Irregulars: Stories by Nicole Kimberling, Josh Lanyon, Ginn Hale and Astrid Amara (51 page)

A chill deeper than the damp fog sank through Jason.

He didn’t want to think about his father’s murder. He couldn’t keep his head on straight when he did. Because all those horrific details that he remembered so very clearly couldn’t have been what happened. Those long-limbed, gape-mouthed creatures that had crouched over his father’s prone body, feeding on his organs—they simply did not exist.

“They weren’t real. It never happened. Don’t think about it.” Jason repeated the words like a mantra, pacing them with the fast rhythm of pumping pedals. But the surrounding mists haunted him with creeping white forms, and that old fear twitched through his nerves.

Somewhere ahead, on Van Ness maybe, an ambulance siren wailed and distorted with speed.

“Never happened. Don’t think about it. Not real…”

It would have been so much easier to forget those red-slit eyes and bloody saw-blade mouths if he was still on ariprazole. But antipsychotic medications weren’t cheap and without insurance Jason hadn’t been able to fill a prescription in nearly two years. Most days he kept himself calm by averting his gaze and doing his damnedest to ignore what he knew was crazy. But this morning between the stress of traffic and this strange creeping fog, his brain was sputtering like an engine misfiring on all eight cylinders.

It shook Jason to realize just how quickly he could lose his grip on reality again.

He needed to keep his head together for a little longer, he tried to assure himself. Soon he’d be eligible for medical insurance; it was just a matter of maintaining steady, legal employment. Which was nearly as impossible to find as Brigadoon for anyone with a history like his. A brutal murder and years spent in and out of psychiatric hospitals and foster care weren’t winning resume builders.

All of which made Jason’s current job precious to him, an almost miraculous promise of a normal life. He still marveled at the sheer luck of it.

A month ago he’d ducked out of the rain and into the gil-ded warmth of Phipps’s Curiosities and Antiques. Among carved camphor cabinets brimming with glittering baubles and scattered across the displays of ornate furnishings he recognized several familiar musical instruments. Out of nostalgia he’d picked up a clay ocarina—not much larger than a human heart, he thought. When an older woman in a fashionable maroon suit inquired about it, Jason obligingly demonstrated the sweet, tremulous notes, playing an old melody he remembered from his childhood. The woman listened, her expression softening from cool interest to rapt delight.

“It’s so beautiful…” The woman gazed at the small ocarina with longing and Jason handed it to her. She cupped it close to her chest as if she were a little girl cradling a bird.

Then, while purchasing the small ocarina as well as an ornately carved Chinese bed, she gave Jason a bright smile and complimented the elegant silver-haired storeowner on his charmingly knowledgeable staff.

If the owner, Mr. Phipps, was surprised by the woman’s assumption it didn’t show in his serene, aristocratic expression. “We do our best.”

After the woman departed Mr. Phipps approached Jason and made polite but pointed inquiries concerning his musical training. Jason kept his answers brief and somewhat honest. He’d studied ethnomusicology at UC Berkley—at least as long as his scholarships had lasted. He loved old and odd instruments.

Mr. Phipps considered Jason for a few moments. His keen gray eyes seemed to take in every detail that Jason wanted hidden—his clothes slightly too loose to fit him properly anymore, his hair a little too shaggy to pass for stylish.

“Why don’t you show me what you could make of this?” Mr. Phipps led Jason to an oak cabinet and handed him the lute-like body of an aged oud. Jason took the instrument like a elderly animal. The small pear-shaped body and short neck felt fragile in Jason’s hands, but as he carefully examined the oud he found that the wood was still strong and the tuning pegs fit well enough.

“It should be restrung and properly tuned,” Jason said. “Mostly it needs to be played. Otherwise it’ll get brittle…”

Glancing up through shaggy brown bangs to Mr. Phipps’s amused expression, Jason realized that the majority of antique buyers only desired instruments to grace their display cabinets, not be performed upon. And yet the lean older man indulged him, allowing him to pluck and tune the old oud. Soon it felt warm in Jason’s arms and its notes sounded rich and sweet as they rang through the shop.

An hour later when Jason handed the oud back, Mr. Phipps offered him a position.

Jason wasn’t sure if his employment had been an act of charity or actual need. But either way Jason had worked hard the last month, wanting to prove, if only to himself, that his skills and knowledge were worthy of more than pity. He’d removed anachronistic steel strings from Vietnamese moon lutes and replaced them with lengths of twisted silk. Over lunch he cleaned cobwebs from the hollows of bone whistles and porcelain bells. He spent several of his days off repairing the delicate bamboo membrane of a lovely jade dizi, so that after sixty years the flute’s resonant melody once again filled the air.

Mr. Phipps had actually broken into a wide grin when Jason played the flute for him.

“You’re quite a find, Jason.”

Jason had flushed with pleasure at the compliment.

Then Mr. Phipps had inquired if he could get to work early to demonstrate the sound of a chelys lyre for a very valuable customer. Jason had been ecstatic at the prospect. He’d assured Mr. Phipps that nothing would keep him away.

Now Jason swore at the grinding stitch in his side as well as the morning traffic. Why, today of all days, did every road seemed clogged with stopped cars?

Twice he’d been detoured by traffic cops wearing neon vests. He was so close, only a few blocks away, but every route he tried seemed closed.

 Jason swerved aside as another police car wailed past. Its lights flared through veils of fog like strange lightning. That had to be fifth police car he’d seen this morning.

Something very bad must have happened. Something very close to Phipps’s Curiosities and Antiques…The alarming thought of Mr. Phipps alone and injured came to Jason.

He peered into the walls of fog. No sign of a fire. A robbery? But why so many police? What could have happened?

As Jason drew in a deep breath, he recognized the pungent floral scent flooding his lungs. His heart gave a wild kick against his chest. The air had smelled strange that day too. And there had been a deep fog as well—cold but perfumed, as if it were the smoke of an alien fire. He remembered all too clearly the way his father’s voice had broken as he’d screamed.

Suddenly the closed streets and blinking police blockades meant nothing. Jason had to know that Mr. Phipps was safe.

He shot past a traffic cop and swerved down the alley that led to the back door of the antiques shop. He dodged trash cans and seagulls and narrowly avoided a vagrant in a tattered trench coat. Behind him, piercing police whistles sounded and someone shouted for him to halt.

But he couldn’t, not with the memory of his father’s murder growing stronger than reason in his mind.

He couldn’t let it happen again. The white mist rolled and swirled around him, brushing his face with dank fingers. The red brick of the back of the antiques shop loomed before him. Five concrete steps led up to the oily black back door.

Then, like one of his nightmares made real, two white, long-limbed creatures stepped out from the door. Toothy spears crowned their heads; the slits of their eyes and nostrils flared wide and scarlet. One held an unlit cigarette between its alabaster talons. The other flicked a silver lighter. Both wore dark uniforms with some sort of government insignia on the chests.

Jason lurched back, slamming his brakes instinctively. His bike skidded across the slick blacktop and swung out from under him. In a crash of wheels and metal frame, Jason hit the ground and rolled into a trash can. The adrenaline flooding his body brought him up to his feet instantly. His arm was bleeding, but he hardly registered the pain. All he saw were the two creatures on the steps above him.

They couldn’t be here. They were just delusions. Figments of imagination that several psychiatrists had agreed were Jason’s way of dealing with witnessing his father’s brutal murder.

They did not exist.

This whole morning had just gotten the better of him; he had to get a grip before it spiraled out of control.

They’re not real. They can’t be real.
But Jason’s terror coursed through him with a power far beyond logic.

Both the creatures regarded Jason. Then the one holding the silver lighter pocketed it and took a step down toward Jason.

“Just hold it right there, kid.” Hundreds of piranha teeth flashed from the vast gash of its nearly lipless mouth as it spoke. Oddly, its pronunciation was perfect, its words carrying through in a smooth, masculine tone.

It took another step and Jason reflected its advance with a retreating step.

“You don’t want to run, kid.”

But that, in fact, was all that Jason wanted to do. When the creature took a third step, Jason bolted, racing blindly for the mouth of the alley. He heard the creatures coming after him and somehow he managed to pour on more speed. His muscles flexed and sprang, burning through every gasp of oxygen he pulled into his lungs; his heart pounded like it was going to burst out of his chest. He bounded over two empty milk crates. Seagulls shrieked and took to the air as he came running at them.

Suddenly a tattered beige trench coat enveloped his field of vision and he slammed into the shockingly solid chest of the vagrant he’d nearly hit on his way into the alley.

They both stumbled. Jason flailed out, the back of his hand grazing uselessly across the rough stubble of a hard jawline and through shaggy blond hair. The vagrant caught him in a firm grip and pulled him to his feet. Jason tried to push past him, to keep running, but all the strength seemed to drain from his body as the man held him. His legs felt like broken rubber bands. His lungs were raw. Only the big hand at his back kept him upright as he gasped and floundered like a fish pulled from the water.

“Steady there, speedy.” The vagrant’s deep voice seemed to resonate through Jason’s chest. His tone struck Jason as warm—almost amused—despite his harsh features. As Jason bowed his head, catching his breath, the mineral scents of clay and the tang of juniper drifted over him from the other man’s coat.

“They’re coming. They—” Hearing the wild panic in his own voice, Jason stopped short. He fought to get control of himself—to drive back the terror pounding through him and think clearly. Unless he wanted to end up in another psychiatric hospital, strung out on haloperidol, he needed to get a grip. Or at least pretend that he had a grip.

Having another human being beside him reassured him and offered him a means to reassess the situation. If there were two nightmarish creatures charging down the alley, certainly this big, blond guy would have reacted with alarm. But he seemed perfectly calm. He clearly didn’t see them.

Because they aren’t there. They aren’t real.

Jason managed to push back from the other man and turn to face his pursuers. He wanted to see nothing, or barring that, two normal human beings—but they remained monsters. Scarlet nostrils flared to deep pits, eyes narrowed to red crescents. An unlit cigarette hung from the ugly mouth of the one nearest Jason.

Jason started back, but the man behind him caught him and stilled him once more. And Jason wasn’t sure if it was just a trick of the light or his imagination, but the vagrant suddenly seemed strangely luminous. With his free hand the vagrant flipped an ornate pocket watch from his coat and held it open as if he were displaying a badge. The two creatures pulled to a halt.

“Henry Falk. Shipped in from the field,” the man identified himself. “I’ve got this one.”

“Yeah, thanks for that.” One of the creatures nodded while the other flipped his cigarette into the toothy chasm of his mouth and swallowed it.

“Henry? My God, it’s good to see you again. It’s been ages.” It shook its ugly head. “The commander didn’t mention you were the one they sent out to us. Nice work on the door earlier.”

“Gunther?” The vagrant’s tone warmed. “I didn’t know you were on this operation.” The blond man offered an easy smile.

“Yeah, all part of the recent promotion,” replied the creature, Gunther—though Jason could hardly reconcile the monstrosity in front of him to such a normal name.

“Good for you.” The blond man glanced to Jason and Jason felt suddenly aware that he was gaping. He closed his mouth and the blond man returned his attention to the two creatures in front of them. “How are things in there?”

“Pretty hairy for a while, but the first floor is secured. It seems like the strike force is getting control of the second.”

“Good,” the blond man responded. “Could one of you tell Commander Carerra that I’ve closed the mist and all the wards are in place?”

“Will do.” Gunther’s companion gave a sharp salute with a heavily taloned hand. Then the creature headed back towards the door. Gunther turned his attention to the spill of wheels and spokes that Jason’s bicycle had become.

Jason watched the monsters move while his brain seemed to lurch in his skull. He took in his fallen bicycle and the smear of blood where the alley gravel had ground up his forearm. It was starting to hurt badly now. The pain, at least, felt real.