Ephemeral creatures, p.20
Ephemeral Creatures, page 20
By the time his offering was complete, Hrym understood the meaning of the term rapture. He wished he’d taken a small draught of his concoction before getting to work, as the experience would likely have been transcendent.
He surveyed his work and nodded approval, well pleased. The old traditions are always best. This vermin does not deserve the honor of being bound to Naglfar. The best he deserves is to end up in the gullets of the crows and vultures.
Already, said scavengers were circling in the sky overhead, eager for some fresh meat. One bold raven alighted on one of the higher branches and regarded him intently.
“Are you one of Odin’s?” Hrym asked the raven. “If the Allfather doesn’t yet know fear, it won’t be long till he shall. Ragnarok cometh.”
The raven cocked its head but made no reply.
Hrym stripped out of his blood-spattered clothes and tossed them in a heap on the ground. He wetted a towel from a water bottle, washed himself clean of blood, then added the towel to the heap. Using the Tahoe’s gas can, he doused the clothes with gasoline then tossed a lit book of matches atop the pile. The gasoline ignited with a whump.
After donning a fresh set of clothes, Hrym climbed behind the wheel. He spun up the song “The Wolf Age” on the CD and drove back toward the distant highway. His stomach grumbled even though the time was barely seven a.m. But he had worked up a good hunger, doing the gods’ work.
He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw his offering to Fenrir was already darkened by the plumage of gorging scavengers.
Hrym smiled. A fine start to the day.
-25-
Kevin made the mistake of not checking the weather forecast for the day. That morning, he’d opened the living room window to admit some fresh air before it got too hot, but then he forgot to close it. When he returned from Phoenix late that afternoon after the brunch with Chad’s aunt, he found a dust storm had blown through the area, and a fine layer of grit covered the kitchen counter, card table, and other surfaces. No doubt, plenty of dirt had gotten into the carpeting as well, maybe even filtering into the bedroom though that window had been closed.
“Son of a bitch.” He already felt dejected after they’d seemed to hit a wall that morning, and now he returned to find a mess that needed cleaning up.
He closed the window and cranked the AC higher. After getting a bottled water from the fridge, he drained half of it in one go. He paused on the way to the bedroom to lie down, noticing something odd about the card table. When he turned the light on to get a better look, a pattern in the layer of dust revealed itself. A chill ran down his spine when he read a message written there: Hope This Helps. The message accompanied an accurate rendering of a bestial maw, last seen as a tattoo on the back of the hand of Lidia’s killer in her memory palace.
Kevin had tried and failed miserably to sketch the tattoo on a napkin at the greasy spoon that morning after Greta’s departure. His attempt to reproduce it from memory, coupled with his lack of artistic skill, resulted in something that barely resembled the sand image on the table. The crude scrawling had drawn puzzled looks from Chad and Tara both. A kindergartener could probably have drawn a more accurate depiction.
The undercurrent of hopeful excitement that had been driving him lately—and was thoroughly tromped on that morning—rekindled at the sight of the table.
“Thanks, Liddy,” he said with a smile, reassured that she was watching over him.
She probably had a good laugh at my crappy attempt at drawing.
Kevin snapped a picture with his cell phone and sent it to both Chad and Tara with a message:
[Found this on the table when I got home. It’s our only clue so hopefully you guys can make some sense of it. Liddy was always the one with artistic talent.]
Tara replied after a few minutes:
[Never seen it before but I’ll have Mal look into it. Gave me chills seeing that message from Liddy. Missing her right now
Chad’s reply came half an hour later:
[That’s a trip. Tell Liddy thanx 4 assist. A little jealous only you can talk to her tho. Icon seems kinda familiar, will have to rack my brain.]
Kevin flopped down on his bed, hoping his friends might have more luck than he’d had in identifying the tattoo.
***
Chad had fired off the text before fully considering what he was doing. He just broke his self-imposed “no casual non-work-related texting” rule.
“Shit. Should’ve thought it through better and just brought it up at work next time instead.” He scratched his head. “Screw it. Maybe it’s meant to be like this.”
Kevin seemed convinced about Lidia wanting the three of them to get back together. Chad had to admit seeing Kevin again was nice, and even Tara, in a way. We’re conspirators now. The thought made him smile.
Gunner huffed and wagged his tail, apparently picking up on Chad’s improved mood.
“What’s up, boy?” He scratched the dog’s head. After a moment, he went into the kitchen, slipped a Milk Bone from the box in the cupboard, and tossed it to Gunner.
The dog crunched his treat happily, tail still wagging.
Chad’s phone pinged with a reply from Stacy.
[I sense there’s an interesting story behind this—care to share sometime? As for your question, no I don’t recognize that dust sketch. I’d be happy to help you search at work tho.]
Chad sighed. After staring at the image Lidia had drawn on Kevin’s table—and he actually believed it had been her after seeing Kevin’s crude attempt that morning—he started to convince himself he’d seen the design somewhere at the store. Whether it was from a book, magazine, DVD, or CD, he had no clue. He’d been hoping Stacy would recognize it—she had a sharp memory for details.
A moment later, another text from Stacy came through.
[Feel free to text more often just for shits n grins. Helps break the single mom doldrums ;)]
Chad found himself smiling again as he typed a reply.
-26-
The day after Hrym left Rex as carrion fodder, his luck turned to shit, souring his buoyant mood. The Tahoe blew its radiator on a back road in the ninety-degree heat of western Texas. As smoke poured from beneath the hood, he cursed and slammed a fist on the dashboard, cracking the plastic and leaving a rather large dent. He pulled over to the shoulder.
Griffith, amid pounding drumbeats and shrieking guitars, was urging him to strike hard, show no mercy, and bury the bodies afterward.
Always good advice. Hrym calmed himself, wishing he could ride a morphine cocktail right now. Where the fuck am I, anyway?
His surroundings had barely changed since he’d departed his property two hours earlier. The same expanse of ubiquitous desert scrub and yellowish prairie grass extended out of sight in every direction. By his calculation, he was stranded several hours from the interstate and civilization, with only a few sorry excuses for towns sporadically popping up along the way.
Need to find myself a new ride at one of those places.
A rumbling reached his ears over the music. He turned the stereo down, and the noise increased. Five motorcycles roared past, heading in the same direction as he was.
Isn’t there a biker bar along the way? He couldn’t remember the name. He’d never stopped nor cared about it but remembered seeing the chrome of motorcycles glinting in the sun in the parking lot every time he’d driven past the dive.
Shouldn’t be too much farther from here. That’ll have to do.
Hrym ejected his CD and slipped it into the case in his satchel. He removed his pack of cleaning wipes and thoroughly wiped down the Tahoe, doing his best to eliminate fingerprints and DNA.
Once that was complete, he headed north along the road. He strode alternately through both worlds, traversing miles in minutes. As he did, he savored the breaks the underworld provided from the aggravating heat and blinding sun. After roughly ten cycles, he returned to the material world, emerging to find The Red Bandit just up ahead. About a dozen motorcycles filled the dusty parking lot, and a group of paunchy tanned men in their fifties and sixties, dressed in leather vests and chaps, stood talking.
The group of five noticed him only after he had crossed the parking lot and gotten within ten yards. Their conversation trailed off as they watched him approach.
“Lookin’ for somethin’, pardner?” the nearest asked in a thick Texan drawl.
“Need a ride,” Hrym replied, slowing as he looked over the Harleys the men were grouped around. “That one ought to do.” He nodded at an older bike where a portly man was rummaging in the saddlebags.
Saddlebags stopped and stared at him hard. “What did you say?”
Hrym didn’t bother answering. Instead, he chopped the edge of his hand into the throat of Tex, who was closest. The man gurgled and staggered away, tripping and falling over another bike. Wolf’s Tooth was in his hand before the others could react. He jabbed the knife into the next biker’s ribs. The third man raised a hand, which Wolf’s Tooth sliced through like paper. He screamed, a girlish sound for a wannabe tough guy as he clutched his lacerated palm to his chest. Hrym headbutted him, and he dropped without any further sound.
The fourth biker, a big man with a horseshoe mustache and mirrored shades, took a swing. His fist crashed into Hrym’s jaw, the blow turning his head slightly, but that was the extent of it. He worked his jaw, which made a popping sound as he squared off with his assailant, just in time for Horseshoe to unload a second punch. Hrym caught Horseshoe’s fist with his free hand. Wolf’s Tooth lashed out twice, tearing a long gash along his forearm then stabbing into Horseshoe’s chest below his collarbone.
As Horseshoe collapsed with a cry, Saddlebags pulled a pistol. Before he could get a shot off, Hrym kicked over the Harley between them. The heavy bike struck Saddlebags in the knees, making him curse and stagger, tripping and falling onto his backside in his haste to put space between himself and Hrym.
Hrym stomped on his hand then kicked the gun away when his grip loosened. He stabbed Saddlebags in the gut, taking a moment to twist the blade before pulling it free. Saddlebags made a sound more suited to a mutilated kitten than a grown man as he curled up in the fetal position. Hrym quickly glanced around, but none of the bikers were in any shape to provide any further resistance. Nor had the alarm been raised inside the bar yet. He hadn’t intended to kill any of the men, though such an act would have been deeply satisfying. The practical reason was because homicides garnered a great deal more heat than simple assault and motor vehicle theft. Assuming any competent first-aid providers could respond in a timely manner, none of the bikers’ wounds should be fatal.
Saddlebags had courteously left his keys in the Harley. The engine radiated heat as Hrym mounted the bike. This group must have been the one that passed him not long ago.
The motorcycle fired up with a roar. A moment later, he was blasting up the highway toward the interstate, where he should be able to find a more suitable ride. Harleys were all about drawing attention to the rider, which was the last thing he wanted. He leaned low over the bike as he summoned more speed, knowing he would be in a race against time, as the theft and assault would undoubtedly be called in. Out here, he had few avenues of escape. Staging a roadblock would be a simple matter for bored deputies looking for a little action in these backwater counties.
Hrym needn’t have worried about law enforcement. He found out later, after arriving in Fort Stockton unmolested, that the saddlebags contained a kilo of coke, likely the reason the bike wasn’t reported stolen.
After eating a tolerable late dinner at a roadside diner, he walked down the street to a packed country western bar. Music and laughter emanated from inside. Almost immediately, he spotted the vehicle he wanted: a late-nineties Explorer parked behind a massive F-250. A cowboy stood beside the Explorer, tucking some chew into his lip. Hrym palmed a softball-sized rock as he approached. The cowboy never saw him before the rock put a good dent in the back of the man’s skull. He crumpled to the ground, his Stetson tumbling away.
Hrym fished the keys out of the man’s pocket and was on his way again in seconds.
-27-
“So did you find out where you’ve seen that drawing before?” Stacy asked the moment Chad walked in the door at Carefree to begin his shift, two days after sending her the image.
“Not yet. But it’s bugging the crap out of me. I know I’ve seen it somewhere.” He went to stick his sack lunch and a couple of sodas in the fridge.
When he returned, he couldn’t help but note how nice Stacy looked. She’d done something different with her hair and wore a little makeup for a change, not that she really needed it. He wondered if their text exchange, which had turned a little flirty at times, had anything to do with the change. And if so, he also wondered what that meant, if anything.
“You said you thought you saw it here somewhere, right?” she pressed.
He nodded though he wasn’t too sure anymore. After racking his brain the prior two days, he’d drawn a blank. Maybe that was one of those things he’d convinced himself of even though it wasn’t true. “Think so.”
“Book? Movie?”
Chad heaved a sigh and sat down behind the counter. Journey’s “Separate Ways” was playing quietly on the boom box behind him. Stacy stood nearby leaning against the counter and regarding him with a thoughtful look, arms crossed under her breasts in a distracting manner that made it difficult to keep from staring.
“I’ve gotta think about it some more.” He leaned back in the creaky chair, hands behind his head, and gazed up at the discolored ceiling squares. As he did, he noticed one of the three pencils remained that he’d embedded there on his last boring shift.
Stacy followed his gaze. “I knew that was you! One of them fell and hit me on the head yesterday afternoon when I was zoning out and scared the crap out of me. Thought I got dive-bombed by some big-ass bug.”
Chad laughed as he pictured the scene. Stacy joined in, and within moments, they were both nearly in tears.
“Stop it.” She smacked him on the shoulder in mock irritation. “It wasn’t funny at the time. I bet you were that delinquent in high school who always sat in the back of the classroom and got your kicks by shooting spit wads at the back of the good students’ heads, huh?”
“I’d never do that,” he said innocently.
Stacy shook her head and wiped her eyes. “I can totally picture you, the metalhead slacker, with the long hair and dressed in black every day.”
Chad shot straight upright in his chair.
“What?”
The mention of metalhead slackers had jostled his memory. He recalled a guy in the store a couple weeks back trading in a box of CDs, some of them bootlegs that Chad had rejected. The most memorable thing about the guy was how freakishly large his earlobes had been gauged—that and his impressive collection of obscure and indie metal bands. Chad tended to pay greater attention to the hard rock and heavy metal albums they took in, being an aficionado himself.
“The dude with the ears!” he shouted in excitement, already heading toward the music section. Then, at Stacy’s baffled look, he added, “Music! I think I saw it on an album cover the ears guy was trading in!”
“Who?”
“Never mind. It was on your day off. Just some metalhead.”
“Which album?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know, but it had to be metal or hard rock—that’s all he had.”
Within moments, the two of them were pawing through the CD shelves in the rock section, which included heavy metal and anything else loosely classified as rock. Chad pulled up the image of Lidia’s dust sketch on his phone and set it out so that they could compare as they searched.
“Really?” Stacy held up a Michael Bolton CD that had been misfiled. “Kids.” She rolled her eyes, referring to the teenage help.
Chad laughed.
“Stacy!”
They both jerked around in surprise, unaware until then that someone had been calling her name. Chad’s enthusiasm seemed to have infected her as well.
Ted, the owner, stood at the front counter with a seriously annoyed expression—at least as serious as someone wearing a cartoon-frog bucket hat and a Hawaiian shirt could seem without just looking comical. The hat was a gift from his granddaughter, he claimed.
“Sorry, Ted,” Stacy said as she headed back up front. “What’s up?”
“Something going on?” Ted asked, still wearing a frown.
“Nope, we just got an oddball request that Chad and I were searching for.” She must have felt Chad watching, for she glanced over her shoulder and winked.
“Oh, okay.” Ted’s voice grew animated. “Hey, so I had this idea for an Easter promotion I wanted to get your input on…” His voice faded as they went into the back office.
Good Idea Fairy strikes again. Chad snorted and returned to his search. He was on the second-to-last shelf when he found a misfiled CD under the Ts—a common enough mistake—titled The Burning Path. He realized after a moment this particular CD should have been in the As since the band name was Abaddon’s Call. He pulled out the case and studied the cover, which featured cool artwork of a fiery path leading through what might have been hell. That image fled his mind the moment he saw the logo above it. The words “Abaddon’s Call” were being devoured in the jaws of a stylized, red-skinned demon. The lower half of the logo exactly matched Lidia’s dust sketch of her killer’s tattoo.
A chill ran down his spine as he stared, mesmerized by the image.
He jumped when a hand descended on his shoulder.
“You find it?” Stacy asked.
“Hell yeah.” He handed her the CD case.
“Never heard of ’em.” Stacy flipped the case over to examine the back. “Don’t see a record label… must be an indie band.” On the back, along with a variation of the cover art and a track listing, a small black-and-white band photo featured a somber quartet of pale young men who looked like vampires with their long hair and leather outfits.
