The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19 Page 21

  Ike had dug a good grave. I went about five feet down before I found the girl, wrapped in cloth sacks and sprinkled liberally with some kind of lye-based drain cleaner, though not enough to dissolve her body completely – that takes a lot of lye, even more than a plumber would have on hand. She was mostly just bones, at this point. I couldn’t unwrap the burlap completely, because the lye could have burned my skin; that was one disadvantage to having a body. How many other girls were buried here? Lonely women with no families, women with drug problems who jumped at the cheap rents in the apartment house on the corner, who opened their doors to that nice plumber Ike Train and found out he wasn’t so nice after all. I wondered if he lured them to his house, or somehow took their bodies out of the apartment building. I couldn’t imagine how he’d gotten away with something like this – in a city, someone is always awake, and witnesses are a problem – but serial killers can be lucky motherfuckers.

  Well, Ike didn’t have good luck anymore. Now he had me instead.

  “Here’s my problem, Ike,” I said, after he woke up, and realized he couldn’t free himself. He tried to yell at me, but he was gagged pretty good, and still woozy from the chemicals I’d knocked him out with, and it was just muffled noise. I leaned back in the chair I’d dragged over by the couch where he was bound. “I could just call the cops, and let them know about the bodies in the backyard. I can be really convincing, especially if the cops are from around here. You’d get arrested and put away for a long time. But that would be bad for the neighbourhood. People here don’t realize there’s a monster like you in their midst. Everybody knows you. You’ve been in most of the houses on this street at once time or another. To find out you’ve been killing women and burying them in your back garden . . .” I shook my head. “Most of these people wouldn’t trust anyone ever again. There’d be news reporters all over. Property values would plummet. People would move away. I’d hate to see that happen.”

  He made furious noises. I removed the gag. He tried to bite off my fingers. I couldn’t blame him. “Make a fuss and I’ll knock you out again,” I said. “You’ve got lots of nice chemicals under your sink I can mix up.”

  His voice was low and intense. “You don’t understand. This used to be a nice place, when I was a kid. Now all that trash lives on this street. Spics, chinks, whores and junkies. Jabbering away in Spanish and Chinese, trying to cadge change off people so they can by drugs, all that bullshit. This whole place is a toilet now. I wish I could flush them all.”

  I raised my eyebrow. “What about black folks? Want to flush us too?”

  “I got nothing against black people,” he said, wounded, as if I’d slandered him. “And there’s decent Chinese people, like your aunt, and some Mexicans I don’t mind, but the kind of garbage that rents rooms down at the castle apartments, they’re just worthless, they—”

  “So killing them has got nothing to do with your sexual gratification, then?”

  “That’s sick,” Ike spat. “You’re disgusting. I do what I do to keep this neighbourhood nice, to keep it safe. A piece of shit like you couldn’t possibly understand that.”

  “You’re no prize yourself, Ike. You know it’s all over now, right? You’re finished.”

  “You can’t mess with me,” he said, his eyes shining, as they had when I’d spoken to his deep down parts before. “This is my place.”

  “It’s my place now. And you don’t have a home here anymore.” I put the rag of chemicals over his face again until he passed out.

  I held a hammer in my hand with every intention of caving in Ike Train’s skull, then disposing of his body out in the desert somewhere, but I couldn’t do it. He was a person. I’d expected a monster, and yes, Ike was a monster too, but I couldn’t see past his humanity. In my more natural state, without a body, I would have found executing Ike Train as simple as flicking an ant off a tablecloth. But for now I was wearing a human form, and Ike was one of my tribe, albeit a crazy, dangerous one. I couldn’t smash his head in, not if I wanted to keep functioning in this body. Such an act would tear me apart. I put the hammer down.

  Still, Ike had to die, and disappear, if I wanted to save this neighbourhood from imploding. They could never know this monster had been in their midst – such a revelation would poison the wellspring of camaraderie and human kindness I’d found here. I had to do something fast, though. He was a big man, and he would wake up soon, and I couldn’t bear talking to him again.

  Sometimes, back in the old days, I’d watched people drown, disappearing beneath churning waves. Losing those people hurt me – diminished me – but it felt more natural, somehow, with the elements taking their lives, instead of a human hand.

  I’m not stupid. I know killing is killing, even if some natural phenomenon is the murder weapon. If you cast someone into a churning sea, and they die, you’ve murdered them, even if it’s the water that ends their lives. But maybe you can sleep a little easier, since the blood isn’t on your hands. Maybe.

  Ike Train was a man who prepared for things. There were several gas cans in the garage, by his emergency generator. They sloshed full when I picked them up.

  Fortunately, Ike didn’t wake, even when I piled pillows around the perimeter of the living room and doused them with fuel. The smoke would kill him before the fire touched him. A mercy, and more than he’d offered his victims. But I’m not about vengeance. I’m about finding bad homes and making them good again.

  When I felt tears on my face, I tried to believe they were just stinging from the gas fumes.

  House fires aren’t exactly good for neighbourhood morale, but they tend to make a community pull together. Everybody came out and watched Ike Train’s house burn. The fire trucks got there pretty quickly, but not quickly enough. The roof collapsed while they were still hooking their hoses up, but Ike was surely gone by then.

  Nobody paid any attention to me, not even Sadie, though she stood only a few yards away. Everyone was watching the flames. I needed to get cleaned up, and shower off the mud from Ike’s back yard. Maybe I’d visit Sadie later, and see about making myself into boyfriend material. This could be a nice place now.

  “Vocabulary word,” said Oswald, walking over from his house down the block and joining the spectators. “ ‘Conflagration’: a large fire. Also a conflict or war.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Oswald,” someone said wearily. “We think Ike Train died in there.”

  “Another,” Oswald said softly. “ ‘Cothurnus’. A tragedy. Also the costume worn by an actor in a tragic play.”

  Then he looked at me, for a little too long, like he had something to say, but some people just have eyes like that, intense and too direct. I slipped away from the neighbourhood crowd, though being among them was all I wanted. I knew the ugly burned-out lot in the middle of their street would be better than the ugliness that Ike Train had caused. I’d used fire to cauterize something much worse. But I still felt guilty. A shower would help, a little. You have to start getting clean somewhere.

  I was on my way to visit Sadie the next Saturday, for our weekend of sex or tourism, when Oswald hailed me from his front yard, where he was brutalizing a patch of unkempt grass with a weed whacker. “Mr Reva!” he said, turning off his buzzing yard tool.

  “It’s just Reva,” I called back.

  “I wonder if I might have a word with you,” he said.

  “What, vocabulary words?” I called back, trying to sound cheerful, because even a miserable little guy like this probably had some good in him somewhere. But I really just wanted to see Sadie.

  “Very droll,” he replied. “Please? Just a moment? I have something inside that might interest you.”

  Was this a come on? Was Oswald so cranky because he was closeted and gay? I’d seen that sort of thing before. I wasn’t interested in him, but maybe, if he was from around here, I could talk with his deep down self, and help him relax, and be a better neighbour. “Sure,” I said, and went up the steps, following him to his front door. He opene
d the door and gestured for me to enter. I did, and it was dark inside – very dark – so I paused just inside the door. “Maybe we should turn the lights on—” I began, and then he shoved me, hard, and I stumbled forward into empty air, falling hard on what felt like a mound of rubble and broken glass. “Fuck!” I shouted, and turned over, my eyes starting to adjust. There was no house inside his house – it was scooped out and hollow, just a few beams to support the roof and walls, otherwise an open pit of dirt and rocks.

  I realized, then, that I’d seriously misinterpreted the situation on this street.

  Oswald leapt down from the little scrap of flat floor just inside the door, landing in a crouch on the dirt before me. He moved more like a spider than a man, which made sense; he wasn’t a spider, but he wasn’t a man, either. I started to rise up, and he threw a rock at my head, hard enough that I don’t remember the impact at all, just the coming of the darkness.

  “Vocabulary word,” Oswald said later, tying up my wrists with lengths of wire. I was naked, and the rocks in his house were cutting into my skin. “ ‘Chthonic’. Dwelling under the earth. Gods of the underworld. Me.”

  “Oswald,” I said, alarmed at the slur in my voice. How hard had that rock hit my head? Way too hard, judging by the pounding in my skull. “We can work something out.”

  “Another: ‘Autarch’. Absolute ruler. Tyrant. Me, here, in this place.” He wired my legs together.

  “You don’t have to do this.” I tried to twist, to kick, but he was agile, and I wasn’t, and he didn’t even stop talking while he dodged my flailing.

  “Another: ‘Autochthonous’. Originating where it is found. Native. From around here. Me, me, me.” He kicked me in the chest on the last word, and darker black dots swam into my vision against the darkness inside his housepit, and I gasped for breath.

  “This is my place,” Oswald said, “and Ike Train was my man. He made the proper sacrifices to me, kept me fed, kept me happy. And you spoiled that, stranger, outside agitator, you ruined it, and now I have to cultivate another man. But you’ll die. Not a sacrifice to me. Just somebody who got in the way.” He gnashed his teeth, and they clacked together like gemstones. “You didn’t have to burn Ike. He wouldn’t have killed that little bitch Sadie you like so much. She has too many friends. We only kill the ones no one will miss. Well, usually. Someone might miss you, but I don’t care.”

  Oswald was the reason Ike Train’s deep down self had been so strange. I couldn’t make a deal with Ike, because he’d already made a bargain with a creature like me. Well, sort of like me. Oswald and I had the same means, but different methods and motivations. That explained why nobody had ever discovered Ike Train’s murders – Oswald had used his powers to protect him, and he probably did other things, too, like keeping the neighbourhood safe from danger, but the price he demanded was just too high.

  As far as Oswald knew, I was just a guy, somebody who came to town and discovered his lackey’s secret. He didn’t know what he was dealing with. Fortunately.

  Oswald stood up, letting his human shape drop, revealing the shambling earthen thing underneath, the creature of the dark and deep who’d lived here, on this spot, for centuries. Oswald was a local spirit, tied to this place, but he was an ugly one, who chose to live off pain instead of prosperity. He reached out to me with arms of darkness, endless limbs that stank of minerals and stale air. “Vocabulary word,” he hissed, in a voice that could never be mistaken for human. ‘Decapitate’. To cut off a head. Another: ‘Decedent’. One who has died. You.”

  Then he killed me.

  While I was dying, I remembered the problem with having a body.

  The problem is pain.

  I wasn’t able to return for a few days. My new body was Korean, older, shorter, dressed in a plaid shirt and khaki pants. I’d needed to pick up some supplies, and they were tricky to get, since I didn’t have money, and had to rely on the kindness of locals. I traded a lucky gambling streak for the truck, and the miraculous regeneration of some missing fingers for the stun gun.

  I knocked on Oswald’s door, late that evening. He opened the door, scowled at me, and I hit him with the stun gun. He was fully in his body then, so he went down shuddering, and I bundled him up and got him in the back of the truck, one of those little moving vans you can rent, though this one belonged to me for as long as I wanted it. I drove fast, hitting the highway and racing, because if Oswald woke up too close to his neighbourhood, he would shed that body like a baggy suit and come crashing right through the roof, and then we’d have the kind of epic fight that leads to waste and desolation and legends. Lucky for me Oswald didn’t wake until we were miles and miles away from the place he called home, and he couldn’t do anything but kick the wall behind the driver’s seat with his very human feet.

  I went north and east for miles and miles until I reached a good remote spot, down some dirt roads, out by a few old mines. It seemed appropriate, for Oswald’s end to come in a place with underground tunnels. I couldn’t abide him to live, but I could respect his origins. I parked, cut the lights, and went around back to slide open the door. Oswald was on his side, still tied up. “Vocabulary word,” he said, voice thick and a little slurry. “ ‘Fucked’. What you are, once I get loose.”

  “You don’t remember me, Oswald?” I said, climbing into the truck. “It’s me, Reva. Last time you saw me, I had a different body, and you tore it to pieces and buried it in your lair. That wasn’t very pleasant. I doubt this is going to be very pleasant for you.”

  He looked up at me from the floor. “Oh,” he said, after a moment, then frowned. “You’re like me. But you shouldn’t have been able to take me, not in my place, so far from yours.”

  “It’s true,” I said, kneeling beside him. “I’m a long way from the place I began. I’ve got a vocabulary word for you. ‘Reva’. It means habitation, or firmament, or water, or sky, or abyss, or god. Sometimes it’s ‘rewa’ or ‘neva’ or other things, depending on where you are. It’s a word from the islands, where I’m from. I used to be the spirit of an island, just a little patch of land in the sea, a long time ago. But you know what happened?”

  I leaned in close to him. “The island sank. All the people who lived on it left, and I was alone for years. I could have just dissolved into the sea, but I made myself a body, and found myself a boat, and went with the currents.”

  “You abandoned your place,” Oswald said, and tried to bite my face. “You’re worthless.”

  “I didn’t abandon it, it just disappeared, so I had options, Oswald. My people were travellers, and I became a traveller too. Anywhere I go is home, because I treat every place I go as home.” I shook my head. “You’re a monster. You poison the place you should protect.”

  “I do protect it. I keep it safe for the ones who belong there. I keep the trash out.”

  “You and me have different philosophies,” I said, reaching over to open the toolbox I’d brought. There were lots of tools there, which I planned to use for purposes they weren’t meant for. “My philosophy wins. Because you’re so far away from home that you’re just a man in a body now, and you don’t have a choice.”

  He fought me, but he didn’t know much about fighting without his usual powers, since he’d never left his street. I didn’t try to cause him suffering, but I didn’t go out of my way to prevent it, either.

  By the time I was finished, he was altogether dead. Even if his spirit did manage to pull itself together again over the next decades, seeping out of the pieces of his corpse to reassemble, there was nothing around here but played-out mines, no people for him to make suffer, no sacrifices for him to draw strength from. I’d just made his neighbourhood a better place for the people who lived there. They wouldn’t have Oswald’s protection anymore, it was true, but the price he demanded for that protection was too high. I didn’t regret a thing.

  I buried Oswald in about ten different places, left the truck where it was, and started walking the long way back to the neighbourhood
I now called home.

  I didn’t have any illusions about Sadie recognizing the real me in this new body, but I thought maybe I could be charming, and make her care about a middle-aged Korean guy. Stupid idea, but love – or even infatuation – lends itself to those. The thing was, once I knocked on her door, and she answered it, she didn’t look the same. Or, well, she did, but the way she looked didn’t do anything for me. My new body wasn’t interested in her, not at all – this brain, this flesh, was attracted to a different kind of person, apparently. I always forgot how much “feelings” depend on the particular glands and muscles and nerve endings you happen to have at the moment. Having a body makes it hard to remember the limitations of being human.

  “Can I help you?” she said.

  “Ah,” I said. “Reva asked me to give you a message. He said he had to leave town unexpectedly, and he’s really sorry.”

  “Huh,” she said. “Well, if you talk to him, tell him he doesn’t have to be sorry. He doesn’t owe me anything.” I could tell from her face that she was hurt, and angry, and trying to hide it, and I wished she was from around here so I could talk to her deep down parts, and make amends, give her something, apologise. But she wasn’t, and I couldn’t.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell him.”

  She shut the door in my face.

  I walked downstairs, and stood on the sidewalk, and looked up the street. I felt as hollow as Oswald’s house, as burned-out as the lot where Ike Train had lived. Why had I wanted to stay here? I wasn’t needed anymore. I’d made things better. This wasn’t my home, not really, no more than any other place.

  Maybe I’d go south, down to the Inland Empire, to see those pretty black walnut trees. I could make myself at home there, for a while, at least.

  GARY MCMAHON