Nightjack (30 page)

Pia lay slumped over the corner of the tomb, like she wanted to join with it. All the happiness he had seen in her today while she danced and sang, while she laughed and wooed the boys, was gone. Its loss left her reduced and deflated, the blackness beneath her eyes much darker than ever before. Pace finally understood that she didn’t just want to die, she was already dying.

“So, you love her,” Pia said.

“No,” he said.

“Now you’ll stay here with her and her father and you’ll be the new master of the island, the mad king of Pythos.”

“Her father is dead.”

“Then there’ll be no one to come between the two of you.”

“Get up, Pia, we’re leaving.”

“There’s nowhere left for me to go.” Her eyes welled even as a cruel grin spread across her face. Here she was, the girl next door you wanted to cuddle with so badly, who would always take care of you while your fevers ran their course. Here she was, almost dead, and you couldn’t figure out a way to save her. Jack’s stomach fluttered.

“You still want to know what I did to her?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“After you made love to her—after she fucked you that night—I told Dr. Brandt. I told her and I watched her beat the hell out of Cassandra. I watched her drag her into the showers and try to wash your seed right out of her womb. I thought she might get pregnant with your child and I wanted it dead too. You hear me, I wanted your baby dead!”

“Why?”

Her tears ran and hung in the hollows of her cheeks. “What?”

“I asked you why.”

“Because I’m crazy, you idiot!”

“That’s not the reason, Pia.”

“Because I love you! I love you and need you to love only me!”

“Why?”

“
So you’ll kill me
!”

He said, “That’s not what love is, Pia.”

She held her face up and presented her throat. “Don’t you understand? It is to
me
! That’s what love is to me!” She closed her eyes tightly and begged. “
Jack
!
Jack, please
! I’m the whore that got away!”

Jack wanted out. Jack wanted this little bitch once and for all.

“It’s not going to happen,” Pace hissed.

His hands were ahead of him again though. They moved. His feet moved him. The knife was there and he bent forward and angled it close to Pia’s jugular, and Jack showed his teeth and his mouth watered with the hope of dissecting her later.

Pace said, “No.”

Jack exerted himself, under wraps for too long. The laughter broke free from Pace’s throat and his breath blew stray hairs back and forth on Pia’s forehead. The hand grew uncertain of its purpose. The laughter grew frenzied and much more horrible, and Pia’s smile grew even more ugly.

“Yes, that’s it, Jack,” she said with the huskiness of an impassioned lover. She kneeled before him and panted. “Give it to me, baby.”

“No,” Pace said, louder. He might only be the In-between man but he had made his own oaths. Even if he wasn’t here tomorrow—even if some new aspect of Pacella arose in the night—his promises mattered. They had weight. They held power that would continue on without him.

Jack roared and grabbed Pia by the hair and pulled her closer. She crawled on her knees, sobbing but with her mouth curved in a smile. She pressed her face into Jack’s crotch, the way the prostitutes in Whitechapel had more than a century ago. The things you could do to a woman when you had the time and the proper tools, and this one was even willing. Jack felt a twinge of real adoration for her within his consuming hate.

“Don’t do this,” Pace said, but his voice was the voice of another man. Maybe Pacella, maybe another him—all the other
hims
that hadn’t turned up yet, hadn’t gotten their chance in the flesh. “Don’t let Nightjack out.”

His mind chimed with names. Nipple Jones. Where had he heard that before? Freddie “Double Tap” Freeman. Caramel Skankie. Katie. Duchess Crotch Stink.

Katie. Katie, that was it.

He said Pia’s sister’s name as gently as he could. “Katie.”

“You know you want me,” Pia said. “You know you’ve always wanted to drive it in. To feel my blood beneath your touch. To flay me and fuck me to death.”

The blade froze at her throat.

“I’d like to talk to you, Katie.”

The dead will follow
.

We are the vessels. We are the conduits. We are the possessed.

“Katie, please talk to me.”

Pace felt an odd surge of confidence because Jack, like all men, wanted to extend the moment, prolong the climax. Jack’s eyes rolled up in his head and his giggle echoed in the cavern, back thousands of years through time.

Pia’s sister, with the same heart-shaped face, the same warm pale-eyed stare that made you want to curl up beside her, was down on her knees before him. She looked up and said, “It’s my fault. She wants to be like me. She wants to be dead, murdered by someone she loves.”

“How do we save her?” he asked.

“You can’t, you can only give her what she wants. You have to kill her.”

“I promised that I...would...save her.”

Jack’s cackle grew louder, the blade starting to move, a fraction of an inch closer, cutting Pia’s cheek, and a spurt of blood arched over the knife handle to splash on the back of Pace’s hand.

Pia didn’t really want Jack to kill her anyway. She wanted her father to do it.

Pace shouted, “Faust! Where the fuck are you! I need help!”

Fighting himself—battling Jack—Pace managed to turn his chin aside and focus on the dim stone recesses of the cave. He pressed his affliction forward into the darkness until the man came dancing out of the shadows.

Pia’s father spun and did the bump, then slowly came to a stop beside her. Beneath his maroon suit jacket he had the piano wire tied around his waist.

She said, “Daddy—”

“Shh, baby, don’t you worry about anything. I’m here now, I’ll take care of you.”

“Yes, Daddy, please...finish it...”

He undid the piano wire and slipped it over her neck and pulled it tight from behind. Pia’s face lit with a smile so incandescent that Pace had to narrow his eyes to slits.

Jack wanted more blood. He always did, it was his natural state of being. He drew out all kinds of surgeon’s tools from his little black bag. He wanted to make this last a long while, really get in there and start snipping away, pull out bones and sacs and tissue, but leave the heart beating.

Pia was choking to death, her face turning an awful indigo as her father continued to tighten the wire. The blood vessels in her eyes were purple and ready to burst. Jack thought it was a waste, having the girl die this way, but he didn’t really mind. He could have just as much fun afterward with the body, scooping and flinging.

With the details so lovely and vivid in his mind, Jack stepped away to relish them, hugging himself. Pace felt a little stronger and managed to work the tip of the Trident with its Bowie style blade between the wire and Pia’s throat. It was sharp enough to cut through damn near anything.

The wire snapped from around her neck. Pia’s father dropped away with an expression of indignation. Jack turned back and wore the same shocked expression, like he’d made a foolish mistake and couldn’t believe he’d done so. He licked his lips and cocked his head in a rage, the way your father did when you didn’t put out the trash.

Pia took a deep breath and fell into Pace’s arms, sobbing against his chest.

She went completely slack and they both dropped to the dirt. Her father and sister wandered around for another moment, confused and at a loss, their chins slack and hands open. They brushed against Pace and he shuddered at their touch, his flesh going cold where they passed through him. Pia’s eyes were black and lidless like a shark’s and then he saw them become beautiful and blue and wet and pained again. He held her and felt the human heat of her body against him, warming him.

With the quiet strength and mewling of a lover in need, she kissed him. Pace held the kiss, their tongues touching coyly, almost shyly, afraid of the intention or where it might lead.

Then he began to draw from her the venom, the poisons, toxins, repressions, and subjugations. The children started dancing with Pia’s father. They welcomed her sister, calling her Nipple Jones, Siobhan, Yokahama Yolanda, Pookie. If Pia was going to have a chance, it had to be this way.

She tried to break their kiss and struggled to get free of him, but he held on, drinking her in deeper and deeper. She squealed beneath his lips and scratched at his chest until it was finally over.

Then she slapped him so hard that he tasted blood.

“I didn’t want an exorcism,” she said.

“I know that.”

“You had no right!”

“I told you I would save you.”

“God damn you,” she moaned, and then went slack in his arms and began to sob.

As he kneeled there with her, hushing and patting her back, blood on his tongue, he watched a shadow thrash along one of the alcove walls. It squirmed beneath flame. As Pace kissed Pia’s brow he held up his fist.

He opened his hand and read the message there, and realized then that in the end maybe he would have to kill somebody after all.

thirty-one

He pulled her to her feet and gently began to press her away.

“No,” she said. “I want to stay with you.”

“You can’t.”

“Why?”

“I need to be alone for this. As alone as I can be.”

“For what? What are you doing?”

“Completing a very vicious circle. Stay here if you want and wait for me, but don’t follow.”

He could tell she wanted to argue, to continue the fight she’d been fighting all her life, but there was no reason for it now. She seemed stunned as she turned and didn’t find her father behind her.

She wiped the back of her hand across her dripping nose and said, “All right.”

Pace spun toward the alcove where one of the ancient lamps threw light against the dark rock mottled with minerals. He followed the shadows, like the contours of a nightmare, through the small stone rooms until they led him to Faust.

“There you are,” he said.

Faust was crouched before the burner. “The old gods die, and new ones are built on the bones of them,” he intoned, repeating what he’d said the first time they’d come through the cavern. “The same as men.”

“What did you do in the world, Faust?” Pace asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Think about it.”

“That hurts too much.”

“Try.”

Faust looked at the friezes as if trying to spot himself in their scenery and stories. Himself or someone like him. “I was an insurance salesman. Yes, I believe that’s it. I sold insurance and enjoyed helping those hurt in accidents, providing comfort for the downtrodden. I went to houses and they gave me money and I protected them from termites, floods, earthquakes, and other acts of God. That’s what I did, I’m pretty sure of it. Almost certain, in fact. Yes, that was it.”

“I don’t think so,” Pace said.

“Why? Why do you say that, Will?”

“What kind of man were you, Faust? Do you remember?”

“I told you—”

“What’s the long green spinach?”

“I don’t know. And I’m a little offended you aren’t taking my word for it.”

“Why are staring into the lamp?”

“Because. Well, maybe you’ve heard this already, but you see, my wife, she died in a restaurant fire—”

“No,” Pace said. “That wasn’t your wife. What did you do before?”

“Stop asking me that.”

“It’s important.”

“Is it?”

“What did you do on Park Avenue? The Gold Mile?”

“Stop hammering at me, Will. It’s very rude. Yes, very rude, coarse, and disrespectful of you. Let’s have no more of that.”

“Philly’s Main Line. Malibu. Beverly Hills. You said you did a lot of work in L.A. What did you do?”

The storm swept down over the mountain, beating against the earth so that, in the underworld, the force of heaven rang like a death knell. Pace felt the atmosphere changing. Faust’s beard and hair danced in the air. Pace felt a powerful draw at his back and realized it was the knife being pulled as if by a magnetic wave. He wondered if lightning were striking directly over the cave, if the
heroon
, the tomb itself, was calling down the gods.

“I remember now!” Faust screamed. “The long green spinach. That’s big money. I got paid the big green!”

“For what?” Pace asked.

He looked to his left and saw Rimmon, governor of the first order of seraphim, angel of lightning and fire, whose sword set fire to the bush that brought clarity to Moses, who must have written with a fiery finger across Pace’s palm. He opened his fist. There was no paper in his hand, the note was cut directly on his calloused flesh in a shaky scrawl that extended across each of his fingers: