Ravenous Ghosts (13 page)

Then she shrieked as it began to burrow beneath her skin.

My immediate instinct was to run like hell. I'm sure I might even have tried had the kid not turned the book on me.

"
And you," he said and I felt as if my guts had turned to ice crystals. "You are another casualty of the mistakes of others. They will only silence you, nothing more."

I shook my head so hard I heard my neck crack but I knew what was going to happen just as I had known there was something different, terribly different about the kid and his strange little paperback book.

It lay flat in his open palms in a V-shape, framing his chin as he pursed his lips and blew. The page fluttered and exhaled a quartet of tiny black exes with barbed edges. They came at me like angry wasps and then I made the last sound ever to pass between my lips. I screamed loud and hoarse. The perfect opening for the symbols to enter my head. They tickled and hurt the back of my throat as if I'd swallowed powdered glass and I retched. Silently.

The alarmed cry this invasion inspired never came. My mouth was open but nothing emerged except hot, panicked breath.

I got to my feet, both hands clawing at my throat, feeling the rippling beneath the skin there, horrified and terrified all at once but knowing I had been lucky.

Lucky that the kid had spared me from the fate he was meting out to Daisy.

She was tearing at her skin, flaps of it were hanging loosely from her face as she spun round and round like a lunatic as the kid blew more and more of the little black symbols at her.

They were ripping her apart from the inside and while I had been struck dumb, Daisy
's guttural cries of agony made the floor tremble.

I staggered backward, my back colliding painfully with the booth where just moments before Jed MacLean and his crew had been chowing down on some of Ralphie
's Prime Rib.

The end, when it happened, took only seconds and when they tell you in novels that time seemed to stretch into an eternity you
'd better believe it. Those last few moments were long enough for a man to lose his faith and turn old and gray.

The kid snapped the book closed but by then there was nothing more he needed to do.

Daisy had clawed most of her makeup and the two-shades-lighter skin off with it and yet the little black symbols continued to slice and tear at the exposed flesh. There was a sudden ripping noise and a long pink thing wriggled from her mouth, slapping against the counter before sliding to the floor.

I moaned and in my head I heard it, even though I hadn
't uttered a sound.

Daisy spun wildly as a small black S-shape scissored open her left eye sending a jet of milky fluid into the air. She stumbled backward and rammed into Ralphie, who had been standing pallid-faced and paralyzed with fear as his boss was torn to pieces by the kid
's symbols. Ralphie gave a startled yelp as Daisy's massive bulk knocked him off balance. His arms pin wheeled crazily before he was sent ass over teakettle into the frying vat where his specialty chicken wings ($2.00 before six) were bubbling and roiling in the searing fat. His legs drummed frantically even as he was being fried in his own vat but Daisy's weight kept him where he was and soon the struggling stopped.

My stomach spasmed and I doubled over, unable to ignore the smell of cooking flesh and perversely glad the chicken had been in there to at least partially mask the horrid odor. I vomited copiously and heard Daisy
's scream fade to a pathetic warbling before a loud thump indicated the symbols had completed their grisly task.

I allowed myself a frantic glance over the counter. Between the white clad V of Ralphie
's outstretched legs I saw the top of Daisy's head, flayed but still twitching as the symbols freed themselves from their dead host and returned en masse like a cloud of gnats to the kid's book.

I put a hand on my quivering stomach and stared in terror at the kid.

He got to his feet and regarded me with what I can only describe as sympathy though his eyes were nothing more than black holes in his skull. The return of the symbols was mirrored in them.

"
They make me do these things you know," he said in a curiously child-like voice. "It wasn't written like this. People need to learn."

He nodded at me as if this was supposed to be explanation enough and turned.

The tinkle of the bell announced his departure as, book in hand like the world's most unlikely bible salesman, he stepped out into the noon sunshine.

I was alone with the smell of death.

In a drunken stumble I ran to the phone, had dialed the number with a trembling finger before I remembered my new condition and hung up.

Some time later, the bell rang again and I flinched, sure it was the kid come back to finish me off. But it was a trucker who, despite his bulk, turned and spent his lunch on the linoleum when he saw what was left of Daisy and Ralphie. His eyes found me, widened and he ran back to his truck.

The police arrived and tried to question me until they finally figured out I was in shock and carted me off to the hospital. If I could have spoken, I'd have told them there was nothing they could do for me.

* * *

That was one year ago today and though the nightmares have stopped, the fear remains.

The only image that remains any way clear in my mind now is the sight of those exes swirling through the air--miniature ravens caught in a cyclone as they head toward me, finally finding the security of my screaming mouth…

For a year I've tried to put it behind me but any recovery is tempered by the knowledge that those symbols are still inside me. In that respect, Daisy and Ralphie were lucky. They got to die.

And now I
've figured out that the only way to escape this ugly, alien feeling that crawls beneath my skin is to join them. So tonight I'm checking out. My father's old Police Chief's Special sits next to me as I write this.

But before I go I
'm going to try an experiment.

I
'm going to finish my whiskey and stare at the words I've written here.

And see if they move.

EDITOR
'S CHOICE

Few things are more irritating to a writer than submitting a story to a magazine that claims to publish all genres but snubs the one you happen to have chosen. Such was the case with one particular magazine. They rejected several of my stories with comments like: "Have you anything more cheerful?" and "This one will have our readers reaching for the razor blades." Hardly encouraging, but I took the hint and wrote a story, in which, addled by frustration, I made snide references to the magazine in question and sent it to them.

To my surprise
, not only did they get the joke, they published it. (It's not a tactic I would advise, mind you.)

"Morning sweetie," Lynn said, spinning on her heel to retrieve the purse hanging from the back of the chair opposite Malcolm.

"
Mmm," he replied, brow furrowed, back hunched as he pored over the morning's mail.

"
How do I look?" she asked, adopting a catwalk pose that was lost on him. He grunted but did not look up, eliciting an irritated sigh from her as she headed for the door. "Anything interesting?"

He snorted, his eyes glued to the page in his hand.
"Nothing I want to hear, that's for damn sure. This magazine
Pirates of Reality
makes me feel like a dog chasing a bone tied to a speeding truck. I mean, what exactly are they looking for?"

She was waiting by the door, hand resting lightly on the latch, already sorry she
'd asked. "Another rejection?"

"
The first story was one of my best efforts and they told me it was too cynical. Can you believe that? Rejected for expressing my political opinion! And now…" he shook the letter, his lips thin and drained of color, "…and now
this
!"

Lynn shifted her stance and sighed.
"I'm really sorry, honey but I have to go. I have that job interview today, remember?"

"
You know my story
Benjamin Cooley: Detective of the South?
One of my best, right? Even you said that. You said it is was the best story I'd ever written and you have a diploma in English!"

"
Degree."

"
Whatever."

"
I have to go," Lynn said and opened the door. "I'm sure it's just a case of them not recognizing good quality fiction. I'll be back in about two hours, okay?"

"
Damn amateurs!" he continued, ignoring her. "Wouldn't know professional literature if it bit them on the ass!"

Lynn shook her head and walked out the door.

"Wait!" Malcolm called and she paused.

"
What?"

His expression was one of total bewilderment.
"Where are you going?"

Biting her lower lip, Lynn closed the door, leaving Malcolm alone with his disgust.

* *
*

Dear Mr. Pepper,

Thank you for sending us your story 'Hanging On The Coattails of Gorillas'.

Unfortunately, after much thought we have decided not to accept this for inclusion in
Boomhatch
magazine.

While very amusing, I found the structure a little distracting.

You seem to favor fragments in your prose. While this is not necessarily a fault in itself, I do feel that your work needs discipline. The tale seems a little stilted, the dialogue terse and unbelievable.

It is clear that you have some original ideas and I firmly believe that with a little work, you will be quite a capable writer.

Thank you for thinking of
Boomhatch
.

Regards,

Mike. W. Canavan

Senior Editor

Boomhatch
Magazine

* * *

With a howl of rage, Malcolm crumpled up the paper and flung it across the room.

Distracting! Fragments! Discipline! Stilted! Unbelievable? With a little work?

How dare they!

"
Sons of bitches," Malcolm growled and stalked upstairs to his office.

The room had one window, right in front of the computer and at this time of day, a hazy corona around the monitor was all he could see of the sun. That suited him just fine. An atomic bomb dropped right in his back yard couldn
't deter him from the task at hand.

Charlatans!

On either side of Malcolm, hardcover books stripped of their dust jackets were aligned perfectly, four shelves high and set on shelves that reached almost from wall to wall. They were his pride and joy, the words within the inspiration that drove him to write. The smell of them was enough to fuel his desire to tell the stories he knew the public wanted to read, regardless of what those uneducated hacks at
Boomhatch
and
Pirates of Reality
thought.

After a moment spent pondering, his fingertips hovering over the keys, he exhaled and began to type.

Soon he was lost, immersed in a world that fell short of his own ability to describe in common language, the occasional chirping of birds the only sound struggling to compete with the frantic clacking of keys and click of the spacebar. There was no reprieve, the lapse of time evident only in the lazy movement of the glowing orb high in the summer sky outside both his office and creative windows. The splash of sunlight became finger-like bars of shadow as he wrote, his mouth working soundlessly, reading what he wrote from the notebook in his brain before they appeared on the filtered screen before him.

This would be a masterpiece, driven by fury and frustration, a challenge to those so-called experts. Let them turn
this
down. They would live with the mistake forever after if they dared.

The daylight faded in synch with his energy and he found the cursor blinking impotently, waiting to be prompted back into action or set free. With a husky sigh and a stretch that made his back pop, he decided he had done enough for one day. He checked the word count (five thousand, not bad), saved the document under the provisional title
"Editor's Choice," and with a self-satisfied smirk, shut down the computer.

"
You done?"

Malcolm had been halfway out of his leather swivel chair when Lynn spoke. Her voice startled him and he turned, thumping his thigh against the knee space below his desk.

"Ah, blast it!" he hissed and began to massage his leg, pushing the chair away as he did so. "You scared the bejesus out of me, woman! Don't sneak up on me like that! Where have you been until now anyway? It's almost…" He shrugged back the sleeve of his shirt and peered at his watch. "…Six o' clock!"