Red Right Hand Read online

  That’s fitting.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror. Daniel sat folded behind us, feet up with no room for his legs. He wasn’t overly tall, five-ten or so, but the Honda’s backseat was pretty small and my floorboards were full of trash. I don’t keep a clean car ’cause I just don’t care that much. There’s no food trash—my car doesn’t smell—but anything paper or plastic I just toss in the back.

  Daniel’s eyes met mine in the reflection of the rearview mirror. They weren’t back to normal, but at least they’d lost their mile-long stare. He had nice eyes, quick and kind. They nearly twinkled when he wasn’t thinking with the hyper-focus of a student who could keep up, but not without work. He still had to be half drunk, as I’d been when I left his apartment, before the night turned vicious on me and any buzz had been doused from my system by fear, horror, and adrenaline. He did look stoned though, the micro-muscles in his face relaxed to almost strokelike looseness.

  It was the same look my ex-boyfriend Thom had gotten when he went on a narcotic nod.

  I never joined him, never that far, but I’d watched him slip off into the arms of Morpheus while dulling my mind on weed and pills. I did it just to be able to get through a whole day after … after what happened. My therapist at the time had prescribed a laundry list of pills to get me through, but those just deadened everything and put me to sleep.

  Those drugs made sure I didn’t think about what happened, but they did it by making sure I couldn’t think about anything. Left dead awake, I wandered through my life not feeling, not caring, just sleepwalking and nearly nonfunctional. I needed to be able to live, to deal with the thing—but only a little at a time, holding it at a long arm’s length. Working my way up to working my way through it.

  So I self-prescribed, dropping into behavior I’d only been around before, never involved in. I burned out my brain cells and short circuited the memory so I could get to the end of that day and damn tomorrow for not being real.

  Thom had been the way I accomplished that.

  I’m a terrible person.

  He was a nice guy, a sensitive art type who never met a drug he didn’t like, so he had the connections I needed. He’d liked me for years during middle school and was enough of a nonjudgmental hippie to still like me after I got out of the hospital.

  Guilt stabbed deep as I remembered pushing Thom to tie off, to shoot up, to nod away. He’d been headed there before me, but I needed him to give me painkillers and company without the threat of sex. Threat is the wrong word. He was too nice to push, never would if I’d given him the chance, but he’d want it, all boys do, and I just couldn’t. Just before he would drop all the way gone, he would loll his head over, give me his crooked smile, pat my arm, and say, Don’t worry, babe, you’re always gonna be my heroin.

  I wasn’t proud of what I had done. Not at all. I hurt, and I saw a way out of it and, at the time, couldn’t see anything besides that. It only lasted a few months. I got Thom to NA before I parted ways with him, but it was still shitty of me.

  Shittiest thing I’ve ever done in a long list of shitty things.

  Terrible person.

  Don’t judge me.

  In the mirror, Daniel smiled softly. I cut my eyes back to the road.

  Pay attention, or you’ll kill us all.

  Flexing my fingers on the steering wheel made the Mark on my hand sore. I adjusted in my seat, moving my kidney off the piece of broken seat plastic that jabbed me when I slouched. Outside the car my neighborhood fell away, streets opening to the rest of the city. Soon I’d have to turn off or run out of road.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We will be seeing someone who can give us direction.”

  “Direction? I could use some, unless you want me to turn the Kwikie Mart at the end of this road into a drive-through.”

  The Man in Black reached into his coat with his red right hand, the crimson of it slipping obscenely into the inky folds. His arm slid deep, deeper than it should have been able to, disappearing into the leathery darkness. I watched from the corner of my eye as I drove.

  Where is his sword?

  It wasn’t in the car. I hadn’t seen it since the foyer of the townhouse. Had he left it there? Would my roommates find it in the mess of gore and blood of the dead skinhounds? Shasta would freak out in the morning. They all would. If they woke up at all. The Man in Black had said he’d placed a spell to keep them asleep. What if he wasn’t telling the truth?

  What was I thinking? What if he was telling the truth?

  What kind of insanity had taken me tonight?

  Panic rose in my chest. I clamped down on it.

  I could only do what I could do in this moment. I would deal with this right now and deal with that when it came.

  The Man in Black felt around the depths of the coat, too-sharp teeth biting his lower lip. He smiled as he found whatever he’d been looking for and began to pull his arm out. The smile scraped the points of his teeth over the thin skin of his lip. Black blood trickled from a dozen pinpricks. It pooled along the bottom edge of his lip, quivering as it thickened, hanging, threatening to drip. His tongue darted out, sweeping across and scooping up the droplet. The tongue was too long, scabrous, and red like a boiled lobster.

  The sight of it ran a chill up my spine.

  His hand slid out of the coat. Held delicately between his fingers was a tiny white object. The fluted ends gently curved to a narrow center. He studied it for a moment, turning it carefully in front of him. My scalp began to prickle, hot and itchy under my hair.

  The light ahead switched from yellow to red.

  I coasted the Honda to a stop. “What’s that?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Raw red fingers flicked the tiny object into the air with a gentle spin. His other hand plucked it before it began to fall. I watched in dread and fascination. I didn’t see his red right hand snake toward me until it snatched a hair from my head with a sharp, sudden shock.

  “Ow! What the hell!?”

  The Man in Black didn’t answer. He held the single hair between his fingertips. It was short and dark, curling on itself in twists. My hair is a complete pain in the ass. Tight, dark curls that I can never straighten or even really brush. Even more so since I had cut it short—short enough that it couldn’t be grabbed, couldn’t be used against me.

  As I watched, he placed my hair inside his mouth, holding fast to the end of it. Closing his lips around it, his jaw worked for a brief second. He pulled, drawing it slowly between his lips.

  It came out straight as a needle.

  He jerked his chin, pointing forward with the fingers not being used to hold my hair.

  “Drive, Acolyte.”

  I looked up. The light had turned green. Shifting and punching my foot down, I accelerated, still watching him from the corner of my eye, my scalp still itching with some weird feeling from the thing in his hands. He took my chaos god spit–stiffened hair and laid it against the small white object. Holding it in place with his thumb, he wound the hair like piece of wire.

  A low noise filled the car, harsh and guttural, banging against my eardrums. The Man in Black began to chant under his breath. The air in the car grew thick, cloying, and oppressive, heavy with the scent of rotten honey.

  It made the energy, the magick, inside me boil and the hair on my arms rise.

  A glance in the mirror showed Daniel leaning back, his eyes closed, a smile on his face as if he were listening to Mozart instead of the whine of my car and the bickering between me and the chaos god in the seat beside me.

  “Turn left.”

  The Man in Black held the hair in his fingertips, suspending the fluted piece of ivory in the air. It leaned left as if the whole world had tilted on its axis.

  I turned where he indicated, holding the steering wheel tightly to keep my hands from jittering. The Mark on my palm hurt. “What’s that thing?”

  “It is a compass. It will lead us to the one who can reveal the hiding plac
es of the gods.”

  The wheel spun in my hands. “Okay, it’s a compass, but what’s it made from besides my hair?”

  He stared at the piece of ivory. Now it dangled forward, against gravity.

  “It is the finger bone of a murdered child.”

  I hit the brakes.

  The Honda jerked, black smoke ribboning from under the car as retreaded tires screamed in protest. Daniel slammed into my seatback with a grunt.

  Nyarlathotep scowled. “Why are you stopping?”

  Disgust rolled inside me. My mouth twisted with it. “What did you say that is?”

  “It is the finger bone of a murdered child.”

  “If you want me to drive, you need to explain to me why you have that thing!” My voice turned shrill, tilting into a higher pitch, brittle with anger at each word. This was too much. The face of every child I knew flashed through my mind. My younger brother; my niece, Sara; my nephew, Rolf; the kids I used to teach when I worked at a daycare. This was over the edge of what I could handle.

  “Calm yourself, Acolyte. It was not a child you knew.”

  Daniel pulled himself up by the back of my seat. He touched my shoulder. “Hey, Charlie. It’s okay, it’s all right.”

  “It’s not all right.” I jerked his hand off my shoulder. “You have no idea how not all right it is right now.”

  “Drive.” The Man in Black pointed across the front of the car. His voice burned with heat. “That way.”

  “No. That’s it.” I pounded the steering wheel. “That. Is. It. No more! That thing is too much. You show up, you kill some stuff, you drag me into this freak show of a night. My ear is messed up. He’s”—I indicated Daniel in the backseat with a wave of my hand—“acting like a zombie. You do all this weird, black magick shit, and so far I’ve been here going along with it. But that”—I jabbed my finger toward the dangling fingerbone—“that is too much!”

  My fist smashed into the steering wheel. Pain sliced through my hand, running along the symbol incised there. I welcomed it, pulled it into myself.

  Bring the pain.

  It was sharp, and bright, and clean inside my mind, cutting through all the confusion. A lifeline in the whirling, swirling storm-tossed sea. Everything started to crash around me, pushed over the tipping point by the finger bone, the tiny, delicate finger bone of a murdered child. Logically, I knew I didn’t know the child, didn’t know how old the bone might be. It might have been a hundred years old, and it didn’t truly matter anymore.

  The thought that it might not matter sent a spike of guilt through me.

  Lights flashed into the interior of the car as a van topped the hill behind us. I didn’t move, didn’t reach for the button in the center of the dash to spark the yellow hazard lights.

  Let them hit us. At least it would stop this crazy night.

  The car shook as the van whipped around us, its horn blaring. I flipped a middle finger at them even though they couldn’t see it, anger boiling over inside. They rode their horn until they disappeared over the hill ahead of us on the road.

  Nyarlathotep shifted in his seat.

  “Tonight is about saving your kind from extinction. The longer you delay us, the less likely that becomes possible.”

  I shook my head, not looking at him. “You are not the good guy. Don’t play that card with me.”

  “You have seen me in my true form. I am not the worst of my kind. There are things on the edge of the darkness, things we are trying to stop, that would use this world as a feasting board. They would spill every drop of humanity’s blood until it runs a river for them to bathe in. Your race would be gristle in their teeth and meal for their bread.”

  An image of Nyarlathotep’s true form charged to the front of my mind, making me close my eyes and shake my head. It rattled behind my eyelids, horrible and terrifying and lodged deep in my cerebellum. That image, the thing I saw, would fuel nightmares for years to come. I could just feel it. The thought that there might be more of his kind out there, and even worse than him, turned my guts into ice water.

  But that finger bone, that child … “You aren’t any better, not if you can use a thing like that.”

  Daniel’s hand touched me again. “Maybe we should…”

  “Shut up, Daniel.” Pulling the parking brake, I turned the car off. I didn’t look over, didn’t look around, just kept my hands on the wheel and stared straight ahead. “I’m done here. Find someone else.”

  I meant it.

  Silence filled the car, broken only by my strained breathing, the cooling tick of the engine, and the rustle of the angelic pelt the Man in Black wore as a coat. It fluttered around his legs, quietly fwapping in the dark.

  Headlights shone over the hill ahead, cutting through the dark like a pair of spotlights. They grew brighter as the vehicle they were attached to drove relentlessly our way.

  The Man in Black turned in the bucket seat. Dark eyes looked past me.

  “Daniel Alexander Langford.”

  I watched in the rearview mirror as Daniel turned toward him, his eyes wide and unblinking.

  An eighteen-wheel semi truck burst over the hill.

  “Step out of the car. Stand in the road.”

  Stiff-shouldered, Daniel reached for the door handle.

  The semi cleared the crest of the hill, barreling over, picking up speed on the other side.

  My throat closed in terror as I realized what was about to happen. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream NO. My fingers scrabbled desperately at the safety lock button. It engaged with a click from all four doors.

  But Daniel had already pulled his handle.

  He stepped out of the car, shutting the door behind him. He took three long steps and turned, his eyes closed as he stretched out his arms in supplication.

  The semi roared down the hill.

  He’ll see him, he’ll see him, the driver will see him and stop.

  Daniel stood in the road, dressed in a black hoodie and dark jeans, in a puddle of darkness between wide-spread streetlights. We were only a few feet away, and I could barely make out the shape of his face.

  I grabbed my door handle. I had to get out, to get him. There was time. I could get him out of the road.

  Pain clamped around my arm, jerking me against the seat. Black spots fuzzed my eyesight as all the air rushed out of my lungs. Nyarlathotep leaned toward me, his face drawing close. Under his red right hand the pain turned cold, an ache stabbing deep, straight into my bones. His face thinned, drawn into a feral mask. Sharp, jagged rows of teeth meshed as he hissed between them. “You chose this, Acolyte, so you will watch. This is the price you pay for disobedience.”

  He shoved me, making my head jerk toward the window. My eyes fell on Daniel, standing still in the street, docile as a Hindu cow. The headlights of the truck threw his silhouette into harsh relief.

  The driver saw him, the semi’s air horn blaring out into the night and brakes locking in a scream as thin asbestos pads tried to stop twenty tons of vehicle rushing headlong at eighty miles per hour.

  The truck didn’t even slow.

  My mind jolted with images of roadkill, burst organs and shredded fur.

  Thirty feet.

  Acid geysered up the back of my throat.

  Twenty feet.

  My heart clenched like a fist.

  Ten.

  I screamed.

  “ALL RIGHT, I’LL DO IT! I’LL DO WHAT YOU WANT!”

  Nyarlathotep let go of my arm. The fingers of his red right hand flashed together like matches being struck. The skinless hand made the same crack! my father’s snapping fingers used to make. A burst of light slapped me in the face, searing my eyes, flash-frying my optic nerve. The world went white, then red, then black. I blinked away tears, and my vision returned like a slowly developing photograph.

  Daniel sat in the backseat, the same look of serenity on his face.

  The Man in Black pointed across the dash and out the window with his red right hand. The fingerbon
e swung gently at the end of my strand of hair, which was curled around two skinless red fingers.

  I started the car. The keys jangled in my shaking hand.

  “Thou shalt not tempt the lord thy god, Acolyte.” The Man in Black’s red right hand fell away, disappearing in the folds of his coat. “Now drive.”

  I looked in the rearview mirror. Daniel looked back at me. He smiled. I didn’t smile back. My throat still tasted like stomach acid.

  I put the damn car in gear and drove, hatred burning in my heart for the Man in Black.

  9

  THE LOW-SLUNG BUILDING sprawling in front of us was on the brink of collapsing in on itself.

  It lay end to end in square architecture made for order and expedience instead of artistry. Windows lined the graffiti-covered brick wall illuminated by my headlights. Most of the glass had been broken, replaced with plywood gone gray from exposure. The brown, knee-high grass and weeds weren’t enough to hide all the trash scattered on the ground.

  I asked, “What is this place?”

  It looked creepy as hell.

  The Man in Black tucked the finger bone compass into his coat. The coal of hatred in my heart flared again. “It is the lair of an old … acquaintance.” He opened the door, stepping out of the car.

  Daniel scooted across the seat, his fingers on the door handle. “You coming, Charlie?” He looked expectant, his face unlined by concern. He looked like my kid brother climbing out of the car in the parking lot of the county fair, all wide-eyed and excited.

  Jesus, he has no idea how jacked any of this is.

  For a moment, a split second, the urge to crank the car, jam it in reverse, and run, run as fast and as far as my broken-down Honda Civic would take me, sat hard in my chest. It lay so heavy my heart felt as though it beat inside a plastic bag filled with syrup.

  The Man in Black watched me through the windshield.

  He shook his head.