Double Dose, page 24
“But I can explain—”
“There’s no explaining livin’ like that,” he said. “She tried so hard to undo what your father’s people had taught you. She thought she’d shown you how to be a good person.”
“But she did! She succeeded!”
“If she had, do you think you’d be spending your days cheatin’ people?”
What could Daley say to that? She couldn’t think of a damn thing.
“I’ll be hittin’ the hay meself, I think.” He downed the last of his whiskey. “Come on, Brendan.”
“I’m sorry, Unk. All I can say is I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to her.”
He stopped in his bedroom door and turned to her. “Too late for that I’m afraid.” He gave a sad shake of his head. “You broke her old heart today, dearie. Broke her heart, you did. Clean through.”
He closed his door, leaving Daley alone in the main room. She turned in a slow circle, taking in the excess of furniture and the array of Gram’s religious statuary.
Broke her heart…
The last thing in the world she’d ever want to do…break the heart of the woman who’d taken her in when she was orphaned and raised her and nurtured her and loved her and made her feel safe. She’d rather die than be responsible for breaking Gram’s heart.
Rather die…there’s a thought.
Who was left? Who could she turn to? Who hadn’t she turned against her? What bridge had she left unburned?
What did tomorrow offer but more of the same shit? And the day after that? And the day after that? Where did she go from here? She wouldn’t go back to the grift, even if she could.
Let’s face it, girl: You’re a pariah. You’ve got no friends in this world, so why hang on? Tomorrow’s gonna suck so why not just cancel tomorrow? And all the tomorrows after that? Really…who the fuck is going to miss you or be sorry you’re gone?
She couldn’t think of one lousy person.
She stood there for she didn’t know how long, staring at the wall, trying to think of one person who needed her, and couldn’t come up with one. And slowly it came to her what to do.
She stepped to Seamus’s door and put her ear against it. She could hear him snoring on the other side. She eased the door open, slipped through, then left it open a crack behind her so she could see. As she tiptoed toward his nightstand, Brendan’s tail started thumping on the bed as he lifted his head.
Don’t wake him!
She eased open the nightstand’s bottom drawer where he kept the Webley. She felt around and found it under some papers; she’d forgotten how heavy it was and almost dropped it. Clutching it to her chest, she hurried back to the main room where she examined it in the light. The eight-chamber, weirdly sculpted cylinder was fully loaded. Unk had always said an unloaded pistol wasn’t worth a damn. He’d taken her to a gun range in the hills a number of times during her teens, so she had some idea of how to use it.
Okay. Now she just had to decide the best place to put an end to all this…
62
“Leave your shoes here,” Cadoc said.
“What? This is crazy, Cad.”
He and his brother stood before a heavy, bolted door in the antechamber of the entrance to the Lodge. The door opened onto the stairs down to the Nofio pool. Rhys had been down there countless times. Why was Cad taking him down now?
“I know it seems crazy, but just humor me for the next five minutes and you’ll see something you’ll never forget.”
“But—”
“Five minutes, Rhys.” He was sounding testy now. “Five lousy minutes.”
“Okay, okay.”
He could spare him five minutes, he supposed, even though Cadoc was acting a bit loony tonight.
I truly believe she has a power to heal…
Seriously? Daley has magic powers?
Maybe Cad had been cooped up in that room for too long. But Rhys would go along for now. He removed his shoes.
“Now,” Cadoc said, stepping out of his own, “if this is going to work, we have to be go down those steps in the dark and in complete silence. Complete silence. Not even a whisper. I’m serious about that. The slightest noise will ruin it.”
“Ruin what?”
“Everything I’m trying to show you. Ready?”
“I guess.”
“I’ll lead. Hold onto the railing with one hand and keep the other on my shoulder so we stay together.”
“Got it.”
Cad turned off the antechamber overhead light and eased the door open, revealing deeper blackness within the darkness. Humid, slightly sulfurous air wafted around them. Rhys put his right hand on Cad’s shoulder as he began to move down, found the railing with his left, and followed him onto the steps.
The Pendry family lodge had been built over a hot spring. The area was full of them. The spring trickled downhill under the foundation and pooled in a roughly square depression running twenty feet on a side. The runoff flowed into a subterranean channel that took it who knew where.
Not the most pleasant place. Ventilation had been added but it wasn’t enough to combat the constant moisture. As a result the walls were slimy and moldy. The place had been lit by oil lamps in the old days, but the grotto had been equipped with electric lights for the last thirty years or so.
Why all the trouble? The Nofio—another inane clan ritual. Every three months all the pregnant women in the clan would trek down here to immerse themselves for an hour or so in the hundred-degree, mineral-rich spring water. During the immersion the head of the clan would read a passage from the Scrolls invoking a blessing from the absent Visitors upon the unborn.
After they were through, the women would dry themselves off, go back home, and no one would visit or give another thought to the pool until the next Nofio.
Rhys didn’t remember there being so many steps, but finally Cadoc stopped. He felt him lean forward and twist slightly to the left, and suddenly the grotto was ablaze with light. That was when Rhys realized they weren’t alone down here.
A dozen dark figures occupied the pool. And they weren’t human.
After a frozen heartbeat during which Rhys’s mind tried to comprehend what his eyes were telling it, the tableau dissolved into thrashing movement as the figures dove into the runoff channel and disappeared.
Rhys found his voice. “Porthors? Were those…porthors?”
“Give the man a prize!”
“No, seriously, I thought they lived in the desert.”
“They do. But apparently a certain number of them—I don’t pretend to know how they decide whose turn it is, but there’s a group soaking here pretty much every night.”
“But-but-but—”
“You sound like motorboat, Rhys.”
“But how do you know? How did you find out?
“This was one of my earliest discoveries. When I first went into seclusion, I used to sleep in the day and wander the Lodge at night—raid the fridge, watch movies…and skinny dip. The minerals in the spring water made my messed-up skin feel better. One night I decided to take a nap down here, so I turned off the lights, stretched out on that bench over there, and dozed off. I awoke to sloshing sounds in the pool. Scared, I turned the lights on and—whoa!—got the fright of my life.”
“I’ll bet!”
According to the Scrolls, the Visitors took early hominids or proto hominids, and transformed them into something else—something that doesn’t die but has limited intelligence and cannot speak—and left them behind when they returned to wherever they came from. Rhys had always considered them bullshit, some sort of boogie men, imaginary beings to frighten children. The porthors’ll getcha! was a familiar phrase around many a clan home.
“Why didn’t you tell me, bro?”
Cad shrugged. “I didn’t want you to know I was wandering around the Lodge at night. Little brother would want to come along and I didn’t want company. It was my time. I had the place to myself. I was undisputed Master of the Lodge at night.”
“But what’s this got to do with the Pendry Patch?”
“They’re the source of the Patch.”
Rhys could only stare at him. Cadoc had lost his mind.
“No,” Cadoc said, “I haven’t lost my mind.”
“But the porthors live out in the desert. Our clan has been here only a little over a century, while the patch has been in the family forever.”
“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. If you go back to the nineteenth century in Wales, there’s no mention in the family records—not a single one—about a rough, discolored patch of skin on anyone. I know. I’ve looked. Only after we moved to the desert does it get mentioned. I know that too. I’ve done the research and the first mention was on a child born in 1919 and almost every child thereafter.”
That was a shocker. The patch being part of the family had always been one of those everybody-knows things.
“But that still doesn’t mean—”
“I don’t know how it started. Maybe a hot mineral spring was such a novelty when we first moved here and the clan was small enough so that everyone soaked. And then the pregnant ones began to give birth to kids with the patch. Somehow it became part of clan lore that the patch will mark us as makers of the way for the Visitors, and as such we will be exalted upon the Return. And so began the Nofio ritual: every three months all the pregnant women soaked here. After a couple of generations, the patch was everywhere.”
“But how? How does it happen?”
Cadoc shrugged. “I’ve got no scientific studies to back me up, but my theory is that when the porthors soak here they leave their ‘essence’ in the water.”
Rhys grimaced in revulsion. “You don’t mean…”
Cadoc laughed. “No, not semen. They’re sexless, remember? But they leave something behind that causes the patch.”
“But you…”
“I had an exaggerated reaction, I guess. Instead of a small patch it spread over my entire body. Could have been worse, I suppose. I mean, I could have been born without the patch.”
That was a shock.
“I thought every Pendry had a patch.”
“It happens.”
“Who do we know who doesn’t?”
Cadoc gave him a level stare. “No one.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“A Pendry child born without the patch is reported stillborn to the parents and put up for adoption. There’s no shortage of childless couples out there looking for a lily-white child they can raise as their own.”
“Bullshit!”
“It’s the truth. It’s rare and only the Elders know that there’s nothing inside that little closed coffin when it goes into the Pendry crematorium.”
Rhys slowly sat down on a bench. “Not Aerona. Don’t tell me…please, don’t tell me our little sister is being raised somewhere by another family.”
“I wish I knew. I’ve tried to find out if she really died or was adopted, but it’s been beyond me in my previous condition. I’ve combed the files and the computers for some kind of record but came up empty time after time. And since all Pendrys are cremated, an exhumation is impossible.”
“But if she is alive…then what?”
“It would be just enough to know she’s safe and well. It would be no favor to let her know what kind of family she was born into.”
Rhys felt his gorge rise. The possibility was monstrous…inconceivable.
“I can’t believe Dad would tell Mom Aerona was dead when she wasn’t. He wouldn’t let her live all these years blaming herself…would he?”
Cadoc’s voice was flat. “It’s the Pendry way.”
“No. I can’t buy it. I know Dad’s become unbalanced lately, but he’d never do something like that.”
Cadoc bent at the waist and got in his face. “You’ve seen the film,” he said when they were almost nose to nose. “The man who hopes to make that a reality is capable of anything.”
63
“Where the fuck you think you’re going?”
Cadoc jumped at the unexpected sound of a voice, then froze. He’d made it only to the third tread on Daley’s back stairs. He turned slowly but could see no one in the dark.
“Who’s there?” he said.
“I asked you a question.”
He didn’t see why he should answer to anyone, but the undeniable menace in the voice made him wary. Might be better to humor this one.
“Going up to the apartment. Why?”
“You know her?”
“We’re friends.”
“I ain’t seen you around before.”
“I’m not terribly social.”
Why am I explaining myself?
“Easy to say you’re a friend, even if you ain’t. Kind of late to be bothering a friend.”
“I felt she might need friendly company tonight.” Rhys had refused to come along and Cadoc didn’t think Daley had many friends left. “Who are you?”
“Her watchdog. Every goddess needs a watchdog.”
Goddess? Interesting…
“She stationed you here?”
“She don’t know nothin’ about it. And you might as well save yourself some steps because she ain’t here.”
Cadoc glanced at the empty spot where she usually parked. He hadn’t thought to check that first.
“Where’d she go?”
“If she don’t know I’m here, she ain’t about to tell me, is she?
“Good point. So you spend the night out here watching her place?”
“I got her back.”
Something about the way he said it made Cadoc believe him.
“Well, I’m glad someone does. And since she’s not here, I guess I’ll be going.”
“Good idea.”
That could be the oddest conversation I’ve ever had in my life, Cadoc thought as he walked away. All with a man I couldn’t see.
At least he seemed sincerely devoted to Daley. As was Cadoc. Despite all that had happened, she still had friends. She might be glad to know that.
64
Daley didn’t want Gram or Seamus finding her body so she’d looked up the nearest branch of the LAPD and made the short drive to the West Valley Police Station. She parked in a non-spot across the street and pulled out the pistol. Someone in the station would hear the shot and come to investigate.
Whenever Seamus had taken her to the gun range, his Webley-Fosbery always caused a stir because invariably there’d be a gun collector there who’d spot it and beg to buy it. Unk’s response had always been the same: “It was me Da’s and I’ll not be selling it for any price.”
Daley didn’t want to think about this too much more. She’d mulled it plenty on the drive over and hadn’t changed her mind. So just do it and get it over with.
She pointed the barrel at her face and opened her mouth but couldn’t stick the muzzle inside. Something just so wrong with that. Pard must have read up on suicide by gunshot because somehow she knew that the surest way to succeed was to put a bullet through the brainstem. Plenty of people had survived a bullet in the brain but the brainstem controlled bodily functions like breathing and there was no coming back when you blew that out the back of your head.
She closed her mouth and pressed the muzzle against the top of her throat. With the proper upward angle, she’d hit the brainstem.
Oh, wait. She had to undo the safety. One of the features of the Webley-Fosbery that caused all sorts of oohs and aahs at the range was its safety at the top of the grip. Apparently revolvers don’t have safeties. This model was an exception. She flicked the little lever on the left side to off and repositioned the barrel, hooking her thumb around the trigger.
Ready.
She hesitated.
“Okay, Pard,” she said aloud. “This is where you make a miraculous return and say, ‘Stop! Don’t do it! You’ll be killing me too.’ Pard? Hey, Pard, I’m waiting.”
Shit. He really was gone. She truly was all alone. Which was the whole problem, wasn’t it. The whole reason she was here.
And yet…
Why had she been expecting Pard to stop her—no, wait: wishing Pard would stop her? Didn’t that mean she didn’t really want to do this? Yes, that could only mean she didn’t want to do this.
She lowered the pistol.
Cancelling tomorrow…all tomorrows…
What had she been thinking? She’d pulled some dumbass stunts in her day but this took the proverbial cake.
When did I become so goddamn pathetic?
People think I’m a crook, a fraud. Well, that’s true in the past tense, and well deserved. I’ll own that.
People distrust me. I deserve that. Some people even hate me enough to spit on me. I don’t think I deserve that, but it’s hardly the end of the world.
I’m the pariah of the moment. But haters will hate and people have short memories. The haters will soon find someone new to hate. And if they don’t, so what?
Fuck ’em.
Fuck. Them. All.
She’d come through a dumbass moment but she wasn’t a total dumbass. Yeah, she was down—way down—but she wasn’t out. Not nearly. She had options. Didn’t know what the hell they were just yet, but she’d figure them out. She would.
She flicked the safety back on, lay the pistol aside, started the car, and headed back to Gram’s for a night on a couch.
Let tomorrow bring what it would. She’d be there to face it down.
WEDNESDAY—March 18
65
(“Wake up, Daley.”)
Daley bolted to a sitting position on the couch.
“Pard?”
(“Hold it down. Don’t want to wake the old folks.”)
You’re back!
She wasn’t sure how she felt: Happy? Mad? Relieved?
(“Never left.”)
What? What kind of a game are you playing?
(“No game. I’ve been paralyzed. Mute. Powerless.”)
I can barely hear you.
(“Still very weak…low input to your nervous system.”)
What happened?
