Unkillable (12 page)

The pain stopped. As the world opened up again for me, I became aware of The Rat’s hearty laughter. “Seek ye to bind me within the burning star of Cornelius Aggrippa?” it asked me in the most mocking of tones as I struggled to get to my knees.

I held up a finger. I said, “I’ll be with you in a minute, asshole.” I knew I couldn’t throw up, but it felt like I would have felt a lot better if I could have. I attempted to spit. Some dust flew from my lips and a tooth bounced across the pavement. Great. This was my big win?

Bruce emerged from the darkness. He looked at me in shock. Then at Marie.

“Bruce, we got it,” I said.

Bruce just nodded. I noticed that he was sweating. That he looked scared. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Bruce,” I don’t really know if I was saying it convince him, or to convince myself.

“What makes you think this can hold me?” The Rat asked.

“Belief,” I answered.

“You’ve never believed anything in your life.”

“Oh, not me. Out there in the night. There are billions of people, billions of souls, who’ve seen enough bad horror movies and read enough comic books that they believe a pentagram will trap a demon.”

“Am I a demon then?” The Rat asked as if it was talking about the weather. It sure didn’t act like something that was trapped. Its attitude wasn’t helping my pointless nausea. It tried to reach through the pentagram and there was a crackle in the air. Something like what bolt lightening might be like after it downed a bottle of Valium. The Rat pulled its hand back and looked at it thoughtfully. “Pretty strong. It might have been strong enough.”

And then The Rat reached through what I thought was an impenetrable force-field of cliché-driven belief and caressed me on the cheek. If it were possible, I would have shit my pants.

“Thank you, Bruce,” said The Rat. “You will be rewarded. His name is Josue, and I now release him.” To my left, I heard Marie make a little sobbing noise. I looked at Bruce.

Bruce looked down. I followed his gaze and realized that he had scuffed his foot across the side of the pentagram and broken the five-pointed wall of flame that had contained The Rat.

“Bruce? What the hell is going on here?”

“He now recognizes me as master,” said The Rat.

“Shut up, rat,” I said. The Rat stopped speaking, but it giggled on the verge of hysteria.

“It’s her,” Bruce said, “The Rat told me that it would make her love me. That she would be mine. A girl. A real live girl for me,” he turned to Marie, “You see, Marie, we’re going to be together. Now you’re going to love me, the way I need to be loved. The way I should be loved.” Bruce looked to The Rat for confirmation, “Right?”

The Rat smiled. My special question came back to me. How screwed was I? A dead guy betrayed by his mortician? Life sucks. Death is worse.

Marie walked to Bruce. She did it slow and sexy, her loose cotton dress riding on her hips like it might be thrown off with the very next step. It seemed to take forever. If she had been any hotter in that moment, she would have brought me back to life.

She reached out towards Bruce – unbelievable, a girl like that with a, a, a, a pasty-white Chet like him – and took his face in her hands. Slowly, sweetly, she brought his face closer to hers. Bruce began to pucker in anticipation of being kissed by what had to be the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, dead or alive, but she stopped short. A few inches from his face, she began to whisper.

At first, it seemed like this was good. I could imagine what her breath would have felt like on my face. She was speaking in another language, which has always been hot. But her voice grew in volume until I realized that she was speaking some kind of chant or spell. She brought her right palm to her lips.

In a savage motion, she bit into her palm and jerked the flesh from it by using the muscles of her neck. With the flesh in her teeth and blood on her lips, she kissed Bruce -- a hard kiss, and angry. Then she struck him a terrific blow with her bloody palm.

At this, The Rat laughed again, twitching non-existent whiskers as it did.

Bruce staggered back a few steps. Then he swallowed. And then a very strange look crossed his face. He touched his stomach and his eyes grew wide. He looked to The Rat. “But, you told me she would love me?”

Marie spit on the ground and cursed him, “Now you will dine only on the flesh of men.”

The Rat said, “I bargain with souls, not with hearts.” And The Rat laughed so loud that it rattled the bones of my skull. Then the pain started again.

The world condensed into a three-inch circle in the middle of my vision. The pain, the pain. But the most offensive thing was The Rat’s all-penetrating laughter. I yelled in frustration. Bellowed for all my paper lungs were worth, which wasn’t much, but it felt good, anyway. Good in the bad way. Like Kamikaze pilots must feel in the middle of the dive. Like the guy who dives on a hand grenade to save his buddies must feel. Like a Captain who cuts the last lifeboat away and goes down with the ship.

I threw an arm in front of me and started to crawl.

More laughter. A wall of contempt, dark and substantial and very loud. The pain wracked my body. If I had been alive, I’m sure I would have passed out. But I wasn’t alive. Now, even the release of death was denied to me. So I threw another arm and kept crawling.

On some level I was aware of The Rat talking to me. Its mocking tones arriving to some part of my consciousness through some unknown means -- perhaps through the bones of my skull -- because all other circuits were overloaded. Another arm, the knee brace tearing grooves in the pavement as I pushed forward. And again. And again.

When I got to the gap in the burning pentagram, I closed it with arm. My flesh, dried these many days, lit like tinder, sealing The Rat in his prison. The pain condensed into my arm and then faded to a dull roar. A tingle compared to what I had just been through. But the laughter, the laughter did not stop. It died down to a contemptuous chuckle.

I saw its feet on the other side of my arm and looked up at it.

“Oh, yes, bravo,” hissed The Rat, “but how long do you think you can keep me trapped? Soon, you will burn out, like all mortals. You have granted yourself a brief reprieve, nothing more.”

Marie knelt down beside me and closed the pentagram with magnesium powder. Then she helped me to stand. I looked at The Rat, taking in its smug confidence. Understanding every way in which it was right. This was only a brief reprieve. According to the rules that the game was played by, it still had me. I could do nothing to hurt it. Hell, I didn’t even know how any of this worked, much less believe in it strongly enough to make any bit of it work for me.

The Rat’s smile grew into a wheezing chuckle in the back of its throat. I had heard enough of this bastard’s laughter.

“You’re right,” I said, “I can’t hold you. And I can’t hurt you. But I know someone who can.”

I stepped aside and let it see Vlade who was standing behind me. The Rat stopped laughing. The black of the snake tattoo on Vlade’s neck and shaven head gleamed like oil on the surface of calm water by moonlight. Through his thick accent Vlade said, “Leave me with the Vermin.”

* * * * *

Chapter 23

Marie helped me inside the empty club. I slumped at the bar and watched her pour herself a drink. Her hands shook as she did it. She showed me and smiled awkwardly. I just felt weary. As weary and as old as time itself.

On the bar was a pack of cigarettes. I lit one and felt the warmth spread through my chest. For a moment it was just Marie and I. Me with my cigarette. Her with her drink and her skin and her cotton dress, dirty and torn, her hair headed in a thousand curly, contradictory directions and damn, didn’t she make me want to be alive.

She sipped her drink, shifted her weight and gave voice to my question, “What now?”

From outside, I heard screaming. Then the smell of an electrical fire filled the air.  The silence that accompanied the smell was fraught with portent.

We looked from the door and back to each other. “I don’t know what comes now,” I said. Then we were silent long enough for me to finish the coffin nail.

The door to the back of the club opened and a very contented Vlade walked in. His face and body were marred by marks that looked like they had been made by claws. Blood splattered him from head to toe and his face was almost completely covered. But whose blood was it?

Vlade was unconcerned by his appearance. He picked up a napkin, and rather than wiping the copious blood off his face, or tending to any of his fresh, ragged wounds, he daintily wiped the corners of his mouth.

Without looking at us, he walked to the bar. When he got to the end, he fixed me in his gaze. The whites of his eyes stood out in sharp contrast against the blood that was drying and darkening on his face.

“It is done.”

“What is done?” I asked.

“The rat will trouble you no more.”

“What happened to him?”

“Nothing is ever created or destroyed. There is only a change of form. So, he has changed form.”

“But what happens to me?”

Vlade shrugged. “Why should I care?”

“But am I stuck like this? I mean, after all this? I’m stuck like this? Falling apart, little by little? Never able to eat a meal, make love to a woman, take a nap in the afternoon? Until one day, there’s just some speck of me lying in the corner -- maybe an eyeball, still aware -- still aware but bored to death of looking at people’s shoes and wishing one would step on me and end it all!”

Vlade looked at me for a long moment. “This life, I think, is not for you,” he said with that fatalistic, yet non-committal shrug that only Eastern Europeans seem to be able to pull off when talking about profound matters.

“What life is this?”

“You see? Not for you.” He stood up and encompassed both Marie and I in his gesture, “Come, is time for you to go.”

He walked us out the front door onto the sidewalk. It must have been 4 in the morning. Not a soul on the street. A cab drove by like a strangely luminous yellow fish, plumbing the depths of a dark city night. Marie shivered a little in the night air. As always, I felt not the cold or warmth of life. I was just will encased in dust. Now that the danger had passed, how stale, flat and unprofitable it all felt now. What point was there? Now that I could finally see something of the beauty of the world, participation in it was denied to me.

Vlade turned to me and asked, “Do you want to be as other men again?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you want to be mortal again? To go back to your old life? To life like all the other warm-blooded animals in this city?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I do.”

“To have the same shitty little life?” Vlade asked as if he did not believe me.

“It was a life,” I said, “The only real problem with it was the shitty little guy living in it. What are you talking about? Can you fix this?”

“I don’t see anything broken,” he said with a strange smile.

“Do you have a way bring me back to life?”

“Well,” he said with that fatalistic shrug, “there are no easy ways.” Then he stabbed me in the heart.

I said, “You stabbed me again? Why did you stab me again?” And then I felt it. A cool feeling. A wet feeling seeping through my insides. I looked at my chest and saw that an icicle protruded from below my sternum. Then pain.

“Breathe,” said Vlade.

Marie shrieked, “What have you done to him?”

Vlade ignored her and dialed his cellphone. I collapsed to the sidewalk. I realized that I could feel everything. The cold of the night, the concrete grinding against my knee. The warmth of Marie’s hands as she held me.

Vlade said the word “Paramedic” into his phone and then looked down on me. From the back of his throat he sang a little chant in an Eastern language.

“Is that a prayer?” I asked.

Vlade smiled, “No. It’s the other kind. Now, we are even. Do not trouble me again, or I will eat your soul.”

As the blackness closed in around me, I asked, “Why?”

Vlade said, “You are a man with a destiny. And I will not be destroyed by it.”

* * * * *

Chapter 24

When I awoke I was in a hospital. It was bright and loud and everything hurt. A nurse came in to draw blood and told me where the self-administered morphine button was. I grabbed it pressed it until I blacked out.

That’s how it went for a while. The pain and bright lights would come back and I would press the button until it went away. How long, I couldn’t tell you. Could have been days. Could have been weeks. Sometimes the lights were on when they came in to take blood, sometimes the lights were off. Sometimes there was something on TV. Sometimes there wasn’t.  It was all an endless cycle. Groundhog Day in hell.

At some point, they dialed back the morphine. I started having longer and longer periods of consciousness. I discovered that my right leg was a mess. It had been elevated and immobilized within a metal cage that held the wreckage of my skeleton in place.  When I tried to turn my head, I discovered I had an elaborate cast holding my left shoulder in place. The nurse said my collarbone had been broken.

She also told me that they had never seen someone so dehydrated. Or so lucky. That if there had been anybody else for the ICU that night, they would have triaged me out. I was dead on arrival. A hopeless case. But it had been a slow night and I had lived. Then she started asking me questions.

I almost said, “When somebody goes through what I’ve been through, what makes you think they give you any answers at the end?” Instead, I just kept lying. I said I didn’t remember. I should explain things to her? You tell me, how could it be done? How could I tell her that I had died and come back from the dead?

Would she have believed it? Probably not. And if she did believe me, would that be better? That’s how religions got started, you know. And that’s all I needed. The adulation and worship of countless people who would never be able to hear what I really had to say. It’s not the answers that they give you that matter. It’s the questions you answer for yourself.