John Shirley - Wetbones Read online

  Culver City, Los Angeles

  "Where the hell did you get that?" Jeff asked, sitting at his breakfast bar next to Prentice. "Isn't it illegal for you to have that shit?"

  "Maybe," Prentice said, distractedly, running his finger down the scribbled doctors' evaluations on the photocopies he'd fanned out on the table, "but I was married to her, right?"

  "You bribe somebody?"

  "Desk nurse. Gave him a hundred bucks which probably went to crack cocaine, from the look of him. It's pretty scary, what I hear about people in hospitals, nurses and doctors and orderlies, using hard drugs. They're gonna be pulling out your organs and selling them on the blackmarket to get drug money or something . . . Anyway, yeah, the guy photocopied Amy's files . . ." He tapped his finger on one copy-faded line. "Check it out."

  Instead, Jeff got up to make capuccino. He had an espresso machine and a milk-steamer. He was going to be buying a house soon. Prentice felt resentment and jealousy chasing tails through him, and he stuffed it away, concentrated on the admissions form, reading aloud to Jeff. "Patient repeats certain phrases at intervals, eg: The Morman won't let me come home . . . patient is frequently labile . . ." Blah blah blah, the usual psychoguff . . . But check that out: 'The Morman'."

  "The Morman?" Jeff said, over the hissing of the steamer. "Like . . . The More Man, you mean?"

  "It says 'the Morman'. But yeah. She probably was saying, The More Man. Like Lonny said." Prentice waited for Jeff to react.

  Bingo. Jeff turned, stared at him. "Come on. Mitch and Amy hooked up with the same guy? Bullshit."

  "Hey - they both mutilated themselves, right? More or less the same way." Prentice smiled in quiet triumph. "I went to the Pinkertons, I was thinking of hiring them to investigate the whole shebang, but they're too fucking

  expensive. But - they do traces on credit cards and stuff for a pretty reasonable fee. So I had 'em trace the account she had that Gold Card on - it came from Sam Denver."

  "You're shitting me!"

  "You know, that's a revolting expression. No, I'm not 'shitting you'."

  "Who are you, Miss Manners? Listen, bro - let's go out to the Ranch. No more talking about it, let's do it. Denver's ranch. See if we can find Mitch. I mean, right fucking now. Just look into it. If it doesn't pan out, we go to the cops."

  "Just go out there? Just us?"

  "Hey - chances are the Denvers are like my old man used to say about spiders: 'They're more scared of you than you are of them.' They won't want any trouble." He sipped his capuccino. Sprinkled more chocolate on the foam. "And I got a gun, bro. I got a bunch a guns. I got a fuckin .357, they want to play games - "

  'You been playing paintball too often, man. Spend too much time writing action pictures. Dirty Harry's a fantasy, Jeff. But yeah. Let's go check it out. Only I want my capuccino first, with extra chocolate."

  Near Malibu

  Jeff was driving like a fucking lunatic, Prentice thought. There was a slate of thin cloud over the sky, but it was hot, the light suffused with an eerie sameness over the dry hills, the manzanita and stunted pine and purplish underbrush, the punky stands of yucca spears - all of it sometimes broken up by improbable squares of lushly green, manicured lawn where an irrigated estate or gated cluster of luxury condos wedged in between hills.

  The Cabriolet made a razzing sound as it attacked the curves, fishtailing from time to time. Maybe Jeff's way of working up his nerve for the confrontation . . .

  They had directions from Jeff's agent, who used to come out here, years earlier. But Jeff almost missed the dirt road. They were supposed to look for a redwood mailbox on a big, four sided post made of smooth quartz river stones. They saw the post at the last moment - Prentice spotted it and stamped an imaginary brake, yelling, "Shit - there it is!"

  Jeff hit the brake and the tyres made crooked marks on the cracked white highway, Prentice grabbing the dashboard to keep from slamming his head into the windshield. "Coulda told me sooner," Jeff muttered.

  "Not at those speeds, A.J. Foyt."

  They backed up, turned onto the dirt road. There was a little gravel left in its deeper ruts. Jeff paused to look at the stone post. It was almost hidden in high fiddlehead ferns and sage. The wooden mailbox was gone. On the concrete post, the rounded quartz stones glowed faintly in the sunlight.

  "Gotta be it," Jeff said. "They really let it go to seed." The car made a noise like a trumpeting baby elephant as he changed gears. They gunned up the road, pluming dust, tailbones banging on the seat springs as the car jounced in the ruts. The trees got higher nearer the top of the hill; there were hoary palm trees, here, transplanted long ago, looking over the shoulders of mistletoe-darkened oaks. Another curve and they came to a high, dust-coated hurricane fence, with a heavily padlocked gate made of the same stuff. Ten yards beyond it was a stone fence and a black, wrought iron gate figured with rusting cherubims holding a bullet-pocked sign that had once said, Welcome. Over the

  cherubims was a wrought-iron figure of two crossed skeleton keys. The Doublekey Ranch.

  Jeff pulled up in the shade of an overhanging bower of roses. Big roses, so red they were almost black. Looking closer, as the dust cloud parted around them, Prentice saw that the roses were overgrown up a dead oak tree; its trunk and lower branches a black, warped skeleton for the fleshy roses.

  From the midst of the rose bush came a wet, throaty snarling. No. It wasn't from the bush - why had he thought it was? It was coming from beyond the hurricane fence. Two Dobermans with spiked collars were running alongside the fence, snarling, teeth bared. They jumped at the fence, making it ring like chain mail, throwing their full bodies against it; shaking dust loose with each clank and making both Prentice and Jeff twitch back in their seats.

  Rose petals filtered down from above, pattering softly into the car.

  The dogs threw themselves at the fence again. Rose petals rained once more. Prentice looked up and saw that vines of another rosebush clung to the top of the fence.

  A black man, well over six feet and three hundred pounds, wearing a generic security guard's uniform, stepped from a small guardhouse at the iron gates and shouted at the dogs. They cringed back, wincing as if afraid of being whipped. The guard came striding up toward the fence, a shotgun aslant across his tubby middle, his eggplant pate shiny with sweat, dark glasses strobing. "Ya'll got an appointment?" he bellowed.

  Jeff looked at the glove compartment, where his gun was hidden.

  Prentice said softly, "Way too soon to even think about it, Jeff."

  Jeff nodded. Prentice could see him gather his courage. He took a deep breath and got out of the Cabriolet, ''Hi, how ya doin'!" he called, as the two men approached each other from opposite sides of the metal fence.

  'Ya'll got an appointment?" the black man repeated.

  Jeff shook his head. "I . . . I'm Jeff Teiltelbaum. I had word that my brother is here and I need to see him. I'm his legal guardian. His name's Mitch Teitelbaum."

  'Mitch Tuttle . . .?"

  "Teitelbaum."

  'Lemme call up. I'm sorry about these damn dogs." He turned on his heel, slapping his thigh. "Come on, hounds, up wid me. Lesgo." The dogs trotted after him. Prentice could see a metal rod strapped into the man's belt that might be a cattle prod. He walked laboriously over to the guardhouse and reached in to a wallphone.

  Prentice said, "This place is a paranoid's delight." Jeff nodded.

  The guard came back three minutes later shaking his head. "Got no Mitch Teitelbaum here - hasn't been here neither. You maybe on the wrong road."

  Prentice called, "This is the Denver place, right?"

  The guard turned his mirror-glassed eyes toward him. "Surely. But your boy, he ain't here." He turned and walked away with an air of dismissal.

  "Could we talk to someone from the house, the Denvers," Jeff began, "or - "

  The guard turned back to them but kept walking, backwards. "No sir, not today. Mrs. Denver not feeling good. Can't have visitors. She's just not up to it. I alre
ady asked." He turned his back on them again.

  At the guard house he hesitated, then turned toward them, raising the shotgun so its barrel rested casually

  against his right shoulder. Not so casually, really.

  Jeff hissed, "Shit, shit, shit," under his breath as he turned and got into the car. He started the car, backed it up, went slowly back down the road. Making a statement with his slowness: You didn't run us off, I'm leaving because I want to.

  "Look, let's go to the cops," Prentice said, when they got to the edge of the highway. "Mitch was out of his gourd on something. Maybe these assholes are giving it to him. He could end up dead, like Amy."

  Jeff stopped the car on the verge of the old concrete road. Sat there, staring at it. "Fuck the cops!"

  "I know how you feel about them - "

  "Especially LAPD. They're total fuckers. And I swore I wouldn't go to them. I swore to Lonny."

  "That's just stupid, man. What is this, Tom Sawyer and Huck swearing on the bones of a pirate? For Mitch's sake, let's go to the cops."

  Jeff made a long sigh. He coughed, spat dust over the side of the car. Finally, he changed gears so violently Prentice feared for the transmission, and the car bounced up onto the highway. "Okay. Okay, fuck it. Let's try the cops."

  Near Malibu. The Doublekey Ranch.

  Late afternoon. But it was shadowy in Mitch's room; no light on, and the rosebushes around the window took all the sun for themselves. It was quiet, except for the sounds of ripping wallpaper and, briefly, in the distance, the sound of a car - a sports car, by the sound of it changing gears and gunning away.

  Mitch was peeling wallpaper. Starting it with a thumbnail, then peeling it away like the strips of skin

  he'd pulled from his own ribs, a few days before.

  Fucking roses on the wallpaper. Drooping rosebuds between that spiky shape from European shields. Let's see what's under it . . .

  He wasn't really seeing the wallpaper. His head was churning with pictures. Images of hurting himself, cutting himself, the nosing knife in his forearm. He tried to remember how it had started, how he'd got into something that sick. But it was like trying to see through a fogged window. It wouldn't come clear. Not quite.

  Just bits and pieces. The More Man telling him, Basically, it's a mystical discipline. It had sounded heavy, then. Now the phrase sounded totally bogus to him. Mystical discipline, bullshit. That kind of talk was supposed to fake him into seeing himself as some messiah type guy. Christ's scourging and crucifixion immediately preceded his exaltation, The More Man had said. And he'd talked about fakirs who laid on beds of nails and saints who whipped themselves all day. But the secret is, if you do it right, it's not painful! Mostly not. When it does hurt, it only hurts you for a while. Once you're in touch with that higher place, you can feel anything. Heal anything. The Spirit will heal you . . .

  They'd been on some terrace at a beachside condo. The More Man in shades, holding Mitch enthralled. I want to make you a star, Mitch - but that takes a godlike transformatian. To be a real superstar takes total discipline. Discipline need not be painful. It need not hurt - it needs only the courage to explore . . . This body is not your true body, so what you do to it doesn't matter. Your true body is ectoplasmic, Mitch. It's ethereal, a higher thing that cannot be hurt . . .

  And then he'd given Mitch the Probe, just a big silvery knife. And when Mitch hesitated, this girl just

  sort of drifted out onto the terrace and, holy shit, it was Jeff's buddy Tom Prentice's wife, Amy, wearing a bikini, tanned but her body with all these mooncoloured marks on her, and she'd taken the knife (Mitch peeled another long spiral of wallpaper away) and knelt beside him and put her hand on Mitch's thigh - instant hard-on - and, with the other hand started carving her breasts with the knife.

  Mitch wanted to vault over the terrace railing and run, when the blood started guttering along the edge of her bikini top, curling down the round sides of her breasts. He saw the look on her face, the most totally awesome ecstasy and he thought, The bitch is sick . . .

  Until Sam Denver said, "Feel what she is feeling. Touch her arm, and it'll come through to you."

  "She - no. I can't. She'll stab me."

  "No. No she won't, Mitch. I promise you."

  So Mitch reached out and touched her arm - and the feeling went into him like a hot wet tongue running over his nervous system. The feeling expanded from there; it encompassed him with a monstrous pleasure.

  He was feeling what she was feeling, yes, he could even feel the hot, intense places where the knife dug in - where the pleasure was as intense as the flame of a welding torch, you couldn't look at it directly. He could feel her breasts (peeling another strip of wallpaper away) as if they were his own; could feel the blade slicing them an inch deep here and there . . .

  Could feel his pussy getting wet between his legs.

  He wrenched away from her, sick with gender disorientation. But wanting more of the pleasure. Immediately.

  "Give me the knife," he said.

  The next morning, he'd felt wrung out, used up,

  depressed. The pleasures took their toll. The wounds? He couldn't feel them - not back then. He felt fear simmering slowly in a steel pot of emptiness.

  But by the next night he was ready for more . . .

  "Got some other little things I want you to do for me, first," Denver said. "Just to show us your devotion. Your dedication. There's a certain street . . ."

  Now, Mitch wrenched another strip of paper from the wall and ground his teeth, shook himself, though the movement sent shards of pain spinning through him, to drive out the memory of what the More Man had made him do on that street.

  But once you've felt the Head Syrup, The Spirit's Reward, the More Man called it, you'll do anything to get it back.

  You want more, the More Man had said, And it's all right to want more. They try to teach us that we should only want a little as it's doled out to us - but it's a lie, a conspiracy to make us slaves to Society, Mitch. The Spirit wants us to have more . . . and more and more . . .

  The slowed-down sound of electricity crackling. That's what tearing paper sounded like to Mitch, as he tore away another uneven strip of wallpaper. You could smell electricity, a kind of electrical burning smell, when the Reward was coming . . .

  He'd cleared an area of the wall about a yard square, next to the head of his bed. Under it, was just more wallpaper. Another kind of rose pattern. Shit.

  He wondered vaguely if they'd punish him for it. Probably not. They probably didn't expect him to be sane.

  He had no idea why he wanted to strip away the wallpaper.

  On the left side of the flame-shaped patch where

  he'd stripped the outer layer of wallpaper away, the under-paper showed a long, drip-shaped brown stain.

  His hands started to shake, as he tore away more paper on that side, revealing the old wallpaper beneath. More brown stain. Drippy brown stain. Where rainwater had seeped?

  No . . . But he kept clearing it away till he was sure that it was a splash that had come from the bed. You could tell by the way it was splattered outward from the top right of the bed. He pinched a piece of the discoloured underpaper with his finger tips, and brought it to his nose. A smell of rot and iron. It was blood.

  He thought, What'd you expect, dumbshit?

  But he kept stripping away wallpaper, revealing more and more of the splash - and then a place where the underpaper had been breached. Clawmarks, four of them, ran down the wall here, to the plaster beneath. In one spot exposing a crack in the wall. As soon as he'd exposed it, he felt a little puff of cool air from the crack. And a moment later heard the voices.

  And the edge of the crack was outlined in light.

  He bent, and pressed his right eye to the crack (an icepick, there'll be an icepick spike coming through the crack into his eye - no, shake that bullshit off . . .) and squeezed his other eye shut. He could just make out pink shapes moving, in the next room . . . fleshy pink . . . />
  It took a moment for his eye to adjust. Then a piece of the neighbouring room came into focus. A man and a woman fucking on a bed. Fucking without rhythm on the bare mattress. He couldn't make out what they were saying. There was someone else, too, coming into Mitch's narrow field of vision for just a moment, moving to stand by the edge of the bed . . .

  The More Man? He wasn't sure. He could only see an arm, a bit of his side. Then the guy moved back, into the shadows, and there were only the man and woman on the bed.

  The couple on the bed were bleeding. They moved in sex like someone crawling across a desert. Like each movement was a fight with exhaustion. Each thrust a heave and a slump, a weak convulsion that was only technically sex. He could make out the knobs of the guy's vertebrae on his back. He looked so skinny, so used up. Blood runnelled down from a torn ear . . . the ear hanging by a flap . . .

  They were crying, too. Weeping softly, the both of them. "Please," the man on the bed pleaded. "Let us stop. I can't . . . any more . . ."

  "Yes please, please, please," the woman sobbed. "Just let us rest, we'll do a lot more later. A long, rasping, wracking sob. "Please."

  "More," said the man watching from the shadows. "More. More. More. More."

  Then the motion of the two on the bed changed. The whole quality of their movement changed. Mitch tasted burning electricity, shivered with lust for the Head Syrup, as the man and woman begin to giggle - hoarse, moronic giggles. Then they began to hump faster, writhing in puppeted semblance of sexual delight.

  The woman's leg was twitching . . . spasming. Her arm flopping like a live fish dropped on hot coals. The man turned his face from her - Mitch couldn't quite see the guy's face but he could see and hear what was coming out of it: a thick vomit of blood.

  Vomiting blood but still he humped into her.

  Mitch felt the strength go out of his knees. He slid down the wallpaper to the floor.

  Then he was up, lurching across the room, throwing himself at the window frame, smashing at it so that glass flew. But he couldn't get it open, it was completely blocked off . . .

  He stared at the splintery geometries of broken glass on the floor by the wall. He could use a piece of glass to slash his jugular . . .