Red Right Hand (11 page)

T
HE
E
AGLES'
“H
OTEL
California” played softly through the elevator's sound system. The cheap speakers made Don Henley's voice sound hollow and karaokesque, turning the soft-rock masterpiece into something haunting and melancholy, a splintered bow drug across the violin strings of my nerves.

I hear you, Glenn. I can check out anytime I like, but I can never leave.

“Hey.”

I looked over at Daniel. We were standing against the opposite walls of the elevator. The Man in Black watched the numbers count up, ignoring us. My back pressed
hard
against the little handrail that ran along the walls. I was still jumpy, still jittery. I wasn't flexing my hand; I wasn't panicking again; but I could feel it skritching at the edges of my brain. Normally I had distance between me and full-on meltdown mode. It took years of therapy to get it, but I had it. Now, after
the small episode in the lobby, I wasn't even inches away. No, once I had one I was left raw and exposed, all my defenses torn away.

And the music wasn't helping.

Daniel's whisper filled the small, square space. “Did you know this is a Satan song?”

I blinked at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Yeah, it's true. This song is all about Satanism.”

“‘Hotel California' is about Satan?”

He nodded vigorously. “An evangelist came to my mom's church and told us all about it.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“He did come to my mom's church. Brother Hank something-or-other. I was fourteen at the time.”

This was a good distraction. I went with it. “I believe a guy came to the church. I don't believe Hotel California is about the Devil.”

“You just have to listen to the evidence. I didn't believe it either when I was told, but now…” His eyes slid to the Man in Black, then back to me.

Ah.

“Explain it for me then.”

Anything to keep my mind occupied.

Daniel moved over beside me. I watched him. His hands still shook slightly, but he had the easy grace of an athlete, every movement made with confidence. He leaned next to me and talked out the side of his mouth so we could both watch the Man in Black. His fingers ran through thick hair, pulling it forward in a cute, boyish, unconscious habit.

“Okay, it's like this. The song starts out with this guy on a highway, and he sees this hotel. When he gets there, he finds a girl who tells him it could be heaven or hell. Well … it's hell.” Daniel's eyes were big, really wanting me to believe what he said. “Then he calls for some wine, and the guy tells him they haven't had that spirit there since nineteen sixty-nine. Guess what was founded in nineteen sixty-nine.”

“I have no idea.”

“The Church of Satan! In a hotel that Anton LaVey bought in California.” His hand grabbed my arm, emphasizing the fervor in his voice. “Wine is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. That hotel really
wouldn't
have had it since sixty-nine. And if you look on the album cover, guess who's on it, hidden in an archway?”

“Satan?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Anton LaVey.” He nodded as he made this point. “I saw it myself.”

“Who's Anton LaVey again?”

“The guy who started the Church of Satan.”

I looked sideways at him. “That's pretty thin.”

His eyebrows creased together. It was kinda cute. “Then how about this. There's a line about stabbing the Beast with knives, but it won't die. The Beast is another name for the Antichrist, and in Revelation he gets stabbed in the head but doesn't die.” His hand still lay on my arm.

I smiled. I hadn't expected it, but his enthusiasm for this explanation was contagious and … charming.
This
was the Daniel I knew. I pushed that out of my head, holding onto the balance the conversation brought to me, running with it. “I don't know. That's pitchy.”

His hand moved away, his arms crossing over his chest, a playful pout on his face. “You don't believe it?”

“You do?”

His eyes cut meaningfully at the Man in Black's back. “Even more than I did before.”

“I get that.”

“I can hear you.” The Man in Black didn't turn around. His voice echoed inside the elevator.

“So, is it true?” I couldn't help asking.

“John's Revelation has not happened yet.”

“Was that a yes?”

The elevator chimed. The doors split open, and the Man in Black stepped through them without answering.

Neither of us said anything as we followed him, leaving our glimmer of a good mood eviscerated on the floor of the elevator.

 

17

W
E STEPPED INTO
a recovery ward, closed off behind a nurses' station. Behind it sat a pleasantly plump woman in a gleaming white uniform. Hair the color of a new penny frothed under a nurse's cap straight out of the fifties. Her skin had the shape and shade of uncooked biscuit dough, making the hair look brassy and fake. Not like a cheap dye job, but the color and consistency of fine copper wire.

“Can I help you?” Her voice was chipper and high pitched. Pushed through a wide, saccharine smile, it squeaked like a dog toy.

Immediately my nerves were on edge.

Nyarlathotep stepped to the counter in a swirl of midnight coat. He stood in stark contrast to the nurse, sinister and saturnine against her gleam. Looming, his head tilted slightly, he spoke. “Stand aside.”

A hand fluttered over pillowy cleavage. “Now, you
can't just barge in here! There are rules, and our patients need order.”

My fingers tightened on the charred stick I held as tension clamped across the back of my neck, making the vertebrae grind. I looked around, stretching while I did. My neck popped and cracked and felt better. Studying the reception area put the tension right back where it had been.

I'd been in ICU, a recovery ward, and a psych ward. This place looked nothing like any of them. Those all had things in common. The same bland, abstract paintings on the wall, nonspecific track lighting to diffuse the atmosphere, pastel colors to set visitors and patients at ease. None of that could be found here. Everything gleamed as white as the nurse, unadorned and blank. Harsh light cut from bulbs set into the ceiling, striking the floor in bright pools. Only one painting broke the stark whiteness. It hung down the wall, angled
just
out of my direct line of sight. I could see it was abstract, but it wasn't bland. The colors slashed across the canvas like claw marks on bare flesh. I leaned back, trying to look at the painting, to study it, but my eyes kept sliding to the left, going out of focus until a headache started to black-hornet buzz behind them. I turned. “What kind of wing is this?”

Before the nurse could answer, the Man in Black's voice whip-cracked at me. “Do
not
speak to her.”

The nurse looked up at him, a wide clown grin plastered on her face. Daniel nudged my arm. He pointed at a sign over the automatic doors leading to the rest of the ward.

ONCOLOGY RECOVERY
.

That explained a lot.

I don't just hate hospitals because of what happened to me. No, my hatred of them goes way back. Long before that night, at a time where my memories are lost in the fog of childhood, my dislike of hospitals had been cemented into who I am.

My grandmother died when I was seven.

She'd been old my whole life. In my child's memory she'd been ancient, not even human, just a collection of sticks wrapped in sagging, wrinkled skin. I have no memory of her other than the hospital. I don't remember when she got sick with cancer, or what she was like before.

I've seen pictures, a pretty woman who looked a lot like my mom, but that's not the image in my head. No, I remember her as a sad, inhuman
thing
lying in a bed, curled in pain. She moaned, low and constant, the undulating rhythm of low-yield agony broken only by the sucking in of more breath. I remember the
smell
of her, moist and decaying, the scent of her body betraying her bit by bit, strong enough to cut through the astringent bleach and medication smell that all hospitals share.

I love my mom. I really do. Caught in the sorrow of losing her mother, she had no idea what she did by making me go with her to keep vigil. As an only child, she didn't have a choice; there was no one else to be with my grandmother and no one else to watch me. So I went with her, every day, all day that summer, until my father came to rescue me, taking me home and leaving my mom behind to stand watch and witness the slow dying, the ebb of life with each thin, tortured inhale and exhale.

I was there the moment my grandmother died.

I can still feel it clearly. The very moment the moaning stopped and didn't start again. The machines hummed and beeped and whirred, but there was a hollowness in the air, a desolation scooped from the atmosphere as my grandmother ceased to live. My mother sat up and looked at me. Both of us were frozen, locked in time by what had just happened between one breath and the next. Neither of us moved for a long moment. Then my mother's face twitched and cracked and broke, tears spilling down her cheeks, running off her jaw, and splashing her shirt. She slipped off the chair, crumpling to the floor with a sob that turned into a scream.

I was a child. I didn't know what to do. I stood there, locked in fear, until strangers rushed in the room and shoved me away.

“Move aside. I will not tell you again.”

Nyarlathotep's voice broke through the memory, snatching me back to what was happening here and now in front of me. His red right hand had slipped out of its pocket. It hung beside him, skinless fingers slightly curled. He looked almost casual, indifferent and unconcerned, but the air crackled with tension.

“Sir, I will not allow you to disturb our patients.”

The nurse stood now. Her uniform puckered at the buttons as the fabric strained across a generous middle and spongy breasts the size of my head. Self-conscious, I hunched my shoulders around my own modest B-cup. The nurse's smile was still in place, cheeks pulled high, stretching lips tight against teeth that were so very white.

The tension between them vibrated. I had to speak, had to say something in the face of it. “She's only a nurse. Why don't we just go around her?”

“She is the guardian of this place.” The Man in Black didn't turn when he answered me. “Stop asking questions, Acolyte.”

The nurse turned her face toward me. Her smile got even wider. It looked painful, pulling her eyes into diagonal lines, thinning the skin over her brow and drawing tight her double chin. “Acolyte? Dr. Mason would love to … examine you.” Her head swiveled toward the Dark Man with a snap. As her cheeks quivered and strained under the pull of that clown smile, her voice dropped a full octave. That smile hadn't faltered since we stepped off the elevator. “But you will not gain entrance.”

The Man in Black didn't move. He didn't. His coat rustled, pulling its hem tiredly off the floor. It had been nothing, a simple shift, the tiniest movement of all.

But it was enough.

The nurse's face split in two.

It started in the corners of her mouth, twin ruptures like paper cuts, trickling translucent blood that zigged and zagged down the plane of her jaw. I could
hear
the skin ripping, like packing tape being pulled off the spool. The splits widened, yawning in strings as they tore all the way to her ears. Teeth ran to the very back of her skull.

In the blink of an eye her face swelled, expanding like a puffer fish and turning a dark shade of jaundiced, a rotten-lemon yellow. The top of her head flipped back to reveal an open maw crammed full of jagged teeth, all of their crowns wicked sharp and white. They circled an empty, gaping gullet like an enameled chainsaw whirlpool. Saliva sluiced out in a gush to spill over the counter and drip on the floor. From the neck down she was still human, with the same pudgy arms, still wearing the white uniform now obscenely see-through after being soaked with spittle. Putting its chubby, pale hands on the counter, the thing that once was a nurse pushed off, lunging at the Man in Black with her mashing monster mouth.

That terrible red right hand flashed, slapping her to the floor.

The thing that once had been a nurse tumbled off the counter in a sprawl of chubby arms and legs. It scrambled to its feet, the top of its head askew. Its face had deformed: eyes slit closed, copper-wire hair wadded around skin gone swollen and bright, dehydrated-urine yellow.

Its upper jaw clacked against the lower as it tried to speak, but words dribbled out in a chewed-up, mangled mess.

The Man in Black's red right hand curled into a fist. With one step, he drove it into the skull of the thing that used to be a nurse.

Its head exploded in a shower of pulp.

Tiny pieces of monster head splattered across Daniel and me. We hadn't moved. There hadn't been time. It was over in a moment, a breath … no, a thought. One second the nurse was talking, the next her head had been obliterated.

The Crawling Chaos turned to us. Blood and gore slid slow and chunky down his face. His eyes glittered with dark amusement, backlit with glee as he licked clean the fingers of his red right hand.

Finished, he looked at us and smiled under sharply arched eyebrows.

“What? Did you want me to share?”

 

18

T
HE AUTOMATIC DOORS
shushed closed behind us, and the second they did I wanted to turn around and leave. The ward stretched out before us, twin rows of hospital beds captured in dull pools of low fluorescent light, the back wall lost in the hovering darkness. The fact that it was the middle of the night struck me like an openhanded slap.

The middle of the
same
damn night.