Dead to Me

13

We called in our incident at the Sectarian Defense League to the Inspectre, and after a quick rundown of what had happened, he dispensed a Shadower team to keep an eye on their Empire State Building offices. Connor and I headed back down to the D.E.A. but I wasn’t happy about it. Filing the paperwork on our encounter was going to be a nightmare.

When we arrived back at the Lovecraft Café, I had hoped for the comfort of my office chair, but I had no such luck. There was already a buzz of activity concerning our discovery. Assistants were placing calls and scrambling hurriedly off into the bowels of the D.E.A. while the Enchancellors summoned the two of us to a private council. Once Connor and I stood before them, it was clear that I had misjudged the magnitude of our agency. The crowd consisted mostly of unfamiliar faces, faces that scrutinized Connor and me as we gave our account of our run-in with the Sectarian Defense League.

Afterward, we were dismissed from the assembly, but told to wait. Eventually Inspectre Quimbley emerged from the room with a serious look on his face and whispered something to Connor that I couldn’t hear. I had been on the verge of falling asleep with all that had happened already so I was surprised when, without any explanation, my partner grabbed my arm, led me out through the coffee shop, and hurried us toward the subway stop at Astor Place. That had been hours ago.

Connor was being tight lipped about just what we were doing, but if I were to guess, it had something to do with experimenting on how long it took my ass to fall asleep on the hard, orange plastic seats of the R train. While designed for commuting, they were clearly not meant for extended journeys. The blur of moonlit buildings and urban graffiti sped along outside the window as I stretched my back and shifted in my seat. We had covered the entire length of the R line several times over. The entire time, Connor had sat next to me, calmly doing crossword puzzles. Occasionally he would ask me for a three-letter word for “feline” or a twenty-letter word starting with “X” and having the clue “Ancient mythic cult from the Lower East Side.” Other than that, he seemed quite content to sit in silence all along the rails of the subway.

“Are we supposed to ride this train all night or what?” I finally asked.

“We ride until we get what we came for,” he said and erased one of his answers from the crossword.

“You sure we’re on the right train?”

“Yeah, kid, I’m sure,” Connor said, starting to sound annoyed. He folded the paper and set it down. “Look, Simon, consider this a lesson in patience. We’re waiting for a sign. We’re dealing with things on a cosmic and spiritual level. There is a whole subset of rules that we have to play by. Riding and waiting on the R train is just one of them.”

I had experienced enough exercises in patience for one day.

The train was just heading back underground on its return trip from Queens when the door at the far end of the car slid open. The click clack of the tracks filled our ears, and an elderly gentleman shuffled into the car. He was dressed in a brown workman’s jumpsuit and wore a tattered wool hat with earflaps, even though it was much too warm. His face was a mass of wrinkles, and I watched as his wild blue eyes darted around the empty car before settling on us. In his hand he carried a blue and gold paper coffee cup, and as he shook it, the sound of coins jingled rhythmically.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. I looked around, but there were only Connor and me. The man’s voice was thick with an accent similar to Faisal Bane’s, and once again, I couldn’t quite place it. Serbian, Croatian, something that smacked of the former Soviet Republic.

“Please pardon the interruption of your commute to wherever your destination lies,” he continued. “I’d like to perform a little number for you and if you can find it in your hearts to give…a nickel, a dime, whatever…it would be greatly appreciated.”

Since the subway car was empty, it was obvious that his impromptu “number” was meant only for the two of us. With great enthusiasm, he shook his cup of change and it jingled in a faster rhythm as he hopped around the subway car with superhuman agility. He pranced across the empty seats one second and swung from the bars overhead the next. What he was, I didn’t know. I threw open my coat and eased my hand toward my bat, but Connor’s grip stopped me. I turned to him and he shook his head.

The old man’s raspy voice belted out a song. I recognized the words as vaguely familiar, but couldn’t place them.

“At first, I was afraid, I was petrified.

“Kept thinkin’ I could never live without you by my side…”

“What the hell is he?” I whispered underneath the singing. The crazed man was now hanging upside down from the bars in the middle of the car. He flipped deftly down to the floor and swayed to his own rhythm. The sound of the coins went clink clink clink as his frantic pace increased, but not a single coin fell from the cup, no matter how fevered the rhythm or his dancing became.

I wasn’t sure how to react. I wanted to smile at the clear enjoyment this man-creature was getting from singing, but at the same time, with Connor and me the sole objects of his focus, I began to feel intensely uncomfortable. The smell of garbage washed down the length of the car and I had to fight back the urge to cough. “Is this who we’ve been waiting for?”

I found myself slowly recalling the words of the song he was singing, mouthing them as the old man continued. I knew them from my childhood, from a music style I had hoped would never rear its ugly head again—disco. “I Will Survive.”

The man finished the chorus and closed the distance between us by half. Now his scent was overpowering.

Connor shoved his crossword into the space between us while he dug deep into his pocket. He fished out his wallet and flipped it open as the man started to sing his next verse.

“Crap!” Connor muttered. He held up his wallet so I could see. Outside of a variety of credit cards and ATM receipts, it was empty. “Pay the man, kid.”

I nodded and pulled out my own wallet. “I’ve only got twenties.”

“So give him one!”

“Don’t you think twenty is a bit much for an old seventies disco song?” I asked.

“Just do it!” Connor whispered urgently. “Trust me on this; we need his help. Goes by the name of Gaynor. Or that’s what he lets us call him anyway.”

The man called Gaynor landed in front of us now. I coughed as a fresh wave of his stench rolled over me like a blanket. I held my nose and attempted to breathe through my mouth only, but still the strong scent remained. All the while, Gaynor’s cup rang out clink clink clink! and the man did a little two-step shuffle, jumping maniacally back and forth from foot to foot.

I slipped the twenty into his cup, and immediately Gaynor stopped singing to let out a dry cackle. Up close, his features showed the signs of more years than one mortal lifetime could possibly know. Luckily, we rarely dealt with the possible. His eyes danced momentarily toward the cup and he thrust his fingers in and fished around until he pulled out the twenty.

“Oh ho-ho!” his dry voice cackled merrily. “Your little gentlemen’s club must be wantin’ to know something pretty bad there, eh?”

Connor looked at the weathered old man and smiled gently. “Good to see you, too, old friend.”

“Eh!” said Gaynor, looking disgusted. “Enough with the ‘old friend’ crap. You in some kind of fucking comic book? Save your road-movie dialogue.”

“Sorry,” Connor said. I could hear the annoyance barely hiding itself behind his apology.

“And don’t apologize!” Gaynor shouted. “It makes you sound weak…”

The belligerent way he handled Connor was something I shouldn’t have found funny, but I couldn’t help laughing, which switched his attention to me. Gaynor turned as fast as a striking snake and crouched down. His manic eyes locked with mine and his earthy smell overwhelmed me, causing the laughter to die on my lips.

“You find that funny, do you?” he asked. His eyes scurried back and forth across my face. I felt the sudden urge to squirm out of my seat and dash as far away from the man as quickly as I could, but with the handrail to my left and Connor to my right, that was impossible.

“No,” I replied, hating the sound of weakness in my own voice, “I don’t find that funny…particularly.”

I turned my head as far as I could to avoid his gaze. I couldn’t explain it rationally, but I wanted nothing more than to make this creature go away.

Yes, creature. Although he looked human, no human moved like he did or could have caused this sensation in me unless it fell under the category of supernatural. It didn’t matter how human it looked, it was still otherworldly—and that meant that it fell within my bailiwick in Other Division to deal with. I so didn’t want to.

“The kid’s new here,” Connor offered. “Give him a break, will ya?”

Gaynor turned his attention back to Connor. I felt my intense discomfort fall away.

The subway train pulled into Lexington Avenue, and the doors slid open. The platform was full of people, but none of them stepped into the car. En masse, they faltered for a moment as if something was repelling them, and then quickly made their way to another car. As the doors slid shut with the familiar bing bong, our car was just as empty as it had been. The train lurched out of the station.

“Twenty won’t buy you much time, ya know,” Gaynor said, twisting the bill in his shriveled but powerful-looking hands. He stood up and tucked the twenty into one of the side pockets of his coverall. He pushed his hat back to an almost impossible angle and scratched at the mad tangle of gray curls covering the front of his head. “Better get crackin’!”

“We’ve come about a wooden fish,” Connor said. He pulled out a pen and picked up the newspaper, sketching a rough image of the item stolen from Irene’s. “It’s about the size of a dinner plate and we think it’s sacred or something. No one at the Department can make head or tail of it. We haven’t come across any references to it in any of our research so far, but it was important enough for a group of cultists to nick it from under our noses.”

“Ahhh,” Gaynor said. He snatched the paper from Connor’s hands. Was that recognition I saw in his eyes—or madness? “No idea what it is, eh?”

“None, I’m afraid.”

Gaynor let out a sigh as he lowered himself to the floor of the train car and arranged himself cross-legged. He sat quietly as he gathered focus. Seconds later, his jaw fell open and his eyes rolled back into his head, reminding me disturbingly of my narcoleptic great-grandfather after Thanksgiving dinner.

The deeper Gaynor fell into a trance, the faster the train rocked and careened beneath Manhattan. The lights of the tunnel flicked by faster and faster outside. I had never been on a train shooting along so fast. I felt a little queasy and decided that if I were ever in Japan, I would avoid their bullet trains at all costs.

“Did we just go express?” I whispered to Connor, but he only shushed me.

The overhead lights flickered out, and the backups sprang to life, giving the car a ghostly glow. Gaynor’s shadow rocked back and forth with the sway of the train, looking as if he might fall over any second. Then his voice exploded over the roar of the train.

“That which you seek,” Gaynor boomed out, “is far more important than you know.”

His voice was no longer his own. It spoke with a calmness and clarity that clashed with his mad beggar appearance. I waited for Gaynor to say more, but he offered nothing else. Several manic moments passed before I couldn’t take it anymore.

“What is it?” I shouted over the din of the rocketing train. “Do you know what the fish is or what it does?”

The words sounded weird even to me, but believe it or not, I had said more foolish things in my time with the Department. I watched Gaynor for any sign of reaction, but he simply rocked back and forth. I assumed from the blank look on his face that the old man simply hadn’t heard me. I leaned forward in the dimly lit car, hoping to catch a glimpse of some sort of reaction. I was inches from his face when his eyes sprang open and a faint blue glow radiated from deep within them.

“That which lies within is not for me to know,” he said.

As the train car sped and shook, one of the ceiling vents came loose and clanged noisily to the floor beside us. Connor leaned toward Gaynor.

“What can you tell us?” he asked.

“That which you seek…” Gaynor’s lifeless face said. “Its true purpose is known to only a few, but only one will lead you to it. Follow the Vegas trail and all will become clear.”

The overhead fluorescents flickered to life, and the lightning speed of the car finally started to slow until it resumed its normal pace. The old man’s head slumped forward onto his chest. He was drained from whatever force had been working through him. Connor looked bored, but I wasn’t.

Consulting this type of wild oracle was new to me. It had been a lot more nerve-wracking and exciting than the pamphlet back at the office—So You Want to Channel the Powers—made it out to be.

Gaynor came to and adjusted his hat before scooping his coffee cup up off the floor. He leapt to his feet.

When he turned toward the door as the train pulled into the next station, I stood and barked, “Hey! What did you say about Vegas? What’s that got to do with anything?”

Gaynor coughed his earthy cough and glanced over at Connor. “Did I say something about Vegas?”

Connor nodded.

Gaynor shrugged. “Beats me,” he said before brushing aside my hands. “You might want to keep yer kid here in line. He might last longer.”

With a final cackle, Gaynor turned toward the exit. As the doors slid open, he looked back over his shoulder and winked at me.

“Smile, kid, it won’t mess up your hair.”

The old man shuffled off the train and disappeared into the crowd. His earthy scent faded as people pushed and shoved to get on, stepping over the dislodged ventilation cover lying on the floor.

“What the hell was that all about?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” Connor said.

“I’m out twenty dollars!”

“Expense it,” he said flatly.

“But—”

“Look,” Connor said, using a hushed tone now that the car was jam-packed with people. “Stop griping about the money, kid. Do you realize what you just witnessed? The fact that we can even connect with something, someone, like that is a miracle, in and of itself. Call it an act of God if it helps you sleep at night. All I do know is that he and his kind have been able to help us in the past.”

“His kind?” I asked.

Connor shook his head. “Didn’t you ever read the classics in school? All the way back to the Greeks, there have been those who had some kind of cable modem connection to a higher power. Seers, oracles, call them what you like…and every last one of them is as cryptic as the Sunday Times crossword puzzle.” He looked down at the seat between us. “Actually, the son of a bitch stole my crossword puzzle…”

The doors dinged closed and the train took off beneath the city once again.

“So,” I said, “it’s up to us to figure out what the Vegas trail is. I really don’t think the Department’s going to okay an impromptu trip to Nevada for either of us. Not that I wouldn’t welcome the change of scenery…”

“I’ll ask Quimbley,” Connor said, “but I suspect he’ll be about as receptive to that as the Sectarians were to our request for the wooden fish.”