The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (22 page)

Julia Ferrick couldn't bring herself to answer. It was as if
she were trapped in some bizarre fever dream, aimlessly walking around familiar
dreamscape locations as the horrors continued to unfold. The odd, dwarfish man
was but the latest addition to an equally strange cast of characters that had
taken up residence in her home. Sitting at the marble-topped kitchen island,
she gazed toward the window above the sink and saw the thick red fog swirl
ominously about outside. The usual view of the trees in her backyard was
completely obscured by the bizarre weather that had supposedly engulfed the
city and its suburbs, at least that was what her visitors told her.

"You got some old milk in here . . . Christ, it's got
the Lindbergh baby on the carton!" Squire turned toward her, wide-eyed. Then
he gave her a terrifying smile, something out of Grimm's Fairy Tales. "Just
kiddin'. Heh. But seriously, the sour cream gives it that little bit of extra
somethin'," the man . . .
she thought he was a man
. . . said as he
pulled himself out of her refrigerator, arms filled with ingredients.

Julia went over to the oven and opened the cabinet above it.
She pulled down a bag of Oreos and set it on the cooktop, then fished behind a
jar of peanut butter to grab an unopened box of Winston Lights. Her fingers
quivered as they retrieved the cigarettes. Then, quickly, she dug through a
drawer for matches. It was her emergency pack. Her fallback, held for a time
when it wouldn't matter anymore what Danny's reaction would be to her smoking
again. She imagined it stenciled with the words
In Case of Apocalypse, Tear
Plastic
.

There were no matches so she turned on one of the gas stove's
burners and bent, shaking, to light the cigarette. The first intake of
carcinogens was harsh relief. Her fingers stopped quivering. She gnawed her
lower lip, then took another puff before blowing out a plume of smoke. Her back
was to Squire.

"Feel better now? You needed a smoke, huh? I know the
feeling. Not that I smoke but . . . Oh, hey, Oreos!"

When Julia spun to look at him again, Squire had already
picked up the bag of Oreos and was helping himself. The package crinkled as he
drew out a pair of cookies and popped them in his mouth like they were dog
biscuits. She expected him to throw back his head and gulp them down, but
instead he stared at her and then spoke up once more, talking with his mouth
full.

"So. Sour cream?"

"What?" Julia asked him. "The sour cream . .
. for what?"

Squire rolled his eyes, snatching another Oreo from the pack
and then going back to the open fridge. He retrieved a couple of items from
within and then closed the door with a bump from his hip. "For the omelets
we're making for the hungry troops? Remember?"

She smiled nervously. "Right. Sorry." Eyes darting
away, she took another long drag on the cigarette, no longer caring if the
house smelled like smoke. She leaned back to look through the doorway into the
living room, where the others had gathered. "My head is spinning."

"That's all right," Squire said, returning to the
refrigerator. He yanked open the door again and helped himself to some eggs. "Gotta
admit, this business has even got me seeing stars, and that's sayin' somethin'."

He asked her for a large frying pan from the rack that hung
over the kitchen's center island. She doubted that he could have reached it
even with the added help of a stepping stool. Julia retrieved it for him.

"Best thing to do is keep your head and keep thinkin'
the good thoughts." He looked at her as he doused the pan with no-stick
cooking spray. "That's what I do, and it hasn't failed me yet, except for
that business with the Beast of Gevaudan. That shit was just bad news from the
start."

He rattled on a bit more and she nodded her head and smiled
politely, but deep inside she could feel it building, the urge to scream and
throw them all out of her house, her son included. If at the very moment she
had been given the choice to crawl back inside her mother's womb, Julia Ferrick
would have done so without so much as a second thought. She felt as though
there was an electric current passing through her seat and into her body.

She found herself gnawing on the nail of her left index
finger, even as she tapped the ash from her cigarette into the stainless steel
sink. Great. She'd given into temptation, and now she had two habits to kick
instead of one. But, God, the cigarette was a comfort. Just holding helped to
steady her.

Squire was using a whisk to beat the eggs inside a bowl,
humming busily to himself, seemingly content to ignore the fact that the world
was falling apart all around them.

"That's quality," Danny said as he came into the
kitchen.

Julia thought for a moment about trying to hide her
cigarette, but it was too late. He looked disappointed for a moment and then
just sighed. She gave him a small shrug. What could she say? In a situation
like this, the kid should understand. She thought about putting it out, but he'd
already seen her anyway, and she needed that cigarette.

Averting her eyes from his gaze, she took another drag and
let the smoke trail from her mouth. Then she did her best to smile. She put on
a brave face for her son — and he would always be her son, no matter if
she had given birth to him or not, no matter if he was even human. The tiny
black horns that had burst through his skin and now protruded, just above his
temples, made her shudder, but she did her best to hide her revulsion.

"What's up, kid?" she asked him.

"I wanted to know more about this Doyle guy. Dude took
an interest in me, but how does he know all the stuff he knows? I asked Eve what
his story was, but she said to ask Squire." Danny focused on the ugly
little man and Julia was grateful he wasn't going to fight her about her
smoking. "Says you've worked for him the longest."

Squire abandoned his cooking for a moment to snatch a few Oreos
from the package. He popped one into his mouth and went back to whisking eggs. "You
want the short version or the long version?"

Danny sat on the edge of the table and crossed his arms. "Let's
start with the CliffsNotes. Mom says I have a short attention span."

"Mr. Doyle. The boss. A.K.A. Arthur Conan Doyle. Learned
a bunch of magick. Tries to keep the nasty shit from bothering normal people. End
of story."

"Come on. There's got to be more to it than that."

Squire shrugged. "Lots more. But you wanted the short
version."

"Hold on," Julia said. "Just . . . just hold
on." The cigarette dangled from her fingers, nearly forgotten. Her brows
knitted as she stared at Squire. "Arthur Conan Doyle. His parents gave him
the same name as the creator of Sherlock Holmes?"

Danny shot them a confused look, his Converse Chucks
squeaking on the linoleum. "What, you mean that cartoon? Sherlock Holmes
in the Thirtysomething Century?"

Squire snorted, but it wasn't derisive. Danny amused him. "Kid.
Sherlock Holmes is one of the greatest fictional creations ever. People around
the world know who he is. Like Mickey Mouse and Superman. He was created in the
1800s."

Then the leather-skinned, ugly little creature turned on a
burner and started to heat a pan in which to cook omelets. He didn't even look
up as he responded to Julia's question. "And, no, the boss ain't named
after Sir Arthur. He's the real deal. The one and only. You see the way he
dresses? He's not old-fashioned. He's just
real
old school."

"No shit?" Danny asked, a strange grin spreading
across his badly scarred features. "That's just so fucking cool."

"Watch your mouth," Julia snapped, glaring at her
son. It was such a maternal thing to do that she had a moment of dislocation,
as though none of this was happening. It was all impossible. This latest news
was only the latest in a string of impossibilities. But the tip of her
cigarette burned and the smoke warmed her throat. She was awake and alive. Julia
knew the difference between a dream and a nightmare.

Everything that was happening to them was real and true. Danny
was . . . what he was. But just with those few words, with the rush of instinct
she had to chide him for his foul language, snapped part of her mind back into
place. He was her little boy, still. No matter what. She had raised him, put
band-aids on his scrapes and cuts, comforted him when he had a nightmare. How
could she possibly think of him in any other way?

"Sorry, Mom," he mumbled, averting his eyes.

She reached out and ruffled his thick, curly hair, and
gasped when a handful of it came away in her fingers, floating to the floor. "Dear
God," she muttered, staring at the bald spot that she had created.

"It's okay," he reassured her. "It's been
falling out pretty steadily for the last few days." He moved the hair on
the floor around with the toe of his sneaker.

She felt the tears well up in her eyes. It took every ounce
of her self-control not to break down sobbing.

Clay and Eve entered the kitchen, their focus on Squire.

"How are those eggs coming?" Clay asked.

Julia gazed sadly at her son and slid down into a chair at
the kitchen table. Danny kicked at her chair lightly, playing with her, being a
brat, but only to remind her of who they were, to let her know he was still
there and still himself. She nodded, smiling weakly.

"Eggs?" Squire barked at Clay, flipping a golden
brown omelet with a spatula in the frying pan. "When have I ever merely
prepared eggs, compadre?"

Clay laughed pleasantly, and Julia trembled again as she
recalled how the handsome man had somehow changed himself into a mirror image
of her, her exact doppelganger. How such things were possible she did not know.
All she did know was that she was not going to be getting used to them at any
time soon. She took another drag of her cigarette, now smoked almost down to
the filter, and chose to focus on the kitchen conversation. She was becoming
fairly adept at preventing herself from losing her mind. It seemed she had no
other choice. What was that old saying?
Adapt or die
. Her version was a
little different.
Adapt or lose your marbles
.

"A repast fit for a king," Squire said, flipping
another omelet on the burner beside the first.

"If it's anything like that goulash you tried to pawn
off on us last fall . . ." Eve chimed in, drawing a glass of water from
the tap.

"That was no fault of mine," Squire protested. "I
was assured by the butcher that the meat was of the finest quality." He
broke one of the omelets in half with the spatula, flipped it onto a plate and
handed it to Clay. "How was I to know that dog meat was considered a
delicacy in his particular dimension?"

Clay sniffed the food on his plate suspiciously and wrinkled
his nose as if smelling something foul. Danny burst out laughing beside his
mother and she jumped. Laughter had become a foreign sound in this household of
late, and she had almost forgotten it existed.

"Are you partaking?" Squire asked, turning to
offer Eve a fresh omelet on a plate.

The woman threw up her hands to ward him off. "I'll
pass." She leaned her head forward and sniffed around the offering. "Is
that . . . is that garlic I smell?" She asked him.

The ugly little man smiled mischievously. "Chopped up
nice and fine, just how you like it."

"Asshole," Eve spat, and Squire cackled.

Julia didn't understand the joke, unless it was simply that
Eve didn't care for garlic. After she'd stubbed out her cigarette in a coffee
mug, Squire brought plates for her and Danny and she thanked him, but could not
bring herself to eat. Her son on the other hand, ate his own portion and then
helped himself to hers as well.

"How long do we give Conan Doyle to find us?" Clay
asked as he brought his empty plate to the sink for Squire to wash. The little
man now stood atop a chair and was cleaning up, the sink full of hot soapy
water.

Eve leaned in the doorway between the kitchen and living
room, drinking her water. Danny could not take his eyes from the attractive
woman, Julia noticed, and in a way, she could not blame her son. Eve was one of
the most strikingly beautiful women she had ever seen, with the body and the
fashion sense of a supermodel. In an ordinary woman, it might've made Julia
envious. Yet there was something about Eve that made the hair on the back of
Julia's neck stand on end. She wondered what her story was, what bizarre secret
she kept in order to be associated with the likes of Squire, Clay, and Mr.
Doyle.

"We give him as long as it takes," Eve said, a
dangerous edge in her voice. It was clear in her tone that she neither
expected, nor would accept, an argument. "I'm sure he's figured out what's
going on by now. We wait for him. Then we'll make a plan."

Clay stood on the other side of the island across from her
and folded his muscular arms. "And if he doesn't come back? If this
Morrigan woman who's taken over the house gets the better of him?"

"I forgot what a bundle of joy you could be." Eve
scowled at him.

"Conan Doyle will come back, don't you worry,"
Squire said as he scrubbed a plate clean with a sponge and placed in the
strainer to dry. "It'll take more than that nasty Faerie bitch to put him
down for the count." He turned atop the chair at the sink to look at
Julia. "Pardon my French."

She was about to tell him that it was all right when there
was a thump on the front door. Julia jumped, placing a hand against her chest. She
could feel her heart racing.

Eve was the first to react, moving into living room and
toward the door.

"Could it be Mr. Doyle?" Julia asked, hoping it
was. She had met the man, and whether or not she had to think about their
claims about his true age and identity, his presence would be welcome. At least
he seemed human enough. But she wasn't sure if she could stand another bizarre
stranger the likes of her current guests.