Darker Than Weird: Fourteen Tales of Horror

The River Flows To Nowhere

I hate the city.

I hate the nonstop rain and the blood-salted asphalt slick as snakeskin. I hate the smells of mildew, petrol, and despair. The acrid fogs, the vagrants gathered like clumps of fungi beneath rusting bridges. I hate the eternal night of the city, how the sun never shines there. It’s an endless labyrinth of neon canyons, trash heaps, and the husks of dead factories.

It changes you in ways you never thought possible.

I hate the city, but I understand it. That’s why I get hired for cases like this. It’s the only reason I go back to the streets again, something I swore I’d never do. I’ve broken that vow many times. Every time the money runs out and the booze runs low. Every time some desperate client with a hefty bank account wanders into my office.

The clients talk, sometimes they cry, and I just listen. Usually it’s a remorseful father, the kind who spoils his kid relentlessly and can’t figure out why junior ends up hating him. Sometimes it’s a lady. A mother or a sister. Out of her mind with worry or guilt.

The last thing anybody wants to do is go into the city. So they show me a picture, write me a check, and one more time I break that promise I made to myself. After an hour or two at the bar I head for the old highway. Far sooner than I’d like, I’m staring at a jagged skyline. The city steams like a technicolor volcano beneath a black shroud of smog. It’s always night in the city.

I take a one last look at the setting sun, slip the border guard a sawbuck, and drive into a maze of endless twilight. Walls of rusted iron and rotting stone rise up to swallow my vehicle.

I take a good slug from the flask of Old Kentucky nestled inside my jacket. I’m sweating and nauseous. That’s the way it always goes when I come back here. I hate the city.

But I’ve got a job to do.

Her name is Dorothy, if you can believe it. I’ll try to keep the Oz jokes to a minimum. Dorothy McIntyre. Nineteen years old. Beautiful girl. Her mother hired me for the usual reason: no other options. Dorothy’s story sounded all too familiar. Ms. McIntyre explained it from behind a tear-stained handkerchief. Dorothy’s father had been out of the picture for some time. Ms. McIntyre didn’t talk about him or what his line of work had been. I could’ve guessed.

“Dorothy was a good girl until she met that…boy,” she said. “They call him Roach. A horrible name for a horrible person.”

“Any idea his real name?” I asked. She didn’t know a thing. They never do.

“First, he got her hooked on drugs…”

“Junk?”

“Yes, I believe that’s what they call it.”

“Anything else?”

“No,” said the mother. “At least I don’t think so.”

“So Dorothy and this Roach never drank?”

“Oh, yes, there was drinking…I thought you meant—”

“It’s all right. Go on, Ms. McIntyre.” I offered her a glass of bourbon, the dregs from my last bottle. To my surprise, she drank it down in a single gulp. Momma had done her share of drinking.

“She started staying out all night with him. Coming home a mess. A few days into it I caught him in her room. They were doing drugs. Junk. Dropping it into their eyes. I remember the veins on my daughter’s arms pulsing and throbbing. Her eyes rolled back in her head, she barked like a dog… I thought she would die right there. I drove that boy out of the house with this…”

She opened her purse and showed me a handgun. Antique six-shooter. Probably wouldn’t have fired at all. But I’m sure “Roach” didn’t want to take that chance.

“He came back for her two nights later,” the mother said. “Dorothy refused to listen to me, she walked the halls all night long. She couldn’t sleep or eat…she was so thin.”

“Withdrawal,” I said. “Very common in these cases. Nothing to worry about.”

Sometimes a good lie is all it takes to make a client feel better.

“He broke through a window and took her. Or she broke the window and climbed down to him. I’m not sure. But I saw them running through the hedges. Him in the black leather jacket with the skull stitched on the back. I’d have known it was him even without that silly jacket.”

“What was Dorothy wearing?” I asked. A few more procedural questions followed. She gave me a picture of Dorothy. It was taken a year ago, before Roach came into the picture.

The picture showed sunlight, green grass, and the blossoms of a cherry tree. Dorothy stood beneath the branches in a yellow sundress. Her hair was long and wavy, the color of ripe corn, her eyes black as midnight. She was smiling. The kind of smile that makes you feel good, yet also a little sorry for her. I believed Ms. McIntyre when she said her daughter was a good girl.

Good girls are prime currency in the city.

“Promise me you’ll find her,” my client said. “Bring her back to me…” A fresh welling of tears ran down her cheeks. Dorothy’s mother was a looker too. I could see her beauty beyond the patina of pain and worry that marred its surface.

I knew better than to make a promise I couldn’t keep.

“I’ll do everything I can,” I told her. “I have some experience in these matters. Go home and get some rest. I’ll contact you in a few days.”

Ms. McIntyre paused at my office door and looked back at me.

“Do you think…do you think he took her…into the city?”

I nodded.

She nearly fainted. I grabbed her shoulders and she fell into my arms.

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I know the city. Leave it to me.”

I cashed her check as soon as she left.

The picture of Dorothy lies on the passenger’s seat next to me. Neon lights seep through the windshield to glide across its glossy surface, painting her face in shades of hot pink, cherry red, and bruised violet.

Most of the outer streets are lined with the burned-out husks of old cars or service vehicles. You can only drive so far into the city before you have to get out and hoof it. Luckily, I have a good parking connection.

A pack of red-eyed starvelings eyes me as I glide by. A bottle of piss or alcohol smashes across my windshield. I hit the gas and take a few corners fast enough to leave them behind. It’s not far to the alley that slopes beneath a crumbling tower. At the bottom of the ramp is a steel door like the kind you used to see in bank vaults. I hit the brakes then lay on the horn.

A couple of armed guards appear from nowhere. I pass them my investigator’s license and a pair of neatly folded fifties. They hand me back the license and the vault door opens. I glide through the rows of vehicles, most of them left to rot here years ago. But there are a few clients like me, a few machines left in working order. I pick a spot near the exit, pay the attendent, and get my gear from the trunk. All of this is going on my expense report.

A longcoat hides the hand cannon strapped beneath my right arm. The picture of Dorothy slides into my right pocket, along with my silver flask. The hunting knife slides neatly into my left boot. Sometimes you have to work quietly in the city. That’s when a good knife comes in handy.

The door I use to exit the parking vault is hardly visible from the street. I hit the asphalt and head toward the glittering chaos of the inner city. The light rain is steady and warm. Gusts of wind kick up swirls of dirty cellophane. Sheets of hanging moss dance like restless ghosts. Seven blocks later I spot an old woman with a black suitcase walking directly toward me. There’s nobody else on the street. I’m in a canyon whose walls are pocked with glassless windows. Firelight flickers through rectangular orifices. The telltale signs of squatters and drug dens.

The woman with the black suitcase is closer now. I see her wrinkled face, the sway of her wide hips. Her hair is long and matted, her eyes hidden by the brim of a moth-eaten hat. She wears a raggedy longcoat over a tattered dress and army boots. She clutches the suitcase to her breast with both hands and walks with a slow limp, like she’s never been in any kind of hurry. One of her hands rubs the surface of the case like petting the back of a lizard.

I cross to the other side of the street but she stops, head turning to follow me.

I reach the far sidewalk, step over a junkie who’s either sleeping or dead in the gutter, and keep my eyes trained forward. The woman with the black suitcase laughs behind me. It sounds like a death rattle, like her throat’s been cut and later healed into a mass of scar tissue.

I turn the corner and leave the horrid laughter behind me.

Up ahead I spot the globe of crimson neon blinking above Frankie’s Utopia. A crowd of anxious junkies waits outside, quivering like snakes, waiting for their chance to gain admission. I walk to the head of the line, show my ID, and pay off the bouncer. He lets me inside.

Down a set of filthy stairs, through a reinforced iron door, and the pumping bass of the club rattles my bones. The sheer volume makes conversation near impossible. The lights flash and strobe, a mass of half-naked bodies writhes like some great amoebic organism. The room reeks of sweat, cheap perfume, and sex. A dozen clashing colors of smoke rise from the crowd. Overtaxed veins pulse beneath shallow layers of skin. The place is a junkie’s paradise. Hence the name.

At the bar Frankie recognizes me. She winks, pours me a shot of bourbon. Her mohawk haircut is covered with glitter, and her contacts sparkle in rainbow hues. Looking at her makes me dizzy.

“How’s it hangin’, D?” she yells in my ear. “Been a while…”

I nod and show her the picture of Dorothy McIntyre.

Frankie frowns and looks at me like I just spoiled her evening. She picks up the photo, examines it, then shakes her head.

“Nobody like that in the city,” she shouts above the assault of the bass.

“At least not anymore, right?” She smiles at my little jest.

I ask if she knows a guy named Roach, wears a skull on his back.

She grins, points across the teeming dance floor. And there he is, Mr. Roach in his skullface jacket, nodding his head, sweating and jerking to the industrial funk. I leave some money on the bar, drink the shot, and make my way through the crowd.

“I swear, I don’t know where she is!”

It’s hard for Roach to talk through his broken teeth and bloody lips, but he manages. He squirms across the puddles of piss and petrol. I grab him up again, slam him against the alley wall. His veins pulse like tiny snakes trying to burst free of his skin.

I drive a knee into his stomach. He pukes. Starting to sober up.

“Tell me another lie and I’ll get mad. Dorothy McIntyre. Who’d you sell her to?”

Roach wipes blood and bile from his mouth. He’s crying now.

I slap him. “Don’t cry. Be a big boy. Who has Dorothy?”

The punk coughs and shivers. “I can’t say anything…they’ll kill me.”

I bring my face real close to his. I let him see the big knife, feel its point on his eyelid. “I’ll kill you. After I take your eyes. Tell me now and you’ll have a chance to run. Get out of the city. If you don’t, it’ll kill you anyway. Just a matter of time.”

Roach stiffens, too scared to breathe.

“Who has her?” I ask again. Neon glints off the naked blade.

Roach’s eyes swivel toward either end of the alleyway. He whispers like he’s afraid of his own voice.

“The Man…” he stutters, coughs. “The Man in the White Limousine.”

I put the knife away, let him fall back into the mire.

“You stupid waste of skin,” I tell him. “Now you better run.”

He takes my advice, scurrying like a rat into the shadows and piles of trash.

When I leave the alley there’s a boy with a sideways face picking up bottles in the street. He looks at me like I’m a tasty morsel, flashes the fangs lining his vertical mouth. I pull out the hand cannon, let him see the glimmer of its metal. He hisses at me, moves on down the road, disappears among a jumble of rusted-out vehicles.

I stand for a moment in the street, getting my bearings. The White Limousine never comes to this part of town. I’ve got some walking to do. Maybe I should just go home, forget about Dorothy McIntyre, write her off as another unsolved case. Just another victim of the city.

I take a good shot from the flask and look at her picture. She comes from a world of sunlight. And now she’s lost in darkness. The rain picks up, turning from steady drizzle into dedicated downpour. Warm and oily. Like blood.

Damn it.

I shove the picture back into my pocket, turn up my coat’s heavy collar, and start walking.

On 459th street I pass the Man Who Speaks With Shadows. He’s always there, like a phantom shaman who haunts the block. He stands on a pyramid of rusted shopping carts, waving his arms in the rain and muttering gibberish. His face is black with grime and madness, his gray beard a tangled crow’s nest. His long robe is a stitched-together quilt of every color that has faded to no color at all. I pass by as far as possible. I can only reach the River District by going down 459th. All the other streets heading this direction are blocked by toppled skyscrapers, mountains of scrap, or barriers of rubble.

“The River flows to Nowhere!” shouts the old man. He’s looking down at me now, bathed in the orange flicker of alley-fires. “To Nowhere!”

I keep walking. He’s harmless.

“Give up the skin and you give up the heart!” he bellows. “What are we without hearts? What are they? The current carries us all toward oblivion! The River flows to Nowhere!”

Farther down the road I can’t hear his ravings anymore. The rain lightens up, but the road is still waterlogged. Steam rises from grates, along with hollow moans of agony. I hear screaming somewhere down below. The city sewers are another world altogether. Couldn’t pay me enough to go down there.

This close to the river nature has started to take back the city. Green vines with black leaves crawl up through the pavement to hug the facades of dead towers. Weeds grow waist-high from cracked asphalt, and sheets of purple fungus smother the concrete. Sometimes things like bloated eels crawl out of the sewers and go hunting up here. They feed on each other when they can’t find rats or stray junkies.

Now I turn off the main avenue. The snipers up ahead will spot me soon if I keep going that direction. The only way I’m going to get close to the Man in the White Limousine is by navigating the Intestinal, a maze of alleys that leads eventually to the River District. I take out the hand cannon. The weight of it in my hand makes me feel a bit safer in the dark and narrow places. A bit.

Bits of bone and fabric line the alleyway, broken glass, the occasional skull, sometimes a gnawed skeleton. Two-headed rats skitter away at my approach, then reconvene to finish their feast when I pass. I take a right, a left, then two more rights, following tiny signs graven into the brickwork. Anybody else would be totally lost in here. Knowing these kinds of things is why I get paid so well.

Eventually I come to the Alley of Ecstasies. The girls here crawl like serpents across the slimy ground. Forked tongues flicker from their bright red lips, and they whisper filthy secrets. They offer me obscure pleasures as I step carefully between them. Their heads twist to follow me. Their bodies are covered with mud and green-gray scum, but otherwise perfectly proportioned. They’re not exactly human, despite their spot-on female anatomies. My stomach turns as they caress my thighs with their long fingers, begging for my favor.

I stop right in the middle of them when I see the man lying at the far end of the alley. Two of the girls crawl across his naked body. His mouth hangs open, head resting on a pile of cast-off clothing. They do unspeakable things with his body, contorting him like a rag doll. He moans and cries out. I turn away, take out the picture of Dorothy and stare at it until the moaning stops. The man stands up, pulls on his clothes, and looks at me with naked embarrassment. He runs from the girls hissing at his feet.

They’ve given up on me, sensing I’m somehow immune to their charms. They bare yellow fangs, warning me to beat it. I drop a few bucks into the slime and make my way quickly to the alley’s end. The maze continues, only now there is a second maze of conjoined fire escapes rising above me. I’ve reached the part of the Intestinal where the buildings still support life. Hunched figures move and scramble through the network of back iron, like fat spiders in a web. Sometimes garbage drops into the allies from above. I watch my step.

I follow the hidden signs, the ones I learned long ago when I was young and reckless. Back then I saw the city as a challenge, an adventure. I owned nothing back then, and so I had nothing to lose. I spent years in this place before I discovered a way out.

Something to live for besides hustling.

Her name was Carolyn.

On my way out of the Intestinal I see the woman with the black suitcase again. She sits on a pile of crumbled stone, cradling the suitcase, watching me pass into the River District.

“Do you know where you’re going?” she asks in that rasping, scarred voice.

I pause, for some reason I can’t name. Maybe the urgency of her question.

“Yes,” I tell her. “I know.”

And she laughs at me again. I leave her laughing as I walk into the road beyond the maze.

The streetlights glow white and orange, rising on iron poles from the avenue at regular intervals. The folk here wear dark clothing and heavy cloaks. Their skulls poke through the skin of their faces like fingertips through worn-out pairs of gloves. They shamble about drawing rickshaws or hand carts loaded with cages full of chickens, hairless cats, or snuffling mutant things without names. The people of River District are meat-eaters.

I blend into the crowd along the Street of Succulents, moving between the stalls where hocks of pink meat glisten on hooks. Hooded vendors shout the merits of their products. The smells of animal shit and barbecue smoke fill the gloom. A couple of stands offer tentacled creatures pulled from the river, and a few even display old-fashioned fish with silver scales. Gourmet food.

Several of these places offer fresh human limbs for those with truly discriminating tastes. I might look into these places in my search for Dorothy McIntyre, but I knew better. If the Man in the White Limousine had bought her, she wouldn’t end up in someone’s stew pot. She’d be in for something far worse than a slaughterhouse death.

The crowd here reminds me of Frankie’s Utopia, but without the blaring lights and noise. And there’s no joy here, not even the simulated kind that junkies are always chasing. No, here the citizens speak in hushed voices, until an argument breaks out and someone gets stabbed or strangled to death. An undercurrent of rage and fear runs through the lives of everyone who lives in the River District. They know who their masters are here, and they’re closer to them than anybody else in the city. They have good reason to be afraid.

The Children Without Mouths march through the crowd, which splits immediately to make way for them. I move to the side like everyone else, keeping out of their direct line of sight. They’re almost cute, these little enforcers. They might be 5- or 6-year-olds if they were wholly human. But like the Girls Who Crawl the Alley, there’s not much human left in them.

Fifteen of the little fascists stalk by my position, turning their tiny heads in every direction. Their big, round eyes scan the crowd and the stalls, looking for who-knows-what. Their tiny fists clutch curved knives and barbed whips. They wear dirty rags beneath cloaks of gleaming silver chain mail. Their faces would be adorable if not for the complete lack of lips or mouths, and the raw menace bleeding from their eyes. A smooth layer of waxy flesh covers the lower half of their skulls, beginning just below their tender little noses.

When the last of them passes by, I resume my walk. I hear the cracking of whips behind me, the shouts of alarm. They’ve found a victim, someone to haul away for whatever mysterious reason drives them. I used to think they worked exclusively for the Limousines, but I learned better. There are other powers in the city. The Children Without Mouths are mercenaries. Like everyone else in the city, they’re for sale to the highest bidder.

At the far end of the avenue I reach the riverwalk. Black water stretches away from the shore, and dark shapes swim in its depths. The fogs hang thick above the rippling surface, so dense that the far shore is impossible to see. The big venus flytrap flowers growing along the riverbank yawn wide as I approach. Sometimes they capture a stray pigeon or some other bit of vermin. They’ll take your arm off if you get too close.

Here on a platform overlooking the rainswept water, the Women Who Dance with Fire begin their nightly performance. Thirteen of them, naked as savages, swirling lit torches through the air, juggling them back and forth with hands, feet, and knees. Tattoos of ancient fire gods writhe across their backs and breasts. Their smooth skin is marred and scabbed over in places where the fire has caught them over the years. Their faces are invisible behind masks of polished bronze carved into the likeness of leering demons. The demon-masks are vaguely Asian in design, yet the Woman Who Dance with Fire are of no specific race or nationality. They come from all over, drawn to the fire like addicts are drawn to the Junk.

I lean against a light pole, watching the cross streets. Waiting for the White Limousine to come by. I know it will be here eventually. Waiting is a part of my job.

The fire-women undulate to the rhythm of drums from hidden speakers. The twirling fires mesmerize me, make me less conscious of my surroundings than I should be. I sip from the flask, and the taste of Old Kentucky makes me remember what it should be helping me to forget.

I remember Carolyn. I met her here, twelve years ago, on this same street. We watched the fire-dancers and took a barge along the river. We ended up in her father’s penthouse, looking down over the whole rotten, steaming city. I had never been up that high. I knew I didn’t belong there, but it was Carolyn who made me feel like I did.

Days later her father found out she was seeing me. He did what any father would do: forbid his daughter to hang out with a no-good street hustler. Next time I went to meet her I wound up tied to a chair in a burned-out warehouse. Her father and his goons stood over me in their pinstriped suits, looking at me like I was an insect. I was certain they were going to stomp me then. But they just worked me over good, broke my nose and a couple of fingers.

I remember her father’s face close to mine. The sour hell of his breath, his crooked nose.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

I nodded. My lips were too swollen to speak.

“Stay away from my daughter,” he said, “and you’ll stay alive.”

I nodded again. I would have told him anything to stop the beating.

They threw me in the river, and I barely crawled out of the frigid water before something ropy and hungry could pull me to the bottom. I vomited riverwater and was sick for a week. I promised myself that I’d never see Carolyn again. But eventually I went looking for her.

She wasn’t hard to find. She had been waiting for me here, by the fire-dancers. We decided to run away, leave the city and her father behind. She stole some money from his safe, bought a used vehicle, and we bribed our way across the border.

We built a life together in the sunshine, made a little home surrounded by green living things. Had a baby. Best time of my life. I almost forgot about the city.

Six years we were happy together. Safe. Content.

But all of it ended when the White Limousine found us.

Before I realize the flask is empty, I’m already half-drunk. The city has that effect on me.

The fire-women are still spinning, and the drums are making my head throb. I think about finding a flophouse to spend the night. I might have to come back here tomorrow and resume my watch.

Before I move away from the light pole, something slips about my neck, pulling me backwards. My skull slams against the pole, and the wire digs deep into my esophagus. A black bulk rises before me, blotting out the flame dancers. Dark glasses reflect twin images of my panicked face. A pair of black-gloved fists on either side of my neck, straining, pulling.

The man before me removes his glasses, and I look into his eyes. But they’re not eyes at all, just pulsing orbs of translucent mucous, glistening like toad flesh. He croaks at me, and the last of the air rushes out of my lungs.

Sleep or death comes now. I’m not sure there’s much of a difference.

I wake up to a spash of icy water in the face. Deja vu strikes me like a fist to the teeth, followed closely by an actual fist to the teeth. My head jerks back. I spit blood from swollen lips. The skin of my neck burns and bleeds. There will be a nasty scare there if I survive. A big “if.”

Three men with bull-necks stand about me. Their coats are long and black, although one of them has shed his outerwear. His shirt is gleaming silver silk, his well-tailored pants charcoal gray. His fists are covered by black gloves, and the gloves are covered with my blood. His eyes are gleaming toad-flesh.

My arms are locked about something, secured behind my back. A metal chair.

“Hit him again,” says a voice from the shadows. It echoes in a way that lets me know this is one of the hollowed-out factories that line the River District.

Thunder rolls into my skull again. A tooth flies from my mouth.

It takes a few seconds for me to come back from this one. My vision is blurred, the ribs of the chair are cold against my naked back. At least they left my pants on. And my boots.

“Die with your boots on,” they always say. Makes a kind of weird sense.

The sound of a purring engine fills the dank air. Twin points of light draw near, defining themselves as two headlights. The White Limousine pulls up close, its windows black as tar, revealing nothing of who’s inside. But I already know.

The door opens and Carolyn’s father steps out. He’s every bit as tall and broad as I remember. A granite statue with a few more wrinkles carved into its face. His suit is immaculate. A silver skull pin decorates his lapel, like the kind Nazi SS commanders used to wear. He walks with a cane, fat fingers wrapped around its platinum head.

He comes to stand in front of me, silent as death. I spit more blood and force my head up to meet his eyes. They’re cold, like blue ice. Carolyn’s eyes were the same color. I bite back the hate and the sickness in my gut. Force a smile across my inflamed lips.

“Son of a bitch,” I mumble.

He doesn’t smile.

“I warned you, D,” he says. His voice is the sliding of a tomb door. The crush of a gravel ton as it grinds your bones. “Told you never to come back here. This is no place for you. Never has been.”

“I’m looking for a girl.”

Carolyn’s father shifts his weight, sighs. Someone brings him a chair. He wipes the seat with a handkerchief from his breast pocket and sits down in front of me. Leans in real close.

“Carolyn’s gone, you poor bastard,” he says.

“Not her,” I tell him. “Dorothy McIntyre. Her mother hired me.”

He looks at me like I’m speaking some language he’s never heard.

“She wants her runaway daughter back,” I say. “Sound familiar?”

He glances at the gloved thug. I take a couple more shots to the jaw before the bruiser backs away. Carolyn’s dad leans in close again.

“Do you know who I work for?” he asks. “Do you even begin to understand my business?”

“Flesh trade,” I say.

He smiles. It’s a terrible, gargoyle smile. Unnnaturally white teeth. He even laughs. Turns to his thugs, who chuckle. I have no idea what’s so funny.

“The flesh trade,” he repeats my words. “There is that. But there is so much more. The flesh is only the beginning, boy. I work for The Skinless Ones. We all must serve somebody, so I serve them. The flesh is weak, but limited. There are so many other ways to suffer. So many alternatives to blood and bone. I think you came back here because you want to discover these things for yourself.”

I shake my head, wince at the pain it causes.

“I only want the girl. The mother is well-off. I can arrange a ransom.”

“It’s too late for that, D.” He turns around in the chair and motions to one of his goons. Someone brings him a small box of dark mahogany with an emerald clasp. He settles it on his knees. Rings glitter on his big fingers.

“You displeased me when you stole my daughter,” he says. “You ruined her. Gave her an illegimate child. You took what was mine. I should have killed you then. But you reminded me of myself…when I was young and stupid. So I gave you a warning instead. Now you leave me no choice.”

I flex my calf and feel the knife buried deep in my boot. I have no chance of reaching it. Not with my hands chained behind the chair.

“Unlock these chains,” I ask him. “Give me a fighting chance.”

Carolyn’s dad laughs again. His fingers run across the clasp of the box. He opens the lid, stands, and turns it upside down. A dozen or so black worms fall across my head, shoulders, and laps. Cold and slimy, bristling with short black hairs.

“These are the Worms That Feed On Dreams,” he says. “They will feed until there’s nothing left of you but an empty shell.”

“I loved her.” I tell him. “Why did you have to kill her?”

“She was worthless. She disobeyed me. So I gave her to my masters. I’ll do the same with you, once you’re properly hollowed out.”

“What about my baby? Your own grandson…”

“I am not entirely without mercy. I pitied Carolyn’s little bastard,” he says. “It’s out there somewhere. On the streets.”

I scream long and hard as the worms become tentacles invading my mouth and nostrils. But worse than that, they send fire coursing through my brain, filling my skull with flame. I’m twitching and straining, but the chains hold me tight.

The worms strip away my memories one by one: my mother, who died when I was a boy. I’ll never know her face again. My time in the alleys of the city…the gangs, the drugs, the fights…all gone. Carolyn…no, that’s the memory I can’t bear to lose. It will kill me as surely as a shot to the head.

I feel them tearing at it now…what was her name?

Some kind of commotion begins around me. A rush of blurred images. Something quicker than the eye moves between the thugs. Red fountains spray across the concrete floor, across my face. Something rips the worms away from my head, one by one, tossing them into the shadows. I realize then that my screaming has stopped.

For a moment I black out, clinging to the memory of Carolyn’s face.

What color were her eyes?

Then I’m back in the real world, and someone is unlocking the chains on my wrists. Something snuffles and snorts and chews nearby, digging into the spilled guts of the big bruiser. He lies on the concrete, body split apart like an overripe melon. What is the thing devouring him? It’s like a canine, but more like a spider. Its lucent skin steams and smokes. Bloody light spills from the eight eyes set about its head, most of which is a fanged snout. It squats and feeds, suckles on the goon’s viscera, then moves quick as lightning to the next body and continues its feast.

The chains fall away. I hear the squealing of tires and the roaring of an engine. The White Limousine races away, rear fender striking sparks as it leaves the scene of carnage.

A lean figure stands before me now, dark face staring from beneath a mildewed hat. Next to her a black suitcase sits open and empty. A strange animal musk fills my nostrils.

“Do you know where you’re going?” she rasps at me. When I don’t respond, she turns and whistles. The smoking dog-spider-thing scampers into the big suitcase, licking its chops. The old woman leans over and closes it tight. She clicks it shut and turns to face me.

“What is that thing?” I ask, rubbing my wrists and wishing for a shot of Old Kentucky.

The old woman glances at the black suitcase.

“My son,” she says.

I try to stand but fall to the cold floor instead.

What was her name?

Carolyn? Dorothy?

Her eyes were…

“Do you know where you’re going?” asks the old woman.

“He works for the Skinless Ones…” I mumble. “He gave her to them…”

The lights dim. The wet concrete becomes a comfy pillow.

“I know,” says the old woman.

She touches my cheek with gentle fingers.

And I’m out again.

I wake up fully clothed. My shirt is torn, stained with blood and grime. My face is swollen, my head ringing. My tongue probes a hole in my gums where an incisor used to be. I’m a mass of aching flesh and bones. Somehow I’m alive.

Flickering firelight warms my shivering body. I’m lying in an alley somewhere on the edge of town. The woman with the black suitcase sits on the other side of the fire. Mounds of trash and rubble form a crude stockade about us. Rain drizzles across a latex tarp suspended above the flames, drips through tiny holes to sizzle on the embers.

My companion offers me a bottle. I struggle to a sitting position and sniff at the liquid. Old Kentucky. I drink deep, letting the warmth of the booze rush through my limbs, settle in my belly. Always takes the pain away. At least for a little while.

I pass it back. Her eyes are pools of darkness beneath the brim of the broad hat.

The big suitcase sits close to her knee.

“What’s in the case?” I ask.

She answers my question with a question.

“Do you know where you’re going?”

I blink at her, rub my eyes.

“I’m looking for a girl,” I say.

“What is her name?” she asks.

I stare at the heaps of trash about us as if there might be a clue hidden there. I run my hands across my battered body, looking for pockets. Looking for answers. I discover a big knife in my boot and a hand cannon strapped under my arm. In the pocket of my jacket I find a parking stub and a photograph.

The girl is beautiful. Blonde hair, dark eyes, soft skin against a green backdrop. A cherry tree, a sad smile. Right away I know that I loved her. Love her.

“Carolyn,” I tell the old woman. “Her name is Carolyn.”

She reaches over and takes the picture from my hand.

“That’s not Carolyn,” she says. “I’m afraid you’re too late.”

She drops the photo into the flames. I watch it wither and curl and turn to ash. She gives me another slug of the whiskey. I drink it down.

“The River flows to Nowhere,” she says, and turns away from me. She caresses the surface of the black suitcase, which seems to throb as if breathing. She might be sobbing. It’s hard to tell.

I force myself to stand up. My head spins. The parking stub says there’s a vehicle waiting for me somewhere. I stagger away from the woman with the black suitcase, wincing with pain at every step. My belly feels hollow, empty, but I know better than to eat city food. Anyway, the emptiness feels deeper than hunger. I’ve lost something. The city has taken it from me.

I follow the address on the stub and regain my wheels. I drive away from eternal night and endless rain, putting distance between myself and a thousand secrets.

And I swear I’ll never go back.

I hate the city.