Borderlands 5 Read online

  “Don’t know, Eddie,” Gramps whispered, barely opening his mouth. “I hoped by telling stories about him, it’d keep him away for good.”

  Gramps fell back into silence.

  Eddie wanted to ask Gramps what he was talking about. When had he seen the bear before? It didn’t even look like a bear, so how did he know it was Chumbly? Why did he not want the bear to come back? What had happened?

  The thing inside the bottle spun around a few more times, then disappeared in a glint of firelight and a ripple of wine.

  Edward brushed his teeth in the bathroom mirror and thought about his dream.

  You can’t kill me, ’cause I’m already inside you.

  Memories of Gramps and his childhood, listening to the old man tell his Chumbly Bear stories by the fireplace, flitted through his mind like a broken, too-bright strobe light, the images uneven, unnatural.

  Wine and shadows, he thought. Something dancing in the bottle. Something I can’t kill. But I do not want to kill it. I don’t know how I know that, but I do.

  Slipknot hunkered down in Edward’s mind and listened. Just … listened. Being the bear had been fun, sure. But being Slipknot was oh so much better. In every way. It did not want to lose that. Not now. Not after all this time.

  Edward leaned over, spit into the sink, rinsed, stood back up … and caught a flicker in the upper right-hand corner of the mirror. Something black. Churning. Twisting. Mulching.

  Dancing.

  Slipknot could not resist a titter.

  More memories surfaced—these ones like old, forgotten pictures in a photo album, like the dregs of a long-cold cup of coffee sliding down the throat.

  Edward grimaced.

  Gramps had shot himself in the face with a double-barrelled shotgun two months after that last Chumbly story when he’d been scared by the return of the bear … or whatever the hell it was … moving around in the wine bottle. Both parents gone before he was old enough to walk—father killed in a car accident, mother run off with another man—he’d been given over to his grandfather, so little Eddie had been the one to find poor Gramps, brains smeared all over the fireplace and oak table, blood splashes streaking across the wine bottle and ceiling, dripping. Dripping like the shadows sometimes dripped in his dreams.

  A voice from the bottle, a swirling in the boy’s ears, weaving a tapestry of shadows across thought, whispered gently in his ear as he gazed down at Gramps’ cooling corpse: You can’t kill me …

  Edward had screamed then, and run out of the house shouting for help.

  But that was over twenty years ago.

  The flickering thing in the high corner of the mirror spread itself out and pulsed in time with Edward’s heartbeat. Edward stared, transfixed. The toothbrush dropped from his limp fingers. Then he heard the voice again, this time so close to his ear he imagined he could feel the slight rush of air as the sentence formed, each word like a crumbling tombstone half-in, half-out of the shadow of a tree, caught between this world and the next: I’m inside you.

  Then the walls dissolved in Edward’s vision, and he was no longer in his bathroom …

  “Shoot the boy,” the man said.

  Philip Curtis flinched. “I can’t, Smithy, he’s my only son.” The gun wavered, came down by the man’s side. “How do you expect me to—”

  “Shoot him or I’ll shoot you both.” Cold fact. “But Smithy, there’s gotta be—”

  “No, there ain’t nothin’ else you can do,” Smithy interrupted, raising both arms, gun in each hand, and pointed them at Philip and his son. “You got yourself into this, now you gotta do what you can to get out. And if you’re thinkin’ you can squeeze off a shot in my direction before I kill you both … well, if I was you, I’d stop thinkin’ like that, Phil. It ain’t gonna happen. You know it ain’t. Now FUCKING shoot him. I’m countin’ to five.

  “One.”

  Sweat popped out on Philip’s forehead. His son, James Curtis—just married, new father—shook his head back and forth, eyes glued to the guns in Smithy’s hands, one part of him praying Smithy would pull the triggers and just end it all, the other part praying his father would raise his own pistol and at least try to save their lives.

  “Two.”

  “Look, Smithy, I’m sorry, alright!? We gotta be able to work this out. Why are you doing this? Why do you have to—”

  “Three.”

  Philip Curtis started to cry. James’ insides clenched tight as a drum, heart lurching in his throat. Philip raised the gun to his son’s face.

  “Dad, what are you DOING? Shoot HIM! At least TRY, for God’s sake!”

  “Four.” Smithy smiled, waited a beat, took a breath, and moved the muscles in his face that would form the word “five.”

  Edward, tears glistening in his eyes, fell over in his bathroom, bashing the side of his face against the tub and curling up into a ball. He cupped his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut, mouthed the word along with James.

  “Five.”

  Smithy only got half the word out before Philip’s bullet ripped through James’ skull, spraying thick clumps of brain and blood against the nearby trees.

  James crumpled.

  Philip dropped the gun, fell to his knees, head in hands, sobbing. Smithy turned around, silent, and made his way through the forest, back to his car.

  Edward opened his eyes, the fluorescent light of the bathroom too bright, blinding. He said one word, the sound dropping like stone from between his dry, cracked lips: “Dad.”

  Slipknot waited until Edward had gone to bed before slipping out again from behind the bathroom mirror.

  It would rend this one like it had the last, and the one before that, and on down through history. Sometimes it wished it wasn’t restricted to just one family, that it could fuck with others, turn their lives inside out, torment them in whatever ways caught its fancy that generation. But rules were rules, and these were rules of the universe, so there was no one to appeal to.

  Smithy had been a longtime friend of the Curtis’, and was Slipknot’s first and only human host. In its true form—the form it was in now, that of shadow—it was not as limited as when it was the bear or the human. It had forgotten the other forms it’d assumed/created over the many, many years with the Curtis’, but it knew, and never allowed itself to lose sight of the fact that they were all, essentially, human creations.

  Guilt took all forms, and Slipknot’s was only to portray them. Though, in its boredom of late, Slipknot had deigned to help things along their way a little. After all, as there was no one to appeal to about the rules, it stood to reason that there was no one to answer to, either. Edward often dreamed about his guilt, and Slipknot fed off it, intertwined it with the rest of the family’s, splashed it across the ceiling and let it drip down. Slipknot increased the tentative connection with Edward as he slept, and listened hard … Edward was dreaming of it again.

  And Slipknot was hungry.

  In the dream, Edward was taking his twelve-year-old son, Stephen, to a hockey game for his twelfth birthday.

  “Woo-hoo! Go Canucks!” Stephen shouted, his little boy’s voice lost in the roar of the crowd.

  The noise was driving spikes into Edward’s brain. The pounding headache/near-migraine was threading through his skull, chipping bits off, and by Christ he wished Stephen would just watch the game and shut the fuck up.

  “Dad, did you see Ohlund rip that shot through Hasek!? Holy cats!

  What a blast he’s got! Incredible! Dad, did ya see it!? Dad?”

  Edward gritted his teeth, more cracks in his head. The Canucks had scored on the Buffalo Sabres and this Vancouver crowd was going nuts—a jackhammer at the base of his skull. He’d never had a headache this bad in his life. He’d taken aspirin for it before they’d left for the game, but—

  “Ha-HO!” Stephen leaped out of his seat with the rest of the capacity crowd and started clapping and hollering. The Canucks had popped another one in. “Dad, Bertuzzi roofed one! Did ya see
it!? Wow!”

  Shut the fuck up, he thought. Just SHUT UP. Yes, I fucking saw it. Edward leaned forward in his seat with his head in his hands, rubbing his temples.

  “You okay, Dad?”

  “Leave me alone, Stephen,” Edward said, eyes shut, a tear slipping down his cheek from the pain. “Just … watch the game and let me be for a bit, okay?”

  “But what’s wrong?” Stephen shouted over the noise of the crowd. I knew the little shit wouldn’t shut his trap. He can’t just fucking leave me alone, can he? He has to know what’s wrong. He has to shout the question right in my goddamned ear. Has to—

  “Dad, can you hear me!? Are you alright!?”

  Edward knew he was close to snapping. Teetering on the brink.

  One more word and he knew—“Dad, is it your head? Is it—”

  Slipknot pushed just then … only a little bit, but he pushed. Just enough.

  Edward swung around in his seat, lifted his son up to his face by the arms. Stephen dangled like a broken puppet, eyes wide, suddenly terrified. “Yes, Stephen, my FUCKING head is killing me, you little bastard!” The words came from his mouth, but he had no idea where the thoughts that had formed them came from. “My head is pounding like hell, and your constant shouting and bellowing in my fucking ear isn’t exactly helping, ALRIGHT!?”

  “B-B-But … Dad, I—”

  Slipknot shoved a bit more and grinned as the words tumbled from Edward’s mouth. “You were an accident, anyway, Stephen,” Edward said, and dropped his son back into his seat, utter disdain on his face.

  The Canucks came close again, hitting a post, and the drill probed deeper into Edward’s mind, stirring Slipknot up even more.

  A big, fat Sabres fan—a Mike Peca jersey pasted to his sweaty back—leaned over in his seat one aisle up from theirs and threatened Edward, telling him to lay off the kid. Edward ignored him.

  Stephen’s face had gone slack at the word ‘accident,’ but Edward simply could not stop. “We didn’t want you. No one wants you. You were an accident. Just a fucking stupid accident.”

  Edward felt something release from inside him. The headache started to fade, slowly, in increments. Waves of nausea passed over him and he fell clumsily into his seat. He started to cry.

  The Canucks slammed their third straight goal through Hasek and the crowd erupted. Stephen remained seated, staring at nothing, wishing he were dead.

  Edward woke from the dream, sweating, head pounding. His sheets were soaked through. Breath coming in raspy, choking gulps, he looked up to the ceiling and saw the shadows stretching themselves along the ceiling again, pulsing in time with his breathing. He had only ever seen this in dream before, but now it was real. Dripping onto his sheets. Slithering between the folds of his crumpled quilt. The hushed whisper, I’m inside you, slinking through his mind like a back-alley whore. You can’t kill me ’cause I’m already inside you.

  The shadows seeped under the covers and into Edward’s pores. Flitting images and vague feelings of broken promises and forgotten dreams: the back of dad’s head splashed across trees, the dull thump of his body hitting the leafy ground; Chumbly twisting in his red wine prison; Gramps with his brains splattered all over the oak table and mantelpiece; Edward’s wife leaving him after two years of marriage, lurid scenes of the infidelity that had caused it; Stephen at the hockey game, the flat, stone look of worthlessness, of being loved by no one. “I do not want to kill you,” Edward mumbled, dream becoming reality, the words untrue, but practiced, ingrained nonetheless. Guilt tightened, became a machine, thrust forward, immutable. Parts of it became a hard, cold stone in his chest. Other parts swam through his veins, burning, congealing, solidifying. Frozen Pompeii, an ashen statue of grief and guilt.

  Then Slipknot told Edward his name.

  “Slipknot,” Edward whispered, the beginning sibilant like a razor deep and hard across his tongue, the word itself a poisonous miasma drifting through his psyche, ripping out memories like talons tearing at clumps of soil.

  When the pain had subsided and only a dull throb remained, Edward slept, and dreamed about Stephen.

  Stephen walked through the front door of his house to see his father standing in the hall, a gun pointed at his son’s head. He dropped his overnight bag on the floor and tried to think of something to say.

  Edward felt the knot tighten. He was sweating from everywhere a human being can sweat from, his entire body drenched, the exposed parts—arms, hands, face—glistening. His whole frame trembled, but his gun hand was steady. He could feel Slipknot racing around inside him, shooting random images of betrayal, regret, and loss through his mind. With each image, each impression, the trigger bent back that much further.

  In his son’s face, he saw Gramps, saw his father, saw himself … and squeezed a little more.

  He tried to say he was sorry, that Stephen wasn’t an accident, that he’d wanted him, loved him, still loved him, would always love him. But Slipknot pulled tighter, securing itself against the accumulated guilt/ betrayal of the centuries before him. More images seared synapses, burned grooves through rational thought. Images two, three hundred years old of people Edward did not know, but knew were his blood. Their faces sliced through his will, their deeds crushing it to dust.

  The hammer of the gun cocked back slowly as the pressure on the trigger increased. Shades of grey wrapped in shadows in the shape of tears rolled down Edward’s cheeks.

  Slipknot smiled, and waited patiently for the back of the boy’s head to open up all over the screen door.

  Finally, Stephen found words. Words he had no right saying. Words he didn’t understand, and had no idea from where they’d come. “Pull the slipknot, dad.” His eyes were locked with his father’s, somehow, perhaps through the song of their blood, sharing the visions. “Pull it.” Some rules are universal, and with no one to appeal to, they sometimes change on their own, or bend to the will of one stronger. “Pull it. Pull the knot.”

  Edward flinched at the words—you can’t fucking kill me

  —shook more violently yet, his gun hand finally becoming affected.

  The disease within him screamed—I’m already inside you

  —pressed harder at Edward, but Edward understood his son’s words, and he let it all go.

  He just let. It.

  Go.

  Stephen watched his father raise the gun to his own head, the hand holding the weapon now steady again. Something flickered momentarily beneath the skin of Edward’s face, something black and seething, something trying like mad to get out.

  Stephen Curtis closed his eyes.

  Magic Numbers

  GENE O’NEILL

  Gene O’Neill’s stories have appeared in a wide range of genre magazines from SF to crime fiction. The story which follows does not easily fall into any such neat category … which is exactly the way we like it.

  TODAY, THE NUMBER IS SEVEN.

  Despite common belief, late night sounds are not really muffled in heavy fog, quite the opposite: A siren shrieks sharply in the distance, a dog howls mournfully, nearby music is crystal clear, and a car roars by on Jefferson Street, its tires making sticking sounds on the wet pavement. Forgetting about the fog creatures, you stop, cock your head, and enjoy the night sounds, watching trails of mist swirl about your legs, which reminds you of a neighbor’s gray kitten that arches its back, puffs up, and rubs against your ankles.

  You almost expect to hear—

  Instead of the anticipated purr, you hear a gasp of surprise as three figures materialize out of the fog like black phantoms, their faces momentarily startled by your sudden appearance. Then quickly their expressions turn blank; and for a moment they stare at you in dead silence.

  Your heart thumps rapidly and you begin to hyperventilate.

  But thinking quickly, you extend all five fingers in the left pocket of your coat; and in the right pocket, you extend two fingers, the tips pressed down into the stolen silk panties at the bottom. The number seven restores your co
urage, your breathing and heartbeat quickly returning to normal.

  “Whatcha doin’ here, man?” the short, stocky one on the left asks in a deep voice thick with menace. He’s wearing a Raider’s windbreaker, the collar pulled up against the misty chill, his hostile black eyes peering at you directly.

  For a moment your legs weaken, lose tone, but you repeat the number in your head: Seven, seven, seven.

  “Yeah, white boy, whatcha doin’ here ‘cross Jeff’son?” the big guy in the middle says slowly, his speech softer, less measured, but the sentence full of implied threat. There is a sharp meanness to his features. And he is indeed huge, his shoulders wide, his white football jersey bearing the black number 66; but there is easily enough chest for another 6, which makes you shudder.

  The guy on the right is wiry, his partially hooded gaze making him appear sleepy, except his speech is hyper and jumpy. “M-m-may-bb—” He stamps his foot, which breaks the stutter, “Maybe this white boy t-t-that Lil Bo Peep dude, Leroy.”

  Oh, no, you think, closing your eyes for a second, hoping one of the fog creatures will swoop down and swallow them up. Seven, seven, seven.

  You blink, but they are still there.

  “Yeah, whatta bout that, boy?” the big guy, Leroy, asks. “You awful funny-lookin’. Now, you ain’t that dude from the newspaper, one been sneakin’ and prowlin’ ’round over here, scarin’ all of the womenfolks, is you?”

  “This little sucker him, alright,” the one on the left butts in, before you can think of any answer.

  “How you know, Sidney?” Leroy asks, challenging the husky guy’s statement.

  “‘Cuz, my lady friend, Clorinda, she done tole me what the muthafucka look like, man.” He glances at you disparagingly, then nods his head. “Dude ripped off some of her stuff when he peepin’ in her backyard last week, but her dog, Spike, he starts barkin’, and she see him ’fore he do his Carl Lewis outta there, you know what I’m sayin’?” Cautiously, you push the panties deeper into your right jacket pocket with the extended two fingers, hoping they won’t think to search you.