Ring of Knives

CHAPTER ONE

"Hell of a day, ain't it?"

"You said it." Matt stared out the windshield, his fingers white-knuckling his rucksack. Fog choked the winding road so badly that the tow truck seemed to be plowing through a sea of milk. The glare from the truck's headlights revealed nothing ahead but the broken flash of yellow median lines, which slipped into view just a second before being eaten up by the truck. Occasionally the jagged shadows of black pines faded into view along the roadside, only to drown, seconds later, in the milk.

The driver shook his head, snorted. "Only a fool'd be out on a day like this."

Matt decided to let that one pass.

"How long you had that Ranger?"

Matt told him he'd had the old Ford for three weeks. That he'd got it off a part-time cop in Galesburg in exchange for building an addition onto his porch.

"Ford," the driver snorted. "Fix Or Repair Daily. Ain't that the truth?"

Matt said he guessed it was, wishing to God he'd been picked up by a mute. He stole a glance at the driver. The guy hadn't gotten any better looking since Matt first laid eyes on him: beer-bellied, as bald as Mr. Clean, wearing a black Harley T, black "Don't Tread on Me" ball cap, and black Terminator wraparound shades.

And as chatty as fuck. Matt had been in the truck only twenty minutes, and already he'd had to listen to a detailed explanation of exactly how his breakdown had inconvenienced the driver socially ("had to cancel on my buds' night out"), culturally ("sure was lookin' forward to that UF match"), and reproductively ("no pussy tonight, either, I guess").

Not that Matt had had a choice: as he'd driven up the winding road, his mind occupied with making his noon interview, the fog had parted before him to reveal a huge white stag standing in the road, complete with a fifteen-point rack and black, startled eyes.

He'd slammed on the brakes, one-eightied on the wet asphalt, thumped backward into a ditch. When he stepped out, shaking, the stag was gone. He'd wondered if it'd even been there at all. Luckily, he was unhurt, his cell phone still had reception, and his backpack, tool kit, and grandfather's ax, his only remaining possessions from his old life, were safe in the trunk and undamaged.

That is, he thought he'd been lucky, until he'd had to wait two hours for a tow truck, only to learn that its cab had no heat ("cold as a witch's tit, ain't it?") and no radio ("Rush was gettin' too liberal for me"), and was filled with the sickly sweet smoke of raspberry-flavored cigarillos ("got a sweet tooth, and I'm tryin' to lose weight"). Matt had stared at the guy in amazement as the driver lit up his first. Now that he was on his fourth, Matt just kept his eyes on the road ahead, his hands in his lap, and his lips clamped tight, trying not to breathe. But with each passing minute the cab filled with a fruity funk that made him want to barf. He'd never been carsick before, but he had a feeling that his thirty-year lucky streak was about to end.

Still, the guy had one thing going for him: he didn't seem to recognize Matt, and that was a relief. Matt had no desire to explain how it was that he had survived being frozen for three months beneath an avalanche. It had been all over the papers for a while, both his miraculous recovery and his subsequent disappearance. Now no one knew where he was, or where he was headed. Matt wanted to keep it that way. He'd spent a season on ice and had lost a part of himself. But he'd gained something, too-the ability to detect hidden evil, hidden madness. It manifested in the form of rot, which only he could see. A supermodel might look like a leper to Matt. Not an easy thing to explain to the average tow-truck driver, and Matt wasn't eager to try.

He looked the driver over again. No festering sores, exactly (his wrists did look swollen and purple-but then again, he was a fatty). And no scent of decaying flesh (although who could tell beneath the gaggingly sweet fumigation of those cigarillos?). Anyway, it was hard to tell. Matt didn't understand the scope of his new powers, or if they even were powers, and not some brain-damaged delusion from sleeping with the mastodons. Matt had no clue. But someone would. And for the first time, Matt had an idea where he could find that someone.

"So where'd you say you was goin'?"

Matt glanced at the driver warily, but the black wraparound shades gave nothing away. "I've got an appointment at the Carthage MHC in Westland County," he said. "If you don't mind dropping me off, I'd appreciate it. I'll call a cab later."

"Well, we passed the Westland County line ten minutes ago. But-Carthage?" The driver let out a low whistle. "Ain't that the nuthouse?"

"Mental Health Center, I think they call it."

"Hell, they can call it the Ham Sandwich for all I care. But a nuthouse is a nuthouse-am I right?"

"Guess so." Matt busied himself by opening his rucksack, pulling out a folder. Maybe if he looked like he had work to do, the guy would stop jabbering.

"That's just a mile or two away. But hell, you don't wanna go there. Lemme take you into town first. I'll take you all the way up to Tacoma, you want. I'm missin' the UF match, but I still got me a big night planned."

"No, thanks. Like I said, I got this interview today. It was a lot of trouble setting it up."

"Huh." The swollen fingers drummed the steering wheel. "Got some kinda business there, do ya?" The driver glanced over at Matt's reflection in the rearview mirror. "Or are ya checkin' yourself in?" He chuckled at his own joke and slapped the dash.

"Neither. Just gotta talk to someone."

"Who's the someone?"

Jesus, Matt thought, this guy just doesn't fucking quit. "His name's Jesse Weston."

"You and he kin or somethin'?"

"Or something." Matt opened the folder. It contained three sheets of paper. Each had a page number in the bottom left or right-hand corner, going from 997 to 1002. Each had a header at the top that read Encyclopedia of Psychopathology. And each had a ragged edge where he'd ripped it out of a book after being reminded by a snotty librarian that reference materials couldn't be checked out.

Matt stared at the face on the first sheet of paper.

Profile: JW

37-Year-Old White Male

Diagnosis: dysomophobia; paranoia; delusion (persecutory and grandiose); dysthymia; narcissism; schizophrenia

Born of middle-class parents, JW was happily married and enjoyed an active lifestyle until experiencing an accident while spelunking. A companion of his was killed in a fall, and JW was trapped on a ledge for six days, living on bats and groundwater until rescued. Though having only superficial injuries, he subsequently suffered a breakdown, exhibiting paranoid-type schizophrenic disorder in accordance with the criteria of the DSM-III-R.

A bug landed on the page: a beetle with black, metallic wings. Matt flicked it away and kept reading.

Soon after his ordeal, JW began to claim that he could see lesions on individuals which were invisible to others, and that these lesions presaged violent incidents. He furthermore claimed that he was visited by a personage he called Rotting Jack, who taunted him, infected others with lesions, and was always accompanied by a distinct odor of decomposing flesh. Eventually, his symptoms regularly merited six points on the hallucination scale and thirteen on the psychosis index of the BPRS. JW showed early improvement with a combined regime of cognitive behavioral therapy, Flupenthixol, and Prolixin, but his condition began to deteriorate into hyperkinetic states after regular usage. He is currently residing at a facility in Washington State under the care of Dr. John Dindren.

"Got shifty eyes, don't he?"

Matt looked up. The driver's wraparounds had turned from the road, were focused on the page in his hand.

Matt wasn't sure if the driver was talking about JW, who did have a juvie squint, or Dr. Dindren, who looked nearsighted despite wearing Coke-bottle-thick goggles. He closed the folder. "I didn't notice."

"Didn't-?" The driver snorted. "Oh, you got to notice the eyes. Always take note a' the eyes."

"Huh. And why's that?"

"Well, hell, boy, everyone knows that the eyes"-he peeled off his sunglasses-"they're the windows to the soul."

Matt flattened against the far door with a sharp, harsh intake of breath. His heart pounded wildly.

The driver had no eyes.

None.

Just sockets.

And they were seething with black masses of carrion beetles.

Matt bit back a yell of fear. A hard mass of panic formed at the base of his throat, and he forced himself to look away from the driver's face before he upchucked into his lap.

"Notice anything unusual about my peepers?"

Matt swallowed. "Ah… Such as…?"

"Well, dincha notice? One's blue and one's brown! Piebald, they call it. Like a husky dog!"

Trying to get a grip. "Or David Bowie."

"Who?"

"Never mind." Matt took a slow, deep breath. Then another. Forced his head to turn in the driver's direction. His sockets were still aswarm with twin spirals of thorax, mandible, and iridescent black wings.

Matt cleared his throat. Thought carefully back through the last few minutes' conversation. Made a connection. Ask him, he thought. Can't hurt to ask.

"So…" Matt's voice sounded thin and strained. "You said you were going to Tacoma tonight. What's in Tacoma?"

A strange smile played on the driver's lips, like he'd tasted something bitter-and liked it. "Oh, my ex is havin' a birthday party. She don't know I'm comin'. Thought I'd surprise her, meet the new beau."

Matt's nausea got a little worse. "Crash it, huh?"

"'S right. Got a gift for her that she's never gonna forget." More beetles pulsed through the twin holes in his skull. Some pattered into his lap.

Matt nearly lost his lunch. And not just because of the beetles. "What… kind of gift?"

"The kind that keeps on givin'." The driver turned his beetles towards Matt. Several of them took flight, spanning the distance between them. Matt swatted them away.

The driver grinned. "Sure you don't wanna come? Might see somethin' worth puttin' on YouTube."

Or Faces of Death XII, Matt thought. "Uh, no. But thanks. I see the sign up ahead for Carthage MHC. You can just drop me off right there. Like I said, I'll call a cab later, come by and pick up the Ford."

"Suit yourself. But you're missin' out. Gonna be a night to remember."

# # # # # #

As soon as he was out and the truck pulled away, Matt noted the license plate and pulled out his cell phone. With shaking hands he called the Tacoma police and left an anonymous tip. Nut-job tow-truck driver coming to wreak havoc on local divorcée. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Afterwards he felt better.

Maybe this is the reason I was given this gift, he thought. Not just to get caught up in carnage, but to prevent it. To head off bad things before they come to pass. To make a difference in people's lives for the better.

He liked the idea. It made him feel less like a delusional homeless man and more like a wandering knight. To save damsels in distress? He could get used to that gig.

And before he'd gone a hundred yards, he saw another chance to do just that.

# # # # # #

Halfway up the Carthage Mental Health Center's gravel driveway was a beat-up Toyota Corolla that must have rolled off the assembly line when Nancy Reagan's views on drug use were big news. Its hazards were blinking. As he got closer, he noticed that one wheel was flat.

Matt walked up to the car.

"Hey there," he said, raising a hand in greeting.

The driver turned, startled. She was a heavyset black woman with shiny gold highlights in her hair. And mouth.

"See you got a flat, ma'am?" He put his hand on the car roof, gave a reassuring smile. "I can help you with that, if you want."

"Get away from me, ya white-power, serial-killer ma'fuckah!"

Matt froze. "Hey, really, I just thought-"

"Thought you could rape my shit is what you thought, ma'fuckah." She reached in her purse and pulled out what looked to be a toy: a bright yellow plastic handgun. She jabbed it towards him. "But I'm 'a Tase your shit an' you come one step closer, so back the fuck off."

He looked at it closely. Yep, it was indeed a Taser. Took a step back. A big one. "Fine. No problem. I'm gone." He turned away.

"Damn right you is."

He started to jog up the hill. But he could still hear her.

"… up in my goddamn business…"

He sped up. But some voices carry better than others.

"… three hundred twenty-five dollars for this shit, ma'fuckah…"

Much better.

"… Tase your white ass…"

# # # # # #

Carthage Mental Health Center was a disappointment. Matt was half hoping for an ivy-covered, crumbling gothic ruin crowned with gargoyles and ravens. A set from a Tim Burton movie-that's how he'd imagined it. Instead, the Admin Building butting up against the circular driveway was pure sixties save-a-buck state construction: single-story cinder block with slit windows, pealing paint, and a weedy "serenity garden" out front that consisted mostly of crabgrass and poison ivy.

The inside wasn't much better. The floor looked like it hadn't been vacuumed in weeks. One of the fluorescent overheads flickered. A row of empty plastic chairs faced a central desk, behind which a clerk was staring slack-jawed at her phone.

"Hi there."

She kept staring at the phone, so he said it two more times.

Finally she looked up, irritated. "What?"

"My name is Matt. I called ahead?" No response. "I'm here for a visit with a resident by the name of Jesse Weston."

The clerk turned her attention back to her phone and yelled out a series of syllables. It was either a name he'd never heard before, or she was speaking in tongues.

"What's going on here?"

A pale, toad-faced wreck came out. She appeared to be wearing a gray tent. In one hand she had a clipboard, and in the other, amazingly, a cigarette.

"This guy wanna see Jesse," the clerk said, still not looking up from her phone.

Toad-Face's astonishingly wide mouth creased downward at the edges, and a mirror image of the long furrow formed on her forehead. "Oh yeah? Well, you can't. He's gone."

"Gone?" Matt wasn't sure he'd heard correctly.

"Gone. As in, Not Here Anymore. He transferred out." She turned away, started to leave.

Matt couldn't believe what he was hearing. "But I set up this meeting three weeks ago with the facility administrator. He promised me an opportunity to meet with Jesse Weston!"

"Sorry." She waved her cigarette over her shoulder at him.

"Well, where's he been transferred to?"

"Confidential."

Matt felt his face flush with anger. Behind him he heard the front door bang open. The manager whipped her pasty face around to see who it was. Matt stepped deliberately into her line of vision.

"Ma'am, I came all this way to see Jesse Weston. It's a matter of life and death. If he's gone, then I at least need to talk to whatever doctor was treating him: Dr… Ah…" He remembered the Coke-bottle goggles but not the name.

Toad-Face and the clerk shared a quick look. "Dr. Dindren," Toad-Face said-with far too much pleasure, Matt thought-"doesn't work here anymore. Sorry." Before Matt could respond, she stepped around the desk, eyes narrowed, and crossed her arms confrontationally.

"Maloria," she said, "how nice of you to drop by-half an hour late."

Matt turned. Behind him, panting, damp with fog and perspiration, was the big woman who'd chased him away from her Corolla.

"Oh, no, you don't, Hirotachi." The big woman rolled her eyes and shoved the pink palm of her hand towards the manager. "Talk to the white girl, 'cause the black girl ain't listenin'."

"Don't you use that tone of voice with me. Your shift starts at three!"

Another eye roll. "I… had… a flat, arright?"

Hirotachi (apparently the clerk had not been speaking in tongues) put her hands on her hips. "For thirty minutes you had a flat? Without calling? Why should I believe that?"

"Because it's true," Matt said.

Both Hirotachi and Maloria looked at him in surprise.

"I can vouch for her. She got a flat back there. I told her not to call, said I'd fix the flat. But I couldn't get the tire off, took forever trying. So it's all my fault, not hers."

Hirotachi opened her vast, amphibian maw, then closed it. She sucked in her thin lips and glared at him.

"See?" Maloria crowed. "What I tell you, bitch?"

"Don't you dare disrespect me," Hirotachi snarled.

"Oh, shut the fuck up," Maloria said, grabbing the clipboard out of her hand and signing in. "Talk to my union rep, you don't like it."

"Oh, I will, and I'll write it up in a report, too. But in the meantime, you might as well know you're being assigned to do janitorial in Module One."

Maloria put her fat hands on her mythological hips. "That ain't my job."

"It is now. Roger called off. Stay here; I'll get you a bucket." She spat out this last word and stormed into a back hallway, slamming the door behind her as she went.

Maloria turned to Matt immediately, cackling, holding out her fist.

"Dag, was I wrong about you. You white, but you right! Give some love, boy."

Matt executed the most Caucasian fist bump in history.

"Hope I haven't gotten you into more trouble," he said.

"Nah, nah, she just trippin' 'cause her man a freak. Hey, look…" She stepped in close, pulled Matt away from the desk clerk, and lowered her voice. "You mean what you said, about it bein' a matter of life and death-you meeting with Dr. Dindren?"

"Yeah, I did. And it is."

She pursed her full lips, gave a curt nod. "Meet me around back in twenty minutes; I'll take you to him."

Matt stared at her. "But Hirotachi said he isn't here anymore."

Maloria snorted. "You got to listen better, boy. She say he don't work here no more, and he don't."

"But then why would he be…"

She raised an eyebrow.

Suddenly, he got it. "Oh my God."

"That's right." Her gold tooth glittered. "He a resident now."