Red Right Hand (2 page)

He stood, outlined by the streetlights behind him, his face in shadow. Just a shape, just the form of a man, all shadowed moving edges and hard silhouette. His eyes glittered deep in his face. Other than that I couldn't see anything about his countenance.

Then he smiled.

It was a shark-toothed grin, a glistening grimace from a mouthful of murder. A chill slid slowly down my spine. The gleam across his teeth was the same gleam that slid down the edge of a sword like a drop of quicksilver. Gooseflesh that had nothing to do with the chill night air rushing through the open door rose from the base of my skull to the bottom of my shoulder blades.

The hound standing over me growled from within its exposed rib cage.

“Shut up, mongrel. Recognize your better.”

The voice was deep and clear, a tolling bell that echoed in the tiny vestibule. The hound tilted its head, watching the man with an unblinking sulfurous eye. Fear pulled tight every tendon in my body, squeezing like a python, making me want to scream. The tension in the air suffocated me and clamped around my chest, thick with the potential for violence.

The hound above me turned, snapping at its brethren with a hoarse bark and a
clack
of wicked teeth.

The two smaller hounds sprang in an explosion of deadly, liquid grace. They were a blur, hanging in the air at the same time. Ropes of spittle and foam slung from raw-lipped snouts as their teeth gnashed.

The Man in Black turned, flicking the black-bladed sword in his terrible, red right hand. The slender length of steel licked out, not slowing as it bit deep into the belly of one airborne hound. Muscle parted like water in a gushing plop of strange organs on the floor. The hound fell as if struck down by the hand of God. Both halves of it twitched, sloshing out more of the chunky stew its entrails had become.

With a twist of the red right hand, the sword's curved blade sliced the air again, cleaving the second hound's side with a hollow, drumming
thunk
. It struck deep, a hack instead of a slash, driving through contracting, skinless muscle and grating along the vertebrae of the hound's spine. The hellhound fell at the man's feet, spasming its life out in a gout of black, runny ichor that spread like sewage underneath it.

The Man in Black spun the sword, slinging gore off the blade. It flicked in a wet arc across the wall. He pointed the weapon at the last hound.

“Your move, cur.”

The last hound took a half step back.
Clackety squelch
. It stopped, stood, and quivered.

Then it turned its head and latched its teeth into my ear.

Pain exploded, hot and immediate from my eyebrow to my chin. The fangs scissored in, puncturing the skin, the cartilage, and the flesh, ripping furrows deep in my cheek and temple. Saliva sizzled and popped like bacon grease in a hot pan.

I tried to jerk away from the agony. The skinless dog shook its jaws, worrying the meat in its mouth. It felt like my face was being yanked off the bone, pulled away like a rind from a melon. The teeth that had punched through my earlobe ripped free in a spit of hot, thin blood, but the ones through the rim of cartilage around my ear held fast, the gristle strung tight in the hound's mouth.

My ear filled with blood, but I could still hear the hound's breath
whuff
and hiss as though we were in an echo chamber. Blood ran down my ear canal, filling my brain with sound, the moist snuff of canine breath bouncing off walls of throbbing, pulsing agony.

My feet slid and slipped on the gore-covered tile of the floor. I jerked as an electric current of pain jolted all the way down to my heels. My nerves burned as one hand slapped against the smooth, skinless muscle of the hound's chest, trying to push away, the other cramped around the keys I still held.

Hard metal dug into my palm.

My mind went animal blank, panic slaughtering all rational thought, leaving behind only hollow, raw instinct. Deep in the lizard part of my brainpan, that base-of-the-skull place, a spark flared and my training kicked in.

I drove my keys into the hound's face as hard as I could.

The metal sticking up between my knuckles bit deep. Punching through muscle, scraping on bone. The long, serrated key to my car punctured a lidless eye, spilling spoiled aqueous liquid across my fingers like runny egg yolk.

The hellhound gave a shrill yelp, and my pain cut away in a wash of cool sensation as its teeth slipped free. I popped my eyelids open in time to see the Man in Black slash with his sword. The hound turned skeletal tail, bounding across the room. A wide gash gaped open along its flank, the meat split wide and peeled back. The hound didn't slow or turn or hesitate, and when it hit the corner behind the stairwell it disappeared.

The world flickered in my mind, sputtering like the end of a movie reel. The Man in Black knelt beside me, his dripping sword held out and away. The fingers on his left hand touched the side of my face. They were cool and clean. He smiled a crooked, shark-tooth grin. His voice came to me clearly, more inside my mind than out.

“Do not die yet, Charlotte Tristan Moore. We have much to discuss.”

 

4

“D
O YOU HAVE
cream or sugar?”

The side of my head throbbed, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. I could
feel
the blood lurching underneath the skin, slouching its way toward the Bethlehem of my face. It
hurt
. Like claw hammer to the skull hurt. Even my teeth were sore.

I held a towel against my shredded ear to catch the blood that poured out, running hot and sticky down my neck. The world sounded half muffled through the blood-soaked cloth.

I stared at the tablecloth in front of me, elbow propped on the red-and-white checked vinyl my roommate Shasta had brought back from her last visit home. The little red squares wavered with every pulse from under the towel.

What the hell is going on?

A dark hand sat a steaming cup of black coffee on the table under my face.

“I asked you a question, Charlotte Tristan Moore. I would appreciate an answer before this turns cold.”

I looked up. The Man in Black stood close beside me. My neck hurt as I twisted my face up to take all of him in. Tall, he loomed, his head seeming to brush the ceiling—though some small part of me knew that was a trick of perspective, the angle I looked up from. A black coat stretched from his neck all the way down to the floor. It moved even though he stood still, shifting subtly, delicately, as though it was breathing. Not that coats breathed.

It must be a trick of the light.

Or my head injury.

Oh, shit. Do I have a head injury? Something cracked inside my skull, making me think weirdly?

The Man in Black held a second steaming cup in his right hand. My eyes locked on that hand. It thrust from the edge of his coat sleeve, the one bright patch of color on the doom-black darkness of him. This close, it glistened in the incandescent kitchen light. Wet, or possibly greasy—as though it had been flayed, dusky skin peeled off, leaving behind the raw red of meat, the exposed underflesh. Subtly shiny like it had been dipped in crimson liquid latex.

Or fresh-spilled blood.

Now that hand held my favorite mug, a bright yellow cup with a picture of George Takei doing heart hands to the camera.

I caught myself leaning away, threatening to slip off my chair and onto the floor, trying to get as far from him as possible. Dammit. I was cowering.

I pulled myself upright.

My voice didn't tremble when I spoke. That surprised me.

“My name is Charlie. Only my family calls me Charlotte. Sugar is in the cabinet above the coffee maker, creamer is in the fridge. Help yourself.”

He nodded, turning away in a swirl of coat.

As he rummaged through the cabinet, I pulled my hand away from the towel. The hand moved, but the towel stuck, held to the side of my face by a clot of dried blood.

Great.

I pulled on one corner, tugging sharply. It peeled free with a tearing sound. I winced—I couldn't help it—the pain flaring hot and bright like a struck match laid against my skin.

You've been hurt worse. Get it over with.

My fingers closed on the corner of the towel, and with a swift, sharp yank I pulled the whole cloth free from the clotted wound. It felt like being slapped with a belt sander. I sucked in air hard and fast between clenched teeth.

Damnthat
hurt
likehell!

The man was there, next to me.

I didn't see him move—my eyes hadn't been shut longer than a second—but he somehow crossed the room to me. He was just there. As though he'd teleported. His red right hand reached for my face.

His voice came, a dark murmur. “Do not move.”

My nerves locked, freezing me in one spot. That hand moved closer, drifting lazily near. It hung, exposed and obscene, from the end of his sleeve, almost limp, its fingers slightly curled like those of a dead man.

It became all I could see, all I could look at, blocking the whole world. Made of striated muscle attached to tendon and bone, stringy nerves laced over the entire surface like electrical feeds. It came closer, everything else going blurry with strain as I tried to watch, but it slipped out of my line of sight. I couldn't move my neck, couldn't tilt my head, frozen by his command like a field mouse hypnotized by a cobra.

The hand touched my ear. I felt a slight pressure and then … nothing. No pain, no stab, no tear, no rip. None of the searing agony I expected. He pulled away, hand falling to his side, disappearing in a fold of that long black coat.

My own hand flew, touching my ear. It felt … strange. Odd. Hot with fever. I felt the rough, crumbly crust of dried blood. My hair was matted with fluid into a hard knot. As I felt around, the blood crumbled and dusted down my cheek, down my neck. My fingers moved the flaps of soft, spongy tissue where teeth had ripped through the earlobe, leaving it a tangle of skin strings. The hard rim of cartilage felt like a frond of plastic under my touch.

A gnarled, half-melted frond of plastic.

A chunk of scab came off in my fingers, and they were suddenly slick with new blood. I felt all that in my fingertips.

None of it in my ear or the side of my face.

That skin was dead. Rubbery. No sensation at all.

The Man in Black now sat across from me at the little table, a long-handled spoon clinking around the rim of the yellow coffee mug as he stirred in hazelnut creamer.

I hadn't seen him move. One second he stood at my side; the next I examined my ear; the third he was in the chair across from me.

“Did you heal my ear?”

He smirked, making the corner of his full lips twitch upward. Dark eyes glittered, smudged with deep hollows underneath. “Does it feel healed to you?”

“No, it still feels like shredded meat, but it doesn't hurt anymore. Why?”

He lifted the coffee mug. George Takei smiled at me. “I shut off the nerves in that part of your face.”

“You did
what
?”

“Your eardrum is not damaged. You heard me.”

“Is it going to come back? Will I have feeling again?”

The Man in Black sipped his coffee, not answering.

“Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Tonight is your night of destiny, Charlotte Tristan Moore. You have been chosen to receive a great blessing.”

“A chewed-up ear is a great blessing?” My hand banged against the table. Coffee splashed over the rim of the mug in front of me, spilling across the plastic tablecloth. “Quit talking in riddles and tell me what's going on.”

Slowly, the man set his coffee on the table. His hands folded around the mug casually, lying loose and relaxed around the yellow cup, fingertips barely touching the smooth ceramic surface. His left hand had long, slender fingers, each one carefully sculpted and covered with smooth skin the color of the coffee in his cup. The nails were even and manicured. It made me think of the piano. His fingers looked like they would be able to seduce a tune from an instrument.

Stroke the keys.

Tickle the ivories.

Then my eyes fell on his other hand.

The right hand.

The terrible, red right hand.

The memory of it touching my face slithered through my brain. A chill ran up one side of my spine and tumbled down the other to splash against something low and deep inside me.

I tore my eyes away, forcing them up to his face.

He looked at me, gazing intensely from under a dark brow. His nose was sharp, hawkish at the bridge and widening at the bottom over full lips. He had an exotic face, feral and Semitic, the face of an ancient Babylonian or a time-flung Assyrian.

That sensation happened again, the sick thrill that churned deep inside me.

Fear wrapped itself around me. I felt like an injured swimmer in shark-infested water.

This time my voice did tremble, just slightly, just below the surface. “Who are you?”

“I am Nyarlathotep.”

“Why does that sound familiar?” I'd heard that name before.

“Your uncle Howard Phillip Lovecraft wrote of me.”

“My uncle Howard?” Who the hell was he talking about? Knowledge slammed into my brain. “You mean my
mom's
great-uncle? The dead writer?”

“You are of the Lovecraft bloodline.”

This makes no sense.

“My last name is Moore.”

A sip of coffee, a twinkle in dark eyes. “Your father's last name is Moore. You are a Lovecraft through your mother's blood.”

“Wait, wait, wait a damn minute.” My hands were flat on the tablecloth, holding onto something solid because the world had tilted on its axis. My brain fumbled around, trying to figure things out. “I read that stuff as a kid 'cause my mom made me. It was weird and boring and totally made up.”

My mom took great pride in being related to a famous writer and wanted me to be proud too. She used to assign his stories to me like homework. I would sit on a Saturday and try to plow my way through words that filled pages like marching insects. Words that had been out of date when he wrote them, containing enough syllables to make my jaw hurt, and he used them as though it were his job. Four adjectives to describe one noun, and three or four nouns in a sentence.
Everything
became
eldritch, elephantine, horrifying, terrifying,
or some other ten-dollar descriptor.