Michael Dibdin - Dark Specter

He stepped forward and grasped my hand.

“You’re going to find happiness here, Phil. A happiness you never dared dream would come to pass. I know that may seem kind of strange now, but it’s true. I’ll prove it to you.”

I smiled weakly and nodded.

“Great. Thanks a lot for inviting me.”

Sam turned in the doorway. He shook his head solemnly.

“You invited yourself, Phil. Everyone who comes here invites themselves. They’re the only invitations we accept.”

He turned and walked out, closing the door behind him. I undressed quickly, turned out the light and got into bed, pulling the covers over my head just as I had as a child in our badly heated house in Holland. Shivering with cold, I lay there sorting out stray sounds which seeped in through the cracks in the walls: a flurry of indistinct voices next door, rapid spasms of gunfire from the video, the dull thud of the Costeo goodies being stashed away, and then the disturbingly familiar sound of a child crying somewhere in the distance. That was the last thing I was conscious of, and when I thought it over in the morning I wasn’t sure if I had really heard it or if it was part of a dream.

Over the next few days, I explored my new home and fell in love.

9

Beyond the window streaked with grime, the flat, featureless landscape slipped past like a loop of film repeated interminably Where the hell were they? After three days on the road, he’d even lost track of what state it was. The occasional towns they hit offered no clue, just the usual run-down Main Street, a few parked cars and pickups, a cluster of people waiting to board the Greyhound, a row of hardscrabble businesses, a water tower with some no-hope name painted on it.

Pat glanced at his watch. Still another three and half hours to go. He looked across the aisle at the girl in the leather jacket and tight jeans. She had sweet, mean, trailer-trash looks, and a body to match. He knew just how she’d fuck, but how would she die? He imagined pressing the pistol to her head, just behind the ear, the way he’d practiced so many times. Ease the muzzle right in there, in the little hollow he’d have licked if he’d been going to fuck her.

She’d like that. After all the guys who’d just climbed on top of her and shot their wad, she’d appreciate a little gesture like that. She’d think he was classy. But not if it was a revolver he was sticking in there. That would make him just like all those other guys, plus she’d be dead. But then maybe she already was. You couldn’t tell, that was the whole point. Not until you tried.

Sensing Pat’s eyes on her, the girl turned and stared right back at him, sassy and challenging. He looked away, feigning a sudden interest in what was happening outside the window. Which was nothing. And if he’d had to shoot her? Would he have blown that, too? In that case, of course, everything would be different. He’d be psyched up and ready to go, and Russ would be there to help. Even so, nothing could guarantee that he’d be able to go through with it. Dale had proved that once and for all.

Pat still found it very difficult to accept what had happened to Dale. For a couple of days in there, he’d almost lost his faith. And he wasn’t the only one. Even the real hard guys like Mark and Lenny had been shaken.

Andy had laid the whole thing out for them: how he and Dale had found the house empty, how he’d tricked the real-estate agency into revealing the time of the next viewing, how they’d dressed up as joggers and circled the block until the client and the agent showed, then followed them inside. Everything had gone without a hitch. The victims had been positioned, cuffed and taped. All that remained was the act itself, the ritual revelation of Life and Death which would raise Dale to the ranks of the initiates.

But then it had all gone wrong. Pat and the others had listened in stunned silence as Andy described how Dale had broken down and then turned the gun on himself, leaving his partner to execute the witnesses and withdraw as best he could.

It was a brutal reality check for all of them, but especially for Pat. He and Dale had been real close. They had arrived at almost the same time, and a bond had formed between them back in those early days when everything could seem kind of creepy at times. Plus they had similar tastes in music and movies. They’d even shared the same woman for a while. And now Dale was gone. Even worse, he’d never really been there in the first place. That was the hardest thing to accept, but there was no other possible explanation. Facts were facts. Get over it.

Pat had tried, but the best he could do was to separate the two Dales in his mind: the dead one, and the person he’d joked and bullshitted with for hours on end, day in, day out. He hadn’t admitted this to any of the others, of course. He knew it was heresy. But there was no way he could convince himself that the Dale he’d known had been any less real than he was himself.

But how real was that? Pat shivered. That was the scariest thing about the whole business. Not only had none of them known the truth about Dale-Dale himself hadn’t known. If he had, he would never have gone along in the first place, knowing what the outcome must be. Why take a test you’re bound to fail? So he couldn’t have known. No one had known. Until the moment of truth, no one could ever know. The people at 322 Carson Street didn’t know, Russ didn’t know, Pat himself didn’t know. That’s why he was going, to find out. That’s what the whole thing was about.

“You got the time?”

It was the girl across the aisle. Pat checked his watch.

“I’ve got a quarter of two.”

The girl made a face.

“I could really use a rest stop.”

She straightened up, turning away from him. For a moment Pat was tempted to try to keep the conversation going. It would help pass the time, and take his mind off what was going to happen when he arrived. But that was against the rules of engagement.

His palms were sweaty. He rubbed them against the smooth, faded denim over his thighs. If only he had the gun with him. Knowing that it was tucked up in his bag, up on the rack, would make him feel better. Just knowing it was there. The gun was solid enough, at least, while the rest of it sometimes seemed kind of flaky. It was one thing back home with the others, everyone buying into it and no distractions. Everything made perfect sense then, as Los expounded the scriptures, laying out their hidden meanings and making you see how it all related to your own life. But out here, bombarded by headlines and billboards and neon signs and reader boards and electronic counters telling you how much Americans had saved by switching to MCI, there were moments when Pat felt himself losing touch. Everything seemed brighter and louder and faster and more confusing than he remembered. Sometimes he found himself reeling under the onslaught of sensations, even though there was nothing really happening, just a bunch of people hanging out in some greasy spoon where the bus stopped. Above all, it was the people who bothered him. There were too many of them, and they were too different. He had to struggle to recall that this was all an illusion, repeating the lines of scripture he’d memorized as part of his self-reprogramming exercise.

That’s why they hadn’t let him take the gun, of course. They had it all figured out. As it was, there was nothing to tie him in to them. If he flipped out and went to the police, he would have nothing to give them but a story so crazy that no one would believe it for a moment. He didn’t even know where Russ was staying. All he knew was the address of the house they were going to hit, and that wouldn’t mean anything until afterward. And afterward he would be guilty of first-degree murder, videoed in the act by Russ, a permanent record of his initiation which would send him straight to the gas chamber or the electric chair or however they did it in Georgia.

When he thought about it now, that seemed kind of crazy too, having to come all this way, spending days and days on buses, and all because his dad had happened to be posted to Fort Benning the year Pat was born. In fact his childhood had resembled this cross-country journey more than it did his destination. The family had moved when he was two, and he’d never been back. He couldn’t remember a damn thing about Georgia, but he had plenty of memories of other places all over the States, mostly unhappy. His sister had taken new homes and schools in her stride, settling down and making friends, the perfect military brat. For Pat it had been a struggle. By the time he was ten, his life already seemed like a school notebook full of botched attempts, unfinished assignments that never got beyond the first paragraph.

That’s why he was so determined not to screw this one up. It wasn’t so much the Secret itself that attracted him. If he was honest, he felt the same about that as he did about Dale. Looked at in one way, it was a really neat idea which explained everything, and he was proud to be one of the chosen few to whom it had been revealed. But if he closed his eyes and looked again, it could seem no more part of him than a new set of clothes, a really zippy outfit that made him look and feel great, but which he could put on or take off depending on how he felt.

Maybe it would be different after his initiation. Anyway, what really mattered wasn’t that but the sense of belonging. For the first time in his life, Pat had a real home and real friends, a stable center and a shared sense of purpose. For that, he was ready to kill, even to die. If he had to go back to the life he was leading before they’d taken him in, he’d be as good as dead anyway.

He lay back and closed his eyes, trying to imagine what the house would look like. It was impossible, of course. It might be large or small, old or new, stucco or brick or wood or aluminum siding. At the moment it was just a number and a street name, but somewhere up ahead of him, getting closer every minute, was a real building on a real block, with real people living in it. Only they weren’t real. Either that, or he wasn’t. Soon he would find out.

A crinkling sound drew his attention. The girl across the aisle was opening a package of cookies. She saw him watching her.

“You want one?”

He hesitated just a second, then smiled.

“Sure.”

She moved over to the empty seat next to the aisle, her long legs dangling down, and handed him the bag.

“Going all the way?” she asked.

He nodded.

“You?”

“Uh huh.”

Beneath the open flaps of the leather jacket, Pat could see her breasts outlined against the T-shirt she had on. They were small and tight, with slightly raised nipples.

“Visiting your family?” he asked.

She shook her head, stirring her dank, bleached hair, the roots already growing out a mousy brown.

“Other way around,” she said.

Her accent was lightly spiced with the sweet sensuality of the South. Pat remembered her getting on in some small town they’d stopped at in the middle of the night.

“How do you mean?”

“I got sick and tired of running interceptions on all the passes my stepdad kept throwing at me.”

Pat frowned.

“You mean he tried to …”

“He sure did. He tried real hard.”

“Did you tell your mom?”

“Uh huh. She said it was all God’s will. Meaning, this guy is my meal ticket, so just play along and keep him sweet so I can sit around here all day without having to do jack shit. So I figured I could do better on my own. This way, if I end up having to peddle my ass, at least I get to keep the cash. You want another cookie?”

Pat took one.

“So you’ve run away from home?” he said. “Jesus.”

All his own fears of rootless dispossession rose up like a waking nightmare. But the girl merely shrugged.

“It’s not that big a deal. I took about fifty bucks and my mother’s charge card. I can forge her signature real easy and it’ll be a couple of weeks before she even notices it’s gone. Till then, I aim to go spastic with the plastic. How ’bout you?”

Pat opened his mouth and closed it again.

“I’m … Well, I … I guess I’m kind of in the same position myself. I lost my job, see. And I heard Atlanta was a good place to find work, so I thought I’d head on down there and see if maybe something will go right for a change.”

The girl nodded.

“You got a place to stay?”

Pat shook his head.

“You?”

“Nope.”

They were silent for a while.

“Listen,” she said at last. “You want to do me a favor? When the bus gets in, you want to make it look like we’re together? Thing is, all these pimps hang around the bus station looking for fresh meat. A friend from school came down last year, real nice person but the worst buckteeth you ever saw. I mean this little gal could eat corn through a picket fence, and they were still all over her like stink on shit. So I’d really appreciate it if you’d kind of stick around for a while.”

Pat hesitated. He knew he should refuse, but he also knew that he couldn’t. This girl’s situation reminded him too much of his own previous existence, after his dad and mom broke up and he’d faded into the blurred anonymity of the streets, sleeping outside and panhandling and searching trash cans for scraps of half-eaten hamburger.

“I’d be glad to,” he said.

She smiled, a sweet pucker of her thin red lips.

“We’d better meet. I’m Cindy Glasser.”

Pat thought furiously. He couldn’t give his own name, of course.

“Dale,” he said.

The girl gave a heliated laugh.

“Really? My first boyfriend was called Dale! What’s your last name?”

Pat tried to make one up, but his mind had gone blank.

“Watson.”

The girl pouted charmingly.

“No, he was Krumdiack. Crummy Dick, everyone called him, poor guy. Still, isn’t that amazing? I bet I know what sign you are, too. Gemini, right? I get along real good with Geminis, ’cos they’re kind of indecisive. I’m just the opposite, being an Aries. Can I come sit here beside you? The edge of this seat is killing my butt.”

It had started to rain, the drops transformed into streaky lines of water by the speed of the bus. Pat snuggled down in his seat. For the first time since his long trip began, he actually felt good. He knew this was wrong. He wasn’t supposed to be feeling good, not at this supreme moment of his life. But he couldn’t help it. And what difference could it make, after all? If stuff was meant to happen, it happened. If it wasn’t, it didn’t. That was the basis of the whole thing, so why give himself a hard time about feeling good? No one need ever know, anyway. Just because they all shared the big Secret didn’t mean he couldn’t have his own little one. He relaxed, feeling the warmth of the girl’s body beside him.

Kristine Kjarstad sat on the steps of her front porch, looking up at the sky, which was tinted an ethereal shade of peach. Although it was almost nine o’clock, the light was only just starting to fade. The mild, balmy air was perfumed with the odor of resin from branches cracked by Thomas, who had taken up residence in the tall cedar which grew next to the front fence. She could just see his head as he sat ensconced in his nest, reading about orea whales.