Eternal Life Inc. (27 page)

42

Insomniac Ghosts

Roger couldn’t sleep. That was nothing new. He hadn’t been able to sleep for the last six months. He went into the bathroom, turned on the light, and looked at himself in the mirror. He didn’t like what he saw, the hanging jowls, the broken blood vessels in his nose, the hint of gray in the ginger stubble on his cheeks. Harry was right. He looked like shit and the black eye the son of a bitch laid on him didn’t help. How could he have let it go this far? He needed a drink or maybe something a lot stronger, but he was afraid if he started he wouldn’t stop and this night would end like so many others with him passed out on the floor.

“No, you’re just going to have to go through this cold turkey,” he muttered at the image in the mirror. He thought of Susan. He tried to push it away, but the demons of guilt and pain kept coming back, tearing at his guts with their sharp, little teeth.

God, he needed a drink! He sank onto the toilet stool, closed his eyes, and buried his face in his hands. Closing his eyes only made things worse. Susan waited for him behind his closed eyes, Susan with her tortured, battered face, Susan screaming, “Help me! Please help me!”

“No-o-o!” he screamed and jumped up and came face to face with himself in the mirror. “No-o-o!” he screamed again and slammed his fist into his mirror image. The mirror shattered, and the sharp burst of pain from his bleeding fist brought him to his senses. He pulled a large splinter of glass out of his lacerated fist and dropped it on the tile floor. He watched the blood dripping onto the rose petal tiles. “Oh, Susan, I’m sorry,” he said, his voice flat and hollow.

Me and Harry, he thought as he got out some bandages and
antiseptic and began dressing the wound. You can sure pick them, Susan. Me and Harry, we both led you down the garden path to perdition, didn’t we?

He understood Harry now. They were as close as blood brothers. They both shared the betrayal of love and the agony of guilt. Their lives were so intertwined, their fates so scarily similar that he almost wondered if maybe there wasn’t some kind of Old Testament god of vengeance and retribution pulling the strings behind the scenes.

He finished bandaging his hand and looked up and caught a glimpse of a blood-shot eye staring back at him from a long splinter of mirror that still remained in place. He turned away. “It’s going to be a long night,” he thought and shut off the light.

He was alone, the house as quiet as a tomb and filled with ghosts. He walked down to the gym and turned on the overhead lights. The skeletal chrome and plast-steel bars and rings and weights of the exercise machines gleamed with the cold comfort of an operating theater; or maybe a high tech torture chamber, he thought.

On nights like this, he would come down here, avoiding all those damned machines, and head straight for the heavy punching bag and the speed bag he kept in a little room at the back. On nights like this, he’d tear into them with a ferocity fueled by hate and despair until, at last, he hung against the bag drenched in sweat, exhausted, and gasping for breath. And sometimes after an hour or two down here beating up his rage, sometimes, if he was lucky and it was a good night, he might even be able to fall asleep without waking up screaming.

Tonight though, he didn’t even have this way out. His bloody bandaged fist split open as soon as he began, and the bag was soon slick with blood and he had to stop. He wrapped a towel around his fist and leaned back against the wall. Slowly, he slid down to the floor, pulled his knees up against his chest, and stared out at the gym he hated so much.

It/she wanted it, not him. He watched her working out down here for hours, the unholy thing that possessed her driving her to exhaustion. They wanted to ride only strong, healthy animals.

He closed his eyes and thought about the party. He knew there was no use fighting it any longer. It always came to this point late at night when he could no longer put it off, when exhaustion and despair wore away his defenses until, at last, he just gave up. He always thought that maybe he would be able to sleep afterwards if he just got it out of his system, but it never seemed to work out that way.

It was the party, that goddamn party! Why did he have to go to that goddamn party? Why did he have to drag Susan along? A bitter smile cut his face like a razor. How many times had Harry probably asked himself the same thing?

Susan hated that crowd. She couldn’t understand what Roger saw in those rich, powerful, greedy men and their beautiful, predatory, amoral women, the cream of society, the movers and shakers. What did Harry call them, “The not-so-beautiful people”? Roger wondered if Harry ever suspected how right he was. Scratch away the varnish of money and power, take away the makeup and clothes, and you were left with a pack of wild, ugly scavengers who devoured people and things in their insatiable hunger for more and more.

They were the perfect devotees of black ice addiction. No desire was too gross to satisfy, no perversion too obscene, no drug too dangerous. Hell, you hardly noticed any difference from before they were possessed and after, Roger thought.

So why the fuck did you have to go to their goddamn parties, he asked himself, just as he had asked himself a thousand times before. Who the hell were you trying to impress? You were already top of the heap, the king of the castle, you had it all. You didn’t need to impress anyone.

He knew the answer even though he didn’t like it. He’d been born dirt poor and brought up to resent it. He’d had his face
pushed in it, made to feel worthless, never quite good enough. After his parents were killed, he grew up fast, like a feral animal, alone, despised, and feared.

Nothing much changed when he got to New Hollywood, where he ruthlessly clawed his way up from the bottom, wheeling and dealing, always on the outside looking in, always looked down upon and despised by those “not-so-beautiful people” who held the real reins of power. Then, when he finally saw his chance, he took it and when he became richer and more powerful than any of them, when he finally became king of the castle and didn’t need to prove anything to anyone, it still wasn’t enough.

He was like a man who had been starved all his life and couldn’t stop eating. He needed constant proof that he really was someone. He needed those goddamn parties that he threw on his private island estate. He needed all the “not-so-beautiful people” scrabbling for invitations, and he needed an invitation to every major event, and it was never enough.

Sitting there under the harsh glare of the overhead lights, looking out at the gleaming chrome and steel skeletons, he realized for the first time that maybe he and “the not-so-beautiful people” were not so different after all. He was just as hungry, just as insatiable. No matter how much money or power or prestige he had, no matter how many parties he threw or how many of the rich and powerful patted him on the back and told him what a wonderful guy he was, it never seemed to be enough. It never filled the hole that years of poverty, slights, and scorn had left inside him.

The only thing he ever had that was clean and pure was his love of Susan and in the end, he betrayed even that to his insatiable hunger. He knew there was black ice at that party. He thought he knew how dangerous it was, how ruthlessly proselytizing black ice addicts could be, yet he took Susan there anyway.

Then he left her for a bit of backroom, back-slapping wheeling
and dealing, left her unprotected, a lamb surrounded by a pack of wolves and when he came back, Susan was gone. Oh, her body was still there, unconscious on a settee, on a penthouse terrace overlooking the Emperor’s fairytale castle. There was a half-empty glass on the table beside her.

Roger squeezed his eyes shut and banged his head back against the concrete wall again and again trying to drive away the image, trying to stop the inevitable scene from playing itself out in his mind.

He forced his eyes open and pushed himself to his feet with a heavy groan. He looked around, hating this place where the wolves had driven his wife, bending, twisting, and stretching her mercilessly on these mindless machines. The wolves had an almost neurotic need to drive their victims like racehorses, training and exercising them constantly.

How many times had he looked in and seen her here, running endless treadmill miles at her own reflection on the mirrored wall and when she/it saw him watching, it bared her teeth and gave a howl of triumph.

“Enough!” he screamed at the ghosts haunting this room. Why the hell had he come down here anyway? For peace? What a laugh.

He climbed back up the stairs. He wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight. He could just as well accept that and try to get ready for the trip tomorrow. Diana wanted to leave early, but Jericho had convinced her to wait at least until noon to give Harry a chance.

Harry, he thought. At least he hadn’t betrayed everyone, although it wasn’t for want of trying. The wolves tried to get possession of Harry under his last resurrection. It looked like they almost succeeded. For a while he and Jericho were afraid they had. Even the wolves weren’t sure. At least I managed to keep them away from him when he woke up, he thought.

Something about Harry scared them, and now Roger knew
what it was. According to Jericho, the wolves thought he might be a prophesied King of the Dead who was going to stomp the shit out of them. Roger had his doubts and so did Diana, but the wolves wanted to make sure. When the sons of bitches realized possession hadn’t taken, they were furious. They forgot all about getting Harry to sign a new contract and wanted to shoot him up with black ice on the spot.

I had to do some fancy footwork to convince them otherwise, Roger thought. The stupid fucks weren’t thinking straight. They weren’t used to being crossed. “Masters of the Universe!” Roger snorted with contempt. They hadn’t even thought about what would happen if Harry hadn’t shown up for the media this morning.

It had been a hard resurrection thanks to the wolves, and he was already a day late. Rumors were spreading fast about all the people not coming back from resurrection, or coming back changed. It was getting harder and harder to keep the lid on. If Harry hadn’t shown up at that press conference, it would have blown that lid right off. There would have been no possibility of containment.

When he finally got that through their thick “Masters of the Universe” skulls, they had reminded him again of what would happen if he didn’t get Harry to sign a new contract that would give them another shot at him and keep the whole charade going a little longer.

And I did my best to oblige them, Roger thought bitterly, as he walked past the entrance to the living room and detoured over to the bar. “Screw it, I need a drink”, he muttered. He needed more than one drink but with what he had in front of him tomorrow, one drink would have to do. He poured a tumbler of vodka and toasted his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. “Here’s to you, Harry! Did you know I saved your ass? Did you know they probably spiked the water on your bedside table with black ice? Only you never touched it, did you?”

Roger’s lips curled back in a feral grin. “Especially not after I dropped my cigarette butt in it. I bet that pissed off the wolves hiding behind those two-way mirrors, but hey, by then I had nothing to lose, did I?”

He tossed back his drink and said, “At least I made sure you got out of there in one piece. No matter what else you think of me, I did do that.”

As he put his glass down, he looked past his reflection in the mirror to the reflected image of the living room. He closed his eyes and grabbed the edge of the bar hard enough to splinter wood. Ghosts, this whole fucking house was full of ghosts! Why did he have to come back here after last night and why the hell did he have to come back to this room? He looked down at the empty tumbler. Well, the answer to that last one was logical enough, a drunk’s logic.

The room was just as they left it after they finished torturing Susan. They wanted to make sure he got the message. They had Susan trapped inside herself while they used her body and her social position to throw wild parties, orgies of unspeakable perversions, to lure other lambs to black ice addiction. And he accepted it. What else could he do? They had Susan and every once in a while they would bring her back just to remind him that she was still there and that if he played along, maybe, just maybe, he might get her back one day.

He looked at the overturned chair and the handcuffs that still dangled from one of the back slats. And sometimes, he thought, they would bring her back to teach him a lesson, like they did last night.

43

The Black Wolf Bash

There were four of them. They came home with Susan. At first, Roger was angry and irritated. They knew he was going to be home that night. One of the little concessions he had been able to wring out of the sons of bitches was that they would leave him alone when he was here. If they wanted his cooperation, they could at least spare him the sight of them pawing his wife’s body in another one of their orgies. He had been wrong, though; they weren’t there to throw another orgy, they were there to teach him a lesson.

He had been alone, drinking in the dark, when Susan walked in and turned on the lights. She leaned against the doorframe and looked at him with that mocking, provocative smile that the wolves had given her. She ran her fingers through her long blonde hair and licked her lips with a quick little flick of her tongue. “Roger Dodger,” she cooed and gave him a slow, sultry smile full of perverse promise. God, how he hated them for what they had turned his wife into. She stumbled into the room trailing an expensive fur cape across the carpet. Her walk was unsteady as if she had been drinking too much. “Roger Dodger,” she mocked again. She–they knew how much he hated it when she called him that.

She came over and took the drink out of his hand and tried to sit on his lap. She smelled of alcohol, cigarettes, and other men. He pushed her away angrily and was about to tell her to get the hell out when he noticed the four other men who had slipped into the room behind her. Four tuxedo-clad, black ice possessed addicts. They prowled around the room like curious animals, sniffing and snarling at each other; no longer necessary to keep up the pretense of humanness. Not in front of Susan, not in front
of him. No, they were right at home.

“I brought some friends home for you to meet, and then we’re all gonna party,” Susan giggled as she ruffled his hair and laid a possessive arm around his shoulders.

“Now, be a good boy and say hello to, Rover, Lassie, Butch, and…Now what is your name?” she said, chewing on her fingertip with mock indecisiveness. “Oh yes, now I remember. Roger, meet, Wolfy!” She laughed triumphantly and the four, black ice possessed threw back their heads snapping and snarling and howling with laughter as they pranced around the room.

“I don’t need this,” Roger said and began to get up.

“Oh, but you do, Roger Dodger, honey,” Susan said and pushed him back down with surprising force. “You really do.” The four addicts circled around him, more than ever like a wolf pack, their lips pulled back in snarling smiles.

“Wolfy” broke from the pack and instead began circling around Susan. He was sleek and slim with slicked-down, oily, black hair, a pencil thin mustache, and the attitude of a hotwired, car bomb. He licked his lips and growled deep in his throat as he circled in towards Susan.

Roger suddenly realized he knew the guy, although the guy he knew usually didn’t wear a tuxedo. It wasn’t only that, though. The guy himself had changed physically. When Roger knew him, he was just a pale, skinny, pimple-faced wimp, a harmless, no-talent hustler. Well, he’s not that anymore, Roger thought.

It was the wolves, of course. They liked their rides to be in top condition and that was one thing Anton Shane had never been. He was still thin but now it was wiry thin with whipcord muscles, clear skin, a healthy tan, and the attitude of the predator that rode him.

Without warning, Shane lashed out, grabbed Susan’s arm, and dragged her roughly across the room.

“Oooh,” she cooed. “Don’t you just love strong, forceful men.”

“Shut up, bitch,” Shane snarled and slapped her hard across the face and threw her into a chair.

“That’s enough, Shane!” Roger shouted and started to get up, but strong hands grabbed his shoulders and forced him back down. An arm wrapped around his neck and held him in a chokehold.

“No, Roger Dodger, it’s not enough,” Susan said, and put her hands behind her back as Shane took out a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. As soon as he cuffed her to the chair, Susan went limp. Her head fell forward until her chin rested on her breast. Her long blonde hair fell loosely around her face.

After a moment, she groaned and shook her head slowly. “Where am I?” she asked. “What’s happening?” She slowly lifted her head.

“No!” Roger screamed and tried to pull free. “No, don’t do this!”

Susan looked around confused and uncertain. “Where am I?” she muttered. “Roger?” she said when she caught sight of him. “Oh, Roger,” she cried happily.

“Shut up, bitch!” Shane stepped around and hit her brutally in the face. The heavy signet ring on his finger tore a long, bloody gash across her cheekbone.

“No-o-o!” Roger screamed and tried to get free, but the chokehold tightened and dragged him back down coughing and gagging. “Susan,” he whispered hoarsely. “Oh god, no!” They had brought Susan, the real Susan, his Susan, back once again, to torture and teach him a lesson.

He screamed in helpless, frustrated rage as they beat her unmercifully while she cried to him for help. At last they stopped. Susan’s head hung limply, her body racked by sobs of pain and shame. They’d ripped away the front of her gown exposing her bruised breast.

“Please, Roger, make them stop,” she moaned as Shane leaned
over and licked her breast and leered at Roger.

“Stop it!” Roger screamed. “What do you want from me? Just tell me! You don’t have to do this. Just tell me!”

Shane sucked one of Susan’s nipples into his mouth and bit down so hard she screamed and tried to twist away. He held on for a moment longer, watching Roger the whole time.

“Shane, you son of a bitch, I swear I’ll kill you for this!” Roger rasped.

Shane smiled at him with dead eyes while he slowly caressed Susan’s breast. Holding it in the palm of his hand, he said, “What did you say?” and squeezed until Susan moaned with pain.

“What do you want from me?” Roger said in defeat. “I’ll do anything you want.”

“That’s better,” Shane smiled and released Susan’s breast and wiped his hand on his trousers as if he had just been handling something dirty.

“What we want is Harry Neuman.”

“I don’t understand,” Roger said. “You got him. He came back possessed, didn’t he?”

Shane looked at him and Roger felt the rage and frustration boiling behind those flat, dead eyes. “We’re not sure,” he said at last. “We missed him when he resurrected last time. Why was that? We never miss. We’ve found traces of him out there.” Shane tossed his head as if to indicate someplace else.

Roger knew what he meant by “out there”. It was where the black wolves came from. “Out there” was their hunting ground, where they captured and ate lost kas. What the hell was Harry doing “out there”? How did he get out there without dying? “There must be some mistake,” he said and knew immediately the mistake was his.

“Wrong answer,” Shane growled and casually backhanded Susan, splitting her lip. “We can smell him out there. How does he do it? What is he after? How did he get away from us?”

“I tell you I don’t know!” Roger said as he watched a trickle
of blood run down the side of Susan’s mouth. “Please don’t hurt her anymore. I’ll do anything you want, but I can’t tell you what I don’t know!”

“If Harry gets away from us tonight…” Shane smiled and put his hand under Susan’s chin and lifted her head. Susan opened her eyes and looked at Roger. “Please help me,” she pleaded. “Please get me out of here.”

Shane put a finger to his lips and shook Susan’s head back and forth. “Sh-h-h-h, I’m talking.”

Roger could see how Shane’s finger dug into her jaw. “Now, as I was saying, if Harry does get away from us tonight…” Shane casually slid his hands around Susan’s throat and began to squeeze. “…You make sure he signs another contract with us as soon as he wakes up.” Susan fought for air; her eyes bulged with fear while her body flopped from side to side.

Roger struggled to get free, twisting and kicking and screaming obscenities.

“Do we understand each other?” Shane yelled and squeezed harder.

Roger gave up his struggle and bowed his head and sobbed, “Yes! Yes! Now stop!”

Shane nodded with a satisfied smile. “Good. I think we have a deal,” he said and released Susan’s throat.

Roger stared at the handcuffs dangling from the overturned chair. After they were through torturing Susan, they took her ka away again to wherever they take kas and a black wolf once again took possession of her body. Seeing that transformation was almost worse than watching the torture, Roger thought, and tossed back the rest of his vodka. He closed his eyes and concentrated on it burning down his throat, hoping that it would burn away the memories.

He wondered sometimes why they didn’t take him too, but maybe they knew they didn’t have to as long as they had Susan.
He wondered where she/it was tonight. No, he didn’t want to think of that!

He threw away the empty glass, grabbed the vodka bottle, and stumbled across the room to the sliding glass doors leading out onto the terrace. “Off the lights,” he said as he pushed open the doors. A cool breeze greeted him as the room went dark behind him.

The moon was up. It would be full in a few days. He wondered if he would be alive to see it. He wondered if it mattered anymore.

Tatters of clouds raced across the face of the moon. Rain coming, he thought as he walked across the flagstones to the edge of the pool. He watched the moon’s reflection jump and break as the breeze stirred the water.

He thought of the cigarette butt floating in the glass of water beside Harry’s bed and his lips curled in a feral smile. “I bet you didn’t know they spiked your water with black ice, did you, Harry?” he asked. “I pulled your chestnuts out of the fire on that one, and I did it again when I ran interference so you could walk out of the building afterwards without getting whacked. I bet you didn’t know that either.” He waved the vodka bottle dismissively. “Doesn’t matter…it’s not much to be proud of anyway.” His face split in a sudden derisive grin. “But these days I’ll take whatever I can get!”

He looked down the dark slope of the hill, behind the pool, to where phosphorescent waves broke against the dark beach and the moon sparkled on the water. He loved this view. It was why he bought this island in the first place and built just here. In the distance he could see the glow of New Hollywood like a luminous haze on the horizon.

He raised the vodka bottle to the moon. “Here’s to you, Harry, wherever you are,” he said with tears in his eyes. “That’s two you owe me.”