Ghosts in a Desert World
Matthew Tait
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 by Matthew Tait
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Table of Contents
Futures Kingdom: The King's Dome
The Chronicles of Trent Randell
When the first drop fell, Michael Richards was sitting by himself in front of his word processor and dictating a letter to one of his fans. His office was dark, just the way he liked it when he wrote, and at first he dismissed the splashing sound as just another mysterious apartment noise. Being a professional fiction writer, Michael was used to long bouts of silence, so peculiar little ados throughout his domain was something to which he'd long been accustomed.
It was only a few minutes later, as he was nearing the end of his thank you letter, that the sound came again and he quickly whipped his head around hoping to find the source. At first there was nothing; the only things he could see were the same damn bookshelves that he looked at three million times a week. Then something caught his attention on one of the lower cases that housed his own collection.
He got out of his chair and began walking toward the shelves as though the strange mark might leap off at any moment and attack him. It didn't look like a pest, but Michael didn't want to take the chance. Everyone knew rats weren't the only problem facing New York residents these days.
I bet it's just water, he thought. This whole building's going to shit anyway. Why the hell didn't I just take Lori's advice and buy a house?
He shook his head sadly. Coming to the conclusion that your ex-girlfriend was always right could be a little frightening.
But gradually, however, as the little mark came into view, it became apparent that what he was staring at definitely wasn't dirty pipe water. It was thick. It was dark. It had the substance of…
"Blood," he murmured, then bent to the shelves to get a closer look.
Even in the meagre light through the slatted blinds , there was still no mistaking that the liquid was red. He placed a tentative finger toward its shiny surface, touched it, and then brought it to his nose.
"What?"
As a writer in the horror fantasy genre, Michael had made quite a comfortable living dealing with blood. Now, as he breathed in its scent, and frowned.
"Blood," he repeated again, incredulous.
Although it pained him mightily to do so, his next course of action was to bring it to his lips and taste it.
"Can't be."
He looked up at the ceiling. As he did so, another drop fell and landed on the tip of his nose. He stepped back, and shook his head. The drops speckled his woollen jumper.
Jesus Christ, he thought. Lori would love it. She hated this jumper with a passion.
Reaching the dining room, Michael turned to look back at the bookshelves. On a patch of area about thirty centimetres from the bottom of the case, a tiny pool of crimson was spreading. Naturally, his eyes travelled back to the ceiling again, and he almost expected to see a red cloud. With a fertile imagination, it wasn't hard to picture something that could cause a storm of blood.
"Son of a bitch," was all he could say when he saw the dark blob on the ceiling. Like mould seeping from an attic, it appeared the blood was oozing from whatever was between him and the floor above.
Well at least it isn't raining blood, he thought, and then laughed at the stupidity of such a ridiculous joke. Over the years, Michael had seen more than a few friends disappear because, as they put it: 'Your sense of humour sucks.' It wasn't something he could control. Blood leakage from his apartment, however?
He started to make his way toward the phone, and then stopped halfway there. Just who the hell was he going to call? And what on earth was he going to say? He could call the police, of course, but as of this moment he had no idea where the blood might be coming from. Obviously, there was the apartment above his, but he didn't have a clue who lived there. The superintendent? Forget it. The man was a surly faced asshole who had never chosen to hide his dislike of Michael's career.
And that's the one reason I probably can't call anyone, is it? My work?
He felt his heart go weak at the thought. It always pained him when reality came crashing through from the outside world, reminding him constantly what he did for a living. To worry all the time about what other people thought was stupid, childish, and even somewhat demeaning to one's own personality and sense of self-worth. But there it was, all the same. At thirty-seven years of age, his career had spanned only just six of those, providing sufficient income whereby he could afford to write full time. Nevertheless, he doubted there would ever come a time when others regarded it seriously. They never tired of remarking that it wasn't really real work.
"What do you do up here all day, buddy?" the superintendent, Jeffrey, had asked one day while taking a look at a broken window. 'You hide away like a goddamn hermit. Are you obsessed with pulling yourself, or something?'
Even after seeing his name emblazoned in bold letters on the dusk jackets of his books, most people chose to pretend they didn't notice, or care. He didn't know if it was jealousy, contempt, or both. Of course, his remaining family and his editor were more sympathetic to his plight. Lori, on the other hand, hadn't been quite so understanding.
Just imagine what a field day the police will have when they show up?
In his mind's eye, Michael saw a couple of uniformed officers strolling around the apartment. He saw them peering at things, poking them with their black batons. Once they had discovered—after a few preliminary questions - what he actually did for a bit of dough, they would smile and shake their heads as if he should know better.
You say you write fiction Mr. Richards? As in make believe? Sure you didn't just plant that blood up there yourself? The way I see it, a guy like you gets paid to lie. And considering you write horror and all...
For a moment he could actually see this happening - saw it with the stark clarity of a vision. One of the cops would be fat; the other one would be skinny. The fat one would probably have a toothpick jammed in his mouth like something out of a hackneyed movie. The skinny one would no doubt have both hands resting on a puny behind, with a face that told a person they could kiss it if they didn't like it. Of course, he knew he was being overly paranoid (the bane of every writer, no doubt) but it was enough to quash the idea entirely. Something had to be done though. The question was what?
You can clean that shit up for a start, an inner voice told him, and this time Michael wholeheartedly agreed. He'd just have to watch out for more of those damn drops.
He gathered together the necessary cleaning items, then set about the chore. Halfway through, the total impact of how careless he was being hit him like a wave.
"Oh, shit," he croaked. "Disease! AIDS! How the fuck did I ever finish high school?"
Tearing off the jumper, he threw it across the study as if it were on fire. He suddenly felt covered with maggots. His life had been turned upside-down in a space of minutes. Before that, he had been thinking about having a beer, watching the clock as though thoughts alone could make it speed toward midday. Now the pool of blood on the floor looked like a gaping hole into another universe, one where writers were tortured for stupidity and insanity prevailed above all else.
And then it came to him what he should've done in the first place, if he hadn't been thinking like an alcoholic. What was the first thing a person did when they had a cut? Why, they stemmed the flow, that's what. Even bloody pre-schoolers knew it.
Michael ran down the hall toward his bedroom to fetch another jumper, then thought better of it and decided it wasn't worth the effort. He picked up his keys from the dresser instead, stashed them in his jeans, then high-tailed it back out through the front door. Before slamming it, he caught a reflection of himself in the wall-mirror than ran the length of his study.
I look like a naked derelict, he thought. But that suited him fine. After all, didn't most writers bare the truth of themselves for everyone to see?
***
The rapping on the apartment door caught the attention of the other tenants. Michael heard the groan of doors opening along the passageway, could sense them peeking from their tiny warrens like rabbits. So be it. If somebody was currently home at Number 17, he wasn't going to let their nosiness stop him from finding out what was going on.
"Little pigs, little pigs, let me in," he whispered, as he peered through the tiny dark spherical peephole. So far he hadn't even detected a sound, let alone the prying eyes of somebody on the inside.
He checked his wrist watch. Damn. He'd been knocking for three minutes.
"What to do? What to do?"
It was possible that somebody on the other side was hurt—maybe even dying. Why couldn't he simply break the goddamn door down? He would be a kind of New York hero.
He hunkered down and peered under the door. Tiny bits of fractured light coming from somewhere, but that was all. There was a faint smell, too faint to properly discern its source. Perhaps if he yelled…?
No, he couldn't do that. No real reason why, except that
(the weather)
it had something to do with staying out of other people's business. Hell, he was a private man, wasn't he? You didn't just go
(crashing)
bursting into other people's apartments. It wasn't right, even living in a metropolis as morally corrupt as New York City.
Such thoughts were totally ludicrous, really. And none of it was his concern, anyway. Surely if he went back to his apartment he'd discover imagination had had as much a part to play in this as anything else. Reading too much dark fiction, probably. Writing the stuff likely only made feverish thoughts worse. The best thing he could do would be to go back to his little nest of an office and grab a nice frosty one. It wasn't too early, and besides, everybody knew that all writers drank like fish. It was, for some, an integral part of the process.
Michael decided he would take the stairs
this time. Elevators made him nervous.
***
He opened his front door and was struck by the now familiar sensation of it being somebody else's apartment. Strangely, he felt like a little boy exploring the neighbour's domain while they were out playing bingo.
Cool metaphor, Mike. How the hell did you ever make it onto the bestseller list? Your success is a mystery even to yourself.
True, he mused, slamming the door shut behind him. Somebody who regularly talks to themselves ought to be on another kind of list entirely.
Giggling a little, he headed straight for the fridge and grabbed a beer
He popped the cap off into the kitchen sink, brought the beer straight to his mouth, and downed the drink as though he were dying from dehydration. Now that his belly and head were filled with a soft, nullifying heat, it was time to get back to the business of the blood. But first he'd take one for the road. No, strike that: two. As he trotted down the short hallway toward his study, however, he came to the conclusion that it wasn't such a good idea after all. Not the drinking, but the confrontation with something that might not even be real in the first place. Besides, he was a writer, and writers had all the time in the world to deal with shit like that. Instead, he grabbed a few more beers and headed out onto the balcony. The ruined vista of New York's altered skyline never failed to make his afternoon more interesting. Perhaps later on he would tinker with his new book The Hope of Kinfold. It was coming along well. After a few more beers, it would come along even better.
Laughing to himself, Michael drew in the early afternoon air. All of a sudden he felt so good he could hardly recall what had unnerved him before. Didn't matter. He supposed it would come back to him eventually.
On the streets below, New York City was teeming with the same mindless automatons that infested it like a disease every other day of the week. Poor bastards, he thought. They couldn't know the simple pleasures of being a writer.
***
At first he didn't recognize it as a dream. After all, he hadn't had this particular one in over twenty years. Not since his teenage years—not since he'd learned how to slowly erase the awful memory of it all.
Little Michael Richards sits in the passenger seat of his mother's Chrysler. At only seven years of age, he can't quite pronounce that particular word yet. This is mostly because he always associates the word 'Christ' with it. As it's Sunday and they are coming home from church, it's no wonder he gets them mixed up again. He asks his mother if the 'Christler' will need some petrol on the way home. Agatha Richards knows what her son really means when he asks her this, and that is: Can I have a slushy at the station mom? It's a little game they have played with each other for as long as he can remember, and they both get a kick out of it. Of course, they always need petrol, and Agatha is always happy to oblige.
Michael smiles, happy with how the day is going so far. Sure, Church had been utterly boring; even as boring as dinner at Gramma's. But hey, he is seven. Seven! Nothing matters except going home and playing with his trucks. It seems that if there are worries in the world, adults are the ones that have to put up with them.
"What're you smiling about, hon?" his mother asks, looking down at him. Like all mothers she is constantly surprised by how fast he's growing. That, and how very good looking he's turning out to be. His black hair and blue eyes are quite a sight. Smiling to herself, she thinks about how girls will be falling over backwards to get his attention
"Nothing, really. I just like the rain is all."
Agatha laughs. The downpour is kind of pretty, but the reason she laughed is because his father would have said exactly the same thing.
They drive in silence for a while; the kind of companionable silence where words just spoil it all. Agatha likes the rain, too—but she's a little concerned. The Chryslers tires have been balding for some time now, and she hasn't done anything about it. Even with Ted's new promotion, they are still on shaky financial ground.
She sucks in a breath as the car in front of them suddenly brakes too quickly. Michael looks up at her, alarmed. He knows his Mommy is a good driver, but it is hard to see the other cars in all this rain. Luckily, the Chrysler has good brakes, and it comes to rest a respectable distance from the hatchback in front of them.
"Seatbelt on tight?" Agatha asks, already knowing that it is. "Can Mommy just check for a minute, dear?"
She leans over Michael and in his dream he bucks like a petulant child. But it is not anger, it is fear. He knows this is the last time they will touch; knows that the smell of her perfume will linger with him always.
"Tight as a fish's bum, Mikey," she says, and claps a hand over her mouth. She isn't usually so crude with Michael, but when she chooses to be, Michael loves it. "Don't you go repeating that in school, okay chum?" But Michael is laughing so hard, he can't find the breath to respond.
His mother releases the brake, and the Chrysler lurches forward, turning right at an intersection. The green light here is always fast to turn because it goes against the flow of traffic. Agatha accelerates a little, catches up to the hatchback, and guides the vehicle through the rain. She hears Michael gasp behind her, and turns to see him staring out the window with wide eyes.
"Mommy, there's a car com—"
The sudden impact as the cars collide is tremendous, sending the Chrysler hurtling toward the pavement. The vehicle pivots along the median strip with the sound of tortured metal. Red shapes dance through the windshield, and Michael tries to hide his face as they turn into sparks. He feels his neck pushed deep into his collarbone, so hard he thinks his teeth might splinter. There is a moment of stomach churning weightlessness as the Chrysler goes airborne, then a thundering crash as it lands on its roof. Although the passenger side is relatively undamaged, the driver side has been pulverized like a soda can. After spinning around for some time on the tarmac, the vehicle finally comes to a halt.
Minutes later, Michael can still feel warm breath being pushed from his lungs. At first he thinks he's died, because there is no pain, none at all. The world is a mix of darkness and horrible sounds: leaking and splattering, tics and groans. Surprisingly, he can see the faintest outline of the road outside, and he instinctively reaches for it, sliding his bottom along a ruined floor/roof coated in some kind of thick liquid.
It is hard going at first, since there is also something lying in his lap that weighs him down. He tries to brush it away at first, but finds it much too heavy. Some deep part of him has switched off, for he hasn't thought of his mother at all. It is only as he wipes the filth from his eyes, and stares at her decapitated head resting on his lap, that it all comes back, what has happened, and the reality of the nightmare he is abruptly living. They were on their way to get petrol, to get a slushy, to get—
A silent scream issues forth from him—silent because he is choking on shock. Suddenly a bright light pierces the interior of the car and Michael sees a glowing orb that may be a flashlight, illuminating everything it touches. The inside of the car lights up as if the sun has found it, and the full horror of the situation is revealed to Michael.
The splattering sounds had not been petrol, or oil, or even the rain on the gravel outside. It was blood. So much blood that the crippled interior was like a dream—a carnival funhouse mirror stained red. It dripped from the ceiling; it pooled in the crannies. It flowed like lava, soaking Michael's eyes until they were blurry with it.
Straining to see into the world beyond his metal coffin in which the ruins of his mother still lay, all that registered were booted feet scurrying in urgency, and the rain. It too had changed colour.
"Car…Crash…Weather," Michael whispered, and closed his eyes.
***
He came awake with a jolt, hitting his skull against the wooden headboard. For a moment, tiny black dots of black swam before his eyes, and he massaged his temples in an effort to ease the pain. Of course, it wasn't really the whack he'd taken that had caused the pain. This was something else entirely - something that he had dealt with nearly every morning and afternoon for the past twenty years.
I've got to stop drinking, he thought for the billionth time in his short life. It's just not worth it, feeling like this. This isn't a hangover. This is depression incarnate.
Michael's entire body felt ravaged with poison, which, in reality, he supposed it was. His whole mid-section shook.
I know what'll fix that. He glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand and felt surprised to see it was just after eleven at night. Couple of shots of vodka ought to do it. At least then, I'll be feeling part-way human again.
"Yeah, and then I'll have another blackout. No thanks."
Clambering into a sitting position, Michael felt his thoughts return to the dream. It had been a long time between drinks with that cracker of a nightmare, and he guessed he now knew what had brought it on. It was easy to shut out the past when it was so long ago, even easier when you had a fridge full of beer to help you do it. But every now and then a flashback would occur - frightening in its realism - and suddenly he was only a seven year old again, holding the decapitated head of his mother while it rained blood.
What really took the cake, however, was how he'd almost forgotten the little nickname he'd given to that particular day. He supposed it came from the writer in him—something that had always been there even as a child.
Car crash weather.
Pretty stupid, really, that he'd captioned the memory like that. But he'd never been able to let go of it. Even when tooling along the highways outside New York in his Plymouth (just the sight of a Chrysler was enough to make him nauseous) and there was just the slightest prospect of rain, he would turn around and drive straight back home. Always in the back of his mind was the recurring thought that he had to get out before there was any car crash weather.
And now it's arrived again, he thought. Who could've guessed it would follow me to my apartment?
Suddenly he remembered fragments of the previous afternoon, and the inevitable moan of embarrassment escaped him—that now familiar self-pitying protestation when he couldn't remember a goddamn thing about anything. After trying to forget the blood on his ceiling, what the hell had he done with the rest of the afternoon? Knit afghans? Write several plays? No, he'd indulged in so much freaking alcohol it was a wonder he was still breathing. It was bad enough he always drank during the day; it was even worse that he couldn't seem to work on a novel sober.
That's bullshit and you know it. When are you going to get over that stupid excuse that you're a writer and ask for help?
Probably never, that's when. Anyway, he certainly could do without the self-chastisement right now. He had an idea there were bigger problems awaiting him in the study.
***
Michael had known it would be bad. What he hadn't counted on was it being a whole lot worse than bad. He walked stiffly down the hallway, shoulders hunched as if preparing for battle. As it turned out, he didn't need to go into the study to verify what he already knew was waiting for him in there.
Blood was soaked into the carpet like expensive red wine. Blood lapped at the edges of the hallway as though he stood on the banks of a crimson pond. Blood decorated the floorboards in the kind of patches and splatters that would have made Jackson Pollock proud. It trailed the length of the study, all the way to the dining area, and then petered off into pools around his small fireplace. But worst of all, however, was the smell. If it hadn't been for that particular characteristic, Michael probably would've come to the conclusion by now that it was all a supernatural delusion.
Christ, that's not just the smell of blood. It's the smell of death.
Michael cast his mind back to some research he'd done for his second bestseller The Taste Lands, where he'd stupidly decided to visit one of New York's lesser known morgues in a vain attempt to add some verisimilitude to what was otherwise a poor full-blown splatter novel. Entering that part of the hospital was a lot like standing where he was now, and the smell seemed identical: body juices and decomposing fat, stiff skin and yielding gasses. But most appalling of all—at least to him—was the foul, muddy reek of solidifying blood, congealing like soup someone had left on the counter all night.
Why the hell did I go to a morgue in the first place? he asked himself. It's not like I didn't have enough experience of death as a kid.
He was snapped out of his reverie by a splashing sound over toward the shelves. From his vantage point, he could see that most of the damage came from the original place on the ceiling where he'd first noticed the seepage. Little lines like cracks in a pane of glass had spread out from this point, creating a tapestry of dripping apertures. As he watched, new ones began to appear. This time, Michael didn't care about disease, falling on his ass, or any of the above. He simply had to get out, even if that meant wading through the shit like it was a swamp.
***
Michael stood at the door of Number 17 again, thanking god he'd remembered to being his plastic inhaler. Although he didn't have severe asthma, something deep inside told him he was going to need it in the next few minutes. Having never broken down a door before (outside of his own fiction, of course) it was only natural that the prospect of his first time filled him with dread.
Just call the police, Mikey.
No, he couldn't do that. This wasn't just about discovering what was on the other side of the door...it was about dealing with the weather.
Don't turn this into some kind of revenge therapy for what happened to you when you were seven. That's boring, Mike. It wouldn't even make a good story.
Probably not. But still…
"This isn't a story," he said, then suddenly threw his shoulder against the wooden door. It budged but did not give, rattling on its hinges like a loose tooth. He repeated the manoeuvre once, twice, three times. On the forth blow, it finally gave and crashed open with enough force to lodge the doorknob into the plaster on the wall behind it.
He staggered in with the weary competence of a fighter on his last legs. The first thing that jumped out at him was how similar it was to his own apartment, right down to the wooden floorboards that were such a pain in the ass to maintain. Then he caught sight of the object sprawled across its surface.
At first he didn't know what to do with himself. Inside him, there was a tugging sensation as if he'd become a puppet. Black specks floated in his vision.
"Oh, fuck…"
Lying face down in what looked like green jelly was a dead black man. Cords of gut trailed out from his abdomen in uneven loops, twisting to connect to the rest of his body.
He's in half! Michael thought. He's in half! He's in half! He's—
Closing his eyes, Michael bent down, and clenched his head. It was difficult to breathe. His plastic inhaler was a small bulge, but it seemed to weigh him down to the floor. Little by little, he found the courage to rise again, and finally managed to do so without sliding into a wheezing faint. Shielding his eyes against the scene in front of him was impossible.
That guy's innards are adorning my place like Christmas time in hell. Where the hell am I going to go?
At that moment somebody screamed behind him. A man. Probably one of the goddamn neighbours, no doubt, come to see where the noxious odour was coming from.
Turning his back on the corpse, Michael headed straight for the door. Before exiting the room, he glimpsed the shrieking form of an ancient hag. She was pressed against the side of the passageway, clutching the beads of a rosary and jerking them toward the room as though he were Beelzebub incarnate. He looked at her wearily, trying to remember if he'd seen her before. Obviously, she had no idea who he was, and had probably come to the conclusion that he was a Nazi who butchered Negros.
Putting on a grin that felt utterly ridiculous, he said, "Don't worry, there's been no murder. It's just car crash weather."
Smiling, he walked toward the stairs. The old bat had suddenly stopped shrieking, but whether from fear or relief he couldn't tell.
***
Time lost all meaning. The hours passed with grudging, hopeless uncertainty. Nothing would ever be the same again.
Michael sat propped against the end of his bed, holding the phone and waiting for it to ring. If he'd been describing a character in one of his novels, he would've said that he called to mind a mental patient counting down the minutes until his next hit of opiate. Of course, such a thing might well become a reality, but it all depended on the phone.
After coming back to his apartment (he could not recall any of it - a small blessing), he had immediately called the police. The conversation was sketchy, but he remembered that the officer's name had been Jerry Reinhold. This young policeman had informed Michael that they had already been alerted to the scene and were dealing with it. He then asked Michael his name and address, and Michael had given it to him. After promising to call back within the hour with details on when somebody would interview him, Jerry asked that Michael stay put and alert no one. Michael agreed, then hung up the phone.
From his position, he could see the faint outline of two paperback books lying on the floor. At first he had no idea which books they were because the bindings were soaked in blood. But after several minutes of staring at nothing else, his eyes adjusted and he saw that they were both Richard Laymon editions. What was really fascinating about them, however, was how they'd become a gauge for how fast the blood was rising. When Michael had first noticed them, nearly all the white of the pages had been showing. Now they were blanched red.
Although Laymon's dead, he'd probably be stoked.
Michael could not find the courage to go back into the study. The word-processor was his main concern, with the incomplete copy of The Hope of Kinfold on its hard drive. Dean Clement, his agent, would be more pissed than a shit-house rat, but Michael couldn't care less. The only occupation he planned on pursuing now was trying to stay sane.
He cast his mind back to the issue at hand. He had always assumed the apartment building to be heavily insulated. Although he'd never taken the liberty to do a bit of research (who the hell would)? Michael had known that the walls were double brick and therefore guarded against the majority of noise from the abodes of the other tenants. Sure, he sometimes swore he heard the couple next to him fucking when they were drinking too much, but that was probably only because he wished he could. The super had never gone to great lengths to explain the architecture of the place, but Michael thought all that was about to change.
I'm going to fuck you up, buddy. This is one goddamn hermit writer you wished you'd never leased to.
The ringing of the telephone jarred him from his thoughts. For a long moment he didn't move. Then, on the eighth ring, he answered it.
"Officer Reinhold?"
"Hello, Michael. Sorry I didn't call back sooner but your building's a fucking madhouse in case you didn't know."
Michael said nothing, just stared at the ceiling. He could still hear the sound of police activity up there.
"The apartment's being sealed up, Michael. Nobody comes in or out until we've identified the body. That means you too. A team will be in shortly, but my advice to you is to get the fuck out as quickly as possible. Got it?"
"No," he said. This wasn't going as planned. Were they telling him they weren't going to clean it up?
"Listen carefully, Michael. Buildings like this get sealed up all the time. Its protocol in a homicide until the body's been identified. And…there's one more thing. As you've probably figured out by now that bastard's been up there a long, long time."
"No shit."
"That's why you've got to get out now. Don't stall, don't wait for my boys to come in. He's registered HIV positive, Mike. Get yourself straight to the ambulance outside."
Michael felt himself grow cold all over. He began to shudder.
"What…what did you say to me?"
"He's registered with AIDS, Michael! Hang up the phone now and move!"
Suddenly distracted by movement in the upper left hand corner of the room, Michael looked up and saw a black outline of blood forming there. It seemed to hang in the air for some time, and then, as if in slow motion, it finally grew heavy enough and dropped down to land on the electric fan below.
Michael quickly turned his face away.
But it was far too late.
Most of it went straight from the fan into his mouth.
For Michael Cameron Richards, car crash weather was in season again.
Liam Goodald sat back in his comfortable leather recliner and watched the mental hospital across the road. Day and night he watched it, sometimes alone, sometimes with others. Mostly he was the sole occupant of his small apartment.
Today, the first day of the New Year, Mitchell Wentworth was going to come over for a couple of hours and watch with him. Like always there was a chance he would bring his guns. Liam certainly hoped so. Shooting at the hospital was a lot more fun than looking at it.
At two thirty in the afternoon he got up and made a ham and cheese sandwich. The cheese was a little mouldy and out of date, but Liam didn't care. Such things had recently ceased to matter to him.
Afterwards, he returned to his chair and began surveying again.
So far, the day had been relatively quiet. Nurses came and nurses went; they smoked, conversed, and relieved each other of individual shifts. By four o'clock, Liam had yet to see his first patient, and he was starting to get edgy when the doorbell rang.
"Greetings, earthling," Mitchell said as he shut the door behind him. "Have the sprightly pedantic gnomes of the east wing chosen to show us the discourse of their slovenly lives?"
Mitchell Wentworth was an asshole to the power of ten, no question about it. He fancied himself as a kind of Andy Warhol incarnate, complete with greasy bleached bulbous hair, and a big shit-eating grin that made him look like the world's biggest underdog. He came from a breed of geeky college students so clichéd Liam sometimes thought the bastard not human at all, but a paper thin caricature stepped right from the pages of a book. If it wasn't for his overt obsession with all things psychotic, Liam would've shot him with one of his own guns years ago.
"Not much happening," Liam said.
"That's too bad; you're going to love what I have to show you."
Mitchell threw his black backpack onto the ratty couch next to the open kitchen alcove, then hunkered down next to it. Tonight he was wearing a green X-Files cap that was filthy with something that looked like shit.
"Have you been snooping around in the girl's toilets again?" Liam inquired.
Mitchell followed his gaze and removed his cap. "This? Oh, I got stuck into Mom's hidden chocolate brownies." He gave a snort. "Talk about your whoopee weed…whooee! I couldn't stand up for a couple of hours, no shit. Had to hide myself in the closet until the paranoia was over."
Liam ignored him, unwilling to get into a pointless conversation concerning the finer attributes of Mitchell's mother's hash cookies. After an interminable silence in which Mitchell just picked his nose, Liam said, "So what have we got today, boyo? Something juicy I hope?"
"Ahh." Mitchell rubbed his hands together and then hoisted his backpack onto his lap with an affectionate smile. He unzipped the top portion and pulled out the hefty object inside.
"Not a bad little catch, if I do say so myself," he said, and chuckled.
Squinting in the hazy murk—the apartment always had to remain dim—Liam edged in for a better look and gave a grunt of approval. He held out his hands to better peruse the prize.
"Not so fast there, big boy. First I'll need your word that tonight I get the first yellow duck."
Liam supposed he should have seen this coming. But it was no big deal. Let the moron have the first potshot of the evening. It didn't make much difference. There were more than a few yellow ducks in the shooting gallery that was Cyclone Grove Institute for the Mentally Impaired.
It made him smile a little to think of the little nickname Tom had given to their particular prey. Tom had been the third member of their little cabal before he headed off to college in New Hampshire, and Liam missed him.
Good Christ they even look like ducks! he'd shouted upon downing his first quacker. Those stupid yellow uniforms, with black circles on the back! Just like a fucking bullseye!
How they had laughed.
Eventually, he'd return. But until then, Liam had to put up with such cretins as the dufus that sat before him now.
"It's a Ruger Model 44, Semi-Automatic Action with no short strings. Shoots like a motherfucker, believe me. It's just what we need."
"Can I at least hold it?" Liam asked.
"I get first duck?"
"First duck," Liam agreed.
"Sure."
While Liam inspected the new weapon, Mitchell made his way over to the bay windows that served as a vantage point from which to watch for their quarry.
"Sure is dark tonight," he said.
"It'll be all right."
"Yeah. When hasn't it been?"
Never, Liam thought. It's always been better than all right.
***
Like most of the students that finished at Berkley High school in the summer of 97, Liam Goodald quickly became bored. Until then, his existence consisted of little more than forced activities where the human train of thought never really derailed from its tracks.
Idle hands are the Devil's plaything, his mother always said, and until that stifling summer—a summer where the heatwave reached record levels and claimed many lives—Liam had no idea what she'd really meant. Sure, the basic idea was that if you didn't pull up your socks and get some work done, then, by god, bad times were going to show up at your front doorstep, warrant in hand and paddy wagon waiting for you at the curb.
But that summer…and no school. Already he had no plans to go to university because his mother had a business in DVD retail where he'd worked part-time since he was a child. Someday, if all went to plan, he'd take over that business and lead a comparatively comfortable lifestyle. Not much excitement, but hey, in the world's current climate things could've turned out a hell of a lot worse. There were hobbies, and there were friends - but there existed something in the old brain that the teachers from Berkley never trained you for. When free will became something a lot more than just a word used for religious prattling…well, let's just say the old brain was like a brand new sponge. Something had to give, and when it did, Liam picked an occupation as old as time itself, one generally frowned upon by the public at large.
Murder.
Of course, it wasn't that frowned upon - governments classified it as War, Defence, Liberation—or, God help us all: Jihad. But when you got right down to the nitty-gritty, these terms could only be construed as Sanctioned Murder. You just had to use the military, and even if there was no valid reason to use them, why, then the powers that be just made one up. And most of the populace would be appeased by the media when they said it was just A-OK.
The idea had come from his old mate Joseph Butterworth, an intern who'd worked at the hospital before finding the apartment across the road. Joe had cleaned up the occupants' shit and semen; he'd also regularly made a mockery of the already feeble system by breaking every rule in the book. The hospital had been understaffed, undertrained, under-everything. The equipment used had been archaic. To say the public health system was in crisis was a severe understatement. But all this was just fine with Joe. What happened on the premises stayed on the premises. He had a predilection for some very nasty behaviour, and the Cyclone Cove hospital was one place such behaviour could be indulged.
It wasn't just the patients and minor employees who were unruly and abused the system - the head of the department, Mr. Skinner, was also one slack motherfucker in the extreme. He not only neglected his 'prisoners', as he liked to refer to them, but there was also ample evidence the old dude was helping himself to a generous amount of dough from the books. The Cyclone Cove Institute employed roughly twenty casual staff on a rotating basis—and there was a lot of staff turnover—but it was only Joe he'd taken into his confidence regarding embezzlement of the generous slush-funds heaped on them from donors, readily boasting how easy it had been to fool the State Superintendent on one of his infrequent visits.
And then there was the other side of Joe's misdemeanours, the more interesting side. A lot of these crazy residents had no family to speak of, none whatsoever. They were the children of a lost generation plucked from the street with only a delicate grasp of what the rest of the human sheep thought of as reality, grown men and women who appeared normal but spent their days shitting themselves and weeping into their hands. There were men who argued that their friends were ten different individuals claiming to be one, others who believed they were not even human, but creatures from more sophisticated realms. Everybody knew these souls from seeing them portrayed in countless films and books as unwanted, savage, or just plain misunderstood.
The perfect playground for Joe and Liam's boredom.
***
Someone knocked on the door and both men jumped. Mitchell looked up, paranoid.
"Relax," said Liam. "Joe's back."
"What the hell? When?"
Liam smiled wanly. Mitchell had assumed they'd be the only ones duck hunting tonight.
"He only got back last night. Didn't want to waste any time."
"Shit."
Liam got up, padded to the door, and opened it. The look of disappointment on Joe's round face as he walked in mirrored Mitchell's. Verbal fireworks between the two were a common occurrence in the shooting range of Liam's apartment.
"Aren't you a little jet-lagged?" Mitchell asked him.
"Fuck you, little man."
"Ouch. Touchy."
"Just stay out of my face tonight, ok?"
"Sure, whatever. Have you been by work? What's going on with our ducks?"
They gathered around the window near the fireplace, hunched like tigers on the prowl. A reflective glare from the sodium lights outside gave all three a ruddy orange pallor. Liam noticed a small sliver of drool on Mitchell's lower lip.
The view from this angle compromised of the bottom right side of the building and the alleyway that ran adjacent to it. Like the hazardous environment inside, the edifice's architectural frontage was unappealing. It was painted white, of course - the crappy universal colour for hospitals the world over, but it hadn't had a fresh coat in years. In places, the older brick could be seen, filthy and stained by the weather. Only two levels high, the upper floor windows were encased in emerald green glass behind military-like barbs and wire-mesh covering. The alleyway next to it had a huge white strip running down its middle, and this is where most of the staff congregated to suck back their nicotine.
Joe was cracking his knuckles and fidgeting. After an uncomfortable period of silence, he said. "They hired someone new while I was gone. Some shitty little Asian fella who doesn't look as if he'll play by the rules. He's on night-shift tonight, but Doris is on too, so there should be a window of opportunity around two or three."
Mitchell groaned and sat down heavily on the floor. "What do you mean, around two or three?" he asked. "Are they going to go out walking around the leisure centre in the middle of the goddamn night?"
"Pipe down, numb nuts," Liam said.
"Yeah," said Joe. "You should know me well enough by now to know that's not how it's going to play out. I've tipped Doris and she should present us some duck while she's supposed to be out walking an older fella to the John. I stressed to her that it had to be a girl this time, but I highly doubt it will be."
Liam blinked at him. "You're not serious?"
"Serious as cancer," he replied. "It's coming up on a year now since we bagged our first duck and I think we should all be proud of three fatalities. But it's time we stepped up to the plate gentlemen, and evolved a little. All suspicion from George Bush has disappeared and I think we deserve some fresh meat."
Despite Joe's proclamation, Liam laughed. He always got a kick out of hearing that name—it brought back such sweet memories.
***
At the time, they'd purchased the apartment on a whim— but looking back Liam could see the patterns of synchronicity that had always been there. They'd been flatmates, after Liam decided to move in with his friend. Both quickly became as restless as a couple of sex-starved nymphos.
Idle hands are the Devil's plaything, Liam…
And didn't he know it. The summer days induced boredom and ennui. There was no air-conditioning. The most Joe could afford was a small electric fan that buzzed away in the corner with a sound like insects which irritated the shit out of them both. The idiot-box was a no-hoper, as well. Without cable there was nothing to watch but ridiculous reruns that only pre-schoolers could find entertainment from. Outside was a blistering heat-haze of concrete and metal. Inside was no better, with flies infiltrating their territory no matter how carefully they barricaded the doors and windows.
Joe had been under the window, screwing around with an air-rifle he'd had since his early teens. Liam was staring out the top-section through slitted eyes. They widened when he saw the old man walking around on top of the building next door.
"Jesus H Christ. What the hell's that old fucker doing up there at this time of day?"
"S'probably just one of the nurses," said Joe. He was sticking the end of the rifle up his nose, seemingly trying to pry stuff out. "I see them up on the roof sometimes."
"I don't think so," Liam said. "This guy looks to be in his eighties. He's running into things...oh, shit! He's wearing a dressing gown. It has to be one of the freaking patients!"
Joe jumped up as if he'd been stung. The end of the gun was still in his nose. He quickly removed it. "Holy shit, you're right. My god...is that...Mr. Dangree?"
The day was clear and bright, and they could see the roof perfectly. The old man was grinning, his penis a large protrusion as it swished around in time with the folds of his dressing down. His billowy grey hair reflected silver in the sunlight. It did, indeed, seem to be Mr. Dangree from Ward 17. Mr. Dangree was a solicitous, dangerous old fart who thought his relatives were terrorists from Syria. What made the whole thing funny was that he resembled the current president of the United States: George W. Bush. Albeit, without a suit or the annoying Texas drawl.
Without even thinking about it, both boys crept to within a couple of inches of the window. Liam was unravelling it so they could both get a clearer view. Joe's air-rifle was slung over his shoulder and it poked through the opening as he leaned in. Mr. Gangree, aka George W Bush, had managed to get even closer to the edge of the building and was pumping the air with his fists, no doubt eager to get his hands on those elusive terrorists.
We should go downstairs, Liam said. He's definitely going to fall—–
There was a loud report from under Joe's arm as the air-rifle went off. For a brief moment, Liam thought he was going to fall through the glass—the sound was louder than he'd anticipated. What stopped him was seeing Mr. Dangree somersaulting to his death.
The fall almost broke him in two.
Minutes went by as both Liam and Joe sat stunned. Mr. Dangree was now totally unrecognizable as the man he'd been only moments before. His was a splattery grey mess while tendrils of intestines lay only meters away from Liam's sidewalk. Later Liam would go downstairs and watch them hose off the street.
Well, that was unexpected, Joe said, his words the first to break the silence. Now if only that would happen to the real George Bush.
Liam didn't answer him. He was too busy laughing.
***
The unfortunate death of Mr. Dangree made no headlines. The flat where Liam resided met the standards of a typical business district, and, as the event had occurred on a Saturday, hardly any pedestrians or vendors were there to witness it. The ambulance arrived at about seven-thirty and the police cordoned off the block, after taking about a billion photos and meeting with Mr. Skinner from the hospital. By this stage, Liam and Joe were in a state of near-panic but not once did the officials below ever look up toward their apartment window. Liam asked Joe if he'd seen where the small bullet had struck and Joe replied that he didn't know. There was a chance it hadn't even pierced the crazy old man's flesh. Both of them agreed, however, that the shot from the air-rifle had been the catalyst for his plunge to the earth below.
Obviously, Mr. Skinner was trying his darndest to keep a lid on things, and somehow it was working.
***
The days and nights passed, and Joe went back to work at the hospital. Liam was agitated. He kept expecting the police to break into the apartment in the wee hours of the morning but eventually his paranoia passed. Nobody was coming; nobody knew or had seen anything. It had been treated as an accidental death and the rooftop was now closed off to patients and staff alike. After discussing it at length, neither Joe nor Liam felt much guilt or responsibility. After all, it had been an accident, plain and simple. The circumstances were regrettable, but in the end, the world now had one less crazy bastard to worry about.
The days dragged on, the summer got even hotter, and after a while Joe and Liam's boredom returned.
Liam had planned all along to bring someone else into the fold, but his reasons for this were not entirely benign. He wasn't a selfish man by nature, but the murder had changed him. If there were more people involved, then there was less chance of him going down for it. Considering the fact that it was his apartment, a little insurance in a situation like this went a long way. He'd known Mitchell Wentworth from high school, where the boy had been busted with a slew of porno magazines featuring golden showers and scat play. It was rumoured he kept a collection of snuff DVDs and had once even drank the toilet water out of the female urinal stalls.
In short, he was a perfect candidate to bring into the fold.
And he'd not disappointed. In fact, he had jumped at the idea with more aplomb than Liam had anticipated. And when a perfect opportunity presented itself with another old patient (this one milling around near an open barred window), Mitchell hadn't hesitated firing his own air rifle—bought specifically for this purpose and with more kick to it—through those bars where the small ball-bearing had lodged directly in the man's eye socket. It hadn't killed him, but the thirty year-old schizophrenic had gotten a hell of a shock nevertheless. His paranoid delusions of anal probes and aliens helped pin the man himself for the attempt on his life. It turned out he'd even tried something similar before with a ballpoint pen.
Sure, it wasn't the most ethical way to tackle the Devil's Plaything—but it worked.
***
"Man, I'm not too sure about that," Mitchell said.
"I knew you'd flake out on us," Joe replied. He was reclining on the weather beaten sofa and polishing Mitchell's new gun. "You've always been a sucker for pussy."
"Ducks are guys, dude. Not chicks."
Liam and Joe laughed; the irony was not lost on them.
"Ducks are whatever I say they are, shithead," Joe said, eyeing Liam from the couch. "Who gives a fuck about these retards, anyway? Ain't that right, Liam?"
Liam nodded. "Come on, Mitchell. You don't have to work with the slobbering idiots like Joe does. If you did, bagging a female duck wouldn't faze you in the slightest."
Mitchell looked stupidly back out the window, as if he'd expected to see a woman cavorting around on the roof already. "Maybe you're right."
"Damn straight," Joe said. "And for a lapse like that I'm not sure if letting you have first shot is such a wise idea, my friend."
Mitchell sneered at him and brought his rifle close to his chest. "Just try and stop me, faggot."
***
She came out on the rooftop at 2:15, wearing nothing but a silk nightie and white fluffy slippers. Doris, their thirty year-old partner in crime, had befriended Joe about six months prior when he'd noticed her utter disdain toward the patients. Subsequently, he had let her in on a few things, and from there she had agreed to help them a little in their fun. Joe had also fucked her twice, and this had served to grease the wheels a little. Liam could hardly believe that the hospital contained such a huge number of morally challenged. He complained that there was no way they could afford to trust any of them. But Joe had eased his worries a little by reminding him of the Institute's sordid history and penchant for keeping all transgressions locked firmly within its walls. None of this really sat well with Liam, but by then he had little choice but to go along with it.
And now here was their latest quarry, edging along the roof like a zombie out of Night of the Living Dead.
"I don't recognize her," Joe said.
Mitchell was propped up right next to the window, his eyes wide with anticipation. Liam noticed he was even fogging up the pane with short, excited breaths.
"Jesus, Mitchell. Just wait a second," Liam told him, and he stopped just short of the windowsill in a crouch. They jostled like children standing in line for the best view. Joe was looking just as excited as Mitchell.
He's not really going to kill her, is he?
The whole notion that they had finally gone too far and were using up all their luck pinged at the edge of Liam's consciousness. It seemed the three of them had entered a frame of mind better suited to serial killers and lunatics: fun and games evolving into full blown homicide. Didn't that put them pretty much in the same league as the duck who now stood within their scope?
"Fucking ducks," Joe said, and scooted over a little. Mitchell nudged him further out of the way with the butt of his rifle and took aim.
We won't get caught, Liam thought. Can't. We've got Doris.
Mitchell slid the weapon through the small opening.
***
Doris Edgar had worked at Cyclone Cove Institute for the mentally impaired for just over two years, and in that time she had witnessed the absolute nadir of human corruption and indifference toward the mentally handicapped. The hospital had quietly and unceremoniously disappeared from the radar of the post-modern twentieth century, not sliding backwards but staying stagnant and mired in an era that had seen similar abominations during the forties and fifties. Just how it had managed to stay the same during these innovative times was a mystery but not worth contemplating because, well because…
Because I love it here.
Doris was of German descent; her parents had been wealthy contributors to the Nazi regime and Hitler's party during the Second World War. After the desecration of Poland and its beautiful levelling, they had relocated into a German sector where the filthy lice-ridden Jews had appropriately been sent packing. During her forty-two years Doris had grown accustomed to witnessing atrocity on an epic scale.
The Institute certainly suited her hunger.
Now, as she was prepared to put her plan into motion, she glanced along the E-Wing's linoleum corridor at the reflection that stared back at her from the windows.
Her face held all the charm of a shovel.
And that suited her too.
Meeting Joe Butterworth had felt like something special, an end to a lifetime of disappointment following the filthy American's destruction of her motherland after the fall of her beloved father's Fuhrer. Since then the world had gone exclusively the way of the Jewish scum and she'd been forced to relocate to the Americas to stay with her financially successful sister following certain misdemeanours in the motherland. Luckily, the fates had dealt her an opportunity to even up the score a little. Working in tandem, she and Joe had organized for the patient to be let out onto the roof so he and his malcontent cronies could take the bitch out. This had been easy enough, and now the old cunt was moping about up there. Tonight those boys would get their duck, but not quite in the way they expected.
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