Red Right Hand (19 page)

I had started thinking of where in the world we could go when Jimmy Deets stopped screaming and started moving.

He rolled up on his knees and began crawling toward us. He was thin, so thin I could see every jerk and jut of his shoulder blades, spine, and ribs. In high school he had been in ROTC. He'd been fit and healthy. Looking at him now was like watching a hairless, starved rat crawl to you on its last bit of strength. He scurried around the mess of Tyler Woods and hit his knees at my feet.

He looked up and I looked down. Splinter-nailed hands reached but didn't touch me, hovering in front of my waist in supplication. Tears streamed from red-rimmed eyes, racing down hollow cheeks, skimming around the sores in their way.

His mouth opened then closed, a white gummy substance in the corners of his lips. They opened again, and his voice came out choked. “Please…”

The word shocked me.

He swallowed, a tiny sob breaking at the end. “Please…” he repeated.

“Please what?”

“Please forgive me.”

The dark, ugly thing inside me curled up, rubbing against the pity being born, blossoming in my heart.

His head dropped, muffling his words, but this close I could still hear him. “I am so sorry. I know what we did to you was horrible. I … I can't imagine what it was like.”

“No. You can't.”

“I can't stop remembering it.”

The dark, ugly thing lashed my spine.

“I bet you can't.”

His face flew up, horror painted there. “No! No! Not like that, never like that. God, I wish I could scrub it out of my head. I've tried. I've tried so hard. Crank, pills, drinking … but it never works. The memory is always there. I can't clear it out of my brain.”

Twist.

I snarled. “Maybe you should have used a bullet.”

His head fell. “I tried.” Scrawny shoulders shook with silent sobs. “I couldn't do it.” His fist beat against his leg. “I was too weak. Just like that night … I couldn't stand up to Tyler, and you…”

He choked, an ugly noise shaking his ridged chest like a palsy. “I'm so sorry for what I did, for what I let happen.”

Ragged fingertips moved to his temples, rubbing in circles. “It's been horrible. I can't hold a job. I haven't ever been able to find someone to love. I live off disability and painting houses.” His fingers curled into fists. They beat on the sides of his head. “I barely sleep, I only eat enough to live, and I'm alone, so damn miserable no one wants to be around me.”

The dark, ugly thing inside me came out in my voice.

“I feel really sorry for you. I'm sure it's been tough.” I fought the urge to spit on him.

He broke, his spine folding until he huddled, compressed over his knees, rail-thin body shaking as he cried.

Daniel touched my arm. I looked at him. He ran his fingers through his hair, not looking at me.

“What?”

It took him a second to speak. “Listen to me, Charlie. Hear me out. I'm not saying he deserves it, but maybe you should forgive him.”

“Forgive him?”

His hands went up between us, warding off the anger in my voice. “Not for his sake, but for yours. I'm watching you right now, and I can
feel
the anger, the hate … hell, the
magick
rolling off your skin. I don't think it's good for you.”

I looked at Daniel's face. The dark, ugly thing curled inside.

Screw him. He doesn't know what this animal did to me.

The look on his face cut through that ugliness. It wasn't anger. It wasn't pity for me. It wasn't self-righteousness.

It was a look of care.

A look of love.

It shone in his oh-so-green eyes. He loved me. He asked me to forgive Jimmy Deets because he could see what the anger and hatred were doing to me. The look in his eyes made things clear in a click.

I could feel the hatred inside me, stoking the fire of the magick, eating away my resistance to its siren call. I could let it go. I could drop that burden.

I wouldn't absolve Jimmy Deets of his sin. I wouldn't make it okay in any way. I would just let go of the anger
I
was carrying. The rage. The pain.

I could be free.

Not healed, but closer.

“Stand up,” I said to Jimmy. He looked up at me, scrambled to his feet, and stood in front of me.

I took a deep breath. My heart pounded in my chest. It throbbed at the edges of my vision, making the room seem darker.

Jimmy looked at me expectantly, fear on his face.

I couldn't do this.

Not after what he did.

My head hurt. The room grew darker still.

Daniel's fingers found my shoulder. I could feel the strength and support in his soft, reassuring touch.

“I…”

The words stuck in my throat.

I swallowed and tried again.

“I forgive you.”

The air in the room grew thick like syrup.

A smile broke Jimmy's face open, fresh tears streaming. “Thank you. Thank you. I don't deserve it.”

The room dimmed as though a lamp had been turned off. A shadow moved behind Jimmy. It swirled and coalesced then strode over, a naked sword in its red right hand.

Daniel saw it too. “What the…?” was all he had a chance to say.

The sword rose then fell like lightning, splitting Jimmy Deets from the crown of his head to the bottom of his crotch. He stood there, a shocked look on his face until his left knee buckled and both halves of him fell apart.

“No one gets to harm my Acolyte.” The Man in Black stepped through the bloody mist, dropping the sword into the eldritch depths of his coat. “Not even ten years ago.”

 

33

M
Y HAND SLID
across the mirror, wiping away condensation in a smear. The shower ran behind me, hot water rolling steam into the bathroom. My bathroom. I stared at my reflection.

I look like shit.

A fine layer of grime covered my face, turning my eyes into black holes. My eyes are dark—it's part of my heritage—but now they looked painted, Cimmerian circles around both as though I'd been awake for days. The skin over the right one was discolored. It hurt to touch, a deep soreness under my fingers. It also felt mushy, swollen.

It's from when your face got slammed into the door.

All the way back at the beginning of this night. God, that felt like weeks ago, but it had only been a few hours.

Damn.

I turned my head slowly. I didn't want to, but I had to. I looked at my right ear.

It wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. It looked a little weird, but I couldn't really see it. Using a finger, I moved the hair curling over the top rim of cartilage. The curl of hair was stiff, hard with dried blood that cracked and crumbled under my touch. It stuck to the torn flesh like a hard-packed bandage. I took a deep breath and pulled it away.

It didn't hurt—I couldn't feel it at all because of whatever Nyarlathotep had done earlier—but I still had to grab the sink to keep from falling down.

My ear was ruined.

Taking a deep breath, I pulled together my resolve and looked again.

The ear looked perfectly normal on the bottom half. The lobe still curved delicately to my jaw, and it still bore the diamond earring given to me by my dad as a graduation present. But the top half … the top half was destroyed. It had been torn into four jagged sections, and a piece was missing. I could see white cartilage in the rips. It didn't look like an ear. It looked like mangled meat.

How will you explain what happened when people see this?

This would be out there, out where the world would see it forever. Maybe a doctor could fix it, but I couldn't afford that. What would I do? Wear scarves or hats? Grow my hair out?

The thought made my stomach hurt.

I had short hair.

I'd cut it short the day I got out of the hospital and had kept it short since. The thought of growing it long tripped the ugly old feelings. It dragged my mind off my ear and shoved it toward what had happened earlier.

I'd killed someone earlier.

No. You killed
three
people.

Mason, Donnie Zito, and Tyler Woods.

Brad Curson and Jimmy Deets were dead because of me too. I hadn't stuck a knife in them or used magick …
I still couldn't believe I used magick at all
 … to
turn them INSIDE OUT
.

That
thought made my stomach lurch. I bent at the waist, aiming for the trashcan, but nothing came up. I stood there, bent over, with the room spinning lazily. The air grew hot, the shower steaming up the tiny bathroom. That didn't help.

Pull it together.

Reaching deep inside, I forced my mind to think clearly. I stepped outside myself so I could look at the feelings inside me without being caught up in them. It was a trick I had learned on my own, and I could only do it by myself when I was someplace safe.

My therapist hated it, always worried that the dissociation might cause a hard split in my personality, so I didn't tell her about still doing it. I could see her reason for concern, but it worked, so I did it when things pushed my issues too far. Tonight had definitely pushed my issues all the way over the edge.

In seconds, my mind cleared and my heart slowed down.

You killed Mason.

I had. It was self-defense, and he'd been a monster. Did I feel bad about it? No. I didn't. I should.

I thought I should.

The whole thing felt surreal, a nightmare that almost didn't feel like it had happened at all. The image of him, of his face as the knife sank into his chest, swam up in my mind. My body had the memory of the knife sliding in, stopping when the hilt hit his sternum, his weight pulling down on my arm as he slid to the floor, and the jerk upward as the weight fell off. I could feel all these things as though they were happening at that very moment.

But I didn't feel bad about them.

What about Tyler Woods?

The image of Tyler reduced to a mound of meat smeared across my mind. It blared, filling my mindspace with lurid colors and grisly shapes, a geometry of gruesomeness. It was a disgusting picture that I could feel would come back on me, in nightmares and flashbacks, anytime my mental defenses drop it would appear. I would see it for a long time, maybe even the rest of my life. My nose filled with the wet-hot scent of raw flesh dredged from memory.

It repulsed me.

But I didn't feel guilty about it.

I hadn't done that to Tyler Woods. I hadn't actually wanted that to happen to him. It was an accident of my magick. Magick that I didn't want. What was I doing with the ability to cast spells? How did I have the power to do something like that with just a casual wish?

I looked down at the symbol in my hand, the open cuts now turned to raised red lines of angry flesh. They'd sealed over and lay stark across the plane of my palm. Looking at the symbol made it tingle. I rubbed it across the front of my hoodie. My mind went back to the fact that I hadn't done anything to Tyler on purpose. It had been the magick's fault, not mine.

But did you try to wish him back to life?

Guilt panged across the dissociation, echoing hollowly in the space between me and my feelings.

No, I hadn't tried. I should have. I should have wished for him to not be turned inside out. It might have worked.

Even as I had this thought, something inside me knew it wouldn't have.

Donnie Zito shot Brad Curson because
you
stabbed him.

The gap I'd made inside myself narrowed, squeezed in by the truth. I hadn't meant it, but it had happened that way.

And the Man in Black killed Jimmy Deets because of you.

He did.

The gap slammed shut, dissociation crumbling as my feelings swarmed into my mind.

I hadn't wanted any of it to happen.

I had wanted all of it to happen.

They all deserved it after what they did.

I hadn't tried to kill any of them.

But they're still dead.

I stumbled, my knees suddenly unhinged, and slid down to the floor. The weight of all that had happened pushed me down. It crushed my chest under its weight.

God, please forgive me.

The tile was cold under my face as I wept.

 

34

D
ANIEL TURNED AS
I stepped into the kitchen, clean and solid once more. He swallowed the spoonful of soup he'd just taken.

“Wow. You look…”

I stopped. What? What did I look like? Crap?

He finished: “… tough.”

I don't know how long I laid on that floor—long enough to cry out all the guilt over what I'd done and what had been done for me. Long enough to reconcile the part of me that was glad about what had happened to those four animals. Long enough for the water to be ice cold by the time I dragged myself into the shower. It still cleared my head and washed away the dirt and dried blood.

I'd dressed in clean clothes—another a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt—but this time I wore sturdy hiking boots and a watch cap that covered my ruined ear. The torc from Ashtoreth still lay around my neck,
and the Knife of Abraham jutted from my belt. It somehow felt right there, laid over my hip and close at hand.

I looked tough?

I could own that. I
felt
tough.

I was compartmentalized and reconciled enough to have a talk with the Man in Black.

Alone.

He sat at the table across from Daniel, sipping what I assumed was coffee from the same George Takei mug as earlier. He looked exactly the same as he had at the beginning of the night. Even the coat had mended itself and was whole as it hung off him, rustling slightly and murmuring softly in the corner of my mind. Nothing we had been through in the last few hours had affected him at all. The benefit of being a chaos god, I supposed.