Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales (31 page)

But it was not the bloodied Nadir who was the meal; it was what remained of Girder’s masterpiece. Colors from the torn canvas bled, then faded from the surface as the sickening mouthparts pulsated over the rough canvas. Ropes of greasy slime slid forth as it moved, removing the hours and days and weeks of Girder’s work, and with each pulse the creature seemed to grow fuller. It fed off everything Girder had given, and the sight left the artist cold and emptied. He reached down to retrieve the dull knife, his grip that much more sure.

The Rasp-thing fed, the smell and sound of it overpowering, as Girder crept behind it. Each staggered step reminded him of the games Rasp had played over the intervening weeks, of the disappointment in Mr. Raymond’s eyes, of the way his father had—as they all did—of diminishing him, of making him believe he was less than he was. They had all stolen so much from Girder, taken so much
of
him, and given him nothing in return.

Except that that was not true.

His father
had
given him two things.

The first, a connection to his emotions so strong that a veil of burning red rage consumed his sight; the second, an understanding of how a person’s hands might quickly inflict the maximum amount of damage.

He stepped over Nadir’s prone body and into range; Rasp’s dull dead eyes rolled and glared. Its jaw quivered, tongue lolled.

It knew.

Girder could no longer hesitate.

The slim dull knife stabbed black flesh repeatedly, throwing indescribable color across the walls. The creature gurgled, squealed, spun in circles as the foul liquid spurted. It darted and Girder leapt back, but with broken body and legs it managed only circles, spraying everything. Girder nearly slid in the mixture of hemolymph, grease, and bile as he struggled, his nerve gone and twisted leg screaming. But the damage to the Rasp-thing was done, and as it slowed its mindless convulsions the vestigial face on its back flickered and twitched with ebbing control. It was only when it had ceased moving beyond an occasional dying tic that Girder was brave enough to crush it beneath the weight of Nadir’s empty chair.

Girder stood panting on wobbling legs, taking in what lay before him. Nadir, broken and unbreathing. Rasp, a severed head crushed to a soft lump. Blood and vomit and colors spread across the canvas of floors and walls, and upon them an abstract expressionist composition unlike any revealed itself. Girder observed the patterns, breaks, details of flecks and spots, and read their meaning. The composition’s intent was clear. It spoke directly to him. It spoke of freedom, of release, of a life finally his own. While outside the storm raged fiercely, inside Girder’s great tumult was finally at an end.

Noah screamed and opened his eyes. No one on the bus would look at him, all eyes curiously pointed down, and Noah felt the vestiges of his dream lingering in the dry oven air. The windows were tinted, but the sun still bore through them, bathing Noah in an unbearable heat, a heat intensified by his anxiety. Sweat trickled through the tight coils of his dark hair and down his face. In his hand was clenched the newspaper clipping he’d been carrying for days.

“Are you okay?” Rachel’s eyes were wide with worry. Noah’s head, a jumble as his sense of displacement ebbed.

“Yeah,” he said, folding the blurry photograph and placing it back in his pocket. “How long did I sleep for?”

“Not long, I don’t think.” She looked down at the small mound under her shirt and placed her hands upon it.

“I feel worse now than before. Still, I’m surprised I was able to sleep at all.” He swallowed. It tasted sour.

“That’s what happens when you don’t sleep for three days.”

It had taken a week to put the money for the trip together and make all the arrangements to get from their tiny house in Sarnia to Astilla de la Cruz in as straight a line as possible. Neither knew how long it would take to find Noah’s ex-wife, Sonia, in Mexico, let alone rescue his son, Eli. Sonia had been one step ahead of them for two years, and though Noah liked to believe his son cried for him the entire time, rationally he knew the boy forgot him more with each passing day. If he couldn’t find the boy and rescue him from his mother, Eli would be lost forever.

“Are you holding up? You know you didn’t have to come down with me, considering.”

“I’m okay. Just a bit tired. It’s still early enough that I don’t feel
too
frazzled. That will probably change soon.”

“It did with Sonia—” He stopped himself, but it was too late. The damage was done. Rachel shook her head.

“It’s okay, Noah. I’m not bothered by it.”

It was clear she was lying.

The bus hit something on the road, some rough spot that caused the entire length to shake. Noah held Rachel’s hand as she squeezed, reminding him of the delivery room when Eli was born. He tried to push the memory out of his mind, unwilling to have it contaminated by his situation. Rachel had her eyes closed as though in prayer, waiting for the disruption to end, and Noah wished he’d been able to convince her to stay at home. Already, he was terrified about what he might find when he finally discovered Eli, and Rachel’s presence only further compounded his fears.

Noah carefully took in the crowd of passengers. They barely looked human, as though sculpted from leather, not flesh, filled with sand, not blood. Their movements were sluggish and weighted, eyes half-lidded or closed—a lifetime of survival had worn them down. Across the aisle sat an elderly lady, her head covered in a thin shawl, her feet bare and calloused. In her hands was a small leather-bound book with blank dog-eared covers. She stared unblinkingly at Noah and Rachel, and he had to look away as much from embarrassment as from fear; in her gaze he saw nothing but the endless expanse of desert. The woman opened her mouth to wheeze, and Noah worried the glaring heat had baked him out of reality and into some sub-reality, one in which everything moved slower than it should. She raised her hand, her crooked fingers bent in some crazy pattern, and touched her stomach in the same manner Rachel touched her own. He saw Rachel’s hands awkwardly fall away.

“What’s she saying?” Rachel whispered to him, visibly upset. He wished he knew, but it was clear by the sudden shuffling of feet and positions that the woman’s voice was making the strangers around him and Rachel almost as uncomfortable.

“Something about you being a mother, I guess.”

The old woman nodded, smiling, repeating,
“Madre.”
Rachel smiled too, hers as forced as the old woman’s crazed.

“Ya mero llega la hora,”
she said with glee, then laughing returned to her small leather-bound book. Rachel leaned toward his ear, her breath as hot as the sun.

“I remember now why I never wanted to visit Mexico. My sister had a horrible time in Guadalajara. Why the hell would Sonia have brought Eli here? What’s there to see but a whole lot of nothing?”

“I have no idea.” There was too much Noah didn’t understand, nor was he sure he wanted to. Sonia had changed after the divorce, only slightly at first, but over time the cracks grew wider and in number. There had always been something inside her, something he saw only on rare occasions. It was in her eyes, in the tone of her voice, but she managed to keep it hidden. When the cracks grew wide enough, however, there was no hiding it, and what she once tried to suppress she instead became. It was the only explanation he had for why she would have taken Eli from him. The boy was everything, and to have him gone for nearly half his life evoked a pain Noah could never sufficiently convey to Rachel. Sometimes he wondered if she had only become pregnant to try and replace what he had lost. But how could he ever replace Eli? It was like trying to replace a piece of his soul. “What are you looking at?” Rachel asked. Noah’s eyes were wide and dry. He hadn’t blinked in what seemed like days.

“I think we’re getting close.”

The black mark on the horizon grew as the bus approached it, peeking out from the haze of the radiating desert to form a church spire, then the rickety buildings beneath it. Within the hour the bus was close enough for Noah to point out the village to Rachel, who simply nodded solemnly. Noah itched for action, desperate to be freed from the bus he had been trapped in for so long so he might begin the search. Sonia and Eli were there, somewhere, in the small village, and he knew it. Knew he was so close. Strangely, the excitement made him salivate, and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand in anticipation before Rachel noticed it. All he tasted was salt.

As the bus pulled into Astilla de la Cruz, things became clearer to Noah. The church spire he had seen from so far away was broken, the cross hanging precariously upside down from little more than a wooden sliver. No one seemed to be tending to the church to fix it, however. The delicate stained glass was broken, the ground of the small graveyard beside it upturned until few of its tombstones remained upright. The stores along the street of the village were no better, a small step beyond wooden shacks, nearly indistinguishable from the rundown houses around them. Had the road not been paved, he would have wondered if there were a road at all. Each crack and pothole jolted the bus, shaking Rachel’s head back and forth as though she were a puppet. Noah put an arm across her chest while his other hand gripped the back of the torn vinyl seat in front of him. He squeezed tight, hoping to keep both from being pitched to the ground. None of the other passengers, including the elderly lady, seemed nearly as concerned.

The bus came to a stop alongside a long wooden platform set in the dirt. At one end was a small wooden office with the word
Estación
carved in a plank hanging above the door. “I guess this is the station,” Rachel said as Noah relaxed the arm that had been holding her down. They gave the other passengers time to stand and gather their things before they retrieved their bags from under the seat and made their way off the bus. When they stepped down onto the platform—Noah taking Rachel’s hand as she navigated the stairs—he cast a glance sideways at the window he had been sitting beside for so long. The glass reflected the light from the bright streets, yet the reflection looked almost like a negative of him that had been burned in by the blazing sun. He stared at it, but did not admit it to Rachel for fear he was hallucinating. Then that image moved, and the confusion made him dizzy. Rachel tripped as she came down the stairs, but Noah snapped back in time. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, then looked again at that image in the window. It had become translucent, and when he looked again he was able to see through it to what lay beyond: the elderly woman, glaring. Noah nervously raised a hand to shield his eyes, but it was too late. She had stepped away from the window and vanished into the patterns of light.

Rachel stood on the rickety platform with her bag over her shoulder, ignoring the low creak as her weight shifted to her left foot. Noah flashed to when he’d first met her, standing much the same way outside the front of the police station. Her shape was different then—straighter, leaner. It was a good shape, but he liked the new shape better. Still, there was something there that was familiar, some older memory that the new could not successfully supplant. Without Eli, it all seemed worthless. “So,” Rachel finally said. “Where do we go from here?”

Noah sputtered.

“What do you mean?”

“Where’s the hotel? How do we get there?”

“Ah.”

“Why, what did you think I meant?”

Noah shrugged. “Why don’t we go inside and ask?”

The station contained barely more than a few chairs, fliers, and a ticket booth. He thought he saw someone behind it, but as soon as he and Rachel stepped inside, the bottled heat drove them back.

“I think I’m going to wait for you outside,” Rachel said.

Noah stepped in again and let himself get acclimated to the heat. He took deep breaths, his body struggling for oxygen, and the exertion only made him sweat more. As he walked in, he realized the station was much older than he thought. The wood was mottled and cracked, baked too long in the sun. But as old as the station appeared, it must have been built up around the station agent, who had no doubt sat slack-jawed on his stool since the beginning of time. Noah approached, but the man’s eyes did not move. Instead, the left merely drooped somewhat further than the half-lidded right, and he licked his lips with an inhuman patience. Had he not blinked, Noah might have mistaken him for a wax sculpture that the heat miraculously hadn’t touched. As though on cue, the station agent spoke in a rasp not nearly powerful enough to disturb the flies crawling over his sweating face. He moved his head with a creaking, his eyes scouring Noah and his bag. Noah did not enjoy the sensation. “Can you tell me where the Hotel Bolero is?”

“
¿Que?
Bolero?”

“Si, si,”
Noah repeated with exasperation. Outside, he could see Rachel standing against the side of the station fanning herself while trying to squeeze into a sliver of shade.

The language barrier was proving difficult for Noah, especially knowing it would likely be the biggest impediment to finding his son.

“Telephone?” he said, miming dialing a rotary phone. The station agent barked inhumanly, and with what must have been a tremendous show of strength he lifted his arm and pointed across the room. There among torn billets on the irregular walls hung a telephone, or the remains of one. It was barely more than a dangling receiver. Noah caught a glimpse of the old man’s tongue as he gummed his lips and wheezed, and the small wrinkled flesh looked like a chewed piece of leather. The station agent seemed stricken dumb, his long white mustache hanging over his mouth. It twitched and rustled as though he spoke under his breath, and Noah had to force down his paranoia in the face of that unblinking gaze.