Orpheus and the Pearl & Nevermore (11 page)

“
You
mean like a zombie?” Jean crossed his arms. “Now, I’ve never heard
of
that.
”

Saul shushed him and leaned against the
counter, chin in hand. “Go on,” he told Malcolm.

When all had been told,
Jean said, “I can’t believe any of this.” He pulled a chair away
from the little table across from the counter. Slumped there, he
looked at Malcolm. “Listen… I was trying to help, like I said.
Because I
did
fuck up. But not last night. I gave Leo a
reading—”

“
Now might not be the
time,” Saul said.

Jean shook his head. “I told Leo someone new
was coming into his life. I didn’t say the guy was going to take
your place, Malcolm. I didn’t tell Leo it was over between the two
of you. Just that there was going to be someone new. It was a lie
when I said it!”

“
Jean.” Saul pointed to
the doorway. “Go make yourself a drink.”

Malcolm glared at Jean as he slunk out of
the room. Saul sighed. “One has nothing to do with the other. Now,
it isn’t uncommon for the spirit and body to become separated by
some psychic trauma, and it sounds as if you and your body may
still be tethered to one another, which isn’t uncommon either. As
far as what your body has done—I have to admit, I’ve never heard of
anything like what you’ve described. However, I’m sure we can
complete the separation.” Turning, he started taking jars from the
cabinet again. He held out the Yellow Sign and said, “Truth.”
Setting down the purple jar, he said, “Spirit.” Besides that, he
placed a jar of crimson-tinged ichor. “Nature.”

He rifled through a drawer at his waist. “We
need to find your body. We have you, so it won’t be too difficult.
I only hope we get to it before further harm is done.”

Jean was in the doorway, drink in hand.
“Malcolm.”

“
Not now,” Saul said
brusquely.

Jean stared at him, at the
jars on the counter. His eyelids fluttered. “Is that—is that Red
Death?” He pointed at the crimson jar. “What are you doing
with
that?
”

Glass fell somewhere in the rear of the
house.

Saul spun around, knocking
the purple jar from the counter. His hand shot out to catch
it.
“Quiet!”
he
hissed, and Jean’s half-opened mouth snapped shut.

Jean turned in the doorway, then turned
back, his eyes like saucers. The three of them listened. Malcolm
tried to seek out the smaller sounds in the house, searching for
footfalls on carpet, but all he could hear was the rain and the
breathing of the other two.

The lights went out.

Jean screamed. His shadow
bolted across the kitchen, toward the front. Saul caught him, and
Malcolm heard the muffled sounds of their wrestling, heard Saul
whispering,
“The fuse box is that way! We
can’t go that way!”

They all knew it was the cadaver.

Saul pulled Jean back toward the next room,
and the floor creaked—the sound was answered by another from the
front hall. The cadaver had entered from the back and slipped down
the hallway. It hadn’t barreled mindlessly into the kitchen, it had
taken out the lights. It was stalking them.

Malcolm scanned the
darkness.
The thing couldn’t have followed
me to Jean’s, waited, and then followed us here, could it?
Malcolm’s being was chilled by the realization
that the body wasn’t merely a rogue vessel, but was possessed of
its own intellect. It had been stripped of his mind, had shed his
flesh, and was becoming something else—joining some other order
between life and death.

Then he saw it,—standing there in the
doorway leading from the front hall, the glowing brand on its
forehead.

Jean and Saul didn’t
react. Couldn’t they see it? Malcolm stared through the shadows
into their vacant eyes. They couldn’t see a goddamn thing!
It’s there! IT’S RIGHT THERE!

With a sound like thunder, the cadaver
charged into the room.

It ran full-force into
Saul. He crashed into Jean, and they went down in a pile, the
cadaver spilling over the two men. Screams erupted. All Malcolm
could see now was a flurry of thrashing black limbs, and he was
panicking—light bloomed at the edges of his spectral vision, and
the sounds of the struggle assaulted his sense of orientation. He
had begun to think of himself as a person again, standing and
talking there in the kitchen. He was suddenly and keenly aware of
his formlessness as the screams of Jean and Saul grew
distant.
Still yourself. Focus!

Malcolm hovered over the
cadaver’s back. He imagined his hands, raised over the thing in
balled fists, and saw ectoplasm forming in the air. The noise in
the room sharpened: shoes squeaking across linoleum, snapping
teeth.
“GET HIM OFF!”
Jean wailed. Saul had to be getting the worst of it. And he
wasn’t making any sound at all.

Malcolm brought his fists down between the
cadaver’s shoulder blades. He vaguely felt the contact—numbness on
numbness—but the cadaver shot bolt upright and turned its fiery
third eye to face him.

It was looking right through him. That
didn’t matter, because Saul and Jean were wriggling out from under
the thing and clawing their way into the next room.

Malcolm reached for the
cadaver’s face, its raw bleeding flesh puckered and wrinkled like
that of an old man. He brushed his fingertips across the bridge of
its nose. The thing grunted.
I’m here.
Look for me.

It grunted again, and one dark claw swept
through the space where Saul had been. The cadaver whirled and was
on its feet. From the darkness beyond, Saul cried, “Jean! Come
here, Jean!”

The cadaver lurched forward, and as soon as
Malcolm heard Jean’s strangled gasp, he could see a silhouette
there and knew the thing had him.

Saul’s shadow leapt into the fray. Jean was
pushed back, and the cadaver caught hold of the older man, then
threw him back into the other room, grabbing Jean once more.

Footsteps thumping on
carpet.
Saul, coming around through the
hall...? The footsteps entered the kitchen opposite Jean and the
cadaver. Malcolm saw Saul at the counter. He was going after the
jars.
Of course!
But then he was gone, and Malcolm heard the front door
striking the wall as it flew open, and the porch door clattered
noisily seconds later. Saul had fled.

Light swam around Malcolm as he looked back
at Jean. He heard meat tearing, Jean gurgling. The cadaver let out
a low moan as it buried its face in Jean’s body.

When his senses returned, he wasn’t sure at
first. Though he could again see the details of the kitchen, it was
startlingly bright.

Then he saw what was left of Jean.

It had been a feast. As with the
policewoman, his flesh had been peeled away in strips. Red lines
welled in vertical patterns on the thin layer of meat still
clinging to Jean’s bones. The cadaver had gorged itself. In the
blood covering the floor, Malcolm saw the impression where the
thing had sat cross-legged, like a child, beside Jean’s corpse. He
saw the footprints marking its exit.

It’s morning. Jean is dead. Saul is gone.
I’m alone.

He never would have expected Saul to flee,
he had seen things most people didn’t believe in. Malcolm recalled
the cadaver hurling Saul away to get at Jean. Lucky.

Or…

He was still “tethered” in some way to the
cadaver, and he had been angry at Jean. He’d blamed him for what
happened last night, and even though it wasn’t true, he now knew
that Jean’s psychic bullshit had helped Leo justify his affair. It
was as if the cadaver had known, and had felt the same rage.

If he and the cadaver were
connected that intimately, what then of the attack on the police
officers? Malcolm hadn’t had anything to do with that. They’d
simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The thing was
driven to feed, that was all, whether or not he gave it direction.
But now he was sure he had focused it on Jean.
I’m so sorry. You
were
trying to help.

He thought about Ray. That could only have
been grim circumstance. Yes, he’d been upset at Ray for being
preoccupied with Bonnie, but—

Bonnie.

She was going to Malcolm’s this morning.
Maybe right now.

The clock on the microwave
read 9:30. He still had time. He didn’t know what he was going to
do.
She is going to see it.
She would see the blood in the hall, and she was
a police detective. When neither Malcolm nor Ray responded to her
pounding she would kick the door in.
I
have to be there.
He had to explain it to
her, somehow, before her colleagues ran the bloody fingerprints
or—worse yet—found the cadaver.

Then he thought of
something else:
What if it’s gone after
Leo?

Jesus. Jesus.
He willed himself to stay focused.
If that’s true… go to Bonnie. Get Bonnie. Get the
police.
A few bullets may not have been
able to stop the thing, but it was still flesh and blood. It had to
have a breaking point.

As he exited the kitchen, he noticed the
jars on the counter. Only the Red Death was missing.

The sky was still bloated and gray, and a
light drizzle fell as he moved down the street. The gutters were
overflowing. It had been one hell of a downpour.

He saw police on Westmore.
They surrounded the mouth of the alley where the patrol officers
had been killed. He went to the other side of the street. If they
were there, it was only a matter of time before they found the
scene around the corner, assuming 911 hadn’t already been called
hours ago.
God, maybe Bonnie’s already
here, on the job.
He hastened his
progress, crossing the street again as he passed the crime scene.
He wondered what they were making of it, two cops lying
half-devoured in broad daylight.

To think he was seeking out a detective now,
after a night of the walking dead and would-be psychics. He had
accepted this new reality so easily. He supposed there was no
alternative, except maybe to go mad—if the dead were capable of
such things—and he suspected he was. Maybe he was mad already,
having gone to Jean and Saul first, but he’d had his reasons. It
had made sense in the new world.

There were no police around his building. It
was Saturday morning—maybe none of his neighbors had left their
apartments yet, hadn’t seen the mess. That gave him a little time
to prepare for Bonnie, and figure out just how he was going to get
through to her. With a feeling of hope, he went up the steps and
through the entrance.

His door was open, but he’d left it that
way. Malcolm passed over dried copper stains and stopped in the
doorway.

She was there. She was standing over Ray,
hands on her face, her mouth stretched open in s silent scream.
Tears streaked the collar of her jacket. She’d been there a
while.

The memory of finding his brother,
undiminished, unfiltered, came back all at once. Malcolm trembled
in space. He searched the room. There was nothing to write in, or
with, except… and he refused, absolutely refused. Then he thought
again of Leo. He had to get Bonnie over there now.

Malcolm moved to the couch. He cast himself
downward, beside Ray. He didn’t look at him. He concentrated on the
blood that covered everything. He concentrated on the thought of a
finger dipping into a dark pool.

She must not have noticed at first, the
first vertical line being traced on Ray’s forearm. Then the line
took a sharp turn. Bonnie’s breath caught in her throat. She
stumbled back, shaking the tears from her eyes. Another character
was printed beside the first. Then another.

L E O

“
R-Ray?”

Malcolm looked up in surprise. Bonnie wrung
her hands and stepped closer, and repeated, “Ray?”

Just as well she thought that. Maybe it
would bring her some small measure of comfort. Jean had been right
about one thing—Bonnie loved Ray.

“
Leo. What do you mean,
Leo? Ray?”

There wasn’t time now to explain further.
Malcolm printed the name again, this time on Ray’s cheek. His
digits made gentle impressions in the pale skin. For the first
time, he noticed that Ray’s hair was going gray on the sides. Even
if he could have wept, it would have done nothing. He wanted to
tear himself in half.

“
Leo? Where is he?” Bonnie
pulled her gun from her jacket. Malcolm saw the transformation
occur, saw her emotions retreating as she raised the weapon and
edged toward the kitchenette. “Is anyone here? Come out!” She
glanced over the counter and, seeing nothing, moved toward the
bedroom door.

She nudged it open with the back of her
hand. “Malcolm?” He heard her sigh—she must have been relieved to
find the room empty. She turned back. “Ray? Where’s Malcolm? Is he
with Leo?” She went back to the body. “I’m going to Leo’s. Is that
right? Can you tell me? Are you still here?”

Malcolm silently urged her from the hall
outside. Finally she came. She moved with purpose, and he had to
cast himself out quickly to keep up with her. Leaving the building,
she pulled out her phone. He heard her calling in the address and
some other numbers, numbers that meant Ray had been ripped apart,
as she got into her car by the curb.

Shit!
He couldn’t ride with her. Malcolm had to get to Leo’s on
foot, or whatever he had. He looked through the windshield at
Bonnie, saw her pulling the runny mascara from her face with her
fingers, dropping the gun in the passenger seat. Then she started
the car and tore out of the gutter, sending a sheet of rainwater
through Malcolm.