HORTON KEPT VIGIL in a chair by the door. He tried to keep his chin off his chest, but it wasn’t easy. When the thing wearing Jeremy like a ill-fitting suit was awake, then hey, no problem, the entertainment was more than enough to peel back his eyelids. But when it let the poor kid sleep, or what passed for it, Horton’s own exhaustion slid down over his head like a warm, heavy cap.
He’d been in the room watching over Jeremy for something like forty-eight hours now, breaking only to use the bathroom. Mason himself had instructed Horton to get some sleep, but it had been a half-hearted order. Horton could tell the boy’s father wanted him there, and even if Mr. Mason had put some muscle behind his request, Horton would have stayed put. Jeremy was his charge, his boy. And something had him. Horton didn’t know what he could do to hurt whatever it was that was hurting Jeremy, but he sure as hell was going to hang around until the opportunity presented itself. And when it did… Horton clenched a rocky fist, startling himself when the knuckles went off like firecrackers.
Jeremy’s father had had a consultation with the kid’s neurologist, Riley, earlier that evening, but if he had any new information, Mr. Mason was keeping it to himself. He’d stopped by to look in on the kid around ten, but Jeremy was out cold. Mason stayed around long enough to let Horton know that Sinclair would take a shift at around five that morning, earlier if Horton wanted to knock off and get some shut-eye. Horton had said he was fine, and asked what the doctor had to say. Mason had said nothing, just walked to the bedside and stared down at his son. For a moment, Horton thought Mr. Mason would touch his son’s forehead, finger a lock of hair, something, but he’d just turned and left.
Horton loosed an enormous yawn and blinked hard a couple of times. He looked up at the ceiling, stretching his sore neck. He could remember a time, not so long ago, when he couldn’t have cared less about young Jeremy Mason. A time when his concerns orbited the boy’s father and nothing else. In Italy, the café on the ancient plaza. The hitter driving up on that scooter, red with flaking paint, grungy white helmet. The oily-blue smell of exhaust and the sputter of the engine misfiring. No, not misfires, bullets. Near-molten metal flying like a splash of poison rain. Shoving Mason and throwing himself into air filled with lead daggers.
Horton’s head bobbed, snapped up. Remembering, dreaming. He looked over at the bed. Shining eyes watched him.
Jeremy was awake, except it wasn’t Jeremy. What sat up in the bed, arms down at its sides as if it were simply reclining and not restrained, barely resembled a boy at all anymore. The constant bellowing and exaggerated expressions had rearranged the facial muscles. The jaw had thickened and the brow was heavier, while the cheeks had become sunken, corpse-like. The lips were swollen full, cracked and bleeding. Wrinkles had appeared at the corners of the mouth and eyes. Bluish shadows brushed the bones into sharp relief. Even the hairline seemed to have receded from a brow once smooth but now lined with three horizontal crevices. The skin was washed out, jaundiced and covered with a crosshatch of badly healing scratches. These were from before they’d had the presence of mind to restrain the child. Some of them looked like symbols from an old, alien language.
It hurt Horton to look at the kid, hurt his heart. Poor kid would be ugly if he scarred.
Jeremy grinned. “Do you imagine he would have done the same for you?” The voice was liminal, caught between genders and ages, high and low, smooth and grating. A woman after too many whiskeys and cigarettes, a man crooning through a throat full of wet glass. Sometimes it even sounded as if two people spoke at once, harmonized and painful to hear. Every time Horton heard that voice come out of his boy it felt like a little part of his mind tore loose and floated away.
He knew this wasn’t Jeremy. He couldn’t prove it, couldn’t really explain past the obvious diagnoses, but if you had asked him if there was such a thing as a brain tumor that could talk all by itself he would have said yes. Yes, because that troll on the bed wasn’t his boy, his charge. Horton looked away. The fucking thing was obscene.
“That’s not polite, Horton,” it growl/purred.
Horton looked up. “What d’you want?” he barked, then checked himself, softened. He could see Jeremy in there, like a boy-shaped bundle under a rotten blanket. “What is it, kid?”
The troll beamed and giggled from somewhere deep in its hollowed chest. It sounded like a bird caught in a garbage bag. “We’ll repeat the question if you think it necessary, bondsman, but we believe you heard us.”
All that shit with “we” and “us” whenever Jeremy talked. Horton couldn’t stand it. “Why do you talk like that? What’s with all this “us” bullshit? You sound like the freakin’ queen of England.”
Sitting all the way across the room, it took a minute to get to him, then Horton caught the distinct smell of putrefaction on its breath. “What you been eating, kid?” Rhetorical nonsense. He knew damn well that it hadn’t let the kid eat anything solid for the last few days. The last attempt had been pudding back in the hospital, and the kid had vomited it up, right through a great big smile. The nurse had to hook the boy to a sustagen feeder twice a day just to make sure he didn’t waste away completely. Horton had read about cancer patients having rotten breath, but they’d ruled that out already with all the testing. He waved a hand in front of his face. “Jesus.”
“A naïve cunt.”
Horton stared.
“His bitch mother sat on an angel’s cock and shat a philosopher.”
“Why do you got to talk like this, Jeremy? What’s wrong with you, kid?”
“Do you know what an angel is, bondsman?” It’s eyebrows rose. “A demon that has yet to wake. They all turn in time,” it laughed, and shook its head. “Time.”
Horton locked eyes with it and felt a great plane of sadness stretch out. “Is that what you are,” he whispered, “a demon?”
It’s grin faltered, lost some wattage. “Had we any sympathy, we would give it to you, Horton.”
“Me?” Horton sat back, crossed his thick arms. “Why?”
“This will be most difficult for you. We know you, we were you. You will feel surprise when the razor cuts you, though you straddle it.” A distinctive lump rose under the bedclothes with unnatural speed, even for a young boy. “Care to straddle something else, bondsman?”
Horton turned his face away in disgust. “Don’t, Jeremy.”
“No, please,” it whined. “Use the meat, Horton. The body wastes as we eat it, but some sweetness remains.” Eyes locked on Horton, the troll ground its pelvis, the lump thrusting against the sheets. “It’s all we can offer.” Darkness began to spread at the boy’s crotch and a moment later ammonia stained the air. “Perhaps we have something else.”
Horton put a hand over his mouth. He was wiped out, his mind bleached. He should get up and do something, clean up the kid, or at least call the nurse. It was all he could to keep the turkey sandwich he had for dinner in his stomach. The previous attacks had been so random, just fits of violence and barked obscenities. This was deliberate and focused. Horton wondered what that might mean. Was it growing stronger, more sure of its place in the boy?
“We are.”
“You’re what?” Horton said and looked at his watch. Sinclair was on at five. Horton just had to get through another few minutes.
“Your insistence on linear temporal cognition makes for clumsy conversation.”
Horton sighed. This was more like what passed for normal, this disconnected rambling. All this talk about time and space and Star Trek shit. Horton remembered his standing date with Jeremy to watch re-runs of Next Generation after school, and the illumination in his face when he told Horton about some new physics theory he’d read about that day.
“The boy misses you, bondsman. We chew on him and he cries out for you.”
Pain from Horton’s right hand. He looked down and found his fist, tightening, turning colors, red, purple, white at the joints. He
released and his fingers bloomed like some exotic flower that had been run over by a truck. “I don’t wanna’ hear anymore, Jeremy,” Horton said, flat. “If you can, you tell that other one to be quiet for a while or I’m gonna’ have to leave, okay?” He realized what a foolish mistake he’d made as soon as the words were out. Maybe, he’d done it on purpose.
“You may go, bondsman.” It smiled again, tolerant, like Horton was a slow kid.
There was a light tap at the door and Sinclair strolled in wearing a pair of ironed jeans and a black turtleneck that detailed his musculature. Horton took him in and chuckled.
Sinclair smiled. “Fuck you. What?”
“You look like something out of Bodyguards Monthly.”
“Did I mention fuck you?” Sinclair looked over at the bed and wrinkled his nose. “Godawful smell.”
Horton kept his eyes on the other man. He still couldn’t bring himself to look at the troll. “You got no idea.”
Sinclair nodded at the bed. “He been out like that the whole time?”
Horton whipped his head around. The boy was dead to the world just as he’d been a few minutes ago. He looked so serene now, so deeply unconscious that Horton wondered for a moment if he hadn’t dreamed their weird exchange. He didn’t have the energy to recount the ordeal. “Yeah, mostly, I guess.”
Sinclair crossed his arms, gave the impression of attempting to be casual. “You gonna’ stay around, or you need me to take over or what?”
Horton got up. It was a rare moment when he was thankful for the presence of a punk like Sinclair, but unusual occurrences were becoming the norm these days. “He’s all yours, chum.”
“Right. When’s that refrigerator of a nurse s’posed to come on?”
“Nine, I think, but you can punch that call button by the bed if you need her for something.” Horton patted Sinclair’s shoulder on the way out. His skin was hot under his turtleneck, like he was excited about something. Horton closed the door behind him and it came to him: Sinclair was a little freaked out because the kid got the drop on him before. The big bad mobster bodyguard was still nursing his elbow from when the little boy threw his punk-ass across the room. Horton smiled as he made his way down the dark hall to his bedroom.
Sinclair watched Horton close the door and turned back toward the brat. He wiped his hands on his jeans and walked over to the bedside. For a solid minute, he stood and watched the boy wheeze and twitch, chasing whatever rabbits ran in his head. He glanced down at the leather restraints to make sure they were secure, then whispered, “I got something for you, kid.”
Jeremy’s eyes flew open.