Red Right Hand Page 5

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.” I unbuckled the seat belt.

  My door creaked, the sound rolling along the front of the building. I’d parked between a jacked-up, piss-off, stereotypical redneck truck that towered over the Honda, its wheels almost as tall as me, and a sleek, high-performance convertible so new it sparkled even in the dim, yellow light of the streetlamp. My eyes scanned the tiny parking lot. Cars of all makes and models, in all states of repair, filled almost every space, crowding next to each other like family at a reunion before the bickering started, before grudges fueled by alcohol sparked fistfights.

  Daniel touched my arm.

  He needed to stop doing that.

  His voice was soft, low. “The Master’s waiting, Charlie. We should go.”

  “Don’t touch me.” My face felt hot. I lashed out. “What’s with this ‘the Master’ crap? Don’t you know what’s going on here?”

  Daniel glanced at the Man in Black. His hand moved, hovering next to my arm but not touching it. He blinked, long and slow, his eyes closing then opening, locking with mine.

  They were clear and bright.

  And oh so green.

  The anger inside me melted, just a little.

  He looked away, running fingers through his bangs in a nervous gesture. “I don’t know what’s going on. All I know is that I feel … weird around him. Something I’ve never felt before. I want to … I don’t know the word to describe it, but if he needs something, anything, I want to be the one who gives it to him.” A look passed over his face. “Things are pretty screwed up in my head.”

  Damn.

  My mind tried to sort it all out. I’d seen Nyarlathotep do things, things I couldn’t explain, and he said Daniel had to worship him. I thought about the eighteen-wheeler and the look on Daniel’s face as he waited for it to run him down.

  Realization thundered in my mind.

  He doesn’t have any choice. Not one drop.

  Daniel’s hand touched my arm again. I didn’t pull away this time. I couldn’t. “The only thing that’s not screwed up in my head is how sorry I am for whatever happened earlier. With us. I’ll make it up to you, I promise. Whatever I have to do.”

  He really means it.

  Fingers slid down my arm, warm when they brushed the skin of my hand. “I like you, Charlie. A lot. I hope I didn’t mess that up.”

  Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

  Daniel wouldn’t look at me, his eyes turned just slightly away.

  The Man in Black was suddenly there, next to us without moving. “We have things to do.” He turned, his coat flaring out to brush against our legs. Gooseflesh rose where it touched. “Come, Acolyte; come, minion; follow me.”

  Daniel dropped my hand and stepped in behind the Man in Black.

  That coal of hatred flared hot and sharp behind my breastbone as I followed the two of them into the building. I swore in my heart that somehow, some way, I would fix this. I would find a way to get Daniel away from the Man in Black, no matter what I had to do.

  Walking into the run-down, burned-out hotel, I hoped I’d have the courage to keep that promise.

  10

  DARKNESS FILLED THE inside of the building.

  Not pitch-black, but gloomy. Spooky.

  Shadows cast by a multitude of burning candles danced along every nook and cranny. Tallowed light filled the room with a runny yellow glow.

  In its glory days the place had been a “no-tell motel,” a haven for third-rate romance and low-rent rendezvous. A feeling washed over me: impressions of desperate passion and sweaty flesh pressed to service empty souls and broken hearts. It swept around me like a graveyard breeze and left me feeling cold and a little shaky. The magick inside me had cooled to a low simmer but was still there, bubbling away.

  We walked through the lobby, check-in counter on the left, dust-covered square furniture on the right. Candle wax had dripped from the edge of the counter in a glacial waterfall of various colors and lengths. Wax stalactites hung, some only an inch or two from the lip, some forming lumpy columns that stretched all the way to the floor. They piled across and spilled over the sign under the counter with raised lettering that read Pinecrest Inn.

  Looking around, I took in the acoustic tiles falling from the drop ceiling, sagging and broken. Yellow insulation spilled out of the black openings like sulfuric cotton candy. Trash lay in piles on each side of a candlelit path that led deeper into the hotel and, all I could think was:

  Fire hazard much?

  A sour, clotted smell hung in the air. Part candle soot, part ripening meat. Nyarlathotep didn’t stop. He strode along the path of candles, his coat flaring like bat wings, snuffing candle flames as he went. In the gathering darkness he became a silhouette, the shape of a man carved from starless midnight. As the gloom deepened, he seemed to stretch and grow. It was a trick of the light.

  I hoped it was a trick of the light.

  Candle glow glimmered along his red right hand, edging it starkly like a drop of blood on a sheet of black velvet.

  Daniel followed him, close behind.

  I hurried to keep up, not wanting to be caught in the dark. The thought made the skin under my shirt crawl with tiny electric jolts.

  I’d caught up to only two steps behind them when we rounded the corner and ran into the line of people.

  They stood, front to back, men and women of all shapes, sizes, and social standings, stretching down the hall leading to a room whose doorway had no door. Some of them turned as we rounded the corner, naked hatred pulling their faces into snarls.

  A man in a black cowboy hat, a plaid shirt, and dark skintight jeans growled, an ugly animal sound rolling from deep in his chest. Red and purple spots mottled the caramel Aztec skin of his throat, spilling up onto a jaw clenched like a pit bull’s, baring square, unnaturally white teeth. I watched foam fill his lips, spilling out of his mouth as though he were a rabid dog. He took a step toward us, hands curled into ripping claws.

  Nyarlathotep’s fist flashed, cuffing the man across the cheek in a casual backhand.

  He fell as though he had been shot.

  The line shuffled forward, the person behind him stepping on his back with her six-inch, thousand-dollar, spiked heels.

  “What are all these people doing here?” I asked.

  The Midnight Man kept walking. “They are here to worship.”

  I looked behind us at the line of people, taking note of their details, cataloging them in my mind. A man in an Armani suit texted on his cell phone; a mechanic with grease on his coveralls and skin hooked his grimy thumbs in drooping denim pockets as his fingers tapped his thighs in some rhythm I couldn’t catch; the woman in the high heels had her legs spread to shoulder-width, keeping a ramrod-straight spine centered over the six-inch spikes; a tuxedoed groom grinned ear to ear while arm in arm with his white-gowned bride; a man older than my grandfather stooped in a set of striped pajamas; three cheerleaders in their uniforms looked unblinkingly at the brightly glowing screens they held; two soldiers in their uniforms held hands; a human so covered in filthy rags they had to be homeless hung on a pair of dented crutches … The line had over twenty people in it, and none of them fit with one another. The diversity disturbed me for some reason I couldn’t identify.

  “What are they worshiping?”

  The Man in Black reached the open doorway. He stepped back, bowed, and gestured inside with a flourish. “They are worshiping her.”

  I moved past Daniel, between the chaos god on one side of the door and a saffron-robed Hare Krishna on the other. Crossing the threshold of the room made my head swim. The blood in my veins lit up as the magick simmer became a roiling boil. Ache settled in the Mark on my palm, the lines hot through to the back of my hand. The air inside clotted around us, thick and moist with a fog of humanity. The smell went to spoiled meat and crawled into my nose, coating the insides of my sinuses. The line of people followed the wall, leading to a bed in the center of the small room.

  On the bed
a man held himself up by his arms, the muscles of his back outlined in the flickering light of the guttering candles. Naked, he hovered over someone hidden by his body and the shadowed light.

  The sight of it was a punch in my stomach.

  I grabbed the wall, wounded palm flaring in sharp pain. My knees went weak, threatening to kick out from under me. A band of iron clamped around my chest, squeezing the air from my lungs, compressing my heart, and making it beat like an animal trapped in a heated cage.

  That’s not you. It’s not you. It’s not them. It’s not then. Feel the wall, feel the floor under your feet.

  You.

  Are.

  Okay.

  I took a step, moving to feel myself move, to remind myself that I was still myself, that I wasn’t pinned to a filthy mattress. Pushing deep breaths in and out of my lungs, I studied the situation, fighting past the trigger.

  I’ve got this. I can handle this.

  I could see most of the man’s face as his head jerked up and down with the thrust of his hips, and I latched onto that. All of that was happening outside me, proof that I was in the room, not on the bed. Reality formed a dam against a flood of bad memories, and I held to that desperately. The man’s contorted face wasn’t over me; it was across the room over someone else. That reality gave me the stability to really look, to see the man and his actions.

  I recognized him from a big-network hit dramedy that aired every Thursday.

  He thrust violently, jerking spastically as if he’d been plugged into a live wire. The moist sound of skin slapping skin became a staccato rhythm section to the high-pitched gurgling grunts he made with each jerk and gyration. He thrust deep, the muscles in his back trembling like plucked cables as he roared out in climax.

  He rolled away as the Man in Black stepped behind me, Daniel in tow.

  The actor grabbed his clothes, clutching them to cover himself as he stood and moved away. The woman left on the bed reclined in a valley of soiled cotton; the mattress cupped her sprawled form, beaten into a cradle after countless interchanges. She lay, legs spread without shame, thighs and groin glistening, slick and swollen to deformity, the mattress under her damp and soaked through. Dark eyed and dark haired, her skin golden in the candlelight, she turned and looked at me. A claw of a hand rubbed across pendulous breasts that hung like overfilled wineskins to each side of a pronounced rib cage. A curving nail picked at a scabbed sore, one of hundreds dotting her body in a constellation of infection. She smiled and her lips cracked, chapped into snowflakes of dead skin. Her voice purred from deep in the back of her throat, smoky and seductive as she looked past me.

  “Ahhhhhh, Son of Azathoth. To what do I owe the honor of this visit, my long lost friend?” She smiled a black-gummed smile. “And you brought me presents! How thoughtful of you.”

  “They are not for you, Ashtoreth.” The Man in Black stepped past me. “Send your worshipers away so that we may talk.”

  The woman on the bed smiled a crooked smile. It pulled her round face to the side as though she were a stroke victim. “But if I send them away, who will worship me?” Her crooked smile turned into a crooked pout. “Will you worship me, O Lord of Nightmares?”

  “You will gather more. Like flies to spoiled milk they will come.”

  The actor had pulled on most of his clothes. He staggered past the Man in Black, leaning away from him. The coat swirled, wrapping the actor’s legs and waist, slowing him as it undulated against his body. It stretched as far as it could, holding the contact as long as possible before being pulled away. The next person in line stepped forward, a young Asian man with thick, square glasses. He pulled a distressed-cotton T-shirt over his head to reveal a narrow, hairless chest.

  The Man in Black pointed at him. “Stop.”

  The Asian man dropped his shirt on the ground. At Nyarlathotep’s command his hands bunched into fists. He stepped forward, his voice wavering from deep in his bird chest. “It’s my turn.”

  The Crawling Chaos slipped his red right hand under the coat, reaching deep inside the dark folds of the skin he wore. With his hand still inside, he looked at the woman on the bed. His eyebrow arched in an unspoken question. She twittered a laugh in response. The Man in Black shrugged.

  When his hand came out it held the black-bladed katana.

  The curved sword flashed in a circle of silver light, striking as it was drawn. The razor edge caught the Asian man just over his hipbone, shearing through skin, spine, and viscera. Blood splashed with the blade’s exit, tumbling through the air, splattering across Ashtoreth’s sex.

  She writhed and moaned in a way she hadn’t under the actor’s gyrations.

  The Asian man looked down, shock raw on his face. His face rose, looking at me, mouth working silently up and down as he tried to speak. Blood leaked from the red line across his midsection. His hand came up, reaching toward me as if to steady himself. The movement upset his balance, making him top-heavy.

  His upper body toppled free in a spill of blood.

  That wasn’t what made my stomach revolt and empty itself on the floor. No, that part had been too much, too shocking to do anything but strike me numb. What pushed me over the edge into vomiting was the way the next man in line casually stepped through the puddle of gore soaking into the threadbare carpet and began to unbutton his shirt, glassy eyes only focused on the blood-splattered goddess sprawled on the bed.

  Face flushed hot and sticky, I turned away.

  My ears rang hollow, everything muffled and dulled as I threw up. Nyarlathotep’s voice sounded far away even though he stood close enough for me to reach out and touch him.

  “Send them away, little goddess, or I will carve them all into decorations.”

  My mind babbled, already brittle from what had happened so far. I wanted to go, to get away, to run. My mind felt like crumpled cellophane.

  Oh God, oh shit, not more, not now, not blood, what? Nowhere to go. No way to run. Fight. FIGHT.

  Breath dragging deep in my lungs, I fought the panic, shoving it away, compartmentalizing my mind the way therapy had taught me to handle panic attacks.

  Picture a door with a lock.

  A hand touched my back.

  My now empty stomach clenched at the thought of the Man in Black touching me with that skinless hand of his. The panic boiled back up. I jerked my head around.

  Daniel hovered next to me, forehead creased in concern. His hand lay softly on my back; he was trying to comfort, trying to help. I grabbed the panic and shoved it into the room in my mind, slamming the door, turning the lock.

  Daniel whispered, “You okay?”

  I nodded.

  I will be. To keep my promise, I will be.

  Straightening, I turned away from my sick.

  Enough of that. Just a physical reaction. Be strong. Be a survivor. Get through this. You can, you have before.

  I wiped my mouth without thinking. The rough-edged symbol carved into my palm smeared across my lips, becoming moist with my saliva and my sick.

  A spark flared deep in my mind, tearing my vision apart.

  11

  THE ROOM SWIRLED, tilting and then locking into place. In my eyes it looked like two films playing at the same time, overlapping each other.

  I could still see the room. All the furniture looked the same, but distorted, my new vision twisting the perspective and opening the space around me, bringing some things closer, pushing some things further away, and melding them all in a funhouse-mirror version of reality. The people in line were all glowing pockets of light, threaded through with tendrils of poison-green energy that twisted around them like mistletoe choking the life from an oak tree.

  Nyarlathotep stood next to me, still tall and dark and imposing, but his true form was wrapped around him like a ghost image. I could see it dimly, superimposed over his human guise like a swirling, tentacle-laden illusion.

  Movement from the bed made me turn.

  The woman still lay there, still sprawled obscenel
y on the soiled mattress—but now, now I could see her true form.

  She was grotesquely female, still long limbed, but her flesh was now tinged blue with decomposition, as if she’d been drowned and dead for days. A vertical slash of mouth ran from brow to chin, two wide yellow eyes set deep on each side. They glowed sulfurically, casting shadows down her corpulent form. Her hair writhed across the mattress under her head like a nest of trapped snakes.

  My eyes traveled down Ashtoreth’s body, taking in the puckered sacks of breasts that ran down her rib cage like infected udders. Horrible fascination made me look, made me see the thatch of wriggling, twisting fibrils above a gnashing, tooth-filled cavity that nested between swaying, blubbery thighs.

  I shut my eyes, scrubbing my raw, wounded palm on the front of my hoodie, trying desperately to shut off the Sight.

  When I opened them, the world had slid back to normal.

  Thank God.

  The line of people had turned around and was silently shuffling out of the room. The body of the Asian man was gone, nothing left behind but a dark stain on the carpet. I pushed his death out of my mind.

  Get through this. This right here and right now.

  The Man in Black stood at the end of the bed, hands in the pockets of his rustling, restless coat. The sword was gone again. Daniel hovered near me, not touching but close enough to. Ashtoreth still lay on the bed. Flame burned blue-bright from her fingertips, touching the end of a broken glass tube held to chapped lips. She sucked hard on the crack pipe, dirty gray smoke billowing out of her mouth and swirling around her face. A sticky-sweet smell crawled through the air, rippling the back of my throat.

  I had to ask. I couldn’t help myself. “What are you?”

  She laughed, more smoke streaming out of her mouth. “Child, I am everything you desire. I am Ashtoreth.” She sucked on the end of the crack pipe, the rock inside flaring the dark orange of a dying sun. Her mouth on the pipe made a wet hissing noise as lip skin sizzled on butane-heated glass, and her right eye shuttered up and down and up and down in a mad twitch as the noxious smoke did its work. She exhaled her next words in a cloud of poison.