Flesh Wounds, page 4
In Jeremy’s head there was a detonation of light, accompanied by pain like he’d never known before. His mind, stripped of reason and sensory input, latched on an image from one of any of a hundred films in the Friday the Thirteenth or Nightmare on Elm Street genre. In it, a man’s face was split with a machete, a victim’s head caved in with a fireman’s axe, or a woman’s forehead pierced with an iron railroad spike. There were a thousand variations, but that was the pain he felt. A bright implosion of agony that burned through his skull like a nuclear inferno and left him stripped, lifeless, hanging from a lance of chrome thrust between his eyes.
Infinite seconds passed. On some distant level, Jeremy was aware of the floor slamming hard against his back. His head hit the cracked linoleum with a dull smack, the sound a basketball in need of air makes on wet cement. Somewhere far, far away, Deke made more threats. Jeremy thought he heard his mother’s voice crying from the living room, “Please don’t kill my boy.” There was a second blow that must have been a kick. Jeremy felt it wedge knife-like between his ribs. And then the door slammed shut.
Despite the pain, the tears, the blood trailing from his nostrils, Jeremy felt relief. He had survived another beating. He tried to sit up, but the room wouldn’t hold still for it. Something was pounding against the inside of his skull in an effort to escape. Tentatively, he felt his nose, and whimpered as broken cartilage grated beneath his fingers.
When he was finally able to sit up, it felt as if there was a heated knife in his side. His neck was sore where Deke had held him.
All in all, he’d come out of it pretty lucky.
Jeremy heard Deke in the living room ordering Mother to hold still. A moment later, her weeping and Deke’s hoarse moans whispered through the closed door and echoed off the barren bedroom walls.
Where is Mother’s Black Knight?
The comic lay beside him, open to a curling page sixteen. A single scene occupied the entire page: the Black Knight standing triumphant over a shuddering Monteret. It was drawn from a ground-level perspective so that Monteret was but a cowering child and the knight was a tower stretched above him, the gleaming length of his broadsword a polished slide from tower to ground. In the background, Lady de Vac was still on the rack, but her head was raised and her eyes were fixated on her savior. Her eyes said it all.
“I can’t do it alone,” Jeremy cried. His tears ran a course parallel to the blood streaming from his broken nose. “I need your help, Sir Knight.”
A light breeze, perhaps from beneath the door, rustled the page. From the other side of the door, Mother’s weeping had quieted to a resolute sobbing, while Deke’s breathing had become ragged and full of shuddering gasps.
“You’ve got to save us,” Jeremy told the comic book image. “I’m calling you forth to right this wrong, Black Knight. I—” The boy stumbled over the words. What were you supposed to say in a summoning? What were the proper procedures for—
Blood!
Every summoning needs blood!
The boy leaned over the open comic and, despite the sharp pain and fireworks going off back of his eyes, he squeezed his broken nose. Fresh blood splattered across the page and was promptly absorbed by the cheap, dry paper.
But nothing happened.
Jeremy stared into the dark eyes gleaming through the knight’s visor. “You must come!” He pounded the blood-dampened page with his fist.
Still, nothing.
Then, a single tear, like a tiny, pearl-shaped diamond, fell from Jeremy’s eye and hit the page, soaking into the violet jewel in the pommel of the knight’s broadsword. There was a moment of silence, as if all time had stopped. Gone were the sounds of Mother and Deke, the cars and people on the streets outside, the failing air conditioner in the living room window... everything. Gone.
The silence was shattered by a thunderclap that left Jeremy’s ears ringing. The air above his bed parted, opening on some netherworld where damp stone corridors overgrown with green moss and black mold led off into dark recesses that screamed of hidden evil. The air that came through was fetid, foul with stale death and worse, unidentifiable odors. Jeremy had a second to wonder if this was such a good idea, then the gaping hole was filled with the Black Knight.
The knight stepped out onto Jeremy’s bed, stooped to prevent his head and shoulders crashing through the ceiling. One of the bed’s legs snapped beneath his weight. The bed tipped precariously. Legs braced, the knight didn’t even notice. Behind him, the rent in time and space closed with a soft pop. The knight stepped down off the bed. He was now able to stand without stooping, although the scarlet plumes shooting from the top of his helmet were bent double by the ceiling. Where he had walked across the bed, there were grimy, rust-colored smears, thick and oily, like wet clay. The knight carried with him an odor of death. His armor was a lackluster ebony, splattered with old blood that clung like dried onion skin. Strapped about his waist were two weapons, longknife and broadsword. The broadsword’s tip nearly dragged the ground; its pommel was tipped with a vermillion stone that glistened wetly.
From the living room: “Goddammit, I don’t know what the hell that little bastard’s doing in there, but as soon as I’m done I’m gonna kick his ass!” Deke’s words were spaced around short, gasping breaths, as if he was speaking while exercising.
The knight’s eyes, barely visible through the slit in his visor, were black as crude oil. The helmet seemed to contain its own field of darkness, cloaking the face within, leaving nothing but the eyes discernable. Those eyes studied Jeremy for a moment, then their intense gaze traversed to the door. Something in the knight’s posture indicated a patient query.
“Yes,” Jeremy whispered.
The knight hesitated but a second longer, and Jeremy could almost hear his thoughts as he considered the close confines of the doorway and compared it with the space required to wield the broadsword. He drew his longknife. The blade rasped like a hornet as it slid from its sheath. The iron was dark, the edge notched and worn, but the tip was finely tempered and, where the edge had not been misused, it gleamed silvery sharp in the feeble bedroom light.
He crossed the room in two great strides, the broadsword slapping metallic against his thigh, and with one kick split the door down the middle. The doorknob half pinwheeled out into the living room, spinning like some crazy top before it fell. It struck Deke across the back of his legs just above where his trousers hung around his ankles and he let out a yelp of pain. The hinged half clung tenaciously, swinging wildly on hinges that had pulled free of the frame and hung now by screws seated mere threads deep. As the knight stepped through the doorway, he hit it with his shoulder and it crashed to the floor.
Mother screamed.
The Black Knight strode through the living room, brandishing the knife on level with Deke’s throat. Deke’s pants saved him from the first cut. As he scrambled away, abandoning Mother across the couch with her house dress hiked up around her waist to reveal her pale buttocks, he tripped and fell. The knife whistled by, mere inches from his face.
Despite a quivering jaw and a keening not unlike Jeremy’s earlier, Deke fought back. He clawed up the battered half-door laying beside him and, with a Herculean heave made possible by months of heavy lifting on the loading docks, slung it at the knight. The door caught the knight by surprise. It’s weight not only carried him back several feet, it also knocked the knife from his hand. The heavy blade clattered across the linoleum, sliding to a halt in the bedroom doorway where Jeremy now stood.
Deke scrambled to his feet, fighting his trousers up over knobby knees and hairy thighs. There was no erection to get in the way this time. The knight’s presence had taken care of that. Ignoring the difficult zipper and button, Deke held them up with one hand. With the other, he shoved his screaming wife aside so he could run for the front door.
The knight caught him about halfway there, driving him into the wall with a backhand. The knight’s iron gauntlet opened up the side of Deke’s face as easily as if it were rice paper. Deke hit the wall hard enough to leave an impression in the sheet rock, then he crumbled to the floor. As he sat there, blood seeping down his face to drench his dirty t-shirt, the Black Knight drew his broadsword and raised it over his head.
“No,” Jeremy said, but his voice was barely a whisper.
Suddenly Deke was on his feet, ramming his shoulder into the knight’s stomach. But the knight wasn’t even moved by the tackle. He brought the pommel of his sword down atop Deke’s head. Deke staggered back, more blood starting from his forehead. Deke’s eyes, shiny and distant, met Jeremy’s across the room. In them, Jeremy wasn’t sure if he saw apology or accusation.
The sword flashed and blood flew in a wide spray, decorating the wall in violent red swathes of abstract art. Deke spun as if on a string, a gruesome ballerina tasseled with blood and intestines, until the blade came back and stopped him in his tracks with its length thrust through his back and out the upper part of his chest. Deke hung there while the Black Knight contemplated him like a crude man studying something he’d just pulled from his nose.
Were it not for Mother’s screaming, the room would have been completely silent. The blood running down the walls and dripping about Deke’s feet made not a sound.
“Fuck,” Deke said in that silence, his final comment to world and family. The single word sounded thick and wet, like he was talking around a mouthful of raw liver.
Contemptuously, the Black Knight slung him free of the sword. Deke hit the floor like a sodden sack of dog food and lay dead, a loop of grey intestine strung out beside him. His eyes were open, staring accusingly in Jeremy’s direction.
Jeremy’s stomach heaved and he vomited across the floor, splattering the front of his shirt and his feet.
The knight shook his sword to clear it of blood. The viscous fluid splattered the floor in Rorschach patterns of red—crude images of women with spread legs, yawning chest cavities, and ravaged throats. The Black Knight said something then, the first word he’d spoken since he’d stepped out of that netherworld. The word was in a foreign tongue, but Jeremy interpreted the tone as contempt for an opponent too easily vanquished.
He glanced once at Jeremy, then turned to face Mother where she cowered, whimpering, on the sofa. Sheathing his sword, he stepped toward her. Mother screamed again.
“It’s alright, Mother,” Jeremy said from the doorway. “I called for him. He’s here to help.”
The knight reached out and caught the front of Mother’s dress. With a single wrench, he stripped it from her body and tossed it aside. Mother huddled on the couch, one hand covering the dark hair between her legs, the other clutched across her breasts.
“No,” Jeremy stammered.
The Black Knight looked back over his shoulder. The dark eyes blinked, polished onyx, hard and cold. He spoke again in that foreign tongue. Though the words themselves were a mystery, Jeremy knew the message: To the victor go the spoils.
Jeremy sagged against the door frame and sank to his knees. One knee landed in vomit, but he was beyond caring.
The knight knocked Mother’s hand away from her crotch. He forced her legs open and slid between them, slapping her once when she tried to claw at his eyes through the visor. As she sagged back against the sofa, he squeezed one of her breasts hard enough to leave the imprint of his armored hand. There was blood there too, bright red against Mother’s pale flesh. It was Deke’s blood.
The knight began fumbling with the buckles at his waist.
Where is Mother’s Black Knight?
From the apartment building’s stairway came the sound of heavy feet.
Jeremy’s hand found the cold iron of the knight’s knife.
Mother’s hands pounded vainly against the heavy armor shielding the knight’s broad chest. He laughed. It was a cruel laugh, universal in all languages.
Jeremy staggered to his feet, his eyes on the knight’s back, looking for an opening, his hand wrapped tight about the handle of the knife.
There was a pounding at the door. “Police! Open up!”
Still working at the buckles, the knight looked back over his shoulder at the door, just as Jeremy slipped the knife in to the hilt where breastplate and shoulder-piece met. Blood flooded hot over the boy’s hand. The knight bellowed in pain. Jeremy ripped the knife free and drew it back to plunge it in again, but there was another clap of thunder and the knight was simply... gone.
The front door burst open and two policemen ducked through, indistinct blurs of blue and black to Jeremy. His focus had narrowed to the dripping knife in his hand, the only thing remaining of the Black Knight. Everything else was out of focus, elongated and disassociated with distance.
Guns leveled, the cops ordered him to drop the knife. Their eyes shifted from the red blade in his hand to the corpse on the floor.
Jeremy looked to his mother. She would tell them what had happened.
Mother was a gibbering mess, her eyes rolled back in her head, her hands rhythmically clenching and unclenching the sofa cushions. She no longer made any attempt to cover her nudity. “Please don’t hurt me,” she chanted again and again.
“Drop the knife, son,” one of the cops repeated. The muzzles of their service revolvers seemed incredibly large, dark tunnels leading to another world.
Jeremy let the knife slip through his sticky wet fingers. It thudded to the floor. He wiped his hand on his pants.
“I can explain,” he began as they cuffed his hands behind his back.
Roses in December
God gave us memories so that we might have roses in December.
–James M. Barrie
The new nurse found the missing old man in the garden, head back and moonlight in his eyes, howling like a wolf. He’d ripped open his pale blue pajama tops, the ones with the Wintercrest Nursing Home logo on the right breast pocket. His hairy chest gleamed silver. Discarded buttons littered the snow like pocket change. He was barefoot. He was howling. He must be, thought the nurse, a total loon.
“Mr. Holstead?” She leaned in close enough to turn and read the plastic band on his wrist. “Barry?”
“Arrrrrrrrrrroooooooooooo!” howled the old man, a bitter breeze tossing his long grey hair.
The name was familiar—something she had been told by one of the day nurses. Holstead... Yes, that was it. The poor man’s wife had died just last week. Compassion displaced her irritation at being outside in fifteen degree weather. She touched his arm. “You’re going to catch a cold out here, sir.”
Another melancholy howl. From somewhere beyond the grounds a neighborhood dog answered. She looked in its direction, but could see little for the security wall. A rooftop just the other side twinkled with Christmas lights.
She took him firmly by the arm and tugged him toward the home. “Come on, Mr. Holstead. We’re going inside.” The old man was stronger than he looked. She pulled, but he didn’t budge.
“Do you smell it?” he asked unexpectedly.
“Smell what?”
A long, deep shuddering breath. Head back. Eyes closed. Moonlight in his beard. “Yesterday,” he whispered. “As clear and sweet as a rose. Yesterday.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He smiled at her gently. “Christmas Eve, 1944. Glenn Miller caught a plane to Paris and was never heard from again. I was in the Philippines, having just taken Guam with Admiral Halsey. I was on R & R, mourning Miller’s death with too many beers and howls that sent the local girls to work the other side of the room, when this U.S.O. dancer put on Moonlight Serenade.”
She smiled at him indulgently, shivering now. “We can continue this story inside, Mr. Holstead.”
“Sweet, sweet Betty. The first time I saw her, I knew this day would come.” He leaned back against the nurse’s arm, opened his mouth, emitted another of his eerie howls. It seemed to go on forever, the nurse pulling unsuccessfully on his arm, the hound on the other side of the wall adding its own sad harmony, and the ambivalent full moon dominating the sky.
“Betty? Was she your wife?” the nurse asked when the howl had finally died.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Holstead.” It sounded condescending to her. Insincere and contrite. She struggled for a better response, but before she could say anything else, he spoke again.
“I loved her,” was all he said, softly, wistfully.
“I’m sure you miss her terribly,” added the nurse.
He nodded. “Her and all the others.”
“Others?”
“Deborah and Julie. Delice and Dina and lovely Paula Jean. I miss them all. And each time,” he said, staring now into her eyes with an intensity that made her step back, “I tell myself I won’t fall in love with another.
“But I always do.”
He howled.
Pity, she thought, that such a nice old man should be so delusional. But enough of this; it was time to get him back inside. “If you don’t come in with me now,” she said, breaking into the middle of the wolf’s call, “I’ll have to go in and get security. They’ll bring you in by force, Mr. Holstead. You don’t want that, do you?”
He smiled at her, snorted a small careless laugh. “No. I suppose not. Someone might be hurt.” Then he seemed to notice her shivering. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he steered her toward the door.
Moments later, they were back in the Spartan room where he’d spent the last seven years watching his wife deteriorate. The nurse tucked him into bed and, on impulse, planted a single brief kiss on his cheek. “You buzz for me if you need anything, Mr. Holstead.”
“Thank you.” His eyes twinkled in the light from the window. She had the impression that he was laughing at some secret joke.
“Goodnight.” At the door she smiled back at him. “And Merry Christmas, Mr. Holstead.”
