The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) (21 page)

But she was gone. And he
was alone, the dumbest criminal to ever break into an empty apartment, nothing
left for him to do but jerk off or run rabbit.

“Fuck!”

Out in the living room,
something fell on the floor, a sound like a heavy sack; a heavy,
wet
sack.

What the hell is he
doing?

Then he
heard the voices, and froze. There was Marco’s senseless gabbling—hard to
mistake that—and someone else, someone he knew!

Goose
Man!

“
Shit
!” Cho’s feet
started turning in furtive circles, eyes darting, walls spinning. The room was
bare; nothing but what he brought with him, the little boning knife, useless.
There was nowhere to run; nowhere to hide. Goose Man would find him eventually.
And Cho knew what would happen then. Goose Man was crazy. Worse, he was
alive
.
Alive and crazy and, in all likelihood, very, very pissed off.

Cho considered the window;
a three-story drop onto pavement. Maybe he’d only break his leg.

Or maybe you’ll break
your fucking neck!

The only sure way was
through the door, and Goose Man waiting on the other side.

What about Marco? He’s
got your back. Good ol’ Marco. Good dog.

Marco’s dead! Wet
thump, pissed off crazy guy; do the math! You’re alone!

Maybe he doesn’t know
I’m here. Hide under the bed. Lay low and don’t make a sound, and he won’t find
you.

“Ellen’s not here, Matty,” Goose Man called softly from the
other room. “I told you, I look after her.”

Shit! Shit! Shit!
Shit!
Shit! SHIT!

“Now get out here.”

And against all reason,
against the screaming animal battering away at the walls of Matthew Cho’s mind,
he reached out his hand, opened the door … and stepped into the short hallway!

Goose Man stood with his
back to the windows, reduced to absolutes of shadow and blackness. The only
lighted part of him was the glimmering metal rod he carried, its length shiny,
almost wet-looking. He was standing beside a motionless lump that Matty thought
might have been an old sack of clothes or garbage.

It was a moment before he
realized it was Marco.

“You …
killed
him?” Matty asked.

Goose Man shook his head
in disdain. “I’ve
eaten
smarter animals than you.”

Cho felt the maddened
beast inside of him, the one crashing about his mind in a strange whirl of
terror and hatred, burst free. The creature took hold of limbs turned numb by
the sound of Goose Man’s voice, and made them snap to order. The knife shot up
wildly, gyrating in his hand like a maniac’s last hope and nearly slicing off
his own ear.

Then he was charging
straight at Goose Man with every intention, however disjointed, of slicing the
man’s throat open. Not for fear or hatred or even desperation, but an instinct
more primitive, more primal,
less human
. It was the same instinct that
compelled him to try and beat Goose Man to death earlier. And now it was
screaming at the inside of his skull like a siren wailing through his brain:
Goose Man did not belong; he had never belonged. He was an outsider, an
interloper, an outcast of the human race and all other manner of beasts under
God’s sky. And he had to be destroyed, expunged from the world because it would
not tolerate his existence, or suffer those who did.

Cho’s mouth was open, a
small string of slobber running to his T-shirt as he screamed an insensible
battle cry that was a mixture of some prehistoric roar of challenge and the
shriek of a terrified child as he charged the ancient white wizard with nothing
more than an old boning knife.

*     *     *

Kreiger’s fist pistoned
bullet-quick, striking Cho in the face, and dropping him in his tracks.

It had occurred to the
white wizard that these two morons might try to beat him senseless again, might
try to kill him. It also occurred to him to let them. But he’d decided against
it; he’d been beaten up once already, and the value of repeating the experience
would have been negligible.

Besides, he was pressed
for time; things were moving faster than expected. The derelicts were intended
only to teach him humility. That purpose fulfilled, their usefulness was at an
end.

Well, nearly.

Cho lurched awkwardly to
his knees as if trying to stand but unable to remember how. His eyes turned up
to Kreiger, unfocussed and dark, his nose a bloated mat of blood running down
over his lips and chin. He gawped at Kreiger as if searching for words he could
no longer remember, a voice he was no longer sure how to use. He was a fish on
land wondering what to say to the man with the hook and line.

Kreiger stared back,
searching Cho’s eyes.
It was still there, exactly what he needed.

The pointed staff shot
forward in a blur, boring smoothly through Matthew Cho’s side and punching
straight through his heart. Kreiger yanked the staff back, a dark spurt of
blood following to splash hot against his legs. There was only the one surge, the
final efforts of a muscle newly aware of its own destruction. Cho’s heart
stopped, and the air sagged from his punctured lung with a low whistling sound.
His mouth worked like he was trying to swallow and force something out both at
the same time. The result was a thick mixture of saliva and bright blood spilling
over his lips and down his neck in a bubbly froth.

Matthew Cho was dying,
but he was not dead yet. Not quite.

Kreiger seized Cho’s
ruined face in his hands, throwing him back to the floor and straddling his
chest to search the man’s dying eyes.
It was still there … but not for long.
Seconds only, no more
.

But
seconds were all he needed.

Snatching Cho’s knife
from his dying fingers, Kreiger jabbed the tip into the corner of Matty’s eye
socket, digging down and in until the eyeball popped free, the roots severing
with a sound like the last vestige of water spiraling down a drain. Cho did not
resist, his body squirming only slightly in defiance of what must seem
comparatively minimal to what had already befallen it. With death fast
approaching, the excision would seem nearly painless.

Nearly.

Kreiger plucked the
eyeball instantly into his mouth, swallowing it whole even as he turned his
attention to digging out the other.

It was not ideal, he
knew, but one learned to take dreams where one found them. He was Gusman
Kreiger. Cast Out. Sorcerer. Survivor. It made all the difference.

Kreiger stood up slowly,
breathing heavily; it was exhausting trying to keep up with Jack. Exhausting,
but necessary. Come hell or high water, he was not about to let the Caretaker
strand him on this miserable plane, trapped in this miserable life. Jack was
welcome to hate him, revile him, even hunt him down to the ends of reality and
kill him like a rabid dog. But Jack would not
forget
him. Kreiger would
see Ellen Monroe killed first—by his own hand if necessary—before allowing
himself to be dismissed.

That would certainly
get your attention, eh Jack? That would just fuck you up but good.

Him and you, both, old
man.

Kreiger shelved the
notion, not yet that eager to secure Jack’s undivided attentions. Such notice
could prove painful, how well he knew.

He walked to the front
door of Ellen’s apartment, his knees and hands aching. He had pushed himself
too far. A pair of quick kills, useless pieces of garbage taken down, their
dreams stolen, his savior protected. But still, too much to ask.

Idly, he wondered if Jack
appreciated all he was doing for him.

Probably not.

Kreiger flicked the light switch, cognizant of the small
stains of blood left behind on the switch plate, expressionistic flower petals,
bad bed-and-breakfast decor. Then he turned, surveying Ellen’s living room.

If the wall switch was art, than Ellen’s living room was a
gallery, a post-modernistic expression of the apocalypse. Marco lay in a thick
puddle of red, the slow pool of something left to drain for the sake of the
meat, spilling out with the slow methodical steadiness of an old, cracked
bucket. In contrast, Cho lay face up, most of the blood trapped by his clothing
except for what ran across his face and clotted in his hair. Crimson flecks
splayed out from his nostrils and thick red drool ran down his chin. He cried
tears of blood from empty sockets. One of the derelicts, probably Cho, had
survived just long enough to squirt a ragged ribbon of heart’s blood across the
floor. And of course there were bloody boot prints walking from the bodies to
himself, punctuated by dark crimson splats falling from the length of the
lightning rod.

Kreiger walked into Ellen’s kitchen, and started running cold
water down the sink. He then ran the staff under the aerated stream until the
metal was clean. He switched the water over to hot and let it run while he
rummaged under the sink for a bucket, a scrub brush, some all-purpose spray
cleaner, and a roll of paper towels. He found dishwashing soap on top of the
sink by the faucet. The first order was to wash his hands of this. He used the
steaming hot water and dish soap along with the scrub brush for his nails and
the lines of his skin. When he was finished, the flesh was immaculate, pink and
clean. He used paper towels to wipe his boots and pants dry. They were still
bloodstained, but at least they wouldn’t leave tracks. Finally, he turned to
the trail behind him, squirting each footprint, stain, or mark with a quick
blast from the bottled cleaner. Then he bent to his knees and started
scrubbing.

He backtracked from the kitchen to the wall switch to the
bodies, and stopped. Behind him, a trail of discarded paper towels, grimy and
red. Ahead, two derelicts lying in pools of blood congealed to the consistency
of tree sap, their bodies already turning cold. There was a pungent stink in
the air; one or both corpses had emptied its bladder, maybe its bowels.

“This could take all night.” He regarded the corpses with a
sour expression as he climbed slowly to his feet, joints singing painfully,
hands already cramping. “I’ll need some help.”

“You spoiled the catch!”

Ellen stared defiantly at
the rude, little troll—it would have been incorrect to call either of these two
men, they were so twisted and misshapen. For five minutes straight, the one had
complained: about her, about her in the net, about her in the sea, about her
ruining the night’s fishing. As if she had asked to be trussed up like a cod
and dropped on their deck.

“There should be at least
a dozen souls in tha’ net,” the idiot troll carried on. “A dozen if it’s one. A
dozen men ta ‘oist sails and pull oars and drag nets.”

Ellen could not fathom
what he was talking about, and doubted he would explain if she asked, the
lantern bobbing and weaving with the animation of his complaints. His
partner—twin save being a few inches shorter and less vocal—nodded,
occasionally parroting the other’s remarks for emphasis like a brain-damaged
color commentator.

“Do you know what we ‘ave
instead? Do you?”

“Do you?” the second
echoed.

The troll answered before
she could reply. “Fish an’ garbage!”

“Garbage an’ fish
,” echoed his partner.

“What the ‘ell are you
doing out ‘ere, scaring away our catch, gathering all these friggin’ fish?” He
kicked at one, trying to shoo the bottom-sucker back towards the pile. Instead,
it latched toothlessly upon his foot, flipping and thrashing angrily. The troll
let out a squeal and started gyrating and kicking, sending the hapless fish
through the air. It bounced upon the deck with a wet, squelching sound before
sliding overboard. Again, the lantern bobbled and wavered, shadows skittering
about the strange vessel. “Friggin’ fish!”

“Dirty friggin’ fish,”
the second echoed.

“If you don’t plan on
catching fish, you shouldn’t
drag your nets in the sea,” Ellen challenged back. “Most sensible people
would agree that’s how you do it.”

Both trolls gaped at the
brazen response. “An ‘ow are we s’posed to catch souls, miss, if’n we don’t
drag for ‘em?” the one asked. “Lean over the bow an’ whistle?”

The other troll snorted laughter.

Ellen glared angrily. She
had been so close to finding Jack that she could actually feel the warmth of
his lips through the water’s skin, and now he was gone … as if he had never
been at all.
Perhaps he never had; perhaps you’re crazy?
“You did catch
a soul, you fucking moron! You caught
me
!”

“Exactly!” the troll
shouted, thrusting the lantern at her. “We got
garbage
!”

“You got
me
,”
Ellen said in a dangerous tone. “What else did you expect to catch in an ocean
besides
fish
?”

“Not fish, tha’s fer damn
sure. They’re only ‘ere ‘cause o’ you.”

“They’re here because
it’s an
ocean
, idiot!”

The troll looked at her
as if she were mentally deficient. “This ain’t the ocean, miss, it’s the
sea
.
An’ there ain’t no fish in the sea but what you brought with ya.” Light
scattered pell-mell about the deck as he continued to punctuate his ramblings
with shakes of the lantern. “Just what the ‘ell are you, anyhow? Ya don’t look
like no ghost, tha’s fer sure. No tail neither, so ya ain’t no mermaid.” He
reached out skeptically, jabbing a finger at her.

Before she could think
better of it, Ellen punched the unsuspecting troll square in the eye. With her
other hand, she snatched the lantern, easily jerking it from the troll’s
unsuspecting fingers. “Stop poking me, stop yelling at me, and stop waving that
damn light around, you jerk!”

And there they stood,
squared off against one another, Ellen brandishing the lantern, her other hand
still tightly fisted and ready, knuckles smarting from the troll’s boney face.
The troll only stared back at her from his one eye, hand clamped tight over the
other, mouth agape but not saying a word.

The other troll, the one
Ellen was convinced might be retarded, remarked, “Well, she ain’t no ghost,
tha’s fer sure.”

“And what’s all this
about?”

The two trolls jerked
about suddenly at the voice, not so much startled as
terrified
. Ellen
momentarily forgotten, they dropped to their knees and pressed their foreheads
flat to the deck in exaggerated veneration. Ellen looked back at the ship’s
empty mid-deck and held up the lantern, panning the light back and forth, its
glow barely reaching the ends of the boat. She glimpsed motionless figures
standing in the shadows, haunting sailors, slack-featured and statue-still, puppets
with no master. Perched upon the side rail was an enormous cat, gray as
November, staring back at her.
A pet of the speaker, maybe, or property of
the ship’s captain?
The cat’s eyes threw back the lamplight with almost unnatural
ferocity, sending a shiver up her spine, and it was the first time Ellen
remembered feeling cold in a dream.

And maybe this isn’t a
dream.

The trolls groveled and
quivered, but remained otherwise motionless, and the speaker remarked, “Oh, I
see.”

His voice was refined and
luxurious, pleasant like an actor’s, soft-spoken and genteel, almost a purr of
Queen’s English.

And it was definitely
coming from the cat.

“Are you…?” Ellen’s voice
caught, and she swallowed nervously. “Are you in charge of these two?” She
tried directing the question in the general direction of the aft deck,
uncertain if she should be addressing the cat or someone as yet unseen. If
nothing else, she hoped whoever was in charge of this boat and its idiot crew
would at least hear her and respond.

“They do what I tell
them, if that’s what you’re asking?” the cat answered.

It wasn’t, but it was an
answer of sorts.

Ellen turned back towards
the side rail, letting the light fall upon the cat’s face. As big as a lynx,
its ears were extraordinarily long, the jowls and whiskers thick with long
drooping fur. Its body was fastidiously folded together, feet tight to the
rail, claws steadying it against the rocking of the ship by digging tightly
into the wood. The cat’s tail twitched high in the air, the tip bristling like
a bottlebrush; the rest of its fur as thick as an Angora rabbit, a dark
gray-blue like autumn thunderheads in the evening sky. Its eyes glowed back at
her like amber, regarding her with a kind of strange intelligence, questions and
suppositions and thoughts flickering across their surface in a rapid, almost
dizzying array that seemed to suggest a staggering intellect.

But it was, after all, a
talking cat.

I don’t care if you
are cold, Ellen. This has got to be a dream.

“You’re the biggest
fucking cat I’ve ever seen,” she said.

“And you’re the whitest
fish I’ve ever caught,” the cat replied back.

Ellen stepped back
without realizing, her fist opening. “You caught me?”

“The net caught you,” the
cat clarified. “And it was Simon and Piotr who pulled the net on board. But the
net, these two, and everything else you see and don’t see on this vessel are
mine.”

“Except me,” she pointed
out.

The cat’s tail swayed gently like a marsh reed as he turned
upon the trolls without answering. “Why have we sailed out of the mist? And why
haul in a net full of fish? Did I say anything to suggest to you that I was
hungry?”

The trolls nudged one
another on the ground, each jabbing elbows into the other’s ribs in an effort
to spur an answer that neither wanted to give.

“Do I need to repeat the
question?” the cat asked.

The one Ellen was coming
to think of as the smarter of the two—the one who complained the
most—hesitantly climbed to his knees, eyes on the ground. “Beggin’ ya pardon,
sah, but the mist’s lifted clean away. One minute it was there, and we was
skimmin’ fer souls like we’s supposed ta. The next, it turned clear as a bell.
The mist and the witch light just …
vanished
. It was spooky, I tell ya.”

When the cat refused to
comment either way, the troll pressed on, his words desperate and quick. “The
net was startin’ to snag on all manner o’ things. We had no choice, sah. We had
to pull it in ta empty it.”

“And that was when you
decided to drop a load of fish on my deck?” the cat asked.

The troll paused, making
an effort to recall the exact chain of events that had led him to the
supposition that he should do just that—a supposition that was apparently
incorrect. “Well … we thought we could figure out what was happenin’, ya know?
Figured the net might catch whatever was responsible. Anyway, that’s ‘ow we
found this thing,” the troll concluded with an offhand gesture at Ellen.

“Well, you certainly have
caught something here,” the cat murmured softly. “Quite the mystery you are,
young lady. You were drawn up from the sea, which suggests that you are dead
for there should be naught else there. But quite evidently you are not. In
fact, you smell very much alive. And that perplexes me. The living belong no
more in the sea of the dead than the dead belong in the land of the living. You
are an enigma, whoever and whatever you are, a riddle that must be solved and
resolved before it starts to unwind and sweeps us all down in the resulting
maelstrom.”

The cat stretched its
back in a deep arch, claws carving small curls of finish from the rail, then
straightened and sauntered closer along the narrow beam. “Well, I expect
introductions are in order, as you are going to be my guest for the time being,
and I detest the overuse of generalities. It lends to sloppy thinking. My name
is Podak. You are aboard the
Dreaming Moon
. The two imbeciles beside you
constitute my crew, Simon and Piotr. Don’t worry which one is which; it doesn’t
really matter. Who are you?”

“Uh, Ellen. Ellen
Monroe.”

“Pleased to make your
acquaintance, Ellen Monroe. Simon, fetch Ellen a towel then help push these
fish off the deck before it starts to smell like a cannery.”

The two trolls spun away,
glad to be out from under Podak’s watchful eye.

“And one more thing,” the
cat said before the trolls could make good their escape. “Save any squid you
come across in a bucket. I’m warming to the idea of calamari.”

“I thought you didn’t
want fish,” Ellen said softly, the words out almost before she realized she was
speaking. Almost.

“Spirited. You’d think
your name was Alice chasing white rabbits in the skirls of opium smoke and the
visions of half-eaten mushrooms. Or maybe you already have.” The cat tilted his
head, his stare weighing upon her, as physical a thing as stinging insects or
the bite of windblown sand. When the cat’s eyes narrowed, tightening upon her
face, her form, her soul, she felt her arms fold self-consciously over her nakedness.

Podak turned away
suddenly, mumbling “One day a riddle will be the death of me.” Then more
loudly, “In answer to your observation, Ellen Monroe, squid are not, strictly
speaking, fish. And as captain of the boat on which you stand, what I choose to
do, contradictory though it may seem, is my prerogative. It is a right and
privilege that I have earned.”

Beyond that, he would not
elaborate. Behind her, one of the trolls was using a broad shovel to push piles
of fish and clams over the side. The other returned with a towel, presenting it
wordlessly to Ellen before rushing off to assist with the cleanup.

Ellen dried herself, noting an embossed seal on the towel’s
corner, the gold-stitched insignia of the Sands Hotel. She looked at Podak
questioningly, but the cat simply rolled its shoulders and blinked. “A souvenir
from Vegas,” he answered unapologetically. “Come with me.”

The cat turned easily on
the narrow rail and marched towards the back deck. “What brings you here, Ellen
Monroe? Why were you swimming in this sea tonight?”

“I’m … I’m not exactly
sure.”

“Lost your way, did you?”

Lines and rigging and
nets festooned the boat like something left in an old attic, layered with
cobwebs. Wooden lobster pots were lashed outside the rails, and the deck was
littered with thick coils of rope and grappling hooks; what purpose they
served, she could not fathom. Even in the darkness, Ellen could make out two
enormous objects dangling from the side of the boat’s forward deck by chains.
They looked like the skulls of some kind of sea creature, perhaps whales, and
like the boat itself, both resembled vestiges of some long ago age gone dry and
gray. Everywhere, the wood had turned old, bleached like driftwood, a musty
smell clinging to every surface, the miasma of rot and even death. It hung in
the air, saturated the planks and rigging, coated the iron nails and brass
fixtures, and even the seamen standing patiently about the deck, unmoving,
unseeing, little more than phantoms, the inanimate ghosts of seafarers lost
long ago.

The
Dreaming Moon
was a ghost ship!