Dread Locks (15 page)

He walked over to a deep, cluttered closet, rummaged through it, and finally pulled out an old, rusty microscope. He blew off some dust and wiped the lens with his shirt. “Live long enough and you have one of everything,” he said. “I haven’t had to use this baby since some rich kook hired me to engrave Shakespearean sonnets on grains of sand during the seventies. What you might call microsculpture.”

Mike picked up a tiny steel pick and pointed it at the broken edge of the wrist, scraping off a small sample. He picked up one of the crumbs with a pair of tweezers and put it on a glass slide, then slipped the slide under the microscope. Peering through the eyepiece, he quickly twirled a knob to focus it.

“Hmm ...” he said. I could see his forehead crinkling with thought. “Hmm,” he said again. He straightened up and turned to me. “I’m no geologist, but I know this is something you don’t see every day. Take a look.”

I bent over the microscope. I squinted and could clearly see the tiny little flake of stone, now magnified to the size of a boulder. Light glinted off the nearly translucent edges, creating a little rainbow effect.

“It almost doesn’t look like stone,” Mike said. “The structure is very unusual—it doesn’t look like a mineral matrix; it looks more like a cellular structure.”

I straightened up and looked at him. “Petrified flesh ... like petrified wood?”

“Flesh doesn’t petrify. It rots.”

He picked up the stone hand again, along with the large magnifying glass, and held it under the bright light on the worktable. He examined the back of the hand, looking closely at the texture around the knuckles, the wrinkles in the skin. “I don’t know who the sculptor was, but this is the most lifelike work I have ever seen.”

Then he turned the hand over and let out a low whistle. He looked at me, looked at the hand again, then to me once more. He saw something. Something major. I could tell, because his expression was hard, but also a little bit frightened.

“Tell me about this friend of yours,” he said.

“In a minute,” I told him. “First, tell me what you see.”

He considered it for another moment, then said, “It’s something I have never seen in a sculpture before. I can’t even imagine how it was done—or why.”

“What is it?” I could feel my curls begin to twitch.

He held the hand and the magnifying glass closer to me so I could see. His arthritic fingers shook. They hadn’t been shaking before. Even though I didn’t want to look, I forced myself.

“Do you see?” he asked, holding the lens over the tips of the stone fingers.

I nodded, unable to speak.

The stone hand had fingerprints.

15

“HERE, KITTY KITTY”

I
told the sculptor everything I knew about Tara, and everything I suspected. He took me far more seriously than I thought he would. He said he’d go do some research on his own.

It was past eight o’clock when I got home—only I didn’t go home. I knew my parents would get on my case for being out and not letting them know where I was ... that is, if they even noticed I was gone at all. I passed my house and headed straight for Tara’s.

All her lights were out. Either she could see in the dark, or no one was home. For all I knew she
could
see in the dark and had eyes in the back of her head. Anything was possible now. Anything. I didn’t like the feeling. I was used to a world where a clear line was drawn between improbable and impossible ... and losing that line was like having no guardrail on Darwin’s Curve. There was nothing to keep me from falling off the edge.

I walked down the path to her front door, then turned the knob and let myself in. Even though the house was completely dark, I had a sense of where everything was. I didn’t need the light to move effortlessly around obstacles; I was tuned in their presence. It was weird.... No,
I
was weird. I had a ser beyond sight now, and I knew instinctively that my hair h some new sensory organ. They were
of
me, and yet
not
me: foreign and familiar at once, like tubular cancer growth inoperable and rooted so deep in my nervous system, there v no telling where I ended and they began.

Tara wasn’t in the house. Instead, I found her out ba swimming laps in the moonless darkness. I stood there, root to the spot, waiting for her to acknowledge me, but she didr She knew I was there—I could sense it, but still she swam. It v like this wordless communication was taking place between that I was only dimly aware of. A part of me was speaking to b in a language I didn’t know. Yet.

Finally, she stopped swimming, and came over to the ec where I stood. She looked straight at me, but in the darknes saw nothing but the shadows of her eye sockets. I’m sure s knew that.

“Want to come in for a swim, Baby Baer?” she said. “The w ter’s perfect.”

“Perfect like the Mediterranean Sea?” I asked.

She chuckled. “The Mediterranean Sea was never perfe That’s just a myth.”

“A myth ... like you?”

“I was never a myth,” she said. “Although people tend to be lieve I am.”

“And what about Perseus?” I asked. “Was he a myth?”

She didn’t even flinch at the question. “Oh, Perseus was re all right—but he wasn’t quite the hero legends make him out to be. He didn’t cut off my head, for instance, as you’ve probably figured out. Sure, he tried, but he couldn’t resist looking into my eyes—beheving himself too powerful to be turned to stone. One look at me, and it was over. He turned to stone with his sword still in his hand. I was so angry, it took only seconds—it can happen that fast, if you’re angry enough.” Then she smiled. “He was a handsome statue. That is, until you smashed him with a baseball bat.”

I suppressed a shiver. “You’re supposed to be ugly.”

“More lies. Am I ugly to you?”

“No ... but what you do ... turning people to stone—it’s impossible....”

She pulled herself out of the water, grabbed her robe, and wrapped herself in it. Her hair, I noticed, didn’t even appear wet. “Is it so impossible? If you put a person in the ground, they turn to dirt. If you put them in a fire, they turn to ash.”

“That’s different....”

“Not really. I simply do it in a different way than nature does. I harden their hearts; I harden their minds. Their flesh has no choice but to turn to stone as well.”

I stood there, trying to keep the world from spinning as I spoke to her. Nothing seemed real anymore. In the darkness nothing even seemed solid. “Why?” I asked. “Why would you want to turn people to stone? What purpose could it possibly serve?”

She looked at me as if she didn’t understand the question. “It’s just ... what I do.”

“You mean to say you just do it because you can?”

“No! I do it because I
must.
Humans must breathe; humans must eat or they die. And I must turn flesh to stone. Every time someone hardens—every time someone’s skin goes cold and solid from my gaze, I grow stronger,” she said, with a grin that I could feel more than see.

“Why here? Why our town?”

“Do you really have to ask? Look at your school—look at all of your rich friends. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that wealth hardens people. Turning them to stone is easy—they’re already halfway there before I start.”

She was right. If love of money is the root of all evil, then having money is the root of all boredom. When you can have everything, you find there’s nothing you really want. When you can do anything, you find there’s nothing you really care to do. You become lazy. Life feels like a boulder you don’t want to lift. How much would it have taken to turn me to stone, if Tara had wanted to when she first met me?
Halfway there.
I knew exactly what she meant.

Tara looked at me. Even though I couldn’t see her eyes, I could feel her looking deep, deep into the very center of my being. I felt myself being examined, and probed, and weighed.

“I know all this is hard for you, but it will soon get easier. I think you’re ready.”

I didn’t want to ask the question, but I had to. Even though I already knew the answer, I had to hear it from her lips.

“Ready for what?”

And, as usual, her answer surprised me. “I’m lonely, Parker. You have no idea how lonely. I’ve been around the world twelve dozen times, and I’ve blended into any culture I chose. Yet in all that time, in all those places, no matter how many people surrounded me, I’ve always been alone.”

“What about your sisters?”

She laughed. It was an ugly sound. “Typical dysfunctional family. I can’t stand them.”

I had to let out a sick little chuckle myself. Three flesh-turning Gorgon sisters. What could be more dysfunctional than that?

“I was alone by choice,” she continued. “The people around me meant nothing to me. Looking at them was like looking at ... food. I never realized what I was missing, until I met you.”

I didn’t know whether to be flattered or terrified. “What’s so special about me?”

She shrugged. “I guess you were just in the right place at the right time. I was ready for a true friend, and you were there.” Then she giggled. “Or maybe I just like your eyes.”

“My eyes don’t turn people to stone,” I told her.

She whispered, “... They could if you let them.” She stood there a moment longer, then she turned and went inside without looking back.

“But ... but why would I want to? Why would I
ever
want to?” She gave no answer. Instead, she closed the door, leaving me alone in the dark yard.

Another sleepless night. I suspected I was no longer a creature that needed sleep. I was so much like her already. I hated it; I loved it. I felt strong, but I felt powerless. What was I? Who I now? Tara had given me the gift and curse of being like h immortal—but at what price? Would I now be a predator, her?

I tried to reason with myself, rationalizing to make all easier to swallow. Perhaps I didn’t have to be like her. Perl there were other ways to satisfy a medusan hunger. The n moved on ever slower, until I lost patience with it, and sudd I felt myself PUSHING time, making it move at a pace pleased me, until dawn finally broke.

My decision was made now. I knew I was already past point of turning back, because Tara had already changed n but I would not live like her, growing strong by turning hun to stone.

As I walked down the stairs, I could feel a tingly lift in step. I felt more alive than I had ever felt in my life. I was co pletely tuned in to my surroundings. I felt like I belonged exa where I was, doing exactly what I was doing. It was a feeli had never experienced in my life. It
comes from accepting
what
are,
I heard a voice say in my head. Accepting
what you’ve becom
could tell you it was Tara’s voice in my head, but I’d be lying, cause I knew the voice was my own.

I walked to the kitchen, my tightly curled locks picking up vibrations of everything around me. Walls were flat and feat less waves; the upholstered chairs were soft hills in the plane steel-and-glass coffee table was a sharp, angular spike.

The houseplants, though, were different. They were aliv could feel the life force coming from them. I moved closer inhaled it, drank it in. It was delicious, but empty. It was like smelling a grilled steak, but not being able to eat it. Only now did I realize how hungry I was, but it wasn’t food I was hungry for.

I knew at once that no one was home. Other than the plants, I could feel no other life force in the house.... No, that wasn’t true.... In a distant room, near the back of the house, under Katrina’s bed, I was aware of a small life.

Nasdaq.

I wanted the cat to come to me, but I wondered if he would. Would he sense that I had changed? Would he hiss at me, the hair on his back standing on end? Would he recognize me for what I was?

“Nasdaq ...” I said softly.

He heard—even from so far away, he heard. I knew he would. I felt him stretch and stand up. The day before yesterday, I knew, he would never have been able to hear me, and even if he had, he would have ignored me. But not today.

I could feel Nasdaq approaching, down the hall. I was becoming irresistible. Like Tara.

“Here, kitty kitty,” I said, snickering at the old line. Nasdaq padded around the corner and slinked into the room, rubbing the side of his body against my leg. He purred, delighted, longing to be closer to me. To be enfolded in my arms.

I obliged. I leaned over and put my hands under his stomach and chest, supporting him as I lifted him to my lap. “Hi, Nasdaq,” I said pleasantly, looking at him. “You like me like this? Yes, you do. I can see it. I can see it in your eyes.”

I was looking directly into his eyes now, and he didn’t look away. I could feel his muscles stiffen slightly, but he didn’t resist.

I could feel the moment that I triggered the change. It was like flicking a switch deep within the cat’s brain. It would take time for his entire body to be transformed, but the damage was already done. There was no stopping it now.

I found that my vision had gone dark, and as it came back, I became aware of the hardening body of the cat in my lap. A stiffening of bone, then ligaments. A seizing of flesh. Nasdaq turned to stone while I held him, from the center out. He didn’t seem to care. Neither did I. I felt neither pity nor guilt for what I had done. And the decision to do it—was it a decision at all? The desire to turn him to stone had been as irresistible as a sneeze, or scratching an overwhelming itch. Having done it, I felt stronger now ... but only a little. It was the slightest taste of power, and gave me an appetite for more. I put the stone cat down beside the fireplace, already knowing that my hunger wouldn’t stop there. The stone-turning urge had grabbed me now, and as much as I tried to deny it, something as tiny as a cat was not nearly enough to satisfy it.