No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) (8 page)

“Find your
way around okay?” Carr asked as I walked in.

“Yeah,
thanks,” I said as I shifted a stack of folders from the only other chair and
sat down. “I got a call this morning.” He pushed one of the less grimy cups
towards me. It was teaming, so I assumed it was more or less safe to drink
from. “They’re coming to town.”

He didn’t
need to say who ‘they’ were. My interest was piqued, but the feeling from the
previous day crept back in behind my eyes. The bitter coffee did something to
push it down.

“When?”

“Around
one. Said they want to meet for a bite and offer reassurances.”

Wearing a
wire crossed my mind, but I decided against it. What would be the point except
to record their rehearsed spiel? There were similar recordings in storage;
enough to fill days, if you had the time to listen.

“This
place have somewhere up-market enough for them?”

Carr
smirked and shrugged. “No chance, but I don’t reckon they’re the picky sort.”
That was true; each of them had come from nothing in the beginning.

“Would’ve
packed a better set of clothes if I’d known.”

They came
in a black Town Car; about what I expected. Not that a different choice
would’ve changed anything. People around here knew who these men were, even if
they’d never met them. They drove themselves, which spoke to a power of a sort
you don’t normally see. Men like these don’t drive themselves, but they did.

Everyone
knew them.

King was
the tallest. Six-six, easily, but bald and with a face that might have been
battered to pieces and put back together over months.

Qassilda
was next. Dark hair and darker skin, but blue eyes set into almost sunken
sockets. He oiled his hair back and tried to hide a limp; the result of an
accident years ago that no one quite knew the details about.

Carcosa
came last. No one could work out if his name was Italian or Spanish, and he
never said either way. Compared to the other two, he was an albino: creamy skin
and fair hair. His file said his mother was Swedish, and it seemed his name was
about all he’d got from his father.

We met at
the diner where I’d shared coffee with Carr. All formality, we shook hands in
turn and exchanged polite hellos.

Each of
them carried themselves easily enough when they walked inside, nodding to the
waitresses. I saw Qassilda flash a smile. His teeth were a set of pearls,
almost gleaming in the fluorescent light. It was the kind of smile which
promised much, but could threaten more.

We sat in
a booth roughly in the middle of the diner, our three guests opting to sit
facing the door.            A waitress came.

“Special’s
meatloaf with mash potatoes and green beans,” she said. There was a slight slur
to her words, but she wasn’t drunk.

“Sounds
good,” King said and waved a finger at everyone. “Drinks too?” “Coffee,” I
said.

Carr
nodded for the same.

“Scotch,
neat,” Qassilda said. Carcosa asked for the same, while King ordered water.

Squeaky
clean in front of the law, not that I think Carr or me would’ve pulled them
over for a DUI.

The
waitress left with our order and returned with the drinks a few minutes later,
and only when we’d all sipped did they start in on their spiel. Guess the act
of sharing a drink made us all friends for the next while.

“Terrible,”
King offered. “I know things like this happen, but it doesn’t make it any less
shocking.”

He was so
good, you could almost believe him.

“Can we
ask how far along the investigation is?” Qassilda asked over the rim of his
glass. “At this point, there’s not a lot to tell beyond what’s already been
printed,” I said. About the standard response, which they would understand to
be stonewalling.

“We will,
of course, cooperate in any way,” Carcosa said. “Really, anything you need from
us, we can give you.”

For a
certain class of people, I knew what he said would be completely true, but they
couldn’t give me what I needed. I didn’t think they’d agree to admit any
wrongdoing.

The meal
passed like that, more or less. They would offer empty platitudes because it was
expected of them. False promises of assistance and help; even the occasional
joke was cracked, and in those moments, I was almost able to forget who I was
sitting with in that diner.

Each of
them had that effect; an easygoing way that disarmed you, no matter how hard
you tried to remember to be wary. If I didn’t know better, I might have said
they put something in the food or drink.

We hung
around our cars afterwards, just chatting about nothing at all. As they climbed
into theirs, Carcosa turned to face me.

“Do you
think they were relieved?” “Sorry?”

“After all
the things they say were done to them, I wonder if they welcomed it…the fire, I
mean. Those kids.”

I didn’t
know what to say, and I think he saw it on my face.

“It was a
way out, after all…they just had to let go when the fire and smoke took them.”

He was
voicing what many people thought; Wade had intimated something similar to me
before leaving. That didn’t make it any easier to hear, though, because they
would’ve welcomed freedom a lot more than death. But then, death is its own
kind of release, and I suspected deep down inside that she and Carcosa were
probably right on some level. At what point does suffering make you crave for
death?

I don’t
think any of us can understand that.

Carr and I
watched them drive away. The sheriff spat when they were out of sight, and the
gob landed with a wet splat on the concrete. I suspect he’d been saving it for
some time, letting the shit build up in the back of this throat. As for me, I
felt the need for a shower in something caustic that would strip the outer two
or three layers of skin from my body. Burning my clothes also felt like an
option.

“What
now?” Carr asked before hawking again. “Now we keep looking into things.”

He nodded.
“I’ve been going over the files we have and I’ll send more over to you later…what
we need is a witness, someone tangible.”

Only Carr,
myself, and Wade knew about that — at least as far as we were aware. Carr said
he’d picked them up not long after the fire crews left the scene, when he was
hanging back for the medical examiner to finish removing the bodies.

A
collection of tracks had led away from the house. He’d been able to follow them
later, when the scene was clear. He was the only one looking; the others were far
too taken up with what was in front of them.

“They
turned into prints from bare feet after about a mile,” he said, still chewing
on a wad of something he worked up in his mouth. “Found a pair of sneakers in a
bush.”

Someone
got away, and they were out there in the desert. God knew where, but Carr was
looking.

“Even if
we find them, there’s no guarantee he or she will be able to tell us anything
useful.” “True, but that’s not the point.”

“You think
those three would be stupid enough to show up at a place like that?”

The idea
was ludicrous. “Their names might have come up,” I argued. I swallowed what
came up in my throat, deciding not to imitate him. “What do you think the
chances are?”

He worked
his shoulders, rolling them first forward and then back. “Hard to say; no way
of knowing what kind of shape they’re in, but they get worse every day nothing
turns up.”

There was
a clock running somewhere, I just didn’t realize how fast its hands were
turning.

Carr left
me a box of files to look over for the rest of the day while he drove out into
the country to keep looking for our runaway. I offered to go with him, but he
declined.

“You’ve
got more of an eye for the paper shit,” he said around his cigarette. “Don’t
get me wrong, man, I’m sure you can handle yourself out there, but I work best
alone.”

I wasn’t
ready to argue with him, though I didn’t relish looking through a box full of
dead ends. As soon as I started reading the files over, a deep sense of
frustration started to tie itself together in my chest.

In theory,
I was looking for anything that was missing from our knowledge; something the
investigators had overlooked before. I knew I wasn’t going to find it — the act
was more to satisfy curiosity and to be absolutely sure.

By the
look of the files, Carr had been working on gathering what he could on King,
Qassilda, and Carcosa for quite a while. The notations on the documents also
suggested they’d been passed up and down the chain from him to the Bureau, from
about the time he’d arrived in town.

I wasn’t
surprised, but it made me wonder how much Wade might be keeping from me. I
started to think about how all of this could be off the books. She could square
whatever she needed; she’d been in her position long enough to be given wide
latitude when it came to the job.

None of it
gave me real pause. I kept reading, burning through a pack of cigarettes I
bought from the machine outside. A pain in my neck made me stand and stretch,
and then I saw the dog from the night before, one paw held up in mid-step as it
caught me looking. I thought maybe it looked thinner than before, if that was
possible. Even from where I was, I could see its ribs sticking out along its
body.

I was
thinking about trying to leave it some food when my phone buzzed, vibrating
itself towards of the bedside table.

“Carr?”

“I’ve got
him,” he gasped, panting like he’d run a mile or more hard. I heard something
shoving in the background.

“Where are
you?”

“Doesn’t
matter. You know where my place is?”

He’d told
me before, and I’d written it down on the back of a napkin. I fished it out of
my coat pocket and read the slightly smudged ink. “I can find it.”

“One
hour.”

Carr’s
house was rustic; an old wooden bungalow outside of town. When I pulled up, he
was leaning on the porch rail, smoking.

Backlit by
a single light, he could’ve come out of a Western or something. He wore an old
sheepskin jacket the color of tobacco and milky coffee. I noticed his hand was
trembling slightly as he brought his cig up to his mouth.

“He’s
inside,” he said, grinding the half-finished smoke under his heel and lighting
another one. “He’s not as bad as I thought he would be, but he’s not great
either.”

“How bad?”

He lit up
and handed me one. “Bad enough, but I got him warm now and some food in him…once
he settled down.”

There were
red streaks around his neck where his skin was abraded. “He do that?” “Kicked
me in the balls too.” Carr picked at the marks. “Can’t hold it against him.”

The kid
couldn’t have been more than eighteen.

Wrapped up
in a blanket on Carr’s bed, he looked smaller than he was. He had dark hair cut
short at the sides, but longer on top, the kind of modern cut kids his age
liked to show off. He was good-looking, which was probably why he’d ended up
where he did. I was starting to get a feel for the kind of people we were
dealing with.

“We need
to get him deposed,” Carr hissed through his teeth.

“Tall
order; he probably needs a shrink to look him over first. Did he say anything
when you

found
him?”

Carr
squelched his tongue between his teeth. “Not much that made sense…just to kill
him because of what they’d filled him up with. Whatever the fuck that means.”

“Jesus.
Yeah…can we get him out of here?”

“None of
my people can be trusted,” he said as he pulled the door closed. “Just you and
me.”

I should’ve
mentioned the team that was supposed to be following me. I wanted to, but even
then, something stopped me. Maybe I was trying to keep him out of the loop for
his own good; it’s just the sort of bullshit excuse the job can teach you to
believe.

“I’ll pack
up at the hotel and meet you on the road out of town. You got anything you need
to take with you?”

Carr shook
his head. “Okay then, one hour?” “One hour.”

The lights
wouldn’t turn on in my room; it was my only warning.

A shape
came at me out of the darkness, arms reaching, and it tackled my waist. I
pushed into it and we fell into the black, landing hard on the floor. If I’d
been able to reach my gun I could’ve ended the fight, but he clawed at my chest
and face, struggling for purchase.

My knee found
his gut, sinking in just above his groin, but it barely slowed him. A fist
cracked into the side of my throat and I gagged, choking for air. I balled my
fist and smashed it into his temple, and I felt his head snap sideways. Two of
my fingers broke, but I didn’t really notice.