Valknut: The Binding, page 22
“You can’t support us any more,” she said. “You’re nothing but a dummy.” She had never said these things to him before she left, but the words were there now. And her eyes said even more. I can’t stand to let those clumsy, stupid hands touch me.
Feelings stirred through him. Bad feelings that made him heat up all over. He fought them, afraid of what they might make him do. A sob shook his body and this time he couldn’t swallow it back down.
It isn’t real. That’s Soo, there, not my wife, and this isn’t my house. These feelings aren’t real, neither. Someone’s messing with me.
He stared at his hands, which had clenched into fists all by themselves. He had to get away. Still sobbing, he lurched away from the jungle. The feelings faded as he left the firelight behind. A few more steps, and he couldn’t remember anymore why he was running. He just knew he couldn’t stay there.
The wind picked up again, blowing right through his worn suit coat. If he couldn’t stay with Soo, he’d need some other shelter. The festival had all sorts of hideaways a guy could tuck himself into for the night. Jim tried to figure what place might be best, but his thoughts felt thicker than usual. He shrugged and started off for the tent village.
Halfway there, the sheet of cardboard dragged past him, flapping and turning like a living thing. It seemed to know where it was going. Cardboard was a blanket, or a mattress, or a lean-to against the wind and rain. He pounced at it, missed, and gave chase. The cardboard flew in a burst of wind, scooting past the food vendors’ deserted stands. It came to rest in the festival’s carnival, pinned against Ashley’s favorite kiddie ride, a train that looked like a big snake chasing its own tail on an oval track. Thinking of Ashley, his throat tightened and he thought he might cry again. He had nothing left but her and the other children who knew him as Jungle Jim, the hobo clown.
Jim hurried to the cardboard. He couldn’t let it get away again. He was too tired to run after it any more. The wind tried to take it from him, but he grabbed it and held on tight. Air puffed from his lungs like a train whistle and his legs felt wobbly. If he didn’t find a place to jungle up soon, he might just go to sleep right where he stood.
He looked at the kiddie ride. In the day, the train would race up and down and around its track with a load of squealing kids. Ashley always rode up front with her white-blond hair streaking behind her like a comet tail. The ride was quiet now. It would make him a fine house, and the cardboard would be his roof.
He climbed to the pavement inside the oval ride and wedged the cardboard between a heavy control box on the ground and the underside of the track. Taking one last look around, he crawled inside his new lean-to and fell asleep before he knew he was lying down.
***
Lennie hadn’t played inside a cardboard box since she was eight years old, when her father had brought home a new washing machine. Her mother had exclaimed over the shiny, white washer, but Lennie was far more interested in its packaging. That box had housed her own private world for months, until the cat turned it into his back-up litter box.
This box didn’t seem nearly as large as the one she remembered and the air had the same stifling paper-and-glue odor that had driven her out of her cardboard forts as a child. But it was the best shelter she could get for less than fifty cents. And at least it was clean.
As painful as that pressure in her head had become during the poetry session, the sudden release was almost as bad. The landing emptied of hobos while she sat in an incoherent daze. Junkyard had to prod her into moving. He’d left her at the festival’s jungle before going to look for Jim. Too Long Soo took one look at Lennie’s dull eyes and led her to the nearest empty box.
“Crawl in, girlie. Yer lookin’ more tired than a hound dog after a night of coon huntin’.”
But now Lennie felt fine, though exhausted and plagued by a small, completely ordinary headache. She should be out with Junkyard, looking for Jim. But she had no idea where to look. Most likely, she would just get lost.
Soo’s voice penetrated the thin cardboard walls as she argued with Bones O’Riley over the ingredients for tomorrow’s stew. Bones claimed that the carrots were “so limp they’d have to soak in Viagra for a week to stiffen up.” Soo countered that the carrots were fresh bought, that he was being “more ornery than a pit bull with mange,” and that she was getting tired of Viagra jokes. The conversation seemed almost ordinary after the bizarre events of the last thirty hours.
Lennie squirmed uncomfortably and poked at the pile of newspapers that served as her pillow. She tried to relax, but it was no use. Tired as she was, her mind wouldn’t slow down. Too much had happened, this day. She sighed and switched on the flashlight Soo had given her.
If not for the tattoo, she might believe that she had taken a nosedive into schizophrenia somewhere between Ames and Minneapolis. From the moment she had awakened in the boxcar, she had been sensing things that weren’t there and had been assaulted by beings she couldn’t see. Her body seemed to have developed a power she couldn’t understand. Most distressing, no one around her ever seemed to notice anything unusual.
She pointed the flashlight upward and stared at the circle of light on the cardboard ceiling. There had to be a connection between Ramblin’ Red, the tattoo, and the mental attacks, if only she could see the pattern.
The pressure she had sensed at the poetry session had to be related as well. She tried to pinpoint when she had first felt it, but it seemed like it had been there at a low, ear-popping level all day. She had only noticed it after the readings were well under way. During Jungle Jim’s song, it expanded like a constipation of the mind, blocking her ability to think or see. And then, magically, it was gone. Why?
Abruptly, she knew with awful clarity the focal point of the attack.
She should get up, find Junkyard, tell him...tell him what? Something is after Jungle Jim—I could tell by the way my headache went away when Jim disappeared.
Yeah, right.
Still, she should try. Junkyard had said something about checking Bill’s house. Soo might know where that was.
But Soo seemed very far away. In fact, even sitting up seemed like far too much work. She yawned. Her concern for Jungle Jim faded into an almost drunken lethargy. Alarm trembled in the back of her mind. This isn’t right. She struggled against the unnatural pull of sleep. But her eyes closed anyway. The flashlight slipped from her relaxed fingers and rolled across the floor. Its light cast shadows of nothing in the corners of the box.
***
The carnival sprawled across the pavement like the skeleton of an abandoned alien city, the wind whispering through its rusting metal bones. From one extremity came the frantic, lonely flap of a loose awning. From the other came the jingle of chains on the swing carousel. At its heart, there was a muttering, a shallow cough, and then the gentle seesawing of Jim Tuttle’s snores.
The moon had gone out behind charcoal clouds. Layers of shadow blanketed the carnival. In the lee of a cotton candy stand, the deepest shadow of all swelled and split in amoeboid separation. The blacker portion drifted to the oval of Ashley Sutter’s favorite ride, roiling with Fenrir’s rage.
Here was Jormungand, Fenrir’s own brother, rendered in rusting metal and peeling paint. The colossus of the deep, reduced to a two-dollar ride in a traveling carnival. The yellow in Fenrir’s eyes flared, threatening to pierce his cloak of shadow. These humans made mockery of his brother for the entertainment of their children. They would soon learn what a child of Loki could do.
Fenrir climbed to the center of the ride and stood over Jungle Jim’s little shanty. The hobo moaned within, his mind a playground where Fenrir toyed with his dreams.
It was not enough to merely kill him, though that would be easy enough to do. Fenrir would tear out Jungle Jim’s soul, soil it beyond redemption, and feed it back to the simple man in tortured pieces. He might not kill him at all.
He began his work delicately, peeling back the first onionskin layer of Jungle Jim’s mind. His manipulations were subtle at first. Fenrir would not underestimate the clown in his eagerness for revenge.
Jungle Jim was dreaming the memory of a cool fall afternoon shortly before the accident that had changed him. His thoughts were clear, as though his brain had never been damaged.
Sharon had brought Jessie and Alexandra to see him at work. He sat on the open tailgate of a pick-up parked in front of the roundhouse. His wife stood next to him and a child perched on each of his knees. They watched a diesel unit ease forward. Jim was supposed to check the air brakes on the unit before it went out again. The power of the train’s massive engine vibrated through them and hot air blew dirt in their faces.
“A tornado in a can,” he said, and the girls flung their arms around him in delighted fear. He laughed, holding their warm bodies close, and looked at his wife to share the joke.
Instead of laughing with him, as she had all those years ago, Sharon stiffened, her mouth tight and disapproving. Her eyes glowed yellow.
Jungle Jim thrashed in his sleep, knocking the cardboard aside. Fenrir leaned close, his lips twisted somewhere between a snarl and a grin. He opened a memory of another place and time, and began again.
Jessie, Jungle Jim’s little darling, the younger of his two children, had fallen off her tricycle. She sat on the roadside, the skirt of her dress torn and bunched around her thighs. Blood streamed from scrapes at her elbow and both knees, but Jim knew her tears were those of frustration rather than pain. She was his tough girl, his adventurer. He lifted her into his lap, the peach fuzz of her leg hairs soft against his calloused hand. “There, now. Don’t cry—you didn’t hurt your trike a bit.”
She laughed through her tears and kissed his cheek. Then her mother burst from the house. Instead of bringing bandages, the way he thought he remembered, she snatched Jessie out of his arms.
“I saw it,” she screeched. “I saw it all through the window. You just stay away from my daughter—don’t you ever touch her again!”
She snarled at him, and her teeth had lengthened, each ending in a sharp point. Jungle Jim started, almost waking up, but Fenrir pressed him back.
“Not yet—there is more,” he murmured, his voice a low growl.
Jim dreamed on.
He was giving the girls a bubble bath. Both girls had sculpted their hair in Dairy Queen curls. He chuckled and filled his hands with colored bath foam, dotting each girl’s nose in purple. He rubbed the foam on Alexandra’s back, over the washboard of small muscles and ribs. The soap felt slick on her smooth skin.
“Stop that!”
Startled, Jim fell back from the tub. Sharon stood in the bathroom door, her face distorted in outrage.
“You pervert!” She crossed the bathroom in two strides and swung her open hand at his face. The fingers ended in hard, sharp nails, more dog-like than human. They laid his cheek open with four long gashes. “If you ever come near my babies again, I’ll kill you!”
He gaped at her. Why had she struck him? He was only giving the girls a bath. Then he looked down at himself and saw that he was naked. Smears of purple foam streaked his body.
No, it didn’t happen like that—it never happened like that!
But he was caught in the dream, his crazed wife standing over him, blood dripping from impossible claws. He fought the false memory, fought to awaken, but the dream wouldn’t let him go.
Sharon is doing this to me.
He didn’t know where the thought had come from, but he was certain it was true. And now she threatened to keep him away from their children. He kicked out at her, driving her back. Then he was on his feet and charging her, hands outstretched, and he could hear the girls screaming behind him, the fear in their voices, see the hatred in Sharon’s eyes, and he knew that this wasn’t real, that he would never strike his wife or hurt his children in any way. Someone was doing this to him.
Someone from outside.
He stopped his attack and let his arms drop to his sides. Sharon roared and landed a blow to his head. He didn’t move to defend himself. Closing his eyes, he felt her fists bloody his nose and loosen a tooth, but he told himself this couldn’t be his wife. This wasn’t his bathroom. There was no cold, damp tile beneath his bare feet. Those little girls weren’t his daughters. Jessie would be eight now, and Alexandra would be eleven.
This couldn’t be real.
The blows grew weaker and disappeared. The screams faded along with the smell of grape bubble bath, and he could feel the shoes on his feet and the hug of a belt and bow tie. He opened his eyes, certain he would find himself under the cardboard, safe within the ring of Ashley’s favorite ride. But he was wrong.
He was back in his house. It was empty except for the litter of a hasty move. He bent and picked up a crumpled paper. Straightening it, he saw that it was one of Jessie’s drawings—a crazy-looking girl with wild hair and spaghetti legs. There was a turtle in the bottom corner. All her pictures had a turtle somewhere. He folded the paper carefully and put it in his coat pocket. When he looked up again, Sharon stood before him. This time, she was not alone. Bill Sutter stood beside her, one arm draped possessively around her shoulders.
Fat Bill. Jovial Bill. Bill, his friend. The man whose life he had saved.
“Yes, Jim,” Sharon said. “I’m leaving you. Can you blame me? Bill has a bigger income, a bigger house. Lord knows he has a bigger brain.”
She nibbled at Bill’s neck. “In fact, pretty much everything about him is bigger.”
She stuck her tongue in Bill’s ear. It was far longer than it should have been. Sweat broke out on Bill’s forehead. He licked his lips and pulled Sharon closer. She wrapped her arms around him and leered at Jim.
“Jessie and Alexandra have a new father now.”
She tilted her head and her tongue disappeared into Bill’s mouth.
Jungle Jim’s hands balled into fists inside his pockets. The back of his neck burned and the air seemed too thin to breathe. This never happened, his inner voice insisted. Sharon left without saying anything at all. But that small thought was lost in violent emotion.
For years, loss and rejection had sliced Jim’s heart with the sharp blade of grief. He wandered town to town, trying to fill the emptiness by bringing laughter to others, laughter that rang hollowly in his chest. But Sharon’s betrayal had awakened a dark animal in him, one that sneered at those weaker emotions. One that howled for revenge.
He awoke.
This time, Fenrir allowed it, holding Jim tightly in the prison of his delusions. Jim struggled to his feet. Fenrir stepped back and let him rise. “Yes, Jim. Go to her...kill her.”
It was a long walk to Bill’s house, but Jim found he wasn’t tired any more. The closer he came to Bill’s house, the angrier he became, until his mind burned white-hot. Anyone on the streets that late would have seen a lone man dressed in shabby, whimsical clothes with the look of murder on his face. After his passing, they might have felt a chill, as though Death himself followed close behind.
Bill lived on a street lined with young maple trees and an occasional old elm. His house was a small bungalow with beige stucco siding and trim the color of dried blood. The windows were dark. They were asleep, then. The girls were tucked into the smaller bedroom for the night, and Bill would be in the master bedroom—with Sharon.
Jim crossed the grass and stepped into the front landscaping. The moon broke through the clouds, lighting his way. He found a small resin frog nestled in the mulch between two bushes and bent to pick it up. The mixed scent of cedar and roses stopped him. He loved Bill’s roses, with all the different colors and blooms the size of his palm. Ashley loved the white ones best.
He nearly gave it up then. Bill could have Sharon. Jim could go back to the jungle and have some coffee with Soo. But a sharp image of Sharon’s leering face intruded, the false memory more real than the smell of any flower.
Jim snatched up the frog, gripping it so tightly that the stone-hard legs cut into his fingers. Then he grasped the upper half, and lifted. The house key lay inside, glinting in the moonlight. The key to hell.
Jungle Jim stood at the front door for a long time.
“Why am I here?”
Why am I here...why am I here...why...why?
For a moment, the layers of memory separated in his mind. Confusing and contradictory images fought for prominence—the sorrow in Sharon’s eyes as she leaned over his bandaged head in the hospital...Sharon’s snake-like tongue thrusting into Bill’s ear...playing elephant with his daughters on his back...the hatred and revulsion in Sharon’s eyes as she snatched 3-year-old Jessie from his arms...having dinner at Bill’s house and telling Ashley a bedtime story...his own daughters clinging to Bill’s legs and looking at Jim in fear.
It always came back to that—his children. His baby girls. They were his, and she had taken them.
The jumbled memories slammed together into one complete set. The contradictions were gone. There were only betrayals and spite and little hatreds. He saw Sharon in bed with Bill...the sneer on Sharon’s face...the sweat on Bill’s forehead. A furnace burned in Jim’s chest. His breath came in short explosions. The house key grew hot in his hand. He reached for the doorknob. And stopped.
“No.”
He jerked his hand back as though the knob burned red hot. The key lay in his palm, gleaming innocently in the moonlight. It didn’t matter what was real, or why Sharon had left him, or who the girls now called “daddy.”
He was Jungle Jim Tuttle and he would not do this thing.
He flung the key into the yard and turned away from the house. The false memories crumbled and fell away. He was whole again, free of the evil that had invaded his mind. He hugged himself and smiled up at the moon.
“We beat it, Petey!” he howled. “There ain’t no foolin’ Jungle Jim.”
Then he clamped his hands over his mouth. He wanted to laugh and sing and do a silly jig, but not here. He didn’t want to wake Ashley. Maybe Soo would still be awake back at the jungle. She could play her guitar while he sang. He tried to take a step away from the house, but his feet wouldn’t move.
