides.
“Was that someone you killed?”
“My father,” said Sam. He finished his cigarette and stumped it out. “And yes.”
He took the skull from the boy’s hands and gently placed it back into the bag.
“To business then?” said the boy.
Sam nodded and gestured to a wall.
“That’s where you are going to shoot me?”
“I don’t need guns.”
Sam took off his right glove revealing the black nothingness underneath. It was absence of light, far below the freezing point in temperature and still vaguely hand-shaped.
He could see the kid’s breathing accelerate. He gave him credit. That was normally the point where they screamed.
“There isn’t any hope, is there?”
Sam shook his head.
There were things in the world people did not get better from. There was AIDS, stage four leukemia, there were bullets to the head, plane crashes and napalm. And death warrants from the Powers That Be. In other words, him.
“Up against the wall and I make it quick.”
The boy shook his head. Slowly.
“I’m fine where I am.”
“Very well.”
Sam pushed his hand on the boy’s chest and it sunk right in. There were gaps in every piece of matter, even diamonds. Between the air molecules that people breathed was nothingness, an invisible abyss. That was what most of Sam’s body was made of and that was the reason why he could slowly wrap his fingers around the boy’s still beating heart, The truth was, the glass was always going to be half-empty, no matter how much water you poured into it.
“It’s OK anyway,” said Sam. “I was lying when I said I was going to make it quick.”
The boy’s body cringed. He was holding his breath now.
“This is a special occasion, you see. It’s the big one-triple-zero.”
The boy was thrashing now, hitting Sam’s arm. He stopped when he realized what Sam held on to. He held on to Sam’s coat instead.
“My one-thousandth kill. You can take comfort in that. No matter how crappy your life was, at least you were special to somebody.”
“One last request?” the boy coughed.
For the first time Sam’s eyes connected with the boy’s. The boy hadn’t cried. Sam could tell. And even now, at the moment of his death, there was no trace of fear in those eyes. He saw nothing but anger, hate and cold-blooded defiance.
Sam’s fingers tightened. He was savoring the moment. Let the kid’s heart die slowly.
“Tell my father I didn’t beg.”
It was time to finish this. Sam knew it. He gave the boy a curt nod. Why not tell his father? This was a special occasion after all! He pictured how he would tell it to the old man’s face. Putting a warrant on his own son, that geezer didn’t deserve the satisfaction. Sam collected his strength for the final, glorious grab.
Then he did something he hadn’t done in almost a century.
He hesitated.
***
Camden, New Jersey looked like the asshole of the universe. Houses that weren’t broken down or burned to the ground, were covered in graffiti with the windows boarded up and crack-addicted scarecrows were roaming the streets. It smelled as bad as it looked. Sewage, smog and rotten meat.
Sam’s Mercedes vibrated, making its way over the garbage-riddled road. Somewhere in the distance, Sam could hear gunfire. There were Morrigan birds sitting in the trees. Black raven-like creatures with fuzzy, shadowy edges and red eyes. Somebody had died here recently. In this very street. A warning to everyone with the mental flexibility to see them.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Letting the boy go. Not like he would survive out there on his own. And for what? One last giant
fuck you
to a man who died a long time ago?
It was the homeless man, standing in the middle of the street that pulled him out of his thoughts. Sam’s back ached. So did every flesh-part his body still had. Normally, after a drive of seventeen hours, he would have been angry at the man. Maybe even killed him. This time however...
There was no guarantee that they weren’t already after him. To some of his colleagues a death called out. It made a physical noise they could hear. Even blood had produced what had been described to him as an eerie melody. Singing to the sensitive...and the hungry.
He hit the horn, startling the man, but he still didn’t move. Probably stoned out of his mind. The noise attracted one of the other denizens of Camden however. A shirtless man with a revolver tucked into his underwear, proudly showing off his swastika tattoos, made his way towards him. Sam let down his window. This man might be of some help.
“So what are you in the market for?”
“Last time I have been here, this was still Italian territory.”
The guy gave him a yellow-teethed laugh.
“When were you last here?” he said.
1967.
“It’s been a while.”
“Yeah we just recently acquired this particular street. And we are forever grateful you give your patronage to the honest, Christian, hard-working Americans that live here. So what’cha want?”
“Jerimia Antonio Falcone. They called him Stubnose, but it’s been a while.”
He laughed again. Only this time there was an edge to it.
“He some kind of mobster?”
“Yes. Well, freelancer, not a made man. But most of our customers were Family.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Are you sure? He would be about seventy right now. Lived just down this street.”
“Listen. I’m a busy man. Buy something or piss off.”
Sam glanced ahead. The homeless man had moved out of the way now. He did the math. This was probably the least supernatural street in what had to be the universe’s worst neighborhood. There were no crevasses, wrinkles, side-side-alleys or even nooks anywhere to be found. He was driving a ’97 Mercedes 190. It looked new though, because it was. There was an Inbetween factory in Germany that never stopped making them. Best car Mercedes ever built and—cut off from all his resources—his only ride.