From behind me, I heard a skitter-slide of feet, the sound of millipedes and bad dreams. I felt something watching me, a thing old and awful, and very cold. And then, a blast of ice. A breath on my neck.
My eyes fluttered, rolled upward.
For the first time in my life, I was grateful for the dark.
21
My bicycle weighed less than twenty-five pounds, but it felt oppressively heavy on my shoulder as I trudged up the steps of my building. The carpet-covered wood creaked beneath my feet. The old light fixtures struggled against the dimness of early evening. My Cannondale’s rear tire spun sleepily as it skipped against the wall.
Tick-tick-tick, went the wheel. And then, skitter-slide: tktktk.
I stopped, clutched the banister, sensing something unfamiliar. There was no breeze here in the stairwell, but it was chilly, as it always was this time of year. I sniffed, smelled plaster and wood polish. The air felt damp, heavy. It pressed against me like fog, another skin, claustrophobic.
Tktktk.
I shuddered, resisting the urge to turn around.
It was the Cannondale, yes. It was the Cannondale’s tire whirling round and round, and the air had changed because people were heating their apartments now. That was all, an elementary deduction; my Spock-side would be proud. I leaned against the handrail, inhaling deeply. The whirlwind days and sleepless nights were catching up with me. They’d come, finally, to collect.
Tick-tick-tick, went the wheel.
“Oh, shut up,” I said.
I clomped up the second flight, relieved to be home.
Rachael and Lucas were waiting in the living room, their faces pinched and fretful. I smiled. It was a weary-faced farce. They knew it, too, and I loved them for that.
My brother pulled the bike from my shoulder and wheeled it to the hallway closet. I heard him hang it on the door rack.
I gazed at my woman standing in the center of the room, surrounded by our red halo of chili-pepper lights, drinking up the sight of her. I went to her, hungry to feel warm, held, beloved.
Her inked arms pressed me closer. I sighed. The steel cables in my shoulders slackened a bit. I kissed her, breathed in her scent of shampoo and skin. Goddamn, this was perfect. Holistic. Necessary.
“You should’ve let me pick you up,” she whispered.
I pulled away, gave her lips another quick kiss. “No. I needed to be alone. Needed to think.”
Lucas stepped into the room, a fresh beer in his hand. I accepted the bottle and slid onto our couch. Compared to the stiff hospital bed and metal chairs in which I’d spent nearly my entire day, this felt luxurious. Rachael joined me. Bliss hopped into my lap, delighted. Her other half, Dali, was nowhere to be seen.
“Tell, bro,” Lucas said.
I sipped the beer, unsure of what to say. Drake’s personal effects lay strewn about the steamer trunk before me: wallet, phone, envelopes, letters…
“Failure,” I said finally. I suddenly wanted to cry, but I didn’t have it in me.
They waited. Lucas sat on the floor.
“So there was an accident,” I said. “I told you that. And I’m fine. But… I… this morning, I watched my friend head-butt his brains all over a wall.”
“Oh my God,” Rachael said. “Why?”
“Because he’d been hacked, like a computer,” I murmured. “He’d been reprogrammed by that son of a bitch. Our CIA interrogator spent days spooking him, slow-boiling him like an egg. Today… today the shell came off. Jesus. Emilio is… Emilio was always a little off-center. Drake exploited that.”
“He’s dead?” Lucas asked.
I nodded slowly, my lips trembling.
“He must be. They took him topside. A chopper medevaced him out. No one’s told me anything, but there’s no way a person could survive that.”
In my mind, I heard the Brinkvale tile shatter against the hallway floor. I shuddered.
Emilio was dead.
“No way,” I repeated.
“This just… happened?”
I turned to Rachael.
“It’s my fault. I told Drake my theory about Alexandrov. He broke through, he actually saw… and then he broke down. Starting screaming about the Dark Man, how it was going to hunt us, kill us.”
“Oh, babe,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Who’s ‘us?’” Lucas asked. His voice was low.
“Us three, and Dad.”
I watched him. He pulled his knees up to his chest. Now, he hugged his shins. An incisor dug into his bottom lip. Oh, no.
“Lucas, relax,” I said. “It’s bullshit.”
But it’s not, cooed a slippery voice inside me. You’ve been marked. Time’s running out. Tktktk-tock.
I shook my head.
“It’s a con, Luc. A way he controls his life, and others. It isn’t real.”
The voice in my mind tittered.
“It’s not,” I said again, more insistent. “Paranoia only has power if you buy what it’s selling. You have to believe, man. Emilio was like that, God love him. He was eager. He was unbalanced. He bought into it.”
And you? the slippery voice said. Aren’t you in line to buy? You heard it, scritch-scratch, tktktk. You felt its breath on your neck. And now the voice was Richard Drake’s: You’re wrong, so wrong…
“Don’t be eager,” Lucas was saying. “Heh, right. Dookle. What’s the opposite of ‘eager?’”
“Skeptical,” Rachael and I said simultaneously.
The three of us smiled. I felt a little better. I rubbed Bliss kitty’s head. She hopped from my lap.
“Are you done with Drake?” Rachael asked. “Is it over?”
I shrugged.
“After I watched Emilio… ah, jeez… after I saw it, I fainted. Woke up in the infirmary. They fussed over me. Dr. Peterson came down, personally conducted the interview for the incident report. That was awkward. Cops took a statement. Of course, no Zach Taylor screw-up would be complete without a cameo by Nathan Xavier.”
“Is that the prick who looks like a Ken doll?” Lucas asked.
I nodded.
“Plastic prick,” Rachael said. “Doctor Dildo.”
I smirked, grateful for the joke. “I spent most of the afternoon in a counseling session. I had questions about Drake, but everyone was giving me the ‘wait and see’ line—probably because Xavier is gunning for the job. All I know is that the man has completely shut down. He isn’t moving, talking, eating. Near-catatonic state. Oh, and he’s blind again.”
“Everything’s undone,” Lucas said.
“Pretty much.”
I sighed.
“I don’t know what to do. I was ready to sign him off as unfit to stand trial, I really was. He’d never given me a reason to believe otherwise. Therapists and patients are supposed to work together. You give, you get. But Drake never gave an inch.”
I pointed at the belongings on the table.
“I had to steal whatever I got,” I muttered. “Goddamn. Do you realize that I’ve been more like Anti-Zach in the past four days than I have in the past four years?”
“That’s not true,” Rachael said. “You’ve been trying to help.”
“I haven’t helped anybody. I killed my friend.”
“Z, you didn’t—”
“He gave you the song,” Lucas interrupted. “‘Night On Bald Mountain.’”
I paused. Yes, the song. But Drake hadn’t given that willingly, either. I never told him the Casio recorded his every note. Sure, the tune was another glimpse inside him—another validation of the Dark Man. But that was worthless now. Everything I’d done was worthless. In fact, that stupid song had been the only “art” this stupid art therapist had extracted from his patient. I was a fraud, a boy pretending to be a man. I’d been so desperate to—