Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller (2 page)

“Twenty and we’re square, sir,” the hauler told him, politely as sin. His voice held a touch of that approachable Missouri, but that honest smile had long since fled. His searching eyes narrowed. “I figure it’s likely more. But we can’t know for sure now, can we.
Can
we?”

At this the man glanced round to garner agreement. Not a word was spoken, but some of the patrons, the rats, mostly, seemed to concur. The eyes—sickly or not—never lie.

The drifter capitulated. His arms were aching, and the incessant pressure from the nelson was grilling him almost as deeply as the static. His long chestnut hair, cradling the shoulders of his weathered denim jacket, slipped down in front of his face. He held a menacing look, and the looker, long since bored with the barkeep, stirred on her high bar stool. She bit down teasingly on her lower lip, handing him a breathless gaze with those perfect green gems. She had no idea how lucky she was; the redhead’s eyes were creepy little pissholes now.

“You win,” he said, feigning exasperation. He shook his head for good measure.

“No more tricks,” the fat man reiterated, with obvious suspicion—and more than a hint of relief. He really wasn’t a bad seed, in his way; he was probably a good husband, a good father, a good provider. But
nobody
hustles a hustler.

The man drew the knife back with a step. Nodded to Cal. Cal let him go.

The drifter gathered himself. He regarded the looker with a small smile, and with an innocent gesture of settling up, reached for his breast pocket, figuring to give old Cal here an elbow to the gut before he snatched up his knapsack and bolted for the exit. He was just about to when thunder rumbled, and the place went black. Mild chaos turned to utter chaos when the lights didn’t come, and amid the ruckus of shouting, shuffling, and confusion, the drifter, like a finely tuned magician, the audience astir, waved his magic wand.

And popped the rabbit out of the hat.

~

The bright neon clock above the bar, a Budweiser, ticked six minutes to one; give or take a few precious seconds, roughly three minutes it had lost, to the black and chilling chasm of time. Jimmy Dean was just getting started (for what was in fact the ninth time), and when the looker crossed her legs the way she did, bouncing one upon the other so sexily, the drifter, not a scratch on his sculpted chin, called for another round. Some joker was still playing a crazed kind of pinball inside his head, flipping bricks about his skull. And the static, all over him like a tiger, clawed into his brain.

He tried to tell himself that if the lights hadn’t failed when they had, he might have made it. But in all the confusion, stumbling through blackness and bodies, he hadn’t been able to find his knapsack. Some bastard had lifted it. He didn’t have much, nothing more than a few clothes, but there
was
his dark secret, tucked safely inside. He had had no choice.

And now here he was—here
they
were—again.

He considered making a run for it right then and there, but they’d be all over him the moment he went for his things. He might make it past one of them, but not both. Even if he managed to pull off that minor miracle, fat chance their cronies would let him escape. And wouldn’t there be fireworks then. Particularly when it came to light that, after the brewskis he’d bought, he had exactly three dollars and sixty-two cents in his pocket.

He only prayed he could pull this off.

The leggy looker smiled coyly at him. Her wild eyes were still those fine sparkling emeralds, and he was thankful for that. But he had to admit, her new tan flattered, from pretty head to pretty toe. The redhead, despite being spared the sunburn, hadn’t fared as well. Her eyes burned with all the look of an infection. She was chalky. Looked as sick as a dog. He felt for her, he really did.

He slipped a coin into the steel slot of the table. His new buddy Ron, nodding to his other new buddy, Cal, watched him like a hawk as he racked. Their skin had deepened, their sunburn an even greater tell. Their eyes were thick with bloodshot. Sick with the color of butter.

He glanced at his weathered boots. A faint dusting of fine powder clung to them. Maybe this time it was just ordinary dust. But he knew. Too white.

He studied the fat man carefully. Rather than drawing his cue as he had expected, the trucker took a swig of his draft instead, deferring the break to him with a nod. It was a little thing, not taking his cue this time, but how well he knew how such a trivial change in the way of things could ripple into chaos. The good news was, the man
hadn’t
taken the break; he had feared that might happen, and his chance would be lost.

This would have to work. His mind was out of gas, sucked dry from his mental exertions. Another Turn would likely leave him unconscious. And with these boys, he’d likely find himself in a ditch wearing nothing but the clothes God gave him when he came to.

He chalked his cue. Then, before old Ron changed his mind, he stepped round the table and positioned himself for the break.

“No tricks, sir.”

The drifter looked up.

You calling ME a cheat?
he’d snapped before, and hadn’t
that
worked out well. He kept his big mouth shut.

Cal, the big bastard, looked more like a tanned surfer from California than a pale barfly from the Midwest. The man belched, took a deep swig of his draft, then shifted from his perch at the bar to the table. So far, so good. But now that he knew Ronnie-boy had a knife, there was no telling what might happen this time round. If things got dicey again—and they would, if the puzzle pieces scattered about the man’s brain suddenly assembled into a nice neat picture—a little slit on the chin could turn to a six-inch gash across the throat. You just never knew.

“Tell you what,” he said warmly. “Double or nothing?”

“What do you take him for?” Cal barked. “A goddamn fool?”

“Fine as a feather,” the trucker said after some deliberation, clearly intent on collecting, win or lose. He was stone. Maybe he knew. Maybe he knew, and his mind had snapped. God knew he had seen it before. And now, maybe the guy was waiting for
his
chance. His chance to gut him.

But then the man moved up a step, and the nauseous redhead, already listing in her seat into the narrow aisle, bless her, gave it her all.

Too fat and too drunk, the hustler stepped gamely, but not gamely enough. His left leg slid out from under him in the slick vomit, and gravity did the rest. His drink soaked one of the rats as he flailed, his big ass hitting the hardwood like a sack of cement, and Cal, laughing it up like most of the shit-faced others, didn’t notice a thing. The drifter took up his knapsack and slipped away, gave a wink to the looker as he passed her—great legs, this one—and hurried to the restroom and nearly got stuck as he shimmied through the narrow back window. Thunder cracked, a lasting report of deafening soul, and as he looked up from his knees and into the driving rain, saw lightning strike a power line not twenty feet from the roadhouse. The lights failed, far longer than before, and by the time they returned, the trucker bolting from the front door and into the storm with bloodshot eyes the size of golf balls, the drifter, like that finely tuned magician, had vanished.

~

It was in all the papers.

Well, just the local one, he knew, but one was enough. One was one too many.

He shouldered his knapsack and put up a hand to keep the pages clear of the spitting rain. He took shelter beneath the awning of the roadside diner, and had to abandon it as that rather obese family of four came out. The father, the last to emerge, gave him a look that was none too friendly. In the dying light, he watched them hurry across the lot and wedge themselves into their station wagon, the springs feeling the pinch, and though he held no doubt it would be a squeeze, a part of him wished he could hitch a ride. They turned south onto the lightless road, the rain coming in buckets suddenly, their fading taillights a pair of cold eyes that seemed to be watching him.

He moved under the awning again. He was soaked, the paper equally so. A Halloween decoration hung in the window. The jack-o’-lantern had sharp, angled eyes and held a sinister grin.

He read the date. The twenty-ninth. Yesterday.

He skimmed through the article again. Perusing the paper over his greasy burger, it had been buried with the obits—news like this was either front page or back page, he figured, depending on whether the editor felt it actual and factual or, as this editor had, figured it to be nothing more than hokum, filler to amuse the readership, given the playful headline—and as he had turned to it, his heart had skipped a beat or two. Two booths down, the family man had been reading his own paper, had looked up more than once, had given him that typical look of suspicion. The long hair? The scars? Usually, that’s what it was. But for all he knew, the man had been at the bar that night. Hell, it might have been his new buddy Cal, for the size of him.

A creeping chill ran the nape of his neck. He stood cold, half expecting the station wagon to come rolling into the lot, a highway patrol car racing close behind.

His head throbbed. The headaches were getting worse. They lasted days, now.

At least that crazy static was gone. Thank God.

His mind drifted back to the roadhouse. He could still hear Jimmy Dean.

What had he been thinking?

He’d thought the guy was a Stiff. Thought them
all
Stiffs. His first mistake.

The second—and it seemed he had been making more and more of them lately—was his stupidity. Drunk or not, cheated or not, you just didn’t Turn on a whim. Jesus.

He read the headline again. Like a line from a children’s bedtime story. In another life, another
time
—ha—he might have laughed. Hell, even Brikker, that soulless freak, might have managed a grin. And if—no,
when
—the man discovered this, no doubt he would.

WILLOW SPRINGS MAN MEETS FATHER TIME

His heart sank. He looked up wistfully, his tired mind drawn north along that desolate road. It looked so cold and dark. And endless.

He slipped the newspaper into the receptacle near the door and turned back to check inside. The waitress was cleaning up, getting ready to close.

He regarded the grinning pumpkin. Twisted and evil.

All he saw was Brikker.

“Three whole days,” he sighed, so weary to move on so quickly, the callous October wind slapping him in the face. He stood under the awning for another ten minutes, the downpour finally ebbing, falling to that maddening drizzle.

Kain Richards walked, into the rain.

~ 2

Brikker looked up expectantly from his cigarette, his narrow gaze reaching like fingers, into the murk beyond the oil lamp that flickered on his desk. In the bad light, the thing seemed to wrap round him like a giant reptile, a snake in walnut clothing. Here was a desk of decision, a desk of death, now serving another hemisphere—serving
democracy,
serving the will of the people. It had once served Hermann Goering, Commander-in-Chief of the
Luftwaffe,
Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, a man Brikker had deeply respected and understood, but now it was a spoil from the Allied victory, confiscated and shipped directly to him after the fall of Berlin, a gift from friends, if you will, for a job well done. Nearly crushed in the siege, it had been repaired so precisely to its original form it was as if it had never been damaged; as if Russian shells had never been dropped in its vicinity. He could appreciate such magic.

A thin veil of smoke lingered in the cold dark room. A second lamp burned on a long bureau beneath the window (the good Doctor relished the smell of oil-burning lamps and would eat only in the warmth of lamplight), while two others glowed on metal stands at the door. The corners were cloaked in shadow, and in the gloom, a longcase clock echoed endlessly, that staccato tick enough to drive one raving.

He smelled the disdain. The fear. Indeed, they all loathed his very existence; a more silent hatred could they not possess. And why? For the very reason they feared the aliens at Roswell. They did not understand then, nor did they now. It was their human frailty, their lack of vision, their failure to see that which was only so clear. They were monkeys, trained only to follow orders to the letter, his included, his especially, and whatever God they believed in help them should they falter. This one was at best twenty-five, a babe in the military’s arms. This boy—this
child
—knew nothing of how the world truly worked, of how men of vision grappled with that great beast, Power; how real men, if the Fates were kind, would shape destiny like a gifted sculptor. Men like Hitler and Stalin knew, and perhaps, even men like Churchill and Truman. Men, like he.

Brikker buried his cigarette in the ashtray among a dozen other dead. He had thin and wretched fingers, stained of ochre from the poison of his passion.

“I’m not accustomed to asking twice.”

“I believe it’s en route, sir.”

Brikker drew a silvered cigarette case from his breast pocket. He considered a moment and slipped it back. The lieutenant had taken to the painting near the window. His eyes had shifted for but an instant, an instant most would have missed. But not Brikker. He heard the silent; saw the light when light fled. Saw the hearts of men.

“En route.”

“… Yes sir.
Sir?
”

The physician and physicist, schooled in the sciences, but truly an artist in the works of torture, gazed beyond the lieutenant. The gold pendulum in the clock swung in wondrous, faultless rhythm. It was akin to magic, such focused energy, and Brikker’s eye—he had but that piercing left, the right now patched—seemed to blacken.

“The mind,” he said, barely above a whisper.

No response. None expected. They could never hope to understand. A few did, of course, a
very
small few; a very precious few. They understood all too well. Better than he.

“…
Sir?
”