The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (33 page)

"Sure," Eve said with a shrug. "They look
like a reasonable bunch of dead guys. Why not?"

The executive lunged with a gurgling scream, hands hooked
into claws and mouth open to bite.

"Then again," she said, driving her fist into the
cadaver's face. It felt as though she had punched through a rotting melon. The
corpse danced horribly at the end of her arm, its face and skull collapsed
around her hand.

"That's just fucking gross," she spat, yanking her
fist free with a wet, sucking pop. Further disgusted, she snapped a savage kick
to the dead man's chest, hurling him backward into a T-shirt display. The
corpse seemed to break upon impact, what was left of its head lolling obscenely
to one side as it crumpled to the floor in a twisted heap.

"Quite effective," Graves said, slowly nodding his
head. "Perhaps if you were to break them up into smaller pieces."

Eve flicked her hand at the ground, spattering the Linoleum
with rotting brain as she tried to shake off the gray matter on her fist and
arm. "Look, I didn't say I was an expert. I said that I've been known to
be pretty good at getting information out of guys who didn't feel like talking.
Obviously my technique doesn't work so well on dead folks."

The three remaining corpses began to circle around them, as
though they had gained courage — or at least motivation — from the
destruction of the fourth.

"If you'd like to give it a try, be my guest," Eve
said, turning toward the shambling corpse of a woman so withered she seemed
almost a scarecrow. Eve snatched her up by the front of her dress and hurled
her into the others, knocking them all to the floor.

"Perhaps I will." Graves drifted from his place at
the door to levitate above the undead that thrashed upon the floor, trying to
stand. "I doubt I could do any worse."

One of the corpses untangled himself from the others. He had
been a middle-aged man, obviously cut down in the prime of his life, his white
shirt soiled from the grave. In his recent activity, the buttons had been lost,
revealing the pale flesh of his chest and stomach. Eve noticed the serpentine
stitching that writhed vertically from esophagus to navel.

The zombie leapt up at Graves with a hungry snarl, but his
fingers passed harmlessly through the substance of the ghost.

"You'll do," Dr. Graves said.

The specter plunged one of his hands into the corpse like a
magician reaching into his magic hat. The zombie froze, its decaying form
snapping rigid. Graves pulled his hand free, withdrawing a white, writhing
shape from inside the dead man's remains.

Eve watched, fascinated. "What is that, its soul?"

"Near enough," Graves replied, holding onto the
squirming ectoplasm as its rotting shell collapsed like a marionette whose
strings had been cut. The two other corpses grew still, staring at the ghost,
as though they understood what he had done.

Eve was not sure if they were frightened, or envious.

The amorphous thing in the spirit's grasp writhed, vaguely
taking on the shape of the man it had once been.

"Listen to me," Graves said.

Eve smiled. The man's voice just oozed control. It was
damned impressive that even dead, the guy could still exude that much
authority. She remembered how the world had been captivated by this man when he
was still amongst the living, never really understanding the attraction. But as
Eve watched him now, she began to see what she had not taken the time to notice
before.

The ectoplasm retained the shape of a man, reaching up to
the ceiling, but Graves prevented it from flowing to where it yearned to go. The
soul moaned, not so much a sound that was heard, but one that could be felt, a
low bass vibration the she could feel in the center of her chest.

"You will talk to me," Graves told it. "What
was it that you sought here?"

"The Eye,"
said the soul, what passed for
its head staring toward the ceiling.

"Did you find it?"

The spirit made another futile attempt to escape Graves, but
the ghost held fast.
"Want to go,"
it pleaded.
"Need
to be away from this place."

Graves yanked it down further toward him. "I asked you
a question," he roared. "Did you find it?"

"Please,"
the soul begged, stretching
toward the ceiling.

With a grunt of frustration, Dr. Graves drifted to the
floor, pulling the ectoplasmic remains of the dead man behind like a child
holding a balloon. The soul fought him, but to no avail.

"I will put you back in here," Graves growled,
forcing the soul toward the rotting husk that it had been extracted from.

"No!"
it shrieked, the intensity of its
psychic cries causing Eve to wince.

Graves would hear none of it, pushing the panicking soul
stuff closer to where it had been imprisoned. "Did you find it?"

"I searched,"
the man's soul answered
pathetically.
"But I did not find the Eye."

Graves floated toward the ceiling, letting his prisoner have
a taste of where it wanted to go. But just a taste.

"Do you know who did?"

"One of the others,"
it responded.
"One
of the others found the Eye."

Graves yanked the soul down again, pointing to the restless
corpses who lay on the floor below.

"Was it one of these?" he asked.

"No, it was not,"
it answered immediately,
afraid of what Graves could do to it.
"One of the others has the eye .
. . one of the others out there."

With one of its willowy appendages, the soul pointed outside
the gift shop, out into the museum.

Graves turned his attention to Eve.

"Oooh, scary," she said. "But what the hell. It
worked better than my approach."

The ghost released that tormented soul and they both watched
as it hungrily swam toward the ceiling, passing through the white tiles, and
then disappeared into the ether.

"Not really," the ghost replied despondently,
drifting down toward their remaining zombie captives. "We don't know any
more than we did before."

Eve watched as the ghost tore the imprisoned souls from
their cages of decaying flesh, releasing them to the ether as well.

"We can only hope that Clay has been more successful,"
Graves said, drifting closer.

"So what do you think?" she asked him. "Should
we grab a couple more and hope we hit the jackpot?"

Graves folded his arms across his chest. "I suppose it
couldn't hurt," he said.

"So many dead guys," Eve sighed, moving toward the
glass doors, looking out into the museum at the straggling corpses that still
meandered about outside. "So little time."

The red mist that swirled outside the Ferrick house had its
own strange luminescence. A crimson glow came in through the windows and though
they were closed, from time to time the house whispered with a breeze, a draft
from nowhere, and the candles in the living room flickered and threatened to go
out.

Danny did not want the candles to go out. There were very
few things he was certain of this night, but that was one of them. Without the
candles there would be only that red glow, and he would have to wonder a little
harder what was causing it.

He sat on the sofa in the living room with his mother beside
him. She clutched his hands for comfort, but he wasn't sure which of them was
comforted the most by this contact. It was weird to him. All the shit that he
normally cared about — his skateboard, his tunes, his room, the latest
video games, even the way he looked in the mirror — it all seemed so
small now. What good was that new shirt from Atticus he'd wanted now? Little
things had always been part of his mother's stress, too, but she'd always
seemed to know the difference. Danny guessed they were both learning more about
the big picture now than they ever wanted to.

Together they watched Arthur Conan Doyle pacing the length
of the room. The man — the mage, Danny had heard him called — barely
seemed to notice them.

From the moment Danny had returned to the house, magically
transported here by Ceridwen, Mr. Doyle had been lost to them. Danny had been
impressed by the guy in general, but he had not thought very much about the
magic he supposedly wielded. Mr. Doyle seemed grim and courageous, but not
really very intimidating.

That had changed.

Conan Doyle paced the room with his teeth ferociously
clenched, prowling back and forth as though each step was some small victory. His
eyes gleamed with dark purple light that coalesced into tears and then
evaporated, trailing tendrils of lavender smoke behind him. The jacket Conan
Doyle had been wearing was draped over a chair and his sleeves were rolled up. In
the moments when he paused at one end of the room to turn and pace the other
way, he reached up to run his fingers over his thick mustache. It was a pensive
action, the unthinking gesture of a man readying himself for a fight. His whole
demeanor, the marching, the rolled-up sleeves, contributed to that image.

He looked mean.

They weren't friends, the Ferricks and Mr. Doyle. They had
not known each other long enough to be friends. But they were allies. Even so,
Danny would not have interrupted him, even if the hordes of hell were crashing
down the door. In the reddish glow from the mist outside and the flicker of the
candles, Conan Doyle looked like a demon himself.

But he's not the demon, is he? That'd be me.
His
pulse quickened.

His mother leaned on him a little. He could sense her fear,
practically taste it, and he understood. All she wanted to do was curl up with
her baby boy, close her eyes, and pretend that the nightmare world that was
seeping in through her windows and under the door, the monsters she had invited
into her home, would just go away. But they weren't going to. And her baby boy
was one of them.

No matter how she yearned to shut her eyes to what was
happening, however, Danny knew she would not. Julia Ferrick was not that kind
of woman. The world had thrown some real shit in her path in the last few
years, and she had never let it stop her.

His fingers gripped her hand and he gave her a squeeze. "It's
going to be all right," he whispered, his voice a rasp, almost menacing,
even to his own ears. With the grotesque and malevolent atmosphere that had
enveloped the city, he was becoming
more
of what he was. He knew he
should be frightened, but it felt right to him. Even his thoughts were
changing. His mind . . . he felt more adult, in a weird way. Smarter, even. It
was more than a little fucked up.

When she glanced at him, there was a storm in her eyes
almost as intimidating as the fury in Mr. Doyle's.

"You shouldn't have gone, Danny. You should have stayed
here. When I think about where you were . . . the danger . . ."

Again his fingers tightened on hers. He narrowed his gaze
and cocked his head, wanting to make sure their eyes were locked, that she
would not turn away.

"No, Mom. It was the right thing to do. No matter what
. . ." he glanced nervously at Conan Doyle, who had instructed him not to
go. "It was the right thing. If I hadn't gone, Ceridwen might never have
been able to tell us what Morrigan was up to. And besides . . ."

He took a breath, then closed his mouth. His tongue brushed
against the backs of his jagged teeth. The skin his horns had torn through
still itched and flaked, but he resisted the urge to scratch it.

"Besides what?" his mother asked warily.

Danny let out a breath through his nostrils, plumes of hot
air as though from a furnace. "It felt good. For the first time, it felt
like I was part of something."

Her expression was crestfallen, as though he had just broken
her heart. But Danny could not run away from what he was, and neither could his
mother.

Mr. Doyle stopped his pacing in the precise center of the
room.

Danny and Julia Ferrick stared at him.

"Mrs. Ferrick, I am sorry to have taken advantage of
your hospitality in this way. Rest assured, Squire will make an appearance
shortly, after which I and my agents will no longer be a burden to you."

The words were simple enough, but Danny didn't like the
sound of it. It sounded as though Conan Doyle was going to shut him out of it again.
A flutter of anger went through him and another blast of hot air came from his
nostrils. It burned coming out, as though he was some dragon-boy, but he
doubted that fire-breathing was going to be one of the abilities his demonic
nature was going to give him.

"Where are you going?" Danny asked. His mother
said nothing. He figured she was just relieved to be quit of Conan Doyle and
all of his friends.

Mr. Doyle rolled his sleeves back down and began to button
them. He did this as though there were nothing at all in the world that ought
to be worrying him at the moment. There was a fussiness about him as he
smoothed the fabric and then took his jacket and slid it on again. He truly was
a man of another age.

When he glanced up again, that purple glow steamed from the
corners of his eyes and another glimpse of his fury flickered across his face.

"Where? To war, of course. To battle. There's nothing
to be done for it now. If Eve, Clay, and Dr. Graves succeed, it will be
helpful, but even if they do not, we must do our best. No matter the
consequences. The alternative is unthinkable."

"The alternative?" Julia Ferrick asked.

Danny glanced at her, squeezed her hand, and nodded at Conan
Doyle. "Come on, Mr. Doyle. We've been through enough of this with you. I
think we've earned the right to know. Who is The Nimble Man? What's this all
about?"

For a long moment, Arthur Conan Doyle peered down his nose
at the Ferricks, frustratingly aloof. Danny wanted to hit him, but then he
remembered the rage burning just inside the man, and knew he shouldn't push. At
length, Conan Doyle's expression faltered and now Danny saw tragedy in his
eyes, catastrophe in the twist of his lips.